Archive of Our Own

Lucas was getting better at this. Didn't take nearly as long to get Ned out of trouble this time around. He had some practice now, after all.

Not that he pulled it off without a hitch. He found Ned in the back of a beat-up van this time, instead of Charlie's shitty bar. When he jerked the rear doors open, too urgent to be as quiet about it as he probably should've been, he thought for a second—

He thought for a second he'd found something he didn't want to find.

But Ned was alive. He twisted around, face white against the grimy dark inside of the van, blinking up at Lucas dazedly. And then he said, "Oh—oh, thank god," and scrabbled his way out on his knees, one elbow—his hands were tied behind him, Lucas realized, which was why he got halfway out, lost his balance, and fell right into Lucas.

Not like he was heavy. Lucas caught him, hung on and steadied him with one hand and went for the rope with the other, and the knot was shit so it didn't take long at all. And then the rope was gone, and Ned was—was still leaning on him.

"All right, come on," Lucas muttered, because there were limits to these things: touching when you had a reason to, fine, but if the reason went away and you kept touching anyhow, it started to say something.

He wasn't harsh about it, just settled Ned on his own two feet. So it was a surprise when Ned gasped and jerked and stumbled into him again.

Lucas thought for a second that maybe they'd tied his ankles, too, and he just hadn't said. But he bent a little to get a better look and didn't see a rope, and then glanced up at Ned's face and saw his gritted teeth, his tense forehead, the way his face had gotten pasty.

"My ankle," Ned said, a little unsteadily. "It's—I think I sprained it, or—oh, god—"

That last was because he'd tried to put his weight on it again, like an idiot. Lucas grabbed at his waist, shoving him back onto his other foot and watching the tight line of his mouth ease when the pain did.

"You know, you shot me in the leg," Lucas said, "and I could still get around under my own steam."

But he didn't really mean it. He tried to be careful, picking Ned up, and it was even easier without Meg on top, both Ned's hands free to grab Lucas's shoulders.

"Aw, come on," Ned said, "not again," but he didn't flail or kick or try to get down again, so Lucas figured he didn't really mean that, either. "This is—this is undignified—"

"You got dignity to lose?" Lucas inquired, raising his eyebrows like this was news to him, already moving off toward the car.

"I'm not a sack of potatoes," Ned muttered.

He wasn't, Lucas thought. He was warmer. And a little—a little—less lumpy.

Hardly took two minutes to get him over to the car, like this. Meg was waiting in the back seat, gazing over, like she'd watched Lucas leave and just kept watching that way the whole time he was gone. Lucas swung Ned down again right next to the passenger door, kept an arm around him opening it—just so he didn't do anything stupid and hurt himself worse—and helped him down, and even that must have hurt a bit, the way Ned closed his eyes and let out a breath once he was sitting.

And then he opened them again, blinked twice at the dashboard, and said, "Whose car is this? Do you really think this is the right time to be stealing cars?"

"Nobody's going to report this one," Lucas said, rounding the hood to reach the driver's side.

"How do you know that?"

"Because," Lucas said, "it's the robber's."

"Oh," Ned said. "Yes. Well. I suppose he isn't exactly going to be walking up to the RCMP to lodge a complaint."

"Nope," Lucas agreed, and then started it up with a roar and got them the hell out of there.

First half-hour or so, Ned stayed jumpy, twitching at every flash of brake lights—red—and demanding to know why Lucas was driving like this.

But Lucas kept his voice calm. They weren't in a car chase, just trying not to be noticed, and the best way to do that was to drive like a normal person. Not under the speed limit, either, because nobody did that. Or at least not many people, even in Canada. Just a couple miles—or, well, kph, in this stupid Canadian car—over, and being a little pushy, running a yellow here and there but no reds, that sort of thing.

And he didn't talk that long, but when he was done Ned didn't answer, just shifted a little in his seat. After a couple minutes, Lucas looked over, and Ned's eyes were shut, his breathing even. Meg was in the back and just fine, playing with her blue bear and even humming a little, voice sweet and piping in that way little kids' voices were even though it wasn't any real kind of tune Lucas could recognize.

Lucas pointed them away from Vancouver instead of toward, got them on the Trans-Canada heading east, and then there was nothing to do but drive. Drive, and think.

He'd meant to leave them, back there in town. He really had. It would've hurt, but—but that was exactly why it had to happen, how he'd known he needed to do it. Get away, get some distance. If it was going to hurt now, letting himself stay with them longer would only have made it worse. Because—

Because it was going to happen, sooner or later. It always did. Money, people, even prison—nothing Lucas had ever lasted. He'd never gotten anywhere pretending otherwise.

Which was why it made no sense that in a stupid way, he was almost glad Ned had gotten himself taken hostage. It was just that—well, that there were limits to these things. Staying when you had a reason to? Fine. It was only if the reason went away, only if you kept staying anyhow, that you had a problem. And it was a pretty good reason, this thing where Ned and Meg needed him.

It was just hard to get used to, that was all.

Everywhere else he'd ever been, in children's homes and gangs and prison, there was one rule that had pretty much stayed the same. Everybody got it, and nobody ever said it, because they didn't have to: you didn't need things, or if you did you at least didn't let on about it. That was nothing but the surest way to get somebody to take it away from you. So you let everybody else know you didn't need shit from them, and they let you know right back that they didn't need shit from you either.

But Ned didn't seem to know that rule. The way he'd gone on about Meg, how huge and obvious he was in caring about her, should probably have been a red flag—but Lucas still hadn't been prepared for it, the way Ned had looked right at him with those enormous wet eyes and just asked. Even pleaded, sort of. Bargaining with Lucas, telling him he wouldn't have to stay for long, just a couple hours. Like he didn't realize all the leverage he was throwing away by getting so desperate about it, or he did and just didn't care.

Weird as hell.

Lucas had said no right away, obviously. He wasn't stupid. He still had his head on straight. Saying yes would have been just as bad, just as obvious, as Ned asking had been, and Lucas knew better.

Except he sort of didn't. Going to visit Meg like that, and helping Ned break in to get her out, and fleeing to Canada with them. And he'd told himself the whole time that he was still mostly safe; that if Ned really didn't know the rule, then it wasn't like he'd understand what it meant that Lucas was breaking it. Once they got to Canada, he was home free anyhow. He'd leave them, show that he could and that it was fine, survivable, that if it hurt it at least didn't hurt more than he could stand.

And then Ned got himself taken hostage, and now he'd sprained his ankle and was out like a light, and they needed Lucas to get them out of this at least as much as they ever had.

