AN: Yeah! Cookies for those of you who made it to the second chappie. (Whee! Thank you so much AdriellaPiranabite, Esquirella, Perhonen, and whateveryouwant for the reviews! :huggles:) I also need to stop watching so much Gilmore Girls. It’s warping my fragile (demented) mind. And nicknames have totally overtaken this story. My apologies if it gets confusing.

--

“So,” Ted drew out, landing on the inflatable air mattress he’d been sleeping on in Maurice’s bedroom for the last month. “That was Cole, huh?” Somewhere in the first week, he’d gotten sick of having to sneak into a house he’d practically grown up and been living in his entire life. At least Cole was interesting enough to make up for it.

“Yeah,” Maurice waved daintily, before pulling out a tube of lipstick. “You see him every day at school like the rest of us. It’s not exactly a shock to see him slightly more up close, is it?”

Well, school was one thing. Ted could stare at Cole and try to figure out what was so fascinating about all the books that he read. And then, after realizing that the only thing that Cole did was read, he could realize that maybe he really wanted to become the one person who Cole didn’t read out of his life. But there was no way to approach someone like Cole at school and actually strike up a conversation that might actually mean something.

“It took me three weeks to get up the guts to talk to him, what do you think,” Ted snorted as Maurice carefully applied eyeliner. “And you get major bonus points for getting him to call me Theo.”

“I just told him your name was Theo. You, in fact, could have done that yourself.”

“I was aiming for mysterious.” Actually, he was hoping that he at least had presented an intriguing enough problem that Cole couldn’t simply shrug his shoulders and then go back to reading. Stealing the book had helped too, even if the book hadn’t exactly opened the world of Cole up to explanation.

“Well, Mysterious, he might also call you Fido because I told him that’s what Dad calls you.” Maurice quirked an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re crushing on him? He’s kinda weird.”

“And we’re perfectly normal,” Ted quirked an eyebrow. Because, while he was keen on Maurice’s feminine ways, he knew the rest of the world didn’t hold the same opinion. At times, he wondered if he’d think it was so normal if it weren’t for the fact that Maurice had been this way as long as Ted had known him. It seemed natural. The sky was blue. Ducks quacked. Maurice wanted to be a girl. It was normal. They were normal. Or, so he’d thought until he was about eight.

“Of course. We’re the epitome of normal,” Maurice returned absently, pulling out mascara. “Seriously, he’s a little messed up, okay? I mean, Liz met Dad through therapy because of him.”

“And you, and me for that matter,” Ted pointed out, rolling off the bed and pulling Maurice’s boy clothes off the floor and throwing them in the hamper. “Everyone’s messed up in some way.” Ted had long ago given up on the idea of being normal. And even if he hadn’t, the way Maurice had laughed himself silly when Ted had told him that he was going to run away from home to become a monk at age ten probably would have. Of course, wanting away in order to sequester himself away from the world in a religious institution probably wouldn’t have made him normal either.

“Yeah, but,” Maurice got out the blush, “Cole doesn’t talk to anyone. He barely talks to me, he grunts at Dad. He hardly even talks to his own mom, okay? He’s antisocial. I tried, all right. Right after the wedding. He picked up Dad’s gag gift War and Peace novel and started reading.”

“He’s scared,” Ted said with conviction.

“Of what? That I’ll maul him or something? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m like a midget. He maybe be short, but he still towers over me and could kick my butt.” Maurice gestured with a cosmetic brush.

“He’s not scared of you, you. He’s scared of people. Letting people in. Talking to them. Interacting.” Ted shrugged.

“So what you’re really saying is that he’s scared of being human.” Maurice started taking rollers out of his hair.

“What’s with you?” Ted finally demanded, rounding on Maurice. “You’re never this harsh. Or mean, I might add.” Crawling off his bed he walked over to Maurice’s bed and plopped down so that Maurice could see him reflected in the mirror. Sighing, heavily, Maurice shook out his curls and gave a hair toss.

