Archive of Our Own

"Hi, friends," trickles from him all soft and sweet, his voice pitched up slightly to obscure the faint sense of discomfort of having to be the one delivering the news.

Billie and Issa look up at Paul Baker, lifting their gazes up from Issa's phone. They share the same welcoming smile, a warm, "Hi!" ringing out in unison. The restaurant is mostly empty so it rings out—save for the couple a few booths down filling up the air but they're about to be heading out, Paul Baker has been waiting.

He leans his elbow on top of the booth, standing opposite to the girls. As his gaze travels over the half empty coffee cups and nothing else on the table, his smile tightens around the edges. "You know how much I love it when you guys come in," Paul Baker starts in that overly polite tone.

"Well, Vladi's has the cutest servers in town," Billie remarks, her playful grin all coy and even knowing that she's playing around, Paul Baker feels his cheeks blooming a little in warmth at her tone. "And they wear the skimpiest uniforms."

"Ma'am, please, I'm just trying to do my job," Paul Baker throws back.

Billie shrugs, darting her eyes up and down. "Don't act like you don't like it."

Beside her, Issa adds in, "Plus, if we tip you well, then the house gets that fancy three ply toilet paper."

"Oh, that, too," Billie says eagerly.

Shaking his head, Paul Baker still makes a mental note to grab some more of that brand when he has the chance—as if he's the only person in the whole house who is capable of buying it but that's not the point. "Okay, and while your kind of stingy tipping is appreciated, you two can't sit here all day getting free refills," he says finally, his tone dropping back into its usual level. "You gotta either order some food or get the hell out."

Issa gasps in offence. "Paul Baker, we are your most loyal customers and you're threatening to kick us out?"

"Half the time, we're your only customers, too," Billie adds leaning across the table.

"Ouch. But yes, I am." Paul Baker pulls out the notepad he keeps in his back pocket, holding it up with an expectant look, waiting patiently.

He does absolutely adore them and he knows he's lucky that he's even allowed to sit and chat with his friends when they come in, but it's been nearly forty five minutes since Billie and Issa first came in. In that entire time, all Paul Baker has done for them is top up their coffees. And honestly, at this point, Paul Baker is a little concerned about how much caffeine they've both consumed in such quick succession—their eyes looking up at him verging on too intense. If this was the bar, Paul Baker would be cutting them off and calling them a cab.

With all due love and respect, of course.

"We'll order," Billie starts, pausing deliberately to watch Paul Baker lean in, putting pen to paper, "when Samir gets here. We're meeting for lunch. It'd be rude to order before he arrives."

"You wouldn't want Samir to feel bad, would you?" Issa poses, resting her chin in her hand.

Paul Baker narrows his eyes at them, mistrustful. "Samy running late?"

Billie holds eye contact while her fingers dart across her phone screen, pulling up what Paul Baker can only assume is their text chat. In a quick flash, she looks down and back up and Paul Baker, a smug grin flashing across her face. "He'll be here in—" another flicker down like she instantly forgot it "—in seven minutes."

"Oh, he will?"

Both of the girls hum in agreement.

"He's got six and a half, and then you gotta order," Paul Baker says decidedly.

He's only half serious. He'll probably give them until it's been a full hour before he really tries to push them on their way just to be fair. Paul Baker is really all bark and no bite. If it was up to him, Paul Baker would let them stay as long as they like just because he enjoys having them around.

"Coffee?" he asks in that customer service tone again.

"Obviously, Paul Baker, you shouldn't need to ask," Issa answers, pushing both their mugs out towards him.

Smiling to himself, Paul Baker scurries off to grab the coffee pot, adding a top layer of hot coffee to their still mostly filled cups. Paul Baker manages to get a few minutes straight of sitting down with Billie and Issa, keeping an eye on the couple in case they need anything from him. It always makes his shifts go faster when his friends stop by for a meal. Plus, Paul Baker gets to steal some of their fries or a bite of a sandwich which is great.

After a while, a group of three comes in, and by the time he gets them sitting down and situated with drinks, Paul Baker is drawn off to the couple waiting to pay and get out. It's really as busy as the place gets, cleaning up the table and taking new orders to the kitchen, and he's distracted enough that he doesn't immediately look over to the greet the pair walking in.

Before he can even think about greeting them, he hears the familiar curve of Samir calling out, "Hey, Paul Baker!"

It's followed with Issa calling out, far too smug, "See? It was only eleven minutes."

A comfortable sense of ease settles over Paul Baker knowing that he can take his time. His friends won't mind if he doesn't get to them just yet.

"Paul Baker?"

He doesn't fully comprehend that last voice, losing it to the air of the restaurant. It shouldn't bother him. Paul Baker doesn't even recognise it but it tickles something in the back of his head like an itch in the heel of his foot, unreachable, nothing he can deal with right now with his job to do.

In a casual sort of brisk walk, Paul Baker can finally head back over to the booth where his friends are. There, Issa and Billie and the back of Samir's curls all seem to be pointed to the fourth member sitting at Samir's side. Weird. Paul Baker thought he was pretty much up to date with the extended circle of friends. It doesn't seem to be any of the ones that the house don't see all that often but are on good enough terms with to get lunch with.

Huh.

Paul Baker feels some tug in his chest but it won't stick. A fluttering heartbeat. It—it's just that the back of a stranger's head has never felt so—familiar before. Like he saw it once, a dream maybe, passing on the street, somewhere he can't put his finger on.

Brushing it off, he slides up beside the booth. "Alright, you've got exactly four minutes to order or else you're out," Paul Baker says before he's even come to a stop, the ballpoint of his pen pressing a blue smudge onto the notepad. It's thrown at the girls first before his gaze and smile slips over to Samir, and the guy next to him—the—he—

"Oh my God," he says slowly, deep brown eyes glistening up at Paul Baker like the sun is shining on rusted metal trying to make something ugly into the sublime. A shock of dyed black crops over his forehead now, shaken forward to cover that hairline creeping away he was always so fucking insecure about that it bordered onto pathetic even when Paul Baker loved him the most, and God—the way his lips curl like he's trying to replicate a smile based on an old memory of one, and oh God, the way he is still so fucking hot that Paul Baker goes weak in the knees for a dozen odd reasons. "It is you! I thought there was no way Samir's Paul Baker was mine."

Paul Baker's mouth hangs open, a half formed gasp getting stuck in his throat. His lungs constrict and spasm trying to swallow it down, trying to find any way to make his body continue the functions it needs to live but nothing inside of him wants to.

"No way, you know Paul Baker?" Issa asks, the pitch of excitement in her voice sounds like breaking glass to his ears.

Like his entire world has just shattered before his very eyes and no one else sees the shards pointed at his neck.

"Oh, I should've guessed," Samir says, gravelly. "You're both Canadian."

And he—Julian laughs, his shoulders shaking and it takes a long while for his unblinking gaze to tear away from Paul Baker, addressing the group instead. "Okay, no, Samir, not all Canadians know each other."

"Except for these one, apparently," Billie interjects. She glances over to Paul Baker with an amused smile on her face but he'd find a kick to the balls funnier than this, frankly.

Julian, still laughing these barely formed beats, too comfortable, too at ease in a place he doesn't belong in, says, "We went to university together. Kinda circled around each other for a few years before we really got to know each other in our last year."

Finding the weakest scrap of strength that he can muster, all air and dust down there, he yanks the thing up through his chest until the words fall out from Paul Baker's stumbling tongue in a desperate attempt to fix the narrative before it can form. "Yeah, we were pretty good friends by then," he says, looking intently at Julian until understanding blooms in his dark eyes.

"Right." Julian's grin sharpens.

Paul Baker doesn't know why but he just can't handle his friends knowing about them. Not right here. It's too mortifying to drag out that dead thing in front of people he wants to respect him.

"But it's been forever since I've seen you, Paul. I had no clue you'd even moved down here," Julian says.

"Same goes for you," he throws back, biting more aggressive than he needed to.

It's one of the rare times Paul Baker actually wishes he had social media. At least then he would have been given this warning before it even happened. Julian couldn't help but post his every move, obsessed with letting everyone know how incredible his life was, and Paul Baker doubts that has changed in any meaningful amount. But on the other hand, being so far removed from him, Paul Baker has lived the last three years blissfully unaware of any direction Julian took after they—once they stopped talking. Not having to think about him or worry whether they'd ever accidentally run into each other has been amazing.

It was so fucking great…

"So, what are we getting?" Paul Baker wonders, too loud as if he's trying to cover up the sound of his heart thundering away like he just ran another marathon. His smile too forced. His muscles too stiff. He thinks he's imploding right in front of them and can't tell whether he wants them to notice or not.

Issa sighs, rolling her eyes as she grabs the menu he gave her almost an hour ago. "You're no fun when you actually care about your job," she comments. Despite it, both her and Billie are quick with their orders, likely because they figured it out an hour ago.

On the best of days, Paul Baker's handwriting can be a bit like chicken scratch, bordering on unreadable by even him, but this tremor ghosting through the bones in his hands has the pen jerking and scribbling through the letters as he writes. His whole arm, too, shakes just enough to be visible. Fuck it, he'll rewrite it before he gives it to Vladi when no one's looking at him, he decides, already noting down Samir's grilled cheese before he finishes asking for it.

Paul Baker could have guessed what everyone wanted with one look into their eyes. He knows his friends and their tastes like they're his own, it's second nature.

Samir gives him a pleased smile, letting Paul Baker take back his menu, and Paul Baker's body instinctively turns to walk away. Anton isn't here today, visiting his parents, so there's no one left.

There's no one else that Paul Baker has to worry about.

"What would you recommend, Paul?" Julian asks, blinking up innocently at him.

A lump forms in Paul Baker's throat. In the back of his mind, a thought smashes through like a speeding car, the blaring horn all he can hear. All he can think is that he better make the right choice. It can't be wrong or then it'll be his fault and Julian will be pissed and—

"Whatever you want, man," Paul Baker chokes out, bitterly, if only out of spite that a few minutes around this man has brought back the twitching learned behaviours. "Whole menu's pretty good."

Julian doesn't quite grimace—no, he's far too controlled to slip up with something small like that in public but Paul Baker knows him well enough to sense it in the air. Paul Baker isn't playing whatever game it is that Julian is trying to set out of them. He isn't doing any of that bullshit.

In the end, Paul Baker hardly hears what it is that Julian actually orders before he's tearing himself away from the table, trying to read his own scribble of it in the far corner of the restaurant and makes a safe guess at it. Ripping off the page as he hands it over, Paul Baker is met with the impression of writing pressed into the fresh sheet. A stab of blue has leaked through and through, all the way into several pages down.

Jesus, Paul Baker needs to get a grip.

It's just Julian. He's some guy, not the fucking grim reaper.

It's just the guy that Paul Baker could be on his deathbed and still be celebrating that he never ran into him again. Just the guy that had Paul Baker wondering if he needed a Xanax prescription or a fucking brain scan because apparently he just kept misunderstanding and misremembering things when Julian knew them perfectly and a hearing check the way his ears would ring long after Julian had stopped shouting. That one. Him. The guy Paul Baker sometimes wonders if he imagined the whole thing with because every inch of time and distance put between them made it feel all the more unreal. As if it didn't really happen—or not to him. It couldn't have happened to him, like he's sharing the memories of another person.

Because that person doesn't feel like who Paul Baker is now. Scared and small and freaking out over the most insignificant things—

Someone that panics seeing the onions in Julian's omelette because he has a personal beef with them. God—shit, it's too late now that he's realised the mistake because Billie has spotted him coming with their food, sitting up in excitement. Paul Baker can't turn and have it remade without making it into a whole Thing. Shitshitshitshit.

Paul Baker stiffens every minor muscle in his hands as he hands out the plates to fight off the shaking. Not even the wave of warm gratitude from his friends is enough to melt the frozen fear gripping him.

Last is Julian's, lowered carefully so not even a clatter sounds. Julian blinks down at it, a frown pulling down at his face. Fuck, here it comes, Paul Baker lowers his gaze on impulse.

"Ah, that's on me," Julian comments ruefully, hesitant to pick up his fork. "I forgot to ask for no onions."

"Don't like 'em?" Samir asks through a mouthful of bread and melted cheese.

Julian shakes his head.

"Oh, I'm sure you can get it remade. That's not a problem, right, Paul Baker?" It's so great that Billie is always the one suggesting the way to fix any problem she's given but Paul Baker would love it, actually, if she could cut it out just this once.

Because Paul Baker would and he hates it.

"No, no, it's not that serious. I wouldn't want to waste food."

"Paul Baker usually ends up eating the wrong orders," Issa explains rather helpfully, damn her. "Or he brings it home for one of us—so you'd actually be doing us a favour. One week, we didn't even buy groceries, we just lived on old burgers and overcooked schnitzel."

It was good week, Paul Baker thinks. Every time he came home from work, it was a fun surprise to see what he'd bring home. Julian doesn't need to know that, though, like him just having that information is retroactively ruining the memory.

And whatever he hears in it, whatever he elects to take out from Issa's words, Julian gets this spark in his eye. Still putting on that face of nonchalance as if he truly is unbothered by the issue, no slight of silent anger simmering in the undertone of his voice, Julian says, "Honestly, it's fine. I'm an adult. I can just pick them out, no big deal. Thanks, Paul, it looks great."

Oh.

So—

That's it?

Julian isn't going to make a big deal out of it? Since when?

Now he's suddenly an adult. Now he's mature enough to keep his unwarranted fury kept away when it really isn't that important. Now. Great. Awesome. He couldn't have grown up back when Paul Baker needed him to.

That fucking—

"Hey, Paul Baker, you gonna sit with us?" Samir asks.

Paul Baker blinks, his vision settling back onto his friends and he realises that he's been hovering awkwardly at the edge of their table. "Uh, yeah, just—just give me a sec. I'll be right back."

Anywhere but here. That's where his feet are taking him. Someplace that doesn't have Julian in it—Julian with his friends. His. The ones that Paul Baker was craving for so long, the ones he deserves to have and keep and this cannot be another thing Julian takes away from him,

The chill of the walk-in freezer bites at Paul Baker's skin. It doesn't do anything for the flush in his cheeks, his jaw clenched with the horrible urge to cry. Pacing the length of the short box, Paul Baker brings his hands together, rubbing and scratching at the nail polish of his middle finger absentmindedly.

Fuck.

Fuck. What the absolute fuck is Julian even doing here?

How can he—when did he—and Samir knows him, somehow? At the very least Julian is seemingly willing to go along with the narrative of being good friends—oh, like he's suddenly decided to be merciful towards Paul Baker, fucking asshole—because all Paul Baker knows is that he cannot have that painful talk with his friends. Because they would. Samir would. If him and Julian are apparently friends now, he'd ask Paul Baker whether it's okay to be friends with an ex of his—or ex-whatever they were. Samir's good like that.

And then what? Either Paul Baker has to lie through his teeth and say he has no problem with the mere idea of them sharing the same air or he tells the truth and that—

That's a hard no. Without a doubt. Paul Baker knows with a certainty he rarely does that he would rather do anything than breathe life back into those memories. Too big. Too twisted. They exist in a part of his mind that Paul Baker has fought tooth and nail to let die unacknowledged. A dusty corner of the attic no one is brave enough to reach into, that's where Julian has existed all this time. Bring out the old, half-dead corpses won't do anyone any good. Paul Baker himself hasn't fully moved past the disaster of everyone finding out about his other friend group. At least with those guys there was something good buried in the lie. And if that bombshell made things painful, then Julian is a nuke ready to leave everything a desolate wasteland.

Okay. So him and Julian were friends, they really were once upon a time, and all the things that happened when they weren't just—did not happen.

Easy. Paul Baker can do that.

It's the same thing he's been doing the entire time he's lived in New York.

Only now, Samir knows Julian and Julian is hanging around like a bad cough and Julian is a name shared among them now.

Perfectly fine.

Paul Baker wipes his eyes just to be sure nothing escaped his tight lock. This is so easy to do. He's hidden a scarred body before—just because the knife is suddenly back doesn't mean his friends have to see any of the twisted tissue.

Throwing himself back out, Paul Baker is the picture of just fine. With all the delight of seeing them for the first time, Paul Baker grins wide at his friends, asks them how their food is, and settles onto a bar stool across from the booth. He can do this. Julian doesn't have any power over him anymore. They are so far removed from that awkward something that Paul Baker can't reasonably justify still being broken up over it.

Just because Julian's voice doesn't sound right when it's not hurling insults at Paul Baker, it doesn't mean a thing.

And as he sits, listening far more than he speaks, Paul Baker learns that Samir and Julian work together. Julian's new to the job and to the city, and Samir, in all his beautiful friendliness and generosity, invited him to lunch today to meet everyone—save for Anton, of course.

Fuck, Paul Baker would feel so much better if Anton was here. He can't really place why but he knows that Anton's added presence would put him at ease—a true sense of ease, not this, no one would be so stiff if they truly didn't care. And Anton has an ability to read people. He's always been able to read Paul Baker like a book. If he was just here, then maybe, maybe someone else would be able to see there's something wrong in Julian without Paul Baker having to scrounge up something bitter.

It keeps getting worse and Anton would just help keep Paul Baker from feeling like he's drowning. Samir seems to really like Julian—laughing at all his jokes and telling everyone stories from work that paint Julian in that perfect light he always shines in. Samir's doing all the work that Julian usually puts in to make himself sound perfect.

The urge to say something sits right on the tip of Paul Baker's tongue like the drunken want for a cigarette though he never smokes otherwise. It'll be bad for him and he won't love the taste left and the stench will cling to him longer than he likes, but all of that feels like the point. The indulgence into something he'll only regret come a sober morning is both revolting and enticing. Paul Baker could make himself sick on all the things he could say about Julian until the nicotine stains his teeth yellow.

Intoxicating, it would feel so fucking good to see Samir reeling away from him, to wipe the smile off Billie's face, the interested glimmer out from Issa's eyes.

Fidgeting with his hands like he's playing with the lighter, Paul Baker sits on his stool, elbow leaned back on the counter and sits like the perfect listener. Is it self control or obedience that has him biting his tongue? Is there a difference? He only ever budges to do his actual job but he keeps coming back to this spot like a well trained dog.

Of all the things Paul Baker thinks to say, nothing but a well timed laugh or agreeing hum leave his mouth. Where would he even start? How could he ever end?

Throwing him the occasional glance, Julian seems to be tempting him into the very same line of thought. In what world wouldn't Paul Baker tell the truth? Erasing their very notable history only saves Julian in the end. He can't be victim and accomplice.

But it just never comes. Too soon, the girls scoot out of the both to leave, and not fast enough, the guys are following behind him. Already over and it only cost him his life.

"Seriously, man, you don't have to," Samir is insisting as Paul Baker slides up behind the cash register to ring them out.

Julian just waves him off. "I got it. It's my treat." Digging out his card from his wallet, he looks at Paul Baker with that crooked grin of his.

One drag, Paul Baker thinks. The last time Julian looked at him like this must not have been long before their break-up. It's the perfect look, one he used over and over because it typically ended with Paul Baker apologising for his mistake, for starting whatever they were fighting about, and he'd let Julian hold him in his big, strong arms. But—it's that by the end of that mess, Paul Baker started feeling like it wasn't Julian protecting him from the world but like he was protecting the world from Paul Baker. Paul Baker, who couldn't help but mess things up. Paul Baker, who somehow never did a thing right and needed to be helped.

It felt like Julian was doing him a favour when he was finally finished yelling.

"So what's the damage?" Julian jokes like he's a forty year old dad.

Since when was Paul Baker so disciplined?

It takes too long for Julian to finally be leaving, paid up and getting far away from Paul Baker. His voice is swallowed up in the chorus of bye and see you at home that his friends throw back towards him. Paul Baker waves after them, at least leaving them with a nice look of a semi-genuine smile.

In the quietly humming restaurant, Paul Baker stares at the door long after it stops moving in their departure like they've taken all the life with them. Long after he has a good reason to be stuck here.

It's just Julian.

Paul Baker hasn't even thought about him and the apartment and that voice and all the things hurled at him without mercy or compassion—all of that hasn't crossed his mind in a long time. Certainly not after he met Issa and everyone else.

So—just—go back to that.

Be that guy again.

Easy.

Easy.

God, why is he even so bothered by this?

It's nothing. It's so—easy.

—

He winds up agreeing to cover a shift at the bar tonight. He hadn't intended on it, not even remotely. A few hours ago if it had been offered to him, he would have turned it down with an apology and some excuse. All Paul Baker has been thinking about is a nice meal that wasn't cooked for someone else and turning in early for a good night's sleep. One night of pure rest is all he's asking for—was asking for.

Because Paul Baker takes it without thinking whether he can handle it. He goes straight from cleaning up after the dinner rush at Vladi's to the bar with just enough time to change into the spare shirt he keeps in his work bag for days like this. The in case he's never needed before.

On the bus between establishments, he sends off a text to the group chat to let them know he'll be working late. The chat buzzes to life, making his phone vibrate obnoxiously in his pocket but Paul Baker never pulls it out to check what they're saying.

A quiet voice worries that somehow Julian will have invaded this space, too, that his voice will clog up all the air Paul Baker is trying to breathe no matter where he turns. It's ridiculous—it's the house chat after all but—he hasn't thought that Julian would ever be sitting in Vladi's chatting with his friends. That nightmare has officially been achieved so anything is possible.

Working distracts him. Paul Baker doesn't have the opportunity to think about anything too closely while he's on the clock. It all fades. A comfortable state where he doesn't have to think about it.

Just…

Easy.

Being easy.

—

The house sits cold and quiet when Paul Baker finally makes the trek home. It's always a little odd to him when he comes home this late. Outside, it's fine. Feeling like he's the only person awake, moving about a still city with only a handful of the weird stragglers still lurking about—himself not included in that because he knows he has a reason to be awake still—it's almost fun. Paul Baker feels like the only person in the entire city and it makes him feel big. But in here? When Paul Baker is the only one moving in the house, these walls hollow, just him standing alone in the doorway, there is a pang of loneliness in his chest like something is trying to tear its way out.

Always, somehow, this house is thrumming with energy. Even a quiet buzz when there's just a few of them home or if the walls are shaking with their voices and laughter, restless like the noise can't stop, there's a life force to this place.

Except, apparently, now. Pulling his headphones out, it's like the entire world has expanded and stretched and moulded just to leave him painfully small. Insignificant.

He pulls in the first breath of stale air.

Lets it out as if he's releasing the sudden urge to cry.

The thing is, Paul Baker is the furthest thing from alone. Privacy in this house is rarely ever thought about—he doesn't even have his own bed for a start—but for some reason the weight of isolation is dropping itself onto his shoulders tonight.

Paul Baker presses two fingers into the corners of his eyes, rubbing at the dryness and the prickling sensation creeping in. God. It's so stupid that even his empty laugh at himself sounds pathetic. Paul Baker's just tired and it's so fucking late and maybe that drunk guy at the bar didn't have to yell at him so much for cutting him off.

The front door creaks to a close, clicking into place a touch harsher than Paul Baker intended it to. He cringes, holding his breath for a moment in case anything moves upstairs. It's not like anyone sleeping could have possibly heard the minute sound but—it's just polite to not go around slamming doors when people are trying to sleep.

All he hears, thankfully, is the faint hum of his music through his headphones he hasn't paused yet and the shake in his breath as he exhales.

Jesus, Paul Baker's being ridiculous, isn't he? More times than he can count now, he's come home and been too tired to call out his arrival—doing nothing to hide it, either—and trailed after the sound of chatting voices upstairs or in the kitchen only for everyone there to leap in surprise like he materialised right in front of them. Once, Issa threw her entire iced coffee at him with a screech and Paul Baker's still trying to get that stain out. If he had thrown his full force into slamming the door, no one would have even noticed it.

And he's standing all alone freaking out over something that didn't even happen.

With slow, stiff movements, Paul Baker locks the door as silently as possible, toes off his shoes, and drifts further into the house. In his mind, he's staggering upstairs and collapsing into his warm bed until he becomes one with his pillow, buried so deep into the mattress that Samir won't be able to find him when daylight hits. It doesn't matter if he'll only get a handful of hours if he passes out right this second before his alarm tears him out of blessed unconsciousness.

His body has other ideas, though. His socked feet decide to pad quietly across the hardwood floor, taking him further away from where he really wants to be.

The light has been left on in the kitchen, a glow of dull orange growing wider as he approaches.

A quiet thing settles in his gut. It's not that Paul Baker really needed it. The flashlight on his phone works just fine, and even then, Paul Baker can walk the entire floor plan blind after enough nights he didn't want to wake himself up by reaching for a light switch. He knows how far to arc around the dinner table in case a chair hasn't been pushed in, when to curve to avoid clipping the edge of the couch at his hip. Hell, he's made entire meals with just the streetlight leaking in from the window.

With dragging foot falls taking him over to the light switch, Paul Baker could easily make the argument that leaving it on with no one here to use it, is a complete waste of electricity and it'll burn the bulb out faster.

But, oh, he's already tried that—the first time it happened. Samir wants to leave it on for Paul Baker so that he doesn't come home to a dark house, so that the expanse of a long, exhausting night doesn't continue any further than the front door, so he can still find his way. Even if he washes up lonely, here is the proof that he shouldn't be.

When Samir had explained it, so casual and off-handed like he was explaining that they need more toilet paper, Paul Baker had just about cried.

He still might, really.

It was so disgustingly sweet and considerate that he can feel the full brunt of the gesture hitting him like it's the first time all over again.

Lingering in the light, pulling in small breaths after small breaths and the cold of the linoleum is creeping through his socks from his stillness, aimless and unsure, it's just a stupid fucking light. Paul Baker would do the same for anyone else. They'd do it for each other. It's only a light but it means someone has thought about him, wanted something kind and soft for him to experience. When he's barely been home all day, he hasn't stopped existing in people's minds.

Why does it feel like such a novelty all of a sudden? Like it's slipping away from him?