So—so he had a reason again. At least for a while. He had a reason again, and that was safe, and it didn't make sense that he should be staring out the windshield, driving, with Ned sleeping next to him and Meg humming loud enough to hear, and feel his chest tighten up, prickling, with something he figured he'd better call dread.

He didn't want to take them too far out, not when they still needed those papers and Jim was back in Vancouver. Lucas found them a little motel in Hope, paid in cash—Canadian, the robber's partners had had some on them and Lucas hadn't felt all that bad about taking it off their hands. Ned hardly woke up at all when Lucas bent down to lift him up out of the car, just cracked a bleary eye and said, "Come on, admit it, you enjoy this," when Lucas hooked an arm under his knobbly knees.

"Shut up, asshole," Lucas told him quietly, and picked him up to carry him in, with Meg trotting along happily behind, bear in hand.

He got Ned settled on one of the beds, and then knelt down in front of Meg and took her hand.

"This time it's your dad who's sick," he murmured, and then added, "Just a little," hastily when her eyes widened. "Just a little, he's going to be fine, but you have to look after him for me. There's a couple things I need to do, and then I'll be right back. Okay?"

Meg looked at him thoughtfully. "You'll be right back," she repeated.

"Yeah. Yeah, I will. I'm not leaving this time," Lucas added, "not yet. All right?"

"Okay," Meg agreed, and she went over to the bed and set her bear on it right next to Ned—who felt it, sleepily, and grabbed for it, one fuzzy blue arm against his cheek, without actually opening his eyes.

Lucas turned around and went out, and closed the door as quietly as he could behind him.

He went out to the payphone, called Jim from there and explained—well, not the whole thing, but enough of it. Once Jim was done laughing, he agreed that he could do a rush job, have something for them that would hold up okay by tomorrow. He could even get somebody to drive it out to Hope for them, at least if Lucas didn't mind owing him one.

Lucas did, a little, but not half as much as he minded the idea of trying to travel around Canada as the Kowalskis. And he had less than no idea how they were going to pay Jim for it, but they'd worry about that tomorrow.

Maybe, he thought wryly, they could rob a bank.

He ventured just far enough from the parking lot to find a Tim Hortons, because there was no way it was a good idea for them to try to go out for dinner, and came back to the motel with a big bag of carry-out. They could always have the leftovers for breakfast.

When he got back to the room, he almost hit Meg with the door by accident. "Jesus, Meg!"

She looked up at him steadily, and he glanced over at Ned—still asleep, good, and cuddling the bear like his life depended on it—and then down at her, and frowned.

"What is it?" he said, setting the food to one side so he could crouch down and look her in the eye. "You worried about your dad? I told you, he's going to be okay. He's just a little bit sick, remember?"

But she shook her head. And—she'd been standing by the door, and he'd been stuck in line at Tim Hortons for a little while. Time moved different when you were a kid, too, if you didn't know to check a clock, if you hadn't learned yet how long five minutes could feel on a bad day.

"Aw, Meg, I'm sorry," he said, quick, and reached out to pull her in close—and she put her arms around his neck in a second when he did, so it must have been the right move. "I'm sorry, I took a little longer than I meant. That's all. I wasn't leaving. I told you I wasn't, and I promised. I won't go until your dad's all better."

"But then you will," she said, half into his hair, so muffled he almost couldn't understand it.

And he opened his mouth, meaning to explain, but—but how could he? "I have to," he said at last, reaching up to ruffle her short scruffy Jonathan Kowalski hair a little. "I have to. But not for a little bit. Okay?"

She didn't agree, didn't say anything. Which was her way of telling him it wasn't okay at all, Lucas thought. But she let him go, let him get out the food and obediently picked herself a sandwich, so maybe she wasn't too mad at him yet.

They sat there, side-by-side on the other bed, and ate, and watched Ned sleep. It got uncomfortable, a little bit—like in the car, the way his chest had felt; it started to feel like that again, sitting here with Meg pressed up small and warm next to him, looking at Ned's closed eyes and slack face.

Not a lot of people had ever slept like that in the same room as Daniel Lucas. At least not without a shiv or two under their pillow.

But it was fine. It was going to be fine. They'd get out of British Columbia, and Ned's ankle would get better, and then Lucas would leave. For real, this time, and it might hurt but he'd be okay. He'd relearn how to be alone again. How long could it even take? He'd been good at it, once, and he'd get good at it again, and it would be fine.

He woke up blinking, and for a second didn't know where he was: unfamiliar ceiling, and since he'd gotten out of prison he'd been sleeping on examination tables and in chairs and on concrete, but not so much in beds. Not until the night they'd spent at the Prewitts' place, anyway, and this was not the Prewitts' ceiling.

But that definitely was Meg curled against his arm; and when he shifted a little the Tim Hortons bag crinkled in protest next to him.

Right. They'd been eating, and then—he'd meant to wake Ned up, make him eat, but he must have fallen asleep himself instead.

And—he craned his head up—now Ned was gone.

A crash, and Lucas would've thought it was coming from the next room over or something, except the "Ow!" that followed after sounded a hell of a lot like Ned.

Meg had shifted at the noise but hadn't woken. Lucas eased his arm out away from her, shook it a little to try to get the feeling back—she had a heavy little head, Meg did—and then got up to go find out what exactly Ned had broken this time.

He was expecting a mess, maybe a little debris, maybe some water on the floor.

He was not expecting to find Ned blinking up at him from the tile with his pants half-off, lying across a scattered pile of wrinkled Canadian bills.

"I can tell this is going to be good," Lucas said after a moment.

Ned stared at him, and then flushed and jerked at his pants—trying to get them up again, except they were catching on the money. He swore at them and switched tacks, kicked them off until he was left in boxers and socks, and then threw them at Lucas. Who caught them by one leg, and then stared down at the cascade of bills that tumbled out of them, all over his feet.

"I forgot about it. All right?" Ned said. "It was—in the van. The guy who grabbed me, he put the bag with the cash back there, too. And I couldn't get my hands untied, but I could unzip the bag, and I couldn't reach my pockets, but I could reach my waistband, and I thought—" He shrugged helplessly. "Why not? But then they left me in there, and you showed up, and we had to get away, and—I forgot about it. Until I woke up and had to go to the bathroom, and suddenly ten thousand Canadian dollars fell out of my pants—"

Lucas looked at the pants, and then at Ned, and then at the floor. "You were lumpy."

"What?"

"When I picked you up," Lucas said slowly, "I thought you were lumpy."

They stared at each other for a moment, and then all at once they were laughing, huge ridiculous whoops of it—Lucas couldn't even make himself stop to give Ned his pants back, or to start collecting the cash. He went weak in the knees with it, had to lean back against the doorframe and let himself slide to the floor, face and ribs aching, and Ned wasn't any better off: practically crying with it, half-hysterical.

