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“I don’t really want to go home.”
Where he was tossing a bundle of wrinkled up t-shirts into his suitcase - packing last minute like he usually did - Brandon paused. “Dude, we planned this like, weeks ago? If we cancel the flight now they’ll charge us five million dollars in fees.”
For a second, Alec wanted to correct him. It was only a hundred, per ticket; he’d looked last night. He had been meant to be sleeping, but instead his stomach was churning with dread and he’d curled up under the covers and thought of any way to get out of it. He didn’t correct him. “I didn’t say I wanted to cancel it. I just don’t want to go.”
Brandon flipped the lid of his suitcase shut to make more space on his bed so he could sit himself next to Alec. “How come?”
He shrugged, playing with the frayed edges of Marsh’s thin blanket and refusing to make eye contact. Refusing to even glance up, in case that gave away that his eyes had felt cloudy and misty since he’d woken up and he couldn’t even explain why. “Just don’t want to. It’ll be my first time home since…” He shook his head. “You know.”
The first time home since they had become a thing. Since the clubhouse celebration where they’d gone too far, to somewhere they couldn’t brush off as a joke and come laughing back the next day. Since they’d kissed in the smoky hallway, sweaty and drunk and exhilarated. Since then.
It was getting too much - the music was pounding in his chest and the alcohol was spinning in his head and he was so happy and so proud and so tired and he needed to get out.
“Marshy,” he yelled, above the sound of the celebration. “I need a minute.”
He hadn’t really meant for Brandon to follow him, but when he finally reached the hallway and took in a deep breath, free from the stickiness of beer on the floor and all of the hands touching him everywhere and the music dulled to a distant beat, he was still there in front of him.
“Hey,” Brandon said, a hand on each of Alec’s arms as he leaned against the wall and caught his breath. “You okay?”
Without explanation, Alec laughed, throwing his head back until it hit the wall behind him. “Yeah,” he breathed, and he thought he probably looked incredibly stupid but he couldn’t care at all. He grabbed Brandon’s arms, and they were holding each other. “I’m great. I’m so great.”
He figured that Marsh would let go once he reassured him that he was fine, but he didn’t, so Alec stayed there, held against the wall, breathless and giddy. Their bodies were too close together - not because they hadn’t been this close before, but because for some reason tonight it was making him too warm and it was making him want to melt. It was making his stomach feel weird - hot and fluttery and spinning. God, maybe he was more drunk than he thought.
“Um,” Brandon mumbled, and for the first time Alec noticed that he looked almost as flustered as he felt - his face red, sweat damp on his clothes, his hands shaking a little where they were still wrapped around his arms. “Can I kiss you?”
Alec felt like something huge and monstrous had opened in the pit of his stomach, threatening to consume him from the inside out. He felt like he might float away, or like he might explode into a thousand pieces right there and leave Brandon with nothing. Yes, he wanted to say, please, sure, do anything.
But the words caught in his throat, and he thought if he tried to say any of them out loud he’d throw up. And Brandon was still there, in his arms, eyes wide and body shaking.
With nothing else to do, no other way to say yes, dizzy and desperate, he twisted and pushed Brandon to be against the wall instead and kissed him first. It was nothing special - Brandon’s beard tickled against his chin uncomfortably, and he tasted a bit like cigar smoke and Budweiser, and the rest of their bodies were scrambling and out of place, unsure what to do.
“Stop,” Alec panted eventually, his hand on Brandon’s chest. Brandon glanced up, eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and Alec didn’t know how to tell him that he wanted it too much, that it was scaring him how good it was. He didn’t know how to say that something ugly and desperate and repressed was crawling its way up his throat and making him feel insane. He didn’t know how to say any of that, no matter how much Brandon deserved to know. “They’re gonna wonder what happened to us,” he said instead, a half-lie for an explanation. “We gotta get back.”
“Yeah,” Marsh agreed, though Alec could tell he was hurt. He didn’t know what to do about that. “For sure.”
He couldn’t imagine, after that, driving by his old high school where he used to hear lecture upon lecture about marriage, and chastity, and holiness. Passing his old church on the sidewalk on the way to the 7-11, feeling the phantom sensation of the cold, wooden pews underneath him and the stares of the people around him and the scent of incense burning his eyes. Hearing the little voice in the back of his head that he could never quite silence back home, that said maybe they’re right, and maybe there’s something wrong with you, and maybe you’re disgusting and irredeemable, and maybe you don’t deserve anything good after all.
Or, he could imagine it, and it made him feel sick. He swallowed down the nauseous feeling in the back of his throat. “It doesn’t matter.”
Brandon wrapped his arm around Alec’s shoulder, and he felt him grasp onto the fabric of his shirt like he always did. “I mean, it kinda does, man. I don’t want you to be upset.”
He couldn’t handle this today - the touch, the tenderness. “Don’t touch me right now,” he said. Brandon’s hand dropped off his shoulder immediately, and he added softly, “Please.” Silently, Marsh stood up and resumed packing. “I’m gonna be fine,” Alec continued, feeling like the interaction was falling apart in front of him and he couldn’t grasp it to pull it back together. “It’s gonna be fine.”
