Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 13:34:04 -0600 From: Karla Schulz Subject: Carrots and Celery Series: Damage Deposit (Chapters 5 to 8) Sorry for the delay I had some editing issues - but this is a nice long section to make up for it! Thanks to everyone who wrote to say they were reading, I totally appreciate it! --- Chapter Five; school house rock (Carrots) We respond to the approach of September first with steadfast denial and then with a near blind panic. In a bout of action, half fueled by my nervous energy and the other half by Kyle's determined calm, which I only now, after his death, think of as influenced in any way by my father, although it is no different than the steady way Kyle has always attempted to approach crises, we sort out a few things one afternoon in late August, getting as far as deferring mine and Celery's acceptance to University and deciding that for the time being Kyle will also not be returning to school. There's the much more serious and complicated problem of what to do about Kara and the twins, which remains a murky abyss of inaction. We can't really bear the thought of sending them back into the dangerous wide open of public education, but can't very well, in our already uncertain position as 19 and 21 year old guardians of 16 and 13 year olds, keep them out of it altogether. When Kyle and Celery quash my plans to make off to the hills with nothing more than slightly exasperated looks, we all realize we have to come up with something a little more practical, and perhaps, you know, sane. So we do what is now our way. We defer to Kyle, and he calls a family meeting. "We can just go back to school. It'll be fine." Jon is saying this flatly, as though it wasn't ever really a point of discussion. "You don't think it'll be a bit too much, so soon?" Kyle is all about the steady resolve, I'm more into hiding and coddling. Not that the twins ever take it ever well. Although there was certainly a time when they would have taken it much worse. Now they just shrug, instead of perhaps glaring. "We can handle it," Dave promises, and he actually smiles, like he wants to reassure me. I spend most of my days wishing I could wrap my arms around my entire family and just hug the hell out of them at all times. "Mmm," Jon murmurs his agreement. "I mean, we've been fine this long, right? Sure, people are going to be unbearable, asking about mom and dad and pushing at us, but that's nothing new." Somehow, despite being aware my brothers were quite popular, I largely missed that they sort of hated it, and most people they knew, although I have had the growing suspicion these last couple years that they spent a lot of time wishing everyone else pretty much on the planet would just sort of go away and leave them to their business. "If you're sure," Kyle releases permission, approval, with the appropriate amount of supportive wiggling room, and when they don't take it, he nods. "Okay then, that's what we'll do." It's been Kyle's approach to something like parenting to take everyone at their word, to believe someone when they say they can handle something, trusting all of us to know our own limits. That and watching everyone like a severely worried and vigilant hawk, looking for any visible signs of distress. The twins thus sorted, he turns his attention to Kara. She smiles nervously, as she has taken to doing when any amount of attention is put towards her by everyone all at once. "Kara, what do you want to do?" "I want to stay here, but I don't really think I can, right? I mean, I can't just stay here can I?" She's become this terrifying thing, these past months. Still clinging to childhood in all of our minds, still filled with a lost innocence haunting the corners of her face, her voice, but she knows too much, understands the things life will take from her if she lets it, and having already had to face too much, seems all too aware of what else she will be forced to face in the future. She sits on a knife's edge of this at all times, and it kind of makes me want to kill things. The expression on the faces of Kyle, Celery, and the twins lets me know I'm hardly alone in this. "I don't know," Kyle says, like it kills him to do so. "I don't really think so. I mean, not forever anyway. Maybe for a little while, we could try to home school you, or just keep you back a year." He's kneeing his way over to her on the carpet, and comes up close so he can take her tiny hands in his. "That might be very hard, itself, though Kara. But if that's what you want, you know we'll do whatever it takes so that can happen." This is another new house rule, which while perhaps not technically new, is new in that it is now fervently vocalized on a regular basis. We say it to each other, and in that way and through our actions do everything possible to make it certain that, just in case any one isn't clear, all that's left for any of us to do is to do anything and everything we can for each other, and that we'll go to all conceivable lengths to see each other happy and taken care of. Kara nods in affirmation of this, and we can count that much as a victory at least, the confidence she has in us, the assurance we can see she feels in our presence. I was worried, and am still sometimes, that we'd [I'd] already fucked things up too much to be trusted, but the new reality seems to have changed that, saved me from that fate, and I am forgiven, and relied on once more. "So what do you say Kare?" This nickname, which sounds just like mine, is a new shared thing that only Kyle and Celery are allowed to call her, and it usually makes her smile at me, like when one of us is called that, we're both sharing the love the speaker has for us when they said it. "I think I'll just have to go back." She quirks her mouth up into a half smile, and glances over at Jon and Dave. "At least we'll all be in the same school now. We can look out for each other." "Absolutely sis," Dave says amiably, giving her a warm smile, but the fierce look he and Jon share a moment later implies in no uncertain terms that by `looking out for each other,' they mean `kill anyone who even looks at her funny.' I try to push away the thought of the inevitable combining of the horrors of junior high and the grief of our parents' death which Kara will now be forced to endure, and take comfort in the murderous look the twins are still maintaining. "Yeah," Kyle agrees belatedly, and does some deep breathing, no doubt suppressing hypothetically murderous thoughts of his own. "And we can all walk you guys to school, and you can come home for lunches, and we'll come pick you up in the afternoon." Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprising anymore, the twins don't even roll their eyes at this amount of hand holding, instead they look relieved, and fortified by the thought of so much refuge time at home in the midst of school and back up support in the now unending battle of us against everyone else. --- I think it was the funeral that really cemented our general wariness and at times irrational fear of any one other than ourselves. They had reserved plots for themselves years ago, in a secluded cemetery by an elm tree, and we had the funeral there, watched them lower our parents into the ground, standing as close to each other as was physically possible, arms encircled around one another, eyes averted as the host of strangers and acquaintances, half remembered relatives and family friends stood around us, looking concerned and curious and with questions at the tips of their tongues. After that we went back to the house, which we had in a fit on insanity allowed to be open to the same people from the funeral, a reception of sorts, with small sandwiches and dainties some aunt arranged for. It was that, I think, all those people converging on our house, our grief, which set into sharp relief the separation we had perhaps always felt from the general public, all the more glaring and definite now. We huddled together then, much as we had at the cemetery, held hands in a long row on the couch, with Kara moving from lap to lap, impossibly tiny for barely 13. But they wouldn't leave us alone, people kept coming up to us, telling us how sorry they were, asking us if we needed anything, despite the fact that we felt we were making it pretty clear that all we needed was to be left alone. I was still at that point obsessed with the idea that some of them were going to start trying to take us away, one by one, and so couldn't do anything more than glare suspiciously and hold on tight to the various limps of my brothers and sister that were in hand. Kyle was left doing most of the talking, thanking people for coming and listening to them tell stories about our parents, and while none of us were much help, we held on to him while he had to endure it, and sometimes Celery, of all people, would stand up before people could approach, shake their hands, thank them for coming on behalf of the family and say something softly like, `they just need a few minutes,' or, `nobody's really up to talking right now.' I could hardly imagine loving him more, in those moments. After everyone finally left, we were more shell shocked than ever, and although we didn't talk about it explicitly then, I see now that that was the moment, when, as we walked around our finally empty house, breathing in the silence and sanctuary of it that had finally returned, we decided, if silently, that this, being alone together, was really the only acceptable way to live, to be, and having come to this mutual agreement, we would do everything we had to in order to keep it that way. --- Kyle and I go to parent teacher meetings together and it is the height of weird, talking to teachers I had only months before about the twins progress in their classes or Kara's shyness. We are always being called about something, the twins are always getting in fights, with people who hassle Kara or try to fuck with Braden or make snide comments about them or our parents. The administration is a mix of sympathetic and exasperated, but the twins never start the fights so they don't get expelled, and we flatly refuse to tell them to stop, instead we write them excuse notes when they don't feel like dealing with all the bullshit for a couple days and think about moving Kara into a different, smaller school where people will leave her alone and just let her be her quiet self and do the work. The only thing the twins still care about in school, which is maybe the only thing they ever cared about actually, is the sports, but they've been picked up by a club team now and gym class is hardly an appropriate use of their talents. Busing or biking with them back and forth to practice, going to their games and making lunches takes up a lot of Kyle, Celery's and my time. We kept thinking we were going to end up being bored and feeling unproductive once school started, but we're busier than ever, dealing with teachers, ferrying them around and making meals. Kyle reads philosophy and chemistry in his spare time and Celery will be out skateboarding until the snow falls, no matter how cold it gets. I prefer, as I always have, to arrange my leisure time around the hobbies and interests of those around me instead of developing my own, so I divide my time around going to the skate-park at the Forks with Celery or reading and discussing philosophy with Kyle. I'm getting pretty into the Immanuel Kant guy, but that might just be because Kyle preaches him like he's the second coming. In the afternoons Kara and the twins spread their homework out on the kitchen table as Celery and I once did, and we bounce answers off each other and help them colour in maps as we move around them making dinner. In the