Let It Snow

by Heidi Cullinan

  Frankie nodded his understanding, huddling under his quilt. In the coziness of the evening, he’d almost forgotten they were entering stage one of a blizzard. “How many days is it supposed to go on?”

  Paul, who had done some weather intel at the café while Frankie and Patty had chatted, shook his head. “No idea. Initially it was two days of snow and then three of blowing, but nobody has a clue now. It all depends on when the system moves over.” When Frankie shrank deeper into his blanket, Paul gave him a sideways smile. “No worries. We’ll take care of you, Frankie.”

  Arthur tugged on Paul’s hand. “Speaking of taking care of people, I thought you were tired.”

  “Well yeah, but not so tired I can’t talk to our guest for a second.”

  “Well, I am that tired.” He swatted Paul on the ass and headed for the stairs. “Get on up here in ten or I get out the paddle.”

  “The hell you will,” Paul said, but he hurried into the bathroom all the same.

  Marcus and Frankie were left alone in the common room with the awkward aftermath of the departure.

  Clearing his throat, Marcus headed for the wood stove. “I’ll bank it up good and see to the fireplace too, and then I’ll make up the bed.”

  “I can do that,” Frankie volunteered, rising, but Marcus glared at him.

  “I got it.” He nodded at the bathroom, which Paul was vacating as he rounded to the stairs. “You go brush your teeth and whatever else you have to do.”

  There wasn’t any question, Frankie decided as he slammed the bathroom door shut behind him and turned on the battery-powered lantern at the sink. Marcus didn’t like him at all.

  A sharp slap came from the loft, followed by a heavy groan. Sighing, Frankie rested his head on the cupboard door and got himself ready for a long, long night.

  Chapter Five

  LISTENING TO PAUL and Arthur’s nightly pornographic soundtrack hadn’t ever been Marcus’s favorite thing in the world—usually he either jerked off and put in earplugs or went right to the earplugs. Not once had playing their silent witness made him think he’d like to go and get himself a partner to fuck too, not in the seven months he’d been sleeping on the sofa.

  Of course, not once in seven months had he been sharing the sofa with someone who, if he were honest, he wanted to fuck very, very much.

  Marcus couldn’t be anything but hyperaware of Frankie’s presence in his bed, tuned in to the rhythm of his breathing, the heat of his body, the small and sometimes significant spasms he made when Paul and Arthur were especially loud. They’d ended up getting out the paddle after all, which was never an easy session because Paul truly didn’t like it and Arthur loved it, so to the untrained listener it came off pretty bad. Jesus, but Marcus wished they’d find different lovers and go back to being just friends. At the very least he wished they’d chill when they were all about to be trapped in the cabin together for days.

  He wished they’d consider that fucking this vocally was rude with company, and damn frustrating for their roommate who had a bit of a thing for their guest.

  If he thought he’d have been able to sleep, Marcus would have put in the earplugs, but he’d still feel Frankie’s jerks and gasps of surprise. He wanted to be able to reassure his bed partner if he got too uneasy. That had seemed important the night before, though he wasn’t sure if he should do it again.

  He ended up staying quiet until the loft reached its inevitable climax, and then he lay there until his dick went soft enough he could sleep.

  In the middle of the night he woke to find himself facing Frankie, their legs tangled together.

  The fire still had a faint glow, and Marcus indulged in a silent observation of the younger man, vulnerable and sweet in his slumber. If he thought he could do so without waking him up, Marcus would have stroked the stray flop of hair from Frankie’s face. He hadn’t gotten a shower in the day before, and his gelled-up hair was especially crazy. Probably Frankie hated it, but Marcus thought it was adorable.

  He thought Frankie was adorable straight up, which was really damn dangerous.

  Eventually he untangled their legs and rolled back over, but he never really slept, only slipping in and out of a shallow stupor until at six he got up, put on his winter clothes, and fired up the generator so he could make breakfast.

  When he came back in, Frankie stood in the kitchen, wrapped in his quilt and biting his lip as he warily eyed the stove.

  “I’ll make your tea in a second,” Marcus told him, washing his hands in the sink.