Should he have been more appreciative of it before now? He'll lose it—it's a fragile thing and he's been too careless with it before now, thoughtless—the silence is grating and he wants nothing more than a single other person to be awake with him, to share this hanging quiet. The light has not unburdened him of anything and his hand shakes and there's nothing but him in this unforgiving, lonely world.

Fuck—what should he do? Sleep instantly jumps to mind. He should sleep and let this day finish because it's just wrong. It's all wrong. Where—it went wrong somewhere—and he can't put it back—and if he goes to bed now, he'll just be disturbing Samir, just becoming another problem.

Paul Baker is better when he's just… easy to deal with.

So he stays down here and he'll be easy until someone else wakes up or until he has to leave again.

Either option sounds unbearable. A death sentence he's too nice to say no to.

Paul Baker drags himself away from the fucking light switch, pressing into the corner where the counter curves. It digs into the small of his back but he doesn't want to move. Paul Baker's hand fights against a tremor as he digs his phone out of his pocket. Surely he can find something entertaining enough on YouTube that'll distract him from the terrible biting sensation in his lungs.

A round of ads hits barely a minute in, naturally—he misses when Billie had that free trial of premium a few months ago.

Staring just above his screen at the floor while he waits for the skip button to appear, Paul Baker lets his vision blur over, unfocused, listening to an obnoxious ad for car insurance with only one earbud.

"You're home late."

He jumps, unable to process everything he has to other than his phone dropping to the floor, his heart going with it—it snags on the earphone wire, hanging in the air until he can drag it up. Paul Baker rushes to make sure it's switched off, his earbud torn out like he's been caught on his phone past bedtime and he's trying to pretend like he wasn't doing anything wrong.

Snapping his head towards where the soft voice came from, the one he's so sure is about to become raised, Paul Baker holds his breath in a brittle chest.

It takes a few, trembling moments, blinking rapidly until his eyes decide to finally focus before he can see that the figure hovering in the entrance way is Anton. Just Anton laughing softly at the over-reaction only a level below Issa.

Oh. Jesus.

Anton's glasses hang low down his nose with him leaning forward, keeping himself upright with a grip on the wall. He's peering up at Paul Baker, eyes gleaming in the light with dancing humour.

The combination of how warm seeing him all comfortable like this makes Paul Baker feel mixed with the slight unease of still coming down from the fright has Paul Baker clearing his throat awkwardly.

Paul Baker forces a stuttered breath to come out in the form of a clipped beat of laughter, trying to join in with Anton but it doesn't settle all the way in his chest like it should. It's good enough, though. Fiddling with the wire of his earphones, Paul Baker says uselessly, "I—I, uh, didn't see you there."

"Uh huh, I realise that now." Anton stands taller, the laughter dying down but his lips are still curved up in a relaxed smile.

"What are you doing up?" Paul Baker asks, quickly trying to steer the conversation onto something that isn't about him.

His gaze bounces over to the microwave clock, blinking back at him to say it's almost five in the morning. As a Sunday, Anton rarely makes it out of bed before ten. It's a well known fact that nothing short of a house fire could drag him out a second before, and Anton will really push how close the flames are getting before he considers it. Oh, shit, did Paul Baker actually wake him up somehow? On one of Anton's rare days of rest from work, too. Crap. He was right to worry over a damn door.

Eyes widening, an apology forming on his tongue before Anton can truly get mad. "Fuck, I woke you up, didn't I? I—I tried to be quiet, I'm sorry. I didn't—"

Anton quite literally waves him off as he shuffles further into the kitchen. "Paul Baker, relax. I was already up, I was coming down to get some water."

The light must catch on Anton's hand as he moves or something, the flicker of an action making Paul Baker's eyes fixate on the indent pronounced on Anton's pinky finger, the way his fingers haven't fully stretched out like they tend to do after he's been reading for a while. Thank God, he isn't lying to spare Paul Baker's feelings. That's good.

At this point, Anton must nearly be done with the second book in the series he's on—Intolerant or something like that.

Though he must be a little cramped from reading in a barely comfortable position—according to Anton, there are none, just ones that hurt less after a few hours—standing in the washed out light of a bulb that was brighter last week, Anton looks every part put together and handsome, like he was born all perfect like this. Of course he was, Paul Baker thinks blearily as his heart stutters something pathetic.

It's just a fact that Anton is ridiculously good looking but even now? Only a few feet away, Paul Baker pressing himself further into the corner, Anton hovering like a late night vision of the perfect dream, it's just a bit too much.

All Anton must be seeing the bags under Paul Baker's eyes and his hair set astray from the wind and there's undeniably a stain of vodka on his shirt.

Somehow, still, Anton just smiles, shrugging as he carries on, "I dunno, I just couldn't sleep tonight. Something didn't feel right."

Paul Baker looks away before he chokes.

"Anyway," Anton presses on, jumping over the beat of tension so effortlessly that Paul Baker must have imagined it, "how was work?"

There's a flashing second where Paul Baker can only blink back like he doesn't understand the question. "It was—"

It was what? What did he even do all night? When he runs his hand over where his memory should be, there's a gaping hole in its place. Paul Baker realises he has such little recollection of everything he's done tonight, all day, really, that his stomach clenches in a twist of anxiety. He's scrambling for something, anything to offer up, but the hole just keeps getting bigger and deeper. Paul Baker's been better at refusing to do shots with customers because it's against policy—mostly. Unless the person asking is really cute, then maybe he'll do one—so he knows that it isn't amount of drunkenness blocking him from his memories.

Besides, he knows when he's blacked out. There's always some hazy awareness that there are memories, somewhere in his head, that might bleed back, that are just a little bit clouded from his grasp. This isn't anything like that.

There is just—

Paul Baker pouring coffee one moment and the next, he's home and trying not to breakdown on the doormat.

Clearing his throat again just for something to do, Paul Baker blinks away the twist of panic. "It was fine," he says, flat, thinking that it's probably the truth. If nothing happened that was bad enough to leave much impression on him, then everything was just fine.

Anton narrows his eyes, blatantly waiting for something more. Paul Baker hopes he'll remember the little crease in Anton's brows later. It's cute. "That's it?" Anton asks with a disbelieving scoff. "C'mon, you sound like I'm your mom and I just said how was school today, honey—like, you gotta give me a little more than that."

"Sorry, I—I think I'm just a little tired." It manages to come out without him choking on it. Barely.

"Oh!" Anton's face drops, waving his hands like he's trying to brush it aside. "Oh my God, of course. Duh," he says, dragging the word out. He steps aside to allow Paul Baker to pass by him. "Ignore me. You should go to bed, you've had a long day."

Just go. It rings out in Paul Baker's mind like a bell, echoing in the empty space. Just walk upstairs and nestle into bed beside Samir for however long he can. It'll be worth it just to be horizontal. There was that episode of Mythbusters, right, where they proved any amount of rest is better than nothing at all, even if he just lays there without sleeping. That's what he should be watching, he thinks briefly.

As aware of that as he is, hanging in the kitchen with the entire house and city asleep, being the only one to experience Anton in this quiet moment, Paul Baker has never wanted to sleep less than he does right now. It—it's nice here, all of a sudden. Wasn't he wishing to not be alone? That pang of loneliness followed him all the way inside but he can feel it quieten down with every word that leaves Anton's mouth.

"I—I'm probably not gonna get any sleep tonight," Paul Baker admits in a low voice, like he's confessing to something horrible.

"I can make you a nice cup of chamomile. It'll help you relax a little," Anton offers, his voice so gently genuine and inviting that it threatens to stop Paul Baker's wounded heart altogether.

It's the honest want in Anton's voice, as if it would be a privilege to stir up a cup of tea for him, and Paul Baker nearly accepts outright. He wants Anton to have anything he could possibly ask for and if that request is to have the intimate honour of taking care of someone in a small way—taking care of him, then he should give into his body's natural instincts and do it.

"Thanks but—" and rejection tastes bitter like burnt coffee "—I gotta get up at seven for my shift as Vladi's anyway. Someone's gotta feed all the hungover college students, y'know."

"A noble endeavour, the people of New York thank you."

He's smiling too much just to lose it again. "Figured it'll be easier to get through if I just keep pushing through. I can sleep when I get home later."

Anton frowns. "That doesn't sound healthy, Paul Baker."

"Oh, it's not that bad. This one time, I worked like a seventy hour week and got maybe, ten percent of that in sleep. I'll manage alright." It does absolutely nothing to smooth out the deepening furrow in Anton's expression like he had hoped it would. Paul Baker just means that there's no need for Anton to worry about him. He's fine. He always is.

He's always the one that is just fine.

The muscles in Anton's jaw flex for a moment, something sombre settling over his already dark eyes, but before Paul Baker can really catch on it, he lights up again, not a heartbeat missed. It's too perky for this early hour but it's perfectly Anton that it has Paul Baker relaxing inherently.

"Well, I had to put my book down because the words were starting blur, so I can keep you company. And since we're both up, how does breakfast sound?" Anton asks, flashing one of his warm grins.

Paul Baker can't tell if he's hungry or not but the question has every muscle in his body pushing into motion. Making breakfast for his husband is the best idea he's ever heard.

Before Anton can pretend to make a move into the kitchen, Paul Baker is setting himself about. His phone and earbuds go facedown onto the counter, the distraction no longer required. As first point of order, he grabs two mugs out and starts on making them some coffee. Paul Baker's going to be needing a lot to get him through today so might as well start early.

Once he's finished, handing it off, Anton takes the round mug with a gentle, "Thank you," and his head tilted to the side like he's trying to capture Paul Baker in just the right light.

And, well, it's hard to feel lonely when Anton's looking at him like that. It's a superpower, Paul Baker thinks. A stranger on the street can feel this bold and steady after just one look from Anton and even knowing that, it doesn't take a drop away from the effect. It is always still something magical to be someone Anton pays attention to.

Despite his own growing need for it, Paul Baker's own coffee sits more or less forgotten beside the stove as he starts to collect the things he'll need. He doesn't bother asking because Anton's hum of surprise and agreement once he pieces together what Paul Baker's making is more than enough encouragement.

It's Billie's turn to get groceries this week, Paul Baker notes as he scribbles down a few items he sees they're running low of onto the list, but if he has the energy after work today—if he hasn't gone completely insane from lack of sleep, that is—he might just stop in at the store on his way home. Save her the hassle. Normally, he wouldn't be so eager to take over someone else's job. The chore wheel only works so long as everyone sticks to it but—but there's just something caught in Paul Baker's ribs where he just wants to.

Needs to.

Samir left the light on for him. Paul Baker should do something nice for someone else. Pay it forward or something like that.

"You know, when I said breakfast, I meant coffee and some toast. I was thinking about letting you try some of that blueberry jam I picked up at the farmer's market last week if you were lucky. You don't have to do all this just for me," Anton tries to protest but it's really only for the sake of it. If he wanted to, he'd be pushing his way into the kitchen, dead set on helping and nothing Paul Baker said in return would matter. Instead, Anton is carefully perched on the edge of the counter, legs dangling off, coffee cup held atop his thigh. Paul Baker just smiles, letting him continue, "Come on, you've been working all day—which, that has got to be against some labour law. You could probably sue someone for that, get a massive payout for having your good nature and inability to say no taken advantage of. Retire before you're thirty."

Breaking eggs into the bowl of wet pancake batter—doubling the recipe in his head so there'll be enough for the others when they get up—Paul Baker throws back lightly, "I don't even know what I'd do with that much money.

Most weeks, Paul Baker can't think past what he'll do wit his next paystub, let alone anything substantial like that. It's a fun fantasy but there isn't much point living in it. He starts measuring out the milk as Anton hums, listing it out on his fingers.

"Get a car. Pay off your student loans. Travel. Be my sugar daddy, y'know, the usual."

Paul Baker swallows the flinch, though his hands still jerk enough to spill a splash of milk over the measuring cup. He breathes out something akin to a laugh through his jaw trying to clench down on his tongue. "Oh, I see," he says. "You don't care about if I'm being mistreated, you just want to quit your job."

It lacks most of the genuine humour it should have but there's still something there, some scrape he can muster up. If only because it makes Anton smile.

"I can care about two things at once!" he defends, holding his hands up in surrender. Anton takes a sip of his coffee—Paul Baker doesn't remember learning how to make it to Anton's taste, just knows that he did it perfectly by Anton's expression. "Besides," he says, "I didn't marry you for your money, Paul Baker."

Something thick and heavy clogs up Paul's Baker throat. "Once I'm rich, though, you're gonna take me for everything I'm worth in the divorce, aren't you?"

"Now why would I want to divorce you?"

Paul Baker grins, though it feels like he's trying to smooth out melted plastic, turning sticky into solid, stuck somewhere in between all twisted up. There's a million good reasons, he thinks, any reason from Paul Baker didn't do the dishes when it was his turn to Anton's met someone new.

It travels like a stone down his throat, because it'll happen one day, won't it? Anton is going to meet a guy and they'll hit it off and the next thing he knows, Anton will be asking for a quiet divorce so he can marry his real soulmate. Screw Paul Baker and his visa. It'll be his own problem to handle by then.

His stomach rejects the idea of any appetite but he keeps cooking for Anton.

The lack of an answer sits heavy in the air. He prays Anton is just thinking he's too tired to think of anything cute or clever to say. Prays that his hands will stop shaking if he grips the whisk hard enough, stirring the wet and dry ingredients together with the intensity of someone walking into battle.

Paul Baker is fighting through a stubborn clump when Anton carefully drops, "Oh, Samir was telling me earlier how you and his new friend actually know each other—what was his name? Like Justin or—"

"Julian," falls absently from his mouth.

Anton snaps his fingers. "Julian. That's it. So you guys know each other from college, right?"

"Yeah. Last year of university. Haven't seen him since graduation—hadn't."

"And now him and Samy are like, besties. Small world."

Paul Baker fights the urge to throw up. There it is. That's why this entire day has been so shitty and why it's slipped away from him like sand between his fingers. He was pouring coffee and then he was there, laughing with Paul Baker's friends, looking at Paul Baker with those eyes that have never done anything wrong, talking to him in that voice all velvet and smooth like it's never been cutting and vicious. Paul Baker was lost the moment he was forcibly reminded that Julian still exists, that he didn't fade away with the memory of how his lips taste.

He nods, staring down at the batter as if it'll help him. "I mean, they haven't know each other that long," he snips.

Even Paul Baker hears how abrasive he sounds. He turns away, moving to draw a pan out from the cabinet, carefully trying to keep it from banging against the other cookware. So long as he doesn't look at Anton, Paul Baker will be just fine. It's not that there's any truth in Anton's words—none that he was intending for to begin with—but they echo out in Paul Baker's head. Julian sat so casually with Samir and the girls, looked at Paul Baker with a curious gleam, a hungry glint sparking in the snapped second he could allow eye contact, spoke to all of them with the familiar breeze of old friends.

"Any reason you guys didn't keep in touch?" Anton wonders from his perch, his eyes always remain on Paul Baker, no matter where he moves about in the kitchen.

"Uh, no?"

"Are you asking me?" Anton says with a brief laugh.

Paul Baker dips back into the fridge, pulling out the butter he instinctively put away to keep the mess to a minimum, and it hits him. His back to Anton fully, the grief is allowed to wash through his face raw and unaltered for anyone else's consumption. It's stuck here now, this hollowness, this mourning of a light left on because it never would have been back then.

He wipes it clean from his expression and turns back to the stove—in the corner of his eye, he watches Anton watching him, overly aware of how every muscle in his body needs to be held just right. A slab of butter goes into the heated pan, bubbling and melting quickly as he moves it around. "Sorry. There's no reason," Paul Baker answers after a moment, decidedly uninterested. "We just sort of—drifted apart, y'know? Nothing exciting."

"It happens," Anton says, following Paul Baker's hand pour in the first spoonful of batter. "Since he's in town, though, do you think you're gonna start talking again?"

"Uh, maybe."

"Wanna try that again and act like you mean it this time?" he jabs gently.

With that, Paul Baker finally turns and looks at him again. His dark eyes sit soft and narrow in the shadow heavy lighting, one hand wrapped around his mug, the other curve over the lip of the counter as he leans in towards Paul Baker. There's nothing cruel or critical in his gaze—never is. It's Anton. The only time Paul Baker has ever seen something he didn't like in Anton was when Talia came around but they were able to resolve that issue—as much as it ever can be solved.

The pancake sizzles.

Even if Anton knows that Paul Baker is trying to lie to him, he doesn't seem particularly put off by it. He's just eyeing Paul Baker with that tender look, taking him in, letting him bring himself towards the truth rather than forcing it out of him.

"Mind wipe?" Paul Baker asks suddenly.

"Go for it," Anton answers without a beat of hesitation.

The first bubble appears. "I don't want to talk to Julian or be friends with him or see him ever again because I kinda really fucking don't like him."

"You, Paul Baker, don't like someone?" Anton repeats.

He doesn't know he's waiting for the laughter that'll come next until it never comes. Sometimes, these guys talk about Paul Baker as if he's some paragon of goodness and righteousness in this world. So the idea of him not liking someone? It sounds ridiculous. More than a few times he's been openly called the house's golden retriever. Why would they need a dog when they have Paul Baker? And it's a compliment. It's nice but it's just—he hid his other friend group from them for so long for a reason. There are pieces that aren't so—

That aren't good and pure, that don't make him just endearing enough so when the untrained dog pisses on the carpet, it's hard to abandoned him all together.

Julian is the biggest of those pieces.

Anton is going to laugh it off because the dog not liking someone isn't a problem for real people. It doesn't mean anything in the long run because he'll just have to adjust.

"Jesus, what did this guy do?" comes next.

Did he put plastic in the trash can instead of the recycling?

Did he decline to round up his total to donate to kids in poverty?

Did he do something that wasn't anything at all and your stupid golden retriever heart and good nature got all upset over it when it doesn't matter because you don't and none of this means anything—

"Do we need to tell Samir about this guy?" Anton asks after—hang on, what? He's sliding off the counter, his feet meeting the floor with an impact that might just be Paul Baker's heart lurching against his ribcage.

All of a sudden, Anton is invading Paul Baker's space, hovering close beside him the way everyone in this house always does but it's too much right now—too close—Paul Baker can only shy away a few inches, turning his focus onto flipping the pancake.

This isn't what he wanted. He didn't mean for it to turn out this way. "Why would we do that?" Paul Baker throws back, his voice wavering over we.

This is now their problem when it shouldn't have been one in the first place. Anton has automatically allied himself with Paul Baker—without knowing a single thing beyond Paul Baker dislikes a single person in this world, Anton is backing him up. Paul Baker's word is just good on its own like that. Anton can't give him that—shouldn't.

"PB, if you don't like this Julian person, then I'm pretty sure he's gotta be a serial killer or something terrible. At the very least, we shouldn't let Samir know there's something up." Anton reaches out, trying to catch Paul Baker's hand, the touch of his fingers would be gentle and assuring, and Paul Baker would be able to let go of this tension in his bones.

Paul Baker pulls away under the guise of taking out the first pancake onto a dish. It's dull on one side, dark on the other. Nothing like that golden crust he can usually whip up without thinking. That's fine. The first one is always a dud.

"He—" The words get caught in Paul Baker's throat, focusing his attention on pouring the next one. "It's not like that. Samir's not like, in danger or anything."

"Right but if you know Julian's a piece of shit, then why wouldn't you want Samir to know?"

"Because he really isn't!"

Refusing to let him get away this time, Anton places a firm hand around Paul Baker's wrist, his fingers easily curving all around it. And of course it is—warm and comforting, almost too hot against the chill of Paul Baker's skin. He's lost some of his own warmth, apparently, in his walk from the bus stop home, and hasn't gotten it back in the time since.

Paul Baker glances at Anton and feels the words leaving his mouth without his consent. "Samir is fine. He's a good friend most of the time. That's not a lie."

Anton understands when he changes. And Paul Baker wouldn't make something up so blatantly like that. While they were friends and nothing else, Julian was perfectly friendly. He was good, even. Kind and funny and so charming that just friends was never going to last long. Something inevitable about the way Julian gets his way.

Standing so close, Paul Baker can feel the shake of Anton's breath. In return, his lungs ache.

"But he wasn't good to you, was he?" Anton asks, his voice a soft whisper, though he must already know the answer or else he never would have to asked it.

"Huh," punches out of Paul Baker at the delicate edge in Anton's tone.

Paul Baker can't decipher it but he decides that he doesn't like it, the mixture of Anton talking to him like this and the bitterness of talking about Julian has him set to implode. Everything in him wants to walk away. Straight out the front door, Paul Baker will walk until his legs collapse and he can't keep going. He went all the way from Canada to New York and it still wasn't far enough. How far can he go to escape Anton?

A step outside the kitchen is too far.

Looking down at where their hands are almost connecting, skin on skin, Paul Baker says in his most honest, most brittle voice, "It was a little more complicated than that—but Samir doesn't have to worry about that. It won't happen to him." And the way Anton's face creases, all pained and stressed, too early to be this worried, too tired to deal with Paul Baker's brand of disaster, sends a wave of regret and guilt crashing into his stomach. "Mind wipe, right?" he adds, too fast to be anything but raw terror.

Anton nods. "Yeah. Mind wipe, I got it, but Paul Baker—"

"I just don't want to ruin anything, y'know," he interrupts, cringing at himself for the rudeness. "What happened with Julian was forever ago, anyway. I'm the one acting like obsessed ex."

"You're allowed to be hurt."

Brushing past it as if he never said a word, Paul Baker just states, "If Samy wants to be friends with him, then that's his decision to make. Not mine."

"But he should be making an informed one," Anton presses.

In the instant his voice dies, stretching the awkward tension through the night air, Paul Baker manages to shake his wrist loose—though it doesn't take any strength at all, really, like Anton wouldn't dare to keep him a second he doesn't want to be kept—and flips the pancake only to reveal a blackened side.

Great. That's two basically inedible. He needs to be able to serve up something for Anton to actually eat. He just—he has to. Everything needs to be perfect.

Or else—

There's just him and Anton, and none of that is going to happen because Anton would never, physically incapable of it, it's not in his fabric, and still—

Paul Baker shrugs and says idly, "I'm not the same guy I was back then. I have to give Julian the same chance, don't I? Unless he actually does something wrong—" he chokes a little at the idea "—but until then, mind wipe."

He hasn't known a mind wipe to be so forceful, like a set of barred teeth demanding the erasure of everything that has been shared. The dog that never barks suddenly turning on the hand that feeds.

Dizzy, Paul Baker downs nearly half his coffee in one go, just barely cool enough that it doesn't burn as it collects in an empty stomach. The caffeine isn't enough to get a spark running but he'll make it work. It will keep him going long enough.

Anton backs up a little, leaning his hip against the counter. Far enough that Paul Baker can breathe easier. Too far to be thoughtless. He isn't pretending to do anything other than stare openly at Paul Baker, arms crossed over his chest, the weight of his gaze like being struck with a series of bullets. "Okay, Paul Baker," Anton says, simply. He makes the gesture of throwing something away from his temple. "Mind wipe."

"Thank you." Paul Baker copies the action. He wants it gone, he wants to make sure Anton never crosses paths with Julian, he wants Samir to come to his own conclusion that Julian is a walking red flag, and this will all end peacefully before anybody has to know what specific kind. "If you want, you can go sit down," he says, swallowing the bitterness that comes with the words. Dismissing Anton feels unnatural. "I'll bring it in to you."

In return, Anton shifts until he's comfortable. He picks up his coffee, holding it between both hands with it half raised to his mouth. "I'm okay right here."

Oh, thank God. He isn't ready to be alone just yet.

"I'll be done soon," Paul Baker says anyway.

"Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."

Paul Baker manages a smile that feels something genuine.

Isn't that just the problem?

—

By the time the sun has risen and breakfast is a past affair only existing in the bowl of batter in the fridge, it's still just Anton that sees Paul Baker off. They've both eaten enough pancakes coated in maple syrup and butter, Anton insisting on taking some of the ruined ones with a smile—the sugar stuck to Anton's lips, shimmering in the first rays of dawn, in a way that tugged at Paul Baker's chest unbearably.

Anton waves him off like a husband would, watching from the front door until Paul Baker disappears down the street.

And once he's gone, thrust back into the quiet world paying him no mind, it all sinks in piece by piece. There's a bowling ball in his head, a listless feeling in his gut, and the flashing vision of begging Anton for a mind wipe, fearful that he isn't actually going to get one. In his wake, the house is still quiet. Before him, the New York streets echo his hurried footfalls.

For a while, he tries to pretend like it isn't there.

He left it on the doormat. It was supposed to be when he came home. It—it can't be both ways. It can't be the same burning ache of being so fucking alone that it might just kill him but it is but it is but it's because this time, he's ruined and aware of Julian walking these same streets, breathing this air.

Somewhere in this city, he's there.

Samir knows him and likes him, and while it won't ever reach the same level it did between him and Paul Baker, it still makes Paul Baker want to scream thinking about his best friend and—and him together.

Losing himself in the work, downing enough coffee whenever he can sneak a sip to stop his heart and start it up again, Paul Baker just keeps his focus on one foot after the other. If he drifts back to this morning, the quiet shared voices, the way Anton's fingers feel trying to comfort him, trying to draw something too fragile out of someone that hardly ever breaks, Paul Baker won't be able to get himself off the floor again. Vladi will have to sweep him out with the dust and dirt.

What little he gave Anton earlier is all he can give—and with Anton, in the grand scheme of it, it was easy. Everything is easier with Anton. If that dragging that splinter out was the easy thing, then letting anyone else see the wound would be an impossible thing.

So it'll stay here. Like this. Just a mind wipe in the kitchen and the way Anton touched him.

In the evening, Paul Baker staggers home with his eyes half-closed, phone dying ten minutes away so he's stuck with the busy sounds of the suburbs and his feet on pavement. It takes him years to get there, but finally, he's pushing open the front door and is quickly greeted with the swarm of voices trickling from inside.

