Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The blue truck was an eighteenth birthday present from Chip to C.J. It had belonged to one of Chip's friends and needed some engine work, which Chip and C.J. did themselves over the spring in between fishing charters. Flick loved the truck, even in those early months before it was properly driveable; it was the color of the sky and represented all manner of possibilities. On warm nights, after they had eaten dinner and finished their homework—or at least after C.J. had finished his homework and Flick had decided that he didn't want to do any more—they would sometimes lay in the truck bed together and talk. These nights felt almost magical to Flick; even though the truck was parked on the street between their houses, in full view of all their neighbors, when they laid down in the truck bed it felt like they were in their own little world.

One night at the end of April, C.J. said, “As soon as I figure out that carburetor issue, I think the truck should finally be driveable.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Flick said. “Does that mean you can stop pouring all your money into it?”

“Well... that means I can start repaying my dad for all the money he loaned me for parts. He told me not to worry about it, but I'd feel bad not paying him back. Plus I still need to attach a trailer hitch so I can tow the boat.” He paused for a moment. “Dad said he'd split fishing charters fifty-fifty with me once I'm done with school, and split all the charter income, too. If I've got my own truck and can captain my own charters, we can take on a lot more bookings. Like, if we time it right, he could do a half-day excursion in the morning and I could do a half-day excursion in the afternoon on the same day. I did the math, and if we average four charters a week—so, like two for me and two for Dad—that'll be enough, after you account for, like, taxes and boat maintenance and all that, my share of that income should be enough to support me and you completely.”

Flick smiled. “How many charters do you average right now?”

C.J. sighed. “Well... May through September, it's easy to get four a week, we usually get more than that already. For ice fishing, last winter we got, like, maybe one or two a week, but with better advertising and with me doing my own charters, we could probably bump that up a little. The problem is the in-betweens. There's weeks or even months in the late fall or early spring where there's nothing. I'm taking out some more online ads now to hopefully fill out this summer a bit more, so I can make more money to put into savings for the off season.”

“I can look into getting a job this summer, too,” said Flick.

C.J. frowned. “I mean, sure, if you want. But you don't have to. I can support us.”

“If you're going to be busy doing all those fishing charters, I feel like I should be doing something productive with my time, too.”

“Come September you're going to be busy with college, though.”

“Plenty of college students also work part-time jobs.”

“I know, but... high school stresses you out enough already. And, I mean, maybe college will be better for you than high school, but I just don't want you to feel overwhelmed.”

“But I want to feel like I'm contributing to our future. Besides, if we're going to be looking for an apartment this summer, I think landlords are going to be more likely to rent to us if I'm actually, you know, employed. I'm willing to get a little overwhelmed if it means I get to live with you.”

C.J. smiled, and rolled over to face Flick. “I suppose. Get some job you can quit the second we sign a lease, then.” He put his arm around Flick's waist. “I can't wait to live with you. We could be doing this every night, laying together like this, but in a bed—our bed—instead of out in a truck on the street.”

“And we could be doing a lot more than just laying here, too,” Flick said, and kissed him.

C.J. grinned at him, and they snuggled together, daydreaming. After a while, C.J. said, “I know this summer is going to be busy enough already, with everything else. But once this truck is up and running, I really wanna go out and livestream on location more often, and I want to make some kind of streaming schedule so that people know when to tune in. I know it's probably a pipe dream, but some people make a full-time living from streaming. Like a comfortable living. And I just feel like... like I've already done so much social media and advertising stuff for the charter, I know what I'm doing enough that if I put that energy into my own livestream, I could make it big.”

“All the more reason for me to get some job so that you have the time and energy to stream, rather than just grinding out fishing charters all summer.”

“Hmm. I don't want you to feel like you have to do that, though.”

“But I want to help you be successful,” Flick said. “How many followers do you have right now?”

“Like thirty-two as of this morning. But ten or twelve of them are people I know in real life, like you and Dad and Bam or whatever.”

“But that means twenty total strangers like your stream.”

C.J. shrugged. “It's not bad considering I only started streaming, like, a month ago, and my schedule's been so sporadic.”

“That's because you're good at what you do,” Flick said, and kissed his cheek. “Hey, if I'm not working, could I maybe come along when you go out to stream? That was fun the last time we did that.”

C.J. grinned. “Oh my god, yes. I love it when you come with me.”

Flick giggled.

“What?”

“Just the, um, probably unintentional double entendre.”

“Huh?”

“Come with me.”

“Oh my god.” C.J. elbowed Flick. “You have a filthy mind.”

“Uh-huh,” Flick said with a laugh.

“I mean, yeah, I do love that too.”

Flick cleared his throat and ran his hand over C.J.'s chest. “As for streaming,” he said. “I liked watching you have fun and mug for the camera. I watched your other streams, too, of course, but it's different being there with you.”

“I was definitely kind of showing off for you.”

“I know. It was cute.”

“Do you think you'd be willing to come on camera with me some time?”

“I dunno,” Flick said. “It's not really my thing.”

“No, that's fine. I love just having you with me. You don't even have to hang out with me the whole time, you can go off and look for bugs after a while, too.”

“I probably will.”

“God, that would be so nice. We'd get to hang out together for a while, then we both go do our own thing, and then we see each other again at the end of it.” C.J. sighed dreamily, then said, “You know what else I want to do with this truck?”

“What?”

“It'll be at least a year or two or more before we can afford this. But if my livestream ever takes off, what I'd like to do is buy or build out a camper for the back of the truck. Then you and I could drive across the country, and I could stream from all these new locations, and you could go look for new bugs, too.”

Flick felt himself melt a little; he loved that C.J. was creating all these plans for their future. Flick didn't have a lot of concrete ambitions for his own future beyond just being with C.J., and so he was happy to piggyback onto C.J.'s dreams. “That sounds amazing.”

C.J. seemed almost surprised, but he smiled and said, “Really? Do you want to?”

“Of course. Why wouldn't I? I don't have any special ties to Leafville, and I know you've lived here your whole life and that you're ready to bust outta here. So let's go on some epic road trip together. Every day would be a new adventure that would still feel like home because I'd be with you.”

C.J. put his hand to Flick's face and kissed him, then he sat up and started gesturing. “We'd have a sleeping loft over the cab, with a screened-in window because we both like fresh air at night. Then on this side we'd have shelves or cubbies or cabinets or something. Definitely a long shelf on top for my fishing poles, and then some smaller spaces for tackle boxes, bug stuff, art stuff, plus, ya know, clothing or whatever. Then on this side we'd have a bench seat with cushions, but, like, it would open up for more storage underneath. There should be a fold-down table for meals, or to use as a desk. And then in this corner we'd have a kitchenette with, like, a mini-fridge, a sink, a little two-burner stove-top, maybe like a microwave or a toaster oven.”

Flick grinned at him. “You've been thinking about this.”

C.J. shrugged sheepishly.

“Let's do a toaster oven so I can bake. I could mix up bread dough in the morning, then we'd let it rise in the back while we drive and at night when we park again I could bake it, and we could have fresh baked bread while we're basically camping.”

“Oh my god, yes, I love that idea.” C.J. glanced around the empty truck bed as if he were imagining the whole set-up. “It'd probably be easier to buy a camper—I've seen used ones pop up on craigslist or whatever—but I like the idea of building our own. We could make it exactly to suit our needs. It feels like a big project, though.”

“You and I built that tree house when we were kids that's still standing almost seven years later,” Flick said. “And you built that ice fishing shack with your dad, which is basically a small cabin, with electrical wiring and everything. You're great at building things, you could totally build a camper. I could maybe help. I mean, my art skills have to be good for something, right?”

“Your art skills are good for a lot of things,” C.J. said, bending down to kiss him again. “But also I know that you could make a camper much more beautiful than I could. I'd just make it functional.”

Flick sat up now, too. “Where do you want to go first?”

“God, anywhere, everywhere,” C.J. said. “I wanna be able to take you someplace you've never been, but you've been so many places already.”

“Yeah, but with my dad. That's not really the same. Besides, I want to do new stuff with you, too. I want to be with you when you see the ocean for the first time.”

C.J. grinned. “Oh my god, yes. I want to see the ocean so badly.”

Flick smiled. “Let's pick someplace warm, so that we can go swimming, too,” he said. “And there's plenty of other places I've never been, that I'd like to see with you. The Appalachians. Hudson Bay. Joshua Tree. Ooh, how 'bout the oyamel forests in Mexico, in the winter when the monarchs are there?”

C.J. said, “If we go to Mexico, I can use those two years of high school Spanish.”

“If we go to Quebec, I can use my French,” Flick added.

“God, I can't wait,” C.J. said. “There's so much I want to do with you.” He smiled dreamily at Flick and Flick leaned in to kiss him again. After a moment, Flick shifted his weight and laid C.J. back in the truck bed, letting his hand roam over his body. When his hand glided over the front of C.J.'s pants, C.J. pulled away from the kiss and said softly, “Mmm, Flick, not here.”

Flick murmured back, “Where would you like me, then?”

C.J. laughed under his breath and said, “You know what I mean. Not here in the truck where anyone can see us.”

“You wanna go to my bedroom?”

“Isn't your dad home?”

“Yeah, but it's my house, too. I should be allowed to have guests over.”

“I feel weird fooling around when your dad is just down the hall.”

Flick's hand continued to caress C.J.'s body; C.J.'s breathing quickened and his eyes fluttered shut. After a moment, Flick suggested, “Tree house?”

C.J. swallowed and opened his eyes. “Y-yeah. Okay.”

They climbed out of the truck and walked down to the forested ravine at the end of the block, then started down the trail to their old tree house. C.J. said, “This feels so illicit.”

Flick smiled over his shoulder. “What? We're just sneaking off to a secret location so I can give you a blow job.”

C.J. laughed. “Is that the plan?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I dunno. Back in the truck you were just kind of feeling me up.”

“Yeah, but why should my hands get to have all the fun?” Flick asked, and C.J. hummed in anticipation. After a moment, Flick added, “If we had any lube, you could fuck me.”

“God damn,” C.J. breathed. Then he said, “We could try using spit again.”

“No, I don't like that.”

“I guess I should be carrying emergency lube on me at all times.”

Flick giggled, and said, “Seriously, though, maybe keep some in the glove compartment of the truck?”

“Could make for an awkward conversation with a police officer if we're ever pulled over and I'm digging around in there for vehicle registration.”

“I'm sure they've seen worse,” Flick said. Then he grinned and said in an authoritative voice, “What have you got in the glove box there, son?”

C.J. responded, “Just an economy size bottle of EZ Slide, sir.”

“Economy size,” Flick snickered. Then in his cop-voice said, “For what purpose?”

“Sex purposes, sir!” C.J. answered cheerfully, and they both laughed.

As they approached the tree house in the dark, C.J. put his hand on Flick's shoulder and stepped in front of him. “Hold up, let me go first to make sure there's nobody else up there.” He turned on the flashlight on his phone and climbed up the rope ladder while Flick waited on the ground below. “All clear,” he called as soon as he got into the tree house, and Flick followed him up. C.J. turned off the flashlight as soon as Flick was inside, and in an instant Flick's lips were on his and his hand was on C.J.'s zipper.

Later, when they were both spent, they laid on the floor of the tree house intertwined, Flick idly running his fingers through C.J.'s hair and C.J. with his hand on Flick's hip. Even with cool night air and the hard wood planks beneath them, Flick felt sublimely cozy. He said to C.J., “Let's sleep out here tonight.”

“Mmm, we've got school in the morning.”

“Let's skip. Let's drop out.”

C.J. smiled. “Six weeks before graduation?”

“Why not? School is bullshit anyway. I just want to spend the night with you.”

C.J. sighed. “I know. I hate being apart from you.”

“And being together like this almost makes it worse,” Flick said. “Because now I'm going to have to go back home, make some stupid small talk with my dad, and then spend the whole night alone in my bed just aching to be back here, to be in your arms again. When I'm away from you, all I can think about is being with you again. Like, more than anything else in the world, I just want to be able to spend the whole night with you.” Despite all the sweetness of the evening, Flick felt tears pricking his eyes.

It was too dark for C.J. to see that, but he must've sensed it, because he pulled Flick closer to him. “I know. God, I think about you every night, I want you so badly. I don't just mean sexually, but just... you. All of you.” He put his hand to Flick's face and pulled him in for a kiss. “But it won't be long now. We're gonna finish up high school, and then this summer we're going to find an apartment and move in together, and then we're gonna be able to fall asleep together every night and wake up together every morning. And then later on we're gonna go on that road trip, and we're gonna drive everywhere we can drive and see everything there is to see. And then some time after that we're gonna buy a house together, and we're gonna get married, and we're going to be together forever.”

Flick felt as if he might literally swoon; he held tight to C.J. and buried his face in his neck.

The end of high school was dragging on for Flick. He had already written his final papers for AP English, AP French and AP Psychology—because writing papers was easy, and this way he wouldn't have to think about it any more—and was just waiting for the opportunity to turn them in, and he was sure he already knew enough Calculus and Physics to pass the final exams in those classes and so he didn't see the need to attend any more lectures. The only class he actually enjoyed was Independent Art Study, during which he and a handful of other students had free reign of the art room and its supplies. This art class was serendipitously scheduled for the final period of the school day, and so if Flick wanted—and he often did—he could skip all his other classes and show up at school for the final hour just for Independent Art Study. Flick's attendance had never been great, but as his senior year came to a close, it got increasingly worse.

His father was not pleased. After dinner one day, Nat said to him, “Your school called me again today. Apparently you were marked absent for all your morning classes?”

“Mm-hm,” Flick agreed casually as he loaded his dishes into the dishwasher.

Nat sighed, and said tersely, “Was there any particular reason?”

Flick smiled. “Well, it was sunny this morning but the forecast called for rain later on, and I didn't want to waste the nice part of the day stuck inside school.”

Nat glared at him. “Are you serious?”

Flick laughed a little and shrugged.

Nat rubbed his temples. “You know, Flick, they don't have to let you graduate. They can still fail you, it's not too late.”

Flick said, “Come on, you know they're not going to do that. I do the work—or at least, enough of the work—and my teachers know that I know the material. It's a waste of my time to just sit there for hours every day.”

“The attendance policy exists for a reason. You need to be there, you need to physically be in school. The vice principal told me today that if you don't improve your attendance, they won't let you walk in the graduation ceremony.”

“Oh no,” Flick said sarcastically. “You mean I won't be able to go to some crowded, awkward event I don't want to attend anyway? Whatever shall I do?” He laughed again. “Even if they didn't just mail me my diploma later—which they probably would—I'm positive I could pass whatever exam there is to get a GED. So what would it matter?”

Nat spoke through gritted teeth. “Because a high school diploma is so much more valuable than a GED, especially considering all the AP and Honors courses you've taken, and you know that. My god, Flick. How can someone as smart as you act so stupid sometimes? You've done ninety-nine percent of the work of a high school education, and there's only a few weeks left. Why are you trying to throw it all away now? Just go. Just finish. Go get the diploma that you've earned.”

Flick leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “You know, the only reason I went in at all today was to have lunch with C.J. Plus we have Physics together sixth period and there was a lab today, I wanted to be there to be his lab partner. C.J.'s really the only reason I ever go at all, but, I mean, most days I can just see him after school.”

“Not if I ground you until June,” Nat snapped.

But Flick only laughed. “Seriously? Dad, I'm going to be eighteen in two weeks, you don't have that kind of control over me anymore.”

Nat sneered at him. “Oh, you think you're all grown up, huh? I suppose you don't need an allowance any more then. Or to be on the family phone plan. I suppose I can change the home Wi-Fi password and you can just figure out your own internet access. Maybe you could start paying rent and buying your own groceries, too.”

Flick rolled his eyes and walked off to his bedroom, where he closed the door and laid down on his bed. He had made a show of acting nonchalant, but the truth was he hated that his dad actually did have more power over him than he would like, which meant that now he would have to try harder to push himself to attend school more regularly, even on days when the crowds and noise and obligations of high school felt like torture. He wasn't sure how serious his dad actually was—he tended to be more bark than bite—but he especially did not want to risk losing phone or internet access, because he couldn't fathom not having a way to be in touch with C.J.

Flick texted him now, hey.

C.J. responded almost immediately with three heart emojis and then, What's up?

nothing, Flick texted. just missing you. stupid rain keeping us out of the truck tonight.

I know. I was just thinking that it's too bad we can't drive out to some deserted scenic overlook and steam up the windows.

Flick smiled, then texted, still no luck on the whatever it is?

Carburetor, C.J. responded. I haven't had a chance to look at it all week. The rain's kept me away, plus I've been kind of swamped with homework. And with the fishing opener coming up, I've been trying to drum up excitement on the charter's social media. We're booked solid for like a week after the opener. Dad says he wants me to do one of the weekend charters on my own so he can have a break, and maybe the next weekend, too. So I don't know when I'm going to get to work on the damn truck.

Flick felt guilty that C.J. was so busy and that he was comparatively so idle. He texted, what are you doing right now?

Trying to figure out what I want to write about for my World History term paper.

Flick frowned. i can let you go so you can focus.

You'd better not, C.J. texted back, and Flick felt a little better.

Flick texted, maybe i could come over to help you study...?

You're not even in my World History class.

i don't think we'd be actually studying.

Oh, I'd be studying something all right, C.J. texted

Flick giggled. Flirting felt safe and familiar, much better than angsting about school or C.J.'s truck or any of the related worries that Flick's brain wanted to spiral off into right now. He texted back, sooo...?

You probably shouldn't. My dad is home and awake.

i can be quiet.

I doubt that, not with what I have in mind.

Flick smiled, but he was also starting to feel a little antsy. He wanted C.J., and he was working hard right now not to interpret C.J.'s busyness and reluctance to invite him over as rejection. Sex was an easy way to feel immediately and unequivocally good, but he worried sometimes he leaned on it too much, that it was a frivolous distraction from other, more important matters, or that he himself was just a frivolous distraction.

He was trying to think of some response that did not make him sound needy or sad, when C.J. texted him, We could FaceTime if you want.

Flick felt an instant wave of relief; video-chatting with C.J. invariably devolved into lewd debauchery, which was exactly what he wanted tonight. He texted back, yes please, just give me a minute to get ready. He got up, locked his bedroom door and closed the curtains. He turned on his laptop and opened up the FaceTime app, and while it loaded he moved his chair next to the bed and set the laptop on it. He looked at his image on the screen, smoothed out the blankets on his bed, and turned on the overhead light in his room. He texted C.J., ready. Then he took off his shirt, leaned back on one hand and ran his fingertips over his own chest, waiting with anticipation for C.J. to call.

Flick didn't care about most school activities or traditions. He wasn't in any clubs or sports or extracurriculars, he had never purchased a yearbook or read the school newspaper, he and C.J. didn't go to Homecoming or Prom or any other dance. Every year the senior class played some prank, which usually involved either making a mess or moving some large object from one location to another, and Flick was already embarrassed by whatever his own class was going to do before they had even done it.

But one tradition he was looking forward to was Senior Skip Day. Flick had his own private skip day at least once or twice every week, but since there was a designated day for everyone else in the senior class to skip, too, that meant that C.J. would also be skipping, which meant that they could spend the day together. C.J. had gotten his truck up and running by then, and Flick wanted to drive someplace with him.

But then a few days beforehand, C.J. said to Flick, “So, uh, Bam is hosting a party at Sunset Beach for Skip Day.”

“Oh,” Flick said, and tried not to let his shoulders sink. “I mean, y-you can go if you want.”

“Did you want to come with?”

“Not really.”

“Well, but I wanted to spend the day with you. And Bam invited the both of us, so I feel like it would be a welcoming atmosphere, if that's a concern for you. Apollo and that crowd are doing their own thing somewhere else.”

“No, no, I figured, I just...” He trailed off and shrugged.

“We don't have to go,” C.J. said.

“Well, but I don't want you to not go, if it's something you want to do. I don't want to keep you away from your other friends.”

“I don't want to go by myself, when we'd been planning to spend the day together. But also, I don't want to drag you there with me if you're just going to feel uncomfortable.”

They looked at each other for a moment, then Flick said, “We can go for a little bit.” He tried not to sigh.

“Are you sure?”

Flick nodded. “If it's an outside thing, I can handle that better than, like, a party at someone's house. There's not any proper trails at Sunset Beach, but it's a big enough space that I can wander off if I need a break.”

C.J. said, “Should we have, like, some kind of secret hand signal for when you're ready to go?”

Flick smiled. “I don't think that will be necessary. I'm not good at subtlety, and you usually pick up on my mood before I say anything anyway.”

On Skip Day, Flick and C.J. had breakfast at a cafe; Flick was aware that large portions of the rest of the senior class were eating at Perkins or IHOP, and he was glad to have avoided that, to have some quiet, private time with C.J. before the party. But then they drove out to the beach. Flick glanced over the assembled classmates and didn't see any of the usual bullies, but crowds of people always felt vaguely hostile to Flick, even if they were composed of friendly or neutral people like this. Bam looked over at them as they approached and smiled broadly. “Hey, you guys made it!”

C.J. said to him, “I'm surprised you're doing Skip Day. Doesn't that mean you can't go to baseball practice tonight?”

Bam shrugged. “It's just one practice. Besides, I'll have plenty of opportunities to play next year.”

“That's right,” C.J. said. “I heard you got that baseball scholarship out west. Where was that again?”

“Gold Mountain University in SoCal.”

“That's so awesome. Is that scholarship full ride?”

Bam nodded. “It is. And my recruiter said that scouts from the major and minor leagues snatch up players from GMU all the time. I'm excited, bro. This could be a real big deal for me.”

He and C.J. continued to talk about sports and Bam's plans, and after a minute Flick slipped away.

There was a cooler full of ice and beverages, and Flick dug through it a little but was disappointed to realize they were all non-alcoholic. Which made sense, considering it was ten in the morning, but Flick also felt like he needed a bit of a buzz to stand being at a party. He surveyed the snack table, but his stomach felt knotted up, so he walked away from that, too. He looked over at C.J., who glanced back at him and smiled; it felt good to know that C.J. was looking out for him, but he didn't want to hover and be a distraction, so he walked down to an empty stretch of beach.

It was a sunny day, not quite warm enough for swimming yet, although down the shore a bit there were several kids with their shoes off and their pants rolled up to their knees standing in the chilly water. He and C.J. had gone swimming here once last summer, and he tried to call up those memories now, but there was too much going on for Flick to focus: too many voices having too many conversations, and the air was warm except when the wind picked up and then it got cool, and the sun was too bright and reflected on the water in distracting sparkles and he hadn't brought his sunglasses. He looked back up at the crowd of people, and panicked for a second when he couldn't see C.J., but then he caught a glimpse of his black and yellow cap; he and Bam had just walked a few feet over from where they were before and were talking to Teddy now. After a few seconds, C.J. shifted his weight and glanced around until he caught Flick's eye; Flick forced himself to smile back, and then C.J. went back to his conversation.

Flick took a breath and turned to face the lake. He squatted down and sifted his fingers through the wet sand, looking for snail shells or quartz or anything else that might be interesting, but nothing came up. He'd only been at the party for ten minutes, but he already felt like he was done. Maybe he wouldn't be feeling so awkward if he'd actually said hello to Bam or spoken to someone else, but sometimes the longer he was quiet, the harder it was to get any words out. As it was, the party felt like a lost cause now. He rinsed the sand off his hands in the lake and glanced back up at C.J. again, but this time C.J. didn't look back at him. Flick didn't want to interrupt their conversation, and certainly didn't want to make C.J. leave the party already. He decided he would go sit in the truck to decompress for a while, and maybe he could come rejoin the party again later.

He was halfway to the parking lot when he heard his name, and turned around. It was Cherry. “Hey,” she said with a smile. “I saw you and C.J. arrive, but by the time I made it across the crowd, you were already leaving.”

“Sorry,” Flick said. “I don't handle parties very well. I was going to go sit in the truck.”

“Can I sit with you? We could split a joint.”

Flick felt himself relax at the mere idea. “Yes. I would love that actually.”

As they walked up to the truck, Cherry said, “Nice. Is this yours?”

“No, it's C.J.'s, I don't drive.”

“Oh, that's right. I knew that.”

“Let's sit in the back,” Flick said. “So we don't stink up the upholstery.”

He and Cherry sat in the truck bed. As Cherry got supplies out of her purse, she said, “Hey, that's a cute shirt. I haven't seen that on you before.”

He was wearing a black short-sleeved button down shirt with a pattern on it that from a distance looked abstract but up close was interlocking pink and purple mantises. “I just got it. I ordered it online.”

“You don't wear cute stuff like that to school.”

“I get enough shit at school, I don't need to invite more by wearing pink.”

“Ahh, fuck 'em if they can't handle boys wearing pink.”

Flick watched as she rolled a fat joint. As she was licking it shut, he said, “Can I buy from you before the end of the school year?”

But she shook her head. “My supply dried up,” she said. “My cousin got busted. By his parents, at least, not by the cops. But they made him trash all his plants. He's got some seeds stashed, though, I could probably get you some if you want to grow your own.”

Flick considered it, but then said, “No, my dad's always finding some excuse to go through my room, I probably shouldn't.”

Cherry lit the joint and had a toke, then handed it to Flick. He inhaled and held the smoke in his lungs for a moment, then handed it back to her. A minute later, his head felt suddenly swimmier than he was expecting, and he put his hand on the floor of the truck bed to steady himself. “I-is this cut with something?” he asked.

“No,” Cherry said. “But it's stuff my cousin bought from a friend of his from Colorado, it's a different strain than what you and I normally smoke. It's definitely got a bit more of a kick to it. Sorry, I shoulda warned you.”

The head-swimminess lessened and Flick now felt the familiar warmth and loosening of his muscles. “No, this is...” Flick paused as his thoughts cut out for a second. “This is perfect.”

They passed the joint back and forth for a few moments in comfortable silence, then Flick asked, “So what are your plans for after graduation?”

“Nook Pizza's offering me full time hours for the summer, and I guess for as long as I want to stick around. I've been trying to book out a bunch of gigs for the band this summer, too. My goal was one a week, but I'm not sure if that's happening. There's only so many punk venues in Leafville—ya know?—and if we're driving someplace, we're probably spending more on gas than we're earning from the gig. It's good to get out there, though. It's good publicity, plus we get to see other bands perform, too.” She took a puff, then handed the joint to Flick. “You should come out to some of our shows around town, though. I wanna see you up front in the mosh pit.”

Flick smiled as he exhaled. “I'll try to come to a show, but no promises on the pit. It's a bit much for me.”

“C'mon,” Cherry said with a grin. “You're not a real punk unless you go in the pit at least once.”

“I'm fine with that.”

Cherry giggled. “Nah, that's all right. You do you.” She took another hit. “But in the fall, Muffy's moving to New Sylvania for college. Katt and I are talking about moving out there, too, so we can keep the band together.”

Flick smiled at her. “Like, you and Katt moving out there together?” Then he saw Cherry's face cloud over. “Or... um...”

Cherry sighed. “Things are kind of... uncertain with us right now. We're trying to figure that out.”

“Oh,” said Flick. “I'm sorry.”

“It's weird. It's not like there's any animosity between us, it's not like we're having big fights or anything, we're just... It's like we want different things, and the relationship is just kind of fizzling out.” She shrugged, and leaned over to rest her head on Flick's shoulder. “C'est la vie. We had a good run.”

“It's still kind of sad, though,” he said, putting his hand on her leg.

“Yeah. It is.”

Flick usually reserved most of his social interaction and nearly all of his physical affection for C.J., but he realized now that he would actually miss this. Not just having someone to smoke weed with—although that too, C.J. never smoked—but having a platonic relationship based on mutual friends or interests that he didn't share with C.J. He also realized he didn't know how to maintain a friendship with Cherry when they weren't in enforced, regular proximity, like school, especially if she was moving away, and he felt sad about that.

Cherry kept talking. “But interest in the band is really picking up, and I want to keep that momentum going, even if she and I are...” She trailed off. “Anyway,” she started again. “I feel like it would be worth it to move to New Sylvania no matter what. Like, not just for the band, but for everything. New Sylvania has so much more going on. I really don't want to wind up getting stuck in Leafville forever, ya know?” She sat up and handed the joint to Flick. “What about you? What are you doing after high school?”

Flick took a hit off the joint and smiled wryly. After he exhaled, he said, “Being stuck in Leafville for a while longer. My dad's strong-arming me into college. Since he's a professor at the university, I can get a scholarship that covers most of my tuition.”

“Do you want to go?” Cherry asked. “You don't have to go. You're an adult, you get to decide.”

Flick shrugged. “I don't know what else to do with my life.”

“What are you going to be studying?”

“Art.”

“That'll be cool, at least.”

“Maybe.”

They smoked for a minute, then Cherry smiled and said, “Hey, do you remember a few years ago in study hall one day I had you draw that luna moth on my arm in Sharpie? And all the lunkheaded jocks thought it was a real tattoo?”

Flick laughed a little. “I do remember. Like, have they never seen an actual tattoo before? It was so obviously just marker.”

“So I was wondering,” Cherry said. “Could you draw me another luna moth? But on paper this time. I'm saving up to get inked for real this summer, I want a drawing from you for them to use.”

Flick laughed again. “No, you don't.”

“Why not?”

“Why would you? Any tattoo shop is going to have a binder of images for you to pick from. Anyone can draw you a luna moth.”

“Well, yeah, but that's the point. I don't want just some stock image, I want something more meaningful. I want you to draw it.”

“I don't know...” Flick said. Two minutes ago, Flick would have readily admitted that he was pretty good at drawing bugs, but the idea of somebody using a drawing of his for a permanent tattoo made him feel self-conscious about his abilities.

“I'll pay you,” Cherry said.

“No! That makes it worse!”

“You're so weird, Flick.” Cherry laughed. Then she said, “I could see if I can get a quarter ounce or so of this shit to trade you for it.” She held up the joint.

“Maybe...”

“Is that a yes?”

“It's a maybe.”

“If it's a yes, I bet you'll be the only freshman at Leafville U who's had an original drawing made into a tattoo.”

“I dunno. My dad took me to see the student art show there last year. There's people making good stuff.”

“Your stuff is better.”

“Flatterer.”

“It's the truth.”

They sat smoking for a moment, then Flick smiled and leaned his shoulder against Cherry's, “Hey, but there is one good thing happening for me after high school. C.J. and I are moving in together. We're going to get an apartment in the city.”

“Awww!” Cherry smiled broadly and bumped her shoulder back against Flick's. “That's awesome. Congrats, dude.”

“It's gonna be so good,” Flick said dreamily. “I've got to look for a job this summer, though, so I can help cover rent.”

“Wanna wait tables with me at the pizza shop? I made pretty good tips last summer, when all the tourists were in town.”

But Flick wrinkled his nose. “No. I don't think I could be friendly to strangers for hours at a stretch.”

“That's fair, that is very fair,” Cherry laughed. “Is C.J. going to Leafville U, too?”

Flick shook his head. “He works for his dad's business, they run fishing charters. Plus he has his livestream.”

“Oh yeah,” Cherry said. “I watched his stream once. I'm not even into fishing, but he's fun to watch.”

“I know, right?”

“I was actually wondering if maybe the band could stream some practices, if that would, like, help keep interest up between gigs.”

“Oh my gosh, C.J. would love to talk your ear off about setting that up.”

Cherry laughed. “I'll bet. It's probably more hassle than I want, though.”

Flick daydreamed for a moment, then said, “He's gonna make it big with his livestream, I can feel it. I mean, he's so cute and funny and smart, of course he is. A-and someday, he and I are going to build out a camper on this truck that we can live in, and we're going to travel all over the continent, from the Yukon to Mexico, New York to California, all over. And he's going to do his fishing stream from all these new locations, and I'll get to go look for new bugs. And, and our life is going to be this long, epic adventure. It's going to be perfect.”

Cherry grinned at him. “Big dreams.”

“It's gonna happen.”

As if on cue, C.J. walked up to the side of the truck. Flick was thoroughly high by now; the world felt like a warm and friendly place, and he felt exquisitely happy and comfortable, lounging languidly with Cherry in the truck bed, gazing at his beautiful and talented boyfriend. C.J. smiled at Flick and said, “There you are. I turned my back for one minute and you disappeared.”

“Sorry,” Flick said. “I was going to text you where I was. I, um, got distracted.” He shrugged one shoulder and handed the joint back to Cherry.

She offered it to C.J. “You want some? There's a little bit left.”

“No thanks, I'm driving,” C.J. said.

She offered it back to Flick, but he said, “You can finish it.”

Cherry smoked the last little bit of herb, then licked her fingers and pinched out lingering embers on the rolling paper and filter. She said to C.J., “We were just talking about life and shit. Sorry, C.J., but I'm stealing your boyfriend. He's way too cute.” She hugged Flick's arm, and Flick giggled.

C.J. smiled and said, “You had your opportunity,” referring to the handful of awkward dates Cherry and Flick went on before they both realized they were more interested in different people.

But Cherry only laughed. “No, I never had a chance. He's only got eyes for you.” She let go of Flick and said to him, “I'll see you around, yeah?”

Flick nodded. “I'm sure I'll turn up at school at least once or twice before the end of the year.”

“And one of those times you'd better have that luna moth drawing for me. I'm counting on you, Flick.”

Flick sighed. “Yeah, okay.”

Cherry's eyebrows shot up. “Really? For serious?”

“Sure.”

“Oh my gosh, thank you!” She leaned over and hugged him briefly. “You are the best. I will absolutely get that payment for you.” She got out of the truck bed and waved to the both of them. “I'll see you guys later.”

Flick and C.J. said goodbye, and once Cherry was gone, Flick knelt on the truck bed and leaned over the side panel to put his arms around C.J.'s neck and kiss him. C.J. smiled and said, “You taste so smoky, I'm going to get a contact high just from kissing you.”

Flick giggled again.

“What was that about a drawing?”

“She wants me to design a tattoo for her.”

“Whoa. That's awesome.”

“I dunno. It feels kind of weird. It's a more high-stakes drawing than what I usually do.”

“Yeah, but you always work so hard at all your drawings, and I imagine you'll work extra hard on this one,” C.J. said. “What's the payment?”

“Weed.”

“Hmm.” C.J.'s smile faded a little. “How come you're getting high at ten in the morning anyway?”

Flick shrugged sheepishly. “Parties make me feel weird.”

“We can leave.”

“No, we just got here, I don't want to make you leave right away.”

“It's fine. I made an appearance.”

“Don't you want to see your other friends?”

“I did. And there'll be more opportunities.”

“Honestly, at this point I'd be fine just laying in the truck bed and watching the clouds for the next hour if you want to go back to the party,” Flick said.

“But did you want to do something together?” C.J. asked.

“Mmm... yeah, kinda.” Flick took his hands from behind C.J.'s neck and instead slipped them into the sleeves of his t-shirt, sliding his hands over C.J.'s bare shoulders and back as he kissed him deeply again. Weed usually made him more amorous than usual, and what he had smoked today seemed to make him especially so.

As they broke from the kiss, C.J. murmured, “And what exactly did you have in mind?”

Flick took a hand out of C.J.'s shirt and grabbed his wrist to check the time on C.J.'s smart watch. “My dad will have gone to work by now. We could go back to my bedroom.”

“Heh. But my dad is home today. If he sees the truck across the street, he'll know exactly what we're doing.”

“So? He knows you're skipping today.”

“Yeah, but it feels different, skipping to go to a party at the beach with thirty other kids versus skipping to go have sex with my boyfriend across the street.”

Flick smirked. “You're such a prude.”

“I most definitely am not!” C.J. laughed. “I just don't need my dad, of all people, knowing my business.”

“Fine,” Flick said. “So what do you want to do?” He put his hand back inside C.J.'s shirt, tracing his fingertips over his shoulder blades.

C.J. took a slow breath and said, “Go back to your bedroom. But maybe we could park in the school lot and walk home from there.”

“Prude,” Flick said again, smiling.

C.J. gave him a look, then said in a mock serious voice. “I dunno, maybe I shouldn't be taking advantage of you at all when you're in this state.”

“You're a prude and a tease. You'd better take advantage of me,” Flick dug his fingernails into C.J.'s back just enough to make him gasp. “But if we're going to be pedantic about it, I don't think you're really taking advantage of me when I'm basically throwing myself at you.”

C.J. hummed happily.

Flick continued. “You're right, though. The state I'm in, you could probably talk me into anything. Is there anything kinky you want to try? You could tie me down and whip me.”

“Oh my god, no, I don't want to tie you down and whip you!” C.J laughed incredulously. Then he lowered his voice and asked, “Wait, do... do you want to do that?”

Flick thought about it for a second. “No... I don't think so.”

“Okay then,” C.J. giggled.

They got into the truck and started to drive home. Flick was looking forward to the sex, but it was a long enough drive that his mind started to wander. C.J. had his livestream, Cherry had her band, Bam had baseball. None of those things were inherently more practical than art, and yet they were all doing something with them, they were making them work. What was he doing with art? Nothing important, nothing valuable. Designing a tattoo was a practical—well, semi-practical—use of his art skills, but he knew that wasn't what he wanted to do with his art long term, it was just a favor for a friend. And now he also started to wonder if Cherry had only asked him out of pity. He thought back to their conversation. When he said, I don't know what else to do with my life, did he sound pathetic? Did Cherry only ask him to do this because she felt sorry for him?

Letting one worry into his brain opened up the door for other worries. Why did C.J. care if his dad knew he was at Flick's house? Both their fathers knew they were in a relationship, and must surely be assuming at this point that they were sexually intimate. Did C.J. truly want to leave the party, or did he only agree because Flick had been touching him and kissing him—had Flick been unintentionally manipulative? And what if all this passion and chemistry he felt with C.J. was just sexual tension, and once they were living together and were able to have sex as often as they liked, things would fizzle out like it had with Cherry and Katt? Did he and C.J. want different things out of life? What did Flick even want? He was going to college out of a grim sense of obligation, but he had zero expectations of it actually improving his life in any tangible way. Why did everyone else seem to know what they were doing, and he always felt so adrift?

He was so preoccupied that he didn't realize where they were until C.J. parked the truck in front of his house. Flick looked around, then with a tentative smile said, “I thought you were going to park at school?”

“Ah, I figured you were right. What does it matter if my dad knows I'm here?” C.J. smiled at him, then said, “You were so quiet on the drive. Is something on your mind?”

Flick smiled more warmly now. “Nothing important. Let's head inside.” They walked up the sidewalk and Flick unlocked the front door. “After, uh, bedroom activities, maybe we could go back out if you want? It's such a nice day.”

“Yeah, I'd like that,” C.J. said. “Fern Lake is usually pretty quiet on weekdays. Or we could go out to Hermit River, but that's more of a drive.”

“Either one is fine by me. You pick.”

“I'll think it over.”

Flick locked the front door behind them. He was starting to get hungry now, so he said, “And maybe we could make some sandwiches? Pack a little picnic to bring with? Or just swing by Trader Joe's and buy something.”

“Oh my gosh, a picnic sounds super cute and, like, so wholesome.”

Flick turned around to smirk at him. “Right after we have all that filthy sex.”

C.J. laughed. “A little less wholesome, but I am so here for it.”

Flick did wind up graduating from high school, even though his attendance hadn't improved tremendously; there was one day where his father had gone in for a long conference with the vice principal and afterwards didn't tell Flick what exactly they had talked about, which left Flick assuming that Nat had pulled whatever strings he could to allow Flick to graduate with his class. Flick had hoped that finishing high school would also be the end of his father nagging him about his education, but instead he only transitioned to nagging him about college instead. One day, Nat said to him in a faux-helpful voice, “You know, you're not required to declare a major until your junior year. There's no need to rush into the art program.”

Flick was laying on the couch scrolling on his phone. He sighed, and did not look up when he answered. “If I'm going to college, all I'm interested in studying is art. I'm sure.”

Nat sat down in the arm chair and picked up the newspaper. “Art is fine for a minor, or even a second major. But your primary focus should be something more... career oriented.”

Flick put his phone down and gave his father a look. “Mom was a working artist.”

Nat lowered the paper and looked at Flick over his glasses. “Your mother used her undergrad degree in biology to parlay into a career in botanical illustration.”

“I specifically avoided bio in high school because I didn't want to do dissections, I'm sure as hell not going to major in it.”

“It doesn't have to be biology, there are plenty of other programs you can pair with art to make it more lucrative. Study any field of science, and you could do illustrations, too. I've seen your drawings, I know you have an excellent attention to detail. You could absolutely do scientific illustration. Or, you know, you did so well in your Psychology class last year, you could major in psych and be an art therapist.”

“Ugh, no.”

“Double major in art and education and you could teach high school art. Or do that and continue on to get your Master's to teach at the college level. Study art history and communication and you could write, or work in a museum. Study art and business and you could open a gallery. Study art and technology and you could go into graphic design.”

“I don't want to do any of that.”

“Flick, you need to think of your future. What do you expect to do with a bachelor's degree in studio art?”

Flick didn't have a good answer for that, so he went back to his phone. After a minute, he grumbled, “I just want to be a better artist.”

Nat scoffed, and picked up his newspaper again, shuffling the pages noisily. Flick did not like the tension that was in the air now and was about to get up to leave when Nat folded his newspaper and set it aside, muttering, “You remind me so much of your mother sometimes.”

Nat's tone had not been particularly kind, but Flick was intrigued; his mother had died when he was eight and they rarely talked about her. He turned his phone off and asked quietly, “How so?”

“You lack ambition, just like she lacked ambition. Her illustration work was incredible. She could have published her own books, she could have sold original drawings and prints for a fortune. She could have gone down in history alongside John James Audubon and Ernst Haeckel. If she'd finished her PhD, she could have taught at the best universities. Instead, she just did contract work, because it was something she could pick up whenever she had the time and interest. She's not even credited by name in any of the field guides that have her illustrations, it's a disgrace. She never had the drive to be successful, she just wanted to make a few drawings in the spare moments between everything else.”

Flick frowned. “I suppose by 'everything else' you mean taking care of me when I was little and keeping house for you.”

Nat said, “That's not the point. We could have afforded a nanny. And obviously in retrospect, I'm glad you had as much time with her as you did, even if you were too young to remember much. The point is she had an unbelievable, innate talent, but she wasted it, just like you're wasting your talent. She could have been so much more than a wife and mother and freelance illustrator. I could never understand her lack of motivation, when she had so much obvious potential. It drove me crazy with her and it drives me crazy with you. You are clearly so smart, and you could do great things, but instead left to your own devices, you would prefer to do nothing. It's maddening.”

Art isn't nothing, Flick thought, his brow furrowed. And I want a good relationship with C.J., that's not nothing either. But he knew he couldn't voice any convincing argument right now; his dad knew how to poke all his vulnerabilities and Flick felt a little sick, uncomfortable with the mix of admiration and frustration in his dad's speech. After a minute of silence, Flick got up and left the room.

By the end of June, Flick managed to get a part-time job shelving books at the library downtown. It was a job he tolerated well because the library was so quiet and he found it to be unexpectedly satisfying to sort books by the Dewey Decimal System; it helped also that on his first day of training, he'd been specifically instructed that it was not his responsibility to assist library patrons and that he should instead direct them to more experienced library staff. Flick usually rode his bike to work, but sometimes C.J. would pick him up in the truck, occasionally even coming by after a charter, towing the giant, thirty-foot boat and awkwardly parking in the back of the library parking lot, just for the pleasure of seeing Flick a little sooner than he might otherwise, something Flick found equally endearing and embarrassing.

That summer, he and C.J. went apartment hunting in secret, because Flick was sure that his father would only disparage his efforts and he did not want to deal with that negativity until he had a success to report. So it was with great pleasure one day in August that he announced at dinner, “Dad? C.J. and I signed a lease on an apartment downtown today. I'm moving out September first.”

“Oh.” Nat seemed stunned. “I... I didn't realize you were even considering this.”

“I know,” Flick said with a grin.

Flick was surprised that, rather than being angry or dismissive, his father instead looked sad, and Flick's smile faded. “Okay,” Nat said, and after a pause he subtly wiped his nose and forced a small smile. “What's the address?”

“Um, 210 West Tulip Street. I-it's on the same block as Brewster's Coffee, around the corner from that shop where I bought my bike.”

Nat nodded. “I know the area.”

There was an awkward silence. Flick had been expecting a confrontation and the necessity to defend his choices. Instead he was feeling guilty for having kept this a secret. “It, it's just a tiny little studio apartment on the third floor of this old house. But it's cheap, and close to the university.”

Nat nodded again. “You and C.J. don't need much space, though. The two of you could live together in a shoe box and still get along.” He smiled at Flick and Flick smiled back. After another pause, Nat said, “Well, then.” He picked up his plate and scraped the rest of his dinner into the garbage. “We'll have to go through kitchen utensils later, see what duplicates we have that you can take with you. We have so many towels, too, plenty for you to take some. You can have the blender. I never use it, and I know you like to make those, those fruit drinks.” He loaded his plate and cup into the dishwasher. “Will you two need a mattress? Don't get a secondhand one, there's no way to be sure it's not full of bedbugs. Anything upholstered.”

“Y-yeah, I know,” Flick said. “We've already talked about it. A mattress was pretty much the only thing we were planning to buy new. C.J.'s dad has an old couch that he might bring by later, if there's space for it.”

Nat nodded. After a pause, he sighed and said again, “Well, then.” Then he walked out of the room, leaving Flick to finish dinner alone.

On August thirty-first, Flick, Nat, C.J. and Chip loaded boxes and furniture into the back of C.J.'s truck, and after that was full they attached Chip's snowmobile trailer to the back and loaded the rest onto that. “You two have so much to move tomorrow,” Nat said to Flick. “Are you sure I can't help? I can follow behind in the car and help carry things upstairs.”

“No, we can manage on our own,” Flick said, absolutely not wanting his father tagging along tomorrow; the imagery in his head was driving away and leaving his father behind, and he wanted to do everything in his power to make that happen. But then he thought he could at least try to be more polite about it. “With your bad knees? I'm not going to make you carry all our crap up three flights of stairs.”

Nat sighed and shrugged, and his face resumed the same distant, preoccupied expression he'd had for the better part of the last month.

As they sat down to dinner that night, Flick tried to be friendly and make conversation during his last dinner here, so he asked Nat, “What are you going to do once you don't have to look after me all the time? I know you haven't always been the biggest fan of academia. Do you think you'll get back into field work?”

“Ha! Quitting two years after I finally get tenure? That'd be a real kick in the pants for the dean, wouldn't it?” Nat smiled. “No, if nothing else, I'd stick around at least as long as you're enrolled, so that you can get the faculty child scholarship. But I think my days of serious field work are probably behind me. Bad knees and all.”

Flick cringed a little.

Nat continued, “Getting back into hands-on research would be nice, though. I'll probably take a sabbatical at some point in the next few years.”

“Where do you think you'll go?” Flick asked.

Finally now, Nat perked up. “South Africa. I'd like to revisit my doctoral research to see how a quarter century of climate change has affected the Tettigoniidae of the region. There's been so many papers on invasive pests and agriculture, but almost nothing on the native, endemic insects.” Flick smiled as he listened to his father enthusiastically talk about his research on katydids for a few minutes. Then Nat said, “Going back to South Africa would also give me the opportunity to finally spread your mother's ashes in Coffee Bay like she wanted. I've held onto them long enough, it's time.” He thought for a moment. “You should join me! Not for the whole year, of course, but just to pop in for a few weeks.”

“I... I don't know...” Flick hesitated. “I mean, I have actual memories from London, if anything I think I'd rather go back there.”

“Oh, but South Africa is so much more beautiful. And you could get to know your mother's family! I don't think any of them would want to see me again, considering I stole their girl and then she died. But I'm sure they'd love to meet you.”

“Heh. I don't know how thrilled they'd be to meet their long-lost gay, effeminate nephew or whatever.”

“Tsk. Don't put yourself down like that.”

“I didn't mean it as a put-down,” Flick said. “Besides, didn't you just sort of blame yourself for Mom's death? If anything, it's their fault, since cancer risk is a genetic thing.”

Nat eyed him for a second, then smiled wryly. “Maybe you don't need to go to college after all, I think you're too smart already.” Flick smiled back at him. Nat said, “At any rate, it would be a few years off. You have plenty of time to think about it.”

Right now, traveling with his father on some emotionally charged trip sounded like misery, but maybe after two or three or four years in which they weren't a daily, antagonistic presence in each other's lives, they'd be able to find some peace and common ground. Most of the time that seemed impossible, but tonight, for this last dinner, they were both making some effort, and so for the rest of the meal the conversation shifted to more mundane matters—Flick's classes this semester, the last minute things he'd need to grab in the morning, and so on. But then, just as they were finishing the meal, Nat said, “Flick, I know we haven't always gotten along, but I just want to say that if anything goes wrong in terms of school or work or finances or relationships—anything at all—you're always welcome to come back home.”

Flick bit his tongue and resisted making a snarky comment, trying to keep this last dinner civil. “Dad, it'll be fine...”

“I just wanted to make the offer,” Nat cut him off. “I could also deposit some money into your bank account every month if you need me to. No one would even need to know about it.”

Flick was too frustrated to hold back now. “Dad, no. First off, I don't keep secrets from C.J., and secondly, I don't need your charity. You're already paying for the rest of the tuition that's not covered by the scholarship, that's more than enough.”

“I'm only trying to help.”

“Well, you're doing it in a way that implies that you think I'm incapable.”

“I said no such thing. You are being far too sensitive.”

“You're treating me like a child.”

“Of course I am, Flick,” Nat said with a gentle laugh. “You're always going to be my little boy.” Flick's anger softened. But then Nat continued, “I only want you to be successful. And goodness knows that little library job of yours isn't going to cut it.”

“For fuck's sake,” Flick muttered under his breath. “This is what I'm talking about,” he said. “And getting that quote-unquote 'little library job' was a big deal for me! You told me yourself that you were proud of me.”

“I was, and I am. But that was when I thought you were just earning some spending money for yourself. Fifteen hours a week at whatever paltry wage the library pays isn't going to be enough when you have rent and bills to pay. And you know it's not fair to C.J. for you to not pull your own weight—you can't rely on his generosity forever.”

“Dad, that's...” Flick felt a twinge of fear in his stomach, but he pushed it aside to be angry instead. “How is it any better to rely on you and your money? I'm an adult and you need to let me figure this out on my own. If I'm going to fail, you need to just let me fail.”

“There's nothing wrong with accepting help.”

“There is if it comes from a hypercritical narcissist with a savior complex.”

“Good Christ,” Nat said. “Flick, you are being ridiculously melodramatic about this,” he said, and left the room. And so Flick's last dinner at home wound up being like so many other dinners at home.

Flick wasn't particularly proud of his behavior at dinner. Most of the time he felt like a calm and reasonable adult, but his dad knew just how to push his buttons and make him act like a petulant child. He went to his bedroom, had one last quick glance around to make sure there was nothing else he wanted to pack, then he laid down in bed and texted C.J., hey.

Immediately C.J. texted back, hey.

what are you up to?

Cleaning. Packing. Getting ready for bed. You?

same, Flick texted. our last night sleeping alone.

I know, C.J. responded, adding a smiley face emoji. I can't wait to live with you.

i love you so much, Flick texted. you know, we've made some good memories in these skinny little twin sized beds. but it'll be even better to make more memories in our new big bed.

Yeeesss. I'll be able to kiss you good night and kiss you good morning, hold you all night long, reach out and touch you anytime I want. A pause, then C.J. texted, Hey, wanna FaceTime?

Flick bit his bottom lip and grinned. But then he texted back, nah, i don't really feel like it tonight. i just finished up having one last fight with my dad for old time's sake.

You know that's not your last fight with him.

lol, i guess. last time while i'm living here maybe? no, we could probably squeeze one in tomorrow morning, too.

lol, C.J. texted. What was it about?

just him reminding me that i'm a failure and always will be a failure.

You're not a failure. You're working hard and doing incredible things, C.J. texted, and although it didn't feel true, Flick let him say it without argument. C.J. texted, What did he say?

Flick didn't want to tell him what Nat had said about relying on C.J. because he was too afraid it might be true. basically that when everything goes to shit that i can come back home. and he offered to send me money every month. like specifically he even said he would do it in secret so that you wouldn't know about it.

lol, why? C.J. texted. Does he think I would care?

i think so that i can pretend i'm not a loser who needs money from daddy.

I know you don't want his help. And we don't need it. But I do think he means well.

it doesn't feel like it.

I know, C.J. texted. We're heading out after breakfast tomorrow, right? So you only have like twelve-ish hours that you're stuck there. Eight of which will be spent asleep.

Flick sighed. wanna sneak out and spend one last night in the tree house with me instead??

lol. Yes. But we shouldn't. We should try to get better sleep than that if we're moving tomorrow.

Flick smiled. always so practical.

This time tomorrow we'll be in our bed together. And every other night after that.

i am yours forever. i love you so much.

I love you.

The next day when Flick woke up, the first thing he did was check his phone, and he saw that C.J. had texted him half an hour earlier, Good morning, beautiful.

Flick was in a mood, so he raised his phone above him to take a selfie to send back to C.J. Then he thought for a second, took off his shirt, rearranged the blankets, and then took the selfie. He sent it with the text, i just woke up.

C.J. immediately responded, No fair sending me thirst traps when I'm trying to eat breakfast.

haha, Flick texted. is it weird that i'm going to kinda miss texting you like this?

C.J. wrote back, I mean, I get that. But also I'd much rather be throwing you down into bed right now instead of covering up my phone with my hand and trying to have a casual conversation with my dad.

loooooool, Flick texted. so now is probably not the best time to describe to you in detail what i'd like you to do when you throw me down into bed...?

Flick saw that his text was read, and after a long pause C.J. wrote back, Don't you dare.

or what? Flick texted. or you'll punish me? Flick giggled.

After another pause, C.J. texted back, Fuck you.

Flick cackled. mmm, yes please, but that doesn't sound like a punishment to me.

You are the worst, C.J. texted.

so bad. so very very bad.

I'm going to turn my phone off.

Flick giggled again. i suppose i should get started on the day anyway.

The sooner you do, the sooner we can get going.

and the sooner you can throw me down into bed.

EXACTLY.

Flick put his shirt back on and got up. As he left his bedroom, he was determined to hold onto these good feelings and not let his dad ruin the morning, but as it turned out, he didn't have to try too hard because his dad scarcely said more than good morning to him. Flick ate breakfast and showered, then started packing up things like his pajamas, his toothbrush, his pillow. As he walked through the house scanning the rooms, Nat said to him, “It's only a fifteen minute drive, or thirty minutes by bus. If you forget anything, it'd be pretty easy to come get it. Your apartment is so close to the university, I could even drop something off before work if you need me to.”

“Y-yeah,” Flick said. “And C.J. will be over at his dad's all the time, too, for fishing charter stuff, he could get things for me, too. I just want to be sure I'm not forgetting anything important.” Flick knew that in reality this would not be the last day he would set foot in this house; the apartment was so small that he wasn't able to bring everything, and he was leaving behind a whole bookshelf full of books, his big terrarium with the heat lamp, all the art he'd made in high school, and piles of other odds and ends strewn around his bedroom, with the assumption that he could come get them as needed or when he and C.J. moved to a bigger place. But he didn't want to have to come back any time soon.

Flick looked out the kitchen window and saw C.J. and Chip loading more boxes into the truck, so he went outside. C.J. looked up at him, and for a second, Flick saw a devilish glint in his eyes, but then he smiled and said, “Hey, Flick. How much more stuff do you have?”

“Not much. My backpack and a bag with my pillow and blankets and stuff.”

“The backpack can go in front with us, and there's probably space in one of these boxes for your bedding.”

“I'll go get them,” Flick said, and as he turned around he saw that his dad had followed him outside. “Oh, hey,” he said. “I'm just grabbing the last of my stuff.”

“Do you need any help?” Nat asked.

“No. It's just two things, I've got this.”

Flick got his bags, and when he came back outside he saw the fathers were talking, so he walked up to C.J. by the truck. C.J. took the bag with the bedding in one hand and with the other hand hooked a finger in the collar of Flick's shirt and pulled him in close to whisper in his ear, “You will definitely be needing this pillow later today if we don't want to disturb our new neighbors.”

Flick giggled. “I can't wait,” he whispered back.

C.J. opened up boxes until he found one with room for Flick's bedding and Flick tossed his backpack in the front seat, and that was that. C.J. walked over to Chip to say goodbye and give him a hug. Nat and Flick both watched them, then Nat walked up to Flick with his hands in his pockets and a stoic expression on his face. They looked at each other. “Well,” Flick said. “I guess I'll see you later.”

“I hope so,” Nat said.

Flick's shoulders slumped. “I will. Dad, it's not...” He sighed. “We just need some time apart, you know?”

“Maybe,” Nat said.

And then there was nothing more to say, so they just stood there and waited, Flick leaning against the truck and Nat standing on the sidewalk, until C.J. walked up to them. “You all ready?” he asked Flick.

Flick smiled at him. “Yes.”

C.J. said to Nat, “I'll see you around,” and Flick waved to Chip, and they got into the truck and drove off.

Flick breathed a big sigh. C.J. laughed softly and said, “So how's it feel?”

“Such a relief,” Flick said. “I have been looking forward to this day for, like, a year.”

C.J. smiled, but then said, “Your poor dad looked like he was about to cry, though.”

“I know,” Flick said. “I kinda feel bad about that.”

“What did you guys say?”

“Nothing, really. I mean, what is there to say?” Flick shrugged. “Besides, he and I can't really have a conversation right now without at least one of us overreacting and getting mean.”

“I guess,” C.J. said. Then he added, “You should have hugged him.”

Flick laughed dryly. “I haven't hugged him since I was, like, nine. I'm not about to start up again now.” When C.J. didn't respond, Flick looked over at him. He had a thoughtful expression on his face, but when he glanced over at Flick and caught his eye, he smiled and reached over to hold Flick's hand.

C.J. had texted as they left home, and the landlord was waiting for them in the apartment. “Hello, hello!” the landlord said. “I took the liberty of opening the windows for you. It can get a bit stuffy up here on warm days, hm?”

“Thanks, Mr. Nook,” C.J. said.

“Now then, just a bit of paperwork to get out of the way. This acknowledges that I gave you both your keys and that the apartment is clean and everything is in working order when you moved in. Feel free to read it over.”

Flick and C.J. glanced at the form and signed the bottom.

Mr. Nook tore off the carbon copy and handed it back to them. “There's a copy for you to keep, and another copy of the rental agreement, just for reference. Did either of you have any questions right now?”

Flick and C.J. looked at each other, then shook their heads. “Nah, I don't think so,” C.J. said.

“Well, if you think of anything later, all my contact information is in the rental agreement, you can reach out any time. Welcome to your new home.” He smiled and let himself out.

C.J. locked the door after him, then turned around to face Flick. “Our new home,” Flick said.

“All ours,” C.J. said. “I wonder what the landlord thought of the two of us renting this little place together.”

“Oh, I thought he was gay, too,” Flick said.

“Heh. Why do you say that?”

“I dunno. Just a feeling, I guess. Just kind of a general vibe. At any rate, he never said anything about us, unlike some of the other landlords we met with that made dumb comments about the number of bedrooms. This place is so small, even if you did put two beds in here, neither person would have much privacy. If we're living here together, it's pretty obvious we're not just roommates.”

C.J. grinned. “No. We are definitely not just roommates.” He walked up to Flick and kissed him, pressing his body into Flick's.

Flick broke away from the kiss and said, “I thought you said you were going to throw me down into bed.”

“I don't need the bed,” C.J. murmured, and hefted Flick up onto the kitchen counter.

“What about all our stuff in the truck out on the street?”

“It can wait five minutes,” C.J. said, and went back to kissing Flick. Flick wrapped his legs around C.J.'s body, but just then there was a knock at the door. “God damn it,” C.J. muttered. He took a few seconds to compose himself before answering the door.

“Oho,” Mr. Nook said. “Sorry to interrupt. I just realized I forgot to give you keys to the laundry room.”

“Thanks,” C.J. said as he took the keys.

Mr. Nook glanced over at Flick perched on the kitchen counter. Flick smiled at him shyly, and Mr. Nook cleared his throat and looked away. “Enjoy the rest of your day, boys,” he said, and left again.

C.J. closed and locked the door once more and Flick giggled. C.J. sighed. “Should we go haul in our things?”

“I suppose,” Flick said.

The apartment was smaller than Flick had remembered. It had been advertised as “open concept” but what that actually meant was that it was basically just one room. The front door led to the small kitchen, and an island countertop separated that space from the living room area. Off to one side was the bathroom—the only door that closed inside the apartment—and on the other side a curtain hung from the ceiling to partition off a bedroom area. As they carried in their furniture and boxes, the apartment started to feel uncomfortably full. “Did we bring too much stuff?” Flick asked as he stabilized a stack of boxes.

“Nah,” C.J. said. “It won't be so bad once we get everything unpacked and put away. It'll be like a puzzle. But we can totally make this place cozy.”

After they had brought everything in, C.J. said, “I guess I should bring the trailer back to my dad's place.” Then he paused and smiled. “Heh. It's 'my dad's place' now.”

Flick walked up to him. “Kiss me before you go.”

C.J. wrapped his arms around Flick and kissed him. “I'll be back in, like, half an hour.”

“Home,” Flick corrected. “You'll be home in half an hour.”

C.J. hugged him close. “Yeah. I'll be home.” He kissed him again. “Hey, you wanna order some food while I'm out? I'm starving. Also, we should plan to, like, go get groceries tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I can order something. Any requests?”

“Nah, you pick.”

Flick pulled C.J. into him and gazed dreamily into his eyes. “Maybe we could wait a bit on all that, though?” He kissed him again.

C.J. kissed him back. “Mmm, but neither of us have eaten since breakfast. We should at least get the food. And I may as well take the trailer back while we wait. Because I'm sure as hell not going to want to put on pants and drive across town and back after food and sex.”

Flick sighed and said in a mock-whine, “But I have been waiting all day. You promised to throw me down into bed.”

“And I will.”

Flick kissed trailed kisses down his neck. “Seriously, though,” he murmured. “You have a charter tomorrow afternoon, don't you? So you'll be going back to your dad's anyway. Wait until then.”

C.J. hummed. “Don't tempt me.”

“I'm tempting you,” Flick said as he undid the buttons of C.J.'s shorts. “C'mon, let's go lay down for a while.”

C.J. let Flick's hand explore for a minute, then he pulled it away. “We're taking up two parking spots on the street, I don't want to piss off our new neighbors on our first day here. You can wait an hour.” He closed up his shorts.

“You're so mean to me.”

“I can be mean to you later if you want.”

Flick giggled. “No. You're never actually mean to me.” He kissed him once more. “I guess I'll see you in half an hour.”

After C.J. left, Flick ordered some Chinese food, then started unpacking a few essentials. He put sheets and pillows on the bed, and dug out enough dishes to eat dinner. He laid out some basic toiletries in the bathroom and lube and towels next to the bed. It felt good to be setting things up, to be feathering a nest, and Flick was anxious for C.J. to return so that they could be together again, so that this cluttered little apartment would feel more like a home. As Flick worked, he daydreamed about some future where they had not just a six hundred square foot apartment but a whole house where Flick could have a room just for his art studio and C.J. could have a room for his streaming set-up, and they'd have a yard with a garden, maybe even a few acres of property, and a garage for the truck and camper so they could take off on adventures whenever the mood struck. The actual, real-life logistics of the two of them buying a house felt unbelievably monumental, but also, at least on good days like today, almost inevitable.

The food arrived just as C.J. came back, and he brought it up with him, saying, “Wow, you got a feast.”

“You said you were hungry. Plus I thought it would be good to have leftovers. Just in case we don't actually get around to grocery shopping tomorrow.”

“We gotta get groceries tomorrow.”

“We will make every effort.”

“We really gotta.”

“Mm-hm.”

There was no space in the apartment for a table, so they ate at the kitchen island counter, and they talked about how to arrange the furniture, what else they might need to buy (a doormat, a window fan) and started a grocery list on the back of the paper bag the Chinese food was delivered in. When they finished, they packed away the leftovers in the fridge and put their dirty dishes in the sink to wash after they bought some dish soap. Then C.J. said, “Flick, I know it's only, like, six-thirty, but would you like to come to bed with me?”

Flick laughed and said, “Finally!”

Chapter Text

C.J. had woken up beside Flick more times than he could count. They had known each other since they were eleven, and for the first six years of their relationship when they were just friends, they'd had sleepovers almost every weekend through the summer and at least once a month during the school year; every time C.J., who had been nursing a crush since day one, had wondered if there would come a day where they would get to spend the night together not ensconced in separate sleeping bags, where he'd be able to wrap his arm around Flick's waist and feel the warmth of Flick's body next to his. They had started dating at age seventeen and their relationship had become more physical, but opportunities for sex were always brief and fleeting, and usually limited to times when one of them had the house to themselves; they had wanted to go on some camping trip this past summer, but between work schedules and apartment hunting they had never found the time. They had only spent the whole night together a handful of times since they had started dating, most recently being last winter, when Flick's dad had some weekend conference that required an overnight stay. Flick had texted C.J. the minute Nat drove away that Saturday morning, and C.J. immediately went downstairs and said to his dad, “I'm going to go spend the day with Flick.”

“Hold up a second,” Chip said. “Nat's out of town for the weekend, isn't he? Does he know you're going over there?”

C.J. hated lying to his dad, so he said, “Well... I didn't specifically ask, but knowing Flick, probably not.”

C.J. saw a hint of a smile on his dad's face that he was clearly trying to suppress, then Chip said, “So I suppose you'll be there all day then, eh?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

“Well,” Chip said. “I've got that ice fishing charter tomorrow morning. So I'll be going to bed early tonight and heading out at dawn tomorrow.”

“Wait, I thought I was coming with on that charter.”

Chip shook his head. “I've got it. My point is,” he said, emphasizing his words. “I will be going to bed early tonight and I will be gone in the morning. So I won't see you until tomorrow afternoon.”

C.J. finally caught on. “Oh. Yeah. Okay. I-I'll see you tomorrow afternoon.”

So he and Flick had gotten to spend all of that Saturday and half of Sunday together. There had been, of course, a lot of sex, but they had also made dinner together—C.J. cutting up veggies and Flick cooking rice and mixing a sauce for stir-fry—and watched a movie on the couch. They'd slept side by side in Flick's skinny twin-sized bed, luxuriating in the opportunity for contact all night long, and when they'd finally got out of bed the next morning, they made breakfast together, C.J. scrambling eggs and Flick frying pancakes. And it's not like that weekend hadn't been incredible, but it had also felt like just another stolen moment, or like they were playing house.

This was different. C.J. already knew that Flick never snored, that he fell asleep on his side and woke up on his back, that he was a heavy sleeper except when he was dreaming at which point his whole body would twitch and flail and his face was more expressive than it often was when he was awake, and that sometimes he had nightmares that would wake him up in a panic and that he never wanted to talk about. He knew that Flick took a long time to get going in the morning and if given the chance would lounge in bed for hours before getting up. He knew how to touch Flick to make him gasp or moan or laugh with pleasure. And yet, waking up beside Flick today somehow felt like a whole new experience. It was their first night in their new bed—brand new furniture just for them that they had paid for together—and their first night in their first apartment. And it was the first time, C.J. realized now, that he had a designated side of the bed. He hadn't given it any thought last night, had just plugged in his phone and laid down, but now he wondered if he'd be on the left side with Flick to his right for years, or forever. Right now, everything felt magical—the warm, golden sunlight shining in the window above them, the mess of sheets and blankets, Flick's steady breath beside him, and having a side of the bed.

C.J. watched Flick sleep, and after a while Flick started to dream; his shoulders shrugged and his brow furrowed and his fingers tapped on the blanket as if he were playing the piano. There was no way to know what kind of dream he was having, but C.J. wanted to make it a good one, so he leaned over and kissed Flick's bicep, then trailed kisses up to his shoulder. Flick's body stilled. C.J. kissed along Flick's clavicle, and Flick's breathing deepened. C.J. kissed up his neck to his jawline. Flick hummed, and his eyes fluttered open. He laughed sleepily. “What a way to wake up,” he said.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” C.J. murmured. Flick pulled C.J.'s mouth to his to return the kiss, and as they kissed, Flick took C.J.'s hand and put it where he wanted it.

Afterward, C.J. said, “We should get up. We got stuff to do today.”

“No, I don't wanna,” Flick said. He threw his arm over C.J.'s torso and snuggled up closer.

“I've got to leave for my charter at, like, one, so I can pick up the boat and get out to the lake in time. And we've got to get groceries.”

“But what about you?”

“What about me?”

“What about you?” Flick said again, this time in a suggestive tone of voice. He started tracing his fingertips over C.J.'s chest.

“Heh. I don't need anything right now.”

“Are you sure?” Flick's fingers glided down to C.J.'s stomach.

“Mmm, no.”

Flick's hand slid over C.J.'s body. “I can go get groceries on my bike later.”

“No, I'm not going to make you do that.”

“Why not?”

“How much could you even carry on your bike anyway?”

“Don't you remember when I found that nightstand on the curb on my way home from work once? I strapped it to the rack and carried it all the way home, and I had to get up the Third Street hill then, too. There's a supermarket, like, a mile away from here, and it's all flat ground. I can bungee a couple of bags to the rack and fill up my backpack.”

“You didn't ride up the Third Street hill with that nightstand on your bike.”

“No, I'm not a masochist, I pushed my bike up the hill. But it was still heavy, and I rode the rest of the way. I can manage groceries.”

“Mmm.” C.J. was starting to get too distracted to argue.

“Let's stay in bed for another hour or two. Then we can go get something to eat at the coffee shop on the corner. I'll get groceries while you're doing your charter.” Flick slid a leg over C.J. so that he was straddling his hips. “Honestly, C.J., do you really want to get up and go grocery shopping right now?”

“You can't ask me that when you're on top of me.”

“Do you want me to get off?”

C.J. laughed. “There are two very different meanings of that question.”

Flick laughed, too, then leaned forward and planted a hand on the pillow on either side of C.J.'s head. “Make your choice, then.”

It was an easy choice. C.J. pulled Flick in for another kiss.

Three hours later, they were finally on their way to the coffee shop. “I can't believe you can walk straight after all that,” C.J. said to Flick.

“I can't do anything straight,” Flick quipped.

“Jesus Christ,” C.J. muttered, laughing, and elbowed him.

Flick giggled, and said, “It was your idea to shower together.”

“Well, we couldn't go out unshowered after everything else.”

“No. But we needed another shower after our shower.”

“Heh heh. Yeah, we did.” C.J. grinned. “Anyway, you're the one that started things this morning.”

“I can't help it!” Flick said. “It's just too tempting having you with me all the time. I'm sure the novelty will wear off in, like, ten or twenty years.”

C.J. laughed. “I'll have to up my game after that, then.”

“See that you do.”

They held hands as they waited in line at the coffee shop and whispered in each other's ears. The muscles in C.J.'s legs and back were pleasantly sore from everything they'd done last night and this morning, and it felt exquisitely satisfying to have had that much sex. Although they'd been dating for more than a year at this point, sometimes it still felt miraculous that Flick loved him back, that he wanted C.J. as much as C.J. wanted him, that he had Flick all to himself. He glanced over at Flick and caught his eye, then ticked his head to the side to beckon Flick to lean in closer. When Flick did, C.J. gave him a quick, surprise kiss on the lips. Flick laughed under his breath and said, “You goofball.”

“I love you,” C.J. said.

“I love you more,” Flick said, and cupped a hand around C.J.'s face and brought him back in for a proper kiss.

C.J. considered how different this all felt from high school. Coming out at the beginning of his senior year had been a slightly traumatic experience, and although most of their classmates had come around in time, for the rest of the school year C.J. had still felt a palpable sense of otherness, and of having altered everyone's expectations of him. But nobody knew him in this neighborhood, and from day one he could be a gay man, Flick's boyfriend. For the first time, he was a little jealous of Flick starting college and having so many more opportunities to make social connections outside the tiny, insular world of high school. But it also felt so good just standing here with Flick in this coffee shop that he was already imagining would become a regular spot for them, and knowing that they had just come from their shared apartment, their shared bed, that they were embarking on a brand-new shared life together.

As they sat across from each other at a table drinking coffee and eating bagel sandwiches, C.J. said, “The past twenty-four hours have been so good. I'm not really looking forward to getting back into real life.”

“This is real life,” Flick said, and rubbed his foot against C.J.'s leg under the table.

“Well, but, I mean, we can't have this much sex and spend this much money on restaurant food every day.”

“No, not every day, but sometimes. Just because we're being impractical and indulgent doesn't mean it's not real life.”

“I suppose it wouldn't be as much fun if we did this every day.”

“Oh, I think it might still be fun,” Flick purred, and slid his foot up higher on C.J.'s leg.

“Stop that,” C.J. whispered with a laugh, although he did nothing to move Flick's foot. Flick held eye contact for a moment, then laughed and brought his foot back down to the floor.

C.J. reluctantly went out on his charter that afternoon; despite all the sex they'd already had, after eating and resting for a bit, he felt like he could have gone right back to bed with Flick. But it was, of course, important to go earn some money to make this whole life possible. At the beginning of the charter, he asked the client if they'd be okay with him streaming, but they'd, predictably, said no; the demographic that hired out a fishing charter was generally not the same demographic that understood or approved of livestreaming. So he stowed the bag with his laptop and camera and other gear in a waterproof compartment inside the boat, and cheerfully went about the usual charter routine, but on the inside he started feeling a little anxious. He hadn't streamed for six days now, which seemed like a dangerously long time to go without producing new content—even if he had still been posting to other social media, even if he had let his followers know he'd be moving this week. Everything he'd read said it was best to make a schedule and to stream at the same time every week so that folks knew when to tune in, but he had to work around his fishing charters, which were never at the same time every week. And he had to take on every available charter until he started making more money from streaming, but he wouldn't make more money from streaming until he could make a schedule and stream more regularly. He tried to stream every Wednesday morning—Wednesdays were the least popular days for charters anyway—but he'd missed this week because he was moving, and he'd lost three followers because of it.

It was after eight by the time he got home that night, and he was feeling tired and slightly worried about money. But as he climbed the stairs to the third floor, he could hear music faintly coming from their apartment, and he smiled to himself: Flick rarely listened to music in front of other people, even him. He paused for a moment and put his ear to the door to see if he could hear if Flick was singing along, but then he put his key in the lock and let himself in.

Flick was at his desk as he walked in. “Welcome home,” he said as he reached over to grab his phone and close out the music app.

“You don't have to turn off your music,” C.J. said.

“I don't mind,” Flick said. “Besides, I can't have a conversation and listen to music at the same time.” Flick closed up his sketchbook and put it away in a desk drawer.

Flick was shirtless, but before C.J. could ask why, he noticed something on the kitchen counter. “Holy shit, did you make brownies?”

“It's just a box mix, it was on sale at the grocery store. I suppose I should have done something more practical, like make dinner, but I wasn't sure what time you'd be home.”

“Are you kidding? Coming home to brownies and a half-naked Flick is, like, the dream.” C.J. cut himself a square of brownie.

Flick giggled. “The apartment got so hot when I had the oven on, and then I just never got around to putting my shirt back on.” Flick kissed C.J.'s cheek as he chewed, then cut off a sliver of brownie for himself, too.

“Do you think we should buy a window air conditioner?” C.J. asked.

“No, summer's almost over. Maybe we'll get one if we're still here next June.”

C.J. felt a little pinch of worry. “Why wouldn't we be here in June? Where else would we be?”

Flick shrugged. “Maybe driving to Alaska with a camper on the truck so that you can stream some big salmon fishing thing?”

Now C.J. laughed. “I'd have to start making a lot more bells from streaming than the zero I'm currently making for that to happen. And anyway, we'd break the lease.”

“Maybe by June you'll be making enough to pay whatever fee there is for breaking the lease.”

“You have way too much faith in me.”

“Nah, I have just the right amount of faith. You're C.J.! You can do anything!”

“I'm not Superman.”

“Close enough,” Flick said, and for an instant, C.J. felt both proud that Flick thought so highly of him but also terrified of letting him down. Flick continued, “Didn't you just reach some... some reward level with the streaming service? I can't remember the terms they use.”

“I got Affiliate status in July is probably what you're thinking of. I'm on track to get my first actual payout this month or next.”

“Hey, that's great!”

“I mean, it's maybe slightly faster than average...”

“You have been working so hard,” Flick interjected.

“But it's still only going to be, like, five thousand bells.”

“That's a lot more than zero, isn't it?”

C.J. shrugged. “The next monetization level is Partner, but that's a big jump. I need a ton more engagement to get there. It usually takes people a year or two or more.”

“You'll have been streaming for more than a year by next June.”

“Again, way too much faith in me.”

“Okay, fine, maybe not by June. But I bet you'll get there sooner than you think.”

“Hm.” C.J. cut off another square of brownie. “It just feels like it's taking forever. These early months are so rough. There's so much hustle for no actual money.”

“But this is what you want to do, right? And the time will pass no matter what.”

“But what if it doesn't work out?” C.J. asked. “I can't keep putting twenty or thirty hours a week into something that's not earning us a living.”

Flick cut off more brownie. “Then you scale back and just do it for fun and we find another way to make money.”

C.J. sighed.

Flick said, “Come on, you're not supposed to get angsty, that's my job.”

“I'm allowed to get angsty.”

“I mean, yeah, of course you are. But I guess my point is, is this even something to get angsty about? You just told me you're going to get your first payout faster than average. You're always telling me about how you're getting more followers and more views and all that.”

“I lost three followers this week.”

“Is that a lot?” Flick asked.

“It's down from one-twenty-seven to one-twenty-four.”

“That doesn't seem like a lot.”

“And, I mean, the follow count does fluctuate. But three in a week feels bad. I think it was because I missed my Wednesday stream.”

“Seriously? If they dropped you because of that they were probably assholes anyway.”

C.J. smiled. “It doesn't work like that, it's not like friendship.”

“Still,” Flick said. “You are being successful, you are on an upward trajectory, even if it's not a straight line. Last time I looked at your page, you only had ninety-some followers, so it's going up overall, even if you did lose three people this week who were definitely assholes that don't deserve you.” Then Flick smirked and said, “And if the fishing livestream thing doesn't work out you can always start up an Only Fans.”

Now C.J. laughed. “I'd have to bring you on board, then, because nobody wants to see just me.”

“I do,” Flick said. “Come on, you might get more followers on your livestream if you flex while you're casting your line. Maybe unzip that hoodie a little.” Flick reached out and lowered C.J.'s hoodie zipper to the bottom of his rib cage.

“I'm pretty sure the vast majority of my followers are straight dudes.”

“They won't be straight after you start strutting your stuff.”

C.J. laughed again. “You are overestimating the appeal of my stuff.”

“Excuse me,” Flick said. “Speaking as the world's leading expert on the appeal of your stuff, I beg to differ.” Flick picked off another bite of brownie. “We should eat some actual dinner, not just brownies.”

