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I was busy keeping Xavier alive the night my life went up in smoke.

"Behind you," I called, positioning my shield to block the incoming damage. The victory screen flashed, adding another win to our stats. On my second screen, the Discord call showed Xavier’s icon as a stylized flame. Something tightened low in my belly at the sight of it, knowing Xavier was on the other side.

“That’s what you get when you let me keep you alive instead of running off to solo squads,” I pointed out.

“Dude, your build is broken. There’s no way that build is vanilla.” Xavier’s voice held that special mix of accusation and admiration that made my chest feel warm. Even through Discord, his voice had a texture to it, like whiskey poured over gravel.

Two years of friendship, and I still hadn’t built an immunity to it. Two years of virginal fantasies hidden behind casual banter.

“Says the guy who literally wrote an aimbot last month because he was too lazy to learn the new recoil patterns.” I adjusted my thick-framed glasses, trying to hide my smile even though he couldn’t see it. “I didn’t mod shit. I just understand the current meta.”

“Bold words from someone who still uses Python for everything.”

“Python is elegant and practical, you elitist code snob.”

The familiar rhythm of our banter settled something restless inside of me. The way Xavier could construct a perfect exploit in seconds made my brain light up in ways that felt dangerously close to arousal. I’d never admitted to anyone how watching someone craft beautiful code turned me on more than any of the porn my army buddies had passed around in secret.

This was our nightly ritual, gaming and coding debates that stretched until dawn. Me, in my bedroom fortress of screens and half-finished miniature models, him in whatever dark corner he was haunting that night. Our friendship had been built on a foundation of competitive gaming, mutual respect, and exactly that kind of comfortable banter. But somewhere along the way, it had developed into something more for me. I had to pretend I didn’t count the minutes between our calls, didn’t replay his laugh in my head like hymns, didn’t dream of doing things with Xavier that my priest would call abominación.

A crash from the kitchen made me jump. My heart stuttered against my ribs, and somewhere deep in my psyche, I remembered how dangerous my father’s unpredictable temper could be. “Dammit, not again.”

“Wattson’s stress baking again?” Xavier asked.

“Yeah. He lost someone today at the clinic. Car accident. He always bakes after. Makes him feel better, I guess.” I glanced at my clock. The green neon numbers shouted it was after two in the morning.

Doc had been off kilter since he got back from his thirty-six-hour shift at the clinic in town. I’d heard him pacing earlier, muttering about response times and rural infrastructure. Now, the familiar scent of his emergency chocolate chip cookies wafted under my door, along with the sound of him apparently rearranging every pan we owned.

“You know, you and Wattson sound like a sitcom waiting to happen,” Xavier said. “The combat medic and the hacker, sharing a double-wide in the middle of a junkyard. Cue the sappy jazz intro.”

“Better than living next to a funeral home,” I shot back.

“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. They’re quiet neighbors.” There was a brief pause before Xavier added. “You’re okay though, right? With Doc and his…thing?”

The question caught me off guard. Xavier didn’t do gentle with many people, but he’d always been different with me. Something warm unfurled in my chest at the concern in his voice. This was the Xavier only I got to see, the one who remembered who my favorite Sailor Scout was and never once mocked me for it.

Sometimes, it felt like he knew me better than I knew myself. My therapist would call our relationship unhealthy, and it probably was. It couldn’t be healthy the way I measured my worth by his attention, or the way I structured my entire week around his schedule, or how I felt physically ill if we didn’t talk for a day. But my therapist didn’t understand. Nobody did. Xavier was essential to my life. I literally couldn’t function without him.

"Yeah, I'm good. It's actually kind of nice, you know? Knowing someone cares that much about saving people. Even if it means finding flour in weird places for the next week."

More crashing from the kitchen. I really hoped he wasn't trying to reorganize the cabinets again. Last time he'd done that, I couldn't find the coffee for three days, and the withdrawal headache had been biblical. My abuela would have said it was divine punishment for my impatience.

“Speaking of saving people, I need to handle something.” Xavier's voice took on that particular edge that meant he was about to log off to do something probably illegal and definitely dangerous. My stomach clenched, a Pavlovian response to the danger his tone promised. That tone did things to me, terrible, wonderful things that had me shifting in my chair and crossing my legs against the sudden tightness in my jeans.

"Anything I should know about?" I tried to keep my voice casual, but the hollow feeling expanding in my chest betrayed me. Every time he went hunting, I spent hours calculating odds and probabilities, imagining all the ways a vigilante mission could go wrong. The eight hours after he went dark were always the worst. My brain went on a constant loop of worst-case scenarios. I wouldn’t be able to sleep or eat until I knew he was safe.