evenings we still gather as a family, watching movies and playing games, building puzzles. Kyle, who in a lot of ways is much stricter than our parents ever were, has in acted a midnight weekday curfew which is largely irrelevant because none of us ever go out, but I think the reason we all like having it, even if no one is ever out anywhere long enough to test it, is because of the added security it seems to offer, a sense that we will all be called home by that allotted time, and past it we can be sure we will all be together again. Home safe for the night. Chapter six; but if I could have my way – I wouldn't be alone (Kyle) There are times when he has to bow his head and shut his eyes against his life and just hate all of them. For being this way. For shutting themselves up so tight against the world; for needing him this much. Because he gets it. Shut up with them like this, cut off from everything, he gets why Jonas left. It suffocates him, sometimes, this need, this pain. And there's no one else but them, other people who hurt just as bad, to help them. He wants to run, sometimes, too. To scream and lash out and then to turn and run until he finds his freedom, his escape. When it all gets to be too much, as it so often does, he understands Jonas all too well. The way the twins' hands twine together at the slightest upset, the smallest threat. The blank, closed off looks that so often rule their faces, even as they dare the rest of them not to understand. Kara's long wounded silences, her eyes huge and empty. The manic chatter and movement of Carrots, numb to his grief, and Celery's brooding silent vigil. All these things he can't fix, all this pain he can't touch. He wants to hate Jonas too, like he hates himself, for leaving without asking Kyle to come with him. Needs some place to put the guilt that threatens to choke him, for never loving Jonas enough to be able to do that and for showing that all too clearly, needs to hate Jonas, along with the rest of them, for knowing it. For never even thinking to ask, for leaving without pause or consideration, because he knew, must have known all along, that Kyle would never come with him. He wants to scream and ask them to look at what their grief has cost, what it has taken from him. What it has taken from all of them, everything it's costing them, with each passing day. But these are just flashes in time, brief moments of loss and desperation. And just when he can almost feel himself losing himself to it, he'll feel Carrots' hand reach across the table and attach itself to his, steady and sure, a lifeline and a reminder. He'll open his eyes and Carrots will be looking back at him, eyes bright with fury and love, all tangled together, perhaps irrevocably, and he'll know there's nothing he can do but this. No way he could turn his heart away from them, no part of him that believes any sacrifice is too much when it comes in exchange for keeping them together and safe. Chapter Seven; if we make it through this winter (Carrots) It's October when Jonas shows up outside our house, standing by the window that looks into the front hallway, looking uncertain and strange, all his dreads shorn off revealing a vulnerable dome covered in wheat coloured fuzz. Everyone else is inside assisting Kyle in making dinner; I'm walking up the front path, back from a last minute run to Organic Planet for some fresh leeks. My hands clench into fists. "What the fuck do you think you're doing showing up here?" I demand furiously. He looks at me steadily, hands shoved into the pockets of the worn navy blue hoody he's wearing. It's much too big for him, and I think it must be Kyle's. "Answer the question, asshole, or I swear to god I will punch you in the mouth." There is no part of me that is kidding, but at the same time, this is ripping me to shreds, and I hate that even more, that after all these months of trying to forget him the pain is instant and like lightning, this loss I tried not to acknowledge but have mourned all the same. He shrugs, and a little bit more of the pain hardens into anger. "I'm just skulking." He doesn't even have the decency to look embarrassed. "I do it a lot actually." He smiles bitterly. "No one's ever caught me before." I can't think of anything to say. "You look good," he says, and smiles again, sincerely this time. "How are you doing?" "Get the fuck out of here before I do something that'll hurt Kyle even more, that's how I'm doing. And Jonas – I swear to Christ if I see you around here again, if you even walk by this street, I will do everything in my power to take you down. Do you understand what seeing you like this would do to him? Have you any concept of the hell you've put him through?" When he doesn't saying anything in response, I sigh disgustedly and repeat, "Get the fuck out of here, Jonas. Don't come back." He looks at me for a long time before smiling tightly and saying, "It was good seeing you, Carrots," and walking away. --- A few days later, when there's a knock at our door, something that inspires anxiety at the best of times, my nerves start crackling and I jump up before anyone can even ask, `who the hell's that' and scramble for the door, shouting, `don't get up' to the rest of them. With the same frantic energy I yank open the door, fully prepared to punch Jonas in the face and haul him down the stairs and out of the yard. But it's not Jonas on the other side of the door; instead it's someone far less expected and far more welcome. I kind of can't believe my eyes. "Holy shit, Shelly! What the hell are you doing here?" I exclaim and he laughs and pulls me into a hug. I haven't seen him in almost seven years, but it still feels right. "Hey buddy," he says warmly, thumping my back. "It's been too fucking long." We release and stare at each other, grinning. "Hell yeah it has, but you were the one who had to move away like