Title: Mixed Emotions
Author: Kameko-chan
Pairings: Kyle/Christophe
Notes: Theme #14, 'Radio-cassette player'

When I turned sixteen, Christophe gave me a cassette player. It was a relic if ever I saw one, a ton of plastic and fake wood paneling that would run you ten dollars at the average garage sale. Dual tape decks and a radio that picked up nothing but static, that was my gift from a hit man in training.

Everyone laughed at the Mole and his beast of a present. Even Kenny, who could barely afford the card he gave me and probably stole the twenty dollars I found inside, laughed along with the rest. Christophe didn't seem to care, he never does. He turned his back to their jeers and snuck another cigarette before my mother took it away and crushed it beneath her designer heels.

When I asked him about my gift later that evening, he told me to make a mixed tape with it. "It's more real, making cassette tapes rather than CDs," he explained. "It is one of my favorite activities. Try it, you will enjoy it."

Well, what the hell?

In the next few weeks, I began to learn what he meant as my allowance was drained by blank tapes and 99 cent cassettes in dusty bargain bins. I could have wired my computer to the cassette player rather than amass a collection of obsolete audio, I suppose, but that would have felt too much like cheating.

When I finished my first tape, I gave it to him. He was delighted with it, and I never could figure out whether it was due to my mixing abilities or simply because I'd taken him seriously. He gave me one of his tapes the next day.

I kissed him the day I gave him my sixth tape. It was the first time I bothered with a title, and I called that one 'Impossible'. It surprised me when he kissed back.

My seventeenth cassette was peppered with Al Green songs. I whimsically dubbed it 'Music to Make Love to' and made him laugh. We must have played that one a thousand times, until the ribbon wore down to nothing.

Number thirty-two was titled 'Eternity', a soft and dreamy mix that still brings out the tears. I can remember how he's brush the hair out of my eyes when we listened to that one together. I can't remember another time when he was nearly so gentle.

I called my fifty-third 'Poetry of Heartbreak'. It was the last cassette I ever made, the only one he never heard.