"My god," Ned managed at last, "I can't believe I forgot about it."

"Hey, don't be too hard on yourself, it's been a rough couple of days," but Lucas could barely get the last couple words out before he was off again.

After another minute or so, Meg came to the doorway looking at them both curiously, and Ned managed to calm down enough to get her to help with the money, collecting it all off the floor like it was a game.

"And we want to get every single piece," he explained to her, demonstrating, "and then Lucas is going to give your daddy his pants back and you're both going to go back in the other room so I can actually use the toilet the way I was planning to."

"Right," Lucas said, suddenly awkward, and handed them over. He didn't ask if Ned needed help, because what the fuck was he going to do about it if Ned said yes? Besides, Ned had gotten himself out of bed in the first place. The man had to be able to stand on one leg long enough to get the job done, and the bathroom was only like six feet wide anyway; he could hobble to the door and get Lucas's attention if he needed help getting anywhere else.

Once they'd collected the cash, Lucas took Meg back out into the room and they sorted it all out together and counted it up. Meg was just smoothing out the last couple twenties when Lucas realized it had been kind of a while, and looked up to see Ned watching them from the bathroom doorway.

Which wouldn't have been weird except Ned looked caught for a second, deer in the headlights, before he jerked his gaze away and cleared his throat and said, "So I, uh, I really don't want to put any weight on this ankle?"

"Sure," Lucas said, and pushed himself up and went over to take Ned by the arm.

Ned still had his socks on, but it looked bad anyway, fat and swollen and something obviously wrong with it. Lucas should've gotten him some ice or something—there had to be an ice machine somewhere around here, right? Maybe they could go by a general store before they left town, buy a bag and set him up with it in the car.

"I have to admit, I wasn't really expecting you to be here when I woke up."

Lucas blinked and looked up, Ned's ankle to his face. Ned had said it quietly, probably trying not to draw Meg's attention. And not angrily or anything, he was—he looked scared, maybe, big-eyed and nervous, biting his lip.

"It's your right ankle," Lucas said.

Ned stared at him.

"Can't drive left-footed." Lucas gestured down at Ned's feet with his free hand. "And you've got to drive. You shouldn't stay this close to Vancouver. Shouldn't stay in BC at all—you'd be better off in Alberta, at least."

"Oh," Ned said. "Right, right, sure."

"And your IDs," Lucas added quickly. "I set everything up—overnighted your photos to Jim yesterday when everything went to shit, because I figured you wouldn't be able to do it. He should get them this morning, and he'll send a guy out with them for us this afternoon."

"Sure, no problem," Ned agreed. "Thank you for—thanks."

Lucas huffed a breath through his nose, shook his head, and then turned them a little so he could lower Ned down onto the edge of the bed. "Don't thank me," he said, and hooked a thumb over his shoulder at Meg, who was dividing a stack of fifties into smaller piles of ten bills apiece with intense concentration, tongue poking out just a little at one corner of her mouth. "Now maybe we're actually going to be able to pay him for it."

Jim had told the truth: he didn't show in person. The guy who met them in the parking lot outside of Dairy Queen wasn't anybody Lucas recognized. But he seemed to recognize Lucas, made eye contact and held it and then tilted his head.

They'd stopped at a general store by then. Ned and a giant bag of ice were back in the car, and Lucas had one of a packet of nice discreet brown envelopes to hand Jim's fee over in. He got an envelope of his own in return, and took it with a nod. "Extra thousand in there," he murmured. "Tell Jim thanks for being so quick about it."

"Sure," the guy said, smiling—and why shouldn't he? Bonus for Jim was a bonus for him. Jim wasn't stingy. At least five hundred of that was probably going to end up in his pocket.

Lucas went back to the car with his head down, looking like he wasn't looking at much of anything and every ounce of concentration checking for movement in the corners of his eyes. But no cars pulled in while he was crossing the parking lot, no lights flashed, and a moment later he was safe in the driver's seat again.

"That was quick," Ned said.

Lucas shot him a wry look and tossed the envelope at him. "Yeah, because I left you in the car this time," he said.

"Right, good point. If I'd tried to do that we'd probably both be on fire by now," Ned agreed, tipping the envelope out over his lap. "Wait a minute, these aren't—oh. Ned Perkins? Is that, uh, safe?"

Lucas shrugged. "No record of Ned Perry entering Canada. You aren't even on the Mounties' radar, Lucille."

Ned scowled at the reminder.

"Plus," Lucas added, looking away, "it's—it'll be easier for you. If you can still answer to Ned, I mean, and—and Meg. Whole new name might be safer, sure, except if you screw it up too many times and people start paying attention. You know?"

"Hey, I don't know anything," Ned said. "I don't know shit. This is the first time I've ever fled across international borders and used any alias that wasn't my middle name. What you say goes, Lucas."

He was still looking, though, pawing past the driver's license and passports. Any second now, Lucas thought, watching his own knuckles go white against the steering wheel, he was going to see—

"Lucas Perkins?" Ned said, sounding a little strangled. "You, uh. Doesn't that, uh—"

"What?" Lucas said, turning away—just to check his mirror before he went into reverse, that was all. "We don't look like cousins to you?"

Ned laughed, quick and startled, and when Lucas risked a glance at him again he was shaking his head, smiling a little, a bit of a flush not quite faded from his throat and ears. "Right, sure," Ned said. "And not—not Daniel?"

Lucas jerked, almost hit the gas way too hard and nearly stalled the car out trying not to overcorrect with the brake, getting his feet back where they needed to be. "Who told you that?"

"Oh, I—Charlie," Ned said. "Or, I mean, one of his guys, maybe. I don't know, their voices all sort of blurred together once they'd hit me in the head a few times. That is your name, though, isn't it?"

Lucas took his time, pulled them out of the parking lot and back onto the Trans-Canada, before he risked answering. "Sort of."

"Sort of," Ned repeated, dubious.

Lucas shrugged one shoulder and didn't look over. "You call me Lucas. You and Meg, I mean. You call me Lucas."

"Right," Ned said. "Making it easier for us not to screw up, to call you the right thing."

"Right," Lucas said, and it was only when he said it that he realized that hadn't actually been what he'd meant at all.

Lucas laid out the plan for Ned as they went, weaving up north along the Fraser River. And—of course—he didn't get all that far before Ned interrupted him.

"Wait, what? You want us to go sightseeing?"

"Just a little," Lucas said. "It's Canada in July, there'll be plenty of other people doing the same thing. Nobody'll look twice at us. We can still cover the distance to Edmonton in a few days."

