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Mickey watched Ian out of the corner of his eye as he put together the tent. He had pushed Mickey away a few minutes ago, sighing in mock frustration, and was now assembling the whole thing like a pro. Mickey was sitting on the ground, trying to get a fire started, and watching Ian easily assemble the forty piece tent.
“You know we’re not fucking, right?” Mickey asked.
Ian looked over at him, an amused glint in his sea blue eyes. A smile slid over his face as he said, “Just because they put all the gay guys in a tent together, doesn’t mean we have to have an orgy.”
“Just the two of us isn’t enough for an orgy.”
Ian rolled his eyes. “We’re not going to have sex. I got it, Mick.”
Mickey let the conversation fall into silence and went back to trying to start the fire. He got a few sparks off the twigs he was rubbing together but nothing else. The camp was noisy around them, everyone pitching tents and starting fires and yelling at each other. Ian got their tent up and walked off to help a couple of the other guys. Mickey stayed alone by his twig teepee, robotically rubbing sticks together.
The whole gay-guys-have-to-sleep-separately rule was stupid and everyone except for the gym teachers knew it. What was the point of putting the guys that would actually want to have sex in the same tent? Why not just put them with the girls if it was such a big deal to the straight guys? It made no fucking sense. All it really made were a bunch of really nasty jokes about what he and Ian were going to do after lights out.
And after weeks of tolerating these jokes, Mickey wanted to be perfectly clear that nothing was going to happen. Because, amazingly, Ian found the jokes funny. He laughed at them. He added on to them. He winked at Mickey whenever enough people were around for it to get a laugh. But they hadn’t been friends for a long time and they sure as hell weren’t going to have sex. Mickey couldn’t even remember why the hell he had come out to the school anyway. Every part of this camping trip had been a terrible idea.
He finally got a fire going and a couple of other guys came over to join him around it. The conversation turned in useless directions, a couple of the guys commenting on how attractive some of the girls were. Mickey glanced over at them, their tents separated from the guys tent by a long stretch of no-man’s-land that was dotted with the teachers’ three tents.
“How easy do you think it’d be to sneak over?” Hector asked.
Mickey said, “All you really have to do is wait for Mrs. Brett to fall asleep, sneak around to the North, and you’re golden. She sleeps like a log.”
Hector gave him a look as he considered the plan. Then he clapped him on the back and said, “That’s not a bad idea, Mick.”
Mickey tried not to shudder at the nickname. Ian had taken to calling him that at the start of the semester and, annoyingly, it had stuck. And he wouldn’t have really minded it at all if it hadn’t come from Ian. A lot of the guys saw it as some sort of sign that they were already fucking, making putting them in a tent together even more of a joke. After hearing they would be bunking together, Freddie had asked if he could bunk with his girlfriend too.
At least Ian hadn’t laughed at that one.
Ian came back after setting up half of the camp’s tents, including more than one of the tents on the girl’s side, and sat across from Mickey in the loose campfire circle. He ignored the guys telling him he should sit by his boyfriend and quickly changed the subject. Mickey studied him as he talked, loud and animated, drawing people from different fires over to hear his stories. Half of which weren’t even true. Ian seemed to forget that Mickey lived in his neighbourhood.
The sun went down and Hector started detailing a plan to get over to the girls’ side of the camp. He spoke in a stage whisper, quiet enough to attract attention towards their silence. He drew a diagram in the dirt, the three teachers’ tents X’s and the girls side a pot of gold. He said, “We go around Mrs. Brett’s tent, quietly, once she’s asleep. Easy enough. But how do we tell if she’s asleep?”
“She snores,” Ian replied, before Mickey could. “Loud as a jackhammer. It’ll keep everyone else up, but she’ll be fast asleep.”
Hector stared at Ian for a moment before glancing back at Mickey. And, damn him, his cheeks went bright red at the look and he had to dip his head to look at his feet. Nothing had happened. Nothing had fucking happened. It wasn’t his fault that the two of them had been in the equipment locker at the same time and heard Mrs. Brett snoring through the thin wall that the locker shared with the office. And it wasn’t his fault that it had turned into one of those rare moments where the two of them actually managed to get along again and they had stood there for a while, trying to get her to wake up. Other than standing a little too close together for lack of space and feeling Ian’s breath on his neck, nothing had happened.
