Mike finally woke up around lunch.

"Good Morning Mike." Peter said apprehensively.

"Morning," Mike said, rubbing his eyes awake and sitting up. "Oh my head," he groaned, laying back down.

"I'll get you some aspirin." Micky said "Or do you want you're orange pain pills?"

"My orange pills?" Mike said, confused.

"Yeah," Micky said.

"Aspirin I guess." Mike said as he sat up again slowly.

"How…do you feel?" Micky asked, bringing him a cup of water and two white pills.

"Fine, I guess?" Mike asked, taking the pills. "Headache, but fine. Why?"

"You had a concussion and were out of sorts for almost two days." Micky said.

"Oh," Mike said "I don't remember that…I don't think…"

"What do you remember?" Davy asked. Mike sighed and closed his eyes thinking.

"Skating and Willy pulling me down pain in the back of my head then everything's kinda fuzzy until now." Mike said. Then a look of panic crossed his face.

"Oh My God!" He said as he made to get up but Micky grabbed him and held him down.

"What," Davy asked looking around, "what is it?"

"The skating contest!" Mike said "I need to be there!" He got up again and was halfway to the door grimacing in pain when Micky went up behind him and grabbed him.

"Hold your horses there cowboy," He said, making Davy and Peter snort and Mike give him an unamused look "the contest is over. We had to take you to the hospital halfway through because you got hurt. The doctor there said she didn't want you showing back up there for a week."

"Oh," Mike said, frowning "I-I don't remember that."

"Yeah, well" Micky said leading Mike back the the couch "I'm thinking there's a lot you might not remember."

Mike looked at him.

"Like…what?" He asked hesitantly.

"Like you almost having to be taken to a mental hospital because of how you were acting in front of the police." Micky said rather bluntly.

"Wait, what?" Mike's eyes widened. "What was that about?"

"You ran off to the lighthouse for some reason or other and we called the police in case I couldn't find you," Micky said "I did find you and got you back home and the police were there." He said.

"I called them," Peter said.

"Anyway," Davy continued, "you took the police officer's hat and wanted to keep it." Mike looked at them.

"Well," he said trying not to bury his face in the couch cushions "can you blame me? Police hats are very nice."

"So you said," Micky smiled.

"What?" Mike asked, confused.

"Nevermind.," Micky said "you just said that before, is all."

"You wouldn't give it back and Peter finally gave you your green hat and the police officer took his hat and then called the nut house because he thought you were a danger to people."

"Oh," Mike said, "was I? Did I put you guys in any danger?"

"I don't think so," Micky said. "You mostly just laughed and repeated things."

"Oh," Mike said.

"And then there were these two people who wanted to take you away for the night," Micky continued. "But you freaked out so we thought it would be better for you to spend the night in a more familiar environment and they let us spend the night at Millie's."

"Oh," Mike repeated, rubbing his forehead. "Why aren't we there now?"

"Cause you ran away again." Micky said lightly.

"Someone should call her so she's not freaking out." Mike said.

"Already did that." Micky smiled.

"Okay," Mike said, getting up.

"Mike," Peter asked, "Where are you going?"

"To make some coffee." Mike answered as he made his way into the kitchen.

"Davy already made some." Peter said.

"Hmm," Mike hummed passing the chore chart he glanced at it then stopped and stared at it.

"What's this?" He asked studying it.

"Well," Micky said "One thing you were rambling about was how you had to do everything and how no one helped you-"

"That's not true," Mike interrupted, "you help out."

"No Mike," Micky said "we don't, not nearly enough anyway."

"This is so we all know what chores we're doing on any given day." Davy said.

"We even have these colour coded chips so we know who's doing what." Peter said happily holding out some old checkers that they painted.

Mike sighed.

"I can't ask y'all to do all that, I'm fine doing the work—"

"Please, Mike!" Micky pleaded. "Please just let us help you! I don't know why you have some weird aversion to us helping you but we all need this."Mike didn't answer for a few moments. Peter went over and took his hand giving him three squeezes. Mike automatically gave three squeezes back.

"I-I don't have an aversion to you three helping," He finally said slowly "It's just I'm so use to doing everything back home for the kids that sometimes I forget that you guys can do things to help me out."

"You didn't ask your brothers and sisters to help out?" Micky asked. Mike shrugged.

"It wasn't their fault the house was messy and dinner needed to be made." Mike said "They were..they needed to be kids, I started cooking meals for the family when I was fourteen." He said as he made his way into the kitchen and poured some coffee into a mug and hunted around for the sugar.

"You weren't that much older than them," Micky said, handing him the sugar. "You deserved to still be a kid too." Mike hmmed as he poured sugar into the coffee and snagged a spoon from the drawer and sat down at the table.