Like every time before, Paul Baker follows after the sound, mindless, just the dull ache in his legs propelling him forward.

"Oh, Paul Baker's home! Just ask him!" Issa is practically throwing herself over the back of the couch as he comes into sight.

Caught under the gazes of his friends, Paul Baker hums in acknowledgement. He's already about to open himself up to whatever is needed from him, standing vulnerable and on the edge of consciousness.

"No, guys, don't bother him right now. He just got home," Anton says quickly, the only one not really looking back at him. "He needs a nap first. Let him go."

"I'm good," falls instinctively from Paul Baker. "What do you—"

"Goodnight, Paul Baker," Anton cuts over him, loud, flashing a knowing look that he can only accept.

"Night, Paul Baker," Billie calls.

"Sweet dreams," Samir follows as Issa waves him off.

Well—okay, then. "Night," Paul Baker throws over his shoulder, stumbling up the stairs purely on the thought that Anton told him to.

He thinks he could have last a few minutes or so with everyone if they needed something from him—if he just stuck himself somewhere on the edge where he wouldn't fall asleep on anyone's shoulder, sure. But Anton said he needs sleep and out of everyone, Anton knows that the best. Of course he's right. Of course Paul Baker is falling into bed because Anton directed him to. He doesn't know if he could relax this quickly if it wasn't brought out of him.

Asleep, Paul Baker gets to forget what's kept him up all this time.

—

Waking up late the next morning, the house is in that held breath state—the bed half empty, quiet halls, and stairs that creak under his weight—but even then, it doesn't feel as unbreathable as it last night. Paul Baker feels warm, steady, like something rooted deep into the earth instead of the floaty feeling that swallowed him up, spitting him out half digested. When he finds the note hung up of the fridge with his favourite magnet—the little bumblebee one that's so round he thought it was an off colour basketball from far away—scribbled in Billie's neat handwriting that they'll all be home this evening but to call either her or Issa if he wakes up and wants to hang out while the boys are at work, Paul Baker doesn't even have that thick weight of loneliness clinging to his shoulders anymore.

Whatever it was, it seems like he's slept if off—shaken loose the terrified desperation that had him all but begging Anton for a mind wipe.

It's actually rather nice this time to be by himself. Sunlight streams in through the windows all day, clouds holding themselves back far off so Paul Baker can enjoy it even if there's hardly a dull sense of warmth from it.

After finishing his breakfast-slash-lunch, he sees there's a small pile of dishes left from everyone else. Nothing more than coffee cups and bowls and cutlery. Nothing that really needs to be dealt with right now and Samir will get to them tonight since it's his turn but—

Something itches under Paul Baker's skin.

It takes a weird amount of strength to pull himself out of the kitchen. He doesn't need to do anything despite what the prickling sensation in his chest is trying to tell him. Showering off the long few days and it doesn't wash down the drain. Watching TV loud enough to drown out an explosion and it doesn't quiet down. Has him glancing towards the kitchen every few minutes.

Just because he can do them doesn't mean he needs to. The chore wheel hasn't seen any issues since Paul Baker was added to it. He cleaned up enough closing the bar and working all of yesterday at the restaurant—if he has to think about one more dirty plate he might scream.

His phone buzzes from the coffee table. Suddenly pouring with gratitude for the distraction, he snatches it up, eyes scrolling over the messages from the house group chat. The last time he looked at it was to heart react a photo of a dog Issa and Billie met in the park which was quickly drowned out by a series of you're alive?! and I had to check if you were still breathing before I left today and welcome back to the living world that he had just laughed at and tried not to think about the stupid fucking dishes. Now, though, Samir's complaining about the long commute home, and Issa thinks her and Billie's Lyft driver probably has someone chained up in his basement, and when he blinks, Paul Baker is elbow deep in warm soapy water.

Apparently he's in a cleaning mood. Maybe sleeping nearly fourteen hours will do that to him because he's washed, dried, and put everything away before he can really think on the urge. It's not the most normal thing, Paul Baker is cognisant enough to recognise that.

He feels that anxious hangover weight, like he's trying to piece together a night out with the breadcrumb scattered items around his house and the dozen texts on his phone.

But the door flies open, Paul Baker ripping off the purple dish gloves to get rid of the evidence, and Samir is already sighing loudly and tiredly, dragging heavy feet into the kitchen with half closed eyes.

"Hey, man," he mutters.

Paul Baker should not feel like he's been caught and yet, his head stutters. "Uh, hey, good day?"

The noise Samir makes is guttural and whiny at the same time.

"Understood." He shuffles out of the way as Samir gets himself a glass of water, pushing aside the brief flutter of frustration because he just made the kitchen look so tidy.

Unsure what to do with himself, Paul Baker decides he'll make himself sparse so Samir can relax. He's gotten all of two steps into the living room when he hears,

"Did you do the dishes?"

There's a faint shadow of confusion on Samir's face when Paul Baker turns back around.

"Oh, yeah, I—" It doesn't matter. It shouldn't and yet it just does. It's a Thing even if Paul Baker can't name it right here. "Wasn't doing anything else so I just…did them."

All of a sudden, Samir's shoulders drop like a puppet cut from its strings. "Dude, you're a lifesaver. I so didn't want to deal with them tonight. Thank you."

Even unnameable, even prickly and confusing and strange, whatever made him feel so restless today until he completed the chore now sits warm and blooming, it feels good. Paul Baker feels more relaxed than he has in a few days knowing that he helped. Taking the burden from his friend wasn't all that hard but something so small has eased Samir's load so much.

So while slightly concerning that he felt like he was going to throw up if he didn't, Paul Baker doesn't think it's all that important to figure it out. No harm, certainly no foul. It's fine.

Paul Baker smiles, feeling like he's earned the way Samir pats him on the arm as he passes by.

—

The issue comes up pretty quick.

Paul Baker isn't so unaware that he can't see it happening in real time.

It grows gradually, an avalanche picking up speed and force with every passing day until it's cleaned the mountainside of anything but snow and ice. And the longer it goes on, the more Paul Baker can feel how royally screwed he is.

Because Samir comes home and talks about his day at work, which innately comes with a story about what Julian did or the funny joke he made or how great of a guy he is, and Paul Baker sits all nice and quiet, laughing in the moments he should, biting his tongue while the other's make little comments along with him. And in the quiet moments of the night where everyone is winding down, sitting comfortably in pyjamas and watching a show in the living room that no one is really paying attention to, Paul Baker gets that itch. That need. Do something useful.

So he does the dishes and cleans the entire kitchen, cleans the bathroom while he's at it, scrubbing until his arms ache. Tries to ignore the conversation sparking from the couch while he works.

Because he gets the groceries when it isn't his turn and cooks for the entire house, heating up leftovers if someone isn't home just yet so there's a hot home cooked meal for them. And Paul Baker makes sure there isn't a single scrap of evidence of his existence left afterwards, everything clean and tidy and put away so no one else has to deal with it.

Because every second of Paul Baker's life becomes a series of questions. What can he do? How can he make himself needed? If he doesn't finish this load of laundry, what is the worse that can happen? His mind spirals into all the terrible things that have happened to him in the past.

When Issa comments that Paul Baker has taken care of all her chores for that week with a grateful thank you, you're amazing, and his stomach sits worn and content instead of twisting itself into knots, he understands what is happening to him with such startling clarity that it makes him sick.

Of course. Of course this is happening.

Julian is happening to him all over again and they've barely even spoken.

It's the sheer thought of Julian being in the same city as him that has Paul Baker returning to old habits, the same safety methods he used back then to protect himself making a fierce and stubborn reemergence.

As he's taking out the trash for the third time that week, just so that he can be sure no one else does it, Paul Baker understands how utterly ruined he is.

With Julian, if he just did everything, if he made sure the apartment was clean and tidy and there wasn't a thing Julian needed to do after a day of classes and work, then it would keep Paul Baker a little more safe. Nothing to throw a fit over. Nothing to shove his face into. At the very least, he could eliminate some of the potential triggers and go a full day without being yelled at. Those days were nice. They are still now. He wants to keep it that way.

So if he does everything, then he isn't giving anyone a reason to be mad.

Four people is a lot harder to manage than just one but Paul Baker thinks he's doing a pretty good job of it. Cooking and cleaning and leaving nothing to be wanted, if he can just keep this up for forever, then his friends won't ever think about tossing him to the trash like Julian threatened so many times.

He can do it.

A week of carrying the house on his shoulders doesn't hurt all that much. It's only when Samir mentions Julian and Issa comments that they should get lunch again because he was just so fun and Anton looks at Paul Baker like he's on the verge of asking something he shouldn't still remember, that Paul Baker feels the weight. When the conversation drifts somewhere Paul Baker can't follow. When he wishes that he was brave enough to say anything about it, to remind Anton of the mind wipe and tell him to remember it anyway, it hurts and hurts and he can't get the words to form on his tongue.

—

As it turns out, deliberately holding himself at the edge of his own world makes it so he feels horribly far away from everything even when it's happening right in front of him. The world keeps spinning and the house keeps breathing without him really there.

Which—is fine and what he should have expected. It's what he wants. Paul Baker doesn't want to become a spectacle or anything to worry about.

It's good to be here on the frayed margins because it means that no one is thinking of him.

No one is thinking of him…

He understands it perfectly fine and doesn't mind it. This is all on purpose. Paul Baker doesn't think he's anything all that vital to this house and it's continued function. He isn't a load bearing pillar like the others are, just some visitor barely making a dent in the drywall in all his time. This house has lasted long before he joined, a whole ecosystem thriving for years before Paul Baker was an idea in anyone's head, but—

But if he can't be foundational, then he can still be wanted. Sure, the house was constructed without him but he can still be the carpet or the bannister or the front door—replaceable, yes, with enough effort he can be forgotten about in a month or so, but maybe the energy it takes to dredge out the old one to stick something new in just isn't worth the hassle. If he still works well enough, then no one will want to bother getting rid of him just yet.

Yeah. Paul Baker can do that. He can be the best damn door that anyone has ever seen. His hinges won't whine and the knob won't ever get jammed and he wouldn't dare to leave scratches on the hardwood floor from his continued orbit.

He will be so damn good that they won't ever think about replacing him.

Strong and unyielding and bearing the brunt of whatever weather threatens to tear about the house.

Good. He'll do that and they won't ever have to know what things he's protecting them from. Keep it all inside. Be a good door. Be good. Just be something good.

—

The invitation is extended out to the entire house.

Paul Baker tries very hard to turn it down, drawing up some excuse of being tired from work and just wanting to have a quiet night at home, but near instantly, he's met with a wall of refusal. Everyone, save for Anton, throws back plenty of reasons to come out with them. It's the sheer fact that he has been working so much recently that he needs a night on the town to de-stress from it all, to actually hang out with them, and they all adamantly refuse to take no for an answer. This is the peer pressure Paul Baker was warned about in high school finally rearing its head.

He really, really does not want to do this.

So, naturally, Paul Baker finds himself at an understaffed bar with too loud music and too many bodies cramped into such a small space because Billie heard this was the place to be and Anton weaselled their way in. Another night, Paul Baker is sure he'd be able to have a good time here, but no matter how quickly he knocks back drinks to wipe away the clean head space, he is still far too sober to really enjoy it.

Billie disappeared first, some guy catching her eye within minutes which means she's going to be having a good night. This dude approached Anton rather quick, too, buying him a drink with a charming smile and his eyes too lustful and eager, and they've been talking in a quiet corner for nearly twenty minutes now—not that Paul Baker is counting, of course. He's just noticed it's been a while. Paul Baker himself slipped away from the table Issa and Samir are still hovering around, claiming to be getting himself another drink. He isn't staring but they're over there, happy and content and laughing in conversation with—with him.

The one that brought them all out. The one that Paul Baker can't spend more than a few seconds around before needing to leave.

Julian looks good tonight. He's put on more muscle than he had in Canada. All that time hitting the gym seems to be paying off because his biceps push against the confines of his shirt sleeves, straining the black material to make him look even bigger, jaw sharper until a thin line of stubble, the veins in his arms more pronounced. If it was any other person, Paul Baker would be eyeing him up with a quiet thirst. He's single now. He's allowed to look.

But it's Julian.

Paul Baker doesn't find anything attractive in the way Julian seems to flex when Issa laughs at a joke of his, a smile bright and beautiful on her face, drawing into his orbit like she's only found herself there by accident.

Instead, Paul Baker wonders how strong Julian is now, whether that muscle mass has translated into real strength.

If he could—

Shifting on his bar stool, Paul Baker stares down at the vodka soda he wants to get down as fast as possible so when he starts asking the bartender for straight shots, it doesn't seem so pathetic. Nearly there, he slows just enough to let his eyes dart around the bar, taking stock. He catches Billie standing with the same guy, chatting away happily. Across the way, Anton seems to be in a similar position, his back to Paul Baker but the slant of his shoulders tells how relaxed he is.

Good. Everyone's having a nice night, then.

Just because Paul Baker wants to crawl out of his skin doesn't mean he needs to bring anyone else down with him.

And he's having an—okay time alone at the bar—not that anyone seems to have clocked his absence once he excused himself. Being the one keeping an eye on all his friends fills that bristling need to do something useful and from his position, no one's beyond his sight. This is why he's here, then. To just watch and be there in case he's needed. He settles in.

By the second shot of vodka he downs, Paul Baker is in a comfortable haze, sitting in that sweet in between place where he doesn't feel the aches of a sober body and still knows that his hands belong to him.

Naturally, here is where the universe decides to throw him a curveball so harsh he barely stops it from slamming into his face.

"You look lonely." Julian settles up beside him with all the grace of someone that's never been denied a thing in their life. Careless with it. Expecting everything to be given to him simply because he desires it.

Paul Baker goes rigid, all the alcohol in his system clogging up, blood running cold despite the warmth emitting from the man at his side. Swallowing tightly, he makes a check of the perimeter again. Samir and Issa are still at the table, caught in some tipsy, intense conversation. Billie's moved to a table with her man, a little harder to track but he can still spot her which is all that matters. And Anton—

Is fine.

Talking to that guy, he's fine.

When Paul Baker's gaze finally slots back, Julian is still watching him the way a predator eyes up its next meal, all wolfish and eager in the flashing lights of the bar.

"I'm just fine by myself," Paul Baker says through a clenched jaw, shifting in his seat.

Julian hums, leaning in as if he still owns a piece of Paul Baker's personal space. "You're never fine alone. You like people too much for that."

He doesn't know how to answer that, how it's true and sitting alone at the bar is actually the worst way Paul Baker can imagine spending his night but he's pretty much dead set on being miserable.

Every muscle in Paul Baker's body has tensed in the few seconds Julian's been here, a prey animal gearing up to run for its life. Just the feeling of Julian brushing against his arm has Paul Baker feeling like he's about to puke—but in fairness, that probably would have happened anyway when liquor met an empty stomach. He hasn't had enough time to properly get drunk, to have this conversation in a way he won't remember in the morning. He—he isn't ready for this. Ill prepared for a conversation that never should happen.

"Oh, come on, Paul, you're not even going to talk to me?" Julian says with a laugh, his eyes too bright, voice too carefree, his everything too much. "Back home, I could never get you to shut up and now you're all quiet? Quit messing around."

"Just leave me alone," Paul Baker chokes out. His heart is thundering behind his ribcage, threatening to break every bone it has to in order to escape.

"You're being ridiculous."

"I'm ridiculous?" he echoes. Jesus, he had forgotten just how fucking audacious Julian can be sometimes. Turning up and acting as if Paul Baker should be ecstatic for the chance to be in his presence. If he had the withal to be offended, he'd be burning with it.

"Yes." Julian laughs, shaking his head with this half-fond glint in his eyes. "At least you haven't changed, Paul. That's nice to see."

Paul Baker swallows the venom creeping up his throat. "If I'm so ridiculous, then why are you still talking to me?"

"Because you're just so handsome, I couldn't resist," Julian throws back quickly, flashing a wide, toothy grin that flips Paul Baker's stomach.

He remembers when that smile still worked on him, when it drew him in inch by inch until Julian had taken so much space in his life that he couldn't fathom how he'd get it back. God, what an idiot he was. In the flashing lights, it looks only like a warning.

A giant neon sign telling him to run.

Paul Baker's gaze dances around again, desperately searching for someone that isn't already engaged to save him. The back of Anton's head sits in his vision for far too long as if he's screaming silently over the beating music for him to turn around, for him to know. Anton always just knows. He'd see this for what it is and come rescue Paul Baker like a knight in shining armour.

Anton tosses his head back in laughter—his hand on the shoulder of some guy, someone that isn't Paul Baker—

"Just go away, Julian," he mutters forlornly.

Shifting to lean more into Paul Baker's line of sight, Julian positions himself in a way that looks casual but is so forced that it's almost laughable—elbow on the bar, head tilted back to look at Paul Baker. "Why do you gotta be like that?" he demands, eyes narrowing into sharp lines. "I'm just trying to be nice since you decided to sulk here all night."

"No one's making you stay."

"No but I'm a decent guy so I did it anyway."

Paul Baker can't stop the snort before it hits him. Regret fills his gut instantly. Julian's exasperation turns quickly, souring into something Paul Baker recognises all too well.

Holding his breath, Paul Baker is halfway to apologising before Julian lets out a deep sigh, his jaw clenching and relaxing a few times before he settles.

"You won't even give me a chance," he says, far too calm.

Any second—it won't last. It never does. The waiting was always the worst part. Paul Baker hated being stuck in this liminal space, knowing that the yelling was coming, that he couldn't do anything to avoid it, but Julian just wouldn't put him out of his goddamn misery.

Maybe it's the alcohol hitting him, maybe it's the way he is all alone out here, no one coming to save him, maybe it's just the fact that Paul Baker has been too comfortable recently and it's long overdue. It's time to rip off the band-aid himself. Get it done with and then Paul Baker can just carry on with his life.

This is a nightmare he hand crafted himself. Paul Baker turns in his seat, pressing into the faint haze in his head for the courage—the stupidity, rather. "Why should I give you a chance?" he wonders, dropping his voice bored and thoughtless. "I don't owe you a damn thing."

Just fucking yell at him already. Paul Baker is tired of being scared every little thing will get him into trouble. Apparently he has to do everything himself.

And he can see it. Julian wants. So easily falling into old habits like they're still together, Julian has be fighting every instinct in his body to not completely scream at Paul Baker. Being in public never made him any nicer—maybe only quieter but still so scathing. Still bringing him to tears.

Before he answers, Julian flags down the bartender. With his body pointed away, he starts, "I have a feeling we're gonna be seeing more of each other, Paul." And his voice turns warm, a jagged thing scratching against the air. "Me and Samy are getting pretty close, after all—" as if he knows Samir enough like that to use the fond nickname "—so whatever fucking issue you have with me, you might want to get over it."

"Samir will see through your bullshit eventually. He's too smart for you," Paul Baker says, all his bravado dripping away like a leaky pipe.

There's a pause, the thumping music overtaking the moment. Julian smirks as the bartender approaches, running off an order that ends with, "And another of whatever he's having," as if that's some favour.

"If I'm so bad," Julian remarks, his lips contorted still, "then why haven't you already told him that?"

Again, that question. Why would Paul Baker wait? Coming from Anton, it felt like a gentle prod for information, trying to subtly push him into making the right choice which of course, is telling people.

But from Julian, it's an insult, like Paul Baker is admitting how much of a coward he really is without Julian needing to call him it first.

His throat closes. The bartender pours his shot first and Paul Baker downs it without hesitation.

"Uh, one more, thanks," Julian says, sharing an amused look with the guy. With him distracted, Julian closes in, his voice lowered. "I'll tell you why. Whatever you have to say about what we had, it makes you look bad, too, and you don't want that. You want your friends to think that Paul—sorry, Paul Baker is some kind of saint and you're terrified that I could change that."

If he could breathe, Paul Baker thinks he'd be sobbing. At least there's no air in his lungs to choke on. That's good.

As if he didn't say a thing wrong, Julian flashes the bartender a warm smile when he finishes the last of the drinks, thanking him all bright and cheerful. He shifts so easily between masks because there isn't an ounce of that person still there when he looks back to Paul Baker, nothing but a hungry wolf about to snap its jaw around Paul Baker's jugular.

Julian brings up a hand, thoughtlessly brushing it behind Paul Baker's neck as if to size him up, toying with the strands of hair. It was his favourite thing to do back in Canada, a hand on Paul Baker almost constantly, tracing nonsense shapes into the ticklish skin. Paul Baker wants to pull away. He tries but his body won't move.

Trapped under Julian's gaze, Paul Baker can only wait for the touch to stop.

There's this amused sort of understanding in Julian's expression. "I won't tell anyone if you won't," he says, voice sticky sweet like he isn't trying to get Paul Baker to sign his own death warrant.

"I—I didn't do anything—that's not—"

"So your friends know all about me, then?" Julian cuts in.

Even what little Paul Baker's told Anton, the way he has probably made some assumptions and is too kind to bring them up, isn't enough. In the three years he's been in New York, Paul Baker doesn't think he's told a single soul about Julian, happy to leave this man in the past and across the border.

The lack of response is all Julian needs to know. He was there. He knows what he put Paul Baker through and all Paul Baker has done tonight is prove how much it's still affecting him. No matter how far he goes, he always brings Julian with him.

But—but Paul Baker knows he isn't the one at fault. That's a fact. Not even Julian can twist that so can't Paul Baker even talk about it? If he's such a victim, then he should be perfectly able to tell his friends that. He wouldn't have any doubt about how they'll react. Why can't he just fucking say it?

"That's what I thought." Julian collects the drinks into his hands, sliding out of Paul Baker's space as if he was never there to begin with. "Do whatever you want, Paul, that's fine. Just stop blaming me for everything."

And he's gone.

Just—leaving, going back to the table with Paul Baker's friends, talking to them as if he didn't just cut Paul Baker down into pieces.

Paul Baker has to wonder whether Julian was ever really there, if anyone else saw this hallucination of all his most terrifying intrusive thoughts. All that is real is the burn of vodka down his throat. The bar around him fades into a buzz, hot and sticky, too much to take in and too little to feel like it's happening to him. He can't feel the tips of his fingers or his jaw as he works through paying off his tab or the muscles in his legs as he marches straight out the exit. No part of his body is working. Nothing stable. Just some mismatched combination of pieces forced to pretend like they make up a functional being.

Even in the stark clap of cold night air, Paul Baker is none the more concrete. Fuzzy around the edges.

Pushing forward on pure muscle memory, Paul Baker somehow orders a Lyft, gets in and gets home without a single clear thought cresting over this foggy feeling. How he even gets one foot in front of the other is beyond him.

It's only when he meets an empty house does he remember anything important—it hangs in the aftermath of all five of them getting ready, outfits and shoes abandoned, a loaf of bread sitting out on the table because Samir insisted on needing to line their stomachs, the general sense that a hurricane run through here a few hours ago. Paul Baker had just stood to the side and watched, vaguely entertained enough to almost forget where they were going.

Quickly, he shoots off a text to the group chat to let them know he's gone home. He doesn't want anyone worrying when they can't find him later on. No one reads it just yet, just Paul Baker alone in the chat wishing for someone to see his absence like a gaping wound.

Wait—it's better, actually, that he's left on delivered. It means they're all still having fun.

If anything, wanting someone to see him gone is selfish. Always too wrapped up in his own bullshit, Paul Baker should be glad that the removal of his presence hasn't changed a thing.

This is fine.

This is good.

And just to prove how fine it all is to this audience of his own hazy mind, Paul Baker cleans up the mess the others made as the alcohol fully hits. He throws in a load of laundry undeniably drunk. He washes the handful of dishes left in the sink unsure whether he'll remember this in the morning but at least it'll be done.

His vision blurs as he moves, like a smear on the windshield or maybe it's the world lagging behind him, but Paul Baker finds himself dropping unceremoniously onto the couch laid out in the small backyard. It's too small to lay down fully, so his legs dangle over the armrest, swinging against the wicker to drum a lazy beat. Most days, it's too cold to spend much time out here, and it'll be a while before summer hits and makes it the place to be, but Paul Baker is hot all over. His neck burns with a phantom touch and the chill of a dark night is actually rather calming.

Paul Baker lays there, hand beneath his head, staring up at the clouded sky with unblinking eyes. For a long while, he just… stays. He knows that he's drunk, is incredibly grateful for it because fuck feeling like this sober, and he could keep the buzz going with some beer in the fridge but being here is too nice to give up.

All the wispy energy in his body simmers under his skin.

This is the type of night where Baker would be seeing the sunrise, still drinking, still unhinged. He could call up Roach right now and find himself the sober one if he really wanted to.

Laying there, unmoving, not drinking, remembering a whole year of his life that he once had forgotten, Paul Baker can't get himself to do anything but breathe. And he isn't doing a particularly good job at that either.

Forgetting Julian was once a skill Paul Baker was an expert at. He seems to have lost it recently.

It's difficult here, to tell how much time passes, whether it even is. The only sense he has is his buzz fading in small inches, a night he wants no part in ebbing back into reach. But it has to have been a while before the back door swings open, letting all the warm light trickle out in the backyard.

Clinging to the door, Samir calls over his shoulder, "Found him! The hell are you doing out here?" He stumbles a little, footing unsteady, and his voice is a little too loud for the last hour. "Come inside, dummy. You'll freeze!"

Paul Baker sits up, his feet meeting the paved ground. "Have a good night?" he asks, giving a small smile at his friend barely keeping himself upright.

Behind him, there's enough voices coming from the house that screams how drunk they all are. Good. Paul Baker might feel a tightness in his chest but he really is glad that he didn't affect any of their nights. The last thing he needs is anybody asking what made him leave.

Samir nods, a lopsided grin on his lips. "We're ordering Taco Bell if you want anything."

"Wow, I'm surprised Issa waited till now. Normally she has it waiting for her when she gets home," Paul Baker says.

