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Xander had just blown past a sign for Ivory River on the side of the highway when the engine on his truck started to emit a menacing screech. Not having much experience with cars at all, mechanical problems were one of Xander’s worst nightmares. He could barely change his own oil, for chrissakes.Fear compelled him to hit the brakes. He pulled over onto the shoulder in a panic. The tall trees lining either side of the road shrouded both Xander and his truck in shadow while the warm red glow of the setting sun lay at his back.Xander popped the hood and stared down miserably at the mess of intricate machinery that lay before him. He had a sneaking suspicion just from the sound that something was wrong with the transmission, but if that was truly the case, he didn’t have a clue how to fix it. He sighed and rubbed at his eyes, feeling exhaustion starting to set in. Guess he was walking those two miles to Ivory River, then.Xander stuffed all the essentials into his backpack, sifting through the disorganized mess in the truck bed that was a telltale sign to anyone who caught a glimpse that he’d been living out of his car for longer than was considered socially acceptable. It had taken him two weeks to get from New York to central Texas: a trip that under other circumstances should have taken a quarter of the time. But Xander wasn’t in any hurry.He wasn’t in a rush as he ambled down the side of the backwoods farm-to-market road either, with not a single car passing him as he trudged through the eclectic mix of dirt and gravel. He scanned the trees for any sign of civilization and found nothing.Then, sooner than he’d expected, Xander suddenly spotted the dim lights of a gas station up ahead, and he quickened his pace. Surely, he hadn’t already walked a whole two miles? The sun was low on the horizon in the west, but still just barely visible if he glanced over his shoulder. The flickering overhead fluorescents illuminating the rural gas station were the only beacons on the path ahead.As Xander made his approach, he could see the vague outlines of other buildings further down the road, but all seemed uncharacteristically dark for so early in the evening. From this distance, not even a single car was visible out on the street where the highway morphed into a small-town avenue. Xander began to feel uneasy as he drew closer to the gas station, starting to worry now that the whole place was actually just a ghost town despite the lights, and that he’d find himself stranded there with his broken-down truck for the night.He stretched his hand out for the handle on the door of the adjacent convenience store without much hope for what he might find inside. The door opened with a jingle to reveal a dark head of hair propped up against the front counter. Xander breathed out a sigh of relief and stepped inside.Behind what he presumed was the cashier, Xander could see a laptop wedged between the chewing gum display and a locked glass case filled with cigarettes. He couldn’t tell what exactly was playing, but the two people on screen were locked in a passionate kiss that didn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.Xander coughed, trying to get the cashier’s attention before the scene transitioned into something more embarrassing for the both of them. When the woman didn’t respond, Xander rapped his knuckles against the counter, sending the girl spinning around in her chair with a graceless curse as she ripped her headphones out of the computer. Xander grimaced as the couple’s loud moans suddenly permeated the empty convenience store.“It’s not porn!” the woman said immediately, before Xander even had a chance to open his mouth. “It won an Oscar!”Xander just gaped at her.“Um, anyway, if you’re on another pump you’re gonna have to switch to two,” she added quickly, trying to gloss over the awkwardness of their situation with little luck as she hastily closed out of the tab that was blasting symphonic music over the sound of breathy moans. Xander didn’t dare glance up to see what was happening on screen. “And we only take cash, so. Sorry. Card reader’s all out of whack.”“No—” Xander said before pausing to gather his thoughts. He took a large step back from the counter before continuing. “No, I mean, I’m not here for gas; my car broke down a couple miles outside of Ivory River and I’m just trying to find someone who can take a look at it.”The woman narrowed her eyes at him in confusion. “Outside the river?” she questioned.“Isn’t that…the sign said it was two miles to Ivory River,” Xander replied uncertainly, now wondering in the face of this woman’s scrutiny that he had somehow gotten it wrong.She laughed, which was less than comforting. “Oh, no, that’s not the name of the town,” she said. “There’s a trail at the other end of Main Street that leads you to a historical marker overlooking the falls. So you’re less than a mile from here if you broke down near the sign.”Xander felt himself go a bit pink at being corrected so thoroughly, but he was grateful he hadn’t had to walk quite as far as he’d expected. “Yeah, so um, can you help me out, maybe?” He crossed his arms over his chest self-consciously. He knew what this looked like, and he knew how he sounded, asking for help with his broken-down car from some woman working by herself at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. He fully expected her to say no, accuse him of being a serial killer trying to bait her out, and then threaten to call the police.Instead she grabbed a flashlight from under the counter without so much as hesitating, and then hopped up and over to stand in front of Xander, her free hand outstretched for him to take. “I’m Clare, by the way,” she said, giving his hand a vigorous shake.“Xander,” he replied.“Cool, cool. Well, my car’s out back, so just follow me.”He was careful to trail several feet behind her, wishing he’d put on his jacket even though it was far too warm out for that. He felt oddly vulnerable in just his grease-stained white shirt and ripped jeans, his knuckles torn up and bruised from a bar fight he’d gotten into in Colorado three days ago.Xander was surprised Clare didn’t seem more intimidated by him. He fit the visual profile of a drifter to a tee. He was practically a serial killer waiting to happen. And he was fairly certain he didn’t smell too nice either, between the heat inside the truck cab and the lack of showering out on the road.As promised, there was a small sedan parked behind the building that looked that it might have at one point been painted white, but the thing was so weathered and rusted that Xander couldn’t even hazard a guess as to the make or model. Clare got in on the passenger side before Xander had a chance to. He stopped to watch as she clambered over the center console and folded herself into the driver’s seat. She rolled down the driver’s side window and gazed up at him with a bashful smile.“The handle snapped off,” she said by way of explanation as the engine started up with a coughing sputter.Xander carefully squeezed into the miniscule amount of space afforded him on the passenger side, thankful he didn’t have to climb over the middle like Clare had, and closed the door. The entire car rattled with the force of the bare metal plates roughly clanging into each other. Xander winced. He couldn’t help but wonder how this piece of junk was still running, while his truck—barely five years old at this point—had given up less than halfway across the country.“So, I’m guessing you aren’t from around here,” Clare said conversationally as they slowly pulled out of the lot and onto the main road. She kept tapping the fingernails on her right hand against the side of the steering wheel. It was distracting. “Where are you headed?”“San Antonio. For now, I guess.”Clare made a face Xander couldn’t hope to interpret. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for it, to be honest. You look Austin-bound, if anything.”Xander gave her a questioning look in the brief second that her eyes met his, but she turned back to the road without addressing it.“So what’s the town called?” Xander asked when she didn’t elaborate further.“Yoon-ker.”“Sorry, what?”Clare huffed out a little laugh. “It’s German,” she explained. “Spelled like ‘junker’, but whatever you do, don’t call it that in front of anyone over the age of forty unless you’re looking for a fight.”Xander wondered if she had noticed his knuckles and had made her own assumptions about the type of guy he was. He worried at his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. “I’m not exactly planning on staying any longer than I have to,” he remarked bluntly. They were nearing the spot where he’d left his truck now, if he had to guess. “I just want to get my truck fixed and get back on the road.”“Oh yeah, of course,” Clare replied absently, having clearly forgotten what he’d just told her. “Sorry, we just don’t exactly have a lot of tourists coming through. Got a little overexcited.” She was still tapping her fingers frantically against the wheel. Xander didn’t think she sounded excited at all; he could feel the anxiety billowing off of her in waves. “Is that your car?” she asked a few seconds later, finally ripping her hand away from the steering wheel to gesture out into the dark.The red paint of his truck reflected the dim glow from her headlights back at them. Xander nodded. “Yeah. That’s it.”Clare angled sharply to the left and coasted up the shoulder until her sedan was practically bumper to bumper with Xander’s truck. She left the engine running, took off her seatbelt, and gave Xander a meaningful look. He scrambled to open his door and nearly slammed his head into the roof of the vehicle twice while trying to extract himself.Clare, who had ostensibly more practice at it, almost made the action look graceful as she used the frame of the door to pull herself out. Xander handed her his keys once she had two feet planted firmly on the ground and watched from afar as she sauntered over to his truck, the gravel crunching loudly under her scuffed leather boots in the still summer air.She climbed in and started the engine. Xander could hear the squeal from where he was standing as she tested her foot on the accelerator. Apparently satisfied with the results of her examination, the headlights flicked back off again and the engine went silent.Clare hopped out and walked around to lift the hood. She wedged her bulky flashlight into the crook of her neck, and Xander wondered how she wasn’t blind when the bright LED beam suddenly illuminated the innards of his truck like she was wielding the power of the sun itself.She didn’t ask for his help once as she dug around under the hood, and Xander didn’t offer it. He was content to let her work uninterrupted.A few minutes later, the flashlight clicked off. Xander heard Clare emit a loud sigh before she trudged over to him, the sudden transition to darkness making it damn near impossible to see.“The good news is that your car isn’t gonna blow up anytime soon,” she told him. “The bad news is that the only way you’re getting to San Antonio is if you drive it in first gear the whole way there, and even then, there’s no guarantee it won’t break down completely on you.”“So you can’t fix it,” Xander surmised with a grimace.“Me? Hell no. But there’s a mechanic in town. He might be able to patch it up, or he might not, but that’s really your only option right now.”Xander squeezed his eyes shut, drawing in a few deep breaths through his nose. He barely had enough money left for gas. There was no fucking way he was going to be able to afford to pay some small-town mechanic who probably charged through the nose just to get by in between the occasional job.“Okay,” he said quietly. “Can you please take me to the shop then, so I can talk to this mechanic?”“Um,” Clare replied hesitantly, now tapping her fingers against her left bicep in lieu of a steering wheel to fidget with. “Well, everyone’s actually over at the ranch right now for the summer festival, so….” She eyed him up and down, clearly trying to assess whether she could get away with bringing along a total stranger to this party, or whatever it was. “Screw it,” she said with a sigh. “I wasn’t even supposed to leave the gas station at all, technically, so it’s not like I can get in any more trouble than I already have.”“Sorry,” Xander said automatically, though it wasn’t like he’d had any idea she was endangering her employment by helping him.“It’s fine,” Clare replied easily. She climbed back into the sedan without another word.Xander watched through the scratched and dusty window as they rumbled down Junker’s Main Street, taking in the antique shop fronts that looked like they’d been pulled straight out of a spaghetti western. Between that and the utter lack of any sign of life, the place certainly looked the part of a stereotypical Texan ghost town, only the electric streetlights and the odd payphone here and there to dispel the illusion.Before long they were driving beyond the small slice of civilization and back into the wilderness. Xander could see the vague suggestions of houses through the trees, but not nearly enough to get an actual sense of how many people belonged to the town. And then after a short while, there was nothing at all to see but blackness.A few minutes and several turns later, a lit-up sign on a dirt drive appeared seemingly from nowhere, proudly proclaiming that they had arrived at the Twist Ranch.The narrow path leading up the hill was lined with dogwood, an entire lane’s worth wrapped in fairy lights. At the very end, Xander could see a large house with clean contemporary lines that seemed vastly at odds with the simplistic square buildings on Main Street. It looked almost as if someone had plucked a modern ranch home out of an architectural design magazine and had plopped it down right in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.Up near the house there was a large flat clearing, where Xander could see a smattering of cars parked as neatly as could be expected with no pavement markings in the dirt as a guide. Xander waited patiently, without saying a word, as Clare made a nine-point turn so she could squeeze her little sedan between a rusted old pickup and a large tree.After carefully extricating himself from the car once more, and waiting for Clare to do the same, Xander followed her through the scattered vehicles up to the front door, which was surrounded by a wreath of the same fairy lights that had been used to decorate the tree-lined drive.  There was a kitschy banner hanging over the threshold that had ‘WELCOME’ painted across it in large rainbow letters.Xander hunched his shoulders down as Clare pushed open the door, trying futilely to appear smaller than he really was as a large throng of people crowded into the foyer were revealed, all juggling food and drink in their hands as they stood around chatting to each other.Xander did his best to stick close to Clare as she weaved expertly through the crowd, all smiles and friendly waves even while each person they passed stared curiously at Xander, who suddenly felt like the new kid on the lacrosse team again, too quiet and gentle-natured for his peers to effectively tolerate.Once they emerged from the foyer, the layout of the house remained fairly open, with a staircase to one side and a sprawling great room on the other. The kitchen was separated from the living area by a breakfast bar, and Xander could see a frazzled middle-aged woman filling enormous kegs of lemon water standing behind it, while simultaneously trying to maintain conversations with each of the people standing around waiting on her.Clare seemed to spot the woman at the same time as Xander and made a beeline for her, still slipping through the mass of partygoers with relative ease. The woman’s pinched face brightened considerably as they approached, and she—unlike the rest—didn’t seem fazed in the slightest by Xander’s presence.“I thought you were working tonight,” the woman said mildly once they were within earshot—which was practically standing on top of each other with the amount of noise surrounding them.“Hey to you too,” Clare said, leaning forward to give the woman a hug. “There was a slight hiccup. I’m sure Adam will understand, right?”The older woman rolled her eyes. “I’ll talk to him. What happened? Who’s your friend?”Xander shifted uncomfortable and offered her his hand. “I’m Xander. Clare’s just helping me out.”The woman nodded and shook his hand politely. “I’m Anne. Nice to meet you.”Clare laughed. “You won’t catch anyone in town calling her anything but Mama Twist though,” she explained to Xander. “Except for Mitch, who is actually the person we’re looking for.” She looked hopefully at Mama Twist, who sighed as she began wiping up a spill from around the bottom of one of the kegs.“Car trouble?” she guessed. Clare nodded. “Well, you’ll have to wait, unfortunately. He went out riding with Harry and some of the kids. They should be back soon. Do y’all want a drink while you wait?”Xander accepted graciously and followed Clare to the back of the kitchen, where they stood with their backs to the cupboards, quietly sipping their glasses of water. Xander had to consciously keep from making a face at the slight tang that accompanied every swallow. He hated flavored water.He could tell that he was still attracting curious looks from the partygoers around them, and found himself wishing he had a jacket he could hide in. Everyone there with the exception of Clare looked like your average god-fearing Texan, and Xander stuck out like a sore thumb in his skinny-fit jeans and too-tight t-shirt. He scanned the bearded faces and the sea of blue denim surrounding him. He was starting to understand why Clare had pegged him for an urban hipster earlier.“I don’t really have any money,” Xander blurted out suddenly.Clare was slow to react. “What?” she said, taking another sip of her water. “Oh, you mean for the car? Mitch is a good guy, he won’t charge you for the labor if it’s that desperate.”At this point, labor wasn’t what Xander was worried about.They stood there for a few more minutes, and then the front door opened and in flooded a gaggle of elementary school-aged children, closely followed by two men who couldn’t have looked more different.The first—bearded, scruffy—was wearing a baseball cap and had a kid sitting on his shoulders who was clinging onto the visor like reins. The man ducked down to avoid bashing the kid’s head on the doorframe as they walked in, and then leaned down so his companion— just as tall but unremarkable except for his long hair, dressed in a baggy gray hoodie—could help him the kid get down to join the others.Xander watched as Mama Twist waved them over, but only the man in the baseball cap headed toward the kitchen.“What’s up?” he asked, his eyes flickering over to Xander for the briefest of seconds before meeting Mama Twist’s.“Can you have a look at a car in the morning?” she asked, getting straight to the point. “Clare’s friend here—Xander, right?—needs some help.”“Sure,” the man replied. Mitch, Xander thought, if he was remembering correctly. “Where’d you leave it?” he asked, turning to address Xander.“Uh, out on the main road,” Xander told him, hoping that was okay with him. Xander couldn’t get a read on the man’s impression of him so far in the slightest. “But I don’t have, like, a motel room or anything….”He could see Clare out of the corner of his eye making some sort of meaningful gesture toward Mama Twist, who merely nodded in response.“We have a guest house out back,” Mama Twist interjected. “You’re welcome to stay there until we get things figured out.”“Are you sure that’s okay?” he asked hesitantly. “I mean, you don’t know me at all.”“Southern hospitality and all that,” she replied easily. “Mitch, please be a dear and go save your wife from Adam before she breaks something over his head.”Mitch straightened his cap and did an immediate one-eighty, heading straight through the crowd into the living room where a slender brunette was very clearly just tolerating the giant of a man swaying next to her with an entire bottle of wine clutched in his right hand.“Clare, if you can get back to the gas station soon, there’s a chance Adam will be too drunk to even remember anyone telling him you were here,” Mama Twist said measuredly. “I’ll just have Gemma show Xander to the guest house.” She made a shooing motion and Clare hurried away with an apologetic shrug as she passed Xander. “Just give me a second,” Mama Twist told him as she pulled out a newer-looking smartphone and pecking at the screen with her index finger.Less than a minute later a girl with cropped platinum-blonde hair walked up to them. There was a telltale hitch in her step that told Xander she’d had plenty to drink, but not so much that she couldn’t function so long as she remained focused on the task at hand. Her eyes positively lit up when she noticed Xander, and she raked her eyes unapologetically over his body as she drew closer.“We taking in strays now, Mama?” she asked.Xander assumed the question was supposed to be a joke, but he was so caught off guard by the girl’s open appraisal of him that he didn’t even think to laugh along.“Gemma, Xander; Xander, Gemma,” Mama Twist said instead of answering. “Gemma is my only daughter,” she told Xander meaningfully.“I hate when you say that,” Gemma said with a pout.Mama Twist snorted. “Then blame your brother for not being another girl. Now show the poor boy to the guest house, and try not to get lost on the way there, okay sweetie?”Gemma rolled her eyes, but beckoned for Xander to follow her without any further protest. He tightened his grip on the backpack slung over his shoulder and traced her footsteps through the crowd, careful not to bump into anyone as they moved through the packed space.They cut through the living room, back into the foyer, and past the staircase, down a darkened hallway that led to a sitting room walled off by a large glass door. Gemma unlocked it and slid it open in one fluid movement, waiting for Xander to pass before she went through. The door closed with a loud thud behind them, and Xander jumped.“So,” Gemma said, her voice cutting through the low hum of natural ambiance surrounding them. “On the run, car trouble, or faking your death?”“What?”She raised an eyebrow as Xander turned to face her. “Drifters usually fall into one of those categories. You look a little too much like a frat boy to be the first or the last though, so I’m guessing car trouble?”Xander smiled weakly. “You guessed it.”“That’s a shame,” she said before suddenly skipping ahead of him.Xander took a straight course through the grass behind her as she zigged and zagged along the flagstone path that meandered from the main house to the smaller building located in the rear. From the looks of the exterior, the guest house alone was probably twice the size of the apartment he’d shared with Tori in New York“Why’s that?” Xander asked, letting his curiosity get the better of him as they walked up the porch steps side by side.Gemma unlocked the door and flicked on the lights with a drunken giggle. “Well, because guys with car trouble never stay for very long. You got a phone?”Xander stared at her in open confusion for a moment before pulling out the battered remains of his phone from his back pocket. Gemma snatched it out of his hand before he could say anything at all and began typing her number into his list of contacts.“You’re cute,” she told him as she sidled even closer to slip the phone back into his pocket. “I hope you stick around.”Gemma spun around with a playful smile and skipped back down the path toward the main house, leaving Xander still standing there, shell-shocked, in the doorway.

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The guest house consisted of nothing more than a small living room, a kitchenette, and a single bedroom with an attached bath. It was still more luxurious than any place Xander had lived in his adult life.He spent nearly twenty minutes searching through all the cabinets and drawers, wondering if he was allowed to help himself to the shampoo and toothpaste stashed under the sink in the bathroom before deciding the Twists, with all their unexpected hospitality, didn’t seem like that type of nouveau-riche.Xander wasn’t sure how long he spent in the shower, but it was later than he expected when he finally emerged. He could feel tendrils of exhaustion creeping under his skin, making his movements slow and sluggish as he prepared to sleep.He dithered in front of the mirror for a few minutes after brushing his teeth, wondering if he should shave to alleviate the rogueish scruff that had grown in without his usual maintenance over the last few weeks. In the end, he decided it wasn’t worth the effort to deal with the inevitable process of growing it out again once he was back on the road.The bed was gloriously soft. Xander sunk into the middle with a contented sigh.There was a TV hanging on the wall opposite that matched the one in the living room in make and size, but this one had a noticeable crack running along the left side. There was a post-it note stuck to the center with a large frowny face drawn in marker.Xander couldn’t help but wonder what the story behind it was, though he knew he’d likely never find out.That was the last thought Xander remembered having before he suddenly opened his eyes to find the sun streaming in through cracks in the shutters. Someone was knocking on the front door.Xander stumbled out of the bedroom and over to the door. He let out a quiet hiss as the morning light flooded the entryway, temporarily blinding him.“Hey man,” Mitch said in monotone, giving Xander a little wave. “Did you sleep in your clothes? Anne would have lent you some pajamas if she’d known.”“What?” Xander rasped. “Uh, I—what?”Mitch approximated a smile and clapped Xander on the shoulder. “Sorry, didn’t realize you were still asleep. Need a minute?”“Yeah. I mean, no, I’m fine,” Xander replied, his tongue feeling like it was lead in his mouth. Who could have predicted he’d feel this awful after finally getting to sleep in a bed for the first time since leaving New York? “Um, most of my shit—I mean, my clothes and stuff are still in my truck, so.”“Gotcha.” Mitch nodded in understanding. “Well, you want some breakfast before we head over and take a look? We always try to eat together before going our separate ways, so you might as well join us since you’re here.”Put that way, Xander didn’t really feel like he had much of a choice, so he just nodded and tried to flatten his hair down the best he could as they walked back to the main house. In the light of day, the ranch home looked even larger, and Xander could finally make out the stables and corrals for the horses Mama Twist had mentioned last night on the other end of a large open field.Again, Xander wondered what a place like this was doing in some backwater Texas town. Nothing about it seemed to fit in with the rest of Junker at all.Mitch flung open the back door, assaulting Xander with the smell of cooking bacon before they even stepped foot inside. His mouth watered automatically, and he realized he’d hardly even eaten fast food over the last week. Mostly he’d stuck to protein bars and chips, stuff he could pick up from gas stations and snack on while driving.Not that he’d been in any kind of hurry. Xander had headed east first, straight out of New York along the border to Chicago. The city hadn’t really felt right to him, too similar in some ways to the place he’d left, so he’d driven southwest instead, visiting Denver, Albuquerque, El Paso, before deciding to turn around and head east to San Antonio instead.Stopping in El Paso had been a mistake; he’d visited once with his mother and the memories left a sour taste in his mouth. But this part of Texas was nothing like the city he’d left behind on the Texas-Mexico border. The lack of any evidence of civilization as he’d driven down the sun-bleached asphalt, through endless miles of overgrown trees, had made Xander feel like he was on an alien planet.But now, standing inside the spotless kitchen at the Twist Ranch, with Mama Twist behind the stove cooking pancakes and fried eggs and bacon, Xander suddenly felt achingly nostalgic for something he’d never had.Xander wasn’t expecting the eclectic mix of strange faces at the dining room table when they walked in. Mitch gestured for Xander to take a seat on the very end next to him. Xander smiled tightly at one of the few people he recognized from the night before as he sat down: Gemma, directly opposite him. She returned it, and then looked away, giving Xander the opportunity to let his eyes drift across the table to take the rest of them in.There was a girl seated next to Gemma, her hair a more natural shade of golden blonde, cut short and shaggy just below her chin. She was glaring down at her empty plate as if it had just done something to offend her. On the girl’s other side was the guy Xander remembered seeing with Mitch, and there was an uncanny similarity in their faces. Xander wondered if the two were siblings, twins maybe. They looked around the same age, but it was hard to tell.Xander’s eyes lingered long enough on the guy to take in the fact that his hair was long enough to pull back into a knot on the back of his head, and that he, too, looked perturbed by something Xander wasn’t aware of. He moved on quickly after that, not wanting to be caught staring.On his own side of the table, Xander could see Mitch’s wife, but on her other side were two men Xander was fairly certain he hadn’t seen last night at the party.No one but Gemma had bothered to acknowledge Xander’s presence after he’d come in, and he remained silent, wanting to keep it that way.A few minutes later, Mama Twist finally walked in from the kitchen with a heaping platter filled with pancakes and set it down in the middle of the long table with a warm smile. “Glad you could join us, Xander,” she said before quickly going through introductions.The man at the head of the table was her husband, Robin, or Papa Twist. The man next to him was a bit older, by the looks of his graying hair, and was introduced simply as ‘Des’, with no clarification on his relation to the Twists. The girl next to Gemma was called Cara, again with no explanation for how she fit into things; Mitch’s wife was named Sarah; and the younger guy at the other end of the table, who still had yet to look up at Xander once during the introductions, was Harry, Anne’s youngest.Xander was a bit confused by that. He remembered clearly Anne introducing Gemma as her only daughter, which meant the girl who looked nearly identical to Harry couldn’t also hold that title. And how did Mitch and Des figure into things? It bothered Xander that he would probably never know the answers.Xander responded stiffly with the expected ‘nice to meet you’ and ‘how do you do’s, and then faded into the background once more as Mama Twist announced that everyone was free to help themselves. It was chaos from the get-go. Xander waited until everyone around him had filled their plates before starting in on his own.Xander was careful to serve himself conservatively, but when he glanced up toward the head of the table, he was startled to see Des glaring at him like Xander had just stolen his share.Xander glanced down automatically, and then looked up again to see if any of the others had noticed. They hadn’t, and all seemed to be solely focused on eating. Xander was a little surprised by that. He’d expected them to say grace, do something stereotypically Christian, but everyone around him seemed content to eat their breakfast without ceremony.Xander’s mouth was full of bacon when Papa Twist asked him what he was doing in Junker. He swallowed quickly, nearly choking as he struggled to answer. “Just car trouble. I was on my way to San Antonio.”“You have family in San Antonio?” Papa Twist’s tone was soft, curious rather than accusatory, but Xander still felt like he was being subjected to an interrogation.  “No,” he replied slowly. “Just doing the whole road trip, self-discovery thing. I guess.”Papa Twist nodded but didn’t seem terribly impressed. “We’ve seen our fair share of travelers searching for meaning out on the open road. I hope you find it.”“I suppose you’d need a working vehicle for that, though, right?” Sarah chimed in suddenly, surprising Xander with her loud laugh. “Let him eat, Robin. You can ask him anything you want once Mitch has the damn truck in the shop.”“Language,” Mama Twist scolded, but she didn’t look too upset by it.Mitch turned to his wife. “Kiddos still asleep?” he asked. She nodded accommodatingly and continued eating. “Give ‘em a kiss for me, then. I’ll be back before dinner. Xander, you ready to go?”Xander was easily hungry enough for seconds, but he nodded and set his fork down neatly next to his empty plate before getting up and following Mitch back out of the house. Mitch’s truck, Xander noticed, was the same make as his own, just slightly older, but the fact that they drove the same vehicle at least, inspired some hope.His good mood soured when they reached his own truck, still parked on the side of the highway, and Mitch assessed the damage.“You don’t look like you have good news,” Xander ventured.Mitch scratched at the back of his neck and grimaced. “Yeah, your transmission’s toast, I think. I can still take it apart at the shop and give it another look, but more than likely, you’ll need a replacement before this thing’s fit for a long haul.”And that was quite possibly the worst news Xander could have received. He was suddenly all-too conscious of how light the wallet in his back pocket really was. He’d emptied the contents of his bank account before leaving the city, and had been living off that cash, and whatever he could scrounge up along the way, ever since.The plan had been to look for work in San Antonio once he got there, something to pad things out till he could reach…wherever he was going. This hadn’t been a variable he’d anticipated.“I don’t really have any money,” Xander confessed.Mitch sighed through gritted teeth, a shrill whistling sound. “Look, I’ll do what I can but when it comes to parts, I don’t really have the cash to front that sort of thing out of the goodness of my heart, you understand?”“Yeah, no, I get it.”“Isn’t there someone you can call? Borrow a few hundred bucks from?”Xander thought about his remaining connections in New York. Or more accurately, the only connections he’d really ever had. His brother would probably loan him money if he asked, but he didn’t want to ask for his help if he had any other choice. Not after everything Max had already done for him over the last decade, favors he’d never had the opportunity to properly return.“Is there any way I could work in exchange for the fix?” Xander asked. It seemed like the only other viable solution.Mitch considered it for a moment. “I’m not exactly bursting at the seams with clients, man. I’m lucky half the people here are generous enough to come to me when they need an oil change instead of just doing it themselves, you know? But Des—” He stopped, and Xander curled his fingers into his palms, bracing himself for whatever was coming next. “Des could probably use another set of hands. You know your way around power tools?”Xander nodded. “I helped my aunt and uncle renovate their house when I was a teenager.”“Great,” Mitch said. “Des is kinda uptight when it comes to strangers, but Anne can talk him into it. I’ll let him know what the cost of the repairs ends up being, and we can figure out who’s paying who once that’s settled. Sound okay?”Privately, Xander thought working with Des, who had done nothing but scowl at him throughout the entirety of breakfast, sounded fucking awful, but he didn’t have a lot of options left. “Yeah, sure thing. So…how are we getting the truck back to the shop?”Mitch tossed his keys back to him. Xander barely managed to catch them before they hit the ground.“You’re gonna drive it,” Mitch said. “Really, really, really slow.”Xander was careful to follow Mitch’s instructions to the letter, meaning it took them a good ten minutes to drive less than a mile. Xander parked the truck inside Mitch’s shop, a tiny little garage that looked like it had been cobbled together with scrap aluminum and cracked cement, and then got out with a frustrated sigh, slamming the door shut behind him. His duffel was digging into the meat of his shoulder, weighed down with all of the essential belongings he could possibly fit inside without breaking open the zipper.“Wait here a minute,” Mitch told him, phone already pressed to his ear. “I’m calling Des right now.” He weaved expertly through the maze of boxes and stray parts littering every inch of available space between the roll-up entrance and the door marked ‘OFFICE’ in faded sticker-lettering. Xander watched him slip inside and then sat down on a plastic fold-up chair against the wall to wait.A few minutes passed and then Mitch re-emerged, looking a bit more frazzled than he had when he’d gone in. “Des agreed to let you work for him,” he said, exhaling loudly. “He’s not thrilled about it, but I can’t really say that’s much of a departure from normal.” Upon seeing the look on Xander’s face, he quickly added, “It’s a good deal. You might as well just bite the bullet. Your truck’s still pretty solid; I can’t imagine you’d want to just ditch it.”Xander hadn’t even considered that possibility. He wasn’t in dire enough straits to even entertain the notion of hitchhiking to San Antonio, but then he remembered what Gemma had said about the types of drifters that usually passed through town.Sure, he was running, but the destination wasn’t all that important. He could spare a week or two in Junker if it meant he’d have his car up and running again by the end of his stay.“Okay,” he agreed. “When does he want me to start?”“Tomorrow,” Mitch replied. “He said he’ll come get you in the morning after breakfast.”“Get me from where?” Xander asked hesitantly.“The ranch,” Mitch said, as if it were obvious.“Oh.” All this time, the thought of continuing to stay in the Twist’s guest house hadn’t even crossed Xander’s mind.“You don’t have to worry about paying them,” Mitch hurried to reassure him. “Anne and Robin are good people, they’ll let you stay as long as you need.”“Oh, okay.” Xander wasn’t sure how he felt about that, really, but then again, he didn’t really have much of a say in the matter.“I’ll call Cara to come pick you up,” Mitch told him, apparently satisfied that their business had been resolved for the day.Xander was somewhat relieved to not have to deal with Gemma, who had been far too flirtatious for comfort last night, or Harry, who had made it a sticking point to ignore Xander this morning, but he wasn’t sure what to expect from Cara, and that made him just as nervous. Luckily, he was only afforded a few minutes to dwell on his anxiety before a newer-looking Jeep pulled up outside.Cara honked once and rolled down the passenger window to peer out at him. “I don’t bite,” she called out, beckoning him toward the car.Xander wasn’t so sure, but he shuffled over to her anyway, climbing into the car with just a second’s hesitation. She picked up on his apprehension immediately.“I guess Gemma must have rolled out the welcome mat for you at the festival last night, huh,” she remarked with a smile.Xander just nodded.“Well, if it’s any comfort, she’s not usually like that. She’s the golden child. I’m the one you really have to worry about.”Xander nearly choked on his own spit. “I thought Anne—sorry, I thought Mama Twist only had one daughter,” he replied, trying to deflect.“She does,” Cara replied with a little laugh. They were almost back to the house now already, by Xander’s reckoning. He couldn’t understand how people could live in a town so small without all wanting to kill each other. “We’re half-siblings.”Xander supposed that was why she looked so much like Harry then, though he wasn’t sure if that meant Harry was Cara’s full-blooded brother or Gemma’s. Mama Twist’s statements had seemed to imply the latter, though his resemblance to Cara suggested otherwise. Xander didn’t ask, hoping to endure the rest of the journey in silence.Cara didn’t share his plans. “On the off-chance she does proposition you again, though, you should know that I’m the better choice,” she told him shamelessly, with a challenging stare.Xander floundered for a response. “I mean…I’m not exactly looking for a girlfriend. I’m just passing through.” The excuse sounded flimsy even to his own ears.Cara didn’t look convinced. “Mitch already told me you’re gonna be working for Dad while he does your repairs,” she informed him.“Dad?” Xander asked, confused.“Des,” she clarified.That only exacerbated Xander’s bewilderment. “Wait, so your dad eats breakfast every morning with his ex and her husband?” He blurted the question out without thinking, only realizing after the fact how rude it sounded. “Um, sorry. That was—”“It’s the South, sweetheart,” Cara said patronizingly as they pulled up in front of the Twist Ranch again. “We take care of our own.”Xander guessed that there wasn’t much use in burning bridges when you lived in a town with less than two hundred people, but he managed to keep that thought to himself as he climbed out of the car. “Thanks for the ride,” he mumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets.“Any time,” Cara replied with a wink, causing Xander to blush from the roots of his hair all the way down to his fingertips.They parted ways there at the back of the house, and Xander trudged through the grass to get back to the guest house, which appeared to be just as he left it. He couldn’t help but turn to look through the windows as Cara slowly sauntered over to the sliding glass door, only to realize that Harry was standing there on the other side, waiting for her.And then Harry’s eyes flicked up to meet Xander’s, and Xander went stumbling backwards, tripping over his own feet in his haste to get away from the window, even redder now that he’d been caught staring at them like a peeping tom.Xander rushed into the bedroom like he expected Harry to be hot on his heels, and threw the door shut behind him with a loud slam, breathing heavily. It wasn’t like him to get flustered so easily, but it wasn’t every day that Xander found himself faced with the attentions of not just one, but two pretty girls, and for the first time in a long time, he was actually single. There was, objectively speaking, nothing stopping him on taking either Gemma or Cara up on their offers.Xander put it out of his mind for the moment and turned his attention to his backpack instead after setting his duffel down on the foot of the bed. He pulled his laptop out and plugged it in before consulting the little slip of paper taped to the dresser directly under the TV that had the Wi-Fi password typed out for him. The level of preparation made Xander wonder if the Twists entertained guests often. He hoped he hadn’t displaced somebody, like Des, or Mitch and his wife, but the place didn’t exactly seem lived in so much as ready to be lived in.Once he was connected to the internet, Xander pulled up his email, checking for any updates from Max and deleting everything from Tori in the process without even bothering to open them. After finishing the process, he exited out of the tab and opened Netflix instead, intending to stream something off of his brother’s account, but to his surprise, the login didn’t work.Xander wondered if that meant Max had changed the password on him, or perhaps had just canceled the service entirely. He kind of hoped it was the latter. Xander hadn’t thought that Max would believe anything Tori said, but he hadn’t stayed long enough to really explain himself either, so there was no telling just what had happened in his absence.Xander sighed and closed his laptop, getting back up again to grab the TV remote from the dresser this time and peeling the sticky note from off of the cracked screen. It worked well enough despite the slight tear in the picture, and it didn’t take Xander long to find the on-demand section of the Twist’s cable service.He settled on an older action movie, something he’d seen once in theaters but not again since, and laid back against the pillows, allowing himself to get comfortable until finally, he dozed off about halfway through the film.When Xander woke up, there was someone standing above him next to the bed, and he nearly rolled off entirely in shock.“Shit, I’m sorry!” a familiar voice exclaimed, and Xander blinked up at the silhouette until it coalesced into something solid.“Clare?” he croaked. “What are you doing in here?”“Well, you left the door unlocked,” she said matter-of-factly.Xander just stared in disbelief.“I guess that’s all well and fine,” she continued, apparently oblivious to how weird all of this was, “if you’re expecting one of the Styles kids to drop by for a booty call or something.”“Styles?” Xander questioned, still not quite sure he was actually awake after all.“They kept Des’s last name,” Clare explained. “It’s kind of…a thing,” she said vaguely.Xander crooked an eyebrow, but she didn’t elaborate further. “Do Gemma and Cara make passes at every adult male who sets foot in town?” Xander wondered, hoping the question didn’t come off as offensive. He wasn’t being judgmental so much as curious.“Only the cute ones,” Clare snarked. “But seriously, you should probably keep your distance if you want to stay on Des’s good side.”“Des has a good side?”Clare didn’t laugh. “Seriously,” she reiterated. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”Xander sighed. “Noted.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

If someone had told Xander when he first arrived in Junker that a week later he would be making out with Cara in a half-built bathroom in a house he was supposed to be helping her father build, he would have laughed in their face. But things changed fast, and Xander was a different man to the one who had left New York with barely more than the clothes on his back.And it had been a long time since Xander had touched anyone and wanted it. And Cara was…simple. Uncomplicated. As long as no one found out, that is.Xander was happy enough to kiss her and dry hump against the newly installed sink, but once her hand strayed below the belt, he grabbed her wrist and pulled back. “We should stop,” he breathed. “We shouldn’t even be doing this while I’m working.”“You’re no fun,” Cara pouted, but she backed up a few feet and quickly adjusted her hair and clothing in an effort to make it look like she hadn’t just been halfway to fucking Xander in an unfinished bathroom. “Good?” she asked.Xander stepped forward to fix her cross necklace, the one all three siblings wore in variable metals around their necks. Cara’s was silver. “Better,” he pronounced. “Thanks for lunch.”“Anytime,” she replied with a smirk, the words loaded with barely disguised innuendo. “See you around?”“Mhmm.”Xander almost had a heart attack when Des walked in just seconds after Cara had left. He stared at Xander suspiciously but said nothing for a long while, finally grumbling a brusque, “Get back to work,” before disappearing back into the other side of the house again.Xander spent the rest of the afternoon toiling in tense silence at Des’s side, but the man said nothing to indicate he had any reason to believe Xander was fooling around with his daughter right under his nose.Des drove them back to the ranch without saying a word at the end of the day, as he always did, and Xander ate dinner with the Twists before he retired to the guest house, studiously avoiding meeting Cara or Gemma’s eyes throughout the course of the meal and looking up only to answer Anne’s questions about his day of work.Xander had sort of expected Gemma to lose interest in him once he’d begun fooling around with Cara, but it had somehow only made things worse, like the sisters were in competition over his attention or something. Under other circumstances, he might have been flattered by that, but so far it was only adding to his unnecessarily convoluted entanglement with the Twist clan.Midway through dinner, Xander felt his phone buzz gently against his thigh. He glanced up to make sure no one was watching him and then carefully pulled it out to read it under the table, swallowing a sigh when he saw that Gemma was the sender.
