I do not own CP Coulter's Dalton, Glee, TH White's Once and Future King, or anything besides the writing and two characters (Emil and Andy).

Justin hated having to cancel on Charlie. If not because he didn't want to disappoint Charlie, but because he always enjoyed their plans. And sure, in the few years that they had been secretly dating, with the Windsor hysterics, Charlie frequently cancelled on Justin. But it was only recently that Justin had started cancelling on Charlie.

People often assumed that everything was naturally calm at Hanover, and Justin didn't bother correcting them. But people were mistaken: things were calm at Hanover because Justin kept them that way. Teenage boys were still teenage boys. High school was still high school. And only previous Hanover prefects could understand the careful and calculated effort required in maintaining the peace and structure of neutrality.

So when Danny came up to him at his last class and told him there was an emergency, Justin muttered a curse and pulled out his phone to text Charlie his regrets. This was the third emergency this week, and was in the company of many other recent strange occurrences in Hanover. It was getting bad enough that Justin half considered consulting Dwight about exorcising the house. Things were never this bad before; there had to be a reason.

"What's the emergency, Danny?" Justin asked, still looking at his phone, as they walked back to Hanover.

"There's blood in the kitchen. Like, lots of it. No one knows what it's from. Merril's freaking out, Jeff's accusing everyone who walks in, and Adam passed out. And the second Spencer finds Merril crying, he's going to join in with Jeff and rile the whole house up."

Justin looked at Danny with wide eyes, which immediately flashed down to Danny's wrists before he even realized what he was doing. This seemed to make Danny uncomfortable, and Justin awkwardly turned back to his phone as it received a new message. Lemme know if you need back up. I'll be over at 4 as usual. –C

Charlie usually came over in the early afternoon to work on homework and they parted ways for dinner. But tonight they had been planning on catching a movie and eating dinner together – away from the madness of Dalton. Charlie hadn't even mentioned the former plans in his response to Justin's cancellation, and it made Justin feel even guiltier.

"How much blood are we talking, here?" Justin slid his phone back into his bag and focused on the issue at hand. And then it hit him that he was talking about blood. "Wait – Is everyone accounted for?"

"I…" Danny looked like he hadn't considered this possibility, and then like he was running through a mental list of who he had seen recently.

Justin wondered how Danny hadn't thought about this, but as the boys arrived at Hanover, he was distracted by a screaming match between three sophomores. They stood halfway between the front door and the kitchen and wildly gestured to the kitchen as they yelled at each other.

Justin slammed the front door and instantly earned silence. The sophomores, still wearing anger in their eyes, turned their heads to Justin like dogs watching a car pass by.

"Everyone in the common room, now," Justin gritted his teeth and approached the kitchen cautiously.

It smelled terrible. The blood covered half of the kitchen table and had spilled onto the floor and a mismatched chair. Justin stared at the scene blankly, as the remaining Hanovers in the room filed silently into the common room. Only Danny stood, equally as silent, behind Justin, observing the prefect's behavior.

Justin tried to quantify the blood in his head. It was a lot. Too much for any human to lose and still be alive. A few liters, maybe. It wasn't dry on the wood of the table, where it looked like it had absorbed most of the blood. The trail that fell from the table to the chair, and then to the floor looked dry upon the floor in a small puddle. On the other side, a smaller trail formed a near perfectly straight line until it stopped at a large black container.

Carefully avoiding the dried blood on the floor, Justin approached the container. It still held some blood, pooled at the bottom and looking terrifyingly mundane and like paint. He recognized the black container. It had been in the back of the freezer for months. He had never questioned it because, well, Hanovers tended to keep to themselves, and as long as it didn't start to smell, no one cared. Justin knew better to meddle in the secrets of Hanovers, but now he was beginning to regret this attitude.

With this disturbing thought and scene fresh on his mind, Justin stormed into the common room, Danny following behind like a shadow.

The room had been silent for a few minutes after they were ordered into it, but conversation had slowly began, and it was now approaching the yelling chaos that Justin had recently silenced. His presence repeated the cycle.

Adam lay, still unconscious, on one of the arm chairs in the corner. Merril sat nearby, eyes red, beside a chestnut haired boy, Emil, who had been her roommate her first year – before Avery had arranged for her to have a single. Merril wiped away her tears as she and Emil tried to see if Adam was okay.

"Who's missing?" Justin snapped.

