Chapter Text
The worrier in Izzy kind of hopes that Ed will doze off. That he’ll just fall asleep on a good note, and they won’t have to risk the whole sneaking-off thing.
Ed doesn't fall asleep. Every time Izzy glances over, his big eyes are wide open, staring at the tent ceiling while his fingers drum restlessly on his breastbone.
After an un-guessable amount of time, Ed sits up. “Iz,” he whispers, “What d’you think?”
“I haven’t heard anyone for awhile.”
“Yea, me neither. Okay. Okay.” Ed’s expression is intent. “We pretend we’re just going to the bathroom, right? The trail to the lake is up there anyway. If someone notices, we have to come back to the tent and wait. If they don’t—we just pass the outhouses and keep going.”
They wriggle back into their binders in case they run into someone. With their cover story, there’s really no need to be especially quiet, but Ed still coaxes the tent zipper like he’s diffusing a bomb. The almost-full moon is bright enough that they can leave their flashlights switched off.
Once they reach the outhouses, they linger a few moments, scanning the campsite for signs of life. There’s nothing to see but trees and tents. No sound but the tree frogs chirping and the occasional rustle of sleeping bags.
“Okay,” Ed whispers.
Izzy’s heartbeat pounds in his ears as they edge around the back of the outhouses. They walk slowly at first, placing each foot lightly and checking back over their shoulders. Once they round the first bend, they pick up the pace, stepping faster and faster until they break into a full run.
Ed lets out a little whoop, leaping over a fallen branch. His loose curls catch over his face when he turns back to grin at Izzy.
This is happening, Izzy thinks. We’re out. We’re out and no one stopped us. He feels billowed-up, blown full of air and moonlight and Ed’s high spirits.
The path leads them to a ridge with the lake shining below. This isn’t one of those brown, mucky lakes with weeds that snare your ankles. It’s sandy, clear enough to see the bottom till it gets really deep. It’s huge, too, forty square miles or something. This beach isn’t one of the main ones. It’s just a little inlet. At this time of night, they can pretty much count on having it to themselves.
They’re so eager to reach the water that they nearly fall on the steep path down. They make it to the beach though, skidding to a stop all breathless and dusty. Ed immediately starts pulling off his shoes.
“Fuck,” Izzy says, looking at their sweatpants and t-shirts with a sinking feeling.
“What?”
“Well, we remembered our binders and forgot our stupid swimsuits. We can’t come back with these all soaking wet, someone might see.”
“Wasn’t going to,” Ed grins, and strips off his outer layer.
“But what about—oh. Ok.” Ed’s casually peeling off his binder now, tossing it on the ground.
Well good thing we bothered changing back-to-back, Izzy thinks, a little grumpy as he eyes the trail of clothes Ed’s left behind him.
If Ed can’t be bothered to keep the rules consistent, then Izzy won’t bother to keep his eyes off the little shifting muscles in Ed’s back, getting some definition now after a year on T. Izzy’s pretty sure his own back is still just skinny. Maybe one day, though.
He pulls off his shoes and socks and heads to the water, where Ed’s up to his knees already.
“Come on, it’s not cold!” Ed calls.
“Not what I’m worried about,” says Izzy, craning his neck to look back at the trail.
“It’s like midnight, nobody’s coming. Just take that stuff off and get in.” Ed’s up to his thighs now. His purple boxer briefs are starting to soak up water.
Izzy takes one more look at the trail before pulling off his shirt. He stands there with it balled in his fists, waiting for someone to burst out of a bush. The treefrogs chirp. Ed yelps as he plunks to his knees in the water. No one comes.
Ed dunks his head and whoops as he surfaces, shaking his soaked hair. “What’s the problem, are you wearing lace underwear or something?”
“No,” Izzy scowls.
“Then it’s just like swim bottoms.”
Izzy blows a sigh through his teeth and finally steps out of his sweatpants. It feels a lot more daring than swim bottoms. The fresh air cools his bare legs, tickling through the hair that’s growing thicker now that he’s on T.
“You gonna swim in your binder?” asks Ed.
