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Chapter Text

   “Would yer like to do the honors?” Shirl smiled encouragingly, sympathetically. Amy took the key dangling from her fingers. 

   This was meant to be a momentous occasion. She had thought about it for ages, what it’d be like to bid the hospital farewell for good and return to her Nan’s bungalow, where she’d been brought up. She wished it would someday become a safe haven during years of enriching travels, studies, excursions, the like. As a girl, dreaming of independence one day, the way one does—the promise of glittering adulthood. Amy always had unmatched zeal for life. 

   She only had one to live, after all, and was determined not to let it slip from her clutches so easily. 

   But oh, she had. 

   “Go on,” Shirl urged, sensing Amy’s trepidation. This was a gift. She’d be damned if she wasn’t able to see the good in it. 

   The hardest part of this, frankly, was that Nan was gone now. And Amy felt she really should’ve been there with her to the end, but life had just gone the other way round. 

   She turned the key. 

   The place had been empty for a couple of years by this point. Nurses made greater efforts for outreach during the Rising and Nan had found her way inpatient a few years after the worst of it had passed, never returning to the bungalow herself. Amy hadn’t met Shirley when she lived in Roarton before. She seemed a comforting companion, one who would’ve been nice enough to die beside. 

   The inside smelled as she remembered it, even after all these years, after the world had turned upside down and clumsily uprighted itself, shaking her out in the mix. Something about the vintage fabric used for the drapes, aged wood in the northern damp. Missing the notes of coffee, though. 

   “Doesn’t look like it’s even been touched,” Amy remarked, her finger trailing a picture frame in the place’s entryway, gathering a small pile of dust. She looked over her shoulder at Shirley, “Like she could walk right through this door.” 

   “She remembered you so fondly, love.”

   Amy’s brow crinkled. It was in her nature to be hospitable, welcoming, but she would need time. When Shirley left her alone to regain her bearings, she crept down the hall she knew like the back of her hand. Her bedroom. Her beloved hideaway. 

   This door was wide open. Maybe Shirley had left it that way, when she came peeking around for property damage in advance. It warmed her to think her Nan had, though. It would break her heart to think the sight was so painful it had to be sequestered off. 

   She wouldn’t be able to feel the ease of collapsing into bed against her numb muscles and greyed nerves, but that’s what she did, and had a cry for good measure. A PDS cry. It was tearless, ragged. Like someone catching their breath.

   Being raised by a grandparent, older, instead of the typical mum and dad, Amy had long stressed over eventually being left alone in the world like this. She just didn’t think it would come as such a massive surprise. 

   She blinked foggily, rubbing brown contacts back into place. She looked over her teal walls, lovingly covered in art prints, unusual finds from charity shops, paintings her grandmother had decided to part with that she gladly incorporated into her personal gallery as an artsy teen in the aughts. 

   It wasn’t like Amy to feel anything had ever entirely gone to shit. She was a silver linings girl, Nan had said. 

   She screwed her eyes shut. Inhaled deep, through her nose. It was quiet. Like she’d wished for many, many sleepless, nauseating nights. 

   This place could finally be her escape from the din of beeping equipment after all. She would make it so. 

   She had to get these bloody lenses out. No use wearing them at home to please herself, walking around with fuzzy peripheral. Upon waking in the treatment centre she’d noticed her blinking felt slow, dry, perhaps. Dreadful, if at least not painful. She saw much better without them. 

   The living room tugged at her heartstrings; green, its warm olive hues and plush sofas conjuring days of summer where sun actually shone through the windows sometimes and she’d lay on her belly for hours with a book. Nan’s old radio, and soft pink scalloped floor lamp; items which shaped Amy’s affection for things from bygone eras. 

   Dust flopped off of the pillows as Amy adjusted them and announced aloud to her Nan somewhere in the ether that she made it back in one piece, finally. She could still feel choked up in this strange physical state—tight. Compressed by the weight of the homecoming. Emotionally or bodily was hard to say, but it was a pervasive bittersweet. 

   In Nan’s room, she found a framed photograph from around the time she’d passed her GCSEs. It was before her diagnosis, when she still had ideas for the rest of her education. A future. Beaming with pride, the both of them. One Amy’d bet made it into both memorial services, if she were to put money on it.

   It was on Nan’s desk vanity, opposite one of Amy as a little girl, cherub-cheeked and smiling for a school portrait, haloed in ornate brass. 

