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“Dude, you can’t say that,” Stan is saying. “It’s like, racist against Canadians.”
Craig’s ears perk up. He’s in a towel in the locker room after swim practice, doing an excellent job at avoiding eye contact with anyone. Stan and Kyle, however, have never had that kind of boundary when they change. They probably tuck each other’s dicks into their boxers or something. Craig wouldn’t know, because he’s not looking.
“I’m not racist against Canadians,” Kyle says. “My brother’s Canadian.”
“Oh, sure,” Tolkien shouts from across the changing room, “and I’m sure you have a lot of Black friends too—”
“That’s not what I’m saying!” Kyle squawks.
“Sure sounds like what you’re saying,” Kenny piles on.
“Then you’ve got water in your ear!”
Craig hears a smack and then a metal thunk and a melodramatic oww. He steals a glance up to see Kenny rubbing his forehead and scowling. Craig’s not going to miss the opportunity to appreciate that kind of view.
“What I was trying to say,” Kyle says, “is that I think Canadian audiences should be treated the same as American audiences. Domestic releases should cover both areas.”
“Say that last sentence again,” Stan says.
“Domestic rel—”
“Stop.”
Craig sees Stan’s bare foot stomp on the ground for emphasis.
“Domestic. As in, at home. As in, Canada, for Canadians.”
“But we’re right next door!” Kyle whines. “It’s not fair that Ike gets to see the new Terrance and Phillip movie before me, just because he’s at college in Canada.”
“Oh my god,” Craig mutters into his locker. He’s too tired for this shit. PC Coach pushed them hard today, drilling laps without arms until Craig felt like he had the joints of a senior citizen.
“Hmm?” Kyle says.
Craig flinches as he feels several pairs of eyes begin to bore into him. “Nothing.” He raises his gaze to find Kyle is still shirtless, freckled arms crossed over the fine ginger hair on his chest. His nipples are still in view. Fuck. Craig pushes his head back inside his locker. “I thought I’d lost my sock,” he says flatly. “Oh, look. There it is.”
“Right,” Kyle says with disinterest. “Well, what do you think, Craig?”
“I think I’m glad I found my sock.”
“No, about Canadian privilege.”
Craig is torn between informing him of how ridiculous he’s behaving or offering his ego a verbal hand job. He pulls on a shirt to stall for time, before shilling out a politician’s answer. “I try to watch movies when they first come out because I hate spoilers.”
“Exactly!” Kyle says, interpreting this as complete agreement. “Ike keeps alluding to plot twists in such an infuriating way.” He puts on an exaggerated Canadian accent. “All I’m saying is, eh—”
Craig peeks round the edge of his locker door to see Kyle miming strangling the air.
“You should go easier on him,” Stan says. “It can’t be easy being a genius.”
“More like penis,” Kyle huffs.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Clyde, who is somehow still naked, interjects.
“Screw you guys!” Kyle spits. “Why aren’t you on my side here?” He turns back to Craig. “Craig, you’re my only true friend.”
Craig feels the skin on his face get hot and makes an amorphous grunt of acknowledgement. He knows Kyle doesn’t mean it, really. They’ve been on the same swim team since freshman year of college and have barely spoken at all. Kyle is too busy arguing with his friends and Craig is too busy forcing himself not to look any lower than a collarbone.
Swimming is a very inconvenient sport to be in when you’re closeted, and especially if one of your teammates is a fit ginger with the nicest ass a member of the male population has ever boasted. Unfortunately, it’s the only sport Craig’s good at, being in excess of height and of little width. Coming out would just impose his self-consciousness on everyone else. Thus, awkward and closed off he must remain.
Kyle’s comment sticks with him, though, fluttering in his chest as he walks home. When he gets to his room, he shoves the pile of junk off his laptop, opens it, and navigates to his ol’ reliable torrenting site. Terrance and Phillip, he types, and grimaces as it produces the most recent sequel, 2-rrance and Phil-2. That’s what all the drama was about? Craig doubts Kyle’s missing much. Still, he clicks download.
He roots around in his desk drawers until he finds a USB stick that doesn’t look too important. He plugs it into his laptop and saves the few files that were on it: black and white pictures of Stripe #12 that he took for an assignment a few years ago. He moves the movie download onto it, ejects it, and grabs a sticky pad and a pen. For Kyle, he writes and wraps it clumsily around the stick.
He intends to give it to him at swim practice a few days later, but on the morning of, he chickens out. Kyle had got a haircut, and he was looking particularly attractive, and it was just too much for Craig to put up with. Thankfully, Kyle forgets to close his locker properly, and Craig is able to dawdle in the changing room and shove the USB stick hastily inside before joining the rest of his teammates in the pool.
He didn’t put it in very securely. It falls onto the floor when Kyle opens his locker after practice.
“What’s that?” Stan asks.
Kyle frowns. He bends over with a soft tut to pick it up. Craig can’t help but watch, overcome by giddy anticipation, only to accidentally get a perfect eyeful of Kyle’s behind. Craig turns away so quickly he slips on the tiled changing room floor and nearly falls on his own ass.
