Original -- Semi-Regular Indulgences
Title: Semi-Regular Indulgences
Rating: PG
Word Count: 6,465
Warnings: occasional language; occasional angstbuckets; Nick doesn't know what "PC" means
Prompts: 1. mistletoe set-up; 6. a kiss in the snow; 16. family reunion; 22. visible breath; 38. stranded somewhere unusual by a snowstorm
Summary: Nick bribes Theo to drive him up to Tahoe for a family get-together. This is the worst decision of Theo's life, with the possible exception of befriending Nick in the first place.
Author's Note: This was going to be my Baubles to It piece… until it became a monster. D: Angst!background you may like to know: Theo is black, and his adoptive parents are white; Nick's father left when he was very young, and he lives exclusively with his mother. Voilà, now you can go watch the angst play out. XD
SEMI-REGULAR INDULGENCES
“Three-eighty, please.” The cashier’s turquoise hair clashes horribly with the red holiday aprons, but he’s so nice that Theo forgives him for being an eyesore.
“I’ll get it,” Nick says, holding out a five before Theo can open his wallet-and that’s how he knows.
Theo pauses, and then he goes to pick a table while Nick deals with the change. He selects one by the wall of windows, though the fact that it’s the only one available-unsurprising in a coffee shop on an afternoon in December-factors heavily into that particular decision. Theo folds his hands on the tabletop and waits, watching as Nick sits down and wrinkles his nose at the elevator music. Nick only ever supports Theo’s “foofy girl drink habit” when he wants something.
For the record, it’s not a habit. It’s a semi-regular indulgence.
“What’s the favor?” Theo asks.
Nick blinks for a moment, and then he grins sheepishly. At least he has the grace not to deny it.
“You want to go to Tahoe?” he asks.
“No,” Theo says. “Why do you?”
Nick chews on his lip and glances out the window, presumably wishing he was out there among the oblivious rather than having this conversation, in spite of the café vibe and central heating. “Family get-together,” he says at last.
Theo frowns. “Isn’t your mom going?”
Nick taps his fingers on the table, looking at them. “It’s my dad’s side of the family.”
Theo doesn’t say You hate your dad, which is what Nick would have him believe; neither does he say You hate that you still care what your dad thinks of you, which he knows is closer to the mark. He decides not to say anything, which works out fine, because Nick has a tendency to say too much.
“It’s because of my cousin,” Nick says. “We used to hang out a lot when we were kids, but she went to boarding school in South Africa, and she’s almost never in the States, and… I dunno. Some of my relatives on that side don’t even believe that I exist.”
“Okay,” Theo says.
Nick blinks a little more. “Really?”
“On three conditions,” Theo says.
Nick sighs and holds the back of one hand to his forehead. “Not the conditions!”
Theo counts them out on his fingers, more for emphasis than because he thinks Nick needs the mathematical assistance. “One: you pay for gas.”
“I love your Prius,” Nick says.
“Two: you deal with the snow. That means shoveling, if we have to; it also means putting on the tire chains.”
“I’ll ask WikiHow,” Nick says.
Theo eyes him. “Three: you rescue me from your relatives if you get the slightest hint I’m uncomfortable.”
Nick beams. “I will be your white knight, Theo-bee. I will save you from the clutches of familial awkwardness, stop you from drinking questionable eggnog, preserve your honor and dignity at all costs-”
The barista puts a cup on the counter. “Caramel macchiato for… Egbert Aloysius?”
Theo gives Nick a look.
“Starting tomorrow,” Nick says, trying valiantly not to grin. “Aren’t you going to go get your drink?”
“Tire chains are the worst invention in the history of mankind!” Nick howls.
Theo rolls down the window, letting hot air billow over Nick, who’s crouched down to tussle with the front-left tire.
“I thought that was Furbies,” he says.
“I think it was you,” Nick grumbles.
Theo starts rolling the window back up. “You know… I love my Prius, too.”
Theo’s life ceases to be such a hybrid advertisement as they climb higher, and the snow thickens, and neither his headlights nor his windshield wipers seem to be adequate.
“Please don’t drive off the cliff,” Nick says.
“Quit distracting me, and maybe I won’t,” Theo replies.
“Your white-knuckled grip on the wheel is encouraging,” Nick says. There is a pause, during which he looks pointedly at Theo’s knuckles and flashes an even more distracting grin. “Hang on while I figure out how that’s a black joke.”
“Condition four,” Theo says. “Zero black jokes in front of your family.”
Nick stretches. “But you never care.”
“They will,” Theo says, eking his way around another sharp turn, his blood pressure rising at the same approximate speed as the odometer. “Your cousin lives in Africa. And they’ll think I’m self-loathing when I don’t beat the daylights out of you.”
“No after-the-fact conditions,” Nick says. “Everyone knows that.”
“You can get out and walk if you prefer,” Theo offers.
Nick slouches in his seat, pouting. “Condition observed.”
“I said left,” Nick says.
“That was left!”
Nick considers. “I meant right.”
Theo thinks about crashing his well-loved, fuel-efficient baby into a snowdrift on purpose.
But he doesn’t.
Lunch, as they discover after the third stop to debate directions, is being held at a lodge-which, in Theo’s overdeveloped vocabulary, means “a country club open to the middle class, provided that they pay up.” Lunch begins with Theo’s cramped legs protesting both the walk and the cold air in which it takes place; and then lunch segues into Theo’s intense surprise at the way Nick’s shoulders go tighter and tighter the closer they get to the door. Nick doesn’t give a damn or a crap what people think about him, which is at once his most frustrating and his most admirable trait.
“Did you RSVP?” Theo asks-which probably doesn’t help, but which is important enough that he risks it.
“Um,” Nick says. “Not as such.”
That part is definitely not surprising.
Theo holds the door for him anyway.
The Lodge Man leads them down a hall and around a corner-Theo mouths See? Left!, and Nick sticks his tongue out in reply-in order to drop them off in front of an open doorway, through which Theo sees a room full of people who don’t look very much like Nick. He knows that feeling.
Nick inches his way over the threshold and stands there, hesitating. No one turns. None of the conversations peter out. If there is one thing to which Nick Deveraux is completely unaccustomed, it is being ignored; if there’s another, it’s feeling like he’s lost.
Emotionally, that is. Theo knows very intimately that Nick gets geographically lost whenever possible.
Then a plump woman with auburn hair notices them loitering, still half in the hall. She smiles, slightly uncertainly, and comes forward.
“You two need name-tags,” she says, warmly despite her misgivings. Gamely, she raises a Sharpie and a stack of stickers. “And I need to know what to put on them.”
“Auntie Lola,” Nick says helplessly.
“Nicky?” the woman asks, transitioning into disbelief.
Theo is not going to laugh. Not going to laugh. Not going to-
He snorts.
Nick forces a broad grin and opens his mouth to respond pointedly to his relation, but he doesn’t get the chance, because an attractive redhead hurls herself at him and squeals.
“Nicky!” is the cry, and Theo likes her already, if only because Nick looks torn between jumping into the freezing lake and staying here until she hugs him to death.
The girl bounces up and down a little without releasing her vise grip on Nick’s ribcage, and then she draws back, scowls at him, and speaks with a strong accent. “You should’ve said you were coming, you shit.”
“Caroline,” Lola gasps.
Caroline makes an even more agonized face. “Sorry, Mum.” She smacks Nick’s arm. “But you should’ve! I thought I was going to be stuck here with the old people!” She pauses in her Nick abuse long enough to notice Theo waiting off to the side, immensely enjoying the show. “Oh, God-um, hi, I’m Nicky’s cousin, Just Made an Arse of Myself.”
Lola appears to be contemplating infanticide. Theo, for his part, can see why Caroline had to move to another continent: if she and Nick had grown up together, they would have destroyed the world.
Nick shifts in preparation to introduce him as the mute chauffeur, so Theo takes matters into his own hands by holding one out to Caroline.
“Theo Alton,” he says. “The brains of the operation.”
Caroline shakes warmly and glances at Nick. “I like this one,” she says. “You can keep him.”
“I have no choice,” Nick says. “He’s my ride home.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and glances faux-nonchalantly around. People seem to recognize him now that he’s standing next to Caroline, and Theo’s not sure the memories of the pair are entirely positive. “Is… my dad here?”
“You know Stephan,” Lola sighs, and for a fraction of a moment, Nick looks like he’s been stabbed. “He couldn’t show up on time if you put a gun to his head and led him to the door.”
Theo realizes two things at once-that Lola is indisputably Caroline’s biological mother, and that Nick is a glutton for punishment.