He was almost too intimidating for anyone to respond, but as they looked around the room, the boys began to appraise the answer.

It was Merril who finally spoke up, her voice shaking, "Spencer."

"Andy," Emil added, his light Boston accent barely noticeable in the one word.

"Chris."

A few other names were thrown out, and Justin counted the room to see if enough names had been noted. "Call them, right now."

Within minutes, everyone had been accounted for and Justin realized that he needed to actually deal with the situation in front of him. This was not the first time he'd seen this amount of blood, not the first time he'd been in this deep. But it was the first time that he cared about the people involved, and that made it feel like the first time at all. How had he been able to stomach gang life just a few years ago?

Frantically trying to decide what to do next, he did the only thing he could think of. "No one goes into the kitchen tonight. Now, I want to know whose container that is, and I want to know who spilled it. I'll be in my room, and I swear to God, I better receive answers by the time the kitchen is clean again."

He stormed off, leaving Danny standing in front of a confused and terrified room.

"Fuck."

Justin climbed the steps to the second floor with absolutely no idea what to do next. He should call the cops. That was a lot of blood. But everyone was okay, and the blood had come from a bizarre plastic bottle in the freezer, not a live person. What if it wasn't human? It probably wasn't human. How was he supposed to know if it was human? He didn't want to call the cops. Hanovers kept Hanover secrets. But this was not a secret he could keep.

Logan was not good at moping. Don't misunderstand, Logan was fully capable of moping, and annoying everyone in the area code with his sad ballads and constant whining, but Logan hated it. One of the reasons he crashed so hard when he fell in love was because he liked being in love. It was his one excuse to be passionate and ignore his medication. Falling in love frequently seemed like the only reason Logan would ever have to feel. And trying to ignore this - trying to pretend that he had never loved and never felt - was like the live action version of his brain on his medication.

So when Logan wandered in to Julian's room, he was trying to distract himself from the absence of feeling and from lingering too long on fond memories of emotion. Julian could always distract him. He loved pissing Julian off, and Julian loved pissing him off, and Logan had decided that this mutual love of annoying each other was what made their friendship work.

He opened the door to Julian studying.

"Are you doing homework?" he said with an overacted surprise tone. "I thought the school got some Asian kid to take classes for famous actors?"

"Har har," Julian grunted, turning his chair around entirely, glad at Logan's distraction. "I guess they only do that for lead singers. Why aren't you working on something right now?"

"I am working," Logan smirked proudly. He crashed onto Julian's bed with a dramatic hand flourish. "I am working on annoying you."

"Oh, the things you put your effort into," Julian rolled his eyes. "Seriously, you don't have anything else to do? No countertenors to serenade?"

Logan sat up with a jerk and an angry face. "I told you, I'm finished with that. But it's fucking miserable, so I'm trying to distract myself with my best friend. You're doing a terrible job."

"Since when am I your best friend?" Julian's eyebrows rose so high it was comical. "Go bother Derek; your romantic shit is driving me insane."

"Good god, you're a selfish asshole," Logan threw his arms up in frustration. "I'm trying to not talk about him. You are the one who keeps bringing him up. And you think I'm driving you insane?"

"Go bother Derek." Julian turned back around to his writing and tried to keep himself from screaming. It was a mistake to think this might be a happy distraction.

"Derek is not half as fun to annoy as you are," Logan smirked at this thought, but his face fell quickly as he continued. "And he's twice as bad about reminding me of things."

"Now who's bringing it up?" Julian grumbled, not turning around.

"Why does it bother you so much?" Logan snapped, irritated.

"Because you're a stupid idiot, and it's really tiring to watch over and over again." Julian still did not turn around.

"Julian, if you have a problem, come out with it. I don't need to hear you bitch about how you hate listening to my shit because I listen to your shit - when you even bother to be here."

"My problem, Logan," Julian finally turned back to Logan, whipping around so quickly that his paper flew down the desk in the gust he caused. "Is you. You are my problem. You think you listen to my problems? Bull shit, Logan. Whenever I'm here, I listen to your problems, and I try to help – Fuck! I do help. I help because I can't stand to see you upset because I'm in love with you. You dense, fucking idiot. I'm in love with you."

As soon as he finished his rant, his face froze in panic. Fuck fuck fuck. Why did he just say that?

"You're what?"

Logan was equally frozen. The boys sat staring at each other with wide eyes for a minute before Julian spoke again.

