Crow read the words printed out on a big white banner out loud, trying to hold back a laugh, “The Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls and Toys.” They were standing in front of a two-story colonial type house, a few white columns holding up the green-bricked roof. It looked much more like someone’s home than a museum.

Crow loved it.

“Yup,” Ethan said. “Excited?”

Crow looked from the white banner to Ethan, who was smiling like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Let’s do this,” Crow said, clapping his hands together and seeming to catch some of the excitement. Ethan had hated seeing him mopping around and upset that his show had been canceled, so being the one to bring that smile back to Crow’s face made Ethan’s heart flutter a little harder. He also couldn’t deny that this entire thing was very ‘date-like’ and Ethan was finding himself completely ok with that. He was excited to see how it would go, and wasn’t as thrown off as he had been when Angela walked in on them. Over the past three days, Ethan had time to sit down and really think about what, or rather who, was holding him back from seeing all the possibilities with Crow in his life. He had to come to a place in his life where he wasn’t feeling guilty about feeling happy, and he felt like today was a huge step in the right direction.

A blacked out sedan was parked on the street, two suited men standing outside of it and staring eagle-eyed at the museum, there fists hanging loosely in front of their silver belt buckles. Crow convinced them that they would be ok going in alone. The last thing he wanted was two men in black cock-blocking this, date or not. There was nothing— not even a neauralyzer— that could ever make Crow forget about that kind of missed opportunity. The crisp summer afternoon air was blown away by a rush of cool air-conditioning as Ethan opened the door for Crow. He got a whiff of Crow’s scent as he walked by and was suddenly wishing this was a hotel room tour instead of a museum of unintentionally creepy toys tour. Ethan followed Crow in, entering a small lobby of sorts. The room was separated from the rest of the museum by a wall, with doors on either side leading into the museum. In front of the wall was the front desk, where an older woman placed her bookmark and set her book on the table, cover down.

“Welcome!” she said, her white curls bobbing as she greeted them. “Is this your first time visiting us?”

“Yes,” Ethan asked, feeling like he wanted to run around the table and give the lady a huge hug. He had really woken up on the right side of the bed that day.

Or, maybe that’s just what being with Crow does to me.

“Ooh, fun! Well, we have a collection of more than ten-thousand figurines and toys, some dating back to the 1600s. It’s not a large museum, so no maps or anything, but you’ll find yourself wanting to get lost amongst those dolls for a while.” She smiled, softening the creepy factor of her statement. Ethan was starting to feel like he entered the Twilight Zone.

He was so fucking excited. He loved these weird little finds and he could tell Crow genuinely did too. Things were already off to a great start.

“Thank you,” Crow said, pointing to either door. “Choose your own adventure?”

The little lady, Martha, according to her nametag, laughed as though Crow had just performed a killer stand-up set. “Both lead into the same room,” she said, when her giggles died down.

“Perfect,” Crow said with a wide grin. He looked to Ethan, who gave a tiny shrug. Crow nodded toward the right and started walking. Ethan followed, admiring for a moment how good Crow looked in a simple t-shirt and a pair of nice jeans. He definitely looked the part of a celebrity, with his blue cap tucked low on his head to give him some sort of cover from getting recognized and mobbed by a group of fans. Although, Ethan was pretty positive that most of Crow’s fan base wouldn’t be in a museum like this in the first place.

As they opened the door to the rest of the museum, Ethan realized that not only were Crow’s fans missing, but so was everyone else. It looked like they had the entire museum to themselves.

And, boy, what a museum it was.

Right off the bat, they were greeted by life-sized porcelain dolls with cracked foreheads and chipped fingers, once bright red and blond hair, now faded by the years that passed on by. They were standing in front of a tall, all-glass cabinet that held a menagerie of tiny figurines.

“Holy shit,” Crow said. “I love this place.”

Ethan laughed, finding that he couldn’t look at the dolls for too long before he got that weird tingly feeling down his back. And not the good kind. These were the kind you got when you heard the story about the babysitter asking the parents about the clown statue in their backyard and them answering that they don’t own a clown statue.

Oh, you’ve never heard that story?

You’re welcome.

“How did you even find this place?”