Leave your door unlocked tonight?
He’d kissed her once. Once. But it had apparently been enough to convince her that he was perfectly willing to fool around with her and Cara simultaneously, and Xander really didn’t need that kind of drama in his life on top of everything else.Xander tucked his phone back into his pocket discreetly, leaving the message unanswered for now. He wasn’t sure what to do about Gemma. Maybe it was best that he did leave the door unlocked, if only so he could set things straight between them, to keep this from happening again. Xander wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be in Junker, but playing these games with Gemma and Cara both was starting to take its toll.He finally settled on that course of action when he returned to the guest house later that evening, after helping Anne clean up the dining room and kitchen, and then settled in on the couch in the sitting area with some TV to wait for Gemma to show.Xander didn’t end up having to wait long. His ears perked up when he heard the doorknob slowly turning, and he spun around on the couch to watch as the door opened to reveal Gemma—with Cara waltzing in right behind her.Cara closed the door casually while Xander stared at the two of them in blatant confusion. “Um, what the hell is going on?” he blurted out when Gemma skipped over to him and knelt down on the couch cushion beside him. Xander nearly gave himself whiplash when Cara suddenly leaned down on his other side to press her lips to his throat.Xander jumped up off the couch in a flash, staring at the two girls with a mixture of bewilderment and alarm. He could feel his fight-or-flight impulse firing off in the back of his brain, and Xander was tempted to just haul ass out of there without explaining a damn thing. Hitchhiking to San Antonio had never seemed so tempting.“I am not doing this,” Xander said evenly, making a concentrated effort to stay perfectly calm.“Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport,” Cara whined.Xander whirled on her. “Are you fucking serious, Cara?” he hissed. “What made you think this was a good idea?”Out of the corner he could see Gemma’s face starting to crumble. He knew now that she was the oldest of the three siblings, but it hadn’t taken Xander long to realize she was also much more emotional than Cara, which was most of the reason why he’d chosen to fool around with the younger girl instead. He didn’t get off on breaking girl’s hearts. Gemma needed someone who could give her everything. And that wasn’t Xander.Cara sighed loudly. “We’ll see you at breakfast, I guess,” she remarked, pulling Gemma up off the couch and heading for the door, thankfully without Xander having to ask first.“Yeah,” he replied dumbly, still feeling a bit gob smacked as he stared after them. He flinched when the door shut with a dull thud, and it was a nearly a minute before he collected his senses enough to lock the door before returning to the TV in the main room so he could try to forget what had just happened.Xander wasn’t expecting the knock at his door that came just a few minutes later. He got up with an exasperated sigh, already running through his head what he was going to have to say to either Gemma or Cara—or god forbid, both—to make it absolutely clear that he wasn’t interested.But it wasn’t Gemma or Cara at the door. It was Harry.Harry, who burst into the guest house with fire in his eyes as soon as Xander opened the door, forcing Xander backwards in an effort to accommodate the sudden intrusion into his personal space.“Are you seriously fucking both of my sisters?” Harry demanded. He didn’t stop until he had Xander backed into the counter bordering the kitchenette and there was nowhere else for them to go.“What? No! I mean, me and Cara fooled around a couple times but it’s not like—”Xander didn’t have a chance to finish explaining before Harry’s fist came swinging toward his face. Xander ducked it just in time and then quickly moved out of the way before Harry could recover and try to hit him again. He had plenty of experience wrestling with drunk friends or dealing with the occasional asshole in a bar, but he didn’t often come up against someone in a fight who was stone-cold sober, so Xander decided to resort to dirtier tactics to make sure he had the upper hand.He launched himself into Harry before Harry had a chance to throw another punch, throwing one hand around his waist and reaching up with the other to grab Harry’s hair, thrown up into a loose ponytail. Xander used his own momentum and his now solid grip on Harry to send both of them hurtling to the floor, quickly pinning Harry’s shoulders down with his knees as the younger boy struggled to catch his breath.“Get off of me!” Harry gasped, turning bright red as he wiggled under Xander like a beached fish.Xander tightened his grip on Harry’s hair and pulled hard, causing Harry to jolt underneath him with a sharp inhale before going completely silent, his eyes wide with some unidentifiable emotion.“Look, I get it, okay?” Xander said, speaking to Harry as if they were having a perfectly pleasant conversation over the dinner table and not halfway to one of them ending up in a full nelson. “I may not have sisters, but I know exactly what this looks like, so really, I get it, I’d want to deck me, too.”“Then—what the fuck?” Harry gasped, breathing out a little whine when Xander accidentally tugged on his hair again.“Cara and Gemma are both old enough to make their own decisions,” Xander continued calmly, suddenly hyperconscious of the fact that his crotch was nearly in Harry’s face. “They don’t need baby brother storming in here to defend their honor. And I would really, really appreciate it if we could just forget this ever happened, okay? Because I don’t need your dad reneging on his promise to let me work for him in exchange for getting my truck fixed. Trust me, I want to be gone just as much as you want me gone.”Harry had calmed down a bit by the end of Xander’s tirade, his eyes glazed over almost like he was in a trance as he stared up from at Xander from between his thighs. It took him another few seconds to register that he was still pinned under Xander, and his face hardened again.“And I would appreciate it if you got the fuck off me,” Harry growled with all the intimidation factor of an angry lap dog. He shoved uselessly at Xander until the older man untangled his hand from Harry’s hair and finally rolled off.“You won’t tell your mom about this, right?” Xander asked uncertainly.“So long as you stay the fuck away from my family,” Harry retorted as he picked himself up off the floor, his long ungainly limbs nearly betraying him as he used the back of the couch for leverage to pull himself to his feet. Harry stormed out of the guest house without waiting for Xander’s response, letting the door hang open behind him and giving Xander a virtually unobstructed view of Harry as he walked back to the main house.From the back, in a flowy peasant blouse with his long hair hanging half-out of his ponytail from Xander’s grip on it during the fight, Xander could almost believe that Harry was yet another Styles daughter, and he felt a pang of…something at the realization.Xander knew he didn’t want to examine that if he could help it, so he went to close the door, intending to go back inside and watch more TV until he fell asleep, but then he spotted the trail leading out into the woods and stopped. Maybe a walk would do him some good.Xander took just enough time to pull on his boots before heading out, leaving the light on in the kitchen in hopes that he’d be able to see it if he got turned around in the trees. He’d hoped the summer air would help clear his head, calm him down a bit after his scuffle with Harry, but instead Xander just found himself dwelling on what an idiot he’d been.He’d nearly jeopardized everything the Twists had been willing to give him out of the kindness of their own hearts, because of sex of all things. Sex he hadn’t even technically had.Xander was so caught up in his own thoughts as he wandered down the trail that he didn’t even notice the noise at first, until he was so close that he could make out distinct words, seemingly spoken by a ghostly voice out in the trees. He froze, listening hard but unable to tell what was being said. It didn’t sound like English, he decided, feeling the hair on his arms prickling as goose bumps slowly spread across his skin.It wasn’t like Xander to be so easily spooked, but he was in the middle of Bumfuck, Texas after all, and he was out alone in the woods. He wasn’t about to chance stumbling onto some kind of unholy pagan ritual out there when he could easily turn around and head straight back to the guest house instead.So he did. And Xander wasn’t at all ashamed to admit that he’d bolted back in a full sprint, locking the door behind him and checking it twice just to make sure nothing was getting in. It took him a few more hours after that of cooking shows to come down from the adrenaline rush, but the physical toll of construction was enough that Xander fell into a dreamless sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.Xander’s alarm was only set for weekdays, so he slept in the next morning, awoken only when the sound of frantic knocking filtered through his consciousness. It took him a minute to realize what was happening and another to make it into a pair of pants, stumbling to get them pulled up around his hips as he hopped over to the front door.Mitch was on the other side, looking so uncharacteristically panicked that Xander felt his heart rate instantly rise in response, even though he didn’t yet know the reason for it.“What’s wrong?” Xander asked dumbly, aware that he still wasn’t exactly presentable by any stretch of the imagination, and hoping that whatever it was, he’d have enough time to actually put some real clothes on before he had to go gallivanting off somewhere.“It’s Michael,” Mitch said. He looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands, and he kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other, like he was ready to run at the slightest sound. “We can’t find him.”Michael, Xander had learned, was Mitch and Sarah’s son, a charming little boy who was fascinated by Xander and loved riding horses with his sister and Harry in the afternoons after school.“How long has been gone?” Xander asked, suppressing a yawn. It didn’t feel appropriate.“All morning. We’ve looked everywhere in the house. He’s not with you, is he?”Xander shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since dinner.” He looked past Mitch, toward the main house, where he could see figures moving out near the tree-line.“I’ll help you guys look,” Xander told him. “Just give me a second to put some shoes on.”When he made it outside, everyone Xander had seen earlier scouring the edge of the forest was out of sight. Mitch lingered long enough to give Xander a vague direction, and then disappeared into the trees as well, leaving Xander to his own devices.Xander started down the trail he’d taken the night before, cutting straight through the forest down to the edge of the river, which had been too dark to make out the night before, and then cutting through the trees about ten yards downstream back up to the rear of the guest house.He repeated the process for what must have been close to an hour before spotting a bright flash of pink through the leaves, down by the shore. Xander rushed over, hoping to find Michael, but instead coming up on a familiar head of brunette curls bent down in the bushes.Harry’s shoulders were heaving underneath his cotton-candy sweater, and Xander could tell from the muffled sounds emerging from Harry’s mouth that he was vomiting.“Are you okay?” Xander asked. He reached forward to touch Harry’s shoulder, to comfort him, but hesitated just before his fingers made contact.Harry turned just enough for Xander to make out tear-tracks streaking down his cheeks. “Can you get my mom?” he quietly, choking a little on the last word. “I need you to get my mom.”Harry’s eyes flicked over to the shoreline, and Xander followed them automatically, pausing on the dark shape lying half-in the water. For a moment, Xander forgot how to breathe.“Don’t move,” Xander told Harry, swallowing heavily, though he really didn’t think there was much danger of that in Harry’s condition.Reception was dogshit out in the woods where the Twists resided, which meant the only way Xander could track down Anne, or someone else with some sort of actual authority, was by running along the tree-line outside the main house and yelling at the top of his lungs, hoping someone would hear it.Robin, Harry’s step-father, was the first to emerge. Xander decided it was good enough.“Did you find him?” Robin asked hopefully.Xander wasn’t sure how to answer. “Harry did,” he finally settled on. He swallowed spasmodically, his mouth bone-dry. “He needs you—I’ll show you where.” It didn’t feel fair to lead Robin to Harry and Michael without warning him first, but Xander couldn’t seem to form the right words on his tongue. He wasn’t even sure what the right words were. How do you tell someone something like that?Robin had an airhorn in his hand that he blew just after Xander started to lead him back into the trees, blowing it again in increments as they walked to signal to the others that they’d found something and should regroup.They ran into Mitch and Clare first, and when Xander said nothing in response to Mitch echoing Robin’s question, he could tell that the three of them were starting to realize what they were about to find.It didn’t lessen the blow when they finally reached the river, which was just as Xander had left it: Harry, crouched in the bushes, and Michael, lying face down in the water.Xander turned away as Mitch ran forward towards the boy, Robin following right behind to make sure Mitch didn’t touch him, but not seeing Mitch’s reaction didn’t erase the guttural wail that erupted from the man’s throat at the sight of his son, lying there dead in front of him.Xander blinked furiously as he stared at Harry instead, trying to ignore the trickle of search-party volunteers and police that were slowly starting to trickle in as Robin continued to blow his airhorn without pausing, until finally the sheriff showed and started to clear the area.“Who was first on the scene?” Xander heard him asking Robin. When Xander looked up, he wasn’t really surprised to find the sheriff’s shrewd eyes focused on him. He’d figured, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he’d be the first suspect in all this.But Xander was surprised when Harry suddenly spoke up. “Me,” he said, a bit too loudly. “I’m the one who found him.” He still looked like he might throw up again, but he managed to slowly climb to his feet, swaying a bit as he stood.The sheriff nodded, lips pursed. “All right, well let’s clear the area, get everyone back to the house. We can start taking statements there.”Robin, Mitch, and Harry were all asked to stay while the others received their instructions to leave and regroup at the ranch. Xander was already walking into the trees again when he was suddenly overcome by the urge to look back, his eyes homing in on Harry instantly. The look on the younger man’s face was haunting. Xander knew he’d never forget it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Xander knew it was normal even in the face of unspeakable tragedy for the mind to wander, to focus on the trivial things in order to cope, but he still felt bad that his first thought while walking back to the house along with the other downtrodden volunteers was that his car was never going to get fixed now.It was an awful thing to focus on when a kid was dead, and Xander knew that, and yet it was at the forefront of his mind all the way up until he finally reached the ranch again and Clare suddenly pulled him aside, diverting his train of thought momentarily.“Come with me,” she said quietly, leading him past the others and into a wing of the main house he had never set foot in before.“Where are we going?” Xander wondered as she pulled him along into a darkened hallway.Clare didn’t answer. The doors on either side of them were all closed except for the one at the very end, through which Xander could just make out the shapes of two shadowy silhouettes, illuminated only by the sliver of daylight streaming in through the cracks in the shutters. It wasn’t until Clare led him inside that he could make out the faces of the two women seated on the edge of the bed: Anne and Hélène.Xander had been at the Twist Ranch for nearly three days before he’d even learned of Hélène’s existence, much less the fact that she lived there, in the main house with all the others. He hadn’t ever had the courage to ask why she was there, but he’d gleaned enough from his brief glimpses and context clues to figure out that something was deeply wrong with her.Xander stayed back near the door as Clare stepped closer to them.“Did you find him?” Anne asked tiredly. Her hands were wrapped tightly around Hélène’s and she sounded exhausted, but Xander didn’t think she’d been crying. Hélène didn’t even look up to acknowledge either Xander or Clare and didn’t react at all to their presence.“Harry found him,” Clare explained quietly. “Near the river, but—” She stopped.Xander couldn’t see Clare’s face from where he was standing, but he could tell from Anne’s expression that she understood the situation without it having to be said. And still Hélène didn’t look up.“Irving?” Anne inquired.“With Harry and Robin. And Mitch. They want to interview everyone at the house.”“Okay,” Anne said quietly. She finally let go of Hélène, who allowed her hands to flop back down onto the mattress as soon as she was released, like they belonged to a corpse rather than an actual living, breathing human being. Anne ran a hand through her hair, stress starting to crease the skin around her eyes and mouth. “Okay,” she said again.Before either Clare or Anne could say anything else, a streak of yellow suddenly shot through the cracked open bedroom door and catapulted into Anne’s lap. Joey, Mitch and Sarah’s daughter, entwined her hands around Anne’s neck as Gemma came trailing in after her bearing a look of shame.“I was taking her to the bathroom and she just bolted,” Gemma explained apologetically.Anne sighed and carefully detangled Joey’s hands. “I told you to stay with Gemma,” she gently chided.“I am with Gemma,” the girl replied matter-of-factly. “Did you find the ghost that took Michael?”Gemma rushed over and scooped up the girl. “It was a bad dream, Jo. Come on, let’s watch TV and let the grown-ups talk, okay?” With one last look of apology toward her mother, Gemma spirited Joey back out of the room, leaving a dull silence in their wake.Anne ran a hand through her hair and sighed again. “Is Sarah back yet?” she asked, glancing back up at Clare.Clare shook her head. “I didn’t see her when we came in, but I can go check.”Before she had a chance to even turn, the door edged open again and lo and behold—Sarah’s face popped in through the gap. She looked exhausted and Xander couldn’t blame her. He wondered if she knew already about Michael or if Clare was going to have to break the news again.His question was answered when Sarah suddenly stumbled forward, practically falling into Clare’s arms as she burst into tears. “I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed. “And Joey—what do we even tell her?”Anne stood and moved over to the nightstand, picking up a pen and quickly scribbling something down onto a notepad. “I don’t want to give you the wrong advice,” she said quietly, pulling Sarah away from Clare just long enough to hand her the slip of paper. “This is a number for a child psychologist in Austin. You and Mitch call him when you have a minute and tell him I recommended you, okay? He should be able to help.”Xander was becoming increasingly more uncomfortable the longer he intruded on the Twist family’s private moments. He wasn’t even sure why Clare had dragged him along in the first place. He’d known these people for all of a week. He didn’t have words of comfort, just hollow sympathy. And he couldn’t even voice that, especially not with Sarah standing there inches away from him, broken over the death of her child. Nothing Xander said could make that better.He stared helplessly over Sarah’s shoulder at Clare. She seemed to catch on.“Listen,” she said, gently pushing Sarah away, toward Anne instead, “I’ve gotta take Xander back—” Back? Back where? “—and then I’ll put some tea on, okay?”“That sounds nice,” Anne replied, grabbing hold of Sarah by the waist and clinging on to her firmly. “Thank you, Clare.”All of Xander’s questions were answered as soon as they exited the main house and started off on the path across the yard to the guest house.“So I’m not saying I agree with them,” she started in a quiet voice, one hand on the small of Xander’s back as they walked, “but you should know that people are starting to point fingers, and I don’t want to give them the opportunity to hassle you, because from everything I’ve seen, you’re a pretty decent guy and I don’t think you deserve it.”“Oh. That’s—thanks, I guess.” Xander hadn’t even considered the fact that he would be the most obvious suspect in Michael’s disappearance, seeing as he was the only person within the town limits that the rest of the citizens hadn’t known their entire lives. “Um, what should I do, then?”They’d reached the guest house, and Clare froze with her hand on the doorknob. “Do? Don’t do anything. Just stay out of trouble. The sheriff’s department’s gonna be tied up interviewing everyone all day probably, so just hang out here until things quiet down, okay?”Xander nodded and allowed her to let him into the guest house. The door clanged shut behind him without warning, and he jumped a little.Xander wanted to go back to sleep now that he was away from all the chaos but there was no indication really of when he would be interviewed by the cops and Xander didn’t really fancy waking up to a shotgun in his face because he didn’t answer the door in time.It ended up being the right call. There was a knock at the door within the hour, and on the other side, a man in police uniform, looking every bit as drained as the members of the Twist family. “Mind if I step inside?” he asked tentatively, like he was actually offering Xander the opportunity to decline.“Sure.” Xander stepped inside to let the man in.“I’m Deputy Azoff—well, everyone just calls me Jeff, but considering the circumstances, we should probably keep things strictly professional. You’re Xander Ritz, right?”Xander nodded, wondering if it would be inappropriate to sit down on the couch. His legs felt like they could give out at any second.“Can we sit?” Jeff asked a second later, and Xander practically fell onto the couch cushions in relief. “So I just want to go over the basics. It shouldn’t take too long.”“Okay.” Xander had enough practice with law enforcement that he knew not to give any information other than what was asked, even if these were just small-town cops, and if Jeff planned on asking him anything that seemed designed to lead Xander into incriminating himself, he had no qualms about telling him to come back with an arrest warrant.“You got into town a week ago?” Jeff asked. He’d procured a notepad from somewhere and had his pen already pressed to the page, ready to document Xander’s answers for further examination.Xander couldn’t get what Clare had said about people already starting to suspect him out of his mind.He nodded. “Yeah.”“And your reason for being here?”Xander had no doubts that Jeff already knew the answer to that with the way the gossip mill seemed to work in Junker, but he decided to humor him for the sake of getting through the interview as painlessly as possible.“My truck broke down on the way to San Antonio. Mitch is fixing it, but he’s still waiting on parts.”“So you’re not planning on staying long-term?”“No.” Xander was nervous about where the questions seemed to be heading. His fingers began to tap out a quick staccato rhythm against the arm rest.“All right, just a few more questions and then we’re done,” Jeff said with a reassuring smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Where were you last night?”“Here,” Xander replied, knowing that if he was expected to provide an alibi, he wouldn’t be able to do so.“All night?”“Yes.”“Okay. And can you summarize this morning from the time you woke up to when you found Michael?”“I didn’t find Michael,” Xander corrected. “I found Harry; he’d already—” He stopped, worried suddenly that it sounded like he was trying to pass the blame.“Well, until you found Harry, then.”Xander recounted the events of that morning as succinctly as possible, trying to keep from giving any unnecessary details or coloring it with his feelings—a difficult task after seeing firsthand Michael’s body and the way Harry had looked at Xander when he’d stumbled across him at the river.He had to hold in the urge to let out a sigh of relief when he finished, and Jeff tucked his notepad back into his jacket. “Thanks for your time,” he said politely, reaching out his hand for Xander to shake. He was awfully nice for a cop, but Xander still hoped he never had to see him again.Once he was gone, Xander felt any remaining energy leach out of his body. Now he really wanted a nap. But of course, as soon as he plummeted into the downy mattress, his body was like a livewire again, his brain unable to come down even after nearly half an hour of tossing and turning.Xander gave up after that and settled on a warm shower instead, hoping it would relax him enough to fool his head into quieting down for a minute. It had the opposite effect. The hot spray only made Xander’s skin itch until he couldn’t bear it anymore and finally jerked the faucet all the way to the way to the left, blasting himself with freezing water before finally shutting it off entirely.He got one foot out of the shower before he saw Harry and froze, clutching the curtain to his crotch in a wasted effort to preserve his dignity.Harry wasn’t looking. He was crouched down between the toilet and bathroom cabinets, head in his hands. He glanced up at the sound of the curtain rustling with Xander’s movements, revealing red-rimmed eyes and a tear-streaked face.“How long have you been in here?” Xander asked, a little belatedly. He’d stood there gaping at Harry with a shower curtain held over his junk for far longer than was strictly necessary.“This is your fault,” Harry spat back in lieu of an answer.Xander strained to reach the towel hanging up on the wall and quickly wrapped it around his waist. When he stepped out of the tub, Harry was just starting to pull himself to his feet, his legs shakier than a newborn calf’s.“What exactly is my fault?” Xander asked calmly as Harry stared him down with fire in his eyes.“Everything,” Harry shot back, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Everything was fine until you got here and now it’s—you ruined everything. And now Michael’s dead.”“You really think I killed Michael?” Xander asked bluntly.Harry’s mouth moved like he wanted to answer, but no sound came out. Xander didn’t wait for him to come up with something, instead pushing past him in just his towel to exit the bathroom. He pulled on his clothes quickly, seeing when he left the bedroom that Harry still hadn’t moved, and walked into the kitchen to pull out a couple of mugs.The hot chocolate was shitty, instant mix and milk microwaved for barely a minute, but it was still warm and seemed to jolt Harry out of whatever trance he’d fallen into when Xander returned to the bathroom and pushed a mug into his hands.“Oh,” he said, looking dazedly down at the drink. “Thanks.”“You’re supposed to drink it,” Xander prompted him when Harry made no move to lift the mug from waist level.Pink bloomed in Harry’s cheeks and he quickly hid his face behind the mug as he took a quick sip. “Thanks,” he said again, voice softer now. His eyes were starting to droop, like anger had been the only thing propping him up after the stress of the morning.“You looked like you needed it,” Xander replied honestly. “Come on.” He put a tentative on Harry’s shoulder and guided him into the living area, pushing him gently down onto the couch to finish his hot chocolate without the danger of sudden collapse.“Is it all right if I sit next to you?” Xander asked. There weren’t exactly a lot of other options, and he felt obligated to keep an eye on Harry now that he’d inserted himself into Xander’s only private space.Harry nodded, and Xander sat down delicately on the cushion next to him, careful not to accidentally touch Harry in the process.He wasn’t expecting Harry’s head to conk down on his shoulder as soon as he settled down on the couch, a cascade of brown curls spilling out onto Xander’s chest in the process. Xander froze, not sure how to react.Harry sniffled pitifully. “I should have found him sooner,” he murmured, his lips dragging against the fabric of Xander’s threadbare cotton t-shirt with every word.Xander carefully snaked his arm around Harry’s shoulders, leaving it to rest lightly against his back. “What happened isn’t your fault,” he said, knowing it was a poor excuse for reassurance in the face of what Harry must have been dealing with. Xander had gone through his own fair share of shit in his life, but all of it paled in comparison to what had happened to Mitch’s family, and by extension, Harry’s. Xander didn’t know how to make that better. “You can stay here for a while if you want,” he offered.“Can you put something on?” Harry replied in a small voice, still muffled some by Xander’s shirt.“Like what?”Harry shrugged. “I just don’t want to think anymore.”“Okay.” Xander leaned forward as much as he could without jostling Harry to grab the remote off the coffee table and flicked the TV on, scrolling without hesitation for the safest place he could think of: the Hallmark channel. He scanned the list of titles carefully, avoiding anything that looked like it might have children in it, and finally settled on a mediocre Christmas movie. “You like romcoms?” he asked, only thinking to check after hitting play.“Mhmm,” Harry replied drowsily. He rubbed his face into Xander’s shoulder like a cat.Xander just stared down at the top of Harry’s head, feeling a bit shell-shocked. After the vitriol Harry had spit at him at every turn, he had never expected this of all things, and now he wasn’t quite sure how to react. Was Harry high? Was there something in the water?Xander didn’t anticipate having Harry literally fall asleep on his shoulder halfway through the movie either, leaving Xander to decide whether to move and risk waking him up, or to leave him there, at least until the movie ended and he had a good excuse to disturb him.Xander settled on the latter and stared vacantly at the flashing images on the screen, not registering anything that was happening. His skin felt charged with static electricity, but it was a dull hum, almost soothing. He imagined it was like that thing Max said happened to him when he watched videos of people folding towels on YouTube that made all his hair feel like it was standing up.That’s how Xander felt with Harry breathing hotly into the exposed bit of skin over his collarbone, where the collar of his shirt had ridden down. He felt dizzy, almost a little drunk, and focused harder on the screen until all he was seeing were flashes of color with no form or substance at all.Xander wasn’t sure when he’d fallen asleep, but when he opened his eyes again, the movie was over, the TV had gone dark, and Harry was no longer curled into his side. He was alone.

