Everything was silent. Outside, snow fell in steady heavy flakes, blanketing the roads and rooftops alike, dampening sound to a white hush. Businesses were shuttered for the night, and snow on the road was left undisturbed until the morning. All down the street Christmas garlands and twinkling lights peeked out from their frosting, the houses picturesque between tall pine and snow-covered trees. All, that is, except one. On this house, the snow was oppressive, falling heavily onto the undecorated roof, the lightless porch, and un-shoveled driveway. No lights were on inside, either, though someone was home.

David lay in the dark in the bedroom that was not his. His bedroom was across the hall, done in browns and greys, as uniform and devoid of personality as a hotel room. Any attempt to change it to reflect himself had been met with violent opposition, so he had stopped sometime in middle school. It didn't matter; he rarely slept at home anymore. But this bedroom was teeming with personality—movie posters, trophies, ribbons, plaques and awards, pictures in frames, sports equipment, work out gear, a tv and floor speakers. His room was a guest bedroom; this room belonged to a beloved son, made into a shrine after its occupant moved out.

David didn't feel any anger at that. He had accepted his fate a long time ago. He liked this room. It was the only one in the house that still felt welcoming to him. In it, he felt the presence of the boy who used to live here, the older boy who used to look back at him with beseeching eyes when their parents would take him out in the car and leave David with the neighbor.

The boy. Yes. That's how David thought of him. He couldn't really call him brother. They weren't brought up that way. Despite their shared blood and looks—at least up till David entered high school—they were not brothers. Not really.

David lay on top of the blue and white plaid comforter, his eyes closed in the dark, listening to the sounds of the house. It was the day after Christmas, and he expected to have the house to himself for another five days, until after the new year. His year would end quietly and calmly, at least. Reaching down, he pressed a hand against the pocket of his jeans. Inside, he felt the hard rectangle of a phone. Jason had given him one of his old ones.

"For emergencies," Jason had said. "And for my own peace of mind. Consider it a Christmas gift."

David wanted to call him, but Jason would not see him if it wasn't an emergency. David had already checked.

Time passed or stayed still. In the quiet dark, David could not tell, and he fell asleep.

He was woken sometime later by an angry voice. "What the hell are you doing in here?"

Heart pounding, he sat up blinking in the sudden light, past experience a premonition of what was to come.

**

Nothing good ever came from being woken in the middle of the night.

That was Jason's first thought when he was jolted awake by the shrill ringing of his cell phone. Trained to be a light sleeper, able to go from sleep to wake and ready for anything, he rolled over, picked his phone up from the bedside table, and answered in the time it took to blink.

"Hello?" he asked, his voice only slightly hoarse.

Silence.

Taking the phone from his ear, he squinted down at the bright screen. His heart pounded at the name of the caller ID. "Hello?" he said again. A pause. "David? Is that you?"

As if from a place far away: "Yes."

He sat up. "What's wrong?"

More silence, then: "You said to call...."

Jason's heart pounded again. This was different than the other times David had called him, trying to bait him into meeting. Flinging the sheets aside, he swung his legs to the ground. "Where are you?"

"Outside."

Jason paused in the act of pulling on pants. "Outside? Outside where?"

"Outside, here."

Going to the window, he pulled the curtain aside to look down at the road. Snow covered cars lined both sides of the snow-covered street. In the blanket of white, it was easy to see the spot of black standing below the lamppost.

By the time David came up, Jason was dressed and already had the kettle on. He opened the door to see the young man, hands in the pockets of a heavy thigh length jacket with a bright silver zip going diagonally from hem to collar. On his head he wore a knitted hat with a rim of white cartoonish skulls. Around his left eye and corner of his mouth, he sported darkening bruises and a cut lip.

He waited in the hall, unwilling to step in until he was invited. Gaze down, he could see the pant clad legs and bare feet of the man, standing still in the open doorway. "Sorry," David said, in that same small, far away voice. "You sounded like you were asleep." David shuffled his weight between his booted feet. "Actually, so was I."