All I’d be able to think about were all the ways I might lose him before I ever really had him. Before I ever worked up the courage to tell him that I'd never been kissed, never been touched, never been anything but the good Catholic boy who'd disappointed his family anyway.

The cruelest irony of all? Even if I found the courage to tell him how I felt, it wouldn’t matter. Xavier had told me six months ago, during one of our late-night coding sessions, that he was asexual.

"Sex just isn't my thing," he'd said so casually, like he was discussing a preference for coffee over tea. "Bodies and fluids... not interested." I'd nodded and kept typing, pretending my entire world hadn't just collapsed around me. Pretending I hadn't been nurturing impossible fantasies for over a year by then.

I still wanted him with an intensity that frightened me. I kept telling myself that maybe it didn’t have to be sexual. Maybe we could just be best friends. Maybe this could be enough. But as more time went by, I was less sure of that.

Either way, I wasn’t willing to give him up. I wanted him in whatever way I could have him. He was like a drug, and I was addicted enough that even getting scraps of him was better than nothing at all.

Xavier’s voice pulled me back into the moment. “…cleanup job. I guess it’s my turn on the roster today. You know how it goes.”

“Yeah,” I said, though I obviously didn’t.

“I’ll be back on tomorrow. Don’t stay up too late, Sunshine.”

“Don’t burn down the whole countryside,” I countered.

“Just the parts that deserve it.” His voice softened. “Night, Leo.”

“Night, X. Be careful.”

The words felt inadequate, pathetically small against the enormous feelings swelling behind them. Be careful carried the weight of everything I couldn’t say: Don’t die. Come back to me. I need you in ways that terrify me. I’ve never been touched, but I want you to be the first. I want you to corrupt everything my family tried to make holy in me. I don’t know who I am without you anymore.

The intensity of my own thoughts shocked me sometimes. When had my need for his companionship become as essential as breathing? No, it was something more. It was desperate, all-consuming… Very much like a drug. I’d let Xavier carve out pieces of me to make more room for him.

If my abuela could hear those thoughts, she’d drag me straight to confession. Not just for wanting a man, but for idolizing one. For becoming someone who would rather be in pain with Xavier than whole without him.

I made a mental note to check the dark web forums tomorrow for any chatter about mysterious fires. These days, I handled most of Xavier's digital cleanup, anyway. It was easier for everyone if the forums blamed electrical faults rather than vigilante justice. The thought that he trusted me with this, with covering his tracks, with being his silent partner in righteous criminality, sent a shameful thrill through me. What would Father Mateo say now, seeing his altar boy enabling a vigilante?

Xavier trusted me with everything except his body. That part of him would always remain beyond my reach, a boundary I couldn't cross no matter how desperately I wanted to. And I did want to. With every fiber of my being. The need to be touched by him, to feel his hands on my skin, had become a physical ache I carried constantly.

I stretched, my back cracking after hours of gaming. The sound echoed in the silence of my room, making me suddenly aware of how alone I was now that Xavier had logged off. The absence of his voice left a vacuum, an emptiness that expanded with each passing second. My room was a comfortable chaos of technology and memories, but without X's voice filling the digital space, everything felt slightly wrong, like a puzzle with one crucial piece missing.

My walls were covered in indie game posters and shelves that held various models of my favorite anime characters. The carefully framed photo of my old army unit sat next to half-built Evangelion models. A small shrine of Sailor Moon collectibles claimed one corner, dominated by my prized Sailor Mercury figure. She'd always been my favorite—the smart one, using technology and intelligence to solve problems over violence.

Sometimes I wondered if that's why I was so drawn to Xavier. He was like Mercury in so many ways—brilliant, analytical, capable of freezing enemies with a calculated precision that was beautiful to watch. But unlike my innocent love for an anime character, my feelings for Xavier were complicated by flesh and blood reality. By the knowledge that I wanted something he couldn't give.

The Fullmetal Alchemist wall scroll above my bed had been a gift from Xavier on my birthday last year. He'd remembered me mentioning it was my comfort anime, the one I returned to when the world felt too harsh. My father had called anime a waste of money, a childish obsession. My mother had worried about the "feminine influence." Neither of them had understood that what I admired was the minds, the capability, the complex characters who weren't afraid to show emotion while still being strong.

The trailer might be small, but this space was mine. My sanctuary of circuits and code, where I could build the simulations that kept local law enforcement and private security teams sharp. It wasn't the career I'd imagined when I was writing combat training programs for the Army, but it let me help people in my own way. Plus, living on the Junkyard Dogs compound meant I had a front-row seat to how those simulations actually helped in the field.