"It was easier when Pa was alive," Mike said "Ma was home so I didn't do as much, Gabbie was dating some feller from town and had her own place Rene was the oldest girl then, but me and her took turns cooking to give Ma a break, then Pa died and Ma had to go to work. Then Rene moved out and everything was left to me to do." He took a sip of coffee and looked out the kitchen window.

"It wasn't easy, but I told Pa that I'd look after everyone." Mike said "I told him I'd take care of everyone."

"Well…" Micky said, sitting down. "Taking care of everyone does mean taking care of everyone, Mike. Including yourself. You're not letting him down or being disrespectful or anything by asking for a break. Or some time to yourself. That's part of why we made the chore chart."

Micky smiled at him. "So we could all take care of each other."Mike nodded.

"How often are we going to change chores?" he asked.

"Oh err, to be honest, we haven't gotten that far yet."

"We were going to talk about it together, but…" Peter said, looking down.

"But what…?" Mike asked, realizing something was bothering them.

"You know what, it's not important." Peter said quickly. "We just didn't get the chance to talk about it."

Mike frowned and looked at the other two.

"Will either of you tell me what happened?" Mike said trailing off looking at the blond.

"Well, you kinda started repeating things." Peter said.

"You told me I was already doing that." Mike answered, taking another sip of coffee.

"Well, yeah, but this was without any context it was like you were repeating everything you've heard in the past day for some reason." Peter said.

"And then you fell asleep and slept for a few hours and then woke up and you're acting like you." Micky said "for the most part." Mike looked at him puzzled.

"You told us more about your family in the past half hour than I have ever heard." Micky said. Mike smiled.

"It's not that I don't want to talk about them," Mike said "but…memories can be painful."

"I understand," Micky sighed. "But sometimes it can be better to get these things off your chest so they don't keep weighing you down."

Mike nodded and looked down into his cup.

"I'm sorry…" he whispered, keeping his head down.

"Michael," Micky said. "Look at me."

Mike looked up at him and he smiled.

"It. Is. Oh. Kay. You didn't do anything wrong, I'm sorry that you felt like you couldn't tell us these things, but it's fine."

"Yeah, Mike," Davy added. "We wouldn't judge you for anything." Mike smiled again and took a deep breath.

"Wanna hear about the time me and my brother Charlie prank called the school principal and had him close the school for the day?"

"Wait, you pranked the school?"

"Well, it wasn't just me. Charlie helped. Oh and another time I got a bunch of my classmates to go to the library during book week or whatever you call it and check out a bunch of books. I mean the shelves were almost empty of books, I think it was the whole Junior class, anyway, we checked them all out and she was so happy because kids were reading, then on the last Friday we all went and turned them in at the end of the school day." Mike chuckled at the memory. "She was up all night probably checking them back in."

"Bet she loved that." Micky said.

"No, she didn't really." Mike said "She found out it was me who organized it and I got banned from the library for a month. But Charlie and I called the principal from one of his friends' houses and said that cows were in the school. He didn't even check to see, he just started calling the phone tree-"

"The what?" Peter asked.

"The phone tree," Mike said "you start at the top and work your way down with everyone calling everyone else. So the principal called the vice principal who called the secretary and the head cook, who in turn called the cafeteria workers and parents, and cafeteria workers and parents would call more parents and ect until everyone was informed that school was closed." Mike said.

"Oh," Peter said, still not getting it.

"Anyway, he finally went over to see how much damage the cows were doing and of course there were no cows." Mike said.

"And everyone got a day off school." Micky said.

"Yep." Mike smiled.

"What else?" Davy asked.

"Oh, let me think." Mike said "I remember when I got my first guitar. I got it for my seventeenth birthday. Couldn't play a lick and asked Ma why she spent so much on something i couldn't play." He took another sip of coffee and sighed.

"Ma said she liked my singing, I was always singing to the kids to get them to go to sleep, see, and said that I should learn how to play guitar."

Peter smiled.

"Did you teach yourself how to play?" He asked and Mike nodded.

"For the most part, yeah," he smiled too at the memory. "Been playin' ever since."

"I bet your siblings all loved it when you played," Davy said and Mike nodded again.

"They all liked it, yeah. Only thing was playing didn't put food on the table."

He let out a sigh and looked down.

"You know, those guys like Elvis and Hank Williams, they could do it." He explained to them. "They could make good music and turn it into a career. I couldn't do that, I wasn't like them."

"No," Micky smiled. "You're no Hank Williams or Elvis, you're Michael Nesmith."

Mike rolled his eyes but smiled.

"Well, back then I was a nobody, just a kid with no real direction. I couldn't go to college, we couldn't afford it and I didn't pay enough attention in class for it." He let out a sigh. "There were so many times that we were desperate, where I wanted to and tried to sell that stupid thing, one time I even did. We needed the money…it was sitting in the living room the next day, just waiting for me…"

Tears threatened his eyes as he thought about it, but then he smiled.

