Jason spent all day looking for him, but could not find David, nor did he have any idea where he would go. By lunch he was getting desperate and asked a girl with blue hair who he'd seen David with if she knew where the teenager was, but she didn't. He could not leave school to search, but he called the diner where David worked. He had not been by. David had missed the whole day of school, there was no reason to believe he would show up for his extra credit sessions with Bailey after classes ended, but Jason showed up outside the classroom anyway. It was literally his last hope.

Just as he got there, Drew Boutan, on his crutches, approached from the other end of the hallway. "Hey, Major," Drew said, perking up at the sight of the man.

"Hey. Nice to see you up and around," Jason said, forcing a smile. "Are you taking extra sessions with Bailey, too?"

"Yeah," Drew said sheepishly. "I need them to graduate next spring."

"Well, that's great," Jason said, glancing left and right down the hall.

"Are you okay, Major?" Drew asked, frowning. "You looking for something?"

Jason hesitated. "Actually, I am." He gestured for Drew to follow him a few feet away from the classroom door, to stand by a water fountain. "Okay," Jason said. "This might sound a little weird, but your friend David—"

"He's not—"

"Yes, alright," Jason said quickly. "Just David then. You know who I'm talking about."

Drew had never known the other man to be so wound up. "What about him?"

"Where would he go? I mean, if he wanted to be alone, and maybe also to not be found."

Drew looked at him. "This have anything to do with him running out this morning five minutes after he showed up dressed like a weirdo?"

"Yeah." Jason sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "I may have said something to upset him, and now I need to find him. He doesn't have a phone, all his friends are here, and I don't know where he could be. He's not even wearing his sweater."

"I noticed," Drew said. He cast another look at the man, but if there were questions or judgment, he kept them to himself. "There's a group who hangs outside the convenience store."

"I called. No one's there."

"Behind the old playground?"

Jason shook his head. When Drew grew quiet, Jason sighed. "Well, if you think of anywhere else, let me know. I guess I'll just drive around and see." He was about ten feet away when Drew called for him. Turning, he watched as the teenager moved swiftly towards him, expert with the crutches already.

"There is one place," Drew said.

"Where?" Jason asked quickly.

"The cemetery." Lowering his voice, it was Drew's turn to glance up and down the empty hall. "He goes there to visit...someone. I don't know if he's there now, but—"

"I'll take my chances," Jason said, already moving towards the exit. "Thanks Drew. You're a good friend, if not to him, then to me."

Drew watched the man jog down the hall and around the corner. Turning back towards the classroom, he moved towards it, wondering who, in fact, he had been a friend to just now.

**

David sat with his back to the tombstone, knees pulled to his forehead, arms folded and head down. Dressed in only his t-shirt, he was shivering uncontrollably, yet he stayed. Because it was not just the cold stone at his back, or the occasional gust of wind that made him shiver, but his internal state as well.

How could he have been such a fool? He'd never misread the signs before. He was humiliated, mortified, more so because he actually cared what the man thought about him. Now he was just as pathetic and pitiful as the old truckers at the diner who hit on him—people who never stood a chance.

His whole body covered in goosebumps, he sat by the grave all day, falling asleep at one point, only to shiver himself awake. The dangers of the situation were lost on him; he would not have cared even if they weren't.

"David!"

He jumped at the call. Squinting in the bright sunlight, he saw a slightly out of breath Jason coming towards him.

David bolted.

Or, at least, he meant to. But hours in the same position in the cold had left him stiff, and he only managed a wobbly step before he was forced to grab hold of the tombstone to stop himself falling.

"David," Jason called again, catching hold of his elbow.

"Let go of me," David said. But his struggle was weak, and his words were broken between cold lips.

"You could freeze to death. I need you to come with me, David."

But David made to walk away again. And once more Jason caught hold of his elbow.

"David—"

"Stop!" David yelled. "Stop calling my name. Stop...saying it like that. I get it," he continued. "You were just being nice." Bowing his head, his black hair fringed his eyes, quivering as he shivered. "I wish you hadn't though. You shouldn't have paid me any attention. Then I wouldn't feel so—" He stopped.

Jason looked at the bowed head, recognized the fragile emotional state the boy was in. But right now he had another immediate problem. Taking off his coat, he swung it around David's shaking shoulders. The boy tried to shrug it off, but Jason held it tightly closed in front.

"No," he said firmly. "You are dangerously close to hypothermia—frankly, I'm surprised you're not dead already. So, I'm not going to argue with you. If you continue to resist, I will pick you up and carry you out."

David paused. There was something in the man's voice he hadn't heard before, a restraint of some emotion.

"Are you going to come with me?" Jason asked.

David nodded.

"Good." Jason gestured for him to go first, and as David moved pass him, Jason glanced at the grave where the boy had been sitting. By the birth and death dates, it was a child. But the name is what stayed with him: Mary Louise Boutan.

