The opening of fall--real fall, the first bracing breeze and the changing of leaves--cuts through Vermont and settles on Welton Academy. Classes have been in session for almost a month, and Neil is grateful that the rhythm of classes have settled in neatly.

He's meant to be studying before rowing practice, but he can't. It's too good a day. So, instead, he's sat out on the dock into the lake, looking out over it, thinking of what the future could hold. His gaze travels the lake, and then up to some of the sports fields above, watching the soccer team go through drills in this private moment.

At leas the dock is a little private, right now. He probably could just study down here, he has his books with him, but it's almost better to have this moment to himself, to savor the brisk weather and lovely transition of the trees.

While he's looking around, he catches sight of someone heading down toward the docks too. It's enough to have him looking away from the fields, just a little bit discretion, though he doesn't quite get up yet.

Neil has everything planned, meticulously. He's had it planned since right around the New Year, and he's fairly impressed with himself for keeping that under wraps, though maybe he shouldn't be; secret keeping is something he's always been rather good at, as long as nobody is around to give him away. He feels just a little bit silly for having it planned so much, but what else is he supposed to do? Having control over the situation feels very important, and if he doesn't have control over the situation, then he feels like all of his frustrating avoidance will have been for nothing.

Because it has been avoidance, hasn't it? He's been avoiding this for months. And Caleb--Caleb has come to terms with this, and he's been so good and gracious and kind and patient, understanding, despite everything. There's no reason that Neil can't conspire to shower him in a bit of affection and make sure that he knows that he not only appreciates all of that patience and fortitude to tolerate Neil's fears and nervousness, but that Neil's ready to respond about the whole thing.

Sure, it took him two months. But that's better than nothing, isn't it?

It feels a little silly to have Caleb pick him up for a date that, otherwise, Neil has taken entirely under his own control, but there's only the one car between them and he does want a little bit of style on top of the grandeur of a nice dinner and romantic evening walk. All this for a confession that isn't really a confession at all. For playing catch up.

So, in neat trousers, his favorite early spring boots, and a smart cable-knit sweater, he waited for Caleb to pick him up outside Candlewood, having told him only to dress for a comfortable date night. All he can hope for is that all of his obsessive planning won't go to waste.

Waking up was a strange experience. There's something, upon waking, that isn't quite right, and Neil's not sure how to put it. Like the bed has gotten larger, or he's gotten smaller. He's alone--and it strikes him that he knew that. Since Nick's disappearance, Neil's been doing his best to not have Caleb over, not wanting to upset the quiet sanctity of his and Rosie's apartment. When she's ready for friends over, they'll come. But it will be up to her, and not him.

He stretches a little, and it's that that really starts to clue him in. How his shirt and shorts move against his body. Weird. But he's still mostly asleep, and it doesn't really mean anything except that he's tangled up in clothes and sheets.

So, blinking sleep out of his eyes, he clambers out of bed and to the bathroom, intent on going through the regular sleepy motions of waking up. Toilet, shower, brushing his teeth, all of those sorts of things. Except--

He doesn't scream, exactly, when he reaches down and doesn't find his dick. He does make a noise. He definitely falls on his ass, scrambling to both look at what's going on and urgently pull his shorts back up so that he doesn't have to. Now that he's startled awake, he's aware of being, well, small. Small shoulders and small waist and small hands. Of breasts under his t-shirt. He doesn't want to look in the mirror, like seeing his reflection makes it more real.

Maybe he can just go back to bed?

Neil manages a couple of days, feeling very silly every time he looks at Caleb's picture in his phone, every time he thinks of calling him. It's terribly silly to feel silly, he knows. He's sworn men off, hasn't thought about anyone or anything in months, and he's fairly certain that any kindness here is just kindness, just looking for familiarity and friendship.

They have a mutual friend. Neil has been trying so much to be closer with Rosie's friends, all the mutual friends they have, and it's been easier in the last couple of months, now that he's sworn everything else off. Now that he's just focused on being a twenty-thing and not bed warming or something else.

What a terrible way to think about what he and Harry were doing.

But anyway, he's been staring at Caleb's picture in his phone, thinking of what to do. What to say. He lied about not texting. Not that he wasn't good at it, because he isn't very good at it, but he still did it anyway. But he couldn't think of what to say for a text, or for a phone call, or any of it. The swirly nerves were strange.

He manages a couple of days and then he buckles.

The phone rings...and rings...and Neil almost hangs up when it picks up with cacophonous background noise, and Neil's already speaking.

"Hi, Caleb, it's Neil." He's barely breathing, thinking too fast, strangely nervous in a way he hasn't been in years. "I was wondering if you wanted to...get together of coffee or food or something."

When all was said and done, when he was settled back in his apartment after everything, he sent a slightly bewildered text to his boss--he'd just missed several weeks of work, but it was worth saying he was alive, at least, right?--and then he slept. He slept like he hadn't in the makeshift dungeons, in the cages, oppressed by cold and loneliness even when he was around people. He slept like he hadn't for the last weeks, since he'd been snatched off a street corner in broad daylight.

When he woke, he wasn't quite sure what time it was, or what day. He lazed in bed, knowing that he needed to do things. Check in with Gabriel and Rosie, who had both also been kidnapped. Nina, who would hopefully have her daughter returned to her now. A myriad collection of others who had been in Kagura or had not. He couldn't bring himself to.

It took a great effort to pull himself out of bed. It took a greater effort to change into clothes that weren't stale and rank, to at least wash his face and brush his teeth and comb his hair, all with the lights off and avoiding looking at himself. But it took less effort to leave the apartment and go seek out Harry's bar, once all that was done.

