Justin

The dead weight of Cam’s body lay against my chest, his breathing deep and even as the movie we’d been watching continued to drone on in the background. Easy sleep was another gift his happy childhood had given him, though I wasn’t sure how it’d survived the last two years. I still woke up in the night and found myself halfway to Tammy’s room, certain she needed me for something, before my brain woke up enough for grief to punch me in the gut again. Then I’d spend the rest of the night staring up at the ceiling while Cam snoozed on peacefully in the bed next to me.

Maybe it was because she’d been my sister, though I didn’t think the death of Cam’s sister would have hit me any less hard. Of course, that wasn’t really a fair comparison when I’d spent more years growing up with Cam’s sister, Angie, than my own. Angie was only a year younger than us, whereas the difference between me and Tammy had been more like a decade. I’d been out of the house before she’d turned seven.

I still remembered when it’d been just me and my mum. Everything had been different then. Sure, we’d been poor as shit and she’d been stressed all the time, but in a way it had felt like us against the world. Then she’d met my step dad, and he’d hated me, and at some point she’d decided that life was easier if she just hated me too.

Then they’d had Tammy, and things got worse. Having this precious baby princess in the house opened up a whole new world of things I could do wrong. I once got in trouble for being sick because I might make her sick. I went to Cam’s house and his mum made me soup.

So when I left for good, it hadn’t crossed my mind to worry about Tammy. She’d always been loved and cared for. I’d figured she’d be better off without the drama I brought to the house.

I was twenty-three, living with Cam in this house, when I got a phone call asking if I would take custody of my half-sister. Medical neglect, they’d said. She’d been loved and cared for right up until she became too much of an inconvenience. Then the weight loss, the pain, the fatigue was all ignored until it was much too late.

Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. That it was already too late. Sometimes you only find that out by doing everything you can and finding out that it’s not enough.

The doorbell chimed and Cam jerked awake.

My first thought was: murderer. Cam said, “I hope someone hasn’t crashed again.”

Again, our upbringings had turned us into two very different people. And, in this case—in many, really—Cam was the more rational of the two of us. Our house was on a corner, and someone had totalled their car on a tree out front once. Rain was bucketing down outside. It was easy to imagine someone underestimating conditions and skidding on the wet road.

So I got up to answer the door, but I made sure I beat Cam’s sleepy ass there. If one of us was getting stabbed, I was calling dibs. It was only fair since he’d proven he dealt with grief much better than I did.

On the doorstep stood Flynn, clothes dripping, blond hair so drenched it had almost been convinced to lay flat, and that easy, lopsided smile fixed on his lips.

Cam found his voice before I did. "Good lord, what happened to you?" 

“Well… rain,” Flynn said as he toed off his shoes. His socked feet squelched on the ground and he braced a hand on my shoulder as he lifted his foot to pull one off. “You can’t see shit out there, so I got kinda lost, and I had to keep ducking under cover so I could get out my phone and check maps. Got here in the end, though!”

Cam dashed across the room and disappeared down the hall.

"Why didn't you call us to pick you up?" I asked as Flynn switched feet to tug off his other sock.

“Didn’t think of that,” Flynn admitted, letting go of my shoulder to shed his sopping jacket. “And, y’know, I wouldn’t have wanted to bother you. Like, not even moved in yet and already asking for shit. Wouldn’t be a good look, right?”

Well, wasn’t that a punch in the gut?

“Don’t you worry about that,” Cam said as he reappeared behind me and slung a towel over my shoulder. “You call next time, okay?”

Flynn laughed. “Yeah, alright. Thanks.”

I was glad Cam had found his voice before I had, because he was far more capable of being normal about this shit than I was. I had the heart of a mother bear, and it didn’t like that my cub was shivering as the cool air hit his bare arms. Unfortunately getting your hackles up at the rain didn’t get you too far.

I lifted the towel, intending to drape it over Flynn’s head, perhaps after giving it a playful ruffle to let him know we were all friends here even though I was pretty sure I looked pissed. He dropped his head and only leaned in further as I brushed the towel over his hair. 

So I rubbed a little more, and he sighed, let his shoulders drop. Who could blame me for continuing?

I glanced back to see Cam leaning against the wall, his lips pressed together against an amused—and slightly fond—smile.

Sheets, I mouthed to him, and he gave a quick nod and hurried off. We’d stripped the bed earlier in anticipation of Flynn’s arrival, but if he had sheets in that backpack, he didn’t have much else. He definitely didn’t have a blanket or pillow. The queen bed in Tammy’s room—Flynn’s room—used to be ours before Tammy inherited it and we bought the king for ourselves, so we probably still had some sheets for it knocking around that weren’t covered in flowers. 

Though hell, maybe he’d rather the flowers. The sunflowers he’d given us were still sitting in a vase in the kitchen, though they’d seen better days by this point.

Eventually Flynn huffed and straightened, and I reluctantly stepped back and handed him the towel. I shut the door behind him as he stepped inside.

“Thanks, man,” Flynn said. “Actually, do you mind if I go wash? I know you just spent all that time drying me, but some nice hot water would be amazing right now.”

“You live here now,” I told him. “You don’t have to ask.”