"She…my Ma, she could see how much joy it brought me, playin' and singin' I mean, and told me to never give that away…that feeling of joy was worth more than all the money in the world. She had bought it back for me…and no matter how tight money got, she always would tell me to keep it and play for her…or play for me…"

Peter smiled and hugged Mike who stiffened at the contact.

"You have music in you Mike." He said as he pulled back.

"I guess," Mike said, shrugging.

"You taught yourself how to play guitar at seventeen, you've been playing for five years like you have been playing for thirty."

Mike smiled slightly at the complement.

"I'm nowhere near as good as you are Pete." He said. Peter smiled.

"To be honest, I'm not that great on bass," He said sheepishly "I prefer lead."

Mike smiled and let out a sigh.

"Thanks Peter," he whispered, squeezing his hand three time. "Thank you, all of you."

"We should have been helping more," Davy said, "so don't be thanking us."

Mike didn't answer but he looked at the chore chart again and examined it more closely seeing something on the bottom.

"What is that?" He asked, squinting at it. The other three just smiled.

"We were all writing out a list of the chores," Peter said with a grin. "It was just gonna be Davy and I writing but you wanted to help."

"Oh Jeez, what did I do?" Mike asked.

Davy took the chore chart and handed it to Mike so he could see it clearly, he was wearing a similar grin to Peter's. Mike took it and looked at it. There were scribbles and a flower chain along with stick people and a house.

Peter smiled and looked at it over Mike's shoulder.

"You told us that was you," he said, pointing at a stick figure wearing a police cap. "You and your 'very nice' hat. That was Davy," Peter then pointed at the figure beside it, who was less than half the size of the others. "That's Micky," He then pointed at one that had a mess of scribbles meant to represent Micky's curly hair. "And that's me." He finally pointed at one on the other side of Mike, with messy yellow lines representing hair and his love beads. Stick figure Mike and stick figure Peter were holding hands with the words "three squeezes" messily written above it.

"Oh my God…" Mike muttered, cringing at the drawing.

"I like it." Peter said "it's nice."

"Well, my art skills haven't improved since high school, that's for sure." Mike said.

"We should hang it up on the fridge!" Micky said, taking it out of Mike's hands and bringing it into the kitchen.

"Please don't," Mike said.

"Well we have to hang it somewhere," Davy said.

"I'd much rather we just forget about that whole thing…" Mike said embarrassed.

"He means the chore chart," Micky said. "We'll have to hang it up at some point so that we can use it."

"Oh," Mike said as he looked around the room then back at the chart.

"Wait," he said, frowning. "'Rest' is one of the chores?"

"Yes," Davy and Peter said in unison.

"Since when?"

"Since it's just as important as all the other things there," Peter explained. "You're gonna burn yourself out if you keep doing everything…or…you already have and we're not gonna let that happen to you again."

"And that way," Davy added. "No one's gonna get burnt out or overworked. And this will force you to take it easy." Mike sighed.

"I don't think I know how to take it easy."

"We'll show ya." Said Micky.

Mike frowned and looked down for a moment.

"Please, Mike," Micky said softly. "We only wanna help."

"And I get that, but…" Mike started to say but cut himself off.

"If you were about to say you don't need our help, that isn't true and we already know it." Micky sighed. "This is good, Mike. We're stepping up, you're taking some time away."

"But if y'all are helping then you won't need-" Mike cut himself off before he could finish what he was going to say.

"What was that Mike?" Davy asked.

"Nothing Davy." Mike said.

"Mike…" Micky said "come on, what was it?"

He sighed and looked down at his hands.

"If you start doing everything…then…you wouldn't need me anymore," Mike finally said in a whisper. "I mean, I-I don't…I don't bring much else to the table so it'll just be…I'll just be…like a dead weight on you guys…"

"Mike," Davy said "You're not dead weight. You always help us out of trouble when we're in it, you give great advice, you're a better cook then all three of us-"

"Hey," Micky said, shoving Davy gently.

"Cooking's not that hard," Mike said, "you just need to follow the instructions."

"I ment you're good at making meals from almost nothing," Davy said "that takes creativity."

"Comes from years of being poor and struggling to make ends meet," Mike sighed. "You learn to work with what you've got."

"Well, it's still impressive." Davy said.

"I'll teach you." Mike said dryly.

Peter frowned slightly. He thought Mike was making a joke, but he couldn't understand what the joke meant.

"I was being sarcastic, Peter," Mike explained, noticing Peter's intense concentration.

"Oh, well could you teach us?" Peter asked. Mike looked at him.

"Yeah, I guess, if you want me to."

"Oh goodie." Peter said happily "you teach me how to make your tomato and rice soup and I'll teach you how to make cream of root beer soup."

"Oh boy, can't wait." Mike said.

"Should we put that on the chore chart?"

"Teaching Peter how to cook?" Mike asked. "Sure, I guess."