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The first time Rolan Deep kisses a boy, he’s thirteen and drunk.
The handle of vodka is heavy in his hand. Cold glass against his fingers, muggy night air pressing down on him from above. Out in the bayou the cicadas are singing a monotone song, and in front of him Jesse Kimberly is pulling back from his face, lips pink and wet with alcohol. His cheeks are red. Rolan is staring at him, stomach churning as he blinks in the dark.
“Something wrong?” Jesse asks. He’s not from Galloway– he’s a summer blow-in, come to visit his grandparents from up north, a Yankee. He’s older. Fifteen, with sideburns and scruff and a worldview that clashes with the rest of them, but makes him interesting, makes hanging out with him a necessity instead of a choice. His voice doesn’t lilt with southern twang, his vowels sharp and pointed. His words aren’t meant to be accusing, but Rolan flinches anyway.
“Um–” he says, and his face burns hotter than his throat when he takes a swig of vodka. Jesse is watching him, eyes narrowing slightly, brown hair falling over his eyes. He looks unnervingly like Rand.
“Sorry if I pegged you wrong,” Jesse says, and Rolan wishes he could curl up and die right now, sitting on a sandbar with the water flowing around them, his sneakers wet from the current. The thing is, he’d said yes when Jesse suggested they sneak away from the rest of the party, the other teenagers currently sitting around a bonfire in the distance, chugging beers and laughing. He can hear Kian’s voice over the rest of them, loud and strong, and he can remember the glint of his pale skin in the firelight. The way Jesse had leaned over to him, conspiratorial, a half-smile playing on his lips as they’d staggered off together. Rolan had thought it was a good idea, but now he can’t remember why. The summer night is suffocating.
“I’m not a fag,” Rolan says before he can think of anything else. Jesse’s eyebrow raises, then lowers again.
“Neither am I,” he says, and he looks back out over the water and the mud, waist-high grass hiding them from the others and the cypresses shielding them from the stars above. He feels warm when Jesse looks at him, lungs heavy with damp and sweat indiscernible from the trickling summer heat. “You ever kissed anyone, Deep?”
“No,” Rolan says, nervous to admit it. He’d thought his first kiss would be with a girl, someone from their small school, like how Kian had first kissed Becky in the middle of the lunch cafeteria and Rand had made gagging noises and a teacher had slapped them both on the wrist with a ruler. Rolan had thought his first kiss would be that, not this, and this is making him panic.
“Well, sorry then,” Jesse says, bringing his knees up to his chest and letting his arms rest on them. He reaches out and snags the vodka from Rolan’s fingers, casual as a blowfly. “It doesn’t count anyway, if you’re not a fag.”
“I’m not,” Rolan insists, because this feels important to him, that Jesse knows he doesn’t think about boys like that, has never thought about boys like that, doesn’t want to. His dad would kill him. His mom would cry– none of this would be right, and besides, it’s not natural. He thinks about Kian and Becky, the way they smile at each other, and suddenly feels the urge to vomit. He abruptly turns away from Jesse and staggers to his feet, the world spinning around him like a kaleidoscope in flames. He makes it to the bank of the stream before his stomach contents upheave and he curls over himself, throat burning.
“Woah, hey.” An arm on his back, a hand on his neck. Jesse’s skin is cool compared to the air. “Didn’t think you’d freak this bad.”
“It’s just the booze,” Rolan whispers, forcing his mouth to shape words. He is so, so drunk. His mom is going to be so, so mad. The world feels like it’s slipping sideways, and he hums in tandem with the cicadas, like maybe if he slides along with the spins he might end up stuck to a tree, bugged out.
“Right,” Jesse says, and Rolan is so fucked up, but he lets Jesse sling an arm around his shoulders and drag him forwards, sloshing through the pebbles and water until they’re both back on firmer territory. Ahead of them, the bonfire is still flickering towards the sky, embers spitting like stars. Rolan’s head is still spinning when they approach, but he can make out Kian, blond hair shining as he sings loudly– but not badly. A few others are still here, but Rolan breaks from Jesse’s arm to stagger and half-collapse next to Rand on an overturned log.