"And if the cops put out an alert," Ned said slowly, starting to catch on, "it'll be old news by the time we catch up to it. Because they'd be expecting us to try to speed our way to Alberta as fast as we could. Man," he added, "you really are good at this, aren't you?"

"Had a lot of practice."

"Right, fourteen holdups, I know," Ned said with a grin—and then he shifted his weight a little too much, absent, and grimaced when it jarred his ankle.

It was about three hours to Kamloops, and more like four when Lucas was driving like this: easy, relaxed, like they were here for the views and in no rush. They still made it to the lake by the early afternoon, with plenty of time to get Meg out of the car and down on the shore, looking like any other kid putting sand in her hair on a summer day.

Ned was a little tougher. Lucas didn't want too much attention drawn to the ankle if they could help it. And carrying him was pretty easy for Lucas, but not very subtle.

But they could manage, Lucas figured. He got them set up first while he was thinking it over, dug a towel out of the trunk and laid it out, and he was headed back to help Ned over when he realized Ned was already hobbling toward him.

"It's fine, it's fine!" Ned called out, before Lucas could so much as start yelling at him. "Rock in my shoe," and Lucas gritted his teeth but grabbed Ned's arm, helped him sit down and then grudgingly watched him playact his way through taking his shoe off and extracting an invisible pebble.

Could have been worse, Lucas supposed. He didn't get hit by a van or break his arm or anything. That was definitely a passing grade, for Ned.

It was a nice day. The sun was warm, the water cool but not frigid, and it wasn't like it was a hardship to keep an eye on Meg. She seemed to accept that Ned had to stay where he was, and carefully built a sandcastle next to him to keep him company before she made Lucas take her wading. Their shell-and-pebble-and-random-bit-of-crap collection got so Lucas was carting around a double handful of it in his shirt, holding out the waist to carry it like a hammock.

He was just lucky Ned talked her into using it to decorate the sandcastle, once they made it back up the shoreline to him, or they'd be stuck figuring out where to store it all in the car.

And then, it felt like suddenly, the sun was dropping low, everybody around them packing up. Lucas could figure out where all the long warm hours had gone, when he went back through it a bit at a time in his memory, but somehow it still felt like they'd missed something, like it had gotten away from them, like it was over sooner than it ought to be.

Kamloops was bustling, this time of year—or maybe all the time, it wasn't like Lucas knew for sure, but he could spot a decent number of sunburned tourists grinning at each other. They landed themselves a pretty nice room at a little hotel, and it came to a steeper total than the motel in Hope, but it wasn't like they couldn't afford it, thanks to Ned's pants.

And getting inside, settling in, listening to Ned ask Meg all about her adventures and hearing the quiet glee in his voice every time she answered out loud—it felt good. It was a weight off just being here, clear of the outskirts of Vancouver for real, with plenty of cash and no sign of cops so far. Lucas hadn't felt like this in at least five years, and if he'd felt it before then the memory was faded, wearing through, and not much in comparison.

He hadn't done shit all day except drive for a few hours and then follow Meg around on the beach. No reason he should feel halfway asleep, but he sat down on one bed, fell back across it, and wanted, in a blurry comfortable sort of way, to close his eyes.

And then he felt a little movement of air, the awkward lurch of Ned's sprained-ankle weight coming in for a landing. "Hm?" he said.

"I think you got a sunburn," Ned said, and Lucas blinked his eyes open in time to see Ned's hand heading for his nose, and that was when he noticed.

The first thing he thought was that it had to have fallen off, come loose on the beach or in the parking lot. Maybe if they were lucky, it was in the car, or it had ended up in Meg's sandcastle.

"What happened?" he said. "When's the last time you saw it?"

Ned raised an eyebrow, looking startled, and then followed Lucas's glance to his hand, and jesus, was this the first time he'd noticed? Was he going to freak out?

Lucas would have bet every Canadian dollar they had that the answer would be yes, except Ned looked down at his bare finger and didn't freak out at all. "Oh," he said. "You mean the ring? I took it off."

"You took it off," Lucas repeated, and fuck, there it was again, that tight clenching thing crackling in his chest.

"Yeah," Ned said, tilting his chin up, like he thought Lucas was going to fight with him about it.

Which—which Lucas maybe was. He didn't know why, but he almost wanted to. His hands had curled up into fists in the bedspread without him telling them to, his shoulders bunching up, the way he'd carried himself in prison when he knew he was about to have to take somebody down.

"Yeah," Ned repeated, "I took it off. I still have it, it's—I didn't get rid of it or anything. But Ned Perkins hasn't been married in a while, and he's somebody else. Right? Maybe—maybe his wife's still alive," Ned added after a second, thoughtfully. "Or, I mean, maybe he just got divorced. Maybe he's not the kind of person who'd still be wearing it all the time. Maybe he's looking for a fresh start."

Lucas swallowed. Ned's hand was still kind of held out toward him, and he didn't want it to be. It made him nervous, Ned being so close to touching him like that. It made him nervous and he didn't like it.

He repeated this to himself again until it sounded truer, and looked away. So Ned wasn't going to be wearing his wedding ring anymore. So what? What the hell did that matter?

"Up to you," he said aloud, shrugging and letting the motion take him away from Ned's hand instead of toward it. "No skin off my nose."

But he couldn't help looking, in time to see Ned's mouth twitch a little. "Oh, it'll be some skin off your nose," Ned said quietly, "if you don't let me put some lotion on that."

"I'll do it myself," Lucas snapped, but it wasn't loud enough or harsh enough, or something.

Because Ned didn't flinch from it, was the problem. He just kept sitting there, too close, looking at Lucas like that, without a goddamn ring on his goddamn finger. "Sure," he said, and then, louder, without looking away, "Meg, baby, can you go grab all the little bottles you can find in the bathroom?"

"Okay," Meg said, sunny.

"You know she's going to come back with a shitload of shampoo," Lucas said, after a moment.

"And conditioner," Ned agreed. "But there might be a little moisture lotion in there somewhere."

There was—the fifth of seven bottles Meg dumped on the bed, in the end. The lotion was cold and Ned's hand was warm, and Lucas shut his eyes and didn't move until it was over. And then he got up, said he didn't even know what to Ned, crossed the room and got out the door and took the stairs two at a time, went out some hotel service entrance and outside, and finally felt like he could breathe again.

The next day brought them to Revelstoke, another couple hours on. And there, at last, Lucas decided it was probably safe enough to buy an ACE bandage and wrap Ned's ankle up a little better. They'd been managing all right, sticking his swollen foot in one of Lucas's boots and lacing it up as tight as he could stand. But around Revelstoke there were miles and miles of hiking trails, and this time of year there had to be dozens of people twisting an ankle out there. Nobody'd think twice about one more.