C.J.'s anxiety was gone now. He grinned and said, “Nah, let's do something else instead.” He picked up Flick and flung him over his shoulder.

Flick shrieked with laughter. “Hey! I was going to make spaghetti!”

“Later,” C.J. said, and nibbled Flick's flank.

Flick squirmed and giggled. “You are insatiable!”

C.J. carried him off to the bedroom. “You are way too cute.”

The next morning as they were waking up, Flick slid his hand over C.J.'s body. C.J. hummed dreamily but then said, “We shouldn't spend the whole morning fooling around again. Don't you work today?”

“Yeah, but not 'til, like, noon.”

“I'm gonna stream while you're at work. I'll probably just go out to Fern Lake, it's a short drive. But if we're both home in the morning we should work on unpacking some more stuff.” C.J. let Flick slide his hand over C.J.'s body for another minute, then picked it up, kissed his palm, and placed it on Flick's chest. “I'm going to send out a quick update.” He leaned over and picked up his phone.

Flick sighed, but then got his own phone and snuggled up to C.J. while he scrolled. After a minute, Flick's phone dinged in his hand. “Oh, look, my favorite streamer is going to be online later today!”

“Too bad you're working.”

“I'll tune in for a bit during my break,” Flick said. Then he added, “I wish I could go out with you.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“It's so sunny and beautiful today, I'd much rather be hanging out with you at Fern Lake than pushing my book cart up and down the stacks at the library.”

“Once I'm raking it in from streaming, you can quit your job and come out with me anytime you want. You can join me on stream and be my lovely assistant.”

Flick giggled, and kissed his cheek.

After breakfast, they started shuffling furniture around and unpacking boxes. Since Flick had worried aloud the other day that the apartment was too small, C.J. was determined to get everything set up as soon as possible, to make sure that Flick was comfortable here. C.J. was slightly concerned that he had rushed Flick into signing the lease on this place, although it was also one of the few apartments they found that they could actually afford, and the first of the half-dozen places they applied to that had actually approved their application. Mr. Nook was the only landlord who'd been willing to rent to them despite neither of them having any rental history and scant personal references; Flick had wanted C.J. to not tell his father they were looking at apartments, because Flick wasn't telling his dad until it was over and done, but in the end C.J. had to tell him, because he'd only ever been employed by his father and didn't have anyone else to list as a reference. The whole process of apartment hunting had been more nerve-wracking than C.J. had been expecting, and sometimes he thought that he had settled too quickly on this place, too, just to get it over with. Flick was right that the apartment was small, but C.J. was hopeful that it wasn't too small, that they could make it their own and be happy here together; C.J. had been dreaming about this for years, living with Flick like this, and he wanted to do everything in his power to make it as close to perfect as possible.

As they were unpacking, Flick asked, “Do you mind if I have my desk by the window?”

“Nah. I figured you would, I know you like natural light. I have my ring light, that's better for my camera anyway. I was thinking I would put my desk in the corner over there.”

Flick watched him for a moment, then said. “So, um, w-what direction will your camera be facing when you're streaming at home?”

“I hadn't really figured that out yet. I'll have to set everything up and see what works best. Why?”

“Can it not face the bedroom area, or my desk? I know it's a small apartment, and I'm probably going to wind up in the background of your stream at some point, but I just, like, want some space where I don't need to think about it.”

“Oh. Sure, no problem. I was probably going to have it face one of the walls, actually, just so there's a nice clean background, so you won't have to be on stream ever unless you want to be.” He opened up another box, then paused. “But, hey, now's probably a good time to check in and ask how comfortable you are with me talking about you, since we'll be living together and I've got more followers now than I did the last time we had this conversation.”

“I mean, you've mentioned me on the stream before.”

“Yeah, but, like, in a super vague way.”

“No, I mean, like, you've said stuff like, 'Flick and I are here at Daisy Lake today and while he's off catching bugs I'm blah blah blah.'”

“Yeah,” C.J. said. “That feels super vague to me.”

“Well, I guess... what are you wanting to say about me?”

“I dunno. I don't really think about what I'm going to say before I say it.”

“Heh. Yes, I have noticed this about you.” Flick shrugged. “It's okay for you to mention me or whatever. I just don't really want to be on camera, or to, like, be a focus of attention or anything.”

“Can I mention that you're my boyfriend?”

“It's fine by me if you're okay with it.”

“Yeah, I am done being in the closet.”

There was a brief pause, then Flick took a breath and said, “Then how come you haven't called me your boyfriend on stream before?”

C.J. felt a little flutter of self-consciousness in his chest. “I... I haven't?”

Flick shook his head. “I mean, I'll admit I haven't watched every single stream at this point, but the ones that I tagged along for, when you mentioned me you just said 'Flick.' Or once you said, 'my boy Flick,' but that feels, in your own words, super vague.” Flick paused. “I assumed you were doing it that way on purpose so that you didn't alienate the dude-bros who might be following you.”

“Nooo,” C.J. said, although he started to worry that it might be true. “I-I mean, it's not like I was doing it consciously. If anything, I think I was maybe just trying to respect your privacy.” He thought for a second. “In the early streams, I was still wearing that rainbow necklace you made for me, before it broke. I know it's not the same as the word 'boyfriend' but, I mean, it's something, right?”

Flick nodded and said, “Uh-huh,” before turning his attention back to unpacking a box.

C.J. said, “You should make me another necklace.”

Flick smiled. “I dunno...”

“Come on, why not?”

Flick was still smiling, but he looked a little embarrassed. “Because I would want something that matches, and I'm not really a rainbow necklace kind of person. I kinda want to wait until we can get wedding rings.”

C.J. smiled back. “In time.”

They went back to unpacking, then Flick said, “We could get tattoos.”

“What?” C.J. laughed. “How is that less permanent than marriage?”

“I dunno, it just feels different. I could do stick and poke tattoos right now. All you need is a sewing needle and India ink.”

“No! Is that even sanitary?”

“You sterilize the needle in a flame. I've never actually done it, though. I'd do myself before I did you.”

“No, Flick. No...”

“We'd have to figure out what to do, anyway. Tattooed names are tacky, I'd want some symbol to represent us. I'd have to think about it,” Flick said.

C.J. offered up the first image that came to his mind. “Coat of arms with a crossed fishing pole and a bug net.”

Flick laughed, but then he seemed to be thinking about it.

“Flick, no!” C.J. said again with a laugh. “I'm not letting you tattoo me with a frickin' sewing needle. Jesus. Or yourself. If you want a tattoo, go get it done professionally.”

“Aw, what's the fun in that?” He went back to unpacking, and after a minute said, “Anyway. You can mention me on the stream. You can call me your boyfriend—or your roommate, if that's easier for you. And, like, I understand that part of streaming is talking about your life, and obviously I'm a part of your life. It just feels kinda weird to be talked about.”

“I don't want to do anything that feels weird for you.”

“It's fine. I mean, what you've been doing is fine. You don't have to change anything that you've been doing. It's not like you're sharing any intimate details. I guess, I just... if it feels vague to you, I guess I'd rather keep it kinda vague. I mean, your followers tune in to hear about fishing stuff anyway, right? Not about your boyfriend. Or roommate or whatever.”

C.J. contemplated it for a second. “I'm sure I've called you my boyfriend on stream before.”

“Okay,” Flick said, in a dismissive tone of voice that annoyed C.J.

He paid attention to the way he spoke that afternoon on the stream. He made idle chit-chat for the first forty-five minutes or so while viewers trickled in, then he said, “Looks like we got a good crowd of regulars here today. I wanna thank all of you for tuning in on a surprise Friday stream, especially after I missed our usual Wednesday. Like I mentioned on the Discord, I was moving this week. Me and Flick got an apartment together.” He watched the chat to see the reaction. Somebody asked, is this your first apartment? C.J. responded, “Yup! Moving out of my dad's place and out on my own. Well, with Flick. We're both real, live grown-ups now.” He willed the chat to ask about Flick, but instead one person sent in a one hundred bell donation and said, for rent money, and C.J. had to acknowledge that and thank them, and then someone else asked how the fishing was today, and the conversation moved on. Maybe he hadn't actually used the word 'boyfriend' on stream, since it felt contrived to try to say it now.

Still, he looked for ways to bring it up naturally, and when he saw Flick's username enter the chat, he said, “Hey, atlas_moth has joined us today. Welcome aboard, atlas_moth.” But Flick only responded with a waving hand emoji. C.J. fiddled with his pole for a few more minutes, but the fish weren't biting at the moment, and he tried to think of a story to tell. “I remember Flick and I came out here one time earlier this summer, and we got to watch a dragonfly molt. They shed their skin a couple times, I guess. It's incredible to watch. It was amazing. Afterward, Flick moved the dragonfly so that he could take the old dried up skin. He probably still has it somewhere, I know he wanted to try to preserve it with some kind of shellac or something. It's like this ghost dragonfly. It's kinda freaky, but it's cool. We were up the shore a bit from where I am now, over by the cattails where it gets kinda swampy.” C.J. angled his camera over to the cattails for a few seconds, then back to where he was now. “And of course it was, like, ten minutes after I had stopped streaming for the day, so I didn't get to broadcast it. But I got some photos and videos that I put up on the socials. I can't remember what kind of dragonfly it was.” He knew Flick wouldn't be able to resist reminding him of the species, and he watched the chat on his laptop.

Instead his phone chimed with a text from Flick, 12 spotted skimmer.

C.J. picked up his phone to text back, You should share it with the chat.

Flick responded, lol, no thanks. Then he texted, break's over, i gotta go. see you tonight. i love you.

C.J. sent a heart emoji back, then set his phone down.

Before the stream was over, C.J. tried once more. “I caught a nice little mess of perch today. I should text Flick to let him know not to cook, I'll be taking care of dinner tonight.” He glanced at the chat. Somebody asked, how do you like to cook perch? C.J. said, “These are big enough that I'll probably just fillet 'em and fry 'em up. Smaller perch are good for soup, though. Or croquettes! Cook 'em up, shred the meat, mix it with egg and mashed potato and breadcrumbs, maybe some parsley or dill, form them into little patties and then fry 'em in oil. Dip 'em in a nice aioli. That's a lot more work, though. Tonight we'll just do something simple. Basic Friday fish fry. I'm not sure what kind of vegetables we have at home, Flick did the shopping. Baked potatoes are easy, or maybe some broccoli with butter and garlic.” He looked at the chat again. At this point, he had been talking about Flick a lot more than he normally did on stream, but still nobody asked about him. Instead, somebody said, aren't you only 18?? how many 18 year olds make croquettes and aioli?? C.J. laughed and said, “Hey, I was a latchkey kid for a long time. I had to cook a lot of my own meals, and I got bored of boxed mac and cheese. Besides, it was just me and my dad, and he is not a great chef. Somebody had to pick up the slack. Sorry, Dad, if you're watching. I love you.” He laughed again.

And then someone in the chat commented, femboys make croquettes and aioli, followed by the barfing emoji. C.J. laughed again, a bit nervously this time, and made a face. “What the fuck, dude? Are you tuning in from 1952? Food doesn't have a gender, ya weirdo. And everybody should learn how to cook for themselves.” Others commented, femboys eat well, and, you can make me croquettes any time. C.J. read those comments with relief and said, “Right on. You can call 'em fish cakes and garlic mayo, if your masculinity is too fragile for croquettes and aioli. But we are absolutely pro-femboy and pro-croquette around here.”

He wound up the stream and turned off his equipment, and as he rubbed his face, he thought, I'm making it obvious, aren't I? Even if he hadn't explicitly said the word 'boyfriend,' he had talked about Flick a lot and had, he hoped, painted a picture of a shared life of cooperative domestic responsibilities. Because he also worried that Flick was right, that he was subconsciously avoiding the commitment that came with the word 'boyfriend' because he didn't want to risk losing followers. He was at a tenuous place in his streaming career right now and had to, if he wanted to be successful, put all his effort into expanding engagement: more viewers, more followers and more subscribers meant more money. If he could make this work—and he realized that was an extraordinarily big if—then he could support himself and Flick by doing something that he loved and that would let him set his own hours; it was a lot of work and sacrifice now, but it could lead to a very comfortable future for the both of them. And in the short term, he also desperately wanted to just make enough money that Flick wouldn't need any financial support from Nat; Flick wanted so badly to break or at least loosen ties with his father, and a reliable income from C.J. was vital to that. And it's not like he was lying about his relationship with Flick, exactly, he just wasn't telling the entire truth, and Flick himself said he wanted to keep things vague. Still, it didn't quite sit right with him. But maybe he'd be more comfortable being more open when he was more successful; maybe losing a few followers wouldn't feel as calamitous once he had a thousand followers as it did when he only had a hundred.

C.J. was busy with fishing charters through Labor Day weekend, but he and Flick were able to unpack enough of their things for Chip to bring over the couch. He came by Tuesday afternoon after a charter, and C.J. met him at the front door to help carry it up the stairs. Chip asked, “Is Flick around? I'd rather make you young'uns do the heavy lifting.”

“Sorry,” C.J. said. “He's got some orientation thing at the university today. Let me take the bottom end, though, so that I'm carrying most of the weight.”

They carried it up the stairs, pausing at each landing so that Chip could rest and stretch his back, and then finally into C.J. and Flick's apartment. They set the couch down, and Chip groaned. “Third floor living is not for old men,” he said, and looked around the apartment. “It's a cute little place you've got here, though. You've got everything arranged real nicely.”

“That's mostly Flick's doing. He's been off work from the library for a couple days over the holiday weekend, and he's been busy organizing and making everything look nice.”

Chip smiled. “So how is it, living downtown?”

“I mean, we've only been here a couple days. I'm not used to there being so much traffic right outside, but being up on the third floor it's not so bad, and it quiets down at night. We're high up enough that the street lights don't shine in the windows, either, which is nice. It's weird having to think about, like, downstairs neighbors, or people in the apartments across the street being able to see in the windows, stuff like that.” C.J. shrugged, and then laughed. “You know, it's funny. For years I thought it was boring living in the suburbs because there was nothing going on, but now that I'm in the city, it's almost like there's too much going on. I'll get used to it, though. There's a nice coffee shop just down the block that we've been to, and there's, like, loads of restaurants and stuff to check out later, too.” Then he smiled and said, “How's life back home? Probably much quieter now that I'm outta there.”

“Way too quiet,” Chip said, smiling back, then he sighed. “I'll get used to it, like ya said. But if I'm being honest, it's a little lonely right now. You and I have been a team for so long.”

C.J. felt a pang of guilt. “Aw, we're still a team. It's just... different now.”

“No, I know. And it should be different. You're growing up, and you and Flick are getting started on your life together. It's all different in a good way. It's just an adjustment period right now. Once charters slow down for the season, I'll have more time to hang out with my buddies, and I'll be fine.” He looked around the apartment again. “It's great that you got a place so close to the university. That's pretty convenient for Flick.”

C.J. nodded. “We're close to the library where he works, too. I don't know how long we'll stay in this exact apartment, it'd be nice to find a bigger place when we can afford it. But it's a good place for now.”

Chip thought for a moment, then said, “I know a lot probably depends on Flick's plans for school or work or whatever. But have you two thought about if you're going to stay in Leafville, or...?”

“Um...” C.J. tried to formulate some answer that was vague but honest. “I mean, we definitely haven't decided on any specifics. I think we both want to travel, either when Flick's done with school, or maybe in the summer or something. But, like, beyond that, I dunno.”

Chip nodded. “There's a big world outside Leafville, I wouldn't really expect you to stick around, to be honest. But whenever you two do decide to settle down and maybe start a family, let me know, because I'll want to move to where you are.”

“Oh my god, Dad.” C.J. laughed in embarrassment and covered his face. “Even having a conversation with Flick about that is, like, years away.”

“I know, I know,” Chip said. “I'm just saying. I don't want to be the kind of grandpa who only sees the kids on Christmas and Easter. I want to be able to babysit every other weekend.”

C.J. felt himself blushing. “Uh, okay. I will keep that in mind.”

After Chip left, C.J. looked over the couch. It was in rougher shape than he remembered, but it was better than no couch at all. He had already spent more money than he'd anticipated on things for the apartment, but maybe he could find some cheap pillows and blankets at Target to make this old couch more cozy. He was already looking forward to snuggling with Flick on the couch, and he scanned the apartment trying to figure out where they could put a TV—once they could afford to buy a TV—for movie nights.

C.J. was on the couch with his laptop watching a livestream when Flick came home a few hours later. Flick said, “Hey, we have a couch!”

“We do.” C.J. smiled. “How was your school orientation thing?”

“Dumb and pointless,” Flick said as he took off his boots. “It was mostly going to different rooms and getting talked at about financial aid or how to use the campus library or basic safety crap. I skipped out on the second half of it. I would have come home earlier, but I had a one-on-one meeting with my academic advisor at four, and I knew if I came home I wouldn't want to go back to campus again. So I just went to go hang out in Peace Park for a few hours.” Flick sat down next to him. “The couch smells like your house. It smells like your basement.”

“Yeah... sorry. I didn't know what to do about that. I figured spraying it with Febreze or whatever would just make it worse for you.”

“Ugh, no, don't do that.”

“I opened all the windows in the apartment after Dad brought it by. It'll air out in time.”

“No, that's fine. I like the way your house smells. It's a comfortable, familiar smell. And it'll smell like our place will smell like soon enough.”

C.J. laughed. “What does our place smell like?”

“Well,” Flick started. “Right now it smells like cardboard and cleaning products and still just a hint of fresh paint. But after a while I guess it'll smell like nothing, because it'll be home, I'll be used to it. And then when I go back to my dad's place, it'll have a different smell, because it won't be home any more. And whatever it smells like, I'll think of that as 'my dad's house.'” He snuggled up close and kissed C.J.'s cheek. “I like having a couch.”

“Mmm, me too,” C.J. said, turning his face to kiss Flick's lips.

Flick rested his head on C.J.'s shoulders and looked at the laptop that C.J. had balanced on his knees. “What are you watching?”

“Forager_Erik. I think I've shown you this livestream before, he does this sustainable lifestyle thing from a cabin in Canada.”

“Yeah, he looks familiar.”

They watched the stream for a moment; on the screen, a man was standing on a short ladder, harvesting apples with a long handled fruit picker and filling up baskets on the ground that were just on the edge of the screen. C.J. said, “I've been watching Forager_Erik for years. He's a big part of the reason I got into streaming in the first place. Like, this is what I want my stream to be like, although my streaming persona is a bit more, uh...”

“Hyperactive?” Flick suggested.

C.J. smirked at him. “I was going to say 'high energy,' but sure. But, like, look how comfortable he is on camera, how easily he chats with the viewers...”

“How does he see the chat, though? He's so far away from whatever device he's using.”

“He's got a headset on, and he's probably using some screen-reader software to read the chat to him.”

“But there's so many people in the chat, wouldn't it just be nonsense all read aloud?”

“He's probably got someone acting as a moderator, picking out the comments that might be worth responding to and feeding them into his headset.”

“People do that?”

“What?

“Have a moderator. Like, is that a volunteer thing, or does he pay them?”

“I'm sure he pays them. It's pretty common for big-name streamers like this to have some staff helping out.”

“Geez. I didn't realize.”

“I mean, he's definitely making a good living from streaming, he can afford it. He's got three hundred people in the chat right now, on a random Tuesday afternoon, just watching him pick apples. That's crazy. He's got over twenty thousand followers. But also, like, he's earned it. Everything about his stream is masterful. Like, take this camera angle, the way he has it pointed up just a little, like we're there on the ground and he's handing the apples down to us, like we're just friends hanging out. And the way he's using the natural light here? Like, this is cinematic. This is gorgeous.”

Flick teased, “It sounds like you have a crush.”

“Shut up! I do not.” C.J. laughed. “It's purely professional admiration.”

Flick smirked. “You should type something in the chat, see if he responds.”

“What would I say?”

“Ask what he's going to do with all those apples.”

“He already said. He's going to process some into applesauce and apple butter for himself, and then the rest he's going to make into fruit leather to sell at the farmer's market.”

“Ask what variety of apple it is, or how old the trees are.”

“The cabin where he lives has been in his family for generations. He already said his grandfather planted the trees, and he doesn't know the variety.”

They watched for a little longer, then Flick said, “Does he have other fruit trees on his property?”

C.J. nodded. “Pears, and a trellis of grapes. Strawberries and stuff in the summer. Plus wild stuff like chokecherries or elderberries.”

Flick said, “Ask if he's ever made apple-pear sauce. I had that once and it was really good.”

C.J. considered, then typed into the chat, Are your pear trees ripe right now? Have you ever tried making apple-pear sauce? Within seconds, his comment disappeared into oblivion with all the other comments, but then a moment later, Erik said, “Got a good question from Fishing_with_CJ just now asking if my pears are ripe and if I've made sauce with them and the apples together. I have not actually. The pears won't be ready to pick for another few weeks, and they ripen off the tree. By the time the pears are ready to use, the apples will have gotten mushy. This variety of apple doesn't keep well in storage, they need to be processed ASAP. With the pears, some of them I'll slice and put through the dehydrator, but most of them I'll can.”

He went on to talk about pear recipes, but C.J. wasn't listening at the moment. Instead, he giggled and said to Flick, “He said my name!”

Flick laughed and said, “You do have a crush!”

C.J. grinned and said, “Shut up. It's a purely professional crush.”

“I dunno, he is kind of cute,” Flick teased. They turned their attention back to the stream, then Flick asked, “Is he queer?”

“Uh...” C.J. looked at the laptop screen. He'd never thought of Erik like that. “I-I don't know that he's ever said one way or the other. Why? You know I don't actually have a crush on him like that.”

“Oh, I know, I was just making fun of you,” Flick said. “He just looks like he could be.”

C.J. watched Erik for a moment, then asked, “What makes you say that? Like, I don't get the whole gaydar thing. What are you picking up on here?”

“I don't know,” Flick said. “Like... the way he moves his body? O-or the cadence of his voice? It's hard for me to really verbalize, I guess, it's just kind of a feeling. Just like... a certain wavelength. I don't know. And when it's in real life, I think a lot of the time it's the other person picking up on something in me and then, like, making meaningful eye contact with me. I mean, nobody's going to look at me and say, 'There goes a cis-gendered heterosexual.'”

C.J. snickered. Then he hesitantly asked “What about me?”

“Hmm?”

“Like if you just saw me on the street, what would you assume?”

Flick looked him over, and there was a look of amusement that flashed over his face briefly that C.J. did not appreciate. But then he said, “I mean, I have extensive and very intimate knowledge of exactly what you're into, so...”

C.J. laughed a little, and said, “But if you didn't know me at all, what would you think? Or what about my streaming persona?”

“Your streaming persona isn't really you, though.”

“It's a version of me.”

“Like a cartoonish version of you.”

“In a bad way, though, do you think?”

“I mean... I like your stream better when you're more like the real you, the everyday you that I know and love. I don't know what's better for, like, viewership, though.”

“I don't know either,” C.J. said. “But, like, real life me or streaming persona me, any version of me, if you didn't know me at all and you just met me for the first time, would you think I was gay or anything?” Flick's lack of a clear answer was starting to get to him.

Flick sighed and leaned back on the couch to look C.J. over. He put his hands on C.J.'s face to turn it this way and that, and C.J. laughed under his breath. Finally, Flick said, “I think maybe if I just walked past you on the street, I wouldn't immediately assume you were queer, but I might start to suspect something if we got to talking.”

C.J. smirked. “Cuz I'd be flirting with you?”

Flick laughed. “Well, sure, if you're going to make it obvious.” He looped his arms behind C.J.'s neck. “No, I just mean that, like, you're thoughtful and sensitive, and...”

“But straight people can be thoughtful and sensitive. Gay people can be jerks.”

“I know! I know. It's just a feeling, I can't explain it.” Then he nestled in close and started kissing C.J.'s cheek and neck, and in between kisses he said, “But also for you in particular, it's impossible for me to think of you that way, as a stranger. Like, we've known each other for so long, and even before we started dating, we had this incredible connection, like I knew that you were like me in some way, even before I understood what that meant. And, like, I loved you for years before I knew that I loved you, long before I said the words. I can't just forget all that.”

C.J. let his anxieties melt away as he closed his laptop and set it on the floor leaning against the side of the couch. Then he turned his head to return Flick's kisses.

After a moment, Flick said, “I didn't mean to distract you. Did you want to go back to that apple picking video?”

“Definitely no,” C.J. said, and shifted his weight so that he was laying down on the couch. Flick slid on top of him, and they went back to kissing.

Later that evening, though, C.J. was at his desk rewatching clips and highlights from Forager_Erik's livestream, trying to pick up on whatever Flick was seeing when he asked if Erik was queer; he knew that Flick must be thinking of something beyond stereotypical mannerisms, but C.J. felt like he didn't even know what to look for. He also scoured over Erik's public social media to see if he had ever mentioned a partner or any relationships, but couldn't find anything. There could be any number of reasons for that, though—Erik could be wanting to keep his private life private, or maybe he just wasn't interested in that kind of relationship at all. Or maybe Flick was right and he was queer and for whatever reason he did not want to publicly come out. C.J. thought of other streamers he watched who had mentioned girlfriends or boyfriends or spouses, and a few couples who streamed together, although he couldn't immediately think of any queer couples that he followed. And actually, when he stopped to think about it, he realized the only out, queer streamers he knew ran gaming streams, that all the outdoorsy streamers he followed were either adamantly straight or said nothing at all on the topic; he did a few quick searches now, but the only outdoors streams he found that included keywords like “queer” or “lgbt” were girls showing off their bodies but doing it outside in the sunshine, and C.J. suddenly felt a little lonely. He was still learning the culture of streaming—he was still learning about a lot of things—and while he did want to be out, he wanted to do it in a way that didn't lower his streaming numbers. At the very least, he wanted to be visibly queer in whatever oblique way that Flick thought that Erik was, but he didn't know what that looked like for him.

C.J. clicked back over to Erik's channel now. For years, he'd envied the easy comfort Erik had with the camera, the rapport he had with the chat, and how he always managed to make his streams so visually stunning. He had followed Erik's stream for so long, he did almost feel like a friend at this point, although C.J. also realized there was a lot he didn't know about Erik's life off-stream, and Erik had surely curated that intentionally. As he watched Erik's saved videos, C.J. tried to puzzle out how much of his own private life he should or could or wanted to make public, and how he could be charismatic and social and outgoing while still maintaining healthy boundaries on his personal life. He was sure he wasn't the only outdoors streamer who was queer—and certainly not the only queer viewer of outdoors streams—and he wanted to be a role model, he wanted to be a beacon for anyone else seeking out this content. But it felt a little intimidating to come out and say so when on the surface it seemed like nobody else was.

Chapter Text

Flick's classes started on Wednesday morning. This wasn't as much of a fresh start as he would have liked—moving from the suburbs to downtown, starting classes at the same university where his father taught—but it was the best he could manage. And he had C.J. with him, which made everything feel better. Without C.J., none of this would have been possible. The past few years, he had been fighting with his father more and more and high school had been increasingly intolerable, and without C.J.'s love and support he would have likely dropped out and run away. Or worse. His relationship with C.J. was the foundation on which he built the rest of his life.

He did not particularly want to go to college, but then, he did not particularly want anything else, at least not anything practical. He would have liked to create some existence outside the bonds of capitalism where he could just make art and catch bugs and C.J. could just go fishing and livestream for fun, and they'd have some home base but could also travel whenever they wanted, and they could just be happy, without either of them having to stress over trading their time and energy for bells. Flick did not have even the slightest hint of what he might want to do as a career. He liked art, but so did a billion other people, and he recognized that his art was not anything special, and certainly not something to be relied upon as a potential source of income. His shelving gig at the library wasn't bad, but it was also the kind of job that college students or retirees did for a little extra pocket change, and Flick didn't think he had the right personality to be a good librarian. Restoring art at a museum might be okay, since it would allow him to focus on his task and have minimal interaction with the public. But then, so would working as a janitor, and one of those jobs was a lot more likely than the other. Flick couldn't think of any one thing he'd want to do for forty whole hours every week, and he didn't anticipate coming up with any ideas in the future. But going to college would buy him a few years before he'd have to actually pursue anything seriously, or just get a janitorial job.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Flick had Freshman Composition and Intro to Sociology, liberal education requirements that he wasn't especially excited about. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays he had Ancient to Medieval Art History and Ceramics I; one of the few strings he had allowed his father to pull when it came to college was to talk to the art department and let Flick create a portfolio to test out of the freshman level design courses so that he could instead enroll in upper level studio classes. (He'd also let Nat sign off on testing him out of Intro to Entomology for his natural sciences lib ed requirement, although he didn't tell his father the only reason he agreed to that was so that he could hopefully avoid the Science building for his entire college career and therefore minimize the chances of running into Nat on campus; Nat had teased him that a major component of his Intro to Ento class was creating a pinned insect collection, something Flick would never do, but he signed the paperwork anyway.)

Since he had gotten his class schedule, he'd been studying the campus map to memorize where each classroom was, where he could park his bike and the best route from one location to another. He had purchased all necessary textbooks and supplies. He got dressed Wednesday morning in an outfit he had previously coordinated so that it was both physically comfortable and also visually presented the image he wanted to his new classmates and professors. It felt strange; he didn't really want to be successful in any conventional sense of the word, but he also strongly wanted to avoid any potential mishaps.

He was in the bathroom that morning putting on makeup when C.J. leaned in the open doorway and looked at him in the mirror. “You know, I've never really gotten to watch you do this before. It's kinda hot.”

Flick laughed. “It is not.”

“I don't think you get to be the judge of that.”

Flick brushed eye shadow over his eyelids, then lined the bottom of his eyes with eyeliner, smudging it with his pinky finger. He looked over at C.J. in the mirror again. “Are you just watching me, or do you need the bathroom or something?”

“I need something, all right.”

“You'd mess up my makeup.”

“Damn right I would.”

Flick smiled, and tapped his phone screen to check the time. “I've got to leave in, like, fifteen minutes.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“Of course I was.”

C.J. walked up behind Flick and kissed the back of his neck. “I can be quick,” he murmured. “I don't have to mess up your makeup.”

“No,” Flick said. “I don't want to get all flustered before my first class.” He turned around to kiss C.J., then went back to the mirror to apply lipstick.

C.J. sat on the edge of the tub to watch. “How are you feeling?”

Flick sighed. “I never know how to answer that question. I don't know. I don't know how I'm feeling. Weird. Like it's a big deal, but not a big deal. Like I care, but I don't care.” He took one last look in the mirror, then started putting all his makeup back into his bag. “I don't even have any good classes today. Both my art classes start tomorrow.”

“Maybe it's best to start out with something boring. To ease into it.”

“Maybe.” Flick crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the sink to look at C.J.

C.J. smiled at him. “You look beautiful.”

Flick smiled back, but he said, “I feel sick.”

“Did you eat anything this morning?”

“No. I can't. My stomach feels funny.”

“You should take something with you. Or have the money to buy something.”

“I'll bring a banana maybe.” Flick sighed again, and frowned. His fingers picked at the seam of his shirt.

“Hey,” C.J. said gently as he stood up. “Everything will be fine. You'll be fine. It's just a new thing.” He put his arms around Flick's waist, and Flick put his arms around C.J.'s shoulders.

“I hate new things,” Flick said.

“I think you hate the change more than the thing. You might even like it, or parts of it at least, once you get used to it.”

“We'll see.” Flick kissed him. “I have to work in the afternoon, too.”

“Big day.”

“Maybe I'll call in sick.”

“You should try to go if you can. Do you at least get a break between school and work?”

“Yeah. I'll have time to come home for lunch in between. What are your plans for the day?”

“I was thinking about streaming, or at least going out and getting some videos to post later. But if you're coming home for lunch, I want to be here to see you.”

“No, you don't have to do that. I'll see you tonight. You should go do your thing.”

“I can go out in the afternoon while you're at work. What time'll you be home? I can have lunch ready for you.”

“No,” laughed Flick.

“Come on,” C.J. said. “I'm not going to do this every day, but let me do something nice for you on your first day of college.”

Flick smiled. “I should be back by about eleven forty-five. I work at two, so I'll have to leave again around one forty if I'm biking.”

“I can drop you off in the truck, I'll head out to stream after that.”

Flick kissed him again. “You're too good to me.”

“Nah, I'm just the right amount of good.”

In Freshman Comp, Flick sat in the back of the classroom listening to the professor read the syllabus aloud, and wondered why he couldn't have tested out of this, too—do people really make it to college without knowing basic grammar and punctuation or without knowing how to structure a simple research paper? Flick was willing to admit that he might be more advanced than his peers when it came to things like art or bugs, but writing seemed like a basic skill that everyone should know; he'd always proofread C.J. and Cherry's papers in high school, and they had absolutely mastered everything on the Freshman Comp syllabus in front of him. It seemed absurd to be spending an entire semester and several thousand bells worth of tuition covering something that should have been learned by middle school. He looked around at his classmates to see if anybody else realized how ridiculous this was; he couldn't quite read anyone's expressions, but nobody seemed perturbed. Maybe he was just a snob. A snob with smart friends.

Sociology was taught in a large lecture hall with two hundred other students; there was no attendance taken, no class participation, and papers would be submitted electronically. Flick flipped through the syllabus and the textbook and wondered if he could get away with only attending class for the two scheduled tests, but then the professor announced there would be four additional random pop quizzes. The professor seemed bored and annoyed, and Flick didn't blame him; assuming he had gone into sociology out of a genuine interest, he must be so disappointed now to be wasting his time lecturing to hundreds of students who were only there because they had to be. College didn't seem to be off to a promising start.

On Thursday, art history was another lecture hall class, although smaller this time, maybe seventy-five students, and the professor was more enthusiastic than his sociology prof. But just like with sociology, the entirety of the class was lectures, slides, note-taking, tests, and papers, with little to no opportunity for discussion. The past few years, Nat had been extolling the virtues of college to Flick, had been going on and on about how intellectually stimulating it was and how it would broaden his perspective, but so far Flick felt like he could have saved himself a lot of time, money and energy, and learned everything these classes were going to teach him simply by reading the textbooks independently. Maybe upper level classes would be better, or maybe the lecture hall classes wouldn't be as boring as they seemed the first week. At least with art history the subject matter was interesting, even if the delivery method was less than ideal.

But then, finally, his ceramics class felt more promising. The studio was large, and the afternoon sunlight pouring in through the windows made it feel warm and cozy. One wall was lined with potter's wheels and there was a series of worktables in the center; off to the side were rooms with gas, electric and raku kilns. The professor was laid-back and the assignments on the syllabus were open-ended, and Flick was excited to get working. What's more, as Flick sat among his classmates, he felt like he had actually found other people like him, and for the first time since he started college he didn't feel like he was the only queer, the only punk, the only weirdo in the room.

Flick also worked his usual shifts at the library that week. And with the stress of starting college and being disappointed in three out of four classes, coupled with the usual, everyday stress of employment, by the time the weekend rolled around, Flick was exhausted. C.J. had a charter early Saturday morning; Flick was vaguely aware of him getting out of bed sometime around dawn and kissing Flick goodbye, but by the time Flick woke up for good, the sun was up, the apartment was quiet, and C.J. was gone. Flick used the bathroom, then wandered over to the kitchen where he idly opened the fridge and cabinets, but nothing looked appetizing. Flick went back to bed with the intention of thinking about what he wanted to eat, but he wound up falling back asleep.

He woke up hours later to C.J sitting down next to him in bed. “Hey, are you feeling all right?” C.J. asked, brushing his hand over Flick's forehead. “It's, like, two in the afternoon.”

Flick stretched and rolled over to face C.J. “I'm just so tired.”

“You had a big week.”

“I had a stupid week.”

“It wasn't all stupid.”

“Hm.” Flick rubbed his hand over C.J.'s leg. “You should lay down with me.”

“I smell like fish and sweat.”

“We have to change the sheets anyway.”

C.J. thought for a moment, then stripped down to his boxers and laid down next to Flick.

“How was the charter?” Flick asked.

“It was good, actually. I had four guys, two I think brothers and then their teenage sons. The kids convinced their dads to let me stream, and then they were horsing around with it the whole time, egging on the chat, really having a blast. They both followed me, like, while we were on stream, which was cool. It's always kinda weird having to walk the line between being, ya know, a responsible grown-up fishing charter captain and being a goofball livestreamer, especially when I'm closer in age to these kids than I am to the dads who are paying for the whole damn thing. But I think everyone had fun. They caught some good fish, too, three nice walleyes, and some bass and perch.”

“I'm sorry I missed it,” Flick said as he snuggled up to C.J. “I like watching you have fun.”

“Ya gotta be getting sick of hearing me talk about fish all the time, though.”

“I kinda tune out the fish stuff sometimes,” Flick confessed.

C.J. laughed. “It's all fish stuff!”

“I might just be ogling you, too.”

C.J. chuckled. “So you're watching me on mute, then?”

“No, I love your voice. I don't care what you're talking about.”

They laid there nestled together a minute longer, then C.J. said, “Seriously, though, Flick. How are you doing? You've been kinda quiet and withdrawn the past few days.”

Flick sighed, and rolled over onto his back. “It's just... how do people do this? I feel so worn down, just bone-tired. And I'm not even doing that much! Four classes and a part-time job. That's nothing. Fuck, I didn't have a full week—classes didn't start until Wednesday, and I had Monday off from the library. And I am just completely wiped out.”

“Well... but four classes is considered full-time, isn't it? And this is your first week, new things are always hard for you. And we just moved, and we've been having a lot of sex, and you're biking everywhere. Of course you're tired.”

“I slept, like, sixteen hours last night.”

“Y-yeah...”

“That's not normal. And I was biking plenty all summer. It's, like, three and a half miles from my dad's place to the downtown library. School and work are both less than a mile from here. The average weekly mileage probably equals out.”

“My point is that you need to be more gentle with yourself.”

Flick ignored him. “And it's not just a physical tired, it's... god, I don't know. I can't even think. I feel so dumb and dead. Like I'm just a lump of mud.”

“Flick...”

“It just feels like I can't handle being a normal adult. Like I'm too weak and fragile and stupid. Like it's all just hopeless. Like I'm just not cut out for life.”

“Flick.”

“And my dad's going to be right! Everything's going to fall apart. I can't manage school and work and—”

“Flick, stop!” C.J. said. “Do you even care about his opinion, anyway?”

“No, but... I don't want to get yelled at. I don't want to be belittled.”

“If it gets bad, you can block his phone number and email. But even if you can't manage school or work or whatever, you won't be going back to his house. You'll stay here with me. I can support you.”

“You're going to get sick of me if I'm like this all the time.”

“No, I'm not. I mean, obviously I want you to be happier than this, I think that should go without saying. But I hope it also goes without saying that I still love you even when you're struggling. Devotion with conditions isn't devotion at all.”

Flick sniffled.

“Have you eaten anything today?”

“No.”

“Have you had any water?”

“No.”

“Flick...”

“What?” Flick grouched, wiping his eyes.

“If you're not going to take care of yourself, then I'm going to do it. I'm going to shower quick, but then I'm going to make you some food.”

“You don't have to do that,” Flick said.

“I know I don't have to. I'm trying to help.”

Flick groaned, and rolled over to bury his face in the pillow, frustrated that he was apparently so incompetent he couldn't even feed himself.

“Do you seriously not want me to make you food?” C.J. asked, with just a hint of tension in his voice.

Flick winced with shame. Then he turned to the side to face C.J. “I'm sorry. I'm just grumpy.”

“It's fine,” C.J. said, his voice soft again.

It's not, Flick thought. I am an ass. An inconsiderate, ungrateful ass. But he mumbled, “We don't have a lot in the kitchen, we need to go shopping. That's another thing I failed to do today.”

“That's a problem for later. I'll figure something out.” C.J. kissed Flick's cheek and got out of bed. He took some clean clothes from the dresser and headed for the bathroom, but a minute later he was back. “Drink this,” he said, handing Flick a glass of water.

Flick frowned, but he sat up and drank the water.

Flick leaned back on his pillows, watching the shadows on the wall and listening to C.J. shower and then rattle around in the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, C.J. came back to the bedroom, carrying two plates of scrambled eggs and toast. He handed one to Flick then set the other on his dresser for a moment while he got his laptop out of his bag. “We're going to watch some mindless cartoons for a while,” he announced, setting up his laptop on the foot of the bed. Then he got his plate of food and sat down next to Flick.

Flick slowly ate his food, and when he was done, he set his plate on the nightstand. He slouched so that he could rest his head on C.J.'s shoulder and watched cartoons without really paying attention to them. After a while, he said to C.J., “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Everything. The charters and the streaming and everything else you do. You're always moving. You're always so busy.”

“I have a different brain and body than you. It feels good for me to stay busy.”

“I have a fucked-up brain.”

“You have a beautiful brain,” C.J. said, and kissed the top of Flick's head.

“Maybe I'll drop out of college.”

“Maybe. You should probably give it more than a week, though.”

“But I'd miss out on my ceramics class if I did. And any other studio classes I might take in the future.”

“Do you think, like, an art school would be better?”

“That would cost a fortune. And I'm pretty sure there'd still be some lib ed requirements. And it's not like I'm opposed to a liberal education—like, it's totally possible that sociology could be legit interesting and useful—but the way they do it at the university here in the big lecture hall is just presenting it in the most boring, least accessible way possible. It's just, like, an education factory.”

“Maybe a smaller school with smaller class sizes would be a better fit? Or dropping a class or two and only going part time?”

“Maybe? But the faculty child scholarship I'm getting is only for full-time students. And it covers seventy-five percent of my tuition here, and my dad's paying out of pocket for the rest. He might be willing to pay for tuition somewhere else, but I don't want to ask him. Especially since it's really a coin toss whether or not I'd actually be happier anywhere else. It's not like I even want to take part in class discussions, I just want to listen to other people have them. God, I'm impossible to please.”

“Flick, stop. You're talking about yourself the way your dad talks about you.”

Flick scowled. He thought for a second. “They do have a really nice ceramics studio here, though.”

“You're going to make yourself miserable for four years just so you can use their studio space?”

“Maybe.”

It's not that things got markedly better during the second and third weeks of school, but Flick was trying to get used to it. At the very least, he was settling into his schedule and the expectations of balancing school and work and this new phase of his relationship with C.J. He loved C.J. and loved living with him, but somehow he hadn't considered how little time he would get to himself once they moved in together, especially in this tiny apartment, and he felt naive for not having thought about that when they were looking at places. When they were at home together, Flick felt like he always had to be “on,” and he couldn't figure out why he felt that way, because it's not like C.J. expected any specific attention or activity; there were plenty of times when C.J. was at his computer and Flick was on the couch or at his desk, and they weren't interacting in any way, but the mere presence of another person in the room, even someone he loved as much as C.J., kept his brain keyed up just enough that he couldn't quite relax as much as he could if he were all alone. What complicated it further was that there were other times that he craved C.J.'s company; on weekends when Flick was off work and C.J. was away on some charter, the first few hours in an empty apartment were nice and quiet and peaceful (provided Flick was awake to take advantage of them) but then he started to miss C.J. and ache for him to come home, to hear his voice and to nestle into his arms again. Flick didn't like these contradictory impulses—especially since C.J. had never mentioned feeling anything like this—and he mostly tried not to think about it, hoping that whatever was wrong with him would sort itself out in time.

One day in Freshman Comp, the professor decided to spontaneously put the students in small groups to workshop the writing assignment that had been due that day, which Flick resented immensely; he hated small groups enough to begin with, but if he had to do it he wanted to at least have been warned beforehand so that he could have mentally prepared himself. What's more, two out of the four students in his small group hadn't even done the assignment, so the group wound up talking about Flick's writing more than he would have liked, and then they all sat in awkward silence for a minute before one of the other students started making small talk with others, which Flick felt was even more awkward than the silence and he tried to ignore them, but then someone would ask him a question directly and he felt compelled to stammer out some response that he was sure sounded idiotic.

So he was already feeling out of sorts as he walked from Freshman Comp to his sociology class, and as he made his way down the hallway, his steps got slower and slower as he realized he was dreading his next class. It was only fifty minutes, and it would probably take at least as long to read the chapter in the textbook covering the same material, and he could practically guarantee that nobody would talk to him or likely even acknowledge him in any way. But at the moment it felt intolerable. He couldn't stand the prospect of sitting in a dark room with two hundred other students who also didn't want to be there and a perpetually grumpy professor, being expected to take notes during some dull PowerPoint presentation or uninspired lecture; it felt like an unreasonable demand, a miserable waste of his time, like it would crumble up all his energy and leave him a wreck the rest of the day. Flick felt almost panicky; his stomach knotted up and his heart felt like it was fluttering in his chest. He stepped off to the side of the hallway and leaned against a ledge by a window, digging his fingernails into his palms to keep his hands from shaking, watching the other students swarm around him and then slowly filter into various classrooms until the hallway was empty again. He peered over his shoulder out the window behind him; it looked out on a concrete courtyard with benches and planters, nothing terribly compelling, but he watched the shadows of clouds drift across the wall of the building on the other side of the courtyard, and he took slow, even, deliberate breaths until he felt calmer. Then he checked the time on his phone and saw that he was at this point officially late for sociology, which settled it for him that he'd be skipping that class today, and once that decision was made he felt like a small weight had been lifted off his shoulders. But he was also scheduled to work at the library later that afternoon. It was three hours until his shift started, and he considered whether he'd be able to push through the bad feelings that had swamped over him this morning and make it into work—maybe he could walk out to Peace Park and find some secluded spot along the forest trail and lay in the dirt for a few hours to decompress. But as he thought more about what he would need to do to make work happen today, he started to feel sick again, so before he could change his mind, he texted his supervisor that he wouldn't be in that afternoon, then he switched his phone over to airplane mode and returned it to his pocket. Freed from the burden of obligations for the rest of the day, he felt an instant sense of relief.

The relief was followed quickly by shame. He hadn't even been in college for a full month yet, and already he was skipping class. Everyone had told him that college would be better than high school—why wasn't it better? What was wrong with him, that this was so difficult? Sociology wasn't even a hard class, if anything it was a little boring. And nothing in Freshman Comp had gone wrong, exactly. The other students in his small group hadn't had any critiques of his writing; one person had even said, “Wow, you're a good writer,” and Flick had tried hard to politely accept the compliment even though he also thought the assignment had been a ridiculously simple one and so the compliment felt insincere. But working in small groups had been an unexpected change in his routine, and when the professor announced it, Flick could practically feel something inside him fall apart. And now he felt like a spoiled child, on the brink of tears because things hadn't gone his way.

Flick didn't want to stay on campus, but he didn't want to go home right now either, because C.J. might be there and Flick was embarrassed about skipping class. He also knew himself well enough to know that this wouldn't be the only time he'd skip class or call in fake-sick to work, and he'd have to get over his embarrassment eventually. He just didn't want to do it right now; he felt like he'd already done enough today and didn't want to have a conversation on top of everything else. He'd tell C.J. next time he skipped, and by next time (even if it wound up being tomorrow) he'd have some set phrases and explanations in his head to offer up.

He knew that C.J. had been planning to go out to stream today, but he couldn't remember when, and because he wasn't ready to face some sympathetic reply text from his supervisor at the library, he didn't want to take his phone out to check. So he headed outside and walked the long way to Brewster's, avoiding the street in front of their apartment so that he wouldn't accidentally run into C.J.; there was another coffee shop that was closer to campus, but Flick hadn't been there yet, and he wasn't up for trying anything new right now. He walked at a quick pace until he got off campus and away from all the clumps of other students hanging out under trees or at picnic tables, then he slowed down, letting the late September sun warm his shoulders, his eyes cast to the ground, watching for late season monarchs or bumblebees at the flowers that lingered in people's yards or in unmown boulevards, or for busy ant hills over cracks in the sidewalk.

He was already feeling a bit better by the time he got to Brewster's. He paused outside the door and peered down the block, but he was too far away and there were too many other cars parked on the street for him to be able to tell if C.J.'s truck was in front of their apartment. Inside, he was relieved to see that the coffee shop was just the right amount of busy; it was not so crowded that he'd feel claustrophobic, but not so empty that he'd feel weird sitting there by himself. He ordered his coffee and was able to sit at the same table that he and C.J. had sat at both times they'd been to Brewster's together, which Flick now thought of as their table, and that helped him feel better, too, as if C.J. was still with him in a way even when Flick needed to be alone. He was feeling brave enough now to look at his phone, and briefly glanced at a text from his work supervisor that read, Thanks for letting me know. I hope you feel better soon! Then he checked C.J.'s livestream channel and saw that he was actually streaming right now; Flick was startled, and even though he hadn't actually joined the chat, he still clicked out in a hurry because he didn't want C.J. to see his username since he was supposed to be in class right now. He took his laptop out of his bag, plugged in some earbuds and triple checked that all audio was going into the earbuds and not to the laptop's speaker. Then he logged out of his profile on the streaming service on his laptop and entered C.J.'s livestream as a guest.

It felt a little devious, watching C.J. when C.J. didn't know he was watching. C.J. on his livestream had a certain swagger about him that he never had when he was with Flick, the same kind of brashness and aggressiveness that he'd always had when he was hanging out with his jock friends in high school. It was still a little disorienting for Flick how easily C.J. could pivot from the gentle and thoughtful version Flick knew when they were alone together to the extroverted and energetic version at school to the cheerful and easygoing version that he was with fishing charter clients or any authority figure. Sometimes Flick found himself wondering which was the real C.J., but he also knew that on some level they were all the real C.J. Flick couldn't do that, match his personality to the company he was with; there was only one version of Flick and it did not mesh well with most other people's social expectations. But that was why C.J. was the successful one who made friends easily, and Flick was currently still trying to pull himself together after having made some unplanned small talk an hour earlier.

On the screen, C.J. was bouncing his line in the water trying to get the fishes' attention and he was talking about his luck for the day, how he had caught a thirteen inch walleye early on in the stream when he only had two viewers, but since more people had tuned in, everything he'd caught had been too small to keep. Someone in the chat wrote, How much meat can you even get from a 13 incher? I don't keep anything below 15 myself. C.J. read the comment aloud and laughed and said, “Yeah, not a lot. If I'd known that was all I was gonna catch, I mighta put 'er back. I might still catch some more, though, I've only been out here, like, an hour, hour and a half. I'll clean it up later and see what I've got to work with. I can always put it in the freezer for later, although that seems like a waste with walleye, they're so good fresh. One nice thing you can do with littler fish like this is fish tacos, because you don't need a lot of meat for that, you can load 'em up with veggies to round out the meal. It's certainly healthier that way than just a huge chunk of fried meat, too.” He laughed again. “Walleye are great for fish tacos. Definitely not traditional, but nice. I know some people use catfish, but they taste kinda muddy to me, no matter how I prepare them, so I always put them back whenever I catch 'em.” The chat was quiet for a while, and C.J. wasn't catching anything. He reeled in his line, set to work switching out the lure and casting it out again, and the whole time he narrated what he was doing. Flick sipped his coffee and watched him on the screen and tried to think of something to type into the chat, but he couldn't think of what to say that wouldn't give away who he was; he started to feel a little guilty about watching as an anonymous guest and he debated whether or not he should log back in under his regular username.

Then, after a moment of silence, C.J. said, “Flick's actually the one that introduced me to fish tacos.” Flick froze at the mention of his name. C.J. kept talking. “This was years ago. At the time I'd only ever had, like, Americanized midwestern tacos. Ya know, with crunchy shells and iceberg lettuce and all that, absolutely nothing authentic about them. And, I mean, I've always eaten a lot of fish, but putting fish in a taco just seemed super weird to me at first. But Flick's always been great about pushing me out of my comfort zone. It's a totally different kind of taco, obviously. We add avocado and cilantro and, like, this creamy cabbage slaw with chipotle peppers. It's so good.” C.J. thought for a second, then said, “Yeah, that's for sure what I'm going to do with that walleye. I'll swing by the grocery store to pick up the rest of what we need. That's going to be such a good dinner.”

Flick waited to hear his name again, but C.J. kept talking about food, and that's all the chat was asking about anyway. Flick hadn't thought about that day in ages, but now the memory came back to him. To say it was years ago was an understatement—they were literally children. They were twelve years old, and Flick had been spending some summer day at C.J.'s house while Chip was at work (this was back when he still worked at the paper mill, before he was doing charters full time). C.J. had offered to make them lunch, and was listing off ingredients available in the kitchen; Flick had nodded to the fruit bowl on the counter and said, “If those avocados are ripe, and if we can steal some cilantro from Mr. Tortimer's garden, we could make fish tacos.” C.J. had been incredulous that that was a real thing, and Flick had made him go to the household computer (this was before either of them had cell phones) and look it up online to prove it and to find a recipe. Making the tacos had become a project—they wound up not actually eating lunch until two in the afternoon—but C.J. had cooked the fish and Flick had made the slaw. Flick could still viscerally remember the nervousness he felt as they sat down to eat—this was something he'd only ever eaten in restaurants, and what if this recipe wasn't any good, and then Flick was to blame for suggesting something gross—followed by the satisfaction he felt when C.J. loved them. He'd always felt—and had felt it even more so back than—that between them, C.J. was more experienced, more worldwise, and that C.J. was always introducing him to something new and teaching him things, and so it had felt good that he was able to introduce something new to C.J., even something as inconsequential as fish tacos. And it felt good now to know that they still made this dish together, all these years later, and to hear C.J. talk to his stream chat about how much he liked it. Flick thought about that time in their lives, when they were twelve and C.J. was harboring a secret crush on Flick, and Flick was at the time oblivious to all things romance but still knew he was happiest when he got to see C.J. every day and that he felt a warm thrill whenever he was able to make C.J. laugh or smile.

The more Flick thought about that day and all the days since, the more he wanted C.J. to talk about him on stream again, to tell his audience how long they had known each other, how close they were, how much they meant to each other. Boyfriend, Flick thought. Call me your boyfriend. It's not that he wanted all of their private life unfurled for some social media audience, he just wanted that simple acknowledgment of their relationship, he just wanted confirmation that he was important. He toyed with the keyboard on his laptop, wondering if he could ask something in the chat as an anonymous guest to goad C.J. into saying the word boyfriend, but he knew he didn't want to interfere with C.J.'s stream like that, or to make C.J. feel forced to admit something he wasn't ready to admit yet; C.J. was better at navigating social situations than he was, and he certainly knew his audience better than Flick did. He probably had a good reason for not saying the word boyfriend. Flick took another sip of coffee and leaned his elbows on the table, feeling a bit lonely.

On the screen, C.J. shifted his weight and turned so that he was in profile to the camera. Flick couldn't quite see what he was doing, but then a minute later his phone chimed with a text from C.J. Are you at home right now? Do you know if we have any tortillas?

Flick texted back, not home atm, but i think we have flour tortillas.

C.J. texted back, I was thinking of making fish tacos for dinner. I'll pick up some corn tortillas at the store along with everything else if that sounds good to you.

yes, definitely, Flick responded. Then, deciding to play dumb, he wrote, were you going to stream today?

C.J. wrote back, I'm actually streaming right now, lol.

Flick looked up at the screen. He could see that C.J. was smiling, looking down at the phone gripped in thumb and index finger while he awkwardly reeled his line in a few inches with his pinky and ring finger. Flick texted, silly boy, why are you texting me instead of entertaining your masses?

Cuz you're more interesting, C.J. texted. In his earbuds, Flick could just hear the click-click-click of C.J.'s reel as his line was pulled back out by the current of the lake.

me and my fascinating insights about tortillas? Flick texted.

C.J. responded, It's been a slow day of fishing and the chat's boring today. Then he added, I miss you.

Flick smiled. He texted a heart emoji, then added, where are you today?

On the screen, C.J. glanced up at his fishing pole for a moment; he popped his phone into his vest pocket and reeled in the line again, tugging up on the pole a bit. Once he was satisfied that there was no fish on the line, he took his phone back out, and Flick's phone dinged with another text from him. Lake Maple.

Lake Maple was fifty miles away. Flick texted back, long drive for a slow day.

C.J. texted back, Eh, it happens.

Flick thought for a second, then wrote, if you were at fern lake I might have been able to bike out there and meet you. Fern Lake was only ten miles outside of town.

On the screen, C.J. laughed softly and swiped his thumb over his phone. A moment later, Flick got a text from him that said, Daaang. Here I was this morning thinking I go to Fern Lake too often and should try mixing it up.

Flick looked over at the chat. In the time they'd been texting, a couple of comments had popped up. Flick knew that C.J. had been getting notifications of them in his headset, and he felt touched that C.J. had instead chosen to devote his attention to texting with him. Flick wrote, i miss you, too, but i should probably let you get back to your stream.

Back to the social media mines, C.J. responded.

how much longer do you think you'll be out there? Flick asked.

C.J. wrote back, At least an hour probably. Longer if the fish start biting, or if the chat perks up.

Flick wrote, i'll see you tonight then. i love you.

C.J. texted, I love you so much. I'm so glad I got to talk with you a little bit.

On the screen, C.J. returned his phone to his vest pocket, then reeled in his line all the way and turned to face the camera. “Sorry about that little interlude, folks,” he said. “Let's see what I missed in the chat.” C.J.'s voice was softer and his body was looser now, after they'd been texting, and even though C.J. didn't know Flick was watching, it still felt as if C.J. was looking directly at him as he scrolled through the chat and glanced into the webcam. Flick liked seeing his version of C.J. make an appearance on the livestream. He watched the stream a few more minutes to see if anyone would ask C.J. what he'd been doing on his phone, and when nobody did, Flick drank the last of his coffee and logged off.

Since he now knew that C.J. would be gone for a few more hours, he went home to take advantage of the empty apartment. Once inside, he took off his boots and jacket, dropped his backpack next to his desk, connected his Bluetooth speaker to his phone, then laid down on the couch to scroll through his music. People tended to assume that Flick only listened to punk, but in truth he actually listened to a wide range of music; he couldn't understand how someone could claim to be a music lover and then only listen to one very narrow genre. But also, he did love punk quite a bit, for a variety of reasons. He liked the DIY spirit of it, the delicious mix of anarchy and justice and mutual aid, and the fuck-the-man ethos. But he also just liked the sheer loudness of it, the throbbing beats of drums and guitars, the screamed vocals of righteous fury, the wall of sound that overwhelmed his senses in the best way possible so that nothing else could get in or out, so that his entire being was consumed by music. It felt private and intimate, almost like sex. There were certainly times when he couldn't listen to punk, when he couldn't listen to any music at all, but when he was in the right headspace for it, it was exquisite.

On his phone, he queued up an old Ape Sex album, balanced the speaker on the back of the couch and cranked up the volume. Then he closed his eyes and let the glorious, beautiful noise wash over him. He was feeling recovered enough now from this morning to know that when C.J. came home he would tell him about his day, about the awkwardness in Freshman Comp and about how he had felt overwhelmed and skipped class and work, although he would probably omit the part about watching C.J.'s livestream anonymously.

During his fourth week of school, Flick got two emails that caught his attention. The first was from Cherry. He and Cherry had texted sporadically over the summer, but that had dropped off in August while Flick was getting ready to start school and Cherry was moving to New Sylvania, and Flick resignedly thought that perhaps that was that, as far as their friendship was concerned. But then at the end of September, Cherry sent him a long email telling him about her new job waiting tables at a Spanish restaurant, and about the room she was renting in a big communal house full of other punks in other bands, and about a new girlfriend named Goldie, and other bits and pieces of her life. The email closed with this:

It took three sessions, but I finally finished up that tatt w/ yer drawing! And it's finally healed enough that I can get some good pictures. AND IT LOOKS FREAKING AMAZING, RIGHT?!?!?! Obvs the tattoo artist has got skills of their own, but also they had that kick-ass drawing of yours to reference. THANK U SO MUCH FOR DRAWING THIS FOR ME I LOVE IT SO MUCH!! Goldie took this photo of me, btw—isn't this a great photo? I look like such a badass but like also kinda cute too? So I want to post this pic to Insta, on my personal page and prob on the band page too, and I was gonna give a shout out to the tattoo artist, but also can I link to your Insta since you did the original luna moth drawing?? You don't have to say yes, I just want to be able to give credit where it's due for yer awesome art.

Flick had made a line drawing of a luna moth for Cherry and the tattoo artist had added colors that were almost but not quite true to life, which annoyed Flick, and behind the moth they had added a night sky with a stylized crescent moon and twinkling stars, which he was neutral about. But the drawing was unmistakably his—even in this small picture on his phone he could recognize his own linework—and it felt surreal to see his art out in the wild like that, having a life of its own somewhere other than his sketchbook or some school classroom. He had agonized over this drawing, trying to get a pose that was both biologically accurate but also artistically dynamic, and he reworked it again and again to include enough scientific details that he felt like he was doing the luna moth justice while also keeping it simple enough that it would easily translate to an outline for a tattoo. He had a hard time sharing his artwork, because most of the time it felt not quite good enough; every piece he made he felt like he could have done better. But Cherry was right, the tattoo did look good. There was nothing about his drawing that he would change, and that, too, felt a little surreal—being satisfied by his own work. He wrote a long email back saying that she was welcome to link to his Instagram if she wanted but there wasn't much for anyone to see there, and he told her about how college was so far a disappointment except for his ceramics class, and living with C.J. was mostly good although he was still getting used to sharing a living space with someone else. It felt good writing to her, and he was glad that, at least for the time being, he was able to maintain some kind of relationship with her.

The other email he got that week came from his dad, which startled Flick, not because the actual content of the email was alarming in any way, but because apparently a whole month had passed since Flick had moved out without either of them making any contact with the other. Flick had in fact barely thought about his father and had never once even considered calling or texting or emailing, and he felt guilty about that now. Nat wrote:

Hello Flick. I hope that all is well with you and that you're adjusting well to the beginning of college and are settling into your new apartment and your new life with C.J. I'd love to come by and visit sometime whenever there's an opportunity. I'm writing because I was cleaning the house the other day and found a book of yours under the couch, looks like some artist's biography. Title is 'The Life and Work of Egon Schiele.' Is this something you need? I could bring it by your apartment someday before/after work if you want. Let me know if there's anything else from home you need, too. Love, Dad

Flick cringed reading it; he didn't want his dad over at the apartment, although he didn't have a good reason why, certainly not any reason he'd want to share with his father. Eventually he wrote back:

Hi Dad. School and work have been keeping me pretty busy. The apartment is still a bit of a mess right now, but C.J. and I are happy here. I don't need that book at the moment. You can just leave it on the shelf in my old room, and I'll come by if I need it or anything else. Thanks, Flick

He had purposefully dodged the question of his father coming over for a visit. There was no emailed response from Nat, which was at once a relief but also strangely disappointing.

Ceramics was the bright spot of Flick's schedule every week. It was deeply satisfying to work the clay and to watch shapes and figures come alive in his hands. There was a sense of peace in the studio, where there was occasionally murmuring conversations or the radio playing at a low volume, but mostly the room was filled with the soft hum of artists concentrating on their work. As an art major, Flick would later need to declare a concentration, and while he looked forward to the required drawing, painting and photography courses—every day after ceramics, he lingered in the art building, peering in the open doors of other studios and imagining possibilities—he already felt like sculpture was where his best talents lied.

The only problem was that class was only an hour and twenty minutes long, which was not enough time for Flick to finish his projects; there were open studio hours, but they wouldn't work with Flick's schedule. So after taking a day to plan out what he wanted to say, he went to talk to the professor after class. “Um. P-professor Pascal? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, man, no problem.”

“Um. My name is Flick, I-I don't think we've really talked before...”

“Nah, man, I know who you are. You're that entomology professor's kid.”

Flick's shoulders sank. “Yeah...”

“I was on the committee to review your portfolio. I'm not supposed to tell you that.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, what's up?”

“Well. Um. So. Class has been going well, b-but I can't make it to any of the open studio hours. I'm either in my other classes or I'm at work. So, um, I-I was just wondering if it was possible to come in some other time to work on my projects...?”

“Yeah, man. Let me drop some knowledge on ya.” The professor glanced around at the rest of the departing students. “There are no ceramics classes after seven p.m., but the maintenance staff doesn't lock the front doors of the building until ten. You dig?” He raised his eyebrows conspiratorially.

Flick looked at him. “S-so... between seven and ten at night?”

“You got it, man. You can even stay after ten, maintenance doesn't care, I've got an agreement with them. Just don't leave a mess, and go out through the studio door if you stay late, there's no alarm on that door. Don't tell the dean.”

“O-okay.”

“So, like, during the open studio hours in the afternoon, there's a TA here to help, but there's nobody here at night. I mean, there might be some upperclassman or grad student doing their own thing, but, like, there's a good chance you'll be here alone. But you seem to know what you're doing. You're cool, right?”

Flick smiled at the prospect of having the whole studio to himself. “Yes,” he said. “I'm cool.”

So that Wednesday at seven, he headed over to the art building. The hallway lights were turned down low, and most of the other studios were dark, although Flick did pass a few classrooms with other people working. The light was on in the ceramics studio, and Flick paused outside the open door to listen, but after a minute when he didn't hear anything he stepped inside. He was startled to see someone sitting at one of the potter's wheels, frowning at the vase in front of them. “”Oh!” Flick said.

The person looked up and smiled. “Hey. I haven't seen you before. Are you a new student?”

Flick nodded. “My name's Flick.”

“I'm Bob.”

Flick hovered in the doorway, feeling unsure. “Um. P-professor Pascal said it was all right if I came here at night to work on my projects...?”

“Yup,” Bob said. He turned his wheel back on and pressed his fingers into his vase, widening out the bottom. “I just usually have the place all to myself Wednesday nights.”

“Oh. Did, did you want to have the studio all to yourself?”

Bob smiled, and without looking up from his vase said, “Nah, I don't care either way.”

Flick hesitated, then took off his jacket and hung it on a hook by the door, and went to retrieve his project from the shelves in the back of the classroom. He felt awkward, and wasn't sure if it was more socially appropriate to sit at a table closer to the potter's wheels or farther away. As he worked, he glanced up at Bob occasionally, watching as he shaped his vase and sopped up the excess water; he noticed also that Bob was glancing over at him from time to time, too. When Bob finished, he turned the wheel off, ran a wire under the base of the vase, then moved it to the shelves to dry. He paused, then walked over to Flick's table. “What are you working on?” Flick turned his project around to show him, an asymmetrical vessel into which he was etching an outline of a moth. Bob smiled. “Nice. What is that, a cecropia?”

Flick was momentarily stunned, then he smiled and said, “A-an atlas moth, actually. But they look similar to cecropias.” He showed him the reference photos he had called up on his phone. “They're related, but not very closely. Atlas moths are native to Asia, so you probably haven't seen one. But cecropias live around here.”

“Right on. My grandpa used to raise cecropia moths with me when I was little.”

“Oh!” Flick laughed in surprise. “I love cecropias, too. How did you overwinter them?”

“We had them in an old aquarium in Grandpa's tool shed.”

Flick nodded. “I raised some last year. After they pupated, I moved the habitat out to the garage. And then spent the whole winter worrying about them.”

Bob smiled. “How do you know about the other ones? Atlas moths.”

“We moved around a lot when I was a kid. I spent some time in the Philippines. They're pretty common there.”

“Radical,” Bob said. He continued to watch Flick work on his project. “That vase has a great shape. Is that all handbuilt? Man, I suck at handbuilding. Too much responsibility.”

Flick smiled. “How's that?”

“Like, with handbuilding you have to do every little thing by yourself. When I'm at the wheel, I can just kinda vibe. When I'm in the zone, it feels like I can just let the clay tell me what to do.”

“That's funny,” Flick said. “I can't get into wheel throwing. It looks so meditative, but, like, I can't get the clay centered, and then the walls are either too thick or too thin, and then it falls apart or something. And it winds up being too stressful to really enjoy the experience.”

“Yeah,” Bob said. “It took me probably a year or more until I really felt comfortable at the wheel. Now it's just, like, another part of my body.” Bob walked to the other side of the studio to get a lump of clay from a bucket. He wedged it at a table to get the air bubbles out, then took it back to his wheel and started work on another vase. After a few minutes, he said to Flick, “So where'd you transfer from?”

“What?”

“Are you a transfer student?

“Oh. No.”

“Grad student?”

Flick laughed a little. “Freshman.”

“What?” Bob looked up. “No way. Like, a freshman-freshman?”

“What do you mean?”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Aw man,” Bob said, looking a little embarrassed. “I thought you were around my age.”

“How old are you?

“Twenty-three.”

“That's not a huge difference.”

“Feels huge to me considering I was going to try to make a pass at you,” Bob said. Flick must've made some kind of face, because then Bob laughed nervously and said, “Diiid I make a wrong assumption? I just saw the progress pride button on your jacket, and, uh...”

“N-no. No. You assumed right. I guess I was just caught off guard. But also I'm in a relationship.”

Bob went back to work, leaning into his clay, and after a moment asked, “Is it monogamous?”

Flick considered. “Well... I-I guess we never discussed it. But I've been assuming so.”

“How long have you been together?”

“We've been officially dating for a little more than a year, but we've been friends since we were kids. We actually just moved in together.”

Bob smiled, and without looking up from his clay said, “Aww, man, that's way too cute, I can't break that up.” He glanced up at Flick and Flick smiled at him, and they both went back to work. After another pause, Bob said, “So are you guys, like, high school sweethearts, then?”

“Ugh. I wouldn't use that term. But I guess so.”

“What's wrong with high school sweethearts?”

“It just sounds too cutesy and heteronormative. Like it makes me think of roller skating dates and sharing a milkshake with two straws and going to prom.”

Bob laughed. “I don't know what your high school was like, but at mine, two dudes going to prom together would not have been well received. Sorry, I'm assuming you're two dudes.”

“Another correct assumption. And it was the same at my high school, too. Although my friend Cherry did take her girlfriend to the homecoming dance, but that was more of an ironic, crashing-the-party sort of thing, rather than a sincerely-enjoying-it sort of thing.”

“Ha! Right on.”

They worked on their projects in silence for a few minutes. Then Flick, who did not normally like making conversation, realized he was actually curious, so he asked, “Are you a grad student, then?”

“Heh. Nooo. Still working on my undergrad. I've dropped out and come back a few times.”

“Are you a studio art major?”

“Art and pre-med. Guess which one my family's more enthusiastic about.”

Flick smirked. “So are you going to be a doctor, then?”

“What do you think?” Bob laughed. “Nah, I might get, like, some medical assistant certification later on if I need a regular job or something. Right now, I'm basically just seeing how long I can waste my parents' money on tuition so I can keep using the studio here.”

Flick laughed. “That's a great plan.”

Bob smiled. “I'm not even enrolled in any ceramics classes right now, I've got a ton of science and lib ed requirements I've got to catch up on. But I've been here so long, Pascal lets me come in to use his stuff anyway.”

“He seems like a pretty laid back guy,” Flick said.

“I mean, he is, yeah. But also I'm trading him weed for studio time.”

“Ah. There it is.”

“There it is,” Bob agreed.

Flick's interest was piqued; he'd been rationing the last little bit of his stash that he'd gotten from Cherry and was nearly out now. He thought for a moment about whether or not he trusted Bob, considering they'd only just met, then asked, “Do you grow your own?”

“Uh-huh. Just a little basement operation, nothing huge. Enough to cover my own needs and, like, to sell as a side hustle, mostly just to my friends.”

That seems fine, Flick thought, and said, “I might buy from you at some point, if that's all right.”

“Yeah, man. Hit me up any time. I'm here most Wednesdays, and sometimes Fridays or Mondays, too.”

Flick smiled as he went back to his project again. He had come in tonight hoping he'd be able to work alone, but this was nice, too. Bob was good company.

Chapter Text

Flick had been sulky for weeks, so at first when he came home from the ceramics studio smiling at quarter to eleven, C.J. was relieved. “You're in a good mood,” he said. “Did you have the studio to yourself?”

Flick shook his head. “No. There was this guy named Bob there. But he was all right. I'm working on this piece that I'm carving an atlas moth into, and he asked if it was a cecropia. He used to raise cecropias when he was a kid. So we got to talk about bugs for a little while.”

“Nice.”

“He was working at the wheel the whole time I was there, and, oh my gosh, he is, like, so good at wheel throwing. Like, the professor gave us a demonstration last week, but I feel like Bob is better at it. He made this one piece tonight that was almost two feet tall. Like, he gets his whole body into it, and the clay just responds, like magic. It was incredible to watch.”

C.J. smiled. “Did you make good progress on your own work?”

“I did, yeah. I think this piece is done. Or at least mostly done. I'm going to look at it again tomorrow in class, I might add some texture to it.”

“When do you get to bring home all this stuff you're working on?”

“Pascal—the professor—said he was going to fire up the kiln this weekend. I don't think my atlas moth piece will be dry enough to go in this round, but I've got other pieces that can go in. But then we glaze the pieces and fire them again. And then I guess we're going to set up our work around the studio and do, like, a group critique thing in class. So I guess a few weeks.” Flick poured himself a glass of water. “Bob said Pascal lets him use the kiln. Usually only grad students can do that, but Bob's been taking ceramics classes there for years—like, on and off—so he's got some special privileges. He said I could fire my stuff with his, if I'm there when he's loading up the kiln. He said Pascal is kind of a flake and depends on the TAs way too much to, like, remember what needs to be done.”

“Sounds like you made a friend,” C.J. said, and kissed Flick.

Flick kissed him back, but then C.J. could feel him smiling against his lips. “Actually, Bob said he was thinking about hitting on me until he realized how much younger I am than him. He's, like, twenty-three.”

C.J. tried to keep the smile on his face, but he could feel his stomach clench a little. “What?”

“So, I mean, it's cool that we're both queer, that's another thing we have in common.” Flick finished his water and put the empty cup in the sink.

“What did you say?” C.J. asked.

“What do you think?” Flick said, and playfully shoved C.J. “I told him I'm taken.” C.J. relaxed a little. Then Flick said, “But then he asked if our relationship was monogamous.”

“What did you say to that?”

Flick shrugged, and his smile faded a little. “I mean, I think that's something couples should probably establish sometime before they've been dating for a year. But I've been assuming we are.”

“Yeah, me too,” C.J. said quickly.

“Well, there, we've discussed it then.” Flick eyed C.J. for a second, then grinned. “Wait a minute, are you jealous?”

“No...” C.J. said.

“Oh my god, you're jealous!” Flick laughed. “A minute ago you were happy I made a friend and now you're all jealous because he made one comment about hitting on me.”

“Well, there's a difference between a friend-friend and a friend with a crush. I mean, I'm speaking from experience here.”

“Oh my god, it was nothing like that.” Flick laughed again. “We literally just met. He was basically just saying he thinks I'm cute. And then we dropped it and moved on. I can't believe you're jealous about something like that.”

“I'm not jealous,” C.J. said.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Flick said. He cupped a hand around C.J.'s face and planted a kiss on his cheek. “I'm going to go shower, I feel like I have clay dust all over me.” Flick walked away giggling.

That night in bed, C.J. was a bit nervous, and hesitant about making love because it felt like his motivation wasn't desire exactly but instead a primitive impulse to establish himself as Flick's mate, and he didn't like that feeling. But Flick initiated things and C.J. followed his lead, and sex that night was a little rougher than usual. Afterwards Flick turned to C.J. and sighed, “Oh my god, C.J., that was so hot.” C.J., breathless, kissed Flick gently on the lips. As he returned to his senses, C.J. thought, This is ridiculous. I am being ridiculous. If there was anything to be jealous of, Flick wouldn't have mentioned Bob at all. And of course I trust Flick. He might not tell me everything, but he doesn't lie to me. But Bob was someone who could bond with Flick over art and bugs, things C.J. had very little expertise in, and he felt... well, maybe he did feel a little jealous. Flick had been mostly sad for weeks, and it was a few hours with Bob that had cheered him up. And as Flick drifted off to sleep and C.J. laid there awake, he thought back to the sex they'd just had, and he started to wonder if there was something about the encounter with Bob that had evoked this response in Flick.

They fell into a routine where Flick slept away most of the weekend and moped most of the week, except for when he had ceramics class or went to the studio in the evening, and he was spending more and more time in the studio. Clearly this was a thing that brought Flick joy, and C.J. tried to be chill about it, but eventually one day he asked, “Do you really have that much work to do for your ceramics class?”

“No,” Flick said. “I mean, I do feel like I work more slowly than the other students and it takes me longer to finish each piece. But I'm also making a lot of extra pieces, too. Bob said they do a big raku firing every fall before it gets too cold. It's usually just for upperclassmen and grad students, but Bob said I should come. I've never done raku before.”

“What is it?”

Flick smiled excitedly. “So it's an outdoor firing. You use a special kiln, and you fire the clay until it's red hot and then you take it out with tongs and bury it in, like, wood shavings or leaves or paper, something that burns, and then you cover it up. And, like, the chemical reaction of the burning makes these crackly patterns in the glaze, or sometimes it comes out looking shiny and iridescent and, like, almost metallic. I've seen videos, it looks awesome. So I want to build up a collection of stoneware pieces that I can raku fire. I guess there's some graduate level classes specifically for raku, but the fall firing—and they do one in the spring, too, I guess—it's for everybody. It's more like a party.”

C.J. smiled, but then said, “You hate parties.”

Flick wrinkled his nose. “Yeah. It'll be kinda weird. But it's an art thing, too. I'll have tasks to stay busy with so I won't have to talk as much. And Bob will be there, so at least I'll know one person.”

“What about your professor?”

“I guess Pascal sometimes shows up to these things? But it's not exactly an officially sanctioned event.”

C.J. told himself that of course Flick should do art things with other art students, and under different circumstances he would have been pleased to see Flick socializing more, but he was still stupidly hung up on that one comment Bob had made weeks ago about hitting on Flick and he hated that he couldn't let it go. Maybe if he could meet Bob and get a feel for what he was actually like, he could stop obsessing and assuming the worst, but there was no good opportunity for that; C.J. and Flick lived in such different worlds now. He thought high school would have prepared him for this, since they'd always had so few classes together, but even still they'd had plenty of shared experiences: walking to and from school together, eating lunch together, seeking out each other's company during assemblies or fire drills. Once while Flick was out, C.J. opened his art history textbook to where Flick had bookmarked it, trying to get a glimpse into what Flick was studying, but as he read over a paragraph about Minoan sculpture, he felt his eyes glaze over. And yet the notebook on Flick's desk suggested that Flick was writing a paper on that very subject. Sometimes it felt like Flick was moving on to bigger and better things and leaving C.J. behind. His dad had warned him that relationships can change when two people move in together, but thank goodness they did live together now because otherwise they would hardly ever see each other; Flick had classes and work during the week, and C.J. usually had one or two charters every weekend. At least now they slept together every night, and they had some time together during the day, although it never felt like enough. C.J. hated to think what might have happened to their relationship if they hadn't moved in together; they might have only had time to see each other once or twice a week, and if Flick had met Bob anyway, he might not have been so quick to turn him down.

