Page 63 of Playing with Fire

"That's fucking disgusting," I snarled, though I couldn't quite banish the disturbing mental image.

Xion tilted his head. "Actually, I could see it. All that control in public... might crave the opposite in private."

"I'm going to be sick," I announced, while Xander cackled.

Leo cleared his throat awkwardly. "Maybe we could... not discuss your biological father's sexual preferences?"

"You think this is funny, don't you?" I growled at Xander.

"Hilarious, actually," they replied with a smirk. "The great Xavier Laskin, terror of the criminal underworld, bending over for his virgin boyfriend. It's positively Shakespearean in its irony."

I grabbed the front of Xander’s shirt. "You're about three seconds away from eating your own teeth."

"Ladies, ladies," Xion drawled from his chair, not even looking up from his phone. "You're both pretty. Can we get back to finding the psycho who's trying to barbecue our family, or do you need to whip them out and measure first? Because we all know I'd win."

Leo blinked. "But…you're identical triplets. Isn't it…you know. The same size for all of you?"

All three of us froze, turning to stare at Leo in stunned silence. Xander's mouth hung open. Xion looked like he'd been slapped. I felt something between horror and possessive fury surge through me. Why the fuck was Leo thinking about my brothers' dicks?

"What? I just—" Leo started, then stopped, his face flushing as he realized what he'd just said. "I mean, scientifically speaking—"

"No," I cut him off, my voice deadly quiet. "We are not having this conversation. Ever."

"But—" Leo tried again.

"Ever," I repeated, fixing him with a look that shut him down immediately.

The awkward silence stretched between us like a live wire.

I released Xander's shirt with a disgusted shove. "Fuck you."

"No thanks," they replied cheerfully, smoothing out their shirt. "That's Leo's job now, apparently."

"I'm going to fucking kill you," I snarled, but there was no real heat behind it anymore. This was just Xander pushing buttons because it was what they did best. Because none of us knew how to process fear like normal people. "And you," I added, turning to Xion, "are a fucking traitor for not backing me up."

Xion finally looked up from his phone, his expression serious despite the banter. "Bro, I'm just glad someone's making you happy. God knows you've been a miserable bastard long enough." He shrugged. "Leo's good for you. Who cares who sticks what where?"

"That's... surprisingly mature of you," Leo commented, sounding genuinely impressed.

"Don't get used to it," Xion replied, returning to his phone. “The voices in my head are just too distracting for me to come up with a good one-liner right now.”

"And on that delightful note," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose, "can we please get back to finding the arsonist who's been targeting our family?"

Leo nodded. "Maybe we're overthinking this. What if we go back to the beginning?"

"The beginning of what?" Xander asked, apparently bored now that the prospect of a brotherly fistfight had faded.

"Xavier's hunts," Leo clarified. "The first time he went solo. If this is personal, it might go back further than we think."

"I've already done that," I pointed out, gesturing to the board. "There's nothing there."

"No, no. I mean start the first case over again. Look back at your very first job. Go through the evidence. Maybe the clue you need is something you missed the first time."

My jaw tightened. "I don't miss things, Leo. I don't do a job if I don't know everything."

"But maybe you did the first time." Leo approached the board and started pulling things down. "There's something somewhere in a job you did early on, probably. Something you wouldn't miss today, but your inexperience led you to overlook the first time. So let's start there. Tell us about the first case."

I stared at Leo, offended by the suggestion that I'd ever been inexperienced enough to miss something crucial. But the tiny voice in the back of my mind, the one that had been screaming at me for days that I was missing something, whispered that he might be right.

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