Theo stamps his feet on the steps. Converse in snow are not so fabulous. His coat is doing the best it can, and he ganked a piece of Saran wrap from the snack table to sit down on, but he’s going to have to head back in there soon.
Not yet.
He watches his breath mist against the silver-gray-white wash of the iced-over lake, rimmed by evergreens. He’s seen it in summer before, and it’s a riot of color then-vibrant blue, deep green, searing yellow for the sand. Flecks of gold float in the water, and the whole place glitters even without the help of Reno’s neon lights.
Theo blows out a thin stream of steam as if it’s cigarette smoke. At least that would give him an excuse to be outside. Sorry, I’m introverted doesn’t sound viable somehow.
Theo gives up on pretending he’s a smoker and pretends that he’s a dragon instead.
The door shuts, and he jumps, glancing over his shoulder before gravity’s quite brought him back to his seat. It’s Caroline, which is both unexpected and not.
She plops down on the step beside him and hugs herself, gazing over the frozen hush of the landscape.
“I was watching this home video,” she says. “The other day, when I got in-of me and Nick when we were five, right before I left. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s going to be the most obnoxious bastard on the planet Earth, and I’ll have slaughtered him by dinnertime.’”
She smiles. Theo can’t make out the words from here, but he distinctly hears the intonation of Nick’s voice that means he’s reached the punchline. Peals of laughter ensue.
“But he’s not,” Caroline says. “And I think that’s because of you.”
Theo thinks it’s because Nick’s mother takes neither prisoners nor bullshit from anyone, whether opposing prosecutors or caving husbands or obnoxious five-year-olds.
“I don’t think I have much effect,” he says. “Nick’s his own… entity. He does his own thing. I just let him.” He huddles in his jacket and shrugs. “Sometimes I point and laugh.”
Caroline’s looking at him in a way he’s not sure he likes. She’s smart and focused-which suddenly feels dangerous, because Nick’s never both at once, and that’s why Theo’s safe.
“He wouldn’t be who he is unless he had someone to be himself with,” she says.
Another punchline. More uproarious amusement.
“He’s talking about you,” Caroline says.
“I’m going to kill him,” Theo decides. “The second I’m done freezing my ass off.”
Caroline looks over. “Is that plastic wrap?”
Change of plans. “I’m going to kill him now.”
Theo does not see why dinner must be held somewhere other than the lodge. It probably has something to do with renting space by the hour and the homely touch of a lakeside cabin, which is a nice illusion for people who no longer know each other but want to pretend that they’re close.
He and Nick stop off en route to take pictures of a “Caution: Avalanches” sign with an inappropriately hilarious stick man, so they’re the last to arrive. Things just go south from there.
Theo wishes he’d thought of going south for the winter instead.
It’s overcompensatingly warm inside, and they’ve just finished peeling off the top layers when Caroline calls, “Catch!”
Damn all of Theo’s instincts to hell, back, and then to hell again: he does what he’s told. He raises his arm and snatches the leafy thing she throws at him out of the air.
Ninety percent of the room immediately choruses, “Oooooh.” Theo would like to say a thing or two about the horrors of mob psychology, but his throat has stuck.
Nick considers.
“Mistletoe is really kind of ugly,” he says.
Theo tries to swallow, to little success.
Nick grins at him. “What, you don’t want to kiss me?”
Even if Theo could speak, it’s a trap question.
He finally lowers his arm and looks at the-Nick has a point-hideous plant in his hand. What kind of sick family reunion involves mistletoe, anyway?
Nick has not defended Theo’s honor. He has not protected Theo’s dignity. But Theo’s still the bigger liar, because he’s never breathed a word of the truth he carries everywhere, and he can’t do it even now.
“C’mere, Theo-bee,” Nick says, grin maniacal. He fists both hands in Theo’s sweater and hauls him into a kiss of hot-flushed cheeks and chapped lips and poorly-angled noses, and Theo reels so violently that most of his brain just up and shuts down. He lets his eyes fall closed and thinks that if this is kissing, making out must be sheer torment.
Then Nick doesn’t let go. Theo has started to panic when a voice breaks out-one he’s only ever heard for fifteen seconds before Nick deleted the message and sulked for hours.
“Me-e-e-erry Christmas!”
Nick’s hands uncurl, spread, and shove Theo away from him far too late.
Nick stares at his father. His father stares back. Theo has the giddy thought that they look like gunslingers in a Western.
Nick’s father’s face resembles many of the others in this room, and it crumples into confusion with an umbrage of disgust.
“What,” he says, “in the hell-”
Nick pushes past him and forges out into the snow.
Silence again. Theo can actually hear Nick’s sneakers crunching on the pathway. He can also hear a heartbeat that hopefully belongs to a frightened rabbit, or else he’s about to have a heart attack at age nineteen.
He sidles past Stephan Deveraux, fumbles to grab their coats, and runs after the boy who was kissing him a minute ago.
It’s snowing-tiny white flakes like fireflies, sinking slowly, melting if they touch his skin. It’s beautiful. Nick keeps going. Theo keeps going after him.
They walk a ways like that, the snow thickening and the world darkening all the while. Nick strides with his head down, following the shoreline, kicking at the white carpet so that flurries dance around his feet, which he’ll regret when the water soaks in. When they’ve moved about a quarter-mile, he stops near a low, square, cinderblock building which-by the rather unambiguous MEN inscribed on the door-must be a restroom for the summer crowds. Nick tucks his hands into his pockets and stares out at the lake. Theo weighs where to begin. Nick swipes the back of one hand at his eyes before the tears freeze, but not before Theo’s heart lurches so hard he’s nauseous.
“It’s not you,” he says.
“I know,” Nick says unsteadily, swiping at his nose now, which is equally practical but not so romantic. “In my head, I know.”
Theo holds out Nick’s coat, and he sniffles and takes it. Theo shoulders on his own and tangles himself up in his scarf. It’s snowing harder-ominously now.
There are tiny flecks of ice in Nick’s eyelashes, like beads of water in a spider’s web. He glances towards the bathroom.
“You think it’s got hot water?” he asks.
“No,” Theo says, but he holds the door anyway.
“Behold the Chamber of Secrets!” Nick intones.
“I can’t see the cabin,” Theo announces from the doorway. “Furthermore, I can’t see anything.”
“Snow is something,” Nick says. “Don’t discriminate against less common forms of precipitation.”
Theo closes the door and chafes his hands, which proves futile.
“I won’t resort to cannibalism if you don’t,” Nick says.
“You’d taste terrible,” Theo says, and then he remembers that he has concrete evidence to the contrary.
Nick chooses not to comment on Theo’s facial expression. “Don’t go to sleep. Your body temperature drops, and that’s when the hypothermia gets you.”
Theo hadn’t realized that hypothermia has graduated to 80s-slasher-movie villain status. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep here,” he says. “It’s unsanitary.”
Nick probably knows he’s not joking. Theo sits on the edge of one of the sinks, which seems like the least bacteria-ridden spot in the building, tucks his hands under his arms, and hunkers down.
Nick’s cell phone buzzes, and he fishes it out and looks at the text.
“Caroline wants to know if we’re okay,” he says. He narrates his response as he types-which, for all Theo knows, he also does when he’s alone. “Alive… but… suffering… send… help… and… macchiatos. Theo… looks… appetizing.”
Theo is too cold to go hit him.
Nick peeks out and gauges the snowfall.
“Don’t sleep,” he decides.
“Too hungry,” Theo says.
Nick makes a horrified face, and Theo can’t help but smirk.
“Don’t call the police,” Nick tells Caroline through the phone.
“Call the police,” Theo says.
“We’ll be fine.”
“Call the SWAT team.”
“Theo’s a natural worrier.”
“Call the FBI.”
Nick manages not to laugh. “It’ll let up soon.”
“I’ll be dead by then.”
“You have my permission to kill me and eat me if things get bad,” Nick says. There’s a pause. “Not you, you; I was talking to Theo and his neuroses.”
“They’re what make me fun,” Theo says.
“Well, obviously,” Nick replies.
Eventually, they hear yelling over the lessening wind. Theo slides down off of the sink, and Nick opens the door.
Caroline’s cheeks are redder than her hair but not quite as red as her mittens, which clash with them both.
“It let up ten minutes ago,” she says, which isn’t true; it’s still coming down with gusto. “Have you two been making out in here?”
Lola looks pleased. Nick’s father looks mortified.
“Oh, probably,” Nick says, and he takes Caroline’s arm in his left and Theo’s in his right. “Lead the way back before I starve after nobly refusing to eat Theo’s corpse.”