C.J. tried to busy himself with streaming, and when he was on camera, it was easy to slip into a happy, goofy persona, but the rest of time he was feeling increasingly anxious; it was a new, uncomfortable feeling that he didn't know what to do with. In September, he was just short of the minimum payout from the streaming service, and he was disproportionately upset about that. Flick seemed unconcerned. “That just means you'll get paid for sure next month, right?”

“Yeah, everything carries over. But... god! I was just forty-five bells short this month. Forty-five bells! That's ridiculous. A couple more ad clicks and I could have actually gotten paid.”

Flick smiled gently. “I really don't think it's as big of a deal as you're making it out to be.”

C.J. sighed. “No. It's not. I know. But it just... feels bad. Like I'm not doing enough. Maybe I should try a different kind of ad, or some new emotes for subscribers...”

Meanwhile, as the weather cooled, the fishing charter business started to slow down, as it did every year, but this year it felt more dire. C.J. had spent a lot of money that past summer on truck repairs and all the various expenses related to moving, and recently had been shocked by how expensive it was to put winter tires on the truck, and now his savings was looking sparse. He resisted talking to Flick about it, since Flick was already stressed about school, but eventually C.J. had to accept that even if he did get a payout from streaming next month, it would be essentially pocket change, and that another month would be passing without him becoming a viral streaming superstar. So he sat down on the couch with Flick one day to talk about their financial situation.

Flick frowned. “What are we going to do about it?”

“Well,” C.J. began. “A lot depends on the ice fishing season this year. I did take out some bigger print ads for the charter in regional travel guides, and some more online stuff, too, so if that pans out we might squeak by okay. But, ya know, money'll still be pretty tight. And if there's any big surprise expense, like if the truck breaks down or there's some medical thing, we'll be shit outta luck. And the ice fishing season depends so much on the weather, too. It needs to get cold enough that the lakes freeze early but not so cold that it's dangerous to be outside.” C.J. sighed. “I'll probably just have to get another job.”

“No,” Flick said. “You're already so busy. When would I even see you? When would you sleep?”

C.J. shrugged. “It'd just be something short-term. Things with the charter will pick up again in the spring. And what's the alternative? You're busy, too. And getting a weekend job would break you, you need that downtime. I can't ask you to do that.”

“But you're already doing so much. And I would feel like shit if you're basically working three jobs so that I can nap all weekend.”

“It's not like it would be three full-time jobs. Charters slow down a lot in the winter, and... and I probably don't need to be putting so much time into streaming. Like, clearly it should just be a hobby, ya know? Clearly I'm not going to make it like I wanted to.”

“No, C.J. No.” Flick reached across the couch to hold both of C.J.'s hands. “You're just about to get your first payout, right? And you're always talking about how important it is to build momentum.”

“But we need to be practical, too. Financial stability is more important than chasing some dumb dream.”

“It's not dumb,” Flick said. After he thought for a minute, he said, “I could sell plasma. It's not a lot, but it'd be something.”

C.J. grimaced, and he felt a sick little twist in his stomach. “No...”

“Why not? Lots of college students do it, there's a place just two blocks from campus. There's posters up all over advertising, like, 'Make forty thousand bells your first month.' I don't know how accurate that actually is, I'll have to look into it. And I guess I don't know if plasma places have the same antiquated, discriminatory rules as blood donation places—I might have to lie about the sex-with-men thing.”

C.J. frowned, and tried to think of some other reason that would disqualify Flick from selling plasma. “Do they drug test you before you can sell plasma?”

“Pfft. I doubt it, if they're specifically recruiting college students. I mean, probably they wouldn't take me if I was shooting heroin or something, but I don't think they're going to care that I'm smoking weed once or twice a week.”

C.J. hadn't realized that Flick was smoking that often—in high school it had always been much more sporadic—and Flick must've recognized that this was new information for C.J. because his expression flashed briefly to startled embarrassment before he tried to force it back to something more nonchalant. C.J. said, “Uh, not to derail the conversation, but once or twice a week seems like a lot, or at least it's a lot more than you used to.” Flick just shrugged, and avoided eye contact. “Like, I get that you use this for anxiety and stuff, and I get that you've been stressed lately. But is it good for your lungs to be inhaling that much smoke?”

Flick scoffed. “It's not like it's tobacco. Once or twice a week is not that much.”

“I just want you to be healthy.”

“Being miserable isn't healthy, either.”

C.J. sighed. “Aren't there other ways to get it though?”

“Edibles take too long to kick in, and shit like vape pens or even tinctures just seem weird and chemical to me. I like the ritual of rolling a joint, and I like that I can keep one in my pocket for when I need it. Besides, I can control my experience better by smoking.”

C.J. was debating whether or not he should drop the subject or keep pestering Flick about it. “You can't still be smoking that stuff you got from Cherry, if you're smoking twice a week now. Where are you getting it from?”

“I'm buying from Bob,” Flick mumbled. “He grows his own.”

And then C.J. knew he should drop it because the mention of Bob made him feel irrationally upset and he knew that anything he did say would not be kind or helpful.

Flick seemed to realize this, too, and took advantage of the situation to steer the conversation away from his drug habit. “Anyway, selling plasma would be better than getting another job. Needles don't bother me, and all I'd have to do is sit there for an hour or two. I could do homework while I'm there. I've got that big gap between classes on Thursdays, I could go then. And then maybe on the weekend? Or Mondays instead of coming home for lunch.”

“No, you're not going to skip lunch to go sell plasma. And then bike to work right after. Jesus.”

“I'd bring a sandwich or something with me to eat before I go. I'd have to see how I feel.”

C.J. sighed.

Flick asked, “Why are you so against this?”

“I don't know,” C.J. said, and it was true: he couldn't identify why it felt so gross to him. “I just, I want something better for you.”

“Selling plasma is, like, a broke college student rite of passage. I'm not special.”

“Yes you are,” said C.J.

“Not that special.”

C.J. secretly hoped that Flick would be anemic or too skinny to sell plasma. But both Flick and his plasma were healthy, and so twice a week he started coming home with band-aids and bruises on the crook of his elbow. C.J. tried to not to feel like it was evidence of his failing Flick, and instead focused his energy on making sure Flick ate regular meals with plenty of protein.

One thing that consistently made C.J. feel good was time and contact with Flick, and he coordinated his streaming to when Flick was at school or work so that when Flick was home they could be together. One night, Flick laid on the couch with his laptop, and C.J. sat down on the end of the couch, lifting up Flick's feet and redepositing them on his lap. Flick looked at him over the top of his computer and smiled. C.J. scrolled through his phone for a few minutes, then said to Flick, “What are you working on?”

“Sociology paper.”

“Oh. I won't interrupt, then.”

“No, please interrupt me. These sociology papers are the worst.”

C.J. smiled. “Why's that?”

“The professor assigns the topic, so we don't even get to pick what we want to research, and then I don't think he even reads the papers at all. And I mean, why would he, for two hundred students just in this one class? I'm pretty sure he just puts them through some program to check for keywords. My last paper, I got a B-, and I normally get an A, so I went back to look at my submission again, and when I was copying and pasting it over to the portal I must've accidentally left off the last page. Like, my paper just stopped mid-sentence. And I still got a B-. It's ridiculous.”

“College seems weird.”

“I feel like there are better ways to do this. But yeah, it's weird.”

Flick typed, and C.J. scrolled, and after a few more minutes, C.J. said, “Hey, I just saw on Instagram that Cherry's going to be back in town with her band for a show.”

“Uh-huh. I saw that, too.”

“Wanna go?”

“Heh. No.”

“Why not?”

“Too noisy. Too crowded.”

“Don't you want to support Cherry?”

“She also posted they're getting some merch made. I'll buy a t-shirt or something.”

“I bet she'd like to see you, though.”

“Maybe. But I think she knows me well enough to not expect me there.” Flick typed a few more sentences. “Why do you want to go? You don't even like punk.”

“It's all right. I just want to do something with you.”

“Yeah,” said Flick, and he looked over his laptop at C.J. “We haven't really had a lot of extra time or money to go out on dates or anything. What's your schedule like this weekend?”

“Charters both days. The weather looks like it'll be nice.”

“Mornings or afternoons?”

“They're both afternoon charters.”

“Let's go get coffee and brunch at Brewster's on Sunday morning then,” Flick said, and when C.J. hesitated, he added, “Come on, we can spare the bells for it, it'll be fine. We haven't gone out in forever.”

“All right. Yeah. It's a date, then.”

Flick smiled at him, and turned his attention back to his laptop screen. After a moment, he said, “I'll have a few days off school around Thanksgiving, and the library is closed that whole weekend. We could do something bigger then.”

C.J. smiled nervously. “Uh, actually... Dad just asked me today if you might be interested in coming up north with us for Thanksgiving so that you could meet the family.”

“I've met most of your family already. I came along on that camping trip when we were, like, thirteen, remember?”

“Yeah, but that was years ago. And I mean meeting them in, like, an official boyfriend capacity.”

“Oh geez.” Flick lowered his laptop screen to look at C.J. and giggled. “I never even considered the whole meeting-the-family thing. You actually have family.”

“You have family, too. Just not on this continent.”

“And that I haven't had any contact with in years or ever.” Flick thought for a second. “Would we be staying overnight?”

“We wouldn't have to. It's, like, a three hour drive one way, so it'd be a lot of time in the car. But it's doable.”

“Would you go on your own if I don't?”

“I-I don't know. I want to be with you.”

“Don't stay home on my account. You like your family, you should go see them.” Flick tipped his head sideways to rest on the back of the couch. “I mean, it sounds super cute, being the boyfriend that you're bringing to meet your family, but also super nerve-wracking. Can I think about it?”

“Of course.”

Flick raised the laptop screen back up, and after a minute said, “What about the rest of the weekend? Could you and I do something together?”

C.J. sighed. “Unfortunately, charters are already fully booked out all the rest of the weekend. Dad's taking the mornings and I'm taking the afternoons. We were talking about it today because I was wondering if, ya know, if you wanted to skip Thanksgiving dinner with my family, maybe I could take another charter that day, since there's already people trying to book that out, too.”

“But then when would you see your family?”

C.J. shrugged. “I dunno. But we could use the money. And all the rich nine-to-fivers have the whole damn weekend off, and they expect us to be always available to cater to them,” he grumbled. Then he caught himself and said, “S-sorry.”

“For what?” Flick asked.

“Well, I mean, you were just saying how the library was closed all that weekend so you have off work, and campus is closed, too. And, uh, I don't want you to think I'm, ya know, angry or resentful towards people like your family. I mean you and your dad.”

Flick lowered the laptop screen again and looked at him in confusion.

“I-I've always been a little self-conscious about how you guys are, ya know, financially better off than me and my dad.”

“I mean, maybe a little?” Flick said. “Are you sure it's not just that my dad is so British? Americans always think he sounds rich and fancy.”

C.J. laughed softly.

“Professors don't make that much, and he only just got tenure two years ago. I don't think there's a huge difference between our families' financial situations. And even if there is, so what?”

“I think there's more of a difference than you realize,” C.J. said. “And, ya know, your dad has a regular schedule. He has weekends and summers off. You never had to get a summer job, you chose to this year because we were getting an apartment. And, ya know, you guys always had better food at your house, you had more and nicer clothes. You guys got to take vacations. Like, vacations that weren't just camping or visiting family. It's just, ya know, a bunch of stuff like that that I've noticed.” He glanced over at Flick, who was looking back at him with a furrowed brow, and he knew that Flick was just taking time to process things and that C.J. should let there be a pause in the conversation so that Flick could think, and he literally bit his tongue to keep from rambling on nervously.

After a minute, Flick said, “He has summers off from teaching, but he uses that time for writing and publishing. He's still working, just in a different way. But I get what you're saying, and you're right, we did have some privileges that you guys didn't. And I never really thought about it before, which I guess is just another sign of privilege. Does it really bother you, though?”

C.J. shrugged. “Not seriously. I mean, there were times when we were kids that I was jealous of this or that. But, ya know, it's not something I spent a lot of time thinking about.” He sighed. “But, um, I guess sometimes I worry about not being able to, uh, ya know, p-provide the kind of lifestyle that you're used to.”

Flick asked genuinely, “Do you think I care about that?”

“I think you don't think about it,” C.J. answered, and then cringed because that seemed harsh.

But Flick didn't seem offended. He set his laptop on the floor and sat up to kneel next to C.J.; he cupped both his hands around C.J.'s cheeks and kissed him, then held his face close. “We could live in the truck and eat out of dumpsters, and it would still be a good life because I'd be with you. Love and happiness are more important than money and things. Okay?”

C.J. had to blink a few times to keep back tears that wanted to spring up, and he nodded, his face still in Flick's hands. Flick laid back down on the couch and went back to his paper.

C.J. closed his eyes and laid his head back against the couch; he'd streamed for three hours this morning and then ran a charter in the afternoon. He was already tired from work, and having an emotional conversation made him even more tired; he felt a little embarrassed for having brought this up at all.

After a few minutes, Flick said, “If you're going to be working all the rest of that weekend, then I'll definitely come with for Thanksgiving dinner with your family.”

C.J. opened his eyes. “Yeah? You don't want to think about it for a while?”

“Nah,” Flick said. “I mean, it's gonna happen eventually, right? And if I put it off, it'll just be more awkward. And this way I can be sure that you'll actually go.”

C.J. smiled. “I'll let Dad know,” he said, and turned his phone back on. It was still open to Instagram, and he decided that he'd text his dad later, he just wanted some mindless distraction right now. He clicked into Cherry's band's page and scrolled through recent posts, then clicked over to Cherry's personal page. “Hey, I just saw the picture Cherry posted with that tattoo that you drew. That looks pretty sweet.”

“Doesn't it?” Flick said. “I only drew the outline for the luna moth, though, not the whole thing.”

“So only, like, the biggest and most important part of it.”

“The tattoo artist did a good job.”

“With your drawing.”

Flick sighed. “Yes, fine, with my drawing.”

“That's gotta feel pretty great for you.”

Flick shrugged. “Cherry's been talking about tattoos for years. She's going to be one of those people who covers every available inch of her skin with ink.”

“So it's an honor that you chose your drawing to be her first tattoo, right?” C.J. said, then laughed. “I ain't gonna let up until you admit that this makes you feel good.”

“You are so terrible,” Flick said, glaring at C.J. from behind his laptop but also smiling. “Yes, it kinda feels good.”

“That's better,” C.J. said. “I feel good about this on your behalf. You should put more art stuff up on your Insta. Even just sketchbook pages or whatever.”

“I don't have anything worth posting.”

“Like hell you don't. What about that centipede painting you made last summer?”

“Ugh, no, that's so sloppy, and the colors are garish and weird. Anyway, all my finished art is still back at my dad's place. The only stuff I have photos of is what I sent in for my portfolio for the university, and all of that's so old at this point I'm kind of embarrassed by it.”

C.J. let the matter drop, and he went back to scrolling though Cherry's Instagram. The algorithm had been burying her posts, so he hadn't realized he hadn't been seeing anything from her in weeks. After a few minutes, he asked, “Are Cherry and Katt still dating?”

“No, they broke up a while ago. Cherry's dating someone named Goldie now, I don't know her. But she and Katt are both still in the band together, which has got to feel kinda weird.”

Before he could stop himself, C.J. asked, “Do you think we'd still be friends if we broke up?”

Flick looked at him over the laptop again. “We're not breaking up.”

“I know. But if.”

Flick sighed, and considered it. “I mean, yeah, I would hope we would be. But it would be kind of awkward at first, and it would be awkward again once you started dating someone else.”

C.J. gave him a small smile. “Why do you think I'd be the one to start dating someone else first?”

Flick shrugged. “You're more social.”

“Not since high school, I'm not.”

“Yeah, about that... That's not good for you, C.J. You're going to go batty hanging around just me all the time.”

“I like hanging around with you.”

“Yeah, but you like other people, too. You should be going out more.”

“It's just hard.” C.J. sighed. “Most of my high school friends moved away, so we only interact on social media now. The local fishing scene here is mostly straight guys and old guys—it's like, my dad's friends that I grew up around. It's hard to find where I belong.”

“You've got the people who follow your stream.”

“Yeah... some of them are cool. A lot of them are just kinda more of the same—straight guys and old guys and dude-bros.”

“You should try being more gay on stream. You'll find more people like you if you put yourself out there more.”

“Maybe,” C.J. said, although he doubted he would be doing that any time soon. “You should join me on stream sometime. We could be gay together.”

Flick smirked. “I don't know what you have in mind,” he said, and poked C.J. with his toe. C.J. laughed. After a minute, Flick said, “How many followers do you have now?”

“One ninety-two followers, eight subscribers.”

“What's the difference?”

“Subscribers pay money, and they get stuff like special emotes or whatever.”

“How many people actually tune in for a stream?”

“It varies. Once I had forty-two after my stream got raided, which was amazing, but most of them didn't stick around long. Usually it's, like, five to ten.”

“That's not so bad,” Flick said to himself. Then to C.J. he said, “I'll go on stream if you introduce me as your boyfriend.”

“Seriously?”

“Not for, like, an extended period of time. But I'll come say hello.”

C.J. thought about it. “What if I call you my partner?”

“I mean, it's not untrue. But it's still more ambiguous than 'boyfriend.' Like, we could be business partners.”

C.J. smiled. “What kind of business are we running?”

“Flick and C.J., Attorneys At Law.”

“Heh. Why lawyers? I was imagining, like, electricians.”

“I'd be a terrible electrician,” Flick said. “I guess I'd be an even worse lawyer, though, I hate conflict.”

C.J. yawned, and turned his phone off, laying his head back against the couch and closing his eyes again. “Will you really come on stream with me someday?”

“Sure,” Flick said. After a minute, he said, “You should go to bed.”

“I wanna go to bed with you. If I go to bed now, I'll be asleep by the time you get there.”

“You sure you're not already asleep?”

“Wide awake,” C.J. answered without opening his eyes.

“I've just got to submit this paper by midnight, Flick said. “I suppose I can stop trying to make it good, it obviously doesn't matter.”

C.J. smiled. He meant to stay up to wait for Flick, but he must've drifted off, because the next thing he was aware of was Flick ruffling his hair. “Bedtime, sleepyhead,” Flick said softly, and kissed his cheek. “I'm just going to brush my teeth and I'll be right there.”

C.J. trudged off to bed, and forced his eyes to stay open to wait for Flick. A minute later, there he was, lifting the covers and sliding into bed next to him, wrapping his arm around C.J.'s waist. C.J.'s body melted into Flick's; he closed his eyes now and sighed, “I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Stay with me forever,” C.J. murmured dozily.

“Okay,” Flick said, and C.J. could hear the smile in his voice.

Over the next few weeks, whenever C.J. would livestream, he would mention Flick any chance he got, and he would think, boyfriend, every time he did, hoping that if he thought the word often enough that one of these times he'd just say it without overthinking it, but it never happened. Flick never brought it up again, and seemed preoccupied and distant a lot of the time. C.J. had to regularly remind himself that Flick was having a hard time balancing school and work right now, and that Flick had always become withdrawn when he was stressed. But he'd also been hoping that simply living together would have magically cured Flick of these depressive tendencies, and he felt a little lost and scared thinking about how his love wasn't enough to save Flick.

One day, C.J. was coming home from a morning charter, and as he put his key in the lock he heard a noise from inside the apartment, which gave him pause, since Flick was supposed to be at work. When he opened the door, Flick was waiting for him, and he caught the door in his hand so that C.J. couldn't open it all the way. Flick had a serious expression on his face, and he said, “Before you come in, I just want to say that I'm sorry.”

C.J.'s heart thumped. “Why? What happened? What's going on?”

Flick stepped aside and let C.J. in. When he glanced around the apartment, he saw on the kitchen island Flick's two mesh pop-up insect habitats. “Bugs,” he said, and laughed with relief; this was so far removed from the various disasters he was imagining a few seconds ago. He looked more closely. “Oh, wow, those are big. And there's a lot of them, too, holy mackerel.”

“Uh-huh,” Flick agreed nervously.

“They're stick bugs, right? But they're not the kind you used to have, like, last summer or whatever.”

“Good eye. What I had before were northern walkingsticks. They're native to here and so, ya know, I'd find them outside and I would bring them in for a few months. I'd overwinter the eggs and release the nymphs in the spring and it would be fine. These, however, are Vietnamese stick bugs. They are actually illegal to possess because they are considered an agricultural pest.”

“Ha ha. Oops.” C.J. was still smiling, despite Flick's angst.

“It's not funny!”

“I'm sorry,” C.J. said. “It's just that I was imagining something a lot more serious when you first met me at the door.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno,” he said, not wanting to speak any of it aloud. He looked at Flick, who was pacing nervously and fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “Flick, it's okay. Sit down, tell me what happened.”

Flick sank down on a kitchen stool and sighed; he put his elbows on the counter and rested his head in his hands. “Okay,” he began. “So, this morning, Bob texted me that one of his roommates had some stick bugs he wanted to rehome and he was wondering if I would know anybody who could take them.”

C.J.'s chest tightened, and he thought, They've exchanged phone numbers? But he nodded, and tried to keep a neutral expression on his face.

“And he said that if he—the roommate—didn't find any takers, that he was just going to release them. Which is a terrible idea, even for the native walkingsticks, because if you've kept them indoors, they've habituated to the warmth, it's too cold for them outside now, they'd die. So, because I'm a complete idiot who didn't ask any further questions, I said I'd take them. Because I assumed that since he was talking about releasing them, they must be the native walkingsticks, and I'd just overwinter them and release them myself in the spring when the weather warmed up.”

“You're not an idiot,” C.J. said.

“I should have gotten a clue when he said there were babies, too. Northern walkingsticks shouldn't have nymphs this time of year. I... I just wasn't thinking.”

“Flick, it's okay,” C.J. said again. “But why'd you take them once you saw what they were?”

“I-I was already there, an-and I'd already said I'd take them. I didn't want to disappoint everyone. And Bob's roommate was going to release them! They'd either freeze to death, which is a miserable way to go, or if they survived the winter they'd wreak havoc with the environment.” Flick sighed. “He—the roommate, I can't remember his name—was actually going to keep the nymphs, he just wanted to rehome the adults. He wants to get a fucking tarantula instead, and he was going to keep the nymphs in the terrarium a-as food. Which, you know, obviously I understand how nature works, and tarantulas have to eat something, it's not their fault. But everybody wants a tarantula, if they're going to have a bug—or something bug-like—as a pet. Everybody wants a fucking tarantula or a scorpion, because they think they're fierce or macho or whatever. Nobody appreciates gentle herbivores.”

“I appreciate gentle herbivores,” C.J. said, and Flick gave him a small, half-smile.

“Once I was there and I saw them, I felt like I had to take them.” Flick sighed. “I am too fucking soft.”

“Flick, you have a good heart,” C.J. said, and reached out for his hands. “One of the things I love best about you is how much you care and how deeply you feel things.”

Flick still looked like he was about to cry. “C.J., what am I going to do? There's, like, over eighty nymphs in there. I can't release them, I can't sell them or give them away. I don't have the space to keep them all myself.”

“Maybe your dad might have some ideas?”

Flick groaned and laid his head in his arms.

“Sorry.”

After a minute, Flick said, “Honestly, they probably won't all survive anyway. They're so sensitive to change. Moving from one habitat to another will be hard on them, and the little bit of time they were exposed to the cold might've been hard, too, even if me and Bob both had our jackets wrapped around the habitat for the walk from the car to the apartment.”

C.J.'s chest tightened again. “How did you get them home?” he asked.

“Bob drove me.”

Bob was here? C.J. thought. Has he been here before?

Flick sighed. “Speaking of my dad, though,” he said. “I need to go get my big terrarium, so that I can at least give these guys a bit more space until I figure out what I'm doing. I know you just came from there, b-but, can you give me a ride to my dad's place?”

At least he didn't ask Bob to do that, too. “Yeah, absolutely.”

“C-can we go now? My dad has class and then office hours until three thirty today. I want to be gone before he comes home, I-I don't want to have a conversation with him about this right now.”

“Of course.”

So C.J. drove them across town to Nat's house. C.J was at his own father's house a couple times every week, but this was the first time Flick had been back here since they had moved out almost two months ago. Flick walked through the house almost cautiously, and after he retrieved his terrarium from his old bedroom, he said, “I think my dad's been going through my stuff. It's not the way I left it.”

“Like, in a bad way?”

“No, I guess not. Everything's just kind of... moved around.”

C.J. shrugged. “He probably just misses you.”

Flick frowned, and closed his bedroom door. He started for the front door, then stopped. “Actually, before we go, I want to take a peek into the backyard to see if the blackberries have any green leaves left on them. Bob's roommate was feeding the stick bugs lettuce, which is okay for the adults, but it's not a good food for growing babies.” He headed out through the garage to grab some pruners.

C.J. put the terrarium into the back of the truck and then walked around to the backyard. Flick had a fistful of blackberry boughs in one hand and now just stood there, looking around the yard. C.J. watched him for a moment, then said, “Hey, babe, it's quarter after three. If you want to avoid your dad, we should get going.”

“Y-yeah. Yeah,” Flick said. “I'm all done here.” They went back through the house so that Flick could get an old spaghetti sauce jar from the recycling bin to fill with water for the blackberry boughs, then Flick locked the doors and they headed out.

Once they were in the truck, C.J. said, “You should let your dad know you came to get some stuff. If he's going through your room, he's going to notice the giant terrarium is missing. You should let him know it was you so he doesn't think somebody broke in.”

Flick sighed. “Who would break in and only steal a terrarium?” he said, but he took out his phone and sent a text. When he was done, he put his phone away and turned his attention to the blackberry leaves. “These are so dried out,” he said. “I mean, I'll still offer it, but I don't know if they'll eat it. Could we maybe go to Trader Joe's? They have a floral section, they might have roses or eucalyptus or something that haven't been sprayed with pesticides. At least I can buy some organic lettuce, the adults will eat that.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Flick fingered the blackberry branches and started nervously picking the thorns off, collecting them in his cupped hand. C.J. watched out of the corner of his eye as he drove, and after a few minutes asked, “How's it feel going back to your dad's?”

After a long pause, Flick glumly said, “I dunno.”

“When's the last time you talked to him?”

“Like, verbally?”

“Anything.”

Flick thought for a second. “He emailed me about a month ago. He said he found a book of mine under the couch and asked if I wanted it. Honestly, it just felt like he was looking for some excuse to reach out. And he asked how we were settling in.”

“Did you email him back?”

“Yeah. I wrote back. Not, like, a long email, but I did respond.”

“Is that the only contact you two have had since you moved out?”

There was another pause, then Flick asked in a sharp voice, “Why are you asking me these questions?”

C.J. was momentarily taken aback and didn't answer.

“You know I don't have the same kind of relationship with my dad as you have with yours. I thought you were on my side about this.”

“I am!” C.J. said, and was surprised by the desperation in his own voice. He took a breath and said again, “I am on your side. Like, I know how your dad talks to you and how he treats you, I know how he makes you feel. And, like, I fully support whatever you need to do for your own mental health here. I'm not trying to make you feel guilty about anything, I'm just... trying to understand, I guess. Like, I know that he's an asshole sometimes. Like, you've told me about it and I've seen it myself. I get it. I know that he's fucked up before. But like, I also know that he's trying. He fucks up, but he tries. I know that he loves you, and that he wants some kind of relationship with you. And, like, obviously it's not my place to say what that relationship would be, obviously it's complicated. And, like, like...” C.J. took a deep breath. “If I'm being completely honest with you, Flick, it just kinda scares me the way you hold a grudge against him. Because I worry, ya know, what if I fuck up? Are you going to hold it against me forever? Am I going to lose you if I do something stupid?”

There was a long pause, and C.J. felt like he was dying. Flick poked at the thorns in his hand; he rolled down the window to dump them outside, then rolled the window back up. Finally, Flick said, “C.J., I've known you for more than seven years, I can't imagine what you could do to fuck up. What are you afraid of doing?”

“I don't know. I don't even know.”

“And I can't imagine not forgiving you for whatever it would be. Like, even if you did fuck up, it would be one thing. One thing in seven years of being otherwise considerate and supportive. That's not the case with my dad. The situations are not comparable.”

“I... I guess.”

Out of the corner of his eye, C.J. could see Flick looking at him. Then he set the blackberries down on the floor and leaned across the truck to put his hand on C.J.'s shoulder. “Are you really worried about this?” Flick asked.

C.J. shrugged him off. He forced a smile and said, “Hey, I'm driving, there's traffic. I've got to concentrate.”

Flick shrank back to his seat, and C.J. felt guilty for bringing this up; they drove the rest of the way to the grocery store in silence. He pulled into a parking spot and turned off the truck. They both unbuckled their seat belts and then just sat there. Flick slumped in his seat and fidgeted with the hem of his jacket, and after a minute he said quietly, “Am I really that moody? That you're scared of how I might react to something?”

“No!” C.J. said. “God. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything, I—”

“No,” Flick cut him off. “I-if it's an issue, we should talk about it. Clearly something is on your mind.”

C.J. slouched in his seat and rubbed his face with both hands.

Flick said, “Is something wrong? You've been kind of wound up for weeks.”

“I don't know,” C.J. said. “I just...” He sighed. “I'm just so stressed. Like, everything about adulthood has been more expensive than I was anticipating, and streaming isn't really taking off like I had hoped, and the charters are drying up for the year. And like, you're stressed about school and work and stuff, and I want to make things better for you and I don't know how, and, and...” He thought, And you're spending so much time with Bob now, more than I even realized, and I'm afraid of what that means. But he took a breath and said, “And I've just wanted this for so long—us together, us making a life together. And I want it to be perfect. And instead everything has been so hard.”

“Oh, C.J.,” Flick said, and he scooted next to him on the bench seat and wrapped his arms around him in a hug. C.J. hugged him back with one arm, but he also cringed with shame over having brought this up. Flick pulled back a little bit, his arms still looped behind C.J.'s neck, and said, “What do you think perfect is?”

“I don't know,” C.J. said, and frowned because he felt like he'd been saying that a lot lately. “Something easier. Something more comfortable.”

“Because, yeah, there's all those external stressors you mentioned. And they're not insignificant. I don't want to minimize them, because I know you're concerned about them. But they're, like I said, external. And at the core of it all is us. And we're good, aren't we, C.J.? Our relationship? We're good, right?” There was a wrinkle between Flick's eyebrows, and a hint of real worry in his voice.

C.J. forced himself to say, “Yeah. We're good.” And he hoped it was true. Flick relaxed in his arms and kissed him, and C.J. melted with relief. “Maybe I just need more time with you,” C.J. said.

Flick smiled and said, “We're together every night, we spend more time together now than we ever have before.”

C.J.'s stomach knotted back up with worry, and he thought, Am I too needy? Is that why he's spending so much time with Bob now, so much time away from home?

Then Flick said, “But I get it. Everything is serious now. We have more responsibilities, especially you, since you're earning the bulk of our income. Of course you're stressed. We should be doing more fun stuff together. Like a weekly date night or something.”

“But our schedules conflict so much. And we can't afford a proper date every week.”

“Just an improper one?” Flick asked with a smirk, and C.J., despite his angst, chuckled a little. Flick took the opportunity to kiss him again. “But we can do something, we could...” Flick trailed off and his expression changed as something outside the truck caught his eye. C.J. followed his gaze to an adjacent parking spot where an older woman was standing outside her car staring at them with a sour look on her face. C.J. didn't think they'd been doing anything wrong, or even anything particularly indecent, but he felt a little self-conscious that someone had been watching them kiss and hold each other. He turned back to Flick; he was scowling back at her now, and he raised a hand up off C.J.'s shoulder to flip her off.

C.J. laughed, then said, “C'mere.” He pulled Flick in for a kiss, which Flick enthusiastically returned.

When they parted, they both turned to the woman, who was now loading the last of her groceries into her car with an even bigger sneer now. Just as she was getting into her car, Flick rolled down the driver's side window and yelled at her, “Pervert!”

C.J. laughed again as she drove off. “What's her problem?”

“Probably just doesn't like to see people having a good time, probably just jealous of two people who are so obviously in love,” he said, and kissed him again. “We're perfect,” Flick said, and C.J. smiled at him.

Once they got home, Flick set up the terrarium and went to work painstakingly transferring the tiny stick bug nymphs from one habitat to another. C.J. laid on the couch with his phone, and once he was sure Flick was thoroughly preoccupied, he navigated over to Flick's Facebook page. Flick hadn't posted anything since August, when he had shared some photos of a butterfly he had seen, but when C.J. scrolled through his friends list, he found what he was looking for: an unfamiliar face with the name Bob attached. This Bob was also a student at Leafville University and was twenty-three years old, so it was surely the same Bob. Bob didn't have too many public posts, either. He was tagged in some other people's photos from a music festival, and in a few photos from somebody else's wedding where he looked uncomfortable in a button-down shirt. There were some memes and quiz results, but nothing too juicy or compelling. His profile pic was more than a year old, and in it Bob was in a sun-dappled forest squinting into the light; he was thin and wore a pink shirt with yellow flowers on it. He looked like a hippie. But, C.J. acknowledged, it was a nice photo, and he felt like Bob looked objectively handsome in it. C.J. looked up at Flick, and then down at his own body. He missed the muscles he used to have when he played high school football. Now he never got to work out like he wanted to—even if he could afford a membership at a gym or the Y, when would he find the time? What's more, he was always so tired and hungry after a fishing charter, and it was too easy, after he dropped the boat off at his dad's house, to go through a fast food drive-through or get a doughnut from a gas station, even though he knew it was a waste of money that they couldn't really afford. He poked his stomach and squeezed his thigh, and frowned. He hadn't gained a lot of weight—and Flick hadn't said anything about it, and nor had their sex life changed at all—but comparing himself to that photo of Bob, he felt fat and unattractive. And disappointed because now it felt like he had just given himself one more thing to worry about.

Chapter Text

Flick was having a bad day. When he woke up, he saw that four more stick insect nymphs had died overnight. Which was not entirely unexpected—they were fragile creatures who often died for reasons unknown, and despite Flick's best efforts, some of them simply refused to eat the blackberry leaves from Nat's backyard, or organic lettuce or roses from Trader Joe's, or the potted privet from Leif's Garden Center—but Flick still felt a stab of guilt every time he found more dead bugs. He gathered up the little bodies and folded them into a square of paper towel, then went outside with a kitchen spoon and buried them in the apartment's backyard. His father had always teased him for doing this, laughing and saying something along the lines of, “Don't forget to say the Lord's Prayer,” and Flick was embarrassed about how childish he knew this looked, holding a funeral for a bug, but no other option felt respectful. At least C.J. had been kind about it; when Flick told him more nymphs had died, C.J. had said, “Aww, poor little guys,” and when Flick told him he was going to bury them outside, C.J. had only said, “Okay.”

In art history class that morning, Flick got back his midterm test, and was shocked to see he had gotten a C- on it, the lowest grade he had gotten in college so far, and a lower grade than he had gotten on most assignments in high school (not counting the zeros he'd gotten for high school assignment he simply never did). He looked over his test; the majority of it had been multiple choice, and he'd lost a lot of points because he hadn't been able to remember exact dates of artworks or specific countries that artists had been from. High school had been so easy, he rarely had to actually study much; he'd scan over the assigned readings once, and he'd be able to retain everything he'd need to know for papers or tests. College had so far seemed easy in the same way, and when Flick had taken this test, there were a few questions he knew he was guessing at, but by and large he had given what he thought were accurate responses. It was a shock now to see that he was struggling more than he had even realized. On the two essay questions at the end of the test, where he'd been able to write about the overall gestalt of the artwork they'd been studying, the professor had marked next to them Nice and Good, which helped reassure him a little, but getting such a low grade—and in an art class, no less—was a surprisingly hard blow to his ego.

At the plasma center that afternoon, Flick didn't feel like reading or doing homework, so he was on his phone; he texted Bob, are you going to be in the studio tomorrow night? can i buy 1/8 from you? As he waited for Bob to respond, he clicked over to the payment app the plasma center used, and noticed that he'd gotten paid less last week than he had before, and there was no explanation as to why, so after the technician came to remove the IV, he went up to the front desk to ask. The person there looked through their records and said, “Looks like you went down to a lower weight class. The amount of plasma you can safely donate is based on your weight, so last week and this week were smaller donations. Your weight is right on the edge, though. A couple of bacon cheeseburgers will pop you right back up.” The front desk clerk smiled cheerfully, and Flick nodded and walked away.

Once he was outside, he looked at his phone and saw that Bob had texted back, Yeah no prob, see ya then.

But now that Flick wouldn't have as much money for groceries as he was expecting, he had to text back, sorry, looks like i'm actually short on bells, it'll have to wait until next week maybe.

Bob responded, Also no prob my dude, I'll see ya when I see ya, but still Flick felt bad for Bob because he was likely counting on those bells, and bad for himself because he just wanted to be able to smoke a joint now and then to chill the fuck out.

In ceramics class that afternoon, they had a group critique with everyone's most recent work. One of Flick's pieces was a vase onto which he had carefully sculpted an orb-weaver spider and behind it carved an intricate spiderweb pattern; he was proud of the work he had put into it and pleased at how the glazing turned out, settling in the crevices of the web to highlight it and yet not obscuring any of the small details on the spider. But the only comments he got from his classmates were about how “spooky” or “Halloweeny” it was, and suddenly Flick didn't like the piece as much any more, and he hated himself for being so naive to have made spider-themed art in October.

He lingered in the hallway after class, looking over a bulletin board, and among the usual fliers for concerts or textbook buyback events and hand-scrawled posters selling futons or mini-fridges, he saw a notice he hadn't seen before, advertising a drop-in figure drawing class on Thursdays from five to seven p.m. In small text on the bottom, it read, Models wanted, 4,000 bells/50 minute session, followed by contact information with a student email address. Four thousand bells was more than he was making selling plasma, even before he lost weight, and if there was one thing he was good at, it was standing still. He considered whether or not he cared about his classmates seeing him naked, and the conclusion he came to was no, not really; somehow his physical body felt less private than his thoughts or feelings. But then he remembered how weird C.J. had been about him selling plasma, and he thought surely he wouldn't be too pleased about nude modeling, even if it didn't seem like a particularly big deal to Flick. But also, he thought, C.J. wouldn't have to know since it didn't really concern him; it was Flick's body and Flick's time, and it was a thing that didn't hurt anyone. And they could use the bells. If he could go every week, that would cover half a month's worth of groceries, or better yet he could use the bells to take C.J. out on a nice-ish date every week, and either way maybe C.J. would worry a little less about everything. Flick took a cell phone pic of the poster to think it over some more.

When he got home that night, C.J. was streaming; he glanced over at Flick as he walked in the door and smiled, then turned back to the camera. Flick checked on his stick insects, spritzed the inside of the habitats with water, then laid down in bed to wait for C.J. to finish. He opened the streaming app on his phone and clicked over the C.J.'s channel; from across the apartment, he heard C.J. say, “I see atlas_moth and offkeytuna just joined the chat. Welcome, welcome.” Flick propped his phone up against C.J.'s pillow and watched his stream. C.J. was always so cheerful and energetic on stream, which was increasingly more of a contrast to how C.J. was in real life. Flick understood that streaming was at least in part a performance, and that real-life C.J. was anxious about real-life things, but it also felt like a light had gone out in C.J. since they moved in together, and Flick was worried that it was his fault, that maybe he really was impossibly high-maintenance, impractical and unreasonable, hard to live with and hard to understand, worried that maybe his dad had been right all along.

After about an hour, C.J. said to his stream, “Well, it's time for me to wrap things up here. Flick came home a little while ago and I'm going to go make us some dinner.” One person in the chat commented, lucky Flick, and a few others asked what he was making, mentioning specific fish dishes that C.J. had made before, and Flick frowned watching the chat; it felt weird that these strangers knew what they ate. But it also felt weird in a different way that he was known to them only by his name and not by his relationship to C.J. He had told C.J. he was fine with the ambiguity, which was sort of true, or at least true enough that Flick didn't feel like he was lying, and more to the point Flick didn't want to pressure C.J. into anything he wasn't comfortable with. But if he was going to be talked about anyway, it felt lonely to not be acknowledged as C.J.'s boyfriend. He sighed at his own inconsistency; if he didn't understand it himself, it didn't seem worth it to try to talk to C.J. about it.

After a few more minutes, C.J. finally said goodbye to the chat; the livestream on Flick's phone went dark and the apartment was quiet. After a few seconds, C.J. called out, “Hey, Flick.”

“Hey.”

“I'm just going to close things out and make some quick notes, I'll be right there.”

Flick plugged his phone into the charger and waited.

Five minutes later, C.J. pulled back the curtain that led to their bedroom space and sat down on the bed next to Flick. “How was your day?”

“Kinda crappy.”

“Aww. What happened?”

Flick told him about the art history test and the ceramics critique, but not about anything else.

“They're all idiots,” C.J. said, and kissed Flick's forehead. “They don't recognize genius when they see it.”

Flick laughed dryly. “I feel like it's just more evidence that I don't know what I'm doing here. And not just college, but like, life in general. But in college, too. Like, it doesn't matter that I have all these opinions and extraneous information about ancient to medieval art history, the test was about dates and names and places, so of course I'm going to get a bad grade if I don't do what's expected of me. And the professor even told us that, she told us what to study, but... I don't know, I-I just didn't make enough effort, I guess. And that spider thing in ceramics—god! Like it never even occurred to me that Halloween is next week. Like, not even once. And there's Halloween crap up all over the place, including stupid, garish, cartoony spider crap. But like, it didn't even register to me when I was making and showing this piece. I feel so dumb. I feel like I'm from another planet.”

“You're way too hard on yourself.”

Flick had run out of words about his day and he didn't want to be comforted. He sighed and closed his eyes. After a minute, he said to C.J., “How was your day?”

“Boring,” C.J. said. “I was on the computer all day. I was updating the charter's website and social media with winter rates and excursions and stuff. I've been trying to convince my dad not to lower our rates in the off-season, since we already get so few charters, but I think he's probably right that we'd get even less if we charged the full rate. People are such wimps about being out in the cold and the snow, I don't know how else to get more business in the winter other than discounts. And then I did some housekeeping stuff for the stream, and then actually streaming this afternoon.”

Flick frowned—C.J. had so much responsibility, and was always so busy—but then said, “It sounded like the stream went well, though.”

“Yeah, it was all right. But I started later than I meant to, I wanted to be done before you came home.”

“You know, you don't have to time things like that. You can do your own thing. I can do mine. We see each other every night.”

C.J.'s forehead wrinkled. “But... I mean... especially after hearing you had a bad day, I want to help you feel better.”

Flick's stomach knotted up with guilt; he didn't like worrying C.J., and didn't like feeling like he needed to be taken care of. But C.J. had seemed a little insecure lately and Flick didn't want to reject his efforts, so he said, “I do like coming home to you.”

C.J. relaxed. “I'm glad to hear that,” he said, and leaned over to kiss Flick.

As C.J. sat back up, Flick put his arms around his waist and said, “Lay down on top of me.”

C.J. smiled and said, “We should eat dinner before we fool around.”

“No,” Flick said. “I don't mean like that. I just, I like the pressure.”

“I'm too heavy for that.”

“No, C.J....” But Flick sighed and dropped the issue; it was a weird thing to request anyway.

“What should I make for dinner?” C.J. asked.

“I'm not hungry,” Flick said reflexively. But then he thought back to the plasma center and added, “But I should eat.”

“What would you like? I'll make you anything.”

“I don't really want anything. Can you just, like, put a frozen pizza in the oven and lay down with me?”

“Sure, but that's not much of a dinner.”

“Do we have stuff to make a salad to go with?”

“I think the only lettuce we have is stick bug lettuce.”

Flick groaned. “I'm so sorry about the stupid stick bugs.”

“They're not stupid,” C.J. said. “And it's not a big deal.”

“But it's just one more thing. On top of everything else, it's one more thing to worry about.”

“Do you want me to run to the store to buy stuff for a salad? It would only take a few minutes.”

“And I've spent so much money on stick bug food and substrate for the habitats and—”

“Flick, enough.”

“Besides, it's my turn to go get groceries. You've gone the past two or three times.”

“Flick...”

Flick sighed. “No, I don't even want a salad.”

“Once the oven preheats, I'll lay down with you until the pizza is done. Okay?”

“Okay,” Flick said.

As he listened to C.J. moving around in the kitchen, he picked his phone back up and looked at the photo he took of the figure drawing class poster. It wouldn't hurt to email and ask about modeling. The bells would be nice, and Flick would be able to feel like he was contributing more to the household. And it would get him out of the apartment a little longer so he wouldn't have to feel like he was being worried over.

Since Flick had never attended a figure drawing class in any capacity, the instructor, who was a grad student, suggested that he come sit in as an artist one week to get a feel for things before he committed to modeling. Flick tried to think of a way to talk to C.J. about it, but he never found the right words or a good time, so the following Thursday after ceramics, he texted C.J., i'm going to be a bit late coming home today, there's a figure drawing drop-in class i'm going to check out, and he sent C.J. the picture of the poster he had taken earlier, edited to crop out the text at the bottom about models wanted. C.J. texted back, OK, sounds cool. Are you coming home right after? I could have dinner ready. C.J. had been doing most of the cooking, and Flick felt bad about that, but now wasn't the time to have a discussion about that, either, so he texted back, yeah, i shouldn't be any later than 7:30.

At the figure drawing class, Flick introduced himself to the instructor, then took a seat near the wall. He looked around the room. Most of the other artists had large newsprint pads that they propped up on easels in front of them, and Flick felt self-conscious about the smaller sketchbook he had brought, but as he sat there a few other nervous looking students with sketchbooks wandered in, too, so he felt less alone. At five o'clock, the instructor locked the door and poked his head behind a curtained-off area in the corner of the classroom, and a minute later a woman in a bathrobe stepped out and up onto the platform at the front of the room. The instructor said to the artists, “All right, we're going to start with some two minute poses to warm up.” He nodded to the model, who slipped off her robe, draped it over a chair, and then struck a pose with her arms crossed behind her head.

Flick had never seen anyone naked in real life other than C.J., and he was expecting it to feel awkward. But drawing gave him a job to do, and two minutes wasn't a long time; he had barely gotten her shoulders and elbows sketched out before the instructor called, “Time,” and she changed positions. Flick turned the page. The model went through a series of two minute poses, then ten minute poses and finally a twenty minute pose, and by the end of it, Flick was so focused on line and shape that he had forgotten about being nervous. At the end of it, the model put her bathrobe back on, stepped behind the curtain, then came back out a few seconds later with a water bottle; she sat down in a chair next to one of the artists and started talking with them animatedly and she waved to someone else across the room. Flick couldn't imagine himself doing that, but it did help reassure him that his fellow art students might not think differently of him for modeling.

The same model posed for the second drawing session, too. At the end of class, Flick went up to talk to the instructor. “So, what do you think?” the instructor asked.

“I-I think, yeah. I think I'm up for it,” Flick answered.

“Wonderful. As you can see, we're a bit short on models right now. Can you do the second session every Thursday? Six to seven?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“If we get more people to sign up, I'll be rotating through different models every week, but I'll let you know about any schedule changes ahead of time.”

Flick nodded. “Do, um, do I need to bring anything?”

“Just your own robe. And you don't have to be nude, if you're super uncomfortable with it. But if you're going to wear underwear, go with solid color briefs, just to minimize distraction.”

Flick nodded again. He'd been assuming he'd be nude and had been mentally preparing for that, and so now the prospect of posing in underwear felt weirder. Besides, he normally wore boxer briefs, and he didn't want to have to purchase both a robe and new underwear just for this gig.

At home that night, C.J. said to him, “How was the figure drawing class?”

“It was all right,” Flick said. And then, because he felt the need to elaborate, said, “It was actually a lot harder than I was expecting. I guess thus far I've mostly focused my attention on drawing things like bugs or flowers.” He paused. “I, uh, I'll probably be going back every week for a while.”

“Oh,” C.J. said, sounding a little sad. “Yeah, I guess it's an important skill for an artist to learn.”

“Mm-hm.” Flick nodded, then changed the subject. “What's for dinner? It smells good.”

“Yeah,” C.J. said. “I was streaming today. I didn't see your name in the chat—I know you're busy—but I caught a nice big pike. I was able to put half of it in the freezer for later, and the other half I've got baking in the oven with some potatoes and mushrooms and garlic. It's probably just the garlic that you're smelling, the fish only just went in about a minute before you came home.”

Flick smiled and said, “Tell me about streaming today.” Then he listened to C.J. talk about that for a while, grateful that he didn't bring up the life drawing class again.

The next day, Flick met Bob in the ceramics studio to work on his projects and to buy some weed, and as they were working, Flick said, “Have you ever been to that life drawing drop-in class?”

“Nah,” Bob said. “I've seen the posters, but I've never gone. Why?”

“I, uh, was thinking of modeling for it.”

Bob laughed and said, “Seriously?” He laughed again. “Well, maybe I will go check it out then.”

“Don't you dare!”

Bob grinned and asked again, “Seriously, though?” Flick nodded. Bob asked, “Why?”

“I could use the bells. It seems like easy work.”

“The cafe I work at is hiring dishwashers, I'm sure I could get you in. I don't know what kind of availability they need, though.”

Flick grimaced. “Ugh, no, I hate washing dishes. I'd rather model.”

“Suit yourself,” Bob said. “But why go if it freaks you out? All the people drawing you are going to be people you have classes with.”

“It doesn't freak me out,” Flick said. “I don't really care if my classmates see me naked.”

“Just me?” Bob asked.

Flick blushed and looked down at the table. “No. You can go. It would just be awkward because we're friends. But I'd get over it.”

“Nah, it's not really my scene anyway,” Bob said. After a while, he said, “What does C.J. think about it?”

“Um. I haven't exactly told him yet.”

Bob looked up from his potter's wheel, his face more serious now. “Secrets aren't cool, Flick.”

“It's not a secret.”

“It's just a thing you're not telling him?”

Flick scowled. “What do you care, anyway?”

Bob shrugged and went back to his art work.

Flick poked at the clay in front of him, and after a few minutes said, “He would be weird about it. He was weird about me selling plasma, which is even less of a big deal. Like, I get that he loves me and that he means well. But he has this impulse to take care of me, like I'm some rare and delicate orchid that needs to be babied. I don't like it. It's stifling.” Bob glanced up at him, and Flick kept talking. “Like, he wants to take on all the hard work and responsibility, just to try to spare me any suffering. And, like I said, I know he means well, but it's not a great dynamic. It doesn't feel equal. And, ya know, I want to be able to contribute, b-but I know I'm not particularly employable, or really great about useful things like doing the dishes. But modeling or selling plasma are things I can do. I just want to be able to do them.”

Flick anxiously squished a piece of clay between his fingers and Bob continued to shape his vase at the wheel. After a minute, Bob said, “Sounds like there's a bigger conversation that needs to happen between you two.”

Flick sighed. “He's already so stressed about money and, and other stuff. I don't want to dump something else on him.”

“Nothing's going to change unless you talk about it.”

“I hate talking about it.”

Bob smirked. “What do you think you were just doing with me, dumbass?”

Flick smiled back, and said, “Shut up. It's not the same.”

The following Thursday evening, Flick waited outside the drawing studio as instructed, and at ten to six the instructor unlocked the door and let him in. “You can go ahead and undress behind the curtain,” he said, and Flick nodded.

But when Flick stepped behind the curtain, he was surprised to see the woman from last week wearing nothing but underwear. “Oh, Jesus!” Flick said. “I-I'm sorry, I...” he trailed off.

“It's fine,” the woman said. “I don't mind. Are you the new model?”

“Uh-huh.” Flick kept his gaze locked to the floor and he stood as far apart from her as he could. “M-my name's Flick.”

“I'm Ankha,” she said. Out of the corner of his eye, Flick could see her hooking a bra behind her back. “Is this your first time modeling?”

“Yup.”

“Nervous?” she purred.

“A-a bit.”

“Yeah, the first time is weird,” she said. “I've been doing this on and off for a couple years. It got boring a long time ago.” She laughed, and shimmied a loose-fitting dress down her body. “I'm decent, by the way, you can turn around now.”

Flick glanced at her, then looked around the rest of the space. It was a small area with a full length mirror and three folding chairs. Ankha had her bag and robe on one chair. She stepped into a pair of leggings and pulled them up to her waist under her dress, then sat down to put on socks and boots. Flick took off his jacket and sat down on the other chair to unlace his own boots.

Ankha said, “I'm glad you're here, and I'll bet the instructor is, too. We don't get a lot of male models.”

“Hm, I wonder why that is,” Flick said absentmindedly as he pulled off his socks and stuffed them inside his boots, wishing she would hurry up and leave so that he wouldn't have to undress the rest of the way in front of her.

Ankha said, “I think they're probably worried about having a, uh, spontaneous physical reaction.”

“Oh my god.” Flick put his face in his hands.

Ankha giggled. “I'm sure you'll be fine,” she said. “But just in case, I've heard that tensing the muscles in your legs will, you know, get the blood flowing somewhere else.”

“Oh my god,” Flick said again.

“I'm gonna head out,” she said as she put on her coat. “Maybe I'll see you next week, huh?”

Flick rubbed his face and nodded.

Ankha smiled gently, then patted his shoulder. “You'll do fine,” she said again. “It's really not that bad. The first thirty seconds are the worst of it. After that, the only problem is keeping still.”

“I can definitely stand still,” Flick said.

“Have you practiced at home?” Ankha asked.

“K-kind of?”

“Twenty minutes is longer than you think. Even ten minutes can be tough. Go with some passive, reclining pose for the longer ones. That's the best bit of advice I can give you.”

Flick nodded again, and she said goodbye and left.

He quickly took off his shirt and pants and underwear and put on his new black cotton bathrobe, then he sat down and watched the time on his phone tick down to six o'clock. The instructor stuck his head behind the curtain and said, “We're ready when you are.”

“All right,” Flick said, and took a breath. Then he stepped out from behind the curtain and up onto the platform at the front of the room. The instructor smiled at him, then said to the class. “Let's start with two minute poses.” Flick's hands were shaking, but he untied the knot on his robe and laid it on the floor next to him, and then moved into one of the poses he had practiced at home, his arms folded behind his back and one foot stepped out in front of him. He closed his eyes.

The studio was heated to the point where last week when he was drawing he was almost too warm, but now he felt a slight chill, although that might also be nerves. He listened to the scratch of pencils and charcoal on paper and of the mechanical whir of the space heater behind him. He felt his breath filling his lungs and the stretch of muscles in his legs and back and arms. Then the instructor called, “Time,” and Flick opened his eyes. He turned to face a different corner of the room and moved into his next preplanned pose, his arms raised above his head with his fingers laced and his hips cocked to one side. This time he kept his eyes open and focused on the wall behind the artists.

Soon nervousness gave way to feeling ridiculous: these poses were nothing like how he would normally hold his body. He had originally thought he could simply move through different yoga positions, but sitting in on class last week made him realize that asymmetry was more interesting to draw, and so he had looked up other people's art from life drawing classes and made a mental note of poses he thought he could comfortably hold. But it turned out that actually holding the pose for the required number of minutes was more physically demanding than he had been expecting, and he had to concentrate so much of his energy on keeping still that he didn't have much left to feel embarrassed about his nakedness or the awkwardness of the pose. He was so tired that he had to improvise a kneeling position for the second ten minute pose, and for the twenty minute pose he spread his bathrobe out on the floor and laid down on top of it, one leg bent, his back arched and his head resting on his folded arms. When the instructor called, “Time,” at the end of the final pose, Flick let out a big sigh, shook the dust out of his bathrobe and put it back on, then stepped back behind the curtain.

He sat on a folding chair, feeling a little shell-shocked, listening to the soft chatter of artists on the other side of the curtain. Footsteps crossed the room, and Flick heard the classroom door being unlocked. He had a long drink of water, and then started putting his clothes back on.

After he was dressed, he waited another minute before emerging from behind the curtain. The instructor was talking to a few artists who still lingered in the classroom, but when Flick caught his eye he smiled and said, "Flick! Thank you so much for coming by tonight. Let me go get your payment.”

Flick stood a few feet away from the artists, unsure of what to do while he waited; they both looked familiar, and Flick was sure he'd seen them around the art building, but he didn't know their names. One of them bit her lip nervously, then said, “Hey, not to make things weird or anything, but you were fun to draw.”

“Oh!” Flick said, and laughed lightly. “R-really?”

Her companion nodded. “Especially after Ankha. Because, you know, she's so curvy, and you're more angular. It's nice to have that diversity of body types.”

“But you had some good poses, too,” the first person said, and the second one nodded again.

“Oh,” Flick said again. “Thanks.”

The instructor returned and counted out the bells into Flick's hand. “Thanks again,” he said. “Can you come back next week at the same time?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can,” Flick said, smiling.

Flick had been expecting modeling to be at best a neutral experience, but he walked away from it actually feeling good. Now he wanted to be able to talk to C.J. about it, but he wasn't sure how to bring it up after the fact, and C.J. didn't ask about class at all tonight so he didn't feel like he had a good opportunity. But bodies were on his mind a lot that night, and as they were getting ready for bed, Flick walked into the bathroom to see C.J. looking at himself in the mirror, his shirt in his hands and a frown on his face. Flick loved the way C.J. looked, and he hated to see C.J. unhappy, so when C.J. moved to put his shirt back on, Flick snatched it away and tossed it to the floor. “Uh-uh-uh,” he said, turning C.J. to face the mirror and standing behind him, resting his chin on his shoulder. “Look how beautiful you are,” Flick said.

“Really?” C.J. asked, his frown now a disbelieving smirk.

“Mmm, these shoulders, this chest, those hips,” Flick said as he ran his hands over C.J.'s body. “Delicious.”

C.J. laughed a little. “Are you high right now?”

Flick had smoked before figure drawing class, but the effect had largely worn off, so he dodged the question. “Are you calling my taste into question? Are you saying that I, the resident artist here, don't know what beauty is?” C.J. made eye contact with him in the mirror, then looked down. Flick said, “C.J., I love you for a lot of reasons, but one of them is absolutely the way you look.” He wrapped his arms around C.J.'s chest from behind and hugged him close. “And the way you feel,” he added. C.J. took a big breath, and relaxed as Flick started kissing the back of his neck. “Let's go to bed,” Flick murmured.

“That's something I can support,” C.J. said, as he turned around to kiss Flick's lips.

“And let's keep the light on tonight.”

“I... I dunno...”

“Come on. For me?” Flick asked. “I want to be able to see you. Every inch of you.”

C.J. looked him in the eye, and finally a small smile crossed his face. “All right,” he said.

After a week or two, Flick stopped finding dead stick insects in the habitats every morning, but there were still four adults and about fifty nymphs, which was more than Flick could comfortably house. His two pop-up mesh habitats took up the better part of the kitchen island, which not only meant Flick and C.J. had to eat all their meals on the couch, but it also cut down on counter space for food prep, and the large terrarium sat on the floor next to Flick's desk, which was the most out-of-the-way option but still kind of impeded the flow of travel throughout the apartment. Flick had to move the big potted privet off his desk every time he wanted to sit down to do homework or work on art, and the weekly purchase of organic roses and lettuce was eating into the grocery budget. C.J., to his credit, never complained once about any of it, but Flick still felt sick with guilt over how much chaos this one stupid, impulsive, soft-hearted decision had brought to their lives.

But at the same time it was soothing for Flick to watch over and care for the stick bugs. He appreciated that they gave him something to focus on other than his own shortcomings, and they they provided a little window into the world of bugs and nature at a time when Flick didn't otherwise have the opportunity to get out into the wilderness as often as he liked, and besides the wild insects outside were mostly gone for the winter. He had spread coconut coir over the bottom of the habitats and had collected branches and moss from nearby city parks for the stick bugs to explore, creating tiny jungles inside their mesh and wooden boxes. Some of the braver individuals would crawl onto his hand when he added fresh leaves, and he liked to watch them creep along his fingers and palms, tapping his skin with their little legs as if they were as interested in him as he was in them, and he liked getting to know their individual personalities. It was a queasy feeling, loving and resenting these little creatures in equal measure.

There were few things Flick hated more than making phone calls, but he forced himself to do exactly that, reaching out to nearby pet stores to see if any of them would be interested in the nymphs. One store offered to take them as feeder insects for other pets, but Flick turned them down, and after he hung up was glad that C.J. wasn't home at the time; even though C.J. probably wouldn't have said anything, Flick didn't want to have to explain himself.

Finally, he found a pet store about an hour's drive away that would sell them as pets and whose proprietor never asked whether or not Flick had the permit he was legally required to have to possess exotic insects. The pet store would only take twenty of the nymphs, but said that if they sold well, they'd take twenty more in a few weeks. So one day, Flick counted out twenty nymphs into one of the mesh pop-up habitats, and he and C.J. made the trip to Appleton to Redd's Pets-N-Things.

Flick was quiet on the drive as he hugged the habitat close to his chest and kept fiddling with the heat vents to keep the stick bugs warm enough but also out of the gusts of air. C.J. glanced over at him as he drove and said, “Maybe someday we'll have a big ol' mansion of a house and you can have a whole wing dedicated just to insect care and rescue.”

Flick smiled sadly, then said, “Maybe someday we'll have a private jet and I could just fly these guys back to Vietnam to release them into the wild.”

“Even better. I wonder what the fishing's like in Vietnam.”

“It'd probably be great for your livestream,” Flick said. He sighed as he watched the stick bugs sway in the motion of the truck. “I just feel so bad for these little guys. They didn't ask to be born.”

“None of us do,” C.J. said.

“Yeah. But Bob's roommate wasn't even breeding them intentionally. He just didn't properly clean out the tank. For months. It was so gross. Stick bugs lay a ridiculous amount of eggs, and he just wasn't paying enough attention to notice until suddenly there were dozens of nymphs crawling around in the substrate. And then he was just going to give up on them! Things got more complicated than he was anticipating, and instead of taking responsibility, he was just going to condemn them all to death, one way or another. Who does that?”

“They're lucky you stepped in to take them.”

“No, I just happened to be there. Bob's the one that stepped in, he's the one that convinced his roommate to wait on releasing them or feeding them to some tarantula. He's the one that saved them.”

“You're the one that did all the hard work of caring for them the past few weeks.”

“I suppose,” Flick said. “But who knows what fate awaits them now? People treat bugs as pests or food or at best a disposable pet. Nobody gives them the respect they deserve. There's too many for me to rehome on my own, but even if I tried I know I'd be stupid about it and have, like, absurdly high standards and not actually let anybody take them unless I could be positive they'd treat them properly.”

“Stop calling yourself stupid,” C.J. insisted. “It's not stupid to be compassionate and to care deeply about things.”

“It's inconvenient,” Flick said.

“Well, so what? If I broke my leg and you had to take care of me for a few weeks, it would be inconvenient, sure, but would it be stupid?”

“That's different.”

“Only in degree, not in kind. Those stick bugs needed you, and you stepped up to provide for them.”

“Most people don't care about insects this much. They wouldn't get this invested. Normal people don't act like this.”

“Exactly. So they're so lucky they found you.”

Flick sighed, and returned his attention to the swaying stick bugs in the habitat on his lap.

When they got there, Flick frowned looking at the front door of the pet store. C.J. asked, “Do you want me to come in with you?”

“Yes please.” Flick wrapped a blanket around the habitat and held it close to his body, then he took a deep breath and stepped outside.

The bell on the front door rang as Flick and C.J. entered the store. The clerk looked up from behind the front desk and grinned. “Are you my bug man?”

Flick nodded. “You're Redd?”

“Live and in the flesh,” Redd said. “I've got a box set up for them over here.” Flick and C.J. followed Redd across the store. Flick appraised the habitat Redd had prepared; the walls were mesh, which would allow for good air circulation, and the substrate looked clean and moist; Flick was relieved that at least the stick bugs would be comfortable. Nearby were similar habitats with millipedes or mantises or hissing cockroaches, and they also looked well-maintained. In one corner of the stick bug enclosure was a covered vase with fresh, green oak leaves, and Flick wrinkled his brow in confusion. “Where did you get oak leaves this time of year? Everything outside is brown and dried out.”

Redd smiled slyly. “I have my sources.”

“For oak leaves?” Flick asked, and Redd just shrugged. “B-but, see, I still have more stick insects at home. I could use another food source for them. If I could get some oak—”

“Sorry, pal, industry secret,” Redd cut him off. “Is this deal still on?”

“Y-yeah,” Flick said, and Redd opened up the habitat. “I can move them in,” Flick said.

“Knock yourself out,” Redd said, and stepped to the side.

As Flick was moving the bugs, C.J. walked along the back wall of the store, which was lined with aquariums, and he said to Redd, “Hey, this tank is mislabeled. I've never heard the term 'fringed scorpionfish' before. It's usually called a zebra turkeyfish, or a zebra lionfish.”

“Hmm, you don't say,” Redd said distractedly.

C.J. looked at him, then back at the tank. “And aren't they, like, super venomous? Who's going to want a zebra turkeyfish as a pet?”

Now Redd grinned again. “Only the finest aquarists,” he said. “Last one in stock, better snatch it up quick if you're interested.”

“Nah,” C.J. said. He glanced over the rest of the store. “You know, this place is called 'Pets-N-Things.' I see the pets, but what are the other things you sell?”

Redd tapped his fingertips together and raised his eyebrows conspiratorially. “What are you in the market for?”

“I'm just curious.”

“Well, you're in luck, because I've got curiosities a-plenty. For the right price, I can get you anything you want.”

Flick and C.J. made brief eye contact, then Flick said, “I've got everyone moved in.”

“Wonderful,” Redd said. “We agreed on five hundred bells a head, yes?”

Flick nodded, and from his apron Redd pulled out a bundle of ten thousand bells rubber banded together and handed it to Flick, then from another pocket he got a wax marker and wrote on the plastic label of the tank, Long-legged Stick Bugs, 1,000 bells/each.

“Quite the mark-up,” C.J. commented.

“A man's gotta make a living somehow,” Redd said to him. Then to Flick he said, “I'll be in touch again if I need more of 'em. I've got your number.”

Flick nodded and fingered the wad of bells. “Th-thanks, I guess.”

Redd grinned. “The pleasure is all mine, cousin.”

Once they were outside and the front door had closed behind them, C.J. said, “Wow, what is up with that guy?”

“He sounded kinda shady on the phone, but not that shady,” Flick said as he emptied the used substrate into a planter on the sidewalk and folded up the mesh habitat. “And what's the deal with those oak leaves? Oak is a great food source, I would love to have access to oak right now. Why is it such a big secret? What's so illicit about frickin' oak leaves?”

“I mean, obviously he's got some other scam going on. The whole store is probably just a front for something else. He's probably got some guy coming up from somewhere south of here with drugs or guns or whatever, and he just grabbed some oak leaves along the way.”

Flick laughed dryly as they got into the truck. “Drugs and guns and exotic insects. Did you see what he labeled the habitat? I guess so long as he doesn't call them 'Vietnamese stick insects' he has some measure of plausible deniability as to their legality. I wonder what else he's selling.”

“Moonshine? Organs?”

“Porn? Art forgeries?”

“There was that venomous fish, too—is that a pet or a murder weapon?”

Despite everything, Flick smiled a little. Then he reached into his pocket. “At least I made ten thousand bells out of the deal. Unless it's counterfeit.”

C.J. took the wad of bells and undid the rubber band. “It's all one hundred and five hundred bell notes. Nobody counterfeits those.”

“That guy might.”

C.J. rubber banded the bells back up and returned them to Flick. “What are you going to spend it on?”

“Food for the rest of the bugs.”

“You should get some little treat for yourself, though, too,” C.J. said.

But Flick shook his head. “This whole thing feels kind of gross, I don't think I should get a reward for doing it. Besides, I've already spent so much money on bug food that should have been spent on groceries or rent.”

“I wish you wouldn't be so hard on yourself,” C.J. said. “You should at least buy yourself some art supplies or something, too. Besides, the bugs really haven't been as expensive as you make them out to be.”

That's because I've been spending my modeling money on bug food the past two weeks, Flick thought. “Is there anything you wanted to do in Appleton? I kinda just want to go home,” he said.

“Home sounds good to me,” C.J. said, and started the truck.

Flick continually reminded himself that selling the stick bug nymphs to Redd had been his best (and only) option, but he still hated it, and he was grouchy and irritable for days afterward. They had gone to Appleton on Saturday, and on Sunday morning he got up out of bed so that he could feed and mist the remaining stick insects and then, only because C.J. insisted, he sat up on the couch and ate the breakfast C.J. put in front of him. But after C.J. left for his afternoon charter, Flick went back to bed, and he was still there when C.J. came back seven hours later. Then because he'd slept too much during the day, he couldn't sleep at night, so he'd stayed up until nearly four in the morning, drawing stick bugs by the light of his desk lamp. Before he went to bed, he turned off the alarm on his phone, since clearly he wasn't making it to class tomorrow.

When he woke up mid-morning on Monday, he looked at his phone and saw a notification that C.J. had sent out to all his followers earlier that day saying, Sorry fishionistas, something came up and I've got to cancel today's scheduled stream. We're still on for our usual Wednesday, so I'll SEA you then, nyuk nyuk! Flick groaned, then yelled across the apartment, “C.J.!”

“Yeah?”

“Did you cancel your stream because of me?”

There was a pause, then C.J. said, “Nooo...”

“You're a terrible liar, C.J.”

C.J. walked across the apartment and pulled back the curtain to the bedroom. “Legit, though. I was going to stream out at Fern Lake today, but the weather's too crappy. The wind would rattle the microphone and the rain would wreck my equipment.” He sat down on the bed and Flick glared at him. “And, okay, I didn't want to stream at home because I wanted to let you rest. So what?”

Flick groaned again and pulled the blankets over his head.

“Like, clearly you're not doing well. I'm just trying to be sensitive to that.”

“Just do your stream,” Flick said through clenched teeth, his voice muffled by blankets.

“No. I've already canceled it. It's fine.”

Flick fumed, and stared at the pattern on the sheets.

“I take it you're skipping class?”

Flick pulled the blankets off his head. “My Monday classes are bullshit, anyway.”

“What about work?”

“I'm not going.”

“Did you call in?”

“No.”

“You should.”

Flick sighed. “I'm going to get fired if I keep calling in.”

“Maybe. But if you're not going to be there today, you should let them know so that they can plan accordingly.”

Flick scowled. “This is all bullshit,” he said. C.J. opened his mouth to say something, but Flick cut him off. “Don't comfort me. I'm sick of it.”

C.J. rubbed his face, then said, “Fine.”

They sat there in silence for a few minutes, then Flick asked, in a quieter voice, “Can you mist the stick bugs for me?”

“I mean, I can. But if I say no, will you actually get out of bed?”

Flick frowned. “I'll do it. I have to get up to use the bathroom, anyway.” He sat up and swung his feet over the side of the bed, his back to C.J.; he rested his elbows on his knees and put his face in his hands.

“Can I make you some food?” C.J. asked.

“No.”

“Are you going to make yourself some food?”

“Not right now.”

“You gotta eat.”

“I'm not hungry. Leave me alone.”

“I'm trying to help, here, Flick.”

“Just let me fester in peace.”

“No. That's not an option.” A moment of tense silence passed, then C.J. said, “Don't sleep the day away again. If you're not going to eat now, I'm going to keep harassing you every couple hours until you do. Like, you can feel your feels, but you still gotta take care of yourself. And if you're not going to do it on your own, then I'm going to make you do it, whether you like it or not, because I love you. Fuckin' deal with it, Flick.” He got up and walked back to his desk.

Flick sat on the bed for several minutes after that. C.J. had never gotten that frustrated with him before, and it felt a little like a knife twisting in his heart. But it also felt like he deserved it: he was making everything complicated, he was worrying C.J., and he had made him cancel his livestream. After a while, he forced himself to get up out of bed and to go through the minimal motions of the day.

He managed to drag himself to ceramics class on Tuesday, and by Wednesday he was back to his usual schedule of school and work, but he still felt sad and pathetic. After that one conversation Monday morning, C.J. was more patient and gentle with him, but Flick also had the feeling that C.J. didn't know what to do with him, and Flick didn't blame him, considering the way he'd been acting.

One night later that week, Flick had a dream that started out with him walking down a long hospital-like corridor that was at once both bright white and also in shadow. These hospital dreams never ended well, and Flick felt an immediate sense of dread. He was alone in this dream, and his footsteps echoed in the hall around him. As he walked on, C.J. materialized next to him, and for a brief instant Flick was relieved: C.J. would protect him. But C.J. in the dream was angry and was muttering some wordless fury that Flick couldn't understand. Flick in the dream was confused and thought, I need to get him out of here, so he took his hand and tried to pull him away, although in these hospital dreams there was never an 'away' to go to. C.J. resisted, but Flick kept pulling, and in time the hospital hallway morphed into a dismal, swampy forest, and Flick had a sense that this was somehow worse than where they had come from and it was his fault for bringing him here. Flick's feet skidded out from underneath him and he fell into the mud, pulling C.J. down with him. C.J. was now shouting incomprehensibly, and Flick in the dream couldn't make his voice work, no matter how hard he tried; he felt panic rising in him as they both struggled to pull their hands and feet from the mud, he thought, please don't let this wind up like that awful scene from 'The Neverending Story.' This, finally, let his brain click over to the realization that this was only a dream, and he jolted awake.

Flick was sitting up in bed, his breath coming in in short, sharp gasps. Beside him, C.J. pushed himself up now, too, and he said to Flick, “What happened? Are you okay?” Then after a beat he said, “Nightmare?”

Flick couldn't respond. His whole body started to tremble and his teeth chattered.

C.J. started to reach for him, then stopped and asked, “Can I touch you?”

Flick managed to shake his head no.

“Okay,” C.J. said. “Okay. I'm here if you need me. Try to focus on your breath.”

Flick wanted to squeeze his eyes shut but he was afraid of going back to the imagery of the dream; his eyes darted around the bedroom to the shadows and the glow of the streetlight, and then suddenly everything felt overwhelming and he started to cry, big heaving sobs he couldn't control. He was vaguely aware of C.J. making some sympathetic noise beside him, but for the moment he couldn't do anything other than cry and hold his head in his hands. The tears seemed to act as a catharsis, and after he had tired himself out, he felt just a fraction calmer. He let a shaking hand drop to C.J.'s leg, and in an instant C.J.'s arms were around him; Flick let his body collapse, nestling his face into the crook of C.J.'s arm. C.J. said nothing as he held him tight against his chest and took long, slow, deep breaths, and in time Flick's breath evened and began to match C.J.'s. C.J. had been consoling him after nightmares for years, since they were kids having sleepovers, and they had long since developed a rhythm.

And every time in the aftermath, Flick felt a sick mix of comfort and shame; he hated that C.J. had to see him like this, but if he was going to be like this anyway, he was so grateful that C.J. could be there for him. He wasn't always this bad—sometimes he just woke up with a start—but then, the nightmares weren't always this bad. Even now, all these years on, most of his nightmares were about his mother dying. Sometimes he had nightmares about his father being ridiculously, unrealistically cruel, or more garden-variety nightmares in which he himself was in some kind of danger. The nightmares about C.J. were the most rare and the most terrible, and never before had he had a nightmare in which C.J. had been so angry with him or where everything that had gone wrong was so obviously his fault.

Flick felt nauseated, and after a few minutes, he shrugged C.J. off and made his way to the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face and sat on the side of the tub, waiting for his stomach to settle. When he was sure he wasn't going to throw up, he stood up and walked across the apartment. He cleared off his desk and opened the window, sticking his face up against the screen and breathing in the cold night air. It helped, but after a while he started to worry about the draft coming in over his stick bugs in the terrarium on the floor nearby, and he closed the window.

Flick wanted to go out for some fresh air, but he was only wearing the boxer briefs he slept in. He looked over to the curtained-off bedroom; there was the dim possibility C.J. had gone back to sleep, but more likely he was waiting up for him, and either way Flick didn't want to disturb him. But they usually left some dirty laundry on the bathroom floor, so Flick went back to the bathroom to see what he could find. He put on a pair of his jeans and one of C.J.'s hoodies. The hoodie smelled strongly of C.J. and Flick pressed the fabric up to his face to breathe it in and to be enveloped by it. There were no socks in the bathroom, so Flick stuck his bare feet into his Doc Martens and laced them tight. He put his pleather jacket on over the hoodie, grabbed his keys from a hook by the door, and slipped out into the hallway.

Outside was colder than he'd been expecting and he pulled the hood up over his head. As he walked down the street, from half a block up, someone else turned the corner onto the sidewalk in front of him. Flick froze, and was instantly aware that he didn't have his phone on him; if anything happened, he'd have to scream and hope that someone else was awake in the middle of the night to hear him. He felt himself start to shake again. The other person paused, too, then crossed the street and continued on their way. Flick almost had to laugh at the idea that he could apparently look so intimidating that people would cross the street to avoid him while at the same time he felt so scared himself.

He walked on for a few blocks until his feet started to get cold and worn raw from his boots, then he slowly circled back to the apartment. He didn't know what time it was or how long he'd been gone and he hoped C.J. had gotten back to sleep by now, but after he let himself into the apartment, he saw behind the bedroom curtain a blue, electronic glow. Flick took off his boots and jacket, and as he stepped into the bedroom, C.J. turned off his phone. Flick asked, “Were you waiting up for me? You should be sleeping.”

“I heard you leave, I was kinda hoping you'd text me to let me know what was up.”

“I didn't even bring my phone with me.” Flick gestured to his own nightstand where his phone was plugged in to charge.

“Oh, geez,” C.J. said, a little embarrassed. “I didn't even think to look.”

“I'm sorry I worried you,” Flick said as he started to undress.

“It's fine, you're home now.” C.J. watched, then said with a small amount of amusement, “Were you wearing my gross hoodie?”

“It's not that bad,” Flick said. C.J. lifted up the blankets, and Flick slid into bed next to him; C.J. held back for a second, but once Flick put his arm around C.J.'s waist, he pulled him in close, and Flick nestled into his broad chest, taking comfort in his warmth, his steady heartbeat and his familiar scent. After a few minutes, Flick said to C.J., “I'm sorry I'm like this.”

“Shhh,” C.J. soothed, and stroked the back of his head. But he was sorry he was like this, not only because of the burden it was on C.J. but also the burden it was on himself. He was so sick of being sad and scared and overwhelmed all the time.

Chapter Text

It felt like Flick was gone all the time, both literally and metaphorically. He was at the ceramics studio once or twice or three times a week, plus that life drawing class every Thursday evening now, in addition to his usual class load, plus work, plus selling plasma. But even when he was home it felt like he was not really there; he was withdrawn, sleeping all the time, and was quieter and moodier than usual. It seemed obvious to C.J. that he was stressed, and he couldn't figure out why he would take on all these extra things. Why wouldn't he want to just rest instead? Why didn't he want to stay home with C.J.?

