He Glows

It made me wonder about his past again. I had the strangest feeling that he didn't get experiences like this when he was younger. I thought that same thing several times over the past ten days when he'd react to random things and he'd look so young and innocent in those moments. Like, in those moments, he was actually younger again somehow.

We sat and chatted around the fire for hours. We toasted marshmallows but Ava had failed to bring the chocolate and graham crackers that she'd promised to contribute to the s'mores situation.

The s'mores situation goes like this. Weeks ago we decide to camp. Ava screams S'MORES at the top of her lungs. Ava promises to bring everything we need. A week ago she dumps it on Jen to take care of. Jen gets marshmallows and makes Ava promise, in a group text, to get the other two ingredients, or no s'mores. Ava is Ava. Ava is pouting by the fire, she blames Jen for ruining her camping trip. Drake yells that she's the one to blame, not Jen (that's true). Ava storms off to sit in Riley's car. Drake storms off to his tent. Riley slinks away to his and Ava's tent. Me, Jen and Sage sit and stare into the fire.

"Leo honey, pass me another marshmallow. And pack that bowl and pass that over here too, please" Jen says. And I hand her everything she requests and we get high as fuck and eat way too many toasted marshmallows. "I'm going to bed guys, have a good night." Jen exits stage left.

"So, do you regret coming yet?" I joke with Sage.

"I've never been camping" is his answer. Really? Never? How did we get here without him telling me that before. Now I feel even worse about his tiny bag of stuff. I should have gone over this with him in more detail. I should've asked questions. I mean, how could I have known? But still.

"Never, huh? It's different as adults than it is as a kid." It's all I can think to say. Shit! I hope that didn't bring up weird stuff for him. Good thing I wore these shoes, they fit into my mouth, with my foot, so nicely. "The fire is dying down. We either need to put more wood on or we should head to bed."

He stands and stretches, his shirt and coat ride up to expose his thin abdomen. I hear his shoulders pop. He looks at me, sitting staring at him. "You ready?"

"Yeah, I'm going to go piss in those bushes right there and then I'll be in."

In the tiny, two-man tent, I resist the urge to ask him if he brought, well, literally anything. That bag isn't a tardis. There's only so much that could possibly be in there, so I just won't ask. Instead I ask, "Do you need a pillow or a blanket or anything?"

"I was going to use my bag as a pillow and this sleeping bag you leant should be enough."

No, it won't be. "No, it won't be", I say it out loud. "You're going to freeze. Scoot over and unzip your sleeping bag all the way, so it's flat" I direct him as I start to undo mine too. He gets his sleeping bag open and I grab the corner and start lining the zippers up.

"What are you doing?" he looks so curious. And there's that innocent look again.

"I'm zipping them into one big sleeping bag. When we were kids, Drake and I would do this to keep warmer with our shared body heat. Even with all our layers on, it still seems to help. Also, well put this big blanket over both of us. It'll stay over us better if it's all one big surface. Here, I brought an extra pillow." And I hand him one of my best two fluffy pillows.

"Thanks" and he takes the pillow. We spread the double sleeping bag out underneath us. There's barely any room to move in here with the limited space and two average to large sized men inside. We finally manage, without tearing the tent down around us. I count it as a win.

We both finally slide into the sleeping bag and adjust our pillows and our layered clothing and the extra blanket and turn off the lantern. I lay there for a few minutes just listening to ambient sounds in the dark. He senses it somehow and rolls over a bit until he's facing me and he asks "Are you tired?"

I laugh quietly and answer with "Are you sure you've never camped? That is the first official rule in the camping handbook. Ask the person next to you if they are tired, or if they are awake. You're an old pro already Sage."

He's quiet for a second. "Thank you again, Leo. For inviting me and sharing your stuff and your family." He's really quiet but I sense he's not done and he finally says "I don't have any experiences like this. It's kind of cool that now I can say I've camped."

"Sage, you're very welcome. I'm glad you came. My family is a bit crazy, but they're good people. And if after this, you still like me, you'll probably get to do more stuff with us like this."

He chuckles at my sarcasm. "I'd love that." We both lay there, in the dark for a while longer and the next thing I know, I hear Jen and Drake arguing by the campfire.

