His stomach growled.

Under the circumstances he was willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, he should have kept his mouth shut until after Collin had produced something edible.

He was meditating on this unpleasant reality when he heard the door unlock and swing open. Ray’s reflection was visible in the monitor. As was Collin’s. Gritting his teeth and holding back an attempt at a biting and possibly snide remark, Erik stood up. “Hey,” he said by way of greeting.

“Hey,” Collin answered, looking uncomfortable.

There was an awkward silence as they stared at each other. Ray, cheerfully removing his boots, seemed oblivious to the situation. After a minute, Collin shifted his gaze from Erik to Ray. “You were going to get that milk.”

Erik put a hand to his head and had difficulty restraining a groan of frustration. Ray had younger siblings, surely he knew that the only way to deal with them was to not let them manipulate you the way they manipulated parental units.

But apparently Ray’s need to make Erik’s life a constant, unending hell took precedence over any older brother skills and knowledge he might have possessed. All he did was straighten, look briefly at Collin, emit a cheerful “Oh, right!” and vanish through the door in his sock feet.

Collin blinked. “He isn’t going to run to the grocery store in his socks, is he?”

“Damned if I know.” Erik tilted his head to one side and stared at the empty doorway.

“I mean, there’s snow and stuff outside. How far can you get in just socks?”

“Normally I’d say ‘not very’, but before it got cold he used to climb in and out of the window.”

“And do what?”

Erik shrugged. “Steal pancakes.”

The expression of pure bafflement on Collin’s face was almost enough to make Erik forgive Ray for being borderline psychotic. “Steal . . . pancakes.”

“Well, once, anyway.”

Uncertainly, Collin looked over his shoulder at the door. “You don’t think . . .”

“Probably not. I’m sure he’s just looking for someone to borrow it from. That’s all,” Erik lied. Privately, he was sure he would win the lottery before Ray swapped his tendency towards insanity and petty crime for rational decision making, normalcy, and morals.

“You’re probably right. I mean, he’s your roommate. You’d know, eh?”

“Eh.”

Erik’s unresponsive response went unnoticed by Collin as Ray abruptly slid into view at high speed. He stopped himself by grabbing the door with one hand, making it swing back and forth for a moment as it absorbed his momentum. His socks were dry, but his cheeks were flushed and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. His hair was more than usually rumpled.

And he was clutching a carton of milk in his other hand.

Collin’s eyes went round and he turned, briefly, to look at Erik. His mouth moved, soundless with disbelief. Erik could only shrug, spreading his hands in something like silent apology. Ray was not his fault or his responsibility. Collin had been the one to ask for Ray’s help, after all.

Disbelief transformed into a scowl on Collin’s bruised face, but it wasn’t directly, entirely, at Erik, for once. He focussed the confused scowl on Ray, his disgruntled stare soon joined by Erik’s less disgruntled and more sarcastically exasperated stare.

Carefully, Ray disengaged himself from the door and shifted between the combined stares of the two brothers. Uncertainly, he held out the carton of milk and looked between the two. “What?”

“So,” Ray asked lazily, “is there going to be a repeat performance of tonight’s dramatic idiocy in the days to come? Because, as entertaining as dinner theatre is, I’d rather not be taking in repeat performances in quick succession. Your show isn’t that good.”

“Ha-fucking-ha,” Erik snarled without looking up from his copy of Oliver Twist. He sat cross-legged in bed, with his shoulders reflexively hunched and his pillow within easy grabbing distance if he felt the need to hurl it at Ray to shut him up.

“Just give me the word, Thor, and I’ll go crash at a hotel.”

“Think you could do that until the end of term?”

“If I did that, you’d die of boredom.”

“You make boredom look appealing, man.” Erik sighed and absently circled a passage that he hoped might be semi-relevant to his paper. “I’ll keep it cool if he does.”

“So mature,” Ray laughed.

When Erik looked, briefly, away from his book, Ray’s grinning face was upside down and his feet were slowly climbing the frosted window pane, his hands planted firmly by his head. He snorted. “You’re one to talk.”

