Chapter Text
As the brothers argued about what they should watch, Danny - damp hair pulled back and changed into an old t-shirt and sweatpants - found himself drawn to all the photos on the living room walls. He knew his mom would eventually get around to doing the same in their house, but some of these looked very old to him, either the fading colors of 1960s film stock or the stark black-and-white of earlier decades. People with instruments, singing around a piano. He looked for resemblances among those figures he could study. He wasn’t sure that music ran as deeply in his family on either side as it seemed to for the Kiszkas.
Every couple photos he would see a bright wide smile and then he would know. Even as they were likely all family on display. And then…the boys as little kids. A baby photo that had to be Sam: wide-mouthed smile, dressed adorably in Fall colors. The four siblings in similar attire (as seemed to be mandatory for family photos), the twin-ness of Josh and Jake so much more obvious in those days, with Ronnie in the center and Sam at the top of the grouping.
Kinda a weird spot for the baby, Danny thought, but it seemed even by then Sam was showing his height.
He drifted back to a photo of a man playing accordion with a band, horn players in the background.
“That’s our grandpa Frank,” Sam said, coming behind him. Danny flinched just the slightest, as he had been studying the handsome face, wondering what parts of the lineage came into that harmony of bone structure and other features which made up the most attractive generation he had ever met.
“Do you play accordion too?” Danny asked, trying to ensure he made the question sound as genuinely curious as he felt.
Sam shrugged. “Kinda? I mean, he’s taught me stuff but I don’t have an accordion and the only time I would ever practice was when we’d go visit. Every summer there’s a big camping trip. One of my uncles taught me to play piano there too. ‘Cause it would be a big old jamboree every night at the cabins.”
Danny smiled. “Sounds really cool. So your grandpa was in an orchestra or something?”
“Polka band. He’s actually pretty famous as an accordion player.”
“No shit! Wow, can he play, like, really fast and stuff?”
Sam brayed with laughter, pushing his hair back from his face. “Can my gramps shred on the accordion? The answer you’re looking for is fuck yes! And his dad played the organ, it’s the same one I use now.”
“The acoustic I have? It was my mom’s.”
“Lori plays guitar?!”
“Yeah, she wanted to be a folkie, I guess. She let me have it when I proved to them that I was serious about playing guitar.”
“Dang, I would have never guessed!”
“She’s pretty suburban now, but she can sing okay. When my mom and Jo put in their '70s Vibe' mixtape and sing every song? It’s kinda cool.”
“Our mom sings too! Now Josh can have that female choir he’s always wanted to back us up.”
Danny started laughing; it seemed too absurd, almost.
“Damn, my dad is gonna feel totally left out!”
Jake cut into their revelatory discussion.
“We’re gonna watch Help! and then maybe The Fearless Vampire Killers.”
“Your hair turned out so nice,” Josh observed, pulling at one of Danny’s bleached strands.
“It’s too bright!” Danny squeaked. He scared himself looking in their bathroom mirror.
“It’ll fade,” Sam said. “Ronnie gave me highlights last summer and they barely made it to Labor Day.”
Danny wondered if any of his Encinitas friends would even recognize him now. It wasn’t just the hair, he felt like his face had shifted from smiling so much.
The others were settling in and cueing up the DVD on their shared laptop, plugged into a widescreen monitor atop a bookshelf against one of the walls of their bedroom. Sam nudged Danny gently.
“C’mon,” he whispered, “let’s go chill.”
Danny followed him into the darkened living room. Sam turned on the light over the stove in the kitchen then joined him on the couch-bed.
“You didn’t wanna watch the movie?”
“Nah, I’ve seen it a jillion times. I guess I kinda get why you thought I should sleep over in your room.”
Sam sat directly next to him, divesting Danny of his phone. “So you gotta good playlist for us?”
Sam’s proximity made Danny squirm. “Uh, yeah, pull up my Spotify and pick one.”
He watched Sam click on the icon and scroll through what he had, again, a squirmy sensation as if the other was looking through his underwear drawer.
“Oooh,” Sam breathed, “now that is the shit.”
The percolating funky shuffle of Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” began and Danny smiled.
“I can play that,” he said, and it did feel like a humblebrag, like he wanted Sam to be impressed.
“I can believe it,” Sam replied, and he smiled.
Oh god, I’m going to Hell.
