Ollie had never seen the kid before.

He wasn't actually a kid, but Ollie would be impressed if he'd even hit twenty-one. He was short, probably no taller than five-foot-five and compactly muscled with dark roots showing under faded teal hair and olive skin. There were backpack straps on his shoulders and holes in his jeans.

One of the arms he had crossed over his chest was covered in bright green vine tattoos dotted with elaborately detailed and vibrantly colored flower blossoms, but the thing that kept drawing Ollie's eyes were the bruises darkening the skin around the kid's right eye and down over his cheekbone. The white of that eye was blood red from busted capillaries and the dark iris was trained on Vidar.

The eldest Rourke seemed to be locked in a stand-off with the kid in the aisle beside the cage. Kayla and Rory were standing quietly off to the side, and as Ollie approached from behind Vidar with Harbor and Dagen flanking him, he saw the kid's dark eyes move to him.

Vidar glanced back at him before stepping off to the side but staying close.

"Are you Ollie V?"

"Yes. Who are you?"

The kid pulled the backpack from his back and started to reach inside. Vidar moved so fast, Ollie barely registered it before he had a hand clamped over the kid's colorful forearm. Harbor and Dagen both took a step forward, Dagen sticking close to Ollie's side.

"What the fuck!" the kid protested and tried to pull his arm out of Vidar's grip.

“What’s in the bag?” Vidar’s growling voice was low enough that Ollie could barely hear it. Everyone in the room held their breath, watching as a power struggle passed between the two men.

A dark look crossed the newcomer’s face a moment before he opened the bag enough that Vidar could see inside. Vidar looked down before leaning forward and saying something Ollie couldn’t hear. Another look passed between the two and Vidar released his arm, stepping back to the side.

Reaching into the backpack, the kid drew out a black notebook. Well, mostly black. The cover looked worn and there was duct tape stuck here and there to keep it intact. Ollie's eyes widened.

"I think this belongs to you," the kid said while taking a couple of steps closer, eyes moving from Ollie to Dagen. Ollie didn't know what he'd see if he looked to the man beside him, not that the thought crossed his mind to even make that look. He was too intent on the book in the kid's hands. His sketchbook.

"Who are you?" Ollie demanded, stepping forward and reaching out his hand.

"I was the new you."

They moved to the reception area of Open Wounds and got Niko—their strange visitor’s name—settled on one of the couches with a bottle of water. Dagen knew Ollie was shaken without having to ask. He had a death grip on the sketchbook that proved to be the one Ollie had been missing and had barely taken his eyes off Niko since he’d snatched the book from the kid’s hand.

Niko looked skittish, but he sat quietly, his eyes darting between Ollie and Vidar. Vidar was leaning against the wall next to the couch, and while he wasn’t staring intently at the other man, Vidar’s eyes continued to track back to him. Dagen wanted to go to Ollie and drag him into his arms.

“What happened?” Ollie blurted, breaking the awkward silence. “Why would you—”

“Travel halfway across the country to bring you a book?” Niko cut in, and his words had a sarcastic bite Dagen suspected he used like armor. He was sensing a pattern here. Two men who had fled the same culprit, bruised and wearing masks to hide from the world. To protect themselves. One of which dug his way farther into Dagen’s heart with every passing day.

Ollie nodded.

Niko swallowed and set the bottle of water on the coffee table in front of him. “He was using your sketches. Especially the samurai ones.”

Ollie went pale. “Those—”

“Are amazing? Yeah, some of the best work I’ve ever seen. That’s how I knew they weren’t his and started poking around until I figured out who they belonged to.” Niko lifted his hand to his bruised cheek. “He didn’t like that very much.”

“How long were you there?” Ollie sounded like a shell of himself, and Dagen was getting antsy. He needed to go throw some heavy shit around or something, so he wouldn’t be tempted to get on the next plane to Vegas and decimate the fucker responsible. Vidar looked to be of a like mind, his quiet intensity focused wholly on the two men conversing on the couch. Dagen could see the tic of his jaw, one of the few tells that his brother was nearing the end of his control.

“Only a couple of weeks. It was a nightmare, honestly. I don’t know what it was like when you were there, but every time the phone rang and someone asked for you, it was like he got a little more batshit.” Niko went quiet as he focused only on Ollie. “He kept ranting about how you left him high and dry. I think he was on drugs.” Niko chewed on his lip. “Then when I refused to sleep with him, he hit me again, and I was gone.”

Dagen felt like the floor had been ripped out from under him. He looked at Ollie, but Ollie wouldn’t meet his eyes before he stood up quickly making Niko startle beside him.

“Sorry,” Ollie apologized to the other man, then glanced at the rest of the room. “I’m going to call it a night. Thank you for bringing this back to me. Um, do you have a place to stay?”

