Forever And Evil

BandomBigBang 2013 Wave 1 Bonus Materials

bad_peppermint — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:05:01 GMT

Wonderful bonus materials!

Art by akamine_chan:

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Mixes!

"the night book mobile" by leish

handwritten by the gaslight anthem
falling for you by the 1975
c'mon by panic! at the disco and fun.
like the dawn by the oh hellos
voodooised by empires
what do you go to home to? by explosions in the sky
creep by scala and the kolacny brothers
can't help falling in love by ingrid michaelson
cannonball by damien rice
the grey havens by howard shore
i will wait by little mix
box of stones by benjamin francis
leftwich grey and silver by karla adolphe
run by ludovico einaudi
come back home by two door cinema club
home by daughtry
burial scene by 65daysofstatic
exitlude by the killers

- on 8tracks or mediafire.

"Until the Sun Rises" by truthismusic

on 8tracks or mediafire.

Words cannot express how fantastic all of these are, but you should definitely try. :)
The story, Starcrossed, can be found here.

Annual Body Count

bad_peppermint — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:46:51 GMT

Hey, folks, we made it into 2013. :D

In 2012, I wrote two (2) stories for SPN RPS, one (1) for j2_everafter and one (1) for spn_j2_bigbang, killing two (2) and turning four (4) people into household appliances; word counts are 6,241 and 35,329, respectively, for a grand total of 41,570 words.

I wrote one (1) Adam Lambert RPS/Bandom story (new fandom :D) of 53,367 words for werewolfbigbang, mauling one (1), and another Bandom story for bandombigbang at 12,243 words, killing one (1). Which makes the total of Bandom+ words 65,610.

Sooooo: Killed: 3. Words: 107,180. Still better odds than winning the lottery.

On a side note, I might stop posting to this journal. It seems like most of my readers prefer AO3 anyway, and so do I, so that might be coming up. Just a heads up. Until then - trucker on.

King of the Pumpkin Patch - Bonus Material

bad_peppermint — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 23:13:16 GMT

Absolutely fantastic mix created by piratekitten! It's called Fairy Nightsongs and is way amazing, and you should go listen to it ASAP.

01. A Place In Time intro - Amanda Abizaid
02. Edge of Dawn - Gary Stadler ft Stephannie
03. Sylvan Spirits - Nox Arcana
04. This is Halloween - Danny Elfman
05. Autumn - Classical New Age Solo Piano
06. An Paistin Fionn - Niamh Parsons
07. Fairy Dance - James Newton Howard
08. First Try - Brendon Urie
09. Moon Dance - Danny Elfman
10. Echoes - Jason Hayes
11. Fantastic Garden - Bruno Coulais
12. A Place in Time - The Landau Orchestra
13. Alice (Underground) - Avril Lavigne

Download it here.

Go tell piratekitten how much you love it. Because you will.

Back to Masterpost

King of the Pumpkin Patch - Part 2

bad_peppermint — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:55:24 GMT

Part 1

They all knew his poetry already, of course, but they still cheered at his more elaborate lines, at broken bones and jealous orchards and less pathetic vines. Brendon’s eyes grew steadily rounder and rounder, and Ryan couldn’t quite tell if it was from awe or fright, not even when Brendon clapped his hands along with everyone else.

Spencer gave Ryan a slow nod. His eyes kept flickering back to Brendon, just like Ryan’s. “Brendon, are you ready?”

Brendon giggled a little, high-pitched and nervous, as he pushed to his feet. Ryan pretended not to notice the calming palm Jon settled on his back.

Ryan took the spot the boy had just vacated, wrapping his arms around his knees just like Brendon had. Even from this perspective, Brendon wasn’t particularly tall, and Ryan could see every drop of sweat gathered at the line of his hair.

“You may begin,” Spencer said, and Brendon shot him a panicked look.

“Okay. Poetry. Okay.” He blew out a sharp breath. “Here goes nothing.”

~

Poetry was not Brendon’s strong suit. He tried, that much was clear, tried hard to emulate Ryan’s meandering style, but he didn’t seem to have a lot of experience conjuring up words and definitely very little actually performing them, and the little bow he tacked on at the end was more than a little embarrassed.

“That was terrible,” he said, oddly cheerful. “Right, guys?”

Ryan’s creatures nodded, some more forcefully than others, and Brendon grinned at them all despite the flush on his cheeks before he turned to await Spencer’s verdict. Ryan’s lips twitched, and even Spencer looked like he was fighting back a smile.

“Ryan wins this challenge, then,” Spencer said. “Is everyone in accord?”

They all nodded, even Brendon, and while Ryan wanted to remind himself that this was only one of three challenges, he couldn’t help but feel a jolt of relief. Maybe hope, even. Maybe they actually had a chance.

Spencer carefully placed one of the three white stones by his right foot. “The second challenge will now begin,” he said. “Brendon, if you lose again, you will relinquish the contest.”

Brendon nodded gravely. “What’s the second challenge?”

Spencer cut a glance at Ryan. “Your majesty?” he said.

Ryan nodded. He knew what was coming, and so did his creatures. He could hear them shifting around in their seats, whispering to each other, tapping their toes to some inaudible beat. “The second challenge will be song,” he said.

Brendon’s eyes went wide. “We get to perform a song?” He whirled around to face Spencer. “Really?”

Spencer nodded gravely. He didn’t quite manage to hide his bemusement.

Brendon, to everyone’s surprise, broke out in a wide grin. “Oh man,” he said. “Oh man, oh man, oh man. I need to get something, from the house, I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t think you’re getting out of this challenge,” Spencer called after him, but Brendon had already disappeared past the briar bush, shoes drumming along the driveway.

“Can we disqualify him for stalling?” Gabe asked, the top of his head just barely brushing against the leaves of the apricot tree, unaware that William was lovingly decorating his hair with small twigs.

“We’re not disqualifying him,” Ryan snapped. “Spencer said it was fine.”

“Well if Spencer says,” Gabe said, rolling his eyes, but he kept his mouth shut until Brendon’s footsteps pounded across the driveway once more.

“Not right now, God,” they heard him yelling, right before he skidded back into view behind the blackberry thicket, a gigantic wooden… thing in his arms.

Ryan stared. His creatures stared. After a moment, Brendon’s grin died on his face.

“What?” he asked.

“What’s that?” Jon finally said.

Brendon looked down at the thing in his hands as if he’d never seen it before. “This is a guitar,” he said. “You guys don’t know what a guitar is?”

“It looks like firewood,” Frank said, edging closer.

Brendon drew the guitar against his body, arms wrapped around it protectively. “It’s not firewood,” he said. “It’s an instrument. You make music with it.”

“Can he do that?” Jon asked Spencer. “Use something to help him make music?”

Spencer pondered that over for a minute before he shrugged. “Don’t see why he couldn’t,” he said. “We’re still going to judge him on his singing.”

“It’s fine,” Ryan said, when Jamia opened her mouth to jump into the conversation. “I say it’s fine, and since I’m the one going up against him, my opinion is the only one that matters in this instance.”

Spencer cleared his throat noisily, and Ryan rolled his eyes. “The Master of Ceremony’s opinion also matter, of course.” Just not as much, was all.

“Enough stalling,” Spencer said prissily. “Your majesty, begin.”

Ryan rolled his eyes in Spencer’s direction, but obeyed. Singing wasn’t his greatest talent, but he did okay, muddling his way through one of their ancient songs, one everybody knew. None of his creatures were allowed to sing along, of course, but Bob tapped out the beat against the dry earth, and Ryan could definitely see Spencer’s foot twitching. He could do this. For the first time since that van rumbled up the drive, Ryan let himself believe that all this might actually turn out okay.

~

The applause when he was done wasn’t quite as loud as it had been after his poetry, but not as half-hearted as after Brendon’s last performance, so Ryan bore it with good grace when Suarez muttered something to Cassadee about Ryan choosing a champion for this part next time.

“Quiet,” Spencer chided. “Brendon, are you ready?”

“Fuck yeah,” Brendon said, and dragged his fingers over the strings.

~

Ryan had never even heard of the song Brendon chose, but he still had to admit defeat before Brendon even made it to the first chorus.

~

“Third challenge?” Brendon asked, cheeks flushed with exertion and pride as he pulled the guitar strap over his head.

Ryan shook his head. “Tomorrow,” he said, gesturing to where the sun was turned red on the horizon. “Tonight, we celebrate our victories.”

“But our victories were against each other,” Brendon said, frowning. “I thought we were rivals.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “No one’s forcing you to stay,” he said testily, gesturing back at the house in an invitation for the boy to leave. Ryan wasn’t about to make anyone stay in his pumpkin patch if they didn’t want to.

Brendon quickly shook his head. “No, no,” he said, tongue tripping over the words, “nope. Staying ‘cause I like it, that’s me.”

“Wonderful,” Ryan said. He still sounded surly, he could tell, but Brendon grinned and punched him lightly in the side. He’d probably been going for the shoulder, but couldn’t reach that far. He was short, and ridiculous, and Ryan couldn’t quite remember why he had thought inviting him to stay would be a good idea.

He briefly entertained the thought of uninviting him, but then Frank unearthed a bottle of mead with a cry of delight, and Brendon laughed, and Ryan figured he could stay, for a bit.

In any case, Brendon leaned his instrument against the trunk of the apricot tree, and Ryan turned away from the still-flushed nape of his neck when Alicia called, “A little light, your highness?”

There was a mocking quality to the title, the way all of his creatures said it, but Ryan pretended not to hear it when he knelt down in the middle of the pumpkin patch, keeping his bony knees well clear of the large, rough leaves. Twilight was coming on fast, so even though there was still plenty of light to see by, Ryan stroked his hand down the side of one of the larger pumpkins, smiling with satisfaction when it began to emit a soft, warm glow.

“Oh wow,” Brendon said, almost kneeling on Ryan’s hand in his haste to come closer. “Did you do that? That’s insane.”

“Perks of the job,” Ryan said, wriggling his fingers at him.

“Oh man.” Brendon laughed. “If I win, am I going to be able to do that, too?”

Ryan shrugged. He wasn’t entirely sure, to be perfectly honest. He’d been King of the Pumpkin Patch for as long as he could remember. He had no idea whether it was something that came with the title, or one of Ryan’s personal quirks.

“You might want to rescue your gee-tar before the Alex’ get their hands on it,” Spencer remarked, shuffling by with another earthen bottle and a basket full of sweet, ripe plums.

Brendon turned and rushed over to his guitar, pushing into the fascinated group of boys to cradle the instrument to his chest and flee. He only paused when he was back at Ryan’s side, casting paranoid looks over his shoulder, and he kept the guitar close even when Lindsey invited him to sit with a wave of her four-fingered hand.

He immediately edged closer when Ryan sat down as well, one arm draped over a pumpkin. Spencer settled on Ryan’s other side, and Dallon next to him, the bark on his bare arms and neck creaking lightly.

Jon sat across from them, and it wasn’t long before he abandoned his conversation with the Butcher to turn greedy eyes on the guitar in Brendon’s lap. “Can I look at it?” he asked, holding out his hands like he was asking to cradle a baby.

Brendon eyed Jon’s claws with some trepidation, but he finally nodded, holding the instrument out by the neck. “Be careful with it,” he said. “It’s the only one I have.”

Jon nodded solemnly. He looked cautious enough, settling the guitar against his body the way they’d seen Brendon do, brushing the side of his thumb over the strings. The sound was metallic, and sharp, and it didn’t sound anything like when Brendon had played the instrument.

“If you press your fingers against the strings, up here,” Brendon said, “the notes change.”

Jon peered at him doubtfully, but Brendon just grinned and nodded his chin at the instrument. “Go on, try it.”

Jon did, cautiously, startling when Brendon’s words turned out to be the truth. He tried pressing down on different strings, and then on different heights on the instrument’s neck, and then different ones at the same time, and Ryan couldn’t stop staring at it, at him, at the way his fingers stumbled and tripped over the strings as he picked out a clumsy melody.

Somebody cheered when he was done, and Jon looked up, cheeks red, grinning. He said, “Hey, Ryan, you want to try?”

“Ryan?” Brendon asked.

Ryan smiled at him. It was, surprisingly, not very hard at all. “That’s me,” he said. “I do have an actual name, you know?”

“I wouldn’t,” Brendon said, shrugging, but his smile was brilliant.

“Here,” Jon said, holding the guitar out by the neck. “Try it, Ryan. It’s fun.”

Ryan did, carefully, his spindly fingers wrapping around the neck once and then half around again. It was lighter than he thought it would be, and it wasn’t very hard at all to prop it against his knee the way he had seen Brendon do.

Jon eyed him for a moment before he was distracted by Victoria’s ferocious laughter, and then it was just Brendon, watching Ryan with a soft smile on his face.

“Aren’t you worried?” Brendon asked. “Now that I know your name?”

Ryan looked down at his hands. He was smiling, but he couldn’t help it. “I think I’ll be okay.”

A warm, broad smile blossomed over Brendon’s face. For a moment, he simply sat there, smiling at Ryan, and then he suddenly clapped his hands together. “Do you want to try?” he asked. “I could teach you, if you wanted.”

“Teach me to play the guitar?” Ryan asked.

Brendon nodded happily. “I’ll pick something simple, I promise.”

“Will you now.” Ryan’s fingertips sounded odd when he drummed them against the wood. “I suppose you better get over here then.”

Brendon’s grin split his face. “Okay,” he said. “Okay,” and shuffled over, fingers settling on top of Ryan’s, his entire body pressed against Ryan’s side.

~

The stars had been out for quite a while by the time they finally said goodnight, and many of Ryan’s creatures were drooping, yawning behind their hands. Brendon, too, looked tired. But happy as well. He’d spent the night at Ryan’s side, so close Ryan could feel it when his body shook with laughter at someone’s joke or stilled in anticipation of a story’s punch line. He’d had mead, too, but not enough to do more than warm his cheeks, maybe put a little stumble in his step when he climbed to his feet.

“Don’t forget your guitar,” Ryan said, holding it out to him.

“Oh yeah.” The boy took it carefully. “Thanks, Ryan.” He smiled a little hesitantly, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed, but Ryan only smiled in return.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Brendon said, and Ryan could feel his smile stiffen a little at the corners.

“Until tomorrow, Brendon Urie,” he said, and didn’t let himself stay and watch him go.

~

Tomorrow dawned bright and far too early for Ryan’s taste, the sky clear and brilliantly blue, the sun a relentlessly cheerful patch over the horizon. There had yet to be a sign of life in the house, but Ryan had barely settled on a pumpkin to wait when Jon came and rested his cheek against Ryan’s knee.

“Best of luck,” he said, quietly. His claws dug rhythmically into Ryan’s calves.

Ryan let his palm rest on top of Jon’s head for a moment before he pushed him back to meet his eyes. “Is Spencer awake?” he asked.

Jon nodded. “He said he’d be here soon,” he said. “Does the Brendon know when we’re starting?”

Ryan wasn’t sure, actually, but he assumed Spencer had filled him in. He was Master of Ceremony, after all.

He must have, because it wasn’t very long at all before Brendon arrived with sleep-bleary eyes, wearing a different shirt but the same pants as yesterday. “Hey,” he said with a brilliant smile. He scrubbed his palms over his bare arms. “It’s a bit chilly, huh?”

“It’s getting to be winter,” Ryan said absently. “The frost is coming soon.”

“Already?” Brendon asked.

Ryan didn’t get around to answering before Spencer strode over, raising his eyebrows. “Are you both ready?” he asked.

Brendon nodded happily, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “So ready,” he said. “What is it this time? Pumpkin throwing? A berry eating contest? Maybe a little arts and crafts?”

“A duel,” Spencer said blankly.

“A duel?” Brendon’s voice did a neat little flip. “Like, with swords and stuff?”

“Is there a different kind?” Ryan asked, but gently. He felt a little bad for Brendon, but, well, the rules were the rules.

“I’ve never used a sword in my life,” Brendon protested, with just a hint of a tremble in his voice.

“Neither has Ryan,” Jon assured him. “So you’re both going to be terrible, don’t worry.”

“Great,” Brendon said. He smiled broadly. “This’ll be a cakewalk, then,” he said, and released a shuddering breath.

“Okay,” Spencer said, happily enough, and produced two broadswords apparently out of thin air. They were huge and unwieldy, and Brendon staggered under the weight when he took hold of one of them.

“Shit,” he said. He gave Ryan a wide-eyed look. “Dude, I’m not sure I can actually lift this.”

“Then I suppose you’ll lose,” Spencer commented blithely. He turned away to pick his way through the growing crowd of spectators and settle on his pumpkin. “Everyone settle down,” he said. “Sit down and be quiet. Now, if you don’t mind.”

There was one white pebble by his right foot, one by his left, the third still sitting untouched in front of him. Ryan forced himself to concentrate on that. One more challenge. One more chance to save their home.

“Begin,” Spencer said, and Brendon barely had time to say, “Man, this is so much better than getting bitched at all day,” before Ryan swung his sword, aiming for Brendon’s neck.

Brendon, caught off-guard, parried clumsily, sword held at an awkward angle that was bound to hurt his wrists. They were close, so close, cheek to cheek and Ryan could feel Brendon’s ragged breath across his skin, see his wide open eyes. For the first time since Ryan met him, Brendon looked scared.

When Ryan eased up on the pressure, Brendon took a quick step back and cleared his throat, but he didn’t say anything. No little quip to lighten the mood.

Someone in their audience shifted uneasily, so Ryan brought his sword up again. So did Brendon, movements slow and semi-controlled, muscles bulging underneath the sleeves of his t-shirt in an attempt to hold the weapon steady. He was the one to attack this time, sword swinging slow and clumsy, but the impact of metal against metal still jarred Ryan’s very bones. His breathing was loud in his own ears, perspiration already gathering at the back of his neck, the sound of his shoes shuffling in the dust grating and harsh.

He sincerely doubted his fight had a lot of entertainment value, but his creatures were almost unnaturally silent, watching their every move with rapt attention. Ryan’s sword was almost too heavy to lift, his thin arms tiring quickly, and Brendon didn’t look to be faring much better. It took just about all of Ryan’s strength, but he managed to force Brendon back a step, and then another, until Alicia had to pull her boots out of the way to avoid tripping the boy.

Then Brendon bit his lip and suddenly, unexpectedly, threw himself forward. Ryan went to parry his blow only for Brendon to tear his sword back and send it flying at Ryan from the other direction.

Ryan just barely managed to get his blade between himself and Brendon. It hurt, though, the impact did, and the angle tore the sword from his grasp and sent it flying, thudding heavily on the ground and skidding to a halt at Joe’s feet.

The yard was silent.

“Oh wow,” Brendon said, with a hint of a smile. “I really didn’t think that would work.”

Ryan scowled. He hated losing to incompetent people.

“That’s great, Brendon,” Spencer said with an easy smile. “Now you just have to kill him.”

Ryan hastily pulled his foot back when Brendon all but dropped his sword. “Kill him?” he asked, voice flipping. “Nobody said anything about killing!”

“Those are the rules,” Spencer shrugged, and Ryan glared at him. He could at least sound a little bit more concerned. Ryan’s life was at stake here, after all.

“But I don’t want to kill him,” Brendon said, sounding utterly lost. He stood, shoulders slumped, tip of his sword digging into the soil, looking so young Ryan could hardly believe this had all been his idea. There was no way he would challenge someone this – innocent to become King of the Pumpkin Patch.

Spencer drummed the tips of his fingers against his lips. “Then Ryan is going to kill you,” he finally decided. “Ryan, get your sword.”

“A little bit of respect, please,” Ryan said, but he straightened his back and took his sword from Patrick with a gracious nod.

“Kill me?” Brendon asked, sounding quite a bit more afraid, but no less shocked.

“Well, yes.” Spencer spread his hands. “It’s a duel to the death. Either you kill him, or he kills you. There’s no third option.”

“But-” Brendon began. He barely managed to wrench his sword up in time to parry Ryan’s blow. When Ryan retreated, circling him carefully, he took a few hasty steps backwards. “But!”

“There’s really no use arguing about it,” Spencer said casually. “So you might want to save your breath.”

It was good advice, if a bit cruel; the brief respite had allowed Ryan to recollect his strength but unsettled Brendon enough that their fight had become horrifically one-sided. Ryan advanced, and Brendon retreated, doing his best to fumble his sword between himself and Ryan’s blade. He parried, once, twice, lunged sloppily a time or two, but it wasn’t long at all before Ryan managed to slip one of his long legs behind Brendon’s and trip him. Brendon stumbled backwards, into the watching crowd, dropped his sword, and sat down heavily between Mikey and Amanda, who both scootched as far away from him as possible.

“Okay,” Spencer said, while Ryan’s creatures held their breath. “Ryan, you know what you have to do.”

Ryan did. He raised his sword high, drawing back his arm, and then he made the mistake of meeting Brendon’s eyes, his big, dark, terrified eyes. Had he looked like that when Brendon had advantage over him? When Brendon had been in this position?

Brendon didn’t say anything. The pumpkin patch was deathly quiet, and Ryan would have heard every word, had Brendon chosen to plead. But he stayed quiet. He simply sat there, staring up at Ryan, eyes big and wet, lip quivering unhappily. It was pathetic, and Ryan dropped his sword with a sigh. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said.

Brendon’s eyes widened.

Spencer clicked his tongue sharply. He leaned back and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Well, one of you is going to have to kill the other, or we’ll be here until the end of time.”

“I’m still your king,” Ryan reminded him, with a sharp look that let Spencer know exactly how much Ryan didn’t appreciate his tone.

“Yes, your majesty.” Spencer dropped his eyes. He didn’t look very sorry, but Ryan was used to that from him. “But it’s a duel to the death. If you won’t kill Brendon, and Brendon won’t kill you, then the duel won’t end. The rules are very clear about this.”

“The rules, hm?” Ryan looked back at Brendon, who had deflated into a tiny ball. The Butcher had reached over to rub Brendon’s shoulder with furry fingers, and Amanda had Brendon’s hand clasped firmly between her own, and Brendon looked like he didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry.

“I’m King of the Pumpkin Patch,” Ryan said grandly. “I’m changing the damn rules.”

There ought to have been stunned silence, perhaps a round of applause. Instead, every single one of Ryan’s creatures began whispering to someone else, and the veins in Spencer’s forehead looked ready to burst.

“You can’t just ‘change the rules’ in the middle of the contest!” he protested.

“Are you questioning your King?” Ryan asked haughtily, and Spencer scowled but shook his head.

“It’s fine,” he muttered. “Whatever.”

Brendon choked on a laugh, and Ryan grinned when he reached down to offer him a hand. Brendon surprised him by going for a hug as soon as he was upright, wrapping his arms around Ryan’s skinny torso and burying his face in Ryan’s chest.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “For not killing me. Thank you.”

“You didn’t kill me either,” Ryan reminded him, sliding one hand into the hair at the back of Brendon’s neck.

They were pulled apart by Jon, who first curved himself around Ryan, claws digging into his back, before hugging Brendon with equal determination. Ryan caught Frank when he launched himself at him, and then Pete, and then he suddenly started laughing. Not too loudly, not too boisterous, but just enough to make Brendon glance over at him and smile.

~

What seemed like an eternity later, his creatures’ chatter had quieted but still not died down. Ryan extracted himself from a circle of Alex’ and fled over to the fence bordering the property, where he could sit and be alone and breathe for just a couple of minutes.

It was wonderful that the duel was over now, of course, wonderful that both he and Brendon had somehow made it out alive, but at the same time, didn’t that mean the end of the pumpkin patch? Brendon’s parents were going to tear up the grass and the brambles, chop down the trees in the orchard and fill in the dirty old pond at the far end of the property to make way for a shiny-tiled, shimmering pool instead. Ryan and his creatures were going to have to find somewhere else to go; flowers without a garden, leaves without branches, kings without a kingdom.

They were going to lose everything.

“Ryan, hey.” Brendon flopped down on the grass next to him. “What are you gazing at all soulfully?”

Ryan turned his head to meet Brendon’s eyes, smiling perfunctorily, but Brendon’s happy grin practically melted from his face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked suddenly. He sounded concerned, and almost scared. “Ryan, what is it?”

Ryan rested his cheek against his knee and gave Brendon a long look. “The pumpkin patch, Brendon,” he said. “What are we going to do? This is the only home we’ve ever known.”

Brendon chewed his lower lip. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure you would have saved it by killing me, you know? My parents can be pretty harsh, but they wouldn’t just let that go.” He shrugged, smiling helplessly. “Humans don’t really work that way.”

“Great,” Ryan muttered. “So we were doomed from the start. That’s very reassuring, Brendon, thank you.”

Brendon sat up straight, startling Ryan upright as well. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Nobody said anything about being doomed.”

“But we are, Brendon,” Ryan insisted. “Unless you can pull a plan to save the pumpkin patch out of that guitar of yours, we are doomed.”

“Not necessarily.” Brendon lifted a stalling finger into the air. “I have an idea.”

“What kind of idea?” Ryan asked, but Brendon shook his head.

“Just. Let me work my magic, okay? Have a little faith.”

Ryan scoffed, but Brendon seemed too elated suddenly to pay him anymore attention, springing to his feet and dusting the soil from his knees and ass. He was still holding up his finger, grinning wide, and barely called out a goodbye before he stumble-rushed away to the house.

Ryan stared after him. He didn’t want to believe in Brendon and his idea just yet, but it was hard. Hard not to let that small glimmer of hope in his chest blaze into a full-fledged inferno. He wanted to believe that Brendon knew what he was doing. He really, really did.

“Are we really going to trust him?” Spencer asked, settling down at his side.

Ryan shrugged. His lips kept wanting to smile, no matter how often he fought them down. “He’s proved himself.”

“I suppose,” Spencer said. He hesitated. “I’m glad you didn’t die,” he said, nudging Ryan with his shoulder.

“Thanks for letting me know,” Ryan said snippishly. “I wasn’t sure for a moment.”

“You know I was rooting for you,” Spencer protested. “But I was supposed to be impartial, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ryan reached over to ruffle Spencer’s hair, using his longer arms to his advantage when Spencer ducked away.

Spencer escaped after a moment, glaring, and Ryan let him go. His smile was slowly turning into a frown. It was a little strange, knowing that their fate was being decided, perhaps right this very second, and there was nothing they could do. There was nothing any of them could do.

They were all in Brendon’s talented little hands, now.

~

Despite his reassuring words, Brendon didn’t reappear until the next day, speaking loudly enough to be heard all the way from the house. He was earnestly reassuring someone – the mother, William announced from his vantage point in the apricot tree – but leading her steadily towards the pumpkin patch, and Ryan’s creatures disappeared from sight without him having to say a word.

“Careful,” Brendon said to his mother, her hand on his arm, as he pushed aside a couple of curious vines. “Careful with the pumpkin leaves, they break easily.”

His mother huffed, unaware of Spencer tugging Ryan out of sight behind the dog rose hedge with a hand curled around Ryan’s wrist.

“What are we doing here, Brendon?” she asked, stepping cautiously over a thorny blackberry tendril. “I’ve got lunch to prepare.”

“I know,” Brendon said. “This won’t take long. I hope.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Spencer breathed in Ryan’s ear.

Ryan couldn’t do anything but shrug, so he didn’t. “He almost became king of the pumpkin patch,” he pointed out. “We should have a little faith.”

“Yeah, because you lost against a human,” Spencer said, grinning, but the expression quickly dropped off his face when he caught Ryan’s bony elbow in the side.

“Almost lost,” he corrected tightly.

“Yes, your majesty,” Spencer said. He sounded like he was rolling his eyes, but Ryan didn’t look over. He was a king. He was above such pettiness.

In the meantime, Brendon had lead his mother over to the garden bench and urged her to sit down on the dilapidated wood, despite her doubtful look. “It’ll hold,” he assured her. “I promise, Mom. Just sit.”

She sat, carefully smoothing out her skirt but halting her movement when Brendon crouched down at her feet, looking up at her with an earnest expression.

She cleared her throat a little, and then again when Brendon reached up and caught one of her hands. “Honey, what is it?” she asked, offering him her other hand as well.

Brendon looked down at his feet for a moment before he looked back up. “I know I’ve been terrible lately,” he said, but he was grinning a little. “About the move, and in general.”

Mrs. Urie nodded. She said nothing to contradict him, but Ryan thought she looked almost – hopeful, somehow.

“And, well.” Brendon looked down at his knees. “And I didn’t want to admit it, at first, but I like it here. It’s nice, you know. Like it could be a home.”

She freed one of her hands to tuck a wayward lock of hair behind his ear. “I’m sorry we couldn’t pay more consideration to your objections, honey, but your father and I thought long and hard about this move.”

“Yeah, I know,” Brendon said. His jaw tightened for a moment, but then he breathed out, and Ryan could see his shoulders forcibly relax. “I know that, Mom.” He sucked in a deep breath and held it for a second before he said, “I wanted to ask you to leave the garden alone. Like, to leave it as it is.”

Her eyes went horrified-wide, and Brendon quickly went on, “I mean, trim it back a little, of course, make it look all nice and sh-stuff, but. Like, not completely flatten it? It’d have, like. Charm. I think it could be nice.”

Ryan could tell from the look on Mrs. Urie’s face that she wasn’t going for it, even before she shook her head. “That’s really not what we had in mind, Brendon,” she said.

Brendon gave her a hopeful look. “I know that,” he said. “But I think it’d be for the best, you know? I just – this place is special, can’t you feel it? We can’t just mow it down.”

She tightened her lips, clicked her tongue. “Brendon, baby, it’s just a garden.”

“It’s not just the garden!” Brendon said fiercely. “Not just a garden, I mean. Not to me.” His face smoothed out, though Ryan had the feeling it was deliberately done. “I really, really like this place, Mom, and I’m asking you to just leave it be. Please. For me.”

The woman was wavering, Ryan thought, looking down at Brendon. She looked confused, but not malicious. “They’re just weeds, Brendon,” she said.

Brendon ducked his head. “I know,” he said. “But I like it, you know? It makes me feel – at ease, I guess. Peaceful.”

“I thought you’d been less argumentative the last two, three days,” she conceded. Then she sighed, deep and loud. “I’ll have to talk it over with your father,” she said, but from the way Brendon started grinning, that was as good as a yes, and the woman looked like she knew it too.

“It can’t just be an indulgence, Brendon,” she said. “You’re going to have to take good care of it if we let you do this.”

Brendon laughed, delighted. “Maybe you’ll even let me get a dog, one day,” he said.

“How about you take care of your garden, first,” Mrs. Urie said. She was smiling, though, and Ryan could feel his heart unclench a little bit.

“I will,” Brendon said, jaw set fiercely.

The woman reached over to ruffle his hair. “I’m starting to get that,” she said. She smiled at him, long enough that Brendon started fidgeting with the tear at his knee, before she looked up at the sky. “I really do have to start getting lunch ready, though.”

“Do you need any help?” Brendon asked.

Her expression was startled, at first, but when Brendon simply knelt there, looking up with earnest eyes, it eased into a soft, fond smile. “I’m alright, honey,” she said. “But maybe you could check if your dad needs any help sorting out the attic.”

“I can do that,” Brendon said easily before he pushed himself to his feet and dusted off his knees with his hands. He reached up to tug a couple of blackberry vines out of the woman’s way when she made to push them roughly aside. “After you,” he said, grinning.

She smiled, charmed, unsuspecting, running her hand over Brendon’s shoulder when she passed him. Brendon took a moment to follow, letting his gaze wander over the seemingly deserted pumpkin patch. Then he grinned, sudden and startling but oh so bright, and even though Brendon couldn’t see him, Ryan smiled back just as wide.

~

The others were off somewhere, celebrating, passing bottles of mead around with elation. Ryan was going to join them in a minute, he was, but for now he was content to perch on the fence and watch the sun sink towards the hills, blushing crimson as she went. It wasn’t any different from the way she always did, nothing Ryan hadn’t seen hundreds and thousands of times before, but it felt different. Now that the pumpkin patch was safe, that he knew they were still going to have a home, even if only for a time, it felt different.

He heard Brendon’s footsteps long before he felt the presence at his side, the shuffle-step of his sneakers against the summer-hardened soil. He didn’t look over, not even when Brendon sighed.

“The sunsets are so colorful out here,” Brendon said. “I swear they never looked like this back home.”

Ryan shrugged. He’d never strayed far from the pumpkin patch, had barely even been past the fields surrounding the house on all sides. Every sunset he’d ever seen was a brilliant purple, a crimson red, a startlingly bright turquoise.

“Beautiful, though,” Brendon added after a while. Ryan was fairly sure the boy wasn’t actually looking at the setting sun, despite his words. He could feel Brendon’s eyes on him.

“So,” Brendon said after a while. “The pumpkin patch is saved.”

“For now,” Ryan said, even though even he couldn’t quite manage to feel hopeless at the moment. Eventually the Brendon would leave, and then maybe then his family would decide to destroy the pumpkin patch after all, or maybe one day he would stop caring about them and not bother to hold up his end of his agreement with his mother any longer, but that was ‘maybe’, it was ‘one day.’ It wasn’t now.

For now, the pumpkin patch was saved.

“For a very long time, if I have anything to say about it,” Brendon said.

He sounded so fierce, so determined, that Ryan turned his head and smiled at him. “You would have made a good king, I think,” he said. “You care a lot.”

Brendon shook his head fiercely. “I’m glad I didn’t win,” he said. “I don’t ever want to take something away from you.” He scowled at the mere thought, and Ryan quirked his lips and leaned over to cover Brendon’s fingers with his own.

Brendon fell silent at that, eyes firmly on their intertwined hands until Ryan pulled his back to fiddle with the buttons of his waistcoat. Then he suddenly rose up onto his tiptoes and pressed a quick, dry kiss to Ryan’s cheek.

“Ryan,” Brendon said. “Thank you,” he said, when Ryan blinked at him. Even in the fading light, Ryan could see him turning pink. “For this. For being my friend.”

“You’re welcome,” Ryan said, after a moment.

“I should go inside,” Brendon said. He hesitated for a moment, but then he smiled and pushed himself away from the fence. “Good night, Ryan,” he called, when he was almost out of sight, and then he was gone.

“Good night, Brendon,” Ryan said. He stayed on his perch, watching the sunset dye the sky in violent shades, fingers ghosting over the spot where Brendon’s lips had touched him, and smiled to himself.

Bonus Material

King of the Pumpkin Patch - Part 1

bad_peppermint — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:52:58 GMT

King of the Pumpkin Patch

~

The house at the end of the drive had stood empty for a long, long time. It had been seasons upon seasons, years even, since the Old Lady had left, escorted to a van by a smiling man and woman in white clothing. Ryan hadn’t seen her since. He’d never really wondered about her, hadn’t missed her.

Perhaps he should have wondered. Perhaps he should have expected that the ever-busy humans with all their hustle and bustle would never leave a house as spacious and inviting as this one unoccupied for long. Perhaps he should have seen the cars that had blocked the drive briefly during the summer as a warning sign, rather than turning a blind eye and hoping the problem went away on its own.

But he hadn’t.

Instead, he’d been curled up underneath the briar bush as tightly as his long limbs would allow, dreaming about the ripening grapes and the first bite of winter, when a van thundering down the drive yanked him unceremoniously from his slumber. He bolted upright, banged his head against one of the sturdy bottom branches, planted his hand in a couple of wayward thorns, and let out an undignified yelp.

When he finally, sucking on his palm and more than a little disgruntled, located the cause of the disturbance, two of the men had already opened the van’s back doors. There were another two, one significantly older than the others, who began to lift cardboard boxes and a disassembled lantern onto the ground. A car was parked over at the far side of the lot, next to a woman who eyed the proceedings with a critical expression and her hands on her hips, and a boy kicking the ground with the biggest frown Ryan had ever seen, on anybody.

“What is it?” Spencer asked from behind him, wriggling his way underneath the briar bush.

“Humans,” Ryan breathed. He could hardly make himself say the words. “There are humans at the house, Spencer.”

“More than one?” Spencer asked, creeping forward on his belly. When Ryan glanced over, he could see one of the thorns tearing a hole into the fabric covering his shoulder, but Spencer seemed preoccupied with other things. Ryan couldn’t blame him.

Once he had come close enough to see properly, Spencer propped himself up on his elbows, head ducked low to avoid the sharp thorns. “Lots of humans,” he said.

“Lots,” Ryan agreed. He chewed his lip. “They’ve brought… things.”

“To-stay things?” Spencer asked, cutting him a sharp glance.

“I think so.” Ryan pointed at the back of the van, where all four of the men were hard at work. “Look, that’s one of those indoor benches.”

“This is not good,” Spencer said. He slipped his thumb into his mouth and chewed vigorously on the nail before he said, speaking around it, “Not good at all.”

They both startled at the sound of branches cracking behind them – Ryan could feel Spencer flinch – but it was only Jon, pressing in against Ryan’s shoulder.

“Hello,” he said quietly, but there wasn’t any of his usual humor in it. His attention was fully focused on the men and the woman bustling around the drive.

“Are the others safe?’ Ryan asked him under his breath.

Jon nodded. “They’re all hiding,” he said. “Watching, but hiding.” He met Ryan’s gaze briefly. “Pete and Patrick are off somewhere, but Patrick’s smart. He won’t let them catch him.”

“Good,” Ryan said, and Jon grinned briefly at the praise before he nodded at the van.

“Do you think they’ll all be staying here?” he asked. “I mean – the house is big, but it’s not that big.”

And there are so many of them, Ryan knew he wasn’t saying.

“I don’t think so,” he said. He bit his lip. “I hope not.”

Spencer nudged him lightly, understanding in his eyes, before he shuffled another few inches forward. “There’s, what? Four men, and the woman?”

“And the boy,” Ryan said.

“Boy?” Jon asked.

“Yeah, he’s –” He had wandered off towards the house, the boy had, apparently fascinated by the ivy climbing up one side. He couldn’t quite reach it, stalled by the flowerbed separating him and whatever had caught his attention, but he was certainly trying his best, tips of his sneakers dipping into the loose soil.

That much fascination for a blank wall was unsettling to Ryan, even though he knew humans did strange things sometimes. He narrowed his eyes, and then widened them in alarm when he caught sight of a telltale shimmer between the ivy leaves, like air rising from asphalt on a boiling hot day.

“Who’s over there?” he asked, under his breath, barely even daring that even though the humans were all the way at the other end of the drive.

“Pete and Patrick, most likely,” Spencer whispered back, just as quietly. “Pete wanted to go raid the bees’ nest in the oak tree, I think.”

Ryan groaned, burying his face in his elbow for a moment before concern for his guys made him look up again. The human boy had edged closer while Ryan wasn’t paying attention, feet barely moving but his torso twisted forward. His eyes had narrowed to little slits.

“He has glasses,” Jon noted. “That’s good, right? That means his eyes are bad.”

“But how bad?” Spencer asked over Ryan’s head. “They’re well camouflaged, but he’ll still see them if he’s looking right at them.”

“Guess we’ll just have to hope for the best,” Ryan said, even though his every instinct was screaming at him to run away, or else cause enough of a distraction that the boy would leave his guys alone.

The boy reached out a questioning hand, and Ryan was just about to throw caution to the wind and march over there when the woman, unexpectedly helpful, intervened.

“Brendon,” she snapped. “Will you make yourself useful, please?” She pointed a demanding finger at the back of the van, and while the boy scowled, he whirled away from the ivy and stomped down the drive.

Ryan let out a long, slow breath.

Across the yard, two shimmering shadows disappeared around the corner of the house, and by the time the boy, with his arms full of boxes, looked their way again, they were long, long gone.

Ryan breathed in, and then out again. “Let’s go,” he said, pushing himself backwards. “We need to talk to the others.”

~

They’d taken up refuge down by the largest pumpkins, Ryan and Spencer and Jon. The others were unsettled and chattery, too loud and too boisterous, and it had taken most of the afternoon to restore some semblance of calm. It didn’t help that Ryan himself could feel the apprehension sharply in his gut, that Spencer – usually as cool as the icicles on the trees in wintertime – was fidgety and distracted, glancing back at the house every couple of sentences like the humans might come for them right this very moment.

They’d finally convinced everyone to settle down for the night, to not panic, when daylight was already fading, and then they’d hunkered down amidst the pumpkins and lapsed into distressed silence, watching the sun die on the horizon in a blaze of yellows and greens. Still, it was bright enough that Jon was barely more than a black silhouette, a stark profile surrounded by a soft halo of hair, utterly preoccupied with stuffing tobacco into his pipe. He leaned against a pumpkin the way he always did, legs sprawled out and crossed at the ankles, unlike Spencer, who liked to sit painfully upright even in situations like these.

“What’s taking so long?” Spencer asked, annoyed but not malicious, and Jon turned his head the other way to look at him.

“Do you want to do this?” he asked, waving the pipe around.

“Just… finish it, please,” Ryan said, unwilling to listen to their usual bickering. He slid one leg off the pumpkin he was perched upon and nudged the sole of Jon’s foot. “Take pity on my poor nerves, please.”

“You sound like the Old Lady,” Spencer scoffed, but he left it at that, and so did Jon.

He struck a light on the side of his pumpkin and lit the tobacco with it, the dried leaves glimmering crimson in the falling darkness. He grew even more boneless as he smoked, practically melting into the ground like snow in the spring, and when he finally passed the pipe on to Spencer, his voice was thick and lazy.

“What are we going to do?” he asked. “About the humans?”

“We might not have to do anything,” Spencer said. “Maybe they won’t care about the yard.”

“Did you see their stuff?” Jon asked. “They’re not the type not to care about the yard.”

Ryan took the pipe when Spencer offered it, but he didn’t add anything. He stared off into the sunset and thought about the boy instead, the human boy, the only one in the chaos who’d opened his eyes and looked.

He glanced over his shoulder at the house. Through the briar bush’s branches, he could see the illuminated kitchen window. Not many of the humans – the Urie’s, Ryland had said they were called. Not many of them had stayed, but the woman had, and the older man, and the boy. The Brendon. He was sitting at the table now, inside the house, stabbing at the plate in front of him while the other two scowled.

Ryan had a hard time reading humans, he knew that, but the whole scene looked rather dismal. Unpleasant. He didn’t really understand why they would do that to themselves.

Frowning, he turned back to the sunset, pressed one hand to his cheek and let the other, the one holding the pipe, rest on one knee. Jon poked the other with his toes.

“Ryan?” he said. “Earth to Ryan.”

“I’m alright,” Ryan said automatically.

“Yes, you are,” Jon said. “But the humans? What are we going to do about them?”

“What can we do?” Ryan returned, shrugging helplessly. “It’s a people-house. We have no claim over it. We can’t ask them to leave.”

“We could make them leave,” Spencer offered, but even he looked unconvinced by the idea.

“They’d only bring more people,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “People, and machines, and all sorts of things, and it’ll be troublesome and dangerous.”

“It’ll be dangerous no matter what happens,” Jon said. The frayed sleeves of his shirt trailed over Ryan’s knees when he reached for the pipe. “The boy pays attention. That’s bad for us.”

Ryan looked back at the house again. They were all standing now, the man and the woman and the boy, shuffling around their kitchen with big gestures and agitated movements. As he watched, the man pointed a stern finger at the door and the boy hesitated, said something else that darkened the man’s face like the last black clouds arriving before the storm, and then he stomped away.

When Ryan turned back to his friends, the sun had almost died, and the pipe had passed on to Spencer. Jon settled his hands on the belly bulging out underneath his shirt and sighed lazily. “We should wait,” he said. “Either they’ll try to destroy the yard, or they won’t. We won’t find out tonight.”

“You were the one asking,” Spencer pointed out, but he seemed well pleased with the idea himself.

Ryan couldn’t help sneaking one more look. Inside, the woman had sat down at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, the man rubbing soothingly between her shoulder blades. There was no sight of the boy. Ryan drummed the pipe against the side of his boot to knock out the dregs and tucked it into his coat pocket.

“I suppose there’s nothing further we can do tonight, at least,” he said, even though it was frustrating to acknowledge. “Let’s turn in.”

Spencer, yawning, nodded. “I’m sleeping in the briar patch,” he said. “Anybody with me?”

“I’ve finally managed to get that damn badger out of his hole,” Jon announced gleefully. “It’s mine now.”

“Congratulations,” Spencer said, mostly serious. “Ryan?”

“I’ll be there soon,” Ryan said. “You go on ahead.”

“Suit yourself,” Spencer said, giving him an odd look. He nudged Jon in the shoulder by way of saying goodnight and slipped underneath the branches while Jon disappeared into the high grass beyond the dog rose hedge, chattering under his breath all the while.

Ryan stayed where he was, even though it was starting to get cold, even though the last light was fading fast. If these humans were like the others, if the stories he’d heard tell were true, then this was to be one of their last days in the pumpkin patch, and Ryan wanted to be there for every minute of it.

~

Despite the chill that was starting to creep into the ground at night, the last hot days of summer were turning the pumpkins a warm, dark orange-red. It was the time of year Ryan loved best, those first days of fall, when the trees were heavy with ripening fruit but the leaves had yet to die.

He was alone, as alone as he ever was, the others scattered across the yard and the fields beyond it. Jon was off picking grapes to make wine with Carden and Maja, and Spencer was somewhere around, doing things that Spencer did when he was alone.

Ryan didn’t mind. He liked the quiet, the way nature grew more solemn when he was on his own, and yet never quite fell silent. It put him in a strange, contemplative mood, and he tended to wander around the pumpkin patch when he was feeling like this, peeking under leaves to spy on the bolder snails and stretching up as far as he could to reach the ripest pears.

The humans were still at the back of his mind, of course, but it had been a day or two and they had yet to venture out of the house much, let alone this far into the yard. They could still be heard arguing sometimes – always, always the boy against the man and the woman, though the instigator changed as frequently as the wind – but Ryan couldn’t quite bring himself to sneak closer and listen in. As long as humans were fighting amongst themselves, he’d learned, they were too busy to destroy anything else.

He paused to investigate a mouse burrow with his toes, but he couldn’t tell if it was lived in or not. He hadn’t seen mice at it in days. Maybe Jon’s badger had gotten them.

“Oh wow,” someone said behind him. “Check this out.”

It was the boy, of course. Ryan turned and it was the boy, standing there, fiddling with a blackberry leaf and grinning at everything. He hadn’t even seemed to notice anything strange, yet. He certainly wasn’t staring at Ryan like he ought to.

Instead, he grinned at him for a second before he plucked one of the berries and popped it into his mouth. “These are really good,” he said around it, warbled. “Small, but really sweet.”

“That’s because they’re wild blackberries,” Ryan said. He couldn’t help it. “They’re not like the man-grown ones.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” The boy stuffed another few into his cheeks.

Ryan felt the corners of his mouth tugging into a smirk.

The boy reached for yet another berry. “Are you the gardener?” he asked. He hesitated, and Ryan could practically feel his gaze dragging up Ryan's spindly limbs, his coattails, the coal-black glimmer of his eyes. “You’re not the gardener,” he said.

“I’m not the gardener,” Ryan agreed. He hopped up to perch on the wrought-iron fence surrounding the pumpkin patch, one hand on the metal between his toes to steady himself. “But you’re the little Urie.”

“Uh. Brendon,” the boy said. “My name’s Brendon.”

“Brendon,” Ryan echoed, rolling the name around his mouth. “Well, little Brendon Urie. Don’t you know it’s bad luck to tell your name to strangers?”

“It is?” Brendon asked, voice going shrill and breathless, so that answered that question, Ryan supposed.

One of the blackberry vines smacked, harmless but startling, against Brendon’s temple. “Oh!” he exclaimed, stumbling backwards. “Did that – was that-?”

“Spencer, stop it,” Ryan said. He didn’t even try not to laugh.

“You’re no fun when you’re being all regal,” Spencer grumbled, but he emerged from the blackberry vines a moment later. He looked the same as he always did, dressed in a bright orange shirt, patches of moss and small trees growing on his shoulders and along his arms, one ear and the side of his head looking as though it had been carved out of cool, smooth stone. Ryan had the sneaking suspicion he was also hiding a cabin in his hair, but Spencer refused to admit it, and Ryan didn’t dare pry.

Brendon watched him walk past with his mouth wide open.

Spencer, catching the look, rolled his eyes. “Humans,” he scoffed. “Think they’re so smart.”

“I, I,” the Brendon said, proving Spencer’s point, and then fell silent, mouth and eyes open wide, when Jon also crawled out from the thicket. His gaze followed Jon’s movements as he brushed clumps of soil from his shirt and the worn out fabric of his pants, from the top of his feet, eyes flickering briefly to the curved claws of Jon’s fingernails.

“You’re the human,” Jon said. “Do you have a cat? I like cats.”

“No cats,” the Brendon said, blinking. “I had a hamster once, but it died.”

Jon nodded knowledgeably. “Cats eat hamsters,” he said.

“Mine just died of old age, I think.” Brendon aimed a helpless look in Ryan’s direction. “And I think hamsters might be a bit big? For cats to eat, I mean.”

“Jon,” Ryan said, when Jon looked to be gearing up to another one of his educational monologues. It did little good, of course, because Frank chose that moment to pop up amidst the begonias, a crown of them hanging precariously off his ear, and say loudly, “I like cats too! They’re delicious.”

Jon bristled immediately, the hairs at the back of his neck visibly straining upwards, and Ryan was fairly certain that only Gerard’s arrival prevented Jon from going straight for Frank’s throat.

“Frankie,” Gerard protested, fussing with the flowers in Frank’s hair. “Don’t be mean,” he added, as an afterthought.

The Brendon looked utterly fascinated and possibly a little horrified by the pair of them, Gerard’s snowy skin contrasting sharply with the blue, green and red patches of Frank’s, his dark hair almost brushing against Frank’s green and orange tufts. Ryan used the momentary respite to gesture Jon closer, tugging him between his knees and scritching lightly at the sensitive skin behind his ear.

“Frank won’t be eating any cats,” he promised quietly. “I won’t let him.” He had little control over what Frank did in his spare time, of course, but even the feral cats tended to stay well clear of the area, and Frank was too enamored with Gerard to set out looking for them, so Ryan figured it was safe enough to say.

Jon rubbed his cheek against Ryan’s knee in response, and Ryan ran his nails over his skin one last time before he looked up to find Brendon spinning on his heel in alarm. During Frank’s little interlude, the pumpkin patch had filled with Ryan’s creatures, and there were more arriving still, slipping in through the fence and underneath the briar bushes, peeking out from the wild grass and behind the broad pumpkin leaves. The Alex’ balanced on the back of the worn resting bench, giggling and attempting to tip each other off of it, but they stayed well clear of the other end with Ian and his crow’s nest of hair, who’d pulled one of the baby birds from the tangles and cradled it carefully in his lap. Victoria sat straddling the faux-Greek statue where it barely rose over the weeds, long legs twisting round and round and round the base. Greta eased herself out of a tangle of pea plants, straightened her skirts and shook the flower blossoms out of her hair, and then more, and more, daisies and marguerites and buttercups until Nate crouching in the grass beside her smacked at her legs to get her to stop.

“This is the human?” Andy asked. His mouth was smeared red with raspberry juice. There were several more speared onto the horns protruding from his hair.

“He’s so squat,” William said, sliding down from the branches of the apricot tree. He bent down to peer closely at Brendon’s face. He had to fold himself nearly in half to do it, and when he drew back, Brendon’s mouth had formed a perfect little o.

“This is one of the humans,” Ryan said, drawing both Brendon’s attention, and the crowd’s. “The little one.”

The little one in question took off his eyeglasses, polished them rapidly on the hem of his t-shirt, and pushed them back up his nose. He closed his eyes firmly, and then opened them again. From the look on his face, he had expected something to change, but as far as Ryan could tell, nothing had.

“Holy shit,” Brendon said, taking them all in. He blinked at Ryan, but his eyes stayed just as wide. “Who are they?”

“My Court,” Ryan said, not entirely without pride.

“Your court,” Brendon repeated.

“My boys and girls. My creatures.” Ryan grinned. “And I’m the King of the Pumpkin Patch.” He bowed as deeply as his precarious perch would allow. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, little Brendon Urie.”

~

The moment didn’t last. Brendon closed his mouth, opened it, closed it, opened it, and looked to be on the verge of actually managing a few words when the woman’s voice carried into the pumpkin patch, calling for him to wash up before dinner.

Brendon pointed hesitantly back at the house. “I have to go,” he said. “But, it was nice to meet you. Your Highness?” He bobbed his head. “And everybody.”

“Goodbye, Brendon Urie,” Jon said, waving from the vicinity of Ryan’s knees.

Spencer nodded, once.

“You’ll be here tomorrow?” the boy asked quickly. Another loud, harsher “Brendon!” came from the house, and he called back, “I’m coming, Jeez!” before he whirled back to Ryan. “You’ll be here?” he asked, almost desperately.

“We’re always here,” Ryan said, finally.

The boy nodded hastily. He swept his gaze over the Court’s solemn faces one last time before he rushed towards the house, uncaring of the blackberry vines tearing into his shirt, shoes pounding the ground long after he’d vanished from sight.

“Well,” Spencer said, into the silence. He pushed himself away from the fence. “We’ve got something now, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” Ryan echoed. He rose to his feet, towering over even William and Gabe and Travis from his vantage point on the fence. “My creatures,” he said grandly.

It took them a moment to quiet down, but eventually they all turned their eyes on him, waiting for his verdict.

Ryan pitched his voice loud enough for them all to hear. “Stay away from the humans,” he said. “The boy knows now. That’s already too much. The others cannot know, is that clear?”

He gave them time to nod, to mumble quiet affirmations, before he turned away and beckoned Spencer to him.

“What are we going to do about him?” Spencer asked, head tilted back to meet Ryan’s eyes. “He’s far, far too aware for his own good.”

“When the time is right, we’ll think of something,” Ryan said, hoping he sounded more assured than he felt. He’d never met a human who could spot them that easily, that casually, and yet barely even notice anything was out of place. He hadn’t met many humans at all, but nevertheless, he knew that wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.

He didn’t like it at all.

~

Ryan, curled up in his nightly nest underneath the briar bush with Spencer, breathing his air, jolted awake at the sound of footsteps. It was late, for their preference, the sun already halfway to midday, but the previous day’s events had tired him out and, apparently, made him careless and unaware.

He craned his neck around and caught sight of two pairs of shoes, one small, one large, both sturdy and sensible.

“Look at this mess,” a woman said, and when Ryan tilted his head back, he could see it was the one from the house. The Urie mother.

“I suppose no one’s been here since Aunt Jenna moved to the home,” was the reply, and that was the man of the house, the Brendon-father, the one with the sternly disapproving eyes. “No one’s bothered to take care of the place.”

“They should have,” the woman said. “We’ll have to get rid of this jungle,” she said, pushing one of the old briar branches aside with so much force that it splintered and cracked. “Maybe we could put in a pool. That might appease Brendon a little bit, don’t you think?”

“We can’t reward his bad behavior by spoiling him,” the man said, but he didn’t sound opposed to the idea, exactly.

“Being strict with him hasn’t worked, either,” the woman said, and she didn’t sound reproachful, exactly, but worn out and frustrated and maybe a little sad.

The man sighed. “We’ll look into a pool,” he said. “The trees would have to go.”

The woman looked up at the apricot tree that was William’s favorite, his preferred spot to curl around the branches and bask in the last rays of summer sun, to fold himself along the bark and listen to the voices of the garden. “I think we’ll survive,” she said. “It’s not like there’ll be a lot of fruit we’re missing out on.”

The man took a few decided steps over and laid his hand on the bark curiously. “I suppose not,” he said.

A hand settled on Ryan’s shoulder, and then Spencer’s arms slipped around his torso, pressing in close, his nose squashed against the fabric of Ryan’s suit. Ryan covered Spencer’s fingers with his own.

“I’ll call the landscaping agency, get a quote,” the woman said, and then they were moving away, voices fading into the quiet sounds of morning.

A pool. They were going to ruin the pumpkin patch, their home, for a pool.

Humans. Most days, Ryan just wanted to strangle them all.

“We can’t let this happen,” Spencer said, squeezing Ryan’s middle once before letting go.

“We can’t,” Ryan agreed. He ran his fingers through his hair, dislodging a few overzealous leaves, and shook his head.

Spencer pulled at his own hair in frustration. “Why can’t we just tell them to go?” he asked. “We were here first. We’ve been here for years! Why can they just waltz in and destroy everything?”

Ryan was about to agree vehemently when an idea struck him. He tapped his forefinger against his chin. “Maybe we can,” he said.

Spencer blinked. “What do you mean?”

“The Brendon,” Ryan said. “He knows about us already, and he’s one of them. We’ll make him their champion. If I challenge him to a contest, maybe we can strike up a deal. If I win, I remain King of the Pumpkin Patch, and he and the other humans will leave. And if he wins…” He trailed off, but Spencer merely nodded his understanding.

“Can you even do that?” he asked. “Challenge someone for your own title?”

“I’m King of the Pumpkin Patch,” Ryan pointed out in response. “Who’s going to stop me?”

Spencer shrugged, because no one would, and they both knew it. “But what if you lose?” he asked instead. “What if he wins, and you’re no longer the King of the Pumpkin Patch?”

“Why be King of the Pumpkin Patch if there is no pumpkin patch anymore?” Ryan asked.

Spencer, it seemed, could think of nothing to say to that.

~

Ryan had asked his creatures to disappear. They were still there, of course, hidden in the brambles, ducked into the grass, shielded from curious eyes by the leaves of the trees surrounding the pumpkin patch. Even when Ryan was alone, they were never far away.

Ryan himself had cozied up to William’s apricot tree, still and hidden from view long before the Brendon’s shuffling steps came close enough to be heard.

They hesitated fairly early on, and Ryan could hear him smacking his lips absently. “Creatures?” he asked loudly. “Anybody?”

Ryan almost felt bad for him, the way his voice dipped from expectant to forlorn just about instantly, but apparently that wasn’t going to deter Brendon from anything.

“Hello?” he called. “Guys? You can come out now. I know I didn’t imagine you.” He took an uncertain step, a pumpkin leaf breaking loudly under his soles, and stumbled backwards.

Ryan gritted his teeth.

“Please?” the Brendon called, and he sounded almost miserable now. “Come on, now. Don’t do this to me.” Another leaf shattered under his careless feet.

“Stop that,” Ryan grouched, slipping around the trunk of the tree and startling the boy so badly he narrowly avoided flattening a pumpkin. “There’s no need to destroy everything in sight.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Brendon said quickly. “It was an accident, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Ryan waved a bony hand. “You’re just getting a head start, really.”

“Head start?” Brendon shook his head, frowning. “Head start on what?”

“On the destruction,” Ryan said, slowly. Maybe this one was a little weak in the head. He knew that happened sometimes, if they were dropped as children. He’d heard humans say that before.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brendon said slowly, like maybe Ryan was the dense one.

“The humans,” Ryan said, sharply gesturing towards the house. “Your parents. Don’t tell me you don’t know they’re planning on razing the entire pumpkin patch to the ground.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” the Brendon said, looking unsettlingly sincere. “They don’t really get it.” He scowled at the ground. “They don’t get a lot of things.”

“I don’t like it,” Ryan said, more to himself than the boy. “No one’s disturbed us for years,” he said, pulling at the hem of his coat. “The Old Lady knew better.”

“Aunt Jenna?” the Brendon said, looking surprised. “She knew about you?”

“She knew to leave the pumpkin patch alone,” Ryan said loftily, because the truth was, he had no idea if the Old Lady had known. But she’d been careful, only coming in to trim when it was absolutely necessary, never destroying. In turn, Ryan and his creatures had saved her the juiciest apples and the darkest pumpkins, the sweetest berries and the ripest pears. Things had been good, like that.

And then she’d disappeared.

“Anyhow,” Ryan said, pulling himself upright. It was extremely gratifying to see how Brendon had to strain his neck to meet his eyes. “What you do or don’t know is inconsequential. I’m here to challenge you.”

“You’re challenging me?” Brendon asked, voice flipping. “To what? Why? Um, your majesty.”

“A competition,” Ryan confirmed, unimpressed. “I am challenging you to a competition. Its outcome will determine the future King of the Pumpkin Patch.”

“A competition?” Brendon breathed. “Fuck, that’s cool.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “I’m glad you think so,” he said.

“I really do.” Brendon grinned. “I was kind of hoping my parents would get me a dog, but this is so much better.”

Ryan turned away so Brendon wouldn’t see him roll his eyes. That was probably bad form, now that they were formal challengers.

“Shall we begin, then?” he asked instead, summoning his creatures with a wave of his hand.

“You mean right now?” Brendon asked, eyes going wide. He sounded thrilled.

“No time like the present,” Spencer said, striding over to them, followed by a crowd of Ryan's creatures. “Do you, the Brendon, formally agree to partake in the competition?”

“It’s just ‘Brendon,’ actually,” the Brendon put in. “There’s no ‘the.’ It’s not a title, or anything.”

Spencer managed to look distinctly unimpressed without even twitching a muscle. “Do you?”

Brendon bounced on the balls of his feet, looking around at the creatures bustling across the pumpkin patch, trying to pretend they weren’t watching their every move. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Let’s compete.”

Ryan would really have liked to reach over and hold him still, but instead he fit his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat, elbows sticking out at stark angles.

One of the Alex’ darted up and pressed three white pebbles into Spencer’s palm, who inspected them for a moment before he turned away, nodding.

Someone had brought over a pumpkin for Spencer to sit on, leaves and stem curled carefully away. When he settled, so did Ryan’s creatures, leaving him and Brendon standing awkwardly at the center of a cleared circle, constrained at every side by watchful eyes.

Brendon shot Ryan a quick smile. Ryan turned his attention to Spencer, who carefully placed all three pebbles between his feet and cleared his throat.

“Do the contestants agree to abide by the rules?”

“We do,” Ryan said calmly.

Brendon darted quick glances back and forth between them. “What rules?” he asked. “Guys, what are the rules?”

Spencer nodded approvingly. “I’ll get everything ready,” he told Ryan.

Ryan nodded himself, turning away to get a drink of water, and maybe find something to eat. It wasn’t good to fight on an empty stomach.

“No, seriously, what are the rules?” Brendon asked, trailing after him.

Ryan paused and gave Spencer a look over Brendon’s head. “Explain the rules,” he said.

“The rules,” Spencer began, slow and long-suffering, “are the following: You and his majesty shall duel each other. You may not let anyone help you in any task. The winner of each task should be fairly obvious, but when there is doubt, the Master of Ceremonies,” he pointed at himself, “shall decide. Clear so far?”

Brendon nodded seriously.

Spencer went on, “There will be three challenges. The first contestant to win two of them becomes – or remains,” he amended with a nod in Ryan’s direction, “the King of the Pumpkin Patch, thus deciding its future. Is everyone in accord?”

There was murmured assent from the crowd around them. Spencer nodded regally. “Then the contest begins.”

Ryan’s creatures cheered, but they didn’t sound like their hearts were really in it. He could understand that – after all, the duel would decide all their futures, and while Ryan didn’t quite think he would lose, he also couldn’t guarantee success.

“Alright,” Spencer said. “First challenge. Who wants to start?”

“I’m the challenger,” Ryan said. “I’ll do it.”

Spencer nodded gravely.

Brendon pushed himself up onto his tiptoes to manage some semblance of looking them in the eyes. “Um – is anybody going to tell us what the first challenge is?”

“The king knows,” Spencer said lightly.

Brendon pulled on Ryan’s sleeve. “Tell me what the first challenge is,” he said. “Come on, your majesty.”

Ryan tugged his arm free and carefully inspected the fabric. “We’re going to perform poetry,” he said.

“Poetry?” Brendon asked. He looked absolutely horrified. “I thought it was going to be stuff like finding the hidden treasure, and shit. I’m shit at poetry!”

“I don’t think the king will really mind,” Frank put in sardonically.

“Frank,” Ryan chided, even though it was the truth.

Frank settled back, scowling.

“You can bow out,” Spencer informed Brendon, who still looked like Ryan had announced that the Winter Solace celebration had been cancelled. “In that case, you will forfeit, and Ryan be declared winner.”

Brendon looked over at Ryan, who smiled.

Brendon wrinkled his nose. “No, I’ll try it,” he said. “Whatever. What do I do?”

“His majesty will start,” Spencer reminded him. “As challenger. You sit with us until it’s your turn.”

“Okay,” Brendon said. “Fine.” He let out a noisy sigh. “I can do that.”

Jon patted the empty patch of ground next to him. “Come sit with me,” he said. “Front row seat. They’re the best.”

Spencer waited until Brendon was settled, arms wrapped around his knees, before he nodded regally. “Your majesty, begin.”

Ryan let his gaze sweep over his creatures for a moment. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes, but he could still see them gazing up at him, expectant and enraptured, and Ryan drew in a deep breath and spoke.

Part 2

King of the Pumpkin Patch - Masterpost

bad_peppermint — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:51:08 GMT

Title: King of the Pumpkin Patch
Genre: Bandom, Fantasy
Characters/Pairings: Gen (pre-Ryan/Brendon)
Disclaimer: Written just because I can. I mean no harm or offense or whatever. If you got here by googling yourself (which you shouldn't), take it as a compliment. :)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 12,250
Warnings: None, really.
Notes: AU! Inspired vaguely by Nightmare Before Christmas. Yeah, I know. Just go with it.

Beta'd by the amazing stella_lost. Thank you, darling!

piratekitten made an amazing fanmix which can be found here. It's an amazing soundtrack to this fic - I highly recommend downloading it and listening to it while you read.

And many thanks to the mods at bandombigbang for all the hard work. It's truly appreciated!

Summary: Ryan, with his tailored suits and spindly fingers, has been King of the Pumpkin Patch for as long as he can remember. He sleeps underneath the briar patch, he smokes his pipe with his friends, and he watches the sun set every night, without fail. But everything changes when the Boy moves into the Old Lady's house. With Brendon's parents dead set on destroying everything Ryan's ever known, Ryan has no choice but to challenge Brendon to a duel to determine the next King of the Pumpkin Patch.

Masterpost
Part 1 | Part 2

Also on AO3 (+ PDF download).

Bonus Material

Mr. Ackles' Flower Shop - Part 4

bad_peppermint — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:29:16 GMT

Part 3

By the time Jensen finally admitted defeat and closed Landon’s Introductory Plant Biology, his vision was swimming and his head pounding. He hadn’t made any noticeable progress, he was tired and irritable, and even the feel of Jared’s elbow brushing against his own grated on his nerves instead of soothing them.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he said.

Lindsey looked up with a hesitant smile, most likely ready to give up herself, but Jared tapped the page he was reading thoughtfully.

“Hang on a moment,” he said.

“Did you find something?” Jensen asked.

“I have an idea,” Jared said slowly. His eyes flickered to Jensen, but he looked away when Jensen tried to meet his gaze. “You’re not going to like it, though.”

“Tell me?” Jensen said anyway.

Jared wouldn’t look at him. “Your mother’s theory,” he said. “A constrictor plant that captures rather than strangles.”

“No,” Jensen said. He couldn’t breathe, and for a moment it was as if it had already gotten a hold of him. “Jared, no.”

“You’re brilliant, Jensen, and we’d never work on it alone,” Jared said quickly. His eyes were wide and dark. “We’d be careful, Jensen.”

“That’s what she said, too,” Jensen snapped at him, and went to hide himself at the very back of his greenhouse, where the leaves were almost impenetrable and he could breathe, just a little.

When he returned to the counter, a good half hour later and noticeably calmer, Jared was still sat where Jensen had left him.

“I’m sorry,” he said the moment he laid eyes on Jensen. “We’ll think of something else.”

“No, it’s.” Jensen swallowed against his dry throat. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

He could tell from the looks on his friends’ faces that they didn’t believe him, but that was alright. It was fine, as long as they got this over with.

~

The constrictor plant was so big that Sheppard had to bring two more men with him to help him carry it in. It was wrapped up in netting and canvas and as immobilized as they could possibly make it, and Jensen still felt a sharp, cold shudder run down his spine.

He didn’t think he let it show, but at their vantage point at the doorway, Jared let one hand rest at the small of Jensen’s back. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. The sharp, tense line of Jensen’s shoulders probably said it all.

Sheppard spent several minutes hovering by the door, asking questions just this side of nosy, but he bid them a hasty goodbye when Jared leveled a truly impressive glare at him.

“Thank you,” Jensen said once he’d gone, his smile just a little shaky.

Jared waves his words away. “He was ridiculous,” he said. He draped his arm over Jensen’s shoulders and gave the constrictor a thoughtful look. “You ready for this?”

Jensen wasn’t, probably wouldn’t ever be, but he still took a deep breath and shrugged out of Jared’s comforting hold. “Let’s get to it,” he said.

~

They didn’t. Instead, on the day they’d set to begin their treatment, Jared pulled Jensen aside. He eased himself onto one of the stools at the counter and looked down at his hands.

“Jensen,” he said quietly. “Jensen, are you sure?”

“I said I was, didn’t I?” Jensen snapped at him.

Jared didn’t look up, but Jensen could see him flinch, and that more than anything allowed the tension to leak out of him, leaving nothing but regret and a heavy heart.

He took a slow step closer, and then another, until he was close enough to take Jared’s hands in his own. “Jared,” he said. “Look at me, please.”

Jared did, after a moment, and Jensen smiled at him. It was small, he knew that, but it was real, and from the way Jared sat up a little straighter, his friend knew that, too.

He ducked his head a little, letting his gaze drop to their clasped hands. They looked so similar now, calloused and stained with dirt and sap where only a few weeks ago, anyone would have been able to tell them apart by nothing but their fingers.

Jensen brushed the pad of his thumb over Jared’s knuckles. His smile came more easily this time. “Jared,” he repeated. “I’m not going to lie and say it’s easy, because it isn’t. But please trust me when I say that it’s okay.”

“I just.” Jared ducked his head. “I just don’t want to make you unhappy, Jensen. It wouldn’t be worth it.” He squeezed Jensen’s hands between his own. “It wouldn’t ever be worth it.”

“Thank you,” Jensen said quietly. “Thank you, but. We should do this. We can do this.”

“If you’re sure,” Jared said, and didn’t raise the matter again.

~

“We could call her Constance,” Jared offered. “You know, give the fear a name?”

Jensen stared at him for a moment, earnestly afraid for his friend’s sanity. Then he deflated. “Sure,” he said. “Constance it is.”

~

“Alright,” Jared said slowly. “So if we use essence of the dracaena to ease Constance’s aggression and add sap from the felicitas as a sedative, then Constance should theoretically still give in to its predatory instincts and pounce, but without actually crushing whoever it’s gotten a hold of, right?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Jensen agreed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“We should probably repeat the process several times,” Jared said. “Just to be sure.”

Jensen nodded his assent. “We should start as soon as possible,” he said, but that didn’t mean the blade in his hands wasn’t quivering when he made the first cut, Constance roiling angrily underneath the netting.

Jared didn’t comment on it.

~

It was hard to remember that the rest of his shop also needed tending to, with the constrictor plant constantly occupying Jensen’s thoughts, but when Jensen discovered that long-fingered fern had somehow appropriated a child’s barrette, he also recalled the clinger.

He’d banished it to the back room some two weeks earlier, when it had latched onto a customer browsing the shop with her little boy, and it had taken Jensen almost twenty minutes to extract her. The customer, suffice to say, had not bought anything – she hadn’t even stuck around long enough for Jensen to offer her another, complementary flower in recompense. So Jensen had sighed and taken the clinger to the back until someone asked for it or until the incident had become less painful in Jensen’s mind. But there was still the matter of maintaining the clinger’s good health – there wasn’t much for it to latch onto in the storeroom, not much for it to damage itself with, but Jensen wasn’t willing to take any risks.

Still, the mostly hazard-free environment meant the task was quickly done as well as generally mindless, and he entertained himself with humming snatches of songs and shuffling his feet in place, careful to stay far from Constance’s reach, and he continued to do so even after he’d realized that the songs stuck in his head were the ones he’d listened to with Jared on his old radio. He didn’t even mind that he was smiling.

He heard the bell above the doorway jingle while he was still elbows deep in soil, so he called a “Just a moment!” and set about extracting himself from the clinger’s steely grip. It took him a while, stems and leaves winding around his forearms with grim determination, but in the end he managed without doing any damage to the plant, and he only had to raise his voice twice.

He rinsed the bright blue residue the clinger liked to leave behind off his skin in the sink and slid into the shop, a warm smile and an apology already on his lips, but when he saw who was waiting for him, both froze on his face.

His customers were Gabe and the willowy William, but instead of clinging to each other the way they usually did, they were standing a full four feet apart, a tabletop flowerbed between them. It was a jarring sight, and Jensen stared at them for a moment before he even registered their low, but heated voices.

William had cut his hair, short enough that when he ran his fingers through it, he left a jungle of unruly strands in their wake. “Gabe,” he said, stuttered, choking on the word, but when Gabe’s eyes softened in sympathy, William’s own blazed up.

“You always do this,” he hissed. “Every time, Gabe. Every – single – time.” He choked again, sucked in a breath of frustration and let his head drop, hands pressed against the table’s surface.

Gabe, it seemed, might have been sympathetic to William’s plight, but that didn’t mean he was any less angry. “Maybe if you’d learn to have a little bit of a sense of humor, then we wouldn’t have to have this fight every damn time.”

“Oh, I don’t have a sense of humor, do I?” William bit out.

“Gentlemen,” Jensen said, raising his hands imploringly, but they were too preoccupied to pay him much attention.

“If you do, you certainly hide it well,” Gabe hissed. He reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “God, just. Why do you always have to take everything so seriously?”

“Why can’t you ever take anything seriously?” William snapped back. He pushed his fingers into his hair. “You know what, this is ridiculous. I’m going home.”

And without giving either Gabe or Jensen a chance to react, he brushed past them and out the door.

“Bill, you get back here,” Gabe snarled, already stalking after him. The door swung closed behind him and then clattered back open from the force, and Jensen rushed to close it. He peered through the glass panes into the street, but the only thing he saw was Gabe’s coat flaring as he turned a corner. William was nowhere to be seen.

~

Working on Constance was possibly the most nerve-wracking thing Jensen had ever done. Even with Jared in the room, even after the initial treatments when the plant was already proving to be far more docile than it had in the beginning, he constantly expected to find branches and leaves wrapping around his torso to squeeze the life out of him.

The day they declared the treatment finished, the day Jared handed the plant a balloon and they both watched Constance wrap limbs and leaves around it tightly without actually popping it, Jensen vowed to not return to the back room until the damn thing was gone.

~

"Are you alright?" someone asked mildly, and Jensen startled away from the ledger he was attempting to update.

"My apologies," he said earnestly, especially when the speaker turned out to be the well-dressed gentleman, Adam, smiling at him from the other side of the counter.

He was wearing black today, with rows of polished gold buttons running down the length of his coat and soft-looking leather gloves on his hands. Hovering at his elbow was another man in a more traditional topcoat-and-cravat combination, a fringe of blonde hair falling into his eyes and a pair of welder's goggles slung around his neck.

"You came back," he remarked, a little belatedly.

Adam nodded with a good-natured smile. "I did," he says. "And I've been telling all my friends about you."

"He really has," the man at his side put in.

Adam glared at him briefly, but there was without a doubt a fond look in his eyes. "This is Tommy," he said, running his hand down the man's arm. "He likes to think he's funny."

"I'm hilarious," Tommy said.

Adam rolled his eyes, even though he was grinning. "Go look at flowers, or something," he said, pushing Tommy into the greenhouse. "Go. Go!"

Tommy went, flashing them a glimpse of his tongue over his shoulder, and Adam watched him go for a moment before he turned back to the conversation at hand.

"Are you sure you're alright, Jensen?" he asked.

"I'll be fine," Jensen said, which was true enough.

Adam fixed him with a critical look. "Is your heart giving you trouble?" he asked seriously. "Are you tragically in love with some thoughtless Adonis?"

Jensen, who really didn't want to get into the details of business espionage and childhood traumas, simply nodded.

"That's a shame." Adam shook his head. "You're lovely, Jensen. I really can't see you becoming all shy around some attractive boy."

Jensen twisted his lips into a wry smile. "It's different when it matters," he said.

"Isn't it just?" Adam cast quick glance in Tommy's direction. "But we shouldn't let boys, no matter how attractive, make us sad, don't you think?"

"If only I could take my mind off these things," Jensen said, more dramatically than he really felt.

Adam nodded knowledgably. "Come distract yourself, then," he said. He tucked his hand into the crook of Jensen's elbow, despite being just that little bit taller than Jensen was. "Come, Jensen. Tell me all about your lovely flowers."

"Please do," Tommy put in, emerging from the leaves. He had a couple stuck in his hair. "And come tell me why you're keeping this one in a cage."

Jensen had a good idea which one he was speaking of, but he stayed silent until Tommy had let them over to a birdcage hanging from the rafters, where a large ball of fluff was inching back and forth across the bottom.

"Tumbling cotton," Jensen said, freeing himself from Adam's grip and reaching up to undo the latch on the door. "This is one of the particularly mobile ones." He lifted the plant out and set it down on the tiles, where it immediately rolled forward and bumped into the tips of Tommy's boots. "I let it out at night or on a slow day, but I try to keep it up here where I can keep an eye on it when there are customers."

The plant did a quick circuit of Tommy's legs, and then Adam's, before it bumped into Tommy's shoes again. Jensen intercepted it before it could hype itself up, or disappear underneath the display tables, lifted it up and set it down on top of one. Both Adam and Tommy were watching raptly, and Jensen grinned at them both.

"Children in particular are always tempted to play with it, and I prefer not to let that happen."

Tommy nodded. "Because it's fragile?"

"Because of this." Jensen parted the cottony fluff to prod at one of the sensitive flowerbuds underneath, and then quickly snatched his finger back when the plant immediately raised vicious, inch-long thorns in defense. "That's really not one you want to have to explain to the parents."

"Soft on the outside, hm?" Tommy grinned, quick and easy. "I can dig that."

Jensen waited until the thorns had retracted back underneath the flower's soft white outside before he lifted it into Tommy's arms. "Keep your hands away from the blossoms," he said. "And avoid giving it caffeine. You'll never catch it again."

Tommy grinned again, but it was more at the plant he was holding than at Jensen.

Adam, in the meantime, had turned away to look at the flowers arranged nearby, frowning at some, grinning at others. "What about this one?" he asked, pointing out a midnight lantern.

"It glows in the dark," Jensen said. "But only if it's been raining."

Adam laughed delightedly. "Why are you hiding these in the back?" he asked. "They should be front and center, if you ask me."

"They're the more dramatic plants," Jensen said. "Most of them are a little volatile, and quite demanding, so they tend not to sell that well."

Adam shook his head in disbelief. "I love these," he said, trailing his finger over the stem of a roaring lily. "Why get something boring when you can get something like this?"

"There's no accounting for taste," Jensen said neutrally, because he tended more towards the understated, undervalued plans himself.

Adam scoffed but didn't pursue the topic. Instead, he pointed at one particular specimen, unremarkable except for what it was covered in. "What's this?" he asked. "Is that glitter?"

"Pollen," Jensen said, hiding his grin behind a thoughtful hand. "There aren't many individual plants, so it does shed rather violently."

Adam lifted the plant into the air, immediately covering his hands, the front of his coat and even the tip of his nose in the silvery substance. He sneezed, digging out a handkerchief at the very last second, and then smiled wryly. "I see what you mean."

"I could get you a clothesbrush," Jensen offered.

The other man waved him off. "I don't mind," he said. "I like this one. Tommy, I assume you want that ball of fluff?"

Tommy looked up from whatever he had been crooning to the tumbling cotton. The desire in his eyes was plain to read, and Adam huffed fondly.

"We'll get it," he said. "It's ugly, but we'll get it."

"Your face is ugly," Tommy muttered, but let Adam lead him back to the counter.

Adam overpaid dramatically while Jensen wrapped up their purchases and wouldn't take no for an answer. "Consider it a tip for the entertainment," he said. He took his glittery plant with one hand and draped the other arm over Tommy's shoulders. "Say goodbye, Tommy."

"Goodbye," Tommy said, rolling his eyes.

Adam ushered him towards the door, although he passed briefly on the threshold and fixed Jensen with a grave look. "Things will work out for you, Jensen," he said. "I'm sure of it."

Jensen smiled and waved at them both, but it felt a little forced. Adam was sure. If only Jensen could be that certain.

~

“Delivery!” came the call from the back door, and Jensen let out a quick curse. He’d forgotten about that entirely, and most of the back room was now taken up by the constrictor. There just wasn’t any way he could let Sheppard bumble around back there.

Instead, he met Lindsey’s eyes for a significant moment before he went over to pull open the front door instead. “Around here, please,” he called, and a moment later, Sheppard stood in the doorway, wide-eyed, bumping the corner of his crate against the frame.

“What’s wrong with the back door?” he asked, once he’d set his load down.

“I’m afraid I’ve been working on a new plant that’s taking up most of the room,” Jensen said, trying for kind but implacable, as he returned to his seat. “The one you brought by the other day. I really can’t let you back there.”

“Oh really.” Sheppard seemed to try hard to look surprised, but he really wasn’t a very good actor. “That’s fascinating,” he went on. “Do you do that a lot?”

“Quite a bit, actually.” Jensen eased his sheet of notes between the pages of Systematics and Evolution of Unusual Plants. “It comes with the territory.”

“You’re a bioengineer?” Sheppard asked. His greedy stare unnerved Jensen enough that he tucked his hands against his knees to stop himself from fidgeting.

“I’m a florist,” he said, perhaps a little more forcefully than strictly necessary. “That’s why I own a flower shop.”

“Of course, of course,” Sheppard said easily, but the look in his eyes didn’t quite fade, and Jensen struggled to keep the smile on his face when he asked, more lightly than he felt, “So, have you gotten everything unloaded, then?”

“Oh! Yes. I mean, yes.” Sheppard took a startled step backwards, as if he couldn’t quite remember what it was he was supposed to be doing. “Yes. I suppose I should be going now.”

“I suppose so,” Jensen said, and walked him to the door, and made sure to close the door firmly after him.

“Who was that?” Lindsey asked, frowning, once Jensen had returned.

“The delivery guy who replaced Bernie.” Jensen couldn’t quite hide his scowl, and he could tell she noticed immediately.

“The one you think is spying for Pellegrino?” she asked.

It sounded ridiculous like that, and Jensen shook his head. “Something’s off about him, that’s all,” he said.

Lindsey opened her mouth, no doubt to ask further questions, but Jensen was saved by Jared bursting in the door with the widest grin on his face.

“Full marks on my midterm, say what,” he crowed, and proceeded to perform a silly little victory dance right there on Jensen’s doorstep. Then he quickly closed the door and came closer, hesitating when he saw their faces.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What happened?”

“Jensen thinks the delivery guy is spying on him,” Lindsey scoffed. She slung her bag over her shoulder, ignoring Jensen’s blazing cheeks. “I’ve got to go pick something up, but I’ll be back in a little while, okay?” She squeezed Jensen’s shoulder. “Don’t worry so much, you’ll get grey hairs.”

Jensen already had grey hairs, but he refrained from saying anything until Lindsey had left, waving merrily over her shoulder.

“Spying for Pellegrino?” Jared confirmed. His long fingers toyed with the hem of his vest. “You really think Pellegrino would do that?”

“I really would, yes,” Jensen said. And he would. He didn’t want to think like that, but when it came down to it, he thought Pellegrino capable of just about anything.

“Why do you dislike him so much?” Jared pushed his fists into his pockets, shoulders hunching up around his ears. “You seem to get along with just about anybody.”

“Besides the fact that I see no reason to cheat my customers out of their hard-earned money?” Jensen asked, raising a brow.

Jared nodded. “Yes, besides that,” he said. “Jensen, I’m sorry, but I know you pretty well by now, and this isn’t just your usual ethical rambling.” He waved a helpless hand. “It feels personal, this time.”

“The crimson felicitas.” Jensen looked down at his hands. “It’s addictive,” he said, after a moment. “If the exposure is too intense – and it would be, were I to make the changes Mark wants to make; when used too frequently, and in too high a dosage, the body starts to crave the sensation, and the detoxification process is something no one should have to go through.”

Jared picked at the sleeve of his shirt. “You must have attempted a change yourself,” he said. “To be so aware of all the side effects.”

Jensen pressed his lips into a thin line and forced himself not to look away. “I did, yes.”

“Oh,” Jared said softly.

“It’s not him I have a problem with,” Jensen said. “Not really. It’s his ethics. His complete and utter lack thereof.”

~

“I’m back,” Lindsey announced, sweeping in the door just as dramatically as she’d left. She had a giant roll of canvas tucked under one arm, and a sheet of paper in her hand that she presented to Jensen.

“Voila,” she said. “Here’s your plan.”

“’Jensen Ackles Original’?” Jensen read off the invoice. He blinked. “Lindsey, what is this?”

“Advertising,” she said. “Hey, Jared, take that end.”

“Is that a banner?” Jensen asked.

“Yes,” Lindsey said. “Obviously.”

Jensen raised his eyebrows at her. “Would you like to enlighten me as to why you’ve brought me a banner?”

Lindsey fixed him with a stern look. “Well, it’s not as if Mr. Pellegrino’s just going to waltz in here without a reason to, is it? He’s not stupid.”

That was true, unfortunately, though it would have made Jensen’s life a whole lot easier if he was. But it didn’t automatically mean that Jensen was entirely on board with the deception.

“What about the customers who are going to come in, expecting a ‘Jensen Ackles Original?’ They’re not going to be pleased.”

Lindsey glared at him. “They’re not going to be pleased if you go bankrupt, either.”

“Alright, fine.” Jensen turned away, throwing his hands into the air. “We’ll put up the banners.”

Lindsey’s stormy expression instantly turned sweet. “Thank you,” she said, and directed Jared to stand further back.

Jared, his hands full of waxed canvas, shrugged easily. “I kind of like it,” he said. “It’s very dramatic.”

There turned out to be two banners, not one, both reading NEW JENSEN ACKLES ORIGINAL – COMING SOON in blocky black letters.

“Lovely,” Jensen couldn’t help but comment, once she and Jared had unfurled it for him to inspect.

“It’s nice of her to help out, though,” Jared pointed out, and it was, it really was, so Jensen leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to Lindsey’s cheek.

“Thank you,” he said. “Will you help me string it up?”

“Do you own dirty work,” Lindsey said, crossing her arms, but Jensen could see her fighting a pleased little smile.

~

They hung up one of the banners outside, across the greenhouse windows, blocking the view from the street, and the other above the water tank since there wasn’t really anywhere else for them to put it.

“It was a special offer,” Lindsey said when Jensen asked, and then primly gathered up her bag. “I’m going on a date,” she said. “Jensen, stop scowling. It’ll work, and that’s what’s important.”

“She’s right, you know,” Jared said once she’d breezed out the door. “We’ve got the plant. Now we just need to draw him in.”

“I know,” Jensen said, looking away.

A moment later, Jared’s hand settled on Jensen’s shoulder. “I should go too, it’s getting late,” he said. He squeezed gently. “It’ll be fine, Jensen,” he said. “You’ll see.”

~

Despite their reassurances, however, nothing happened for another two days – days that seemed to drag on forever. Jensen checked on Constance every morning, peeking through the door at the hulking plant in the storeroom. He stayed as far away from it as he physically could, leaving even the most urgent tasks for some other day because he couldn’t bring himself to even edge into the room and go through his supplies.

He was so intent on one day seeing Mark in his back room, limbs trapped among the plant’s coiling branches, that he was entirely caught off guard when he looked up at the sign of the doorbell to find the man standing in front of him instead.

“Hello, Jensen,” he said easily. He nodded his head, he said, indicating the second oversized banner that they had strung up. “You’re gracing the world with another one of your creations, I see.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.” Jensen’s voice remained remarkably calm. “What are you doing here, Mark?”

Mark smiled pleasantly. “A little bird told me you’re working on something new,” he said. “I just wanted to come see it for myself.”

“You won’t,” Jensen said. He lifted his chin. “You can wait to see it just like everyone else.”

“What if I don’t want to wait?” Mark asked, lips quirking into a teasing smile. When Jensen scowled at him, it merely grew wider.

Jensen gripped his hand and tugged him behind the dracaena, out of immediate sight from the door. The last thing he needed was for someone to see him in an argument in his own shop.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” he hissed, “but this ends right now. I’m tired of your games, do you hear me? I don’t want to work with you, and I’m not ever going to work with you, and I want you to leave.”

Mark tilted his head at that, considering, and maybe he would have or maybe he wouldn’t, but Jensen would never know because that was the precise moment the bell above the door let out a happy jangle. Jensen drew in a sharp breath, because it was Jared, of course it was Jared, waggling his fingers at the mockingbird in the tank by the door. With his head turned away, Jensen only caught a sideways glance of Jared’s smile.

Mark followed his gaze, and his smile, Jensen could fully appreciate. “My, my,” he said, gaze intent, before he leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to Jensen’s lips.

Jensen was so completely, utterly floored that it didn’t even occur to him to push Mark away. He simply stood, motionless and wide-eyed, Mark’s lips firm but gentle against his own. A moment later, they heard Jared’s soft “Oh,” and Mark pulled away from Jensen and turned to Jared with a faint smile on his lips.

“My apologies,” he said. “I just had to steal Jensen here away for a moment. It’s all my fault, I promise.”

“That’s – okay,” Jared muttered. His eyes were fixed on the floor, and it occurred to Jensen suddenly that Jared had no idea who this was, who Mark was and why Jensen would never, ever even consider kissing him.

Mark smiled widely, and thumbed fondly at the corner of Jensen’s mouth. “I should get going. I’ll see you, Jensen,” Mark said, and then pressed another kiss to Jensen’s lips before he strolled casually away.

He left the door open, of course, but Jensen didn’t move until a sharp noise had him flinching and looking up. Jared had his hand still on the door where he’d pushed it shut, gaze still on his feet, shoulders tense as if he were angry.

“Jared,” Jensen said.

“It’s alright,” Jared said stiffly. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“Jared,” Jensen said. “It’s not like that.”

“It’s fine,” Jared insisted. “You can be with whoever you want. I mean, I’m happy with Genevieve. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be happy too.”

