DarkIsRising

Dawn had been right: the Heelys had been the perfect birthday gift for Steve, not that Garrett let him know that it’d been anyone else’s brilliant idea but his own when he’d presented them after the others had gone home, the demolished ice cream cake whale was more or less a puddle, and it was down to just the two of them in the murky dark of Garrett’s half-lit store.

Steve’s smile was as wide as Garrett had ever seen it, caught in the glow of the nearby Pac Man’s flickering start menu, as he shouted, “Ohhhhh myyyyy GOONIES, where did you even get such a tremendously bodacious shoe?!” but before Garrett could answer, Steve had scooped him up into a hug that lifted him off his feet a bit. For such a short man, Steve had the upper body strength of a musk ox (and usually smelled like one, too; not that Garrett had ever minded).

Steve was a hugger; it was something that Garrett was finally getting used to—it had been years since anyone had been brave enough to cozy up to a legend like the Garbage Man, himself, not that he blamed them; heck, he’d be intimidated too if he wasn’t, you know, the Garbage Man, himself. The fizzy feeling that washed through Garrett’s belly, like he’d slammed back a tube of Mentos and followed it with a couple liters of Coke and then decided to go a few rounds with his Shake Weight, was just as familiar for all that it still took him by surprise. He dealt with it like he had every other time before: by stuffing it down into a box—nay, a cube—and then burying it as deep down as he possibly could so that he wouldn’t ever have to wonder about things like what?, or why?, or him?

Steve didn’t notice—he never noticed—which was a good thing since this was Garrett’s first real friend. He’d hate to junk it up now that he finally learned about the magic of friendship, or whatever those ponies were always going on about in that cartoon Steve liked to binge watch from Garrett’s futon over a carton of cherry chocolate ice cream.

Steve’s his friend, and that fizzing feeling is something Garrett’s keeping guarded as closely (as selfishly) as an Orb of Dominance.

Which is maybe why the day Steve rolls into the shop, on the wheels of the shoes Garrett had bought him thank you very much, clutching a wooden chest to his, well, chest, to announce broadly that he’s met a new friend, her name is Alex, she lives in Steve’s old house, and she’s “the absolute best bombdiggity”, Garrett’s the only one that doesn’t say a thing.

“Is she creative?” Hank wants to know.

“Does she know self-defense?” Natalie asks.

“How’s the floorplan of the house, and what’s the bathroom to bedroom ratio?” Dawn wants to know, and then, when she’s met with blank stares, she apologizes, admitting sheepishly, “I’ve been having kind of a tough time transitioning out of the real estate mindframe.”

That works to Garrett’s benefit, because the others then get distracted on brainstorming ways to help Dawn leave the realtor life behind for good, and no one seems to notice that the cartridge that Garrett is trying to pry out of an old, cracked Atari console isn’t really as stuck as he’s pretending it to be.

If Steve’s hugs make Garrett’s belly fill with Mentos and Coke, then it feels like the complete opposite—like pixie sticks of sadness dumped into a vat of wet concrete— every time Steve mentions Alex’s name. Which he starts doing.

Constantly.

The others meet her and love her, and tell him how funny, and cool, and smart, and how hard it is to get her in a headlock, which is, like, you know.

Whatever. It’s whatever.

Garrett manages to avoid spending any sort of time with her. Whenever there’s plans for dinner he’s busy at the shop, and anytime she stops by the shop, there’s something in the back that needs his attention now, right now, and no, it can’t wait, “not that I’d expect you to understand how much goes into running a real business with real customers, and not just weird, square headed villagers, Steve.”

That last one gets him a wounded look, like Garrett’s slapped Steve across the face with the business end of a buck-chucket. Still, it’s worth it to keep Alex at such a distance, she’s pretty much just a silhouette against the shop’s window and a splash of red hair as far as Garrett’s concerned. And it works! It works, okay; eventually the others get the hint and stop inviting him out to group hangs if Alex is going to be there. Alex stops coming by the store, and maybe there’s more lonely times for the old G-Man than there had been, but that’s no big whoop. He’s used to being alone. He doesn’t need everyone around him, all of the time.

Garrett is a wolf, and nothing like a total pushover wolf like Dennis, give them a bone, and they lose all their edge. No, he’s a lone wolf. Totally badass and awesome, and completely unfazed by treats and belly rubs. Feral. Majestic. To remind himself of the fact, he commissions a new jean jacket, this one with a totally sick airbrushed wolf on the back, and to make his point even pointier he only gets one, ignoring the strange, sad crinkle in the corner of Steve’s sad, strange eyes.