Niko opened his mouth, but Vidar was the one who answered. “Yes, he does.”

Ollie tipped his head in a barely discernible nod and walked quickly down the hall into the back room and up the stairs to their apartment. Dagen followed right behind him, worry knotting his stomach. He stopped in the doorway of Ollie’s room casting a long shadow over where Ollie sat on the bed, his sketchbook still clutched in his hands. For a moment, they didn’t say anything, then Dagen was on his knees in front of him. “Ollie... would you look at me? Please?”

“I don’t want you to see this.”

“All I see is the same man I always have. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of—”

“Jesus,” Ollie exploded, jumping to his feet and pacing away from Dagen to stand near the foot of the bed. “Of course I do! Were you not listening? I let that asshole use me!” Tossing the sketchbook on the bed, Ollie scrubbed both hands over his face. “I didn’t know that was what was happening at first. I thought…” Ollie shook his head. “I don’t know what I thought. I was young and stupid and just didn’t want to be alone anymore.”

Dagen’s heart cracked in two and he took a few cautious steps forward. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. If you want to tell me about it, I’m here, but if you’re looking for judgment this isn’t where you’re going to find it.” When he reached Ollie, he went to pull him into a hug, but Ollie stepped back.

“Look,” Ollie said, voice rough, “You don’t owe me anything, okay? So we’ve fucked. That doesn’t mean you have to—”

Closing the distance between them, Dagen pressed his lips against Ollie’s still moving ones. The kiss turned fierce in an instant and Dagen slipped his arms around Ollie’s back, one hand settling on the back of his neck. They pulled apart with a gasp, Dagen resting their foreheads together. “Please don’t punish me for shit he did,” he whispered into the small space between them. “I know it’s new. I know it’s crazy even, but it’s not just sex, Ollie. At least not for me. Tell me you know that.”

Ollie took a deep breath and blew it out slow before brushing his lips over Dagen’s again.

“I know. I’m sorry, Dagen. I shouldn’t have said that. I think I need a minute to get my head together.”

Dagen didn’t like it, but he nodded. “I’m going to go check in with Vidar. I’ll have my phone if you need me.”

Ollie nodded.

Dagen stepped back and took Ollie’s hand in his. He bent his head, never taking his eyes from Ollie’s beautiful brown ones, and pressed a kiss to the knuckles that had so recently been bruised before turning and leaving the room.

He found Vidar in the gym, hands wrapped and landing vicious blows to one of the heavy bags. Dagen walked behind it, grabbing the bag and bracing his shoulder against it to stop the rocking motion his brother’s punches caused.

Vidar nodded and punched harder, sweat glistening along his forehead as he steadily increased his pace until the bag felt like a battering ram trying to pass through Dagen’s body and burst out the other side.

With a final brutal backhanded swing that rocked the bag enough Dagen had to brace his feet again, Vidar turned away with a deep growl. The sound echoed around the big room and washed over Dagen, it’s resonance helping him to temper his own anger. Vidar stood for a moment with his back to Dagen, body heaving from his strained breathing, before turning back and starting to remove the wraps from his hands.

“Ollie?” Vidar asked without meeting his eyes.

“He’s upstairs.” Dagen blew out a deep breath. “He didn’t tell me much. Other than he needs some space. Niko?”

At the name Vidar lifted his head, blue eyes flashing with some emotion so quickly that Dagen couldn’t name it before it was gone. “He’s in my office on the couch. Asleep before his head hit the pillow.”

That surprised Dagen with how antsy Niko had seemed, but he let it go remembering how utterly exhausted Ollie had looked that first day barely a month and a lifetime ago. “What are we going to do?”

“Protect them.”

Ollie let the quiet darkness of the apartment wash over him and nestled further down in the bed, pulling the covers up over his head. When he was younger it was his favorite place to read books or flip through his comics. As he grew older, it morphed into a safe haven where—even if only for a few minutes—nothing could touch him, and the outside world didn’t exist. Releasing a pent-up breath, he felt the knot in his chest loosen at the familiarity of being ensconced in soft material.

He pressed his nose into the pillow and inhaled deeply. Dagen’s smell surrounded him, offering further comfort as the first tears slipped down his face. Leaving Vegas was supposed to have put all this behind him. He was grateful that Niko had gotten out too, and he knew he needed to talk further with the younger man, but he just hadn’t had the strength tonight.

Dagen had assumed the worst. Ollie saw it in his eyes, and while the truth was bad enough, he knew he needed to open up, tell Dagen what his life had been like for the past two years.