On the plane, sitting side by side, their knees touching, Alec did not feel like things were going to be fine. The anxiety about going home was leaking into everything else; every time the plane dipped and jumped in turbulence he gripped the armrest of his seat and every time Brandon looked at him even just a fraction off, he felt an uncertain turn in his chest.
“When we get there,” he started, quietly, staring resolutely at the latch holding the tray up to his seat in front of him. “We’re gonna get off the plane, get the rental car, drive to my house, say hi to my parents-” At this point, he must have gone over the plan a dozen times at least, and Brandon was indulging him every time.
“Don’t be…” he continued, trailing off. He didn’t know how to say this. He didn’t know how to say anything, not when it really mattered. “Don’t be too…you know. Like, in public, or around my parents, I mean, don’t- The people there are kind of- I mean-”
Brandon cut him off. “Dude, you know I grew up in Georgia, right?”
He probably didn’t mean anything by it except for what he said - nothing like Alec, you’re being crazy or Alec, there’s something really fucking wrong with you - but the anxiety was creeping around everything and he felt like he’d been slapped into something tiny and pathetic and stupid.
“Yeah, sorry, I-” He felt his shoulders shrug up to his ears, and there was nothing he could do about that. He didn’t know why it happened. “Sorry. I know. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, baby.” Brandon so rarely used pet names on him, romantic ones like that, and it made his stomach flutter violently against his will. “I know you’re having a really hard time right now.”
God, he didn’t deserve him. He didn’t deserve any of this - someone who’d come home with him, fly to an unknown place, meet his parents, deal with his panic and his stupid conflicted emotions that he didn’t even bother trying to explain. Deserving was such a weird concept. Had he done anything to deserve good things?
“I’m just gonna tell my mom we’re just best friends,” he choked out.
Brandon shrugged. “Aren’t we?”
And that was the thing, wasn’t it? They weren’t exactly more than best friends. But they weren’t exactly just best friends either. They were something in between, uncategorizable - and that itself made Alec anxious if he thought about it for too long. They weren’t dating; just the thought of something that official, of having to come to terms with himself that straightforwardly, made a terrified lump choke the back of his throat. He didn’t know what they were.
On the sofa, Alec and Brandon were tangled up - limbs crossed over one another, Brandon’s head rested on Alec’s shoulder, Alec’s hand in Brandon’s hair - beers in their hands and a stupid documentary nearly muted on the TV.
“So,” Brandon ventured, tracing his fingers idly down Alec’s arm. They’d just kissed again earlier - slowly this time, intentionally. One time could be written off as anything: adrenaline, exhilaration, a joke. Two times? A different story. “Do you like guys then?”
“No.” The answer was instant, tumbling out of his mouth before he could even think about it. The question made him feel antsy and uncomfortable, and he shifted on the sofa. His face felt weird, like he’d felt when he was tiny and caught lying and he knew there was no way out. Burning and ashamed and helpless.
Brandon lifted his head off his shoulder curiously. “But you like me?”
“Yeah.”
He settled himself back down, nestling against Alec and nudging his arm to wrap around him. “Okay,” he said. Maybe that was enough for him.
God, he wanted to be enough for him. He didn’t know what he’d do, if Brandon ever asked to be his boyfriend. If he ever asked why he never said “I love you too.” If he ever asked why they couldn’t tell the rest of the guys, why the idea made him nauseous. Brandon probably deserved better than him. He didn’t want to think about it.
Alec knew he was going to cry, eventually. He’d known since last night, when he’d been awake in the early hours of the morning desperate for any reason not to leave. He’d felt it building up, pressure behind his eyes and tightness in his throat, until it was inevitable. So he knew it was going to happen, but that didn’t make it any easier when it hit him without warning behind the wheel of their rental car.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, jerkily pulling the car off the road and stopping it in the middle of a rundown parking lot, grass overgrowing in the patches of gravel still visible. There was an old playground off to the side, with its mulch sprinkled with clovers and weeds and a little puddle of muddy water in the bottom of the slide. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”
He hated rental cars. They felt so cold and impersonal. They were too clean, and he felt like he’d dirty them just by stepping inside. After turning the car off, he frantically searched each compartment for tissues, or a paper towel, or anything he could use to wipe his nose because it was running and he was about to cry and he felt gross.
“Fuck!” he yelled, coming up empty.
“Woah, woah,” Brandon unbuckled his seatbelt and twisted sideways in his seat to touch Alec’s arm softly. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, nothing.” He felt like he couldn’t breathe, like he’d forced the tears down for too long and they’d dripped into his lungs and now he was drowning. His eyes were burning. With nothing else to do, he brushed his sleeve under his nose, and felt disgusting. He always felt disgusting, more or less. “Fuck. I can’t- I need to-”
The car felt like it was closing in on him, determined to squeeze and crush him until it had sucked everything awful out of him and left only a shell left. There was a song about that, he was pretty sure, that they’d used to sing at church. Probably, if he thought about it, the song was a little different. Probably something about refining all the imperfections out, something about becoming holier through trials. But singing it had always felt like being crushed.