“Okay,” Hector said, clearing his throat. “We wait for the snoring. We sneak out of our tents. We go to visit the girls.” He rubbed out the drawing and stroked a fake beard at his chin. “It’s so simple it just might work.”
A bunch of the guys let out muffled whoops of joy. Then Ian said, “I really think that Mr. Craig giving us math homework for the trip was a load of bullshit.”
Everyone stared at him, confused, until Mr. Craig himself cleared his throat from behind the bulk of the group. Ian looked up at him, an angelic smile on his mischievous face, as he said, “Sorry for my language, sir.”
“You’ll do the homework,” he replied.
Ian nodded and the rest of the group played along, offering apologies and reassurances that the homework would be done. Mr. Craig eyed the group suspiciously but moved along to the next fire as the group watched him, waiting until he was out of earshot to start laughing.
***
Mickey lay awake in his sleeping bag, staring up at the thin roof of the blue tent. He could hear Ian’s shallow breathing to his left, but no snores lit up the camp yet. He was restless with the energy of the camp. It had been his plan.His plan. And although he really didn’t care about sneaking over to fool around with girls, he would have liked to at least have been invited.
Then he heard it. Like a foghorn calling the troops to their positions, Mrs. Brett’s snore echoed through the camp. And less than a second later a mad scramble ensued from the rest of the tents. A loud clatter of boys shushing each other and tiptoeing over squeaky fabric and pushing each other in order to reach the position all together.
Mickey sighed, knowing there was about a fifty percent chance this was going to fail miserably. The guys had already been loud enough for Mr. Craig and Ms. W to poke out their heads and see what the commotion was. And even on the off chance that they were both deep sleepers too, the girls might not want the guys over there. They might scream. They might yell for the teachers. One of the guys could secretly not be on board with the plan and rat them all out.
Mickey waited breathlessly as the rest of the guys scampered across no-man’s-land. He heard no rustle from the teachers’ tents and waited for the first of the girls to be woken. A giggle sounded too loudly across the field, but the girls were bound to be giggling anyways, all awake despite being told to go to sleep.
A new scatter of shushes and giggles and sloppy kisses floated through the silent night air. It took a few minutes for them to quiet down, but soon the muffled sounds of a “silent” party were floating through the night. And even though Mickey was glad his plan had worked, he silently cursed the teachers for being such deep sleepers and for being so stupid. No one was that happy without someone having sex.
“Would you please be quiet?” Ian groaned.
Mickey glanced over at him, his arm lying across his forehead, eyes still closed against the darkness. Mickey bit down on the sigh halfway out of his mouth. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Don’t be sorry,” Ian replied, “just quiet.”
Rolling his eyes, Mickey went back to staring at the top of the tent. He tried to close his eyes, slowing his breathing so he could sleep, but the ground dug hard into his back and the noise of the party, while quiet, was too loud. After a minute, he asked, “You awake?”
“No.”
“Wanna do something?”
There was silence for a moment. Then, “We’re not having sex.”
Mickey bit back his sigh, but allowed his eyes to roll. “Not that, asshole.”
“You’re the asshole,” Ian grumbled, and it took Mickey a second to figure out whether he was just throwing the insult back or making an innuendo. Before he was completely sure –and with Ian he could never be completely sure– Ian said, “What do you want to do?”
Mickey looked over at him. His eyes were finally open, but blurred heavily with sleep. “How can you sleep with that noise?”
“Five siblings.”
“I got four.”
“The fifth really adds to the noise.”
“It doesn’t bug you?”
Ian shrugged. “Don’t really want to see a bunch of girls get wasted and then try to get me into bed.”
“Me neither. Still annoying.”
“You jealous?”
“Jealous?”
“You used to have a thing for Hector.”
Mickey rolled his eyes. “In the sixth grade.”
Ian laughed, the sound too harsh to mingle with the quiet giggles of the girls across the way. “And even then the guy was straighter than an arrow,” he said. “I think you’re gaydar’s broken.”
“Fuck off.”
