— t w e n t y - f o u r —

holiday, which had only been made enjoyable for Oliver by Reed's company, was unendurable.

Following the news about his mother, Reed caught the first flight back out to England. Oliver had offered to go back with him. This was mostly so Reed wouldn't have to travel alone when he was clearly upset and partly for selfish reasons of not wanting be left behind on this mess of a holiday with Adam and Clair. But whatever Oliver's reasons for accompanying him, Reed refused. Every single one of his defences had sprang back up into place following that phone call. He was cool and guarded, so distant it felt like the last few months of rebuilding their friendship had never happened. Oliver knew he couldn't take it personally even as every doubt he had about Reed eventually regretting this rose to the surface

Reed was going through something and maybe this was how he handled it. By ignoring every one of his calls and barely replying to his texts. Oliver liked to think he wasn't a particularly clingy person, but he remembered how shaken Reed had been when they'd sent him off in a taxi to the airport. Oliver was happy to give him space if that's what he needed; he just wanted to make sure he was okay.

If Oliver thought Reed's misfortune would be enough to soften any of the hostility between Adam and Clair, he was sorely mistaken. Their glaring and arguing only became even more impossible to ignore in those last couple of days. The hours of daylight were mostly fine; Oliver passed them in the pool or the gym, having lost interest in wandering Val Thorens without Reed. Dinner in the evening was the worst. When Adam and Clair weren't sniping at each other, they ignored each other so intensely that Oliver almost found himself making conversation with Adam's parents just to escape the heaviness of the silence.

Things were hardly any better with Adam. He was still annoyed at Oliver. Even though he had never spoken a word of his irritation out loud, his weighted silence and short replies were all the confirmation Oliver needed. Oliver only made one attempt at talking to him about it, while they were in the bedroom trying to sleep. Adam could take the other side of the bed now that Reed wasn't here and the silence that hung in the air before one of them had drifted off to sleep was almost as tense as those gracing the dinner table.

"Adam," Oliver had said, into the darkness, "about what happened with Clair — "

"The last thing I want to talk you about is Clair," was Adam's terse reply.

"But — "

"Oliver," Adam said, and his voice was as cold as Oliver had ever heard it. "Stop."

And that was the end of that. Oliver was too much of a pussy to ever bring it up again.

"Oli!" His little sister couldn't have screeched his name any louder as he pushed the front door open and she didn't even give him a chance to set his bags down before launching herself at him. "You're back!"

Oliver couldn't help laughing. After two days of the people he was with seeming less than pleased by his existence, it was nice to come home to such warmth. Even if Lexie was talking too loudly and had already managed to step on his feet about three times. "Hey, Lex," he said, ruffling her blonde hair. "Miss me?"

"Did you bring me any presents?" she asked eagerly.

Oliver rolled his eyes. "Nice to see you, too."

"Oli," she said, with an impatient whine. The warm affection at seeing Lexie was quickly being replaced by reminders of how annoying she could be. "Answer the question!"

"Yes, you spoilt brat, I did. Now let me put my bags down or you won't be getting any of them."

Lexie immediately sprang back with wide eyes. "Okay! Wow, lots of presents, I hope you got me cupcakes. Or maybe teddies. Oooh, or roller skates! Lily from school got roller skates for her birthday last week..."

Lexie kept up her high-speed chatter even as she followed Oliver up the stairs so he could dump his bags in his bedroom and didn't even hesitate to pounce on them in search of her presents. Ten minutes later, Lexie sat cross-legged on Oliver's bedroom floor and happily tore at the wrapping of her presents. With the way she was tossing the paper haphazardly over her shoulders, Oliver was going to spending a lot of time cleaning up her mess. She squealed with delight as she unearthed a snow globe and wriggled into the Val Thorens resort t-shirt with a beam. It was far too big on her, pooling down to her knees, but it was the smallest size Oliver could find. Despite all her hopes for cupcakes and roller skates, Lexie was easily pleased and would have been happy with a rock if Oliver had wrapped it in shiny paper.

