He wanted to punch something. Punching things was what he was good at, beating things, fighting, but not caring for things. He wanted to snarl at Cyrus to put him back where he belonged. He kept his hands clenched at his sides as he stalked downstairs.

He was calm, though, when he came back into Lindsay’s room. “You okay?” he murmured, closing the door behind him. The anger had faded to a background crackle behind the worry for his… His. Dane was sorrier than ever for it now, for Lindsay’s sake.

Lindsay opened his eyes and relaxed visibly when he saw Dane. “I’m all right,” he said, but he was still whispering and his eyes slipped shut.

“I’ll get that cloth cold for you again.” Dane hardly knew what to do. “Cyrus is calling Mona. She’s not a doctor. She’s a grumpy old lady who lives over a pizza parlor.” He picked up the cloth. “I’m sorry if I did this to you.” He petted Lindsay’s hair back from his face, as though that would do anything.

Lindsay’s brow wrinkled. “You didn’t hurt me.” The firmness that came through in his faint voice made Dane feel worse, in a way

“Okay. Stay right there.” Dane took the cloth and went to freshen it up.

He filled up the whole bathroom, it seemed, all huge shoulders and clumsy feet. He wasn’t made to be indoors. The face in the mirror wasn’t even human. His hands, when he didn’t pay attention to them, like now, were curled and heavy and tipped with black claws. He forced the claws to shift into something that looked like human nails so he wouldn’t tear the cloth up while wringing it out.

Back in the bedroom, Lindsay lay in the bed looking as fragile as he had the first night. Dane came over and laid the cold cloth on his forehead. “Mona will be here when she can be. Sorry it’s not sooner.”

Lindsay tilted his head, seeking out the touch, shivering. “Cold,” he whispered.

He smelled distressed, still. It was the same sick smell that had clung to his skin after the Institute. His skin was icy to Dane’s touch, in spite of the blankets piled up on him. The fire was hot in the hearth, so that wasn’t the problem. The air in the room was stifling.

Dane gave up and lay on the side of the bed, curling himself around Lindsay. It was all he knew how to do at this point, to keep his frail charge warm. He sighed against Lindsay’s hair, wrapping one arm over Lindsay’s body. “She’ll be here soon,” he promised, even though he didn’t know it for certain. Cyrus wouldn’t let them down.

Lindsay curled closer, pressing up against Dane as he always did. “Thank you.”

“Don’t talk.” Dane stroked Lindsay’s cheek, tucking his head down so his own cheek pressed against the top of Lindsay’s head. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

Lindsay ignored Dane’s instructions, this time. “Did you know?”

There wasn’t any suspicion in the little voice, in spite of the question, but Dane couldn’t help being a bit offended. “No. Hush.” All Dane wanted was for the little mage to stop smelling like he was so ill, to stop shivering.

“Not your fault,” Lindsay said, sounding almost imperious. He relaxed by degrees, his shivers slowing.

Dane put his fingers over Lindsay’s mouth to hush him up. He needed to be quiet, and to rest. Lindsay sucked in a breath, his eyes opening wide, but there wasn’t any pain in the noise. Dane moved his hand enough to cup Lindsay’s cheek, but he left his thumb on Lindsay’s lips to keep him from talking. Lindsay closed his eyes again, tilting his head into Dane’s hand. Dane’s guilt wasn’t Lindsay’s problem. What was Lindsay’s problem was that Lindsay was ridiculously stubborn at the worst times. For someone so small, such a thing could do far more harm than good.

“Good,” Dane murmured. That was better. Dane sighed and relaxed against Lindsay, waiting for the healer to come. He wanted to do more, but didn’t remember how, if he’d ever known.

Finally, Lindsay drifted off to sleep. It wasn’t an easy sleep—he was still shivering and his face was pinched with pain—but it was sleep and not the unnatural unconsciousness that had dragged him under in the park.

It was hard to be in the world. Harder than he’d ever dreamed. Without his cocoon of medications, he was a bare, ragged worm clinging to a branch. He certainly wasn’t a butterfly. This wasn’t a child’s story with an easy, happy ending. To Haruto’s dismay, Jasper had refused to give up his medications entirely. One to make him sleep, one to keep his seizures at bay. The other prescriptions from Dr. Avakian at Raindell had ended, but Jasper was still hoarding the last of each bottle.

“The more you fear, the worse you suffer,” Haruto had said at their last appointment. Samson, lying at Jasper’s feet, had whined sadly enough to make Jasper’s chest ache. “It is not the medications that bother me, Jasper; it is your fear. For this to work, for you to flourish, you must have faith.”

“I don’t know how.”

Find it here.