Jason could hardly believe what he was seeing. The injuries startled him, but more than that, they triggered his instinct to protect, and his first thought was...

"David," said in a calm voice, the kind that told of restraint and turbulence beneath the surface, "who did that to you?"

A chill that had nothing to do with the weather sent a shiver down David's spine, and he took an involuntary step back.

Even in his state, Jason noted the reaction. With supreme effort, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and released it with the opening of his white knuckled fist. When he opened his eyes, he was master of himself.

"Sorry," he said, in his normal way. "Come in. I'm making tea."

David hesitated only for a second, before stepping through the held open door.

**

Cups and spoons and cupboards rattled and slammed behind David as he once more sat at the kitchen table. He'd taken off his jacket, underneath a black and white sweater distressed in random spots showed flashes of his pale shoulder and back. He still wore his hat, pulled low and covering all of his hair. The loud banging continued. David wasn't as jumpy as he was the first time; he recognized it now as a sign as anger, not aimed at him, but at those who had done this to him. It was comforting, but Jason would not find that out until long after. Right now, it was best to let him work through his feelings.

A plate with a grilled cheese sandwich, a small bowl of tomato soup, and a cup of tea, all steaming, was set in front of him. Jason took the seat across the table. "I'm not a wonder in the kitchen like you are," he said. "But it's warm."

"Thank you," David said. "It looks good."

Jason sat back in his chair, and the silence continued until David had finished eating. Then Jason asked, "Will you tell me what happened?"

Dark eyes glanced up at him, darker now that they were not hidden by a fringe of hair but bordered by a pale forehead and dark brows. "If I don't?"

"It wasn't a threat, I won't throw you out if you don't. That's why I asked if you will. You can say no."

David stared into the swirling milky depths of the tea for a moment. "My parents came home early," he finally said. "They were supposed to be gone at least two weeks."

Jason frowned. David hadn't told him his parents would be gone over the holidays. "Where did they go?" he asked. To his surprise, David twitched.

"They went to see..." Images of a smiling young man in a graduation cap and gown flittered across his mind. "...their son."

Jason's frown deepened. He knew little about David's home life, they had never spoken about it before, but what little he knew, he did not like. "Their son?"

David stared into his tea, the milky liquid transforming into the flaky snow swirling down from the sky.

**

"You're dragging the bottom of the suitcase," snapped the man, slamming the trunk closed. "Use the handle, for Christ sake."

"I can't roll it over the snow," snapped back the woman. "If you had shoveled the drive before we left like I told you to, I could."

"What good what that have done?" the man said. "It snowed after we left. You're going to break the wheels off!"

"Then you bring it in!" she yelled, chucking the suitcase so that it tipped over onto its side and fell into a bank of snow.

"Don't be mad at me," the man said, grunting as he picked up the suitcase. "I'm not the one who ruined this trip."

She had stormed up the drive and was on the porch but whipped around at his words. "Are you saying I am?" she said. "You were the one who kept pushing him to go to Europe."

"And you were the one who kept pushing him to move back home," the man said, walking with the case up the steps. "No young man wants to move back home after college. He should go off, see the world."

"Well, now he won't do either. I don't know what got into him," she said, as they moved into the entryway.

"He's just under a lot of pressure," the man said. "He didn't mean what he said."

"I'm going to call him," she said, pulling off her gloves and moving towards the stairs. "And I'll put up the new drapes in his room, so that he can see it when he comes home for the new year."

"If he comes home," the man said.

"Don't say that," the woman whipped around to hiss at him. "Of course, he will." She paused. "Right?"

They looked at each other on the stairs, a trickling of worry down their spines. Something had changed over the visit, and they sensed it would not be good to them. Their hold on him was slipping, and it was showing.

"I'm going to take a hot shower," the man said gruffly.

