Chapter Fourteen
Mark went home for fall break and was on his absolute best behavior for his mum and Jim. Jim hardly grilled him about Alpha Delt, except to ask if he was getting excited about his upcoming initiation. “I’m excited for pledging to end,” Mark said truthfully.
Jim laughed. “It seems rough in the moment. But once you’re through it, you’ll really feel a bond with those boys. And you’ll do the same initiation rituals to next year’s class.”
Somehow Mark doubted he’d be pouring hot sauce down some freshman’s throat next fall. But he let it go.
He called Deacon a couple of times to find out how Deacon’s break was going, and it seemed like Deacon was having fun with his mother and Ben, but Mark wasn’t sure. He got the feeling there was still a lot Deacon didn’t tell him.
Mark tried to make a start on the research paper for his lit class that was due at the end of the semester, but he just couldn’t make himself care enough to do it. He’d gotten a sixty-eight on his lit midterm, which wasn’t bad, he’d thought—though Brandon seemed a bit discouraged. Mark had promised Brandon he’d at least settle on a topic over break.
When he got back to Prescott, things went fairly smoothly for a few weeks. He didn’t take Deacon to Alpha Delta’s Halloween party, even though theoretically Deacon could have dressed as Chewbacca or something and gone unnoticed. But the Alpha Delts had already unmasked Zorro; Mark didn’t want them to de-head Chewbacca and discover Deacon in their midst once more.
Instead, Mark put in an appearance at Alpha Delt, and then he and Deacon both went to the Halloween at the Morgue party at Phi Mu, Chelsea’s sorority. Brandon dropped in too, and he and Deacon finally met and hit it off. Mark actually got so tired of hearing Deacon praise Brandon’s eidetic memory that he tripped and “accidentally” sloshed some punch on Deacon’s Westley costume.
That night, Mark changed out of his Mad Max costume and put on the knickers and suspender belt for Deacon. Deacon fucked Mark with Mark’s legs in the air, the belt tugging on his stockings until one of the suspender loops snapped.
He and Deacon continued their arse play. Deacon worked on stretching Mark, and Mark made Deacon blush by suggesting a trip to a sex shop to pick up some butt plugs and a douche kit. Mark was serious, though. He thought about getting Deacon in the car and telling him they were going to the half-priced textbook store, then pulling into Midnight Fantasy instead. But he wanted Deacon to come shopping of his own accord. He had a feeling Deacon still felt guilty that the fisting hadn’t worked—that he worried he’d hurt Mark. Mark wasn’t sure how to get him the hell over that, especially since Mark sometimes felt, inexplicably, like a failure for not being able to take Deacon’s whole hand. Would it really have hurt so much to keep going?
Then he remembered how bad the pain had been. Remembered what he’d read online, that sometimes it took guys weeks, months—even years—of prep before they could take a fist up their arses. Mark didn’t want to give up on the idea, not by a long shot.
He and Deacon tried going on a double date one night with Matt and his girlfriend, Kate. Mark was completely bored; they went to a shitty restaurant, and Matt acted like a lug and Kate was overly peppy. She kept commenting on how she was the only girl in their party. Ordering drinks: “I guess since I’m the only girl here, I’ll order a Cosmo.” Getting up to use the restroom: “Guess I’ll be the first girl in history to go to the bathroom alone. Since I don’t have any other girls here to ask.” Then she’d laugh. Matt would give her a snort out of solidarity, but Mark could tell he didn’t think she was funny either.
On the way home, Mark told Deacon he never wanted to go on a double date again, unless the definition of “double date” was Mark getting to go out with both Deacon and the hot guy from Tau Kappa Mark shared an intro-to-bio class with, and subsequently they had their first fight—because who knew sweet, stoic Deacon had a jealous streak?
Mark loved learning that kind of shit about Deacon. And Mark apologized first, so look who was getting better at not being a total prick.
Mark was surprised to find he was starting to enjoy his independence. He hadn’t thought much about it, since he’d felt enslaved to the Alpha Delts his first few weeks at Prescott. But it was finally occurring to him that he was an adult. If he wanted to get stoned and go look at pregnant meerkats or stay out fucking Deacon all night, he didn’t have to worry about having to tell his mum where he’d been when he got home.
The only thing that was strange was Mark’s standing with the Alpha Delts. Bengal’s idea of revenge, apparently, was to exclude Mark from pledge activities. At first Mark was pleased that Bengal’s definition of retribution seemed to precisely match Mark’s definition of reward, but after a while, Mark could kind of see what the objective was. Once again, Mark felt like an outsider. He had no way of keeping an eye on Bengal, and he rarely knew what the other pledges were going through. If he asked Dan or Fraser, they didn’t say much. Mark figured Bengal had them scared.