Jensen had wanted to insist that he had neither asked for nor encouraged Mark’s attention, but hearing Genevieve’s name from Jared’s lips startled him into silence. Jared didn’t care who Jared was with because Jared was a good guy and didn’t mind that Jensen was gay, but he also didn’t care who Jensen was with because he was with someone else, and Jensen would do well to remember that.

“In fact,” Jared said, “in fact, I think I was supposed to meet her right now, so I’m going to go.”

He fumbled blindly for the doorknob, practically tripping over his feet in his haste to get away.

Jensen scooped up the creeping parvifolium that hovered just by the door, pressing it against his chest. “I guess it’s just you and me, now,” he whispered.

Unlike it had in the past, it really didn’t make him feel any better.

~

The incident with Jared had Jensen so preoccupied that he almost forgot about the plant hulking in his storeroom. So when he opened the door to quickly snatch the shears from the worktable, the last thing he was expecting was to find the window open, and Mark trapped in the constrictor’s flexible branches. His eyes blazed when he caught sight of Jensen, but seeing how one of Constance’s broad leaves had wrapped itself firmly around his jaw, he could not do more than glare.

Jensen made himself meet Mark’s eyes for a moment, and then he went and dialed Jared’s number with shaking fingers.

~

“Where is he?” Jared asked, as soon as he’d stepped across the threshold. Jensen was thankful for it, because Jared’s face was just as stormy as it had been when he’d left the shop the day before, and it almost made Jensen regret his decision to call him. Almost.

Jensen wordlessly pointed at the door to the storage room.

Jared went to open the door, taking in the sight before him. Jensen peered over his shoulder, deeply thankful that the plant had shifted, hiding most of Mark’s body from view. The sight of the two legs protruding from the plant’s coiled mass was unsettling, but Jensen didn’t think he wanted to look at the man’s face, ever again.

“Alright,” Jared said, pulling the door quietly shut. “Is that who you thought it was?”

Jensen nodded. “Even if I’m not sure why,” he said. “Why wouldn’t he just hire someone else to do his dirty work?”

“Probably didn’t want to risk it getting back to him,” Jared said. He shrugged. “Besides, I’m not sure I’d know where to go if I wanted to hire a petty criminal to break into someone’s shop. Would you?”

Jensen wrapped his arms around his middle. “I suppose not,” he said, looking away. He chewed on his lip. “I didn’t think he would actually go this far,” he confessed into the silence.

For just the tiniest moment, Jared’s expression softened a little. “I’ll call the police,” he said. “You should go sit down for a moment.”

Jensen obeyed, but after Jared had made the call, his face was once again closed off and distant, and they waited for the officers to arrive in silence.

~

But it wasn’t the police that came. Or they did, but they were accompanied by a veritable army of government agents, men and women dressed in crisp black suits and dresses, and it seemed like only moments before they had taken over the store, with Jensen relegated to the empty bit of wall next to the counter, watching the proceedings with wide eyes and the swooning protea clutched to his chest, lest she get stepped on.

It wasn’t very much longer until a number of plant specialists were brought in, because apparently, Constance was quite reluctant to release Mark from her clutches. Next came a whole slew of whirring, ticking gadgets. Jensen looked around for Jared, but just as he’d spotted him hovering by the water tank, trying to coax the mockingbird out of hiding, one of the government agents stepped into his way.

He wore a sharp, dark suit, cut to accentuate his broad shoulders and clearly toned chest, paired with a severe white shirt and dark grey tie. Jensen figured him for a man who preferred low-maintenance plants - perhaps childish sedge grass, with its endless ability to entertain itself with the shadows it cast on the wall.

“Agent Morgan,” he says, holding out a large, calloused hand. The cogwheels of his watch spun wildly. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise, Agent,” Jensen said faintly.

Morgan’s suit had creases along the lower arms, and scuff marks across the top of his shoes, but it didn’t seem to bother him very much. It certainly didn’t make him look any less intimidating, nor did it stop him from immediately following Jensen’s line of sight to see what had caught his attention.

“Ah yes,” he said, reaching over to tug ruefully at one sleeve. “That’s quite a plant you’ve designed there,” he said lightly.

“I didn’t do it alone,” Jensen was quick to point out, but Agent Morgan shook his head.

“I know that,” he said. He gave Jensen a careful, considering look. “But it’s not the first plant you’ve designed, is it? Not by a long shot.”

He looked a whole lot less well-meaning all of a sudden, and Jensen narrowed his eyes and pressed himself a little more firmly against the wall. Morgan kept watching him, and Jensen had just about worked up the courage to tell the agent that that was really none of his business when Sheppard suddenly appeared at the man’s side.

“Hey, Jensen,” he said, with a sheepish little wave.

“He’s with you?” Jensen asked Morgan. He suspected his eyes were a little wide.

“He is,” Morgan said. “Mr. Ackles, meet Agent Sheppard.”

“Agent?” Jensen echoed.

Sheppard smiled quickly, uncomfortably, before giving Morgan’s elbow a quick squeeze. “I’ll go have a chat with the other one,” he said quietly, and Morgan nodded, eyes never leaving Jensen.

Jensen looked back for as long as he could. When he glanced away, Sheppard was watching Jared explain something earnestly.

“He’s a terrible actor,” Jensen said without thinking about it. Then he flushed. “I mean. That’s probably something you should know.”

Morgan didn’t look particularly annoyed. Instead, he looked like he was trying hard not to smile. “We do,” he said. “He’s still new. This was a test run, and I doubt we’ll be putting him undercover again.”

“Good,” Jensen murmured, for want of anything better to say. “So – does the government always come in to investigate flower shop break-ins?”

“Usually not,” Morgan admitted. “But this is a special case.”

“So you’ve been keeping an eye on Mark?”

“Uh, no, actually.” Morgan gave him a questioning look. “We’ve been keeping an eye on you.”

“But I haven’t done anything,” Jensen protested. He flushed again a moment later.

Morgan’s eyes crinkled at the corners, but Jensen had to give him credit for the fact that he didn’t reveal his amusement at Jensen’s retort in any other way. “I’m well aware of that, Mr. Ackles,” he said. “To be frank, we’re more interested in what you can do than what you sell, or who you sell it with.”

“You’re here because I design plants?” Jensen echoed. His eyes widened at Morgan’s nod. “How? No one ever comes into my shop, and if you’re after the felicitas, I designed it a decade ago.”

Morgan nodded sagely. “Actually, you have Mr. Padalecki to thank for that.” He gestured towards Jared, who now leaned slumped against the water tank, answering Sheppard’s questions. Jared startled at the mention of what was apparently his last name, and their gazes locked for a moment. Jensen looked away first.

Morgan’s eyes were sharp, watching Jensen, but he thankfully declined to comment. “I’m sure you know that Mr. Padalecki is in the engineering program at the university?” he asked. At Jensen’s nod, he continued, “His thesis advisor, Ms. Harris, is a liaison for our local bioengineering department, and when Mr. Padalecki mentioned your shop, and your creations, to her, she brought you to our attention.”

Jensen laced his fingers, bit his lip. “I’m not sure I understand,” he said quietly.

“We’d like you to work for us,” Morgan said. Into Jensen’s stunned silence, he continued, “You’re, quite frankly, one of the best plant designers I’ve encountered, and the constrictor plant in there is proof that you’re a talented engineer, as well.” He paused for a moment. “You’d be well recompensed for your efforts, of course.”

“I,” Jensen said. “Well. I don’t really know what to say. Or think, to be honest.”

“That’s fine,” Morgan said. “There’s no rush. You have plenty of time to think about it.”

“I have very strong ethics, I’ve been told,” Jensen felt obligated to point out. “I won’t ever unquestioningly follow your orders.”

“That’s good,” Morgan said without hesitation. Some of Jensen’s skepticism must have shown on his face, because the man laughed, a low, raspy sound that suited him. “I assure you, that’s a good thing.” He reached out, slowly, to squeeze Jensen’s shoulder. “We’re not the bad guys, here, Jensen. We’re not after world domination.”

Jensen looked at him intently, but Morgan didn’t even flinch. He was either the best liar Jensen had ever encountered, or he was being sincere, and Jensen could admit that the offer was more than tempting. It would certainly solve his money problems, and it wasn’t like he’d be doing work he didn’t enjoy.

“I’d have to think about it,” he said finally. “I mean, I’d need time to work in my shop, because I’m not going to work for you if that means not having my shop, and I’d need some questions answered, and I’d need to keep tabs that the government’s actually using the plants I engineer to do what it said it would.”

Morgan nodded. “Whatever you need,” he said easily. He took his hand away, and Jensen narrowed his eyes.

“I said I’d have to think about it,” he said, a sharp note creeping into his voice.

Morgan nodded again, a dignified tilt of his head. “Please do, Mr. Ackles. But if you’re at least willing to consider it, I’d like to put you into contact with Miss Harris. Mr. Padalecki’s professor,” he reminded him at Jensen’s blank look. “She’s been our liason for many years, and she might be able to put your mind at ease better than I can, given the similarities of your positions.”

“Alright.” Jensen swallowed, raised his voice a little. “Alright,” he said again. “That should be fine.”

“Excellent.” Agent Morgan smiled at him, warm and honest. “I’m glad to hear that.” He hesitated. “We’re going to have to confiscate that plant of yours,” he said.

“Please do,” he said fervently, and if Morgan was surprised at the urgency in his tone, he certainly didn’t show it. “We’ll take them out the back,” Morgan offered, and Jensen nodded gratefully.

Morgan nodded in return, and gestured to someone, and before long, he could see the agents milling around begin to retreat, to back up their equipment and their flashing cameras and head out the door.

“We’ll be in touch,” Morgan said with a significant nod, and then he, too, was gone.

Jensen took a deep breath, and then another.

It was over now. It was done.

He looked around, hoping to catch Jared’s eye, maybe share a smile, only to realize Jared wasn’t there. Jared had left, had left him, slipped away in a quiet moment because he couldn’t bear to even look at Jensen anymore, and Jensen still didn’t know why.

And he had to know why, because besides his plants, Jared was the bright spot in Jensen’s life. And Jared was cross at him, for Jensen didn’t know what, but instead of making Jensen angry, it just made him miserable. He’d gotten so used to having Jared in his shop, to turning around and seeing him there, that he scarcely knew what to do with himself now that he no longer was.

Because he didn’t know if he could do without Jared. And he certainly didn’t want to.

He threw open the door, uncaring of the creeping parvifolium, and headed for the street, the soles of his shoes slapping against the bricks.

“Jared,” he called, turning wildly. “Jared!”

But Jared wasn’t there. The street was deserted, and there wasn’t anybody but Jensen, turning on his tail and yelling like a crazy man.

~

Jensen spent the rest of the day in bed, on his side, staring at the wall. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to come into his shop after it had been raided by government agents the entire morning, and he certainly didn’t want to be in his shop, so he wasn’t. He’d tried to sleep, but he couldn’t banish the image of Mark’s defiantly burning eyes. It was worse when he closed his eyes so he kept them open, following the structure of the wallpaper with his gaze.

Outside, the sky was turning pink, which brought with it another dilemma he wasn’t quite able to forget: He still needed to cover the verbena lupos. It was a full moon tonight, and if exposed to its light, the usually docile plants would become vicious and turn on each other. He had to get up, he had to, but the edge of the bed was so very far away.

In the end, it was only his unfailing sense of responsibility that allowed Jensen to fight his way back downstairs. There were boot prints all over the tile, and leaves littered on the ground where unthinking agents had brushed too closely past his more delicate plants, and marks on the back door frame where Constance had no doubt resisted her removal.

Jensen took a deep breath. He wanted Jared, wanted him with him so badly it hurt, but there was nothing for it. The only thing he could do at this point was pick up and carry on.

He tucked the creeping parvifolium into a basket, tied the lid down firmly, and pulled the door open, allowing the cool night breeze to sweep away some of the sticky-warm air inside the greenhouse. He found the plant covers in the back room and set to work, and had just about finished the second layer of verbenas – and just in time for the moonrise, too – when there was a knock on the door.

“We’re closed, I’m afraid,” Jensen said, straightening, but froze when he saw Gabe fidgeting in the doorway.

“I was hoping you could make an exception for me,” he said. He had his hat in his hands, turning it round and round, and even though he was as impeccably, if garishly, dressed as always, Jensen had never seen him quite as – unraveled.

“Gabe,” he said, once he’d finally found his voice. “Of course. Come in.”

He bit his lip, hoping against hope that William would come breezing through the door after him, but there wasn’t anyone.

“Jensen,” Gabe said, once he was close enough. He held out a hand. “I’d like to apologize for the scene we made the other day.”

“It’s alright,” Jensen said. And then, because he was still feeling raw and couldn’t quite help himself, he asked, “I trust everything worked out?”

“It did,” Gabe said. “Or it will. I hope it will.”

“Oh,” Jensen said. He locked his fingers together, rocked on the balls of his feet. He tried a smile, but it didn’t feel right. “Anything I can do?”

“Well,” Gabe said, uncharacteristically somber. “If I wanted to, say, present an object with the help of one of your plants, what would you recommend?”

Jensen pursed his lips. Usually he probably wouldn’t even have hesitated, but the day’s – week’s, perhaps month’s – events had left him unsettled and unsure. “Well, that depends,” he said. “What kind of object are you thinking of?”

Gabe huffed a laugh, smiled a little. He cast Jensen a quick look, laughed again, and had it been anyone else, Jensen would have sworn he was blushing when he lifted his hand, held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “Like this, perhaps?” he said. He dropped his gaze. “The general size and shape of a ring, really.”

“A-“ Jensen caught his own shocked tone, cleared his throat. “A ring. Yes, of course. Perhaps – perhaps an oyster fern would suit.” He made an aborted gesture further into the greenhouse. “If you’d follow me?”

He picked out a small, blue-green plant for Gabe, offering it up for inspection without any of his usual enthusiasm. “This is the one,” he said. “Stroke along the outside of the leaves, like so, and it opens to reveal a chamber just big enough to keep a coin in, or a ring.”

“That’s great, Jensen,” Gabe said, unusually quiet himself. “Wrap that up for me, would you?”

Jensen did while Gabe waited, looking around the room, his face set in somber lines. “I feel like I should ask what happened,” he said. “But I won’t.”

Jensen drew in a sharp breath. “Thank you,” he said. He held out his hand to take the bill Gabe handed him, but they both knew that wasn’t what he meant.

“You know, Jensen,” Gabe said, eyes firmly on his wallet, “a fight or two isn’t automatically the end of the world.”

“It’s not that,” Jensen said. He fell silent after that, but when Gabe raised his eyebrows, he hunched his shoulders and added, “I’m no good with anything but plants.”

Gabe tilted his head to the side, watching him, and then he smiled – not his usual big smile, but a small, soft one, one that Jensen had only ever seen him aim at William. “Maybe you don’t have to be, Jensen,” he said. “Maybe that’s enough.”

He reached out to take the plant from Jensen’s hands and lifted it into the air. He said, “Thank you, for this.”

“Good luck,” Jensen replied.

Gabe rewarded him with a warm smile. “Keep some for yourself,” he said. He reached up to gently drag his thumb across Jensen’s cheek, giving him plenty of time to pull away, before showing him the specks of dirt now caught on his skin. “You look like you could need it.”

Jensen stared at the door for a long time, until long after Gabe had left, before he finally managed to force himself into action. He found his book of customer contact information and leafed through it, pausing at a set of unfamiliar numbers written in his own hand. He’d never actually called her, even though she regularly reiterated that he could, and his hands shook ever so faintly when he reached for the receiver.

The disk was slow under his fingertips, seemingly taking ages to rattle back into position so Jensen could dial the next number, but he managed them all eventually. He cradled the receiver against his ear with both hands, breathing slow and steady while it rang an agonizing four, five, six times. He’d almost convinced himself to hang up and go to bed when someone picked up with a breathless “Hello?”

“Lindsey?” Jensen asked.

“Jensen?” she returned incredulously. “What’s wrong?”

Nothing, he almost said, but that was a lie. Instead, he relayed what had happened, and he had barely closed his mouth when Lindsey said, “I’ll be right there,” and hung up on him.

Jensen occupied himself with taking down the banner above the water tanks with methodical movements, and then the one outside, leaving both in the doorway to the back room he couldn’t quite bring himself to enter. He closed the door and locked it, checking it twice, and went to sweep the aisles and wipe down the counter.

He freed the parvifolium last, scooping it up from the corner it had curled itself into and set it gently on the ground. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Within moments, it had disappeared from view underneath one of the tables, and Jensen rubbed his face and sat down behind the counter to wait.

Lindsey arrived in a flurry of skirts, tapping her nails against the window until Jensen had fumbled the door open.

“Oh, Jensen,” she said as she swept into the shop, hair disheveled and dress slightly askew, as though she’d hastily put herself to rights before rushing out the door.

“You were with him, weren’t you?” Jensen asked. “You were with Gerard. I’m sorry.”

Lindsey shrugged. “He understands,” she said. “And now he can snoop around my house without any disruptions. I’m sure he’s thrilled.”

Jensen smiled, but even he could tell it wasn’t very convincing. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I didn’t mean to make you leave him.”

“You didn’t make me do anything,” Lindsey said. “Go sit down. I’ll make us some tea.”

Jensen didn’t particularly want tea – he didn’t really want much of anything, at the moment – but it was easier to obey than it was to argue. Lindsey made quick work of it, too, returning what seemed like mere moments later with a steaming cup in each hand.

“Here you are,” she said, handing Jensen one of them. She settled down in front of the counter with the other. “Now will you tell me what’s wrong?”

There was so much Jensen could say to that, so many things, but when he opened his mouth, what came out was, “Jared’s upset with me, and I’m not sure why.”

“Oh,” Lindsey said quietly.

“Mark kissed me,” Jensen said, which made Lindsey’s forehead crinkle in confusion. “He kissed me, and Jared saw, and now he’s upset with me, and he has his lady friend, and how could he not know how I feel about him?”

“Maybe he doesn’t,” Lindsey said, still quiet, when Jensen took a hasty sip of his tea, nearly scalding his tongue.

He set his cup down again. “He has to know.” He balled his hands into fists on the counter’s surface. “How could he not?”

Lindsey smiled sympathetically. “You’re not the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve, Jensen,” she said. “Quite the opposite.”

“Not with him,” Jensen said quietly, miserably. “Not with him.”

“He’ll come around,” Lindsey said. She reached over to brush a lock of hair off his forehead. “He’ll come around, or he won’t. But either way, you’re going to be okay.”

~

Only years of habit allowed Jensen to fight himself out of bed the next morning. He’d dropped off earlier than he’d thought he would, worn out by adrenaline and the day’s many revelations, but woke at his usual time feeling like he’d gotten no sleep at all. He skipped breakfast, his stomach twisting at the mere thought, and went to get the mail, leaving the unread pile lying on the counter for some other time. It could wait until Jensen was in a better mindset to deal with it all.

What Jensen really wanted to do was go back to bed, but he had a shop to tend to, so he pushed himself away from the counter and went to work. He found Agent Morgan’s ID badge on his routine inspection of the long-fingered fern and stored it in a basket behind the counter (with a bracelet, a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses, and somebody’s shoelace) to return later. He wiped down the counter and attacked the glass panes set into the door with a rag. The blandness of the tasks was comfortable, soothing enough that he found himself falling back into his usual routine: Sweep the entrance area, double-check his sheet of customer requests and this week’s order, update his stock of wrapping materials, count his available change. He unlocked the door at 8:59, flipped the sign in the window around, and retreated behind the counter.

God, how often had he sat here, with Jared or Lindsey on the other side? Lately, it seemed like no matter where he turned, people were finding each other. Gerard and Lindsey seemed more than happy together, and while they obviously had to iron out some kinks in their relationship, William and Gabe were just as clearly not intending on letting that keep them from building a future together. And Jared – Jared had Genevieve, much as it hurt Jensen’s heart to admit it. Jensen couldn’t have him like that. But maybe… maybe Jensen could still have him as a friend. He’d have Jared as a friend, and he’d have his plants, and that would be enough.

That decided, he suddenly couldn’t sit still any longer. He dialed the number of the local courier service and asked them to send someone by as quickly as possible. Then, he went to fetch his very first creation from the shelf that had housed it for over two decades.

He’d just about managed to wrap it up when the courier knocked on a window, shuffling through the door when Jensen beckoned him in.

“Be careful with it,” Jensen cautioned him, twisting the package in his hands.

“Yes, sir,” the courier said with a quick, easy grin. He tipped back his cap. “Is this it?”

“One minute,” Jensen said.

He took one of his business cards from the stack behind the counter and, on the back, wrote, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. He looked down at the words while the ink dried, every moment a temptation to crumple up the card and send the courier away, but then he thought of Jared’s smile and Jared’s laugh and Jared’s dead, dead eyes when he’d walked away, and he tucked the card underneath the wrapping paper and presented both to the courier with a pounding heart.

~

Jared didn’t come by until the afternoon. Jensen spent the morning jittery and uncertain, see-sawing between thinking he’d made the right decision and thinking he’d made a terrible mistake. He puttered around for most of the day, unable to get rid of the tension even when he fielded questions about his newest creation that was supposedly coming soon, but when he finally looked up at the jingle of the bell to see Jared there, it was as if he’d suddenly grown roots.

Jared came inside slowly, shoulders hunched and head bowed. He kept his eyes hidden underneath the brim of his cap. “Hello, Jensen,” he said.

“Jared,” Jensen said, ignoring the painful jolt his stomach gave at the word. “Did you -?” He swallowed, throat dry, though it didn’t help much. “Did you receive the plant?”

“I did.” Jared smiled, but Jensen’s gaze was fixed on the way Jared’s fingers were twisted in the hem of his sweater vest. “That’s why I came by.”

Jensen nodded quickly. “Do you not want it?” he asked.

Jared hesitated in whatever he had been about to say, eyes growing wide. “Do I – Jensen!”

“I’m sorry,” Jensen said, looking down.

Jared was silent for a moment. “No, Jensen,” he said. “I want it very much.”

“That’s.” Jensen cleared his throat. “That’s good.” He bit his lip, hating how small he sounded when he asked, “Did you – did you need something?”

Jared started, and then took a closer look at him. Jensen wasn’t sure what it was he read in Jensen’s face, but his expression softened. “Maybe there’s something you could help me with,” he said.

“Anything,” Jensen promised quietly.

Jared reached up to tug on his cap before he smiled a little at the ground beneath his feet. There was yellowish, sticky sap spread over a couple of the tiles. Jensen had been meaning to clean it up.

“Let’s say there was a person in my life, a person that I loved very, very much but who didn’t know it – would you have a plant of some kind that could help me make that person understand?”

“Oh,” Jensen said, like that could somehow alleviate the hot despair spreading through his veins. “Come-” He cleared his throat. “Come with me, please.”

He lead them down a random aisle, trying to remember if he had any violet confessions on hand, and then he imagined giving them to Jared and Jared going on his knees before his girl, face turned upwards, smiling hopefully, and stopped in his tracks.

“Jared, I’m sorry,” he said, turning to face him. “I’m sorry, I can’t sell you a plant like that.”

“Why not?” Jared asked quietly, and he wasn’t looking at Jensen, not really, but he sounded vaguely… hopeful.

Jensen ran a hand through his hair. “Call it a conflict of interest,” he said. His voice shook, but only a little.

Jared sucked in a breath. “Why, Jensen?” he asked quietly. “I know you have someone.” He looked down, flexed his fingers. “I was here, remember?”

“Jared, that was – he was – no.” Jensen bowed his head. “I would never.”

Jared didn’t reply.

When the silence grew too thick, too heavy, Jensen glanced up again, further words of explanation dying on his tongue when he saw Jared fighting a smile.

“That’s – okay,” Jared said. He blew out a breath. “Okay. That’s great, actually. That makes this a whole lot easier.”

“Makes what easier?” Jensen asked.

Jared smiled at him, but he was nervous, too, Jensen could tell. He bit his lip and took a deep breath, and then he smiled again, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Mr. Ackles,” he said, “of Mr. Ackles’ Flower Shop for Unusual, Extraordinary, and Peculiar Plants, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner?”

Jensen shut his eyes very firmly for a moment. When he opened them again, Jared was still there, smiling bemusedly and perhaps a little uncertainly at him.

"Are- are you sure?" Jensen stammered out, and that wasn't what he'd meant to ask at all, Good Lord. There was no reason at all for him to remind Jared that taking Jensen out for a night was possibly a bad idea. No reason at all.

Thankfully, there was a small smile blooming across Jared's face. "I'm sure, Jensen," he said. "I've been sure for a while."

"That's - good," Jensen said slowly. "I'm glad to hear that."

"Does that mean you're taking me up on my offer?" Jared pressed, after a moment, ducking his head to meet Jensen's eyes.

Jensen bit his lip. “But what about your lady friend?”

Jared smiled sheepishly. “Well,” he murmured. “We actually only went on the one date. I just needed an excuse to come see you.”

Jensen wanted to belabor the point, to ask, Why didn’t you say something?, but it wasn’t like he’d given him much of a chance to, was it? He took a moment to marvel at the look on Jared’s face, so hopeful, so determined, and he found himself answering without even thinking about it.

“I – yes.”

“Yes?”

“I’d love to,” Jensen said. And if he’d had any doubts about his decision, Jared’s smile would have blown them all away.

“I’m really glad to hear that,” Jared said. He curled his hands around Jensen’s, hanging loose at his sides. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear that.”

“Jared…” Jensen looked up just in time to see Jared’s lips twitch, an aborted smile. “What?”

“No, just-“ Jared shrugged one shoulder. He released one of Jensen’s hands to gesture at Jensen’s glasses. “You’ve got some dirt, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Cheeks warming, Jensen pulled out of Jared’s grasp entirely to take off his glasses and polish them on the corner of his dress shirt that had come untucked. Why did he have to choose today, of all days, to look like such a mess?

“Jensen,” Jared said, amused and fond, and when Jensen shot him a flustered look, Jared leaned in and kissed him.

“I’ll go to dinner with you,” Jensen said, drawing back. “On one condition.”

“Oh?” Jared no doubt tried hard to look considering, but he was grinning too hard for it to be particularly effective. “What’s that?”

“Be my date to my cousin’s wedding?”

“Only if you promise not to provide any bouquets.”

“Deal,” Jensen said easily, and Jared ducked in to kiss him again. This time, however, he was the one to break away.

“Hey now,” he said. “I’m keeping an eye on you.”

Jensen followed his gaze down to the floor, where the creeping parvifolium had taken up post right inside the threshold. He laughed, squeezed Jared’s arm. “Nah, that’s alright,” he said and reached over to pull the door open.

“Stay safe, sweetheart,” he said, and turned back to Jared with a smile on his face.

~The End~

Masterpost

Mr. Ackles' Flower Shop - Part 3

bad_peppermint — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:25:34 GMT

Part 2

“Jensen!” Jared called, when Jensen had rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie. He’d resisted the temptation all day, but the greenhouse had been particularly hot and muggy today and there hadn’t been a single customer, so he’d bent his own rules a little bit. He’d given the afternoon up as a wash, and of course that was when Jared appeared in the doorway.

“Jared,” he said, ignoring the flush that had formed high on his cheeks from having been caught looking utterly indecent.

“Jensen,” Jared said again. His eyes widened a little at Jensen’s appearance, and it really wasn’t fair that Jared had chosen today of all days to look particularly gorgeous. He was wearing a light blue shirt under a cream vest, and a cream tie, and not even the sweat beading at his forehead made him look the slightest bit unappealing.

“You look nice today,” Jensen said, trying for neutrally. Jared looked – dressed up. Like he was trying to impress someone. Jensen swallowed past the lump in his throat and asked, carefully pleasant, “Dinner plans?”

Jared looked away, clearly flustered. “You know,” he said quickly. “If that’s what makes them happy, right?”

Jensen forced a laugh. “Of course,” he said. “You know, we’ve had some shying daisies come in. They’d match your vest, and you’re just about charming enough to make them show it.”

“Right.” Jared bit his lip. “Maybe later, okay? I wanted to see if I could take a look at your books. Maybe pick your brain a little.”

Jensen gestured at the counter. “The books are all back there,” he said. “Feel free to help yourself. But I’m afraid I won’t be much use to you today. It’s harvest time for the weeping mulberries, and I’ve learned the hard way that that takes priority over anything else.”

“Oh, that’s perfectly alright,” Jared assured him. He bit his lip again when the corners of his mouth curled upwards. “I really wouldn’t want to keep you from anything, Jensen.”

“You aren’t,” Jensen assured him, though if he was being truthful, he had to admit that he most likely would have said the same even if Jared had been. “It’s a fairly mindless task, to be honest.”

“Oh yeah?” Jared sat up a little straighter and folded his hands in his lap. “Anything I can help with, by any chance?”

“No, no.” Jensen smiled at him over his shoulder even as he headed out to retrieve the first of the plants. “I’m fine. You just read.”

“I’m tired of reading,” Jared said while Jensen was rummaging around on the lower level of one of the display tables, trying to decide which of the mulberry bushes needed his attention most badly, just in case he didn’t get through them all today.

“Jensen,” Jared said, drawing out the word. “Reading is all I do, all day. Come on, let me help.”

“I couldn’t,” Jensen said, picking out one of the bushes that was furthest along. “You’re not here to take over my duties.”

“You let Lindsey help,” Jared pointed out.

It was true, he did. Lindsey had been his friend for longer, much longer, but Jared was in the shop more than she was, certainly.

“You’ll ruin your clothes,” Jensen pointed out.

Jared made a dismissive noise. “It’ll come out.”

“It really, really won’t,” Jensen said, allowing himself a laugh. “But if you’re so determined, then yes, you can help.” And what was the harm, really? Jensen could contain his hammering heart for a few hours.

He picked up a second pot, then took a moment to close his eyes and try to relax. It was just like with Lindsey. There was really no need to be this infatuated. “Alright,” he said, when he walked over. “You can help.”

“Perfect.” Jared rubbed his hands together. “What are we doing?”

“Picking berries,” Jensen said. He deposited the first two pots on the counter, then reached underneath it to procure two sets of workman’s gloves. “They need to be removed before they become ripe enough to burst.” He handed one set of gloves to Jared. “You’re going to want to wear these,” he said.

Jared obediently slid one hand into a glove. “What happens when they burst?” he asked.

“Well, as you can see,” Jensen said, pointing out the clumps of berries on the bushes, “the berries are a dark blue, and the riper they grow, the darker they become. When they burst, the juice runs down along the stems and leaves as though the plant were crying – which is all very pretty and fascinating until you’ve realized you’ve gotten it all over your clothes, and that you now have to part ways with your favorite shirt.” He smiled at Jared’s rapt expression. “So wear the gloves?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, of course.” Jared fumbled his fingers into the second one while Jensen procured a bowl for them to collect the berries in.

“So what do you do with the berries once you’ve picked them?”

Jensen pulled on his own gloves, shrugged. “Grow more,” he said. “They’re too bitter to eat, but I was thinking of perhaps crossing the mulberry plant with some sort of vine or ivy, to grow around windows and doors as protection against burglars.”

“Huh,” Jared said, and burst out laughing when he picked off one of the berries and it dissolved between his fingertips, staining the gloves a deep, dark blue. “Yeah, I think that could work.”

~

Picking the berries off the bushes was tedious work, unfortunately, because there were plenty of berries on plenty of bushes, and Jared lasted until they’d worked several hours and through about half of the bushes before he asked about their progress.

Jensen dreaded telling him, but he was honest.

Jared’s jaw dropped. He asked, “Do you usually do all this by yourself?” with his expression caught halfway between impressed and horrified.

Jensen forced himself to smile when he turned back to the plant in front of him. “Usually I hire someone from the florist school to help me out, but this year, I-” can’t afford it, was the honest answer, but that was not something he really liked to contemplate, let alone talk about.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Jared sitting quietly for a couple of moments, watching him. But Jensen didn’t say anything more, and eventually Jared picked off another berry and said lightly, “Well then, it’s a good thing I’m here.”

~

It was odd, working with someone like Jared. Odd, but oddly nice, and he found himself reluctant to close up the shop when it was time for Jared to leave. But he did, and he took a long time to fall asleep that night, and spent most of the morning being vaguely absent-minded in dealing with his customers.

He sold a daisy chain to Ryan Ross when he came in, who nodded vaguely through Jensen’s explanation that sunlight and a nightly soak would keep the circular plant alive and healthy, long, spindly digits repeatedly drifting up to finger the blossoms in his hair in infatuation. He could barely even take his fingers away to pay, but before he left, he looked up at Jensen, eyes suddenly sharp.

“I hope he’s good to you.” He nodded at Jensen. “The one who’s got you smiling like that.”

“I don’t, I haven’t,” Jensen stammered, but before he’d regained his power of speech, Ryan Ross had already waltzed out the door.

~

He was still mortified by Ryan’s words the next time Jared came in, armed with a slew of notebooks and pens, and spread them all over the counter. He found himself being just a little gruff with Jared, playing Ryan’s words over and over in his head, but quickly relented when Jared merely gave him a confused, hurt look and fell silent, playing with his pen.

Jensen couldn’t. He just couldn’t bring himself to scare Jared away, even when it was for both their good, and so he did what he usually did: He distracted himself with his plants.

“What’s that?” Jared asked, eyeing the quivering mass of stems that Jensen carried over to the counter in fascination.

“Twisting hazel,” Jensen told him dutifully. “The older stems need a trim, or they’ll grow too hard and break.”

“Huh,” Jared said, after a moment. “What happens to them in the wild? If there’s nobody around to trim them?”

“They get eaten.” Jensen smiled. “Like a large number of wild plants, to be honest.”

“Did you know the rotting valerian has evolved to look and smell like it’s already dead, to avoid exactly that?” Jared tilted back on his stool so he was leaning against the wall and lazily stretched to tap the page open in front of him. “I just read that.”

“I did know that.” Jensen smiled down at his hands for a moment before he reached out to take hold of the first twisting leaf, testing it for bendiness. It passed the test, and he kept a tight hold on it while he reached for a second with his free hand.

Across from him, Jared laughed. “Oh yeah,” he said good-naturedly. “You already know everything there is to know about plants, I forgot.”

“Not everything.” Jensen worked his way through a third stem, and a fourth. “But it sort of comes with the territory, you have to admit.”

“I suppose.” Jared reached for the pencil lying on the counter top, tapping it against the surface while Jensen worked. “I’ve been wondering about that.”

“Oh?” Jensen said carefully.

“Yeah,” Jared said, smiling a little. “When all the little boys wanted to be firemen, were you the kid talking about owning a flower shop one day?”

Jensen had never been so thankful for a customer as he was right then, and the smile he aimed at the woman pushing open the door was perhaps a little wide. “Welcome,” he said. “Would you like some help, or are you just having a look around?”

“Oh, I’m just looking,” she said, waving a vague hand.

“Well, let me know if you need anything,” Jensen said. When he risked a glance back at Jared, the other man was frowning at him, and Jensen, caught, dropped his gaze.

“So tell me more about twisting hazel,” Jared said, a peace offering of sorts. “Where is it from, originally?”

Jensen smiled gratefully, and had just launched into a description of European flower trade in the fifteenth century, when he heard his customer make a faint noise of outrage.

“Is this a joke?” she asked, holding up a price tag.

Jensen could see his own startled expression reflected on Jared’s face. “Uh, no, ma’am,” he said. “All prices are as displayed.”

She scoffed and jabbed the sign blindly back into the soil. Jensen cringed, but it looked like she had avoided spearing any errant leaves. She read over a few more signs, expression growing darker with each one, and finally shook her head and turned away from them entirely.

“These prices are ridiculous,” she said. “That flower shop on Lombard Street, what’s it called?” She snapped her fingers. “Pellegrino’s. They sell all of these for half price, at least. You don’t even have bouquets.”

“There are ethical reasons,” Jensen began, at the same time Jared snapped “Hey!” but the customer merely said “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” and headed for the door.

“Have a good day,” Jensen called after her, and was answered by the sound of the door slamming shut. He didn’t let himself droop, not exactly, but he still hunched his shoulders and bowed his head. He could hear Jared move, after a moment, but he didn’t look up until he felt his hands settle on Jensen’s back.

“People are cruel,” Jared said. His hands were broad and warm against Jensen’s shoulders.

“They can be, yes,” Jensen whispered.

Jared took his hands away. Jensen concentrated on the twisting hazel while he returned to his seat, and while he turned a page and made a couple of notes.

“You never answered my question, you know,” Jared finally said, deliberately light. “About what made you decide to open a flower shop.”

Jensen finally found a stem that wouldn’t bend like the others, cracks already marring the sides, and it was then that he realized he only had sharp-nosed shears on hand. He tried them anyway, but the stem in question twisted so violently Jensen almost cut off the one next to it instead. He could hear the bark crack. “There’s not much to tell, really,” he said, launching another attempt that, predictably, also failed. “My parents owned one, and I’ve always loved plants. It was only the next logical step.”

“What’s wrong?” Jared asked, when the twisting hazel bent away from Jensen’s hands a third time, and Jensen sighed.

“I need the snub-nosed shears,” he said. “Twisting hazel doesn’t like sharp things, but apparently I’ve left them in the back, and if I go get them now,” he indicated the hand full of wriggling strands, “I’m going to have to start over.”

“You could have just said something,” Jared chided, springing to his feet. “I’ll go get them. The back room, you said?”

“You don’t have to,” Jensen protested, but Jared was already gone. “They should be on the worktable,” he called, and then gave his handful of hazel a gentle tug. “This is all your fault, you know,” he said quietly.

“Got them!” came the cheerful reply. Then a worry-inducing silence. “Hey Jensen?” Jared stuck his head through the door, cobwebs clinging to his bangs. “Did you know you have a radio back here?”

“A radio?” Jensen asked. He remembered making room for one, vaguely, but what exactly he had intended to do with it escaped him.

“Uh-huh.” Jared disappeared only to emerge again a moment later, shears in one hand and, indeed, a radio under his other arm - one of the old, upright, wooden ones that Jensen had always preferred, no matter how outdated they were.

Jared handed the shears to Jensen, who snipped off the now pliant stem in question, and returned to his own side of the counter. He set the radio down and ran a flat hand across the top of it, grinning when he came away with a palmful of dust. “Man, Jensen,” he said. “I hope this still works.”

He looked around for an electrical outlet, then back at Jensen, faltering slightly. “You don’t have any plants that react badly to music, do you?” he asked.

“Not at the moment,” Jensen said evenly, though the fact that Jared was so thoughtful of his plants sent a pleasantly warm shiver down his spine. He gestured at the radio with his shears. “Go right ahead.”

“Alright,” Jared crowed, and went to plug in the cord. When nothing happened, he lightly smacked the radio’s wooden side a couple of times, muttering, “Come on now, come on.”

Jensen figured they were both about equally surprised when that actually worked, though Jared’s grin at the first sign of white noise was decidedly bigger. He fiddled with the dials for a moment, going through several stations, before finally settling on something rhythmic and lighthearted.

Jensen, on the other hand, was merely waiting for the moment Jared noticed the shelf of fledgling plants mounted on the wall.

Which he did, a moment later. “Jensen,” he breathed. “Jensen – are they swaying?”

“They are.” Jensen finally gave the hazel up as a lost cause, at least while Jared was still exclaiming in delight over Jensen’s treasures. He untangled his hand and turned in his seat to give Jared his full attention. “Telegraph plants,” he said. “Though I prefer the less common name dancing lords and ladies.” He thought about explaining how the music’s vibration in the air affected the young leaves, but in the end he merely smiled, deciding that a scientific explanation would only lessen the magic.

Instead he said, “If you turn the music down a little, you’ll be able to hear them humming.”

“But then I’d have to turn the music down,” Jared said, smiling, though he immediately reached for the knob that controlled the volume. The humming that accompanied the swaying wasn’t particularly pretty, but it was certainly impressive, and Jared immediately wandered over to peer at the plants with interest.

“This is amazing,” he said, after a moment. “They’re like a tiny choir, right here on your shelf.”

“I agree,” Jensen said quietly.

With a quick grin over his shoulder, Jared began conducting the plants in grand, sweeping motions, and Jensen couldn’t help it – he laughed, loud and bright, and then laughed again at the way Jared startled and promptly lost the beat entirely.

“Are you laughing at me?” he demanded, grinning wide, and set his hands on his hips.

“I would never,” Jensen said, but he was still smiling, and Jared shook his head and then a finger at him.

“Come on,” he said. “Just for that, I’m forcing you to dance.”

“No!” Jensen protested. He held up one hand, laughing. “No dancing!”

“You can’t fool me,” Jared crowed. “I see those fingers twitching, Mr. Ackles!”

Jensen stilled his other hand – indeed, merrily tapping away – immediately, but Jared didn’t seem to care about that, twining his fingers through Jensen’s instead.

“Come on,” he said, giving Jensen’s hand a little tug. “I know you want to dance, Jensen. I can see it in your eyes.”

Jensen wasn’t sure he could, considering he was having a hard time tearing his gaze from the sight of their clasped hands, but he let Jared pull him around the counter and into the small bit of open space in front of it. There wasn’t much room for dancing to be had, but he spun obediently when Jared urged him to, and laughed when Jared attempted some sort of swing step that almost sent both of them flying. He turned again, and then froze when he saw someone standing in the door, watching with interest.

He realized a moment later that it was only Gabe, but Jared had already stilled, one hand settling protectively on Jensen’s hip.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Gabe said, grinning.

Jensen took a hasty step back. “It’s not like that,” he said, and when he chanced a glance at Jared, his friend was frowning in agreement.

Gabe shrugged good-naturedly. “Too bad,” he said. “That was seriously cute.”

He gestured at the greenhouse windows, and Jensen flushed a hot red. He’d completely forgotten how visible they were from the street. Anyone walking by could have seen him being utterly unprofessional. Thankfully, the only person outside was William, who hurried across the driveway and into the shop, a bright flush on his cheeks.

“Sorry,” he said, not unhappily, after he’d pushed closed the door. “I’m late, I’m late, I know.”

“One of these days,” Gabe said, extending a hand, “you’re going to be on time to something, William, and I won’t know what to do with myself.”

“Hold your tongue,” William told him. He allowed Gabe to draw him in and press a warm kiss to his lips. “No bad-mouthing me in front of Jensen. He might think less of me, and if that happens, I think I might die.”

“I would never,” Gabe stage-whispered against his lips before he let him go – though no further than an arm’s reach away. “Well then, Jensen,” he said, and Jensen keenly felt Jared drifting away but he didn’t dare turn to ask him not to go.

Gabe, perhaps sensing his distress, softened his smile. “We’ve come for the rest of those snakeheads.”

~

The following Thursday, Jensen received a letter from the gas company asking him to pay nearly four times what he usually owed. It was an unusually busy day, and while Jensen inwardly rejoiced at the half dozen of the crimson felicitas he wrapped up and handed over to their delighted new owners, he was also fidgety and distracted until he had the chance to call the company just before closing time.

The representative who answered his call – Isaac – ‘hm’ed, papers rustling, before he finally came back on the line.

“We have no such bill on record, sir,” he said. “According to our files, you’ve actually acquired less balance than last month.”

“That’s – fine,” Jensen said. “It must have been a mix-up in the paperwork, then.”

“I’m very sorry about that,” came the reply. He laughed a little. “But hey, better this than the other way around, huh? ”

“Certainly.” Jensen’s smile was a little weak. “You have a good day.”

“You too,” Isaac said and hung up.

Jensen himself was slower to, and when he finally pulled his hand away, his fingers were shaking. What on Earth was going on?

~

“The blue butter daisy is a plant too docile to cross,” Jensen read. He scoffed. “Too docile to cross, are you serious?”

He knew for a fact that it wasn’t, considering he’d used it to create a child-friendly version of the raging daffodil just last year, as a special request from a client with no small case of nostalgia but also a hefty dose of concern for her children’s safety. The inherent quality of a trait had nothing to do with how strong it was when crossed, everyone knew that. But there it was, printed in black and white. The blue butter daisy is a plant too docile to cross.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered, not realizing he had spoken aloud until he noticed Jared giving him a curious look. He lifted the magazine to give Jared a better view of the cover, simultaneously hiding his reddening cheeks. “This is possibly the least accurate journal I have ever read,” he said.

“You know a lot about designing plants?” Jared asked casually.

Jensen shrugged his shoulders. “A little,” he said. “I’ve designed a couple, like the felicitas, but mostly my creations are the result of a happy coincidence.”

“Most people would call that ‘brilliance’.”

Jensen shook his head quickly. “I combined a few lucky discoveries with what I already knew about plants,” he said. “It wasn’t a coincidence as such, but it certainly wasn’t due to my own brilliance.”

Jared, smiling a little, shook his head. “I highly doubt you’d ever attribute anything to your own brilliance,” he said, and then clapped his hands and looked away before Jensen could respond. “So!” he said brightly. “Tell me which of these are your own work.”

“Anything in particular?” Jensen asked, indicating the greenhouse and its mess of plants crowded on every available surface, occupying tables, shelves, chairs, the floor and even the rafters. They weren’t all his, but a significant number of them were. “Otherwise we might be here a while.”

Jared laughed. “What about your earliest one? The earliest one you have available, at least.”

That was easy, at least. Jensen slid out from behind the counter and reached up to pluck it from a shelf, presenting it to Jared. “Here you are,” he said. It was a clumsily assembled plant, its stems varying in thickness and length, with a lone marguerite blooming in the center.

“She doesn’t even have a name,” Jensen said. “But at the time, I thought it’d be an excellent idea to have a plant that opened a different color blossom every day of the week.”

He’d spent days on it, weeks, figuring out how to combine the marguerite with three different color carnations, a dandelion, a violet, and a tulip. It had still turned out horribly disfigured.

“Oh wow.” Jared took the pot from Jensen’s hands to turn it this way and that. “How young were you?”

“I don’t know.” Jensen laughed. “Young.” He gave Jared a small smile. “Not the finest work I’ve ever done, I’ll admit, but I find myself oddly fond of it all the same.”

“Is that why you still have it?” Jared asked, “Because this might be your first attempt, but I still can’t imagine that no one would be interested in buying it.”

“It’s not that.” Jensen shook his head. “There have been interested parties, and I’m willing to part with it, I am. I’m just not willing to sell it to just anyone, you know? I know it’s stupid, but I can’t bear to let it go if I don’t know that it’s going to a good home.”

“I don’t think that’s stupid, Jensen,” Jared said quietly.

“That’s good,” Jensen said, just as softly. He smiled. “Want to see my latest, in contrast?”

“I’d love to,” Jared said, but the smile faded when he registered the plant Jensen lead him to. “Doesn’t that look like… a mother of millions?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jensen said easily.

Jared gave him a sidelong look. “The plant that kills grown men if they so much as brush against the blossoms with bare arms?”

Jensen allowed himself a grin. “I did say it was one of my creations, didn’t I?” he said. He reached past the star-shaped blue blossoms to point out a short, thick branch that didn’t quite seem to fit with the others. “This is purpureum,” he said. “It can be used to create antidotes for just about any kind of poison. This plant is a cross between the two, and it’s entirely harmless.”

He brushed his hand against one of the blossoms, ignoring Jared’s sharp breath, and smiled. “See?”

“That is amazing,” Jared breathed. He turned to Jensen, a wide grin spreading over his features. “You’re amazing.”

His smile was so brilliant, so breathtaking, that Jensen had to swallow and look away. It wasn’t for him, he reminded himself firmly. Jared was interested in girls, in women, in one woman in particular, and Jensen needed to abandon the fluttering in his stomach before it got him into serious trouble.

“I,” he began, but Jared was already entirely entranced by Jensen’s creation once again.

“How did you do it?” he asked. “Everything I’ve read says that the mother of millions rejects any foreign implant, making a cross impossible.”

“No, you see,” Jensen said, heading for his books and drawings, letting Jared’s enthusiasm carry him. He took hold of one of his references, flipped through a notebook. “You see, that’s what you’d think, with the mother of million’s aggressive characteristics, but if you use the sap of the leeching ivy to seal the cut, the parasitic element in the liquid absorbs the rejecting trait of the mother of millions, protecting the purpureum, and by the time the effect wears off, the added branch has already absorbed enough of the mother of millions’ sap for it to accept it as a native extension, and then the mother of millions adopting the purpureum’s antidotal characteristics and neutralizing its own venom is just a matter of time.”

“That’s genius,” Jared whispered, tracing Jensen’s sketches with one long finger. “Jensen, that’s – the ivy sap, how did you come up with that?”

“Oh.” Jensen shrugged a little. He was hugging Malcolm’s Field Guide to Flowers to his chest, he realized, but wasn’t sure how to let go without drawing attention to the fact. “It wasn’t a brilliant discovery, or anything,” he said.

“I think it’s pretty great,” Jared said.

“That’s because you’re almost as fascinated by flowers as I am,” Jensen said. He hesitated. “I mean, judging from your interest in the subject, I simply assumed-”

“No, no, you’re right.” Jared looked down at his hands. “I think I might specialize in Botanical Engineering. You know, plant design?”

“Because of my shop?” Jensen asked. His heart was hammering so loud he was surprised Jared wasn’t already calling a doctor.

“Yeah.” Jared smiled at him through his bangs. “I just never realized how cool plants are, you know?”

It was certainly the first Jensen had ever heard of it, but it wasn’t like he was going to argue the point. “I’m glad you think so,” he said, and found himself smiling back.

~

They settled into a kind of routine, after that. Jared came by after his classes, or sometimes before, or sometimes in between, and sat at the counter with his books. When Jensen was busy, Jared read. When Jensen was free, which was often, he sat down on the other side and told Jared everything he wanted to know, and some things he didn’t, but Jared, unfailingly, listened with rapt attention to every word Jensen said.

The days grew warmer slowly, bringing a welcome respite after the chill of winter, but they also brought along Jared’s mid-term exams.

Despite Jensen’s fears, Jared still came into the shop, but he was red-eyed and dragging his feet and spent most of his time bent over his notes and books, scribbling comments and muttering to himself.

“Two more days, Jensen,” he said at one point. “Two more days, and this is finally over.”

Jensen looked down at the crown of his head for a moment, and then he went and fetched the honeybell from the back of the greenhouse. “Here,” he said, setting the plant down by Jared’s elbow.

“What’s this?” Jared asked, staring at it with bleary eyes.

“Honeybell,” Jensen said. He broke off a part of one stiff leaf and offered it to Jared, holding it carefully to keep the milky sap that welled up immediately from dripping onto the counter. “Try it,” he said.

Jared took it from him carefully, tongue flicking out to taste the liquid. His eyes popped open. “This is really good,” he said.

“I usually reserve them for children with overly stern parents,” Jensen said, smiling down at his hands. When he looked up, Jared was watching him.

“Why?” he asked, tone without censure.

“Everybody needs a little happiness in their lives,” Jensen said.

Jared licked at the sap running down the side of his thumb before he dragged his finger out of his mouth with a satisfied pop. “Words to live by." He looked down at his notes and sighed. “Can you pass me the Landon again?”

~

The first rain drops hit the greenhouse windows just as Jared reached for his bag, and by the time he had pushed his papers and books inside, the first gentle noise had transformed into a veritable drum line beating against the glass. Jared reached for his hat, pulling it deep across his ears, and then he looked outside again and sighed.

"Please tell me you're not actually thinking of going out in that," Jensen said before he remembered himself. Jared wasn't his to command - if Jared decided to walk home in abysmal weather, then Jensen had no right to criticize him for it.

"What are my other options?" Jared asked in return. He looked around again, and then sighed once more. "And today, of course, is the day I decided to leave my jacket in my room."

"You could stay here," Jensen said, impulsively. "At least until the worst is over."
Jared smiled. "Jensen, you're closing in twenty minutes," he said. "Don't think I haven't noticed what a stickler for punctuality you are."

Jensen cast him a careful look, but Jared seemed amused rather than critical, and that's what gave him the courage to point out, "I think I'll survive allowing someone to stay past closing time for one night," he said. "Whereas I'm not entirely convinced you'll survive the walk home in this weather."

Jared looked outside again, where the thunderclouds gathered overhead gave the impression of a premature dusk. "I think you might be right," he said. He set his bag down on the counter once more, sat down on one stool and patted the one at his side. "Well then, Jensen," he said, turning to him with an expectant smile. "Since you won't let me leave, I fully expect you to keep me entertained now."

Jensen sat down at Jared’s side, but couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Instead, he looked down at the rag in his hands. "How would you like to be entertained?" he asked. His voice was soft and a little shaky, which he hated, but he hated not knowing what to expect even more. He never knew what to expect with Jared.

"Well." Jared drew out the word until it was barely recognizable. "You could start by telling me a little bit about yourself, oh mysterious Mr. Ackles."

"There's not much to tell," Jensen replied automatically. There really wasn't, though people always appeared determined to believe the opposite. He owned a flower shop, he tended to plants, and occasionally he even had a customer. That was really all there was to it.

"That's what they all say," Jared chided him. "You could at least come up with something original."

Jensen twisted the rag between his fingers. He couldn't bring himself to look at Jared, even though he knew Jared was looking at him. "I don't know what you want me to say," he said.

Jared made a considering noise. After a moment, he huffed a breath. Jensen could see him turn away, towards the rest of the greenhouse, out of the corner of his eyes.

"You could tell me a little bit about why you like plants so much," he finally said.

"Why wouldn't I?" Jensen returned, confused.

Jared laughed a little. He gave Jensen a smile. "You'd be surprised how many people really aren't that interested in plants," he said.

"You're lying," Jensen said, smiling a little to show he was only teasing. "There is not a single person in the whole wide world who doesn't love flowers."

"My sister doesn't," Jared said, and now Jensen truly was shocked.

Jared smiled at his expression. "She's allergic to most of them," he said. "It's unfortunate, but since she rarely comes to visit me here, I can still keep all the flowers I want."

Jensen put down his rag and reached out, tentatively, to straighten a stack of forms. He couldn't imagine being allergic to plants - what a terrible illness to have. "Isn't it odd, then?" he asked. "That you're so interested in plants?"

"Not entirely." Jared shrugged. "I suppose they've always fascinated me just for that reason. The forbidden fruit, you know?"

"I suppose," Jensen said.

Jared was silent for a moment before he smiled again. "So, Mr. Ackles, now it's your turn: How did you decide to become a florist?" He winked. "Be honest, now. Don't say it was to impress the ladies."

"I'm not," Jensen said. "I don't. I mean. My parents owned a flower shop," he forced out, before he could embarrass himself any further, or flush an even darker shade of red. “I grew up taking care of plants. I ended up being better at it than they were, some of the time, once I’d hit my teens.”

“I can imagine.” Jared nudged Jensen’s knee with his own. “You’re scarily good at it.”

Jensen, somehow, found it in himself to return the gesture. “That’s what they said, too.”

They fell silent, after that. Jensen noted absently that he’d need to pick the rotting leaves off the toadflax before it began to devour itself, and didn’t notice how tense Jared had become until he spoke again.

“Are your parents…?” A look of regret passed over his face immediately, as if he was wishing he hadn’t opened his mouth. That, more than anything else, gave Jensen the courage to duck his head in agreement.

“They died,” he said. “My father when I was very young, my mother when I was almost an adult.”

Jared’s knee knocked into Jensen’s again, but this time it stayed there, warmth bleeding through the fabric separating them. Jensen folded his hands between his knees to shift his attention away from the sensation.

The sting at being alone was mostly gone now, anyway. He didn’t have any particularly vivid memories of his father – a few hazy recollections of tottering around the greenhouse, held steady by large, calloused hands; clinging to the man’s neck, gazing up at enormous leaves; digging his hands into the soft, fine soil in the flower beds, his father not too far away, doing the same. He didn’t even remember him falling ill, and his mother had understandably been reluctant to talk about it. She’d also refused to return to the family who’d turned their backs on her when she had left to find herself and found herself married to a florist and soon pregnant instead. She’d tolerated the presents they’d sent Jensen, and even brought him along to some of the family gatherings they asked her to attend, but for the longest time, it had been him and his mother tending to their flowers, struggling on, no more and no less.

“I’m sorry, Jensen,” Jared said. “That must have been hard.”

“She just got careless,” Jensen said. “She had this grand idea about modifying a constrictor plant, making it less aggressive so it’d be like a living security blanket instead of crushing the life out of you. It was all she ever talked about, in the end, but she knew, she knew that it was dangerous and she still kept working on it when I wasn’t there, even though I told her not to.” He looked over at Jared whose eyes had grown wide. “I told her it was going to happen, and she still went and got herself killed.”

“Jensen,” Jared said, and Jensen let his gaze drop. He didn’t cry over it, not anymore, but sometimes he couldn’t help but wonder how she could have been so careless with her own life. Like the fact that her seventeen-year-old son might have needed her didn’t even matter to her anymore.

“Jensen,” Jared said again.

Jensen smiled at his knees, knowing what the next words out of Jared’s mouth were going to be some empty platitude. But Jared didn’t say anything at all. Instead, he reached over to cover Jensen’s hand with his own, and when Jensen glanced over at him in surprise, there was a faint smile hovering at the corners of Jared’s mouth.

“I think you’re really brave, Jensen,” he said.

“It’s not the constrictor’s fault,” Jensen said automatically. He cleared his throat. “It was acting on instinct, that’s all.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard for you, going through all of that alone.”

“It’s alright,” Jensen said. “It was a long time ago.”

“Did–” Jared asked, glancing around, but Jensen shook his head.

“Not here,” he said. He knew, rationally, that the entire thing was nothing more than a truly unfortunate accident, but there was a difference between understanding that and continuing to spend every day of his life looking at the place where he’d found his mother on the floor, unmoving, limbs barely visible underneath a tangle of leaves.

He let his body drop forward, catching his forearms on his knees, and breathed in the damp, dusky smell of his greenhouse. It was reassuring, and it was home, and it made the hurt ease a little bit. After a moment, Jared’s hand settled between his shoulder blades, large and reassuring, and Jensen took another deep breath, allowing himself to revel in the warmth soaking through his shirt.

“How about some tea?” he asked, when the silence had stretched on for several minutes. “I have a kettle and hot plate in the back room.”

“Sounds great,” Jared said, beaming at him.

Jensen found himself smiling back, and went to boil some water while Jared volunteered to quickly sweep the aisles. Outside, the rain came down harder and harder, but Jensen’s smile remained firmly in place.

~

Lindsey lasted a whole twenty minutes of Jensen cheering up the yellow vanity with brightly colored ribbons before she finally burst out, “I went out with Gerard again.”

She’d finally come by again, and they’d both muttered heartfelt apologies. One of the things Jensen liked best about Lindsey was that he could fight with her, and make up again, and they were both equally easy.

“Oh really.” Jensen lifted one of the dark red strips higher, and the flower drooped.

“Really,” Lindsey said. She looked down at her hands, but Jensen could still see the blush staining her cheeks. “He sat outside my store for four hours, waiting for me,” she said. “I just – thought he couldn’t be all bad, you know, if he cared that much.”

“I suppose not.” Jensen finally relented, reaching over to tie the ribbon around one quivering stem. “It went better this time, then?”

“So much better,” Lindsey said.

“Not that it could have been much worse,” Jensen reminded her, smiling.

“No, it was.” She flushed. “It was really nice.”

“Remind me to never give you a wailing carnation,” Jensen laughed.

Lindsey wrinkled her nose. “What, the one that whines louder and louder the happier its owner is? Why would anyone do that to themselves?”

“It sounds very pretty when you’re unhappy,” Jensen felt obliged to point out, and then looked away when Lindsey turned her sharp gaze on him. “It was a long time ago, Lindsey,” he said.

Lindsey kept on watching him for a moment. Then, deliberately accusing, she asked, “So I assume you’re going to tell me that Gerard hasn’t come in for advice.”

“It’s possible,” Jensen said non-committedly. “You know people do that at times.”

Lindsey narrowed her eyes at him, but she smiled when Jensen did, expression melting into something soft.

“It was really nice, Jensen,” she said. “He’s really nice.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jensen said. He reached over to cover Lindsey’s hand with his own. “Really glad.”

Lindsey smiled, which was when there was a loud on knock on the back door.

“Delivery!” someone called, but when Jensen went to open the door, smile already on his face, it wasn’t Bernie on the other side. Instead it was a guy in his mid-forties or so, smiling sheepishly.

“Hey there,” the man said. “Jensen Ackles?”

“That’s me,” Jensen said. He stepped back to let the guy maneuver the dolly across the doorstep. What happened to Bernie? was burning at the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t want to be rude. It was possible this man didn’t even know.

Instead, he waved his hand at the empty tabletop. “Right over there is fine,” he said, when the delivery man cast a helpless look around.

“Thanks,” he said. He took the clipboard off the topmost crate and narrowed his eyes at it. “So I guess it’s this, and… three more crates in the back?”

Jensen gave the man another once-over. There was just something off about him, something Jensen couldn’t quite put a finger on. And it wasn’t just that he obviously had no idea what he was doing, or how to lift crates properly, for that matter – he was going to strain his back before long if he kept that up.

Jensen took a step forward to help and the man gratefully fell back.

“Thank you, seriously,” he said. “I mean, I’m sure that’s supposed to be my job, but. I mean. I haven’t been doing this for very long.” His lips twisted into another sheepish look. “I’m sure you can tell.”

“It’s not that bad,” Jensen lied. “I’m sure you’ll catch on quick.”

The guy smiled again, scuffing the tip of his shoe into the rough concrete floor, and Jensen finally figured out what was bothering him: Bernie had been a jovial guy, comfortable in his skin and in his grey coveralls with the company’s logo stitched above the right breast pocket. He’d moved easily, stood easily, smiled easily.

This new delivery man, on the other hand, held himself as stiffly as if he were afraid of rumpling some invisible suit. And it wasn’t as though Jensen, who had given up on the topcoat for convenience’s sake but nevertheless insisted on a button-down shirt, vest, and tie with his slacks, was unfamiliar with the desire to keep his clothing as tidy and orderly as possible, but this man’s posture was just about ridiculously correct, so flawless it was uncomfortable to witness. Merely looking at him made Jensen want to loosen his tie.

“The delivery?” Jensen finally prompted, and then discreetly rolled his eyes when the man, utterly lost, began to leaf through his papers.

Together, they managed to unload the right crates, though Jensen honestly had to say he did a lot more of the paperwork and a lot more of the actual lifting. But the delivery man looked contrite, at least, and offered Jensen a hesitant smile when they were done.

“Thank you, again, for the help.” He held out his hand. “I’m Sheppard. Well, Mark, but everybody calls me Sheppard. I’m replacing Bernie.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Jensen said, gripping firmly. He kept his smile in place until Sheppard had closed the backdoor behind him with another nod. He held it until he heard the delivery truck back out of the driveway, then he dropped the expression and went to quickly turn every single lock on the door. That done, he leaned his back against the wood and took a deep breath. This was getting ridiculous.

When he returned to the front, Lindsey was still sat at the counter, leafing through this season’s issue of Your New Best Friend and shaking her head at the many full-page photographs of people posed in their living rooms with a variety of plants in their laps. Unlike before, however, Jared now leaned against it from the other side, head bent over Steinhower’s Handbook, pen and notebook under one hand. He raised his head to smile at Jensen when Jensen eased into the greenhouse, but his expression quickly faded into concern.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did something happen?”

Lindsey turned her head too, eyebrows creasing, and Jensen shook his head.

“I’m fine,” he assured them. “But I think we should have an emergency meeting.”

“Um, sure.” Jared pushed the book’s heavy cover closed. “What’s up?”

Jensen took a deep breath, and then another. It wouldn’t be like last time, he told himself. This wasn’t the police, these were his friends. “I think someone is doing his or her best to sabotage the shop,” he said.

“The – the flower shop?” Jared asked.

“Yes, the shop.” Jensen silenced the snippy comment he could practically see dancing at the tip of Lindsey’s tongue with a sharp glance.

She rolled her eyes at him, but her tone was civil when she asked, “What makes you say that?”

Jensen took another deep breath, and then listed everything that had occurred recently that had caught his attention: The fake bill, the water hose, the way the skittering vine had been so upset. He told them about Sheppard, too, but only vaguely – he didn’t want to go accusing the man of anything before he had learned more about him. It was entirely possible, after all, that he was just having a bad first day.

“There’s no other explanation,” he finally said. “This isn’t just bad luck anymore. There’s something else going on here.”

“But who would do something like that?” Jared asked, eyes wide in disbelief, and Lindsey nodded in flummoxed agreement.

“Unfortunately,” Jensen told them grimly, tucking his papers into an organized pile, “I have a pretty good idea.”

~

“And you really think this is Pellegrino’s doing?” Lindsey asked, not for the first time.

“Well, who else could it be?” Jensen ran his hands through his hair, no doubt creating the impression that he’d recently crawled through a hedge, or touched an electrical outlet. “Nothing else makes sense! He’s obviously invested in me and the shop, he’s tried to convince me to share my design plants with him before, and he’s a low enough person to resort to these methods.”

“So says you,” Lindsey cautioned him.

“Who would you say it is, then?” Jensen asked, throwing his hands in the air.

“It might not even be anyone we know,” Lindsey said, jaw growing tight.

“Just a minute,” Jared cut in before Jensen had a chance to snap back at her. “If this person’s broken in before, chances are high he or she will do it again, correct?”

Lindsey narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s your point?”

“My point is,” Jared said, lifting a finger into the air, “that it doesn’t matter who it is, as long as we catch them in the act.”

Jensen stared at him. It wasn’t a bad idea, of course, but if it hadn’t been for the skittering vine, Jensen doubted he’d even have noticed someone had been in his shop. “And how do you propose we do that?” he asked.

“Why, Jensen.” Jared smiled at him. “With the help of your plants, of course.”

Part 4

Mr. Ackles' Flower Shop - Part 2

bad_peppermint — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:23:19 GMT

Part 1

Every once in a while, Jensen found himself confronted with visitors who’d only come in on someone else’s behest. It didn’t happen very often – his shop was a little too obscure for anyone but the truly passionate – but it did happen, and when the short man with the top hat perched on his stringy hair appeared in his doorway one afternoon, that was what Jensen pegged him for.

“Hello,” the man said. He cleared his throat and shuffled forward, stepping carefully around the swooning protea that had sprawled out in the entryway. “Um.”

“Hello there,” Jensen said. “Welcome to the shop. Are you looking for anything in particular, or just having a look around?”

“Well,” the man said. He took another step closer, twisting his fingers in the chain of his timepiece. “Um. You’ve got a flower lying on the ground, here.”

“Ignore her,” Jensen said. “She just does it for the attention, most days.”

“Um. Okay.” His customer shuffled a little closer to the counter. He had an oddly pointed nose and an entire mouth full of sharp teeth that he bared at Jensen in what Jensen assumed was intended as a friendly gesture.

Just in case it was, Jensen smiled back. “What can I help you with?”

The man instantly turned a startlingly bright red. “Well,” he stammered. “Uh. There’s this girl.”

Jensen kept from assuring him that there was always a girl, or perhaps a guy, or perhaps something in-between. In Jensen’s experience, people tended not to like being reminded that they weren’t particularly special. And in all honesty, he thought that people who went through the trouble of picking up flowers from an actual flower shop for a date were just special enough that he wanted them reassured, not thrown out of balance by a lonely flower shop owner who was already half-way in love with a taken man.

“Alright,” Jensen said. He gave his customer a reassuring smile. “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about her?”

“Okay,” the man said. “So, I took her out, I guess, but I guess it’s not cool to bring people bouquets. Like, that’s murder.” He rubbed his hands together, fingers splayed as wide as they would go. “She got pretty angry with me.”

Lindsey, Jensen thought, smiling a little, which made the man in front of him Gerard, the failed date from not so long ago.

“But she still wants to meet you a second time?” Jensen asked gently, lifting the dracaena’s wide leaves out of the way so he could squeeze out from behind the counter. “You must have worked some serious magic.”

“I begged a lot,” Gerard said, and turned bright red.

“That’ll do it,” Jensen said, even if he hadn’t been positive that it actually would, with Lindsey.

He turned to walk into the shop, beckoning Gerard along, and the man shuffled awkwardly after him.

“I just – isn’t it awkward to bring someone an entire plant on a date? Like, with the roots and dirt and everything?”

“Well,” Jensen said, and licked his lips. “To Lindsey,“ and here, Gerard blushed furiously once more, “bringing just the stem of a flower is the equivalent of bringing her someone’s leg or an arrangement of fingers. They might be lovely fingers, don’t get me wrong, but wouldn’t you prefer the whole person?”

“I’d rather not bring a whole ‘nother person on our date,” Gerard muttered. Then his eyes widened. “I mean – I get it. Whole flower. Not single pieces. Not so macabre.”

“You never know, she could be into that,” Jensen said before he could stop himself. Apparently it was now his time to blush. “But I don’t want to know about that. That is completely between you two. Or three, or whatever.”

“Right,” Gerard said.

“Let’s take a look at our collection,” Jensen offered, and Gerard nodded vigorously.

“Let’s,” he said, and Jensen pretended not to notice the relief spreading over the man’s face.

They made it exactly as far as the display of crimson felicitas by the door when Gerard stopped for the first time. “What are they?” he asked.

“There are our best-selling plants,” Jensen said. “They release pheromones to allow their owners to relax. Quite popular.” When Gerard’s eyes lit up, Jensen shook his head. “Lindsey already has one of these.”

“Her apartment must be a veritable jungle,” Gerard muttered.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Jensen, who had never been to Lindsey’s apartment, said neutrally.

Gerard let his hand sweep over the plants in the flower bed, and Jensen just barely managed to pull the stinging pepper out of the way before his guest managed to give himself first degree burns.

“Do you think it would be too forward of me to ask to see it?” Gerard asked hopefully.

Jensen blinked at him for a moment before he nodded, slowly. “Wait until she offers,” he said. “She might misconstrue the question.”

Gerard took a moment to think about that before he nodded. “Yes,” he conceded. “Yes, you’re right. I wouldn’t want to impose.” He wandered a little further, hesitating over a white perennial. “I like this one,” he said, reaching out to run a finger over the blossom.

“The lovers’ vow”, Jensen said. “Once it’s imprinted on two owners, it needs to be watered by both at the same time, or it’ll die. Very common as a wedding gift,” he said. “And the bane of divorced couples everywhere.”

“I’m not going to divorce her,” Gerard said, still fingering the plant, but Jensen shook his head firmly.

“At least wait until the third date,” he advised.

Gerard’s face fell, which Jensen took as his cue to point out the flower he had actually been intending to show him.

“This is a Darwin tulip,” he said, holding it up to the light. It had just a single stem, with a single blossom. In fact, the only outwardly remarkable thing about it was the fact that its roots were a fine net spanning the top of the soil in the pot, rather than sinking into the ground.

“It just looks like a regular one,” Gerard said slowly, like he wasn’t sure if he was confused or disappointed.

“It isn’t,” Jensen assured him. “It may look like one, but when you tug on it, like so,” Jensen said, demonstrating, “the roots straighten and stiffen.” He held the flower out to Gerard who, frowning, reached out his hand and hesitated just shy of touching it.

“As you can see,” Jensen said, “it’s virtually indistinguishable from an actual cut flower, the roots locking into position to look like a natural extension of the stem. And when they touch soil again…” He returned the flower to its pot, watching fondly as the roots unraveled and spread a wide net across the earth inside.

A moment later, Gerard’s head was at his shoulder, peering wide-eyed at the pot. “That’s amazing,” he said.

“Flowers adapt to changing times, just like animals do. Like people.” Jensen smiled. “Do you think this flower could work for you?”

“Definitely,” Gerard said. He hesitated. “I mean – you think so too, right?”

“I think it’s worth a try,” Jensen said.

“Okay,” Gerard said. He sucked in a deep breath before releasing it all at once. “Okay, I’ll take it.”

“That’s wonderful,” Jensen said, and carried the flower, sans pot, over to the counter to wrap it up.

Gerard followed, keeping the watchful eyes of a newly minted owner on the tulip.

“Make her promise to let you explain before you give her the flower,” Jensen told him, tucking the newspaper around the stem with care. “She might murder you with it otherwise.”

Gerard rubbed the heel of his hand against his sternum. “I do hope she won’t,” he said. “That might end the date on a sour note.” He looked up at that, and grinned, and Jensen found himself smiling back before he could help himself.

He held out the flower for Gerard to take. “Here you are.”

Gerard took it gingerly, and then dug one hand into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled wad of bills that he dumped in Jensen’s hands. It was, from what Jensen could see, at least three times as much as the flower actually cost, and he shook his head, but Gerard was already on his way out the door.

“Make her promise!” Jensen called after him.

He didn’t catch all of Gerard’s response, but the tail end sounded vaguely like “…thank you,” so Jensen marked it down mentally as a success before he rushed over to forcefully close the door behind him.

~

Jensen couldn’t deny a certain sense of elation after Gerard had left. Yes, the man had committed a serious faux-pas, but at least he had meant well. And Jensen still remembered Lindsey’s expression when she’d come into the shop after Gerard had asked her out for the first time – the thrill in her eyes, how pleased she’d been. She’d been happy then, and she deserved to be happy, and if that happiness lay with Gerard, then Jensen wholeheartedly wished them all the best.

His good mood carried him through the rest of the day, and into the next. Jensen caught himself whistling some tuneless melody time and time again, and although the shop was empty, he flushed and stopped himself every time. And yet the song didn’t quite die on his lips until he looked up just past midday to see a familiar figure standing in his shop.

For all that they were in the same business, and their respective shops were located not far from each other, Jensen had not interacted with Mark very much. There was just something about the other man that set Jensen’s teeth on edge, something that wasn’t mere professional rivalry and extended beyond Mark’s insistence on unethical flower trade, and Jensen had always attempted to avoid the other man as much as possible. An effort made useless, of course, when Mark came to seek Jensen out in his own shop.

Jensen hadn’t even seem him coming through the greenhouse windows, preoccupied with taking a customer’s order over the telephone mounted on the wall, and was so understandably caught off-guard when he looked up from his notepad at the jingle of the bell to find Mark standing in the doorway of his shop.

“…I’ll be in on Thursday, then,” the customer said, and Jensen replied, “Yes, thank you,” to the dial tone and hung up the receiver, eyes never straying from Mark. He didn’t quite know the man well enough to judge his character, merely his ethics, but he had to admit that he certainly looked the part of a somewhat-successful business owner. He tended to dress impeccably, if a little blandly, in suits with waistcoats and bowties and the occasional fedora thrown in on special occasions. Today rated, apparently, because there was a grey hat perched on his head at a jaunty angle, the cream-colored band matched with his vest and the buttons of his coat.

He stood in the door for a moment, letting his gaze wander over everything – everything except Jensen. After a moment, a small smile stole onto his lips.

Jensen fought to keep the scowl off his face. “Excuse me,” he said, perhaps a little colder than strictly necessary. “Could you shut the door, please? I’d prefer it if my plants remained inside.”

“Oh, of course.” Mark tossed a casual smile Jensen’s way. “My mistake.” He made a show of laboriously closing the door. “Is that better?” he asked. “Jensen?”

“Very much, thank you,” Jensen grit out.

Mark took a step closer. “How are you, Jensen? We haven’t crossed paths in a while.”

‘Thank Goodness for that,’ Jensen was tempted to say, but he refused to sink that low. He was a professional, and he was going to be professional if it was the last thing he did.

“So it has,” he finally settled on. “To what do I owe the pleasure now?” He tugged a rag from his belt and wiped his hands on it, because he’d be damned if he’d let the man outclass him in Jensen’s own shop.

Mark shook his head, smiling faintly. “Your lips say one thing, and your tone another,” he accused.

Jensen tossed his rag onto the counter. “I’m sure you can figure out which is the more accurate,” he said.

“I don’t understand why you’re so determined not to like me, Jensen.” Mark spread his arms wide. “Am I not a likeable guy?”

“You murder plants,” Jensen said tightly. “You murder them for a little bit of profit, and you somehow expect me to do the same, and I will never, never work with someone so unethical.”

“This is about the bouquets?” Mark asked. “Because really, Jensen, you have to go with the times a little. People want dead plants, we give them dead plants.” He waved a dismissive hand at the greenhouse’s windows. “This shop, right here, is a relic, Jensen, and it’ll die out if you don’t learn to adjust to your customers’ needs.”

“You say that like you actually care about your customers,” Jensen said. “But you don’t. You don’t care about them, and you certainly don’t care about your plants.”

“I don’t, do I?” Mark tapped a finger against his chin. “And what do I care about, Jensen? Please, enlighten me.”

“You care about money,” Jensen told him. Anger was making his voice shake, and he gripped the counter hard to distract himself from it. “So far, you’ve suggested to me to artificially shorten the lifespan of my plants just so you can sell a couple more of them, to starve my plants of water and nutrients to save money, and what now? Are you still trying to convince me to heighten the amount of pheromones the felicitas releases?”

Mark shrugged casually. “I really don’t know why you’re so against it,” he said easily.

“Because it’s dangerous,” Jensen burst out. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Because we’d be endangering our customers for a marginal profit.”

Mark smiled, a disquietingly honest smile. “Is that so bad?” he asked. “We’re not forcing anyone to buy more. If they do, it means our product was satisfactory. They’re happy, we’re not starving ourselves to keep our shops open another few days, so we’re happy, and it’s not like the plants themselves know any better.”

“That is not the point,” Jensen said through gritted teeth.

“Making yourself miserable just to satisfy a few customers isn’t the point either,” Mark said quietly. “Customers who neither realize the gem they’ve found in you, nor would fully appreciate your genius if they ever did.”

He smiled, a little sadly, and touched his fingers to Jensen’s wrist. Jensen could feel the warmth soak into his skin like poison, seep along his veins and settle small, frail roots in his mind, whispering Is he so wrong?

Jensen pulled his hand away. “I’d appreciate it if you left now,” he said quietly. He balled his hands into fists and didn’t look up again until he heard the bell above the door signal Mark’s departure.

~

It was without a doubt a relief when, a few hours later, two customers came ambling into the shop to take Jensen’s mind off the incident. One of them, the shorter, dark-haired one, was dressed in bright colors and obnoxiously mixed patterns like a child, and he seemed sorely tempted to touch every plant in sight. Jensen suspected he liked colorful, dramatic plants. Maybe this was someone who’d provide the right sort of home for Jensen’s swooning protea.

The customer was followed by another man, one almost as short and decidedly better dressed. He had a pair of drum sticks protruding from the pocket of his coat, where a handkerchief should have been, and the sight made Jensen smile. This man was most likely a candidate for Jensen’s telegraph plants, once they grew a little bigger. Jensen could see them getting along.

“Pete,” the second man sighed. “Pete, please?”

The first, Pete, held up a silencing hand. “There’s no use arguing, Patrick,” he said. “This is happening.”

Patrick flushed furiously, huffing out a breath and looking ready to read Pete the riot act, so Jensen smiled his most welcoming smile.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Pete leaned up against the counter, hands shielding his chest from the pressure. “I heard you have lovers’ vow in stock, is that true?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Jensen said slowly.

Pete grinned, broad and happy. Jensen had to admit it was a good look for him, transforming him from a slightly disheveled, slightly overdramatic man into someone decidedly handsome. “We’ll take it,” he said. “Patrick and I, we’ll take it.”

“He has a wife,” Patrick told Jensen helplessly.

Jensen bowed his head to hide his smile. “I’ll just go and get that for you, shall I?” he said, and pretended not to see the way Patrick sighed, or the way Pete grinned in delight.

~

He didn’t remember about the mail until sometime mid-afternoon when he went to tidy the counter and found the stack of sealed envelopes still sitting on top of it. Jensen went to sit on his stool with some trepidation, but for once, it weren’t the bills that made him so reluctant.

Instead, it was a cream-colored envelope, made out to one Mister Jensen Ackles with no return address, but the number of people who would send Jensen elegant letters on expensive paper was limited. Jensen had a fairly good idea who it was from, and he’d been dreading opening it ever since he had taken it out of the letterbox that morning.

But there was no helping it, was there? He slid his thumb underneath the flap and slid it open slowly. The card inside, just as expensive looking, with white and cream decorations, read Invitation. Jensen tilted it from side to side for a moment before he took a deep breath and flipped it open.

He came as far as Dear Jensen, you are cordially before the bell above the door rang out, clear and sharp.

“Hi Jensen,” Jared said cheerfully. He closed the door firmly before he bounded over to the counter. “Ooh, you got mail,” he said, smiling wide.

Under other circumstances, Jensen might have felt himself responding in kind, but today, all he did was shake his head. “It’s not a particularly joyous occasion,” he said.

Jared’s expression immediately turned sympathetic. “Bad news?”

Jensen’s lips did curl into a wry smile at that. “In a manner of speaking,” he said. “It’s nothing horrible, not really,” he hastened to assure Jared, when the other man looked anything but at ease.

“If you say so,” he said. He bit his lip, craning his head like he didn’t want to pry but also couldn’t quite contain his curiosity. “Who is it from?”

“My cousin,” Jensen said. “Or rather, my aunt, on behalf of my cousin.”

“How mysterious,” Jared said. He waggled his eyebrows. “Well, what’s it say?”

“My cousin,” Jensen said slowly, “is getting married, apparently.”

Jared pursed his lips. “And you’re invited?”

Jensen folded up the invitation, scraping one thumbnail along the edge. He was going to have to clean his nails – he’d long since given up on ever removing the half-moons of dirt underneath them, but he supposed that was bad form, for a wedding. “Not only that.” He offered Jared a wan smile. “Not only that, they’d also love it if I did the flower arrangements, and the bride’s bouquet, and provide the flowers to go into the flower girls’ hair, and their baskets.” He waved a vague hand. “They’d pay me, of course. For my generous contribution.”

“They want you to provide bouquets?” Jared raised his brows. “To go in vases?”

Jensen nodded.

“That’s terrible,” Jared said.

“They mean well.” Jensen pushed the letter underneath his battered copy of Pollination and Floral Ecology. “They think they’re doing me a favor.”

Jared pursed his lips. “They must not know you at all.”

Jensen laughed quietly. “No, I don’t suppose they do.”

“That’s a shame,” Jared said carefully. “I’ve quite enjoyed getting to know you so far.”

Jensen smiled wryly. “I expect they don’t see it that way.”

Jared looked down at his hands. “Is all of your family like that?” he asked hesitantly, like he was afraid of crossing some invisible line.

Jensen slid off his stool with determination. “You don’t want to hear about all that,” he said firmly. “You’re here for a reason. Another date, I take it?”

“Well.” Jared laughed awkwardly. “Not just yet. I just figured I’d take a look around, so I’ll know what to bring next time.”

“I could-" Jensen began, but Jared waved him off.

“You read,” he said. “I’m just going to go say hello to the dracaena for now.”

“Alright,” Jensen said reluctantly. He sat back down. “But please let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”

“Will do,” Jared said firmly. “Sit.”

Jensen sat, pulling the abandoned stack of mail towards him once more. He fought hard to keep from watching Jared walk away, even though he listened keenly to the sound of Jared’s heels against the tile. It wasn’t until he heard Jared speaking softly, too softly to be understood, that he tore open the first of the bills.

There weren’t any unpleasant surprises, thankfully, but no particularly pleasant ones either, so Jensen took out his ledger and a slip of notepaper and set about trying to figure out if he could pay them all this month without bankrupting himself. It wasn’t anything he particularly enjoyed doing, so he was almost relieved when he heard Jared’s voice again.

“Um, Jensen?” came the hesitant call from somewhere within the labyrinth of plants. “Could you come here for a moment?”

Jensen obeyed, mind reeling with possibilities of what had drawn Jared’s attention. He found Jared standing, apparently frozen, in front of one of the less popular plants that sat against the back wall, a short, squat tree of a reddish-black color. It had thick, purpling leaves and blossoms that bloomed red, and an open gash across its middle where the thinner, blue-green leeching ivy had taken up residence.

“I think your vine-y plant is eating your fat plant,” Jared said, caught somewhere between helpless and horrified.

It was, in fact – the ivy had several long tendrils extended into the tree’s innards, raising the bark in thick strands, much like a tree’s roots distorting a covering of asphalt. They were coming close to the last stage of the cycle, and the thick hornbeam certainly looked the part, leaves hanging discolored and fragile from its branches.

“Oh, that’s fine.” Jensen couldn’t help but smile at Jared’s incredulous expression. “They do that. It’s the best way to keep them, actually – they’re both symbiotic, and they each thrive on the nutrients the other plant produces.”

“They… live off each other?” Jared asked faintly.

Jensen smiled again and, after a moment’s hesitation, reached up to squeeze Jared’s arm. “Perfectly,” he said. “If they didn’t need water to survive, they would be a perfect perpetuum mobile.”

“But-“ Jared waved a hand at the hornbeam’s yellowing leaves. “I mean, you’re the expert, but that doesn’t look very healthy to me.”

“Well, it’s dying,” Jensen said.

“You said they keep each other alive!” Jared protested.

“They do.” Jensen reached out to run his fingers over the hornbeam’s rough bark. “It’s a constant circle, you know. The ivy will leech off the hornbeam’s nutrients, becoming stronger and stronger until the hornbeam is almost dead, and then it will grow weaker again, allowing the hornbeam to become the dominant partner.” He smiled at Jared. “I’ve kept them like this for, oh, four years now. Trust me, the system works.”

“Well.” Jared laughed, but he sounded somewhat flustered. “It’s still kind of terrible.”

“Sometimes you just have to let nature take its course,” Jensen said, and then winced at how pretentious he sounded.

Jared, though, Jared just laughed. “I suppose so,” he said. “You are the expert, after all.”

“Self-taught expert,” Jensen corrected, unable to completely bite down a smile.

“Whatever,” Jared said, waving him away. “That just makes it even better. I can’t even imagine what that must be like, just looking at a plant and knowing everything about it. That’s just – that’s amazing, Jensen, is what it is.”

He caught himself and grinned a little sheepishly, spots of color appearing high on his cheeks. “I probably sound like a dork, huh?”

“Me?” Jensen gestured, a sweeping arc that encompassed the leafy jungle of his shop. “I would be hard-pressed to call anyone a dork when it comes to plants, Jared.”

“You’re pretty cool, for a dork.” Jared smiled a little nervously, but he didn’t take it back. Instead, he reached out to lightly rest his hand above Jensen’s elbow, nothing more than a touch, his fingers crinkling the fabric there.

“Thank you,” Jensen said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say in reply, and the feeling of Jared’s fingers on his shirt proved to be far more distracting than he’d expect.

“Alright, then.” Jared ducked his head, but Jensen could still see him smile.

~

On Wednesday, a gentleman swept into his shop wearing an elegant coat of shimmering blues and greens, expertly matched with his boots, the feather in his hatband, and the colored streaks in his dark hair. He looked around with an uncertainty that didn’t fit with his confident appearance, as if questioning what on Earth had possessed him to enter a shop that consisted almost entirely of moisture and dirt. Jensen had to admit that he was wondering, himself. But then the gentleman caught sight of him and smiled brilliantly, and Jensen liked him immediately.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he asked. Extravagant, he thought, mentally tallying which plants he had available. Here was a man who enjoyed attention, though not in an unpleasant way - he was comfortable in his skin and he was fully prepared to prove it to the world. He clearly had no issues with Jensen's scrutiny, either, because rather than scowl or look away, he held out a solid hand.

"Adam," he said. "Are you Mr. Ackles?"

"That's me," Jensen confirmed. "Jensen."

"It's a pleasure, Jensen," Adam assured him. "A friend recommended this shop to me. She assured me I'd find something amazing."

There was a light challenge in his tone, but not an unpleasant one, and Jensen gladly took him up on it.

"My customers are rarely disappointed," he said, smiling a little. "What kind of plant are you looking for? Something decorative, or something for the garden? Perhaps a gift?"

"Something decorative, I think," Adam said. "My boyfriend insists my apartment is woefully bare, and I'm afraid he might be right."

"Well, that will never do," Jensen said. He smiled. “And I think I have something that you might like.”

He let Adam wait by the counter – no use in inviting disaster by letting loose his plants with that coat – while he went to fetch the camouflage trillium. It had taken on a leafy green shade, echoing the plants around her, but quickly took on a darker color when Jensen lifted her against his black vest.

“Here you are,” Jensen said cheerfully, pushing the plant into Adam’s arms.

“What does-?” Adam began, but then the flower began to change color, leaves taking on a startlingly turquoise hue to match his clothing, and Adam’s confused expression softened. “Oh,” he said. His hands, Jensen noted, shifted to cradle the plant more safely against his chest.

Love at first sight, Jensen mused, and then found his thoughts wandering to Jared, to his eyes and his laugh and the way his big hands were so infinitely careful with Jensen’s plants.

“She’s beautiful,” Adam said, awed, and Jensen laughed.

“She’s yours if you want her.”

“Name your price,” Adam said immediately.

Jensen reached over to tap the price tag stuck into the pot’s soil base. “I’ll wrap her up for you, if you’d like,” he said.

“Please,” Adam said, so Jensen did, and exchanged the trillium for the bill Adam handed to him.

“I’ll just get you your change, sir,” he said.

“Keep it,” Adam said, smile sweet. “This place is a treasure, Jensen.”

He turned with an elegant flourish before Jensen could protest any further. He paused on the threshold, and tipped his hat, and Jensen had to admit to a charmed smile even as he hurried to close the door in his wake.

~

Perhaps it was Adam’s visit, or perhaps it was something else, but things came a little more easily after that. Business picked up a little – Jensen suspected it was the first signs of summer that had people breezing in, demanding the most colorful plants he had to offer. But even if they hadn’t, even if the shop had been as dead as before, the lack of bad news was enough to keep Jensen satisfied. He found himself smiling more easily, more frequently, and receiving more smiles in return.

And then the skittering vine went missing. Jensen usually let his mobile plants roam freely around the shop, but the creeping parvifolium’s near constant bids for freedom necessitated semi-regular checks, just to make certain it was still lying in wait underneath the display table by the door.

Instead, it was the vine that Jensen couldn’t find. She liked to hide, so it really wasn’t that unusual, but she also wasn’t in any of her preferred hidey-holes. She wasn’t behind the counter or in the branches of the dracaena or tucked away in the small forest of verbena lupos.

