FSE

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All Bets Off

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Mirath

“Dad?"

Xander hugged the toy bear to his chest, worn and missing an eye, as he walked through the house with the toddling step of a child who had only just woken up. His bed was still unmade and his mother would have something to say about that soon enough, though his mop of nearly white blonde hair still needed brushing too when he could find the wakefulness to do so. It wasn't a school day but a Saturday morning offered him a break from routine where his mother was still out, coming back from the night shift around eight or so, though she'd always have a smile for him no matter how tired she was.

His father was supposed to be there, however, as he checked the kitchen, the tiny living room, the dining table shoved to the side of the hall. It had once been in an actual dining room but the last couple of moves had seen them downsizing their home considerably. Why, he even had to share with his brother after that and that was one of the worst travesties that a young boy could imagine. Just who would have wanted to share with a stinky, noisy younger brother who made as much of a mess of his stuff as he did Xander's? Even then, Xander liked a sense of order about things, taking pleasure in having things “where they belonged" even if sometimes that place didn't make rational sense. Yet he was still a child and the structure and routine to make sure that everything was in place simply wasn't there yet, fuelling a twist of nerves in his gut that was near-enough constantly present.

Ah, the office. That was the den of sorts, where he wasn't meant to go, a spare room that was not much of a spare room when it was crammed with a bed that his father sometimes slept on and towering piles of newspapers and magazines. They were opened, the pages bent back, to articles on horse racing and the betting pages, some niche ones even promising to “make you a winner", whatever that meant. Xander wrinkled his nose, a sour stench clawing at his nostrils. His father was slumped over the desk crammed into the corner of the room, the old computer set on top of it alongside his father's soundly snoring head.

“Dad?"

Xander licked his lips, his mouth suddenly too dry, too dry and too moist. There was something wrong there but he didn't know what. The scene didn't look like any that he had walked in on before, clutching his teddy bear even more tightly to his chest than before as if holding onto that alone would give him some sense of stability in a storm that was entirely not of his doing.

His father grunted in his sleep, turning so that the side of his unshaven face was pressed to the table. His hair was as light as Xander's. People were always saying that they looked like each other but Xander couldn't see it, a typical son not wanting to say that he looked like anyone else even if he would come to see the resemblance in better times.

He took a breath and coughed, the thick, sweltering aroma sinking down his throat obnoxiously. Best not to breathe too deeply.

“Dad?"

Didn't he sleep? He'd thought his father had had a bedtime too but that couldn't be right if he was sitting at the desk still. As he tugged at his father's sleeve, wet through with something, the slight shift of his body jostled the mouse on the desk, blinking the computer screen in flashing life once again.

He didn't understand what was on the screen that day. It all looked like a game to him, one that he too wanted to play. But when Xander told his mother that he “wanted to play games all night like daddy", well... To say that that hadn't gone down very well at all was an understatement. Being grounded was not so much of a punishment when, at that time, he didn't have any friends in school to play with after moving schools yet again, their addresses always changing, but it still felt like one. Even worse, he didn't know what he'd done wrong and cried in his room, kicking his legs and swinging them off the edge of the too-high bed where they still dangled.

The understanding of what was wrong that day was something that would only come to him in time as he grew up and learned just what “gambling" was. It could be a bit of fun, a raffle undertaken in school to win a gift basket – all for charity, in that case, of course – or it could be something darker and more sinister entirely.

His father didn't win gift baskets. Truth be told, he didn't win very much at all. That was why they had to keep moving so the debt collectors couldn't find them, even though that meant too that Xander and his brother also had to keep changing schools. It was a way through which they could be tracked, after all, and not something that his parents wanted to deal with while his mother worked and worked and worked, fighting to pay off the debts even though, truly, they were bankrupt at the best of times.

Xander was familiar with food banks by the age of eight, though he didn't like going to them. He fought and scowled and sulked and did everything that he possibly thought he could to get out of going to them, for fear that he would be seen, yet again, by someone who would tell on him at school. By that time, the bullies had locked onto him, seeing him as a weakness, a vulnerability that they could pick on, tear apart, and he'd had to learn to fight back with his fists.

The teachers didn't like that. They didn't like him with his tight, strained face, cheeks hollowed slightly where he was not getting enough good nutrition into his body, despite the best efforts of his mother. He knew she tried so very hard for him and his brother (less and less for his father) but it just wasn't enough when she was fighting and straining to pay off his debts, which mounted more and more every day.

The teachers said that he should be more diplomatic, more tactful, that he should find a way not to get into a fight. Some even said, on one notable occasion, that he must have done something to instigate it, to antagonise them, for it could not be possible that everyone hated him or had some kind of a grudge against him. It had to be something that he'd done, of course, that could be the only possible reason for it, why he was picked on and ganged up on day in and day out.

He leaned back against the wall in middle school, scruffy shoes crossed over each other. It was a day like any other but he had a cigarette in his hand, the end damp where he had stuck it between his lips. He hadn't lit it because he hadn't filched a lighter off his father as yet, sneaking bits from him while he could and while his mother didn't notice. She'd have had strong words for him if she'd known that he was smoking too but, well, she didn't have to know. And he knew as well as her, even by then, that sometimes those little things just made you feel better. Could that really make them so bad?

“Oi. You."

