There was a time when Baj couldn’t pry Fray off them for love nor money. Several, thinking about it—most of their adolescence, the first few days after their escape, and those long-distant, idyllic summer nights at the mansion. Fray communicates in casual touches and hair ruffling. It took Baj a long time to get used to, and longer to realize they missed it. No one touched them in the Library, not without fireproofing between the two of them. Not until Fray walked in.
Those touches had faded since the three’s arrival at the Catcheway-Stonewall household. Baj did not want to be touched, and Fray in turn did not touch them, even when they kind of wished he’d do it anyway.
The last time Fray touched Baj, it had been in the blazing heat of a burning building. It had been after Roseingrave’s sleeper programming had made him into a puppet. It had been to gouge his fingers into Baj’s flesh and rip muscle from bone. It had been to kill them as viciously and horrifically as possible. The memories are hazy, but Baj would swear that even with the insane heat they had seen tears pouring down his impassive face.
Fray doesn’t touch them at all now. Fray barely gets near them, or near anyone, for that matter. A week ago Baj saw him get close enough to Harper for Harper to touch his shoulder. He’d shied away like he’d been struck. Or burned.
Baj watches people. It’s the only way they know how to figure them out, watching, mimickry. It made them feel less than human even before the phoenix nested in their chest, and it makes them feel fully alien now. So many little things people do, so few of them Baj understands. It’s maddening.
But they watch Fray anyway.
When they were kids, he was free and loose and confident in all his motions. When they were at the Library, that confidence remained, but measured and restrained. Baj has watched that immaculate joy in motion drain away over these long months, worsening each time Fray misjudged how much damage he was capable of. He has ripped handles off of car doors and broken windows by closing them too hard. It is a miserable thing, watching someone who took such pride in their body begin to lose their trust in it.
These days, Fray walks around with his hands in his pockets. He moves well out of arm’s length when someone must pass him in the hall, or else plasters himself to the wall and tries to shrink himself to nothing. He won’t even make eye contact most of the time, as if simply looking at someone might hurt them.
Sometimes Baj wishes they could have gotten just five minutes alone with Roseingrave. April says this is a bad mindset. Harper says that it’s better that they didn’t get the chance. Tin, who is still full off Roseingrave’s mind, once said flame was too good for him, and would not discuss the matter further.
Baj watches Fray. They watch him unsubtly move away from them when they enter the room, they watch his tongue lock up into silence around them, they watch the way his face burns red with some emotion they can’t name when they’re too close for too long. They watch him get further and further away from them. Again.
This time, Baj doesn’t even have the luxury of being angry with him for it. All they ever feel is the dull pain of a growing wound.
It turns out neither Fray nor Baj is subtle, though.
“I’m shit at this stuff,” says April, smoke creeping up from her mouth as she does, “but you need to talk to him.”
It’s a brisk twenty degrees out, which is downright balmy for Alice and Baj’s nameless passenger. April likes to lean on the porch railing and smoke, melting an April-sized patch in the snow. Baj has taken to following her, first for free cigarettes and later because they simply like her. Today the dog, Hudson, has followed, and Baj sits on the porch swing scratching his big ears. They consider the statement, and then say, “Who?” You know. Like a liar.
In answer, April tosses one of her carefully hewn are you stupid or are you fucking with me? looks Baj’s way. “The guy who keeps acting like he’s a bomb that’s about to go off,” she intones without inflection. “That one. You know.”
“Oh.”
If April is saying something about interpersonal relationships, Baj reflects, something has gone very, very wrong in their life.
Nevertheless. April shrugs. “Harper thinks he’s scared of hurting you again.”
“Dunno why,” Baj says, dry as cereal.
April says nothing to this. It’s an effective scolding, whether she knows it or not. Instead she drags on the cigarette and says, “Harper has a burn the size of your head on her back. It’s from me. It was an accident and it still fucked me up so bad that I wanted to leave her just so I couldn’t hurt her again.”
Another drag. Snow falls.
“Harp told me,” she goes on, “she’d forgive me any burn. But she’d never forgive me for leaving over one.”
Baj prickles. A wave of nausea washes over them. They lurch back to that burning building, to the unrelenting agony of Fray crushing their very bone, of Fray tearing them to ribbons. “Fray,” they say, more viciously than they think they’d meant, “didn’t burn me.”
“I know,” says April. Her eyes remain fixed on the distant trees. “It’s not the same. I know it’s not the same. But last night Fray told me he’s thinking about going back to the Library so he can’t hurt anyone else.”
The nausea worsens. “Th—that’s stupid. They’ll just use him to hurt more people.”
April hums in answer. “Told him that.”
“And … ?”
“He left,” April says. She blows out a long sigh, and adds: “This morning Harper told me her gun is missing.”
Where’s Fray?
Tin doesn’t know. Neither does Harper; her supernatural sight takes a while to work. It’s April that finds him, though, as if she’d known exactly where he would go: out in the old barn five minutes from the house, stowed up in the hayloft that has no hay in it. Baj can see him from the doorway; can see the way he flinches when they call his name. They’re about to bolt for the ladder when April’s hand closes on their shoulder like a vise. “What?” they hiss.
April isn’t looking at them. She’s looking up at the hayloft, at the way Fray peers over the edge before curling into a ball with his back to the barn wall. April says, quiet and flat as ever, “Be careful.”
Careful for which of them, Baj wonders as they scale the ladder. It groans under their weight, and the old boards of the hayloft grumble similarly as they scramble onto it. Fray’s trying to do the thing where he hides under his hair, only his hair has only grown back to his ears after being burned down to nearly nothing.
