it probably can't get any worse than this {Winter}

[Erik Stewart]

It was the holidays again. To Erik, that just meant a lot of cold weather. He’d an estranged family and not many souls he could call friends - there was Mike and his counselor, who all had families of their own, and there was Oriel and Jade, also busy, and a lack of classes meant that he spent most of his time tucked away in bed or cleaning off the floors of the LGBT center. It was a lonely time for him, and it got harder with each year. At least now he had his job, and the people that came with it. His supervisor had given him gloves to wear. His coworker had given him his old winter coat. They’d gifted him with chocolate bars and gift cards for Christmas, along with the free coffee from the break room every day, and he really didn’t care whether it was out of pity or genuine care. He felt comfortable enough at the center now. Last year they’d put up a holiday potluck, Erik had only stayed long enough to stuff some turkey into his face and leave; now he planned to stay after it was done to help put everything away. They’d enough for everybody: turkey, stuffing, potatoes, shuffle…they’d dessert with apple pie and frosted cookies, enough to fill two tables.

Then the place would be closed for Christmas. He preferred not to think about it. Erik had already decided that he’d be asleep as much as possible that day.

He ate as much as he physically could. He wasn’t normally a fan of yellow-white fluorescent lights, nor cheap tacky green-and-red streamers hanging above their fake wooden tables (tables his fingers kept getting caught in when he folded them), but it was warm, and the chatter filling the auditorium seemed in good cheer, and it would be a bright spot in an otherwise brutal holiday season.

Eleven thirty saw Erik on his way, just in time to see the Christmas lights outside cut off.

“God damn,” he muttered, realizing upon finding his pack of cigarettes that he’d forgotten his Zippo. He wasn’t about to wait until he got home to smoke. Luckily, there was a figure near the steps; a boy. Erik thought he’d seen him inside, at the potluck, and as he came closer the more he became certain that he was right. Whoever he was, he had a distinctive face.

“Got a light?”

[Winter Rowley]

Winter Rowley was annoyed without any real, justifiable reason for annoyance.

Signing up to volunteer so close to the holidays had been his first mistake; he’d been desperate to burn through his free time, and he hadn’t thought it through. Still, all he’d been expected to do was show up and exist. He could handle that. It was, after all, what he did every other day of the year, with varying degrees of success.

Even so, the small crowd in the LGBT center’s auditorium had exhausted him. Rowley didn’t want to stuff his face or be recognized or be cheerful or pretend that he found Christmas music tolerable. He didn’t want people to ask him how he was doing, because he couldn’t tell them the truth. He didn’t want to see the way people noticed him and then forced their gazes elsewhere, a little too quickly to be polite.

He wanted to sleep, and he wanted to smoke. He supposed one out of two wasn’t bad.

He stood on the edge of the sidewalk, no more than four feet away from the steps. The smoke from his cigarette curled out toward the nearly empty parking lot and up into the inky night sky, where it dissipated. His shoulders were hunched protectively against the slight wind, which had bitten his nose and cheeks and tinged them with pink. He was wearing all black, except for his t-shirt, which was dark gray with a quarter-sized hole along the seam of the neckline.

Darkness replaced the subtle warm glow from the icicle lights hanging on the eaves behind him. Somewhere near the steps, there came the sound of someone’s shoes crunching over the re-frozen patches of snow and rock salt.

Still, he didn’t look over until he was spoken to. That was his policy.

He glanced sidelong, and his eyebrows rose in silent acknowledgment. He took a good look at the boy—dark-haired, freckled, questionably young. This wasn’t the SuperKwik, though, and he was too cold and too apathetic and too annoyed now to care who did what.

Nobody had cared when it had been him.

“Yeah.”

He fished a cheap lighter out of his hoodie pocket—transparent hot pink plastic—and the pause between them was filled with the gritty click of the strike. He shielded the flame from the wind with one lightly trembling hand.

[Erik Stewart]

The tiny flame was no source of heat. He could barely feel it just an inch or two away as it lit the end of his cigarette alight, though it made his face light up a flickering orange. He could finally breath in a stream of black smoke. It cycled back up out his nostrils; he’d been doing this too long to be bothered by the ashy tickle. “Thanks,” he said.

Erik was no mindreader, like (as he called him) Mr. Neville. Sure, Winter looked a little pissed off, but a lot of people did. It was just how their faces looked. They’d spent too much time with their eyebrows knotted and their mouths suckin’ on lemons and after a while it’d just stuck like that, for ever, or at least as far as the playground rumors back in Louisiana went. Erik couldn’t help but remember those old superstitions when he looked at him. But Winter was also handsome: he saw that, too. And if he’d come from the LGBT center - well, that meant he didn’t necessarily have to be content just to look.

“So,” Erik began, holding his cigarette away from his face, “You got any plans for Christmas?” Taking another drag, he added, “Or, t’night?”

[Winter Rowley]

Rowley offered a brief, absent nod in reply to the boy’s thanks. The lighter disappeared into his hoodie pocket again, and so did his now-free hand. He turned his gaze back to the front and smoked in disinterested silence, until it was broken by his unfamiliar companion’s prefatory so.

His eyes trailed sidelong again.

“Work,” he said. “They needed someone to take Christmas and New Year’s.”

He stalled purposefully, taking another long drag from his dwindling cigarette. It was the drawl that gave him pause. It reminded him of Gray: thicker, but just as sweet. Gray had grown up with his grandmother in Georgia. Rowley had always loved to listen to him talk.

“Nothing tonight,” he said. He flicked some glowing ash from the end of his cigarette, where it sparked and died on the sidewalk. “Why, you need a ride?”

He tilted his head toward the lot before them, which was empty save for Rowley’s salt-splattered Honda and the program director’s off-white Lexus.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik wasn’t shy about eye contact when it counted. He wasn’t necessarily trying to catch and hold Winter’s gaze, but he did wonder if and when he would. He could see that his eyes were dark. A little deep-set under his eyebrows. Other than that, it was hard to tell; Winter kept them away and turned to the side. “Shame,” he said, and he meant it - as bad as his job was, at least it didn’t require him to work over the holidays.

“Oh, that’s alright,” Erik replied. “I’m not really lookin’ for a ride home.”

Erik had his crooked smile on. One cheek dimpled. Blue eyes alight and interested, waiting for him to turn so he could take note of his reaction; Erik could usually tell if he was going to get laid or not from the first glance. The bright ones, anyway. Sometimes they didn’t get it; it took an extra hint of transparency.

“There’s no one up at th’ school right now.” Erik put on his best sugary sweet southern-belle voice. “I get awful bored.”