The four Rawley boys went back late. They were so far past curfew it was a joke but none of the others commented on the fact. Hamilton didn't say anything either. He watched Will and Scout cycle ahead. "How come Scout isn't in a sportscar?"

"His dad has this thing about poverty being character building. Sean's pretty funny about the Calhoun idea of poor."

Ham had heard him getting at Scout all evening. "That's why Sean hates Scout." Envy. It explained a lot.

"Hates.. nahh. Resents, I think. I dunno."

Ham took his top off and folded it into a pad. The night breeze made him shiver.

Jake shivered in sympathy, the way you mirror someone's body language when you're looking at them too hard. Jake said "Bella used to date Sean before she fell for Scout."

"Oh."

Jake arranged himself on the bike, stretching his arms to grip the handlebars for balance. "I don't understand it either. I'm kind of on the fringes of that group. There was a big drama going on when Scout got together with Bella. I don't know the details."

"Uh huh." Jake's weight made the gradient a struggle. It took most of Ham's breath.

"When you don't tell guys things, you can't expect them to tell you their secrets." The silence was drawing Jake into talking. Interesting.

"Did I know your secrets?" Ham asked the back of his friend's head. That beer had been a mistake. Or maybe it was the intimate dark.

"..yeah."

"Tell me."

Jake said "You're a different person now."

That wasn't what the specialists said. Circumstances had changed, not him. "Why didn't I tell my folks I'm bi?"

Jake startled, and the bike lurched.

Not the first beer. He blamed the second beer. Or the fourth.

"Bi?" Yeah, he had said it out loud, and now Jake was parroting key phrases in a dumbfounded voice. Generally Ham was the one shocked into a stupor by a change in the universe. He had a flash of memory of standing opposite Jake in a confined space, formalwear. Jake had just devastated him - how? - and Ham was clawing for control of the situation, or his body. Shaking off the paralysis enough to speak would be good. If he knew what to say. The flash ended.

There had been much beer tonight. Hamilton would have expected seventeen year olds to have better heads for beer. Curfew breaking rebel seventeen year olds, anyway.

Jake scrambled off the bike. They had passed the last houses. Ham skidded in a wide arc, yards beyond Jake. They were in the woods between town and school. Jake was shocked. Ham was shocked that Jake was shocked. Jake was shocked that Ham was- He could have sworn that Jake would know this. It was mostly girls, in a generalised way, and Jake, in a less generalised way. He'd keep that quiet, in case Jake took it as a slur on his Bruce Willis factor. It hadn't needed the Estella/Miss Havisham rant in class to prove to Ham that Jake had big, big gender role issues.

"You're bi?"

Weird. His square old Dad would take this as smoothly as Mr I.want.to.be.like.James.Dean.except.the.dead.part.thank.you, here. "Liking the look of girls And boys clued me in." Sarcasm. He could do sarcasm.

"Ham you get excited about the look of" Jake gestured wildly. "trees."

Trees. Rock formations. A skein of birds in the sky. Golden brown eyes, like clear amber. He'd spent a while telling himself it was art aesthetic. He'd grant Jake that.

"I mean, do you like-"

Ham waited. Was Jake going to name himself? This conversation might go better without the beer. He didn't trust his powers of self expression.

"Will?" Jake asked.

"Will! No." This conversation wouldn't have happened without the beer.

"See" Jake said, like he'd proved a point.

"Freckles. I thought you knew this."

"I know Will has freckles." A careful monotone.

Jake was way too sober for Ham to cope with. Beer was bad. "Get back on the bike." He felt annoyed. "I'm not gonna molest you."

"I know that." Jake came over, moving slowly. "I was just surprised." He stooped to get Ham's top off the ground and shook the dust and grit out.

"I thought you knew this. I thought we were together. That's what everyone at school thinks." Aside from how truly unpleasant it tasted, alcohol was amazing. He knew this was stuff he should die before saying, and he honestly didn't care.

Jake looked up from the cloth he was folding to see whatever he could see of Ham's expression in the moonlight. Jake had had only one beer. Apparantly that was his habit. He'd joked that he was too much of a control freak to get wasted. The others had shown zero surprise at that. "That's the rumour" Jake admitted. "I'm not what you think I am."

As if Ham knew enough about Jake to have preconceptions. He didn't think Jake was anything. He didn't know enough to guess. "What do I think you are?" Impatient, he picked Jake up and dumped him onto the bicycle frame.

"Hey." Jake hated that.

"What? I want to get home before breakfast."

"Yeah, God forbid you should lose a meal" Jake muttered. He tried another tack. "Look. Hamilton. Ever since you've come back, you've been very-" Jake took a deep breath "(don't take this the wrong way) law abiding. Son of the Dean."

"I was always the son of the Dean."

"Not like this."

"Doesn't make me your enemy" Ham said gruffly.

Jake slanted a look over his shoulder. What was he so afraid of?

"I know you're a hacker. I know about your stupid bike-"

"You remember?"

"I found the helmet." Hamilton was offended. Normally, Jake treated him like he had a brain. He'd shown Ham a couple of good tricks with his computer two days ago, and he hadn't patronised him once, even though Ham had had no clue what they were doing. Ham had a brain. He could take evidence and work it out. He'd be together tomorrow. He could be, like, Sherlock Hamilton. Tomorrow.

Stupid Jake.