There never was. Jasper sat up with his back to the cinderblock wall and tried to breathe. Breathing didn’t help, even if he breathed right, but Jasper had to try. Everyone said he would feel better if he just tried. No one seemed to notice that he was trying, that he had been trying ever since he was a kid. He breathed, in through the nose and out through the mouth, counting and trying to relax his shoulders and warm his fingers. The blue nightlight at the foot of his bed cast everything in an eerie glow, but Jasper tried to use it as a focus. If you were trying, he thought, it wouldn’t happen.

It happened anyway. It always did.

He knew without looking that Vale was doing the same. They had long since fallen into rhythms and patterns to carry them through the night with nary a pause for planning what was to come next. Those pauses wasted precious moments Gray could otherwise spend as he was now, turning to see Vale’s beautiful golden face lit up with the ecstasy of their contact.

“Has it been a good year for you?” Gray asked. In the beginning, they’d tried to send messages to each other, sharing news of their days, but nothing made it through the barrier of the curse. Even mutual friends, the few they’d once had, found themselves unable to speak of Gray in Vale’s presence, or of Vale to Gray. Those friends had all moved on, now, made too uncomfortable by the curse’s control over their thoughts and actions.

Vale gave the same answer as always: “Long.” After a pause that felt as long as a year, he continued. “I know how to break the curse.”

“No!” Jasper gulped and shook his head. “It’s okay. It… it just happens. I can get home.” Samson could feel him shaking; maybe it was the seizure, but now Jasper smelled like fear. “Come on, Samson.” He wasn’t ready to be walking, but he tugged on Samson’s leash to get Samson to move.

“Jeremy can walk you home,” the woman said, patting at the arm of the scrawny teenager lurking behind her. “Go on, Jer.”

“Oh, no.” Jasper clutched Samson’s leash to him as he backed away, about to fall off the curb. “Samson can help me.”

Samson made sure to flash the SERVICE DOG panel on the sides of his harness as he circled and settled himself at Jasper’s side. Whether it was that or his unusual size that made people back off, Samson didn’t care. As soon as the walk sign lit up, he guided Jasper across the street. The sooner they showed that Jasper was well enough to walk, the sooner the strangers would leave him alone. And then the sour smell of Jasper’s fear would stop clogging Samson’s nose and throat.

Jasper leaned against him as they walked, giving up on the leash with one hand to hold the harness between Samson’s shoulder blades. He could stay upright as long as Samson steered. “I saw something in the street,” he muttered as they got to the other side. Looking over his shoulder, he let Samson guide him so he didn’t walk into the newspaper box. “It was so dark. There was a little white cat. It was trying to get to me, but it ran in front of a car, and…”

“Bryce…” Zac wasn’t sure what to say to that. That wasn’t what he’d expected, not at all. He’d known things with Bryce would change, but he hadn’t thought about how coming out together in that interview would make it obvious Perry had known all along. “Because it wasn’t really… relevant.”

“Not relevant?”

“Well, it’s not like you welcomed Perry with open arms when he came out to you,” Zac pointed out before he could censor himself. Bryce wasn’t even looking at Zac anymore. It was just like before, when Perry had come out to the swim team and Bryce had started flinching away from his touches, avoiding spending time alone with him. Bryce had never said anything, but Zac knew that Perry being out had changed things for Bryce.

Bryce stopped draining the cup to sputter, “It was just… I was surprised.” He flailed his arms until he was standing. “I mean, all that time, and he never said anything. And then I’m supposed to act like I knew all along?” The cup and whatever was left in it went into the too-long grass with his next flail. that interview would make it obvious

Zac stood up and caught Bryce’s arm, intending to pull him back to the swing, but Bryce leaned back against his grasp. “Dude.” Perry had been totally patient with everyone on the team, letting them get their bearings around him again, but it had seemed everything Perry tried had just made things worse between him and Bryce.

“It’s just. Not right. It’s not. Nothing’s right.” Bryce wasn’t just being an ass about it; he was actually upset about something.

“What’s wrong, man?”

“Nothing.” Bryce pulled away and stumbled as he went to get one of the bottles of beer he’d stashed at the base of the swing. Of course. Zac had to wonder how many had been there to start with. “Just. Nothing. It’s just all wrong, that’s all. I need another drink. Maybe I should get laid.”

They’d been all around Toby’s old neighborhood, fueled by frozen soda drinks and hot dogs and caramel corn from various corner stores. They’d shot hoops, slipping through the gap in the chain-link fence around the school and sharing a ball with a handful of boys and girls around Josie’s age. It was houses more than tenement buildings, but it felt something like home to Ven.

Now, standing on the street corner across from the garage where Toby had followed his dad to work as a little kid, they were deciding which way to go. Further downtown was just starting to light up — bars and strip clubs and XXX shops putting their neon lights on — and the other way was back to where they’d parked the car that afternoon. Ven put an arm around Toby’s waist. “Don’t tell me you didn’t go down that way.” He pointed toward all the neon.

