Chapter Ten — Fighting Fire

It felt unnatural to me, how routine and utterly mundane dawn was. I woke up with a jaw-popping yawn, and Damien was tossing a towel at me from the bathroom, informing me that he'd only be a few minutes; his expression was the mild, 9-to-5 face of my father, the face of someone who had been saying the same words and making the same motions for so many years it was like second nature... but Damien had not been waking up to my snores for years. He pulled the act off perfectly, but I wasn't stupid. As bad as his memory was, I knew that he hadn't forgotten our conversation last night. I knew he was only acting this casually because acting any other way might – God forbid – spark an unwanted followup conversation.

Or maybe I didn't know anything.

The water slowed to a stop and Damien stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around thinner hips than I would've expected. He caught me staring and raised his eyebrows. "What?" It sounded so purely bemused that I wondered if there really wasn't any subtext to the question.

"You're so skinny," I commented wonderingly, choosing to ignore my alternate train of thought.

"Oh, Pip!" he exclaimed, clasping his hands together and batting his eyes at me. "You know if you keep flattering me like this it'll go to my head!"

"It wasn't a compliment." True story. "Unless you're purposely going for the starving, anorexic girl look."

"It's all the rage in Teen People."

"Seriously: do you eat?"

"Think I'd die otherwise."

"I didn't think it 'worked like that' with you."

"Well, you know, I figured the bathroom trips might have been some sort of tip-off. I don't shit just for the thrill of it, though I won't begrudge you any such obsession."

Stupid idiot with his stupid idiotic banter. It reminded me ruefully of the way I'd always tried to squirm out of undesirable conversation topics with Wendy. I'd thought it was subtle then, but apparently I was wrong. At the moment, it seemed glaringly obvious that he was tip-toeing (well, stomping, really) around his discomfort zone using crude shock value as a sort of distraction. Whatever. If he was too immature to deal with the fact that maybe he needed my affection, I could humor him.

"Go on and take your shower," he urged, wisely dropping the subject of his bowel movements at my massive eye-roll. "I need to get dressed, and if you cream your pants when I let the towel drop, I'm not letting you borrow mine."

The comment took me by surprise. He wasn't trying to steer our conversation clear of my feelings (or lack thereof, as the case ironically was) for him. He was perfectly content to joke about it the way he always did. Nothing... had changed. Maybe he really was being genuinely casual. "Do I smell bad or something?"

"Bad enough that I'd be embarrassed to take you out in public. You've been complaining about that outfit I picked up for you ever since I brought it back, and I think it's worth the trouble to buy you something else if it'll shut you up. Seriously, though." He made a gesture down at his towel and then another one that threatened to rip the towel right off if I didn't hurry.

I hurried.

o o o

I had learned a few things from the girls I hated, and one was this: purposely avoiding any subject of conversation was an absolutely surefire way to end up talking about it. I didn't want to talk to Pip; I didn't want to look at Pip; the last thing in hell I wanted was to make casual jokes about a sexuality that scared the living shit out of me.

I didn't want to think about Cartman fucking him into the dirty grass. I didn't want to think about Cartman fucking him into his own dirty bed. More than that, though, I didn't want Pip knowing that such a thought bothered me.

Because I didn't really understand why it did.

"Done," he announced from behind me, stepping out of the bathroom almost fully dressed, towel lying haphazardly over his hair. It struck me as funny that maybe he didn't trust me enough to get changed outside. "Does this place have a hair dryer?"

"I'm not waiting for you to dry your hair," I answered in place of telling him that there was a hair dryer under the sink. "It'll be fine. It's not that cold outside."

"No, it's not that. I just can't wear my hat over wet hair; it'll stretch the wool."

"So we'll buy you another one."

"But..." He made a quiet protesting noise in his throat and looked down awkwardly at his feet. I shot an incredulous look at him, which he seemed to feel rather than see, and coaxed him into eventually surrendering, "Alright."

"If it's too precious for you to ruin, I understand," I teased with a lecherous grin that I didn't mean at all. I wanted things to be like they were two days ago; I wanted his answer to mean nothing. Now, he could either deny it and be lying, which would mean our whole conversation last night had been an awkward way of coming out to me, or deny it and be telling the truth, which would mean our whole conversation last night had been an elaborate ruse to get me to confess that I'd wanted him to come out to (and probably on to) me. If he didn't deny it at all, I had no clue what to think.