“Huh.” Kyle is too distracted by the mystery gift to care. He groans and rolls his shoulders back as he straightens up. They were working on arms today, and they’re all feeling it. “I don’t know.”
“Well, try it out!” Kenny says. “I wanna see what’s on it.”
“I don’t have my laptop with me.”
“I do,” Stan says. “Put it on mine.”
“No way, dude,” Kyle says. “What if it’s malware? Or, like…” He lowers his voice, and says, in a stage whisper, “porn.”
“What are you, from the 90s?” Kenny scoffs. “No one uses USB sticks to exchange porn.”
“No one uses USB sticks for anything, I thought,” Kyle says.
“Except your secret admirer,” Kenny says.
“Who says it’s an admirer?” Kyle narrows his eyes. “It could be blackmail.”
“Let’s find out.” Stan swipes the stick from Kyle’s hand. Kyle yelps and tries to grab it back but Kenny blocks him. Craig pretends to be very interested in something on his phone.
There’s a whirring as Stan’s laptop boots up.
“Wrong way,” Kyle says, as Stan tries to plug in the stick. “Wrong way again,” he repeats, then, “There you go.”
“Dude, how is it possible to get it wrong both times,” Stan mutters. “There are only two options. I fucking hate—oh, shit, it’s a video.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t watch it here,” Kyle says nervously. “Maybe I should take it home.”
“Kyle, do you have a sex tape you haven’t told us about?” Kenny asks.
“No!”
“Then what’s the big fucking deal? Open it, Stan.”
Stan double clicks. There’s a brief silence as the file loads. An overture begins to play. It’s the score to Shut Your Fucking Face Uncle Fucker.
“Dude!” Stan cackles. “It’s 2-rannce and Phil-2!”
“What the hell?” Kyle says. “How’d they get a hold of it?”
“In the depths of the dark web,” Kenny says sarcastically. “Where do you think, asshole? Pirated. Same place you could have watched it if you weren’t such a coward.”
“But that’s illegal!” Kyle exclaims.
Craig is lucky that the gang are too distracted by the movie to notice the look of utter disgust on his face. What a fucking dweeb! How could he ever have a secret crush on such a loser?
“Craig, can you believe this?” Kyle turns to address him for some strange reason. “Someone’s obviously trying to fuck with me.”
Craig is speechless. He wants to rightfully call Kyle a mega-dork but all he can muster is, “Crazy, man.”
“You get it, Craig,” Kyle says, and smiles, for some reason. “You always get it.”
Actually, Craig does not always get it. He rarely gets it at all. But Kyle’s smile is so blinding that it clouds his judgement enough for him to make him want to try again.
*
Tuesday again. Exactly one week after Kyle began lamenting about the Canadian Cinematic Universe.
Craig smuggles in a packet of Protein-Variety Cheesy Poofs in his backpack. This gift is far better researched than his previous one. He’s seen Kyle eating them, and he’s heard Kyle yearn for them after practice. Craig thinks they’re fucking disgusting, but he thinks Kyle is delicious enough to balance it out. He then immediately thinks about dropping out of society and retreating to the forest to become a hermit, just to counteract how cringeworthy that last thought was. Anyway, he spends his hard-earned dollar seventy-nine on a pack of Protein Poofs.
He intends to slip it in Kyle’s locker as an anonymous apology for his previous faux pas, but his plan is immediately disrupted when Kyle places a hefty padlock on his locker.
“I’m not letting anyone else implicate me in their crimes,” he declares, loud enough for the whole team to hear.
Craig tries to sneak a peek at the combination but isn’t standing at quite the right angle to catch it. Shit.
The team is streaming out of the locker room. Craig fumbles for his phone and opens Instagram. Kyle’s account is already in his recent searches, because sometimes, when Craig is feeling particularly sorry for himself, he will scroll dejectedly through his posts.
He taps on the photo from Kyle’s most recent birthday party, an upload which Craig is very familiar with. Kyle looks very cute in it, nose crinkled up as he laughs, one arm slung around Stan, the other one raising a beer to toast the camera. Craig had been invited to that party, but was too nervous to go, and he regrets it every day.
He checks the posting date. May 27th. Craig vaguely remembers it was posted the day after the party, which would have been the 26th. Had it been held on Kyle’s actual birthday? He couldn’t remember.
“Craig! Get your ass in here!” PC Coach calls from down the hall.
“Coming!” Craig shoves his phone back in his locker.
He leaves it an hour before excusing himself to go to the bathroom. He races back into the changing room and goes straight for Kyle’s locker. 0526, he tries, but the padlock doesn’t budge. Shit shit shit. He tries 0527, 0525, 0524, but none of them work. He even tries smacking it against the side of the locker, but all that does is make a loud clang, and cause the other people in the changing room to cast him dirty looks.
Then Craig recalls Ike. Don’t Canadians sometimes write the day first, before the month? He slides the dials to 2605. Click.
Craig could weep with relief. He settles for raising the right corner of his mouth. He grabs the Protein Poofs from his own locker and tucks them carefully in the back of Kyle’s, so they won’t fall on the floor this time.