   She reached for this one, rubbing her thumb numbly over the texture in the frame. She looked between her young self and her reflection, wondering what Nan would have to say about her eyes, suddenly longing to ask if it was true that adults never really stop seeing the little ones in the beings they’ve raised once they’ve grown and become unrecognizable. 

   This, and the other frame containing the two of them together. These were her treasures now. She gathered them up. 

   Some things needed doing. Nan’s now-dead plant collection was particularly macabre. Amy could use some odds and ends. 

   Another day, she would don those lenses again and cover her face just as she was told, so she could go to the shops to replace those plants with lush green new ones. She’d buy the wrong batteries to reanimate her clock radio and have a small meltdown over the concept of returning to the store to do being in public over again, ultimately letting it stay dark for a little longer til she worked up the courage for round two. She would bring home two packs of lantern string lights she didn’t need but absolutely couldn’t resist, though. She was back from the dead and bloody well deserved it. And they would really bring out the colors in the oddities still plastered on her walls from a life lived and prematurely ended. New throw pillows too— she made a mental note now.

   Tonight, though, the first night, Amy cleared the dust from Nan’s frames and added them to her own existing collection. Her own weren’t quite so elegant, but in her eyes the black and white image of Nan holding her as a baby was perfectly suited to the heart-rhinestoned frame which held it as long as she could remember.

   Her childhood self, in the ornate brass, she decided, would have a spot on her dresser. Optimist or not, Amy figured some mornings she may need the reminder that she ought to fight for the chance that girl never truly had. Broken pupils and leukemia scars be damned, she was back; beautifully unique and frighteningly untethered. She was something else this time, something stronger. 

   How could that be so awful?

Chapter Text

   Damp. The floor of the bog in this shitty pub was sticky. Simon was meeting his parents later this week, but he could clean himself up by then. He was going to their house, going home— he was supposed to be. 

   Now, though, he was melting into the stall door, nodding and fluctuating between hug-like warmth and prickly cold, breath beginning to rattle. 

   They’d never like to imagine their only son in a place like this, his old mam and dad, but what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. He’d be home. 

   And he was, when he tried to piece it together. He made it to his front door. Or, not his, not his own— where he ought to have slept. But he did make it to his parents’ house. It could’ve been later that week. Felt as though it could have been. 

   Their front door. His hands shifted eagerly over the etched glass which obscured the inside. That warm feeling Simon had felt, as he was on that grungy tiled floor, that must have left him with enough to carry him here in spite of whatever he took. He made it, they couldn’t be angry with him. He’d made their appointment, must have done. 

   Simon pressed his forehead against the wood. He wasn’t able to enter without his mum or dad, and neither manifested to let him in. 

   They should have barred it. 

   Simon’s mum didn’t hear a bell, or a knock. What she heard instead was shattering. 

   Simon’s dad was sat in the family room, head craned to see what was the matter. There was a deep, heaving sigh. Simon’s father heard the unnatural sounding breath, the groaning wasn’t his wife’s. The screams were, though. He was hurrying to investigate but as he entered the kitchen the sound stopped with a wet thump and in front of him, on the couple’s clean kitchen tile, was Simon in a banquet of blood. It dripped from his slack-jawed lips, covered his filthy dress shirt, orb-like white eyes bulging from his sockets. 

   Simon hadn’t been home in weeks that first ill-fated month, and contrary to his failure to resist the allure of nightclub chemical cocktail, he had been legitimately looking foreword to the visit. A taste of nostalgia, fish and chips at home like old times. A pleasant meal. If he acted properly for a few hours they wouldn’t be clued into the frequency and the recklessness of his mind-numbing amusements. 

   It wasn’t as though his parents wouldn’t understand his depression— they were academic folk, casual enjoyers of tragic poetry, not shy in showing their emotions. 

   It was simply that he was determined to avoid their help and if that meant going to lengths not to worry them, not to expose how fucking near the end of his rope he was, so be it— he was looking forward to this visit. Truly. He made a bad choice. It was nothing new. He was warm. He would be home later that week. 

   And he knew they envisioned he’d be stronger, smarter than he turned out to be, in the end. His fingers pried open his mother’s skull. 

   He was going to make it to his family’s kitchen table. His apartment was so shitty— his dad hadn’t been particularly impressed when he first found it, but certainly would be appalled at the state of it now. 

   One pleasant evening, a nice meal. He could manage that. He still had enough life in him for that. 

   That’s all he remembered thinking, really. None of the rest. None of the carnage. Just the sticky floor of that nightclub. 

   And he wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he heard beeping. 