Three weeks ago, he never would have considered confiding in someone, never would have shared his shame. Because that was the worst of it for Ollie. The shame he felt at his own ignorance, at getting himself into the situation in the first place. For staying as long as he did.

It tore at him, constantly lurking and waiting to give reminder to all the ways Ollie had failed. His parents. Himself. The way he would surely fail Dagen. A fresh stab of bitter regret pierced his heart and he squeezed his eyes shut.

The door to the apartment clicked open and Ollie stilled, wiping at his eyes, as he listened to Dagen make his way down the hall. His footsteps paused—Ollie imagined him standing in Ollie’s bedroom door and realizing he wasn’t there—before picking up again. The barest glow of golden light filtered into his fortress when he heard the click of the light switch. It went away again almost immediately. The rustling of fabric filled the room a moment before a draft of air met his back and the mattress dipped beside him.

A split second later, strong arms snaked around him, one under his neck and the other around his waist, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut again. Dagen pulled him back into the solid curve of his body, fitting his bent knees in behind Ollie’s and pressing a soft kiss to the back of his neck.

Ollie clung to Dagen’s arms like the life raft they were. He’d run away from Vegas, from Justin, and he’d let himself get comfortable here. It was so easy to do. So easy to push all the bad things, all the things he hated about himself, down until they were buried beneath every good job Kayla said to him, every time he put money in his apartment fund, every smile Dagen gave him, and a million other little things. He could bury it there, let it fester, but even before he’d run, he had realized he needed to stop letting Justin or his parents or the past have so much foothold. He was going to take it back.

“I was nineteen when I met Justin.” Ollie’s voice was quiet in the darkness of their blanket cocoon. When Dagen had come back upstairs and Ollie hadn’t been in his room, Dagen had started to panic until he’d flipped the light in his own room and seen the Ollie-shaped lump huddled under the blankets. He hadn’t thought twice about stripping down to his briefs and crawling in beside him. Dagen’s only concern had been making sure Ollie was okay and getting him back in his arms. “And one more late rent payment away from living on the street.”

Dagen didn’t know what to say, so he snuggled even closer letting his lips rest on the back of Ollie’s neck.

“It wasn’t even my apartment. I didn’t even have my own room. Just a bed. There were always so many people in and out. I couldn’t get a good job. I didn’t even have my high school diploma.” Ollie started to absently run his fingers up and down Dagen’s arm, like he was getting lost in his head. “I started doing sketches for tourists, just on the sidewalk, and that’s where he found me.” He huffed a laugh. “It’s such a cliché really. He took me in, taught me to tattoo, helped me get my GED. I think that’s why I stayed so long when things really started to get bad. I felt indebted to him.”

Ollie was silent for so long Dagen thought he wasn’t going to say anything else. Then Ollie lifted the covers off their heads and turned in Dagen’s arms. His skin was alabaster in the slivers of moonlight coming through the blinds of the window. Dagen wanted to kiss him so badly, but he held himself back. Ollie had other ideas, though, and leaned in until their foreheads met, then brushed his lips across Dagen’s.

“I know you’re imagining the absolute worst things right now. But mostly it was the manipulation. Things I couldn’t even see at the time. Getting me to let him use my sketches or take credit for work I’d done for the good of the shop. He had a million excuses. A million things that had to be just so. Like my weight. I was thin to begin with, but he always made comments about me keeping it that way. So I did. After a while, my appetite mostly went away. Then I passed out once on a run. I tried to do a little better after that.”

Rage was scalding Dagen’s insides, and he bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from letting it spill over.

“He had always gambled, but it got worse the longer I was there. He started getting into other things too. The day I left, I walked into the back room to get something, and he was doing lines of cocaine right there in the shop. I turned right around and walked out. He had never hit me until he tried to stop me from getting in the Jeep. He knocked me over and started kicking me.”

“How’d you get away?” Dagen’s tone was rough.

“I managed to grab his foot and trip him. Then I got up and broke his nose.”

“Your knuckles…”

“Yeah, I’d never hit anybody before. It freaking hurts.” Ollie let out a little chuckle, but it was tinged with sadness. “I’ve got a lot of shit to work through, Dagen. Logically, I know that none of it was really my fault but… it still feels like my fault. And then I just ran away, and now Niko…” Ollie’s voice cracked and Dagen pulled him in, tucking him under his chin.

“That is not your fault either. You couldn’t know that he would go after someone else. And… I’m here, okay? For whatever you need.”

Ollie sighed and nodded his head where it rested against Dagen’s chest. As quiet minutes passed, Ollie gradually went lax against him as the emotions of the day caught up and sleep took hold. Closing his eyes, Dagen relished the feel of Ollie safe and warm in his arms. Even though it had only been a week that he’d been granted the privilege, he silently hoped to always keep him that way.