Hamilton expected to wake in the cruel grip of a hangover the next day, but he woke, and he poured himself liquidly out of bed, and he got to crew only the usual few minutes late, and he rowed - not well, but adequately - and there was no pain. He was very very tired.

"I don't have a hangover" he muttered to Jake. Apparently he was still speaking before thinking.

"Alcohol still in your system." Jake moved away and got his shoulder under the far end of the boat.

Ham thought about the things he'd said last night. He had come across like a complete girl. Hearts and flowers. Hefting the shell across the damp grass before the sun baked the early morning chill out of the day, he still didn't care. He had a suspicion he would care later.

Jake wasn't speaking to him, wasn't looking at him, and was standing at the far side of all the guys present, forcing a conversation on Finn. Obviously, Jake was upset about last night. Ham wondered if he'd started packing again.

Ham thought he'd better make the most of his beer fuelled bravado before it ebbed. "Have you got a pen?" he asked Will.

"Yeah - why?"

"Can I borrow it?"

Scout heard. "You're not going to get inspired by lyric verse at weird times too?" He looked horrified.

Will clouted the back of his roomie's head.

"What? It could be a head injury thing.."

Ham tore a page out of a sport equipment brochure and scrawled We've Got to Talk on it. Truly, he was visiting the planet Girl. He brushed past Jake, his eyes on Finn, and kind of reverse-pickpocketed the note into the back of Jake's pants. Jake tensed but didn't turn. He had a nice ass under those cargo pants.

Finn was talking about how Love transcended the conventional rules of Society. Ham wondered if Jake agreed.

"..it takes courage to defy - Mr Fleming, what is it?"

Finn meant him when he said Mr Fleming. "Jake needs to come for breakfast at my place. Mom asked."

Finn despatched them both at once. "Far be it from me to go against the wishes of a lady." Ryder was right; Finn was a berk.

Jake said "We've got to talk."

"Yeah."

"But not now."

"Yeah." Ham didn't think they'd make much sense. "Tired?"

"Yeah." Jake yawned. "Stayed up and hacked, last night."

Ham gave him a disapproving look.

"I needed to unwind."

Unwind. Jake had no right to feel wound. He was the big city boy, and he was meanly leaving Ham to do all the propositioning. It was so unfair, Hamilton thought. He wished for a bottle of water. He could glug it in a provocative way, or something.

All right. It wouldn't provoke Jake. But it would help the dehydration.

Jake was unfolding the note he'd passed. "We Need to Talk" he read aloud. He grinned a little crookedly.

"I think we covered that."

"At least we're on the same page." Jake refolded the sheet and tucked it away. From one of the innumerable pockets on his pants, he brought out a small bottle of water. "Want some?"

"Thanks." Ham drained it.

Jake stared ruefully at the empty plastic container. "I was thinking of sharing."

"Oh. Sorry." Ham let them in by the kitchen door. The dogs greeted Jake as an old friend. "Shh. Shh." He caught Jake's eye. "My folks aren't great morning people at the weekend."

Jake nodded. "Breakfast in the garden?"

"Cool."

The Dean's house had a small private garden, fenced off from the school grounds. At the end furthest from the house were some gnarled crab apple trees. "They look like monster bonsai" Jake commented.

"Ummph." Ham said through a mouth of croissant.

"No, seriously." Jake often acted bemused by the natural world. Ham suspected a put-on.

"Eat." Jake didn't eat enough. "Not you" he told the hopeful dogs. "You had breakfast before I went out."

Jake delved through the fruit bowl they'd swiped from Ham's lounge. "You're like you were when we first met." He offered Ham an apple.

"I changed a lot in this last year." That much was clear.

"Uh huh. How's it going with your Dad?"

His Dad was leaving town this afternoon. He'd be back next week. "Cool. I can tell him anything."

Jake looked at him blankly.

Ham leaned in and said, low and very fast, embarrassed by the words "Look, I know you have this thing about the Dean. And you think he can't handle Us. But he's not gonna expel you or anything. He's-"

Ham was going to say, he's a cool guy disguised in a suit. As disguises go, the Dean's formality was..pretty convincing. Jake probably knew this. He'd had that year to find out.

"- he's not mean, or unreasonable." Ham finished.

"There is no Us" Jake burst out.

That didn't sit with the Jake and Ham he saw mirrored in their classmates' eyes.

"You don't have to feel weird around me."

Yeah, easy for him to say, Ham thought. "Well, I do."

Jake had no response but an awkward silence.

The blanket denial was annoying Hamilton. He said resentfully "Everyone thinks I'm dumb. Because I don't make speeches like Krudsky (and Krudsky is gonna Turn Into Finn, you watch) ..I notice things. I see things the whole time. I know we were an item."

"We were." Slow and reluctant, Jake finally admitted it. His eyes were fixed on a daisy he was tearing apart. "But, I've been thinking." One petal at a time, he threw it aside. "This year is a fresh start."

Jake never stopped thinking. It sucked that Ham never knew the thoughts. "Fresh start" he prompted.

"Last year. It was incredibly stressful, and both our reputations got shot to hell, and our grades went down the pan." Jake raised his eyes to Ham's. "You hated sneaking around - you said so - and I hated the guilt. We're sophomores now. It's time to focus on exam results and how our resumes will look."

Ham barely heard. Jake's eyes told him that Jake didn't want this. He'd made this decision, and wanted to be talked out of it, or, he hadn't made this decision, and thought he should. Either way, Ham wasn't giving up on them.