a fucking loser. It was like you liked your family more than us or something," I joke, feeling instantly relaxed by his presence, just like I always did back in the day. "Not even close, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right? Being 14 sucks." I nod. And then incline my head towards inside. "You're coming in, right? Kyle's going to fucking lose his mind, it'll be great." His smile falters for a second, but he nods. "Yeah, definitely. But maybe you want to go in there and warn everybody first, eh? I know you guys've been through a lot, the last thing you need is more surprises." I raise my eyebrows, surprising myself by my own willingness to discuss this with someone. But, even after all this time, Shelly is hardly just someone, I guess. "You heard about the accident?" The crash. That's what we call it. I guess because that's what it was. He nods, gravely, and looks at me with such genuine and uncomplicated remorse, all for me and for us and nothing for himself, I kind of feel like its happening all over again. "Yeah. I just got back into the city last month, starting school, and after I was a bit settled in I started asking around to see if you guys were still living in the city, and where and all that, and someone told me what happened and I just – fuck, you know, even though it's been years I felt like I just had to come over right away." I smile. "I'm glad you did. It was never quite the same without you; it's going to make Kyle's life to have you back." He returns my smile, albeit a bit uncertainly. "Yeah, I hope so. I've missed the hell out of you guys. Especially Kyle." I nod. "Well, come on in, man, don't worry about surprises, good ones are still welcome around here." "Okay. If you're sure." "I'm sure. Don't worry about it." We walk into the house and he toes out of his shoes and after an expectant look from me, takes off his wool coat and hangs it on the last empty hook. It does things to me, seeing it there. I smile to hold back something else. "What?" He asks with an embarrassed grin. I shake my head. "Nothing, man. It's just good to have you home." As we're walking into the living room I'm planning to say something like "look who I found" or something equally cheesy but the words die half formed on my lips when I see the expression on Kyle's face as he registers Shelly behind me. For a second I almost don't even know who I'm looking at. It's as though a light has been turned back on after it's been off so long you've stopped noticing the darkness. He's on his feet automatically, so fast he looks surprised to find himself there, and they cross the expanse of the living room in a heartbeat, but then stop, inches away from each other, just staring and breathing hard. I don't really know what's going on, and as I look around at the elated faces around me which are now shifting into confusion, I know I'm not alone. I was expecting big grins and hearty handshakes which turned into manly thumps on the back, the kind of hug that's more like the butting of two chests briefly together. Instead they're staring at each other like someone forgot to tell them how to move and they've lost the ability to form words. I stop for a moment to worry that Kara won't remember who Shelly is, and will be worried about that on top of everything else, but then I remember the smile she gave him the second before all this happened, and I know whatever's making her frown right now that's not it. Just when I'm thinking somebody's gotta say something sometime the paused movie starts up again, and the tension of the moment is broken by Rocco shouting "shoot this mother fucker!" and suddenly Shelly and Kyle and both laughing, albeit a little hysterically, and then they're moving together again, until they're hugging like their lives depend on it, like it's the cure for something they didn't even know they were suffering from. When they finally let go, minutes later, they're grinning sheepishly down at their feet and swinging their hands nervously at their sides. Just before they collapse under the awkwardness, the twins jump up and slap Shelly on the back heartily. "Dude. Good to see you again. When'd you get back into the city?" And then it's all normalness and catching up. Shelly tells us about getting accepted into Medical School at the University of Manitoba, about how weird and barren his apartment is, how he's grown to appreciate the variety of ways Kraft Dinner can be cooked and about the joys and pitfalls of advanced academic life. He stays carefully away from talking about our parents, aside from one brief and totally heartfelt "I was so sorry to hear about what happened to your parents, you guys" right at the start. For the most part he avoids his own past as well, apparently preferring to live in the now, if you'll forgive the new-agey phraseology. The whole time he's talking, answering questions, asking them, there's this tension in the air, this heat passing between him and Kyle every time they look at each other. At one point their hands bump while they're both gesturing as they speak and they both reflexively reach out for the other, only remaining suspended in the air for a moment before falling back into their own laps. I've never seen Kyle act this way, not even with Jonas, and certainly never around Shelly. They were the kind of friends who were always shoving each other around, tripping each other up and throwing mock punches. They played full contact football and soccer together all day long, would race across our lawn swinging their shirts high above their heads shouting death threats and tackling each other mercilessly to the ground. I never saw them anything but totally at ease in each other's company and personal space, but in all that time I never saw the kind of undeniable, totally palpable spark that's between them now. The thing of it though, I mean the part that's