"I have tried so hard…not to love you." Julian looked down at the floor.

"Why do people think that's a compliment?" Logan's eyes squinted. "That's an insult. Do people not know that that's an insult?"

"You act like you hear that often," Julian muttered. "I'm not the first unlucky bastard?"

"Again, with the flattering," Logan snapped. "Look, you either want me or you don't, and if you're still having this debate, I don't really need some pre-relationship heartbreak.

"Wait, is this just an elaborate acting-practice insult, because, Jules, I know I came in here to be annoyed by you, but this is taking it too far."

"Logan, you are a colossal idiot. The reason I don't want to love you is because you will never love me back. I'm not debating it, I'm suffering it. Because you would chase half of the Warblers around hopelessly without even realizing I was there."

Both boys still sat where they were. Neither spoke with the elaborate gestures they usually used to dramatize their game of annoyance. Instead, Logan sat still, eyes darting back and forth across the floor, mind trying to comprehend what Julian had just confessed.

"In my defense, I thought you were straight," he stated calmly. Disturbingly calmly, if you were to ask Julian. It felt as out of place - as if Logan had just asked Julian about their English assignment.

"I…Clearly not," Julian muttered guiltily. "I'm bi."

"And you're in love with me?" Logan questioned. "Like this? As fucked up as I am?"

"Yes. I'm in love with you." Julian sounded even guiltier. "Just as you are."

Logan sat stunned at this thought. As he was? If ever there was a more appealing statement to give an emotionally unstable boy who had always been told he wasn't good enough, Logan had not heard it. He leaned forward and grabbed Julian by his shirt, pulling him into a forceful kiss.

Julian scrambled, struggling against his body's urge to fall on top of Logan and continue what he had just initiated. But with impressive determination of his mind, Julian managed to remove Logan's grip and fall onto the floor instead.

Standing up, he stared at Logan with offense. "I'm not a fuck buddy, Logan. And unlike you when you're drugged up like this, I have feelings. You are still in love with Kurt, and I am not going to do this."

He looked to the door pointedly, but Logan did not move. Logan had every intention of standing by the kiss he had just started, but Julian had said Kurt's name, and now his heart was doing twisted awful things.

"I didn't mean to-"

"No you never do, do you, Logan?" Julian looked back to the door, lingering on it longer this time.

"Julian, I'm not in love with you," Logan started carefully, "but I could be. So easily. And if you have any patience in that prissy body of yours, you'll deal with me while I get over…Kurt."

"Am I supposed to be wooed by your heartbreaking inability to say his name still?" Julian stopped hinting that Logan should leave and let himself get his hopes up.

"What I'm saying, Jules," Logan stood up and dared to approach Julian again. "Is that you are worth it. You are exactly what I need. And I know that that's not the perfect declaration of love that you want - or anywhere near it – but it's something, isn't it? God Jules, you're worth so much. You're so fucking…special."

"You selfish bastard, if you start singing Radiohead, I won't let you kiss me," Julian conceded, hoping he wouldn't regret it.

Logan's mouth burst into a large grin before it reconnected with Julian's. Now, Julian responded, and within seconds, he was breathing deeply and failing to resist the request Logan's tongue was making.

The fact that it was no longer entirely surprising to walk in to Laura sitting on his bed was a problem for Justin. A recurring problem.

"Laura, seriously?" Justin shoved the door closed and rolled his eyes as his body sighed. "Don't you have friends at school? Any?"

Laura smiled and got up to sit by the window. Keeping her smile warm, she glanced out the window and then back to her brother. "I have friends everywhere. I'm just a lovable person."

"Well, lovable sister," Justin jerked his head to glare at Laura, who was looking way too proud. "Do you think you could go back to the friends at your school and live your own life, instead of living vicariously through mine?"

"But your life is so much more interesting. People are going crazy here; did you notice?" Laura perked up further, and Justin wondered just how excited she could get over his stress.

"Yea, Laura, I'm in the middle of trying to deal with that. Now I have to deal with you too. Do you realize exactly how difficult you make my life?" Justin rubbed his eyes angrily. "I can't deal with you right now; I'm calling Charlie to babysit you."

"You do realize that I'm only three years younger than you. I don't need to be babysat."

"That is a lie, and you know it." Justin held the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he paced, preoccupied with the images of the kitchen still flashing in his brain. He had no idea what to do, and suddenly the idea of Charlie wrapping his arms around him and telling him it was okay was a much more motivating reason to call than his pestering sister.

