I was in the living room, browsing auctions on my laptop, when Flynn returned home from work. I immediately knew something was wrong when he greeted me with only an obviously guilty half wave and headed straight for his room. When I went to investigate a few minutes later, I found him on his bed with his shirt off, spools of thread from a sewing kit he’d just bought and torn open strewn across his comforter, struggling to thread a needle. His knee was scraped up and starting to scab over, blood dried and flaking on his skin.

“So, uh, I fucked up,” he said, not pausing in his attempts to get the thread through the tiny hole. “On my way back to the bus stop after work, I saw this goanna, and I followed it into the brush, and, well, the undergrowth was pretty thick and I didn’t see where the ground dropped down, and I fell. Annnd the shirt was kinda tight across my shoulders, so it tore.”

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?” He paused to glance at his knee. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I just gotta get this string in, then I’ve gotta look up how to sew, and maybe if I can figure all that out, Justin won’t be pissed. Maybe…”

“Flynn, sweetheart,” I said, at a sudden loss for words as those wide, worried eyes met mine. “Give me a minute.”

I headed to the kitchen, retrieved the first aid kit, and returned. 

“Go and rinse your knee,” I told Flynn. “Make sure you get all the dirt out of the scrape.”

He abandoned his needle and obeyed, still looking morose and downtrodden. I put the needle away in the little plastic case the kit had come with so that he wouldn’t find it with his body later.

He returned, slightly damp around the bottom of his borrowed shorts but no less sad looking. I pointed to the bed as I pulled on a pair of disposable gloves.

“He won’t be angry,” I assured Flynn as I sat with him. I squirted antibiotic ointment onto my gloved fingers and began carefully smearing it over the scrape. “I know Justin can be hard to read, but I’ve known him most of my life. He’s a good man.”

“Well, yeah, I’m not saying he’s not, but when you touch someone’s shit without asking, and you break it, they get mad. And they should, right? That’s totally fair. This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been mucking about.”

I covered the scrape with an extra large bandaid, gently pressing it down around the edges. “Just because it would be fair for someone to be annoyed doesn’t mean that Justin will be annoyed. It’s not a big deal. I promise.”

“Okay,” Flynn said, but his features were still tense and he didn’t sound any less worried.

“How about this,” I said, dragging the sewing kit towards me. “I’ll teach you how to sew.”

That perked him up a little. I showed him how to use the needle threader and did the first few stitches for him while he watched, then I let him take a crack at it. His features pinched in concentration as he carefully wove the needle in and out of the torn fabric.

“Oh,” he said after a few stitches. “This is easy.”

I laughed. “It is fairly simple, yeah.”

“I thought it would be like knitting. My grandma used to do that all the time, but I could never figure it out. It was all swoopy and loopy.”

“How long ago did you lose her?”

“Uhh…” Flynn said, pausing in his stitching. “Well, okay, so the last time I saw her I was, like, ten? That was when she was diagnosed, too, but she was pretty bad. When I started living with her, she’d call me by my dad’s name sometimes, and I didn’t really think anything about it. But then she started actually thinking I was my dad. So, I dunno, I guess she could still be alive, but like… probably not, right? And if she somehow was, there’s no way she’d even know who I was.”

“I can try to look into it and see if I can find out what happened.”

“Sure,” Flynn said as he continued his careful stitchwork. “I was only with her for, I dunno, six months? Maybe less. Barely knew her before that, never saw her again after. But she was harmless, and she loved me, and life’s taught me since just how much that’s worth.”

“That’s the barest bare minimum, Flynn. Don’t ever forget that.”

“Oh yeah, don’t worry, I learnt that lesson. Trouble is that lying exists, so who do you trust? I had this huge crush on Ethan and I think it was mostly ‘cause he’s just so harmless. He just couldn’t hurt me in any real way no matter how things went. Probably I’d hurt him, though, without even meaning to. I think the perfect kinda person I’d want to be with would be a risk—but we were talking about my grandma, not dating, so I dunno what I’m rambling about.”

“No, it's worth thinking about. And you're right—it's hardly ever as simple as someone seeing exactly what they're walking into and picking it anyway. It creeps up on you slowly, so nothing's ever a big enough jump on its own to trip the alarms.”

“Yeah, though I probably should’ve realised things were fucked up from the start with Dean. Age difference, y’know? That’s an obvious red flag. But I was fifteen, being bounced through the foster system. It seems so obvious that you don’t go with this adult man who keeps pushing boundaries, but I didn’t have anyone else giving me attention or telling me I mattered. When you’re that desperate, it’s easier than you’d think to just not see that one big damn flashing neon sign that’d ruin everything.”

“But you got away. You saved yourself.”

“In the end, yeah. I’m not too good at knowing when it’s time to get out until I’ve been in a bad situation way too long, but I’ve got a good bit of determination in me once I’ve made up my mind. Getting my documents, a job, a place to stay, all that was crazy hard, but once I’d decided that I was leaving, Dean couldn’t stop me. He made all kinds of threats, and I believed some of them, but…” Flynn shrugged. “I’d made myself a promise, and I keep my promises.”

