Nine years ago.
Johnny takes them to school in the Chevy, which he’s been allowed to drive in good weather since his sixteenth birthday. As usual, Lance is crowded into the bucket seat between Danny and Johnny. His legs are tucked into Danny’s side of the gear shift, and Danny and Johnny are battling across him for control of the radio dial. Johnny is laughing and Danny is growling.
The school day is uneventful until Danny and Lance go out to the parking lot after their last class. They’re among the first kids to spill out the back doors into the student parking lot, which is about ten times the size it needs to be for the number of kids who drive. It’s a warm afternoon, the sun high and the pavement hot through the thin rubber of Lance’s sneakers.
“Where’d you leave off? Issue thirteen, right?” Danny asks, continuing the conversation they’ve been having in various forms all day. A new issue of The Team is about to drop next week, so they’ve been rereading every issue from Danny’s collection.
“Twelve,” Lance says, and then stumbles on the first step when he hears a girl’s shout ring out from the parking lot.
“Did someone call a teacher?”
Lance and Danny look at one another for a split second, then in the direction of the voice. There are a handful of cars parked in the first few rows, and from there the vehicles are more scattered. But there’s a congregation of kids growing in the row where they left the Chases’ Chevy that morning.
From the top of the steps, Lance can see over the crowd’s heads and spot Johnny, his head of golden waves unmistakable even from a distance. For a moment, Lance thinks he’s kneeling on the ground—like maybe he dropped something, and has knelt to pick it up—but then he sees his arm arch behind his head, then fall.
Their school is small. People don’t fight. Sure, there are arguments in the hallways, and sometimes a few angry shoves. But Lance has never seen anyone get punched except on his father’s westerns. It’s so alien that it takes him another long moment to realize there’s another boy sprawled under Johnny, a boy Johnny is hitting.
Before Lance can unfreeze his mind, much less his feet, Danny lets out a howl and breaks into a sprint, down the steps and toward the scene unfolding a few dozens yards away.
Danny isn’t bothering with words—just high-pitched howls, like a mad cat. But Lance understands that all he’s trying to do is to distract and startle, like when they’ve chased birds out of the vegetable garden at the ranch.
Lance scoops up the backpack that Danny just dropped and follows as fast as he can without tripping. As soon as he’s at the bottom of the stairs, he can’t see the fight for the crowd, but some of the kids have been so startled by Danny’s ongoing wails that they’ve turned away from the fight and toward him. That makes it easier for Danny to elbow his way through, Lance a few steps behind.
When Lance makes it past the other kids, he finds Danny frozen on the inside of their periphery, staring. Lance stares too. On TV, punches sound like gunshots—loud, dry pops. But Johnny’s punches sound heavy and wet, like slaps. The kid on the ground is Cade—one of Johnny’s classmates, another popular boy who plays football with Johnny. Lance sees two more boys on the football team that he thinks of as Cade’s friends, and they’re muttering and shoving each other, like they can’t decide whether or not to join the fight.
Maybe they don’t know whose side they should take.
Then the interlocked bodies lurch and topple sideways, and it’s Johnny on his back, and Cade is straddling him. He grabs the collar of Johnny’s shirt, snarling as blood runs down his face.
“Fuck you, you pervy fucking pretty boy, I’ll—”
“No!” Danny howls, darting forward from Lance’s side and pushing Cade’s shoulder with both hands. He’s about half Cade’s size but still manages to shove him with enough force that he’s off-balance and startled. He lets go of Johnny’s shirt, rolling over his left knee and landing on his butt on the asphalt. Johnny pushes himself to his feet and scowls at his brother.
“Get out of here, Danny!”
It’s only at that moment that Lance sees the Chevy, about two parking spaces away from where Johnny and Cade were fighting. Someone painted the word “FAGGOT” in bold red spray paint across the tailgate.
Whatever fervor possessed the two older boys seems to have passed. They’re glaring daggers at each other and breathing hard. Maybe after another second or two of that, they might have gone at it again, but just then a teacher shouts, “HEY!” from the top of the stairs, where Lance was standing with Danny only a minute ago.
“I hope you get suspended,” Cade snarls. There’s blood streaming from his nose and a red mark on his cheek and jaw; his eye is starting to swell on the same side. Cade turns to appeal to the crowd. “You all saw how he jumped me for nothing.”
Two junior girls exchange a glance, and then one of them gives a cool shrug and the other says, “I thought you hit him.”
“Yeah,” says her friend. Then, she points at the tailgate. “And you put that on his truck, you asshole. That’s hate speech.”
There’s a general murmur of consensus amongst the teenagers.
Something dark and horribly nervous in Lance’s chest solidified the second he saw the word on the tailgate, but hearing the majority of the kids in the parking lot taking Johnny’s side makes it loosen, just a little. His next breath comes easier.