It was one of the bullies in yet another school but he barely glanced over at them, eyebrows raised. They weren't worth a reply and he'd learned that, sometimes, staying quiet could earn him a little reprieve if only he wasn't “fun" to push around. Sometimes they made their own fun though, feeding off one another, and that was truly the worst kind of bully, at least in Xander's mind.

“Vamp. Vampire. What's wrong with you with your hair all like that?"

It was an old joke, his hair having lightened to the point that he could very well have been a vampire from one of the movies that were popular about that time, yet not a dig that struck particularly hard. It was just how he looked so just how could he feel all that bad about that? It was just a thing and there were more important things in the world. Like the fact that his mother had kicked his father out that night, screaming and shouting, tears streaming down her face. In a way, he didn't blame her. In another way, he did anyway.

“Are you listening to me? Fucking hell, are you thick as well as a bloodsucker?"

Someone shoved his shoulder and the cigarette fell from his dangling fingers as he jolted to the side, eyebrows pushing together as a knot formed between them.

“Original."

Xander stepped back to give himself a little more space between his assailants and himself, the same group of narrow-minded thugs that had come into his space time after time again as if they had any right to it at all. They all looked the same to him too, hunkering down as if they couldn't even stand up straight, beasts and animals – no, worse than that. They were like the thugs that had come around once to beat up his father, shoving him down to the ground and slamming their fists into his head and stomach over and over again, his mother's screams and wails echoing in his ears. But just what could she do about that?

He swallowed hard, fists trembling, standing up a little taller. He'd done it in school many times before. Could he be the one to do something about it?

When they came for him, fists flying and greedy fingers hungrily grabbing for his clothes, he was ready.

That had been the first school that he had officially been kicked out of and his mother had grounded him for it, although Xander still didn't see it as such a bad thing. He spent most of his time on the old computer anyway, carefully maintaining it and ensuring that there was nothing inside that could screw up the system. Of course, it was still very old for its time but he'd managed to make it so that it wasn't suitable for his father to gamble on anymore, hampering the gambling sites until he was forced to click off them out of sheer frustration, swaying drunkenly where he sat. It was a sort of parenting software that he'd tweaked to his liking and abused but it worked just as well without exposing to his father just what he was up to either, a neat trick of manipulation that he'd gotten into.

Computers were sane. Computers were safe. Coding was even more so, numbers flowing across the screen as he shot straight to the top of his computing class in the new school, though he could only count himself as exceptionally fortunate to be in a school in the city, considering the money his parents didn't have, that they had computers at all. He had to fight to get on one for every class for there were not even enough to go around, though he tried and did all he could in that regard, for it was finally something to focus on.

And having a focus was good, even after he learned that there was a way to get into systems, websites and more. That was called “hacking" and, oh, it gave him the break from reality that he needed each and every time. Sometimes he was better at covering his tracks than others but he kept the stakes deliberately low so as not to draw suspicion to him, knowing at the very least from the activities of his parents that having someone tailing him digitally was probably worse than physically.

The debt collectors still came and he still tried to ignore them, left the door locked when they came knocking, finding their new address yet again. It was not something that he should have dealt with as a child, anyone would have said that, but it was still something that he had to work through. If he pretended that no one was there, maybe it would be okay. If they gave up on the house for another day, maybe it would be okay. In the end, of course, they would have to move and Xander lost access to computing classes even though he'd accessed the wealth of information that the growing internet had to offer.

Maybe that was better. It taught him darker tricks than how to use processing software and it was never usually the “good" places that were targeted, which was more than enough to shove down any remaining tingles of guilt that he had in his heart. He was not a bad person, he told himself, even with a new black eye glowing on his face. He was just trying to get by and hacking was fun, it was an escape. Maybe, in a way, it could even do some good even though he was yet to find that.

But it showed him too that the perception that people had of him was not the “real" him as he worked through it, working late into the night with only the flicker of the computer screen to keep him company. It was the best kind of company that he could have hoped for those days even though he'd found other people, like-minded people, that he could talk to occasionally. Although his digital conversations were all based around computers and the twists and turns of getting into a system, he lied and told them he was twenty-one. Regardless of who he spoke to, he always told them he was twenty-one. It seemed like a good age to be.

There were ways, however, to make what people saw match up to what was in his mind even though that in itself was a more difficult task than what Xander may have imagined. There were ways to make money online but gambling was top of the list and the notion of going “there" left a sour taste in his mouth, bile rising sickly in the back of his throat. No, that wasn't worth it, not at all. And other ways just reminded him of seeing his father there, slumped over on the desk with empty beer cans strewn around him, his latest losings plastered across the screen for all to see.

No... He could do odd jobs and work washing dishes. Bars didn't care what the age of someone was in there as long as they served their needs and he didn't go near the alcohol. And, in the very worst of ways, he'd learned the value of money, how swiftly it could disappear and be gone and out of your life forever. Maybe that was the wrong take to draw from a gambling addiction but a young man like him could only, surely, do what he could do in that regard. It was as it was and he wasn't about to wrap himself up in someone else's business just yet, except from hindering his father's gambling in an admittedly hopeless attempt to set him back on the right track.

He couldn't control his father. But he could do something about himself.

“It's a bit strong but you kids these days know what you like, don't you?"

