Would You Open Your Door?

G.B. is in the kitchen when Pepper wakes up. She stares at him blankly. “Barnabas. What time is it?”

G.B. hasn’t looked at the clock since he left his room. He spent at least an hour tossing and turning after Marshall Lee left, and that was enough of that. Since then, he’s been too focused on what he’s doing to pay attention to the time. “It’s five. The time bakers usually get up.”

Pepper stares at him. Most of it is sleep inertia, but a lot is confusion.

“I’m making muffins,” G.B. says, trying to make it sound normal.

“At five in the morning.” Pepper blinks. “Neither of us has to get up until seven.”

“I like getting up at six,” G.B. replies, as though this makes it normal.

Pepper blinks. “Barnabas, what’s the matter?”

He looks at his work bowl and says nothing.

Pepper shakes her head. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I’m going back to bed.”

G.B. nods as though it means nothing. When she leaves, he leans over the counter and lets out a slow, shaky breath.

***

The muffins are exemplary, but Pepper doesn’t care. Monochrome shows up an hour after breakfast—which means he’s gotten less than three hours of sleep, if he slept at all after getting off work.

“You called him?” G.B. demands of Pepper.

She gets to her feet. “Barnabas. Something is wrong. You won’t talk to me, so…” She looks to Monochrome, who folds his arms over his chest.  

G.B. glares—at no one in particular, but it doesn’t deny the strength of it. He bites his lip. Monochrome is implacable, impossible to lie to. “…I had an argument with Marshall Lee.” He is admitting too much. They will see all of him, bare before them, and he doesn’t want them to. Never mind that they are the two most important people in the world to him. Never mind that they already know—that they must already know. He can’t tell them, any more than he could have opened that window again last night.

“It was bad,” Pepper supplies, her voice only half a question.

G.B. crosses his arms over his chest. “It was an argument.” There are other things he could say, but he bites them back. Just because they already know doesn’t mean he wants to tell them. He tries to keep his voice level and rational. “He showed up in the middle of the night, so I found it difficult to get back to sleep. That is all there is to it. I decided to do something productive with my time instead of mooning over it. Are you satisfied, or do you need to interrogate me?”

Monochrome puts his hands in his pockets. “…I’m your friend, G.B,” he says, his voice soft enough to break G.B.’s heart. “Why don’t you want to talk about what’s really going on?”

G.B. bites his lip so the words don’t come stumbling out. He doesn’t want to tell them how afraid he is of trusting, how scared he is of letting anyone see inside of him. Marshall Lee didn’t do that, but Marshall Lee got closer than anyone has in a long time. He doesn’t want to tell them that the waters inside himself are stable and dark and deep, and nothing has disturbed them since the day Pepper pulled him out of school to tell him he was alone in the world. Now there are ripples, and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know if he wants them gone or not.

So he shakes his head. “If you’re here, at least eat a muffin. They’re good.”

***

G.B. is nothing but not stubborn, so he forces things back to the way they were. Pepper and Monochrome stop questioning it. He knows they aren’t really convinced, but he doesn’t care. He wants his life to be quiet and sensible again. He wants to erase every mark of Marshall Lee.

And it’s not like it seems to matter to Marshall Lee, either. A knock never comes at G.B.’s window again.

***

A few more weeks pass. It’s hot one night, so G.B. pulls the window open, and a letter flutters down, cleverly folded so it doesn’t need an envelope.

G.B. thinks about burning it, but not seriously. His fingers are already working to undo the folds, carefully smoothing each crease so the words are legible.

Don’t expect you to read this. You don’t have to. But I’ll be at the pool every quarter of the moon. You can come if you want. You know how to get in. I’ll explain.

G.B. looks outside. The moon is full.

He wants to burn the letter. He wants to tear it into bits. He wants to crumple it and bury it beneath everything in his wastebasket. Instead, he grabs his shoes and swim trunks and squeezes out through his window.

It’s that promise of answers that catches G.B. Marshall Lee is a trick, a puzzle just like his note. There’s something about him, something that whispers of secrets told late at night, of promises never properly articulated. G.B. cannot abide leaving things half-done.