“How long have we been friends, Ted?” Maurice curled an arm over his chair, turning halfway around, giving Ted his full attention.

“Since we were babies. Your dad has a picture of us in diapers in his wallet,” Ted returned, pointing out the obvious.

“And now everything changes,” Maurice scowled. “They move in, take over. You have to sleep down here because Cole needs his own room. You have to sneak around so he won’t feel uncomfortable. I can’t leave anything lying around in case he notices. I have to stay sequestered down here until he gets “used” to living here. Never mind that he’s living on another planet and couldn’t care less what happens here in the world of mere mortals. I get a new brother despite the fact that I already have you. And, just in case I don’t have enough of a reason to resent him, you’re completely gaga over him and can’t stop drooling so even when I’m not around him, I have to hear about him.” Maurice tossed the last bit of make-up back down onto the table he was sitting at, stood up and straightened out the dark green skirt he was wearing and smoothed down the sea green top he’d bought the last time Ted had gone shopping with him. “How do I look?”

Sitting up, Ted took in the whole picture. He’d known Maurice since they were babies. They were practically siblings. They’d pulled hair, flung mud, kept secrets, gotten into fights, pitted each other against Jim. And in all that time, it never failed to strike Ted how royally unfair the world had to be when someone like Maurice could be born like this when all he wanted was to be Reese. The girl. “You look cute.”

And it was actually the truth, because there was a period when Maurice had looked more like a complete accident of nature instead of cute and girly. But, with practice and Ted’s occasionally klepto moments with things like the Hooker Red lipstick or the Hot Mama Pink eye shadow, Maurice had managed to take it from circus clown to subtle. And all done up like this, Reese actually looked like a fairly normal and cute girl. A bit flat-chested, maybe, but Reese worked with what he could.

“If I look cute, then way do I have to skulk around in the basement?” Reese plopped back down on his chair dejectedly.

“Aw, Reese,” Ted sat up, leaned over, and pulled Reese’s chair over until Reese was in hugging distance. It was easy to pull Reese’s much tinier frame into a big bear hug. “You’ll always be my incredibly annoying little sister. And if the world doesn’t like it, then screw them. If Cole doesn’t like it, then tough beans. But you haven’t even given him a chance to see if he can accept it or not.”

“But,” Reese started.

“Cut him some slack. He’s blind. He has no idea what he’s stepped into. It’s like waking up in Wonderland for him.” Ted messed ruffled Reese’s hair and Reese scowled at him playfully before looking back at the mirror to rearrange it. And maybe that was why Ted could identify with Cole, because god only knew waking up in his house was like waking up in a scary upside down world of Wonderland. “Besides, if it bugs you so much to hide from him, why don’t you remedy the situation? Let him into the inner sanctuary.” He flopped down and arched an eyebrow at Reese.

“I dunno. What if he thinks I’m a freak?”

“He’s watched you eat Captain Crunch with pineapple juice and Dr. Pepper poured over it. I think we’re past that stage.” Ted joked. Since Reese’s worried look failed to vanish, Ted suspected he really hadn’t helped dispel the fear. “Look, you won’t know until you try.”

“He’ll think I’m a freak because I am a freak,” Reese whispered quietly.

“No, you’re not,” Ted reached over, putting a hand around Reese’s neck and pulling him closer until their foreheads knocked together. “Besides, if he even breathes wrong, I’ve got contacts. I can have Mom’s boyfriend knock him off. Or maybe Dad’s girlfriend can get him shipped to Indonesia through her white slavery ring.”

“You know, the scariest part of all that is that your parents might actually be into those sorts of things,” Reese managed a weak laugh before pushing Ted’s head away. “Fine, idiot. You go get him and bring him down. What happens, happens.”

--

Ted circled the house and looked in all the other rooms three times before trying the laundry room. In the space between the washer and the dryer there Cole was crouched, reading the book Ted had given back to him earlier. The only light source was the night light on the opposite wall, and he wondered how the hell Cole could even see the words he was reading. As it was, Cole’s big pretty blue eyes were glassy, his hair wet and his clothes still soaked from the looks of it.