I open my eyes and it's daylight and it's too damn warm in this sleeping bag, in all these clothes and in this steamy little tent and I feel a near panic as I try to free myself from all of it. As I twist and thrash to get out of the sleeping bag, I see Sage next to me. He's still asleep, but he's on top of his side of the sleeping bag and blanket. He must have gotten too warm a while ago.

I can't get out without waking him. I mumble an apology about it. He sits up and scoots to the foot of our pile of blankets and pulls the zipper of the tent up. Instantly, cooler air from outside floods the tent and provides enough relief to quell my rising panic.

"Oh fuck, thank you, I thought I was going to die."

He's still sitting facing the flap, looking barely awake. After a huge yawn he asks "You want coffee, Leo?" He turns to look back. He smiles a little 'just woke up smile' at me. My brain betrays me and the first thought in my mind is 'he looks freshly fucked'. Why, Leo? Why?

"Yes. To coffee. Thank you." Like I needed to clarify about the coffee. He can't actually read my mind. He doesn't know I just imagined him just having had sex. "I need to get out of this tent, right the fuck now." I continue to struggle. Sage reaches over and pulls down the zipper on the sleeping bag and it gives me enough space to pull off my sweatshirt and my t-shirt over my head.

When I free myself from my layers I look up and he's gone. I hear Jen greet him. He cheerfully greets her back. By the time I get out of the tent, in a different t-shirt and a pair of swim trunks, he's got water on the fire and a French press ready to go once the water is ready. My mouth waters. For the coffee. Just the coffee.

Jen whips up a big skillet of cheesy scrambled eggs and Drake appears from wherever he had gone off to. There's no sign of life from Ava and Riley's tent. The four of us work together to accomplish breakfast and a quick clean up around camp, without waking them. On purpose. Without discussing it, we all agreed to enjoy ourselves. By pretending it was just the four of us here in the woods.

We agree to head to the water to look around and hopefully swim. "It's so weird how it was almost freezing last night, but now it's perfect swimming weather" Sage says to me as we walk behind Drake and Jen, towards the lake.

"Yeah, I was surprised no one got sick from the drastic changes every time we camped when I was a kid. Drake was always getting sick at school, but he didn't ever have problems when we camped. When Ava was a baby, we didn't camp for a few years. Drake wanted to send her back because of it. Back to where, I'm not sure."

"Who's older, you or Drake? I can't tell."

"Me. I'm the oldest, but only by eleven months. I'm 29, he's 28. We're the same age for one month every year. Ava wasn't planned and she came along later. She's 21." I want to ask him if he has siblings, but that seems to blend with the unapproachable time period in his life, so I don't.

"I'm 25. My brother would be 29 this year."

Would be? As in past tense? Maybe that's why he doesn't talk about that stuff. So I try to steer clear of that without blatantly changing the subject. "When's your birthday?" That seems safe.

"I'll be 26 in October. It's my golden birthday this year. 26 on the 26^th."

"We should have a party. Our place is a great party house." I get excited thinking about a possible Halloween/birthday costume party. In my cool ass house. And Julia can't come! Ha!

"A party?" He looks at his feet. Great, what did I do now? I wish I knew his deal so I could avoid any subject that makes him look like that. It makes my heart drop when he gets that face. I want to hug him, but I don't know why. Nothing actually happened. At least nothing that I know of.

"I don't have anyone to invite to a party, Leo. I've never had a party. I must sound like a huge loser, huh? No parties. No camping. No nothing. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Everyone's done different things. And everyone has plenty of things they haven't done that everyone else has. It's part of what makes us each unique. And they don't get much more unique than me." I try to smile like it's not getting heavy.

"A party might be a fun idea." I'm pretty sure he's just trying to appease me so I just drop it. Luckily we arrive at the lake.

The four of us swim and splash like kids for a while and then we sit on the shore, in the shade of the huge lush trees and we get higher than a fucking kite. Like satellite high. No, like Mars high. NO! High like Uranus! Good one.

Ava and Riley were sitting around the fire when we got back. I braced for a fight. About who knows what, but it's Ava. But it didn't really happen. We sat around and had sandwiches for lunch and everyone spilt off into our pairs and did our own activities. Sage and I hiked a trail we found that ended up back at the lake. We stood and looked across the water and skipped a few stones.