really throwing me for a loop about my brother and his ex-best friend of nearly seven years total and their undeniable sexual tension is the fact that neither of them seem the least bit surprised about it. Quite the contrary. In fact, they keep sharing small smiles, half knowing half guilty, and then looking away. And I mean, okay, I admit it, I miss things – but this is Kyle. What I don't get he's usually more than happy to lay out for me, usually with a `pay more attention, asshole' smack upside the head, and when it comes to him I pay more attention than most. So how the fuck did I miss all this, and why am I only picking up on it now, more than six years after the fact, when they haven't even seen each other or spoken in all that time? I look around again to see if this question is on any other faces, and see that Celery at least is definitely wondering the same thing and while the twins still look more confused than anything, Braden of all people seems to have reached the same conclusions as me, meeting my gaze directly and clearly asking, with the raise of an eyebrow and an incline of the head, `when the hell did this happen?' After about an hour of sexually charged small talk and catch up Shelly starts making noise about heading home and Kyle's protesting before he's even got all the words out, telling him it's late, there's plenty of room, that's he's more than welcome to stay over. This is all true, but it does nothing to diffuse the strangeness of the situation. All the same, we all move to encourage him to stay, and finally he agrees to crash on Kyle's couch. He says he'll take the couch like he actually believes he'll end up there, but something about the way Kyle bounds up after him once we've all said good night has me suspecting otherwise. We wait in silence until we hear the door of Kyle's apartment shutting before letting out a collective sigh of astonishment. Jon speaks first, "holy shit," and Dave finishes, "what the hell was THAT?" None of us really have an answer for them. Chapter Eight; I remember you and I remember me (Kyle) As he's racing up the stairs after him, Kyle tells himself he wasn't prepared for him to look so much the same, to bring out exactly the same pull in his gut, the flutter in his chest, but that's a lie, already clearly proven by the way his insides had ruptured at the mere mention of this possibility, at the whisper of this moment born in his mind the minute Shelly walked into their living room. The other parts, the lack of surprise in Shelly's eyes when they're facing each other again, standing in the middle of his small living room, and the way he can hear his heart beating from three feet away just the same as his own, makes there even less point pretending he doesn't notice this, didn't expect it. They stare for an eternity as the minutes tick by and it seems like that moment alone will stretch on even after the end of time, but then, at the exact same moment – they grin. It starts out small, but soon takes over their whole bodies. They laugh, bent double from it. Lost in the pure, simple joy of being together, uncomplicated and total in a way it's never been with anyone else – never could be. This is what he's been missing for seven years, been missing for so long he forgot what it was like to live before it. When the joy turns molten, thickening in their blood and settling their bodies once more, calm like there's only been once in their lives before allows them to reach out, and grasp hands. The laughter has stopped, but the smiles haven't left their eyes. "Hey." Even though they've been talking for almost an hour, now that they're finally alone, this seems like the perfect thing for Shelly to say. Nor is he surprised that it's Shelly who speaks first. So it has always been between them. "Hey." He thinks – if only life could remain frozen in this moment. If only everything could remain as clear and whole as it is right now. If only everything truly faded from existence the way the other's presence has always made it seem. If only he hadn't spent the last seven years trying to forget this feeling. He waits, depending on Shelly to take the lead once more. To show him what to do. Reliable as always in that respect, Shelly broadens his smile and shakes his head. "God. It's good to see you." And then they're hugging, like they had downstairs and then some, and the walls come crashing down, like they were never even there. They hug until their arms are screaming from the pain of it, until they can't breathe, until the world has shrunk again back to its acceptable size, where it is only they two. And though it seems impossible, after this they release, and Shelly's hands are on his face, memorizing again. Holding his shining face like a cup, help up and extended towards a dying man in the most relentless of deserts. Kyle closes his eyes again, taking a picture of Shelly with him to look at in his mind. His body is shaking, but his hands are steady as he reaches out to cover the ones holding his face, gathering them together and drawing them down to his lips. The skin he finds there is like water, smooth and uniquely capable of quenching a thirst he's carried with him for almost seven years, almost without knowing it. "Kyle." One of the hands has left his mouth and is reaching up to touch his hair. He wants to moan at the impossible pleasure of it when the hand runs through his hair, making him liquid. What he has to do next almost rips the breath out of his lungs. He clenches his eyes down against the agony for a moment, and then opens them, stepping away, out of Shelly's reach. "I..." He begins, knowing he has no concept of how to continue. "Shh. It's okay. I'm not expecting this to be easy – I'm not expecting it to be anything at all," the words rip at his chest but Kyle doesn't speak, knowing this is how it has to be. At least for now. At