What was the code jumbled to before Craig started fucking with it? He can’t remember. As he dives back into the pool, he hopes Kyle doesn’t either.
He usually likes the feeling in his body after training. The heaviness that floods back into his limbs as he climbs back out of the pool, the way his muscles turn to sweet lead as he hauls himself towards the showers. That delicious ache promises a sound night’s sleep, which, at the elderly age of 22, is one of his top priorities. He can never wrap his head around how half of his team hit the club after Friday training, and sometimes even on the Tuesdays too. Do these people care nothing for the sanctity of bedtime?
The pleasant numbness evaporates as the team pick off from the showers towards the wall of lockers. Craig’s heart is in his throat. He can’t wait to see Kyle’s reaction. Woah, he’ll say. Who put these there? Clearly someone who was just trying to be nice to me last time. I totally forgive them and find this whole event deeply attractive. Oh, also I’m gay by the way. And I know you’re all going to be cool with it. Does anyone else want to take this opportunity to also announce that they’re gay, free from prejudice or social discrimination? I’ll make out with you if you do.
Something like that, probably.
Kyle doesn’t say anything when he opens his locker. Or, rather, he doesn’t stop saying anything, conversation flowing with Tolkien about some Bronco’s game last night that Craig didn’t bother watching because he’s never had any interest in that. Craig likes sports for the rush of chemicals it gives his brain, the clear and achievable goal, the routine and structure it gives his life. Watching sports gives him none of that, and neither does discussing it.
Craig is beginning to wonder if he somehow hallucinated breaking into Kyle’s locker when Kyle at last goes, “Woah.”
“What?” Tolkien asks.
Kyle pulls the packet out. Craig tracks him out of the corner of his eye.
“I totally forgot I brought these with me today!” Kyle says. “That’s so weird, I don’t even remember putting them in there.” He shrugs. “Whatever, awesome, I’m gonna eat these on my walk home.”
Craig slams his locker shut with the force of all his rage.
Everyone around him flinches.
“Dude, you good?” Kenny asks from the other side of him. Apparently, he’s also been observing the exchange.
Craig gives him a tight-lipped smile. “I’m great.”
Kyle opens the packet and tips it towards them. “Want one?”
Craig stares down at the Protein Poofs, his own Protein Poofs, that he bought with his own money, being offered back to him. “No thanks,” he mutters. “I’m not hungry.”
“I am,” Kenny says, and takes a handful.
“Hey! I said one.” Kyle grumbles. He resumes his Broncos discussion with Tolkien. They exit the locker room together in heated debate, passing the packet back and forth. Craig watches them go, forlorn.
“Are you seriously alright?” Kenny asks again.
Craig hadn’t noticed he was still there. “I hate Protein Poofs,” he says.
“Uh huh,” Kenny says dubiously. “You must really hate them.”
“Sure do.” Craig shuffles out into the lobby before he can be forced to maintain any more conversation.
*
Craig is in a bad mood as he walks to practice on Friday, the memory of his failed gift still fresh in his mind. He arrives to find Kyle similarly ticked off.
“Aw, great, I forgot my fucking deodorant,” he says after rooting around in his bag for a while.
“Want to borrow mine?” Stan offers.
“No way, dude. Yours is roll on. That’s gross.”
“I don’t have the black death,” Stan says. “There’s no boils in my armpits. You’ll be fine.”
“Nuh-uh,” Kyle says. “Still gross.”
Craig spots his chance. He’s got a spray on. This should be easy, and more importantly, it should be noticeably not Kyle’s. He pulls the same trick as before, ducking out halfway through the session to pop it in Kyle’s locker. He makes sure to place it front and centre this time. As he returns to the breathless underwater laps they’re drilling, he wonders if he should have just offered Kyle some to his face, instead of continuing this elaborate ruse. But that would involve initiating conversation, the idea of which makes his stomach clench hard enough to give him abs. He gasps as he comes up for air.
“What the fuck?” Kyle says when he opens his locker later.
“What?” Clyde asks. He’s already naked. That fucking guy.
Kyle turns to face the rest of the team. “Does someone here think I stink?” he exclaims. He casts an accusatory eye around the room.
“Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?” Kevin Stoley asks.
Kyle gestures to the deodorant in his locker like its evidence in a TV court case.
“Oh, hey, your secret admirer is back!” Stan says.
“Secret enemy, more like,” Kyle growls. “Sending secret insults.”
“Oh my god, get over yourself,” Kenny scoffs. “You were complaining about not having any deodorant, and now you’re complaining about having some?”
“How do I know this is deodorant?” Kyle says. “It could be pepper spray in there. Or, I don’t know, some sort of poison—”
“Let’s find out.” Kenny picks up the can and sprays it at Kyle’s chest.
“Hey!” Kyle shouts.
Kenny sniffs. “Smells like deodorant to me.”
Kyle ducks his head and inhales deeply. “Smells sort of familiar.” He narrows his eyes at his teammates. “Who hear wears Dove?” He zeros in on Kenny and starts sniffing him.
