The bar was full, nearly to capacity, and Josh looked around at all the rowdy patrons, not nervous, but alert. When people got loud and pushy, and the place was crowded, sometimes a fight could break out. Well, actually, usually a fight broke out.

Josh poured whiskey and cracked beers, tucking away cash in the register and tips in his apron, and the hours began to pass. Eventually, the dinner crowd went home to their families, and he was left with the late nighters—almost all of them.

Hank, especially, Josh had his eye on. The man was known for starting fights in town, and in the bar, and outside of town, but that wasn’t so unusual, after all. It was a rough town. Josh just knew that Hank had been hitting them hard tonight—sitting at the bar, pounding back double after double. He might cut him off, but the man was tipping good, still, and only yelling a little.

In Texas, men drank. At least in Josh’s part of Texas. In fact, women drank too. Most people did some drinking, but running a bar meant Josh saw all of the drinkers, and most of his friends, in some state of inebriety or another. He knew what kind of drinker everyone was, he’d heard most of their secrets spilled out over the sticky bar and a glass of something potent from Josh’s shelf.

Luckily, that night, Josh had his father with him, too. Miller, Sr. was more than happy to break up a fight if need be. This was his bar, after all, his grandfather’s before him, and Josh could remember a few times when he’d had to duck behind the bar to avoid a stray bullet from an angry patron, only to have his father pull out that sawed off shotgun behind the bar and take control.

Senior was a good friend with the Sheriff, who allowed a certain amount of mischief to happen in the bar, so long as it didn’t carry off into the streets. It was the sort of place people went to really blow off steam. A game was always on the old TV in the corner, the jukebox still played almost all of its collection, and pool was an all-night event. What else were people in such a small town in dusty Texas supposed to do with their evenings?

It was mid-summer, and luckily, they’d gotten air conditioning sometime in the mid-eighties. Ever since then, summers were spent at the bar, and business for the Miller family was booming.

Running a bar with his father and his family, he often got asked if his last name had anything to do with the famous beer. It didn’t. Long before his family had made their way out to Texas, his ancestor had really been a miller, pounding grain. Eventually that miller had become a brewer, and passed that along to his sons. During the Prohibition, this same bar had become a speakeasy for his great grandfather’s homebrew beer and moonshine.

“When’s that boy of yours getting married, Miller?” Hank demanded, and Senior just smirked over at Josh.

“You wanna answer that one, son?”

Josh rolled his eyes. “Never,” he replied firmly.

The truth was, he’d only ever loved one person, one boy, and that boy was long gone. Had been for years. Every now and then, Tristan came back to break his heart, and then left again, and Josh had never been able to have feelings for anyone else. So he wasn’t getting married. He’d sleep around the whole damn town before he got married. Love was a lie, anyway. His mother and father had been divorced for twenty years, and they were an alpha and omega, destined to be together, apparently.

It was all a sham.

“WHAT?!” Hank demanded loudly, as if he were somehow entitled to a more acceptable answer. “What’dya mean, NEVER?! There’s a whole lotta pretty ladies in this town, Josh, you’ll find the one.”

Josh shot Hank a dirty look, and then turned to the patrons on the other end of the bar, checking if they needed a top up. Even over the roar of the noisy bar, he could hear his father lean in to speak to Hank.

“I keep telling him I need a grandson. Someone to take over the bar, carry on the Miller name. He won’t have it. Short of disowning him, I don’t know what I can do.”

Josh glanced over in time to see Hank giving Senior a conspiratorial look.

“We’ll set him up,” Hank said. “I got girls and boys both, whatever his preference. We’ll find one he likes and put ‘em together whether they like it or not.”

Josh really had to get a hold of his temper. He knew he shouldn’t have done it, but when he heard those words, his blood boiled. Tristan’s face was in his head, and the idea of being ‘put together’ with someone ‘whether he liked it or not’ was too much. He grabbed that faithful shotgun under the counter and held it up, pointing right at Hank’s head across the bar. Several patrons had the good sense to duck, but the less sober ones jeered.

“Get out of my bar, Hank. Now.”