least until he can make the world stop spinning so fast he feels like he's going to get whipped right off into outer-space. "But I had to come back. I had to see you. Every minute for the last seven years you've been in my heart, this whisper at the back of my mind, and every minute I fought coming back to you – knowing what I might find, knowing what it might do to you." He shrugs. "I guess I finally lost." Kyle swallows back a hundred things, before finally opening his mouth to speak. "I'm glad you did. No matter what – I'm glad you're here." Now that he's found his voice, he can breathe, he can release some of the tension in his shoulders. Lost in this moment, he'd forgotten, but he's come a long way. He's not 14 anymore. He's lived through enough to face this. To be strong enough for whatever's coming. --- They talk for hours, recounting all the events that have shaped them over the years they've been apart, the stuff neither of them had been able to face in front of the audience they had downstairs. Shelly goes into more detail about Med school, tells the unglamorous stories about interviews and rejections, hellish hours spent studying for the MCAT, and the weirdness of finally living on his own. Kyle waits for good natured teasing about his own, albeit now less certain, plans to become a nurse, but Shelly only smiles placidly, remarking, "You always were best at taking care of people without the glory," this offhand comment, it occur will occur to Kyle later, perfectly summing up the difference between them. The ambition, the drive to achieve and be recognized, distinguished – something he had never really felt, hints of it only coming out in the times Shelly had been able to draw it out of him. They steer away from the personal bits that are bound to hurt as long as possible, but it can't be avoided, and ultimately Shelly simply ceases one pause in the conversation asking, "So, who is it that's got you all fucked up in there, eh?", tapping Kyle's temple. Kyle winces. There's no trace of accusation in his tone, just matter-of-fact curiosity. He bows his head, doubting even Shelly will have anticipated Jonas. As he thinks this, his stomach lurches. He still can't really think about Jonas without feeling nauseous, the combination of this massive failure and this gaping loss, two things he's never been particularly adept at dealing with. Shelly's patient smiles holds the promise of understanding, absolution, but Kyle knows it isn't what he has done, but what he will do that will truly be something to atone for. No one else knows that he sees Jonas all the time, walking on their street, peering in through the windows, all these moments infringing on the life they're supposed to be building without him that Kyle's done nothing to stop, all because he can't bear the thought of giving up anything that offers him the chance to see Jonas again. He takes a deep breath, and tries to explain. At the end of it, Shelly is pinching the bridge of his nose and smiling ruefully. Kyle waits, breath baited, for whatever reprimand is to come. Or even for sympathy, understanding. Pity. He's considerably more than surprised when Shelly laughs, deep and throaty. "Jesus, Kyle." He gasps, between laughs. "You really know how to pick `em." He pauses, still too shocked to understand, and then what Shelly's said registers, and he is also taken over by helpless fits of laughter. In the end, they're left wiping away tears of mirth mingled with regret from their eyes, still chuckling occasionally. After the last laughs have died in their throats, Kyle lets out a low moan, his head falling to rest on Shelly's shoulder. "Man, what are we going to do?" He can feel the breath of the final soft chuckle that escapes Shelly's lips on the tips of his hair. "We're going to not freak out for a second. We're going to take a breath. It's going to be fine." Kyle laughs again, a very different kind, letting out a hint of desperation. "See now – that's not a very solid plan. In fact, I wouldn't say it would qualify as a plan at all." "You got a better idea?" Calmly. "No, but – that's! That's exactly why we—" "Kyle – are you forgetting about the part of the plan where we don't freak out? Because that's sort of the whole crux of the thing, really." Kyle nods and takes a few gulping breaths. Shelly pats him on the knee. "That's my boy." Kyle releases a shaky sigh. "Fuck. The way you make me feel." Shelly smiles, sadly, knowingly, so it's clear the point doesn't need elaborating, but Kyle does it anyway. "It's like I need you to tell me how to get the oxygen out of the air." In a few seconds, he's up, agitated. "And – damnit! That's not... I'm not -- " He glares down at Shelly's neutral look. "This is your fault – it's always been... only you can turn me into such a freaking spaz. I'm the oldest! I take care of shit! I'm the fucking rock of ages!" He looks ready to keep going, but before he has the chance Shelly is up in his face, neutral expression gone – replaced by something far more dangerous, no pretense anymore, everything he wants and will fight like hell to get written on his face. "That's you, Kyle, but this is you, too – me and you – what I make you feel – what ONLY I can do to you – that's real. Seven fucking years and that hasn't gone away, and just because you went and got your heart broken by some fucking snarky emotionally unstable Mennonite doesn't make it any less true." There isn't even any consideration given to denying it. "I know. That would be the whole fucking problem, jackass." Not once did his eyes flinch away from Shelly's. Even now he meets them squarely. Shelly backs away, breathing slower. More evenly. "The way I see it, we only really have two options. Either you grow a pair and choose – or I choose for you. And as much as the selfish shit in me wants to take what I can and well, give nothing back, as much