CHAPTER 12:

Burr hung up the Skype call as soon as he was sure the details of what he wanted were laid out in no unclear terms. It would cost a little more then he'd expected, but the man he'd hired had excellent feedback for the jobs he did. He'd have John in check by Friday at the earliest. And for that, Burr would gladly pay almost any price.

He pulled up the transmitter on Alex's phone again, surprised to hear nothing but slightly muffled traffic sounds now. No movement of clothes, no voices. If he listened close enough it did sound like a car was being driven somewhere, definitely traffic moving around the phone.

So. Alex had forgotten his phone again somewhere. Great.

Burr sighed. That would just have to be fine for now. It wasn't hard to open the running log that tracked where his phone was and how long it stayed in anyone place. From the looks of things, Alex had left his phone in the car of whoever was driving him around, and they had stopped for a time at 3804 Rosemount Street; the quick Google search showed him it was a quaint little house, in a quiet little neighborhood. And a moment later he had the floor plans for it's three bedrooms, two bath layout. A red ping told him the owner of the house used to be on The Company's roster of customers they serviced years ago, one Mr. John Adams, but he'd since moved on to other sites. Burr sighed again. Of course.

He pulled up Mr. Adam's file, and skimmed over it for anything he'd have to take care of. He noted that Mr. Adams had been active more in the years leading up to Alex's recruitment, and had stopped his subscription about a week after Alex started making appearances. His file also noted he was a shut in who never left the house. Well then, that certainly worked in Burr's favor. But what he need to know now was whether or not that man would recognize Alex and then what he'd do about it. Likely he'd just make a comment in passing, but that would be all Alex would need to flip his shit. Burr wondered if he couldn't just lock Alex in his studio and keep him there for the rest of his life. That would certainly solve a lot of these problems.

A few keystrokes later and Burr was flicking through the hacked webcams on the local home network at 3804 Rosemount Street, one of them showing him literally nothing and the other one, surprise of surprises, popping into a bedroom where he could clearly see his darling little moneymaker laying on a bed with none other then the problematic little John Laurens and the Marque de Lafayette. Burr squinted at the screen and listened closely. Was Alex...? Why yes, he was asleep! But it was barely past noon, and Alex had said he had slammed down something like six cups of coffee that morning. He should be wired like a squirrel right now, so how the fuck did that sneaky little asshole John get Alex to lay still long enough to fall asleep with him? This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all. He needed to pull Alex out of there, or at the very least, he needed an extra set of eyes and ears in that room NOW.

The door buzzed and that's when miss Maria Reynolds walked into the room.

"Maria!" Burr greeted with a smile. "Just the woman I wanted to see." She ignored him as she strode past, making her way directly for the hallway that would lead to her studio. "I don't know where you think you're going," he called after her as he started typing at his keyboard. "Your session has been canceled today."

Immediately she whirled around and shot him a glare. "What are you talking about?" she asked coming up to his desk. "You can't just cancel my sessions! I Need The Money!"

"Sorry, baby girl, I just did," Burr cooed at her.

"I am NOT your baby girl."

"Listen, I know you think my canceling your session was a wicked bad thing for me to do, but I pulled you out today because I need you to do another job for me. One where you can keep your clothes on."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, to you of all people even, but I'd rather take my clothes off for my money, thanks," she hissed at him.

"You're not listening to me, Maria. I've already pulled you off today, I'm not gunna put you back in, and if you keep talking to me in this disrespectful tone I'm going to pull your sessions for the rest of the week too."

"You can't do that!" she screeched at him, but reeled her anger in when he didn't seemed at all phased by it. She took a deep breath and tried her best to ask calmly, "What other job do you have for me?"

Burr smiled, a charming little smile that held no warmth in it. "I need you to go make sure Alex isn't in more trouble then he thinks he is."

"What trouble is Alex in?" she asked, and this time her tone did carry actual concern.

"Well, the short end of it is that I think he's found his way into the house of someone who used be a client of ours, I'm still checking some things. I don't know if the man has any intention of hurting Alex, and of course you know how he'll respond if he finds out someone like that found a way to wheedle into his life, he'd just be a mess. So I need someone I can trust to go and check things out personally, then report back to me exactly how it is."

"And you trust me to do that?"

