Maybe Bailey was different, or maybe it was Matt. But something changed after that night.

Matt spent less time avoiding him around the farm and more time helping with the hard labor projects his father assigned. And in return, Bailey spent more time around the guest house. He started to shower every night and stick around for dinner and the evening news, and Matt didn't mind his company all that much. He wasn't like Jess; Bailey spoke when spoken to and the silence that occurred when he chose not to talk at all felt natural enough that Matt had twice now fallen asleep to the sound of his endless sketching and nothing else.

It was a Tuesday evening when he brought the first boy to the farm. Thin and small, clean and coiffed. He walked with an effeminate grace and weak ankles. Matt watched from the kitchen window that night, wondering just who and what Bailey Walters was waiting for, slouched beneath the motion light of his barn in the dead of night. Maybe he was amalgamating with the dark. Makin' skin to skin contact with the shadows that bore him.

Then the blond showed up. Seemed nice enough to Matt, but Bailey treated him with a strange kinda softness that felt all wrong to watch. Dark fingers ruffled through his fair, blond-white hair, like a pup praised for fetching the right pair of shoes. That was how Bailey always greeted him. Like a soft, stupid thing.

Then they'd go into the barn together, the lights would shut off, and in an hour he'd leave just the way he came. Gracefully effeminate and weak in the ankles.

They were a wrong pairing. The kid couldn't have been older than eighteen, the kinda dimples you could see from miles away. Long lashes and honey-brown eyes that swelled with the motion light of the barn. He was punctual. Kinda kid you'd see on retail posters. Always left with his cheeks red and his hands stuffed in his khaki shorts.

He wore khaki shorts, for Christ's sake.

Matt wondered what he was doing with Bailey—a boy who looked like he slept in the jaws of the city, dressed in black and drudged in dirt, and torn at every weak, outworn seam. More than anything, Matt wondered what he meant to the hound. The way Bailey treated him, Matt wanted to know—was he special?

But then Bailey started to bring other boys to his loft. Muscled tall ones, older ones that wore suits and fine watches, tiny ones, like the blond from before. He could do what he wanted, so long as he didn't get caught—that was what Matt told himself.

Then came the evening Jess arrived in a dress that stopped at her thigh. She unloaded armfuls of groceries and the words happy anniversary ticked in Matt's head like the countdown of a time bomb. They ate expensive steaks, drank fine wine. And as Matt leaned over the sink to do the dishes, he saw Bailey once again with the dimpled, brown-eyed blond. His hands were sudsy with the soap from the sponge, but his fingers went limp around the knife he held and he watched with the strangest curiosity as Bailey ran those dark fingers through that pale, downy hair. Jess came up behind him at some point—wrapped her arms around his middle and whispered filthy things in his ear. Matt listened to every word she said. Every indecent sound. And as he did, he watched Bailey pressed the kid up against the rain-wet wood of the barn wall. Felt Jess's hands slide under the waistband on his jeans as the two kissed in the cold night rain, beneath that pale motion light.

He never came in for dinner. He never came to shower.

That night, Matt laid tangled in the sheets beside Jess's tiny, naked shape. His hand rested between her bare breasts, watching her chest move as she slept. He wondered when he stopped loving the shape of her. The soft of her skin. She was beautiful—every bit of her. He didn't deserve it.

Tell your wife you don't want to fuck her, Bailey had said. Let her find someone who does.

He thought about it all the time. It would be hard, though. Hard to tell her. Hard to let her walk away when she was the only person in this world who'd ever loved him like this. It stung but he couldn't keep lyin' to himself anymore. He didn't love Jess.

Let her find someone who does.

His heart hurt. Either way, his heart would hurt. If she stayed or if she went, or if she died suddenly in her sleep and haunted him for the rest of his life. It hurt because he wanted to love her. Because he wronged her by being incapable of it.

His heart hurt. And his bladder kinda did too.

He brought the blankets up over her chest, slid on his clothes and escaped to the isolation of the bathroom. Midway through his piss, Matt caught a flare of something pink poking out from the tissues of the trash can. He finished, flushed and crouched to shuffle through the bunched up toilet paper inside. The item he took out was round and clasped on the back—a makeup compact he thought at first. Then he opened it.

Blood pumping in his ears, Matt tossed it back in the bin, left the bathroom and shoved his boots on at the front door. Then he headed out to the field with a bucket of sudsy water. Billy followed his lead from the barn, huffing and grunting all the way to the heart of the pasture where Matt had propped up his stool and set his washing tools beside a crumbling pile of dung.

His face burned and his heart beat in his throat, but Billy seemed to love the sudden aggression of the wire brush. His tail flicked and a speck of soap caught in Matt's eye. He cursed at the burn and wiped his eye on his shirt, and when he opened them again, a second shadow stretched over the pasture grass.

"What are you doing?" Bailey asked, somewhere feet behind him.

Matt didn't look at him. He scrubbed the dung from Bill's coat, eye still searing. The dessicated grass crackled behind him as Bailey stepped closer.

