NB: (the three asterisks *** represent Ethan's memories that I added to paint a better picture of it.)
Leon could remember it clearly like it happened just a couple days ago and yet it had a surreality around it like it never really happened.
He thought it weird that Ethan kept bothering him to come over alone but they were friends after all and eventually he gave in.
It seemed nice enough at the start, both his parents were out so they had the house just to themselves and unlike his house, there was life in this one.
It lacked the vibrancy that Jaxon's house had though but that wasn't important, he was just here to mess around with Ethan to fulfil a promise he never remembered making.
They had started off tame with hide and seek, Leon found it odd that Ethan kept insisting to do the seeking and he always caught him but he chalked that up to it being his house.
Then after they got bored, Ethan suggested they play pranks so that the person to get pranked the most would have to do whatever they wanted for a day.
Seemed legit to a fifteen year old, he didn't expect it to turn dark so fast.
After a few pranks, he had tied a thin string at the edge of a hallway, Ethan had gotten him a couple times with that prank already and he wanted to get him back.
What he didn't expect was for Ethan's mom to come back, it seemed like she had forgotten some important files because she came in from the back door, grabbed the files and hurried out the front door.
Leon hadn't seen her, crouched at the edge of the hallway, waiting to laugh at Ethan for falling flat on his face.
What he didn't expect was for Ethan's mom to come hurrying through the hallway, there was no time to warn her because he didn't see her till she tripped.
It might have just been a bad joke if she had simply stumbled and tripped but she slid as well, stumbling down the flight of stairs, breaking her neck and dying instantly, files littered around.
He could do nothing but watch in horror as she fell to her death in front of him, his hands covering his mouth, blue eyes glassy with unshed tears.
The ruckus had alerted Ethan who hurried over, took one look at the scene and went ash grey but was quick to recover, while Leon was still frozen in shock.
He had just killed someone.
He couldn't have guessed then what was going on in Ethan's head.
***Sure he was sad that his mom was lying at the bottom of their stairs with her blood pooling around her.
He was also elated at the possibility of getting Leon's attention forever.***
Ethan had come over to him then and Leon looked helplessly at him, expecting the worst, he didn't expect what came next.
Ethan had knelt in front of him, cupped his face with both hands and kissed him harshly, for some reason that made the tears gathering in his eyes rain down.
***Ethan had planned to get a kiss from Leon by winning the prank game but his mom won for him, it was perfect, if he promised not to tell on him, he could get Leon to do whatever he wanted.
Forever.
He tried it out with a kiss, it was his first, he had just planned a simple kiss but then Leon's tears started to fall and the vulnerability in his usually cold and aloof eyes had branded itself in his mind so he kissed him harder, maybe a bit too hard.
Because he had tasted the faintest hint of blood when he pulled back***
Ethan had then told him to sneak out the back that he would handle it after wiping his tears, it was a conflicting situation and his conflicting emotions didn't offer respite.
It was why even though he had buried this memory so deeply that it stopped existing to him, all it took was one harsh kiss from Ethan to remind him.
He hated every moment of it.
***Ethan might have gotten addicted to the look of vulnerability in Leon's eyes at that moment and his strange obsession with him only grew, he had never really liked anything.
Maybe it was from his parents accidentally having him and then neglecting him but none of the toys or pets they got for him sparked his interest and then they moved down to Pine Creek when he was ten.
He had taken one look at Leon and decided that he was the one thing he liked.
He got rid of the string and made sure to wipe every trace of it from his mom's shins before calling his dad with affected terror and panic.
He got away with it.
His mom's death had been declared accidental but his dad kept insisting that he was the one who killed her and treated him that way.
He might have ignored his father's existence still but he had to go and take Ethan away from Leon, that was unacceptable***
All that was gone now, he just wanted a toy he liked.
~*~
By the time that Leon had apologised through everything that had happened, Darian had curled in slightly on him like he was trying to protect him from it.
Jaxon had drifted over, holding Leon's hand in his clean hand that wasn't covered in Ethan's blood..
Leon had tired himself out, he was far from recovered, curling into Darian.
Theo cleared his throat in the silence that followed, Ethan had dropped his head again and it seemed like no words would be coming from Leon again.
"Your dad and I were friends, he told me you were killing him." He spoke up.
Everyone's head whipped in Theo's direction except for Jaxon, Leon and Darian who were in their own little circle.
"What does it matter now? That old fool ruined everything by making us leave, the only reason I kept him alive was because I still needed him." Ethan muttered distantly, he had lost his edge after Leon opened up.
It was terrifying, almost like he had gone listless after realising that he had lost Leon for real this time.
"I think we're done here." Darian spoke up, already turning around to stride away before he could even get a response, Jaxon right by his side.