Impractical Magic

by M. J. O'Shea

  You okay?

  Fen took the easy road.

  Yeah. My connection went out.

  Course, that didn’t explain why he hadn’t picked up his phone. He figured Kevin wasn’t stupid, though. He’d figure it out.

  I’m just gonna go to bed.

  Kevin replied with a simple, okay.

  Fen didn’t sleep for a long time. He was all keyed up and anxious and still weirdly turned on, and nothing in his body felt right. He figured somehow he deserved it.

  KEVIN CALLED a few more times that week. Fen didn’t answer. He felt like an asshole for not answering—it wasn’t like Kevin had broken any rules, stated or implied. He was just being a hot, single twenty-three-year-old. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. Fen still didn’t know how to talk to him. So he didn’t.

  He had a long week. The kids seemed to have a sixth sense for when he was tired and unhappy, and as a group they decided it was the perfect opportunity to act like assholes and make every day even harder. Lab equipment somehow got broken, simple concepts that they’d been building toward for weeks were impossible for them to grasp, they talked and texted and mostly failed the pop quiz he gave on Tuesday. Most days that week, he felt like thunking his head down onto his desk and giving up.

  By the time the weekend rolled around, he was torn between relief and dread over two long days of silence. He wasn’t in the mood to hang out with the guys and he didn’t have much work to do. Plus, every day he ignored Kevin’s calls made it that much more likely that he’d never call again.

  He dragged himself to the gym for a workout he didn’t feel like doing. Afterward, he barely made it into his apartment and onto the couch before he closed his eyes. He sat there, eyes closed, in silence, without even the television for company for a long time. He’d drifted off into an uneasy half sleep when his cell rang from deep in the recesses of his coat pocket. He dragged it out, not even sure he felt like talking to anyone, and gulped when he saw it was Kevin. Again. Fen figured he might as well get the awkward conversation they had to have about cutting things off over with. He pressed the button to accept his call.

  “HEY.”

  “Oh, uh, wow. Hi. I didn’t think you were ever going to answer my calls again.” Kevin sounded sad and relieved.

  “I wasn’t sure I was. I’m stupid, okay?”

  “You’re not stupid.”

  “I just assumed that you were feeling things like I was and I shouldn’t have. I kind of broke my own dumb heart. I need to step back, though. Let you get on with things.”

  There. Do it before he does.

  “Fen. No. I’m sorry, okay. Like, actually sorry, both to you and to myself. It was only twice, and both times I felt like it should have been you, and it was wrong, and I didn’t even like it. Well, I mean I liked it, I guess, but—”

  Fen didn’t want to hear about Kevin’s sex life. At all. “I get it.”

  “I don’t think you do. I am feeling everything you’re feeling. It’s been months since I did that. Before Thanksgiving.”

  Somehow that did make it better. “Were you ever going to tell me if you hadn’t slipped up?”

  “Yeah. I was. I have some things to say to you. A lot of things. But I don’t want to say them on the phone. You think you can get out of town for spring break? That’s in a week, right?”

  Fen continued to be in awe of the way Kevin managed to remember his schedule when half the time he didn’t remember it himself. “Yeah. I don’t have any plans. I could fly down.”

  “Good. Great. You’ll get a ticket?”

  “I can, yeah.” Fen paused. “Do you honestly want me to come? I’m not sure I get what’s going on here.”

  “Yes.” Kevin sounded frustrated. Maybe Fen was a lot slower than he’d always thought he was. “I honestly do.”

  “Then I’ll buy a ticket.”

  Chapter 16

  FEN DIDN’T know if he was going to go until the moment he stepped on the plane. Before that, well, he wanted to see Kevin, his body felt like it was going to fly apart if he didn’t touch him, but it still hurt in random little bursts whenever he thought about Kevin with other guys. Even if Kevin said it was a mistake and he didn’t want to be with anyone else anymore, it was hard to even talk to Kevin on the phone sometimes with that dumb hurt all curled up in his chest. He had no idea what it was going to be like to see him.