   He craned his neck, the only part of him he could move. His whole body felt numb. 

   To the right of him, on a steel table, a human’s body. Undressed and still. He could scarcely make out the silhouette, vision blurred, tired. Lining the wall to the left of him were barred cages, wanting arms reaching out, snaking amongst one another—again, human hands. He couldn’t see the cages’ prisoners in the dark, but they were moving, animated. Not like the corpse on the table. 

   The overhead fluorescents only seemed to worsen his eyesight. Two voices in the room. Motion in front of him. The white light reflected off of a pair of eyeglasses. He didn’t try to free himself, could barely muster the energy to open his mouth and speak. 

   He blew air through his dry lips, trying to form the sounds. The murmuring, the movement both stopped.   

   “Where—“ he rasped, “Am I?”

Chapter Text

   A figure in grey crept through the knee-high beige grasses that surrounded the Walker household, their backyard sequestered by hedges taller than Steve. Kieren was out of view once he was past them, slinking along the side of their home till he could creep into the place unnoticed. There they were; Jem, Sue, and Steve, no doubt talking about him, though he supposed he had no choice but to be grateful they hung back on the cul de sac at the moment, as it afforded him the chance to hide that he’d been outside all day. He had to ready himself to perform, shaking off being recognized in public for what he was.

   “Rick’s back like Kieren’s back,” Sue spat through the unrolled driver’s window quietly, urgently. Steve left their freshly returned son home all day, guilty at the moment for having been caught red-handed pulling into their drive. Sue and Jem had come back early from the Rising memorial ceremony, after Bill dropped the bombshell right in front of Vicar Oddie.

   “Like Kieren?” Steve feigned confusion.

   “Dead man walking,” Jem hissed with a sarcastic smile. Her mum hushed her. Sue and Steve had shared plenty of words about what Rick dragged Kieren through when they were alive. Steve took a deep breath, shaking his head at the steering wheel.

   “Does Kieren know?”

   “No, no— we’ve not been in yet, we’re not gonna tell him.”

   This clearly wasn’t the conference discussion Jemima had expected, parents talking to one another as though it were obvious. He’d find out sooner or later, she interjected.

   “Alright, let’s make it later,” Steve replied firmly.

   “No, that’s not what I meant.”

   “Jemima, keep your voice down.”

   “You know what he’ll do, don’t yer? He’s supposed to be a secret,” she said at an ironic volume. Her mind was on the HVF, about Bill and Dean and Gary. Not just what they’d do to Kieren, but to her for lying on the monster’s behalf.

   “It’s not all about you,” Steve retorted.

   Dry rot was sitting at the family computer when they came in.

   “Hiya, love—“ Sue called out to him, “Sorry to leave you here on yer own all day. I’ll put yer tea on.”

   She patted Kieren’s stiff shoulder as she walked past him, Jem shaking her head at the pervasive denial. 

   “Dicks,” she muttered under her breath. 

   Her dad returned, saying something to Kieren about the hoodie he was wearing and commenting on the temperature. The thing that had taken her brother’s place pretended to shiver. She rolled her eyes. 

   She didn’t get a chance to observe him longer; Steve took her by the arm, insisting she leave the corpse to his own devices. 

   This was Kieren’s third night home. The first, she’d entered his bedroom and confirmed the creature had her brother’s memories. She looked into his yellowed, bleached eyes and when he told her a story from their youth she knew it was truly his brain inside. She’d collapsed into tearful sleep afterward, leaving him alone with the remnants of her shattered bedside glass and the promise that she could never forgive him for leaving her the way he had. No note, the bastard. In the year after Rick left, just going, going, gone. Unrecognizable. 

   If they let Kieren figure out about Rick the wrong way, it could awaken something dangerous in him. He needed to be kept a secret, in order to safeguard her standing with Bill. When she’d said he was going to find out sooner or later, she meant that she didn’t want him to just find out. She wanted him to be told, restrained. She couldn’t tell him herself; her mum and dad would need to do it. If Kieren was as devoted to Rick as he’d said, if their relationship had factored into his suicide, staying separate now that they were both reanimated would be too big an ask coming from her. She’d made it fairly clear she had no approval of him left to lose, he’d probably rather have Rick. If given the chance to properly explain things to him, to calm him, their parents had to get him to understand it wasn’t going to be that simple. The freak had to have a modicum of self preservation, even if he had gone mad once. It was going to take compassion she didn’t have in her anymore.