“Woah, man,” Rand says, smoke curling from his mouth as he says it. Rolan finds himself watching it as it disperses, distracted for a moment. “Woah, he good?”
Over his shoulder, Jesse Kimberly snorts a laugh.
“Wasted,” he says. “Make sure he gets home safe, little brother.”
“How was the swamp?” Rand asks, and Rolan snaps his gaze back to him. His mouth tastes acidic and to get rid of it, to make it all stop, he reaches out and snags Rand’s cigarette from his lips. It tastes like Rand, like Rand’s house, smells like their furniture and walls– stole his mom’s pack, then. He inhales, then coughs, but at least his mouth tastes like it’s his own. Remnants of Jesse left behind on his lips are all but gone, and if he doesn’t turn around and look, he won’t have to remember it, either.
“No gators,” Jesse says when Rolan doesn’t reply. Rolan’s glad for the nicotine distraction in his mouth, because otherwise he’d probably snap and say something dumb, like yeah, no gators but you.
The second time Rolan Deep kisses a boy, he is fifteen and high.
Timothy Rand has discovered weed. It is now his whole personality. Kian Stone has also discovered weed, but he says that for him it’s just a tool to the music, because Kian Stone has also discovered The Who and Led Zeppelin. Rolan has been forced to discover weed, because otherwise he’d have no other reason to talk to his best friends and sometimes trauma is easier to deal with when stoned.
They lie for hours on their backs in Rand’s attic bedroom, the windows cracked open and a damp rag shoved under the door. Smoke fills the air in hazy spirals that Rolan watches for hours at a time. It’s summer again, the temperature soaring into the type of heat that leaves you breathless. They’d been playing a game of D&D but then it had hit four pm and everything got too fuzzy to think, so here they are. They’re all in their underwear, stripped down as the afternoon plods onward, time slowing down to whatever they can perceive. Across Rand’s room, Kian has an acoustic guitar. He plucks at the strings and teaches himself double the chords in a timeframe that Rolan thinks he could barely learn one. Kian is confident– in himself, yeah, but in his capabilities. He talks about California with the same feverish look in his eye that Rolan’s mom gets whenever she watches the Evangelicals on TV, saying the words Los Angeles and Hollywood like he’s saying Peter the Apostle and Jesus Christ .
“I think I’m going to get famous,” Kian says, and Rolan’s eyes cross when he tries to look over at him, he’s so high. “I think I’m going to make a song the world will never forget.”
“Nobody could forget you,” Rand says from across the room, face-down on his bed and half asleep. Rolan blinks, and then Kian is in front of him, guitar discarded to the side.
Kian’s hands land on his face, nails digging into the sweat and grime of his temples. His palms cradle Rolan’s cheeks and he stares up at Kian and thinks oh, is this what momma’s God is made of? Because if God is Kian Stone without his shirt on, a manic look in his eye and his lips pressed together in a thin little line, Rolan thinks he’d like to start paying attention in church.
“You’re not getting it, man,” Kian whispers to him. The afternoon sun is coming through the window in bright orange shafts of light, smoke and dust whirling behind Kian’s head as he speaks. “You’re not getting it. I can feel the future in the music, dude, I can make it happen. I just have to write the song. The song to end all songs. The music’s here, dude, like, within us.” Kian shakes Rolan’s head a little, zealous. “It’s just like Mr. Dickman says, dude. I can be whatever I want to be if I just dig deep.”
“I’m Deep,” Rolan says, because Kian is saying a lot of words and he’s absorbing maybe five percent of them.
“Not Deep, dude, deep ,” Kian emphasizes. “Where’s your head at, man? In the clouds?”