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Xander tried not to spare much thought for Harry or his unexpected absence as he got up from the couch and tried to find something within the guest house to occupy himself, but laying low, as Clare had advised, was a lot more difficult when an afternoon of boredom seemed like a worse fate than ending up in jail for murder.It wasn’t long before he’d exhausted his options and decided to throw caution to the wind. Grabbing lunch in town seemed safe enough. There was a diner on Main Street that Xander had begun to frequent on Cara’s recommendation, and he doubted he’d run into much trouble there.There was an old car the Twists kept stored in the barn that was available for Xander’s use if he needed it. He tried to avoid touching the car at all costs. He’d been assured by Mitch himself that the thing was in perfect working order, but Xander didn’t trust the sputtering sound the engine had made the first time he’d gotten behind the wheel, and he wasn’t really looking to spend the meager dregs of his pay from Des on gas for the damn thing.But it wasn’t like Des was gonna drive him into town on a whim, so Xander nutted up and headed for the barn. He stopped just a few yards short of the doors, not expecting to see Hélène curled up against the faded wooden slats, looking like a mournful spirit in her pale grey pajamas, her blonde hair glimmering snow white in the sun.Xander approached cautiously, but she didn’t even look up at him as he neared her and cleared his throat, unsure of what to say.“Are you all right?” he asked, voice cracking a little on the last word. He wasn’t sure why Hélène unsettled him so much; she was half his size, it wasn’t like she was any kind of threat. “Do you want me to get Anne or something?”Hélène stood slowly, lips moving around something inaudible, and then she walked off in the direction of the main house without ever once acknowledging Xander’s presence.Xander stared after her for a few seconds, befuddled by the interaction—or lack thereof—until finally he regained his senses and remembered that he’d come to the barn with an actual purpose in mind.The car was every bit as rickety as the last time he’d driven it a couple days ago. Xander patted the steering wheel encouragingly. “Please don’t die on me,” he whispered. He was starting to worry that it wasn’t the cars that were the problem. Maybe he was just cursed.He’d barely made it through the barn doors before starting at the sound of knuckles rapping against glass. Xander slowed to a stop and rolled down the window, fully intending to tell Cara to fuck off, but she reached inside and unlocked the door to let herself in before he had a chance to say anything at all.“You gonna get the latch?” she asked nonchalantly as Xander stared at her in gob smacked silence.He blinked once and then threw the car into park, quickly getting out to pull the barn doors shut before climbing back in the car to find that Cara had only made herself even more at home in his absence, her booted feet now propped up on the dash as she reapplied her lip gloss using the side mirror.“I’m not taking you to lunch with me,” Xander said bluntly.Cara wasn’t fazed. “I’ll pay,” she replied.Xander’s mouth closed with a loud snap. “That’s not—” he started to say, his frustration only increased by her unwillingness to even look at him. “We aren’t going anywhere together,” he said pointedly. “Your brother already—”That got her attention. “My brother?” she interrupted, bringing her feet back down as she glanced up at Xander with wide eyes. “What exactly did Harry have to say about us?” she asked, arching an eyebrow expectantly.Xander gritted his teeth. She was taking all this in stride, as if it weren’t Xander’s neck on the line if they got caught. “He saw you and Gemma at the guest house,” he told her. “He wasn’t happy about…the implications.”“Harry’s an overprotective idiot,” Cara replied dismissively. “You gonna drive, or what?”Xander took a deep breath and put the car in drive again, despite every instinct screaming at him that it was a mistake. “I’d really rather not be chased out of town by a mob holding pitchforks and torches,” he said calmly.Cara had the gall to actually laugh. “It’s not that deep, Xander. You’re not the first guy from out of town I’ve messed around with.”“Yeah, I’m aware.”“Oh, is that what’s really bothering you, then? Maybe Gemma would be a better choice. She’s pickier.”Xander cast his eyes to the side as they turned sharply onto the long drive leading away from the Twist Ranch to glare at Cara, who blinked innocently back.“It’s not like that, and you know it,” Xander told her.“Do I? I mean, I barely know you at all, Xander. You could be just like any of the other men that roll through here looking for a quick fuck.”Xander did his best to keep his breathing measured, voice even as he responded. “Then why are you wasting your time with me?”“Because I’m hoping you aren’t like the rest of them.”Xander’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. He knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, but— “I like all of you fine—” he started to say, hoping the compliment at least would placate Cara long enough that he could get enough words out to actually turn her down. It had the opposite effect.“All of us?”“Both of you,” Xander amended, feeling his face go hot. He hadn’t intended to say it, and he wasn’t even sure what he’d meant by it, exactly. He was afraid to turn and look at Cara, unable to even guess at her reaction. He kept his eyes focused steadfastly on the road ahead even though they were moving down an empty highway at a crawl; not even a deer was likely to do much damage if by some chance it was dumb enough to actually hit them.“You’re still driving,” Cara pointed out a few seconds later, just as they rounded the last turn and Main Street finally came into view.“Yeah, well you’ve made it pretty fucking clear that you’re coming with me whether I like it or not.”Cara reached over and patted Xander on the head with a laugh. “Good boy,” she said, in a tone that made Xander’s blood boil.He knew she was joking around and hadn’t meant anything by the gesture, but his limbs locked up anyway, jaw tensed against the words that were building up in the back of his throat as soon as her hand touched his hair. He pulled up alongside the diner and parked, forcing himself out of the car in tandem with Cara, attracting more than a few stares from passers-by as they both shut their doors simultaneously.She walked ahead of him, figuring out their destination easily and snagging a booth from the hostess—Xander couldn’t remember her name but thought it was something to do with a flower—in the far corner of the tiny restaurant, as far from prying eyes as they could manage.So Cara wasn’t completely oblivious to the looks they were getting as they walked inside, which made her behavior all the more bewildering. Xander didn’t actually believe that she wanted to get him thrown out of town, but the way she was acting seemed to indicate otherwise.“What’s your game?” he asked as soon as they’d ordered.Cara pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows in a silent request for elaboration. Xander refused to give in.“It’s not a game,” she finally replied with a sigh. “It’s not like Gemma and I have a bet going to see who can hop on your dick first—” Xander almost choked on his water at hearing that. “It’s just lonely around here.”“Why don’t you leave?” Xander rasped, taking another big gulp of water in an effort to soothe the burning in his throat.“I did for a while,” Cara told him. “Graduated from UT Austin last year.” She paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe someday I can convince Mama to move somewhere more civilized, but it feels wrong to just ditch her.”Xander almost had to wonder if that comment was supposed to be a slight against him, but it couldn’t be. Cara didn’t know his story. “She’s not even your real mother,” Xander pointed out, realizing belatedly how insensitive it sounded once he’d said it.Cara, to her credit, just shrugged it off. “Real mom fucked off as soon as I was born. Anne’s the only one I’ve ever had.”“But she still doesn’t refer to you as her daughter,” Xander continued, hoping he wasn’t crossing the line by pushing her for more information.Cara’s smile tightened. “Well, I guess your husband having a kid with a prostitute is still a hell of a thing to get over.”Xander looked down at his water and wished that their food would just come out already so they could eat and leave as quickly as possible. This wasn’t at all the way he’d envisioned his quiet lunch outing going when he’d walked out the door earlier, and he was already regretting his decision to leave the ranch in the first place. He really should’ve listened to Clare.Cara seemed content to eat in silence once their food came out, but Xander’s curiosity got the better of him within just a few minutes of starting in on his southern-style macaroni—which was by far one of the best things he’d ever tasted.“How’s everyone else holding up?” he asked cautiously, between careful bites. “I mean, you seem oddly chipper, all things considered.”Cara shrugged. “Guess I just have thick skin.”Xander suspected there had to be more to it than that. He liked to think he had thick skin, too, but the sight of Michael’s body had still shaken him.And just like that, his appetite was gone.Cara raised her eyebrows as Xander pointedly pushed his plate to the side. “Finished already?” she asked, her tone indecipherable.Xander gave a curt nod. “Wasn’t that hungry,” he lied. But he still had the waitress box up the leftovers for him when she came back with the check—which Cara took without asking—already planning on sitting out any future meals with the Twists if he could get away with it.The stares that followed them out of the diner were more intense than the ones that had followed them in, if anything. Cara still didn’t seem to care. She buckled herself into the passenger seat of the rickety car while Xander struggled to get the engine to turn over, humming something quietly under her breath all the while.“You really need to stop worrying what everyone thinks about us,” she said, once they were back on the road again. “Pretty soon they’ll find out about you-know-what and it won’t even matter anymore.”That was a morbid way of looking at things, but Xander supposed she was probably right, at least about them not being the hottest item of small town gossip once news spread about Michael.“And your brother?” Xander asked, not wanting to acknowledge the latter part of Cara’s statement.She rolled her eyes. “You just let me deal with Harry, okay?”Xander was confident from her tone that was to be the end of the conversation, but then Cara reached over midway through their drive back to the ranch and confidently squeezed Xander’s dick through his jeans.“What the fuck!” Xander yelled, his hands jerking the wheel around wildly in shock. He remembered the brake just in time and the car slowly shuddered to a halt in the underbrush just off the side road leading up to the ranch.“Sorry,” Cara said after Xander turned the engine off, not sounding even a bit sincere in her apology.Xander stared back at her in disbelief. “Are you fucking with me?”Her expression didn’t budge a millimeter. “Look, if you tell me to back off right now, then I will. Cross my heart.”Xander felt his mouth drop open a little. There was a buzzing in his ears that couldn’t be solely attributed to the sound of insects in the underbrush all around them, reminding him that they were completely alone, for better or worse.Xander wasn’t sure which one of them moved first, but suddenly Cara’s mouth was on his, hot and wet in a way he hadn’t realized he’d missed. He drank her in hungrily, pulling her as close as the space would allow, trying to connect every square inch of their bare skin.It was clumsy and undignified, the both of them barely able to fit together in the cramped space. There wasn’t enough room for Xander to have really fucked Cara even if either of them had a condom, but they didn’t, and careless hands had to suffice.Xander came staring up at Cara’s uncannily familiar features, his mind miles away.They cleaned up separately, staring out their respective car windows into the sunny Texas woodlands, not a word uttered between them all the while. Xander’s hands were trembling when he went to turn the keys in the ignition. He made it a point not to look at Cara once, focusing instead on getting them out of the bushes he’d swerved into, only a few yards off the backroad that led to the Twist Ranch.“So,” Cara said once Xander started driving again, this time—thankfully—keeping her hands to herself. “I know Harry might have some kind of misplaced moral obligation when it comes to me and Gemma, but for the record I really don’t care if you sleep with her, too. You should just know that she’s a lot more…emotional about things. Romantic, I guess. Just don’t get her thinking it’s something it’s not, okay?”Xander’s ears were ringing again, his brain struggling to comprehend Cara’s proposition. “You’re giving me permission to screw your half-sister?” he breathed out, hardly believing he’d heard her correctly.“I’m telling you I don’t care what you do as long as no one gets hurt,” she replied, and there was an edge to her voice that made Xander very sure that if he did hurt Gemma, it wouldn’t be Harry he’d have to worry about.“Noted,” Xander said. He wasn’t planning to take Cara up on the proposition. One Twist was plenty of trouble already.It was blissfully quiet for a few minutes after that, until they’d turned off onto the drive leading up to the house, at which point Cara decided to open her mouth again. “You know, you’re a lot like Gemma, I think.”Xander grunted noncommittally, telling himself he didn’t care one way or the other if she elaborated on that point.“You’re both a lot more fragile than you want people to think you are,” she continued, oblivious to what Xander did or didn’t want. “You’re different than most of the guys who come through here. I wonder why that is?”Xander kept his mouth clamped shut and pulled up in front of the barn doors, waiting for Cara to get out and unlatch them so he could pull the car in. She didn’t move.“Let me guess: single mom? Sisters? Younger sisters?”Xander sighed. Clearly, she wasn’t going to let up till he played her game. “No, no, and no,” he replied.Cara hummed a little in surprise. “The mystery deepens. I wonder what it could be.”Xander wasn’t willing to answer that. “You gonna get out of the car, or should I just do it myself?” he asked.Cara got out with a huff. She didn’t stay around long enough to even say goodbye after she pulled the barn doors open, marching off toward the main house as soon as she’d made enough room for Xander to park. Xander didn’t follow her.To his credit, Xander didn’t visibly react when he opened the door to the guest house to find Harry lying on the sofa, bare feet propped up on the armrest with his loose hair hanging off the other end like a waterfall.“I saw you coming back with Cara.”“Mhmm.” Xander set the boxed-up leftovers on the counter and opened the tiny fridge in the kitchen to make room for them, ignoring Harry in favor of focusing on a simpler task.There was a creaking sound from behind and then the patter of footsteps on the tile. Xander could feel Harry hovering behind him before he could see him, but he still refused to acknowledge him in any way.“Can I have those?” Harry said, close enough that Xander could feel warm breath on the back of his neck.“What?” Xander replied, whirling around in surprise.Harry pointed innocently at the box on the island, as if the request had been perfectly normal for someone who had threatened Xander the last time he’d seen him hanging out with his sisters. “Your leftovers from the diner. Can I have them?”“Uh…sure,” Xander said, dumbfounded. He closed the fridge and stood with his back to the doors, watching as Harry grabbed a fork and dug into the lukewarm macaroni with gusto. He stared for a while, unsure of what exactly to say. “Are you okay?” he finally settled on after a few moments had passed.“What do you mean?” Harry asked without looking up.Xander quickly decided not to bring up Michael, though it was certainly more relevant. “Well, you haven’t threatened to kick my ass over me hanging out with Cara again,” Xander pointed out. There was still the possibility that Harry would change his mind about that if he found out just what they’d gotten up to. “Not that I’m complaining or anything.”“Doesn’t seem that important anymore,” Harry replied quietly.“So you’re okay with it?”Harry’s hand stilled, fork halfway to his mouth. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “But I figure anything I could do to you wouldn’t compare to what my dad would do if he found out, so it’s kinda moot.”Xander nodded tightly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Right.” He continued to watch Harry eat, wondering if this was the standard for their truce now.

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Things at the Twist Ranch had been surprisingly normal in the wake of Michael’s death. Xander was surprised at how little had changed, despite the looming absence at the breakfast table. The biggest change was in Sarah, who could hardly be persuaded to leave her bedroom in the days leading up to the funeral. It was a far cry from the fiery woman Xander had just been starting to get to know before the world had come crashing down around their ears.Xander, for the most part, had tried to keep his distance. It was bad enough that he had to deal with pointed stares whenever he went into town with Des, he didn’t need it from the constant influx of visitors flooding the ranch with their condolences and homemade casseroles.He had his fair share of those sitting in his fridge already, Anne only too glad to pawn them off on him to save space in the main house. He and Des had been eating a steady diet of cheesy potatoes for lunch for the past three days straight.Still, he’d been surprised when Gemma had come to the guest house and asked him if he needed something to wear to the funeral. He’d borrowed trousers from Mitch and an ill-fitting blazer from Harry that smelled like it had been stuffed in the back of his closet, unworn, for years.He’d then found himself sitting outside the main house somehow with Gemma and Joey, who was sitting on the tire swing swaying back and forth while chattering animatedly about how ‘Miss Yama’—the child psychiatrist Anne had taken her to, apparently—had told her that Michael had gone to live with God.Xander had only been half-listening while Gemma had fielded the more sensitive bits of the conversation when Joey suddenly piped up with something that had his ears perking up.“The ghost told me Michael was bad,” she said, her eyes darting around shiftily, as if she were worried she’d be caught confiding a secret. “And I was good and that’s why I had to stay.”She seemed genuinely worried, and Xander wondered if the police knew she was saying that sort of thing. Maybe she’d seen something the night Michael had disappeared without realizing it.“You’re both good,” Gemma reassured her. “The ghost was only a dream, Joey. What happened to Michael was an accident, remember?”Joey nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. Gemma sighed and turned to face Xander.“Can you go get Sarah, maybe?” she asked in a low voice, standing up to give Joey another boost on the swing, presumably to distract her.Xander nodded and stood up without saying a word. He meandered slowly back toward the front of the house, not really looking forward to what awaited him inside. But then he spotted a flash of white as he passed a bunch of junked farming equipment scattered along the sides of the barn, and he stopped.It was Hélène, of course, and Xander wished he didn’t know how guilty he would have felt if he just pretended he hadn’t seen her and continued on his way. Sometimes basic human decency was really damn inconvenient.“Hey,” he said, approaching the waifish woman carefully. It struck him, seeing her crouched down amongst the hollowed-out machines and scrap parts, just how small she was, like she barely existed at all. “Are you okay?”Instinct was what drove Xander to lean down toward her, extending a hand. He was slow to react when she struck, like a snake, leaving a white-hot handprint across his face in retaliation.He froze, stunned by the action, but then her voice, soft and distorted and furious, spurred him into action. “Get away from me,” she hissed.Xander practically ran to the main house, attracting more than a few confused looks when he cut through the living room, breathless and sweating a little, to get to the wing where the Rowlands lived. Sarah was right where he expected her to be, shut up in her room with Anne and Cara, who were trying to help her do her hair; her hands were shaking so much she couldn’t even hold the comb.Xander felt uncomfortable standing there in the doorway with all three women staring at him expectantly. He stumbled over his words in his haste to get them out. “Gemma needs some help with Joey,” he explained. “But I can probably find someone else—”“I’ve got it,” Mitch said, suddenly emerging from the ensuite bathroom, midway through doing up his tie. He gave Xander a meaningful nod, and Xander turned to lead him out of the room, only to find a tall blonde standing there blocking the doorway.“Oh,” she said as Xander jolted back in surprise to let her through, “sorry.” She looked Xander up and down and turned to Anne with an inquisitive look on her face. “Who’s he?” she asked, as if Xander wasn’t still standing right there.Anne sighed. “Xander, Taylor; Taylor, Xander,” she introduced quickly. “You’d best get on,” she urged Xander, who hadn’t moved since Taylor had walked into the room.“Yeah. Right.” He swiftly exited the room with Mitch hot on his heels, waiting till he was sure they were out of earshot before asking the question currently plaguing him. “Who is she?”Mitch gave him a look that conveyed he clearly didn’t think this was the time but answered anyway. “Harry’s girlfriend,” he said, oblivious to the strange pit forming in the bottom of Xander’s stomach. “She lives in Abilene and goes to school in Dallas, so he doesn’t see her much, but she drove down for the funeral.”“Oh.” Xander didn’t press him for anything more. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know more, and he couldn’t figure out why his insides felt all knotted up, like the way he’d felt the first time he’d ever kissed a girl.The feeling persisted throughout the funeral, where Xander, seated way in the back with Clare, could easily see Taylor and Harry sitting next to each other, hands clasped between their seats. He watched them closely when they stood up and embraced each other at the end of the service, and then pointedly looked down at his own shoes when he noticed Clare staring at him quizzically.Thankfully, she didn’t point it out even after the services had concluded and everyone was invited back into the Twists’ home for lunch. Xander wasn’t sure how he would’ve explained it if she had asked.Clare was still playing Xander’s knight in shining armor throughout the luncheon, keeping him out of sight as much as possible. Xander appreciated that and tried to enjoy his lunch in relative peace while he watched the funeralgoers interacting throughout the main living area of the house. It wasn’t until things started to wind down and people began saying their goodbyes that he started to suspect something was amiss.Xander had previously assumed everyone in the town was naturally close-knit, a consequence of living in close quarters, as it were, with little contact with the outside world. But he could see now an odd dynamic forming, the way that everyone giving their condolences to Anne was just on the frostier side of polite, how no one lingered longer than strictly necessary.Xander was confused by it, but not enough that he dared ask Clare while anyone was still around. And then he didn’t have a chance; she flooded out with the rest of the town at the end of the meal, giving Xander only an apologetic smile in goodbye.Xander was left sitting alone in the back corner of the dining room, feeling oddly helpless and wondering when he would be able to safely slip away and return to the guest house.Anne cornered him a few minutes later, right as he was gearing himself up to leave. “You mind cleaning up in the kitchen with me?” Anne asked softly, putting a single finger to her lips. “I don’t want the others catching on, or they’ll try to help.”“Sure,” Xander agreed easily. He had no issue hanging out with Anne for the afternoon. She was the only one of the Twists, even including Cara, that Xander felt truly comfortable around. She didn’t have any expectations of him, or at least none that he could readily see.Anne was quieter than usual as they washed the endless dishes from the luncheon, but that was to be expected after burying a child, one she considered family. Xander didn’t think anything of it until he saw silent tears starting to run down her face, mixing in with the soapy dishwater below her chin.Xander hesitated before putting a hand on her back, just a gentle brush between her shoulder blades. He wasn’t expecting her to spin into him before throwing her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest, staining his borrowed shirt with her tears.“I’d offer to talk it out with you,” he said earnestly, wrapping uncertain arms around her to return the embrace, “but I don’t know how much it would help. I don’t know you like the rest of them do.”Anne abruptly broke free from Xander’s hold, pulling away with a start. “No one in this fucking town knows me,” she said venomously, her face twisting into an angry scowl for a brief second before she seemed to realize what she had just said. “Oh my lord, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”“It’s okay,” Xander assured her. “Really, I mean.” He guided her over to the little kitchen table in the center of the room and sat her down, pulling up a chair close to hers. “The offer still stands, by the way,” he said. Seeing Anne’s look of confusion, he added, “To talk, I mean.”“Right,” she said with a nod and a soft smile. “I suppose I owe you an explanation for whatever that was.”Xander was ready to tell her that she didn’t owe him anything, particularly after how generous she’d been to him ever since he’d crash-landed in the Twists’ lives, but he could tell she wasn’t finished.It took her a little while to find the words. “My family’s been part of Junker for a long time,” she began. Her voice was a bit unsteady at first, but it evened out as she kept speaking. “The town used to a lot bigger than it is now. If you go down the backroads, you can still see some of the houses out in the woods, but most of them are abandoned now.”She paused then, staring down at her hands folded together on top of the table, and for a moment Xander wondered if she was going to finish.“There used to be a factory up the river,” she finally said, after sucking in a deep breath. “My grandfather built it and my father ran it in the sixties and seventies when I was a kid. They processed—” She stopped again, swallowing. Her eyes were still a bit red from before, and she looked like she still might break into tears again at any moment. “They processed laundry detergents and disposed of them in a containment area upriver. There was an accident, at some point, and I guess they didn’t realize—or maybe they just didn’t care—that it was polluting the water and seeping into the ground until decades later.”“Oh.” Xander imagined he was only getting a small fraction of the bigger picture from Anne’s story, but he was starting to connect the dots.“A lot of people died because of what my family did,” Anne said in a small voice. “And they haven’t forgiven me for it.”“Why haven’t you just left?” Xander asked, hoping it wasn’t too rude to ask. It seemed like the obvious choice, given the situation. He couldn’t imagine trying to make a life for himself in somewhere as small as Junker with the kind of weight that rested on Anne’s shoulders.“I did for a while,” Anne replied sadly. “But then I just felt guiltier for running away. So I came back.” She laughed lightly. “And let me tell you, I most certainly wasn’t welcomed back with open arms. But the money helped.” She leaned in closer to Xander, finally lifting her eyes to meet his gaze. “No one will admit it, of course, but we’re practically the only thing keeping this whole place above water.”Xander supposed that explained a lot of things about the Twist Ranch, like their proclivity for taking in strays with no questions asked, or why people like Des, and Hélène, and the Rowlands lived on the property instead of in homes of their own.“But I know it’s not enough for some people,” Anne continued. “I used to take the kids to church every Sunday, you know, but after a while it got to be too much. I started to worry they’d get bullied or worse, so finally, I just gave up. Tried to minimize the damage where I could, but I know they still got their fair share of resentment in school.”Xander furrowed his brows, following the line of thought to its natural conclusion. “You don’t think that what happened to Michael is because of your father, do you?” Xander asked carefully, worried that he was crossing a boundary somehow even though Anne had chosen to confide in him in the first place. “Like, as revenge or something?”Anne put a hand over her face and closed her eyes. “I don’t think anyone would go that far,” she said wearily, “but…I don’t know. Sometimes it just feels like this place—the river—it’s cursed. Or maybe our family is. Maybe I should have just let this place and my father’s legacy die out the way it was meant to.”Xander shifted uneasily in his seat. “I don’t know if this makes you feel any better,” he offered, “but you’re a hell of a lot better mom than the one I had.”“I have to admit,” Anne replied with a tearful laugh, “that makes me very happy and very sad, all at the same time. But thank you.” She leaned in close to him again. “Come here,” she said, winding her arms around Xander’s neck this time to give him another hug, this one a little less damp than the first.She held it for a long time, long enough for Xander to watch from over her shoulder as Harry wandered into the kitchen, and for Harry’s expression to change once he noticed his mother hugging Xander like he was her own son.Harry looked like someone had gut-punched him, a wounded look taking over his face, and Xander wondered if that would be enough to put an end to their shaky truce.“I thought you might want some help cleaning up,” Harry said to Anne after she’d let go of Xander and noticed her son standing there in the entryway.“Oh, thank you, dear, but Xander and I took care of it already. Is Sarah still doing okay?”Harry nodded, his jaw tensed in barely suppressed annoyance. “She’s hanging out with Taylor, so I thought I’d leave them alone for a bit. But if you don’t need me—” He didn’t wait long enough for Anne to reply, storming out in a huff before either Anne or Xander realized what was happening.“Did I say something?” Anne asked, turning to Xander with a quizzical look.Xander sighed. “He just doesn’t like me much,” he told her. He pushed out his chair and stood up with a groan. “I’ll go talk to him.”“Are you sure?”“Yeah, it’s not a big deal, really.” Xander didn’t want to out Harry as being jealous of Anne hugging him, though he couldn’t imagine what on earth Harry was even jealous of. If any of the siblings had a reason to be angry, it was Cara, and she didn’t seem to have a single care in the world. So what was Harry’s problem?Anne let him go with a concerned frown. Xander fervently hoped he wasn’t making yet another mistake.It had started drizzling sometime after the service, the sky now appropriately dreary, as if it had dressed for the occasion. Xander could see Harry standing outside in the rain through the window, and he pushed the door open slowly, trying to make his presence known before he approached.Xander still hadn’t settled on an opener yet when Harry spoke up and saved him the trouble. “What are you trying to do?” he demanded, turning just enough to give Xander a good look at him in profile, his triangular nose and full slips slick with rain. “Why are you so obsessed with my family?”“I’m not obsessed,” Xander retorted, feeling his face go hot. Of all the ways he’d imagined this conversation going, this hadn’t been one of them.“First you hang all over my sisters and now my mom?” Harry said, turning around to fully face Xander and taking a step forward, getting right up into his space. “Why don’t you go back to your own fucking family instead of trying to fuck everyone in mine?”Xander reached out and grabbed Harry’s collar without even thinking about it, bunching up the fabric in his fist as he pulled Harry in closer—was he going to punch him? He hadn’t decided yet.Xander didn’t punch him. Xander kissed him. And neither Harry nor Xander himself saw it coming.Xander could taste the pewtery rainwater still on Harry’s lips as the younger man kissed back just as fervently, overwhelming Xander’s senses in a way that he’d never felt before, not even with Cara, who reminded Xander so much of Harry himself.Xander was surprised when Harry was the first one to come to his senses, pulling away roughly with a gasp. He stared into Xander’s eyes as he reached up to untangle Xander’s hand from the collar of his shirt, and then he turned, and walked away into the woods without saying a word.