I pulled up the police scanner program I'd modified, setting it to alert me to any reports of fires or explosions within a thirty-mile radius. Then I opened my monitoring software, the one that kept tabs on Xavier's digital signature across various networks. He didn't know I'd built this particular safeguard—a program that tracked his movements through digital space. It was invasive, probably crossing boundaries that friends weren't supposed to cross. But the thought of not knowing, of him disappearing without me having any way to help, was unbearable.

This was the dark reflection of our friendship. I had this obsessive need to track him, to protect him, to be the one person who always knew where he was. The one person he could count on when everything went to hell. It wasn't healthy, but it was ours. And after two years, I couldn't imagine functioning any other way.

Another crash came from the kitchen, followed by muffled swearing. I sighed and got up, carefully sliding my feet into my shoes, just in case Wattson dropped something on the floor.

I found Wattson surrounded by mixing bowls, his curly red-blond hair dusted with flour. The kitchen counter had disappeared under bags of chocolate chips and measuring cups. Three sheets of cookies were already cooling by the sink, their sweet smell mingling with the sharp tang of anxiety sweat. The contrast was jarring. Something meant to comfort, born from something painful.

“Want to talk about it?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe. My shoulder blades pressed against the cheap wood paneling, grounding me in the moment, in the reality of being needed here instead of running after Xavier into whatever danger he was facing.

He looked up, and for a moment I saw past the calm exterior to the weight he carried. Connor McCoy—though nobody called him that except his medical license—had been patching up soldiers and mercenaries for longer than I'd been alive. But some cases hit harder than others.

He shot me his signature scowl, the one that scared new recruits but had stopped working on me months ago. "No, I want to stand here at three in the morning measuring vanilla because I enjoy wasting my time."

He grabbed another mixing bowl with more force than necessary, then winced at the movement. His Central Pain Syndrome was flaring up again. My eyes caught the slight hitch in his movements, the careful way he compensated with his other arm.

I pretended not to notice. We had an unspoken agreement about his bad days. About pretending we were both more whole than we actually were. "Need your meds?"

"Already took them." His voice was gruff but had lost some of its edge. He focused on measuring vanilla, the same careful control he projected to convince everyone he was clean now.

I nodded, not calling him on the lie. The empty pill bottles I occasionally found hidden in the bathroom trash told a different story than the sobriety chips he proudly displayed. His "recovery" was as carefully constructed as my heterosexuality had been back home. It was a performance we both maintained because the truth was too painful to acknowledge. The difference was, I knew he was still using. He just thought he was better at hiding it than he actually was. But who was I to judge another person's necessary fictions? We all did what we had to do to survive.

"Kid was nineteen. Just started college. If we'd had a trauma center closer, if the ambulance had gotten there faster..." He shook his head. "Rural healthcare is a fucking joke."

"So you're making cookies." I kept my voice neutral, free of judgment.

"Better than the alternative." He gestured at the cooling rack with his mixing spoon. "Make yourself useful and pack these up. The night shift at the clinic could use them. And for Christ's sake, wash your hands first. I've seen your keyboard."

I grabbed some containers from the cabinet—which he had indeed reorganized, fan-fucking-tastic—and started packing cookies. This was our normal. Him saving lives and stress-baking when he couldn't, me writing code and playing games and trying to make the world a little safer through better training. Two broken people who'd found a weird kind of family in this tin can we called home. Not the family I'd been born into, with its rigid expectations and conditional love, but something pieced together from salvaged parts. Something that worked despite its imperfections.

The smell hit me just as I was sealing the last container. Not chocolate or vanilla or the lingering astringent scent of Wattson's medical-grade hand soap.

Smoke.

I frowned, looking at the oven, but it wasn't even on. The air felt suddenly different, heavier somehow, pressing against my skin. My lungs seized, refusing to draw in what they sensed as poison. "Doc, did you…"

The smoke detector stayed silent, but suddenly the air felt wrong. Thicker. My heartbeat accelerated, pounding so hard I could feel it in my fingertips, in my temples. Blood and adrenaline flooded systems, preparing for fight or flight.

A whoosh from the front of the trailer, followed by instant, intense heat. Smoke started curling under the front door like probing fingers, seeking entry, seeking flesh.

"Wattson!" My voice cracked as another whoosh came from the back of the trailer. "Fire!"

The heat was already building, making it hard to breathe. Hard to think. My glasses started fogging up from the smoke and I could taste panic in the back of my throat, metallic and sharp.

"Front door's not an option!" Wattson was already moving, grabbing his medical bag from its spot by the counter. "Back window!"

I ran to my room, stumbling as smoke burned my eyes. My laptop. Had to grab my laptop. Everything I'd built, everything I'd coded, all our security systems... My mind fragmented, priorities shifting and realigning under pressure. What defines us when we're forced to choose in an instant? What pieces of ourselves do we save?

