Chapter Text
Calvin didn’t consider himself to be a particularly observant individual.
Maybe he was in some regards— he could take one look at the water and know whether it would be a good day for surfing, if the waves wouldn’t reliably crest five feet, or if a storm was blowing in that not even a thrillseeker would try to battle. He could find his way up just about any bluff, and figure out when a piece of rock wasn’t stable enough to hold someone’s weight. Those things took skill, and he didn’t like bragging, but he had those skills. But interpersonally, he could admit there were things he overlooked.
Truthfully, he didn’t see much of a problem in that. If someone was mad at him, they could choose to tell him, and if they didn’t, that was their problem. If Lexi thought they weren’t spending enough time together or felt unincluded, she had no problems forcefully inserting herself into his plans. If someone was keeping a secret from him, then it wasn’t any of his business. He didn’t need to be reading into everyone’s every movement. Honestly, it sounded exhausting. He preferred to float through life, unimpeded by trying to get into other people’s heads.
Then again, he wasn’t a complete lost cause.
Or maybe, certain things were difficult not to notice.
*
It started during an overnight with the Hill twins, who had somehow wormed their way into Calvin’s circle in record time. Calvin’s parents were on a trip, so they had the whole place to themselves— Lex, Kristin, and Ember had commandeered the upper floor, while he, Jake, Tyler, and Dante camped out in the living room, playing a co-op video game and periodically passing around a bottle of whiskey he’d stolen from his parents’ liquor cabinet. Tyler kept bemoaning his girl troubles, and how his girlfriend was going off to college at the end of the summer and didn’t want to give long distance a try even though Tyler was totally willing to try. Meanwhile, Dante kept trying to conceal how bored relationship talk made him and was subtly taking larger and larger swigs from the whiskey bottle, possibly in an attempt to drown out Tyler’s complaints and Jake’s suggestions on how to win her back. It wasn’t until nearly 1:00 that he remembered he’d left his phone charger in Ember’s bag and ran up to get it before his phone died.
And stayed there.
And stayed there.
Calvin silently considered the possibility that Tyler had managed to chase Dante away from the living room by talking about girls.
“Did your sister kidnap him?” Jake asked, before hollering up the stairs, “Dante, did you die?”
“No!” Dante yelled back. And continued not to come down.
It wasn’t until a solid twenty-five minutes later that he finally made it down the stairs, phone charger in hand, and the sharpest eyeliner Calvin had seen drawn with eyeshadow and nail polish to match, looking more than a little winded and incredibly confused.
Tyler promptly started cackling, and Calvin had to shove his fist in his mouth in order to keep himself from following.
“Dude,” Jake said. “What?”
“So apparently, intruding on girls’ night means that you have to become ‘one of the girls’. So Kristin did my makeup,” he replied slowly. Tyler started laughing harder, and Jake broke in his resolve to join in.
“And you let them?” he slapped Dante on the back hard enough to make him wince and stumble slightly. When he blinked, his eyelids showed sparkling silver and purple that was, admittedly, very well applied.
“They weren’t talking about relationships up there,” he said, which got Tyler to stop laughing and Calvin to start. “They were watching Promised Neverland. Besides, Lexi knows how to do nail art.”
And he held up his nails, not even making a token effort to pretend to be embarrassed about getting peer pressured by a bunch of girls into getting his makeup done. The nails were nice— Lex’s nails were always nice, because she was good at what she did and even Calvin was willing to admit it— but still. Dante seemed way too chill with the development.
“How do you even get that shit off?” Jake said, poking Dante’s cheek and then checking his hand, like makeup was contagious. Jake, Calvin knew, didn’t have a sister or a girlfriend. It showed.
Calvin knew he could be the asshole that made Dante try to get everything off with water and bar soap. Honestly, it would probably be funny to watch him try. But Calvin had, unfortunately, been the test dummy for some of his sister’s makeup skills, and he knew how hard eyeliner was to remove. He was feeling merciful.
