Casey was aware that someone was making an awful, hurt noise, high-pitched whimpers escaping through a throat nearly closed up with fear. He tried to move, to see who was crying like that, to help them, and then he jerked awake to the sight of Adam’s worried face.

Casey pushed away automatically, scrambling off the bed and turning his head to try to get a breath of air that wasn’t reeking of alpha, but the whole room smelled of him and Adam, and...

And his heartbeat was already slowing, even with Adam right there, still radiating sleep-warm, trusting alpha scent laced with concern. Casey turned his head, looking toward the door as he tested out the idea of a shower, scrubbing away Adam’s scent, sleeping in his own bed—the bed that also smelled of Adam, from last night’s empty moon. It didn’t help. It sounded awful.

Casey looked back to Adam, who had pushed up on one elbow but no further. He was lying very still, watching Casey with huge eyes that looked like pure pale silver in the darkness. As Casey stood there watching, Adam deliberately closed his eyes and lay down, turning his face away.

Adam wouldn’t ask him not to leave, of course. Adam wouldn’t even watch him go. Adam thought Casey was better off far, far away from him.

Unseen, Casey shook his head sharply. Fuck that.

He climbed back onto the bed and lay down across Adam’s body again, just as he’d first fallen asleep. He realized once he was down that this wasn’t how he’d woken up; he had been lying on the mattress, Adam half-covering him. Adam had rolled away as soon as Casey pushed, but before that, he’d covered Casey’s body with his, trying to shelter him. Casey didn’t know if that was what had caused the nightmare—it wasn’t like he needed help with that—but he thought it might have been sort of nice if he hadn’t been blindly terrified.

This was nice, too, though, Adam’s big, broad body lying very still under his, Adam’s heartbeat slowing along with his own. They had both been scared, Casey realized. Of course. Adam didn’t want to hurt him.

Casey reached up and patted Adam’s cheek. “I’m okay. You okay?”

Adam cleared his throat, but the words still came out a little hoarse. “I am if you are.”

“We’re okay,” Casey agreed, and lay quietly, listening to Adam’s heartbeat and trying to let it drown out that thin cry still echoing in his ears.

Casey woke again in the early light, curled close to a warm body, bigger than his own, and for just a second he knew exactly where he was. Home.

Then he nestled into the pillow and felt his hair moving loosely around his head, and felt a spike of panic. That would mean trouble—scolding—and having to have it all combed and braided again, and Mama would—

Casey’s eyes flashed open and he could feel the memory melting into nothing—being forgotten again, like always, and he blurted out, “My hair, my hair was—braids—”

Adam jerked awake and clumsily rolled over to face him, blinking awake. “What?”

“My—I had long hair and—I had a—” Casey’s throat closed up before he could say mama, and what came out was a shockingly loud sob.

Adam looked utterly panicked; he reached out a hand and then jerked it back, and Casey’s next sob also wanted to be a laugh at Adam’s total inability to deal with this. What came out of his mouth was a half-choked noise; he coughed a little, shaking his head, and then gasped. Adam’s hand settled cautiously between his shoulder blades.

Casey let his head hang, and his hair—which did need a trim—brushed his temples and cheekbones. Hanging loose. He felt a faint echo of that bolt of panic, and ran one hand through his hair. Braids. His hair had been long, heavy, and tightly braided so it wouldn’t tangle.

His hair?

Casey shook that thought away along with the wave of grief that threatened at the dim thought of mama, shapeless but somehow certain, a pillar of the life he could no longer recall.

“I’m okay,” he muttered, when his breath was steady.

Adam’s hand patted uncertainly. “You sure? Did you...”

“Remembered a little,” Casey said. “Could you just—remember what I said? In case I...”

He was going to forget again. It felt familiar suddenly, the process of remembering and forgetting. How many times had he forgotten this? Forgotten...

Mama.

Casey shook his head harder and sat up. They had things to do. He was sure they had things to do. He would remember what they were soon enough.

“I’m going to... shower,” Casey decided, sitting up. He ran his hand through his hair again. It was getting awfully long; he should ask one of the midwives for a trim before they headed to the next pack.

All day, the Beltrami Niemis were giving Casey and Adam knowing looks, and for once Casey didn’t even find it annoying. They were right, and once he shook off the morning’s odd ominous mood, he was happy that they knew it. He kept shooting little not-very-secret smiles at Adam.

Adam even smiled back, cautiously, like he wasn’t sure how to do it and didn’t want to get it wrong. But he tried every time, and Casey figured that was enough to be going on with.