“Theo appreciates it,” Theo says.
They stay over that night; somehow, between couches and the floor, everyone’s accounted for. Nick talks nonsense to the people in his dreams, but Theo can’t sleep, and that’s only partially because of the hardwood two blankets down. He dozes fitfully now and then, drifting through various degrees of consciousness, but mostly he just waits it out, feeling like some kind of vampire.
That’s funny-a black vampire. Nick would have half a dozen un-PC things to say about that.
When it’s close enough to dawn, he gets up, steps over the recumbent forms of a few kids he didn’t have a chance to meet, and finds the kitchen. Caroline’s sitting at the table, dressed in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, which she’s propped up on another chair.
“You’re up early,” Theo says.
“Jet lag,” she reports, gesturing to her coffee mug. She moves her feet, and he accepts the invitation to sit. “You?”
He shrugs. She winces.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Not your fault.”
“It damn well is,” she says. “Can I burn you some toast in penitence?”
He smiles a little. “All is forgiven.”
Nick comes in an hour later with magic marker doodles all over his face.
“I will never procreate,” he announces. His hair’s tousled in some places and flattened funny in others, and his eyes are puffy and hazy from prankster-interrupted sleep. He looks hilarious and adorable, and Theo’s stomach twists itself into an intricate knot as his imagination gears up and guns it. “There must be a stash of booze in here somewhere.”
“Poor baby,” Caroline says, grinning. “Did the mean ten-year-olds pick on you? Let me cry you a river, love.”
“Punk,” Nick says. He drops down into the chair next to Theo and leans his head back, arms dangling. “If this is permanent marker, they’re all dead. I’ll hide the bodies in the lake.”
Theo does not picture helping Nick to dump the cadavers of his adolescent victims. Theo is too busy picturing waking up next to him-kissing him goodnight; sharing hot chocolate; stroking his hair when he passes out in front of the evening news. Getting snuck up on and blind-hugged from behind. Telling him to fold his shirts and then doing it for him, because he’d just wear them wrinkled and look absurd.
Nick nudges Theo’s knee with his. “When do you want to make our escape?”
Theo lifts a shoulder. “It’s your family. Whenever you can bear to part with them.”
Nick rolls his eyes at Caroline. “I was asking what you want, Mr. Accommodating. I swear you never want anything.”
Theo shrugs again and pushes at the not-too-burnt toast crumbs on his plate.
Nick eats three and a half Pop Tarts to console himself about the vandalism to his face. At that point, he looks like he’s going to vomit to console himself.
“Theo,” he says, “will you help me get this off?”
Theo thinks of tearing Nick’s clothes off and pushing him down on his mother’s couch. Then he thinks of “get off” without the hanging modifier. Then he thinks he is irrevocably depraved.
Nick gestures to his face.
Oh. Yeah.
Theo hates mornings; he’s never in control of his brain, and it’s hard enough not ruining everything when he can regulate his thoughts.
“I think we’ll have to exorcise you,” he says. “Is there any holy water in the fridge?”
Nick lathers, scrubs, rinses, peers into the mirror, and grimaces.
“I still look like a Satanist with facial tattoos,” he says.
“Tragic,” Theo notes.
Nick shoots him a look and goes back for more soap. He virtually disappears into the suds this time, like a kid playing Santa Clause in the bath, which at least is seasonally appropriate. He rinses again. His hairline dampens. Rivulets run down his face.
“Remind me why I’m standing here watching you commune with the sink?” Theo asks.
“Well,” Nick says. He pauses to spit out soap. “Well, it’s pretty much the only way to get privacy at something like this.”
Theo shifts. “The insuppressible extrovert craves privacy-hang on, I need to stop the presses.”
Nick flicks water at Theo’s face with impeccable aim. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to talk about it.”
It. What kind of a tiny pronoun is that to encapsulate everything that’s been done and thought of and not said?
The problem-the primary problem; the ringleader of a gang of problems; the Problem Mafia don-is that Theo does more. It’s not because he’s better; it’s not that he’s capable of more; it’s much nearer to the opposite. It’s because he has to do more to be something he’s satisfied with. It’s because Theo Alton, at a fundamental level, is not enough, and compensating is the only way to balance out the inadequacy. He has to work more, think more, build more with a given quantity, stretching it to fit. He has to be more, because he has to cover, because he has to live up to his parents’ hopes, earn their commitment, return on their investment in him. He has to exceed expectations built for better human beings.
That ripples outward, though, and floods.
That means that no matter how sincere Nick was at the time, no matter how dedicated he thinks he can be, Theo will have more. Theo will feel more, and he won’t be able to stop that or even slow it down. He might be able to hide it, but that’s the best chance he’s got.
Nick has other friends. Nick has other connections and other spheres and other dreams. Nick was wrong, obviously; Theo wants dozens and hundreds and thousands of things, of which Nick himself is only one, albeit a tally mark gouged into the page by repetition. But even if this it has crossed Nick’s mind in the past, Theo has done more-he has imagined and considered and created, guiltily but often, enough that no reality can be anything other than a disappointment.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Theo says.
Nick stops mid-ablution to stare at him. “What planet are you from, and where have you stowed Theo’s unconscious body for later probing?”
“Try the lake,” Theo says.
Nick gives him a look that’s unfamiliar-the exasperation is familiar, of course, especially tainted with grudging amusement; the fondness he knows; the strange underlying intelligence rings a bell; the hint of pity and the weariness are new, and he doesn’t like either one.
That’s part of what he flees from.
“You missed a spot,” he says, indicating Nick’s entire face. “I’ll be downstairs.”
When he gets downstairs, he hears other voices than Caroline’s from the kitchen. He doesn’t have the constitution to face other human beings right now. He catches up his coat again, pulls it on, fights with the lock on the front door, and forges out; embarrassingly enough, he actually stumbles backward a step at the first blast of frigid air.
He’s just closed the door again, regretting having touched the handle from the outside, and buried both curled hands in his pockets when he sees Nick’s father with the snow shovel, paused halfway up the excavated walk.
Theo clears his throat and then clears it again.
“Hi,” he manages. “I’m Theo. Theo Alton.” He fishes one frozen hand from his pocket and holds it out, half-expecting to receive a shovel blow to the wrist.
Nick’s father hesitates, but he reaches out a hand sheathed in black nylon and shakes briefly-his grip tight, firm, and snow-dampened while it lasts.
“Stephan,” he says.
Theo swallows. “Nice to meet you.”
If it’s possible to explode from awkwardness, one of them is going to burst at any moment, spraying gore and discomfort all over the yard. Theo shoves his hands back into his coat pockets. He can’t quite bring himself to comment on the weather to give both of them something to say.
Nick’s father takes a deep breath and releases it in a puff of fog. “So… how long have you and Nick been…?”
“Been what?” Theo asks, sounding prickly even to his own slowly-numbing ears.
Stephan sighs mistily, buries the shovel up to the hilt in a mound of snow, and leans on the handle. “You’d think his mother could’ve mentioned-”
“Mentioned what?” Theo presses-slightly cruelly, perhaps, but after the events of last night and his sleeplessness and the lack-of-a-conversation he just had in the bathroom upstairs, what can he say that’s not justified? “We’ve been best friends since the fifth grade. He’s had four girlfriends in the meantime, the most recent of which broke up with him right before his birthday. Your card was late, by the way; he recycled it, but I saw the postmark.”
Stephan flinches and then frowns. “Look, I’m sorry, but my relationship with my son really isn’t any of your business.”
“Mine isn’t any of yours,” Theo says.
Stephan opens his mouth and then shuts it again.
Theo’s pretty sure he won this round, so it’s even more unfair that he feels like shit all the same. He braves the freezing doorknob and goes back into the house; it’s noise sensitivity rather than nobility that prevents him from slamming the door.
Nick was right about one thing-the bathroom is the only place to find solitude around here.
He’s been rotating around to sit in the least-unhygienic spots for about an hour when there’s a knock at the door. He doesn’t answer. The knocker tries the knob, then calls:
“It’s Caroline. The password is… um… ‘Open Please-ame.’”
Damn her; she’s too cute to lock out. He gets up, undoes the bolt, steps back, and shoves his hands in his pockets. Caroline peeks in.
“You found my secret lair,” Theo says.
She slips inside and shuts the door again. “I’m very resourceful. Do I get incinerated for asking why you need a secret lair?”
She’s also too cute to incinerate. She probably knows it.
“Well,” Theo says, “it’s not even noon yet, and the accomplishments of my morning have been alienating Nick’s father, alienating Nick, and eating a piece of toast.”
