Brace Yourself

Chapter Twenty One: The Soul Of Someone Once Close To Me

By: Jondy Macmillan

A/N: Ohhhh, guys. You better love me; I was about to go to sleep, and then I was all-no. MUST post. In other news…they should let you rank favorites by…well, by how much each user likes them. Like, keeps all the other sorting methods, but then have an extra option for user's ranked- because I now have 105 favorites- not that many if you consider I've been on this site for seven years, (I should do some spring cleaning)- but certain fics are definitely in my top ten, and I'd like to be able to click the tab and boom , there they are. I guess that's considered mean or something. Hmm, maybe I'll do an lj post ranking them. I'll link it to my FAQ post…Um. Yeah, kay, story now.

Harbuck's is neutral territory. It's fancy coffee and streamlined computers and haunting background music, and that's kind of the way I like it. So when Kyle walks in just as I'm tying on my apron, I feel myself deflate. All the courage I've managed to work up today floats away.

Hell, if my courage took on the form of a bunny shaped cloud, I'd say it fucking scampered.

It's like seeing him a different light. Wiry muscles, floppy red curls, a wry half-smile. I think he's some kind of boy-god. I'm watching him stomp snow off his boots onto the black rubber mat right inside the door. He levels that smirk at me, and yeah, he's straight out of some Norse myth. A trickster. Loki.

When you start seeing your friends as larger than life, as gods, you know your sanity's worth questioning.

I duck behind the counter, even though it's beyond too late to hide. Hell, I'm the one who told him to meet me here. He already saw me, even. Funny how none of that makes me want to stop hiding any less.

Christophe, at my side gives me a look of pure disdain. He's on the phone, getting ready to start his shift with one hand while the other cradles plastic to his cheek.

I can hear the British voice on the other end of the line, the, "What the fuck are you laughing at, a-hole? I'm attempting to be serious here!"

"Non, non," Christophe replies, "the pussy-boy I work wiz is 'iding be'ind ze counter like a coward."

I might as well name the voice inside my head Ze Mole; they seem to be berating me for the same things.

"Thanks a fucking lot," I hiss, then maturely mock his accent, "I'm not 'iding. I'm looking for caramel syrup."

"Really?" a voice cuts in, "Because it looks like you're hiding."

Eek. Kyle.

Why did I tell him to come again?

Every instinct I have is screaming, 'RUN'.

Fuck my life.

Slowly I grip the counter, rising up on my heels so that I'm eye level with him, a cobra being charmed out of a vase.

"How you doing?" he asks, smile concealing whatever I'm positive is lurking behind his eyes. I peer closer, hoping I'll spot a hint of what he's hiding, but I come up short. It feels like I'm looking at a picture, flat, two dimensional.

Knock, knock, Kyle's not home.

"Hey, Christophe. I'm going to take a break," I murmur.

"You just got 'ere," he protests, pulling the phone from his ear, "And you were ten minutes late."

"Yeah," I lower my head in apology, but give him this little shake that means I'm not going to back down on this. I glance at Kyle again, judging, estimating, "It'll only take fifteen anyway."

He mutters some curses in French, or if it's not, it's some language that sounds like gibberish to me. The guy on the other end of the phone, clear as day, yells in an offended voice, "Watch your mouth, Christophe!"

"Make me," Christophe practically purrs in reply, and oh, I think I liked it better when cell phones didn't have such clear reception and loud speakers.

Kyle gives me a look, clearly commiserating.

I don't return it. I'm trying to get myself ready for fifteen minutes of bull, because that's what I'm pretty sure I'm about to get.

There are some black leather couches in the far corner of the store, tucked away next to shelves of mugs with script that attempts to be witty but fails so badly we've had to mark them down below clearance. Even for a dollar, no one's buying.

I sit in one of the big comfy arm chairs, ignoring the space Kyle's trying to make for me on the couch. Reclining back, I put my arms behind my head and my feet up on the coffee table. On anyone else, this kind of body language would indicate relaxation. On me, it's battle-ready.

I'm acting like Kyle's one of them, one of the people who alienated and abused me for the past few years. This is my don't-give-a-fuck, ready-to-be-kicked-while-I'm-already-down posture. I think Kyle knows it too. His shoulders slump and he leans towards me a little, like he's begging for forgiveness.

