IV

Matt appeared, leaning against her bedroom doorframe while she was getting ready for bed. "Feel better after your little macho man act, do you?" she asked wryly.

"Your boyfriend's not much of a basketball player," he observed.

"Oh, woe! Suddenly all the shreds of my attraction to him are tearing away." She clutched melodramatically at her heart. "Oh, wait. False alarm."

Matt scowled pensively. "I don't trust him, Abs. There's something shifty about him."

A chuckle of disbelief bubbled up from inside her. "Shifty? Jed? Oh man, you really are from planet obnoxious big brother, aren't you?"

But instead of copping to overactive protective instincts, he simply shifted his balance and frowned deeper. "I'm serious, Abs. I saw when we were playing basketball; he's got bruises all over him, and he won't say a word about where he got them."

"He's a klutz!" she shrugged, growing exasperated with this relentless suspicion. He didn't even know Jed, otherwise he'd realise his vague accusations were ridiculous.

"Yeah, that's what he said. Looks like he's so klutzy he accidentally walked into somebody's fist."

"Oh, get over it, Matt, will you?" she groaned.

"I'm just saying. You might want to ask your boyfriend where he got those bruises, because it looks to me like Mr. Perfect Boyfriend's a bit of a scrapper on the side. You don't get those kind of bruises tripping over your own feet."

"You're so wrong," Abbey insisted, shaking her head.

"Okay!" Her brother threw his hands up in the universal 'humouring that crazy girl' gesture. "Just don't say I didn't warn you when he turns out to be some kind of trouble."

"He won't," she said, and got up to close the door against him.

Jed, a scrapper? The very thought made her almost giggle. She was positive there was no violence in him, and besides, he was hardly the size to go round picking fights. But still; Matt might be an idiot, but he was her big brother, and he'd obviously seen something that had got him concerned.

Could Jed have got beaten up during his trip home? A random encounter with some old school bully, perhaps... or, it would be just like him to step into somebody else's fight with his crazy selfless instinct for stopping injustice. And even more like him not to admit a word of it so nobody would fuss over him.

That could be it. She'd ask him about the bruises tomorrow, and no doubt there'd be a perfectly reasonable explanation, not whatever conspiracy theory her brother had apparently dreamed up to make him an unsuitable boyfriend.

He was most definitely a suitable boyfriend. Everything she could have wanted in a guy and a few things she'd not thought to ask for, all wrapped up in a package that was pretty darn cute to look at, too. She curled up and went to sleep with Jed's face in her mind, and a smile on her lips.

"Hey."

"Hey!" Coming out of the house he shared with his roommates, Jed grinned delightedly at Abbey as she jogged the rest of the way up the street to join him.

"So, did you take up boxing when you were back home?" she asked brightly, bouncing up to sit on the wall beside him.

"Huh?"

"Oh, my idiot brother's got some idea you've been in a fight. Said you've got bruises all over you."

Dammit. Why had Matt had to go and make such a big thing of it? "It's really nothing. I just- You know what I'm like," he shrugged.

"Show me," she commanded.

He snorted a laugh, part amused and part startled. "You just want to ogle my naked body," he accused with a smirk.

"Cheap thrills, cheap thrills," she grinned. "Come on, strip," she ordered.

"Yes ma'am." He rolled his eyes and quickly yanked up the bottom of his shirt to flash the faded bruising on his stomach. "See, that's all."

"Yeah, actually show me," she grumbled, snatching the cloth as he let it fall back. He had to admit, despite the awkwardness of the moment, that having Abbey determinedly yanking his clothes off him was not the worst thing ever. She inspected his bruises seriously. "Does this hurt?"

"In my experience, only when crazy girls start poking it with their fingernails. Ow!" He pouted.

"Aw, poor baby." She let go of his shirt, leaving one hand on his chest underneath it in a way that made his heart beat pleasantly faster, and kissed the corner of his mouth. "How'd you do it?"

He thought on his feet, as his childhood had accustomed him to doing. Awkward bruises... it was just so much easier to be able to give a simple explanation. "It's... well, this is dumb." He brushed back his hair. "Me and my brother, we had this... we used to have this old tyre swing at the bottom of the garden? And we were kind of messing around down there, and-"

"I see where this is going," Abbey noted dryly.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm a klutz, okay? But in my defence, it was totally his fault."

"I'm sure." She chuckled throatily, and laid her head against his shoulder; he squeezed her gently around the middle.

There was a slight pang of regret at the thought of lying to her... but really, wasn't this much better all round? She'd only get upset, and she'd probably get a pitying look in her eye, and- and it wouldn't change anything anyway. No, much better to put such things far behind him in his father's home where they belonged, and enjoy the happiness and the sunshine.

They sat that way for a while, Abbey absently bumping her heels against the wall.

"You have uncomfortably bony shoulders," she observed after a few moments, sitting up and rubbing her neck.

"If your mother keeps trying to feed me the way she has been, that won't last long," he pointed out. Mary Barrington had apparently decided he was 'too thin'. He wasn't sure at which point he would cease to be too thin, but if the amount of food she kept trying to cram down him was any indication, she was aiming for somewhere around three hundred pounds.

"If my mother's trying to feed you to death, it's a sign you've been adopted into the clan," Abbey explained. "She still sends my brother food packages every other week, and he eats like a pig."

"I don't think your brother likes me," Jed admitted. Abbey shrugged and let out a nonchalant huff of air.

"Yeah, well, he's just Matt. It took him long enough to get used to Ron, and he's known him since junior high. I don't think he approves of me swapping boyfriends."

"Well, neither do I!" Jed said fervently. "Now you've got me, I'd rather like you to keep me."

She grinned angelically up at him. "Well, that's good, 'cause I'd rather like to keep you too."

Abbey swooped in unexpectedly to kiss him on the nose. He retaliated by suddenly yanking her closer so she was half-sitting on his lap, she mussed up his hair, and it quickly devolved into a giggling heap at the bottom of the wall.

It was hard to remember a time in his life when he'd ever been this happy.

Ben shook his head in amused exasperation at the way the younger boy gleefully bounced about his bookstore duties.

"So tell me, Happy," he asked dryly, "when are the rest of the seven dwarfs gonna show up?"

Jed just stuck his tongue out, and scrambled up onto the counter to grab a book from the nearest high shelf. He even seemed to have become more athletic since he'd taken up with Abbey. No less clumsy about it, alas, but definitely full of a bright energy that had been absent in the shrunken, perpetually tired and overworked student he'd been before.

"I don't know what that girl's done to you, but if I could sell it in a bottle, I'd be rich."

"You can't synthesise it," Jed grinned. "It's her. She's amazing."

"You're a dork." Ben rolled his eyes.

"I'm a dork in love," he shrugged, and jumped down from the counter, staggering the landing a little and wobbling into the bookshelf.

"Bet that hurt."

"Didn't."

Indeed, he shot off at a near jog, hyperactive as ever. Ben put his book down and affected a serious expression. "Okay, this has got to stop."

"What has?" Jed frowned. Ye gods, he even frowned with a cheerful twinkle in his eye.

"This! It's not right. You're a student, man! Slouch! Sleep in! At least try to look dull and lazy, you're scaring the customers."

Jed paused and shook an admonishing finger. "You, my friend, are just jealous, because you do not have the love of a good woman to see you through the rocky road of life."

"The rocky road of- Did you swallow a book of poetry?"

"I'm in love!" he said expansively. "The whole world is written in poetry."

Ben thumped his head against the desk, and covered it with his hands. "I liked you much better when you were depressed," he groaned.

Jed just smirked, damn him... and started to whistle.