Sitting in the barber's chair, Xander tried not to look like he was taking a breath as the chair was turned back around to face the mirror, showing him what he had been there for a few hours having done. It seemed to be a long time and an inordinate expense to have the style that he'd wanted but it was worth it, particularly as he'd spent his time earning extra money sweeping up the shop and running errands for the barber. He was a kindly man but one who was strict on the standards he expected even from a middle-schooler (almost in high school) who worked odd jobs for cash in hand.

But the person that Xander saw sitting in the chair looking back at him was not the Xander he remembered. Moreover, it was not just a style that he had but a stepping into of himself as he smiled faintly at the image of him with pink hair, his hair a bit of a rough mop but in a style that said, “I meant to have it like this". His hair was no longer scruffy and unkempt because he could not afford to have it trimmed like the other boys in school, although he would stand out more than ever and god knew just what the teachers would have to say in the change in his style and the choices he made there. He was sure that there would be lots to say on that count but it was a small price to pay in comparison to absolutely everything else in his life.

He'd pay that price to look like himself.

One time he felt most like himself, however, was with a joint between his lips. Not hard drugs, not really, just a little cannabis to take the edge off things as he went into high school. People called him a stoner, a drop-out (even though he'd not dropped out of anywhere), but he didn't care. They left him alone there even as things escalated and, well, he wasn't about to complain about that. Things went better when he was left alone and the older kids walking similar or worse paths to him could fuel their own needs and desires by letting him buy weed off them. It was just enough to take the edge off it, though he was not the only one of his age, of course, smoking it, yet all that he wanted and needed to break away from reality, from time to time.

Maybe that was all he could hope for, behind the bleachers at school on a rainy, grey Sunday with no one else around. That was something, at least, that made sure that he would not be disturbed out there and he much less did not want to be caught doing something like that. That may have meant that he would get caught and, well, that wasn't something he was willing to risk. Weed made him feel lighter though, allowed him to imagine that everything could come right again if only he was patient enough. He was just a kid, after all, he had no responsibility for his father's addiction, even if he caught himself checking doors again and again, trying to lock out the demons that plagued the family from within.

Maybe weed was better than gambling. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe everything was as bad as gambling.

That was when he started with alcohol.

Some would have said that he was doing things the wrong way around, perhaps using alcohol as a gateway drug to cannabis, but, well, there wasn't much that Xander cared about in that realm. It just wasn't something that was going to at all affect him or his life, so why should he bother worrying about the opinions of sheep when he just was as he was? At the very least, he could keep on with his computer activities, moving into deeper and darker water even as he learned, despite his failing grades.

Some things came easily to him. He liked those things. He liked those things rather a lot. Studying computer science as an extra-credit course was, at least, something that he could lean into and use too. He used, he couldn't say it any other way. It was all to get by thought and he was, at the bare minimum, careful to ensure that nothing he did would ever get back to his mother or his brother, protecting them absolutely to the exclusion of all else.

His dad, well... He was already doing more than he should have been simply to protect him. Maybe that could be enough. Maybe, to wash away that thought, another beer was in order.

“Two."

He jabbed his finger at a pack of cigarettes over the counter, having fortunately grown in a beard a little earlier than most, maturing more quickly than his peers. It suited him well, along with his strong shoulders and his pink hair, which made him look more like a punk-inclined man off at college or something like that. Xander's eyes were unwavering and some small part of him was pleased that the shadows under his eyes made him look older than he was too, in high school at last and moving swiftly towards the end of his schooling years. It served him well when he didn't want to get ID'd and most in a gas station with their eyes as bloodshot as his were about to be after he'd gotten himself suitably high again.

The cashier eyed him up but he didn't say anything if he had any concerns about Xander's age. It was all as it was normally and he wasn't about to say anything against that and if anything had been said or he'd been denied the sale of those cigs, he would have gone somewhere else. In his city, no one cared enough to pass shit like his onto the police. Kids like him were a dime a dozen and if he fucked himself up, well, he'd just be another number all over again at the end of the day.

With the little white sticks of death tucked away in his pocket, he shrugged his hood back up over his head, wallet a little lighter. It didn't seem like quite the right thing to spend his money on but, as long as the lights were on at home, he thought it was his money to do with as he willed. His mother was doing much better after she'd kicked his father out, though he missed his father too in a strange way. He hadn't thought, quite honestly, that he would miss the man, considering his absent presence from practically the rest of his life. Yet the hole his father had left in his wake was one that was most certainly keenly felt and something that Xander didn't want to feel too strongly, which was probably just one of the many reasons why he used substances to take the edge off, even though he'd never gone into anything hard. There was time enough for that, he'd thought sourly, before taking another hit of vodka under a tree once, though it was not a thought that he could have honestly have said that he dared re-visit. Thinking about things escalating, the potential for it, was far too close to home for his liking by any means.

But things were not right as he took the plastic carrier bag of groceries up to his father's apartment, the tread of his sneakers heavier and heavier as if some other kind of force was holding him back and dragging him down, putting the weight of its body on him as if that would be enough to turn back the threads of time. Of course, his mother had had to, ultimately, separate from his father – there was no doubt about that. He was running her into the ground and gambling day and night, barely sleeping, a ghost of his former self with only a shell remaining. And it was her and them, her sons, that had suffered the most, considering that they had not had everything that they needed while growing up. The fact of the matter was that they had enough money for the basic things on his mother's wage when his father wasn't tipping it into gambling machines or throwing it off and away on “his next big win" in some betting ring.