“Mm?” Ray hummed inquisitively, his face slowly going dark from excess blood.

Erik drew several asterisks by a helpful margin note Dustin had made instead of dignifying Ray’s feigned confusion with an answer. Circle, circle, squiggle. Underline. “So, what did you talk about with Collin?”

“What makes you think there was talk? So paranoid, Thor. Are you worried we were planning some kind of coup against you?”

“I’m not paranoid. I just wondered. You must have talked to him about something; you weren’t dragging him back here kicking and screaming or anything.”

“Hell no! He’s bigger than me.”

“So . . .”

“So what? So nothing. I didn’t talk to the kid about anything important or interesting. Just stuff. Snow.”

“Snow?”

“Snow.”

Erik snorted. “You’re fucked in the head, man.”

“It makes for good conversation, though, doesn’t it? You Canadians love talking about the weather. I’m just trying to fit in.”

“We don’t love talk about the weather, it just happens to be something we can’t avoid and has a rather large impact on our lives,” Erik defended his fellow Canadians from Ray’s attack rather irritably.

“Sometimes I have the distinct impression that I’m living in a giant retirement community that stretches from sea to shining sea.” Ray half-sang the last few words and spread his arms wide. Somehow, this act did not cause him to immediately topple over.

Quietly, Erik hated Ray and his natural poise. With unnecessary force he dog-eared a relevant page before turning it. Impatiently, he thumbed through the next few chapters, ignoring Ray until his eyes began to water from the force of too many words.

Damn Charles Dickens.

“I know what I’m doing, Thor,” Ray said abruptly.

It was surely a sign of Erik’s level fo irritation that giving conversation with Ray another try was preferable to reading another word of Dickens.

By a slim margin.

For at least a few minutes. “Excuse me if I think that’s total bullshit, Ray.”

“My dear ming-bogglingly thick Thor, I have seven – that’s your one plus six more – little sibling leeches back home. I think I know how to handle one. I was just trying to make things a bit less chaotic is all.”

“And get fed.”

“That too.” Ray stretched his legs up a bit further. “You are harsher on the kid than you need to be, though.”

Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ray, I’m willing to give you this much. You probably know how to relate to little punks like Collin as Ray Fujimoto.”

A nod was a singularly strange gesture when performed by someone standing on his head.

“Ray Fujimoto is not Erik Thorbiornsen.”

“Vodka is not a potato. And?”

Intently, Erik made a heavy, sharp mark on a random page of his book. When he thumbed past the marked page, the shadow fo the pencil bruise was visible for at least ten pages after. He shut the book with a snap. “Erik Thorbiornsen, therefore, cannot deal with people and problems in the same way Ray Fujimoto does. Assuming you have any problems beyond chronic stupidity.” He looked at Ray out of the corner of his eye. “I can’t deal with things the way you do, Ray. I don’t have your . . .” He fumbled for a word.

“Natural ninja greatness?” Ray suggested helpfully.

Erik’s lips twisted in spite of himself. “Your self-confidence.”

“That’s pretty great too,” Ray agreed judiciously.

“Right.” Erik snorted his disbelief. “Just . . . let me handle it my own way, eh?”

“I would if you stopped handling it with all the finesse of a drunken idiot with a live grenade, dear Thor.”

And suddenly it seemed like Oliver Twist was emitting a benevolent and welcoming aura. “I’m not trying to get a fucking peace treaty negotiated, man. I just want to get the bulk of this damn paper done and he is making it way more difficult than it already is.”

“Christ, Thor, put things in perspective. When the kid’s gone Dust should be free to take a break from that giant nuclear robot chicken he’s making, and he can help you reign in the savage, deadly beast that is the 1500 word English paper. You have a genius for a best friend; make use of the blighter.”

“Because obviously my life can only be improved by using my best friend as a crutch. Gee, Ray, maybe we should take the genius hat away from Dustin and give it to you, since you’re so fucking clever. Because your scheme will not fall apart at all if Dustin gets snapped up by one of this big expensive genius schools.”

