"I need to go home," David said.

Jason, sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, looked up so quickly he missed his mouth with the spoon and hit his teeth.

Slapping a hand to his hurt mouth, he took a moment, head bent and eyes squeezed shut, before asking in a muffled voice, "You what?"

Taking a dishtowel from the sink and coming to him, David said, "I need to go home. I'm missing something."

"Oh." Jason took the towel to dab at the spilled milk on his shirt and lap. Glancing up at David, he said, "So you still think of it as home, huh?"

They had been living together now for about a month. Outside it was the ides of March, and winter was giving way to Spring slowly but surely. No longer concerned about repercussions to their relationship, they had still decided to keep it discreet. It was nobody else's business but their own.

"I think, a part of me always will," David said. "Is that stupid?"

"No," Jason said. "Of course not."

"I think of this as my home, too." Brushing stray cheerios from the table into his hand, he smiled at the instant lift on the other man's face. "You're so easy to read."

"I'm easy in other ways, too." Jason laughed as David pelted him with the dishtowel. Picking up his spoon once more, he took a spoonful of cereal. "When do you want to go?"

"You're taking me?"

"Who else?"

"I thought we were being discreet."

"I'm not letting you go back to that place alone."

David, seeing the little frown on Jason's face, remembered how angry the man had been when he'd shown up on his doorstep with a black eye and split lip. When David had gone back to collect his stuff the first time, Jason had insisted on going with him then, too. It made the young man sigh with fondness.

Looking up at the sound, Jason, around a mouthful of cereal and milk, asked, "What?"

"Nothing," David said. "Just thinking that I've never brought a boy home before."

"Yeah, well, you're not bringing one home now," Jason said, to which David laughed.

**

The house was empty when they got there. David knew both his parents would be out; it was the fifteenth, and they always went golfing on the fifteenth. Jason pulled into the driveway and parked, and David let them into the house. He had not been able to part with his keys, even though he felt he should. Inside, it was neat and clean—a little too neat and clean for Jason.

"It looks like a show house," he said grumpily, looking around. "Like some staged magazine shoot. It's creepy."

Seeing David's childhood room did not help. He sneered at the bland neutrals and hotel neatness. It was all David could do to keep him from tipping over things as he walked, reminding him that anything out of place would be blamed on David. Standing in the middle of the room with his arms crossed, Jason grudgingly and gruntingly agreed to behave.

Opening the closet, which was empty except for hangers and storage bags, David got down on his hands and knees. The floor of the room was covered in dark grey carpet, but inside the closet it was wood, and now David pried up a thin strip, revealing a small space underneath. Reaching in, he brought out what looked like a roll of plastic. Replacing the wooden plank, he stood and closed the accordion doors of the closest carefully.

"Okay," he said. "I'm done."

"Can I know what it is?" Jason asked.

Coming to stand with him, David turned the roll over in his hands and lifted an almost invisible strip of tape, letting loose the edge of the plastic. He gripped it with one hand and let it unroll into his other hand, where the plastic ended and a rolled paper flopped out. Handing the plastic to Jason, David carefully unrolled the paper. It was a sheet of ordinary art paper, the kind used by children, but instead of a childish rendition of flowers or a sunny day, or stick figures, it was a graphic, detailed image of a red heart, dripping blood onto the nails of a pale hand, the scarlet red darkening as it painted the nails black.

"Wow," Jason said, with true amazement. "That's cool. Did you draw that?"

David hesitated. "No," he finally said. "Mary Sue did."

Jason looked at him quickly, the name bringing images of the cemetery, and the tombstone at which David had been sitting.

"Mary Sue," Jason repeated, in a questioning way, but without asking.

"Mary Sue Boutan." David paused, looking down at the drawing. "She was Drew's little sister. I used to baby-sit for her, before she—" He stopped, and immediately felt an arm around his shoulders and comforting squeeze. "She died," he continued, looking at the drawing. "And I stopped babysitting."

Jason had vaguely guessed at some of this, but the people in this town did not talk about it, and he was not going to ask the two boys connected with that name about it, either. Guiding David to sit on the bed, Jason pulled out the desk chair to sit in front of him.

"Were you," Jason began gently, "Were you there, when...it happened?"

"No," David replied, his voice barely audible in the silent room, his bleached blond hair hanging over his eyes. "I went to sleep that night and she was there. When I woke up the next morning, she wasn't."