Mark hadn’t thought he wanted the kind of brothers you had to pay for, but sometimes he felt envious when he saw Deacon hanging out with James or Matt. Wondered how many friends he’d cheated himself out of by keeping his fellow pledges at arm’s length. Wondered what it was going to mean to live the next three years in a house with a group of guys who didn’t really like him.
Making your bed and lying in it, he supposed.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Deacon asked him in early November. They were walking toward the library, where Deacon swore they’d find some good resources for Mark’s research paper, and where Mark swore there was a microfiche room just begging for two star-cross’d lovers to fuck in it. Deacon said resources before fucking.
“Uh, to be honest, I don’t really get Thanksgiving. But Jim’s cooking, and—fuck—Jackson’s gonna be home. Jim’s family’s coming over.”
Deacon grinned. “You’ll have a good time. Food’ll be good, at least.”
“Ever since frozen-turkey bowling, I’ve been kind of turned off by turkey,” Mark said. He shivered and glanced up at the gray sky. “Getting cold. I don’t like it, Deke.”
Deacon took his hand. It still gave Mark a thrill, a gesture that simple. Deacon pulled him close so that Mark could feel his body heat—even if he couldn’t walk without tripping over Deacon’s feet. “I was thinking,” Deacon said. “If it doesn’t snow before the semester ends, maybe we could take a weekend and go to the ski lodge up in Tannersville. They’ve got a snow machine for when they don’t have enough real snow.”
“A snow machine?”
Deacon glanced at him. “Yeah.”
“Why the hell would they make something no one wants around in the first place?”
Deacon laughed. “Because some people like snow, believe it or not. And they need it to ski.”
“They’re crazy.”
Deacon squeezed his hand. “Mark.” Deacon looked at him imploringly. “It’s fun. The lodge is nice, and there are fireplaces in the rooms.” He nudged Mark with his shoulder. “We could come back from skiing and fuck in front of the fire.”
“Why don’t we skip skiing and just fuck in front of the fire?”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m worried about legitimate things. Like frostbite on my balls. And snow bears.”
“Snow bears? Do you mean polar bears? Because we don’t have those.”
“No, I mean snow bears. Like, bears that forgot to hibernate or woke up early and aren’t afraid of snow.”
“Jesus Christ,” Deacon said. “You’re taking biology, and you don’t know how nature works.”
Mark muttered something about preferring to study Deacon’s biology, but Deacon didn’t take the bait. They checked out some books instead.
“I’d rather check out…” Mark began loudly at the counter, and Deacon’s laugh turned into a cough, and he almost choked. Then, because he was still red and breathless, he made Mark carry all the books.
So college life was okay. Sometimes it was better than okay. And the cold wasn’t so bad, not once Deacon showed Mark how to stuff so many marshmallows into a cup of hot chocolate that it was pure diabetes in a mug. Mark liked being inside when it was cold, with Deacon and movies and hot chocolates, but outside? Outside it was wrong. Just plain wrong.
All those layers of clothing that had to be put on before he even opened the door, and then painstakingly taken off again minutes later when he stepped into a lecture hall or coffee shop. The cold necessitated so many accessories it wasn’t funny. How did people remember them all? Mark could hardly remember his wallet and his keys on a good day. Add to that gloves, a beanie, and a scarf, and he was constantly dropping things, misplacing them, or, in the case of his scarf, trying not to strangle himself.
And then there was Thanksgiving, which American TV had promised Mark would turn into a drunken family drama full of bitter recriminations and feuds that dated back three generations. Sadly, all of the extended Phillips family seemed to have been cut from the same cloth as Jim and were so full of goodwill and bonhomie that Mark wasn’t entertained at all. Even Jackson was decent. Mark wasn’t sure if that was because Jackson had warmed to him slowly or, more likely, if Mark himself was being less hostile. Jackson even took him out into the woods behind Jim’s house to show him the tree house he’d made as a kid. It was a bunch of sticks more or less on ground level.
“Well, I was six,” Jackson said. “And I built it on my own.”
“It shows,” Mark told him.
Jackson snorted. Not quite a laugh, but almost.
Mark missed Deacon over Thanksgiving and called him. Deacon said he was having a good time, but he missed Mark too. For once Mark wasn’t homesick for a place; he was homesick for a person. He thought about telling Deacon that but then realized how lame it sounded. He’d show him instead, back at Prescott.
He phoned Brandon as well and cheered him up by complaining about the cold, the possibility of bear attacks, and what the hell was the obsession with cranberry sauce anyway? Jackson’s mother had been horrified when Mark had eaten his turkey with tomato sauce instead. Although she’d called it ketchup. She’d asked him if they had a Thanksgiving at home.