Xander shook his head, stomach churning and turning over uncomfortably. It was strange... He wanted to hate him, hate the man who had destroyed half of his childhood, but be couldn't blame him either, not considering how things had turned out. It was hard to think of it as all his father's fault when there was such a big thing looming, clearly designed to prey on people. He could not see one redeeming factor in gambling except to line the pockets of fat, rich people, his view of those in wealth certainly at the other end of the scale from his scrawny, poor figure. So why was it done? Why were people tempted and so led astray to ruin their lives or, at the bare minimum, throw money away on games that weren't even entertaining?

The concrete steps were bare and unwelcoming as if they were trying to turn him back, but Xander pressed on, a storm rumbling above, the late afternoon grey and dismal. One step, two steps... Something was wrong. The air crackled with tension, the looming storm, a peal of thunder cracking through as if the heavens themselves were splitting open from the inside out. Xander rolled his shoulders, straightening his back against the encroaching deluge. He hated storms. So did his father.

He had a key to his father's place and entered the main staircase quietly, not wanting to make a nuisance of himself. He'd always been aware of how much his mother needed to sleep in his younger years, considering all the extra work and night shifts, especially, that she took on in an attempt to keep everything afloat. That was why he'd been quiet and grown up quietly, playing with his brother, though that was something too that had changed over the years. His brother didn't want much to do with him, going off with another crowd, and there wasn't too much that a younger brother could do about that but shake his head and try his very best to take care of his own troubled mind.

His mind followed him all the way up the stairs as if it was floating above his head. Don't go on, his head would have said if it had really known what he was going to find when he swung open the door of his father's apartment. Not the broken chairs, the shattered glass, the bottle of cheap vodka spilling out over the floor. Smears of more alcohol, unidentified substances, his eyes travelling and travelling, yet only going to one person and one person alone.

What he saw in there would mark the rest of his life forever.

*

“Really... Just fuck..."

Xander took a long drag of the cigarette, although he had told himself time after time again that he was going to quit. It wasn't something that he wanted to continue doing, much less remember the taste of cigarette smoke in the back of his mouth as he'd found his father there that day, lifeless, considering the toll it took on his body. Everyone knew that, even Hugh, but he was more the sort that wanted to live his life “to the full" and slide into any so-called heaven or afterlife kicking and screaming as to what a wild ride life had been.

It was a good many years since that day, as a child, that his life had been turned upside-down but Xander still remembered it like it was yesterday, the flashbacks snarling up in the back of his mind some days more vehemently than others. It was not just a thought that rose without warning but a sense that he was back there, the scent of the old, musty carpet thick in his nostrils, bitter, acrid bile rising in the back of his throat, how the carrier bag slipped through his fingers, groceries spilling across the floor with a clatter and a clang. He'd bought his father tinned food, cheap things that would last a while, just to keep him going. He had never needed them.

Hugh, a friend of Xander's that he had met after his father's death, shook his head and kicked his feet up on the desk of his office. His workroom was more studious than Xander's ever had been but his hacking did not often remain on the right side of the law, considering what he was working against, day and night. Hugh, however, was a lecturer at a college across the state from Xander, meaning that they did not meet up in person all that much, even though they spoke online several times a week. Of course, the dark-haired man was in one of his usual over the top, overly bright Hawaiian shirts that some were still bandying about as cultural appropriation. As it was not his culture, Xander chose not to say anything on that matter.

Hugh was an odd soul, though not much could be said about that considering that Xander had not ever been normal either. He was still in touch with his mother but not, currently, with his brother, although he had kept the pink hair. That dye job was something he undertook more at home, becoming more and more of a recluse despite meeting up with a select few people from time to time, like Hugh and Donnie. It went without saying that those he spent time with were like-minded souls, even though the ever so slightly unkempt Hugh was perhaps the stranger of those two friends.

“So, yeah..." Xander took a gulp of his drink, not even tasting it as the alcohol burned down his throat, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste. “After that was when I started hanging out with you, well... Well, if you can call what we did hanging out, that is. It was all digital. Dunno what you'd call that, even now."

Hugh chuckled, though his amusement at that was shorter than usual. It was hard to be too joyful after such a dark tale had come to light, despite what he had already known about Xander's past.

“I'm glad you trusted me enough to tell me that," Hugh said instead, kindly refilling Xander's drink for him with another shot while he didn't notice. “That must have been hard for you...fuck, yeah, I know, that's an understatement. But you get the gist."

Xander nodded absently. Truth be told, he didn't feel all that bad at all with alcohol coursing through his veins, a pleasant pump and throb of his heart ensuring that all of his organs were still working as they should be. He wasn't one to overdo it on the drinking, not considering all that had come to pass in his younger days, but he still liked that sense of numbness, the feeling that he was floating, possibly even invincible. Xander supposed that those feelings were part of the issue that drunks got into so much trouble too, though there were those still in his life that did seem to be invincible – namely the brother of one of his closest friends.

He shook his head. Best not to think of him. He wasn't worth it.

“Just..." He tried to force the words out, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth as if he could scoop them out and send them forth. “Just what the fuck is anyone meant to do about that? I mean, sure, I fucking called the hospital, an ambulance... They came and the cops laughed in my face."

