{Cary}

Cary legs still felt like jelly after his shower—he'd pushed himself hard on the hill up out of the ravine, like he could outrun the poisonous cloud Jon was breathing into the air of their home. He changed and paced restlessly in his tiny room, unable to settle, but unwilling to leave. As long as Jon was home and Pete wasn't, his room felt like the only place he was allowed to be. He pulled his backpack out from under his bed, zipping it open before he was even conscious that it was in his hand. His fist tightened around the canvas, and he held still a moment, thinking.

If he could just get a break, a little space to breathe...

When he heard the front door open, he went out to meet Pete, his backpack over his shoulder. "I stayed the afternoon like you said." Cary met his eyes, his stomach squeezing. Pete was drawing himself up, like he would stop him from going out the door. The bruise on his cheekbone was red and tight. 

Cary dug his feet into the floor to hold his ground. "I gotta friend camping out. Just him. No drinking, no nothing." He darted a look over his shoulder—Jon was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his eyebrows lifted, his mouth twisting. He ducked his head, plowing on. "I want to go one night. I'm asking...please let me go."

Pete was standing there in his way, and he edged forward until he was close enough to see the rise and fall of his chest under his shirt. He said low, "Love you, Pete. Okay?" He lifted his eyes and saw Pete's face soften as he absorbed those words. He'd never said them before because it had taken him this long to figure out what Jon's dad meant when he said them to him. Cary tried to make his mouth smile, like he was okay. "I'll come back tomorrow. Just I can't..." He drew in his breath, unable to articulate what was wrong.

"Do you have your cell phone?" Pete's voice rumbled quiet and close.

He ducked his head in a nod.

"Call me if you need me—"

Jon's voice lashed out hard behind him. "Dad! Are you seriously letting him go? He just punched down a bus shelter and probably scared the shit out of everyone and now he just gets a night off with his friends?"

Cary's shoulders bunched with tension.

Pete lifted his head to speak past him. "Son, Cary's given me no reason to distrust him all the months he's stayed with us. He's not a prisoner—if he wants a night out, I see no reason not to give it to him."

"Seriously?" Jon's voice was high and tight. "Did you look in the mirror? You want to pick him up all beat to shit after he's messed up some other kid in an alley? 'Cause that's what's going to happen."

"Jon." There was force behind the word and Cary wanted to fold himself in a tiny ball and disappear. Pete was still right in front of him and he was caught in the crossfire between the two of them. "I won't tolerate this ugly attitude from you any longer. You stood there in the bathroom bleeding in the sink and you told me that was not what Cary is like. Remember? And I think if the past four months are any indication—you were right. I trust Cary with our girls same as I trust you."

"Like we're anything the same." Jon bit the words off. "There's no way you should be leaving the girls with him. No way!"

The hallway was still, like all the air had been sucked out of it. "I'm starting to wonder if I should be leaving the girls with you." Pete's words were soft, but heavy as stones. "You've been holding onto this grudge with so much hate and ignorance, I feel like I don't recognize my own son." Cary heard Jon make a small noise behind his white, pressed lips.

Pete didn't let up on him. "You have had enormous privileges in this family, Jon—and it's blinded you to your own shortcomings. You have such an inflated sense of your own goodness you can't see how hypocritical your behaviour has been this summer. I'm ashamed for you."

Jon had his back against the wall of the hallway, his head bent and his hair falling over his eyes so his face was hidden. His hands clenched over his stomach.

"Do you even know what happened to Renae?" Pete's voice vibrated with feeling. Cary wrapped his hands over his mouth, frozen, watching Jon dig in his heels and stiffen his legs as his dad moved towards him. This was the last conversation in the world he wanted to be in the room for. "Did you even ask any questions, or were you content to just assume the worst and move on to 'better' friends? Listen to me—Cary was just a child. He was afraid. He could hear his father hurting his mother in the other room. All he wanted to do was keep her safe and hide them both. You would have done exactly the same. You're not special. Any one of us would have done the same."

Jon lifted his face and Cary could just see him looking at him through the wave of his hair. Jon's ears were cherry red. Cary barely managed to hold his eyes, feeling for some reason like he needed to apologize.

"Dad, I'm sorry." Jon's voice was low and tight. "I get it, all right?"

Pete threw his hand out to Cary, who flinched. "Apologize to him."

"Mr. White—" Cary protested softly.

"I'm sorry," Jon said more loudly, like Cary or his dad were hard of hearing. "I'm sorry. You're right, Dad. Like you always are. Give me a fucking break." Jon's voice cracked just short of a yell.

Pete lifted his hands, running them slowly over his thinning hair. Cary's heart drummed loudly in his ears, and he saw the tension building in Pete's body.

Jon looked aside. "I'm going, too," he said abruptly. "I want a night out of this fucking house."

Cary sucked in his breath, feeling the trigger of Pete's anger trip just before it exploded. He was down the hall to get the hell out, the force of Pete's yell pushing him to the door. "You're not going!"

Jon's voice raised to match his father's. "How can you trust Cary to go and not trust me?"