“I can’t,” Izzy grumbles, kicking at the water, “My other is just like a… sport bra thing. This is my only real one.”
“Hmm. Be a shame if something… happened to it.”
Izzy looks up in alarm. Ed’s scooted over with his knees to his chest. His hands are raised, ready to splash.
“Don’t, what the fuck!” Izzy yelps, scampering back.
“Guess you should take it off then.”
“Fuck you, what if I have, like, deathly crippling dysphoria??”
“Okay, but do you?” says Ed, squinting critically.
Izzy has plenty dysphoria, but he could block it out if he knew they were alone. He’s pretty good at shutting off parts of his brain.
“Dude, no one’s coming,” Ed insists, swishing his arms through the water. “And if they do, I’ll deal with it, and you can stay in.”
Ugh. They have already made it this far. It would feel incomplete, just kicking around in the shallows. Izzy pictures lying in bed later, feeling his whole body still zipped up tight. It’s not appealing.
“Fucking, fine,” he sighs. Peels of his binder before he can think better of it, and marches into the water with his arms crossed over his chest.
Ed’s a liar. It’s cold. Izzy drops underwater to get it over with and feels his brain reboot at the shock. When he surfaces, the first thing he sees is Ed’s smile.
“You finally did it!” he crows.
“Hurray,” says Izzy, going for deadpan. He’d meant to make Ed pay for that binder threat with at least a few minutes of grumpiness. He’s failing. He can’t not-smile, seeing Ed like this.
The moon is shining in Ed’s wet hair, on his teeth, in the droplets that cling to his skin. When they’re both old, Izzy thinks, he’ll remember this—how Ed’s face looked when everything was ahead of them, and they ran away to swim under the stars.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Ed says, breathless.
“Yea,” Izzy admits, “it’s nice.”
Ed dunks below the surface, and Izzy watches the long shape of him glide away underwater. Once he’s deep enough that he can’t touch bottom, his head pops up, and he starts turning somersault after somersault.
Izzy paddles out to meet him and treads water. All he can see in any direction is lake and sky and sloping bank leading to forest. The water is a mirror of the moon and stars, disturbed only by his and Ed’s splashes. It’s like swimming in a bowl of sky.
Ed’s circling around him now, weaving up and down like a river otter. When he tires out, he flips onto his back and flings his arms wide, apparently mindless of his tits.
Fuck it, Izzy thinks with crisp clarity. He kicks onto his back and floats next to Ed, pressed between lake and sky.
Something inside him is settling. It’s like if you’d lived your whole life with your neck out of joint, and then one day—crrck! It all snapped into place, and you felt a relief you’d never known to wish for.
“When we get out of here,” Ed says dreamily, “let’s go someplace where there’s water.”
“Yea,” says Izzy. He’s looking at the moon, trailing his fingers through the fan of Ed’s hair. “That’s what we’ll do.”
They float and race and splash each other until they’re exhausted, and then they longue in the shallows like alligators. Izzy’s pretty sure he sees the actual stars reflected in Ed’s eyes.
“We better get out,” Ed says finally.
Izzy looks at his pruney hands and nods. Not even the threat of leaving can bring his mood down. This contentment feels so vast, he can’t imagine ever wandering past its reach.
They slosh their way out of the water, and realize they’re soaking wet with no towels.
“Maybe like…” Izzy makes his hands flat and scrapes the edges down his body. “Like windshield wipers.”
They both give it a try. It helps, but not much. Ed soon gives up on it.
“Air dry!” he shouts, and starts zooming around the beach with his arms flung out.
Izzy never runs around without at least an industrial-strength sports bra. The bouncing of his chest makes him feel grotesque, like a human with cow udders grafted on. Now, though, he chases after Ed without thinking twice. He couldn’t begin to break off one sensation and get mad at it. The bounce, the breeze, the swish of Ed’s hair and the crunch of cool sand—they all make a single feeling, the feeling of this. He wouldn’t change it for anything.
They chase each other across the sand until they’re gasp-laughing and nearly dry.
Wearing their wet underwear would sort of defeat all that work, so they peel them off, another non-issue on this high Izzy’s riding.