"I trust that you'd do anything to keep your daughter out of doing exactly what mommy does to pay the bills, Maria. After all, she's only two years old, isn't she?"

He watched her fight to keep the fear off her face, but of course that wasn't possible. Maria looked away as she blinked back her tears, caught in his trap with no foreseeable escape. How he did delight in pulling her strings and controlling her like a puppet. "I know you must be reeling to hear something like that, baby girl, so let me go a head a sweeten the deal for you. I'll pay you for this job as well, three times that what you'd make today. There now, see? I'm not such a bad guy, am I?"

"Fine," she said after a moment. "Where is Alex? And what, exactly, do you expect me to do?"

"That's a good girl," Aaron cooed at her. He jotted down the information and handed it over. "Just pick him up and get him somewhere safe. Bring him here, take him to your house, perhaps. Or take him out for ice cream, I don't really care. I just want him with...family right now, ya know? His little roommate might want to tag along. Do me a favor and ditch the kid, or any of his friends that try to follow. And whatever you do, don't tip him off to why you're making him run errands with you. Let me handle that."

"You're a despicable human being," Maria said as she turned around to leave. "I don't know what Alex sees in you."

"He sees God," Burr called after her. He smiled as she glared at him from the doorway. "Or at the very least, salvation. Much like you did once, didn't you?"

"Go back to hell where you belong, demon." She spat on the floor then turned and stormed out of the room. Burr sighed as the door slammed in her wake, then calmly turned back to his computer and deleted every session she had for the next two weeks.

Alex felt John's hands around him, and he heard himself talking to John, but he wondered why John had stopped talking back. Did John...did John no longer like him? No, that couldn't have been true because he was still holding onto Alex and why would he do that if he didn't like Alex? He looked up to ask John what was wrong, but instead he kissed him and felt relief when John kissed back. Alex rolled on top of him and panted, grinding their hips together, feeling that friction...hearing John moan. He liked this, he liked John.

He heard a splash come from off the side of the bed and he looked away, momentary panic gripping his heart. The floor was flooded. Floors shouldn't be flooded, floors should NEVER be flooded. Lafayette's face swam up to the edge of the bed and stared at him. Alex asked him why the room was flooded.

"Storm is coming," Lafayette said. Alex noticed rows of sharp teeth in his mouth. Shark teeth. "What are you doing with my John?"

He looked back to John, he wanted to ask him what Lafayette meant, but he didn't have too. John's bear torso started to fade from human to the underbelly of a great white shark below his navel, like some special kind of mermaid. "The toilet is backed up again," John said. "We should call a plumber about that."

Alex said he would fix it. He got off John and splashed into the water, walking past Lafayette, whose glistening stripped silver tail Alex now caught sight of as we waded past in murky water. The toilet was overflowing, but as soon as Alex touched it, it stopped. It was fine. He made use of it and started washing his hands, not feeling at all relieved. He needed to take a shower before work. But John was in the tub and he took up all of the floor space. Alex asked him to move. "Why?" John asked him. "You can scrub all you want but you'll never be clean again. You sold your soul, remember?"

Alex asked him to whom had he sold his soul, but John only stared back at him. "I know what you are," he said. Alex asked him what John meant by that. "Whore," John said. He didn't have time for this, he was going to be late for work.

He left the house and turned to looked back at it...the house he had lived in with his uncle when he first came to the states. A gunshot went off inside and he ran; maybe if he ran fast enough they wouldn't find him, they wouldn't be able to drag him back. He would run and run and run, but the sounds of police sirens still followed him. He couldn't run anymore and he stopped, collapsing on the floor, but the sirens sped past him as if he wasn't even there. Alex looked up, and they were gone. What was he doing? Where was he going?

He had to stop and ask James for advice. It was important. He bounced in place as he waited in line, UGH! Could it move any slower?! Finally it was his turn and James handed him the key to the bathroom. He took it and made his way back there, forgetting what it was he needed advice with. Maybe it wasn't important.

He made use of the urinal. He made use of the urinal. He made use of the urinal. He didn't have time for this, he was going to be late for work. His reflection in the mirror growled at him. "You can't keep me locked away forever," it yelled at him as it banged it's hands angrily against the glass from the other side. "No one likes you! You're boring! They Only Want Me!" Alex ignored it as he washed his hands. He always ignored it as he washed his hands. The more his reflection banged, the more it's arms and hands bled as the mirror began to crack and break. It screamed in agony, but Alex didn't care.