Cade backs away from Johnny and Danny altogether. Lance advances into the space he left and wordlessly hands Danny his bag.
Cade is looking around as though bewildered by the lack of support. “So, what, none of you care that—?”
“Kids, what the heck is going on out here?” Mr. Bellows, one of the Math teachers, has reached the knot of students now. He sweeps them with a look, then does a double-take when he sees the Chevy’s tailgate. His lips press into a thin line.
“Okay, I’m going to need all of you to stay right where you are while we sort this out.”
After the teachers have gotten the basics of the story down, they send everyone home with promises that parents will be called. It’s silent in the cab of the truck as Lance and the Chases leave town, but as soon as they hit gravel, Danny can’t contain himself any more.
“Johnny, what…?”
“No.”
“But—”
“I said no, Danny. Goddamn it, can’t you just leave me alone?” But before he’s finished telling Danny to shut up, Johnny’s mind seems to pivot, and he takes the gaze he’s had fixed out the windshield and pins it to Danny as they slow to a stop at an intersection. “What were you thinking, running into the middle of that? You could’ve gotten punched in the face. You want a broken nose?”
Danny shrugs, totally unbothered. “You’re my brother.”
Johnny sighs frustratedly. But after he puts the truck back in second gear to accelerate away from the stop sign, he knocks off Danny’s ballcap with a flick of his hand and musses his hair.
“You’re an idiot,” he says quietly.
Danny, batting away Johnny’s hand, rescues the cap from his lap and puts it firmly back on his head. “So, what—”
“Not right now, okay? Later.”
Silence falls. Lance is thinking about Cade and can’t stop looking at Johnny, staring at the blood on his lip. He feels hardness around his heart, like roots of stone are spreading, making it hard to breathe.
Robbie must have seen them pull up. Maybe he was watching for them; he gets worried whenever they run even a few minutes late. He comes out of the house at a jog. Johnny, barely out of the pickup, closes the truck door and shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans, hanging his head.
When he’s standing in front of his brother, Robbie ducks his head to look at his face, and his expression twists. “You got in a fight?”
Johnny pulls his head up, a glint of challenge in his face. He shrugs.
Robbie folds his arms. “Who threw the first punch?”
“He had it coming,” Johnny mutters. He brushes his wrist against his split lip, then grimaces as he seems to notice that he’s gotten a streak of blood on the cuff of his denim jacket sleeve in the process.
“Robbie,” Danny starts to pipe up.
Johnny shoots him a withering look. “Don’t.”
That remark, of course, has the opposite of its intended effect. Danny bristles more. “You think he’s gonna care?”
“What are you two—?” Robbie tries, but Danny speaks over him.
“He won’t,” Danny says with confidence.
“Danny,” Johnny growls, “for once, would you mind your own fucking business?”
“Hey!” Robbie snaps. “Language!”
“He won’t care,” Danny says again. “I know he won’t. I’ve seen his porn.”
That shuts up everyone, including Johnny, for a shocked second.
Danny’s ears get pink. “I mean, it wasn’t on purpose. I was looking for Christmas presents. I guess you can find the wrong hiding place, sometimes. Anyway, there were some naked girls, yeah, but also—”
“How, exactly,” Robbie interrupts, his voice a little strangled, “is this relevant to whatever is going on?”
Johnny, who’s been gaping at Danny along with Robbie and Lance, now hangs his head again.
Danny takes a deep breath through his nose and jerks his head toward the back of the truck.
Robbie, cheeks still faintly red above his beard, looks back and forth between them in bewilderment, then follows Danny’s silent gesture and starts to circle the Chevy. When he sees the tailgate, he freezes mid-step.
For a long moment, Robbie just looks. Even Danny doesn’t break that silence. Then, Robbie retraces his steps until he’s back in front of Johnny and puts both of his hands on his brother’s shoulders. Johnny hesitantly looks up. When he does, Robbie pulls him into a tight hug that goes on for a long time. Neither of them say a word.
Later, after a quiet dinner where the events of the day aren’t mentioned, Lance and Danny go upstairs and sit on the floor wordlessly. The issues of The Team are still there in a neat stack from the night before, ready for them to dive back in. Lance reaches for Issue 12, but, for once, even the subplots that feature Mr. Cosmos can’t hold Lance’s attention.
“Did you really…?” he blurts, but he can’t bring himself to actually say the words.
It doesn’t matter. Danny definitely knows what he’s talking about. He glances up from beneath the oversized bill of his ballcap. “Yes, I’ve seen Robbie’s collection. Or, at least part of it. Maybe he doesn’t keep it all in one place. I only saw magazines. He probably has other stuff, you know? I mean, he’s not ninety years old, so I assume he has some video—”
“Danny,” Lance murmurs desperately, not sure how much longer he can listen to Danny talking out loud about porn—porn that belongs to Robbie and that isn’t all girls—without his head exploding. “Please stop.”