“What’re you gonna do with yours?” he asks, “Just carry them back, or…?”
“Or….” Ed says, “this!” And he stuffs his pair into the center of a bush.
Izzy laughs and adds his own. Tomorrow, when no one's looking, they'll sneak them out. He can picture it already... he and Ed talking with their eyes, sharing their secret in the middle of everything.
They tromp up the trail still laughing, bouncing with the energy they’ve built up together. It’s going to be weird walking back into camp. Izzy suddenly, maybe understands those kids who go off to summer camp and come back with a strut, like they’ve leveled up.
“Wait,” Ed says, coming to a stop.
Izzy looks. There’s an offshoot on the trail, one Izzy barely noticed on the way down.
“What?”
“Well, I don’t know if we’re ready to go back yet,” Ed says, mischief in his voice.
The first flutter of doubt sneaks into Izzy’s high. “Do you know where it goes?”
“Not yet,” says Ed, “but the night is young!”
“Kind of middle-aged,” Izzy points out. “It’s got to be at least one-thirty.”
“So we’ve got hours! C’mon, I just want to see.”
He’s already walking away, hips popping side-to-side. Izzy’s not ready to burst this bubble. He follows.
It’s very much a trail. There’s trees. They hear an owl. It’s lovely, but normal enough that Izzy can feel himself winding down, maybe approaching sleepiness.
Suddenly, Ed stops.
“What?” Izzy asks.
“Listen. You hear that?”
Laughter. Voices. Male voices, talking over each other like at a party.
At first, Izzy freezes, thinking they’re caught—but the voices are up ahead. It couldn’t be people from school.
Ed listens intently. “C’mon,” he whispers, creeping closer.
“Ed…” Izzy’s following, but slowing down, reluctant. He doesn’t want to invite anyone into this, much less a group of randos.
“Shh.” They’ve reached a point where the path dips down and out of sight. Ed steers them off-trail, where they crest the hill under the cover of trees.
The hill bottoms out in a flat meadow. At its edge, four men sit in folding chairs around a homespun firepit. They’ve driven up in a massive off-road truck. Crushed-grass tire tracks swerve off into the distance. Izzy can’t make out the men’s words, but their voices sound distinctly drunk, alternately drawling and rowdy.
Ed and Izzy look at each other. For a moment, Izzy can see the wariness in Ed’s eyes— and then it fades, shoved aside by fascination.
This is the thing with Ed’s wild moods. Once he gets rolling, he can’t stop. Has to keep pushing, pushing. If I made that happen… what else can I do?
“Ed…” Izzy warns. His high is collapsing fast, like a blow-up Santa going saggy. Ed just motions him along.
They’re close enough to make out words now. “No you fucking didn’t!” one of the men is bellowing. “He fucking did not, dude, I was there. It was like, fifty pounds, max.”
They aren’t old, but they’re adults. Maybe mid-late twenties? They look… they just look like regular small-town white dudes. It’s not a selling-point for Izzy. He can see a heavy-metal T-shirt, a trucker hat, beer cans strewn around. There’s a fifty-fifty chance he’d cross the street if he ran into one of these guys on his own.
Ed, though. Now that they’ve both been on T for almost a year and can kind-of-sort-of pass, Ed’s got this fucking thing with guys he doesn’t know. They’re like catnip to him. It’s not that he wants to fuck them. What he wants is to test how they react to him, how much of himself he can hang onto and still chameleon his way into their ranks.
“I don’t know about this,” Izzy whispers—but Ed’s got that set to his jaw that means there’s no coming back.
“It’ll be fine,” he murmurs, “They’re just dudes. We’ll just say hi. Follow my lead.”
“Ed!” Izzy hisses— but Ed’s already stepping out onto the path.
Izzy squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, lives in the peace of that darkness for just a second. Then he takes a deep breath and follows.
“Hey,” Ed says. Izzy can tell from the sound that he’s put on his cool smile, his “wherever I go, I belong,” smile.
Four heads turn. There’s a chorus of “Whoa!”s and “Holy shit!”s.
“Where they fuck did you come from?” asks the guy in the trucker hat.
