Bass could feel his focused gaze from across the fire. It was cold, cutting through the warm summer night. He could remember a time when a fire was something to relax next to, drink a few beers by. Now a fire was a necessity. It was used to cook,to boil water, to keep animals away. Not to enjoy your cold beer aside. He could remember doing that with Miles, drinking cold beers next to the fire pit in his parents back yard, but it was a fuzzy, distant sort of remembering. The kind of remembering that made you think it could have been a dream, if you didn't have the smell of the smoke to tell you it was real.

Bass was broken out of his reverie by Charlie's warm hand on his shoulder, leaning down to hand him his plate. As she turned to go he snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her into his lap and nuzzling her throat. "Thank you my sweet, docile little woman" he murmured in her ear, while she gave a throaty laugh and hit him in the shoulder.

"Sweet and docile hm? Don't you just wish. Ask that deer on your plate how sweet and docile I was when I shot him in the neck."

" You're right, thank you my fierce, sexy warrior woman" he answered, moving his hand down to squeeze her thigh.

Aaron have them a disgusted look from the log next to them. " Your foreplay is disturbing." Charlie just laughed, leaning down to give Bass a lingering kiss before getting up to get her own bowl of the venison stew.

As she sat back down next to him, Bass looked up to see Miles' gaze still focused on them. He could still read Miles like a book, after all these years. He could see the simmering fury in his eyes, along with the jealousy and bitterness. It had been there almost since the moment Charlie had brought him to Willoughby. Definitely since it had been made clear to him that their relationship had changed drastically on the long journey, and that Charlie gave zero shits about what any of her family thought about that. She made it quite clear that she and Bass were together, a package deal that they could either take or leave.

They took it of course, after much screaming and yelling, Rachel pulling out a shotgun, Charlie rather succinctly disarming Rachel of said shotgun, and a fistfight between Bass and Miles. After all was said and done, an uneasy truce was formed where they all pretended there wasn't a maelstrom of hidden emotions going on under the surface of their everyday lives. Miles pretended that he was angry Bass was fucking his niece, not that he wished he was the one fucking her instead.

Rachel pretended that she didn't know that she was, at best, second choice. A stand in for her own daughter. She pretended that the man she lay in bed next to every night didn't wish it was his niece next him instead. Bass could see that she knew, could see it in the cold, calculating way she would look at Charlie when she thought nobody was watching. He could see that it wasn't disgust or worry the sick, twisted bitch was feeling, but bitter jealousy. It was the same way that Miles looked at him now.

Through every fucked up thing they had done through, with, for and against one another, Bass thought that this would be the one that would finally break them. Bass could not justify or allow that look of lust and want and possession that his brother wore when he looked at the woman Bass loved. Nor could he put aside the new look that Miles wore when scrutinizing him. Because on top of that hate and jealousy and fury, there was now calculation. As if he were imagining just how Charlie would lean on and cling to good 'ol uncle Miles after the tragedy that would unfortunately befall his good buddy Bass. Uncle Miles, who would be all she had left in this world. Imagining how he could twist that grief and dependence into finally becoming what and who he wanted to be to her. Bass knew how his mind worked, especially those dark and twisted corners that were so similar to his own, those unmapable places where Bass had lived for so very long. Where he had been trapped, until Charlie came in like a super nova, throwing light on them, airing them out and making them places he could live again without the darkness threatening and grabbing at him every moment. A not so small part of him could even understand Miles' viewpoint, because that's what Charlie did. She took broken and used things and made them useful again through her own Hurculean force of will and self. When Charlie was with you, believing in you, you felt like everything would be okay, that you would be okay. Charlie was sunlight and warmth after a lifetime of gray, rainy days. It was only natural to want to be as close as possible to that sunshine. Unfortunately for Miles, that spot was taken, and Bass would fight tooth and nail and sword and fist before he allowed anyone else to take it, even the person he loved second most in the entire world. A naive part of him hoped it wouldn't come to that, but that small piece of General Monroe still left in him knew that it would if they stayed.