  The plane ride was short, but Fen had a lot of thinking to do on the way there. He wanted it. He wanted him and Kevin more than anything he could ever remember wanting. It was all-encompassing and hot and steady and a little terrifying, truthfully, and he wanted it. But Kevin hadn’t wanted it enough not to sleep with other people, at least not at first. Fen didn’t know what to think about that.

  He looked out the windows at the ground far below and the puffy specks of cloud. The plane started sinking to the ground before he knew it, his belly filled with that odd sinking floating feeling, and his ears popped a few times.

  This is it.

  KEVIN WAS waiting outside baggage claim. His smile was sweet but tentative, like he wasn’t sure what to expect. Fen smiled back. Not like he was going to go over there and rip Kevin’s head off and eat it. He still loved him, even if his heart felt a little bruised. And he still hadn’t told him.

  “Hey, you.” Kevin held out his arms.

  Fen couldn’t resist. Insecurities be damned, he dropped his weekend bag and wrapped his arms around Kevin’s lean, muscled torso. “Hi.”

  They stood there for a long time, just breathing each other in, before a car honked angrily.

  “We’d better get out of the way,” Kevin said. He reached down and took Fen’s bag and tossed it over his shoulder. “I’m really glad you’re here. Just in case you didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, I am too.” And he was. That much he’d decided.

  The drive to Kevin’s place was quiet, but not awkward. Kevin’s radio blipped along in the background and he’d rolled his windows down to let the warm air in. It was a nice, mellow spring heat. Kevin’s building was nice too, a lot closer to the water than Fen would’ve imagined someone Kevin’s age could afford.

  “I like your place,” Fen said when he dropped his bag on the couch. The walls were familiar from their ill-fated Skype session, but he was surprised how well put together the place was. There was tons of art on the walls and the furniture was better than anything Fen had.

  “Thanks. I really like having somewhere to come home to at night that feels like… well, home.”

  “I get what you’re saying. I suppose I haven’t made my apartment that great because I keep thinking I’m going to buy a house. I just can’t make my mind up about what part of town I want to live in. I can’t afford the places I want on a teacher’s salary.”

  Kevin gave him a shy smile that Fen wasn’t sure he understood.

  THEY PUTTERED around a little, getting drinks and sitting on Kevin’s plush couch. Fen laid his head back. He hadn’t slept well the night before, unsure of how this whole thing would work out.

  Kevin reached out for his hand. Fen flinched for a moment before he relaxed into Kevin’s touch.

  Kevin sat up and tugged on Fen’s hand. “Okay, we need to talk now or this is going to be a long week.”

  “We do?” Fen wasn’t deliberately playing dumb. Okay, he was, but the big pit in his belly told him he wasn’t sure he wanted to have this conversation.

  “Yeah, at least I do. Can you just let me get all this out?”

  Fen nodded.

  “First of all, I did see a few people when I got home last fall. Three. I slept with two of them. I don’t even know why I did it.”

  “Kev, we weren’t together then. You don’t have—”

  “Just let me talk. You promised.”

  Fen nodded again but remained silent.

  “I know we weren’t technically together, but I couldn’t fucking stop thinking about you. It was taking over my whole life how much I missed you, and it kind of pisse
d me off. So I went out and found a few guys at the bar, thought I could, I don’t know, exorcise you from my system or something. It didn’t work.”

  “Was that when we weren’t talking much?”

  “Yeah. I felt kinda wrong, talking to you, wanting you so bad, and trying to move on at the same time. Guess I finally realized I didn’t want to move on.”

  “When I told you about the teacher who asked me out, huh?” Kevin’s demeanor toward him had changed after that.

  “Yeah. Like every little thing I’d told myself about how we’d just had a bit of fun over the summer flew right out the window at the mere thought of you moving on. I fucking hated it. I felt ridiculous about it, but I wanted to get in my car and drive up there that night and, I don’t know, fuck it into you that you didn’t want anyone but me?”