“You’re the one who wanted to talk.”
Silence rolled over them and Mickey tried to keep it that way. But he was restless with the noise across the way, so he asked, “What do you think they’re doing over there?”
“Fucking.”
“Yeah, but before that,” Mickey said. “Girls don’t just jump guys. They want to seem harder to get than that.”
Ian sighed. “Truth or dare.”
“Dare,” Mickey replied, even though he knew Ian was answering a question, not asking one.
Ian opened one eye again, staring at him across the small space of the tent for a moment before rolling onto his side. The action barely closed the space between them, but Mickey still flinched at the prospect of Ian getting closer. The tent was small and there was only about three feet between them.
“Tell Hector you used to like him.”
“Something I can do from here.”
“You can do that from here,” Ian insisted. Then, at the top of his lungs, he shouted, “HEY! HECTOR!”
“Holy shit,” Mickey said.
Ian laughed, his entire body rocking until the laugh faded into a smile. He looked at Mickey, awake now, and said, “Pick truth instead.”
“Fine, truth.”
“Why’d you tell me we’re not having sex tonight?”
Mickey scoffed. “’Cause we’re fucking not.”
Ian rolled his eyes. “I know, but why specifically tell me? Why the warning? I know you’re not into me.”
For a second, Mickey stared at him, unable to believe that Ian didn’t know the reason. The culmination of Ian hitting on him every waking instant and the guys’ jokes and the fact that sometimes, just sometimes, when Ian looked at him, that he thought Ian might want to have sex with him.
He settled for the easy answer. “You’re the school slut.”
Ian smirked. “How can I be the school slut? You’re the only other gay guy and I haven’t slept with you.” Mickey gave him a look and Ian’s smirk turned into a smile that was holding onto a laugh. “Fine. I’m the school slut.”
“Truth or dare?” Mickey asked.
“Dare.”
Mickey thought about it for a moment. “Pick truth.”
“Truth.”
“Do you like me?”
Ian gave him a look that wasn’t entirely unsuggestive. Then he shrugged. “No. Truth or dare?”
For a second, Mickey felt like pushing him on that answer, but he thought better of it. “Truth,” he said, resigning himself to the fact that there were no good dares that they could do without leaving the tent.
“Ever had a sex dream about me?”
“What?”
“You have to answer.”
Mickey felt his cheeks go bright red, burning right through to the bone. “Once,” he snapped. “Truth or dare?” he asked the question too quickly, sending Ian into a fit of laughter that he muffled against his hand. Mickey wished he could just disappear right then and there.
“Truth.”
He was tempted to ask the same question, but pulled away from it. “Have you ever liked me?”
“I’ve considered it.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
Ian was silent for a moment, his eyes floating towards the top of the tent. “I’ve thought about it. After you came out.” He paused for a second and Mickey let the silence fill the space between them. “You know, what it’d be like to be with you. Holding hands. Kissing goodbye between classes. Actually, you know, having a relationship instead of just fucking behind closed doors and then pretending we’re nothing more than good friends.”
There was a sadness to his words that Mickey felt was necessary to get rid of. “And then what?” he asked. “You realized I don’t do relationships and figured, out or not, it’d be the same thing?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Ian replied, not getting that Mickey was joking. The silence stretched for a long moment, for longer than Mickey was comfortable with, and then Ian asked, “Truth or dare?”
Despite loving the respite from the silence, Mickey let it come back for a second before he answered. He liked hemming and hawing over it as if it was still a decision. “Truth.”
Ian smiled. “Hottest guy on this trip?”
“Richard Cline.”
Ian laughed. “You wouldn’t like him.”
Mickey glared at Ian. “How do you know what I like?”
Shrugging, Ian said, “He’s got a tiny dick.”
Mickey was silent.
“He’s a bottom.”
“So?”
They were silent for a second as Ian gave him a look, but Mickey didn’t budge. Ian rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, rolling slightly away from Mickey as he said, “You are such a bottom.”
“Am not.”
“Really?” he asked. He looked over at him in askance. “When have you ever topped?”
“Plenty of times.”
“I want the guy’s name.”