“Given that our first European settlers turned up in chains and leg irons, they probably weren’t feeling very thankful,” Mark told her.
“They got the last laugh, though, right?” Jackson said. “Sentenced to prison on what’s basically one big beach?”
“It beats snow,” Mark agreed.
Snow. Shit. A flake or two was kind of pretty, but then it just stayed on the ground. Just stayed there, building up. Not nice like a dusting of icing sugar on a cupcake. It only looked pretty from the inside. The second you had to go out in it, wearing a gazillion layers of clothing, it was hard work. Like trudging through sand dunes, without the reward of the beach at the end. Just more snow.
Jackson saw him texting Brandon after dinner.
“He doing okay?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Mark said.
“Good.” Jackson looked relieved.
“Bengal’s a fucking prick, you know,” Mark said.
“Yeah,” Jackson said. “I know. I guess we all do.”
“So why don’t you do something about it?” Mark asked.
“He’s…” Jackson stared out the window at the gently falling snow. “He’s still our brother, Mark.”
Mark wasn’t sure there was any way he could respond to that. Not without losing his temper and punching something, anyway. He walked away instead. Took the high road for once, and there wasn’t even anyone there to congratulate him on it.
In the end, Mark kept out of the weather as much as he could. He passed the time by being civil to Jackson, playing computer games, checking out lingerie online, and counting down the hours until he was back at Prescott. Who’d have thought it in a million years?
* * * *
Deacon still felt terrible about his attempt to fist Mark. He tried not to show it—tried to put his effort into learning as much as he could about fisting, into helping Mark prepare. But sometimes he’d have his fingers buried in Mark, and Mark would beg him to push a little farther, and Deacon would freeze, remembering Mark’s face when Deacon had tried to go past this point at the hotel. Mark had been completely white, his eyes watering, his mouth open but without any sound coming out.
Deacon had hurt Mark so bad Mark hadn’t been able to speak. How fucked-up was that?
It seemed like anyone with any sense would have known to stop before it got to that point. Would have known you didn’t just jam your hand inside someone when they felt that tight, when you’d barely given them a warm-up. There was more to fisting than Deacon had thought. The fistee had to train those muscles to relax and expand. Had to learn to relax his mind as well. Had to be cleaned out inside.
But he’d been so excited by how readily Mark took his fingers, how much Mark loved arse play. And Mark had said keep going, so… God, it was so wrong to feel even a twinge of resentment toward Mark over this. But Mark had said it himself—he pushed. He was always trying to prove something. Was everything he did always going to be some weird competition with himself that Deacon would have to watch from the sidelines?
Or was Deacon being too sensitive? He used to worry that he wasn’t doing a very good job of being gay. Weren’t gay guys supposed to go to clubs and bars wearing ridiculously tight jeans and have lots of anonymous sex and never give a fuck about anything but getting their dicks sucked? Or else settle down with their longtime partners and adopt a kid and show the hetero world how “normal” they could be? As he got older, he realized there was no point worrying about fitting a stereotype. He was who he was—sex always meant something to him; he couldn’t just fuck some guy in a restroom stall and leave it at that. He liked intimacy even when it scared him. Liked the connection that went beyond sex.
And he had a feeling Mark liked that too, though he pretended his MO was quick, dirty sex, and that he was a “crap boyfriend.” Mark had proved anything but a crap boyfriend.
He was thinking about all this over Thanksgiving dinner, when he ought to have been savoring the time with his family. His dad was home on a break from his job, and he and Ben had been glued to the Penn State game most of the afternoon.
Deacon didn’t notice Ben was talking to him until Ben waved his hand by Deacon’s face and said, “Yo, Deke!”
“Huh? Sorry.”
“I said you should come by and see the apartment later.”
Ben had rented a one-bedroom downtown, but Deacon hadn’t had a chance to see it yet.
“I stopped by on my way in last night,” Deacon’s father said, cramming a bite of turkey into his mouth. Looked pretty good. No rats.”
“I’ll come by,” Deacon promised.
He let the conversation wash around him once more as he responded to a text from Mark:
Ate my turkey with ketchup and Jackson’s mum is acting like I might as well have covered it in snot.
Deacon typed, That’s what the gravy’s for, Jules.
Jim didn’t mix the gravy well. Full of cornstarch lumps. Prefer ketchup.
Wish you were here.
Deacon set the phone aside, and his heart pounded the way it always did when he told Mark he missed him or wanted to see him. Because what if Mark didn’t respond, or what if this time he was like Look, Deke, I think we’re moving too fast?
But a minute later he got, Me too. What’re you wearing?