"Fuck off," he laughed, reaching out to backhand my shoulder. That seemed acceptable enough a response. "As someone with absolutely no shadow of a soul, I fully realize that you are incapable of understanding this, but it makes me feel a little bad every time we rip off a store."

"It's a rich country. The economy will bounce right back."

"Yes, I suppose that's the attitude of every petty criminal."

"Please, Pip. Petty? I am the grand master of all criminals." Pip laughed a little and tugged his hat over his wet hair with less remorse than I would've liked.

"Guess you are."

We walked together down through the hotel, making more stupid small talk; I wasn't even listening to myself. That was one of my favorite qualities, really: the ability to chat people up without actually thinking at all. At least not about what I was saying. When I was picking up chicks, I had much more exciting things to imagine than what her favorite outlet store was. Every now and then, as we passed through the halls, Pip would start at the sound of a door opening. I assumed he was afraid that his little girlfriend would pop out from behind one, demanding to see... what did I name Pip's imaginary boy toy... Mark? I pretended to find it all very funny. On some level, it was.

But every time I looked at him, images flashed through my head of him watching me sightlessly through that crimson blindfold while Cartman—

Forget it, I chastised myself, making a big show of picking out a car to annoy Pip, because that seemed very in character for me. He said nothing happened between the two of them. He's not the kind of guy to lie. We climbed into the car, Pip mumbling something about my being an ass... I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention. Just forget it. You've been cool all morning. You can keep doing this.

"Are you sure you and Cartman have never screwed around?"

The words came out of my mouth of their own volition. Pip stared for a moment, pursed lips threatening to break into a smile, then decided he couldn't hold it in anymore and collapsed over my shoulders, snickering like an idiot.

"What?"

"I knew you hadn't just forgotten about it!" he said triumphantly, pulling away to jab a finger in my face. I knocked him back a little over-enthusiastically, slamming his entire body into the side of his seat with a muffled THUMP. He didn't seem at all perturbed, because his grin never flickered. "I thought I'd be the one to crack and bring it back up!"

"I'm not bringing anything back up," I informed him coolly. "I'm just asking you a question."

"You are so hung up on Cartman!"

Yeah, maybe. But that might have something to do with the fact that I can't sit down right now without experiencing phantom pain. "Just answer the question."

"No! I've never done anything with Cartman!" he laughed, looking absolutely beside himself with glee. "I don't have any idea why you seem to think otherwise."

"Psychic."

"Oh, really?" He smiled teasingly at me. "I guess the secret's out, then."

"I'm serious!"

Pip gave me a funny look that made me cringe a little. "You were worked up last night, too. This is about more than whether or not I'm gay, right? It's really about Cartman?" He frowned a little. "I know your pride might have trouble accepting this, but don't you think that maybe you are a little jealous?"

I made an indignant noise and put my hands to my head, grimacing. "What would I be jealous of, Pip?" I was too busy shaking my head at the floor of the car to catch his facial reaction.

"The fact that, assuming Cartman and I were playing pelvic pinochle—" I reminded myself to kill him later for that choice of words "—he could get me interested and you can't! You've got such a big ego that I can't believe you wouldn't feel that way!"

"You didn't convince me of this last night—"

"—and I'm not going to convince you now. Got it." He shot me a look that was lingering somewhere between sullen and self-righteous. "But you refuse to tell me what it is that has you stuck on Cartman, so I've only got my intuition to go on. You wanna give me something more: go ahead." I growled a little and glared up at him. He reflected the expression faultlessly.

"It's none of your business why I'm stuck on Cartman!"

"It's my business when you're asking me whether or not I'm sleeping with him, I think!" That was, at most, fifty percent true. It certainly wasn't his business that every time I took a shit today I'd be thinking of that asshole. I threw him a bone anyway.

"I told you three days ago that our whole... thing—" I couldn't think of a better word for it "—came back to me in my sleep, right? Well maybe some other shit 'came back' to me, too. If my subconscious thinks it's true, it probably is." I wanted to add, and the fact that you're getting so defensive lends credit to the theory, but I was slightly less stupid than that. His arm was stronger than I'd originally suspected.