They finished up surveying the pack’s omegas right on schedule, with plenty of time for Casey to get his hair cut before supper. Auntie Goldie gave him the cloth with all his hair trimmings to take out and scatter for the birds, and Casey wasn’t surprised when Adam made a little hopeful gesture toward the door. Casey didn’t even think it was only that he wanted to escape Granny David’s disquisition on exciting ways he’d seen omega childbirth go wrong. Adam was taking studious notes, but he had been keeping one eye on Casey all the time, too.

It didn’t take long for them to get shoes and coats on and step out into the November twilight. Everything was covered in a thin blanket of snow, so Casey paused just outside the back door to look for the shapes that would show the location of the kitchen garden. He took two steps toward it, and then a little breeze crossed his face and he jerked around to look at Adam.

That wasn’t Adam’s scent, though. Alpha and—and familiar, home. But not Adam. It was—

“He’s here,” Casey whispered, looking around with wide eyes, searching the nearest stand of trees for the shape of a man with dark hair, standing and watching, waiting. He strained his ears for a heartbeat he couldn’t find. “He’s—where—”

Casey started running, past the kitchen garden. He thought he caught traces of that scent, but it might only have been memory. It might have been nothing, just remembering something again, but—

Casey stopped short. There were footprints in the dirt and snow, right at the edge of the trees, cut deep like the man had stood there a while. The tread of each boot was sharp and distinct, like the boots were brand new.

A vision flashed in Casey’s mind: a man standing on the far edge of a field wearing dark blue jeans and a brown canvas coat and no hat. The garments were a little stiff with newness, showing no sign of wear or fading.

Casey rubbed his hands over his face, or tried to before he got a faceful of cloth: the bundled-up trimmings from his hair. He looked down at them, and at the boot-prints again. The prints came exactly this far—just to the edge of the woods, where the Midwives’ House was visible, and no further. Someone had stood there for a while, watching the back door and kitchen windows, and then turned and walked away again.

It wasn’t something someone in the pack would have done. It didn’t prove anything—and he didn’t know whether he could possibly be remembering that glimpse of new clothes to match these sharp new boots, or what it would mean if he had—but it was something. It was real.

“Casey?” Adam said at his shoulder.

“Those are his footprints,” Casey said, and he felt Adam move closer, brushing against Casey’s shoulder as he looked. Casey felt him stiffen when he saw what Casey saw. “He was here. He’s real and he was here. I caught his scent on the air. He was right here. He watched me get my hair cut.”

“Casey,” Adam said, and it wasn’t a question this time. Casey finally dragged his gaze up from the footprints and looked at Adam, who was looking back at him thoughtfully.

“You’re not afraid,” Adam observed. “You’re not even angry—not that he was here. You’re angry that he’s gone.”

Casey started to argue, but the words wouldn’t come. Adam was right; Casey was frustrated that the alpha had disappeared again, and sad to have lost him again, which didn’t make any sense.

“When you smelled him before,” Adam said slowly. “What did he smell like?”

Casey remembered once again being held against an alpha’s body, when he was small enough for his feet to dangle, his hair pulled tight—braided tight. Scared, but safe. Reassured.

“Home,” Casey said. He looked down at the footprints, and then into the trees where the man had disappeared. “He smelled like home.”

Adam nodded, and when Casey looked up to see his expression it was thoughtful, but not at all surprised. It hit him suddenly that this was something Adam knew, one of the things about him that other people knew and Casey didn’t.

“Why did you ask that,” Casey said, more a demand than a question. “Adam, what do you know, what—”

Adam winced. “I can’t—”

Casey shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me everything, but tell me something. Tell me...”

Casey didn’t even know enough to know what to ask. The blank spaces inside him yawned wide, all the more noticeable when he could see one or two things around the edges. His hair had been braided. He had had a mother, and an alpha had carried Casey in his arms and made him feel safe.

“You saw the man before,” Adam said. “But you didn’t tell me what he looked like.”

Casey opened his mouth to describe him, but Adam shook his head slightly, reaching out. He ran his fingers through Casey’s newly-trimmed hair and said, “He had dark curly hair.”

Adam brushed a thumb over the top of Casey’s ear. “And he had fair skin, pink in the cold.”

Adam rested that thumb just beside Casey’s eye. “And his eyes were bright blue.”

It had been too far to see the color of his eyes where he stood in the shadow of the trees, but Casey was absolutely certain Adam was right. His eyes had been blue. They would have to be, in that face, under that dark, curly hair being disarranged by the wind, above those fair pink cheeks.