I felt dad-like a couple of times, like I was showing my kid new things for the first time. Sage is a good kid, if I had to have one. That whole four year age difference be damned. I'll be his fucking dad if I want to, dammit!

The rest of the day and night passed with relatively low levels of drama. Riley finally joined the convo. And Sage seemed to relax and open up, too. Jen kept everything running smoothly. She might be the best thing that happened to my siblings as a unit, besides clearly being the very best thing ever to happen to Drake. I hope he never fucks this up.

Tonight, in the tent, we wore less layers and it was definitively more comfortable than last night. We laid awake and chatted, total small talk for a while. And then Sage told me something that had me shook for a minute.

"Yesterday" he said "when Jen started crying, I thought she was pregnant. I mean, I don't know them, but I thought that's what was happening. I was so confused why he made her carry that heavy stuff and he wanted her to pump gas. It seemed almost abusive to a pregnant girl. But the way she cried and ate that pink thing, it just struck me that that was what was happening." He was quiet for a few seconds.

He then continued "I hope she's not though. She sure can smoke weed with the best of us" he took a drink of his water bottle "you don't think she's pregnant, do you?"

"I honestly never thought about it. But she can't be. She would never have carried that cooler or smoked up with us if she was. She's the most responsible person in our family group. She wants kids someday, so I'm pretty sure she wouldn't endanger herself or a baby that way. No matter what." I was completely convinced I was right.

I didn't really want to talk about that topic anymore, so I took the chance in the dark and pulled the 'I might ruin this whole fucking trip' trigger and I asked the question that head been on my mind since this morning on the way to the lake.

"Where's your brother?" I held my breathe, hoping he didn't freak.

"I honestly don't know. I'm not sure if he's even alive."

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh sweet fuck Leonard David Fallmeyer, just shut up. Forever.

"We went into foster care when I was seven and he was eleven. We got separated at some point. I was too young to know how to keep track of him. I heard from him when I was fifteen. He'd aged out of the system and he sent me a post card from Kansas."

He continues "I tried to look him up when I was like nineteen. But I couldn't find him. I don't know if he was really in Kansas, or somewhere else. My ex said a post card from Kansas might as well be a letter from prison. They said he was either in jail or dead. It's one of the reasons our relationship started to fail."

"I'm sorry Sage. I shouldn't have asked."

"No, Leo, it's seriously alright. No one ever asks me and I'd really like to talk to you about stuff. I feel so, I don't know, comfortable isn't the right word. It's better than comfortable, but I don't have a word for it."

"Sage. You can talk to me about anything. Anything at all. You can ask me anything too. If I don't want to answer, I'll just tell you that." I felt warm inside. Like we just had a breakthrough. It wasn't like the closeness I had with Drake. Or with Jen. She was basically my best friend after all these years. And Drake was practically my twin. But this feels really nice. To feel close to someone like this. Happy rainbows and sunshine.

"Thanks. Do you have any other questions for me? We're just learning about each other and I don't open up easily. I live in your house and I know a lot more about you than you do about me. What do you want to know?"

"Okay, I'm dying to ask this, because I'm honestly curious, but you can tell me to fuck off if you want, but when you dated that non-binary person, what was that like? Specifically in the bedroom, if I was unclear."

He laughs out loud, but quietly, because he can read the room. "Oh Leo, I'm seriously surprised that this is the case, but no one has ever asked me that, and I can't believe it. It would be the thing I wanted to ask if I met someone that had dated them to." He paused and cleared his giggles and preceded to tell me lots of interesting stuff.

"Their pronouns were they/them, obviously. Their name was Raven, which I assume wasn't a given name, but they refused to discuss the name topic. They could have just said, it's the name I picked for myself, but they held onto it like an angry secret. There must have been a story there, but I wasn't allowed to ask. But what you really want to know is what was in the pants. Right?"

I almost answer but I'm thinking that's rhetorical in nature and it is because he continues.

"There was a penis in the pants. The whole package, two balls and one penis. And before you can ask, I'm sure you want to know how we had sex. Well, they didn't like their dick, so they bottomed. And they always wore a jock during sex to hide it. They tucked in certain outfits. But they also didn't have any interest in getting a vagina. If they could have had a smooth featureless Barbie crotch, they would have been completely happy with that."

