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Patton felt awful.He was sad and hurt and angry and everybody was keeping secretswhy couldn’t they just have a conversation-
We all can’t talk about it-
He was such a hypocrite.And that was the worst part. He had no right to be upset with Roman and Logan. And he’d yelled at them, like a jerk, and probably made them feel guilty when Patton was sure they had a good reason, right? Certainly a better reason than his.“Stop crying,” he’d said flatly when he’d shut himself into the truck. His voice had been loud in the silent cab. And he had stopped, instantly– he hadn’t even had to do it more than once. The curse got stronger every day.And after what he’d already done with it? The idea that it even couldget more powerful was absolutely terrifying.He was terrifying.Patton had wiped his face. And when Logan and Roman had gotten into the truck he’d smiled at them through slightly swollen eyes, and he didn’t apologize because he knew how little they probably wanted to talk about what had happened.Patton spent the entire school day ducking into corners and empty bathrooms and insistently telling himself to be happy – to smile, to calm down, to be happy – and by the time the final bell rang he could easily pass for someone who had never been upset in the first place.Roman and Logan had both seemed cautiously relieved. Both of them declined going to Patton’s house for homework like they usually did, but they didn’t seem upset- just tired. And after the morning they’d had and then school on top of it, Patton couldn’t blame them.Besides – that meant Patton could visit his other friends.Seeing as it was a Monday, the parking lot of Fletcher Street Chapel was empty until Patton pulled into it. Patton killed the engine and took in the familiar, borderline unnatural silence.The archway that led into the graveyard was black iron, and the paths between the stone were simple gravel.“Good afternoon, Mr. Archer,” he said the stone closest to the door.And the next, “Hello, Miss Vineyard,”On and on, Patton greeted everyone of them – it was a small graveyard, but still a fair undertaking. Finally, he reached the oldest headstone, closest to the church, sat down and leaned against it.“Hey, Mrs. Fischer,” he said, “I’m not having a very good day,”The silence seemed to take on a curious tint. Patton was sure it was his own imagination, but it made him feel better to have someone to talk to.“I yelled at Roman and Logan,” he continued, “And I still haven’t told them about-”Patton cut himself off and sighed.Caution, then. Sorrow – more curiosity.“I know,” he said, “It’s my own fault. And I obviously haven’t learned my lesson,”An edge of sharpness. Reprimanding.“I know I haven’t tried very hard, but-”Shuffling, a few headstones over. Patton looked up.“It’s okay,” he called, his voice soft and sad, “Come out, sweetheart,”A short pause, and then a small shape began to pick it’s way around a headstone.The rabbit would have been horrifying if Patton wasn’t already painfully familiar with what it looked like. Holes were beginning to open up in it’s skin; as it got closer, the smell became nearly unbearable. One of it’s eyes had fallen out, dangling grotesquely, and it was dragging one of it’s back legs.Patton, unstartled, held out his hand, cooing gently.It was wrong. It was unnatural. It was cruel and awful and he couldn’t stop doing it, because what if the poor thing just rotted away but was still conscious because Patton had made a stupid mistake and didn’t know how to fix it?“Heal,” he said softly.Instantly, the rabbits skin began to knit back together. It kept coming towards him, growing stronger with every step, until the little creature that hopped into his lap was a soft, perfectly normal brown rabbit.It had been an accident, the first time.He didn’t know what had happened to the rabbit – it had probably gotten attacked by another animal or a human, maybe even some fae with a streak of animal cruelty. Whatever had happened, the poor thing had managed to get away, but only barely.It had been so hurt. And Patton didn’t mean to – he hadn’t even known at the time that the curse worked on animals, he had never tried.So when Patton, heartbroken and cradling the little brown body, had whispered, “Please, don’t die,”It hadn’t. And now it couldn’t.Patton had tried to forget it. Tried to block it out.But then he’d seen the rabbit again, and realized that while the rabbit couldn’t die, that didn’t mean it couldn’t rot.He’d tried to tell it not to, and while that made it last a bit longer, it still gave out eventually.The curse didn’t come with a manual or a rule book. Patton