“That would be a problem in this dark era, unlit as it is by the soothing glow of technology, when sending a simple note takes months of travel on the back of a single three-legged homing beaver. If only there were a way to communicate instantaneously across great distances. If only we existed in such a golden fantasy world.”

They glared at each other across the short distance between their beds. After a minute, Erik forced out: “I’m doing this my way.”

“It’s the stupid way. The hard way.”

“Because you always do things the easy way, eh, Raymund?”

Ray’s eyes narrowed into a dark, upside down glare.

“From my perspective, this is the best way to go about things.” Erik sighed and picked up his book. “If I knew an easier way, man, I’d take it. Until then . . .” He trailed off. Shrugged. “Dustin’s my friend. I’m not going to use him, got it?”

“Got it.” Ray shrugged – how the hell did a guy shrug while he was standing on his head? “But I hear, from fairly reliable sources, that kind of the point of having friends is to be able to lean on them for, well, whatever. Even stupid school things.”

Erik blinked as he lay back, his pillow barely cushioning his head. Pensively, he lifted his book above his head, letting it hand so gravity forced it open ever-so-slightly. He stared at a fraction of one unreadable page instead of looking at Ray. “I know,” he said to the book. “I know.”

“Then why – never mind.” Ray exhaled loudly.

Warily, Erik looked out of the corner of his eye at his roommate. Ray was trying to touch the tip of his nose with his tongue, without success. “D’you shink,” he asked, his words oddly slurred around his tongue, “that wash kinda gay?”

“Sort of.”

Ray gave up his odd attempt to exercise his tongue. “Need to scratch your balls and spit?”

Erik snorted softly. “That’s okay.”

“Want to punch something to make you feel like a man again?”

“Doesn’t help Ash, does it?”

Ray emitted a surprised whoop of laughter.

“Hey, Ray?”

“What?” Ray asked, still shaking with inverted laughter.

“Did you essentially call me a potato earlier?”

Ray’s usual smirking grin flashed briefly, only to be unbalanced as he started chuckling again. “Nothing wrong with potatoes,” he said by way of answering.

Erik threw his book at Ray, nailing him just below (or was it technically above?) The knee, knocking him off-balance and sending him into a crumpled, sprawling heap on the bed. One foot was awkwardly tangled in the curtains. Satisfied, Erik lay down, flinging one arm out to turn off the lamp while the other dragged blankets up to cover as much of his lanky body as possible. “Good night, Ray,” he said, shutting his eyes to listen blissfully to the sound of Ray fighting the curtain.

That anything Erik had said to Ray could have turned him into a sane, rational human being propelled by anything other than his own selfish needs and the perverse pleasure he derived from tormenting other was too improbably for Erik to believe. It could only be a marvellously timed coincidence, then, that Friday morning had begun with breakfast on the table – cold pancakes and fresh berries from fuck knew where, much to the delight of Ray – and Collin already gone. Ray, after all, had stayed stubbornly and sluggishly in bed until after Erik had woken himself up with a cup of coffee and a shower, so he couldn’t have done anything to influence Collin or speed him on his way. Whatever he could have done. Something he would probably describe, unhelpfully, as ninja coercion.

But it went further than that. So coincidentally fortuitous were events that Erik had trouble shaking the worry that the entire apartment was going to burst into flames and he’d burn to death.

With a fresh cup of coffee almost glued to his hand, Erik had sat down to boot up the computer. Ray had been sprawled over a chair by the table, picking at the remains of his breakfast; he had barely even glanced in the direction of the console.

When the phone rang.

And Ray had answered it. Not only answered it, but turned his back to Erik and spoken in unusually subdued tones. Although the sheer bizarrity of Ray behaving like a civil human being, particularly when contrasted with his usual habit of answering the phone, was enough to be subtly disruptive. Then the phone call had been over and Ray had hung it up – quietly – and announced that he was going out on a date.

At ten in the morning?