My fingers found my phone on the desk, muscle memory taking over. Had to tell Xavier. Had to let him know. Even with flames licking at the walls, with death breathing down my neck, my first thought was of him. Not of my own safety, not of escape, but of making sure Xavier knew what was happening. This level of dependency wasn't normal. But in that moment, it felt like the only truth that mattered.

"Leo, move your ass!" Wattson's voice cut through my panic. Right. Survival first. Objects later.

I snatched my laptop bag and my phone, nearly tripping as I bolted for Wattson's room. The heat was worse now, pressing against my skin like a physical force, like hands trying to push me back into danger. Through the thin walls, I could hear the shouting of other members of my mercenary company who must have spotted the fire. The sounds reached me as if through water, distorted and distant despite their urgency.

Wattson's window stuck. Of course it stuck. Everything in this damn trailer was older than I was. I slammed my shoulder against it once, twice, the impact jarring through my bones. The pain was clarifying, focusing my scattered thoughts. On the third try it gave with a shriek of metal, letting in a rush of cool night air that made the fire behind us roar louder, hungry for the oxygen.

"Go!" Wattson shoved me toward the opening. I pushed my laptop through first, heard it thud on the grass outside. The window frame was hot under my hands as I wiggled through, trying not to think about how close the flames must be.

I fell more than climbed out, landing hard enough to knock my glasses askew. The gravel and dirt of the compound scraped my palms. Somewhere nearby, I could hear Boone shouting orders, the heavy footsteps running to help. The sounds seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, my senses overwhelmed by pain and fear and the terrible brightness of flames.

"Doc?" I scrambled to my feet, heart pounding. A sudden, vivid image flashed through my mind—Wattson trapped, burning, because I'd gone first. Because I'd saved my stupid laptop instead of making sure he was out. Guilt and terror collided in my chest. “Wattson!"

Wattson dropped his medical bag out first, then started squeezing through the window. The flames were visible now, licking around his doorframe, otherworldly in their beauty and horror. I grabbed his arms and pulled as more voices joined the shouting. The acrid smell of burning plastic filled the air as the fire ate through our home.

We collapsed onto the packed dirt of the compound, gasping. Around us, the familiar maze of trailers and salvaged cars cast weird shadows in the firelight. It might’ve been home, but I'd never seen it like this. Never from the outside, never as something vulnerable and breakable rather than a sanctuary.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" That was Boone's voice. He was half dressed standing out in the cold in nothing but his pajamas. "Someone get the extinguishers! Ragnar, check the other trailers! Someone wake up Xion, tell him to get the truck and pull around! Bowie, get the hose!"

I couldn't focus on the chaos. My hands were shaking as I pulled out my phone, barely able to see the screen through my smudged glasses. The world seemed to tunnel down to the small rectangle of light, the message I needed to send. There was only one person I needed to hear from right now.

LEO: Someone just tried to kill me and Wattson. Trailer's gone. We're okay.

Xavier's response was instant:

X: Where are you?

LEO: Compound. By what's left of my trailer.

X: Stay there. I'm on my way.

Just three simple sentences, yet the authority in them made my knees weak. Even through text, Xavier projected a confidence that felt like physical shelter. Even now, even in crisis, my body responded to his command. That just those words— I'm on my way —were enough to make me feel like I could breathe again.

Wattson's hand gripped my shoulder, steadying me as we watched flames consume everything we owned. The fire cast strange shadows across the familiar landscape of stacked cars and scrap metal, turning our home into something alien and terrifying. Other Junkyard Dogs were gathering now, some still in sleep clothes, faces lit by the growing inferno.

"Doc!" Xion jogged up, his body blocking some of the heat. "Leo! You two okay?"

I tried to nod, but nothing felt okay. My throat burned from smoke and my hands wouldn't stop shaking and somewhere in that inferno, my Sailor Mercury figure was melting. Dammit, I'd forgotten to grab the photos. Why hadn't I grabbed my photos?

"Forget the damn trailer,” Wattson shouted. “Soak the ground to keep the fire from spreading."

Right. We weren't the only ones who lived here. Other trailers meant other targets. Other friends at risk. The thought steadied me enough to start functioning again, to push aside the shock and grief that threatened to swallow me whole. I'd lost everything once before, walked away from my family home with nothing but a duffel bag and the burning shame of not being what they wanted. I could survive this, too.

But all I could do was stand there, trembling, watching my life burn while waiting for Xavier to arrive. Because right now, despite being surrounded by some of the most dangerous mercenaries in Ohio, the only person I really wanted to see was the one who spoke fire's language.

The one who would understand exactly what this meant.

The one who would find whoever had burned my home to the ground and help me make them pay.