didn’t know what worked and what didn’t. He could only use trial and error, and he hated that he was basically using this poor rabbit as some kind of test subject.The right thing to do would probably be to tell it to just… to just die. Every time he left the graveyard he thought “Next time,” and every time he managed to convince himself he would, he really would.And then every time he saw the rabbit, and he told it to heal, and the cycle started all over.So he came back, every other day or so, never longer than three, sometimes late at night if he couldn’t get away, and he fixed what he’d done. And the rest of the time he tried desperately to pretend he wasn’t an absolute monster.There was nothing right about what he was doing.Patton started running his index finger over the rabbit’s forehead.“I’m sorry,” he whispered.The dead were quiet around him, reproachful and cold.An apology didn’t mean anything if you were just going to keep doing it. And they all knew what kind of person Patton was.Virgil woke up alone.For a moment, he wondered if it had been a dream - the longest nightmare of his life.He tried to sit up. But only the crystal around his head and shoulders had been broken – his hands braced on the inside of the casket lid and his chest ached.Not a dream then.He scooted backwards, far enough that he could sit up, and a cascade of glittering shards rained down his armsHe looked around – Virgil had heard someone just before he’d woken, hadn’t he? But there was nobody else in the clearing. The sun was still low, probably barely over the horizon – the sky was pale grey.The only other living things around him were his sisters, skittering through the grass and over what was left of the casket, but not on him. They weren’t speaking to him – they seemed too overwhelmed for words, too afraid to touch him. Virgil could only hear rampant anxiety mixed with absolute jubilance.“Hey, it’s okay,” he rasped, his voice rough from disuse. Fuck, how long had he been here?He remembered Greta’s voice, but it had grown more and more infrequent, and the stretches between them could have been days or months – time had been indistinct and impossible to keep track of. More voices had joined as hers had become sporadic, and then stopped entirely.But why would she have stopped coming to see him? That didn’t sound like her at all. He’d expected her to be smugly standing over him, crowing about how clever she was; not sending someone else to do it and leaving him alone in the stupid coffin.Why was he alone? Where…Where was she?“It’s okay,” he repeated to his sisters after clearing his throat a few times. He held out an open hand. They began to trip over each other in their rush to climb his arm, and then their voices exploded into his consciousness.
Brother, brother!
Awake! We missed you, you wake!
He woke you, he woke you, the cloak, he brought it-
“Cloak?” he muttered.They had started leaping from his hands to his shoulders, casting lines and swinging from his arms and his clothes. Several of them clustered over a mass of silver laying across his lap. It had been draped over his shoulders when he’d woken up; he’d thought it was some kind of blanket.
The cloak, the cloak-
Woven of home-thread-
Forgive us, forgive us, we could not do it-
It was not permitted-
The curse is broken, how is it finished?
We saw her weave it-
“Greta? Did Greta make this?” Virgil picked up the cloak in his hands. He unfolded it, running his fingers over the fabric. It-It was woven from spider silk.After a moment, he realized none of them had answered him.And then, only a single, whisper-soft voice spoke.
We could not leave.
The smallest of them, barely the size of his pinkie nail, climbed onto the back of his knuckles.We could not leave, she said again, bound here by our tie to you.Many winters, so many, so long, came more hesitant voices. They all sounded so sad.Virgil’s hand started shaking.It couldn’t be. It couldn’t have been that long. Half-asleep or not, Virgil would have known. He would have felt it.It has been so long since we saw the witch, said the smallest, desperately, and Virgil was sure if she could cry, she would be. His chest felt like it was caving in, and every muscle in him had gone rigid with terror.
We were trapped, we could not follow her, we could not help-
Forgive us, we do not know, we cannot be sure, we have not seen-
There were too many winters for the witch, the youngest voice cut across her sisters, and they all fell quiet in his head, And at last we saw her she was bent and crooked, white-haired and slow, so mortal and so weak.Her voice was achingly gentle.
She could not yet live. She is lost.
