Maybe he was angry and disgusted, and just didn’t say so.

Yet, Lance doesn’t think Robbie could have hidden his real feelings so well. There’d been no trace of condemnation on his face.

Maybe I’m the one who’s angry and disgusted.

That thought is the one that lingers in Lance’s head until sunup.

When the sun rises, Robbie wakes. He doesn’t say anything to Lance; maybe he thinks Lance is sleeping. He runs water in the sink; Lance hears the now-familiar sounds of the pat of a scoop of powdered milk against the surface of the warm water, and then the tinny call of the swirling whisk against the thick plastic mixing bowl. When he’s finished, Robbie opens and closes the door, and for a few minutes at least, Lance is really alone.

Lance slides out of bed immediately, gets the clothes he dug out of the odds and ends of Johnny’s old wardrobe just for the occasion of today, and walks fast for the bathroom, trying not to look at the air mattress and its single pillow and blanket as he dodges it. He shuts the door and turns on the shower, getting cleaned up as fast as possible and hoping the steam might take a few of the wrinkles out of Johnny’s khakis and button-down.

Under the stream of water, Lance remembers running from his father’s house to Riverside for the last time six years ago, and offering his heart to Robbie, knowing Robbie would never take it. For some reason, there’s an echo of that same feeling in the visceral reaction he had last night when Robbie calmly reminded him that there was nothing Lance could do which would change the way Robbie feels about him.

You’re family. It’s all Lance ever wanted, until he began to want more.

Lance can’t quite puzzle through the feelings, as there’s too much white noise. And he knows that if he says anything to Robbie, Lance will break down. He’ll sob. He’ll act like the broken child he was at sixteen.

Maybe he already ruined everything last night, but maybe, if he can get through the next few days…if the case could somehow just go away—

There’s an audible click in his mind.

That’s it.

If he’s going to have a shot with Robbie, he has to get rid of the criminal case. He’ll fix things with Niall for long enough to make it all go away. It’s a half-formed idea, but he knows immediately that it’s the course he has to take. Pulling on yet another ill-fitting set of Johnny’s clothes, he dares to emerge from the bathroom, pretty sure Robbie isn’t back yet, and he’s right. Lance lopes across the hayloft to the dresser where he’s been rummaging for all of his borrowed clothes, but this time, he opens the top drawer, where he put the plastic bag of stuff from the jail. He hasn’t bothered with the phone since he realized it was disconnected, but if it still has enough battery to turn on, he can pull up Niall’s number and call him from Robbie’s cell.