“Fuck off, creep!” Kenny whacks him with a towel. “I use axe.”
“Of course you do.” Kyle looks at him distastefully.
“I wear Dove,” Kevin Stoley volunteers.
“Did you put this in my locker?”
“No.”
“Well then, Kevin Stoley, I don’t see how that helps.”
“I use Dove too,” Butters says. “I bet most of us do.”
There’s a scattered round of agreement from the team. Craig stays quiet.
“Not exactly the best clue,” Tolkien concludes.
“Yeah, well, whatever,” Kyle says. “I’m gonna figure out who my enemy is somehow.”
“I’m not your enemy, you stupid beautiful idiot!” Craig wants to scream. Instead, he quietly closes his locker and slips out the door whilst Kyle is still raving about the psychological warfare he is apparently under.
Craig goes to the pool on Saturday to practice by himself. He likes the clarity it gives him, the way it muffles the world, locks him inside himself. His aching arms, his burning lungs, his pumping blood. It’s why he got into swimming in the first place, that profound solitude. Being on a swim team undermines this considerably. Today, he ignores the large timer on the wall, counting down the seconds that span from one end to the other. He just swims for the sake of it.
The problem, he decides as he cuts through the water, is that he’s being too subtle. Small acts of niceness are easy to misinterpret. He lifts his head and takes a big breath before diving to the deep end. It’s time to get direct, he thinks. Or—as direct as he can be without using his voice, or words at all, or anything that might involve looking Kyle in the eye and owning up to what he’s doing.
He touches the tiles at bottom of the pool before floating upwards again. He bobs face-down on the surface like a corpse until the lifeguard taps him on the shoulder to see if he’s alright.
“It’s meditative,” Craig tells the guard. Wendy, or something. He vaguely remembers taking a class with her a few years ago. “I see how close I can get to passing out before I take a breath. There’s this Japanese inventor who drowns himself—”
“Could you please meditate face-up?” she interrupts. “You’re freaking out the freshmen.” She nods towards a pair of teenagers who are hovering worriedly on the other side of the pool.
Craig flips them off. They scowl at him, and so does Wendy.
“I don’t see a sign against it, lady,” he says, but his tranquillity has been killed, so he leaves shortly after that to go sweat in the sauna until his tongue turns to sandpaper in his mouth and he feels like he’s on the brink of death again.
The sun is shining as he heads to practice after class on Tuesday. Spring has officially sprung. He passes a hilly patch on the edge of campus that’s covered in little wildflowers, sprouting eagerly in sprigs across the grass.
Craig’s breath trips as he’s struck by an idea. It’s so overtly romantic that it sort of makes him want to throw up, but isn’t that the whole point? The romance, not the throwing up. He takes a brief detour to pick a few: some daisies, some asters, some clover, a bit of lavender off a bush nearby. None of them are particularly big or eye-catching, but bundled together, it’s cute enough. More importantly, it’s culturally relevant. You get flowers for people you care about. Even Craig knows that. He tucks it carefully into his backpack, taking care not to crush the petals.
This being the fourth time Craig has snuck something into Kyle’s locker, he has the routine down by now. He’s glad to find Kyle hasn’t replaced his padlock, even now that he knows it’s compromised. Maybe there’s some small part of Kyle, deep down, that wants to believe it is an admirer, and not an enemy, and doesn’t want to block them out. Craig hopes that’s the case. Or maybe Kyle just wants another reason to complain and accuse everyone of betrayal. Craig is certain that’s part of it.
His head is spinning when training finishes, feeling light and nauseous. Maybe he pushed himself too hard today. He drifts behind the rest of the team as they make their way back towards the showers.
“Are you okay?” Kenny peers at him. “You’ve gone kinda ashy.”
“I think I’m getting sick,” Craig mumbles in an attempt to brush him off. There probably actually is something wrong with him, to get so wrapped up in this stupid game. At least this will put an end to it.
He finishes showering just as Kyle is undoing his padlock. Breathless, Craig retreats to watch Kyle from the gap between his locker door and the wall.
Kyle opens his locker. Craig waits for a reaction, but nothing comes. Kyle just stares inside with a grave expression on his face.
“You get another gift?” Stan asks.
“You could call it that,” Kyle spits. He grasps the flowers in his fist. “Look at this.”
“Aw,” Butters says. “That’s sweet.”
“It’s not sweet, Butters.” Kyle glares at the bunch in his hand. “Because I’ve got fucking hayfever, haven’t I?”
Craig closes his eyes and yearns for the ground to swallow him up. God fucking dammit.
“It’s still a nice gesture,” Butters says as Kyle places the now slightly squashed bouquet on a nearby bench.
“Easy for you to say,” Kyle sniffs. “I—aw, man, look at this.” He takes a black t-shirt covered in yellow-white speckles out of his locker and holds it up for his friends to see. “I’ve got pollen all over my clothes.”
Kenny laughs at him. “You really don’t know how to take a compliment, do you?”
“Not when the compliment makes my eyes itch, I don’t!” Kyle rubs them for dramatic emphasis.