Quivering like a tree in an autumn storm, he drew one finger down her leg.Forgive us, she begged.“It’s not your fault,” he choked out.And when he screamed, the last of the glass shattered around him.As Roman walked towards the house, his nose was immediately assaulted by the smell of acrid smoke.Understandably, he panicked.“Mamaw!?” he shouted, bursting through the door and sprinting through the house.But rather than whatever disaster he was expecting, she popped her head out of the kitchen, scowling.“Why the hell are ya makin’ such a racket? And close the door, I know damn well ya weren’t raised in goddam barn.“You hag, something’s on fire, can’t you smell it?” snapped Roman, “I thought the house was burning down!”“It’s the fireplace, ya buffoon,”Incredulous, Roman turned back into the living room, where the fireplace was, in fact crackling away. But the smell was absolutely awful. It was like the chimney wasn’t working at all. And he knew for a fact the smoke detector couldn’t be working if it wasn’t going offnow.“Have we calmed down? Have we taken a breath?” she said dryly.“‘Have we calmed down and taken a breath?’” he mocked.She scoffed and walked back into the kitchen.Roman followed her, unwilling to believe she hadn’t accidentally left a dishcloth on the stove top without checking for himself.He tilted his head.“Have you been baking?” he said, pointlessly, because the fact that every flat surface in their kitchen was strewn with baking tins, cake pans, flour and sugar and butter and dozen other things, made it obvious that she couldn’t be doing anything else.“No, o’course not,” she said placidly, “I’m knittin’, clearly,”“You hate baking,” he said.“Didn’t I just say I ain’t bakin’?”“Okay, fine, whatever, you cryptic harpy,”Roman took a half-step backwards, but hesitated.It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her what had happened this morning. But there was so much. He wouldn’t even know how to start.“Here,” she said bluntly, shoving a slice of… some kind of bread into his hands and startling him out of his reverie. It was lopsided and a little overdone on the outside, and she’d used too many – they were probably blackberries? - so it was on the edge of falling apart.“Get out of my kitchen, I don’t need you underfoot while I’m doin’ shit,”Roman paused for one more fraction of a second. But the desire to get out of the house and find the fairy prince won out over his curiosity over Mamaw’s bizarre behavior.When he got to his bedroom, he shut and locked the door behind him, quickly making his way over to the drawer he’d dumped the glass into and pulling out one of the pieces.He compared it to the one in his pocket, which he’d picked up this morning from the clearing. He turned them every which way, trying to figure out if they were the same substance.They looked similar – in color, in transparency – but the one he’d picked out of his hand was much smaller, barely thicker than a thumbtack. The shard from this morning was bigger than a quarter; he didn’t know enough about rocks, or crystal or whatever magical substance this stuff was to be sure they were the same thing.Logan might know, said a treacherous voice in his head, and Roman stomped that thought down so violently he made an audible, vicious noise.Never. Logan could never know.Huffing in frustration, Roman went to his closet and puled out the cardboard box he kept his hunting things in.It had been ages since he’d even looked at it. He hadn’t wanted to make a nuisance of himself to the residents of the forest – the fewer reasons he could give them to come after him the better.His stuff was all there, but there was something else as well – a book that looked like it had something stuffed into the pages.Baffled, Roman pulled it out of the box and opened it.He took a moment to be horrified at the scribbles all over the page, but most of his attention was drawn to the little cloth doll.It was crudely made, with no face or details – just a little cotton pillow, essentially, with four limbs and an overlarge head. He plucked it out of the pages and realized it wasn’t stuffed with anything normal, certainly not more cotton, or even batting. Whatever it was, it was rough and almost sandy. And it smelled like – like Italian food? And something weirdly floral?Setting it to the side, carefully, like it was a bomb that might go off any second, he turned his eyes back to the page and read the title.
The Farmer and The Viper
It was a brief, woefully simple fable, one of Aesop’s. Roman had hated it as a child. He still wasn’t very fond of it, though his reasons had, admittedly, changed slightly.It told the story of kind-hearted farmer, who found a viper while walking outside in the winter. The snake was too cold to move and almost frozen.The farmer took pity on the snake and picked it up, bringing it into his home. He held it to his own chest and sat by the fire to warm it, hoping to save the serpent from death.But as soon as it woke up, the serpent turned and bit the farmer, killing him. As the farmer was dying, he cried “I have only gotten what I deserved, for taking compassion on so villainous a creature,”So, yeah, Roman fucking hated it. It was an awful story.The new writing was equally upsetting. “Serpent” and “death” had been underlined several times, and “compassion” and “pity” were both circled and then crossed out.Scrawled at the bottom of page, in all capitals and that same angry, jagged handwriting he’d found in the walnut shell, there was a single sentence.