“Somewhere up there,” Rolan says, giggling slightly. His whole body is hot and uncomfortable, but he’s already just in his boxers and stripping down to bare skin would be weird, not right. He wishes he could peel his skin off, maybe, but Kian’s still got a grip on his face and there’s no room for his own hands.
“Come down, man,” Kian whispers to him, conspiratorial. He leans in, taking up all of Rolan’s field of vision. “Come down to earth with me. Let’s make music together.”
“Okay,” Rolan says, and leans in.
He doesn’t mean to initiate it. It just sort of… happens. The space between them closes, like a cosmic bend in the universe, and then Rolan’s lips are pressed against Kian’s and everything is still too hot and too smoky and Rolan hates the smell of weed that clings to Kian. His hair is hanging in Rolan’s face, tickling him like the long grass on the side of the road. Rolan’s not sure who started kissing who, but Kian’s mouth is on his and everything is spinning again and for a brief moment he remembers Jesse Kimberly’s face, having blocked it out for years.
But before he can even start to panic, Kian is pulling back, still gripping Rolan’s face tight. His eyes are shining, and so are his lips, and he looks between Rolan’s eyes and his nose and his mouth for a second. The sunlight hits his face just right, lining his features in golden glow, and Rolan wishes he could take it all back.
“Deep,” Kian whispers, and he says it like a cult prayer. “You’re a genius.”
“What?” Rolan breathes. Kian leans forward and kisses him again, briefly this time, barely a brush of the lips and more of a smack.
“Genius!” Kian crows, leaning back and throwing his head to the roof, his throat long and pale. “I get it now! I get it, dude! I know how I’m gonna write the song. It’s Becky , man. It’s always been Becky.”
“Becky,” Rolan repeats, and Kian has let go of his face by now, crawling back across the room to his guitar. “Rebecca Becky?”
“It’s all about love,” Kian croons, strumming the strings lightly and letting loose a couple chords that seem to make the very air vibrate. Rolan is more confused than ever, wondering if he’d imagined the kiss. He rubs at his face, his eyes, scrubbing the feeling of Kian’s fingers off of his skin and staring across the room at him. Rand finally picks up his head and the movement draws Rolan’s attention, staring over at him as he glances at Kian. His hair is falling in his eyes– shoulders broad and freckled and Rolan is already thinking about kissing so it’s completely reasonable that he imagines himself attacking each freckle by mouth with a vengeance. God might be Kian Stone, but Jesus Christ is Timothy Rand and the blunt he holds to his mouth, eyes hooded and red as he looks over at Rolan.
“That’s some queer shit,” Rand says on the exhale, coughing slightly before dropping his head back into the sheets. “Get over yourself.”
Rolan glances back at Kian, nerves lighting up like the Fourth, but all he sees is a guitar and fingers dancing over the strings, Kian unbothered, glowing holy.
The third time Rolan Deep kisses a boy, he is twenty and stone-cold sober.
He’d graduated from Galloway High two years ago, gotten into University of Chicago’s law program by the skin of his teeth. It had taken two years of hard work and a lot of hoping to God that he’d make it in, but he had, and the day he’d graduated high school was the day he’d moved up north.
He had to get away. He knows his friends didn’t understand– Rand, at least, didn’t. Everything that was haunting them was ethereal and tied to the swamps, so Rolan had to get away and escape it. He found the only place that did enough to muffle the monsters in his mind was the complete opposite of where he grew up.
It was strange, living in a city. Especially at first, when instead of the cypress trees and spanish moss, duckweed and salvinia, Rolan found himself surrounded by concrete and steel. The culture is different too– no more waking up on Sundays to attend church, no more knowing all of your neighbors and partying out in the bayou during the summer. It’s cold in Chicago, so cold that Rolan has to buy himself a big wool coat and gloves to keep himself from freezing in the fall and winter and even in the spring before the snow melts. He experiences snow, the kind of ice-cold that takes your breath away, negative temperatures. And he experiences college, too– all his classmates from every corner of the States, each of them different and new.