"Thanks, Oli!" She launched herself at him in another hug and crawled onto his lap, giving the snow globe a vigorous shake in Oliver's face to emphasis the flurry of glittery flakes. "This is so pretty. Is this what it was like where you went? Did you play in lots of snow?"

Oliver entertained her endless questions about how his holiday had been (which was all fun and snow for Lexie, there was no need for her to hear about how it had all crumbled to pieces towards the end) and listened to her rambling, telling him all about what he had missed in the past ten days and all the fun things they were going to be doing for Christmas, which was only a few days away. "Oh!" Lexie broke off mid ramble about her favourite new teddy, a blue elephant called Bluebell, to look up at him. "Where is Reed? I haven't seen him in so long. I want to introduce him to Bluebell."

"You haven't seen me in so long," Oliver reminded her.

"Yes, but here you are," Lexie said impatiently. "Now I want to play with Reed. Why didn't you bring him back with you?"

Oliver's chest tightened a little at the reminder of Reed. Oliver had spoken to his parents about what had happened on the ride back from the airport, but the explanation had been brief and vague for the simple reason that it was all Oliver knew about the situation. All he had managed to get out of Reed over the texts he actually answered was that his mum was having some kind of an acute episode and had to be hospitalised until her symptoms could be managed appropriately. Oliver didn't press for details because it was clear Reed didn't want to talk about it and he didn't want to push him. But Oliver did want to talk to him. He wanted to see him, even if Reed didn't want to talk about his mum, or anything in particular. Oliver hadn't been prepared for the ache of missing him like this and how much the relative radio silence from his end would hurt.

"Reed is busy," Oliver told her. "He'll come play with you some other time."

Lexie pulled a face. "But I miss him!"

"Yeah, me too," Oliver said, with a sigh.

Christmas passed without much affair. Oliver had passed his driving test a few weeks ago (passing his first time was enough to irk Reed, who has failed his test three times already and seemed unlikely to pass anytime soon if the stories from his driving lessons were anything to go by) and his parents got him a car for Christmas. It was nothing fancy, a second-hand Toyota, but it would be a welcome relief from relying on public transport and Adam to get anywhere. They had family round for lunch, aunts and uncles and cousins driving in from across the county. Lexie spent the whole day baking entirely inedible cupcakes in her new easy baking kit and forcing any family member who came too close to the mini cooker to eat them.

The day of festivities was a welcome distraction to the fact that neither of his best friends were talking to him. The relative radio silence from Reed morphed into absolute radio silence over the next week. He wasn't even replying to any of Oliver's texts now and Oliver didn't even have the excuse of school to hunt him down in person, seeing as they still had a week of the Christmas holidays left. Things were even worse with Adam, whose silence was considerably more annoyed than Reed's silence.

Oliver was right back to square one and he wasn't sure how to fix things for a second time. He decided to tackle things with Adam first. At least he understood where the hostility stemmed from and he could only hope Adam was feeling reasonable enough to hear him out on this one. Reed was going to be trickier. Oliver didn't know exactly what he had done wrong there and he was worried their holiday together had been some kind of fever dream, a blissful escape that would crashing down around them now that they were home. Maybe Reed regretted it after all. Maybe he didn't want anything to do with Oliver anymore.

But that would have to be a later problem.

Oliver knocked on the towering oak doors that acted as the front doors to the Montgomery household and prayed that it wasn't either of Adam's parents who would answer. He had come round during the day in the hope that they would both be at work. As grateful as he was to them for letting him come on their holiday, ten days in Val Thorens with them was more than enough quality time for Oliver. He breathed a sigh of relief when the door swung open to reveal Inkeri, the Montgomery's housekeeper. She had been working for the family for as long as Oliver had known Adam and was nothing but kind to him. She beamed at the sight of him and ushered him with warm greetings.

"Oliver! It has been too long, how are you? So tall," she said, reaching up to give his shoulder an affectionate pat. She was short enough that she barely reached his shoulders as it was. "I'm sure you're eating very well."