It was Friday night. C.J. had just come home from streaming and Flick was gone. He almost never went to the ceramic studio on Friday nights and C.J. didn't know where else he could be. He checked his phone, then restarted it just to make sure he hadn't missed any texts from Flick, and while he was waiting, he looked around the apartment for a note but found nothing. Usually when Flick did go to the ceramics studio at night, he waited until after C.J. came home so they could see each other for a bit, but tonight C.J. had lost track of the time, and then there was traffic, so he was a bit later that he'd been intending. C.J. started feeling guilty—maybe Flick had been waiting for him, but he had been gone too long and Flick just got fed up with waiting. Although it was only quarter after seven when C.J. had come home and that didn't seem excessively late, and why wouldn't Flick have told him where he was going? Unless Flick was upset with him about something else...

Eventually, C.J. just texted him. Hey, I just got home from streaming, sorry I'm late. Where are you? And then he waited. And waited. The text went unread for more than twenty minutes. C.J. sat at the kitchen counter watching the stick bugs. They had fresh leaves that were still damp from misting, so clearly Flick had come home to take care of them at some point.

Finally, the little blue checkmark popped up next to his text indicating it had been read. And then another three or four minutes passed before Flick responded. raku firing. i reminded you about it earlier this week.

C.J. read that and then said aloud, “Shit.” He could remember the conversation now, and he felt embarrassed he hadn't remembered it earlier. He texted back, Sorry, I just spaced that was tonight. Then, Maybe we should make a shared calendar or something so I can keep track of all the stuff you're doing. After a few minutes, the texts were read, but Flick did not respond, and C.J. started feeling a little sulky. He texted once more, How long do you think you'll be there? And then waited for Flick to read it and waited for Flick to respond.

Finally, Flick texted, i don't know, could be late, don't wait up for me. A minute later, he texted, i love you.

C.J. frowned at his phone. Somehow that last text felt tacked on and insincere in some way that C.J. couldn't identify. But maybe he was just in a bad mood. He texted back, I love you, then turned the screen off on his phone and flipped it to face down on the counter.

C.J. looked around the kitchen, but he didn't feel like cooking dinner just for himself, even though he had a cooler of fish he had to do something with. There was a Mexican restaurant down the street that he drove past all the time but had never actually been to, and he considered going there and ordering the greasiest, junkiest option on the menu, something Flick would hate. But he knew it wouldn't be as satisfying as he was imagining, and besides, if he was going to go somewhere new, he wanted to go with Flick. He picked up his phone again and scrolled through calendar listings for events tonight, but nothing caught his eye. He idly clicked around social media, but that was boring, too; he didn't feel like FaceTiming any of his high school friends or chatting with stream followers on Discord. He turned his phone off again, wondering what Flick meant by “late” and how much time he'd have to waste just waiting for him. He brought his laptop into the kitchen and found a livestream that would be suitably distracting background noise, a retro video game stream where they were playing some old Legend of Zelda game he'd played when he was a kid. Then he dumped the cooler full of fish and ice into the sink and started cleaning and filleting the fish to put in the freezer.

Time passed. He made himself a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches and settled in on the couch. When the gaming stream finished up, he found another stream from the sidelines of an amateur soccer match in Australia, where it was a sunny spring day. The streamer was comically disappointed in both teams' performances, and C.J. was amused listening to him say so many unfamiliar swear words in such a charming accent. Then a grasshopper jumped onto the streamer's camera; the streamer laughed and made a joke about how the grasshopper had a better kick than any of the soccer players before nudging it away. C.J. watched this and thought, Australia is full of crazy insects, isn't it? Boy, what I wouldn't give to be able to take Flick there. That reminded him of a conversation he'd had with Flick weeks ago where Flick had mentioned that Nat was planning some work trip to South Africa and was considering bringing Flick along for it; from the sounds of it, Nat had made the offer casually, as if it were no big deal, and Flick's biggest concern was the awkwardness of traveling with his father, and not the huge, massive expense such a trip would be. There were so many places C.J. wanted to be able to take Flick that he couldn't, and so many places that C.J. wanted to go, too, and all of it seemed impossible right now. After they had sold off those stick bugs, C.J. started wondering how far south they'd have to drive to find fresh, green oak leaves in November—Missouri? Alabama? But gas alone for that kind of trip would cost a fortune, never mind the costs of food or lodging. It might be a nice gesture, but it would be cheaper by far to just keep buying the bugs those organic roses from Trader Joe's.

C.J. tried to focus his attention back on the Australian soccer game, but he wasn't having fun anymore. He turned his laptop off, washed the dishes, puttered uselessly around the apartment for another half hour, and finally just went to bed.

Flick didn't come home until after midnight. C.J. listened to the front door creak open and to the soft rustle of Flick taking off his boots and jacket. Flick went to the bathroom, then walked into the bedroom, and after he stepped behind the curtain, he paused for several seconds before whispering, “C.J.?”

“Yeah?”

“You're awake.”

“True fact.”

“I told you not to wait up for me.”

“I just couldn't sleep,” C.J. lied.

“Aw, poor baby,” Flick said. “But at least this way I get my snuggles.” He took off his jeans and slipped into bed next to C.J.

“How was it?” C.J. asked.

“It was good, it was all right.” Flick put his arm around C.J. and kissed him.

C.J. pulled back a bit. “You were gone for a long time.”

“There were a lot of people there, and only a few kilns. There was a lot of waiting around to take my turn to fire my pieces. And a lot of time waiting around to gather up the courage to ask to take my turn.”

“How did that go?”

In the dark, C.J. could feel Flick shrug. “I mean, I got there in the end. There's like this concrete patio area outside the ceramic studio where we were doing the firing, and then beyond that is the parking lot, so there's a big open space which, I dunno, just kinda feels better sometimes. Like I can just migrate over to the edge of the crowd and watch from a distance. And then a couple of times when I needed a break, Bob and I went around to the other side of the building where it was quiet and split a joint, which helped, too.” He went back to kissing C.J.

C.J. pulled back from the kiss. “You're spending a lot of time with Bob.”

Flick paused for a few seconds, then answered with some sharpness to his voice. “Yeah. He's my friend.” He kissed C.J. again.

C.J. tried to appreciate the kissing—Flick had not much been in the mood for physical affection lately; C.J. had been trying to blame it on depression—but he'd been in a bad mood since before Flick came home, and the mention of Bob did not help. After a minute, he pulled away from the kiss again and said, “I smell something on you.”

Flick sighed. “I dunno, weed? Wood smoke? Tobacco? Some people had a grill set up for, like, hot dogs and shit.”

“No. None of that.”

“I don't smell anything,” Flick said, sounding frustrated now, and tried once more to kiss C.J.

After a few seconds, C.J. pulled back and said, “Patchouli. You smell like patchouli.”

There was another pause, longer this time, and finally Flick said, “Bob lent me his sweater for a while. It's probably that.”

“How long do you need to be in contact with his sweater to come home smelling like it?”

“I was wearing it,” Flick said incredulously. “Besides, patchouli permeates everything.”

“Why were you wearing his sweater?”

“I was cold.”

“Didn't you have your jacket?”

“Yes, but... C.J., you know I always get cold. How many times have I had to borrow stuff from you?”

“But I mean, you said they had all these kilns going and fires or whatever. It just doesn't seem like you'd get cold enough to need to borrow a sweater.”

There were a few tense seconds of silence. Then Flick asked, “What are you implying?” His voice was hard and angry.

C.J. sighed, regretting that he hadn't been able to shut up about five minutes earlier. “Nothing. Never mind. Forget about it.”

“All right. Fine. Let's just forget about it,” Flick huffed. He rolled over to face the wall, his back to C.J.

C.J. was stunned. It was one thing for Flick to not be in the mood because he was tired or sad or whatever, C.J. could deal with that, but this felt like outright rejection. When he had said, “Forget about it,” he had of course meant “forget about this conversation,” not... this. C.J. wanted to go back to kissing Flick to move past all the angst and worry of the night, but that opportunity had passed. He didn't even know what he could say to Flick—should he try to apologize, or would that only make it worse? He stared at the outline of Flick's shoulder and head for a long time before rolling onto his back and looking up at the ceiling, and in time his surprise and disappointment turned into anger, and then he knew he shouldn't try to say anything right now because part of him was wondering, Is there a reason Flick got so defensive? Am I right to be suspicious of this thing with Bob?

The next day, they were both subdued. Flick slept in, and when he finally woke up, he made himself tea and toast and curled up on the couch with his phone. C.J. sat at his computer at his desk, not really doing anything. They didn't talk much. Finally, Flick asked, “What are your plans for the day?”

“Afternoon charter. I've gotta leave around twelve-thirty.”

Flick nodded. “I need to go to the ceramics studio sometime this weekend to gather up my stuff from the raku fire. We kinda left a mess, we need to have everything cleaned up before Monday.”

“Do you need a ride? How much stuff are you carrying?”

“It should all fit in a box. I can haul it home on my bike just fine.”

“All right.”

There was a pause, and Flick picked up his phone to check the time. “I'll probably take a shower and head out, actually, just to get it out of the way. One of the grad students has a key, and she said she'd be there around eleven today.”

“All right,” C.J. said again.

Flick took a long shower, and emerged from the bathroom damp and glistening, with a towel wrapped around his waist; C.J. watched with longing as he walked across the apartment to the bedroom, and although he wanted to, he did not follow him. But he did step into the kitchen to look for something to make himself for lunch; after Flick had dressed, he stepped out of the bedroom, looked at C.J. in the kitchen, then walked to the front door to put on his boots and jacket. “I don't know if I'll be back before you leave, but I guess I'll see you tonight.”

“Yeah, I'll see you later,” C.J. said.

Flick hesitated for just a second, then leaned in to kiss C.J. goodbye. It was a quick kiss, and after they parted, C.J. put his hand behind Flick's head and brought him back for a longer, deeper kiss; Flick kissed him back and put his hand on C.J.'s face. This time when they parted, they both sighed. “I love you,” C.J. said.

“I love you,” Flick said, too. And then he left.

The kiss had done a lot to dissipate the tension in the air, but still C.J. didn't know what he was feeling right now, some indescribable mix of love and frustration and desire and fear. After Flick had gone and locked the door behind him, C.J. leaned his elbows on the kitchen counter and put his head in his hands, taking big breaths and trying to get himself in the right headspace to be the happy-go-lucky fishing charter captain the clients were expecting.

After the charter, C.J. drove the boat back to his dad's house and parked it in the driveway. He cleaned it out and hauled the equipment into the garage, then let himself into the house to talk to his dad. They talked about the day's charter, and the weather, and business plans for the winter, and as the conversation was winding up, C.J. realized he didn't really want to go home, so he said, “Ya know, I see you all the time, but just in, like five or ten minute increments when I'm dropping off the boat. You got any plans tonight? Wanna hang out?”

Chip smiled. “Miss your old man, huh?”

C.J. smiled back. “Maybe a bit.”

“Yeah, how 'bout you stay for dinner? I don't have anything fancy, but I've got a frozen lasagna I can put in the oven.”

“Sounds good,” C.J. said. “I'm just going to text Flick real quick to let him know.” He took out his phone and texted, My dad invited me to stay for dinner, so I'll be a little late in coming home tonight. He waited a few seconds, but when his text wasn't immediately read, he returned his phone to his pocket.

Chip put the lasagna in the oven to cook. “You oughta bring Flick with one of these times,” he said.

“Yeah. One of these times I will. I think he's maybe a bit nervous about running into his dad, though.”

“They're still not getting along?”

C.J. shrugged. “I think they're mostly avoiding each other right now. How's Nat doing?”

“Oh, I think he misses Flick, but he doesn't talk about it much. He asks about the two of you, and I relay whatever information I have. I know it's hard for him, though. He wants to reach out, but I keep telling him to give Flick some space, and that he'll come around in time.”

“Yeah. That's probably for the best. Flick is a force to be reckoned with, he needs to come to things on his own.” His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to check it, but it was only Flick texting back, okay. He put his phone away again and sat down at the kitchen table. Chip took a beer out of the fridge for himself, then took another out and put it in front of C.J. “Ha ha, seriously?” C.J. laughed.

“Sure. You're old enough.”

“Just one, though. I still gotta drive home.”

“The lasagna will soak up all the alcohol. I might have some garlic bread in the freezer, too.”

“Nah, that's all right.” C.J. opened his beer bottle on the edge of the table.

“Look at you, popping that cap off like a pro,” Chip said as he got a bottle opener from the drawer.

C.J. took a sip and said, “This may not be my first beer.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Chip shook his head, smiling. “How are you doing, though? You've seemed kind of preoccupied lately.”

C.J. had originally invited himself over hoping his dad would pry things out of him, but now he felt embarrassed; because he and Flick had been friends for so long before they started dating, people tended to assume that their relationship was perfect, and so if they were struggling it felt like they must be doing something wrong. So he defaulted to a safer topic to talk about. “Just worried about money, I guess. I was really hoping streaming would have taken off more by this winter.”

Chip nodded. “I know you've been putting a lot of time and effort into it. But it seems like such a precarious way to earn a living.”

“It... it is. But, ya know, some people make millions streaming. And it's not like I was expecting that, exactly, but I just... I really want this to work. Even if it's not going to be a full-time income, I really want it to be a more reliable supplement.”

Chip thought for a moment. “I'll have the mortgage here paid off in another five or ten years. Maybe after that we can start sending more charters your way. I know that doesn't help you right now, though.”

C.J. smiled sadly. “No offense, Dad, but I really hope I'm not still doing charters in five or ten years. I mean, it's been great, but I've been doing this for literally half my life, ya know? It's time for a change. Or at least it's time to work towards a change.”

“No, I get that. There's work for ya for as long as you want it, though.”

“I do appreciate it.” C.J. sighed. “In the short term, I'll probably just have to get another job this winter.”

“Do you have any leads?”

“I filled out an application for a Christmas tree lot attendant. I can't afford to be super picky, but there's not a lot else really calling out to me. Sitting behind a cash register or working in a dark warehouse for hours sounds like hell. At least this would get me outside.”

“Delivery driver, maybe?”

C.J. frowned, but said, “Maybe.”

“Is Flick still at the library?”

“Yeah. It's part time, but at least it's steady, unlike charters and streaming. He's got weekends free, but he's...” C.J. paused. “He's really struggling a lot with work and school and, and everything, I don't want him to feel like he has to take on something else.” He thought for a second, then added, “Don't tell Nat I told you that, Flick would kill me. He's got a ceramics class he really likes, you can talk about that.”

“You got it,” Chip said. “That sounds like it's hard for him, though. For you, too.”

“Yeah...” C.J. trailed off. He could sense that his dad was waiting for some elaboration, but he felt strangely vulnerable now talking about it, so he just shrugged.

After a while, Chip said, “I'm sure you two will work something out, though.”

C.J. nodded. “Charters'll pick up again in the spring. It's just a few months to get through. At least heat and electric are included in the rent, so we don't have to worry about that.”

“If money's the problem, I'll bet Nat would be willing to help you guys out. Although that's probably the last thing Flick wants.”

“Yeah, it for sure is. I'm doing my best to make sure it doesn't come to that, for Flick's sake.”

Chip got up to check on the lasagna in the oven, then said, “So tell me more about this pottery class of his so that I have some good news to share with Nat.”

It was only eight-thirty when C.J. got home, but the apartment was dark. He closed the door quietly behind him and looked around, and when he saw Flick's boots on the floor and jacket on a hook by the door he relaxed, knowing Flick was home. It was so quiet that he assumed that Flick must be sleeping. He took a shower, then walked softly to the bedroom; he glanced over at the shadow of Flick in bed, then carefully slid open the top drawer of his dresser for a clean pair of boxers. As he pulled back the covers and slipped into bed, Flick rolled over to face him, clearly wide awake, clearly waiting for him. Flick reached for him in the dark, sliding his hand up C.J.'s body to his face, then pulled him in for a kiss. C.J. held him close and returned the kiss, and they wordlessly made love.

On Sunday morning, everything felt like it was back to normal between them. Neither of them had any obligations for the day, and C.J. wanted to relax into this time together, but at the back of his mind was still low-level anxiety, so after lunch he said to Flick, “So, uh, Thursday is Thanksgiving. Are we still on to go up north to see my family?”

Flick gave him a blank look. “Yeah. Why wouldn't we be?”

C.J. laughed a little. “Are you serious?”

Flick shrugged.

“Because you've been depressed and because things have felt, I dunno, kinda off with us.”

“I'm always depressed.”

“I mean worse than usual. And what about us?”

Flick chewed on his lip. “Is this about Friday night?”

“That, that's part of it, yeah.”

“Part of it?” Flick asked, sounding worried.

“Should we talk about it?” C.J. asked, but Flick didn't answer. “We should talk about it.”

Flick sighed, and sank down onto the couch. C.J. sat down on the other end. After a second, Flick said, “I did tell you about the raku fire earlier in the week.”

“You did. You definitely did. I remembered that after I texted you.”

“And I told you that I didn't know when I was going to be home.”

“Yup. And, you know, that's fine. It's not like I need to know where you are every second of the day. Like, I'm not upset at all that you went to this art thing and stayed out late, that's not the issue. I guess I was just feeling kind of... insecure? and lonely? And it felt like I was waiting a long time to see you that night. And I probably didn't express that very well. But that's a me problem, it's totally not your fault for going out.” He glanced over at Flick, who was looking back at him. “But...” he said, and took a breath. “It does feel like you're going out a lot. Like I feel like you're either gone or asleep most of the time. And the time that we do get together is just little snippets in between everything else. And I miss you.”

Flick fidgeted with the hem of his t-shirt. “You're gone, though, too, with charters every weekend.”

“Because that's when people usually book them, because that's when everyone else has off work and wants to do something fun.”

“Well, what do you expect me to do? I have school and work during the week, I can't change that.”

“I know. But then you're doing all this other stuff, too, and you're wearing yourself out. And, like, I'm lonely, yeah, but I'm worried about you, too. Like, is it good for you to be selling plasma when you're so tired all the time?”

Flick sighed. “They do a health screening every time I go in. I'm fine. They wouldn't let me do it if I wasn't fine. Besides, I'm making, like, fifteen thousand bells a month selling plasma.”

“But is that—” C.J. stopped short. “Wait, I thought you were making more than that.”

Flick hesitated, then said, “I was, but I lost some weight, so I can't donate as much.”

“Flick...”

“What?” Flick grumbled.

“You're already so skinny, you don't have much to lose.”

“I'm fine.”

“Anyway, is fifteen thousand bells worth the stress?”

“It's, like, half a month's worth of groceries if we budget right. Besides, selling plasma is the least of my worries. Selling plasma is not what's stressing me out.”

“Then what is stressing you out?” C.J. asked. Flick didn't answer, so C.J. kept talking. “Because I can't figure out why you're doing all this other extra stuff—going to the ceramic studio so much, and the drawing class now—when you're obviously already stressed. And, like, I've been specifically trying to time my streaming to when you're in class or at work so that we can spend time together at night, but now you're doing all this other stuff at night. And so I just start to wonder—are you avoiding me? Are you upset with me about something? Are you not happy living with me?” C.J. watched Flick as he spoke, and he could practically see his heart breaking. After a few seconds of silence, Flick's lower lip started to quiver, and C.J. said, “Shit. I'm sorry.”

“Is that what you think?” Flick asked, his voice quiet and breathy.

“Flick, I'm sorry,” C.J. said again. “I didn't mean to upset you. I'm just... needing some reassurance, I guess. But I maybe shouldn't have been so blunt about it. Flick...” He hesitantly reached for Flick's hand. Flick limply curled his fingers around C.J.'s and tipped his head back to rest on the couch; he closed his eyes and tears slowly streaked down his cheeks. C.J. watched him, feeling like garbage, and waited for him to speak.

After several long minutes, Flick finally said, his eyes still closed, “I suppose I've been a bad boyfriend.”

“No, Flick, I didn't say that.”

Flick ignored him. “I've been taking you for granted. I've been assuming that you'll always be around and that you'll always want me.”

“I will, I just—”

Flick spoke over him. “I've been selfish, and I haven't been taking your needs into consideration.”

“No, no, no, Flick, you're not selfish.”

Flick sniffled, and his lip trembled again. “And then when you try to talk to me about it, I just get stupidly emotional and start crying and can't even have a rational discussion about it.”

“No, Flick, don't. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. I know you're having a hard time right now. I shouldn't have said anything.”

Flick furrowed his brow and pressed his lips together. The tears continued to drip from his closed eyes. Then he exhaled, and took several slow, deliberate breaths. Finally he said, “Coming home to you is the best part of my day. You have always been the best part of my life. Like, I don't think I can explain it in a way that you'll actually believe just how important you are to me. Like, if I didn't have you in my life, I...” he trailed off, sighed, and lightly squeezed C.J.'s hand.

“Flick—” C.J. began.

Flick cut him off. “Let me talk,” he said. But then he was silent for a minute while he gathered his thoughts. C.J.'s stomach churned as he waited. Finally, Flick opened his eyes and, staring up at the ceiling, asked, “Do you know why I like art so much?”

This seemed like a big jump in topics, but C.J. said, “Why?”

“Because I'm good at it. I'm not the best at it, I'm not perfect, I know I've still got a lot to learn. But I'm pretty good. I've got some skills and talent. Like, I can translate the image in my head to some specific media. I can figure out the steps I need to take to make it happen. And if I make a mistake, I can usually figure out what's wrong and how to fix it, or I can recognize if a particular piece might not be salvageable and should just be scrapped. I'm maybe not confident in other people's opinions of my art, but, like, I'm confident in my own abilities, or at least in my potential abilities. I like art because I feel like I know what I'm doing.” He took a breath. “I don't feel that way about relationships. Even with you. Maybe especially with you because you're so important to me. Like, disappointing you is my worst nightmare. I love you more than anything, I'm more comfortable with you than I am with anyone else. And maybe because I am so comfortable with you, I just... forget to put in the effort into actually maintaining the relationship. Like, I understand there's a give and take aspect to relationships, but that sort of thing doesn't come naturally to me, I have to think about it. I don't really know what I'm doing and I hate that feeling. I know that I'm going to screw up and then not even realize that I'm screwing up, and then...” He took a ragged breath, and turned his head to face C.J. “I am absolutely not avoiding you. I don't like being worried about or being fussed over, and maybe I'm trying to avoid that, but I'm not avoiding you.” Flick let go of C.J.'s hand and scooted across the couch to be closer to him, scrunching up his long, gangly body to nestle under C.J.'s arm, resting his head on C.J.'s chest. C.J. hugged him close. Flick said, “I'm doing the best I can.”

“I know you are. I shouldn't have said anything.”

“No, you should have. Because how else would I know?” C.J. didn't have a response to that. They stayed snuggled together for a minute, then Flick said, “I'm sorry, I'm no good at this.”

“Stop. You're plenty good. We just need to find a way to communicate about relationship stuff.”

C.J. felt the rise and fall of Flick's chest against his body, and after a while Flick said, “Can we be done for right now, though? I'm kind of conversationed out.”

If C.J. was being honest, he had not gotten what he wanted out of this conversation. He had wanted to ask directly if there was anything going on between Flick and Bob, he wanted the both of them to talk more about how they were feeling, and he had wanted to make some sort of concrete plan for their relationship going forward. But he said to Flick, “Yeah, we can be done.”

After several minutes, Flick sat up straight and, with a tentative smile said, “I'm not very good at the talking kind of communication, but I think I'm better at the sex kind of communication. Maybe we could try that?”

C.J. smiled back. “You are in fact very talented at that. But sex doesn't solve problems.”

“Are you sure? Don't you feel calmer and happier after sex?”

“Well, yeah...”

“And closer and more connected to me?”

“Of course, but...”

“Sounds like sex solves problems to me.”

C.J. smiled. “Sex doesn't solve all problems.”

Flick arched his body toward C.J. and looped his arms around his neck. “Maybe we should be having more sex then. Or more variety. Maybe you should try bottoming more often.”

C.J. laughed softly.

“I highly recommend it,” Flick said.

“Flick, you are distracting me,” C.J. said with a smile.

“Good. That's the point.” He moved his body a little closer and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Maybe later,” C.J. said. “Can we just snuggle on the couch for a little bit right now?”

“Yes, definitely.” Flick nestled his body into C.J.'s, resting his head on his shoulder.

As they sat there snuggled together, C.J. glanced around the apartment and his eyes fell on a cardboard box on Flick's desk. After a moment, he pointed and said, “Hey, is that your stuff from the raku fire? Can I see it?”

He felt Flick tense against him just a little. “Um. N-not yet,” Flick said. “One of the pieces broke, and I want to fix it before you see it.”

C.J. tried to curtail his frustration that this was yet another thing Flick was keeping from him, but he said, “Okay.”

On Thursday, Flick was so nervous about going to visit C.J.'s family for Thanksgiving that he smoked a joint in the truck on the drive up, blowing the smoke out the cracked open passenger side window; afterward he dripped Visine into his eyes to take away the redness and rubbed some cologne on his pulse points to cover up the smell. But the visit passed without incident, and as they got back in the truck to drive home, C.J. said to Flick, “Thank you for coming with me. I know this kind of stuff is hard for you.”

“It is. But your family is so nice.”

“Well, not everyone is, but the assholes didn't show up this year. There was a bigger crowd than I was expecting, though. I would have warned you had I known.”

“That's fine. It can be easier to fade into the background in a big crowd.”

“Everyone I talked to liked you.”

Flick smiled, but then he said, “I daresay everyone likes you, and would have liked anyone that you brought along.”

C.J. smirked at him, and said, “Just take the compliment, Flick. My aunt said she'd like to see your artwork. You should put together a website, or actually post to Instagram or something.”

“No, I'd need a more cohesive body of work before I do anything like that. My art is kind of all over the place right now.”

“Have you seen Instagram? People post all kinds of stuff.”

“Yeah, and the people whose posts are all over the place don't get as much attention.”

“Since when do you care about attention?”

Flick thought for a second, then said, “I don't care about attention for myself, which is why I don't currently post to Instagram. But I might care about attention for my artwork. Which is why if I were going to make an artist Instagram, I'd want to do it right and have a cohesive body of work and a more distinct artistic voice.”

“Whatever you say, dude. You can borrow my camera when you change your mind.” As they drove down the dark highway, C.J. smiled thinking about the day. They had only stayed for a few hours—they had a long drive there and back, and besides C.J. didn't want to overwhelm Flick—but everything about the day felt good. Nobody had made any weird comments about him bringing a boyfriend, not even the relatives he hadn't come out to directly, who had only heard about it via the family gossip grapevine, and although C.J. could tell that Flick had been nervous he thought that perhaps it wasn't so obvious to people who didn't know Flick as well and that he had come across as quiet but friendly; at dinner, Flick managed to engage in polite conversation, although C.J. could feel his leg bouncing under the table. After dinner, folks migrated to the living room where there wasn't enough seating for everyone, so Flick and C.J. wound up sitting on the floor, but after a few minutes, C.J.'s grandpa called him over to ask about a computer issue he was having. As he listened to his grandpa, he also kept an eye on Flick across the room; Flick anxiously fiddled with the tab on his can of pop for a moment, but then one of C.J.'s cousin's babies toddled up to him with a big toothy grin and slapped his palms on Flick's drawn up knees. Flick smiled cautiously at the baby and glanced around for its attending grown-up. Then he set his can of soda on the floor behind him, out of the baby's reach, and playfully tapped the baby's hands with his fingertips. The baby laughed, and slapped Flick's knees again, and Flick tapped the baby's hands again, and they went back and forth like this a few times until once, instead of tapping the baby's hands, Flick squeezed their chubby little arms, which made the baby laugh so much that the baby's mother walked up to the scene, and she and Flick spoke for a moment, both of them smiling, until the baby lifted their arms to their mother to be picked up, then she and the baby walked away.

In the truck now, C.J. said to Flick, “Hey, I saw you playing with that baby. That was pretty cute.” He glanced over at Flick and saw that he was smiling.

“I haven't had a lot of experience with babies before,” Flick said.

“Well, you did great. You're a natural.”

“I don't think you can say that after just a few minutes.”

“I can say whatever I want. You did great. That baby loved you.”

After a moment, Flick said, “You have so many cousins.”

“I do, but a lot of the little ones now are my older cousin's kids. I don't know what relation they are to me. Second cousin?”

“First cousin once removed, I think.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I have a lot of useless facts in my brain,” Flick said. He looked out the window for a moment, then said, “All those little kids clearly adore you.”

C.J. grinned and said, “Yeah. I haven't gotten to see them for a while. They're fun to play with, though. I always wished I could have had some brothers or sisters, but I guess it just wasn't in the cards.”

“You would have been a great big brother,” Flick said. After a minute, he added, “I bet you'd be a great dad, too.”

C.J. took a breath, and his heart caught in his throat. He had known since he was a kid himself that he wanted to be a father someday, but he also had the feeling that this was not something Flick was particularly interested in. And although there was absolutely no reason to worry about it now, at this point in his life, sometimes he wondered, if it came down to it, which he would choose: Flick or fatherhood. One offhand comment and two minutes of Flick playing with a baby was nothing to make any real decision over, but it felt reassuring. “Maybe someday,” he said.

Flick responded with a noncommittal, “Hmm.” But when C.J. glanced over at him, Flick was smiling back at him, and just for a moment, C.J. let himself imagine another Thanksgiving visit years in the future: he and Flick in the front seat of a different vehicle, maybe a minivan, with a baby asleep in a car seat in the back.

They drove on, and after about an hour, Flick said, “Can you pull over at this truck stop? I need to use the bathroom.”

“Yeah, no problem. I should get gas anyway.”

After C.J. gassed up the truck, he headed inside to buy snacks, and as he did, he saw Flick, with a slight scowl on his face, place the restroom key on the counter without looking at the clerk. But once Flick caught C.J.'s eye, he smiled. C.J. asked him, “Do you want anything?”

“Are you getting something?” Flick walked up to him.

“Just a roll of Lifesavers.”

“What kind?”

“Standard fruit assortment.”

Flick wrinkled his nose. “I only like butter rum Lifesavers.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot you're a gross little freak.”

Flick giggled and looped his arm though C.J.'s. “No, I'm sophisticated. Butter rum is clearly the mature, adult variety of Lifesavers. Fruit flavors are for children and normies.”

C.J. smiled at him. “Hey, you knew I was basic when you got involved with me.”

Flick smiled back. “Buy these for me?” he asked, slipping his arm out of C.J.'s and picking up a roll of butter rum Lifesavers.

“You got it,” C.J. said. He walked up to the counter, set the candy down and said to the clerk, “This, plus gas on pump four, please.” As he paid, he felt Flick standing behind him and leaning into his shoulder, and he noticed the clerk silently eyeing the both of them.

Once they were back in the truck, Flick said to him, “When I asked for the restroom key, the clerk gave me this nasty look, and asked 'Which one?'” Flick mimicked a country accent. “He wouldn't give me the key until I said, 'The men's room,' and then he sort of laughed at me.”

“What?” C.J. said. “That's awful.”

But Flick just shrugged. “And then it was just a single stall restroom anyway. There's no reason for it to even be gendered at all.” He opened up his roll of Lifesavers and popped a candy in his mouth. “I didn't think I looked that androgynous today, though. Like I specifically tried to butch up a bit for your family.”

C.J. looked him over. Flick was wearing black skinny jeans, a form-fitting gray sweater, no nail polish, and very minimal eye makeup; he hadn't considered it before, but it was a toned down version of what Flick normally wore. “You don't have to do that, my family wouldn't care.”

Flick buckled up his seat belt and said, “Sometimes it's just easier this way. Although obviously I don't always get it right.”

There were times C.J. was jealous that Flick looked so visibly queer—people rarely assumed he was straight, the way they assumed C.J. was straight—but he considered now the safety there was in that cover, and he hated that Flick wasn't allowed that level of safety, that the mere act of being himself put him at risk. “You should be able to wear whatever you want, though,” C.J. said, and Flick just shrugged again. C.J. added, “Well, you look beautiful no matter what.”

Flick gave him a small smile and reached across the bench seat to squeeze his hand. C.J. leaned over to kiss him, half hoping that gas station clerk was watching them. Flick kissed him back, then said, “Careful I might taste like butter rum Lifesavers.”

C.J. smiled and said, “You always taste delicious, even when you're eating gross candy.”

“We should get going,” Flick said. “We've still got a lot of driving ahead of us.”

“Yeah, we should,” C.J. said. He gave the truck stop a quick glance, and made a mental note not to stop here again next time they came back up north.

The rest of the weekend passed with ease. C.J. had fishing charters every afternoon, but both the library and campus were closed all weekend, so Flick had no obligations, not even any homework, and it was such a relief for C.J. to see Flick relax again. On Sunday evening as C.J. stepped in the door, Flick was taking bread out of the oven. “Is that bread, like, from scratch?” C.J. asked.

“Uh-huh,” Flick said as he popped the bread out of the pan and set it out on a wire rack to cool.

“I didn't know you could do that.”

“Anyone can do that,” Flick laughed.

“I mean you specifically. Baking bread.”

“I haven't for a long while. It's not that hard, it just takes time.”

C.J. leaned in to smell it. “Is it ready to eat?”

“It should cool for a few minutes. But it's best when it's warm.” Flick hung up the oven mitts on a hook on the wall. He smiled at his loaves of bread, and then at C.J.

C.J. smiled back and gathered him up in his arms and kissed him. “You're so beautiful when you're happy,” he said.

“It's been a pretty good weekend,” Flick said. “I wish you would have had time off work, though, too.”

“Thanksgiving weekend is the last big hurrah for fishing charters. After this, there'll be almost nothing until the lakes freeze and we can go ice fishing. It's been so warm this year, that might not be until after the new year. Even then, charters are always pretty light through the winter.”

Flick wrapped his arms around C.J.'s waist. “Well, it'll be nice to have you home more, but not so nice to be worrying about money.”

C.J. sighed. “I... actually won't be home more, at least in the short term. I just got word today that I've been hired to go sell Christmas trees out of the parking lot by the Westgate Mall.”

“What? You never told me about this before.”

“I was kinda hoping I wouldn't get the job, actually. I want to be home more. But we could use the money.”

Flick sighed, and leaned his body into C.J.'s.

“Aww, don't be sad,” C.J. said. “It's only for a month.”

“When do you start?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“That's so soon!”

C.J. shrugged. “It sounds like I wasn't their first choice. They said they'd hired someone else but the person quit after the first week.”

“Doesn't sound like a great gig.”

“Maybe not. But it'll be fine.”

Flick pulled back from C.J. “What does your dad do for money in the winter?”

“Well, for one he's a lot better about saving than I am. He doesn't have any expensive, tech-based hobbies like I do. But also he sells custom hand-tied fishing flies on Etsy.”

“Those are, like, the feathers and ribbons and stuff tied around a hook?” Flick asked, and C.J. nodded. Flick thought for a second, then mused, “I wonder if I could do that.”

C.J. smiled. “I'll bet you could make something beautiful, but the market for them is pretty tight. And considering the amount of time my dad puts into it, his hourly rate can be fairly dismal.” Flick looked a little sad, and C.J., wanting to cheer him up, said, “Hey, can I tell you a story about my dad? You have to promise not to tell him I told you, though.”

Flick looked intrigued. “Okay...”

“So, after he quit the paper mill and started doing charters full time, the first couple winters were really, really rough, like financially, so he had to find some other work every winter. And he did a lot of different stuff, obviously he couldn't be as picky as I'm being because he had a kid to feed. But one job that he did, like, two or three years in a row was...” He paused for dramatic effect. “Mall Santa.”

Flick smiled, then covered his mouth as he giggled. “Oh my gosh,” he said. “I've never thought about it, but your dad would make a great mall Santa.”

“I know, right? But he made me promise not to tell anyone. He said he didn't want me to get teased at school if any of my friends from school recognized him. But I was, like, thirteen at the time and if any of my friends were visiting a mall Santa, they're sure as hell not going to want to tell anyone about it. I never even got to see him in his costume, though. He was kind of embarrassed.”

“Aww, there's nothing wrong with being a mall Santa. Somebody's gotta do it.”

“Exactly.”

“I don't think you're quite at the Santa stage of life, though,” Flick said. Then he smirked and added, “But maybe an elf.”

C.J. smiled back. “Is that a dig at my height?”

“No, of course not,” Flick said smiling. “It's a dig at your cute little elf cheeks.” He pinched both of C.J.'s cheeks.

C.J. batted his hands away. “Have I ever told you that you're a brat?”

Flick laughed. “You may have mentioned that once or twice.”

C.J. smiled, and said, “Is that bread ready yet?”

“Yeah,” Flick said. “Can you get the butter?” He slid a loaf to a cutting board and cut two thick slices.

As they buttered their bread, C.J. asked, “What inspired you to bake bread today?”

Flick shrugged. “I haven't done much else this weekend. I wanted to do something productive.”

C.J. took a bite, and after he swallowed it, he said, “One, this is really fuckin' good bread. But two, you know your worth is not determined by your productivity, right?”

Flick eyed him, and with a sly smile said, “So says the man who'll be slinging Christmas trees tomorrow morning?”

“That's different.”

“Why? Because it's you?”

“Well, yeah. Employment is annoying, but it doesn't hurt me like it does you.”

Flick gave him a look like he was about to argue but then changed his mind. “Anyway,” he said. “I like to bake. I'd do it more often if I had the time and energy.”

“All the more reason for me to go sling Christmas trees, then, if having a bit more financial stability will help give you more time and energy.”

“But you should be able to do the things that you like, too.”

“I like eating fresh-baked bread.”

Flick smiled, but then said seriously, “You know what I mean. When are you going to be able to stream? Is this Christmas tree gig full time?”

“It's thirty hours a week. I can stream nights or weekends. I guess I'll miss my usual Wednesday morning stream for a while, but maybe folks are too busy this time of year getting ready for the holidays anyway to sit around watching livestreams.”

“You always have them on in the background while you're doing other stuff. I imagine other people watch that way, too.”

“Hey, it's not your job to worry about my business.”

“I can worry about whatever I want to worry about,” Flick said. But he dropped the subject.

C.J. had never had a boss other than his dad, and he was unprepared for just how annoying employment could be. He arrived at the Christmas tree lot ten minutes before his shift started, and although C.J. said a cheerful, “Good morning,” his supervisor greeted him by saying, “You know you don't get paid more for showing up early.” He wasn't expecting how demeaning it would feel to be trained in on simple things like how to lean the cut trees against a wooden frame for display, how to sweep up pine needles, how to make change or use the credit card reader, or how infuriating it would feel when his supervisor described these tasks slowly and in detail, as if they assumed that anyone working a low-wage temporary job must not be too bright. At least his supervisor left after half an hour of this so-called training, but that meant that C.J. was alone the rest of his six hour shift, apart from the occasional customers who were few and far between on weekday mornings; he did not anticipate how boring it would be to do nothing useful or entertaining for so long.

When C.J. got home that afternoon, he was surprised to see Flick. “Aren't you supposed to be at the library?” he asked as he hung up his coat.

“Yeah, but... I called in sick. I wanted to be able to see you after you got home from work.”

C.J. forced a smile, but thought, That's not really what I meant when I talked about wanting to see you more. “You shouldn't miss too much work, though. I'd've seen you tonight.”

Flick bit his lip. “I was actually going to go to the ceramics studio later. The end of the semester is coming up, I want to be sure I finish everything I want to finish. I didn't want to be gone all day.”

C.J. resisted sighing. “Well, I'm always happy to see you,” he said. He walked up to Flick and kissed him. “How were classes today?”

Flick cringed a little. “I-I didn't go to those, either.”

C.J. looked him over. “Is something wrong? Are you feeling okay?”

“No, I just... I didn't wanna. My Monday classes are so boring. Besides, it's not like they're going to do a pop quiz in sociology the Monday after Thanksgiving break, and even if I miss a quiz, so what? I get decent enough grades on the papers I write. And freshman comp is ridiculous. Most days it's just a lecture and then some in-class writing exercise that doesn't even get collected or graded. It's a waste of my time.”

C.J. gently turned Flick's left arm, which still had a band-aid in the crook of his elbow. “But you still went to go sell plasma?”

Flick pulled his arm away. “Yeah. So?”

“I dunno. Skipping school and work for plasma and the ceramics studio. Is that the best way to prioritize things?”

Flick crossed his arms. “For my mental health? Yeah, it is.” He glared at C.J. “Don't nit-pick how I spend my time.”

C.J. sighed. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just feeling kind of tired and grumpy.”

Flick's expression softened. “How was the new job?”

“Mostly boring,” C.J. said. “My supervisor is kind of a condescending jerk, but he didn't stick around. The trees are kept in this storage unit overnight, and after I set up for the day there's not a lot to do besides wait around for customers. I can't even get a good WiFi signal from where I'm at. I wanna download some podcasts or fanfics or something onto my phone tonight so I'm not so bored tomorrow.”

“Standing around doing nothing sounds like a job I could do.”

“Nah,” C.J. said with a smile. “Considering how my supervisor was talking to me this morning, you wouldn't have been nearly as polite as I was. You would have told him off.”

He meant it as a compliment, but Flick frowned, and C.J. felt worried for a second. But then Flick said, “I wish you didn't have to work there.”

“It's really not that bad.”

“I'll definitely go to the library for my shift tomorrow.”

“Aww, I wasn't trying to make you feel guilty.”

“But I should.”

“I mean, yeah, they're expecting you, and you've missed a few days lately. But I know work and school are tough for you. I really don't want you to feel bad about this.” He put his hands on Flick's hips, and Flick uncrossed his arms and looped them around C.J.'s neck. C.J. said, “It's really not that bad. It won't kill me to be bored for a few hours a day.”

“And get yelled at, from the sounds of it.”

“I honestly don't know how often I'll even see my supervisor again. He manages a couple different tree lots around town. He gave me the key to the storage unit. He says he goes around to collect the cash at the end of the day, but I think the idea is I'm supposed to run the thing myself through the morning.” Flick still looked sad, so C.J. insisted, “It's really not a bad gig, and it's only for a few weeks anyway.”

Flick sighed, and hugged him. Then he said, “You smell like pine trees.”

“I'll bet I do. Probably better than smelling like fish.”

“Maybe,” Flick said as he pulled back. “But fish make you happier.”

“I'll get back to fish soon enough.”

Flick looked him over. “It reminds me of camping and stuff. We haven't been able to go out and do anything like that in so long. Some of the cabins at the state parks have wood stoves, don't they? It'd be nice to stay in a cabin for a few days over winter break. Snuggle up by the fire and watch the snow fall outside.”

There is no earthly way we could afford that, especially if you wind up getting fired from the library, C.J. thought. But he smiled and said, “That sounds beautiful. They're probably all booked out, though, that's only a few weeks away. But we should do some day trip while you're off school, before ice fishing season starts up.”

“Yeah,” Flick said. “We can probably make that happen.”

Flick spent hours at the ceramic studio Monday and Wednesday nights, and although C.J. missed him, he could sort of understand it, if Flick was indeed finishing his projects before the end of the semester. But why go to the figure drawing class? C.J. had been hoping that after their conversation, and after having such a nice, relaxing weekend, that Flick might skip it. But as C.J. sat around watching the clock Thursday evening, it became clear that Flick wasn't coming home after his afternoon classes. They'd still never had a good conversation about this, and C.J. was feeling resentful. By Flick's own account, he preferred to draw other things, and C.J. knew Flick well enough to know that he rarely chose to do things that he didn't like. So why was he still going to this figure drawing class every week?

C.J. sulked on the couch; he kept picking up his phone, scrolling for a minute, and putting it down again. He glanced around the apartment. The box of Flick's stuff from the raku firing had been moved from Flick's desk to the floor, but it appeared to still be unopened, and C.J. was tempted to go take a peek inside, but there didn't seem to be much point. He looked over at Flick's desk. That potted plant he bought for the stick bugs sat by the window, and piled around it were school books, loose papers, old jam jars filled with brushes or pens or scissors, abandoned cups of tea, his sketchbook, and... Wait a minute, C.J. thought. For as long as he'd known Flick, he'd had only ever used one sketchbook at a time; he filled it methodically one page after another from the front cover to the back, using it as a sort of visual diary. If he was at figure drawing class, he should have his sketchbook with him. C.J. swallowed dryly. Maybe it's an old sketchbook, maybe he just filled this one and he took a new one with him? But even from across the room, he could tell by the way the pages were worn it was only half full. He stood and walked to Flick's desk, and after a long pause he opened the sketchbook. There were dozens of blank pages in the back. He paged through the drawings, and saw that the most recent was dated yesterday. There were several pages of drawings of the stick bugs, plus some drawings of other bugs Flick must've found around the apartment—sowbugs, centipedes, daddy long legs—and some drawings of insects and flowers copied from field guides (Flick had noted the book and page number he referenced on each drawing). There was a rough sketch of C.J. working at his computer, which C.J. hadn't realized Flick had done and which made him smile briefly, and some unexpected drawings of fish. And finally, when he had paged back far enough, there were a few drawings of a nude female figure, dated more than a month ago. He flipped through the rest of the drawings and all the blank pages, but didn't see anything else that looked like it could have come from a figure drawing class. He closed the sketchbook solemnly, and sat down in Flick's chair.

Had he only actually gone to this class once? Where was he every other Thursday evening when he claimed to be at figure drawing class? C.J. felt sick—Flick never lied to him. He scanned the top of Flick's desk for clues, and then started opening drawers. Flick's desk was a mess, but as C.J. cautiously dug around, he only saw office supplies, art materials, books, and a few random odds and ends like a jar of beach glass or a ziploc of pine cones, but nothing incriminating. He closed the drawers, and walked to the bedroom.

Flick's dresser held nothing but clothes and jewelry. There was a box on the floor of Flick's half of the closet, but it only held his sandals, extra laces for his boots, a sewing kit, and some random buttons. C.J. sat down on Flick's side of the bed and opened the drawer of his nightstand. Inside was a pile of folded up scraps of paper, and when he opened one it read, soc test 10-14. Another read, lib clsd nov 24-27. C.J. read every one, but they were all just innocuous notes Flick had written to himself. Beneath all the paper was lip balm, a spare phone charger, extra lube, cough drops and a bottle of melatonin. Then a prescription drug bottle caught C.J.'s eye, and for a moment his heart skipped a beat—he had never known Flick to use anything stronger than marijuana. But when he picked it up and turned it over, he saw it was antidepressants, prescribed to Flick and filled at the on-campus clinic two weeks ago. The label indicated a thirty day supply, and when C.J. emptied the remaining pills into his hand he counted twenty-three, which led him to assume that Flick had actually been taking them. He refilled and capped the bottle, and held it in his hands for a long time. Here he was, all set to be angry at Flick for lying about the figure drawing class, but now suddenly his feelings were more complicated. Flick talked a lot—at least in a vague or self-pitying kind of way—about being depressed, but had never mentioned antidepressants. How bad had things gotten for Flick? What was he not telling him?

C.J. returned the bottle to the drawer and arranged the scraps of paper over everything else like they had been before. There was nowhere else left to snoop, and C.J. felt bad enough for what he had done already. He laid on the couch to wait for Flick and tried to imagine where he might be. He entertained the thought that Flick might be at something like therapy every Thursday, but Flick didn't get home until after seven, which seemed too late for any appointment. And even if he was, why hadn't he told C.J.? Why lie about it? As he laid there, the conclusion that he came to was this: Flick was hiding something, something big, and it was the guilt over whatever this was that was worsening his depression. An hour ago, C.J. would have dismissed this as a paranoid fantasy, but the longer he waited for Flick to come home, the truer it felt. And at any rate, it felt better to blame this mysterious something than to consider that it was C.J. or their living situation that was making Flick depressed.

It was almost seven-thirty when Flick came home, and by then C.J. was back to being more angry than worried. As Flick let himself in the apartment, C.J. slowly rose from the couch and walked into the kitchen. “Where were you?” C.J. asked in a clipped voice.

Flick gave him a look, then answered, “Figure drawing class.”

C.J. took a breath, then said, “Let's see your drawings, then.”

Flick had been hanging up his jacket and he froze for a second, his back to C.J.

“You didn't even take your sketchbook,” C.J. said, and as Flick turned around, C.J. gestured towards Flick's desk. Flick glanced at his desk, then looked back to C.J., his face pale and tense. “So I'll ask again: where were you?”

Flick slowly sat down on a kitchen stool, his gaze lowered to the floor now. “I was at figure drawing class...” he began.

“Don't lie to me,” C.J. cut him off. He was making every effort to keep his voice low, but still Flick flinched, and C.J. felt a flash of shame. He took a breath and tried to calm down.

Flick furrowed his brow and closed his eyes. After a few seconds he spoke, slowly enunciating his words. “I was at figure drawing class,” he said again. “But not as an artist. I was there as the model.” He opened his eyes and looked up at C.J. again.

They held eye contact for a few seconds. Flick looked almost scared. C.J. felt stunned. “The model?” he repeated.

Flick nodded.

“Like... the... the nude model?”

Flick nodded again.

Several seconds passed. Flick's gaze flickered from the floor to C.J. C.J. blinked twice, and then said, “I don't believe you.”

Flick exhaled, and glared at him now. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I'm serious. That does not sound like a believable thing.”

“Oh my god,” Flick muttered under his breath. Then he stood up, grabbed his backpack from the floor and pulled out a black garment. “Here's the robe that I wear after I undress and before I pose.” He tossed his backpack and the robe on the floor, then got his phone out of his pocket. “Ankha, the other model, stuck around to draw me last week. She showed me her work. She's halfway through her masters in drawing and painting, and she's a really talented artist. I was so impressed that I took some pictures. Feel free to scroll through them.” He thrust his phone at C.J. C.J. took it hesitantly. On the screen was a charcoal drawing of a nude figure sitting on the floor leaning back on their hands, one leg drawn up and the other extended, the face in profile. It was unmistakably Flick. C.J. scrolled through the three more pictures of drawings of Flick until he got to a picture of the stick bugs. He turned off Flick's phone and quietly set it on the kitchen island. When he looked back up, Flick was glowering at him, his arms crossed. “Now do you fucking believe me?” Flick asked.

C.J. nodded, and they were both silent for a minute. Then C.J. asked, “But why? Why are you doing this?”

Flick started, “They pay four thousand bells per session...”

C.J. cut him off. “For money?” he said incredulously. “You're degrading yourself for money?”

Flick gaped at him. “It's not degrading.”

“Like hell it's not!”

“What do you think goes on there?”

“You tell me,” C.J. said, and glared at him.

“It's not a sexual thing,” Flick insisted. “I might as well be a bowl of fruit.”

“A fucking bowl of fruit,” C.J. muttered.

“But it's true!” Flick said. “The artists are there to study line and form and, yes, anatomy, but it's not... It's not like they're there to ogle me. It's a morally neutral experience. I mean, maybe it seems weird to you because you're not an artist, but—”

C.J. cut him off. “Don't give me that bullshit. Like you think that you're more enlightened than me or whatever because you're an artist.”

“I absolutely did not say that,” Flick said. “Jesus Christ, C.J. Why are you so angry about this? Like, I get that it's a surprise for you, but it's not a shameful thing.”

“If it's not a shameful thing, then why didn't you tell me about it before?”

“Are you fucking serious?” Flick asked. “You are demonstrating right now exactly why I didn't tell you. This is the kind of confrontation I was trying to avoid. You're acting like you want to control my time and my body and I—”

“I am not! I'm upset that you've been doing this for more than a month and keeping it a secret and lying to me about it!”

“I was not lying,” Flick insisted. “I told you I was at figure drawing class. I just didn't tell you in what capacity and—”

“That's the same fucking things as lying.”

Flick exhaled sharply and rubbed his face. After a moment he said, “I am way too angry right now to continue this conversation. I'm going out.”

C.J. felt a pinch of fear. “No, Flick, don't go, please, I'm sorry,” he said in a calmer voice.

Flick grabbed his phone and keys and put his jacket back on. “If we had a room with a door that closed, I'd go shut myself away for a few hours. But we don't, so I'm going out.”

“Flick, I'm sorry, please don't go.”

“I'll be back later,” Flick said, and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

C.J. listened to Flick's feet thumping down the stairs, then he went to the bedroom and watched out the window; a moment later Flick stepped out the front door and headed west down the block. He did not look back up at the apartment.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” C.J. muttered as he paced the apartment. Flick hadn't locked the door behind him, so C.J. locked it now. On the kitchen floor, Flick's backpack and robe still lay in a messy pile. C.J. picked up the robe and shook it out; he folded it and slid it back inside Flick's backpack. C.J. considered rifling through the pockets, too, but figured he had done enough damage for one day. He sat down on the couch, feeling miserable. He didn't know what he had expected Flick to tell him, but this was not it, and certainly C.J. had not behaved the way he'd wanted to. Flick was already depressed and now C.J. had gone and made things worse. C.J. desperately wanted to text an apology to Flick, but he knew it would not be well received.

Flick finally returned three hours later. C.J. turned to face him, and they held cautious eye contact for a moment. Flick set something down on the kitchen counter as he took off his boots and jacket. “What's that?” C.J. asked as he stood and walked toward Flick.

“That ice storm last week knocked down some trees in Peace Park. They haven't cleaned it up yet. I found some branches with lichen, I thought the stickies might like them.” C.J. watched as Flick unzipped the mesh habitats and placed a branch inside, nestling it into the substrate to stand it up.

“Will they eat the lichen?”

“No. I mean, they might nibble it, and it won't hurt them. But mostly it's just an enrichment activity for them.” Flick looked at the habitats, then furrowed his brow in confusion. “D-did you mist them while I was gone?”

C.J. nodded. “I know you usually mist them twice a day, I wasn't sure what time you'd be back.”

“Oh,” Flick said. He made a face something between a frown and a smile. “Thanks.” He carried the remaining branches to the terrarium on the floor and sat down as he put them inside.

C.J. sat down next to him. “Are you mad at me?”

There was a long pause, and finally Flick said, “No. I should have told you about the class. I kept telling myself that it wasn't exactly like I was keeping it a secret, that it just wasn't any of your business. Which I still think is sort of true. But I felt guilty about it. Mostly I just didn't want... I didn't want you to think less of me. I didn't want to have a conversation about it and have to defend my choices.” He fiddled nervously with the branches and the substrate. Then he asked quietly, “Are... are you mad at me?”

“No,” C.J. answered immediately. “I overreacted. When I saw your sketchbook on your desk, I didn't know where you actually were and I was, I dunno. I got myself worked up. I didn't really give you a chance to talk about it.” They sat there in silence, and C.J. watched as a stick bug crawled onto Flick's hand. “Are you going to keep going?”

“Yes,” Flick answered without looking at him.

“How come?” C.J. asked, and Flick shot him a look. “I don't mean that in a judgy way,” C.J. quickly amended. “I'm just, I'm trying to understand. Explain to me why you like it.”

Flick relaxed a bit, and sighed softly. After a moment, he said, “They need models. It's just been me and Ankha all semester. Several people have told me that they're glad that I'm there, and it's nice to feel appreciated. And the money's nice, too, of course. But modeling has also helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin. I-I don't mean in, like, a body image kind of way, b-but, like... Like, if I can do this, if I can pose nude in front of ten or fifteen of my classmates, then speaking up during a group critique isn't so bad, ya know? And I feel like it makes me a better artist. Like when I'm posing, I need to think about composition, I need to consider what's satisfying for the artists to draw and also what would make a compelling image to view later as a finished work of art. And it also makes me appreciate all the people throughout history who have posed for artists. The artists get all the credit, and obviously I'm not arguing that they don't work hard. But they didn't just invent those figures in their artwork out of nowhere. They were based on real people, who gave hours or days or weeks of their time to pose, and whose names and lives are lost to history. And, I mean, just in my own experience drawing bugs, drawing from life is so much better than drawing from photos. Modeling helps me see art from a new perspective, and I-I feel like I'm contributing to the art world as a whole, even if it is only in some incrementally tiny way.”

C.J. felt humbled, and after a moment he said, “If you'd explained it to me like that when you were first considering it, I would have been all like, 'Heck yeah, go for it, that sounds awesome.'”

Flick smiled. “I don't think I could have. At the time I was just thinking, 'Hey, four thousand bells for an hour's work.' That's more than I make selling plasma, and a hell of a lot more than my hourly rate at the library.” He sighed. “I had these grand plans to use the money to take you out on dates, but I've wound up spending most of it on the stick bugs.”

“Stick bugs need love, too.”

“They do. But so do you.”

“The stick bugs are so good for you, though. I mean, I know you worry about them a lot, too, and about what to do with all the babies. But, like, I can see how much you love them, and I think it's been good for you to have these bugs to look after, especially now that it's winter and there's no bugs outside.”

Flick smiled sadly. “Yeah. I'm going to miss them when they're gone.”

“We could keep a few.”

“I was going to keep the adults, because nobody else is going to want them. This species only lives a year at the very, very most, and the sub-par care they were getting before I took over probably shortened their lives a bit. It's hard to tell how old the adults are, but they probably only have a few weeks or months left.”

“Aww, I was getting attached,” C.J. said.

“Loving bugs is a perpetual meditation on the nature of loss.”

C.J. looked over the habitat. “You should keep some of the babies, too.”

Flick just shrugged. After a moment, he furrowed his brow and said, “C.J., could we move someplace warmer one day? I-I know you probably don't want to be far from your family, but winter here is so hard for me. Not just the no-bugs thing, but the cold and the snow and the short days and everything...”

C.J. felt a surge of relief that Flick was still assuming a shared future after their fight. “Yeah, absolutely. I'll live anywhere with you.”

“Where do you want to live, though?”

“I haven't thought a lot about it, honestly. I want to be able to travel, but beyond that, I dunno.” He thought for a second. “But when we're rich, let's buy a cabin up north, like by my Grandpa's or on Lake Superior. We can come back for a vacation in the summer or fall.”

Flick said wryly, “Yeah, when we're rich.” But then he added sincerely, “Fall is nice.”

A second stick bug crawled out of the open habitat onto Flick's hand, and the first started making their way up his arm to his shoulder. As Flick guided the second stick bug from one hand to another, he said to C.J., “Hey, uh, can you help me out?” He nodded toward the first stick bug, who was making their way down his back now.

“Yeah,” C.J. said. “How do I pick 'em up?”

“Just slide your fingers under their abdomen, let them crawl onto your hand.”

C.J. carefully brought the bug back around to the habitat and set them inside. Flick put the other stick bug inside, too, made a quick head count, then closed the habitat. C.J. said, “They're so much more active now than they normally are.”

Flick nodded. “They're nocturnal.”

“Like you,” C.J. said.

Flick smiled. “I would probably be happier if I had a schedule that let me sleep from, like, three a.m. to noon.”

“Have you registered for next semester's classes yet? Maybe you could try to only take afternoon classes so that you can sleep in.”

But Flick shook his head. “All my library shifts are in the afternoon. I need to schedule my classes around that, and there's not a lot of classes offered in the evenings.”

C.J thought for a moment. “How much are you making at the library? Like per hour?”

“Eleven hundred bells an hour.”

“So, the modeling thing earns you as much as, like, three or four hours at the library? If you're doing that, could you drop a shift at the library then?”

“All shelvers are fifteen hours a week, no more no less. That's just how the library blocks out their schedule.” He smiled sadly. “I appreciate the effort, but I promise I've looked at this from every possible angle and I'm pretty much fucked.” He sighed. “But right now it's late, and we've both got shit to do in the morning. We should go to bed.”

They got ready, then got into bed and turned off the light. C.J. reached for Flick and put his hand on his hip. “I love you,” C.J. said.

“I love you,” Flick replied. He kissed C.J. good night and rolled onto his back. C.J.'s hand drifted to Flick's stomach, and Flick laid his own hand on top of it. C.J. could tell from Flick's breath that he was nowhere near sleep, and after a minute Flick began nervously fidgeting with C.J.'s fingers. Then he said, “C-C.J.? I meant what I said that I'm not mad at you, but...” He took a breath, and C.J. braced himself. “I'm hurt that you accused me of lying to you, a-and I don't like the way you talked to me earlier tonight. I mean, I-I agree that, yes, I should have told you about the class, a-and probably this isn't the best time for me to insist that you need to trust me. B-but withholding information is not the same as lying. Privacy is not the same as lying. I'm never going to be the kind of person who shares everything about their life, and you know that. You need to be okay with it. I'm not going to tell you everything, but I don't lie to you.”

“I'm sorry,” C.J. said. “The last thing I want to do is to hurt you. I just, when I didn't know where you were every Thursday, I got scared, and I lost my temper, and I acted like a shit. I'm sorry. I do trust you.”

“Do you?” Flick asked.

“I do,” C.J. insisted immediately, although Flick's tone of voice evoked a little flicker of doubt in his heart. “I do trust you,” he said again. Then he took a breath and added, “B-but also, Flick, I want you to trust me enough to tell me these things. Like, I get that I behaved poorly tonight, and I'm really, really sorry. I want to do better. But I hate that you feel like you can't tell me things, and this is about more than just the class. You close yourself off from me when you're stressed, and I just feel so lost and scared. I want to be able to support you. And if, if there's some issue or concern, I want to be able to fix it. But I need to know about it to be able to fix it. I want—more than anything—I want to make this work. But, if we're going to have a healthy and sustainable relationship, if I'm going to be a better partner for you, you need to give me the opportunity to try.”

Flick didn't reply with words, and they laid there for a moment, Flick anxiously running his fingernails along C.J.'s cuticles until C.J. pulled his hand back just enough to intertwine their fingers. Flick took a breath, and lightly squeezed C.J.'s hand, then he rolled over onto his side and nestled in to be the little spoon against C.J., hugging C.J.'s arm to his chest. C.J. held him close, kissed the back of his neck, and thought, Trust.

The next morning, C.J. got up early for work. Flick was still asleep as he was getting ready to leave, but C.J. sat down in bed next to him, brushed his hand over his forehead and said, “Hey, I'm heading out. It's seven forty-five, by the way, I don't know if you want to get up for school.”

Flick's eyelids fluttered open, and he sleepily reached out for C.J. “Kiss me,” he said. C.J. did, and they kissed deeply enough that C.J. was just about ready to get back into bed. Then Flick laid his hand on C.J.'s cheek and said, “I love you,” and he rolled over to go back to sleep.

“I love you,” C.J. said, and he watched Flick smile briefly, his eyes still closed.

C.J. thought about Flick all day at work—there wasn't much else to do. Flick had always been quiet, he had always been a private person and he'd never talked much about his inner thoughts or feelings. C.J. did, in fact, know that, and it wasn't fair for him to expect Flick to change. C.J. had always felt lucky that Flick confided in him more than he did anyone else, and part of him had been hoping that living together would actually have changed Flick, at least a little bit, to be even more open with him. But considering it from Flick's perspective now, he wondered if this expectation—this demand for emotional vulnerability—was just another burden placed on Flick, just another thing making Flick's life hard right now. He thought about how he should apologize for what he said in bed last night, and about how he had fucked up in so many ways yesterday.

But at the same time, C.J. still wanted more from Flick—more time, more clarity and more words. Talking was how C.J. sorted through his own thoughts, talking was how he understood the world, and it felt lonely not being able to share that with Flick as much as he wanted. What Flick called privacy still felt like secret-keeping to C.J., and it was uncomfortable to consider how divergent their communication styles were. And it scared him to death that regardless of how much they loved each other, they might just not be compatible for a long term relationship, at least not if they couldn't bridge these differences.

He considered whether or not he truly needed to know that Flick was modeling for this class, and the conclusion he reached was a tentative no, and he started to wonder if maybe Flick was actually right in not telling him, because if he was being honest with himself, he still wasn't exactly comfortable with it, even if he did now understand Flick's motivation, and he thought maybe he was just small-minded, maybe he was just jealous and possessive, wanting Flick's attention and Flick's body all to himself. Then he had to remind himself that Flick hadn't actually said any of that. But maybe this was just another way they weren't compatible.

And then by extension, he wondered if he truly needed to know that Flick was taking antidepressants. He certainly hadn't been hiding the depression itself, and that was the important thing to share, wasn't it? And it's not like C.J. needed to know every time Flick took an aspirin for a headache, and the situations weren't all that different. But they felt different. It felt like Flick was hurting more than he realized—and he had not come to C.J. for help. C.J. didn't know if this depression was worse than other depressions, or if it only seemed worse because he saw so much more of Flick now that they were living together, and he hated that Flick was shutting him out just when all he wanted to do was to support and care for Flick.

And he was frustrated that he couldn't even expect to have a conversation about any of this. It felt unfair that he had to sacrifice his needs for Flick's comfort, but he also understood that it wouldn't be any more fair to reverse the situation and try to force Flick into some emotionally draining conversation he didn't want to have. C.J. didn't really want to have that conversation either, he just wanted things to be better and easier. In the short term, though, Flick was right: C.J. just had to trust him. And so C.J. tried to focus on the positives of the day before: Flick held him, Flick kissed him, Flick assumed they'd be living together in the future, and Flick took C.J.'s relationship with his family into consideration. Flick even talked a little bit about his feelings about the fight, which couldn't have been easy for him. He'd just have to trust that Flick wasn't hiding anything terrible, and that he was happy enough with C.J. and committed enough to the relationship to keep trying.

It was mid-afternoon when C.J. got home, and Flick was gone, which likely meant that he had at least made it to his shift at the library, even if he may not have made it to classes in the morning. C.J. noticed that the box from the raku fire had finally been opened, and he peered in the open top, but everything inside was wrapped in newspaper and C.J. didn't want to dig around. But when he sat down at his desk he saw his keyboard had been moved to the side and in its place was a clay fish, a trout, about a foot long. Underneath the fish was a scrap of paper on which Flick had drawn a heart and written, for you (but plz be gentle with it for the next 24 hrs while the epoxy sets). C.J. ran his fingertip along a jagged edge on a corner of the tail where the adhesive was still tacky. Every detail of the fish was on point, the grooves in the fins perfectly aligned, the eyes and gills and nostrils so lifelike it almost looked as if it might take a breath; Flick had even covered it in tidy, exactly spaced scales. The glaze was an otherworldly rainbow of blue and green and pink and gold. C.J. carefully lifted it and carried it to the window, where it shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, then he brought it back to his desk and set it on the shelf above his monitors. It was obvious that Flick had put hours of work into this, and the finished piece was incredible; C.J. was moved that, even when Flick was gone for so long, so often, he was still thinking of him. He sat at his desk, admired the little clay fish, and thought, Trust.

Chapter Text

If. C.J. had said, If. “If we're going to have a healthy and sustainable relationship...” There had been a lot of heavy discussion that night, but Flick was hung up on that one word. He hadn't realized it was even a question. Sure, there were financial worries, and Flick had been fairly miserable as it became more and more obvious how incompetent he was at adult life, but he had been secure in the assumption that their relationship was safe. But C.J. had said if, as if breaking up was a real possibility, and his voice had sounded so serious that Flick had been too scared to respond. He tried not to panic, but it felt like confirmation of his deepest fear, that he was intrinsically unlikable, that anyone who got close to him would in time be repelled by him. C.J. had lasted longer than anyone else, but maybe Flick was just too difficult and weird for intimate relationships. He worried that he had gotten too comfortable with C.J., and now not only was he annoying C.J. but he had also gotten too attached and too dependent; if C.J. left him, he would be destroyed in every possible sense of the word. His initial instinct was to put some distance between them and start hardening his heart now so that he could better withstand it when the worst happened, and when he was gone at work or school or some other obligation, he considered what it would be like to have no lover to go home to, to rent some tiny room in a big shared house like Bob or Cherry did because surely that's all he would be able to afford on his own, to be at once always alone and never alone. At least he wouldn't burden anyone that way. But when he was home with C.J. all he wanted was to stay with C.J. and he couldn't even contemplate the prospect of losing him. C.J. had mentioned more than once wanting to talk about their relationship and Flick didn't know if there was something specific C.J. wanted to discuss (what? what had Flick done wrong?) or if this was just a general desire. But conversation—especially serious conversation—was so hard for Flick; he needed a lot of time to process what was being said and then more time to figure out what to say in response, and after just a few minutes his brain seemed to overheat anyway and he'd either cry or shut down or walk away. Which was just another way that he felt like he was a failure at life. He knew he wouldn't be able to initiate any relationship conversation with C.J., but the next time C.J. brought it up he vowed that he would do his damnedest to participate as fully as he could.

Redd texted shortly after Thanksgiving that he'd be interested in twenty more stick bugs to sell for the holidays. Flick hated the idea of selling stick bugs to Redd again, and especially hated the idea of them being sold off as presents for someone who might not even want them or know how to care for them. But he hadn't done the work to find any other option and the nymphs were growing fast, and it certainly wasn't any better for Flick to hoard them in a too-small enclosure. Besides, if Redd took twenty nymphs, that would leave Flick with nine nymphs and four adults, and if he divided them evenly between the three habitats, that would give them a semi-reasonable amount of space. Hopefully C.J. actually meant it when he said they could keep a few.

So the following Sunday, they made another trip to Appleton. On the drive, after they had made it a few miles down the freeway, C.J. said, “Flick? I need to tell you something.” Flick turned to look at him. C.J. took a breath and said, “I want to apologize for what I said in bed the other day, you know, after... after the fight. You don't have to tell me anything that you don't want to. Like, I do want you to be comfortable talking to me, obviously. But I also want to say that I understand that talking is not always an easy thing for you, and, and... I don't want you to feel like I'm wanting or expecting something you can't provide. I just, I want to make sure that you know that. I don't want you to feel like you need to change who you fundamentally are for me or for the relationship. You don't have to respond to this at all, I just, I just needed to say it.”

Flick swallowed, and after a moment started, “I'm sor—”

But C.J. cut him off. “Flick, I'm gonna stop you right there, because if you're about to apologize for being yourself, I don't wanna hear it. I didn't say all that just so that you can feel bad. If you've got something to say that's not self-pitying bullshit, though, ya know, feel free to share.”

Flick frowned. “You're really limiting my options if you're vetoing self-pitying bullshit.”

C.J. glanced over at him and smirked. “Tough luck, babe.”

Flick slouched in his seat and looked out the window. After a while, he said, “I appreciate what you're trying to do. But it's not fair to you, is it? You deserve a partner who can have a conversation like a normal person.”

“You're the partner I want, and I want you to be happy.”

“But you've also mentioned more than once wanting to be able to talk about relationship stuff. And if that's the case, you're not going to get what you want from me.”

“Flick, what did I just say about self-pitying bullshit?”

“But you're not. Objectively speaking, you're not.”

“We just gotta find a way to communicate that works for both of us,” C.J. said. “We've been making something work for... for seven and a half years. We can figure this out.”

“Or maybe you've just been vaguely disappointed with me for seven and a half years. I mean, you've certainly told me many, many times before that you wished I would talk to you more about this or that.”

“Flick, you are such a butthead,” C.J. said with a small laugh. “You are really twisting this around to the opposite of what I meant. Why do you think I've stuck around for the past seven and a half years?”

“My rakish good looks and dexterous artist's hands?”

C.J. laughed. “I mean, that doesn't hurt. But also because I love you. All of you. As you are.”

“But, but I mean... you have to admit that I'm kind of a lot to deal with...”

“No. I'm not agreeing to that.”

“Fine. But living together changes things. Adulthood changes things. We have a different dynamic now than we did a year ago, or five years ago. And, and maybe I'm not the kind of partner you thought I would be, and—”

“Flick, stop. Why are you being such a butthead about this? Just let me say nice things about you.”

“Nice things feel weird. And besides, I'm really good at being a self-pitying butthead.”

“That you are, Flick, that you are.” C.J. thought for a moment. “Okay, you're right, things are different now. And that's why I said we have to figure out something new. But the core of our relationship, like, for as long as we've known each other, is based on love, and respect, and care. Wouldn't you agree?”

“Yeah...”

“So we'll be fine. We'll figure something out.”

They drove on for another mile or two, and then Flick asked, “C.J., are you happy?”

C.J. considered. “I mean, I'm worried about your stress levels, and about finances, and about how my stupid livestream isn't taking off like I wanted. But I love you and I love living with you, if that's what you're asking.”

Flick knew that Are you happy? was a simplistic question, and C.J. had given him an accurate and nuanced answer—he'd given the kind of answer Flick would have given—and so he knew it was ridiculous to be sulking now because C.J. hadn't answered with a straightforward, Yes. But he felt sulky anyway. He frowned, and glanced over at C.J.

After a few seconds, C.J. smirked and said, “Careful now, I think we might be talking about our relationship.”

Flick laughed dryly and said, “Fuck you. Tricking me into conversation with all this nonsense about unconditional love.”

C.J. smiled at him briefly, then turned his attention back to the road.

After a minute, Flick said, “Seriously, though. If I were a normal person, this wouldn't be so hard. I feel like I'm complicating everything, and—”

C.J. cut him off. “Flick, enough! If you don't knock it off with this bullshit, I'm going to pull this car over and kiss you, just to prove a point.”

Flick was caught off guard enough that he giggled. “Promise?” he asked.

C.J. grinned and bit his lower lip. He checked his mirrors, then said, “There's too much fuckin' traffic, you're going to have to wait until Appleton.”

When they parked in front of Redd's Pets-N-Things, C.J. said, “Hey, I meant what I said.” He leaned over and pulled Flick into a kiss. “You gotta stop hating yourself.”

“No,” Flick said. “But I can stop telling you about it.”

“You know that's not what I mean.”

Flick sighed. “Yeah. I know.”

C.J. nodded toward the door. “You ready?”

“I suppose.”

Flick wrapped a blanket around the mesh habitat to protect the bugs from the chill in the air, and as they walked down the sidewalk, he was preoccupied fussing with that when C.J. said, “Wait wait wait wait wait,” and put his hand on Flick's shoulder. “Is that our landlord?”

Flick looked up now, and sure enough, there inside the store was Mr. Nook in the middle of a heated discussion with Redd. They were on opposite sides of the counter, and as Mr. Nook spoke, he jabbed at the air angrily with a finger. Redd watched him with a smug little grin on his face, and when Mr. Nook had finished talking, Redd said a few words, and reached out and booped Mr. Nook's nose. Mr. Nook slapped his hand away and Redd laughed meanly. Mr Nook spoke again, and this time Redd leaned his elbows on the counter to listen, his expression slowly turning into something more sincere. Redd said a few words, and Mr. Nook's expression softened just a bit. Redd spoke again, and as he did he reached out and walked his fingers up Mr. Nook's chest; Mr. Nook tensed as Redd touched him, but he didn't step away. Then in one swift movement, Redd cupped his hand under Mr. Nook's chin and brought him in for a kiss. Mr. Nook raised his hand hesitantly, as if he wasn't sure what to do with it, and then placed it gently on Redd's cheek as he kissed him back.

Out on the sidewalk, Flick leaned over and murmured in C.J.'s ear, “I told you he was gay.”

“Y-yeah, all right,” C.J. said.

As they watched, Mr. Nook and Redd parted from the kiss. A small smile flashed on Mr. Nook's face and when he spoke again, Redd laughed, a real laugh this time, his expression almost tender as they gazed into each other's eyes. Then Mr. Nook grinned, grabbed Redd's collar with both hands, and pulled him in for another, more passionate kiss.

Flick said to C.J., “Maaaybe we should head back to the truck for a bit.”

“Agreed.”

Once they were inside the truck, they both laughed a little, and Flick said, “Well, then.”

“That was unexpected.”

From where the truck was parked, they couldn't see the counter, but Flick leaned over to look at the door. “I can't go in there while Mr. Nook is there. I mean, social awkwardness aside, we're not supposed to have pets in the apartment.”

“Would stick bugs even count as pets, though? They're not much different than a goldfish, I mean in terms of their impact on the apartment.”

Flick shrugged. “People get touchy about bugs, though, and they imagine some kind of disease-ridden infestation. Even though the worst thing that would happen if my stick insects got loose in the building is that they'd die and someone would have to clean up the bodies. Or maybe they'd eat some houseplants.”

C.J. looked over at him. “Hey, how are the little guys doing? Should I turn the heat back on while we wait?”

Flick unwrapped the blanket to check on the bugs. “Maybe just for—”

C.J. interrupted, “Oh, hey, look.” He pointed at the pet shop door.

But it was only Redd, flipping the “Open” sign over to “Closed” and turning off the lights and locking the door. It was one-forty in the afternoon, and the posted hours had the store open until six. Neither Redd nor Mr. Nook left the store.

“Huh,” Flick said.

“I-I mean, we could stick around and wait. Maybe Redd'll open the store back up when they're, ya know, done.”

“I dunno. How long does it take two old guys to have sex?”

C.J. snickered. “I have no idea.”

Flick looked down at his bugs, then up at the pet store. “I didn't really want to sell to Redd again anyway.”

“I know,” C.J. said. “But what's your plan, then?”

Flick sighed. “I suppose I could ask my dad if he has any thoughts. He is the stupid entomology professor at the stupid university after all.”

“Might not be a bad idea,” C.J. said.

So after Flick had moped and obsessed about it for a few days, he wrote his dad an email:

Hi Dad. I've recently come into possession of a large number of Ramulus artemis. I've rehomed what I can on my own, but I still have twenty-nine nymphs (approx. two months old) that I don't have the space for here. If you have any leads on a safe and humane placement for them, I'd be open to suggestions. Thanks, Flick.

Nat wrote back the next day:

Flick, it's a pleasure to hear from you, and I am not surprised in the slightest to hear that you managed to stumble into a few dozen R. artemis. (Nor am I surprised you're seeking a “safe and humane placement” for them—ha! Not to worry, I already have several pinned specimens in my collection, I neither need nor want more.) Luckily, your timing at least is impeccable. A former colleague of mine recently took over as director at the natural history museum in New Sylvania, and the board wants him to expand the exhibits to include, among other things, an insectarium. Since he's more of a fossil man, he reached out to me for my input on the project. I had been planning to drive out there over winter break to hash out some plans with him, and then to start shipping specimens over in the spring and summer. But perhaps we could fast track a single exhibit for your R. artemis—the board might even appreciate having a little teaser of what's to come for museum patrons. If they agree, I'd be able to transport them when I go down there at the end of the month, and my credentials will cover up your little misdemeanor here. I'll check in with my friend, and I'll get back to you when I know more. Love, Dad

An insectarium at a natural history museum was probably the best possible placement for the stick bug nymphs, and while Flick recognized that he should be grateful for his dad's connections here, mostly he felt resentful that he hadn't been able to find a solution on his own. He also didn't like the tone of his dad's email, and was dreading having a face-to-face conversation about these bugs. His anxiety levels steadily ratcheted up as he waited to hear back from Nat. “I really don't want him coming over here to get the bugs, “ he said to C.J. “He's going to make some comments about the apartment or me or us or something, and then I'm going to feel bad.”

“We could take the bugs over to his place.”