Cary silenced the argument with the thud of the front door, jogging down the front steps. He could still hear the sound of raised voices and he bent with his hands on his knees to catch his breath, his ears ringing faintly. This whole fight felt like his fault, and he hadn't wanted to make any trouble. He just wanted a break.

The front door slammed open again, bouncing off the weathered mailbox, and Cary whirled, fists up. Jon stormed past him, slinging a backpack full of bedding over his narrow shoulders. "Let's go."

Pete was standing in the doorway, his lips a hard line inside his beard, his eyes following his son down the walk. "Be good." The growl was still in his voice. He met Cary's eyes and his mouth softened. There were deep, worried lines in his forehead. "Be safe."

Cary put his hand over his drumming heart, holding Pete's eyes with some difficulty. As best as he could promise, Jon would be home in one piece.

///

The first thing Cary had done with his paycheck was buy Pete a new bike. He had not expected Pete's response, which was to offer to let him use it whenever he needed. He rode it in silence under concrete bridges and over jogging trails, listening to the buzz of Jon's tires behind him. The memory of the last time they had done this, how safe and comfortable he had felt with Jon, pressed jaggedly against this moment. He couldn't even say what he was feeling. The words Pete had slung at Jon were still making his ears ring. Pete wasn't wrong—Jon had treated Cary like shit all summer, sniping him full of holes one minute and giving him the silent treatment like he didn't exist the next. It had hurt like hell. But somehow, watching Pete take Jon apart for that made Cary feel even worse.

The heat of the day beat against them when they pulled up to stop at intersections, and it was a relief when they headed down into the ravine to finally get under the shade of the trees, the breeze of their movement lifting the shirts off their backs. They stashed their bikes under a fallen tree and walked into the bush, warm afternoon light sending long, dusty rays between the trunks.

The make-shift campsite had a distinct air of abandonment: the shelter branches were brown and shedding their needles and the fire pit was kicked apart, chunks of blackened wood and stones scattered under the trees. Cary surveyed the scene and checked the sun, which was slanting long through the trees, then bent to gather the stones back into a ring.

"This is it?" Jon asked.

"Yuh." He didn't look at him. "Mike was here last time. Couple months ago. Guess he's moved on."

"Is this...legal?"

He hunched his shoulders in a shrug. "You know the way home," he said shortly. Jon's continued presence felt like a blade against his stomach. Every movement they were together he risked being gutted and barely able to function.

He heard Jon moving around the site, and then he was at his shoulder with another stone. He went to one knee to set it into place with a 'click,' taking longer than necessary to shift it and line it up next to the neighbouring stone. Cary shifted away, heaping up a little pile of dry needles and twigs, and Jon stayed there, kneeling, watching him hold the flame of his lighter to the tinder.

"I didn't know," Jon said abruptly. "I should have asked more questions."

Cary's stomach tensed, and his sweaty hand slipped on his lighter, losing the flame. He flicked it again, feeling heat creep up his face into his ears.

"My dad was right." Jon's mouth twisted like he'd bit into something bitter. "I wouldn't have done any better."

The twigs caught with a soft 'crackle,' tongues of yellow flame licking upwards. Cary sat back on his heels, keeping his face away from Jon. He felt like he'd barely gotten the front of him zipped up again. "You don't know that," he said drily. "Doesn't seem fair to compare you to me. When you weren't there."

Jon made a sharp noise in his throat. "Whatever." He took a deep, strained breath. "You didn't mean to hurt her. It was an accident, and I didn't know that. I'm sorry I assumed."

Cary wrapped his hand around one of the larger sticks piled beside him, his thumb prying off a shred of dry bark. "You assumed what?" He asked, soft and flat. "That I did it on purpose?" The words made a sick taste in the back of his throat, and he looked into Jon's face for the answer.

Jon made himself smaller, glaring back at him. "I didn't know," he said again. "I didn't know what to think."

Cary jabbed the stick into the fire, almost scattering the tiny flame, hot to his hairline now. "Doesn't fucking matter anyways," he said finally, a growl in his voice. "If I just wanted to hold her and make her safe or snuff her out. She's dead. My hands did that. There's no take backs." The words Jon had used against him were sharp in his mouth, and he flinched, turning his face aside to reach for more wood.

Jon's face was white under the flickering orange light of the fire. He took a breath and seemed to get a hold of himself. "So yeah, that sucks. I feel sick that you did that. But it makes a difference that you didn't mean to. Like, that's on your hands but not—inside your heart. You're not..." he hesitated, and Cary waited for his words to fall, his head bent. "You're not a bad person."

Cary closed his eyes, touching the front of his chest where Split-lip had opened him and dragged out so much toxic blackness that it hurt him to carry it away. The thought of that scarred face settled his stomach and helped root him here in this dirt, in this moment when he didn't carry that anymore and he couldn't do a thing to deserve it. "'Course I am, Jon," he said quietly. "Same as you."

Jon's eyebrows drew together and his mouth tightened. "Don't start," he said shortly, and turned away.  

*Finally Jon and Cary are talking again! Does this feel like an adequate apology from Jon?*