“Come on, darling,” Jensen said softly. “Come on, don’t scare me like this.”

It didn’t help much – his heart was still pounding painfully when he finally discovered her tucked into an overturned flower pot in the corner where Jensen kept his supplies. “What happened to you, darling?” he asked, getting on his hands and knees in the dirt. He tried to edge closer, cheek almost brushing the floor in an attempt to see her in the dark space, but relented when the vine curled away from him. “It’s okay,” he crooned. “We’ll figure it out.”

He tried extending his fingers once again, more slowly this time, and though the vine tensed, it didn’t move away. “That’s right,” Jensen crooned, and shuffled just a little closer.

The bell over the entryway jingled happily. The vine, now inches away from Jensen’s hand, ducked away and disappeared between two tilting towers of pots.

Jensen sighed. “I’ll be right there,” he called to his customer. “Come on,” he muttered to the plant. “Time to stop hiding.”

He edged closer, as quickly as the vine would let him. It was too safely entrenched for Jensen to reach it with his fingers, but he had customers to attend to now, and as disquieted as the plant seemed to be, he really didn’t want to leave it in its current position. There was really only one thing left for him to resort to, as much as he hated it, and he withdrew his hand to undo his cufflink. Skittering vines liked warm, dark places, and sure enough, when he offered the plant his sleeve to crawl into, it swayed forward, tempted.

“That’s right, sweetheart,” he whispered, and the plant made a mad attempt for the cuff of his shirt, disappearing almost instantly underneath the fabric, rough hairs dragging along Jensen’s skin. It was an odd sensation, not entirely pleasant, but not, Jensen imagined, any worse than a cat dragging its tongue along one’s arm.

“It’s okay,” Jensen whispered to her. “I’ll figure out what’s scared you, I will. I promise. It’ll be okay.”

“Jensen,” Jared said behind him, sounding a little strangled.

Of course it was. Jensen smacked the side of his head into the table top in his haste to get up, and then stood there, temple smarting and knees covered in grime and his shirt bulging in the armpit where the skittering vine had taken up refuge.

Jared had a flush sitting high on his cheeks, and when he spoke, he looked a little past Jensen. “I should have waited by the counter?” he mumbled.

Jensen could feel matching heat rising in his face. “It’s alright,” he said, dusting off his hands like that could somehow restore some of his dignity. “Can I help you with something?”

“Well, I was hoping – Are you sure you’re alright?” Jared gestured vaguely at Jensen’s torso, which reminded Jensen of the vine creeping along his collarbone. “You look a bit agitated.”

“Let me just,” Jensen said, gesturing at the lump curled along his collarbone, and turned away slightly to fumble with his tie and shirt button. He lifted the vine carefully out and gave her a moment to curl herself into the empty space between the fuzzy chickweed and the whistling grass, thankfully silent today. When he faced Jared again, there was a flush high on Jared’s cheeks, eyes on Jensen’s fingers as he did up his shirt and settled his tie.

“Jared.” Jensen cleared his throat. “How are you today?”

“I’m fine,” Jared said, a little bewildered. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Jensen said. “I’m fine.” He was rattled, and he wanted to be alone so he could coax the vine from its hiding place and soothe it with quiet words and gentle touches, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he could soothe anyone, considering the state he was in.

He turned and headed for the safe haven of his counter, gritting his teeth when Jared’s footsteps were close behind.

“I’m serious, Jensen,” Jared said. “Please, tell me what’s wrong.”

Jensen closed his eyes, took a deep breath. “Did you want anything?” he asked. “Because this really isn’t a good time.”

Jared shook his head. “Jensen, I just want to help.”

“You shouldn’t,” Jensen said firmly. “I’m managing just fine, Jared, I have for years. And besides, won’t your lady friend miss you?” He brushed a few specks of dirt from the counter with a decisive movement. “You shouldn’t make her miss you, Jared,” he said. “That’s not good, this early in a relationship.”

Jared pressed his lips together, not quite meeting Jensen’s eyes. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I’ll just go then,” he said, and Jensen pressed his hands to his burning eyes and didn’t say anything.

~

Jensen turned the incident over and over in his mind for several days, but was never sure what to make of it, right until the moment when he found himself going over his order forms just to make sure everything was ready for his next delivery and found them unlike he’d left them.

“What on Earth,” he murmured, which was when Lindsey burst through the door, face flushed with exertion.

“Jensen!” she said, dropping her messenger bag onto the counter. “Jensen, I have to tell you something.”

“Just a moment,” Jensen murmured, leafing through the forms again. He recalled quite clearly that he’d ordered them by urgency a few days ago, the most pressing ones at the top, but there was one request for next Tuesday in between the ones that weren’t due for another three weeks. He pulled it from the stack, staring down at it, and then he remembered that he was keeping a friend, a customer waiting and gave Lindsey a quick smile.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“No, it’s fine.” Lindsey reached across the counter to squeeze one of his hands. “What’s wrong?”

Jensen lowered his voice. “I think someone’s been here,” he said. “Last night, after the shop closed.”

When Lindsey stared at him, eyes wide, he leaned in even closer. “You haven’t seen the skittering vine,” he said. “She’s completely beside herself. Even more so than she usually is. And, just – things are wrong, here. They’re not the way they should be.”

“Are you sure?” Lindsey asked. “I mean – the skittering vine is kind of insane.” She hesitated. “All I’m saying is, is anything actually missing?”

Jensen let his head drop. He wasn’t sure, not at all, which was precisely the problem. If he were sure, he could call the police and have them deal with it, but what would he call them for – an unsettled plant and a disorganized stack of paper? Nothing was missing, as far as he could tell, and he knew from experience that law enforcement didn’t always have the most positive reaction to cases involving plants.

The wailing carnation, the beautiful but oftentimes obnoxious plant that sang beautifully when its owners were unhappy and gave screaming cats a run for their money when they weren’t, the one Jensen had moved to the counter for a little more sunlight, was humming a hauntingly sad little tune.

“What else could it be, Lindsey?” he asked, pushing the flower aside. “It’s not as though I’ve an employee who could have shuffled my orders around, or upset the vine by sneaking around late at night.”

He cast a quick look over his shoulder when someone pushed the door open, and though his stomach gave a now-familiar jolt at the sight of Jared standing in his shop, smiling tentatively, his conversation with Lindsey was important enough to prevent distraction.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong, Jensen,” she said. “I just think that that’s a pretty harsh accusation to level at someone, without any proof.”

“What do you want me to do instead, then?” Jensen bit out. “Just sit back and take it?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I want you to be rational about this.”

“Like how rational you were about Gerard?” Jensen asked her.

“Oh,” she huffed, reaching for her bag and shoving past Jared with quite a bit more force than was strictly necessary.

“Lindsey,” Jensen said, quietly, but she was already gone.

Jared gave him a rueful smile. “I suppose that didn’t go the way you wanted it to go?”

“Somebody’s been here,” Jensen insisted. He explained the occurrence with the skittering vine, and about the order forms, finishing with, “Someone’s broken in. There’s no other explanation.”

“Alright.” Jared undid his cufflinks and pushed his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, exposing lovely, tan, muscular forearms. “I’m going to go around the building and check that none of the windows have been tampered with. You just look through the rest of your papers, see if anything else isn’t as it should be.”

Perhaps Jensen’s face showed how overwhelmed he was, because Jared’s expression softened a little. “We’ll figure it out, Jensen,” he said. He laid his hand on Jensen’s arm, just briefly, fingertips bleeding heat into Jensen’s skin through the fabric of his shirt. “It’ll be alright. You’ll see.”

Jensen allowed himself to soak up Jared’s compassion for a moment before he nodded and turned to his paperwork. “Let’s take a look, then,” he said, and didn’t look up again until he heard the bell signaling Jared’s departure.

~

Jared returned some forty-five minutes later, when Jensen was just going through the last of his ledgers.

“Anything?” he asked.

Jensen shook his head. “It’s all a bit more… orderly than I can recall leaving it, but I can’t tell if it’s because something is actually different now or because I’m trying too hard to find some sort of disturbance.”

“I might have.” Jared nodded his head towards the door. “There are scratch marks at one of the windows, towards the back. Nothing’s broken, but someone might have gotten inside. I can’t tell.”

“Alright,” Jensen said. “Thank you.” He laid a hand across his forehead, trying to ease his impending headache.

Jared gave him a worried look, and Jensen forced himself to smile at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He pushed sweaty bangs off his forehead. “You’re not here to watch me panic over nothing. How is everything with you?”

“Fine, fine,” Jared said, nodding distractedly. “Hey, listen, I wanted to apologize for the other day. This is your work, and I shouldn’t expect you to always have time for me.”

“That’s alright,” Jensen said. He could feel heat rising in his cheeks. “I like spending time with you. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that, you didn’t deserve it at all.”

“So we’re both really sorry,” Jared said, grinning.

Jensen smiled back at him. “It looks like it.”

“Well, that makes it easy,” Jared declared. “We’ll just have to make it up to each other.”

“Oh yeah?” Jensen raised an eyebrow. “And how do you propose we do that?”

Jared placed a grave hand on Jensen’s shoulder, thumb dragging along the side of Jensen’s neck. He managed to keep a straight face, but the dimples appearing in his cheeks gave him away. “I think we should have tea.”

“Tea.”

“Yes, tea.” Jared darted his tongue over his lips. “It should be a suitable punishment for the both of us.”

“That’s not much of a punishment,” Jensen said. He gently moved his shoulder out of Jared’s grip, before the heat soaking into his skin made him forget himself. “I’ll get the tea started.”

“Just one second,” Jared said. He pushed his hands into his pockets, bulging out the fabric. “Before I forget: I did have a reason for coming in today.”

“Alright,” Jensen said slowly. “What is it, then?”

“I.” Jared reached up to finger the back of his neck. “I actually wanted to ask you a favor.”

“Oh,” Jensen said. “Alright. I mean, of course. Ask away.”

“Okay.” Jared smiled at him, looking determined, and dropped his hand. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m in my third year at the university,” he said. “I’m in the engineering program.”

Jensen did some mental math at that new information and came to a startling conclusion. “You’re twenty-one?” he asked, perhaps a little too loudly.

Jared blinked at him, and Jensen flushed.

“Just – you look older than that,” he mumbled, willing Jared to take it as a compliment and not stalk off in a huff.

“Oh.” Jared smiled. “I’m twenty-six, actually. I spent the first couple of years out of high school with my father’s firm, building dams in flood-endangered areas, and didn’t actually begin my studies until I was twenty-three. A bit late, I’ll admit, but I think it was worth it.”

“No, I’m – I’m sorry,” Jensen said. “Carry on, please.”

“Right,” Jared said. He brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Well, one of my lectures this term is on sustainability, and there’s a term paper that I’ve yet to find a suitable topic for.”

He glanced up over at Jensen, and then away. “I’ve spoken to my professor about various options, and, well, I might have told her about your shop?” He smiled sheepishly. “I was just so fascinated, I couldn’t help it. But she definitely approves,” he rushed on to explain, “and she thinks the hornbeam and the leeching ivy are great subjects for a paper. So what I’m really asking, I suppose, is if I could perhaps come in every once in a while and observe their development. I’d be entirely unobtrusive, I promise.”

Jensen blinked at him, vaguely stunned. Whatever he had been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been Jared asking to spend more time with him, or at his shop at least, and it took a moment for his startled expression to morph into a smile. “Of course,” he hastened to assure Jared who stood quietly before him, unsure and perhaps a little crestfallen at his silence. “Of course, Jared, you don’t even have to ask.”

“I do,” Jared insisted, but he was grinning widely enough for it not to matter.

“You’re more than welcome,” Jensen said. He absently drummed his fingers on top of his ledger. “Anytime.”

Jared was still grinning, and Jensen looked down for a moment, licked his lips.

“If you have any questions, you know, that your professor can’t help you with… Well. Maybe I can be of assistance.”

“That’d be great. I’ve started researching, but there’s just so much information, you know, I’m not really sure where to start looking.”

Jensen leaned back against the counter. He crossed his arms in front of his stomach and tilted his head to the side. “What have you looked at so far?” he asked.

“I’ve been reading a lot of Steinhower’s Handbook to Parasitic Plants,” Jared offered, and, at Jensen’s approving nod, went on, “And I recently started looking at Wilfred’s Introductory Plant Biology.”

“No, no, not Wilfred.” Jensen shook his head vehemently. “Half of its content is inaccurate, and the other half is outright wrong. You’re much better off relying on something like Invasive Plant Ecology and Management, or The Vancouver Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms, or Parasitic Plants of the World – that one is less detailed, but it draws some interesting parallels between the evolution of plants and that of society.”

“Alright,” Jared said. He looked around. “I should probably make a note of that,” he said.

“I should have them right here,” Jensen offered. He pushed himself off the counter and rounded it to get to the bookshelf behind it. “Here’s the Vancouver Glossary,” he said. “And this is Earthbound Parasites, another good one, and Pollination and Floral Ecology: A Handbook,” and then he spotted Physiology and Behavior of Complementing Plants at the end of the row and pulled that down as well, and when he turned back to lay them on the counter, he found Jared watching him with wide eyes.

Ah, yes. Of course. All Jared had done was ask him for advice, and Jensen practically offered him an entire library. He smiled carefully. “Only if you want them, of course,” he said.

Jared laughed. “Are you kidding?” he asked. “Jensen, of course I want them. This is wonderful.”

Jensen smiled again, a little more certainly this time. “You don’t have to read them here, if you don’t want to,” he said. “You could take them home with you, if you promise to bring them back safe and sound.”

But Jared just shook his head, letting his gaze wander. “I like it here,” he said. He smiled. “I like the atmosphere.”

It wasn’t the first time Jensen had heard someone say that, not by far. Most of his regular patrons had, at some point or another, exclaimed over how cozy and adorable and quaint his shop was. But it was Jared saying the words this time, and Jensen could feel his cheeks growing hot.

“Thank you,” he managed to get out. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Jared smiled at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked. “I really wouldn’t want to be in the way.”

Jensen hastened to assure him that no, he really wasn’t, and procured another stool from the back room so Jared could seat himself in front of the counter and leaf through Jensen’s collection of reference books.

“These are perfect, Jensen,” he said, about three pages in. He looked up and smiled. “Seriously,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

“I could see if I could find my notebooks for you, too,” Jensen offered hesitantly. “There might be something useful in them.”

“That would be amazing, Jensen,” Jared said. He looked like he meant it, too, eyes wide and a small smile tucked away at the corners of his mouth. He let the cover drop shut. “I have to go to class now, unfortunately,” he said. “But I’ll be back for these. And for your notes.”

Jensen nodded, trying not to smile too broadly.

Jared hesitated for a moment, fingers tangled in the strap of his bag, before he leaned in to press a soft, dry kiss to Jensen’s cheek. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

Then he was gone, and Jensen had to take a moment to catch his breath.

“You’re amazing,” he whispered into the empty space Jared had left behind.

Next to him, the wailing carnation began to howl.

Part 3

Mr. Ackles' Flower Shop - Part 1

bad_peppermint — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:21:15 GMT

Mr. Ackles’ Flower Shop for Unusual, Extraordinary, and Peculiar Plants
~
Mr. Ackles’ Flower Shop was located on an unassuming side street tucked away at the far end of Howler’s Walk, a place that was beloved by its regulars and went unnoticed by just about everyone else. Even people who had been before occasionally had a hard time finding it again. Many of them found themselves so turned around by the rows upon rows of brick houses, lined up side by side in a silent guard of honor, that they eventually just gave up and returned home, and every once in a while, over dinner, brought up that flower shop on the outskirts of town, the amazing one, the one that had simply… disappeared.

It was bad for business, without a doubt, but Jensen liked it that way. He was the owner, manager and sole employee of his little shop, and despite the fact that he had not been able to afford so much as a new suit in quite some time, one of the things he enjoyed most about his shop was the fact that there was rarely more than one customer vying for his attention.

He had not, however, planned it that way. After his mother’s death, when Jensen could barely reach for the handle of their old store’s front door without the grief turning his stomach, there had been a single greenhouse for sale in the entire city, and Jensen had barely even hesitated. The fact that the nearest store was over a mile away, and another flower shop to boot, didn’t bother him. People would just have to go out of their way to visit him. Maybe that wasn’t the smartest decision financially, but Jensen was a florist, not a business man, and he remained firm in his belief that his customers recognized quality, and would return for more.

For a florist, Mr. Ackles’ Flower Shop had always done reasonably well. The shop and the two-bedroom apartment above it were Jensen’s property, and the money Jensen made every month had been enough to cover the upkeep and acquisition of his plants, food, bills, the occasional glass pane when drunken teenagers roaming the neighborhood decided it would be funny to throw rocks at his greenhouse, and even allowed him to set aside a little for presents for his extended family. Not that he saw them much, but he usually simply picked out plants for his friends, and his family tended to expect something a little more… extravagant.

Jensen didn’t see them much, and he suspected everyone involved liked it that way.

Recently, though, the paint had begun to flake from the door, and the little bell above it rang out less and less. And it was a recent development, because even at seventeen, when he had first gone about the tedious business of setting up a greenhouse as a flower shop, Jensen had had more customers than he did now.

In fact, for a while, he’d done remarkably well. Mr. Ackles’ Flower Shop had achieved local fame when Jensen, aged twenty-three at the time, created a flower that, sweet-smelling and beautiful as it was, filled the air around it with gentle pheromones. It wasn’t much, not really – just enough for the plant’s owners to wake up in the morning elated and refreshed, enough for them to stretch out on the sofa after a hard day and simply relax. The plant had, and continued to sell well even if nothing else in the shop did, and Jensen was well used to people trying to coax, pry, bribe or occasionally threaten his design plans for it out of him.

Jensen had yet to give in. He preferred his integrity to money, regardless of how tight it was at the moment. It was cold comfort, however, on days when the bell above the door rang once, or perhaps twice at most, and in recent months, Jensen had taken to seeking solace in his flowers even more so than usual. He loved them, and for the most part they loved him back, and Jensen had figured somewhere along the line that if he didn’t have customers to satisfy, then he could at least make his plants happy. He created the perfect environments for them, made sure they had all the nutrients they needed, showered them with affection and attention and always, always looked out for their safety.

Some of the ways he did things were subtle, others less so, but they were the reason why, in one of the window panes, there was a handwritten signs asking visitors to please close the door quickly upon entering and exiting the shop. It did not state why, but the twice-underlined ‘quickly’ did lend a sense of urgency to the request. Jensen tended not to ask for things, not really, but his plants were the one thing he was serious about.

It was just as well, since his plants were all he had.

~
On the particular Monday on which our story begins, Jensen, our reluctant protagonist, went about his morning routine just as he usually did. He cleaned up his store a little, tidied whatever mess his plants had created in the night, and took a good look around. The greenhouse was only a few paces wide, enough to set up two show tables side by side and still move around comfortably, but lengthwise it took up the entire building. The far ends were shielded by brick, not glass, which Jensen preferred. Not many people ventured that far, unless they had Jensen as their guide, which gave Jensen leave to store some of his more… eccentric flowers there. He kept a small assortment of decorations, as well; mechanical bugs that scuttled over their shelf, cogwheels whirring, brightly colored pinwheels, even the odd garden gnome with a mechanism that allowed it to tip its hat or lower its fishing rod, much as it pained Jensen to stock something so… inorganic. He had a small back room for soil and packaging materials, and if his selection maybe wasn’t as showy as, say, Pellegrino’s flower store on Lombard Street – well then, he preferred it that way.

Jensen very determinedly liked both his store, and his life. What he had was good. He refused to ask for anything more.

~

While not much of a morning person in general, getting the mail was officially turning into the worst part of Jensen’s pre-opening routine. It had never been particularly pleasant for him – he didn’t know anyone who’d travel to exotic places and might send him a postcard, and there just wasn’t anything particularly exciting about free advertisements. Lately, though, the take-out menus were being replaced by bills upon bills upon bills. There was the water and the heating and the deliveries, the broken windowpanes, soil and fertilizer, his license, his mortgage payments, his groceries.

Jensen closed the door firmly behind him, flipped the hand-painted sign to OPEN, and looked through the stack of letters on his way over to the counter, squinting a little through the lenses of his eyeglasses. Four of them were bills (one marked ‘late notice’), one a flyer advertising accounting classes for small-time business owners, and one a plain envelope addressed in an unfamiliar hand. He opened that one first, knowing what the others would say, and unfolded the plain sheet of paper tucked inside.

Jensen, it read, in an easy, flowing script. We should have a talk sometime. I daresay you know why.

It wasn’t signed, but Jensen nevertheless knew who it was from. And that, perhaps more than the presumption of the note itself, or even simply the note, made him so angry he had to grip the edge of his white-washed counter to keep from hitting anything.

He had yet to unclench his hands when the bell above the door rang out, signaling his first customer of the day – a short, squat gentleman in a thick coat. But he managed a smile, because professionalism was important, and said, as kindly as he could on a morning that had already turned sour, “Close the door, please.”

The man blinked but obeyed, pushing the door shut roughly, and took a few shuffling steps into the greenhouse.

“How do you do,” Jensen said. “Are you here for anything in particular?”

The man shook his head, huffing a little bit, and Jensen smiled again.

“Well, feel free to have a look around, and let me know if you have any questions. And try to stay away from the Birds of Paradise,” he warned. “They peck.”

The man cast a quick, panicky look over his shoulder, and then skittered further towards the counter when two or three of the stalks swayed closer in interest. “So,” he said. He shuffled closer. “You’re Ackles, right? The Ackles?”

Jensen, who had had similar conversations several times already, smiled tightly. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Well.” The man took another step towards him. “Because I have to tell you, Ackles, you’ve really made a name for yourself, you know?”

So it was going to be that conversation. Well then. Jensen leaned his elbows onto the counter and raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?” he asked tiredly.

“Uh-huh. And I’ve gotta say, I’m really liking those happiness plants you’ve got by the window.”

“The crimson felicitas?” Jensen asked.

“Uh-huh, those.” The man waved a vague hand. “Now, you see, those plants of yours, I’ll admit they made me a bit curious. Like, how does an untrained florist like yourself come up with something as successful as that?”

“Trade secret, I’m afraid,” Jensen said, still smiling.

The man’s smile, if anything, grew in intensity. He leaned an elbow onto the counter and lowered his voice, as if there was anyone else in the shop to overhear them. “Now, Jensen,” he said. His tone seemed to imply that Jensen was nothing more than a particularly stubborn toddler, and Jensen had to struggle to keep his carefully pleasant expression in place.

“Jensen, Jensen, Jensen.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Go on, you can tell me.”

“I really can’t,” Jensen said.

“You can.”

“But I won’t.”

The man kept smiling, and Jensen kept smiling, and after a moment the man pushed himself off the counter and huffed his way out the door.

Jensen sighed. The worst part wasn’t even that they tried to pry his secrets out of him – it was that they didn’t even bother buying anything in apology when he called them on it.

To calm himself down, he went to water the few plants that actually needed it, and then spent another hour and a half organizing back issues of Strange and Exotic before the doorbell rang out again.

This time it was a woman, in a sleek black coat, who took a slow look around and frowned before Jensen so much as had the chance to say hello.

“Don’t you have any arrangements?” she asked, letting her disapproving gaze sweep over the rows of potted plants. “I can’t show up at my sister’s with an armful of dirt.”

Jensen swallowed back an angry retort. He managed to conjure up a polite smile instead. “I’m afraid not, Ma’am,” he said, and rubbed his hand over his eyes when she headed for the door without another word. Jensen wasn’t really the type to hate Mondays, but sometimes he understood why other people did. Sometimes he really understood.

He’d just decided to trim the Japanese bonsai – Jensen had been overfeeding it with the blowfish soup, judging from the way it had grown – and gone to fetch it from the leafy green jungle at the back of the greenhouse when the bell rang out for a third time.

“Jensen!” someone demanded. “Where are you? Come out here so I can tell you about the tragedy that is my life.”

“Coming!” Jensen called back, laughing. It felt good to laugh, and it was certainly a relief to find someone in his store that wasn’t about to berate or belittle him. “I’m on my way, Lindsey, just give me a minute.”

“Come faster!” Lindsey groused. “I don’t think I can stand it for another second.”

“Your date didn’t go well, I take it?” He picked up the little plant and hefted it in his arms. He tried to find solace in the fact that he was not the only one struggling with his existence at that moment, but it was cold comfort, especially considering Lindsey was one of his closest friends and not someone Jensen would wish ill, not under any circumstances.

Lindsey was, like most people Jensen considered friends, someone who had come into the shop as a customer and had then refused to leave. She was a receptionist at the Howler’s Glen Wildlife Clinic, Jensen had learned, just a few minutes up the road. She liked to stop by after work and soak up the atmosphere, even though she didn’t always buy something, and Jensen honestly looked forward to her visits.

Perhaps not everyone would have prided himself with being her friend, but Jensen liked to think that he was a reasonably open-minded character. Lindsey liked short sleeves and low-cut dresses – indecently so, perhaps, but it wasn’t as though Jensen had any interest in her dress and what lay underneath it, so he saw no reason to frown upon it.

When Jensen had fought his way back to the counter, he found Lindsey slumped in front of it, drooping from her lace-up boots and lacy hemline all the way up to her hair. She brightened when she caught sight of Jensen, but not by a lot. “It was a tragedy, Jensen,” she said. “A tragedy, I tell you.”

“Apparently so,” Jensen said. “Give me a moment and you can tell me all about it.”

He set the tree on the counter before he slid behind it, pulled two shears from a basket underneath it and set them down. He picked up one of them and went to work, leaving the other for Lindsey – sometimes she liked to help him out, but today, it seemed like her tragic tale of woe had her entirely preoccupied.

“I can’t believe I went out with him,” she muttered, more to herself than to Jensen. When she did look over at him, her eyes were the size of small flower pots. “Jensen, I can’t believe I actually went out with him!”

“He must have done something truly appalling,” Jensen said carefully. “Last time you came in, you could barely contain your excitement.”

“Oh!” Lindsey exclaimed, in the tone of voice she only adopted when she was truly working herself up about something. “Oh, Jensen, I don’t know how he ever managed to fool me.”

“That bad?”

“You don’t even know!” Lindsey exclaimed. “God, it was so awkward, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. And he brought me roses,” she groused. “Seriously. Who does that?”

Jensen shuddered in sympathy. Every once in a while, on the rare occasions that he went out to a family gathering, someone or other would remark that he did, after all, own a flower shop, and what did he think of the oh so lovingly arranged buckets of dead flowers by the door? They meant well, Jensen knew, but there were few things he could imagine that were worse than asking a florist’s opinion on carelessly slaughtered plants.

“That sounds fairly bad, I’ll admit,” Jensen said.

Lindsey shuddered again, dramatically, and mimed thrusting a bouquet of flowers at someone. “‘Here, I’ve brought some lovely murdered plants for you to enjoy.’ Ugh, he was such a prick.”

Jensen chuckled a little, and after a moment, Lindsey joined in.

“I might have overdone it a little, telling him off,” she admitted. She stood for a minute, then she picked up the shears on the counter and took careful hold of a leaf. “Anyway, that’s done with now. I’m not ever going to see him again.”

She said it haughtily, but Jensen had known her long enough to recognize the disappointment in her voice, and despite what she was saying now, he also knew she’d been looking forward to her date since the moment the unfortunate miscreant had finally managed to ask her.

Seeing her here, now, mouth flattened into an unhappy line, it only took him a moment to make up his mind. He raised a finger into the air. “I might have something to cheer you up,” he said, stepping around the flower beds and venturing deeper into the jungle at the far end of the greenhouse. Lindsey followed him, keeping a possessive hand on her purse when she had to edge past the long-fingered fern.

Jensen lead her to a shelf in the back where he kept his less popular, less space-consuming plants, and lightly felt across the top shelf until he found what he’d wanted to show her; a small, dry bundle of leaves, tightly curled together in a shade of unappealing olive-brown.

“Here she is,” Jensen said, and placed the plant in Lindsey’s outstretched hand.

Lindsey took a moment to inspect the plant resting on her palm. When she looked up again, her eyes were sparkling. “I’m upset about getting a dead plant as a present, so you decide to give me a mummified one to cheer me up?”

She didn’t seem particularly upset, despite the misunderstanding, so Jensen laughed before he hurried to explain. “It may look mummified,” he said, “but it’s actually perfectly alive and healthy. It only needs a little water to restore it to its full glory.”

Lindsey took another, closer look at the plant. “It lives without water?” she asked.

Jensen nodded. “The crusader’s rose is a desert plant,” he said. “It can survive for decades without water, but merely the slightest bit of moisture causes it to unfurl and blossom. As long as you store it in a dry place, it’s virtually unkillable.”

“And invincible plant,” Lindsey mused. She grinned. “I think I like it.”

“Wait ‘till you see it bloom,” Jensen told her, and gestured her back to the counter. “Don’t even think about it,” he said, when she made to dig for her wallet. “This is a pick-me-up. Those don’t get paid for.”

“Jensen,” she began, but she thankfully refrained from reminding him that he had enough debts to pay without giving away his wares. It wasn’t like Jensen didn’t know. It wasn’t like he could ever forget.

“I’ll just get this wrapped up for you,” Jensen said, overly cheerful perhaps, but she remained silent, watching him wrap up the flower with a tight-lipped smile. It softened into something more real when he waggled her new darling in front of her face, and she pushed – carefully – at his hands.

“Jensen,” she chided.

“Let me do this for you, alright?” Jensen asked quietly, and after a moment, she nodded and gave his fingers a light squeeze.

~

After Lindsey had left, Jensen was just about ready to declare the entirety of the day a complete wash. Pride insisted he keep the store open until his regular closing time, but that didn’t stop him from going into the back room to tidy up a little and check on the plants that preferred a less bright environment, and then dust off his equipment. He found a set of shears behind his work table that were covered in bright red, sticky sap and spent a good half an hour scrubbing at them, so engrossed in the task that he almost didn’t hear the doorbell ring.

He dropped the shears into the sink to soak for a while and then had to unstick his fingers, and then he slid back into the greenhouse, an apology already on his lips.

The customer was peering into the tanks of water plants Jensen kept against the wall just by the door. He was tall, and tan, with dark hair just curling around his ears where it wasn’t tucked underneath a newsboy cap. It reminded him a little of the Ross boy who came in sometimes, looking ‘for inspiration,’ or whatever it was he did between the flower beds. Jensen was a little afraid to ask.

Despite the hat, however, there was little similarity between the two. Ryan was of average height and so rail-thin Jensen had to remind himself sometimes that it was unprofessional to offer to feed his customers, and his sense of dress often crossed the line into the flamboyant. Jensen's current customer had broad shoulders and the frame to match. His shirt, vest and coat were held in subdued greens and greys that suited him well, and Jensen took a moment to appreciate the way the colors worked with his skin tone. Here was a man, he suspected, who liked straightforward plants with a little bit of spice. Nothing crazy, nothing high maintenance, but nothing boring, either. Perhaps some whistling grass – he looked like a fairly cheerful person, as far as Jensen could tell, one who would appreciate a little musical accompaniment in the morning, when the first light hit the blades just right.

Jensen bit his lip, considering. The customer had an easy-going air about him, that much he could see. He certainly didn’t seem upset when the aquatic mockingbird in the water tank moved suddenly, leaves tilting to imitate a frowning face. He jumped, yes, but then he laughed and flicked his finger against the glass in greeting. He looked over a moment later, startling – though not as badly as he did Jensen – and straightened quickly.

“Hi there,” he said, with a smile that just about melted Jensen’s heart in his ribcage. “Are you Mr. Ackles?” He gestured vaguely upwards, perhaps indicating the sign above the entrance, and Jensen nodded.

“Jensen,” he said.

“Right. Jensen.” The customer bit down on his lower lip. “I’m Jared.”

A first timer, then. Looking for flowers to impress someone with – a date, or perhaps a girlfriend’s mother. Jensen let his professional smile melt into something a little more honest, more reassuring, and leaned his elbows onto the edge of the counter.

“Jared,” he said. “What can I help you with?”

He wasn’t particularly surprised when Jared’s face flared a bright, hot red. He hemmed and hawed for a moment, not quite looking Jensen in the eyes, before he finally swallowed, cleared his throat. “Well, you see,” he said, tugging on the brim of his cap, “I’m going on a date tonight.”

“Oh,” Jensen said. He had been expecting it, of course, but perhaps he had been hoping that Jared had been looking for a flower to gift his mother on her birthday, or something similarly unlikely.

Jared nodded without meeting his eyes. “And, well, someone told me that this store – you, I suppose – is good at figuring out what to bring. You know, on an occasion like that.” He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “And, and also, I know it’s bad form to bring cut flowers, but I wasn’t really sure how to go about bringing someone an entire potted plant without it being, you know. Awkward.”

“It doesn’t have to be awkward at all,” Jensen assured him. “We can find you something tasteful, subtle.” At Jared’s jerky nod, he asked, “Are you looking for anything in particular? How well do you know this person?”

“Genevieve?” Jared shrugged. “Not that well.”

Something generic, then. “A midnight rose, perhaps?” Jensen offered. “Its blossoms open in dark surroundings. Very suitable for romantic restaurants.”

Jared chewed on his lip for a moment. “Yeah, that – that could work,” he said.

Jensen brought him a single-stemmed rose in the smallest pot he had, and Jared nodded at his offer to wrap it. He paid and took it carefully, large hands almost entirely engulfing the clay pot.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. He fidgeted with the plant for a moment. “Jensen.”

“Yes?” Jensen said, but Jared only shook his head quickly. Pre-date jitters, Jensen decided, and smiled at him. “Good luck with your date,” he said.

“Oh, yeah.” Jared’s returning smile was a little strained. “Yeah, thanks.”

“I hope I’ll see you again,” Jensen offered, which was the truth, and Jared’s eyes crinkled.

“I hope so too,” he said.

He smiled, and waved on his way out the door that he closed carefully behind him. Jensen waited until he was out of sight before dropping his head into his hands. It just wasn’t fair.

~

A few days after Jared’s visit, of which Jensen thought more often than he liked to admit, he was bent over his calculations when there was a knock on the back door.

“Jensen! Delivery!”

Jensen, welcoming the distraction, slid off his stool and opened the door to the storeroom. He didn’t keep many plants there, mostly just the dodder plant that burned in sunlight, but he liked having extra stock of wrapping papers and the occasional ribbons and decorations for special occasions. The storeroom also held another door leading to the back of the building, where Bernie from the plant delivery service parked every Tuesday morning when he came round to drop off whatever Jensen had asked for that week.

“Thanks, Bernie,” Jensen said once he’d unlocked the door, stepping back to let Bernie head for the work table with a crate full of fledgling plants. “How goes it?”

“Not bad, not bad,” Bernie huffed. “Although you have no idea how glad I am to be here.”

“Oh?” Jensen asked him when he was already on his way out the door again. He was vaguely flattered, he had to admit. “How so?”

He peered out the door, watching Bernie pull another crate from the back of the truck.

“I was just at Pellegrino’s,” Bernie confided. He laughed when Jensen pulled a face. “Exactly,” he said. “Man, I’ve never met anybody so picky in my life.” He grimaced. “The leaves are the wrong color, the blossoms aren’t big enough, bla bla bla. I mean, they’re living things, you know? They’re not gonna be picture perfect every damn day.

“Sign here please,” he said, and tipped his head while Jensen did.

“You have a good day, Jensen,” he said, and Jensen watched him carefully back his truck out of the driveway before he turned and shut the door.

~

Jensen was up to his ears in delivery forms when the door opened and an already-familiar figure stepped through.

“Jared,” he said, just barely concealing his surprise. “Another date?”

“Well." Jared touched the back of his neck, somehow managing to look up at Jensen, the way he ducked his head. “Sure. Yes. But that's not why I'm back."

"Oh." Jensen frowned. "Was the midnight rose not to your satisfaction?"

"No, it was fine," Jared was quick to reassure him. "It's just that - this is embarrassing, but it appears I've lost my wallet. I've already looked everywhere, and to be perfectly honest, this is the last place I remember having it." He smiled. "You wouldn't have found it, by any chance?"

“Right,” Jensen said, coloring again. “I think I have an idea what might have happened.” He gestured for Jared to follow him.

They didn’t go far, just past the first display table, where the long-fingered fern sat in a fat pot on the ground. Jensen made it a point to avoid Jared’s eyes as he crouched down in front of it, pushing a few of the bolder leaves away when they gently but insistently honed in on the pockets of his shirt. Reaching down, he bent the stems apart carefully at the bottom, and sure enough, there it was, laying in the pot’s soil – a plain brown leather wallet, along with an earring and Jensen’s spare basement key. Jensen tucked the jewelry and key into the pocket of his slacks before he rose to hand the wallet over to Jared.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I’m usually better at warning visitors about him, I don’t know what happened.”

Jared grinned and said “No problem,” even though Jensen was sure the lie was written all over his forehead. The truth was, Jensen had been so distracted by Jared’s sweet smile and his delighted laugh and his easy closeness that Jensen had let professionalism fly out the window and entirely forgotten how to do his job.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Jensen said again while Jared tucked his wallet away.

“It’s alright,” Jared said, waving him off. “Your store is amazing. It’s kind of worth coming back to for a closer look.”

“Oh.” Jensen’s smile was quick but real. He loved his shop, despite all the trouble it brought him, and it warmed him to the core whenever someone complimented it. “Do you have any questions about any of the plants?” he asked. There, that was almost smooth. “I’d be happy to answer them for you.”

“Well, since you asked.” Jared waved a hand at the many plants on display. “Do you think you could find something for me? My landlord doesn’t allow pets, but she never said anything about plants.”

Jensen tapped his forefinger against the side of his jaw, allowing himself to take in Jared’s appearance. He tended to recommend the Scandinavian pussy willow to customers looking for a pet substitute, because it was tactile and the purrs were enough to satisfy even the most dedicated cat person. With Jared, however, he found himself reluctant to resort to something so ordinary. And it wasn’t merely that all the rumbling could become impressively annoying at three in the morning – no, he wanted to (and could even admit it to himself) find Jared something special.

“Let’s have a walk around,” he suggested finally.

Jared seemed all too happy to, pausing here and there to look without touching anything. When they passed the yellow vanity cozied up to the greenhouse glass, he hesitated. “What about…?” he asked.

“No, no,” Jensen said, waving him away. “She’s far snooty, trust me. Unless you spend two hours in front of the mirror every morning, the two of you really aren’t going to get along.”

He started walking again, only realizing Jared wasn’t following when the other man laughed.

“You’re one of those people, aren’t you?”

Jensen froze, and blinked, and whatever was showing on his face made Jared laugh again, sheepishly this time.

“I mean, one of those people who try to match up their customers with their best fit, or whatever. Not just whatever’s most expensive.”

Jensen looked down at his hands. “It just feels wrong,” he said. “Selling someone a bad fit just because I’d make a little more money. The customer wouldn’t be happy, and the plant wouldn’t be happy, and,” here, he smiled a little bit, “as you can see, my plants are somewhat important to me.”

“I figured as much,” Jared said, and when Jensen looked up, Jared was smiling at him. “Don’t worry.” He winked at him from underneath the brim of his hat. “I like that in a man.”

Jensen looked away, flustered. “So,” he said quickly. “How did your date go? Well, I hope?”

“Oh.” Jared reached up to finger the back of his head. A flush spread over his cheekbones and quickly disappeared again. “Yeah, it went well.” He turned, and then hesitated, attention caught by the broad-leaved dracaena that had become a permanent staple in the shop when, in a time of gross negligence on Jensen’s part, it had grown too big to fit through the door.

“That is one big plant,” Jared said, awed, and gently stroked over a leaf that was easily twice as big as his hand. The leaf quickly, but gently, folded around his fingers, startling Jared into laughter.

“It likes you,” Jensen concluded. “It’s probably because you’re both so tall,” he said, and promptly blushed.

Jared thankfully didn’t draw attention to Jensen’s bumbling. Instead, he reached out with his free hand to pat the broad trunk, and his grin, when he flashed it at Jensen, was anything but pitying. “I’d adopt it if I thought I could move it,” he confided. He placed his hand on another leaf, grinning again when it achieved the same effect as the first.

“What’s special about this one?” he asked.

“The fact that it likes you,” Jensen said. “Dracaenas are notoriously bad-tempered. It’s had years to get used to me, and still…” He took a step closer, holding out a hand that the dracaena’s leaves instantly shied away from. “Imagine what it might be like if it didn’t.”

“I’m honored,” Jared said earnestly. He took a slow step back. “Wish I could take you, buddy,” he said, then turned away reluctantly. “Any chance you’ve got anything a little less – massive?”

Jensen tilted his head to the side, insight striking him unexpectedly. “How do you feel about books, Jared?”

“Uh.” Jared blinked. “They’re all right, I guess? Nice to read on long train rides.”

Jensen felt his lips curve into a smile. “Then I may just have the perfect plant for you.”

“Now I’m intrigued, I’ll admit it,” Jared said, trailing after Jensen when he beckoned the other man to follow him. He found the parchment sylvatica with ease, picking up the leather-bound book the plant had dug its roots into and holding it up for Jared to see.

“It lives off the paper?”

“And the ink, and the glue,” Jensen said. “It evolved in old libraries, to no one’s surprise. It’s not just bookworms you need to watch out for.”

“Cool,” Jared said happily. “You think we’d get along?”

“I could see it,” Jensen said. And he could – the sylvatica wasn’t particularly high-maintenance, but just peculiar enough to interest someone like Jared, and he’d love for the two of them to find each other.

Jared brushed his fingers across a velvety leaf. “So how does me liking books factor into this?” he asked.

“Well, you need to have some books around, obviously, or she’ll starve.” Jensen reached up to scratch at the back of his head. “But if you’re the kind of person who thinks books are sacred and should never even be taken out of their packaging, then I wouldn’t try to give you a plant that eats them. Naturally.”

“Naturally,” Jared agreed with a laugh.

“She’s a little greedy,” Jensen admitted. “She’s probably going to go through a book a week, although that may vary somewhat depending on how big the book is, and how interesting.”

“Interesting books get devoured faster?” Jared hazarded, and Jensen smiled approvingly at him.

“You got it,” he said.

“Alright,” Jared smiled. “I think you’ve found me a new friend, Mr. Ackles.”

He insisted on paying the full amount, waving off Jensen’s offer of a discount for the missing wallet and cradled both book and plant in the crook of one arm.

“Take care of yourself, Jensen,” he said, waving on his way out the door. He made certain to close it firmly behind him, and from his vantage point, Jensen could see the creeping parvifolium droop dejectedly underneath the display table by the door. The plant’s incessant attempts to escape made it fairly unpopular with the customers, for obvious reasons, so Jensen had had more than enough time to get used to its antics.

He pointed the end of a pen at it. “I’m keeping my eye on you,” he told it.

When he looked over again a few minutes later, halfway through marking down Jared’s purchase, it had slinked away, and Jensen allowed himself a grin before he returned his attention to his paperwork.

~

It seemed that after Jared’s visit, Jensen’s luck held, and the next day brought two of his favorite customers into the shop.

The first time William had come in, Jensen had mistaken him for an extraordinarily tall woman. William had been clinging to the arm of an even taller man in a headache-inducing suit, head turned towards the mockingbird’s shenanigans in the water tank, and it wasn’t until he’d said “Gabe, look!” in what was undoubtedly a man’s voice that Jensen had bitten off the “Sir, Ma’am,” hovering at the top of his tongue and said, “How can I help you, gentlemen?” instead.

He didn’t realize Gabe, the man in the horrific suit, had been making faces back at the mockingbird until he turned to Jensen mid-grimace, cheeks puffed up dramatically. He deflated after a moment.

“I think we’re alright for now,” he said. “Bill?”

“Hmm?” The not-woman turned a surprisingly young face towards Jensen when Gabe tugged him closer. “Oh.” He smiled. One long finger indicated the water tank. “Your plants are lovely,” he said.

“Thank you,” Jensen murmured, flushing. He nodded at the water tank. “It reacts to light,” he said. When William’s eyes widened a little, he smiled. “That’s its primary defense mechanism. It mimics the way the light falls onto your features, creating the illusion of expressions – yours, to be exact. So if it looks like it’s making faces at you, it’s really because you’re making faces at it.”

“That’s amazing,” William had said, and stuck out his tongue experimentally, and laughed in delight when the mockingbird returned the gesture. “Gabe,” he said over his shoulder. “Gabe, we should come back here all the time.”

William had smiled at him then, and Gabe had winked, and they had returned at least once a month since then – always together, always smiling, always utterly absorbed in each other without ever making Jensen feel as though he were intruding. They’d quickly climbed the ranks of Jensen’s favorite customers. He loved it when they came in, loved William’s sweetness and Gabe’s wry indulgence of the former, and he loved spending those quiet afternoons searching through books and magazines for a new friend for them to take home with them, even if he wasn’t sure where they managed to store them all.

They liked simple plants, the pair of them - they always bought them together, so Jensen assumed they also shared a house or an apartment, and they both clearly preferred the clean-cut plants: the somber lilacs, or perhaps the frozen clover, or sometimes the gorgeous mimicry with its clear, lovely voice. Jensen had seen both of them, on separate occasions, shy away from the sweet-smelling honeybell with its sugary leaves, and both frowned unanimously at the yellow vanity. Jensen could appreciate that. He loved all his plants, no matter what their peculiarities were, but he enjoyed people who knew what they wanted without having to resort to rudeness to get it.

Today, William was utterly entranced by the year-long bonsai, small trees existing in a state of all four seasons at once, constantly rotating so that they were simultaneously blossoming, carrying fruit, turning colorful and losing their leaves at any given time.

Gabe’s interest was mildly picqued, it seemed, but only mildly, and he turned away from the display the moment Jensen slid behind the counter.

“So,” he said. He set all ten fingertips onto the wooden surface. “Blow my mind, Jensen. I dare you.”

“I just might,” Jensen said, returning Gabe’s grin. He nodded into the greenhouse. “If you’ll follow me?”

“William?” Gabe asked, but the man in question waved him off.

“You go ahead,” he said. “I’m good here.”

Gabe rolled his eyes fondly, but gestured at Jensen nonetheless. “Lead the way, sir,” he said. “Show me what I’ve been missing.”

Jensen quickly found him the plant he’d stored on the lower level of one of the display tables, lest someone come and claim it for themselves before Gabe could get his hands on it. He set it down on the table’s surface, holding the wide bowl with both hands, and then quickly took a step back.

This particular plant was made up of several different stalks, each green-red in color. They had the appearance of snakes rising from the ground, tongues swirling and flickering in their direction, never hesitating, never settling.

As predicted, Gabe looked utterly delighted. “Oh my.” He lifted his hands up, clearly itching to touch. “And who is this exceptional beauty?”

“It’s a common snakehead,” Jensen said. He’d known it was the right one as soon as he’d seen it in the new Spring edition of Garden Plants for Temperate Regions - it was hard to miss the oversized gold ring shaped like the head of a cobra that sat on Gabe’s middle finger. “Also called Medusa’s grave. The flickering ‘tongues’ attract pollinators.”

Gabe carefully, after a quick glance to Jensen for permission, lifted the pot into the air for a closer look. “Oh man,” he said. “Jensen, this is possibly the greatest plant under the sun.”

“I assume you’ll take it?” Jensen asked, swallowing back a laugh.

“Yes, I’ll take it.” Gabe winked at him. “And I’ll be back for more once I convince William we need one in every room of the house.”

Jensen carried the plant to the counter with him and set about wrapping it up carefully while Gabe dug through his wallet and laid a few bills on the wooden surface.

“It’s been quiet here, hasn’t it?” Gabe asked, letting his gaze sweep over the empty shop.

“Yes, well.” Jensen shrugged. “Not a whole lot of people have been interested in buying flowers lately.”

“People aren’t buying much of anything, these days,” Gabe said, smiling a little.

“I suppose not,” Jensen said, finding himself smiling in return.

After a moment, Gabe added, “You know Pellegrino’s? On Lombard Street? He’s been having these crazy elaborate sales. Signs so big you can read them from a block away.”

Jensen tried to curve his lips into a smile, but it was hard. He just couldn’t compete with Marc’s prices. And if it was just a one-time shopper looking for a thoughtless dinner present, that was one thing, but losing customers he’d known for years – that hurt.

“I’m afraid my shop doesn’t do well enough to allow for those kinds of deals,” he finally said, when Gabe raised an expectant eyebrow. “Your change.”

Gabe pocketed the coins without so much as glancing at them. “Shops that are doing well generally don’t need to hold sales, you know.” He gestured at the snakehead plant in its newspaper wrapping. “Thank you, for this.”

“You’re welcome,” Jensen replied, while Gabe looked around for his companion, still preoccupied with the bonsai.

“William, are you ready to go?”

“In a minute,” William said absently, and Gabe sighed, loud and demonstrative.

“Don’t ever go and fall in love,” he counseled Jensen wisely, with a quick look over his shoulder. William was still poking at the trees, blissfully unaware.

Gabe shook his head mournfully. “It’s not worth it, take my word for it,” he said to Jensen. “You go and give your heart away, and then you rise and fall by someone else’s decree. It’s the world’s most cruel undertaking. Chinese water torture cannot even begin to compare.”

He pushed himself off the counter and raised his voice. “William, my love, are you ready now? Not worth it,” he insisted to Jensen, when William mournfully pulled himself away from the flowerbeds. “You mark my words.”

“Of course,” Jensen said, and handed over the plant wrapped in newspaper, but he privately thought the small smile hovering around Gabe’s mouth made him a liar.

~

In retrospect, Jensen supposed it had to happen. Things had been going well; sales had been good, if not exceptional, even if Jared had not been by again, so Jensen really should have been prepared for something to go wrong. Perhaps not for the hose he kept by his back door to break, or whatever else was to blame for the inches-deep puddle flooding his back room, but he should have at least been ready for some kind of disaster.

Still, disaster had struck, regardless of whether or not Jensen had been expecting it. His worktable and shelves were waterlogged and dark almost up to his knees, the bag of extra-fine soil he kept in the corner turning the liquid into slick, slimy mud. Sighing, Jensen tucked up his slacks at the knees, hoping that might be enough to keep the hems from soaking through, and edged towards the door opening into the drive.

It was the hose, of course it was, but instead of having become leaky like Jensen had expected, it was simply… on. It lay on the ground as if it’d fallen off its hook in the night, but the faucet had most definitely been turned on.

Jensen took a moment to cover his face with his hands, water soaking into his shoes and the socks inside. He was barely making ends meet as it was. A bill covering what could well be twelve hours of unstopping water flow would almost certainly mean cutting out a few meals here and there. Jensen could already hear his aunt’s voice in his head, scolding him for not taking care of himself as if he were still an awkward teenager, living on his own for the first time.

He sighed. There wasn’t really anything he could do about it now, so he reached over the threshold to firmly close the tap and coil the end of the hose carefully around the hook.

He went through the motions of opening the shop that day, mind reeling. He hadn’t even used the hose in days – how had it become undone? He couldn’t imagine it being a simple act of vandalism – yes, sometimes children threw rocks at his windows, but it was always from a safe distance. No one had ever even dared step foot on Jensen’s property, as far as he could tell.

It was just as well he had a delivery of new spider plants that morning to take his mind off of things, or he possibly would have wracked his brain for the rest of the day. He loaded his arms with the pots from the back room to take to the front, not remembering until it was already too late that the door to the shop was fairly heavy and just about impossible to open with both arms full of flowers.

He managed to get his foot into the gap and edged forward, twisting his body to squeeze through after it. He was hot and slightly sweaty and the pot in the crook of his elbow was dangerously close to sliding out of his hold when there was suddenly a hand on the door, pushing it open and allowing him to slip through without losing hold of anything.

His efforts were almost in vain when he finally looked up at his savior and nearly dropped his armful in surprise. “Jared,” he said. His glasses were sliding off his sweat-slick nose, of course, and he could barely see, because the laws of the universe dictated that Jensen look his absolute worst when an attractive man actually returned to his shop.

“Jared,” he said again, schooling his features into the semblance of a smile. “Another date?”

Jared’s smile stiffened somewhat, but Jensen didn’t have time to contemplate what that might mean – he could feel two of the pots slipping from his grasp, and he had to hastily sidestep Jared and let them all drop gently onto the counter before they shattered on the tiles after all. He righted the one that had tipped over onto its side, brushed the loose soil from his hands, and pushed his glasses back into position. Then he conjured up a smile and turned to face Jared, who was still standing by the open door to the storage room.

“Um. Sorry,” Jared said, gesturing at said door with his thumb. “I mean, I’m probably not supposed to be back here, but you looked like you could use some help.”

“It’s much appreciated,” Jensen assured him through the heat rising in his cheeks. “Is there – um. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, well.” Jared shuffled to the front of the counter, and Jensen noticed for the first time that he had a bundle, wrapped in some sort of fabric, held in the crook of one arm. “I think I might need some help.”

He pulled the cloth down, revealing the plant Jensen had sold him not so very long ago. The parchment sylvatica looked decidedly worse for wear than it had just days ago, long leaves not brown, exactly, but without a doubt limp and drooping.

“What did you do to it, for Heaven’s sake?” Jensen burst out before he could stop himself. He reached out to take it from Jared, which Jared allowed without protest.

“I don’t know,” he said plaintively once the sylvatica was safely cradled Jensen’s arms. “I gave it a book, I gave it water, I gave it sunlight, and somehow it turned into – this!”

He gestured at the sad affair on Jensen’s arm, clearly agitated, though it seemed to be out of frustration rather than anger.

Jensen forced himself to take a calming breath. Whatever it was, Jared was clearly not out to make Jensen’s plants miserable on purpose, which meant that the root of the problem was a misunderstanding, or some sort of accident. And, well, there was really only so much it could be.

“What book did you give her last?” Jensen asked, cradling the flower carefully. It wasn’t a particularly big book, and the roots obscured the tittle, and Jensen wasn’t sure he knew anything that was both short and depressing.

“Romeo and Juliet,” Jared whispered, like just saying the words might make the flower even worse.

When Jensen raised his eyebrows in disbelief, Jared’s shoulders settled into a defensive slouch.

“I thought she might like the language,” he said.

Jensen petted one of the drooping leaves. “It’s a good thought, but try to stay away from anything too depressing,” he warned. “Or too sappy, or you’re going to be vacuuming away flower petals for weeks.” He moved behind the counter and used his free hand to grope around on the top shelf for something neutral for the sylvatica to latch onto. “Hm,” he said, lifting up the biggest thing he could fit his fingers around. “Phone book?” he asked the plant. “How’s that sound? Something nice and factual after all that drama?”

One root twitched weakly towards the paper.

“Alright then.” Jensen let the book drop onto the counter with a thud and set the plant down next to it. He offered Jared a reassuring smile. “Would you like to help?” he asked.

Jared did, and though he had to ball his hands into fists to keep from intervening, Jensen let him do the majority of the work. He was going to have to learn to do it eventually, if he didn’t grow frustrated and return it. Which, Jensen had to admit, was not all that likely – Jared was obviously concerned enough to return for advice, and to his credit, he was more than careful in transferring the plant, movements slow and controlled.

“Just like that – good,” Jensen said.

Jared smiled up at him for a moment before he focused on the plant once more. It wasn’t long before the sylvatica had a new, less heart-wrenching new home, and Jensen gave the stem a light stroke.

“Go with adventure stories if you’ve got them,” he said to Jared. “Robert Louis Stevenson, maybe some Mark Twain. Make sure it has a happy ending.”

“Yes, sir,” Jared murmured, ducking his head again. He held out his arms for the flower, and Jensen gently deposited it into them. “I’ll take excellent care of her, I promise.”

“I’m sure you will,” Jensen said, a little surprised to find it was the truth. “Better luck next time.”

“Thank you kindly,” Jared said, shifting to tip his cap, the other arm tucked firmly around the flower and the phone book. “I’ll see you soon, Jensen.”

“Do come back,” Jensen said immediately. “I’ll look forward to it.”

“That’s what a guy likes to hear,” Jared said, grinning. He laughed when Jensen flushed, but not meanly – fondly, perhaps, friendly and warm. “Until next time.” He smiled brilliantly and turned to go, pausing to hold open the door for Lindsey, who was just on her way in. “Ma’am,” he said, and then he was gone, pulling the door firmly shut behind him.

Lindsey’s smile, when she turned to face Jensen, was wicked. “And who was that handsome gentleman?” she asked, expression promising all sorts of teasing to come in the future.

“Just a customer,” Jensen said, looking down.

“’Just’ customers never have you blushing like that,” Lindsey pointed out. “Admit it – you think he’s cute.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” Jensen crumpled the rest of the newspaper into a ball and turned stiffly away to drop it into the wastebasket. “He came in for help. Apparently I was neglectful in telling him everything he needed to know to properly care for his new plant.”

Lindsey laughed. “’Neglectful,’ huh?”

“Lindsey,” Jensen chided. “I would never let a plant suffer like that, you know that.”

That did not mean he hadn’t been hoping. It wasn’t uncommon for first-time owners of unusual plants to come in a second time, sometimes to ask for more information or – more often – to return them and request a refund. Many people underestimated how much work the proper care for a plant, especially ones as diverse as the ones for sale in Jensen’s shop, would actually be. Like children with a kitten or puppy, they focused on the flashy, impressive characteristics and entirely overlooked the fact that plants were living, functioning organisms and often needed dedicated care.

But he’d gotten his wish. Jared had returned to the shop, and even seemed open to the idea of coming back again, and that was really all Jensen could ask for.

Part 2

Mr. Ackles' Flower Shop - Masterpost

bad_peppermint — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:33:16 GMT

Title: Mr. Ackles' Flower Shop for Unusual, Extraordinary and Peculiar Plants
Fandom: SPN RPS plus guest appearances by people from Bandom and Adam Lambert RPS
Genre: Fantasy/magic realism, with a dash of steampunk thrown in for good measure
Characters/Pairings: Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki, Lindsey Way/Gerard Way, Gabe Saporta/William Beckett (Adam Lambert/Tommy Joe Ratliff if you'd like to read it that way)
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the people mentioned herein, nor have I ever met any of them. This was written entirely for fun - no harm intended, no money made, my sincerest apologies if it happens to offend anyone.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 35,329
Warnings: Minor character death, mentions of drug use (plus mentions of het pairings, if that bothers you).
Notes:
I'm sorry to say that this fic will probably be my last hurrah in the Supernatural/Supernatural RPF fandom. I suppose it's only fair, therefore, that this was possibly the most painful thing I've ever written, and while I'm reasonably proud of the way it's turned out, I am so very glad it's over and done with.

I could not have finished this story without the help of my lovely beta a_dreamwithin who vastly improves everything I write and deals with my insecure whining on top of it all, and my cheerleader/brainstorming-buddy/emotional crutch stella_lost who never lets me give up, no matter how much I want to.

Also thanks to pinkmonkeybird who - misunderstandings aside - created the most gorgeous art for me. Go check it out!

And last but not least, thanks so very much to the mods over at spn_j2_bigbang who deal with this year after year (after year).

Summary:Twisting hazel, wailing carnations, camouflage trilliums, skittering vines - to Jensen, sequestered in his flower shop, his plants are his best friends and constant companions. They see him through his tentative friendships with his customers, rival flower shop owner Mark's attempts to sabotage him, and even his hopeless crush on local university student Jared who comes in every couple of days to buy flowers for his girl.

But even they can't help him when Jensen has to use the plant that killed his mother to catch Mark in the act - no, that responsibility falls solely to Jared.

Link to art master post: Here

Masterpost
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Or read the whole thing on AO3 (+ PDF download).

Enjoy!

Module 4 - Part 6

bad_peppermint — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:52:40 GMT

Tommy’s shirt is sweat-stained and gross, though not as bad as Adam’s, by the time he gets off stage, punch-drunk and giddy from the cheers and the blinding lights. That doesn’t stop Frank from jumping on his back, nearly flattening him, and it doesn’t stop Mikey from patting his shoulder or Gerard from beaming at him. Even Ray’s smiling, maybe.

“Fucking awesome,” Frank crows, pumping his fist into the air. “Adam, dude, give me some love.”

Adam rolls his eyes, but Tommy can totally see the smile he’s trying to hide when he high-fives Frank obediently. What a faker.

“Nice show, Adam,” Gerard says, and Adam seriously fucking glows. He just stands there and beams and beams until one of the venue people comes by to make everybody get ready for their set, and then he turns t Tommy with an almost manic expression.

“This,” he says. “I don’t care what it takes. This is what I’m doing for the rest of my life.”

They head for the pit while the guys play, and a couple of people recognize them and yell something about good sets, but mostly they’re left alone. And Tommy should be disappointed, maybe, but really he’s just reveling in the feeling of Adam’s arms around him, sweat-sticky skin against sweat-sticky skin, and the fact that nobody gives a shit that there are two baby punks grinding on each other in the middle of a mosh pit.

“We gonna show those prejudiced fuckers out there a good time or what?” Gerard hollers into the mic above them, and the roar he gets in return is staggering. Gerard points straight at Tommy and winks before he launches into Teenagers, and Tommy smiles back and maybe even waves a little bit, because he’s a loser like that, before Adam leans in to nose at Tommy’s ear and Tommy forgets about the band entirely.

“I love you,” Adam whispers, inaudibly over the music, but Tommy can feel his lips move as they drag over the skin on his neck. He reaches up and winds his arms around Adam’s shoulders, shuddering all over, and Adam just grins, pleased and predatory, and hugs him tighter.

He’s so wrapped up in the moment, in Adam, that he doesn’t even notice Monte until the man’s hand settles on his shoulder.

“Come on!” he yells over the chords. “You don’t wanna be out here when the crowd really gets going, trust me.”

Tommy just blinks dumbly up at him, but then he sees somebody in the mass of writhing bodies over Monte’s shoulder draw back his fist and send it crashing into another guy’s teeth, and a quick look around confirms that he’s not the only one. In the back, somebody’s started tearing down the posters advertising upcoming shows, and the bouncers are ushering out a whole slew of people determinedly not freaking out.

Up on stage, Gerard finishes up with song with a cheerful-but-tense “Thanks, guys, that’s all for tonight,” even though Tommy knows they were planning on playing at least another three songs.

Frank’s pulling the strap of his guitar over his head as soon as the last riffs are done, though, and he catches Tommy’s eyes and tilts his head towards backstage with a pointed look.

“Yeah, okay,” Tommy says, turning to face Monte and Adam. “Let’s bail.”

Frank clamps his hands down on Tommy’s shoulder as soon as Monte pushes him into the backstage area. “You’re okay,” he says, and then “Man, dude, that was fucking sick, did you see that?”

“Like, the crazy people?” Tommy asks on a laugh.

“Revolutionaries,” Frank corrects him. “Nobody’s ever started a revolution from their study back home.”

“So these people are going to start a revolution killing each other?”

Frank shakes his head, like he can’t believe Tommy’s being this dense. “Maybe that’s what they’re doing now,” he says. “But not long now, and their anger will shift.”

Tommy wrinkles his nose. “Anger?” he asks. “I figured this was more drunk rowdiness.”

“Oh no, this is anger,” Frank says. He waves Tommy towards the door leading to the floor. “Go on, take a look.”

Tommy has to get up on his toes to peer through the window set in the door. It looks like reinforced glass, which is probably a good thing. There are at least three fistfights going on that he can see, and a whole number of scuffles that could be people getting their heads bashed in or people play-fighting or people dancing like spazzes, who knows. A couple have already spilled out onto the street, yelling and jeering, but it looks like everyone’s staying clear of the stage, which is, you know, good.

Hot breath ghosts over Tommy’s ear and he jumps a mile before he realizes it’s just Frank.

“On the brink,” he says. “I told you.”

“You did, yeah,” Tommy admits, quietly, hardly any space between them. His gaze flickers down to Frank’s lips, spit-slick and shiny, and Frank catches him looking and laughs, nudging his chin upwards to bump their noses together.

“I fucking told you,” he whispers.

Tommy feels Adam at his back a split-second before Frank’s focus slips away from him, up over his shoulder.

“Hey now,” Adam says mildly. He snakes his arm around Tommy’s waist. “Hands off the boyfriend, please.”

“Wasn’t using my hands,” Frank says, grinning, but he still takes a respectful step back. As respectful as he can be with the giant leer on his face, at least.

Adam rolls his eyes at him. He wraps his other arm around Tommy, too, slipping it just under his t-shirt and settling it, hot and huge, against Tommy’s stomach. Tommy leans his head back onto Adam’s shoulder, tilting it a little bit so he can peer up at Adam’s face, the line of his jaw. Everything feels light, eerie, unreal, like Tommy’s about to float away. He’s here, in New York City, 400 miles away from Clarkenwell. By now, everyone at school knows they’ve gotten out. Maybe even his mom.

Adam catches him looking and grins at him. “Gonna start a revolution with our very first gig,” he says. “Think that’s exciting enough for you?”

Tommy reaches up to slide his fingers into Adam’s hair, ignoring the gagging noises Frank apparently can’t resist. He grins. “It’s a start.”

“We need somebody to check that the van’s still okay,” Ray says in the chaos, bent over his guitar case, and Adam reaches for Tommy’s hand.

“We’ll do it,” he says. “See you guys in a sec.”

And it really is just a second, because they’re no ten feet down the hall before they’re intercepted by Monte. “Where do you think you’re you going?” he asks.

“Um.” Tommy gestures vaguely down the corridor, dropping Adam’s hand to do so. “Home?”

Monte shakes his head. “Forget it,” he says. “There are people rioting in the parking lot. You’re not getting out of here.”

Tommy thinks his eyes probably go a bit bug-eyed at that, and he casts a helpless look in Adam’s direction. Not that Adam looks any better, really.

“So what are we supposed to do?” Adam asks faintly.

“Go back to the dressing room and wait,” Monte says. He turns Tommy around by the shoulders and gives him a little push. “Go on, now. We’ll let you know when things are safe.”

As it turns out, things aren’t safe again for a long, long time. They end up hanging out in their dressing room for several hours, sprawled out on the grimy couches, bored out of their minds but too lazy to do anything. Ray’s been noodling around on his guitar for what feels like forever, picking out snatches of songs that then get stuck in Tommy’s head.

He’s trying not to say anything, though, because Ray’s tolerance of him and Adam is tentative at the best of times. So he hunches up his shoulders and lets Adam hold his hand between their thighs, which is seriously more soothing than he wants to admit.

Frank and Gerard are draped over the couch across from them, next to Ray’s chair, Gerard reading a back issue of Time Magazine that he found between the cushions for approximately the fortieth time, and Frank alternately tapping his feet or crossing and uncrossing his legs or drumming his fingers on his knees. It’d probably be annoying if it weren’t the only form of entertainment.

Every once in a while Mikey, who’s off socializing with somebody he knows through somebody he knows from his time in Jersey, or Monte will stick their heads in the door and give a progress report, usually along the lines of ‘Nope, still people going crazy outside, it’s gonna be a while yet.’

It’s not until some insane hour in the morning, when Tommy’s eyes are starting to sting with tiredness, that Mikey comes in and says, “Somebody set a car on fire,”

“Re-vo-lu-tion,” Frank singsongs, but Tommy doesn’t look at him. He’s stuck staring at Adam who’s staring back, eyes just as wide as Tommy’s, probably. Just – they’re in this. They’re a part of this, now.

It’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.

Naturally, epiphanic moments like that mean nothing around Frank, the hyperactive rock star. “Fuck yeah,” he says, dancing around on his seat. “Fuck yeah, man, this is fucking amazing, is what it is.”

“Just, fucking-“ Gerard jabs him with his elbow. “Sit still, will you.”

“’Sit still?’” Frank echoes. “The fuck?”

“Yes, sit still,” Gerard says. “You’re not fucking rioting, you’re in here, and you need to stop freaking the Hell out because I’m trying to read.”

“Stop freaking out? Why would you do that to me?” Frank moans, head tilted over the back of the dingy couch. “Why are we stuck here?”

Gerard cranes his neck to peer at his face. “I don’t know if you noticed the rioters outside?”

“Exactly.” Franks smacks the bottom of his fist against Gerard’s thigh. “We should be out there, with them.” He blinks his eyes at them. “We’d be fucking awesome rioters. Right, guys?”

He gives Tommy a pleading look, and it’s not like Tommy would know but he kind of wants to be, but Ray gets there first.

“They’re kids, Frank,” he says. “And I know you’re a giant child, but they’re actual children, and they shouldn’t be anywhere near a riot.”

“You’re no fun,” Frank moans theatrically, but the air has already gone still and stifling around them.

“Fucking seriously?” Tommy asks.

“Tommy,” Gerard says, half placating and half confused but Tommy’s attention is all on Ray’s bowed head.

“Look man,” he says, “I know you’ve gotten it into your head somehow that I’m this snot-nosed little kid who’s only out to ruin your life, but you’re not the only one who has it tough, so if you could stop acting like I’m a fucking idiot, that’d be much appreciated.”

“Hookay,” Gerard says into the silence. “You know, I think I’m going to go check how things are looking out there.” He pulls on Frank’s sleeve. “You can come with me.”

Frank sputters a bit but goes, and Adam hovers a bit but he doesn’t try particularly hard to stay when Gerard takes his arm and pulls him out the door. Fucking traitor.

It’s quiet after they leave, and Tommy sits perched at the edge of his seat, all ready for Ray to open his mouth and start listing all the ways Tommy is a little kid and a fucking idiot and completely inferior in every way.

Ray doesn’t, though. He just sits there, bowed over his guitar, plucking out the beginning of Nothing Else Matters.

Finally, Tommy can’t take the tension anymore. He was totally going to wait around until Ray finally gave in and admitted what a dick he is, or else gave Tommy Hell for his attitude, whatever, but in the end, it’s Tommy who caves.

He says, “Well, if you’re not gonna say anything,” as snottily as he can manage as he gets up, but it’s totally a retreat and he knows it. And honestly, the only thing he wants to do right now is get the fuck out of here as fast as possible. And he almost makes it, too, before a quiet “Tommy,” makes him hesitate at the door.

“I know it’s tough, up at that school,” Ray says. He looks up from his strings. “I know it’s fucking tough.”

Tommy’s hand slips from the doorknob. It’s not like he doesn’t know that; he does, he fucking lives there. But everybody always acts like all the shit they get is fucked up but shouldn’t actually bother him, and he didn’t realize how much that hurt until someone acknowledged that it might.

Ray smiles a little bit. “I know, Tommy, okay? I get it. But at least up there, nobody’s gonna tie you to their bumper and cruise down the highway going ninety. They’re not gonna grab you off a dark street corner and force you to swallow handfuls of broken glass, and they’re not going to kick you in the face until not even your dental records are going to help identify you.” He gestures vaguely at the door but doesn’t say anything else, just offers another, weaker smile.

Tommy bites his lip for a moment, but then he turns to face Ray all the way. “I get that,” he says. “I do. And maybe I’m being stupid, and maybe I’m dragging Adam into something we’re both going to regret, but I’m not going to trade freedom for security. Ray. I can’t be that guy.”

“Yeah, I know.” Ray strums again, E to E flat. “You wouldn’t be our Tommy if you could.”

He smiles again, expression growing when Tommy fumbles for the doorknob. “I’m gonna – help the others pack up our shit,” he stammers.

“You do that,” Ray says serenely, and by the time Tommy’s in the hallways and pulling the door shut behind him, he’s already gone back to plucking on his strings.

They don’t get back on the bus until the sky turns a pale pink on the horizon, stars fading away above them.

“There’s no place like home,” Gerard says after he sinks into the passenger seat, sliding one leg across the center console to kick his heel against Mikey’s.

Mikey kicks back half-heartedly and turns the key in the ignition. “Don’t pass out yet,” he says. “You have to navigate.”

“M’not passing out,” Gerard says, half the words lost around a yawn.

Mikey rolls his eyes, but Tommy gets it. The adrenaline’s faded by now, leaving him shaky and drained, and he doesn’t resist when Adam tugs him over to rest against Adam’s shoulder.

“So that was our first gig,” Adam says quietly.

Tommy grins. “Your first gig,” he says.

“Yeah, my first gig.” Tommy can’t see it, but Adam sounds like he’s rolling his eyes. “Can’t tell you how glad I am that we’ve popped that particular cherry.”

Tommy snots, but there’s still a shiver of anticipation that runs through him, unexpected and pleasantly terrifying.

“Please don’t talk about your cherries,” Ray says from the back. “There are things I really don’t need to know about, God.”

Adam tightens his arm around Tommy protectively. And unnecessarily, because whatever his deal was with Ray, Tommy’s over it now.

“Would you rather hear about the coke that techie offered us backstage?” he asks, making Ray groan and everybody else laugh, and settles more comfortably against Adam’s side.

They get stuck in traffic just outside Springfield, which Frank proclaims to be evidence of his revolution at work and Tommy think is just fucking annoying, and they spend a solid three hours trying to decipher the bumper stickers on the car in front of them.

Mikey finally pulls them into a parking lot off the highway, refusing to drive any further until the road’s cleared up a bit, and as much as Gerard whines about wanting to go home already, there’s not a whole lot he can do about stopped traffic. Instead, Frank finds a Frisbee for them to throw around squashed underneath an amp, and they do that for twenty minutes before they all try to catch a bit of sleep in the van, and Tommy goes straight from listening to Adam’s heartbeat to Frank shaking him awake with the sun setting behind him awake with the sun setting behind him, muttering about oversleeping and no fucking alarm clocks.

Ray’s the one to take over the wheel this time, and everybody else falls back asleep pretty much the minute they get back on the road. Tommy’s awake now, though, and Adam nods off a couple of times but eventually pulls himself upright as well, and kisses Tommy’s jaw with a sleepy smile.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

Tommy can’t help but laugh at that, because seriously? But then he shrugs and says, “Stuff. You know, not anything in particular. Just stuff.”

Adam nods slowly. “You know everything’s going to be different now, right?” he says.

Tommy glances around but they’re the only ones awake, besides Ray, who’s staring at the road over the steering wheel and bobbing his head to some non-existent beat.

Adam finds Tommy’s hand between the seats and squeezes his fingers firmly. “We can’t hide anymore,” he says. His lips curl into a weak smile when Tommy gives him a look. “We’re out now. The school knows we snuck out, and our parents know, and even if they somehow don’t wring our necks, everybody’ll know something happened.”

Tommy fingers his hair. He doesn’t say anything, but he knows Adam’s right. They’re not getting out of this one no matter how far they bend.

He still thinks that it was worth it.

Nobody catches them sneaking in. Ray stops the van on the maintenance road closest to their dorm. Frank wraps his arm around Tommy’s neck from behind and gives it a quick squeeze, but there’s not huge, emotional scene. Gerard’s dead to the world in the back, and Mikey lifts a tired hand, but that’s all. Once Adam slides the door shut from the outside, it barely takes the guys half a minute to rattle the van down the road and out of sight, despite the neat and tidy 17-point-turn Ray has to execute on the tiny little road.

Tommy stares after them until the red lights have disappeared into the darkness, and even then he only moves when Adam brushes a hand along his back.

Adam helps him scale the fence with an ease that has Tommy stumped for a moment before he remember that Adam’s been climbing this fence pretty regularly for two months now, and he hasn’t needed help in a long time. Clearly, it’s not only boosting his confidence.

Tommy hangs onto Adam’s hand when they’re cutting across the grounds and Adam doesn’t seem to mind, smiling to himself in the darkness, dragging Tommy to a stop by the basement window and pushing him up against the bricks to kiss him. He kisses him once more, soft and sweet, when they get to Adam’s room. He reaches down to squeeze Tommy’s hand and smiles at him, but he doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to be said.

Tommy keeps looking over his shoulder on his way to the stairs and Adam’s looking back every time, and Tommy clings to that while he slips into his room and changes into his PJ’s, when he’s staring at the ceiling, keeping his eyes open for as long as he possibly can because the next time he wakes up, there’s going to be hell to pay.

For some reason, Tommy fully expects to be dragged out of bed by his hair, some teacher or supervisor or whatever screeching in his ear about calling his parents. He isn’t. Instead, he’s pulled from sleep by the incessant beeping of his alarm, which is as annoying as it is ordinary. He smacks it into submission and then lies there for a moment, covers pulled up to his chin, listening. There are people moving in the halls, talking quietly. Perhaps a little more quietly than usual on a Monday morning, but that might just be Tommy’s imagination. It’s running wild enough to, after all.

But there’s nothing for it. Tommy’s going to have to give in and get up eventually, so he pushes the covers down and sits up. He finds a crumpled pair of khakis under the bed that don’t look so bad once he shakes the wrinkles out, and once that’s done the rest just kind of happens, his body falling into the routine of getting himself up and dressed and ready for another day in Hell.

He makes his way over to the dining hall after a quick stop at the bathroom, feeling more and more like Alice with every step. There aren’t many people around, but everyone who sees him stares like he’s got horns growing out of his head. Word’s gotten out, apparently. The dining room, like some bullshit teen movie, falls silent when the door falls shut behind him. Adam isn’t around, but Ryan is, staring at him with his eyes wide and his lips curved into a soft, pink ‘o.’ Tommy gets an orange juice because he doesn’t think he can get anything more substantial down and sits at an empty table and hopes to God somebody will come get him before he starts laughing out of sheer desperation.

Of course, that feeling only lasts until there’s a hand on his shoulder, and Mrs. Sallivan asking him to please accompany him to the principal’s office, and then all his whirling thoughts completely wipe away and the only thought he’s got left is a terrified mantra of oh shit looping ‘round and ‘round in his head, like one of Frank’s scratched-up records.

Tommy doesn’t think there’s a single person who doesn’t watch them go.

Tommy, for all that he’s kind of a problem child at this school, has only been to the principal’s office once before, and that was when he first got here. His mom had hovered awkwardly at the very edge of their seat, quick to smile and even quicker to assure everyone who’d listen how thankful they were. Tommy, in true fifteen-year-old fashion, had slouched in his seat and barely raised his eyes and mumbled unintelligible answers when prompted, sure that everyone at Clarkenwell as well as God above hated him.
The office hasn’t changed much, not really. There’s a different calendar on the wall, this year’s edition of the Clarkenwell fundraiser for kids in need. The subjects have changed, but the theme hasn’t: Smiling girls and boys in tidy uniforms, playing instruments and sports, walking the grounds, studying and being overly attentive in class.

Other than that, though, things are mostly the same: An intimidating oak desk, a book shelf full of books heavy enough to crush someone’s head, two visitor’s chairs on one side of the room and Mrs. Morrigan on the other, contemplating the grounds outside her window with a disapproving glare that Tommy can recognize even in profile.

Adam’s already there, tense-limbed in one of the chairs in front of the desk. He doesn’t smile when he sees Tommy, not exactly, but his shoulders unclench a little bit, and as it turns out, that’s all the encouragement Tommy needs to step over the threshold and sink into the seat next to him. At least they’re going down together.

He starts when Adam nudges him and points his chin at the newspaper lying on the desk. It’s a copy of the Times, headline reading New York City riots escalate. There’s a shot of a group of protestors underneath, mouths open, caught mid-scream, and Tommy swallows.

“On the brink,” he says quietly.

Mrs. Morrigan hears him, maybe, because she turns away from the window to fix him with a truly paralyzing glare. “Mr. Ratliff,” she says. Her tone could cut glass.

She likes playing up the stern angle, though, so that’s not really all that new. She always wears blazers and pencil skirts and her hair pulled back into a tight bun, and really, it’s no surprise Clarkenwell is such a hellhole considering who’s running it. She’s the kind of woman that makes Tommy gape a bit at the fact that anybody actually thought it would be a good idea to marry her. And it’s not like he’s a misogynist or anything, Tommy knows plenty of marriage-worthy women (his own mother included), but Mrs. Morrigan? She’s like, the ultimate boner-killer.

Tommy shudders a bit, secretly, on the inside. He doesn’t even try to smile. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.

She looks away, lips pursing in distaste. “Wait quietly, if you please,” she says. “You are an adult now, Mr. Ratliff, I’m sure that’s possible.”

Tommy kinds of wants to make some smart-ass comment just to piss her off, but that might be pushing his luck a little too far, so he just sits still and counts the seconds ticking by loudly on the clock behind him. He loses count a couple of times but he sits as still as he can, even after his ass starts aching a little bit. He doesn’t even turn around when there’s a knock behind him, not until Mrs. Morrigan nods at somebody and says, all regal and composed, “Officer.”

Then, Tommy whirls around so fast he can actually feel something crack in his back, and yeah, no lie, there’s actually a cop coming into the room. He’s an older guy, muscled but tall enough that he still looks skinny, and he’s got ‘dignity’ written all over him. There’s another one, too, still waiting by the door, a big blond mountain of a guy. He could probably crush Tommy’s skull with one hand, Jesus fuck.

“Are these the two boys you mentioned?” the first cop asks Mrs. Morrigan.

She nods. “Mr. Ratliff, Mr. Lambert,” she says, mentioning to each of them in turn. She forces her lips into a smile. “If you would be so kind as to cooperate with Officer Halvard.”

Tommy nods slowly, remembering that whole bit they always go on about on TV about not saying anything without a lawyer. He’s not so sure he’s going to make it out of here in one piece, anyway, so maybe waiting for a lawyer would be stupid.

“Cooperate on what?” Adam asks, voice a little rough.

Halvard smiles at him. “Nothing terrible, I promise,” he says.

“Terrible enough to involve the police,” Tommy points out, which makes Mrs. Morrigan sigh quietly and Halvard’s smile get even bigger. Tommy’s starting to think Halvard thinks he’s dealing with five-year-olds.

“There’s been an incident this weekend which was serious enough to warrant a police inquiry, yes,” he says. “Considering your whereabouts have been unaccounted for since Friday night, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you some questions.”

It’s by far the nicest Where the hell have you been? that Tommy’s ever heard, and that relaxes him a bit. At least no one’s busting out the handcuffs quite yet.

“Okay,” he says. He looks over at Adam, and Adam nods. Tommy swallows. “Okay.”

The cop nods. “You’re not obliged to say anything without a lawyer,” he says. “We can call you one, if you’d like, but we’d have to bring you in to the station for that.”

This time it’s Adam who says, “That’s okay,” before he cuts a quick glance at Tommy. “We didn’t do anything super illegal, right?”

It’s probably not the smartest thing to say, but Tommy’s pretty unsettled himself. Do they really call in the cops when people play hookie for a day?

Mrs. Morrgian scoffs, so maybe they do, but the cop’s smile is vaguely sympathetic.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” he says. “This is just a questioning, there haven’t been any formal charges.”

“Yet,” Mrs. Morrigan adds under her breath.

Halvard gives her a displeased look. “Like I said,” he tells Adam and Tommy, “no formal charges, but if you could answer a few questions for me, that’d be much appreciated.”

“But,” Tommy says. “What’s going on? What are we even being questioned on?”

Halvard sighs. He says, “One of your classmates was attacked on school grounds this full moon. He sustained severe injuries and is currently in intensive care at Spring Harbor Hospital.”

“Who?” It comes out in a whisper. Tommy clears his throat, licks his lips. “Who was attacked?”

“A Mr. Jesse Monroe,” the cop says, and that sucks, but there’s totally a part of Tommy that’s relieved that it’s the school douchebag and not somebody he actually, you know, liked.

“Mr. Monroe was viciously attacked, by what was obviously a wolf,” Mrs. Morrigan elaborates. “So if you have anything to say for yourselves, now is the time to say it.”

“Now, now,” Halvard says. He smiles at them. “I’m sure that whatever these two boys got up to, they meant no harm. Isn’t that right, boys?”

“Right,” Tommy says faintly. He really wants to hold Adam’s hand, but there’s no way he’s giving these guys that much of an opening.

Halvard smiles again. “So, would you like to tell me where you were? As much as you can remember.”

Tommy exchanges a quick look with Adam. He dips his head. “We weren’t on the grounds,” he says.

“Where were you, then?” Halvard asks.

Tommy shakes his head. “Not on the grounds.”

“You’re in enough trouble as it is, Mr. Ratliff,” Mrs. Morrigan snaps. “I’d really advise against adding unwillingness to cooperate with the police to that list.”

“We went to a concert,” Tommy says, hoping his voice comes out cool and collected rather than wavering, because that’s the version that reveals the least, but it’s still true and he hopes they can see that. He really, really hopes so.

“And I’m sure there’s somebody who could verify that?” Halvard prompts, and Tommy bites his lip.

There is, of course there is, but Tommy’s not exactly keen on letting the cops know about the guys’ involvement in their illegal weekend activities.

“Mr. Ratliff,” Mrs. Morrigan says sharply.

“I can,” Adam says, but falls silent again when Mrs. Morrigan give him a quelling look.

“Obviously, questioning the two of you together isn’t doing anybody any good,” she says. “Mr. Ratliff, would you wait in the reception area?” She stabs the intercom on the desk with a manicured fingernail. “Marcy, draw the shades, please?”

There’s a staticky “yes, right away” in reply that Tommy barely hears. He’s too busy staring at Adam, and Adam’s looking back with his eyes just as wide because, new-found confidence aside, Adam’s more likely to cave out of the two of them and they both know it.

Mrs. Morrigan makes a pleased noise, no doubt popping a giant lady-boner at the prospect of getting to torture Adam, but things never get that far.

“Leave them alone,” somebody yells, audible even through the pane of glass that separates the office from the rest of the admin area, and they all turn to look.

It’s Daisy, most of her uniform on but it’s a mess and her ponytail is falling apart, half of it in her face. She’s kicking her legs and screaming and her fingernails leave long, bloody streaks down the arm of the blond officer who grabs her around the middle to stop her from coming closer. The guy winces but doesn’t let go.

“You can’t arrest them,” she yells, scrabbling at the arm around her waist, “because they didn’t fucking do it!”

Halvard gives Mrs. Morrigan an unreadable look. He gets up and opens the door and says, “Please elaborate, Miss,” like he’s at etiquette school and not in an office interrogating a bunch of school kids in an assault/attempted-murder investigation.

Daisy grows a bit calmer at that, but the cop who’s got her around the middle doesn’t let go. Smart guy.

“They didn’t do it,” Daisy says. She sets her jaw. “They weren’t even here.”

“Where were you?” Mrs. Morrigan asks them icily, and Adam manages to say, “New York” before the cop holds up a finger, asking them to be silent.

“Do you know who did?”

Daisy’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Yes,” she says evenly.

“Did you assault Mr. Monroe?” the cop asks gently, like he’s talking to a child.

Daisy lifts her chin. “And I’m not sorry for it, either,” she says. “He had it coming.”

Mrs. Morrigan chokes on air. “You little brat,” she starts, and then seems to run out of words. The look of disgust, the way she curls her lip, though, they really say it all.

“Mrs. Morrigan,” Halvard reprimands gently, which could possibly have made Tommy’s day under different circumstances, and when he turns to Daisy, his eyes are still gentle. “Daisy, can you tell me why you assaulted Mr. Monroe?”

Daisy grins at him, all teeth. “Because he makes my life hell. He makes their life hell,” she spits, one spindly finger pointed at Adam and Tommy, and the cop raises an eyebrow.

Mrs. Morrigan gapes at them. Tommy doesn’t think he’s ever seen her speechless.

“Boys?” the officer asks, and Tommy finds himself nodding before he remembers that maybe he shouldn’t be incriminating Daisy like that.

Halvard looks like a nice guy, though, and the tilt to his mouth is soft. “Is she right?”

“Jesse’s a jerk,” Tommy says.

“Has he ever been violent to you?” the cop asks.

Tommy looks at Adam who looks back, long and silent, and the cop sucks in a breath, obviously getting it without needing to be told, but then Adam nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “We got beat up a couple of times.”

“We had to see the vice principal for a fight, like, back in September,” Tommy adds. “He said we started it.”

“Did you?” the cop asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s judging though – just curious.

“Not unprovoked,” Tommy settles on eventually, and the cop nods like he gets it. Maybe he does. Either way, his voice his gentle when he turns to Daisy again.

“Daisy,” he says, quiet and calm, “we’re going to have to take you down to the station. Alright? I promise you won’t be hurt.”

“Fucking try me,” Daisy says, voice shaking, eyes wide, and when the officer holding her reaches for the handcuffs on his belt, Halvard shakes his head.

“Let’s not make a spectacle out of it, Bryar,” he says, and the officer nods before he leads Daisy away.

“Alright, then,” Halvard says. He smiles at them. “That means you two are most likely not the ones who did it,” he says, and that’s almost worse, the way he treats them, all kind and gentle, like they’re fucking idiots. At least when somebody’s a dick to them, then that’s just wrong. It’s harder to explain to people that kindness can be fucking painful too.

“Due to legal reasons, I have to ask you not to leave town regardless,” Halvard says. “We’re still going to need your statements, officially, and we might have to rely on you as witnesses.”

He hands each of them a card. It’s waxed paper, and it sticks to Tommy’s sweaty palm.

“Call me if there’s anything,” he says, tips his head at Mrs. Morrigan, and heads out after his colleague, closing the door with a cheerful little wave.

Mrs. Morrigan makes a small noise of displeasure. She doesn’t say anything, though, and the silence drags on until Adam starts to fidget, school slacks dragging against the fabric of the chair.

Tommy clears his throat. “So, like, are we getting suspended, or what?”

Mrs. Morrigan raises her eyebrows. “You can’t honestly think you’re still welcome at this school,” she says.

Tommy can feel his eyes going wide. Because yeah, getting expelled was always sort of the ultimate Damocles sword hanging over them, and okay, yeah, they’ve been sneaking out a bunch, but nobody gets expelled for not being guilty of something, what the fuck.

“You’re kicking us out,” he says anyway, just to be sure.

Mrs. Morrigan attempts a pinched smile for a moment, but it’s not working too well and she lets it drop after only a moment. “You two gentlemen are obviously not very appreciative of the opportunity Clarkenwell is affording you,” she says. “There are hundreds of eligible students who would relish being offered what this school is offering you, and from your behavior, I have to conclude that they, unlike you, would actually deserve it.”

Tommy thinks his smile might be kind of mean. “You mean you’d rather have two lapdogs who roll over and beg when you tease them with a treat.”