Anyway, in the few weeks since he last saw Marshall Lee, G.B. has come up with several things to say to him, things that will lay out every detail of how Marshall Lee irritates him, of how terrible he is, of what a blight he is on humanity. G.B. needs to let those words out, or they’ll burn inside him forever.

***

Getting into the pool at night is a job and a half, especially by himself. Last time he had Marshall Lee’s surprisingly strong hands to pull him up to the bottom of the fire escape, to help him vault onto the roof, to work in tandem with him to pull aside the window that doesn’t lock correctly. He had someone to promise to catch him if he falls wrong. G.B. tells himself it’s not so bad alone, but he’s a bad liar.

The pool is empty, silent except for the ripple caused by water moving through the filter. G.B. bites his lip, so hard he tastes blood—hot and copper in his mouth.

He tells himself he was expecting nothing else, that Marshall Lee has never done anything but disappoint him—will never do anything else. He reminds himself of all the sharp words he was going to say if Marshall Lee did show up, although they have turned cold and pale within his mind.

He decides he’s here, so he might as well swim. The water looks heavenly and cool. He pulls off his shirt, and someone coughs behind him. G.B. freezes, expecting a security guard. Hoping for a security guard.

Marshall Lee emerges from the shadows that lead to the locker rooms. His hair is wet; he smells of strawberries, and he’s wearing only swim trunks. “Thought about wolf-whistling, but you wouldn’t like that, huh?”

G.B. glares at him. But he still can’t say the sharp things inside his heart. Instead, he says, “Turn around. I want to swim.” He doesn’t really trust Marshall Lee to stay turned around as he changes into his trunks, but at the same time, he doesn’t really care. His heart is a cold, hard stone at the center of his chest, so heavy he’s half-convinced he will sink when he slips into the water.  

He covers his eyes and pinches his nose and sinks under the water, where everything is silent except the beating of his heart in his ears. He wishes he could go deeper and drown even that out, but the tighter he closes his eyes, the louder it gets. It’s the whole world, until he has to surface for breath.

Marshall Lee is dandling his feet in the water. There’s no reading his expression; he’s looking at the water like he’s searching for meaning in his face himself.

G.B. pinches his nose and goes underwater again. He can’t hold his breath for as long this time. When he surfaces, Marshall Lee has not moved. G.B. goes under again.

Now when he comes up for breath, Marshall Lee is frowning. “What, are you trying to drown yourself?” G.B. senses a joke lurking just beyond Marshall Lee’s words, but at least he keeps it out of what he says.

“You wish,” G.B. mutters. He feels light-headed and dizzy. All from the swim. He doesn’t risk going under again—he might pass out. So he hangs on the edge of the pool, resting his chin on the cool tile lip.

“I don’t wish that,” Marshall Lee says, in a voice that is small and lost and not like Marshall Lee at all. “I don’t wish that one bit.”

G.B. closes his eyes against the desire to ask what he does want. To poke, to prod, to inquire. He remembers their first few encounters, when he only wanted Marshall Lee vivisected, pinned to a mat in front of him with all his parts clearly labeled. Something that could be understood—both the desire and the desired.

Asking what Marshall Lee wants now would be a different kind of question. It would betray a different kind of interest, and G.B. hates the idea.

Marshall Lee swallows. “Listen, just—”

“Why?” The word comes out all broken and twisted-up, like something you’d find lying on the side of the road. G.B. clears his throat. It doesn’t help. “Why should I listen, Marshall Lee? I keep… reaching. I keep trying. And I have no idea what the hell I’m getting back.”

Marshall Lee lets his head fall back. His hair is shaggy, nearly shoulder-length, but he has shaved a section on one side of his head. It makes him look like he walked out of a concentration camp. “I know. I know. It’s just…” He swallows. “I don’t have anything to give you. I don’t know why you keep looking at me like I’m—worth something. And I—” He moves, almost like a convulsion, and covers his head with his arms.

G.B. looks out to the far wall so he won’t watch the storms of feeling moving over Marshall Lee’s face.