BETTER TO BE THE SNAKE THAN THE FARMER
Whoever was sending him these messages was an astonishingly bleak individual.Roman set the book by the doll and retrieved the iron dagger from the bottom of the box. It seemed much smaller in his hand now, and Roman was so out of practice; he might even be more dangerous tohimself than he would be to anything he came across in the woods.And, honestly, the part of him that had spent long, sunlit days in the clearing, staring into the casket and regaling the fairy with tales of triumph and adventure and laughter – that part was hopingdesperately that he wasn’t going to have to fight the prince.The jacket didn’t fit anymore – he’d have to make due with his normal coat. He changed back into the muddy boots after fruitlessly trying to wipe some of the grime off.It didn’t make any sense. If he had left last night, and his shoes were so filthy, why hadn’t he left footprints getting back in? His window still had plastic over it for the winter – he could hardly have gotten in that way.Roman wasn’t exactly trying to be quiet when he came back towards the living room, but apparently he’d managed to do so – because the closer he got to the kitchen, he realized Mamaw was… talking?He moved towards the kitchen, puzzled – he hadn’t realized there was anyone else in the house.“- exactly how long ya think we can keep this up?”The answering voice was unfamiliar and indistinct – Roman would hazard a guess at male, but he couldn’t be sure.“This whole mess is a house o’ cards waitin’ to collapse,” Mamaw spat, more bitter than he’d ever heard her. “A shitshow from the bottom up. Ridiculous. I’m gettin’ too damn old for this,”More muttering.“Don’t ya think I know that?” she replied, “We can’t tell him, he’ll have damn fit,”Was… was she talking about him?“Well, all the eggs are in the one basket now,” she grumbled, “Here’s hopin’ we like the prince better than we liked the damn king,”She spat “king” with all the disdain one might use when discussing an infestation of cockroaches.She knew the prince was awake? How could she possibly – hecertainly hadn’t told her, and she- she could barely walk across the grocery store, there was no way she could have made it to the clearing and back by herself, even if the strange barrier around it was down now.He peeked around the corner, but there didn’t seem to be anybody else in the room. Was she on the phone?Mamaw turned her head and Roman moved to hide again, but she wasn’t looking towards the door. She was looking out the window.“I give Roman less than a day before he goes lookin’ for ‘im,” she sighed, “You’d a thought the boy woulda had his fill of gamblin’ by now,”Roman bolted.He didn’t know if she’d heard him run out the front door, and at the moment he couldn’t really bring himself to care.She knew.She knew, and she’d never said anything. Never reprimanded him, never even brought it up. He’d spent so long trying to keep it a secret, it had never occurred to him that she’d have figured it out on her own.But why? And who was she talking to? They obviously also knew. Could it have been Logan or Patton?He was so caught up in his frantic thoughts that he didn’t wasn’t watching very closely where he was stepping. So, of course, his foot caught something dark and he went sprawling face first in aspectacularly undignified fashion.“What the hell-?” he grumbled, rolling over. As he did, the shape jumped on his chest and began to make some very unhappy noises.“Dizzy, how do you keep getting out of the house?”Her chest rumbled with a drawn-out growl.Roman plucked her off his chest and set her in the leaves. He climbed to his feet, muttering in complaint all the while. He noted absently that he and the cat must make quite a pair, both of them grumbling and glaring at the other.“You’ve been in a mood for two days, you diva,” said Roman.Dizzy stared at him, and Roman got the distinct feeling he was being judged. Harshly.She licked her paw once and then turned, calmly trotting away from him.“Don’t walk away from me, we’re going home!” said Roman, jogging after her, “You’re an invasive species you know! You’ve heard Logan lecture me about it often enough. You’re not supposed to be out here,”Anybody who’d ever said cats couldn’t roll their eyes had never met Dizzy.She kept walking, speeding up just fast enough to stay out of his reach when he tried to catch her. Conversely, if he slowed down, she would turn her head and chirrup impatiently, before matching his pace.Well, she had to get tired eventually. Roman was incredibly irritated – of course the rest of his afternoon and evening were going to be spent tracking down his damn cat.But as he followed Dizzy deeper into the forest, he started to feel a bit uneasy. The canopy was denser here, and she was so dark-colored – it would be easy to lose her in the underbrush.And then, like someone had stuck him with pin, Roman was sure he was being watched.Trying for subtlety, Roman began to look around him.Only to lock gazes with a pair of bright purple eyes, barely ten steps away.