"What the hell is that?"
"My boyfriend. What's it look like?" Baird asked with a roll of his eyes.
"A damn mess in the waiting." Marcus shoved at the bright orange pumpkin Baird had plopped on the desk. "Get it out of here. I have work to do."
"Don't you want to help me carve it?"
"Do I look like I'm ten?"
Suddenly snatching up the pumpkin, Baird turned indignant. "Oh, sorry. I forgot you had the opportunity to do this every year with your perfect family."
"We'll carve it tomorrow," sighed Marcus but the blond man was already out of the study.
Leaning his elbows on his knees, Marcus rubbed his temples. He had previously pulled an all-night stint to finish his thesis—although he was still just shy of concluding his main point—and his head was still pounding. Baird's constant pestering didn't help matters. Marcus hated holidays for that reason. Two years ago Baird started seeing a therapist to work through the trauma of his emotionally abusive parents. Whenever a holiday approached, Baird became more and more childish and temperamental about the smallest things. Marcus understood; what he didn't, he tried and supported Baird, anyway. He just wished it was mutual.
All night to write a paper and he bitched at me for not making coffee this morning.
There was a clatter from the kitchen; books, pans, and empty beer cans hit the hard wood floors. Marcus warned Baird yesterday to stop leaving his trash lay around. He didn't want to deal with the mess now; the seventy page document glared at him from his computer. But when heard the blond man's muffled curse, he went to investigate.
The newspaper that was under the pile of books—now discarded on the floor—was spread across the table. A chef knife lay next to the pumpkin, and next to it, a puddle of pumpkin guts. At least Baird had the good sense to put the paper down.
Baird was so fixated on his struggle to clean the inside, he didn't notice Marcus until the bigger man held out an ice cream scooper.
"I don't want your help," Baird grunted. Elbow deep in a disemboweled pumpkin, his defiant expression was humorous.
"You'll never get it all with just your hands."
"Sure I will."
Why did he have to be so stubborn? Knowing he wouldn't budge, Marcus set the scooper on the table and bent to collect the mess scattered on the floor.
"What happened to your paper?" Baird asked.
"I realized it doesn't have the ability to talk so it can't whine for hours that I ignored it. You, on the other hand…"
Baird sneered and slapped another wet heap of orange mush on the table.
With the cans picked up, the books back on the shelf, and the two stray pots that were sitting on the counter put away, Marcus took a seat at the kitchen table. Sometime during his cleaning Baird admitted defeat and used the ice cream scoop to scrape the sides.
"What are you going to carve?" Marcus asked. He was genuinely curious. Baird wasn't an artist.
"Whatever the hell I feel like. Maybe an ass, maybe your ugly mug. Same difference, right?"
Marcus ignored that. "Can't you do something like a cat or a face?"
"It's my pumpkin. Maybe if you had offered to help me—"
"I'm sorry." Marcus ran a hand over his tired face, wishing he could rub the exhaustion away. "I'm sorry I decided my thesis was more important. It's not like it's due in two days. That time is better spent with you, anyway. My grade doesn't matter."
With a grimace Baird pulled his hand out of the pumpkin. Instead of replying, like Marcus expected, Baird didn't seem to hear; he grabbed the knife and stabbed it into the pumpkin's side. Marcus smiled despite the tense silence.
"The knife is too big. It's coming out the other side."
Baird continued to saw at the skin, his face frozen with intense concentration.
"Unless you're going to take out that whole side, you should get a different knife."
"You wanna do this yourself?" Baird demanded.
"It's your pumpkin. I'm just the peanut gallery."
Baird set the knife in the sink before pulling a new one out of the block. It was smaller and would allow him more room to carve. He held it up and Marcus nodded in approval. Sometimes the blond was helpless.
Coming back to his monstrosity, he said, "You're a fucking awful peanut gallery. I thought I was the opinionated one in this relationship."
"Do you want my honest opinion of the thirty-four year old scientist carving a pumpkin?" Marcus asked.
"Sure. How pathetic do I look? Like a wet cat or something?"
"More like an excited kid. It's kinda cute."
"Didn't know you were into that kind of thing."
Marcus shook his head. He would have punched Baird's arm if he wasn't holding a knife.
Despite the earlier hostility, easy silence slipped over them. It surprised Marcus; normally Baird would do anything to fill a stretch, but he was focused intently on his pumpkin. He kept the carving turned away from Marcus, successfully keeping it a secret.
Marcus was content listening to the saw of the blade, watching Baird struggle in thicker patches. The way his muscles flexed under the sleeves of his shirt, his neck straining with effort at certain points. His face was screwed up in concentration. Marcus smiled. When Baird did something, he gave it his entire attention. The expression reminded him of a similar one; the only difference was that both men were currently clothed.
"Sorry," Baird said, interrupting Marcus's wandering mind.
"For what?"
"You know."
"No, I don't. What are you apologizing for?" There were a lot of reasons Baird would apologize.
"Being … a brat, I guess. Holidays suck and my boss has been pushing for another genius contraption. Because I can obviously shit miracles, right?" Baird stabbed the pumpkin again. "And then you were ignoring me for your stupid paper. I tried not to be upset about it but I wanted my ego stroked. I'm still suffering a creative block."
"Is that what your piss poor seduction attempts have been about?"
Baird's pale complexion quickly turned pink.
"Just so you know, 'Hey big man, the Baird Machine could use some calibrating' is not the same as 'I could use some attention.' Plus, it sounds ridiculous," said Marcus.
"Hey, you're the romantic in this relationship."
Marcus chuckled. "Just finish your damn pumpkin already."
Baird began sawing again, twisting the pumpkin every way except where Marcus could see it. It wasn't much longer when set the knife down and took a step back. He grinned.
"Not bad for my first attempt. Didn't think letters would be that hard."
"Normally it's easier to draw on the pumpkin first," Marcus supplied.
Baird grimaced.
"But I'm sure it's fine," the other man backpedaled.
He stood and came around the table. The pumpkin was in rough shape after all the stabbing. There were still seeds and gooey strings seeping from the inside but Baird was proud of his first carving and Marcus wasn't going to ruin his mood.
The actual carving was what mattered. It was sloppy and jagged, and a little hard to read, but it made Marcus shake his head with a smile.
"Damon 'heart's Marcus," he read. "You really are an ass."
Baird shrugged. "Well, you know, gotta pick up the slack somehow. I have a romantic bone somewhere. I just don't like to show it off."
"Yeah, I know what you do with that bone."
Baird turned pink again. It was so easy to make him blush.
"That's not a bone, idiot," he grumbled.
Marcus kissed his temple. "I appreciate the thought, and you're cute as hell right now, but you know Halloween is next month, right?"