Casey’s lips parted, but Adam was already shaking his head. Adam wouldn’t tell him more, but Casey knew who would. He grabbed Adam’s hand. “Come on. We have a phone call to make.”

He towed Adam away from the trees, to the guest house path. He was aware of walking away from the lighted warmth of the Midwives’ House, but they would know where he had gone and why, even if they were polite enough to pretend they didn’t. Was someone already reporting every word he’d said to someone back home?

It didn’t matter. Casey was going to get answers. Casey was going to know what everyone else knew about him, and then...

He didn’t know what would be different after he knew. What came next was as much a blank in his mind as the things he couldn’t remember. But if he filled in one the other would follow.

Casey towed Adam inside, all the way to his bedroom, but had to let go of Adam’s hand to dig his laptop out of his bag. The cold feeling of his palm and the faint ache in his fingers as he unbent them made him aware of how tightly he’d been holding on. He glanced at Adam’s hand; he was flexing his fingers tentatively, but he wasn’t in pain.

Casey couldn’t quite look at Adam’s face. He turned on his computer, staring impatiently at the screen while he waited for Skype to launch. He was perched on the edge of the bed, and he was aware of Adam standing just out of reach, halfway between Casey and the door.

“Don’t leave,” Casey snapped, because he couldn’t bear asking Adam to stay. If it was a question, Adam might say no, or ask why.

After a moment, Adam sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed at Casey’s side, a careful space left between them. Casey scooted over to lean against Adam’s side as the light blue screen finally popped up. He clicked as forcefully as he dared on Alpha’s name in his contacts—if he broke his computer now it would delay this conversation, and Casey was done with delays.

The call only rang a few times before it was picked up, and Alpha’s face appeared, looking grim against the backdrop of his office. Casey didn’t know whether he’d been warned or just had enough sense to know that there was only one reason Casey would want to see his face while they talked and wouldn’t bother to check if it was a good time before calling.

“Tell me,” Casey said sharply.

Alpha nodded slowly, and his gaze flicked sideways, noting Adam’s presence at his side. “Have you remembered anything? Or has Adam told you?”

Casey shook his head. “There’s this alpha watching me, and Adam obviously knows something about him, but—tell me.”

Alpha rubbed a hand over his mouth and then said, “Hang on a second, Case.”

Casey gritted his teeth and watched as Alpha leaned away from the screen, rummaging for something. When he settled again, he held up a notebook—one Casey recognized. It was one of Pappa Otso’s. It would be full of notes and details about anything Pappa had thought future midwives—or the Alpha?—might need to know about some topic, or cases during some period of time.

One case. Pappa Otso would have written down everything to do with the orphan he’d taken charge of, Casey realized. There would be a thousand sharply-observed details in those pages.

“This is yours,” Alpha said. “This is the notebook Pappa kept just for you, the first year or two. You remembered some things, I think, when you first came to us—over that first year you forgot things, until it was like you’d never existed before I found you in the woods. Pappa didn’t tell me everything, but he made sure nothing was lost. This is yours, to read, whenever you’re ready. But in the meantime I’ll try to tell you what you need to know.”

There was something familiar about the notebook, although Casey could swear he’d never seen that particular one before. He must have caught glimpses of it sometimes when he was young, if Pappa Otso kept it close to write down observations about him. Hadn’t he? But he couldn’t remember that, either.

“I’ve read it before,” Casey said, staring at the worn notebook. “Haven’t I.”

Alpha nodded. “Some of it. When you were thirteen, before your first heat. Every kid’s a mess at that age, but starting to notice alphas just made everything more complicated for you, and you got determined to find out why. And you did, for what good it did.”

“I forgot,” Casey said, looking up from the cover of the book to Alpha’s serious face. “I forgot again.”

He didn’t remember much of his first heat—most omegas didn’t—but a lot of what he did remember about the days leading up to it was sobbing stormily in Pappa Otso’s arms, clinging to Pappa and shaking with... grief? Rage? Both?

“It’s why I didn’t tell you that night, before you left,” Alpha said. “I know you’re a long way from thirteen, but last time you found out when you were already upset, it didn’t go well. Are you ready to hear this now?”

Casey looked down. He was a hell of a long way from calm. The sight of those footprints on the snowy ground had clearly burned past whatever lingering effect his last calming dose of wolfsbane might have otherwise had. But he wasn’t a child. He had Adam. And like Adam had said, he wasn’t afraid, not really. Not of what he was about to hear.