Mickey stared at him, more angry than he should be. Ian’s easy, teasing manner was light in the air, matching the buzz of the fading noise of the party. Mickey licked his lips. “Well…” he began and Ian laughed. “Shut up.”
“Nothing wrong with being a bottom.”
“Fuck off.”
Ian kept laughing until the sound faded in his throat and he had to swallow. He looked over at Mickey, his sea blue eyes shining in the darkness, and he said, “I choose truth, by the way.”
Mickey searched the air for a good question. Something to get them off of this topic. But, unfortunately, this topic was the best one he could find. “Name someone you haven’t slept with who you want to.”
“You.”
“Fuck off.”
Ian laughed, but the sound was strained, as if his reply wasn’t quite a joke. Mickey eyed him, looking for signs that there was something there, but found none. He frowned until Ian settled and replied, “Your brother-”
“Shut up.”
“Alex Barber.”
Mickey laughed.
“What?”
“Definitely a top.”
“You’ve slept with Alex Barber?”
“Who hasn’t?” Mickey replied. “He’s the second biggest slut in the school.”
“But he’s a top?”
Mickey nodded and Ian swore. It was Mickey’s turn to laugh now, and laugh he did, until Ian pulled the pillow from under his head and smacked Mickey across the face with it. Mickey quieted for just long enough for Ian to pull his pillow back before laughing again, short and forced. Ian rolled his eyes.
“Truth,” Mickey said on the edge of his subsiding laughter.
“Describe that dream.”
“No.”
“No chickens.”
Mickey bit his bottom lip. Ian’s expectant silence was buzzing in the night air, giving the mosquitoes a run for their money. And, despite the fact that no one was close enough to hear them, Mickey lowered his voice.
“Fine,” he said. He lingered over the words, pulling up the dream in his mind, and trying to pretend he didn’t remember it nearly as well as he did. “We’re in this hotel room. The one from the state capital trip in middle school and-”
“Wait, wait,” Ian said, so serious that for a second it hid his smile. Then his teeth glittered in the night as he leaned close and asked, “Was I in the roomwhen you had this dream?”
“Fuck off.”
“It’s a legitimate question.”
“It’s a question for a different turn.”
“It’s an add-on question.”
“Do you want me to describe the dream or not?” Mickey snapped. Ian raised his hands in mock surrender, but didn’t back up. There was a little less than a foot of space between them now and Mickey looked up at Ian, close enough to kiss. He wanted to kill himself for even mentioning the dream in the first place. He could have lied.
With a sigh, he said, “We’re in the hotel room and… when we get there, instead of two beds, there’s one. And you give me this look like, well, it’s notreally a problem, even though it clearly is a problem and… what? What? Stop laughing!”
Ian’s laugh filled the tent and it took him a second to calm down. Biting down on the smile, he shook his head and said, “You watch too much porn.”
“Fuck off.”
Ian tried to swallow his smile and failed. He made a hand motion, telling Mickey to go on.
Shaking his head, Mickey dropped his eyes from Ian’s and continued, “And then while I’m arguing about why exactly it is a problem, you step forward and kiss me, really suddenly and really hard, and then, all of a sudden-” Mickey’s eyes shot up to Ian’s. “Stop fucking laughing!”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” He laughed again and then swallowed it. “I can’t believe you’re telling me about your middle school sex dreams.”
“You asked.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Fuck off.”
Ian smiled broadly and Mickey shook his head at him, feeling Ian’s warm breath skittering against his exposed arms. He let the silence hang in the air for a second, feeling the lack of space between them and, oddly, not really minding it. “Truth or dare?” Mickey asked.
“You didn’t finish.”
“You forfeit the answer due to excessive laughter.”
Ian tried not to smile and failed miserably. He said, “Dare.”
And Mickey, stupidly, replied, “Kiss me.”
Ian raised an eyebrow, all of his teasing nature swooping into the moment at once. “I thought you said we weren’t fucking.”
“I didn’t say ‘fuck me’.”
Ian was silent for a second, then said, “Kinda the same thing.”
“Not the same thing.” Mickey stared at him for a long moment and then sighed. “I’ve never actually kissed a guy before, all right? I just… want to see.”