Hank held his hands up, a beautifully surprised expression on his face.

“Whoa, whoa,” Senior said, and he went over to Josh, taking the gun from his hands. “That’s enough, kid.”

Josh shot his father a dirty look; he was too old to be called kid, but he had enough sense still to let the man take the gun before he did something stupid. Instead, he stared Hank down, trembling.

“You know I don’t need a gun to knock a few of your teeth out, Hank. Get out.”

His father held Josh back, but to his credit, he stood by him.

“Hank, tab’s on us tonight. I think you better leave.”

Hank said some fairly despicable things right then about their genitalia, but he turned and left, and the bar, which had gone a little quiet, roared to life again with laughter and more beer.

Josh turned, when his father let go of him, and left the bar, but out the back. He thrust his back against the brick wall and sighed in frustration, turning his gaze up to the stars and the cold black night. A pickup truck rumbled in the parking lot, and Josh shut his heavy lids and swallowed.

He really hoped that was Hank leaving, or he might honestly have to start a fight. It had been too long since Josh had gotten to hit anyone, and he was starting to lose it more and more. Maybe it wasn’t the hitting, honestly. He hadn’t gotten laid, either. Been touched. Smiled.

He took a deep breath, shaking, calming his temper. Whenever he got angry, he thought about Tristan. Not just that he was angry at Tristan, which he was, but how angry Tristan used to get. That actually made him smile, made his heart ache for the man. If anyone ever accused Josh of having a temper, they would take it back the moment they saw Tristan St. John angry. ‘Saint’ was Josh’s nickname for his childhood best friend, and it had always been ironic. Tristan was a calm, nice guy, until he blew up, and then, well. Josh tried to think about what his best friend would have done to Hank. He wouldn’t have pulled an unloaded gun to threaten him with, that was for certain. He would have probably snapped his neck in the bar if he’d heard Hank’s comment about his omega.

They knew. They both knew they belonged to each other, and they had since Tristan’s eighteenth birthday. Josh had been twenty-two then, and too old for him, but they’d known.

That had been ten, no… God, twelve years. Twelve years ago. A lifetime of mistakes had happened in those twelve years, and they’d both been broken down by life. Tristan was still at war and Josh was still alone.

That was when he heard his voice.

“Josh?” the deep baritone asked, and Josh’s eyes flew open.

“Tristan?”

* * *

“Tristan? Where are you?” Josh called out to his friend.

He was nine years old. The little boy was hiding somewhere in his house, but Josh knew if he called out enough, Tristan would giggle and give himself away. He was too young to resist.

“Triiiistan,” Josh called again, making his way cautiously into the bathroom. He checked behind the door, and then walked as silently as he could toward the shower. Very suddenly, he pulled back the shower curtain.

Tristan, to his surprise, wasn’t there, but he thought he might have heard something from the hallway. Josh turned and looked in the linen closet, but he wasn’t there, either.

“I’m gonna find you, Tristan!” He called loudly, and then shut his eyes and listened carefully.

Nothing. Maybe the younger boy was finally figuring out how the game worked.

Josh had started the game in Tristan’s room, and he’d already searched under the bed, in the closet, everywhere he could think of in there. Besides, he was sure that Tristan had left, he’d heard his little feet go running out of the room and down the hall.

He quickly searched the grown-up bedroom, but he knew Tristan wasn’t allowed in there, and he wouldn’t have hid there either. That left downstairs, and Josh went running, excited.

There was a four-year age difference between them, and when they’d been younger, it had been hard to play with Tristan. Only recently had Tristan started to understand all of Josh’s games, and now, it seemed like he was really getting good at playing them, too.

Josh looked all around the couches in the living room, and in all the closets in the hallway. He checked the downstairs bathroom and the kitchen cupboards, every single one. He even checked the fridge, but it was full of food, not Tristan.

Where could the other boy be?

Really starting to have fun, Josh went to the basement door.

He didn’t like the basement. It was dark and creepy and the steep stairs led down to a cold cement floor that occasionally was home to critters like spiders or mice. There was nothing down there, really, just storage, but if Tristan had hid down there, he’d have go find him.

