by S. J. Goslee
It’s still annoying as fuck.
He slips off the sill, swiping his hands on his thighs. “So what are you hiding out in here for?” he asks. Mike knows why he’s hiding in there. He’d barely made it out of math that morning without spilling everything to Lisa. There’s no way he’d have survived lunch.
“Carter,” Serge says darkly.
“Carter,” Mike says, head cocked. “Chubby sophomore, wears cardigans—that Carter?” He can’t imagine him bullying much more than a plate of cookies.
Serge’s cheeks heat. “Sophie Carter.”
“A girl.” Mike isn’t going to make fun of him, even though that’s his first instinct. Girls can be scary.
“Well, uh. The guys mostly leave me alone, since I kicked Marcus in the nuts. And hang out with you.”
Mike slumps a hip against the bank of sinks, pleased. It’s cool that he can impress the lower classes with his badassery. Apparently girls of all ages are immune, though, that’s a little sad. “She pulling your pigtails?”
Serge makes a face. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Is Sophie hot?” Mike says, smirking. Teasing Serge will never get old.
Serge looks seriously pissy. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Like hell it doesn’t.”
“Do you think my brother’s hot?” Serge says. He’s got both his eyebrows arched and his arms crossed, like he knows exactly how Mike ticks, and what is it about Mike that somehow lets whiny little scamps grow backbones around him? Granted, Jason’s never maimed anybody’s junk, that he knows of.
Mike says, “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” and he curses Serge’s tiny, satisfied smile.
* * *
“You stupid, stupid boy,” Lisa says.
“I didn’t do anything,” Mike says into his cell. It’s preemptive; Mike isn’t sure why Lisa’s calling him. It’s late Tuesday night and he’s already in bed, his laptop paused on an episode of Buffy.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the problem.”
It’s late and Mike’s face hurts, he doesn’t need this cryptic shit. “What?”
“Chris Leoni punched you,” she says.
Mike grimaces. “How did you find out?” He’s been very carefully avoiding Lisa. A wasted effort, clearly, because everybody around him are dirty whores who can’t keep their noses out of things that are totally not their business.
“Larson told me,” Lisa says, like she can’t believe she didn’t hear it from Mike first, “and Larson heard it from Casper, who overheard Leoni telling Rook.”
“Great,” Mike says. Fucking fantastic. He hopes Larson and Casper can keep their mouths shut, but he’s not going to hold his breath.
“You know, there’s a really simple solution to this,” she says.
Mike knows what she’s alluding to, and it’s in no way simple. When he tells her that, though, she just scoffs. Scoffs, like him and Wallace being mortal enemies is some kind of joke.
“You’re such a drama queen,” Lisa says. “Man up, talk to Rook, and maybe Leoni won’t break the other half of your face.”
“I seriously hate you,” Mike says.
Lisa makes an aren’t you adorable noise, and says, “You’ll hate me more if you mess this up,” in a vaguely threatening manner, like maybe Mike’ll wake up one day with his eyebrows shaved. Mike thinks he’d look stupid without eyebrows.
He sighs loud and heavy, so she can hear how goddamn weary he is of this entire situation. “Fine,” he says.
“Fine, what?”
“I’ll talk to Wallace.” He will, he totally will. He just makes sure not to specify when.
* * *
Thanksgiving is Thursday.
Thanksgiving means Cam and Zack and their dad, because the Scott extended family is all the way across the country in California. It means Uncle Louie and Aunt Doreen and Ella and Em, the twins, who are twelve now and probably still in love with Cam—which would be funnier if Cam didn’t enjoy the attention so much.
And it means Gramps and Nana.
Gramps is a true American mutt. He likes football and beer and not talking about his feelings. Mike loves this about him.
Mike’s grandmother is a retired air force colonel with the posture and punctuality to prove it. She’s ice pale, with blond hair shot with silver, and Mike blames her Nordic roots for his own sharp features. She has a smile like a cat, and strong arms, with the strange ability to hug Mike tight and keep him at arm’s length all at the same time.
Right now, he wishes his face didn’t still look like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
Nana corners him in the hall outside his bedroom, grips his chin with cold fingers and clucks her tongue. “Fighting, Michael?” she says. “I expect more out of you.”