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Breakfast the next morning was an exercise in torture.Xander couldn’t help but feel like everyone in the room knew something had happened between him and Harry with how pointedly Harry was avoiding even acknowledging his existence, and it was killing him that he had no idea if Harry had actually told anyone what had happened. Not helping matters was the fact that Taylor was there eating with them, and Xander still felt sick to his stomach every time he so much as looked at her for reasons he no longer cared to examine.Xander was gone as soon as he finished eating, choosing to wait by the truck for Des instead of spending another minute slowly going crazy inside the house. Des, as expected, said nothing about Xander’s quick exit.In fact, he said nothing at all, choosing instead to work in absolute silence, which under different circumstances wouldn’t have bothered Xander at all, but owing to his confrontation with Harry the night before, now made his skin crawl. The silence persisted until their lunch break, at which point Des gave a pointed cough and stared at Xander. Xander slowly lowered his fork back into the Tupperware container and looked quizzically back at the older man.“You know, I’m not sure you didn’t have something to do with what happened to Michael,” Des told him in a gruff voice. “And I just want you to know that I’m keeping an eye on you until this all gets sorted.”Xander stared back at him in disbelief. “You’re kidding me, right?”Des’s expression didn’t waver.“Holy shit,” Xander muttered, standing up from the unfinished countertop they’d been sitting on while they ate. He started to make for the door, and then stopped, turning around to confront Des instead. “No, you know what?” he said, taking a step toward Des. “I’m not dealing with your bullshit anymore. If you think I had something to do with what happened to Michael, then that’s your problem. I’m not putting up with your shit anymore.”It was possibly a bit of an overreaction, but something had come over Xander the second Des had accused him of having a hand in Michael’s death. Fuck him, Xander thought as he marched out to Des’s pickup, finding the keys still in the ignition. Des could hitch a ride back to the ranch house for all he cared.He drove like a maniac on the winding roads, not slowing down until he reached the long drive leading up to the house. There was a flash of color in front of him suddenly; Xander swerved to avoid hitting whatever it was and slammed on the brakes, nearly colliding with a tree instead.The thing that had caused Xander to nearly crash turned out to be Cara, standing out in the middle of the road for some reason.He flung the truck door open and jumped out, stomping over to her with fire in his eyes. “What the hell were you thinking?” he yelled with enough force to catapult a flock of birds from a nearby tree.Cara didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out to take Xander’s hands in her own, causing him to flinch a little instead.“What were you doing out there?” Xander asked, softened by her apology and the somber mask on her face.“I saw you coming up the drive,” she told him. “I didn’t think you were going that fast. Didn’t you get my phone calls?”Xander’s face creased in confusion. “What phone calls?” he asked. He could feel his throat tightening as Cara continued to stare at him expressionlessly.“The sheriff’s department came back this morning just after you left,” she said quietly. “They officially suspect foul play now; asked Anne if they could search the guest house.”“Oh,” Xander replied, his voice suddenly feeling as if it were coming from very far away.“I went through your stuff before they got there,” Cara said, taking Xander by surprise and jerking him back to reality for a brief second.“What? Why?”She didn’t answer. “I found this,” she said instead, reaching into her pocket to pull out the shattered remnants of a phone, identical in make and model to the one in Xander’s pocket currently, except for the color of the case. She handed it to him. “It was on your bed. You didn’t have a password on it, so I looked.”“You what?” Xander asked, feeling all the air whoosh out of his body suddenly.Cara’s hands tightened around his as the corners of her mouth turned down into a slight frown. “How often do you read the list?” she asked, voice clear as a bell and leaving Xander’s head ringing in the aftermath.He swallowed hard, trying to keep his body from ripping itself out of Cara’s fragile grip. Running away wouldn’t fix anything this time. “Every morning,” he said roughly, remembering how he’d sat naked on the edge of the bed with the cracked screen sitting delicately between his palms just that morning before going down to the main house for breakfast. “I don’t want to forget,” he told her.He used to wish he could, after the first time his mother had hit him at thirteen, her wedding ring splitting open his top lip while his father looked on impassively, telling him, “You shouldn’t have made her late,” while Xander blinked up at him through helpless tears.Cara’s characteristically harsh features softened as she looked back at him, while Xander futilely tried to keep the emotions he could feel roiling in his gut from showing on his face. Still, he refused to break the connection between them, forcing himself not to flinch away even when Cara pushed up onto her tiptoes to place a gentle kiss against his forehead.“You deserve better,” she whispered in his ear, so quietly that Xander wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it. When she pulled back, she was still wearing that melancholy expression that desperately made Xander want to run in the other direction. “The cops didn’t find anything,” she reassured him. “They left a little while ago, so maybe you should just go lay down, all right?”Xander nodded distantly. “Des—” he said, suddenly remembering the fact that he’d stormed out on the other man and practically stolen his truck.“I’ll handle him,” Cara said. “Go on.”It was all the urging Xander needed. He wandered up the drive toward the guest house in a daze, bypassing the front door entirely and somehow ending up on the back porch instead. He sat down heavily on the steps capping the path that wound its way through the woods from the bank of the river, the sound of the water clearly audible in the silence even though Xander couldn’t see the source of the sound through the trees.He lingered there a while, until the pressure building in his head started to spread into his chest and limbs, prompting him to stand suddenly. It was easy to make the decision to follow the path down to the water. Xander stared out at the churning white water, wreathed on either side by overgrowth, trying in vain to empty his mind of everything but the sound.“You shouldn’t be here.”Xander started, whirling around to find Harry suddenly standing there behind him. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there looking out at the river, but he hadn’t heard Harry coming. Xander suddenly felt as if he were the one intruding, even though he’d been there first.“Especially not with the sheriff sniffing around,” Harry continued, scuffing his boot a little in the gravel. His face was all twisted up with some undefinable emotion, and Xander wondered if he was still hung up on what had happened between them.“You might as well just tell the whole town I kissed you,” Xander said suddenly, the sound of his own voice taking him by surprise. He felt a sick rush of sadistic pleasure when Harry jolted a little at the words, as if he’d been physically struck. “It’d really help round out the story, wouldn’t it? Wrap a neat little bow on the case of the child-murdering sexual deviant who goes around kissing men who don’t know they want it?”Xander wasn’t expecting the punch, didn’t realize what had happened until he was stumbling backwards, almost falling into the river from the force of the blow. Only Harry’s hand latching unexpectedly around his wrist saved him from catapulting backwards into the rapids.“Fuck,” Harry shouted, releasing Xander as soon as the older man had regained his balance. “You’re an asshole, but I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, bending over to put his hands on his knees and taking a few deep breaths.Xander raised a hesitant hand toward his lip. It was bleeding, split on the inside from his own teeth cutting into the flesh. “I deserved it,” he said honestly, though he didn’t regret what he’d said.“I still shouldn’t have hit you,” Harry replied without looking up. “Taylor always says I get too emotional,” he continued, oblivious to the fact that Xander’s vision was going red as he spoke, “that I need to stop letting my feelings control my decisions—”“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Xander demanded suddenly.Harry looked up in surprise, mouth hanging open. “What?”“You kissed me back,” Xander reminded him. “You have a girlfriend, and you kissed me back yesterday. And now you’re just gonna talk about her like it didn’t happen?”Harry slowly straightened up, looking too much like a kicked puppy as he did so for Xander’s anger to persist. It was quickly replaced by bone-deep exhaustion instead.“What do you want me to do about it?” Harry asked quietly, startling Xander with the frankness of the question. He’d expected more protesting, more denials. “You want me to dump a girl I’ve known for years, because what? Some asshole drifter kissed me, and I got a bit confused? I don’t fucking know you.”Xander let out a bitter laugh. “But you still kissed me back.”Harry’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “I did.” He took a step back, and Xander was surprised by how much it hurt. “But that still doesn’t change anything,” he continued. “What I have with Taylor, it’s—it’s not perfect, but it’s the only thing I know.” His eyes pleaded with Xander to understand, but Xander didn’t want to. “I can’t run away from all my problems like you.”Xander gaped at Harry just long enough for the younger man to realize what he’d said, and he then stormed off despite Harry’s protests and apologies echoing faintly through the trees. Harry didn’t follow him.Xander ate dinner by himself that night, cobbling together a poor-man’s meal from what little there was stocked in the cupboards. He watched TV while he ate, pretending not to see the lights from the main house across the way shining in through his windows, mocking him.He watched a news program as he often did in the evenings, desperately trying to feel connected to the outside world in some way, searching for reassurance that the world was indeed still turning outside the eerie isolation of Junker’s surrounding woodlands. At some point, the monotony of the program lulled him into an uneasy sleep, his soup bowl sitting nearly empty on the couch beside him.The sound of the door opening jerked Xander awake. He almost flung the bowl onto the floor in his haste to turn around, searching blearily for the source of the noise.The kitchen lights flicked on, revealing Harry standing there in the still-open doorway, a plate neatly wrapped in foil balanced in one hand. “Thought you might be hungry,” he said, looking appropriately wary after their confrontation earlier that day. “Everyone went to bed already, but I couldn’t sleep—” He stopped. “Here.”Xander stood up and took a tentative step forward. Once he was certain that Harry wasn’t going to run away or punch him again, he moved to take the plate from him. “Why are you playing errand boy?” he asked pointedly.Harry’s mouth pursed into a thin line as he shifted from one foot to the other. “Des,” he finally answered. “He told Robin about your little stunt earlier, with the truck, and there’s the whole…police issue…. They both agreed Cara and Gemma should keep clear of you.”“But not you,” Xander surmised.“No one thought there was any reason to warn me off,” Harry replied, as if that was all there was to it. But he still looked a bit constipated, like something else was bothering him. Whatever it was, he didn’t seem willing to share, and Xander wasn’t going to ask. “Mama’s still on your side, though,” Harry added as an afterthought. “And Cara, obviously.”“But not Gemma?”Harry hesitated. “Gemma’s just…scared,” he answered. “I don’t think she knows what to believe.” He shut the door finally, clearing up any doubts Xander might’ve had about his intentions for staying. “Taylor’s asleep,” he said meaningfully. “She doesn’t know I’m out here.”Xander’s mouth curled into a scowl. “So what, you’re just going to keep lying to her?”“Probably,” Harry answered, surprising Xander with his honesty. He didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed about it.“Why are you even dating her?” Xander demanded. He was still holding the plate Harry had brought him, but he was scared that if he moved to set it down, Harry might bolt.“I told you.”“No, you didn’t.”Harry blinked twice at Xander and wandered over to the couch, throwing himself onto it with a sigh. Xander took that as his cue to unwrap the foil from the plate, delighted to find a hunk of lasagna and a slice of garlic bread underneath. He grabbed a fork from the kitchen and moved over to the living room to join Harry, perching himself on the armrest of the couch while he ate.“Mama likes her,” Harry said simply, as if that was explanation enough. “I don’t want to make her sad.”“Didn’t peg you for such a mama’s boy,” Xander replied through a mouthful of warm pasta. “Must be nice.”Harry arched an eyebrow in interest. “You don’t get along with your mom?”“You could say that,” Xander said with a dry laugh. He didn’t explain any further. Harry didn’t push him for more. Xander continued eating as they sat in silence for a moment, before his curiosity got the better of him again. “Were you ever in love with her?” he asked.“How do you know I’m not in love with her now?” Harry shot back. Xander could see the muscles in his forearms tensing as he replied.“Because you would’ve said so when I asked why you were with her,” Xander pointed out.Harry was quiet for a while. “I don’t know,” he said finally in a soft voice. “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to feel like.”Xander shoveled in another bite of pasta, scraping the plate clean. He set it to the side and turned, tucking his feet into the gap between Harry’s body and the back of the couch. Harry didn’t bat an eyelid at the action. “I was in love with a girl before I came here,” he admitted, the words tumbling out of his mouth unbidden.Harry’s eyes widened infinitesimally, like a child being read a bedtime story. “Were you together?”“Yeah,” Xander said. “For a long time.”“But you don’t love her anymore.”“No.”Xander wasn’t expecting the warm hand that suddenly wound around his ankle, softly caressing the bit of exposed skin between his joggers and holey socks. “Is this okay?” Harry asked, squeezing a little tighter as he spoke.Xander nodded, pretending not to notice the flash of heat that coursed through him at Harry’s touch. “Should we—should we talk about this?” he asked, gesturing vaguely between the two of them.Harry’s grip continued to tighten in increments, his thumb rubbing small circles into the inside of Xander’s ankle. “Do you want to?” he asked, fluttering his eyelashes in a way that would have made Xander weak at the knees if he’d been a girl.He still felt a little breathless, anyway. “No,” he decided. “No, I don’t.” Maybe it was better to leave things as they were, just so he could have at least this much from Harry.They hardly spoke and barely touched each other after that, both of them falling into opposite sides of Xander’s bed after washing up, the space between them like a yawning void. Xander only managed to hold out for so long before it was too much to take; he flipped over onto his left side and reached out to pull Harry’s body into his, ignoring the little gasp of surprise that fell out of the other man’s mouth.“I don’t know what it is about you,” Xander admitted, the truth of it cutting him deep. Now that he’d let himself acknowledge the strangely magnetic attraction he felt toward Harry, it was like he had no control over it whatsoever. He might have been embarrassed if he weren’t too tired to do anything but sleep.The first rays of dawn were filtering through the shutters when Xander was gently woken by Harry’s hands on his shoulders.“Hey,” Harry whispered, leaning in so close that Xander could feel Harry’s breath against his cheek.Xander was still half-asleep when he clumsily bumped his face into Harry’s in an approximation of a kiss, not thinking about the potential consequences of the action. Harry looked stunned for a second, and then leaned down to press his lips against Xander’s, softly kissing back. He pulled away far too soon.“I have to get back to the house before Taylor’s alarm goes off,” he explained.Xander groaned and finally let him go, realizing that it had been his octopus-like grip keeping Harry in bed with him. Xander watched as Harry pulled his boots back on in the doorway, trying in vain to keep his eyes open long enough to watch him go. He thought he might have felt the soft pressure of lips against his forehead before he drifted off again, but there was no way to be sure it wasn’t just a dream.

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Xander woke for the second time that morning to the sound of insistent knocking at the front door. He stumbled out into the living room in just a pair of boxer shorts and socks, certain in his sleep-addled mind that it was Harry returning to climb back in bed with him now that Taylor was gone.It wasn’t Harry standing out on his doorstep.Xander’s eyes shot open as he swung the door open to reveal what looked like the entirety of Junker’s police force waiting outside, at least half of whom were armed, with hands already hovering over their belt holsters.“Morning,” he said in a hoarse voice, addressing the deputy he’d spoken to previously when he was first interviewed after Michael had been found. He attempted a smile, but it wasn’t returned.“You might want to put on some pants,” Deputy Azoff said in a grave voice.Sure enough, Xander was granted a few minutes to make himself semi-presentable, with Jeff standing at his back all the while, before he was promptly put in handcuffs and taken down to the station.Xander watched from inside the sheriff’s vehicle as seemingly every citizen in Junker funneled out of their homes and places of business to gawk at the procession of police cars coming down the main road. Their eyes didn’t so much as waver when Jeff pulled him out of the car and marched him into the station. Xander felt like he was in an old western, being marched to the hangman’s noose without trial while all the angry townsfolk looked on in smug satisfaction.Xander wasn’t dumb. He knew from the second he’d been put into cuffs, well before they shut him away in the interview room, that the best course of action was to stay quiet and wait for a lawyer. Xander didn’t have a lawyer. And he couldn’t afford one. And as he’d been informed by Jeff, it would probably be a while before they could get a public defender down from San Antonio or Austin to come see him.His impatience won out. He just wanted to leave, and the sooner he could do that the better. So Xander agreed to talk.The first thing Xander learned was that Jeff’s father, Irving, was the sheriff, and that he was a mean son of a bitch. Xander decided after less than five minutes with the man that he greatly preferred the younger Azoff.The second thing Xander learned, with an icy chill flooding his body, was that Joey was missing.And finally, as Irving so gleefully informed Xander, he was the only person at the Twist Ranch who didn’t have an alibi.Xander felt sick to his stomach when he realized the reason for that was because Harry must have told them he’d been with Taylor all night, not wanting to jeopardize his sham of a relationship even when Xander’s fucking freedom was on the line apparently. He clenched his fists under the table and clammed up after that, refusing to answer even the most innocuous of queries.They let him go pretty soon after that, Jeff looking almost as frustrated as Xander felt as he unlocked the cuffs and told him he was free to go. Xander would have felt sorry for him in another life. The kid clearly wasn’t cut out to be a cop.Xander walked out of the station a free man, but a marked one, with the eyes of the town still following his every move. He was hardly dressed for a trek through the woods back to the Twist Ranch in socks and slide sandals, and opted instead to march the opposite direction down Main Street, ignoring the prying eyes that trailed him all the way to the gas station where he’d first met Clare.She was behind the counter when Xander walked in through the front doors, and he wondered if she ever got a day off. But that was a question for another time.“You look like crap,” she said by way of greeting.“Thanks. Can I use your phone?”She frowned and handed it over, taking the time while Xander looked through her contacts to find Harry’s number to examine him fully. “What happened to your wrists?” she asked, noting the marks from where the handcuffs had dug into his skin. They were just scrapes, nothing major, but the raw flesh was very noticeable.Xander didn’t answer, too busy biting his fingernails as he listened to the phone ring, but Clare’s eyes widened a second later in belated realization.“They didn’t,” she gasped, horrified. “You’re kidding me!”Xander shook his head, trying to convey silently that no, he wasn’t kidding her, and yes, they had arrested him for Michael’s murder. Xander suspected that she didn’t know about Joey yet, and he wasn’t about to be the one to break the news.Eventually Xander got Harry’s voicemail. He listened to the chipper voice on the other end asking him to leave a message, and then hung up just before the tone sounded. “Shit,” he muttered, lowering the phone and staring down at the screen helplessly. Well, there was always Cara, he supposed, even if Des had forbidden her from associating with him. Fuck Des.“What are you doing?” Clare asked. He could see her out of the corner of his eye trying to lean over the counter to see the phone screen as he typed out a message.“Texting Cara,” he replied shortly. “I need a ride back to the ranch.”“Ah,” Clare replied. “You know, I would just take you back myself if Adam was here,” she told him.Xander nodded appreciatively, too drained from his experience at the station to must up any additional words.“For what it’s worth,” she continued, “I don’t think you had anything to do with what happened to Michael.”“Thanks,” he said, wishing it sounded like he actually meant it.“I’m really sorry they’re putting you through this,” she added.He shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. It wasn’t. “They’re just doing their jobs.” After all, it wasn’t the sheriff’s fault Harry had outright lied to them about where he’d been last night. “You mind if I sit down?” he asked wearily.Clare cleared a space for him behind the counter while Xander set her phone back down, watching it carefully as he tried not to succumb to the exhaustion he could feel overwhelming his body now that the adrenaline from his arrest had fizzled out.It took nearly an hour for Cara to reply, an hour in which Xander had been stewing in his own anger and frustration with no outlet. He wasn’t about to unload on Clare, who had innocently gone back to watching a movie on her laptop as soon as she was confident Xander had everything he needed; she had even gone to the trouble to get him a lemonade from the fridge in the back, reassuring him that she would cover the cost if Adam cared enough to ask.Xander liked Clare a lot. She would have been a better choice, he thought, than Cara or Gemma or Harry, but of course it was just his luck that his brain had fixated on the worst people in the entire town. It made perfect sense to him, though. Why wouldn’t he end up replacing the toxicity in his former life in the form of his mother and ex-girlfriend with just more of the same?It was thoughts like these that plagued Xander up until the second he saw Clare’s phone light up next to the register. He leapt for it with a loud exhale, startling Clare into tugging off her headphones to look over at Xander as he read the reply to his call for help.“She on her way?” Clare asked, waiting for Xander to nod before breathing out a sigh of relief. “Thank god. I was about ready to call up Adam and ask him to come in early just so I could take you myself.”That pulled a chuckle out of Xander. “You’re a good friend, Clare,” he told her. He was going to miss her when he finally escaped Junker’s clutches.She blushed. “Aww shucks, Xander,” she said mockingly. “That’s awful kind of you.” Xander shook his head and playfully socked her shoulder, getting a giggle in response. Her eyes brightened a few seconds later. “Hey, they’re here!”“They?” Xander asked, turning around to look out the front doors, where—sure enough—Cara was seated in Des’s pick-up, Gemma next to her in the passenger seat. And behind them, in the back of the cab, was none other than Hélène. Xander felt his stomach drop.He wasn’t expecting Clare to accompany him out, but she skipped ahead of him without a word, flying through the doors and marching up to the back window of the truck. Xander watched from afar as she engaged in a stilted conversation with her adoptive sister, waiting for the two of them to finish before he approached. He wanted as little contact as possible with Hélène after what had happened during their last two encounters, and he certainly wasn’t looking forward to spending the drive back crammed into a tiny truck cab with her.Clare finally turned and walked back toward the store, clapping Xander on the chest with a quiet, “Good luck,” as she passed. He definitely needed it.The drive to the ranch was every bit as uncomfortable as Xander had envisioned. Neither Cara nor Gemma had said a word to him since he’d gotten in the truck, and Hélène had spent the entire drive staring at him with those disconcertingly pale eyes.Xander practically leapt out of the truck as soon as they got back to the ranch. He caught Cara as she was coming out of the driver’s side, grabbing her wrist loosely in his hand and feeling slightly encouraged when she didn’t immediately pull away.That feeling disappeared when she refused to meet his eyes as he spoke. “Hey,” he said softly. “We still good?”Xander looked to Gemma, who caught his gaze for just a moment before glancing away again to help Hélène out of the cab. She said nothing.Cara’s nostrils flared. “I don’t know,” she said finally.Xander let go of her wrist as if he’d been burned. He watched her follow her sister and Hélène back into the main house, bitterly wondering just what he’d done to deserve any of this.Xander skulked in the front room of the guest house for the rest of the morning, peering through the gaps in the shutters at the main house, waiting for someone to emerge. Harry, in particular, since he had no doubt that even if he had Harry’s number, he’d only be ignored once again. Evidently Harry wasn’t keen on taking anyone’s calls. Xander hoped, perversely, that that was the guilt at work.A few hours passed before Xander saw movement outside the windows. He jumped up, confirming that yes, it was Harry walking by, on his way back to the main house from the paddock by the looks of it. Xander didn’t waste any time, jogging out of the guest house to meet him before he gave himself a chance to chicken out.Harry saw him coming a mile away. He paused in the middle of the grass, wiping his hands down the front of his jeans as he waited for Xander to approach.“No offense,” Harry said once Xander was in earshot, “but I’m not exactly in the mood to fuck you now that my best friend’s only surviving kid is missing.”Xander stopped dead in his tracks. Did Harry really think that Xander would try to sleep with him after everything that had happened with the sheriff’s department? Xander’s blood started to boil.“If I was looking for sex, I could’ve just gone to one of your sisters instead,” Xander retorted, savoring the look of hurt and disgust that flitted across Harry’s face for a second before it hardened into an angry scowl.“Fuck you.”“Thought that wasn’t on the table.”“What the hell is your problem?”“My problem?” Xander replied. “How about you throwing me to the wolves this morning because you want to keep lying to some girl you don’t even care about.”Harry scoffed. “Yeah, cause telling the truth would have really worked for both of us,” he said sarcastically. “This isn’t San Francisco, Xander, it’s Bumfuck, Texas. If I’d told them I was with you, they would have just assumed we were a pair of pedophiles and locked us both up.” He shook his head dismissively. “Child-murdering sexual deviants, remember?” he said, throwing Xander’s own words back into his face.“You really think that people who have known you their entire lives would think that about you?”“People here don’t like me nearly as much as they pretend to,” Harry replied, reminding Xander of what Anne had told him about the townsfolk’s grudge against the Twists. Still, it seemed ludicrous to assume it would extend as far as accusing one of their own of murdering a child.And despite the part of Xander’s brain that wanted nothing more than to throw all rationality to the wind and forget the morning’s events had ever happened, he knew Harry didn’t deserve to be so readily forgiven. “You still shouldn’t have lied,” he said, feeling almost childish for pointing it out, even though he knew firmly that he was in the right and Harry was the one who had fucked up.Harry sucked in a deep breath, pulling his bottom lip into his mouth and releasing it. The animal part of Xander wanted to lunge forward and bite it, but he managed to restrain himself.“Okay,” Harry said finally. “You’re right. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about what happened with the Azoffs. Hopefully Irving wasn’t too hard on you.” He smiled, and Xander hated himself for the way his heart suddenly started beating faster.“He was a bit of a curmudgeon,” Xander said with a shrug. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”Harry smirked. “I bet,” he replied, his voice heavy with meaning. Xander didn’t have time to consider the implications of the statement before Harry was opening his mouth again to give him whiplash. “But I still think it’s better if no one knows about…whatever this is,” he said.“Fine,” Xander replied curtly. “But maybe next time you could do me a solid and give me a quick head’s up before you sell me down the river, maybe?”Harry frowned. “No promises.”Xander couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss him or punch him. But there were more pressing matters to address now that he finally had Harry alone. “Listen,” he said, “about us—”“Thought you didn’t want to talk about it,” Harry shot back, giving Xander a sharp look.“I didn’t,” Xander said. “I still don’t. But we should.”Harry’s eyes darted from Xander’s face to the house. He looked uneasy. “Not right now,” he said. “After Taylor leaves, we’ll talk, okay?”“Okay.” Xander was well-aware that he was too easily satisfied, especially when it came to Harry, but he was greedy, too. He reached out to pull the younger man into him.“Don’t,” Harry said shortly, shying away from Xander’s touch. He shook his head, glancing sideways toward the main house again, where they could be easily seen from the bay windows.But Xander didn’t give a damn anymore. He yanked Harry into him, hard, kissing away the half-hearted protests until Harry melted into his arms.“I hate you,” Harry said as he pulled away, looking like he meant anything but.“Me too,” Xander replied with a soft smile.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“It’s bullshit,” Clare announced loudly over the sound of discordant rock music blasting from the portable speaker she’d jammed into the cupholder in the front of her car.Xander nodded along passively, not really paying attention to what she was saying at all, but willing to let her keep carrying the conversation since it meant he could focus on the fact that Taylor was finally gone. Which meant he could actually spend more than five minutes alone with Harry for the first time since the night Joey had disappeared.It had been three days now, and the police still had nothing to show for their efforts. Joey was still missing, Xander was still their prime suspect, and the Twists were still avoiding him, which was the main source of Clare’s consternation.