As Justin hung up, he sat on his bed, with his arms on his knees and his face in his hands. After a few minutes, it dawned on Laura that she was the least of his problems.

"Justin…" She reached out to his shoulder sympathetically. "Are you okay?"

There was a knock at the door that not only startled Justin but kept him afraid long after it physically scared him. He wasn't ready to hear confessions or accusations. But as Laura answered the door, and he heard Charlie's voice, he relaxed a minute amount.

"Laura? So this is why Justin called? Seriously, do you know that you live in London?" he joked, closing the door softly. His smile left as he saw the distraught look on both Bancroft faces. "What happened?"

Charlie rushed to sit next to Justin and threw his arm around him, using the other to rub Justin's leg reassuringly. Laura had figured them out a year ago; he didn't bother hiding his intentions with her brother.

"When Emil answered the door he was acting like someone just died. What was the emergency?" Charlie's eyebrows furrowed with concern and he look frantically back and forth from Justin to Laura.

"The kitchen." Justin offered this to Laura and Charlie as if it explained the entirety of his expression. Realizing it did not, he added, "it's covered in blood. Like three liters of blood. I – It – I don't know what to do. I don't know if it's human. No one's missing here.

"It was in a black container in the freezer. You know that one I complained about taking up half of the freezer? But I left it there because I figured that it wasn't really hurting anything. And – God – I let it stay in our freezer. I let someone keep bl – that – in our freezer. Our house. Our fucking house. I don't – I don't know what to do, Chaz."

Justin shook his head and let a few exhausted tears fall out of his eyes. Charlie and Laura wore matching expressions of terror.

"I should call the cops," Justin said it but didn't quite sound like he believed it. "But I can't. Avery never did with E – No one has ever gone to the cops. Even with…"

Charlie recognized that he would never know the secrets Hanovers kept for each other, but was suddenly struck by how serious some of these secrets must have been. There was a massive amount of blood downstairs and Justin seemed to think avoiding law enforcement regarding this was equivalent to previous Hanover cases. Charlie silently thanked his stars that he had been a Windsor. Hanovers were creepy.

But as he looked at his boyfriend, who seemed to be going mad as he internally debated what to do, Charlie wondered if he would ever know the loyalty it required to choose insanity over revealing secrets.

"Justin," Charlie practically shouted, desperate to pull the boy out of his reveries. "If you don't go to the cops…What do you need to do?"

"Figure out what it is. Figure out whose it is. Figure out who found it." And then, as an afterthought, "clean it up."

"Dwight." Laura spoke up, voice shaking uncharacteristically. "Dwight has those kits that can tell if blood is human."

"Go get him. Subtly," Justin ordered, not even bothering to question why Dwight would have such a thing.

Charlie threw his key to Laura, who proceeded to climb out the window as if it were the ordinary method of coming and going.

Charlie laughed silently before turning back to Justin. He mentally forced himself to keep his face up instead of letting it fall back into the worry he was feeling. Justin needed him to be strong – to hold him together – and Charlie would be damned if he wasn't. "We'll worry about cleaning once Dwight's gotten what he needed. So, the container…"

Justin looked up at Charlie enviously. Here he was, the one with actual experience with death and violence, and he was the one falling apart. Maybe that was the reason it was so crushing – the idea of the brutality of his gang days catching up with the home he had made for himself here. And when Charlie smiled at Justin reassuringly, Justin's envy faded into the feeling that he was the luckiest person in the world. He threw his arms around Charlie and buried his face in Charlie's neck.

"It's okay," Charlie whispered, running his hand over Justin's head lightly. "You can do this. If anyone can do this, it's you."

Justin pulled away and sniffled. Charlie leaned in to lightly kiss him before wiping away a stray tear that was left on Justin's face instead of Charlie's neck.

"It was that stupid container that I was bitching about last week," he muttered, trying to be strong as Charlie seemed to think he could be – as strong as he had once been in his youthful naivety.

"Did you complain about it to anyone else?"

"Just Merril. She said it wasn't hers, but she found it equally clumsy and space wasting."

"I guess that rules out her and Spencer – she'd know if it was Spencer's, right?"

Justin shrugged. "I think the fact that it's a vat of blood rules out Merril. And Spencer, I guess."

"Well, if there's a stand out for who would keep a jar of blood in your freezer, wouldn't that have been your first thought?" Charlie mocked, and Justin smirked in response.