“Camping,” Ed says. “Late-night walk.”
“Seriously? How old are you? You look like you’re fucking fourteen, ‘scuse my French.”
All four men are looking them up and down. Izzy’s suddenly, uncomfortably aware of his missing underwear, the extra air between his still-damp thighs.
“Eighteen,” Ed says, rounding up by a year and several months. “Just late bloomers, I guess.”
“Huh.” Trucker Hat’s face says he doesn’t believe it, and also doesn’t care. “Well, we have a bunch of beer, if you want some. It’s this watered-down shit anyways, it’s basically pop.”
“It’s not watered down, it’s fucking Natty Lite, dude, have some respect,” says the one in the Pantera shirt. “I hope the brewery fuckin’ fires you, it’s making you such a jackoff.” He grunts as he leans forward, fishing two beers out of a cooler to hand to Ed and Izzy.
“What the fuck, dude, don’t speak that over me!”
The Christianese is not helping Izzy’s first impression. He watches as Trucker Hat crumples a greasy paper plate and flings it into the fire, where several others are burning under a huge cast-iron pan. The third dude, a skinny, jittery man with tattoos on his shaved head, is jabbing at the fire with a long stick.
“Siddown,” he says to Ed and Izzy. He nods at a log that holds the grill tongs and a half-empty bag of hotdog buns.
Ed settles easily, and Izzy perches next to him. He’s not sure what to do with this drink that a drunk stranger has handed him. It’s sealed, but still.
“D’you not drink or something?” Pantera shirt asks, frowning at the way Izzy’s scrutinizing the can.
Izzy’s got nothing to say to that, so he just shrugs a shoulder. He does crack open the can though, just for show.
“He’s not much of a talker,” says Ed.
“Huh,” Trucker Hat grunts, “You and Trevor should hang out.”
His gaze indicates the fourth man, the one who hasn’t said anything. He’s a clean-shaven guy with a browbone out of the Stone Age, passing a beer from hand-to-hand as he props his elbows on his knees. Izzy’s felt his stare on them since they arrived. Hearing Trucker Hat’s suggestion, the guy curls his lip, scoffs, and says nothing.
Izzy suspects he and Trevor will not be hanging out.
“So are you guys in high school, or what?” asks Head Tattoo.
Ed and Izzy glance at each other. What do you think? Ed asks with his eyes. Don’t fucking look at me, this was your bad idea, Izzy glares back.
Ed chooses partial honesty. “Uh, yea, senior year,” he says, cracking open his beer as he sits with a three-bus-seat manspread.
“Huh. Fuck that.” Head Tattoo drums his hands on his thighs, like he’s sounding the war-drums on high school. “School’s just brainwashing, man. In the real world, it’s allll about connections. You don’t have to graduate from shit. Just gotta know the right people. I just got hooked up with this one opportunity—”
“Pyramid scheme,” Trucker Hat cuts in.
“No, it’s a fucking—”
“PYRAMID SCHEME,” Trucker Hat bellows, looking bored as he slumps back in his chair.
Izzy’s more focused on silent-Trevor. He’s finally taken a break from staring to duck into another huge cooler. When he emerges, he’s got a whole massive block of plastic-wrapped meat in his hands. He digs around in his shorts pocket, fishing out something oblong and palm-sized.
Thwack.
Izzy clamps down on a startle as the object springs open in Trevor’s hands, revealing the shiny blade of a hunting knife. Trevor’s narrowed eyes dart to Izzy, like he’s noting that flinch. He props the meat slab on a board in his lap and starts sawing away strips of what looks like bacon.
He’s looking at Ed and Izzy more than his carving. Between that hawklike stare and the smell of raw meat, Izzy feels sick. He takes a drink of beer in case it’ll help somehow.
Meanwhile, Head Tattoo has failed to convince Trucker Hat that his “business opportunity” is legit. He scowls, turning to Ed. “He’s just jealous cuz I work for myself, and he’s playing fuckin’ slave for some bitch.”
Lovely.
Still seem like a good idea? Izzy beams to Ed with his eyes. But Ed just looks at Trucker Hat, slouching like he’s got this handled.