“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” he yelped, skittering backwards.The eyes shifted from glaring to startled, and then the figure stepped forward, seeming to almost materialize from the shadow he stood in.And there, standing in pale shaft of afternoon sunlight, looking down at him in wary curiosity, was the fairy prince.Roman had imagined this moment a hundred times, a thousand. He’d come up with dozens of speeches, and now that he was standing in front of him his mind was a jumble of all of them; he had no idea what to say.“Do you always lurk behind trees like a stalker?”Roman resisted the urge to smack himself for his own idiocy.Almost faster than Roman could process, the fae darted forward, standing entirely too close holy shit.“I know you,”His voice reminded Roman of the sound of snow crunching underfoot.“You talked to me, when I was in the casket. You were there this morning,”“Uh, yes,” Roman squeaked, “With, um. With my friends, two of them,”He narrowed his eyes in answer.“There was no other voices there. You told me to wake up,”Roman winced.“Did I really?” he grimaced.“Don’t play dumb, I am not in the mood,”“Bold of you to assume I’m playing,” Roman answered and memes really Roman that’s what you’re going with right now is memes.“You brought this,” the fae snapped, yanking to indicate the silvery cloak around his shoulders. “Where did you get it?”“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” said Roman, holding his hands up in a placating gesture, “But I’ve never seen that, and I truly have no idea what you’re talking about,”Moving lightning-quick once more, he snatched the front of Roman’s jacket.“WhEr E diD y Ou GeTtH I s?”Roman couldn’t help but screech in alarm – he felt like someone had jammed a pencil in his ears. The fairy prince was rapidly dropping down the list of people Roman liked – or even tolerated.“There’s no need to shout!” said Roman, because the borderline suicidal streak of stupidity he’d had as a child had apparently not calmed down in the slightest in the intervening years. “I’m not being coy, you brute, I’m telling you I genuinely do not know what I did last night,”The prince stared at him for a long moment, and Roman scowled back.Then his face fell, releasing Roman and taking a step away.“Alright, I- sorry,”Roman raised his eyebrows, baffled.“What?”Now that Roman wasn’t utterly overwhelmed with shock or being threatened, he realized – well, out of the ethereal casket and fairytale clearing, and hunching in on himself like he was genuinely embarrassed, the fairy suddenly didn’t seem that intimidating at all. And he’d just apologized which was easily the most bizarrely out-of-character experience he’d ever had with a fairy“I said I’m sorry, are you deaf?”“Forgive me my shock, I’ve never heard one the Good Neighbors apologize,” Roman said bluntly.“Maybe you’ve only met the rude ones,”Roman barked a single, short note of stunned laughter.“I don’t think you’ve got a leg to stand on calling anyone rude, Grabby Coleman,”But rather than retort, the prince’s face crumpled and he flinched like Roman had struck him.An awkward silence fell.“You wouldn’t-” he started, and Roman leaned forward curiously.“Wouldn’t what?” he prompted when the fairy didn’t seem like he was going to speak again.“…You wouldn’t happen to know anybody named Greta would you?” he said quietly.Oh. Oh.“I- I don’t,” he answered. “Sorry,”The prince looked away.“I know… I know you’ve probably figured this out already,” said Roman gently, “But… you’ve been asleep for a very long time,”“Could you give me a better range than ‘very long’?” came the deadpan reply.Roman winced.“My grandmother is seventy-two,” he said, “At least before she was born,”The prince actually groaned.“Great,” he hissed, throwing himself against the trunk of the tree behind him and sliding down to sprawl on the forest floor, “Absolutely fantastic,”Roman wished Patton was here. He’d know how to comfort someone with this. Even Logan would be better than him, probably catch him up on more than half a century of history in ten minutes.Something shiny caught his eye, and he looked down to see one of the clearing spiders crawling across his shoe.“Oh, hello, little miss,” he said. He leaned down to give her a hand to climb into but she didn’t actually seem to be after him – she continued right over his shoe and made a beeline for the prince, scrambling up his sleeve.The prince tilted his head, like he was listening.“Roman,” he said.Roman choked in alarm.“You were the one telling me stories,” he continued absently. “I couldn’t really understand what you were saying, you know,”Roman shrugged.