  “I can make it. This is the kettle, right? Any particular water I should use or not use?”

  “I said I’ll make it.” Marcus nodded at the table. “You sit.”

  For some stupid reason, Frankie looked hurt, but he didn’t say anything, only went to the table as he was told. Marcus opened the cupboard where he’d stashed Frankie’s boxes. “Which tea do you want?”

  “The English breakfast, please.” He was polite when he spoke, his words soft and precise. Marcus couldn’t explain to himself why English breakfast, please was so arousing, but in Frankie’s mouth, it was.

  “Got it.” He put the kettle on, draping the bag into a thick, clean mug. “Oatmeal okay again?”

  “Anything’s fine. I can do dry cereal too. I don’t want to be trouble.”

  Wasn’t it obvious that Marcus was trying to do something for him? Why was Frankie always undercutting that? Marcus glowered into the fridge. “Is bacon okay, or does it upset your stomach too?”

  “I can eat a little, but too much grease makes me queasy. I’m sorry.”

  Why did he have to be sorry? What had Marcus said now? God, Marcus might have three degrees and half a doctorate, but around Frankie he couldn’t manage to feel like anything but a clod. “I’ll just make oatmeal.”

  He couldn’t help but notice the stark contrast between the silence he and Frankie kept and the raucous chatter that began as soon as Arthur boomed down the stairs, like seeing someone who wasn’t Marcus made Frankie breathe easier. He lit up, relaxed and talked almost as much as Arthur. Apparently they were going to have a cribbage tournament today while the snow came down.

  Probably Marcus would have to do all the cleaning up while they did it. Maybe if he was lucky, they’d let him listen to them talk.

  You’re being a surly bastard, Marcus scolded himself, and focused on breakfast.

  FRANKIE WAS PRETTY sure if it had been he and Marcus snowed in alone together, one of them would have been dead or he’d have had to run off screaming into the snow.

  Throughout the morning, Frankie made several efforts to include Marcus in conversation, but somehow even the most benign acknowledgments seemed to be construed by Marcus as offensive. The man was, quite simply, impossible. Nothing Frankie did inspired Marcus to tolerate Frankie’s shared existence in his space. Yet every time Frankie tried to get out of his way, to take a burden from Marcus’s shoulders, this pissed Papa Bear off too.

  It was good there wasn’t a loaded gun visible in the cabin. Frankie didn’t know how to shoot one, but Marcus was certainly an inspiration to learn how.

  The worst part was Frankie couldn’t figure out why the hell he cared. He wanted to blame his confused emotions on cabin fever, but likely that was a cop-out. It wasn’t just attraction either; yes, he found Marcus very physically attractive, but he found a lot of men physically attractive and it didn’t impede his life.

  For all his grumpy-bear routine, Marcus had regular flashes of humanity that Frankie desperately wanted to connect with. His explanation in bed that first night about Paul and Arthur’s sex life had been a big one, but there were plenty of others, some of them words, a lot of them gestures. Like bringing Frankie food and tea, which Marcus kept doing. He wouldn’t let Frankie lift a finger for much of anything, and though there was usually a grumpiness about those moments, there was also an odd sense of caretaking. Sometimes it seemed like Marcus resented the caretaking, not Frankie—yet he wouldn’t stop.

 
There was the making of the chili too. A pot of the same stuff the other guys had sans meat would have been fine, or even with the chicken tossed in, but no, Marcus had whipped up a certifiable gourmet white chicken chili just for Frankie, and he wouldn’t let anyone else eat it. He made Arthur wait to use the shower because he’d noticed Frankie hadn’t had one the day before and worried there wouldn’t be enough hot water for more than one person every few hours. When Frankie promised to be fast, Marcus had insisted Frankie take his time.

  Grumpily, yes. But it was weird. Take away the grumpy and Marcus was almost doting. It made no sense.

  It made Frankie crazy.

  He tried not to think about it, and as they ate chili again for their lunch, he focused his attention on Paul and Arthur, who eagerly conversed with him.

  “You know what I do for a living,” Frankie said, “but I don’t know about any of you.”