That is not what I expected at all. I don't know what I did expect, so yeah, but it wasn't that. I kind of change the subject, to one just as dangerous. "You said they thought your brother was dead or in jail. Why?"

"Oh, they were really distrustful about everything, which bothered me sometimes, but I just worked with it, you know? Raven said that one random postcard, with no return address, from someplace as featureless and droll as Kansas, could only be from prison. I said there was no way they could know that and they become insistent about it and called me an idiot for not seeing the writing on the wall. And then they said he was probably dead anyway, since I hadn't gotten another one in all those years."

"You are not an idiot, you know. They are. I'm sorry your partner wasn't more supportive of you, especially about something like this. And I'm sorry they told you he was dead. That's basically just cruel. I don't do cruel. It's why Julia had to go." I want to comfort him. I hope my words are comforting. I want to hug him. What a sucky life.

"Leo, have you ever been with a man?"

Okay, that caught me by surprise. Maybe it's a segway to something else, back to him and Raven, he's not trying to have sex with me. Calm down. Answer the question! "No. I've only been with women. I've met a few guys over the years that I might have slept with if it had become an option, but it never did. Why?" I really didn't need to add that part about being attracted to a few guys. He didn't ask. And I don't really want to know why he asked either. My brain is starting to spin.

I just had an earth shattering realization. That's the first time my brain went into my usual haywire mode all day. I've been almost normal ALL DAY. I haven't felt manic. I haven't been caught up in my head. I haven't imagined crazy scenarios happening when I'm over stimulated. Sage is a certified calming drug.

"Are you okay over there, Le?"

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Okay, because you didn't respond when I answered your question with a question of my own."

I had asked a question? He had asked me a question? I had mentally left the tent somehow. C'mon Leo, get it together. Stop talking to me, talk to him!

"Sorry Sage, I got caught in my own thoughts, I guess." I'm a mental case, if you hadn't noticed. This will probably be that part of the relationship where he bolts. Emotionally, if not physically.

"Yeah, I've noticed that you do that. You were doing really good all day today. You seemed really engaged. Do you take anything for that?"

He'd noticed the difference?!?!? I didn't even notice the difference until just now. I used to take some meds but they all made me feel so numb and flat. I'd stopped because the doctor wouldn't listen to me. I'd rather live on my roller coaster of highs and lows and crazy loop-de-loops that live in thick fog ever again. Those drug companies don't want to help, they want to control. Control your whole personality, not just control your bad wiring.

"I'm sorry. Can we go back? I got really lost. What was the question again? I'm sorry. I'll get back on track, I promise."

He rolled over and faced me. "Leo, look at me please?"

It's dark, I can't look at anything. But I know I can see him even in the darkness, because he is lit from within, like no one else I've ever met. I roll over and face him and he's glowing, just like I expected. And I feel calm. I hope he reads my thoughts like usual. I release a big breath.

"We can go back. I asked you about guys and your question was why I asked you." He explained it and he didn't make me feel stupid in the process. Even Drake can't do it that smoothly. "I answered you with this, I wanted to know because you seem open-minded about everything. Why is that? By the way, were pretty much caught up to where you got lost now."

He just seems to understand me. He doesn't ask what's wrong with me, he just gets it, or accepts that he doesn't get it and can look past it. I had therapists that couldn't make me feel secure like that. He was something special, as a human, a really rare, super amazing person. And now I'm ready to answer his question.

"I'm open-minded for the exact reason you probably already think. I've been judged a lot because of my head stuff, and people treated me very poorly, including my dad. Especially my dad. So when I was getting out of high school and getting out of my parents house, I also got out of the mind set that was ingrained in me by everyone who treated me as less than. I just tried to accept people. And it was obvious that things like sexual preference and stuff didn't matter to me. I don't like mean people. I don't like hateful behavior, so I just try to be better."

"That's incredible Le. It's beautiful. You're beautiful. You have a beautiful soul. And you're perfect. Just like you are. I'm glad you feel that way about this stuff. I asked you before if you took anything for your head stuff. You didn't answer but I bet I know. You used to. But you don't any more. Am I right?"