And that way, nobody'd think twice about them heading up the parkway instead of hiking for themselves. They were in luck: it was open already, most of the way, even though the snow hadn't quite finished melting at the very top. The cops would hardly be popping up there to see if a couple of bank robbers happened to be taking a day to relax.

Up there even the parking lot was scenic, with the flowers just starting to come out. Ned had insisted on sandwiches, and Lucas had rolled his eyes about it, so there was no way he could get away with saying how good it actually was, to sit there on that good old towel in the middle of all that fresh green grass and eat, once he got hungry.

And then Lucas got out the bandage, the clips, and—and it was just practical, wasn't it? Ned didn't have a good angle, not really, plus it was Ned.

It was important to have a reason. You couldn't do things just because you wanted to, or at least you couldn't let anybody catch on that that was why. You had to have a reason.

It was just that Lucas couldn't remember exactly what that reason was anymore, as he sat there unlacing Ned's shoe, not looking up. Ned's ankle wasn't swollen up as badly as it had been a day ago, but it still looked weird, color coming up ugly through Ned's pasty skin. Lucas felt stupid trying to be careful with it. His hands were big, blocky: made to grab or punch, haul a bag of money or level a gun. Holding Ned's bony bare foot like this, gingerly, wasn't anything he was any good at.

But he did know how to put on a bandage. He wasn't a veterinarian or anything, he thought with a snort, but he'd done his fair share of quick patch jobs, covering up a bullet hole or bracing a bad arm until they could shake the cops, until it could get taken care of properly.

"Well?" Ned said. "Come on, doc, tell me the truth: am I going to make it?"

"I don't know," Lucas said, dry, "it'll be touch-and-go," and Ned grinned and winced at the same time as Lucas felt around carefully, shifted his foot this way and that. "How's that angle?"

"Fine, fine," Ned said. "Honestly, as long as I'm not standing on it or moving it or touching it, it barely hurts at all."

"Okay," Lucas said, and got started.

He took his time; they weren't in any rush. Meg was running around trying to catch butterflies, but there was enough room between the trees, at least the closest couple stands, that Lucas wasn't worried about losing sight of her. He tried a couple angles before he wrapped each round of bandage into place, slid his fingers in flush against Ned's skin to make sure he wasn't doing it too tight or anything.

Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. That was all. He clipped it in place, tested it a little, and kept on not looking up until he'd set Ned's foot down and moved away. "How's that?" he said then, glancing over, and Ned was—

Ned was staring back at him, pink all through the face, eyes big and round. "Great," he said quietly. "It's great, Lucas, thank you."

"Sure thing, asshole," Lucas said, more gently than he meant to; and then Meg came skipping back toward them and dropped half a dozen flower crowns at once onto Ned's head.

He jerked, startled, and two of them flopped down at a drunken sort of angle over his forehead. He looked ridiculous, blinking and feeling for his head to figure out what exactly had landed on him, and Lucas couldn't help grinning at him—and then Ned's eyes narrowed, and he snagged the top one off himself, just barely managing not to break a thin-stemmed weak link at the back, and threw it at Lucas.

Meg was right there, crouched down behind Ned and giggling, so Lucas went all-out: pretended it had been an arrow, a spear, and clutched it to his chest with a silent cry before he toppled over sideways. Which was apparently too much for Meg to take. "No, it goes on your head," she said loudly, and then she rounded Ned and took it from Lucas's hands, and dropped it neatly and precisely onto his face instead.

And it was fine. Whatever it had been just then, suspended in the air between Lucas and Ned—it was gone, and that was fine. It didn't matter, it wasn't going to matter. Another couple days and Lucas would leave, and it wouldn't be a problem. Because he wasn't stupid enough to do anything about it, and that was all that was important.

The next day was going to be a longer one, because Lucas was a little leery of stopping in Calgary. Their luck had stayed good so far, but Calgary was the first big obvious stop if you were heading east from Vancouver, and there wasn't any good reason to risk it.

So they started early, bundled Meg into the car still half-asleep and drove right into the sunrise, until Lucas started spotting signs for 93. They went north through the mountains for a while, everything green and gold with morning, and then hit 11 and started going east again, a nice generous curve, and the traffic wasn't bad at all.

They hit Red Deer in the early afternoon. Perfect timing, because Meg had started to get sullen and grouchy with antsiness, stuck in the car for so long, and frankly Lucas wasn't feeling all that far behind her. It was a good car, solid, and it ran fine, but breaking six feet made it hard to fit comfortably in much of anything for seven hours straight.

Or—fuck, six feet, what was that in meters? Centimeters? Lucas was going to make a shit Canadian.

With Calgary safely in the rearview, though, he could feel himself start to relax a little. Which lasted right up until they tried to get themselves a room.

"What?" he said, hoping he'd just heard wrong.

The lady at the desk seemed to guess that this was raw unfiltered wishful thinking, and gave him the sort of fondly weary look people gave kids who wanted to go on the same rollercoaster for the twelfth time, even though they'd thrown up after every single one of the first eleven. "One room, one bed," she said. "Busy season's just picking up, mid-July rush on its way, and we're almost full up."

There were other places they could go in Red Deer. But going to them meant getting Meg settled back in the car, which she was going to hate, and Ned all set up again in the passenger side with his newest bag of ice and his foot propped up.

Lucas thought about it. Should've been an easy call, deciding that there was no way it was worth the trouble. But the words one bed were circling around in his head, ringing in his ears, and he didn't like the noise they made doing it one bit.

Except Ned didn't seem to hear that noise, or if he did it sounded different to him. "Let's take it," he said, leaning a little more heavily on Lucas's shoulder.

He looked almost as ready to fuss as Meg, in his own way. Lucas hadn't noticed it before, but his hair was going everywhere and he was pink, a little sweaty: he looked hot and tired and like somebody who wanted nothing more than to lie down somewhere quiet for a little while.

And—and if Lucas was going to march them all back out to the car instead, he'd need a really good reason. One he could say, one that wasn't just the tense unsettled feeling in his gut when he thought about that single bed up there waiting.

"Okay," he said, and the lady smiled and popped her gum, took his cash and slid a room key across the counter.

It wasn't that bad, really.

It could've been. It really could've been. There was something about it that was hard to ignore, stepping into that little room with Ned crowded up close against Lucas's side, Meg clutching one of their hands in each of hers and yawning, her head tipping back into Lucas's thigh.