There doesn’t seem to be much point to standing, so Baj crawls until they can sit across from him. They peer back over their shoulder; the doorway to the barn is empty, though they’re sure April lingers nearby. Close enough to run in if she hears a shot, anyway.
That’s all Baj can really think about. It’s not what they mean to say when they open their mouth, but it comes out anyway. “Where’s the gun?”
Fray shifts minutely. He pulls his arm from his lap enough to reveal something small and silver clutched in his hand.
“Give it to me.”
The gun disappears back into his curled-up body.
The air is heating up. Baj bites their lip. Be careful. Be careful. They can’t take it by force, they realize; they can’t do anything to Fray by force. No one can, except the people who know the words that turn him into an empty thing.
Baj wets their lips. Their palms have gotten damp. Be careful.
“Would it even work?” they say softly. There’s no reply. “You’ve got my … you’re like me. I don’t think I can die anymore.”
There’s a soft sound, like autumn leaves tumbling in wind. It takes Baj a moment to realize it came from Fray. “Worth a shot.”
“Not funny.”
Fray cringes, and Baj panics. “What do you even think you’re doing?” they demand, daring to scoot closer. Maybe they can get near enough to grab him if he tries anything. “You’re not—you’re you. This is shit I’d expect from me.”
This, at last, gets him to lift his head. He looks all wrong without his long braid. His eyes are rimmed with red, and with a cold shock Baj realizes he’s been crying. They try to remember if they’ve ever seen him cry before, really cry, ugly cry. They feel like they must have, once, but no memory is called to mind. They stare. Fray stares back, listless and empty. He says, “What do you think I am?”
“What?”
Silence, though his lips move. Baj waits, terse, anxious. He gets there eventually. “Y, you said. ‘You’re you.’ Baj. I’m not. I don’t know what y-you think I am. But I’m not … I’m not that anymore.”
“You’re—”
“I’m a weapon,” Fray says thickly, and with horror Baj hears his voice crack and see the tears begin to well again. “I’m a gun,” he says, and looks down at the pistol in his lap. “I’m just a fucking gun now. Just something they can use to hurt people, and there’s n, nothing I can do to stop them from using me if they get ahold of me.” His shoulders convulse in something that cannot decide if it is a laugh or a sob. “Except this.”
“No,” says Baj. “Fray. Fray.” But nothing else comes to mind. Their head spins. They want to yell at him, tell him how stupid he’s being, except—can they? He isn’t wrong, is the horrific thing. The thing that happened at Roseingrave’s hideout could happen again. And Baj has never understood how to lie. They can only tell the truth.
“I don’t want you to.”
A hiccup from Fray.
“I don’t want you to,” repeats Baj, feeling desperation crawl up their throat like a parasitic worm starved for food. “I can’t do this without you. I don’t know what to do without you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
Silence.
“I’ll burn it down if it means you don’t,” they say quietly. “I’ll go back and I’ll burn it all down. Every file and folder and experiment—”
“Stop.”
“I’ll incinerate them,” Baj says. “All of them. The Library. The mansion. Everyone who might know the words, I’ll burn it out.”
But now Fray is truly shaking. He swipes at his face and claws at his too-short hair and gives the frustrated growl that means he wants to speak but can’t, and Baj falls silent until he puts his face in his hands and screams into his palms. It’s odd, Baj thinks, how they can still understand him, even like this. He is saying no and shut up and I don’t want that from you, and Baj cannot even pretend they do not understand.
But he’s shaking, and as Baj carefully moves in closer they realize they’re shaking, too, and fine, if that’s how it has to be. Fine, if this is what keeps Fray close to them. They grab him by the shoulder, be careful, they slide their hand up to cradle his jaw, they curl themselves into him like they haven’t since they were kids. They feel the cold bite of the pistol where they lean over him, and as much as they want to grab it and throw it off the hayloft they can’t bring themselves to take another choice away from him.
Instead they press their lips to his temple and hold him tighter as his trembling worsens, as he dissolves into hiccups and stuttering breath. They kiss his forehead, they say, “I need you,” they say, “I’m here,” they say, “I’m not afraid of you.”
Fray’s laugh is choked with gasps. “Should be.”
“No. No.”
“I killed you.”
“And I’m still here,” Baj says, and kisses the tears from his eyes, his cheeks, where they collect along his nose. “You think I’m that easy to scare off? Fuck you, man.” Their voice is a soft thing, a hearth fire. “You need me. I’m not going anywhere.”
Fray’s shoulders heave. His fingers lock into Baj’s clothes and pull them in until Baj is all but in his lap, until he feels the gun dig against him. With a broken snarl he fumbles for it, and Baj’s mind goes blank, but they need not have feared. He rips the pistol out from between them and hurls it away. He drags them close against him, holding on like a man about to drown, but it’s Baj who tilts his head back and presses their lips to his. They feel his breath hitch and his grip tighten, and the tears that seem to fall eternal from his eyes brush their skin. He says their name into their mouth, wondering and a little afraid, and so they kiss harder and deeper, until he crushes them against him and returns their kiss with intention. He’s always bragged about what a good kisser he is. Baj’s heart stutters to find he’s right.
When it breaks, it breaks only so Fray can press his face to their neck and catch his breath. Baj couldn’t pry him off even if they wanted to. “I’m here,” says Baj, who can only speak the truth, as they tuck his hair behind his ear. “I’m here.”
“But why?”
Because I need you. Because you need me. Because there’s no one else. Because I’m not afraid of you. Because I refuse to believe you’re just a gun.
Baj says, “Because I love you.”