“You work for a dominatrix or something?” he asks mildly, “That’s chill. I hear people make bank on OnlyFans.”
Pantera and Head Tattoo burst into explosive, wide-eyed laughter, like a zoo animal just dropped a one-liner.
“Dude, what the fuck, I work at a brewery!” Trucker Hat protests, grinning as he shakes his head. “You’re crazy, man.”
He says that, but all three talkers look ten times more interested now that the feral child makes raunchy jokes. They’re all talking over each other, asking Ed how the fuck he even knows about that shit and don’t his parents take him to church.
Off to the side, Trevor’s eyes are still fixed on them like rifle sites. The knife drags through fat and muscle: schhhtck. Schhhtck. Schhhtck. Ribbons of raw meat pile up behind it.
Izzy looks longingly at the trailhead, then up at the moon. It seemed so friendly when he and Ed were alone. Now it’s a silent eye, watching and impassive. What time is it? Maybe two-thirty? He could ask one of the guys, but that would mean talking to them.
“That would be kind of sick, though,” Pantera’s saying. “Just play the fuckin’ pool boy for some, like, blonde MILF with huge tits. That’d be the easiest job ever, dude. They’d probably hire you, too, with that face. You look like some fuckin cougar-bait.”
Great. Perfect.
Izzy glares daggers. He can see the shade of discomfort under Ed’s cool-guy smile. The more uncomfortable Ed is, though, the more he’ll act the opposite. It’s some kind of werid survival instinct, like puffing up to look large to bears.
“Nah, don’t want to limit my options,” Ed says, lounging with cultivated casualness. “Me and him have a million things we want to do. Porn’s always there as fall-back. Y’know. Shoot for the moon and if I miss, I can always land on OnlyFans.”
The three talkers laugh and cheer. “There you go! There you go!” “He’s got it all figured out!”
Trevor’s finished slicing the bacon. Now he starts some cooking over the fire, flinging it at the pan with sharp flicks of the wrist as his eyes bore holes in Ed and Izzy.
Izzy grips his beer too hard, and feels the aluminum pucker.
“You really don’t talk, do you, uh…. ?”
Izzy looks up. It’s Head Tattoo. “Izzy,” Izzys fills in curtly.
“He don’t have to, in their line of work!” Pantera hoots. He’s still stuck on the sex work thing—totally normal, not creepy at all. “They don’t get paid to talk!”
“Nah, rent boys is plan B, remember?” says Trucker Hat, “they’re fuckin’ boy-entrepreneurs, man!”
“You sure about that?”
It’s Trevor. All eyes turn. He’s staring out of the tops of his eyes, holding a pair of grill tongs. Fat pops and sizzles in the cast iron.
“Are we sure we’re…. boy-entreprenuers?” Ed asks, wariness creeping through his cool-mask.
Trevor leans impossibly further towards them.
“Sure you’re fuckin’ boys,” he snarls.
Izzy’s bones turn ice cold.
“What… what d’you…” Ed’s trying to scrunch up his face in confusion, but it’s a shaky attempt.
“Yea, what the fuck?” says one of the others. They’re all looking at each other blearily, like they’re way too drunk for this riddle.
“You look awful pretty for boys,” Trevor says, low and menacing. He’s got the grill tongs in his hand now, slapping them into the opposite palm.
Izzy’s pulse pounds so hard his ears ring.
Ed huffs an attempted laugh. “That’s not…” he starts, but Trevor cuts in.
“My cousin was in high school. Just graduated. Says there was a couple’a trannies there. Girls taking man hormones from that Planned fucking Parenthood. And one of them was an Indian with long hair…” he eyes Ed’s brown skin and damp black curls— “And one of them—” He shifts his gaze— “Was called Izzy.”
Fuck fuck fuck fuck
Ed and Izzy have somehow wound up on their feet, standing frozen as their eyes dart around the circle. The three others stare at them, stunned, looking them up and down like they’re trying to work out an equation.
He and Ed can’t back up. Log’s in the way. They start to edge sideways.
“You think you’re little tricksters, don’t you.” Trevor gets to his feet, rising over six feet tall.