Toby laughed a little and nodded. “Not ’til I was a little older. But, yeah, I went down there. Want to go explore the nightlife?” He tipped his head, grinning at Ven, his expression just a little bit wicked.

That was a fine, fine look. Ven stole a kiss, so fast, less than he wanted but more than he should have. “Let’s go. I’m up for anything.” He meant it.

Toby led him down the street toward all the glowing neon. Past a strip club decorated with bright pink outlines of women’s legs was a similar club with men doing the stripping. They peeked inside, but didn’t actually go in. Instead, Toby led Ven into a bar a little further down the street, one with people surging in and out of the door like waves on a beach. They squeezed past the crowd, paid the cover charge, stopped just inside to let their eyes adjust to the dim lighting.

Music was the same in clubs like this anywhere. They could well have been back home, they could have been at home any time in the last ten years; the only things that changed were the hairstyles and the drinks. The music was too loud to tell the difference between now and then. “Buy you a drink?” He looked around, marking where the exits were, the stairs down behind the bar, the dance floor, the pool tables. It looked good.

Toby didn’t answer right away. When Ven looked at him, he was looking Ven up and down, slowly. “Yeah,” he said, a little grin tugging at the corners of his lips. “I think I’d like that.” Toby flashed Ven a teasing grin and then headed for the bar. He didn’t look back to see if Ven was following.

Ven followed him to the bar and caught him up against it with one hand on either side of him. “What’ll you have?” he murmured in Toby’s ear.

“Whatever’s on tap,” Toby said, turning so that Ven could see the freckles scattered over one cheek. “Unless you’ve got a suggestion for something better…?”

“Not yet.” God, Ven loved being this close. He could smell Toby’s warmth, see the details of his beautiful face, his flawless skin, the softness of his full mouth. “You are so gorgeous,” he breathed against Toby’s ear. When the bartender got close enough, Ven made himself look away. “Two draughts.” He could feel Toby through their clothes, knew in his head what it would feel like to press up against his lover naked. He was so damn lucky.

A little movement brushed Toby’s body back against Ven’s, a little tilt of Toby’s head bared his neck as he glanced back at Ven. “You come here often?”

“With pink!” Charlotte reminded all of them. Until Momma had suggested it, Ven hadn’t really been planning on having a wedding, much less on having white, yellow, and pink involved, but if it made the girls happy, he sure as hell wasn’t saying no.

“With pink.” Toby laughed and gave Ven a quick squeeze, then headed over to the racks of dresses. “How could we forget the pink?”

“You can forget pink?” Brenda picked Charlotte up with a sigh and shook her head, then laughed, kissing Charlotte on the cheek. “Okay. Nothing stretchy. No sequins. No feathers.” She looked over her shoulder at Ven. “For the girls, that is. Don’t let me interfere with anything you two might have picked out for the occasion.”

Toby gave a little snort and shook his head, letting Josie drag him over to see the lacy, sparkly dress she was insisting was “just perfect, Daddy, really.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Toby said, and pulled the dress down off the rack to hold it up against her. Josie looked down at herself and sort of harrumphed, and then her gaze lit on something else down the aisle and Toby was left to put the dress away and chase after her.

“I wanted feathers, but I was voted down,” Ven said dryly. “Charlotte, why don’t you come look down this aisle. I think it’s your size.” It had taken him a while to figure out that the sizes were only theoretically sorted by age. Charlotte was a lot smaller than some girls her age, and had ended up swimming in some of the clothes he’d tried on her the first time he’d taken her shopping.

“Okay.” Suddenly, Charlotte was all business. She wriggled until Brenda put her down, then towed Brenda by the hand toward the row where Ven was waiting. “I want pink,” she asserted, for possibly the millionth time since she’d been able to talk. Almost every choice had the same answer.

Toby steered Josie toward them, hands on her shoulders, letting her carry the mass of white lace and yellow taffeta she’d found. “I know we’re not going to get you two into the same kind of dress,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of Josie’s head, “but maybe we can find dresses that match.”

“We can dream,” Brenda said dryly, as Charlotte started poking at dresses that caught her fancy.

Ven was ahead of her by a rack and carefully moved a pink-rosette-covered, floor-length pageant dress out of sight. “How about we start with just looking at a couple,” he suggested. That always worked with Cake. Cake wanted to have a choice, but sure wasn’t up to choosing one thing out of twenty. “And if we don’t like any of those, we’ll get more.” He held a short pink taffeta and tulle dress out for Charlotte to inspect.

Charlotte squealed and hugged it to her chest. “I want to try it on!”

Brenda gave Ven a long look. “The first one? The first?”

Ven tried to look apologetic. “Sorry?”

“You can take her shoe shopping this fall is all I’m saying. That’s four hours I could use on something important, like the spa.” Brenda pointed toward the change room. “This way. Come on girls, Daddy and Ven will bring a few more.”