“I mean, why are they even letting you stay on the ranch if they think you’re a murderer?” she asked, waving a hand around wildly, which worried Xander a bit. She wasn’t exactly the best driver in the world; he would’ve been more comfortable if she kept both hands on the steering wheel, at least.“Maybe they want to make sure the cops know where to find me,” Xander replied absently. He was a bit surprised by it all, too. After learning that Robin and Des had very little confidence in his innocence, Xander had expected to find himself out of a job and without a place to stay. But the Twists had remained civil towards him, albeit impersonal. He certainly wasn’t welcome at the dinner table any longer, but once Clare had caught wind of what was happening, she’d stepped in and invited Xander back to her place for meals after work.“You should come live with me instead,” she proposed out of nowhere.Xander couldn’t help but laugh. “You live in a studio above the coffeeshop,” he pointed out.“I’ve got sofa-space!”It was a nice thought, but they both knew Xander was better off staying in the Twist’s guest house even if things were a bit strained. Thoughts of leaving Junker in the near future had vanished from Xander’s mind after the way things had turned out with Harry, and Mitch certainly had other things to worry about that were more important than fixing Xander’s truck, which gave him a good excuse to stick around. Not that he thought the Azoffs would even let him leave, at this point.“You seem distracted,” Clare finally said as they pulled onto the Twists’ drive. “What’s up?”Xander sighed deeply. “Just—the investigation, you know,” he fibbed. “Wondering what’s gonna happen.”Clare took the excuse at face value, thankfully, and gave Xander a warm hug before sending him off on his way. He waited at the top of the hill and waved down to her until she spun the car around again before heading to the guest house at a near sprint.Harry was waiting for him when he burst into the front room, sitting on the island with his long legs dangling down over the edge, making an inviting space between his splayed-out thighs. Xander slipped into it easily and brought up his hands to gently cradle Harry’s face, kissing him hard in one moment and then soft and slow the next.Harry allowed it to continue for some time but pulled away far sooner than Xander would have liked. He reached up to take Xander’s hands in his, pulling them down from his cheeks as he stared deeply into the other man’s eyes.“Hey. Mind taking a breather for a moment?” Xander did mind, very much, and he planned on saying so, but Harry’s next few words splashed over him like a bucket of ice water. “Someone named Tori has been trying to video chat with you for the last half hour.”“What?”“I’m gonna assume from your face that it’s not somebody you particularly want to talk to.”“She’s my ex-girlfriend,” Xander replied flatly.“Ah. So I guess you aren’t keen on answering.”“No, not really.” Xander was content to leave it at that and go back to kissing Harry until he forgot Tori ever existed, but an insistent musical tone sounded from the open bedroom door, prompting him to lean his forehead against Harry’s chest with an exasperated groan.“Maybe you should just tell her to fuck off,” Harry suggested, scratching gently at Xander’s scalp with blunt fingernails.“Not in so many words,” Xander replied with a sigh as he pulled away. But Harry was right. Tori was notoriously persistent when she wanted something.He wandered into the bedroom with Harry following close behind, quickly hopping into the desk chair and hitting ‘answer’ on the call. He wanted to get this over with.Seeing Tori’s face again was like getting punched in the gut.“I’ve been trying to call you for ages,” she said, dark mauve lips twisted into an irritated scowl. As if she was the one being inconvenienced.“Yeah,” Xander replied, resolutely pretending his mouth hadn’t gone bone-dry at just the sound of her voice. “I know.”“Hmm. Well, you’re lucky it’s me and not your mom calling. I had to talk her out of it after she got the same phone call I did from some Podunk town in Texas asking about you.”“Asking what, exactly?” Xander’s skin was crawling. He wanted to turn tail and run, just high-tail into the woods until he collapsed from exhaustion and died. Anything but listen to his ex-girlfriend mention his mother for the first time since he’d finally started to convince himself that he could lead a life without either of them in it.“I don’t know, stuff? They hounded me for half a day before I even bothered to pick up. They kept asking about what you were like in school and if you had any problems at home and stuff.”It was a while before Xander could muster up an adequate response, his tongue paralyzed with mounting anxiety. If Irving Azoff had called his mother, that meant they were that much closer, if they didn’t already know, to finding out about all the unsavory details from his past. He wondered how long it would take them to get to the police report about the night before he’d left for good.“What did you tell them?” he asked once he’d finally found his voice again.“Nothing,” she replied, sounding annoyed that he even had to ask. “We want you to come home, Xander.”Of course she did. And that couldn’t happen if Xander ended up in jail for murder. Tori had yet to get it through her head that he wasn’t coming back, apparently.“Do you know if my mom said anything?” he asked, now more worried about his mother’s penchant for petty revenge more than anything else.Tori pursed her lips but didn’t answer, her eyes distant all of a sudden. “Hey,” she said instead, “who is that you’re with?”Xander’s eyes flicked up to the thumbnail of his own broadcast, where he could just see Harry silhouetted along the edge of the frame. Xander slammed the laptop closed without answering, instantly ending the call. He was going to pay for that later in the form of about a billion demanding messages from Tori, but those were easily ignored nowadays.“I hope you weren’t about to say something incriminating,” Harry remarked a bit sarcastically as he took a step forward. He sank down onto the edge of the bed next to Xander with a put-upon sigh.“Not funny,” Xander retorted.“Okay, maybe not, but—” Harry flumped down, letting the hem of his t-shirt ride up enough that Xander could see his bellybutton, wreathed on either side of his hips by twin laurels. Xander wanted to bite into them. “I’ve been going crazy this past week,” Harry admitted, oblivious to the less than innocent thoughts running through Xander’s mind. “With Joey, and everything else…I feel like I can’t even talk about it or someone will start crying.”Xander reached toward Harry and placed a comforting hand on his knee, though whether Harry or himself was the one more affected by it was anyone’s guess. “Does anyone still expect to find her…alive?” he asked reluctantly.Harry tensed up for a second and then shook his head minutely.Xander let out a long sigh. “I can’t help but feel like this is somehow my fault,” he admitted in a quiet voice, squeezing Harry’s kneecap just that much tighter. “All of this happened right after I got into town. Like someone was waiting for an opportunity to pass the blame or something, and if I’d never come here—”Harry sat bolt upright, expression severe. “If you’d never come here, someone else would’ve,” he said fiercely. “Or the timing’s just a coincidence and this would have happened either way. It’s not your fault.”“I know, but—”“It’s not your fault,” Harry said again. He reached out to pull Xander in for another kiss. “It’s not your fault.”They fell back into the bed together, Xander landing with his hips between Harry’s thighs. Xander kissed him slowly, deliberately, wanting to draw the moment out for as long as possible. They hadn’t done anything but kiss since this thing had started, and Xander was fine with that; neither had brought up sex since their cruel confrontation the day of Xander’s arrest. He didn’t want to pressure Harry into addressing it again until he was ready to bring it up himself.Xander kept his hands safely pressed on either side of the mattress with Harry’s head in between, despite the temptation to stray. He’d never been with a man before, but he knew how it worked, and it certainly wasn’t something he was afraid of. Clearly, the same couldn’t be said of Harry, who was so terrified of breaking his mother’s heart that he wouldn’t even dump a girl he didn’t love.Xander was surprised when the kissing stretched on far longer than he expected, and then again when Harry suddenly tore his lips away to press them to the underside of Xander’s chin instead. He moaned, feeling Harry’s hips jerk upwards in response, pressing firmly enough into his belly that he could tell in an instant Harry was hard in his jeans.Harry seemed to come to the same realization simultaneously. He froze underneath Xander for a long moment, and then as soon as Xander moved back to ask what was wrong, he jumped out of the bed entirely and fled to the kitchen.Xander found him there a few seconds later, pulling various ingredients he’d stolen from the main kitchen out of the cupboards and babbling about making dinner. Xander stared at him in openmouthed confusion.“I can make a mean spaghetti,” he was saying, already breaking out the pots and pans without even consulting Xander first. “We’ll have to skip the garlic bread, but that’s—”“Harry,” Xander said, placing a careful hand on the younger man’s shoulder and slowly spinning him around till they were facing each other. The expression on Harry’s face could only be described as deer-in-the-headlights. “I wasn’t going to try to push you into doing something you aren’t ready for,” Xander reassured him.Harry bit down on his lower lip. “And what if I’m never ready?”Xander hadn’t really considered that possibility. “I guess I’ll have to get used to watching porn after we make out, then,” he replied after a moment’s consideration.That got a laugh out of Harry. “You’re not serious, are you?”“Absolutely I am.” Xander cocked his head to the side, examining Harry’s face for signs of discomfort. “Is it me being a man that bothers you?” he asked, deciding to just put it out there.Harry looked even more panicked now. “It’s not that,” he said, quickly amending, “well, not just that. I just always thought—with Taylor, I mean—I didn’t really like it so much? I just thought I wasn’t a very physical person, but with you—” Harry flushed a deep red.Xander had never felt more flattered in his life, but he still wasn’t about to pressure Harry into moving too quickly, no matter how much other parts of him wanted to. “Look, I’m all right taking it as slow as you want,” Xander told him. “This is the first time I’ve been with a guy—hell, it’s the first time in years I’ve been with someone who wasn’t Tori, so. Yeah, I’m fine with it.”Harry didn’t respond, but he looked a bit more relaxed as he went about preparing their meal. He only broke focus once, when Xander got a bit too handsy, pushing him away with a gentle warning glance.Dinner was ready within the hour and tasted every bit as good as it smelled. Xander had been practically salivating over the pot of tomato sauce on the stove in the later stages of cooking and had to be shooed away by Harry twice.“God,” Xander said, practically moaning as he shoveled another forkful of spaghetti into his mouth, “you must’ve really learned something from your mom, cause this is almost as good as her cooking.”“Only almost?” Harry asked, a little more reserved with his eating, though he had an oddly endearing habit of sticking his tongue entirely out of his mouth on every bite.“Well, nothing could beat those enchiladas she made the second night I was here,” Xander pointed out. He still had dreams about those enchiladas. He missed them. And to a degree, he sort of missed eating with the Twists, too. It was nice having Harry to himself sometimes, but he’d privately enjoyed feeling like he was part of one big patchwork family.Xander assumed Harry would leave as soon as they finished dinner, but he wandered over to the couch instead after cleaning his plate, settling in on one side and looking expectantly back at Xander.“What do you wanna watch?” Xander asked cautiously as he sat down on the other side and picked up the remote.Harry shrugged. “Something happy,” he said simply.Xander nodded. “Okay.” He could do happy.They settled on an old comedy from the nineties and were halfway through, with Harry’s head having migrated to Xander’s lap somewhere around the thirty-minute mark, when there was a light rap at the door.Both men scrambled up off the couch, Harry looking frantically around the room while Xander hurried over to the door and put his hand over the handle, ready to shut it if his visitor decided they weren’t willing to wait for him to let them inside. Xander gestured toward the kitchen island, mouthing ‘hide’, as if that wasn’t already Harry’s plan.Xander waited just long enough for Harry to fold in his gangly limbs behind the tiny counter-block before opening the door to reveal Gemma standing on the front steps with her arms over her chest, her eyes bloodshot and lashes still damp with the remnants of her tears.“What’s wrong?” Xander asked as she ducked under his outstretched arm to get inside. That hadn’t been part of his plan. His heart-rate ratcheted up as she walked straight up to the island and spun around to face Xander again, putting her back right up against Harry’s ill-conceived hiding place.She didn’t answer, her mouth twitching with suppressed sobs as she rubbed at her eyes.Xander took a hesitant step toward her. “Gemma, you know you shouldn’t be here,” he tried, reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder, intending on gently guiding her out of the guest house, hopefully without too much of a fuss.The last thing he was expecting was for her to catch his hand and pull him into her, reaching down with her other hand to try and undo his pants. Xander jumped back a foot, ripping his hand out of her grip.“Gemma,” he started, still backing away, but he didn’t have time to get out another word before she suddenly burst into tears.Xander froze, unsure how to handle this new development. He only had a few seconds to process what was happening before Gemma suddenly flung herself at him and started to sob into his shirt instead. Xander slowly wrapped his arms around her.“I’m just so tired,” she cried. “I haven’t slept in days.”“And you thought coming here would fix that?” Xander asked frantically, genuinely confused by the train of thought that had led her to his doorstep.She looked up at him with her eyes still watering. “I just thought if we—that I could sleep in your bed instead.”“Oh.” Xander’s heart sank. Well, he definitely couldn’t turn her away now. “You know, if you wanted to sleep in my bed, all you had to do was ask.”Gemma laughed, her voice still thick with unshed tears. “Thank you. I feel real silly now.”Xander squeezed her a little tighter and gently guided her toward the bedroom, all-too aware of Harry’s presence behind the island. “Come on, let’s put you to bed, then.”She was a sniffling mess all the way to the bedroom. Xander lent her a t-shirt and some sweats to wear to bed and waited patiently for her to change in the bathroom before making sure she was comfortable enough. He set an alarm for early in the morning, reasoning that neither one of them wanted Des or Robin finding out that she was staying there.“You know we can’t make this a long-term thing,” he told her as he turned on some indie music on low for her to fall asleep to. “I don’t want to incur the wrath of your parents if they catch you.”“Just need a reset,” Gemma replied with a yawn. She sounded half-asleep already. “I can’t stop having nightmares. Feels like I should’ve done something.”That’s right, Xander remembered. Gemma’s room was just across the hall from Michael and Joey’s.“Try not to think about it,” Xander said unhelpfully. He tucked her in, feeling a bit weird about it while he did so—after all, he’d slept with one of her siblings already and was well on his way to bagging another—and left the room, closing the door as soon as he shut off the lights.He sucked in a deep breath and headed to the kitchen to deal with Harry.The younger man was still crouched behind the counter when Xander approached with a finger to his lips, bending down to his level so they could talk without being overheard by Gemma in the other room.“You should probably go,” Xander told him regretfully. “Unless you want to explain to your sister why you’re hiding in my kitchen.”“Technically it’s my kitchen,” Harry reminded him, “but you’re probably right.” He darted forward for a quick kiss and then stood up, glancing furtively around the front room before heading for the door. He scrunched up his nose as he looked back at Xander from the doorway, gave a short wave, and then he was gone.

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Xander knew he was prone to falling headlong into total infatuation at the drop of a hat, but even when he’d been a teenager obsessing over Tori for the first time he hadn’t been this bad.This realization occurred to him in the exact moment that he tripped over a loose board thinking about running his fingers through Harry’s hair, only to go pitching forward and landing palm first on an exposed nail.There was a beat of stunned silence, and then Xander’s throat opened up to release a howling scream.Des came running. He skidded into the doorway to the unfinished bedroom and looked down at Xander, hunched up on the floor with his hand steadily bleeding all over his shirt and dripping onto the floor below. “Goddammit,” he muttered, hurrying over to help the younger man.Xander trembled like a newborn calf while Des wrapped the gaping hole in his hand with a mostly-clean rag. Not that hygiene was really the priority; as Des told him in a strangely calm voice, they would need to drive to the nearest hospital immediately so Xander could get a tetanus shot and stitches, at the very least.The drive to Glockner, a slightly larger town outside of Junker with its very own emergency room, was long, and Xander had nearly puked out the rolled-down window of Des’s truck three different times on the way. He could barely function from the pain, and distantly he wondered if that was normal. It was just a nail.Once he was taken in for an examination, he quickly discovered why it hurt so damn bad.“We need to do an x-ray,” the nurse told him matter-of-factly.Xander was ready to do anything she asked, but Des was more skeptical. “What, why?” he demanded, arms folded over his chest as he scowled down at the woman.“Because,” she explained patiently, keeping pressure on Xander’s hand all the while to staunch the bleeding, “my best guess is that there’s bone damage, and potentially nerve damage, and he’s going to need surgery.”Xander wanted to pass out. Or die. But the medical professionals at Douglas Memorial simply wouldn’t let him.For a while, Xander thought the x-ray would be the worst part—having to keep his hand still and stretched out in a way that aggravated the wound while the technician took far too many pictures for his liking. But then they wheeled him into surgery and told him he would be awake for the procedure. The laughing gas helped, but not much. The actual pain meds didn’t happen until after they were finished, when Xander was far too exhausted to even appreciate them.When all was said and done, Xander had gotten a tetanus shot and had surgery to repair a cracked metacarpal, shredded tendon, and a nicked vein. What had started out as a small puncture wound was now a line of black stitches running across the center of his palm, covered by layers of gauze and a brace to keep his hand immobile while it healed. All because of Harry.Harry, who—speaking of—had texted Xander over a dozen times since the last time he’d checked. He scrolled through them quickly while Des drove the two of them back to Junker, and balanced his phone in his lap, struggling to craft a coherent reply with shaking fingers. By the end of it, he wasn’t sure if he’d succeeded in making any sense at all, but he hit send anyway and hoped for the best. He was too delirious at that point to really care.Xander had expected Des to drive them straight back to the Twist Ranch. Instead, they ended up parked in front of the only bar in town, masquerading as an authentic Old West saloon. Xander stared up at the sign in confusion while Des walked around the truck to let him out.“I’m not supposed to drink,” Xander said stupidly. He stepped out of the cab and promptly tipped over, Des just barely managing to save him from hitting the concrete.“We’re not here for you,” Des retorted.His thoughts were still a fuzzy, jumbled mess, but Xander could recall Cara mentioning the fact that Anne didn’t allow any alcohol on the premises. Something about not wanting any mishaps with the farming equipment to be her responsibility. Xander had just assumed that meant none of the Twists and their assorted strays drank at all, but clearly that wasn’t the case.When they walked inside and Xander saw Clare standing behind the bar, he stopped short, afraid for a second that the pain meds he’d been given were making him hallucinate. Des gave him an annoyed look and gently nudged him toward the bar, pushing him down onto one of the stools directly in front of Clare.“Whiskey, neat,” Des told her, confirming for Xander that the smiling brunette was indeed real and not just a figment of his drug-addled imagination. “Nothing for him.”“How many jobs do you even have?” Xander asked when she returned with Des’s drink.Clare laughed. “I’m just filling in for a friend,” she explained. “There aren’t that many pretty girls in town willing to put up with a bunch of grumpy old drunks.” She directed the last comment toward Des, who merely grunted and took a big swig of his whiskey. “What happened to your hand?” she asked, nodding at the mess of bandages with a frown.“Fell,” Xander replied simply. “On a nail.” It sounded every bit as pathetic as it felt, and Xander still couldn’t believe the amount of trouble such a tiny little bit of metal had caused.“Yikes,” Clare said, wincing sympathetically. “At least it’s your left,” she remarked optimistically.Xander glared.“I’d make you a drink on the house,” she continued, ignoring the dirty look, “but I’m guessing you’re loaded up on drugs right now, huh?”Xander nodded dully. “They’re not working,” he complained.“Give it a minute,” Clare suggested with a chuckle. “Here, I’ll make you a mocktail, all right?”Xander accepted the fruity carbonated beverage gratefully, nursing his drink while the bar gradually emptied around them and his pain meds finally started to kick in. Later, he would blame his boldness on that, some impulse-driven portion of his brain prompting him to blurt out a question that had been plaguing him for some time.“What’s the deal with your sister?” Xander asked bluntly. He was dimly aware of Des tensing up next to him, but the older man said nothing.“What do you mean?” Clare said, wiping down a glass with a tight smile straining her face.“She’s weird,” Xander replied. He sipped noisily at his drink. “That’s why she doesn’t live with you,” he surmised. “Because she’s too weird.”The smile slipped off Clare’s face. “That’s not why she doesn’t live with me,” she said quietly.Xander remembered the way Hélène had looked at him the day of the funeral. “She hit me,” he told Clare. Her face changed again, but Xander couldn’t make any sense of it. “Why would she hit me?”“I don’t know,” Clare replied flatly. “Maybe because you were being a jackass? Excuse me, I’ve got other customers.” She moved down the bar to attend to an elderly man at the end who looked half asleep on the bar-top and hadn’t asked for another drink in nearly an hour.Xander stared after her in confusion, not reacting to the hand on his arm until Des squeezed hard to get his attention. “What the hell?” he said, turning around to face the other man.“Come on,” was all Des said, “let’s go.”Xander found himself being summarily dragged out of the bar without even a chance to say goodbye to Clare. Des shoved him roughly toward the truck, all traces of his earlier generosity long gone.“You shouldn’t pester Clare about her sister,” Des told him as they pulled away from the bar.“Why not?”“Because it’s rude,” Des replied bluntly, as if that much should have been obvious. And it might have been, if Xander hadn’t been half-out of his mind from the pain medication. Des’s explanation for Hélène was simple. “She’s a very sick girl,” he said without elaborating on that particular point. “Clare’s done the best she can for Hélène, but sometimes a person’s problems are too much for their family to handle alone.”Xander nodded wearily and turned his head toward the window. He felt overheated suddenly, and his curiosity had rapidly waned in the wake of his chastisement. He was happy to leave it at that.But Des wasn’t done with him yet.“I want to ask you something.”Xander uttered a garbled noise of assent, keeping his forehead plastered against the window. He tried to focus on keeping his breathing steady and tried to ignore the way his nose was itching incessantly no matter how much he scratched it.“Did you have anything to do with the Rowland kids?”Xander slowly turned his head to face Des, who was still staring out at the road ahead as if he hadn’t just asked Xander point-blank whether or not he was a murderer.“No,” Xander replied, even though he couldn’t see the point. Everyone in town had already made up their minds about him, one way or the other.Des glanced at him for a second and then back to the road. “Okay,” he said.“Okay?” Xander questioned.“Yeah. I believe you.”Xander was rendered momentarily speechless. “But why?”Des’s answer was simple. “Because I know when I’m being lied to. And you weren’t lying to me just now.”Xander frowned, wondering why—if it was that simple—Des hadn’t just been straight with him before now. “Why are you being so nice to me anyway?” he asked. He cringed, regretting the words immediately. He knew how easy it was to draw Des’s ire.“Did you expect me to just let you bleed to death?” Des asked. There was a touch of humor in his voice, an unfamiliar note. It terrified Xander a little.“Well—no,” Xander replied stupidly. He closed his eyes for a minute, only opening them again when Des let out a laugh, startling Xander out of his half-conscious fugue state.“You seemed like you could use a little kindness,” Des told him.Xander didn’t reply.The truck rolled to a stop in the dirt lot outside the house a few minutes later, the noise of the sputtering engine finally giving way to silence. The front door to the main house opened at the same time as Xander climbed out of the cab. He could tell just from the darkened silhouette that it was Harry.Harry started to run over to him and then stopped upon seeing Des rounding the other side. The older man looked at his son with an expression Xander couldn’t figure out, and then slowly turned to stare at Xander, making the other man’s blood run cold.“I’m gonna go back to the guest house and sleep, probably,” Xander said, wincing at the awkwardness of it all. If Des hadn’t sensed something was going on before, he definitely did now. Especially if he could tell when someone was lying, as he’d claimed.“Yeah, you do that,” Des started to say, only to be cut off by Harry cheerily volunteering to walk with Xander.“I’ll come with you,” he said, marching straight for Xander and ignoring the meaningful glances Xander was shooting his way.Xander could feel Des’s eyes following them the whole way there. He made sure to keep at least a foot’s distance between them, waiting until Harry had gone inside before glancing back to see that, as he’d suspected, Des still hadn’t moved from where he’d been standing next to his truck.Xander slipped into the guest house with a sigh of relief, only to be cornered by a frantic Harry as soon as the door shut behind him.“Are you drunk?” Harry demanded. “What happened to your hand?”“High, actually,” Xander replied honestly. There was a flash of something resembling panic on Harry’s face before it eased with Xander’s continuing explanation. “I fucked up my hand on a nail at the Gardner’s. Had to go to the hospital and everything.”“That bad?” Harry asked with a crooked smile. He eyed the wrappings on Xander’s hand apprehensively. “Hope you don’t use your left to jack off.”“Har-har,” Xander replied with a roll of his eyes. “If I said I did would that mean you’d volunteer to help me?”Harry scoffed and took a step away from him, going over to the fridge and rifling through it for a minute before emerging with the container of cranberry juice Xander had recently grown rather fond of. He poured them two glasses and watched from over the rim of his own while Xander drank his, as if he was worried Xander’s nutritional intake had been compromised by the injury somehow.“So, stitches?” Harry asked, nodding toward the hand in question.“Surgery, actually,” Xander replied, setting his empty glass down on the counter. “Managed to crack a bone.”“Ouch.” Harry hissed in sympathy. “No wonder you’re so drugged up.”“Mhmm.”Xander started to sway dangerously, prompting Harry to move over to him, putting his hands on Xander’s waist in an effort to steady him. It had the added effect of putting their faces conveniently close together, and Xander’s lowered inhibitions made it only that easy to lean forward to connect their mouths.“All right,” Harry said as he pulled away. “Maybe we should get you into bed.”“Not tired,” Xander whined. It was a lie. He’d never wanted to sleep more in his life but sleeping meant not seeing Harry again until the next night, and as much as it made him seem like a lovestruck teenage girl, Xander didn’t want to sacrifice a single second of time he could be spending with Harry.“Yes, you are,” Harry replied, calling him out on his lie immediately. He bullied Xander into bed, pushing him along like he was trying to herd an unruly sheep, until finally Xander caved and allowed himself to be reluctantly tucked in.Xander was pleasantly surprised when Harry climbed in beside him a few seconds after, taking Xander’s laptop from the nightstand and passing it over for Xander to unlock. “What do you want to watch?” Harry asked, taking the computer back after witnessing Xander’s clumsy attempts to type in his own password.“Nature documentary,” Xander decided, staring at the screen with lazily slitted eyes as he rested his head on Harry’s shoulder.“Nice nature doc or mean nature doc?”“What the hell’s a mean nature doc?” Xander wondered.“Like the ones where they tell you about all the shit in Australia that’ll kill you,” Harry replied, laughing.“Oh. Okay, yeah, do that.”Harry shook his head fondly and opened up Xander’s web browser. He stilled as the page loaded, muscles tensing under Xander’s head.Xander lifted his head to get a better look at what had affected him. “Oh,” he said, seeing the list of unread emails, all from Tori. “Yeah. That’s kind of a…thing.”“I thought she was your ex,” Harry said with a troubled frown.Xander thought that was a bit hypocritical of Harry to be upset about, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good to call him out on it. “She is,” Xander emphasized. He reached over with a shaky finger and exited out of the tab. “She just doesn’t know the meaning of boundaries.”“Is that why you broke up with her?”Xander hesitated. He wasn’t sure how deep he wanted to get into this. But maybe just putting it all out on the table now was the best option. “Not exactly,” he hedged. “We had a fight, just before I left.”“What kind of fight?” Harry asked quietly.“The physical kind,” Xander answered, feeling queasy in a way that he knew wasn’t just from the drugs. “It got out of hand, and she got hurt, and I realized it would be better for both of us if I left.” He waited for Harry to ask for an explanation, to ask if Xander had hurt her on purpose, something—but Harry said nothing at all. And suddenly, Xander was way too tired to be having this conversation. “Let’s just watch the thing,” he suggested, scooting in even closer to Harry.Not even the skin-crawling images of spiders and snakes was enough to keep Xander awake. He fell asleep with Harry’s fingers gently combing through his hair.