Hugh's lips pressed together in a thin, hard line with much concealed behind it but he didn't say anything, allowing Xander to go on without interruption.

“They said that there was no point calling them for a body, probably knew that anything I said to anyone else about them, how they acted... No one was going to fucking believe me."

His words slurred, running together, though he was not so drunk that he was struggling to speak. His free hand balled up into a fist and relaxed again, over and over, the tumbler glass trembling in his other hand. Hugh tipped forward as if to take it from him but thought better of it than Xander at the last moment. He had a few more years on him than Xander and sometimes someone just had to get it out of their system, regardless of what “it" was.

“Fucking cops, you know they don't do shit here, don't do shit anywhere."

Hugh nodded.

“Surely, or you'd be caught by other investigative services now, wouldn't you?"

Xander snorted.

“Hah! As if! I get in and get out, leave nothing behind. Are they really going to fucking care about me hacking gambling sites and that? They're better off wiped off the face of the fucking earth!"

Hugh pressed the tips of his fingers levelling and looked at him over the tops of them, his face giving nothing away.

“Only when it's their pockets they're lining."

That shut Xander up as he turned his head sharply away and grumbled into his drink. It wasn't vodka that time, which was probably a bad enough idea, but the burn of whisky, something that seared as it went down. He couldn't tell whether it was a good one or a bad one or one that he couldn't give a fuck about, the room taking on a softer, fuzzier aura around him.

Maybe Hugh was right. Although they'd gotten to know each other in the hacking scene, it was not as if they were on the same level. At least most of the time, to Xander's knowledge, Hugh stayed on the right side of the law – as shaky a line as that was most days. Sometimes they didn't even know what was right and what was wrong considering morals and the lack of them wrapped in the legal system. That was why, in a way, his father had never been able to access help, he was sure, for his part in illegal activity. Robbery wasn't looked on very favourably, though Xander understood, in hindsight, why he'd done it. He hadn't had a long stint in jail for that time he'd been caught but the many other times had piled up, showing him to be the sort of “character" that didn't deserve help through the medical system. Addiction studies of gambling weren't a thing back then to even start the groundwork of helping him.

They thought he was a bad man: therefore he was. Sometimes the public perception of a person was all that mattered. It had been the only thing that had mattered to his father when he'd hung himself to escape his debts, the acceptance letter into a rehab program for alcohol abuse still in the mail, on its way to him. That it landed a few days later was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, too little too late and assistance, undoubtedly, for the wrong thing at the end of the day. But maybe it would have given him a tiny bit of help, a foothold from which to spring off to help himself.

Those were the kind of thoughts that kept Xander up at night, though even worse were the ones that whispered that he could have done something. If only he'd gone to see his father earlier that day, maybe things would have been different. Maybe he'd've known that his father was in a bad state of mind. Maybe he'd've been able to do something. But he'd never know the answer to that speculation and it cut him up inside more than he wanted to let on.

“You think taking down those gambling rings and sites, not to mention the casinos, is something that's going to make you feel any better here? Where one goes, there'll always be another to pop up after it."

He knew Hugh was right but that didn't stop him from shoving his empty glass (when had he drunk that?) across the desk, lips twisting.

“Yeah, well, ain't no one fucking else gonna do anything about it. Maybe taking...hic... Maybe taking one casino down stops an addict from going there instead of rehab. Maybe that intervention...hic...helps one person. Isn't that enough?"

“And where does the money you scoop from these jobs go?"

Xander looked away. Were his cheeks warm? That must have been the alcohol, a crawling heat creeping down his neck, darkening his pale skin a flush that not even he could hide. Maybe it set off the hue of his hair a little more nicely...

“You know where it goes. Enough to get me by, me and my mom, without worrying about money. She still thinks I work in that office, that financial one..."

“Times and Dane?"

“That's the one."

Xander shifted uncomfortably. Maybe he wouldn't have said anything if not for the alcohol loosening his tongue. Maybe he just wanted to spill the beans at long last. He'd never know and it was inconsequential at best.

“The rest goes into gambling recovery programs, addiction studies, wherever I think the support is needed at the time. Some into alcohol abuse. I dunno... There's so much that I can't find ways to get money to all of them without taking things up to a much bigger scale than what I'm doing here. And then I'll surely get caught sooner or later."

He sighed, shaking his head, a strand of rebellious, pink hair flopping into his vision. Maybe it needed brushing. He had wondered about tying it back, particularly as the summer heat was starting to get to him, even when the cool of the evening should have been upon them. Hugh was close to the coast but not close enough to let the ocean take the temperature down a little, although that was, sometimes, merely wishful thinking.

“If money disappears from anything gambling and continually gets funded into recovery programs, it won't take a proper investigator long to put the pieces together. That's why I've got to be careful with it, not go up too high, so that I can keep going with it. That make sense?"

Hugh's soft smile, crinkling at the corners of his eyes, said more than his words. Though he didn't have any of them as, considerately, he moved Xander to the old sofa in the office, something that was reminiscent of his student days and not really something that he should have kept around. Still, something in him hung onto it, wanting it to stay, even though he could not have explained quite why.

It was an attachment. Everyone had them. Even Xander.

“Well, I can't say that's not a noble cause, though I'd much rather have you on the straight and narrow myself. You know you can make a lot of money working with big security companies or even just the financial ones, showing where the holes in their systems are and how to patch them up. And that's only the start of it."