“No, that would be worse,” Flick said. “We've been here more than three months, and my dad hasn't even seen the apartment yet. Your dad's been here. I'm sure they talk. And the university is so close, too. My dad's office in the Science building is, like, five blocks from here. I could probably see his office window if I stood on the roof of our apartment. It's stupid that I've never had him over here.”

“You know it's not stupid,” C.J. said. “You've been doing what's best for you.”

“He's going to think it's stupid. And since I've waited so long, it feels like a bigger deal than it should be.”

“It'll be tough, but you'll get through it.”

“God, and what if while he's here, he asks me to come home for Christmas? I don't wanna go home for Christmas!”

“His house is not your home any more. And you don't have to go back for Christmas. You guys never even did much for Christmas, though, did you?”

“No. Not really. Christmas eve dinner and then presents Christmas morning. Which was always kinda awkward—I hate opening presents in front of people and having to have a reaction. We didn't even get a tree the past few years.”

“Do you want a tree?” C.J. asked. “I could probably steal one from work.”

Flick smirked. “Liar. I know you, you wouldn't steal it.”

C.J. smiled. “Well... okay. But there's a pile of trees at the back of the storage container with broken tips or branches or whatever, they're just going to get wood chipped anyway. I'm sure they wouldn't mind if I took one.”

Flick considered. “No. Back when we did get a tree, sometimes I'd find western conifer seed bugs in them. Bringing them indoors wakes them from their diapause—it's, um, it's kinda like hibernation. But normally that wouldn't happen until the spring, when there are fresh conifer seeds and flowers for them to eat. So in the middle of December, I wouldn't be able to get any appropriate food for them, and they always wound up dying and then I'd feel sad and guilty.” Flick thought for a second. “Actually, maybe that's why Dad stopped getting a Christmas tree.”

C.J. smiled. Then he said, “For real, though. What do you want to do for Christmas?”

Flick shrugged. “Nothing, really. What does your family do?”

“Well, Thanksgiving is the big, extended family get-together—it's just easier to organize it around a food holiday instead of a present holiday. Christmas was always more for, like, immediate family.”

“So, like, you'll be going to your dad's then?” Flick asked as he fidgeted with the hem of his shirt.

“I mean, we could. But... you're my family, Flick. I was expecting I would spend the day with you.”

“Oh,” Flick said, and laughed self-consciously. Then he added, “I'm sorry, I'm not very much fun on holidays, though.”

“We don't have to do anything particularly Christmas-y.”

Flick thought for a moment, then smiled. “We could bake cookies.”

“I love cookies,” C.J. said.

“O-or, maybe we could drive out some place? The parks would be pretty empty Christmas day.”

“You're probably right. The waterfalls in Tamarack State Park are probably frozen over by now. I bet they're pretty.”

“Do you work at the tree place Christmas Eve day?”

“Yeah, but in the morning. I'm done at two.”

“We could bake cookies that afternoon. A-and then bring them with for a snack on our hike the next day.”

C.J. smiled. “Sounds like we've got plans, then. And now if your dad does ask if you want to come over for Christmas, you can say, 'No, I already have plans.'”

Flick smiled back and said, “Yeah.”

The last few weeks of the semester dragged on, at least for three out of four classes. Flick stopped going to sociology, since he couldn't see the point of it—since there was no attendance taken, nobody would miss him, he could submit his last paper electronically, and he didn't think it would matter if he potentially missed a pop quiz so long as he went in for the final exam on the last day. He was going to stop going to Freshman Composition, too (he had already written the final paper and was just waiting for the opportunity to turn it in) until C.J. reminded him that they did take attendance there and if he stopped showing up for the last three weeks, they might think that he had dropped out. So he made a token appearance once or twice a week. Even his art history class was boring now. They were covering medieval art, easily Flick's least favorite time period; after the evocative and exacting realism of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, the flat, distorted goofiness of medieval Christian iconography seemed like a massive step backwards in artistic evolution.

But his ceramics class was finishing up far too quickly. Flick had overslept on the day he was to register for spring semester classes, and so Ceramics II was full by the time he'd tried to sign up for it. He had gotten into Drawing I, so at least he had one studio art class to look forward to. But drawing was something he had done on his own already for years, drawing was a thing he could do at home. He had been excited about sculpture and he was disappointed now that he wouldn't be able to take any classes on it until the following school year; it seemed like such a counterintuitive way to foster creativity and artistic growth. Besides that, he loved going to the ceramics studio at night. Once or twice a week, he'd see Bob, and Flick found he actually enjoyed having a friend to talk to about art or school or bugs. But once or twice a week, he'd also have the studio to himself, which was equally as nice. He loved C.J. with all his heart, but he was also increasingly missing solitude, which gave him the time and space to let his mind unfurl so that he could think his thoughts more fully and more freely. One reason he was skipping school so much was for the pleasure of having the quiet, empty apartment to himself for a few hours. He wasn't even doing anything particularly exciting—he would read, or draw, or listen to music or do yoga—but it felt necessary to have this time alone. It was a reset button when he was overwhelmed by everything else in his life—school and work and money and bug care and even his relationship with C.J. He couldn't figure out any way to explain this to C.J. without it potentially coming across as hurtful or rude, and he was afraid to even try, since C.J. had apparently already been questioning the stability of their relationship. He also thought it was maybe an inherently hurtful or rude thing, this need to be apart from the person you claim to love, and Flick thought maybe it was just more proof that he was generally unfit for relationships. He didn't want to risk losing C.J., so he kept all this to himself.

A week later, Nat emailed to say that he would be able to take the stick bug nymphs; the natural history museum even already had a terrarium in its storage left over from a previous exhibit, and Nat could help them set it up and write some educational signage to go along with it. He and Flick made plans to meet on the first day of winter break.

When Flick told C.J., C.J. asked, “Do you want me to be here when he comes over?”

“No. Yes. No. I don't know.” Flick sighed. “I mean, I want you here, but I feel like it'll be easier for me to deal with him on my own, like then I'll only need to navigate one relationship dynamic at a time. Does that... sound bad?”

“No, Flick, it's fine,” C.J. said with a gentle laugh. “I'm not offended. Do what's best for you.”

Flick chewed nervously on his lip. “Why does this feel so weird? It shouldn't feel this weird to see my own father.”

“Well, but you haven't seen him at all in, like, more than three months, after having seen him almost every day for your entire life previous, and you haven't really corresponded much, either.”

“But he's my dad. It shouldn't feel this weird. But it feels like, like I'm out of practice.”

“That's because you are,” C.J. said. “You guys have always had a complicated relationship, and it's changing now that you're out on your own. It's totally normal for it to feel different and weird.” C.J. put his hands on Flick's shoulders. “But I do think you're worrying about this maybe more than you need to. How much do you care about his opinion?”

“W-well... I mean...” Flick thought for a second. “He's really smart. Like, crazy-smart. A-and he knows a lot about insects a-and their habitats, and I respect that, you know, e-even if our exact appreciation of insects is rather different. A-and, you know, he definitely wasn't the greatest dad, b-but I supposed he did his best, more or less, e-even if there were a lot of things I think he should have done differently. A-and it would be nice, at least theoretically, to have a civil and friendly relationship with my father. I mean, we're never going to be close, like you and your dad are close, b-but... I want him to at least like me.”

“He definitely likes you, Flick,” C.J. said.

Flick sighed. “Maybe. But it feels like he likes some fantasy version of what he thinks I'm supposed to be, and not the actual me.”

C.J. smiled sadly, and didn't have a response to that. “When is he coming over?”

“Wednesday the twenty-third at three. He said he has some stuff he needs from his office and he's going to come by after.”

“Are you going to want me to come home after he's gone, or do you think you might want time to yourself to decompress?”

“I don't know.” Flick sighed, and started chewing on his lip again. “I'm sorry, I don't want to kick you out of your own apartment, you don't have to stay away.”

“It's fine. I'm off work at two that day, I'll just go get coffee afterward. You can text me when you know how you're feeling.”

“I'm sorry,” Flick said again. “I don't know what I want yet.”

“Flick, it is truly, truly fine,” C.J. insisted. He cupped his hands around Flick's face and kissed him.

Flick puttered anxiously around the apartment as he waited for Nat, wiping down counters and windows, tidying the piles of clutter on his desk. Around one in the afternoon, he got out his weed and grinder and rolling papers, but then after rolling a skinny joint he put everything away again; he didn't want to risk any smell lingering in the apartment when his father was here, and besides it felt important to be clearheaded, even if that also meant being slightly miserable.

It was exactly three o'clock when Nat rang the bell. Flick met him outside and walked him upstairs, and as soon as Nat entered the apartment, he said, “My, it's even smaller than I was imagining.” Then, glancing at Flick he added, “But you've laid everything out nicely, and getting these bugs out of here will give you a bit more space.”

“Well, here they are,” Flick said, walking over to the mesh habitats on the kitchen island.

Nat smiled at them from across the room. “Where'd you get them anyway? Vietnamese stick bugs tend not to just fall from the sky around here.”

“Um, from a friend of a friend,” Flick said. “He got a little overwhelmed when the eggs started hatching.”

“I'll bet. Phasmids can be a bit troublesome in that regard.” Nat walked up to the habitats now. “Well, but I'm glad to hear that you're making some friends. Sounds like college is working out for you, then.”

“I had friends in high school, too.”

“Friends other than C.J.?” Nat asked with a smirk.

“Yes. I was friends with Cherry.”

“That girl you went on one date with?”

“Three dates. And we were friends before and after that, too.”

“If you say so.” He took a breath. “How did your first semester of classes go?”

Flick exhaled. “Um, all right.” He had passed all his classes, but his GPA was much more middling than he'd been anticipating and Flick was embarrassed, not just by the low grades but also by the fact that he actually cared, that he hadn't realized how much of his own sense of self-worth hinged on his school performance. He hadn't told anyone about his grades, not even C.J., and certainly wasn't about to tell his dad, so he tried to dodge the question. “I really liked my ceramics class. I-I like working with clay, and I made some stuff I was really proud of. But the rest of my classes were a little boring, especially the big lecture hall classes.”

Nat nodded. “Speaking from the other side of the podium, those big introductory classes are the worst to teach, too. But that's what is most efficient for the university. Just be patient, upper level classes will be a bit more satisfying.”

Flick just shrugged.

Nat gestured to the stick bugs. “What all have you been feeding them?”

“I managed to get a potted privet from that hippie garden center out east before it closed for the season. Some of them will eat lettuce. But mostly they eat organic roses from Trader Joe's.”

“Organic roses!” Nat laughed. “Lucky bugs.”

Flick scowled. “Well, there's not much else available this time of year.”

“Of course not. I've heard some people collect acorns in the fall to sprout throughout the winter as a food source. The acorns need some kind of cold stratification to grow, I've never done it myself, I don't know the details exactly. But that might be an option if you find yourself in this situation in the future.”

Flick nodded.

Nat kept talking. “Organic roses,” he mused. “That's got to be the most expensive possible food source.”

Flick crossed his arms. “That's all some of them will eat. What am I supposed to do, starve them?”

“No, I suppose not.” Nat smiled as he leaned over to watch the stick bugs eating their roses. “If you ever have children, Flick, you're going to spoil them rotten. But you'll probably just have bugs, eh?”

Flick didn't know how to respond to that, so he didn't.

“I'll let Blathers know what they've been eating,” he said as he stood up. “I imagine the museum has a better budget than you do for weekly organic roses. We can probably find some folks from warmer climates to ship in oak or brambles, too.” He thought for a moment. “Do you remember Blathers? He and I worked together at the Toronto Museum of Natural History.”

Flick shook his head.

“His partner actually owns that coffee place down the street from your apartment, Blathers took on the job in New Sylvania to be closer to him. But back in Toronto, he was putting together an archaeology exhibit for the museum there, and I was restoring and expanding their pinned insect collection. We saw each other rather a lot that year. I invited him and his partner over for dinner a few times. I remember once he had just found some old arrowheads in the museum's collection that he had determined were inauthentic—just modern replicas—so he pulled them from the collection and gave them to you. Do... do you not remember this at all?”

Flick shook his head again, and when his dad kept looking at him he said, “No. Why? What does it matter?”

Nat paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, then said, “That was... Well, let me first say that Blathers is a brilliant man and a good friend of mine. We studied together at Cambridge, too, so we've known each other for quite a while. But more to the point, that was, ah, around the time I started having some inkling as to your...” He made a vague gesture with his hands. “Your orientation. And I wanted to invite Blathers and his partner over as a way to demonstrate to you that... that when you were ready to tell me, that I would be supportive.”

Flick stared at him for a second, then laughed dryly. “Dad, I was ten.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I didn't even have any inkling as to my orientation at the time. What on earth did you think you were seeing?”

Nat looked slightly embarrassed, then admitted, “I suppose I was making assumptions based on stereotypes.”

“Well, I mean, you weren't wrong, obviously. I guess I appreciate it in retrospect.” Flick thought for a second. “But if you were trying to be supportive, then why did you kick up such a big fuss whenever I asked for nail polish or some shirt from the girl's department or something?”

“Because I also didn't want you to get teased more than you already were. And I still bought you the nail varnish and the shirts, didn't I?”

Flick shrugged, and they fell silent for a moment.

Nat glanced around the apartment. “What's over here?” he asked, walking up to the terrarium on the floor.

“Just more stick bugs. Bob's roommate wanted to get rid of the adults, too. I'm keeping those. A-and a few of the nymphs.”

Nat knelt on the floor with a small groan, and Flick sat down next to him. Nat said, “You really did a great job building this terrarium. It still looks fantastic even after all these years. You've made a nice set-up for the stick bugs in here, too.”

“Th-thanks.”

“I'd almost be tempted to bring you in to help build out the insectarium at the museum, but I suppose they'll have their own team, and you're busy with schooling anyway. But you have a real talent for this, and it'd be a nice way for you to combine art and science. Might be worth considering as a career path going forward. You'd need to take some zoology courses, I could advise you on that.”

“I, uh, I dunno...”

“Just something to think about.” He paused. “And in the meantime, if you're ever interested in the more exotic phasmids, let me know, I could get something shipped in for you, I have all the permits. Have you ever seen Achrioptera punctipes?”

“Only in pictures.”

“They're gorgeous. Truly gorgeous. A bit fussier to care for than your Ramulus artemis here, but I'm sure you could manage.” They watched the stick bugs for a moment, then Nat asked, “Are your adults still producing eggs? What's your plan for when the nymphs start laying eggs?”

“They were laying a lot when I first got them back in October, but egg production has dropped off significantly the past few weeks. They're getting old. B-but I've been freezing the eggs.”

Nat laughed. “Tender-hearted Flick destroying phasmid eggs! Never thought I'd see that day.”

Flick furrowed his brow. Why did his dad have to laugh at him just when it felt like they were almost starting to bond? He snapped, “It's not like there's any sentience at that stage of development. And it's a much kinder option than hatching out eggs I can't care for.”

“Oh, of course. I'm just teasing.”

“Well, stop. I don't like it.”

Flick was scowling at the ground, and out of the corner of his eye, he watched as his dad's expression went from startled to angry and then settled into a stony stoicism. “Right,” Nat muttered, and pushed himself up off the floor. “I suppose I'll head out then and let you get on with your day.”

Flick closed his eyes for a few seconds and took a breath, then stood up, too, and walked back to the kitchen island. “You should warm up your car first,” he said.

“They'll be fine, it's not that cold,” Nat said dismissively.

“They are tropical insects and it is literally below freezing outside.”

“The car was just running fifteen minutes ago, it couldn't have cooled off that much.”

“But you told me you were coming from your office. I doubt the interior of the car warmed up that much in the first place during the five block drive from there to here.”

They stared each other down for a moment, and then Nat conceded in a patronizing tone of voice, “Fine. I will warm up the car.” He started for the front door.

Flick sighed and said, “I-I won't make you climb all those stairs again, though. I'll bring them down in just a minute.”

“Fine,” Nat said again, and headed downstairs.

After Nat left, Flick closed his eyes again and took a few deep breaths. Then he put on his boots, grabbed a blanket, and carried the two mesh pop-up habitats downstairs. He stood at the front door of his apartment building for a moment, and looked out the window at his dad parked on the street, sitting in his car with a frustrated expression on his face. Flick looked down at his stick insects. “I'm so sorry, babies,” he murmured. “This really is the best I can do.” He opened the door, wrapped the blanket around both habitats, and stepped outside.

Flick walked around to the passenger side of his dad's car and gently tapped the door with his foot, raising the habitats above the window to show that both his hands were full. Nat leaned over and unlatched the door, and Flick pushed it open with his foot. He nestled the habitats into the passenger seat and reached over to buckle them in. “You're going to park in the garage and bring them straight into the house when you get home, right?” he said to Nat.

“Of course.”

“A-and when you bring them the New Sylvania, you need to wrap a blanket around the habitats for the walk from the car to the building. A good wool blanket that'll actually block the wind, not some cheap fleece thing.”

“Flick, I know what I'm doing,” Nat said.

“I-I know,” Flick answered. He hadn't put a jacket on himself, and he started to shiver now, but he still held the blanket over the habitats to block the chill from the open door.

Nat said, “I'll send some photos from the museum once we have the habitat set up and everyone installed. All right?”

Flick nodded. “Th-thank you for taking them.”

Nat nodded back. Then Flick pulled the blanket away, gently closed the car door, and walked back up to the sidewalk. Nat raised a hand to wave goodbye and Flick waved back, and then Nat drove off.

Flick stepped back into his apartment building and sat down on the bottom of the steps. He was still shivering, so he wrapped the blanket around his shoulders now. He closed his eyes to decompress from that short visit from his dad. It would have been so much easier to process if his dad's behavior had been either all good or all bad, but this mix of kindness and meanness felt so inscrutable. One thing was clear, though: three months apart made it all the more obvious how much he hated his dad's criticism and teasing. No wonder he was having communication issues with C.J., if this was what he had been used to. But despite any hiccups there might be in his relationship with C.J., CJ. never spoke to him like this, C.J. never made him feel like this. He took out his phone and texted C.J., he just left, plz come home.

The message was immediately marked as read, and a second later C.J. responded, On my way. Then C.J. texted, I'm at Brewster's, do you want me to bring you home a little treat?

Flick smiled and texted back, no, just you.

Flick sat on the steps and looked out the front door of the building as he waited for C.J. His dad had never asked about his ceramics class, even though Flick had specifically made a point of talking about it and had boxes of bug related artwork that he might have liked to have shown him. And he had also not said anything about Christmas, which was only two days away. Flick didn't even want to celebrate Christmas with him, but he still felt a little sad: did his dad not actually want to see him at Christmas?

Minutes later, C.J.'s truck pulled into the parking spot that Nat had just vacated. Flick stood up and watched C.J. walk up the front steps, and when he reached the porch, Flick stepped outside to meet him. C.J.'s face lit up as soon as he saw Flick. “Hey,” C.J. said with a smile. Flick didn't say anything, just opened up his arms for a hug, enveloping the both of them in the blanket. “Aww,” C.J. said, wrapping his arms around Flick's chest under the blanket and pulling him in tight. They stood out there in the cold holding each other for several minutes, and Flick thought, Please, C.J., never leave me.

For years when Flick was little, he told himself that the reason they never did much for Christmas was because it was just him and his dad; his mother had always been the one to plan holidays and outings and celebrations, and after she died none of that really seemed worth it. Christmas, he thought, was a thing for families—real families, with two parents and multiple children. But he had to reconsider that viewpoint after they moved to Leafville, because C.J. and his dad always went all-out for Christmas. They got a big tree that they put up by their living room window facing the street, strung colored lights along their front porch and set up glowing plastic reindeer decorations in their yard; C.J. spoke of things like Christmas cards and Advent calendars and watching It's a Wonderful Life on TV.

So this Christmas eve, Flick didn't really feel like he was missing out on much, but he felt a little sorry for C.J. to be stuck here with him. C.J., for his part, was not complaining, though. When they were baking cookies, Flick showed him the cookie cutters he had bought—a generic fish and a butterfly (the only insect cookie cutter he could find) and C.J. had mentioned at least three times how adorable that was, and then insisted on taking photos of the finished cookies to post to his social media. And he'd let C.J. play Christmas music while they were baking and decorating the cookies, even though Flick had to admit that he didn't know any of these songs (C.J. conceded that the music was objectively not that great, it was just traditional).

And now they were laying on the couch together, snacking on fresh gingerbread cookies, both of them scrolling on their phones. Flick rested his feet on C.J.'s lap; C.J. held his phone in one hand and rested the other hand on Flick's leg, his fingers idly rubbing Flick's thigh. It had been a quiet, peaceful night, perhaps not the big holiday celebration that C.J. was used to, but they both seemed comfortable and content, and as they laid there snuggled on the couch, at the back of his mind Flick thought about what else he could do later on to make tonight special for C.J.

Then a notification popped up on his phone, and when he clicked into it, he sat up and said, “Holy shit.”

“What?” C.J. asked.

“My dad just Venmoed me a hundred thousand bells.”

“Holy shit,” C.J. said, and turned off his phone and sat up to face Flick. “Why?”

“He wrote, 'Happy Christmas to you, C.J. and the stick bugs.'”

C.J. smiled and put his fingers to his lips. Then he said, “Okay. That's a little cute.”

Flick sighed. “A little,” he admitted. “But that's a lot of money.”

“How much does he normally spend on gifts for you?”

“Not that much. Not even half that.”

“Well, but you've got to divide it three ways—you, me and the bugs.”

Flick snorted. “Thirty-three thou just for the bugs?”

“You know you'd spend that much if we had it available.”

“Quiet, you,” Flick said, and poked him. “Seriously, though. Should, should I accept it?”

“I can't answer that for you.”

Flick looked at his phone again, as if it would give him more information. But there was just the money transfer notification and those nine words from Nat. Flick had already talked to C.J. about the visit from his father yesterday—he had spent more time talking about it that the actual visit had taken—and he wanted to be done thinking about this for a while, and he resented this intrusion into what had otherwise been a calm night. “Is this just, like, a Christmas thing? Because that's way too generous. Or is it some underhanded comment on our finances and, like, what a failure I am? I made a specific point not to say anything about money, but maybe he was making some assumptions based on the size of the apartment or the fact that I've been buying roses for the stick bugs or something. Or is it supposed to be an apology for being a little bit of an ass yesterday? Because I'd rather that he actually acknowledge it and say 'sorry' in words. God, I hate this. Is this how you feel when I can't talk about my feelings?”

C.J. smiled and said, “No comment.” But then he added, “Actually, no. It's not the same at all. You don't have a passive aggressive bone in your body. I get angsty over nothing sometimes, but I'm pretty confident that I can take what you say and do at face value.”

Flick relaxed incrementally, and looked at his phone again. “I mean, we could use the money...”

“Sure, we could,” C.J. admitted. “But we can get by without it, too. Don't feel obligated to accept it if it feels weird.”

“He could just mean what he says. It could just be a Christmas thing.”

“It could be. You'd know more than I would.”

Flick thought for a moment, then smiled. “We could accept it and then blow it all on something indulgent. Like a trip somewhere. Or—how much would it cost to put a camper on the truck?”

“More than that, unfortunately, even for a crappy used one.”

“Aww.”

Then C.J. smiled and said, “You could quit your job at the library.”

“What?” Flick laughed. “No...”

“Why not? How much do you make in a month there anyway?”

“About sixty thousand bells, assuming I make it in for every shift.”

“So this is, like, a month and a half's pay for you. The money from your dad would help supplement whatever I'm making on ice fishing charters for the rest of the winter. Spring and summer I'll be making more than enough to support the both of us. We wouldn't have to worry about money again until fall.”

“Yeah, but then what?”

“We'll figure it out then.”

Flick laughed softly again. “No, C.J., I'm supposed to be the impractical one here.”

“Okay,” C.J. said. “Practically speaking then. Quitting your job would let you focus on school and art right now, and in the summer when school is out you could look for a different job, if that's what you want. Or maybe my streaming revenue will pick up and you won't have to. And if nothing else, next year I can be more proactive about looking for a winter job and see if I can get hired as, like a UPS delivery driver or something over the holiday season. We have options.”

Flick contemplated it as he fiddled with his phone case, and finally he said, “No. I don't like that the only financial contribution I'd be making would be money from my dad.”

“I get that. But you'd also have the income from plasma and modeling, too.”

“But that's so little compared to what you make.”

“It's groceries, isn't it? And maybe bug food, too.”

“At least I don't have so many bugs to feed, now,” Flick muttered.

“Anyway, I really don't like that you're thinking about it that way, though. Things don't have to be completely equal to be fair. Your happiness is important, too.”

Flick frowned. “Shelving books at the library is not a bad gig.”

“Maybe not. But you gotta agree that there are better ways for you to be spending your time.”

Flick picked at his cuticles as he thought and after a minute, he said, “C.J., should we have a joint bank account?”

C.J. looked slightly startled. “W-well, I mean... I guess I figured we would eventually but, uh...” He paused for a second, then said, “But ya know what? Sure. Why not? Would that help you stop thinking about it in terms of my money versus your money?”

But Flick sighed and said, “No. Because the plasma place puts the payment on a prepaid debit card, so that money wouldn't go into any account. And as for modeling, I get paid in cash, so unless I make a trip to the bank—which I know I wouldn't—that money wouldn't go into any account either. So if I do wind up leaving the library, all the money in our account would have been earned by you, even if both our names are on it.”

“So you're thinking about it? Quitting the library?”

“I shouldn't quit,” Flick said. “But I suppose the money from my dad would be nice to have in case I get fired. I can try to assume he did in fact just mean it as a Christmas thing, so I can stop thinking about it.” After a pause, he added, “Your dad just bought us an air fryer. I like that better.”

C.J. smiled. “It is a bit less emotionally complicated.” Then he said, “Hey, should we get a joint account anyway? It sounds kinda cute, now that you mention it.”

Flick considered it. A joint bank account would be a thing to bind them together, but also a thing to untangle if they were to separate. “Maybe later,” Flick said.

Flick did a good job making it into work over winter break—his work week being truncated by holiday closures helped a lot—but once classes started up again in January, he started missing shifts again, and one day, after he had hung up his jacket and hat, his supervisor said to him, “Flick? Before you get started, can you step into my office for a minute?”

“S-sure,” Flick said, knowing exactly what was coming.

As he walked into her office, she said, “Close the door, have a seat.” Flick did as he was told and waited anxiously. His supervisor smiled at him. “How are you doing, Flick?”

“Um. A-all right, I guess.”

She nodded, waited a moment as if expecting him to elaborate, then said, “Well, it's just that we've noticed you called in sick to work last Wednesday, and on Monday the week before. You missed a lot of work over the fall, too. And I'm just concerned. Is there something going on that I should be aware of?”

Flick felt himself starting to blush. “N-no. I'm sorry. I-I'm just busy with school, a-and I'm, um...” He didn't want to say 'stressed,' he didn't want to say 'overwhelmed,' he didn't even want to say 'tired.' But he didn't know what to say to this near-stranger who held authority over him; after he'd been hired and trained in, they'd rarely spoken at all beyond saying hello and exchanging the occasional pleasantry about the weather. “I'm sorry,” he said again, forcing himself to look up and make eye contact.

She smiled at him gently, and said, “What can we do to help? Do you need an adjustment to your schedule? Maybe you could work one long shift on Saturdays, that would get half your weekly hours out of the way in one day. Or maybe one of the branch libraries would be a better location for you?”

“No, no,” Flick said, picking at his fingernails. “My schedule is fine, a-and I just live over on Tulip Street, this is the closest library for me. I-I just need to buckle down more, I guess.” He stopped himself from saying 'I'm sorry' again. When he glanced up at his supervisor, her expression had changed slightly to something akin to concern, and Flick felt embarrassed and uncomfortably vulnerable.

After a pause, his supervisor said, “We'd really like to be able to keep you on as a shelver, so if there's any accommodations you would need to help you make it in for more of your shifts, please don't hesitate to let me know. Okay, Flick?”

Flick could only nod.

She waited another few seconds, then said with a sigh, “All right, then. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. You can go ahead and get to work.”

Flick nodded again and let himself out of her office. He grabbed a cart and squeezed it to keep his hands from shaking. His heart was pounding and he was sure his face was red, but he turned to face the returns shelf and tried to ignore the front desk staff who had glanced at him when he left the head librarian's office. (He thought about how his supervisor had kept saying 'we'—did that mean they had all been talking about him?) He took a moment to breathe and to blink fast to keep from crying. (Why did he suddenly want to cry? He wasn't even particularly sad, just overwhelmed.) Then he started methodically loading books onto his cart, sorting them to the Dewey Decimal System.

He purposefully started with adult non-fiction because it was always the least populated part of the library, and as he pushed his cart down the empty stacks, reshelving the books, he thought about that look of concern on his supervisor's face and the sideways glances from the other library staff, and he hated himself. He hated that he was struggling with a fifteen hour a week, low-stakes job, he hated that he had become an object of pity among his coworkers, and as the minutes ticked by, he thought that whatever they were assuming about him was probably right, maybe he was a pitiful failure. Pitiful and hopeless and worthless.

When he came to the end of the aisle, he pushed his cart around the corner to the next aisle, and when he saw that someone was there browsing, he was about to keep moving to the next aisle and come back later, but then the person looked up at him and he realized it was Bob. Bob smiled at him and said, “Ha ha, whoa, worlds colliding.”

Flick forced a small smile, and pushed his cart into the aisle.

“You work at the library? That sounds awesome. How is it?”

Flick shrugged. “It's all right,” he mumbled, hoping he didn't looked as fucked up as he felt right now. Then he added, “I got a talking-to today for missing some shifts, though.”

“Aww, that sucks, dude,” Bob said. He walked up to where Flick was and leaned back on the shelf across the aisle from him.

Flick gestured to the books in Bob's hands. “What are you getting?”

Bob shuffled through the books—a haiku collection, a history of Chinese pottery, a copy of the Dao De Jing. “Just stuff,” he said.

“Isn't haiku Japanese? The other two books are about Chinese things,” Flick said.

“I'm just kinda grabbing what jumps out at me today.”

Flick nodded, and they stood there next to each other in the aisle for a moment, Flick with his eyes to the ground. He didn't particularly want to talk to Bob right now, but he also didn't want Bob to leave, and that, he realized, was another thing he hated about himself: he never knew what he wanted.

After a moment, Bob said, “I haven't seen you around the studio in a while.”

Flick shrugged. “W-well, there was winter break, and then I didn't get into Ceramics II this semester, so...” he shrugged again.

“So what?” Bob asked. “You should come anyway.”

“But I'm not in any ceramics classes right now.”

“Neither am I,” Bob said.

“Yeah, but I'm not you.” Flick glanced up at him, and Bob held his eye contact for a second, then turned his attention to something down the aisle. Flick heard footsteps approaching, and he sighed.

“Excuse me, miss?” a library patron said as they walked up behind Flick. When Flick turned to face them, they stammered, “Er, ah...”

“How can I help you,” Flick deadpanned.

“I, um, I was having some trouble with the microfiche, and...”

Flick cut them off. “I'm afraid I'm not trained in on the microfiche. But the folks at the reference desk can help you. It's around the corner and to the right.”

“Thank you.” They smiled awkwardly and walked away.

Once they had left the aisle, Bob smirked and said to Flick, “Miss.”

“Whatever,” Flick muttered. “Like I give a shit.”

Bob shrugged, and said, “People are dumb.”

“As a general rule, yes they are. But I truly do not give a shit about this.”

“Well, ya make it look cute,” Bob said, and Flick snorted. After a minute, Bob said, “Seriously, though. You should come back to the ceramics studio. Wednesdays are lonely without you.”

Flick crossed his arms in front of him and frowned. Then he admitted, “I do miss it.”

“So come back. Who's going to care? Besides, I've seen you work, Flick. You spend, like, three weeks making one piece. Nobody's even going to notice. I can fire your stuff with mine.” When Flick hesitated, Bob said, “Come on, come steal art supplies with me. I miss hanging out with you.”

Finally, Flick said, “Y-yeah, maybe. I did have a few ideas I wanted to explore.”

“Right on,” Bob said with a smile. “I can't wait to see what you're gonna make, your clay work is so kick-ass. Come by next Wednesday, I'll split a blunt with you, my treat.”

“Sure,” Flick said. “Sounds good.”

“What else are you into? I could probably get some 'shrooms or peyote, too, if you want. Or maybe something like ketamine or ecstasy?”

“Uh, I dunno...” Flick said.

“Think it over, man, I'll see what I can scrounge up. I'll see ya Wednesday night, then. It's a date, dude.”

“Yeah, I'll see ya,” Flick said, but as Bob walked away he thought, Wait... he didn't mean it that way, did he? It's just a colloquial way of saying we have plans, right? He also realized that now he'd have to tell C.J. about going to the ceramics studio again; C.J. had always been a little weird about Bob, and considering the conversation they'd just had, Flick worried that maybe he'd been right to be suspicious. But he also thought there was no reason he had to tell C.J. that Bob had called him cute or said that he'd missed him, because Bob probably didn't even mean it in a flirty way... right? Flick felt like he knew Bob well enough at this point to trust that he wouldn't actually say or do anything too inappropriate, and if by some chance he did, Flick could simply turn him down or leave, although it would be a shame to lose that friendship. Flick did legitimately have some clay projects in mind that he'd never gotten around to last semester, and he did also miss Bob's company, and if he was being fully honest with himself, it also felt good that an artist as talented as Bob liked his work, too. He went back to shelving library books, and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to go back to the ceramics studio at night. What was the worst that could happen?

Chapter Text

One of the things C.J. liked best about streaming was that it gave him the chance to talk for two hours about the intricacies of fish bait with people who were actually interested—not even his dad was as into this stuff as he was. Today he was sitting at his desk showing off some new rubber frog lures he just got. “Okay, you guys are all going to think I'm a huge dork,” he said with a self-conscious laugh. “But when we signed the lease on this apartment, I was, like, super stoked that it had a bathtub. I don't even like to take baths, I take showers, but, but, heh, what I like to do when I get a new lure is I'll start the tub filling up, and I'll leave the water running, like, kinda medium-low, and I'll take my fishing pole and...” He laughed again. “So obviously there's not room to properly cast, but, like, I'll let the line dangle in the tub, and, ya know, the running water kinda simulates a stream current, and so I get to see how the lure acts in the water. These frogs here are nice because the way the legs are designed, they have these kinda ridges along the edge here...” He held it up to the camera. “So, ya know, so long as there's a good water current the legs kind of wiggle on their own. But a lot of the time with artificial bait like this, you gotta put in some extra effort to make it work. You gotta learn how to jiggle the line to make it move like it's the real thing, so that you can trick the fish into thinking it's the real thing, too. So the nice thing about practicing in the tub is that, like, it removes a lot of the trial and error aspect of it when I'm out in the field. Like I can see how the lure reacts when I move the pole this way or that way, so I can really perfect my techniques before I try it out with some actual fish.” He looked at the chat. “Moarfish and ofcoursehorsemackeral are both hyping up live bait, and CeePlusBass says I should try fishing with real frogs instead.”

He set down the rubber frog. “Okay, here's the thing. I actually prefer not to use a lot of live bait in my personal fishing. Like, the charters are different, that's a business, we gotta cater to the clients and we gotta do what we can to provide the opportunity for rewarding and successful fishing trip for everyone. And you guys are absolutely right, fish do usually respond faster and more consistently to live bait, ya know, for obvious reasons—if they see a minnow swimmin' around, they know that's a thing they can eat. But artificial bait has its advantages, too. One is that it's a hell of a lot more convenient. Like, I got my tackle box loaded up with all my favorite lures, and so whenever I get the urge to go fishing, I can just grab my gear and go. I don't have to make an extra stop to buy bait or go collect it myself, I don't have to keep it alive during the fishing trip, and I don't have to dispose of what's left at the end of the day. You can reuse artificial bait again and again, so theoretically it could be cheaper. Unless you're me, 'cuz I'm, like, a sucker for these things because they are so freaking cool, so I buy, like, way too many lures.” He laughed again. “But also, ya know, that's kind of another advantage. Like, I've shown you guys the trout flies my dad makes, they're freaking beautiful, they're works of art. And, ya know, the fun of fishing isn't just getting a big catch, it's everything that goes along with it. It's spending time outside and experiencing nature and, ya know, it's also collecting and playing with and admiring the craftsmanship of all the different lures out there. Another thing is that, ya know, I don't want to brag or anything... okay, I'm bragging a little bit. But live bait makes it too easy. Like, I've been doing this a long time, you guys. I've been fishing since I could stand and hold a pole. My dad has this picture from when I was, like, two years old, holding up this itty bitty bluegill I caught with my Snoopy fishing pole.” He laughed. “Like, I'm just saying, I know what I'm doing. If I used live bait, I'd hit my daily limit way too fast and then the fishing trip would be over, and what's the fun in that? Using artificial bait makes it more of a challenge, so that I have to think more about, ya know, finding the fish and attracting the fish. I have to think more about what kind of fish I'm going for and what they might want. And I know it sounds weird to say about a little piece of plastic.” He waggled the rubber frog at the camera again. “But I feel like using artificial bait helps me connect to nature more.”

He took a breath. “B-but also, one of the more important reasons for me, as to why I mostly use artificial bait, is that live bait, a lot of the time, means bugs. Like worms or crickets or maggots or roaches or whatever. A-and, ya know, Flick is really into bugs. Like, really really into them, on a deep, spiritual level. And, um, ya know how when people are complaining about having a bad day fishing, they'll joke that they're just drowning worms? That kind of stuff is, like, really upsetting for him. He hates—like really hates—the idea of sacrificing insects, e-especially when you might not even catch a fish out of it, like, just killing the insect for nothing. And even though I don't, like, share that same depth of feeling about bugs myself, I still want to respect that. So, ya know, I personally don't need to use live bait for a successful or fun fishing trip. So I just don't.”

He felt a little nervous talking about Flick like this—maybe this was too many personal details—but also he wanted to find a way to mention that the reason he wanted to respect Flick's feelings so much was because he loved him, because they were partners building a life together and sharing their passions with each other. He looked over the chat. In the time he'd been talking, a few people shared their experiences with their favorite artificial baits, and C.J. was about to respond to that, when the username CeePlusBass wrote, Flick sounds like a fuckin' pansy. C.J. squeezed his hands into fists. “Yeah, so what if he is?” he said to the camera, anger creeping into his voice now. “Pansies are badass. Do you have any idea how much inner strength it takes to be that tender and compassionate and to care so deeply about living things? Like, the world would be a better place if there were more people like Flick in it.” CeePlusBass wrote, You sound like a fuckin' pansy, too. C.J. fumed. “Okay, this is my little kingdom here, and I'm not going to tolerate bullies. CeePlusBass, you are blocked and banned.” C.J. went through the necessary steps, feeling a little sick. He had never banned anyone before, and as soon as the words had left his mouth, he thought maybe he shouldn't have said them, that he should have just laughed it off or ignored it. And maybe he would have if the comments had only been about him, but any even tangential threat to Flick fired him up into righteous indignation. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face for a second as he realized that perhaps that was another reason he was so hesitant to come out on stream—he didn't want to risk Flick being insulted or ridiculed or worse. He pulled his hands away from his face and forced a small smile for the camera. “Okay, then, moving on. Lemme scroll back up through the chat for a bit. Um, carp_pool mentioned using spinners for walleye, and yeah, that's a great example of...”

C.J. told Flick about the stream that night when he got home from work. “I was streaming this morning. It was while you were in class, I don't think you saw, a-and I didn't see your name in the chat. But I had to block and ban someone.”

“Aww. What happened?”

“I was talking about you a little bit and someone called you a pansy.”

Flick was clearly holding back a smile. “Well, I mean, I kinda am.”

“I didn't like their tone.”

“Isn't the chat all text? How can it have a tone?”

C.J. sighed. “They just didn't mean it in a nice way.”

“All right,” Flick said. “What had you been saying about me?”

“I was talking about how I don't use a lot of live bait, specifically bugs, and about how much you care about bugs.”

Flick raised his eyebrows. “That makes me a pansy?”

C.J. shrugged. “I think having feelings is supposed to be unmanly or something.”

“Gender roles are weird.”

“They are. The same guy called me a pansy, too, for sticking up for you.” C.J. paused. “I've never had to ban anyone before.”

“Was it a big deal in the chat?”

“Nah. After it was over and done, we just went back to talking about lures and bait and stuff and nobody mentioned it again. I haven't checked the Discord yet, though, to see if anyone's talking about it there. I'm kind of afraid to.”

Flick said, “Well, but it sounds like you made the right decision, kicking out someone who was making you feel uncomfortable.”

“Maybe. But I worry people are going to think I overreacted. Like maybe I shoulda just done some kind of temporary block or something.”

“It's just one guy.”

“Yeah, but there were eight other people in the chat this morning. And if they're talking about it on Discord or whatever, my other followers are going to hear about it, too. A-and if I get the reputation of being oversensitive or a tyrant or whatever, that's going to affect future engagement. And if this dude really wants to harass me, all he has to do is create another username. And what if banning him makes him mad enough to do that?”

“Cross that bridge when you come to it,” Flick said. He rubbed C.J.'s back. “Maybe just check Discord so you can stop worrying about it?”

C.J. sighed, but he took out his phone and set it on the kitchen island. Flick leaned into him and put his arms around his shoulders. In Discord, there was a thread titled, CHAT DRAMA! with today's date, and C.J. groaned. When he opened it, it read, What do you all think about the incident with CeePlusBass today? Another person responded, I think C.J. made the right call. CeePlusBass was off-topic and unnecessarily mean. Someone else asked what had happened, and another person recounted the incident. Someone wrote, permaban seems harsh tho, and another person responded, Maybe don't be a dick and you won't get banned? A few more supportive replies followed.

Flick had been reading over his shoulder, and said, “Everything looks okay to me.”

“Maybe,” C.J. said. He quickly scanned the rest of his social media accounts while Flick wrapped his arms around C.J.'s chest and kissed the back of his neck, then clicked back over to Discord and wrote a reply on the thread. Thanks for the kind words everyone. I want my stream to be welcoming to everyone except for assholes. He turned off his phone and flipped it over on the counter.

Flick turned C.J.'s face toward him to kiss his lips, then walked over to open up the fridge. “Oh, you went grocery shopping today, too.”

“I wanted to get out of the house for a while after that.”

“You bought a lot of veggies. Wanna do stir fry for dinner?”

“Sounds good.”

Flick piled broccoli, peppers, carrots and tofu on the counter. “Can you start the rice?”

“Sure.”

Flick pushed the vegetables toward C.J. for him to rinse at the sink while he cubed the tofu. Then he said, “So am I your boyfriend yet, or just some pansy that you live with?”

C.J. sighed. “Flick, this isn't easy for me, and some anonymous asshole calling you names isn't helping.”

But when he looked over, Flick looked slightly deflated. “I know, I'm sorry. I meant it as sort of a joke.”

“That's all right,” C.J. said. “C'mere.” He pulled Flick into a tight hug. “Mmm, you feel good to hold.” Flick hummed happily and kissed him. “Hey, tell me about your day.”

Flick frowned. “It was also kinda crappy. My supervisor at the library pulled me into her office before work to talk about my absences.”

“Ouch. You've been dreading that for a while.”

“I'm surprised it took so long.”

“Did you get reprimanded in any way?”

“No. But that might have been easier to deal with. Instead she was just, like, concerned for my well being.”

“Sounds awkward.”

“It was humiliating.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, she was offering, like, schedule changes and stuff. But none of that would make any difference. I think I'm just hopelessly fucked up. I just need to try harder to make it in for my shifts.”

“You're not hopeless and you're not fucked up. Don't push yourself into a breakdown, either. I'd rather have a happy, unemployed Flick than a sad, overworked Flick.”

“Hmm.” Flick made a face.

“Did anything else happen today? Anything good?”

Flick thought for a second. “In my American Lit class next Monday, we're starting 'Walden.' I've already read that once for high school and twice on my own.”

“And I suppose you'll reread it again now?” C.J. asked with a smile.

“Yeah, probably.” Flick smiled back.

“Well, I'm glad you have something to look forward to, then.”

“Mm-hm.”

They went back to dinner prep, and after a few minutes, C.J. said hesitantly, “Hey, uh, Flick? Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Am... am I the reason you eat fish when you don't eat any other meat?”

Flick bit his lip. “Y-yeah?”

“You don't have to, I won't be mad.”

“No, I know...”

“I don't want you to do something that doesn't feel right to you.”

“Well... here's the thing...” Flick set down the knife and leaned against the counter to face C.J. “Fishing is really important to you, and you're really important to me. If, if I'm going to decide that eating fish is immoral, then I'm probably also not going to want a partner who goes fishing, and... and so I don't want to decide that. A-as far as fishing goes, I feel like you do it as respectfully as someone can. Like, you're out there for the whole experience, not just to get the biggest fish or the most fish or whatever. And, like, you challenge yourself to make it more fair for the fish. You use what you keep and you're gentle when you release what you don't keep. And anyway, life is imperfect and full of compromises. I'm destroying stick bug eggs every time I clean out the terrarium. When I was raising monarchs, sometimes the caterpillars I brought in had been parasitized by tachinid flies, and I would destroy the fly larvae so they wouldn't spread to the other monarchs. I mean, we're murdering thousands of dust mites every time we wash the sheets. The only fish I eat are the fish that you catch, and statistically speaking that's a pretty small part of my overall diet. And, you know, I also eat eggs and dairy because it's convenient, so I'm already a hypocrite, anyway.”

“No you're not,” C.J. interrupted. “You're doing the best you can.”

“Well, exactly. So I may as well eat fish, too, because it's a thing I can share with you.” C.J. frowned, and Flick said, “Don't give me that face. It's not a thing you should feel guilty about. This is something I decided on my own a long time ago.”

“Like, when?”

“Well...” Flick stopped to think. “I stopped otherwise eating meat when I was fourteen, so I guess then.”

“We weren't even dating yet. What was your motivation?”

“Your friendship, silly,” Flick said with a small laugh. “I don't just love you for your hot bod, you know.”

C.J. smiled. He went back to work peeling a carrot. “But if we broke up, do you think you'd stop eating fish?”

Flick thought about it for a second. “Probably. Unless you're still cooking for me.”

“Yeah, I'd still cook for you.”

As the days went on, nobody brought up Flick or the banning incident on any of C.J.'s social media, and he began to relax about it. Although he also made a point not to mention Flick the next time he streamed, because it just felt safer. Even if Flick didn't seem to care about somebody calling him a pansy, C.J. didn't like it; it brought back too many memories of certain high school classmates calling the both of them fags, or of random strangers even now giving them dirty looks. For all of Flick's generalized anxiety, he had a certain indifference towards other people's opinions that C.J. admired, because C.J., meanwhile, felt like he had an almost pathological need to be liked by everyone.

The following week on Tuesday night, after they had eaten dinner and had done the dishes, they were both sitting at their respective desks, C.J. catching up on social media for the charter and Flick working on homework. When Flick not only finished his tea but got up to make himself a second cup, C.J. knew that something was on his mind. And sure enough, a minute after he sat down with his second cup of tea, Flick turned to C.J. and said, in a tone of voice that was clearly trying to conceal his nervousness. “So... I ran into Bob the other day.”

“Okay.” C.J. looked up from his computer and thought, 'The other day?' So whatever this is about happened days ago and he's only telling me now?

“A-and he invited me to come work in the ceramics studio at night with him on Wednesdays. So that was my plan for tomorrow night. Um. J-just to let you know.”

C.J. paused before responding, because he knew he shouldn't feel as angry as he was. “But you're not even in any ceramics classes right now.”

“Well, yeah, but...” Flick started fidgeting with his fingernails. “I mean, you know how disappointed I was that I didn't get into Ceramics II this semester. A-and there's stuff I wanted to make, th-that I didn't have time to in the fall, and...” He trailed off.

“Won't you get in trouble, since you're not supposed to be there?”

“Bob's been doing this for years without getting into trouble, and he said that he could fire my stuff with his. A-and I think he made a good point, that Pascal probably won't even notice, or care if he does.”

Flick was chewing on his lip now, and C.J. started to feel guilty that he was making him nervous, so he intentionally softened his tone and asked, “What kind of stuff did you want to make?”

“Th-there's a couple ideas I want to explore. I, um, I kinda just have to play around with the clay and see what works.” He paused, then said, “There's a student art show at the university in the spring. It's not like the student art show in high school, where everybody in every art class got a piece in and everything was just set up haphazardly in the hallway. This is, like, a real juried show. You submit a piece and write a statement, a-and then there's a committee with not just professors but local artists from the community, too, who decide what pieces to include. And then the show is at the Gyroidite Art Gallery on campus. It's kind of a big deal. Freshmen don't normally get into it, b-but Pascal said I should submit a piece anyway. I mean, I probably won't get accepted, but I want to try.”

C.J. smiled. “You've got boxes of stuff from last semester. That fish you made me is gorgeous.”

“The tail fin broke.”

“You can hardly tell.”

“I can tell.”

“What about everything else you made?”

“I can do better.”

C.J. sighed, and shrugged. “All right,” he said. “I guess thanks for letting me know.” Flick nodded, and went back to his tea and homework.

Flick stayed out late the following night, and C.J. was already asleep when he heard him come home. He waited for Flick to come to bed, but instead he heard the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets opening and closing and a pan being set on the stove top. He got up out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen. Flick jumped a little when he saw him, then said softly, “I'm sorry, did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet.”

“What are you doing?”

“Making a burrito. Did you have plans for these leftover roasted potatoes?”

C.J. shook his head. Flick emptied the potatoes into a skillet, then opened a can of black beans. C.J. asked, “Why are you making a burrito at two in the morning?”

Flick giggled a little and said, “I smoked way too much weed tonight, I kinda have the munchies.” He added salsa and frozen corn to the pan. “Did you want one?”

“No.” C.J. watched him cook for a moment, then asked, “Did you at least get to work on your art?”

“I did. A little. Yeah.” Flick took tortillas and cheese out of the fridge.

“What are you working on?”

Flick turned the heat down on the stove top and turned to face C.J. “So I want to make a tile with a honey bee figure in relief in the center. So it's going to be a hexagon, obviously, with some kind of sculptural flourishes along the edge, and then in the background behind the bee I want some other images, too, like flowers maybe? But I don't know what kind yet. Like, I think apple blossoms might be nice, but then also I want to do something vining, like sweet peas maybe, because I, like, really really want to carve in those little twirling tendrils.” He wiggled his fingers. “But maybe that would be too small of a detail to even show up in the finished piece. And anyway, sweet peas are maybe a little too vaginal anyway, a little too Georgia O'Keeffe-ish. And then I was thinking I could do a variety of flowers, but then I don't know if that's going to be too busy for a background image, because I really just want to showcase the bee. So maybe I'll just go with apple blossoms anyway, like, arranged in an asymmetrical, Japanese kind of way?” He gestured with his hands again. “And then when I color it—I don't know if I'm going to glaze it or paint it, I think maybe paint—I want to, like, do it in a way that makes it look old, like something someone dug up from some ancient temple. So I need to figure out how to do that.”

C.J. smiled sleepily and said, “How much of all that did you actually get done?”

Flick giggled self-consciously. “Step one is figuring out the size. Like I want it to be substantial, like epically big.” He held his hands three feet apart. “But also it has to fit in the kiln. A-and also I need to be discreet enough that Pascal doesn't get mad about me stealing clay and stuff. And I can't make it so heavy that it can't hang on the wall. But it still needs to be big enough to include all the details I want to include. So mostly today I was just trying to find the right size.”

Five plus hours just for that? C.J. thought. “I guess you'll be going back every Wednesday?”

“W-well...” Flick started, and turned back to the stove top to stir his food. “Since I'm not enrolled in any ceramics classes, I'm not in the studio any other times. S-so if I only go in once a week, my clay is going to dry out before I get back to it. So I figure I'll try to go in Monday and Friday nights, too. I'll probably get more done when Bob's not there to distract me.” C.J. had been watching Flick talk, and as soon as that last sentence left his mouth, he seemed to realize that he had said something he shouldn't have because his expression changed to something like surprise. But only for a second, then he turned his attention to his food.

C.J. was immediately wide awake. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I-I told you. We smoked way too much weed tonight. L-like, I'll smoke now and then for, like, anxiety purposes, b-but I don't really smoke recreationally all that much. I can't focus on creative work in a serious way, I just feel kinda goofy and dumb. But, um, I-I also tried ketamine tonight. Like, just a tiny bit.” He put a lid on the pan and got out the cheese grater, his back to C.J. “Sorry. I know you're not a big fan of the whole weed thing to begin with, and then...”

Flick went back to nervously fussing over his food, and there was a long pause as C.J. considered what he should say. “I don't even know how you take ketamine.”

“Um. I-I think there are a couple different ways. But the stuff Bob brought was a powder. We, um, we snorted it.”

C.J. rubbed his face with one hand and muttered, “Jesus.”

“Sorry,” Flick said again.

C.J. looked up at the ceiling. “I'm just worried about you, Flick. I mean, doesn't this seem like a thing to worry about?”

“Life's been kinda stressful, ya know?” Flick glanced at him over his shoulder and gave him a sad smile. “Sometimes it's nice to not feel like my head and chest are in a vice.” He stirred his food once more, put the lid back on and turned off the heat. Without looking at C.J., he said, “Bob is a good friend and a great artist, but he's also kind of a bad influence.” He sighed. “It really was a tiny amount, though. Bob gave me half what he normally takes himself. And Bob knows what he's doing. Like, I mean, he's taken all this stuff before himself, b-but also he's, like, actually studied medicine. He knows how to be as safe as possible. He didn't let me leave until the K had worn off, a-and he had me text him when I got here to make sure I got home okay. He'd brought magic mushrooms, too, but that shit stays with you for hours, and Bob said I shouldn't mix too much stuff in one night.”

C.J. took a long breath, feeling an uncomfortable mix of anger and reassurance and worry, and he didn't say anything.

After a minute, Flick looked at the clock on the stove and turned to face C.J. “Wait, you have a charter tomorrow. You need to get up in, like, three hours. C.J., you should be in bed.”

C.J. shrugged. “I suppose.” He moved to leave.

“Wait, before you go...” Flick caught his hand and pulled him in for a kiss. “I love you.”

C.J. gave him a half smile. “Good night, Flick.”

C.J.'s phone alarm went off at five a.m. Flick was asleep next to him, and he rolled over as C.J. turned off the alarm. “Sorry,” C.J. whispered. Flick mumbled something incomprehensible in his sleep. C.J. got dressed and ate breakfast, and before he left he went back to the bedroom. Flick was curled up in a ball, clutching C.J.'s pillow to his chest like a teddy bear now, his bare feet sticking out from the edge of the blanket. C.J. watched him sleep for a minute. Five hours seemed like a long time to spend with a charismatic stoner—especially considering how little artwork he'd gotten done—and C.J. knew from experience that Flick tended to be more tactile and amorous when he smoked weed, and adding something else into the mix, even a so-called tiny amount, seemed to only be inviting disaster, and he hated to think of Flick being so miserable that he was self-medicating more and more. C.J. had been secretly relieved that Flick hadn't gotten into a ceramics class this semester, and he resented now having to worry about Flick being gone all night with Bob again. What had Flick meant by “a bad influence”—just the drug thing (which was bad enough) or some other secret that Flick wasn't telling him? C.J. couldn't help but imagine what might have happened in the ceramics studio last night, and he hated the images in his head. He didn't even want to ask Flick what else had gone on that night, because he knew that no matter what answer Flick gave him, it wouldn't feel like enough, and having more information would just give his imagination the fuel to fill in the gaps as luridly as possible.

But the real-life Flick in front of him looked sweet and beautiful, and C.J. took a moment to remind himself that he had also enthusiastically talked about the art he was planning, and that the time it took for Flick to actually make art was always longer than C.J. would have expected, and that marijuana had been one of Flick's coping mechanisms for awkward social situations for years, and that C.J. didn't actually know what Flick was like on ketamine. And Flick had come home to him, Flick had kissed him, Flick had told him he loved him. C.J. took a breath and thought, Trust. He leaned over and dropped a kiss on Flick's temple.

As he started to walk away, he heard a rustling sound, then Flick's voice sleepily said, “C.J.?”

C.J. turned back. “Hmm?”

Flick's arm reached out for him in the dark, and C.J. sat down on the edge of the bed next to him. Flick pulled him in for a proper kiss and said, “I love you,” with a hint of desperation in his voice.

This time, C.J. said in return, “I love you.” Flick sighed, and rolled over onto his side to go to sleep.

C.J. headed down to the truck, feeling especially resentful of this charter. He knew he should be grateful that the lakes were frozen enough for ice fishing and that his advertising efforts had worked and business was a bit more brisk than in winters past. But today he just wanted to stay home with Flick. Since Flick had stayed up so late last night, he'd likely be skipping his morning class, and C.J. wanted to spend a few hours snuggling in bed, maybe fooling around a bit, then eating lunch together before Flick left for his drawing class in the afternoon. As it was, Flick would likely be gone by the time he came home from his charter and he wouldn't see him until after seven tonight.

As C.J. drove down their street, the open sign clicked on in Brewster's Coffee just as he happened to pass it, and on impulse he pulled over and went in to get a to-go coffee. A little treat sounded nice, and besides, he liked being reminded of all the dates he'd been on with Flick here, even if right now he was alone.

Today's client was enough of a bore and a grump that C.J. felt like he deserved another little treat after the charter, so he stopped by Brewster's again on the way home. When he stepped up to the counter, the barista said to him, “Back again?” He smiled at her hesitantly, and she said, “Sorry, was that weird? You were in early this morning, weren't you?”

C.J. nodded. “You've got quite the memory.”

The barista shrugged. “We don't get a lot of folks coming in at six a.m. on the dot. You were my first customer of the day, and unless somebody else comes by in the next—” she checked her watch “—seven minutes, you'll be my last customer of the day, too.”

C.J. smiled again, more warmly this time. “Large dark roast to go, please.”

“Room for cream?”

“Yes, please”

“That's two hundred bells.”

He ran his card through the machine as she poured his coffee. When she brought it over to him, she said, “So what were you doing at six a.m. this morning? If you don't mind my asking...”

C.J. added sugar and cream to his coffee. “I co-own a fishing charter business. I was guiding an ice fishing expedition this morning.”

The barista smiled broadly. “Oh, fun! My dad used to take me fishing when I was a kid, but I've never been ice fishing.”

C.J. smiled back and leaned his elbows on the counter. “Nice. Did you grow up around here?”

She shook her head. “No, I grew up in Oregon.”

“I've never been, but I've heard there's good salmon fishing in Oregon. Does it even get cold enough to freeze for ice fishing out there?”

“Up in the mountains it does. But we lived closer to the California border. We got a lot of good salmon off the Rogue River. Steelhead and trout, too.”

“That sounds great,” C.J. said, and he meant it fully; it was such an unexpected pleasure to stumble upon another angler. “I've actually heard of the Rogue River. Not too long ago I was just watching some YouTube videos from somebody fishing for spring chinook out there.”

The barista laughed in surprise. “Yeah, the Rogue is the best spot in Oregon for spring chinook. You must really know your fish.”

C.J. smiled and shrugged bashfully. “So what brought you to Minnesota?”

“My folks divorced when I was thirteen, my mom moved us out here—well, to Appleton—to be closer to her family. Then I moved to the city after I graduated high school.”

Just then the bell on the door rang as someone stepped inside. C.J. said, “Aww, looks like I won't be your last customer of the day after all.”

“Oh well.”

C.J. capped his coffee and stepped back from the counter. “Maybe I'll see you around, though. I just live up the street from here. My name is C.J., by the way.”

“I'm Margie. It was good to meet you.”

“Yeah, let's talk about fish again sometime.”

Margie smiled at him. “I would like that.”

C.J. left the cafe feeling lighter, and at home he looked up those videos from the Rogue River to watch again while he ate his lunch. He was still feeling good when Flick came home hours later. “Hey, how was your day?”

“Average. Boring.” Flick hung up his coat and took off his boots. “How was your charter?”

“Also average and boring. But afterward I stopped by Brewster's for a coffee and got to chat with the barista about fishing.”

“Nice.” Flick gave him a small smile, then went to lay down on the couch. C.J. followed him and sat down on the end of the couch by his feet. Flick yawned and adjusted the pillow under his head. “Which barista?”

“Her name's Margie.”

“What's she look like?”

“Taller than me but shorter than you. Kinda heavyset. Pretty blue eyes.”

“I'm not sure that I know her.”

“I don't remember if I've seen her before,” C.J. said. Flick nestled into the couch and closed his eyes. C.J. kept talking. “She grew up in Oregon fishing the Rogue with her dad. Have I shown you those videos? That guy catching spring chinook the size of his freaking leg? God, I'd love to go out to the Pacific Northwest someday.”

“Hmm,” Flick hummed. After a minute he added, “It's kinda swarming with hipsters, though, isn't it?”

“That's fine. That just means there'd be punk shows and vegan restaurants for you, right?”

Flick laughed sleepily.

C.J. ran his hand over Flick's leg as he daydreamed. “This spring and summer maybe I'll try to save up as much money as I can. Really grind to grow viewership on the stream, too. Then next year, maybe you could take a year off school and we could travel. Man, I wanna go places with you so badly, there is so much I want to see and do with you. And it'd be great for the stream, too—catching new fish, going to new lakes and rivers.” He sighed. “Can we do that? Like alternate years? Take a year to earn some money and then a year to go explore?”

“Mm-hm,” Flick responded without opening his eyes.

“And it was so great to talk to Margie about fishing, too. Even just for a few minutes. Like, streaming is nice, but, like, real-life, face-to-face conversations just feel so much better.” C.J. thought for a moment. “If we're traveling, I could do collabs with other streamers, or meet up with some of my regular followers.” He paused again. “Maybe before my next charter, I'll stop by Brewster's again. Maybe Margie works early mornings and that's why we haven't seen her before. She seemed nice.” He looked down at Flick, whose breathing had grown slow and steady. He smiled and asked softly, “Are you asleep?”

“Not yet.”

“Did you want to be?”

Flick stretched. “I should probably eat some dinner first.”

“I'll stop babbling at you and go make us some food.”

“I can help,” Flick said, although he didn't move to get up at all.

“Nah, that's fine, I've got this. You rest.” C.J. rose from the couch, then knelt on the floor next to Flick and put his hand on his shoulder. When Flick opened his eyes, C.J. kissed him.

Flick smiled. “You're in a good mood.”

C.J. smiled back. “I am.”

C.J. had another ice fishing charter two days later, but Brewster's didn't open until eight on Saturdays so he couldn't go in before his charter. On his way home, he glanced at the cafe as he drove down the street, and thought, Who knows if she's even working today? And it's going to be busy on a Saturday afternoon, we wouldn't have much time to talk anyway. But when he got to the end of the block he circled around again to find a parking spot. He stepped inside the cafe and when he saw Margie behind the counter, he got in line. As he waited, he started feeling a little nervous and considered that she probably talked to a lot of customers every day and might not even remember him. But when he stepped up to the counter, she smiled at him warmly and said, “Hello again.”

He returned the smile. “Hello again.”

“What can I get you today?”

“Large dark roast to go, with room for cream.” Then, thinking of Flick back home, he added, “And one of those cinnamon muffins, please.”

“That'll be five hundred fifty bells.” As she filled his order, she said, “Were you fishing again this morning?”

“Well, another charter,” C.J. said. “The clients are the ones doing the fishing. I'm just there for guidance and moral support and entertainment.”

She smiled. “So what were they catching?”

“We hauled in a couple of northern pike, plus some perch and bass.”

“Pike are big, right? I don't think I've ever caught one before.”

“They can get big. The ones we caught today were only about sixteen or eighteen inches, though. They taste similar to walleye, if you're familiar with that.”

“I've had walleye in restaurants, but I've never caught those, either.”

“Yeah, they're both pretty quintessential midwestern fish. Not too likely to be found in Oregon.” He glanced behind him and sighed softly. “I guess you guys are busy today, I won't hold up the line. I'll see ya later, though.”

“Yeah. It was good to talk to you again, C.J.” She smiled at him, holding his gaze in a way that made him feel a little flicker of nervous excitement, and he smiled back.

Back at the apartment, Flick was awake but still in his pajamas. C.J. said, “Hey, babe, I got you a muffin.”

“Oh, perfect, I haven't eaten yet today,” Flick said, accepting the bag. “What's the occasion?”

“I wanted to stop by Brewster's to see if I could talk to Margie again.”

“Who?”

“Margie. That barista I told you about on Thursday?”

Flick looked at him blankly for a second, then said, “Right. Oregon. Fishing. I'm sorry, I was so tired that day.”

“That's all right,” C.J. said, although he was a little sad wondering if Flick remembered anything else he had talked about on Thursday night.

Flick took the paper coffee cup out of C.J.'s hand, had a sip, then handed it back. “How was the charter?” he asked.

“It was decent,” C.J. said. He talked about the clients and the fish they'd caught, and didn't mention Margie again after that.

On Thursday night after Flick's figure drawing class, he texted C.J., i'm going to be here a bit longer, ceramics studio is empty, i want to get some work done on my tile. Then a minute later he texted, don't hold dinner for me.

C.J. sighed, but he texted back, Okay, I'll see you later tonight, then. Three hours passed, and Flick had still not come home, so C.J. texted again, I've got a charter in the morning, so I need to get to bed soon. Do you know how much longer you're going to be?

Flick responded, sorry! lost track of the time. i'm just going to finish up what i'm doing and then clean up. maybe another 30-ish minutes? Which C.J. knew actually meant more like an hour. And Flick seemed to know that, too, because then he texted, you should sleep tho. and if i don't see you: good night, i love you.

C.J. texted back, I love you, and went to bed. He was asleep by the time Flick came home, so he didn't know how long he was actually gone, although he had a vague memory of Flick, still warm and damp from a shower, coming to bed and snaking his arm around C.J.'s waist. Flick was sound asleep the next morning, and didn't stir when C.J.'s alarm went off or when he kissed him goodbye. So C.J. was feeling a bit lonely when he got in his truck that morning, and although it was five fifty-six when he drove by Brewster's, he pulled over and waited out the four minutes for the cafe to open. As soon as the lights and the electronic open sign clicked on, C.J. got out of his truck and headed inside.

Margie was taking chairs off the tables and setting up for the day; she looked over at C.J. as the door opened and smiled at him. “Good morning, C.J.”

He smiled back at her. “Good morning, Margie.”

She walked over to the counter. “Large dark roast to go with room for cream?”

C.J. laughed a little. “Am I that predictable?”

Margie shrugged. “Hey, we've got a good dark roast here.”

“You do. Plus it's nice to have a little treat before going to spend the next five hours on the ice.” He ran his card through the machine.

Margie watched him for a moment, then glanced at the baked good case. “Hey, do you want a day-old oatmeal cookie? My treat. I'm supposed to mark them down, but there's just the one left over and it hardly seems worth it.”

“Wow, yeah, that'd be great. Thank you.”

Margie slipped the cookie into a paper bag. “So where do you guys go ice fishing?”

“We have an ice house set up on Fern Lake.”

“So if you're doing this professionally, you probably don't have those little pop-up tent shelters. I'll bet you have one of those big luxury ice houses with, like, a full kitchen and a bathroom and a large screen TV.”

C.J. laughed. “Something in between. It's a six by twelve shack my dad and I built a few years back, with four holes for fishing. We do have what we euphemistically call a kitchenette, but it's just a two-burner stove top and a kettle. And a bathroom, but obviously there's no running water out on the ice, so it's basically just an outhouse. It's nothing too fancy, but we have it set up nice. We've got some fake wood paneling up on the inside to make it look like a log cabin. And some northwoodsy cabin style décor. Ya know, canoes and snowshoes and plaid, stuff like that. It's kinda cheesy, but the clients seem to like it. And it makes for nice photos for social media. Every year, we always position the ice house so that the window faces the forest. Fern Lake's not exactly deep in the wilderness—ya know?—but when you're in the ice house, it's easy to imagine you're out in the middle of nowhere.”

Margie smiled. “It sounds nice. I'd love to see it sometime.”

C.J. paused only for a second, and then said, “I could take you ice fishing, if you want.”

Margie laughed shyly and said, “Really?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Don't you need the ice house for charters?”

“Sure, but we have it set up all season, and we're only getting two or three charters a week. It's just sitting empty the rest of the time.” When Margie hesitated, C.J. said, “Come on, you gave me that cookie, I have to pay you back.”

Margie laughed again. “That's not exactly an even trade.”

“But you said you've never been ice fishing before. Or caught a walleye. I want to give you the opportunity to try it out. I can't guarantee the walleye part, though.”

“Well... But I haven't been fishing since I was a kid. I don't have a pole or any gear or anything. I don't even know what you need for ice fishing.”

“The beauty of the charter is that we've got everything you might need,” C.J. said. “I'll even bring the bait. It's all my treat.”

Margie thought for a second. “Okay. Yeah. I'd like that, actually.”

“Yes!” C.J. said with a grin. “You'll have a good time, I promise.”

“I'm sure I will.”

“What day next week works for you?”

“Between my two jobs, the only day I have off is Wednesdays. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. We almost never get charters on Wednesdays, so that's perfect. Where else do you work?”

“Pie Island Boutique. It's a dress shop out on Seventh West.”

“I suppose I'm not too likely to run into you there.”

Margie laughed. “We do carry some men's clothing, too. But maybe not in your style.”

C.J. grinned. “No Carhartt, then?”

Margie shook her head, “I'm afraid not.”

C.J. briefly thought, Maybe I could stop by anyway, maybe there'd be something Flick would like, his birthday is in a few months. But then he thought that might be too stalker-y. He glanced at the clock. “Oh, geez, I should get going. I like to get everything set up before the client gets there at seven.” He reached into his pocket. “Here, put your number in my phone. I'll text you later, we'll make some plans.” He opened up his contacts and handed the phone over. She seemed unexpectedly nervous, but she took the phone, entered in her name and number, then handed it back to C.J. “All right,” C.J. said, putting the phone back in his pocket. “I'll be in touch soon, and I'll hopefully see you Wednesday, yeah?”

“Yeah, I'll see you Wednesday,” Margie said, and held his gaze in a way that felt significant.

C.J. felt a little bit of a blush rise to his cheeks. “Uh, thanks again for the cookie.”

“Anytime.”

As he got back in the truck, he thought, This isn't weird, right? I'm just taking a new friend fishing. There's nothing weird about this.

That afternoon while Flick was working at the library, C.J. texted Margie. Hey Margie, this is C.J. Hope I didn't ambush you with the invitation to go ice fishing on Wednesday. But if you're still interested, we could pick a time and make some plans. He set his phone down, and a few minutes later it chimed with a response.

Hi C.J. Not feeling ambushed at all, so no worries there. :) I'm free all day Wednesday. What's a good time for ice fishing?

C.J. smiled, and wrote back, Fish are most active at dawn and dusk, but anytime would work.

Margie responded, I get up before dawn too often as it is and I suspect you do, too. Can we plan for the afternoon/evening?

C.J. wrote back, Absolutely. They made plans for C.J. to come pick her up at her apartment.

When Flick came home later that night, C.J. told him, “Hey, so next Wednesday afternoon I made plans with Margie to take her to the ice house. She's never been ice fishing before.”

“The barista?” Flick asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, cool,” he said. Then he smirked and added, “You never take me to the ice house.”

“You hate the ice house, you said it was cold and boring. Plus last time you kinda freaked out.”

“Well, tell me it's not freaky to be standing in the middle of a lake over twenty feet of freezing cold water.”

“The ice is a foot thick, you could drive a truck over that. It's not going to crack under the weight of a toothpick like you.”

“It might if I'm a cursed toothpick.”

After a pause, C.J. said, “I could take you out there sometime if you really want, though.”

“Did you guys fix the propane heater?”

“Yeah, we got it going again.”

Flick shrugged. “If you're going out there on your own sometime, I'll tag along, just to hang out with you. If I can make it work with my stupid schedule.”

C.J. thought for a moment. “Yeah. Maybe I should stream again from the ice house sometime.”

“Oh,” Flick said with a hint of disappointment.

“What?”

“I, uh, kinda had an activity in mind that I didn't want to share with your followers.”

“Flick!” C.J. laughed. “It's too cold for that out there.”

“You said you fixed the heater. Besides, I can keep you warm, I've got a nice, hot mouth.”

“That you do, you pervert.”

“Who says I'm a pervert? Maybe I was just talking about kissing.”

“Were you talking about just kissing?”

“Absolutely not.”

C.J. laughed. “Yeah, maybe we could head out there sometime. I could stream for an hour or two and then shut the camera off and move on to other activities.”

“I dunno,” Flick said. “That might be a quick way to remove any ambiguity about our relationship to your followers.”

C.J. snickered. “That is definitely not the way I want to do it.”

The following Wednesday, he streamed in the morning and he was talking about ice fishing when one of his viewers commented, You're lucky you get to go ice fishing so much. My wife totally hates it when I spend the day out on the ice with the boys. Someone else responded, Time to get a new wife, lol. Another person added, Women just don't get the appeal of fishing like we do. C.J. spoke up. “Okay, that's not fair, there are plenty of women anglers out there,” he said, thinking of Margie and their plans for the afternoon. “And, I mean, sure, your partner should support your interests, even if they don't share them, because that's what you do in a healthy relationship. But I guess I would wonder why she hates it so much. Like, are you avoiding responsibilities at home or avoiding spending time with her so that you can go drink beer outside with your buddies? Because this could be a you problem, my dude.” He laughed. He wanted to mention Flick here, and how Flick always encouraged him to keep streaming even though it wasn't turning much of a profit, but then he considered the last time he mentioned Flick on stream, and instead steered the conversation back to ice fishing.

Flick was working his afternoon shift at the library when C.J. headed out to go pick up Margie. As they began the twenty minute drive to Fern Lake, Margie said, “So, not to sound like a creep or anything, but... I know who you are.”

“Ha ha, what?”

Margie laughed nervously. “Well, after you invited me out, I realized I didn't actually know you that well. I mean, you could be some axe murderer looking to dump my body in the lake, you know? So I googled 'fishing charter Leafville' to see if I could find you. Your charter was the first one that came up in the search. Actually it was, like, the first three results, you guys must have a great marketing team.”

“Ha! You're looking at the marketing team. And the social media manager. And a boat captain.”

Margie laughed again. “But anyway. From the charter's Facebook, I found a link to your livestream channel. I, uh, I watched your stream this morning.”

“Ha ha... oh gosh.”

“Sorry, I'm not trying to embarrass you.”

“No, it's fine. I mean, I don't put anything on the internet I don't want people to see, ya know? I've just never met a viewer in real life. I mean, real life friends or family or whatever do follow me, but they knew me before I started streaming.”

“Technically, I knew you in real life, too, before I knew you were a livestreamer.”

“Yeah. I guess you're right.”

After a pause, Margie said, “I liked it, your livestream. I liked how you talked about other things, too, like that recipe you shared or relationships or whatever, in addition to the fish stuff. Plus you're entertaining to watch. You're funny and charismatic.”

C.J. laughed softly and put a hand to his mouth; he could feel himself starting to blush again.

“I am embarrassing you!” Margie said with a laugh. “Somehow you didn't strike me as the shy type.”

“No, no,” C.J. said. “It's just... Like I've been streaming for a few months. And it's fun, and I get some decent engagement, and I'm finally starting to earn a little revenue from it. But I really want to be able to make a full time living from it, and it's just... Like it's probably just wishful thinking, but I had really hoped I woulda been more successful with it by now, and sometimes it feels like, ya know, even with all the work I'm putting into it, it's still not enough. S-so it feels good to hear someone say that they like what I'm doing.”

“Of course people like what you're doing! All those people in the chat obviously loved talking with you. And you've only been doing this for a few months?”

“Well... it'll be a year in March. So that's like, what, ten months?”

“Still. I don't know a lot about streaming, but you seem to be pretty successful for only being ten months into it.”

C.J. shrugged. “I mean, I've been watching other streamers for years. And I did research for a few months before I actually jumped in. I just wish the numbers reflected my enthusiasm for it a bit more.”

“You'll get there,” Margie said. “But I think I know how you feel. The reason I work at the dress shop, even though they only pay minimum wage, is because I want to be a fashion designer. The shop owner said she'd be willing to carry one of my designs, but she hasn't liked any of the drawings I've brought in yet. But I keep trying. Back home, there was this tailor shop, and I'd bring my designs in to the two women who worked there. They were always so encouraging. I thought maybe I really had some talent, but...” She sighed, and shrugged. “It's inspiring to be around so many incredible designs at Pie Island, but also a little frustrating to feel like I'm never going to be included.”

“You'll get there, too,” C.J. said, and glanced at her across the truck. “So do you sew, then?”

“Mm-hmm. I make a lot of my own clothes, and I've made stuff for family and friends, too.”

“Seriously? Like, most of the time I've seen you you're behind a counter and wearing an apron, so I can't say I've really noticed your clothes. But the other day when you were setting up, you were wearing a dress with, like, stripes of different fabric along the bottom...?”

“Yeah, I made that.”

“That was awesome! The colors you used made it look like a sunset.”

Margie laughed shyly. “That was exactly the image I was going for.”

“Man, I'm so jealous of artists.”

“I don't know that I'd call myself an artist...”

“Why not?”

“It's just sewing. It's not like painting or sculpture or music or anything.”

“But it's, like, wearable art. It's functional art. And art, ya know, requires this incredible level of creativity that I can't make my brain do. Like, artists can look at a lump of clay or some fabric or some beads and feathers or whatever, and they can imagine a whole new life for the materials. They can use them to create something brand new that didn't exist before. It's like magic.”

“It's not magic. It's practice and hard work. And a lot of failing and trying again.”

“I mean, yeah, I know it is. But from the outside it looks like magic.”

C.J. parked the truck, and they began the quarter mile walk across the frozen lake to the ice house. “So when's the last time you've been fishing?” C.J. asked.

“I guess it would be the spring before my parents divorced. I would have just turned thirteen.” They walked on a few more steps, then Margie added, “I mean, us kids went back out to Oregon for visitations, but it wasn't the same. When I went out there, I asked my dad sometimes if we could go fishing, but either he'd be too busy or he'd brush me off and make some comment about how surely a teenage girl like me doesn't really want to spend her vacation fishing.”

“Aww, that stinks. That's not fair at all.”

Margie shrugged. “I think he was trying to be supportive in his own way. This was also around the time I was getting into fashion design, and he's kind of... I think he just had a hard time reconciling those two interests. I think maybe he thought I was just humoring him by asking to go fishing. He and I kinda grew apart after the divorce, and being thirteen is hard enough anyway. I didn't really know how to talk to him about it. So I kinda just let it fall by the wayside.”

They had reached the ice house now. C.J. turned on the generator outside, and as he unlocked the door, he looked over and gave her a smile. “Well, let's see if we can get you some more good fishing memories then, eh?”