They already had ground rules. No leaving the house, and no moving spots. But the basement wasn’t off limits. Tristan had probably hid there just to scare Josh.

The boy opened the basement door, taking a deep breath.

“Tristan? Are you down there?” he called, gazing down the creaky wooden stairs into the darkness below. He thought he heard Tristan’s voice. “Oh no,” he sighed. “Tristan! Don’t make me come down there!”

Another murmur from the basement. Josh knew the rules. Tristan wasn’t going to leave his spot until Josh found him.

Josh turned on the dim basement light and walked carefully down the steep, rickety stairs. His feet hit the cold cement floor and he glanced around the dark basement, peering in the shadows. There were several boxes piled in one corner. A few shelves with tools and other boxes on them. Their chest freezer and spare dryer were on one wall, next to it, an old table, and then on the other side of the room, his old bike, some broken furniture, garden tools, and several more boxes filled the corner.

As he ducked down to check underneath the old table, he heard a loud, muffled scream. Tristan’s voice.

Gasping, Josh knocked his head on the table, and groaned in pain as it throbbed through the back of his skull. He clambered out from under it more carefully, rubbing his head.

“Ow,” he groaned, glancing around. “Tristan? Where are you?” he demanded, a little worried now. He was used to giggling from the little boy, not screaming.

Another muffled shriek came from behind him, and Josh turned to look at the chest freezer and the spare dryer.

“...Tristan? Tristan!”

Suddenly full of panic, Josh threw open the dryer, and then, finding it empty, he gripped the heavy lid of the deep freezer and lifted it open with all of his strength.

Shivering, pale and scared, was little Tristan, curled up in the half-empty freezer.

“Tristan!” Josh cried, tears in his eyes as he pulled the younger boy out, holding him in his arms. He was freezing, shivering even harder as the comparatively warmer air of the basement hit his skin.

Tristan was a big five-year-old, but Josh still managed to carry him in his arms up the stairs, stumbling as he hugged the freezing little boy against his own small chest. He placed him on the couch and wrapped him in every blanket he could find, and then ran upstairs to get more blankets from his bed and pile them on top of the shivering five year old boy.

They weren’t home alone. Tristan’s older sister Joanne was technically watching them, but she was locked in her room, music blaring through her headphones. She’d told Josh to watch Tristan and not to get into any trouble. He was supposed to take care of him.

Josh struggled with himself as he watched Tristan, buried in a pile of blankets, shivering hard and looking at him with big blue eyes. His lips were almost the same colour. Should he go tell Joanne? They’d get in so much trouble, both of them.

“Why did you do that?!” Josh demanded angrily of the younger boy. “You can’t hide in a freezer, dummy!”

Tristan’s teeth chattered and he just stared at him, before finally saying, “Please don’t tell Jo.”

Josh shook his head. “You should have gotten out when you got cold!”

Tristan burst into tears, shaking under the huge mountain of comforters and knit throws around him.

“The l-l-l-lid was s-s-STUCK!” he sobbed, half frozen and completely hysterical.

The lid hadn’t been stuck, but it had been heavy. Tristan probably just hadn’t been strong enough to lift it once he’d climbed inside. Josh should have told him that the basement was off-limits before playing, he realized. Suddenly terrified of getting in trouble for making Tristan cry so much, Josh went to him and hugged him.

“Shh, shh, stop crying. It’s okay. I got you out. I found you. I guess it was a good hiding spot, huh?”

“No!” Tristan cried.

Wincing, Josh shushed him again, hoping Jo didn’t hear the little boy from upstairs.

“Okay, okay. We’re never gonna hide in the basement again, right?”

Tristan shook his head, starting to both calm down and warm up. Josh smiled.

“I have an idea. I’m gonna make soup.” He was pretty good at taking care of himself. He’d been able to heat up his own soup on the stove since he was eight. “Wanna watch TV? We can watch whatever we want, Jo won’t even check.”

Tristan nodded, his lower lip still trembling, but he had quieted down. Josh sighed in relief. Hide and seek, he decided, was a stupid game. He was never, ever letting Tristan out of his sight again.