Oliver laughed. "Well enough, thanks, Inkeri. How are you?"

"Good! Always good. You are here for Adam, yes?"

"Yeah," he said. "Is he in?"

She nodded. "Up in his room. Would you like anything to drink before you go up? A tea, coffee?"

"No, no, that's fine, don't trouble yourself."

"You boys are too polite. I will make you tea," she said, with an assured nod of her head. She waved a hand when Oliver opened his mouth to protest. "None of that. It is too cold outside to refuse the hot drink. I remember the way you like it. Milk and two sugars?"

Oliver actually preferred his tea without sugar, but he wasn't about to correct Inkeri when she was going out of her way to make him tea. "Yeah, that sounds great. Only if you're not too busy. Thank you," he added.

"Of course I'm sure! Now go, go. Adam will be waiting for you," Inkeri said, shooing him up the stairs. "I will bring tea to you."

Oliver could have pointed out Adam most certainly wasn't waiting for him and there was a high chance he he would kick Oliver out of the house, but Inkeri had already disappeared into the kitchen. Oliver was strongly tempted to follow her into the kitchen. A conversation with Inkeri was strongly preferable to the conversation he was about to have with Adam, but he couldn't put it off forever. He'd committed himself to this plan and it was too late to back out. Dragging his feet only a little, Oliver made his way up the stairs and through the maze of corridors until he reached Adam's room. When they were kids, Reed and Oliver would spend more time getting lost in the giant house than anything, wandering the hallways until they bumped into someone who guided them back to Adam.

They treated finding Adam's room as a fun game during their first few visits, an adventure they had to set out together to conquer. Oliver swallowed the lump in his throat at the memory. A lot of things had changed since then. He had been here enough times now to know the route to Adam's room without getting lost, and Reed wasn't with him this time.

It took Oliver a good minute to summon up the courage to knock on Adam's door and even at the muffled call in to come in, he took longer than necessary to push the door open. Adam was sat at his desk with his laptop open in front of him, countless textbooks and papers scattered across the desk. They had already done their mocks in the last couple of weeks of term but that hadn't stopped the teachers setting them all mountains of homework to complete over the holidays. Homework Oliver had yet to start, forget finish. Adam glanced back at the door opening and it was clear from the expression on his face Oliver was the last person he had been expecting.

"Oh," he said, quickly schooling his surprise into indifference. "Hey. I didn't know you were coming round."

Oliver could roughly translate that into what are you doing here? He was willing to take it as a good sign that Adam hadn't outright said that to his face. He also didn't seem as annoyed as he had been when Oliver had last seen him, six days ago at the airport. All promising signs.

"Yeah, sorry, I was just passing by and thought I'd stop to say hi," Oliver said, which was absolutely a lie. He had spent the day feeling as bored as he had since coming home from Val Thorens with his limited circle of friends unabialble to hang out withand left the house with sole intent on coming here to harass Adam until he forgave him. "What are you doing?"

"Interview prep. And headboy shit," Adam said, looking exasperated even as he said it. "I have to organise and sort out some stupid school dance for the year elevens. It's taking up way too much of my time considering I won't even be going to the dance."

"Would you even want to?" Oliver asked, amused.

"No," Adam said. "But that's not the point, is it? It's the principle of the matter."

"Fair enough." Oliver paused, realising he was still stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Adam hadn't invited him in but he hadn't snapped at him to get the hell out. "So, uh, can I come in?"

Oliver waited with bated breath as Adam considered it before saying, with a shrug, "Sure."

Oliver tried not to look too relieved at the first acceptance he'd been given since the disastrous break-up in the hot tub. He was definitely taking this as a promising sign. Adam's room was bigger than Oliver and Reed's combined, with a huge bed made up with a navy duvet in one corner and wide bay windows looking out on the endless green sprawl of the back garden. He had his own TV with its own considerably collection of video games and the shelves were stacked with books, mainly stupidly thick maths textbooks. There were enough that Reed and Oliver would tease him for being a nerd. Oliver sank down in one of the plush beanbags circling the TV and decided to dance around the elephant in the room for a little longer.