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Xander woke up the next morning shivering and in pain. Harry was gone.There was a knock at the front door, growing steadily louder as Xander swam back into consciousness. Xander wasn’t naïve enough to think it was Harry back again; he wasn’t dumb enough to stop by in broad daylight.It was Des, looking more uncomfortable than Xander had ever seen him, one hand scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Anne said I should invite you down for breakfast,” he said. And when Xander still didn’t move, he added, “It’s not really a request.”“Oh.”Des elected to wait right there in the doorway instead of setting even a single foot inside while Xander got dressed and made an attempt to look presentable. Xander eyed the pills on the nightstand after he finished. His hand hurt like hell, but he hadn’t really enjoyed the effects of being high after the fact. He decided to leave them for now, telling himself he could take more later if it got to be too much.Xander was content to walk with Des in absolute silence over to the main house. Des wasn’t, apparently.“Junker’s had its fair share of scandals over the years,” he said uncertainly. Xander nodded, not wanting to interrupt his train of thought. “I just don’t want to see another one sullying the Twist name is all.”Xander stopped walking. Des took a few steps forward alone and then realized Xander was no longer with him, turning around with a frown to face the younger man.“What the hell are you talking about?” Xander demanded. He could tell right off the bat that Des wasn’t referring to Xander’s status as a murder suspect.Des’s eyes narrowed. “I see the way you look at my boy,” he said, crossing his arms. “I may have lived in Texas all my life, but I like to consider myself a little more open-minded than some folk.”“So open-minded that you’re, what? Warning me off?”Xander was shocked when Des shook his head. “I know my son, and I know I’d be a fool to try to tell him what to do. But you’d do well to remember that if you aren’t careful, he’s gonna be the one to bear the consequences at the end of this.”Xander was stunned into silence. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about the repercussions of them being caught now that he was under so much scrutiny from the law, but it still shook him to be reminded of it, especially now that Des had actually caught on to what was happening underneath the Twists’ noses.“We should head on in,” Des finally prompted, startling Xander into moving his feet again.Stepping into the Twists’ dining room was a bit like traveling back in time. Xander had been worried about how the others would react to his presence, but it was like nothing had changed since the first time he’d sat down at their breakfast table—minus the Rowlands, but Xander couldn’t be sure that Mitch and Sarah would have been in attendance even if he hadn’t been there.Xander was relieved and discomforted all at once. There was a certain cognitive dissonance involved in the fact that no one, not even Anne, was acknowledging the fact that just yesterday he had been an unwelcome guest in their home, one that most of them privately agreed was a potential murderer. Xander wondered just what had happened to change their minds overnight.The biggest difference from the last meal Xander had shared with the Twists revealed itself when his hand brushed Harry’s while they both reached for the bacon platter, and Harry smiled. Xander snatched his hand back quickly and looked away, pointedly ignoring the look of hurt he knew would be plastered across Harry’s features in favor of helping himself to more scrambled eggs instead.Xander tried to enjoy his meal while engaging in as little conversation as possible without coming across as rude, but it was difficult. The Twists may have been pretending that the last few weeks hadn’t happened, but Xander certainly hadn’t forgotten them, and it made smiling pleasantly across the table at Robin while they chatted about Xander’s work with Des a lot harder.Xander ate as quickly as he could, not wanting to be stuck at the table with Harry for longer than he had to, and then waited impatiently for Des to finish up before following him out. They didn’t work on the weekends, but Xander wanted answers, and ironically Des was probably the only person who could give them.Des did his best to ignore Xander for the first few seconds that he was being tailed before finally turning around near the barn with an unimpressed look. “What now?” he asked.“Why are they all acting like that?” Xander questioned, thinking it should have been obvious what he wanted. “I thought you and Robin were dead-set on blackballing me.”Des pursed his lips in a way that reminded Xander ever-so faintly of Harry. “I misread you at first. It was unfair of all of us to think you had something to what happened, so I talked to Robin about it and we agreed that the family should try to make amends.”It was clear from his tone that that was the end of the conversation. Des turned around and marched into the barn without waiting for so much as a ‘thank you’ or ‘apology accepted’ from Xander, who was left standing gob smacked in the middle of the field.Harry caught up to Xander on his way back to the guest house, the younger man’s brows drawn together in a tight line over his luminous green eyes. Xander was expecting to be chewed out as soon as Harry approached for the way he’d acted over breakfast, but Harry didn’t mention the stilted interaction at all.“Can you go with Clare to San Antonio?” he asked instead, prompting Xander to blink back at him a few times in surprise.“What?”“Taylor just called,” Harry replied. “It’s an emergency. I have to go meet her.”Xander swallowed back the bile rising in the back of his throat. He’d successfully pushed Taylor to the back of his mind as soon as she’d left Junker, thinking of her as more of an abstract obstacle rather than a very present reality in Harry’s life. “Is she okay?” he asked, unsure if he actually meant the concern he was demonstrating on reflex.Harry shrugged, frowning. “I don’t know, she sounded—I don’t know.”Xander reached out with a hesitant hand, gently cupping the back of Harry’s neck under his hair where it had been pulled up in a messy bun, feeling a bit of the tension leach out of Harry with just a touch. Xander contemplated risking a kiss but decided it would only make things worse in the end.“You should go, then,” he said, though Harry hadn’t asked for his permission. “But I’ve got the day off tomorrow, too,” Xander reminded him, feeling Harry perk up a little in response. “So I’ll see you when you get back.”“Yeah,” Harry replied breathlessly. “Yeah, okay. I’ll text you when I get in.” He broke away then, taking a step back to put some space between them. “Make sure you call Clare,” he said, already starting to walk away.Xander nodded, watching him go. He waited until Harry was out of sight before taking out his phone to do as Harry had asked.“I’m busy,” she said immediately upon answering.“I know,” Xander replied. “Harry went to Abilene for the day. Apparently, I’m going to San Antonio with you?”Clare was silent for an alarmingly long time. “Oh.”“Is that not okay?”“No,” she replied hastily. “It’s fine, it’s just—I’m just about to leave to come pick you up so make sure you have anything you want to bring with you. We probably won’t be back for a while.”“Where are we going?” Xander asked cautiously.“Um…it’s a long story. I’ll explain when I get there. Just take your laptop or a book or something if you get bored easily.”That wasn’t exactly promising. Xander was already starting to regret agreeing to accompany Clare before he even left the guest house with a full backpack only to find Anne and Hélène waiting at the top of the hill for Clare. The only upside to the situation was that so far, Xander hadn’t had a chance to worry about Harry and Taylor instead, so all-encompassing was his unease when confronted with the knowledge that Hélène was also coming along for the ride. Funny how Harry hadn’t mentioned that bit.Anne didn’t notice Xander until he was almost on her, at which point she suddenly turned and told Hélène to stay put before hurrying over the Xander and guiding him away out of the girl’s earshot.“She’s been getting worse since this whole mess with the Rowlands,” Anne warned him in a voice just barely above a whisper. “I don’t know that she’s quite lucid at the moment, so try to let Clare handle her as much as possible.”Xander was perfectly fine with that. It also didn’t escape his notice that Anne hadn’t mentioned Harry at all, or why Xander was there instead of him, but he didn’t want to bring up the issue.“Where exactly are we going?” he asked instead.Her forehead creases deepened. “Clare didn’t tell you? Hélène has an MRI scheduled.” She didn’t say why Hélène needed an MRI, and Xander couldn’t help but wonder if any of them actually knew what was wrong with the girl to start with.Clare pulled up before Xander had a chance to ask anything else, startling Anne back toward Hélène, who was rocking very slightly back and forth on the balls of her feet.Xander was a little surprised when Clare parked and got out before taking the keys to the newer-looking SUV parked outside the house that Xander had never seen a single person drive since he’d arrived. It made sense, he realized a moment later. Clare’s shitty sedan was all right for buzzing around town in a hurry but transporting three people to San Antonio in it was out of the question.He hovered in the background while Anne and Clare got Hélène buckled in, waiting until Clare climbed into the passenger seat before taking his cue to get in on the opposite side, feeling the back of his neck prickling uncomfortably with the force of Hélène’s gaze on him from behind. He made it a point not to glance up in the rear-view mirror to look at her, deciding instead that it would be best if he just pretended she wasn’t there at all for the duration of the drive.Clare didn’t say much after filling Xander in on a few more details about their destination—a neurology center in downtown San Antonio that she had been to only once previously, for Hélène’s initial consultation. The drive was mostly silent, Clare breaking only to give Xander directions every so often, or to murmur things in German to Hélène in the backseat, even though the other girl never once responded.Xander’s left hand, propped awkwardly against the side of the steering wheel to balance it out, gave an aching throb every so often, but otherwise didn’t bother him.About half an hour into the drive, Clare finally turned around to face the road with a sigh. “She’s asleep,” Clare announced quietly.Xander finally chanced a look back to confirm Clare’s words. “What were you talking about?” he asked curiously.“Just reminding her of things from when we were kids,” Clare replied. “It helps her stay focused.”Xander was tempted to ask Clare right then and there what was wrong with Hélène but decided against it. She looked stressed out enough already. “You grew up in Junker?” he asked. He knew she and Hélène had been adopted as kids, but not much else. Clare kept the details of her past close to the chest and Xander could respect that.She nodded, staring out at the straight farm-to-market road extending into the horizon ahead of them. “Our parents were pretty old when they adopted us,” she told him. “So they’d been here since before the accident.”Xander knew she was referring to the spill that had polluted the river for decades afterward, the one Anne’s father had been culpable in—the one that had caused the deaths of a huge portion of the town’s residents. Xander started doing the math in his head. Clare was older than him, but not by much, and Hélène was older than both of them, so….“Is that why she’s sick?” he asked, coming to the realization belatedly. He should’ve connected the dots sooner.“Anne thinks so,” Clare replied quietly. “She’s the only reason we’re even doing this, because god knows we don’t have the money.”“What about your parents?” Xander asked delicately.She shook her head. “They passed away a few years back when Hélène was just started grad school. Cancer,” she explained. Clare glanced back at her sister. “They think the MRI will probably show a tumor,” she added quietly.Xander didn’t know what to say to that. He felt bad for how uncomfortable he’d been around Hélène, for how sick she was, but he knew condolences wouldn’t mean much. “What was it like growing up in Junker?” he said, deciding to change the subject in hopes that it would brighten the mood.Clare perked up instantly. “Better than you probably think it was, City Boy,” she replied mockingly. “Dad was injured in the accident that closed down the factory, so he got a pretty good check out of the settlement and decided not to go back to work after he and Mom adopted us. It was nice having them around all of the time, honestly.”Xander couldn’t relate to that. Both his parents had worked non-stop before his dad left when he was fifteen, and afterwards, when his mother was actually home, he only wished she wasn’t.“Our grandparents on my mom’s side lived here, too,” Clare continued, “but they died when we were pretty little. That’s how we learned German, from them. A lot of people don’t think it counts because we were adopted, but our family goes all the way back to the original settlers in Junker.” She sounded proud, and Xander felt proud for her.“Your claim to fame,” he teased. “They should put you in a history book.”Clare shot him a wry smile that soon faded away. “Hélène was sick a lot as a kid,” she confided, voice growing soft again. “But then she got better once I started school, and I kind of thought that would be the end of it. Guess that was dumb of me.”“Were you close when you were kids?” Xander wondered. He couldn’t make much sense of their relationship now, but that was to be expected, what with Hélène not being herself anymore.“I used to think so,” Clare replied stiffly. “But I don’t know now. I think maybe Hélène was a bit jealous of me. She had problems in school for a while, and at home. But in the end, she’s the one who went to college and I got a job at a gas station, so.” She shrugged. “I suppose none of that matters now, anyway.”“You’re a good sister,” Xander felt compelled to tell her. Their eyes met from either side of the front seat before Xander turned back to the road. “She’s lucky to have someone who cares that much.”“Do you have siblings?” Clare asked.“Just one,” he replied. “A younger brother.”“You’re not close?”It was a natural assumption, but it wasn’t the truth. “We were pretty close, actually, before I left. But he knows I need space right now.” It was hypocritical, but for as much as Xander had just quizzed Clare about her family, he had no desire to talk about his own. “So were you around when the Twists came back to town?” he asked, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.“I was,” Clare replied, switching gears without protest. “But I was still a baby, so if you’re hoping for dirt, you’re out of luck.”“Damn.”She laughed. “People still talked, though, when I was a kid. Apparently, there was an uproar when Anne came back—married, no less—and tried to pick up right where her parents had left off.”“Des isn’t from Junker?” Xander asked, his curiosity piqued.“No,” Clare informed him. “They met in college at UT and moved back when she was pregnant with Gemma.”Xander wondered if Ellie had known before they’d come back that Bobby had cheated on her and gotten someone pregnant; if that had been the catalyst for the move. He didn’t ask. “How long did it take for people to get used to it?” Xander said.“I don’t know that they are used to it,” Clare replied honestly. “The stuff you see isn’t good old Southern hospitality; it’s tolerance. If Anne wasn’t throwing money at the place, I think they would’ve run her out of town by now.”Xander remembered what Des had said to him that morning with his heavy-handed implications about Xander’s relationship with Harry. Maybe he was right. Maybe Xander was just giving Harry yet another reason to be an outcast in his hometown.Hélène stirred in her sleep a few seconds later, signaling the end of their conversation. They hit the San Antonio city limits pretty soon after that, and after a half hour or so of Clare giving Xander directions, they finally found themselves outside the neurology center: a large modern building constructed of metal and glass.The place was every bit as intimidating once they were inside as it had been on the outside. It was certainly nothing like the ancient wood and brick barely holding Junker together, and Xander felt a bit off balance, suddenly reminded of the life he’d abandoned some weeks ago now.There wasn’t much for him to do once they reached the waiting room and Clare got Hélène signed in for her appointment, which was both a blessing and a curse. Xander found his mind wandering as soon as they sat down and identified it as a problem immediately. He pulled out his laptop, bringing up some photos he’d taken on the drive through Texas hill country before he’d ended up in Junker and began to painstakingly edit them, though he had no real intentions of doing anything with them afterward.Clare noticed after a minute or two and leaned in to get a closer look. “You’re a photographer?” she asked curiously.“Just for fun,” Xander replied. He wasn’t fishing for compliments, just looking for a distraction, but Clare seemed determined to give them to him anyway.“You’re really good,” she told him, right before Hélène’s name was called. She jumped to her feet and dragged her sister away, giving Xander an apologetic smile as they left the room in the company of a nurse.Xander’s phone buzzed in his pocket a few minutes later. He extracted it slowly, half-dreading and half-hoping to see Harry’s name, and almost dropped it when he saw his mother’s instead. He shoved the phone back into his pocket and did his best to ignore the call until the buzzing stopped.The reprieve lasted only a few seconds. This time Xander ripped his phone out and declined the call, hoping his mother would get the message.She did, apparently enough to coax Tori into calling him instead. This time Xander took the call.“Don’t hang up on me,” she started off saying.“What the hell, Tori?” Xander hissed, getting up quickly and trying to avoid catching the eyes of the other people surrounding him inside the waiting room as he walked outside.“Listen,” she continued, ignoring him completely, “I tried to be as honest as I could with those cops, but it’s not my fault if they took it the wrong way, okay?”“What are you even talking about?”“The fight!” she said. “The one we had before you left.”Xander was pissed off that she was even calling it a fight, when it had been her berating him for over an hour before he’d finally snapped back. “What does that have to do with you calling me?” he demanded.“They asked about the police report I filed and said they’d already talked to your mom about it, and I didn’t want to lie, so I told them it got physical, you know?”Suddenly, Xander couldn’t help but wonder what he had ever seen in Tori; couldn’t figure out what about her had compelled him to waste the entirety of high school and college chasing after her, and the next six years putting up with all her shit once he finally had her. Because right now he couldn’t identify a single good quality about her.“What do you mean, ‘physical’?” he questioned, feeling a pounding pressure starting to form behind his eyes.“I told them what happened,” she said, “that you pushed me when we were arguing, and that I fell and got a concussion.”“Did you mention the part where you threw two bottles of wine at my head first and then tried to hit me in the face with a rolling pin?” he asked drily.Her silence was answer enough.“I’m hanging up,” he told her, already pulling his phone away from his ear when her frantic protests made him pause.“Wait, wait,” she cried out, “I can help you out!”“How?” Xander replied through gritted teeth, already regretting having picked up at all.“I can hook you up with a criminal defense lawyer,” she suggested, making Xander roll his eyes before she even finished getting the words out. “He’s this guy from group I’ve been hanging out with lately and I could probably get you a discounted rate—”“Goodbye, Tori,” he said firmly, and pressed the end-call button.When Xander walked back into the waiting room, Clare was sitting in the seat he had just vacated, her head in her hands. Xander carefully sat down next to her and looped an arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him, sighing a little. She looked exhausted and more than a little upset.“What happened?” he asked quietly, cognizant of the fact that they were still sitting in the middle of a well-occupied waiting room. “Where’s Hélène?”“They had to sedate her to do the MRI,” Clare explained. “I thought she’d be okay, but she started panicking as soon as they got her in the machine, so.” She sighed again. “There’s no point in me being back there with her asleep, so now we just wait, I guess.”They waited a long time, enough for Clare to fall asleep herself tucked into the crook of Xander’s arm. She was still dozing quietly when a nurse finally brought Hélène back out, looking like a ghost in her hospital gown and swaying woozily on her socked feet. The nurse motioned toward Clare and Xander quickly shook her awake.Xander remained in the waiting room while Clare helped Hélène get changed, and then the three of them returned to the car together, Xander hovering just behind Clare in case she needed help. He wasn’t surprised when this time, Clare got into the backseat with Hélène, who still looked half-conscious as she allowed her younger sister to handle her like a ragdoll in an effort to do up her seatbelt.“I wish we didn’t have to wait so long for the results,” Clare lamented as Xander started the car.“What are you expecting them to say?” Xander asked.“I don’t know. Nothing good.”Hélène remained unresponsive, looking dead to the world even as her fate was being discussed right in front of her face.They grabbed some fast food on the way out of the city, neither of them relishing the thought of making the two-hour drive back on an empty stomach. Xander munched on his burger quietly as he drove toward the sun slowly descending in the sky. He wasn’t really in the mood for casual conversation after his phone call with Tori. All he could think about was what was potentially waiting for him when they got back to Junker.He pushed those thoughts away with a reminder to himself that Harry would be there to spend the day with him tomorrow.They returned to the Twist Ranch early in the evening. The first thing Xander noticed was that Harry’s truck still wasn’t there, but he put it out of his mind for the moment. Abilene was just as far as San Antonio; it wasn’t unreasonable for him to spend more than a few hours there if something was really wrong with Taylor. Xander just hoped it wouldn’t keep him overnight.Hélène refused to stand on her own two feet when Clare tried to help her out of the car, prompting Xander to reluctantly step in.Together they carried Hélène into the house, where they were met by Anne, who immediately took over for Xander, something he was immensely relieved by. But he continued to accompany the three of them through the house and into Hélène’s room, watching from the doorway as they carefully tucked the girl into bed.Xander noticed three things while he was standing there: first, that Hélène’s bedroom was completely bare, like it hadn’t been lived in at all; second, that the only exception to the first item was a small laundry basket filled with dolls and action figures sitting underneath the desk by the window; and third, that there was a Jack-and-Jill bathroom adjoining Hélène’s bathroom to the one Xander knew the Rowland kids had slept in until their disappearance. He wondered if she’d heard anything either of those nights, and whether that was part of the reason she seemed so troubled.He took a step back as Anne and Clare finally emerged from the bedroom. Clare took Xander’s hand wordlessly while Anne shut the door behind him. The younger woman led him back out of the house and into the dirt lot where her car was waiting.The hug was expected, and Xander held it for a long time, softly rocking Clare back and forth as he rubbed soothing circles into the small of her back. “Everything’s gonna be all right,” he told her, though he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. One of them needed to.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Xander slept deeply through the night, only waking when the rumble of an engine cut through the haze of sleep just before dawn. There were two options, he realized immediately. Either Harry was back, or the cops were.Deciding he would rather investigate himself rather than be caught, literally, with his pants down by the entire sheriff’s department again, Xander groggily dressed himself in the dark and walked outside to find Harry’s truck parked in its usual spot. He sagged against the doorframe in relief and looked out toward the main house, where he could see a few of the lights turned on in the kitchen. He hoped Harry hadn’t brought Taylor back with him.He wandered hesitantly toward the main house, stopping along the way to the back door to peer inside the kitchen windows. He could make out the shapes of two human silhouettes through the curtains, one very recognizable as Harry, and the other too short to be Taylor. Xander felt a rush of relief and continued on into the house.Once inside, he could see that it was Anne standing in the kitchen with Harry, holding him. Xander took a step forward and felt an immediate sense of overwhelming dread as he realized something was very wrong.Xander walked slowly into the kitchen, catching Anne’s eye as he came up behind Harry, whose head was tucked down into his mother’s shoulder. Xander realized in the next second that Harry was crying, full-bodied sobs that made Xander wince sympathetically in response.Xander glanced toward the door meaningfully, asking Anne with his eyes if he should go. She shook her head.He reached out with a tentative hand toward Harry’s shoulder instead, feeling Harry melt under the touch. “Are you okay?” Xander asked, even though it was obvious that Harry wasn’t, not at all.Harry suddenly broke away from Anne’s hold, turning and falling into Xander’s arms without saying a word. He cried openly into Xander’s arms despite the fact that his mother was still standing right there, staring at them with something akin to understanding. Apparently, whatever had happened with Taylor had been dire enough that Harry no longer cared about disappointing his mother.“What’s wrong?” Xander tried, but Harry was sobbing so hard he couldn’t answer. Xander looked up at Anne questioningly instead.She didn’t say anything at all, lips drawn in a taut line across her face, eyes sad as she stared unblinkingly back at Xander, who still didn’t know what to do. “I’ll make everyone some tea,” Anne finally told them, turning around to get out the kettle and giving Xander and Harry some semblance of privacy.Xander finally managed to coerce Harry into walking into the dining room as the younger man’s sobs began to subside. They sat beside each other at the far corner of the table, angled just far enough that Anne wouldn’t be able to see them from the kitchen. Xander linked their hands together underneath the tablecloth and leaned in close to press his forehead to Harry’s.When he moved back, Harry looked a little calmer, though his eyes were still bloodshot and gummy. Xander wanted to kiss him anyway.“Taylor had a miscarriage,” Harry said hoarsely, once he found his voice again.Xander felt a sharp twinge in his chest. He had to forcibly remind himself that this wasn’t about him, it was about Harry. Xander’s feelings didn’t matter right now. He squeezed Harry’s hand a little tighter.“Did you know she was pregnant?” Xander asked softly. He told himself he was asking for reasons other than the obviously selfish ones, a desire to know if Harry had been lying to him about something this big the whole time.But Harry simply shook his head, and Xander felt all the tension rush out of him. He believed Harry, unquestioningly.“We don’t have to talk about it,” Xander assured him. He could still hear Anne bustling about in the kitchen and knew he should put some distance between them before she came out with the tea. But just as soon as he tried to pull away, Harry tightened his grip on Xander’s hand, refusing to let go.Xander surrendered in a heartbeat.Anne barely looked at him when she returned with a steaming kettle and an assortment of mugs stacked neatly on a serving tray. She focused instead on Harry, and Xander couldn’t be sure whether that was because Harry needed it or because she was just uncomfortable with the closeness of the two men in front of her.Xander would have been a little surprised and lot disappointed if it turned out to be the latter. If even Des didn’t have a problem with his son being gay, or whatever Harry happened to be, but Anne did? Xander knew it would crush him.Harry kept holding onto Xander’s hand while they drank their tea, even when Cara came out of her room to investigate the source of the lights and the noise and then joined them at the table. It was all Xander could think about suddenly, the fact that Harry apparently trusted Xander enough to seek comfort from him.Cara started chattering enthusiastically after realizing her brother was in no mood to talk about what had upset him so much, but Xander didn’t hear a word she said.He could only focus on Harry unlinking their fingers beneath the table and stroking lightly across Xander’s palm before twisting their hands together in a new pattern, sending a rush of goose bumps racing up his arm.Finally, Cara’s energy levels started to peter out, and even Anne let a yawn escape before covering her mouth in surprise. “Excuse me,” she said, looking a bit startled. It was still dark outside the kitchen windows. Xander wondered how long she’d been up before he’d interrupted. Maybe she’d been waiting up the whole night for Harry to get back and hadn’t slept at all.“Mama, you can go back to bed,” Harry told her. “I’ll be fine.”She frowned and yawned again. “Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t want you to be alone.”“I’m not,” Harry replied, giving Xander’s fingers a firm squeeze.“All right,” Anne said as she stood up from the table, giving Xander a slightly dubious look as she moved away. “Come on, Cara,” she urged, reaching for her step-daughter’s hand to pull her toward the hallways. “Give your brother some space.”They each departed for their respective rooms, the sounds of the doors closing behind them the only thing cutting through the silence. There was a single beat, and then Harry was standing as well, his hand still entwined with Xander’s.“Let’s go out back,” Harry said quietly, gently tugging the older man up.He hit the lights on the way out, plunging house into pitch-blackness as they slipped through the back door and onto the grass. Harry led Xander all the way out to the tire swing and sat down heavily on the grass, Xander tumbling down along with him and landing somewhere between Harry’s spread thighs, still unable to see much of anything but comforted by the warmth seeping through Harry’s clothes and into his skin.“We were supposed to get married,” Harry finally said, putting an end to the comfortable silence stretching out between them. Xander didn’t respond, waiting for him to continue. “She wanted to move the wedding date up starting a few weeks ago. I guess she must’ve known—”“But she didn’t tell you?” Xander asked. He could feel Harry’s curls brushing across his face in the darkness as the younger man shook his head. “When was she planning on doing it, then? After you were already married?”“I don’t know,” Harry replied sadly. “I think she was waiting until it was too late to—to do anything about it.”“Would you have asked her not to keep it?” Xander asked.Harry didn’t answer.“Are you still going to go through with it?” Xander pressed. “The wedding?”“I don’t know,” Harry said again, after a few beats of silence. “We decided to take a break,” he said slowly, and Xander hated himself for not having the courage to ask which one of them had initiated that decision. “But I don’t know what I want.”Xander felt as if he’d been stabbed through the heart. It was the same all-encompassing infatuation he hadn’t been aware of when he’d fallen in love with Tori—a mistake. He knew how to recognize it now, and he instinctively began to pull away, to try and put some physical distance between himself and Harry in preparation for the emotional distance that would necessarily follow. But Harry wouldn’t let him go.“From Taylor or from me?” Xander asked, frustrated at being put in the middle of Harry’s indecisiveness.“What?” Harry replied, sounding surprised by the question.That only made Xander angrier. “What do you want for yourself, then, Harry? Do you even know that?”“I want to be normal,” Harry replied. Xander could hear the tears thickening his voice. “I don’t want to cause any problems for my family.”“Then you shouldn’t be with me,” Xander told him, making another attempt to break free of Harry’s grip.Instead of letting him go, Harry unexpectedly surged up into Xander to clumsily connect their mouths in the dark, scraping his teeth against Xander’s jaw before pressing his lips, open-mouthed, against Xander’s.Xander kissed back just as forcefully, pushing his tongue into Harry’s mouth like he was trying to prove something, like he was trying to show Harry just what he wanted to do to him. He pressed Harry back into the tree, trying to get deeper and deeper, pressing his hips into Harry’s and this time not caring if he scared Harry off. Maybe he was hoping for it.The last thing Xander expected when they finally broke apart, lips wet and gasping for air, was for Harry to take his uninjured hand and slowly climb to his feet, pulling Xander up along with him.“What are you doing?” Xander asked, resisting only a little when Harry pulled him into the trees. The sun was just coming up now, casting an ethereal blue glow across Harry’s face.“I want to show you something,” Harry said cryptically as he led Xander forward.It was even darker in the trees where the dawn’s first light had yet to penetrate, giving the illusion of an endless night. Still, there was enough illumination for Xander to make out a small clearing as they approached, at the center of which lay a nearly perfectly circular pond, the water perfectly clear and reflective even in the dark.Harry let go of Xander’s hand when he reached the edge, fishing in his pocket for his phone and laying it down on a smooth flat rock too close to the water for comfort, before abruptly pulling his shirt over his head in one fluid motion.“What are you doing?” Xander asked again, his tongue feeling thick and heavy inside of his mouth all of a sudden.Harry ignored him in favor of stripping off his jeans next, folding them neatly along with his shirt and placing them on the rock next to his phone. He wasn’t wearing any underwear.Xander’s face was like a bright red beacon shining in the darkness.Harry crouched down low on the rock while Xander watched him, fiddling with his phone for a moment before jumping headfirst into the water without warning. The music started playing just as he broke the still surface of the pond, startling Xander with the eerie vocalization that echoed loudly against the rocky edges of the clearing.Harry’s head popped up just as the singer launched into the first verse, his voice cutting in over the androgynous crooning. “Aren’t you coming?” he said, before noticing the brace still covering Jensen’s left hand. “Oh, right, your hand.”“Fuck my hand,” Xander grunted, leaping into action at Harry’s invitation. He tore the thing off and ignored the slight thrumming of pain, tossing it down onto the rocks next to Harry’s phone.He shed his clothes as fast as possible and discarded them in a messy heap next to Harry’s neatly-folded pile. He cannon-balled in, landing with a splash next to Harry, who was still laughing loudly when Xander surfaced.Xander barreled into him, kissing him hard and then pushing Harry under water with a booming laugh. Harry was smiling when he came up for air, looking like the last day had never even happened.They splashed around until the sky started to lighten and the song on Harry’s phone transitioned into something a bit more melancholy, the same reedy voice emanating loudly from the speakers. Harry climbed up onto a rock with a weary sigh, reminding Xander that he probably hadn’t slept at all that night.“Should we head back?” Xander asked, swimming over to him and clinging to the edge of the rock. Now that he’d gotten over the shock of Harry getting naked right in front of him, he could take the time to appreciate the contrasting lines of Harry’s body, slender but soft in unexpected places.“Don’t want to leave yet,” Harry replied, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. The other was curling into strange patterns against his thigh, in time with the guitar emanating from his phone.“You play?” Xander asked, inclining his head toward Harry’s hand.Harry blushed, his fingers clenching shut in embarrassment. “Only a little bit,” he hedged. “I wanted to be a musician when I was a kid, but—”“Then why can’t you?”Harry shrugged. “It’s not very realistic, is it?”“Screw reality,” Xander told him, pushing himself up so he could reach Harry’s mouth. He was becoming addicted to kissing him, he thought, but Harry’s lips weren’t the only thing he wanted to taste. “Tell me if you want to stop,” he said, gently pushing apart Harry’s thighs and feeling a rush of satisfaction when Harry’s cock started to thicken from just those words alone.The first swipe of Xander’s tongue against Harry’s cock was clumsy and unpracticed. A quick taste, to explore new territory. The slightly earthy flavor of the water covering Harry’s body concealed any natural taste or scent he might have had, and Xander caught himself thinking that they should do this again, just so he could get the full experience.It was awkward at first, taking Harry into his mouth. He still didn’t know what he was doing, and his jaw ached from the strain, and his movements were slow and stilted.Harry didn’t seem to care. He threw his head back, fingers scraping against the slick surface of the rock as Xander curled his free hand around the base of Harry’s cock and stroked in counterrhythm to the movement of his mouth.Harry came without a word of warning, his body tensing up as he cried out. Xander pulled away coughing and slowly jerked him off through the rest, waiting until Harry pushed his hand away with panting breaths before he climbed up on the rock to kiss him again.Harry didn’t so much as flinch at the taste. He kissed Xander back slow and steady, mimicking the same movements on Xander’s cock, already half-hard from watching Harry come.Xander was so hard it felt like his hands had gone numb, all the blood in his body redirecting to his dick at the expense of all other extremities and vital organs. He felt like he was going to die, but in the best way possible, and he was helpless to do anything but let it happen.Xander slumped into the younger man, pressing his forehead against the heat of Harry’s naked shoulder as he lost himself in the delicious friction of Harry’s hand, knowing it was going to be over before he had a chance to really enjoy it.He came with a breathless gasp and bit down hard into Harry’s shoulder when Harry still didn’t stop, basking in the overwhelming sensation of just too much pleasure until it finally started to hurt, and he finally had to still Harry’s fingers with a hand placed over his.Xander felt compelled suddenly, in the afterglow, to tell Harry he loved him. He bit the words back, swallowing them down, choking on them as the song faded out into silence. Harry smiled dopily up at Xander and he forced himself to smile back.“We should get back before someone comes looking for you,” Xander said, pressing a gentle kiss against Harry’s temple. “And you should get some sleep.”Harry stood up with a groan. “You should wash your hand before it gets infected,” he snarked.He wandered languorously back over to his clothes, giving Xander an unobstructed view of his naked ass swaying in the dim pre-dawn illumination, and Xander bit down on his tongue hard. So what if he’d never looked twice at a man in his life before this? Staring at Harry was like seeing the sun for the very first time. And Xander would have gladly gone blind if it meant he never had to look away.But deep down, he knew that was the type of thinking that had gotten him into trouble with Tori, why it had taken him years to recognize her glaring flaws, all the red flags she’d practically dangled in his face since the moment they’d started dating. Xander wasn’t ready to let go yet. No matter how much he wanted to.