“Yes, Nana,” Mike says dutifully. It never pays to argue with her.
Nana gazes down at him shrewdly. She’s just a hair taller than him, but it’s still disconcerting. She says, “Your mother tells me you’re queer now.”
“She did not,” Mike says, horrified. He slumps back against the wall, palms catching at the slightly textured wallpaper. His knees feel weak.
“She used the term bisexual,” she narrows her eyes, “but no grandson of mine is going to be indecisive.”
“I don’t think that means I’m in—”
“Michael Allan Tate,” Nana says.
Mike swallows hard. Maybe he shouldn’t be concentrating on terminology now, since his seventy-five-year-old grandmother is confronting him about his sexual preferences. He brings a shaky hand up to rub his dry lower lip. “Yes, ma’am?”
She clasps her hands in front of her chest and says, “Are you, or are you not gay?”
Mike does not want to answer that. He absolutely doesn’t, but Nana will just stare at him and stare at him with her pale, scary eyes until he eventually gives up, so there’s nothing for it. “I am?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Nana says sternly.
Mike wants to die. He wants the roof to collapse and kill them all. “Telling,” he says in a very small voice.
She nods once, sharply. “Good. Now, who’s the boy?”
Boy? He can’t decide if this is worse than accidentally coming out to his mom. At least his mom didn’t interrogate him about his love life. “Uh. There’s no boy.”
“Nonsense. You don’t decide to be gay without a boy, that’s just poor planning.”
“It’s not like I decided—”
“Ostracized and alone,” Nana steamrolls right over his words. “I sincerely doubt your mother raised you to be that irresponsible—”
“I’m not ostracized, Nana, oh my god.”
Nana straightens up; it’s hard for her posture to get any more perfect, but she manages it well, she’s even looming, damn that lousy inch. “Don’t interrupt me, Michael,” she says. “It’s rude.”
Mike presses two fingers over his right eye, fighting a headache. He hasn’t even had pie yet. This is so unfair. “Sorry,” he says.
“You’re lying, but I accept your apology anyway.” Nana is simultaneously awesome and terrible.
It’s not funny, but Mike finds himself fighting off a hysterical giggle. His life—is there anyone else in the world that is this ridiculous and pathetic?
Mike’s mom yells up the stairs, “Mom, are you harassing Mike?” and relief swells over him so fast he gets a little dizzy, pushing off from the wall.
Nana gives him a look, a we’re-not-finished-young-man look, but precedes him down the stairs. Then she ruins everything by sweeping into the living room and saying, “Of course I’m not harassing Michael, Allison. He’s just being ridiculously closemouthed about his boyfriend.”
Zack chokes on a sip of beer. “You have a boyfriend?” he says.
Cam gets hysterical, the bastard, and snorts into his fist.
“Jesus Christ,” Mike says, stunned. He’s not sure what just fucking happened. He’s praying he’s having some sor
t of mental breakdown, like everyone around him is imaginary.
Nana slaps the back of his head. “Language, Michael.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mike half yells. She just outed him to his entire family.
His aunt and uncle are looking at him like he’s an alien, the twins are grinning scarily, and Nana’s mouth goes small and pinched. Mike would care if he didn’t hate her. Nana is dead to him. He’s going to pay for it later, but right now he just wants to stomp off in a hissy fit, slam his bedroom door, and sulk until Christmas.
“Michael,” Mom says. It’s her disappointed voice. Mike doesn’t think he’s warranted that. He hasn’t done anything wrong.
He sullenly flops down on the couch next to Cam, crossing his arms over his chest. Cam punches him in the shoulder, mouth stretched into this huge mocking smile, the bitch.
Mom gives him an arched eyebrow before shuffling Aunt Doreen and Nana into the kitchen. On any other mom that would probably mean he’s headed for a grounding, but Mike’s never been grounded in his whole life, not even for the time he and Cam accidentally set the garage on fire.
Gramps dials up the volume on the TV so the Eagles game drowns out whatever the twins are giggling about.
“So,” Zack says, rolling his beer bottle between his palms. He draws the word out, waggling his eyebrows in a leer, reminding Mike that, yes, no matter how cool Mike thinks Zack is, he’s still related to Cam. “You’re gay.”