Mrs. Morrigan’s expression is sour enough to curdle milk, which is kind of thrilling, no lie, even with the situation as fucked up as it is. “You have an hour to pack up your things and vacate the premises,” she says. “Then I’m asking Officer Halvard to return.”

“Can we call our parents, at least?” Adam asks. His face is calm, but his fingers are white around the armrests of his chair, and his voice shakes just the slightest bit.

Mrs. Morrigan’s face doesn’t even twitch. “You’re welcome to do whatever you like, Mr. Lambert, as long as you do it outside the school grounds. You are no longer Clarkenwell’s responsibility.”

“Motherfucker,” Tommy hears himself mutter. Wow. Just, wow. They can’t even bring cell phones to school with them – he has a grand total of eleven bucks in cash, how the hell do they expect them to get home?

“Language, Mr. Ratliff,” Mrs. Morrigan warns.

“He can say whatever he wants,” Adam says loudly. “He’s no longer Clarkenwell’s responsibility.” He hesitates before he opens his mouth again. “You fucking bitch.” He looks kind of terrified as soon as the words leave his mouth, like he can’t believe he actually said them.

Tommy definitely can’t, but that just makes him want to jump Adam all the more. And hey, he’s out, he’s free, so he gets up and slings his leg over Adam’s and kisses him, tongue and all, and grinds his hips into Adam’s stomach to show how much he approves.

“I can still have you arrested for trespassing,” Mrs. Morrigan cuts in sharply – a bit too sharply, like she’s losing her cool – and yeah. They definitely don’t have the money for bail.

Tommy withdraws reluctantly, leaving Adam glassy-eyed and shiny-lipped. “Let’s get out of this shithole,” he whispers.

“Yeah, okay,” Adam replies, just as soft, and eases Tommy off of him with a gentle hand to his side. “It’s not there’s anything left for us here.”

The words sting, even though they’re true, but Adam slides his fingers between Tommy’s when they turn to the door, and that helps.

“Please remember that your identification bracelets are school property,” Mrs. Morrigan says, just as they leave.

Flipping someone off has never felt so good.

It doesn’t take him long to pack. The uniforms had been included in the scholarship, and it’s not like Tommy’s going to need them. Same for the books, all those stupid fucking worthless books, and Tommy somehow resists the urge to shred them all to pieces. They don’t matter anymore. He’s out of here.

He finds his duffel and his backpack under the bed, but there’s not really anything for him to take. There’s three pairs of jeans and a couple of band shirts, half of them Gerard’s, a hoodie, a jacket. Computer print-outs of guitar tabs, a battered copy of The Contender, the hanging picture thing his mom made him, but his bag is nowhere even close to full.

He turns, expecting to see an entire suitcase stuffed with shit still lurking in a corner somewhere, because this can’t be his life, can it? This can’t be everything he has to show for two-and-a-half years of misery. He throws open his closet door, starts pulling his starched white shirts and the neatly folded pants from the shelves, pushes the covers from the bed to find a pair of boxers in a miserable little heap.

His shower stuff is in the bathroom and he goes to get it even though there’s nothing of him in there, only anonymous pieces of plastic. He leaves the door open when he gets back and dumps the entire thing on top of his clothes even though there’s water hiding in the shampoo cap that leaks all over his hand. He wipes his fingers on the bedspread and curses a bit, not because he really needs to but because he feels like he has to say something, anything, or he might explode.

A soft cough makes him look up.

There’s a mop of hair hovering at the doorway, bangs just long enough to warrant nasty looks from the administration, and Tommy actually has to stop and think about that for the first time. Huh. Maybe they’re all rebelling in their own little ways.

Still, though. Tommy and Adam are rebelling in fucking huge ways right now, and Tommy still hasn’t quite managed to wrap his head around that. He’s not sure he can deal with this right now.

“Hey, Ryan,” he says. “I’m a bit busy.”

Ryan lets his gaze sweep over the mess on the floor. He doesn’t come in, but he doesn’t leave again, either. “Is it true you’re getting kicked out?” he asks in a hushed voice.

When Tommy doesn’t say anything, he folds his arms over his chest, drops his gaze to his feet. He looks so small standing there, so alone, and Tommy feels bad for him all of a sudden. He doesn’t know much about him, but Ryan’s stuck here, too. None of them would be here if they had anywhere else to go.

“Yeah, I – me and Adam, yeah.” He tries to give Ryan a tiny smile. “Daisy’s gone, too.”

“Okay,” Ryan says. And God, the kid is going to have to live here after everything’s gone to shit, he’s gonna be one of the ones who deal with the aftermath of all Tommy’s and Adam’s and Daisy’s fuck-ups. He’s going to have to live with it all, and he’s all big, dark eyes and lips the slightest bit parted, pathetically young, and Tommy kind of feels like the worst person on the planet.

“Hey Ryan,” he says, motioning him closer. “If you ever need help. Like, really need it.” He leaned in close, pitching his voice to nothing more than a murmur. “You know where Desecration Row is?”

Ryan nods.

“Go there, ask for Frank. He’s crazy, but tell him Tommy sent you. He’ll help you out.”

“Frank,” Ryan repeats quietly.

“Frank,” Tommy says. He zips up his bag and slips it over his shoulder, and then he slides his hand around Ryan’s neck to draw him in and presses a kiss to his temple. “You’ve already got everything they’ll ever want,” he says, whispers, and then he leaves him standing there and walks out the door without ever looking back.

Adam’s waiting for him in the entrance hall, watched by Larkner’s eagle eyes. He’s got a bag, stuffed full from the looks of things, and a small cardboard box that Tommy takes from him, and they look gazes for a moment, wide and scared but also kind of excited, and Larkner says, “I think it’s time you left,” clearly no ‘think’ involved at all.

Tommy nods and starts for the door, the big double-winged wooden entrance that scared the crap out of him when he first got here and still makes him kind of uneasy, but Larkner’s hand on his elbow stops him.

Larkner narrows his eyes when Tommy turns his head to look, thoughtful and kind of mean. “There are places you’ll be welcome,” he says. “This is not one of them.”

“We get it, jeez,” Adam mutters, but Tommy is distracted by the feel of paper slipping into his palm, and he’s sure his confusion shows on his face when he looks up at Larkner.

Larkner tilts his head at the door. “Go on, then,” he says, all dark challenge. “Get out of here.”

“We’re going,” Adam huffs, and he doesn’t look back when he strides over to the door and strains to pull one wing open, not the way Tommy does. Larkner’s still standing there, alone in that big entrance hall, and he smirks a little bit and touches one fingertip to his temple in salute when he catches Tommy looking.

“Tommy, come on,” Adam says. There’s a hand on his elbow again, a surprisingly strong hand that pulls Tommy out of the dim gloom of the entrance hall and into the overcast daylight instead.

Tommy hitches a breath when the doors shutter closed behind them, dark and final. The path to the front gates looks endless from here, winding on and on and on, and Tommy can’t even get his feet to unstick his feet from the ground, he’s never going to make it all the way out there.

“Hey.” Clammy fingers slide underneath his, and when he blinks and tears his eyes away, Adam’s smiling at him. “We’re still here,” he says, squeezing Tommy’s hand in his own. “Okay.” Then he hesitates, because he has to feel the paper Larkner slipped him tucked between Tommy’s sweat-sticky palm and the side of the box. “What-?”

“Larkner,” Tommy says. He shifts Adam’s box to his hip and keeps hold of it with his elbow, using both hands to uncrumple the note.

It’s an address, written in the same sloping scrawl Larkner uses to grade quizzes. Just a single line, a street in the run-down part of town, down by the club the guys play at. Where the sympathetics live.

“What is it?” Adam asks, craning his neck.

Tommy shows him, and Adam bites his lip.

“You think?” he asks.

Tommy shakes his head, helplessly, not ‘no.’ “I think he’s okay,” he says.

Adam nods. “Worth a shot,” he says. He tilts his head down the driveway, towards the staircase leading down to the footpath that’ll take them towards town, away from this hellhole, but Tommy only makes it a couple of steps before he hesitates.

There’s a cop car parked to the side, empty, sirens off. It’s not particularly threatening, but it still sends a shudder down Tommy’s spine. “You think she’s gonna be okay?” he asks.

“She’s still a kid,” Adam says, but he doesn’t sound sure. “Like, there’s limits to what they can do to her, right?”

“Shit,” Tommy says. “Just, why the fuck did she do that? It’s not like we don’t get enough bad press as it is.”

“You know why,” Adam says pointedly, and yeah, Tommy does. If he hadn’t found Adam and Frank and the guys, maybe that would have been Tommy. Doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“It’s going to be a mess,” Tommy says. “The seperationists are going to be all over it. They’re gonna lock us up for good this time.”

“Only if we let them,” Adam says firmly, and Tommy looks up at him, surprised. Adam smiles a bit, nudging his shoulder, and draws himself up to his full height. It’s easy to forget, most of the time, but Adam really is one impressive motherfucker.

“Frank’s revolution,” Tommy says slowly. “You think it’s gonna happen?”

“I think anything can happen.” Adam holds out his hand. “Anything can happen, now.”

Tommy nods slowly. “I hope you’re right,” he says. He slides his fingers between Adam’s. “Like, I really, really hope you’re right. Because I don’t know what we’re gonna do if you’re not.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Adam tells him, and quirks his lips into a smile.

Tommy smiles back, warm and trusting even though he should be freaking out. He should be terrified, and instead, he pulls a little on Adam’s hand and takes the first, hopeful step down the stairs.

The End

Return to Masterpost

Thank you! Hope you enjoyed!

Module 4 - Part 5

bad_peppermint — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:50:05 GMT

"Hey, Tommy," someone hisses when Tommy’s at his locker during break, and it's Frank, grinning and waving at him from the guys' bathroom. "Get your ass over here, come on."

"You trying to lure me into some sketchy corner?" Tommy asks, once he's close enough. "I'm not that kind of girl, you know."

"You totally are." Frank pulls him closer by his collar. "Tell your boyfriend to get himself over here, or we’re leaving without him."

“Okay, okay, chill the fuck out,” Tommy mumbles. “Adam,” he hisses, and jerks his head at the bathroom door.

Adam’s got his hands full of books and his backpack open on the ground between his feet, but his eyes widen in recognition and he nods, and that’s all Tommy sees before Frank pulls him bodily into the tiled room.

“It’s like you’ve made it your life goal to get yourself killed,” Tommy says drolly. “What, the last time wasn’t enough?”

“The last time is never enough,” Frank says. “Except for that time I hooked up with a drag queen by mistake. I really don’t need to do that again.”

Tommy snickers, startled into laughter, and laughs even harder when Frank pulls a just-remembered face of displeasure. He doesn’t look back when the door swings open, trusting that Frank wouldn’t aim his wicked-pleased grin hello at just about anybody. And sure enough, a moment later, Adam’s arm settles around Tommy’s waist, a comforting, familiar feel by now, and Tommy feels his body lean back, trusting Adam to take his weight, almost without his input.

“You two.” Frank shakes his head. “Honestly.”

“Feeling better, then?” Adam asks over Tommy’s shoulder.

“Yeah, thank God.” Frank rolls his eyes. “I was ready to climb the freaking walls, man, I can’t wait to start fucking shit up.”

Adam presses a quick kiss behind Tommy’s ear. “Sounds like fun,” he says, mouth curving into a smile against Tommy’s skin.

Normally Tommy would worry, kind of, because this is Clarkenwell and they're not big on PDA in general and definitely not gay PDA, but ever since he got on stage and rocked his fucking heart out in front of dozens of people, things have been different. He's been different, because he's not sure he really gives a shit anymore. Because seriously - what can they do to him now?

But Adam's been different, too. Less skittish, for one. More touchy-feely, too, even though Tommy's sure Adam double- and triple-checked the hallway before he came in and slipped his arms around Tommy. It's kind of nice, not having to be the daring one for once. Maybe Adam's taking over for a while before Tommy uses up all his daring-points.

And besides, Adam seems to be kind of into it now. "So what's your plan?" he asks Frank over Tommy's shoulder. "Plant any explosives in the girls' bathroom? Write 'fuck you' on the wall in blood? What?"

"Fuck you, I'm not a Satanist, you freak," Frank says, reaching up to push lightly at Adam's shoulder.

Adam doesn't even sway. "No, seriously," he says. "You have a plan, I know you do."

Frank's lips curl into a tiny little smile that just feels all the more evil for how cute it is. "Maybe," he says.

"And you're not gonna tell us?" Adam shakes his head. "Dick."

"It's for your own good," Frank says, drawing himself up to his full height. He's still not very tall. "If you aren't surprised when you find out, they're gonna think you knew about it."

"We did know about it," Tommy points out.

Frank pinches his side, ignoring Adam's dark glower when Tommy squirms away. "Think you were in on it, then, fine. I'm trying to protect you here, you jackass."

"You just like acting mysterious," Adam tells him. He runs a hand along Tommy's arm, over the fabric of his blazer, but doesn't try to draw him in again. He smiles, quick and sweet, and Tommy finds himself returning it before Frank makes gagging noises and rolls his eyes.

"Seriously, quit it," he says. "You're gonna make my balls fall off."

"You should get that looked at," Tommy tells him, swallowing down a smile.

“You should get your face looked at,” Frank says. “Now scurry off to class, I’ll never forgive you if you fuck up my game.”

“So much love,” Adam grouses theatrically in Tommy’s ear, and then kisses the skin behind it before he follows Frank out the door.

The hallways are empty, now, only a minute or so left before the bell rings, and Frank waves cheerfully and almost walks straight into Larkner coming down a stairwell.

“Shouldn’t you be in class, young man?” Larkner asks, before Tommy’s even had time to work up a good panic.

Frank nods and clasps his hands together, looking so angelic Tommy wouldn’t be surprised if a halo popped up over his head. “Yes, sir,” he says. “I left my homework in my room, that’s all.”

“Go on and get it, then,” Larkner says, and Frank nods and mutters a quick “Yes, sir,” before he scampers off.

Larkner turns on Tommy and Adam next. “The same goes for you, Gentlemen,” he says.

“We’re going, sir,” Tommy says, snagging Adam’s sleeve. “Sorry, sir.”

“I’m keeping an eye on you boys,” Larkner calls after them, and they duck their heads and keep walking.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Adam murmurs with every breath. Tommy can’t help but agree.

Someone’s poured thick red food coloring into the fountain by the time third period lets out and it sort of oozes over the copper, from the chubby little angels’ cornucopias and out of the eyes of the crying maidens, and it looks kind of gruesome and really, really cool.

Of course, it also makes the administration go on a giant rampage to find the culprit. They interrogate everyone who’s even been in trouble, or suspected of being in trouble, or anyone who looks like they might be trouble. And all the wolves, of course, and Tommy has no idea how both he and Adam spend almost forty-five minutes swearing on God and their dead grandmas that they don’t know anything without anybody figuring out they’re lying. Adam’s so rattled afterwards that he refuses to go see the guys Friday or Saturday, and Tommy doesn’t press very hard.

They still go Sunday, though, because the guys are playing this super-mini gig, just a couple of songs at somebody’s backyard barbeque, and it’s free food and free drinks and nice people even if they don’t know anybody, and Tommy kind of has to have a word with Frank, anyway.

He corners him next to the one lone apple tree in the yard, after about an hour, because Frank mingles with the speed and determination of a bouncy ball. The only reason he’s listening, Tommy suspects, is because his cheeks are bulging with veggie burger and he can’t actually interrupt Tommy with any sort of coherency.

“You can’t sneak into school anymore,” Tommy tells Frank. He hopes he sounds firm, not earnest (or, God forbid, pleading), but with the way Frank’s eyebrows rise high, he’s pretty sure he didn’t pull it off.

Frank swallows with determination. “You can’t tell me you suddenly grew a conscience,” he says. He runs a hand through his hair. “Man, you gotta nip that shit in the bud, man. It’ll grow like fucking fungus otherwise.”

“It’s not that.”

Frank rolls his eyes. “Man, don’t tell me you’re losing your fucking balls, okay? They’re the best part about you.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy says, but then he makes himself stop and swallow down his anger. “I got plenty of balls,” he says. “But if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re just making things harder on a whole lot of people who don’t deserve it, and I don’t care how much you like to fuck shit up, you’re gonna end up upsetting the wrong people.” He takes a deep breath. “And I won’t let you do that.”

“Fine,” Frank says. He frowns down at his burger. “Whatever, Tommy. You still want us to come by next full moon, or is that too much rebellion for you now, too?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Tommy says. “Yes, I want you to come by. I’m not a fucking pussy, so stop being a dick.”

“Classy,” Frank says, but he’s smiling a bit, and Tommy forces himself to return the expression.

In the days leading up to the full moon, Tommy has to remind himself several times that he did the right thing. Even when the jocks are giving everybody even more shit than usual, even when the faculty are watching all the wolves in their classes with beady little eyes, he did the right thing. He’s not showing his belly. He’s protecting people who need it.

And they do need it. Tommy’s not friends with all the wolves at his school, but he knows at least a first name for every single one of them, can point them out in the hallways, and they all look like shit. The usually chill Joey’s got a pinched expression around his eyes, and he’s always fiddling with something. Ryan’s freshman buddy keeps tugging on his hair, which is fucking gross when it’s at lunch, okay, and Norwell from Adam’s History class has his nails chewed off painfully far. Even Daisy, who’s pretty enough that even Tommy can appreciate it – even she’s got stern lines drawn around her mouth and into her forehead, and she’s a lot paler than the rapidly approaching New England winter would warrant.

Tommy sees her standing by her locker one afternoon and heads over, taking her gigantic – and fucking heavy – textbooks from her. She looks up, surprised, and he smiles.

“Hey there,” he says. “How’s things?”

“Good, good.” She tucks a lock of her behind her ear and rolls her eyes at herself. “You know, the usual brand of terrible.”

“Yeah, I hear ya.” Tommy grins. “You wanna come study with me and Adam?” he asks. “We’re gonna hang in the library with Ryan Ross. I think we’re friends now, or something. Ryan and that freshman of his.”

“Ian Crawford,” Daisy supplies. She smiles. “I’d love to, but I need to check on my chemistry experiment. So unless you wanna walk me over there…?”

“Yeah, why not,” Tommy shrugs, startling a laugh out of her.

“Oh, Tommy,” she says, fluttering her lashes. “Carrying my books, walking me to my classroom. What’s next, are you gonna give me your letterman jacket?”

“I don’t think so,” Tommy snickers. “You’re working on your chemistry experiment in your free time. I think I’m too intimidated by strong women to make this anything serious.”

Daisy rolls her eyes, smile still hovering in the corners of her mouth. “I like chemistry,” she says. “It’s so objective, you know? There’s no opinions involved. That copper sulfate crystal isn’t going to not grow just because of who you are or what you look like.”

“Or what you are,” Tommy adds, and she nods.

“Or that.”

They walk in silence for a bit before she clears her throat quietly. “So, you and Adam, you’re pretty good friends, yeah?”

“Yeah, we are,” Tommy says carefully, but she just smiles.

“That’s good,” she says. She squeezes his arm. “We need all the happiness we can get.”

Tommy looks away, feeling the blush crawl over his cheeks, and then stiffens when he sees who’s loitering up ahead in the hallway.

“Oh, great,” Daisy says. “It’s the goon squad.”

For a second, nobody moves, and Tommy weirdly, stupidly hopes that they’re going to leave them be for today. But then Jesse’s pushing off the wall, blocking the corridor with James and Marcus and that curly-haired silent buddy of theirs.

“Oh, fuck my life,” he mutters. He doesn’t think Jesse hears what he says, but he grins anyway.

“Well now, isn’t this cute,” he says, sugary-sweet.

And just… don’t they ever get tired of this shit? Whack-a-Tommy can’t be the most popular game in town, seriously. “Fuck off, would you?” Tommy asks, just as Daisy’s fingers find his and squeeze.

Jesse pretends to think about it for a second. “Hhmm,” he says. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think at all,” Daisy says. Tommy kind of wants to applaud her for it.

Jesse’s face flits into a scowl before he forces it back into a beatific smile. “Down, girl,” he says. “Let the boys play.”

“Yeah, let’s play,” Tommy says, apparently catching Jesse completely off-guard, judging from his startled expression. “I really liked that game we played during the last soc test, that was fun.”

One of Jesse’s cronies growls, ironically, but Jesse motions for him to stay back with a flick of his wrist. “I’d think twice about that mouth of yours if I were you, Tommy,” he says. His smile is all nasty now. “Or what do you think the administration will say when they hear just who ruined their stupid fountain?”

Tommy has a total oh-shit moment where he imagines policemen knocking down the door to Ray’s uncle’s house and slamming Frank up against the nearest door before he realizes what Jesse’s actually trying to tell him, and really, that alternative isn’t a whole lot better.

“I didn’t do it,” he says, too quickly.

“So?” Jesse waggles his eyebrows. “Who’s gonna take your word for it? After all, everybody knows you harbor, what did they call it? Oh yeah. Destructive tendencies.”

“Leave him alone,” Daisy hisses, but that, predictably, only garners laughter.

“Is your girlfriend going to protect you, Tommy-boy?” James asks.

“Fuck off,” Tommy says. He wraps his fingers around Daisy’s elbow, even though he knows that’s just going to give them more ammunition. “Come on,” he mutters to her. “Let’s just go.”

“Yeah, just go!” Jesse calls after them, hyena-laugh loud and obnoxious, but Tommy manages not to turn back and bash his face in through sheer strength of will.

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” Daisy whispers, barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of their feet slapping against the tile. “I can’t wait to show those douchebags what the real world is like.”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, because what is he supposed to say to that? But he kind of can’t wait for her to show them either.

Night of, Tommy’s practically clawing his way out of his dungeon on his own when Frank and Mikey finally show up. The wind whistling in from outside is freezing, but at least he can see a bit of sky from here, and catch the first glimpse of them when they finally creep up in thick windbreakers.

“Took you long enough,” he says, dancing from one foot to the other. “Come on, come on, that window’s not gonna open itself.”

“Yeah, I gotcha,” Frank says lazily. “Stand back, I don’t wanna kick your pretty little head in by accident.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy says but he obeys, lifting up his hands for Frank and Mikey to pull him up afterwards and trying not to scratch up his knees too badly on the bricks when they do.

“Fucking cold,” he mutters once he’s out, because fuck. And he’s naked. That’s gotta count as cruel and unusual punishment, or something.

“You got that right,” Frank says. He’s bouncing on his toes. “Let’s free lover boy and then let’s get the hell out of here, it’s too fucking nasty to be human in this.”

It doesn’t take long to get Adam out, not with Tommy and Frank and Mikey all helping, and he grins huge and pleased at them all before slinging an arm around Tommy’s shoulder. It’s probably the gayest thing Tommy’s ever done, hugging another naked guy, but, well. If the shoe fits.

“Alright!” Frank grins. “You guys ready to blow this popsicle stand?”

“You’re gonna have to bring us back really early,” Tommy cautions. “Everybody’s still pissed because of the fountain. I wouldn’t be surprised if they pulled some sneaky shit to catch somebody in the act.”

But Frank just shakes his head, expression unreadable. “We’re not gonna bring you back,” he says. “Not for a while, at least.”

Tommy figures he and Adam look about equally as intelligent right now.

“What do you mean?” Adam asks carefully.

“I mean,” Frank says, not unkindly, “that we’ve got shit planned for you two, and that plan entails not bringing you back until Sunday morning or so.” He smiles a little bit. “It’ll blow your mind, I promise.”

“Not come back?” Tommy asks faintly. His heart’s hammering triple-time already. His stomach twists into an elaborate pretzel at the thought of being caught, but there’s also a feeling like someone poured soda straight into his veins, bubbling and itching and hissing just below the surface. He wants out. Out of this school, out of this town, out of this fucking life, and if the only way out of here is a hitched ride in a ratty van with a bunch of wanna-be rock stars, then that’s okay, as long as Adam’s by his side.

“Adam,” he says, breathes really, and he knows it’s written all over his face, how much he wants this. He can’t help it. It’s like the guys are handing him the life he’s always dreamed of on a platter, and maybe it’s only for a day or two, and maybe they shouldn’t be agreeing to this, but Tommy’s not gonna be the one to say no.

Adam, though, Adam still might, and there’s no way Tommy can do this without Adam.

“Tommy,” Adam says, just as quietly. “Tommy, if we go with them, they’ll know we’ve been sneaking out. They’ll batten down the hatches.” He hesitates. “We might get expelled. Suspended for sure.”

He gnaws on his lip, frown cutting deep lines into his face, and Tommy just has to reach out and fit his palm against Adam’s cheek, watch him close his eyes and exhale into it.

“But don’t you think it’ll be worth it?”

Adam doesn’t even have to say anything – seeing him melt into Tommy’s touch is all the answer Tommy needs.

“Alright,” he says to Frank. “We’re in.”

“Damn straight you are,” Frank says, but he sounds pleased. “We gonna let the rest of these poor suckers out or what?”

Tommy looks at Adam, and Adam looks back, and Tommy nods. “We’re gonna ask them,” he tells Frank. “And if they say no, we’re gonna leave them be.”

“You’re no fun,” Frank mutters, but he does some sort of elaborate bow-slash-handtwirly gesture that he no doubt picked up from Gerard. “After you, then,” he says. “You do the honors.”

The room on Adam’s other side is Maria’s, Tommy finds when he peers inside, Adam’s hand sweaty but insistent in his. Maria looks terrified at the sight of them, and just cowers in the corner and shakes her head no no no when they ask her, so they move on to Ryan’s nameless freshman friend instead. He looks tempted for a moment, dithering, and then his gaze catches on Adam’s hand in Tommy’s and he backs away. Tommy thinks, Suit yourself, asshole, and tugs Adam onwards, but Adam stops walking and eases his hand out of Tommy’s grip.

“This is gonna take forever this way,” he says. “And we gotta be outta here by moonrise. So how about you cover the end of this row with Frank and I’ll go ‘round the back with Mikey and ask everybody else there, and we’ll meet at the corner when we’re done?”

“Fine,” Tommy says, and waves him off. Frank goes with Adam though, for whatever reason, so Tommy’s trailed by Mikey when he stoops down in front of the next window.

The guy in that one, a fellow senior, flat-out tells Tommy he’s crazy, and Michael in the one after it keeps his mouth shut but he’s clearly thinking the same thing judging from the look on his face.

The room after that is Joey’s, apparently, and his eyes nearly bug out of his head when Tommy grins and waves.

“Tommy, what the hell?” He springs up from his perch by the door and comes to stand underneath the window. “Are you crazy? What are you doing?”

“Springing people,” Tommy says. He looks down the row of closed windows. “Or, well, trying to.” He crouches down in the soil. “You want out? I’m gonna go wander off with this guy,” he says, gesturing at Mikey, “but it’s amazing, I promise. Like nothing you’ve felt before.”

Joey shakes his head. “You go do, Tommy,” he says. “I’m not that brave.”

“Yes, you are,” Tommy insists.

“No, Tommy,” he says. “This is your thing, not mine.”

Tommy tries not to frown. It’s just, there are so many sheep at their school, even among the wolves, but Joey’s not one of them. He’s the kind of guy who’d want it, who’d love it, and Tommy’s almost sure he could talk him into it if he had the time. But he doesn’t have the time, he really doesn’t, and he knows he’s scowling when he grumbles, “Suit yourself.”

Joey smiles like he knows exactly what’s going on in Tommy’s head. “Just… leave the window open?” he asks, so quietly Tommy barely hears him.

“You got it,” Tommy says. He gets up and gives the window a few good kicks to mangle one of the hinges, enough for Joey to break it open on his own if he changes his mind.

He gets on his knees next to the window again. “It’s worth it, I promise,” he says, pleads maybe.

Joey reaches up and briefly covers Tommy’s hand with his own. “I’m gonna graduate from this fucking school, and I’m gonna go to some Ivy League place, and then I’m gonna tear down their institution from the inside out,” he says. “That’ll be worth it.” He hesitates. “Until then, I guess you’re gonna have to rebel for the both of us.”

“Will do,” Tommy says quietly, and Joey nods and takes a step back, wry smile disappearing into the darkness.

The last person in his row, sprawled in a Baywatch-esque pose on the freezing concrete floor, is Daisy. She’s got her eyes open and on him, wide and dark despite their blue color, and she smiles when Tommy waves.

“Hey,” Tommy whispers.

Daisy doesn’t say anything in return. She climbs to her feet instead, coming over to press her hands against the window, easing it open the extra inch or so that it still goes. “Hey,” she says, once that’s done, and leans against the wall to study him, arms crossed just below her bare boobs.

Tommy finds his gaze drifting downwards. He doesn’t mean to, but he can’t really help it – he doesn’t see naked girls very often, or naked anybody, really, considering him and Adam are moving at snail’s pace right now (the peeks he gets in at times like this don’t really count), and he just looks, okay, he’s not trying to be a perv or insensitive or anything.

And besides, it’s not like she can’t see his junk hanging out, so they’re even.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she asks finally, evenly, and Tommy starts.

“Uh. We’re sneaking out. You can, too, if you want.”

“And leave all of this?” She lets her gaze wander over the bare walls. “What are you waiting for? Spring me already.”

They get the window all the way open and Tommy grabs one of her hands, Mikey the other and they haul her out, and then Mikey, eyes shifty, goes and waits by the corner of the building where Adam and Frank are shuffling around now, blowing on their hands to keep them warm.

“Charming guy,” Daisy says.

“He’s alright.” Tommy jerks his head at them. “I’m gonna go with them,” he says. “They’ve got something planned, apparently.”

“Going where?” Daisy asks.

Tommy glances over to the three of them, twitching impatiently but waiting for him, and gives her a grin. “No fucking clue,” he says. “Have a good night.”

Daisy grins back at him, sharp and startlingly vicious. “I think I will,” she says. “Take care of yourself, Tommy.”

She’s on the go before he has a chance to ask her what the hell that means, and then Frank’s gesturing for him to get a move on, and the sun’s almost down, and Tommy forgets about her entirely.

It’s different this time, being shifted, but no less amazing. What Tommy can remember of the last moon is overshadowed by a firm mantle of awe, of I can’t believe I’ve never known about this. It’s still mind-blowing the second time, but less overwhelmingly so. Instead, he lets himself fall into his instincts, marvels at what his body can do, the things he can see, hear, smell. Frank and Mikey – they’ve gotta be Frank and Mikey – are less indulgent this time, too – they keep urging him to run faster, farther, nipping at his heels whenever he dares to become distracted.

He come to in the middle of the shift this time, jolting from the first sign of a brightening sky to pink sunrise, gaze caught by his shrinking hands. He starts shivering a moment later, no longer protected by thick, coarse fur, and casts a helpless look around for something to warm himself up with that isn’t like, Adam.

Frank catches the gesture and grins, and he ducks behind a tree and pulls out a brimming backpack and a loose set of clothes. It still takes Tommy a minute to realize that they’re back where they’re started, same trees and everything, and hopefully one day he’ll have enough awareness when he’s shifted that he’ll be able to pay attention to shit like where they are. As it is, he’s pretty freaking impressed by Frank and Mikey for figuring out where the hell to lead them, but he’s going to take the non-fanboy route and keep his mouth shut this time.

Frank, unaware of Tommy’s whirling thoughts, hops into his boxers and starts pulling clothes out of the backpack, throwing them vaguely in their direction. “Put some shit on,” he says. “I’m getting sympathy-shrinkage.”

Tommy’s clothes actually fit pretty well, even if they’re a bit loose, but Adam’s look… kind of amazing. He think the clothes might be Ray’s, or at least he doesn’t know anybody else who’d be willing to donate clothes to this ridiculous little venture who’s even remotely Adam’s size, but just – they’re tight enough to accentuate without being ridiculous, and the shirt clings nicely across Adam’s shoulders.

“I hope you have shoes flying around,” Adam says, and Frank hesitates, then grins.

“We’ll get you some flip flops at a rest stop,” he says. He stuffs a few loose shirts into the backpack and trots through the trees after Mikeyway, who, as it turns out, apparently has the inner sense of direction of a bat or something equally badass – after maybe 20 minutes of walking and the minor detail of scaling the fence that marks the edge of Clarkenwell’s property, they emerge onto a minimart-blacktop setup, parking lot empty besides a once-white van sitting in the greying dawn light.

Mikey heads for it straight away, pulling open the back door and disappearing inside.

Adam hesitates, or maybe Tommy does – it doesn’t really matter, because they’re holding hands, have been holding hands for the entire way, and when one of them slows, so does the other.

Frank notices, of course, and he bows, complete with hand-flourish. “After you, gentlemen,” he says.

“You still haven’t told us where we’re going,” Adam says, shifting closer to Tommy.

“On an adventure.” Frank grins with all his teeth, which is seriously even less reassuring than when Gerard does it.

Adam rolls his eyes and crosses his arms in front of his chest, staring down at Frank, and yeah, okay – Frank is seriously a tiny dude. He makes up for it by being loud and obnoxious enough for three, but Adam’s going to be fucking impressive when his ego finally grows to match his body.

“An adventure to where,” he prompts. “And if you say ‘Oz,’ I’m gonna stuff you into your own guitar case.”

Frank grins, but he doesn’t say Oz. Instead, he pulls open the passenger door and climbs – like, actually climbs – onto the seat. “New York City, baby,” he says. “That’s where we’re going. But feel free to hang around this fascinating parking lot instead.”

There’s nothing there, seriously, a 7-11 and an out-of-order public restroom, but Adam makes a show of looking around anyway. “It is fascinating,” he says mock-earnestly.

Frank rolls his eyes. “Get the fuck in,” he says. “You didn’t get me anything for my birthday, so I’m cashing in now.”

“You didn’t get me shit for my birthday,” Tommy reminds him. It doesn’t keep him from reaching up and sliding open the van door.

“Fuck you, I held you a fucking speech in front of an entire crowd of people.” Frank reaches over to shove at his shoulder. “It fucking counts. Now get in and zip it.”

“Finally,” Ray says when they climb into the empty row behind the driver’s seat. “Are we good now? Can we go?”

“Yeah, man.” Frank pulls his door shut. “Pedal to the metal and all that shit.”

Tommy pretty much trips over a carton of Mountain Dew cans and a backpack and a whole bunch of other shit when Ray peels out of the parking lot, and they’re already blowing through a yellow light when he finally gets his ass into a seat. Adam steadies him with a hand on his elbow, gripping Frank’s headrest with the other. He catches Tommy’s eye when he’s sitting down safely too, just a glance, and Tommy looks around the van to distract both of them from the heat blooming across his cheeks.

Mikey and Gerard are in the last row, Gerard passed out and Mikey positively twitchy, tapping his boot against the speaker and his nails against the window sill. Tommy wonders if he feels the same way Tommy does, if he feels that buzz under his skin, that feeling of alive alive more more more. He’s probably going to crash soon, he can feel a bone-deep weariness creeping into his fingers, his toes, but for now he just wants to jitter all over the place.

He does, too. Ray glares at him in the rearview mirror twice before they even make it to the freeway. He tucks his hands between his thighs and stares outside, at the trees and cars flying by, and somehow he goes from feeling a mile high to startling awake again when he bumps his head against the window.

“Hey,” Adam says. He fits his hand around Tommy’s shoulder, tugging a little. “Come here.”

He undoes Tommy’s seatbelt first, then his own, and pulls the buckle out of the way and jams it between the two seat cushions. Then he reaches up and pulls Tommy down onto his chest, broad and soft. Tommy doesn’t even think about it when he cranes his neck to slot their lips together. Adam gets with the program soon enough, tongue slipping between Tommy’s lips, and Tommy hitches a breath and shifts closer.

“Aw, guys,” Ray protests, catching his eye in the rearview when Tommy looks. “Not in the van, come on.”

“Fuck off,” Adam says, so quietly probably only Tommy can hear it, but it makes him laugh nonetheless.

“Not in the van, fine,” he says. He trails his fingers over Adam’s chest. “We should probably get some sleep, huh?”

Adam nods. He tightens his arms around Tommy, shifts him so close he’s practically on top of him. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he whispers into Tommy’s hair, and Tommy would say it in return if he could just get his throat to work.

He jerks into consciousness when the van begins to slow, Adam’s arms still loose around his back. It’s murky out, but bright, probably around eleven or so, but Tommy really couldn’t say for sure. A quick look around tells him that they’re at a gas station, Ray popping open the door with his wallet in his hand. Both Mikey and Gerard are passed out now, Gerard’s hand on Mikey’s thigh, both of them with their heads propped against the backrest and their mouths open. Tommy’s kind of impressed they haven’t woken up yet. Even Adam’s together enough that he blinks warily at Tommy, eyes narrowed into tired slits.

Frank, though – Frank leans across the divide between front seat and their bench and pokes Adam in the shoulder hard enough that it probably hurts. “You, fucker,” he says. “Get up.”

“You want me to drive?” Tommy mumbles. He clears his throat, but his teeth still feel all gummed together and gross.

“Shut the fuck up,” Frank says, “and go back to sleep. I’m just gonna borrow Adam here for a bit.”

“Why?” Tommy asks, and Adam echoes it, “Why?” with big eyes and a sense of trepidation dawning on his expression.

Frank, unswayed, rolls his eyes. “You’ll find out soon enough,” he says. “Come on. Stop that groping and get your ass out there. You’re gonna kiss my feet in thanks when we’re through.”

Adam doesn’t look particularly reassured, but he does slide out from under Tommy and scoots away after one gentle brush of his hand against the back of Tommy’s head. The seat is nice and warm and Tommy rests his cheek against it, breathes in Adam and is out cold before he knows it.

The next time he wakes up it’s because the car door slams with enough of a rattle to wake the supervisors back in Clarkenwell. It’s just Frank, though, hanging across the passenger seat to dig through the detritus littering the floor of the van.

“Dude,” Tommy groans.

Frank shakes his head. “I’m heading back in a minute,” he says. “You’ll get your beauty sleep, don’t worry.”

“You gotta piss again?” Tommy mutters. Fucking figures. “What are you, five?”

Frank pauses in his groping to grin up at him. “You better watch your moaning, dude. You’re gonna love me forever if this works.”

“If it works?” Tommy asks, but Frank just holds up two cardboard boxes with a satisfied “aha” and pops open his door. “Go back to sleep, dude,” he says, and slams the door shut behind him.

Tommy dozes off for another little bit and then he hangs around the van for a while, drinking a can of Pepsi he finds under the seat, but eventually curiosity (and his bladder) make him climb out and head for the restroom behind the minimart. It’s pretty crummy, as far as restrooms go, with dirty tiles and Sharpie all over the walls, but he forgets all about that when he sees Adam and Frank bent over the – cracked – sink, rinsing out Adam’s hair. Adam’s black hair, holy shit.

Adam meets his eyes in the mirror, hair dripping all over his collar, and smiles carefully. “Yeah?”

Tommy takes a step closer, silent, and waits until Adam turns around, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt.

“How’s it look?” he asks, reaching up to tug on a lock of hair.

Tommy swallows, and then he gives Adam a look that has Adam swallowing, too, so he’s sure his approval came across.

Apparently it did, because Frank, who has like, no sense of propriety, or common decency, seriously, looks from Adam to Tommy to Adam and claps his hands delightedly. “Excellent,” he crows. “Tommy, you’re next.”

Tommy can’t quite keep his fingers out of Adam’s hair. They seem to wander towards it of their own volition, creeping along the backrest and towards Adam’s shoulder even when Tommy’s staring out the window, watching mile markers go by. It’s not so bad, though, because Adam seems to have pretty much the same problem, hands always fiddling with Tommy’s new platinum-blond Mohawk, sliding through the leftover strands or scratching at his newly shaved skin.

“We’re so fucked,” Adam says finally, when they’re still 59 miles out of New York.

Tommy lets his head sink against the headrest and grins at him, loose and easy. “So worth it, though.”

Adam chuckles. His fingers slide behind Tommy’s ear. “So worth it.”

They make it to the venue in time with the setting sun. Mikey parks the van in a completely illegal back alley, right in front of the stage door, and he, Gerard and Ray head inside. Frank probably would have, too, but Tommy snags the back of his shirt and Adam blocks his escape route, draws himself up full-height and says, all deep-voiced and threatening, “Explain.”

It’s fucking hot, no two ways about it.

“We’re playing a gig,” Frank says, grinning wide.

“Like, My Chem?” Adam asks carefully. “’Cause all the gear was kind of a giveaway.”

“No, like, us. All of us.” Frank’s definitely bouncing now. “You guys are gonna open for us.”

“What?” Tommy asks, after a moment. Adam’s white, but he nods.

“You.” Frank pokes a finger into Tommy’s chest. “You on guitar, Adam on vocals. And then My Chem goes on and rocks the fucking house.”

They’re playing a gig. Like, him and Adam. It should probably feel overwhelming, terrifying, but it doesn’t. There’s a sharp jolt of nerves, but it’s the good kind, the Bring it kind. Adam and him, they’re gonna blow this thing out of the water.

Tommy grins, and when he looks over, Adam’s smile is just as wide.

“Sounds like a good time,” he says. “As long as you’re aware we don’t actually have any gear.”

Frank waves him off. “Tommy can use my guitar,” he says. “Or Ray’s. You’ll be fine.”

“We don’t even have songs,” Tommy adds.

Frank grins at him, quick and wide. “You gonna let that stop you?” he asks, dares, and Tommy finds himself smirking back.

“Bring it,” he says, nodding towards the van.

Frank grins wider still, saying something like “Fuck yeah,” on his way around the back, which is when Gerard comes back with a stocky guy with a kick-ass goatee.

“This is Monte,” he says. “He’s gonna help you guys out.”

“Hey, man,” Tommy says. He reaches for Monte’s hand. “Good to hear it.”

“Adam,” Adam says when it’s his turn to shake. “That’s Tommy.”

“Pleasure,” Monte says, smiling. “You boys got songs? Mikey said you’d mostly be doing covers, most likely, but if you’ve got anything original, we’re gonna need to run through it a couple of times so I can come up with a bass line.”

Tommy looks at Adam who says, “Covers. Our original stuff never really got beyond jam sessions in the guys’ basement.”

“Sweet, that makes things a bit easier,” Monte says. “You guys wanna write a set list? Nothing big, just five or six songs. And stick with the usual suspects, please – chances are high I won’t be a total pro at your favorite alternative indie rock band or whatever, and I think we all want this to go as smooth as can be.”

“You got it,” Adam assures him. He snags the hem of Tommy’s shirt. “Come on, Tommy, let’s figure this shit out.”

They sit in the van with a piece of paper and a pen while everybody else hauls the equipment inside, Adam on the middle bench with a roadmap on his lap for writing on, and Tommy facing him on the center console. Monte leans against the open door, smoking casually, and Tommy would totally bum one if he weren’t so keenly aware of the fact that he’s barely eighteen and rolled up without so much as a guitar, and Monte’s the kind of guy who can apparently make up bass lines to songs and then perform them on the spot.

Adam, the craving-free asshole, says, “We should do Kansas,” and writes that down underneath Queen and Bon Jovi.

“What about Nothing Else Matters?” Tommy asks. He rubs his hands together. “That sounded pretty good the last time we tried it, right?”

“Right,” Adam says. He writes it down. “We should do something slow, too. Monte, can Tommy have a cigarette?”

“Yeah, sure,” Monte says, digging one out of his pack, and Tommy reaches over blindly while attempting to hide his flaming face behind his newly-shorn hair.

“Thanks, man,” he mutters.

Monte hands him a lighter. “Do Smashing Pumpkins, if you can,” he says. “The kids here love them.”

Adam raises his eyebrows at Tommy. “Tonight, Tonight?” he asks. “Or Cherub Rock?”

“Cherub Rock,” Tommy says. He manages to smile at Monte. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, sure,” Monte says. He holds out his hand. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Adam’s hand finds Tommy’s while he reads, clammy and tight until Monte looks up and smiles a bit.

“One of the bartenders plays the drums,” he says, eyes flickering down their list. “He should know most of these, but if he doesn’t, we can just do acoustic sets for those instead.”

“Yeah, okay,” Adam says, reaching back for Tommy when Monte sets off for inside. He doesn’t slide their fingers together, though, just wraps his hand around Tommy’s wrist, and that should feel weird, maybe, but it doesn’t. Following the path Adam sets out on. It feels right.

The bartender who plays the drums turns out to be a scrawny guy called Isaac with a bandana around his forehead and a mouth full of sharp teeth, and the scar on the back of his neck when he turns to grab Monte a beer works wonders in getting Tommy to relax a little bit.

“Yeah, I can play these,” he says. He folds the paper between two fingers and holds it out for Adam to take. “Let me know when you’re about to go on. The bosses are already on my case about not feeding this lot,” he indicates the few kids already hanging around the venue, “enough beer.”

“Will do, man,” Monte says, rapping the bar twice with his knuckles before he turns away. “Alright,” he says. “Let’s do a sound check, and then we can go backstage and practice for a bit.”

“Sure,” Adam says, all forced lightness, but Tommy’s grin is totally real. New York City gig, what the fuck. As soon as he’s old enough, or has an ID that says he’s old enough, he’s gonna buy Frank a fucking boatload of beer.

The venue, when they finally have a chance to look around, maybe isn’t huge but it’s still a damn sight bigger than Desecration Row. It’s a similar concrete bunker with a minimum of breakable stuff around (and what little there is, already well on the way to broken) and a well-stocked bar in the back, next to the sound board. There’s a huge backstage area, too, apparently. There are three different dressing rooms and separate bathrooms for guys and girls, not that there are a whole lot of girls hanging out. Tommy’s never felt particularly scrawny, but all the overly muscled, tattooed, angry-drunk guys kicking around are enough to give anybody a complex.

Thankfully, Monte steers them safely around those and into one of the dressing rooms, with two snot-green couches that smell like feet, packed high with My Chem gear. Adam goes straight for Gerard’s make-up bag, peering critically at the worn-down stub of eyeliner.

“You want make-up, Tommy?” he asks.

“I wanna find Frank,” Tommy says.

Adam nods in response, like he expected nothing different, so Tommy figures he might as well prove him right and goes.

It’s not hard, either, finding Frank, but he’s busy setting up the stage with Mikey and a couple of people Tommy’s never seen before but who they both seem to know well. Tommy kind of wants to go say hi, to share their easy camaraderie, but he doesn’t know anybody and he feels kind of stupid and out of his depth and in the end, he sits down on a speaker and drums his heels against it until Frank puts down whatever equipment he’s carrying and comes over. He rests his forearms on Tommy’s thighs.

“Hey there, hot stuff,” he says, grinning. “Where’s your singer?”

Tommy shrugs. “Dressing room, I think.”

Frank nods. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he says. “Listen, Tommy, not that I don’t like you hanging out and all, but you should probably go hang out with Adam for a bit.”

“Why?” Tommy asks, trying not to sound hurt. Because he isn’t. Whatever, he doesn’t give a fuck.

“Because he’s probably talking himself a panic attack,” Frank says patiently. “I know this is all an old hat for you now,” and he grins when Tommy rolls his eyes, “but Adam’s never done this before and he could probably really use your support. So, you know, go forth and bond, or whatever.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy says, sliding from the speaker, and trying not to grin too hard when Frank gives his ass an easy smack. “See you later, kid,” he says, and laughs when Tommy flips him the bird on his way out the door.

He spends a bit more time trying to retrace his steps than he’d like to admit, but he manages, and he’s grinning like an idiot when he finally eases open the right door. The expression slides off his face quickly enough, though, when he sees the way Adam’s frowning at his hands where he’s sitting on a chair, the way he doesn’t even notice when Tommy edges into the room and closes the door behind him.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

Adam looks up, smiles, too quick and too wide. “I’m fine,” he says. “You?”

“Fine,” Tommy echoes, but he’s still looking at Adam, and Adam doesn’t look fine. To be entirely honest, he looks like he’s freaking the fuck out.

“Hey,” Tommy says quietly. He picks up Gerard’s make-up bag. “Wanna do my face?”

Adam smiles slowly. “Okay,” he says, and pats the other stool with one hand. “Sit here.”

It’s not until later, when Adam’s stretching one of Tommy’s eyelids with his fingers, liner poised, that he meets Tommy’s open eye for a split second and mutters, “Thanks.”

“Here you are,” Gerard says, pushing open the door all the way. “We soundchecked our gear already, so you guys are good to go too.”

“We could have helped,” Adam says. There’s already tension creeping into his shoulders again. Not that he was ever not tense, but going crazy on Tommy’s face seemed to have at least a calming effect.

“Gee,” somebody says from behind Gerard, and then pushes forward, making him stumble into the room.

“Shit, Mikey,” he says, but Mikey just shrugs, heading for his bag.

“So, you guys ready?” Gerard asks. He rubs his hands together.

“Um, I guess?” Adam sends a help-seeking look at Tommy before he spreads his arms and turns in a slow circle, showing off his jeans and t-shirt and glittery make-up. “How do I look?”

“Hm.” Gerard puffs up his cheeks while he contemplates Adam. Then he snaps his fingers. “Here,” he says, and before either Tommy or Adam, from the looks of things, have time to process what’s going on, he comes over and tears a giant hole into the seam at Adam’s sleeve.

“I-what?” Adam stammers.

“You wanna play a rock show, you gotta be a rock star,” Gerard tells him patiently. “So let’s add a bit of rock’n’roll.”

“Tart her up,” Adam says, lips curling upwards, and Gerard smiles a bit but it’s nothing compared to the smile Tommy can feel spread over his own face. He moves forward, getting to work tearing off Adam’s other sleeve while Gerard finishes his, and Tommy leaves his hand on Adam’s arm afterwards.

“You’re gonna be amazing,” he tells him, when Gerard’s attention gets distracted by Mikey muttering something about his bass.

“You think so?” Adam asks, biting his lip, but it’s not coy. Tommy knows him well enough to know that this is all Adam, only Adam, and he smiles before he leans in for a kiss.

“I know so,” he says when he draws back, and then almost gags at how corny he’s become, but at least the tentative smile on Adam’s face is a good sign.

By the time they’re side stage, Tommy is sort of desperately tempted to remind Adam of the time when everybody forced Tommy into playing a gig and then acted like he was freaking out about nothing. He feels bad for Adam, of course he does, but it’s also kind of weirdly hilarious to watch him jitter all over the place, fiddling with equipment and pulling at his clothes and getting on the sound people’s nerves.

Tommy’s nervous, too, but he tries to counter Adam’s hyperactive bouncing by sitting down on an amp and just chilling the fuck out, occasionally reaching out to snag Adam’s shirt and force him to breathe for a second whenever he paces by.

“Five minutes, guys,” somebody says, possibly the owner of the place.

Adam goes completely white, like, dead-person white, but thank fuck for Monte who just grabs one of the kids loitering around backstage and tells him to go get Isaac from the bar.

“Holy shit,” Adam whispers, more to himself than anybody. He’s close enough for Tommy to grab hold of his shirt, so Tommy does, pulling Adam to stand between his thighs and winding his legs around Adam’s.

“Just… chill for a second, okay?” he whispers. “You’re an amazing singer. You’re gonna be fine.”

Adam exhales forcibly, hot breath washing over Tommy’s shoulder where his shirt has slipped off. His arms come up a second later, bands of heat against Tommy’s spine, and he lets his hands slip underneath Adam’s shirt and lightly squeezes his hips.

Behind Adam, Isaac makes his way through the chaos, retying his bandana and stealing a set of drum sticks from the guy My Chem’s having play for them tonight. He catches Tommy’s eye and nods once before he goes to stand by Monte. They whisper quietly, and Tommy’s pretty sure it’s about them but he’s just as certain that it’s nothing bad, and when Monte tilts his head towards the stage and says, “Showtime, boys,” Tommy’s got nothing but good feelings about it.

Even Adam’s not freaking out as badly, or maybe he’s just showing it less now, slipping into a performance persona that’s growing calmer and calmer with every step he takes towards the stage.

At the edge of the stage, where they can already see the people pressed up against the stage, waiting expectantly, Adam stops and turns around. “I’m about to play my first gig,” he says, tugging at one leg of the jeans he’s got on, “and I’m not even wearing my own pants.”

“Nobody gives a fuck,” Tommy says in reply and pushes him out into the spotlight.

Adam turns back to him, a betrayed ‘What the fuck’-look on his face, but Tommy’s right on his heels, heading over to stage right to a few raggedy cheers from the audience. Monte sets up on the other side, giving a sharp nod to Isaac settling behind the drums, and then to Adam.

Go for it, he mouths.

Adam takes a deep breath and steps up to the mike. “Hey,” he says. He clears his throat. “Hi, guys.”

Someone in the first couple of rows whistles, but nobody else seems to be paying much attention.

Adam turns a helpless look on Tommy, a clear ‘what now?’ and maybe a whole bunch of ‘help!’ And Tommy would love to, he really would, but this is something Adam has to do by himself. Tommy maybe could step in, or Gerard would – he’s probably itching to get out here right now – but if Adam doesn’t do this by himself, he’s never going to. And maybe Adam’s not as vocal about it as Tommy is, but Tommy’s starting to get the feeling that Adam won’t survive in this world they’ve been thrown in any better than Tommy would. Because Adam’s been taught to roll over and play dead his entire life, but he’s not that guy, and this is his one chance to make it, and Tommy won’t be the one to take that from him.

So instead he just smiles, and drags his fingers through his hair, reminding him, and Adam’s grimace turns into a smile of his own.

“I love you,” he says, words caught by the microphone, but before the audience – or Tommy, for that matter – has a chance to react, he tugs the mike out of its holder.

“Okay,” he tells the crowd. “You all need to shut the fuck up right now.”

There are a couple of disparaging jeers from the back, but most everyone seems to lapse into startled silence at his words.

“Thank you,” Adam says sweetly, just as somebody in the back yells, “Why?”

“That’s an excellent question, honey,” Adam says, even though the person in question was definitely male. He lifts a finger into the air.

“Why should you stop jabbering and pay attention? Because this is our world premiere, and it’s going to be amazing, and really, when we’re huge, you’re gonna want to remember this moment.”

“Okay, Mr. Big Talker,” one of the girls in the front calls. She’s got a nose ring that’s so big it’s legitimately a bit scary. “You talk, you gotta walk it.”

“Oh, I’m walking.” Adam winks at her before he whirls around. “Livin’ on a Prayer. Isaac, count us off.”

It doesn’t take the crowd long to realize that Adam wasn’t just talking a big game. By the first chorus, everyone that Tommy can see underneath the glaring lights is yelling along, and by the last, Adam’s grin is so big it’d even put the Cheshire Cat to shame.

“Thank you,” Adam says over the last, fading chords. He bows slightly. “Our next song is Carry On My Wayward Son, you might have heard of it.”

One of the girls in the front row has a bright pink boa wrapped around her neck – apparently that’s a Thing, with Gerard – and she tosses it onto the stage when Tommy strums the opening chords, yelling “That’s my favorite song!”

Adam – predictably – loves it. He winds the boa around his neck, struts across the stage with it, ties it around Tommy’s wrist and tugs. It’s ridiculous, and Tommy definitely misses a couple of chords, he’s laughing so hard, but he obediently shuffles after Adam and gets several delighted cheers from the girls in the front for his trouble.

“Give it up for Tommy,” Adam laughs, once the song ends, and Tommy gets a couple of cheers. The front in particular seems pretty enthusiastic.

He waggles his fingers and bobs his head, and then looks down at the guitar in his hands. This is weird. Kind of awkward, and really weird.

“Tommy’s shy,” Adam confides in his audience, grinning at Tommy when Tommy’s head pops up. “You guys wanna try to loosen him up a bit?”

More cheers. Tommy hides his face behind one hand before peering at Adam through his fingers. He’s still grinning though, so that’s a hit.

“So!” Adam says. “This originally wasn’t on the set list, but Tommy loves Enter Sandman.” He looks back over his shoulder, making brief eye contact with Monte and Isaac who both nod. Tommy’s staring, but Adam doesn’t really seem to care. “Are you ready?”

They are, they definitely are, and Adam points at Tommy. “Let’s see if we can make him hit the floor!”

There are approving screams, and not just from the girls. Adam turns to Tommy and nods. “Take us away,” he says, and then he grins, slow and predatory and practically spelling out mine with his eyes.

Tommy’s so caught up in staring that he almost fumbles his first chord. Because it’s one thing to know someone has potential, and something else entirely to watch it unfold before your very eyes.

Adam winks at him before he whirls back to the crowd. “Sing it with me now!”

And they do.

Module 4 - Part 4

bad_peppermint — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:47:28 GMT

Tommy doesn’t see Adam in the corridors or at lunch, and he thinks for a panicky second that maybe Adam got caught sneaking back in and like, freaking expelled, before he reminds himself that there was no way he would have missed the rumors. Instead he asks Freddie, the guy Adam has Physics with third period, and Freddie says Adam has an appointment with his guidance counselor.

Which, man. Adam hates his guidance counselor, or maybe the counselor hates Adam. Either way Adam’s always a wreck afterwards. Tommy seriously couldn’t have picked a shittier time to blow up at him.

He twitches his fingers against his desk all the way through his last period and disappears before anybody can give him shit, heading straight for the dorms. He knocks on Adam’s door but nobody answers, which could mean something or it could not, so he goes back to his room and grabs a pen and a piece of paper. He slides a note under Adam’s door that just reads music room 3 and heads out to go exactly there, and get his hands on it if it’s free. The last thing he needs is Adam waltzing in on some picture-perfect Clarkenwell pair practicing Beethoven’s Duet with Two Obligato Eyeglasses, or something equally ridiculous and likely.

It’s free, though, and not even locked, and Tommy slips inside and pokes through the cabinets until he finds a guitar that he can fiddle with, tightening the tuning keys and running his fingers over the strings like Frank has taught him. He sits on the window sill and strums most of Our Lady of Sorrows, making up part of chorus when he forgets the chord progressions, but that’s the only part he fucks up. If Adam were here, he thinks idly, he’d totally join in, and it’d sound fucking badass.

Of course it’s not actually Adam that finds him, though. When somebody finally sticks his head in the door, it’s a head that’s too small, too curly-haired, too dark, and Tommy tries not to roll his eyes at the way Ryan Ross hovers in the doorway like some sort of freaky daylight apparition.

“Are we allowed in here?” Ryan asks, eyes wide.

Tommy shrugs, going back to fiddling with the keys.

Ryan takes a shuffling step closer. “Seriously. I thought the music teachers come and yell at you if you’re here after hours.”

“Nobody’s come to kick me out yet,” Tommy says. He manages a chord that sounds mostly right. “So.” He forces an expectant smile onto his face. “Anything I can help you with?” he asks, clearly meaning Get the fuck out.

Ryan shuffles a tiny bit closer. “Can you play that?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at the instrument in Tommy’s hands.

“Little bit.” The smile comes easier this time. “A friend of mine taught me a couple things, and I’ve been practicing.”

“Um.” Ryan’s gaze darts around the room before landing on Tommy’s eyes again. “Can you – teach me?”
Tommy feels his eyebrows twitch up. “You wanna learn to play the guitar?”

“Um.” Ryan looks down, crosses his arms. His entire face just seems to shut down. It’s kind of impressive. “Never mind. Just wanted to know what you were doing here.”

“What are you doing here?” Tommy asks back, watching with interest when Ryan turns bright red.

“Uh, I write,” he mutters. “Like, I go sit in the North stairwell. ‘Cause, like, nobody’s ever up there after class is over, you know?”

“Sounds chill,” Tommy says idly.

“Yeah, it’s.” Ryan bites his lip. “I like it.”

“There’s something to be said for solitude,” Tommy says, half-quoting, he thinks, even if he doesn’t know what, and Ryan nods. His fingers twitch, too, like maybe he wants to run along and write that down. Which, guitar-related bonding aside, would actually be kind of awesome, so Tommy really wishes he’d give in to temptation and get the hell out already.

Ryan, though. Ryan just takes a step closer.

“Tommy?” Adam asks from the doorway. He’s curled up into himself, and he looks stupid, like a giant trying to hide behind a house or something. But he’s here, and even smiling carefully at Tommy and Ryan, and that’s the only thing that counts.

Tommy tilts his head meaningfully at the exit and Ryan scrams, shuffling around Adam as quickly as he can while Adam’s still taking up the entire doorway.

Once he’s gone, Adam takes a tiny step forward. “I got your message,” he tells the floor.

Tommy nods, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He plucks at a string and then stares down at his hands, because this is ridiculous, but he can’t help it. It just figures that now Adam’s here, Tommy can’t come up with a single thing to say.

“Hey,” he finally settles on.

“Hi,” Adam says slowly.

Tommy pats the open space next to him in invitation, and then shuffles away a little bit when Adam comes and sits down. Their knees brush and Tommy jerks, and Adam frowns, and this. This just isn’t going like Tommy planned at all.

He takes a deep breath, all geared up for some big apology, and then deflates again. He can’t think of anything to say that would explain away how big of a douchebag he can be. He’s been thinking about how to say it all day, and had always comforted his idea-free brain with the thought that it’d all come to him in the moment, but now the moment’s here and he’s as clueless as ever. Class act, Tommy. Fucking A.

Adam keeps fidgeting, unimpressed by Tommy’s mental rollercoaster. “You wanted to see me?” he finally says, like Tommy’s his damn teacher or something.

“I wanted to apologize,” Tommy corrects/explains.

“It’s okay,” Adam shrugs.

But Tommy shakes his head. “It’s not,” he says. “I shouldn’t ever do that to you, and you shouldn’t let me.”

“So now it’s my fault?” Adam asks, but he’s smiling a little.

Tommy shakes his head again, violently this time. “It’s never your fault,” he says. “Shit like that’s not ever your fault.”

“Okay,” Adam says quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy says. Because sorry’s not enough, not by a long shot, but it’s the best he can do and Adam seems to get that, because he shakes his head gently and holds out his hand. Tommy folds his fingers between Adam’s, and Adam gives him his sweetest smile, and Tommy knows he’s forgiven.

They sit in silence for a while. Tommy has no idea what’s going on in Adam’s head, beyond the fact that Adam probably doesn’t hate him, so he nudges Adam’s side, and Adam smiles again but still doesn’t say anything for a long time.

“Does Ryan like you or something?” he finally asks.

“Seriously?” Tommy twists around to look at Adam’s pinking face. “First Daisy, now Ryan? Who’s next, Frank?”

Adam manages to smile through his embarrassment. “You have to admit that Frank has a pretty big soft spot for you. Like, the size of California.”

“Shut up,” Tommy mutters, feeling his own face heat up.

“And like, Ryan does spend half his time sort of creepily hovering around wherever you are, you’ve gotta admit that.”

“He does?”
Adam stares at him for a minute. Then he bursts out laughing. “Man, Tommy,” he says, shaking his head in a fond, you’re-such-an-idiot kind of way. “I really have nothing to worry about with you, do I?”

“I keep telling you that,” Tommy mutters.

“I think I’m starting to get it,” Adam murmurs, hushed, and kisses the side of Tommy’s head.

Tommy turns red. Which is stupid, because it’s just Adam, and Tommy reaches for his guitar again to keep both of their minds off it. “Hey, so. I think I figured out how to play Born to be Wild on this. Wanna sing it for me so I can check?”

Frank’s at it again when Tommy gets out of English.

Tommy doesn’t even notice him at first, preoccupied with digging for his Spanish workbook and simultaneously keeping an eye out for Adam, and it’s not until he hears some girl say “What are you doing at my locker?” that he looks up.

She’s taller than Frank is, glaring down at him, but from what Tommy can see, Frank’s still grinning happily when he offers her a flyer.

“The Mythology Club is having a recruitment meeting,” he says cheerfully.

She huffs. “Just… stay away from my locker, okay?” she says and stalks away.

“Bye now,” Frank calls after her. He rolls his eyes and digs a handful of crumpled folded up notes out of the pocket of the uniform slacks he’s wearing, pulling them apart and shaking his head after each one.

Tommy gets to his side just in time to catch the notes when they start to slip from his fingers. “Hey, Frank,” he says. “I see you still haven’t grown a brain.”

Frank unfolds another piece of paper, grin, refolds it and slips it through the slits into the huffy girl’s locker. “Come on,” he says airily. “Who needs a brain when you can have fun instead?”

Tommy unfolds one of the notes. It says Jenny thinks you’re a slut in messy cursive. The next says I know what test you cheated on, the one after that he’s lying to you ~your secret friend.

“You’re ridiculous,” Tommy says, even though he’s maybe, kind of impressed by the sheer size of Frank’s balls. “What if they haven’t cheated on a test, or don’t know any Jenny’s?”

“Then they won’t believe it,” Frank says, waving a dismissive hand. “But a couple of people will believe it, or at least become paranoid enough that they’ll start to see evidence for it everywhere, and then there’ll be drama to end all dramas.” He grins. “People love drama, Tommy,” he says. “Seriously, give them an inch of a reason for it, and they’ll happily go the mile themselves, and drag all their friends along with them.”

“You’re crazy,” Tommy says. “Seriously fucking crazy.”

“I know,” Frank says happily. “Here, check out this flyer. Gerard drew it, isn’t it sick?”

It is, in more than one way – all it says is Mythology Club Recruitment Meeting today! and the rest of the paper is covered in monsters tearing apart screaming men in old-fashioned armor and women in flowey dresses. Lovely.

“Gerard approves of your hobby?” Tommy asks.

“He doesn’t disapprove,” Frank says. “Keep one, though. I kind of want to start a Mythology Club just so we can use this as our poster.”

“I think you kind of have to go here to start a club,” Tommy says absently. It really is a kick-ass picture.

“Yeah, yeah, spoilsport,” Frank says. “Wanna help?” He hands Tommy a couple of flyers and a handful of notes and starts across the hall, almost colliding with Marc who has to pull his gym bag out of the way at the last second to avoid bashing it into Frank’s head.

“Watch it, faggot,” he growls.

“You watch it, dickhead,” Frank says cheerfully, and when Marc turns, incredulous expression half-formed on his face, Frank’s fist flies forward and catches him right in the nose.

Marc doesn’t go down, exactly, but he bends nearly in half with both hands on his face, and Frank grins. He throws a quick wink in Tommy’s direction before he strolls away, all casual-like, and Tommy could have gone on staring forever if Adam hadn’t suddenly appeared next to him and tugged on his arm, whispering, “Come on, Tommy, we gotta go,” with the widest grin spreading over his face.

On the twenty-ninth, Tommy calls his mom from the phone in the common room after classes, patiently waiting while she congratulates him and gets all teary-eyed over his he’s eighteen now, all grown up, she can still remember when he was just– and so on. She asks him about his day, about his plans, and he can’t really tell her how Adam showed up at his door early in the morning, grin mischievous and a little shy, and how they ended up making out for so long they barely made it to their classrooms on time. He can’t tell her about how Frank and the guys put them on the guest list for their gig at Desecration Row tonight, which doesn’t mean a whole lot considering there’s not even an entry fee but it still feels kind of awesome. So he makes vague noises about hanging out with some friends, about the Depeche Mode shirt Adam had his family buy and mail over, and asks how things are in LA instead.

“Well, you know,” she says, without really saying anything. “Mrs. Thompson brought over a pie the other day, that was nice. And it’s nice to have your sister around more, now. It was a little bit lonely with the both of you gone, you know.”

“Lisa moved back home?’ Tommy asks, and he can tell by his mother’s silence that she hadn’t meant to let that slip. “Why? She was all over that apartment the last time I talked to her.”

“Well, yes,” his mother says. He can hear her shifting in her seat. “It was just getting a little expensive, you know. There’s no real reason for her to pay all that rent when she can just live here with me.”

“But what about her job at the kindergarten?” Tommy asks. “Mom? What about her job at the kindergarten.”

His mother sighs. “I don’t want you to worry about all that, Tommy. It’s your birthday, you should be enjoying yourself.”

“Did they fire her?” Tommy asks. His voice is probably getting uncomfortably loud, and he drops it when a couple of people wander down the hall, turns away from them to face the window. “Seriously, what the Hell, Mom? She loves it there. They love her there. That’s fucking ridiculous.”

“Don’t swear, Tommy,” his mother says, sighs. She sounds tired. “There’s nothing you can do, so don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Something happened, Mom,” Tommy insists. “Come on, tell me what happened.”

“Tommy,” she says, probably going for stern, but Tommy’s stubborn “Mom,” just has her sighing again.
“Tommy, just let it go, please?”

“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Tommy asks. It’s all frighteningly clear all of a sudden. “They found out I’m a wolf, so they fired her.”

“Oh, honey, it’s not your fault.”

“Damn straight it’s not my fault,” Tommy bursts out. “They can’t do that, Mom, that’s illegal.”

Except it kind of is his fault, isn’t it? If he hadn’t been such an idiot at fifteen, his sister would still have her dream job and he wouldn’t be at this damn school and his mother wouldn’t sound like she’s forty-six going on ancient, God.

She’s quiet for a moment, long enough that he’s think they lost the connection if it weren’t for the sound of her breathing. Finally she takes a breath and says, “I just want you to have a good birthday, honey.”

And Tommy wants to say something snappy, something mean, something like, ‘how am I supposed to have a good birthday now,’ but she sounds so tired, and he’s so tired, so he just says “Yeah” and then doesn’t say anything for a while.

He’s still not exactly in a talkative mood when he meets up with Adam in the basement with Adam so they can head to the club together. Adam seems to pick up on that though, thankfully, and he stays mostly quiet, although he keeps darting quick glances over at Tommy when he thinks Tommy isn’t looking.

It’s not until they’re in the alley leading down to Desecration Row that he pulls Tommy aside and asks, voice hushed, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy says, with a wrangled smile he gives up on halfway through, and completely ignores Adam’s answering frown.

The guys are all waiting for them when they get into the supply closet posing as a dressing room, bursting into a surprisingly terrible rendition of the Birthday Song, and it’s enough to startle a laugh out of Tommy.

“Happy birthday, man,” they say, voices overlapping, and present him with a beer can with a burning candle stuck to the top.

“Thanks, guys,” Tommy says, managing a genuine smile. “This is awesome.”

Gerard immediately starts to tell him about all the difficulties they went through, finding an unopened can and then not drinking it until he got here, and Tommy nods along but he’s completely tuning him out. His mind keeps drifting back to Lisa, who he didn’t get to talk to because she’s working insane hours as a waitress to make a fraction of what she used to. Who had to leave her apartment to go back to living with their mother because she can’t afford her own rent. It makes him scowl, which makes Gerard falter in his story, so Tommy shows him his teeth and quickly says, “Uh-huh.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Frank pull Adam aside, frowning, and turns away before he has to see anything else. Okay, so he’s not exactly bad-ass company right now, but it’s his birthday, okay, his eighteenth birthday, and Clarkenwell maybe doesn’t set the bar particularly high when it comes to that, but he really could have done without the free-of-charge reminders of how his one big moment of stupidity fucked up his entire life and the lives of just about everyone he cares about.

He can’t resist a second glance though, just in time to catch Frank sending Adam shuffling away with a hand smacked to his back before he comes over, pushes Gerard aside and slings his arm over Tommy’s shoulders. He has to push up onto the balls of his feet to do it.

“Why are you so fucking pissy?” he asks. No foreplay, just gets right down to it. “You’re like, eighteen now. You can get tattoos! Buy your own damn cigarettes and not steal mine. It’ll be great.”

“Whoop-di-doo,” Tommy says.

Frank pauses, grows still in that weird way of his that always makes Tommy feel like he’s being subjected to Superman’s X-ray vision. “Okay,” he says. “This isn’t just your regular old turning-ancient blues. What’s up?”

Tommy looks away, and Frank squeezes his shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “Tell Uncle Frankie what’s wrong.”

“My sister lost her job because of me,” Tommy says. Quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but it really doesn’t hurt any less.

Frank quiets again, but it’s an angry quiet this time, tense and furious. “Because you’re a wolf?” he asks.
Tommy doesn’t even bother to nod.

“Fuck ‘em,” Frank says after a moment. “Seriously, fuck ‘em. I can’t wait for the revolution to mow those bastards down.”

“What fucking revolution?” Tommy asks bitterly, and then Ray’s pulling on Frank’s arm, saying, “We were due in stage thirty seconds ago, Frankie, Jesus Christ.”

They launch right into their first song as soon as Frank and Ray are in position, the kids in the front screaming in delight, and while Frank’s shredding with his usual enthusiasm, he keeps glancing Tommy’s way. When the last chords fade out, he takes off his guitar and leans it against an amp, ignoring the what-the-fuck looks the others are sending his way. The others minus Gerard, that is, who’s running through his usual welcome speech at the center mike.

He’s gotten as far as, “Hey everybody, we’re My Chem-“ when Frank’s suddenly right next to him, raising his voice to drown out the cheers.

“’Scuse me,” he says, ignoring Gerard’s wide-eyed look. “This is an unscheduled service announcement interrupting your current broadcast, because there’s somebody who needs to hear it.”

Somebody yells “I love you, Frankie!” but Frank just makes shushing gestures with his hands. A hush falls over the crowd eventually, and Frank pushes Gerard away from the mike before he plants his feet in front of it.

“I know you’re hopeless right now,” he says. “You’re so fucking terrified, trust me, I know. I can’t say I’ve been there, but I know where you’re coming from. I know how angry you are. I know how badly you want to hurt someone, just so you yourself will stop hurting.” He flicks his gaze downwards, at the rapt faces of the kids pushing against the stage, before he looks straight into the blinding lights. Tommy feels like he can see every single sweat drop bead along the line of Frank’s hair, even though he knows it’s just an illusion, but he’s so sure that he can almost taste the salty sting on his lips.

“You’re angry, and you’re scared,” Frank goes on. He fiddles with the stand for a moment. “But there’s one thing you’re not, and that’s alone.

“The world is full of kids like you.” He grabs the mike with both hands, and his words echo around the room, but the gaze he slants offstage is all for Tommy. “Kids just like you. Kids as lost and fucked up and angry as you. You’re angry, and you’re hurt, and you think you’re the only person in the world to feel that way, but guess what?”

The crowd roars at that, already anticipating what comes next, but Frank yells it out anyway. “You’re not!”

The yells only get louder, and Tommy feels his heart thump painfully in his chest.

“You’re not alone, you hear me? We know what you’re going through. We get it. We get it, and we’re here for you, and we’re going to change the fucking world for you.”

He turns, then, away from the audience to give Tommy his full attention and his biggest smirk. “Happy birthday, kid,” he says. “We got your back.”

When Tommy finally finds Frankie, he’s sitting on the roof of the van, drumming his heels against the rear doors and puffing smoke at the stars.

“Tommy!” he says, delighted. “Come on up, man.”

Tommy has to climb up over the hood and then balance across the slippery roof, which isn’t hard exactly but unfamiliar enough that it’s definitely out of his comfort zone, and he gratefully reaches for the cigarette when Frank hands it over.

Frank shoots him a look now and then, clearly pleased with himself, but he doesn’t say anything until Tommy’s smoked Frank’s cigarette down to the butt. Frank takes it from him and tosses it down onto the asphalt. Tommy shakes his head when Frank offers him another one, but when Frank sticks two between his lips, lights both, and then hands one off to Tommy, he takes it anyway.

“Fuck, man,” Tommy says eventually.

Frank grins, idly punches his shoulder. “I meant it, you know,” he says.

Tommy flops backwards, onto the van’s night-chilled roof, and stares up at the stars, so distant, so bright. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

The next night, Tommy sneaks out again, but he doesn’t sneak far. He finds their row of lockers, pausing to let his palm rest on the cool metal of the first one, and stares down the dark hallway. Then he digs the screw he liberated from the frame of his bed out of his pocket and sets to work.

Adam finds him in the boys’ washroom the next morning. Adam’s running late, as per usual – Tommy’s already showered and standing in front of the row of mirrors in his slacks and undershirt, shaving. He doesn’t startle when Adam practically bounces up next to him, though; he’s too used to watching for jocks that think it’s funny to make him cut himself by jumping out at him suddenly.

“Dude, it’s crazy!” Adam whisper-yells at him. “Have you heard yet?”

“Have I heard what.” Tommy lifts his chin, dragging the razor along the skin there, and meets Adam’s wide eyes in the mirror.

“Oh shit, you haven’t?” Adam makes bug eyes at him in the mirror.

“You gonna tell me what it is I’m supposed to have heard?” Tommy asks him.

“Like, with the lockers? Man, you’ve gotta see this, come on.” He pulls on Tommy’s arm. Tommy just barely manages to get the razor away from his skin.

“We should go to the guys’ tonight,” Adam declares, impatiently bouncing around while Tommy wipes cream from his half-shaved face. “They’ve so gotta hear about this.”

Tommy blinks at him, but Adam doesn’t seem to notice, and he barely gives Tommy time to snag his blazer and tie from the hook on the wall before he’s dragging him out the door.

“You guys are not gonna believe what happened,” Adam says before they’re even all the way into the basement.

Frank actually pauses his game. “What happened?” he asks. He twists around. “Dude, Tommy. What’s with the half-stubble?”

“Oh man.” Adam throws himself onto one of the couches. “Like, you know how you were pulling all of those pranks at school? Was that you? With the lockers?”

Frank blinks at him, and Adam shakes his head.

“Anyway, so, I guess last night somebody decided to copy you, or something, because-”

Tommy tunes out, here, digging around under the couch until he finds an unopened can of Coke that must have rolled there at some point in the last couple of days. He’d really rather have beer, but he also doesn’t want to draw to much attention to himself, and so he forces his attention back on Adam and a faint smile onto his face when it sounds like the story’s winding down.

“…and now, like, all the lockers have L’s on them and everybody’s freaking out, man, it’s crazy.”

“Fucking insane,” Ray agrees.

Gerard hums in reply, resting his chin on his fist, and then Frank gets Tommy a beer from the mini fridge, but neither of them actually says anything.

Tommy’s mom calls him one day and admits in a really roundabout way that they don’t have the money to fly Tommy home for Thanksgiving, and Tommy says it’s fine and not to worry, because what is he supposed to say, really? He manages to convince her he can go home with some friends of his, because he’s pretty sure Frank’s offer still stands, and by the time they hang up she no longer sounds like she’s about to cry.

“’Course,” is all Frank has to say on the matter.

Tommy grins, somewhat stupidly, and hides behind his beer. It’s not like it fixes anything – Frank’s awesome, and Tommy assumes his family is, too, but they’re not Tommy’s family. They won’t pretend to stab the turkey with manic grins before they start cutting it up, and they won’t hold a contest to see who can hang a spoon off the end of their nose the longest, and they won’t fight for the remote before the game starts. The thought of not being home for the holidays turns his stomach, especially because Adam’s going back, and sometimes he forgets that Tommy isn’t and starts to wax poetic about his mom and dad and brother and best friend back home and how amazing everything’s going to be.

But it’s not like going home is an option, apparently, so there’s nothing for Tommy to do but smile and remind himself that the other option is staying at school over the break. Which is just slightly more pleasant a thought than vacationing in Hell.

Nope, Tommy’d take Thanksgiving at Frank’s over Hell any day.

“Alright,” Larkner says, tapping the stack of papers in his hand with his finger. “This is your second test on Lycanthrophia, and coincidentally also your midterm. I trust I don’t need to remind anybody that it’s worth twenty-five percent of your grade for this term, but I do hope you’ve all been studying hard.”

One seat back and to the right, Tommy can hear Jesse scoff.

“Yeah, right,” he mutters, and Marc next to Tommy chokes on a laugh, but they both fall quiet when Larkner glares at them.

“No talking, no peeking, no notes,” he says. “And definitely no cheating. Trust me, you really don’t want something like that on your academic record, not unless your ultimate goal is to attend community college.”

He separates the top copy from the stack and lets it thud down on one of the desks in the front row. “Turn around on my mark only,” he says. “Good luck.”

Tommy’s not really the type to get nervous before tests, and he’s not this time either, not really. But usually his lack of panic is due to that low-level thrum of desire to not prove all the condescending bastards right. He still wants to do well, of course, for his mom and because failing tests always means mandatory tutoring that cuts into his bullshit-free time, but whenever he doesn’t, there’s a part of him that gloats at the fact that the poor little underprivileged wolf isn’t flourishing under Clarkenwell’s charity.

Today, though, today is different. Because Tommy knows this shit, this time. He knows it, and he actually kind of cares.

“Begin,” Larkner says.

There’s a rustle of paper when everybody flips their tests over, so Tommy does the same, and by the time he’s scanned the first couple of questions, his usual Zen has returned. There aren’t a whole lot of questions asking for an opinion – there never are, at Clarkenwell. Instead, it’s names and dates and freaking legislature, and Tommy may not be the best at paying attention in class, but he’s spent hours talking this shit over with Frank and rereading the essays Mikey photocopied for him at the local library until the ink wore off at the creases. He’s got this.

Jesse, apparently, doesn’t take too long to catch onto the fact. They haven’t even been working for more than two minutes – so far, the questions have been the name of the first World War 1 battalion to include wolves, the number of human casualties in the first wolf riot in 1954, and the topic of the latest wolf-related bill that passed in congress; easy – when somebody hisses “Move your damn arm,” and when Tommy glances over his shoulder, Jesse’s glaring at him.

“Boys?” Larkner asks from the front. Tommy whips his head around, meets the teacher’s frown for a full second and then looks down at his paper. He knows Jesse well enough to know that he’s gonna get his ass kicked after class if he doesn’t comply, so he obediently slides his elbow off the table and into his lap.
He’ll be damned if he’s gonna make this easy on the bastard, though.

The next question could be a or b – probably a though – so he clearly marks c for that one. The answer to question 7 is 1916, but that one’s obvious, so he crosses off the right one for that. Behind him, Jesse makes a pleased little noise, and Tommy presses his smile into the cuff of his blazer. He gleefully answers Budapest as the location of the first properly documented wolf at the time of his capture, and then flips the page slow and careful, giving Jesse plenty of time to catch up.

He finishes the test, Jesse copying his every answer, with quite a bit of time to spare, checking off December 19, 1976 as the date of President Carter’s first address on lycanthrophic integration with a confident swoop of his pencil. Then he turns back to the first page and sets about diligently going over his name until the lines are so dark they’re barely legible anymore.

Jesse holds out another couple of minutes, but as soon as Carlotta in the first row – she’s refusing to apply to anything but Ivy League schools – turns in her paper and heads for the door, he does the same. The second the door swings shut, Tommy frantically starts erasing all his answers and starts replacing them with the right ones. He still cuts it close, handing in the stack of paper with only two people left in the room and the eraser on his pencil worn down to a sad little nub, but whatever. It sounds crazy, but he’s starting to maybe get why Jesse and all those idiots like torturing them so much. There’s a sort of rush, a sense of sickly satisfaction at having screwed someone over and then gotten away with it. And yes, most of that is pure fucking pleasure at being the screwer for once, not the screwee, but it’s kind of amazing beyond that, too. No wonder Frank’s so keen on wreaking havoc all the damn time, if this is the way it makes him feel.

“What’s with you today?” Adam asks him at lunch, shooting a sidelong glance at the grin Tommy can’t quite manage to wipe off his face. “You’re all… smiley.”

“Just in a good mood,” Tommy shrugs, and ignores Adam’s choked-off little squeak when Tommy slides his hand between Adam’s thighs under the table.

The nice thing about being a social pariah is that Tommy is always one of the last to get picked for a team in P.E. – usually even after Fat Mike, whose stomach hangs over the elastic waistband of his gym shorts in a truly spectacular fashion. It’s great. There’s twenty-six people in his section, including him, so whenever they play soccer, four people get to sit on the bleachers and watch while everybody scurries around after some dumb checkered ball. Tommy loves that part. He gets to chill out with his fellow wolf Joey, far, far away from Fat Mike who refuses to even look at them. There’s a fourth member of their little slacker league, usually, ever-changing people who sort of hover awkwardly between the fat end of the bench and the wolf end of the bench, trying hard to not be associated with either and looking stupidly relieved whenever somebody comes over to switch.

Technically, there’s a third wolf in the class with them, but the guy in question, Sebastian Slaymeyer, is so stupidly talented at soccer that people pick him for their teams just because playing against him usually means losing. Sebastian tries out for the soccer team every year but, for some oh-so-mysterious reason, never makes the cut. He’s got the flu today though, apparently, so it’s just Tommy and Joey and Fat Mike glowering at everybody, and Joey’s a sweet guy who comes up with the best lines about their hardworking classmates and always shares his water with Tommy.

The not so great part about P.E. is that it’s Jesse’s free period, so him and his little gang come and stand on the far side of the field and glare and make threatening gestures that the coach pretends not to see.

“We’re not even doing anything,” Joey says after a while. “What’s so fun about mocking somebody who’s not even doing anything worth mocking them for?”

Tommy shrugs, and then cheers obnoxiously loudly when Tony Michaels steals the ball and sprints for a goal. Tony startles and promptly loses the ball again, and turns to give Tommy the stink-eye.

Tommy smiles back beatifically.

“Is that even your team?” Joey asks after a minute.

Tommy shrugs. “I don’t think I’m actually on a team,” he says. “I’m pretty sure they’d rather play with one man down than with me.”

Mitchell Something-Hyphenated hits the goal post and gets some slaps on the back. Across the field, Jesse mimes idiotic cheering while his cronies laugh.

“They dare each other to go out during the moon, you know,” Joey says. He nods his chin at Jesse and his posse of sheep. “Sneak out into the woods and stay there.”

“Fucking dumb-asses,” Tommy mutters. It’s not that he gives a damn about the stupid shit they get up to, not when they don’t try to turn him into their entertainment, but he still wakes up at night, sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his skin, remembering the weight on his back and the sharp, stinging pain at the back of his neck. If Jesse’s really willing to risk that actually happening to him, he’s even more of an idiot than Tommy thought.

Joey raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, well,” he says. He carefully untwists the drawstring of his shorts.

“They’re not the only ones getting up to that kind of shit, are they?”

Tommy cuts a quick glance at him, but Joey’s not looking at him anymore. “Oh,” he says finally.

Joey chews on his lip for a moment. “It’s dangerous, you know? That game you’re playing.”

Tommy somehow manages to smile through the adrenaline rushing through his system. “What game?” he asks, voice mostly wobble-free.

Joey gives him a look. “The thing is, I can’t even say I mind. Because I get it, I do, and sometimes I wish I had the balls you do.” He shakes his head. “And then I think you’re fucking idiots and gonna get yourself killed, and fuck everything up for the rest of us while you’re at it.”

They watch the ball make almost the entire length of the field twice before Tommy finally says, “We’re not trying to make life harder for anybody.”

“I know that,” Joey says. He smiles a little bit. “You could never be that much of a dick.”

“I’m not trying to be,” Tommy says. “But I can’t stop now. I don’t know if you understand that, but I know what it’s like now, what it can be like, and I can’t give it up anymore.”

Joey nods slowly. “Did you know that rats don’t start biting until after they’ve tasted meat for the first time?”

“So you’re calling me a rat,” Tommy says. He takes a sip of Joey’s water. “That’s great. Thanks for that.”

Joey laughs a little, but he catches Tommy’s eyes and nods once, and Tommy thinks he gets it.

Larkner keeps the stack of graded quizzes sitting on his desk in plain view until everybody’s fidgeting too hard to pay attention to him anymore before he relents and starts handing them out. Tommy’s practically drumming his feet against the floorboards, but it’s more anticipation than nerves. Larkner certainly isn’t helping any. He’s got the best poker face in the world, no lie, utterly straight-faced when he says, “97 %, Tommy, good job,” without so much as a twitch in his expression

Tommy replies with a quiet “Thank you,” dropping his gaze while he takes the papers. He can practically feel Jesse gloating behind to him, and it takes a shitload of effort on Tommy’ part to not burst out laughing pre-emptively.

He still sneaks a look over when Larkner moves to Jesse’s desk, watches the smirk melt from his face when Larkner says, quietly, “Come see me after class, please.”

He presses his mouth into his shoulder to keep them from hearing him snicker. Not even the death glare Jesse shoots him when Larkner moves on can put a damper on his good mood. He can’t fucking wait to tell Frank.

Tommy gets his ass handed to him in a bathroom during break, alone with Jesse while two of his cronies guard the door. He’s still grinning when they leave him to spit blood into the sink.

So worth it.

Adam, unsurprisingly, doesn’t agree. His voice rises nearly a solid octave when he comes by Tommy’s room later in the day, like he’s never seen Tommy with a shiner, what the fuck.

“You should have seen his face,” Tommy says, batting at Adam’s hands. “Fucking amazing. You don’t even know.”

“I don’t wanna know,” Adam says. He barely gives Tommy’s hands a chance to drop away before he’s got his fingers on Tommy’s jaw again, turning his head sideways to inspect the damage. He bites his lip. “Maybe you should go see the nurse.”

Tommy draws back, moves his jaw a bit. It’s tender and puffy, and he definitely got some strange looks in his classes, but it doesn’t feel like it’s broken or anything. He’s fine.

“We should go see Frank,” he corrects. “Frank and the guys.”

“I’m sure Frank’ll be very proud,” Adam says tightly.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “What’s with the bitch face?” he asks. “I’m the one who got beat up, not you, remember?”

“Oh, I remember,” Adam says. “Doesn’t seem much like you do, though, is all.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Tommy asks. His jaw feels tight when he scowls.

Adam’s bitch face is beyond epic. “You need to lay off, Tommy,” he says, his lips pinched into a thin, pale line. “I’m serious. You’re going to get yourself killed if you don’t lay off.”

“Just because you’re scared,” Tommy says hotly, but Adam cuts him off with an angry movement.

“Yes, I’m scared,” he says. “And if you had any sense in your stupid head, you would be too.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Tommy says. His initial surge of anger’s mostly gone now, replaced by a cold, insistent rage. “You say smart, I say sheep.”

“Wanting to survive my high school years does not make me a sheep,” Adam full-on yells at him.

“No, letting douchebag strangers dictate your entire life makes you a sheep,” Tommy shouts back. Fuck this noise, seriously. Fuck it. “And it’s not even like you don’t fucking know they’re doing it. You’re just too fucking scared to admit it.”

“Oh, save it, Tommy,” Adam says, face dark. “You really think I can’t tell when you’re terrified?”
Tommy scoffs, but Adam keeps right on talking.