"She almost did. Anton made her wait in case you wanted something."

Paul Baker is nowhere near drunk enough for this. He should've ordered another shot before he left. Should be passed out in bed to avoid all these rumbling things in his chest.

"So?" Samir asks, clearly wanting to go inside.

Looking at Samir with the ray of orange light at his back, Paul Baker needs a long moment before he can decide. Sitting and listening to the wave of chatter pooling from inside, he relaxes when it's only the voices that belong here. Not a single octave out of place.

Wherever he's gone, at least Julian isn't still ruining Paul Baker's night.

"Yeah. I'm coming," he answers finally. Getting up is a bit of a struggle, he finds, but he manages against the weight trying to push him back down.

Samir doesn't budge until Paul Baker is climbing up the steps, his lips curled in a perpetual smile. From it alone, Paul Baker could live in its warmth but he's brought into an entire house buzzing and brightening at his arrival.

He winds up curled in the armchair while the others—minus Billie, who's busy upstairs with her new guy friend—pack onto the couch, eating Taco Bell they'll regret in the morning and regaling Paul Baker with everything he missed after he left.

Knowing he's the most sober on here, Paul Baker feels like it's his responsibility to make sure everyone's taken care of as the night winds down. Samir is easy to handle, muttering something about say goodnight to Carly only to fall asleep in seconds of laying down. Issa is rooming with Anton for the night, and they tumble towards bed in a giggling fit, calling down to Paul Baker lingering in the living room before they go.

Once again left in a quiet house, Paul Baker has that itch again.

Nothing needs to be done, not even a scrap of take-out still left out for him to clean up. Paul Baker doesn't need to do anything.

But he's still drunk and still terrified so he double checks and triple checks he's done everything he possibly could before finally, finally climbing into bed beside a snoring Samir. First, of course, putting a glass of water and two Advil on Samir's nightstand for him to take in the morning.

Still good. Still telling himself that Julian was wrong.

In here, this is the delicate space Paul Baker needs to remain, and he can stay here as long as he has to.

—

Paul Baker considers things to be officially Bad somewhere around the time Anton all but corners him on the staircase and says very plainly, "I miss you."

"Wha—what?" Even when Paul Baker plays it over in his head again, it sounds—insane. Ridiculous. Like a lie. "I'm right here," he says.

Anton is a step above him, wrapped up in a cozy cardigan, and his glasses perched up on his nose that makes him look too adorable for such a strange moment. Paul Baker looks around him, wondering if he tries to push past, would Anton try to block him or let him go? Does Paul Baker even have it in him to push like that. His body is all hollow bones and frail limbs, like he could fall apart in a ghost of a breeze.

"Physically, sure," Anton continues, a stiffness in his tone that Paul Baker doesn't know if he's ever heard before, "when you aren't working your million jobs—"

"Can't be your sugar daddy if I'm broke." Paul Baker didn't even remember that comment until right now and it sits in his mouth oddly, clumping syllables collecting on his tongue in the voice of someone else.

Anton tilts his head, just barely smiling enough for it to be called one. "Right, of course, and I can't wait for that, but you're hardly home and when you are, it's just—" Anton sighs, the sharp line of his jaw flexing for a moment. "I don't know. I feel like we haven't hung out in forever. I miss you."

"Oh, I—I'm sorry. I didn't—"

"Obviously, it's not your fault, though," Anton rushes to say, holding up his hands. "It's not anyone's fault. But I miss you, Paul Baker."

And yeah, it's finally hit. Paul Baker has fallen so fast that the descent has him wind burned, arms and legs wiping around in the air gracelessly, falling for so long that he forgot there would ever be a ground rushing to meet him. The bottom of this empty abyss has been waiting for him this whole time.

Paul Baker should've seen it coming.

His rock bottom is staring him in the face, a soft beautiful neediness trying to reach for him and finding the empty space Paul Baker used to occupy. He was just there. He was, he swears he hasn't gone that far away. Paul Baker doesn't want to have gone from Anton. He just—

He just did anyway and never noticed it.

"I'm—" Paul Baker stops himself before he can apologise again because Anton's brow raises in a rather unimpressed manner. "Okay, so, uh—we should doing something, then. Right?"

"I'm not trying to guilt you into spending time with me."

"Of course not. You—you're right," Paul Baker admits, feeling how deeply correct Anton has been in his assessment in the same instant like he's feeling every bone splinter apart in his body from the impact. He's made Anton worry and in his best attempt to replicate the person he's longing for, Paul Baker flashes a tender grin and leans against the railing. "I'm not doing anything now if you're not."

Anton looks hesitant. "Right now?"

Paul Baker nods. "Why not? Let's fix the problem now." Fix it fix the problem and fix it and make it better before anyone gets mad.

The thought of spending another second thinking how Anton misses him when Paul Baker hasn't gone anywhere is torturous. A punishment so raw and cruel that not even Paul Baker thinks he deserves it—the crime he committed far below how painful it is knowing that Anton wants him when he isn't around. That Paul Baker is failing him now.

Bad doesn't even begin to cover it. Bad was so long ago, when he started laying rigid in bed so not to disturb Samir or the pathological need to take every mundane burden from his friends' shoulders or the instant he had to breathe the same air as Julian after years.

That was bad.

This is apocalyptic.

Paul Baker has crossed into territory never mapped out before, standing in unmarked ground, standing on this staircase with the gut churning anxiety of a man the night before war.

"Okay, yeah, let's do it," Anton says, beaming down at Paul Baker as if he said the most wonderful thing.

Fixing things with Anton isn't so hard, he thinks. The punishment and the fix still gets him time with Anton and that's always a marvellous thing.

"Wanna get lunch?" Paul Baker asks.

Anton smiles in that way he always does, like the heavens are opening up and blessing only Paul Baker with this stream of pure sunlight, and Paul Baker's hand twitches with this sudden need to wrap itself around Anton's shoulder, to squeeze the firm muscle and jostle him and just be in close contact. And it wouldn't be strange—everyone in this house is tactile and cuddly and Paul Baker has never found himself questioning the natural urge he has with grabbing Anton's shoulder. So why—

Why does he fight it this time?

Hiding the sudden jerk by shoving his traitorous hand into the pocket of his jacket, Paul Baker pretends like he hears what Anton says afterwards, agreeing with it out of instinct. Which is how he ends up getting dumplings with Anton, leaning over on the other side of the booth and Anton's feet bumping against his under the table.

Paul Baker doesn't really understand it, either, but he tucks his feet back to keep them out of Anton's space.

"You doing okay, PB?" Anton asks, a shallow furrow to his brow that Paul Baker wants to smooth out.

But that would require putting into words this gaping wound in Paul Baker's chest that he's been desperately trying to fill in for years now. To name it would make it undeniable. Something that actually matters to him, that makes him less than this easily tamed stray that people keep taking in. Just loveable enough that he's always given a home eventually because he's so wonderfully house trained. Paul Baker forces a smile, knowing it's one of his weaker ones because Anton's hand is carefully laid out on the table as if he's halfway to reaching out but wants Paul Baker to be the one to approach first.

Keeping that shaking hidden, downward ears and tail tucked between his legs, Paul Baker says easily, "I'm good."

There's not a trace that Anton believes him but before he can press the topic any further, the waitress brings over their bamboo steamers. The moment is over. Paul Baker is shoving dumplings into his mouth long before Anton picks up his chopsticks.

Another handful of minutes Paul Baker is still disappearing in all the ways he wants to.

—

He never quite understands it—why he's trying so hard to stay out of reach, both metaphorically and physically.

Watching the gentle brushes and fully body hugs and kisses and just the ability to exist close to another person that is still normal in their group makes Paul Baker a little ill. The fact that he can't stand the closeness, the fact that he wants it so bad the enormity of his desire feels monstrous, the fact that he feels the loneliness he only found at night hitting him in the middle of the day seeing Billie sit in Issa's lap despite the abundance of chairs—

Paul Baker carries on like nothing is different, happy to exist on the sidelines so long as he still exists.

—

Bad feels like an understatement.

This is more than bad but Paul Baker can't stop it.

His hands won't let him stay still. His mind won't let him enjoy a moment of peace. He needs to move or else he's flooded with the memories of Julian, and that just won't do.

—

They come anyway. Nothing Paul Baker does is ever good enough. Dreams and loud noises and the wrong tone from someone that's never acted like that a day in their life and Paul Baker is there again. Trapped thinking about the life he left behind him. Stuck waiting for it to begin again.

It's always going to—isn't that the thing? Paul Baker thinks that at any point now, it'll start up. Something will change in the people he's surrounded himself with and they'll become some monster that screams at him and berates him and hates him and—

Because isn't that what Julian did? One day, Paul Baker woke up and realised Julian wasn't the same person as when they met. If he can change, then so can anyone else.

If Paul Baker isn't perfect, anyone can change on him.

So he won't give them any reason to. Anton and Issa and Billie and Samir will never need to yell at him. Who cares if things are bad? This is working.

—

Even if what drives him here is pathological, it isn't all that terrible. Standing at the sink, music blasting through his headphones, the repeated motions of washing dishes can be mediative actually. There's nothing to really think about here. For a few minutes, Paul Baker can just listen to the music and zone out.

And well, since it was so nice to get, once the sink is draining, he picks up a dish towel and sets out the same routine of drying everything.

Thoughtless and actually at peace, Paul Baker likes it here. It feels safer than most places do these days. Nothing can hurt him here.

A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye catches his attention and Paul Baker nearly jumps when he turns. His hand flies up to pull out his headphones, staring with wide eyes at everyone lined up in a row. Almost instinctively, Paul Baker darts his attention over to Anton, the only one whose face isn't screaming with anxiety. It knocks him a bit off balance, actually, because while Issa, Billie, and Samir are looking at him like they're about to tell him his dog had to be put down, Anton looks like he was the one that did the act.

"Hey, guys," Paul Baker says slowly, forcing himself to look away from Anton.

"We wanted to talk to you about something," Billie rushes through, like she needs to get the words out before they get stuck. She's wringing her hands together, twisting fingers into a jumbled heap, and she glances at the others for support. "It's just something little we hoped you'd give some—clarification on."

Paul Baker gives a shallow nod. He'd have no reason not to believe her but nothing little would bring the whole house pressing into the kitchen, swapping unsure looks, throwing ones at him like they're trying to catch him with the smallest twitch.

He can't help that feeling again, like he's in trouble, like somebody's about to start shouting and he needs to do anything he can to minimise the damage.

It takes everything in him to keep his expression open and guiltless. Paul Baker just says, "Okay," when no one else decides to speak and he goes back to drying the dishes with his headphones tucked into his shirt. The last plate clatters slightly as he places it away, the hinges of the cabinet stubbornly squeak as it shuts, and still no one has said anything. Paul Baker turns back to his friends, spreading a warm, genial smile onto his face like someone that has nothing to hide. "Should I start or…"

Paul Baker is the only one that laughs, a breathy, airless thing that almost echoes in the stillness of the house.

They're all just—looking at him. Oh fuck, did he do something wrong? Do they actually want him to start, want him to have the opportunity to own up to whatever mistake he made, to prove that he genuinely cares? Let him hang himself first so they don't have to wrap the noose around his neck, clean hands and all. His heart stutters a little in his chest.

Halfway to grabbing a mug to dry, Paul Baker lets his hand drop instead.

Okay. This is—this is okay.

Somewhere along the way, he's fucked up but if Paul Baker cared, he'd already know. He would have already done something to make up for it. It couldn't have been that bad if he isn't aware of it, right?

But if this is the last straw, the final domino tipped after a string of annoyances and mistakes, if everything he's done hasn't preemptively made up for any misstep, this might be it. This could be—he'd rather someone yell than this quiet euthanasia disguised as kindness—they just want to talk but when has talking ever gone well—can't he still fix this—

"Okay, Jesus, I'll do it!" Anton cries, snapping the silence in half with a glare sweeping over the others but before it reaches Paul Baker and before the harshness breaks something more in him, Anton's gaze softens impossibly.

And Paul Baker can pull in just enough breath to say, "Do what?" without his voice breaking. He's trying to find a scrap of mercy in anyone's eyes and finds himself drawn right back to Anton. "Are you guys mad at me?"

Can someone just tell him? Problems in this house typically resolve without much fight, dramatics, sure, but they all have a flair for it so even a conversation about what's for dinner can look like a Shakespearean tragedy. This is so much more subdued than normal. Is that telling that it's worse than normal? Whatever it is, he will fix it, he'll fix the damage he's caused and everything can go back to that warm Goldilocks zone where he gets to be friends with the coolest people he's ever met and hang out with them everyday, and if all he has to do in return is everything, then that's a fine trade.

Works out just fine for Paul Baker. He's already there.

"What? No. No one's mad," Issa says quickly, then, shooting him an accusatory look, she asks, "Why? Should we be mad at you?"

"No?"

"Wow, way to not be helpful, Iss," Anton chides, shooting her a dirty look. She only raises her hands in surrender, making him sigh heavily. "Great, now he's got that kicked puppy look on him. We agreed we'd be gentle in this, guys."

Samir leans in around Billie. "Is talking about him like he's not here still being gentle?" he wonders in a levelled voice, though his gaze never actually leaves Paul Baker's face. It looks like he can hear the way Paul Baker's heart is starting to crack against the back of his ribs, how hollow it sounds because anything of substance has trickled out of him, pooling at his feet in a puddle of shame and panic.

"Of course it isn't," Billie says.

"Well maybe he didn't hear anything," Issa throws.

"He's standing right there."

"What if we whisper?"

Swallowing the lump forming in his throat, Paul Baker spreads his attention across them all. Not just the way Billie lips have disappeared into a thin line or how Samir keeps shifting his weight onto either foot, how Issa has that serious look on her face like when they broke up. But all of them. All at once. Stood shoulder to shoulder like they're spilling over each other to be here with that thoughtless affection they throw around, the four of them together like this feels less like his friends wanting to talk to him and more like the jury deciding whether he'll get the chair.

Paul Baker can't help it—the way they've clearly discussed this, discussed him prior to today, they've laid out the plan of attack well enough to need the conscious decision be gentle, even if it's already fallen apart because no one can factor in Paul Baker's ability to make things worse. It's them against him. No matter how hard he tries, he was still the last one absorbed into the group, begrudgingly brought into the house like a dog only allowed in because it was storming outside. These guys have a history together and Paul Baker doesn't even have his relationship with Issa to justify his presence.

Doing the dishes and the laundry and making sure the fridge is always stocked up doesn't make up for the years he doesn't have with them. This was always going to happen.

"Can we start over?" Billie asks with a deprecating smile and it takes Paul Baker a moment to realise she's asking him.

"Take your time," he mutters, his throat tight and dry.

Paul Baker lets them turn around, clumping into a tight circle with their backs to him, heads tucked together, whispering things he can't make out beyond the frantic tone to their voices. Issa did say they aren't mad at him but it's really difficult to believe that when they're acting like this.

Whatever this is.

Restless without anything to do, Paul Baker reaches for the mug he was about to dry. It's almost soothing running the dish towel over the bottom, curving it inside and spinning it around. A motion he's repeated hundreds of times between Vladi's and the bar. He doesn't have to think to dry a cup. He can't mess that up. Paul Baker makes sure to place it towards the front of the cupboard as he puts it away. Anton likes this one, says the shape of it is nice to hold, and he's going to be using it in the morning anyway. It's his Friday mug. Makes it feel like a celebration.

By the time he's reaching back for another cup, the others have seemingly settled the dispute and are facing him again, slightly more united than they were before. As long as they're on the same page about slowly torturing him, then great. He'd hate to be the cause of any problems—any more problems.

Paul Baker tries not to hold himself like he's waiting to hear the verdict. Though it hurts, because it hurts, he gives them his full attention, throwing the towel over his shoulder.

Anton clears his throat, still the designated bearer of this burden. "We wanted to talk to you about your old friend Julian," he says, so diplomatically that Paul Baker is distracted for a moment by the tone.

"J—Julian?" Paul Baker asks as if he's never heard the name before. God, if only. If only it was new and strange to him, if only it didn't sit heavy and curled in his mouth. Out of everything, he wasn't expecting that. His hands move without his accord, reaching onto the first thing he can to have something to do. He grabs a wine glass Samir used to drink chocolate milk this morning. It normally does better after air drying for while but he needs to get this done but the towel is too damp itself and it's just smearing the droplets of soapy water around. It needs to be dry. He needs to finish this. "What—what, uh, about him?"

"Okay, why don't we step away from the dishes for a minute?" Anton says in that tone where he doesn't want to directly tell someone what to do but totally wants them to listen to him anyway. "They can wait for a minute. It's my turn anyway and this is important."

"I thought it was little."

"Little and important. Both. So, uh, let's put down the glass."

"It's fine. I'm listening. I can multi-task." Paul Baker sends Anton a smile that flies too close to being lying that it makes him feel a little ill. It's all technically true but—he can't put it down and he doesn't know how to even try. He needs something to do with his hands, something physical that doesn't crest over the edge of being distracting so that he doesn't feel like he's floating away from his body.

There's already a listless feeling starting in his chest. What could they possibly want to know about Julian?

"Right, okay, then." When Paul Baker risks a glance, there's the same kind of smile on Anton's face—strained at the corners and too painted on to be genuine. It's strange. Usually Anton's better at this. He's always given Paul Baker the impression that this comes naturally to him—the whole talking to people thing. Anton can put anybody at ease within seconds of meeting them, so disarming and charismatic that on any other person would feel like deception but on him, it's just Anton. "So, the whole thing between you two, back in Canada, what did that look like?"

"I don't—" Paul Baker laughs a little, spinning the glass but it won't fucking dry.

"Samir, can you, please?" Anton mutters, stepping back a little to make Samir more pronounced.

"Did you and Julian use to date—is what we're trying to ask," Samir says plainly, letting his words land like landmines on the kitchen floor.

Again, Paul Baker can only laugh because what. Caught so wholly off guard his mind only has the room to bark a dry laugh at the sheer absurdity of it, he chokes out, "Did we—" and another bitter laugh cuts him off. It doesn't even bubble in his chest, falling out more like he's gasping for air. Why do they want to know? Why? What could—"I already told you guys we were friends," he manages to get out. The glass isn't fucking drying.

"Right but"—Samir's eyes dart over to Issa's. And why are they in sync now? It's practised all of a sudden. Is this what they've been doing the whole time Paul Baker has been down here? Locked up in someone's room discussing strategy while he's been doing chores that aren't even his—"he's kinda saying something different now."

Like that, all of the air is punched straight of Paul Baker's lungs. The world stops spinning, grinding to a halt in the time it takes him to blink. Slow, with all the delicateness of disarming a bomb, he says a quiet little, "Is he?"

"Yeah," Samir replies like he's apologising. "He told me you guys actually dated all through your senior year of college—sorry, university."

"And it's totally fine if you did," Billie tacks on quickly. Paul Baker moves his gaze onto her, finding that same pinch of unrestrained worry that drowning everyone else out. "Like we don't care at all, no big deal, but—I think we're just a little confused."

"Oh. Right." Paul Baker blinks, forcing slow breaths into his chest. "About what?"

The cup twirls. It has to be dry now. Pure friction should have evaporated any remaining water. He can put it away now. Put it down now. Step away now. It twirls.

Issa, uncharacteristically restrained, answers, "About who's telling the truth."

He hates when she's subdued like this, when something is so serious that even Issa cuts away all the frill and silliness, when she's just focused on what's in front of her. It's only when it matters and she locks in hard. Why—why does this have to matter? Who cares if he and Julian were anything? It's not like anyone here even knew he existed more than two months ago. And anyway, they aren't together anymore, haven't been in a long ass time, so fucking long that Paul Baker should be over it by now.

If someone asked him a while ago, he would've said he was.

But he's here, barely even boxed in but it feels like he's trapped, and all he really hears from that is, "You don't trust me?" and his eyes go wide, a sudden prickling that leaves him trying very hard not to cry.

"Of course we trust you," Anton says without even a second to breathe. "A thousand percent—" Paul Baker hears it coming—"but that's why we're asking. It's just weird, right, hearing two different stories but we knew if we came to you, then you'd tell us the truth."

"Exactly," Samir adds on. "That's the only reason I didn't come straight to you 'cause like, the idea of Paul Baker lying about something didn't feel right."

What the fuck does that mean?

Paul Baker's mouth hangs halfway open and he thinks it might actually be something real and honest that's creeping up his throat like everyone expects from him. Surely he can tell them. They trust him to tell the truth and even if he messed up a little by keeping it a secret, they can't then get mad at the actual truth. Right? They seem happy enough to accept Julian as a liar so they'll accept it when Paul Baker tells them that he was worse.

As scared as he is, and god fucking damn it, he is terrified, something in Paul Baker can acknowledge that these guys have been nothing but accommodating and welcoming. They have been upfront with him, it's only fair to return the decency.

They'd believe him.

"It's not the only thing Julian's been saying about you," Issa spits out.

Paul Baker hears a glass shattering.

He—

He's—

A flurry of voices blur in a rush of, "Gentle, Iss," and, "He deserves to know!" and someone panicked, "I'll get the broom," but they all fade into a single low buzzing sound, pulsing like blood in his ears because Julian's talking about him again.

Even now even here even so fucking far from home even safe—

It hits him, then, that the glass has slipped from his hand, that it's now a broken pile at his feet.

His body reacts without thought, falling to his knees with a faint thud. All he knows is that he messed up and he has to fix it before anyone really gets mad, so his hands, the shaking, pleading, disastrous things, reach for the shards of jagged glass tossed across the floor. Just clean it up. If he gets it done quick enough, it'll be okay.

"No, Paul Baker, stop. Samir's getting the broom."

He doesn't know who says it but there's an edge to their voice that he can't stand.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I've got it." He piles the pieces into the palm of his left hand, stacking clinking glass together but his vision keeps blurring and his hand shakes and he can't see the pieces quite right. He reaches blindly, just needing to get it, but he goes too far in his frenzy. As he pulls back, something sharp bites across the soft skin of his palm. He hisses in a breath, grabbing what struck him. It doesn't matter that his hand is throbbing now. There's still a mess. "Shit, I'll clean it up. Don't worry. I'll fix it. I'm sorry."

"Hey, slow down. Everything's okay. Paul Baker, please, can you stop for a second?"

He can feel the moving of bodies around him, touches coming towards him that his muscles jerk away from. He needs to get rid of the glass before anyone hurts themself on it. Really, he should wrap it up in newspaper or something so that the garbageman doesn't get hurt either, but he can't remember if they have any laying around, and he can't see any, and—screw it. The damp dish towel he was just using holds the shards enough, protecting the pointed edges as he wraps it up in a bundle.

Already accepting that he'll buy the house a whole new set to make up for it, Paul Baker deposits the clinking glass into the trash can.

"I found the—oh, fuck, what happened?"

But, shit, he's been meaning to take the trash out all day. It's getting too full and if he doesn't, then someone else will have to, and if someone else does it then he isn't doing what he's supposed to. Then what good is he? Then why would anyone want him? "It's okay. I've got it."

Ties the bag off. Starts to head for the back door to take it out. Does not stop to a single of the protesting voices that fall him.

"Where are you going?"

"Bro, come back!"

"What's wrong with him?"

"Just let him do what he needs to do."

The crisp night air hits him across the face. That throbbing in his hand hasn't relented yet, the only thing he can really feel, just that thrumming, just that shallow ache. Once he's dealt with the trash bag, Paul Baker presses his other hand against it but he doesn't look down at it. Can't. Maybe then it'll be real if he does.

For now, though, there are still dishes that need to be put away and he just threw out a perfectly good dish towel. Maybe with his next paycheck he can splurge a little, go to Bed Bath and Beyond for a really nice set, repay a portion of everything he owes to the house. Yeah. Okay. He can do that. Finish the dishes and be unobtrusive in Samir's bed until he can make it right.

That's good. He can still be good.

In the same breath that Paul Baker reenters the kitchen, all four sets of eyes leap onto him, and all four voices crash over each other so deafening that he can't make out a single one.

Oh crap. Did he leave some glass on the floor? What if someone stood on it?

Paul Baker makes for the place he was standing in at the sink, eyes narrowed trying to spot any refraction of light that would reveal a broken shard he missed, but Issa snatches that aching hand before he can pass by and starts to drag him towards the kitchen island.

It hurts but he thinks it might be for more than the throbbing. "Iss—"

"Shut up, Paul Baker."

His mouth snaps shut.

Issa sighs. "With love, of course, but you're bleeding. Come here."

It's hard to deny her—all but impossible when she's physically forcing him into place, and his confusion doesn't even have time to take root because the offending hand is smacked down onto the wooden top.

His palm sits opens, smeared in crimson that leaks from a thin cut.

Oh.

Seeing it makes him understand the rush of panic circling around the kitchen.

When did that—

"Do we have a first aid kit?" Billie asks, her head ducked into the cabinets beneath the sink.

"Upstairs bathroom," Paul Baker answers automatically, earning a series of startled looks. He shrugs, trying to pull his hand out of Issa's grasp but she's got him stuck. Damn, she's strong. "It's behind the bleach."

Without a word, Billie nods and rushes to grab it.

Suddenly, Anton presses into Paul Baker's other side, pressing another perfectly good towel into the curve of his palm. Paul Baker grimaces at the contact. The white material is quickly stained a sticky red. At this point, Paul Baker just needs to order everything Bed Bath has to leave a lasting supply even after he's gone. Samir's family will be passing them down for generations.

"Sorry but it'll help with the bleeding," Anton says and even though Paul Baker can't think much beyond the flaring beats of pain, he trusts that Anton is right.

"Do I need to call an ambulance?" Samir asks, his nervous energy like a tidal wave from the other side, pacing tight circuits of only a few steps back and forth like he can't bring himself to go all that far away.

"No," Paul Baker says in the same moment Anton answers, "We'll see."