“Google,” Ethan answered, leaning over a glass display that had caught Crow’s attention. There was an extremely intricate and detailed town looking up at them. Ethan admired all the time that must have gone into creating it. From the tiny red bricked houses to the small football stadium outside of the local high school to the octopus man that walked the street.

“Wait, what?” Ethan looked closer. “Do you see that?”

Crow went ‘whoa’ when he saw the man wearing the suit and also sporting eight octopus tentacles as hands. On closer inspection, there were weird things placed around all over the town. A rainbow cat that was chasing after a duck with horns. A baby pushing a stroller holding his mom. A car with cheese for wheels.

“This is nuts,” Crow said, pointing out more things. Ethan loved playing this I-Spy type game, but he loved that he was doing it with Crow more than anything else. This felt good. Laughing and exploring new things, making new memories that Ethan could look back on and smile. He hadn’t done that in so long. His heart felt light as they made their way through the museum, his laughs coming easy and his smile never wearing out.

“You know,” Crow said as they walked through a doorway and into a room full of toy trains, “I don’t think I’ve seen you smile this much since we’ve met.” Crow looked up from a railroad and locked in on Ethan’s eyes. “I really like your smile.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said, feeling himself flush with warmth. “I don’t think I’ve been this happy for a while now.”

Crow gave a toying smirk. “Do trains make you really happy?”

“No, no I don’t think it’s the trains.”

“Oh?”

“Could be the dolls. The porcelain ones.”

“Yeah,” Crow nodded. “Those do it for me, too.”

Ethan chuckled, not even realizing that they had been moving closer to each other, like two planets pulled off track, on a slow but sure gravitational collision course.

“And you,” Ethan said, feeling himself opening up on a new level. “You make me happy.”

“Good,” Crow said. They were inches apart now. “Because you make me really happy.”

“More than the porcelain dolls?”

Crow cocked his head, the smirk playing wider. “Just about,” he said with a sexy as sin laugh.

Ethan licked his lips. The air between them sparked with feeling. Both of them went in, their lips meeting slow and tender at first. Ethan reacquainted himself with Crow’s taste—fuck, he missed that taste.

Ethan brought his hands up, encasing Crow’s head. He moved up higher, digging his fingers through Crow’s hair, gently tugging as the kiss grew deeper, harder, more passionate as their lips parted and their tongues danced. With every soft moan, Ethan felt his more of his walls come tumbling down. His body felt like it was floating on a cloud of pure ecstasy, made even sweeter when Crow pushed his body up against Ethan’s, making his arousal no secret. Ethan returned the favor, rubbing his hard bulge against Crow’s, their tongues sparring, their body heat rising up through the ceiling, filling the tiny room of railroad replicas.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Crow said during a moment both of them were catching a breath. “I would have waited forever. You’re incredible.” His voice was low, but hit Ethan like a demolition crew tearing through the husk of an abandoned high-rise, only to build something bigger and better in its place.

“From the second you sat across from me at the bar, I wanted to do this.” Ethan licked his lips, looking deep down into Crow’s light brown eyes. “I shouldn’t have fought it for so long. This bliss.”

“It’s ok,” Crow said. “We all have a history that affects our present. I get it. And I hope that you’ll be able to talk about it with me soon.”

“I will,” Ethan said, meaning it. He’d talk about it right then and there, but before he could spill his guts, voices drifted in from the next room. Now wasn’t the time or the place.

Kisses were a different thing, though. It was always the time and place for a kiss, even if a family was walking through the aisles of toys collected from The Great Depression, most likely headed toward the very room they were in.

They kissed again. Lips found it hard to separate, but parted for their tongues. Another low moan from Crow, swallowed greedily by Ethan, right before they separated again. And just in time, too. The family, who seemed to be a little less impressed by the displays than the boys, walked through the door, surprised at bumping into two other people.

“Oh,” the mom said, a quaint little thing with a white shirt and a ruffled pink skirt that almost seemed to be swallowing her in reverse.

“Great museum, huh?” Crow said, smiling toward the family. Ethan cocked his head, feeling something odd in the air. The mother wasn’t smiling back. Neither was the dad, who seemed to be pointedly looking in the other direction. Their son, who seemed to be in his early teens and much nicer than either of his parents, waved and nodded before narrowing his eyes.

