As he came down the stairs, Galen was wearing a flour-free set of clothes and had combed his hair so that it fell smoothly around his shoulders. August rushed to introduce him, shooting daggers at his sister to keep her from saying something stupid.

Galen shook hands with August’s family with a smile that he hoped was gentle and unintimidating. The circumstances of their meeting admittedly made him nervous. He didn’t want to come off as distant or rude, but he also had to get past them to the kitchen. He hadn’t cleaned it yet.

“Can I have a cookie?” August’s sister asked, eyeing the platter.

“Help yourself,” Galen offered, “I’ll just be in the kitchen cleaning it up for you.” He used the opportunity to extract himself from them and start a frantic round of counter wiping.

A few minutes later, August’s mom brought the grocery bags over and started making small talk. “Funny story: when we moved August in, I couldn’t figure out why the kitchen was so nice! It makes more sense to me now, though,” she said.

“Mm,” Galen admitted as he hurried to clear space for her, “I love traditional baking, but it just doesn’t come out right without an oven. You can use it, if you want.”

“Really?” August’s mom took a long look at the oven, “I thought it took hours to use them.”

Galen quickly assessed what was in the shopping bags and told her, “it’s still warm from earlier, so we could do it in 30 minutes.”

After quickly consulting with her family, who were all eating cookies at the moment, she agreed. Galen helped her unpack and prep the groceries and showed her how to use the oven. Soon, the smell of baking in the house was replaced with something more savoury in the air. Galen was starting to look forward to the meal, but he still hadn’t finished with the dishes.

August’s mom started expressing a polite interest in helping him with the task, so Galen tried to convince her otherwise, “Why don’t you go talk to your son?” he asked, taking a wayward baking tray out of her hands.

“Oh, well… I know August. He’s not going to be saying anything truthful right around now,” She leaned back against the counter and tapped her fingers on the hard surface, clearly contemplating something as she gazed at her son. Suddenly, she turned and asked, “how are you holding up? I can’t imagine you have it any easier.”

“I’m fine,” Galen assured her, “I’m used to the attention.”

She said, “It would be a lot for anyone, though, what you’ve been through.”

Galen secretly agreed with her, but he was a little confused by the conversation. August’s mom helpfully handed him another dirty baking tray. She clearly wanted to talk to him, but she also wasn’t treating him like a celebrity. Galen couldn’t tell what her intention was. “Is there anything you want to ask?” he finally offered.

She looked at him for a moment, pursing her lips and clearly considering the wisdom of whatever she wanted to say. Finally, she asked, “After Crown Prince Alexander died, did you ever… recover?” Her voice was soft.

Galen took a moment to absorb the question. He hadn’t expected it. Few people seemed to want to talk to him about Alex, and those that did had mostly made up their minds about how he must be feeling. He just stared through her for a second while he collected his thoughts. Then he looked down and said, “I don’t know. Does a butterfly recover from the cocoon? It doesn’t go back to being a caterpillar. I’m just… a different person now, than I was when he died. If that makes sense.”

A long silence followed in which Galen was afraid to look up. He rushed through cleaning several more trays and a set of measuring cups, increasingly worried that he’d said something horribly gauche. Eventually, he heard August’s mom sigh. “It makes about as much sense as anything does,” she said, sounding a little wistful.

Galen finally looked up. Her face was soft, but there was a telltale tension around her eyes. He followed her gaze over to August, sitting and laughing with his sister. His stomach dropped, and a wave of numbness travelled through him, starting beneath his lungs and moving outwards until he had to twitch his fingertips to feel them. He missed Alex with a force that could crush him, a force that had crushed him, and left him completely untethered. And, for a moment, he felt the dread of it again as he stood beside August’s mother.

Galen screwed his eyes shut and held his breath, forcefully clearing his head. When he opened them again, August’s mother was looking at the kitchen floor. “He’s a tough kid,” she said, almost absent-mindedly.