Jason waited, but the pause continued, and just when he was about to let it go, David continued.

"I've never told anyone about this."

Jason, already half an inch off the chair, sat back down.

"No one wants to talk about it," David said, his hair swaying apart enough to reveal a frown on his pale face. "I guess...that goes for me, too."

"And that's fine," Jason said. "It's okay to not want to talk about things that upset us." He paused. "But sometimes talking about it helps it to not upset us." He pulled a face and shook his head at the atrocity of that sentence. "I mean—"

"I know what you mean," David said, smiling, but not at him. His gaze was still on the drawing, held in his lap. "She loved to draw," David went on. "I used to have a whole box of her drawings, but—" He stopped. "It—the box was thrown out during renovations, when I wasn't here."

Inside, Jason tempered a sudden surge of anger. David, he noticed, never spoke about the things his parents did to him in a way that blamed them. The box was probably thrown out along with all of David's things when they turned his room into this monstrosity of blandness. From what he learned from Ms. Davis, David had gone missing right around the time after the little girl's death, and that was probably when his parents did this. It would have been the best chance.

"After her funeral I left the cemetery and kept walking," David went on. "I didn't know where I was going, and when I stopped, I didn't even know where I was. I had walked to the highway. I barely remember being picked up and taken to a diner—the diner, where I met Nancy. I don't remember much of what happened between then and when I came back."

"Why did you come back?"

"I was brought back. It wasn't my choice. I had this on me," David added, the paper in his hands crinkling with his touch. "It was my favorite."

"It's beautiful. How come you take it with you when you moved into the diner?" Jason asked.

"I couldn't take the chance it would be caught in a fire," David said. "And..." he looked up at Jason, "I was waiting for a more permanent home for it." He smiled, reaching out for Jason's hand. "Which I now have."

"Yeah," Jason said, intertwining their fingers and squeezing it as he kissed the back of the hand. "You do."

David smiled. He stood, and Jason took that as his cue that the conversation was over, but as he stood and pushed the desk chair back into place, he said, "Mary Sue must have meant a lot to you."

"She did. She loved me and treated me more like I was her big brother than her babysitter."

"Is that why you and Drew are so at odds?"

David, in the act of rolling the drawing back into the plastic, paused. "How do you mean?"

"I mean," Jason said, "you say you're not friends, yet you have a unique bond through her. A bond you can't break or ignore. It seems like you don't quite know what to do about it."

After a brief, pensive silence, then: "I guess that might be true."

He rolled the drawing back into the plastic, but just as he turned towards the door, a hand caught his and he looked back.

"You've never brought a boy home, hmm?" Jason asked.

David shook his head.

"But you've brought one home now..."

David gave an amused half smirk at the suggestive lifting of Jason's brows. "It's been a while since you were a boy, Major."

"Oh—" Jason yanked a laughing David against him. "Play along, damnit."

Clearing his throat on a laugh, David pulled the straightest face he could. "Sorry. Yes, I have brought you, a boy, home."

"And what would you and a boy do in a house all to yourself?"

"Hmm. Redecorate?"

"I think we could manage to move the bed a bit."

David gave a breathy chuckle. "You're so embarrassing when you're being subtle," he said, ducking his head to hide his face.

"Then I'll be direct," Jason said, taking the rolled drawing from David and placing it on the desk. "Can we make out on your bed before we go?"

With another breathy laugh, David looked up. "Well," he said, "it is my room..." He had barely enough time to finish the sentence before Jason kissed him, turning as they did and walking backwards towards the bed. Falling onto it with David on top, the two kissed, giggling and nibbling at first, and then getting seriously into it. They spent a heavy, gasping half hour there, on the single bed with barely enough space to roll, knocking pillows to the floor and tangling the sheets so that they pulled off the corners. When they were done, David insisted they remake the bed.

"Can't we just leave it?" Jason asked as he reluctantly helped to place the pillows back. "Give them something to think about when they come home."

David glanced at him in an amused you-know-we-can't-do-that way as he tucked in the corners of the sheet.

Downstairs, David paused at the console in the entry hall and picked through a pile of mail.

"I thought you changed your address," Jason said, already at the door and eager to leave.

"I did," David said. "I'm just checking."