He took a few steadying breaths for good measure, slowing his heartbeat, and then he looked up and nodded.

“Have you remembered anything?” Alpha asked again. “Any dreams? Scents?”

Casey grimaced, nodded slightly. “I... when I was little, I wore my hair in braids. It was long, it would get tangled if it was left down, and my—” he swallowed. “My mama would be annoyed if she had to comb it all out and braid it again.”

Alpha nodded. “Pappa Otso thought the name your folks called you was probably Katie. You chose Casey after he sat you down and asked you whether you were a boy or a girl—you went for boy like a shot, and he’d suspected that even before he asked. He thought it should have been obvious, as old as you were, if anyone had been willing to see it before then.”

Casey frowned. “So I—the pack I was born to, they...”

Alpha nodded. “That was Pappa’s guess, and it fits with some other things. Real old-fashioned pack, all the omegas are female because they’re not allowed to be anything else.”

“That’s...” Casey shook his head. “We were past that a hundred and fifty years ago!”

“The Brysons and Niemis were,” Alpha corrected. “Because many-greats-grandma Alex came out to the frontier where he could be Alex because there was no one out here to tell him different—many-greats-grandpa Nat certainly wasn’t about to try. But other packs caught up at different times, and... we like to think we’re better about these things than humans, but there’s no reason any given alpha, or any given pack, couldn’t be as bad or worse. This was before the Revelation, remember. Plenty of packs still insisted on making sure an omega had a female birth certificate so they could account for kids being born to them. Although I doubt you had a birth certificate at all.”

Alpha’s gaze slipped over to Adam again before returning to Casey. This was something Adam knew about.

“What’s that mean,” Casey said, and when Alpha didn’t answer immediately, he finally turned his head and looked at Adam.

Adam was looking back with his forehead wrinkled anxiously. “You... Casey, you know your immediate family, they...”

“Are dead,” Casey said flatly. “Probably badly, probably in front of me. There’s a reason I don’t remember, right?”

Adam nodded slowly. “Both parents, three older brothers. They’re buried on Niemi land—Alpha took me to the place before we left, and he mentioned that they had preserved DNA samples. I suggested a lab that could test them, and helped to interpret the results. Assuming that we’re right about them being your parents, your father and mother were some kind of cousins to each other, and had no genetic relationship at all to other packs in the region.”

“So, what, I’m—” Casey cut himself off, forcing himself to think through what Adam was telling him: the pack Casey came from had been inbred, maybe for a long time. That meant not exchanging with other packs, no midwives arranging things with other midwives to keep the family tree from getting too entangled with itself. That meant isolated, and went along with what Alpha said about the pack being so old-fashioned it was practically stone-aged.

“That’s why you know what he looks like,” Casey realized, meeting Adam’s searching eyes again and seeing a faint expression of relief as Adam realized he didn’t have to explain that part. “The alpha following me—he’s from the pack, and he’s from the same fucking shallow gene pool I am, so we look alike.”

“You said yourself,” Adam said, one corner of his mouth tucking up in an almost-smile. “He smelled like home.”

Casey closed his eyes, letting the memory wash over him again. “My—my dad, maybe? An alpha anyway, he carried me. I was scared, but I thought... I thought I was safe. Because he was there, holding me. Every time I catch this guy’s scent, I remember that.”

Casey opened his eyes to find Alpha watching him with pained concern. “What was I scared of?”

Alpha sighed. “We think your family left the pack, or was driven out. A pack like that wouldn’t have much room for disagreements. But we think that’s why no one looked for you, and why no one claimed you even after we let every wolf for a thousand miles around know where you were. We don’t think it was long after your folks struck out on their own that hunters caught up with them. With you.”

Casey closed his eyes. Before the Revelation, there had been humans who considered it their duty to rid the earth of monsters such as werewolves. Even for years after the world at large found out that werewolves were real, it hadn’t been definitely illegal to kill a werewolf simply for being a werewolf.

But the Niemi pack was large, and closely allied with the other local packs. They had always protected werewolves in the area from the dangers humans could pose, and still did, even now that werewolves were supposedly equal citizens under the law. It was one of the reasons they had rallied so determinedly around Beau and Rory when they got themselves into trouble, despite them being strangers to the Niemis. Trouble for one was trouble for all, and it wouldn’t do to let humans get the idea that werewolves were their prey.