“Mn, and he’s kind, too,” Galen assured her.

The rest of the evening was lovely and relaxing. August put aside his worries for the moment and enjoyed his family’s company, eating his favourite foods and listening to his sister complain about her teachers. Galen had no problem getting along with everyone, asking his parents polite questions about their work and reacting enthusiastically to their mundane stories. It was late in the evening before they waved goodbye from the other side of the gate.

The house seemed quieter when they were gone.

“You have a lovely family,” Galen said to August as they went back into the house.

“I really do,” August said as if it were a burden. A beat later, he added, “I’m glad you got to meet them."

“Meet too,” Galen agreed, heading for the stairs.

August looked over the living room, scanning for any stray dishes they had forgotten, and followed him up.

As he reached the top of the stairs, Galen turned back around and studied August. On impulse, he tried to see the man the way his mom did, like she was looking at a sunset. But he found he couldn’t do it. August was giving him a confused look, a question perched on his lips, a hesitant hand half-reaching out.

Galen smiled at him. “Good night,” he said, “and I hope you sleep well.”

“Oh, you too,” August replied. But August did not sleep well. When he got up the next morning, the media storm around his and Galen’s relationship had only gotten worse. He inflicted some of the news headlines upon himself when he turned on his comm.

Most articles were speculating that he had kidnapped Galen and was somehow holding him prisoner. Some of the more reputable outlets were talking about his disease, and speculating on what kind of sinister plot it was a part of. Outside the official sources, the theories were darker and stranger, accusing August of being a terrorist and an Alpha supremacist. Some of the weirder proposals involved the Galen in his photo being some kind of top-secret cloned replacement.

August closed the newsfeed and did his best to delete all the messages he’d gotten from people he didn’t know, and most of the ones from people he did know, too. Some people were angry with him, but others were begging for answers, and he didn’t know what to tell them. He turned his comm off again and left it in his room while he went downstairs to cook something.

The atmosphere in the house had reverted once again to a tender sort of peace, with August and Galen dancing around each other in choppy conversations and secretive glances. Galen didn’t have much to say that wasn’t obviously facile, so he held his tongue. The reality of the situation was that, when he agreed to their arrangement, he had really not been thinking about what would happen if the situation leaked. He felt foolish now, wincing at the coverage and trying to guess how the narrative would play out. He knew that the story would be easier to control the sooner he spoke out, but he didn’t want to add fuel to the fire, either.

August forced himself to cook for himself and Galen three times a day, if only to make sure that he didn’t spend all his time alone in his room. People were still trying to reach him, although he’d blocked most of them by now. He hadn’t done that to Milly or Xanier; a part of him hoped that they could still be friends, even if he didn’t want to talk to them yet. Or at least, he hoped he could eventually have a candid conversation with them, even if they still didn’t want to be friends afterwards.

At first, every few hours brought some new development on their story. The full contract leaked, everyone knew their address, and full-time guards had to be stationed on their street. Galen’s father did an interview publicly proclaiming his beliefs about August’s disease, which started an ongoing discussion of the veracity of August’s medical records, which had also leaked, as well as the nature of the disease itself. With much fanfare, the Emperor himself announced the opening of an ethics investigation into August’s doctor and his research.

As the pace of the revelations slowed, August spoke to Milly. He was holed up in his office, watching videos of puppy agility classes, when he got another video call request from her. Having never answered her recently, he was a little afraid she’d stop calling soon, so he let it go through.

“August!” Milly greeted him. Her eyes lit up when she registered that the call went through. She was lying on her stomach on her bed. In the upper corner of the screen, he could see part of her old paper timeline, although it seemed to be longer now.

“Yeah, hey, how’re you?” August replied.

Milly took a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks before letting it go slowly. “I have a lot of questions, honestly,” she said.

From the view he got, August couldn’t quite read what the paper timeline said. “For your channel?” he asked.