But there's still nothing in his eyes. Not for the first time, I'm wondering when I stopped being able to read him.

"So, the other night," he sighs, rakes a hand through his curls, and sighs again.

"The other night," I prompt, not planning on making this easy on him. He doesn't deserve easy. If I let him avoid the subject like he's been doing, like he did about our friendship, and like I know he wants to about this, I'll just be enabling him. The worst part is, I want to let him avoid this- god, do I want to. We could let this whole thing go, and we could pretend everything's back to normal. It's Kyle, and he's…he's late night sleepovers and dicking around on the basketball court. He's kosher food and complaints about his loudmouth mother. He's always standing up for what's right, except for…well, when it comes to me.

I wonder why that is?

"Stan, how long have you been feeling…uh, that way about me?"

I want to ask 'what way?' I want to tell him he'd delusional and that whatever he thinks he imagined at homecoming actually didn't happen.

Or better yet, it was a prank. A joke.

No.

No more running away.

"Maybe…I don't know, around when you started talking to me again for real?" I take a deep breath, rolling my eyes up to the ceiling for something to focus on other than Kyle's intense eyes, his grimace, "Or even before that."

"Stan…I'm sorry man," Kyle's tone of voice begs for an out, begs for me to acknowledge how much this all sucks, "but you've got to understand that I've never thought about you like that."

I let myself laugh, humorless, bitter, because-oh, this hurts more than I initially thought it would.

All the raging testosterone inside me is begging, pleading to just sock him in the face. Wipe that smug smile off his lips. Make him hurt like he's hurting me.

It's his tone that forces me to unclench my fist; that pleading edge of it.

But when I tear my eyes from the ceiling, Kyle's not smiling. He's barely even making an expression at all.

We could be talking about fucking algebra.

I lean forward, on the offensive now, curious, "Really Kyle? Really? Not even once?"

The nervous bob of his Adam's apple is the only indication he gives that maybe I've hit a nerve.

"N-no," he murmurs, and now he's looking at the same spot on the ceiling I was.

"Bullshit."

"It's not!"

"You can't tell me you've had dirty thoughts about Kenny and not me."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean," I lunge forward so that my knees are touching his, my face hovering inches away, "That Kenny's not me. You think he makes you happy? Happy's not even close to what I can make you feel."

I stare at him, silently applauding myself.

That's when I realize; he's scared. He's scared of what I think, of how I'll react.

Which means he cares about me. I got my initial wish; this is proof that we're friends again when everything else wasn't. Real, honest to god friends.

He reels back, pressing his arms and back into the fabric of the couch, trying to be as far away from me as he can manage right this minute, "God, Stan. You've changed so fucking much! You can't do this to me- you barely even know who I am anymore!"

That I didn't see coming.

"So show me, Kyle," I'm biting my tongue because I'm so sure he's going to bolt.

"I-" he looks at me, his eyes bright, "Dude, I can't do this."

Yeah. He's off like a fucking deer.

"This has got to stop," Kyle murmurs, standing, staring me dead in the eyes, "I think maybe we need some space. It'll give you time to get over- whatever this is."

And by we, he means himself. He needs space, because- what, I'm figuring him out? Even just a little bit? Figuring out what exactly?

"I'm not going to get over this," I tell him, returning his look tenfold. For a second I think he might be shaking.

It's hard to tell when he's walking away.

I watch Kyle's back as he practically runs out of the store. Then I check my watch. Fifteen minutes on the dot.

When I get back up to the counter, Christophe whistles and goes, "I may 'ave to reevaluate my respect for you."

"Oh?"

"You 'ad that boy running scared," he grins, like that's the best measure of my personality he's ever seen. Hell, it's Christophe, so maybe it is.

I don't tell him that I would have given anything for Kyle to have just stayed and talked to me.

After work's over, I go to Coffee Blue. You'd think that working in a coffeehouse all day long would sort of turn me off of them, but the difference between Harbuck's and here is night and day.

Anyway, I'm here for a reason. I'm steeling myself in preparation for apologizing. It's not something I'm wonderful at. It could be said I'm not actually wonderful at a lot of things.

I'm trying here, okay?

This day's just one long, bumpy road of shit-on-Stan, but I've gotta think everyone has a day like this at least once in their lives.

Right?

Pretend for me.