Pressed, Ray had conceded that it was less a date and more meeting with someone from his integral calculus class to help her with an assignment. But, he had hastened to add, she was unquestionably hot and likely to be grateful for his wonderful, ninja-caliber aid.

Then Ray had left. Leaving Erik by himself in a perfectly quietly apartment. No annoying little brother demanding anything from him. No annoying little roommate distracting him into procrastination or shouting obscenities at a video game, breaking his fragile concentration.

Erik got up from his chair, clutching his coffee cup, and went to the window. He peered out through the whitened panes. The sky was blue, there were fluffy clouds dotted across it, and the rest of the world was either white or muddy.

There was, without question, no sign of meteors, giant rockets, bombs of atomic or other quality, angry personages on horses, or a giant, glowing, disembodied hand waiting to reach in as soon as he relaxed and squeeze him to death.

That Erik could see.

Slowly, another sip of coffee was taken.

Erik counted to ten. Twenty. Fifty. By the time he hit two-hundred-and-seventy-five, it seemed like whatever it was probably wouldn’t arrive to properly ruin his life until after he had finished the paper. With one backwards glance at the window, he returned to the computer and sat down to write his paper and not think about whatever circumstances were allowing him the peace and quiet to work.

If he though about it too much, Erik was worried the entire thing would collapse like a house of cards. The size of trucks. Made out of lead. Constructed right above his head.

Erik kicked the printed, stubbed his toe, and snarled incoherent obscenities at the piece of hardware as he tried forcing it to disgorge the last page of his paper.

“And thus,” Ray intoned solemnly from where he was sprawled on the couch, “dawned a new age, a glorious age, where man dominated machines. Vikings, on the other hand – ”

“Shut up, Ray,” Erik spat from the corner of his mouth. He grabbed at the final page of his paper, the top of which was barely sticking out of the printer mouth, and pulled. The paper slid for a minute, then stuck. Erik grit his teeth and pulled harder.

The sound of tearing paper filled the almost-quiet apartment.

“Vikings,” Ray resumed, “were the catamites of both man and machine in this glorious new age.”

“What,” Erik asked as he probed the printer mouth with long, skinny fingers, trying to wiggle loose the other half of his paper, “is a catamite?”

“Someday you and the dictionary will form a deep and mutually beneficial bond. Until that day, well . . .” Ray sighed sadly and shook his head. “You’re fixing the printer, Thor.”

Erik managed to pull the torn, crumpled remains of his paper out of the printer. He smoothed the paper out as best he could and shot the destructive machine a malevolent glare. “Maybe we can bribe Ash to do it.”

“With our vast supply of magical height increasing drugs?” Ray snorted dismissively, then pushed himself up on his elbows, staring at Erik with a calculating expression in his eyes. “On the other hand, if we use you as a spokes model, that might actually work.”

Briefly, Erik turned his attention from the slim collection of paper in his hands to stick his tongue out at Ray.

“Gosh, Siggy, you are a pinnacle of maturity, eh?” Collin snorted as he emerged from the bathroom, vigorously towelling at his hair with Erik’s towel.

Erik refused to let himself be baited. “Just put your stuff together, eh Collin?”

“Don’t think for a minute I’m not going crazy waiting for Mom to show up so I can leave this charming hostel and your highly pleasant company, Sigurd.” Collin tossed Erik’s towel on the couch.

“He’s going to cry himself to sleep tonight at the sudden absence of fraternal bonding, you can be sure of it.”

Erik scowled and swatted at Ray’s feet with his paper. Under the circumstances, he saw no reason to hide the fact that his watch was very interesting. His mother knew Collin’s basketball thing had been finishing before noon, and her conferences or whatever should all be done, which meant she should be showing up to take Collin far, far away within minutes. If not sooner.

Ray sat up, only to twist around so his feet were propped on the opposite end of the couch and his head was within punching distance of Erik’s long arms. He rolled one eye in the direction of Erik’s battered watch. “Maybe she had car trouble.”

