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lassitude sweeps over him like morphine, loosening his muscles all at once. He could pass out like this. He probably will pass out like this.
    Did Javier even get to come?
    The answer to that is revealed a moment later, when Javier turns him over and Ryan goes with it, passive as a doll. Javier has his dick out and is jacking it fast and hard, setting a brutal pace, as if he’s lost every shred of the patience he’d had with Ryan. Ryan watches as Javier comes into his fist and then feeds that come to Ryan, pushing his semen-salty fingers into Ryan’s slack mouth. Ryan drools around them, too tired to suck on them – but Javier doesn’t seem bothered by it, wiping what remains of his come on Ryan’s chest.
    Ryan wants to pull Javier on top of him, be sheltered and safe again, but Javier’s breathing like a bellows and looks strangely shook up, like he was the one that just got systematically taken apart.
    Ryan wants to tell him it’s fine, it’s okay – but he knows it isn’t.

- CHAPTER IV -
     
    “Hey,” says somebody, jostling him.
    “ Hn.” Ryan buries his head under the pillow. “G’way.”
    “ Hey . Kid. Don’t you have to go back?”
    Ryan cracks an eye open to see Javier’s face, and promptly shuts it. “ N’pe,” he says. “Dad’s on the 24-hour shift.”
    “Again? Is he ever home?”
    Ryan would dearly like to point out that Javier hasn’t been at home with his son in years , but Ryan needs his sleep even more than he needs to be mean, and also, it’d be sorta ungrateful to taunt a guy who gave him an orgasm like that . “G’night,” Ryan says, with what he hopes is sufficient finality, and true enough, Javier doesn’t badger him for the rest of the night.
    * * *
    Ryan smells the weed before he sees it. For a second, he wonders if Pete’s gotten access to Micky the Pothead’s secret stash – but then he recalls where he is and wakes up all the way. Yeah, that’s Javier all right, silhouetted in the milky early-morning light coming through the curtains, pornographically bare-chested and with a smoking joint in his hand.
    “Man, gotta say, that’s something you have in common with your offspring.”
    If Javier’s taken aback by Ryan’s sudden interjection, he gives no sign. “Pete smokes pot?”
    “Only on special occasions. Otherwise, he’s too busy being the ideal son.” Ryan can’t hide the bitterness in his tone, because Pete’s self-imposed rules and regulations are all Javier’s fault. Not that having rules about not taking pot is bad per se, but… Pete can’t stand the thought of being a delinquent like his dad. Being anything like his dad.
    “How good are his grades?”
    “Very good. He’s applied for Stanford and there’s no doubt he’ll get in. He qualifies for a scholarship.”
    The joint is crooked and bent and sad, caught between Javier’s fingers, and for an instant it seems that Javier is sad, too, his back slightly hunched and his eyes distant, as if he’s seeing his son leave the home they never got to share.
    “You really should see him. Speak to him.”
    “ He doesn’t want me to.”
    “Yeah, well, he needs you to. And you need to, as well.”
    “Since when are you my shrink?”
    “Since you started smoking pot angstily, like some kinda modern-day Heathcliff.”
    “I’ll thank you not to compare me to fictional characters.”
    “Holy crap. You’ve read Wuthering Heights ?”
    “Why do I detect a general note of ‘he reads!’ in there?”
    “Possibly because it is, um, there. Sorry. It’s not that I think you’re a monosyllabic Neanderthal – ”
    Javier snorts.              
    “I just – is this a guitar thing? ’Cause I noticed that guitar in the corner, and if you’re one of those tough-looking but sentimental amateur singer-songwriters, then the mental image of you reading literary classics will make a whole lot more sense.”
    “That guitar is the guitar I bought in high school.” There’s an expression on