"That's just it; I know these people. They're weird, and they're quirky, and they have some crazy problems, but none of them would hurt anyone."

"Maybe we'd have more luck approaching it from who found it? How did you find out about it, anyway?" Charlie wondered, having not seen the mess for himself.

"Someone spilled it. All over the kitchen table."

"Like, intentionally?" Justin's terse answer couldn't possibly give Charlie the right image.

"No, not really…" Justin thought. "More like they dropped it and it spilled everywhere."

"Like they realized it was blood and freaked out?" Charlie also let himself think aloud. "But then wouldn't they have been the one to tell everyone else?"

Justin stood up and began looking for his phone. "I know who found it."

"Who?" Charlie stared at Justin eagerly.

"Andy. Andy's a hematophobe. He nearly honked up on Emil the one time he had a nose bleed."

Charlie barely knew the junior in question – he was the younger brother of Hanover's last prefect - but Emil was a mutual friend. "So why didn't he say something?"

"Andy was one of the boys who weren't here," Justin mumbled, hanging up the phone when he didn't answer.

He pulled the phone down and sent the boy a text to come see him as soon as he was back.

"You're thinking Windsor weird isn't that weird after all, aren't you?" Justin sighed, lying down next to Charlie on his bed.

Charlie laid back, grabbed Justin's hand, and inched up to the boy. He laughed, "Yep."

As the boys sighed, content to think about nothing for a few minutes, Dwight and Laura climbed through the window. Justin and Charlie sat up, letting go of each other's hand and separating as subtly as possible.

"Seriously, Laura, there's a door," Justin spat exasperatedly, adding softly, "Everybody already knows you here, anyway."

Laura shrugged and gave her trademark smug smile. "That's no fun."

Dwight cleared his throat softly and awkwardly. "The blood?"

Justin rose to show Dwight down to the kitchen. Charlie looked at Dwight peculiarly. "Dwight, why on earth do you have that blood kit?"

"It's very important, in the occult, to know what kind of blood you're dealing with."

Charlie decided he'd rather not know and let Justin and Dwight leave the room. Laura took Justin's spot on the bed and turned to Charlie.

"Dwight knows, ya know?"

"Excuse me?" Charlie raised an eyebrow.

"About you and Justin. I told him."

"Precisely how does my relationship with your brother come up in your ghost hunting?" Charlie whispered angrily, not sure who he was worried about overhearing the conversation.

Laura didn't answer.

"WAIT – " Charlie's voice rose, but since he had been whispering, it still came out softly. "Are you and Dwight?"

He didn't feel compelled to finish the accusation. When Laura looked away, he knew he was right.

"Don't tell Justin," she begged. "He barely likes Dwight as it is, without going crazy overprotective brother, on him."

Charlie laughed. "I'm the one who isn't Dwight's biggest fan. Justin likes Dwight – he reminds him of you."

"Why don't you like Dwight?" Laura asked, not bothering to hide her offense, but trying to hide the pride she felt at her brother's unknowing approval.

"I don't dislike Dwight," Charlie lay back down. "He's just a nuisance. Like the twins. Except at least I sort of understand the brand of crazy that the twins subscribe to."

"Are you seriously gonna make me say 'he's just misunderstood?'" Laura laughed, and Charlie followed. "This is getting way too romance novel on me."

Charlie laughed and tilted his head toward Laura with a sudden knowing look on his face. "He's the reason you're always here, isn't he?"

Laura blushed so softly that Charlie almost didn't notice. "Guilty."

"I'll try to get Justin to go easy on you."

"You're going to be the best brother-in-law ever," Laura grinned, and now it was Charlie's turn to blush. She paused before stuttering, "Charlie…I – The one time I was here… at Valentine's Day."

"Yea, what about it? Is that when you and Dwight met?"

"Well yea, but that's not - There was blood on the stairs. When Justin brought me back to the dorm it was night time, but I could still see it. But in the morning it was gone, and I thought maybe I was just seeing things. But now, I don't think I was seeing things."

"Why didn't you tell Justin?" Charlie scolded. "Then or now?"

"Then…I thought I saw it wrong. And now…he looked like he was going to crack under any more weight. If I don't tell him before I leave, will you tell him? He should know."

Dwight and Justin interrupted before Charlie could answer, pushing briskly through the door.

"It's not human," Justin declared with relief.