"When's your Cambridge interview?" he asked.

Adam seemed willing to humour him for a little longer, too. "Two weeks," he said. "I've never felt so unprepared, but the problem is I don't know how to prepare. Short of actually making me to solve maths equations in front of them, what else can they ask?"

"Why are you passionate about it, what made you interested in it, maybe?"

"Maybe."

Adam drummed his fingers idly across the desk and it was clear the last thing he wanted to do was talk about his interview. He wouldn't admit it, but Oliver was fairly certain he didn't even want to go to Cambridge; it just wasn't a choice as far as his parents were concerned. He was going to Cambridge or he was a failure in their eyes. A not quite awkward but certainly not comfortable silence fell over the room that was saved only temporarily by Inkeri coming in to deliver Oliver's tea. After she left, it was obvious they weren't going to be beating around the bush any longer. Still, Oliver would never be as blunt as Reed, so he eased into the topic in the least painful way he could think.

"So...how are things with Clair?"

Adam's eyes flashed. "Terrible. We broke up, in case you forgot."

Clearly still too painful of an option, then. Oliver struggled to backtrack in his wording and found he still came up blank with how to appropriately approach this situation.

"Right, but I meant, have you spoken to her since?" Oliver asked tentatively. "About...what happened?"

Adam spun around his chair to face him and fixed him with an irritated look. "Oliver, if you have something to say to me, please just spit it out. You're terrible at subtlety and even worse at getting to the point."

Ouch. It was safe to say Adam was still somewhat annoyed at him, even if it seemed they might be making progress. Oliver decided to take a leaf out of Reed's book, as Adam had suggested, and just spit it out.

"Are you annoyed at me?"

"If we're asking questions, then I get to go first." Adam's jaw was clenched and Oliver couldn't force down his sudden swell of nerves at the stoniness to his voice. "And be honest. If you've ever considered yourself my friend, answer me honestly."

Oliver nodded slowly. "Of course."

"Did Clair ever cheat on me with you?"

"What? No! Jesus, no," Oliver said, too surprised to do anything more than stare at him. "I would never do that. Maybe she seemed like she was flirting with me sometimes, but I swear I never did anything to reciprocate or encourage it. No offence, but I never even liked Clair. I always thought she was just messing around when she made comments like the one in the hot tub and it wasn't any of my business, anyway." Oliver was aware he was rambling and clamped his mouth shut, with a nervous uncertainty as to whether Adam would eve believe him. God knows what Clair had told him. Adam's silence was enough to provoke him to start talking again. "I swear on my life that's the truth, Adam."

"Okay."

"Okay?" Oliver hated how hard it was to ever get a read on him, especially when Adam decided to himself himself off into a closed book. It was the opposite of Reed's wide, expressive eyes with every emotion written plainly across his face. "You believe me?"

"I trust you more than I trust Clair at this point. But she would flirt with you," Adam said, not quite a question. Despite his claims he believed Oliver, the set of his shoulders was still too tense and he didn't look particularly pleased. "Wouldn't she?"

"Yeah? Sometimes," Oliver admitted, because he had committed to honesty and Adam deserved that at least. "I wasn't sure whether I was just imagining it, or whether she was just taking the piss, but it felt enough like flirting to make me uncomfortable."

"Of course she would flirt with you," Adam muttered.

Oliver frowned. "What does that mean?"

"That I always come second best to you, Oliver," he said, with a frustrated shake of his head. "Second best when it comes to Clair, second best when it comes to Reed. I'm even second best to Reed when it comes to you. Clair would've dropped me in a second if you had showed the slightest bit of interest and it's been clear from day one you and Reed have always been closer. I know you were best friends for years before me, I know you have history without me, and I know something happened right before you left for London five years ago. More than either of you are telling me. Yeah," Adam said, at Oliver's startled look. "I'm not as stupid as both of you seem to think I am. I know you're keeping secrets from me and yeah, maybe it fucking bothers me, okay?"