Caroline tilts her head a little, looking at him, and smiles.
“What’s so funny?” Theo asks. It isn’t really an accusation-he wants very badly for this to be funny, and maybe she has some secret South African way of seeing opposites in everything. He’ll ask her to reverse every event since his arrival. Actually, she can reverse his arrival, too.
Caroline shrugs, still smiling. “Just that the toast is the only thing you can’t change.”
That is kind of funny. Sort of. A little.
…no, not at all.
He rubs his eyes. “Honestly, I think I would rather vomit up the toast.”
“You don’t mean that,” Caroline says. “Vomiting is awful. Theo, you know how sometimes-a lot of the time-something is painfully obvious to everybody except the person in the middle of it?”
Theo shrugs acquiescence.
“Nick and I exchanged a lot of emails,” Caroline tells him. “It actually got kind of tiring after a while, because he never talks about anything but you.”
Theo shrugs indifference, because if Nick had someone else to hang out with; if Nick’s mom was home more; if Nick had another human being at hand to help him make the stories-then he’d write emails about them. Theo’s just in the passenger seat-the sidekick position, the background. He’s just in the right place at the right time.
Or he was until yesterday. There’s that opposites thing again.
Caroline looks at him shrewdly. Apparently they teach courses on telepathy in South Africa. “I don’t mean that he talks about stuff you did, or stuff the two of you did together. I mean he talks about you. What you’re like. Things you say. How you make him laugh all the time, and once he choked and got lemonade up his nose, which was the single worst experience of his life.”
“Well, it was before we made out,” Theo says bitterly.
Caroline rolls her eyes. “If you insist on suffering, I can’t stop you.” She sees the look on his face and winces. “It’s true, though. I can’t make you view this as a good thing. You’re the only one who can change your own perception.”
“It’s not a good thing,” Theo says. “That’s not a perception; it’s a fact.”
Caroline sighs, moves forward, and hugs him tightly. “And Nick thinks you’re so smart.”
She manages to coax him out for lunch, which Theo thinks probably stands as evidence that she also takes classes in magic. Nick’s not anywhere in the kitchen, however, or the dining room, or the living room where they slept-Theo’s mystified until he glances out the window and catches sight of a familiar shape in a familiar coat and unfamiliar gloves. Nick and his father are in the process of digging at a mound of snow that bears a strong resemblance to Theo’s car. Nick laughs at something the other man says and then looks surprised.
“Wonders never cease,” Lola says from right by Theo’s shoulder, demonstrating that she’s horrifyingly sneaky for a woman her size.
“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Theo says.
Lola tries very hard not to smile. “Jesus doesn’t appreciate your sass, young man.”
Most people don’t, which is part of why it’s so frighteningly important to cling to the ones that do.
Theo folds his arms across his chest tightly, which is about as close as one can get to hugging oneself without looking pathetic.
“Come on,” Lola says. “We’re decorating gingerbread in the kitchen. Nobody hates frosting.”
Theo has met people who do, but-fortunately or unfortunately-he isn’t one of them.
Theo gauges the lopsided ovals of black icing on the gingerbread man’s forehead, bisected by a jagged splotch of red. He then gauges the seven-year-old girl’s gap-toothed, geeky grin.
“Harry Potter?” he guesses.
“Yeah!” she says, and the grin just gets wider, and Theo has to admit that he feels kind of warm inside. She peers at the interlocking staircases and strange continuities all over his vaguely person-shaped canvas, which has dazed spiral eyes to reinforce the theme. “What’s yours?”
“It’s an Escher-inspired gingerbread man,” Theo says.
The girl blinks at him. “A what?”
“Escher was a Dutch artist who did really awesome drawings,” Theo tells her. “He used a lot of mathematics and perspective tricks to make stuff that kind of messes with your head and fascinates you at the same time.”
“Much like Theo himself,” the most familiar voice in the universe says from behind him.
Theo jumps and turns; when the hell did Nick come in? Has he unwittingly attended a family reunion full of ninjas, or what?
Nick snatches an unclaimed gingerbread man from the tray in the middle of the table, bites its head off, gestures to Theo with the decapitated body, and sprays crumbs everywhere as he speaks: “We found your car.”
“Thanks,” Theo manages.
Nick salutes with his headless gingerbread man. “Just doin’ my civil duty, Mr. Alton, sir. Are you done helping the children desecrate perfectly good cookies, or do you need a little more time?”
“This,” Theo says confidentially to the Harry Potter fan as he selects another cookie, “is Nick.” He adds some brown icing for hair, two green dots for eyes, and a gigantic red smile.
“You should charge for gingerbread portraits,” Nick says. “I would take that home and frame it if I wasn’t so hungry. And if you were ever willing to leave.”
“Have you said goodbye to Caroline?” Theo asks, giving Nick a purple, green, and orange plaid shirt because he can.
“Yes,” Nick says. “She sobbed and clung to my ankles for a while, but I think she’ll be okay after a few years of counseling. Why am I not wearing any pants?”
Theo’s face goes so hot he thinks he might ignite.
“Because…” He snaps off the bottom half of the cookie. “…you don’t have any legs to put in them.”
Nick pauses, and then he starts to giggle. “Can’t argue with that logic. Do you want that, or can I eat it?”
“Autocannibalism,” Theo remarks, handing it over. “I think this is a new low, even for you.”
When they’ve finished their goodbyes-that is, when Lola has finally let them go, and Caroline has given Theo her Twitter name because she knows Nick will somehow lose it even if it’s written on his arm-they troop up the newly-cleared path to Theo’s newly-discovered car. Theo makes a face, fishes a tissue out of his pocket, and starts making futile efforts at picking ice off of his windshield wipers.
“Hey,” Nick says, leaning against the passenger door.
“Yeah?” Theo asks bemusedly.
“Hey,” Nick says, drawing out the syllable until Theo glances at him, paused with his fingers half-stuck to the plastic. Nick grins a little. “You know, I wasn’t finished yet.”
Theo blinks. “What?”
Nick sighs, releasing another puff of mist, and leans in, curling his hand in the faux-fur that lines Theo’s hood. “You’re so cute when you’re clueless, Theo-bee.”
“…what?” Theo says again, hearing his voice tremble faintly as he presses himself back against the car.
Nick drags him in by his jacket hood, eyes falling shut, free hand settling on Theo’s collarbone, and kisses him again. It’s-nicer-this time. It’s cold but soft, and a flurry of snowflakes attacks them, melting and running on both of their cheeks at once, just as Nick’s fingertips slide up the side of Theo’s neck. Nick smiles against his mouth, and his bangs tickle, and there’s a worn place on his sleeve that scuffs against Theo’s face.
When Nick draws back, Theo is afraid to look. Or breathe. Or continue existing. Unfortunately, all three turn out to be natural reactions.
Nick grins, slightly wildly, and then starts smoothing Theo’s collar back down.
“Sorry,” he says. “Got a little excited there.”
“I-” Theo’s voice does a funny thing. He clears his throat. “I’ll have to teach you what an iron is.”
“You mean there are irons outside of the context of ‘Iron Man’?” Nick asks, looking stunned and terrified.
Theo sighs, trying very hard to ignore the shifting pressure of Nick’s hand on his chest. “We should start back. Call your mother so she doesn’t think we’ve died.”
Nick releases him and opens the passenger door, grinning still. “But she’ll be so disappointed.”
Theo moves around and gets into the front seat. He buckles his seatbelt, turns the key a little ways to warm the heater up, and glances over.
“Is your dad… cool… with… this?” he manages. This is almost as bad as it, but he doesn’t know where else to begin.
Nick shrugs. “Everybody’s cool in this weather. I’m downright chilly.”
Theo glares at him, and Nick beams.
“Oh, fine,” he says. “Well, he’s not exactly jumping for joy and clicking his heels and doing that crazy dance from the movie you like-”
Theo really hopes Nick doesn’t mean “Make ’Em Laugh” from “Singin’ in the Rain,” because that would be extremely definitive proof that Theo understands Nick’s twisted brain too well.
“-but he can’t exactly do anything about it.”
Theo turns the engine over and puts the car into gear. “Touché.”
There’s a minute or two of silence but for the tires grinding their way along the snowy road.
“You know what I have a craving for?” Nick asks.
Theo doesn’t and isn’t sure he wants to. “Weather warmer than thirty degrees?”
“A caramel macchiato,” Nick says.
Theo stares at him, then remembers to look at the road before they die.
“But I don’t want to drink it,” Nick says. “I just want to taste that you have.”
Theo turns the heat down, because his face is on fire.