“Don’t touch your face,” Stan says. “That’ll make it worse.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Kyle snaps, blinking rapidly. “Ugh, fuck.”
“I think someone’s trying to flirt with you,” Kenny says.
“She must have a lot of guts, sneaking into the boy’s room for you,” Clyde says.
“Really?” Kyle sniffles, perking up. “I guess so.”
“Who do you think it is?” Stan asks.
“Oh, uh.” Kyle scrubs the underside of his nose. “Maybe Nichole from my PoliSci class? We sorta get on. Or Heidi from Economics?”
Craig flexes his fingers. Now some random woman is getting credit for his (admittedly poorly executed) act of affection? His knuckles are turning white. This is all too much.
“Okay,” Kenny says to Kyle, “but do you think either of them would have found out what time our practice is on, come to the campus gym, waited until we were in the pool, snuck into the boy’s changing room, guessed which locker you were using, cracked the code to your padlock, and put the flowers inside?” Kenny says. “You think Nichole or Heidi would have gone to all that effort?”
Kyle rubs his jaw. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know why anyone would want to go to any effort at all to put anything in my locker in the first place, unless they wanted to fuck with me.”
“Give yourself a little credit, Kyle.” Kenny grins. “You spend enough time parading around in speedos. It was only a matter of time before someone started to appreciate that bubble butt of yours.”
“I do not—Kenny!” Kyle flips to press his back against the wall, outraged.
“So you’re saying it could be anyone who’s used the pool whilst we trained?” Stan asks.
“I’m not sayin’ nothin’,” Kenny said. “I’ll keep any further theories to myself.”
“They’re probably all bullshit, anyway,” Kyle says.
“I guess that means it could be a man, too,” Butters muses.
“Huh,” Kyle says. Craig’s eyeballs bulge out of his head as he searches for any sort of clue about how Kyle might feel about that prospect. Kyle frowns. His eyes narrow. His mouth twists downwards.
Craig begins to worry that Kyle might be homophobic. Then Kyle takes a staggered gasp and sneezes loudly into his elbow, and Craig feels a bit stupid.
“Bless you,” he mutters.
“Thanks.” Kyle screws up his face as his sniffs sharply. “God, I think forgot to take antihistamines this morning,” he groans. “This is gonna be a rough walk home.”
All the frustration Craig feels towards Kyle and his constant bad-faith interpretations dwindles as he takes him in now, glistening pink from the shower, shivering, sniffling, watery-eyed, looking altogether very sorry for himself. Do something, Craig urges himself. He opens his mouth.
“Want to swap shirts?”
Kyle looks as surprised by the offer as Craig is.
“I mean, like, temporarily,” he says quickly. “Just cause, mine is less—and then I can give yours back on Friday—I’ll wash it, obviously—not that I think you’re dirty, just—”
“That would be awesome,” Kyle says, and Craig is grateful for the interruption. “Thank you, Craig, for such a productive suggestion.” He glares pointedly at Kenny and Stan. “If only other people were so good at problem-solving.”
Craig hands his own t-shirt to Kyle. “It’s kind of ratty,” he says, “sorry. If I’d known, I’d, you know, brought a better one, or something.”
“I like Red Racer,” Kyle says, because that’s what’s on the shirt.
“Really?” Craig says, and then is embarrassed by how excited he sounds. “I mean, yeah, me too.”
Kyle pulls on the shirt. Sometimes Craig thinks the act of watching Kyle dress is more intimate than all the times they’ve undressed around each other put together. “This is really nice of you,” Kyle says, reaching for his jeans.
“Really nice,” Kenny echoes. He has a look in his eyes that Craig doesn’t like. He dresses quickly, feeling watched all the while.
It’s like he’s floating on a cloud on his way home. He keeps touching the hem of his shirt, thinking about how just a few hours before, it was hanging around Kyle’s hips instead of his own.
He considers sleeping in Kyle’s shirt that night, but he worries that would be too creepy, and so he just folds it neatly on his desk and stands there and looks at it for a minute.
Is Kyle gay? He seemed pleased by the idea of a girl crushing on him, so probably not. Bisexual, then? Surely he would have said something to Stan about not wanting a guy to like him if he didn’t like guys. Craig can’t be certain. This new, more direct approach seems to be more effective, but he isn’t confident in how to communicate his maleness without giving away the rest of himself. Can he give Kyle a tote bag? A gift card for a septum piercing? A Clairo CD? Craig’s understanding of bisexual culture is very limited.
He’s still uncertain about his next best move by the time Friday comes. He’s washed and dried Kyle’s shirt, and even ironed it, which is maybe weird of him, considering he doesn’t iron his own clothes. But maybe Kyle irons his, and if he does, Craig doesn’t want to return it in sub-par conditions.
“I have your shirt,” Craig blurts the moment Kyle walks into the changing room. “I mean—sorry, that sounded weird.”
Kyle seems amused. “It sounded fine.”
Craig inwardly kicks himself for being awkward about a regular thing. “Well, anyway,” he says. “Here it is.” He holds it out. “I washed it.”