Marshall Lee relaxes at last and puts his hands down. He slips into the pool, silent and natural as a fish. He has to cling to the edge, though, because he’s too short for his feet to reach the bottom. “I asked you out here so I could apologize. I didn’t really think you’d come, so I wasn’t prepared like I should be. But…”

G.B. rests his cheek on the lip of the pool. He’s tired. He feels like he hasn’t gotten a proper night’s rest in weeks. This isn’t helping. But maybe he’ll be able to sleep if he has something to write down. “So talk. Whatever. I’m sick of arguing with you.”

Marshall Lee swallows. “I… I was a jerk. Nobody’s ever given two shits where I went or who I was with, so I just… I skip town sometimes. I gotta. There was a bunch of shit going down, and it was easier to bail than stick around and deal with it. I didn’t…” He bites his lip and makes himself say it. “I didn’t even think about you.”

G.B.’s hands clench, relax. His eyes open, close. He pulls himself from the pool. “Good to know.” His voice is shaking, but now with anger instead of shock. “Good to fucking know. I’ll keep that in mind the next time I decide to—”

“Wait—please—” Marshall Lee tries to pull himself out of the pool. “I didn’t mean to say it like that—”

G.B. turns, glares. “Yes, you did.” His voice carries for miles in the abandoned room. Dimly, he wonders if the pool has security cameras, if someone will watch him, dripping wet and arguing with Marshall Lee in swim trunks patterned after a melting ice cream cone.

The idea deflates him. He presses his hand to his forehead. “That’s exactly what you meant, Marshall Lee. Don’t sugar-coat it. Don’t lie. I don’t need some fancy fucking daydream. That’s what I’ve been saying to you the whole fucking time—be real. Be Marshall Lee, not some goddamn punk-rock fantasy.”

Marshall Lee turns and lets his toes hang in the water again. “Well… that’s it. That’s me.” His shoulders cave in. “Marshall Lee. I don’t stay anywhere. I don’t call anybody. I just do what the fuck I want.” There’s no bravado in his voice; he sounds tired.

G.B. shakes his head. “Fine. Don’t be straight with me. I shouldn’t have expected anything else.” Marshall Lee lifts his head to protest, but G.B. silences him with a scowl. “Why the pool, then?”

Marshall Lee sighs, and his cheeks darken in a faint blush. “Figured I’d get some relaxation in if you were never going to speak to me again.” He pauses. “I bought you a pool thing. ‘Cause you like floating.” He gets to his feet and pads to his clothes, draped over one of the deck chairs. When he comes back, he holds a dark purple inner tube patterned with bright pink cupcakes.

Marshall Lee is playing him, and it is working. G.B. bites the inside of his cheek. He tastes blood, but any sympathetic urge disappears, and he feels wrung-out and empty again. Good. “I’m not using it. If I blow it up, you’ll just make a lewd joke.”

Marshall Lee takes the package back. “Hey, this is my first apology. I’m not going to half-ass it.” He pulls the tube out of the package. “And, for the record, you can make any lewd jokes you want.” His voice is half-hopeful now. G.B. refuses to acknowledge it, glaring out over the water. When Marshall Lee finishes, he lets the float drift toward G.B.

G.B. catches it with his foot and says nothing. After a moment, he drops into the water and surfaces in the center of the float. He leans his chin on the purple plastic. He doesn’t want to be okay with this. He wants to be angry until the end of time. He wants to resent Marshall Lee until they are both old and doddering.

But he’s not. He huffs, narrowing his eyes at Marshall Lee. “You said this was an apology.” Marshall Lee looks at him, still half-hopeful. Maybe more than half. G.B. scowls, still trying to banish that. The expression is real, unlike so much about Marshall Lee, and G.B. likes it as much as he always thought he would.

Marshall Lee raises his eyebrows.

“So apologize.”

Marshall Lee drops his eyes for a moment, and then he drops back into the water, pulling himself along the wall until he can hang onto G.B.’s float, his hands within an inch of G.B.’s on either side. His eyes are dark and soft and sad; they’re real, true just like the half-hopeful tilt of his lips. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t—I felt like such a piece of shit when I saw your face. I’m sorry.”