He walked to work, it didn't take as long as he remembered. The doors were all unlocked, but as Alex walked through them they kept slamming shut behind him. He knew without checking they were locked too. He couldn't go back, only forward, so Alex kept walking forward through door after door. "Alex, baby!" Aaron greeted him when he got to the lobby, it seemed like it took him forever to get there. Alex walked to his desk and saw a cup of tea sitting there. "Drink it," Aaron commanded him, but Alex didn't want to. It was poisoned, he knew it was poisoned. "But why would I ever hurt you, baby?" Aaron asked him. His eyes were completely black. His teeth were sharp. "You were a falling star and I caught you, baby. I saved you. Every single moment of your life from the time you were seventeen has been a gift from me. You owe me." Alex drank the tea.

It was not a good idea.

He coughed and gagged. He ran into a bathroom and threw up, threw up words. He threw up so many words, they just lay in puddles, in his lap, dripping from his arms, spilling from the seat of the toilet. He was covered in them, a mess. They were inky black and slimy, clinging to his skin and clothes. He tried to read what they said, but they mixed together in a blur. Then, some of them started to turn red and if he was touching those ones they burned. They burned like fire and one word started to blaze bright in the black ink: Liar! LIar! LIAr! LIAR!

He took his clothes off and realized he was no longer Alex. Alex was dead, the words were gone, and this was Lin's world now. Lin would do what he wanted with Alex's body because it belonged to him now. He touched himself and fucked himself, and people watched him do it. They liked him for it. That was the only thing they liked him for. It was the only thing he was good at anymore. Aaron led him down a hallway, and opened a door at which a long line of people where standing outside of. The room only had a bed in it. The bed had chains. He wanted to run away. He wanted to say no. But Lin wouldn't let him. Lin calmly walked to the bed and put the chains on. He did it with a smile. "Remember baby," Aaron cooed at him. "Talk less. Smile more."

John walked into the room then. "I know what you are," John said again. "Whore." That was supposed to hurt him, and if he was Alex it would have. But he was Lin now and Lin didn't care. He kneeled before John and clutched at his waist. "I can be your whore," he told John. "I can be your everything. Tell me what you want."

"Alex," John said.

"Alex isn't here anymore. I killed him. He's dead."

"Alex, wake up."

He stared up at John, wondering what he meant. He was awake, they were awake. And they were kissing, and he was gunna show him such a good time.

"Alex get up!" John's voice called from somewhere else. "Alex! Why isn't he waking up?!"

"John, calm down" Lafayette's voice said. "He must be very tired."

"ALEX! ALEXANDER!" He felt someone shaking him. The world was crumbling around him. It was dark. And then... "ALEX! ALEX!"

"Wha—?!" Alex said as he rolled over and opened his eyes. He was back in Thomas's room, Lafayette and John were standing over him, peering almost too close for comfort. "Whazit?" he asked. John sighed in relief and behind him Lafayette too seemed to look like a burden had been lifted. "Whaswrong?"

"You peed the bed, ami."

That's when he became aware of the warm, wet mess he was laying in. It covered his legs it ran up the small of his back. Alex sighed as he sat up to look down at himself, his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He really wanted to go back to sleep.

"No, no, no," he heard John say, holding him upright. "You need to get up, we gotta...we gotta clean you up, okay?"

"Okay," Alex agreed. "Just five more minutes..."

"Alex!"

He grunted as he moved to get up. He felt gross as he moved. His limbs still felt heavy and like they didn't want to cooperate with his brain. Alex blearily looked around, holding onto John's hands because his feet tried to trip him underneath. Lafayette took hold of his other arm and helped hold him up.

"Okay," John said in a voice that was too matter-of-fact. "He needs to get out of these clothes and wiped down, the bed needs to get stripped and the sheets should be washed, do you want to strip him or the bed?"

"Puis-je vous faire confiance pour ne pas toucher ce qui n'est pas encore à vous?" Lafayette asked him.

"Vous pouvez, ne soyez pas vulgaire," John said with a pout.