Panicked, he fumbled with the car door until it unlocked and threw himself out of it, tripping on his own legs. He didn’t know where to go after that, wishing there was some corner he could press himself into or a wall he could lean against until the feeling passed. But there was nothing - just an open parking lot and an open road and an open playground that he couldn’t look at for too long without thinking of the years he’d spent playing there before he learned that there was something incurably wrong with him. He felt like a target, and his whole body felt tense like he was about to be struck.
God, something was really wrong with him.
With nowhere to hide, he fidgeted his arms at his sides, desperately fighting the urge to wave them up and down. He crossed them over his chest eventually, hoping that if he pressed them hard enough, they wouldn’t move.
“Alec, Alec, Alec,” Brandon called, half-running around the car to meet him. He never called him Alec like that. Soft and panicked and cautious, like he was talking to a small and wounded animal. And if that wasn’t how he felt - a small and wounded animal. He wanted to start biting and scratching and growling; he felt like he was bleeding out. “Hey, woah, sit down man, you’re scaring me.”
As if all the nervous energy built up in his body had been sucked out all at once, he collapsed onto the gravel and grass beneath him, pulling his knees up and resting his head on them, hiding his face. He knew he was crying, he could feel it - tears running down his face and his chest hitching and his mouth making stupid, disgusting sobbing sounds - but there was something so detached about it, and he was almost calm.
Sitting on this gravel hurts, he thought. They need to repaint that playground. My sleeves are gonna be gross after this. My jeans are fraying. It’s kind of warm.
Who thought about that kind of stuff while sobbing on the ground in your hometown playground parking lot? He couldn’t even fucking cry properly. Who was so messed up they didn’t even know how to cry without losing focus?
Next to him, Brandon had dropped onto the ground silently. He hadn’t touched Alec since he’d exited the car, and he wasn’t sure whether he wanted him to or not. He wasn’t saying anything, and Alec almost wished he would, so he could stop filling in the silence with his own imagination.
You’re so fucking pathetic, said a twisted version of Brandon’s voice in his head. He didn’t know when he’d gotten Brandon’s voice in his head. You’re a grown ass adult crying on the ground like a baby. Can’t even be man enough to drive a few minutes to your goddamn house. Probably shouldn’t even have come home at all. Nobody here wants you.
Instead, eventually, Brandon whispered, “Can you please breathe for me, man?”
Alec had never heard Marsh whisper before. Even when he was supposed to be whispering, it was usually more of a quiet mumble than anything, something that had caused far too many giggles in meant-to-be-silent environments and something that had earned the two of them more than one stern look from coaches and teammates in the past. He hadn’t been sure Brandon knew how to whisper.
“Please, Alec,” he continued, sounding desperate. “Come on, you can do it.”
He was being treated like a baby, and he hated that. And worse, he deserved it. If he was going to cry and whine and make a big deal out of nothing like a fucking baby, he should be treated like one. He knew about getting what he’d earned, reaping what he’d sewn. He’d been hearing about it all his life.
“Sure,” he choked out, not because he thought he could actually breathe but because something tight and scared and eleven-years-old-again was clawing in his chest and he wasn’t sure what Brandon would do to him if he said no.
For a minute, he didn’t know when he was, if maybe it was 2007 again, trying to run away but with nowhere to go, on this very parking lot shaking in the dark hoping nobody would find him. If maybe it was 1999, and nothing was wrong yet, and nothing bad had happened to him and he was climbing backwards up the slide and tripping and falling and hitting his face in the mulch and coming up laughing like it hadn’t hurt at all. If maybe it was 2014, and he was saying goodbye to the old town - the church, and the school, and this very playground that had been his longest friend.
But then he remembered to breathe, because Brandon had told him to.
“I feel like I’m going to throw up,” he managed - an admission, or a warning, or something like that.
Brandon didn’t move. He didn’t stand up to get out of the way, wrinkle his nose, didn’t flinch - instead, he put his hand firmly on Alec’s back and started rubbing it gently. “Okay,” he said, matter-of-fact. Alec didn’t know why he wasn’t disgusted by him.
He didn’t know why everyone wasn’t disgusted by him, all the time, and it set him on edge, because one day everyone was going to find out how horribly awful he really was inside. He wished they’d just get it over with and find out, so he didn’t have to think about it all the time. At least Brandon. He at least wanted Brandon to figure it out.
Desperately, he wanted Brandon to know every single thing that was wrong with him. He wanted to lay it all out, rip himself open and let him see every horrible thought he’d ever had, every horrible thing he’d ever done. It would be so easy, to pour out every irredeemable thing about him, to stare Brandon’s horror in the face and say, I knew this was coming. To watch him stand up and leave and fly back to Philadelphia without him, and say, I knew you would do that. To finally, finally, stop feeling like he was dangling over the edge of a cliff waiting for everyone to find out, to be all alone with nothing left and say, I knew this would happen, eventually.