G.B. has an absurd desire to lean forward and kiss Marshall Lee on the forehead, like an absolution. They’re so close together that it wouldn’t take much. But… “Are you going to leave again?” His voice comes out soft, but at least he can blame that on the proximity.

Marshall Lee’s eyes dart away for a moment, all the answer G.B. needs.

G.B. bites his lip, reopening the cut from this morning, this evening. “And it’s just going to be like that.”

Marshall Lee twists, squeezing the float. Finally his eyes come back to G.B.’s. They are still empty of lies, and that makes G.B. feel better. “I mean—” He swallows. “You keep expecting me to be better than I am. I’m not. I’m sorry.”

He means it, too.

G.B. watches him for a long moment. He’s not drawing out the silence to torture Marshall Lee—he’s thinking of nights spent staring at the ceiling, waiting for a knock. Mornings spent listening to the news or flipping through the crime section of the newspaper. Does he want that again?

He looks again at the softness in Marshall Lee’s eyes. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted in the beginning, but it’s what he wants now. He thinks again how easy it would be to lean forward and kiss Marshall Lee—maybe on the mouth this time. Just once, to see what he tastes like.

Instead, G.B. pats Marshall Lee’s hand and pulls himself higher out of the water, resting his elbows on the float. “I don’t like it,” he says at last. “I’m never going to like it. But you aren’t lying to me. I appreciate that.”

Marshall Lee looks at the hand G.B. had touched. He shakes himself and pushes away. “Yeah, well—” A smirk settles back on his face, but G.B. doesn’t miss the faint blush, either. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll try to be better.”

“A voicemail wouldn’t kill you,” G.B. says, more gently than he meant to.

Marshall Lee nods. After a moment, he flicks water in G.B.’s direction. G.B. ignores it, leaning back and looking at the ceiling.

***

They float there for hours, mostly in silence. G.B. catches himself falling asleep. He doesn’t want to leave—despite his promises, Marshall Lee might just disappear again, and G.B. doesn’t want that.

Then he shakes his head and falls under the water again, where it is dark and silent and still. When he surfaces, he pulls himself out of the pool. “I should go home. I have class tomorrow.”

Marshall Lee follows him out. As G.B. dresses, Marshall Lee wanders back over to his things. “That, uh, that Black Flag cover band was pretty bitching, by the way.”

“Mmm,” says G.B. Talking about the night Marshall Lee showed up again will only irritate him, and they were doing very well. He prefers not to.

“I, um, I bought a shirt from them.” He holds it up. It is several sizes too large—G.B.’s first thought is that it would fit himself, not Marshall Lee.

Oh.

“You want it?” Marshall Lee asks, without looking at G.B.

The shirt features severed heads on stakes in a swamp. A snake snaps at the viewer. Putting aside the vile imagery, G.B. doesn’t wear t-shirts, except to bed.

He glances at Marshall Lee’s lithe body, still dripping from the pool, and has to swallow. “…Yeah, why not.”

Marshall Lee throws it at him. It hits G.B.’s face, and he catches a faint whiff of Old Spice as he pulls it down and folds it.

***

It’s a good thing the night is still warm—or, at least, Marshall Lee doesn’t seem to mind walking to G.B.’s house half-naked. G.B. will never admit he doesn’t mind the sight. When they reach G.B.’s window, Marshall Lee helps him climb through, and they face each other through it for a moment.

“…Pepper’s making penne tomorrow,” G.B. says. “And I wanted to try making ice cream from scratch.”

Marshall Lee rubs his nose. “…I’ll see what I can do.” His voice is indifferent, but his eyes are still soft and dark, and the smile he flashes G.B. before leaving is sweet, with no sharp edges.

When Marshall Lee is gone, G.B. closes the window and changes into boxers. It’s almost hot enough to sleep like that, but he pulls the concert shirt over his head anyway, inhaling deeply. Beneath the deodorant is sweat and crushed grass, the faintest hint of cigarette smoke.

It’s not a bad smell. It’s not a bad smell at all.