Brookfell Academy sat crooked for the next several days. The air moved differently. Irritated jitters rippled down Nate's spine and into his fingertips.

One week turned over. Their detention spree went by relatively unnoticed.

Though Nate was asleep for most of it.

Didn't help his case that he had another week of detention, already.

“So...” the guidance counsellor drolled, adjusting his pages on his clipboard. Nate could not, for the life of him, remember his name. “Do you know why you're here again, Mr. Quinn?” His office was a windowless room, lit by a single golden lamp in the corner, casting shadows on children's drawings that had been gifted to him. It smelled softly of chamomile tea, wood shavings from the pencil sharpener, and waxy crayons. There was barely enough room for the sofa, coffee table, and his desk and chair. Nothing else would properly fit.

Nate wished he could have been anywhere else.

He rolled his eyes and reclined into the couch, throwing his hands up. “I assume I'm here because Watson still can't take a joke.”

The guidance counsellor raised a brow. “You're here, again, because you're disrupting Mr. Watson's education.”

“Disrupting, livening things up. Potato, pohtato.”

“I know you think you're doing a service for everyone, for Sam, but in my sessions last week with him – and, again, I need to reiterate this – Sam's expressed, in no uncertain terms, that he doesn't enjoy these interactions.”

It was Nate's turn to raise a brow. “And, again, I ask you, isn't that supposed to be confidential information?”

“You know the answer to that, Mr. Quinn,” the guidance counsellor sighed. “In my last session with him, Sam had some...choice things to say concerning you that he assumed would...and I quote, 'sail through your ears'.” He flipped a page, searching for the snippets, before folding a bundle of papers over the metal clasp and glanced at Nate expectantly. “'If it hasn't sunk in, yet,' and he added, specifically, that he thought you would be slow on the uptick, 'he doesn't like you'.”

Nate broke out in a smirk. He liked that leg up on Tyler. That someone “didn't like him”, even if Sam didn't actually mean it. Nate knew, deep down, that Sam didn't mean it; he secretly liked that Nate bothered him.

“'You are more of a disruption to his education than a World War II-era bomb.'”

He sank back into his seat. “Drama queen.”

“'He hates you.'”

“You already said that,” Nate sighed. “Or, read that.”

The guidance counsellor drew in a breath. “Sam was afraid...or, rather, anticipatory, that you wouldn't understand how angry the stunt on Family Night made him.”

“I said I was sorry,” he said, tapping his fingers along a stretch of worn-through leather on the armrest. “What else does he want me to do?”

“Sam also wanted to me say this. And this is verbatim: –” He cleared his throat and enunciated every single word to perfection, as if he was projecting across an empty theater to the back row. “– 'You hurt my family, and I did not think that was something you were capable of. We knew that friends and family were off-limits, and you didn’t do anything when my sister got that awful, awful award.'”

Nate bristled. He glanced away, trying to ignore the burning sensation behind his eyes, or the sickly lump in his throat. That award had Sam's goddamned name written on it. He could reiterate over and over that he didn't mean for Sam's sister to get caught in the crossfire, that he shouldn't have accepted the help of someone as incompetent as that underclassman, but it would be like talking to a wall.

And he tried talking to that wall after their initial week of detention was over. He tried goading Sam into conversation several times over the last few days, especially between classes, but Sam never rose to take the bait. The coldness between them stung, and whatever attempts to try and get Sam to talk to him devolved into outright belittling. So what if it damaged his “Golden Boy” reputation (if anything, it made him look like a golden underdog)? So what if he got another week of detention from it (which already came about)? He wanted Sam back.

“Nate, your...recent pranks, also, have come to light with the administration.”

“Which ones?”

The guidance counsellor stared. “Both of them? Are there more we should know of?”

He gritted his teeth. With their initial week of detention in the rear view mirror, when Sam wouldn't talk, Nate tried a few lighthearted pranks to bring back that fire between them – he swapped Sam's textbooks for children books (really difficult without a locker, but still. An oldie but a goodie); decorated his advisory room's door with baby blue flowers and a “HAPPY SECOND BIRTHDAY” banner (a classic) – but at every turn, every breath that descended into his lungs, Sam never reacted, as if numbed to the bone with coldness. He watched, like a child sleepily mesmerized by the swinging arm of a grandfather clock.

“No,” Nate snapped back. His leg started bouncing. There were more, but probably either not relayed to this poor drone, or simply not reported on.

Shame that Nate once thought Sam had a decent sense of humor.

Nah, he did. Nate, just, had to dig it out, again.

The guidance counsellor regarded him for a long moment before glancing down at his papers. “There's always one odd egg in a family,” he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.

Nate's chest tightened. What the man meant to say was, “Tyler would never be caught dead in detention, or in the guidance counsellor's office. Something clearly must be wrong with Nate.”

“It’s possible, Nate,” the guidance counsellor continued, “that Sam’s not reacting because he’s already said everything he wanted to say.”

“Look, I tried talking to him,” Nate pressed, “but he won't talk to me. What am I supposed to do?”