“Don’t you think I’m disgusting?” he sobbed, desperate for Brandon to say yes.
“What, ‘cause you’re nauseous?” he sounded astounded, like he couldn’t comprehend the idea of being disgusted by Alec. Which was nice, except that he was answering the wrong question. “Dude, we live together. I've seen you throw up like, fifty times.”
He had not, for the record, but Alec was too exhausted to argue with him about it. “No. Because I’m-” He didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Or he did, and he couldn’t make himself say it out loud. He hid his face against his knees again. He wanted to disappear.
Alec was so little, and the world was so big, and he was aware of it for the first time in his life.
In his defense, it was hard to feel anything but little when you were sitting all alone on a playground parking lot curb in the middle of the night, millions and millions of stars overhead and millions and millions of gravel pieces underfoot. But he’d never felt small like this before, and it was terrifying.
He was scuffling his blue sneakers against the ground, so that he wouldn’t be in complete silence. His hands were shaking, no matter how hard he clenched them into fists at his sides, no matter how hard he grasped at the edge of his jacket, no matter how many times he picked rocks up off the ground and threw them into the darkness.
He was so small, and he was angry about it.
“Fuck!” he yelled, for the first time ever. He’d thought it plenty of times, mouthing it under his breath and writing it on the back of tests returned back to him, but he’d never said it, not with his full chest. It felt weird in his mouth. For a second, he felt guilty like someone was watching him and shaking their head. God, probably, he figured. For a second, he imagined himself a week from today lined up against the church wall with the rest of his fifth grade class, preparing to confess every ugly word he’d said.
But tonight he was small, and he was angry.
“Fuck!” he yelled again. He didn’t care if God was watching him. He was angry at him, too. He banged his head against his knees, his voice cracking on every word. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Eventually, he was too tired to keep yelling, and he was too cold to keep throwing rocks at the ground because his hands were numb and he was shivering.
He was old enough to know that he’d have to go home eventually. He knew that he had baseball practice tomorrow at five, and he knew that he needed food and shelter and money to survive and he was too young to get any of those things on his own. He was old enough to know that he couldn’t avoid it forever - eventually he’d have to give up and scuffle back, ashamed, up the sidewalk to his house. He was old enough to know that eventually he’d have to climb back up that rickety stairwell, past the steps he’d sat on and overheard his mother crying as she tried to defend him, overheard his father say he wouldn’t have his only son grow up to be a-
Well, he was old enough to know he wasn’t getting out of there anytime soon.
He imagined getting home, imagined his mom tucking him into bed and kissing his forehead like he hadn’t left at all. “Remember,” she’d say, the way she always did at bedtime - it was just her little thing and he couldn’t do anything about it - “God made you just the way he wants you.” She’d poke his nose while she said it, and he’d used to giggle, when he was little.
Now, the thought of it made him want to cry, because he didn’t think that was true anymore and he couldn’t figure out why anyone would make something like him. When he created anything - when he built legos, or baked cookies, or tied the knot on the back of his baseball glove - he always made sure it was just the way he wanted. He couldn’t imagine making something he knew he couldn’t love.
And he was only Alec, some little kid in Nebraska. God was God. He couldn’t have done a better job?
“Woah, woah, woah,” Brandon laughed, slinging his backpack off his shoulder and tossing it onto the ground just inside the door. “Alec Bohm childhood bedroom reveal?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess,” Alec muttered, his arms still crossed tightly over his chest. As if things couldn’t get any more stressful - as if introducing Brandon to his parents, and having to answer every routine question about the trip and their friendship and all sorts of other nonsense, and having to make up an excuse to get away for a minute so he’d have a chance to breathe wasn’t hard enough - now his favorite person in the world was going to see his childhood bedroom and he hadn’t even gotten a chance to make it presentable.
On the plane, he’d thought about phoning his mom and asking her to tidy it up for him, maybe hide the more embarrassing decorations he hadn’t bothered to remove from his childhood days. But he knew how it would go: she’d say, “It’s just family, sweetheart, no need to pretend for anyone,” and if he argued it’d be suspicious and if he didn’t, nothing would happen anyways.
So now they were here, with Brandon giddily launching himself at Alec’s twin-sized bed and everything about him open for anyone to see. He tried to pretend he’d never seen the room before, tried to imagine he was Brandon taking it in for the first time.
He tried to imagine what he would make of the rows of trophies and medals, lined chronologically along a wooden shelf, or the stack of old lego set instruction booklets, in case he wanted to build them again, or the dark blue weighted blanket folded neatly at the foot of his bed. He tried to guess what he would think of the way baseball posters accompanied the crucifix hung high on the wall and the way baseball cards were scattered on top of the Bible on his bookshelf, like he had two religions, like he worshiped two gods.
He wondered if Brandon could tell that the dent in the wall was where he’d cried and yelled and punched it when he was nineteen, and how obvious it was that the lack of clothes hanging in his closet was so that he could sit in there in the dark when the world got to be too much.
He tried to imagine what he’d think of the person whose childhood bedroom this was. Nothing good, probably.