"It's not that bad," he insists. God, the idea of needing an ambulance called, a night spent in the emergency room and a bill he'll pay off in a few years, it's all so humiliating. He's done enough damage for one day. Spare him from any more.

If Issa would just let go, then Paul Baker could hide out in the bathroom and handle it himself. He can clean blood and bandage his own hand perfectly fine, and then he can fucking finally finish with the last of the chores, and he wouldn't have to handle everyone looking at him like this poor little hurt puppy they feel sorry for.

Anton hums disapprovingly. He's standing so fucking close the warmth of his body is melting the frigid corners of Paul Baker's. "I'll be the judge of that," he says. He looks up as Billie enters with a small red pack in her hands, taking it from her. "Thank you, my love. Okay, let's see what we're working with."

He looks at Paul Baker for a beat, silently asking for permission.

Paul Baker wants to run away like it's all he's ever known how to do. He nods.

Slowly, Anton peels back the dish towel. The cut stings when it's greeted by the open air, Paul Baker biting his tongue to keep the wince from showing on his face, but no blood rushes out from it which seems like a good sign.

"Hand me a wet towel—a clean one," Anton instructs, though he doesn't look up from Paul Baker's hand for anyone in particular.

Needing some way to be useful, Samir practically sprints to the sink to oblige.

"This—this is overkill, guys. I'm fine," Paul Baker tries to say but nobody's listening to him. "It's just a little cut. It was my fault, anyway."

No one made him drop the glass. No one dragged his hand against the broken piece. This doesn't need to become a group project because Paul Baker was too stupid to realise picking up broken glass with his bare hands was a bad idea.

"Here." Samir hands the slightly damped dish towel over.

With all the gentleness that only Anton can possess, like the weight of his hand is both featherlight and firm, he drags it across Paul Baker's hand, swiftly clearing away the worst of the smudged blood. Issa is still prying his hand open, his fingers caught in her grip though he isn't trying to get away anymore. The two of them are each peering into the wound with Billie's phone's flashlight illuminating it.

"Good news," Anton says, his gaze bouncing up to Paul Baker, the soft ease in his voice soothing the anxious thought of having to pay a medical bill he can't afford, like the stretch of a warm blanket thrown across a freezing body, "you don't need stitches."

Paul Baker swallows tightly, suddenly unsure of himself without the urge to run away. "How do you know?" His hand is still hurting but Anton continues to wipe away the blood. Even now, Paul Baker can't really remember the pain of cutting his hand open, only knowing it when Anton has to draw it out to clean him up.

A small smirk curves Anton's lips up. "Please. I've been watching Grey's Anatomy since I was fourteen. I could've gone to med school if I wanted to."

"I've never seen it," Paul Baker mutters.

"Oh, you'll love it," Issa says. "And even if you don't, by the time we get to like, season fifteen, Stockholm Syndrome will have kicked in and you won't be able to stop."

"There's fifteen seasons?"

Anton snickers. "Oh, Paul Baker, you are in for a treat." He shifts his attention for a moment, carding through the little first aid kit that looks like hasn't been touched in a solid decade until he pulls out a small spray bottle. Looking up at Paul Baker and his cautious gaze, Anton says, "It'll clean the cut since you touched all that gross garbage with it but it's gonna hurt."

He blinks. "Okay. I trust you."

Briefly, Anton looks like he's the one in pain. Did Paul Baker say something wrong? It's likely considering how well this night has gone. Everything he's done so far has been wrong. They—his friends were trying to talk to him about something serious—serious enough to have them so locked in and careful, and Paul Baker ruined it, made it all about him instead.

Holding Paul Baker's gaze, Anton brings the bottle just above the cut. "On three?" he says and doesn't blink until Paul Baker nods. "One. Two—and there's twenty-three seasons, by the way, three."

His entire hand is set alight. It's worse than than anything else he's felt before. Someone kicking him in the balls would be enjoyable compared to this. If it wasn't for Issa still holding him down, Paul Baker would have torn himself away. His body wants to run. His mind wants to hide. He wants this to be over and for everyone to forget but a house wide mind wipe doesn't feel like it'll work.

Breathless with constricting lungs, forcing it out from unwilling lips, Paul Baker coughs, "What did he say?"

The pain recedes just enough that he knows no one has answered. They're all still looking at him with these cautious looks, like he can't be trusted with the response, like his other hand will split apart if they dare to give it to him.

"What did Julian say about me?" Paul Baker asks, firmer, breaking his voice down to something flat and unimpressed.

He has to know. It's important to know just what his friends have heard. If he doesn't get it now, he'll send himself crashing out thinking over all the things Julian could have told them.

"It doesn't matter," Samir states, his hands fiddling with the bloodstained rag that Paul Baker should be setting to soak or else the spots will take.

"Tell me."

"It doesn't matter because we know it's all complete bullshit," Issa says, her touch softening enough that Paul Baker could pull back if he really wanted to. He isn't held down so much anymore.

He doesn't move.

All he can do is stare down at his own wound as Anton smears some sort of cream over it and wonder if Julian ever would have treated him with this much tenderness and care. "You don't know that," he mutters if only for the sake of it. They don't know. They don't know anything. As far as they're aware, everything from Julian's mouth is the God's honest truth. For all they know—

"We know you," Billie says.

Paul Baker still can't look up. They know him. He has wanted just that his entire life, but having it put so blunt and unadorned in his hands makes it feel like a lie, like they're just telling him what he needs to hear because he's just splintered apart in front of him.

"The things he said," Billie continues, "can't be true because we know who you are."

His jaw clenches, tight enough that his molars grind together but even that is not enough to stop him from breathlessly claiming, "He does that."

He thinks the pain has gone from his hand to his head. Maybe Paul Baker never learns his lessons and somehow still clings to that naive hope that someone, anyone, will believe him. Maybe he's just helpless enough to try again with this bunch of people he has only ever been a burden to and they have loved him all the same.

"Does what?" Anton asks idly, saving his attention on cleaning every little wisp of blood, even moving onto the streak of red across Paul Baker's left thumb from holding the wound.

A breath punches its way into his lungs. Paul Baker wants with everything he has to think that he's finally found the magical people who will trust his word over Julian's. But when has he ever been so lucky? When has that respite ever been granted to him?

And yet—

He tries. It's the least he owes these guys. He can only try.

"He twists things," Paul Baker says with a harrowed gasp. He stares down at the ground, finding the grout an easier thing to look at than his friends. Are they still that? Will they still be after they know all the things he's kept from them? "He makes me the bad guy. Makes everything seem worse than it was but it's still technically true so I can't just say he's lying and then it makes me look like a piece of shit. And he'd tell people all these things and they'd hate me and I wouldn't know why and there was nothing I could do."

A staggered inhale jumps into his lungs, the strength to pull away finally sneaking into his arm. He pulls away from Issa, from Anton, cradling the injured hand to his chest, backing up from them.

He looks at these people—his friends, his family, at the home he has built for himself and realises that he can't keep it forever. Things end. He left a whole world behind in Canada so he knows how it feels to walk away from something.

But this?

Them?

Paul Baker can barely stomach the thought of having to leave them.

Fuck, Paul Baker likes his friends so fucking much, it's going to explode out of his chest. He's loved every second of living in this house. Of hugging them and washing their dishes so they don't have and being there when they need him. Even if now it's turned into a scared desire to be useful and needed, it is still something pure and real. He fucking loves these guys. How could he ever breathe without them?

"Please don't hate me," he spits out, looking at them all. He is begging them and he doesn't even care how pathetic he must look. Just please—please don't, please let him—"I can explain, I swear. Whatever he said, I promise it wasn't like that."

"We know. We know," Anton says and though it sounds forgiving and kind, he still doesn't fully get it. "Paul Baker, we believe you. No one's mad. Just take a deep breath, okay?"

"No, you don't. It's not true! Nothing he says is. You can't hate me, please, okay. Anything he said—anything, I swear that's not what really happened. I—I can prove it. Tell me what he said and I can prove it—let me prove it. Please."

His hand hurts and he thinks it might be bleeding again because something feels wet—he just doesn't know where. Can't feel his fingers or his legs or spine. Can't feel anything at all. He just needs them to tell him. If he sets everything right and straight then it'll all be fine again. Fix it.

Already too much of a mess, Paul needs to fix this.

"No," Samir says firmly.

No. Nonononononono. This is it. Because he lied to them. Because he needed a visa and because he hid his other friends and because he was never really wanted here in the first place.

A gasp of air breaks halfway down.

"No, we're not letting you prove it," Samir continues, "because there's nothing to prove. If you say it's all bullshit, then it's bullshit! I know that's all I need to hear."

"Same here," Billie says.

"His name is Julian, for fucks sake," Issa adds with a laugh. "No one trust worthy has that name."

Paul Baker looks at each of his friends, desperate and scrambling to find something revealing in the determined sets of their gazes. When all else fails, he looks at Anton. "I have to prove it," he whispers, his voice failing.

Anton shakes his head.

Their last mind wipe never went away.

"You have nothing to prove to us," Anton says.

"I don't?"

"If you say Julian is nothing but a liar, then it's settled. We believe you."

And Paul Baker hears it in Anton's voice—that energy of what he was supposed to forget clinging to every word. If Paul Baker doesn't say anything of it, Anton will let it die with them. He won't tell anyone else what he's already come to the conclusion to.

He'll lie for Paul Baker if that's what is needed. It might be easy for Anton but it means everything to Paul Baker.

Paul Baker looks only at Anton as he says, "He wasn't lying about that."

"About?" Issa asks.

Anton nods and then, only then, does Paul Baker turn his attention onto his other friends. If they hated him, they would have thrown him out long ago. No one is even mad that he broke a glass. What kind of angels has he landed himself with?

"I dated Julian. That part is true. I mean—mostly."

Billie holds up her hands. "Okay, we might need you to be a little bit less vague, if you can. Just once."

"I—like, I was exclusive with him but he—he wasn't," Paul Baker says. It feels strange to say those words, something he thought he'd never have to speak about suddenly clawing out onto his tongue. "Said that it wasn't fair to expect him to have save himself for me. It—it was selfish."

"Oh," Issa says. "Non-ethical non-monogamy. How chic."

"He's not someone that can tied down to one person. I knew that going in."

"Sounds like he cheated on you constantly," Billie says.

Paul Baker can only shrug, for some reason unable to meet Anton's gaze. "It doesn't matter."

"So he's a liar and a cheater and just all around piece of crap," Samir says as if waiting to be corrected on any of his points. "Why didn't you say anything earlier? I would've dropped his sorry ass weeks ago if you told me this back then."

"I—"

Why didn't he?

What was stopping him? Fear? It feels stupid now to have been afraid of something that was clearly an irrational thought. They know and they don't hate him so why the fuck did Paul Baker lie to his friends for so long?

"I don't know," Paul Baker whispers. "He—"

Though he stops himself, it's enough of an answer for everyone to understand where he was pointed towards.

Julian has left some scar tissue that they are only just now seeing. They get it now. As much as they can without Paul Baker spelling it out with the words he might never be able to say, his friends get it.

"Okay," Anton says decidedly. He's rather commanding when he wants to be. "So Julian sucks and we'll never speak to him again. That's settled. PB, are you okay?"

Blinking owlishly, the question has him clenching his hand. When pain strikes, Paul Baker inexplicably says, "It still hurts a little."

"There's no bandages in here. Samir, can you find us some?"

Happy with the task, Samir disappears into the house.

He still can't look up just yet. It hurts too much. "You believe me?"

"Of course we do," Anton answers. "And if you need to be reminded of it tomorrow or the day after or a month from now, any one of us will be happy to tell you."

There must be a pointed look because Billie quickly says, "Any time."

They believe him. They believe him. Paul Baker never thought this was a world that could exist. It was always separate—a reality that knew him, a reality that knew Julian, because those two could never collide. No one would ever really know Paul Baker if they were always fed the things Julian said about him.

But then Samir returns into the kitchen, a box in each hand. "Okay, we got Disney Princesses or Minions. Apparently my parents fell victim to branding and couldn't get the plain version."

Hearing the options, Paul Baker knows that the entire house is leaning towards Princess, and he waits to hear the conjoined answer. But silence meets him. He looks up, finding them all looking at him expectantly.

"Which do you want, Paul Baker?" Anton asks.

He swallows tightly, unused to the question. "Disney," he answers after a second.

Samir hands over the box, putting the other one to the side. They're all standing around the kitchen island with so much interest in the little cut like this is the most important part of their days. Paul Baker squirms slightly under all the attention.

Anton shuffles through the box and pulls out a bandaid. Stripping it of it's outer layers, he says, "Oh, look, it's Rapunzel, she suits you," and places it going along the stretch of the wound.

It sits slightly too tight, restricting his range of motion but he doesn't say anything.

Anton leans back, looking down at his work proudly for a beat before his gaze flickers up to Paul Baker's. The smile curving his lips upwards glows in the night, like a lighthouse guiding Paul Baker back to shore, back home where his legs don't shake and he's safe from the lonely expanse of a dark sea. Paul Baker swallows tightly, the heat of everything crashing in a wave onto him in a single blink.

"I'm sorry," Paul Baker finds himself saying, blinking to cut his gaze away, passing it over the rest of his friends. "For—" he waits for the words to creep onto his tongue but he can't reach them. There's so much he wants to say, so much that he still can't say, and it's all tumbling together into an incomprehensible ball of guilt sunk low in his gut. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, please, that was nothing," Issa says, quickly and inexplicably cavalier. "Just wait till you see one of my breakdowns. This is nothing compared to that."

Samir makes a noise of agreement. "It's true. A little blood doesn't even begin to cut it."

"You've got nothing on her," Billie adds, nodding ruefully.

Despite himself, Paul Baker manages to laugh, cautiously curious about what that could entail if him cutting his hand open in a blind panic isn't considered close to the standard Issa has set. Maybe it's not so embarrassing to have utterly broken apart in front of them.

Something he'll do everything in his power to forget, sure, but—it doesn't feel so damning anymore. They believe him about Julian. What more could Paul Baker really want? He'll take the brief humiliation over losing them entirely.

"Okay," he says, just to assure them—and himself—that he's still here, that he's listening to them.

He feels Anton's finger brush tenderly over the Rapunzel band-aid but doesn't dare look down at it. Paul Baker might just lose it again if he does. His legs are too weak for it, this twitching feeling in his chest like all it'll take is one wrong look to send him crumbling.

Billie sucks in a breath, holding herself like she's about to ask something but thinks better on it. Shaking her head, she mutters, "Nevermind," and slips back into her place beside Issa.

Paul Baker's fingers twitch, suddenly encasing Anton's hand in his. "No. Go for it."

"I don't have to. It's been a long night already. It's fine."

When Anton's fingers tense beneath him, holding him with an equally tight grip—sparred only from the desperation—Paul Baker says, "Bills. C'mon. I literally will not stop thinking about it if you don't just say it."

A frown pulls at Billie's face, her hesitance burning in the furrow of her brow. Paul Baker just holds her gaze and he thinks it's the longest he's gone without looking away all night. He doesn't want to wait around for another difficult conversation, to be cornered in the kitchen and forced to lay himself bare to give another scrap. Tonight, everything about it, cannot happen again or Paul Baker won't be able to get up from the floor. He'll find that impossible standard Issa is holding and he'll break it clean in two like broken glass biting through skin.

With a small sigh, glancing at Samir briefly, Billie sets herself as unimposing as possible. "Is this why you've been all—" her hands float through the air for a beat "—neurotic lately?"

"What do you—"

"Oh, you mean how he's been completely deranged?" Issa asks without a flicker of shame. "Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. You've been acting weird, Paul Baker."

His grip on Anton tightens. Anton doesn't make a face like he's even aware of it. "I haven't been weird," he says, though he most definitely has.

More diplomatic, Billie explains, "You've been doing everything around the house. Cooking and cleaning everyday—you put away my laundry the other day, Paul Baker! And I know you say that it's fine but you get this—this deer in headlights look in your eyes whenever someone brings it up."

Oh. Fuck. Paul Baker thought he was covering that well. The way his heart lurches whenever he sees a chore he hasn't done or when someone else is doing it before he gets the chance, he thought that was purely locked inside his chest. How fear spiked through him at the idea of not being useful. They've seen it this whole time, then? Always seeing it. Nothing Paul Baker did was enough to hide it. Nothing was enough—

"And this isn't me trying to attack you or anything," Billie rushes to add, her hands reaching out for a moment before falling empty onto the kitchen island. "It's just—since we're here and everything, I thought I'd ask." She shrugs, rendered so unsure of where the boundaries are.

Paul Baker would also like to know, to be fair.

"Yeah, you've been doing a lot around here recently," Samir remarks, his expression falling into that same concerned look of Billie when Paul Baker moves his wretched gaze onto him. "No one likes cleaning the toilet, y'know, and I didn't even know the bathroom mirror could be that shiny. But you know you don't have to do all that, right?"

He nods, unable to summon his voice for a moment. Breathing out slowly, Paul Baker mutters, "I know," because their definitions of have to are different. By their standards, Paul Baker doesn't have to do a thing that isn't already stated on their beautifully made chore wheel.

By his, if Paul Baker doesn't make sure he's on top of everything he won't be able to sleep.

"Do you?" Anton asks in a low voice, choosing now to speak up. He hasn't let go of Paul Baker's hand, though, seemingly content to stay here so long as Paul Baker decides he needs the strength.

Paul Baker can't even inhale properly for a moment. "So what? Why does it matter? You guys should be happy." Why can't he do anything right? Even this has made them upset. The most inoffensive thing Paul Baker can think of still isn't good enough.

"I mean, I love that I haven't had to do shit in weeks," Issa says, "but watching you wash dishes like someone's holding you at gunpoint has been a little concerning."

"Why—" Billie starts, looking for the right words and deciding on, "Why have you been doing all this anyway? I'm not gonna knock it if it's a coping mechanism but a little clarity would help."

"I just—" Paul Baker's mouth hangs open, wordless and airless when Anton squeezes his hand. It flares through the cut but the weight, the tightness brings him back into his body like he's been falling back down from space.

Taking the first breath of fresh air, Paul Baker wrangles continue over the panicked thing living in his chest. This is okay. They aren't mad at him for this, just curious and wanting to understand him. Paul Baker doesn't need to feel like he's fighting for his life. Anton is holding his hand and hasn't dropped it like he's afraid of catching the rot in Paul Baker's bones.

"I just don't want to give him any reason to yell at me." It comes out small, pitiful, barely formed like it's been released too soon but he needed it out of him. The unfiltered truth rattles through the air, Paul Baker refusing to meet any eyes when the room hears it.

If he's just good and useful then maybe he can avoid the inevitable for a little longer.

"Paul Baker," is all Issa breaths out.

"It's stupid, I know," he says, hating the way they're all looking at him still. How is there more ways he can make them all so sad? Paul Baker's blood on a dish towel is somehow better than this. "I should be over it—over him. And I was—I was so fucking over him but then—and he—"

"Then Julian showed up in town and everything you thought you'd buried came back up," Anton finishes for him when his tongue gets tied over the rush of feelings.

Slowly, Paul Baker releases Anton from the death grip, holding him with the gentleness that Anton deserves. It shouldn't be possible for Paul Baker to be this breathless still and yet he keeps finding the new limits every time he looks at Anton.

"Yeah." Hardly a sound at all with the air in his lungs punched out. "That."

Exactly that. Every second Paul Baker has spent breaking himself away from the relationship like he's cutting his own arm off trapped by a boulder, stripping himself down to the bone to escape Julian's influence until he had nearly forgotten what it was like to be stuck in the thick of it, it's back. Sharper teeth this time. Dulled blade this time. The stress and the constant state of anxiety he lived in settled back in his gut like it had never left, all the space of a home made there perfectly filled up again.

Given the words and the chance to finally talk about it, Paul Baker feels it swell in his throat until he gargles out, "I don't know. I've just been—scared, I think. Like all the time, I'm just scared. I know you guys aren't like him and you aren't gonna throw something at me 'cause I didn't pick up fucking toilet paper or something but I can't stop thinking that something bad is gonna happen if I don't. So I do. I just do. And I feel insane doing it but I can't stop."

When he's finally done dry drowning, Paul Baker ventures a look at his friends.

Stunned is the only way he can describe the way they're all looking at him. For once, the loud and constantly chatting house is sitting in a state of wordless surprise. No one has anything smart to say. Not even a well-meaning attempt of comfort.

Paul Baker feels the skittering need to apologise break into his mouth but he clenches his jaw to stop it. He has a feeling that it won't make anything better here.

"Okay, then we'll work on that," Anton says, decidedly. He's so calm like this, facing the room in complete control.

"How?"

"TBD," he answers with a shallow shrug, "but we'll figure it out together. We'll help you feel safe again."

Paul Baker doesn't understand it—just knows how his body reacts. He lets go of Anton's hand even though it's the sole thing keeping him upright like it has. Paul Baker will figure it out, somehow, how to be real and steady without the touch because he can't go through life with Anton holding his hand.

But Anton doesn't let go.

Blinking like he's seeing Anton for the first time in his life, Paul Baker doesn't know what he did to deserve someone like this in his life, in his corner, but by God, will he make himself into a man that does. He will earn Anton's friendship if it's the only thing he ever does.

Paul Baker nods. "Okay."

Anton smiles a soft thing. "Alright, anymore pressing questions or can we finally let this poor man rest?" he asks, throwing it out towards the others.

There's a circling agreement that everything's been settled, for the most part, and that everyone's happy to let this painful conversation end. Paul Baker lets out a breath, anxiety still ruminates in his chest but it doesn't feel as a lethal as it did before.

Maybe in the morning when he's had time to think about it, Paul Baker will feel the full depths of his mortification. For now, he's felt too much for a single emotion to be bold enough for him to notice it. Half numb and half exhausted, Paul Baker is beyond ready for this day to be over.

"Last thing I'll say on it," Samir says, hands up in a placating manner, "just so we're all on the same page, I'm never talking to Julian again. So we don't have to worry about him anymore. He's gone. I hope he dies."

A real smile snakes onto Paul Baker's face.

"And that is the last time his name will be uttered in this house," Issa declares. "The J word is officially banned."

"Agreed," Billie says.

Paul Baker feels ridiculous for saying it but he needs it to be said, "Thank you," even if he sounds so sheepish and scared. "For everything."

"'Course," Anton says, only now letting go of Paul Baker's hand. "You're our guy. We've got your back."

The moment lingers in the air for a while. "I don't really know how to move on from all that," he says honestly.

A snort of laughter washes over the group.

"Uh, let's act like it didn't happen and watch TV?" Samir suggests with a shrug.

"Oh, perfect, I love that," Issa says.

Paul Baker agrees—having this whole conversation not happen sounds like heaven but at the same time, he feels a weight leave his chest since it has. He isn't the only one carrying this burden anymore. His friends believe him and they have his back, and all the damaged pieces that Julian reawakened somehow aren't enough to send them running.

Fully realised for the first time in a while, Paul Baker glances over his shoulder at the dishes he was interrupted putting away. "Okay, yeah, I'll just—"

Anton cuts in with a disinterested, "Don't you even look in that direction, Paul Baker." He slowly untangles himself from Paul Baker, the removed warmth of his hand leaving Paul Baker's palm empty and cold. "I will finish up in here. You—go do something else. Whatever you want. Just stay away from cleaning something or tidying or anything in that vein."

The absence of Anton's hand is quickly replaced by both of Issa's wrapping around him. "Come on, if we start watching Grey's tonight, we can get you caught up before Christmas!"

"Wait, how long is this show, again?" But Paul Baker is already being brought into the living room, offered exactly zero help until he's deposited onto the couch between Issa and Billie.

—

He doesn't pay much attention to the first episode, his mind stuck on the sounds of Anton putting dishes away in the kitchen, how it should be him, how he should be washing the dish towels staining with his blood instead of abandoning them for the trash, on the Rapunzel bandaid on his hand sitting tight and restrictive.

But when he comes in to join them, Anton flashes Paul Baker a warm smile, settling into the free space on the couch as if it's any other night, and Paul Baker understands that this is how he feels safe again.

Paul Baker didn't finish the chore and not a single person is mad at him. If anything, Anton seems happy that he had to do it himself.

Nothing comes just because he wants it enough. It's going to take work to forget the itching sensation that's fuelled him all this time. He just has to trust his friends.

That's not work at all.

It's as natural as breathing.

By the time the credits are rolling on the fifth episode and Paul Baker is sufficiently intrigued enough to commit to a full watch of twenty three seasons, time catches up with him. His energy wavers. His hand doesn't hurt so badly. He just wants to sleep for days.

Taking it all in, Paul Baker thinks he's starting to fully understand what his friends have told him tonight. They know him. It's as simple as that. They know who he is and the lies Julian has spread, the half-truths that make everything even more foggy, don't amount of anything when all they have to do is look at Paul Baker and know. There isn't anything Julian could say to turn these guys away from Paul Baker.

They're his.

Through some pure dumb luck, they're his friends and Paul Baker shouldn't question that.

—

Paul Baker gets a good few days—a great few days, actually, in comparison to how miserable everything has been recently. Anything slightly above rock bottom would seem amazing, though, but Paul Baker really does think things are getting better.

The Rapunzel bandaid stays on his hand for a few days. It's a little hard to do anything with it. His hand doesn't stretch out all the way and the cut starts to itch—which Anton says that means it's healing so Paul Baker has no choice but to believe him—driving him slightly mad but he fights through it. After a little while, he peels it off and inspects the damage fully. Scabbed over, the cut really isn't anything dramatic like it was treated as, an inch or two across his his palm. The purple skin is hardly noticeable, really, not even raised when Paul Baker runs a finger over it. It'll fade quickly enough. Mixing in with the creases of his palm like another line that'll tell him whether he'll die young or whatever.

It actually works against him—or in favour for him, he can't quite tell.

Everyone uses it as an easy explanation to stop Paul Baker from doing anything around the house without making him feel guilty or embarrassed.