It would have been worse without Meg, Lucas was pretty sure. Ned all soft and lazy, sloe-eyed and blinking, trusting Lucas to move him around and ease him into bed—yeah, that could've gone all kinds of wrong in a split second.

But it turned out this was dangerous in its own way: helping Ned sit himself down, closing up the blinds and turning on the old wooden ceiling fan over the bed, Meg flopping down on the bedspread like a starfish with her face tilted up into the faint breeze. Lucas didn't make her sit up again, just popped her shoes off himself. None of them could be bothered to get under the covers. He just lay right down and arranged himself curled around Meg to her left, scrubbing a hand fondly through her hair, and he only realized what it meant when he finally looked away from her and found himself staring Ned in the face.

Because Ned had done exactly the same thing to Meg's right, and now they were hardly six inches from each other, Ned blinking at Lucas with a small absent smile.

"We're going to be starving when we wake up," he was saying, and it took Lucas a second to make the words make sense.

"Yeah," Lucas agreed, low, and Ned's mouth slanted a little harder for a second and then his eyes fell shut.

He had one hand resting against Meg, the back of his wrist to her little elbow. But the other was between him and Lucas, just resting there palm-up, fingers loosely curled.

Lucas didn't touch him. He lay there and thought about it, how easy it would be to move just enough, let the backs of his knuckles settle against the side of Ned's hand, and then he really carefully didn't do it and fell asleep instead.

They were starving when they woke up, almost seven o'clock at night and the quick lunch stop they'd made feeling like it might as well have been yesterday. They took a risk and went out to eat, because Ned said the idea of waiting for Lucas to go and come back with takeout felt like torture. Meg inhaled a whole stack of grilled cheese and then almost fell asleep again right there in the booth. Felt ridiculous, going out and then just coming right back to go to bed, but anything else was so unappealing Lucas didn't even want to think about it.

He regretted it in the morning, just a little. Because this was—this was it.

Revelstoke to Red Deer had been the big push, had taken them from BC to Alberta, a new province and a new timezone and barely any distance at all from Edmonton. And if Ned couldn't find some unremarkable job and a discreet place to live on the outskirts of Edmonton, a way to blend in, then it was hardly going to get easier in Saskatoon.

So this was it. They'd drive to Edmonton today, and in the city, Ned would need the car a lot less than Lucas would. Lucas could drive him to a clinic, maybe, so he could get an ankle brace or something from an actual medical professional. And then they'd split the cash properly, except it would be more like 60-40, 70-30, since Ned had Meg to worry about, too.

And then Lucas would leave.

He had it all figured out in his head, and it made sense. He was going to explain it, and Ned would go along because—

Well, because that was what he did. Like half of the time, maybe. When he was tired enough or nervous enough or felt like he didn't know what he was doing—then, sometimes, he did what Lucas told him to. It was hard to tell exactly where the line was, though. Even at the end there, a handful of miles from Canada, Lucas had still been surprised by the things that could make Ned suddenly put his foot down, turn quiet and steady and totally fucking immovable.

But this wasn't going to be one of them, because Lucas had to leave, and even Ned at his most stubborn couldn't change that.

Lucas repeated this to himself in the mirror, under his breath, and then cleared his throat, drank some water, and went for the door. He was going to open the door and go out there and lay it out for Ned, and Ned was going to agree, because there was no other way for this to go.

And then he opened the door and stopped.

Meg had been asleep when Lucas had rolled carefully off the bed to go to the bathroom, and Ned maybe three-quarters of the way there, cracking an eye blearily to see what had woken him and then letting it drop shut again when he realized it was just Lucas.

But she was awake, now. Awake and sitting on the bed. Facing away from the bathroom, and thank god for that, with Ned sitting beside her, arm around her shoulders.

"I know, baby," Ned was saying, and Lucas found himself ducking down a little, keeping still, holding his breath, trying not to do anything that might make Ned look over. He must've missed the sound of the bathroom door opening, but Lucas could hardly count on that kind of luck to hold. "But we can't make him. You know that, right?"

Meg was silent for a moment, thinking this over. "Why not?" she said at last.

"Because that's not fair, sweetheart," Ned said gently, giving her a little squeeze. "It's not fair to make people do things if they don't want to—unless it's something really important, like brushing your teeth."

Lucas closed his eyes.

"Before he met us," Ned added, "Lucas was somewhere really unpleasant, where he had to do things he didn't want to do all day long, for a really long time. But he stayed there like he was supposed to, and eventually they let him out, and now—" Ned paused for a second, let out a little sigh, and Lucas looked in time to see him press a kiss into Meg's hair. "Now he deserves to get to go where he wants and do what he wants, even if that means we don't get to see him every day. Okay?"

"I don't want that," Meg said.

Ned sighed again. "Yeah, I know, baby. Me neither. But if he doesn't want to stay with us, he shouldn't."

Lucas swallowed, and then eased himself back a step and closed the bathroom door as carefully as he could. He ran the sink for a minute, clattered a couple things around on the counter, and then opened the door again and stepped right out.

Ned had been leaning in, whispering something into Meg's ear. They both twisted around to stare at him, wide-eyed, and for that second they looked so much alike Lucas could hardly stand to look at them.

And then Ned recovered, clapped his hands together briskly, and said, "Lucas! We were just talking about you. Weren't we, Meg?"

"Yep," Meg said, authoritative.

Ned grinned at her, and then got up off the bed and sort of hobble-hopped around toward Lucas. "So, listen," he said, a little more quietly. "The thing is, we aren't that far from Edmonton. Right?"

"Right," Lucas said.

"And Meg can tell I'm moving around a little better," Ned went on, "and she remembers that you told her you'd wait until I was okay before you headed out. I'm guessing you meant for that to be Edmonton."

"Right," Lucas heard himself say again, from a little ways away.

"I know you said you'd visit," Ned added, "and I appreciate that, I really do. But Meg's going to miss you a lot. And we're not in any hurry, so—look, spend the day with her. Just one day," and Ned held up a single finger, as if to emphasize how little that really amounted to in the whole scheme of things. "There's some ponds or something around here, and there's supposed to be some kind of street festival this afternoon. I looked in the paper. Just spend the day with her," Ned repeated, "and then we can drive right to Edmonton first thing tomorrow, and you can drop us off."

Asking. He was asking again. And that meant Lucas should say no again, except—except this was a little different, right? They weren't in the middle of Tacoma with cop cars about to swarm, Lucas with a get-out-of-jail-free card right in his hand and Ned wanting him to throw it away and go on the run for an hour or two, of all the ridiculous bullshit in the world. It fit into their big plan okay, or it at least didn't fuck it up too much. Lucas could agree and then they could still get to Edmonton tonight, if they tried. So maybe this time it really was okay to say—

"Yes," Lucas said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He shrugged, belated. "Sure. Why not?"