“So who’s the guy?” Deacon’s mother asked when she ended up behind him at the kitchen sink, waiting to rinse her plate.
And then scrub it with soap, then maybe spray it with disinfectant.
Then put it in the dishwasher.
“The guy?” Deacon said.
“The one you’ve been texting whenever you’re home.”
“Oh, uh… He’s a guy I’ve been seeing from school.”
“Uh-huh.” His mother smiled slyly. “How long have you been seeing him?”
“I don’t really know. We’ve been hanging out since the beginning of the semester.”
“And you didn’t say anything?” She nudged him out of the way and rinsed her plate.
“I didn’t know for a while if it was serious or not.” Deacon set his plate in the dishwasher. He could hear his dad and Ben laughing in the dining room and wondered why he felt so disconnected from everything. He straightened. “And there are some things I don’t tell you, you know. Even though I’m home every single weekend.”
Shit. He could hear the sharpness in his voice and hated it. His mom was only teasing him, and he was… He was dreading the conversation he’d known he needed to have with his mother for weeks. And he’d just picked the worst possible way to start it.
His mother turned off the faucet and looked at him. She didn’t seem mad—maybe a little hurt. She nodded. “It’s not fair to you,” she said quietly.
“No. That’s not what I…” He closed his eyes briefly. “This isn’t how I wanted to have this talk.” He glanced in the direction of the dining room. “I’m sorry.”
“Let’s go out to the porch,” his mother suggested.
Deacon followed her to the screened back porch. They watched the birds at the feeder for a few minutes, and Deacon felt foolish, like they were in a movie and the director had told them to pause for dramatic effect before beginning their Serious Conversation. Deacon knew if he had something to say, he ought to just say it.
But his mother spoke first. “Deacon, if you want to spend your weekends at school, you should. I’ve always said that.”
“But you don’t mean it,” Deacon said. “Do you?”
She hesitated. “I do mean it. I’m not an invalid. As long as I take my medications, I’m all right most of the time.”
“And what about when you’re not?”
“I have friends I can call. My therapist.” She placed a hand on the back of Deacon’s head and ran her fingers through his hair. “I found ways to cope before you and Ben were born.”
“But Dad was around all the time then.” Deacon felt a lump in his throat and angrily told himself to knock it off. “And you were…” She’d been better. The disorder had gotten worse slowly. “It helps you to have someone around. Doesn’t it?”
“It would help me more to know you were enjoying being young and being in college. That you were spending weekends with your boyfriend, not here. Unless you want to bring him here to meet your mother.”
Deacon snorted, then shook his head. “You say that. But what happens next time you start panicking that I’m dead in a ditch somewhere?”
She grinned. “Then I’ll call you. And make you tell me you’re not.”
“I don’t want Ben to be a replacement for me.” He looked at her. “You know? If you need my help, I want to be around for you.”
“Deacon.” She was completely serious now. “I’m the parent. It’s my job to look after you, not the other way around. I know ‘stop worrying’ is hard advice to take, especially from me. But stop worrying. Try staying at Prescott next weekend. We’ll take it one weekend at a time.”
Deacon swallowed. “Okay. But, um, call me if you need me.” He felt simultaneously relieved and like he’d just been fired from a job he needed.
She nodded. “You’re very sweet, Deacon.”
Would have been nice to be something besides sweet once in a while. To be more like Mark, who was sweet when it suited him, but who was also fun. Exciting. It was never the sweet guys you waited on to get the party started. “Not always,” he mumbled.
She laughed.
“Christmas break,” he said suddenly. He knew she had said they’d take it one weekend at a time, but he needed to bring this up. “I want to take Mark—that’s the guy—up to the ski lodge in Tannersville for a few days. After school lets out. So I might not be home right away.” He looked at her questioningly.
Her expression was sad, and for a moment he panicked that he’d hurt her feelings, that she couldn’t stand the thought of him not coming home as soon as school was done. “I’m so sorry, Deacon. I didn’t realize how trapped you felt.”
“I don’t feel trapped, just—”
“Please go with Mark to Tannersville. And don’t you dare feel guilty about it.” She cupped his cheek. “I want you to live your own life. That’s what would help me more than anything. That’s what would make me feel better.”
“Okay,” Deacon murmured. Those should have been the words he needed to hear. And they were. So maybe he did function better when he felt someone needed him. Maybe he’d never be the guy who got the party started. That was what Mark was for. And maybe Deacon was good for Mark for exactly that reason. Deacon could look out for him. Could make sure angry bunny didn’t get too out of control. Could make sure he studied for his lit final. Could make sure he had a good time at the ski lodge and didn’t get frostbite, or eaten by a rogue bear.
Yeah, Deacon wasn’t out of a job. Not by a long shot.