"Paul Baker, come on, you're hurt," Billie says when she catches him trying to fold a load of laundry, quickly coming in to take over for him, letting him keep her company instead.

"Nope. Not on my watch. Give me the brush," is Samir's insistence after walking in on Paul Baker doing the dishes. It is technically Paul Baker's turn this time but apparently an injured hand means disability in this house.

"Oh, fuck off," Issa bites, batting said injured hand away from even pouring himself a bowl of cereal one morning and doing it for him.

Equal parts frustrating and endearing, Paul Baker takes it all in stride. It's not like he has much of a choice, anyway, but a part of him can appreciate how nice it really is. They're trying to take care of him. A hurt hand and the whole house is closing ranks to protect one of its own. Paul Baker hardly understands it.

It sort of just happens to him and he starts to follow in their footsteps.

When he gets that itch in his chest, Paul Baker clenches his hand, feeling the stiffening of a healing wound, and spends hours convincing himself that he doesn't need to lift a finger. Seeing dirty dishes and a mess in the living room isn't—shouldn't be so terrifying. It's not a perfect system, of course, and things slip through the cracks. Paul Baker slips out of bed at five in the morning to make breakfast in thanks for everything they've done for him and nearly has a breakdown when Billie won't let him clean up the kitchen. Half-frenzied, it takes the entire house to talk him down from the edge and a walk around the block to stop him from trying to force his way into helping.

But, in all, it's so much better than it was. His friends know and they understand and they haven't thrown him aside when his tragic backstory makes him difficult rather than amusing.

They know he's all bark and no bite. Nothing threatening with his ears down turned, eyes big and sad, Paul Baker is just a stray thing asking for a good home.

Really, in hindsight, Paul Baker should have figured that something had to give.

He doesn't get anything this nice without the universe taking something in return.

A slow afternoon is creeping away outside, quietly dredging the sky of its colour and it won't be much longer before its dark. They're all piled up in the living room having watched four episodes of Grey's Anatomy just today, and Issa is insisting that they can finish the season tonight if they try. Unfortunately for him, Paul Baker is inclined to agree because he's been hooked this entire time. He'd stay up for days just to be able to get through one more episode.

It's a problem, he's aware.

Paul Baker is curled in on the end of the couch beside Samir, arm thrown over his shoulder in a way he hasn't been able to in a while. Thoughtless. Wanting nothing more than the press of Samir against his chest like he's dying of thirst without it.

A series of knocks against the door steals everyone's attention.

"Did someone order something?" Billie asks. There really isn't any other reason someone would be at the door.

They all deny it.

"It's probably some sales guy," Samir notes.

"Or some cult recruiter," Billie adds.

"Okay, don't let Issa answer, then," Anton says from the other end of the couch. "She's the most likely one here to join a cult."

Issa gasps in offence, pulling away from where she's curled against Anton. "First of all, rude. Second of all, you're the most likely to start one, so—"

Laughing, Paul Baker untangles himself from the couch. "I'll get it," and it doesn't even stem from that uncomfortable itch. Nothing forced or founded in fear. Not everything he does is. Absently, he runs a finger over the palm of his hand.

The scar is hardly a thought in his mind. A decoration on his body, if anything, but with the closed wound, Paul Baker is happy to let it slip away from him.

Pulling open the door, Paul Baker expects to see some Jehovah's Witness dude or something, summoning his voice to say that we're fine, actually, no thanks. Have a good day! and that whole spiel.

Julian's gaze lifts seeing Paul Baker. "Hey, Paul. It's been a while."

His body moves without his permission. Stepping forward and out, Paul Baker pushes Julian down the front steps. The door closes behind him. Why did he—he doesn't want to be separated from his friends but it's second nature to keep them away from—from this. To be that door.

Whatever this is going to become, Paul Baker wants them far behind him.

"What are you doing here?" Paul Baker asks, his voice cast low on instinct, sharing a secret he doesn't need to keep anymore.

There's a gleam in Julian's eyes. He looks like a real asshole like this. "I wanted to talk to Samir," he says, his voice curving over the name like it belongs to him. "He's been ghosting me for some reason. Changed shifts to avoid me. I just wanna know what's going on." Julian blinks, sizing Paul Baker up. "You don't know anything about that, do you?"

Of fucking course Julian hasn't taken the hint.

And oh, thank fucking God that Samir wasn't just full of shit and actually put in the effort to drop Julian. He didn't have to but he did. Samir chose Paul Baker. He chose Paul Baker.

Shaking his head, he says casually, "Not a clue."

"Fine," Julian spits back, clearly not believing him, "so go get him."

No fucking chance is Paul Baker letting that happen. "Maybe he doesn't want to talk to you. Did you ever think about that?"

Any sense of neutrality in Julian's eyes vanishes in that same blink. "Stop messing around, Paul. I didn't come here for you. Don't act like I did."

"I know you didn't. Doesn't change anything."

The darkness of Julian's gaze compresses into a sharp glare, enough to slice, enough to leave Paul Baker with another scar. Paul Baker steps down, pushing Julian back from the stairs and onto the path leading up to the door—anything to get him further away from Samir and the house.

Julian goes, stepping back slowly, his hands in his pockets as if he doesn't mind this one bit. "What did you say to him?" he wonders.

Paul Baker fights through the instinct to freeze.

"You told him something," Julian continues, uncaring of anything save for how his words hit Paul Baker and his measly defence. "C'mon, at least share the story you made up."

"I didn't make it up."

"Oh? Are you sure? Tell me and I'll tell you if it's bullshit or not."

"I didn't do anything!"

"You always do!" Julian spits. "You always do this shit, Paul. What—you couldn't take that Samir and I were friends so you had to make up some shit to get Samir to hate me. Is that it?"

It has been so long. Julian can't still reduce Paul Baker to that scared partner trying to make everything better. This is Paul Baker's space. His turf. He's in complete control of this and Julian will not make him afraid in his own home.

"You should leave," Paul Baker says, summoning the confidence he does not have. A strength he never had before but it fills his system like a sudden shot of caffeine straight into his veins.

The cold air nips at his exposed skin, trying to beat him back inside, to curl inwards and take this and be that good, little dog who never bites or barks or complains. Take it. It's what he's made for. Julian moulded him into the perfect thing, the kind of animal people would willing take into their home without judging all the scars from a troubling past, just enough to be welcomed. Paul is so easily consumed and tolerated that he wasn't even aware how much he had already been digested by Julian—spat back out for everyone's else taste.

Staring this man in the eye now bears the weight of a life he shed back in Canada.

"Now, Julian. Get out of here." Paul Baker is not this brave but he needs to be right now.

He feels like the last defence between himself and the house. Paul Baker has to be everything.

Julian cocks his head, curious, the faintest thing of a smile on his lips. "Stop overreacting for once, Paul," he says casually, like they're old friends chatting. "I'm not here for you. Not everything is about you."

Paul Baker nearly laughs. Of all things, this is. This has only ever been about him because it's been about Julian. They are so intertwined that trying to separate the cause from the symptom is impossible. In ways that cannot be unwound, Paul Baker is not without Paul without Julian. "No one here wants anything to do with you," he spits out, jaw clenched so tight his molars are grinding against each other. "Just leave, Julian. Please."

"Oh, please," he echoes with this bitter edge in his voice.

Julian blinks, his dark eyes swallowing the dying sunlight like black holes. Just a few feet away, he is burning bright and bold, threatening to take down the entire house with his flames if Paul Baker does not put him out. This is his task. His duty. Whatever brought Julian into their lives, it's Paul Baker that needs to get rid of him for good.

His fist clenches, the fading wound on his hand stiffening with the movement.

All venom and acid, Julian continues, "When are you going to get over yourself, Paul? Stop putting all of your fucking issues onto other people. Me and Samir are friends and it has nothing to do with you—"

"I didn't make him—"

"Of course you did! You always do." Julian takes a small step forward, the tight paved walkway narrowing even further. Paul Baker stops himself from moving back—he's going to meet Julian in whatever way he has to because this is his purpose. Be the door. Take the storm. Be unyielding even when he wants to break and cower. "You do everything you can to make yourself the victim so people feel bad for you. All your whining and bitching—it's just a ploy. You, Paul Baker, think you're so innocent, all the fucking time, you can't even fathom the idea that you aren't as blameless as you want to think."

The air knocked out of him, Julian's raised voice all but echoing through the quiet street, Paul Baker can't get a clean breath inside his chest. Julian is too close. Paul Baker is too exposed.

He wants to curl up, to fawn and accept Julian's ruling decision, to make this better because it's all he's ever able to do, but Paul Baker swallows against the rising need.

Not anymore. Paul Baker won't fucking take this anymore.

Too old for it. Too loved for it.

Paul Baker holds out his hand, pointing Julian back down the street. "Leave," is all he says, leaving amiss all the things Julian said about him.

His spine straight. His chin jutted out. Paul Baker holds himself in all the ways he wishes he had in a previous life.

"Or what?" Julian poses, another step into Paul Baker's space. His voice is honey sweet, so carefully consider like he's whispering sweet nothing's into Paul Baker's ear. "What would you do to me, Paul?"

"Stop making this harder than it has to be," Paul Baker mutters, his voice dying halfway in his throat.

"Just let me in. I have some things to say. Let me in, Paul."

"You need to leave."

"Paul, c'mon, you know me."

"Which is exactly why you shouldn't be here—"

Julian tilts his chin upwards, looking down at Paul Baker. "You can't make decisions for other people. If your friends don't want to see me, then they can tell me themselves. Get out of the way, Paul."

He tries to push past but Paul Baker stands tall, resolute, the best fucking guard dog that's ever existed. Paul Baker won't let Julian get near his friends. Never again. This is where he will die if he has to.

"Bring Samir out," Julian instructs, a tired edge creeping into his tone.

Paul Baker has heard it enough times to understand how quickly his patience is running out. They're in the most dire of times—these few seconds are the most important of Paul Baker's life. His heart is starting to run blindly out of his chest. Danger is on the edge of his vision, this will all blow up disastrously in his face, nothing will survive in the wake of Julian's fallout. Paul Baker knows better than to let this bomb explode—disarm it while he can, be that good boyfriend that takes all the blows he has to in order to keep the peace.

Knowing full well the kind of treasure he is trying to protect, Paul Baker shakes his head.

"I want to talk to him," Julian says.

"Why?"

"Because I don't want him to blindly believe you," Julian states, a coldness in his gaze that has Paul Baker shivering. "We both know how you mess with the truth."

Paul Baker fights the urge to gag. "That's your bailiwick."

"Is it? Why don't we ask? Bring your friends out, we'll see who's telling the truth."

"No!"

"Because you're scared. They might agree with me and you won't even give them the chance," Julian says calmly.

After the night Paul Baker cut his hand open, he is confident that his friends wouldn't betray him in that way. Anything Julian could say would never be enough to change their minds. "Fuck, you're still the same asshole," Paul Baker says under his breath. None of this matters. Not in any sense of reality.

His eyes dart back and forth, trying to find anything that could keep him still, but all of that is in the past now.

It means nothing.

Paul Baker draws in a slow breath. "Go away, Julian," he says quietly, turning around to head back inside.

Julian can throw a fit all he wants on the cold street. It isn't any of Paul Baker's problem. He's the best door and such a good dog that the danger won't even get to their doorstep before he stops it.

The house is waiting for him. His safe haven just within reach.

Paul Baker just wants to be inside and away from this nightmare. He gets a full footstep away, a quiet chest, a needy gut wanting to be comfortable, when a fierce weight snatches around his wrist—

Pulling—

Dragging—

He's yanked back, Julian's fist wrapped tight around Paul Baker's wrist and drawing it away. Holding the limb in the air between them, Julian's lips are curled into a thin sneer, fingers pressing deeper and deeper into Paul Baker's skin until it meets bone.

Julian pries Paul Baker back. "Don't fucking walk away from me!"

Stuck there, all Paul Baker can do is freeze in place, his wrist held there, the bruising grip around his skin a bitter, terrible thing.

And he waits. He hovers. It's going to come. Now. Here. In a way it never did before, Paul Baker fears that this is the moment it'll grow beyond the past.

"Hey! Get off of him!"

"Don't you fucking touch him!"

Voices crowd over the street.

Before Paul Baker can understand anything that's happening, Samir and Issa are directly in front of him, tearing Julian's grasp away from Paul Baker's skin, Billie and Anton grabbing at his shoulders to pull him away from the offending touch, running through, "Are you okay?" and "Let's go inside," and all manners of kind things that seem to roll off him. Stuck on the walkway, Paul Baker can't tear his gaze away, seeing and feeling all the ways his friends are trying to take it away from him and refusing to let them.

He should have this, still.

Issa and Samir are spitting bitter things, far too jumpy for a result as Julian slowly creeps away.

"You should leave. Now. Don't make me ask again."

Paul Baker's air catches in his throat. This should be his job, his voice, his role, it needed to be him making all these difficult decisions, but he can't get a single muscle to listen. It's someone else. His own body has stopped meaning a thing.

There's a grazing, burning gaze on Paul Baker. "I hope you're happy."

And Paul Baker is nothing. The weight around his wrist vanishes but Paul Baker is suddenly driftless without it. Just this lost thing trying to understand the way people are pushing at his shoulders and muttering things into his ear.

Lost. Stunned. Unsure of any single thing.

Paul Baker takes the guidance. Anton is the main presence at his side, fingers curled over Paul Baker's shoulder, curled tight around a wrist that isn't bitter anymore. Up the concrete stairs, passing over a threshold Paul Baker has been dutifully holding, they slot back into the house without a fuss.

He's forced inside, hurried away.

No one here wants to acknowledge what just happened.

They are a combination of voices trying to justify the way Julian's voice overtook everything.

In the end, it is only the way Paul Baker holds himself.

"Is he gone?" Issa wonders, the pinch of worry in her breathless voice makes Paul Baker sick.

"Looks like it," Billie answers, peering through the window into the front yard. "We should probably keep an eye out, though, in case he comes back."

Paul Baker thinks he's choking on his own bile.

"He's not dumb enough for that," Anton throws in, a half bored thing not really paying any mind to the rest of the room. In his haze, Paul Baker still feels the burning sear of Anton's eyes on him, holding him captive. "Everyone, let's just bring it down a notch. Freaking out isn't helping."

"Did you not just see that? That psycho just—"

"I was there, Iss. I'm just saying we need to take a breath and actually think about this."

Billie calls from across the room, "Should we let the neighbours know—y'know, like hey, if you see this guy, call the cops?" and she's too far away for Paul Baker's liking, not stuck close with the group where he doesn't have to move to look at her.

He can't—move or blink or think. Frozen stuck where he stands, he needs everything to be quiet and slow, and he wants his friends away from harm—away from—from—

Paul Baker's chest constricts sharply at the realisation, the cold slither of understanding washing into his lungs because he knows how to fix this, even if it makes him violently ill. His wrist still aches with the phantom weight, flexing his fingers as if to shake out the touch, the stain on his bones.

It's a simple thing. Easy. He should have done this long ago. It's all his fault that he didn't.

Overlapping and high and thrumming, he can hear the individual voices of the house, the slight panic creeping up the throat of these walls like stomach acid peeling off the paint every time someone interrupts another. It beats and rattles, the bass of a song thumping inside his chest. Nothing beyond this uneven rhythm buried inside of him feels real. In some far off distant part of him, he knows that he can hear them, can separate them beyond the confusing chatter, where each voice is rushing from but—but he hardly knows where he is and he can't blink. Ears buzzing. Rings clattering as his hands move somewhere he can't feel.

It's all lost on him. It might just be all he really is, just some ghost standing in front of his friends and it's all his fault, this panic, this race of anxiety, it's because of him. Him, an empty husk that mutters, "I'll move out," and since he isn't here, no one hears him.

"Oh my God, why didn't we keep that gun!"

"The hell are you gonna do with a gun, Samy? You don't even know how to use it."

"He doesn't need to know that!"

"Guys, shut up for a second," and in a blink, it all settles into a swallowed gasp, and there's Anton, looking up at him from the couch, hands waving to shush the group, "Paul Baker is trying to say something."

The weight of four sets of eyes suddenly settling on him makes him want to curl into a ball and never face them again. But somehow he still does, finds some scrap of strength in the way his friends have all paused for him—Samir caught halfway in step behind the couch, Billie hurrying back from the window to stand behind Issa curled up in the armchair, and Anton, all serious and focussed with his kind eyes. It hurts a little, how easily they have his back, how none of them even blink to give him this attention.

It's in that and that alone where he finds it in him. They deserve so much better than this.

Than him.

"I'm gonna move out," Paul Baker says determinedly.

His gasp for air is overshadowed by the series of disagreeing shouts spitting through the room but now, the blood rushing in his ears blurs it into nothing. Just a noise and a flurry of arms moving and Anton leaping to his feet.

Eyes wide but Anton's mouth sit closed and tight, blinking in the beats that Paul Baker can't bring himself to—can't let go of this white-knuckled control a single second longer than he already has.

Paul Baker nods, numb, as if he's hearing any of it, taking any of to heart. Unable to look at anyone just yet, he finds a spot on the couch cushion Anton has just vacated and stares at it as if the floral print will give him the forgiveness he's seeking. "I have to," he mutters, realising how it goes quiet when he manages to bring himself to speak. "It's fine. It'll be fine but it's what I have to do."

"You have got to stop threatening to move out," Issa says firmly, trying to sound calm but her voice wavers in the middle, softening too much when she adds, "We're never gonna let you go like that."

"How the fuck would that even be fine?" Samir asks, echoing the word like it's personally hurt him.

He sounds so fucking betrayed that Paul Baker would rather drag his hand over glass again than hear it but—but this is what he gets. After—after that, Paul Baker deserves a little more hurt. This is what needs to happen and he knew it would never go over easy or quiet. What does in this house?

Although his gaze won't rest on anyone, Paul Baker forces it to run a rapid sweep over the room, just to keep track of everyone, the horror on their faces, how much he's hurting them, and how much more he still has to go if he wants to make it out of here with any amount of dignity.

"If Julian comes back, you—you can tell him I don't live here anymore and he won't bother you again. You won't have to deal with that ever again!" Paul Baker cries, gesturing out the front as if that whole display has been scratched into the pavement, memorialised for the rest of time. In the same time it takes him to blink, Paul Baker runs back into that floaty feeling, tired from too little, he just wants this to be over. "If I'm out of the picture, he'll get bored. Everything will go back to how it was. It's the only choice," he explains in a voice that isn't his, with words that he would never say, but it's both what's necessary to happen.

In a few weeks, these guys won't even remember Julian's name.

And if they forget his, too, then so be it. What's a little sacrifice for the people that have given him everything?

Paul Baker drags himself through another look as if he has a limited amount left and he needs to be clever with them—but oh, when has he ever been smart?

It's easier this way, anyhow, to swipe it away when his desperate gaze matches with anyone else's before it can get stuck, before he can be selfish and doubt. They might try to change his mind and he can't let them—needs to draw them down this same path where they come to the same conclusion.

It's easier this way, anyhow, for them to not have to look him in the eyes when they realise it, too. All of this is for them. Of course no one wants to look Paul Baker in his sad face, like a dog begging to be allowed on the good furniture with the rest of the family, to kick it outside into the cold and the dark. Because instead of anything good, all Paul Baker has brought into the house has been problems and now he's dragged some dead animal to the doorstep. Enough has to be enough. So Paul Baker, the loyal thing just wanting to please and be good and loved, will make it easy for the people he loves and will look away first.

It won't hurt and it'll be okay. It'll be good. Paul Baker is still able to be good to them.

"What about you?" Billie asks.

He finally blinks. She's perched on the armrest of Issa's seat, their hands conjoined in her lap with a tight squeeze.

"Me?"

Of course it won't be Billie to decide it—she's amazing and stupidly strong with everything she's had to deal with this year but something in it doesn't feel right for her to kick him out. Not that she's lacking the power but—

And things have been actually pleasantly nice between him and Issa after the breakup, falling into this careful balance as if they've always been friends without the sex, so if even the near-threesome—foursome if he adds the claws—wasn't enough to make her hate him, then it won't be her, either.

"Yeah, you." Samir leans over the edge of the couch, hands clenched into the back of it, the edges of his mouth turned downwards. They all feel so far away. His own hands shaking like a leaf in a storm at his sides are so far from him that Paul Baker can barely registers it from the sound of metal clinking. Is he supposed to? They all seem so real. Should he— "Where are you gonna go? What happens if Julian finds you again and we aren't there?"

Dumbstruck, Paul Baker stares, the pacing of his heart struggling in the empty chasm of his chest. "Me?"

Samir won't do it, either. They're best bros after all. Even if Samir has seniority over everyone in this house given it's his parents' home, he rarely takes it in matters like this. Not even when he could so easily abuse it for his own gain. Samir lets the democracy of the group occur and he won't say it first, and he's so good, he keeps to his side of the bed unless they both want to cuddle and then he's the best little spoon Paul Baker could ask for. It's almost unfair to expect something so blatant and deservingly mean from Samir.

He blames himself for Julian enough as is. God, how could Paul Baker ever try to make it Samir's job to cut the cord?

So Paul Baker, in everything strong and with integrity he has left whistling in the wind, shifts his gaze. He has to go. It's dangerous for everyone else if he stays here. Why can't they just admit that?

"I have to go," he says to Anton, eyes helpless and wide and the only thing real in the entire fuzzy world is the way Anton looks at him.

And Anton, his soft eyes behind his glasses, the small huff to his shoulders, the way his hands sit still just above his navel, Anton has to be it. Anton wouldn't lie to him when it's so important like this, wouldn't drag this dead thing out beyond what it needs to be. You can love the dog and still know it needs to go.

It's better for the house and his friends if Paul Baker isn't here. If he just leaves, it'll be okay. It'll all be okay. If his hands could move, Paul Baker would already be packing his things.

"You can't," Anton says gently, his voice ringing out in the stale air.

"I have to."

"Why?"

He doesn't hear exactly who says it, his eyes already ripped away, and it scratches just enough at his chest that it all tumbles out. "Because it's my fault! Nothing like this—like him happened before me. And you guys shouldn't have to deal with my bullshit problems like that. Julian is my problem! What if—" his breath catches in his chest and Paul Baker realises for the first time that he's been gasping for air, dizzy all of a sudden, listless with his lungs aching for a clean inhale. Why can't he breathe—where did all the air go—he should—"What if he hurt one of you? He—he could've hurt someone and it'd be my fault because I brought him here—"

"Like how he hurt you?"

Paul Baker needs to go. Now. Right now. Pack his things. Get out of the the house before Julian can think twice on it and come back. "So I have to go. It's the right thing to do—to protect you guys. I just fucking have to!"

A step forward is a step matched.

Anton stands in his way, rising to his full height with—with what? What is that on his face. Why does he look so in pain? "You're not leaving, Paul Baker. Not like this," he says, his voice so low and determined that it steals any flake of oxygen he scrounged together.

"Why not?"

Sighing, Anton answers, "Because you're not thinking straight right now. You can't make any big decision when you're feeling like this."

"Like what? What is this? Why am I—"

And that's it, isn't it? He's made Anton sounds like this. He made Anton look so—so scared.

This is a problem. That's all Paul Baker is. Anton had to marry him for fuck's sake and now he's been pulled so strained and stripped back that looks set to cry. Paul Baker did that to him.

In all it's flickering mess, his gaze reveals that he's done the same thing to everyone. They're all watching him carefully, eyes delicate and—and scared. A held breath and pinched frowns and the look you give a dog when its injuries are too severe to be helped. Paul Baker stumbles a step back into place, away, where he can't keep doing this. Is there anything that can be fixed here anymore? If he isn't being good or useful, then what is the purpose of keeping him around?

He hurt them, all of them, somewhere foggy and distant in his head, wherever the tips of his fingers are and the pit of his stomach has fallen to.

Why can't he stop this?

Just for once, he has to make it stop before—

How pathetic can he get?

How—

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for this happen. It's my fault and please, just let me fix it. I can! I can fix it. I can make it—"

"Paul Baker, you don't have to do anything."

"Yeah, we just want you to be okay. Screw Julian, we can handle him."

"I can fix it. Let me—"

"Hey, PB, look at me."

He does. Anton's gentle voice glues the wisps of air into a jagged breath, making Paul Baker's unstable gaze cement itself onto the man in front of him. Paul Baker is on the verge of collapsing but looking at Anton keeps his body from fully giving up.

Standing right there, within reach, they're so close that Paul Baker can feel the warmth rippling from Anton's body, washing over the cold stretches of his skin.

"Can I ask you something?" Anton says, the smooth tone washing over him like nothing else has.

Paul Baker nods fervently. His mouth won't work the way he should but he thinks anything and prays that Anton hears it. Whatever Anton could want from him, he'd hand it over in his shaking hands. Just let him still be useful. It has to be Anton. He might die if it's Anton.

"Did that ever happen often?"

He can only manage a breathless, "Huh?"

Anton continues, speaking softly like he's trying to corner a wild animal—or, well no, that's not how Anton treats animals. Not like a stray thing that's wandered into wrong home. He talks to Paul Baker like nothing and no one else before, tender and precise and with this beautiful gleam in his eyes that Paul Baker is not worthy to have caused. "The way Julian was speaking to you outside—was that the norm in your kind-of-relationship relationship?"

Paul Baker swears he's already had this conversation before. "Kinda."

There's a small pause, everyone looking at them in this vulnerable moment.

"And the way he grabbed you…" Anton hesitates. Anton never hesitates. Paul Baker blinks back at him, stuck and happy to wait however long Anton needs him to. "Has he done that before?"

For a second, Paul Baker doesn't dare breathe. He thought he'd never have to talk about it, that this thing could stay locked up in his chest for the rest of his life and no one would have to know. And if it were anyone else asking, it might have stayed there. Issa, Billie, and Samir get to watch, sure, but it's only because Anton is the one asking it that Paul Baker says with all the honestly cutting up his throat, "I did that a lot."