  Fen smiled a little. “I probably wouldn’t have objected to that.”

  Kevin reached out and cupped his face. He rubbed his thumb along Fen’s jaw. “So end of story, I did see a few other people in a ridiculous attempt to talk myself out of wanting an actual relationship with you.”

  “I-is that what you want?”

  “Yeah.” Kevin laughed a little bitterly. “I think I’ve been pretty obvious about that lately. It’s what I want.”

  “But you still live here, and I still live in Chico.”

  “Well, that’s another conversation. And we’ll have to have it soon. But it doesn’t matter, if you don’t want the same things I want.”

  Fen leaned forward and buried his face in Kevin’s neck. He had to touch him, had to breathe him in. “I do. I want them.”

  “Just us?”

  “It’s only been us for me since the moment we met.”

  Kevin cringed a little at that. “I’m really sorry. I am. I know you didn’t ask for me to be sorry, but I wish I’d only been with you all this time.”

  Fen shrugged. “It is what it is. It hurt, and I’m jealous as hell that someone else got to touch you, but what can I do about it now?”

  “Tell me not to do it again. I won’t.”

  “I’m not going to tell you. That’s your choice. I won’t see anyone else. I only want us.”

  “I won’t either.”

  Fen let a long breath out. “This got a little heavy, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it did. But it’s done, right? Listen, do you want to go to the beach? It’s a nice night. We can grab some dinner to take with us. Maybe try not to do any soul exposing?”

  “I can do the beach. I can definitely do the beach. It’s my spring break, after all.”

  THE FIRST few days were heaven. Kevin had used some of his vacation time and he’d taken Fen everywhere. To the beach and the zoo and out to dinner. They slept in, made brunch, and stayed up late. It felt like the previous summer had felt, just with more familiarity and, if anything, more heat between them. Fen couldn’t get enough of Kevin’s body or kisses or his touch, loved waking up next to him and breathing him in, running fingers along his skin until he woke up squirming in Fen’s arms.

  “If you’re gonna wake me up, at least you can make me coffee,” Kevin groaned one morning.

  Fen giggled and blew a raspberry into his belly.

  “You’re also welcome to take that a few inches south.” Fen bit at the tender skin stretched over Kevin’s hip bone. “Not exactly what I meant, but I’ll take it.”

  “You smell good.”

  “I smell sweaty from sleeping.”

  “I guess I just like it.”

  “You’re weird.”

  Fen rolled his eyes. “Okay, Kettle.”

  He got a sleepy tickle war for his comment, followed by lazy morning sex and another hour of sleep.

  A FEW hours later, at the market, Kevin bumped Fen with his hip.

  “Hey, babe, do you care if we go out to dinner tonight with some of my old friends? I’d ditch them, but it’s kind of a quarterly thing, and I ditched the last one.”

  “Of course not. Why would I mind?”

  Of course hanging out with a whole crowd of twenty-three-year-old southern Cali boys—twenty-four, thank you, Kevin had kept reminding him since his birthday—wasn’t exactly going to do wonders for Fen’s self-esteem, but he’d take one for the team. Just seeing Kevin’s smile was worth it.

  “Okay, cool. Just a warning. They aren’t quite out of high school yet.”

  “Literally?” Fen was horrified for a moment.

  Kevin laughed. “No, of course not. They just have the maturity of a bunch of fifteen-year-olds.”

  “Then I’ll fit right in.”

  THEY DID end up out for dinner that night, with a group of guys that Kevin had hung out with probably since before puberty. They were the typical San Diego mix of surfer guys—preppy, way too pretty for their own good, and as Kevin said, not very mature. That was fine, of course. Fen liked them well enough. The weird part was Kevin.

  Kevin, obviously, was out to them. Fen would’ve been shocked if anyone in his life didn’t know. It wasn’t like him to hide anything, Kevin was guileless that way. It almost seemed like his personality wasn’t out with them. He was brash and loud, and gone was the sweet, giggly Kevin who was a little shy and worried all the time about if people were going to like him.