They went up to the second floor, and while he went ahead to their room, the woman stopped at the first bedroom and pushed in the door. In the cone of light from the hallway, she saw a just woken David sitting up on the bed. It was like a dreaded premonition to her anxious heart, and she let fear take over, which brought anger to protect itself.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" she shrieked. "You get out of that bed this instant, you have no business being—" She chocked, sucking in a breath as he stood, and she got a better look at him.

Hearing the yelling, the man had come out of the bedroom to see David move into the light of the hall. His own eyes widened at the sight of the teenager, who was not much taller than the woman.

David was once more not dressed as David. He wore white washed jeans and a blue football sweatshirt two sizes too big for his narrow frame. But the thing that most shocked the man and woman, that filled them with dread and made their faces go white as if they'd seen the ghost of Christmas past, was his head full of golden blond hair, shinning under the light of the wall sconce.

The woman fell back a step, her eyes went wide. Now she regained her voice and her outrage. "Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?" she screeched. "How dare you!"

"Is this what you do when we're not home?" the man said. "You make a mockery of us? As if going about in clothes looking like at a funeral all the time wasn't enough, you try to hurt us by treating his clothes like some kind of costume? Well, no more I say," the man added. "You may treat yourself like a joke, but you will not do that to us. I'm going to teach you, once and for all," he advanced on David, "that you are no son of ours."

**

David stood by the sink, hands on the edges, head down. His back was to the table where Jason sat, eyes wide and appalled. He had gotten up to put his dishes in the sink and now stood there, fingers curled into fists, eyes squeezed closed, body trembling. It had taken everything he had to recount what had happened, and now he felt weak, empty, about to fall to his knees at any moment.

David didn't hear the scraping of the chair legs against the floor, nor the rattle of dishes as the table was bumped. There was no warning before he felt hands wrap around him from behind, across his chest, pinning his arms to his side as they held him tightly back against a firm body. They might as well have been holding him together.

His breath left him in a rush and returned the same way. He clasped the strong wrist at his chin, curling his fingers now into warm flesh, feeling veins and cartilage and the blood that pumped through them. Turning within the arms that held him, David buried his face in Jason's neck and wrapped his arms around his torso. His body continued to shake for many moments, the only sounds his infrequent gasping breaths and sniffs.

Jason held on to the thin frame as tightly as he could without hurting him. Eyes closed, his brows drew together sharply and deeply, his jaw clenched against his own emotions. The knit hat David still wore was soft against his face, smelling of warm fabric and slightly damp from the snow. They stayed that way for a long time.

At last, David grew calm and quiet. Still in the embrace, he spoke. "Jason?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you going to make me sleep on the couch after this?"

Jason gave a brief, breathy chuckle. "That's what's on your mind?" he muttered.

They broke apart, and David looked up at him. "Can I sleep with you tonight?" he pressed. "You won't even notice I'm there."

Jason looked down at him, into dark eyes rimmed in red and glossy with moisture. "Like hell I won't," he said quietly.

The look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the way he brushed his fingers over his cut lip, it made David's heartbeat quicken, and heat rise up his neck. He looked away, surprised by his own flustered response.

Jason hid a smile at the unusual shyness, then he sighed. "Fine," he said. "But there's going to be a wall of pillows, and if you breach it, I'm putting you to sleep on the floor."

"I have no control over what I do in my sleep."

If he had not already been bruised, Jason would have pinched his cheek. "Cheeky," he said instead. His gaze flitted up to David's hat and back, asking silently. "Is it okay," David said hesitantly, reaching up to touch the hat, "if I keep it on?"

Jason smiled and nodded. "Let's get some sleep then."

**

On the other side of the country, at that exact same time, in another bedroom, someone opened the drawer of a desk. From inside they took out a strip of pictures, the kind you get from photo booths at carnivals and such. Five small, square pictures that showed two boys, alike in their blond hair and small noses, leaning together to take the pictures. One ten years old, the other older by seven years, both smiling awkwardly but happily, their cheeks flushed, eyes bright, arms around each other.

A thumb grazed the image of the younger boy. A sigh, and then a voice.

"Just a little longer, Davie," it murmured. "Wait a little longer. I'm coming for you."