"Oh, you guys speak French?" Alex asked, his face lighting up. "Teach me to speak French! I need it for a client I have to work with! They like it when I speak French!" He didn't catch the way John looked uncomfortable or the too amused look Lafayette shot him. "All I can say right now is...is...moon cherri...I think."

"Mon cherie," Lafayette and John replied together.

"Oh wow, you guys are good."

"You know what else your client might like to be called?" Lafayette asked, ignoring the deathglare John was shooting back at him over Alex's head. "Précieux cygne." John forced himself to take a deep breath instead of wrangling Lafayette's neck. That was a lover's name he had not been called by in nearly two years and Lafayette should have known better then to bring it up. It hurt to hear him say it.

"Pressure singing."

Okay, he was wrong. It hurt more to hear Alex attempt to say it. Lafayette covered his smile and tried not to chuckle too loudly. "We will work on it more later, petit lion," Lafayette said and he turned to leave the room before John could shoot him an accusing look. Guess that meant he was trusting John with Alex...and the bed? John sighed in annoyance.

"Okay, let's...get you out of these clothes," John said.

"Mmm," Alex replied without letting go of John's hands. He was swaying a little too dangerously, and John wasn't sure if letting him go would be a smart move. "What does he mean by petty lawn?" he asked.

"Petit lion," John repeated, enunciating the phrase for Alex. "He's calling you a small lion. It...it doesn't mean anything. He thinks he's being affectionate." John let go of Alex's hands and caught him by the shoulders as he swayed. By the looks of things, the tank top was tubular enough he could just...slide it down around Alex's hips so John set to work getting Alex's arms free from it's thin spaghetti straps in order to do just that, keeping at least one hand on Alex at all times.

"Oh," Alex said. "I mean, I guess at least I'm a lion, yeah?"

"Mmm."

"So...what's the other one mean?"

"Mon cherie? That means—"

"No, no, I know that one...the other one. The...the pusher swing?"

"Précieux cygne," John reiterated, again making sure to sound the words out slowly for Alex. He pushed the the shirt down to the waist of the pants his roommate was wearing, then gathered the pee soaked waistband in his hands and pulled those down as well, kneeling before Alex and ignoring entirely what he knew he would find underneath the clothes.

"Pres-sure sing," Alex said again.

"Précieux," John repeated, lifting one of Alex's feet. He wasn't startled or surprised at all when Alex's balance faltered and he madly grabbed onto John's head to steady himself.

"Pressure, I'm saying it right!"

"You're not accenting the e correctly, it's like an 'eeh' sound, not an 'eh" sound."

"That's...that's the same thing," Alex argued, sounding defeated.

"It's a subtle difference."

"Well, what's it mean, anyway? That phrase."

John bit his lip as he gathered the clothes he'd now successfully gotten off Alex and stood up. "I...I don't know...those words..."

"Oooooh, it means something baaaaad, doesn't it?"

John didn't know how else to explain without outing himself so he just said, "Yeah...it's not something I would use on a client you wanted to keep...if they knew French..."

"What would you use?" Alex asked around a yawn.

"I don't know, something stupid probably."

Alex smiled. "Well tell me something stupid then. Between you and me, who just wet the bed like a little kid and feels like a total ass about it? C'mon John, make me feel better with some stupid French phrase."

John laughed lightly as he turned to gather the sheets in the middle of the bed. Thank god Thomas had on a plastic mattress protector; at least they didn't have to worry about how to wash an entire bed. With a shrug, John gave him the only phrase he could think to translate into French right then that matched the theme of what they were talking about. "Tortue maladroite."

"Torture what now?" Alex asked.

"Tortue. It means turtle," John replied. "Maladroite means like bumbling, awkward, clumsy, or stupid." He turned and tried to ignore that Alex was now standing naked behind him as he laid the palm of his hand over the back of his other hand and rotated his thumbs so they looked like swimming flippers. "My brother's and I do this and we say 'aaaawkard tuuuuurtle' when one of us is doing something dumb, ya know, to tease each other." He watched as Alex mimicked the hand gesture for a minute, trying to master how coordinated John's thumbs were in rotating to look like they were synchronized. By comparison, Alex's thumbs flailed about independently of each other and he let out a low laugh, thinking maybe that was the point, since the imaginary turtle would have looked far more bumbling if it tried to walk the way Alex was doing it.