For Meg. That was a perfectly good reason—or at least Lucas sure wasn't inclined to ask for a better one.

It was a good day.

It was a great day. Lucas couldn't think of one he'd liked more without going more years back than he really wanted to count.

There were ponds—ponds, parks, a river, people laughing and chatting and eating towering ice cream cones. Meg wanted one, of course, and it wasn't like Lucas was going to say no. Wasn't going to spoil her appetite any worse than almost a solid week of Tim Hortons and cheap takeout, he figured.

They took the car, just in case it ended up being a little too much for Meg by the end of the day, and Meg picked where they went by closing her eyes and pointing at the map Lucas had gotten from the gum-snapping lady at the front desk.

They drove down a long shaded road right next to the river, and then turned around in a loop and stumbled across someplace set up for a bunch of arts and crafts, kids' games and face-painting. Meg wasn't quite up to talking to the girl doing the face-paint on her own, but that was all right: Lucas got a whispered explanation of the exact colors required to do a butterfly correctly, and passed them along one at a time.

And then, of course, Meg insisted that he had to get a bright pink monkey.

In the afternoon, they did indeed happen across a little street festival, a section of road blocked off for pedestrians with a bunch of stalls set up, people singing and dancing and even a couple of jugglers. Busy, Lucas found himself thinking, for the middle of the week—except school was out for the summer, after all, and then he checked his watch and discovered it was already after five.

But that was okay, too. Ned could wait a while longer. They'd go to Edmonton in the morning, just like he'd said. It wasn't a big deal.

Meg started to get tired after another half-hour or so. Lucas managed to spin it out a little longer, carrying her on his shoulders and obeying her careful tugs on each of his ears for direction. But then she started to yawn, and he figured the least he could do was get them both back to the car before she fell asleep for real.

He didn't quite make it. He could see the car, Meg tucked against his waist, when he realized she'd started napping right there against his shoulder. And walking through that warm early evening, the light high with summer and only just starting to fade toward dusk, Meg a limp and comfortable weight in his arms, it was almost tempting to think—

What the fuck did the rest of Canada have, anyway, that he was going to leave this in Edmonton and drive away?

They had good timing. When they reached the hotel parking lot again, it had just barely started to rain.

Meg didn't really wake, just stretched and mumbled, twitching at a couple stray drops that caught her, when Lucas picked her up out of the car and carried her back to the room. But as they got closer, she started to squirm a little, and then she said, "Wait! Wait. Put me down."

"You sure? It's not that much further," Lucas said, but even before he'd gotten the last word out, Meg was already nodding hard.

"I know! Put me down."

He did it, a little bewildered. And then she grabbed his hand and smiled at him real wide, and tugged him toward the door.

"Meg—"

"Ssh," she said, exaggerated, finger to her lips.

And then she knocked, and somewhere behind the door Ned sang out, "Just a second!", high-pitched and theatrical—and then the door opened, and—

And there was a cake.

Lucas blinked. Not just a cake, it was—Ned had put the lone crappy lamp on the floor, dragged the bedside table around to the end of the bed, which was just about wide enough to fit all three of them. The cake was almost as big as the table, and he'd gotten paper plates from somewhere, plastic forks, and a single listing candle that had already melted a great big gob of wax onto the icing.

Lucas cleared his throat. "What the hell is this?" he said.

Ned beamed at him. "It's your birthday!"

Lucas stared.

"I mean, not you you," Ned added hastily. "I have no idea when your birthday is. But you let me look through all our IDs, remember? And apparently Lucas Perkins's birthday is July 5th. Which means it's your birthday. Sort of."

"Happy birthday," Meg added. "Make a wish," and after that what the hell was Lucas supposed to do, not go sit down and blow out the fucking candle?

So he went and he did it. Ned didn't sing—small mercies—and just went straight on to the cutting, and Lucas didn't feel bad about feeding Meg ice cream when he saw the size of the piece Ned gave her.

Lucas's was even bigger. The cake was chocolate on the inside, pale icing with flowers traced out on it. "I'm not sure it's actually a birthday cake," Ned confessed. "I think it might have been for some kind of reception or something, but nobody came to pick it up? So Penelope—that nice lady at the desk downstairs—got it for me at a great discount."

"What do you mean, it's not a birthday cake?" Lucas said, mild. "It's got a goddamn candle, doesn't it?"

"I really shouldn't be letting you say things like that in front of my daughter," Ned murmured thoughtfully, but he was smiling.

Meg got icing everywhere, of course. Ned took her over to the bathroom and patiently wiped her down, which meant that of course the bathroom needed a little cleanup, too, afterward. Meg left him to it and came back out, scrubbed pink and looking smug, and then she climbed back up onto the bed where Lucas was lying, staring at the ceiling, and promptly fell asleep again against his side.

He couldn't help it. When Ned came back out, he didn't even notice. He wasn't looking, wasn't listening—he had his hand over his face, and every time he thought he'd gotten a grip, felt like it was safe to start lifting it away, everything cracked apart again.

"Oh, Lucas," Ned murmured, soft, careful, and he eased Meg neatly away so she could keep sleeping and then herded Lucas with wobbly solemnity into the bathroom, and closed the door behind them. "Lucas, hey," he said, settling one hand on Lucas's wrist and the other on his shoulder. "It's okay. All right? It's just me."

"Oh, shut up, asshole," Lucas told him, muffled, and when he'd wiped his eyes enough that he thought maybe he could look up, Ned was grinning at him, bright and a little unsteady.

"Man," he said, almost lightly, "I don't know where the hell you get the nerve. You get that it doesn't have to happen like this. Right? Lucas—it's up to you. It's always been up to you. You don't have to leave if you don't want to."

"Yeah?" Lucas said, sneering—he didn't even really mean to, it was just reflex, automatic. "Yeah? And what the hell am I going to do with myself if I don't, huh? Play happy families with you?"

Bad idea: he could see right away that it had backfired. Ned had done that thing he did, gotten quiet and steely right in front of Lucas's eyes. He didn't flinch from Lucas's tone, didn't waver in the face of Lucas's glare. He looked right back, steady, and he said, "If you want to."

And goddamn, he wanted to know where Lucas got the nerve? Where did he get the nerve, just saying a thing like that to somebody? And not just somebody, but Daniel Lucas, convicted felon, from six inches lower and balancing on a sprained ankle.

"You haven't asked," Lucas heard himself say.