**

Jason's apartment was sparse, but nice. It was short term, only as long as he was working at the school, but he still did his best to make it home. He covered the beige floor with a red circle rug, changed the drapes to match, added some accent pillows and a checkered throw to the beige couch, and had a handful of framed pictures on a side table; his graduation from West Point, out with friends at a bar, his platoon on patrol, what must have been his parents, and the last was a sepia picture of a young boy and girl. David, sitting at the kitchen table, showered, and wearing a sweatshirt and blanket around his shoulders, could see into the adjoining living room, and he studied the pictures. He wanted to ask about the people, but Jason's mood was different than it had ever been, and he knew he shouldn't.

"Tea or coffee?"

The abrupt question made David jump. Half turning his head, he answered quietly. "Tea."

Behind him cups and spoons rattled as Jason made the tea, the whoosh of the tap and the multiple rapid clicks of the stove coming on. Neither of them spoke until two cups of steaming earl grey and black tea were on the table and Jason sat down opposite him.

"Are you angry?" David asked, his voice barely audible. He knew anger, and all the forms it could take. The loud, yelling anger, he was most familiar with, but the silent one was the most frightful.

"Of course, I'm angry," Jason said. "You could have died, sitting out there in the cold."

David glanced up, but his gaze only made it as far as the opposite cup before dropping back to his own.

"Not only that, you also missed all of your regular classes and your extra credit."

"I'm sorry," came the even quieter response.

Jason sighed. Leaning back in his chair, he ran a hand over his jaw, feeling his afternoon scruff. "Mr. Bailey will let you make it up."

"He might not. He was clear I wasn't supposed to miss any."

"Then Mrs. Davis will let you. She has a soft spot for you."

"Why do you say that?"

"You used to babysit for her, didn't you?"

David did glance up now, briefly. "Did she tell you that?"

"Obviously."

David paused. For some reason, he looked worried. "What else did she say?"

Jason thought back to the tombstone. "Nothing, really. Just that you used to babysit for a lot of people some years ago."

David shifted the blanket around him, causing the top to brush his ear, which made him flinch in pain.

"Your piercing is inflamed," Jason said.

"No," David said. "It just got hooked on a towel..."

Leaning across the table, Jason rose his hand to David's ear and gently, gingerly, rubbed the upper ridge, where a small silver bar diagonally pierced. Dark eyes looked up into his frowning face, once more so close to him. But when green eyes shifted down to him, David looked away.

Jason let his hand fall away and sighed. "Right," he said. "We should talk about that."

"We don't have to. I understand now what it is between us."

"No, you don't. What it should be and what it is are not the same, which makes what it is complicated, and what it should be what it's not."

"What?" David asked, frowning and shaking his head slightly.

Jason sighed again. "Look," he said. "Something happened, I can't deny that completely. And maybe I encouraged it when I shouldn't have."

"What does that mean?"

"It means—" Jason stopped. Getting to his feet, he paced around, hands on his hips, before sitting back down. "You told me you'd grant me a favor, remember? When I gave you a ride to pick out a card for Drew."

David paused, then nodded. "I remember."

"Then I'm calling in that favor right now." A pause. "I want you to wait until you're eighteen. Wait until then, and then we can...talk about this."

Dark brows drew together under the fringe of black hair as he looked at the other man. "Why? I think you're getting too hung on that. It wasn't an issue for anyone else."

"What?" Jason asked. "Who's 'anyone else'?"

The blanket rustled as he shrugged. "People."

"Peopl—you know what? I don't want to know. Just say you'll wait."

"But why? Is it just to protect yourself? No one will know."

"I'll know. Look, it doesn't just protect me, it also protects you. Hypothetically, if we do start something—HYPOTETCHICALLY, David, so get that look off your face—if we do, and I go back to the school to recruit, will you be able to trust me? Will you be able to trust that I won't start something with someone else, the way I did with you? And don't just say yes," he added quickly, as David opened his mouth. "Think about it. Think about me working at the school when you no longer go there."

David sat in silence. "Okay," he finally said, quietly and grudgingly. "I'll wait."

"Good." Jason let out a breath of relief. "Now," he said, tapping the tabletop with both hands as he got to his feet. "Let's get you home."

"I don't want to go home," David said. "I usually don't go home for days. It's fine. No one minds."

"I mind," Jason said with a deep troubled frown.

A fleeting smile crossed David's thin lips. "Let me stay here the night."

"No, absolutely not."

"I won't leave," David said, sitting back and pulling the blanket more around him. "You'll have to lift me up and carry me out if you want me to go."

Jason gave a heavy breath. "Were you always such a brat?"

David shrugged noncommittally, but a smile tugged at his lips.

"Fine," Jason said. "I'll make up the couch." He stood, cleared the cups, and was walking towards the living room, David in tow, when he suddenly stopped and turned, almost making the teenager bump into him. "Okay," he said. "I have to know."

David blinked up at him.

"Who's 'anyone else'?"

David blinked again, then began to laugh. "I'll tell you," he finally said when he stopped. Looking up at Jason, his dark eyes twinkled with sudden mischief. "If you let me sleep in the bed with you."

Jason laughed in his face and walked away, still laughing. "You're funny, David, you know that?" he called over his shoulder.

David looked startled, at first. Then his face relaxed into a smile. It had been a long time since someone had said he was funny.