“What is your dealio lately, anyway?” Steve asks when things come to a head one evening during band practice, Garrett’s garage echoing with the question instead of the last, lingering notes from the keytar.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Garrett says, squinting at Steve through his wraparound shades, daring him to call him out on the bluff.

Steve stares at him for a long time, like he’s trying to chisel his way through all the bluster and bullshit to see what Garrett’s really made of.

“You don’t take off your shades around me,” he says at last, not an accusation but something close to it.

“I told you, the ophthalmologist says I’ve got an eye thing.” And he’s not comfortable with the way Steve keeps trying to peer into his soul.

“You never wear our Fly Friendship Jacket anymore.”

Garrett shrugs, and doesn’t miss the way the fringe on his FFJ used to highlight his every movement. Not at all. “Wolves are in right now.”

“Wolves are ALWAYS in, but that’s not the POINT!” Steve’s face is red and his hands, which, on a good day, flow with a dancer’s grace, are becoming a series of abrupt, frustrated karate chops.

That’s one thing that Garrett appreciates about Steve: his hands are a window to his soul, one that Garrett can read as easily as a mood ring. Now, though, they are losing steam, becoming limp as he paces in a tight circle around himself.

“The point—the POINT is.. is…it’s…”

Steve is so close to getting the actual point, and as eager as Garrett has been for this moment to arrive, a new thought is only now occurring to him. For the first time it hits him, then and there, that he’s maybe not actually ready for that to happen yet.

Because, yeah, he’s tired of this Alex chick taking up Steve’s attention, and it would be totally sweet if Steve would kick her to the curb and spend all his time with Garrett again, but it’s dawning on him that there’s another choice here that Steve could make that Garrett hasn’t prepared for: what if Steve chooses Alex over him? What if he says, oh, well, actually GarGar, we’ve had a lot of laughs and made some killer tunes in our time as simpatico hombres (which means good friends in Spanish) but Alex is more rad than you’ll ever be?

What if there actually is someone out there that’s…better than Garrett?

Up until now that line of thinking was unfathomable. Garrett is a fucking legend. He’s the Gamer of the Year 1989, and it’s not like they hand that title out every day. It’s once a year. Which really means something.

But…and this is only now starting to occur to him… if his adventure in the Overworld taught him anything, it’s that there are occasionally, now and again, some things that he’s maybe not the best ever at. Like, if Natalie is just kind of a little better at self-defense…and Dawn maybe has an easier time understanding what animals need…and Hank is, well, Hank: a genius at making stuff with the, you know, inventions and the computers or whatever…and Steve can be gone for years but already has his taxes filed on time, and then knows enough about it to sit Garrett down and explain what taxes even are…then that could mean…

That could mean…

“Shit.” Garrett has to sit down. The only place to do that is on the hood of his sick ride, and immediately feels the car’s hood buckling under the muscular weight of his bodacious physique.

It says something about the importance of what’s happening in that moment that Garrett doesn’t even care that he’s dented his baby. He slides off the hood to sit on the concrete floor, keytar thumping against his chest as he slithers down and then catches awkwardly under his chin when he draws his knees up to rest his forehead against them, but he doesn’t care.

Distantly, he hears Steve ask, “G-Man, you good there, bud? What’s happening, what’s going on?” and if he could bring himself to open his eyes and look at Steve’s hands he might be able to figure out what that tone in his voice means, but he can’t. He’s a coward. He’s a tool. He’s…oh dear God.

He’s a loser.

“Come on, talk to me. You’re freaking me out here, amigo.”

A high pitched keen pierces the air and Garrett is only a little aware that it’s him that’s making that sound. Something warm and strong braces his shoulder and the only thing that’s keeping him upright at all is the fact that he’s wedged between that and the dusty rim of a tire, “You having a stroke? Is this a stroke? WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A STROKE? Water! Yeah, water. You just sit there and I’ll run to the kitchen for some water—-” the warm, strong strength moves and Garrett tilts, falls, before he’s caught and pinned, immobile again. “Okay, sorry, didn’t realize my hand was a load bearing hand.”

It’s a hand, Garrett realizes. Steve’s hand, and since he has two of them, there’s another one free to roam as Steve talks to himself, and roam it does: thick, calloused fingers skim across the rim of Garrett’s ear, the ridge of his cheekbone, the unguarded apple of his Adam’s.

“ —that’s fine. I can work with this. So you’re not structurally sound, so what? I’m a wizard at construction. I just need a cube of wood or an iron ingot and I’ll brace you, my mountainous friend, no problem. Just one snag-a-roo, I’m not in the Overworld, and there’s nary a cube or a block to be found. Cool, cool, so there’s no water in garages and no blocks of wood, or iron ingots, WHAT KIND OF STUPID WORLD IS THIS?”