Xander blinked up at him. When had he gotten sitting over there? The room was softly lit and blurred at the edges, his stomach grinding, twisting itself up into knots. Yet he did not clock on, lips parting in a smile that had no true humour behind it.

“Sure... Sure, and put money in someone else's pocket? Work is just gambling under another name. They'll as soon screw me over as the rings like that fucked over my father, you know that."

“What about becoming a teacher then?" Hugh said, spreading his arms wide. “You know more than enough about computing and systems to get by there and you're always on top of anything new. Can't be that bad a gig if I'm one doing it!"

Yet the look on Xander's face shut him up pretty quickly on that count, Xander's coughing laugh coming with a light bubbling-up of saliva. Swaying even as he sat, Xander put his head in his hands, the room pulsing around him, dipping and swaying, something pulling at his stomach. It was not his belly trying to empty itself, however, but something else, something different, something that not even he could understand, at least not in his increasingly drunken state.

With the lowering of social inhibitions, however, came something harder than the light-hearted back and forth, the slipping of the tongue, the pouring of yet another drink. The words ran over the edge of the cup as if the vessel into which he had poured every last one of his feelings and emotions for so many years had, at long last, overflowed. It was coming whether he liked it or not, whether Xander was ready for it or not, though he could be grateful, when the light of day shone on him once more, that it was Hugh that heard it all.

“The industry..." He spoke clearly, hair hanging into his face as his head tipped forward, lining his expression with dark jagged shadows. “It's evil."

Hugh pulled back, one hand extended as if to reach out to him. But the place where Xander was... Well, it was not one where any mortal could drag him back from.

“Fucking cunts!"

He stood jaggedly, fists flying, though the demon assailing him was one of which that had preyed on humanity for far, far too long, seeking out their weakest moments and bringing them down to a level that they would never again rise from. They were there for one reason and that reason was alone the cause of so very much grief in the world – and for fucking what? So that others could get rich off the lies and beastliness of their business?

“It's not fucking right! They just think that it's alright to ruin people's lives like this, tearing it down, making them addicted – that means they can't just stop, you know? It's like a drug, a drug that they can't give up, but no one back then or, half the fucking time, even now sees it like that!"

He bent over, hands on his thighs, chest rising and falling with jagged gasps of breath. When Hugh's hand landed on his shoulder, he swore and shrugged it off violently, his friend taking a wary step back with his hands up. As if that would be enough to placate Xander after all that he'd been through.

“No! You've got to hear this! Everyone's got to fucking hear this!"

He shook his head, temples throbbing, though no amount of rubbing with the tips of his fingers was about to soothe the pounding drive of a headache. Yet it was a kind of headache that had started once he'd been aware of what gambling was, what it did to people, and continued to that very day and moment in time, driving him on like a tailwind to thrust him forth into the unknown. It was there, always and forever, and he had to pay heed to it, for the lives that were lost and lay scattered in the wake of it.

“There's no thrill in it, no pleasure, no pride – only death. Death and addiction. Why would anyone differ...differ...differentiate between them when they are all the fucking same?"

He struggled with the word, throwing his hands in the air and turning sharply on his heel, though he had nowhere to stalk off too. The ground rolled unsteadily beneath his feet.

“Do you know how much that fucks up a kid, walking in on that? Dealing with that? And, the fact of all of fucking this is that I'm not anything fucking special at all! This is happening to everyone, everywhere, so many people. They don't know how it affects them, whether it's in a family or at work or someone right under your fucking nose. You don't know anything about anyone until it all comes out and then it's too fucking late anyway. What can any of us to when it reaches that point?"

Breathe, Xander, breathe, he tried to tell himself, but his lungs were too tight, almost knotted-up, to take a full breath, leaning over with his hands dangling, scrabbling, for his legs, seeking out some form of purchase when he felt more unstable than ever. It was not that the ground was tipping under him but that it was bucking and heaving, the deck of a ship that solely sought to hurl him overboard into stormy waters. And it was those very waters that dared to swallow him up as he sank, down and down and down, bubbles rising, flooding from his lips even as he tried so very desperately to gulp down air. Sweet, sweet air.

“Breathe, Xander, breathe..."

But how could he breathe when there were so many in the world, including his father, that couldn't breathe anymore? He still remembered the hollow, dead eyes, the life sucked out from behind them, the swing, swing, swing. It was there, ingrained into his mind and replaying night after night, clawing through his soul. I'll never leave you, it whispered to him on nights where sleep didn't come to him at all, though those grew greater depending on the time of year it was, the proximity of the season to that terrible, terrible day.

His friend was there but his lips were still moving, Hugh forced to watch the train wreck that Xander's life had become.

“I know how to do this but I don't know how to do this without getting caught," he hissed through his teeth, shoulders shaking, teeth chattering with the viciousness of the shakes. “I want to but I don't know how and I've got to know, got to find out. Fuck, I know you don't approve of it but what's the fucking point in any of this if it doesn't come to anything? At least it does good, some good, stops these places, some of them. Yes, some of them, some of them... But it's not all of them."

Hugh visibly swallowed, his Adam's apple noticeably bobbing.

“You want to destroy all gambling? You know that's not something one man can do. Not with the powers that be in the world now. There's always been some form of it, something that draws in people, starts small and then –"

“I don't fucking care."