Denny hadn’t had a damn reason to care what day of the week it was for months. He went by dates, due dates for his assignments, physical therapy appointments, checkups with Dr. Halder. Weekends mattered because Sully was home, but Denny didn’t care other than that. It had been nearly a month since they’d come back from Sully’s folks’; they’d been there more than a week, long enough to worry about the money Sully wasn’t making, but it had been good for Sully. Since then, Denny’d had a clean bill of health from Halder and he’d been working his ass off to get back in shape without a care for what day it was. Every day was a day for more work, more getting better.

He took the stairs back up to the house two at a time, feeling the stretch in his bad leg. Stretch and twinge all the way through the bottom of his foot. That was good. Today was Sunday and tomorrow was Monday. Tomorrow, he went to work out at the track. With Sully. Not with-with, not in the same job, but with. It was enough. Denny limped into the kitchen to refill his water bottle. He was crazy. What the hell was he doing?

Sully was still asleep, so Denny had time to ask himself that question a million times as he worked out on the home gym set up over in the corner of the living room. Thoroughly sweaty and still out of sorts an hour later, he put the coffee on before he headed upstairs for a shower. Working out hadn’t improved his mood. He wanted to crawl out of his skin. But he had to get an essay done for the middle of the week and get an outline handed in and finish a physics assignment before tomorrow. Before work. Goddamn.

Nothing made it better, not the shower, not focusing on breakfast. Nothing was going to make the fact that Denny was off to work with Sully go away. Tomorrow. Denny thumped a plate of homemade waffles down on the table as Sully stumbled down. “There’s your breakfast,” he muttered. He threw himself down on the couch and grabbed his physics text. Stupid goddamn physics. Denny knew about physics. It was what made you crash or not. He should’ve been good at this stuff. Maybe if he hit himself on the head with the textbook enough, he could get out of work.

Sully sat down on the couch and eyeballed Denny for a minute. Denny could feel the weight of his stare and it just made him feel even more twitchy. “Thank you kindly,” Sully drawled, patient as ever.

“Eat your goddamn waffles,” Denny said from behind the textbook. Waves. Sound waves. Right. Focusing. He peeped over the top of the book to see if his grumpiness had crossed the line.

“It’s a crime to let Momma’s buttermilk pie just sit there,” Ven murmured.

Toby rested a hand on his belly and hummed a little, then started to wriggle up off the couch. “I’d love some more pie. Anybody else want some? I’ll help carry it out.”

“Me, too, please!” Cake put his hand up. He wasn’t ever not in the mood for pie.

“I’ll share yours.” Ven helped Toby up off the couch, and if he accidentally groped a little, it was really an accident, not that he didn’t enjoy it just fine. “Maybe a little ice cream, too?” He gave Toby his best puppy look.

Toby laughed and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He turned to Poppy and asked, “Do you want some pie, too?”

“No, thanks, son.” Poppy patted his belly—it wasn’t much of a belly; Poppy worked almost full time with Ven now and it was hard work—and sighed. “I’m getting too old to polish off Momma’s pies. Good thing you boys are around to fill in for me. I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee, though, but instant’s fine. Don’t trouble Momma with it.”

“I put the coffee maker on, Ben,” Momma called out to him. She could hear him telling people not to inconvenience her on his account from a block away.

Toby grinned and shook his head, then headed into the kitchen to join Momma. He came back just a few minutes later with two plates and said to Poppy, “Coffee will be out in just a minute.” As he sat down, he passed one plate to Cake. The one he kept had a big scoop of ice cream on it.

Ven loved seeing Toby in the old place. He was glad Momma and Poppy were moving, but he was grateful to get to see his man in his own childhood home. Everything was pretty empty now, all the old kids’ stuff was given away—Ven had spent the day before moving almost a house worth of furniture from one part of the family to the others and redistributing it all—but it was still soothing to Ven’s heart to see Toby here.

Ven put one arm across the back of the couch so that he could snuggle Toby up and held out the other to take the plate while Toby got settled. He could remember a time when he’d worried that he’d never find someone else like him, much less someone who loved him. And the idea that he could bring that man home for Thanksgiving dinner… impossible. Toby sat down and Ven pulled his lover close, leaning his head on Toby’s shoulder for a moment.

Toby’s lips pressed against his forehead, soft and warm. “You okay?” Toby murmured, quiet enough that Ven was the only one who could hear over the TV.

“Yeah.” Ven didn’t lean on Toby much in any way, but when he did, it had to be one of the best feelings in the world. “Just thinking about all the times I sat here without you,” he said, just as quietly. He straightened to kiss Toby on the cheek and put the plate down so they could share dessert before the ice cream melted entirely. There wasn’t much more to say than that; he knew Toby would understand the rest. For that, he snuck another little kiss from Toby’s pale, freckled cheek and nuzzled there.