“What? No no! August, you’re my friend, and I would never do that. I swear on my life! There are just some things that I honestly just really really need to know,” Milly said, fiddling with her braids as she spoke.

August wasn’t sure if he believed her, but he didn’t want to suspect her either, so he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. He asked, “Like what?”

“Oh, okay, so,” Milly started, looking away from the camera as she thought, “my very most urgent question is… I have to know; did the Former Crown Princess bake the lemon squares you brought to the group meeting we had that one time?”

August was stunned by the question. It hadn’t even occurred to him that that was something Milly might be worried about. “Uh, yeah,” he admitted, “I’m sorry I lied about my sister baking them.”

Milly went quiet as she thought about what he said. Eventually, she said, “Those lemon squares were really good, but I wish I’d known…”

“Yeah, I… do you want to know?”

“I dunno, are you going to tell me?” Milly all but snapped at him, before apologizing. She picked at a stray bit of hair and added, “Sorry. I know there was that contract.”

This was August’s best chance to come clean, and he took it. He ended up talking to her for quite a while, explaining his disease, and his doctor’s theories, and what living with Galen was like. There were some questions that Milly tactfully didn’t ask, but she did want to know a lot about what he thought of the Former Crown Princess. August answered those evasively. He did eventually tell her about Galen’s stress-baking habit, though, and the circumstances that had produced the lemon squares. He was actually feeling a bit better by the end of the conversation.

“By the way,” Milly asked off-handedly, “Have you heard anything from Xanier?”

August tried to remember. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Well, maybe that’s a good thing. He messaged me a few days ago but he didn’t make a lot of sense. To be honest, I’m… not sure how well he’d be taking all of this,” Milly said.
August hadn’t known what to say to that. But the next day, he found out exactly how well Xanier had taken it.

“August, I think we should watch this together,” Galen said, calling August over from the kitchen. He put down what he was doing and sat where Galen directed him to.

Galen unfolded his comm so that they could both see the screen. Xanier was giving an interview. He was sitting on a plush white chair across from the host, dressed more nicely than August had ever seen him. After exchanging pleasantries, the host asked, “So it was you who released the photo of Galen?”

“That’s correct,” Xanier said.

“And how did you get ahold of it?”

“August fell behind on his schoolwork, and I was helping him catch up. He told everyone that he had a flair up, or had gone to the hospital, or something, so I was trying to be helpful. I happened to see the photo on his comm at that time. I saved a copy because at first I didn’t know what to think. But after a few days I realized, that for the sake of the Former Crown Princess, I had to come forward.”

“Were you close to August? Can you tell us more about him?”

“Honestly, no. He was always very secretive. He used his disease to get pity, but he never explained what it was. He also lied and told everyone he was a Beta! I thought I was his friend, and I did my best to help him because I thought he needed my help, but now… I really can’t say what his motivations are, just that he’s never been honest with anyone.”

“That sounds sinister! What are you hoping the Emperor will do, now that he knows about this?”

“I’ve admired the Former Crown Princess all my life, so I hope that the Emperor protects him from untrustworthy Alphas, for the sake of the late Crown Prince, if nothing else.”

Galen stopped the video at that point. He felt queasy with rage. It had been bad enough when his parents had said similar things, but at least they had the sense not to try and use his dead husband’s name as a noose! He turned to August and asked, “Do you know him?”

August didn’t seem much affected by the interview. From his perspective, he had already suspected Xanier. After the photo leaked, he remembered finding his comm upside-down during the study session, and his conversation with Milly had made that inkling worse. He had still held onto hope that he was wrong or they could work it out, but now it was apparent that Xanier was more invested in maintaining his saintly self-image. He shrugged. “Yeah. He was part of my group project. He must have gone through my comm when I wasn’t looking the last time we met up.”

Galen could now see that he didn’t have much time to think things over anymore. Xanier’s interview would only add to a growing movement that was whitewashing Galen’s own crimes by tarring August as some unconscionable monster. If he waited much longer to do anything, he would have no room to maneuver.