C.J. let them inside and flipped on the light. Margie looked around the ice house at the red checkered curtains tied back with burlap ribbon, the pile of pillows and blankets on the bench in front of the fishing holes, the framed art on the wall with fish prints and fish puns, and she said, “Oh! It's so cute and cozy!”

“That is definitely the vibe we're going for. With the ice fishing expeditions especially, we really market them toward the beginner angler, so we want everything to feel accessible.” He turned the propane heater on. “We've got some decent insulation, so it'll warm up in here pretty quick, and then so long as we keep the door closed we can turn the heater off again, and it'll be a bit quieter.” He lifted up the top of the bench seat and retrieved the gear they would need, and they chatted as he opened up the fishing holes and installed tip-ups at two of them, setting jigging rods next to the other two. They sat side by side on the bench, pillows behind their backs, and C.J. showed her how to lower the line into the water down to the lake floor and then slowly raise it up and down to get the fishes' attention; when she moved her line too quickly, he set his own rod down, put his hands over hers, and said, “Like this,” and moved the rod in a slow, smooth motion. He let go of her hands and said, “Hold it steady there for a few minutes before you try jigging again. Fish are slower in the winter, it's going to take them a while to swim over to the lure.” As he bent over to pick up his own rod, he glanced at her and saw that she was blushing and smiling.

As they sat there, they talked about their childhoods and other fishing trips they'd been on. After a while, C.J. got up to turn the heater off, and the silence that followed felt comfortable and inviting. It was warm enough inside the ice house now that they both took off their jackets, and while they waited on the fish, Margie told him how she had sewn her shirt. After about an hour, they had caught some lake trout and bluegill, but then for the next thirty minutes after that there were no bites. C.J. reeled in his line and looked out the window, then he checked his phone for the time. Flick would just be coming home from his library shift about now. C.J. had told him he'd be out fishing tonight, and C.J. doubted that Flick would forgo the ceramics studio just to wait up for him. He said to Margie, “A lot of fish might be slowing down for the day, but walleye can be more active at night. If you want to hang around and wait for them.”

“I don't need to catch a walleye,” Margie said. “But I also don't mind waiting a bit longer to see what happens.”

C.J. smiled at her, and said, “I'm going to turn the heater back on for a bit, then.” After he did so, he sat back down next to her and baited his line again. “I'm glad you were able to catch something, though. That was a nice trout you got.”

“I caught the one big fish, but you caught all the others.”

“I just have more recent experience, is all. The fish are all yours to keep, though. I can come back out here anytime.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, of course,” C.J. said with a small laugh. After he thought for a second, he said, “We could come out here some other Wednesday, though, too, if you want. Depending on the weather, there's maybe a month or two of ice fishing left this winter.”

“I think I would like that,” Margie said. Then, turning to C.J., she said, “I had a good time out here with you today.”

“Yeah, I had a good time with you, too,” C.J. said, turning to face her. She held eye contact with him for a moment and smiled coyly. C.J. realized what was happening a second too late.

As she leaned in to kiss him, his first thought was, Oh shit! His second thought was that, because he had never kissed anyone other than Flick, he had somehow never considered that kissing other people would feel physically different. Margie's lips were softer than Flick's, her lip balm was a different flavor, and she pressed her lips to his more firmly; C.J., just for a second, closed his eyes, pursed his lips and kissed her back. His third thought was, again, Oh shit! He pulled away and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Margie, I think there's been a misunderstanding here. I-I did not intend this as, like, a romantic date kind of outing. I'm actually gay, I have a boyfriend.”

Margie blushed a deep red and gasped, “Oh my gosh, I'm so embarrassed. I didn't know...”

“Well, no, of course not, how would you?”

She sighed and leaned back against the wall. “When I was watching your stream this morning, when you were talking about that guy whose wife didn't like him fishing, you know, I-I noticed you didn't mention having any partner yourself. I even went back to watch some of the recent highlights you have posted to see if you mentioned anyone, and you didn't, so I just assumed...”

C.J. leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and to rub his face with his hands; he already knew he hadn't brought up Flick in any of the posted highlights because he had edited them that way on purpose.

“I'm so sorry,” Margie said. “I should have just asked if you were dating anyone. Now I've embarrassed the both of us and put the whole trip in a bad light.”

“No, no,” C.J. said, sitting back up. “It's fine. It was just one awkward moment, you know? And it's over now and we talked about it and now we can forget about it, right?” He forced what he hoped looked like a casual smile, but on the inside he was still thinking, shit shit shit shit.

“A-all right,” Margie said, and tried to smile back.

“But we could also head out now, if you're more comfortable with that.”

“I think I might be.”

They both reeled in their lines, and C.J. dismantled the tip-ups. He said, “I've just got to get everything cleaned up and put away so that it's all ready for the next charter.”

“Can I help with anything?” Margie asked.

“No. It's kind of a jigsaw puzzle fitting everything back in the box. I'll take care of it.”

Margie rose to put her coat back on. “I think I might step outside for some fresh air, then.”

C.J. nodded. “I'll be out in just a minute.” Once she was outside, he checked his phone again, as if Flick should somehow already know what he's been up to, but there were no messages from him. As C.J. packed the gear back into the bench, rearranged the blankets and pillows, closed the curtains and wiped down the counter, he thought, I have to tell him. But what the fuck am I going to say? Was I leading her on—did I do that on purpose? Why did I kiss her back?

As they drove back into Leafville, he felt the need to relieve the tension, and he said, “Hey, I still meant what I said about going fishing again with you. One awkward moment doesn't have to doom a potential friendship. I did still have fun with you today.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Margie said quietly.

“The ball is in your court. You have my number, you know where to find me.” But even as he spoke, he thought, I can never go back to Brewster's again. And definitely not with Flick on a date. He is going to be so angry with me. I have fucked everything up so badly.

After C.J. dropped Margie off at her apartment, he checked his phone again, and saw that Flick had texted five minutes earlier. heading out to the ceramics studio now. the leftover pizza in the fridge is yours if you want it. hope you're having fun fishing. i love you.

C.J. texted back, I'm just heading home now. Maybe I'll see you later tonight. I love you. Then he drove to a store at the end of the block, parked in the back of the lot and waited for twenty minutes before going home. He did not want to risk seeing Flick right now, not until he had figured out what to say.

The apartment was thankfully empty when C.J. returned. He was, for once, not actually hungry, so he left the pizza in the fridge and instead just showered and went to bed, hoping to be asleep by the time Flick got home. But he could only lay there, tossing and turning and feeling awful, and asking himself again and again, Why did I kiss her back? He wondered, did he actually have a crush on her? He gave the matter a lot of uncomfortably honest consideration, and the tentative answer he reached was no, not exactly. He did not have a crush on her in the sense that he wanted any kind of romantic or sexual relationship with her. But he liked talking about fish with her, he liked her stories about growing up in rural Oregon, and he liked the attention she gave him, and he would have liked more of all that. Had he kissed Margie simply because she was more available than Flick? He felt sick at the prospect, and didn't want to believe that about himself, but was afraid that on some level it might be true. He was certain he would have never kissed her on his own volition. But when she had kissed him, why had he responded the way he did? He couldn't come up with a good answer.

Flick came home just before eleven, and C.J. laid in bed and listened to him move around the apartment. When he came to the bedroom, Flick whispered, “C.J.? Are you awake?”

C.J. considered staying silent, but he said, “Uh-huh.”

“Oh, good,” Flick said as he stripped down to his underwear. “I'm glad I'm able to see you a little bit before the end of the day.” Flick climbed into bed and kissed C.J., and although he felt sick with guilt, C.J. kissed him back. Flick murmured, “And maybe do something else before the end of the day, too,” His fingers danced down C.J.'s torso.

C.J. caught his hand. “A-actually I'm kinda tired,” he said. “Could we just sleep?”

“Of course,” Flick said, and gave him one more kiss on the cheek before wrapping his arm around C.J.'s waist and nestling up to rest his head on C.J.'s shoulder.

I need to tell him, C.J. thought. I'll tell him tomorrow. But tomorrow, C.J. had a charter in the morning, and Flick had classes in the afternoon and then modeling at figure drawing at night. They wouldn't see much of each other. And the day after was Flick's long shift at the library, and he'd been so stressed about work lately, C.J. didn't want to add more stress on top of that. Soon, he thought, as he put his hand over Flick's arm and breathed in his scent, already aching over the potential consequences of what had happened tonight. I will tell him soon.

Chapter Text

Flick's honey bee tile was coming along nicely. It was eighteen inches across, the largest piece he had done yet, and the size gave him the opportunity to include so many intricate details. He knew already he was going to paint it rather than glaze it, so as to not obscure those details, and from the research he had done, he decided to use oil paints. But that meant he'd have to buy oil paints, since he only owned acrylic and watercolor, and when he had perused the art supply aisle at the campus bookstore, he was dismayed by how expensive they were. His father's Christmas money still sat in his Venmo account; he'd kept it mainly to avoid the confrontation of returning it, but actually spending it felt a little gross. He was pushing himself hard to make it in for every shift at the library, partly to keep his supervisor from talking to him again, but also now to save up enough money for a set of oil paints.

He snuck in to the ceramics studio as often as he could, sometimes even slipping in between classes during the day if Pascal wasn't in the room (none of the TAs knew him, so they wouldn't know he wasn't in any ceramics classes) just to check on his tile, rearranging the plastic bag around it or refreshing the wet paper towels inside, making sure it wasn't too dry or too wet, and he went in to work in the studio at least three nights a week now. C.J., recently, had stopped making comments about Flick's time in the studio or time spent with Bob, which was at once refreshing but also a little disconcerting, because it felt like something was up and Flick didn't know what that could be.

But he tried to push that worry aside and focus his attention on his honey bee tile, which wasn't hard to do because he found himself thinking about it all day anyway. Winter felt like a terrible time to be making this art—no live bees or fresh apple blossoms to draw from life—but these images filled Flick's brain so much that sometimes he forgot it wasn't actually spring. He copied illustrations from field guides and often spent class time scrolling through his phone for more reference photos that would give him the image he was after—apple blossoms buds and apple blossoms burst open and apple blossoms wilted and fading, a sprig of apple blossoms turned up and to the side just so, and honey bees nectaring, honey bees in flight, honey bees filling their pollen baskets, honey bees at the hive, honey bees from every possible angle. He'd found a documentary on the keeping of bees, and he watched it a few times every week for the cinematography and all the tight close ups so that he could study intently how bees moved and how they held their bodies at rest.

He was working on his tile in the studio one Wednesday night. He had built up a rough form of the bee in the center with clay and was using a loop tool to carve away some of the larger details. When Bob walked by his table, he looked at the open sketchbook next to him and said, “Holy shit, dude, that bee looks like it's about to fly off the page.”

“Not really,” Flick said with a smile. “It's just a line drawing, I didn't even do any shading or anything.”

“Better'n what I can do.” Bob sat down across the table from Flick and pulled his sketchbook toward him. “Do you mind if I flip through this?”

“No, go ahead.”

Bob turned the sketchbook to face him and slowly turned the pages. Flick glanced up from time to time, starting to feel a little self-conscious about just how many bees he had drawn recently. Bob looked over drawings of bees, a few pages of beetles and dragonflies Flick had drawn before he settled on the honey bee, several pages of drawings of the stick bugs, and when he reached an old sketch Flick had done of C.J. once he stopped, and turned the page back to the bee drawing Flick had been referencing. “You and bugs, man. It's awesome, though. Have you taken your natural sciences lib ed class yet? I took Intro to Entomology with professor Nat a few years back. You should check it out, I bet you'd like it.”

Flick set down his tool and looked up at Bob. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Professor Nat is, like, super into bugs, so that makes it a lot more fun than the average lib ed requirement, ya know?” Bob glanced up at Flick now and saw him staring back at him. “What?”

Flick stared a second longer, then said, “Professor Nat is my father.”

Bob's mouth gaped open in surprise. Then he laughed a little and said, “No way.”

“It's true.”

“Heh. That's wild, man,” Bob said. After a pause, he said, “But you don't have the accent...?”

Flick went back to work on his tile. “We left London when I was eight, and I've lived in Leafville since I was eleven. I still had an accent when I first moved here, and C.J. says he can hear a hint of it now and then. But it basically fell away as I grew up.”

“That's too bad,” Bob said. “I bet you had a cute accent when you were a kid.”

“I'm pretty sure I sounded like a smug little bastard.”

Bob laughed again. “I can't picture you as, like, a British school boy.”

“Well, I was. For a few years, at least.”

“Like, with a uniform and everything? Jacket and tie and short pants and knee socks?”

“More or less, yeah.”

Bob chuckled, and said again, “That's wild.”

“School uniforms are a lot more common, well, pretty much everywhere else in the world. And Dad wanted to put me in a private school here, too, when I was a kid, but I pitched a fit about it and he put me in the local public school instead.”

Bob smiled. “I can't imagine you pitching a fit, either. You're so chill all the time.”

Flick snorted derisively. “I assure you I was a miserable hellion.”

Bob watched Flick work for a bit, then said, “Well, I guess that's where you get your love of bugs, then. Did you guys, like, do a bunch of bug stuff together when you were growing up? Like helping him with his research or whatever?”

Flick hummed noncommittally and shrugged his shoulders. “S-sometimes,” he answered without looking up.

Bob thought for a minute, then said, “So, hey, were you the kid with the crippled butterfly, then?”

Flick groaned and set down his tool again. “Somehow I never considered that he told stories about me to his students. I'm his only kid, so I must be. What did he say?”

“Nothing bad,” Bob assured him. “It was a cute story. We were talking about the monarch migration, and he was saying how his kid raised some monarch caterpillars, but one of them hatched with a deformed wing and it couldn't fly, so they couldn't release it. And so the kid made, like, this butterfly hospice in a terrarium with, like, flowers and sugar water and shit. But then at the end of summer, the butterfly kept crawling around the south side of the terrarium, like it wanted to walk to Mexico, the migration instinct was so strong.”

Flick slumped forward. “I remember that. That was traumatic. I had two monarchs hatch while I was gone one day, and my best guess is one knocked the other down and the wings got damaged in the fall. Sometimes they have crumpled wings due to a parasite, but I don't think this was that. But I was just wracked with guilt that I hadn't been there to intervene, a-and I felt like taking care of the butterfly for the rest of her natural life was the least I could do. But, god, Dad hated it. At first he'd just tease me about it, like calling me Dr. Flick and asking how my patient was doing today. But then when she started trying to migrate, he got angry, and he kept yelling at me to put the damn thing out of its misery, or to at least put her outside and let nature take its course. And he kept threatening to do it himself. I had to lock my bedroom door at night because I was afraid he really would. I kept myself closed up in my room during the day, too, because I wanted to protect my butterfly. But that also meant I had to watch her endlessly walk and walk and walk and walk along the south wall of the terrarium, a-and I started to wonder if maybe Dad was right, maybe it would have been kinder to just euthanize her, or to put her outside. Where she surely would have just gotten stepped on or eaten, but in the meantime she could have at least felt like she was getting someplace. But I was just a kid, and I was doing what I thought was best.” Flick sighed. “All that pacing made her weak, and she mostly stopped eating after that. She wore herself out and died after a few days. So at least I didn't have to angst about it for long.”

“Dude,” Bob said. “That's definitely not the way he told the story. It was more like, 'Here's this cute thing my kid did, and an interesting thing a bug did.' The way he talked about it, it felt like he thought it was sweet, you taking care of an injured butterfly.”

“That was not the impression I got from him at the time.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen. This was around the time I became mostly vegetarian, so the treatment of living things was on my mind a lot that summer.”

“Oh, wow. Professor Nat made it sound like you were some little kid.”

“I'm sure he did. He always treated me like I was younger and stupider and more incapable than I actually was.”

Bob sighed gently. “Man. And I used to like Professor Nat, too.”

“You can still like him. I'm sure he's very different in the classroom than he is at home.”

“Maybe. But I don't want to like anyone who made you feel bad.”

“It's fine,” Flick said without looking up.

“It's not,” Bob insisted. After a minute, he said, “My dad's a doctor, a pediatrician. But, like, he worked in the next town over from where we lived, so, like, none of my grade school friends went to his clinic. But then in high school, this kid moved to our district and he and I got to be sorta friends, and we were talking at lunch one day and we realized that my dad used to be his doctor. And he just, like, went on and on about how great a doctor my dad was, how he was so gentle and kind and quiet and all that. This kid had asthma, so he wound up going to the hospital kind of a lot, and, like, he made a point of saying that even when he was freaking out about his asthma or whatever, he'd calm down once my dad came in the room because he knew he was going to be taken care of. And I just sat there feeling stunned, because I had never thought about my dad that way, and I remember wondering which is the real guy—the cuddly teddy bear of a pediatrician at the clinic, or the high-strung, emotionally distant asshole at home?”

Flick glanced up and gave him a sad smile. “Yeah,” he said.

“Yeah,” Bob agreed with a shrug. They sat there in silence a while, Bob watching Flick carve away little strips of clay from the bee shape on his tile. Then he said, “I suppose that explains why you never talked about him before, though.”

“I mean, obviously we don't always get along well, but... it's complicated. The main reason I didn't mention him was because he called in some favors at the university here to test me out of some intro level classes. I'm pretty sure he's the only reason I was admitted at all. I got good grades in high school, but my attendance was pretty spotty. I barely graduated—and I'm fairly certain that was thanks to him, too. And, I-I know he means well, and he's trying to help me. B-but I don't like feeling like the only reason I'm here—or the only reason I'm ever successful at anything—is because of him and his influence. E-even if it is probably true.”

“Nah, it's ain't true, man,” Bob said.

“What do you know?” Flick muttered, still focusing on his tile.

“Did he encourage you in art?”

“Not really. I mean, he didn't discourage me, either. But it's more like he thinks of it as some silly hobby. A whimsical little dalliance before I buckle down in something more serious like science.”

“Because your art is kick-ass, man. You're producing work better—like, technically better and meaningfully better—than what I've seen from most grad students. And that's all you. And you're so much more serious about it than anyone else I've met here, too. So maybe he got you in the door, but you've more than earned your right to stay.”

Flick paused in his work, still looking down at the table. He frowned at his tile and shrugged, then picked up a damp sponge to smooth out a spot of clay.

Bob watched him work, then idly gathered the little scraps of clay on the table next to Flick and began squishing them together to make a little thumb-sized pinch pot. When Flick set down the sponge, Bob picked it up and smoothed out his own pot. After a minute he said, “So, wait, that thing with the butterfly, that would have been four years ago?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So this happened the summer just before I took his intro class. I was nineteen. Man, I always forget how much younger you are than me. You're such an old soul.”

“That's the sort of thing people say about someone who's traumatized or depressed or otherwise fucked-up.”

“Nah, man, you're all right.”

“Bob, you are very kind, but I promise I am most definitely not all right.”

“No, I don't mean that, in, like, a dismissive way. I mean... in spite of the trauma or depression or whatever, you're still all right.” Flick looked up at him now, and saw Bob looking back at him. After a moment, Bob said, “Tsk, you're always so meticulous, Flick, how the fuck did you get clay on your shoulder?” He reached across the table and ran two fingers across Flick's clavicle. Flick sat still, watching him move. Bob pulled his hand back to reveal a little glob of clay; he rolled it between his fingers for a moment, then dropped it on the table next to the tiny pinch pot he had made. Then he walked back to his potter's wheel.

They didn't talk much after that, and after Bob threw one more pot at the wheel, he cleaned up and left for the evening, leaving behind the little pinch pot on Flick's table. When Flick went home, he brought Bob's pinch pot with him, cupped in his hands to protect it on the walk back to the apartment. C.J. was in bed by the time he got there, and Flick cleared out some space in a desk drawer and set the pot in there to dry. After he showered, he looked at his shirt and at the smeared stain of clay along the collar in the shape of Bob's fingers, then he gathered up his dirty laundry to put in the basket in the bedroom.

Flick could tell by the way C.J. was breathing that he was still awake, but he didn't say anything when Flick stepped into the room and so Flick didn't say anything either. Flick laid down next to him, put his hand on his hip and kissed his cheek. C.J. hummed and turned to face Flick, and Flick kissed his lips. C.J kissed him back, then squeezed Flick's fingers and rolled onto his side, his back to Flick. Flick held back a sigh, and nestled himself up against C.J., wrapping an arm around his chest, and waited for sleep.

Something was unmistakably up with C.J. He seemed preoccupied, almost nervous, and Flick couldn't figure out what might be bothering him. He hadn't mentioned anything happening with the stream, and Flick had even glanced over the Discord and didn't see anything there. The charter seemed busy, but not overwhelmingly so, although they were also approaching the end of ice fishing season, after which there'd be a gap in business for a month or two until the weather warmed up and the lakes and rivers were navigable by boat again. But they still had the Christmas money from Flick's dad, so finances shouldn't be a concern. And Flick was, at least for the time being, still employed.

Flick had always defaulted to sex as a way to relieve tension for either of them individually or within the relationship, because it was easier than initiating or maintaining difficult conversations. But it wasn't working this time, because C.J. kept turning him down. Gently and diplomatically, but still—turning him down. C.J. would kiss him or tell him he loved him, but the moment Flick's hand crept southward, C.J. would catch it and make some excuse about being busy or tired or something. Flick didn't know what to make of it, but it was this, finally, that prompted him to talk to C.J.

It was Friday night, and they had just finished dinner. In conversation, they had established that Flick's only homework for the weekend was a three page paper for his American Lit class, which he could bang out in an hour on Sunday afternoon, and that C.J. had spent most of the day doing social media for both the charter and the stream so there was nothing he could claim to be busy with right now. It was only nine o'clock, too early to sleep. They had just finished washing the dishes, and C.J. was drying his hands. Flick stepped up behind him and kissed his neck and ear; C.J. let him, even tilting his head to give him a better angle, and hummed happily. Flick wrapped his arms around C.J.'s chest and pulled him in close, and he felt C.J. breathe against him. Flick said, “We've never actually had sex in the kitchen here, have we?”

C.J. answered, “The counters are a mess, and we haven't swept the floor in, like, a week.”

“Bedroom it is, then,” Flick said, putting his hand to C.J.'s face to kiss along his jawline.

But now he could feel C.J.'s body start to tense. “I haven't showered yet today, and I've been wearing this hoodie since yesterday.”

“We could shower together.”

“Heh. We don't actually get clean when we do that.”

“That's fine by me,” Flick said.

C.J. started to pull away. “I'm not sure that I'm up for a joint shower tonight.”

Flick stepped back now and sighed. “C.J., I don't mean this as a complaint, but... it's been more than two weeks since we've had sex. Which is kind of a long time for us, a-and I feel like you've been keeping me at arm's length. And if you're just not in the mood, that's fine, I'm not trying to pressure you or make you feel bad about it. B-but, like, is there something wrong? Are you upset with me?”

“Oh, no, no, no, no, Flick, no. I'm not upset with you. I promise, it's nothing to do with you. Um.” He rubbed his face, and for a second looked almost scared. “But. Um. I-I do need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay...” Flick heart rate started to increase.

“Can we sit down on the couch?”

“S-sure.”

They sat down on opposite ends of the couch. C.J. took a breath to gather his thoughts. “So...” he began. He rubbed his face again and turned to face Flick. “Okay. Um. I want to start off by saying that I totally should have told you this sooner, and I want to apologize for that. I've just been trying to figure things out—like, trying to figure out what I'm feeling and trying to figure out how to say this to you. And I've also been pretty nervous about this conversation, a-and about what might come after it.”

Flick couldn't respond. He just sat on the couch and waited, already feeling shaky.

After a moment, C.J. spoke again. “Okay. Okay. So. Last week, I took Margie out to Fern Lake to take her ice fishing, right? And, um, I don't know if it's important here to, like, give you more background information. But, ya know, we'd been talking at the cafe for a few weeks, and the fishing trip was—at least at first—going really well. We talked about fish, and growing up, and she caught a nice lake trout.” He took a breath. “But my point is, things were feeling good, and we were feeling comfortable with each other. Um. B-but apparently there had been a misunderstanding between her and I. We hadn't really discussed our expectations or intentions. And I, of course, meant the invitation as a friendly outing. Like, I just wanted to take her ice fishing because she'd never been, and, ya know, she seemed nice and it's fun fishing with friends. But she, I guess, thought it was a date. Like, a romantic kind of date. A-and so she did what a person might do on a romantic kind of date where things are good and you're feeling comfortable. And so... she kissed me.”

Flick's first reaction, Oh, that's not so bad. Sure it sounds awkward, but...

But then C.J. continued, “And I kissed her back.”

Flick felt a chill spread over his body, and when he could speak, he said, “You kissed her back?”

“I didn't mean to, and I swear it doesn't mean anything, but—”

Flick interrupted him. “You kissed her back.”

“It just sort of happened, and—”

“How do you kiss someone by accident?” Flick asked, anger creeping into his voice now.

“I... I don't know,” C.J. admitted.

“So, wait, all this time you were talking with her and you never once mentioned me or us?”

“It just never came up...”

“Are you embarrassed about me? Are you embarrassed to be in a relationship with me?”

“No! Of course not, Flick.”

“Do you have feelings for her?”

“No,” C.J. insisted. Then amended, “Well, I mean, I was enjoying her friendship, and—”

“I don't know about you, but I don't kiss my friends,” Flick snapped. He fumed. “All this time, you've been acting jealous and paranoid about me spending time with Bob. And then you go and kiss some random woman who was friendly with you for a few hours. You fucking hypocrite.”

C.J. cringed, and Flick knew that was harsh, but he didn't care.

Flick continued, “And then you don't even tell me for a week and a half. Like if it was as accidental and meaningless as you claim, why keep it a secret? Just when were you planning on telling me, anyway?”

“You're right,” C.J. said. “You are absolutely right. I should have told you sooner. But at first I was just trying to figure out what had happened, like why I had kissed her back, and then the longer I waited the harder it felt to tell you, and...”

“So why did you kiss her back?”

C.J. paused. “I really think I just got caught up in the moment, and—”

Flick cut him off again. “Bullshit.”

“No, it's true!”

Flick sighed gutturally and tipped his head back on the couch, covering his face with his hands. “I don't even fucking care right now if it's true. This whole situation is bullshit.” He let his hands fall to the couch cushions and he stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then he announced, “I can't be here with you right now.” He got up and walked to the door.

C.J. followed him. “No, Flick, please don't go. I am so sorry I didn't tell you about this sooner, and I swear I—” he put his hand on Flick's shoulder.

Flick spasmed his arms to shake him off. “Don't touch me,” he growled. “Don't fucking touch me and don't fucking talk to me right now.” C.J. shrank away from him. Flick shoved his feet into his boots without lacing them up and roughly pulled on his jacket. He grabbed his keys and his hat and stepped out into the hallway without saying another word, slamming the door behind him and stomping down the stairs.

He sat down at the bottom of the steps and exhaled raggedly, putting his face in his hands. He half hoped that C.J. would come after him—or at the very least that one of his neighbors would yell at him about the noise, because he felt like he deserved to be yelled at right now—but the entire building was quiet. After several minutes, he wiped his eyes, then laced his boots up tight, put on his hat, zipped up his jacket, and stepped outside.

It was a stupidly pretty night, with fat snowflakes drifting lazily in the yellow glow of the streetlights. Flick hated it. He wanted to scream or cry or break something, and he wished there was some abandoned building on his block so that he could have the pleasure of shattering some glass. He kicked a chunk of frozen slush that had been plowed onto the sidewalk, but it didn't particularly make him feel any better. He strode purposefully down the sidewalk; there was only one place he could think to go.

The front doors of the art building were already locked, even though it was only nine-thirty; maintenance must've closed up the building early on a Friday night. Flick continued down the sidewalk, through the parking lot to the back of the building, then he walked up to the door that led to the ceramics studio. The light was on inside, and when Flick peered through the window, he saw Bob working alone at a potter's wheel. Flick tapped on the glass, and when Bob didn't look up he knocked again, a little louder. Bob sat up, startled, but when he looked around and saw Flick's face in the window he smiled and walked over to let him in, turning off the radio on his way. “Hey, man,” Bob said. “I didn't think you were comin' by tonight.”

“I wasn't planning on it,” Flick said as he stepped inside. He took off his hat and coat and gloves and laid them on a table. “C.J. and I had a fight.”

“Bummer, dude. What happened?”

“He kissed someone else.”

Bob grimaced. “Ouch. I'm sorry to hear that.” He started back to the potter's wheel. “Better do some art therapy to get your mind off it, then. Maybe don't work on your bee tile, though, you don't want to wreck it. Come throw some pots with me. I can help you center the clay if you need me to.”

“N-no, that's not what I came here for. I came looking for you.”

“What's up?” Bob asked as he turned back to face Flick.

“I... I want to go home with you.”

Bob gave him a long look. “Liiike in a crashing on the couch kind of way...?”

“No, I mean...” Flick took a step closer to him. “With you.”

Bob held eye contact a second longer, then sat down at the potter's wheel. “You don't really mean that,” he said as he turned the wheel on.

“I do!” Flick insisted.

“Well, too bad, I changed my mind.”

Flick huffed.

Bob leaned into his clay, and after a moment said, “Flick, I'll do relationships based on love and I'll do relationships based on casual sex. But I don't do relationships based on revenge.”

Flick sat down on a work stool, leaning onto the table and resting his head on his folded arms.

Bob said, “Besides, you would regret it, and I don't want to be a part of that.” Flick didn't respond, and Bob continued shaping his vase at the wheel. After a few minutes, he asked, “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“No,” Flick grumbled without moving.

“Okey-dokey.”

But then Flick turned his head to the side and said, “He took this new friend ice fishing, only the friend thought they were on a date and kissed him. He says he kissed her back.”

“Is there anything going on between them?”

“He says there's not.”

“Do you have any reason to doubt him?”

“I don't know,” Flick said. Then he sighed and added, “I guess not.”

“Because these things happen. It sucks for everyone involved, but it just happens sometimes. And you just gotta move on from it.”

“He didn't tell me for, like, a week and a half.”

“I mean, yeah, that definitely bites. But do you think this was an easy thing for him to tell you?”

Flick sighed. “What if he wants some relationship with a girl? He's never, ya know... What if he just wants to experiment, and I let him do that, but then what if he falls in love with her and leaves me?”

“That's something you gotta talk about with him.”

Flick sat slouched at the table, lost in his thoughts for a long time, watching Bob glide his hands over the wet clay on his potter's wheel. After a while, Flick said, “You should kiss me.”

“That's a bad idea,” Bob responded without looking up from his clay.

“No, I mean, for science. Maybe I'm a bad kisser. And maybe now that C.J.'s kissed someone else, he's going to realize that, and he won't want to kiss me any more. You should kiss me so that I know whether or not I'm any good at it.”

“C.J.'s never kissed anyone but you before this?”

“No.”

Bob snickered, and muttered, “You guys are so freaking cute.” Then he said, “No, I don't need firsthand experience to know you're a good kisser, and a good everything-elser.”

“Why do you say that?”

Bob, for perhaps the first time ever, looked slightly embarrassed. He turned off his wheel and said, “Do you promise not to laugh at me?”

“Of course.”

Bob kept his eyes lowered as he spoke. “It's the way you handle your clay. You're so... attentive and respectful, like it's a living thing. I can see the care you put into it, and the way you use your hands, and... and I can extrapolate from there as to other activities.” He turned the potter's wheel back on and ran a scraper tool over the outside of the vase. “Besides, do you really think after kissing you for the past two years, C.J.'s going to decide now that you're a bad kisser?”

“Maybe. And it's only been a year and a half.”

“Like that makes a difference.”

Flick watched Bob work for a while longer, and then said, “Did you mean what you said? A-about me and clay?”

Bob didn't answer or look up at Flick, but he pursed his lips into a frown.

“Because that first night I met you, I was watching you at the wheel, and I remember thinking it was... It's like the clay comes alive under your hands. Except you get your whole body into it. I-I like to watch you work, I like the way you lean into it, or stand up to get a better angle, or the way you tense your muscles... You're responding to the clay as much as the clay responds to you, like a dance or like... And, and, it's like you said, it's easy to imagine... other things.”

Bob leaned back and rested his hands on his knees. “Flick...” he said.

“Yeah?”

Bob avoided Flick's gaze and instead watched his vase spin on the wheel for a moment, his brow furrowed. Then he pressed both his hands on the top of the vase and smashed it flat.

Flick sat up. “Hey, that was good, why'd you do that?”

“It was getting wobbly, and I didn't like the shape. And you're making me uncomfortable.” He flipped the switch on the wheel to turn it off and scraped off the clay, plopping it into a bucket at his feet.

Flick's shoulders slumped. “I'm sorry. I should leave. I'm fucking this up, too, like I fuck up everything else.”

“No,” Bob said as he stood up. “Nothing is fucked up. You're hurting right now and making some bad decisions. But nothing is fucked up. I'm gonna see you here again on Wednesday, and we're going to work on our art, and everything is going to be fine. You're going to have talked to C.J. by then, and whatever resolution comes of this, you're going to feel better about it than you do tonight. Nothing is fucked up.” He wiped his hands on a towel and walked toward Flick.

Flick's lower lips quivered. “But what if it is all my fault?” he asked in a quiet voice. “I've been so depressed and distant for so long. What if he finally figured out that he can do better than me?”

“I don't think that's the case.”

Flick took a ragged breath and pressed the heel of his palm across his cheeks to wipe away the tears.

Bob sighed, and said in a soft voice, “I'd hug ya, but I'd get you dirty.” He held out his still clay-smeared hands.

“I don't care.”

Bob walked up to where Flick sat on the stool and wrapped his arms around Flick's shoulders; Flick leaned into him to rest his head on Bob's chest, his arms limp at his sides. After a moment, Bob patted Flick's back and stepped back. “You're going to be all right. Whatever happens. It'll be all right.” He went to go clean his tools in the sink, then he wiped down the wheel where he'd been working and closed up the bucket of clay. He washed his hands and put his coat on. Flick, this whole time, didn't move. Bob said, “You should go home and talk to C.J.”

“I will,” Flick said.

“He's probably worried sick right now, and I know that you love him and you don't want to worry him.”

Flick sighed.

“I'm gonna head out, but I'll see you Wednesday, okay? And you can text me if you wanna talk.”

Flick nodded.

He patted Flick's shoulder once more before he left, and said, “Everything's gonna be all right, Flick. I promise.”

Flick nodded again, and Bob let himself out the studio door.

It was true that Flick didn't exactly want to worry C.J., but he also couldn't make himself go home right now. He sat there in silence for a long time, before finally standing up and taking his bee tile off the project shelf. But as soon as he set it on the table, he felt shaky and dizzy, and he knew he couldn't work on it tonight. He laid some fresh wet paper towel over the clay, wrapped the plastic bag back around it and placed it back on the shelf. He put his jacket and hat and gloves back on, turned off the lights, and headed outside.

It was after eleven now, and had stopped snowing. On the other side of the parking lot was one of the on-campus dormitories, and in the distance Flick heard the drunken revelry of screamed laughter; he narrowed his eyes and remembered why he didn't like to go out on Friday nights. He turned his collar up against the cold and shoved his hands in his pockets and started his walk away from the noise of other people.

He made his way to Peace Park, and thought about how much he missed that wild, overgrown ravine by his dad's house in the suburbs. Peace Park was fine, but it was too tidy and manicured. Still, it was quiet and empty right now, and Flick walked slowly down the trail that went past the playground and the fountain that had been turned off for the winter, through the sculpture garden, alongside the creek, and into the little patch of trees that passed for a forest, and then Flick could relax a bit. He found himself thinking about where he might like to live in the future. There was no denying he felt infinitely calmer in the solitude of nature, but he also appreciated the museums and restaurant delivery and street art of the city, and living in either place—the city or the countryside—without a driver's license meant not having easy access to the other, and, at least right now, relying on C.J. to drive him places felt uncomfortably precarious. He imagined living alone as a hermit out in the wilderness, biking into town once or twice a month for supplies and culture, but then he thought of his father, who was really not all that old, and his bad knees, and he felt disgusted that even his own body, young and healthy as it was right now, would someday betray him. Life, tonight, felt like a raw deal.

Flick circled through the short forest trail and made his way back to the sculpture garden, kicking snow off a bench and sitting down. He was so tired. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes and—just for a minute, he thought—he laid down on the bench. The snow had started to fall again, just a few stray flakes sifting down, but Flick imagined a blizzard coming in, burying him and the bench under a mound of snow that wouldn't melt until the end of April. I'm not sleeping, he told himself, I just need to rest for a minute. But falling asleep and getting swallowed up by the snow felt like an elegant solution; he already slept so much anyway, and what would it matter if one of these times he didn't wake up? But C.J. would be sad, he thought; he opened his eyes and shifted his weight, but didn't get up. It was probably not cold enough to freeze to death anyway, at least not before somebody found him or his own body's stupid survival instinct roused him. Although there was a pharmacy not too far away from here, he could go buy pills and... No, he thought as he rolled onto his side and crooked an arm under his head. I'm not sleeping, I just need to rest for a bit. He closed his eyes again.

It felt like only seconds had passed before he was jolted awake by the smack of something hitting the bench and an unfamiliar voice talking to him. “What the fuck,” Flick muttered as he sat up.

There was a police officer standing beside him, a baton in one hand. “I said, you can't sleep here.”

“It's a public park,” Flick argued, rubbing his eyes.

“Park is closed between ten p.m. and six a.m.”

“I'm not hurting anyone by being here. Just let me rest.”

“Listen princess,” the officer said, adjusting his stance. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Go ahead and shoot me, you fucking pig, Flick thought. But when he glanced over at the actual gun holstered on the cop's hip, he felt a shiver of panic sweep through him. “O-okay, okay, I'm getting up.” Snow fell off him as he stood and he was about to dust himself off but then felt scared about doing anything with his hands, in case the officer thought he was reaching for a weapon. “I'm leaving,” he said, and started down the path.

The officer called after him, “Nearest shelter's at twenty-second west. Beds are probably full for the night, but they might let you wait out the night in the lobby.”

Flick didn't respond. He kept walking until he reached the road, and then he walked to the corner before he dared to glance over his shoulder. There was no sign of the police officer, or anyone else. Flick batted the rest of the snow off his pants and jacket, then took off his hat and shook it out. He took out his phone to check the time: one thirty-seven a.m. This was the first time he'd looked at his phone since leaving the apartment, and he was disappointed to see that C.J. had not called or texted. But then, he had yelled at C.J. not to talk to him. Flick cringed, remembering how he had behaved. Maybe he was overreacting, maybe Bob was right that these things sometimes happen and he just had to move on from it. But it hurt so much to think of C.J. kissing someone else, and then keeping it a secret for a week and a half. Flick's eyes teared up again now, just thinking about the conversation.

He didn't want to worry C.J. He actually desperately wanted to be home with C.J. right now; he was feeling sad and lonely and scared, and whenever he felt this way, it was C.J. that always helped him feel better. But C.J. was the one who had hurt him tonight, and Flick didn't know what to do. He wandered through downtown, avoiding the blocks with rowdy crowds in front of clubs or bars, and eventually came upon a twenty-four hour diner. He stood on the sidewalk and double checked that he had his wallet in his pocket, then stepped inside.

From behind the counter, the waitress said to him, “Go ahead and have a seat anywhere, I'll be with you in a minute.”

Flick glanced around, and in the back of the diner was a booth crammed with people that all looked vaguely familiar, then one face in particular stood out. “Flick!” Ankha waved to him from across the diner. “Come sit with us!”

“N-no thanks,” Flick said.

“C'mon! We can make space for you,” Ankha said. A few other people looked up at him now, too.

“No,” Flick said. “I kinda want to be alone right now.”

“Aww, all right,” Ankha said. “If you change your mind, though, come on over.”

Flick gave her a weak smile, then slid into the booth furthest away from Ankha and her friends, his back to them.

The waitress walked up to his booth with a pitcher of ice water and a menu. As she filled up his glass, she said, “I'll be right back to take your order.”

“A-actually,” Flick said, sliding the menu back to her. “I just want a cup of coffee.”

“No problem. Regular or decaf?”

“Regular, please.”

“Coming right up.”

The cheerful conversation of Ankha and her friends from across the diner was grating and Flick dug through his jacket pockets for some earbuds; as he did, his fingers touched a plastic baggie that he knew held a joint and Flick felt an instant sense of relief. He considered stepping outside and smoking now, but just then the waitress returned to his table and filled up his coffee. He smiled a thank you to her, then continued digging around his pockets. When he found his earbuds, he plugged them into his phone and turned on his music just loud enough to hurt a little, which helped take his mind off any other pain. He had also found in his pockets a mechanical pencil, and so he flipped over the paper placemat in front of him and began methodically filling it with tiny, detailed drawings of honey bees, bee after bee, a whole swarm, letting himself get lost in the veining of the wings, the segmentation of the legs, the delicate curve of the antennae. When he had filled the first placemat, he reached across the table for another. The waitress came to refill his coffee three times; he noticed only when he went to take a sip and found the coffee-to-creamer ratio to be off.

When he filled the second placemat, he finally sat up, cracking his neck as he stretched. He tentatively pulled an earbud out and found the diner to be silent; when he glanced behind him he saw Ankha and her friends had left, and he was currently the only customer in the diner. Then a smell caught his attention, fresh baked goods, and when he looked over to the kitchen he saw someone pulling a tray of biscuits out of an oven, and Flick realized they must be getting ready for the morning customers. He checked the time on his phone: three fifty-seven a.m. He looked around for the waitress but didn't see her, so he gathered up his things, left five hundred bells on the table along with his bee drawings, and stepped outside. Now, finally, he started for home, but when he passed a dark and empty alley he ducked into it, crouching next to a dumpster, and smoked the joint he found in his pocket, hoping to steady his nerves and his shaking hands.

It was four forty-two when Flick again stood in front of his apartment building. As he looked up at the third floor from the street, he hoped that C.J. had fallen asleep with the lights on, but as soon as he opened the door to their apartment, C.J. was there waiting for him. “Thank god you're home,” C.J. said, hugging Flick tightly around the chest before Flick had even had a chance to shut the door behind him, burying his face in Flick's neck.

Flick held back only for a second before wrapping his arms around C.J.'s shoulders. “Of course I came home.”

C.J. pulled back, and Flick could see that his eyes were moist. “Where were you?”

“Out,” Flick answered cryptically as he closed the door and hung up his jacket. Then he said, “I went looking for Bob. I was going to... well, I don't know what I would have actually done. But I went out with the intention of spending the night with him.” He glanced over at C.J., whose face was tense as he held his breath. “He turned me down,” Flick said.

C.J. exhaled. As Flick took his boots off, C.J, asked, “Flick, is there anything going on between you and Bob?”

“No.”

“Did you want there to be?”

“No,” Flick said again as he walked to the couch.

“Because if you do—”

Flick cut him off. “I don't,” he said. Then he sighed and said, “I don't. I just... I wanted to hurt you.”

“Yeah, that woulda done it,” C.J. said as he sat down opposite Flick on the couch.

They were silent for a moment, then Flick said, “And then I went to Peace Park for a while, but a cop was harassing me. So I went to some diner and drank coffee for a few hours. And then I came home.” C.J. reached out and tentatively touched the shoulder of Flick's t-shirt. Flick looked now, too, pulling at the cloth for a better view, and saw a distinct terracotta handprint. “I was crying, Bob gave me a hug.” They both let go of Flick's shirt. Flick slouched and rested his head on the back of the couch. Then he said, “Tell me why you kissed her.”

“I kissed her because she kissed me. And because I'd been enjoying her company and I wanted her to like me, like I want everyone to like me. Because I feel this compulsion to give people what they want, even if... even if it's not what I want.” He took a breath. “And I didn't tell you because I was embarrassed, and I knew you'd be mad—and, like, rightfully so. But I was going to tell you! That was always my plan. I kept saying to myself that I was just waiting for the right time, but... I, I was just scared, I guess.”

“Do you have any feelings for her?”

“I have absolutely no romantic or sexual feelings for her.”

Flick sighed. “What kind of feelings do you have for her, then?”

“W-well...” C.J. began. “Like I said, I was enjoying her company, and I'd been expecting we could be friends, s-so I guess I'm kinda sad that it didn't work out the way I'd been hoping. And she was so embarrassed afterward and I feel bad about that, too. Like, was I unintentionally leading her on? Was I misreading signals? She and I haven't been in touch at all since then—I haven't even been to Brewster's—so I don't know how she's doing, and I feel kinda guilty, I guess, about that. Like, you are absolutely my priority, but I also feel bad that I made her feel uncomfortable, too.” He paused. “Um. I... I don't know if this is going to make you feel better or worse about it, but, like, you were totally right that I should have been calling you my boyfriend on the livestream. She had found my stream, a-and she had said that since I didn't mention any partner, she assumed I was single. And, I guess, straight, too.”

After a pause, Flick said, “Did you want some kind of intimate relationship with her? Or with anyone else?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“You told me once a long time ago that you were about ten percent interested in girls. I don't really share that desire, so I-I don't know. Aren't you, you know, curious?” He turned to face C.J.

C.J. grimaced. “Do we have to talk about this?”

“Humor me.”

C.J. sighed. “I guess? But, I mean, I'm also curious what it would be like to walk on the moon, that doesn't mean I want to actually do it.”

“I daresay having sex with a woman is a bit more of an achievable goal than walking on the moon.”

“Well, okay, but, walking on the moon means going through years of astronaut training and then risking my life by stepping into a rocket and flying up there. It's possible, but it would be super complicated and unlikely. Having an intimate relationship with someone else would mean not having the same kind of relationship I have with you right now. It's possible, sure, but... it would be indescribably difficult.”

Flick turned his gaze back up to the ceiling. “I don't think it would be all that difficult. I'm not exactly easy to live with or easy to love. And even though I know nothing about Margie, I'm fairly certain she's a better person overall than I am. Unless maybe you just have a thing for nutcases.”

“Flick, no,” C.J. leaned forward. “Have you been blaming yourself? What happened with Margie has nothing to do with you. It's just a stupid mistake I made because of my own stupid problems.” He paused. “But, um, I-I do have another confession I want to make.”

Flick braced himself, and waited for C.J. to continue.

“I, um, th-that night when we had the fight about the figure drawing class...” He took a breath. “When I didn't know where you were, I, uh, I went through your things to try to figure it out. A-and I found the antidepressants in your nightstand.”

“Oh,” Flick exhaled. “I mean, it's definitely not cool that you were going through my things, but... yeah.”

“How long have you been taking them?”

“I'm actually not taking them any more,” Flick said. “They weren't doing anything but making me dizzy and sleepy. I mean sleepier than usual.”

“You never told me you were taking them.”

“I don't think it's any of your business.”

C.J. took a breath, then said, “I disagree. As your partner, as someone who loves you, if you're hurting that much, I feel like I should know about it. Like, maybe I don't need the details as to which medication or side effects or what you might talk about in therapy or whatever. But I want to know enough about what's going on and how you're feeling so that I can support you.” He paused, then said, “Are, are you going to therapy or anything?”

Flick snorted. “I have done therapy so many times and it's been useless every single time.”

“When was this?”

“My dad sent me a bunch. Beginning after Mom died, and then whenever I would start acting up. The last time was when I was, mmm, maybe fifteen-ish?”

“So since I've known you?”

Flick nodded.

“Okay, you never told me that, either.”

Flick sighed. “C.J., I'm already enough of a fuck-up and a flake. I didn't want you to think I was completely broken.”

“Flick, I am not going to think that you're broken for going to therapy or taking antidepressants. These are good things, I want you to take care of yourself.” Then he said gently, “Might not be a bad idea to try therapy again. Maybe it would work out better if you're doing it on your own terms and not just because your dad is forcing you to.”

“When I went to the clinic, they could send me home with antidepressants the same day as my appointment, but there was an eight to twelve week wait for therapy.”

“Might be worth looking into, though.”

“I-I'm already on the waiting list.”

“Oh, good,” C.J. breathed a big sigh of relief. “Good. I am so glad to hear that. Thank you for taking the initiative to take care of yourself, and thank you for telling me.”

Flick closed his eyes, and they sat there on the couch in silence for several minutes. Then he said, “If it's true what you said, that you don't have feelings for her and don't want an intimate relationship with her, then how come you haven't been having sex with me?” He waited, and when C.J. didn't immediately answer, he opened his eyes and turned to face him

C.J. held eye contact with him for a moment, then patiently said, “Because if you're going to break up with me over this, I didn't want you to feel like I was physically taking advantage of you while I was withholding this information.”

“Oh,” Flick said, and turned back to the ceiling. It was a kinder and more generous explanation than he'd been anticipating, and then he felt bad for expecting anything less from C.J. “I don't think I want to break up with you, but... I don't know what I want. I mean, you have to admit that neither of us have been particularly happy. Maybe this just wasn't meant to be, maybe you'd be better off with someone like Margie, and maybe I'd be better off alone. Maybe it was a mistake thinking we could be partners and build a life together. Maybe we're better off as just friends.”

“That's a lot of maybes,” C.J. said.

Flick turned to face him again and gave him a small, sad smile. “Maybe I'm wrong.”

C.J. reached across the couch and held Flick's hand. “I hope to god you're wrong.”

Flick wrapped his fingers around C.J.'s. “Me too.”

C.J. leaned in closer to him, then stopped, and said quietly, “Flick, can I kiss you?”

Flick was surprised to realize he had to think about it, and even more surprised by the answer he reached. “No.”

C.J. leaned back onto the couch, and started to pull his hand away, but Flick held on tight.

C.J. asked, “D-do you want me to sleep on the couch? Or... I could stay at my dad's.”

“No, you can come to bed.”

“But is that what you want?”

This time Flick only had to think about it for a second. “Yes, I want you to come to bed. I think I just... need some time and space to figure things out. I don't really know what that's going to look like or how long it's going to take. But I want you here. I don't want you to leave.” C.J. squeezed his hand, and Flick let himself relax incrementally under his touch. Then a thought popped into his head and he sat up suddenly. “C.J.! You have a charter tomorrow! Today! In, like, an hour! And I've kept you up all night waiting and worrying about me!” His eyes started to tear up again, this time in shame. “Oh, C.J., I'm so sorry, I totally forgot, I—”

C.J. cut him off. “It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. I texted my dad hours ago and told him I had food poisoning. He's taking my charter today. I told him I could take his tomorrow if I'm feeling better.”

Flick, in spite of everything, laughed under his breath. “C.J., you never lie to your dad.”

“I've lied to my dad before,” C.J. said, smiling a little now. “And it's usually been because of you, although in the past it's always been because of happier circumstances.”

Flick smirked. “Like that time coming home from Daisy Lake, when we quote-unquote ran out of gas, and didn't get home until two hours past curfew.”

“Heh heh.”

They were still holding hands, and Flick right now ached for the familiar comfort of C.J.'s body. Instead he slipped his hand out of C.J.'s and said, “We should both probably get some sleep.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Flick undressed in the bedroom while C.J. was in the bathroom, and although he normally slept only in his underwear, tonight he pulled on sweatpants and a t-shirt. C.J., when he came into the bedroom, looked at Flick and then did the same. They turned off the lights and laid side by side in bed. Flick reached across under the covers to find C.J.'s hand again and gave it a squeeze, then rolled over onto his side, his back to C.J.

But when he woke up hours later, he found himself nestled up close to C.J., his arm draped over his chest, their feet mingling under the blankets. Then as he woke up more fully, he became aware of another body part reacting the way it did every other morning when he woke up next to C.J. He arched his hips away from C.J.'s body but left his arm on his chest for just a moment before pulling that away, too, and rolling back over to face the other way. He reached for his phone to check the time and saw that it was just after ten. Four-ish hours of sleep didn't seem like enough, but Flick couldn't get back to sleep now either, so he just laid there. After a while, C.J. turned over in his sleep and slid his hand over Flick's hip. Flick didn't move. Then C.J. froze and snatched his hand back as if from a hot stove, and he rolled over away from Flick.

This was not what Flick wanted, not by a long shot. In the light of morning, the whole Margie situation didn't seem as dire as it did yesterday; Flick found he was not angry with C.J. for having kissed her—it did truly sound like just a misunderstanding—and was only a little angry that he had kept it a secret. But he was frightened at the intensity of his own reaction. It didn't seem healthy that his own mental health hinged so heavily on a relationship with someone else, and he knew it wasn't fair to C.J. for him to feel responsible for that. If C.J. knew what he'd been contemplating, however idly, in the park last night, he would be rightfully horrified. That, too, seemed absurd now. He knew he didn't really want to die, he just wanted to feel better, he just needed some release of pressure. It would have been so easy right now to roll over and press his body against C.J.'s, to forget everything that happened last night and to drown out his feelings in the haze of sex. But it also felt necessary that Flick take some responsibility for his own happiness and well being, independent of C.J. It didn't feel like his relationship with C.J. was a source of stress, but Flick was so overwhelmed right now it was hard to tell. He needed some small measure of distance to figure out what he needed and wanted out of life. As awful as it is, this is just the way it has to be right now, he thought.

Chapter Text

It wasn't as bad as C.J. had first feared, being sort of half broken up. It was bad, sure, but not as unbearable as he'd been anticipating that first night. It helped that on Saturday, as C.J. was brushing his teeth, Flick leaned in the open bathroom door and, with his eyes lowered to the ground, said, “Hey, C.J.? I-I just want to say that I'm not mad at you. Like, I'm not dwelling on... you know. It's just that the whole thing with Margie was kind of an impetus for, for some personal reflection, a-and I feel like I need to take some time and think about whether or not I should be in any relationship at all with anyone. But I just want to say that it's not about you, okay? It, it's just my own issues that I need to work through. And, like, whatever I decided, whatever I might do, I-I want you to know that it's not your fault. Okay?”

C.J. spit out his toothpaste and rinsed his mouth. “Okay,” he said, and wiped his face with a towel. “Can I ask you a question?”

Flick shrugged and said, “Sure.”

“When you say you're figuring out whether or not you should be in a relationship, is this, like, a self-esteem thing?”

Flick fidgeted and said, “Not exactly...”

“Because if we're getting things out in the open, I want to say that I hope you know that you deserve to be loved. Like, even if you decide it's not going to be with me. You deserve love and care and kindness and all that. I want to make that super fucking obvious, okay?”

Flick smirked and rolled his eyes. “Okay,” he said indulgently. “That's not really what this is about. But okay.” And he walked away.

The majority of their day to day lives were not really all that different, being sort of half broken up, just kind of awkward and fumbling, with random moments of tension or uncomfortable distance. But they had years of friendship behind them, and that was a foundation they could fall back on now. They still shared a bed, and meals, and some conversation, although not as much as they had before. But they did not share any physical intimacy or the words I love you, both of which were hard habits to break, because C.J. did love Flick—wildly, fiercely, unconditionally. He thought maybe he should have kept saying it, regardless of Flick's reaction, but he also knew without a doubt that if he told Flick that he loved him and Flick did not say it back, that it would have been more than he could bear. And, he reasoned, perhaps Flick did not want to be burdened with someone else's feelings right now. So C.J. tried hard to be patient as Flick figured out whatever it was he needed to figure out, and he let Flick take the lead.

On Wednesday, he was in the middle of his morning livestream when the front door opened unexpectedly and in walked Flick. Startled, C.J. looked over at him, gave him a brief smile, then turned back to his computer screen. “Sorry about that, folks,” he said to the chat, and went back to talking about trout. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Flick left his boots and jacket and backpack by the door and headed off to the bedroom, then seconds later Flick's username popped up in the chat. C.J. smiled—and he hoped Flick noticed his smile—but he otherwise did not acknowledge Flick, and he continued on with the stream as planned. When he finished up an hour later, he headed over to the bedroom where Flick was in bed under the covers, his phone propped up on C.J.'s pillow, still open to the livestream's page. “Hey,” C.J. said gently as he sat down next to him. “Don't you normally have a shift at the library today?”

“Yup,” Flick answered without looking at him.

“You didn't go Monday or Tuesday either.”

“Nope.”

After a pause, he said, “Are you going to officially let them know that you're quitting?”

Flick said, “They'll figure it out.” Then he sighed and rolled onto his back to look up at C.J. “I'm sorry, I'll look for something different when I'm done with my little breakdown.”

“It's fine. Don't rush it,” C.J. said. “And don't force yourself. Take as much time as you need, okay?”

Flick scowled and looked like he was about to argue, but instead he closed his eyes and took a long breath. After a minute, he opened his eyes again and said to C.J., “You sounded good on your stream today. Especially considering all the drama going on at home right now.”

C.J. smiled. “The stream is a good outlet for all my goofiness. And I don't know if it's healthy or not, but I've always been good at compartmentalizing.”

Flick smiled back. “You're a better person than me.”

C.J. shook his head. “Not better. Just different.”

Flick sighed and rolled onto his side to face his phone again; he scrolled for a few seconds, then turned it off.

After a minute, C.J. said, “I was going to go get groceries. Is there anything you want me to pick up for you?”

He was expecting Flick to mope and say he didn't need anything. But instead he half rolled over to face C.J. again and said, “Could you get more of those crackers you got last time? The rosemary garlic ones?”

C.J. brightened a little to have been given a task. “Yeah, definitely. Anything else?”

Flick shook his head.

“I'll be back soon,” he said, and put his hand briefly on Flick's shoulder.

As C.J. stood up, Flick said, “C.J.?”

C.J. turned around.”Hmm?”

“Could you also please get my water bottle from my backpack and fill it up for me?”

“Absolutely,” C.J. said with a smile. It felt good to be needed, even for something as tiny as this. In the kitchen, C.J. opened up the water bottle, but when he noticed the plastic straw inside felt slimy, he took the whole thing apart and washed it with hot, soapy water before filling it up and bringing it to Flick.

Flick gave him a smile as he took the water bottle. “Thank you.”

“Any time.”

While he went shopping, he resisted filling up the cart with all of Flick's favorites—he didn't want to overdo it—and instead bought only what was on the list, plus the crackers Flick asked for. When he got home, he poked his head around the bedroom curtain. Flick was sitting propped up with pillows, scrolling on his phone. C.J. smiled, and as he stepped into the room he said, “Hey, babe, I got the crackers you asked for.” Then he paused, and added, “Er, sorry.”

“For what?” Flick asked as he took the box of crackers.

C.J. sat down on the bed next to him again. “I don't know if I should be calling you pet names if our relationship is, ya know, kind of ambiguous at the moment.”

“Oh,” Flick said, and his shoulders slumped. Then he shrugged and said, “It's fine.” And then he looked up shyly at CJ. and said, “I like it.” But then he amended, “But you don't have to.” And then finally he said, “You can call me whatever you want.”

C.J. smirked. “So I could call you angelfish or lovebug or cutie pie or sugar plum or—”

“Stop!” Flick laughed, and kicked him from under the blanket. “Call me what you normally call me! Ya weirdo.”

C.J smiled at him. “I'm glad I'm still able to make you laugh.”

Flick pretended to pout. “It's no fair. Here I am trying to fester and you're ruining it.”

“I ain't sorry,” C.J. said, as he went back to the kitchen to put away the rest of the groceries.

Flick stayed in the bedroom the rest of the afternoon, and when C.J. peeked inside a few hours later, he was asleep. C.J. started cooking dinner around six, and Flick emerged from the bedroom half an hour later. He shuffled into the kitchen and looked over the pots and pans on the stove top, then he leaned against the counter and said, “You shouldn't cook dinner for me if you don't even know if I'm going to be awake to eat it.”

“Maybe I wanted leftovers,” C.J. said.

“There's, like, four meals worth of fish here.”

“Maybe I wanted a lot of leftovers.” He turned off the heat on the stove top and moved the fish to paper towel to drain. “Get yourself a plate,” he said to Flick.

Flick took two plates from the cupboard and handed one to C.J. As they ate, Flick said, “I'm going to go to the ceramics studio tonight. I, um, I'll probably be there until late. I have a lot of work I need to do. The submission deadline for the student art show is March fifteenth.”

“That's, like, six weeks away,” C.J. said, thinking that was a long way off.

But Flick said, “I know. There's not much time.”

“You're still working on that bee thing?”

“Uh-huh. And it's so big, it's going to take, like, a week to dry fully before I can fire it. Bob usually starts the kiln Friday nights, s-so it can run overnight and then cool over the weekend and he can unload it on Monday. So I want to try to finish my tile by this Friday so that it has time to dry and so we can fire it next Friday.”

“And then you'll have to fire it again after you glaze it, right?”

Flick turned to give him a small smile. “Normally, yeah, you would. But I want to paint it instead. I think I'll have better control of the colors, and I'll be able to work in more fine details. But I've never painted on ceramics before, so I-I need to figure that out, too.” He poked his fork at the food on his plate. “You know, when you bisque fire clay, if there's an air bubble, or if it's too thick or too wet or something, sometimes the piece will crack or break. And people usually just throw the broken pieces away. B-but I've been collecting other people's broken bisqueware for the past few weeks, s-so I can practice painting on them before I tackle my bee tile.”

“That's a clever idea,” C.J. said.

“It feels a little weird. Digging through the trash at night and stealing other people's abandoned art.”

“If it's in the garbage, they clearly don't want it.”

“Yeah. And obviously it doesn't bother me enough that I don't do it.” Flick put his dirty dishes in the sink. “And then I have to figure out a way to hang the tile. It's so big, I feel like it would be too heavy to just carve a nail hole in the back. So I think I'm going to have to build some custom wood frame, too.”

“Geez,” C.J. said, putting his own dishes in the sink now. “Six weeks doesn't seem like much time any more.”

“That's what I'm saying.”

“You know,” C.J. said. “My dad has a ton of scrap lumber in the basement. Some nice stuff, too. Oak and maple and who knows what else. I could get it for you, for the frame. Whatever tools and hardware you might need, too. It would at least save you a shopping trip.”

Flick looked at him. “Your dad wouldn't mind?”

“Definitely not.”

“Y-yeah, maybe,” Flick said. “Maybe I could go over there with you, in like a week or two, and look it over?”

“Sounds good to me. Fair warning, though my dad'll probably want you to stay for dinner.”

“Hmm. I'll think about it, I'll see how I feel.”

“All right.”

C.J. went to bed that night missing Flick, but feeling good about the day, like he and Flick had connected more than they had the last few days prior. But when he woke up the next morning, he was still alone, and Flick's side of the bed was cold. C.J. laid still and listened for a moment, but the apartment was silent. He reached over and checked his phone, but there were no messages from Flick. He stayed in bed for what felt like a long time, trying to gather his thoughts.

When he stepped out from behind the bedroom curtain he saw Flick, still in his clothes, asleep on the couch, and he breathed a small sigh of relief that at least Flick was home. He walked up to him and gently shook his shoulder. “Hey, Flick, do you have class this morning?”

Flick startled awake and muttered, “Shit. Fuck.” He sat up and said, “What time is it?”

“Twenty after nine.”

Flick groaned. “Art history starts in ten minutes.” Then he leaned back on the couch and said, “Fuck it.” He closed his eyes again.

C.J. went to use the bathroom, and when he came back out, Flick was still slumped on the couch. C.J. went to the kitchen to pour himself a bowl of cereal. After a minute, Flick rubbed his face, muttering something to himself, then got up and walked into the kitchen, too. He started the kettle for tea, then sat down next to C.J. at the kitchen island. C.J. turned off his phone as Flick sat down. Flick said, “I-I didn't mean to fall asleep on the couch. It's not, like, a meaningful thing. Just so you know.”

“Okay,” C.J. said.

Flick leaned onto the counter, then inched his forearm over so that it was touching C.J.'s, and C.J. untensed at his touch. Flick said, “I didn't get home until almost two, and then I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to keep you up with my tossing and turning.”

C.J. considered how to reply. He wanted to say, I always want you to come to bed, I don't care if you keep me up, or, I'm just glad you're home, or, What's on your mind that you weren't able to sleep? But he wasn't sure if any of those were appropriate for what their relationship was right now. So he just sat there, feeling the warmth of Flick's arm on his, and after a moment he said, “Did you get some good work done on your bee tile?”

Flick took a breath and said, “I did. Yeah. I think the bee part is done. Tomorrow I'm going to start etching the apple blossoms in the background. And then some ancient Greek style border around the edge.” Flick shifted his weight, and it felt as if he was going to lean into C.J., or at least that's what C.J. wanted to imagine, but then he sat upright again, although he left their arms touching, and after a minute he said, “Last night was the first time I've seen Bob since, you know, F-Friday. I wasn't sure how it would go, what it would feel like. But it was all right. He didn't bring up any of... ya know... And we just talked about art and stuff, or we worked in silence, and he left around ten. It was like nothing had happened.” He swallowed. “I was kind of afraid he wouldn't show up, or that things would be awkward or bad or... I don't know...”

C.J. waited for the familiar pinch of jealousy whenever Flick talked about Bob, but it didn't come. Flick seemed to be waiting for something, too, so after a moment, C.J. said, “Obviously I wasn't there, but I've known you for a long time, and I can't imagine you doing anything unforgivable. And from what you've told me, Bob sounds like a good friend. I'm glad you two were able to move on from it.” As he spoke, he was surprised to realize he actually meant it.

He felt Flick take a breath beside him. Then the kettle whistled, and Flick got up to start his tea.

During Flick's first week of unemployment, he spent a lot of time sleeping at odd hours, but the second week he was restless. On Monday and Tuesday, he went for long walks in the afternoons, seemingly timing it right after C.J. started some work on his computer, as if Flick didn't want him to ask to come with. Tuesday night after dinner, they were on the couch, and C.J. was already a little sad that Flick was sitting upright, and not laying down and resting his feet in C.J.'s lap as he always had before. C.J. said to him, “Hey, so I'm about to send out an update to my followers, but just to let you know, for my stream tomorrow I was going to head out to the ice house. I know you and I talked about going out there together, but, uh...”

“Yeah,” Flick said, and smiled gently. “Some other time, maybe.”

So although he felt gloomy about it, C.J. wrote up a cheerful update to his followers about ice fishing, then he idly scrolled through social media on his phone, swiping past pictures and videos and not really looking at anything.

After a minute, Flick said to him, “So, um, h-how long do you think you'll be gone tomorrow?”

C.J. set his phone down. “I usually plan to stream from ten to noon for Wednesday mornings, although sometimes it runs late. Plus drive time out to Fern Lake, and time to get everything set up and taken down again... Probably from nine to one or so.” Then, without thinking, he asked, “Why?”

“Um...” Flick started.

Something about Flick's evasiveness made C.J. feel a little panicky as he considered possibilities as to why Flick might want him out of the apartment, and then he realized he didn't actually want to know the details, so he quickly added, “Never mind. I don't need to know.”

“No, no, it's not... I don't know what you're thinking. But it's just that...” Flick fidgeted with his fingernails. “W-well, in the fall, when you were doing more charters, and more charters during the week, sometimes I'd skip classes or work just so that I could have the apartment to myself for a few hours. S-so, um, I was just thinking I might skip American Lit tomorrow morning while you were gone so that, uh...”

“Oh,” C.J. said, feeling a little dejected. “Yeah, I guess I can get kinda clingy.”

“No no no no no.” Flick moved closer to him on the couch and put both hands on his arm. “I promise it's nothing to do with you. Or anyone else. It's just me being... me. Like I need silence and solitude to reset my nervous system.”

“Oh,” C.J. said again, relaxing a little now. “That makes sense. I mean, I don't... I hate being alone—ya know? But that makes sense for you. And I probably shoulda thought about that months ago.” He furrowed his brow.

“I probably should have said something months ago,” Flick said.

“Yeah,” C.J. agreed. Then, with a sinking feeling, he realized something else. “So I guess my little fantasy of putting a camper on the trunk and the two of us going on some epic road trip wouldn't really work out, then, would it? Like it would feel too claustrophobic for you or something.”

“No, it can still work,” Flick said, leaning into C.J.'s shoulder now and holding his hand. Then he let go again and stammered, “I mean, it could, I mean...” He took a breath. “I was assuming we'd just have to be more intentional about it. Like while you're streaming, I would be off hunting bugs, or resting in the camper, or you could even drop me off somewhere in town, wherever we are, and then pick me up when you're done. And we'd still spend most of the time together, but I'd have a little bit of breathing space, too.”

“Yeah, I guess,” C.J. said, taking some comfort in the fact that Flick still wanted this, was still considering a future with him. Flick's hand was at his wrist, and he decided to take a risk and take Flick's hand in his, and he was relieved that Flick did not resist. “So why can't we be intentional about it now? I mean, unless I'm specifically streaming, most of the crap I do on my computer I could do on my laptop at the library or whatever. I can plan it around your schedule so that you don't have to skip classes.”

“I dunno, I think I'd probably skip classes sometimes anyway,” Flick said. Then he added, “But that feels, like, very different to me. Like, I don't like kicking you out of your own apartment, that you're paying all the rent on right now.”

“But you're not kicking me out,” C.J. said. “It's not, like, a mean thing. You're just trying to get your needs met. And it would probably be good for me to get out of the house more often anyway, right?”

Flick shrugged.

C.J. continued. “I mean, it feels like maybe we just got stuck in some routine that's not really serving either of us. So why shouldn't we try changing it up?”

Flick sighed. “Because you're always talking about wanting to spend more time with me and here I am pushing you away.”

“Well, but I sure as hell don't want you to resent spending time with me. That's not what I'm after.”

“No, no, I don't resent it,” Flick said, and slouched to rest his head on C.J.'s shoulder. This was physically closer than Flick had been to him in a long time, and he could feel as Flick realized that, too; Flick tensed for a second, then relaxed against C.J.'s body. “I don't want you to think I resent it.”

Flick sounded so sad, and C.J. squeezed his hand. “Okay. I don't.” After a minute, he said, “And I don't think you're pushing me away, either. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that's what you're trying to do. I think you're just trying to give yourself what you need.”

“But wouldn't you rather have a partner who wants to be with you as much as you want to be with them?”

“I want a partner who is happy with me,” C.J. said, and thought, I want you to be happy with me. But even with Flick nestled into his side, that seemed like too intimate a statement right now. So instead he said,”You mentioned once wishing we had a room with a door—like, other than the bathroom. We could maybe look for a different apartment. Like a one or two bedroom.”

“We can't afford that. Besides, to be fair we'd need a three bedroom—a room for me, and room for you and a room for...” He paused. “A room for us.”

“I don't need a separate room for my computer stuff.”

“But—” Flick began.

C.J., anticipating what he thought Flick was about to say, cut him off. “I mean, yeah, eventually, it would be nice to have a dedicated room for streaming with, like, proper lighting and soundproofing and all that. But I don't need that right now. I'm fine just setting up in some random corner.”

Flick paused, then said, “But you said you wanted to save up to travel, too. Like, take a year off and drive around.”

C.J. smiled, glad that Flick had, in fact, been paying attention to what he said. “Yeah, but that doesn't need to happen this year. Buying a camper is expensive, and building one—especially building one sturdy enough and properly outfitted enough for us to live in for months at a stretch—is a more complicated construction project than I've done before. And also probably expensive. And I haven't done any proper research other than following a few vanlife streams. What I should do if I'm serious is start doing some reading now, and then maybe build out the shell over this summer so that I can work on interior construction next winter and spring. Then the following summer we could set out.”

Flick, still resting his head on C.J.'s shoulder, said, “I could help with building it, if you tell me what to do. And you should stream the construction, too. I bet your viewers would be interested in your process, or at least I bet you could make it interesting.”

“Ha! Yeah, I should,” C.J. said. It felt so good to be making plans with Flick, his warm body nestled against his.

But then Flick sat up and looked at him. “But if we're renting a bigger and more expensive apartment, it's going to be a lot harder to save up for this. Especially if I'm minimally employed.”

The good feelings started to trickle away. “Y-yeah...”

“And I mean, financially speaking, it would actually make the most sense for you to move back in with your dad. Then you wouldn't have to pay rent at all, and all the money you earn could go into this project.”

“But what would you do?” C.J. asked, and Flick just shrugged. C.J. couldn't argue the practicality of it, but he hated the prospect so much he didn't want to entertain it even for a second. “Our lease here runs until the end of August. So, at least for the next few months, this is what we have to work with—this apartment, these income levels, this relationship, this everything. And if one issue right now is that you need more time and space to yourself, then that's something we can focus on. So, this week I have my stream tomorrow and ice fishing charters Friday and Sunday. I've got tech stuff I need to do for both the stream and the charter. So Thursdays you have a midday gap between classes, right? I can head out to the library with my laptop, and you can have the apartment for a few hours. Let's see what we can make work with what we have, okay?”

Flick shrugged again. “Okay.”

So that's what they did. And although C.J. had tried to say all the right words, it didn't feel good, packing up his bag and leaving the apartment ten minutes before Flick finished his morning class. When they were dating during their senior year of high school and the summer after, they both wanted nothing more than time with each other, and they regularly complained about various obligations or circumstances keeping them apart. C.J. had been expecting that living together would give them both what they wanted. So now to be told, after months together, that what Flick actually wanted was less of him—it hurt. And he was afraid it was a precursor to breaking up for real, nudging their relationship toward greater levels of separation.

Still. He wanted Flick to be happy, and he wanted to give Flick what he wanted and needed, even if what he wanted and needed wasn't him. C.J. didn't know what it felt like to be an introvert; whenever he was home alone while Flick was at class or work or somewhere else, he always felt like he was waiting for Flick to come home, and more often than not he spent the time streaming, or watching other people's streams, or scrolling through social media. Even now at the library, he found himself getting distracted, looking around at other people with laptops at different tables, wondering what they were working on, and if there was maybe some local tech work-from-home meet-up group he could join, or maybe some group for content creators. He felt like a newb at both those things, but maybe it would be good to be around other people; life had been a bit lonely after graduating high school, and maybe he had been leaning on Flick too much for social interaction.

For right now, though, all he could think about was Flick, and if nothing else he wanted this time apart to be good for him. And he wanted—although he realized this was unrealistic—an instantaneous transformation. They had talked about it and he had done the thing, and now he wanted Flick to be markedly happier. So it was disappointing that Flick's mood was more or less unchanged, and C.J. felt frustrated and impatient, although he kept this to himself, and he continued to go out every few days to give Flick the quiet and solitude he needed.

In reality, though, it just took some time. One day about two weeks later, he was at the library again. He had already finished the work that he had, and was too gloomy right now to look up DIY camper plans, worried that that might be another unrealistic fantasy, too, so he downloaded some city-building sim game on his laptop to distract himself for the next forty five minutes until he felt like he could go home. Then his phone lit up with a text from Flick. can you please pick up some mozzarella on your way home? As C.J. picked up his phone, another text came in. get smoked mozzarella, the good stuff, and maybe some feta, too.

C.J. texted back, Sure. What are you making?

Flick responded, dinner.

Now that Flick had asked something of him, C.J. wanted to jump up immediately and go to the grocery store. But it was just after four, and C.J. had meant to be gone until five. He tried hard to wait, but ten minutes later he packed up and headed out anyway.

When he got home, Flick rose from the couch as he walked in the door. C.J. said, “I got the cheese you asked for.” He handed the shopping bag to Flick.

“Excellent. Thank you.” Flick set the bag on the kitchen counter.

“So what are you making?”

“Pizza. From scratch.” He lifted a towel off a mixing bowl to reveal a mound of puffy, rising dough.

“Pizza from scratch!” C.J. exclaimed. Have you ever made pizza dough from scratch before?”

“Uh-uh,” Flick said with a smile. “But I saw some post on Instagram that made it look easy.”

C.J. smiled back. “Can I help?”

“No! Go sit!” Flick shooed him out of the kitchen. “I've got this.”

C.J. dutifully went to go sit on the couch, but he sat sideways so he could watch Flick stretch the dough across the baking sheet, nibble on shredded cheese and lick oil off his fingers. After he put the pizza in the oven, he washed his hands, then turned around and noticed C.J. looking at him; he laughed and said, “What?”

“What?” C.J. said back. “I'm just watching.”

Flick gave him a sly smile and sat down on the couch opposite him.

When the timer on Flick's phone went off, Flick got back up and took the pizza out of the oven. C.J. followed seconds later and said, “Holy mackerel, that looks good. Way better than the frozen pizzas we usually buy.”

Flick smiled, and said, “And...” He reached into his backpack on the floor and pulled out a bottle of red wine.

C.J. laughed. “How did you get wine?”

“I asked Bob to buy it for me. I picked it up from him at the ceramics studio last night.”

“The benefit of having of-age friends,” C.J. said. Then he thought for a second, and said with a smile, “So you had this planned?”

Flick shrugged. “Sort of. But even though I checked to make sure we had pesto and sun-dried tomatoes, I somehow totally spaced on checking to see if we had any cheese before I got started.”

“Well, I'm glad I was able to contribute.”

Flick dug through his backpack until he found his Swiss army knife and then used the corkscrew on it to open up the wine, which he then poured into two old jelly jars. C.J. laughed. “We're so high class.”

Flick smiled. “They have the rounded bottom. It's more goblet-like than a mason jar.”

“Does that actually matter?”

“I don't think it probably does,” Flick said. He raised his jelly jar and said, “Cheers.”

C.J. clinked his jar to Flick's and said, “Cheers.” They took a sip.

Flick slid the pizza onto a cutting board and cut it into slices, then set the board on the kitchen island. Flick and C.J. sat down side by side in front of it. C.J. picked up a slice and took a bite. “Oh my god, this is so good,” he said.

Flick glanced at him sideways and smiled. “Yeah. It is,” he said, although he had not yet tried the pizza. C.J. smiled back at him.

Things seemed to be inching toward better, and although Flick still kept his distance, C.J. tried to be optimistic. The following Monday, they were on the couch after an early dinner, as Flick waited out the minutes until seven p.m. when he could go to the ceramics studio. C.J. had been texting his dad back and forth, and now he set his phone down and said to Flick, “Well, it looks like last weekend's charters were the last of the season. Me and Dad have been checking different forecasts all day and they all agree, it looks like it's going to steadily warm up this week and stay warm for at least the week after. We're gonna go bring in the ice house tomorrow.”

When he looked up, Flick's face was suddenly serious. “Is, is that safe?” he asked.

“Yeah, tomorrow'll be fine.”

“But it was so warm on Friday, too.”

“And I was out there yesterday. Tomorrow will be fine, probably all week would be fine.”

“But... but... it's just that every year there's some news story about somebody's truck or snowmobile going through the ice, and...”

“And those are idiots who don't know basic ice safety. We always check the ice when we go out, and I always have ice picks on me just in case. Besides, what else are we supposed to do? Between the ice house and everything in it, there's, like, hundreds of thousands of bells worth of gear out there. We gotta bring it in.”

“But you're more important than hundreds of thousands of bells,” Flick said.

“Thank you.” C.J. smiled. “But I'll be fine,” he said again. “I know what I'm doing.”

“I know, but...” Flick anxiously twisted the bottom hem of his shirt.

C.J. tried to change the subject. “We already had charters booked out for next weekend, too, but we'll have to cancel those. I was thinking, for this stretch of off-season, I might see if I can sign up with some temp agency. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. Like 'temp' is literally in the name. I don't think I'd qualify for any office-type jobs, but this one website I was looking at said they have, like, warehouse and janitorial stuff, too.”