Mike’s heart is thudding so hard his arms feel numb, but he scowls over at Zack and flips him off.
* * *
The day after Thanksgiving, snow-pocalypse happens. It starts in the early hours, and when Mike finally rolls out of bed around noon, the world is layered with at least a foot of pure white powder. It’s still snowing heavily, and doesn’t look ready to let up anytime soon.
Rosie is ecstatic.
Mike still wants the world to fuck off and die, but he’s no match for Rosie’s enthusiasm. He pulls on three layers of sweatpants, two hoodies, and shoves wool-covered feet into his snow boots. He tugs his knit cap down over his ears and gets out an old pair of snow gloves, the navy Batman ones, before following Rosie out into the front yard.
It’s quiet out. The snow is falling so thick and swift that there aren’t any cars on the road, so the only sounds are the hushed pings of snowflakes on snowflakes.
And then there’s a loud whoop, echoing down the street from the Wallace house, and Teeny and Lilith are racing toward them, a dark blob of Serge wandering along behind.
Mike doesn’t ask where Wallace is. Instead, he lets himself be drawn into a snowball fight, girls against guys, and he and Serge make a fort in the middle of Mike’s lawn, high and thick walled. They take too much time building the fort instead of stocking up on snowballs, and Teeny and Rosie are sneaky little shits and start pelting them rapid-fire. Mike and Serge lose spectacularly, but it makes Rosie happy, so Mike doesn’t honestly care.
Their neighborhood is completely flat. A tragedy for sledding, but in this weather they definitely aren’t driving down to Pindel Elementary, the closest hill worth any effort. They’d have to wait for the snow to stop and then for the plows to come through before attempting that. Which means the girls expend most of their energies making a snow house, two snow dogs, and a snow cow before Mrs. Wallace calls them inside for hot chocolate.
Serge stays out with Mike. He’s frowning down at their fort, like he doesn’t quite like how it turned out.
“So, uh.” Mike rubs his gloves together and watches Serge kick at the sides of it. “Where’s your brother?” He totally wasn’t going to ask about Wallace, he doesn’t know why he always does this to himself.
Serge rolls his eyes and kicks harder at the wall of snow.
They put a lot of work into that, though, even if it’s kind of lopsided, so Mike pushes him aside and hunches down to smooth out the hole he made.
Serge takes the opportunity to shove snow down the back of his sweatshirt.
“Son of a bitch!” Mike yelps, jerking to his feet and shivering, trying to shake the snow out.
Serge laughs and backs away, hands up. “C’mon, it was an accident,” he says. Mike scoops up some snow, pats it together as he slowly advances on Serge. He’s trying to be menacing, but by the way Serge is grinning at him, he doesn’t think it works.
Serge matches his steps, moving backward, and Mike lunges for him. He grabs at the pockets of his pants and manages to get the snowball up under the front of Serge’s jacket.
Serge dances away with a shout. “You suck.”
“You started this,” Mike says, and then dodges another attack. He stomps right through their fort by accident, trips over a downed tree branch, and then gets tackled into the snow cow, face-first.
It only takes a few minutes of all-out war—which Mike is definitely winning—for Serge to shake snow off his gloves, say, “Fuck this,” and “Later,” and leave for his house, getting in out of the cold.
Mike shouts, “Pussy!” after him and sprawls out on his back in the pathetic remains of their fort. He stares up at the gray sky and blinks snow out of his eyes. Flakes, fatter and slower than before, stick to his eyelashes, and melt down his temples to freeze again in his hair. He rubs the wet palms of his snow gloves over his cheeks and thinks about following Serge’s example and heading inside. He’s fucking soaked.
“You’re kind of a jerk.”
Mike tilts his head back a little to see Wallace standing above him. He’s only got jeans and a sweater on. “Yeah?” Mike says.
Wallace stares down at him, face ruddy but mainly unreadable, the lines of his brows and mouth flat. Finally, Wallace heaves a sigh. “Why do you have to be so difficult?” he says.
Mike shrugs, shoulders pressing into the snow. “Sorry.”
“You’re really not,” Wallace says, and then he hunches down, fists both his hands in the front of Mike’s hoodie, and yanks him to his feet.