   There was still the matter of tonight’s tea. Her parents didn’t know how long she could keep up her protest, still convinced she’d break like she was a child with a simple grudge against her mean big brother. That’s how they seemed to act about it, anyway. Determined to stay oblivious to all her mentions of their fucked up reality.

   That first night, she’d insisted she’d spend the night on a bench before sleeping under the same roof with the thing that slaughtered Lisa. Thankfully, this new Kieren fucked off in time for her to fill her belly. The second night she’d chosen a litre of cider by the train tracks for supper instead, only returning after she heard Gary telling Dean on the walkie that there was a rotter living on her street they ought to bag. It had been the resurrected Mrs. Burton, of course, in the end. 

   Her parents didn’t seem to understand what she would’ve done for them that second night Kieren was home. Sure, her mum had hugged her after watching their undead neighbor get her blackened blood spilled over the pavement, asked her if she was alright having witnessed such a traumatizing scene. She was not. This was far, far worse than her years of service following the Rising. Infuriatingly complicated, too. The way Mrs. Burton had pleaded.

   “You’re safe now, sweetheart,” Bill had said to her, nonchalantly as ever, leaving Ken to wail over his wife while Kieren watched in the shadows of his bedroom window. Jem didn’t think Sue and Steve really considered that she would’ve turned on her mentor, her newfound family, before watching them two lose Kieren again. They had no idea what she sacrificed, not the slightest clue how hard she was working. The memories she was battling. But of course, it was not “all about” her. They were the ones selfishly lying to the undead creature and playing house with him, putting off a disastrous outcome instead of defusing it— how painfully familiar.

   “I’ll lose me appetite if you make me sit across from him,” Jem groaned, ‘lending a hand’ in the kitchen, “It’s disgusting.” 

   “Please, don’t— don’t talk about him like that,” Sue’s eyes flicked to the open door to the dining room; Jem wasn’t particularly concerned with keeping her voice down. “For my sake, Jem,” she pleaded, “Don’t talk about him like that.”

   Jem leaned against the counter, arms crossed like a child. 

   “Give me a plate and I can take it upstairs,” she proposed. 

   “If you want to eat, you’ll sit at the table—” Sue moved a simmering skillet of mushrooms off the hot stovetop, “Yer not having it in yer room. End of.” 

   Jem scoffed at the lack of sympathy. What was the point in admitting to her mother that she wasn’t alright after last night’s events if she was to be ignored the following day? On the anniversary of the Rising, no less. She wasn’t accustomed to the disrespect. 

   “He can’t even eat it,” she muttered.

   Sue froze for a moment, spatula in hand. She cleared her throat. 

   “He might do. Let him— adjust.” 

   She piled the mushrooms into a serving dish, which she held out to Jem expectantly. 

   “Go on. Have a seat. Chat to dad.” 

   She rolled her eyes and took the dish carefully, clutching its ceramic handles with a furrowed brow. Steve droned about his job.

   “It’s ridiculous, the backup in work orders. I mean, we’ve got tunnels, bridges out of commission since the Rising started the mess off with no priority on repairs. You’ve got to understand, Kier, if the goal’s to get people on transport again...” 

   Kieren looked up at her. His big brown eyes, which she knew were artificial. He didn’t make the mistake for longer than a moment as she set the mushrooms on a trivet. 

   “When stations’re opened up, Jem, I think you ought to take the train to Lancaster. You too, Sue,” he called, “Show folk it’s perfectly safe.” 

   Kieren’s gaze fixed on his empty plate, trying not to let his mouth twitch over his obvious exclusion from that equation. Steve served himself, then reached for his son’s plate. Kieren passed it to him without protest; they’d clearly established what they expected from him.

   Jem turned on her heel, brushing her mother’s shoulder as she went to stall the tea a little longer. There was more for her to carry out, suddenly quite committed to lending a hand for several minutes as she built herself up.

   Sue leaned over her Kieren’s shoulder, setting two big fat sausages in front of him. He thanked her quietly. 

   “Just what we need today, Sue,” Steve chimed, “Bit of comfort food.” 

   “Dig in,” she encouraged, halfway back in the kitchen already. She shot Jem a look and her daughter returned to the table, drawing out her chair with a quiet groan and plopping the bowl of beans down in front of her father. 

   Kieren felt Jem’s gaze following his hands as he reached for his knife and fork; it took all her composure not to twist up her face into a grimace. She didn’t have to be subtle about it, in actuality, he couldn’t exactly retaliate. She was the one sleeping with the colt under her pillow every night. 