“You act like you’re so tough, like nothing can touch you, but deep down, you’re freaking out just as bad as the rest of us.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Tommy says. It’s stupid, is what it is, and he’s stupid, and he won’t let his stinging eyes turn into anything else, so he reaches up and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as hard as he can’t stand it. “I’m not.”

“Oh, Tommy,” Adam says, voice going soft. “Tommy, come here.”

Tommy doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t, but he doesn’t resist when Adam takes his wrist and pulls him over to the bed. Adam glances over his shoulder as he sits on the edge and then scoots backwards, forcing Tommy to straddle his legs or break his hold. Tommy resists for a second before he chooses the former, but he won’t relax, staying up on his knees. He’s refusing to make contact, too, and Adam gives him a second before he sighs.

“Tommy,” he says. He lets his hands rest lightly on the backs of Tommy’s thighs. “I worry, you know,” he says. “That’s all.”

The way they’re sitting (or not-sitting), Tommy’s almost a full head taller than Adam, and he’s fully prepared to exploit that when he’s avoiding Adam’s searching look.

“You don’t have to yell at me,” he says.

Adam hesitates. “I was scared.”

And that, finally, is enough for Tommy to look away from the branches of the sycamore tree outside his window and meet his earnest expression. “I got beat up in a bathroom,” he says. “Okay? Nobody even knew where I was.” He chews on his lip, because that’s the best way he knows to keep his face from scrunching up and his nose from running. “You really don’t have to yell at me right now.”

Adam’s hands move lightly over the fabric of Tommy’s slacks. “I shouldn’t have,” he says. “I know that. Okay?”

After a minute or two, Tommy lets his legs relax, settling into Adam’s lap and ducking his head into Adam’s neck when his arms come up around him.

“I’m sorry,” Adam whispers.

Tommy doesn’t nod, because that would look stupid, but he still manages a muffled ‘yeah.’ “I’m sorry, too,” he says, and Adam kisses his head and rocks him gently back and forth.

So it’s not like things are suddenly easy. But overall, yeah, life is pretty good.

And then one day Frankie peers at him, bleary-eyed and sweaty-haired, from where he’s huddled underneath a mountain of blankets on the couch, and says, “Hey, Tommy, you play guitar, right?” and all of a sudden Tommy’s playing a gig. He never actually agrees to play a gig – in fact, he says no quite a bit, but Frank runs his awesome idea of not cancelling the show they have on Friday night and just making Tommy play in Frank’s stead by the other guys, and they all seem to think it’s a brilliant idea.

Like, brilliantly stupid, but nobody really cares what Tommy has to say. Instead, they talk Adam into bugging him about practicing their songs every single minute until day of, which aren’t really a whole lot, and Tommy spends most of them locked up in the music room with Adam as a look-out because what Tommy really doesn’t need right now is for a teacher catching him playing non-approved music and giving him detention until the turn of the century.

And then they’re almost late to the gig itself because Tommy gets caught by a supervisor tiptoeing down the hall and has to lie about going to the bathroom and gets told off for his jeans and has to go skulk around his room for half an hour before the supervisor finally decides to wander away.

Tommy thinks it’s a sign, personally, but Adam just frog-marches him off school property and towards Desecration Row without mercy. Which, seriously. What the hell. Adam’s supposed to be the reluctant one.

The guys don’t seem to be particularly surprised that they’re late, which is insulting but at least they’re not yelling at him, which is reassuring until Ray pushes a guitar into Tommy’s hands and tells him to warm up while Adam goes to check out the crowd. Which he does, because he’s totally a professional, or whatever. It’s not like he wants to fuck this up. But then he’s all done with his exercises and with running through the songs at twice their usual speed and he paces around the dressing room until Mikey and Ray both excuse themselves with some bullshit reason about checking the stage set-up or getting something from somebody or some shit like that.

It’s not like Tommy doesn’t know he’s freaking everybody out, but it’s not like he can help it.

“Dude,” Gerard finally says, peering at him over the top of some Superman comic. “Will you chill out, please? It’s gonna be fine.”

“You don’t know that.” Tommy swerves around and starts pacing the other way. “What if somebody recognizes me?” he protests, not for the first time.

“Then they’d actually have to admit to being here before they can get you in trouble,” Gerard says. It actually is the first time Gerard has deemed Tommy’s plaintive objections worthy of a reply. Maybe that means Tommy actually looks like he’s freaking out now, instead of just feeling like it.

Apparently he does, because Gerard leans over to give him a lazy push towards the bathroom. “Seriously,” he says. “Go splash some water on your face or puke or whatever. You’re paler than me, right now.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy croaks and stumbles away. He rubs his forehead and the back of his neck down with a wet paper towel and spits into the sink a couple of time, and then he clutches the porcelain with a white-knuckled grip and meets his own wide eyes in the mirror.

“I can’t do this,” Tommy whispers at his reflection. He hadn’t meant to say it – had meant to say, I can do this, but now the words are out of his mouth once he can’t not say them anymore.

I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this.

He almost jumps out of his skin when the door swings open, and Adam only takes one look at him before he’s by the sink, dropping the bag he’s carrying at his feet and running his hands over Tommy’s shoulders.

“Jesus, Tommy,” he mutters. “You look like you’re about to have a panic attack.”

Tommy shrugs, because he’s not so sure he isn’t.

Adam shakes his head. “Man, Tommy,” he says. “What are we going to do with you?”

“Not let me go on stage?” Tommy suggests, but the look Adam gives him suggests that that’s a completely ridiculous idea.

“Don’t be stupid,” Adam says. He bends down to pick up the bag. “You’re dying to go out there, and you know it.”

“Dying, yeah,” Tommy mutters. He nods at the bag. “What’s that?”

“What? Oh.” Adam puts it down on the counter and starts fumbling with the zipper. “Gerard actually suggested this to me,” he says. “’Cause you like his make-up, right, and you know how I’m always playing around with it.”

It still takes Tommy seeing the eyeliner in Adam’s hand for him to get it. “You wanna put make-up on me?” he asks.

Adam’s expression soothes into a smile. “Think of it as war paint,” he says. He pats the counter. “Come up here,” he says, “and let me work some magic.”

Tommy lets him, tries to follow Adam’s directions of “look up,” “mouth open,” “eyes closed” best he can. He twists his hands in the hem of his shirt to keep the rest of him still and Adam works quietly and doesn’t say anything when Tommy jumps at every bang and yell and crash coming from outside.

Finally he drags a thumb over Tommy’s cheekbone and eyes him critically, tilting his head to the side. After a moment, he grins. “I think I’m done,” he says. He drops the eyeliner into the case. “Go on, check it out.”

He takes a couple of steps back while Tommy slides off the counter and turns to face whatever Adam’s done to his face.

“So?” Adam asks after a while, when Tommy’s still staring. And he can’t quite seem to be able to stop staring, because holy shit. It’s pretty subtle overall, probably, not like, crazy swirls and color all over, but still. There’s dark eye shadow on his lids and thick liner around his eyes, and just a hint of gloss on his lips. It’s not much, really, but he still looks kind of. Otherwordly. Fey, if Tommy were the kind of person to describe himself like that.

“It’s okay?” Adam asks, shifting from one foot onto the other.

Tommy turns back around, away from his own reflection, and nods.

Adam clears his throat. “You’re gonna be fine,” he says. “You’ll see.”

Before he can think better of it, Tommy catches Adam’s wrist with his hand. “You’ll be there, right?” he asks.

Adam smiles, softly, letting Tommy draw him back in. “Front and center,” he promises. His lips on Tommy’s are soft and certain, utterly sure, and Tommy draws a deep breath into his lungs and thinks, This is happening.

The gig itself passes in a blur of oh shit oh shit oh shit and this is actually happening, what the fuck. He thinks he does okay, though, because Gerard and Mikey and Ray give him encouraging smiles every couple of verses and the crowd’s cheering rises in pitch when Tommy finally gets his bearing during the second-to-last song and dares to bang his head a little bit.

And then they’re walking off, and Mikey heads straight for the payphone backstage to tell Frank to chill the fuck out and everything’s fine, and Tommy stands there for a second, dazed and disoriented, and he has no idea if Adam was even there because he couldn’t see anything beyond his own two feet.
It doesn’t matter though, because Adam is right in front of him, catching his elbows and drawing him in for a hug. “That was amazing,” he crows right in Tommy’s ear. “You’re so fucking amazing.”

Somebody claps a hand down on Tommy’s shoulder and he turns and it’s Gerard, grinning at him. Telling him he did really well, but Tommy’s still half-deaf from the crowd and the speakers and can barely hear him, everything cotton-wrapped and unreal.

Gerard grins bigger still and says something to Adam, who tightens his hold on Tommy and says something that might sound like, “Maybe I should just take him home,” but then somebody they don’t even know crashes into them and yells, “After-par-tay!” and slings one arm over Tommy’s shoulder and hands him a bottle of vodka.

Tommy wakes up face down on somebody’s carpet, the short bristles leaving uncomfortable imprints in his cheek, with birds sitting outside. He finds a bathroom and retches for a bit, not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that everything stays down. There’s a sliver of grey-blue dawn visible through the milk glass window, and it takes Tommy a couple of minutes of staring out at it before he remembers that while it’s a Saturday and he doesn’t have a class to get to, it’ll still be impossible to sneak back onto school grounds once everybody starts wandering around, and there’s probably some game in the afternoon that they’re all morally obligated to attend.

Maybe he can find Joey and him and Tommy and Adam can all kick around at the top of the bleachers, looking just interested enough to keep the jocks and teachers off their backs.

He splashes cold water onto his face and rubs away the worst of the raccoon eyes his makeup has turned into, and then he goes to wake Adam who’s crashed out on the couch above Tommy’s make-shift bed, one hand hanging over the edge like he was reaching for Tommy in his sleep.

“Hey, Adam,” Tommy says oh-so-quietly. He curls his fingers around Adam’s shoulder. “Adam, wake up.”

Adam does, jerking upright with a quick intake of breath. He gets it faster than Tommy did, sleep-swollen eyes finding the window and the brightening sky behind it immediately before he falls back into the cushions with a heartfelt “Oh shit.”

They have to step over several conked out bodies in their search of the front door, and somebody even bats at Tommy’s ankle when he stumbles past, but they find a back porch eventually, and once they’ve picked their way past the rose bushes lining the side of the house, they even vaguely know where they are. There’s nobody around except for an overzealous kid delivering newspapers who gives them a suspicious look when he zooms by on his bike, and lots and lots of birds eager to express themselves.

After a minute, Adam finds Tommy’s hand with his. “I still can’t get over how kick-ass you are,” he says, grinning over at him.

It makes something warm blossom in Tommy’s chest, warm and comfortable, and he squeezes the fingers intertwined with his and lets that feeling carry him home.

Module 4 - Part 3

bad_peppermint — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:44:18 GMT

Nobody answers at 43 Millner Street, not even when Tommy pounds his fist against the window by the door. The glass rattles alarmingly, and Adam makes an attempt at a soothing “Tommy,” but Tommy’s not having it. Not right now.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Adam starts, but Tommy shouldn’t a lot of things and he’s tired of it. He silences Adam with a glare and folds his hands around his face to peer inside. There isn’t anybody inside but the back door is wide open, and that’s all the invitation Tommy needs right now.

“Tommy,” Adam grouses when Tommy steps off the porch and into the flower bed next to it.

“Shit, seriously?” Tommy hears him say, but then he’s around the corner of the house and Adam has to hurry to catch up with him, radiating disapproval but thankfully silent.

He’s right, the back door is wide open. There’s no sign of any crime though, past or in-progress, so he pokes his head in and whisper-shouts, “Hello?”

Nobody answers him this time either, but there are definitely voices coming from downstairs, and whatever. Frank said anytime, so anytime it is.

He wipes the worst of the soil from his shoes and tiptoes across the carpet and down the stairs, ignoring Adam’s steadily more pointed sighs. The basement door is open. This close, Tommy can make out Gerard’s voice along with a few others, and he steps all the way into the room before he hesitates.

“Oh hey, look, trespassers,” Frank says lazily. He’s lying sprawled out on the couch, taking up a lot of space for such a small dude, apparently deeply engrossed in drinking his beer and playing Madden at the same time. Tommy’s not sure what Mikey and Gerard and Ray are doing, sitting crosslegged in a circle on the floor, but it looks like a really, really vicious version of three-person Red Hands that somehow includes a set of cards.

At least Frank tucks in his legs a little bit so Adam and Tommy can squeeze onto the couch side by side. Adam, on the end, drapes his arm around Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy wriggles his arm between Adam and the couch and up onto his stomach. A moment later, he slides his hand underneath Adam’s shirt and gets a quick grin in return, and an eye roll from Frank, but Frank can suck it.

Somebody yells from across the room and then Ray’s scrambling back against the wall while the Way brothers roll around on the floor, not really fighting but still struggling for the upper hand, scattering cards everywhere.

Frank’s pretty unfazed by it all, lifting his feet right before Gerard’s back slams into the couch below them. Mikey manages to get on top for a split second, pining one of Gerard’s hands while his brother slaps at his torso with the other.

Tommy tucks his feet onto the pillow he’s sitting on, eyes drawn to Mikey’s back. The bite on his neck is hard to miss from this close, jagged scars where teeth tore the skin. It makes Tommy’s fingers itch to reach up and slide them across his own. It makes him wonder if Gerard is like this on full moons, too – if he rough-houses with Mikey then, if he can see past that tiny little elephant of a snag in treating his kid brother like everyone else when any minute, Mikey might lose grip and infect him, too.

It definitely doesn’t seem to bother him right now – he’s grinning like an idiot when he finally manages to get Mikey flipped around, and then digs his fingers into Mikey’s armpits. Mikey doesn’t really make a sound, even, which would be odd if it were anyone else, but he sort of writhes and flails and finally stills under the onslaught.

“Knock it off, Gee,” he says. Tommy can’t really tell if he’s amused or annoyed, and for a second he thinks Gerard will just keep going, but then the guy presses a quick kiss to Mikey’s forehead and gets up. He even reaches down a hand to help Mikey to his feet and Mikey doesn’t even try to yank him back down, which makes him a better person than Tommy and most likely Frank. Instead, he brushes at the knees of his jeans, pulls his t-shirt down where it’s ridden up past his hips, and heads for the stairs, giving the basement door a yank as he goes.

“Where are you going?” Gerard calls after him.

“To get ready for work,” Mikey calls back. “It’s not like I can get out of it just because I’m hanging out with jailbait.” The door swings shut and then bangs open again, and they can just see the last of Mikey’s legs and his battered sneakers disappearing up the stairs.

“You’re a dick!” Gerard yells, and then gives Tommy and Adam an apologetic shrug. “He’s a dick.”

“He’s right,” Adam says softly.

“Still a dick.” Frank grins.

“But.” Adam waves his hand between himself and Tommy, what the fuck. He can be all noble if he wants, but Tommy would totally kick him in the thigh for dragging Tommy into it, too, if Frank and Gerard weren’t both watching them.

“We’re like, high schoolers, you guys. You could get into so much trouble.”

“Yeah, ‘cause the weed and the underage drinking –“ Frank points at himself for that one “-and the occasional pills and the noise complaints are just no big deal at all.”

“At least you’re over eighteen,” Ray says. He doesn’t look at Tommy or Adam when he gets to his feet. “I’m gonna head out too,” he says. “Michaels at the grocery store said he’d pay me time and a half to carry all his heavy shit into the cellar.”

“You got it, man,” Frank says, apparently unconcerned by the nasty look Tommy sends Ray’s way. “Carry heavy shit. Go forth and be productive.”

“Maybe you can be productive, too,” Ray says, nudging a beer can that topples over with a hollow clunk.

“Never,” Frank exclaims. He presses his hands to his heart. “Why must you say such things?”

Ray rolls his eyes, but he’s totally smiling a bit while he collects his shoes and disappears out the door.

“Dick,” Tommy mutters under his breath.

Adam gives him a look, half shocked, half sympathetic, but neither Gerard nor Frank seem to have heard. Which is, you know, probably a good thing.

“Okay, wow, mood killer,” Frank says. “Who wants beer?”

“Frank thinks beer cures everything,” Gerard adds. He nudges Frank aside so he can sit down next to him.

“You can’t drown your problems,” Adam counsels wisely, which, what the fuck? Way to come off as a pretentious ass.

Thankfully, though, Frank just laughs. “But I can damn well try,” he says. “Cheers.”

“Do you have problems, Adam?” Gerard asks, leaning forward. He’s swaying a bit. “Because you can tell us, you know? We won’t judge.”

Adam gapes at him, eyes going big. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so painful. Or maybe it’d be painful if it weren’t so hilarious.

“Yeah, man, tell us all your problems.” Frank burps, laughs. “Except the gay thing. That’s not a secret.”

“Oh, you’re gay?” Gerard asks while Adam sputters. “That’s completely okay, I promise. My Chemical Romance doesn’t discriminate.”

“I, I,” Adam sputters. He shoots a help-seeking look at Tommy, but there’s no way Tommy’s getting involved in this. Adam’s on his own with this one.

“No, seriously.” Frank reaches over Tommy to bump his fist into Adam’s shoulder. “We don’t care who you stick your dick into, Adam,” he says. He waggles his eyebrows. “Or who sticks his into you.”

“Right.” Adam goes bright red, like, fire-engine red, but he manages a smile. “Thanks, Frank.”

“It’s all good.” Frank arches off the couch to fiddle with the twenty-four-pack sitting next to it, hanging upside down. Gerard slings an arm around his waist to keep him from tipping off entirely, but he doesn’t look too bothered. Eventually Frank resurfaces with a handful of cans stacked together between his hands, but he doesn’t actually move away, just settles himself more comfortably in Gerard’s lap before he holds out a beer.

“Have a brew.”

Tommy pops the top and drinks, pretends not to notice the fuzzy bubbles creeping up his nose, pretends not to notice how Adam’s mouth twists with reluctance when he takes his own can. Guy can take care of himself. He’s a big dude, he can handle it.

The next Monday, Mrs. Mackenzie hits them with a pop quiz that everyone except Tommy seems to know about it. It could be that she announced it last class when Tommy’s head was full of riffs and chords and the beat of drums, or maybe everybody else just practiced their poker face a whole bunch since the last test she sprung on them. Far more likely, though, is that somebody caught wind of the thing and let everybody know except Tommy, because why would anybody tell the resident freak anything?

Tommy ends up guessing a whole bunch of shit about Napoleon based on the timeline he vaguely remembers from last week, and squinting at the test sheet of the girl sitting next to him, and probably doesn’t do as badly as he could. At least he knows the Battle of Waterloo wasn’t in 1914.

It doesn’t help him any when he gets a – too well-aimed to be accidental – volley ball to the face in P.E. and has to sit out the rest of the class period and half of Spanish because his nose won’t stop bleeding. Adam comes to the nurse’s office during his break and sneaks him a Snickers bar and eats three of his own sitting next to Tommy on the cot, wide-eyed and pale. He flinches when Tommy elbows him in the side, and his smile is nothing more than tentative when Tommy says, “Hey, man, I’m fine, alright?” around the wad of tissues he’s pressing to his nose.

He manages to barely get out of lunchtime tutoring when he gets his History quiz back with a 76% inked at the top in stark red, thank fuck, and spends two seconds resolving to crack open his books again at some point before he heads over to Adam’s room to talk him into going down to see the guys on Friday or Saturday. Being in Clarkenwell is turning his brain into mush. He’s honestly not sure how he’s going to take all this bullshit much longer.

Adam hems and haws but finally his eyes catch on the bruising across the bridge of Tommy’s nose and Tommy knows he’s won even though Adam says he has to think about it.

Fuck thinking about it. If there’s anything Tommy needs to do, it’s to not think about anything.

“I think we’re getting good at this,” Tommy says when they get to Millner Street with only a minimum of scrapes and strained muscles to show for their troubles.

“Good at breaking the rules,” Adam says. “Great.”

“Would you rather get caught every time?” Tommy asks him, jogging ahead to climb the three steps up to the porch. There’s a crookedly torn sheet of notebook paper taped to the door.

Tommy&Adam – come on in, door’s open
sales people, cops, jerkfaces – fuck off

“Charming,” Adam says, hint of a smile hovering at the corner of his mouth.

“You like it, don’t lie,” Tommy says, reaching for the doorknob.

“Yeah, sure,” Adam says on their way down the stairs. “I like, totally love it. I can barely contain myself.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Tommy says. He’s got a headache, nothing major, but it’s annoying enough for him to reach up and try to rub it away. “God damn it,” he says. “I think Mrs. Mackenzie like, fucked with my brain or something. Feels like it’s melting.”

“Sounds gross,” Adam says noncommittally, and pushes open the basement door.

Only Gerard and Frank are there, Frank playing some fighter game on their PlayStation and Gerard half-melted into his couch, face buried in the cushions.

“Yo guys,” Frank says. “What’s up.”

Adam sits down on the couch, then gets back up again and gingerly removes an empty cookie tray from the seat. “Prep school is melting Tommy’s brain,” he says once he’s comfortably settled.

“Gee, really?” Frank doesn’t look up from his button-mashing. “Color me surprised.”

“Not just mine,” Tommy says, perching on the back of the couch and kicking Adam lightly in the side. “Adam’s just too chicken shit to actually admit it.”

“I am not,” Adam huffs.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “So you’re not bored out of your fucking mind doing Twinkle Twinkle or whatever in choir for the third year in a row?”

Gerard, predictably, pushes himself vaguely upright. “Choir?” he asks.

Adam shrugs and doesn’t look up. “Kind of,” he says. “I mean, I had some lessons in San Diego, and my teacher said I was pretty good, but obviously the choir teacher doesn’t quite agree, and who am I-“

“It’s retarded,” Tommy insists, cutting through Adam’s self-depreciating babble. He slides down into the seat. “He’s the best singer in our entire school, and he’s stuck in the last row because he’s got the gene.”

“The gene,” Frank echoes him, voice pitched all spooky and waggling his fingers before he cracks up.

“You can sing?” Gerard asks, undeterred.

Adam picks at the hem of his shirt. “Like I said…” he mutters.

Tommy slouches across the couch to kick his ankle. “He’s amazing,” he tells Gerard. “Seriously, make him sing something. Anything. He’ll blow your mind.”

“Sing Want of a Nail,” Frank says, like that’s even a challenge.

Adam hems and haws until Tommy elbows him in the side, and then he opens his mouth and delivers the chorus flawlessly. Adam likes to show off. It’s buried deep, underneath his lack of self-esteem and his self-consciousness and complete and utter terror of public embarrassment. So it’s no wonder that it took Tommy forever to figure it out, but. Adam likes attention. Positive attention. It makes him glow.

And he may deny it, but Tommy can see the pleased flush on his cheeks when Gerard nods, says, “That’s really good,” when Frankie whistles through his teeth. Tommy doesn’t say anything. He already knew Adam is awesome – he just has to make the rest of the world see it, too.

It ends up sneaking up on him.

It’s usually impossible for him to forget, for him to do anything but watch the symbols on his calendar steadily creep up to a complete, blank circle, but there’s so much going on and he’s having fun, he actually is for the first time in a long time, and he just totally forgets. He’s bumming around homeroom, trying to look like he’s doing his homework and half-watching the sun tilt down towards the treetops and when the lady on the PA calls for Anderson, Maria he actually wonders what she’s supposed to have done before the list runs down a set of familiar names and he remembers.

It’s like being dunked in ice water. Everybody’s eyes are on him while he shoves his book and notepad into his bag and heads for the door, for the cellars. Nate nods at him when he comes out of the gym and falls into step beside him, damp hair curling at the base of his neck, but they don’t speak.

Nate holds the door to the basement open for Tommy and some mousey little sophomore who comes up behind them to slip through. The door falls shut behind them with a hair-raising thud, one that practically spells out trapped and doomed forever. Sometimes Tommy really misses California and its flimsy architecture.

Adam’s waiting at the foot of the stairs, shifting from foot to foot. He manages a smile for Tommy, but Tommy doesn’t even have time to react, to mutter something reassuring, before Clarkenwell’s guard dogs shows up behind him and snaps at them all to get a move on. And then it’s time to strip down, eyes always on him, and shuffle around on the cold floor while the heavy lock snaps shut like it’s the door of a high security vault.

Tommy takes a deep breath. It stutters out as a sigh.

There’s not really a whole lot left for him to do at this point except pace around and wait for the sun to set. He hates this part, it’s always the worst. At least there’s a breath of fresh air sweeping in through the cracked-open window, though, and Tommy breathes it in for a moment, imagining himself running through the fields, feet/paws hitting the packed dirt, before he shakes himself out of the fantasy. It’s not gonna help him any if he turns into a total pussy while no one’s paying attention.

Instead, he turns and tries to peer out through the spy-hole. It’s pointless, which he knows because he does it every time, but he does it every time because it gives him something to do. It’s routine. It doesn’t even matter that he’s locked up in a dark, cold, lonely cellar with nothing to protect his feet from the cement below him and not even bricks to count to entertain him, because Tommy can still peer out that spy-hole like a motherfucking champ.

“Well, this is fucked up.”

Tommy whirls around at the sound of Frank’s voice, and there he is, the crazy bastard, peering through the window with his hands on his knees.

“What are you doing here, are you crazy?” Tommy whispers. He still edges closer.

“People have assumed so, yes.” Frank rattles the metal on the window a little bit. “So much for not shackling you to the wall,” he comments.

Tommy lifts his wrists into the air. “Shackle-free,” he says.

Frank nods. “Also buck-naked, and stuck in a three-by-three cell. Seriously, fuck this shit.”

“Nothing to fuck, either,” Tommy says, attempting a smile that Frank barely returns.

Instead, he mutters something about disgrace and something that sounds decidedly bloodthirsty, and then he kicks at the window hinge a couple of times. “Ready for a night of freedom?” he asks. “I think I can get this open.”

“What?” Tommy asks, voice flipping hysterically. “You can’t just let me out, Frank. It’s a full moon tonight.”

“I’m well aware,” Frank says . He bends down to peer at the damage he’s done. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“You’re going to shift, too,” Tommy remembers. “Shit, you need to get out of here.”

“I do, yes,” Frank says gravely. “I was thinking you might want to accompany us.”

Tommy’s eyes damn near bug out of his head. “What?”

‘”You want me to leave you down there to rot?” Frank asks, deadly serious, and no, Tommy doesn’t want that at all. He probably couldn’t even convince someone of that if he had to.

He shakes his head. “Get me outa here,” he says.

Frank nods, grins. “Stand back,” he says, and starts kicking at the window frame until it’s so bent out of shape that Tommy can squeeze past it with the help of Frank and a second hand that appears through the frame.

It turns out to belong to Mikey, Gerard’s brother. Tommy climbs to his feet and dusts himself off before he dips his head in Mikey’s direction. “What’s up, Frank,” he says.

“You’ve met Mikey,” Frank says, gesturing.

Mikey nods.

“You’re both completely fucked in the head,” Tommy tells them. “Seriously, I’m not kidding. You could get arrested.”

“You could get expelled,” Frank throws back. He crosses his arms. “Do you want us to stick you back down there?”

The sane answer is yes, but Tommy takes one look at the tiny window and the grey-tinted darkness beyond it and knows he could never actually ask to go back there.

“Fuck no,” he says, turning away and crossing his arms. He gestures at the next window over, entirely closed. “Adam’s down there.”

“Great,” Frank says, all teeth, and delivers a sharp kick to the bolt. He barely has time to attack it again before Adam’s face appears at the window, eyes startled and wide.

“Frank,” he mouths, inaudible through the pane.

“Hi Adam,” Frank says loudly. “We’re gonna spring you, if that’s okay?”

“What?” Adam mouths back.

Frank motions for him to stand back and aims a kick at the metal frame. Tommy really hopes those boots of his are steel-capped, because he really doesn’t want to have to deal with a bunch of broken toes tonight. Maybe he does, because Frank doesn’t even flinch, just kicks at it over and over until the metal’s loose enough for him to wrangle it out of the frame.

“Come on then,” he tells Adam, motioning.

“But!” Adam protests, even as he lifts his hands for Tommy and Mikey to haul him up. “What are you doing? We can’t just climb out! What if we hurt somebody?”

“We’re not gonna,” Frank says. He sounds so sure, so damn sure, that Tommy can feel himself relax into it. They’re not gonna hurt anybody. They’re gonna be fine.

Frank gives Adam a sharp yank to haul him through the window (he almost doesn’t fit) and then drops him to the ground, letting him land with a soft noise. Mikey lets go a moment later.

“There could be campers in the woods,” Adam insists, scrambling to his feet. “We’re not gonna be ourselves – we won’t have control. What if we eat them?”

“Wolves don’t eat people,” Frank says.

Mikey rolls his eyes in agreement.

“We hunt game, like every fucking wolf does. People only get hurt when they get caught in the crossfire, and anyone dumb enough to be out in the woods on a full moon kind of deserves it.”

Adam throws Tommy a help-seeking look, but Tommy just shrugs. He’s made up his mind. Adam can stay here without him if he wants.

“Maybe you won’t have control,” Mikey says slowly, startling all of them, “but we do.”

Adam blinks. Tommy can feel himself mirror the movement. “You do?”

Mikey nods. “We’ll keep you in check,” he says, tiny little smirk gracing his lips.

“Well then.” Tommy bounces on his feet a little. He thinks he’s picking that up from Frank. “If Mikeyway says.”

“Mikeyway says,” Mikey says, and then he turns and just starts walking away and they stare after him like idiots until Frank motions for them to hurry the hell up.

Mikey finally calls a halt in a thicket of trees that affords at least some kind of privacy when the sun’s already blood red on the horizon. He looks around a little bit and then starts stripping his shirt off, just like that, ribs showing as he stretches.

Tommy can see Adam gaping and he wasn’t want to do that, be that guy, but he’s already naked, so he turns and watches the sun disappear, sliver by sliver, and then it’s gone and the moon’s at his back and he can feel the shift creeping up his spine.

Usually this is where he fights, hanging onto his consciousness until it’s wrenched from him violently, but it’s different out here. Like this. It doesn’t feel quite as bad, as unnatural, out in a forest surrounded by three other naked guys who are all waiting for the same thing to happen to them. More dignified, perhaps. Less like a punishment, and more like a way of life.

He smiles at himself for that, because way to sound like a fucking hippie, and ducks his head when he feels his bones begin to change. Shifting doesn’t hurt. It never does – his body is designed for the changes now, after all. It feels weird, that’s all, skin stretching to accommodate his growing bones. The first time was weird, terrifying, but it’s almost normal now. He’s expecting this. He’s all prepared for his vision to blur, too, for his mind to go blank, but for some reason, it doesn’t.

He twists his changing skull around, looking for the others. They’re mid-shift, too, and Mikey’s got yellow eyes in a human face that are fixed on Tommy, bright and aware, and Tommy drops his head and shudders in confusion.

It’s never like this. Usually, Tommy’s mind just… goes away halfway through the shift, when he’s cowering on the floor so he won’t lose his balance but he can still see fingernails clawing at the concrete. He remembers snatches sometimes, the smell of damp and dark or the light of the moon through the window, but usually, he wakes up at first light, curled on the floor in a shivering heap, his mind blissfully blank.

This time isn’t like that. He still doesn’t catch all of it, but he catches some things. It’s disjointed, like a badly cut movie – he’s running, pads of his feet slapping against the moist ground; he’s surrounded by brethren, by friends; he’s splashing into a stream with a happy sound that can only be described as a yowl; he’s pouncing on a big, big wolf that he just knows is Adam, Adam who’s just as playful, rolling around the underground with him and trapping him with his paws, still careful in his victory.

For the first time since he crossed over, Tommy doesn’t wake up hating himself. Instead, the sight of the pink sky through the window, awkwardly bent back into shape, makes him smile. He pushes himself to his feet and looks himself over, but there aren’t any of the usual bruises and tears where he assumes he claws at the walls. The pads of his feet are sore and he has to stretch his hands a little bit, but he feels good. He feels great.

He startles at the sound of keys turning in the lock, and then footsteps, shuffling away, stopping every couple of feet. Finally they come closer again and then away. Tommy listens until the dull thuds that are heavy boots on the stairs have faded away completely, and then he eases open the door. His clothes are on the floor just beside it, where he left them, and while he’s squirreling into his underwear Adam pushes his own door open and reaches around for his uniform. He hides his body behind the wall, just a sliver of bare shoulder visible, but he somehow looks more naked for it than Tommy feels, standing there in just his skivvies.

But then Adam catches his eyes and this wide, exhilarated smile spreads across his face, and Tommy can’t help but smile back. He bounces around while Adam gets into his clothes and barely remembers to get his own pants on and shirt thrown over his shoulders. He probably looks ridiculous, and he’s not even offended when Adam emerges, impeccably dressed, and bursts out laughing.

“Come on,” he says, tugging on Adam’s wrist. It’s still only six or so – maybe they can sleep for an hour (two if they skip breakfast) before they have to get to class.

Tommy manages to toss and turn his way through a couple of disjointed dreams before his alarm goes off, and just barely gets himself dragged down to the classrooms before the bell rings. He stares blearily at the board during Spanish and copies down the homework off the girl next to him while she’s doodling hearts in the margins of her notebook because he can’t make out which part of the scribbled mess on the blackboard is actually important. In Bio, he gets back a B+ on a test he thought he’d fucked up and that’s actually kind of nice, but then he has Mrs. Sallivan and the day takes a sharp downward turn again. He dozes through her lecture until she catches him at it, snaps at him that he shouldn’t expect preferential treatment just because of the bracelet on his wrist and that if the rest of his classmates can stay awake, then so can he. One of the guys behind him kicks his chair when her back is turned, and Tommy pays attention after that, if only because he can’t unclench his jaw enough to go back to sleep.

Mrs. Sallivan gives him the evil eye when he stumbles out of the room, but at least it’s lunchtime now. He’s free for a whole forty-five minutes, which is pretty much a three-day-weekend at this point as far as Tommy’s concerned.

Adam waves at him when Tommy stumbles into the food hall, from Ryan and Freshman’s table. There’s enough space for three people between him and Ryan, so they’re probably not sitting together together, but Tommy’s got glassy eyes and almost falls over some chick’s bag on his way over, so he’s not really willing or able to contemplate the intricacies of the way Adam and the two others are sitting.

At least they all look just as wrecked as he does, and nobody tries to make conversation. Freshman almost falls asleep in his garlic pasta. It makes Tommy feel absurdly better.

He really wants to blame his state of near-delirium on what happens next, but that’s probably a lie. Just – Adam reaches for the salt sitting by Ryan’s elbow, and Tommy sees the way his muscles bunch and stretch underneath the fabric of his blazer, and his brain goes, hot. Which is completely ridiculous, and Tommy stares at Adam’s arm for a little bit, trying to figure out what happened that would warrant that kind of reaction from his clearly ridiculous mind.

Eventually, Adam notices him gaping and smiles uncertainly. “What?” he asks, salt shaker poised over his plate.

“Uh.” Tommy shakes his head. “Nothing,” he mutters.

Adam smiles then, bright and real, and an expression that used to be cute and nothing more now has Tommy’s mouth going dry. It’s fucking freaky, is what it is.

He pushes his chair back, mumbling something about getting something from his locker.

Adam just nods and gets up too, of course. He doesn’t say anything else while they walk, but he keeps glancing at Tommy, and Tommy doesn’t dare look again until Adam’s bent into his locker, pants stretching over his ass, legs long and lean, and Tommy’s brain promptly sputters out again.

Rationally, Tommy understands that Adam hasn’t changed. He’s still a bit pudgy and fidgety and a total scaredy-cat, but every time Tommy looks at him, he sees the wolf instead, mid-jump, stretched and graceful and so fucking badass.

Adam catches him looking again, after a while, flushing at the attention. He’s gonna have to get over that if he really wants to be a singer, Tommy thinks idly, and then tries to make himself be less obvious, but it’s hard. He obviously doesn’t succeed because by the time sixth period rolls around and they’re fiddling with their lockers again, shoving their books inside and, in Adam’s case, sweeping out all the little paper balls someone poured inside as a joke, Adam glances at Tommy every couple of seconds, looking increasingly twitchy every time. It probably doesn’t help that he always catches Tommy staring back.

“Seriously, what?” he asks after a while, dropping his gaze to the floor.

Tommy shrugs and pushes away, strides down the hall and tries to ignore Adam stumbling after him and pleading, “Come on, Tommy, tell me what’s wrong.” And then Adam’s scrabbling for his arm, tugging insistently. “Shit, Tommy,” he hisses. “Tommy. That’s Frank.”

It is, it actually is. Tommy thinks his eyes might bug out of his head. He blinks a couple of times, but it’s still Frank, wearing a Clarkenwell uniform down to the fucking shined leather shoes. He looks over his shoulder a couple of times, casually like he’s just waiting for someone, and Tommy probably would have bought the act if he didn’t know better. Then he gets out a tube of superglue, unscrews it, pops open the locker and begins to line the inside where the door matches up with the frame with the liquid, quickly and efficiently, across and down. He disappears the tube into his pocket, checks his reflection in the mirror on the inside of the door, snags a pack of gum lying on top of a stack of textbooks, and casually pushes the locker shut.

“He’s crazy,” Adam breathes next to Tommy’s ear, and much as Tommy would like to defend him, it’s really kind of the truth.

Frank still hasn’t noticed them, bobbing around on his feet, unsubtly looking around for something else to fuck with. “Hey, man,” he even says to somebody, and grins brightly when the guy gives him a startled look. God, Frank’s such a dumbass. He’s gonna get them killed. He’s gonna get himself killed.

“Yo! Frank!” Tommy whispers, once Frank’s not-friend is gone.

Frank turns, grinning wide when he sees them, and ambles over. “You guys caught that, yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah, we caught that.” Tommy shoves at Frank’s shoulder. “You fucking psycho, what is wrong with you?”

Frank looks a bit taken aback by that, but then he bounces on his toes and grins. “You just wish you had the fucking balls to do that,” he says.

The problem is, he’s not entirely wrong. But Tommy and Adam, they’re here on scholarship, and as fun as it would be to go around causing shit, Tommy can admit – to himself, if nobody else – that he’s too chicken-shit to risk getting thrown out. He just hopes no one hears his voice waver when he says, “You’re crazy.”

Frank shrugs. He looks around but the hallways are nearly empty now, everybody in their classrooms already, and he purses his lips. “You guys should take off,” he says. “Wouldn’t do if somebody noticed you missing and thought you had anything to do with that.”

He gestures vaguely over his shoulder at the superglued locker, and then he grins a bright, satisfied smile and shoos them down the corridor with his hands.

“I can’t believe that was your first time running,” Frank says around the rim of his beer.

“That was craaazy,” Adam says before Tommy can. He’s practically bouncing around on the basement’s ratty couch. “That was so amazing, you guys have no idea.”

“I’m pretty sure they were, you know, there,” Tommy says, but he’s grinning, because Adam’s right. It was insane. Tommy’s still flying high almost a week later.

“Yeah, but they do that every time,” Adam tells him, elbowing him in the side. “Dude, I’ve never been outside during a moon before. I can’t wait to do that again.”

“You will,” Frank assures him. “We’re not letting you wallow away in that dungeon up there anymore. Those days are over.”

“You’re gonna keep springing us?” Adam asks, grinning. His smile is a mile wide.

Frank nods seriously. “Until somebody stops us.”

“You’re insane,” Adam says, but he sounds delighted, and Frank grins.

“Certifiable,” he says.

“A doctor actually certified him,” Gerard adds, dry.

Honestly, Tommy wouldn’t be all that surprised. He tries to grin at Frank, but Frank’s not exactly grinning back. The expression’s there, sure, but something’s off.

“Hey,” Mikey says, distracting him by knocking a knee into Tommy’s. “Felt different, didn’t it?”

And that easily, all the overflow of feelings from the other day is back, making Tommy’s heart thrum in his chest. “It was incredible,” he says. “I’ve never remembered anything after the shift. Do you-” He chokes on his own spit in his excitement, has to pause and take a deep breath. “Do you guys like, remember it all?”

“Not all of it,” Mikey says. “There’s still a couple of hours that go missing sometimes. But most of it, usually, yeah.”

“You can train yourself to,” Frank adds. “We’ve both gotten better at it with time.”

Mikey nods. “And you guys have like, zero training whatsoever.”

“Training,” Tommy echoes. Well, sure. It’s not like he isn’t going to be stuck doing this every full moon for the rest of his life.

Frank cuts him a quick glance but then looks away, and then Gerard starts talking about how he kind of wants to know what shifting’s like – no disrespect or anything, just curiosity – and Mikey throws in something about Gerard’s drawings and how they kind of capture the feeling, and Adam’s practically wagging his tail in excitement when he asks to see them.

“They’re not, I mean,” Gerard says, but he’s already getting to his feet. “They’re upstairs, in my room.”

Adam bounds to his feet, shifting in place like a toddler who needs to pee, but Tommy kind of gets it. He’d probably want to see too if he wasn’t getting this bizarro vibe from Frank.

“You wanna come?” Gerard asks, Adam wide-eyed at his side, but Tommy shakes his head.

He lifts his beer can. “I’m good,” he says.

“Okay,” Gerard says. He shrugs and struts out the door, Mikey and Adam in his wake, leaving Tommy and Frank sitting there in silence.

“You can stop looking at me like that,” Tommy says after a while. “Anytime now, seriously.”

Frank shakes his head. “I can’t believe you let them do that to you,” he says.

“I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?” Tommy bites out. “It’s the fucking law, and it’s not like Clarkenwell is all that different from California, in that respect.”

“Oh, please,” Frank says. “You can’t tell me your parents locked you in a fucking dungeon every moon before you got here.”

“There are places around town you can go,” Tommy says. “Safety houses.”

“Prisons,” Frank says.

“Safety houses,” Tommy insists. “They’re to protect people.” He can’t help scowling. Yeah, those places had sucked, and Tommy hated them. But that was when everything was still new, when the shift itself was still terrifying, and at least the rooms were warm and comfortable and nobody watched him take his clothes off.

“To protect gene-free America.” Frank rolls his eyes. “Don’t try to tell me those fucking lock-ups are there to protect wolves.”

“And what’s so wrong with protecting gene-free America, huh?” Tommy spits. “What’s so wrong with making sure we don’t hurt anybody?”

“If they left us to shift in peace, we wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Frank hisses back at him. “Places like Clarkenwell are a disgrace to our kind, Tommy. I can’t believe you’re defending them.”

“You know that’s how I fucking got bit, right?” Tommy cuts in. “Because of some wolf running wild?”

Frank opens his mouth, jaw tight, but then he catches sight of Tommy’s expression and snaps it shut again. He looks down at his hands, but it isn’t in embarrassment or shame or anything. Tommy’s getting the feeling Frank doesn’t do shame.

“I’m gonna go upstairs,” Frank finally grits out, and then he gets up and walks away.

“Fuck,” Tommy murmurs, letting his head fall back against the backrest, and closes his eyes.

They never talk about it. Maybe that’s not the healthiest approach to the issue, but Tommy’s certainly not going to be the one to initiate a conversation about his feelings, and definitely not with Frank. So he just pretends like nothing happens and Frank does the same and after a while their forced easy interactions melt back into the real thing, easy and light and completely immature, and Tommy loves it. He really fucking loves it.

Tommy heads for the fridge the minute he gets into the basement. Adam, with his complete and utter lack of a survival instinct, trails after him uncertainly, not even getting the memo when the handle creaks alarmingly in Tommy’s hand.

There’s only two beers left; two beers and a bottle of vodka and a half-empty jar of hotdogs. Tommy takes the beer anyway. Whatever, he’ll leave a fiver on the table or something. They can always buy more, or like, most of them can. Tommy’s legally alcohol-free for another three years.

“Hey now,” Gerard says, pushing a half-open sketchbook off his chest.

Frank surfaces behind the couch, cobwebs in his hair and a couple of playing cards in his hands. “Hi guys,” he says. “Wanna play Uno? Loser has to do a grocery run.”

Adam grins, drifting closer to the couches and the pile of battered cards on the coffee table.

Gerard nods. He looks like he’d been asleep, or at least drifting in and out, for a while. “Mikey’s coming home soon,” he says. “And he said he’d kill us if we were still out of milk then.” He flattens his mouth into an I’m-not-scared line. “He can be kinda mean when he wants to be.”

Tommy has a hard time imagining Mikey as anything but carelessly agreeable, but he shrugs anyway. The beer can is crumpling in his grip, so he sets it down on the fridge before anyone notices.

Adam sits down on not-Gerard’s-couch and starts pushing the sticky cards into a somewhat orderly pile.

Gerard sits up and pats the cushion next to him. “Come sit,” he says to Tommy. “I’d make a comment about not biting, but that’s probably inappropriate, huh?”

Tommy shrugs again, perches on the edge of the seat. Adam tries to catch his eye but he turns his head away, too slowly to miss the look that passes between Gerard and Frank.

“You know what he needs?” Gerard asks Adam, nodding his head at Tommy.

Adam shakes his head. “What?”

“Tickles,” Gerard says, throwing himself across the couch, the quick movement startling Tommy almost as badly as the sharp fingernails digging into his ribs.

Tommy jerks away. “Stop it,” he snarls, and Gerard draws back with wide eyes.

“What the fuck,” Frank says. He pats himself down for his cigarettes and pushes the entire pack into Tommy’s hands. “Go smoke it off.” He points at the door. “Go.”

Tommy slinks out the door, trying not to feel too much like a little kid being sent to his room. He hates feeling stupid. And it totally is stupid, what he’s doing, but it’s not like he can just turn it off.

It wasn’t even anything big, really. Just Mrs. Mackenzie making some off-hand comment how werewolf history ought to be taught in their bio class, not hers, considering they’re, you know, animals, and then almost making Tommy leave the room when he disagreed, and then Adam saying “You sure know how to get yourself in trouble, Tommy,” and he’s had to physically unclench his hands several times on the walk over.

Just, since when is this his fault? Any of it?

He smokes the first cigarette too fast, feeling his lungs ache with the intensity even though his jitters are still there. He’s eyeing the pack, debating whether he should risk incurring Frank’s wrath by having another or just sucking it up and going back inside, when the front door opens and Adam eases onto the porch.

Tommy manages not to roll his eyes, but it’s a close call.

Adam gives him a little wave. “Hey,” he says uncertainly.

Tommy lights a second cigarette, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t.

“Seriously, what is up with you?” Tommy asks, once he can’t stand it anymore. “You’ve been acting like a weirdo all day.”

Adam scoffs a bit, like he’s thinking Oh, I’vebeen acting like a weirdo, and Tommy really can’t fault him for that, but he’s just mad enough to tell his conscience to fuck off.

“It’s not funny,” he says, “and I’m not in the fucking mood for games. So tell me whatever you came out here to tell me or leave me alone.”

“Seriously?” Adam asks, looking like he’s about to roll his eyes, but Tommy flashes a look at him, sharp and a bit mean, and he sets his jaw instead.

“God, you’re such a dick around these people, sometimes,” he says.

“I don’t act different here,” Tommy says. That’s a lie, kind of, but Adam’s still wrong. Tommy’s lighter, here. More like himself.

“Uh, yeah you do,” Adam says. “You act like you’re one of them, like we’re like them, but an act is all it is.”

“What are you talking about,” Tommy says, voice flat.

“You know what I’m talking about.” Adam’s gaze is sharp. “Tommy. We don’t belong here and you know it.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy says. He doesn’t mean to, it just slips over his tongue, but he has absolutely no desire to take it back. “Fuck. You.”

Adam flinches. He looks miserable now, and Tommy should maybe stop talking before he fucks everything up beyond repair, but he doesn’t.

“Maybe you’re posing around, but I’m not,” Tommy says. It’s like watching a replay of a soccer goal or something: He knows the words are coming, but he can’t do anything to stop them. “This is my life, okay, and maybe you’re too much brainwashed middle-class to see what the fuck’s going on here, but I need this, okay, I need it, and if you’re just here to rain on my parade, then you can damn well fuck off.”

“Tommy,” Adam says. He lifts a hand, hovers it awkwardly just shy of Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy can’t help but step back, slide away from the touch.

“Seriously, Adam. Just fuck off, please?”

Adam stares at him, eyes big and wet, and then he nods and goes inside and comes back a minute later with his shoes on, laces untied on one of them, and shuffles down the garden path and down the road and out of sight.

Tommy bites his lip. He’s tempted, really tempted, to run after Adam and apologize, but it wouldn’t change anything, would it? Tommy would still be annoyed, and Adam would be able to tell, and then they’d just have another awkward conversation and end up right where they started anyway. No. It’s better this way.

So he doesn’t run after him. Instead, he sits down on the porch and slides his legs through the gaps in the railing and lights up a cigarette.

“He do something to deserve that?” Frank asks.

When Tommy glances over his shoulder, Frank’s leaning against the porch door, arms crossed in front of his chest. His face is all in shadow, and his voice is completely neutral, and Tommy has no clue if he’s pissed or not.

“Yes!” he says, turning back to his cigarette before he looks back over his shoulder. “No. I don’t know.”

Frank smirks humorlessly. “No wonder the poor kid’s all confused,” he says.

Tommy doesn’t mutter to himself, but it’s a near thing. He doesn’t get why it’s always Adam that gets the sympathy. Or maybe he does, because he’s a giant sucker for those big, dark eyes himself, but he can’t deny that it can get really, really annoying at times. Or, like, all the time. And Adam doesn’t even know, is the thing – he doesn’t even get it, he just waltzes through life and everybody falls in love with his Bambi eyes and then everything’s fine.

“Sometimes he just pisses me off,” Tommy murmurs.

“So does Gee, sometimes.” Frank sways on his heels. “Doesn’t mean I go around breaking his fucking heart.”

“Oh, like you’ve never made him look at you with those teary eyes,” Tommy snaps, and then clenches his hands and breathes really hard because it’s not Frank he’s pissed at, it’s not, and he’s already done enough damage for one night.

“Just, I don’t know.” He rests his forehead against the sleeve of his shirt. “It just gets to me, I guess. The way he just rolls over and takes it. Like, there’s no fight in him. Not in him, or freaking Maria, or Ryan, or any of the kids at school. They all just sit and beg and roll over like they’re not secretly dying inside.”

“Maybe it’s ‘cause they don’t know any better,” Frank says. He plops down next to Tommy and sticks his legs through the railing. “You ever think about that?”

“They’re not five-year-olds, Frank,” Tommy sighs. “They fucking know better.”

Frank shakes his head. Tommy has a feeling it’s at him, not what he said. “You know something like 70 per cent of wolves are bred true, right?”

Tommy knows – he’s doing the module on it, isn’t he – but he has no idea where Frank’s going with that, so he just gives him a blank look. “So?”

“So,” Frank says, flipping open Tommy’s pack of cigarettes, “they have no idea what it’s like to not be treated like shit. There’s so many security systems in place now, and like, bite-proof clothes and shit, so unless you get the short end of the stick like you and Mikey, you’re either human or you’re wolf. People don’t cross over like they used to.”

He flicks on Tommy’s lighter, metal crackling, and lifts it to his mouth.

Tommy rubs his sleeve over his forehead. “Will you just get to the damn point already?”

Frank drops the lighter in Tommy’s lap. “What I’m saying, you smart-ass, is that maybe they don’t know that they can fight the system. Hey, I got lucky with my folks, but you said Adam’s been raised believing he’s inferior. And maybe it bugs him, but that doesn’t mean that somewhere, deep down, he doesn’t believe it. And the other kids at your school, they’re not exactly the social elite, are they – they’re from shit backgrounds, they have issues coming out their ears, and being a wolf is just one more factor in all the reasons they’re worth less than everyone else.”

Tommy blinks at him for a moment, breath caught in his throat, before he shakes his head and manages a shaky grin. “Man, when’d you get so deep?”

Frank stares at him. Then he laughs. “It’s a side effect of hanging out with Gerard,” he says. “Occupational hazard.”

“I can see how that would happen,” Tommy admits. He rubs at his forehead again. “I just,” he murmurs. “I just don’t think I can take it a whole lot longer, you know?”

“You won’t have to,” Frank says, utterly self-assured. “We’re on the brink of revolution, anyway.”

Tommy scoffs.

“Seriously.” Frank takes Tommy’s cigarette from his fingers and takes a long drag. He waves his hand, casually, like it isn’t a big deal. “We’re on the brink of something huge. Maybe those fuckers at that school of yours don’t want you to know that, but we are. New York City, there are riots every night. In Portland, three people died during protests after a werewolf got elected onto the city council, but she’s still on it and holding her fucking own. Even the Heartland’s starting to turn sympathetic. It’s fucking massive, this thing.”

Tommy takes a drag from his cigarette to hide the fact that he is, in fact, fucking speechless. “Why don’t I know about any of this?” he asks, and Frank rolls his eyes, and then Tommy rolls his eyes, because yeah, he knows, but what he’s really asking is why aren’t people shouting it from the fucking rooftops?

“Because they’re scared,” Frank says, when he asks. “The humans are scared they’ll get lynched by the freaking oppressed and the wolves are scared they’ll get their heads bashed in, and really, it’s not like you’re announcing to your dictator principal that you’re breaking her rules every other night.”

“It’s not that often,” Tommy mutters, for lack of anything better to say.

Frank scoffs and doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, fine.” Tommy cuts him a glance. “I’m gonna go and like, apologize. Tomorrow. Okay?”

“Peachy,” Frank says, straight-faced.

Tommy figures that’s as good as it’s gonna get.

Module 4 - Part 2

bad_peppermint — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:41:27 GMT

The music, when they finally make it to Desecration Row, tense and still riding high on adrenaline, is even louder than the last time. They’re here later than the last time, too, though, so maybe that has something to do with it. There’s even a bouncer this time, a gigantic bald dude in camouflage shorts, but he doesn’t do more than nod at them when they squeeze past.

There’s a bit more of a crowd this time, too, pressed up against the stage, hands extended towards the singer. Tommy’s too far away to get a good look at his face, but that voice sounds pretty damn familiar anyway.

He reaches blindly back for Adam’s hand, dragging him with him when he pushes closer, and he can tell from the way Adam’s fingers tighten around his when Adam comes to the same realization.

“Are those the same guys from last time?” he asks, right in Tommy’s ear.

“I dunno,” Tommy says, even though he’s pretty sure they are. He definitely remembers that orange hair.

“Wow,” Adam says, and Tommy turns back to him and shrugs.

“I don’t really know how many bands Ricker Hill has to offer,” he says.

“Enough to warrant a venue,” Adam points out, and yeah, okay, point.

“You wanna get in there?” Adam asks, tilting his head at the jumping crowd of punks.

“Are you telling me you want to?” Tommy asks, eyebrows climbing high.

“No.” Adam grins a little bit. “But you kinda look like you need to work off some steam, so.”

Put like that, Tommy doesn’t need telling twice, and he doesn’t waste any time dragging Adam into the fray. They lose each other for a bit but bump – literally – into each other in the pit, and Adam wraps his arms around Tommy and pulls him back a bit. Which sucks, because uncoordinated jumping and the occasional burst of pain was kind of the most alive Tommy’s felt ever since the shift, but he’s not willing to sacrifice Adam’s arms around him to get that back, so he leans back against Adam’s solid chest and drags his attention back to the stage.

The guitarist with the crazy hair’s doing a solo at the moment, so the singer’s wandered off, making moon eyes at the redhead. And then he just kind of… He slides his finger into the tiny dude’s hair and just fucking kisses him, right there, like it’s no big deal, and Adam’s breathing is hot and heavy and startled in Tommy’s ear and Tommy stops bouncing around for a second because holy shit, he didn’t see that coming.

“Wow,” Adam says, and Tommy would say the same, he’s even moving his lips, but there’s no sound coming out. Just wow.

Tommy’s sweat-soaked and still a bit speechless when the set is done. He figures he even kind of deserves it when Adam takes a good look at him and starts laughing, so he’s not even scowling too hard when Adam drags him over to the bar and orders both of them a coke. Tommy’s not even through half of his before a couple of people starts cheering again; looking over, the singer’s just emerged from backstage, slapping shoulders and giving out hugs to the people he recognizes.

He ends up chatting with a few girls with crazy hair for almost twenty minutes, not that Tommy’s paying attention or anything, before the rest of the band emerges.

That guy – the guy from the band, the one who told Tommy he was a fucking boy scout – nods in their direction, but he heads straight for the bartender instead of coming over. Tommy is vaguely annoyed, and a bit relieved, at the lack of attention. It doesn’t last long, though, because then Gerard – Gerard the singer - comes over and nudges the guy next to Adam in the back and says something along the lines of, “Worm wants you backstage,” and then he slides onto the barstool when the guy Worm supposedly wants backstage abandons it.

He waves a hand hopelessly in the bartender’s direction, who doesn’t notice because he’s fixing up a drink for the guitarist, and Gerard slumps for a moment before he notices Tommy looking. A moment later, a smile appears on his face. “Hey there,” he says, holding out his hand at a really funky angle. “I’m Gerard. Way. I sing for My Chem.”

“Yeah, we know, dude,” Tommy says, but he still reaches over Adam to squeeze Gerard’s hand. “I’m Tommy. That’s Adam.”

Adam gives a little wave before he wraps his arms back around his midriff. He’s a social caterpillar, seriously.

Gerard smiles, though. “You guys enjoy the show?” he asks. “Today was a good one. Everybody was all into it, it was great.”

Down the bar, when Tommy looks, Frank’s throwing back his drink. He says something to the barkeep, slides a bill across the bar and grins, quick and easy. Then he looks over and makes an I’m watching you gesture at Tommy, creepily intent.

Gerard laughs. “You caught Frank’s attention,” he says to Tommy. “Don’t ask me how. Fucker’s got a memory the size of a gnat.”

“We talked for a bit after the last gig,” Tommy says. He flinches when he catches Adam’s – totally deserved, okay, fine – elbow in the ribs. “For, like, a second. I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

“Frank doesn’t hate anybody,” Gerard says, waving off his words like they’re ridiculous. “He’s just an angry dude.”

“Yeah, and he hates me.”

Gerard just shakes his head, smirking a little bit. It’s kind of annoying. “You’ll see,” he says mysteriously.

Tommy manages not to roll his eyes.

Gerard grins brightly in return and turns to draw Adam into a discussion about the current band, carefully coaxing him into answering in more than single syllables and blushes. Tommy stares at the bottles of liquor lined up above the bar and lets the adrenaline fade into exhaustion. He zones out trying to decipher the small print on one of the labels and almost tips off his stool in shock when Frank’s suddenly at his elbow, gesturing something at the bartender before he leans into Gerard and presses a quick kiss to his temple.

“Hey, man,” he says to Tommy, all casual like, and Gerard grins at Tommy over Adam’s shoulder all See? See? What did I tell you? Fucking smart-ass.

“Hey,” Tommy says to Frank.

The other guy takes a beer from the barkeeper and gulps down a long swallow before he asks, around the neck of the bottle, “Make any old ladies happy recently?”

“Only your mom,” Tommy says, ignoring Gerard and Adam’s puzzled expressions. Instead, he makes hopeful eyes at the bartender who snickers and shakes his head. Ass.

Frank, though – Frank grins and smacks Tommy on the shoulder before handing over his bottle. “I like you, man,” he says. He turns to Gerard. “Gee, Ray says to tell you we already packed up, and thanks for the help.”

Gerard smiles innocently, and Frank half grins, half rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, dude. I’m gonna go, Jamia’s waiting for me backstage.”

Gerard makes a tiny noise of amusement, and Frank slides his hand across his chest and toddles off, all five-foot-something swagger, fist-bumping somebody in the diminishing crowd before he disappears.

“Jamia?” Adam asks Gerard.

Gerard twists his mouth ruefully, like it’s a question he’s used to getting but not one he really likes answering. “His girlfriend,” he says.

“But you,” Tommy says, like a dumbass, gesturing up at the stage.

Gerard smiles a little bit. “Nah, he just likes to fuck with people. Making out with another guy at a punk-slash-metal concert is right up his alley.”

“People here don’t like that?” Adam asks hesitantly.

“They don’t really care much one way or the other, as long as the rhythm’s right.” Gerard shrugs. “But there’s always some asshole who just can’t keep his mouth shut, and Frank sure has a good time shutting it for him.”

“That’s… good.” Adam picks at his fingers, like, really fucking obviously, and if Gerard hadn’t ferreted on to the fact that Adam’s worried about himself liking dick, he definitely knows now.

But Gerard just grins and pats Adam’s arm. “People here are cool, Adam,” he says. Then he leans forward and adds, surprisingly earnestly, “And if anybody gives you any trouble, you can tell us, okay? We want you to feel safe here.”

It sounds a bit too much like an after-school special to be honest, and Tommy can feel his eyebrows rising up of their own accord, but Gerard’s smile is nothing but innocent. “And you, too, Tommy, of course.”

“Thanks, man,” Tommy says, but he doesn’t roll his eyes. It seems unnecessarily mean, especially when Gerard apparently legitimately wants to make them feel better. Instead, he drinks his (Frank’s) beer for a bit. He even offers the bottle to Adam who takes a sip and makes a face before handing it back. Gerard happily drinks a stoplight of shots the barkeeper pours for him and washes them down with a BudLight. Tommy kind of wants to down his beer, too, but it’s the only one he’s gonna get his hands on tonight, looks like, and he doesn’t want to choke on it and like, actually prove that he has no idea what he’s doing.

So even though he jumps, he’s also kind of relieved when Frank calls “Yo, Tommy,” from across the room. He’s holding up a pack of Viceroy’s, the cheap kind. “We’re going for a smoke, come on.”

Tommy tries not to show his panic when he pushes his beer at Adam, slides off the stool and makes his way across the sticky floor, soles catching with every step, and towards where Frank’s got the fire door pushed open with one hand. From close up, Frank’s lips are kiss-swollen and red, and he’s got a red spot on his neck that’ll no doubt turn into a hickey by tomorrow, and even if all of that wasn’t enough to tell Tommy what he’s been up to, the smug smile on his face would give it away.

“Jamia doesn’t smoke?” he asks when they’re outside, Frank spinning away to fiddle with his cigarettes. It probably comes out more awkward than casual, but Frank only grins.

“Nope. She’s a smart cookie, that one. Refuses to join me in my quest for cancer.”

“That’s… pretty smart, yeah,” Tommy says, and feels like an idiot.

Franks flicks on his lighter and looks up at him, smile sharp in the orange light. “Yeah, well, we’re guys. We’re supposed to do dumb shit and put our life in danger.”

“Modern-day chest-thumping,” Tommy offers, and Frank laughs.

“What’s your name, Gorilla-Boy?” he asks, and Tommy mutters “Tommy,” and he nods.

“I’m Frank,” he says.

“Yeah.” Tommy gestures over his shoulder, even though that’s the wrong way. “Gerard told us.”

“He’s a blabbermouth,” Frank says easily. He comes and pushes at Tommy’s shoulder before he offers him his pack. Tommy takes one on autopilot, stuck on the fact that Frank only comes up to his nose. It’s freaky but nice. It’s actually kind of cool to not be the shortest guy around.

They smoke in silence for a while, before Frank stops and gives Tommy a considering look. “So, like,” he says, in a tone that immediately has Tommy on high alert. “Tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

It comes out kind of flat, and Frank raises an eyebrow before he says, “So, like, Clarkenwell’s a pretty fucking posh place, yeah?”

Tommy doesn’t even dignify that with a reply, just nods.

“So, like.” Frank spreads his hand, cigarette gleaming between two fingers. “What are you doing down here?”

Tommy blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, dude, that you’ve got everything you fucking want up there, and you’re risking it all for a bunch of fucked up kids playing a shitty club. And like, this place rocks, don’t get me wrong, but just – why?”

Tommy laughs. He can’t help it. He tries to keep it in, keep it down, but it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s heard in days, weeks, possibly his entire life. He tries to take a drag from his cigarette when he can’t make himself stop chortling and ends up choking on the smoke, and while he hacks, Frank’s expression goes from annoyed to concerned.

“Dude, chill,” he says. “Seriously. It wasn’t even that funny.”

“You have no idea,” Tommy chokes out, but he takes the half-full, luke-warm bottle of water Frank pulls from the back pocket of his jeans and uncaps for him. A long, slow mouthful helps a bit, and he takes another one before he hands the bottle back.

He tries to straighten a little, compose himself, and then he says, “Frank, if there was one place that I would nominate for fucking hell on Earth, it would be that school, okay?”

“Seriously?” Frank asks, freezing with his cigarette halfway to his mouth.

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “What, you really think I’d be here if I was all about trumpeting the company line?”

“Guess not,” Frank shrugs. “Most everybody who goes there seems to love it, though,” he says, and gives Tommy the eye again.

And fuck it. If Frank’s gonna shun him for having the gene, Tommy would rather find out now than think Frank’s a chill guy for the longest time and then have to deal with the fallout.

“We’re not exactly everybody’s favorite person,” he says, challenging. Ask me, he dares him.

When Frank does arch his eyebrows, Tommy lifts his hand into the air and jiggles the bracelet around his wrist.

“Well fuck that,” Frank says, pushing up his sleeve to show the rubber band around his. “If I cared what people think of me, I would have put a bullet in my head a long time ago.”

“I care,” Tommy says baldly. “I’d kind of like it if they didn’t put a bullet in my head, you see.”

“You might be onto something,” Frank says, mock seriously, punctuating the words with a stab of his cigarette in Tommy’s direction. He loses it mid-motion and stares at the butt on the ground dejectedly for a moment before he lights another one. “So what brings you to New England, Tommy?”

“Um.” Tommy’s a bit thrown by the small talk shit, but Frank motions for him to go on, all curious eyes.

“Carsberg, actually,” Tommy says after a minute. “You know, that thing in L.A.?”

“That wolf that got fucked up by those ghetto kids, or whatever?”

“Lynched. Yeah.” Tommy’s not the type to get nightmares, but even he had trouble sleeping after that news footage – the kid’s nineteen-year-old face, fucked up and distorted into a Quasimodo grimace, boot print on his pale neck. Paul Carsberg. “Shit went on for a while after that. Like, people getting beaten up, people smashing shop windows, burning cars. My mom wanted to get me out of there.”

“You got bit, then?” Frank asks, dark eyes flickering up to Tommy’s neck.

Tommy nods. “Yeah. We have like, zero money, but Clarkenwell has some scholarship program for underprivileged werewolves, or some shit, so.” He shrugs with one shoulder. “Adam’s kind of the same, with the riots and shit, except he’s bred true, right, so he did his freshman year here, too.” He’s itching to rub at the back of his neck, but he stuffs his hand into his pocket instead. “We started at the same time,” he says.

He watches Frank take a couple slow drags from his cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the cold air. Finally he tilts his hand away and says, “So, you’re like, recently crossed over.”

“January 12th,” Tommy says. He doesn’t even hesitate. “Three years ago. Shit.”

“Shit,” Frank echoes. “Man, I can’t imagine what it’s like not to turn.”

“I wish I didn’t know what it’s like,” Tommy says. He didn’t mean to, and he regrets it the minute Frank turns grim eyes on him, but it’s the truth. His life officially went to shit the night he snuck out to get fucked up on the playground with the two guys from next door. Werewolf snack. He’s spent every day since then wishing he’d just been a fucking good boy and stayed at home. His mother’s freak-out had been nothing compared to the way Tommy had beaten himself up about his retarded decisions.

Frank, though, looks at Tommy like Tommy’s a total weirdo for saying something like that.

“What?” Tommy finally asks, when the silence draws on, long and uncomfortable.

But Frank just shakes his head. “You should come by our place sometime,” he says instead. “43 Millner Street. We usually just chill there when we’re not playing a gig.”

“43 Millner,” Tommy repeats. He’s gaping a bit, but he thinks that’s kind of justified, given the circumstances. “Just, like, whenever?”

“Whenever,” Frank agrees easily. “But not before noon. Like, normal-people time, okay?”

“Okay,” Tommy agrees, probably sounding as dazed as he feels.

Frank throws a quick grin his way before he ducks backstage, and Tommy goes to find Adam and maybe freak out a little bit, because holy fuck.

They almost get caught sneaking back in. They spend forever breathing each other’s air in the second stairwell because there’s somebody wandering the corridors, given away by the way their steps echo on the linoleum. When they finally make a break for it, somebody calls “Hey!” and Adam disappears into his room and probably dives straight under the covers, and Tommy ducks into the bathroom and waits in a shower stall for what feels like hours and even hides his jeans and shoes underneath the sink so he can walk back to his room one floor up in just his t-shirt and boxers and pretend he was just going for a piss if anybody catches him wandering the halls at night.

Nobody catches him.

And he’s happy, like, seriously happy about that, but at the same time, there’s’ something startlingly like disappointment curled in his chest. Like, things are different now, right? Everything’s so different now. Tommy feels like somebody else, somebody new, and he wants to shout it from the rooftops but he can’t. He’s a bit like Alice, maybe. He’s gone down the rabbit hole, and he can’t even tell anyone about it.

Instead, he gets to drag his ass to his usual classes and talk about the same stuff they talked about the last time, with the same people, and he gets about two periods in before he gives up on pretending to be the same Tommy and just spends most of Spanish dozing in and out of consciousness. He hates his classmates and the teacher most of the time, and sometimes he even hates his hetero-normative, white-bread textbook. But he really hates the language itself, and he makes it a point to always be the first out the door.

Usually he meets Adam by his locker, but he’s not there today, and Tommy’s fiddling with his books and stalling for time when he hears the laughter.

He lifts his head, but completely in the wrong direction, considering the only person he sees is a girl at a locker two down from Adam’s, marked with a clear L in the top corner, and she looks like could not possibly be further from laughing right now.

Tommy doesn’t know her all that well, but Clarkenwell is small enough that Tommy remembers most names and faces; hers is Daisy, she’s a sophomore, and she’s got just enough weight on her bones to give her awesome curves and an amazing rack. She has History with Adam and always blushes when a teacher calls on her, no matter if she’s wrong or right.

It’s too bad Tommy isn’t particularly interested in girls, because Daisy’s cute. Like, really cute, with a button nose and bright eyes and long blonde hair that spills over her shoulders and down her back. Being interested in her would make Tommy’s life a whole lot easier.

As it stands, Tommy’s more interested in tall and ginger-haired and dorky. It’s ridiculous, but it is what it is.

“Hey, Tommy,” she says, catching his eyes. The paper in her hands vibrates for a moment before she closes her fingers tightly around it.

“Hey.” Tommy takes a careful step towards her, and it’s not until someone giggles in the vicinity again and Daisy flinches that Tommy realizes what’s going on. There are a handful of pretty girls – probably not cheerleaders, but stupidly attractive anyway – crowded against one of the lockers, making faces at themselves in the mirror stuck to the inside and occasionally at Daisy down the hall.

“’L’ for ‘ugly,” one of them snickers, far too loudly not to be intended to hurt. They all break into obnoxiously loud laughter at that, and then they head off for lunch, probably to eat salads with low-fat dressing and make cow eyes at the football players.

Daisy looks down at her feet, arms closing tightly around her chest, and Tommy crosses over to her and reaches out to put a hand on her arm before he even thinks about it. He never thinks about it, what it must be like for her – she and Maria are the only female wolves at the school (again, they match the statistics perfectly – there are 2 female wolves to 15 males) and Tommy thinks that maybe it’s worse for her. He doesn’t think they get smacked around as much, but. Girls are cruel.

Daisy raises her head slowly, and fuck. Tommy doesn’t have to be a genius to understand that sheen of silver in her eyes.

“They’re bitches, Daisy,” he says. He even manages a smile. “Okay? You’re not ugly.”

She drops her head again. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not lying.” He makes a noise when she shakes her head, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Look at you, okay? You’re gorgeous.”

She shakes her head again, but she’s smiling now. “You’re a good friend, Tommy,” she says before she walks away, and Tommy blinks after her for a moment. He’d always thought Adam was his only friend, but maybe – maybe they all have to stick together however they can.

“Hey,” Adam says, knocking on the door Tommy’s left ajar. He hovers in the doorway and doesn’t come inside.

Tommy scoots closer to the wall and pats the bedspread next to him. He hadn’t been doing much, just staring at the wall, imagining a day when he’s made it big as something and nobody can tell him what to do anymore, and if anybody’s mean to his friends, he can just hire a bunch of bruisers and take them around the back.

It’s a good fantasy, if a bit childish, and he’s been occupying himself with it for almost – forty minutes now, according to his alarm clock. He tries to remember if he and Adam had plans, if that’s why Adam’s come looking for him when he probably should be doing his homework or studying for Chem or something, but Adam doesn’t look mad, so maybe not. Guy can’t hide a sulk for shit.

“I waited for you,” Tommy says after a while, when Adam apparently can’t quite manage to open his mouth. He smiles in retrospect so it sounds less like he’s nagging. It’s not like he particularly minds that Adam didn’t show up. It’s just unusual.

“Um. Yeah.” Adam drums his fingers against the doorway. “Choir ran over.”

Tommy rolls his eyes. “Seriously, get in here,” he says, patting the bed again. “Stop lurking, you freak.”

Adam still takes forever to come inside and close the door behind him, and Tommy has to prompt him again before he actually takes a seat on the bed. It’s enough to make Tommy feel anxious, and he still hasn’t the slightest clue what’s actually going on.

“Come on,” he says – whines – after a while. “What’s up? Tell me.”

Adam takes a deep breath, deflates and blows air out his nostrils. Takes another breath. “I heard about that thing with Daisy.” He stares intently at his hands. “That was – sweet, of you.”

Jesus fuck, this school is the most ridiculous gossip mill there is, and barely anybody even talks to them.

“You would have done it, too,” Tommy says.

Adam shrugs. He still won’t raise his head. “Maybe. I hope so.”

Yeah, okay, maybe Tommy isn’t as convinced as all that, either. Whatever. But the way Adam’s acting it’s like something’s really wrong, and it’s freaking Tommy out. He can’t be smooth when he’s freaking out.

He elbows Adam in the side, finally, when he can’t take the silence anymore. “Seriously,” he says. “What’s up with you? You’re being all twitchy and shit.”

Adam twitches again. “Do you, like – like her.” It comes out flat, telling in its lack of emotion, and Tommy can’t believe they’re actually having this conversation right now. What are they, twelve? Fuck.

But, well. There are the butterflies, so apparently they really are. Twelve.

Still, Tommy slides his fingers between Adam’s to stop them from fidgeting, and then just kind of ends up leaving them there. “Daisy’s not who I want,” he says, heart in his throat, but Adam just kind of smiles jerkily before he ducks his head to hide his face. Tommy can still see his ears turn red.

“Okay,” Adam says quietly. He sounds pleased, though, and Tommy squeezes his hand once before he leans back against the headboard and goes back to dreaming about better days.

September spills over into October before they know it. Towards the end of the month, Adam gets lunchtime detention for completely bombing his physics midterm (‘tutoring,’ not detention, technically, but the overall effect is the same) and Tommy eats his lunch in his room for a while before he gets tired of it. Then he goes to sit with Ryan Ross and his crazy-haired buddy Ian, two freshmen with gleaming bracelets around their wrists, and even though they don’t talk, Ryan spends the whole time watching Tommy out of the corner of his eye.

It’s not until the first Friday of October or so that Adam finally has another quiz, gets an 86% and is let off the hook, and Tommy celebrates by dragging them both downtown to hang with the guys. 43 Millner Street is easy enough to find, even if Adam bitches under his breath the entire way down there (and the twenty minutes Tommy spends trying to remember if it’s left at the footbridge, or straight ahead) about how much trouble they’re going to be in if someone ferrets on.

“Would you relax?” Tommy snaps finally, hand already raised to knock on the door. “Nobody’s gonna fucking ferret on if you just stop being so god damn twitchy.”

He brings his knuckles down on the wood before Adam can say anything else, try and talk him out of it, before Tommy can talk himself out of it, and he hears Adam suck in a sharp breath, and then he waits.

It feels like years.

Adam shifts at his side, half impatient, half terrified. Tommy lifts his hand again. One more time. He’s going to knock one more time – that’s okay, right? Not too pushy? Two tries, and then he’s going to go home and it won’t feel like he’s stumbling home with his tail tucked between his legs, and Adam won’t say anything like ‘I told you so.’

Then he hears slow, shuffling footsteps inside, and quickly drops his hand.

The door swings open a moment later. “Oh.” Gerard blinks. “It’s you guys.”

Tommy nods, trying hard to ignore the I-told-you-so look Adam shoots him from the corner of his eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “Frank said it was okay for us to come by. Whenever.”

“We’re waiting for pizza,” Gerard says. He blinks again, and then seems to remember that they’re all just standing around in the doorway and takes a step back. “We’re drinking beer,” he adds. “You can have some if you want.”

“That’s okay,” Adam says, before Tommy has the chance to elbow him in the side.

Gerard shrugs. “Whatever you want, man. It’s all okay with me.”

They bob their heads and shuffle past him awkwardly, into a surprisingly nice living/dining room area with tan carpets and light-colored wooden chairs and table. There are framed pictures arranged on the mantle and cute porcelain animals sitting in the half-empty bookshelves, and it’s just as well the rooms are empty, because Tommy could not imagine Frank kicking around here in a million years.

“The guys are in the basement,” Gerard says, gesturing at the stairs. He locks the door after peering hopefully down the street and motions for them to follow him down the narrow, carpeted steps, around a bend and through the only open one of three identical doors.

As nice and middle class as the upstairs is, this room is kind of a shithole. There are two saggy couches and a TV and a coffee table covered in beer cans and sticky rings where more beer cans used to be, grimy plates and empty take-out containers and a couple of empty handles half-hidden behind the mini-fridge by the door.

“Guys!” Frank cries happily from his perch on one of the couches. “Tommy! And Friend! What’s up?”

“Not much,” Tommy says. “We were just in the area. You know, figured we’d stop by.” He crosses his arms but then drops them because he doesn’t want to look defensive or anything, and then stands there like a total idiot.

“Good timing, man.” Frank leans forward a little. “We ordered pizza,” he confides.

“It’s not here yet,” Gerard says. He crawls onto the other couch and picks up the notebook lying on the cushions before he takes a swig from the open whiskey bottle sitting on the table.

Behind Tommy, Adam chokes on air.

Frank looks over at the sound. “Nice treads,” he says, gaze catching on Tommy’s dress shoes.

Tommy does cross his arms that time. “Fuck you, man, I don’t have anything else.”

Frank happily knocks his converse together in response. “Preppie.”

“Townie,” Tommy manages to get out before he starts laughing. “Do people actually call us that?”

“No idea, man, it’s not like we’re from here.” He pats the cushion next to him. “Come on, park your ass.”

Tommy’s already sitting before he notices Adam still hovering by the door, and he has to work pretty damn hard at not rolling his eyes as he beckons him over. “This is Adam,” he tells nobody in particular.

“Hey, Adam,” Frank says. He grins. “You’re right on time. We’re just getting ready to trash the place.”

“Seriously?” someone asks, and there’s another guy in the corner next to the TV, kneeling over a guitar and a pack of strings, spooning cereal into his mouth. He’s got funky hair and love handles and Frank calls him Ray when he tells him to lighten up.

“This is Ray’s uncle’s place,” Frank tells them, nodding at the curly-headed guy. “So we can hang here for free. Which is good, you know, ‘cause we’re pretty broke. Like, Mikey has a job, and Ray and I mow lawns and shit sometimes, so we’re not like, starving or anything.” He purses his lips thoughtfully. “Gerard mostly just sits around and scribbles.”

“Fuck you,” Gerard says, but considering he’s peering at them from the top of his notepad, his words lose some of their impact.

“Sometimes he gets drunk, too,” Frank says. He’s grinning behind his hand.

Gerard breathes a huffy sigh and retreats back behind his papers.

Frank grins harder. “Speaking of which,” he says, waving a hand at the empty beer cans on the table. “You want?”

“Jesus Christ, Frankie,” Ray says. He gets up and sets his bowl and spoon down on the coffee table. “They’re what, fifteen? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re trying to get laid.”

“I don’t need to get my lays drunk,” Frank protests, just as Tommy says, “I’m seventeen, thanks.”
Ray raises an eyebrow at him. “Same difference.”

Tommy bites his tongue before he says something nasty, even if he’s not sure what he’d say, exactly, because these guys might be chill but he’s just the kid they picked up off the street, and Ray’s their friend, their band member, even if he is a giant dick. Thankfully the conversation gets derailed by the doorbell going, and somebody yelling, “Pizza.”

“Pizza,” Gerard says happily.

Ray scores himself some Brownie points by volunteering to go get it, but whatever. He’s got a lot of fucking points to make up.

Adam elbows Tommy in the side, frowning, and Tommy probably nudges back harder than strictly necessary. And then he feels bad, and then he gets annoyed about feeling bad, and he shuffles a bit away from Adam and is probably way happier to see Ray return with three boxes and a handful of change than he should be, given the circumstances.

Ray lets the first two clatter onto the coffee table and hands the third, smaller box to Frank. “Here’s your vegetarian, you freak.”

Frank flips the lid open and inhales blissfully. “I love you,” he says solemnly. “You brought me pizza.” He closes his eyes for a moment, but they pop open when a skinny guy in all-black appears in the doorway. “And a Mikey!”

“Hey,” apparently-Mikey says, possibly at Tommy and Adam, so Tommy gives him a bit of a wave.
Mikey doesn’t respond, though, just sits down cross-legged on the ground next to Gerard’s perch on the edge of the couch.

“You want?” Gerard asks, and hands him a slice when Mikey nods, dripping grease all over the coffee table.

“Tommy says he plays guitar,” Frank announces happily, for Mikey’s sake because everybody else heard Tommy say it himself. “I like people who play guitar.”

Mikey cuts a quick, expressionless glance at him, and Tommy can feel himself flush. “A bit,” he says. “When I can sneak into the practice rooms. Mostly I just noodle around.”

Mikey nods. “Don’t ask Frank to teach you anything,” he says. His voice is kind of raspy. “He’s good, but he can’t teach to save his life.”

“Don’t bad-mouth me,” Frank protests, mock wounded, before he laughs. “I really am shit at teaching, though. You should ask Ray, he’s way more patient than me.”

Tommy privately thinks that Ray would have to be the last guitar player on Earth before Tommy would ask him to teach him anything, but instead he smiles a bit and takes a bite of his pizza. “So I’ve met your singer, two guitarists and the bass player. Where’s your drummer?”

Gerard shakes his head and says, through a mouthful of pizza, “No drummer.”

“But what about,” Tommy says, and waves a hand in a vague, the guy who plays drums during your gigs kind of way.

Gerard swallows noisily. “He’s one of the club’s techies,” he says. “He’s been filling in. Our old drummer couldn’t be bothered to leave his cushy little nest for his band.” His tone’s casual, but there’s a hard set to his eyes, and he cuts a quick glance at Mikey next to him who keeps eating, unbothered.

“Okay,” Tommy says uneasily. Seriously, what do you say to that?

Thankfully, though, Mikey suddenly smiles at him. He picks up a second slice of pizza with his other hand, so he’s got both hands full, and nods his head at the TV/game console set-up. “You play Tekken?” he asks.

Tommy doesn’t much, but enough that he’s not getting completely clobbered (just mostly clobbered), and it’s hard to be mad about losing all the time when Mikey keeps making these snide little remarks and Frank’s throwing out his own sarcastic commentary and Gerard sucks so hard even Tommy can beat him. It’s a pretty rare feeling for Tommy these days, to just be around guys he gets along with and shoot the shit. It’s not like with Adam, which is amazing most of the time but kind of complicated. It’s just… it’s fun. It’s easy and fun and honestly, pretty damn great.

It’d be fucking amazing, in fact, if Adam wasn’t hovering in the corner like somebody personally shoved a stick up his ass, and does he just have to be such a mood killer all the time? Like, yeah, he’s Tommy’s best friend, but sometimes he could really make it a bit easier on both of them.

Gerard and Mikey and Ray don’t seem to notice or care, or maybe they’re just nice enough to pretend not to, but eventually Adam’s wallflower impression gets so bad that Frank pulls Tommy aside, which Tommy really could have done without, thanks.

“Dude,” Frank says quietly. His breath is loud in Tommy’s ear. “Like, you’re cool, yeah, but can’t you get your buddy to relax a bit?”

“I’ll talk to him,” Tommy says, trying not to flush. Fucking Adam. He pats himself down uselessly. “You gotta cig?”

Frank hands him one. “Gotta smoke on the porch,” he says with an apologetic shrug. “House rules, and shit.”

“Fine,” Tommy says. He holds out his hand. “Lighter? Thanks.”

And then, with a hopefully not completely pathetic smile, he goes to make himself lung cancer fodder and hopefully get Adam to loosen up just a tiny little bit.

The backyard that goes with the house is completely boring. There’s a whole bunch of (trimmed, surprisingly) grass and a hedge, so the only thing worth watching is the agitated way Adam’s pacing all over the porch.

“Having a good time, I see,” Tommy finally can’t resist saying.

Adam starts so badly Tommy’s kind of surprised he doesn’t drop his can of coke. “Sorry,” he says. He smiles a bit, caught. “It’s not like, bad or anything.”

“Not bad, right,” Tommy says. “You just hate it.”

“I don’t hate it,” Adam says. He rubs at his arms, like he’s cold. “It’s just weird, that’s all.”

Tommy tries really, really hard not to sigh, but from the look on Adam’s face, he can probably tell. “Just – can’t you try to relax? Even just a little bit?” He waves his hand at the door, trying not to show how fucking frustrated he is. Adam drives him up the wall sometimes. “They’re not our parents, or our classmates or whatever, okay? They’re friends.”

Adam shakes his head.

“What does that mean?” Tommy asks, sharper than intended, but Adam doesn’t raise his eyes.

“I know they’re your friends, Tommy, okay? I know that. But they’re – they think I’m your weirdo sidekick, okay? They’d never hang out with me if it weren’t for you.”

“Seriously?” Tommy asks. He turns to the garden. Seeing Adam standing there, hunched in on himself, with all his fucking issues – it’s just pathetic, is what it is, and Tommy’s trying really hard not to think of Adam that way.

“I’m just – not as tough as you are, Tommy,” Adam says quietly.

“What are you talking about, man,” Tommy says without looking at him.

“Look,” Adam says, throwing his hands into the air with an exasperated sigh. “Maybe you can just waltz in here and feel right at home, like, these are your people or some shit like that, but I can’t do that, Tommy, okay? I’m not that guy.”

“You could be,” Tommy says stubbornly.

“No, I couldn’t,” Adam says. “That’s all you.”

Tommy kind of wants to be annoyed with him for that, but Adam’s standing there in front of him, shoulders slumped and all uncomfortable, and he can’t. He just can’t.

“Just, come here,” Tommy says, and draws him in.

Adam kisses sweetly, not that Tommy’s surprised, hesitant touch of lips to lips, zero tongue. Tommy doesn’t have a whole lot of kisses to compare it to – being nature’s freak in a place like Clarkenwell is the world’s most effective cock block – but he thinks he likes it. It’s very Adam.

He shifts a bit, touching his fingertips to Adam’s side. Adam stiffens a bit, though he doesn’t pull back, and instead of groping him, Tommy just lets his hand settle there, steady and reassuring. He almost ends up sighing into the kiss when Adam relaxes again, which is stupid but not something he can help. He wants Adam to be relaxed. It’s a new thing, but Tommy thinks he likes it. He’s had crushes before, yeah, but he’s never felt like this about anyone: Like he wanted to take his time with them because they wanted to take time. Like they’re worth it.

“Well now,” Frank says from somewhere behind Tommy, and Tommy can practically hear the smirk in his tone. “Werewolf and a faggot. You’re just fucked all around, aren’t you?”

Tommy’s not sure what to make of that – it’d be kind of hypocritical of Frank to take offense at either, but his tone’s not exactly what you’d call friendly – but it doesn’t matter anyway because Adam practically trips over his feet in his haste to get away, darting worried looks at Frank and then Tommy and then Frank again before he mutters something about having to go and bolts inside.

Tommy sighs. He wanders over to where Frank’s standing in the doorway, smirking, and punches him in the arm really fucking hard. “Thanks for that, asshole,” he says.

“How was I supposed to know he’s so freaking touchy,” Frank complains, rubbing at his arm, and follows him back downstairs where Tommy heads over to the couch. Adam isn’t around. “Seriously though, man, you sweet on him? Beer?”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, just holds his hand out for the bottle Frank pulls out of the mini fridge before he collapses into the grimy cushions.

“I guess he’s a sweet guy,” Frank says finally, and Tommy knows him well enough to recognize a peace offering when he sees one, so he half-smiles and takes it.

“No,” Adam says, mostly to the lunch lady dishing up salad. He’d breezed past the pasta and the potatoes and the burgers, so maybe he’s on a diet again. One his parents probably don’t even know about. Again.

“Adam,” Tommy says.

Adam shakes his head. “No.”

“Adam, come on.” Tommy knows he’s whining, but this is stupid. “You can’t just not come just because of something Frank said.”

“It’s not just what Frank said,” Adam says slowly, like it’s painful to even admit that much.

“I thought we’d been over this,” Tommy says. “They like you fine, okay? They don’t think you’re a freak, and besides, it’s not like they really have room to talk.”

Adam drops his chin to his chest and mumbles something that Tommy’s brain takes a second to decipher into “Everybody thinks I’m a freak.”

“I don’t think you’re a freak,” Tommy says, feeling thick anger welling up in his belly.

Adam peers at him, doubting and a little hopeful, and Tommy sighs.

He nods his head towards the door instead of the loud, bustling tables full of uniformed students and Adam follows without complaint, down the corridor and out the door and across the lawn towards the trees lining the side of the tennis court, where it almost feels like you’re in a park or out in the forest somewhere if you don’t look up from your feet.

“Frank’s a dick,” Tommy says eventually. Maybe it isn’t the grand declaration all the romcoms seem to expect at this point, but Tommy isn’t a grand declarations kind of guy. Also, it kind of needs to be said.

Adam laughs, though, so maybe it’s enough. “I know that, Tommy,” he says. “Trust me. I hang out with the guy, too.”

“Yeah, well.” Tommy spreads his hands, palms up. “He still shoulda kept his big damned mouth shut, so.”

“Frank should keep his mouth shut a lot of the time,” Adam says, easy agreement.