“Sorry,” he started quietly. “I would’ve like, cleaned it up or something, but I was- I mean obviously I wasn’t here, so-”
Brandon helped himself into the drawer of Alec’s end table, pulled out the sort of rubber ball kids earn at the dentist, and started tossing it against the wall. “Dude,” he interrupted. His eyes were sparkling, and his mouth was dropped half-open in a huge smile. “This is fucking awesome. What do you have, like, forty million trophies?” Without waiting for an answer, he bent over and pulled an old book out from under the bed. “No way. Why do you keep photo albums under your bed?”
“Oh my god, give me that,” Alec groaned, swiping half-heartedly at the album. “My mom must’ve put it there for storage when I was gone. Seriously, give it to me.”
Brandon giggled, gleefully - two words that were hardly suited to a grown man like him, and if Alec’s stomach wasn’t churning anxiously about the book in his hand, it would probably be fluttering like he was a middle schooler with a crush again. “Absolutely fucking not,” he laughed, twisting his body so the book was out of Alec’s reach and shaking him off when he put his arms around him. “I’m looking at every single page in this thing.”
Sinking onto the bed next to him, Alec gave up. If he’d insisted, Brandon would probably have given it over, eventually, but he hadn’t. “Fine,” he admitted, sliding closer. Marsh leaned his head against Alec’s shoulder, and he checked instinctively to make sure the door was shut. “At least let me see, too, then.”
“Summer 2003,” Brandon read aloud, opening the album carefully. Alec watched his hands as he did so; they were, as always, a little rough, a little clumsy, but there was something so delicate about the way he was handling it. Reverence, almost, for Alec’s childhood photos. He didn’t know what to do with that. “What are you here, like six? Seven?”
“I don’t know. Something like that.”
On the bed, they were sitting so close that Alec felt Brandon’s breath on his shoulder each time he chuckled at a photo, and felt his body shake a little when he laughed. “Oh my god, look at you and your little buddy,” he said, pointing.
The photo was a little blurry, a little over-saturated, but Alec was clear in the middle, his arms wrapped tightly around another kid just as little as him. Both boys’ eyes were squeezed tight, huge grins on their faces. They were both in muddy baseball uniforms, eyeblack smeared under Alec’s eyes; their cheeks were both red like they’d been playing hard for hours.
Alec remembered that kid. He remembered playing baseball with him, remembered him being his best friend. He remembered when they’d hugged on the last day of fourth grade - ten years old - and he’d shrugged him off and told him they were too old for that now. They hadn’t really talked since. He wondered how he was doing.
“Damn,” Brandon said, turning the page. “I don’t know what all these words mean, but you were looking sharp, man.”
In the photo, little Alec was standing straight with his hands tucked behind his back, grinning widely and proudly. He was in a tiny tuxedo suit, looking almost silly on a child, and there were a few white roses tucked into his blazer pocket. First Holy Communion! the caption read underneath. So proud of you, Alec. June 14, 2003.
“I always look sharp,” Alec retorted, entirely hollow. He remembered that day, too. He remembered being so happy; he remembered it being an incredible day. He didn’t know why the memory tasted sour in the back of his throat. “Turn the page.”
Marsh did, immediately, to an image of him and his parents skipping down a trail in the park. He couldn’t recall who had taken the picture, but it must’ve been someone outside his family, because both his parents were in the frame with him. He was in the middle, holding tightly onto both of their hands, and they had swung him into the air the moment the camera snapped the photo, leaving him blurry and laughing and suspended in mid-air. Happy Summer! We love you so much, baby, was written underneath, in his mom’s curly handwriting. July 9, 2003.
“Oh,” Brandon breathed simply, leaving so much unsaid. Things like what happened? and, you looked so happy. He didn’t turn the page and he didn’t look away. Eventually, he admitted, “Sometimes I wish I knew you when we were kids.”
Something was crawling up Alec’s throat again, tight and harsh. “Why?” he managed, choking back the sob caught in his chest. He didn’t even know what was wrong.
“I mean, I don’t know. It would’ve been fun, to know you before…” Brandon gestured vaguely to the photo, like it finished the sentence for him. And it did, in a way. Alec knew what he meant.
Before they’d had the eyes of the whole country on them, on television nearly every single night. Before they’d had to play their favorite game for a living, before it had become a job and it was still just fun in someone’s backyard at dusk. Before people had started whispering things behind their backs, about getting girlfriends and growing up and becoming men. Before they’d figured out, gradually and uncomfortably, that there was something wrong with them, something different. Before the burden of that shame on their shoulders had weighed them down, when they could still jump through playgrounds and over creeks freely, without being afraid.
Alec tried to inhale, and he was shaking. “I can’t breathe.”
As soon as he said it, he felt stupid, because he obviously could breathe. But each breath was coming sharp and shallow, and his stomach hurt like it was twisting inside out.
There was nowhere to look that could calm him down - not the cross over the door, or the dent in the wall, or the rosary hung on the post of his bed, or the stain on the carpet from when he’d practiced until his hands were bleeding. He couldn’t think about the blue pillowcase that was vaguely tear-stained, or the stack of photo albums under the bed, or the Bible on his shelf that was collecting idle dust.
