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Balthazar felt a surge of giddiness as he passed through the Dukes’ front door, out of the noise of the party into the starlit night beyond, Pedro not far behind him. He heard the door click shut, and he was glad to finally turn his grinning face toward Pedro—but his giddiness deflated at the sight of Pedro’s face.
Pedro sighed heavily, leaned back against the door, and buried his hands in his hair. Without looking up, he said in a choked, almost inaudible voice: “Balth, I’m sorry.”
“S-sorry? Pedro, what—”
“It wasn’t supposed to come to this,” Pedro interrupted, pulling his hands out of his hair, leaving it sticking up in every direction. Balthazar wanted to reach up and smooth it back into place, but Pedro soon did that himself. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but Ben kept pushing, and I just—” He made a frustrated sound. “I’ve got no business being in a relationship at all right now, definitely not with you. You deserve so much better.”
Balthazar stood frozen in place as Pedro continued talking, almost to himself now. “I’ll have to go back in there and tell Ben. Maybe if he’s still in Hero’s room, I can talk to him and get him not to post that video—”
Continuing to mutter to himself, Pedro opened the door and went inside, and it was the door clicking shut behind him that snapped Balthazar back to reality. “Wait!” he called after Pedro, wrenching the door open and running into the crowded room beyond.
He’d expected Pedro to be halfway up the staircase to Hero’s room by now, but he was just a few yards away. Balthazar rushed toward him, grabbing his hand to get his attention just as he heard Ben saying, “So Pedro… what happened out there?” Pedro turned toward Balthazar and looked down, his eyes widening. It began to dawn on Balthazar what he’d just done and what it implied, while in front of them, Ben’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.
“I knew it!” Ben crowed, pointing at their joined hands and grinning fit to split his face in two. “Victory for Team Love Gods, Part II!”
“Ben, I don’t think you unders—”
“Oh, go on, you love-birds. No need to stay here when you’d obviously rather be off doing other things, am I right?” Ben waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Pedro paused. He hadn’t dropped Balthazar’s hand.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we’ll just… be going then, okay?” He turned and practically dragged Balthazar back out the door.
“I’m sorry!” Balthazar called as he tried to keep up with Pedro. “Oh god, I didn’t mean to—”
“I’m not mad at you. I know you didn’t mean for that to happen.” Pedro turned back, then, looking down, seemed to realize they were still holding hands. He dropped Balthazar’s hand. “But this is a bit of an awkward situation. Everyone will think we’re dating now.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Balthazar muttered.
“Balth, I’m serious, we have to figure out what to do.”
“Other than actually dating?”
Pedro groaned and ran a hand through his hair again. “Look,” he said. “I just can’t start dating someone right now, okay? I’ve ruined every relationship in my life and I can’t—” He cut off and blinked several times. When he spoke again his voice was soft and raw. “I can’t ruin this.”
He looked up at Balthazar, his eyes serious and intense. Balthazar’s breath caught. He had to remind himself that it was probably not a great idea to kiss someone who had just told you why you couldn’t be together.
Balthazar looked down. “So what do you want to do, then?”
Even though he wasn’t looking at Pedro, he could almost see him dragging his hand through his hair again. “I don’t know,” he said. “You know Ben’s never gonna let this go.”
Balthazar nodded. “It would almost be easier to just pretend we’re dating.”
Pedro raised his eyebrows.
“Pedro, I was kidding,” Balthazar said.
But Pedro wasn’t joining in the joke. “But what if we did?”
“Pedro, no.”
“Look, I know what it sounds like, but hear me out.”
Balthazar fixed Pedro with his best fine-then-convince-me glare.
“People aren’t gonna leave us alone unless they think we’re dating, right?”
“Probably…” Balthazar admitted grudgingly.
“So if they think we’re dating it’ll probably be easier for us to get past—” he gestured vaguely “—all this than if they know we’re not.”
“We’d still have to act like we’re dating.”
Pedro shrugged. “We could be one of those couples that’s not too keen on PDA.”
“We wouldn’t be, though. If we were actually dating.”
Pedro stared. He was probably trying to go for disapproval, but his eyes were too wide. He swallowed. Balthazar had to force himself not to smirk. Pedro’s plan was a terrible idea. It would never work and Balthazar knew it. But it occurred to him that if he went along with it until it (inevitably) failed, the results of this failure could work to his advantage (and Pedro’s too, if he would pull his head out of his ass long enough to realize it).
“Okay,” he said, “let’s do it.”
Balthazar was bad at strategy. This was the conclusion he came to, sitting alone in his room after a month and a half of infuriatingly successful fake dating. Their final term of high school was over, and without the mandatory daily contact that school provided, Pedro could now avoid him with impunity. He’d thought he was so clever at first, discovering that if he pushed the boundaries a little in public, Pedro couldn’t afford to resist. They had to look like a couple, didn’t they?
So he held Pedro’s hand, found excuses to touch him, even kissed him on the cheek a few times. For Pedro’s part, he shot Balthazar a few you’re-making-things-difficult glares, but otherwise acted the part of affectionate boyfriend so flawlessly, even Balthazar was sometimes convinced.
But when no one else was around, it was another story. Or rather, no story at all. Pedro stopped calling, texting, visiting... It was either a show for their friends, or radio silence.
This was Pedro’s strategic response to Balthazar’s meddling, and in retrospect, it was a pretty brilliant move. During those final weeks of school, Balthazar, anxious about the dwindling amount of time they had left, redoubled his efforts on pushing boundaries in public, but that could only lead so far, because the kind of conversation they really needed to have was one that needed to happen in private, which Pedro had become frustratingly adept at avoiding. Balthazar was caught in his own trap.