as I kind of want to throttle you for even suggesting there's a choice to make considering I'm not the one who broke up with you right after your parents died – the only thing I can do without being afraid you're going to eventually hate me for it is walk away." Kyle swallows, and shakes his head miserably. "I can't do ultimatums right now, Shel, please." They stare at each other for awhile before Shelly relents. "Okay. Shit. I think we're going to have to move to option C." "What's that?" "We both grow a pair." Kyle laughs. "I'm serious, man. Or at the very least you're gonna have to stop with the kicked puppy routine, because... godDAMN. All this time I've been thinking you hadn't changed at all, but that's not true – you've gotten hotter." He says this like it's an accusation. "And considering that in retrospect you were pretty much sex on legs when we were 14... well, there oughtta be a law. That's all I'm saying." Kyle is tempted to laugh, he wants to because it would be so easy, but instead he reaches out and brushes Shelly's bottom lip with his thumb. "You've changed some." Shelly's ragged breath is more like a sob. Frustrated and short. "We never got a chance – we've never had TIME –" Kyle stops his voice with a finger against his lips. "Shh... I know. It's gonna be okay," he promises, and once again, envelops Shelly in his arms. --- He'd been playing basketball when they met. A lazy, uncompetitive revolving game of 21 between him and the group of guys he'd been friends with since elementary school – Gary Ross, James Knox, Steven Gere and Christopher Eckles. He doesn't remember who he was playing at that exact moment, only that he was winning and that the others were heckling the loser good-naturedly. He'd been laughing with them, dribbling around his opponent lazily, grinning at him, and then he'd heard a voice ring out across the court, taunting, cocky, "How bout trying someone your own size?" He'd whipped around and there was Shelly, one hand resting coolly on his hip, his head titled just so, blue black hair sticking up at improbable angles, grinning. Something had thudded in his chest, but then he was grinning too, and he whipped the ball at Shelly, who caught it easily. They didn't speak another word, the friend Kyle had been playing moved off the court, and the game began. It was the most exhilarating feeling of his young life, running, throwing (elbows and the ball), competing like he never had before. Finally, nearly an hour later, after Shelly won by a making a miraculous shot from nearly outside the dotted yellow line that marked the court of the small high school play ground, they'd collapsed side by side and someone, Kyle can't remember who, passed them a bottle of water which they handed back and forth, breathing heavily and wiping sweat from their foreheads. A few minutes later, once they had finally caught their breath, they turned to each other, and Shelly held out his hand. "I'm Shelly Winters." Kyle reached out, and they shook. "Kyle Vasskez." --- They were inseparable that summer. Whoever woke up first would go over to the others' house to bang on their bedroom door until they woke up, and they would go from there. As sometimes happened in the summer, his other friends seemed to fall away, but that year it was less so because he was focused on his little brothers and baby sister as he was with beating Shelly at basketball and bike races. Shelly's parents were consultants, working for governments, corporations, Shelly didn't really know what. He had moved around every couple years his whole life, but thought they might be sticking around this time, he said. He lived in a huge brick house only four blocks away from the Vasskez home, came from the same unconscious privilege. They went to the arcade and midnight movies, they ran for miles around the high school's track, always pushing each other. Kyle showed Shelly the places worth going, and introduced him to his friends, took him to parties where they got drunk and fell asleep on said friends lawns. Shelly came over and they played touch football on the lawn and street hockey with Carrots and Celery, they took the twins to baseball games and helped coach their peewee soccer team. They had dinner at each other houses and camped out some nights in Shelly's yard in the tent his parents gave him for his birthday that May. When summer ended they synchronized their class schedules and joined all the same sports teams. Their coaches couldn't believe their luck. Kyle Vasskez had always been a strong player, an asset to any team, but playing with Shelly gave him an edge, an urge to push himself past his limits, and they seemed to be able to read each other's minds on the court or field, anticipating each other movements as if they'd been practicing together for years. Kyle dated Julie, while Shelly dated Sara, and then Lauren, and then Becky, and then Kim after that. Julie and Shelly got along, but there was a kind of impatience in their eyes when they looked at each other sometimes, as if they were both waiting for the other to leave so they could have Kyle's full attention. Carrots and Celery were new to the school that year, in grade seven, and were getting hassled quite a bit, and they dished out their share of bloody noses to the offending parties. At 14, Kyle was already pushing 6 feet tall, and Shelly at least matched him, if not a bit more. It tended to range from morning to night. They were both lean and strong, and had no qualms about fighting dirty with assholes foolish enough to call Kyle's little brothers faggots. By October, everyone knew to leave Carrots and Celery alone, or at least to avoid saying or doing anything in front of Kyle or Shelly, but Celery, young though he was, was developing a reputation of his own, and soon enough Kyle and Shelly breathed a little easier when they weren't around to watch out