“Right.” Tommy jerks his head in some kind of crappy half-nod. “So, are we like, good now? Because I like Frank and all, but if I have to pick between you and him, I’m gonna go with you, and he’s like, one of my best friends at this point, so if we could all kiss and make up or whatever, that’d be nice.”

“Aw, Tommy.” Adam stops walking, clutches his hands to his heart. “That was almost romantic.”

“So we’re good then?” Tommy presses, lifting his chin a little bit.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

Tommy nudges his chin a little higher, and Adam, pink and pleased, presses his lips against Tommy’s. “We’re good, I promise.”

“Good,” Tommy says. “’Cause I’d totally have to kick Frank’s ass otherwise, and I’m not one-hundred per cent sure I could. Dude’s wily.”

Adam slings his arm around Tommy’s shoulders. “It’s okay, I won’t ask you to be my knight in shining armor. I still think you’re badass, I promise.”

“I’m pretty badass,” Tommy agrees, slow and easy even though his heart thumps almost painfully hard in his chest. He slips his arm around Adam’s waist. “So you’re coming with me, right?”

“No,” Adam says, rolling his eyes, but there’s a smile on his face and Tommy totally doesn’t believe him.

As it turns out, Adam actually doesn’t come with him. His parents call him just after dinner and they talk for almost two hours, and when Tommy comes by to check on him he’s got his head buried in his books and barely even looks up to tell Tommy that he needs to pick up his grades and study hard and his parents are fighting, he can tell, and the last thing he needs is to give them more grief.

Tommy nods and sits down at Adam’s desk, because Adam needs him, okay, but the way his body’s hunched in on itself he might as well have don’t touch me spelled out on his forehead in red ink.

“Do you-?” Tommy says, gesturing helplessly.

Adam shuts him down with a sharp shake of his head. “I need to read this,” he says. He doesn’t even look up.

“Okay,” Tommy says quietly. He rubs his sweaty palms against his thighs. “Do you want – I’m gonna go.”

“Yes,” Adam says. He doesn’t raise his head when Tommy gets up to go, and when Tommy hesitates at the door, he just curls more firmly around his book.

Sneaking out during the week, before lights-out and without Adam, is weird. It’s also a lot harder, people loitering around unexpected corners, and his uniform isn’t half as suitable for climbing out of windows and over fences as the jeans and t-shirts he’s got stuffed into a bag. The seams of his blazer crack alarmingly when he pulls himself away from Clarkenwell soil and onto the other side.

He tears a hole into the hem of his slacks, too, and even breaks his skin, as he discovers when he’s slipping on his jeans behind a bush. It’s just destined to be a shitty day, apparently. He just hopes no one decides to check up on him during lights-out, although even that’d probably just be icing on the cake at this point.

Tired and scowling, Tommy’s actually kind of pleasantly surprised when somebody opens the door after his first knock.

“Hey, man,” Mikey says when he pulls open the door. “I’m picking up take-out, you want any?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy says. His stomach’s totally ready for food, even though his last meal was only a couple of hours ago.

“Right,” Mikey says. He tilts his head into the house, and Tommy heads downstairs while Mikey wanders out the door.

Only Frank and Gerard are down there, hanging out on the couches as per usual. There’s an impressive number of open beer cans on the coffee table, and even more piled into a trash bag in the corner. Gerard’s eyes are pretty glassy, too.

“Where’s your sidekick?” Frank asks, grinning a bit.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “Studying,” he says. “You got beer?”

“You mooch,” Frank says, already reaching for their little fridge.

Tommy drains half the can in one go, slowly getting used to the bitter taste on his tongue, and Frank raises an eyebrow but still gets out a second for him. “Mortal Kombat?” he asks.

Gerard has the controllers out before Tommy even has the chance to nod.

They play for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes before the door swings open and Mikey stumbles in, multiple plastic bags hanging from each wrist. He dumps them all onto the coffee table when they pause the game and waves a hand at them in lieu of saying, ‘Dig in.’

“That was fast,” Gerard says, eyeing the take-out containers suspiciously.

Mikey shrugs. “Lady behind me saw the scar,” he says. “Never seen a place clear out that fast.”

“Dude, that is the best,” Frank crows. “I love it when that happens.” He mimes cowering away from an invisible something, actually making Mikey crack a smile. Then he slaps his hand down on Tommy’s thigh. “See, there are totally advantages to this wolf thing.”

“Faster take-out?” Tommy asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“Silver lining,” Frank says. He opens one of the containers and breathes in happily. “We’re the wolves, they’re the sheep. They just gotta accept that fact.”

“Silver lining, sure.” Tommy rolls his eyes. “’Cause, what, we’re like so much better than them?”

“No one’s better than anybody,” Gerard cuts in sharply.

Frank makes a yapping motion with his hand. “Leaving aside that we’re all, you know, equal and shit – yes. Dude. We have a fucking advantage they’ll never have. We know more.” He takes a sip of his beer. “And knowledge is power, and shit. You know.” He waves a vague hand, and then he giggles, but Tommy can’t tell if he’s delighted or disgusted with himself.

Tommy reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck. It’s a habit he’s trying to break, but sometimes his scar still gets itchy and annoying, and he can never quite forget it’s there. “I could have gone forever without that knowledge,” he mutters. “Not gonna lie.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Frank asks, propping himself up on his elbows. “Shifting is like, the best thing to ever happen. I feel bad for all the suckers who’ll be stuck in human shape all their lives.”

“Tell that to the guys at Clarkenwell,” Tommy mutters. Tell that to everybody, actually. Tell it to the doctors who treated him after Tommy got bit, the ones who refused to even show him into the waiting room without sterile gloves, or the counselor who told him over and over what an idiot he was as if he didn’t know, or the psychiatrist who told his mom that the nightmares he had over being held down and bitten by a giant fucking wolf were a side-effect of his new identity as a wild and crazy beast, and had nothing to do with trauma.

Frank doesn’t seem to have noticed Tommy’s swerve down memory lane. “In my family, being wolves is a point of pride,” he says. “Like, my first day of kindergarten.” Frank pauses to giggle. “First day, right, we’re not even inside yet, and my dad pulls me aside and is like, ‘Kid, if anybody gives you shit, go straight for the nose, okay? Forget the teacher, the only person watching your back in there is you.’”

Tommy tries to imagine his mom saying something like that, but instead he sees her wearing that frown she always gets out when Tommy does something shitty or fucks up a grade or doesn’t appreciate Clarkenwell enough, what the fuck, so he banishes the image again.

“Why are you here, then?” he asks. “If your family’s so awesome?”

“’Cause of the fucking riots, dude.” Frank scrubs at his face. “Like, the Ways wanted Mikey out of the way, right, and Mikey wouldn’t go without Gerard, and what am I gonna do, kicking around Jersey without a band?”

“Thanks for broadcasting that for the world to hear, Frank, that’s real charming,” Gerard says lazily.

Mikey doesn’t say anything, mouth tilting sideways. Frank waves both of them off with a “Sure, you’re welcome, whatever,” and they grin at him or each other or somebody, lips curving into similar shapes.

Tommy images, just for a second, what that must feel like, to have friends that you’d move to fucking Ricker Hill for, before his brain catches on something else. “What riots?” he asks.

“The New York riots?” Frank says. He sounds like he’s talking to a two-year-old, all slow and prompting. “You know, when Wall Street was shut down for two days because wolves and sympathetics and just about everybody were having a giant smack down with the po-po?”

Tommy shakes his head, wide-eyed.

Frank goes a little bug-eyed himself. “Seriously, do you not even read the news at that posh little school of yours?”

“We don’t really have access to any newspapers,” Tommy says.

This time, it’s Gerard and Frank’s turn to look incredulous. Mike doesn’t look much of anything, but he almost drops his cigarette, so Tommy figures he’s shocked too.

“What about TV, then?” Frank presses. “Hell, word-of-mouth. Anything.”

Tommy shakes his head. “Restricted access,” he says. “They don’t want us to get corrupted, or something.”

“Don’t want you to grow a brain, more like,” Frank mutters.

“That, too.” Tommy shrugs. “Not really for free thinkers, you know?”

Frank giggles a bit. “I kinda wish I could unleash my grandma on this heap,” he says. “Man. That’d be a show.”

It sounds awesome. It definitely sound a whole lot better than Tommy’s mom’s I’m-concerned-about-you-but-you’re-an-idiot face that she likes to unleash on him.

“I wanna meet your family,” Tommy sighs. He doesn’t mean to, but he does.

“Sure,” Frank agrees easily. “They’re down in Jersey, it’s not that far off. I can take you guys down for Thanksgiving, if you’re allowed to leave this shithole.”

“Dude, it’s not like they shackle us to the wall,” Tommy says. “We can leave for a weekend if we let them know in advance.”

To be honest, the school code definitely specifies that leaving for a weekend is okay as long as you actually go home, not on some random trip to, say, Jersey to meet an exiled punk-musician werewolf’s extended family, but no way is Tommy actually going to admit to that.

“Cool,” Frank says. “Thanksgiving, then. It’s a-”

“Date,” Tommy cuts in, smirking. “I won’t tell Jamia if you won’t.”

“Oh baby.” Frank laughs, kicking at Tommy’s shins. “I’m fucking overcome with desire here, you shithead.”

Gerard clutches his stomach. “Fuck, man, I’m getting nauseous.”

“Fuck you, man, we’re not that bad.”

“No, like, seriously.” And he heaves himself off the couch and stumbles out the door, and Frank and Tommy and Mikey all stare at each other for a moment before Frank shrugs and digs out another round of beers.

“Hey, Tommy,” somebody calls.

Somebody female, which is uncommon enough that Tommy’s frowning when he looks up from his locker.

It’s just Daisy, though, waving at him, and Tommy just barely catches sight of her smile and returns it with one of his own before she loses her balance. She goes down hard, knees smashing against the tile, in a flurry of papers. Tommy isn’t sure who tripped her, but it doesn’t really matter – he’s on his knees next to her a moment later, helping her shove everything into untidy piles and stuff them back into her binder.

“Thank you,” she says hastily, not even really looking at his face.

“You okay?” he asks her, one hand on her elbow to guide her up. Man, Gerard would be proud.

“Sure.” She smiles, just a little bit, and pushes a lock of hair behind one ear. “Nothing they haven’t done before, I can handle it.”

“Fuckers,” Tommy says before he can think better of it.

Her eyes go wide for a moment, like, good-girl wide, but then she presses the heel of her hand against her mouth to hide a giggle. “You could say that, yes.”

Tommy hands her her folder, smiling a bit, and gets a whiff of her deodorant-maybe-perfume when she leans forward, flash of teeth half-hidden behind a curtain of hair.

“Thank you, Tommy,” she says softly.

Tommy doesn’t bother with ‘you’re welcome.’

Module 4 - Part 1

bad_peppermint — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:25:06 GMT

Clarkenwell Preparatory Academy, Maine
September 1999

The stack of papers, neatly stapled together in the top right-hand corner, lands on Tommy’s desk with a soft thump. It’s upside down, hence the right-sided staple and the blank top page – and will be until Mr. Larkner gives his okay because while his classmates can maybe afford to cheat, Tommy cannot – and Tommy runs his finger along the edge.

Larkner moves past him, blazer tails brushing against Tommy’s arm. Tommy hears him say, “Put that away, Lacey,” but he’s not being a dick about it. Tommy kind of likes that about him. Not that anybody in this shithole is really any better than ‘okay,’ but Larkner’s one of the better ones.

The guy in front of him turns to sneer half-heartedly at Tommy, but then Larkner says, “Eyes in front, James,” to the sound of his footsteps carrying closer again. Definitely one of the better ones.

He fiddles with his pencil a little while Larkner passes out the rest of the tests and then returns to the front of the room. “Ready…” He makes a show of readying his watch in front of his face. “Begin.”

Tommy grapples with the slick paper for a moment before he gets it flipped around. Most of the parts at the top are already filled in - class, teacher, date - so Tommy just scribbles his name in the remaining blank space and lets his eyes skim downwards.

1) State the medical term for carrying the werewolf gene.

Tommy tries not to roll his eyes. It’s obviously Larkner’s customary give-away point for the jocks in the last row, considering the bold print at the top of the page reads, Module 4: Lycanthrophia. Tommy dutifully copies it down, going over one ‘h’ twice when it looks more like an ‘n,’ before turning his attention to Question 2: Explain what members of the werewolf community mean by the term, ‘breed true.’

Tommy sighs, wrinkles his nose, and gets to work.

“Tommy. Hey, Tommy!”

Tommy turns at the sound of his name, grin already spreading over his face.

Adam’s a big guy, and just on the chubbier side of average, and he cuts through the crowd of uniformed students like a bulldozer. Of course, they also twist away from him, carefully avoiding any actual skin-to-skin touches, but as long as Adam continues to pretend not to care, Tommy will pretend not to notice.

“Hey, Adam,” he says when Adam comes to a halt in front of him. “What’s up?”

They’re totally in the way, standing in the middle of the hallway between classes, still rocks in a veritable ocean of students, but the one thing that’s good about their status is that nobody will actually do anything about it. At Tommy’s old school, that shit would have earned you an elbow to the back at the very least. Here, people scowl and mutter, but no one actually touches them.

“Uh, not much,” Adam says, tripping over the words. There’s a hint of a blush on his cheeks. “I saw you leaving your class, that’s all. How was the quiz?”

“Not bad, I think.” It’s not hard to smile. Larkner might not be the greatest teacher ever, and the entire module made Tommy boil with madness at the unfairness of it all, but he’s a fair grader. Tommy has to give him that.

“That’s good.” Adam ducks his head, a ridiculous gesture on a guy his size. “Spanish was stupid,” he says.

What he means is that his study partner stole the homework off him and then talked shit at him for the rest of the lesson, because that’s what Spanish is like for Adam. It’s what Spanish is like for Tommy half the time, only the guy giving him a hard time is some rando at the next desk, because the girl Tommy is supposed to be study partners with refuses to even acknowledge Tommy’s existence.

“When is Spanish ever not stupid,” Tommy says, coaxing a smile onto Adam’s face. He reaches out to brush his fingers against Adam’s elbow. “Save me a spot for lunch?”

Adam nods and then shuffles away when the bell rings, and Tommy has to sprint up an entire staircase to make it to Bio on time.

They end up down by the ping pong tables after last period, because Clarkenwell is the kind of place that actually has outdoor ping pong tables for their students’ entertainment. Nobody ever stoops down low enough to actually use them, not when there are actual fold-up ones at the gym and in the common rooms, but they’re perfect for sitting on side-by-side, and nobody comes to bother them here.

Adam digs out some candy bars for them to share and then makes Tommy talk him through his math problems. He naively continues to cling to the belief that just because Tommy’s a year ahead of him, he actually remembers any of that shit; or, in fact, actually got it in the first place. Tommy gets out Brave New World that they’re reading in English while Adam curses his way through his homework. It’s not quite warm out, but still pleasant enough to shuck their blazers and roll up the cuffs of their starched shirts, elbows brushing every once in a while, Adam a flare of heat against Tommy’s skin every time. It’s a stark difference to the chill seeping into his ass and thighs from sitting on the table’s cold concrete surface.

Tommy still can’t really get used to that – to the weather. He’s spent the last two years and a bit here, and he should be comfortable with it now, but he’s a California boy through and through, and he spent all of his summer roasting around back home. He doesn’t know how to deal with wet-and-cold. It’s barely September, it shouldn’t feel like the middle of January yet.

The metal bracelet on Adam’s right arm clinks when he shifts, reaching up to turn a page. It’s so innocuous, nothing more than a ring of silver with a slender L engraved on the back. Tommy stares at it for a moment while Adam reads, mouth moving silently, but it doesn’t look any different than it usually does – just as unimpressive as the rest of the time. Most of the time Tommy’s grateful for that, but sometimes he wishes the markers were a bit more in-your-face. Like, a brand to his forehead, or something. It’s not like it’d make matters any worse, and it’s just so freaking… painful sometimes that the thing that’s completely screwing over Tommy’s life has got to be so damn aesthetically pleasing to boot.

And like, Tommy knows he’s being stupid. Clarkenwell’s a shithole, but there are worse places out there. Yeah, people are dicks, and it sucks ass being all the way across the country from his mom and sister and everything he knows, but at least the school makes sure they’ve got the nation’s average when it comes to werewolf population. 8% of the student population, faculty and staff is marked L. No less than that.

No less, but certainly no more, either. There is one werewolf in the faculty – Mr. Santora, who teaches Government & Politics – and one on the staff, a groundskeeper, who was brought in a couple of days after the one in the cafeteria got fired.

Adam looks up after a little bit. He’s got a supernatural sense for attention, perhaps because he hates it so much. He smiles though, when he catches Tommy looking, and taps the eraser of his pencil against a block of text. “Wanna be my hero?” he asks, mouth tilting wryly.

The chances of Tommy actually telling him anything useful are pretty low, but Tommy’s a sucker for that smile, even though he’d never admit it. “Hit me,” he says, bending his head over Adam’s book.

Adam starts in on a rant about square footage and derivatives and using functions to calculate the ideal length and width of a soccer field, which Tommy vaguely remembers but not well enough to actually figure out what Adam’s doing wrong, and they’re so wrapped up in the problem that Tommy doesn’t hear the footsteps until it’s already too late.

“Oh look, it’s the puppy dogs.”

The voice is loud and mocking and belongs, Tommy finds when he looks up, to Jesse Monroe. He’s got his buddies with him and he’s sneering, and Tommy would laugh at how cliché it all is, except there’s four of them and there’s nobody else around and it’s not funny, it’s really, really not.

Tommy slides off the ping pong table and tries to look like he’s taller and broader than he actually is. Adam stands up too, except he’s hunching over like he’s trying to make himself less threatening, and Tommy would ask What the fuck? if he didn’t know him so well.

“What do you want?” he asks Jesse instead, a little wearily. His heart is pounding in his chest, yeah, but it’s also a little bit like every teen movie his sister has ever made him watch, and really. If he’s going to get his ass kicked, can’t it at least be in new and exciting ways?

Jesse smiles vaguely. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”

The problem with Jesse is that he’s not just a dumb bully. He’s attractive, in a clean-cut, All-American way, he’s charming when he wants to be, and he’s such an ingénue at cheating on tests that Tommy has to reluctantly admit that he’d probably get good grades on his own, if he only bothered to study.

And yet, such a bastard.

“Enlighten me anyway,” Tommy says. “What’d we do? Breathe near you? Share a classroom with your girl?”

“Cute,” Jesse says. He gestures at Adam. “Does he ever talk?”

Adam goes completely stiff at Tommy’s side, breathing fast and shallow, and Tommy seriously has to fight to keep from reaching over and wrapping a reassuring hand around Adam’s wrist.

“Try to pay attention to the topic at hand,” he says, mock-easily. “I know it’s hard, but you can do it.”

Jesse lifts his chin up, annoyed but at least distracted. “You’re on our turf.”

Seriously? Turf? Tommy’s pretty sure nobody actually says that outside of 1950’s greaser movies. He pushes his hands into his pockets before he remembers that he might need them soon and pulls them out again. “Since when do you give a damn about the ping pong tables?”

“Since now,” Jesse says lightly.

“Because we’re on them,” Tommy deduces.

Jesse smiles sweetly.

Whatever. Tommy can do condescending too. “Do you even have a ping pong bat?” he asks.

“What’s it to you?” Jesse asks.

Tommy grins, wide and fake. “Well, if you do, you should take it and shove it up your ass.”

Because sometimes, Tommy’s got a situation teetering on the very edge of a precipice, and he just can’t help reaching over and giving it that final little nudge.

In the end, it’s Jesse who starts it, even though Tommy technically throws the first punch. But Jesse reaches over and like, slaps his cheek, like you would with a little kid except it stings like hell, and Tommy doesn’t even hesitate before throwing himself at him. He goes down immediately, of course, two fists coming straight at him the second he dares to move. It hurts like hell, too.

The thing about the werewolf gene, the thing that makes everything so fucked up, is that it doesn’t even help. Tommy’s not any stronger, or faster, or more intimidating than he was three years ago. He’s still kind of short and lanky and girly-looking and the only thing that’s changed now that he turns into a wolf one night out of the month is that people actually have a reason to pick on him. And they do.

He gets a set of knuckles to the temple and sees stars for a second, but he still tries and feels his hands and feet connect a couple of times. He’s even vaguely aware of Adam trying to help out and sort of pushing at Jesse and getting a split lip for his trouble.

Tommy gets his hand on Jesse’s ankle while he’s distracted and yanks hard and somehow Jesse goes down. Tommy wraps his legs around Jesse’s waist and heaves himself on top of him and pulls back his fist to destroy his fucking face, and of course, of course that’s when someone grabs him by the scruff of his neck and says, “What the hell is going on here?”

Wright, the tennis coach, pulls Tommy to his feet but keeps firm hold of his collar while Jesse gets to his feet, thumbing the corner of his mouth. Good. Maybe Tommy broke his fucking jaw.

His bloodthirsty thoughts must show up on his forehead, or something, because Wright gives Tommy a shake.

“Wipe that smirk off your face, Ratliff,” he growls. “You’ve got nothing to smile about.”

Which, yeah. Tommy already knew that. Doesn’t mean he can always help himself.

The visitors’ chairs in the vice principal’s office are actually comfortable, is the kicker, and Mr. Schneider isn’t an ugly old creep. He’s actually a fairly attractive dude except for the way his eyes are set a little too close together, and he narrows both of them at Adam and Tommy, sitting side by side like naughty first graders. Jesse and his guys are out in the waiting room after they spent a solid twenty minutes telling their side of the story, with big handwavey motions that Tommy could see full well through the gaps in the blinds.

Technically, it’s supposed to be their turn to explain now, but Tommy only has to look at Mr. Schneider and his thoughtfully narrowed eyes to know they’ve already lost.

“Boys,” he says evenly, maybe like he’d say Criminals. “Mr. Monroe and his friends have explained what happened.” He blinks at them, once. “I’m afraid it doesn’t look too good for you, gentlemen.”

Adam goes a bit pale, probably like Tommy himself, but Tommy knows him well enough to know he’s not going to say anything. It’s probably the smarter choice. No one’s ever accused Tommy of being smart.

“Of course you’d take their word over ours,” he grits out.

“It has nothing to do with that,” Schneider says, waving a dismissive hand.

Tommy doesn’t bother asking what ‘that’ means, but he still rolls his eyes.

Schneider narrows his eyes at him again. “It’s four testaments against two, Mr. Ratliff,” she says. “That would be considered fair grounds to make a judgment call under any circumstances.”

“And the fact that we’re two wolves and they’re all bullies has nothing to do with anything,” Tommy says evenly. He’s a bit impressed by himself. He doesn’t let anything show on his face, but he hears Adam at his side suck in a sharp breath.

“I would appreciate it if you would refrain from making such slandering statements against your peers, Mr. Ratliff,” Schneider says. He steeples his fingers together underneath his chin. “But then, sufferers of Lycanthrophia are known to display frequent outbursts of unprovoked violence and aggression.”

Tommy really, really wants to show him an outburst of violence and aggression, but Adam makes a little choked-off, pleading noise at his side, and Tommy grips the arms of his chair tight enough to turn his knuckles white and forces himself to sink back into the cushions.

“Yeah, okay,” he says.

Schneider nods thoughtfully. “Your parents will need to be informed of these events, of course,” he says, all mock-regretful, like he’s not totally dancing with glee on the inside.

Next to Tommy, Adam makes a noise of terror, so quiet it’s barely noticeable in the near-silent room, but Tommy’s still pretty sure he sees Mr. Schneider fight down a satisfied smile.

“I highly suggest you give them a call this afternoon,” he says. “I’m sure they’d like to speak with you.”

If possible, Adam’s gone even whiter, clinging to the armrests like they’re Obi-Wan Kenobi and he’s Princess Leia. Tommy’s clenching his hands, too, but it’s mostly because he’s so fucking pissed off he might reach over and strangle Mr. Schneider if he doesn’t. With Adam, though, it’s probably just terror, plain and simple.

Tommy leans over a bit, trying to catch Adam’s eye, to somehow make him understand that it’s okay, it’s not their fault, no matter what anybody says. But Adam’s gaze is fixed firmly on his knees, and after a minute or so, Mr. Schneider clucks his tongue impatiently.

“If there’s nothing else,” he says, opening a folder, and while Tommy would love to take that damn folder and shove it down his throat, he unclenches his hands and makes himself no “no, sir,” instead.

Four to six in the afternoon are study hours at Clarkenwell, doors shut and corridors empty, so Tommy tiptoes down one set of stairs and over to door 2-27.

Luckily for them, Clarkenwell had once upon a time decided to be more exclusive and cut down the student population by almost two thirds, so now it isn’t just seniors and rich kids who are able to snag a coveted single room. Tommy isn’t sure what he’d do if he had to live in this hell and share a room with someone to boot, and he thinks Adam appreciates it, too, because Adam likes to crawl far, far back into his shell whenever the opportunity presents itself. Which can be annoying, but it also means that Tommy knows where Adam is at pretty much any given moment in time, and right now he’d bet cash money he’s hiding in his room even though they don’t have locks on their doors, the same kind of stupid honesty policy shit like with their lockers, pretending like that entire thing with the vice principal didn’t even happen.

He knocks, though. He’s being sensitive and respecting boundaries and shit.

“Go away,” comes from inside.

Tommy plasters himself against the door. “It’s me,” he calls. “Come on, let me in.”

There’s a silence, and for a moment Tommy isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do now (actually go away? Threaten to break down the door? What?) and then Adam says, subdued and gloomy, “You know it’s open.”

Tommy turns the knob with more trepidation than he’d like to admit to, but Adam’s not slitting his wrists or anything – he’s just sitting on the bed, pressed against the headboard, legs tucked against his chest. His room is tidy enough to make Tommy’s, with the two shirts scattered across the floor, look like a pigsty. Nothing new there, but for once, Tommy doesn’t feel like teasing him for it. It’d be like pouring salt all over a gross, pus-oozing wound, and Tommy may be an ass half the time, but he’s not an asshole.

Adam wipes his fingers over his eyes. To anyone who doesn’t know him as well as Tommy does, he’d probably just look insanely tired, red-rimmed and bright-eyed. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Tommy replies, pulling up Adam’s desk chair next to the narrow bed and straddling it, wooden backrest digging into his forearms.

Adam reaches over to drop his handful of payphone quarters onto his desk. Some of them hit the edge instead, clattering into the thin space between wood and bed, but neither of them move to collect them.

“You talk to your mom yet?” Adam asks after a while.

“She had to go to work.” Tommy picks at the flecks of white paint chipping off the chair. “Said to call her later.”

That, and a whole lot of stuff about how disappointed she was, and that she hoped he had a really good explanation this time, and didn’t Tommy understand how lucky he was that the school had taken him at all? It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten that particular lecture, and it wasn’t like he didn’t try, but it was getting harder and harder to not tell her just what exactly he thought of this school who’d so graciously offered him a full scholarship.

“Lucky you,” Adam says without inflection.

Normally Tommy’s a big fan of calling bullshit on that one, but even with that phone call still hanging over him, he feels a lot better than Adam looks right now, so he’s willing to let it stand. “Wanna head over to Joey’s to see if we can bum his Gameboy?” he asks instead.

Adam shakes his head, gaze still fixed on the fabric covering his knees. “I have to do homework,” he says.

Fuck homework, Tommy thinks. He’s been doing that a lot lately. He used to be a pretty good kid, keep his head down and his grades up, but recently he finds himself just wanting to say ‘fuck everything’ and bailing at the first sign of trouble. Maybe it’s because of hormones or some shit, or maybe it’s because of the scar on his neck, and the fact that he doesn’t know just makes him even madder.

But Adam’s looking at him now with those big, pleading eyes, practically begging Tommy to just let it drop, to sit down and stay and be a good boy, and Tommy finds himself saying, “Yeah, sure, whatever. Let’s do homework.”

The smile that breaks out over Adam’s face almost makes it worth it. “Your history stuff is over there,” he says, pointing at a stack of books on his desk that Tommy probably forgot there the last time he came over to study. “So you don’t even have to go to your room or anything.”

“Stop sweet-talking me, man, I’m already sold,” Tommy says, but fondly, and turns around in his chair to dig through the stack of books while Adam fishes for his book bag and his homework. His bookmark is in the middle of last week’s chapter, which he already just-barely-passed a quiz on, so he flips forward to The Discovery of the Lycanthrophia Gene, with a reproduced sketch of a hairy, pointy-eared guy in a Victorian style coat and hat on the other page.

Lycanthrophia was first fully documented and defined by Englishman Lewis Gartner in 1894, the book tells him, although Darwin makes mention of wolf-like manbeasts in his On the Origin of Species. Gartner, setting the bar high for the many who would follow in his footsteps, first attempted to introduce this primitive culture of starved, isolated shifters into Western society, gifting them with education and civilization. Despite the charitable attempts of these scientific pioneers, however, werewolves remain among the most violent and volatile members of society one-hundred years later, oftentimes playing vital roles in brutal riots that shock

Tommy smacks the book shut.

Adam looks up, startled by the sound, pencil poised over his notebook. “Tommy?”

Tommy pushes the book away from him. He picks up the disorderly stack of textbooks and papers on the desk and dumps them on top of it, and then sets Adam’s pencil holder on top of the pile. What he really wants to do is shred the entire thing, but it’s a loan from the school and probably costs a million dollars.

Instead, he turns and gives Adam a smile that’s probably more frightening than reassuring. “Let’s do something stupid,” he says.

Adam gives him a wide-eyed look. He draws his legs up to his torso and wraps his arms around them. “What do you mean?” he asks.

Tommy attempts another smile, but it likely comes out more like aggressively bared teeth. “I mean, let’s do something fucked up, hare-brained, ridiculously stupid. Just for tonight. You know. Live for a bit.”

“We might not gonna live for very long,” Adam cautions him. He gnaws on his lip for a moment. “If we get caught, and the administration doesn’t kill us, then our parents definitely will.”

“My mom’s already going to kill me,” Tommy says, cheerier than he feels. His own daring sits thick and heavy in his stomach, but he’ll be damned before he chickens out now. “Might as well make it worth her while.”

“You’re crazy,” Adam tells him, very seriously.

“Crazy awesome,” Tommy says, going for light, but Adam isn’t having any of it.

“No, crazy stupid,” he says. “Dude. We have to keep our noses clean, okay? Now more than ever.”

“We have to get out of here,” Tommy corrects him. “Just for tonight, okay? This place is killing us, man.”

Adam puts his pencil down. He pushes his hair away from his forehead. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s pretend that getting out of here is even an option for a second, okay. Just – Tommy, where would we even go?”

He’s got a bit of a point, there, to be honest. The only town in walking distance is Ricker Hill, a good forty minutes by foot from Clarkenwell, and there’s really not a whole lot going on there. But Tommy’s thought this through. He’s maybe thought about it a little too much.

Tommy looks down at his lap. He chews on his lip for a second, and then he says, whispers really, “Desecration Row.”

“Desecration Row?” Adam breathes, like even saying the name aloud is an illicit activity. He’s not entirely wrong. “Isn’t that right in the sympathetic part of town?”

Tommy nods. It’s why he wants to go so badly, to be honest. He figures that out of all the places in Ricker Hill that might let in two underage (like, actually underage, not just too young to drink) werewolves, Desecration Row is pretty much their best bet.

“Yeah,” he says. He can’t quite make himself look Adam in the eye. “Yeah, they’ve got local bands playing every Friday and Saturday. I saw posters for it on my biology field trip.”

“A concert?” Adam asks hesitantly. He fumbles with his pencil. “You know that’s not allowed.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tommy says as casually as he can manage.

Adam sets his jaw. It’s adorable, really. “So you know that’s a terrible idea,” he says.

“Maybe,” Tommy shrugs.

“Maybe?” Adam’s voice does a neat little flip. “Tommy, we might get arrested. Suspended. Expelled! There are so many things wrong with that idea, I don’t even know where to start.”

“It’s not that bad,” Tommy says, even though yeah, it totally is. “Remember Mariah McCorman? She like, went down to Florida for a week without telling anybody, and she barely even got suspended.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t a wolf,” Adam says. “And now we have a McCorman wing in the library. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

Tommy shakes his head. “Aren’t you tired of that, though?” he asks. “Us not getting to do what everybody else gets to do just because we’re wolves? All over the country, teenagers are doing fucked up, retarded shit, and they’re totally allowed to get away with it. Why aren’t we?”

“I don’t want to do retarded stuff,” Adam says hesitantly.

“And we aren’t going to,” Tommy assures him immediately. “Nothing stupid, or illegal. Nothing you don’t want to do, I promise.”

“Damn right we aren’t,” Adam says with his usual lack of ferocity. He hesitates. “You really wanna do this, huh?”

“I really do.” Tommy pastes on his best pathetic face. “I can’t imagine anything I want more. And you don’t want to deprive me of that, do you?”

“No.” It’s quiet, but he’s said it, and he starts chewing his lip while Tommy tries hard to fight down a smile.

“But, Tommy, there’s like, no way this is gonna end well.”

“No one says it has to end badly.” Tommy slides his hand up Adam’s arm. “Trust me, Adam, okay? I’d never do anything to get you in trouble.”

Adam sighs, and he might not have admitted it, but Tommy knows defeat when he sees it.

“Tommy, if we get caught, we’re gonna get into so much trouble.”

Tommy smirks at him. “Then we better not get caught, huh?”

Tommy spends the last couple of hours before lights out trying to magic more clothes into his wardrobe through sheer force of will. Like, it’s not just a line – he legitimately has nothing to wear. His wardrobe holds four khaki slacks and five white shirts and two school blazers with matching ties. He can’t sneak out to Desecration Row in a white button down – he’d probably not even get in the door without getting his ass handed to him on a platter.

But at least the lack of options means he doesn’t have to take forever to decide what to wear. He has exactly one pair of jeans that he wears on flights and changes out of at the airport bathrooms, and he finds a Morrissey t-shirt crumpled up at the back of his closet and that’ll be enough. It’ll have to be enough.

Tommy’s getting out of here, tonight. He’s going to get out there and he’s going to find something better for himself than this stupid, ridiculous shithole, or he might just flip his lid and fuck some shit up, and he can’t afford to do that. Adam needs him. He doesn’t have any other friends, not really, and he’d be fucked without Tommy.

And maybe, just maybe, Tommy needs Adam to need him a little bit.

Sneaking out is like, stupidly easy, and Tommy can’t believe he’s never had the guts to do this before. Nobody’s paroling the halls, and even though the dorm building’s doors and windows are rigged to set off the alarm if someone opens them, apparently nobody thought to include the windows in the cellar. Tommy thinks about telling his mom when she calls, being all, See? I’m not any safer here than in Burbank, but with his luck she’d tell the administration, and Tommy has a feeling he might need these windows to keep him sane this year.

He slides the window almost all the way shut once they’re outside, both of them dressed in jeans and t-shirts, the least prep school-y things they have. Adam’s got a dark blue tee with a smudge of dust across the middle. Adam is also seriously not an athletic guy, and watching him struggle out the window would be hilarious if Tommy wasn’t so damn sure they’re about to get caught.

They cut through the orchard behind the dorms, bumping into bushes and each other and jumping every time one of them steps on a twig. The fence surrounding the property is a bit more of a challenge, mostly because Adam is seriously a graceless fuck, and he spends the better part of two minutes scrabbling for a foothold before Tommy finally gets tired of it and boosts him over. It still looks kind of like a whale flopping down a waterfall, or what Tommy supposes that would look like, ‘cause it’s not like Tommy has first-hand experience to compare it to.

Tommy has an easier time just by virtue of the fact that he’s lighter, not because he’s any fitter, and they’re both breathing heavily and kind of sweaty and gross by the time they’re free, but then they’re free and the entire thing just kind of falls by the wayside when Tommy feels a jolt of butterflies in his stomach. They’re out, holy shit.

It still feels weird to talk, though, even when they get into town, so they walk the streets in silence, Adam clenching and unclenching his hands at Tommy’s side. There’s nobody around, shops closed, streets deserted. Tommy has a bit of a hard time believing it’s a Friday night.

It’s not until they get to the dirty part of town, the sympathetic part of town, that a little bit of life manages to creep through the cracks. There are people sprawled out on porches, cigarette ends bright in the darkness, lights and noises spilling from a propped-open garage door. There’s still not much, but it’s getting to be more and more, the closer they get, until they can find their way to Desecration Row by nothing more than the beat of drums thumping in the cool night air.

Thank God for the noise, actually, because Tommy isn’t sure he would have found the place otherwise. Desecration Row is in an old storehouse in an alley behind an off-license liquor store, and they probably would have strolled straight by it if it weren’t for the black-hoodied couples clustered around a streetlamp. There are a few more of them in the alley itself, but no one waiting by the entrance, which probably means the party is already well underway. It also means no bouncers, which is good. Tommy doesn’t know what he’d do if he’d come all this way only to be turned away at the door.

Adam stops him at the door with a hand on his wrist. “This is a really, really bad idea.”

Tommy bares his teeth again. “That’s kind of the point.”

“Tommy,” Adam mutters, and Tommy can see in his eyes that he’s about to chicken out, so he pushes open the heavy door and heads inside. It’s mean, maybe, but if there’s one thing Adam’s more afraid of than getting in trouble, it’s getting in trouble alone.

The club isn’t full or anything. It’s not much of a surprise – there’s not enough people in this shitty-ass town, decent people, the kind who’d go to a show in a sympathetic club in a sympathetic part of town. It doesn’t matter though. The couple dozen people who are there are crowded around the stage like someone’s handing out free bottles of booze, and once he and Adam have pushed their way into the middle of it, there might as well be thousands of people gathered around them, all yelling and jumping and having a fucking good time.

It takes about five seconds for someone to elbow Tommy in the face, and someone else to step on Tommy’s shoes with fucking steel-capped boots, and Adam grapples for Tommy’s hand when the crush of teenage bodies drags them apart. It’s hot and sticky and the girl next to Tommy can’t sing for shit but she’s yelling her fucking heart out, anyway.

It’s fucking awesome.

Tommy keeps a tight hold on Adam’s hand, but he can’t keep from bouncing around like an insane motherfucker, screaming and throwing up the devil’s horns when the singer on stage does it.

The set ends a song and a half later and a whole bunch of hardcore metal kids disappear off the floor. Tommy would be disappointed, but there’s also a surge of people crowding forward, pushing themselves off the walls of the place and sliding off of barstools to head for the stage. They’re more punk looking, eyeliner thick on their faces, messages written across their skin in uneven black sharpie. There are techies on stage, carrying drums and guitars off and onto the stage, but the crowd is already gearing up for something big, Tommy can tell.

Somebody pushes into him from the side and he ends up in front of Adam who grabs his waist to keep him from getting swept away. Or possibly from getting swept away himself, who knows. Tommy throws him a grin over his shoulder and promptly misses the entrance of the band, not looking back until they’re all already at their instruments and everybody around them is yelling their approval.

The singer himself slinks on last, a skinny guy with a mess of black hair on his head, but his grin is infectious when he finally takes hold of the microphone.

“Hey, everyone,” he says, giving a little wave. “Thanks for coming tonight.” He grins into the bright lights trained on his face. “We’re My Chemical Romance, and we’re here to save your life.”

With that little weirdo announcement, he nods to the drummer to start them up. The beat’s solid, and the little guy with the guitar is seriously into what he’s doing, but they’re barely a verse into what might be a pretty solid song when the singer peers down into the audience at his feet. “No, man, don’t do that,” he says suddenly, across the riffs of his band members, and the chords peter out.

“No, seriously,” he says to somebody in the first couple of rows, bending down with his hands on his knees. “Like, man, look behind you. She almost got your elbow in the face, and that’s not cool, okay? Like, she can barely see behind you, what are you doing in front of her, anyway?”

Somebody says something, inaudible across the distance, and the singer nods seriously.

“I’m sure she’ll forgive you if you wanna be a gentleman,” he says. “Yeah, like that. Come on, guys, let her through.” He grins, quick and easy, and bumps fists with somebody in the crowd. “That’s what I like to see,” he says. “I expect you all to be gentlemen, okay,” he adds to the audience at large, looking like he’s gearing up for an entire speech, but the guy with all the hair leans towards his mike and says, “Gerard,” and Gerard looks over at him, expression turning sheepish.

“Right,” he says. “Right. He turns to the guy at the drums. “Count us back in?”

After a fourcount, they pick up where they left off, and it isn’t long before the crowd is bobbing along again. The singer’s voice isn’t as technically refined as Adam’s, not as polished, but he has a sort of magnetism to him that’s hard to resist. He struts across the stage and yanks his fellow band members’ hair and runs his hands over their chests, he snarls and growls and practically goes down on his mike, and somehow he still finds the time to get the entire place hyped up and jumping.

Tommy is so completely lost in the performance that he startles when Adam leans in close, a line of fire along Tommy’s spine.

“When I’m famous, that’s the shit I’m gonna do,” Adam says in his ear.

“They’re gonna love it,” Tommy tells him, and he allows himself to shift into the hand that settles on his waist.

He starts bouncing around again the second the next song starts, but he still feels Adam’s hand through his shirt long after it’s gone, even when the band stops playing and there’s another shuffle of bodies, the punk ones heading for the bar or the door while other, more harcore-metal looking ones push forward again. It’s a rougher crowd, overall, and Adam’s starting to look cagey and Tommy could use something to drink, too, throat parched from yelling along to whatever chorus he could pick up in the space of a song, so he prods Adam towards the bar.

Adam goes, looking vaguely grateful, and they manage to snag a stool and hang onto it until one next to it opens up. There’s two bartenders but they’re both alternately swamped or distracted by jailbait in low-cut tops, so Tommy takes a second to catch his breath, looking over every once in a while to make sure Adam’s doing the same. Now that the terror of sneaking out and the surprise of actually being at a damn cool concert’s worn off a bit, the thrill’s taking over. Tommy’s done being a good boy. Come on, world, do your worst. Fucking bring it.

The guy next to him, the one who keeps elbowing Tommy in the back with his overly muscled arm while he’s practically in the lap of the girl next to him, has an opened pack of cigarettes in front of him, and it’s fucking easy to reach over and take it like it’s really his. It’s about half full, still, with a lighter tucked neatly between the stalks of paper. Fucking goldmine.

Adam sniffs and turns his head away, which is pretty par for the course. They’ve been here before – Adam’s told Tommy time and time again that he’d totally smoke weed if they ever got their hands on any, but he refuses to even try cigarettes. He cycles through reasons like Tommy cycles through underwear, anything from not wanting to fuck up his voice and not having the money to not wanting to age prematurely. Vain fucker.

The only real reason Tommy can think of to not smoke would be because it soaks into his clothes, making them reek in ways that the school cleaners couldn’t ignore even if they wanted to. But the only thing on his list of things to do tonight is piss off the fucking school as hard as he can, so he waggles the pack of smokes at Adam and slides off his stool.

Adam purses his lips primly but keeps his mouth thankfully shut.

There’s not a whole lot going on outside, which Tommy’s weirdly grateful for, after the crush of bodies on the floor and the beat of the drums he could feel all the way down his spine. He throws his arms into the air, trying to stretch out his back a bit, feeling the cool night air drift against his bare stomach. This – this is exactly what he wanted. Even if they do get caught sneaking back in, or somebody checks their room for whatever reason, it’ll so be worth it.

“Enjoying yourself?” The question’s friendly enough, but the tone isn’t, and Tommy feels his hackles rise before he even turns to the speaker, a short guy with fucking orange hair and a sleeve tattoo up one arm.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. The guy’s short, and not a whole lot older than Tommy, but he looks tough. He looks like he could kick Tommy’s ass out of sheer determination.

“Let me guess.” The guy drops his cigarette and grinds it into flakey pieces with the heel of his Nikes. “You’re at that posh school up on the hill, and you managed to sneak out for the night, so now you’re slumming it and feeling like a badass.”

“You’re from the band,” Tommy says, because he’s an idiot.

The guy smirks a little. “Yep, that’s me.” He pulls open the stage door, noise and light spilling into the alley. “Thanks for coming. Try not to help any old ladies across the street on the way home.”

He’s gone before Tommy can stutter out a reply about all old ladies being in bed at this point, fire door clanging shut behind him.

Lighting up isn’t particularly satisfying after that, and he ends up dropping the smoke and grinding it under his heel before he’s even halfway done with it. Shit. Some motherfucker’s always gotta rain on his parade.

Tommy’s vaguely impressed when he gets back inside and Adam is still there, sulk-free and unmolested. He almost looks like he’s enjoying himself, tapping his foot against the bottom rung of his barstool to the sound of whatever band is playing now, but he doesn’t protest when Tommy tugs on his elbow and says, “Come on, home.”

Contrary to one of the prime rules of the universe, the way back from the club doesn’t feel any faster than the way there. Instead it just seems to drag on forever, dark streets stretching on in front and behind them, and when they finally get to the fence surrounding Clarkenwell property, Tommy barely has enough strength to drag himself over it. It’s weird – he was totally buzzing with energy back at the concert, but now it feels like it’s all just leaked out of him. Like a soda can with a hole at the bottom, or something. He doesn’t even quite remember to be worried about someone catching them, even though he should, even though they’re being too loud and they’re already on the administration’s shit list and nobody would believe them if they said they’d just gone to the bathroom, or something. But the corridors are moonlit and deserted. Tommy gives Adam’s hand a quick squeeze before he heads up the stairs to his own room, gets into bed and pulls the covers over his head and doesn’t move again until morning.

It’s weird, after that. It’s like there’s something buzzing underneath Tommy’s skin, something big, something huge. It’s nothing new. It’s like it was always there, just below the surface, but now that Tommy’s given in, just the once, it’s feeding off his one night of rebellion and growing, growing until it can no longer be contained.

It’s like something big is lingering just around the corner, and going to his classes with that knowledge whirling around at the back of his mind is kind of bizarre. Not in a bad way, necessarily. In some ways, school and all its bullshit is easier to bear, now that Tommy knows there’s something better out there, just waiting for him to be done with it all. But it’s also harder, somehow, because there’s something better out there, just waiting for him, and yet he’s stuck at school dealing with the same old bullshit.

It doesn’t help that it’s a full moon two days later, when he’s still buzzing with the excitement of it all. There’s nothing quite as good at killing a mood as having your name called over the PA for the entire school to hear so you can trudge down to the cellar and let yourself be locked up until sun-up.

Adam’s already there when Tommy comes down the stairs, waiting at the second steel-enforced door on the right-hand side. Tommy goes to stand by the first, the one he’s been using since he got lost his very first moon at Clarkenwell and almost didn’t make it inside in time.

He’s barely gotten situated by the time the administration guys show up. They always let the heavy door at the top of the stairs bang shut, but it still makes a couple of people flinch, Tommy included. There’s two of them, one for each side of the corridor. Nate Novarro’s standing in front of the door across from Tommy, and their eyes meet for a split second, Nate’s dark and unreadable and so, so old, before they both have to shuffle aside to let the administration guys get at their doors with their five thousand keys.

Tommy’s guy moves carefully around him as he undoes the locks and pulls open the door for Tommy to edge inside. He’s blocking Tommy’s view, so he can’t even sneak one last look at Adam before he’s left alone. Tommy doesn’t really need to look around the room, but he still does it, takes in the bare walls and concrete floor and the single window high up in the wall, high enough that it’d take a boatload of upper-body-strength that Tommy just doesn’t have to pull yourself up to it, and then there’s still the fact that it doesn’t really open beyond a couple of inches.

Tommy stands in the middle of the room, motionless, listening to the sounds of people moving outside. They’re always impressively silent. It always takes forever, too – admin guy has to unlock every single one of the eight doors on Tommy’s side, and once he’s at the end he has to supervise all of them stripping out of their clothes and leaving them outside of the door. Wouldn’t want that precious school uniform to be damaged, after all.

Tommy bites his knuckle to keep from laughing, or maybe scowling, he’s not entirely sure. He sees these guys, his guy, every month, and he doesn’t even know their names. They probably don’t know his, either. They just show up, in suits but with blazers missing like they’re about to do unexpected but deeply unpleasant labor, unlocking their doors and then locking them again behind them. It’s probably a shitty job, but Tommy can’t say he has a whole lot of sympathy.

It seems like an eternity before admin guy shows up again. He kind of rolls his eyes when he sees Tommy standing there, still dressed, but he doesn’t tell him off for it. He never does. He doesn’t say anything at all, in fact, just motions impatiently for Tommy to get on with it, entirely unimpressed by the dark look Tommy gives him when he starts to fumble with his tie.

The guy watches him, face twisted in displeased boredom, while Tommy strips out of his blazer and shirt, while he unties his shoes and shoves his socks into them. He folds everything into a tidy heap and then, when the guy still hasn’t looked away, he takes a deep breath and shoves his pants and underwear down in one go. The guy watches while Tommy gathers up all his shit and drops it next to the door, outside the door, trying to move as little as possible, and then motions for Tommy to step back into the room and swings the door shut.

It locks with a heavy, deafening thud of metal against metal. Tommy’s already itching to get out of his skin. He just – there’s gotta be a way out of this. Around this. It can’t be right.

Still, though. Right or not, he’s still stuck here, and it fucking sucks.

He wakes up contorted on the concrete floor, neck sore and fingers scratched raw and nothing but snatches of memories; of being trapped, of clawing at the walls in terror, of curling into a shaking ball and howling his desperation into the quiet air.

Not even showering helps to wash away the chaos raging in his head, the last remnants of fear, and it takes everything’s he’s got to not just curl up into a ball on the tiled floor and not move until this fucking day is over.

It really doesn’t help that there’s a pop quiz waiting on his desk when he slips into his Chemistry classroom with thirty seconds to spare before the bell. He gets stuck halfway through calculating the half-life of sulfur-35, still half-caught in the nightmare of last night, and spends several precious minutes thinking of Adam, bleary-eyed and drooping in his American Lit class, probably trying so very hard to look like he’s taking in a single word being said. And then Mr. Butkovich raises his voice to say, “Feel free to turn in that test if you’re done, Mr. Ratliff,” and Tommy looks up long enough to catch a sympathetic look from the wrecked-looking Michael Schellener in the first row before he forces his head down and his eyes to focus on the x’s and the n’s.

The day drags on forever, his sleep-deprived brain making slow-going classes run longer still, and it seems like years before the last bell finally rings. He didn’t even see Adam at lunch, although Ryan Ross muttered something about the juniors saying something about Adam being held back after English because he was nodding off in class. Tommy’s got no clue if that’s true or not, but it’s something he wouldn’t put past this school, so he barely even pauses to stuff his books into his locker before he goes to find Adam in the study room at the very back of the library.

Adam’s already there, waiting for him with a book propped against the edge of the table. They haven’t gone back to the ping pong tables since that whole thing with Jesse went down. Tommy kind of wants to, just to spite him, but even he knows that there’s such a thing as tempting fate, so when Adam suggested the library as an alternate hang-out spot, he just smiled and tagged along.

“How are you feeling?” Adam asks hesitantly, climbing to his feet and folding his hands in front of his body.

Tommy dredges up a smile. “Probably as well as you are,” he says. “I’ll be better if we can just get the hell out of here.”

“No,” Adam says, as decidedly as Tommy’s ever heard him say anything. “No, Tommy. It was a dumb idea last time, and it’s still a dumb idea, and we’re not doing it.”

“Adam, come on,” Tommy says, but Adam just shakes his head.

“Forget it.”

“Can’t you just…” Tommy’s almost whispering now, but he can’t stop. God only knows what’s wrong with him, but he feels kind of small and dirty and really just wants to curl up into a ball and die. “For me?”

“Fuck no,” Adam says, and Tommy wraps his arms around his stomach and scuffs his shoes against the carpet, but Adam’s not done yet.

“No, no, and fucking no, Tommy. Of all the dumb shit you’ve ever come up with, this is without a doubt the worst, and I don’t know why I let you talk me into it last time but it was a mistake and it’s not going to happen again, so stop fucking asking me!”

“Please,” Tommy bursts out. He doesn’t look up from the floor. “Just… please.”

Adam doesn’t say anything for a while. Tommy can feel his eyes on him though, so he doesn’t look up until Adam draws in a sharp breath. He throws his hands in the air, all exasperated movement. “Alright. Alright, fine. It’s a terrible idea, but fine.”

“Thank you,” Tommy says quietly. Adam won’t look at him anymore, but that’s fine. This is worth it.

Module 4 Character Introduction Post

bad_peppermint — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 20:26:44 GMT

Brief introduction to the people I've borrowed for this. This is not a comprehensive primer, and I can't guarantee complete accuracy. You won't walk away from this post knowing what kind of underwear they all like to wear. It only tells you as much as I thought was necessary (or interesting) to get through the fic without getting completely lost.

The pictures I've used aren't the greatest, and certainly not my favorites. I chose the ones I did because I thought they fit the mood of the story best. The personalities presented in these pictures are by and large the ones I had in mind while I was writing this. That's all.

Tommy:

Real-life Tommy Joe Ratliff used to play bass for Adam Lambert and is now his lead guitarist. He's got tattoos and piercings and ~~is a bit of an alcoholic~~ really enjoys his drink. Tommy achieved pop culture fame when he made out with Adam during the 2009 AMA's. Or really, Adam made out with him. They've got a tiny bit of a D/s thing going, but that's neither here nor there.
They made out a whole bunch during Adam's GlamNation Tour, too. Adam has a boyfriend now (who isn't Tommy), so I don't know if they still do that. It was great while it lasted, though.

This is Adam:

Adam was runner up of the 2009 American Idol season. I hate elimination shows with a fiery passion, so my knowledge of that show does not extend beyond youtube clips and other people's primers.
After the season was done, Adam came out as gay (to nobody's surprise). He's since then recorded two albums, gone on a world tour, and has his sights set on becoming show biz's HBIC. He might be overcompensating for the fact that he was that fat ginger kid in high school, but you kinda can't help but love him.

My Chemical Romance:

From left to right: Ray Toro, Gerard Way, Mikey Way, some drummer we don't really give a damn about, Frank Iero.

Frank:

MCR's rhythm guitarist. Frank is kind of a menace, both onstage and off. He's got tattoos and piercings (or used to) and crazy hair and is basically Tommy's emo soul mate. He's also a bit of a dick. The kind of dick where you watch him do his thing and think, "Wow, you're an asshole. But I love you!" <333

Gerard:

Gerard is MCR's lead singer. He's fabulous. Gerard will do (and has done) anything, up to and including substance addiction, performances on children's shows, and public (and publicly admitted) cross-dressing. He's also a bit of a feminist and a giant sweetheart, and I'd probably want to marry him if he wasn't married already.

Mikey:

On the left. Mikey is Gerard's little brother, just like in the fic, oh my God, you guys, a tiny bit of canon actually applies. Mikey plays bass. He also came up with the name My Chemical Romance, barely speaks but knows everybody, and used to wear glasses. Then he got Lasik, which is, you know. Good on him, but lame.

Ray:

On the right. Ray plays lead guitar. I tried really hard to include him in this fic, I did, but he was being shy/stubborn and refused to do more than pole his head in a couple of times.

Who else is in it? And where did I get them from?

Bob Bryar

- Bandom - Ex-drummer for My Chemical Romance. I still love him, though, so I gave him a walk-on role.

Isaac Carpenter

- Adam Lambert RPS - One of two drummers for Adam's GlamNation Tour. He and Tommy go grocery shopping sometimes.

Ian Crawford

- Bandom - On the left. Used to play for The Cab, is now guitarist for Panic! at the Disco Version 3.0.

Zack Hall

- Bandom - Security guy for Panic! at the Disco

Nate Novarro

- Bandom - Middle. Cobra Starship's drummer.

Jamia Nestor

- Bandom - Far right. RL Frank's wife and mother of his children.

Monte Pittman

- Adam Lambert RPS - Played lead guitar during Adam's GlamNation Tour.

Ryan Ross

- Bandom - Ex-lyricist, -guitarist and sometimes singer of Panic! at the Disco. Quit the band, is now a non-entity. Last I heard, he was hanging around L.A. with his hipster friends, probably being deep and ironic.

Worm

- Bandom - MCR's security guy (with bonus Gerard!)

Hope that helped! If anything's really unclear still, drop me a line and I'll do my best to explain.

Module 4 - Masterpost

bad_peppermint — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 09:04:16 GMT

Title: Module 4
Author: bad_peppermint
Artist: cassandra_ml
Fandom(s): Adam Lambert RPS, Bandom (My Chemical Romance)
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the people mentioned herein, nor have I ever met any of them. This was written entirely for fun - no harm intended, no money made, my sincerest apologies if it happens to offend anyone.
Characters/Pairings: Adam Lambert/Tommy Joe Ratliff, Frank Iero, Gerard Way
Rating: R
Word Count: 53,350
Warnings: Seriously shitty language, I'm not fucking kidding. Some violence, underage drinking and drug use, some sexual content.References to het.
Notes: This fic would not exist the way it does without the amazing stella_lost, who not only did a fabulous job as beta but also cheerleadered the Hell out of this little monster. I don't know what I did to deserve you, darling. <3
This is my second time working with cassandra_ml and I loved it just as much as the last time around. Her art will rock your socks off, so go and check it out!
And last but not least, thank you so much to everyone at werewolfbigbang who made this challenge possible. I had a fantastic time, and can't wait to do it all again next year.

P.S. Notes on the timeline: Imagine MCR being ahead of the curve by three or four years (complete with albums, people's ages, etc) and you're right on track. Adam's a bit younger that he would have been. All Bandom people are happily taken out of context entirely.

Summary: As far as Tommy's concerned, his illustrious prep school's only redeeming feature is Adam. Adam who goes through the same shit Tommy does, being a werewolf; the bullying and the discrimination and the beat-downs. Adam who's sweet and nice and lets Tommy talk him into sneaking off school property at night to go see bad rock shows at seedy dives. But even Adam can't contain all the helpless rage Tommy's starting to carry around with him, so when Tommy meets local punk kid and fellow werewolf Frank, Tommy throws himself head first into a world of bad attitudes and worse ideas. And even though Adam's reluctant, Tommy could not be more psyched. He's finally found people he fits in with. It's the best time of his life, even though they all know it's just a matter of time before it all goes wrong.

Link to art master post: Here

Masterpost
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Or read the whole thing on AO3 (where you can also download a PDF, if you're so inclined).

No idea who some (or any) of these people are? No problem! Read the handy-dandy pseudo-primers here:
Tommy | Adam | The MCR Boys | Who else is in it?

J2_Everafter: Meant to Be [1/1]

bad_peppermint — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:15:33 GMT

Title: Meant to Be
Genre: RPS
Pairings: Unrequited Toaster/Jensen
Rating: PG (for angst)
Word count: About 6,250
Disclaimer: I am affiliated with neither any of the people mentioned herein OR anything related to the The Brave Little Toaster. Written purely for fun, no offense meant. Please don't sue me. (I'm broke enough as it is.)
Notes: AU. So AU. J2 fic based on Disney's The Brave Little Toaster.
Thank you ever so much to the lovely lemanya for the fantastic and much appreciated last-minute beta. <3
And a huge thank you also to everybody at j2_everafter for making all this possible. It's been a blast. :)

When I was right smack in the middle of writing this, staying at my mother's house, her toaster gave up the ghost. One minute I was using it to make a sandwich and it was working fine, and when my brother came in half an hour later to grab some breakfast, it was dead.
Now, I'd just spent a good two days anthropomorphizing appliances and seriously cringed when my brother and mom decided to go buy a new one, but I kept my mouth shut. I still feel weirdly guilty. So Toaster, this fic is for you. I hope you're very happy in toaster heaven right now, and forgive me for not speaking up in your defense.

On AO3: here.

Summary: When toaster Jay gets left behind during a move, he'll move Heaven and Earth to be reunited with his beloved Jensen.

Meant to Be

Jay is well aware that something is going on. He’s suspected for a while now, ever since Jensen started hesitating in his usually flawless morning routine; running his hand over a cupboard door, or resting his head against the refrigerator. Or maybe even before then, back when Jensen started spending his evenings reading bills at the kitchen table, ever deepening frown lines cutting into his face. Jensen is a pretty happy guy, all things considered, and it’s not like him to get upset over the kitchen island.

So when the boxes start appearing around the room, Jay can’t say he’s surprised. This isn’t the first time he’s moved, or even the second – he’s been through the process once during Jensen’s college years, and three times since then – and everything happens as he remembers. Mostly. Jensen packs up the stuff from the lower cupboards first, the bowls his mama gave him and the mixer, but there’s another box this time, sitting in the doorway, where Jensen puts the blender he’s only taken out of its box once and the reindeer cookie cutter set from Auntie May. He puts a few mugs and pots in there, too, sighing heavily each time, and after a while, he turns the box so the GOODWILL written on the side is no longer visible.

That box has Jay’s wire insides coating with ice.

It gradually fills, thankfully not with Jay or any of Jensen’s appliances that he’s friendly with. The fruit press goes, but it’s terribly snooty anyway so Jay’s not too heartbroken. He spends two days listening to the press telling the cutting board next to it how it was so over being Jensen’s, anyway, so he really doesn’t feel bad. But he still wants to curl up into a tiny, inconspicuous ball when Jensen comes by one day and lugs the box away.

He comes back, later, with another, empty box. The fruit press stays gone.

Another couple of days after that, when most of the kitchen’s contents are packed away, Jensen hops up on the counter next to Jay while his bread is toasting.

“Man, I wish I could afford to stay here,” he says. “I like this place. And you like it, too, don’t you, Jay? Don’t lie, I know you do.”

Honestly, Jay couldn’t give a damn about the place as long as Jensen’s in it. Jensen is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. They’ve gone through several of Jensen’s break-ups together, miserable morning-afters following both alcohol benders and one-night-stands, celebratory PB&Js after exams and successful job interviews, and slow days with Jensen moaning and groaning about the stomach flu that prevents him from keeping anything down but toast.

Him and Jensen, they’re meant to be.

Danneel, though, Jay could do without. She’s a good friend to Jensen, he knows that, and he usually agrees with whatever nasty thing she has to say about Jensen’s fling of the day. However, as well as getting Jensen’s love life straightened out, she’s also made it a personal goal to ‘de-clutter’ Jensen’s life and get him to stop being so sentimental about his stuff, and Jay vehemently disagrees with her there.

Particularly because she seems to be dead set on getting Jay out of the house.

He doesn’t think it’s personal for her. Jay knows how much Jensen values her opinion, and so he’s made sure to always (okay, almost always) toast her bread a nice, golden brown. She just loves having the newest, shiniest version of everything, and Jay can’t do anything except toast things, doesn’t even have those wires that pop up that you can put your rolls on. He’s the polar opposite of shiny.

Still, Jensen doesn’t seem to care because he fishes out his bread and the sliced turkey breast. Today must be an exhausting one – he usually goes for just jam in the morning unless he’s going to have to work really hard. Jay obediently lets his wires come to life when Jensen slides two pieces in, making sure to get both sides of each slice nice and even, not like some of those crappy new toasters he’s heard about.

Jensen rests his chilly fingertips against Jay’s side. “Gen’s gonna love you,” he says.

Jay chokes at that, toast springing upwards.

Jensen laughs and pushes the lever back down. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s not like I’m planning on dating her,” he says. “She’s just a cool chick with a really nice room for rent. Besides, I think she’s dating some TV actor or something.”

Jay, mollified, crackles his wires so Jensen’s bread ends up extra nice and crispy, just the way he likes it. Jensen is totally allowed to move in with some actor-dating chick. That’s fine with Jay.

“Yeah,” Jensen mutters, curling into his knees. “If I have to move, I guess this is the best option I could have gone with.”

Jay hums, wishing like hell that he were human so he could lay an arm around Jensen’s shoulders right now, because he looks like he needs it.

Instead, there’s a knock on the door, and Jensen straightens hastily.

“It’s open,” he calls, followed by the sound of the door swinging open and closed, and then heels in the hall. Danneel, then.

And, sure enough, she steps into the kitchen a moment later, flawlessly made up and impeccable in her designer clothes.

“Morning,” Jensen says, leaning down so she can kiss his cheek. “You ready for the last breakfast in this apartment?”

“I still can’t believe you want to take the toaster,” Danneel says, pulling two slices out of the bag and slotting them up.

“Danneel,” Jensen says patiently, “if you really think I’d give up the toaster, you don’t know me at all.”

Danneel rolls her eyes. “Look, I get that you’re attached to the thing, but it’s ancient. It’s like a dinosaur, only old. And it’s huge. You’re gonna need a box for the toaster alone.”

“I like ‘em big,” Jensen says with a wink.

“God, you’re such a freak,” Danneel sighs, and goes to push down Jay’s lever.

Jay makes sure the toast pops right back up, still limp and cold.

“Seriously?” Danneel mutters, trying – and failing – a second time. She groans. “Jen, this piece of shit doesn’t even work.”

“Don’t call him that,” Jensen scolds, pushing her aside. “He’s got personality, that’s all.” He pushes the lever down, gently hooking it to the right to make sure it latches. “And Jay, you behave. Danneel didn’t mean it like that.”

“Good God,” Danneel sighs. “And you’ve named it. You’ve probably kept all your old Legos, too, and every boarding pass you’ve ever had.”

Jay is sorely tempted to spit her stupid toast right back at her, but Jensen is in the way, and he’s scowling with enough disapproval for the both of them.

“There’s nothing wrong with collecting mementos,” he says primly. “Now go sit down, or you’re not getting a single beer can out of me tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Danneel says, flopping down on the one chair that hasn’t gotten stacked up in the corner. “Are the guys gonna show up soon?”

“Yeah, Chris sent me a text. They’re stuck in traffic on the 405, but they’ll be here in half an hour or so.” Jensen picks up a plate and holds it out, and Jay makes sure to land both slices on it, neatly on top of each other. “So you can just sit there and catch me up on all the gossip, like I know you’re dying to.”

#

Jay finally ends up in a box just before noon, after all the furniture has been lugged out the door by an endless parade of people. He can’t help the jolt of panic, even when Jensen picks up him ever so carefully and neatly sets him down in a box next to Jeff, the old-fashioned telephone, and the Chevy Impala model that Jensen has sitting next to the TV as decorations. A moment later, before they’ve had the chance to do more than nod hello, they’re joined by SANDRA, the delicate little IKEA reading lamp.

“What’s happening?” she whispers. She sounds scared, and Jay has to remind himself that she’s new, barely six months old, and the only move she’s ever been a part of was from the store to the apartment.

“We’re moving,” Jeff whispers back.

Then they have to be quiet because Jensen comes back and puts down the post card stand that has a heart-shaped framed picture of some actor called Chad Michael Something as the base.

“Jen,” Danneel calls from somewhere. “What am I doing with your Kindle?”

“Throw it in my backpack or something,” Jensen yells back. He bends down and lifts the box into the air, Sandy just barely managing to quiet her shriek of surprise. They jerk and rattle, but Jensen is fairly careful maneuvering them out of the apartment and down the stairs, only bumping into a single doorframe on the way. And then they’re outside, blinking in the bright LA sunshine, Jensen’s building a tall shape to their right.

After a few more moments of walking, Jensen stops. “Alright,” he says. “Here we are.”

He sets the box down and Jay gets a half-second view of Jensen’s stubbly jawline and his wire-rim glasses before someone yells, “Jensen!” and Jay goes back to staring at cloud-dotted skies and half a palm tree.

For the longest time, nothing happens. Chad shifts uneasily against him, and the Chevy makes little whirring noises where it’s getting squashed underneath Jeff, but for the most part they sit quietly. They can’t afford to move. Someone could come by at any second.

Every once in a while, there are footsteps, and someone pushes the box they’re in aside, rattling them all down to their insides, but it seems to take forever before he can hear Jensen’s laugh.

“Thank God that’s over,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”

Someone else asks, “We got everything?”

“Yeah, we’re good,” Jensen says.

There’s the sound of car doors slamming and the truck sputtering to life and then pulling away. And then nothing.

“What – what’s going on?” Sandy whispers.

“This can’t be right,” Jay whispers, more to himself than her. Jensen – Jensen wouldn’t just leave them. Not after what he said that morning.

Then there are footsteps close by, and even as he stills, Jay feels a rush of hope. It could be Jensen, after all, who decided to park around the corner while he ran back to get the forgotten box.

But neither of the two faces, when they finally come into focus above them, belong to Jensen. They’re too old, too weather-beaten, and their teeth, when they smile, are yellow and crooked.

“Lookie,” one of them says. “Free shit.”

The other, who has a Lakers cap pulled down over his eyes, shakes his head. “Fucking rich people,” he says. “Rather leave their shit sitting out and buy new stuff after than make an extra trip.”

“Better for us,” the other one says, and they both reach down and lift one side.

“You wanna sell it now?” the capless one asks as they walk, Jay rattling painfully into Jeff’s side with each step.

“Let’s head to Maryana’s first,” Cap says. “She said she wanted a new lamp.” He chuckles. “Always best to stay in her good graces. Ready?”

They lift the box high into the air and let it thud down in what Jay assumes is a truck bed, and then there’s the sound of doors slamming. The surface underneath them rattles to life, sending all five of them skittering against each other. It’s like a painful parody of what should have happened with Jensen, and Jay chokes down a sob. Jensen isn’t ever going to find them now.

“Well this fucking sucks,” Chad says, pulling himself upright. He tilts into Jeff when the truck picks up speed, then back into Jay when it brakes with screeching tires.

Jay is inclined to agree with him, but Sandy looks all scandalized, and then the truck starts going faster and faster. They must be getting on the freeway. Shit. Something needs to happen, and quickly, or they’ll never manage to find their way back to the apartment.

Chad tilts into Jeff again who shrugs him off with a disgruntled expression.

“What do we do?” Sandy whispers.

The Chevy squeaks its wheels in agreement with the question.

“We have to get back to Jensen,” Jay says firmly. They just have to. There’s no other option.

“Oh really?” Chad asks. “After he left us to get picked up by scavengers?”

“That was a mistake,” Jay says.

Chad teeters mockingly back and forth. “Oh really?” he says. “So he just left us sitting by the side of the road by accident, even though he managed to pack everything else? He said he had everything, remember?” He turns away. “Jensen ditched us. Deal with it.”

“Jensen wouldn’t do that to us.” Sandy doesn’t sound very convinced of this, but at least she’s said it, even if Chad scoffs.

“Do we actually know that, though?” he asks. “Maybe he did want to get rid of us.” He makes a show of looking around. “I mean, none of us are things he couldn’t do without, are we?’

You’re wrong, Jay wants to shout. Jensen loves us. Jensen loves me. Instead, he says, “Either way, I’m not sticking around to end up as some greasy guy’s punching bag. I’m getting out of here.”

“And how, pray tell?” Chad asks, leaning towards him with mockingly raised brows, but Jay is no longer listening.

“Okay,” he says. “First, we need to get out of this box.”

They peer upwards, but it’s high – even if they managed to lever Chad and Sandy and the Chevy over, Jay and Jeff would still be too big and too heavy.

“We could tear a hole in the side?” he says.

“I could try burning one,” Sandy says. “I’m battery powered.”

Chad snorts, and they all glare at him, but as much as Jay wants to, he’s not coming up with any brilliant solutions.

The Chevy growls a little and gives a sudden burst of speed, bumping into the cardboard.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’ll work,” Jay says, but then the Chevy does it again just as the truck takes a turn, and the entire box shudders.

“No, hey, it actually might,” Jay corrects himself. “Everyone get over here. Move when I say.”

They must be pretty far downtown now, because it’s not long before the truck takes another sharp turn.

Jay yells “Now!” to Jeff, and they throw themselves against the side of the box.

For one long, terrible moment, nothing happens. Then the box tips, ever so slowly, before it lands hard on its side and they go spilling over and into the truck’s bed.

So far, so good.

“Everyone okay?” Jeff asks, and they slowly right themselves. Chad’s clip is crooked and Sandy looks a little dazed, but they’re all still up and functional.

“Okay,” Jay says, taking a quick look around. There are a couple other, closed boxes in the truck bed, and he can see the two guys sitting in the cabin, Cap with his arm slung along the headrest. There’s no way for them to heave Jeff and himself over the side, plus they’d probably fall and shatter to pieces on the asphalt, but the tailgate is held in place with two heavy pins that they can probably get out.

“Chad,” he calls. “Do you think you can get those pins out?”

“Piece of cake,” Chad says.

“We’re gonna need to be fast,” Jeff cautions them. “If the humans realize something’s going on, they’ll pull over and fix it, and we’ll be screwed.”

“I can be fast with the pin.” Chad peers at the tailgate. “Not so good with getting over there and back, though.”

“Chevy, can you carry him across?” Jay asks.

The Chevy bobbles its hood up and down, and a moment later, it’s got Chad on its back, carrying him across the distance and to the first of the closures that Chad immediately latches onto. He groans and grunts, clip straining with the effort, and slowly but surely the pin slides open.

“Good, good,” Jay calls when it finally slips free, the tailgate gaping open just a little. “Now get back over here.”

Chad hop-skips on top of the Chevy, which bumps over the metal grating at the bottom of the truck bed but gets Chad across quickly, and he wastes no time latching onto the other pin. It jams a little when it’s almost all the way out, but Jeff wraps his cord around Chad’s base and yanks, and it comes free, the tailgate swinging down with a thump.

The blacktop whirls by with a speed that makes Jay dizzy just looking at it. He stumbles back a little, terror rising, but he can’t afford to chicken out now. “Come on,” he calls to the others. “As close to the edge as you can. Aim for the grass strip to soften your landing.”

“We gotta jump all of that?” Chad asks, and Sandy whimpers, but Jay won’t let himself think of that. He has to do this. He has to be strong now, for Jensen.

Glancing back, he sees the capless guy looking out through the truck’s back window and cursing, and yells “Jump!” as loud as he can.

He hits the ground hard, bounces once, twice, before he comes to a stop in the dead grass, a handful of eucalyptus trees shedding their leaves on top of him.

He blinks, disoriented, and looks around. There’s Jeff over there, phone cord tangled in an impressive clump, and that’s Sandy shaking the dirt out of her lamp shade. There’s the Chevy, in one piece aside from the hubcap lying a foot away, and Chad’s not far either, untangling his post card clip from the leaves.

“So what now?” Chad asks once he’s managed to sway his way upright.

“Home,” Jay says immediately. “We don’t know where Jensen is-”

“-and if we’re home, he’ll find us when he comes back to look,” Jeff finishes for him.

“If he comes back,” Chad mutters, but at least he looks sorry when the Chevy titters nervously.

#

They manage to rig up some kind of contraption where Jeff sits right on top of the Chevy, keeping the rest of them on board with the twirly cord protruding from his side, and Chad and Sandy help the Chevy push along the curb where the shoulder ends and the grassy rise they landed on begins.

The going is unbelievably slow, with them either having to stop and then start again from the beginning every time a car rolls by – and there are a lot of them – or risking curious looks and pointing fingers.

Finally, Jeff tips off the wheezing Chevy’s back. “This is enough,” he says. “It’s not worth the exhaustion like this. We can go tonight when there aren’t as many cars and they won’t see us as well.”

“How will we be able to see where we’re going?” Chad demands to know.

Jeff rolls his eyes. “This is LA, Chad,” he says. “We’ll be able to see where we’re going, trust me.”

#

Sure enough, even after the sun sets, it is still plenty bright enough for them to go on, and they all pile into a haphazard pile on top of the Chevy, Chad and Sandy propelling them along. The Chevy’s wheels grind in a worrying way, but it just keeps rolling along until Jay finally calls a halt. They can’t risk breaking the Chevy. Without it, they’d never get anywhere.

They flop down at the side of the road. They’re all exhausted, Jay can tell, even if no one admits it. And they don’t even know where they’re going, or what to do once they get there.

“Guys,” he says, but Chad shakes his head.

“Shush,” he says. “Do you hear that?”

Jay does – there’s scuffling somewhere close by, snuffling, and it’s enough to set them all on edge. A moment later, they see it – a dark shape moving through the grass, big, almost twice as big as Jeff. It could probably tear them apart if it wanted, and it’s heading straight for them.

“What is that?” Jay asks.

The Chevy comes squeaking closer on battered wheels and cuddles up against Jay’s side.

“It’s a raccoon,” Jeff tells him, voice hushed. “I’ve seen them on the TV. It’s probably hungry.”

They watch in silence as the creature comes closer, nosing through the undergrowth.

“But we’re not food.” Sandy curves against Jeff’s side. “So it should leave us alone, right?”

“Do you really want to risk it?” Jay asks.

The raccoon comes closer and closer, leaves rustling under its feet, and it doesn’t stop until it’s practically on top of Jeff, nosing at his dial wheel. Jeff lets out the shrillest ring he’s got, startling not only the raccoon but also Jay and Chad and Sandy, and the Chevy, if its hasty retreat behind Jay’s broad back is anything to go by.

Unfortunately, the raccoon recovers faster than any of them, sneaking back towards them, nosing at a whimpering Sandy’s base and then her bulb, and Jay sees their chance.

“Blind him! Now!” he calls, and Sandy clicks to life.

The animal hisses and cowers away from the brightness, unprepared for Jeff to launch his receiver straight at its nose, and with a loud yelp, it turns tail and runs.

Chad yells a few unsanitary insults after it, but Jay is too relieved to tell him off.

They wait in silence for a while, but the raccoon doesn’t come back. There are only a few cars on the road now, occasionally whooshing by, their headlights skittering across the trees. Despite the late hour, there are definitely birds singing somewhere around them. The Chevy yawns, little hood rising with the motion, and nods into Jay’s side. It’s probably exhausted after carrying them all for so long.

“Hey Jeff,” Jay calls. “I think it’s time to call it a night.”

He’s expecting a fight, some sort of comment about how they still have forever and a day to go, but Jeff just turns and bobs his receiver in agreement. “Let’s get up there by those trees,” he says. “Just as a precaution.”

They make their way up the rise slowly, the Chevy crawling ahead, Jeff dragging everybody else with him, tied up in the phone cord. Once they’ve reached their declared sanctuary, the Chevy abruptly stops moving and refuses to budge another inch, and Jay falls asleep watching the others try to get comfortable on the uneven ground.

#

He wakes to the sound of a motor cutting out, and for a brief, shining moment, he thinks it’s Jensen come back to get him.

Then he peers around and realizes that’s a white van parked at the side of the freeway, not a red truck, and the words Highway Clean-Up are stenciled on the side. Definitely not Jensen.

A man and a woman wearing bright yellow vests get out, armed with trash bags and spears, and they gesture a bit before they split up, the man heading away from their little hide-out, the woman towards it.

They lie quietly, praying and hoping, but they’ve had hardly any luck so far, so why should they start now? And sure enough, the woman hesitates as soon as she’s close enough to see them, then calls her partner over.

“Seriously, the shit people throw away,” she says. She picks up Sandy and gestures with her, the lamp stiffening in terror. “Seriously. IKEA still sells this stuff, and these people just dumped it all by the side of the road.”

“I’m not so sure.” The man picks up the Chevy and peers at it. “I think maybe this fell off a moving van or something. It’s way nicer than our usual haul.”

“Put it in the passenger seat,” the woman says. “We can sell it to that thrift store ‘round the corner when we get back.”

“What’ve we got?” the guy asks, looking around. “What,-- the lamp and the toaster, and the phone over there?”

“And the toy car,” the woman adds. “That’s a cool-looking one.”

Jay hears Chad suck in a gasp, and he sees Jeff lash out with the phone cord, shifting Chad to be more visible.

“What about the heart thingy?” the guy asks.

The woman laughs. “That ugly thing?” she scoffs. “Like anyone would buy that.”

“Just take it,” the guy says. “It’s not gonna hurt.”

“Fine,” the woman says. “But if the thrift store people laugh at us, I’m blaming you.”

She gathers them up, all five of them, thank God, and treks over to the van, opening the passenger door and piling them in the foot well. “Hello, payday,” she says, grinning, before she slams the door shut.

“Chad,” Sandy whispers, but Chad just turns away.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

“Chad,” Jeff says, but Chad says, loudly, “So how are we getting out of this one? Any ideas, Big Jay?”

Jay looks around. They can probably lever open the doors, hope that they can get away before the people with the yellow jackets catch sight of them – but then the door opens again and they both pile in, laughing.

“That was quick, thank fuck,” the woman says.

“You got that right,” the guy replies. “You wanna stop by the thrift store now or after lunch?”

“Now,” she says. “I’m feeling the deluxe burrito right now, and I need the cash for that.”

“Now it is,” the guy says, laughing, and starts the car.

#

The thrift store is a tiny place wedged between a dry cleaner and a taco place, and the clean-up people block the entire sidewalk and half the road parking in front of it. The woman almost drops Sandy getting out, but they manage to get inside without doing any permanent harm.

There’s a short, greying lady sitting behind the counter. “Buying or selling?” she asks, and the clean-up woman dumps all five of them in front of her.

“Selling,” she says. “You gonna take ‘em?”

The thrift store lady okays them all one by one, even Chad, but she hesitates when she gets to Jay. “It’s a bit damaged,” the lady says. “But I’m sure we can make it work.”

Jay flinches at the words, hoping against hope that the others haven’t heard. He knows he’s got scars. He’s old – older than all of the others, except for Jeff, and before Jensen, he went through a lot. He remembers those days far better than he likes. Long, endlessly long days of being smacked and cursed at, and then smacked some more when some little part invariably jammed.

And then Jensen picked him out at a garage sale one day, big hands warm and sure, and took him back to his crappy dorm apartment, and Jay’s life took a sudden, dramatic turn for the better. Because Jensen wasn’t like that. He didn’t treat his things like that.

Not that it was all roses and sunshine after that. There’s still a little bit of black ink on Jay’s side, where some drunken idiot once drew a penis after a party. Jensen got most of it back off after bitching the guy out, and Jay made sure to spit the dude’s toast straight into the sink.

So yeah, he went through some shitty stuff after, too, but at least he had Jensen. Jensen to sit with him and curse at the bastards who dented his side, Jensen to scrub and polish his exterior until he was all gleaming and shiny again, Jensen who wiped clean the serial number JX 350 on his side and promptly named him Jay.

Jensen, who he’ll never see again.

#

“Psst! Jay!” someone hisses, but Jay doesn’t turn. It doesn’t matter anymore what they have to say. Escape is pointless, because even if they did manage to get out of the store, the tiny little store where they sit on shelves, endlessly waiting for customers to come by and tear their little group apart, where would they go? They have no clue where Jensen went. They don’t even know if Jensen would want them back.

“Look, Jay, we can-” It’s Sandy this time, he’s sure of it. But she never has the chance to tell him what they can, because that’s when the little bell above the door jingles and the sound of cars outside grows louder for a second, and they all freeze up.

“Hello?” a woman calls.

“Hi there,” the thrift store lady, lurking at the desk, replies. “Anything you need, or just looking?”

“Just looking,” the woman says, and somewhere above Jay, Chad lets out a breath.

“Come on, Jay,” he whisper-hisses. “We gotta get out of here now, while she’s distracted.”

“And do what?” Jay asks. He’s tired. He’s so tired.

“Get back to Jensen, of course,” Jeff says, and the clattering sound must be the Chevy’s hood bumping up and down in approval.

Too little, too late, Jay thinks. Out loud, he says, “You go do that, then,” and closes his eyes.

“Jay!” Sandy tries again, but then the woman says, “I’ll take these,” no three feet away, and they all have to freeze for fear of giving themselves away.

Jay is pathetically grateful. He loves them all and he’s going to miss them, but he doesn’t want to have to deal with their pigheadedness right now.

“What about Jensen?” Chad hisses anyway.

“He’ll find a new toaster, I’m sure,” Jay says tonelessly. The thought stings, but it’s not as unbearable as it was yesterday. Maybe it’s just Jay’s time to go.

“You can’t just give up,” Sandy protests.

“I’m not giving up,” Jay says. “I’m accepting my fate.”

His friends’ protests fall quiet when the woman wanders over. She’s tiny, with long dark hair, and she has a thoughtful look on her face.

“Wait, wait,” she says to the cashier. “How much for the toaster?”

Jay can’t hear the cashier’s reply, but whatever she said, the woman must have liked it, because she reaches for Jay immediately. “I’ll take him,” she says.

Her hands are tiny, so unlike Jensen’s, as she tucks him into one of those beach bags with the netted sides that you can still see out of, but just barely. The last thing Jay catches sight of is Sandy’s stricken face before everything goes vague and blurry.

#

The woman likes to talk. She curses at the – apparently dismal – freeway traffic, she sings along to the radio, she chatters away on the phone. Jay doesn’t listen. It’s over, over. He’ll never see Jensen again, he’ll never see the others again, and he really hopes the woman who bought him isn’t hard up for cash because he can feel his insides dying at the thought of it. He can barely even muster up enough energy to be nervous when she pulls lopsidedly into a parking spot and declares that they’re ‘here.’

‘Here’ turns out to be an apartment on the second floor that she unlocks with much cursing.

“I’m back,” she calls once she’s wrestled the lock into submission, dropping her keys on the table by the door. She sticks her head through a doorway, where two vague shapes are on the sofa and a third hovers by the window. Jay still can’t see much, can only listen in on what she has to say.

“Hey, so I know you’re all bummed about your stuff, and that you can’t just replace something like that, but I figured I could maybe get you a substitute? I was looking for stuff to use as props, you know, and I saw this at a store, and I figured maybe it’s a bit like your Jay?”

She drags Jay out of her bag and holds him in her outstretched hands. Jay, blinking in the sudden brightness, barely has time to process the fact that that’s Jensen, actually Jensen sitting there on the couch before the man bounds across the room and has Jay in his arms.

“This is Jay,” he crows. “Hell, I’d recognize that dent anywhere. And that Sharpie mark.” He clutches Jay to his chest, and Jay’s heart soars. “Thank you so much, Gen. You’re the best.”

Someone laughs, and Jay vaguely registers that that’s Jensen’s friend Chris getting up from the couch, and Danneel over at the window, grinning wide.

“Jesus fuck,” Chris says, coming closer. “Talk about a coincidence.”

“Thank fuck, I’d say.” Danneel gives Jensen’s shoulder a pat. “I thought you were going to drown in all your emo tears.” But she runs her hand over Jay’s side, briefly, and Jay can see the smile she’s trying to hide.

“Screw you,” Jensen says. He snuggles Jay closer, grin spreading over his face, before he turns to the woman who brought Jay here. “Where on Earth did you find him?” he asks.

“Uh, a thrift store,” she says. “Secondhand Treasures, or something? Down on Park.”

“Did they have the rest of my stuff, too?” Jensen’s voice rises with excitement. “A, uh, a lamp, and a postcard stand, and stuff?”

“Maybe, I don’t really know. I only recognized the toaster.”

Jensen already has his phone out, googling one-handed, and waves Chris away when he tries to take Jay from him. “Secondhand Treasures,” he mutters. “Okay, here,” and presses the phone to his ear.

“Hi,” he says breathlessly. “Um, a friend of mine picked me up a toaster today, and I was wondering if you had any other stuff that came in with it?” His arms tightens around Jay. “Like, a vintage telephone, black and gold. And a postcard stand with that guy from Gilmore Girls on it – Rory’s not-boyfriend. The annoying one.” He laughs. “Yeah, I know, that was my favorite season too. So, uh, the stand, and then this tiny IKEA lamp, and a model of the ’67 Chevy Impala, in black.” He waits, clutching Jay so tight Jay’s a little afraid he might get dented, and then exhales sharply. “They are? Okay, can you, like, hold them for me? I’ll come get them later today. Seriously, put them in a box in the back or something. I’ll pay extra if they’re all still there.”

He hangs up and lets out a huge, gusty sigh. “God, my nerves,” he says. Then he turns to Gen, a gigantic smile spreading over his face. “Honestly, chicka, I think moving in with you was the best decision I ever made.”

#

Gen does love Jay, it turns out. She immediately okays Jensen moving Jay into the kitchen, a narrow affair that has a book shelf and a window seat that Jensen immediately claims for himself, placing Jay on one end and Sandy and Chad on the shelf on the other side.

He lingers for a long time, Jeff and the Chevy under his arm, before he finally goes to bed, and Jay spends most of the night looking out over the smogged-up rooftops of LA, watching the sky slowly turning lighter. Every time he nods off, he jerks in terror, but it only takes a quick glance over at Chad and Sandy to reassure him. He’s home. He’s safe.

Still, he’s more than a little relieved when there are the first signs of life from Jensen’s room: a quickly cut-off alarm, then five minutes later another, then footsteps shuffling around the room. Jay glances around, but Jensen doesn’t emerge for a while. Instead, Jay’s gaze lands on his friends, both of them stirring awake as well. Sandy bobs her bulb at him, Chad -- next to her -- wriggles the card Jensen’s clipped on, and Jay vibrates his levers in greeting.

Jay wants to ask them if they feel just as strung-out as he does, but then the door to Jensen’s room opens and the man emerges, hair piled up in an epic bedhead.

“Hey there, Jay,” he says. He gets out a half-finished bag of bread and a jar of jam. “Have a good night?”

He has, actually. Jay’s had the best night he can remember, despite everything, because he’s here, with Jensen, and Sandy and Chad and Jeff and the Chevy are all here with him, and Jensen’s having breakfast with him like Jay was sure he never would again.

Jensen twists his lips into a wry smile. “I still can’t believe I left a whole box just sitting on the curb like some kind of spaz,” he says, running a finger along Jay’s side. “And by the time I’d crawled back through lunch hour traffic, it was already gone.”

It’s alright, Jay wishes he could say. I’m back, after all, and we’re together.

Jensen lines up two slices of bread and pushes the lever down. “I’ve missed you, buddy,” he says after a moment. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

But the thing is, Jay does. If Jensen even feels a tiny little fraction of what Jay feels, then he must have had the worst two days of his life, and Jay wouldn’t wish that on anyone, least of all his Jensen. So he glows a little warmer, so Jensen can rest his socked feet against him, warm those cold toes, and hums in contentment.

Him and Jensen, they’re meant to be.

TheHappyEnd

All feedback is much appreciated.

Annual Body Count

bad_peppermint — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:27:26 GMT

Alright. Yearly round-up, here we go:

For SPN, I wrote one 6,000 word fic, for the spn_reversebang challenge, in which I explicitly killed seven people but spawned two babies.