It’s his sophomore year, and he’s had a few bad experiences with alcohol so when some of his law student classmates invite him to a party, he offers to be their ride home. It’s nearing midnight and he’s still nursing the first beer he’d been offered, the mostly-empty can a good excuse not to get another drink, when he starts talking to Tim.
His full name’s Timothy, but his friends call him Tim, which Rolan is completely and totally fine with, not thinking of anyone else at all. He and Rolan talk for what feels like hours, leaning against the wall in the kitchen as people talk and chatter and move around them, a record skipping in the corner. Tim is smart and tall and has a wide, toothy grin– his face is narrow, hair just the right side of long. He likes Queen and Television and The Clash and he’s studying medicine, wants to be a doctor because his little brother has a rare genetic condition and he grew up wanting to help. He doesn’t know what D&D is, so Rolan explains it in detail. He’s Jewish. Rolan’s never met a Jew before and tells him as much, which makes Tim wince, then laugh, then offer to take him to synagogue.
“I don’t really think I’m religious anymore,” Rolan admits, because he’s done a lot of thinking and his God is in California doing who knows what and he hasn’t been to church since last Christmas. “Not really.”
“No one is,” Tim tells him, fingers gripping a red cup with some small amount of fervor. “They say the new generation’s all a bunch of atheists.”
“Are you?” Rolan asks, “Religious?” and Tim shrugs, grinning at him again.
“Not really,” he says, “but my grandparents would kill me if I stopped, so I gotta keep going. Besides, there’s plenty they don’t know about me already.”
“Like what?” Rolan asks, leaning in, and Tim looks down on him and smiles.
“I’ll tell you if you come outside and share a smoke with me,” Tim says, and Rolan has to say yes.
They end up on a creaky wooden porch, the paint peeling and sticking underneath his fingernails when he scratches at it. The cigarette they share is pulled from Tim’s jeans pockets, and they huddle together because it’s early October and that means the air is already cold as hell.
“I got arrested,” Tim tells him, eyes gleaming in the dark. The noise from the party is muffled through the wood paneling of the house, one window serving as a golden glowing eye of light against the dark. Rolan blinks at him and asks for what, and Tim tells him. Protesting, he says, with the university’s gay liberation club. He’d been held down and hit with a baton and thrown in jail and he couldn’t call anyone, because–
“What would they say?” Rolan murmurs, cutting him off.
“Yeah, exactly,” Tim says. He’s smiling again, but it’s sharper, more bitter. “You’re from down south, right?”
“Louisiana,” Rolan tells him, and something is stirring in his stomach, something uncertain and unsure. He thinks back all those long summers back to when he was thirteen, and those drunk, fuzzy memories of Jesse Kimberly. “It’s different down there.”
“I can imagine,” Tim says, and then he offers Rolan the smoke and he takes it, inhaling hard. “Not easy anywhere, though.”
“I’m not–” Rolan starts to say, but stops himself, because Tim had shared something intimate and deep and Rolan’s not an asshole, not really. He might be twenty and confused, but he’s not stupid. He’s in law school, for Christsake. And Tim has been talking to him all night with that same look in his eye, and Rolan knows what he’s been doing, has been flirting back– but it still twists him up, makes his insides go gummy and frightened, because something isn’t right about it all. You can take the boy out of the church but you can’t take the church out of the boy; Rolan stares at Tim and Tim stares back, and then leans in, and Rolan lets him.
The one beer he had at the beginning of the night has mostly wormed its way out of his system by now, and so he’s sober when Tim kisses him, and he’s sober when he kisses back. It’s not the first person he’s kissed since he got to Chicago, but it is the first boy, and it makes a world of difference. Tim’s hand hooks into the belt loops of his jeans and tugs him in and Rolan sets his empty beer can down so he can hold his face, remembering the few times he’s kissed girls and copying the movements here.