Mike’s unsteady, so he grabs for Wallace’s forearms. He suddenly finds himself entirely too close to Wallace’s face.
“You’re really fucking annoying,” Wallace says, but he sounds kind of breathless and his eyes have gone navy. “And Serge says you’ve got a—frankly disturbing obsession with alternative rock.”
That’s not Mike’s fault. It’s just that he hero-worshipped Zack Scott from a very young, impressionable age. At least he’s not obsessed with power pop or, god forbid, country. In the grand scheme of things, alternative rock is awesome.
Mike isn’t going to get into that now, though.
Mike shifts his grip to Wallace’s wrists. He’s close enough to Wallace to smell the mint on his breath, and something in Mike’s chest seizes up, serious as a heart attack. The world is muffled around him, both from the roaring of nerves in his ears and the heavy, blanketing snow. “Are you sure this isn’t an ‘I’m gay, you’re gay, let’s be gay together’ kind of thing?” Mike says softly. He hadn’t been planning on saying that. Hell, he’s not even sure where it came from, but now that he thinks about it, it’s totally a valid point.
Wallace frowns. “Actually, it’s more of an ‘I’m gay, I’ve been pining for you since I hit puberty and realized what dicks are for’ kind of thing,” he says. His hands twist tighter in Mike’s sweatshirt, even though Mike hasn’t moved an inch either way. “This is kind of an unexpected bonus.”
Mike stares at the flush that’s slowly creeping up and over Wallace’s cheeks. His heart kick-starts into something resembling a regular rhythm again, amusement a slow bloom deep inside. “Pining?”
Wallace shifts awkwardly on his feet. “Uh.”
“Really?” Pining makes Wallace sound like a big, teary-eyed girl. Mike wants to laugh, but he feels like it’s a really inappropriate time. Or it feels like a great time to Mike, something to slice the insane tenseness hanging over them, except he thinks Wallace would take it the entirely wrong way.
Wallace says, “The pining part still really sucks, by
the way. You don’t…?” He makes a face. “Not even a little bit?”
Mike’s brow wrinkles. “What?”
“Like me?”
Honestly? Right now Mike feels like he’s stuck in one of Rosie’s Disney channel shows. He cocks his head, biting his bottom lip. Finally, he says, “Like you, like you?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Wallace says, but he’s smiling a little.
Mike drops his hands from Wallace’s arms and says, “I can’t believe you thought I wanted to bone your brother.” He’d honest-to-god thought Wallace had been mad that they were corrupting him.
“So … is that a no?” Wallace says, finally releasing Mike’s sweatshirt.
It takes a couple seconds for Mike to realize Wallace is still waiting for an answer—does Mike like him?
“It’s not a no,” Mike says. Then, after a pause, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Fuck, Mike.” Wallace laughs, choked, like it’s not actually funny. “You realize I’ve totally put myself out there for you. A couple times, now. How the hell can you not know what I want you to say?”
It’s different, Mike thinks, than it was with J. J. With J. J., he knew he didn’t like him. He liked certain parts of J. J., but not enough to make up a whole that wasn’t a complete smug and pretentious asswipe. With Wallace, all his dislikes have apparently been based on a false premise. There’s still a tiny niggling of doubt, though, so Mike asks, “Are you sure you’re not just fucking with me?” just to be sure.
Wallace growls under his breath, and Mike feels it all the way down to his toes.
He doesn’t know what makes him do it. Maybe it’s the way Wallace’s eyes narrow in frustration, shoulders tense, like he’s one second away from stomping his foot in a temper tantrum. Maybe it’s the way Wallace’s fingers clench, like he’s fighting the urge to reach out and grab. Maybe it’s because Wallace made all the moves last time, he’s said all the right words, and all Mike’s done is throw it all back into his face.
Mike slowly lifts his hand, bites the tip of his middle finger and tugs off his glove, lets it drop to the ground between their feet. He does the same with the other, then he reaches out, spreads warm fingers on Wallace’s cold throat. Wallace shivers, and there’s that curve of his mouth, the smirk Mike’s actually missed, and Mike thinks Wallace is tense now for an entirely different reason.