  Fen just laughed along and tried not to think about it.

  “YOU’RE DIFFERENT around them,” Fen said quietly when they were back in the car. He wasn’t sure he liked Kevin any less with his old friends, he just wasn’t quite the Kevin he’d fallen for.

  “Yeah. I know. They kind of expect me to be like I was when we were kids.”

  Fen rolled his eyes. “You’re still kids.”

  “They are. Well, most of them at least. I’m not. I like who I am when I’m with you and Rory and Jeremy. That feels more like me. Like how I am with my family.”

  Kevin had told Fen a long time ago that he’d been an adult figure in his family as long as he could remember. His parents both worked and he’d taken care of his sister a lot, made her dinner, listened to her talk when she’d first hit her boy-crazy stage at thirteen.

  “I like this version of you. Maybe they would too.”

  Kevin shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t see them as often as I used to anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been working a long time, and most of them are just getting their first jobs after school, you know? I just don’t have time for beers and the beach all the time. I’m not in the same place they’re in. Plus….”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m just not a kid anymore. That’s all.”

  There was more to it but he decided to let it go until Kevin wanted to finish that sentence. Fen reached across in the dark and curled his hand around Kevin’s thigh. He wondered how different he’d seem with his friends from high school.

  “HEY, BABE. I just got called into work.”

  “Huh?” Fen looked at the clock. It was two in the morning.

  “There’s a warehouse fire. The crew has it under control but they need some backup. I shouldn’t be out more than a few hours.”

  “You want me to come?”

  Kevin smiled and kissed his forehead. “Of course not. Go back to sleep.”

  NOT LIKELY. The moment Kevin walked out the door, Fen was wide awake. Wide awake and willing his mind not to picture all sorts of dire scenarios with Kevin frying in some building, unable to escape or call for help. It wasn’t as bad as the summer, when he knew things were more dangerous than usual, but it still sucked. Fen still didn’t know how people did this. It was more immediate, too, since he was going to have to do this every time Kevin was out doing his job. He hated it.

  By the time Kevin got home, just after dawn, Fen had gotten himself all wound up and nervous. He was pacing Kevin’s living room, scanning the news channels for hints of what had happened.

  “What’s got you all worked up, babe?” Kevin asked. He hung his jacket up and started to pull his T-shirt over his head.


  “How can you just go out there, night after night, knowing there are people waiting for you, people who would die if something happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been here, freaking out all night, wondering if you were going to come home alive. How can you do that?”

  Kevin looked perplexed and, to be honest, a little bit annoyed. “What, you don’t think the other guys I work with have people who love them? Most of them have families. Children. They do this because they want to help people. Sometimes we save families and children. What do you want from me? To get some job sitting at a desk somewhere?”

  “I just want you to be safe!” Fen choked.

  “Well this is part of who I am. You knew that the day you met me. If my job is going to be a deal breaker, you might as well let me know now, so I can take you to the airport and walk away before I get my heart any further into this.”

  Kevin looked tired and dirty and angry. Fen hadn’t ever seen him angry before. He felt like shit for being the one to cause it.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell, I was just scared.” Fen sank down onto the corner of Kevin’s table. He put his head in his hands and rubbed at his eyes. They were achy from hours of worry and he swore he was halfway to tears.

  “I get that you were scared. Hell, half the time I’m terrified, but this wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t ever in any serious danger.”

  “This time. What about next time?”

  Kevin shrugged. “I don’t want to sound like I’m being all casual about it, but next time? I’ll get my ass in there and do my job and hope that I come out okay. This is what I do. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Can you deal with that?”

  Fen let out a long shuddery breath. “Yeah. I can deal with that.” What was he gonna say? No? “It’s scary, and I hate it every time I know you’re at a fire, but I’ll deal with it if the alternative is not having you.”