“I can’t-” he gasped, and felt even more stupid. He didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with him. “I need to- I need-”
He didn’t know how to finish his sentence, but apparently Brandon did, because he stood and grabbed Alec’s wrist and pulled him up off the bed. “You need to get out of here, Bohmer,” he said gently, his hand low on his back, guiding him down the steps. “Come on, it’s okay.”
A few minutes later, they were both in the front of his dad’s old pickup truck, and Alec could breathe again. His dad had offered the truck; he didn’t drive it anymore and it was practically falling apart anyways. He kept the keys in the glove compartment.
Brandon had climbed into the drivers’ seat and turned the vehicle on, but they hadn’t gone anywhere yet, just idling in the long driveway. “Can I ask you a question?” he ventured eventually, once Alec had stopped gasping and he was slumped against the vintage front-row bench instead of tense and shaking like he’d been before.
“Course.”
Brandon didn’t look at him. “Why do you keep coming back here? If it sucks so much.”
It was a good question. Something he’d asked himself a thousand times, staring at the ceiling and angry at stop lights and curled up on the bathroom floor. “What else can I do?” he shrugged. It was the same answer every time. “They’re still my parents. It’s still my house.”
“Come on, man, I'm serious!” Alec cried, throwing his arms up in the air in surrender. It was supposed to be spring cleaning day - whatever that meant. All he knew was that their house was horribly dusty, and he was meant to be washing the window panes on their deck door but Brandon had stolen the fucking Windex and wouldn't give it back.
Tauntingly, he wiggled the bottle of blue solution in front of Alec's face, snatching it away when he lunged for it and throwing him off balance. “Brandon Chase Marsh,” he threatened, catching himself on the sofa and trying halfheartedly to swipe the bottle from Marsh’s hands. “So help me God-”
Brandon laughed loudly, doing a stupid dance and parading the Windex around like a trophy. “You don't believe in God.”
“Yes, I do,” Alec retorted, mostly just to be contrary because Brandon was being a menace and if he wanted to bicker he was going to lose.
But instead, Brandon paused, still half breathless from laughter. “Really?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious. He must have been, because he sat himself on the back of the couch and left the Windex unguarded within reach.
Alec grabbed it, just to make sure it wasn't another trick, and Brandon barely reacted.
“I mean. I don't know. I guess so, yeah?” Without explanation, he felt like he was trapped; heat under his collar and something tight in his chest. He knew Marsh wouldn't hurt him - would never, probably, even if he deserved it - but he wanted to flinch anyways. “It's like when, I don't know, like-” His arms wanted to go up and down again, against his will, and he tucked them to his sides. “You know when you delete an app off your phone or something, but you keep trying to click on it anyways? Once it's gone? It's like that.”
“I don't know if that means you believe in him, to be fair,” Brandon replied, like it was a simple discussion that didn't leave something gaping in his stomach. “Just means it's all you know.”
Every time he left for Pennsylvania, Alec forgot how tiny driving through his home state made him feel. There was something so vast about it; roads stretching on for miles and miles, thousands and millions of stars in the sky, some of them barely polluted by city lights. It was beautiful, and frightening, and every time he was out in the infinite Nebraska night, some sort of emotion burned warm and tight in his chest that he’d never been able to name.
And it was here again, tugging at him, as he rested his head on the passenger door window and Brandon drove them down the silent, lonely stretch of road.
“Where are we going?” he asked, to take his mind off of it. He’d always hated things he couldn’t name.
Only one of Brandon’s hands was on the wheel, and the other was twitching on the center console like he wanted to reach over and rest it on Alec’s thigh, but he didn’t. “Nowhere,” he shrugged. “You just needed to clear your head.”
There was nothing judgmental or accusatory in his tone, just a matter-of-fact neutrality like he’d referenced Alec’s hitting stats or his favorite color. It was weird, to have someone who could read him so well. Terrifying, even.
It was like a fucking trust fall, or some stupid thing like that. Horrifying, but if the other person does catch you, there’s that brief moment of weightlessness in their arms, where nothing can hurt you. Being loved by Brandon Marsh was like a thousand trust falls in a row, where he showed up every single time, no matter how heavy Alec fell.
Without warning, he was crying again. It was different this time, less heartbroken; tension leaking out of his body with every tear and giving into a sort of desperate relief that left him gasping for breath. It still felt stupid. Each sob sent his body lurching forward, caught by the seat belt that locked in place and held him back every time. He kept crying himself into coughing fits, that turned into gags, that turned into gasps of air as he tried to breathe again. It was still stupid, and embarrassing, but the pressure that had been building up for days was collapsing out of him all at once and it felt almost good.
The whole time, Brandon was silent. Barely taking his eyes off the road, barely acknowledging Alec at all, he said nothing until the sobs had died down and Alec was left hiccupping tearfully in the passenger seat and wiping his eyes with the edge of his sleeve.