“Thanks.” Kyle takes it and digs in his bag. “I’ve got yours too. I didn’t wash it. Did you want me to?”
“It’s fine,” Craig says. “I know how to use a washing machine.”
“Right,” Kyle laughs.
Craig’s heart explodes with joy at the sound. He made Kyle laugh! Not on purpose, of course, but still. “Cool,” Craig murmurs.
What’s crazy is that Kyle keeps talking to him as the rest of the team arrives. Craig waits for Kyle to suddenly remember he was talking to someone boring and probably gay, but he doesn’t. By some small miracle, Craig is just about able to hold his end of the conversation, though it consists mostly of nodding and shaking his head. Kyle doesn’t appear to mind, as he’s got enough to say for the both of them, about his allergies, and his garden, and Stan’s vegetable patch, and the slugs that are ruining it. It’s the best four minutes of Craig’s life.
He hadn’t been planning on putting anything else in Kyle’s locker, since the last one went so poorly, but riding the high of their small talk, Craig wants to do something more forward than he’s done before. He tears a scrap of paper from a notebook in his bag, and writes, ARE YOU QUEER? YES/NO on it. He slips it into the gap on the edge of Kyle’s locker door, not even needing to unlock it.
This is an excellent plan, he thinks to himself. Kyle can quietly circle his answer, leave it in his locker, and then Craig can check it to see the result. If he is bi, or pan or unlabelled or whatever, then Craig won’t feel like such a creep every time he talks to Kyle. If he isn’t, then Craig can leave him alone forever. Perfect, no flaws, nothing could go wrong. He glides through practice fuelled with a nervous energy, pushing it into his muscles, feeling it stretch and burn as he swims. He’s exhausted by the end of it, arms hanging heavy by his side.
His palms are sweating as he finishes up his hasty shower. Craig dresses as he watches Kyle open his locker and catch the paper as it flutters out.
“Guys,” Kyle says, after he reads the note. “I think I’m being hate-crimed.”
“Did you get chocolates this time?” Stan asks.
“Or a teddy bear?” Butters adds.
“Please,” Kenny says. “I can’t wait to hear how you’ll twist this one into a slight against yourself.”
“I’m serious, you guys,” Kyle says. “Look at this. ‘Are you queer?’”
“So?” Stan says.
“So, they’re saying I act gay!”
Craig wants to die.
“You are bisexual,” Stan points out.
Craig wants to die slightly less.
“Woah, he’s bisexual, I didn’t know that,” Clyde says to Tolkien.
“Yeah, so what?” Kyle rounds on the pair of them. “I’m meant to announce that to the world?” He shakes the paper. “This is an attempt at blackmail!”
Kenny gives Kyle a withering look. “You are one of the stupidest people I have ever met in my life,” he says. “I think you’ve spent too long holding your breath underwater and have given yourself actual brain damage from oxygen deprivation.”
“I’ll give you actual brain damage,” Kyle says. “With my fucking fists.”
Kenny and Kyle take turns exchanging increasingly absurd threats of violence. Craig waits patiently for Kyle to get back to the subject of his sexuality, and volunteer more information on his tastes, such as whether or not he is interested in tall men, or shy men, or closeted men, or men who would do anything for him except admit who he is.
Kyle doesn’t say any of that. Craig is left in the dark.
*
Next session, PC Coach reminds them that competition season is coming up, and that Craig is far from ready for it. Well, he doesn’t target Craig specifically in his lecture, but Craig can only assume he’s part of the slated few. He’s distracted, restless, tuning in and out of what PC Coach is saying. He’s slow to start swimming, he’s slow to stop swimming, he’s slow to swim across the space between starting and stopping. He’s chosen a sport where every second counts, but the numbers are slipping further and further away from him today.
“Get your head in the game, Craig!” PC Coach snaps when he’s caught zoning out yet again.
It’s a cheesy line, something designed to be barked at a Zack Efron-type protagonist in a Disney Channel movie. The only Zack that he loosely resembles is Oyama, and regardless, he’s hardly cut out for the starring role. Not the supporting cast either, not even the ensemble, and certainly not the love interest. Craig is an extra. No plot, no lines, no name in the credits. It’s a depressing thought.
He comes up for air, and with it, it’s like he’s breaking the surface back into reality again. This whole secret admirer ruse has been a succession of failures. It’s time to put it to rest.
He’s resolute in his decision, right up until he opens his locker after showering to find a note slipped inside.
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UP TO.
Craig’s heart plummets. His vision tunnels on the scrap of paper with its scraggly handwriting, pinched between his rigid fingers. His throat is dry. He swallows. He swallows again. This can’t be happening. He dresses numbly and walks mechanically out of the building.
Treading down the path outside, someone taps his shoulder and he damn near jumps out of his skin.
“That was from me.” It’s Kenny. “The note.”
Craig blinks at him, blood rushing in his ears. “Okay,” he says tightly.
“See how easy that was?” His voice is quiet, but not low enough for Craig’s liking. “You should try it sometime.”