"Cowboy," he said within a breath of his ear. "Are we sleepwalking now? Is your straight sex so boring that your body's decides it would rather go bathe a cow than entertain your wet dreams?"

"He's a bull."

"Even worse."

"What are you doing here?" Matt shoved his brush in the soapy water and stood to scrub Billy's back. "Where's your boyfriend?"

"Which one?" asked Bailey.

"Guess it doesn't matter." Matt lifted the bucket and heaved it over the broad back of the bull, water sliding down his coat. "They're all a different flavor of the same shit, right?"

Just then, something slapped against the back of his neck. Something cold and wet.

Matt touched the feeling and when he brought the substance forward, a terrible stench accompanied it.

"You fucking asshole," he snarled, ripping the cow dung from his neck and flicking it to the ground. Bailey's fingers still stained with the stuff as he took a half a step back, white grin flashing in the dark veneer of night.

"Thought it might wake up your wolf," he said, but he could hardly finish the sentence before Matt was charging at him and the hound was twisting around, sprinting over piles of dung and wet grass. He hopped the pasture fence and Matt chased him through the open barn door and into the aisle between rows of green-barred stalls. Several cows started to their feet and crooned out in fright of the sound of Bailey's half-bleated attempt at reconciliation before Matt slammed him to the wooden floorboards. Bailey caught him by the arms before he could throw a punch, and there they wormed on the loose hay, flipping over one another, fighting to pin kicking legs and grabbing arms.

Matt Managed his way on top, but every hit was snuffed—captured at the fist or shoved away, or held at an arm's length. Then Bailey got loose enough to punch him, one hard fist, right below the ribs.

It knocked the air from Matt and he rolled off, red-faced and heaving, and clutching the tender spot until the pang of Bailey's fist faded. The both of them laid there beside one another, breath heaving as they watched the glow of the night wash over the rafters. For the longest time Matt couldn't bring himself to move a muscle. He rested on the dank barn floor, breathing and hurting and not understanding a bit of it.

"Jess is trying to get pregnant," he said, once the cows and the dust had settled. "Probably is already. Found her birth control in the trash. She hasn't used it since last week."

Bailey picked a piece of hay from his hair and laughed. Laughed out into the quiet echo of the barn. "The world is so fucked already, Cowboy. The last thing it needed was more of you."

Anger pricked in Matt's belly. He wanted to punch Bailey back, but he knew the hound was too fast. He'd deflect anything that came his way and serve it back twice as hard. So Matt sat up instead. "Nevermind." But before he could shove himself to his feet, Bailey bridled him back down by the neck of his shirt.

"She's not pregnant," he said. "Not now. Not yet."

"How do you know?"

"I could hear a hummingbird's wings from across the farm. I can smell the booze your dad drank tonight, the blood in your girlfriend's veins. I can smell that dead calf rotting out where we buried it by the maple tree. I can smell the sex on you, Cowboy. I'd know."

"They smell different when they're pregnant?" Matt asked.

"When they're pregnant. When they're sad. When they eat too much iron, when they don't eat enough."

"Does it get annoying?" Matt asked. "Havin' to smell everything like that? Havin' to hear it all?"

"I can turn it off," said Bailey. "Focus on one thing, shut out the rest."

Matt turned to look at him. The dry hay on the barn floor scuffed against his face. "What do you focus on?"

"The flowers out by the road. Fresh cut grass. Your cologne sometimes," he added with a moment of pause. "Smells nice."

"Thanks," Matt said, watching a moth bat around in the rafters. They stunk, the both of them. And when he couldn't smell the cow shit they were covered in, he could smell the cows. The wasted hay. He wondered what Bailey could smell beyond this. If he could still smell the cologne. Crickets sang in the distance. With a tired tear in his voice, Matt asked, "Do you play video games?"

-

It was easy to sneak back into the guest house—the hard part was showering without waking Jess. Somehow, even after knocking over several shampoo bottles, Matt managed. It was well after midnight when he heaved his dusty old Xbox and thirty-inch flat screen from the storage and carried it up the steps to Bailey's loft. The hound sat on his worn sofa, ringing the cold hose water from his hair. Matt felt a tinge of guilt for making him shower cow shit off in the cold—but when he recalled the splattered of dung on the back of his neck, the guilt ebbed.

He set up the console and attached the television to a series of extension cords that led downstairs to the outlet. Then he powered on the old beast and stuck a remote in Bailey's hand. The last game he'd ever played flashed on screen—an indie shooter that he never quite invested in.

Bailey stared at his remote like an alien device, and Matt had to direct him to every button as they bypassed the character selection screen. "Thought you said you played video games before," Matt told him when the hound couldn't locate the joystick.

"We had one console at St. Terrance and it had to be shared between eighteen kids. Give me a break."

"None of those guys you been with ever play this stuff?" asked Matt.

"How the fuck would I know?"