Eventually, Brandon cleared his throat gently and asked, “Do you think you’re done?”
It was the wrong way to say it, and they both knew that. He’d meant, did you get it all out? Do you feel better now? Did it help? But he wasn’t perfect, neither of them were. Brandon said too much, and Alec said too little. They talked too much about stupid things, and not enough about anything that mattered. They worded things wrong, messed them up, stumbled, fought, made up again. Alec wouldn’t change it. Perfect things scared him, anyways.
“Yeah,” he sniffed, answering all the questions he knew Brandon meant to ask. He reached out to point, letting his arm brush against Marsh’s and linger there for a little too long. “Turn left here. It’s cool.”
He did, and they rode a little ways up another long, straight path until they came across a little clearing, cut out of the crops that lined every other road. They parked the vehicle and climbed out, after rummaging through the random items tossed onto the back bench and coming up with an old, threadbare picnic blanket. In the clearing, they laid it onto the grass and shut the doors of the truck so that its rickety internal light shut off.
“Lay down,” Alec directed, once they were both kneeling on the blanket. Dew from the grass was seeping a little through the thin fabric, and he didn’t care at all.
Brandon smirked. “Oh, yeah? You want me laying down, huh?”
“Oh my god, you’re so stupid,” he laughed. It felt like he hadn’t laughed in years, not light and carefree like this, not with his full chest.
“Come on,” Marsh pouted, without an ounce of seriousness behind it. “Nebraska…fucking…corn field sex could be awesome.”
Firmly, Alec pushed him onto his back and, well…maybe Brandon did have a point, but that wasn’t why they were here.
“Can we at least cuddle?” he asked, still with the sad little fake pout. “It’s cold.”
It was not cold, not even close. “Yeah, ‘course.”
Laying down on the blanket beside him, Alec heard the moment that Brandon realized what he’d meant about laying down, the soft gasp that escaped him when he finally had the whole night sky in a dome over his head and stars were sprinkling his entire view like snow flurries falling from a million miles up.
“Oh,” Marsh breathed. “That’s beautiful.”
Alec wanted to say something like, just like you, or, sometimes I look at you and I feel like you do right now, looking at the stars. But he didn’t say that sort of thing. He didn’t usually say anything at all, and he didn’t now either, just sliding himself a little closer and hoping that Brandon couldn’t hear his heart threatening to beat out of his chest.
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” he managed, having summoned all the courage in his body for such a simple admission.
He felt Brandon tense against him, almost imperceptibly. “Really?” he asked softly, the first sign of insecurity he’d seen from him on this whole trip. It sent a stab of guilt through his body, that Brandon hadn’t even been sure he was welcomed anymore.
“Yeah, really. Like, really glad.” He swallowed, and squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself. “This is hard for you, too,” he stated, like he wasn’t sure if it was a question or not.
“A little,” Brandon admitted easily. He admitted everything easily. He never seemed to be afraid of anything at all. “Because I love you.”
He said it like the four words explained everything, and sometimes Alec thought that, for him, they did.
He felt like an imposter in Brandon’s arms, like the warmth from the hands around his shoulders and the little puffs of air on his cheeks every time he spoke and the gentle scent of his shampoo in every breath he took was meant for somebody else.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
The whole conversation felt fragile, every word entering a delicate balance like adding another block to a tower that was already listing to one side.
“You know why.” He couldn’t say it. You deserve someone better than me. You’re too good for me. You love me in a way that I can never love you back.
In his arms, Brandon was holding his breath. Alec could feel it - the careful tension in his muscles, the stillness of his chest, the little gasps when the silence stretched too long and he couldn’t hold on anymore. Eventually, he asked, “Do you regret it? Kissing me that night?” It sounded casual, almost offhand, but Alec knew him better than that. He could feel the minute tremors in his body. He could hear how his voice was shaking.
He wanted, more than anything, to pretend he’d never thought about it. To reassure Brandon that he’d never do such a thing, that the idea had never even crossed his mind. But he’d always been bound to honesty by his own mind, no matter how much he wanted to lie.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” Brandon echoed, softly. He didn’t sound angry, and Alec almost wished he would be. It would be fair.
He wished he could just kiss him again in answer; he’d always been better with actions than words. It wouldn’t fix anything, but it would delay the inevitable for just a few moments. But no amount of Nebraska roads and open skies could truly remove him from his childhood roots. The years between him and the upbringing that had shaped him this way couldn’t bring enough distance between tonight and the dozens of other nights he’d laid under these very stars and begged God to change his mind and make him something else.
So instead of actually kissing Brandon, Alec imagined it instead. And then he imagined the guilt that would churn in his stomach night after night as he laid awake at night and replayed it over and over again. He imagined himself at confession weeks later, when his mom would beg and plead for him to join her and he’d give in, because she was his mother and back at home he was just a little boy who wanted so desperately to make her proud.
He imagined himself leaning on the wall waiting in the dimly lit church, compiling a list of every way he’d fallen short. He imagined the uneasy feeling in his chest, the panic building as the line progressed one by one and he still wasn’t sure he knew everything he’d done wrong.