I've been waiting for a while; so long that I'm not even sure I should still be sitting here. Still, I have to believe that something good's going to come out of my new and improved attitude. That the fight and detention and my rejecting Derek and my run down Stark's and my talk with Kyle were all just building me up for something good.

I hope.

My eyes flicker closed, and that's when I feel the weight of the table shift and hear the scrape of metal chair legs.

When I open my eyes, they're sitting in front of me.

"Still smell like a fruit cocktail, I see," Craig drawls, ruffling a hand through my hair. Damn Shelley and her damn shampoo.

"I kind of like it," Clyde sniffs, "I can close my eyes and pretend you're a girl."

I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, and then realize that wouldn't be especially conducive to friendship repairing. So instead I splay my hands on the table top and say, "Hi."

"Hi," Craig echoes, his slanted eyes narrowed ever so slightly. He's ready to jump to his feet and call me an asshole if need be, and I can tell he's doing a damage assessment of me to see how fucked up I've been in his absence; if there will be a need for name calling at all.

"So…remember that time I told you guys I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, no, that's not ringing a bell," Craig, group advocate, speaks up. Clyde just grins and leans back in his chair. He's more focused on that one cute barista than the unfolding drama. The boy will never change.

Except maybe for how his hand is settled on Craig's thigh. That's different.

"Well, I was sitting in front of you in Coffee Blue and I said 'sorry', and you guys forgave me, and it was pretty sweet."

"Sounds like it," Craig nods, "So?"

I groan. Time to take my medicine like a good boy.

"I'm sorry."

"Excuse me? The music in here's SO loud."

"I said I'm sorry."

"One more time?"

"Craig, I said I'm fucking sorry."

I can tell he wants to drag it out even longer, but that's the moment when Clyde cuts in and says, "Dude, you don't have to say I'm sorry to me. I'll settle for a latte."

"Cool," I smile in relief while Clyde nudges Craig and tells him to stop being an asshole. He waits patiently for me to fetch his coffee. I get one for Craig too, just to be safe. Then Clyde launches into a half hour long descriptive update of how all his favorite TV shows are progressing. God, I kind of missed him.

For the most part, Craig stays quiet except for a few caustic comments on Clyde's choice in television. I can tell he's bursting to tell me something, but we have to wait until Clyde excuses himself to go buy another coffee to talk for real.

"So, douchebag. What brought about the change of heart?" Craig asks.

"Shelley. What's going on with you and Clyde?" I demand, zeroing in on what I'd been dying to know.

"We're dating. Soon to be officially."

"Officially? I don't get it."

"We're," Craig enunciates carefully, "Going to come out to the school."

"What? Dude, are you sure? It's high school- it's a fucking piranha tank out there."

My reply is pretty concise, but inside I'm screaming with questions. Our high school isn't exactly known for tolerance. We've only got three black kids in the whole place, and one asian. Kyle and Kenny are the only gay people I know, and they're not officially out. Their relationship, despite all the eye-gazing and hand-holding has been mostly on the dl. What Craig's talking about would blow all that out of the water.

"We'll survive," he smirks.

"I'm not so sure about that. Why would you?"

"People need to know to keep their hands off Clyde," Craig watches the other boy possessively as he attempts to flirt with the barista, "He's too horny for his own good, and one day someone's going to take advantage of that."

"Are you sure? I mean, no one's taken advantage of that for the past three years…"

"Haha, very funny," Craig makes a face at me, "I talked to Clyde about it, and he wants it too. He messes around, but he's just been waiting for me to man up. He doesn't like to lie; it makes him nervous and clumsy. 'Cause of that, he won't really be mine until we're honest. With everybody."

"Is Clyde worth it?"

I want to say more. I want to say that he's my best friend, and that we live in a town where varsity jackets and cows are pretty much the only thing we've got going for us, and that being openly gay here is like nine kinds of social suicide. But Craig won't care about any of that. He won't care about anything but Clyde, and maybe me.

"C'mon, Marsh. Very few people make you want to set the world on fire," he tilts his head towards our friend, who even now is delivering some awkward, lame pickup line.

I guess I should know better than most people; we don't choose who we fall in love with.

Craig's asking for my approval. I know it, and I give it. Nodding slowly, I agree, "Okay. I'm behind you."

And I am. One hundred percent.

Somebody deserves a happy ending, at least.

A/N: Please review, and maybe I'll update faster!