Craig narrows his eyes in irritation. “Try what?” he hisses.
“Oh, drop the act,” Kenny says. “You’re a terrible liar. You’ve only got away with this so far because you’re good at staying quiet. But guess what, buddy? I’ve played that game before.” He jerks a thumb back at himself. “I spent elementary through to high school hiding in my hoodie and not saying a thing. And let me tell you, it sucked major ass.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Craig says, and he might sincerely feel that way, if he weren’t presently seething with rage. “I don’t see how that’s relevant to me.”
“It’s time to stop torturing yourself, Craig,” Kenny says. “Kyle’s a nice guy, once you get past the, you know.” Kenny waves a hand. “You should just talk to him.”
“Or else you will?” Craig hisses.
“What?” Kenny seems alarmed. “No, man, Jesus.”
“Oh.” Craig settles a little.
“You’re as bad as Kyle, acting like everyone’s out to get you.”
He scowls. “I never said that.”
“Then quit acting like they are! If you stopped obsessing over how everyone perceives you for five seconds, you’d have realised that you’re not so different from any of us.”
“Like, you’re all gay?” he frowns.
Kenny rolls his eyes. “Like we’re all people!” he says. “Look, you can keep playing pretend with Kyle if that really makes you happy.”
“I’m going to stop,” Craig says. “It was stupid—I didn’t even really mean to start in the first place—I just got carried away—”
“Well, jeez, don’t give up now!” Kenny throws his hands up.
“Then what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to do what you actually want to do,” Kenny says. “Not just what you think everyone doesn’t want you to do the least.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Exactly,” Kenny says. “So, stop it. Or start it. I don’t know, whatever.” He rolls his shoulders back and stretches out his arms. “I’ve never given advice before. How am I doing?”
Craig hesitates, evaluating. “I’ll let you know when I’ve followed it,” he says.
Kenny beams at him and slaps him on the back. “Attaboy!”
Craig flinches away and grumbles, but inside, there’s a glow. Kenny walks with him all the way back to his house, telling him stories from his silent school days. Craig doesn’t even mind it. He finds he likes the company.
*
Craig drafts a longer note this time. He really does want this to be over, but what he also wants is closure, and end to this so he can find a beginning to something else. Kenny’s invited him over for a Mario Kart tournament with him, Clyde and Kyle, and Craig knows he’ll spend the entire time trying not to barf if he doesn’t know where he stands. So, he picks up a pen in the middle of a boring lecture and writes:
Hi Kyle. I’m a guy, and I like you a lot, but we share a swimming pool, and I don’t want things to be awkward. I might have made it worse by leaning into the secret admirer stuff. I want to ask you out, but I don’t know if that’s okay. Is that okay? Leave your response in your locker. You already know I know how to find it.
Craig spends the rest of the lecture writing and rewriting it, before giving up and leaving it how it is. It’s weird and self-conscious, but Craig is weird and self-conscious, so maybe that’s a good thing, since he’s going for this whole honesty schtick. He folds the note up and, just to be safe, writes READ PRIVATELY on the outside.
Last time now. Friday practice. Craig slips back into the changing room halfway through. He retrieves the note from his locker. He goes to slip it into Kyle’s. It’s wrenched out of his hand.
“Aha!” Kyle grasps it triumphantly in his fist. “Gotcha!”
Craig grabs desperately for it back, but Kyle’s too quick. “Give that back!” he cries.
“No way.”
“It’s—it’s not for you!” he tries desperately.
Kyle darts away. “Then why were you about to put it in my locker?”
“I, um, got confused?” Craig gives up on excuses and lurches towards him. Kyle shrieks and dashes away. Craig bolts after him. They’re lucky they’re alone in here, no one to point meaningfully to the NO RUNNING sign on the wall.
A mad chase plays out, the pair of them dripping in their swim shorts, weaving between the benches, across the floor, in and out of the showers. Craig reaches for him, but all he succeeds in is dislodging Kyle’s swim cap, cropped curls exploding out. Their stubbornness is perfectly matched between them. They might have carried on forever, if Kyle hadn’t slipped in a stray puddle. He yelps, losing his footing. Craig reaches out, tries to steady him, but instead ends up being pulled down too.
They land in a tangled heap. Craig gets his bearings back first and snatches the paper back. Kyle lets out a growl of frustration, and tries to wrestle it back, but Craig scrunches it up and clasps it between his hands, fingers locked tight. Kyle climbs on top of him, and begins to try to pry his palms apart, before he clocks the expression on Craig’s face, and realises he is currently straddling his hips.
They both freeze.
“So,” Kyle says slowly. “You’re my secret enemy.” His hands are still wrapped around Craig’s.
Craig looks away, his face burning almost as hot as the part of him that Kyle is sitting on. “Admirer,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Admirer,” Craig says a little louder.
Kyle’s iron grip softens slightly. “Oh.” His shoulders relax. “Wait, what?”
“Before you say anything,” Craig says, “I don’t see why it’s fair that you get to be openly bisexual if I can’t be gay.”
Kyle narrows his eyes. “What?”