An hour ago, everything was perfect. There must be some way to reach back into that. It feels impossible that it could all go so wrong so fast.
Ed holds up his hands placatingly as he and Izzy clear the log and start inching towards the trail. “We didn’t… We’ll just…”
“Just what??” says Trevor, and takes an abrupt, lurching stride towards them.
Ed and Izzy turn on their heels and run.
Shouts erupt behind them. They sprint for the trail, heavy footsteps following after. Izzy darts a look over his shoulder. It’s Trevor and Pantera guy, faces screwed up with rage or effort or both. Ed and Izzy have the head start and are nearly sober, but these guys are much bigger and stronger. They can’t win a race on the path.
“In here,” Ed gasps, and they leap off trail into the cover of the trees.
Behind them, Izzy can hear the men shouting: “Fuck!” “They’re in the woods!”
The dark is denser in the forest, and their eyes still aren’t adjusted from the campfire. Flashlights would give them away. They’ve got to run half-blind, tripping and stumbling, arms outstretched to hit the obstacles first. There’s sharp crunching in the woods behind them—the men have followed.
Izzy’s left foot lands lower than expected. He’s stumbled on the sloping edge of a tall ravine.
“Here! Down here,” he pants, and Ed veers to follow. They butt-slide down through the leaf litter. At the bottom, they duck behind a thick bush and crouch down as small as they can.
Above them, the swearing and crunching continues. Izzy can feel Ed shaking.
There’s a pause in the noise. Izzy’s eyes have adjusted enough that he can see the two silhouettes near the edge of the ravine, looking all around.
Izzy doesn’t pray. But right now, all he can think is please, please, please…
The faces turn towards them, then away. Just as Izzy thinks the men have overlooked them:
“There! Right there, that’s the little one’s shirt!” Izzy looks down at his pale grey sweatshirt. It practically glows amidst the darker foliage.
Fuck.
The silhouettes dip over the top of the ridge and come skidding down. Ed and Izzy leap to their feet, running towards camp but the men are gaining ground, and Izzy’s foot snags on a root. He goes sprawling, knocking Ed to his knees. Ed reaches to help him up, but the men are just yards now, and suddenly Izzy’s limbs are frozen.
Please, fuck, fuck, please…
The men are a room’s-length away. Ed’s saying Izzy, Izzy, but nothing’s working, whatever’s going to happen, it’s going to happen…
And then.
Something’s crunching that isn’t the men. Something’s moving in the brush, and Izzy’s attention shifts as if a train were barreling towards them. It’s not the rustling he’s drawn to… it’s something wider, more diffuse, like a rumble that’s sensed but not heard. Like a shockwave before it hits. The men have stopped in their tracks.
Animals are stirring up in the trees. First a trickle, then a torrent— fluttering, scrambling, creaking of branches. Birds who’ve been silent for hours break into chirps and cries. All the humans instinctively look up. The sky is peppered with birds, with squirrels leaping over branches, all of them heading to Izzy’s left. A few small somethings scurry through the leaves behind him.
Izzy turns to the right, against the current. He feels something rolling towards them… a fire? An earthquake? An angel?
A piece of dark has come unstuck from the dark around it. As far as Izzy can understand it, that’s what he’s seeing: darkness condensed and pulled forward, like a shaft of light in reverse. This dark has solidity, in that it blocks out the lighter darkness behind it, and form, in that it holds an amorphous sort of shape. It’s big, like a bear— but bears don’t stand on their hind legs. Bears don’t move with a gentle, back-and-forth motion, like a ship rocking on the waves.
Across the ravine, the men stand frozen.
The thing, the pillar of dark, seems to hover above the leaf litter as it glides. Izzy follows with his eyes as it moves closer and closer, until it stands directly between them and the men. And then it just sort of… bobs, there, turning this way and that.
The rumble Izzy sensed is escalating, rising to an audible hum. Izzy hears it, at least—hears it all around him, like they’re surrounded by some unearthly insect. He’s frozen in awe as much as fear now—and then, suddenly, he’s unfrozen. Is standing. Is helping Ed up with him. Tentatively, they start to back away.