It was a strange response—something about it made Matt wonder just how Bailey spent the last decade of his life. Had he never owned a thing beyond the clothes on his back and the phone in his pocket? Did he have his license? An ID? Jesus, did he even own a wallet? He wondered what it would be like to stand in a room with all the pieces of Bailey Walter's sad, strange, nomadic life. Would it make him feel grateful for what he had? Or would it make him feel like a shit human being for having those things?

He reached over. "This one to aim," he said, pointing to the button on his controller, but careful not to touch his finger as he did. "This one to shoot."

It took a moment of moving around and aiming at the outdated grass textures on the ground before Bailey could probably traverse the map. Matt found him quickly, but crept within in abandoned building, watching him navigate the ground from afar. It wouldn't be fair to take him out so soon. "You should be more careful about the guys you bring around," Matt said. "My dad's not the most open-minded guy."

"I could turn him."

"I'm serious. He finds out you have a boyfriend and he'll kick you out."

"Stop calling them that. Never had a boyfriend in my life."

Matt watched the distant avatar struggle to hop atop a parked car. "Then what are they?"

"Some of them sell me pot. Some of them buy me pot..."

Matt moved his character one small step toward the open window. Suddenly a shot fired, his armored avatar crashing to the floor in a vat of his own blood. HEADSHOT blinked on Bailey's side of the screen.

"Some of them are just pretty," Bailey said.

Beginners luck. Matt sat back as his character respawned in the center of a ransacked neighborhood. He ran to take cover behind a flaming bus. "If you're not dating then what's with the blond guy?"

"None of your business."

Matt rounded the scattered cars, finding Bailey's character on the horizon. "You're making out with him in front of my barn, bet it's my business."

"How about you focus on your own fucked up relationship," Bailey said. Again, Matt inched just a little to the left. Within Bailey's window, his screen snapped to target. One shot and Matt was splayed on the ground again, pixelated blood oozing from his head. Matt let his controller slump to the floor and wiped his hands up his face. "The fuck am I gonna do? What if you're wrong? What if she is pregnant?"

A series of gunshots snapped from the TV speakers. Matt heard the trumpet of the victory screen, but he didn't take his face from his hands.

"Look at that," Bailey said. "I won."

When Matt didn't reply, Bailey leaned back beside him. The sofa sunk a little under his changing weight.

"You could run away," he said. "Get away from this place."

Matt scoffed and looked up from his hands. The expression Bailey wore was nothing short of serious.

"I couldn't do that," Matt said. "This is home."

Something changed in Bailey's eyes. He watched the floorboards for a strange few moments. Then he sat back and navigated to the game menu. "How do I change my gun?"

-

Matt never went back to the guest house. He passed out on the leather couch, stoned on cheap pot and draped in one of the thin, musky blankets he'd supplied the hound from his father's surplus. He'd fully expected Bailey to be back in his bed, but he must've played on long after Matt fell asleep, because he lay sprawled on the floor with the controller still in his hand, his character standing idle on screen.

Matt dropped the blanket over him as he passed by, climbing quietly down the loft steps. A crow crooned somewhere in the night.

I've got a bad feeling, kid.

"You're not real," Matt said to Raven as he shut the barn door softly behind him. "You don't have feelings."

I've got 'em. And they don't feel right tonight.

Matt checked the light on his phone, the battery nearly dead now. He worked an early shift and it was nearing four AM. He didn't have time for Raven's bullshit.

He snuck back into the guest house as quietly as he could, relieved when he found Jess still curled up beneath the blankets. He was but a series of whispers and shifts in the night as he changed into his work gear, popped his phone charger into his car, and headed to the empty parking lot of Greenview Technical College. He hated four AM shifts, but they were the only time he could ever seem to get a decent parking spot. He snagged the one closest to the art building and exited the wrangler with his shitty organic energy drink and his security vest slung over his shoulder.

The school was always painfully dark at night. Only half of the street lamps actually worked, so the shadows were plenty and when he was the first to arrive, Matt usually relied on the light of his cell phone to guide his path. With his phone nearly dead, he took the key fob from his pocket and summoned a honk from the Wrangler. The headlights flashed on and Matt froze at the silhouettes they cast on the ground in front of him. Shadows of two men, flanking him from behind.

Something smashed into the back of his head. His teeth clicked and his head reeled and Matt staggered down to his knees. A pain exploded in his side and he spilled to the pavement, clutching the spot while ghostly hits rained down on his stomach and his spine. His vision flowered. He couldn't see—but he could feel the round angle of hard-toed shoes, pelting into his bones. Shadowed shapes bowed over him, whispers and laughter whirling in the back of his skull—somewhere beyond the pounding of his own heart and the ringing in his ears.

Each hit splintered him and Matt let out the pained, grovelling sounds of a beaten man. It didn't matter. They didn't stop. He curled into himself until the hurt slowed to a dull, aching pain. The shoes scraped and shifted on the cement.

Then a boot snapped against his face. Matt felt the hot blood slide down his nose, and then he felt nothing.

In the black void that followed, Raven whispered softly.

Told ya.