“Doubt it,” said Collin, zipping his duffle bag closed. “You get anal about transportation when you live in the middle of nowhere. Especially if you’re Mom.”

“Maybe she met up with a friend or something and decided to go out for lunch. Or a drink. One last taste of freedom in the big city, before going back to the boring world of adult responsibilities.”

Erik shuddered at the thought. It was a response less likely to pique Ray’s interesting than the only other response to such a suggestion – a discouraged sigh.

On the other side of the room, Collin mirrored Erik’s response.

Their eyes met, briefly, before they both scowled and looked away.

“It’s not the end of the world if she’s late, right?”

Impulsively, Erik’s eyes darted to the window. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was overdue for some kind of Apocalypse-sized pain . . . but it probably wouldn’t happen until Collin was safely out of the blast radius.

Dammit.

Collin nudged his bag to the door, slowly, with his foot. He licked his lips. “I guess it all depends on your definition of end of the world. Like, actual end of the world, or some weird philosophical or metaphorical end of the world. In, say, my brain. Or Sigurd’s.”

Erik couldn’t help himself. “That,” he snapped, “makes no fucking sense whatsoever.”

“Actually,” Ray began, “there are some schools of philosophy that would ground the world in – ”

“Stay out of this, Ray,” Erik said sharply.

Ray waved one hand in a sketchy salute. “Hai my Viking overlord.” He curled the waving hand protectively over his eyes.

“Like you know anything about anything,” Collin said sullenly. “He,” here Collin jerked his chin at the reclining Ray, “knows more about probably everything than you do, and he’s talking out of his ass more than half the time.”

“Hey!”

Erik snorted. “Yu just go on thinking that, eh? I’m the one you share genetic material with, not that little pathological lying weasel.”

“I’m still here, you know.”

“Then it’s probably a huge relief to those scientists who believe in genetic diversity that I’m not a damn screw-up and spaz, just to prove them all right.”

“You fucking snot-nosed asshole – ”

“Boys, boys.” Ray waved his other hand vaguely in the air, trying to dissipate the tension.

Whatever Collin was going to respond with was interrupted by a knock on the door. Still glaring furiously at Erik, Collin yanked the door open.

Erik and Collin’s mother stood in the doorway, looking expectant but a bit tired. Nevertheless, she engulfed the irate Collin in a hug, effectively smothering his rage. And giving Erik time to stumble to his feet and compose his features into those of someone who hadn’t been a few seconds away from committing fratricide with his bare hands.

Totally justifiable fratricide.

“Collin, are you quite all right?” their mother asked, releasing him to hold at arms length. “You’re quite red, dear.”

“Just got out of the shower,” Collin said coolly. “Couldn’t control the spray temperature.”

She sighed in relief. “Well,” she brushed his lingering black eye with her thumb, “that’s looking better, anyway. I wish you’d gone to the clinic like I said, though.”

“It’s not a big deal, Mom. This stuff happens when you do sports. It toughens a guy up, eh?” Collin turned his head just enough to look at Erik out of the corner of his eye.

Erik clamped his jaws shut, tightly, on the desire to make a subtly snide comment in return.

It probably wouldn’t have been successful, anyway.

“Hi, Mom,” he said instead. “Uh, how’d you get in? I didn’t hear the phone buzz . . .”

“Oh, there was a nice young lady leaving just as I came in. She held the door for me. Very polite, but,” she frowned, “not very safe. I hope you don’t let anyone you don’t know in like that, Sigurd.”

“Uh, no Mom. I don’t. So, um, don’t worry, eh?” said Erik. If he tried to hold the door for someone she’d probably call him a sexist pig and kick him in the ankle. Then, as he let go of the door to clutch at the injured member, the door would shut on his other foot . . . He sighed and went forward to stiffly embrace his mother. Collin had already escape and was pulling his boots on as fast as he could.

“I worry about you, you know?” she said softly.

“I know, Mom,” Erik said, embarrassed.