The men don’t move. Ed and Izzy walk backwards until they reach the other side of the ravine, the beginning of the upslope back to the trail. Izzy takes a last look at the shape, the gently-swaying dark, and then they run. Up the slope, onto the trail, running and not stopping until they see the backs of the outhouses.
They lean against the outhouses a minute to catch their breath. The tents sit silent and unchanged, like toys. Once their breathing starts to settle, Izzy grabs Ed’s hand and leads him.
Izzy kicks his shoes wherever they happen to land and dives into the tent. Dimly, he can feel Ed climbing in beside him. Izzy buries his face in his pillow. He’s never coming out ever again.
Everything’s numb but his heartbeat. That keeps pounding and pounding, like a fist on a locked door. The ground is firm against his belly. If he wants it bad enough, maybe it’ll swallow him up.
After awhile, Ed breaks the silence. “Izzy,” he whispers. His nose nudges up against Izzy’s head. “Iz. Are you crying?”
“No,” Izzy snuffles into the pillow. He hasn’t seen Ed cry since his dad died. It’s been years.
Ed’s burrowing nose burrows closer, nudging in between Izzy’s cheek and the pillow. When Izzy huffs and turns his head away, Ed’s hand sneaks over his shoulders, and slips in to touch his face.
“Yes you are. Your face is wet. C’mon. Stop hiding, fuck.” Ed’s voice breaks a little at the end there, and he takes back his hand, pulling away.
Izzy whips around to face him. He’s got his hands over his eyes.
“Are you crying?” Izzy asks.
“No.” Pause. “A little.”
Izzy pries Ed’s damp hands off his face, pulls them to his own chest for safekeeping. Ed’s eyes have always been big, but now they’re huge.
“Give me back my hands,” he says.
Izzy shakes his head, clutching them tighter. Something about that makes Ed laugh, wet and shaky, which makes Izzy laugh too. He lets go of Ed’s hands so they can rub the tears off other’s cheeks. Laughing loosens something that was clenched up inside Izzy, and on its way out, it sets his whole body shaking.
Ed pulls him into a tight swaddle of a hug. They cling together like that, trembling and snuffling into each other’s shoulders. Ed smells exactly like himself. It’s not a sweat smell, but a salt skin smell, and a coconut shampoo and unidentifiable lotion smell. Izzy buries himself in it like it might be the only safety in the world.
Maybe it is. But then, there was that … something. It’s been years since Izzy’s believed in God or spirits or like, fucking, guardian angels or whatever, but. But.
“Do you think it was an animal?” he asks, voice muffled in Ed’s shirt.
Ed pulls back to look at him, eyes searching and intense, and sort of shakes his head. It could mean incomprehension as much as it could mean No. Which, of course. How would Ed know. They saw the same thing. Izzy just… needed to say something about it, and that was the only thing he could think to say. “Animal” is something he has words for.
Ed drops his forehead back onto Izzy’s shoulder. After a minute, Izzy feels wet soaking through his T-shirt.
“Iz. M’sorry,” Ed says.
Izzy turns that over. He was mad at Ed, back at the meadow. Then he was terrified. Then astounded. Then just done. Now… he doesn’t know.
Ed drags him into things. His mother always says that. “You sure this isn’t an Ed thing?” was a hurdle they had to cross when Izzy first asked to start T. But Izzy flashes back to Ed’s dead eyes after the dinner prep, to his restless fidgets later on, to his wing-spread arms at the lake and his wary fascination above the meadow, and he just can’t find his anger anymore.
Ed’s looking for something because he needs something. Izzy knows how Ed feels before he leaps off an edge. He feels like Izzy does. Like there’s nowhere to go.
“’S not your fault,” Izzy mumbles, patting Ed’s slim back.
“It is,” says Ed. “If… y’know. It would’ve been.”
Izzy breathes out a long sigh, and scritches Ed’s back through his shirt.
They end up squeezing into one sleeping bag together, because they’re both cold even though the weather isn’t. Normally being pressed this close to Ed would give Izzy those electric-surge feelings he refuses to name, but right now, he just wants to be near his best friend. They’ve mostly stopped shaking. It feels like the past day has been a year.