Flick made a noise.

C.J. insisted, “It's not that bad.”

“I can start looking for something else,” Flick said.

“Are you ready? I mean, considering...”

“It's been weeks since I quit the library.”

“Yeah... that's not that long, though. I was kinda assuming you'd wait until the end of the school year.”

“I can't go that long without working!”

“Why not?” C.J. asked. When Flick didn't answer, he said, “Take the time you need to take, Flick, and don't worry about money. I can find some temp gig until we can get the boat out in the spring.”

“It just doesn't seem fair for you to be working so much while I'm unemployed for months and months.”

“Flick...” C.J. sighed. “You know, you talk a lot about things being fair, and, like, I get what you're after. But I just feel like you're looking at it the wrong way. A fair and equal partnership doesn't have to mean that we are both working the same amount of hours or bringing in the same amount of income. Or even doing the same amount of chores. Like, that kind of stuff is so arbitrary and variable, and so dependent on health or energy or time or whatever. And I just don't think we have the kind of relationship where we should prioritize that. Like it's not a business arrangement or some roommate situation. Like, fairness, in a healthy, partner kind of relationship, means equal amounts of happiness, equal amounts of satisfaction, equal amounts of emotional support. That's the kind of fairness that matters. Ya know?” He looked over at Flick and saw that his face was starting to crumple and his lower lip was trembling. “Oh, I said something wrong...”

“No, you didn't,” Flick said, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand. “You didn't. I'm just... emotional.”

C.J. scooted over to the middle of the couch and put his hand on Flick's knee. Flick sniffled, and moved to nestle himself under C.J.'s arm, resting his head on C.J.'s shoulder; C.J. held him there for several minutes, then rubbed his back and said gently, “Hey, it's after seven. Weren't you going to the ceramic studio tonight?”

“I don't wanna now.”

“I think you do,” C.J. said. “I think you'll feel better once you get there. And you've got shit to do, don't you?”

Flick sighed. “In a few minutes.”

“Okay,” C.J. said, and laid his cheek against the top of Flick's head.

C.J.'s dad wanted to get an early start the next morning, so C.J.'s alarm went off at seven. C.J. slipped out of bed, leaving Flick asleep next to him, and went to use the bathroom; when he came out, he was surprised to see Flick in the kitchen, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “You're up early,” C.J. said.

“I wanted to see you before you left.”

C.J. smiled. “I do always come back to say goodbye before I go.”

“I know. But I wanted to be properly awake for it.”

Flick made himself a cup of tea and sat next to C.J. while he ate his breakfast, and neither of them spoke much. Flick anxiously rubbed his fingers over the satin edging of the blanket. C.J. put his breakfast dishes in the sink and said, “Well, I'm gonna get ready to head out, then.”

“Wait,” Flick said. He undraped the blanket from his shoulders and laid it over the kitchen island, then he walked up to C.J. and hesitated only a moment before pulling him into a hug. C.J. melted into it, wrapping his arms around Flick's chest. Flick rested his chin on C.J.'s shoulder and murmured, “I love you.”

C.J.'s knees went weak with relief and he had to lean into Flick to keep himself up. “I love you so much,” he said.

After a minute, Flick pulled back, and C.J. wanted so badly to kiss him, but he resisted. Flick put his hand to C.J.'s cheek and looked into his eyes for several long seconds. Then he swallowed and said, “Be careful on the ice, okay? And text me as soon as you're done.”

“I will,” C.J. said. “But I promise, we'll be fine.”

Flick just frowned, and let him go.

C.J. felt warm and glad as he drove out to Fern Lake, and also a little guilty that it was worry that had prompted this affection from Flick, and so he felt compelled, for Flick's sake, to be extra safe. Chip was already at the lake, and C.J. said to him, “Hey, have you been out to test the ice yet?”

“Not yet. I was waiting for you.”

“I'll go do it,” C.J. said, taking the auger. “You can wait in the warm truck.”

Chip smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

As C.J. walked out to the ice house, he drilled a hole every fifty feet or so to measure the ice depth so they would know if they could drive one of their trucks out onto the frozen lake to haul in the ice house or if they'd have to use the snowmobile instead; C.J. had volunteered for the task because he knew he would take more measurements than his father would and also that he would be more likely to err on the side of caution. He looked out across the lake as he walked to the ice house. There was visible open water on the far other side of the lake, where the river emptied into it, and some slushy, gray patches further out, neither of which had been there when C.J. had come out for the last charter just a few days ago. He'd never been afraid on the ice before, but now he felt a little crackle of anxiety, not so much for his own sake but for Flick's, because he didn't want to do anything that would risk Flick losing him. When he reached the ice house, he texted his dad, Ice looks mostly good but there were a few kinda thin patches. Probably safest to use the snowmobile.

Chip texted back, Damn. OK, be out there in a bit.

C.J. looked to the shore and watched his dad step out of the truck and lower the ramp on the snowmobile trailer, then he went into the ice house to start packing up all the loose odds and ends to secure them for the drive. When Chip reached him, they disconnected the generator and moved it into the ice house. Then they cranked down the wheels and wedged some old sheets of plywood under them for traction, and they hitched the ice house to the snowmobile. C.J. stood back as Chip gunned the engine to try to get it going, but the ice house didn't budge. They rearranged the plywood twice, and the snowmobile smoked and groaned, but finally the whole thing started inching forward, and Chip set out on the slow drive back to the shore.

C.J. breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn't have to risk driving a truck out here, and once his father had made it some distance away, he went to gather up the sheets of plywood. Only he wasn't watching where he was going and after a few steps his foot went out from under him and his heart leapt into his throat. But he had only put his foot through one of the half-frozen over fishing holes left behind from where the ice house had been. He quickly scrambled back onto more solid ice, his heart pounding, and shook the water off his foot. He put his boot through a fishing hole at least two or three times every season, and it didn't normally scare him like this, but now he actually felt shaky as he picked up the plywood and started his walk back to the shore. These past few weeks with Flick being so distant had left him on edge and afraid of losing what he loved the most. He would be glad to get off the ice and back home with Flick.

By the time he had reached the shore, Chip had unhitched the ice house and was driving the snowmobile back up onto its trailer. C.J. laid the plywood in the back of his truck, then said to Chip, “I'll help ya in just one second, I wanna text Flick real quick. He was worried about me being on the ice today.”

Chip smiled. “He's such a good kid.”

C.J. smiled back and took out his phone. All done and back on dry land again.

Flick texted back immediately, good. And then, thank you for letting me know.

No problem, C.J. texted. We've still got to haul the ice house out to the storage unit and get it cleaned up, so it'll be a few hours until I'm home.

okay. i'll see you later today.

C.J. wrote, I love you, hesitated for a moment, and then hit send.

He watched as his text was read, then a second later, Flick texted back, i love you.

C.J. exhaled and put his phone away. Then he went over to help his dad hitch the ice house to the truck.

It was just after three in the afternoon when C.J. got back to the apartment. He was expecting Flick to be gone, but there he was on the couch, still in his pajamas. “You're home,” C.J. said.

“I am,” Flick replied. “I wanted to wait for you.”

“Don't you have class?”

“I'm skipping.”

“But...” C.J. started, and looked at the clock on the stove. “But you have drawing today, don't you?”

“Uh-huh.”

C.J. laughed a little. “You like your drawing class.”

“I do,” Flick said. “But I like you more. I wanted to be sure you made it home safe.”

C.J. smiled as he hung up his jacket. “Everything was fine. The ice was nice and thick on the eastern end of the lake where we had the ice house, but on the west side where the river comes in it was starting to break up a little, so I think we brought it in just in time. But everything went real smoothly. I did get my boots a bit wet, though.”

Flick's forehead wrinkled. “What happened?”

“Ah, I just put a foot into one of the fishing holes. Not a big deal at all. It happens often enough that we actually keep extra socks in the ice house for when clients do it. But I just cranked the heat in the truck and it was dry by the time we got to the storage unit.” He sat down on the couch, and Flick immediately moved next to him, slipping his arm through C.J.'s and holding his hand, laying his head on his shoulder. All the tension dissipated from C.J.'s body; he squeezed Flick's hand and sighed. “I'm starving, but I want to sit here with you for a while.”

“I would like that,” Flick murmured.

In bed that night, after they turned off the light, C.J. rolled onto his side facing away from Flick, because after today he felt like if he didn't that he'd be likely to unconsciously paw at Flick in his sleep. He was about to tuck his hands under his pillow when he felt Flick roll over behind him and nestle his body against C.J.'s, sliding his hand across C.J.'s chest. C.J. laid still for a second, then tentatively put his hand over Flick's so that Flick knew he was awake. Flick responded by lacing their fingers together, and then C.J. felt Flick's lips on the back of his neck, not exactly a kiss, just gentle, brushing contact, and he felt Flick's warm breath on his shoulder. He shifted his arm slightly to press Flick's hand over his heart, and he held him there until they both fell asleep.

When C.J. woke up the next day, he was facing Flick. Flick was already awake and looking at him. C.J. smiled and said, “Good morning.”

Flick smiled back and murmured, “Hello.”

They laid there for a moment. Flick put his hand to C.J.'s cheek and said, “I miss you.”

C.J. sighed and put his hand on Flick's waist. “I miss you so much.” Flick slid his hand over C.J.'s cheek and neck, and then up to push his fingers through his hair. C.J. let his hand slip under Flick's t-shirt, feeling goosebumps rise under his fingertips. C.J. ached for Flick, ached to kiss him, to pull him in close, to be inside him. He swallowed, and said, “I... I know you're still figuring things out. And, like, I don't mean to rush you or pressure you or anything, but... Well, we're friends, right?”

“Of course,” Flick answered.

“Do you think we could maybe be friends with benefits?”

Flick laughed softly, and his hand glided back to C.J.'s cheek. “Don't tempt me.”

“I'm tempting you,” C.J. murmured. He laid his hand flat against Flick's hip and squeezed lightly. Flick's lips parted as his breathing quickened, and C.J. waited for a response.

But then Flick sighed and put his hand to C.J.'s chest. “I shouldn't,” he said. “I rely on sex too much when I'm stressed.”

“But if it's a strategy that you know works...” C.J. started, still wanting Flick. But then he reeled himself in and said, “Okay.”

Flick rolled onto his back, drawing his knees up. C.J. let his hand drift to Flick's stomach. Flick said, “I'm sorry, I'm frustrating you.”

“You mean the sex thing? Don't worry about it, I can take care of stuff on my own later.”

Flick turned to give him a sad smile. “Am I frustrating you in other ways, then?”

“No,” C.J. said. “But what are you stressed about?”

“I was scared about you falling through the ice yesterday.”

“But I've been home safe for, like, eighteen hours.”

“I know. But these things stick with me.”

“I know they do,” C.J. said, wishing that his presence was enough to reassure Flick.

Flick put his hand on C.J.'s arm and thoughtfully ran his fingers back and forth. After a minute he said, “And the reason I'm so stressed is because... I mean, obviously, in a large part it's because I love you and I want you to be safe. But also...” He took a breath, and sounded close to tears. “I don't like that I'm financially dependent on you. Like, if I lose you, I lose everything. I feel like that changes the relationship, like it taints it. It can't just be about love or happiness or whatever. It has to also be about money. And, and, like... I want to earn my own keep because that would make the relationship more pure. Like, then I can know that I'm choosing to stay with you and you're choosing to stay with me—out of love—and there'd be no undercurrent of dependency and obligation.”

They were silent for a long time. Eventually, C.J. said, “Okay.” Then he took a breath and thought a bit more, then said again, “Okay. I mean, you're not wrong that you're financially dependent on me right now. But I don't think it's a permanent thing. Like, if we were to break up, or if... something worse were to happen, you would, in time, be okay.”

Flick laughed dryly.

“You would,” C.J. insisted. “Like, I mean, for sure you would have a big emotional reaction that would probably feel real awful. And yeah, probably you would have to move back in with your dad for a time. But I know it wouldn't last, because you wouldn't let it last, because I know that's not what you want. You'd probably drop out of school, and eventually you'd find some other source of income, probably some menial job that's beneath your abilities like shelving books at the library. But you'd do it. You'd make it work. And, I mean, Flick, this is coming from someone who wants to take care of you. I want to be important to you in every possible way. But I know you'd be okay without me. Because I see how hard you work every day, I see how strong you are—”

“You're lying,” Flick interrupted.

“I'm not,” C.J. said. “Are you trying to tell me it wasn't hard for you, doing school and the library, and plasma and modeling and the stick bugs and everything else?”

Flick sighed.

“But you did it. For months. And you would have kept doing it if there hadn't been some crisis to force you to cut back a bit. And look how much work you've been able to get done on your bee tile these past few weeks, after you've quit the library and, and scaled back on relationship stuff a bit.” He took a breath. “And, ya know, if... if you need to break up with me so that you can focus on your own self care for a while, we can do that. Like, I also want to be clear that I do not want to break up, and if we do, I really want it to be a temporary thing. But if you need a longer or bigger break, we can make it happen. I can move back in with my dad, and I can keep paying the rent here for you until the end of the lease, and we could re-examine relationship stuff at any time. You work so hard every day, and I just want to make life easier for you.”

There was a long pause, and C.J. felt sick trying to imagine what Flick was contemplating. The whole time C.J. had been talking, Flick's fingers drifted back and forth over C.J.'s forearm, and he continued that now. After several long minutes, Flick finally said, “What about you, though?”

“What about me?”

“I mean, for starters, it's ridiculous for you to be paying rent on an apartment that you wouldn't even be living in.”

“It's not ridiculous.”

“It is.”

“No, it's not. Like I said, it wouldn't be a forever thing. What I'm doing—what I'm trying to do here—is to give you what you need right now so that we can find a way to be happy together in the future.”

“But it's not what you want, you just said it's not what you want.”

“Well, no, of course it's not, but if it's what you need—”

“Why should my needs take priority?” Flick interrupted.

“Why shouldn't they?” C.J. asked.

“Because I'm...” Flick sighed in frustration. After a moment he finally said, “I don't want to break up.”

C.J. exhaled.

Flick spoke again. “I don't want you to leave, I don't want to lose you, I don't want...” he trailed off, and frowned. “I just want things to be better.”

“I know,” C.J. said. “Me too.” He tentatively nestled up a little closer, resting his cheek against Flick's shoulder; Flick took a breath and went back to gliding his fingers back and forth over C.J.'s arm. “And I think we can make things better in time. And I want to keep trying. I've loved you for half my life and I want you to be happy, I want us to be happy.”

They laid there like that for a long time, and after a while, Flick said, “Here's the thing, C.J. I just need to know... I just need you to...”

“What?”

Flick sighed again, and chewed on his lip. “Okay, I need to back up a little first. You, you know that you're incredible, right?”

C.J. laughed a little, and said, “What?”

“I mean, do you even listen to yourself? And not just this conversation, I mean like all the time.”

“I'm really not anything that special.”

“But you are. And I don't just mean the way you treat me, although that, too, because nobody else is as patient and considerate. But, I mean, you think about other people to a degree that I can't even fathom. Like, even in the middle of our big, disastrous fight, you were still worried about how Margie was feeling. You probably still are.”

“I don't really want to talk about Margie right now.”

“But are you?”

C.J. sighed, and admitted, “A-a bit, yeah.”

“You should text her or something.”

“No. I told her the ball is in her court.”

“You could swing by Brewster's to get coffee or something, just to say hello, just so that she knows you don't hate her.”

“Maybe. I don't want to freak her out, though. And, uh, I also don't want to touch that situation at all, because I don't want to give you any wrong impressions.”

“I'm fine with it,” Flick said. “But, I mean, that's what I'm saying. You think so much about other people's feelings and experiences. Like, I can see it in the way you facilitate conversations in the chat on your stream, you acknowledge everyone and you make sure their voices get heard. And you were so guilt-ridden that time when you had to ban that troll, because you just want to keep everything light and cheerful so that everyone's having fun. And I even see it in the way you split charter income fifty-fifty with your dad, even though I daresay you're doing more than half the work now.”

“He does the bookkeeping,” C.J. said weakly.

“How much time each week do you think he puts into bookkeeping?”

“Maybe an hour or two.”

“And how many hours a week do you put into advertising and social media and everything else?”

C.J. sighed. “But he's my dad. And it was his business originally. And he's got a mortgage to pay.”

“So you're taking care of him, too. Like you take care of me. Because you have such a big heart, you want to make sure everyone is taken care of.”

“But you know you're my priority, right?”

“Th-that's not where I want this conversation to go right now, but because I know you won't drop it—yes, I know. I mean, on bad days I definitely think, 'Why me? When you could have anyone else...' And I, I have a lot of bad days. But I'm trying to work on that.”

“Good.”

“And, like, on the one hand, it's incredible to see the amount of kindness you put out into the world, and it's obvious why everyone likes you. But, C.J.... You're prioritizing yourself, too, right? Like, you do so much for me, for everyone, a-and, like, with the Margie thing, you told me that you feel compelled to give people what they want, even if it's not what you want. And as far as our relationship goes, I just need to make sure that I'm... that I'm not...”

“No, Flick, it's nothing like that. I love you. I do everything I do because I love you. You are not a burden or an obligation or anything like that. Please, please, please don't think that.” C.J. watched as Flick's eyes misted over and he blinked back tears, although he tried to keep his face neutral. C.J. kept talking. “I mean, you're right that I definitely have a tendency to be a people-pleaser, especially on stream and... okay, in a lot of situations, really. And, yeah, I want everyone around me to be happy, because then I'm happy, too, and it makes me feel good to be able to accomplish that. But, like, speaking purely selfishly, what I want for me, for my own life, what I want... is you. Like, my own desires are very simple. I just want a happy and comfortable life with the boy I love. And I want to do everything I can to make it happen.”

Flick turned to him and asked, “What if we did break up, though? What would you want then?”

C.J. sighed. “I don't even know. I mean, I guess I'd still be streaming, and so I'd want to have some success there. But in terms of, like, how or where to live, or what I'd be doing with the rest of my time... I don't even know. You're my everything. I literally can't imagine what I would do without you.” He paused, then asked, “What would you want if we broke up?”

“You,” Flick answered immediately. “I'd just want you back.”

C.J. smiled. “So we should be able to work something out, then, shouldn't we? We should be able to figure out what we want together. Right?”

C.J. glanced over to him, but Flick was looking up at the ceiling again. C.J. laid his head on Flick's shoulder again, his arm draped over his midsection, feeling his belly move up and down as he breathed. After a long pause, Flick asked, “Do you know the song 'My Blue Heaven'?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“You probably actually do. It's an old jazz standard. You've probably heard it in a movie or something.” He paused, then sang softly, “When whippoorwill calls, and evening is nigh, I hurry to my blue heaven. I turn to the right, a little white light will lead you to my blue heaven. You'll see a smiling face, a fireplace, a cozy room, a little nest that's nestled where the roses bloom. Just Molly and me, and baby makes three, we're happy in my blue heaven.”

C.J. smiled. “Yeah. Something like that.” Then he paused, and said, “Wait, are you making fun of me?”

“No,” Flick said. “I would never.”

“You make fun of me all the time.”

“I am not making fun of you.”

“Because I would absolutely love a little nest that's nestled where the roses bloom with you.”

Flick smiled now, still looking up at the ceiling, and said, “Yeah.” He picked up C.J.'s hand from his stomach and kissed his palm. C.J. pushed himself up a little bit to kiss Flick's cheek.

Later that week, C.J. was streaming at home one evening, and Flick was waiting for paint to dry on his bee tile so he was home, too. As C.J. streamed, Flick sat a few feet away at his own desk, typing up a school paper on his laptop, his phone propped up against a jar of pencils with the stream on mute. C.J. was in the middle of telling the story of bringing in the ice house when there was a strange buzzing sound followed by a pop as C.J.'s ring light burnt out. “Oh no!” C.J. laughed. “That's what I get for buying cheap equipment.” He wrinkled his nose as he unplugged the lamp. “Oh, that smells bad. It's so dark in this corner now. Lemme see if I can find a different light.” He looked around the apartment. Flick silently pointed to his own desk lamp to offer it, but C.J. shook his head, then said to the camera, “We've got a lamp next to the bed that might work. I'll go grab that.”

He realized what he had said as he walked away, and judging by the pings in his headset from chat notifications, his viewers did, too. He unplugged the bedside lamp and carried it over to his desk. Flick was leaning back in his chair now and holding his phone, the paper on his laptop forgotten; he looked up at C.J. briefly, his expression inscrutable, and then back to his phone.

C.J. was mildly freaking out, but before he sat down in front of the camera, he tried to put a casual, unconcerned expression on his face. Then he looked over the chat. There were a few innocuous comments about the ring light, but also one person had written, WE have a lamp next to THE bed??? Another one wrote, Wait, I thought you lived with Flick. Who's your “we”? Then someone wrote, What kind of shenanigans are going on over there, C.J.?

C.J. forced a laugh and said, “What kind of shenanigans do you think are going on? Flick's my partner. I thought I made that obvious.” He busied himself untangling the cord of the ring light, and then glanced at the chat again. YOU MOST CERTAINLY DID NOT MAKE THAT OBVIOUS, one person wrote. Another added, Like a BOYFRIEND kind of partner??? C.J. sighed, still trying to play the part of someone who was not freaking out, although his heart was pounding. “Yes, like a boyfriend kind of partner. How many other kinds of partners share a bed?” He plugged in the bedside lamp and took the shade off, squinting at the sudden brightness. He looked at his image on the screen and said, “Ugh, that's kind of glarey. It'll have to do for now. I wonder if Best Buy or something has ring lights, I don't want to have to wait to get something shipped in.” He nudged the lamp this way and that, and tried moving it to the shelf above his monitors and then moved it back down again. And then he had run out of light-related busywork and he had to turn his attention back to the chat, although first he glanced over to Flick, but he was focused on his phone. In the chat, there were a few variations on whoa! and congrats! One person wrote, All this time I thought Flick was a girl?!?! and someone else wrote, how long has this been going on? and another person wrote, Seriously?

C.J. said, “Yes, seriously. Me and Flick—” C.J. leaned closer to the camera for emphasis, “who is definitely not a girl—have been dating for, uh, it'll be two years this summer. July thirtieth is our anniversary. Our dating anniversary.”

The chat continued to go slightly crazy. There were twelve people in the chat tonight—one of which was Flick, who had of course said nothing—but C.J. was so keyed up it was hard keeping track in his head of who had said what. Someone wrote, way to keep a secret, C.J.! and another wrote, You never struck me as the light-in-the-loafers type. C.J. forced another laugh and said, “Light in the loafers, what the fuck does that mean? That sounds so old-timey. Is that a slur? Like, I don't even know if I'm supposed to be insulted.” The person wrote again, don't mean it as a slur, I'm just surprised is all.

“Okay, sure,” C.J. said, trying to sound dismissive. “And for the record, I was totally not keeping this a secret. Like, maybe I didn't specifically use the word boyfriend, but I also don't think I have to share every detail about my personal life. And besides, like, I talk about Flick all the time on here. Like about living together and cooking meals together and going places together and spending holidays together. Like, come on, do you guys spend Christmas with your roommate? Do you bring your roommate home to meet your family at Thanksgiving? Do I seriously need to spell things out for you?” One viewer wrote, lol, and another sent in a one hundred bell donation and wrote, for my new favorite gay angler... gayngler??? One person wrote, how'd you meet Flick? and another wrote, Let's get back to talking about ice fishing. It felt like there was a lot going on in the chat and C.J. was feeling a weird mix of overwhelmed and excited, when someone wrote, Why does everyone have to be gay nowadays? I am so fucking sick of this shit. I bet you're not even actually gay. I bet you're just pretending to get more views, so you can score brownie points with the woke liberal mob.

C.J. pressed his lips together and was considering how to respond, when from his left he heard Flick say, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Flick slammed his phone down and pushed his chair back roughly as he stood up and stalked over to C.J., leaning his hands on his desk so that he could look into the webcam. “Seriously, what is wrong with you people?” he said to the camera. “Do you have any idea how hard it can be to come out? How scary and vulnerable it can feel when you don't know how someone will react? How terrifying it can be to put your life and livelihood and safety in the hands of other people's opinions? And you think he's fucking faking it?”

“Flick-Flick-Flick-Flick-Flick-Flick-Flick,” C.J. interrupted, putting his hand on Flick's arm. “It's fine. Really. It's just the nature of the beast. If anyone gets out of hand I can block 'em and ban 'em.”

Flick seethed and stood up, crossing his arms over his chest.

C.J. smiled shakily to the camera and said, “Everyone, meet Flick.”

Flick lifted a hand to wave shyly. “Sorry,” he said quietly to C.J.

“It's really fine, don't worry about it. Oh my god, I love you so much,” C.J. murmured, looking up at him for a moment, then turned his attention back to his computer. A username left the chat, and C.J. had to scroll up briefly to verify that it was the troll who had made a comment about pretending. He glanced over at his dashboard on the other monitor and watched as his subscriber count went down by one. He took a breath, then turned back to the chat. A few people had written things like, Hi Flick! or, We've heard a lot about you, or, Flick to the rescue! Another wrote, oooh! Flick's cute! Somebody else wrote, totally out of your league C.J., no offense, lol. Then another wrote, I still think Flick is a girl.

C.J. ignored them all, and said, “Flick is an artist. And he is so freaking talented, I can't believe it. He made me...” Then he turned up to face Flick again and asked, “Can I show them the fish?”

Flick shrugged and muttered, “I made it for you, you can do whatever you want with it.”

C.J. gently lifted the clay fish off his shelf and held it up to the camera. “God I wish I had better lighting for this right now. But look at this beauty. It looks like it's about to wriggle out of my hand. And these colors... you should see it in the sunlight. Next Wednesday morning, if it's sunny when I'm streaming I'm going to show this off again. Maybe I'll take some pictures and put it up on the Discord or something.” He glanced over at the chat, then turned to Flick and said, “Folks are asking how you made it.”

Flick looked a little startled; his eyes darted to the chat, then to the webcam, but then he leaned forward and said, “I-it's clay. With a raku glaze. Th-the shimmeriness of the glaze reminded me of rainbow trout, so, um...” He shrugged again.

C.J. smiled at him, then glanced at the chat. “Someone's asking if you do commissions.”

Flick laughed dryly. “Definitely not.”

“Come on, why not? Could be a nice side hustle.”

Flick shook his head. “This thing took me forever, and it's the second one I made because the first one looked too dumb. Nobody would want to pay what I'd need to charge for the amount of time I put into it. Besides, I don't know enough about fish to consistently make anything that would satisfy people who do know about fish.”

“You should make bug models, then,” C.J. said.

But Flick shook his head again. “Clay is a terrible medium for insects. It's too heavy, bugs are too delicate. For an actual three-dimensional model, I'd maybe want to do something like make a wire frame and then do, I dunno, papier-mâché or something over it. And then I could sand it and paint it. But even then it would have to be pretty huge to get all the details in.”

C.J. smiled, then said to the chat, “As soon as I can convince him to do that and to put together a website, I'll link it in the socials.” He looked at his own image on the screen, and watched as behind him Flick smirked and rolled his eyes. In the chat someone wrote, You two are so cute, and someone else wrote, What did you guys do for Valentine's Day? C.J. read those comments aloud and then said, “Uh...” fumbling for a response. Valentine's Day was two weeks ago and had passed wholly unrecognized; this was before Flick had made them pizza, before all the conversations they'd had around the time C.J. brought in the ice house.

From behind him, Flick quipped, “Nothing we're going to tell you about.”

C.J. snorted with laughter and then cleared his throat. “Moving on!” he said, and looked over the chat again. “Uh, somebody wants to know how tall you are,” he said to Flick.

Flick wrinkled his forehead in confusion. “Why?”

“Because...” C.J. gestured to the length of Flick's body. Then he said, “Actually, wait.” He stood up, adjusted the camera, then said to his viewers. “Okay. Guess how tall I am, and then guess how tall Flick is.” Then he turned to Flick and patted his still-crossed arms. “Stand up straight,” he said.

“Why does this amuse you so much?” Flick asked with a half smile.

“Because it's funny,” he said. He was feeling better now with the troll gone, and with Flick here with him. “Come on, come on, come on.” Flick uncrossed his arms and straightened his shoulders and C.J. stood next to him, then he felt Flick's fingers curl around his. The camera was focused on them from about chest level up, so his viewers couldn't see this. C.J. squeezed Flick's hand, then smiled at the camera and said, “All right. Guess how tall we are.” He watched the chat for a few seconds as a few guesses rolled in, then he said, “Okay, so I'm five foot seven inches. Which is, I just wanna say, a perfectly respectable height. And, Flick, how tall are you?”

Flick sighed and said, “Six two.”

“Six two!” C.J. crowed to the camera. “We've known each other since we were kids, he moved in across the street when we were both eleven, and he's always towered over me. I can still pick him up, though.” He contemplated it for a second, but then said, “I'm not going to demonstrate that.”

From beside him, Flick said, “No, that's for the Only Fans.”

“Oh my god, Flick!” C.J. laughed, and gave him a playful shove. He sat back down at his desk, adjusting his camera again, and said the chat, “I do not have an Only Fans! Jesus. Nobody wants to see that.”

From behind him Flick cleared his throat theatrically and then sing-songed just loud enough for the mic to pick up, “Could be a nice side hustle.”

The chat was getting a big kick out of this, and C.J. leaned into that, acting more embarrassed than he actually was, laughing and putting his hand to his face. “Have I told you guys before that Flick is also a brat?”

He looked at Flick's image on the screen and saw that he was smiling, then Flick turned to C.J. and said, “I think I've probably caused enough chaos for one evening, I'm going to, uh...” He ticked his head toward the rest of the apartment off-camera.

C.J. turned his chair to Flick. “Hey, thanks for coming over to say hi. I'm so glad I got to finally introduce you.” He reached out to squeeze his hand again. Flick smiled warmly at him, glanced once more at the webcam, and walked away. He stepped back over to his own desk where he closed his laptop and picked up his phone. Then he went over to the couch and flopped sideways onto the cushions.

C.J. turned back to his camera. “So!” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Who wants to talk about ice fishing now?” he asked with a laugh. The chat mostly responded with a chorus of, not me, and, nope! although one person did write, I do. “Yeah, come on, it's a fun story. I put my foot through the ice and kinda freaked out for a second. It was great.” Viewers were asking questions about Flick and about their relationship, and C.J. read the comments aloud, then said, “Ya know, Flick has told me before he doesn't really want to be the center of attention on stream, so unless he's, like, here to answer your questions himself, I don't know that I'm really comfortable...” But then Flick's username popped up in the chat and he wrote, i don't care, but whatever you're going to talk about, hurry it up and then turn this thing off so you can come over to the couch and kiss me. C.J. laughed, and turned around to face Flick on the couch.

Flick smiled at him and whispered, “I thought you might be ready for a break, too.”

C.J. silently mouthed, “Thank you,” then turned back to his computer. The chat was loving this, and people wrote, atlas_moth is Flick?!?! of course atlas_moth is Flick... and C.J., you're being summoned, and, better go answer that booty call. C.J. laughed, and said, “All right, all right. I'll tell the ice house story later. And maybe we'll do an AMA with Flick at some point, I dunno. I know it's been kind of a short stream today, but, um, I am feeling kinda weird right now, so... I guess I'm going to head over to the couch.” He laughed again. “You guys have been mostly great. Thank you for being so supportive. Um. This was, uh, not particularly easy for me, but it's been fun. So, um, thanks again. I'll see y'all again in a few days. Good night everyone.” He ended the stream, then turned off the light and his monitors. He spun his chair back around to face Flick again and said, “Oh my god.”

Flick sat up and smiled. “You did it.”

“Oh my god,” C.J. said again with a laugh as he stood up and headed over the couch. “I am fucking shaking.” He held out his trembling hands as he sat down next to Flick.

Flick took both of C.J.'s hands in his. “How does it feel?”

C.J. held onto Flick's hands and said, “It's definitely good to get it out in the open. Like, I tried to play it off all casual-like on stream, but I know I've been kind of dancing around certain words and I don't like that I've been doing that. That troll was a subscriber, and they unsubbed after you yelled at them. But like, please don't feel bad about that, because that was fucking incredible. Like, that's the kind of reaction I'd want to have, if I wasn't always trying to play nice.”

“It's such an absurd idea, that you'd be faking it for attention. I was furious that they were giving you a hard time. And I definitely do not excel at playing nice like you do.”

“It was so great, though. Like, I know you were probably nervous, but the whole thing made for such great video. Like, my viewers loved you. I mean, obviously you're beautiful, but also you're charming and funny. And, like, watching the two of us interact on the screen, we have such a great on-camera chemistry. I never really thought about looking at our relationship from an outside perspective like that, but we really are cute together. Even if we were both playing it up a little for the camera.”

“I mean, maybe a little,” Flick said. “But I-I meant what I said.”

C.J. looked over at him, and before he could say anything, Flick leaned in and softly kissed him on the lips. It had at this point been more than a month since they'd properly kissed, and C.J. had been sure that when it finally happened that it would feel thrilling and electric, like the first time. But instead it felt safe and comfortable, and like home. C.J. smiled at him. “Is this because I finally called you my boyfriend on stream?”

“Not exactly,” Flick said. “I've just been thinking about a lot of things. A-and, I mean, I feel like I've still got a lot of personal stuff to figure out, and stuff that we should figure out together, But I want to figure it all out with you. If, if you still...”

C.J.'s heart soared, and he breathed, “Thank god,” as he brought Flick back in for another kiss. Then he said, “Of course I do, Flick. I am yours forever.”

Chapter Text

Therapy was dumb. Flick was sure that therapy was going to be dumb, like it was dumb every other time he'd gone. A week earlier, he'd filled out a long intake form full of intimate questions he wasn't sure how to answer, and which had been so exhausting that he'd needed a nap after. At least this time he'd been able to fill out his own intake, and he was able to fumble through the answers in his own words; every other time he'd gone to therapy, his father had taken care of all the paperwork and Flick had just been shoved—sometimes literally—into the therapist's office, like a broken-down car being taken into the garage for repairs, not even knowing what supposed issues that his father and the therapist had decided needed fixing.

And now he sat in the waiting room waiting for his name to be called. His appointment was at two o'clock and it was already two-oh-three, and Flick thought surely this must be a sign that he'd been forgotten, that this was a bad idea, that he should just leave now. He nervously picked at his chipping nail polish and decided that he'd give them two more minutes and then he'd walk out the door. He pointedly ignored everyone else in the waiting room; this was the on-campus clinic, and he did not want to acknowledge any of his classmates who might also be seeking therapy, nor did he want them to acknowledge him.

At two-oh-four, the door opened, and an older woman smiled to the waiting room and said, “Flick?” Flick silently rose and followed her down a hallway to her office, where he thought that therapists must all subscribe to the same interior decorating magazines, because here was a familiar overstuffed, faux-leather loveseat, a familiar end table with a box of tissues, and familiar grandiose but clearly fake plants; the overhead lights were off and the the room was lit by three lamps with pure white shades, and on the wall hung inoffensive watercolor paintings of poppies and lupine. “Have a seat,” the therapist said, and Flick sat down, crossing one leg and tucking his foot under the opposite knee. “So,” the therapist began, gathering a clipboard and folder from her desk and sitting down across from him. “I know you've already read this in the intake, but I just like to make sure everybody is clear on expectations during our first session. At the campus clinic here we can offer up to six individual therapy sessions, usually weekly or biweekly, and if there's a need after that I can refer you out to either group sessions or to some community resources. Just so that we can offer services to as many students as possible.”

Flick nodded.

“So what brings you in today?”

“Um...” Flick started picking at his nail polish again, his gaze lowered to his lap. “I-I guess I've been having a hard time adjusting to college, a-and have been dealing with some depression and anxiety issues.”

The therapist thumbed through her folder and, even without looking up, Flick could hear the smile in her voice. “Yes. That is almost exactly word for word what you wrote on your intake form.”

Flick felt himself starting to blush; he was already failing therapy.

She shuffled her papers. “You also wrote on your intake that this is not your first rodeo when it comes to therapy. Can you tell me a bit more about your previous experiences?”

Flick took a breath. “Um. M-my mother died when I was eight, a-and I had some behavioral problems after that. My dad sent me to therapy every couple years, whenever I got to be too much for him.”

There was a brief pause, then she asked, “Do you feel like therapy helped you work through your grief, or helped address the behavioral issues?”

Flick hesitated, but then answered honestly, “No. Not at all.”

“What made you decide to try again?”

Flick faltered. “W-well... I mean... Depression and anxiety are not new for me. Like, I feel like I've felt this way my whole life. But, um, it's gotten kinda bad lately, a-and I've got to try to do something, ya know? I was on Paxil for a little bit but it didn't really do anything for me. A-and my boyfriend made a good point when he said that therapy might work out better if I'm choosing to do it on my own terms and not because my dad is forcing me into it.”

He glanced up now to see her reaction to the word 'boyfriend,' but her face was neutral as she jotted down some notes. “Your boyfriend sounds like a smart cookie,” she said as she wrote.

Flick smiled a little. “Yeah. He is.”

She flipped through her papers again. “So, you wrote that you live with your partner. Is that the boyfriend?”

“Mm-hm.”

“What's his name?”

“C.J.”

She made some more notes, then said, “Let's talk about the depression and anxiety a bit. What do you mean when you say things have gotten bad? Any thoughts of suicide?”

Flick gave the answer he knew he was supposed to give, because he was afraid of the consequences of answering honestly. “No.”

“Any self-harm?”

“N-no...” he said. “I-I mean, I used to when I was younger, b-but I haven't really in years.”

“What did you do when you were younger?” she asked gently.

Flick felt small and embarrassed, but eventually he answered. “I'd pick at my skin. Until I bled.”

She made a note. “None of that now, though?”

Flick was suddenly very aware of his fingernails methodically scraping off his purple nail polish. But that's different, he thought, even as he looked over his red and scabby cuticles. “No,” he said.

“What about substance use issues?” When Flick didn't answer, she added, “This is a confidential space. Unless you or someone else is in danger, nothing you tell me leaves this room.”

Flick swallowed, then said quietly, “I smoke weed.” He didn't feel the need to mention the ketamine, which he had only done a few times.

“Is this a new thing?”

Flick shook his head. “B-but I've been smoking more than I was, like, a year or whatever ago.”

“What does 'more' mean for you here? How often?”

Flick's first impulse was to downplay it, because he was ashamed of was how much of his very limited money he'd been spending on weed, even if Bob had recently been selling to him at a discount, but he forced himself to answer honestly. “F-four or five times a week. Actually, maybe a bit less than that recently.”

“What changed recently?”

“I quit my job. So that removes a source of stress in my life, b-but that also removes a source of income for buying things like this.”

“Where had you been working?”

“The library downtown. Shelving books. It was just a part time job, fifteen hours a week, but, um, I'd been missing a lot of shifts since the school year started, a-and then after a while, I just stopped showing up.”

“What prompted you to quit?” she asked.

Flick didn't want to talk about relationship stuff with C.J.—it felt too complicated of an issue to address in one of six fifty-minute sessions—and nor was he ready to talk about what he had come to think of as his little breakdown. So he just shrugged.

The therapist gave him a moment, then said, “Well, you mentioned that it feels like your mental health has declined since you started college. You're a freshman, right? You started last fall?”

Flick nodded.

“Have you declared a major yet?”

“Studio art.”

“Oh, fun. What kind of art do you make?”

“All kinds, I guess. But mostly sculpture.”

“How has school been going for you so far?”

This was too open-ended of a question and Flick didn't know how to respond. So they just sat there in silence for maybe a full minute, and Flick started thinking, This is ridiculous, I can't do this. If therapy sessions are a limited resource, I should let someone else have this time slot, someone who can benefit from it more than I can, if I am too fucked-up to even answer a basic question.

But eventually, the therapist said,”Let's try breaking it down a little. How are your grades?”

Flick frowned. “Fine, I guess. Fine-ish. Considering...”

“Considering what?”

“How often I skip class.”

“How often do you skip?”

“As often as I can, for most classes that aren't studio art classes.”

“Why are you skipping?”

This, at least, was an easy thing to talk about. “Because it feels like a waste of my time. Like, it's not that I'm opposed to education. I want to learn about the world. But I don't think that college classes are the only or best way to do that, especially not the big introductory classes where it's just the professor lecturing for forty-five minutes and there's no student interaction. And if I'm already feeling stressed, it doesn't feel worth it to use up my limited energy dealing with the crowds and the noise and the expectations and everything else. But then I wind up feeling bad about skipping, and I put in more effort than I probably need to into homework or papers or whatever, to, like, try to make up for it. So I don't know how much stress I'm even saving myself overall.”

The therapist was quiet for a moment as she took notes, then she looked up at Flick and said, “What made you decide to go to college in the first place?”

Flick shrugged. “I didn't know what else to do. And it's the expected thing.”

“Expected by who?”

“W-well...” Flick started. “I mean, I'm not really good at very many things, but school is something I am good at, my school performance is something I get praised for. Everyone's always told me how smart I am, ever since I was little. A-and certain parts of school have always been easy for me. Or at least they used to be, this year's been kinda hard. Not, like, academically hard, but like it's hard to make my brain work the way I'm used to. But I mean things like remembering facts, or thinking about things deeply, or distilling information into a three-page paper. Stuff like that.”

“Well, but you said yourself that college classes are not the only way to learn, and so I think you already know that academic success is not the only way to be smart.”

“No. Of course not.”

“So who's expecting you to go to college?”

Flick sighed. “My dad, I guess. He's a professor here at the university, he's got a PhD. Formal education has always been a big deal for him, so he made it a big deal for me.”

“What's your relationship like with your dad? Do you feel like you want to impress him or make him proud?”

“No,” Flick said with a small laugh. “I mean, yes, sort of, but...” He sighed again. “We have a complicated relationship.”

The therapist nodded and said, “Let's bookmark that topic for another time. I want to drill down on the college issue right now. Why are you here? If you feel like the classes aren't benefiting you, and it sounds like impressing your father isn't a priority?”

“Well, but I do like my studio art classes. Especially the ceramics class I took last semester. Like I maybe started college out of a sense of obligation, but I feel like the studio art classes I've taken have really helped me improve my skills, which is something that's important to me. A-and it's been nice to meet other artists, and to get involved in other, um, art related activities. I want to continue those parts of college.”

“Okay,” the therapist said. “So would it be a fair statement to say that you're having trouble slogging through the bad parts in order to keep doing the good parts?”

Flick shrugged. “Sure. Yeah. I guess that's accurate.”

“All right,” the therapist said with a tone of satisfaction. “So my next big question is, then, what would you like to do about it? How can I help you?”

Flick furrowed his brow and thought, Aren't you the one who is supposed to figure that out?

She continued, “Do you feel like you need help with time management? Or adjusting your expectations? Do you need help creating a different schedule, or picking out different classes that suit your needs better?”

Flick was frustrated now that she wasn't getting it, that he wasn't explaining it in a way where she could get it. “No,” he said. “It's not that simple. I've always had these problems with school, it's just that it feels so much worse now. Like I barely graduated high school, my attendance was so bad. And before high school, when my dad was able to physically force me onto the school bus every morning, I was acting out a lot, I was so miserable. Because everything feels overwhelming all the time, and it always has. Everything is hard. Even good things, like my relationship with C.J. And when things get too hard and overwhelming, I can't figure out how to fix them, it's like my brain switches off. It's easier to just quit, or walk away, or shut down. And, I mean, if too many people in the hall between classes makes me feel panicky, if sitting in a lecture hall for an hour feels like the most onerous burden, if the buzz and glare of fluorescent lights feel like sandpaper on my eyes and ears, how am I supposed to manage everything else in life? Like, these are not big things, but they can feel so big to me. How am I supposed to be a good partner, or a productive member of society, or even a satisfied individual? It just feels like my brain and body are not calibrated for life on earth, and now that I'm an adult and am doing—or at least trying to do—more adult, real-life things, it just feels like it's becoming more evident how hopeless I am.”

Flick was angry with himself, because this, too, was a familiar aspect of therapy: Flick would be unable to hold back some vitriol or self-pity and would blurt out something perilously vulnerable only to have the therapist try to either soothe him over with fake, practiced comfort or brush off whatever Flick had said with gaslighty dismissal. He braced himself for that now.

Instead, she just flipped over a page of her notebook and said,”Well. That does sound like a bigger issue, then, doesn't it? Let's explore this feeling of overwhelm for a bit.”

Flick and the therapist spent the rest of his session trying to parse out exactly what felt overwhelming, and how. He did not feel like he had made any real progress at all, just talking with a stranger for fifty minutes, but this therapist was not as unpleasant as some others he'd met with, and he also conceded that if he was going to give therapy an honest try, he'd have to go for more than one session. When he was done, he reluctantly trudged up to the front desk and mumbled, “Can I make another appointment for next week?”

“Sure thing,” the receptionist chirruped. “First things first, though, the co-pay for today is two-thousand bells.”

“O-oh,” Flick said. He was on his dad's insurance, but this was only his second time using it—the first was when he'd gotten antidepressants—and he had somehow forgotten about the concept of co-pays. He made a show of taking out his wallet, although he knew it was empty, as was his bank account. He had used his last library paycheck to buy oil paints and he had spent all of what was on the prepaid debit card from the plasma place on groceries. He'd be modeling again tomorrow and would have some cash then, but that didn't help him right now. Then he remembered his dad's Christmas money. “C-can I Venmo it to you?”

The receptionist smiled. “Actually, yes. We just set that up this year.”

Flick walked straight home after therapy and laid down in bed. C.J. had a temp gig packing boxes in a warehouse right now, and he wouldn't be home for another hour. The warehouse job was only for the week, but already the agency C.J. was working through had him signed up to wash dishes at some catered conference for three days next week, followed by a one day job on the cleaning crew after the same conference. It sounded exhausting to Flick, but C.J. seemed excited by the variety. Meanwhile, Flick had had one change to his weekly routine—granted, therapy was maybe a big change—and he felt completely wiped out.

At quarter after four, the front door opened, and a minute later C.J. poked his head around the bedroom curtain. “Hey, babe, how was your day?”

Flick rolled over to face him and said, “Meh.” C.J. sat down next to Flick in bed and leaned over to kiss him. C.J. knew that today had been his first therapy session and Flick was relieved that he didn't specifically ask about it. “How was yours?” Flick asked.

“Kinda boring. The warehouse has this big order of t-shirts that they need to ship out, so all day long they had me folding shirts and putting them into plastic bags.”

Flick smirked. “Did they ask for a demonstration of your folding abilities before setting you on this task? Because I've seen your dresser, C.J.”

C.J. laughed. “Hey, I know how to fold clothes.”

“Could've fooled me,” Flick said.

“Maybe that just means you should be the one doing all the laundry and I'll do all the dishes.”

“Happily,” Flick said. “Dishes are gross.”

C.J. smiled. “Hey, are you going to the studio tonight? Should I go start dinner?”

Flick frowned. “I dunno. All that's left for the bee tile is building the frame, and the wood is all cut and stained, I just need to put it together. But I don't know if I want to be around other people tonight.”

C.J. sat up a little. “Do you want the bedroom to yourself?”

Flick caught his hand to keep him close. “No. I mean other-other people. Second tier other people.”

“That art show deadline is coming up, though, isn't it? You've worked so hard on this, I really want to see you finish it in time to submit it.”

“I dunno,” Flick said. “I'm thinking it's maybe not that great anymore.”

“Flick, I haven't even seen it and I know it's great.”

“No, you know that you love me and want me to be happy and so you want to support my interests.”

“Don't be a butthead. What does Bob think about it?”

Flick sighed. “Bob's opinion doesn't count, either.”

C.J. smirked. “Why does Bob's opinion not count?”

“Because he's my friend. Of course he's going to say nice things about my art.”

“Well, all the more reason to submit it and see what people who are not your friends think.”

“The both of you are impossible,” Flick muttered. “I think I'm just sick of looking at it. I've been working on it for so long.”

“Then you should finish it so you can stop looking at it.”

“I'll see how I feel after dinner,” Flick said. “You wanna lay down with me? I don't wanna talk any more, I just wanna cuddle.”

“Yeah, I would love to cuddle for a little bit. But then I wanna get started on dinner, so you can decide about the studio.”

C.J. took off his hoodie and laid down under the covers next to Flick. Flick nestled his back against his chest, taking C.J.'s arm and wrapping it around him; C.J. squeezed Flick into him and kissed the back of his neck for a moment before relaxing into the warmth of their bodies together. It was a relief to have this physical, romantic relationship again with C.J.—and Flick knew it was even more of a relief for C.J.—but sometimes it still felt undeserved. C.J. had more than once implied that this was a self-esteem issue for Flick, but that wasn't it, not exactly. He felt different in some intrinsic, unchangeable, irredeemable way, and it felt unfair to C.J. that Flick would never be able to be the partner that he felt like C.J. should have. But C.J. had also made it abundantly clear that Flick was the partner he wanted. And although there had been so many times during that month where Flick felt like it was just a dress rehearsal for a real break-up, an opportunity for Flick to harden his heart and set C.J. free and prepare himself to live alone, at every turn Flick could not deny his own love for C.J., a love that went deeper than romance or sex or even friendship, a love that went beyond words available to describe it. So even though it sometimes felt like their needs or desires might be incompatible, it also felt fully worth it to find compromises and solutions, to do everything he could to hold onto this relationship that felt so vital, so fundamental to his existence. When Flick thought about it, the circumstances surrounding their relationship seemed almost absurdly haphazard: C.J. had just been somebody he'd moved in across the street from when they were kids. What were the odds that they would wind up having this connection that felt miraculous and preordained in a way that Flick didn't otherwise believe in?

The turning point that month had come when Flick had forced himself to voice his need to be alone sometimes, and C.J.—although he had clearly been saddened by that request and just as clearly had tried to hide his sadness—had been willing to give it a shot. And although it had been awkward and uncomfortable at first, in time it started to feel normal, and then it started to feel good: having this time alone meant that he was able to better look forward to seeing C.J. again at the end of the day. It was such a simple change, but it made a world of difference, and Flick was only a little resentful that it had happened after talking about his feelings and needs and their relationship, as C.J. had been after him to do for months. Talking had been hard for Flick, and leaving had been hard for C.J., but they had done it, and it felt like they were in a better place now.

When he had first gotten on the waitlist for therapy almost four months ago, his motivation had been to eradicate what he thought of as his flaws, to fix what was broken so that he could be a better partner, a better student, a better employee, just better in every way because so little about him felt worthy. But if C.J. was willing to accommodate what felt like a selfish need for solitude, and if meeting that need had improved their relationship and had improved Flick's own sense of wellbeing, however incrementally, perhaps he could find a way to accept and accommodate his other flaws. At least, he had come to that conclusion intellectually; emotionally most of the time he still felt fairly wretched. But, at least for right now, he felt safe in relying on his love for C.J. and C.J.'s love for him to keep him tethered to the earth for a little while longer while he worked on the rest of that.

Flick didn't make it to the studio that night; he had kept C.J. in bed with him until six-thirty, and then after dinner he was too tired. But he went the next day—although he skipped his morning class so that he could sleep in and have the energy to go out at night. It took him longer than expected to piece together the frame, since he wanted to get it just right, but he finished the whole thing the following week, two days before the submission deadline. He asked C.J. to pick him up after figure drawing class so that he could bring it home. As he was getting dressed after modeling, he checked his phone and saw that C.J. had texted him a few minutes earlier, I'm here, parked in the northeast corner of the lot.

Flick texted back, can you help me carry stuff? i should bring your dad's tools back, too. i can meet you by the front door in about 5 minutes.

C.J. responded, Sure.

Flick got dressed and collected his payment, then walked to the front door of the art building. He poked his head outside just as C.J. was coming up the steps, and Flick smiled and held the door open for him. As they started toward the ceramics studio, a few students from the figure drawing class came down the hall in the opposite direction; one of them said, “Hey, Flick,” and the other said, “See ya next week.”

“Y-yeah. I'll see ya,” Flick said.

After they were gone and were out of earshot, C.J. said to him, “Friends of yours?”

Flick shook his head. “Just some people from figure drawing.” He paused. “I think they told me their names once but I don't remember them.”

He took C.J. first to his locker to get Chip's tools. C.J. smiled. “I didn't think they had lockers in college.”

“I rent it for, like, two thousand bells a semester. It's a good place to keep my supplies and stuff.”

“I feel like there's so much about school that you don't tell me.”

Flick gave him a look. “Renting a locker is a boring thing. The existence of people whose names I don't even remember is a boring thing.”

“Yeah, but I'm interested in everything about you.”

“Well, then you'll be fascinated to know that I bought a bag of chips from a vending machine the other day but they got stuck and I had to thump my shoulder against the machine to dislodge it.”

“That's an interesting story,” C.J. said with a smile.

Flick laughed. “It is not.”

Flick opened his locker and started packing Chip's tools into a canvas bag. C.J. watched him for a moment, then turned his attention to the inside of the locker door. “What's this?” he asked, fingering a piece of paper Flick had taped up.

Flick glanced over, slightly embarrassed at his own sentimentality. “You left me a note on the kitchen counter one day last fall when you had an early morning charter...” On the note, C.J. had drawn a rudimentary little cartoon fish jumping out of the water, with a word bubble coming out of its mouth saying, I love you! See you tonight!

C.J. laughed, and when Flick looked over at him, he was blushing. “You are so freaking cute,” he said, and pulled Flick in for a kiss.

Flick gave C.J. the bag of tools to carry and they walked down the hall to the ceramics studio. C.J. hesitated outside the open door, and Flick was a few steps inside before he noticed. He turned and said, “Bob's not here tonight, the studio's empty.”

“N-no, I... That's fine,” C.J. stammered nervously, then followed Flick inside. He set the bag of tools on the floor and looked around the room. “Wow, this is big. Way bigger than the art room back in high school. And this is just for ceramics?”

“Uh-huh,” Flick said. “There's other studios for drawing and painting and printmaking. Plus a studio for additive and subtractive sculpture. A photo lab with a darkroom.”

“Dang,” C.J. said. “This is nice.” C.J. wandered over to look at other people's work that had been set out to dry while Flick retrieved his bee tile from where he'd hidden it on a shelf in the back. He laid it on a table, and C.J. turned around to look at it. “Oh my gosh, Flick. That's incredible.”

Flick grumbled, “Better be, for all the work I put into it.”

C.J. leaned in close; he reached out his hand and then pulled it back. “I'm afraid to touch it.”

“The paint is dry, it's fine. And I basically built the frame around the tile, so the whole thing is pretty sturdy actually.”

C.J. ran a fingertip over the bee's wing and legs. “Oh my gosh,” he breathed. Then he looked up and said, “Flick, this is, like, the best thing you've ever made.”

Flick shrugged and frowned, looking over his tile again. “I could have done better,” he said. “The apple blossoms are a little flat, and I kept going back and forth as to what colors to use for the design around the border. I bought this metallic gold paint thinking that would kind of make this line here pop, but then I thought it would look too gaudy so I just went with black instead, but now I worry that it looks too plain, and...” He sighed.

“Flick, nothing about this is plain. This is gorgeous.”

Flick had more criticisms about his tile, but he kept them to himself. “I still need to put a wire in the back of the frame to hang it. I was going to wait to see if they actually want it.”

“They'd better, if they know what's good for them.”

Flick laughed. “Are you threatening the selection committee?”

“I will if they don't put this in the show.”

Flick smiled. “So, um, I wrote my artist's statement a long time ago, but I still need photos for the submission packet.”

“Yeah, you wanna borrow my camera?”

“No...” Flick said. “I want you to take the photos.”

“Me?!”

“I don't know how to work your camera, or whatever photo editing software you have. And you know more about lighting and stuff than I do. You take such nice pictures for all your social media things.”

“Yeah, but that's different. This is...” He looked back down at the tile. “This is, like, a big deal.”

“Please?”

“I mean, of course I will. But are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Flick said. “But, um, I need to get my submission in by the end of the day tomorrow.”

“I got nothin' doin' tomorrow. The temp agency has a two week construction gig for me starting Monday, but there's nothing until then. I was thinking of streaming, but I haven't sent out the announcement yet. We can do the photos in the morning and I can stream in the afternoon.”

“I'll skip classes tomorrow. I have a lit paper due, but I'll just email it.”

“Hey, can I show off your tile on the stream tomorrow?”

Flick wrinkled his nose. “Your viewers don't want to see that.”

“Like hell they don't!” C.J. said. When Flick hesitated, he added, “Come on, I wanna brag about my talented boyfriend.”

Flick sighed. “Fine,” he said. “But towards the end, so you're not talking about me the whole time.”

“Deal,” C.J. said.

C.J. took his job as art photographer very seriously. Since the landlord wouldn't let them put nails in the wall, C.J. set up a space on the floor for the photos. He taped a white bed sheet to the wall and let it drape over the floor for a clean background, then he set up the bedroom lamp and Flick's desk lamp on either side, and he gave Flick his new ring light to hold above the tile. He put his camera on a mini-tripod and used a remote shutter release to get the cleanest, crispest photos possible. Then he proceeded to take more than a hundred photos from multiple angles to get not only the tile as a whole but also close-ups of the texture of the clay, the shading of the paint, the smooth wood grain of the frame. Flick was normally the obsessive one, but this seemed a little over the top even for him. “You know, they only let me attach a maximum of six photos in the submission packet,” he said as C.J. had him hold the ring light in yet another position for more photos.

“Yeah, but I won't know which ones are good until I get them up on my computer. I want a lot to be able to choose from. I really want to be able to give you the best photos possible.”

“It's not that big of a deal,” Flick said.

“Flick, you've worked on this tile for freaking months. If you're entrusting me with photos, the least I can do is put a few hours of my time into it.”

After he was done taking photos, he spent the rest of the morning sorting and editing them, looking back and forth between his monitor and the tile to make sure the colors were accurate, tweaking this or that to get everything just right. He took so long that Flick started to worry that something was wrong. But then finally at noon, C.J. emailed him cropped and edited versions of the six best photos. C.J. stretched as he stood up, then he walked over to Flick, who was at his own computer, and gave him a kiss. “I'm going to make us some lunch.”

Flick nodded. He opened up the submission PDF and started entering in his contact information. He reread his artist's statement for easily the hundredth time, taking out a comma and putting it back in again, adding a paragraph break and then deleting it. He grimaced reading his statement now; it sounded so pretentious, all these highfalutin ideas about insects and pollination and life cycles, all these ten dollar words which he felt best expressed what he meant but also probably came across as pompous and arrogant. But it was too late to rewrite it now, so he copied and pasted it over. He attached the PDF and the photos to an email, copied over the committee's email address, and wrote a few perfunctory lines in the body of the email. Then he just sat there, staring at his screen, until C.J. said, “Hey, lunch is ready. Did you get your submission sent out?”

Flick turned around to face him. “Um. N-not yet.”

C.J. walked up to him. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no... It's just...”

“What?”

Flick looked at his screen, then up at C.J., giving him a nervous little smile. “I can't be rejected if I don't submit, right?”

C.J. scowled at him, then reached out and menacingly held a finger over the enter key on Flick's keyboard. “Flick, don't make me push this button.”

“No! I'll do it!” Flick said.

C.J. took his hand away, but he didn't leave.

Flick asked, “Are you going to stand there until I do?”

“Yup.”

Flick sighed, and fiddled with the mouse. He reread the email once more, checked again that all the attachments were included and the email address was right, and then finally hit send. And then he immediately clicked back into the email to check again that he had filled out the PDF correctly.

“Thank you,” C.J. said. Flick leaned over in his chair to rest his head on C.J.'s chest. “Now come eat some lunch.”

“I feel like I'm going to barf.”

“Come sit with me while I eat lunch, then. But I made that pasta stuff you like.”

Flick looked up at him. “The stuff with artichoke hearts and parmesan?”

“Uh-huh.”

Flick thought for a second. “I can sit with you.”

“Get yourself a fork so you can steal off my plate.”

“I don't have to, I can get my own plate.”

“But does it feel easier for you to eat if you're stealing off my plate?”

Flick contemplated this. “For some reason, yes?”

“Then just get a fork and come sit with me. I found some funny videos we can watch while we eat.”

Flick made it to his third session of therapy, but he was feeling like he might be done with it, because all they ever did was talk. Whenever he'd gone to therapy in the past, the therapists had given him homework. Granted, they were ridiculously unhelpful tasks that Flick never actually did—make a gratitude list to alleviate depression, initiate a conversation with a classmate to combat social anxiety—but he had expected that to be part of the therapeutic experience. Just sitting and talking with a stranger for fifty minutes a week didn't seem to be worth it. They were forty minutes into the session today, and Flick was watching the clock, waiting to be done. The therapist paused for a moment, flipped through her papers, then said, “Flick, here's a question for you.”

Flick waited, and then said, “Yes?”

“Have any of your previous therapists ever suggested you might be autistic? Have you been evaluated?”

Flick didn't respond at first. A minute ago, they'd been talking about Bob, and about how pleasurable it was for Flick to silently work alongside someone doing the same thing as him, and so this question felt like a non-sequitur. Finally, he hesitantly said, “No... Why would they?”

“Well, here's what I've noticed,” the therapist said brightly. “We've talked a lot about social difficulties, how you have trouble reading social cues or maintaining a conversation with more than one person at a time, things like that. And we've talked about sensory issues. You've told me you avoid things like fluorescent lights or noisy crowds or certain textures, but that deep pressure is calming and grounding for you. And you've made it very clear that these have all been lifelong issues for you. Your interest in bugs and art could probably be classified as hyperfixations or special interests. As for what I've observed firsthand, every time you come in you're always doing something with your hands, picking at your nail polish or rubbing the hem of your shirt, like a fidget or a stim. You fold yourself up into a little pretzel every time you sit down. And in the three weeks you've been here, you've made eye contact with me maybe twice.”

Flick sat stock still. He felt called-out and a little angry, and after a minute he said, “That doesn't mean I'm autistic.”

“No, maybe not,” the therapist admitted cheerfully. “I'll be the first to admit that it's not my area of expertise, I'm more of an anxiety and depression kinda gal. The reason I bring it up is because traditional talk therapy like what we're doing here isn't always a good fit for neurodivergent folks—people with autism or ADHD, things of that nature—because it doesn't mesh well with their natural communication styles. And while neurodivergent people might also have issues with depression or anxiety, at least some of the time it's, hmm, more situational than chemical. For instance, someone with sound sensitivity might have a panic attack at a busy shopping mall, but they'd benefit more from noise-canceling headphones than they would from Xanax. Autistic burnout can look almost identical to a depressive episode, but the solution is reducing sensory triggers and social demands, and some radical rest, and not necessarily antidepressants.”

This was all too much information for Flick to take in, and he didn't respond.

After a minute, the therapist said, “Well, food for thought. Looks like we're almost at the end of our time for the day. And we're halfway through our sessions, too. Next week, let's start brainstorming some strategies and solutions, and talk a bit more about plans moving forward. Okay?”

Flick nodded slowly, and made his way back up to the front desk to make an appointment for next week. He felt restless and agitated, and did not want to go home yet, so he just walked, through Peace Park and beyond it, through neighborhoods with nice houses and wide lawns, then casting a wide arc back toward downtown, past office buildings and apartment high-rises, and finally back toward his own neighborhood of slightly decrepit student housing and corner stores. He pointedly did not take out his phone and google anything his therapist had talked about; it felt too big and heavy, and Flick just wanted to move his body and not think for a little while.

It was after five by the time he finally got home. C.J. was back from his temp construction job and was working at his computer. As Flick stepped inside, C.J. called from across the apartment, “Hey, Flick, welcome home.”

Flick didn't say anything as he hung up his jacket and took off his boots. He walked over the couch and sat down without speaking. He could feel that his forehead was furrowed and his muscles were tense. After a minute, he said, “So, in therapy today...” He glanced over at C.J., who was looking up at him now; he had not previously talked at all about what went on in therapy. “My therapist suggested that I might be autistic.”

“Okay,” C.J. said.

Flick looked at him. “That's absurd, right?”

“Uh...”

“Right?” Flick said again.

“Is, um...” C.J. stammered. “I-is this new information for you, Flick?”

“What do you mean?”

C.J. looked at him blankly for a second, then said, “Uh, let me save my work here so I can give you my full attention.” He made a few more keystrokes and turned off his monitor, then walked over to the couch to sit down next to Flick. He smiled at him nervously. “So, uh, if I tell you something, do you promise not to get mad?”

“No,” Flick said bluntly.

C.J. laughed under his breath. “Okay. That's fair.” He took a breath. “Here goes. So, when we were kids, like, pretty young still, like eleven or twelve, you were—and I just want to say that I don't remember anymore what led up to this, or what you were doing exactly. Like, I'm telling you everything I know and everything I remember, okay? But, um, you were having a hard time with something, and you were behaving in a way that didn't really make sense to me at the time. So I talked to my dad about it later, and he told me that your dad had told him once that you might be autistic. And, ya know, we talked a little about what that meant, and I did my own research later, and I thought, yeah, that sounds about right.” He cleared his throat. “But, uh, I take it your dad did not share this information with you?”

Flick stared at him. “Are you fucking serious?”

C.J. nodded.

Flick slumped on the couch and covered his face with his hands. “Oh my fucking god,” he groaned. “What does that mean—'might be autistic'? What does that even fucking mean?”

“I dunno. You gotta talk to your dad.”

“Fucking dad,” Flick sighed. “I can't believe this.” He let his hands fall to the couch cushions. “How come you never told me this before?”

“Because I wasn't supposed to know in the first place. Like, my dad made me promise not to tell anyone. He just wanted to help me know what was going on so that you and I could keep on being friends. And I figured if you wanted me to know that you would tell me yourself.”

Flick sighed. “God, does everybody know about this thing about me except for me? Is it, like, that fucking obvious?”

C.J. didn't respond.

Flick closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them again and said, “Wait. So all this time, you've been assuming I was autistic? All the years we've known each other?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you... you still...”

“What?”

Flick just looked at him, unable to finish his sentence.

C.J. laughed gently. “What, I still fell in love with you?”

Flick nodded.

“Of course I did! You're still Flick. Like, putting a label to things doesn't change who you are, it just helps me understand you better. Of course I still fell in love with you.”

Flick sniffled, and laid down to rest his head in C.J.'s lap.

C.J. rubbed his shoulder. “Oh, Flick, it's not a bad thing. I mean, your dad keeping this information from you for years is definitely super crappy. But, like, the actual autism, the possibility of autism, it's not a bad thing.”

Flick just sighed. He was all done talking for now.

C.J. held him there, his arm draped over Flick's body. After a few minutes, he said, “Hey, you wanna hear a cute story about this, though?”

“Okay,” Flick croaked.

“So, like I said, we were around twelve at the time. And I had this super big, super secret crush on you, and you were—or you seemed—pretty much oblivious to that.”

“Yeah. I definitely was.”

“So I was doing some research about autism for the first time back then. And ya know, I kept reading a lot of the same checklists—social stuff, sensory stuff, whatever. But then I find this web page that says that autistic people are, like, also more likely to be queer. And I got super excited reading that because I was thinking, 'So you're saying I have a chance?'”

Flick, in spite of everything, laughed softly. Then he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he was aware of was being nudged awake by C.J. “Hey,” C.J. said quietly. “If you're going to sleep for the night, you should head off to bed.”

Flick rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty.”

Flick sat up. “Did I trap you on the couch for, like, two hours?”

“It's fine,” C.J. said. “You were out like a light, I'm pretty sure I coulda gotten up without waking you if I wanted to.” He stretched. “But I've got work in the morning, so I've got to go and make myself some dinner.”

“I supposed I should eat, too.”

“That's a good idea,” C.J. said. He put his hand to Flick's face. “Can I kiss you?”

Flick nodded, and C.J. kissed him.

“I love you,” C.J. said.

“I love you,” Flick said back.

C.J. went off to the kitchen to make dinner, and Flick remained on the couch, still feeling shell-shocked. After a few minutes, he took out his phone, opened the browser and did a search for autism traits in adults. He scanned over the results, but it still felt like too much to think about right now, so he closed the browser and set his phone down again, staring up at the ceiling for a while. Then he picked his phone up again and texted Bob, hey, i know i said i'd come to the studio to buy from you tonight, but i had a weird day and i'm just going to crash at home instead.

Bob texted back, No worries my man. Then he added, Everything OK?

Flick thought for a second, then texted, yeah. i just need some rest maybe.

Bob responded with a thumbs-up emoji, then texted, You want me to change out the paper towels on your work while I'm here? Then, You just have that lidded box with stag beetles now, right?

Flick texted back, yes, thank you.

Bob wrote back. All right, peace out man. Maybe I'll see ya Friday or next week, okay?

Flick texted, yeah, soon. Then he closed his eyes again and waited for dinner.

The next day, Flick skipped both his classes so that he could once again attempt some research about autism, although it was more challenging than he'd been expecting. No matter what search terms he used, he kept getting information about autism in children, or web pages that regarded autistic adults as if they were children. Still more websites pathologized behavior that did not seem particularly pathological to Flick, and focused on treating, curing, eradicating. Flick knew that if C.J. hadn't been so supportive last night, he would be in a pit of despair and self-pity right about now.

Flick had been called a lot of things in his life. Adults had labeled him as “anxious” or “depressed,” sometimes “smart” or “gifted,” maybe “picky” or, if they were feeling charitable, “quirky.” By high school, his peers had largely settled on variations of “weirdo” or “freak,” although when he was younger he also heard epithets like “crybaby” or “spaz” or “retard.” But “autistic” was not something he'd been called before, and so as a result he had not previously thought much about it. His high school psychology class had covered autism so briefly and superficially that nothing he'd been taught at the time had seemed worth remembering. All he had in his head were some stereotypes, which he realized now were at least partially inaccurate; he'd never once considered that this was something that might apply to him since he wasn't especially skilled at math or technology and he'd never done things like rock back and forth or bang his head on the wall.

But after sifting through what felt like a lot of garbage on the internet, he reluctantly admitted that, yes, this was an idea that had some merit, and so now he started looking at everything in his life through this lens. The little ritual he went through every morning when he made his tea—bringing fresh water to a boil, measuring out one of a few particular types of loose-leaf tea, warming the cup, then covering it with a plate while it steeped for exactly four minutes—was that autism? But a lot of people were fussy about their tea. The dishes and silverware that he and C.J. had were mismatched sets from the thrift store, and Flick had very specific cups and spoons that he preferred only for the reason that they felt indescribably good in his hands—was that autism? Possibly. What about the way his brain seemed to short-circuit when a stranger started an unexpected conversation with him, or the way the buzz of the oven timer made his skin crawl, or the way he could spend hours in his sketchbook perfecting the veining of a honey bee wing? For years he had been assuming that he merely had anxiety and depression, and although nothing he had previously done seemed to have much effect, these were, at least in theory, things that were fixable. But the more he read about autism, the more immutable it felt, encompassing perhaps everything about him. It was such a massive paradigm shift that Flick couldn't yet tell if this was comforting or alarming.

In therapy the following Wednesday, he said to his therapist, “I've been thinking about what you said last week,” and told her what C.J. had told him.

“Interesting!” the therapist said with a big smile. “Have you talked to your father about this?”

“N-no... not yet,” Flick said, and the therapist nodded knowingly. Flick continued, “But my question is, even if I am autistic, what am I supposed to do about it? The internet is kind of all over the place as to, ya know, treatment or strategies or whatever.”

“Oh, the internet is a dung heap,” the therapist scoffed. “I mean, there are gems to be found, certainly, and I can send you a list of some resources and social media accounts that are more neuroaffirming. But so many medical or pseudo-medical websites out there are just nightmare fuel.” She shuffled her papers. “But you've got a few options. If you're interested in pursuing a formal diagnosis, I can refer you out to a psychologist. I've got a list of a few that will do autism screenings for adults. Fair warning, though, the diagnostic criteria tends to focus on childhood symptoms, and even if the patient is an adult, a lot of the time the assessor will want to interview their parents, just to get that insight into their childhood. So that might be a challenge for you, since you're semi-estranged from your father.”

Her word choice caught Flick off-guard; he wouldn't have considered him and his father to be semi-estranged. But also, he considered, it was not inaccurate. He could count on both hands the number of times he and his father had interacted in the seven months since he moved out, and meanwhile C.J. saw his own father several times a week, and texted or called or emailed almost daily.

The therapist continued, “Insurance won't always cover autism assessments for adults, either, or they might require some documentation saying that it's necessary. I can write you a letter if you need one, but, ya know, just FYI that there might be some red tape in the process. But a tangible benefit to getting a formal diagnosis for adults would be that it would give someone the necessary paperwork for requesting accommodations at school or the workplace, or for applying for disability benefits. I can't tell you exactly what kind of accommodations the university here might be willing to offer, but you could perhaps look into an alternative attendance schedule, or maybe an adjustment to your scholarship so that you could enroll part-time instead of full-time. Other students I've met with have gotten accommodations like longer test times, or study guides, or tutoring. One young woman was able to get a single dorm room, and just having that space to herself with no roommates helped immensely. The downside to requesting accommodations is that you'd be required to disclose your diagnosis or at least your needs, sometimes over and over, and that can be a hard conversation for a lot of people. The Student Disability Office can help you out there, I'll send a pamphlet home with you today.” She reached over to her desk to grab the pamphlet, then continued, “Another option is that when we're done with our sessions here, I could refer you out to a colleague of mine, a therapist who specializes in neurodivergent clientele. She's actually autistic herself—I'm not sharing private information here, this is on her website. Whether or not you have a formal diagnosis, she could help you figure out strategies to navigate social situations, or ways to make your everyday life more sensory friendly, things like that. She can also help you address depression and anxiety issues in ways that might be more successful for you than what I would usually suggest for my neurotypical clients. She's amazing, I love her so much. I think she's accepting new patients right now. I know she works really hard to keep her waitlist open, at least. She tries to only close it if people are waiting a year or more. But since she's pretty much the only game in town for neuroaffirming therapy for adults, things can get kind of backed-up, so it might be quite a few months before you could actually get in to see her.”

Flick frowned. “None of that sounds very promising, to be honest.”

The therapist smiled gently. “Of course, you don't have to do anything at all. A formal diagnosis or quality therapy is not an option for a lot of people, for a variety of reasons. Some people find it to be beneficial to use this information just to change the way they think about their approach to life, to be a bit more gentle and forgiving with themselves, to recognize and advocate their own needs. I mean, for example, if you know you're only comfortable in soft shirts without tags or scratchy seams, then just buy the shirts that feel good, regardless of what other people might think you're supposed to wear. If you know it takes you longer to process spoken conversation, just keep some stock phrase at the ready, like, 'I need some time to think about what you said.' You don't need a piece of paper from a psychologist for that. You can do your own research to see if autism would be an accurate diagnosis for you, and then go from there to find what works best for your individual needs. It might be a bit more work, figuring all this out on your own, but from what you've told me, C.J. sounds like a supportive and understanding partner, and I imagine it'll be good for you to have him in your corner during all this.”

Flick nodded.

The therapist said, “And, honestly, Flick, the self-diagnosis route might be best for you in the long run anyway, since you've told me more than once how much you hate being told what to do by other people.”

Flick felt pointlessly embarrassed over having been accurately perceived by this person he still thought of as a semi-stranger. “I-I'll take the referrals, I guess, but I don't know if I'll do anything with them. And whatever resources you have.”

Flick had last week read over the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5, although it did not feel particularly good, what with all its references to “deficits” and “abnormalities,” but his therapist had given him a link to a site that explained things in more detail and with language that was a bit more kind. He looked over the other websites she had sent him, too, and the more he read, the more invested he got in this. While C.J. was making dinner one night, Flick sat at the kitchen island to talk to him. “Do you really think I'm autistic?” Flick asked.

“I dunno, dude, I'm not a doctor. I'm just a guy that's done some googling.”

“But do you?”

C.J. glanced at him over his shoulder, then turned back to the stove top. “What do you think about it?”

“I mean, it would make sense. A lot of things would make more sense.”

“Right?”

“A-and it would mean that I'm not broken, I'm not a failure. I'm just... different. And I have to approach things differently.”

“Flick, I've been telling you that for years,” C.J. said, and stepped away from the stove to give him a quick kiss. Flick gave him a small smile. C.J. asked, “Do you think you'll look into some official diagnosis?”

“I don't know,” Flick said. “It sounds like a process, like a big, overwhelming, potentially humiliating process. If I could use it to get some adjustment to my scholarship or something so that I'm only enrolled half time, that might be helpful, but I don't even know if I can do that. And also, I don't know if I even want to continue with school. Like, what's the point? It's not like a bachelor's degree in studio art is going to help me get any job anywhere, and I don't want to pursue some higher degree so that I could teach or whatever. I just wanna make stuff. I don't need to go to college for that.”

“If you dropped out, though, you wouldn't get to use the university's studio space. And you probably wouldn't see Bob as much, either.”

“Yeah...” Flick sighed. “And my dad would never let me live it down if I dropped out of college after a year.”

“Fuck 'im,” C.J. said. “It's not his decision to make.”

“I might go one more year, load up my schedule with as many studio art classes as I can, get whatever experiences I want to get out of college. And then move on.”

“That's an idea,” C.J. said, his back to Flick.

Flick smiled, and added, “Because after that, we're going to go on that year-long road trip, right? After we build out that camper on the truck?”

C.J. turned around to smile back at him. “You still want to?”

“Of course I do.”

“Not a lot of space in a truck camper for artmaking, though. Certainly not for those 3D bug model commissions you should totally start making.”

Flick laughed. “Nobody's asking for those. That's just some weird fantasy you invented.” Flick paused. “I saw some really nice watercolor paintings of insects on Instagram the other day. My watercolor skills are nowhere near as good as theirs, but I'm okay at line drawing, and I could practice more with watercolor, or gouache or something. If I can make some decent paintings, I could get some giclée prints made from them, or maybe, like, greeting cards or something, and sell them on Etsy. That's a lot more practical of a business plan than 3D bug models. Paper and pencils and a tin of watercolors would take up a lot less space in the camper, too.”

“Don't you like sculpture more, though?”

“I... I do, but...”

“Do what you love, Flick. If we're going to be building a custom-freaking-camper, we can plan it out to include at least a small workspace for you. We can ship the finished pieces back to one of our dads' houses while we're traveling.” C.J. dished out dinner and put a plate in front of Flick, then he dug through the drawer until he found Flick's favorite fork and put that in front of him, too. Flick smiled when he noticed that; it was a small gesture that C.J. had done probably without even thinking about it, but it felt good to be accommodated.

As they ate, C.J. said, “Speaking of our dads, have you talked to yours about the whole autism thing yet?”