“The bathroom I showed you on the tour is all yours,” Cam added as he paused in the entrance to the hallway, sheets bundled under his arm. “You can have anything that’s still in there, or you can throw it out to clear space for your own things. It might be a bit teenage girl for your tastes.”

“The teenage girl won’t be wanting her stuff back?” Flynn asked.

“She’s dead,” I said. 

It’d come out blunter than I’d meant it to, and I immediately felt bad when Flynn’s face fell and his light brown eyes widened. “Oh, shit! Sorry! I, uh—”

“No, no, it’s fine! Don’t worry about it,” Cam interrupted. “Obviously it would have come up sooner or later. Sooner is better, I think. She was Justin’s sister. Tammy. She had cancer.”

“That’s awful, though,” Flynn said, running a hand through his hair and leaving it sticking up at odd angles in its wake. “Like, I assume my grandma’s dead by now, because of, you know—the Alzheimer’s. But she was old and all that. I can’t imagine—a teenager. That’s brutal. You sure she wouldn’t mind me using her stuff?”

“She wouldn’t have wanted it to go to waste,” I said. “We grew up poor. We donated some of her stuff after she died, but nobody wants a half-used bottle of shampoo.”

“And if you don’t either, that’s fine,” Cam added. “Don’t feel obligated. We should have cleared that bathroom out months ago, but we don’t really go in there. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I could go for some free shampoo. Don’t suppose girl hair and guy hair is actually all that different. Anyway.” Flynn hefted his backpack. “Thanks for, uh—everything. I’m gonna go wash.”

As Flynn headed off to the bathroom, I followed Cam to the bedroom down the hall to help him with the sheets.

The second the bathroom door clicked shut, Cam turned to me, eyebrows lifting, a knowing smile on his lips. “Drying him off like he’s a drowned kitten? Really?”

I shouldered past him into Tammy—Flynn’s—room. “He dropped his head and leant into it. What was I supposed to do?”

He huffed out a laugh. “I just hope he understands what he just signed himself up for.”

“He didn’t sign himself up for anything. Except that I would die for him.”

“Oh, only that.” Cam tossed his armful of bedding onto the floor and fished out the fitted sheet. “I’m not complaining. You need that spark, and I’m not sure I really—”

“Hey,” I said, cutting him off as I stepped into his space and pressed the heat of my body against his side. “You’re my partner. I used to think calling your spouse your ‘better half’ was just a cliche, but that’s what you are to me. Without you, I wouldn’t be whole.”

“Okay,” Cam said, voice gentle. “I’m not being jealous. I promise. You’re my other half, too. I want you to be happy. We’ve always known that we can’t be everything for one another.”

“Someone we live with is a little different from a one night stand.”

“But it’s not so different from what Tammy was to you.”

“It’s a little different, Cam.”

“Sure, okay, but I’m going to be thinking about him later when you jerk me off, too. Complaints?”

I shook my head.

“Then we’re fine. If he actually bends himself over the kitchen counter and asks for a pounding, we might need to have another talk. Since he hasn’t yet consented to anything I’d have a problem with, I’m not worried. Any lines you cross would be an issue with him, first and foremost, and I know you wouldn’t do that.”

“No, I wasn’t even thinking about that.” I sighed against his ear. “It’s like that and not like that. He’s hot, and there’s no forgetting that for even a second, but it’s not like I was getting off on drying his hair.”

“I know,” Cam assured me. “Your better half, remember? I always know. Now, help me with this sheet.”

I did, and then I found some pillows and a quilt and put covers on them.

We were just finishing up when I heard Flynn call out from down the hall: “Uh, hey?”

I ducked out of the room to see what he needed, and was immediately confronted by the sight of Flynn standing in the doorway to the bathroom, completely naked.

He held a bright fuchsia towel out in front of him, concealing nothing. “So I know you said I could have the stuff in here, but does that include the towels? I didn’t wanna overstep…”

I kept my eyes fixed firmly on his face, but there was no ignoring the contrast of pale skin and darker hair I could see in my peripheral vision. “Yeah, help yourself. They’ve been washed.”

“Cool, thanks.” He didn’t move.

“Now would be good.”

I heard Cam choke on a laugh behind me.

Flynn laughed too, but he covered himself—barely. “Sorry. I shared a room at my old place, and the bathroom was, like… in the room, you know? So I kind of just got used to everyone seeing, well, everything—” He swept a hand down his body to illustrate and my stupid eyes followed it. Fuck. “—so it burnt all the modesty out of me.”

“Okay,” I said, because that was about the extent of the words rattling around in my head that wouldn’t get me in trouble if they came out of my mouth.

“Anyway, thanks for the towel,” Flynn said with a grin, holding it up and flashing me again in the process before he turned—Oh god, bare ass—and disappeared back into the bathroom.

Cam waited until the door clicked shut before he doubled over laughing. I was pretty sure Flynn could very much hear him.

“What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” I grumbled.

Cam drew in a deep breath and calmed his laughter. “Regrets?”

I shook my head—at him, not as a no, though he knew me well enough to know that was the answer anyway. Living with Flynn was going to be a lot more chaotic than I’d bargained for, but maybe that was exactly what we needed.