There was nothing there for him. And even if there were, he knew, it would have been thrown out immediately. That made him decide to check the trash, while Jason bounced anxiously on the balls of his feet by the door. He'd had about as much of this house as he could take. David returned from the kitchen with a strange look on his face, which made Jason stop. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing," David said. "Just...returned my keys to the other spares."

Jason, who knew David was struggling to let go—it was his childhood home and his parents, after all—reached out for him and David went into a hug. "Are you okay?" he murmured into the white hair.

"I will be."

They tightened the hug and then parted. David was the last one out, and with the door open he paused on the threshold to look back at the still, silent house. Memories, what few good ones he had, from his very earliest years, played out in the hall and on the stairs like ghosts, vanishing into smoke as quickly as they came. With one last sigh that blew away the smoke, he closed the door behind him.

Outside on the porch, Jason was not where David expected to see him. Glancing to the side when he heard grunting and scuffling, he saw the other man reaching down to pull a package out from under a chair. It was medium sized, the cardboard wet in spots, and crusted with dirt, looking like it had been left out in the elements for days. Turning it over, Jason read the label. "It's to you," he said, with some surprise. And then he got pissed. "It's postmarked February 12. It's been out here for a month."

"Easy, Major."

"Just let me—"

"No."

"Fine." Jason brought it over but wouldn't let David touch it. "You'll get dirty," he said. "I am already. I'll put it in the trunk."

"No," David said, so quickly Jason rose his brows at him.

"Is this what you were looking for in the mail?" Jason asked as realization dawned on him.

David hesitated. "Yes."

"What is it?"

"I don't know." When Jason's brows lifted again, David added, "I've been getting something for my birthday's since I was twelve. There's never a signature or return address."

"Mysterious," Jason said, keeping his gaze on the young man, who was avoiding his. "And you don't have any idea who it's from?" The silence surprised him, and Jason frowned. "Should I be worried about this, David?"

Now dark gaze flicked up to meet his. "Worried about what?"

"That I think you know exactly who's been sending you things and you seem pleased about it."

"It's not like that," David said.

"Then what is it like?"

"I don't know exactly who it is."

"But you have some idea."

"Maybe."

Jason licked his lips and exhaled in slight frustration. They were going in circles. "Fine. Can we go now?"

"Are you mad at me?" David asked.

"No," Jason called back, walking down the porch stairs and towards the car.

"You seem mad."

Jason stopped short, David following close behind almost colliding with him. "I'm not mad," Jason said. "I'm worried. That's all."

They drove in silence, and David knew he should have tried to dispel the worry, but he didn't know how. All he had were guesses. No, all he had were hopes. And to speak them would make him feel stupid, even to Jason. So he kept silent, too, his gaze drifting to and lingering on the dirty package on the car mat at his feet.

**

David opened it alone, late that night while the other man slept. Inside the dirty package was filled with packing peanuts. Digging his hands into it, David felt smooth sides and heard the crinkling of paper. Sliding his fingers around the edges of another box, he pulled it out. Heart beating quickly, his eyes widened at the heavy gift-wrapped box in his hands, at the black and gold stripped paper, the gold shimmering in the light, the black like velvet, topped with a wide gold ribbon.

Placing the box on the table, he hesitated, glancing back at the door and the bedroom beyond. Should he be worried? Should he have done this with Jason, just to be sure? But he had never been worried about these little gifts before. Though this was already larger and more extravagant than the others, the most expensive of which had been a pocket watch.

Reaching out with slightly trembling fingers, he carefully opened the seams and unfolded the wrapping. As the paper fell away another box was revealed, this time of wood and richly lacquered in black. It had no markings on it, but it hinged on one side. His fingers pale against the wood, he opened it.

As the lid locked into an upright position, the slow tinkering notes of Ravel's Bolero lifted into the air. David's breath left him in a small gasp as immediately a memory bloomed, of being very young, looking out between the wooden bars of a crib, his small baby fingers wrapped around a childish finger stuck in from between the bars, while the same song played from somewhere out of sight. It was a hazy and ephemeral memory, as fleeting and fairytale like as the music, and when it ended, David put his hand up to his cheek, brought it down and looked down at wet fingers.

It was only then, through blurry vision, that he noticed the envelop sticking up from between the packing peanuts. Inside was a birthday card, beautifully embossed, but the only thing written inside was, I'll see you soon.

The next morning Jason would wake up to see the music box on the dresser, but when asked if there was anything else, David would tell him no.