Ethan realized then how close he was standing to Crow. And their faces were probably flushed, making it obvious that they weren’t admiring the trains sets.

“Let’s go look at the dolls,” the mom said, her accent placing her somewhere in the Midwest. She grabbed her son’s wrist as though he weren’t capable of steering himself out the room.

“Wait, mom, it’s Crow!”

“Who?”

“Crow! I listen to his music all the time,” the kid’s eyes were bright with recognition.

“Well, we’ll have to reconsider your choice in music,” the dad said, turning and leaving the room, seemingly expecting his family to fall in step behind him. The wife did, but the son was resisting. He pulled his hand from his mother’s hawk like grip and walked toward Crow. Ethan looked to his side, seeing Crow smiling but there was also worry in his gaze.

“Mind if I get a selfie?”

“Of course not,” Crow said. Ethan glanced at the mother, who was spewing acid from her dilated pupils. He could see her gritting her teeth. “What’s your name?” Crow asked.

“Nick,” he said, smiling from ear to ear as he pulled out his phone. Ethan noticed his bright green eyes were starting to well up with tears at the corner. “You’re literally one of my heroes. Like the top of the list. Especially your new songs. They really hit home for me.”

“Really? Thank you,” Crow said, bending down so that they could be on the same level for the photo. With a few snapped, and the phone put away, Crow placed his hands on Nick’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes.

“Nick, you say I’m your hero, but I want you to know that you’re mine. It gets better, ok, buddy? I can see what’s going on, and it’s going to suck for a while, but you’re one strong kid. It’s so obvious to me. You’re meant for big things, and you’re going to get past this.”

“Nicholas, let’s go.”

“You got it?” Crow asked, ignoring the mother, who seemed to be getting redder and redder.

“Thank you,” Nick said, the tears overflowing and running down his cheek.

“Here, have my number. If you ever need anything or feel like things are getting too tough, give me a call.” Crow typed in his number in Nick’s cell, handing it back to him. “Or just shoot me a text, maybe I can make it out to your graduation. Give a mini-performance.”

“That would be insane.” Nick smiled, his tears rubbed away. Ethan could see the pain. It was the same kind he felt when he was a young kid, hiding deep in the closet, afraid that one wrong flick of the wrist, or one little misplaced lisp would give it all away. The house of cards built around such a fundamental lie would come tumbling down. That was way too much pressure to put on any teenager. During an age when life should be the most carefree it could, before the hands of time start striking back, reminding you that there’s no such thing as invincibility.

Too much pressure.

Crow said goodbye to Nick and they watched as he walked back, his shoulders held higher and his back straighter as he walked past his mom’s furious whispers.

“Fuck,” Ethan said when they were out of earshot. “Poor kid.”

“Broke my heart. I could see it, right off the bat. He looked so much older than he actually was, and that comes from having to hide who you are every. damn. day. And then he brought up my new songs and what they meant to him and I knew for sure that he was closeted.”

That was something Ethan had realized after maybe the second night of watching Crow perform. Before then, he had gotten so swept up in the talent and emotion filling the room, he honestly didn’t even listen to the lyrics very closely. But when he had, he realized exactly what Crow was doing. He wasn’t just singing pop songs with empty calories, meaning nothing at the end of the day except a catchy beat. Crow sang about the boy sitting across from him at the coffee shop, meeting him and rolling on the clouds afterward, a thinly veiled euphemism for romping around on pristine white sheets, sun streaming in from everywhere and lighting the scene like a dream. Crow never once sang about falling for a girl or the trappings that come with that. He was openly out and singing about it, and that gave a voice to an entirely new generation of LGBTQ kids that needed Crow like never before. In an age when bullying was as easy as typing out one-hundred and forty characters and hitting the blue ‘tweet’ button, Crow’s voice had to prove stronger. And it was. Ethan saw it in that room, in the difference between the Nick who had walked in from the Nick who had walked out.

The Nick who walked in wasn’t sure, wasn’t seeing a bright future.

The Nick who walked out was filled with hope. He saw a future where he could take his boyfriend to a weird museum and enjoy the day, his disapproving parents nowhere in sight.