Garrett comes back to himself as Steve’s words unravel, but his hands don’t: one is steady and sure, the other soft and gentle. That’s the one that Garrett catches in his and Steve’s fingers tighten, a reflex that doesn’t relax enough to let go even though their hands are now both dangling, fingers entwined even as their knuckles are clacking against the cold cement floor together.

“Whoa,” Garrett says at last, when the light, floating feeling in his head recedes. “That was trippy.”

“You back, dude?” At Garrett’s nod Seve exhales, relaxes, but his hand doesn’t let go of Garrett’s. That seems crucial somehow, even if Garrett doesn’t know why. “At the risk of setting you off again, what even was that, dude?”

“I don’t,” Garrett starts, stops, shakes his head, blinks, “I had a thought.”

“About wolves?” Steve asks, nodding supportively, like he’s been there a time or two, himself.

“No about…me.” Loser some pipsqueak in Garrett’s head whispers. You’re a loser. “And you,” he spits out savagely, trying to quiet that voice because if he’s a loser, then what about Steve, huh? The guy once found a Funyon in his beard and then admitted he hadn’t even eaten Funyuns for over a week!

Admittedly, they’d both laughed themselves sick over it and then, when their stomachs were still hurting from all that laughing, Steve had offered to go halfsies on it with Garrett, because Steve is cool, and chill, and rad, and even though he forgets to take showers so often that Hank invented an Odor-dometer for Steve to clip to his shirt that takes samples of the air and then, if the Reek Scale tips to Grody, will set off an alarm to let him know it’s time to bathe, that doesn’t take away from the fact that Steve is also kind, and generous, and so funny he makes Garrett laugh until he’s close to puking.

That doesn’t mean that Steve isn’t the best thing to happen to Garrett since 1989, when he won Gamer of the Year.

That doesn’t mean that Garrett won’t have lost something absolutely vital, like a lung or worse, a thumb, if he ever decides to never speak to Garrett again.

“What about…us?” Steve asks, so gently, that it lets the dust in the garage sting Garrett’s eyes so that, suddenly, they ache with tears.

Garrett clears his tight throat, and it takes several times until he can finally speak through it. “You’re my friend,” he rasps, voice low.

“Yeah, no doy,” Steve responds softly, matching the hush in Garrett’s voice so that it’s almost like they’re whispering. “What’s the matter with that?”

“Just, what if you,” Garrett takes a breath, “weren’t?”

Steve scoffs. “Why would I ever stop being your friend? You’re kickass.”

“I know that. But also, I just got to thinking that maybe, sometimes, I’m,” he can’t bring himself to use the ‘L’ word, “somewhat less than kickass.”

“Hey,” Steve says, eyes as soft as his beard, “You’ll always be the kickest of asses to me,” and that should have come as a relief to heard, but really it’s Steve’s hands that soothe him the most.

His hand is letting go of Garrett’s, which makes him panic for a split second, until it joins the other to coax him into less of a balled up position. Steve’s hands are gentle as they coax Garrett forward enough to slip the strap of his keytar over his head, and they’re careful when they set the instrument onto the ground. Last, they ease Garrett’s shades off the bridge of his nose, and when they’re off entirely he has to squint against the garage’s sudden brightness. After wearing them for so long, his vision has to adjust and when it does it’s to see Steve’s eyes, crinkled edges and all, smiling back at him.

“There he is. Long time no see, compadre.”

“Sup?” is all that Garrett can manage in that moment. Fingertips ghost the along his beard and land, butterfly-soft, on the corner of his mouth.

“How can we turn this frown upside down, huh? Tell me what’s eating you, Gilbert Grape?” All at once, Garrett remembers settling into Steve’s side as they shared a beanbag chair during the now-defunct weekly movie night, one of Natalie’s many attempts to expand Steve’s pop culture know-how.

Steve had been fluffy and so, so comfortable to lean against that Garrett had conceded—to himself, since there was no way he’d say it out loud—that there were some advantages to not having a rock solid, gym bunny bod. Such as having a body that would naturally welcome another person’s weight rather than repel it like a quarter bouncing off one of Garrett’s perfectly taut butt cheeks.

“I thought I was your friend.”

Steve’s eyebrows draw together. “You are,” he insists.

“Then why are you so buddy-buddy with this Alex person all of a sudden?”

“Because she’s also my friend,” Steve answers, “but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t my friend, too.”

Garrett scoffs, “Yeah, sure I am.”

“I can have more than one friend, GarGar. Natalie and Dawn and Henry are also my friends, and you don’t have a problem with them.”

“Yeah, they’re okay, but they aren’t, you know, the number one champion friend of all your friends. That used to be me, but now,” he shakes his head, starts to pick at his black, peeling nail polish, “now I’m not so sure.”

