Bailey wrenched the door open and hauled Nate through it while he was still trying to step into his boots. He managed to get his feet into them and followed Bailey onto the porch, just barely managing to ease the door shut behind them. Bailey dragged him down the front porch steps before he could even ask to pause and tie his laces.

"That wasn't so bad," Nate said as calmly as he could. Bailey's hand was shaking terribly where it was wrapped around his arm, but he did not comment on it until they were tucked safely in the truck.

"Are you okay?" he asked tentatively.

Bailey was curled up, his heels digging into the seat and his arms wrapped around his folded legs. His feet were bare because he had run out of the house without putting on any shoes. "I'm fine."

That was most certainly not true. Nate chewed on his lip and put his hands on the wheel just to grip something familiar. He wanted to haul Bailey into his lap, but that was hardly practical while they were sitting in his father's driveway. They needed to go somewhere else. Not that Charles would have a problem with them sitting in his driveway for a bit, but he probably wouldn't appreciate the roar of the engine coming to life once he's already laid down.

Plus, Bailey seemed shaken up by his arrival, so this probably was not the best place for him to calm back down.

"Do you want me to take you to your mom's?"

"No," he spat.

"Okay," Nate said slowly. "Do you want to go to the Waffle House and get something greasy to eat?"

"Jesus Christ, no." he rolled his eyes and turned his head completely away, looking out his side of the truck. Nate imagined the fluorescent lighting and smell of breakfast food and coffee and decided he was glad Bailey didn't like that option. Plus, they really did smell like sex. A shower was in order.

"How about I-"

"Fucking Hell!" Bailey threw his hands in the air, then dropped them on top of his head, digging his fingers into his hair and clenching them. "Just drop me off on the side of the road somewhere. I don't care."

His voice cracked on the last word.

Nate pressed his lips together and squeezed the steering wheel, letting a stunned silence fill the space between them. Usually, that was enough to make Bailey rethink whatever he had just said, or at least reframe it for Nate to better understand what he was trying to communicate. But he just kept his face turned away.

"I'm not going to do that," Nate jammed his keys into the ignition. "What I am going to do is take you home with me, where I can make sure you are okay. We just interrupted a scene, Bailey. You're probably dropping, and I need to take care of you, okay?"

Bailey still did not respond, but he stopped fisting his hands in his hair, at least. He dropped them to the seat beside his feet with a thump.

"Put your seatbelt on," Nate told him.

"Don't fucking tell me what to do," Bailey growled.

Nate's fingers flexed on the wheel. The urge to reach over to grab the seatbelt and force it across Bailey's body was strong, mainly because Nate was scared that he might open the door and bolt out into the cornfield or something. He wanted to get moving before that happened.

But he also decided that being aggressive right now was not the answer. So, he disregarded the nasty tone and listened to the words. As calmly as he could manage without sounding facetious, he asked, "Please put your seatbelt on so we can go."

Hopefully reminding him that Nate was trying to get him away from the clusterfuck that had dropped him like a cinderblock in a lake would be enough to motivate him to listen. It was. With a put-upon sigh, he reached over his shoulder and tugged the seatbelt across his torso. Nate threw the truck into reverse and pulled out.

They drove in simmering silence. Nate's mind drifted as he thought about the need to establish some kind of protocol, at least for himself if not with Bailey, for when things went wrong in the scene. Getting interrupted like that also made him realize that if anything were to go wrong, including Bailey safewording, he did not exactly know how to handle it beyond simply stopping.

He did not even have a good handle on stopping. He had not thought of grabbing the scissors, for fuck's sake. He gripped the steering wheel and swallowed down a little groan of self-flagellation. He'd failed Bailey initially, but he could at least be a strong rock for him now.

Bailey leaned away, looking miserably out of his side of the car. As Nate watched in his peripheral, he shivered and hugged himself tighter. Nate clenched his teeth and resolved to fix this. He was the one who called Bailey all those names and put him in that headspace.

The next battle began when they pulled into the drive of his parents' house.

"I cannot go in there." Bailey's voice was acidic, but the way he looked out the window at the house was filled with terror, eyes huge and shaking.

This was not a battle against Bailey. It was a huge minefield stretched out between Nate and Bailey, which he had to pick his way across. And it was one he had no idea how to begin navigating. Usually, they could say or do just about anything to each other in one of their spats. Bailey would smirk and give as good as he got, but like that night at the bar with Tanner, his lips were curved down, not up, and they were trembling.

Nate removed the key from the ignition and placed his hands in his lap. He took a deep breath, repeating don't react, just listen a good three times to himself before asking, "Why not?"