"I haven't asked?" Ned repeated, a little more strident. "Are you fucking kidding me? Do you or do you not remember the last time I asked you to stay with us? Because I sure as hell do, so let me remind you: you said no! What exactly has happened since then, besides me yet again demonstrating my hopeless incompetence and making you drag us halfway across Canada, that's supposed to make me think you'd change your mind?"

Lucas didn't know what to say. He wanted, a little bit, to shove Ned into the counter and leave, with a surge of hot itchy frustration that was familiar from—from shouting Asshole! at Ned so many times, shoving Ned's head into the leaking oil under that pickup truck, or into the dirt for that long satisfying moment in the park.

Except that was what they were arguing about. Him leaving. And if he did it now, maybe that meant Ned won.

So he was stuck there, fists clenched, glaring at Ned across the bathroom and no idea what came next.

"I was glad, you know," Ned said, before the silence could stretch too much.

Lucas blinked.

"When that guy grabbed me," Ned elaborated. "For a second, I was glad. Because I knew you weren't going to leave Meg in the car and walk off, once you realized what was going on. You were going to come get me, even if it was only for Meg's sake, and I was glad.

"But you wouldn't stay, not even for Meg, when I asked. And—" Ned's face was getting pink again, the tips of his ears already red, and he stumbled but didn't slow down, because he was Ned. "And god knows if you wouldn't stay for Meg, there's no reason to think you'd stay for me."

He wasn't like Lucas. Never had been. His voice got tight, his eyes wet, and he just—he just let them, staring up at Lucas plaintively, because he didn't have the goddamn sense to be ashamed.

Because he'd never learned the rule. And sometimes, maybe, that meant Lucas could get away with breaking it.

Lucas cleared his throat, awkward, and settled a hand against Ned's shoulder. "Look," he said carefully, hoarse and quiet. "Look, you got to understand, it's not that I don't want to. I have to, that's all. I have to. Okay?"

It was, judging by Ned's face, not okay at all. "What the hell does that mean? You have to—I don't have a gun to your head anymore, Lucas. Nobody does. You're not in prison, you're a free man—"

Bullshit! Bullshit, Lucas wanted to say. He'd gotten out of prison except for all the ways he hadn't, all the ways he never would. Not being locked up in McNeil was great, yeah, but it didn't mean he wasn't still—still shut up in a prison all his own, rattling the bars in there and shouting, screaming for somebody to let him out.

But he couldn't tell that to Ned. He couldn't. He wanted to, suddenly, so bad it ached. But he didn't even know where to start, how he could ever hope to explain it to somebody like Ned, who—

Who was a free man, who always had been, because nobody had ever taught him the rule that would have held him in.

"—Jesus Christ, are you even listening to me?" Ned was saying. "You're the asshole here, you know that? You stupid—"

Lucas gripped him by the shoulder, leaned down, and kissed him.

He shouldn't have. He hadn't meant to. It was almost as much of a surprise to him as it had to be to Ned, to suddenly have the soft narrow line of Ned's mouth against his, and he jerked away from it, startled reflex, and stared at Ned.

Ned was staring back.

"Lucas," he said.

Lucas let go of him, turned around—got the goddamn door open, the knob feeling small and slippery under his hand, and crossed the main room in quick quiet strides. Because it was important not to wake Meg. At least he could manage that.

The hotel was a blur of lights, doorways, carpeting. Lucas didn't stop moving until it was behind him, until he was in the parking lot. The rain had picked up, the sky darkening, the pavement—

The pavement was wet under Lucas's feet. His shoes. He'd taken them off when he and Meg had gotten back, on his way through the door—automatic, habitual, because he'd still been staring at the cake. And he hadn't put them back on.

He stopped in the middle of the parking lot, halfway to the car, and looked at his toes. He had to go get his shoes before he left. Right? But he couldn't go back in there. There was no way he could go back in there. He'd just go. He still had some of the cash, after all. He'd go buy some new shoes. Or—or pay somebody else to, maybe, if they wouldn't let him in. They didn't let you in stores with no shoes. Right? And shit, no shoes and he still had that fucking pink monkey painted on his cheek, too—

"Lucas! Lucas—"

Shit, Lucas thought, and turned around.

Ned looked awful in the rain, like a drowned rat—having wet hair made his goofy ears look even goofier than usual, his face even pastier by contrast, his eyes even bigger. And the bandage around his ankle, his unsteady hop-skip, just made him look even more pathetic.

But he wasn't, not really. He was braver than Lucas, following Lucas out here, when Lucas couldn't have made himself go back in that hotel room for anything.

"Lucas," Ned said again, hobbling closer. And then he tripped or stumbled or something, flailing his way down, and of course Lucas had to dart in. Of course Lucas had to catch him.

"You idiot," Lucas said, when he'd gotten Ned back upright again. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Standing in a parking lot in the rain with some asshole," Ned said, and didn't let go of Lucas's arms even when he had his balance back. "What the hell are you doing?"

Leaving, Lucas didn't say, because—

Because he wasn't sure that he was.

He stood there, blinking rain out of his eyes and holding Ned up, Ned staring at him. And at last Ned's eyes narrowed a little, and he said, "Look, if you want a reason, I'll give you one. We need you. We—I still probably can't drive very well, and for all we know the cops are right behind us, so—we need you. Don't go yet. Okay?"

Lucas swallowed. It was an out, exactly the kind he wanted, and he had no reason not to take it. It would work for a while, wouldn't it? And then he could go, when it had worn thin, when there wasn't another to replace it. That would be fine.

Yeah.

"The thing is," he made himself say, real low, clutching Ned's stupid knobbly elbows. "The thing is, you need me when you're hurt, or something's gone wrong, or when you don't know what to do. But I think—I think I need you all the time. Understand?"

And Ned couldn't, no way. But his face softened anyhow, and he said, "Yeah," almost as quietly as Lucas. "Yeah, Lucas, I do," and he leaned up and hooked one of those skinny chicken arms around Lucas's neck and kissed him.

They were wet and getting wetter, cold rain running into their mouths and faces; Lucas discovered, distantly, that he didn't give a damn.

"I need you all the time, too," Ned added, breathless, once he'd broken away again. And then he tilted his head and squinted back over his shoulder at the hotel, and added, "Especially, um, right now, because I don't think I can make it all the way back up to the room by myself."

For a second, Lucas couldn't quite tell what his own face was doing. And then he realized his cheeks were aching like that just because he was grinning so wide. "Yeah, I can help you out with that, asshole," he said, mild and maybe just a little giddy, and it only took a second to duck down and get an arm around Ned's knees and swing him up.

"Not this again," Ned said, "I told you, this just isn't dignified."

But he was smiling, too, ear to ear, so Lucas figured he didn't really mean it.