“I know being you bisexual in general is different from me being gay in particular about you—”
“What?!” Kyle squawks. “You’re what?”
“I’m gay about you, okay!” Craig snaps. “That’s what’s in the note. I don’t even know why I’m bothering to hide it now.” He releases the seal between his hands, and Kyle desperately snags the letter.
He scans it with his brows lowered, but his expression softens as he does so. “Craig,” he says. “This is… this is really sweet.”
“You don’t have to lie to me.” Craig can’t bear to look at Kyle anymore. He throws his arms across his face. “If you think I’m a creep then you can say it. I’ll drop out, I’ll leave you alone forever—”
“You’re not a creep!”
“Or a pervert, whatever.”
“You’re not any of that sort of thing,” Kyle insists. “You’re sweet, I really mean it.”
Craig peeks at him from between his elbows and, yeah, he looks sincere. “Oh,” he says. “Okay. Well. That’s good.”
Kyle nods slowly, adjusting to the situation. “So, you like me, huh?”
Craig nods.
“What about that stuff with the movie?”
“I just thought you wanted to watch it,” he says. “I didn’t know you were a narc.”
“Well, excuse me for respecting artists and believing creators should be paid for their hard work!”
Craig scoffs. “I think Terrance and Phillip will be just fine in their twin mansions.”
“Okay, well, what about the deodorant?” Kyle says accusatorily.
“You skipped over the protein poofs,” Craig says, still muffled by his forearms.
“Huh?”
“I put a packet in your locker, but you thought you’d bought them yourself.”
Kyle’s jaw falls open. “I thought I was going crazy!”
“I definitely was,” Craig says.
“But the deodorant, then.”
“You said you needed some, I gave you some. It’s not that deep.”
“Hm!” Kyle sticks his nose in the air. “And the flowers?”
“I think you know why I got you the flowers.”
“Tactical aggression.”
“Oh my god.” He peels his arms away from his face. “I take my confession back.”
Kyle smirks at him. “I’m teasing.”
“You suck,” Craig huffs.
“There’s no accounting for taste.”
“Were you messing with me, with all your bad reactions?” he asks.
“Oh, no,” Kyle says. “I guess I’m just sort of paranoid. I’ve been the butt of a lot of practical jokes.”
“I wasn’t joking,” Craig mumbles.
“If I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have been so suspicious,” Kyle chuckles. “I can’t picture you pulling a prank. You’re so… earnest.”
Craig studies Kyle’s face, the way it glows as he smiles down at him. God, he’s gorgeous. If this were Craig’s last moment on earth, he’d be okay with that.
“And your first note was because you like me too, huh?” Kyle tilts his head in thought.
“Too?” Craig’s breath catches in his throat. “As in you—”
“I’m surprised you were able to stay quiet about it for so long,” Kyle talks over him. “There’s no way I could have done that.”
“I know,” Craig says, and he feels a rush of affection. “You always say exactly what you mean.”
Kyle sighs. “It’s a problem.”
“No,” Craig says. “It’s wonderful. I love it. I love…” He trails off. “Well, anyway. Thanks for being so chill about all this.”
“No problem, man,” Kyle says. He finally remembers he’s still on top of Craig. “Oh, shit, sorry.” He scoots off onto the floor, and Craig sits upright across from him.
“I won’t mention any of this again,” Craig says. His own swim cap has come off in the process, and he reaches up to blindly fix his hair. “We can just go back to—”
“What?” Kyle wrinkles his nose. “No chance, dude.”
“Oh, so—so you want me to, uh. What do you want me to do, then?”
“What do I want you to do?” Kyle asks. “Right now?”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to kiss me.”
It’s like someone’s vacuum packed Craig’s lungs. All the air leaves his body at once. “You do?” he wheezes.
“Of course,” Kyle says. “Would I say that if I didn’t?”
“I guess you wouldn’t.”
“So. Are you gonna?”
“Uh—yeah. Yes.” Craig scoots clumsily on his knees. Kyle’s eyes light up and he tilts his head forward. Craig kisses him, soft, uncertain.
He intends it to be chaste, but Kyle throws his arms around Craig’s shoulders and pulls him in deeper. His mouth is warm and wet, and he smells like chlorine and a subtle hint of Dove deodorant. Craig finds himself leaning over Kyle’s lap, kissing him on the floor against the lockers. These stupid fucking lockers.
“Boys!” PC Coach’s voice bellows down the hall from the pool. “Quit screwing around and get back in here!”
They flinch apart. Craig isn’t sure how much time has passed. Maybe only a few minutes. Maybe hours and hours. Maybe forever. Probably the minutes, though.
“Shit,” Kyle chuckles. “We should go.”
“Right.” Craig struggles to his feet, legs like jelly.
Kyle wipes the back of his mouth. He grins at him. “Race ya.” He takes off.
“You bastard!” Craig yells, and shoots after him. They run across the tiles to the echoes of their coach’s disapproving shouts.
They hit the water at the same split second. At the bottom, through the rippling blue haze, he can see Kyle smile. Kyle can see him too.