"Sorry, did what?"

"Walk away. When he was trying to talk to me, I'd just walk away because I didn't want to fight, I didn't want to deal with it, so he'd have to stop me." Paul Baker swallows tightly, trying to ease the ache of the words. It was all his own fault whenever Julian had to stop him or else they'd never have a full adult conversation. Paul Baker has found that he likes to run a little too easily. When things are difficult or embarrassing, he finds it easier to just never handle it, never address it, and hope it goes away eventually.

Anton clenches his jaw. "So, it was normal?"

Stunned, Paul Baker's mouth hangs open but no words come out.

Normal. Was it—fuck, was it? It's not normal here, he knows that for sure. These guys will throw themselves over each other but there's never a touch founded in anger or frustration. It all floods in a stream of affection and love.

It was—the gasping inhale snaps halfway down his throat like he's suffocating on air.

"I—"

Is that answer enough because it's all he can get out. When Paul Baker brings his stinging eyes to look at the rest of his friends, he thinks maybe. He thinks resoundingly yes. They can all see something that he hasn't, something he doesn't know. They are seeing something in him that he isn't trying to give away.

Being seen is like having a wound picked at. When the bleeding doesn't stop, surely they will give up. If he cannot fix this, they won't be able to stand him anymore, all scarred and mangled the way he is, someone that it was normal for, someone that still can't breathe.

"Okay, that's fine, that's okay," Anton says quickly. "Let's just take a second, yeah? Take a deep breath for me."

And the problem is that Paul Baker tries. He tries so hard, he wants to do this for Anton, for all of them because he's a fucking mess right now and he has to lock the fuck in before it becomes too much. He tries and yet, "I can't—I don't—I don't know what to do!"

It pours out of him like a scrambled sob and once it finally lands in that broken, terrible mess, he can't do a thing to stop it.

"I don't know what to do. Just tell me how to fix this. Please." The heels of his palms press sharp and deep into his eyes, the explosion of colours and shapes across his eyelids won't help him solve a damn thing but he needs the feeling, needs fucking anything to feel real. "I'll do anything. Just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do and I'll do it."

Be a door. Be the best door. Paul Baker will be the best anything they want of him, just please keep him around, please don't get rid of him, please don't leave him alone in this city that Julian occupies, too, God, please please please please—

"Put your hands down before you hurt yourself."

The instruction is simple if not half a question.

Paul Baker does, letting his arms hang at his sides. His eyes burn but he blinks through the spots in his vision until it clears.

And still, there's Anton, standing so static like he's been frozen. "Can I touch you?"

"Sorry?"

Slowly, careful to have each word understood, Anton repeats, "Can I touch you?"

When has he ever heard that question before? He thinks he's been the one asking it before but—but people tend to take his wordless consent, people tend not to bother wondering at all, and he lets him. He doesn't mind it, truly, but Anton—he's asking. No one in this fucking house asks before throwing around their thoughtless affection. They pile onto each other like a single body drawn together through magnetism. And while it took Paul Baker a quick second to get used to it, once he was accustomed to the lack of boundaries, it came so naturally to him it was like he spent his entire life waiting for this blanket permission.

To kiss his friends and hug them and tell them he loves them, to have Billie sitting in his lap during movie night and to curl around Samir in their shared bed, to tell Issa he loves her even though it isn't romantic anymore and to run a careless hand over Anton's shoulders.

The adjustment felt like nothing when it gave life to all his needy tendencies but now—

An unsaid thing is being made spoken. Just for him. Because Paul Baker needs it to be. It's never asked. It's never needed.

He nods, though he doubts there's anything left here that Anton could want to touch.

"I need you to say it."

Paul Baker gasps a harrowed breath.

"Consent is sexy, baby," Anton says, trying to withhold that half-joking tone he takes with people when things get too serious. Paul Baker looks at him, unsure of anything leaking onto his face but just needing to see Anton. The other man swallows tightly, dropping that veneer of humour. "Can I touch you?"

He pauses, trying to find a real answer somewhere in his clogged chest—choking and weightless and floating somewhere no one will find him, not even Julian. "Yes."

Slowly, letting him pull back at any point, Anton's hands meet the crooks of Paul Baker's elbows, his fingers splayed wide over the cold skin. It feels like the touch will bruise though it isn't at all harsh enough to do so. It's just…there. Holding him. The imprint of fingers that have never hurt.

For a moment, all Paul Baker knows is the feeling of Anton holding him. The real way their skin meets. Real. For a moment, Paul Baker is painfully real, and it hurts as if Anton was gripping him.

"Here's what's gonna happen," Anton says calmly. Paul Baker stands to attention. Please. If he can still do anything good, he wants to take it. "You're gonna come sit down with us. Billie will make you some tea and Samir is going to bring up some Adventure Time for us to watch."

"I love Adventure Time," Paul Baker mutters.

"I know." The smile creeping onto Anton's face is brighter than a thousand suns, soft and tender at the edges. "It's low stakes and not overstimulating and we know how it ends. We're just gonna sit for a little bit and relax and no one has to make any big decisions today. How does that sound?"

There's movement rustling behind Anton but Paul Baker can't really focus on it. All he feels is Anton's hands slipping down into his, ghosting gently over the stretch of skin that Julian touched. A smooth breath dances down Paul Baker's throat.

He nods, finding his words a second later. "I'd like that."

"Good. C'mon, everything's okay. All you have to do is sit."

It's easy when Anton says it. The hands tight in his pull him forward, guiding him down onto the couch. After a moment, Paul Baker remembers to shuffle back into the cushions, every muscle in his body wound tight and ready to run.

On one side of him, Anton remains a steady presence, hip pressed to hip but his hands pull away. On the other, Issa is already curling around him, her legs naturally stretching over his laps in a way that feels both thoughtless and deliberate. There's a brief second where the weight of her legs don't fully lay down, like she's waiting, but when Paul Baker doesn't move, she presses them down all the way. Is this it? Is everyone going to be watching him now, waiting for him to freak out at the slightest things they never thought about before? Will they ask every time? Is he never going to have them look at him the same—

"And if you want anything," Anton starts, cleanly breaking off Paul Baker's spiral before it can starts, "just say—" his waves his hand in the air, trying to conjure up a worthy enough word.

"Bubblegum," Samir supplies as the intro to the episode is unfolding. He's sitting in the small gap beside Anton and the end of the couch. "Say Bubblegum and we'll do it."

Bubblegum. Paul Baker repeats it in his head in case he forgets it. Bubblegum and they'll do anything he asks of them.

Why are they doing him the favour when it should be the other way around?

Issa all but shoves a pillow into his arms, pressing it against his sternum knowing that he likes having something to hold onto. Wrapping his arms around it, Paul Baker hates that he's gripping the damn thing like a little kid to their stuffed toy.

After a few minutes, Billie rejoins them, handing over a warm cup of tea into Paul Baker's hands before folding in beside Issa.

And they just…sit.

Watching Adventure Time.

Between it all, the faint nauseating feeling of having everyone so close and the desperate need to have them closer, Paul Baker starts to feel the edges of his being again, feeling itself pressing in like pins and needles, a quick shiver snaking down his spine.

And he remembers.

All of it.

His breath catches—Julian yelling at him, the sharp edge of his voice cutting straight through any chance of wishing he'd forgotten how it felt, the way it stings every time, the hurling words, bitter and acidic and pressing in all the places known to hurt, the fact that everyone saw it, they heard everything Paul Baker has tried so hard not to be. They saw it. They'll never look at him without seeing it now. He'll always be that arm caught in Julian's grip. Looking down at the stretch of skin and muscle, another inhale gets stuck. Will it bruise? It feels like it will, like he'll have the touch burned into him and the entire world will see it. His fingers tingle, faintly numb. Why is he still here? He should've left already and—

"Hear me out," Issa states boldly, "but Ice King can get it."

"Ew, what?" Samir replies.

She shrugs, unapologetic, and the shift of movement at his side jostles Paul Baker back into his body. "He's hot."

"He's like a billion years old," Billie protests.

"Sorry but you have no right to say that after Mr. Teacher," Anton throws in.

"Hey, that's still a sensitive topic for me. We agreed to never bring him up again."

"Unless the bit called for it," Issa whispers, though they all hear it over the TV.

"And the bit called." The smirk can be heard in Anton's tone but Paul Baker still looks over to see it.

Just sit. That's all Paul Baker needs to do. He can do that.

Slowly, it feels less like a command he's trying to follow and more something that he wants to do. It's nice here, always has been, stuck between his friends and listening to all the jokes and comments that lessen the tension in the air bit by bit. Anton was right—this is exactly what he needed.

He knows how these episodes go. He knows the theme song and nearly almost all of the jokes and still laughs at them. He knows that he's real because he can feel the people around him and the tea settling in his stomach. He knows that something has fundamentally changed in the house but that isn't a guaranteed bad thing, it's just that he's shown them a part of himself again he was ashamed of and there might be a second needed to adjust to it.

Paul Baker sinks lower into the couch, his bone heavy and exhausted. He wants today to be over, another morning to be kinder to him, another sunrise he's safe and away from that man.

"Oh, hey, dinner should be here soon. Don't go to sleep just yet," Issa says.

Who is she talking to? No one replies. Something tugs in Paul Baker's chest but it doesn't stir him. It's all just warmth and peace and a solid mass against his head. He's been so tired.

Someone laughs, bright and soft. "C'mon, we got your favourite," and the delicate fingers brush against the back of his neck, barely skating over his skin, barely there at all, but his body snaps upright, tearing away, just get away, because when he touches him there it's no good, always leads to something bad—

"Bubblegum. Bubblegum. Don't—" Leaning forward over his knees, Paul Baker covers the back of his neck with his hands, eyes scrunched closed, trying to get jagged breaths to fall from his clenched jaw. "Don't. Please don't."

"I'm sorry. I didn't—" oh God, that's Bills. She sounds terrified. Shit. He didn't realise it was her. It would've been fine if he knew. "I won't. I won't do it again."

Still stuck in the same position, Paul Baker can't bring himself to sit up, to meet anyone's eyes. His neck burns still even knowing that it was just Billie. Paul Baker hasn't been thrown so far away that he's forgotten where he is this time.

It's the five of them, watching Adventure Time, what was supposed to be a nice, good time. It's just them. All he has to do is sit. Paul Baker can't breathe, a familiar feeling, the bitter taste of deprivation on his tongue. He can still do that.

"Fuck, I'm sorry," falls from Paul Baker's tongue though he knows it's the wrong thing to say.

"Nothing to apologise for," Anton says. He hesitates for a second. "If you want to explain a little more, we'd be okay with that, though."

And Paul Baker almost does. He can feel the words crawling up his throat to thoroughly explain the way his body revolts at the sensation but it gets scared halfway there, unsure, and all that ends up spoken is, "I don't like being touched there. Please don't."

"Done. It's all done, Paul Baker. Just remember to breathe."

The second Paul Baker straightens his spine, trying to catch Anton in his gaze to show that he's trying how to remember to breathe, a series of short raps at the front door echo out in the house.

It—it can't be—it has to be—and what could Julian want now? What more can he demand of Paul—of Paul Baker? There's nothing left in him to give. He's hollow and wrung dry. Not even Julian can suck anything more life out of him when he's this empty thing.

"C'mon, I told 'em to leave it at the door, goddammit." Samir crawls out of his position on the couch, quickly heading away and all Paul Baker can think is that he needs to get up, too.

He needs to be there, to put himself between anyone he loves and Julian and take whatever blow comes his way. He has to. It's all Paul Baker is good for. A door keeping everything wrong and dangerous at bay. A guard dog can at least bite the first hit to alert his owners to the threat.

"It's okay," Anton says, a steady hand on his shoulder. "It's just the pizza guy."

"What if—"

"Then Samir will tell us but you don't need to worry about it before it happens."

Paul Baker blinks a few times, trying to listen to the pleasantries Samir is swapping with the delivery guy but they're too far and too quiet for him to hear it entirely. "But—"

"No buts," Anton cuts in.

He swallows tightly, only relaxing when he hears the front door click shut and Samir gently padding back into the living room with a stack of pizza boxes in hand.

"See?" Anton says.

Samir opens up the boxes, and the aroma hits Paul Baker right in the stomach. He doesn't remember the last time he ate, especially not when he wasn't the one to cook, and it itches under his skin the same damn way he's been trying to fight against. He doesn't need to earn the affection being given to him. He doesn't need to clean the entire house to feel like he can sit down and be useless.

But—

But—

But—

"You can't go to sleep without eating anything," Anton states. "You've done that too much recently, it's not good for you."

"I'm not—" Paul Baker changes track halfway through. "I don't know if I'm hungry."

"One slice won't hurt," Samir says, pulling his lips into a strained smile. "Give it a try."

He doesn't know how to take the fact that he so obediently listens, obliging Samir with one piece that turns into two into four with a returning hunger he didn't know was lurking. Maybe it's the first meal he hasn't been searching for approval, wanting to know whether it's been appreciated before he could take a single bite himself.

And worst of it all, Paul Baker actually feels better having eaten—which, logically, he could have already known that but he hates it a little bit, how quickly his energy returns with something of substance inside of him instead of that hollow floaty feeling, how his brain is able to actually think and take a controlled breath without being guided by anyone else, how the grease feels on his fingers until Issa hands him a paper towel.

How utterly humiliated he feels.

Right down to his core, taking slow, even inhales while he finishes off the last bite of crust before his stomach turns, Paul Baker hasn't been this thoroughly embarrassed before in his life.

From the start, he knew that he'd do anything to keep his friends from seeing the full extent of what Julian put him through—Paul Baker could give them the filtered version that could fit cleanly into a PG rating while still giving context to the sheer insanity he's been acting like recently—but it's been ripped from his hands and there's no going back. Paul Baker can't clear his throat and plaster on a smile and pretend like nothing happened tonight, like they didn't all see him having a breakdown—Jesus, fuck, they all saw that, didn't they? Of course they did. Everyone was staring at him freaking the fuck out.

Heat burns in his face and he can barely get himself to swallow, needing to gulp the last of the tea, now cold and bitter at the ends, just to get the food down before he chokes on it.

Billie just touched him and he flinched like—like he was—

Paul Baker has to stand up, just needs to move his body before he starts to shake again. It earns the vaguely disguised looks of concern from his friends. Being able to hold them longer than a few seconds still isn't a skill he has gotten back yet, he finds, barely keeping himself together with the weight of their eyes on his back as he shuffles away from the couch.

"Everything okay?" Anton asks, a clear worry in his voice.

Is he just waiting for Paul Baker to start freaking out again? God, if Paul Baker could genuinely mind wipe the last hour from everyone's memory, he'd give anything for the ability.

"I'm fine," comes quickly, a bit too tumbled for anyone to believe that he means it. As he rounds the back of the couch, Paul Baker rubs at his eye and in the same inhale Anton takes before speaking again, he forces his hand down and, more convincingly, says, "I'm just—uh, I'm pretty tired. It's been—a day. I think I'm just gonna go to bed, y'know."

Some time alone, he thinks, to put things back together inside his chest before they spend too much time looking at the broken pieces. Another day and Paul Baker might have been able to ask for something simple like that. Everything wrong with this day makes him feel uneasy even thinking about it, like it wouldn't be allowed, like he hasn't earned it, like he should still be assuring everyone that he isn't like, in crisis or anything.

In unison, they follow after him, all turning around to hang over the couch.

It'd be endearing if he wasn't so desperate to sprint up the stairs and get away.

"That's a good idea, actually," Billie says, as if deciding on it, which has the others nodding and making quiet sounds of agreement. "You should get some rest. You'll feel better in the morning."

"We'll probably be down here for a while, anyway, so if you need anything…" Issa trickles off towards the end. Maybe she can hear the way Paul Baker internally groans at the sentiment, stiff and unsure what to do with all this attention on him, being so carefully looked after, and decides to spare him a little bit of it.

Paul Baker nods, chewing on the way it makes his stomach flutter and twist at the same time. His best attempt at a smile flickers across his face, falling too fast, but he takes the permission given to him and makes for the staircase.

He gets two steps up when he hesitates, hand clenched around the bannister. Paul Baker looks and they've all gone back to Adventure Time, happy to watch it even without it being for his sake, slower to pick at the food. He doesn't even get through the breath before he hears from the back of Anton's head,

"No more apologies. Go to bed!"

Some sound between a sigh and a laugh creeps from Paul Baker's tired lips but he makes his footfalls particularly loud as he drags himself upstairs.

The thing is, Paul Baker did intend on taking a few minutes alone to collect himself. A shower to wash off the feeling of Julian's fingers on him sounds amazing right about now. Scrub himself until he's pink and scratched up every bit of skin that could still be holding Julian's grip. Don't leave until he's someone anew who can face his friends, who can both look them in the eyes without apologising and carry himself as if all of this was just a bad nightmare. Remake himself into the person they knew him as.

But the moment he enters his and Samir's bedroom, his feet refuse to budge from the path he's on.

The mattress springs bounce as he falls down onto his stomach. Paul Baker doesn't even have the wherewithal to change his clothes or shut the door or even get under the covers.

There is just him and the pillow and his heavy eyelids burning when they finally close. There is nothing but his desperate need to be anywhere else.

—

In the first specks of consciousness that Paul Baker finds himself in, he pulls the blanket higher up his shoulder until he can tuck his chin down into it. It's delicately soft and heavy, too, in the best way like someone is lying their entire body weight onto him. He turns inward, seeking something he can't think to name until his body moves too far into a space he intrinsically knows isn't fully his.

Paul Baker peels open sleep crusted eyes and finds the bed empty. Huh. Samir's gotten up early, then. He must have picked up a job. That's fine. More room for Paul Baker, closing his eyes again because he can already tell how poorly he slept.

He moves to roll over, backing up into empty side of the bed because he prefers Samir's pillow sometimes, when his whole body feels wrong. Too many sensations that shouldn't be there at once shake him awake. The scratchy feeling of denim at his legs make moving too stiff and clunky, the pant legs not fully turning all the way with him, and his hand on the mattress is first met with the feel of material that isn't the fitted sheet.

Propping himself up onto his elbow, Paul Baker fights through the initial blur in his vision until it can settle fully on his room. There's a woolly, dark blue blanket draped over top of him that feels like something he'd find in the cupboard at his grandma's house—that old fabric that somehow feels like it carries the years of being used in every fibre. And he's laying fully over top the covers and still in his clothes from yesterday and oh shit—fucking—

Paul Baker had wanted last night to be a nightmare so badly he had almost convinced himself it was.

But it all hits him with a pained groan and the screaming urge to hide under the most comfortable blanket he didn't know they even had.

Sleep wasn't something he had actually thought he'd be lucky enough to have. Paul Baker just said it to have an excuse to cry without anyone seeing it but it feels like he's been asleep for days, his muscles heavy and still needing more. There's sunlight creeping through the curtains, though.

No amount of sleep is going to fix him.

And the longer he hides, the worse he knows the fallout will be.

All but choking on the humiliation clinging to every blink, to every footstep, to every inflation of his lungs, Paul Baker has to face them eventually…

Doesn't mean he can't delay it a little longer, though.

The upstairs is quiet as he pokes his head out from the bedroom door. With a deep breath, Paul Baker doesn't run to the bathroom but he sure as hell moves with purpose. The shower isn't as baptismal as he was hoping but there's not a single mark on his arm so that's better than nothing. At the very least, he gets into a change of clothes that don't feel dirty—Paul Baker tells himself he means dirty as in he wore them all day and still slept in them.

Nothing more.

Nothing that has him debating whether to throw them into the hamper or if he should just toss them out entirely.

Could he ever wear that shirt without thinking of Julian's hand on him? Without his friends seeing Paul Baker like that?

Under the bed they go. He'll figure it out later. That's a whole different problem to handle and he can only take one at a time.

For now, Paul Baker steadies himself on the landing just before the staircase. Voices drift up but he can't see anyone so they must be in the kitchen, a hushed conversation that is undeniably about him.

Well—it doesn't have to be about him. They could literally be talking about anything else in the world other than him. What a selfish assumption. Not everything is about him. They wouldn't have anything to talk about if he hadn't been so insane last night, so dramatic and—

When the voice inside his head stops sounding like him, Paul Baker practically pushes himself down the stairs.

Julian gets no say in this. Paul Baker will only listen to the people that actually care about him. They have actually earned the right to call him all those things, even if they won't.

Oh God, they wouldn't even do that. It aches in the gentlest way.

And fucking of course they were talking about Paul Baker because by the time he gets downstairs, doing nothing to hide his approach, there is still a fierce dying of voices once he's standing in the threshold of the kitchen. Anton, Issa, Samir, and Billie are circled around the kitchen island in varying degrees of intensity, coffee cups either in hand or waiting on a counter, and the fresh tension still clings to the air even though there's four forced smiles thrown towards him.

Paul Baker takes the wave of overly sweet good mornings only because he knows no one has any idea what to say.

"Coffee?" Anton asks, already halfway to the pot before Paul Baker can mutter, "Yeah, thanks."

The urge to have crawled through the bedroom window and jumped from the roof sits heavy in his chest. The possum made it down fine, presumably, so Paul Baker probably stood a decent chance.

Dammit. Well, he's here now.

"Look, we—uh, we should probably talk." Paul Baker already hates this but he can't stop now that he's started. For a moment, he's given only the guarded stares of his friends. "About last night. That whole little show I put on," he adds with a hollow laugh.

No one shares it but Anton does slide a cup of coffee over the island counter. Paul Baker steps up to take it, fiddling with the handle for a few moments.

"I feel like I owe you guys an explanation," Paul Baker mutters.

"Oh, you don't—"

Issa cuts over Samir, "It would be weirder if we didn't talk about it."

There's a beat that passes before Samir nods. "Okay, yeah, it'd be nice to understand it a little bit better. Y'know, just so we can make sure nothing like that happens again."

Paul Baker brings the coffee to his lips just to avoid answering for a second. It goes down perfectly, not an inch too sweet or too bitter like he made it himself. He follows the warmth travelling down his throat, holding the cup to leech some of the heat into his cold body. A part of him wants to dart upstairs and have this conversation with the blue blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

He stares down at the brown liquid swirling slightly with the movement. "I—"

Fuck, he isn't good at this.

It's only worse when no one cuts into his beat of silence. This house lives at the heels of each other, joining in on the joke, continuing the bit the second someone leaves off without a second to question it, having full conversations of seemingly unrelated strings of sentences just thrown at the other only to completely understand every point made. They don't do quiet and they don't do slow. But they do now, they do with Paul Baker as if every word that stutters from his lips is the most important thing they'll hear all day.

All it would take is someone filling the air to push him off his path of courage. If somebody offered him an out from this, he'd take it so fast and greedily it would disgust him.

Paul Baker swallows a small breath. "I know that it was like a lot that I've thrown onto you guys, with Julian and—and last night—I'm not apologising," he adds on quickly seeing the way everyone opens their mouths. "Sure. I get that I shouldn't—"

"You don't need to," Anton corrects, both firm and smooth.

His mouth sits agape for a second, looking at Anton from across the kitchen. They're the furthest apart. It doesn't mean anything when they're all so clumped together like this but—but if Paul Baker reached out he could touch Samir and Billie easily, maybe a stretch to reach Issa. Anton feels like he's miles away.

"Right. Whatever." Paul Baker continues, "I'm not apologising," in the same tone that sounds like he still is. "But it was kinda too much and I think I gave you guys the wrong impression about what happened between us. Like that—that wasn't normal. I've never had that happen before. I dunno what that was."

"You were triggered," Anton supplies.

"What? No. What do you mean?"

"Oh, our therapist, George, God rest his soul," Issa says, going from excited to respectful and trickling right back to weirdly eager as she continues, "he taught me about this, too."

Anton puts a hand over his chest. "If he was still with us, I'd be giving you his number, by the way."

Paul Baker bristles slightly, uncomfortable with the tensing in his shoulder. "Isn't that just what right wingers call people when they try to call them out for saying slurs online?" he says with a humourless laugh.

"Both," Billie says.

"It's both," Samir agrees with a grimace.

Despite the front door being right there, Paul Baker still thinks he could crawl out his bedroom window. It feels better as an exit. Further away. He wants to run so badly the only thing keeping him stuck to the floor is the intrusive thought that Julian will be waiting on the sidewalk for him. Nowhere to go where he wouldn't be cornered.

"Seeing Julian like that," Anton says, his upper lip curling as the name passes through his mouth, "put you back into the headspace you were in while you were together. Or something like that, right?"

Anton pauses, as if to let Paul Baker actually answer. He always seems to know when there's something Paul Baker can't verbalise, giving him every chance to give it air before doing it for him. But he's leaving it vague this time, just that general sense of pointing towards the emotions Paul Baker won't name without actually dragging it out into the sunlight for everyone to see.

Without a reply, Anton continues, "I mean, of course you were! That was intense. Must have brought up some scary things, huh?"

For the first time since he ever met Anton, Paul Baker wants nothing to do with him. It burns suddenly and bright and terrible inside of him. He wants Anton to leave. He wants to never speak to Anton again, to be the subject of his tender gaze, to be the one that he treats carefully like this like it's all he knows how to do. Paul Baker is bitterly grateful for the distance between them now.

"It wasn't like that," Paul Baker finds himself saying, his voice low and coarse and he hates himself for every second it airs.

"You said—"

"I know what I said!"

When Billie snaps her mouth shut, Paul Baker feels the hot prickling in his eyes. This is wrong. This is all going wrong. He came down here with a point and he's making everything worse in the process.

Just one thing. One thing he doesn't mess up. One time he doesn't create more problems than he can fix.

"But I think I said something wrong and we're all just a bit confused," he forces himself to continue. Don't look at anyone. A crevice in the counter holds his gaze. "Like, yeah, Julian sucked. He still sucks, clearly but—" Paul Baker takes in a long, hard breath. "You guys got mixed up, okay? It wasn't like that."

A second passes.