He supposes it could be worse. Maybe. If it tried really hard.
No, probably not.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 6,465
Warnings: occasional language; occasional angstbuckets; Nick doesn't know what "PC" means
Prompts: 1. mistletoe set-up; 6. a kiss in the snow; 16. family reunion; 22. visible breath; 38. stranded somewhere unusual by a snowstorm
Summary: Nick bribes Theo to drive him up to Tahoe for a family get-together. This is the worst decision of Theo's life, with the possible exception of befriending Nick in the first place.
Author's Note: This was going to be my Baubles to It piece… until it became a monster. D: Angst!background you may like to know: Theo is black, and his adoptive parents are white; Nick's father left when he was very young, and he lives exclusively with his mother. Voilà, now you can go watch the angst play out. XD
SEMI-REGULAR INDULGENCES
“Three-eighty, please.” The cashier’s turquoise hair clashes horribly with the red holiday aprons, but he’s so nice that Theo forgives him for being an eyesore.
“I’ll get it,” Nick says, holding out a five before Theo can open his wallet-and that’s how he knows.
Theo pauses, and then he goes to pick a table while Nick deals with the change. He selects one by the wall of windows, though the fact that it’s the only one available-unsurprising in a coffee shop on an afternoon in December-factors heavily into that particular decision. Theo folds his hands on the tabletop and waits, watching as Nick sits down and wrinkles his nose at the elevator music. Nick only ever supports Theo’s “foofy girl drink habit” when he wants something.
For the record, it’s not a habit. It’s a semi-regular indulgence.
“What’s the favor?” Theo asks.
Nick blinks for a moment, and then he grins sheepishly. At least he has the grace not to deny it.
“You want to go to Tahoe?” he asks.
“No,” Theo says. “Why do you?”
Nick chews on his lip and glances out the window, presumably wishing he was out there among the oblivious rather than having this conversation, in spite of the café vibe and central heating. “Family get-together,” he says at last.
Theo frowns. “Isn’t your mom going?”
Nick taps his fingers on the table, looking at them. “It’s my dad’s side of the family.”
Theo doesn’t say You hate your dad, which is what Nick would have him believe; neither does he say You hate that you still care what your dad thinks of you, which he knows is closer to the mark. He decides not to say anything, which works out fine, because Nick has a tendency to say too much.
“It’s because of my cousin,” Nick says. “We used to hang out a lot when we were kids, but she went to boarding school in South Africa, and she’s almost never in the States, and… I dunno. Some of my relatives on that side don’t even believe that I exist.”
“Okay,” Theo says.
Nick blinks a little more. “Really?”
“On three conditions,” Theo says.
Nick sighs and holds the back of one hand to his forehead. “Not the conditions!”
Theo counts them out on his fingers, more for emphasis than because he thinks Nick needs the mathematical assistance. “One: you pay for gas.”
“I love your Prius,” Nick says.
“Two: you deal with the snow. That means shoveling, if we have to; it also means putting on the tire chains.”
“I’ll ask WikiHow,” Nick says.
Theo eyes him. “Three: you rescue me from your relatives if you get the slightest hint I’m uncomfortable.”
Nick beams. “I will be your white knight, Theo-bee. I will save you from the clutches of familial awkwardness, stop you from drinking questionable eggnog, preserve your honor and dignity at all costs-”
The barista puts a cup on the counter. “Caramel macchiato for… Egbert Aloysius?”
Theo gives Nick a look.
“Starting tomorrow,” Nick says, trying valiantly not to grin. “Aren’t you going to go get your drink?”
“Tire chains are the worst invention in the history of mankind!” Nick howls.
Theo rolls down the window, letting hot air billow over Nick, who’s crouched down to tussle with the front-left tire.
“I thought that was Furbies,” he says.
“I think it was you,” Nick grumbles.
Theo starts rolling the window back up. “You know… I love my Prius, too.”
Theo’s life ceases to be such a hybrid advertisement as they climb higher, and the snow thickens, and neither his headlights nor his windshield wipers seem to be adequate.
“Please don’t drive off the cliff,” Nick says.
“Quit distracting me, and maybe I won’t,” Theo replies.
“Your white-knuckled grip on the wheel is encouraging,” Nick says. There is a pause, during which he looks pointedly at Theo’s knuckles and flashes an even more distracting grin. “Hang on while I figure out how that’s a black joke.”
“Condition four,” Theo says. “Zero black jokes in front of your family.”
Nick stretches. “But you never care.”
“They will,” Theo says, eking his way around another sharp turn, his blood pressure rising at the same approximate speed as the odometer. “Your cousin lives in Africa. And they’ll think I’m self-loathing when I don’t beat the daylights out of you.”
“No after-the-fact conditions,” Nick says. “Everyone knows that.”
“You can get out and walk if you prefer,” Theo offers.
Nick slouches in his seat, pouting. “Condition observed.”
“I said left,” Nick says.
“That was left!”
Nick considers. “I meant right.”
Theo thinks about crashing his well-loved, fuel-efficient baby into a snowdrift on purpose.
But he doesn’t.
Lunch, as they discover after the third stop to debate directions, is being held at a lodge-which, in Theo’s overdeveloped vocabulary, means “a country club open to the middle class, provided that they pay up.” Lunch begins with Theo’s cramped legs protesting both the walk and the cold air in which it takes place; and then lunch segues into Theo’s intense surprise at the way Nick’s shoulders go tighter and tighter the closer they get to the door. Nick doesn’t give a damn or a crap what people think about him, which is at once his most frustrating and his most admirable trait.
“Did you RSVP?” Theo asks-which probably doesn’t help, but which is important enough that he risks it.
“Um,” Nick says. “Not as such.”
That part is definitely not surprising.
Theo holds the door for him anyway.
The Lodge Man leads them down a hall and around a corner-Theo mouths See? Left!, and Nick sticks his tongue out in reply-in order to drop them off in front of an open doorway, through which Theo sees a room full of people who don’t look very much like Nick. He knows that feeling.
Nick inches his way over the threshold and stands there, hesitating. No one turns. None of the conversations peter out. If there is one thing to which Nick Deveraux is completely unaccustomed, it is being ignored; if there’s another, it’s feeling like he’s lost.
Emotionally, that is. Theo knows very intimately that Nick gets geographically lost whenever possible.
Then a plump woman with auburn hair notices them loitering, still half in the hall. She smiles, slightly uncertainly, and comes forward.
“You two need name-tags,” she says, warmly despite her misgivings. Gamely, she raises a Sharpie and a stack of stickers. “And I need to know what to put on them.”
“Auntie Lola,” Nick says helplessly.
“Nicky?” the woman asks, transitioning into disbelief.
Theo is not going to laugh. Not going to laugh. Not going to-
He snorts.
Nick forces a broad grin and opens his mouth to respond pointedly to his relation, but he doesn’t get the chance, because an attractive redhead hurls herself at him and squeals.
“Nicky!” is the cry, and Theo likes her already, if only because Nick looks torn between jumping into the freezing lake and staying here until she hugs him to death.
The girl bounces up and down a little without releasing her vise grip on Nick’s ribcage, and then she draws back, scowls at him, and speaks with a strong accent. “You should’ve said you were coming, you shit.”
“Caroline,” Lola gasps.
Caroline makes an even more agonized face. “Sorry, Mum.” She smacks Nick’s arm. “But you should’ve! I thought I was going to be stuck here with the old people!” She pauses in her Nick abuse long enough to notice Theo waiting off to the side, immensely enjoying the show. “Oh, God-um, hi, I’m Nicky’s cousin, Just Made an Arse of Myself.”
Lola appears to be contemplating infanticide. Theo, for his part, can see why Caroline had to move to another continent: if she and Nick had grown up together, they would have destroyed the world.
Nick shifts in preparation to introduce him as the mute chauffeur, so Theo takes matters into his own hands by holding one out to Caroline.
“Theo Alton,” he says. “The brains of the operation.”
Caroline shakes warmly and glances at Nick. “I like this one,” she says. “You can keep him.”
“I have no choice,” Nick says. “He’s my ride home.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and glances faux-nonchalantly around. People seem to recognize him now that he’s standing next to Caroline, and Theo’s not sure the memories of the pair are entirely positive. “Is… my dad here?”
“You know Stephan,” Lola sighs, and for a fraction of a moment, Nick looks like he’s been stabbed. “He couldn’t show up on time if you put a gun to his head and led him to the door.”
Theo realizes two things at once-that Lola is indisputably Caroline’s biological mother, and that Nick is a glutton for punishment.