Ian stared at him for a long moment and then nodded. His silence brought a seriousness to the moment that wasn’t there a second before when they were both laughing about a middle school sex dream. Mickey took a deep breath while trying to look like he wasn’t taking a deep breath. Ian shifted a little closer to him.
Then, with a sharp breath, Ian closed the space between them. Ian’s lips were rougher than Mickey had imagined and he kissed softly. One peck and he pulled back, their foreheads knocking together in the darkness.
“Truth or dare?” Ian asked, a little breathlessly.
“Dare.”
“Tongue.”
Ian went in again without waiting for a response and Mickey reacted quickly. Smooth, soft kisses moved quickly into open mouths and tongues sliding together. The entire thing was tirelessly slow. Mickey tried to push Ian faster, but Ian ignored him, trailing his tongue slowly along Mickey’s, cutting the kisses short just when they got too deep, and closing his mouth to give Mickey small pecks. A minute later he pulled back with a sigh and rolled over to his side of the tent.
A shivering cold went through Mickey and he was silent for a moment, resisting the urge to touch his lips like a teenage girl in a rom-com. He let the silence linger, the night slowing down around them, and asked, “Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” Ian said, grudgingly.
Mickey licked his lips. “You hard right now?”
He could’ve sworn Ian smiled. “A little.”
“Slut.”
“Fuck off.”
Mickey smiled, dipping his head to hide the expression in case Ian decided to look over. He rolled onto his back again and tried to see the stars through the thin roof of the tent. Their silence lasted so long that Mickey thought the game was over, until Ian said, “Truth or dare?”
Itching to say dare, just to see what Ian would say, he replied, “Truth.”
“Why haven’t we hooked up before?”
Mickey blinked, but resisted the urge to look over at Ian. He considered the question. “It’s hard in our neighbourhood,” Mickey replied. “Being gay at all is basically a suicide mission. I guess it’d be harder if we were actually together.”
Ian snorted. “I said ‘hooked up’, not ‘gotten together’. Why haven’t we had sex before?”
“You’re an asshole,” Mickey responded. “And I was in the closet. Deep, deep in the closet.”
“Why’d you come out?”
Mickey shrugged. “Dad died. Wasn’t a point anymore.” Ian didn’t reply, so Mickey asked, “Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“What’d you mean before when you said ‘something like that’?” Mickey asked. And Ian was quiet for so long that Mickey thought he might have to remind Ian when he said that, and in response to what. Then came Ian’s sigh.
“I spent too long in love with you,” he replied, “when we were kids. You, this homophobic ass of a six year-old that I played T-ball with.” Ian paused to shrug. “You came out and I had this ridiculous daydream of us walking happily through the school hallways together and… it hurt too much. Because I remember thinking the exact same thing as a little kid when you would barely look at me because I was gay. And then I remember trying so hard not to look at you like that when we were friends. Having a crush on you was just too hard. So I made a joke out of it.”
“Ian…” Mickey said, but the word didn’t seem to have much of an impact. But he didn’t have any other words to offer. He rolled back up on his side to look at him, silent and still in the night. He licked his lips. Still he had no words.
“Truth or dare?” Ian asked.
“Dare.”
“Pick truth.”
“No.”
Ian rolled back up on his side to look at Mickey, his eyes weary in the darkness. He repeated, “Pick truth.”
“No.”
Ian stared at him for a long time. “I can’t do this for fun,” he said. “Anyone else? Yeah, sure. For fun. But you…” He shook his head. “I can’t do it and I won’t.”
“Then don’t.”
“Then pick truth.”
“I meant don’t do it for fun.”
Ian blinked. He licked his lips and Mickey followed the trail of his tongue. “You’ll hold my hand in the hallways?”
Mickey tried not to laugh and failed. “I’ll think about it.”
For a long moment, Ian was silent. Then he said, “Strip.”
“What?”
“That’s the dare.”
The two of them locked into a staring contest and Mickey shook his head. He shifted forward, closing the space between them, and kissed Ian gently. A long, slow kiss, and then finished by pulling at Ian’s bottom lip. Their lips close enough that the words made them brush together, Mickey murmured, “Only if you’ll help me.”
Ian obliged.