"Okay," Alex said, dropping his hands and rubbing at his face. He was still tired, but clearly he wasn't gunna get to crawl back into a bed anytime soon. "So what would be a nice phrase to say to a client if I wanted to impress them and make them feel better?"

"I think if you can manage to actually say anything in French for a client they'd be happy about it."

"I can say things in French."

"Say 'awkward turtle' in French then."

"Tortured—no, hush let me say it—tortured malachite." Alex smiled so proudly that John had to laugh at him. "Yeah, see, I'm pretty good, aren't I? We can go on a tour of France now. You wanna go see the Eiffel Tower? I'll take you."

"I've already been there," John told him, smiling at Alex's too confident attitude.

"You have?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Oh, Laf took you?"

"Pretty much, yeah. He took me all the way up to the top."

"Damn. Okay, then, how about...we go see...Notre-Dame?"

"Seen it."

"The French palace?"

"Which one?"

"There's more then one?"

"Oh yeah. And I've seen quiet a few of them. There's a lot of cathedrals too."

"I suppose you've been to Disneyland in Paris too?"

"Mm-hmm. Laf and I spent three days there."

"Well, is there anywhere in France that Laf hasn't taken you yet?"

John thought about it for a moment, then answered, "the catacombs."

"Catacombs?" Alex repeated. That seemed to help shake of the dregs of sleep that still fogged his mind. "Catacombs?"

He nodded, smiling bemusedly at the shocked look on Alex's face. "He was too scared to go. It's the one thing in Paris I know I haven't seen."

"What is the one thing in Paris you have not seen?" Lafayette said as he came back into the room with a wet wash rag and a towel. "I took you to see everything."

"Apparently not the catacombs," Alex answered and all color drained from Lafayette's face.

"Non Non Non!" he cried, frantically waving his hands in front of himself. "Je t'ai dit que je n'irais pas! Cet endroit est hanté, voulez-vous être maudit?!"

"Well, I might not speak French, but I know what that means," Alex said. "It's haunted, isn't it?"

"Cet endroit est rempli de morts," Lafayette replied, heedless that Alex would not understand. "Les gens qui veulent l'explorer disparaissent tout le temps." He pointed at the smirk John wore on his face hearing him say such things. "Arrêtez de sourire à ce sujet, ce n'est pas un endroit où une personne sensée voudrait aller. Toute la beauté de mon pays et vous préféreriez être entourés par les morts."

"Les morts nous entourent peu importe où nous allons," John replied. "And yes," he said to Alex, "he's saying it's haunted and cursed. And that he won't go, cuz he's scared."

"Sounds like you need a lion then. A petty lion!"

Lafayette shook his head as he handed Alex the washcloth. "You are crazy. Both of you. Those are not playgrounds to run around in like it is no big deal. Je ne comprends pas parfois votre fixation sur la mort. Je souhaite que vous laissiez cela aller."

John shrugged, even as Alex looked at him for a translation, and moved to Thomas's closet to find Alex a new pair of pants so he wouldn't have to see either male's gaze on him. Alex's bewildered look he could handle, but the disapproving stare of his best friend was another matter. So what if John had a fixation on death? He wasn't gunna off himself on some tourist attraction underneath the city of Paris. He just thought it was interesting to think about all the millions of people who lived and died before he had, how one day he too would be little more then dust on the wind like them. He liked to wonder where their souls were, what kind of people they were like, if any of them were, well, like him. Billions of people on this planet, billions and billions of people to have ever lived and died, and somehow he felt so isolated from all of them sometimes.

"Well, you don't have to come if you don't want, Laf," Alex said with a little shrug. "But I'll take John, if he wants to go."

"You will get cursed."

"Nah, we'll be fine," Alex replied. He smiled as he caught John peeking over at him. "Aren't there like a million cathedrals or something? We'll just pop in for a Sunday mass afterwards and then catch some brunch or something, sound like a date?"

John smiled back, despite Lafayette's muttering that it did not sound at all like a pleasant time to him, but John was glad that Alex didn't seem to mind the thought of it. "Sure. It's a date then," he said as his best friend threw his hands in the air. John handed Alex a pair of jeans and tried not to let his stupid bubbly excitement at the thought of going on a date with Alex show to much on his face. It wasn't like they could just pop over to Paris tomorrow for funsies.