for them. When the ice hit they joined a local hockey club, and skated their way to spring. Of all the sports they played together, hockey was their true element. Both powerful wingers, they played together with a strength and speed that had their coaches talking about triple A clubs and maybe even the Juniors in a few years time. But then spring came, and as the school year ended, Shelly became withdrawn, cagey, avoiding Kyle's calls and making noncommittal noises whenever he spoke about their summer plans. Finally, the day school ended Kyle demanded that Shelly stop being a pussy and come over to his house so he could kick his ass and they could go back their lives, and Shelly came over and sitting together in Kyle's room, told him he was moving to Bristol in a week. There isn't really a way to describe how Kyle felt when he heard this news, except maybe to say it felt something like getting punched in the gut a second before all the air got sucked from the room so that when you inhaled sharply after the blow you realized there's nothing left. They sat there, staring at each, a foot away from each other on Kyle's bed, Kyle having said nothing after Shelly told him the news, but in that moment all the innocence, the nonchalance and lack of understanding they had breezed through the past year with fell away, and they were left with the only truth that ever mattered. They crashed into each other, mouths devouring clumsily, hands trying to be everywhere at once. It was frantic, at times approaching violent, and brief. When it was over, they lay half naked in each other arms, hearts still pounding in their chests even as they closed their eyes in exhaustion. When Kyle opened his eyes again Shelly was gone. They wouldn't see each other again until he showed up in Kyle's living room seven years later, to finish what he'd started that summer afternoon all those years before. After Shelly was gone, Kyle had fallen all too easily back into his old life, telling himself it was the same life he'd been living while Shelly was around, only without Shelly in it, into school and hanging out with the guys and Julie, so easily that he could pretend with almost no trouble at all that that one June afternoon hadn't happened or had at least been an aberration, best left undisturbed. He compartmentalized those moments with Shelly so completely and so successfully that he never associated it with anything he felt for Jonas or anyone else, never felt like a liar for leaving it out of the picture he painted of himself, to himself. The friend Shelly had been was harder to forget, the hole his absence left much harder to fill. But he convinced himself he was not suited to the intensity of their bond, and focused on protecting the thing between Carrots and Celery instead, focused on the twins and Kara, on Julie. But while most of him forgot, wrote off their year of living in each other's pockets and finishing each others thoughts before they had even begun to form words as a momentary and astonishing strike of lightning, something outside himself he could not recreate or control, another part of him never forgot. He never talked about it, not with Carrots or anybody else, didn't even let his mind go there most of the time, but in a way he knew it was in everything he did. What he felt he knew to be true about himself, and the type of life he wanted, would never ring quite as true to his own ears again. It was in the way he and Julie became an on-again, off-again thing, that clichι, instead of the original assumption he'd operated under that they would probably get married someday, have kids and a dog and a mini van, live happily ever after. It was in his unacknowledged need to get it right, the second time, with Jonas. Not the sex part, that never consciously factored in, but at the beginning, when it was about being friends, real friends of the kind he'd only ever been with his family outside of Shelly. Somehow, he'd gotten into it to prove he could have that camaraderie, that closeness, and have it not turn into something else he could not control, and then the thing had gone ahead and turned around on him, and the ground had disappeared from under his feet all over again. But he'd put his comparisons and anxieties away and just focused on Jonas, who always needed so much watching that it had never been especially difficult to do. All the while though, silently, subconsciously, he'd been missing Shelly, training his mind to leave that pain alone, to refuse to even acknowledge its existence to the point where he came to feel it only as another part of being himself, as involuntary and unchangeable as his brown hair and fierce devotion for his family. Missing Shelly became a part of who he was, and now that he's back, for maybe the first time in his life, apart from the moment right before Shelly kissed him and the whole world made sense like it never had before, like it never has since, Kyle doesn't know who he is. The fact is he's never been any good at letting go, not once he's convinced himself the thing he's supposed to be letting go of is worth something. Carrots would call it loyalty, and make a joke about Hufflepuffs, but it's more than that, and he can admit it to himself, if nothing more. The fact that Shelly's returned after leaving without saying good bye and staying gone for nearly seven years and already he's ready to jump as soon as Shel says how high certainly proves that. This fact probably goes double for the Jonas situation. But what can he do? They've never really been about changing who they were, were always raised to be more focused on finding ways to be happy about it, to make it work for yourself and those around you, the ones that mattered anyway. So if change, at this stage of the game, isn't a very practical or probable option – where does that leave him? Where does it leave any of them?