   As a matter of fact, it was attached to her waist at that moment, tucked away under the hem of her camo coat.

   Kieren’s kept his eyes downcast as he pretended to cut his meat and gather up a bite of nothing, Jem still observing him across their circular table. She could see the blue breaking through around his nails where his coverup had wiped away, the slight sickly green tint to his skin from the mixture of warm pigment with his pallor. 

   When he opened his mouth for the empty fork, she saw that the flesh inside was dark, the line of demarcation where his makeup ended.

   She thought of the supermarket, his bright red lips wet with Lisa’s blood. His filthy teeth. He practically jeered at her, she swore he did. Looking at him through her lashes now she could see his ginger hair, slick to his forehead from weather and grime, his frame just as she remembered it but reinstated as a monstrous, looming threat. He tilted his head at her, in her memory or at the table, she wasn’t sure. 

   She pushed her chair back, its legs scraping the floor. She was ready to abandon her meal altogether, and when Sue entered the room and caught her by the wrist, she hoped she may be allowed the mercy of eating alone upstairs after all. 

   That was the first time she’d been at the table with Kieren since he vanished after breakfast on that November morning in 2009. She’d like to be anywhere else.

   Her mother looked to the living room, Jem watched her eyes move. Her fingers, squeezing her arm.

   “Sit over there,” Sue’s voice was soft, pleading. She knew she couldn’t punish Jem anymore. They’d tried the past two nights, knowing perfectly well their nineteen-year-old HVF badass wouldn’t take it. Jem took a sharp breath through her nose. She didn’t look at Kieren. 

   “Fine,” she squeaked.

   Sue lifted Jem’s plate for her and she took it with a bitter huff, realizing she’d been holding her breath. The sofa was far enough from him. She’d manage.

   Kieren’s jaw set. He swallowed and squeezed his tableware, sleeved wrists planted against the table. 

   Steve cleared his throat and looked to Kieren, smiling tightly, like nothing happened, as Sue tucked into her seat and Jem balanced her plate on the arm of the sofa nearly three metres away. He began cutting his meat, gesturing to Kieren’s plate with his fork. 

   “Go ahead, son.” 

Chapter Text

   The days between Amy’s death and her funeral were sleepless, fraught, and sleepy all at once. Dreamlike, probably, more than sleepy— because none of it felt real. Like everything was moving at slow motion. Phil hadn’t seen anyone besides his mum since Dr. Russo told himself, Kieren, and Simon that there was nothing more he could do as Amy lay there bloody and more alive-looking than she'd been since before the cancer. Simon had spirited Kieren away to Amy’s bungalow, but Phil had no such comfort. He was back to life before. Back to being alone, with Shirley offering as much consolation and easy silence as she was able. 

   While Kieren and Philip were young, it would have taken more effort not to be mates. Their mums got along and they were both too soft spoken to object to the company; that was all it really took to be friendly. Counting the primary school years, Kieren had likely spent more cumulative time with Phil than Rick, honestly. And Philip really never had other friends, not by his own accord. His mum was constantly trying to get him to socialize in those days, so not much had changed.

   Phil had grown very used to seeing undead without their coverup on. It didn’t bother him, not with all his involvement with the Give Back Scheme participants. Kieren standing in his living room again, though, it was different when it was one of his old mates, someone quite fixed in his memories. It took him aback to see his face all white, grey, and purple. He couldn’t remember what his friend had looked like at the GP’s, when he’d come in with Amy in his arms— no, that was all a blur.

   Kieren swayed a bit, greeting Phil with his eyes. He could tell when people were looking at him out of courtesy, wrestling with the part of him that was grateful for the apparent effort it took and frustration that it took effort at all. Didn’t feel right to be looked at too long, didn’t feel right not to be. 

   The pair felt like helpless boys in their grief; their mothers had worked so hard at the reception’s preparations for after tomorrow’s internment in the new cemetery. The hors d’oeuvres, the decorations all done according to Amy’s wishes. They spoke in the other room, quietly. 

   Philip kept his eyes trained on Kieren and greeted him in quiet monotone, which Kieren matched. Much to process. Simon was nowhere to be found. Kieren shook his head at Phil after a moment, squinting. 

   “When exactly did you and Amy—?” 

   He says it in that poorly masked bitter, suspicious tone of his. Philip had heard him talk that way to Rick, when he ended up in the middle of some lovers’ squabble the two of them imagined he was oblivious to. 