Not for kissing a boy (potentially), only because that smile made him want to do anything to continue to bask in its beauty and warmth. And Danny was pretty sure that Sam could think of a lot of things for Danny to do, a percentage of them possibly illegal or at least questionable.
“You think it’s too cold to go down to the beach?” Danny asked.
“Maybe, but why? Like, we don’t usually go after dark this time of year. The 5-0 is such a buzzkill.”
Because I don’t want to kiss you in your own house where someone might catch us.
It would certainly be easier in his room. But Danny didn’t think he could wait that long.
“I…just…”
“What?” Sam turned to face Danny, his face mere inches from the other, the music playing softly from Danny’s phone.
“Like…what do you want for Christmas?”
“Huh?!” Sam didn’t appear to think Danny’s question was strange, more like unexpected.
“I wanna give you something. But you might not want it?”
“How could I not want it?”
Danny’s heart felt like it might just kill him at that moment. “What if it’s something you already have?”
Sam put his finger under Danny’s chin and turned his face up and around to face his. Those beautiful brown eyes looked searchingly as Danny blinked and blushed and felt like he might choke on his own embarrassment.
“What?” he whispered and before Danny could stop himself he took Sam’s face in his hands and kissed him, soft and quick. Then he sat back, panting and preparing for the worst.
“Oh no,” Sam said, his voice above a whisper but teasingly low, “it better be more of a present than that.”
He stared back, heart pounding like his bass drum, flushed and wanting to laugh from sheer relief. “Dude! Like, your parents…?!”
“Are asleep, trust me. With four kids in a three-bedroom house? They can sleep through anything.”
It was late, past midnight and yet Danny was achingly wide awake.
“Won’t Josh and Jake be mad, though? I mean, ‘cause if Fleetwood Mac has taught us anything, you shouldn’t fall in love with your bandmates.”
“Too late!” Sam exclaimed with a chortle.
And Danny’s body followed its’ own instincts, honing in for another, deeper kiss.
Some clock, somewhere in the house, chimed 3am, and Danny thought we should be sleeping.
But they weren’t, and they weren’t going to, either. They lay in the dark under a sheet, naked, sweaty, sticky, and completely tangled together, breathing each other’s exhalations between kisses and other oral pursuits.
“Your entire family has been on this couch,” Danny said, vaguely mortified (still) at the thought of them fooling around in this particular spot.
“Well duh! That’s why I put the towel down under us. Wait, is that why you wanted to go to the beach? Have you ever made out at the beach? The sand is heinous!”
“You have?” He was still suspicious of Sam’s purported experience.
“Uh…not really. But, like, Eric always says not to make it on the beach ‘cause you’ll end up with sand in places you didn’t think it could go.”
Danny laughed softly. “He knows so many things.”
“He totally does!”
“Like, you don’t have to front, is all I’m sayin.’ I’ve never - I mean, I’ve kissed people, but, like, that’s all.”
“I’ve wanted to kiss people, but...okay, I never have.”
Danny felt a thrill at that admission. He couldn’t explain why he wanted to be Sam’s first everything, but he did.
“Wanted to kiss me?”
“You know I did.”
“Not, like, right away.”
“No? ‘Cause I could tell you were into me.”
Danny snorted and gave Sam’s ass a small pinch. “Nuh-uh!”
“Dude, you cannot hide anything on your face! I mean, I love that about you, but honestly - I bet you’ve never gotten away with anything.”
“I’m not like that!” Not like you, but then again…
“I know - you’re a good boy, just like Joshie said. He’s always right about people.”
“I guess that’s not cool.”
“Who fuckin’ cares?! You know I’m a dork too, it’s fine. And why? Because we are a totally awesome rhythm section!”
Danny was surprised Sam would admit to being uncool, but he honestly didn’t think that. Sam was so singular he didn’t have to be cool. Because he was Sam, and that was enough.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he whispered.
“Which one?”
“What do you want for Christmas?”
“You.”
“Well, you can’t take me back, y’know.”
A toilet flushed down the hall. They separated and molded themselves into faux sleeping forms, hearts racing. A door quietly shut and they were embracing again seconds later.
“Like you think I'd wanna? No frickin' way!”
They continued to tease each other in various ways until dawn crept up from the horizon as they pulled on clothes and finally fell asleep, back to back. This couch was probably the most uncomfortable thing Danny had ever laid on, but he was unconscious almost instantly, still feeling Sam’s hands all over him, Sam's skin and bones beneath his own.