Still, his mind dwelled on that movie night the Saturday after school got out—a last glimpse at what might have been. The whole group got together at Pedro’s and piled into his den with blankets and popcorn and The Princess Bride. During Westley’s duel with Inigo, Balthazar casually dropped his head on Pedro’s shoulder, and Pedro responded by just as casually wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him in closer. Balthazar felt so warm and comfortable that he soon dropped off to sleep.
He was roused to semi-consciousness by the whole room loudly quoting along with the “mawwiage” speech. He was half-convinced it was just his imagination, but he thought that as he drifted back into sleep, he felt the warm pressure of Pedro kissing the top of his head. Balthazar remembered thinking (in the hazy optimism of half-asleepness), this is it—things are going to change now.
But nothing changed. Several days later, he still hadn’t gotten so much as a single text from Pedro.
But he did have an email from Bea.
It was innocent enough, as far as emails went. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve and she still needed to buy some gifts, and so did Ben, so maybe they could get a group together and make a day of it? Pedro had already responded saying he’d come, and Balthazar did legitimately have a lot of Christmas shopping to do, having procrastinated pretty badly.
A plan was starting to form in his mind. It might not work, but at this point, he was getting pretty desperate.
The shopping trip itself passed without incident. Balthazar’s plan wouldn’t come into play until later on, so for now, he decided he’d enjoy himself. After an unusually successful few months of coffee shop gigs, he had enough tip money to splurge a little, which suited his plan-related purposes perfectly. Other than some guerilla hand-holding, Balthazar kept the PDA to a minimum, and noticed that Pedro seemed in general much more relaxed than normal. Just how he wanted him.
At the end of the day, when they dropped Balthazar off at home, it was time to put his plan into action.
He steeled himself and turned to Pedro. “I think I’ve got more than I can carry. Could you help me?”
Pedro eyed him warily. He knew something was up, but he had to agree.
“Do you need us to wait up?” Bea asked from the driver’s seat.
“Nah, it’s fine, I can take him home,” Balthazar said cheerily before Pedro could answer.
They gathered their bags in silence and headed into Balthazar’s house.
Once in his room, Balthazar acted quickly. He dropped his bags and grabbed his guitar (which thankfully had the shoulder strap attached). Before Pedro could make a hasty exit, Balthazar struck a chord. “I wanna say yes but I’ve gotta say no,” he sang. “Is that the time? I really have to go, I can’t deal with any more awkward situations.” He raised an eyebrow at Pedro as he continued to strum.
“Balthazar…” Pedro protested weakly, recognizing the song.
But Balthazar was not to be deterred. “If this works out, do you think we could settle down together in a nice neighborhood? Probably not,” he continued.
“The song doesn’t even work, you’re not sixteen,” Pedro pointed out.
Balthazar shrugged as he vamped on the chord progression. “I could just skip that bit.”
“It’s the chorus.”
“It doesn’t really matter, ‘cause it’s pointless,” he switched back to singing, “these games we play.”
“Balthazar…”
“It’s pointless ‘cause it always ends the same.”
“Okay, how does it end, then?”
Balthazar didn’t hesitate. He slid his guitar round to hang down his back by the shoulder strap, grabbed Pedro by the collar, and kissed him. Pedro didn’t respond immediately, but he didn’t pull away. Balthazar brought a hand up to rake through Pedro’s hair. He felt Pedro’s hands ghosting around his shoulders, then suddenly pushing him back.
“Balthazar, I told you—” he said.
“I know what you told me, but I’m tired of pretending.”
“You agreed to this plan.”
“It wasn’t supposed to work!”
Pedro paused. “You went along with this even though you didn’t think it would work?”
“Yes,” Balthazar answered defiantly, expecting a backlash that never came.
Instead, Pedro laughed. “We’re even more alike than I thought!” he said.
Balthazar blinked, then started laughing himself. “Yeah, you with your whole Love Gods thing,” he agreed. “So you tricked Bea and Ben, I tricked you. Can we just call it even and start kissing again?” He put on the most innocently hopeful face he could muster.
“Look,” Pedro said, “It’s not that I don’t want to, I just—” he ran his fingers through his hair “—how do I know I won’t mess this up?”
Balthazar took a moment to consider. “I guess you don’t. Neither of us do.” he said. “I mean, it’s like what I was saying in the song, isn’t it? Chances are this won’t last. One of us will probably screw up somehow. But right now, I’d rather be with you than not, so I’m willing to take the risk.”
“That actually… makes a lot of sense,” Pedro admitted.
“Well then,” Balthazar said, “I guess there’s just one thing left to say.”
“What’s that?”
Balthazar grinned and sang, “Do you wanna go o-o-out, do you wanna go o-o-out with me?”
Pedro laughed. “Actually, you know,” he said, “I think I’d rather stay in tonight.”
He kissed Balthazar, and seemed to be pushing him back onto the couch.
“Mmph! Guitar! Guitar!”
“Shit! Sorry…”
Balthazar took a moment to carefully set his beloved instrument on its stand, then he pulled Pedro down into the couch with him.
It was Christmas at the beach and Balthazar wasn’t sure whether it was Pedro in a swimsuit, or just the fact that every touch, every smile was so much more real now, but it seemed to Balthazar that he’d never enjoyed a Christmas more.
“How long has it been,” Ben asked as they settled, damp and smiling, around a picnic dinner, “since that party where I set you two up and you started dating?”
Balthazar grinned up at Pedro. “You know?” he said, “It feels like it was just yesterday.”