   Amy hadn’t been able to gush about her relationship with Philip to Kieren the way she would’ve liked, things being complicated between all of them all around. But Kieren had read her will, her most earnest of wishes. That should’ve been enough to show her devotion. Enough that he should have been able to trust in her, as a friend.

   “Look, this isn’t like Rick’s funeral,” Philip murmured to him, voice crackling slightly as he remembered when they were teens, the little nightmare Kieren had become after that wretched news from overseas. He leaned outward, confirming Sue and Shirl were occupied. “You’re not the only one who gets to grieve.”

   Kieren felt immature all of a sudden, defensive. 

   “I guess I’d have known about the two of you, if I hadn’t been shut inside by the council,” he kept his voice lowered. “You couldn’t have spoken up for me? I mean, after so many years…” 

   Philip blinked.

   “Got removed from council. I assumed you would have heard.” 

   If Kieren's parents caught wind of anything of the sort they certainly weren’t concerned with telling him. He shook his head, white eyes going blank. 

   “I didn’t hear a thing about your case,” Philip continued, “I swear.” 

   Kieren didn’t actually doubt him. He sighed. 

   “How’d you get removed?” 

   “Sort’ve along the lines of how I came to be with Amy, actually,” Phil’s voice caught in his throat, corner of his mouth twitching.

   Kieren bit his lip. It wouldn’t take more than being seen together. Evidently, there was more to it than that. 

   “I’m sorry, Phil.” 

   “There was a protest— I went on a rant about— free love, whatnot. Didn’t stand a chance, but she... she found me, later on.” 

   “Protest?”

   “At the— PDS brothel.” The tops of his ears burned. Kieren looked a bit baffled and chuckled awkwardly.

   “That sounds like something that would’ve charmed her.” 

   “You and that Irish bloke together now, then?” 

   “Simon,” Kieren muttered, bashful himself. He knew full well Phil would’ve carefully observed Amy and Simon together at every Give Back meeting. Probably sizing up the competition, not that he considered himself any. “I owed her an apology,” he added. 

   “You’re always getting into trouble,” Phil cleared his throat to break the tension, trying to smile. It came across a bit strangled. 

   A flicker of the friend Kieren knew most his life returned for a moment.

   “Well, I’m glad she found you.” 

   Philip’s lips trembled. He kept them pressed shut. Kieren just nodded, uneasy at the show of emotion while he was barely managing to bury his own. He was thinking of escape, of what he might be able to contribute to the discussion in the other room. 

   “Ren,” Phil got his attention again, firmly, “I wanted to say I’m sorry. For saying nothing after Rick.” Referring to the second time, of course. 

   Kieren shrugged, reverting to the manner of reaction he was trained in throughout secondary school, if only to keep his shit together. He didn't feel like getting into it.

   “You were mates, too.” 

   “But, I know things were...” he shook his head, “That’s why I feel bad, you know. Not saying something.” 

   “Yeah, well… if you knew, and still hung around us,” Kieren sighed, “You were nice, Phil. I get what Amy saw in you, even if things have been… confusing,” he referred to life, the general state of the world. The bloody Roarton council.

   It was too late to be giving his blessing, really. But it was about the nicest thing Kieren could muster. 

   “I should’ve stuck up for you more,” Phil looked at his feet now, courage to make eye contact spent, “Not just with the council, I mean— before.” 

   School. The Macy household, the Legion. Gary Kendal. Kieren thought of his teenage self. 

   “Didn’t need protecting.”

   “Not with Rick around, that’s for sure,” Phil huffed. Didn’t fuck with Rick Macy. You’d be fucking with Bill Macy. But Phil seemed to have it backwards, what umbrella Kieren would’ve fell under. Even if only for an uncomfortable quip about Rick being the stronger one. The army one. They locked eyes.

   “Like I said. I didn’t need protecting.”

   “Kieren, love—” Sue chimed from the other room, “I could use your opinion.” 

   He pressed his lips together and nodded at Philip again, leaving him alone in the den. Philip didn’t see it as tucking his tail between his legs, letting the others manage things like photographs and decorations. Kieren would think of him whatever he would. His old mate had offered approval, but he was truly beginning to feel like he didn’t need it. Amy had shown him something bigger than the drama of this place, though he didn’t know where he’d begin to enjoy it now.

   He’d said more than he had to anyone in days. And tomorrow, he’d be dragged into the ground with the new weight he carried. For now, he waited for his mum to drive him home with the feeling of what he’d nearly achieved with Amy lingering from their last few days of freedom. Reality as it was.