“You must really love that book,” Ted couldn’t help but chuckle a he bent down to Cole’s level. Cole only took a second to give him a confused stare before going back to the book. “Cole.”

“G’way. Take m’room. M’good here,” he mumbled. And for maybe the first time, Ted was beginning to see why Maurice might be a bit worried about Cole’s state of mind. Not that he or Maurice were examples of perfect mental health, but still.

“We’re in the laundry room.” Ted had to point out. “And you’re still wet.”

“So?” Cole gave him a second glance before leaning his head against the washer. “Big deal. Who cares. M’reading.” Cole turned a page. When Ted reached over and flicked the book to get his attention back, Cole deigned to look up at him again, this time, blinking furiously before rubbing his head. “And your clothes don’t match. They’re hurting m’eyes.”

Oh, and okay, so that sounded incredibly familiar. Only, it wasn’t followed closely by “god, I’m hungry”. Hunkering down, he pushed the book down to get a better look at Cole. The eyes were bloodshot. His words were slurred, pupils dilated. Cole was staring at the book glassy eyed. And while Ted had never seen his parents stare at a book glassy eyed, he could substitute the television and Cole could have presented the same picture Ted had been seeing at home since he was old enough to walk.

His entire wardrobe was a complex warning system that he’d developed by the time he was five. The different clashing colors with the different patterns. To most people it was odd, and he’d almost started a fashion trend in sixth grade before Tippy Walldorn had declared him a hippie reject. For people like his parents, it was an easy way to tell when they were tripping on something because it gave them a headache and made them avoid him. Of course, it sometimes backfired, and some of his parents’ fuzzed out friends wouldn’t leave him alone or keep their hands to themselves because the clashing patterns were irresistible and some sign of the coming apocalypse they’d been anxiously awaiting.

“Okay, that’s it. Up you go.” Reaching over, Ted snatched the book out of Cole’s hands and threw it on top of the dryer.

Cole watched the book land on top of the dryer, and Ted reached out a hand to help Cole up. Instead of accepting it though, Cole flinched. Hard. Shaking his head, Ted frowned. God, what the hell had Cole taken? Not waiting for a flinch reprise, Ted grabbed both Cole’s limp hands and pulled him forward. Stumbling, Cole at least came out from the space between the machines, although Ted decided that he wasn’t going to analyze the sticky lint mystery that Cole had been sitting on for the last couple of hours. He had Cole at least standing before Cole got riled and pushed Ted back all of five inches as he shoved with both hands.

“What do you want from me?” Cole grabbed the book back. There was a half second where Ted suspected that Cole’s fondest wish might be to beat him to death with a cheap sci-fi novel. “You can have the room ’m currently sleeping in. I don’t need it anyway. You can have the house. M’ mother,” Cole tapped him with both hands, “your mother. You have a life here, that’s cool. You can have it. You can have mine, although I don’t recommend it. Now, if you don’t mind, ’m going to go out, steal m’ mother’s mini-van and drive until I find the end of the world.”

“Your mom’s not home yet and she and Jim are going to need the mini-van considering that they’ve got a romantic evening in the city at some obscure restaurant planned for the evening,” Ted tried not to frown again as Cole looked at him like a kicked puppy.

“She’s going to the city?”

There was just no way, Ted found himself scowling now. No way this kid wasn’t buzzed on something. Granted, he was used to disappointment. Each day spent as a Tortenelli was a disappointment in and of itself. But never had it come from the Holden house before unless he counted the fact that he was severely disappointed that he hadn’t been born into the Holden family. “Unless you plan on going along to watch them make eyes at each other,” Ted told Cole quietly, “I think you’re up the creek.”

“She’s going to the city and leaving me here.” On the other hand, Cole looked so lost saying that in his wet clothing in the dark laundry room.