“You survived all that, and you’re worried about a shirt?”

Flynn had stopped sewing while he told his story. He started another careful stitch now. “I’m worried about keeping hold of the good things I have now. Sure, it’s just an old shirt, but these things add up. I dunno if I’ve really made the best first impression.”

“Wait here,” I told him, then I went to the living room and dug through the waste paper basket. When I returned, I slapped a stack of paper down in front of him.

He peeled a yellow post-it note with his own name scrawled on it off the top of the pile, giving me a quizzical look.

“For future reference, you should probably fill out your profile if you’re applying for a share house,” I told him. “This whole stack of paper is people I invited to see the room. Justin and I went through them together, and we chose you. You fought hard to get where you are and you don’t have much. I understand why you’d worry. Just… look at how many sheets of paper there are, Flynn. That’s the reality.”

Flynn set his sewing aside and quickly flipped through the pages, seeing how many were there, then he slowed down and started reading through them. “Why me?”

“Because you made a good first impression.”

“Huh,” he said after sorting through a few more. “Guess I did.”

He went back to his sewing after a few minutes, but I noticed he set the print outs on the other side of him, away from me, like he planned to keep them. I hoped they’d give him confidence, but I knew from my years with Justin that a wounded mind could be a messy thing. It was amazing how many times in a day Flynn could remind me of Justin while also being so starkly different.

When Flynn was finally done with his sewing, he held up the shirt and let out a sigh. The tear had been jagged and angled, and Flynn’s stitches were uneven and inconsistent. The whole thing was lumpy, the fabric visibly pinched together in places.

“We need to pick up a couple of boxes of books this afternoon. Do you want to come with me to get them and save Justin the extra chore after work?”

I honestly hadn’t been sure if that had been the right play. I didn’t want to make Flynn feel like the shirt was something he had to make up for. The instant brightening of his expression and the way he got up onto his knees like he had to hold himself back from running out to the car told me it had been the right move. 

“Yeah, cool, sounds fun,” he said. “When’re we going?”

“We’ll head off in a minute. Just let me call Justin. You should probably also put on a shirt.”

“Oh, yeah, let me just,” he started to move, then stalled out. “Oh, wait, my clothes—”

“Are on the line outside. They should be dry enough.”

Flynn winced. “Ah, shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘thank you,’” I said as I stood. “And you’re welcome. Go get dressed.”

“Ah, yeah, thanks!” Flynn said. As he ran off outside to finally put a damn shirt on, I went to me and Justin’s room to call Justin.

“Hey,” Justin answered, his voice warm against my ear. There was something so grounding about that deep, smooth voice. I hadn’t realised how scattered I’d been feeling until that single word pulled me back together.

“Hey, hun,” I said. “Me and Flynn are going to pick up those books, so don’t worry about that.”

“You’ve roped him into more free labour again already?”

“He wasn’t reluctant. He looked the happiest I’d seen him all day when I suggested it. He’s had a bit of a rough one.”

“Uh oh. What happened?”

I sat down on the edge of our bed. “Well, this morning I showed him how to use the washer, and he threw all his clothes in, then realised later that he had to go to work and had nothing to wear. I gave him some of your shed work clothes to wear.”

“Hot,” Justin commented.

“This afternoon I found him in his room, trying to figure out how to sew because he tripped while chasing a goanna and ripped your shirt.”

“Hold on,” Justin said. “Chases lizards, gets excited for car rides… are you sure we didn’t adopt a dog?”

“You’d have to wonder.”

“Is he okay? Did he hurt himself?”

“Scraped his knee. I put a bandaid on it. Mostly he was very worried you’d be mad about the shirt.”

“I don’t give a shit about the shirt.”

“Obviously, and I told him that, but I think he still believes that even if you don’t care about the shirt, you might think less of him for being careless. Or something. He reminds me of how you were with my parents for the longest time. You thought they’d get angry at you over everything.”

“My own parents blamed me for everything. I thought that was just how parents were. I bet an abusive relationship really fucks you up like that.”

“And foster care before that and who knows what else,” I added. “Anyway, I just wanted to give you a heads up that he’s taking this very seriously. Despite my best efforts, he’s primed to expect anger, and he’s going to find it in anything he possibly can. So… good luck.”

“Hm,” Justin said. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I echoed, a little surprised by how confident he sounded. I loved him with all my heart, but I wasn’t that confident in his ability to project an air of not being mad.

“It’ll be fine,” Justin assured me. “Anyway, customer just walked in. Gotta go, love you.”

“Love you,” I managed to get out just before he hung up.

Flynn was waiting near the front door. He’d put on one of his own shirts, but he was still wearing Justin’s shorts. I wasn’t sure if that was intentional or if he’d just forgotten they weren’t his, but Justin would enjoy it. Justin’s shirt was tucked into the band. Apparently Flynn intended to waste no time in confessing his sins.

But he didn’t look quite as worried about it anymore, so that was something. I just hoped Justin would be able to banish his fretting for good, not make it worse.