His first family had had no such protection, out on their own, leaving the only pack they knew and likely with no idea how to join up with another. If they’d been as isolated as that, they might even have believed that werewolves were much rarer than they were. They might not have known there was anyone to help them at all.

Casey swallowed, as he considered the other part of what that meant. “The hunters... they left me alive.”

Alpha sighed. “Yeah, son. They kept you, we think for some time, probably wolf-shaped nearly all the time. I found the place, backtracking your trail with some others from the pack. We made sure those hunters would never hurt you or anyone else ever again.”

Casey blinked at the bald statement, and Alpha went on, with deliberate precision, “We killed them. Every one. Tracked down the ones who weren’t in camp right then and killed them too. And we figured out what we could about what they’d been doing, which was—” Alpha shook his head. “They were going after alphas—mostly ones living on their own without packs, bitten or outcast or what have you—like goddamn sport hunters going after high-point bucks. And we think they used you as bait.”

Casey felt sick suddenly, close to gagging, his tongue too big in his mouth and too unwieldy. He shoved his fingers into his mouth to feel it, coughing a little to clear his throat. He found himself making those wordless keening noises that followed him out of so many dreams, only now he thought—he thought he knew where those noises came from.

Adam’s arm was around him, warm and steady, and Casey pressed his face to Adam’s chest as he caught his breath, flexing his tongue to remind himself that he could.

“I couldn’t talk,” he mumbled, confident that both alphas would be able to decipher the words. “I couldn’t—sometimes I was human-shaped, but they—they did something. I couldn’t talk. I wanted to scream, I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t.”

Adam made a little noise in his throat and hugged Casey tighter, and Casey picked his head up to look at Alpha.

He nodded. “We... thought it must have been something like that. You had a lot of trouble talking at first. Partly we figured you’d been in wolf shape too much, too long, but... you seemed scared to do it, too.”

Casey nodded; it sounded right, even if he couldn’t drag any actual memory to the surface to match it. He was almost afraid to look; his mind felt roiled already, and they hadn’t even been talking that long. The simple facts the Alpha had laid out for him still didn’t fill all the gaps inside him, and he was starting to realize that he could ask questions all day, and get answers to every one, and still not be made whole.

“The alpha,” Casey said, rubbing his forehead. “The one who’s following me, the one from the—from my birth pack. Why? Why is he just... just watching?”

“I expect you’ll have to ask him,” Alpha said, a little grimly. “And if you want me to send Callie and Gil over to do that very thing, son, you just say the word. As many of us as you like—we can catch him for you.”

Casey frowned, shaking his head a little. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t what he wanted, another alpha captured because of him, maybe getting hurt or hurting someone else. Because he couldn’t resist getting close enough to see if Casey was all right?

“Do you think he ran away from the pack too?” Casey asked. “Do you think he... do you think he’s alone?”

“Could be,” Alpha said. “But as quick as he’s found you, I’d guess he knows somebody who’s got an ear to the ground. There’s a fair number of people who knew where you and Adam could be expected to be every day of the last few weeks. The itinerary wasn’t a secret by any means.”

Casey looked up sharply at that, his jaw dropping as it clicked into place. Every pack within a thousand miles knew exactly where Casey was, every hour of the day. And someone, somewhere, had told the alpha who was following him.

“Are you using me as bait?”

Alpha raised his hands. “No, son. I didn’t know who might pop up on your tail and if he’s not hurting you, I don’t have any plan to go after him. But this is the first time you’ve gone out into the world, and I knew that the part of your past we’ve got buried up in the northeast corner couldn’t be all there ever was. So I’m just as glad to have the pack of packs keeping an eye on you the first time you go too far for me to come running if you call.”

Casey’s memory, as if eager to finally do its job after being so useless, barraged him with images, scents and sensations. A fall from an apple tree into the creek—a fight with Callie—a trio of bee stings—a hand burned on still-cooling pottery he’d been told not to touch. Each time, a startled cry tore from his throat, and each time, faster than he could have imagined, Alpha was there, strong hands gathering him up, a wrinkled brow and a worried scent showing Alpha’s concern.

Casey’s eyes prickled with tears as he recognized how much Alpha had always wanted him to be safe, to be cared for. Casey had never been able to feel that reassurance as much as he had in that fragment of memory from before, but Alpha had done everything he could. And even if he couldn’t feel safe, Casey had always known he was treasured and protected. Loved.

“I’m sorry,” Casey said into the silence, his voice wavering. “The things I said, the night you told me to go, I—I didn’t—”

“Shh, now, son, none of that,” Alpha said easily. “I’ve known you a long time, Case. I know how you are when you’re angry, and you’ve got more right to be angry than most. I can bear it for you. That’s what your Alpha’s for.”