  “We’re loggers.” Arthur’s tone was proud. “Take down the timber, strip the bark, make people furniture and lumber and everything else they need.”

  Frankie didn’t have to feign interest in this. They were lumberjacks. “Wow, really? That’s so cool. I went through a big Ax Men phase a few winters ago.” He bit his lip to stop a smile. “Okay, you can make fun if you need to, but do you ever yell timber when the trees go down?”

  Arthur belly laughed at that, easing out of his defensive posture. “No. Can’t say I ever have.”

  “I heard a guy use it once,” Paul volunteered, “but he was pretty green. Though I’m not out in the woods much since I work in the plant.” He leaned around Frankie to address Marcus, who was still puttering in the kitchen. “What about you, Marcus?”

  “No,” was all Marcus replied.

  Paul settled back in his chair and shrugged. “Marcus hasn’t been doing this as long as either of us, but he’s worked with a lot of green guys, so I thought maybe they were more likely to shout stuff. Most of the guys just work close and careful, and the foreman double-checks where everyone is. The stands we work have thin trees, so you work pretty fast, and there are three to five guys on a team, so it’d be one timber after another.”

  Frankie turned toward the kitchen. “What did you do before logging, Marcus?”

  Marcus glared at Frankie and said, “Nothing.”

  Even Arthur seemed to notice how grumpy Marcus was. He frowned at his friend, then shook his head and pushed away his bowl. “Guess it’s my turn to stoke the stove.”

  “Is there anything else we need to be doing?” Frankie asked as Arthur gathered some wood and stoked first the fireplace and then the wood stove. “I’ve only ever weathered blizzards in town.”

  “Not much to do but wait it out,” Arthur replied as he worked. “Keep the cabin warm, keep an eye on the generator. When the snow goes down a bit, we can make a run into town, but it’s too heavy just now to do anything but sit and wait ’er out.” He arched his back after putting the last log into the stove. “I’d say let’s start drinking the beer, but I’m too old to get drunk this early in the day.”

  A glance at the clock above the window told Frankie it was only one o’clock. It felt like five in the afternoon, and the idea of days more of this kind of inactivity—and Marcus’s cranky-pants attitude—made his heart heavy. “I wish we could go outside or something.”

  “We can, but we can’t go far.” Arthur considered this a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Hell, maybe we can make a snowman. Paul, Marcus, you in?”

  Unsurprisingly, Paul agreed but Marcus only grunted and kept wiping the kitchen counter.

  It was colder than cold outside, the snow coming down thick and fast and the wind whipping around, but even so it was ten times better than being indoors. The snow wouldn’t pack, but Frankie threw it at Paul and Arthur anyway, laughing and letting them chase him. His new overalls were great, keeping him toasty especially as he kept moving. It didn’t take long, though, for the cold to seep into his fingers and toes, and when Paul suggested they go back inside, Frankie was ready.

  It was one thirty.

  “Time for coffee and cribbage,” Arthur declared. “Though I’m telling you, I’m getting the whiskey out once the sun goes down. This is going to be one long storm.”

  Marcus had already started the coffee. It was stupid, he knew, but Frankie tried to sneak around him and prep the teakettle on his own. When Marcus caught him, he glared.

  Frankie had had enough. “I’m just making tea. Is there some trick to the stove or something, or why won’t you let me do it?”

  There was no reason for Marcus to look wounded at this, but he did, and though it shouldn’t have been possible, he got ten times surlier. “Fine. Make it yourself.”

  He stormed out of the kitchen area and toward the recliner. It took everything in Frankie not to throw the fucking kettle at the back of his head.

  AS THE FIRST day of their being confined together wore on, Marcus began to feel like the fat kid at a pool party—and he had been the fat kid at a pool party, so he knew what he was talking about. Even when people tried to include him, the overtures felt awkward and obligatory. Part of him knew he should try to join their conversations on his own, but he couldn’t seem to find a way in, which only served to make him feel more left out.

  To make matters worse, Frankie kept looking at Marcus expectantly, though what he thought was going to happen, Marcus couldn’t guess. He tried glancing back at him, waiting for a cue, but all that did was make Frankie blush and turn back to the others. It didn’t make any sense.