Pip laughed incredulously. "Right, because we were the best of friends, you and I, and boy was it awkward that one night when you barged into my room without knocking to find me on my knees in front of Cartman!" That sent a wave of nausea through my stomach, but I tried to keep it from showing on my face. "We never spoke to each other after the third grade, you dolt. How could you possibly remember anything about my past?"

"I've been up to Park County a lot, even you noticed that," I pointed out, fumbling for the key in my pocket and realizing with a degree of horror that my hands were shaking. "So who says I didn't... I don't know... notice two fags going at it in the back of a movie theater or something?" Okay, that was intelligent... now I was making myself sick. Fuck. Why did I bring this back up?

Because the taken aback look in his eyes was giving me the impression that he did have something to hide, and that... that made me sicker. "W-well... we've never gone at it in the back of a movie theater, so I can pretty much guarantee you that's not it..."

Smirking with a trace amount of actual satisfaction at having finally cornered him, I reached out to put the back of my hand against Pip's cheek; he jumped straight back and hit the window with the back of his head. He cursed out loud and winced in pain, giving me a rude hand gesture beneath the seat. "You're burning up," I commented smoothly, still smiling. Pip looked like he was about to have a heart attack. It was really kind of cute, the way he was pressed up against the door with his feet on the car seat and his knees up against his chest as if he could actually melt through the metal if he only tried hard enough. "And that stutter's a little incriminating."

"We haven't fucked!" he burst out angrily, face redder than ever. I licked my lips and turned the ignition. My hands were still shaking, but not so badly. I shifted into reverse and backed the car out of its parking space.

"Alright," I replied, satisfied for now. I could almost feel his surprise at the simple response. "That's all I was asking." I could see the wary disbelief on his face in the rear view mirror.

"That's... that's all..."

"That's all," I repeated, smiling horribly. "You should probably unglue yourself from the door and put on your seatbelt, because we're taking the highway." Pip was still motionless for about ten more seconds.

"I still... I still think you should drop it."

I honestly couldn't care less what you think, I thought bitterly. I just got fucked up the ass by my own subconscious, and I'm pretty damn sure it's your fault.

"Alright."

o o o

He had been lying when he said it was alright. He made it abundantly clear to me the moment we stepped into the shopping mall that he had absolutely no intention of dropping the subject. Maybe he'd been silent during the ride over to lull me into a false sense of security until we had reached our destination – and couldn't pull over once I started screaming – or maybe it was just more entertaining to humiliate me in front of a crowd. (Actually, I was guessing it was a combination of the two.) He was taking great pleasure in guessing aloud where and what he'd caught me and Cartman doing as we passed through the mall. The food court had provided a few potentials, all mind-numbingly obvious (though he'd come up with a pretty inventive one when we walked by an Orange Julius), but now that we were settled in the mens department of JCPenney's, Damien was moving on to more lurid possibilities.

"Hand job behind a sales rack," he stated with a smile as he pulled apart a cluster of half-priced jeans and gestured to the empty space behind it.

"No," I replied shortly, thumbing through the sizes of the jeans Damien had just pushed in my direction. 28x32. I pulled the hopeful pair off the rack.

"Grope in the back room," he guessed again, gazing across the store to the shoe department next to us where a short man with several boxes towering at least ten inches over his head was making his way out of the storeroom.

"Damien, I'm going to try these on," I told him as if he would care, throwing the pants over my shoulder and heading off towards the dressing room. "Try and behave yourself."

"Sloppy makeout beneath an empty register." I ignored him and continued to the dressing room.

The dressing room was one of those uncomfortable affairs where all the doors had been equipped with wooden shutters placed backwards so that you could see into the stall from the outside but absolutely nothing at all from the inside. They were also lacking locks, fitted instead with a little magnet that gently encouraged the door to stay closed while you modeled your underwear for anyone who happened to be walking by the stall. Well, c'est la vie. It's not like I had much pride to protect anyway.

I'd situated myself in the booth farthest from the door (it had a tri-fold mirror that, even if missing a pane, made it the nicest in the room) and was in the middle of pulling the jeans up over my ass when Damien's voice announced itself behind me.