“I’m sure she’s coming back.” Ted tried grudgingly as Cole sat his grungy lint covered butt right back on the ground and scooted back into the tiny space, this time sans book. Even if he was flying higher than a kite, it didn’t mean he wasn’t human. A huge upsetting disappointment of monumental sizes, sure. But Ted supposed Cole still had feelings. Most of which were probably whacked the hell out by whatever it was he’d taken. “Cole, Maurice was thinking you might want to come on downstairs and hang with us. Since, you know, the laundry is kind of,” Ted trailed off, “boring.” And he’d talked Maurice into this because? Well, at least, if Cole even thought of making Maurice’s life hell Ted had thirteen means and half a dozen ways of both legally and illegally insuring his silence.

“Tell ‘em m’not hiding any Captain Crunch in my clothes and that you both can have m’room back. Play hockey in it.”

“Hockey? Now that’s just crazy talk,” Ted scoffed, his time pulling Cole’s forearms to get him back off the floor. Only this time, instead of standing Cole kind of half swayed and landed on his butt on the floor. And Ted snapped. “God, what the fuck are you on?”

Practicality won out as he grabbed Cole’s arms, pulled him up, bent a shoulder and hoisted the kid over it. “Leave m’alone,” was the mumbled response, but Cole didn’t put up too much of a fight.

“What is it? Pot? Heroine? Crack? If it’s Crystal, you’re beyond help and I’m leaving you at the edge of town. And I swear to god, you stay away from my parents. Get your crap somewhere else,” Ted ranted, trying to negotiate the stairs at the same time he was carrying Cole down them to the basement. If the brat was going to get high, he was going to get his stash from someone else. “Reese, get your butt over here. Your stepbrother’s high.”

“What?” Reese didn’t shriek. He didn’t start yelling or screaming. In fact, if anything he looked confused, and that pissed Ted off even more. So Ted flung Cole not quite as gracefully as he could of onto Reese’s bed. Which earned him a perfectly manicured eyebrow quirk in return.

“Maurice in a skirt.” Cole’s eyebrows came together in a way that might have been construed as cute had Ted not been sure he was high.

“That’s right,” Reese sashayed his way over to the bed, his skirt doing that swishy thing Reese seemed to delight in, and sat next to where Cole was laying on the bedspread. “What’s the matter, sugar?” Both Ted and Cole watched in confusion as Reese pushed Cole’s damp bangs back off his forehead. “Not feeling good?”

“I need m’book,” Cole told him in complete and obviously slightly delirious seriousness. Reese laughed, and Ted could only bring himself to glare at them both. It wasn’t funny.

“We’ll get you your book, sweets, when you change out of those wet clothes,” Reese said pulling Cole off the bed and trying to get him out of the damp dark blue polo shirt he was wearing without his help. “You know Ted, this isn’t as easy as it looks.” Reese shot him a pointed glare as he tried wrestling Cole out of his shoes only to get one off and have Cole shove him away.

“Really? Because it looks pretty damn hard. I don’t know why you’re even bothering,” Ted grumbled. “I can’t believe he’d do that. Here, in your house.”

“He’s not on anything, idiot,” Reese snapped back as Cole’s head cleared the shirt and Cole fell back onto the bed. Cole’s board straight blond hair poked out in all different directions and he spared them both a confused glare.

“I don’t care wha’s going on, but ‘m leavin’,” Cole mumbled, getting to his feet and walking about halfway across the room before tripping over Reese’s boy clothes and landing with a particularly painful looking thud on the floor.

“He’s sick,” Reese stated as Cole tried to get up off the floor.

“You’re the one with the skirt,” Cole retorted defensively, trying to push Reese’s hands and help away.

“No, stupid, you have a fever,” Reese snorted impatiently, pulling Cole up. Since, as Reese had pointed out earlier, Cole was taller and bigger than Reese it was a bit of a losing battle. Taking pity on them both, Ted walked over, still not completely convinced and hauled the kid up and tossed him back onto Reese’s bed.

