Margaret Hayes arrived on a Thursday with a suitcase, a bouquet of flowers, and absolutely no intention of warning her son.

She stepped into the kitchen and found Lucian wearing an apron, reading a recipe aloud while Sebastian sat at the counter with his medication organizer.

“Is this the right amount of garlic?” Lucian demanded.

“Depends,” Sebastian said. “Are you trying to cook dinner or repel vampires?”

“Helpful. Very helpful.”

Margaret put down her suitcase.

“Well,” she said. “I seem to have entered an alternate universe.”

Lucian dropped the spoon.

“Aunt Maggie!”

He hurried toward her, remembered Sebastian's warnings about the wet floor, and slowed to a careful walk. Margaret noticed that too.

She hugged him tightly. “Look at you. Cooking. In a kitchen. Without a fire extinguisher.”

“Everyone keeps mentioning fires.”

“Because I remember the microwave incident when you were twelve.”

“That marshmallow was defective.”

Sebastian coughed into his fist. Lucian glared at him.

Margaret turned to her son. “And you're taking your medicine without an argument?”

“Apparently I have no choice.”

“Wonderful.” She examined the neatly labeled pillbox. “I spent twenty-five years trying to teach you to listen to people.”

Lucian beamed. “I've accomplished it in two weeks.”

“Then perhaps I should hire you.”

“Too late,” Sebastian said. “He's already employed here.”

“Unpaid,” Lucian protested.

“Room and board.”

“And emotional damages.”

Margaret laughed. “You sound like an old married couple.”

Lucian went still. Sebastian picked up his water glass with suspicious calm.

“Mom,” he said.

“What? It's a compliment.”

She wandered through the townhouse, marveling at the folded blankets, stocked refrigerator, and handwritten reminders taped to the walls.

On the refrigerator, Lucian had posted a schedule with three columns: MEDICINE, EXERCISES, and SEBASTIAN BEHAVING.

The last column was almost empty.

Margaret pointed at it. “Accurate.”

“Thank you,” Lucian said.

Sebastian stood in the doorway. “I'm being bullied in my own home.”

“You started it,” Margaret and Lucian said together.

Their matching reply made them laugh. Sebastian shook his head, but his mouth softened.

Margaret stayed for lunch and insisted on hearing everything about Lucian's semester. He told her about his studio project, his professor's impossible deadlines, and the classmate who'd mistaken an unfinished sculpture for a coat rack.

Sebastian listened from across the table.

When Lucian described a difficult presentation, Sebastian said, “You did well.”

Lucian blinked. “You weren't there.”

“I saw the recording you sent me.”

“I sent that to Nolan.”

“Nolan sent it to me.”

“Traitor.”

“You explained your design clearly,” Sebastian continued. “You should be proud.”

Margaret watched Lucian's ears turn pink. Her expression grew so delighted that Lucian immediately changed the subject.

After lunch, Margaret took a call in the garden. Sebastian remained in the kitchen while Lucian put groceries away.

“You didn't have to compliment me in front of your mother,” Lucian said.

“Would you prefer I insulted your work?”

“No. Obviously not.”

“Then what's the problem?”

Lucian shut the refrigerator harder than necessary. “You make everything weird.”

Sebastian leaned against the counter. “I make everything weird?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don't.”

“You pay for groceries, criticize my cooking, tell me when to sleep, and act like you're in charge of the whole world.”

“I'm in charge of this grocery bill.”

Lucian scoffed. “Then who's paying for your groceries, brat? Is that what you're going to say?”

Sebastian's eyebrows rose. “I was considering it.”

Lucian planted his hands on his hips.

“What, you want me to call you Daddy?”

Silence.

Sebastian slowly put down the dish towel.

Lucian realized, a moment too late, that he'd made a terrible tactical error.

Sebastian stepped closer. He didn't touch him. He simply stood near enough that Lucian could smell his clean soap and the coffee he'd had after lunch.

“Only if you mean it,” Sebastian said.

Lucian stared.

“That's not— I wasn't—”

“Weren't what?”

“Don't make that face.”

“What face?”

“The one where you know something I don't.”

Sebastian tilted his head. “You started this conversation.”

Lucian backed toward the counter. He wasn't frightened. That was the problem. He was acutely, horribly aware that he didn't want Sebastian to move away.

“You're impossible,” he whispered.

“And yet you keep talking to me.”

Margaret's voice floated through the garden door. “Boys? Has anyone seen my charger?”

Lucian slipped past Sebastian so quickly he nearly knocked over the fruit bowl.

“Kitchen drawer!” he shouted, escaping down the hall.

Margaret returned to find her son smiling at a perfectly ordinary bowl of oranges.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Sebastian.”

“Ask Lucian.”

“I intend to.”

She found Lucian in the laundry room, pretending to reorganize towels. His cheeks were still pink.

“Everything all right, sweetheart?”

“Perfect.”

“Sebastian being difficult?”

“Always.”

Margaret brushed a stray thread from his sleeve. “You know you can tell me if something is wrong.”

Lucian looked at her. She'd been part of his life for as long as he could remember. She'd bandaged his knees and defended him when the other children teased him.

For a moment he wanted to ask whether Sebastian had ever looked at anyone the way he looked at Lucian.

But that would mean admitting he'd noticed.

“Nothing's wrong,” he said.

Margaret kissed his forehead. “Good.”

At dinner, Margaret told stories about the boys at the lake house.

“When Lucian was nine,” she said, “he declared himself king of the dock.”

“I was elected,” Lucian protested.

“You were the only candidate.”

“An overwhelming victory.”

“And Sebastian built you a little wooden throne,” Margaret continued.

Sebastian looked down at his plate. “It was a chair.”

“With a crown carved into the back,” Margaret said.

Lucian stared at him. He remembered that chair. He remembered assuming it had appeared because someone had ordered it from a shop.

“You made that?” he asked.

“It was crooked,” Sebastian replied.

“I loved that chair.”

“I know.”

Margaret quietly resumed eating, looking far too satisfied with herself.

Later, while washing dishes, Lucian caught himself humming the silly tune Sebastian used to whistle at the lake. The memory made his chest ache in a pleasant, unfamiliar way.

He had spent years cataloging every insult Sebastian had ever thrown at him. Somehow he'd failed to count all the quiet kindnesses.

That evening, Lucian went upstairs early, carrying his sketchbook. He sat on his bed and tried to draw a landscape.

He drew Sebastian's profile instead.

He tore out the page. Then he smoothed it flat again and hid it in the back of the book.

He thought about asking Margaret directly what she'd meant, but that would reveal he'd been listening outside the study. It would also mean saying aloud the possibility he barely dared entertain.

Instead, he texted Nolan.

Lucian: Hypothetically, if someone had a chance, what would that mean?

Nolan: A chance at what?

Lucian: Forget it.

Nolan: Is this about Sebastian?

Lucian put his phone facedown. Five seconds later, he picked it up again.

Lucian: Maybe.

Nolan: Then stop asking hypothetical questions and talk to him.

Lucian considered that excellent advice for someone else.

Near midnight, he came downstairs for water. Voices drifted from the study.

Margaret was speaking quietly, but Lucian recognized her amused tone.

“You finally got him under your roof. Don't tell me you're going to waste your chance.”

Lucian stopped with his hand on the doorframe.

His heart thudded once, hard.

Chance for what?