"Quickie in the dressing room." I sighed and turned around to find him playing with the door's magnetic lock. There couldn't have been anyone else in the room, or he would've worried about how gay this must have looked.

"You're getting on my nerves." He stopped fidgeting with the door for a moment and shot me a smile.

"Only because you're on mine and I need to level out the playing field."

"I'm trying on jeans," I commented dully, knowing that reasoning with him was probably about as effective as banging my head against a wall.

"Yes, I can see that." He shot a glance at my butt in the mirror and waggled his eyebrows. "Love the underwear, by the way. I've always been a Broncos fan."

"You know," I started, matching his leering expression with a poisonously sugary one, "if you really don't want me under the impression that you're only trying to corner me into admitting my interest in guys so that you can take a swing at me yourself, you might reconsider the commenting-on-my-ass-to-get-me-flustered route." Damien's smile grew wider in appreciation.

"And if you don't want me under the impression that you're used to having guys commenting on your ass, you might reconsider the I'm-not-flustered-at-all route." I couldn't decide whether I was more annoyed or amused. He stepped into the changing stall and closed the door behind him, and I quickly finished pulling on and zipping up my pants. Damien laughed.

"You afraid I'm going to have a go at you?"

"Terribly. Also, I feel uncomfortable half-naked in a room with another guy, but the first one is better." He didn't seem uncomfortable at all, however. It reminded me a bit of his demeanor in the Middle Park office. This was clearly inappropriate territory; the only thing I could think of as any worse was a bathroom stall, and I questioned whether he wouldn't still be smirking even in a place like that. (If the smell didn't get to him first, anyway.) I wondered absently if anyone was watching the surveillance cameras in the changing room right now, and – if they were – whether or not they were having a good laugh at this.

"Don't underestimate me." He was still smiling, but there was a note of challenge in his voice now.

I wasn't entirely sure what I was underestimating here. "Sorry. Should I be buckling up a chastity belt, too?"

Too abruptly to be funny, Damien closed the distance between us with one long stride, pushed me against the broken third of the mirror, and leaned in unbearably close. Any and all humor left in the air vanished immediately; if there were any security personnel monitoring the room, now would have been an ideal time for them to come charging into the room with a can of mace. My stomach found itself twisted up in knots, and I wanted to ask him what he was doing, but I figured he would explain himself before I could jump to the conclusion that maybe my chastity belt comment wasn't as ironic as I'd intended it. "I am going to figure out what you did with Cartman," he whispered ferally in what I hoped was the start of some sort of explanation. "It's really just a matter of when, and how much we each have to suffer until then." I blinked stupidly.

"How much we have to...? What are you s—?"

"I told you," he cut me off, breath hot on my face. Ugh. Toothpaste. We needed toothpaste. "It's none of your business."

"But... it'll be my business if you end up raping me in the dressing room?"

He couldn't do it. He just couldn't pull it off. We both knew how uncomfortable I was with close physical proximity, and he'd been going about squeezing information out of me absolutely perfectly if his plan was to flat-out scare me into a confession... but the thought of us actually rutting up against the wall of the changing room was just too much for him to bear, and he burst out in strangled laughter. Slumped against me in a fit of hysteria, he was still managing to make me highly uncomfortable, but not in any way that was beneficial to him. "You're so stupid," he choked out, ribs shaking. "God, you ruin everything."

"Sorry," I apologized, carefully sliding myself out from under him while he rode out wave after wave of laughter. "All those homoerotic fantasies of mine got the better of me for a moment." He decided that this rebuttal was worth another five minutes of laughter, so I left him to his side-splitting and ventured into another stall to change back into my old pants. The jeans fit well enough to buy... or well enough that I wasn't willing to put myself through the hassle of trying on another pair, anyway.

You know. Homoerotic fantasies and all.

He found me about five minutes later as the cashier was ringing up the jeans, still choking on the occasional chuckle. "I already voiced my guess on the makeout beneath the register," he said with a lopsided smirk, and the cashier ignored him admirably. "But I will figure it out."

"Good luck," I replied with a biting smile, taking my bag and my receipt and handing the credit card back to Damien. "You can guess forever, but nothing that has ever happened between us happened in a shopping mall."

I walked off, and he all but ran after me.