For SPN RPS, I wrote one 59,300 word monster for spn_j2_bigbang, one story in my Lycanthropy 'verse (4,700 words) and wrote two ficlets for spnkink_meme (at 2,500 and 5,800 words, respectively) and spawned another two little brats. No casualities here, this time.

Word count total so far: 78,300.

In my new fandom, Adam Lambert RPS, I wrote one fic for lambliffbigbang in which I - explicitly(!) - killed eight bad guys, fourteen good guys, including four kids, hinted at way, way more dead bodies, spawned too many babies to count, and turned two people into trees. That's fantasy for you.

So, this year's round-up says I killed at least 29 people and wrote a grand total of 116,700 words. I'd say that makes up for last year.

Under the Mountain - Part 4

bad_peppermint — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:41:16 GMT

Masterpost

“Please don’t do this.”

Adam shook his head, kept his head down to avoid meeting Tommy’s eyes.

They were deep, deep down in the tunnels, where no one ever went. Tommy had kept silent the entire way down, but when Adam had stopped at one of the cast-iron rings in the ground and unbuckled a pair of chains that he threaded through it, Tommy’s resolve just seemed to crumble.

“You know I didn’t do it,” Tommy said.

Adam splayed his fingers across the other man's cheek, his thumb sealing Tommy's trembling lips. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, sliding closed the lock around one thin, pale wrist. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

The agitation in the council hall had not cooled by the time Adam returned. Those who were not rushing aimlessly about, getting underfoot, appeared to be quite content to out-scream the others for their reasoning to be heard. It was disgraceful. They were a warrior people, and here they were, acting like a group of startled children.

“How would they even get inside?” Neil asked, cutting off Marcus mid-word. “We’ve always defended ourselves and our home in the past.”

“Perhaps, but it isn’t impossible to breach our walls,” Marcus shot back. “If you’re not careful, my boy, your attitude will lead to our downfall.”

It wasn’t until the king ordered anyone who wasn’t within his inner circle, including his sons, out of the hall that some semblance of order returned. Adam returned to his cavern, unwilling to face Neil after all this, and found himself confronted with Isaac, Monte and Allison instead.

“Is Tommy okay?” Allison asked immediately.

Adam nodded slowly and couldn’t help but notice the quiet breath that Monte let out at the news.

“Should he be?” Isaac asked. “The man did betray us.”

Adam didn’t reply.

He wasn’t surprised when Isaac understood. “You don’t think he betrayed us.”

Adam met his eyes, slowly. He didn’t have to say anything.

“Why are you so sure about that?” Isaac burst out. “You don’t know him.”

“I know him well enough,” Adam said. He deliberately unclenched his hands. “Why are you so sure he did?”

Isaac didn’t answer that, and eventually Adam rose to his feet. They had a battle to prepare for.

For two long days, the mountain was in an uproar. There were weapons to be sharpened, supplies to stash away, defenses to build. Their horses were sent into the forest, hopefully to be found again when everything was over. Monte and Adam, both strong, muscular men, were needed to move a boulder that would block the crevice that allowed entrance to their little garden. Stacy had taken possession of Allison, teaching her rudimentary fighting skills that would hopefully keep her alive.

Adam was in the lower corridors, searching for areas that could be used to set up traps, thinking that perhaps he could go see Tommy. He went twice a day, bringing food and water and stroking over Tommy’s increasingly matted hair, but he found himself wondering if a third time would truly hurt when Isaac came up behind him.

“What is it?” Adam asked once the hammering of his heart had slowed.

“Do you hear that?” Isaac asked, finger pointed upwards though the sound echoed towards them from below.

Adam did, and once he recognized the sound, his heart ached like someone had crushed it underneath the heel of a boot. “He’s singing,” he said.

Isaac’s eyes were lidded and dark, and Adam was sure that it was anger he saw glittering there.

“I would not have thought he would be so brazen.”

Adam shook his head. “It’s not that,” he said. He turned to give Isaac a look. “He’s alone in the dark, and everyone is against him. He’s terrified.”

It wasn’t much. It was probably stupid, even, but when Adam saw the once-white dog limping through the corridors, teased by several restless children, he had an idea. He swooped the dog into his arms, sending the children off with a few stern words, and headed into the dark, following the sound of the increasingly hoarse singing.

Tommy’s voice faltered when Adam was close enough for his footsteps to be heard.

“It’s only me,” he called, stomach clenching.

Tommy’s rusty laugh answered him, but when Adam came close enough to see, Tommy sat pressed against the wall but with a small smile on his face. A small furrow formed between his eyes when he caught sight of Adam’s cargo, but he didn’t ask.

“Here,” Adam said, crouching down and pressing the dog into Tommy’s arms. He didn’t know what else to say, how to undo the council’s angry words with a mangled pet and a smile, but Tommy curled his fingers into the matted fur. His gaze flicked from the dog to Adam, then back to the dog when it nosed against Tommy’s arm.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, and this time when he looked at Adam, the smile on his face was genuine.

Adam couldn’t help it; he leaned in and kissed it away. “You’ll be alright,” he promised once again when he pulled away. “I’ll make sure of that.”

The Greymen came towards nightfall, swords drawn and a battering ram at the ready. Neil paled next to Adam when the council received the news, but there was nothing to be done about it now. About any of it.

Their father the king looked down at his hands for a moment before he stood, hand resting on his sword. A moment later, their mother did the same.

“We’ve been preparing for this,” he said, voice even, though his hand shook before he clenched it around his weapon. “We’re ready for this, and we will fight.”

The council responded with a raggedy cheer that Adam couldn’t bring himself to utter. Instead, as soon as his father began issuing orders, he headed out of the hall with long, sweeping strides.

“Where are you going?” Isaac asked, falling in step next to him.

“To get Tommy,” Adam said. He didn’t have to see Isaac’s expression to know what the man wasn’t saying, and he couldn’t quite been the edge out of his tone. “On the off-chance that I’m right and they’re wrong, I’d rather he not be tied up and defenseless.”

Isaac slowed his pace. “I’ll be with Allison and Monte, then,” he said, and there was an accusation in his tone that Adam didn’t have time for.

Still, he turned to face his friend. “I’ll meet you,” he said. “When I have Tommy, I’ll meet you.”

Isaac nodded and whirled away, and Adam began walking again, faster even than before.

“Tommy,” he called, before he was even close enough. “Tommy!”

“Adam?” Tommy’s voice was high and breathy, his fingers white in the dog’s fur. “What’s going on?”

Adam dropped to the ground and undid the lock with easy, practiced movements. “Greymen,” he said. “They’re here.”

Tommy hitched a breath, but Adam didn’t have time, sliding a hand under Tommy’s arm and pulling him to his feet.

“Can you walk?” he asked. “It’s not safe here.”

Tommy pulled the dog into his arms. “I’ll try,” he said. His feet were unsteady under him for a few moments but then he picked up the pace, keeping even with Adam’s long strides.

“We’ll head-“ Adam began when there was suddenly a Greyman in the corridor in front of them, weapon drawn and ready.

Tommy took a hasty step backwards, hampered by his grip on the dog, and Adam had to throw himself forward to block a swipe at Tommy’s side with his own sword. The Greyman feinted right and swung at Adam’s left, but Adam was trained now, prepared, and the force of his blow sent the other man’s sword skittering aside before he regained control and attacked again. Adam parried and blocked, but the corridor was narrow and multiple times he had to avoid Tommy skittering behind him, and it was luck more than anything when he managed a thrust that penetrated the leather covering the Greyman’s chest.

He pulled Tommy away from the dying man and into a short, dead-end corridor. There was a large crevice around chest height, and Adam nodded towards it. “The dog will be fine in there,” he said.

He gestured for the animal, frowning when Tommy clutched it even more tightly to his chest.

“He’ll be fine,” he said. “I promise. Certainly safer than with you.”

“How will he be fine in there?” Tommy asked stubbornly.

They didn’t have time for this. Adam pulled Tommy against his chest, almost crushing the dog between them, and brought his lips to Tommy’s ear. “Where do you think our children are?” he asked.

Tommy gazed at the hole, understanding dawning in his eyes, and Adam nodded, once. He held out his arms and Tommy handed the dog over this time, biting his lip as Adam lifted it into the crevice and pushed it forward.

“Go on,” he said, and the dog whined but disappeared.

Tommy watched it go for a moment before he shook himself, grew hard. “Let’s go,” he said.

They walked quickly upwards, startling every time they heard a noise echoing from somewhere. After the second time, Adam remembered to hand Tommy one of his knives. He had grown so used to the other man being armed that he had not thought about the fact that he been stripped of all weapons when the council had branded him traitor.

The knife came in useful when they came across three Greymen that had cornered Sasha and Jeremy. Adam got one from the back, jerking the heavy body into the blade with an arm around the neck. Tommy wounded one, tossed the knife to Sasha so she could take him down while Adam took care of the third.

Sasha took a heavy breath, wiped the blade on her thigh. “We heard some of the children were in trouble,” she said. “That’s where we’re going.”

Adam hesitated. “I have to go find my friends,” he said. “Neil. My parents.”

Tommy nodded. “I’ll go with them.” His fingers found Adam’s arm and squeezed. “Go.”

With one last look over his shoulder, Adam went, sword at the ready. Up here, the fighting was evident. Blood stained the ground. He had to step over several bodies, less than half of them clad in Greymen garb, to reach one of their main corridors. He burst into a room where several Greymen held a struggling Monte and cut one down, Monte striking down another, the two of them circling back to back to take care of the rest.

They found a solitary Greyman and took him down as well, moved past four or five of their own, lifeless on the ground. Adam made sure not to look, but he recognized a head of hair here, a tunic there, and it made his stomach clench.

Mara and one of the older boys, Laurent, had just taken down a Greyman when they reached them. A girl around Dale’s age but much too tall for the tunnels in the walls sat on the ground with a bleeding leg, and Adam had just reached down to help her up when he heard Monte shout. A blow to the head and he tipped forward, stunned, and when he had blinked the stars from his eyes his sword was gone and another aimed at his chest, the other four just as helpless as he.

The Greymen that had come in took great joy in pulling and shoving them towards the council hall where a small group of others waited. Adam saw Neil there, Allison, Marcus, huddled in a cluster against one of the walls. He hoped there were so few because no one else had been found yet, because the other option was too horrible to consider and his head throbbed in time with his footsteps.

The Greymen that remained in the hall with them watched them closely but didn’t try to harm them, and Adam spoke to those around him, ensuring everyone was alright. Every once in a while, others would be brought in, alone or in pairs, some bleeding, others cradling broken bones. Stacy had her arm snapped in front of them when she tried to punch one of her handlers, and Adam winced with her, but she refused to make a sound.

Tommy was shoved in by himself. The skin around his mouth and nose was stained red, and that was undoubtedly a bruise forming at his hairline, but Adam kept his mouth tightly closed. Making his feelings on the matter known was unlikely to help anyone. He wanted to call out to Tommy, to scream at them to stop touching him, but he knew better than to allow them to find out his private attachments.

Instead, he had to settle for stepping aside when Tommy was shoved into their small group of people, immediately sealing the gap after him, his broad shoulders hiding the other man from view.

There was a commotion at the entrance, Greymen moving aside to let someone through, and then a man appeared in their midst, two big, burly Greymen flanking him.

Adam felt more than heard Tommy’s breath quicken behind him. A moment later, Tommy’s forehead came to rest between his shoulder blades, damp air ghosting against the fabric of Adam’s shirt in a rapid, uneven pattern.

He reached behind him, found Tommy’s thigh and gave it a small squeeze.

“My name is Olivier,” the man said, as though that was the only explanation needed. Maybe it was.

He wasn’t a particularly tall man. Not many men looked tall to Adam, even fewer women, but this one was maybe a few fingers’ width taller than Tommy. But he had broad, strong shoulders, noticeable despite the dark cloak he wore, and a full head and beard of grey-black hair. Adam guessed him to be about his father’s age, same wrinkles forming along his eyes, but he also had a long, thick scar along one cheekbone, cleanly healed but wicked.

“I’m so glad we’re all here together,” the man said, smiling, as if they were friends. “I am Olivier, and these,” toward his legion of grey-clad henchmen, “are my men. I’m sure you’ve been acquainted.”

He chuckled at his own words, raising an eyebrow when no one else appeared to find them funny. “So dull,” Adam heard him murmur.

Olivier walked along their group slowly, meeting each face before dismissing it and moving on. His eyes hesitated on Tommy, narrowing, and Tommy’s breath caught, but then Olivier’s eyes flickered over to Adam. There was a fire in them, a mad fire that unsettled even Adam. Blood thirst, he could deal with. This was something else.

Olivier stroked his fingers slowly over his chin. “You are Prince Adam?”

Adam nodded stiffly.

The other man smiled at him, slowly, mean satisfaction in his eyes. “Congratulations. You are now prince regent.”

For a moment, the man’s words barely even registered. Then understanding curled thick and heavy in Adam’s belly, clawing at his insides and threatening to spill out of his mouth. His eyes cut to Neil across the room, saw his brother’s face turned ashen. The king and queen were dead, then, slaughtered by Greymen for no reason beyond greed and villainy. For a deranged man’s entertainment.

Only Tommy’s hot breath, barely noticeable but there between his shoulder blades, kept Adam from doing something he might regret. He was Prince, King of the Mountain now. His people needed him to stay calm.

“Why do this?” he asked, though he wanted nothing more than to rip this man’s throat out with his hands. “What do we have that you can’t ask for peacefully?”

Grinning broadly, Olivier gestured in the air. “There is a rumor,” he said. “Hearsay, you might argue. A rumor that the people of the mountain own a map; one that tells you how to cross the ridge without falling prey to the many treacherous things that await a caravan traveling along the pass.”

“A rumor, yes,” Adam said.

The man turned to give him a scathing look. “Don’t take me for a fool, Prince Adam,” he said. “I have gone through a lot of trouble to ensure that these rumors have a grain of truth to them, and I intend to discover that grain and use it to cross these mountains.”

Adam could hardly believe the man’s words. “All this,” he said, waving a hand to encompass his bleeding, dying people. “All this for passage across the mountain? Why not just ask a mountain runner?”

“Ah, yes.” Olivier pursed his lips. “The mountain runners. As it turns out, they can be quite difficult, and tend to turn down perfectly valid offers for passage for no apparent reason.”

“This,” Adam said, gesturing at the bloody, beaten people around him, “is a damn good reason. We won’t cooperate.”

“Is that so?” Olivier’s pleased tone had Adam shifting uneasily.

Olivier leveled a look towards them, smirking lightly. “You see, not so long ago, a little bird told me something interesting about these tunnels. The tunnels in the walls.”

Adam knew his eyes were wide with horror. He tried hard not to let it show, but then Olivier gestured for a torch and held it close to one of the safety tunnel’s entrance. “So, let’s try this again: Tell me where the map is, or every one of your children dies.”

“We will never give you what you want,” Adam said, but then Tommy pushed past him, arm brushing against Adam’s elbow, and took a stance before the group despite the three Greymen that immediately crowded close.

“I know where it is,” he said.

Instead of outraged cries, Adam’s people fell silent. Try as he might, Adam couldn’t get his own mouth to even move. Tommy certainly noticed, shifting on his feet, but he didn’t take back his betrayal.

Olivier’s face lit up in delight. “Tommy,” he said, holding out his hand with a mocking little bow. “My darling. I knew you’d come to your senses.”

Although Adam didn’t mean to, he felt his body stiffen. This… no. But there was only one explanation for Olivier knowing Tommy’s name, speaking it so casually, and that was that they already knew each other. He felt Isaac’s eyes boring into his back. And how very convenient that only minutes after Tommy had learned of their children’s hide-out, Olivier knew of it too, right after Tommy had left Adam’s sight.

Adam couldn’t help but remember the other things that the council had mentioned and he had refused to believe; his tendency to disappear whenever he went into town, often for hours, the fact that Greymen had begun sniffing around just after Tommy had come into their midst.
It was just all so mightily convenient for Tommy, and Adam had to fight to keep his hands clenched in the fabric of his pants.

"Adam, please." Tommy's words were soft, breathed back over his shoulder. "You have to trust me."

“Trust what?” Adam asked, nothing more than a murmur between the two of them. “That I was wrong about you after all?”

Tommy’s breath hitched, but a moment later, he took another step forward and fixed the impatiently waiting Olivier with a proud look. “Shall we?” he asked.

“Of course,” Olivier all but crowed, and within moments, he and two of his group had ushered Tommy into one of the dark corridors, but not before turning back to his men. “Smoke them out anyway,” he said, and Adam felt his insides turn to ice.

Isaac tried to knock out one of the Greymen while he was distracted but it only ended with Isaac moaning brokenly on the floor. The others among Olivier’s posse began to crowd Adam’s people together into a corner, and after a last, helpless look at Monte, Adam and Neil were dragged off in a different direction.

Adam should have perhaps been more surprised that they weren’t simply run through with knives, but instead, ironically, they were taken to where Tommy had been only hours before, pushed into a narrow cavern and chained to a ring in the ground, a lock around each of their wrists.

Neil was shaky and pale, still, but as soon as they were alone, Adam couldn’t help but sort through their options. No matter how angry he was, he wanted out.

There wasn’t much. Nothing to pick the lock was in sight, and even then, the chains would have still been heavy and difficult to wrench open. It was doubtful that anyone pleasant would burst through the walkway to the corridor. There was a crack in the rock around waist-height, one of the shafts that their children had hid in, were likely now dying in. It was small, and an adult would never fit through it.

Adam would have liked to bury his head in his hands, but the chain was too short, and it wasn’t as if it would have made him feel better. Neil fidgeted next to him, shifting his hands in the metal locks, and Adam had to fight to keep from screaming at him.

“What is it?” he asked instead when he couldn’t take the constant movement anymore, and Neil stilled.

After a moment, he spoke again. “Adam, I have to tell you something.”

Adam sighed, bit his lip. “What is it?” he asked. He’d much rather figure out a way to get out of here, to get his people to safety before he returned to wring Tommy’s scrawny little neck, than to listen to Neil’s ill-timed confessions.

But all that faded when he turned to look at Neil, really look, because he knew that expression on Neil’s face. The regret, the bone-crushing guilt that had been missing in Tommy’s eyes were clear as day in his brother’s.

He had to fight not to recoil when Neil reached for his arm.

"I told Aileen." Neil's fingers were icy against Adam's skin. “I told my girl.”

“Told her what?” Adam asked, although he already knew.

“Everything.” Neil swallowed a gasp when Adam’s fingers bit into his arm. “I told her everything. Everything about us. And that man, the one with the scar – I saw them together once. She said he was her uncle.”

“I don’t believe this,” Adam said without thinking as understanding finally rushed through him. How could he have been so stupid?

“Please, Adam, I’m sorry,” Neil said, breath hitching.

“No,” Adam said, clutching Neil’s arm tighter between his fingers. “Tommy – I thought it was just another trick, that they were going off to reconvene, but he was just buying us time. He has no idea where the map is. When they figure it out, they’re going to tear him apart.”

“Shit.” Neil pressed his free hand, balled into a fist, against his forehead. “Adam-“

Adam shushed him, pulled him close and pressed a kiss into his hair. “I know.”

They had not sat like that for more than a moment when a nearby noise caused him to stiffen. For a brief second, he was convinced that the Greymen were returning, were back to finish what they had started, but this wasn’t the heavy thud of boots. It sounded more like rodents scuttling along the forest floor.

“What-?” Neil asked. He fell silent when Adam shook his head, once.

The noise grew louder, and louder, and finally Adam’s eyes were drawn up to the crack in the wall. It was small, and an adult would never fit through it.

But a child…

Sure enough, moments later, a dusty brown shock of hair appeared in the opening, a familiar grin in place. Tommy’s mangled mutt followed a moment later, pushing his nose through the gap between boy and rock. There was a hopeful little smile on the boy’s face, and Adam would have hugged him to his chest if he could.

“Dale,” he breathed instead.

“My Prince,” the boy said. He bit his lip. “I’m here to help.”

“Good,” Adam said. “That’s good. Do you know where the others are? Can you get a message to them?”

The boy nodded. “Uh-huh. But first…” And to Adam’s complete and utter disbelief, he pulled a ring of keys from his waistband and held it in the air, the metal clinking quietly.

“I can’t believe it,” Neil murmured when Dale slid down from the crevice and knelt down on the ground before them. “You’re alright.”

“Of course.” Dale jiggled the first key into the lock at Adam’s right wrist, then the second. “We’re not stupid. Jaynie and Tyler put out the torches, and the rest of us took down one of the guards. I got the keys,” he added, after a moment.

“And I’m very thankful you did,” Adam said. “The other children are well?”

“Ye-ah.” Dale chewed on his lip. He slipped another key into the lock, and this one fit. “The little ones are coughing a lot, but we’re all alive. They’re trying to distract the other guards so the grown-ups can get free.”

“Tell them to be careful,” Adam warned him.

“We will be.”

The first of Adam’s cuffs clicked open, and he used his still-chained hand to rub away the numbness in his fingers. “Thank you, Dale,” he said. “I mean it, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” The boy hesitated. “I pledge my allegiance, my Lord,” he said with a hopeful glance upwards from underneath the fringe of his hair.

“I accept,” Adam said wholeheartedly. “Can you free the others? Take care of the Greymen?”

Dale nodded. “What are you going to do?” he asked as the second lock fell open.

Adam set his mouth into a thin line. “I’m going to right a few wrongs,” he said. He got to his feet. “Dale, once Neil is free, return to the others. Be careful. Neil, I want you to get these Greymen out of my halls.” He hesitated, one hand on the rough rock. “Whatever happens, Tommy stays unharmed, you understand?”

“I understand,” Neil said, meeting Adam’s gaze with wide eyes, and Adam nodded.

“All the best,” he said. He was striding down the hall before Neil had the chance to return the greeting. He had things to take care of.

Tracking Tommy wasn’t easy. He had little to go on, merely a single corridor Tommy had been lead down while Adam was dragged away, and he had to dodge patrolling guards more often than he liked, but he knew these caves better than any Greyman every would.

He followed scuff marks, bloody hand prints, tracked and backtracked, and in what seemed like forever and no time at all, he heard Olivier’s sweet, mocking voice echo towards him.

Moving forward carefully to avoid alerting them to the sound of his scuffing boots, Adam pressed himself to the wall and inched forward until he had a clear view of the situation, half-hidden behind a raggedy piece of rock.

There were four men present, and none of them seemed to notice him. Olivier stood back, apparently watching with interest as Tommy struggled. The slight man was on his back, half propped against the sloping wall. Each of the two guards Olivier had thought to bring had a heavy boot on one of Tommy’s arms, threatening to snap the bone if he struggled too much. Blood had seeped through the side of his tunic, staining the rock behind him. Tommy was breathing hard through gritted teeth, and pale, but none of that mattered because he was still alive, glaring at Olivier with a fire that warmed Adam to his core. No one struggling to take his last breaths could glare that way.

Now it was Adam’s task to make sure it stayed that way.

Olivier had obviously not expected to run into any trouble – his right side and back were left entirely undefended, both he and his cronies too focused on Tommy to pay much attention to their surroundings. It was stupid, and sloppy, but Adam was not one to complain.

“So, in summary,” Olivier said, voice light but eyes on fire, “you don’t know where the map is after all?”

Adam shifted on his feet, pressing himself closer to the wall when Olivier moved, but the man only took another step towards Tommy. “Still think your prince is going to save you?” he asked.

Tommy took a breath that sounded almost like a gasp, but he didn’t avert his eyes. “You’ll meet your end one way or another,” he spat.

The Greyman crouched down, away from Tommy’s curled fists. “Undoubtedly.” He reached out, caressing the short stubble where Tommy’s head had been shaved, tightened his fingers in the pale strands when Tommy tried to pull away. “But you won’t be there to see it. You little brat.”

“Why do this?” Tommy jerked his head to the side, wincing when several hairs were left between Olivier’s fingers.

Adam couldn’t help flinching with him.

“What’s so important here that you couldn’t have just gone to other runners, made them a deal?”

Olivier shook his head mournfully. “And I thought you were smart.”He gestured around him, along the bare walls, but it was clear he meant so much more than that. “This, all of this? This is all your doing.”

“This is your doing,” Tommy spat back. “I’ve never taken the life of another living person, and until you, I had never wanted to.”

“How precious.” Olivier moved to chuck Tommy under the chin, only pulling back at the last second when Tommy snapped at his fingers. The Greyman curled his hands into a protective fist. “You know, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t been such a stubborn little ass. You and your family. First refusing us passage across the mountain, and then your pretty little sister, and then you had to go and ruin what could have been such a glorious day.”

“No day will be more glorious than the day you die,” Tommy hissed.

“You tell yourself that, darling,” Olivier said easily. He pushed to his feet, brushed imaginary dirt from his knees. “But remember that you’re the one on the ground, bleeding, while I’m the one with the weapon.” He pulled a knife from its scabbard on his belt, metal singing, and smiled a little. “In fact, while we’re here, I think I’ll pay you back for what you did to my face.”

Tommy blanched, and the man laughed ruefully, fingers coming up to ghost over the distorted flesh. “Yes, you did quite a little bit of damage. But you also left me a present, and I have of course decided to keep it.” He reached into the neck of his tunic with his free hand, disregarding Tommy’s increased struggling, and pulled out a small, sharp arrow tip on a leather cord.

“This is yours, you know,” he said, turning the weapon over and over between his fingers. “I keep it with me, to remind me that even the innocent, pretty ones can become quite a little nuisance.” He let the arrow tip drop against his chest, took a sudden, agile step forward and grasped Tommy’s hair in his fingers again, jerking his head to the side.

He lifted the blade, let it hover over Tommy’s eye, both cronies grinning gleefully at the terror on Tommy’s face, and Adam had had enough.

It was almost insultingly easy. None of the four men was prepared for Adam to burst out of hiding, run first one, then the other guard through with his sword and, turning, backhand Olivier with such force that the man’s head collided with the wall with a sickening crack. He crumpled to the ground like a doll, aware but dazed, and stared up at Adam, breathing hard.

Adam kept his eyes and the tip of his sword on him as he reached down a hand, felt Tommy cling to it and almost lifted the other man to his feet. Tommy clutched his arm for a moment before he let go, swaying ever so slightly, but with a slight nod that Adam caught out of the corner of his eyes, Tommy let him know that he was fine.

He turned back to Olivier who thankfully kept his mouth shut, and lifted his sword. He hesitated when he felt Tommy’s fingers fist in the back of his shirt, but the man didn’t say anything. He merely stood behind him, breathing hard, every ragged gulp of air twisting Adam’s heart a little further.

“This should be you,” Adam said finally. His eyes never left the man lying in the dirt at his feet. “The man to do this, it should be you.”

“I don’t want to,” Tommy said.

Adam glanced over his shoulder, and Tommy smiled at him, strained and uncertain as it was.

“I don’t,” he insisted.

And, well, Adam wasn’t about to question this unexpected blessing.

It wasn’t hard, burying the blade of his sword in Olivier’s body. Usually, the hardest part of killing was convincing yourself to go through with it, convincing yourself that it was really necessary to take another being’s life. Here, now, the movement came easily, the man’s aborted gasp the only sign that Adam had just killed someone.

Tommy’s hand tightened against his back, and he kept his head held unnaturally high, but he didn’t utter a sound of protest, not even when Adam knelt and pulled the cord free of the man’s neck.

Then he pulled Tommy away, because while what was done was done, it didn’t mean that Tommy had to see it in all its gruesome detail. He turned, expression serious, although he couldn’t help but be glad that it was all over now, and then he remembered the spread of blood across Tommy’s side.

“What-?” he asked when Tommy took a shuddering breath. “Are you-?”

“I’m okay. Just a-“ He hissed, pressed his hand against his side. “Just a scratch.”

“That’s good.”

They stood there for a moment, breathless, eyes locked.

Adam was the first to break the silence. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

“How could you do anything but.” Tommy smiled a little. “I’m sorry. I should have been honest with you.”

“You can be, still,” Adam said, offering a hand for Tommy to take. When the other man stepped closer, slid his fingers into Adam’s, he opened his other palm, revealing the arrow head on its leather cord.

“You should have this,” he said.

Tommy’s tongue snaked over his lips. After a moment, he nodded, head dropping forward to allow Adam to lay the cord around his neck. He didn’t resist when Adam kissed him, again and again, not even when Adam pressed him against the wall and slid a thigh between his legs.

They were still alive. Against all odds, despite everything, they were still alive. Adam had to swallow back tears and bile when he remembered how many others weren’t, but as painful as it was, that was natural. Normal, even. People were born, they lived, and then they died.

People died.

People die was a mantra Adam repeated to himself often over the next few days. There were so many bodies to drag out of the corridors, so much blood to mop up. Neil was the one to find their mother, and he insisted on carrying her out to the gravesite himself. Adam was the one to hold him that night as he rocked and shook and sobbed out his anger, his guilt and his frustration. And it was Tommy who kept Adam upright with light, easy touches, a hand in the small of his back, slim fingers in his, or a smile, a knowing look cast his way. Tommy had his own guilt to carry, but he knew where to assign the blame.

Still, when he wasn’t at Adam’s side, silently supportive, Tommy worked harder than three others put together. He dug graves, he shoveled them closed. The hearth had been smashed in the fighting and Tommy lifted beams longer than he was, to clear them away. One time he struggled, clearly not able to carry the wood by himself but unwilling to ask for help, and Adam was about to call for Cassidy when Isaac was there, one end of the log at his feet, hands open.

“Alright, man?” he asked Tommy.

A look passed between them, slow and steady, and then Isaac reached down to grasp the other end and they lifted it upright together.

Moments like those were what kept Adam sane. He’d known, rationally, that many of their number had died, but it was another matter to lift up one limp body after another. Men and women alike had been struck down fighting. A few of the children had fallen ill from the thick smoke that lingered in the cracks, four of them had died. And they were two competent hands short as it was, considering Adam had sent Monte and Sasha into town to find Aileen, Neil’s girl. Find her through whatever means necessary.

They returned from their trip to town at nightfall of the third day, tired, grimy, and empty-handed.

“Aileen has disappeared,” Monte reported. “No one has seen her since the day before the Greymen arrived here, although there are rumors that she eloped with a man with a scar on his face.”

Gareth the guard shook his head. “She wasn’t with them when they arrived here,” he said. “I would have remembered seeing a woman.”

Adam scanned the grim, determined faces of his war council, so much fewer than he was used to, and bit his lip. Monte met his eyes and nodded without so much as a frown. He would do whatever Adam asked, but the decision would have to be Adam’s own. Gareth looked ready to drop his pack and run down the mountain barefoot if that meant getting his hands on the girl responsible. Cassidy didn’t glance up from his stitching, though his forehead was pulled into a tight, unhappy frown.

Neil wasn’t among the scarce number of people crowded around Adam’s new throne. He was out digging graves, still, with Tommy, and he would until someone went out to fetch him. It was nearing the full moon, one of the few nights when being outside after sunset was not a death sentence, and there were only a handful of graves to fill up now. Whoever wasn’t with Adam would be out there, scattering dirt and seeds to disguise the site of the graves, as much out of tradition as precaution. A well-marked graveyard was too uncommon a site – it would become a marker, a means as an end to locate the entrance to the mountain, and they needed to be invisible, now more than ever.

“We’ll find her,” Adam said, after almost every pair of eyes in his council had found his. “It can be Neil’s penance.”

He rose to his feet before anyone could question his words. “We’ll reconvene in the morning,” he said. He couldn’t deal with this any longer. He wasn’t a king, he was just a prince thrust into horrible conditions, and he didn’t even have Neil to help him because no one trusted Neil, now.

He walked away at that, because even if he wasn’t, his people needed him to be king, and he could not let himself fall apart before their eyes.

He could hear hushed whispers at his back but no one dared follow him, and he was glad for it. He walked and walked, people scuttling out of his path once they saw the look on his face, until finally, he heard soft footsteps in his wake. Small, calloused fingers slid between his and squeezed.

“Saw you walking,” Tommy said, falling into step at his side. “Walking like the spirits were after you. Thought I’d say hello.”

Adam sighed, turned sharply into a small cavern and met Tommy’s concerned eyes and light smile.

“Why couldn’t Neil have just kept his goddamn mouth shut?” he asked.

Tommy tugged lightly on the fingers interlaced with his. He tilted his head and smiled. “Life doesn’t work that way, Adam, and you know it.”

He knew. That didn’t mean it was any easier to take.

He sat back when Tommy pushed him, slid down to rest against the cold stone. A moment later, Tommy climbed into his lap, soft yet darkly serious.

“I’d like to tell you something, if you don’t mind.”

Adam reached up and touched Tommy’s cheek. “Anything, you know that.”

Tommy nodded. Took a deep breath.“I wasn’t out hunting when my family was killed.”

“He remembered you,” Adam said.

Tommy nodded. “Life isn’t easy up there, you know?” he said. “We like it, the freedom, the opportunity, but we live with our parents, our siblings, sometimes our children, confined together so we won’t freeze to death in the winter. We hunt for meat and leather, sometimes we fell trees, but we don’t own things.”

He reached down to toy with one of Adam’s pendants, and Adam stroked slowly down his back, settled his hands on Tommy’s sharp hip bones.

“We don’t want for much, you have to believe me. Beads and colors and heavy cloaks, they’re nice, but they’re not necessary. We runners, we have our bodies, and when our bodies fail us, or become damaged, then our lives are over.” He glanced upwards, gaze held by Adam’s own. “Our body is all we have.”

He looked down at Adam’s hands closed over his hips, but he didn’t ask Adam to take them away and Adam didn’t offer.

Instead, Tommy wound his arms around Adam’s neck, fingers finding the short hairs above the collar of his tunic. “We were willing, you know,” he said. “We’re solitary people, we take care of our own. We don’t care much who makes it across the mountain and who doesn’t.”

Adam nodded. While he might disagree with the attitude, he could accept that for people who lived as Tommy’s family did, survival did not come easily. For them, life was about taking opportunities when they presented themselves, not about following a strict moral code.

Tommy smiled a little ruefully. “Olivier had learned that my parents had guided a group of mountain people across the overpass a few years ago. He came and made a deal: passage across for a sum and supplies. The negotiations were settled.”

Here, Tommy fell silent, eyes dropping to his lap.“We honor our contracts, Adam, that you have to believe. We were ready to leave, waiting for his group to arrive, when he suddenly asked to make use of my sister.”

He glanced up when Adam’s hands tightened around him, probably leaving bruises. His face contorted into an expression that was possibly intended as a smile but never became more than a grimace.

“He thought we should be grateful for the offer he had made us. Hand my sister over like a piece of cattle because we owed him.”

He shook his head a little. “I can’t believe that, still,” he said, and Adam wanted so badly for Olivier to still be alive. To be alive so Adam could take it slow, this time.

Tommy’s fingers began gently petting Adam’s hair, though his eyes were far away. “After that… My father grew angry, my mother pulled her knives. They were both of them dead before I even realized what had happened.”

His fingers grew more insistent, almost painful, curling themselves tightly into Adam’s black shock of hair.

“Our parents were dead, and we were cornered, my sister and I. And he was going,” he hitched a breath, “to use her, and she was terrified, and she begged me, Adam, so I slit her throat before he could.”

Adam ran his palm slowly along Tommy’s spiny back while Tommy drew in a hitching breath and let it escape through almost closed lips.

“He was so angry. He cut me open,” one hand over the scar on his torso, “where he knew I would survive but be in agony every time I moved. And then he tied me down next to my parents’ broken bodies and the floor was sticky with my sister’s blood and he left me there to die of thirst or some predator, no matter how, as long as it was agonizingly painful.”

Tommy looked down at his open palms, clenched and unclenched his hands, before he turned his head to look at Adam. “Everything smelled of blood,” he said.

He leaned against Adam’s chest, apparently exhausted. After a moment, Adam rubbed his hand over Tommy’s back again.

“How did you survive?” he asked.

“I got loose,” Tommy murmured. “With a nail from the floorboards of our hut. I tracked them for days before I found them, and him, and I was going to put an arrow through the socket of his eye but he turned his head at the last minute and I only sliced open his cheek.”

His lips curved upwards, no more than a crook of his mouth. “I lost them after that. But I’ll never forget that look of horror on his face when he realized what had happened.”

He grinned, and Adam answered the expression with one of his own.

“I’m glad he’s out of our lives now,” he said.

Tommy inclined his head before laying it down to rest on Adam’s shoulder. Adam reached up to run his fingers through the hair tickling the skin at his collar, pushing it towards the crown of Tommy’s head only to watch it slowly droop back into form. Tommy grinned against his skin but didn’t attempt to stop him, and Adam took that as permission to wrap his arms around the slight body and draw patterns on the silky skin through his tunic with a fingernail.

"So tell me something," Tommy said after a moment.

Adam tightened his arms around him. "Anything," he said.

Tommy tilted his head at him. "Now that I'm properly one of the mountain people, and since I know perfectly well how to cross the mountain on my own," he said. "Where is that map, anyway?"

"That." Adam laughed. He pushed Tommy off his lap despite the protesting squawk and reached for the bottom hem of his shirt.

"What are you doing?" Tommy asked when Adam stripped the fabric from his body, but he fell silent when Adam turned around.

"That is. I can't even believe that," he said after a moment, and Adam grinned at him over his shoulder.

"Greymen would never think of something so simple," he said, and Tommy nodded, still speechless.

He took a hesitant step forward, then another, and laid his palm over the ink etched into the skin on Adam's back. "It's so simple," he said. "And yet so effective."

"No one has ever thought to look there," Adam agreed.

Tommy shook his head. "And to think we bathed together. Though looking back, I do recall you being oddly hesitant to turn your back to me."

"It pays to be cautious."

"That it does," Tommy agreed quietly. His forefinger trailed lightly along a long, thin line that Adam knew only from contorting his neck to peer over his own shoulder. "I can't believe this," he said again.

"I hope you don't mind," Adam said.

"Hardly." Tommy laughed. "You've seen the patterns on my arms. How could I complain about these few lines?"

“We all have them, you know,” Adam said over his shoulder. “Even Neil. I suppose that at least is a secret he managed to keep from his girl.”

Tommy didn’t respond, and Adam was about to say something more, anything really, when he felt Tommy’s body just inches from his own, and a pair of soft lips between his shoulder blades.

“Thank you,” Tommy said quietly. “For believing in me. For trusting me.”

Adam turned at that, caught Tommy’s hand in his when he tried to pull it away and sealed his lips over the pale skin at Tommy’s wrist.

“Will you trust me, in return?” he asked.

Tommy nodded, breath quickening, and allowed Adam to lead the way into the darkness of the mountain’s corridors.

The next full moon was not nearly as joyous an occasion as the last.

They buried the last of the dead that day, Greymen, thrown together in a hastily-dug grave to keep the animals from congregating so near to their home and travelers from noticing the felled bodies and alerting the townspeople. The last thing anyone wanted was more people encroaching on their already disturbed territory.

Adam dug until sweat stung his eyes despite the early winter chill. Despite everything, for the first time in days, he felt hope. They would lose no one else. The children had recovered, and anyone who would die of the wounds they had received while fighting had already done so.

Now, it was time to lay the past to rest. In a way, Adam was glad that it was full moon. Their feast was an opportunity to face what had happened, to bring back a degree of normalcy, to ring in a new chapter in their lives. It was a celebration, and mourning. They had to accept the loss of their dead and be thankful for those who had survived. It was time to move on, no matter how much it hurt.

And it hurt. Sometimes it hurt too much to breathe, when he turned and expected his father to stand behind him but he wasn’t there, when he thought of something to tell his mother before he remembered that he couldn’t, not ever again. The grief was palpable – they all felt it. Every member of his - his - kingdom had lost someone, a sibling or a friend or a child, and the loss had cut them deep.

And so it was no surprise that the mood was somber when nightfall came. There was conversation and mead flowing freely, hushed laughter, but no one was dancing tonight. Not yet. Adam had no doubt that they would, eventually, but for now, he sat on the throne carved into the rock, watching the serious faces around him. The Greymen had left their mark, there could be no doubt about that.

But life went on. Sure enough, someone called for dancers, and more mead, and it was as if they had only been waiting to be asked. Within moments, a space had been cleared and once again filled with people. Tommy and Allison where among them, whirling hand in hand, hair flying wildly.

Adam felt a grin tug at the corner of his mouth. At least their moods would be good after tonight.

He felt more than saw Neil slide to his knees at Adam’s feet. He wore plain black tonight, a tunic, pants, and boots, and his cheeks were gaunt and his eyes hollow and sunken from several days of starving himself.

There were people, Adam knew, that thought Neil should be killed, or exiled. He, after all, had betrayed their secrets. His girl had merely done what she had to, to survive. But Adam knew it wasn’t Neil’s fault. He had made a mistake, and paid dearly for it, but it had been the Greymen who had slaughtered their parents and decimated their numbers. He had told Neil this, had made sure his brother understood that he held no grudge, but Neil was slower to forgive himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at his knees. “Adam, I am. You have to believe me.”

Adam nodded. He carded his fingers through Neil’s hair, thick and black like his own but curled tidily where Adam’s was wild. “The dead are dead,” he said. “And the living go on living.”

Neil nodded without meeting his gaze. He had barely spoken a word since he had been tasked with finding his girl, with convincing her to return to the mountain with him where she would be scorned and hated but would not be able to betray them further, or else silence her forever. The choice was not a kind one, and yet Neil had knelt and reverently kissed Adam's fingertips.

It had been decided that Neil would set out at first light, long before Adam rose from his post-feast slumber. Adam suspected that most would relish in the opportunity to lay curled in their warm blankets for a little longer. He had spotted Isaac and Sophia kissing in a dark alcove earlier and not seen them since, and Allison’s exuberant gestures while she whirled among the dancers suggested that she, too, would appreciate a slow start in the morning.
Neil shifted on his knees, miserable, and Adam stroked his hand through his brother’s hair again. “Neil,” he said.

This time he waited until Neil met his gaze, until those dark, red-rimmed eyes settled on his.
“You do not go in shame. You go as Prince of the Mountain.”

Neil nodded, once. “May I take my leave, my King?” he asked, and turned when Adam waved him away.

Adam watched him go, the tense line of his shoulders, his head held high. Neil had made mistakes, yes. He knew that, and he would never be able to forget it. But Neil was his brother, his friend, his confidante, and Adam would still miss him.

He startled when Tommy suddenly fell into his arms, pushing away from the crowd of dancers.

“Hello,” Tommy said, grinning wildly.

“Hey,” Adam replied, stroking over Tommy’s cheek just to see that smile stretch into something wider, something genuinely pleased. “Having a good time?”

Tommy nodded. “But you’re not, are you?” he asked. “You’re thinking about Neil, aren’t you?”

“Neil, and his girl.” Adam shrugged. “Maybe he’ll bring her back.”

“Do you want him to?”

Adam shook his head, slowly. “I’m just tired of people dying.”

“You realize, of course, that her life will not be a pleasant one?” Tommy asked. He slid his arm around Adam’s neck and his legs over Adam’s lap. “No matter how she decides. Even if Neil convinces her to return with him, she’ll not have it easy here. She won’t be forgiven.”

“They’ll forget,” Adam said. “We move on. That’s what we do.” He smiled, even though the anger he felt burning through his veins at the thought of his parents’ pointless deaths made him a liar.

Tommy smiled, obviously not fooled in the slightest. “If you say so, my Lord.”

“I say so.” Expression fading, Adam let his palm rest lightly over Tommy’s side, where his playful tunic bunched over a thick layer of bandages.

Tommy’s lips curled into a smile. “I’m fine, my Prince,” he said. “As you well know.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Adam said, leaning in to press a kiss to the fabric before finding Tommy’s mouth as well.

Tommy grinned at him, short and full of life, before sliding down to lightly perch between Adam’s feet, leaning his back against one calf and curling his hands around the other. He turned his head to kiss the inside of Adam’s knee before his eyes found Adam’s once again.

“Comfortable, are you?” Adam asked him.

Tommy nodded.

Adam shook his head. “If I didn’t know better, I would assume you were staking your claim.”

Tommy shrugged. Then he grinned, no more than a flash of teeth, and sat up a little straighter. “Before I forget.”

Adam raised his eyebrows at him.

Tommy rolled his eyes. “I pledge my allegiance, my Lord,” he said, smiling impishly, before he turned his head and pressed another kiss to the fabric covering Adam’s thigh.

“I accept,” Adam said evenly, though his heart was beating so loud he was sure everyone could hear it even above the pounding of the drums.

Things had changed. In no more than a full circle of the moon, Adam had returned home, found a companion, lost his parents, and become the king of his people. Good people had died, and bad people had lived. His brother would be leaving him tomorrow, perhaps never to return.
But that was the way of the world. There was nothing unchanging, nothing static. Things lived and died and built up and fell apart.

But they were still alive. They were here, damaged and broken, but they had survived. They would keep on surviving. In the end, the attack had only made them stronger, and the spirits help the Greymen if they ever tried to face them down again.

They were stronger now. Adam was stronger now. He had his people, his advisors, his companion, and he had a brother out there who would not rest until he had brought everything to rights. He had the mountain at his back.

That was all that mattered. After all, everything was dependent on the trust of some, and the betrayal of others, and the goodwill of the mountain.

The End

Back to Masterpost

Under the Mountain - Part 3

bad_peppermint — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:36:40 GMT

Masterpost

One morning, Ginger poked her head into Adam’s chamber when his friends had already departed for breakfast, Adam lagging behind to fix a broken leather strap on his pants.

“The hunters found an uprooted tree out in the woods,” she said. “Dry. We’re bringing it in now.”

“We’ll be there,” Adam called after her, groping amidst the bedding for his boots. Dry, fallen trees were rare on the Mountain, and they needed to hurry if they wanted it inside before the wood was ruined by the storm clouds slowly gathering around them.

It was a ragtag group of people heading out into the forest that day, Adam and his friends, some men, some women, a few of the older, well-muscled children. Each and every one of them was needed to pick the tree apart, and they still needed a good two days before they were able to store the last of the pieces in one of the lower caves. Adam was one of the last to deposit his load, as was Neil. Tommy had been there before them, but the section he had been piling wood on had collapsed from the looks of it, and he was still there, pushing the logs into an untidy heap.

Neil hesitated in the walkway when Adam made no move to follow him. “You coming, Adam?” he asked.

“You go ahead,” Adam replied, and he thought he saw a smile creep over Tommy’s face at the words.

“Suit yourself,” Neil muttered, but he left them alone.

Adam surveyed the wood they had amassed while Tommy finished his task. He wasn’t sure the man had been one of the hunters to find the fallen tree, but whoever had deserved a hearty meal tonight. Dry, burnable wood was hard to come by in a region regularly ravaged by winter storms and snowmelt. They felled trees sometimes, when they were desperate, but especially with the Greymen searching the area for signs of life, it was best to avoid such obvious marks of human activity as a tree cut down for firewood.

“Thanks for the help,” Tommy said drolly, picking up the lamp at the entrance, and Adam cut him a glance.

“You had it well in hand,” Adam assured him.

“I’m glad you think so,” Tommy said and took a step outside, peering at the abandoned tunnels leading off into the darkness.

“Up this way,” Adam told him, gesturing towards the one leading upwards.

“What’s down here?” Tommy asked and veered off down a side corridor without waiting for Adam’s reply.

“Not all tunnels are in use,” Adam told him, catching up with a few long strides. “Some are too small, some too corroded.” He gestured with his hand, encompassing the network of tunnels before them. “These, we’ve had to abandon because there isn’t enough air. One or two people could survive down here, but not all of us.”

The lantern in Tommy’s hand cast flickering shadows on the walls.

“We mainly use them for storage now.”

“Store what?” Tommy asked. He paused to peer into a cavern, but turned to face Adam expectantly when he found it empty.

“Firewood.” Adam pointed back the way they came. “Some food. Weapons. Furs and fabric. Anything that can survive the damp and the cold.”

“Weapons, hm?” Tommy resumed his aimless ambling. “I’ve seen you fight, you know,” he said. “You’re good.”

“Are you?” Adam asked, forgoing the way the compliment had his insides warming with pleasure.

Tommy blinked at him for a moment before he started laughing. “Good with a bow and arrow, yes,” he said. “Knives, I can handle. Anything longer than that, and I’m more likely to injure myself than an opponent.” He ran his fingers over the wall. “It is quite damp down here.”

“Most food spoils,” Adam said. “I could teach you.”

“No.”

Adam crooked an eyebrow. “The best way to overcome a weakness is to face it,” he said.

“Maybe I just don’t want you to see how bad I really am,” Tommy replied.

“Come on.” Adam confronted Tommy with his most winning smile. “We’ll take Monte and Isaac along. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll learn.”

“Definitely not.” Tommy laughed – at him, Adam had a feeling. “I might be willing to let you witness my utter ineptitude at sword fighting, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will get to see it.”

“You cannot be as bad as you make yourself out to be,” Adam insisted.

Tommy laughed again. “You’d be surprised,” he said. He hesitated when his foot clinked against something made of metal and lifted the lantern higher. “What is this place?”

There wasn’t much to see, but Adam still waited as Tommy took in the barren walls, the metal loops set deep into the ground.

“It’s where we keep suspected traitors before their trial,” he said. He waited for Tommy to pale and wasn’t disappointed.

The other man took a hasty step backwards. “You keep people here?” he asked.

“Not for long.” Adam’s tone was grim. “After their trial, they’re either set free for put to death immediately.”

Tommy swallowed. “And do you find them innocent often?”

“None that I can remember,” Adam admitted.

“I can’t – I can’t be here,” Tommy whispered, and then he turned and walked, quickly, quietly, back the way they had come. He managed to get several yards down the corridor before Adam reached his side.

“Tommy. Tommy, hey.” Adam caught Tommy’s hand and pulled him around to face him. “Tommy, it’s okay.”

“Sorry,” Tommy said. “Sorry, I just – I need some air.”

“It’s fine,” Adam said. He curled a careful arm around Tommy’s back. “Let’s go back, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Tommy repeated. “I’m still not used to being inside, you know? And the thought of being locked up down here…”

“Come on,” Adam said, guiding Tommy forward. He could feel Tommy’s shoulders shake ever so minutely and gave them a squeeze. “You know, there’s one flaw in my fighting that I’ve never been able to overcome,” he said.

Tommy blinked at him.

“My left,” Adam said. “I always keep my elbow too high. I’ve been training with Isaac and Monte, but I can never manage to protect my side.” He gave Tommy a little shake. “Sometimes I’m amazed I haven’t gotten myself killed yet.”

It worked: Tommy managed a – small, tremulous – smile. “Maybe you should teach me,” he said. “It’d be a good thing to know, right?”

Adam grinned at him. “We’ll make a fighter out of you yet,” he said. “I promise.”

Adam didn’t have a chance to fulfill his promise for another few days, partly because there was the harvest to oversee and partly because Tommy tended to conveniently disappear whenever Adam had a moment, but he finally managed to drag both of them down to the clearing on an overcast afternoon.

Adam handed Tommy a practice blade and drew his own sword. If Tommy were one of the mountain’s children, Adam would have brought along a couple of sturdy sticks, but Tommy was a man, and a hunter at that. It was always best to learn with the true weight of a weapon in his hands, and Tommy was a warrior – Adam would do him no service, only disrespect, by assuming he would be unable to handle a blade.

Tommy held the weapon well enough, glancing over his shoulder as if to reassure himself they were still alone. Adam had offered one more time to bring Monte and Isaac with them, and Tommy had declined once again, so now it was just the two of them, facing each other across the open space.

“I can’t promise I’ll keep up with you for very long,” Tommy cautioned as he took his stance.

Adam glanced up at the cloud-laden sky for a moment before he focused on Tommy. “I doubt we’ll be able to practice for very long,” he said. “There’ll be rain soon.”

“What a shame,” Tommy said, and Adam laughed.

“We’ll go slow,” he said. “This is the basic strike.”

They went through several attacks and blocks, elementary maneuvers, before they sparred, Adam taking care not to overwhelm Tommy with speed and complexity of movement. Tommy was breathing hard but he didn’t complain, running through the exercises Adam showed him again and again, and he threw what little he had into their brief sparring sessions. He wasn’t particularly gifted, but he was undoubtedly getting better at it, and Adam was about to call a break and congratulate him when the other man, unexpectedly, feinted right and then swung left.

There was a moment when Adam could see it, could see Tommy’s blade slice into his unprotected side, right where Adam had told him to look for it. It would be so easy for Tommy – a moment’s inattention on Adam’s part, a heat of the moment decision on Tommy’s, and the mountain would be without an heir, at no one’s fault but Adam’s own. Tommy would be subjected to whispers and scornful looks, but life on the mountain was vicious, and his people would move on soon enough, forgetting all about the prince who had been stupid enough to reveal the one chink in his armor to a foreigner.

Adam could see it so clearly, and then Tommy turned his blade at the very last moment, smacking the flat of it against Adam’s hip. It stung, and Adam took a step back, Tommy following his lead.

“You’ll want to keep that protected,” Tommy said, lightly, but there was a question in his eyes.

Adam nodded, once, and Tommy let out a sharp breath.

“Again?” he asked, and Adam held his sword at the ready in response.

By the end of the day, Adam’s side was a dark, angry red, but he had blocked the last four swipes Tommy had made at him and couldn’t help the grin spreading over his face. Tommy was in less of a good mood, having been knocked to the ground by Adam time and time again, and when he picked himself up out of the dirt for the final time, his hand idly rubbed over his no doubt aching back.

“I don’t think I’m much of a sword fighter,” he said. “I’m better with a bow and arrow.”

“It’s a matter of practice, really,” Adam said, but he knew, and he had no doubt that Tommy knew he knew, that Tommy simply did not have the talent. With practice, lots and lots of practice, he would be able to become a decent warrior, but he lacked the natural ability to quickly pick up the movements. He lacked the instincts of when to dodge and when to lunge, the instincts that told him what his opponent was thinking, all of which were vital to being a great fighter.

“I’ll stick to hunting, I think,” Tommy said. He handed the borrowed sword to Adam, who wiped it down with a cloth before he used that same rag to blot the sweat from his forehead.

“There’s nothing wrong with hunting,” Adam said. He tossed a grin in Tommy’s direction. “All fighters need to eat, after all.”

Tommy laughed, tongue darting out between his teeth, and Adam ushered him towards the overhang. “Let’s head inside, it’s starting to rain.”

They made it inside just as the first burst of lightning split the sky, followed seconds later by a crash of thunder. The wind whipped icy rain after them, and they shuffled another few steps back.

“Man,” Tommy said. “I wouldn’t want to be a Greyman in this weather.”

Adam turned to him. “What do you mean?” he asked, a sharp note creeping into his voice. Did Tommy know something about the Greymen that Adam didn’t?

“Just, you know.” Tommy shrugged without meeting his eyes. “They’re out there in the open somewhere, aren’t they? I think I’m going to go dry off.” He reached up and squeezed Adam’s shoulder briefly. “Thanks for the lesson.”

He was gone before Adam could regain his footing, and although he could hear Tommy’s footsteps somewhere in front of him all the way up to their living quarters, he never quite managed to catch up.

It wasn’t long before the single, fat drops had turned into a downpour, the sound of water hitting rock audible throughout the caverns. Adam stopped at his own quarters to stow away the training blade and found Monte, Isaac, and Cassidy huddled over a game of Rocks, peering down at the colored pieces intently. He watched as Monte set down a red one and picked up one of the green, depositing it on the pile in front of him, and Isaac groaned.

“Man,” he protested, and Adam chuckled.

“Did he tell you he’s no good at that game?” he asked. “Because that’s a blatant lie.”

“We’re playing for one of Isaac’s carving knives,” Monte said. “Shut up.”

“I’m going,” Adam said, raising his hands. “Have any of you seen Allison?”

“She went up to the spy hole,” Cassidy said. “Where the guards keep watch.”

“I know where the spy hole is,” Adam called back, but none of the three men paid him any attention.

It wasn’t hard to find Allison. The guards had all but abandoned their post, huddling around a bend to protect themselves from the rain, but Allison sat perched at the edge of the opening, peering down at where not so long ago, the four of them had stood, staring up.

She glanced over her shoulder when Adam came closer. “What a weather,” she said.

“Thunder storms usually don’t make it this far inland,” Adam replied, sinking down opposite her, back to the wall.

“I’ve missed them.” Allison cut him a quick glance, laughed softly. “That’s stupid, right? A stupid thing to miss?”

“When we were down at the seaboard, you know what I missed?” Adam stretched out one leg, poked her thigh with his toes. He grinned. “Snow. Winters here are the most painful thing you can imagine, and yet there I was, sitting in the sand, wishing for snow.”

Allison tucked her hands underneath her thighs. “Does it snow a lot here, then?”

“Lots.” Adam nodded. “Higher than you’re tall. If I go out, I’ll sink in up to my neck.”

She laughed. “You’re a liar,” she said.

“Maybe.” Adam winked at her. “But how are you going to prove it?”

She didn’t reply, dropping her gaze the way she did when there was something she wasn’t saying, and Adam felt a sudden, rare, burst of panic.

“You like it here, right?” he asked. “You’re not secretly wishing you hadn’t decided to come with me?”

“I like it,” she assured him. She reached over and tucked a strand of dark hair behind his ear. “I just need to get used to the idea that all those crazy adventures are now over.”

Adam had to swallow against the lump in his throat. He missed them too, of course, those long, hard, dirty days that had nevertheless been full of laughter. But he was home, at least – he was surrounded by friends and family. Sometimes he forgot that all this was as strange and foreign to his friends as his people imagined the places beyond the plains to be.

“We can have other crazy adventures,” he offered.

“I’m sure we will,” she told him softly. “Just – give us some time, Adam, alright? A little time to adjust.”

“I will,” Adam said. “And anytime you need anything, I’ll be there for you. I promise.”

She nodded, and he grinned.“And right now, you know what we need? Tea.”

“Tea?” she repeated.

“Nice, hot, steaming tea,” Adam corrected her. “Because I’m getting cold sitting here on this damp rock, and if I’m cold, you must be well on the way to freezing.”

“I am a little cold,” she admitted, and laughed when Adam lifted her bodily off the ground and onto her feet.

“Off we go, then,” he said, and told her such outrageous lies about the healing powers of tea that she was still laughing when they reached the council hall. She had her arm tucked around his, head thrown back, but she quickly fell silent at the sight of the King’s Council,
huddled close together. The king had his arm around the queen, listening intently though his eyes were turned away as she spoke.

Adam gave Allison’s arm a light tug when she slowed. “Come,” he said.

“Should we really be here?” she whispered to him, and he smiled at her.

“We should.” He pulled her forwards. “This will be us, one day. It will be you.”

Marcus stepped aside when they approached and Adam settled himself on the ground at his father’s feet, pulling Allison down with him, a clear sign that he had no intent to interfere with their discussion.

His father’s hand settled on his shoulder. “I’ve sent out a patrol,” he said. “They’ve reported that the Greymen have followed the Green River inland, away from the Mountain. They’ve burned the village at the foot of Lizard’s Rock to the ground.”

“Now they’ve turned their horses back towards the Mountain,” Sarah, the grey-haired woman with an impish gleam in her eyes added. “They’re not riding hard, but if they know where they’re headed, they could be here in only a few days.”

Adam could feel Allison’s hand tighten on his arm, and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“We have no proof that they know where they’re headed,” Marcus said, forcefully, as if he’d said it before. “And even if they do, they would need to beat the mountain before they could get to us.”

“They could never beat the mountain,” Sarah said. “But they don’t have to. All they have to do is seal off our exits, and we’ll starve.”

“Maybe if it were spring, yes.” All eyes turned to the queen, who smiled mildly. “If the weather was warming and we were low on supplies, yes, that would be cause for concern. But winter is coming hard and fast, and we’ve already gathered most of what we need. Even sealed in, we would only need to wait, while the Greymen would have to battle us as well as the season.”

“There is another option,” the king said. “We’ve only discussed hiding from them or battling them outright, but we could send out a messenger to meet them. Simply ask them why they’re here.”

He looked around, but his advisors all shook their heads.

“We would never agree with their terms,” Marcus said. “Not when they’re razing settlements to the ground. So why bother asking?”

“We cannot bed down with the enemy,” Sarah said, and Adam thought this might have been the first time he had witnessed the woman and Marcus agreeing on anything.

“We cannot ensure that our messengers would return unharmed,” the queen added, and smiled in Allison’s direction when Adam’s friend turned wide eyes on her.

“I’d say that’s a resounding no,” the king said. He turned to Adam. “What about you, my Prince?” he asked. “Do you agree with my advisors?”

Slowly, Adam nodded. “If we ride out to meet them,” he said, “it only proves to the Greymen that we are close by, and perceive them as a threat. I say, better to let them doubt their search and their impact, leave them on uneven footing, than assure them that their scare tactic is working.”

The king nodded, a smile gracing his lips before he raised his head to face his advisors. “So we prepare for a siege,” he said. “Keep the children inside. Let no one travel to far, but gather all provision available close by. We will not let the Greymen catch us off-guard.”

“Yes, my King,” they echoed, and Adam drew Allison upwards and away while the council began to divide tasks that still needed to be done.

“Let’s get you some of that tea,” he said quietly, and she nodded just as quietly in return.

Adam had two baskets full of fresh nuts under his arms when he rounded a corner to find Tommy sitting on a rise with a little girl in his lap. Lianne, Sasha’s youngest – barely old enough to toddle after her mother, but with a fierce scowl for anyone who dared step in her way. In Tommy’s arms, however, she seemed content, idly tugging at the lacing at his throat, and Tommy seemed to have nothing but smiles for the little girl. He smiled at Adam, too, when he caught sight of him leaning against the corridor’s wall, pointing him out to the girl and whispering something in her ear.

She wasn’t particularly interested, reaching up to toy with Tommy’s hair instead, and Tommy grinned as he pulled away.

“I’ve never seen you with a child,” Adam remarked.

Tommy shrugged, tickled the girl with a finger when she made a sleepy noise of protest. “Not many place as unconditional a trust in a mountain runner as you do,” he said. “I’m not constantly surrounded by women asking me to hold their children.”

Recognizing the teasing for what it was, Adam winked at him. “I’m simply irresistible,” he said. “How can I help it if every woman wants to draw me into her family?”

“One day, they will realize how utterly uninterested you are,” Tommy muttered, more to himself than Adam it seemed.

Nevertheless, Adam bit his lip at the sharp note in Tommy’s voice. “I will have a family one day,” he said. “I must. Or at least an heir to take my place.”

Tommy’s gaze dropped to his lap. “I know that,” he said.

Adam reached down to cup Tommy’s chin, tilt his face upwards into the light. “You must also know that I have no desire to be with a woman.”

Tommy’s eyes remained stubbornly averted. “I do,” he said. “But you must. To have an heir.”

Adam kissed him before he could think better of it, sealing his lips over Tommy’s for only a moment before he pulled away. “That doesn’t mean I want to,” he reminded the other man firmly.

Tommy gazed at him, eyes dark, unreadable. He didn’t say anything, but Adam didn’t need him to, to know that it had not been a good time. He and Tommy, they needed space, and quiet, time to let it all unfold. It wasn’t right here, like this, in a hectic corridor with a child clinging to Tommy’s arm.

Still, when Tommy’s lips curled into a smile, Adam knew that they had reached an understanding. Tommy would wait for him, now, until the time was right, until they could let everything happen the way it was meant to be.

A few days later, there was another gathering in the council hall. Not a feast, not that grand, but the days were growing short and there was little else to do at night but sit in one another’s company, some working still in the fire’s light, others dancing and laughing and drinking.

Tommy’s head fit neatly underneath Adam’s shoulder, ear pressed against the curve of his ribs. One hand toyed idly with the pendants hanging from Adam’s neck while he watched the going-ons around them, the girls and women dancing with their scarves and the people pressed to the walls to give them room, lazy with good food and heady drink.

Allison lay pillowed against Adam’s other side, her leg slung over his hip, knee occasionally nudging Tommy’s. She had nicked a flagon from somewhere that she kept passing across, watching Tommy take a swallow before reaching for the drink herself. Tommy had to have noticed the looks she kept giving him, and yet he seemed content to lay pressed to Adam’s side, body warm against Adam’s from shoulder to hip.

Adam smiled lazily when Monte knelt on the ground next to him, raising his brows at the way they lay, entangled. “Busy day?” he asked, and Adam grinned.

“Quite.”

Monte snorted, gesturing for Allison’s flask and taking a large drink before sliding back to lean against the wall behind them, watching the festivities with keen eyes.

Allison held the flask out once again. When Tommy merely turned his head away, she tilted her head back and took a large swig.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Tommy asked.

Allison took another swallow and nodded seriously. “And then I’m going to make you tell me what’s on the other side of the mountain.”

Tommy glanced at Adam, grinning. “No luck, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’ll need to be a whole lot drunker than this.”

“But I can’t drink anymore,” Allison said mournfully.

“Then stop,” Adam cut in for the first time, taking the bottle away despite Allison’s noise of protest.

Mara, one of the dancing women, must have seen the exchange, because a few moments later she was by their side, offering to teach Allison the moves of the dance.

Allison pushed to her feet. “Sounds awesome,” she said, beaming. “You coming, Tommy?” she asked.

Mara hesitated, caught Adam’s gaze but he shrugged. “This is a dance for women,” she cautioned.

“So?” Allison demanded, shifting a little unsteadily on her feet.

Mara turned to Tommy who merely shrugged as well.

Shaking her head, she gestured them towards the dancers.

Allison laughed and tugged Tommy with her, and to Adam’s perhaps unwarranted surprise Tommy went, accepting a scarf from one of the chuckling women.

It came as little surprise that both he and Allison were uncoordinated and clumsy, but they were obviously having a good time, and no else appeared to mind. Adam watched them for a moment, smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He turned to Monte, taking a quick swallow from his own cup, about to share a laugh about their two friends with the other man, when Sophia crouched down next to him, a jug in her hands.

“More mead, Adam?”she asked.

Adam very nearly choked on his drink at that, because Sophia had always been the kind of person who would sooner empty Adam’s mug and force him to go for a refill than offer to serve him. But her eyes were not even on him, gaze fixed on Isaac even as she poured more golden liquid into Adam’s offered cup.

“Isaac?” Adam prompted.

Isaac lifted his mug, as captivated by Sophia as she appeared to be by him. The woman wasted no time stepping over Adam’s legs. She refilled Isaac’s mug quickly, only half-empty from the looks of it, set the jug down and spread her skirts out neatly as she settled down.

Adam turned to share a quick grin with Monte. Children, he mouthed.

A moment later, Monte slipped into place beside him. “I’m fairly sure you’re younger than most people here,” he said.

Adam laughed. “But I’m a Prince of the Mountain. You can’t talk to me like that.”

“I’ll talk to you however I want, boy,” Monte said, Adam grinned at him in return, and that was that.

“Neil, stop,” Adam said, not for the first time, but at least this time it worked.

His brother fell silent, jaw set in a hard line, eyes blazing.

Adam glanced over his shoulder, but there was no one beside them at the stream running through the cavern but two children, and they didn’t look like they cared very much what the Prince and his brother were quietly arguing about.

“I mean it,” he said. “I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

“I won’t stop saying it just because you have blinders on,” Neil insisted, trying on an earnest tone for the first time since he’d cornered Adam. “We don’t know anything about him,” he insisted. “He could be dangerous. What if he sells us out to the Greymen?”

“How could he?” Adam snapped back. “By telling them where to find us? Neil, if they don’t already know, chances are still high they’ll discover us eventually.”

“What if he tells them where the map is?” Neil pressed.

Adam shook his head. “How would he know?”

“Maybe he does.” Neil ran his fingers through his scraggly hair. “It’s not exactly a well-kept secret.”

“Well enough,” Adam reminded him. “It’s not like we tell it to everyone who happens to pass through.”

Neil crossed his arms, his previously mutinous expression now suspiciously close to a pout, and he wouldn’t quite meet Adam’s eyes.

“And,” Adam continued, “even assuming that Tommy is the kind of person who would betray the people who have offered him food and shelter and a home, weren’t you the one proposing we make a deal with the Greymen in the first place? To rid ourselves of them?”

“What, I can’t learn?” Neil rolled his eyes, no doubt at the dubious expression Adam couldn’t quite keep off his face. “I sat in on Father’s council a few times. I don’t think making deals with Greymen is a good idea.”

“Anymore.”

“Anymore,” Neil conceded. “Oh, stop looking at me like that. I thought you wanted me to grow up.”

“I do.” Adam fixed his brother with a serious look. “And part of that would be to stop bad-mouthing Tommy every chance you get.”

Neil sighed, loudly, and Adam gritted his teeth.

“He’s not a bad guy, you know.”

“I know you think that.” Neil closed his hand over Adam’s arm and squeezed tight. “But all you see, all you talk about, is Tommy. You’re so blind with desire, he could be selling us off to the Greymen one by one, and you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Watch your tone,” Adam said, pushing Neil aside.

“I’m serious, Adam,” his brother called after him, but Adam had heard enough.

He stalked down the corridors, scowling when he found himself keeping a look-out for Tommy, and veered off to find his advisors instead. He found them surrounded by a group of children, a long piece of fabric hung across the cavern. Monte sat on the ground with a carving knife, creating what appeared to be an entire zoo of wooden animals, and Adam raised an eyebrow at them all.

Grinning wide, Allison tugged on her tunic. It was diagonally striped, in bright colors, and it was so like her that Adam could feel a smile tug at his lips despite his sour mood.

“We’re putting on a play for them,” she told him. “We told them they could each keep one of them afterwards.”

And sure enough, Isaac was currently walking a little horse and an even tinier man across the top of the fabric, narrating their journey in a high-pitched voice. Allison picked up a rendering of a woman and joined him, and Monte, who had glanced over at her, gave Adam a quick smile before he bent back over his work.

Adam ran his fingers over the artfully carved figurines: The slow, horse-like creature that had faithfully carried them across the desert but left them sore for days; the enormous fish they had found washed up on the beach; the beetle that had, in reality, shimmered a bright, bluish green.

“These are gorgeous,” he said, looking up at his friend.

“I used to carve for my daughters,” Monte told him, and then Isaac said something that had all the children in the room jeer and laugh, and before Adam had time to press for more, Monte had turned away.

The play ended amidst much laughter and applause, and then a frantic rush to the small zoo Monte had set up. Dozens of little bodies pressed towards the figurines, and others clung to Monte’s shirt, begging him for this or that, and Monte found himself pressed against the stone behind him while Allison and Isaac had wisely chosen to flee to the far wall.

“Where did they all come from?” Monte called to Adam over the ruckus.

“They live here,” Adam called back, laughing, and Monte’s eyes went large before he turned to yank away a half-finished figurine from Carrie’s greedy fingers.

It seemed to take forever, but eventually even the pickiest child was satisfied, and even a few adults who had come to see what the fuss was about, and only the four of them were left. Allison laid her feet in Adam’s lap and Isaac sat down to oil the leather straps for his knives while Monte absently worked on a miniature of the tall trees that had provided some much-needed shade for them at the seaboard.

“What’s wrong, Adam?” Monte eventually asked. “You don’t usually come to sit with us.”

Adam felt a stab of guilt at his words, however innocently spoken. It was true – he’d been shamefully neglecting his friends, after he’d dragged them away from everything they’d ever known, and they weren’t even angry with him. They were concerned about him instead, and that just made everything worse.

“Do you think I spent too much time with Tommy?” he asked.

Monte looked up from the animal he was carving, face blank, but Isaac behind him didn’t bother to hide his snort. Allison glared at him before she gently covered Adam’s hand with her own, which Adam took to be a bad sign.

“Well, it depends,” she said. “You, like, like him, right?”

Adam dropped his gaze for a moment before he met hers again, earnestly. “But I don’t want you to feel as if I’ve abandoned you for a pretty face. You’re my friends. I’ve brought you here with me, and we’ve been through too much together for me to do that.”

Monte shook his head. “We’re all adults, Adam,” he said. He cut a glance at Allison. “Mostly. But we can handle you having a little crush.”

Allison nodded even as Adam grimaced at Monte’s words. “We’re not upset about anything,” she assured him. “It’s just weird, that’s all. It was just the four of us for so long, and now there are all these people laying claim to you.”

“I know.” Adam sighed. “Maybe we should do something tonight,” he said, looking up hopefully. “Just the four of us, and something strong to drink. Like old times.”

“No Tommy?” Isaac asked dubiously.

“No Tommy,” Adam nodded, steeling his heart to do so.

“Are you going to sing?” Allison asked, voice going high with excitement.

“I’ll sing,” Adam told her.

And he did.

His friends might have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of young ones vying for one of their carved animals, but for Adam, it was the norm. There were always children under the mountain. Romance blossomed hard and fast, and most women had already had a child or two by the time they reached Adam’s age. But they rarely had time to watch over their offspring, their days long and hard. As a result, Adam had been taking care of children almost since he himself had been an infant. That was simply the way it was on the mountain – you were always needed and useful, no matter how old you were. Children cared for children just as parents did.

So it was no surprise that Tommy found him one day with two little boys in his arms, both struggling to get away, to see what was going on. Adam tried hard to keep them both in check, but one of them stuck his hand in Adam’s mouth and the other yanked on his hair, and of course that was when Neil walked by.

“Oh Adam, hold my baby,” he said, high-pitched and shrill, and Tommy burst out laughing.

He sobered at Adam’s look and took one of the boys from him, holding him until their mother came to claim them. As soon as he was free of his burden, Adam sank to the ground, stretching his tired legs out in front of him.

Smiling sympathetically, Tommy seated himself in Adam’s lap and gave him a sweet, soft kiss that Adam couldn’t help but deepen. And then Neil, returning from whatever errand he had been running, shook his head at the two of them, and Adam glowered at the back of his brother’s head.

Tommy followed Adam’s gaze and grinned, winding his arms – wiry and firm from years of archery, and yet so slight – around Adam’s neck. “He’ll get over it,” he whispered into Adam’s hair.

Adam sighed. “He’s being childish, I know. But somehow I still want to apologize.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Tommy reminded him gently, but that didn’t stop Adam from feeling like he had.

Isaac didn’t like Tommy.

It took Adam a while to figure it out, because the two tended to avoid each other, or when they couldn’t, both remained silent. Adam had no doubt that they did this for his sake, was grateful for it, but it still bothered him more than he liked to admit. He admired Isaac, his brashness, his attitude, but Tommy had sneaked in under his defenses. He wanted them to get along.

He could have thanked the spirits, if he believed in them, that at least Tommy and his other advisors got along. Allison and Tommy seemed to have found something special in one another. They didn’t talk much, Adam didn’t think, or at least Tommy didn’t, but it was a rare day when they didn’t sit somewhere, heads together like two children thinking up a prank, whispering and laughing, yet pretending nothing had happened when Adam asked. They danced together and laughed and sang, and it warmed Adam inside to see it.

What Monte saw in Tommy, Adam wasn’t sure. They didn’t seem to speak to each other much. Sometimes Tommy came to sit by Monte when the man was quiet. Once, when Adam was oiling the leather straps on his saddle, Monte was constructing some sort of instrument out of wood and wires, and when Tommy came over to take a look, began to explain what he was doing. He spoke of resonance and sound, how there needed to be tension on the wires or else it wouldn’t work.

“Like the string of a bow,” Tommy said.

Monte glanced up at him, eyes wide; a moment later, a wide grin broke out across his face. “That’s right,” he said. “Just like the string of a bow.”

Adam bowed his head back over his leather. He didn’t know what Monte saw in Tommy, but it appeared to be doing both of them good. There was something relaxed and easy about Monte like this, sitting with the instrument in his lap, Tommy crouched by his side. A moment of calm for a man who was all tension and coiled muscles.

It was good to see.

And then, overnight, the cold came. Adam woke early one morning to find that the horses were being brought inside since the grass was stiff with frozen dew. He tried to speak to Cassidy only to find that the man was too busy stitching cloaks and mending coats to even look up from his work. Tommy sat cross-legged on their furs, sharpening his knives and arrow tips for a last bout of hunting before winter crept down from the mountain to stay. Monte joined a group of men and women that went out to collect some more firewood before it grew too damp, decked out in a heavy cloak and hat, and even Isaac could be convinced to wear gloves that protected his talented fingers from the weather.

Over his jacket lined with animal fur, Tommy had taken to wearing a heavy woolen cloak that swept behind him as he strode along the corridors. It was from a coarse, dark green cloth, and when Tommy stood still, it fell around his body, cloaking him completely, like the tree people from legends.

Adam asked Isaac to make a sturdier pair of boots, as well, and the man did, for Adam’s sake if not for Tommy’s. The look of sheer delight on Tommy’s face had been well worth it, however, even after Tommy looked up at him with some trepidation and mumbled, “I can’t hunt in these, though. They’re too heavy.”

“Hunting season is nearly over,” Adam reminded him. “You’ll go out, what, once, twice? We’re prepared for the winter, and you should be, too.”

“Come with me?” Tommy asked, boots still in his hand, and Adam found himself nodding without even having to think about it.

The grass was stiff beneath their feet when they set out, dewdrops frozen around the blades. Tommy led the way, quiet and self-assured, his boots – his hunting boots, still, despite the cold – silent on the ground. When they reached a small clearing, grass growing amidst the brush, Tommy swung himself up into a tree. Adam climbed after him, his bigger bulk causing him some difficulties, sitting down on a broad branch, facing Tommy. The smaller man didn’t protest when Adam wrapped his hands around Tommy’s thighs and pulled him half into his lap, just kept his hand on his bow and returned Adam’s gaze when Adam’s eyes found his.

Every gust of breath hung in the air between them.

Adam leaned in first, pressing his lips to Tommy’s. The man’s nose was cold, red from the crisp air, when it brushed against Adam’s cheek. Tommy drew back a little but allowed Adam to chase him, reaching up to wrap his free arm around Adam’s neck and bury his fingers in Adam’s hair. They kissed quietly, silently, despite the chill hanging in the air between them. Adam lost himself in the feel, in the touch, in a way he rarely allowed himself to, and he startled when Tommy suddenly pulled back.

The other man pressed his finger to his lips before Adam could ask. He nodded into the clearing. There, grazing fitfully, was a doe – several years old, from the looks of her, had probably been the mother of several young. She was alone, and beautiful, a warm brown against the frosty grey of the forest.

Tommy twisted in his lap to pull an arrow from his quiver, lifted his bow. He drew back his arm, elbow raised ever so slightly above his ear, and let the arrow fly, sinking it singing into the doe’s heart.

She collapsed without a sound, or perhaps she was merely too far away to hear.

Tommy let the bow sink without the satisfaction he had shown at the market. “We’ll need to get her quickly,” he said. “The predators are preparing for winter. They won’t take long to find her.”

“In a moment,” Adam said. He turned Tommy’s face with his hands, leaned their foreheads together. “You’re extraordinary,” he whispered, and Tommy laughed, but his hands came up to cover Adam’s as well as his small fingers could.

They carried the doe to the outcrop in the rock face where she could be hoisted upwards, didn’t already begin preparing her because they could use everything, now that winter was coming and supplies would be scarce. As soon as she was out of sight and Stacy gave them the sign that they could leave, Tommy slung his bow over his shoulder.

“Shall we head back?” he asked.

“In a little while.” Adam took Tommy’s hand in his. “There’s somewhere I’d like to go, first.”

Tommy’s eyes went wide when they ducked past a few undergrown trees to find a pond on the other side, water clear and deep, with a large boulder almost entirely submerged on one side of it.

Adam grinned at him. “Get in,” he said, tilting his head towards the still pool of water.

“You want us to bathe?” Tommy said, with a tone that clearly implied what he thought of the idea.

Adam grinned at him. “I do,” he said. “Winter is coming. We should take advantage while we still can.”

“I think I see ice forming on the other shore,” Tommy said, but Adam merely rolled his eyes. For all Tommy was a hardened mountain runner, Adam would have assumed he was used to a little cold water.

“Not this cold,” Tommy protested when Adam informed him of his thoughts. “Mountain runners know how hard life can be. There is no need for us to subject ourselves to unnecessary torture.”

Nevertheless, even as the words left his mouth, Tommy unbelted his tunic and unlaced his boots. His pants and shirt, he let fall at the shore’s edge, and by the time Adam had removed his boots and hung his own pants over a low branch to keep them clean, Tommy had already waded into the water.

Adam turned at the other man’s gasp to see Tommy waist-high in the pool, fingers curled in the air, mouth open like the cold had sucked the laughter out of him mid-moment. It occurred to him then that he had never seen Tommy in anything less than a full shirt, and that he had not expected him to have lines of ink running all the way from his shoulders down to his wrists. Adam had seen it before, but never like this; never patterns and sweeping lines that drew the eye into a wild and breathless dance, dragging from his wrists to his shoulder blades and back again. He hadn’t known such a thing was possible, but he wasn’t surprised that it suited Tommy well.

The man himself only slowly managed to dip his arms into the water. “It’s cold!” he said, looking back at Adam with wide eyes.

Adam slipped his tunic up over his head and draped it over the branch as well, tugging here and there to avoid creases. “It is,” he said. “It will be too cold for bathing soon, so enjoy it while you can.”

“Interesting how you yourself are still on shore,” Tommy commented, turning to face him fully. His gaze flickered down Adam’s naked body before they settled back on his face, cheeks heating.

Adam returned the favor, and that was when he noticed the scar on Tommy’s upper belly. It was stark against his white skin, purple from the cold, and vicious, almost a finger long and thick. There was no way it could have been an accident.

Tommy, alerted by Adam’s silence, followed his gaze. “I hurt him in return,” he said. A moment later, he plunged deeper into the pond, hiding the scar and most of his tattoos behind a murky layer of water. “Are you coming, then?” he asked without meeting Adam’s eyes.

Adam obliged him, wading into the water slowly. It was cold enough to curl his toes, but it felt good, too. Refreshing. One last reprieve, one moment of quiet before several months of being confined into narrow corridors and crowded caverns with dozens of others.

“And you call me a weakling,” Tommy commented, eyeing Adam who was still only up to his knees in water.

In retaliation, Adam threw himself forward. Feeling the water close over his head was like a solid punch to the chest, but Tommy’s shriek of outrage was more than worth it.

“You are incorrigible,” Tommy protested.

“And cute,” Adam added with a smirk.

“And insufferable.”

Adam slipped backwards, submerging himself all the way to his neck when Tommy, arms wrapped around his middle, made for the shore.

“I might need until spring to warm up again,” he said over his shoulder, fixing Adam with a stern look.

Adam rolled his eyes. “Lay down on the rock,” he said. “The stone is hot, still. You’ll be fine.”

The other man rolled his eyes but obeyed, flattening himself to the surface of the boulder and rubbing his cheek against the sun-warmed surface.

Grinning, Adam waded over, leaned his elbows on the rock, not caring much that the water clinging to his skin formed dark stains on the surface. Tommy rewarded him with a disgruntled frown that only lasted until Adam reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind a small, decorated ear.

Adam pressed his lips to Tommy’s, smiling when the other man allowed his tongue to slip inside despite the goose bumps forming on his skin. This, here, was worth the cold. It was worth everything.

Tommy was still shivering when they had found their way back into the dark corridors, arms tucked firmly around himself despite Adam’s cloak slung over his shoulders. Adam himself could feel the chill of the water all the way down to his bones, but that didn’t matter because Tommy pressed up against Adam’s side, a small, eager smile blossoming on his face every time he caught Adam’s gaze.

He greeted a few people as they passed; Gareth, Sophia, old Miriam with her own and someone else’s child. They each carried lanterns and Adam asked for one of them, ignoring Tommy’s questioning gaze when he passed it over to the other man.

“We’ll need it to find our way,” he told him once Miriam had gone.

Tommy, shrugging, made towards the cavern in which they usually slept, the two of them with Allison and Isaac and Monte, but Adam caught his hand and tugged. “This way,” he answered Tommy’s questioning look.

The mountain had endless caverns, some too small to use, others unstable, dangerous. With his arm tight around Tommy’s shoulders, Adam found one he had claimed for himself in his younger years, a place to be by himself or with another person. The ceiling was low, the entrance even lower, but there were furs spread out across the floor and stubs of candles on each rocky ledge, used, cold wax cascading along the sides.

“Light the candles, please,” he said to Tommy. He himself tugged one of the furs free and draped it over the entrance, tucking its edges into cracks and crevices to secure its position. When he turned, Tommy had sprawled out on the stack of furs in the candles’ golden glow, legs falling open in an invitation Adam wasn’t sure Tommy was aware of.

Nevertheless, Adam intended to take it.

He went to his knees, carefully so as not to spook the other man, and leaned down to kiss him again, propped up on his hands. Tommy was pliant against him, loose and relaxed, though his skin was still chilled and his nose rubbed red from his attempts to stop it from running.

He could hear people talking, laughing, but they were far away, and Tommy was right underneath him, watching him with wide, dark eyes. Suddenly breathless, Adam’s fingers found the waistband of Tommy’s pants underneath his tunic, slipped between fabric and skin and pulling a little. Tommy smiled, cheeks slowly flushing pink, then red, but he complied with the unspoken question, slipped out of his pants and kicked them down to rest between their feet. Adam gripped Tommy’s knee, slid his hand upwards, along the smooth, white skin towards the place where hip met thigh.

Tommy opened for him easily, a gasp that wasn’t so much smothered as it was silent. One of his hands came up to grip the fabric of his shirt, catching several of the dangling necklaces, and Adam grinned at him. Tommy tugged a little, urging him closer, pressed a kiss underneath Adam’s jaw and arched his stomach upwards.

Adam took the hint, running his hand possessively over the smooth skin for a moment before slipping it underneath, lifting Tommy towards him, his own hips moving in counterpoint. It was slow, but it wasn’t gentle. Tommy gasped with every movement, no more than a puff of air against Adam’s neck, his fingers digging into Adam’s back. Adam didn’t mind the pain –he doubted he would have minded anything if it meant seeing Tommy’s face fall apart in pleasure the way it did.

Even after, when they lay side by side, silent but content, Tommy’s face was lax and tension-free in a way it wasn’t usually. His fingers slid over Adam’s ribs, slowly, gently, too firm to be teasing. It wouldn’t be long before it lulled him to sleep. He ought to get up, remove the fur to make sure air could circulate, confirm that Monte and Isaac and Allison had made it to bed all right, but his limbs were warm and slow and he could feel Tommy’s cheek pressed to his side, hot breath damp against his shirt, and everything else could wait until tomorrow.

Adam woke to footsteps pounding closer and had his dagger in his hand before he even opened his eyes. He barely relaxed his grip on the weapon when he saw that it was Monte, because the man was pale and tense when he pushed aside the fur still draped over the entrance. Beside him, Tommy was stiff as a board, a small knife gripped tightly in the hand that rested oh-so-casually on Adam’s hip.

“You’re wanted,” Monte said quietly, but it was to Tommy, not Adam.

The council hall was crowded with people when they arrived; though their chatter died down the moment Tommy stepped through the entrance.

“You summoned me?” Tommy asked, voice quiet and even, though Adam could see his hands shake.

“There have been some concerns,” Adam’s father hedged.

Beside him, the queen reassuringly squeezed his arm.

“About the Greymen at our door, and your involvement with them,” the king continued.

“What involvement?” Tommy asked, at the same time as Adam cut in, “What Greymen?”

“The ones searching for an entrance outside,” Neil said.

Adam cast a look at his brother, leaning against the wall by their parents’ throne with his arms crossed in front of his chest. His smug expression died when he caught Adam’s gaze.

“And you think I had something to do with that?” Tommy asked, voice flipping.

“Didn’t you?” It was the queen this time, pale but serious. “You’re new to us, we don’t know you. Every time you accompany someone into town, you disappear for hours. You go out alone and bring back nothing as proof that you were out hunting.”

“What are you saying?” Tommy asked. He sounded like he was pleading.

“We think you lead them here,” Neil said, when nobody else would.

“That is ridiculous,” Tommy said. “Why would I lead them here? This is the only home I have left.”

“So you say,” Adam’s father said, and Tommy, open-mouthed, fell silent.

The king smiled grimly. “Who’s to say you’ve not found a home with the Greymen, and are doing everything in your power to ensure their loyalty to you?”

“Swear my loyalty to Greymen?” Tommy asked, voice deadly quiet, and Marcus shifted on his feet.

“We have no proof your family died the way you say they did,” he said.

“That’s what you think?” Tommy asked, turning on his feet.

No one met his eyes, but no one spoke up in his defense either.

“It’s decided, then,” the king said, forcing himself to look at Tommy.

“It isn’t,” Adam cut in, because he’d be damned before he allowed this to just happen. “Tommy deserves a fair trial, as per our laws. This is not the time for this.”

“We can’t just allow him to roam our halls,” Neil said, challenging.

Adam shook his head, even as Tommy turned to look at him with large, fearful eyes. “So we lock him up. Wait with this until after we have taken care of the Greymen. They are what we ought to worry about right now, not about who’s to blame.”

Neil looked like he wanted to argue, but then the king nodded, once. “So we shall,” he said. “Adam, go take care of Tommy. My council, it is time to act.”

Part 4

Under the Mountain - Part 2

bad_peppermint — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:34:08 GMT

Masterpost

Adam woke with a start. He blinked upwards, expecting stars and seeing only darkness, and felt a wave of something hot wash down his spine. He had been one of the first to fall asleep last night, and no doubt his friends hadn’t thought to replace the dying candle before they themselves turned in. And now there was nothing, only darkness pressing down on him from all directions. The furs covering him were stifling. Allison’s weight on his arm was crushing, suddenly, her hair trailing over Adam’s skin rubbing on raw nerve.

He pushed her away, ignoring her sleepy call of “Adam, what-?” and stumbled outside into the hall where at least there were torches lighting the way, and he leaned his forehead against the wall and breathed quietly for a moment.

It wasn’t long before there were footsteps inside, and then Monte ducked into the hallway, his sword in his hand.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Adam said, forcing a smile when Monte didn’t move. “Go back to sleep,” he said. “I’ll find us a candle to light.”