Theo stamps his feet on the steps. Converse in snow are not so fabulous. His coat is doing the best it can, and he ganked a piece of Saran wrap from the snack table to sit down on, but he’s going to have to head back in there soon.
Not yet.
He watches his breath mist against the silver-gray-white wash of the iced-over lake, rimmed by evergreens. He’s seen it in summer before, and it’s a riot of color then-vibrant blue, deep green, searing yellow for the sand. Flecks of gold float in the water, and the whole place glitters even without the help of Reno’s neon lights.
Theo blows out a thin stream of steam as if it’s cigarette smoke. At least that would give him an excuse to be outside. Sorry, I’m introverted doesn’t sound viable somehow.
Theo gives up on pretending he’s a smoker and pretends that he’s a dragon instead.
The door shuts, and he jumps, glancing over his shoulder before gravity’s quite brought him back to his seat. It’s Caroline, which is both unexpected and not.
She plops down on the step beside him and hugs herself, gazing over the frozen hush of the landscape.
“I was watching this home video,” she says. “The other day, when I got in-of me and Nick when we were five, right before I left. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s going to be the most obnoxious bastard on the planet Earth, and I’ll have slaughtered him by dinnertime.’”
She smiles. Theo can’t make out the words from here, but he distinctly hears the intonation of Nick’s voice that means he’s reached the punchline. Peals of laughter ensue.
“But he’s not,” Caroline says. “And I think that’s because of you.”
Theo thinks it’s because Nick’s mother takes neither prisoners nor bullshit from anyone, whether opposing prosecutors or caving husbands or obnoxious five-year-olds.
“I don’t think I have much effect,” he says. “Nick’s his own… entity. He does his own thing. I just let him.” He huddles in his jacket and shrugs. “Sometimes I point and laugh.”
Caroline’s looking at him in a way he’s not sure he likes. She’s smart and focused-which suddenly feels dangerous, because Nick’s never both at once, and that’s why Theo’s safe.
“He wouldn’t be who he is unless he had someone to be himself with,” she says.
Another punchline. More uproarious amusement.
“He’s talking about you,” Caroline says.
“I’m going to kill him,” Theo decides. “The second I’m done freezing my ass off.”
Caroline looks over. “Is that plastic wrap?”
Change of plans. “I’m going to kill him now.”
Theo does not see why dinner must be held somewhere other than the lodge. It probably has something to do with renting space by the hour and the homely touch of a lakeside cabin, which is a nice illusion for people who no longer know each other but want to pretend that they’re close.
He and Nick stop off en route to take pictures of a “Caution: Avalanches” sign with an inappropriately hilarious stick man, so they’re the last to arrive. Things just go south from there.
Theo wishes he’d thought of going south for the winter instead.
It’s overcompensatingly warm inside, and they’ve just finished peeling off the top layers when Caroline calls, “Catch!”
Damn all of Theo’s instincts to hell, back, and then to hell again: he does what he’s told. He raises his arm and snatches the leafy thing she throws at him out of the air.
Ninety percent of the room immediately choruses, “Oooooh.” Theo would like to say a thing or two about the horrors of mob psychology, but his throat has stuck.
Nick considers.
“Mistletoe is really kind of ugly,” he says.
Theo tries to swallow, to little success.
Nick grins at him. “What, you don’t want to kiss me?”
Even if Theo could speak, it’s a trap question.
He finally lowers his arm and looks at the-Nick has a point-hideous plant in his hand. What kind of sick family reunion involves mistletoe, anyway?
Nick has not defended Theo’s honor. He has not protected Theo’s dignity. But Theo’s still the bigger liar, because he’s never breathed a word of the truth he carries everywhere, and he can’t do it even now.
“C’mere, Theo-bee,” Nick says, grin maniacal. He fists both hands in Theo’s sweater and hauls him into a kiss of hot-flushed cheeks and chapped lips and poorly-angled noses, and Theo reels so violently that most of his brain just up and shuts down. He lets his eyes fall closed and thinks that if this is kissing, making out must be sheer torment.
Then Nick doesn’t let go. Theo has started to panic when a voice breaks out-one he’s only ever heard for fifteen seconds before Nick deleted the message and sulked for hours.
“Me-e-e-erry Christmas!”
Nick’s hands uncurl, spread, and shove Theo away from him far too late.
Nick stares at his father. His father stares back. Theo has the giddy thought that they look like gunslingers in a Western.
Nick’s father’s face resembles many of the others in this room, and it crumples into confusion with an umbrage of disgust.
“What,” he says, “in the hell-”
Nick pushes past him and forges out into the snow.
Silence again. Theo can actually hear Nick’s sneakers crunching on the pathway. He can also hear a heartbeat that hopefully belongs to a frightened rabbit, or else he’s about to have a heart attack at age nineteen.
He sidles past Stephan Deveraux, fumbles to grab their coats, and runs after the boy who was kissing him a minute ago.
It’s snowing-tiny white flakes like fireflies, sinking slowly, melting if they touch his skin. It’s beautiful. Nick keeps going. Theo keeps going after him.
They walk a ways like that, the snow thickening and the world darkening all the while. Nick strides with his head down, following the shoreline, kicking at the white carpet so that flurries dance around his feet, which he’ll regret when the water soaks in. When they’ve moved about a quarter-mile, he stops near a low, square, cinderblock building which-by the rather unambiguous MEN inscribed on the door-must be a restroom for the summer crowds. Nick tucks his hands into his pockets and stares out at the lake. Theo weighs where to begin. Nick swipes the back of one hand at his eyes before the tears freeze, but not before Theo’s heart lurches so hard he’s nauseous.
“It’s not you,” he says.
“I know,” Nick says unsteadily, swiping at his nose now, which is equally practical but not so romantic. “In my head, I know.”
Theo holds out Nick’s coat, and he sniffles and takes it. Theo shoulders on his own and tangles himself up in his scarf. It’s snowing harder-ominously now.
There are tiny flecks of ice in Nick’s eyelashes, like beads of water in a spider’s web. He glances towards the bathroom.
“You think it’s got hot water?” he asks.
“No,” Theo says, but he holds the door anyway.
“Behold the Chamber of Secrets!” Nick intones.
“I can’t see the cabin,” Theo announces from the doorway. “Furthermore, I can’t see anything.”
“Snow is something,” Nick says. “Don’t discriminate against less common forms of precipitation.”
Theo closes the door and chafes his hands, which proves futile.
“I won’t resort to cannibalism if you don’t,” Nick says.
“You’d taste terrible,” Theo says, and then he remembers that he has concrete evidence to the contrary.
Nick chooses not to comment on Theo’s facial expression. “Don’t go to sleep. Your body temperature drops, and that’s when the hypothermia gets you.”
Theo hadn’t realized that hypothermia has graduated to 80s-slasher-movie villain status. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep here,” he says. “It’s unsanitary.”
Nick probably knows he’s not joking. Theo sits on the edge of one of the sinks, which seems like the least bacteria-ridden spot in the building, tucks his hands under his arms, and hunkers down.
Nick’s cell phone buzzes, and he fishes it out and looks at the text.
“Caroline wants to know if we’re okay,” he says. He narrates his response as he types-which, for all Theo knows, he also does when he’s alone. “Alive… but… suffering… send… help… and… macchiatos. Theo… looks… appetizing.”
Theo is too cold to go hit him.
Nick peeks out and gauges the snowfall.
“Don’t sleep,” he decides.
“Too hungry,” Theo says.
Nick makes a horrified face, and Theo can’t help but smirk.
“Don’t call the police,” Nick tells Caroline through the phone.
“Call the police,” Theo says.
“We’ll be fine.”
“Call the SWAT team.”
“Theo’s a natural worrier.”
“Call the FBI.”
Nick manages not to laugh. “It’ll let up soon.”
“I’ll be dead by then.”
“You have my permission to kill me and eat me if things get bad,” Nick says. There’s a pause. “Not you, you; I was talking to Theo and his neuroses.”
“They’re what make me fun,” Theo says.
“Well, obviously,” Nick replies.
Eventually, they hear yelling over the lessening wind. Theo slides down off of the sink, and Nick opens the door.
Caroline’s cheeks are redder than her hair but not quite as red as her mittens, which clash with them both.
“It let up ten minutes ago,” she says, which isn’t true; it’s still coming down with gusto. “Have you two been making out in here?”
Lola looks pleased. Nick’s father looks mortified.
“Oh, probably,” Nick says, and he takes Caroline’s arm in his left and Theo’s in his right. “Lead the way back before I starve after nobly refusing to eat Theo’s corpse.”
“Theo appreciates it,” Theo says.