“Do you think it was an earthquake?” Izzy asks once they settle.
“I didn’t really feel the ground shake. Did you?”
“Not exactly.” And then after a minute: “What if we asked your mom?” Now that Ed’s dad is gone, his mom talks about Maori stuff a little more. Izzy has a vague sense that Maori people might know about strange things that happen in forests.
Ed’s fiddling with the sleeping bag zipper, making a little zppzupp sound and elbowing Izzy in the stomach.
“Well we can’t tell her about this, she’d freak out,” he says, “But she’d just say go to the tribe.”
“Yours?”
“No. I think all our spirits and stuff are in New Zealand. The right-here tribe.”
“Oh,” says Izzy. He can’t quite picture what that would look like. Just walk into the tribal office and ask if they know any tall forest shadows who like to disrupt hate crimes?
He thinks back to the Christian phrase the one guy dropped, how the others interrupted their sex jokes to ask didn’t Ed’s parents take him to church.
“D’you think those guys go to Bethel?” Izzy asks, “D’you think they’ll like, talk about it with the men’s group or something?” He’s wondering what they’d do with it. Whether all protectors are angels to them, and what they’d think if an angel protects someone they meant to hurt.
Ed starts to chuckle.
“What?”
“Well, they’d say it was our demon or our witchcraft or something.”
Oh. Of course. Now that Ed mentions it, Izzy can picture it perfectly… the emergency prayer meeting, the casting-off of Ed and Izzy’s powerful witchcraft. The laying-on-of-hands to banish the demon of trans teen protection.
“At least our demons love us,” Izzy says, laughing too now.
They lay there giggling at the tent ceiling. They may be small and poor and constantly outnumbered, but at least they’ve got the power to scare. It is power, of a sort.
“I feel like the lake might love us too,” says Ed. “That was fun.”
Izzy remembers the feeling of floating side by side, just them and the clear water and the sky. He can almost touch the feeling that it still happened, separate from what came later.
“Yea, it was cool,” he says. Their friend the demon. Their friend the lake.
“That moon though…” Ed starts.
“Can't trust it.”
“Right. One minute it’s making the tides and the next—”
“—it’s making you bleed out your vagina,” Izzy finishes, and Ed laughs. Not a shaky, you-either-laugh-or-you-cry laugh, but Ed’s real laugh, like a bell.
Through the mesh skylight, the sky is fading into the purple beginnings of dawn. They’ll have to get up in just a few hours. Thinking of which…
“We have to get our underwear out of that bush tomorrow,” Izzy remembers.
“Nooo, we can’t!” says Ed, “What if that was, like, our offering to the demon? We can’t take it back!”
“Oh, shit, you’re right!” Izzy pictures the dark shape happening on two crumpled pairs of boxer briefs and vibrating with delight. Setting out to rescue them all hopped up on offerings.
Ed must be picturing it too, because he laughs again. Izzy’s eyes are starting to get heavy.
“D’you think it’ll follow us when we leave?” Izzy asks, voice dragging with sleepiness.
“Yea, maybe,” Ed murmurs. “Cuz it’s probably from the lake, and we’re gonna live near the water one day, so it’ll have somewhere to hang out. Maybe we’ll move by the ocean, huh Iz?”
“Never been to th’ocean,” slurs Izzy.
“I used to swim in it every day when I was little. If we go to the West Coast, it’s the same ocean. You falling asleep?”
“Mm,” says Izzy. He turns on his side and rests his forehead on Ed’s shoulder, using Ed’s shirt sleeve and curls like a sleep mask. “Wassa ocean like?”
“Big,” Ed murmurs, “Huge. You can smell the salt when you get close. If we live near the ocean, I can be a marine biologist. And you can be a surgeon. I mean, you can do that anywhere. But San Francisco has the ocean and it’s like, the gayest city of your fucking life. There’s a whole gay neighborhood, and they have a pride parade every single year. I was reading…”
Outside, the sun is rising. Izzy falls asleep to the sound of Ed’s voice— Ed dreaming him into sleep, imaging better days.