"Well, I forbid you from making that your first date," Lafayette said. "You two can do something boring and common for your first date instead. See a movie, go to dinner. I do not care, just no cemeteries, no dead bodies, no haunting buildings, nothing like that!" He huffed at the mess of bed sheets. "Thomas is going to be so mad," the French man said and Alex began to giggle to himself, swaying dangerously as he was standing on one leg and causing John to anxiously reach for him and step closer, in case he fell.

"One might even say..." Alex trailed as his head lobbed froward for a minute and he giggled a little more while stepping into the legs. "He's going to be...heheh...pissed."

"Oh no," John said with his own laugh. "He's making puns."

"Hey, c'mon," Alex went on, hitching the pants up and buttoning them closed. "Let's look on the bright side here..." He giggled more trying hard to reign in the bubbly attitude because god were his jokes funny. "At least it's not...a shitty situation." He let go of the pants and they immediately fell straight to the floor around his ankles; apparently Thomas was a bit bigger in his waist then Alex was. John laughed some and Alex bent down to pick the pants back up, holding them in place this time with one hand. He leaned against John trying to plant a kiss on his mouth but missed entirely and ended up smooshing his face against John's neck, causing him to laugh more.

"C'mon, what are ya doin', ya goof?" John asked, and Alex wondered if that hint of a southern accent had always been there or how he had not noticed it until just now.

"Nothing," Alex replied, smiling as he nuzzled John. He felt so warm and Alex hugged him just wanting to be embraced by that warmth.

"You're still tired, aren't you?" John asked.

"Nooo, I'm awake."

"John, shouldn't you change too?" Lafayette asked him. "You were the one who noticed first that Alex had peed the bed."

John glanced down at his own pants, only slightly damp on one side now from the experience. "I'll just wait for my original clothes to be dry. It's fine." Alex buried his face with an embarrassed grunt and John reached up to pet him. "Hey, c'mon Alex, it's not that big of a deal."

"You're surprisingly okay with this," Alex asked. "Are you into golden showers or something?"

John blushed profusely as Lafayette turned to ask, "what are golden showers?"

"Oh, you know, getting sexual pleasure from being peed on or other forms of piss play," Alex explained nonchalantly. "I think the technical term for it is...urophilia?"

"I do not get sexual pleasure form being peed on!" John defended. "Or peeing on people!"

"Non merde," Lafayette said. "I think that would have been a very long conversation between us if you did."

"Well, okay," Alex said as he looked up at John with innocent brown eyes. "But I mean, I'm still curious about how you're just, 'ho-hum, just another day getting pissed on,' about this. I mean, I'm grateful you're not mad, but it seems a little strange, ya know? Will you sate my curiosity, please John?"

He sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Look, if I tell you guys, you gotta promise you won't make a big deal about it, okay? And whatever you do, never, ever fucking once mention I said anything about this, cuz I'll kill you both, got it? Like I don't care if one of you says something, you're both getting shot."

"Then count me out," Lafayette said as he gathered the bed sheets and moved toward the door. "That does not sound like a secret of yours I can use for blackmail against you, I am not interested."

"You can't use any of my secrets against me," John said defiantly, but Lafayette's only reply was an unspoken look that told John he didn't buy that bluff for a minute. Rolling his eyes after he was gone, John asked, "so are you sure you wanna hear this secret of mine?"

"Only if you want to tell me it," Alex replied. "And you know you don't have too, I'll probably live a richer fuller life without this big, private John Laurens secret hanging over my head, but you know, I'm already in so deep knowing about your shark genitalia and your sexually questionable dreams about me...so, what else you got?"

John chuckled some. "Okay, so...I have this little sister named Mary, right?"

"I do recall you having one of those, yes."

"And there's an 8 year difference between us. So when I was...eleven, or abouts there, she was only about three or so. And she'd...she'd crawl into bed with me whenever she had a bad dream, because I wouldn't send her back to her own room like Mom and Dad did with the rest of us." John shrugged. "Sometimes she'd have accidents in my bed, so I just got used to cleaning them up because it was easier then throwing a fit and making everyone in the house mad."

"Geeze, you are a big brother, huh?"

John shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal and didn't say anything more. He didn't want to explain the real reason his little sister had taken to crawling into his bed at night, or that she still did it even now that he was almost twenty-three and she was fourteen. He knew what people would say; that it was improper, that he was talking advantage of her, that they were incestuous and disgusting and sinners bound for hell for the sexual acts they committed. The thing was, there wasn't a damn lick of truth to any of that, but John only needed to be woken up once by his father dragging him out of his own bed by his hair the first time they were found together when he was sixteen and Mary was only eight. His father had accused him of some really awful shit. It had been one of the worst fights John had ever had with the man. But he'd never touched Mary. He never would.

Nearly seven years later and the memory still caused John to choose his words very carefully when he talked about how close he was with his baby sister. She meant so much to him, and maybe their relationship was a little outside the normal parameters for siblings, but he honestly didn't care. He'd do anything to protect her, even if it would cost him his life. How else could he ever replay the kindness she showed him at three years old when she'd first crawled into his bed as he lay sobbing into his pillow about all the things that had been done to him and offered him her favorite blankie, her softest teddy bear and even the damn binkie from her mouth to sooth him? How could he talk about how she'd hug him when he woke up screaming and wait with him until his terror passed? Who would ever understand the way she never asked him to explain the demons that plagued him, just loved him through his darkness and held his hand in hers so tightly that he was certain some nights she must have known if she let go of him he'd never see the morning, and yet, she got him there time and time again. She started writing him letters when he went away to college because she must've known he would need some piece of her to continually find him and keep him safe. He wrote back because he needed her to know he loved her so much.

The sound of the doorbell ringing brought John back to the present and he shook his head to clear it of unnecessary thoughts. Alex turned to go see who was at the door, but tripped over the too long legs of the jeans and John's reflexes unfortunately weren't quick enough this time to catch him. He landed on the floor with a surprised thud and a groan. John figured the door could wait as he bent down to make sure Alex was okay.

"Hey," John said, rolling Alex onto his back. "You okay there bud?"

"Yeah," Alex moaned. "The only thing that's hurt is my pride."

"Oh no," John replied, "that's basically a death sentence." He could hear Lafayette answering the door and talking to whoever was on the other side.

"Spread my ashes over my writing desk," Alex said in a maudlin tone. "Tell my wife I died valiantly in battle and that I perished screaming her name with all the passion I regret I couldn't return home to show her."

"You have a wife?" John said, unamused.

Alex looked like he was thinking hard about something for a moment then said, "pick a girl at random and tell her that her dear Hamilton has died valiantly in battle, and that he perished screaming in agony for he knew not yet her name to call and regrets that he'll never know the comfort of her arms. Tell her he regrets that he could not lay upon her body the passionate love that he felt for her, but that you, my most beloved friend John will step in to fulfill—"

"I'm gay."

"...pick a boy at random, and tell him—Hey! Where are you going?!"

"You're fine, ya big drama llama!" John said with a laugh.

"My pride was wounded, man! Does that mean nothing to you? You said it was fatal!"

"Yeah, but I'm gunna be a lawyer not a doctor, remember?"

Alex scrambled to his feet just as John was meeting Lafayette in the living room. "We have a problem," the French man said, looking worried. "Thomas needs to move, this house is haunted. Pack up everything, I am moving him away tonight."

"Why, what kind of problem does Thomas have?" Alex asked. "Aside from, you know, being a dick."

"This house has bad ju-ju," Lafayette said as he nervously waved his hands around. "I think it was Thomas's curse when I live here, but now I think it is the house. Also, there is a woman outside for you, but she is very mad; and we cannot let her in."

Alex looked confused until John snorted. "Oh lord, does he still have that shitty sexist rule about needing the approval of two housemates before letting a woman in? He's gunna get himself slapped."

"Well, he did not change it even after Angelica slapped him for it, so I do not know what else can be done."

"Just let her in if she wants in. It's Thomas's curse or whatever to deal with, right?"

"Non, non, non, you cannot! Thomas will be mad!"

"Okay! Okay!" Alex called as he walked to the front door. "I'll talk to her outside, Laf. Just keep your pants on!" He laughed at his own stupid joke as he opened the door and turned to see, to his surprise, a woman he knew all too well standing on it's stoop. "Maria? What are you doing here?"

END CHAPTER