“Ahhh okay, I get it. You’re afraid you’re not my best friend, that’s what this is about.” Garrett doesn’t look up from his nails, only shrugs with one shoulder. “Dude. You are though. You are my best friend of all time. Well,” he amends, “human friend,” and Garrett can’t be mad at that, he knows what Dennis means to him.

“Yeah, so you say. But how do I know that your best friend is me and not, you know, the redhead. There has to be some kind of prize pouch or something. Some kind of, I don’t know, benefit to being your best friend that tells me that I am.”

“We could get matching jackets?”

“We already have matching jackets.” And that still didn’t stop you from replacing me.

“Well, I guess we could,” Steve starts before being interrupted by an alarm whooping, loud as a tornado siren, between them. “DAMMIT! THAT’S MY ODOR-DOMETER !” Steve shouts over the noise. “SORRY! THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT EMOTIONAL DISCLOSURE THAT GIVES ME THE MEAT SWEATS!”

“YEAH, NO, I TOTALLY GET THAT! CAN YOU TURN IT OFF?”

“CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE NOISE, BUT THERE’S NO WAY TO TURN IT OFF! I’M GOING TO HAVE TO GO TAKE A SHOWER—”

“YOU CAN USE MINE! DO YOU WANT ME TO COME WITH?”

“ —I’M GOING TO USE YOURS, BUT YOU CAN COME WITH, IF YOU WANT!”

“CAN’T HEAR YOU, JUST GOING TO COME WITH!”

It takes seven rinse-and-repeats of Garrett’s Mane and Tail shampoo and half a bar of soap for the Odor-dometer to go silent, and by then the bathroom is filled with a privacy curtain of steam that makes for an environment that’s so far removed from the stark concrete of the garage that Garrett can finally start to feel more like himself. And since he’s himself again, perched on the closed lid of the toilet, it doesn’t feel so strange or revealing to tell Steve that he kind of hates the Odor-dometer for reasons beyond what it does to his ear drums.

“I just don’t get what the big deal is, you know? Yeah, sure, you have a smell, but what’s so wrong with that? I like the way you smell.”

“Awww,” Steve says through the fog and from beyond a shower curtain that’s crowded with marine life as a whale and a dolphin leap in majestic tandem across a neon pink sky, “I like the way you smell, too. It’s a very macho and manly bouquet brought on by a life of gym, tan, laundry pile, and balanced by a whiff of hair mousse, a hint of protein powder, and the lingering notes of,” he takes a deep inhale, “synthetic chocolate.”

“I like Oreos,” Garrett admits to the leaping dolphin’s smile.

“I know you do, friend. Which brings me back around to where we left off. Friends—”

“Best friends,” Garrett interrupts because on this he needs to be absolutely clear. Transparently clear.

“Best friends,” Steve agrees, “But with some kinda benefits.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“How about I vow to always use you as my BOGO buddy? Anytime there’s a sale, I’ll let you be the ‘get one’ to my ‘buy one’? Or—ooohhhh— we can make a pact to only drive in the HOV lane with each other whenever we drive into the city? Eh? Faster travel time to the Panda Express at the mall, that’s a treasure amongst riches, right?”

Garrett has been known to demolish a bowl of orange chicken, that has to be said. Still, it doesn’t seem quite special enough.

“What else have you got?”

Steve rattles off suggestion after suggestion, and they all sound okay-ish, but it’s none of them seem quite right. “How do I know that any of this stuff is something that you would never in a million years do with her?”

“Well for one, she can’t possibly scale a fence with me holding onto her back like a baby o’possum,” he says, referencing his last five ideas.”What about this right here? Us, together: me in the shower while you keep me company. We do this all the time—”

“Because you get lonely in there.”

“Right! Exactly! No one else knows about that. You’re the only one I’ve ever told! Ergo, my compadre, you’re the only one that’ll ever be in the bathroom with me while I shower.” The water cuts out and then Steve is pushing back the curtain and reaching for a towel. “Bam! How do you like them best friends’ benefits? Not too shabby, eh? Eh? A friend Alex may be, but she’ll never get an eyeful of this,” Steve says, sweeping his hands to showcase his naked body where beads of water are caught in the matted down hair that covers his body and the glimpses that Garrett gets of his pale skin glistens under the bell-shaped vanity light.

Garrett’s seen it all before, so he doesn’t have to pretend to look away while he asks, “Does this benefit go both ways, or is this a one-way benefit?”

“I can go both ways,” Steve nods, so earnest and vigorous that his wild mane lets loose a spray of water droplets, “if that’s what you want. We’ve never done the shower deed like that before, but I’m flexible, I can dig it if you want us to par-tay in our birthday suits together.”