“Thought you could use the company,” he said helplessly.The prince stared at him, the wariness back in his face.“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said quietly.Roman was starting to feel very awkward standing over him like this. He hesitantly sat down with significantly less grace than the other boy had.“You do know it’s probably really bad that you don’t know where you were last night?” said the prince absently. He wasn’t even looking at Roman, instead watching the little spider crawl over his hand with a flat, miserable expression on his face.“Really, I couldn’t have guessed,” Roman said dryly.The prince shrugged.“She says you were there this morning,” he continued, “So at least you know how you spent the last of your night,”“Sorry, she who?”Roman was really tired of all the side-eye he was getting today.The prince gestured pointedly to the little sparkling shape moving around his hands.“They can talk?”“Too me,” the fairy replied impatiently, “They’re my sisters,”“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it,”“I have no idea what that means,”Right, slang. Small blessings – no one would have to know Roman panicked and quoted a meme at immortal royalty.“And you can’t- you probably can’t tell by looking at me what’s going on?”That got him a snort.“I know as little as you do. Probably less. You’ll have to ask some other fae,”He leaned forward and then goodness gracious, he was fast, Roman only had a second to think before the fairy was suddenly right in front of him.In his most human gesture yet, he held out his arm, clearly offering to help Roman stand.Roman looked at it, stunned.“Do humans still shake hands?” he said, and he actually soundednervous.Roman laughed, incredulous, but when the fairy’s expression shuttered and he moved to take his hand back, Roman grabbed it before he could. The fairy relaxed and pulled him to his feet.“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Roman told him, smiling hesitantly.The prince hummed, tilting his head.“After I figure out what your plan is – remembered or not – I’ll let you know if I agree,”He took a step back, his hand slipping out of Roman’s, and then he almost seemed to melt when he left the light.And then Roman was standing alone.A rustle to the left, and when Roman jerked towards the sound, Dizzy hopped over a felled tree branch and strutted towards him. Haughtily, she began winding around his ankles.If even the cat was getting in on the scheming, Roman thought the situation may, possibly, have gotten a little out of control. He pondered the fairy’s words.Talk to another fae, huh?Well.Roman only knew one more.It was approaching four in the afternoon when Logan heard Thomas sigh audibly, throw down his pencil, and loudly shut his textbook.Assuming Thomas was heading upstairs for a snack break, he didn’t look up. But then he felt hands grip him tightly by the shoulders and spin him around in his desk chair.“What’s wrong?” said Thomas firmly.Logan carefully ran over potential answers in his head.“Why would something be wrong?” he settled.Thomas started shaking his head before Logan even finished the sentence.“No, you can’t answer a question with a question to get out of answering me. But if you must know, you haven’t turned a page in almost fifteen minutes,”Logan cursed internally.“What’s wrong?” Thomas repeated.Logan considered the pros and cons of telling Thomas about the shattered casket and the absolute chaos that was surely about to ensue, but he wasn’t sure if that was within the bounds of his abilities. Better to save all the warnings he could.Even if nobody ever listened anyway.Half-truth then. Luckily, Logan thought sarcastically, there were a number of things upsetting him at the moment.“Roman attempted to kiss me at Remy Adams house on Saturday,”Thomas’s mouth dropped open in shock.“He what!?” he exclaimed,“And you didn’t tell me?”“You were incredibly intoxicated Saturday evening,” Logan explained, “And we were both miserably hungover yesterday. Neither of those states of being are conducive to, as you say, ‘twinsy heart-to-hearts,’”Thomas sighed, shaking his head in exasperation. Then his face took on a note of hesitance.“Saturday, you said?”“Indeed,” Logan replied flatly.Thomas winced.“Before or after he made out with Remy in front of half the school?”“Before,”“Oh, Berry,” said Thomas sympathetically.“I assume you can follow the train of thought and do not need me to explain,”“Yeah, Berry, I’m caught up,” Thomas reached out and squeezed his hand.Logan considered leaving it there, accepting his brother’s comfort and ending the conversation. But now that he had started talking about it, his emotions were bubbling up out of control, and it would probably be easier to simply externalize them.