Cole put up a token protest as he fell back onto Reese’s bedspread. He moved to get back up again, but all Ted had to do was put a hand to the center of his chest and barely push and Cole was sprawled out all knees and elbows and cranky looking.

And now that Reese mentioned it, Cole did kind of feel feverish to the touch.

“So, sick, huh?” he managed weakly as Reese rolled eyes at him. “Hey, it looked a lot like he was high to me,” he tried pointing out.

“Not everyone you know is hopped up on drugs. Case in point,” Reese gestured to Cole as he peeled the other shoe off and it fell with a thud somewhere on the other side of the room. Ted managed a glare but Reese ignored him and went to get Cole of his wet jeans. And so it looked a bit weird as Reese tried to go for the buttons on Cole’s jeans as Cole did everything in his power to keep Reese from actually getting to said buttons.

“Stop it!” Cole finally growled in frustration.

“You stand outside in the freezing rain for twenty minutes before finally ringing the doorbell at Ted’s house and then when you come home you don’t change? Are you completely out of your mind?” Reese finally snapped at Cole.

“No one asked you anyway!” was Cole’s clever retort and the words got lost in Reese lightly shoving his chest and Cole falling back onto the bed. “Gettoffa me!” Cole managed to yelp before Reese started pulling Cole’s undershirt up over his head and muffling whatever protest he might have been making.

“Get bent and get out of those jeans,” Reese returned bluntly as he all but sat on Cole’s chest. It was obvious too, that Cole wasn’t entirely sure how to handle the whole skirt business because he went to shove Reese off, only to hesitate, move his hands to shove another part of Reese and once again not be able to actually shove.

“I try to give you your space. I try to stay out of the way. And hey, m’sorry about the room, but you weren’t exactly beating down m’door to tell m’about it. Why can’t you leave m’alone? Why?” Cole rubbed his eyes tiredly, which had to be hard given the way Reese was sitting on him. And given that Reese wasn’t at all phased by Cole’s plea and was currently undoing the buttons, Ted almost felt sorry for Cole.

“Hey, genius, you could chip in you know.” Reese finally threw over his shoulder at Ted. And since Ted wasn’t stupid or indulging in his parent’s stash, he knew well enough to leave that alone.

“Fine, I’ll go grab some medicine,” Ted shrugged.

“Good,” Reese surprised him. “Grab some of his pjs, ooh and a towel. And you should probably get some extra blankets, and Dad’s got some cough drops stashed behind the tiki lamp in the fichus in the study that he thinks I don’t know about. Ooh, ooh! And chicken noodle soup! I think Liz actually bought some at the market last week. And since no one else in this house eats soup, now’s as good a time as any.”

“Jesus, Reese. I only have two hands,” Ted held up his hands defensively as he backed away. “I’ll be back. Don’t kill the blond.”

The Tylenol was in the cupboard, but that was pretty much were the easy to find stuff ended. It took fifteen minutes to find the cough drops in Jim’s study. Which was weird. After all, who had to hide cough drops? Most people hid mars bars or Little Debbies or twizzlers, but in the Holden house, it was cough drops that were in demand. That were squirreled away like nuts in the winter and hidden away so people couldn’t steal them.

Jim and Reese were crazy. And the cough drops were in the bottom of a potted plant in the far corner by the window. If it weren’t for the fact that the bag had a nifty Ziploc seal, Ted would have left it half buried in the dirt.

It felt a bit weird to go into Cole’s room, even under the guise of getting him something he actually needed. It used to be Ted’s room. It was where he’d slept when he’d spent the night for as long as he could remember. Jim had actually gotten a toddler bed and put it in there when he was three and his parents had started leaving him on the doorstep on the weekends.

And it wasn’t his room anymore. Although, as he flipped the light switch, he could see that Cole hadn’t actually changed it much. The old toddler bed was still doubling as a couch against the wall, although it was currently covered in books. Reese’s old posters of Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo were still hanging on the walls. Cole hadn’t put up any of his own.