That’s what a father is for. Casey couldn’t quite say it, but he thought Alpha knew.

“I don’t know what else to tell you,” Alpha said, when Casey had been silent for nearly a minute, struggling to keep his breathing even and not break down in tears. “And I think this is probably enough for you to hear tonight, unless there’s something else in particular you want to ask.”

Casey shook his head. He should have questions, he knew. He should have a thousand; someday he was going to need to study every page of Pappa Otso’s notes. But right now, it was all a jumble of uncomfortable facts wrapped up in the old familiar formless grief and fear, undeniably accurate and not quite real all at once. “I... thank you. For telling me, and for—”

“You’re pack,” Alpha said sternly. “You’re family, Casey. You deserve every bit of care I or anyone else has ever taken for you. I love you. We all love you.”

Adam’s grip on him tightened a little and then hastily relaxed, and Casey wasn’t even going to think about that right now.

“I love you too,” Casey said, running a hand across his eyes as they started to leak. Like one of his forgotten nightmares, come out into the light. Like all of them, he supposed. “I’ll... I’ll call. Or something. I love you, Alpha.”

“I know, pup. You take care, and you remember you can come home or call for us anytime. It’ll take a little longer, but I’ll still come running for you, day or night. I’m still your Alpha no matter where you are.”

Casey nodded again and couldn’t speak at all, the tears starting to flow faster. He tapped the button to end the call and pushed the laptop shut.

Adam lifted it off his knees and set it down somewhere. Casey didn’t see where, busy hiding his face and clinging to Adam’s shirt. He thought, dimly, that Adam was probably freaking out again. Casey should stop, or at least send Adam away so he didn’t have to see this. Adam hadn’t signed up for any of this. He wouldn’t know what to do. Casey didn’t really know what to do.

He remembered again, clinging to Pappa Otso and crying, and he let out a sudden loud sob as a much more coherent grief hit him squarely in the chest. Pappa Otso was gone, and could never tell Casey all he remembered about Casey’s early days with the pack. It had taken too long for Casey to be ready, thinking he would never need or want to know, and now the chance was gone. Casey could never cry in his lap again, would never again breathe in his familiar old smell, lavender and wolfsbane and strong soap.

Every bit as much as Alpha had taken a father’s place for him, Pappa Otso had been his mother—his dad, just like Adam’s dad—and Casey had never told him so. And now he was gone.

Adam moved, and Casey jerked away, trying to sit up and silence himself, raising a hand to shield his face so Adam wouldn’t see.

“Do you,” Adam started, and then huffed annoyance—at himself, apparently. “No, stupid question, come here. I don’t know how to be any use to you, but I won’t melt if you cry on me.”

Adam drew Casey closer, and Casey let himself be pulled right into Adam’s lap. Adam’s arms went around him, and Adam’s chest was broad enough to hide himself against. Adam’s scent surrounded him, warm and alpha and home and if not safe then at least I want to protect you. Casey clung to him as sobs shook him.

At some point he tried to explain, “I’m not—it’s not about—” but he couldn’t get the words out and he didn’t know if he could even say what it was about.

“I don’t care if it’s because you don’t like your haircut,” Adam muttered gruffly. “Nothing wrong with having emotions. I’ve got you.”

Casey was pretty sure that nothing wrong with having emotions was fucking hilarious, coming from Adam, but he couldn’t hold on to the thought. Another tide of painful, unspeakable love swept through him and he had to turn his face down and cry again.

Casey woke in the night feeling sweaty and grimy—still dressed—with sticky, sore eyes. He’d been dreaming of something, and it felt right to wake up like this, curled up to a bigger body.

“Shared a bed,” Casey said, and Adam jerked beside him.

“Casey? What—”

“Shared a bed, I think,” Casey repeated, although he already wasn’t sure what that meant. Of course he and Adam had shared the bed, they were both still in it together. He wrestled his way out of the clammy t-shirt he was still wearing, then his pants. Adam, beside him, undressed a little more gracefully and pulled the covers up over them when they’d both thrown their excess clothes to the floor.

“Hungry?” Adam mumbled. “Somebody brought food up, I can—”

Casey shrugged and shook his head, sighing in relief at the feeling of Adam’s warm skin against his. That was better. “Just tired. Mm, warm.”

Adam’s arms closed around him again, and Casey slept, safe and sound.