"I can't...I..."

He cut himself off and dropped his eyes to his lap. That was not much to work with. Nate's whole body hurt. It was rare for Bailey to stumble over his words. The pang of anguish that struck against his ribcage rippled out to the very tips of his fingers and made his hair stand on end. In a perfect counterpoint to the unbridled elation that he felt when he reduced Bailey to a puddle of pleasure, mind blank and high off brain chemicals, he was crushed by the realization that he had done this to Bailey.

Logically, Nate knew that the scene had been interrupted, and neither of them was at fault. But still, Bailey did not seem to be able to pull himself out of the headspace for some reason. He hadn't said so in as many words, but it was obvious that he was trapped and struggling with something. All because Nate tied him to the bed and told him he was good for nothing except taking cock.

Nate pressed his lips together and looked past him toward the house. It was dark for the most part. Karlie's window was gently lit by her constant ambient lights. The blinds in the living room window flickered from the TV. That meant his dad was still up, at least. But he was in the living room.

"Look, you don't have to talk to anybody or even see anybody," Nate assured. "We can go in the back door and straight up the steps."

"I don't know," Bailey pouted down at his lap in misery.

"Well, I do," Nate said firmly. He sat forward a little so he could reach back, fist his hoodie, and drag it over his head. It landed in Bailey's lap with a soft sound. "Put that on and pull the hood up over your head. Nobody will see us anyway, and if they do, they will leave us alone as soon as I tell them, okay?"

Bailey touched the hoodie gingerly. For a moment, Nate was sure he would reject it, but then he twisted the fabric around until he could easily pull it over his head and poke his arms through the sleeves. Nate's fingers twitched to reach out help him by tugging the hoodie down in the back as Bailey struggled to settle it around his torso in the confines of the truck. But he let Bailey take his time instead of babying him.

It was a massive relief to see him in Nate's clothes, settling something inside of him. Just like hopping out of the truck and going around to help him step down since he seemed so stumbly all of a sudden settled something. Nate stopped short of putting a possessive arm around him as they crossed the back sidewalk to the deck. Just because he accepted the hoodie and the help down from the truck did not mean he wanted Nate touching him indiscriminately.

The sliding deck door opened with a soft snick. Coolness from the air conditioning beckoned them in from the muggy summer night, and as they stepped through the doorway, the cicadas and frogs gave way to the low murmur of the television and rumble of a laundry cycle.

Nate thanked the heavens for his house's unique architectural puzzle because they could get to the stairs without being seen from the living room. Bailey lowered his head as they padded through the house, his face tucked deep into the hood and his hands tucked into the wide front pocket. When they reached the stairs, Nate put a hand on Bailey's shoulder to make him pause.

Then he stuck his head into the living room. "Hey, dad."

"Hey, kid." His dad nodded from where he was propped in his recliner, comfortably trapped beneath a blanket with a bag of chips and a beer beside him. He had a game on, but the volume was low so as not to disturb Nate's mom sleeping in the room just behind the wall from which the TV hung. Because of that, he would have heard Nate come in and might be curious enough about why Nate snuck through the back door without saying hello to come check it out.

Now that he had accomplished his mission to convince his dad that everything was perfectly normal, Nate returned to Bailey's side and gestured for him to climb the stairs. He did, hitting every single creaky spot just like Nate knew he would. On the other hand, Nate avoided every single one so that it sounded like only one person was going up the steps. He may have snuck silently around this house once or twice or a few times before.

They slipped into Nate's bedroom, and he closed the door behind them with a quiet click and then locked it for good measure.

Bailey stood in the middle of the space between his desk and bed, a little hunched but staring around curiously. He took in the unmade bed and the messy desk filled with papers that Nate was always promising himself he would get around to sorting through. His eyes drifted down to the shirts and boxers strewn on the floor because they had not made it into the hamper only a couple of feet away.

Nate rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. "Sorry for the mess."

As he stooped to pick up the boxers and socks from the floor and hastily shove them into the hamper, Bailey stepped toward his dresser, eyes roving over the boxing trophies. Nate slowed his furious cleaning and stopped to watch him tentatively reach out and brush his fingers over the little plaques where Nate's name was engraved.

The hoodie was so large on him that only the tips of his fingers poked out of the sleeves. The hem fell around Bailey's mid-thigh. It was big even on Nate, because he liked the comfort of an overly large hoodie despite being an intimidatingly large man himself. But on Bailey, it was nearly comical. The whole ensemble made him look soft and vulnerable.

"Bay," he murmured as he dumped the laundry in his hands into the hamper. "Will you tell me what's wrong?"