“Lex has makeup wipes in the bathroom. Upstairs, take a left, in the drawer covered in stickers, can’t miss it,” Calvin replied.
“Cool, thanks,” Dante nodded and made his way back to the couch. Notably not upstairs, where the makeup wipes are. At the look Calvin gave him, he shrugged a shoulder nonchalantly. “I’ll take it off before I go to bed, but I want to get back to the game.”
“Yeah, and Tyler’s girlfriend!” Jake piped up. Tyler flushed, and Dante closed his eyes for half a second too long, looking far too long suffering for the situation at hand. Calvin laughed again.
He didn’t take off his eye makeup until everyone was exhausted enough to agree to go to sleep, and kept the nail art all the way through breakfast, until early afternoon when it was just Calvin, Lexi, and the Hill twins, that he got nail polish remover. Though that part seemed to be mostly because he hadn’t been able to find nail polish remover.
“You sure you don’t want to keep it? You were such a pretty girl!” Lexi grinned widely as she handed over the bottle of remover. Ember elbowed her hard enough in the ribs to make her squeak and wince. Dante turned a bright shade of pink as he took the offered bottle and started scrubbing any evidence of being ‘one of the girls’ off of his nails.
“You sat really still, too, you’re way better than Ember. The most cooperative girl at girl’s night,” Lexi continued, shoving Ember away before she could take another elbow to the ribs. Dante somehow managed to turn pinker. “I think you should keep it. Purple’s your color.”
“Sorry,” Dante muttered, somehow managing to sound more sheepish now than he had sounded while wearing full eye makeup the previous night. “I think Uncle Liam might genuinely kill me if I come back wearing it.”
*
It happened again, about a week later, when Calvin dragged Dante into a surf shop for new board wax before they headed off to the bluffs. Dante had yet to cave to Calvin’s insistence he could teach him how to surf— something about how surfing was the most dangerous sport in the world, but hiking two miles away from civilization and scaling a 75-foot cliff was perfectly safe— so he wandered off while Calvin haggled. Calvin successfully procured his board wax without the markup only to see that his friend had completely disappeared. He didn’t find him until he looked around the attached boutique and found Dante looking at a sundress with a weird look on his face.
Calvin didn’t know what that look meant. But he knew simpler facts, like why a guy would be interested in dresses in the first place.
“Does Dante ‘I hate talking about girls’ Hill have a girlfriend he’s browsing for, perchance?” Calvin snuck up behind him, because he was never the type to miss an opportunity to heckle. That’s what being Lexi’s brother taught him to do. Dante jumped about six inches in the air and drove his elbow directly into Calvin’s gut, because that’s what being Ember’s brother had taught him to do.
“No! Gross! I wasn’t— you can’t— I—” he stammered, before ducking his head and shoving his hands in his pockets. “It just looks like something Ember would like.”
And Calvin didn’t consider himself particularly observant. It was a pretty dress, and Ember was a pretty girl. Maybe their birthdays were coming up, and he was shopping around. He could let it be that simple. But Dante was, as a rule, fairly unflappable. It was hard to get him flustered about anything, and he definitely wouldn’t get flustered about looking at a dress for his sister. Not to mention, he’d never seen Ember wear a sundress in the entire summer— she was more of a crop tops and cut-offs girl than a flowy dresses and skirts girl, which he only noticed because he thought her entire deal was incredibly hot, and he’d take that thought to the grave before he said it in Dante’s vicinity. If it was anyone else, Calvin would think his heckling had actually hit a mark and Dante had a crush on someone, but…
He wasn’t sure, yet. All he knew was that it didn’t add up. But he was starting to look out for whatever the missing piece was.
*
“You can’t give me Dante for Fuck-Marry-Kill. He’s gay. And Ember’s brother.”
“But you can’t say you haven’t thought about it.”