It was the early evening, he found. He didn't know if Harry would be there but he figured it was worth a shot, and if he wasn't, he'd at least have gone out.

In walking, he caught sight of himself in a shop window. He was still disheveled, and there were huge shadows under his eyes. One of them was a bit blacked, from being hit at some point during his captivity. His lips were awfully chapped, his knuckles bruised and fingernails ragged from chewing. A habit he'd dropped years ago at his father's insistence. But his clothes were neat and his hair reasonably combed, so everything else could wait.

He let himself into the bar, though it was obvious it was early for customers. He milled about at the door, feeling foolish for having come. Too late now.

They had to take a taxi back from the party because it was far enough outside of town that walking wasn't necessarily advisable, but that was alright. Neil sticks himself close to Harry in the back of the cab, the way he had after both of their dates, and radiates a subtle, soft affection that comes over him when he's alone with Harry.

Probably, he shouldn't be so easily enamored with people. Probably, someday, it will hurt him. He is, after all, playing a risky game with the casual encounters he has with Elliot and Benjamin, all while letting Harry dote just a little bit of romance at him. But it's terribly nice to be adored, even if he's sure it won't last. Maybe that's self-defeating. At least it's honest.

They arrive at Neil's building and, as always, Harry pays for the taxi. Neil certainly can't complain about that. He worries, occasionally, about the amount that Harry seems willing to pay on him--food and drinks, taxi rides, those sorts of things. But he also can't quite find it in himself to say that he's capable of paying his own way.

Inside the building, inside his apartment, Neil relaxes even more than he'd been at the pool side. He kicks off his shoes, having not put his socks back on after having them in the pool, and strips off his sweater he'd been wearing as well. It lifts his t-shirt briefly, revealing a strip of skin just about his jeans.

"Do you want something to drink?"

He has work in the morning, but it's not stopping him from going out. Besides, this is hardly going out. One of his coworkers put him up on a blind date, and so he's out for that--but the other guy was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago, so Neil doesn't think he's showing up at all. So here's Neil, standing outside of a bar, smoking and feeling a bit like an idiot for being stood up.

He should probably just go. If the guy wasn't here twenty minutes ago, or even five minutes ago, it's reasonable to say that he's not coming and Neil should just give up. He pulls out his phone and checks the texts. There's the one from his coworker, describing the guy he's supposed to be meeting, and there's the one from the guy, confirming that he has Neil's number.

Maybe he'll go to a club. Maybe he'll just go home so he can smoke in a heated room rather than shivering outside. Maybe he'll get this fucking meal and send a picture to the guy; his loss. Neil's an entirely pleasant date.

He's cried so much and so hard that his eyes feel like sandpaper, and there are no more tears. Mercy Beau sits on the bed, as maudlin looking about the whole mess of it as Neil feels. Maybe more so. He's not sure how either of them could look or feel more maudlin, but Neil's certain they can manage if they give it enough time.

It's been a long day and a half. January comes in gray and unseasonably warm, as so much of winter has been. Neil's still impressed that Mercy Beau got himself from Bramford to Candlewood, though he can't be impressed for long. There had been no gently impatient, laughing Southern drawl coming after the dog when Neil opened the door to his soft whining. There has been none since he showed up. And when Neil called--both Goodnight and Billy Rocks--he got the same this number has been disconnected message he's gotten a number of times before, from Cassie and Adam and a handful of others.

Neil leaves Mercy in the apartment when he goes over to Bramford. If Mercy was still there, he has to hope that some of his things are too--and maybe some of Goodnight and Billy's things, as well. It's a sad thought. He doesn't want to raid their apartment for trinkets and keepsakes and little memories of them. Rather, he wants to save what little might remain of them before the vultures circle in and throw them out with the garbage.

There isn't much. It's like they were barely there at all. His breath catches in his chest. Mercy's things, at least, are there. A harness and leash. His vest, and a couple of kerchiefs. His bowls and crate. Neil packs it all into the crate and then sits there in that utilitarian apartment, already half-stripped of signs of their life here.

His hands shake. He calls Gabriel.

"Are you busy?" he asks without saying hello. Even though his eyes are tired and itchy from too much crying, he can feel the edge of it again. "Do you have a little while?"

They haven't spoken much since that night, though Neil's made the effort to check in when he can, and when Guy will make the effort to let him know that he's alive right back. Phones are, for neither of them, a forte. Often, Neil forgets that he even has his. But it's good for convenience, and so that he has a line to Guy on the chance that his friend wishes to reach out in the midst of all he's going through.

Neil thinks they're friends. He'd like that, at least. As he's told Guy, he doesn't have many, and he's lost quite a few.

But for the most part, he gives Guy his space. He remembers the trauma of his arrival, of adapting to Darrow, and in some ways, Neil thinks that learning his future might be for Guy what arriving in Darrow was for Neil. Twice over, now, since the arrival is itself a trauma. So he goes to work, he completes and sends off his application to college, and he does not think of the photographs hidden in his desk, sent to him by Guy. Now, knowing he's a spy, they make sense. He still doesn't know what to do with them, though.

He still doesn't know what to do about a lot of things.

The repetition of his life makes him a predictable creature. Neil's a little sad for that. Sometimes, he does think of their night out at the club; it was nice, until it went sour, just because it was something he didn't do very much of. He misses being rebellious and free.

Which is, maybe, how he ends up standing at the end of the block, looking at the lines that go into the clubs, trying to steel himself up.