She smile dup at him and shook her head. “No, you don’t. I hope you never will.” She reached up and ruffled his hair before trying to neaten it with her fingers. “It’s a mother thing. Or a parent thing.”

“Uh . . . right.” Erik tried not to squirm. He could feel his face getting hot. Ray wasn’t saying anything; he might as well have been a piece of furniture. He looked at Collin, but his brother was looking intently at the floor as he did up his jacket.

After a minute of maternal hair-fussing, Erik was released. Eighteen years and she still seemed to be under the delusion that there was some kind of neatness to be found in his perpetually-messy hair. She patted his shoulder absently and looked at Collin. “Do you have everything packed already?”

“Yeah,” Collin drawled. His eyes shifted, pointedly, to the door.

“You, uh, in a rush, Mom?” Erik asked uncertainly. “I thought, maybe . . .” He trailed off. Lame, man.

“You know what a long drive it is back home, Sigurd, especially in the winter. We might actually have to spend the night in Doherty, even if we leave right now. You know what the roads are like.”

“Yeah. I know.” Erik’s shoulders hunched and he, inadvertently, made eye contact with Collin. His brother gave a barely perceptible shrug.

His mother kissed his cheek. “You know, I really appreciate you doing this for me, Sigurd. I know there were probably things you wanted to spend your break doing.”

“Yeah, well . . . it’s not a big deal.”

“I hope you got along okay. I know it must have been difficult, especially in such confined quarters.”

Erik looked at his brother. Collin was studying his boots. “Not . . . really,” he said. Tattling on Collin would not only be immature, but it would no doubt unleash a barrage of information that should really be kept from parents at all costs.

“And your roommate, that nice Japanese boy, wasn’t bothered at all?”

Erik tried not to choke. “Oh . . . no . . . not at all,” he gritted out through his teeth.

“That’s a relief.” She smiled and kissed his cheek again. “Now, we really do have to run, sweetie – ”

“Yeah . . .”

“Collin?” Their mother spoke with what Erik now, thanks to Ray, could not help but think of as Dictatorial firmness.

Shouldering his duffle bag, Collin went shifty-eyed. “Thanks, Sigurd. I’ll see you later, bro.” He thrust out one hand, as though he were trying to detach it from himself.

“Later, Collin,” Erik said. He put his own hand forward and stuck it in the general direction of Collin’s. A brush of fingers was enough. No need to pretend they liked each other. There were limits to Mom-senses, after all.

“Sigurd.” A final maternal kiss was pressed to his cheek. “Good luck with your studies, sweetie.”

“Yeah.” Erik suppressed the urge to scrub at his cheek. “Have a safe drive back. Say, uh, hi to Dad for me.” He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Of course. Be good.” She reached up, squeezed his shoulder gently, and swiftly herded Collin out the door.

After a minute, Ray said, “Well, that was bloody weird.”

Slowly, Erik turned around. He ran his fingers through his hair, letting it fall back into its usual, comfortable disarray. Ray was sitting up now, his head tilted at a puzzled angle. Erik didn’t ask why Ray had chosen to lie low or how he had managed to go unobserved. He didn’t really want to hear whatever explanation Ray had cooked up during his quiet time. He just slithered onto the couch, pushing Ray’s feet out of the way. “It’s . . . pretty much par for the course with my family.”

“Huh,” grunted Ray. He stared at Erik for a minute longer, tilting his head to the other side, lost in private judgement of something that was apparently located by Erik’s ear.

Erik jerked his head around and glared at Ray. “What?”

Ray shrugged. “Nothing important.” He bounced to his feet and with one overly dexterous foot snagged the cord of the console controller, tossing it to land in Erik’s lap. “Here, play. I’m going to order some stuff for lunch.”

A minute was spent grappling with the controller before Erik glanced with wary hope at his roommate. “Pizza?”

Ray grinned, tangling the phone cord around his hand. “Pizza of the most holy kind, my dear Thor.”

An answering grin touched Erik’s lips. He lay back, turned on the TV and console, and pointedly didn’t think about anything like an Apocalypse.