“What?” Calvin stuck his head into the kitchen, which had been forcefully overtaken by Lex, Kristin, and a horrible smoothie concoction that he didn’t want to come within ten feet of. Then he actually processed the part of the sentence that didn’t involve playing Fuck-Marry-Kill with Calvin’s friend. “He’s what?”
“He’s… very clearly gay, Cal. Jeez, do either of you have eyes?” Lex said slowly, raising her eyebrows like the information was obvious, and she was incredulous that he hadn’t put thought into Dante Hill’s sexuality.
“Is this because of the makeup?” Calvin sighed. Sure, it had been a bit weird, but Dante and Ember were weird people. Part of hanging out with them was accepting that. “You’ve bullied me into wearing makeup, and I’m not gay. I think he was just indulging you.”
“No, it’s not about the makeup. It’s because I’ve never met a sixteen-year-old boy less interested in women than him, and trust me, Kristin’s been trying to drop hints for the past three weeks that she’d be open to a summer fling—”
“He’s not gay! Remember when I was wearing that green blouse with all the embroidery, and he kept staring at me all day and blushing whenever I tried calling him on it?”
“He was blushing because he was uncomfortable, Kris. Besides, remember when you asked him if he’d ever kissed a girl and he replied ‘why would I do that?’ ” Lex responded drily. “I’ve met out-of-the-closet gay guys who can feign interest better than him.”
“So he’s a bit sheltered! We know their aunt and uncle are super strict, so maybe relationships are off the table for them. Officially, anyway. But unofficially…” Kristen made a face that clearly portrayed what she thought of Dante Hill, and then apparently facial expression wasn’t enough, because he followed it up with, “I like ‘em innocent. I could teach him a thing or two.”
“Gross,” Calvin wrinkled his nose. “Besides, don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“We take breaks over the summer,” Kristen replied, entirely unrepentant.
“Unofficially, his aunt and uncle being strict is probably the thing keeping him in the closet, and you still don’t have a chance with him,” Lexi said loudly, pointing the last part of the sentence at Kristen.
“So you have a problem with putting Dante in Fuck-Marry-Kill because you think he could be gay— with no hard evidence, mind you, he could just be weird and repressed— but you’re not putting up a fight against Bigfoot?”
“First: He’s also Ember’s brother. Total violation of the girl code. Second: yeah. ‘Cause I’d fuck Bigfoot,” Lexi said, and promptly turned the blender on high, reducing the mango, spinach, and yogurt into a green slush. Calvin excused himself from the conversation, if only to escape more discussion of his sister and what cryptids and friends of his she would or wouldn’t have sex with.
*
There were things that were easier to notice, when Calvin was looking for them.
Dante didn’t like talking about girls, and he was quick to extract himself from any situation where he was flirted with, but he stared at some of them when he thought no one was looking. He didn’t seem to have a type, or even an age range— rather, he stared at them when they were wearing blouses with bright colors, when they were wearing long skirts with a lot of extra fabric, with that same crease in his brow and a tight frown on his lips that he had when he was thinking about something that displeased him.
When one of his friends started heckling someone over being girly, Dante didn’t join in. The one time Calvin asked about it, he’d brushed it off, but the one time Jake had called him girly, bringing up the makeup he’d worn during their overnight, he’d scoffed and maintained a tense sort of silence until Ember came to pick him up in the car they shared.
He seemed about as interested in boys as he was girls— which was to say, not at all. He never talked about going to LA, or even hitting up one of the queer spaces in Crescent Beach, even though Calvin knew they probably existed. If he had to garner a guess about Dante’s sexuality, he wouldn’t call him gay.
Really, he wouldn’t even call it relevant.
*
He posed the question as non-judgementally as he could, when Dante had custody of the Hill car and was free to leave at any time, with the comforting chatter of a soccer game on the TV to keep them distracted.
“Dude. Are you trans?”
So maybe Calvin was, in fact, observant. Or at least, he was good at being a friend, and he wanted his friends to feel safe around him.
What he was not, though, was good at breaching topics gently.
This was to say: Dante punched him in the jaw.