They stay over that night; somehow, between couches and the floor, everyone’s accounted for. Nick talks nonsense to the people in his dreams, but Theo can’t sleep, and that’s only partially because of the hardwood two blankets down. He dozes fitfully now and then, drifting through various degrees of consciousness, but mostly he just waits it out, feeling like some kind of vampire.
That’s funny-a black vampire. Nick would have half a dozen un-PC things to say about that.
When it’s close enough to dawn, he gets up, steps over the recumbent forms of a few kids he didn’t have a chance to meet, and finds the kitchen. Caroline’s sitting at the table, dressed in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, which she’s propped up on another chair.
“You’re up early,” Theo says.
“Jet lag,” she reports, gesturing to her coffee mug. She moves her feet, and he accepts the invitation to sit. “You?”
He shrugs. She winces.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Not your fault.”
“It damn well is,” she says. “Can I burn you some toast in penitence?”
He smiles a little. “All is forgiven.”
Nick comes in an hour later with magic marker doodles all over his face.
“I will never procreate,” he announces. His hair’s tousled in some places and flattened funny in others, and his eyes are puffy and hazy from prankster-interrupted sleep. He looks hilarious and adorable, and Theo’s stomach twists itself into an intricate knot as his imagination gears up and guns it. “There must be a stash of booze in here somewhere.”
“Poor baby,” Caroline says, grinning. “Did the mean ten-year-olds pick on you? Let me cry you a river, love.”
“Punk,” Nick says. He drops down into the chair next to Theo and leans his head back, arms dangling. “If this is permanent marker, they’re all dead. I’ll hide the bodies in the lake.”
Theo does not picture helping Nick to dump the cadavers of his adolescent victims. Theo is too busy picturing waking up next to him-kissing him goodnight; sharing hot chocolate; stroking his hair when he passes out in front of the evening news. Getting snuck up on and blind-hugged from behind. Telling him to fold his shirts and then doing it for him, because he’d just wear them wrinkled and look absurd.
Nick nudges Theo’s knee with his. “When do you want to make our escape?”
Theo lifts a shoulder. “It’s your family. Whenever you can bear to part with them.”
Nick rolls his eyes at Caroline. “I was asking what you want, Mr. Accommodating. I swear you never want anything.”
Theo shrugs again and pushes at the not-too-burnt toast crumbs on his plate.
Nick eats three and a half Pop Tarts to console himself about the vandalism to his face. At that point, he looks like he’s going to vomit to console himself.
“Theo,” he says, “will you help me get this off?”
Theo thinks of tearing Nick’s clothes off and pushing him down on his mother’s couch. Then he thinks of “get off” without the hanging modifier. Then he thinks he is irrevocably depraved.
Nick gestures to his face.
Oh. Yeah.
Theo hates mornings; he’s never in control of his brain, and it’s hard enough not ruining everything when he can regulate his thoughts.
“I think we’ll have to exorcise you,” he says. “Is there any holy water in the fridge?”
Nick lathers, scrubs, rinses, peers into the mirror, and grimaces.
“I still look like a Satanist with facial tattoos,” he says.
“Tragic,” Theo notes.
Nick shoots him a look and goes back for more soap. He virtually disappears into the suds this time, like a kid playing Santa Clause in the bath, which at least is seasonally appropriate. He rinses again. His hairline dampens. Rivulets run down his face.
“Remind me why I’m standing here watching you commune with the sink?” Theo asks.
“Well,” Nick says. He pauses to spit out soap. “Well, it’s pretty much the only way to get privacy at something like this.”
Theo shifts. “The insuppressible extrovert craves privacy-hang on, I need to stop the presses.”
Nick flicks water at Theo’s face with impeccable aim. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to talk about it.”
It. What kind of a tiny pronoun is that to encapsulate everything that’s been done and thought of and not said?
The problem-the primary problem; the ringleader of a gang of problems; the Problem Mafia don-is that Theo does more. It’s not because he’s better; it’s not that he’s capable of more; it’s much nearer to the opposite. It’s because he has to do more to be something he’s satisfied with. It’s because Theo Alton, at a fundamental level, is not enough, and compensating is the only way to balance out the inadequacy. He has to work more, think more, build more with a given quantity, stretching it to fit. He has to be more, because he has to cover, because he has to live up to his parents’ hopes, earn their commitment, return on their investment in him. He has to exceed expectations built for better human beings.
That ripples outward, though, and floods.
That means that no matter how sincere Nick was at the time, no matter how dedicated he thinks he can be, Theo will have more. Theo will feel more, and he won’t be able to stop that or even slow it down. He might be able to hide it, but that’s the best chance he’s got.
Nick has other friends. Nick has other connections and other spheres and other dreams. Nick was wrong, obviously; Theo wants dozens and hundreds and thousands of things, of which Nick himself is only one, albeit a tally mark gouged into the page by repetition. But even if this it has crossed Nick’s mind in the past, Theo has done more-he has imagined and considered and created, guiltily but often, enough that no reality can be anything other than a disappointment.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Theo says.
Nick stops mid-ablution to stare at him. “What planet are you from, and where have you stowed Theo’s unconscious body for later probing?”
“Try the lake,” Theo says.
Nick gives him a look that’s unfamiliar-the exasperation is familiar, of course, especially tainted with grudging amusement; the fondness he knows; the strange underlying intelligence rings a bell; the hint of pity and the weariness are new, and he doesn’t like either one.
That’s part of what he flees from.
“You missed a spot,” he says, indicating Nick’s entire face. “I’ll be downstairs.”
When he gets downstairs, he hears other voices than Caroline’s from the kitchen. He doesn’t have the constitution to face other human beings right now. He catches up his coat again, pulls it on, fights with the lock on the front door, and forges out; embarrassingly enough, he actually stumbles backward a step at the first blast of frigid air.
He’s just closed the door again, regretting having touched the handle from the outside, and buried both curled hands in his pockets when he sees Nick’s father with the snow shovel, paused halfway up the excavated walk.
Theo clears his throat and then clears it again.
“Hi,” he manages. “I’m Theo. Theo Alton.” He fishes one frozen hand from his pocket and holds it out, half-expecting to receive a shovel blow to the wrist.
Nick’s father hesitates, but he reaches out a hand sheathed in black nylon and shakes briefly-his grip tight, firm, and snow-dampened while it lasts.
“Stephan,” he says.
Theo swallows. “Nice to meet you.”
If it’s possible to explode from awkwardness, one of them is going to burst at any moment, spraying gore and discomfort all over the yard. Theo shoves his hands back into his coat pockets. He can’t quite bring himself to comment on the weather to give both of them something to say.
Nick’s father takes a deep breath and releases it in a puff of fog. “So… how long have you and Nick been…?”
“Been what?” Theo asks, sounding prickly even to his own slowly-numbing ears.
Stephan sighs mistily, buries the shovel up to the hilt in a mound of snow, and leans on the handle. “You’d think his mother could’ve mentioned-”
“Mentioned what?” Theo presses-slightly cruelly, perhaps, but after the events of last night and his sleeplessness and the lack-of-a-conversation he just had in the bathroom upstairs, what can he say that’s not justified? “We’ve been best friends since the fifth grade. He’s had four girlfriends in the meantime, the most recent of which broke up with him right before his birthday. Your card was late, by the way; he recycled it, but I saw the postmark.”
Stephan flinches and then frowns. “Look, I’m sorry, but my relationship with my son really isn’t any of your business.”
“Mine isn’t any of yours,” Theo says.
Stephan opens his mouth and then shuts it again.
Theo’s pretty sure he won this round, so it’s even more unfair that he feels like shit all the same. He braves the freezing doorknob and goes back into the house; it’s noise sensitivity rather than nobility that prevents him from slamming the door.
Nick was right about one thing-the bathroom is the only place to find solitude around here.
He’s been rotating around to sit in the least-unhygienic spots for about an hour when there’s a knock at the door. He doesn’t answer. The knocker tries the knob, then calls:
“It’s Caroline. The password is… um… ‘Open Please-ame.’”
Damn her; she’s too cute to lock out. He gets up, undoes the bolt, steps back, and shoves his hands in his pockets. Caroline peeks in.
“You found my secret lair,” Theo says.
She slips inside and shuts the door again. “I’m very resourceful. Do I get incinerated for asking why you need a secret lair?”
She’s also too cute to incinerate. She probably knows it.
“Well,” Theo says, “it’s not even noon yet, and the accomplishments of my morning have been alienating Nick’s father, alienating Nick, and eating a piece of toast.”
Caroline tilts her head a little, looking at him, and smiles.