“He probably doesn't believe you genuinely mean it.”

“How would you know?”

The guidance counsellor gave him a quizzical look. “Because he told me.”

“But I do.”

“I know,” he said, sounding entirely unconvinced by Nate, “but conviction isn't enough for him. Words and actions mean different things to different people.”

“You said that last time, and it doesn't change anything. Of course, I mean it!” Did this dunderhead really believe he wanted to be doing half this stuff just to get Sam's attention? Did this absolute dogshit of a human being really believe (genuinely believe) that Nate Quinn wanted to waste his time and energy trying to groveling (which Nate knew he wasn't doing) and apologizing (he'd done it, like, nine times!) to someone who couldn't take a joke?

It was a moment like this where Nate wished Sam worshiped him the way everyone else worshiped Tyler. Would've made things so much easier.

“Nate, you hurt him.”

He pfted that. “He's just being a baby.”

The guidance counsellor sighed. “Nate, I don't know if you're understanding – really understanding – where Sam's coming from. Sam felt hurt, or betrayed, when you pulled that stunt at Family Night against his family.”

“I didn't mean for it to go to her,” he insisted, bile rising in his throat. “I told him, that.”

“So if Sam, somehow, tried to...I don't know, dump soapy water on you, and one of your friends ended up getting dumped on, how would you feel?”

“Was that a prank of yours from back in the day?” Nate asked, deadpan. “The world was harder without TVs and phones, wasn't it?”

The guidance counsellor frowned. “Consider the question, Nate. That's all I ask.”

“Fine. If someone dumped water on my friend –” Emma. “– and –”

“And Sam had the same reaction as you did.”

“– and Sam had the same reaction as I did,” he drolled, “I would...”

He could see it plain as day: Emma sopping wet, soaked to the bone, suds in her hair, on her shoulders, clinging to her uniform, as realization dawned on her what just happened. Sam stood by, a wide expression on his face, as he glanced across the way to Nate, his lips parted slightly. Emma started trembling, either from the coldness of the water or her brain catching up with what was happening, and something in Nate's vision turned blood red.

But he didn't hate Sam that much. He could have cut through that initial feeling, because he knew Sam wouldn't mean something that malicious. Sam, in a thousand ways, understood what their friends and family meant to them.

Nate dug his nails into the couch's armrests. This was different. No one was hurt from a piece of paper.

Except, apparently, Sam. Maybe his sister.

And Nate's face.

“Nate,” the guidance counsellor continued, tone softer now, “Sam isn't hurt by what you did, specifically. You two had an understanding of how things were to go between you two, a line in the sand drawn. No one might have gotten physically hurt from the initial prank, but Sam is hurt by what you didn't do.”

His foot started tapping, again. He glanced at the clock, waiting for the period bell to ring and end this nonsense. “I didn't mean to,” Nate insisted, though his words were worn out, now. A record that had been played one too many times. “So say I went up to stop it. I'd be screwed over, anyway. He'd be mad at me for it, either way.”

“...but what could've happened, then? Lay out a hypothetical scenario for me. You know him better than I do.”

Nate would've leapt onto the debate stage, snatched the award, and run, all the while the stupid audience laughed their asses off, thinking it was part of the charade. He would have buried it so deep into a trash can the smell would have been up to his shoulders. Sam would have come to find him, fiery and upset, but Nate would have caught him and explained everything. And Sam, whose fingers never seemed to stop moving, would have deflated with realization that he wasn't some garbage rich kid, and he would have apprehensively smiled, his face growing flushed and making his freckles more apparent, and thanked him for it.

And Nate would have shuddered at the expression.

Imagining it haunted him.

His expression fell, slowly. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to swallow the lump formed in his throat; it refused to budge.

In passing, Nate wished Sam would punch him again, but knew he wouldn't.

The bell rang, and the guidance counsellor sighed, making some notes on his pages. “Some food for thought, Nate, for next time,” he began.

“Next time.” Sure. Nate let him think that.

“I know you mean the apology, but what would Sam appreciate more – words, or actions?”

Nate rolled his eyes, straightened out his uniform, checked that his tie was loose and stylish (the thought of Sam tightening it around his throat again was terrifying in a confusing, enticing way), and shrugged off the question. “See you later,” he offered offhandedly, stepping into the too-bright corridor and wincing at the light.

It was almost December, now. The wind whipped the trees bare, and frost decorated the earth every morning.

Everywhere, his brother's name shone to him on trophies, awards, photographs of productions passed, like a silent taunt he could see behind his eyes: how would he react if someone did this to him?

Everyone would ostracize them, Nate reasoned, because no one would actually even consider crossing the soft-spoken, kindly Tyler Quinn like that.

But he was not Tyler Quinn, no matter what people thought of him. Nate Quinn was looser. Recklessness danced in his fingertips with a honey-colored glow. If Tyler Quinn was gold, Nate was the freaking sun.

Nate sighed and wiped his face. Someone nudged him, and when Nate met the eyes of some hapless underclassman smiling at him, he smirked back. He'd deal with Sam, later.