His language was usually lighter than that, a bubble of spittle drooling down from the corner of his lips. Xander stood tall as if to straighten himself out, wiping it away with the back of his hand, though there was no stopping the deluge of emotion from flowing forth now that the flood gates, at long last, had been opened.

So much held back... So much held in...

Xander shook, nails biting into the palms of his hands, leaving crescents in their wake, bruised and blood vessels broken beneath the surface. How much had he not said?

“Maybe they'll never completely go, like you say," he panted, trying to push the words out as even he did not have breath to do so. “But I've got to fucking try. I couldn't help him..." His chest was tight. “Maybe I can help someone...someone else..."

Too tight.

It wasn't right, his head spinning, the world turning, bucking, revolutionising against him. Hugh was talking to him, shaking his shoulders, holding up some number of fingers in front of his face but he couldn't even tell just how many were there. It was strange, so very strange, but he had to keep going, keep trying, his hand clawing at his chest as he wheezed and tried so very desperately to get his breath back. Even his abs ached.

“Xander?"

“All my..." He coughed, hiccupping, the drunkenness catching up with him as he stood and staggered, something pulling him away. “My fault... I did... Didn't..."

Yet the broken words did not form any kind of sentence and Hugh was left trying to pick up the pieces. He was a man too who was better working with code and systems and blinking screens that were down to technology and no more than that. It was the sort of thing that Xander and he were both better at dealing with than people, working with something that, not as yet, did not have a mind of its own, moment after moment coming with a strict sense of being and order to it.

Breaking down over something quite fair and just...well...that wasn't something that could be considered the forte of either of them.

“Hey, do you remember hacking challenges? You know, trying to get into a system quicker than another person, going at it the same time?"

He had to talk, had to get Xander down from the figurative ledge, bringing him down and down and down, back to something that could soften the edges of his reality. Another drink would not do that for him and Hugh dithered back and forth from foot to foot as Xander heaved for breath, wondering about getting a glass of water. Yet there was no telling what would help as Xander panted and grunted, forcing out words that he really shouldn't have when breath was so very much in short supply to begin with.

“He was there... Just one thing... Something... Stop... Stop it..."

Xander's eyes brimmed up with moisture, though they were not tears, just his body reacting to the strain of not being at all able to get enough breath into his lungs.

“She... Mom... Shouldn't have done it... Had to do it..."

And then Hugh was there, his hands surprisingly cool as they pushed his hair back from his neck, cursing under his breath, Xander's body shaking more than he could have ever thought possible. Yet it was not all that strange, not really, not considering it was just another facet of the broken reality that was his, chest shuddering, gasping, feeling as if he was underwater and sinking deeper and deeper into the crude darkness of the abyss itself.

Were those actual tears?

“Wish I'd...done..." But he couldn't get the words out, mind jumping, juddering from one thing to the next, shaken and erratic, devious in its irrationality. “Stop others... Same path... No..."

Hugh's brow knotted with worry, a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his face as he grabbed for a tissue but, once again, found the box empty where he'd forgotten to replenish it. That was no use to him but there were more important things to worry about as Xander babbled, the incoherent words flowing from his lips all in a jumble that didn't make any sense at all. As much as he tried to support him physically, Xander kept slumping, head lolling, to the side, as if he couldn't even hold himself up, lips moving constantly, although the sound that passed through their trembling barrier was not something that any man could have deciphered.

Addiction, addiction, addiction... Xander blinked, feeling as if he was spinning, although everything was locked in and stationary around him. It was always there, tempting him, making him wonder if he would go down exactly the same path as his father if he slipped up, if he was not so diligent with himself. In person, he could not have been said to keep the best company, considering the drugs that flowed freely there, but he had always abstained from anything harder than weed – at least to the recollections that his mind allowed him to open up again. For there were black spots there, dark spots, times that didn't make sense and holes that were spaced out, memories lacking.

He didn't want to open those up, no, no, no... It wasn't worth it, not somewhere that he wanted to go, but the holes opened him up and swallowed him whole like the yawning fangs of a monster of the night. It snarled around him, teeth gnashing, and his screams were not to be heard, not in the real world, the waking world, thrashing and howling, fists flying. Like with so much else, his fingers were too soft and too weak to make any difference in that world, twisting and turning as he plummeted, yet he had to do something.

Like with gambling. Like with trying to ensure that others did not get caught up in the same trap that his father had. Like the slot machines that he remembered putting his hands on...and then no more than that.

No!

_ _

He blinked and turned around and was suddenly out of the darkness, although it was still there, yawning around him, a sucking wind pulsating as if it was about to rip his physical form from the face of the earth. He couldn't hear anything, sure that he was talking and yet not hearing the words coming out of his mouth, Hugh's lips moving before him as he tried to grab for him, Xander aware that he was standing and staggering and yet not understanding anything that had happened in the interim.

He was back there again, living it all, experiencing it all. Hugh wasn't real – it was the remembering of it that was real. It was there, the bitter scent tingling in his nostrils, the bile rising in his throat, sweating, blood roaring in his ears as he tried to come to terms with it, his mind so very desperately trying to catch up with what was happening, what was right there before him.

Swing, swing, swing.

“No!"