The top couple drawers of the old chest in the corner had Cole’s clothes in it, and not stumbling on any pjs, Ted pulled out a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. But what really surprised Ted was that the bottom three drawers still had his clothes in them. In fact, as he rifled through them, he found a pair of sweats he was sure one of his parents’ friends had stolen in a moment of dazed insobriety and he pulled them out too. He was kinda surprised that Cole hadn’t moved them or tossed them or at least brought them up in conversation, which Ted was sure he’d know about if it had happened because they were his clothes after all.

The room was just a lot sparser than Ted would have thought it would be.

Tromping down the stairs, he managed a wave and a smile as Liz and Jim walked out the front door looking all fancy. They were cute together. Cuter than Ted had thought they were going to be when Jim had sat down him and Reese and explained that things were going to be changing. And while he hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time around Liz, she seemed very cool. Laid back and friendly. Much more so than her son, which was kinda weird too, but then Ted wasn’t exactly a good judge of what was normal. But, she did seem like a good mom.

And Ted kind of envied Cole that.

Twenty minutes of checking and then double checking every cupboard and throwing out five boxes of expired cereal and three cans of tuna that looked like they’d been there as long as Ted had been on the planet, had revealed no chicken soup. No where in any nook or cranny was there anything that could even be construed as soup, which led Ted to believe that Reese was having some kind of hallucination that had involved soup or that Liz had actually eaten the soup she’d bought.

Climbing back down the stairs to the basement, he was kind of worried when dead silence met his ears. But when he got to the bottom stair, the silence was explained. Reese was sprawled out on the inflatable bed asleep. Ted dumped the pjs and cough drops on Reese’s desk. Bending down, he pulled the strappy green high heels Reese had put on sometime during Ted’s tour of the second floor off and set them next to Reese’s extensive shoetree in the closet. Pulling his blanket up over Reese’s shoulders and tucking it in around Reese, Ted realized he’d forgotten the blankets. And the towels. Oh well.

Cole was on Reese’s queen sized bed, curled up in a ball in the corner next to the wall, buried in Reese’s blankets. Ted assumed that Reese had gotten Cole out of his clothes because they were strewn halfway across the room.

Sighing, he couldn’t believe they’d both fallen asleep. Well, Cole he could believe, being sick and all. Reese? Snagging his sweats, Ted wandered into the bathroom and changed. By the time he came back, Reese was kind of half awake, blinking at him sleepily.

“Hey, wild animal,” he ruffled Reese’s now very wayward curls. “Nine thirty on a Friday night and you’re just tearing up the town.” He sat on the edge of the bed, which was about the only room left on the bed given the way Reese was taking up every available space.

“I spent an hour this morning trying to get my Captain Crunch back from Stan. And then he stole it again at lunch and I had to chance him around all during lunch. M’ tired.” Reese mumbled sleepily.

“Scoot,” Ted nudged him.

“No.”

“Please?”

“Go sleep on the bed,” Reese pushed his knee.

“Cole’s on the bed.”

“He doesn’t have cooties. Sick, yes. Cooties no.” Reese mumbled into his pillow. “’Sides, I kick. ‘Member.”

“Fine,” Ted sighed, getting up and walking over to where Cole was sleeping. Gingerly, he lay down, and when Cole didn’t even so much as move, he leaned over. The blond head was peaking out from under the blanket cocoon. Against his better judgment, he reached out and put a hand against Cole’s forehead. It was still really warm, and Cole’s hair was kinda sweaty. But he looked a lot more peaceful in sleep than he ever really did during any of the waking hours. Plus, he wasn’t reading, so it was a different look for him all together.

Well, it wasn’t like they were going to get married or anything, he supposed. They were just sharing a bed. And it was a huge bed anyway. They’d barely be touching. People who weren’t involved shared a bed all the time. And this was just one night. Born out of necessity.

And he was going to quit thinking about it before he talked himself into sleeping on the concrete floor of the basement, which was really uncomfortable.

Making sure that he wasn’t touching Cole, Ted snagged a pillow and closed his eyes.