After a second, Tim pulls back. He’s smiling again. Rolan is confused, but he’s tired and doesn’t care anymore. He likes Tim’s honesty and forwardness, and is sick of lying to himself. He thinks back to long days in Rand’s attic bedroom, and then thinks forward, to right now.
“You gonna freak out on me?” Tim asks, and Rolan is abruptly reminded once again of Jesse. He steels himself to the memory.
“No,” he says. No one is watching them. Not even God, whoever that could be. It is just him and Tim on an unsteady wooden porch under the least stars Rolan has ever experienced, and so Rolan leans over and kisses him again.
The last time Rolan Deep ever kisses a boy, he is twenty-nine and a bug.
Galloway’s sky is a deep dark unmentionable, and the water in the bayou around them is blood red. Everything has gone to shit– his parent’s funeral, seeing Rand and Kian, everything. Nothing will ever be the same, and Rolan Deep is a part of an eldritch hivemind, has been since he was fourteen. God isn’t real, no– God is dead , he left God standing in the middle of the street with his head turned up to that unknowable sky and eyes rolled back, throat humming in chorus with the rest of everything else. God is dead because Kian Stone is gone, and Rolan is going to be gone too if he doesn’t get a handle on himself.
Rand is staring at him like he’s a monster, and he is. His skin is a wetsuit, fleshy and uncomfortable, and it takes everything inside him to hold back the terror and shame and force his brain to stay human.
Rolan Deep is human, at least mentally. He went to college. He lived, had a career, had relationships (boys and girls), and had figured himself out. And screw Kian; he hadn’t needed a shrink for that. He knows himself better than he ever has and he isn’t fucking ashamed of it anymore. Being back in Galloway he’d started to feel fifteen and confused all over again, but right here and right now under this old cypress tree, he’s steadfast in thinking: I know who I am.
And that person is not a bug.
Rand is frightened, then confused, then frightened again. Rolan’s heart aches for him, beating in time with the brilliant music of the bayou, the endless cacophony of screaming inside Rolan’s head that he didn’t realize he could hear until just now. Everything is bright and jittery and makes sense in a way Rolan didn’t understand before, and he tries to explain it to Rand, but all his words fall flat. It’s like being colorblind your whole life, and the moment you start to see the rainbow, you don’t have the words to describe it. But he understands– he knows instinctively what is going on, and where they must go to stop it.
In the end, it’s him and Rand.
It’s kind of always been that way. Rolan haunting Rand’s narrative, Rand haunting his. Echoes of each other throughout their lives, stronger for Rand than for him, but it’s not either of their faults that he left for Chicago the way he did. Rolan knows he's a product of circumstance, now– anyone else could have been under the tree that day. His birth was one of fate and coincidence colliding at lightspeed, whatever unHeavenly mother spore decided was right. Rand was there in Jesse Kimberly’s face, there all those long hot days spent cooped up high in an attic bedroom, there when Rolan had kissed Tim on the porch in Chicago (and honestly, in every relationship since). Rolan is himself, sure, but he’s also a bug now and Rand is looking at him from the edge of the boat with eyes that scream he’s about to do something stupid (because it’s Rachel, it’s always been about Rachel too), and Rolan knows he has no time left.
So Rolan kisses him.
Rand, as paranoid as he’s been, and as stupid as he is, somehow seems to understand. They both know now what had happened to Kian after he kissed Becky, but Rand doesn’t shy away from him. He sits there, he takes it, and then Rolan slips the grenades out of his hands and squeezes the triggers tight.
“I love you, man,” Rand says, the words scraping out of his throat. “Please don’t turn me into a bug.”
“Never,” Rolan promises. As long as he’s still himself, which he is, and will always be. Rolan Deep looks at Timothy Rand and says like a prayer, “I love you.”
Then he looks up at a creature that should not exist, a creature that sings to him and croons his name with love and undying attention; a filthy, swampy, bayou God that shook the sunlight out of Galloway and filled it with sin and flesh and things like Rolan Deep, and he says: “Fuck you.”
And he kills it.