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Xander’s Sunday plans were dashed by Harry’s arrival early that morning. Harry ended up sleeping most of the day, something Xander didn’t begrudge him after everything that had happened, and when Harry finally woke up for dinner, his time was monopolized by the rest of his family, who had all found out from Anne earlier what had happened.Xander went to bed that night feeling a bit bummed out that he’d missed out on an entire day he should’ve spent with Harry; now he wouldn’t have the chance until the next weekend came along.That changed the next morning when Gemma showed up at his door to tell Xander that she asked Des on his behalf if he could have the day off.“Why?” Xander asked quizzically, aware that his hair was standing up in a million different directions and that his shirt was on backwards, but not yet conscious enough to actually care.Gemma squinted back at him. “So you can help us cheer up Harry,” she replied, like it should have been obvious.Xander tensed up and tried not to let it show. “Why would it matter if I’m there?” he asked, feigning nonchalance.He was so certain he was failing at it that he wasn’t even surprised when Gemma replied, “I’m not stupid,” setting all of Xander’s nerves alight. She knew. But then she quickly followed the statement up with, “I know you’re all buddy-buddy now,” and Xander felt his body sag in relief.“All right,” Xander replied, now feeling markedly more awake after that scare, “so what are we doing?”“Go put on a swimsuit,” Gemma told him.“That’s not an answer.”The look Gemma gave him in response was severe. “Swimsuit,” she repeated. “Now.”Xander’s first instinct was to ask if the choice in wardrobe meant they were going to the pond, but he remembered just in time not to mention it. The others still didn’t know Harry had already taken Xander there, and he planned to keep it that way.“Okay, okay,” he grumbled before darting inside to do as she’d asked.Xander didn’t actually have a swimsuit, but he figured his ratty pair of gym shorts would suffice. He started to regret that decision, however, once they joined up with the others—which included Clare and Hélène, much to his surprise—near the back of the house. Harry’s eyes widened exponentially when Xander wandered over, in shorts he knew were far too tight for modesty’s sake.Xander smirked at the expression on the other man’s face but refused to acknowledge it as teasing; Harry had already seen what he had to offer.He ignored Harry so as not to make the change in their relationship obvious to the girls, but he wasn’t sure Harry even noticed. Clare and Gemma monopolized his attention as soon as they wandered out into the trees, speaking incessantly in loud high-pitched voices as if they could talk Harry into forgetting what had happened.Xander noted that while relatively subdued, Harry didn’t seem unduly upset about what had happened. Though that might have been wishful thinking on Xander’s part. It wasn’t so much that he was glad about it so much as grateful—and yes, he was drawing a clear distinction between the two. A baby wouldn’t have been a good thing for any one of them.Xander felt a bit queasy all of a sudden as he felt a spike of anxiety wash over him. He was going to have to convince Harry somehow to tell Taylor about them. Eventually.Xander’s obsessive thoughts were thankfully drowned out once they reached the pond and Cara put on some music from a portable speaker, which she placed down on the exact same rock Harry had put his phone on when he’d taken Xander there alone. Xander wondered how much of their lives the siblings had spent in this very spot. He couldn’t help but read into what it meant that Harry had chosen this place in particular to share with him.Shaking off the lingering worries, Xander plastered a smile onto his face and jumped into the pond with a huge splash, soaking everyone else in the process. When he surfaced, Cara had already joined him in the water, and Gemma and Clare were in the process of taking off their outer clothes before jumping in as well.Only Hélène and Harry lingered on the rocky outcropping, both sitting close to the edge and dipping just their feet in the water.The whole place looked different in the daytime, stripped of the ethereal pre-dawn quality that had made it seem more like a dream than reality. Xander could see now that the pond was deeper than he’d initially thought, so much so that despite the clearness of the water, he couldn’t quite make out the bottom.Xander left Harry alone for a bit, occupying himself with the girls instead, but after a while he couldn’t take it anymore. He swam over to the duo sitting quietly on their own and pulled himself over to Harry, trying not to stare at the expanse of tanned skin exposed by his tiny yellow swim shorts.“You know,” Xander said, keeping an eye on the others to make sure none of them were paying too much attention as he sidled up to Harry, “I think the whole point of this is for you to actually have fun.”“How do you know I’m not having fun?” Harry asked with a wry smile.“Everyone knows it’s impossible to have fun when you go swimming unless you’re actually swimming.” Xander splashed him a little for good measure, taking care not to accidentally get Hélène in the process. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about her, but keeping his distance still seemed like the best option. “Come on,” Xander needled. “Come swim with me.”“Oh, with you?” Harry replied coyly. His eyes drifted toward Hélène, who seemed totally oblivious to their conversation. He turned to her, putting a gentle hand over her forearm. “If you need something, just call one of us over, okay?”Hélène nodded stiffly. Xander was surprised she’d reacted at all and wondered if that meant she’d been listening to every word he and Harry had exchanged, and if so, whether she’d figured out there was something more to their relationship. Xander felt uneasy over not knowing the answer.He moved back as Harry slipped delicately into the water beside him before suddenly launching himself into Xander and propelling them both into the center of the pond with a honking laugh.Clare was singing along loudly with the music when Xander came up for air; Harry joined her effortlessly on the next line as he clung to Xander with his arms and legs wrapped around Xander’s torso.Xander would’ve let Harry stay there forever, crooning into his ear, but it was getting too obvious and Harry was heavy enough that Xander was slightly worried he would drown if he tried to hold Harry up for too much longer. Xander pushed him away playfully, which prompted Cara and Gemma to come after Xander in retaliation, Gemma getting ahold of his shoulders and trying to dunk him while Cara dove under the water to grab at his feet.Xander was happy to play along, feeling ten, twenty years younger as he splashed around with the four of them in the water, Clare taking his side against the siblings while Harry sat back and egged them all on.For a few hours, they all forgot there was anything at all to worry about, remaining in the woodland sanctuary until their skin started to fry and their stomachs grumbled loudly at the lack of their usual breakfast feast. It wasn’t until they climbed out to dry off and head back to the house that things started to take a turn for the worse.Gemma made a noise like she’d been stabbed, and Xander whirled around to see her clutching at her neck, panicked. “My necklace is gone,” she said frantically, darting around every which way like she hoped it would just suddenly appear there on one of the rocks.Xander looked to Harry, expecting a level-headed reassurance in response to his sister’s hysteria. But Harry was no longer standing where he’d been before, his towel lying discarded on the ground as he dove back into the pond without warning.Xander jumped in after him, propelling himself toward the bottom as fast as possible while simultaneously tracking Harry’s shape in the water. When he reached the bottom, his ears suddenly popped, but he ignored the discomfort in favor of skimming his fingers through the mud, searching futilely for Gemma’s rose gold pendant.He bumped into Harry without realizing a few seconds later, and felt hands coming up to cradle his face. When Harry’s mouth brushed against his, Xander’s first thought was that Harry was going to try to give him underwater mouth-to-mouth, but it was just a soft kiss before Harry kicked away and swam up toward the surface.Xander followed, and when he broke the surface of the water, he could see that the others had jumped in as well, all waiting for word from the boys before they swam down to help look.“Any luck?” Clare asked.Harry and Xander shook their head in unison, prompting all five to dive back down again to the bottom.It was a harder fight against his own natural buoyancy this time without the added momentum from diving in, but Xander was still the first to make it down. It was darker now that he and Harry had stirred up some of the mud and sand coating the floor of the pond, which meant Xander was relying on his sense of touch even more as he carefully combed the bottom, still not expecting to find much of anything but putting in the effort just in case.Xander was just about to dive back up again for more air when his fingers brushed against something that wasn’t dirt. At first, he thought it was Harry, or one of the others, but the fabric under his fingers felt wrong, and there was no reaction to his touch. He skimmed his fingers over the mysterious object, ignoring the way that his lungs were screaming for oxygen, frowning as he tried to determine just what it was that was lying submerged at the bottom of the pond.Then Xander’s fingers encountered clammy human skin and he jolted away like he’d been bitten.He raced to the surface, grabbing Cara, who was positioning herself against the rocks in preparation to dive in again, and hauling them both out of the water. He dumped her unceremoniously onto the ground and turned to yell at the others—Harry, who was just surfacing, and Clare, who was already half-out, a glinting rose gold chain wrapped around her clenched fist—to get out of the water, his voice shrill with panic.Xander glanced over at Hélène while the others scrambled onto the rocks, noting that her bare feet were still dangling loosely in the water. He hurried over to her and reached down without asking to pull her out. She shied away with a glare, pulling her feet out on her own. Xander had to remind himself that Hélène was much more aware of what was going on than he gave her credit for. She curled her feet under herself, breathing heavily as she stared down into the pond.There was a tug at Xander’s arm, and then Harry was in his face, his green eyes wide with worry. “What’s wrong?” Harry asked.Xander scanned the water with a furrowed brow, too busy looking for Gemma to answer. When he didn’t immediately find her, he sprinted to the edge and jumped back in, not bothering to give Harry an explanation first.The clear water was murky now with swirling silt, but Xander could just make out a shadowy figure a few feet underwater struggling to make it to the surface. It was Gemma, he realized with mounting horror, and there was a human body clutched in her arms.Xander swam towards her with winding desperate strokes but couldn’t reach her in time. She surfaced with a sobbing gasp and Joey’s bloated head lolling limply against her chest.Xander paddled toward her, adrenaline shutting down every impulse to cry, scream, vomit—fueling him only in pursuit of a single goal: getting Gemma out of the fucking water. He grabbed her bodily and yanked her to the shore, but she was too heavy with Joey’s body still clutched in her arms.“Let her go,” Xander shouted, knowing even while he was doing so that she wouldn’t. “Gemma! Let her go!”Gemma’s elbow collided with Xander’s nose, hitting him square in the face. He let go of her in surprise, clutching his nose with one hand and treading water with the other. He could see through the haze of pain clouding his vision Harry, jumping in beside Gemma and struggling to pull Joey from her grasp.Finally Gemma let go, going limp in her brother’s arms as he dragged her out of the water. The last thing Xander saw before he turned to climb out was Joey’s corpse slowly sinking back down to the bottom.There was blood everywhere, streaming down his chin and chest and seeping into his mouth, but Xander refused to let anyone help him, even Harry, who offered his shirt to staunch the bleeding.Clare was already on the phone with the sheriff’s department by the time Xander made it out. He stood by Hélène while Clare explained the situation, watching as the blonde stared down into the pond, where Joey’s body was no longer visible, with an odd expression on her face. She hadn’t moved in the whole time Xander and Harry had been struggling to get Gemma out of the water.Xander was starting to believe that she knew something. She just didn’t know how to tell them.Harry had to carry Gemma back to the house while she cried in his arms. Everyone else looked just as shaken, though neither Cara nor Clare mustered up any tears as they walked, both of them looking too shell-shocked to feel much of anything at all.Xander was much the same, his head feeling numb from the adrenaline and the shock. He trailed slightly behind the others, watching as Hélène trotted calmly up the trail next to her sister, looking the least affected of all of them.They decided—after a moment of hushed deliberation while standing between the two buildings—to wait for the police at the guest house rather than the main ranch house, not wanting to involve their parents just yet, or face the possibility of having to break the news to Sarah.The Azoffs showed up in two different squad cars (possibly the only two the force had) a few minutes later, sirens off. It wasn’t an emergency. The victim was already dead.Harry showed them the pond alone, leaving the others sitting inside Xander’s front room to stew in silence. It was a long time before Harry returned, alone, sopping wet again and even quieter than he’d been before. Xander wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him somehow, but knew it was better for both of them if he did nothing at all.“We need to take a few cars out to the station,” Harry told them in a subdued voice. No one questioned him.Everyone grouped up without hesitation and piled into Harry’s truck and Clare’s hunk of scrap metal, forming a small convoy as they drove off the Twist property and into town. The squad cars were already parked in front of the station when they arrived, forming a barricade of sorts in front of the doors. Xander wondered if they’d done it to hide the body from prying eyes when they’d brought her inside.There was no sign of the Azoffs when the group first walked in, only a woman at the front desk wearing a deputy’s uniform who stood quickly as soon as they entered. “Have a seat,” she told them, passing out a clipboard to each of them in turn as they sat down. She skipped over Hélène entirely. “The sheriff’ll be out in just a minute to talk with you.” Then she left them there and slipped through a door in the back, leaving them to stew in their own juices while they waited for Irving to show.Xander’s pulse raced as the seconds ticked by. He couldn’t tell anymore if his clothes were damp with water or sweat, but it was probably a mixture of both. There was no way for Xander to anticipate what the sheriff would say when he was finally pulled in for questioning, but they knew now about his fight with Tori, and that was reason enough to worry.Eventually the back door opened again, but neither of the Azoffs emerged. Instead it was the woman from before, looking considerably more frazzled than when she’d left. She pointed toward Cara and Gemma, sitting on either side of Harry, with his arms wrapped protectively around their shoulders.“You two first,” the woman said tiredly. “Come on.”“Glenne—” Harry started to say, standing up in unison with his sisters, but the deputy gave him an unforgiving glare in return. He sat back down again.“Cara, you’re in here with Irving; Gemma, over here with Jeff.”Xander swallowed thickly as the two girls disappeared into the respective offices for questioning, already dreading being alone in a room with Irving. It felt like forever before they emerged again: Gemma with her eyes puffier and more bloodshot than when she’d gone in, and Cara looking more emotionally drained than ever before.And then it was Xander’s turn.“All right,” Glenne said, motioning toward them, “Harry, Ritz, you’re next.”Xander instinctively moved toward the door Cara had just walked out of, only to be stopped by Glenne’s arm barring his chest. “You’re with Jeff,” she told him.Xander switched directions automatically, his brain still processing the change in expectations as he wandered over like a zombie to the other door instead. Jeff had his head in his hands when Xander walked in, looking up just as the door opened and shuffling a few papers on his desk as if trying to look busy.“Have a seat,” he said briskly, but Xander could feel the nerves radiating off of him in waves. It was easy to see that this was Jeff’s first time dealing with a murder.Which begged the question: why was he interviewing their lead suspect instead of the sheriff?Xander sat down and folded his hands in his lap, waiting for the onslaught.There was none. Jeff stood with a weary sigh and passed a folder over to Xander to examine. Xander knew what was inside before he even opened it, but he did so anyway, just for show.“We did some digging,” Jeff told him, which wasn’t anything Xander didn’t already know, so if Jeff was hoping to catch him off-guard, he was disappointed. “You were involved in a physical altercation with your girlfriend just before you came here according to a police report she filed. Is that correct?”“She dropped the charges,” Xander pointed out.“But you still put her in the hospital,” Jeff countered.Xander’s fists clenched of their own accord. “She had a minor concussion,” Xander said through gritted teeth. It would do him no favors to get angry now. “It was an accident.”“Okay.” Jeff’s benign tone did nothing to convince Xander that the deputy actually believed him, but he wasn’t about to argue the point. “Let’s move on, then. Harry said you instructed them to get out of the pond before Gemma found the body. Why?”“Because I found the body first,” Xander replied bluntly.There was a flash of surprise across Jeff’s face for a second before he managed to collect himself. “Mind telling me how that happened?” he asked.Xander outlined the details of the morning, careful not to leave out anything he could remember, including why he was covered in his own blood—though Jeff must’ve already known that from either Harry or Gemma, since he hadn’t asked the second Xander walked in.“Did you talk to my brother?” Xander asked abruptly as Jeff was in the middle of writing something down. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask Max before if he’d spoken to the police; Xander had just assumed he would’ve called if something had happened.Jeff looked up with a frown. “Your brother?” he questioned, like he didn’t know exactly what Xander was referring to.“Yes,” Xander replied, letting his annoyance seep through. “My brother. I know you spoke to my mother and my ex-girlfriend. I’m asking if you talked to my brother, too.”“We couldn’t get a hold of him,” Jeff said quickly as he glanced back down at his notes. A few seconds passed and then Jeff looked up at Xander again, seemingly annoyed. “You’re free to go now.”Xander rose from his chair apprehensively, half-worried that as soon as he got up an entire SWAT team would burst through the door to put him in handcuffs again. But nothing happened. Jeff didn’t even look at him as he turned to go.Xander paused with his hand on the doorknob. Something was still bugging him. “Are you going to interview Hélène?” he asked, turning his head slightly to get a better look at Jeff behind his desk.“Hélène?” Jeff replied, looking incredulous. “What would be the point?”Xander thought that was a rather callous way of looking at the girl’s situation, but he wasn’t about to argue that point with a man who clearly wanted him to be guilty just so he could put this case to bed.“I think you should talk to her,” Xander insisted. He knew he was pushing his luck.“And I think you should go,” Jeff retorted, “unless you want to end up in a holding cell for the next twenty-four hours.”Xander held up a hand in surrender and swiftly made his exit. He returned to his seat without ceremony, pointedly ignoring the inquisitive looks from both Cara and Clare as he passed by them.Jeff emerged from his office just as Xander was sitting down to summon Clare in himself. Hélène didn’t go with her. Xander stared a hole into the floor, waiting for them to finish. When they got back to the ranch, he was going to dig up those sleeping pills from the bottom of his duffel and put himself in a coma.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It was a while before Harry finally came out of Irving’s office. He looked distraught, which wasn’t surprising to Xander, but the fact that he resolutely refused to meet the other man’s eyes as he walked back over was, and it hurt more than he expected.“I’m gonna take Gemma home,” Harry told Cara in a low voice. “Can you catch a ride from Clare when she’s finished?”Cara nodded wearily. Xander waited until Harry passed him with Gemma under his arm before getting up to follow them.Harry didn’t say a word to him the whole way back to the ranch. Xander tried to tell himself he was fine with that. He wasn’t.Xander finally broke once they reached the house, after Harry had pushed Gemma through the front door and was on his way inside. He reached out to touch Harry’s arm, but as soon as his fingers brushed skin, Harry flinched away, looking wounded.“Sorry,” Xander said hoarsely.Harry turned without saying a word and followed Gemma into the house. The door slammed shut in Xander’s face.Xander made good on his promise to himself to knock himself out with sleeping pills as soon as he retreated to the guest house. He fell asleep in his bed still dressed in his gym shorts and blood-stained t-shirt and drifted dreamlessly for hours, finally rousing again well after the sun had set.He felt disgusting when he woke up and wandered aimlessly into the bathroom to take a shower, discarding clothes haphazardly along the way. The water was too hot when he got in, and too cold when he turned it just an increment to the left. He gave up, slumping against the tile and letting the lukewarm spray sluice down over his naked skin, streaking pink and swirling down into the drain, erasing everything but the memories.Xander didn’t feel any cleaner when he finally emerged, his fingers pruned and skin flushed pink. He grabbed a towel off the rack and dried off quickly. He was about to toss it into the laundry basket before leaving the bathroom to get dressed, but an unexpected noise on the other side of the door gave him pause.He pushed the door open slowly, noticing first that the lights he’d turned on had now been turned off. The next thing he spotted was the dark silhouette standing at his window. He drew back an inch, his wet feet squeaking against the tile, causing the finger to turn just enough that a ray of moonlight broke free and cast the smallest bit of illumination across a familiar face.“Pretty sure I locked the door,” Xander said evenly, hyper-aware of the fact that he was wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist while Gemma stared at him, her expression unreadable.“I have a key,” Gemma told him, dangling the aforementioned item between her thumb and forefinger. “You didn’t come to dinner,” she continued. There was an expectant note to her voice, but Xander didn’t know what she wanted him to say.“Wasn’t feeling up for company,” Xander replied, hoping she’d take the hint.It had the opposite effect. “How about now?” she asked imploringly.Xander heaved out a rough sigh. “I’m not gonna sleep with you just because you feel bad about what happened,” he told her. It was a cruel way of putting it, but he was tired. He wanted to go back to bed.“I’m not asking for that,” Gemma retorted. Her face hardened. “I just thought maybe you’d let me stay here again tonight.”Xander considered it for a moment. “Fine,” he agreed. He half-expected her to flop down into his bed right then and there, but she didn’t move. “Is there something else you needed?” he asked pointedly. “I’d like to get dressed in private, if you don’t mind.”Gemma sniffed in affront and moved toward the door. “Mama wants you to come have hot chocolate with us,” she said, “so make it quick.”Xander rolled his eyes as the door swung shut behind her. He threw on joggers and threadbare cotton tee and ignored the way that his stomach was rumbling now that he’d been awake long enough for his body to register the fact that he hadn’t eaten all day.Gemma was sitting on the island countertop in the kitchen when Xander finally emerged. He could see now under the lights that her makeup was gone, revealing the scared little girl underneath, her eyes still red and puffy from what must have been hours of crying. It was enough to pull him toward her despite his earlier rejection. He wrapped his arms delicately around her and held her tight, listening to her breathing in time with his own for nearly a minute before finally letting her go.“What was that for?” she asked as he pulled away, swiping at her eyes as she started to tear up again.Xander shrugged. “Seemed like we both could use it.”She smiled back at him and hopped down off the counter. “Ready to go?”“After you.”The mood in the Twist household was somber despite Anne’s attempts to cheer everyone up with hot chocolate and freshly-baked cinnamon rolls. Anne tried to stuff one in Xander’s mouth almost as soon as he walked in; he ate another two after that just to soothe his grumbling stomach. He didn’t protest when Robin filled his mug almost to overflowing either. The warm drink felt good even though it was summer, and by all accounts Xander shouldn’t have needed it, but for whatever reason he’d felt colder, down to his bones, as soon as he’d crossed the threshold.Maybe that was because of Harry, still making a concerted effort to ignore him from across the table, like the last few weeks hadn’t even happened.Mitch and Sarah were absent, as Xander had expected. It wasn’t long before he learned that they had chosen to vacate the Twist property entirely, at least for the time being, and were staying with the Azoffs instead while the investigation continued. Xander wondered if they’d ever be able to come back after what happened.It was strange seeing the house so empty after the bustling party that had been Xander’s first exposure to the place, the sense of life all but gone now as the cobbled-together family gradually dwindled. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be the next to go, either forced out or finally able to leave of his own accord.Xander felt like a kicked puppy as he tried with no avail to get Harry to meet his eyes over their steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Eventually he gave up, turning his gaze to the others sitting around the table instead, listening to their subdued chatter without adding anything of his own.Cara had her arms around Hélène, their chairs pushed so closely together they could’ve been sharing the same seat. Clare was missing, too. Working her shift at the gas station, Xander assumed.Gemma was the first to leave the table. She excused herself with a yawn, heading out of the dining room and slipping around the corner into the darkened living room, where Xander presumed she was taking the long way to the guest house through the back door. He gave her a few minutes’ head start and then departed as well.He didn’t even make it to the door.“I need to talk to you,” Harry said darkly, taking Xander by the arm and pulling him up the stairs branching off from the foyer and into a wholly unfamiliar part of the house that overlooked the paddock and stables.It wasn’t until he was inside with the door shut firmly behind him that Xander realized Harry had just pulled Xander into his bedroom, and he couldn’t help but gaze up curiously at the walls, covered in an eclectic mix of music posters and abstract Polaroids. There was a giant charcoal portrait of Cara’s face hanging on the door to the bathroom. Xander wondered what the story behind it was.Harry’s curtains were a gauzy pink; so was his duvet, the sheets underneath the same cotton candy color of the sweater he’d worn the day they’d found Michael’s body. Xander stared at the bed hard, wondering if Taylor had slept there, if that’s where—he stopped himself and turned to look at Harry, who had yet to say anything since they’d walked in.“So?” Xander prompted with a rough exhalation.Harry seemed startled by it, like he’d forgotten Xander was even there. It took him a few seconds to collect himself. “About earlier,” he started, and then paused for a long moment while Xander stared at him, still waiting. “I asked Irving to let Jeff interview you instead,” Harry said quietly.“Well,” Xander replied awkwardly, “I appreciate it.”Harry’s expression remained grave. “I told him I lied, too. About my alibi. Got my ass reamed out for it to boot, but Irving knows I was with you that night now.”Xander’s breathing quickened. By all accounts, that should have been good news, but the look on Harry’s face was even more foreboding than before.“And in return,” Harry continued, “he was kind enough to inform me that you put your girlfriend in the hospital a few weeks before you got here.”“Ah.”Harry’s lip curled. “That’s all you have to say?”“What do you want me to say?” Xander replied, already exhausted by their conversation. He sat down heavily on the edge of Harry’s bed, though he would have rather turned tail and ran straight out the door instead. “I already told you we fought right before I left. I told you she got hurt.”“I thought you meant—” Harry sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t think you put someone in the hospital, that’s for sure. What the fuck, Xander?”“It was an accident,” Xander replied, pleading with his eyes for Harry to believe him. “She just kept…coming at me and I freaked out. I don’t know. I pushed her and she hit her head on the kitchen counter. I was the one who drove her to the fucking ER. It’s not like I wanted her to get hurt.”He could’ve told Harry that it wasn’t the first time Tori had thrown a bottle at him after she’d gotten too drunk, or that he’d patched himself up more than a few times after she’d dug her nails into his arm until he was bleeding.He could’ve told Harry that he’d spent his entire childhood being picked apart by his mother while his younger brother could do no wrong, and that Tori was the first girl who had made him feel worth anything at all when he was skinny and ugly and awkward in college, and that he’d stuck with her despite all the signs warning him not to because he was afraid no one else would have him.Xander could’ve said all of those things, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to have to say them, to justify a single mistake he’d made, one he’d regretted from the moment it happened and still did—because despite everything, Xander had never wanted Tori to be miserable. He just wanted her to be happy without him.“I can’t tell what you’re thinking,” Xander said, looking up at Harry, who was still standing in front of him with his arms wrapped loosely around his torso, brows still creased in a frown.“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Harry said quietly. “I want to believe you.”“Then believe me.”Harry took a tentative step forward just as Xander spread his arms open wide in invitation. Harry stumbled into them, allowing Xander to press his face into the soft give of Harry’s stomach as he wrapped his arms around the younger man’s waist.“Come to bed with me?” Harry asked softly, prompting Xander to lift his head.Xander could tell it wasn’t an invitation for sex, but he didn’t care. He would take Harry any way he could get him. And that realization was what scared him the most.Harry’s bed was empty when Xander woke up in the morning. He luxuriated in the soft pink sheets for a minute, starfishing wildly just because he could, and then sat bolt upright when he realized it was morning and he was still inside the Twist’s ranch house.Xander leapt out of bed and dove into his clothes, only to then consider that wearing the same thing he had last night was even more incriminating. He paced around Harry’s room, wondering if he should just make a break for it and hope no one was around to catch him sneaking back out again, but eventually he flumped back down on the bed again and decided to wait for Harry.He made it a full five minutes before going out of his mind with boredom as he stared at Harry’s portrait of Cara—drawn by him, or someone else? It seemed unfair for him to be both musically and artistically gifted. For some reason, it made Xander think of his own brother, and the fact that they hadn’t spoken once in well over a month, since before Xander had left home.Xander called him, figuring it was late enough in the morning in New York that Max would be up and about. He picked up just as the answering machine began its robotic spiel, cutting it off midsentence.“Hello?” His tone was businesslike, cluing Xander in to the possibility that Max had picked up without even bothering to look at the caller ID first.“Hey, it’s Xander.”“Oh.” There was a beat of silence. “Did you need something?”Xander felt like he’d been slapped. Sure, they hadn’t been talking much in the year or so that Xander had been living with Tori instead, but there was never any animosity between them. This Max sounded like he was speaking to a stranger. “No, not really, I was just calling to catch up. Is it a bad time?”“No, it’s fine.” More silence.“Okay,” Xander said cautiously, “well—”“Actually, you know what, I can’t do this,” Max blurted out unexpectedly. “You’re really calling me to have a chat like nothing happened?”“What?” Xander said, exhaling loudly. “I emailed you to explain things—”“You left the equivalent of a note on the fridge saying, ‘gone to buy milk’, Xander. I feel like I deserve more than that after everything I’ve done for you.”Xander couldn’t really fault him for that. Max was two years younger and yet Xander had been riding his coattails for years.“Okay,” Xander replied flatly. “So, do you want an explanation now or would you rather we just wrap this up?”The door creaked open as Xander was speaking. Harry slipped through quickly and shut it again, tip-toeing over to join Xander on the bed. He smiled, pecking the tip of Xander’s nose with his lips before flopping down onto the pillows.“I’ve been telling you for years to dump Tori,” Max was saying. “And it took her getting you arrested before you even considered biting that bullet. Then you up and leave out of nowhere, and a couple weeks later I get a call from Texas saying that you’re a fucking person of interest in a murder case. Xander, what the flying fuck?”Xander was speechless, but Max wasn’t finished.“If worse comes to worst and you need a lawyer or something, I’ll step up and figure something out. But unless it’s that dire, or you manage to finally get your shit together, don’t call me anymore. I can’t carry your baggage around forever. Bye, Xander.”Xander let the phone fall from his ear with a startled frown.Harry furrowed his brows in concern. “What was that about?” he asked.“Nothing,” Xander said automatically, before amending, “My brother wants nothing to do with me right now, I guess. Not that I can blame him.”Harry pouted at him, making Xander smile in spite of what had just happened. “As much as I’d like to let you stay here and rag on your brother,” Harry said, “we should probably get you back to the guest house before everyone wakes up.”“Are you ever going to tell your family about us?” Xander asked as Harry pulled him out of bed and toward the door.Harry paused, cocking his head to the side in contemplation. “Maybe,” he said finally. It wasn’t a no, at least.Xander was surprised when Harry didn’t let go of his hand even when they exited his bedroom and snuck down the hallway toward the backdoor. Xander could hear someone bustling around in the kitchen, Anne probably, so he did his best to stay as quiet as possible they slipped through the sliding glass door.Cara was leaning against the wall of the house on the other side, a cigarette between her fingers. Xander dropped Harry’s hand immediately, but Cara’s eyes had already homed in on the sight of their fingers linked together. She frowned slightly.“Cara,” Harry said forbiddingly, with a pointed look at her cigarette.“Harry,” she retorted with a mocking expression. She nodded toward Xander. “I thought you two were fooling around.”“We’re not ‘fooling around’,” Harry replied, crossing his arms over his chest in defiance.Cara waved a dismissive hand. “Well, whatever you want to call it.”Xander didn’t know what Harry wanted to call it and that was the biggest problem.Harry reached forward suddenly, and Xander thought he was going to pluck the cigarette right out of Cara’s hand and toss it in the grass, but he only took her other hand in both of his, staring down at her imploringly. “Please don’t tell anyone,” he begged. “I don’t want Mama to know.”“Why do you think Anne would even care that you’re into guys?” Cara shot back. “She didn’t give a shit about me and Clare when we dated.” And that was a revelation that had Xander’s eyes widening, though in hindsight, he felt like he should have seen the signs sooner.“Well, you’re not her kid,” Harry pointed out meanly.Cara wrenched her hand out of Harry’s grasp. “Oh, get over yourself, Harry,” she hissed, before angling her head to include Xander in her next address. “Neither of you have seen Gemma, have you?” she asked.Xander tried not to look guilty. “Have you checked the guest house?” he replied, getting a sharp sideways glance from Harry in return.Cara didn’t look even remotely surprised. “First place I checked, actually,” she responded coolly. “She was supposed to head down to the Azoffs to check on Mitch and Sarah, but the cinnamon rolls are still in the kitchen and none of the cars are gone.”Harry and Xander exchanged worried glances. “We’ll take the truck and look for her,” Harry suggested.Cara nodded, biting at her bottom lip. “Be careful,” she warned.They didn’t find out anything useful at the Azoffs. Only Sarah was there, and she informed them in a trembling voice that she hadn’t seen Gemma, but that they might have better luck asking Mitch down at the shop.Mitch wasn’t much help either.He was working on an old blue sedan when they arrived at the garage, Xander’s truck sitting gutted next to it in the only other available spot. He didn’t look up as Harry and Xander approached, only grunting as he worked to let them know he’d noticed them walking up.“Hey, Mitch,” Harry said softly, his voice just barely audible over the clanking of Mitch’s metal tools. He didn’t get a response. “Have you seen Gemma around? She was supposed to drop some stuff off at the Azoffs, but Sarah said she never came by.“Haven’t seen her.”Xander didn’t know Mitch well enough to determine whether his brusque tone was due to intentional rudeness or merely the lingering effects of yesterday’s news. Harry seemed put out by it, however, and grabbed Xander’s arm, pulling him back toward the truck.“Come on,” he grumbled. He turned the engine back on but sat there unmoving for nearly a minute, his hands glued to the steering wheel as he stared ahead.“Where are we going next?” Xander asked, more than a little alarmed by Harry’s shift in mood.“I don’t know.”“Should we go back to the ranch?”“I don’t know!” Harry snapped, clenching his hands around the steering wheel. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t even want to think about—” He stopped, swallowing hard.“Let’s just focus on finding her,” Xander suggested. It wouldn’t do either of them any good—or Gemma, at that rate—to panic. “Can’t you think of anywhere we could look? Somewhere she might have gone if she was upset or something?”Harry shook his head. “The pond? The river, maybe. I don’t know.”“We’ll start with that, then,” Xander decided, staring at Harry pointedly until the younger man finally put the truck into drive and made a sweeping U-turn right there in the middle of the street.Xander was actually expecting to find Gemma at the pond, or maybe just hoping so hard that he couldn’t allow himself to see any other possibility. Whatever the case, he found himself disappointed. The pond—tranquil as ever—stood like a monument to tragedy in the middle of the clearing, and Gemma was nowhere to be seen.Harry said nothing and instead continued on into the trees with Xander following him. He paused when they finally reached the river, looking east and west as if hoping to find some kind of sign directing them which way to go. There was nothing, only the eerie stillness that permeated the thickly forested shoreline as the water rushed by at a contradictory pace, churning a pure white, like ivory.