“What’s so funny?” Theo asks. It isn’t really an accusation-he wants very badly for this to be funny, and maybe she has some secret South African way of seeing opposites in everything. He’ll ask her to reverse every event since his arrival. Actually, she can reverse his arrival, too.
Caroline shrugs, still smiling. “Just that the toast is the only thing you can’t change.”
That is kind of funny. Sort of. A little.
…no, not at all.
He rubs his eyes. “Honestly, I think I would rather vomit up the toast.”
“You don’t mean that,” Caroline says. “Vomiting is awful. Theo, you know how sometimes-a lot of the time-something is painfully obvious to everybody except the person in the middle of it?”
Theo shrugs acquiescence.
“Nick and I exchanged a lot of emails,” Caroline tells him. “It actually got kind of tiring after a while, because he never talks about anything but you.”
Theo shrugs indifference, because if Nick had someone else to hang out with; if Nick’s mom was home more; if Nick had another human being at hand to help him make the stories-then he’d write emails about them. Theo’s just in the passenger seat-the sidekick position, the background. He’s just in the right place at the right time.
Or he was until yesterday. There’s that opposites thing again.
Caroline looks at him shrewdly. Apparently they teach courses on telepathy in South Africa. “I don’t mean that he talks about stuff you did, or stuff the two of you did together. I mean he talks about you. What you’re like. Things you say. How you make him laugh all the time, and once he choked and got lemonade up his nose, which was the single worst experience of his life.”
“Well, it was before we made out,” Theo says bitterly.
Caroline rolls her eyes. “If you insist on suffering, I can’t stop you.” She sees the look on his face and winces. “It’s true, though. I can’t make you view this as a good thing. You’re the only one who can change your own perception.”
“It’s not a good thing,” Theo says. “That’s not a perception; it’s a fact.”
Caroline sighs, moves forward, and hugs him tightly. “And Nick thinks you’re so smart.”
She manages to coax him out for lunch, which Theo thinks probably stands as evidence that she also takes classes in magic. Nick’s not anywhere in the kitchen, however, or the dining room, or the living room where they slept-Theo’s mystified until he glances out the window and catches sight of a familiar shape in a familiar coat and unfamiliar gloves. Nick and his father are in the process of digging at a mound of snow that bears a strong resemblance to Theo’s car. Nick laughs at something the other man says and then looks surprised.
“Wonders never cease,” Lola says from right by Theo’s shoulder, demonstrating that she’s horrifyingly sneaky for a woman her size.
“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Theo says.
Lola tries very hard not to smile. “Jesus doesn’t appreciate your sass, young man.”
Most people don’t, which is part of why it’s so frighteningly important to cling to the ones that do.
Theo folds his arms across his chest tightly, which is about as close as one can get to hugging oneself without looking pathetic.
“Come on,” Lola says. “We’re decorating gingerbread in the kitchen. Nobody hates frosting.”
Theo has met people who do, but-fortunately or unfortunately-he isn’t one of them.
Theo gauges the lopsided ovals of black icing on the gingerbread man’s forehead, bisected by a jagged splotch of red. He then gauges the seven-year-old girl’s gap-toothed, geeky grin.
“Harry Potter?” he guesses.
“Yeah!” she says, and the grin just gets wider, and Theo has to admit that he feels kind of warm inside. She peers at the interlocking staircases and strange continuities all over his vaguely person-shaped canvas, which has dazed spiral eyes to reinforce the theme. “What’s yours?”
“It’s an Escher-inspired gingerbread man,” Theo says.
The girl blinks at him. “A what?”
“Escher was a Dutch artist who did really awesome drawings,” Theo tells her. “He used a lot of mathematics and perspective tricks to make stuff that kind of messes with your head and fascinates you at the same time.”
“Much like Theo himself,” the most familiar voice in the universe says from behind him.
Theo jumps and turns; when the hell did Nick come in? Has he unwittingly attended a family reunion full of ninjas, or what?
Nick snatches an unclaimed gingerbread man from the tray in the middle of the table, bites its head off, gestures to Theo with the decapitated body, and sprays crumbs everywhere as he speaks: “We found your car.”
“Thanks,” Theo manages.
Nick salutes with his headless gingerbread man. “Just doin’ my civil duty, Mr. Alton, sir. Are you done helping the children desecrate perfectly good cookies, or do you need a little more time?”
“This,” Theo says confidentially to the Harry Potter fan as he selects another cookie, “is Nick.” He adds some brown icing for hair, two green dots for eyes, and a gigantic red smile.
“You should charge for gingerbread portraits,” Nick says. “I would take that home and frame it if I wasn’t so hungry. And if you were ever willing to leave.”
“Have you said goodbye to Caroline?” Theo asks, giving Nick a purple, green, and orange plaid shirt because he can.
“Yes,” Nick says. “She sobbed and clung to my ankles for a while, but I think she’ll be okay after a few years of counseling. Why am I not wearing any pants?”
Theo’s face goes so hot he thinks he might ignite.
“Because…” He snaps off the bottom half of the cookie. “…you don’t have any legs to put in them.”
Nick pauses, and then he starts to giggle. “Can’t argue with that logic. Do you want that, or can I eat it?”
“Autocannibalism,” Theo remarks, handing it over. “I think this is a new low, even for you.”
When they’ve finished their goodbyes-that is, when Lola has finally let them go, and Caroline has given Theo her Twitter name because she knows Nick will somehow lose it even if it’s written on his arm-they troop up the newly-cleared path to Theo’s newly-discovered car. Theo makes a face, fishes a tissue out of his pocket, and starts making futile efforts at picking ice off of his windshield wipers.
“Hey,” Nick says, leaning against the passenger door.
“Yeah?” Theo asks bemusedly.
“Hey,” Nick says, drawing out the syllable until Theo glances at him, paused with his fingers half-stuck to the plastic. Nick grins a little. “You know, I wasn’t finished yet.”
Theo blinks. “What?”
Nick sighs, releasing another puff of mist, and leans in, curling his hand in the faux-fur that lines Theo’s hood. “You’re so cute when you’re clueless, Theo-bee.”
“…what?” Theo says again, hearing his voice tremble faintly as he presses himself back against the car.
Nick drags him in by his jacket hood, eyes falling shut, free hand settling on Theo’s collarbone, and kisses him again. It’s-nicer-this time. It’s cold but soft, and a flurry of snowflakes attacks them, melting and running on both of their cheeks at once, just as Nick’s fingertips slide up the side of Theo’s neck. Nick smiles against his mouth, and his bangs tickle, and there’s a worn place on his sleeve that scuffs against Theo’s face.
When Nick draws back, Theo is afraid to look. Or breathe. Or continue existing. Unfortunately, all three turn out to be natural reactions.
Nick grins, slightly wildly, and then starts smoothing Theo’s collar back down.
“Sorry,” he says. “Got a little excited there.”
“I-” Theo’s voice does a funny thing. He clears his throat. “I’ll have to teach you what an iron is.”
“You mean there are irons outside of the context of ‘Iron Man’?” Nick asks, looking stunned and terrified.
Theo sighs, trying very hard to ignore the shifting pressure of Nick’s hand on his chest. “We should start back. Call your mother so she doesn’t think we’ve died.”
Nick releases him and opens the passenger door, grinning still. “But she’ll be so disappointed.”
Theo moves around and gets into the front seat. He buckles his seatbelt, turns the key a little ways to warm the heater up, and glances over.
“Is your dad… cool… with… this?” he manages. This is almost as bad as it, but he doesn’t know where else to begin.
Nick shrugs. “Everybody’s cool in this weather. I’m downright chilly.”
Theo glares at him, and Nick beams.
“Oh, fine,” he says. “Well, he’s not exactly jumping for joy and clicking his heels and doing that crazy dance from the movie you like-”
Theo really hopes Nick doesn’t mean “Make ’Em Laugh” from “Singin’ in the Rain,” because that would be extremely definitive proof that Theo understands Nick’s twisted brain too well.
“-but he can’t exactly do anything about it.”
Theo turns the engine over and puts the car into gear. “Touché.”
There’s a minute or two of silence but for the tires grinding their way along the snowy road.
“You know what I have a craving for?” Nick asks.
Theo doesn’t and isn’t sure he wants to. “Weather warmer than thirty degrees?”
“A caramel macchiato,” Nick says.
Theo stares at him, then remembers to look at the road before they die.
“But I don’t want to drink it,” Nick says. “I just want to taste that you have.”
Theo turns the heat down, because his face is on fire.
He supposes it could be worse. Maybe. If it tried really hard.
No, probably not.