Could existence be a sin? Could God punish him for something He’d created Himself? He wondered if he’d confess the kisses, the touches, everything else. He wondered if he really believed they were wrong, or if he was just terrified that they might be. He didn’t think he could say any of it out loud, and just the idea made him want to throw up. Who committed a sin so shameful they couldn’t even offer it up to be forgiven?
He imagined bowing his head and reciting the prayer he’d known since he was six years old. I firmly intend, with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. He imagined the way the words would catch in his throat like poison, the way he’d never been able to lie and this wouldn’t be the exception.
And worst of all, after all of that, it still felt worth it. Was feeling guilty the same as regretting it? Maybe not. He imagined kissing him over and over and over again.
“I’m not sorry,” he muttered, quiet. “I’d do it again.”
Brandon shifted until there was nothing between them and his lips were pressed against Alec’s shoulder as he spoke, rendering him almost inaudible. “So, do it again,” he said, voice firm and low; gentle and forgiving. Maybe that was God too, in a way.
Slowly, deliberately, Alec rolled over until he was laying with his weight on top of Brandon, their legs tangled up and their stomachs pressed together. He could feel everything - every breath on his own face, every twitch in Brandon’s muscles, the heat radiating off his body and seeping through his shirt into Alec’s own chest.
Almost desperate, Brandon was reaching up a bit, lifting his head off the ground, and Alec gently pushed him back down. Bracing his elbows on the ground, he leaned down to kiss him first. Just like he’d positioned himself in the first place, it was slow and deliberate and he tried to count every individual sensation he could detect in Brandon’s body as he kissed him.
But underneath him, Brandon wanted more and Alec could tell, so he indulged him - kissing him a little harder, pressing their bodies even closer together until he was sure the dew from the grass was soaked into Marsh’s t-shirt and his front felt so warm from the contact that he thought if his heart stopped beating right then, he wouldn’t die.
Immediately, Brandon rewarded him with a little grateful sound, too incoherent to be words but too charged to be meaningless. And immediately, Alec was struck with the conviction that he would do anything in the world to hear that sound again, to be the reason that Brandon was rendered speechless underneath him. And if Hell was the cost for doing that again, then maybe the eternal flames would come to remind him of the heat that was flooding his whole body and his whole heart as he kissed Brandon and it would all be worth it in the end.
He pushed himself up for a second, gasping for air. “Am I in love with you?” he asked, breathless.
Brandon went up with him, kissing him again before he could get enough air in his lungs and laughing into his mouth. “How could I tell you that? Are you in love with me?”
Before he could answer, Brandon had pulled him back down and he couldn’t speak so he tried to convey himself in other ways. He hoped his hand in Brandon’s hair said, Yes, I think I am. He hoped his kisses, deep and intentional, said, I’ve never felt this way before, about anyone besides you. He hoped his actions said everything he’d never be able to say out loud; he always did.
Eventually, they stopped, exhausted, but they didn’t pull apart. Instead, Alec laid his head on Brandon’s shoulder, still on top of him, and Brandon reached up to play with Alec’s hair. For a moment they did nothing but breathe together, until their lungs rose and fell in sync and their heartbeats matched one another. Then, Alec mumbled, “Do we have to go back home?”
It was a childish, naive question, and he knew it. Of course he had to go back home. He had nowhere else to go, nowhere to run. No matter where he hid, home would always be there in some way or another; in the way he’d still bless himself sometimes when he drove past a church, in the way he still tensed when he heard footsteps climbing up the stairs, in the way he could never quite escape the guilt that accompanied any sense of pleasure or pride in his existence.
No matter where you go, God will be with you, he’d been told since he was little. He didn’t know then just how true it would be.
“Yeah,” Brandon replied, the rumble of his voice vibrating through both their chests. “We’d get too cold out here. But I won’t go anywhere, I’ll be with you.”
Alec believed him, wholeheartedly, and wasn’t that also a religion, if you thought about it? The belief that someone who loves you is right behind you, even when you’re too scared to turn around and double check? If that wasn’t believing in God, he didn’t know what was.
“I-” love you, he wanted to say, more than anything. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. “I’d like it if you came back here again with me next year. And, you know, the year after that. For a lot- for a lot of years.”
“Of course,” Brandon agreed, easily, like he did everything else. “I’d do anything you want.”
And Alec knew he meant that; he knew that sometimes Brandon saw his own god in Alec’s eyes, and while Alec approached Marsh with a cautious sort of belief, a frantic need to fill every need and follow every guideline, Brandon was devoted to whatever god he saw in him like he was desperate to martyr himself sometimes, like he wanted to die for love.
Maybe Brandon had been wrong, all those months ago, when they’d been cleaning their house and he’d argued that Alec didn’t really believe in God. Maybe God was real, and He was everywhere, and He was inescapable and He was in their blood and in their lungs and He was every kiss they’d ever shared. Or maybe they were just two random, insignificant people in love, and there was nothing else at all. Alec wasn’t sure if he would ever know for certain. He wasn’t sure if there was a difference.