“You head east, and I’ll go west?” Harry suggested after a minute.Xander nodded, not seeing any better alternative. They set off, Xander scanning the tree-line and the water for any sign of Gemma but finding nothing. The longer he walked, the more uneasy he felt, until finally, he wasn’t sure he wanted to find her at all, too afraid of what he might await me when he did.Harry’s yell from upriver made Xander start, his feet nearly flying out from under him as he tripped on a stray rock. He turned to find a tiny figure just barely visible in the distance flailing its arms wildly. Xander sprinted over to him, his heart in his throat.Harry was pointing down into the mud when Xander reached him. He squinted into the muck and was just able to make out the tell-tale outline of a cell phone, the case a barely visible rose gold. There was a mess of footprints around it, like a stampede had come through, and as Xander’s eyes roved over the whole scene, he could make out a distinct dark stain against one of the larger rocks, the color of dried blood.Xander’s heart-rate doubled, but he tried not to show it, not wanting to cause Harry to fly into a panic as well.“There’s a set of tracks going into the woods,” Harry said, his voice going a mile a minute as he gestured at the muddy footprints and water-logged skid marks that led away from the shore and into the trees.Harry led Xander forward without waiting for a reply, scrambling up the bank in a flash. He navigated the twisting roots and bushes underfoot with surprising ease considering his long giraffe legs, but Xander supposed Harry must have had plenty of practice gallivanting around these woods as a child.Xander even had trouble catching up at first, but then Harry suddenly stopped in a thick cluster of dogwood. He didn’t move even when Xander reached him, his eyes staring out resolutely into the trees ahead.Xander spent a long moment trying to figure out what had troubled Harry before realizing the underbrush was so thick that there were no more footprints to follow, and that they were standing on the edge of a matted patch of leaves coated with black syrupy blood. There were no other clues to indicate which way they should keep going. The trail ended there.Xander moved to take another step forward, intending to press on until they reached the house if necessary, but he didn’t make it that far.“Wait,” Harry said suddenly, putting a hand against Xander’s chest to stop him. He squinted out at the surrounding foliage as he slowly spun around in a circle. “There’s a treehouse near here that Des built for us when we were kids.”“And you didn’t think to look there?” Xander didn’t mean to let it slip out, but the combination of anxiety and physical exhaustion was taking its toll on his nerves.“The tree got blown over in a storm,” Harry said deadpan. “None of us have been back there in years.”“Oh.”“Forgive me if it wasn’t exactly first on my list.”Xander nodded, feeling appropriately chastised. He waited a moment for Harry to get his bearings. The younger man reached for his hand this time, like Xander was a child, and led him deeper into the forest.The vegetation they hiked through was wild and overgrown, completely obscuring the forest floor. Xander couldn’t even tell north from south anymore, but Harry seemed to have no trouble finding his way through the emerald labyrinth, despite the fact that everything looked the same.Harry was the first to spot the ruins of the Twists’ childhood treehouse through a break in the trees, the tightening of his grip on Xander’s hand a dead giveaway that they were close. There was still no sign of Gemma anywhere as they approached, and Xander was already starting to worry that they’d come to a dead end, losing their one viable trail back by the river.“Give me a boost,” Harry directed, tugging Xander over to the pile of rotting wood that was all that remained of the fallen treehouse. It was still high enough of the ground that Harry had to use Xander’s thigh as a stepping-stool to get up into the higher branches, where there was an opening he could climb through to get inside the treehouse itself.Xander watched him disappear and tore strips of flesh off his bottom lip as he waited.“I need help!” Harry called out only a few seconds later, spurring Xander into immediate action. “She’s here, but I can’t—”Xander leapt for the bottom branch, shredding the palm of his unbandaged hand as he caught hold and pulled himself up. It was easier after that to climb to where Harry’s head was poking out of the wreckage. Xander bit back a gasp as he caught sight of Gemma’s face, covered in blood and unrecognizable except for the rose gold pendant hanging from her neck. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing.Extracting Gemma from the treehouse without further injuring her was nearly impossible, but somehow, they managed. Both Harry and Xander were nearly as beat-up and bloody by the time they got her down to the ground, at which point they were faced with a decision: risk moving her and possibly worsening her condition in the process, or try to send for help.Xander wanted to play it safe, but Harry was adamant that they get her out of the woods as quickly as possible, which was how Xander ended up with Gemma on his back as Harry led them back to civilization. He could feel the warm trickle of blood against his neck and between his shoulder blades as Gemma’s head wound continued to bleed steadily into his shirt while they walked.“The house is straight this way, right?” Xander finally said to Harry as they inched forward. He was trying to stay level-headed, but he could feel tendrils of panic creeping in with every second that Gemma remained unconscious.“Yeah,” Harry replied, marching on with a stony expression.“Run ahead,” Xander urged, prompting Harry to suddenly stop short. “Run up ahead and I’ll catch up with you,” he continued. “Get the truck started and call the hospital in Glockner; tell them we’re on our way. Call the Sheriff while you’re at it.”“Are you sure?” Harry said. Every second of hesitation was a second Gemma no longer had.“Just go!”Xander stumbled forward while Harry sprinted ahead and vanished into the trees. It was a few minutes of panting breaths, tears of frustration pricking his eyes, before he finally heard the tell-tale rumble of Harry’s pickup in the distance. He moved faster, spurred on by the sound, and finally emerged from the woods to find Harry there on the other side, waiting for him.Together he and Harry gently eased Gemma into the back of the cab. Xander got in the driver’s seat, praying his trembling and bleeding hands wouldn’t betray them, and started on the long drive to Glockner.Xander carefully breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth as he drove, trying vainly to ignore Harry’s choked sobbing in the backseat and the dried blood sticking to his skin. He refused to look back in the rear-view mirror to check on Harry and Gemma. He was driving as fast as dared, shutting out everything except the road ahead.Gemma woke up a mile out from the hospital. Xander could hear her vomiting, could smell it, sour bile mixing with the metallic tang of blood. Harry’s crying had taken on a new shrill panicked pitch, but Xander still couldn’t look back.The paramedics were already waiting outside the ER with a stretcher by the time Xander came screeching in. He was pushed aside almost as soon as he opened the door to climb out, unable to see Harry or Gemma in the ensuing chaos.There was a lot of waiting after that.Harry was banished from Gemma’s bedside—or stretcher-side, as it were—almost immediately and relegated to the waiting room along with Xander while she underwent surgery. Hours passed, in which all of Harry’s family was summoned up to the hospital to join them, and Xander faded quietly into the background while they clung to each other and cried and expressed sentiments of faint optimism while they waited for a verdict from the doctors.Xander slipped out just as the surgeon came into receiving to break the news. He couldn’t take it anymore.It was raining when he walked out the doors into the parking lot. He wasn’t sure what he was planning on doing now that he was out there; he didn’t have any way of leaving without Harry or one of the others to take him back to Junker, but every single nerve in his body was screaming at him to run, and he didn’t know how to ignore it anymore.“Hey,” said a soft voice from behind him, cutting suddenly through the patter of rain against the asphalt.Xander turned to find Harry standing there, pale and wan, but smiling just a little, despite everything.“Good news?” Xander assumed.Harry nodded. “She came out of surgery a little while ago and just woke up. Mama and Cara went in to see her, but I saw you coming out here, so….” He sucked in a deep breath. “Can you promise me something?” he asked.Xander inclined his head slowly, wondering if he would regret whatever it was Harry was about to ask him to do.“Can you stay just a little longer?”Xander stared at him for a long time before leaning in to kiss Harry’s rain-slick lips, clammy until he parted them with his own mouth to get at the hot core of him. He prayed the kiss said what he couldn’t.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Regardless of Junker’s feelings toward the Twists on the whole, Gemma’s plight had struck another chord of sympathy from the town. It was Anne’s idea to have an open house for people to visit and show their support during Gemma’s recovery, as no one wanted to deal with the constant trickle of well-wishers like they’d had after Michael’s death.Xander was beginning to regret volunteering to help keep the kitchen organized after being passed his third casserole accompanied by a dirty look from its creator, this time from one of the sheriff’s deputies, no less. His unpopularity was no mystery; after the story about Gemma had spread, Xander had fully expected to be implicated somehow in a less than flattering light. He just hadn’t anticipated the openness of their vitriol.Xander spent most of the ‘party’, for lack of a better term, helping Robin serve food in the kitchen. He was content being there, away from the bustle in the living room where everyone was fawning over Gemma, who had recovered enough to sleep in her own bed—though Xander strongly suspected she chose not to—and receive visitors, though she refused to be seen without a beanie covering the scars on her exposed scalp.Xander had kept his distance from her since then, feeling like his presence would only be an unwelcome reminder of what had happened. Gemma hadn’t made any attempt to seek him out, so Xander assumed she felt the same way.Xander hadn’t seen much of Harry in the past few days either, but that was more due to poor timing than anything else. Harry had been placed in charge of Gemma’s recovery and was responsible for driving her back and forth between Junker and Glockner for tests and check-ups, leaving him little opportunity or energy for clandestine nighttime trysts.Xander was still trying to convince himself he was okay with that.A few hours in, Anne finally showed up to relieve Xander, looking more out of sorts than he’d ever seen her. She refused to take no for an answer.“You’ve been in here slaving over the food all afternoon,” she chided, bumping him out of the way with her hip. “Go mingle.”“You don’t think Robin deserves a break, too?” Xander replied with a smile. He would’ve rather stayed, but he knew there was no point in arguing with Anne when she was set on something.“Robin,” she said with a sideways glance towards her husband, who looked guilty without having done anything at all, “likes sampling the desserts too much to even consider it.” She rolled her eyes and turned back to Xander. “Go on, dear,” she said, already putting together a plate for him, “go sit down and eat.”Xander tried to seem grateful as he accepted the heaping platter from Anne before heading into the dining room to find a relatively secluded corner to hide in. His eyes homed in on Cara immediately, and he plopped down in the empty seat next to her without saying a word.“Do you know where Gemma went?” Cara asked as he sat down, her mouth still full to bursting with one of the four varieties of fruit salad they’d received.“She’s not here?” Xander replied, surprised. “I didn’t think Anne was going to let her leave until everyone got their chance to ogle.”Cara shook her head. “She went to the bathroom or something, didn’t come back. I figured she made a break for the kitchen. Maybe she’s hiding in the guest house?”“Maybe.” But Xander couldn’t shake the veil of unease that had come over him at hearing Cara’s words.Gemma hadn’t been able to remember anything that had happened to her the day of her ‘accident’, and it was like the same effect had taken over the whole town as well. Everyone was so relieved to finally get someone back alive they’d forgotten that the same person who had killed Michael and Joey and nearly killed Gemma was still out there somewhere.They ate together in silence. Xander had no desire to mix with the townsfolk or to draw any attention to himself, and he suspected Cara felt the same. He finished his food before Cara somehow, even though he’d started well after her, and excused himself quickly. She didn’t try to stop him.Xander made a beeline for the back door, wanting to get some fresh air finally but also needing to know that Gemma was safe somewhere and that someone was keeping an eye on her.He wasn’t expecting to see Hélène of all people lounging against the side of the house just past the door, her hands jammed into her pockets, looking as casual as could be. She was alone as far as Xander could tell, even though when he’d seen her earlier at the gathering, Clare had been hovering over her sister like a hawk.She caught his gaze as soon as he looked at her, eliminating any possibility of Xander pretending he hadn’t noticed her at all without him feeling like a horribly scummy human being for it afterward.He drew in a deep breath and marched toward her. “Have you seen Gemma?” he asked plainly, though not really expecting an answer.“She’s the wrong one,” Hélène said hollowly.It took Xander a moment to realize that she was answering his question, however indirectly, and then he spent another, longer moment trying to decrypt what she’d said. He wondered if she was referring to the fact that both sisters had set their sights on him when he’d arrived, if Hélène somehow knew about all of it. But there was a dreamy ethereal quality to her voice that gave him pause.“What do you mean, ‘she’s the wrong one’?” he questioned cautiously.Hélène didn’t turn to face him, still staring straight out into the trees without blinking. “She’s bad. She’s gonna hurt you. Like she hurts Cara.”Xander’s frown deepened. “I thought you liked Gemma,” he said, but Hélène had grown quiet. He eyed her suspiciously for a moment longer before darting away, even more determined to find the other girl now.Xander finally found Gemma a few minutes later, hanging out with Harry outside the barn. Both siblings looked to him as he approached, but neither said anything.“Hey,” Xander said, fiddling with his belt loops uncomfortably as he tried to force himself to meet Harry’s eyes, “can I talk to you in private for a minute?” It seemed pertinent now to tell Harry what Hélène had just said to him, and Xander was grateful for the excuse to talk to Harry, period.“I’ll head back in,” Gemma said quickly, saving her brother the trouble of answering. Both men watched her go in silence.“What’s up?” Harry said quietly, not budging from where he was standing next to the door.Xander chanced a step closer as he spoke. “I just saw Hélène over on the other side of the house,” he said, garnering an arched eyebrow from Harry in response. “She said some stuff, about Gemma.”“Okay?”“She kept saying Gemma was bad, and that she was going to hurt Cara,” Xander explained. “She said Gemma was ‘the wrong one’, like she was the wrong sister or something.”Whatever his reaction, Xander wasn’t expecting Harry to literally laugh it off. “I’m sorry,” he said, still a bit breathless, and Xander hated how pretty he looked like that, all pink-cheeked with suppressed mirth, “but it just sounds like those bullshit doppelganger stories Clare’s Oma used to tell us when we were kids.”Xander jolted a little. He cocked his head to the side. “Doppelgangers?” he asked curiously, distracted for the moment by Harry’s outburst.“Yeah, you know, like evil twins?”Something clicked in Xander’s mind. He stumbled away from Harry, single-mindedly focused on finding Clare instead. “I have to go,” he mumbled, sprinting away toward the house, deaf to Harry’s protests.Xander had suddenly realized that it wasn’t the Twists who were being targeted at all. It was siblings. He needed to find Clare.He checked the house first, asking the few people he recognized if they’d seen her, but with no luck. Xander pulled out his cell as he slipped through the back door again, nervously glancing toward the place where Hélène had been standing earlier only to find it vacant.He dialed Clare, waiting anxiously for it to ring. When it finally did, there was an answering buzz emanating from behind the pile of firewood stacked against the house. Xander stepped forward, phone still pressed to his ear, praying he wouldn’t find what he knew was waiting there.Clare’s phone was lying abandoned in the grass, vibrating loudly against the siding while Xander’s name flashed across the screen.“Ritz?”Xander leapt to his feet, spinning around to find Jeff Azoff standing half-out the backdoor, evaluating Xander suspiciously. “I was looking for Clare,” he explained, pointing down at the phone.Jeff walked over with caution, as if he was afraid Xander was luring him into some kind of trap. He picked the phone up delicately and scanned the area. “You still haven’t found her?”Xander shook his head. “No, but Hélène was out here. Earlier. And she kept saying stuff that sounded like—well” He kicked the grass underfoot with his toe. “I think something might have happened to them,” he said vaguely, knowing full-well that if he came right out and told Jeff his theory about Hélène there was no way the man would believe him, let alone agree to help him look for her and Clare.“Okay,” Jeff said calmly. “Any idea where they might have gone?”Xander scanned the dewy grass, easily identifying a trampled path leading from the spot they were currently standing into the woods. He pointed, and they followed it.Xander was surprised Jeff was being so helpful, but he supposed after what had happened to Gemma, no one could really be too careful. The trail was gone as soon as they made it through the first line of trees, but that didn’t matter. Xander was certain now about where they’d gone. Hélène had taken Clare to the river.If Jeff still had any reservations about following Xander, he didn’t voice them, but it only took one look at the other man for Xander to determine that he had his pistol on him, in a holster at his hip. His right hand twitched spasmodically, like he was readying himself to draw his weapon, on Xander if need be. Maybe he still thought Xander was guilty and that he really was trying to lead him into a trap, and that’s the reason he’d agreed to follow him in the first place.It didn’t matter what Jeff thought, because as soon as they reached the river, Hélène and Clare came into sudden view, the two of them perched on a high boulder overlooking the treacherous rapids just downriver from where Xander and Jeff had emerged.“Clare!” Xander shouted, ignoring Jeff’s subdued protests from his rear in favor of sprinting full-tilt toward the two women. “Clare, get away from her!”Clare only had a second or two to glance back at Xander in confusion before Hélène’s hand suddenly latched onto her wrist. Xander stopped, afraid to get any closer for fear of what Hélène might do if she felt threatened.“Xander, what the hell’s going on?” Clare asked in a reedy voice, panic etched into every line of her face.Jeff echoed the same sentiment as he approached. “Mind explaining what’s going on here?” he asked, looking from Xander to the two women perched atop the rock in front of them, apparently unsure of who was the bigger threat.“I think Hélène killed Michael and Joey,” Xander announced, staring the blonde dead in the face even as he realized now just how ridiculous it sounded when he said it out loud. “She killed them because they were twins, because of some old stories her grandmother used to tell her about doppelgangers being evil.”“Ritz, you need to take a step back,” Jeff said warningly. His hand was hovering over the holster at his hip now, but he hadn’t raised his gun.Xander didn’t want to give him the opportunity, too afraid that Clare would be caught in the crossfire if something went wrong. “Just let me talk to her,” he pleaded. “Please, just give me a second.”As he turned, there was a spark of lucidity in Hélène’s eyes that Xander had never seen. It was like all the adrenaline had gone to her brain, sparking something in it that suddenly drained away that perpetual half-asleep quality that Hélène had embodied for as long as Xander had known her.“You’re right,” she said, “I did kill them. I had to. I had to. If I didn’t—”“Then you’d never get better,” Xander realized.“What the hell are you talking about?” Clare demanded, fighting against her sister again now that Hélène’s words had registered, sparking a primal fear response. Even if Clare couldn’t fully rationalize it, a part of her knew that her own sister was trying to kill her and was doing everything in its power to get away.“They shouldn’t have brought you home,” Hélène told her sadly, and then she shoved Clare hard, sending her flying backwards into the roaring current.Xander watched the scene play out in slow motion as he stood paralyzed on the riverbank. Clare’s hand, grasping at Hélène’s wrist as she fell, pulling the other girl in with her, and then both of them disappeared into the river.For a moment, Xander still couldn’t move, and then his body sprang into action. He was oblivious to Jeff’s warning cries as he sprinted into the water, the current sweeping him off his feet before he could get more than a few yards in.He could feel the rocks thudding into his body from all sides as he struggled to swim through the roiling mass of darkness ahead of him while he was battered by the current. He could barely see and couldn’t even think of trying to get another breath until finally the rapids subsided and Xander was faced with a tranquil underwater paradise, tarnished only by the body floating lifelessly just below the surface.Xander paddled forward to the figure, recognizing it as Hélène as he approached. Some part of him wanted to leave her there to die, for what she’d done to Michael and Joey and Gemma, but Xander couldn’t bring himself to do it.Even in the relative stillness of the water downriver, Xander struggled to haul both himself and Hélène up for air. When he finally breached the surface, there were black spots dancing in his vision from the lack of oxygen, and Hélène was still lying unconscious in his arms. He thrashed around wildly, searching for any sign of Clare as he struggled to keep the two of them afloat, but he saw nothing.Suddenly a head popped up out of the water a few feet away, and then another. Both Jeff and Clare gasped and spluttered as they made their way toward shore, Xander hot on their heels with Hélène in his arms now that he knew Clare was safe. It was a rough go of it even with Jeff jumping back into the water to help Xander once Clare was back on land, the two of them fighting against the still-moving current with Hélène hanging between them to get to the riverbank.Xander collapsed onto the pebbled beach as soon as his feet touched solid ground. He laid there limp and useless, watching dazedly as Jeff started CPR compressions on Hélène while Clare looked on in horror, a bloody gash carved into the meat of her forehead but otherwise none the worse for wear.Xander felt nothing when Hélène suddenly shot upright, coughing and gasping for air as she clutched her chest. No relief, no regret, just…nothing at all.“Ritz!” Jeff barked at him, already pulling his cuffs off of his belt. “You still with me? We gotta get them back to the house.”Xander slowly picked himself up and moved over to Clare, who didn’t respond when he leaned down to touch her arm. “Clare? We have to go.” He spoke to her softly, like someone trying to coax a wounded animal to safety.She stood with Xander’s help, balancing on unsteady legs like a baby deer. He guided her forward, affording her a few steps on her own before deciding to hell with it and bending down in front of her so she could climb on his back. “It’ll be faster this way,” he told her. “We need to get you back to the house. You’re going into shock.”It took her a moment to process the words, but then she nodded and climbed onto Xander’s back. He lifted her with a grunt and turned to Jeff.“Shouldn’t you call someone?” Xander asked, seeing now that Hélène was cuffed but clearly uncooperative in Jeff’s grip.The deputy shook his head. “Didn’t have my radio on me and my cell’s probably toast now.”Xander realized his was likely in the same predicament even if he could manage to get an ounce of reception from within the trees.The trek back felt like it took hours and seconds all at the same time. Clare was a heavy weight against Xander’s back, grounding him somewhat as he shook and shivered in his damp clothes. He was only vaguely aware of Jeff behind him, struggling to lead Hélène along as they made their way back. When the house was finally in sight, Xander wanted nothing more than to collapse right there in the grass.Xander hadn’t noticed them before he’d emerged from the trees, but suddenly Harry and Anne were running up to him, helping Clare down as Jeff wandered forward with Hélène in tow. Xander sat down heavily in the grass behind the guest house, not wanting to take another step, watching as Jeff explained the situation to Anne and acquired her phone to call the rest of the sheriff’s department.He was grateful when Harry sat down with him, and instead of asking what had happened, merely reached out to touch Xander, giving him something to lean into. Harry’s hands on his face were too tender, too intimate for friendship, and he could feel Jeff’s eyes tracking them. Harry didn’t seem to notice, or care.“Are you okay?” Harry finally asked.Xander didn’t answer. His eyes roved over the grass, moving to Hélène, who was standing like a solemn specter in the night, stark white against the dark forest green. Her eyes slowly turned, latched onto his, without blinking. They were empty.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Xander’s arms were laced with sweat, his breath coming in swift heavy pants as he helped Des move in the last load of floorboards into the unfinished living room. Apart from the cosmetics, the whole place actually looked like a house now, instead of the plywood skeleton it had consisted of when Xander had first started working with Des over a month ago.“You know, you could have taken the day off,” Des pointed out as he wiped his brow with a dust-stained rag.“Needed the distraction,” Xander replied with a grunt as he leaned down to unwrap the bundle of wood lying in a heap on the floor—or what would eventually become the floor, once they were finished for the day.“Fair enough.”The nice thing about working with Des was that Xander knew the older man wouldn’t pry. Things had been moving in an unsteady rhythm since Clare’s near-death-experience just two days prior. Xander had done his best to stay out of everyone’s way, not wanting to interfere any more than he’d already had, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to detach himself from the Twists. Des was his lifeline, a surprisingly uncomplicated tie to the family.Clare was staying at the ranch now, and Mitch and Sarah had moved back in shortly after Hélène’s hospitalization in San Antonio, where she was undergoing intense psychiatric and medical evaluation. No one was sure when or if she was ever coming home.The results of her MRI had shown multiple metastatic brain tumors contributing to her obsessive thinking and psychotic delusions. It was still up for debate just how involved those delusions had been, and why she’d chosen her particular victims. No one could be sure yet just how much of what Hélène had done was really even her fault, but Xander was sure that people would still blame her anyway. He still wasn’t sure how to feel about any of it, so avoidance was the best tactic.“You know,” Des finally said, breaking the silence as they packed up the truck to leave, “if you’re planning on staying in Junker long-term, people will probably forget they ever thought you had something to do with the Rowlands.”It was a nice sentiment, but Xander already knew it was blatantly untrue. “No one’s forgotten the Twists’ legacy,” he pointed out quietly.Des didn’t have a response for that. He remained silent until they were loaded up and ready to go, when Des’s hand stilled on the gearshift. “I know it’s none of my business, but whatever it is you’re doing with my son…just be careful with him, all right?”Xander nodded even though he thought it should’ve been the other way around, that Harry was the one continually shattering Xander into a million pieces and forgetting to pick them back up again, but maybe Des saw things he still couldn’t see. Maybe Harry was more fragile than he seemed.That thought plagued him continually as they drove back to the ranch.Xander had fully intended to go inside and visit with Clare once he got back, but no sooner had he showered and changed into fresh clothes did he find Harry standing on the edge of his front porch, gazing back toward the main house, where Clare and the others were clearly visible through the open windows.“Hey,” Harry said quietly as Xander approached.“Hey.” The words Xander wished he could say suddenly seemed too heavy for his tongue to move. “How are Mitch and Sarah doing?” he asked instead.Harry shrugged. “About the same. Turns out closure is kind of overrated.”There was an unfortunate truth to that.“So what brings you here?” Xander asked casually as he leaned against one of the porch supports.“Thought I’d check in on you,” Harry replied. “See if you wanted to get away for a while.” There was a hint of promise in those words that had Xander reaching for his boots before they were all the way out of Harry’s mouth.“Lead the way,” he replied.Harry took his hand with a mischievous smile, ignoring the fact that anyone inside the main house could have looked outside and seen them skipping across the field together like two besotted youths strolling down a lovers’ lane.When Harry led him into the forest, Xander almost thought that Harry was taking him back to the pond. He was surprised, and more than a little apprehensive. He’d thought the place had been tainted for all of them after what had happened there.But Harry didn’t take him to the pond. Instead they ended up in an entirely unfamiliar corner of the woods, staring up at something that hadn’t even crossed Xander’s mind as a possibility.“I thought your treehouse got blown over in a storm,” Xander said, squinting up at an exact replica of the structure he’d helped Harry rescue Gemma from less than a week ago. This one, however, was still intact, perched in the branches of a tall oak, with a thick rope ladder trailing down the trunk.“I built a new one,” Harry said matter-of-factly as Xander circled the tree before ending up where he’d been standing before with his back to the ladder. “I was a teenager by then, and I wanted somewhere I could jack off without risking one of my sisters walking in on me. Helped, too, that I had some place to hide my porn.”Xander laughed, loud and long, the sound of it echoing through the trees before fading into silence as Harry pressed him up against the rope ladder, tangling his hands in the rungs to get a better grip as he mouthed into Xander’s neck, thrusting up against him once, twice, before his hips finally stilled.“You ever fuck someone out here?” Xander asked, staring deeply into Harry’s lust-blown eyes as he pulled away, his lips spit-slick and cherry-red.Harry shook his head. “Never been fucked up here, either,” he added with a crooked smirk. “You’ll be the first.”“You have stuff?” Xander asked meaningfully, trying not let his voice belie his eagerness. If they needed to go back to the house—or god forbid, the gas station—to get lube and condoms, he wanted to know now, before they got hot and heavy.Harry nodded, that one simple action twisting Xander’s stomach into knots. “Stocked the place ages ago. Was hoping—”Xander cut him off with another searing kiss. “Up,” he murmured against Harry’s lips, clumsily bumping him into the ladder. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he watched Harry’s ass as he scrambled up the rungs before disappearing into the treehouse, already envisioning all of the things he was planning on doing to him. Xander bounded up after him in three long pulls, catching Harry midway through undressing.Xander tore his own clothes off as soon as he climbed up onto the makeshift pillow mattress Harry had constructed to cover the floor of the treehouse, caring little where each article landed in the process. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Harry, who seemed every bit as desperate, and once both were naked, Xander pressed Harry down into the soft pillows on his back and just hovered over him while they breathed the same air between them.“How do you want this?” Xander asked belatedly.Harry spread his thighs in answer, allowing Xander to fall gently between them. “Not gonna last long,” he warned, already bucking up against Xander to rub the hot line of his cock against Xander’s stomach.“Me either,” Xander breathed.Harry’s face broke into a slight smile even as he rocked into Xander’s hips, unable to keep his own still for just a second. “Guess it’s a good thing we have a few hours before we have to get back, then.”Xander knew a few hours wasn’t enough for him to do everything he wanted to do to Harry, but they had time now, he reminded himself. They had all the time in the world.Xander’s hands were shaking worse than when he’d lost his virginity at sixteen when he pulled the things they needed out of the little backpack in the corner that Harry had pointed out to him. He didn’t think he could be blamed for his nerves. Harry didn’t seem like he was faring much better, already panting heavily behind him.Harry’s eyes were wide and searching as Xander crawled back over to him with a tube of lubricant clutched in his hand, which should have felt like the un-sexiest thing in the world, but it didn’t. Harry’s erection had wilted a little in the time it had taken for Xander to fetch everything and return, and Xander took Harry’s dick firmly in-hand, determined to make sure this was just as good for him.Harry’s fingers curled into claws against the pillows as Xander stroked him slowly, like he was doing everything in his power to keep from either pulling Xander’s hand away or trying to make him go faster.“Do you want me to, or…?” Xander asked, gesturing weakly with the lube. He finally let off Harry, whose whole body went limp with a strangled groan.“You,” Harry rasped. He lay there uselessly while Xander uncapped the tube and squirted a generous amount on his fingers, looking like he’d been rendered totally immobile just from Xander’s hand.“It might be easier if you turn over,” Xander prompted, staring down uncertainly between Harry’s spread legs and trying to ignore the heavy weight of the younger man’s gaze boring holes into his forehead.Harry rolled over without protest, baring his ass and the smooth expanse of his back to Xander’s eyes, and if Xander hadn’t been rock-hard already, that sight alone would have done it.“Tell me if I do something wrong,” he said, arching over Harry to speak the words directly into his ear like a whispered prayer.Harry shook his head, only spreading his thighs even further in invitation.Xander went slow, unsure of himself even when Harry humped the pillows underneath him as he pushed in with a single finger and begged Xander to go faster. He was surprised by how effortlessly Harry was taking him in, and Xander wondered if Harry had done this to himself before, in the shower, in his bed, with a fist jammed into his mouth to keep himself quiet so no one in the Twist house would hear.He didn’t have to be quiet out here in the middle of the woods, where the only listeners were the birds in the trees around them, being treated to an orchestra of Harry’s moans interspersed by the slick sounds of Xander’s fingers parting his flesh.Eventually Xander got so caught up in drawing those sounds out of Harry that he forgot himself entirely, forgot they had come up there with a different goal in mind. Harry finally reached behind himself and grabbed Xander by the wrist, stilling his movements.“Is it too much?” Xander asked worriedly. “Should we take a break?”“I don’t want to take a break,” Harry said sternly, glaring at Xander through one slitted eye as he laid there with his face still mashed into the pillow. “I want you to fuck me already.”Xander pulled his hand back to circle the base of his cock, wincing a little at the bolt of heat surging through him at Harry’s words. “Fuck,” he hissed.“Yeah,” Harry replied, deadpan. “That’s the point.”Xander would have laughed if he’d had any breath left in his lungs to do so, but he was fighting bodily instinct telling him to come right then and there, between the dimples above Harry’s ass. Another time, he promised himself.He pulled the condom on clumsily, not wanting to take his hands off of Harry for even a second, and then turned back to the younger man, who had slumped back down to rest his head in the cradle of his own arms.“Like this?” Xander prompted, already spreading Harry open enough to press the tip of his cock down into him without applying enough pressure to actually enter.Harry nodded messily, his shoulders tensing up as Xander pressed forward.There was a second of resistance, and then nothing, Harry’s body giving way easily to Xander’s cock. Harry keened as Xander pushed in, so loudly that Xander was worried for a second that he’d actually hurt him, but then Harry was rocking back, urging Xander with his hips to move, to keep going.The romantic in Xander wished that they could have done this face to face, but he had to concede that this position was easier on them both as he leaned down to press his face into the gap between Harry’s shoulder blades, hips working frantically to meet Harry’s own answering thrusts.As Harry had predicted, it was over all too fast, Xander spilling into the heat of Harry’s body without warning only a few minutes later. He bit down into the meat of Harry’s shoulder, yanking a jerking shudder out of the man underneath him. Xander nearly blacked out, coming in hot pulsing spurts that made him feel like his soul was being wrenched out of him, too.It took Xander a moment to recover, and he finally lifted himself off of Harry, red-faced and a bit ashamed that he’d come before him. Only to discover when he finally rolled Harry over that the younger man’s belly was already streaked in smears of white, his cock hanging limply between his legs.“When did you come?” Xander blurted out, almost offended that he hadn’t noticed.Harry shook his head weakly. “Dunno. Lay down with me.”Xander sunk down obediently, tucking Harry into the curve of his body and trying to sync up the rhythm of their breathing as they laid there in silence.“You really never did this with anyone?” Xander finally asked, his curiosity getting the better of him as he stared up at the glimmering leaves through the slats in the treehouse ceiling.“Nah,” Harry replied, his lips still pressed into Xander’s neck. “When I was a teenager I wanted to bring Mitch here once, back when I still had a crush on him even though he was hopelessly straight, but I never got up the courage to do it before he started dating Sarah, and then after that there was no point.” He bumped Xander’s jaw gently with his face. “You’re my first,” he said brightly.“You’re my first, too,” Xander told him, meaning it in every way that counted. Harry didn’t ask him to elaborate. Xander sighed. “I feel like such an old man for saying this, but I don’t think I’m gonna be up for round two for a while.”Harry stiffened under him, and his voice was thick with faux nonchalance when he replied. “I guess we’ll have to schedule in another session before you leave, then.”Xander pulled back slightly to get a better look at Harry’s face, stained pink with injured embarrassment. “You brought me here even though you thought I was leaving?” he asked, incredulous.Harry curled into the crook of Xander’s arm like he was trying to hide. “I was hoping you wouldn’t want to after.”“I don’t,” Xander said, slowly sinking down into him again, breathing the words into Harry’s lips, his jaw, his throat. “And I didn’t want to before. I stopped wanting to run a long time ago.”They fell asleep tangled up in each other while the wind shook the leaves in the trees and slowly rocked them into a gentle summer slumber.