  When Paul finally got the cribbage board and cards out at three, Marcus decided he’d had enough. “I’m going out to split some more wood,” he declared, and thankfully nobody pointed out the wall by the door was stacked to the ceiling with logs and the front porch had enough for the next day. They let him bundle up and go out into the blast of wind and ice, probably glad to be rid of him.

  Goddamn it. He didn’t know how he’d keep from going crazy if this lasted as many days as it looked like it might.

  The snow was over a foot deep now, and he had to really trudge to get through it. It was way too windy to work outside, so Marcus took a few logs into the barn, propping them up on an old bench before swinging the axe down. He felt better after a few rounds, his confusion and loneliness seeping out of his body with each swing. It would be fine, he told himself. He was just hung up on Steve still, which he’d known, and Frankie was a walking reminder. It’d be frustrating for a while, but pretty soon he’d get used to it, and before he knew it Frankie would go back to Minneapolis and he’d never see him again.

  It wasn’t like he could really have a chance with Frankie anyway. Despite his enthusiasm over Marcus’s current employment, guys like Frankie didn’t want to date loggers who lived in the North Woods. There was no way, either, that Marcus was living anywhere else, not anymore. Not with his mom sick. He wasn’t going back to the Cities, and he wasn’t going to any other city. So at best he could have a fling with Frankie, which had never gone well for him. Best to keep jerking off on his own and working. He’d be fine.

  Lonely, but fine.

  He swung the axe down, and an image of Frankie smiling for Arthur and Paul flashed through his mind.

  It would be fine. Fine, fine, fine.

  The door to the shed slammed open and shut. Marcus turned.

  Frankie was there.

  He looked like a fashionable mummy, trussed up in his overalls and bright red ski coat and his balaclava, his angry blue eyes visible in the narrow slit above his nose. After coming all the way into the shed, he pulled off the head covering and tossed it on the ground in front of Marcus.

  “What is wrong with you?” Frankie demanded.

  Too surprised to reply, Marcus put down the axe and stared.

  “I’m done with this. You hear me? Done.” Frankie didn’t come closer, standing just inside the doorway, shaking with cold or rage or both. “I’m not going to spend days and days like this, having you snipe at me and ignore me all
day and then lie next to me at night like if you move too close to me you’ll get cooties or something. God, if you were homophobic, I’d get it, but obviously—” He stopped, as if something was dawning on him, and then his pretty features turned up into a sneer. “Shit. You’re one of them, aren’t you? Think effeminate guys are the reason you get so much hell? If I weren’t so swishy, maybe your life would be easier?”

  “What the fuck? No.” Marcus shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  This only seemed to fan Frankie’s fires of indignation. “What am I talking about? I’m talking about how you won’t say more than three words to me, how you won’t let me do anything to help in the house, but when you have to do something for me, you act like it’s the biggest imposition in the world. If you hate me, just come out and say it. Get it out of your system, because if you’re going to be like this, I’m stealing the Ski-Doo and staying with Patty in town.”

  “The hell you’re leaving,” Marcus shot back.

  “Why do you hate me?” Frankie demanded.

  Fucking hell. “I don’t hate you.”

  Frankie put his hands on his hips and glared.

  Marcus glared back, doing him one better and taking several steps closer to Frankie. “I don’t hate you. You’re not an imposition. And you’re not stealing the Ski-Doo.”

  “You won’t talk to me.” Frankie crossed his arms over his chest, his slick red coat whispering shoosh at the gesture. “You always growl at me.”

  “I do not.”

  “You do. You just did growl. You growl at me and you glare and you make me feel like shit.” His eyes developed a sheen, and he pulled off his gloves, angrily wiping at them. “If you make me cry, you asshole, I’m running you over with the Ski-Doo.”

  Marcus deliberately tried to soften his countenance, despite the gesture making him feel so naked he wanted to throw up. “I’m sorry I made you feel like shit, Frankie.”

  This, however, only made Frankie wilt. “Goddamn it, stop.”