He fought and he fought but he was wrapped up, the noose around his arms, holding him tight, his arms pinned to his body. It was a faux kind of bondage and nothing of the kinky kind, gasping and heaving, retching, not even sure if anything was coming up. A glass shattered, knocked to the floor accidentally with one flung-out arm, and Hugh manhandled him back, shouting his name over and over again.

Cutting through the clamour of his brain, Hugh's fingertips dug into his arms with such force that the pressure became a bite, snapping through, the snarl in Xander's mind taking a breath and a pause, even if only for a moment. It was that moment that was enough, a time where he could pause and come back to himself, thinking and feeling, his body aching as if he had run and run – as if he'd been running all night long. It had been a long time since that but, well, it was still a time that he remembered, escaping his own demons through feats of physical exertion that left him similarly gasping and retching.

It wasn't much...but it was enough to return to some semblance of reality.

“Fuck, Xander, come here, fucking sit down, jeez... Do you need me to call something?"

The room spun and spun and he was barely aware that he was on the floor as he blinked up at Hugh, eyelashes barely fluttering, eyes too dry, so very dry. Not even his lips had the moisture there that he wanted them to, everything strange, as if he was no longer seated in his own body. Hugh's hand tightened on his shoulder, getting him down and seated more comfortably, though he did seem lower again. Had he actually gotten up into a sitting position? It was hard to tell.

Yet his breath was coming in short, sharp pants that he could not control, his body fighting and clawing for oxygen even though it was right there for him to take. Something was wrong, something was very wrong, though it was all something that had happened before and he tried to wave off Hugh even as the images kept replaying and replaying in his head.

Nightmarish images. Images that did not even deserve to have a name and words put to them. Yet he was the one who had to deal with them each day. Sometimes they just got on top of him, that was all.

He didn't want to be there, no, not at all, but he could let go of it, very slowly, with someone else there. Despite his lack of experience dealing with such matters, Hugh's voice was slow and soothing, rhythmic, talking about things they'd done together, the celebrations that they'd had after an event, even the competitions that people had engaged in. Those, of course, were all on the legal side of the law and above board, though people didn't like that, Xander always doing much better than Hugh considering one did it for a living and the other merely as a hobby.

“Nearly came in dead last once... Do you remember that? Nod if you can hear me. This is okay, you're going to be okay."

Hah... Yes, he did remember that, as strange as it was to look back. It pulled him from the memory, locking it back behind a door that he didn't want to revisit, yet it would always be there in the back of his mind, as looming and as ominous as ever. He panted, counting to ten, counting to twenty, his eyes flicking around, counting the patterns in the room, taking note of them, his eyes following the zigzag shape of the out-of-date wallpaper, the lines of wood grains in Hugh's desk.

“That's it, deep breaths."

It was grounding but it was a different kind of grounding to what he would have done if he was alone, scraping by and getting high when he needed to slip by the barrier of what he could deal with at any given time. Maybe that was just why also he couldn't get a regular job, for he could not see any doctors ever helping his father with his addictions, so just what could he ever expect them to do about his afflictions of the mind? He didn't even know what it was but one thing could fuck a kid and a man up forever, that much was certain.

Hugh stayed with him, quietly, talking about things until the conversation returned to some semblance of normalcy, only leaving once to clear up the broken glass and fetch him a glass of water. For once, however, he did not feel thirsty, even though he drank a little if only to appease Hugh. It was all he could do, his muttered thanks nowhere near enough to convey to him the depth and enormity of what he felt Hugh had done for him that night, his babbling mess something to be taken care of though he didn't truly know even how to look after himself.

It may have been a time that he didn't understand but, if anything, his resolve was strengthened, his mind clearer than ever as, slowly, the alcohol left his system, bit by bit, word by word. Xander stayed up with him but, after the first mumbled apology, they spoke no more of what had happened, Xander's neck hot and tight with lingering embarrassment. To be seen in such a position of weakness... He shuddered. He didn't want to think about it. That was a problem for daylight hours.

Later that night, lying on the sofa in Hugh's spare room, because he'd said that he wasn't going to let Xander go off and get a hotel after being in such a state, he twiddled his thumbs and willed sleep to come with all his might. It was not a tactic that had ever worked before but he just didn't know what else he could try, turning over and over, flipping the pillow, trying to relax in a space to sleep that was not his to relax in.

Yet it was all he could do as he cried silent tears into the pillow, pressing it around his face so that the snoring Hugh would not hear, even if he could have heard from the other floor of his house. Hugh had done well for himself and, if things had been different, Xander fairly wondered if he could have ended up just like him or another version of him. It was not a bad way to either live or be and he could have still taken his solace in the hobby of hacking even if it may not have quite needed to become a full-time occupation stalking, quite clearly, with his head held high on the wrong side of the law.

Yet dreams did not come and neither did the darkness care for what might have been, only what was. What would soon come to be was only for him to worry about and yet it was all that he worried about, furtive and fretting over a monster that was too big for even Xander, with all his resources, to contain.

His fist tightened around the pillow, gripping and crushing it to his face. If he was going to make a difference, he was going to need help. He was going to need to fight, to field his inhibitions about it, to squash every last demon that had ever dared to threaten his existence.

He took a deep breath, moisture drying on his cheeks, eyelashes clumped together. Yes, help. Help would make a difference.

And it was from the last person that he'd ever want to ask.