"Wasn't like what?" Samir asks.

Paul Baker sighs, throwing his hands into the air. "I wasn't like, abused or anything. You all think that I was, I can see it in your eyes, okay, but I wasn't. So please, stop looking at me like I was."

There's a very long, very deliberate pause as Paul Baker throws his harrowed gaze around the kitchen. This time, it's them that won't meet his eyes, all sharing looks they think are subtle, that don't hide a fraction of how little they believe him. It's so fixed in their heads that they can't begin to think they might have gotten it all wrong.

Because Paul Baker hasn't responded rationally to a thing since he first saw Julian again. It's been his freak outs and lying to everyone so casually and dragging an enraged Julian into their home that has them thinking this way. It's his fault but all that means is that Paul Baker needs to set them straight. Explain it wasn't as horrible as they're thinking it was.

He's frazzled, is all, not triggered.

Billie nods shallowly. "Right," she says, dragging the word out.

"Okay, please listen to me, it wasn't like that. Julian—he could be an asshole, I know that, but he never—" Paul Baker's voice wavers over the words "—he never actually hurt me. He's not that bad."

"Oh, no, of course not," Issa says in that tone of accepting a challenge, her head tilting to the side. Paul Baker feels that inherent urge to divert her from her warpath but is frozen. She throws up a finger with everything she points out. "Julian would just yell at you, demean you, spreads lies about you to other people so you were isolated, and cheat on you constantly. Did I miss anything?"

Leaning in across the counter, Billie says quietly, "And the throwing things," with a half apologetic look.

"Right, we did catch that—no pun intended," Issa says with her hands raised. "So all that, it's what—acceptable behaviour?"

"It's—" but Paul Baker doesn't have an excuse when it's laid out like that.

Only then does Anton lean in—he'd been pressed further back before, Paul Baker hadn't realised how far he'd gone until the distance closes. As confusing as it is, he does still want Anton closer and further away and everything that he isn't right now. "Guys," he says, quietly, "this isn't our breakthrough to have. Leave him be."

Before Paul Baker has the chance to question what the fuck that means, Samir is staring him down with a grief that doesn't become him, his voice suddenly cold and brittle. "What if it was Iss or Bills?" he asks, all the edges of his expression sharpened.

"What?"

"Or Anton or even fucking me? If anyone else told you what you've told us, what would you call it?" Samir demands. He's all fired up and Paul Baker can't remember what he did to deserve it but he knows how to manage the anger. It's all he fucking knows. "You wouldn't be downplaying it if it happened to anyone else."

He doesn't understand the tension in his chest or the way his hands are shaking or the ugly desire to have Julian screaming in his face again—that at least makes sense. That Paul Baker understands.

But these guys? It doesn't fit right. He can't find the proper way to respond.

"He's right, Paul Baker," Billie says, looking at him all soft and sad, and none of it makes sense. Why are they mad? Where are they mad? If it was at him, it wouldn't be this cushioned and careful. "You wouldn't be okay with any of us being treated that way. And I know it's a lot to face right now, but it's the truth."

"No, it's not!" erupts from Paul Baker's throat. His friends are shocked into silence, watching him with their wide eyes and shaking heads. "It wasn't like that, okay? I'm the one that lived it. I would fucking know."

"That's exactly why you wouldn't," Issa adds on.

"Did you dead therapist tell you that, too?"

Paul Baker holds himself deadly still, feeling the weight of his words as they sprinkle over the kitchen like shards of broken glass. It was so much easier back then, when there was blood and something physical to fix and patch up, but here, there's just Paul Baker and his fear. Some mistreated dog barking and biting at the hand reaching out towards him with nothing but good intentions because it can't understand the difference—too confused to do anything but snap at the open palm because they're all the same. In the end, aren't they?

Won't every touch hurt eventually?

Bared teeth, Paul Baker waits for the strike to correct his behaviour. He'll take it and adjust or they will tie him up at the side of the road for anyone else to take him.

Issa blinks back at him, finally regretting bring the stray home. Tick bitten and mangy. She should've been the one to know that he was no good and yet she gave him a bath and food and told everyone this old dog could learn new tricks.

"Why don't you want to accept what happened to you?" she asks, calm and gentle and so genuinely confused.

"Because—" is all that gets out of Paul Baker's mouth.

Because then he'll have to process how everything back then was different, the person he thought he was, that terrible thing that kept losing people without understanding why, how maybe he wasn't so bad. Because then he'll have to grapple with the fact that he was the one steadily abandoned and that he steadily abandoned the others. Because everything Paul Baker knows about himself will have to change if he accepts any greater truth that goes beyond Julian was just a little shitty way back then.

His voice breaks. "Because."

Paul Baker is just an old dog that wants a good home for his last years. He just wants his friends to still love him even knowing the darkest parts of his past—a whole secret group of friends has nothing on this. On Julian.

Sure, they won't accept him moving out to protect them, but Paul Baker should have done that already. He shouldn't have allowed Julian to get so close to the point his name was a known thing in the house.

This stress, this fear, only exists because of him.

But nothing with him and Julian ever crossed that line. It can't have. He'd know.

"Because," tricks from him again and he doesn't understand it or know why or anything but they're all looking at him and he needs to say it.

"Paul Baker—"

Issa's voice falls flat when Anton suddenly surges forward, his hands cutting through the air. "Hey, Paul Baker!"

He feels his shoulders stiffen. Anything Anton wants, he'll give it.

"Mind wipe?" Anton asks, this piercing need in his voice that has Paul Baker's knees weak. He nods fervently, happy to take anything Anton doesn't want remembered. It's a nice break from everyone else. It's easy to exist when it's just Anton asking it of him. "You won't like this."

"Mind wipe," Paul Baker, too eager and needy but anything. Anything to make him still good. Maybe he can't learn something new but a mind wipe he can do. This a trick he knows.

"You were abused," Anton says plainly, swallowing tightly. "Verbal and emotional abuse is still abuse. It still counts but you don't have to acknowledge that until you're ready. Our thoughts on the matter can't change that."

"Ant—"

"We understand what you've been through and we'll still treat you the same way. Who you are hasn't changed."

That floaty feeling threatens to snatch away his fingertips but Paul Baker clenches his fists to keep it. He wants to stay here, to feel the full extent of this moment, even if it hurts a little. Paul Baker and Anton make the wiping motion in unison, the others following a second later just to assure him.

Later.

He can handle these overwhelming feelings later when he's strong enough to feel them.

They will give him the grace to move on his own time.

"Okay," Paul Baker says. He pauses for a moment. The moment is too strange and tense for it to be moved on from. It's not a natural ending, so fucking artificial that Paul Baker could choke on the chemicals in it. But clearly, it needs to happen. Clearly, he can't have this conversation, and probably shouldn't with the emotional hangover he's in. Just get through it. He searches for something, anything to say that won't have him falling into a breakdown. "Okay. What's for breakfast?"

"We have so much leftover pizza to get through," Billie says, "because someone ordered way too much last night."

"Hey, I'd rather be safe than sorry," Samir defends, making for the fridge to pull out a box of all the leftover pieces thrown in together. "Now we can feast for days!"

Paul Baker picks up a piece of cold pepperoni, finding Anton's gaze across the room. This feels okay. It's still a little too complicated to handle right now, this morning haze taking them further than Paul Baker thought it would.

The word rattles around in his skull. Moving and beating against the edges like it refuses to settle anywhere but still won't leave.

Anton said it's up to Paul Baker to decide when he processes it. It won't be now. He can't do it now. He's already drug up so much of his horrible past that he can't spend another second dwelling on it. Mind wipe. It's already gone.

For now, his friends are just there, just with him, eating cold pizza and drinking coffee, and moving on so kindly from the grotesque problem right in front of them.

In just this second, all Paul Baker has to do is breathe, and the next and the next.

—

Breathing hurts sometimes.

He thinks he might die if he lets out a single exhale. He thinks it'll be the final straw. He thinks the very idea of his existence will make his friends hate him because he's putting them through far too much.

Nothing comes easy. Nothing ever does. Paul Baker is not an easy person to care about when all the ugly pieces of his life are laid out like this.

When the person that is always fine suddenly isn't, what fucking use are they, then? Why do they still care about him when he can't do anything in return for it?

—

Sometimes is the key word there.

Not every day. Just some days. Other ones don't try to kill him. Paul Baker prefers those ones much more.

—

Something is brewing in the depths of Paul Baker's chest, the rumbling vibrations rippling out through his ribs like the low, distant bursts of a far away thunderstorm. He can't explain the undeniable feeling that the worst has passed already—lightning on the horizon like a light left on in another room. Paul Baker doesn't want to name it. Too scared or too unbothered, he can't really tell. Tired, mostly, he thinks, but that's not much of an issue.

The cushion beneath him shifts as he adjusts himself, trying to straighten his curved spine from it's stiff position.

"Stop moving," Issa chides lightly.

She has his hand in hers, applying a layer of black polish to his freshly cleaned nails. There wasn't much to wipe off anyway, since he'd chipped off most of it in the last weeks. Paul Baker could've repainted them himself but Issa had seen the scratched mess of his nails earlier today and had simply insisted that she do it.

Paul Baker doesn't really mind. She's holding his hand delicately, attention fixated on the task like it's the most important thing she's ever done.

"Sorry," Paul Baker says. The word still tastes a little bitter and heavy on his tongue after—after everything but it lands like a small patter of rain.

Noticed but unimportant.

"My back's starting to hurt," he adds after a moment.

He doesn't understand how Issa isn't fiercely uncomfortable herself, hunched over as they're both sitting on the floor between the couch and coffee table, but Issa's face is perfectly content doing her job.

"Oh, here," Billie says above him on the couch. She swings her legs over Samir's lap beside her, opening up a space of the base of the couch for Paul Baker to lean on.

It's a quick adjustment, Paul Baker turns his back against it, stretching out his back with a series of loud cracks that has Samir muttering, "Jesus," and holds his hand over to Issa now at his side to continue.

Knees against his chest, another quiet rumble runs through Paul Baker's chest, the weight of Billie behind him, Samir's legs beside him. He breathes through it slowly, waiting to see which way it goes. It's a thing he has to do still sometimes. Wait it out.

Issa straightens up, holding up Paul Baker's hand for everyone to see and gently applaud her good work. "Blow," she instructs bluntly as she lets Paul Baker go.

He makes a show of blowing against his nails to help dry them. Issa smiles, pleased with him, and makes a grabby hand for his other one. Setting off to work, the room falls back into the familiar stillness. There's no reason for it, no reason for the house to be boisterous either. For whatever reason tonight, they are all in this peaceful sort of mood, swapping idle comments about the movie—New Moon, because Billie and Issa are on their yearly rewatch of the series, and even if Samir complains about it, he still willingly sat down, and will continue to sit down while they get through the rest of the movies—just happy to curl into each other's space and ignore the rest of the world for a handful of hours. No big energies. No problems that need a mass of answers. Paul Baker lets his chest thunder as long as it likes, lets it doubt the peace, lets it question whether it'll really last.

Because even if it's different tomorrow, it's exactly this right now.

Letting the rumbling burst a crackle louder every time he thinks he hears something outside, Paul Baker feels his head start to fall against the couch. First, there's Billie's leg behind him, then Samir's knee. It's too comfortable for Paul Baker to move and no one seems wanting to make him.

Issa finishes with him, leaning back happily, directing him again to blow on his nails.

Paul Baker sits there for a while longer, even as Issa clambers onto the couch for a more comfortable sitting position. After what could only be five minutes or so, Paul Baker follows the quiet urge in his chest and collects the black smeared cotton pads Issa used to clean his nails to throw them out.

As he's up, he throws out to the room, "Anyone want anything to drink?"

He makes out some audible requests in the chorus of voices and decides he can probably safely assume what everyone is asking for. Flashing a thumbs up, Paul Baker rounds behind the couch to head into the kitchen.

As he passes by, Anton leans his head back. "Thanks, PB."

And Paul Baker can't help—it still earns that warm bloom through his chest. He still likes being useful but it means something extra when the gratitude is coming from Anton. Unconsciously, Paul Baker reaches out and squeezes Anton's shoulder. Just a fleeting touch. Nothing that really means anything but the familiar curve of muscle fits so perfect in Paul Baker's hand.

It's over before he can really linger on that.

Paul Baker's hardly gotten the fridge door open when he feels someone else entering the kitchen. Glancing over his shoulder, he only needs a glance to confirm that the weight of the footsteps belong to Anton.

"Okay, if you say what's taking so long, Ant, I'm not making your tea," Paul Baker says decidedly as he pulls out Billie's soda.

"I'm perfectly capable of making my own tea," Anton throws back. He leans his hip against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.

Still, though, his gaze follows after Paul Baker dancing around the kitchen to collect everything he needs for tea. A grin spears across Paul Baker's face. Of course he's capable. It's a question of will he rather than can he when it comes to Anton—a question of will Paul Baker let him, really.

While the water boils, Paul Baker takes out the others' drinks, basking a little eagerly in the circle of thanks he gets. Sue him. It's nice. When he gets back, Anton is still standing in his position, something a little unfortunately familiar in their places.

Paul Baker tries not to think often on that night, convincing himself that the shroud of late night protects the memory. Makes everything he said a half-forgotten nightmare. When he tries to remember what he said, the exact lines of misery he plucked from himself into Anton's awaiting grasp, it feels like trying to read a book while dreaming. There are shapes he recognises as words. The idea of a sentence but no matter how much he squints his eyes and focuses, Paul Baker can't quite understand the sound of his own voice.

He just knows that it was the first block pulled that set his tower crumbling in the end.

Muttering sad things to Anton while still trying to persuade everyone and himself that Julian meant absolutely nothing to him, Paul Baker wishes he possessed Anton's ability to actually adhere to his desperate mind wipe. Anton's never mentioned it. Not even now, after—after everything happened, he hasn't even breathed in that direction. Paul Baker loves him for it.

Even now, Anton holds nothing in the firm set of his shoulders that points to him harbouring that flash bang of a memory like Paul Baker.

"I didn't come in here to chastise you, Paul Baker," Anton remarks, unimpressed.

Paul Baker raises an eyebrow. He matches Anton's posture, his back pressed against the counter just down the way. "Oh, really?"

"Yes, really."

"Then why'd you come in here?"

Anton's mouth opens, his voice dying halfway in his throat like he cuts himself off. Thinking twice on whatever he was about to say. Paul Baker holds himself back from jumping to conclusions, staying very still as he waits for Anton to work through it. There's been too much raw honesty in this house lately for Paul Baker to instantly accept that he's done something wrong. Especially Anton. He's been so good about all this—this mess that Paul Baker is, knowing how to handle things that Paul Baker couldn't even name. Anton would have brought it up when it happened if Paul Baker pissed him off somehow.

Communication breeds security, as it turns out—two things that Paul Baker discovered he was sorely lacking.

Having and using both feels a little like trying to speak a new language and Paul Baker isn't entirely sure if he's making the right tonal inflections. The whole house speaks it in varying levels, though, so that's comforting.

"I figured I'd help you out so you wouldn't smudge your new nail polish," Anton says after a moment, blinking as if he's hearing it for the first time. "You always mess up the middle finger first, anyway, and I don't want you ruining all of Issa's hard work in the first five minutes."

He blinks. "I mess up the middle finger?" he repeats, looking down at his hands to check if he's already done it.

Anton shrugs with too much force. "Yeah, you rub it when you're anxious so the nail polish gets chipped away there first," he notes, matter of fact, like everyone knows that.

What's crazy is that Anton's right. Paul Baker never put it together until this very moment. Every single time he's painted his nails, the middle fingers gets chipped away first and he's never understood why until now. He just thought it was some weird coincidence.

Huh.

Huh.

"Well, you're doing a great job helping so far, Ant. Thanks," Paul Baker says, his throat a little tight for some reason.

The water is boiling, and even now, Anton is letting Paul Baker make his tea. Paul Baker isn't complaining, not one bit. It's just funny. The rumbling in his chest rolls low and deep, though he can somehow tell it's a different kind—a new vibration thundering inside of him. He likes this one. It doesn't feel bad.

It feels—

Safe.

Pouring hot water into Anton's mug—the misshapen one painted green Issa made that time they did a drunk ceramics class. It was supposed to look like a frog but other than the smears of yellow for eyes, it's more of a lump than a cup, and they all adore it—Paul Baker tips his head to the side and throws Anton a warm smile. "I think I've got it in control here. Go sit down. I'll bring it in when it's ready."

"I'm really proud of you," Anton blurts.

Paul Baker doesn't quite flinch but it's as good as. "What? What for?"

Anton shifts awkwardly, looking unfitting in his own body for a few seconds before he swallows tightly and focuses. "Okay, I going to say something incredibly sappy and gross and it'll hurt me as much as it'll hurt you, so we just gotta push through it." He speaks so fast that Paul Baker only really hears half the words clearly, the rest jumbling into each other, but the core is there.

Putting everything down to centre his attention firmly onto Anton, Paul Baker asks very genuinely, "Do you want to mind wipe?"

Both unbearably curious about what it could be and understanding that sometimes it's better when things are forgotten, Paul Baker just wants Anton to have all the options.

"No. Not this. We aren't going to act like this didn't happen," Anton replies sternly, and they both understand what he's referring to. So he does still think about that night.

His mouth running dry, Paul Baker can only nod.

"With everything that's gone down recently—with that guy—I was a little worried about you," Anton says, breathing through the words like a confession, like he's admitting to something. And Anton was right—it hurts a little to hear to it. But Paul Baker stands still and listens because it's the least he can do for Anton. "You were going through something and it must have been really hard—" he pauses for a second, his hands held out in front of him "—but watching it was hard too. And now, like he's gone but I know that it doesn't mean you've stopped thinking about him."

If only he was so lucky, Paul Baker thinks. He hasn't seen Julian since that evening outside but it didn't magically fix everything. It lingered and haunted him long after.

Anton continues, "But even then, you—you've been trying so hard to keep everything together. I—I know it's not comparable but when my ex, Jacob, ended things, I did not get out of bed for a week straight. Billie had to sleep downstairs 'cause my crying was keeping her up at night."

"Jesus, we gotta kill that guy," Paul Baker mutters, mostly out of shock. He probably won't ever meet this Jacob guy but he can't understand how someone could be so insane to fumble Anton—the best person in the whole fucking world.

"Issa tried buying a hitman on Reddit. It was a whole thing." Anton shakes his head. "Anyway, my point is, that almost killed me and somehow, you're still upright and functioning and like, a real person after that absolute nightmare of a guy. No one would have blamed you if you became a hermit for the next year."

"I—" Paul Baker didn't mean to speak, spending more of his energy trying not to interrupt Anton to brush it all off. He doesn't deserve praise for—for what? Living? It's the simplest thing, it's the only thing because—"I didn't know I had another choice."

What else was he meant to do? Never once did it occur to Paul Baker that he could hide away from the world and lick his wounds in private. He has to keep going because he always has. Even when he actually left Julian, Paul Baker didn't collapse all that spectacularly. There wasn't anyone left to catch him so he couldn't fall.

Anton presses his lips into a line, visibly fighting across the pity soaring through him. "That's what makes you Paul Baker," he comments quietly, like he, too, didn't mean for it to come out. Louder and intentional, Anton adds, "Through everything, you've been holding it together—

Paul Baker can't help but laugh.

The smile crosses onto Anton's face. "Okay, more or less holding it together. I just want you to know that you seem happier now. More—you."

It's fucking agony hearing it and Paul Baker really fucking loves Anton for saying it.

"I feel more like me again," he admits, softly.

"I'm glad. You deserve to be happy. Fuck that asshole for making you feel anything different."

"God, he is such an asshole!"

Anton laughs, a bright sound that Paul Baker could spend the rest of his life listening to. If Paul Baker was struck down in this very moment, he'd die perfectly content. No regrets left. If the last thing his eyes saw before darkness took him was Anton's beautiful face and stunning smile, nothing in heaven would hold a flame to it.

Letting out a slow breath, Paul Baker has to say, "Thanks, Anton. It means a lot coming from you."

Waving a hand, Anton scoffs. "Please. I'm just pointing out the obvious. You're the one doing all the hard work."

"Well, you made it a lot easier," Paul Baker says, his eyes darting low before he catches himself. Clearing his throat, he adds, "All of you have. You've all done so much for me. I don't know how I could repay you guys."

"Consider our debt paid up with this cup of tea."

Paul Baker barks a loud, ugly laugh. "Then I'll make it the best tea you've ever had."

"Looking forward to it." Anton hesitates for a moment, his smile never faltering but it takes him a second before he turns to leave.

Watching him go, Paul Baker is stuck with a goofy grin on his face and his chest aching with pleasant need. It's hard to consider it himself, to really be able to point out the small things, the slight changes in behaviour that don't feel like anything significant in a way he can verbalise, but Anton sees it. Notices it.

Has enough interest to tell Paul Baker about it, too.

Nothing in his life has taken as much care and focus as making this single cup of tea. It's the only thing that matters in this moment.

Once he's sure it's the best it can be, Paul Baker slinks back into the living room, handing off the mug to Anton before taking his place on the floor beside Issa again.

"Finally. You missed so much," she says.

"I was gone for give minutes. How much could have happened?"

"A lot," Billie and Samir both say in unison above him.

Paul Baker settles against the couch and something in the corner of his eye catches his attention. Anton is taking the first sip of his drink, a content smile curving his lips up as he brings the lumpy mug down.

Their eyes meet.

A rumble of something Paul Baker isn't brave enough to name just yet storms in his chest. He knows it's there but for now, it doesn't need to be thing. It can just exist without him acknowledging it.

He can just exist for a few moments.

—

Crossing through the door, Paul Baker is greeted with the loud voices trickling down from the staircase. It settles something quiet in his chest. His mind has been in a bit of a mess today, a thought appearing like an itch he can't stop to scratch while he was pouring coffee and it hasn't let him have a moment of peace all day. Just enough to put him off. Annoying and needing attention but he hasn't had a second where he could stop and deal with it.

Not until now.

He follows the sounds upstairs, finding his friends laid out on the couches on the landing, watching something on the TV.

They light up seeing him. Paul Baker lingers just on the edge of the space, fiddling with his middle finger.

"Something on your mind, Paul Baker?" Anton wonders, almost casual enough to get away with it. Him and Billie are cuddled up on one couch with Issa and Samir have the other. They look so comfortable and Paul Baker has the brief thought that he shouldn't bother them with his mess.

By now, he should be able to handle it on his own. Curl up on one of the couches like a good dog and just be unobtrusive until someone calls his name.

"I—" Paul Baker doesn't look at anyone in particular. "Can I still call bubblegum?"

All the air stiffens suddenly. They each share a look with each other, which at least confirms for Paul Baker that they still remember it. He hasn't used the word since that night. Hasn't really needed. Paul Baker hasn't broken down like he did then.

"Of course," Samir says quickly, sitting up to lean over his knees.

"Yeah, absolutely," Anton adds. He pulls himself up from Billie's side, his gaze like a brick weighing at Paul Baker.

"I just—tell me the truth. Don't try to make me feel better about it," Paul Baker says. There's an echoing sense of agreement that runs around the group. Everyone watches him intently, waiting for him to speak again. It's a little overwhelming and a lot anxiety inducing but Paul Baker is in too far to back out now. "So I—I was like, fully abused, then, right?"

He bristled against that label before, unwilling to take on something that didn't apply to him. There are so many people that actually have earned it, that have gone through terrible things that he can't even imagine and deserve this level care and concern. Paul Baker is not one of them.

Or—

Was not.

Wasn't until this morning when the thought crept back into his mind and made a home. It was Samir's voice, particularly, that got stuck. If it was anyone else that went through what Paul Baker did, he'd be in complete agreement that it was abusive. He never would have questioned it for a second.

And so if that label applies to them, why the hell doesn't it apply to him?

"Like what Julian did was more than just a little shitty," Paul Baker adds as if he needs to clarify.

There's four sets of eyes on him. A familiar position given all the things that have happened in this house lately but it still makes him squirm.

"Yes," Issa says plainly.

"Oh." Paul Baker already had an idea on what the answer would be but hearing it is still a strange experience. He blinks. "That's sad."

Billie nods, her eyes wide with concern. "Yeah, it's very sad. Are you okay with that, Paul Baker?"

He takes a moment to think about it because he doesn't want to just say he's fine without meaning it. Taking stock of everything, Paul Baker feels every part of his body from his head to his toes, nothing rumbling anywhere. He hasn't even touched the bathroom though it's his week to clean it yet.

"Yeah, it's weird but I'm good." Paul Baker nods after speaking, as if reassuring himself that he means it. He does. It isn't so scary to accept it when his friends are all here. "What do you guys want for dinner?"

"Oh, we were just talking about that. Come sit," Issa says, shuffling over into the middle of the couch to let Paul Baker sit down.

He wouldn't have minded being in between her and Samir but it's clearly in effort to not overstimulate him with too many people touching him so Paul Baker can't really be annoyed. As he falls into the soft cushion, his head falls back, throat bobbing stretched out like this. "Dibs not cooking," he mutters.

"Who has money to order in?" Samir asks.

"Ugh, fine, I will. What do we feel like?" Anton sounds annoyed but no one made him volunteer.

Paul Baker lifts his head, seeing Anton grab his phone to pull up Doordash.

Everyone is throwing out suggestions, all completely different in terms of cuisines, and Anton turns them all down on the basis that he's ordering it so he has final say.

"Oh, what about that Mexican place we went to the other week?" Paul Baker says. "What was it called?"

Anton's eyes lift up to him for a beat before glancing back down to his phone. "I know what you mean, I'll find it. Guys, shut up, we're getting Mexican."

And that settles it.

Paul Baker leans back into the couch. Nothing has changed now that he understands it. Nothing has to. It was always true even before he could name it. In the grand scheme of things, nothing is different tonight. It's a night like any other—tucked up safe and happy and comfortable with the best people he knows, and in the morning, it will still be the same.