“Well, you asked,” Danny huffs, but his gaze is lingering on Lance, not returning to the comic book open on his lap. He looks like he’s about to say something.
“What?” Lance mutters.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. It’s just—I don’t know. Why do you…what do you…?” Flustered, Lance gropes for something to say that won’t be incriminating.
For once, Danny lets him off the hook. He looks down at his comicwith a shrug so casual that Lance wonders if he imagined the intent look in his eyes a moment ago. “Whatever. It’s not a big deal. But I guess he’s probably bi.” He looks up from the page again, a thoughtful expression on his face, and Lance can tell he’s about to orally draft another thesis about Robbie’s porn habits, or an adjacent topic, before he even begins. “Or, maybe he’s pansexual, or autosexual but responsive to different visual—”
“Please stop,” Lance insists in a strangled voice. “Please.”
Danny shrugs and looks back down at his comic. Lance worries for a second or two that he’ll start up again, but he just turns one page, and then a bit later, he turns another.
Lance looks down at the issue he’s holding and pretends to read it, too. But there’s no way he can focus now.
After dark, Lance leaves out the back door to walk home. In the fading light, he might not even have noticed Robbie around the front of the house by the truck if he hadn’t heard the whir of the cordless drill. Lance pauses, unnoticed by Robbie and nearly at the tree line, so that he can watch Robbie loosen the tailgate’s bolts to remove it from the body of the Chevy. After he’s detached it, he sets it in the bed and stares down, presumably at the painted words. Then he steps back and kicks the tire several times, so hard that Lance hears the impact of his boot on the rubber. That’s more like what he’d thought punches would sound like, he thinks absently, as he slowly melts into the trees and makes his way home with leaden feet.
Today.
“I’m still cold,” Lance says, knowing exactly what effect those words will have. Still, a part of him can’t believe that Robbie steps forward, picks up the corner of the blanket, and slides underneath it.
Robbie is fully clothed, and there’s an outside chilliness clinging to his clothing that flushes the bit of trapped body heat out of the shelter of the blankets. Lance shivers despite himself, but when Robbie settles the blankets back around them, lying on his side and facing Lance, but somehow not touching him anywhere, the warmth returns twofold within a moment.
“I’ll lend you a little body heat,” Robbie says, his voice a low, rough murmur that Lance feels like the soft rasp of wool on his bare chest, his thighs, and his cock. He shivers again. He’s at eye level with Robbie, facing him, their cheeks pressed into the same long pillow. It’s like being plunged into a dream unexpectedly—and like any plunge, it’s as frightening as it is exhilarating.
Robbie rubs Lance’s arm through the blanket, murmuring something that Lance can’t make out—maybe something about a doctor. But Lance could close his eyes and moan at just the weight of Robbie’s hand and the delicious reality of his body warming the bed Lance is lying in.
He wants to tell Robbie to stop touching him. He also wants to grab Robbie’s hand and thrust it between his legs. He’s paralyzed by these warring feelings.
“Lance? Kid?” Robbie touches his cheek. “Sweetheart, are you crying?” His voice cracks slightly on the endearment. So slightly, like a fissure in varnish with the wood solid beneath it. Robbie’s thumb brushes away a tear from Lance’s cheekbone.
“I’m just,” Lance breathes, “so…Robbie?” He’s asking for something, but he doesn’t even know what. He shudders, but not from the cold. He pushes his face against Robbie’s hand, speechless, and then can’t contain a little cry when Robbie’s other hand runs down his blanket-covered side to his waist and pulls their bodies together under the blankets.
“Lance.” His name is a sigh on Robbie’s lips, stirring his hair. And Lance’s hammering heart is pressed to Robbie’s chest, where he can feel Robbie’s heartbeat in turn; together, they make a confusion of rhythms, fast and desperate. Then Robbie’s lips are at his temple, his beard surprisingly soft on Lance’s face. Lance tips his head back, questing, his nose dragging through the bristle of Robbie’s beard, presenting his panting mouth. He wants this most forbidden thing: Robbie’s kiss. He wants it no matter the price. In this way, he’s forever the boy he thought he’d left here, the boy it turned out he could never leave behind after all. The feeling he had of conflict—Robbie’s love, or Robbie’s wanting—is forgotten now.
Robbie is very still, his face angled just slightly away so that the corners of their mouths barely meet. It’s for Robbie to seal the kiss, but he hasn’t moved yet.
Lance can imagine each possibility with equal clarity: Robbie kissing him, or Robbie gently pushing him away. Again.