Monte nodded, and although he seemed reluctant to return to his bedding, he left Adam to his own devices.

Adam turned so his back was protected at least, felt the solid, cold stone against his sweat soaked shirt and forced himself to relax. It was later than he would have thought, or perhaps earlier – there was some noise, people speaking somewhere, someone clanging with pots, and the uncertainty of where or who they were abruptly had Adam wishing that he was out in the wilderness somewhere, where you could see even in the darkest night and every sound carried for miles.

A few quick footsteps and Adam jumped, hands reaching for a sword that wasn’t at his side, before he forced himself to take another few deep breaths. He couldn’t afford to be this skittish. What if he drew his blade on a child, or worse yet, another warrior who saw it as a challenge? He, more than anyone, had to remain calm. He needed help with this. He needed his friend.

Older than Adam by several years, Cassidy had always been a voice of reason to him. He was a well-spoken, level-headed man whose skill with a needle was known as far as the town at the foot of the mountain, and maybe beyond.Adam had always believed that all that time spent sitting and working had allowed Cassidy to think about everything and anything, giving him time to understand things that always remained just slightly out of Adam’s grasp.

Maybe it was the way that Cassidy pondered their community’s comings and goings with the same importance as he did a request for a new article of clothing that had Adam so at ease. There was no denying that the thought of Cassidy not caring much whether Adam lived or died stung a little, but then the way the man offered him a nod as if they had only spoken yesterday rather than two years ago. It was the first response since his return that made Adam feel as though he were truly still a part of his father’s court.

“Cass,” he said in greeting as he settled himself next to the other man.

“Eva needs a cloak,” Cassidy replied, holding the fabric up to the light so Adam could admire the dark blue color. “That girl is going to freeze to death come winter if I don’t make her something now.”

“I won’t distract you,” Adam promised, but Cassidy just laughed.

“You will,” he said easily. “But perhaps it will keep my mind off the tedium of my work. You had a question.”

Adam startled at the prompt before he remembered that yes, as always, there was something he had wanted to speak to Cassidy about.

“Is this about your brother?” Cassidy continued before Adam had time to elaborate.

“Neil. Yes.” Adam shifted uncertainly. “He seems different.”

“He is different.” Cassidy’s voice carried a hint of disbelief. “Everyone has changed during the time you spent away. You certainly have.”

“I have. I’m ready to be king,” he confessed, quietly. He had no reason to upstage his father, but he could feel that knowledge, that power, pulsing through his veins.

“And yet there are those that would choose Neil before they chose you,” Cassidy interrupted his thoughts.

“Neil is a child.” Adam protested, although yes, perhaps that had been part of what had been on his mind.

Cassidy slowly shook his head from side to side. “Neil is close to you in age. Yes, he still has to go Wandering, but he will not be gone for long. You are honest, brutally so, and you surround yourself with foreigners, while your brother has a tongue that spins every truth into something his listeners want to hear.”

“Neil is a good man,” Adam said heatedly. “He is worthy of allegiance.”

“He is,” Cassidy said, inclining his head. “But how would you know that? You haven’t seen him in over two years, have barely spoken to him since.”

“I know my brother,” Adam insisted.

The other man looked up from the cloak for a moment, narrowing his eyes at Adam, then he sighed. “Either way, the two of you will split the mountain into fractions if you aren’t careful, and a divided mountainis something we cannot afford.”

Adam leaned back against the rock behind him, sighing himself. Cassidy had always known how to make his temper flare, but it was hard to stay angry at someone so calm, so rational. “The mountain is split into fractions over my mother and father,” he said, “and that works out just fine.”

“It’s different with them.” Cassidy held up his needle, allowing the threat to grow taunt before Adam’s eyes. “Your father brought your mother in as a bride – it was clear that they would rule together. You and your brother, however, are rivals.” His gaze flickered over to Adam when Adam snorted.

“You are. You are both contenders for the throne, and as such, you are rivals, whether you mean to be or not.” Cassidy tilted his head, giving Adam a long, thoughtful look that had Adam squirming where he sat before he returned to his stitching. “There are those that will wait for your brother to return instead of pledging their allegiance to you.”

“Neil may never return,” Adam pointed out.

“I know that.” Cassidy snapped the thread with his teeth and pushed the needle through the cuff of his sleeve before he held up the shirt to inspect it closely in the dim light. “But he may return, and there are those who believe that when he does, he will be stronger and faster and wiser than you.”

“It’s possible,” Adam admitted, though from Neil’s stature and attitude, he doubted Neil would ever be a better fighter than he was. “But he’s not due for Wandering for some time yet. It’ll be years before he returns, if he even does.”

“You did,” Cassidy reminded him. He smiled. “Not that I’m not glad you did,” he said, voice teasing in tone, and Adam responded with an uneasy smile of his own.

Later, on his way to the council hall for a bite to eat, Adam found himself confronted with a girl that reached all the way to his hip, gazing up at him with a serious set to her jaw.

“I saw you fight yesterday,” she said.

“Is that so?” Adam asked, and she nodded.

“I want to fight like that.”

“You could practice with someone your age,” Adam said. “Carefully. Find some wooden sticks and strip them.”

The girl shook her head. “Everyone my age is bad at fighting,” she said. “And they cry when I beat them.”

Adam had to chuckle at that, because he remembered well that feeling of utter frustration that not even boys and girls bigger and older than he was proved much of a challenge when sparing, and he gave the girl a nod. “I’ll teach you,” he said. “How good are you with knives?”

Which was precisely how he ended up clutching a hand to his bleeding arm, the blade he had given the little girl lying in the dust between them. The girl herself, Carrie, watched him mouth curses with tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry if you’re gonna die,” she said.

Adam laughed. The cut wasn’t particularly serious. It was along the underside of his arm, shallow, would heal quickly but probably scar, nothing more than an unfortunate combination of Carrie flipping the knife in her hand the very moment Adam reached in to correct her grip.

“I didn’t survive two years of Wandering just to die in my very own halls,” Adam assured her. He smiled. “I’ll be fine. Our lessons might have to wait a little, though, if that’s okay.”

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “Are you sure you’re not going to die?”

“Pretty sure,” Adam said. “Have you ever put in stitches? If not, you’re going to have to get Cassidy for me.”

Carrie wiped the moisture from her eyes. “I can do it,” she said. “As long as you promise not to faint.”

Adam was no stranger to injury, not after two years of feeding himself with money earned by prize fighting and defending himself from robbers and roadside bandits. The pain from the cut was minimal, especially since he had long since learned which herbs sped along the recovery process and which numbed the sensation in his arm, and yet his companions and his people made sure he was left to rest and spared any tasks which would injure his arm further.

It was nice. Adam had little experience with being pampered, and after being gone for so long, he had fully expected a rush of things to catch up with. Instead, he found himself reacquainting himself with his home, catching up with old friends and showing around the new. Tommy even stopped by once or twice, giving Adam a little wave before he disappeared off into the darkness of the corridors, always unwilling to stay.

Neil, however, quickly gave Adam a headache. He’d stopped by to see Adam several times but never hung around when Adam had others with him. The one time he came when Adam was alone, Adam had been about to fall asleep, and Neil had stalked off in a huff when Adam asked him to leave him be.

And now, Adam had all but walked in on his brother and the Queen, Neil insisting that Adam’s injury proved him to be weak, spoiled after his Wandering; unsuitable to be King of the Mountain.

Adam drew himself up to his full height, squaring his shoulders, and stepped forward. “Neil,” he said, and his brother flinched before he, too, tried to stand up straight.

“Adam,” his mother said, and Adam shook his head.

“It’s alright, my Queen,” he said. “I don’t expect him to understand what Wandering really means.”

Neil glared at him. “Stop treating me like a child.”

“Neil, you are a child,” Adam said deliberately.

A helpless, humiliated flush spread over his brother’s face, but Adam refused to feel bad about it. There were behaviors that were simply unacceptable for his brother to engage in, and undermining the authority of the future King of the Mountain was one of them.

Neil opened his mouth, but Adam didn’t allow him to protest.“You are a child, and you using a minor injury to spread lies and rumors about me only proves that you are. You think this,” he gestured at his bandaged arm, “makes me weak? Neil, it’s been almost a week since my return, and I have yet to see you hone your fighting skills. The only battles you have engaged in were those of the tongue.”

“Rhetoric is an important skill,” Neil insisted. “Who am I going to kill here?” He spread his arms, encompassing his parents, the council hall, everything. “We are at peace.”

“For now, yes.” Adam let his hand rest on the hilt of his sword, watched Neil’s eyes follow the movement as if he couldn’t help but be drawn to it. Adam noticed once again that the belt at Neil’s waist was bare. He had dismissed it as Neil being too young, because try as he might he couldn’t help but think of his little brother as a child, but that of course was a ridiculous assumption. Boys and girls a decade younger than Neil were armed.

Adam tapped two fingers against the sword’s hilt meaningfully, and Neil’s gaze flicked to his face.

“But all that can change in a moment,” he said. “A moment,” he drew the sword from its scabbard, nothing more than a hair’s width with a flick of his finger, but the scrape of metal against metal was loud in the quiet room, “is all it takes.”

“Back so soon?” Cassidy asked. He was still working on the same fabric, thoughit had now taken on the shape of an actual cloak rather than a shapeless length of blue.

“What can I say?” Adam shrugged,then smiled. “It’s been a few days. I couldn’t stand the thought of you weeping at my absence.”

“I weep at your presence,” Cassidy muttered, but he didn’t object when Adam took a seat next to him.

“So, is this what I should expect now?” he asked once he had made himself comfortable. “My brotherbelligerentand my parents’ council tense yet passive?”

“Neil will find his way,” Cassidy said serenely. His eyes flickered upwards, and he smiled. “Give him a little time. You yourself weren’t always so calm and self-assured as you are now.”

“Maybe not,” Adam admitted. “But I always knew where my duties lay.”

“And Neil will learn.” Cassidy’s voice was firm. “If he’s given the chance to prove himself.”

“Others seek out chances,” Adam said. “There was certainly no one patiently waiting for me to prove my worth. I won my followers and friends over through will and effort.”

“You draw people in,” Cassidy said without looking up from his stitching. “You always have.”

“You’ve never pledged yourself to me,” Adam reminded him.

Cassidy turned to face him, abruptly, startling Adam upright. Caught off-guard, he could do nothing but stare as Cassidy took his hand, thumb drawing lightly over Adam’s fingers. “I am pledged to your mother, my Lord,” he said. “But when the time comes, I will avow myself to you.”

“My mother.” Adam laughed helplessly. “My mother has suggested that I attend the market in town.”

“Your mother is a wise woman. There is a reason she has my allegiance.” Cassidy brushed several loose ends of thread from his thighs. “It’s an excellent idea,” he said, when Adam still didn’t speak. “It will give you some distance. Time to think.”

Adam grinned wryly. “Is that all? No insights? No reminder that my brother needs time to grow?”

“Why bother? Your mind is already fixed on the issue.” Cassidy softened his words with a smile. “You want advice? Take Tommy with you. He’s good company, and he loves the market. All those shiny, frilly things. Boy is worse than a magpie.”

Adam scoffed, though the thought of being alone with Tommy for an entire day sent a pleasantly warm shiver down his spine. “So long as his magpie impressiondoesn’t get us in trouble with the locals. We have a bad enough reputation as it is.”

Cassidy lowered his head, but Adam could still see him bite down on a smile. “He’s a good man,” he said. “He won’t do anything to make your life difficult.”

“Not intentionally, maybe,” Adam said. “But you know mountain runners don’t always take things like personal property as seriously as the plains people.”

“And have you ever met a mountain runner who stole?” Cassidy asked with a roll of his eyes. “Wait, no, you haven’t, because Tommy is the only mountain runner you know. And I’m telling you, he’s a good man.”

“Fine,” Adam barked. “I’ll take him. There’s no need to be insulting.”

“You know I’d never insult you,” Cassidy said, smiling sweetly.

Adam rolled his eyes. “I hope you know this is only because I trust your judgment.”

About a quarter of the way into the ride, Adam was seriously beginning to doubt Cassidy’s words – or his sanity. If there was something Tommy wasn’t, it was good company. He barely spoke, even when Adam asked him a direct question, and his answers were monosyllabic to the point of being dull. He kept both hands loosely fisted in his dapple gray’s mane. Adam usually didn’t mind being the one to keep the conversation alive, but he couldn’t help but feel out of his depth around the quiet man.

He tugged lightly on the reins to the third horse, the one intended for sale, when it grew interested in the grass at the side of the path.

At least there were going to be ways for him to occupy his time if Tommy maintained his silence; it had been some time since he had been to the town’s market, but he had learned quite a few things about bartering since then, and he intended to use them. There were things that he was sure he could get for less than was common, so maybe they would be well prepared for the winter this time; less likely to have to ration their supplies as they usually did.The merchants in town would be smug, without a doubt, but they would be willing to give Adam what his people needed.

They could fend for themselves, of course – mountain people were dependent on no one – but there were things which were easier to buy than make: knives and arrow tips, boots, soaps and lotions. It was easier, but Adam could not say that he enjoyed the task. He preferred to be independent, hated having to ask the plains people for anything, even if it was in trade.

“Maybe I should bring Neilback something,” he mused aloud. “To win back his favor.” He hadn’t meant to say something so personal, so private, and regretted it the moment he did, but the words were already out there.

Tommy grinned, hips loosely swinging with the horse’s rhythmic movements. “He has a girl,” he explained, still smirking. “In town. He always volunteers to go so he can see her, but with you here, he couldn’t.”

Adam thought that over, gazing up at the leafy canopy above them. He made it all the way to the seaboard while Wandering, saw the sheer cliffs and the windbattered trees and saw the empty, grassy plains two seasons ride away from there, but he still thought nowhere was as beautiful as the forests surrounding the mountain.

Tommy made a querying noise, and Adam offered him a slow smile.

“My parents must not be pleased,” he said. “A girl from town? She’s neither one of us nor a foreigner, and they despise us.”

“Perhaps so.” Tommy shrugged. “But there’s not much they can do, is there? You know how he is.”

Adam nodded, because he did, indeed. Neil had never been one to adhere to other people’s standards, stubbornly doing whatever he liked, no matter how good or bad it might be for the rest of their people. Neil’s people, because just like Adam he was a Prince of the Mountain, and he was obligated to do whatever he could to help them.

It was an issue he wished he could forget, but once brought to the forefront of his mind it was hard to lay to rest, and Tommy seemed content to let him wallow in his thoughts.

“I just can’t let things stand like this,” he finally burst out, quite a distance later, and his companion turned thoughtful eyes on him.

“You know,” Tommy said, slowly. “Whenever my sister had gotten it into her head that she was cross about something, and a merchant had gotten himself lost in the mountains, I would barter for some sweets. Candied fruits, small sugar rocks, whatever they had.”

Adam, who had rarely heard Tommy mention his family, nudged his horse a little closer. “And that worked?” he asked.

“Every time.” Tommy grinned. “Even when I didn’t even know what she was angry about, she forgave me immediately.”

“Neil likes sweet things,” Adam said. “He always makes sure he gets the darkest strawberries or the smallest apples.”

“Bring him something,” Tommy said. “And then wait with him while he eats it, but don’t ask for a share. It’ll work.”

Adam hummed a reply, already calculating which of his rings or beads he would be able to trade in for a confection. “Any other advice?” he asked. “I’m not sure a candied pear will be enough, in this case.”

Tommy laughed and started talking, not only about how to win a disgruntled sibling’s favor but also about his family in general, about his sister’s love of all things blue and his mother’s terrible singing voice. It was slow at first, but at Adam’s gentle prods, he mentioned his father’s leg that had been difficult ever since a boar attacked him on a hunt, about seeking shelter from a thunderstorm in a cave inhabited by possums, about an avalanche that had once torn away their entire supply of firewood for the winter.

Adam brushed a sympathetic hand over Tommy’s shoulder and almost thought he imagined the way Tommy leaned into it before he grinned and launched into a story of the time a colony of fire ants had decided to move into his family’s home, Tommy’s hand squeezing Adam’s knee for only a moment before it darted away.

Adam was almost a little sad when they finally reached the plains, the town’s strong walls rising up before them. The gates were open and the streets inside packed with people, so Adam had Tommy and himself dismount and walk their horses through the crowd. They passed booths and stands, merchants carrying baskets and others asking visitors into their shops. It was loud, and colorful, but Adam had seen so much now that it seemed not half as magnificent as it used to.

“Do you need me for this?” Tommy asked when Adam hesitated in front of a woman selling spices, he himself turning his head to follow a man walking away with a crate full of colored beads under his arm.

Adam didn’t need Tommy’s help, he could manage just fine on his own, but even if he couldn’t, he wasn’t sure he would be able to make the other man stay at his side when his mind was so obviously on other things.

“Go ahead,” he said, giving Tommy’s shoulder a little push.

The other man certainly didn’t need telling twice, patting the grey on the flank before trotting after the man with the beads with the determination of a woman with her sight fixed on the last eligible bachelor.

Shaking his head, Adam pushed through the throngs of people, leading all threehorses towards the livestock section of the market. He traded the young mare for two short swords, an axe and a bundle of coins that meant nothing to him but would help him make the other purchases he needed to before he returned home. Not everyone was willing to cut deals with mountain people, especially if they were bartering goods, not money, but the coin purse from the sale of the horse was heavy against his thigh and even the most reluctant of merchants was willing to open his doors once he heard the clink of Adam’s coins.

When the sun began to dip down towards the rooftops, Adam started looking around for Tommy. They were far from the mountain, and the way back was a steady uphill climb. They would have to leave soon if they wanted to return home before nightfall turned the path treacherous and deadly.

It took him a while to find the other man. Pale hair like Tommy’s was not as rare here as it was on the mountain and the market was decently sized, drawing people from far reaching areas. When he finally did find the other man, however, it was not at a stand for dyed glass or feathered hats the way he had expected – instead, Tommy lounged at a woodcarver’s stand, several paces away from a large bale of hay with a target drawnupon it where men and women could shoot arrows for sport, ignoring the crowd that had gathered at the barrier. A sour-faced man, perhaps a merchant stood watch beside a small table that held three small clay pots, tightly sealed. The woodcarver herself, a woman Adam vaguely remembered from his last time at the market, pushed aside several of her bows and finally returned with one, a frown forming between her brows.

“This is the smallest one I have,” she said apologetically, but Tommy took the bow anyway, shrugging her off.

Adam tied the two horses to the barrier and swung himself over it, landing lightly next to Tommy. “What’s going on here?” he asked, sliding his arm around the man’s waist.

The shorter man glanced up at him and, grinning, relaxed into his hold. “This gentleman doesn’t believe I can sink two out of three arrows into the blue,” he said.

Not for the first time, Adam found himself wondering how good of an archer Tommy really was. Adam knew he was often asked to go hunting, that the other hunters among his people liked to have him along, but none of that justified the calm, confident tone in Tommy’s voice.

“What’s the wager?” he asked.

Tommy tilted his head at a small stool on which sat three clay containers, each one small enough to fit in Adam’s palm. “Those, or a day’s worth of labor,” he said, as though what he had just announced was not a brazen, idiotic bargain.

“A day’s worth of labor?” Adam hissed. “And just how do you think that we could pay our debt?”

“We won’t have to,” Tommy replied, collected and cool. There was not a hint of pride or boasting – he appeared to truly believe that there was no way they would lose.

Still – there were ways to lessen the risks. Adam gestured at the bow lashed to Tommy’s saddle, because every fighter was most comfortable with his own weapon, but Tommy shook his head.

“I can shoot with this,” he said, nodding his chin at the weapon in his hands.

“Now you’re just being foolish,” the merchant cut in, falling silent again when both Adam and Tommy regarded him with quelling looks.

“Are you?” Adam asked nonetheless. “Would you risk less if you shot your own bow?”

Tommy scoffed. “Not here,” he said. He gestured around the courtyard with the tip of the boy; the woodcarver, the merchant, the small crowd of curious on-lookers. “There is no risk here.” He tipped his chin upwards when he met Adam’s gaze. “Not like this.”

“If you insist,” Adam said.

Tommy grinned at him, a flash of teeth before it was gone. He held the bow before him and pulled string and arrow back with an easy, confident movement. “Last chance to change your wager,” he said, speaking to the merchant without even meeting his eye. When silence was the only reply, he clucked his tongue. “Your loss,” he said, and let the arrow fly.

Adam knew it had hit its mark before he heard the on-lookers gasp. The woodcarver’s expression cleared to the same degree that the merchant’s darkened, but Tommy seemed to feel no need to stop and gloat. He let a second arrow fly, hitting the mark as well, then sank an unnecessary third just slightly upwards and to the left, neatly piercing the line between the inner circle and the ring around it.

The crowd let out a few cheers and whistles, but Adam couldn’t help but think that they had wanted the mountain runner to lose, or maybe they had merely anticipated a little more thrill. Within a few moments, most of the onlookers had blended into the late crowd. The merchant turned away, scowling, and Tommy turned to Adam, rocking up on his toes with an expectant smile.

“Now will you tell me what the wager was for?” Adam asked.

Grinning, Tommy handed the woodcarver back her bow, picked up one of the containers He twisted the top off of one bowl with an easy, practiced movement and offered it up for Adam to see; the inside was a dark, murky paste that had Adam frowning, taken aback.

The other man dipped one finger into the container and dragged it over his lower lip, staining the skin there a dark, leafy green.

“It’s ink,” he said. “Like the color with which you line your eyes. I think it’s beautiful.”

Adam barely managed a nod. He was still staring at Tommy’s lip, at the color there. He’d seen dark red color staining the lips of women down at the edge of the desert, far, far away from here, but he’d never thought that he would find something like that right here, just a short ride away from his home.

“Time to go home, son,” the woodcarver cut in, meaning Tommy. She collected the other two jars and pressed them into Tommy’s hands, who took them reverently, and nodded her head at Adam. “You better leave, before he,” the merchant, “decides he’d like recompense anyway.”

The last spectators had dispersed by now and it was no hardship to untie their horses and lead them towards the town’s gates. Tommy followed slowly, still entranced by his inks, opening and reopening pots to peer at and dip his fingers into the vivid colors.

Adam slowed his steps, waiting for him to catch up. “They are beautiful,” he admitted. “But a day’s worth of labor?We’re barely going to make it back before dark as it is.”

Tommy merely grinned, unrepentant. He ducked his eyes behind his hair and leaned against Adam’s side, and Adam, after a startled moment, tucked his arm around Tommy’s waist and bit back a smile.

They reached the mountain with the last rays of light, riding hard for over an hour. A part of Adam wanted to be angry about it, to focus on the dangers of travelling at night, but it was exhilarating, too, the wind whipping through his hair while the sun sank lower and lower.

One of the guards, a girl called Alicia, stood waiting at the end of the tunnel to take the horses and purchases from them.

“How was town?” she asked, and “Were there many travellers?” and “Did you see any strange animals?”

Distracted by her questions, Adam took his time unsaddling his horse, and he looked up when Tommy moved past him, brushing his hand along the small of Adam’s back.

“Where are you going?” Adam asked, but Tommy simply smiled and didn’t stop walking.

Adam lifted the saddle off his horse and reached for a handful of straw to quickly rub it down, Alicia prattling on on the horse’s other side, but he wasn’t particularly surprised when Tommy had disappeared by the time Adam had delivered their purchases and the few leftover coins.

Neil looked startled when Adam confronted him in the council hall, but his wide-eyed look was quickly replaced by delight when Adam unwrapped the confection he’d bought him.

“Thank you,” he crowed, pushing a piece into his mouth. He hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Adam nodded. “I’m sorry you couldn’t see your girl,” he said, and Neil flushed a deep, dark red, but he nodded.

“You want some?” he asked, holding out the piece he’d broken off like an offering.

Adam took it, careful to keep it from crumbling, and slipped it into his mouth. It was good, great even, and his grin grew even wider at the sticky-pleased one Neil gave him in return.

Their newfound camaraderie lasted all of a day. Then Adam found a few brightly colored feathers in his pack that, while beautiful, were certainly not his, and when he set out to return them to Tommy, came across his brother instead.

“I’m looking for Tommy,” he said.

Neil rolled his eyes. “Of course you are.”

Adam cut him a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Neil said, picking himself up off the ground. “You just seem to be very interested in everything he does, considering the two of you have just met.” He pulled on his shirt so violently that Adam could hear the seam tearing. Cassidy would be pissed.

“I haven’t seen him.” Neil glared at him. “He disappears sometimes. I’m sure he’ll pop back up sooner or later.”

He stalked away, leaving Adam staring after him with nothing left to say. How could this moody, aggressive little brat be the brother he had left behind?

Adam eventually didn’t so much find Tommy as he nearly tripped over him out in the enclosed garden, lying supine in the grass, eyes fixed firmly on the stars above them.

“Sorry,” Tommy said, pulling his legs up in what Adam thought might have been an attempt to let him pass through.

“Where have you been all day?” Adam asked, careful to keep any accusation out of his tone. It wasn’t any of his business where Tommy spent his days. Not yet.

Tommy lifted one hand into the air and waggled it from side to side before he let it flop back into the grass. “Around,” he said. He didn’t protest when Adam sat down next him, legs crossed underneath him, and Adam took that as permission to stay.

“I was looking for you,” he said.

“Sorry,” Tommy said. “I just had to get away for a bit. It’s so busy here.” He rubbed his arms in an almost absentminded way, like it was from habit more than actual chill. “There’s always someone doing something. Always people. And even when they’re nowhere near you, the echoes still make it sound like they’re practically breathing down your neck.”

He ran his hands over his skin again, more determinedly this time. When Adam lay down and reached over to tug him closer, he didn’t resist, fell heavily against Adam’s side.

“I thought mountain runners lived in close quarters, like us.”

Tommy didn’t meet his eyes. “Perhaps when we seek shelter for the night, yes. But when we step outside with the rising sun, we are alone.” He reached out to tug at a loose thread at the seam of Adam’s pants. “My sister and I roamed the forest together when we could barely walk.”

Adam ran his hand through Tommy’s hair. “I get it, if that helps,” he said after a moment. “Having to get away for a little while.”

Tommy chewed on his lower lip for a while. “It does, funnily enough,” he finally said. He rolled over, curling himself into Adam’s side, and Adam was not about to protest.

Tommy didn’t protest when Adam suggested they head inside a little while later, just sighed and pushed himself to his feet.

“Can’t have you catching cold, after all,” Adam said.

The other man shrugged. “I’m alright,” he said. “I just get a little overwhelmed sometimes.”

He remained clingy all the way back inside, not that Adam minded, even when Adam remembered why he had gone looking for Tommy in the first place.

“Yes, those are mine,” Tommy said, pressing against Adam’s side. “Thank you.”

“So you did find him,” Neil interrupted, emerging from one of their storage rooms with a carafe in each hand. He bared his teeth at Tommy. “Were you doing anything productive, or was it just business as usual?”

Tommy was quiet for a moment. “Excuse me,” he murmured, pushing away from Adam and disappearing around a corner.

“He’s a little fragile, don’t you think?” Neil commented.

Adam rolled his eyes. “Neil, go to bed,” he said, and he didn’t wait for his brother’s reply before he turned and did the same.

Adam didn’t see Tommy again that evening. There wasn’t anything to be worried about, he knew that. Tommy was a man, a hunter, and in all likelihood older than Adam was. Still, it made him restless, fidgety. He met Allison’s frown with a reassuring smile when they bedded down for the night, but when he awoke some time later, twitchy and uncertain, he pushed aside the furs and beddings and went to take a look.

Maybe it was later than he thought, and Tommy no longer thought anyone was coming for him, or maybe he was simply abysmal at hiding. Either way, Adam had tracked him down within minutes, simply by following the trail of heat and warm cooking into the council hall.

The hall itself was warm, warmer than the corridors at least, but it was nearly empty. Two women, one of them a guard Adam recognized, sat huddled by the fire, too absorbed in their conversation to pay him much mind.

Across the cavern, in the hall’s darkest corner, sat a huddled figure that had little in common with the proud, confident man Adam had chided at the market. A cloak was slung around his shoulders and pulled up over his knees, protecting him from the draft of cold night air that steadily crept through the cavern. He stiffened when he saw Adam but didn’t move away, and Adam saw it as an invitation to settle on his haunches in front of the other man and drape his forearms over Tommy’s knees.

“I hope you realize,” he said conversationally, “that Neil is an idiot.”

Tommy reluctantly raised bleary eyes to meet his and frowned.

“Well.” Adam opened his hands, palms facing upwards. “He may be my brother, and a Prince of the Mountain, but he’s yet to go Wandering. He knows nothing beyond these borders, and if he doesn’t learn to keep his mouth shut, he may get himself killed before he has the opportunity to learn.”

“I don’t know why I always let him get to me,” Tommy said. “It’s not like it was the first time.” He sounded hoarse, and Adam really hoped he wasn’t getting sick. It wasn’t a good thing to be on the mountain.

“It happens to the best of us.” Adam grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Tommy said, and Adam couldn’t help but laugh.

“Please do,” he said. “Neil could stand to be knocked down a peg or two.”

Tommy grimaced, obviously unwilling to agree with Adam’s disrespectful words, but not willing to lie for Neil’s sake, either. A moment later he began to cough, muting the sound in the crook of his elbow, and Adam felt a steep line form between his brows.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine.” Tommy stifled another cough. “Cold, that’s all.”

Adam looked around, hoping for another blanket to lie around Tommy’s shoulder, and instead caught sight of the two women by the hearth. Their murmurs were too soft to make out, but whatever was simmering along in the pot above the fire smelled delicious, and there were few things as soothing to a chilled body as a steaming broth.

A few words, a smile, and Adam brought Tommy back a mug full of liquid, keeping both eyes on it as he walked to keep it from sloshing over the side. He had to put it into Tommy’s hands himself, fold open his fingers and mold them around the container, but once his skin touched the warm clay, Tommy seemed to startle into awareness.

“Thank you,” he murmured. He took a short sip, then a longer, deeper one, and smiled a little. “You shouldn’t be taking care of me,” he said.

“Maybe I want to.”

When Tommy turned too-large eyes to him, blinking in surprise, Adam shook his head.

“Drink,” he said, watching as Tommy obeyed.

He took the container from the other man’s fingers and set it down on the ground next to them. “Come with me,” he said, rising to his feet without letting go of Tommy’s hand, forcing the other man to contort himself upwards. He hardly gave the man time to collect himself before he tugged him away, Tommy clutching at his cloak to keep it on his shoulders, stumbling behind him in the darkness.

Tommy’s breath hitched a little when he recognized where he was being lead, when Adam carefully directed him to step over Allison’s curled up form and held him still before he accidentally trod on Monte’s hand.

Adam drew Tommy down with him, barely allowing him to lay down on his side and sling an arm around Adam’s middle from behind before he pulled the covers over them both. Allison murmured and shifted backwards, into Adam’s warmth, and a moment later, Adam felt Tommy’s hot breath between his shoulder blades as the other man molded himself against Adam’s body.

“Sleep well,” Adam whispered in the candle’s faint golden glow.

Tommy’s hand tightened against his stomach in response, and Adam allowed himself a small smile when he let his eyes flutter shut.

Adam expected the next day to be odd, for his foreign friends to feel abandoned perhaps, or his family to comment on the fact that Tommy was, so obviously, a man, but the morning was calm and pleasant. Isaac rolled his eyes when Adam met his gaze after waking, Tommy’s arm still firmly around his waist. Monte ran the pad of his thumb over one of Tommy’s knives and declared it needed sharpening. Allison grinned and asked Tommy about his hair.

Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. Neil still glowered, but Adam didn’t care so much anymore. Cassidy still gave biting advice, but Adam remained serene. Adam saw happiness wherever he looked, but the world kept on fighting.

It was normal under the mountain, of course. So many people living in such an enclosed space naturally led to arguments, and as violent a people as they were, fighting was, if not necessary, then nevertheless encouraged.

That didn’t mean that he wasn’t uncomfortable when he and Tommy came across two children on top of another, smaller boy in the hallway, but he didn’t step in. The losing boy needed to learn to defend himself. He had to grow strong if he ever hoped to survive on the mountain.

Of course Tommy had other ideas. “Stop it, the both of you,” he snapped, pulling one child away with each hand. “You’ve proved your point. Now leave it be.”

They stepped back reluctantly, watching with keen eyes while the third boy struggled to his feet.

“I’ll get you,” he hissed, futilely, and it was no surprise when the other children laughed.

“I’m so scared now,” the girl said.

The boy at her side nudged her shoulder, but he still addressed the smaller one. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re such a good fighter. I’m quaking in my boots, Foreigner.”

“That’s enough,” Adam said, stepping forward. “Beat it, you two.”

The two children were gone within moments, hasty steps echoing along the corridors.

Adam looked down at the boy left behind. His collar was torn and there was a bruise forming green and large over his cheekbone. His eyes shone with tears but he let none of them fall, instead wiping at his nose with his sleeve.

Tommy crouched on the floor before him, gave him a little smile. “Are you alright?” he asked.

The boy nodded, running his sleeve over his eyes this time.

Adam shook his head. This child was too small to be running around with no one here to so much as watch him. “Where is your mother?” he asked.

“I’m too old to be under her supervision,” the boy snapped.

Adam peered at him. Looking closely, he had to admit that he had the face of an older boy, one who would be learning to hunt and to trade. But he was so small.

“What’s your name?” Tommy asked before Adam could voice any of his thoughts.

“Dale,” the boy said.

Adam furrowed his brow. The only Dale he recalled was Mara’s boy, but he would have to be close to eleven, twelve years now, and this one had the stature of one who was seven or eight, at most.

Tommy reached out, brushed a hair from the boy’s forehead and didn’t seem to care when Dale jerked away. “Well, Dale, I’m Tommy, and I’m in the mood to tell a story. Would you like to hear one?”

Dale edged a little closer, though he kept his torso twisted away. “Why don’t you tell one to Prince Adam?” he asked.

Tommy cast a look at Adam over his shoulder and grinned. “Adam wants to hear it, too,” he said. “Don’t you, Adam?”

Put like that, it wasn’t like Adam could truly refuse. He glowered at Tommy for a moment before making himself at home, spreading his cloak for them to sit on. Tommy took a seat on a raised portion of stone, facing them both, and began:

“Long, long ago, when the mountain was still young and the sun not yet tired of her journey, there lived a beautiful woman named Ilaina.”

Tommy glanced down at the boy and grinned. “Ilaina was the most beautiful woman in the mountain’s shadow. In fact, if you climbed to the top of the mountain on a clear and sunny day and searched as far as the eye could see, you would not have been able to find a woman more beautiful than Ilaina. No one could or ever would compare to her beauty.”

Adam frowned and kicked at Tommy’s ankle.

The other man winked at him before turning his attention back to the boy before him. “She was the most beautiful woman there was, but she also had a good heart, and she was in love with a man called Nior who was not as beautiful, but had just as good a soul.”

There were footsteps clambering along the corridor, and Adam turned to face the direction it was coming from, rising onto one knee. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Tommy finger the knife at his belt, one hand resting on Dale’s shoulder to push him to safety if need be. Dale of course lifted his fists as well, not that Adam had much confidence in his ability to protect himself. But he was a child of the mountain, after all.

They stood, poised, waiting, but the figure that finally came into view was only Elia, Sasha’s son, with his little sister in tow. He was only six, as far as Adam knew, and already several inches taller than Dale, but when he saw the scene before him he nevertheless burst into a grin.

“Prince Adam,” he beamed, and Adam blinked. He hadn’t thought the boy even knew his name.

“What are you doing?” Elia pressed. Lianne, his sister, clung to his leg, and he dragged her forward.

Adam couldn’t help but smile at the boy’s eager expression. “Well, Tommy here was just telling Dale and me a story,” he said, gesturing at the man in question.

“A story?”Elia rounded on Tommy in delight. “Can we hear, too?”

“Of course,” Tommy said despite Dale’s scowl. He nodded at the fabric beneath his feet. “Here. Come sit.”

The boy did, eagerly, drawing his knees to his chest and gazing up at Tommy expectantly. Lianne climbed into Adam’s lap instead, a decision which made Dale roll his eyes once more and Tommy snicker quietly, but she, too, only had eyes for Tommy.

“Like I said,” Tommy continued, voice deepening once more, “Ilaina was a beautiful woman with a beautiful soul, and her chosen companion was the good, hardworking Nior. But while Nior was a good man, who worked hard for his keep and always respected the laws and other people’s property, he was also not a rich man, and Ilaina’s parents knew how beautiful she was. They wanted power more than anything, and if Ilaina married Nior, they would have neither a daughter nor any money or power to satisfy them.”

“But what’s the money for?” Elia interrupted.

Dale, unnoticed, rolled his eyes yet again, flushing when Adam frowned at him.

“Everybody knows money doesn’t buy anything on the mountain,” the younger boy insisted.

“It doesn’t, no,” Tommy admitted. “But Ilaina wasn’t from the mountain. In fact, nobody lived on the mountain at the time.” He smiled when Elia wrinkled his nose at the concept. “Ilaina was one of the plains people, and down in the towns and villages, money can buy a lot.

“So Ilaina’s parents arranged for her to marry a rich merchant.Ilaina was heartbroken, because she was a good daughter and wanted to make her parents happy, but she loved Nior and knew she could never be with anyone else. When she told Nior what had happened, he was as distraught as she, and the two lovers devised a plan: They would run away together, far away, where no one knew them, where no one cared that they were poor as long as they were happy together.

“But of course, as these things go, it was not that easy.Ilaina’s parents caught her trying to sneak out of the house and they alerted the merchant. She ran, Nior at her side, away into the dark forest, but the merchant sent horses after them.When Nior fell and twisted his ankle, Ilaina knew they needed help. So she fell to her knees and she prayed for the spirits to save them, to keep them from the rich merchant’s clutches forever. And the spirits did.”

He looked over at Adam, eyes dark, solemn. “The spirits turned them into trees,” he said. “Two tall, strong trees, growing side by side, branches just short of touching one another. And it worked. The rich merchant searched the forest for a long, long time, stomped around the two trees, sat in their shade, but in the end he had to admit defeat and return home. And Ilaina and Nior remained there, two trees, side by side. Together, yet separated forever.”

The two boys looked suitably solemn at that, but Adam could hardly suppress a shudder. That particular story had given him nightmares as a child; the thought of being so close to a loved one and yet forever parted still sometimes sent shivers down his spine.

But Tommy, it seemed, knew a different story than he did.

“Many, many years after Ilaina and Nior became part of the forest, when they had all but forgotten what it felt like to be human, there lived a man named Calden. Now Calden, he was a thief.”

“A thief?”Elia echoed with wide eyes.

Tommy grinned at him. “Yes, a thief. But Calden wasn’t a bad man, you see. He was poor and his young wife was with child, and he had asked everyone he knew for just a day’s labor so he could bring his family some food. But no one had work for him, because times were hard and men and women were so terrified of losing what little they had that they kept it from everyone else, hid it away from prying eyes, lied to their friends and condemned them to the very fate they were so afraid to meet.”

Tommy looked around, at the three – four, if Adam counted himself – pairs of eyes watching his every movement. Lianne snuck her finger into her mouth and leaned more heavily against Adam’s arm, smacking her lips around the digit. Her mother would no doubt scold her for it, but Adam was loathe to disturb the comfortable mood.

“So Calden,” Tommy continued, “our hero, was forced to become a thief. One day, in desperation, he hid a loaf of bread in the folds of his clothing. He thought for sure he would be caught, his heart hammering so loud he thought the birds down by the creak would startle and fly away. But do you know what happened?”

He leaned forward, almost nose-to-nose with Dave and Elia, neither of which so much as blinked.

Lianne managed a little querying noise, her eyes drooping shut, body melting against Adam’s chest.

Tommy winked at the two boys. “Nothing,” he said. “No one saw him, or said anything, and when Calden brought home the loaf of bread, his wife was so overjoyed that he did it again. He took some apples from the farmer, some cheese, he kept a copper coin that someone dropped between the market stalls. He and his wife could eat, even spare a little to save for the ever-looming winter, and their life was good.”

Adam couldn’t suppress a small noise of disapproval at that.

Tommy shot him a look that was clearly annoyed, but his story continued uninterrupted.

“But no such luck could last, as no luck ever does. Before long, Calden was spotted sliding beautiful yellow pears into his cloak and he had to run. He knew the penalty for stealing was severe, so he, tears in his eyes, had to collect his wife at home and the two fled with barely the clothes on their backs. They hurried as fast as they could, but Calden’s wife was pregnant and the guards had horses, and they were closing in fast.”

Both boys shuffled in closer, eyes fixed on Tommy’s face. Even Lianne gripped Adam’s sleeve a little tighter, although Adam was sure she was too young to really understand what they were saying.

“Calden,” Tommy went on, “Calden cried out to the wind and the trees for help, and what trees should they stand under but our enchanted lovers? And Ilaina and Nior, they understood the lovers’ grief. They remembered their own, you see, at not being able to be with one another, and while their memories of their human lives were little more than shadows now, they could still remember the pain that they had felt at being separated. So they bowed down their branches for Calden and his wife to climb into and lifted them high, high into the air, so high the farmers and the guards didn’t even think to look for them. And there they stayed for long, long days, afraid to climb back down for fear that they would still be caught. They were too far away to touch each other, and at night it was so dark they could barely see their own feet, so they sang to each other, quietly, so quietly even the birds mistook it for nothing more than wind. And there they stayed for four days and nights while the guards searched the forest floor below them, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink but dew drops in the morning, until it was safe for them to climb back down.”

“Four days?” Dale cut in, too caught up in the story to care about posturing, and Tommy nodded.

“Four days,” he said. “But finally the guards gave up their search and they were safe, and Ilaina and Nior lowered them gently to the ground. And Calden and his wife, they climbed high into the mountains, so high no one would ever be able to find them, and there they had a daughter, and then a boy, and they vowed never to return to the world that had treated them so harshly, and to cherish the gift that Ilaina and Nior had given them.”

Elia cheered at that, and even Dale joined in before he remembered himself.

“I have to go,” he said, climbing to his feet. He cut a glance at Adam. “Thank you for the story, Tommy,” he said.

Elia agreed even as he lifted his sleeping sister out of Adam’s arms and slung her over his shoulder, and when Tommy dismissed them with a smile, they wandered away, Dale taking care to stay away from the younger boy. No doubt it would not do for them to be seen as friends.

“What did you think?” Tommy asked, turning to Adam, who shook his head even as he bent down to retrieve his cloak.

“I think that entire last part stems from your imagination.”

Tommy laughed at that. “The stories we tell on the mountain are a little different from the ones you tell below.”

“I gathered that.”

Tommy peered over his shoulder at Adam’s tone, a small frown forming between his brows. “You disagree with my story, then?”

Adam pursed his lips. “I’m not sure I should allow you to teach our children that stealing is acceptable.”

Tommy leaned his head against Adam’s shoulder and rolled his eyes. “That’s not what the story is about,” he said. “It doesn’t say that stealing is acceptable. It merely says that sometimes, you have to do whatever it takes to stay alive.”

There wasn’t much Adam could say to that, not knowing what he did, so he fitted his arm around Tommy’s waist and gave it a light tug. “It must be time for midday meal if the little ones are getting sleepy.”

“I imagine.” Tommy ran a hand through his hair, strands falling in disarray in its wake. “I promised Sasha I would join her on her hunt,” he said. But he didn’t move away, just stood there, breathing Adam’s air, looking up at him with wide, brown eyes.

“Promise me you’ll return safely, then,” he said, not quite meeting Tommy’s eyes. “I imagine Dale would be quite heartbroken if he didn’t get to hear at least one more story.”

Tommy smiled a little. “Yes, I imagine he would be.”

He still didn’t move away, and Adam reached up and tweaked his nose. “No wonder he likes you. You’re barely taller than he is.”

Quick as a wildcat, Tommy smacked Adam’s arm. “I’m leaving,” he said with a haughty tone that did not disguise the laughter in his voice, and Adam watched him stride away, gracefully, fluidly, his mind on wicked things.

He was about to follow the other man down the corridor, find something to occupy his mind with for a time, when a clear, high voice called, “My Lord Adam.”

It was Dale, chest heaving with exertion, yet his face a mask of determination. Before Adam could react, the boy had fallen to his knees and pressed a kiss to Adam’s knuckles. “I pledge my allegiance, my Lord,” he said, quick and breathless, clutching Adam’s hand in his as though afraid Adam might try to snatch it away.

Which Adam did, though slowly, carefully. He appreciated the offer, but there was no way he could have a child, especially one as helpless as this one, among his advisors. “Dale,” he said, and the boy’s face crumpled, though it remained dry.

Adam tried on a smile. “You’re young, still. You don’t have to pledge allegiance for many years.”

The boy’s face fell, though he was quick to hide his feelings behind a nod and pained smile. He gestured behind himself, and Adam let him go with a nod, watched him take quick, short strides far, far away from the scene of his humiliation.

“Dale,” he called, and the boy turned back, a hopeful smile intruding on his downcast expression.

“I will gladly accept in a few years’ time,” he said, and the boy nodded, contentment and disappointment on his face in equal measures.

“Thank you, my Lord Adam,” he said, stiffly, formally, and ran down the corridor without even waiting for Adam to dismiss him.

Part 3

Under the Mountain - Part 1

bad_peppermint — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:33:13 GMT

Masterpost

The water from the stream was icy on Adam’s skin, and he couldn’t quite keep back a small gasp. He leaned a little farther forward, to keep the droplets from dripping from his face onto his clothing, and splashed another handful onto his eyes and cheeks. Some of the ornaments and pendants dangling from chains and leather ropes around his neck dipped into the water, but Adam didn’t mind. They’d certainly seen worse over the course of the last two years.

Two years, two long, long years, and he could hardly believe how close he was to home. The ground beneath them had been climbing steadily for some time, horses tiring more easily now that they were almost at their destination. Adam wished he could say that this short moment’s rest was for the animals, to graze and relax before the last, steep stretch, but he knew that it was he himself who needed a moment to collect himself.

Adam wasn’t a coward by any means. No one would even dare to insinuate it. No, he was a Prince of the Mountain, and the mountain bred them tough. The frail, the fragile, the vulnerable, they didn’t survive very long. And these people, the advisors, foreigners he had brought home, would thrive on the mountain, Adam was sure of it. Allison, Monte, and Isaac – as different as the seasons, and yet each one a survival artist, confident and tough as nails.

Monte’s head was cropped close – a mark of those in mourning, Adam had learned. He didn’t fill the air with needless chatter. It didn’t bother Adam; he did enough of that for the both of them. But when Monte did speak, he said useful things. He knew how to read the wind and the trees, he knew when to let his sword rest and when to send it singing into another man’s flesh. Most importantly, however, Monte was patient with Adam. He understood the importance of appearance, knew that sometimes it wasn’t simply vanity to be concerned about looks. Knew that sometimes, it was about other people more so than oneself.

Isaac, on the other hand, had no such understanding. He’d plucked an apple from a tree somewhere, firm and ripe, or maybe snaked it from a vendor that morning when they’d passed through town, who knew.Now, here, he made a point of eating it noisily, crunching the crisp fruit between his teeth, probably to remind Adam of the tales he had spun about the feasts, the glorious food they had under the mountain. It was the sort of thing he’d do. The ends of the colorful scarf he had tied around his forehead to keep the hair from falling into his eyes whipped around in the sharp breeze, but Isaac didn’t seem to notice.

He leaned against a boulder next to Monte, keeping an idle eye on the horses, while Allison sat perched on top, eyes drifting across the barren, bitter landscape.

Allison, Adam knew the most about. He knew that she was exiled from her village for refusing to name her secret lover, and later abandoned by that same man who refused to leave the comfort of his home for the woman who had given up everything for him. The fool had been blind to how precious that kind of loyalty was. Adam was not.

He scrubbed his hand over his forehead, trying to wash away the grime from his skin without smearing the color around his eyes. He wished the stream was still enough that he could see his own reflection, but here, this far up, it was fed year-round by the melting ice covering the distant mountaintops. It never remained still for long.

He startled backwards when the sad remains of an apple core hit the ground no two hand lengths from where he crouched and tumbled into the water, disturbing the stream even further.

“Take your time, Princess,” Isaac called.

Adam’s only response was a rude gesture thrown over his shoulder. Isaac, as far as he could tell, was the least damaged of the bunch; a second son, he’d left his parents’ farm when famine years threatened the survival of a too-large family. His relatives were well, his home open to him should he wish to return, so naturally, he was the most cynical, stubborn, sarcastic man Adam had ever met.

He did not even know which part of Isaac’s prickly nature appealed to him so much.Or perhaps it was Isaac’s sweet side, which the man would never admit to; his artistry, his vision. He had made two leather armbands for Adam in exchange for an escort through a dangerous stretch of forest, both black with depictions of intricate flowers and trees, laced up at the wrist. He had completed the work with Adam watching over his shoulder, both taking no more than half a morning, and yet Adam had found himself completely captivated by the man and his talent.

But maybe it was that, then, that was the problem – he was fascinated by Isaac, tended to forget that he was unused to the ways of Adam’s people. He couldn’t expect the man to understand how important it was for Adam to return as a triumphant warrior prince, proud and strong, and not as a dusty, weary straggler.

“I’m hungry,” Allison said, kicking her legs against the trunk of the tree. She wasn’t whining, Adam knew; she just liked to share whatever popped into her head. Still, he dunked his hair into the frigid stream, tossed it back in a water-soaked arc that had both Monte and Isaac exclaiming in protest, and got to his feet.

“It’s not far, now,” he said. “We’ll get there soon enough.”

And they did. The sun had barely moved in the sky when the ground beneath their feet began to rise sharply. Adam rode ahead, guiding his horse along the difficult path, carefully watching the hooves as they moved through the first autumn leaves.

“Adam,” he heard Allison call behind him, but he didn’t turn. He knew what she wanted to say – that this could impossibly be the right way because the path ended where sheer rock began. Most travellers thought so. They were meant to think so.

He pulled lightly on the reins and vaulted off his horse, pulled off his heavy gloves and ran his fingertips along the stone, searching.

His friends didn’t bother to dismount, or perhaps they were simply too confused. Adam didn’t care much either way.

“Adam, this is a rock,” Isaac said.

Adam grinned at him over his shoulder, wild and feral, he knew. “This is no rock,” he said. His fingertips settled on the mark worn into the stone, an eye with a pupil thinly cut like a cat’s. “This is the mountain.”

He could tell from Isaac’s silence that the man wasn’t impressed, but even Adam had to admit that there was nothing to be impressed by yet. To a stranger, it would look like nothing but sheer rock face, rising tall and impenetrable from the barren ground. Above it were tough green weeds and trees clinging to the side of a mountain ridge that climbed fast and high, impossible to cross unless you knew which paths and passes to take. Not many knew the way, and even less of the ones who attempted a crossing ever returned.

But Adam knew what to look for. There was a rocky outcrop perhaps half of the way up, no more than a natural formation that would eventually be worn down by wind and rain. There was a gaping wound in the rock underneath, wide enough for two grown men to stand side by side. It was where Adam had last seen his mother and his father and his brother, watching him ride out into an uncertain future.

He’d been so different then.

Still, the thought of seeing his family, his people, again, quickened Adam’s heart. He balled his hand into a tight fist and smashed it against the rock face, where he knew the cracks and crevices in the stone would allow the sound to carry upwards, alert the others to his presence.

“I demand entrance,” he thundered.

There was only quiet, not even the sound of birds chirping in alarm. Isaac’s horse nickered quietly and Adam saw the man calm her with a hand to her neck, but even he didn’t seem to dare break the silence.

And then a face appeared, halfway up the rock face, a young man with a suspicious frown. Could it really be Gareth? When had he gotten to be old enough to be a guard?

“Gareth.” Adam could barely hide his delight. “It’s good to see you.”

The boy frowned at him. “Identify yourself,” he said, voice sharp but face dawning with realization.

“It’s Adam. Your prince, Gareth,” he called upwards. “As you damn well know. Let us in.”

A moment later, a second face appeared underneath the outcrop. It was an older man, with a scraggly beard that he hadn’t had at Adam’s departure, but Adam recognized him nonetheless.

“Marcus,” he called. “It’s me, I’ve returned.Let us in!”

Marcus said something, quietly, to Gareth who flushed a bright red and scuttled away, before the man turned back to Adam and his companions. “We’ve been expecting you, boy!” he called back, face splitting into a mangle-toothed grin. “Adam. We thought you might have died. It’s been a long time.”

“Like I would give you the satisfaction,” Adam retorted. “I’m alive and well and found myself my advisors. My Wandering is complete.”

“Your parents will be pleased to hear,” was the reply. “Go on, get down there, we’ll meet you there.”

Adam lifted his hand in reply. He swung himself up on his horse and gestured for his companions to follow. He lead them along the rock face, a few minutes ride before they reached a crack in the wall, so narrow a horse could barely squeeze through, the remains of a rockslide covering the rest.

Adam was through first, on foot again, despite Monte’s disapprovingly narrowed eyes. Monte was careful, and that was good, but this was Adam’s home. There was nothing he knew better than these rocks.

His horse hesitated a little when he leadher forward but she came, following him into the dark corridor beyond with a nervous whicker. After a few seconds in which he shuffled forward blindly, he could hear the telltale footsteps and hoof sounds of the others following.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” Allison asked somewhere behind him. Her voice was distorted ever so faintly by the tunnel’s structure.

Adam had to laugh. “Fairly sure, yes.”

Allison drew breath to say something else, but then Adam took the last few upward steps and found himself saying, almost involuntarily, “We’re here.”

He was the first out of the tunnel – had he always had to duck his head to avoid splitting it open on the rock? – and stepped into the clearing. He had grown up with this, this enclosed garden that blossomed in what was little more than a crack in the rock face, twenty paces wide and maybe thirty long from end to end. There were two trees, small and bare of fruit, a few bushes and even a small creak that bubbled up from the rock on one side and disappeared underneath it again on the other. He had grown up with it, thought it nothing special, but his companions’ quiet gasps reminded him that maybe it was.

There was a large overhang on one side, shielding one old and two young horses from the weather, and from it Marcus emerged with another young man – Jeffrey? Jeremy? – in tow. Before Adam had had a chance to compose himself, he found himself wrapped up in a forceful hug.

“Adam, my boy!” Marcus said loudly. He snapped his fingers at the boy hovering uncertainly behind him. “Go on, boy! Get their horses.”

His companions insisted they help, of course, and it wasn’t long until all four animals were scrubbed dry with straw and their saddles stored in a large wooden crate. Marcus picked up two lit lanterns from the ground and, handing one to Adam, motioned them deeper under the overhang.

Adam could hear his companions stifle their surprise when they crowded close only to find another walkway leading up into the rock, climbing steeply. It was not an easy walk. The lanterns were small, their light dim, and the ground was uneven and rough. Several times, everyone in their party except Allison had to duck their heads to avoid smashing them open on raggedy ceilings. Cracks and crevices opened to the left, right and above, sometimes even in the ground, some no bigger than a finger, others big enough to fit a small child. Hearing Monte quietly mutter a prayer, Adam had to stifle a grin. Sometimes, he couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that the rock had not yet come down on them all.

They walked for another few short minutes before they reached the busier caverns, where children washed their clothing and men and women wove baskets and tanned leather. Most stopped their activities to stare, some had smiles and greetings for Adam, but Adam was still caught on how small everything was.

In his memories, the halls of the mountain had been vast and endless, a labyrinth of corridors to navigate and lose yourself in. Now, his steps seemed to carry him farther than before, or maybe the halls had shrunk in his absence. Had it really always been only a few short strides from their main hall over to the crevice where mothers watched over their squabbling children? The path had seemed endless when Adam had left his home barely two years ago.

He felt Allison’s hand on his arm and smiled down at her. “What do you think?” he asked.

“It’s amazing,” she breathed, and Adam had to chuckle at her wide-eyed wonder.

“I can’t believe it. It’s like a city built into the rock.”

“Most of these caves are naturally formed,” Adam told her, freeing his arm from her grasp and slinging it over her shoulders instead. “We’ve only expanded on them here and there.”

“Amazing,” she whispered again.

Adam grinned. “You saw the creek outside, didn’t you?” he asked. At her nod, he gestured into one of the caverns they passed, at the water gushing through it. He laughed when she stared in amazement, tugged her into another corridor, leaving Marcus and his boy waiting with a nod, glanced behind him to make sure Isaac and Monte were still following behind.

Another few turns and they had arrived at the cavern Adam had used to call his own, before his departure. No one had dared take it, it seemed, despite the two long years that had passed, and he gestured at his friends to drop their things by the stack of furs and blankets that lay piled against one wall.

Allison stretched in delight, lifting her hand to one of the cracks in the ceiling. “It’s cold,” she said, surprised, not complaining.

Adam nodded. He gestured upwards, towards a crack in the stone above them, stark contrast against the light rock. “Warm air is bad air,” he said. “The colder the air, the cleaner it is.” He crossed his legs and sank down on his pallet. The other four followed his example after a moment, forming a tight circle, and Adam set the lantern down between them.

“These always burn,” he said. “They give light, yes, but they also stay ablaze to keep us alive.”

At the blank looks on his companions’ faces, he smiled a little, opened the catch and carefully broke the candle from its base. He twisted around to drip hot wax onto a rocky outcrop behind him and pressed the bottom of the candle into the mess, securing it against the rock.

“When the air is clean like this, when it comes straight from the outside, the candle will flicker, but it burns bright. When the air is used up and old, the flame grows small. Don’t ever let a candle die – it’s dangerous, and there’s no natural light here to guide your way.”

Three heads nodded their understanding; Adam smiled, but he knew they wouldn’t fully grasp what he meant until they had first woken up terrified, expecting to see the gleam of stars above them and instead finding nothing.

“So what now?” Allison asked when the silence stretched just past the point of being comfortable.

“Now.” Adam smiled at them all. “How would you like to meet the king and queen?”

By the time they had reached the council hall, Adam and his friends had managed to amass quite a following. News of the oldest prince’s return seemed to have spread like wildfire, and men, women and children stood gathered in the walkways, calling out greetings or reaching out to grasp Adam’s hand.

The king and queen, Adam’s parents, were seated on the throne carved into the rock at one end of the hall. There was no doubt that they had heard of his arrival, not the way they watched the entrance intently, but they did not rise until Adam pushed before them and bowed, deeply and respectfully.

“My King,” he said. “My Queen.”

His father’s hug was impossibly tight and would likely have gone on forever if his mother hadn’t stepped in, pushed between them and wrapped him up in a hug as well. She had tears in her eyes when she pulled away, pressed a hand to his cheek.

“You’re back,” she whispered.

Adam nodded.

His father beamed at him, tearless. He pressed a hard kiss to Adam’s forehead. “Your days of Wandering are over, my son,” he said, and Adam felt his throat grow tight.

It was a rite of passage and he had performed admirably, he knew that, but seeing the pride spread across his father’s face still made something skip in his chest.

The king turned, waved someone in the group forward. “Neil, come greet your brother.”

Adam looked up just as Neil took a hesitant step forward.Two years ago, Neil had been scrawny and sharp, barely more than a boy despite the quickness of his tongue.He was still the shorter of the two of them, Adam noted with some satisfaction, but there was no doubt now that Neil was fast becoming a man.

Adam could only hope that he would.

He and Neil were the only surviving of their parents’ children, and Neil had yet to go Wandering. Who knew what would happen to him during the two years he had to spend away – maybe he’d fall sick, or injure himself, or fall in love with a pretty girl somewhere and decide to stay. Life on the mountain was harsh, and it wasn’t hard to conceive that someone would decide not to go back. Adam had to admit that even he had been tempted once or twice, but in the end, he would never give up the mountain – he had been raised by it, and it was a part of him. He would never be able to leave it behind.

Maybe his melancholy was reflected on his face, or maybe it was something else, but a few feet away, Neil’s steps faltered. “Welcome,” he said, voice inflectionless, face uncertain.

Adam couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Two years, and this is the greeting I get?” he asked, closing the distance between them and enveloping his brother in a hug. After a long moment, he felt Neil relax into it.

“Welcome,” he whispered again.

“It’s good to see you,” Adam replied, just as quietly.

Then he extracted himself, took a step back. “My King, my Queen – my people,” he said, ushering his friends forward. “May I present my companions: Allison,” a radiant if nervous smile,” Isaac,” a wave, “and Monte,” a formal bow.

“Welcome,” Adam’s mother said, smiling brightly.

“Welcome,” his father echoed. He bowed formally. “I hope you will advise my son well.”

“I have no doubt that they will,” Adam said with a smile.He took a step back, startling when his father seized his hand. When he tried to tug it away, his father’s grip only tightened.

“It’s alright, Father,” he said. “I’ll leave you to your council. We’ll talk tonight.”

His father shook his head. “You’ve only just returned to us, Adam,” he said. “The council can wait until tomorrow.”

“You know it can’t.” Adam folded his free hand over his father’s. “I promise I will see you tonight. But for now, you have a council to hold and my companions are weary from traveling.”

His father nodded, albeit reluctantly, but instead of letting go, he drew Adam in for another hug. “It’s good to have you back, son,” he whispered in Adam’s ear, and Adam couldn’t help but murmur back the same.

If Adam hadn’t seen it happen so many times, it would have been hard to believe that the council hall during his parents’ meetings was the same room as during the new moon feast that night. The cavern was filled wall to wall with people of all ages and sizes. There were drummers, dancers and musicians, storytellers. There was food and drink. Children, cats, and dogs were underfoot wherever they turned, and Adam saved himself to one wall, dragging his companions with him.

“I refuse to sing,” Isaac announced from his place at Adam’s side, which Adam thought to be a rather wise decision. The other man had a knack for instruments, for melodies, for comedic timing, but his voice was rather gruff.

Most of the mountain people sang well – heritage, perhaps, but more likely that they all began early, did it all their lives. In the long, cold winter months, there wasn’t much else to occupy their time.

This time, however, when the singing began to take precedence over the dancing, he made his way over to the seat his parents used as a throne to talk to both of them. He told them about his travels, which he promised to also do for anyone who wanted to hear, at some later date. He asked about their lives, let them touch him to their hearts’ content. By the time everything was said, he had talked himself hoarse, and when his parents finally let him be for a moment, he allowed himself to lean back and let his gaze sweep over the crowd.

There weren’t many foreigners among his people, not many he didn’t know. Some of them he didn’t recognize if they’d grown up too fast or aged too poorly, but he knew the names and faces of all but a few. The children, he doubted he would be able to name. There were so many, and all of them had changed so much, that Adam felt as though it would be years before he once again felt comfortable naming them all.

He amused himself for a while, trying to guess which name from his memory belonged to which new face, but grew weary of it when he began to remember the names and faces of the people he had met while away instead, men and women and children that had never even seen the mountain from a distance suddenly grinning at him in the halls. He scoffed, looked around for someone to bring him another mug of something strong, when a shock of hair, the color of straw amidst a mass of browns and blacks, caught his attention.

He’d seen men and women change the color of their hair while he was travelling, seen them sap all color from it or add dyes until they looked as colorful as a field of flowers. The small man’s sun-golden hair was positively plain in comparison, but Adam knew he would have been fascinated by it a few years ago.

And while it was certainly the man’s most noticeable feature, it wasn’t the only interesting thing about him.He was a hunter, that much was obvious. Above the plain, grey tunic that fell partly down his thighs, laced at the throat and cinched at the waist with several rounds of a long strip of braided leather, he wore a jacket patched together from many different types of animal hide – leathery and tough on the outside, but Adam could see the tufts of grey, black and golden fur peak out along the collar from where he sat. A curved predator’s tooth dangled from one earlobe, brightly colored feathers from the other.

He had his sight set firmly on a group of giggling young women around Adam’s age, so Adam had ample opportunity to stare, unabashed. Adam’s boots reached up to his knees, and they were sturdy – light enough to move easily, but designed to protect against sharp rocks from below and wayward hooves from above. The other man’s looked like nothing more than strips of supple leather climbing halfway up his calves – thin soles that allowed him to feel every twig and leaf, silent and deadly.

He was focused, too, the way Adam expected a hunter to be, eyes fixed on the dancers twirling around the open space left clear in the middle of the hall. Adam tried to make out who he was following so avidly with his gaze, but couldn’t – His eyes seemed to skit from one girl to another, fixing each one with a heavy look, but there was something intent in his gaze that said he had already chosen a favorite.

Adam oughtn’t to have been surprised that it was one of the dancer girls. They were pretty and feisty, the lot of them, and the hunter was bound to have developed an attachment to at least one of them.

The prince turned his gaze away and let his eyes drift over the rest of the assembly.

There was another person he didn’t know, a small, dark woman with two unsteady children curling their fists into the leather of her hunting garments. She turned her head away when he smiled at her, and Adam took this, however obscurely, as a sign. As permission.

He laid a hand on his father’s arm who turned immediately, face lighting up in a smile that made Adam’s heart soften. It must have been hard for his parents to have a son out there and not know if he would ever return – know that if he had died somewhere on the road, they would never learn of it.

“Anything you need, son?” his father asked, and Adam shook his head.

“Some answers, Father,” he said.

The king gestured for him to carry on, and Adam shifted a little closer, pointing out the leather-clad woman. “The huntress, over there. Who is she?”

“That’s Sasha,” his father said without hesitation. “Her children are Elia and Lianne. She came to us the spring before last, I believe. Our hunters found her in the forest. She was traveling towards the seaboard after her husband had died.”He laid his hand over Adam’s thigh. “She’s made it quite clear that she doesn’t want another, I’m afraid.”

Well. She wasn’t the reason Adam was asking, after all. Instead, he gestured towards the blond-haired man, allowing his father to follow the line of his arm. “What about him?”

His father kept his eyes on the crowd for a moment. “Oh. Tommy,” he said, and Adam whispered the name to himself simply to test out how it felt on his tongue.

Tommy.

“A mountain runner,” his father said. “He came seeking asylum when his family was killed.”

A mountain runner. Adam had heard of them, briefly –a prince of the mountain had to know about all creatures they shared it with, be they mountain goats or people who lived as though they were. Runners clung to the hillside like spiders, carving their homes into the rock face up where the plains people could barely breathe. They were hunters, often archers, small and tough and unpleasant to strangers. They had no desire for community. They lived in small families that stayed well clear of one another, claiming territories so big you could scarcely see from one end to the other, but they could occasionally be coaxed into leading caravans across the mountain, for the right price, and only in the summer.

“What happened to them?” Adam asked, because runners were fighters and they knew the mountains too well to fall prey to its treacheries. There was no way they could have been caught off-guard by a rockslide or an unexpected storm.

His father turned his head to give him a look. “Slaughtered, he says. Says when he returned from his hunt, it was to find traces of riders, many of them, with his mother and father felled where they stood and his sister dead with her dagger still in her hand.”

Adam nodded, his eyes once again finding Tommy across the room. “Has he hunted for them?”

“All summer.” His father covered Adam’s hand with his own. “But you know how runners are. The dead are dead, and the living go on living.”

“When did he come here?” Adam asked. If Tommy had been hiding himself away here while Adam was out seeing and tasting everything the world had to offer, he was going to be extremely displeased.

“Around summer solstice,” his father replied after a moment. “Perhaps since the new moon feast before. No earlier than that.”

Not too long, then. He would likely still feel like a stranger, like a solitary man lost in a crowd of weather-beaten faces.

Adam was still deep in contemplation when the king got to his feet.

“You’ll forgive me,” his father said when a hush fell over the crowd, inclining his head. “It’s late, and the day has been full of excitement. Our oldest son has been returned to us. My wife and I will retire to our beds and rejoice in private.”

Adam bowed his head like the others did when his parents departed hand in hand. There was some tittering afterwards, some people deciding to leave as well, others electing to stay. It took a few moments before Adam found the pale-haired man in the crowd again, but rather than on the girls, Tommy’s attention was fixed on Adam now. His gaze was heavy and hot, so dark Adam thought he could feel it prickling against his skin, and when he saw Adam looking, he didn’t avert his eyes – he smiled.

Adam crooked his finger at him and he came, weaving his way through the throngs of people. Adam lost sight of him for a moment when a young pretty girl offered him a plate of fruit. He took an apple and nodded his thanks, and then Tommy was at his elbow, dipping into a bow.

“My Lord Adam,” he said.

Adam grinned. He leaned away from Tommy, against the other armrest, and allowed his legs to sprawl.

“You know who I am,” he said.

Tommy clasped his hands before his body, but while the gesture might have looked demure on anyone else, on him it looked slightly mocking. “Everyone knows who you are, my Lord Adam,” he said. “It has been trumpeted from every treetop all day.”

“Do you always speak to people this way?” Adam asked mildly.

Tommy returned his steady gaze with a smile. “Usually, yes,” he said. He hesitated. “You’ll find that mountain runners are not known for their manners, my Lord.”

Adam let his hand drift over and lightly tugged on the bottom hem of Tommy’s tunic. “Neither are the people of the mountain, if you take stock in plains people’s gossip.”

Tommy tilted his head to the side. “Yes.” The corners of his mouth quirked upwards. “But then again, who gives a damn what the plains people think?”

Adam inclined his head in acknowledgement. He looked down at the apple in his hand, polished it with the cuff of his tunic.

When he glanced up, Tommy’s eyes were fixed on his fingers. Smiling lightly, he offered the fruit to the other man, who reached out to take it before he hesitated, eyes flitting to Adam’s.

“We’ll share it,” Adam offered, pulling a small but sharp knife from his belt. He nodded at the arm the chair. “Sit,” he said. “Entertain me a moment.”

“Whatever you wish, my Lord,” Tommy said, but it did not come out as sarcastically as might have been intended.

Adam let his legs slide to the floor, and a moment later, Tommy sat perched on the ledge carved into the rock, his feet sliding easily between Adam’s thighs. The leather covering his skin was too thick for there to be any heat, but Adam could still feel the outline of his feet, small yet broad, against the fabric of his pants.

He cut into the apple slowly, juices trickling over his fingers, from two angles. The first piece he slipped into his own mouth, feeling Tommy’s eyes on him with every movement, the second he held out for Tommy to take, giving him the option of pulling it from the knife’s blade with his teeth or plucking it off with his fingers.

Still, he felt the familiar stirring of want low in his belly when Tommy chose the former option, pink lips tightening around the apple’s yellow flesh.

“It’s sour,” Tommy said, when he had finished his slice, the rest of the apple forgotten in Adam’s hands.

“It’s early yet, for apples,” Adam said. “They’ll grow riper still.”

“I hope so,” Tommy murmured, but Adam was no longer interested in the topic.

“Have you sworn your allegiance?” he asked, eyes fixed on Tommy’s face, watching him for a flicker of deceit, but the other man shook his head.

“There aren’t many asking allegiance from a mountain runner,” he said.

“That’s their mistake.” Adam slipped his fingers into Tommy’s hair, watched the other man lean into his palm. “I would have yours,” he said. “If you would offer it.”

Tommy smiled slowly. He uncurled Adam’s fingers and guided them downwards to rest against Tommy’s cheek. “Ask me again in a month,” he said. “If you still want me then.”

With those words, he slipped from the seat’s arm, plucked the apple from Adam’s limp fingers, and disappeared into the crowd.

It wasn’t long before most of the crowd had cleared. Adam was not surprised when his companions came to find him fairly quickly after Tommy had left. Allison was the first, curling under Adam’s arm while he talked with a woman who had chosen a seat nearby to rest. Her name was Stacy, he recalled. He remembered that she had had sunburn on her nose the day he had left. She was younger than Adam, but a guardswoman now, her stomach swollen and round. She was resting because her child’s ceaseless kicking wore her down.

She took her leave when Monte appeared at Adam’s side, weary-eyed but alert, hand resting on the handle of his short-sword like it always did. Isaac took the longest. Adam thought he might have been making eyes at Sophia, one of the women seated at the hearth to dole out food and drink, but when Isaac finally found his way over, his face betrayed nothing.

“Shall we sleep?” Adam asked, nudging Allison whose eyes were fluttering closed.

She nodded in agreement, finding enough energy to right herself and stumble after Adam from the hall, Monte and Isaac bringing up the rear. Adam called several goodbyes but didn’t stop until they had reached the small cavern that had once been his. Someone had brought in more furs and blankets that laid out on the floor in invitation.

Isaac wasted no time bedding down at the entrance, knife in hand, and Adam rolled his eyes in Allison’s direction when she settled down next to him.

“You’ll keep me warm tonight, won’t you?” she asked with a hopeful little smile.

Adam smiled at her. “Of course I will,” he said. He ran a hand over her hair, smoothing back the wayward strands. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

He stayed awake long enough to watch Monte light the candles and crawl into his own bedding, settling down between Adam and the wall. Tommy, he thought, no more than a flicker in his mind before he slept, but he couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like if it was the smaller man he had in his arms.

Adam was the first to regain consciousness, the others not as attuned as he was to the sounds of the mountain stirring awake. He lay quietly, eyes fixed on the colorful strands in Allison’s hair, remembering what had occurred the night before.

Only his reluctance to wake the girl in his arms kept him from covering his eyes with his hand. An idiot was what he was. He couldn’t believe he had asked Tommy to be a part of his inner circle based on looks and half a conversation. He’d likely cause enough of a stir as it was, bringing three foreigners with him instead of the usual one or two. Mountain people valued outsiders, expected their princes and princesses to bring with them a foreigner from Wandering that kept their minds sharp and their views fresh, but there was a difference between asking for an outside opinion and flooding the halls with foreigners.

Thoughts spinning round and round, Adam did finally extract himself from Allison, letting her sink into the bedding with a sigh. He dressed quietly, taking his boots outside with him, and snuck away to the council hall and the promise of breakfast.

There were only a few people around, Adam guessed most of them were already hard at work, and it wasn’t long before he was handed a bowl of oats and warm milk, with a generous helping of fresh berries. Adam looked up in surprise, and the woman who had served him, Ginger, gave him a wink.

“Welcome back, Prince Adam,” she said.

She waved off his thanks and moved on to someone else, and Adam set off to devour the food she had given him.

He had barely pushed the bowl aside when a hand fell on his shoulder.

“Look who’s finally awake!” Neil dropped down at his side, a grin splitting his face. “I’ve been up since dawn, and you’ve only just found your way out of bed?” He clasped a mock-conciliatory hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Brother, I’m afraid your years of Wandering have made you weak.”

Adam snorted. Neil’s words couldn’t be farther from the truth, but at least the impish gleam in his eyes assured Adam that he wasn’t actually serious.

He threw his arm out, too quickly for Neil to have any chance of defending himself. The younger boy kicked and squirmed, but his face was red with laughter by the time Adam had managed to pin him to the ground.

“I think you’ll find,” Adam said, grinning down at him, “that I’ve grown rather tough.”

“Tough like dried meat after a long winter,” Neil said. He kicked his legs, grunting when Adam easily immobilized them with his own. “And you smell just as unpleasant.”

“You little brat.” Adam couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe I ought to take a dip in the stream, then,” he said. He dug his fingers into his brother’s ribs, finding the ticklish spots easily despite the time that had passed. “Take you with me?”

“No!” Neil cried out.

“No,” someone agreed, and they both tilted their heads back to find their mother standing over them, an empty basket tucked under one arm.

“Unfortunately,” she said, “Neil has a task assigned this morning. And you, Adam, ought to look in on your advisors. See if they’d like some breakfast.”

“Yes, my Queen.” Adam pushed himself up from his seat on Neil’s chest, pulled his brother to his feet.

Neil immediately went for Adam’s ribs himself, but the elder slapped his hand away.

“Hush,” he said, not unkindly. “You heard the queen. We can talk more later.”

“Promise?” Neil asked. His lips curved into a smile, but his eyes were honest, strands of hair falling into his forehead, and he looked so young standing there that Adam felt his heart clench.

“I promise,” he said. He gave Neil a light push. “Go on, do your duty.”

“I’m going,” Neil said, taking the basket from their mother, mock-scowling over his shoulder as he went, and Adam couldn’t help but laugh at his antics.

When he returned to the cavern in which he and his companions had bedded down, the only one still curled up under the covers was Allison, who burrowed away from his gentle hand.

“Where are the others?” he asked her.

“Outside, I think.” Her voice was muffled in the bedding. “Said you should join them.”

Adam smoothed down a few tangled strands of her hair and left her to her rest.

It wasn’t hard to find them. The moment he stepped out of the tunnel into the autumn-sharp sunlight, he heard the sharp, sudden clash of two blades meeting mid-air.

They had attracted a small audience to their practice ground, a patch of grass swept free of fallen leaves. A handful of children stood gathered a safe distance away, the youngest staring openly, the older ones sneaking furtive glances at the two fighters while they sorted through their baskets full of collected nuts and berries.

Isaac and Monte broke apart when they saw him approach, both men raising a hand in greeting. Isaac had stripped to the waist, chest glistening with sweat, his familiar scarf keeping his hair from falling into his eyes.

Monte still wore a light tunic but it, too, was soaked – stained dark at his throat and along his back. He shifted his sword from his left to his right hand and grinned.“You against the two of us?” he offered. “How about it, Adam? Feeling up to a challenge?”

Isaac grinned as well from where he had knelt down to take a swig from his water skin, revealing two rows of sharp, even teeth. He turned to the cluster of children. “Wouldn’t you like to see Prince Adam fight?”

A ragged cheer rose between them, startling away a nearby bird, and Adam rolled his eyes. He stripped off his outer tunic, leaving the one underneath safely in place, rid himself of his scabbard and stepped into the makeshift ring, his sword in his hand. He kept his eyes on the two men when they turned towards him.

They were both good fighters, despite their differences: Isaac was skinny and lanky, using his superior height and reach to overpower an opponent before the other could reach him. Broad, stocky Monte relied on his strength, throwing his body weight into every blow he delivered. Adam had fought both of them countless times, sometimes in jest, sometimes just crossing the border into serious, but he knew better than to underestimate either of them.

Isaac was the first to move, predictably. Monte preferred to observe an opponent before engaging him, so Adam parried Isaac’s sword once, twice, before he sidestepped the blow Monte aimed at his back. He ducked out of Isaac’s reach and aimed an elbow at Monte’s side, laughing when Monte scowled.

His amusement died quickly when he turned, only catching sight of the sword aimed at his side when it was already too late. Isaac’s blade curved upwards at the last possible moment, its impact with Adam’s own sword rattling his bones, and Monte clucked his tongue.

“Watch your left,” he called over.

Adam nodded, scowling. Despite his many years of fighting, he had yet to learn to keep his left elbow down, his vulnerable side protected. It rankled him, and his friends knew better than to tease him about it, only drawing attention to it when he might have gotten himself killed.

“That’s right, Adam,” Isaac insisted dramatically. “You need to step up your game. My three year old cousin could beat you.” He flapped his hand at himself and Monte, dismissing them as opponents, and startling a chuckle out of Adam.

This was how he had first encountered Isaac, prize fighting for the entertainment of a handful of farmers in exchange for food and a bed for the night. They hadn’t become friends until their paths crossed again, until Adam had already met Monte and Allison, but even then, even while fighting, Isaac’s sharp tongue had made him laugh.

He nodded to his friends, his good humor mostly restored, and allowed himself to get lost in the movements, thrust and parry, thrust and parry, sidestepping where he could and blocking where he couldn’t. He forgot about his growling stomach, about the late summer sun beating down on his arms and no doubt littering him with freckles, about the ache in his muscles. His entire focus was on his sword, on his opponents, on keeping his body moving.

“Tommy, let’s go,” someone said.

Adam felt the words like a jolt to his spine. He signaled a rest and turned, gaze immediately finding the pale head among the watchers. Tommy stood a little to the back, bow slung over his shoulder, lips parted and a flush high on his cheeks, the image enough to have Adam’s labored breathing hitch a little.

He colored even more strongly when Adam caught him looking, dropping his eyes to avoid the prince’s attention.

“Tommy.”

It was Sasha the foreign hunter who had spoken, her hands tight on the bow in her hands. Tommy ducked his head but he didn’t move, stood transfixed between the trees without taking his eyes off Adam. A bow and a quiver of arrows were slung over his shoulder. Another hunter, an older woman called Ona, stood impatiently a little further away. Adam had no doubt they were off to check the traps that kept the mountain in supply of meat to dry for the winter.

Everyone who lived under the mountain knew how to hunt, of course, knew how to keep him- or herself alive, but some were more suited for it than others. Just like Cassidy was known for his skill with the needle, so Ona and apparently Tommy and Sasha were in demand for their skill with a bow and arrow. They were the ones who provided the skinny rabbits and the tough deer that helped them survive the cold season, huddled together in caverns lined with frost.

And here was Tommy, waylaid from such an important task by the sight of Adam, swinging a sword. The thought had something pleasantly warm uncurling in Adam’s belly, and he smiled.

Sasha, on the other hand, looked less than content, short bow tapping against her thigh. “Come on, Tommy,” she insisted. “If we want meat tonight, we need to be on our way.”

“Yeah, Tommy, come on.” That was Neil, emerging from the trees with three basket-laden children in tow, no doubt charged with overseeing their efforts. The smile he gave Tommy was all teeth. “You lusting after our Prince won’t satisfy anyone’s hunger. Not that way, at least.”

Where Tommy had been reddening before, he now turned pale, quickly heading for the trees without making eye contact, with nothing more than a muttered “Come on, Sash.”

Adam watched the light shock of hair fade into the undergrowth before he turned his attention on his brother. “Neil,” he sighed.

Neil shrugged, unrepentant. “If he wants to live underneath the Mountain, he needs to pull his weight like the rest of us.”

Adam let his face show his disapproval. “I hope you plan on working especially hard this harvest season, to lead by example.” He eyed the girl at Neil’s side, clutching a bulging basket, and his brother’s empty hands.

Neil rolled his eyes but kept his mouth wisely shut even as he jerked the basket out of the girl’s hands and hefted it under his arm. He muttered something under his breath as he stalked away, too quietly for Adam to hear, and there was nothing for Adam to do but turn and face his companions once again.

He was sharpening weapons with Isaac, the rhythmic slide of metal against rock soothing to his frazzled nerves, when Stacy come to a breathless stop in front of him.

“There’s something going on in the council hall,” she said.

Adam cast a look at Isaac who motioned for him to go, and he left.

There were several people crowded around the hall’s entrance, though not as many as he had expected, and he managed to push through with little trouble. Inside, he found his father’s war council as well as Neil. Tommy, Sasha, and Ona stood against the wall, still in hunting leathers, their expressions tight.

Monte stood waiting towards the back of the hall, and Adam slipped into place next to him. "What's wrong?" he asked.

Monte shook his head, tilting it towards Adam's mother and father who still stared at the three hunters with stony expressions.

"Father?" Adam asked, taking a step forward. "Mother? What's wrong?"

His father turned to fix him with a serious look. “Greymen,” he said, and the word alone was enough to send a cold dread creeping up Adam’s spine.

Greymen. For as long as Adam could remember, he had heard the word spoken like the plague. They ravaged the forest like wildfire, like pests, taking whatever they could and giving nothing back. They cheated, stole, lied. They thought their women too weak to fight, and yet they left them on their own, undefended, while they pillaged and plundered their way across the foothills.

“Greymen?” Monte echoed behind him.

The king caught the question and scoffed. “Wandering nomads. Parasites that cling to the mountain, feast on others’ hard work. For years now, they have tried to cross to the other side of the mountain in search of riches, wreaking havoc there as they do here.”

Monte nodded, took a quiet step back, but Adam could still feel his easy presence.

He took a steadying breath. “Here?”

His father nodded towards the three hunters waiting along the wall. “They all say the same thing: riders, on horses, coming our way.”

"Where?" Adam asked, turning towards the three himself.

"Out by the ridge," Sasha said. She raised her eyebrows. "There were Greymen," she insisted.

"Several," Tommy added. "They were searching for something."

"Something?"

Tommy rolled his eyes at Adam’s question. "Something like the entrance to an underground city, something."

“They won’t find it,” Neil said, utterly self-assured, and Adam found himself giving him the same disbelieving look that he could see on Tommy’s face.

“What makes you so sure?” Adam asked, stepping forward.

Emotions flickered across Neil’s face – surprise, distaste, something like betrayal – before it finally settled into a blank mask. “They won’t. They never found us before, and they never will.”

“They’ve never been this far south,” Adam reminded him. He looked to his father in confirmation, who nodded. “When I left to go Wandering, they had never even been south of the Black River.”

“They’ve grown more insistent, more ruthless,” his mother said. She turned towards Adam, mouth set into a firm line. “Do you remember that settlement of plains people where the Black River and the Green River meet?”

“Of course he does, Mother,” Neil cut in before Adam could affirm. “He’s still Adam. Perhaps he has gone Wandering, but he’s not grown into a different person.”

“Perhaps not.” It was the king, and his voice was harsh. “But he’s learned many things since then, grown wise. He has gone Wandering and it would do you well to remember that you have not.”

Neil’s face grew stiff. He tilted his head away, gave a mocking little bow, but remained silent.

“The settlement, my Queen?” Adam pressed lightly, if only to ease the tight knot that had formed in his stomach.

She beckoned him closer, closer still so she could draw him down to sit on his father’s other side. “Around the time when the strawberries grow ripe, we heard that the settlement had been attacked. Greymen had raided it, said they’d spare their people if they could tell the Greymen how to cross the mountain or tell them of someone who could lead them to the other side. They couldn’t, and the Greymen killed their leaders, left the others scattered to the winds.”

“We can.” Neil, again. “They must know of our map by now.”

“All the more reason to avoid them,” Sarah, one of the King’s council, spoke up.

“Not at all,” Neil insisted. “They want to cross the mountain, we want them gone. Why not give them the map and send them on their way? Why should we continue to fear them, day after day, when we can be rid of them, and happily, so easily?”

“Greymen are dangerous,” Tommy cut in, face a tight mask. “You cannot trust them. They killed my family because we did not grant them passage across the mountain. Don’t think they won’t do the same to yours.”

“Not if we grant them passage,” Neil said with a wave of his hand like he was shooing away a fly. “Why should they harm us if we give them what they want?”

“Because that won’t be all they want,” Tommy said. “They ask for passage, and then they’ll ask for your women, and your children, and your goods. They won’t stop until they have taken everything.”

“So you know them personally, do you?” Neil asked, and Tommy instantly fell silent.

“Perhaps we should consider Tommy’s words,” Marcus,of the king’s council, cautioned. He turned to Adam’s father, who nodded. “If the Greymen are coming, we’d best be prepared.”

Neil shoved off the wall. "This is ridiculous," he said.“Fighting the Greymen will only lead to bloodshed.Bloodshed that can be easily avoided if we only bargain with them.”

"Are you really willing to take that risk?" his father cut in before Adam could say something scathing. "What if we bargain with them, and they betray us? What then?"

“Then we will face them down,” Neil said, chin lifted haughtily into the air. “And we will triumph over them.”

“And why should we take that risk,” Adam shot back, “when we can simply not bargain with them at all? I say we tighten our defenses, we lay low, and should the Greymen really make their way here, we’ll be ready to fight.” He caught Neil’s gaze and held it. “Were you not the one insisting that the Greymen would never be able to find us?”

Neil kept silent, eyes ablaze.

Around them, Adam saw the council members pass quiet nods.

“Wandering makes men grow wise,” he heard Sarah murmur to Marcus.

Neil must have heard it too, because he rolled his eyes. “Since it appears that no one values my opinion very much, I ask to take my leave, Father.”

“Go,” their father said, curling his hands like he himself was about to lose his temper, and Adam couldn’t blame him.

Adam watched Neilstomp towards the exit, brows steadily climbing up his forehead.

His mother sighed and leaned across his father’s lap to cover on of Adam’s hands with her own. “I cannot remember you ever being this difficult,” she said.

“I’m sure I was, Mother,” Adam lied. Truth be told, at Neil’s age, he had already had responsibilities and commitments driving home that he would likely be King of the Mountain one day, and he had known better than to flounce about like a petulant child.

Between them, his father sighed. “We shall make the necessary arrangements,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the hubbub. “Keep on the look-out. Do not roam the forest alone. Greymen are not to be trifled with.”

“Are we really going to believe the foreigners?” someone called out.

Before Adam could turn and tear him down for his attitude, his father shook his head. “If you will not believe the foreigners, trust in Prince Adam. Princes of the Mountain bring home wisdom and advisers, that’s the way it is.”

The chatter only rose at that, and Adam’s gaze was once again drawn to Tommy when the slim man turned, hands balled into tight fists.

“May I take my leave, my Lord?” he asked, and at the king’s distracted wave of a hand, he turned and left the hall, swiftly and silently.

Adam watched him go. He felt the sudden, burning desire to run after him, but instead he asked his leave also and returned to his cavern to find his companions, his friends. Isaac sat fully dressed, sharpening his knives still while Allison rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Monte, who had gone ahead, was carefully inspecting his shirts and pants for holes and loose seams, and from Allison’s first question when he sat down next to her, Adam figured that Monte had already filled them in.

“What’s so important across the mountain, anyway?”

“No one knows.” Adam smiled a little. “Well, mountain runners know, but they refuse to share the secret.”

Secret, Allison mouthed, and Adam had to grin as he resettled against the rocky surface behind him.

“There are rumors, of course – myths about a land where fruits grow year-round on the trees and snow never falls. The rains are short and never sweep away newly-planted crops, and the sun burns so hot that you can leave the clothes you washed out to dry even in the winter.”

It was possible he might have been exaggerating a little, so Isaac’s scoff was hardly a surprise, annoying as it was to see Allison’s enchanted smile fade.

“There is a legend,” he said brusquely. “A Greymen legend that tells of an enchanted land on the other side of the mountain. Maybe they’ve heard tales of it, or maybe they believe that it used to be theirs. Either way, some, the ones stronger in their beliefs, they think that they need only cross the mountain for all their troubles to be over. And they will risk anything to do so.”

“They’re delusional,” Isaac concluded.

“Don’t you think it’s a little bit romantic, though?” Allison asked him. “I mean, enchanted lands where all your dreams come true, isn’t that worth fighting for?”

“Is it worth killing over?” Isaac asked, and although Adam wanted to smack him once again for making Allison droop the way she did, he had to admit that the man had a point.

Part 2