“And Patton saw,” he added, “He was clearly distressed. I- it seems as though I cannot manage to stop interfering,”“This again?” said Thomas, “We talked about that, lots of people are polyamorous,”“You know that is not the primary issue,”Thomas’s face closed off.“Roman and Patton don’t care that you’re a fairy,” he said, a note of anger entering his voice, “None of us care,”“I care,” Logan snapped, “And I’m sure you’ll care tomorrow, as always,”Thomas flinched, and there was a sharp twist of pain in Logan’s chest, which was familiar enough for him to identify it almost instantly as profound guilt.“Apologies,” he said, “That was… unnecessarily cruel,”Thomas worked his jaw back and forth and then smiled, tense and shallow.“You always come back,” said Thomas, “It’s stupid for me to be so anxious about it anyway,”Logan moved to argue but Thomas beat him to it.Besides, we’re not talking about me right now, we’re talking about you, and you’re deflecting as always,” Thomas shook himself and his expression became stern once more, “You deserve to be happy, Logan-”And for the first time in a long time, Logan did not bother to edit his thoughts before they came out of his mouth, cutting right into the end of his brother’s sentence.“I am already going to be unhappy, regardless of what else I do,” said Logan. There was an edge of desperation in his words. “I can not afford to acquire anything else to lose,”Thomas deflated instantly. Logan closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at his face; too much like looking in a mirror that showed his own devastation back at him.“We both know how the story ends, Thomas,” he finished quietly.“… Yeah,” agreed Thomas his voice cracking.After a moment, Thomas leaned forward and set his forehead on Logan’s shoulder.Logan let his own head drop on top of Thomas’s. The spent long minutes like that, and eventually Thomas sighed heavily and turned back to his own homework.But Logan was almost certain he hadn’t gotten anything else done. Logan certainly hadn’t.Thomas didn’t bring it up again, and if he hugged Logan a little tighter before they separated the next morning - Logan towards Patton’s car and Thomas to Corbin’s - Logan was not in the business of drawing attention to uncomfortable subjects without either very good reason or very insistent prompting.Logan did not really need a ride from Patton – his house was well within walking distance of the school. And it did not make very much sense for Patton to pick him up first and drive back out of town to get Roman.But when their school schedules had diversified, the time spent getting to school and home had become some of the only time the three of them had together. Now, even when they were all being rather secretive and distant, the tradition held.However, there were morning routines that had not continued, so when Patton turned to the two of them in the school parking lot and held his arms out in a clear invitation for an embrace, Logan was understandably startled.The two of them hesitated, Logan a second longer than Roman, but they both complied.Roman had gotten taller, he noted. So had he – Patton was a much smaller shape huddled between them, almost like they were shielding him from something. Logan had the faint thought that that may have been why Patton wanted the hug in the first place.And when Patton stepped back, Logan realized that he very much hadn’t wanted to let go.Patton waved at them as he broke off towards the east end of the building. Logan watched him go, and turned to go in the opposite direction.Roman grabbed his arm.They stared at each other.“So,” said Roman with an air of forced casualness, “About yesterday morning,”“This is not happening,” said Logan vehemently.“I’m just curious about the singing,” Roman tried.“Absolutely not happening,”Roman slumped, but he didn’t let go of Logan’s arm.“… Full moon tonight,” he said hesitantly.Logan’s whole body tensed before he could stop himself.“You are going!” exclaimed Roman.“Shut. Up,” Logan spat.“Take me with you,”“I most definitely will not,”“I’m going,” said Roman, and that familiar bull-headed determination was dawning in his eyes. Logan could have torn his hair out in frustration. “Whether you take me or not, I’m going. But-”He hesitated, and then he slid his hand down and grasped Logan’s palm rather than his forearm.“I want- I want your help. I don’t- I’m not sure if I can keep doing this by myself,”Logan’s blood was roaring in his ears. Roman’s fingers were like a brand across his.“I’m not sure if I even want to,” Roman finished quietly.Logan stared.“… If I do this for you,” Logan said solemnly, “Will you tell me what you have been keeping secret from Patton and myself?”Roman hesitated.“…Yes,” he said finally.Logan set his jaw.“My house, when the sun sets. Do not come inside,”“Got any tips?” said Roman, clearly trying for levity.Logan pulled his hand out of Roman’s and gave him a grim look.“Bring nothing you aren’t willing to lose,”