“No,” Flick said with a sigh. “I'm trying to decide if I want to. I mean, I'm incredibly curious as to why he told your dad that I might be autistic. Like, what if I was actually diagnosed when I was a kid and he just chose to ignore it? But, I mean, I can't imagine he's going to be cooperative or supportive. It's not going to be a good conversation.”

“You're probably right. I guess it comes down to how much you want or need whatever information he has.”

Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him, and so since this therapist was not going to give him homework, Flick gave himself an assignment: he was going to reach out to his father and ask about autism. But he wanted to do it in a way that did not out Chip or C.J., since Chip's motivation for telling C.J. all those years back seemed to be well-intentioned. So after a few more days of angst, this is what he emailed Nat:

Hi Dad. I recently started going to therapy to address depression and anxiety issues. At a recent session my therapist suggested that I might be on the autism spectrum, and so I've been doing research and trying to gather more information. Was I ever screened for autism when I was younger? Do you have any notes/documentation from my previous therapists? Thanks, Flick

It took Nat four days to write back; normally he was much quicker about responding. What he finally wrote was this:

Hello, Flick. I'm so happy to hear from you. How has school been going—did you do well on your recent midterm exams? It's good that you're addressing your anxiety and depression, although I'm sorry to hear that it's bad enough that you feel the need to. Getting you into therapy in the past was like pulling teeth, so I'm glad to hear that you're taking some initiative. No, you were never formally evaluated for autism, and frankly if I were you, I wouldn't put too much stock in the skills of your current therapist or this particular suggestion. The only paperwork I have from your previous therapists is billing related, which is probably not what you're looking for; they never shared their notes from your sessions with me. Let me know if there's anything else I can help with. Take care. Love, Dad

Flick was getting angry—angrier—with his father now, and wrote back:

I feel like I have a decent rapport with this therapist and that she knows what she's talking about—and she certainly knows more about mental health and psychology than an entomologist would. In the research I've done on my own about autism, it seems like a real enough possibility to warrant some further investigation, and honestly it seems unbelievable to me that of all the professionals you dragged me to over the years, not one of them considered that there might be this one very straightforward explanation for my poor social skills and sensory sensitivities and meltdowns, etc etc. Is there something you're not telling me? My therapist said that if I decide to pursue a diagnosis, the psychologist might want to talk with you about my childhood, so I would very much appreciate your cooperation here.

This time, Nat wrote back the next day:

Flick, I don't know why you are so hellbent on following this wild goose chase, but this is what I can tell you. Your fifth grade teacher in California suggested that you be evaluated for autism, but since we were preparing to move over winter break, I never followed up. The therapist you met with when you were thirteen recommended an autism screening as well, but there was a long waitlist at the time, and I knew how difficult it would be to get you to cooperate for any kind of testing, so I declined. But honestly, I just don't think this is something that applies to you. Psychology is an inexact science. These therapists are only seeing you for an hour a week, and they're making guesses based on whatever crumbs you choose to share or whatever facade you choose to present. The therapist I sent you to in Germany told me you might have a learning disability, but one must only look over your grades—which were always excellent, even in the shadow of crisis after your mother's death—to know how wrong he was. Even your teachers only saw whatever aspects of yourself that you chose to display at school. But I have known you since the day you were born, I know you better than anyone else on earth, and I believe I can say with authority that you are not autistic. You are perhaps introverted, but your relationship with C.J. proves that you can connect with other people just fine when you want to. And “sensory sensitivities” is a rather high-blown way of referring to finickiness—plenty of people are finicky without being autistic. Your behavioral problems were clearly the result of the trauma of losing your mother at such a young age, as evidenced by the fact that as you've matured, you've largely outgrown them. And even if you were autistic—even if you did pick and choose some personality traits of yours and shoehorn them into the diagnostic criteria—what good would it do you to be diagnosed? It's a label that will negatively impact you in school and work and relationships. And more to the point, it would be an all-too convenient excuse for you to not do your best. Flick, I know you to be smart and capable, but I also know very well that you lack discipline and ambition. You have an incredible innate talent and intellect, but you squander it—you've squandered it your entire life. I have done my best to encourage you, but you've always resisted me, as if you are determined to wallow and to fail. I know you well enough to know that if you decide to manipulate some psychologist into giving you an autism diagnosis, that you would stop trying to succeed altogether, and you would fall back on this invented diagnosis as a justification for your shiftlessness. You are latching on to what probably feels like an easy way out of the hard work of being a responsible adult. I cannot abide by that and so, no, I will not be helping you in this matter, although I would be happy to research some better therapist for you that would actually try to help you improve your life. Perhaps this all sounds harsh to you, but I say it with utmost love and concern. I was a bit shy when I was your age, too, but I pushed through it to make myself successful, and there's no reason you can't do the same. You can do better than this, Flick. Please give this matter some serious consideration. Love, Dad

Flick shook as he read his father's email. He'd been getting ready to leave for his afternoon class, but instead he laid down on the couch and waited for C.J. to come home.

When C.J. walked in the door a few hours later, Flick was still on the couch. “Hey, Flick,” C.J. said cheerfully, then he caught Flick's expression. “Ohh... what's wrong?”

“I-I emailed my dad...” Flick began.

C.J. sat down next to him. “Did he write back? What did he say?”

Flick took out his phone. “You can just read it. Let me scroll back up to the top.” He handed his phone over to C.J.

C.J.'s face looked serious, and as he read through the email thread he exhaled moodily. When he got to the end of it, he muttered under his breath, “Son of a bitch.” He handed Flick his phone back. “I'm so sorry, Flick.”

Flick took his phone, fiddled with the case for a moment, then set it aside. Then he hesitantly said, “Do... do you think what he said is true?”

“No, Flick, no...” C.J. put his hand on Flick's back, but Flick shrugged him off, not wanting to be touched right now. C.J. took his hand away. “Look, I know I've defended your dad in the past and, like, I can see in his last email that he is trying to be what he thinks is supportive. But he is doing it in, like, the absolute worst way possible, he is being an absolute asshole about it. And he is dead wrong in his assessment of you. Like, if he can't see how hard you work and how much you've accomplished, I don't know what the fuck he's looking at or what he expects of you. And his word choice was complete garbage. Like, you are absolutely not manipulative, you are not—what did he say?—shiftless. That is bullshit.”

Flick sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “B-but he's right, he knows me better than anyone else, and—”

“Do you really think that's true?” C.J. interrupted. He asked gently, “Do you really think he knows you better than I do, or better than you know yourself?”

Flick shrugged.

“In your heart of hearts, do you think what your father said is true?”

Flick sniffed again. “I don't know...” he said, his voice cracking.

C.J. sighed sadly.

Flick wiped his eyes, and after a minute he said, “I am just so tired of this. Everything is so hard.” He leaned against C.J. now, and C.J. wrapped his arms tight around him.

“I know,” C.J. said.

“I'm so tired of everything being so hard.”

“I know.” C.J. held him a moment longer, then loosened his grip and kissed his cheek. “And your dad is not helping here. He is not making you feel good. He is not a healthy presence in your life right now.”

Flick wiped his eyes again, and slowly shook his head. “No,” he said. “I... I just wish...” He trailed off, and slouched to nestle himself under C.J.'s arm.

“I know. Me too.” C.J. hugged him close again.

After a few minutes, Flick said “Should I write back to him?”

“Do you think you'll change his mind about anything?”

“No.”

“No.”

Flick sighed. “And, like, I can already tell that even though I'm sad about it now, in a day or two I'm going to be pissed off, and then I'm going to want to write some angry screed back. To show him how much he hurt me. To burn bridges.”

“I can't tell you what to do. But I don't think that's going to help you feel any better about this, that's just going to prolong the misery.”

“But if I ignore his email, he's going to think that he won.”

“Does it matter what he thinks? How much do you even want him in your life?”

Flick sighed, and C.J. kissed the top of his head. “You're right,” Flick said. “I know you're right. I've been saying more or less the same thing for years. I just... I don't like how this feels. Like, I was really hoping that moving out would give us enough of a break from each other that we could at least have a civil relationship. But even when we go weeks without talking, whenever we do talk, more often than not we wind up fighting. It's like we don't know how to interact without antagonizing each other. I feel like an idiot for getting my hopes up that it could ever be any different.”

“You know you're not an idiot,” C.J. insisted. “It's not idiotic to want a better relationship with your father. And he might come around a bit more in time. Like, it's clear—even from those emails—it's clear that he loves you and he wants you to be happy. And it's not like you need to cut ties with him completely, you maybe just need to put some boundaries in place, for him and for yourself, as to how often to see each other or what to talk about. Like, if he's not going to be actually helpful for you in regards to mental health stuff, then he doesn't get to be part of that conversation.” He paused, and then gently said, “But also, Flick, I think it's important to remember that you shouldn't feel like you need to force a relationship with him just because you're family.”

“Family,” Flick repeated wryly. After a moment he said. “You're my family more than he is. And you always have been.” He hugged C.J.'s arm tighter around his chest, and they spent the rest of the afternoon snuggled on the couch together.

After that, Flick pointedly ignored his email for the next few days, but then Thursday rolled around and he felt obliged to check it; last week Ankha had been sick with the flu and the instructor had emailed Flick and asked him if he could come in early to pose for both figure drawing sessions. So Thursday morning, he said to C.J., “Hey, um, can I ask kind of a silly favor?”

“Yeah, what's up?”

“Can you look over my email inbox and let me know if my dad's written to me again?”

C.J. smiled. “Not a problem.”

Flick unlocked his phone and handed it over. “He's always used my personal email, but can you check my campus mail, too?”

C.J. scrolled for a moment, then said, “Nothing from him in your gmail, and... nothing from him in your school account either.”

“Thank you,” Flick said, taking his phone back.

“Any time.”

Flick looked over his emails. His personal account was mostly junk—social media, news and website updates that he deleted without reading—and his school email wasn't much more compelling. There were several campus notifications that didn't concern him, an automated reminder from the school library about some overdue books, and an email from the TA for his American Lit class asking if he was planning on turning in the essay on a twentieth century poet that had been due last Friday and commenting on how many classes he had missed lately. Flick cringed. American Lit was one of the classes he usually tried to make it to; he hadn't realized how much he had been skipping, and he had completely spaced on that essay. But then he remembered that he had written a paper in high school on Langston Hughes that he could probably recycle without much effort, and he told himself he would try to email that in later today with some vague but sincere apology.

In the midst of all those emails was one with the subject line, RE: Leafville University Student Art Show submission. Flick hesitated, and was tempted to delete it without even opening it; it almost felt better not to know, and if anyone asked about it later—well, C.J. and Bob were the only ones who knew he had submitted anything—he could just tell them that he didn't get in. But then he braced himself and opened it anyway.

It started out, Thank you so much for your submission to Leafville University's Student Art Show. We received a record number of submissions this year, and the selection committee was most impressed by the talent and creativity of our campus community. There were a few more lines praising the submissions as a whole and detailing the selection process, and Flick was sure this was sizing up to be a rejection.

But then the next paragraph said, We would like to include your submission, entitled, 'Honey Bee Altar Tile,' in this year's show. Flick felt goosebumps rise over his body in surprise, and he went back and reread that sentence again to be sure he understood it correctly. The rest of that paragraph gave him instructions when and where to drop off his art, and the email concluded with a few lines with the dates of the show and of the opening reception. He read over the whole thing again, then said aloud to C.J., “I-I got in. To the show. The art show.”

C.J. broke out in a huge grin. “Hell yeah! I knew you would.”

Flick smiled now. “I didn't.”

“Did they tell you how amazing it is?”

“No. The email kind of reads like a form letter. But I think it's better that way. Like, less awkward.”

“I'll bet it'll be the star of the show.”

Flick shook his head. “It's really not anything that special. Like, I've seen better work from other students just from hanging around in the art building, seeing what people are working on in other studios.” Flick sighed now, and he felt his forehead wrinkle with worry. “I hope my piece doesn't stick out too much, if everything else there is so much better.”

“Flick, you gotta have more faith in yourself. Clearly people who know what they're talking about think it's good enough to be included.” C.J. paused, then said, “Is there, like, an event for the show?”

“Opening reception is Friday, April sixteenth. The show runs until May twenty-fifth.”

“Do you want to go to the reception?”

Flick bit his lip. “No, but yes?”

C.J. smiled. “Should I make you go?”

Flick laughed. “Probably. I'll regret it if I don't.”

C.J. went to his desk and got out a pad of sticky notes. “What time is the reception?”

“Five to nine p.m.”

C.J. wrote something down, then walked across the apartment and put a sticky note on the fridge door; it had the date and time of the reception written down, with stars and hearts drawn all around it. He said, “We'll go together. I wanna see this artwork of yours getting all the love and attention it deserves.” He sat down on the couch next to Flick and kissed him. “Flick, I am so freaking proud of you. For doing the work and for submitting it and getting into the show. You are on your way to great things.”

Flick smiled back at him and shrugged. “Maybe.”

Chapter Text

Waking up beside Flick was always the best part of C.J.'s day. Today it was sunny, after a week of freezing drizzle, and the air finally felt spring-like. Flick and C.J. were both still naked after sex last night, and this morning as they woke up, they nestled up close and kissed for a while, basking in the shared warmth of their bodies together under the covers. Then Flick stretched, and said, “I know we don't have a lot of spare bells at the moment, but we haven't gone out on any kind of date in a while.”

“What are you thinking?” C.J. asked with a smile.

“Something simple. Just coffee.”

“Where did you want to go?” C.J. asked, although he felt a little knot of anxiety now.

“Why can't we go to Brewster's?” Flick asked, holding eye contact with him.

C.J. sighed. “You know why.”

Flick rolled onto his stomach, resting his chest and chin on his pillow. “The lease on this apartment runs for another five months, and we might be here another year after that. Are we going to keep avoiding the cute, gay-owned coffee shop that's half a block away all that time, just because you're nervous about running into a certain barista?”

“You wanna look at apartment listings? Maybe we could find something cheaper or bigger in a different neighborhood...”

“You're changing the subject.”

“You bet I am,” C.J. said, then he sighed again. “Flick, the month or so after the whole Margie thing was, like, the worst month of my life. I kinda just want to move on from that.”

“Well, exactly. Don't you want closure?”

“I want to forget it ever happened.”

“But you know I'm not mad at you, right? You know my little breakdown was not your fault.”

“I know, I know. But it still feels bad. It feels like I fucked up super hard. Like, even if the extended breakdown was not my fault, I still made you sad, and I hate that, I hate it so much. Like, it physically hurts me to think about how sad I made you. And besides I don't know if it would make Margie feel weird for me to show up for coffee after, ya know, what happened. She hasn't reached out to me at all, and if she wants to forget about me, I want to let her do that.”

“But what if she's wondering why you never even come in for coffee any more, when she thought you were friends? What if she's wondering if you're upset with her?”

C.J. sighed. “I've thought about that, too. There's just no good options.”

“So we may as well go get coffee, then, huh? If you're already damned if you do and damned if you don't.”

C.J. didn't respond.

Flick asked, “Could I go on my own? How would you feel about that?”

C.J. squirmed. “W-well... She mentioned once that she watched my livestream. I don't know if she still does, and I don't know if she'd recognize you from it if she saw you. I mean, I doubt she'd say anything, and I know you wouldn't...”

“So it would only be awkward for you, who wouldn't even be there?”

C.J. smiled apologetically. “I know I'm being ridiculous.”

Flick rolled onto his side, crooking an arm under his head and reaching out to run his fingers through C.J.'s chest hair. “We could go in the afternoon. You said before you only saw her in the mornings. We might not even see her.”

C.J. thought about it for a moment. “Why do you want to go so badly?”

“Well,” Flick began. “On a simple level I just want to be able to patronize our neighborhood coffee shop, to go get a hot beverage or a scone or whatever. But also I want to stop being afraid of it. I want to stop dreading those memories, and the images I created in my head to go with them. I need to neutralize the threat so I can move on from it. Besides, it used to be our spot, and I want it to be our spot again.”

C.J. sighed; he knew he couldn't deny Flick. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “We can go after lunch today if you want. But if she's working, I just want to get our coffee to go, okay?”

Flick leaned over and kissed his cheek.

C.J. did not eat much lunch that day, and did not want coffee after, but he did want to appease Flick, so just before two in the afternoon, they walked down the street to Brewster's Coffee. They paused outside the door, and C.J. frowned and said to Flick, “Do I have to do this?”

“No, of course not. We can just keep walking.”

C.J. thought for a second. “I can do it. Let's go in.”

Brewster's was busy on a Sunday afternoon, with a line of customers and no empty tables. Behind the counter were two baristas, neither of them Margie, and C.J. breathed a sigh of relief. “She's not here,” C.J. said to Flick. “But it's so crowded, maybe we should get our stuff to go, anyway. I think I'll feel better if I keep moving.”

Flick nodded.

They waited in line, not talking much. After a few minutes, the door to the kitchen opened and out stepped Margie, buttoning up her coat. C.J. involuntarily gasped. Margie scanned over the crowd and after a moment caught C.J.'s eye. She paused for just a second, and a slight blush rose up to her cheeks. Then she smiled nervously in greeting, and C.J. smiled back. Then they both turned away, and she kept walking toward the door.

Flick noticed all this. He looked at Margie, then whispered to C.J., “Is that her?”

“Shh!” C.J. whispered back, his eyes to the ground. “Don't stare.”

“She's not even looking at me.”

C.J. glanced up again now. Margie was almost at the front of the coffee shop now, her expression unreadable. Another customer opened up the door, and she smiled at them as she stepped back to let them in, then she slipped outside, her hands in her coat pockets, her eyes to the ground. C.J. looked over at Flick. He was staring at her unabashedly, his forehead furrowed in concentration. Once she was out of sight, he took a breath, and then shrugged affectedly and said, “I mean, she's cute, but I'm cuter.”

“Flick, stop,” C.J. hissed, surprised at the seriousness of his own voice.

Flick must've been surprised too, because C.J. could feel him tense beside him. After a moment, Flick murmured, “Sorry, I was just trying to be funny.”

C.J. exhaled. “No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped. This is just hard for me, you know?”

Flick glanced over at him and touched his fingers to C.J.'s palm. C.J. intertwined their fingers and squeezed Flick's hand in apology.

Everything C.J. had said earlier was true: he'd been dreading the social awkwardness of this encounter and the prospect of making people uncomfortable. But there had also been a small part of him that was afraid that he actually did have a secret crush on Margie, so secret that even he didn't know about it, and that seeing her again would stir up some unwanted feelings. So it was a relief that the whole thing only felt awkward. But of course he knew it was a different situation, seeing her briefly across a crowded room with Flick at his side, versus being alone with her as he always had been before. So since fishing charters were starting back up for the spring, he vowed to go into Brewster's one morning on his own before a charter.

It took him a week to work up the courage to stop, and then the day of it took him a few minutes to get out of the truck and go in. And there she was, rewriting the chalkboard menu for the day. She looked up at him and smiled cautiously. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he said, stepping up to the counter. “Um, large dark roast to go, with room for cream, please.”

“Two hundred bells.”

There was a moment of awkward silence as she filled up his coffee, then she said, “Are you fishing today?”

C.J. nodded. “The charter basically shuts down for a month or two at the end of winter while we wait for the ice to melt, but they're starting back up for the season now. Ice is out on Fern Lake and Hermit River, the rest of the lakes will open up soon, too.”

“What are you catching this time of year?” Margie asked.

C.J. started to relax. “We're bringing in stuff like perch or bluegill or cisco. Game fish like pike or walleye are catch-and-release until the fishing opener in May.”

“Oh yeah,” Margie said. “I saw your stream the other day when you caught that pike.”

“Heh heh,” C.J. laughed. “I didn't know you were watching. What's your username? I'll look for you in the chat.”

“Umm...” Margie smiled shyly.

C.J. quickly added, “You don't have to tell me, I was just making conversation.”

“No, no, it's just... kind of silly. I first made my account years ago to follow this Dungeons and Dragons stream, so my username is, um, liriel-underscore-twilight.”

C.J. smiled. “I don't know a lot about D-and-D, so it just sounds like a regular username to me. But you know you can change it if you want.”

Margie shook her head. “It's been my username forever, I'm used to it.”

C.J. took his coffee. “Well, I guess I should get going. But maybe I'll see you around.”

“Yeah, I'll see ya,” she said.

C.J. went back to the truck and thought, That wasn't too bad. That was thoroughly tolerable. And there had been nothing that felt like flirting, nothing that felt like a crush. After he got to the lake, while he was waiting for the client to show up, he looked over his streaming profile on his phone, and saw that Margie's username was not among his followers or subscribers. He had caught that pike that she had mentioned during his Wednesday morning stream last week, so maybe she had just tuned in after they had seen each other across the coffee shop the weekend before. That felt like it was for the best, because he didn't want her harboring any secret feelings for him, either. Maybe they wouldn't be actual friends, but they could at least be cordial acquaintances. And he could go back to getting coffee at Brewster's without feeling like a traitor or a heel.

Fishing charters starting back up again for the spring felt a little bittersweet this year. It was nice to get out on the water again, and of course C.J. needed the income the charters provided. But they were also a distraction from what increasingly felt like his real life—his relationship with Flick and his livestream. After he had come out on stream, he had lost a few followers, but in the weeks that followed he gained more than he had lost. With Flick's permission, he had posted as a highlight the video of his coming out and Flick joining him on stream, so that going forward nobody could accuse him of keeping this a secret. He also selfishly liked to watch the video over and over himself; every time he watched, he cringed at his own nervousness and waited with anticipation for that moment when Flick stepped onto the screen, coming to his rescue, and then he savored the heartwarming banter of him and Flick as they chatted for a few minutes at the end of the stream. He loved seeing on screen his own unmistakable adoration of Flick, and the way Flick's face softened and his body relaxed the longer they were together; he loved that moment at the end before Flick walked off camera—the eye contact, the hand squeeze, the smile. Flick had told him that he'd be willing to briefly come on stream again sometime—to say hello, to show off some bug he caught, to help release a big fish—and C.J. already knew that even if he didn't wind up posting those videos as highlights on his stream, he would without a doubt be saving them for himself.

And he wanted to get on with streaming more. He hadn't realized how much anxiety he had been holding over coming out on stream, and now that it was done, streaming was getting to be fun again. There was still, of course, the occasional troll, but now that C.J. didn't feel like he had to avoid certain words or connotations, he was more comfortable saying outright something like, “I'm not going to tolerate homophobia here,” and booting them out of the chat. He had a few regular viewers that were vocal supporters, and it felt so good to see them back him up, even if they were mostly anonymous names on a screen. Now that he was comfortable being himself—his full, authentic self—on stream, he was connecting more with his viewers and with other streamers, and his numbers were starting to tick upward. He felt a little silly that he hadn't made that connection before.

C.J. going out on fishing charters was a convenient way of giving Flick the time he needed to be alone, but every time C.J. went out, he couldn't wait to come home. Flick's mood had its usual ups and downs, but overall it seemed to be arcing toward better, and as a result their relationship was feeling better, too. C.J. wished that Flick could have kept going to therapy, since those six sessions at the campus clinic seemed to have helped, but he knew better than to pester him about it. The therapist had brought up the possibility of an autism diagnosis, and Flick had been fixated on this idea ever since. Easily more than half of the conversations he and Flick had now at some point digressed to the subject of autism, which admittedly got a little tedious at times, but on the whole C.J. was thrilled to see Flick making this effort to accept himself a bit more.

One day they were on the couch, both of them scrolling on their phones, when Flick suddenly said, “Pathological demand avoidance is a thing!”

“Huh?” C.J. said.

“It's a thing! It's an autistic thing! I'm not just a lazy jerk.”

C.J. laughed a little. “Of course you're not a lazy jerk, Flick.”

Flick read a bit more on his phone, then sighed. “You know, you say, 'of course,' but...”

“I know,” C.J. said, and put his hand on Flick's leg.

Flick set his phone down. “God, just think of how different my life could have been if I'd been diagnosed when I was a kid. My dad first sent me to a therapist when I was eight. And I mean, yeah, I was kinda fucked up—like, more fucked up than I was before—after my mom died. But I can remember feeling like an alien before that, like, not knowing what to do with other kids. If we hadn't moved around so much after Mom died, some doctor or therapist or teacher might have gotten to know me well enough to have noticed what was going on and gotten the ball rolling on a diagnosis. Or what if Dad actually followed through when they did bring it up? I could have grown up having that understanding about myself. I could have grown up not feeling like a failure, or like I was irreparably broken.”

C.J. smiled sadly. “I mean, yeah, maybe you coulda. But considering how your dad is acting now—when you're a grown-ass adult making grown-ass adult decisions about your own healthcare—do you think he would have been at all supportive about it when you were some vulnerable, malleable kid? Or would he have put you in some kind of intense therapy to try to grind it outta ya?”

Flick sighed.

C.J. continued. “I really wish you could have had a better childhood, too, in, like, a myriad of ways. But with the autism thing, I think it might be for the best that you didn't come to it until after you got out from under his thumb. Like, his motivation for not getting you diagnosed as a kid was... well, I don't know exactly what his motivation was, but it was nothing good. But this way, you get to make it your own. You get to learn about this aspect of yourself without his negative influence. You get to decide on your own what to do about it, like what kind of therapy or even if you want to do therapy. You get to have more autonomy this way.”

“Yeah,” Flick said. “But I also have to unlearn so much garbage, so many negative thoughts and maladaptive coping mechanisms. Like, honestly... if I'm not broken, then what am I? I don't mean that in a self-pitying kind of way, I just mean, like, I've thought of myself as broken for so long, I don't have any other available concept of myself. I have to undo a lifetime of shoddy work, and it just feels like an impossibly large task.”

C.J. sighed. “I wish I coulda done more for you when we were kids.”

“But you were just a kid yourself, and you had your own shit to deal with,” Flick said.

“I know, but—”

Flick cut him off. “And even so, what you did was perfect. Like, what I needed more than anything was someone to stick around, to stand up for me, to love me for who I was. You were exactly what I needed. You have always been exactly what I needed.”

C.J. smiled at him. “You have no idea how good it feels for me to hear you say that.”

Flick kissed him. “I know I'm not very good at expressing it with words, but I hope you know how important you are to me.”

“I know,” C.J. said. “But I do appreciate the reassurance.”

C.J. was going out on charters once or twice a week right now. People were already booking out charters for after the fishing opener in May and through the summer, too. There were so many weekends solidly booked out, with both morning and afternoon charters on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and the weeks around Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day were filling up, too; C.J. could already see that even splitting the charters evenly with his dad, there would be some weeks where he'd be going out six or seven times. C.J. had ramped up advertising efforts over the winter because he wanted to save up money to build a truck camper, or maybe to pay the rent on a bigger apartment, or even just to be able to cover all the bills through the off-season next year without Flick feeling compelled to force himself into some miserable employment. But now he started to worry that the advertising had been too successful and that he wouldn't have time to stream or to see Flick as much as he'd like, especially during the summer when Flick was off from school.

He mentioned this concern to Flick, but Flick just kind of shrugged it off. “If you're that busy, couldn't you guys just hire someone to do a couple charters a week during the summer so that you two can have some time off? I mean, your dad has so many angler friends, surely he knows some old retired guy who'd like to use your nice boat to take people fishing.”

C.J. could immediately think of three or four of his dad's friends that would fit that description. “Y-yeah,” he said. “We could. But, I mean, I want that income, too. The hourly rate that I'm bringing in with the charters is way better than what I'd earn in any other job I'm qualified to do.”

“What about streaming?”

C.J. laughed a little. “My numbers aren't going up that much.”

“They might if you were able to steam as often as you'll be doing charters this summer. Just imagine what your livestream would be like if you put all the effort you've been putting into the charter into that instead,” Flick said. “If you want to be successful with streaming, you're going to have to take some risks, like cutting back on charters a little. It's not even that big of a risk. This is, like, a C.J.-friendly level risk.”

C.J. smirked. “But it would mean not having as much to put into savings for the rest of the year, though. And if the charter is as busy as it looks like it's gonna be this summer, by the end of it we'd be able to put down a deposit on a second boat. Then next year we could do even more charters.”

Flick gave him a look. “If you buy your own giant thirty-foot boat, you're basically committing to doing charters the rest of your life. Is that really what you want?”

C.J. sighed. “No, but... it's a safe option. I could work like crazy through the summer and relax a bit more the rest of the year, and I'd know that we'd be financially stable.”

“Does your dad want to work like crazy through the summer, though?”

“Probably not. Every now and then he'll make some comment about wanting to hand the business off to me one day so that he can cut back to just doing a couple charters a week for fun and pocket change, basically.”

“So hire some part-timer to help out this summer so you both can do a reasonable amount of charters. And then you'll get to stream and hang out with me over the summer, too.”

“That is tempting,” C.J. said. “I'll think it over.”

That Saturday, C.J. had a morning charter. Flick was asleep when he first woke up, but by the time he went back into the bedroom to say goodbye, he was awake and sitting up in bed with the blankets kicked off, wearing nothing but boxer briefs. Flick looked up at him and set his phone down as C.J. walked into the room.

C.J. said, “Good morning, beautiful. I was just getting ready to head out.” He sat down next to Flick in bed and kissed him.

“So, um, I have a quick question,” Flick began, and smiled coyly. “D-do you remember how we used to FaceTime last summer, before we lived together, a-and things would get sort of, um, obscene?”

“Heh heh. Boy, do I.”

“Sooo, I was just thinking,” Flick said, and giggled. “The, um, your camera, your good camera, it saves to a memory card, doesn't it? It doesn't automatically upload to Google Photos or anything, right?”

C.J. grinned. “What are you getting at?”

“So, theoretically, we could use that camera to make... videos... that would remain absolutely private. Right?”

C.J. smirked. “Videos,” he repeated.

Flick shrugged, biting back a smile.

“Like, video videos.”

Flick giggled now, and covered his face with his hands. “You know, i-if you're interested...”

“If,” C.J. repeated, and laughed. “Dear Flick, why did you have to bring this up minutes before I have to go take a couple of senior citizens bass fishing?”

“Because I have terrible timing?” Flick laughed and leaned back on his pillow. “Happy belated birthday.”

C.J. smiled. “Yeah, we could maybe make some videos later.”

“Today?”

“Today?!” C.J. said, raising his eyebrows.

Flick shrugged. “I-if you want.”

“I very much want that, yes.” He leaned in to kiss Flick again. “Is this part of your campaign to get me to cut back on charters this summer?”

“Maybe,” Flick said. “Or at the very least it would give you some little memento from me if you do go crazy with the charters this summer and we don't get to see each other nearly enough. I've seen you rewatch that clip from your stream.”

C.J. blushed a little; he thought he'd been keeping that to himself. “Hey, that's a nice video, too. Albeit in a very, very different way.”

Flick had spring break at the end of March, and so when C.J. went out for his usual Wednesday morning stream, Flick tagged along. It was the first on-location stream Flick had come along with since last summer and he said he'd come on camera for a bit, and C.J. was excited to share this time with Flick. They drove out to Fern Lake and C.J. set up his streaming and fishing gear on the pier, and at exactly ten o'clock, C.J. started the stream. Flick watched him, then asked, “Now that you've got more followers, do people show up right away, or does it still take a while?”

“It still takes a while. I usually get at least a couple viewers in the first ten or fifteen minutes, though. I wait to even bait my hook until someone shows up, though.”

Flick perched on the railing of the pier. “I'll keep you company for a little bit. But once you get going, I'll head off to look for bugs.”

“Sounds good. Are you okay being on camera?”

“Sure.”

“Scooch over closer to me, then. You're kinda half off screen right now.”

Flick looked at his image on C.J.'s laptop, then repositioned himself.

“And actually, if you're going to be on camera, you should have a mic. My mic won't pick up your voice very well when we're outside, with all the other ambient sounds. I just bought this clip-on mic, you can test it out for me. Do you mind?”

Flick sighed, but he said, “Fine.”

C.J. got the Bluetooth microphone out of his bag and connected it to his laptop. “It comes with an earpiece, if you want to hear chat notifications or anything.”

“I don't,” Flick said.

“Heh. That's fine.” C.J. clipped the microphone to Flick's shirt, and standing so close to him made him smile. “I love having you here with me,” he said.

Flick smiled back. “It'll be nice being on stream wearing something other than my pajamas this time.”

C.J. said, “You're beautiful no matter what you're wearing.” He leaned in and kissed him.

Flick kissed him back for a minute, then pulled away and murmured, “Aren't you streaming right now?”

“Nobody's here yet,” C.J. said, and went back to kissing Flick. He put his hand on the top of Flick's leg and let it slide to his inner thigh. Just then there was the ding of a notification in his headset of someone joining the chat. C.J. pulled away from Flick and turned to his laptop. “Hello!” he cheerfully said to the screen. He glanced over to Flick, but Flick only smiled serenely back at him; it was impossible to guess what would and wouldn't embarrass Flick. The viewer wrote, lol, am I interrupting something?? C.J. smiled and said, “Nah, I'm just getting a little distracted by Flick while I wait for folks to show up.” The viewer wrote, I can come back later, lol lol lol. Then another person entered the chat, then another, and C.J. said, “Ah, we got a crowd showing up now. Let's bait some hooks and get fishing.”

C.J. picked up his tackle box, then glanced at the chat again and saw that someone had written, hello Flick! He looked over at Flick again, who was definitely not watching the chat, and said, “Hey, Flick. Folks are saying hello to you.”

Flick turned to face the laptop, and gave the camera a shy smile and a small wave. “Hello fake internet people.”

C.J. laughed, then double checked the usernames in the chat and said, “Everyone here right now is a regular, they're good folks.” He tied a lure onto his line and kept talking. “Flick's college is on spring break this week, so we get to hang out with him for a little bit on stream today. But then later he's gonna go catch some bugs.” He looked at the chat again, then said, “Username, uh, sturgery says it doesn't sound like a very exciting spring break.”

Flick laughed a little and said, “Compared to what? Going to Florida or whatever to get drunk with strangers sounds like literal hell. I'd so much rather be right here.”

C.J. gave him a smile, then turned to the camera. “So as you can see, it's a beautiful spring day here today. Temp's around fifty-five or sixty, clear skies. I'm going after some perch today, so the lure I picked out to start with is this little spinner here.” He held it up to the camera and twirled the line between his fingers. “These are great for a lot of fish, they've got a nice bounciness in the water that really gets the fish's attention, and with perch specifically I've found they respond best to the red or orange ones. I guess it must look like whatever their regular food is, zooplankton or invertebrates or whatever.” His headset dinged, and he checked the chat. Then he said to Flick, “Somebody's asking how you feel about fish eating bugs.”

Flick shrugged. “I don't control nature. Insects lay dozens or hundreds of eggs for a reason—most of them are going to get eaten. Obviously insects are food for fish or other creatures. Insects are food for other insects, too, and the food web just grows from there. So much of life on earth—one could even argue all life on earth—is dependent on there being swarms and swarms of insects. I just want people to appreciate and respect that. The only reason we're alive—the only reason anything else is alive—is because of bugs. And that's not even taking into account the work they do pollinating flowers to produce fruit. Or the gratuitous beauty that they bring to the world, or...” He sighed and trailed off, and when C.J. glanced over at him he looked self-conscious.

C.J. turned to the camera and smiled and said, “Speaking of pollination, Flick made this awesome piece of art with a honey bee on it. It's fuckin' gorgeous. I put a photo of it up on the Discord, but he won't let me copy over his artist's statement.”

Flick smirked at him and said, “That's because it's way too pretentious. You don't want people to think you're dating some sanctimonious pseudo-mystic.”

C.J. laughed and said, “You can't tell me what I want.” He cast his line and started slowly reeling it in. “What kind of bugs are you looking for today?”

“Um, it's still pretty early in the year for a lot of bugs to be out,” Flick said. “I'm mostly just going to go out and see what I can see. Ants for sure. Probably some stink bugs and boxelder bugs. Maybe some native bees or honey bees. Maybe pond skaters or fairy shrimp in some vernal pools, if I'm lucky.”

C.J. reeled in his line and adjusted the lure; he glanced at the chat before casting it out again. “A couple people are asking what fairy shrimp are. Flick, you wanna take this? You can explain things better than I can.”

“You do it,” Flick said. “They're not even bugs.”

“They ain't fish, either,” C.J. said. “And I'm busy, you're just sitting there.” He laughed, then added, “You don't have to, though, you can head out whenever.”

Flick slid off the railing and stood up, as if he was getting ready to leave, but then he crossed his arms and said, “So, a-as people can probably guess from the name, fairy shrimp are crustaceans. If anyone's seen ads, like, in the back of a comic book for so-called 'sea monkeys,' those are a type of fairy shrimp. When the snow melts and forms vernal pools—uh, p-puddles, springtime puddles—the eggs hatch and the fairy shrimp emerge. They're maybe an inch long, and orangey brown. They flutter their legs to swim, a-and it looks sort of feathery, l-like wings, I guess. The adults only live for as long as the puddles exist, a few weeks maybe, but the eggs can survive for, I think, ten or fifteen years if they stay dry. A-and then they'll hatch when they get wet again, when there's another vernal pool.”

C.J. could tell that Flick was finishing up being social, so he reeled in his line again and said, “I love your brain, you are so full of interesting facts.”

“I'm full of something,” Flick muttered.

C.J. set his pole down. “You wanna go hunt for bugs?”

“Yes, please.”

C.J. glanced at the chat and saw that someone had written, no, Flick, stay and hang out with us! C.J. said to Flick, “If you find anything interesting, maybe you could bring it back to show it off, if I'm still streaming. You got a jar for fairy shrimp?”

“Of course I have a jar.”

“Lemme get your mic.” He disconnected the Bluetooth and unclipped the microphone from Flick's shirt, leaning in close and holding eye contact for a moment; as he did, he heard a few dings in his headset from chat notifications, but he ignored that for the moment to focus his attention on Flick. “Thank you for joining me today,” he murmured.

“Mm-hm.”

Flick did not say good bye to the chat, and C.J. watched him walked down the pier, pick up his backpack and net, and head off down the trail to the woods. After Flick disappeared from sight, he looked at the chat again, and saw that several people had written, kiss him, kiss him. He laughed shyly. “Just saw your chat messages now. That is an entirely different kind of stream you guys are after. Let's see if we can't get some fish to bite today.”

C.J. streamed and fished for the next hour and a half, and caught six yellow perch that he put in his cooler and one catfish that he dehooked and released back into the lake. He switched lures, and after another fifteen minutes, he caught another perch, but then nothing for a long time after that. He said to the camera, “Fish might be done for now. It's past noon, anyway. I was kinda hoping Flick woulda come back by now to show off whatever he found, but he gets pretty focused on what he's doing, he probably just lost track of the time. I'll give it another half hour to see if any more fish want to come say hello to me, but then I'll probably call it for the day. And then I'll head off into the woods to go find Flick, heh.”

He cast out his line again and had started to reel it back in when he heard an unfamiliar ding in his headset. When he glanced over at the chat he saw a notification that read, Forager_Erik is raiding with a party of 278. C.J. almost dropped his fishing pole; Forager_Erik was one of C.J.'s favorite streamers, and while they had chatted briefly in each other's streams before, this was his first time getting raided by him. “Ha ha, holy shit, oh my god. Forager Erik, I'm, like, a huge fan of your stream, I've been watching for years.” Forager_Erik wrote in the chat, happy to be here, and C.J. tried not to giggle with excitement. Some of the raiders dropped off after the first few seconds, but he still had over two hundred people in the chat, which was a lot more than he'd ever had before, and ten or twenty times his average. He tried to compose himself. “Uh, welcome aboard raiders. M-my name's C.J., I run a fishing stream. Um, sometimes I'll talk about other nature-y stuff, too, or, uh, once in a blue moon I'll do a cooking stream to, like, show off what I do with the fish. I'm at Fern Lake in Minnesota today. I've got seven nice sized yellow perch so far today, plenty for dinner tonight and probably leftovers for sandwiches tomorrow. Erik, I know you go fishing sometimes, you've got that awesome trout stream on your property, but your channel's mostly, like, gathering mushrooms and grinding acorns into flour, stuff like that. Which is awesome, by the way. But hopefully your viewers are cool with watching me fish.” He reeled in his line. “I brought in most of today's catch with spinners, but right now I'm trying out some crankbait to see if I can't get another bite or two before calling it a day. Anybody else out there like to fish for perch? What kind of lures do you folks like to use?” The chat lit up with more responses than C.J. was used to, and he laughed a little as he scrolled back up to read them. “Minnows, crayfish, leeches, waxworms. Lots of other folks using jigs and spinners, too. All good choices. This is what I've got on my line right now.” He held up an orange plastic fish with two hooks dangling off of it. “It's maybe a bit big for perch, or at least for the perch I've been bringing in today—I've been mostly getting nine- or ten-inchers. But perch are hungry fish, and they like to bite. Once, I was fishing with some crankbait a bit bigger'n this, with three hooks on it, and I felt a bite and started reeling it in, and I thought for sure I'd landed something big because it was really fighting me, and when I pulled it up I had two perch on two different hooks. It was awesome. I always wondered what that second perch was thinking, though, seeing the first one get dragged away and going for it anyway.” C.J. was starting to get comfortable again, even with a bigger audience. “Anyway, let's get this back out in the water and see what happens.”

He cast his line and started reeling it back in. Then he turned to the camera and said, “So with crankbaits... Now, I know some of you are experienced anglers, but for those of you that aren't as familiar with the sport, with crankbaits what you want to do is reel it in slowly and, like, unevenly. Like you want to pause for a second here and there, and speed it up just a tiny bit and then slow it down again. You want the lure to move like a living fish. Sometimes if I'm in deeper water—like if I'm out in a boat—I'll attach some weights to my line to get it down by the weeds, since crankbait is pretty buoyant. But on the pier here, the water's only, like, eight, maybe ten feet deep, so we don't need weights. I mean, there's also a lot of different types of crankbait and a lot of different retrieval techniques, but I'm trying to keep it simple here.” He pulled up an empty hook, then said, “Let's try again.”

He cast it out, and after a few seconds felt a jerk on his pole. “Ope! We got something.” He started steadily reeling in his line. “Feels pretty good sized. Something bigger than the perch I've been getting. I think they've moved on for the day anyway.” The fish was pulling hard enough that he felt like he had to focus on taking care not to let the line snap, but he still forced a smile for the camera and said, “Wouldn't it be funny if this was just, like, an old boot?” He laughed a little. “You know, you see that all the time in cartoons, but I've never actually caught a boot. Plenty of seaweed and the occasional plastic bag, but I guess people just don't lose boots like they used to.” The fish was close enough now that he caught a glimpse of it in the water. He gave the camera another smile and said, “I can see it. Definitely not a boot. I gotta grab my net for this one.” He leaned off camera for a second, and scooped up the fish. “Look at that beautiful walleye. That's, what, sixteen, seventeen inches?” He reached into his vest pocket for pliers to remove the hook, then he lifted the fish out of the net and held it up to the camera. “Look at those teeth! The fins are pretty sharp, too, but those teeth are vicious. Great example of why you should always use pliers or a dehooker.” He admired the fish for another second, then said, “They're outta season for another five weeks, so I gotta put 'em back. Let me see if I can get this on camera for you.” He gripped the wiggling fish on one hand and grabbed his webcam with the other, then knelt down on the edge of the pier. “I hope I don't drop the camera in the water, although I guess that would make for some exciting video, too, until everything shorted out, heh.” He set the camera down, and then used both hands to lower the fish into the water. “So he—I think it's a he, the males are leaner and longer—he tired himself out a bit, so what I'm doing here is just kinda gently swishing him back and forth a bit, get the water flowing over those gills again, until... there he goes.” The fish flailed as it swam away, and the spines on its dorsal fin sliced one of C.J.'s fingers on his left hand. He stifled a gasp as he pulled his hands out of the water and wiped them off on his pants. “He nicked me a little bit with his dorsal fin, nothing too bad, though. It looks worse than it actually is.” He held up a bleeding finger to the camera for a second. “Oh, I'm glad you guys got to see that walleye, though. You raiders came by just in time.” He picked up the camera and brought it back up to his laptop. The viewers had gone down to one hundred and seventy eight, but that was still an incredible number for C.J., and there were several excited comments about the fish. His finger throbbed a little, but he wasn't about to take time out of his stream right now to clean and bandage it, and since his pants were bloodstained already, he pressed the cut finger against his pants to try to staunch the wound while he talked about walleyes and catch and release methods.

After a few minutes, Flick emerged from the forest trail holding a bug cage to his chest. C.J. grinned and said, “Hey, Flick came back! And it looks like he's got a bug for us. Flick is my, uh...” He paused only for a second; if even half of today's viewers followed or subscribed, it would do wonders for his overall numbers, and his initial instinct was to not risk alienating them. But he also didn't want people in his chat if they weren't going to be accepting of who he was, so he plunged ahead. “Flick is my boyfriend. He's into insects. He joined us for a little bit at the beginning of the stream this morning, but then he went off to hunt for bugs.” Flick walked up to the base of the pier and waved to C.J., and then C.J. realized that when Flick had left, he'd only had twelve viewers. He looked to the camera, then to Flick. Leaving dead air—even just for a few seconds—was risky, but he also knew he had to warn Flick, so he turned back to the camera and said, “We've got a hell of a lot more viewers now than we did earlier, and I just gotta go check in with Flick to make sure he's okay with that before he comes back on camera. I will be right back. Please don't go anywhere.” He took off his headset and stepped off camera.

Flick smiled at him and started to say, “Hey, if you're still streaming, I've got—”

C.J. cut him off. “Real quick, Flick. So my stream got raided and—”

“It what?” Flick interrupted.

“It's a good thing, I can explain more later.” C.J. was talking quickly. “But I've got over a hundred and fifty people in the chat right now.”

“Oh my god.”

“So you don't have to come on—but you can if you want, I'd love to have you—but I just wanted to give you a heads-up. I gotta get back to them, though.”

“I-I can come on. They're just names on a screen.”

C.J. grinned with relief. “Thank you. I love you.” He kissed him quick, then stepped back in front of the camera. There were still one hundred and sixty-two in the chat, and he smiled at the camera as he put his headset back on. “Flick is on his way!” Flick joined him a moment later, and C.J. said, “Let's mic you back up. Do you want the ear piece?” Flick shook his head. C.J. connected the microphone to his laptop, then said to Flick, “So what did you find today?”

“I-I found a butterfly. A mourning cloak.” Flick held the bug cage up near the camera.

C.J. tried to get Flick to talk more. “Now, that might not seem like a big deal to folks in warmer climates, but here in Minnesota, it's still pretty cold most days. I haven't seen any other butterflies out this year yet. Or flowers for them to feed at. Heck, there's still snow on the ground in some shadowy ravines.”

Flick took a breath, and started to warm to his subject. “S-so these butterflies actually overwinter as adults. I-in cold climates like this, butterflies usually overwinter as pupae, o-or maybe larvae or eggs, b-because it's easier for them to withstand freezing temperatures that way. But mourning cloaks and tortoiseshell butterflies and a few others overwinter as adults, they basically hibernate in hollow logs or unheated outbuildings, a-and this way they're able to emerge early in the spring, as soon as temperatures start to warm up. I have seen a few flowers out there—there were marsh marigolds starting in the woods today, a-and I've seen dandelions on some sunny hillsides. B-but these butterflies don't really nectar at flowers much anyway. They get their nutrition from tree sap or rotting fruit or from minerals in the wet soil.” He took a step closer to the camera. “You can tell by how ragged the wings look that they've had a rough winter. I-I wanted to come show them off, if you were still streaming, but I'm going to let them go again now.”

C.J. stepped to the side of Flick to scroll through the chat quick; there were several comments along the lines of, cool, or I've seen those in my woods before, or that's one tough butterfly to sleep outside though a MN winter. C.J. said to Flick, “Thanks for bringing 'em by. I think the chat liked seeing them.”

Flick gave C.J. a brief smile, then opened up the bug habitat. When the butterfly didn't fly out after a second, he took the lid off, too, and when they still didn't fly out he put his hand inside to coax them onto his finger. Flick held the butterfly up to the camera for a moment while they pumped their wings, and then as soon as the breeze picked up, they fluttered off.

While Flick was releasing the butterfly, C.J. checked his own hand to see if the cut had stopped bleeding yet, and when he saw that it hadn't, he pressed it against his pants again. As Flick was putting the lid back on the habitat, he looked down and saw C.J.'s bloodstained pants. A look of concern came over his face as he picked up C.J.'s hand, and said, “What happened?”

“Uh, I caught a walleye while you were gone.”

“Did it bite you?”

“N-no. Swiped me with its dorsal fin while I was releasing it.”

Flick tsked as he let go of C.J.'s hand and set down the bug habitat. “And I suppose you were too busy chatting to do anything about it and were just going to let it get infected.”

“Um... heh heh.” C.J. laughed nervously. “It's not that bad.”

“Well, I mean, it's not that bad in the sense that you don't need stitches, but you should have at least cleaned it up and put a band-aid on it,” Flick grumbled.

“I was gonna. I'm probably finishing up my stream soon anyway.”

Flick ignored him as he dug through C.J.'s tackle box until he found the mini first aid kit. Without a word, he tore open an antiseptic wipe and took C.J.'s hand again to clean the wound. “Flick...” C.J. started.

“What?” Flick said without looking up.

“Nothing,” C.J. said, and smiled shyly at the camera. This was not especially the image he wanted to project on his stream; he tried to be high-energy and fearless and tough. He also wanted to get back to more compelling content so as to not lose viewers. But this was also part of the reality of fishing, and part of his life with Flick. Besides, it felt good to be fussed over by Flick, so he just let him work.

Flick dabbed the antiseptic wipe over the cuts, then folded over the wipe to clean up the area around it. He got out a large band-aid and wrapped it around the injured finger, then said, “You can clean it out properly and put some medicine on it at home, but that'll do for now.” He gathered up the packaging from the wipe and the band-aid and shoved it in his pocket. “I'll let you get back to your stream now that you're not bleeding all over the pier and your clothing.” He unclipped his mic and handed it back to C.J.

“Thank you,” C.J. murmured.

“Mm-hm.” Flick gave him a brief smile, then walked away again without saying goodbye to the stream viewers.

C.J. glanced over the chat as he disconnected Flick's microphone. There were several comments—from strangers who had come over from Erik's stream—that read, aww, or, such a good boyfriend, or you guys are cute. C.J. laughed under his breath and said, “Yeah, he is a good boyfriend.” Then he cleared his throat and said, “So I know a lot of you folks have been watching for a while, either my stream or Erik's stream. I was just about to finish up before I got raided, but, uh, let's make a poll real quick and put it to a vote. I could either try to catch one more fish with some different tackle, or we could go find another stream to raid and send all this fun energy someone else's way.” He gave them a minute to vote, then said, “Looks like seventy-two percent of ya are saying one more fish. You guys rock.” C.J. smiled. “Sounds good to me. Lemme bring my tackle box up to the camera and we'll pick out something new to try.”

C.J. streamed for another fifteen minutes and caught a tiny bluegill that he released, which was a little anticlimactic after that walleye, but he was able to joke about it and the viewers seemed to be having fun. While C.J. streamed, Flick dragged a picnic table to the shore by the base of the pier and sat down with his sketchbook, and after C.J. had wound up his stream for the day, he shouted to Flick, “Oh my god, that was freaking amazing!”

“Come tell me about it!” Flick shouted back.

“Yeah, I'll be there in a minute,” C.J said. He looked over his stats; during this stream he had gained fifty-seven followers and three subscribers, which was incredible. He started composing a DM to Forager_Erik thanking him for the raid, when a message popped up on his own screen from Forager_Erik. It read, Hey, that was a lot of fun! I've been meaning to raid you for a while. I'm glad our schedules finally aligned, and on a day when Flick was able to join you, too.

C.J. was glad his camera was off now, because he giggled in a very undignified way; there had been so many people in the chat that he hadn't realized that Forager_Erik had actually stayed to watch his stream. Then he wrote back, That was the best! I was so excited when you followed me back last month. Your stream is one of the reasons I wanted to get started with it in the first place. There are so many gaming streams out there, but your channel showed me that streaming outdoorsy content was not only technologically possible but that it could also be compelling and successful. He read over what he had written, and even though it sounded a little fanboy-ish, he sent it anyway.

Forager_Erik messaged back, That's great to hear! Yeah, we are definitely a niche market, and it was even more so when I got started. It's been exciting to see what up and coming streamers like you are doing with the medium.

“Up and coming!” C.J. said aloud to himself, and giggled again. He did not want to monopolize Erik's time, so he was trying to think of some diplomatic yet flattering way to wind up the conversation, when Forager_Erik messaged him again: We should do a collab at some point! Like an on-air, remote fishing tourney. Although I've seen enough of your stream to know that you'd probably kick my butt, lol.

C.J. bent over laughing in surprise; if they were actually going to do a collab he was going to have to find a way to be a lot more chill than this, but right now he was too excited to care. From his picnic table at the shore, Flick shouted to him, “What's going on?”

C.J. shouted back, “I'll tell you in a minute!” Then he messaged Erik back, I would love that! I unfortunately have to work around my day job's schedule, but I definitely want to find a way to make a collab happen!

Erik messaged back, I've already got another event planned for next week that I'm hyping right now, but maybe the week after that? Wednesday morning again?

That works for me! I usually stream around 10 a.m. CST, which I think is 9 a.m. for you? Which would give you a bit of an advantage since fish are more active earlier in the morning.

lol, I'll take what I can get. Let's check in again later and make some plans how we want to promote this.

Sounds good! I'll be in touch again soon.

C.J. left himself logged in for a few more minutes while he packed up his fishing gear, just in case Erik messaged him again, but then he shut things down and packed up his computer gear, too. Then he walked down the pier toward Flick saying, “Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god.”

“What?!” Flick asked again, closing his sketchbook.

C.J. sat down next to him. “So, Forager_Erik is one of my favorite streamers. And he's, like, the big time. He has over twenty-five thousand followers, his streams regularly get hundreds of viewers. I've been watching him for years, and he just followed me back a few weeks ago, and, ya know, that alone was amazing, that he actually noticed me. I've mentioned him to you before, but I know I talk a lot, so I don't know if you remember him.”

“No, I remember. He's the Canadian, right?”

“Yeah, that's him. So he raided me today! He did his own stream this morning and then at the end of it brought his viewers over to mine. A lot of the viewers dropped off, but I was able to retain, like, half of them. Which maybe doesn't sound like a lot, but it actually is. And the stream went so well, oh my god. I was trying so hard not to freak out, but everything went so well. I caught a walleye, and it was, like, this dramatic moment. And then of course you came on with your butterfly and all that. I don't think you realize how charming you are, how much people love you. God, I can't wait to watch all that video again this afternoon, I'll be able to make a bunch more highlights for my channel from today's stream. And a lot of the raiders followed me, too! A few even subscribed!”

Flick smiled. “I'm so glad you had a good stream.”

“There's more!” C.J. said with a grin. “So after I finished up my stream, I was about to DM Erik to thank him for the raid, but then he DM'ed me! And we chatted for a little bit and he's, like, actually watching my stream! Like, watching it enough that he likes it! And he wants to do a collab with me! We've got some tentative plans for the week after next.” C.J. sighed contentedly and rested his elbows on the picnic table. “He called me an 'up and coming streamer.' Up and coming, Flick. Like, this raid went so well. Normally you can't expect any significant growth from a raid, it's just, like, a way for one streamer to tip their hat to another streamer. And, I mean, we'll see if the new followers stick around, I'm gonna stream again Friday probably to try to keep their interest. But collaborating with Erik could do wonders for my stream. Like, if I can be charismatic and entertaining enough, I could get hundreds of new followers. Could you hang out with me during the collab, too? You don't have to be on screen, but, like, just for technical support, like moving the camera, stuff like that.”

“Yeah, of course.”

C.J. daydreamed for a moment. “And, ya know, when he and I were chatting, he said that we should do the collab the week after next because he has another event that he's promoting for next week. And do you know what that event is?”

“Hmm?”

“This other streamer is coming to camp at his property for a few days, and they're doing, like, a bunch of in-person stuff. Erik hosts other streamers like that all the time, and their numbers always go way up after. He is such a positive force in the community. And like, just think—that could be me someday. If he likes me, that could be me someday.”

Flick smiled at him and said, “I've got news for you, C.J., I think he likes you.”

C.J. giggled. “Maybe.”

Flick asked, “Where does he live again?”

“I'm not sure exactly. Base of the Canadian Rockies. He's streamed from the farmer's market in Banff before, so probably near-ish there.”

“Oh, Banff is beautiful. I've only seen pictures of the national park, though, I don't know what the town is like.”

“Looks cute and kinda touristy, from what I've seen on stream.”

Flick thought for a second. “So, I know the charter's busy all summer, but is there a time where it's less busy?”

C.J. considered. “Early August, maybe? There's no holidays, and people are getting sick of the heat, but September seems far enough away that there's not as much pressure to go out and do something before kids are back in school. Why?”

Flick smiled and said, “We should go on a road trip. Not the big, epic year-long one, but something shorter, like a week or two. We can just borrow your dad's tent and camping stuff. We'll make some vague plans to go west, and you can spend the next few months buddying up to Erik, and then around June you can say to him, 'Hey, we'll be passing through nearby later this summer, maybe we could meet up.' Not exactly inviting yourself over, but just kinda seeing what comes of it. The worst that happens is he says no, and we still get to go see some beautiful scenery and have some adventures. And I mean, we should do some shorter trips before the big trip anyway, right?”

C.J. bit his lip and grinned. “Yeah, you're right... Missing out on two weeks of charters is a lot of lost income though.”

“Your streaming numbers are picking up.”

“That's not translating into bells yet.”

“But it might by the end of summer,” Flick said. “Two weeks is not that much, considering how hard you push yourself the rest of the year. And you've said yourself that we have options for income. Are there other streamers you know between here and there that you could maybe meet up with, too?”

“Hmm, there's another angler in Colorado, and an organic farmer in North Dakota. I actually raided Lyman, the farmer, after my stream today, since I still had so many viewers from Erik's stream. He was pretty stoked. I think I might know someone in Kansas, too.”

Flick smiled. “Sounds like a round-trip itinerary, then.”

“What about you, though? How do you feel about meeting all these new people?”

Flick shrugged. “I can say hi, and then go off and do my own thing. If you don't mind me being antisocial.”

“No, of course not.” C.J. considered it for a moment. “What about the stick bugs? Will they still be around in August?”

“Probably, especially if I hatch out another generation of eggs,” Flick said. “I could probably take the habitat over to Bob's while we're gone, I'll ask him if he's going to be around this summer. The stick bugs are pretty low maintenance—daily misting and fresh food every couple days. If we're only going to be gone two weeks at most, he wouldn't even have to clean out the habitat.”

C.J. thought about it. “You know, I brought up your idea about hiring some part-time help for the charter with my dad, and he liked it. He was feeling a little overwhelmed about all the bookings. He's been talking to some of his friends to find someone to help out over the summer.”

“So, can we go?”

C.J. bit his lip again. “Let's budget out gas and food and park fees and all that before we decide for sure. But yeah, maybe we can do some road trip this summer.”

Flick grinned. “Can we go up into the mountains? Dad and I crossed the Rockies when we were moving from California to Toronto, but he was kind of freaking out about driving the moving truck on mountain roads and didn't want to stop. I want to see a Rocky Mountain wood tick.”

C.J. laughed. “No, you don't. Nobody wants to see a tick.”

“I didn't say I wanted to get bitten by one, I just want to see them.”

“Okay, we'll have to map out the nearest clinics to get you antibiotics, then, too.”

Flick smiled. “And since you've never left the country, you'll need to get a passport, if we're potentially going to Canada. And I might have to renew my US passport.”

“You have others?”

“One of the few things my dad did for me that I actually appreciate is that he maintained citizenship for me for both South Africa and the UK, because he wanted to make sure I had options for my future. And then of course when my dad naturalized here, I became a US citizen, too.”

“I remember that. I was so relieved that you'd be staying, like, permanently. I wanted to make a big deal out of it but you wouldn't let me.”

“I hate big deals,” Flick said. “I should look into what kind of paperwork I need to do to keep up my UK and South African citizenship. But theoretically, I think that means that if things ever really go to shit here in the US, you and I could get married and move abroad relatively easily, since I have citizenship elsewhere.”

Flick had spoken about this potential future so casually, as if it was a given, and C.J. loved that he was thinking about this. He smiled and said, “Well, we got plans, then, huh?”

At the beginning of April, C.J. drove Flick to the art gallery so that he could drop off his artwork. C.J. waited in the truck, and when Flick came back out he seemed almost more nervous than when he had gone in. He said, “There were other people dropping their art off, too, and a bunch of paintings and things propped against the walls. There's a lot of good stuff in there.”

“Your tile is good stuff, too,” C.J. said. “They included it in the show for a reason.”

“Hmm,” Flick responded, his brow furrowed.

“Like, you told me before that all the submissions were evaluated anonymously, with nobody's name attached to them, right? So there's no chance that it was accepted because they saw your name and some professor feels sorry for you or because your dad works at the university or anything like that. It was included because it's good and worthy. And it's gonna look great up on the wall with all the other good artwork in the show.

Flick sighed, and untensed his shoulders. “We'll see.”

A few days before the opening of the art show, C.J. came home from a charter one day to find Flick on the couch, and as C.J. stepped inside the apartment, Flick said, “So... I got an email from my dad today.”

Flick did not seem as upset as he was about the last email from Nat, but C.J. still felt a pinch of worry and anger. “What did it say?”

“You can read it,” Flick said, handing C.J. his phone.

Flick, I ran into the dean the other day and he flagged me down to tell me what an impressive accomplishment it is for a first year student such as yourself to get a piece into the student art show; I had to smile and nod as if I already knew that you had submitted something and been accepted. I'm hurt that you didn't tell me any of this yourself, that apparently you're still holding some grudge against me and giving me the silent treatment, that I had to hear this secondhand from the dean, but congratulations all the same. I have a committee meeting the night of the opening reception, so I won't be able to attend, but I will try to swing by the gallery sometime while the show is up to see your artwork. Love, Dad

C.J. handed the phone back. “Are you going to respond?” he asked.

“No,” Flick said. “I mean, the email is mostly passive-aggressive bullshit meant to provoke me so that he can feel morally superior in some way, and I'm not going to give him the pleasure. What's more, he's never had a committee meeting run later than seven p.m. The reception goes until nine, he could totally go if he truly wanted to. He's just trying to make me feel bad, like he's trying to get back at me for not telling him about the art show.” Flick sighed. “If he actually does go see the show, and if he writes me again about my sculpture, I'll maybe respond to that. But not to this.”

C.J. nodded. “At least this way you know you won't run into him at the opening.”

“That was part of my reason for not telling him about it.” Flick thought for a moment. “You know, I've never accidentally run into him on campus, and it's a big enough school that I know I'm not likely to. But that's still something that's always in the back of my mind. Like, what am I supposed to do or say if I see him walking across the quad or something? What's our relationship supposed to be like now? It's another point in favor of dropping out of school, though. I'd be able to better control when and where I see him.”

“That's true. But if you want to continue with school, you shouldn't let him scare you away from something you want.” C.J. paused for a moment. “You know, though, if we're going to be building a custom camper for the truck, that construction is going to be happening in my dad's garage. If you're helping with the project, your dad's going to be right across the street. You're probably going to see him.”

“I know, I've thought about that,” Flick said. “It's not like I'm trying or planning or even necessarily wanting to cut off all contact with him. And if he and I are going to have any kind of continued relationship, I know I'm going to have to—he and I are both going to have to practice being civil with each other, and we'll probably have to have some stupid, awkward conversation about feelings or whatever. I'm not going to avoid him forever. He and I will eventually work something out, at least I hope we will. I just want to avoid him for right now.”

C.J. said, “I think that's maybe for the best.”

The evening of the art opening, C.J. put on clean jeans and a nice button-down shirt, then he sat on the couch waiting for Flick to get ready. After half an hour of listening to Flick open and close dresser drawers and shuffle through things in the closet, C.J. called out to him, “Flick, I'm sure whatever you're wearing right now is fine.”

“I need to look better than fine,” Flick called back.

“I'm sure whatever you're wearing right now is gorgeous, then.”

“I'm not aiming for gorgeous, I'm aiming for hip and artsy.”

C.J. laughed to himself and said, “Flick, you could wear raggedly pajama pants and one of my old hoodies and still look hip and artsy.”

Flick didn't respond, and C.J. heard the dresser drawer open again.

After another fifteen minutes, Flick finally emerged from the bedroom and asked hesitantly, “How does this look?” He was wearing tight, red and black tartan pants, a drapey black t-shirt with an abstract ladybug print, and a choker necklace with a little pendant dangling from it.

C.J. set his phone down and smiled at him. “You look beautiful.”

Flick still seemed unsure, and he smoothed his hands over his shirt, frowning. “Is the bug shirt too on-the-nose? Considering that my art is also bug themed?”

C.J. laughed a little and said, “Like, half your t-shirts have some bug design on them.”

“I know. But is it going to look obsessive?”

“Nobody is going to be paying that close of attention.”

Flick sighed, and said, “I'll have my pleather jacket on, too, so maybe people won't even notice.”

C.J. started to get up and said, “Are you ready to go, then?”

“No, I still have to do my makeup.”

C.J. sat back down and picked up his phone again.

When Flick was finally ready to go, C.J. asked, “I know it's not far, but do you want to walk or drive?”

“Definitely walk,” Flick said. “I need to try to burn off some of this nervous energy before I'm around other people.”

They walked to campus without talking much. Flick fidgeted with his fingernails, and after a while, C.J. said, “You're going to pick off all that nail polish you just put on.”

Flick looked down at his hands, as if he hadn't even noticed what he was doing. But then he went back to it, and said, “Chipped nail polish is an aesthetic. A punk aesthetic.”

“Is that what you're after here?”

“No.”

After another minute, C.J. asked, “What are you anxious about?”

“Seeing people I know. Not seeing anyone I know. Having to have a conversation with someone who's obviously only trying to be polite. Nobody wanting to even talk to me about my art. Genuine compliments that I won't know how to respond to. My art looking worse than the other art and like I was only included out of pity. My art looking better than the art next to it so that it looks like I'm showing off.”

“So... pretty much every possibility?”

“Heh. Yup.”

“We don't have to go,” C.J. said. “We can come back another day when there's not a reception.”

“No, because then I'll feel like I'm being an avoidant wimp.”

“You know that's not true.”

“No. But that's what it'll feel like.”

They approached the art building; groups of other people were smoking at the base of the stairs or hanging out by the door. Flick paused for a second, then started up the stairs and went into the building. C.J. followed Flick down the hall to the gallery. As they got closer the crowd got thicker and Flick walked more slowly, and when they were outside the gallery he stopped again and silently surveyed the crowd. Then C.J. felt Flick's hand curl around his, and after a second he started walking again.

Inside the gallery it was almost too crowded to move, and Flick leaned into C.J. as he looked around the room. Somewhere there was a speaker playing classical music, and in one corner of the room was a table with beverages and trays of cheese, crackers and grapes. The room was big, and artwork filled the walls; at the back of the room C.J. could see open doorways leading to two other rooms. C.J. couldn't see much over the crowds of people. Flick craned his neck to look from wall to wall, then he leaned over to C.J. and said anxiously, “I don't see it.”

C.J. said to him, “There's a lot of people in the way, and there's two other rooms. Let's keep looking.”

C.J. noticed Bob before Flick did, and he recognized him immediately from the photos he'd seen while Facebook-stalking him all those months ago. Bob was as handsome in real life as he looked in the photos, but today he was dressed in a tie-dye shirt with a suit jacket over it, and looked a little ridiculous. Bob put his hand on Flick's shoulder and said, “Hey, Flick, you made it.”

Flick's face relaxed and he smiled. “Bob, hi.” Then he tugged at the lapel of Bob's suit jacket and, laughing a little, said, “Is this your idea of dressing up?”

Bob smiled at him and shrugged. “I was gonna add a clip-on bow tie, too, but I thought that might be a bit much.”

Bob glanced over the C.J., then looked away, and then Flick seemed to remember that he was holding C.J.'s hand and said, “Oh, Bob, this is C.J.”

C.J. smiled politely and said, “Hey. I've heard a lot about you.”

“Heh heh. Reeeally?” Bob said, looking a little embarrassed. Then to Flick he said, “So where's your bee?”

Now the tension returned to Flick's face. “I don't know. I can't find it. What if they changed their mind about including it?”

Bob gave Flick a look. “That's not how it works. It's a big show, they filled all three rooms. It's around here somewhere.”

Flick frowned, but then he said to Bob, “Where's your piece?”

Bob grinned, and pointed across the room. “I got a corner pedestal this year.”

C.J. looked where Bob pointed, but he could only catch glimpses of some big vase. Flick stood up on his tiptoes to look over the crowd, but then he smiled and said, “Oh, Bob, it looks so nice out on display. I haven't seen it since you put the silver leaf on.” Then he turned to C.J. and said, “I got to see that being made!”

C.J. smiled back at him.

Flick said to Bob, “I'll try to work my way over there and get a closer look at it later.”

“Yeah man,” Bob said. “Let me know when you find your bee tile, too. I just got here, I haven't made it to the other rooms yet.” Then he looked around and added, “And come find me again after you guys hit up the refreshments table, I can spike your punch.” He opened up his suit jacket to reveal a flask in the inner pocket.

Flick laughed a little and said, “Yeah, maybe we'll see you later.”

“See ya around, dude,” Bob said to Flick, then nodded to C.J. C.J. gave a nod back.

C.J. tried to think of something to say to Flick about having met Bob—it felt like he should acknowledge the moment, and Bob seemed mostly harmless and not a threat in the way C.J. had originally imagined him to be—but Flick was already inching his way through the crowd again looking for his artwork.

They had made it halfway around the first room when a beautiful woman came up to Flick, gave him a one-armed hug and said, “Flick! I didn't know you had something in the show! Or that you were so talented, oh my gosh!”

Flick tensed a little as she hugged him, but then gave her a hesitant smile and said, “Ankha, hi.” He glanced over at C.J. and said to her, “This is C.J., my boyfriend. C.J., this is Ankha, from figure drawing.”

“Hello,” C.J. said.

Ankha gave him a smile and said, “Hey.”

Then Flick anxiously said to Ankha, “You saw my tile? Where is it? I haven't found it yet.”

“In the next room, on the left side. I have a charcoal drawing on the opposite wall in there.”

“I-I'll go check it out,” Flick said.

Ankha said to him, “Flick, aren't you a freshman? Getting into the show as a freshman is, like, a really big deal!”

“Yeah... th-that's what I've heard.”

“I didn't get anything in until, like, my junior year.”

“Oh. R-really?”

“And it looks so nice, too! You know, I see you every week, but I had no idea you had these kinds of skills,” Ankha said. “I couldn't get too close of a look, though, there was a crowd in front of it.”

Now Flick looked worried again.

But Ankha smiled at him cheerfully and said, “You should go eavesdrop, see if you can hear what people are saying about it.” She stepped to the side to let them through. Then to C.J. she said, “It was nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, it was nice meeting you, too,” C.J. said.

To Flick she said, “I'll see you Thursday, yeah?”

“Uh-huh,” Flick answered without looking at her.

She patted his shoulder and said again, “Go! Go see how nice your art looks up on the wall.”

Flick gave her a little nervous smile now, and she walked away. But Flick still didn't make any move to go to the room where his art was.

C.J. leaned over to him and said, “Geez, I didn't realize you were getting naked every week with a supermodel.”

“With a what?” Flick said distractedly.

“Never mind,” C.J. said. “Come on, you heard her, let's go eavesdrop.” He pulled Flick into the next room and toward the left. They looked over the wall together looking for Flick's tile, and after a few seconds the crowd parted momentarily and C.J. knew that Flick had seen his artwork because his grip on C.J.'s hand tightened. Then another group of people stepped in front of it and hid it from view again. C.J. pulled Flick forward to go stand behind them. Despite the low hum of the crowd around them, they were close enough to overhear their conversation.

“Who's Flick?” one of them asked.

“Bob knows him,” another person answered. “He's some freshman.”

“A freshman made this?” a third person said. “Like, a straight-out-of high-school kind of freshman, or, like, some middle-aged adult who's been doing this for decades and is only just going to college now?”

“Like some eighteen year old kid,” the second person answered.

“Jesus,” the third person breathed. “I was not producing this level of work when I was a freshman. I don't know that I could do that now.”

The first person reassured them, “But your ceramic work is so much more abstract and gestural. It's totally different.”

The third person said, “I mean, yeah, we have very different styles. But, like, the composition, the colors, the details... Like, you can feel the amount of attention they put into it. And it's not just some practiced, academic thing, it's obvious that they know what they're doing on, like, an intuitive level. I only scanned over their artist statement, but clearly they're thinking some big, deep thoughts here, too. Clearly they have some incredible talent.”

The second person nodded and added, “And not just, like, talented-for-a-freshman-art-student kind of talent, either. Like, this is the sort of thing I'd expect to see in a real museum. I'd be jealous, but this is, like, a whole different league than the work that I'm producing.”

C.J. knew that Flick was listening because he turned to him now, his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide with surprise. C.J. smiled back at him.

The third person laughed now and said, “Can you imagine, like, doing the ceramic unit in Design I, making some crappy little pinch pot, and then the person next to you is turning out something like this?”

The first person said, “I had some prodigy like that in my Intro to Photography class. Like, even the professor didn't know what to do with him. He transferred to Pratt his sophomore year. I'll google his name every now and then. He's working as a freelance photographer now, his website says he's sold work to Harper's and Time and The Sun. The bio on his website says he, quote, 'grew up in Minnesota and studied at Pratt University.' Nothing about Leafville U, of course, and the way it's worded I don't think he even graduated from Pratt.”

The third person said, “Well, yeah, sure. Why pile on more student loan debt if you can go straight to selling photos to Time-freaking-Magazine?”

Their conversation meandered to other topics after this, and Flick pulled C.J. away, back through the gallery and out into the hallway. Once they were far enough from the crowd, Flick said to him, “Did you hear that?!”

“I did,” C.J. said with a grin.

“They don't even know me! They have no reason to be nice to me.”

C.J. laughed a little. “Because they're not just being nice to you, Flick. Everything they said is true, you are incredibly freaking talented. I've been saying it for years. Like, your friends, your professors, everyone—we're not just pandering to you. We mean what we say.”

“I-I know. I don't mean to be ungrateful. It's just hard to believe.”

“I know, I'm just teasing you a little bit.” He stopped and pulled Flick in for a quick kiss. “But I'm gonna keep telling you that until you do believe it. And I'm going to keep telling everyone else, too.”

Flick smiled at him, and they walked outside. It was a warm spring evening, and the sun had broken out through the clouds. Flick sat down on the steps to the art building, and C.J. sat down next to him. Flick dug around in his jacket pockets for a moment, pulled out a lighter, and then seemed to change his mind and put it back. C.J. said to him, “Did you want to go back and check out your friends' artwork?”

“I do, but another day, when it's not so crowded and when I can actually give the art some proper attention.”

“Could I come with you? I don't have to stay for the whole time you're there, I can let you focus. But I want to get a picture of you with your art.”

Flick laughed. “Why would you want that?”

“Why wouldn't I want a picture of my beautiful boyfriend with his beautiful artwork?” C.J. smiled at him. “Besides, when you make that artist Instagram, you're going to need a nice profile pic, right?”

Flick smirked at him. “For those bug models you won't shut up about?”

“Or whatever.”

Flick thought for a second, then said, “Vietnamese stick bugs would be a good species to start with. I just mean that their bodies are more streamlined than, say, an orchid mantis or a centipede or a tarantula. Plus obviously I have a selection of models ready to pose for me. And papier-mâché is a pretty cheap and easily obtainable material—it's just old newspapers and wheat paste—and unlike clay I wouldn't need a kiln or anything. I'd probably switch to a better quality paper later if I really get into it, but did you know that wheat paste—just standard wheat paste, flour and water and salt—is an archival quality binder? People have used it for centuries for making books. So I wouldn't have to worry about my sculptures rotting or falling apart, at least not if I do it right. I've always thought of papier-mâché as, like, just for piñatas or kindergarten craft projects, but I looked it up, and there are other people making, like, sophisticated, museum quality art with papier-mâché”

C.J. smiled. “So you're thinking about it.”

Flick shrugged. “It would be a good project to keep me busy over the summer when I'm out of school. Plus summer is when the most bugs are out. If I'm making three dimensional sculptures, not just raised reliefs images like on my ceramic work, I think I would really need living models to study. Like, I can't get the information I need just from photos or even videos. The reason that fish I made you was so hard was because I didn't have a living rainbow trout in front of me.” He paused for a moment. “You know, my dad always goes on and on about how vital pinned insects are to the study of entomology. And, I mean, I get that there are things to be learned scientifically from dissection or whatever. But just think how much I could learn about bugs from observing living specimens and trying to recreate them in sculpture form. Like, that sort of endeavor requires a wholly different kind of attention and concentration than what my dad does. But I think it's just as important.”

C.J. smiled. “I absolutely agree,” he said. Then he asked, “How long does papier-mâché take to dry?”

“I dunno, I've never done it, at least not since grade school. A few days maybe?”

“So after we build out that camper, we can drive around chasing bugs and fish. We'll hunker down in one location for a while, and I can stream and you can find some bug to make a model of. Then your model can dry while we drive out to the next location. Once they're totally dry and done, we could ship them home for storage, or out to some buyer.”

Flick smiled. “That's a nice thought. The bug models would just be for my own amusement, not the side hustle you're imagining.”

“Why not?”

“Who'd want them?”

“Who wouldn't?” C.J. asked, and Flick laughed. “Seriously, though, Flick. You have an incredible amount of skill, and I know you can make some kick-ass sculptures. And outdoorsy people like outdoorsy things. Like, if you made fish models, I can guarantee that people on my stream would buy them—people could even commission their favorite fish from you. I know there'd be a market for bugs, too. Like, your artwork is amazing, and if you put it out there, people are going to find it, people are going to love it, and people are going to want to buy it.”

Flick folded his arms over his drawn-up knees and rested his chin on his arms. After a minute, he turned to C.J. and said, “How would we keep a fish alive long enough for me to study it to make a model?”

“I dunno, some big-ass aquarium? That's not too practical for a camper set-up, though. I haven't really thought it through. Just focus on bugs for now, focus on what you love.”

“Mmm, but I love you and I love making a life with you.”

C.J. smiled. “Start with bug sculptures for now and see where things go.”

Flick thought some more. “I'd have to learn to work a lot faster than I currently do, especially if we're traveling. I'd need to finish the body of the sculpture while we're still in a location where I can release the insect.”

“Well, you can practice this summer. And honestly, I bet if you're not worrying yourself sick about school and work, you'd probably be able to focus your attention a bit better on things that are important to you, like art.”

Flick leaned his shoulder against C.J., and C.J. put his arm around him. After a minute, he looked up and said, “Do you really think people would be interested in my bug sculptures?”

“I know so.”