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December in Mobile is volatile. Some days, when the sun is high and bright in the sky, the temperatures are in the high eighties. At night, and on overcast days, it’s cold enough to warrant a jacket, and sometimes even a scarf.
The cool night air on this night, strange as it is, has Merriell able to breathe.
From inside the large house, the band they’d hired is still playing, the sharp jazzy noise bellowing out into the night. Snags of half-formed conversations and laughter filter out through the walls, and the silhouettes are moving seamlessly behind the gossamer curtains.
Merriell studies them as they enter and exit his field of vision from his perch on the porch railing. The lights are off out here, and he’s sitting in the dark. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
He’s lost count on the number of cigarettes he’s started and finished, just as he’s lost count of time.
The party continues on, as time stills.
Life keeps going, bright and cheerful. Everyone here has probably had a big beautiful holiday, a bountiful Christmas dinner before they arrived here. That’s what they’re used to, right? These damn people have never had the chance to struggle. They’ve never had to scrounge for a meal in a dumpster because Ma was too busy working to feed him. These leftovers that are going to exist from the party are just going to be tossed away - the cheese rinds that used to sustain him when he was thin as a rail gone to waste.
When he’d stepped out, Gene had been engrossed in a conversation with his father regarding his plans for graduate school. Mary Frank had then turned to Merriell, and with a polite look on her face, tried to rope him into discussing Merriell’s thoughts on the Virginia Woolf novel she’d lent to him when they stopped by back in July.
A common evening activity with the Sledge family was the post-dinner read in the sitting room. They had a damn sitting room and would swap books and talk about literature and contemporary society. It was nice, just different. So much of it was.
He’s gotten more into reading as of late—thanks to the combination of a short term sick leave and Gene’s substantial collection of books—but fact still stands that he ain’t never read for pleasure. Definitely not enough to hold a conversation, not with folks like these. So, he’d excused himself, clumsily, and stepped outside.
It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. But as always, no one mentioned it. Neither him nor Gene ever got weird looks when they had to leave a room for a moment or two. Gene’s Doc dad once prattled on about how it was completely normal. Said some shit about sensory overload being common with vets. The look that Merriell had leveled him had only been received with an understanding smile, but it had never been brought up again.
It was not discussed, but it was accepted, in its own odd way.
Just like his and Gene’s relationship.
Like he actually belonged here, with these people, in this life.
The Sledge family has welcomed him, more or less. They try to. They make space for Merriell. They keep an extra seat at the table for him. They ask about his preferences and hobbies. It’s not something he’s familiar with.
Worst kept secret. That’s what Gene called it, the phenomenon of their relationship that had been happening for the past six years. The way Sledge’s family didn’t talk about it, how the maids put him up in the second room to the left up the stairs, even though everyone and their uncle knew Merriell would sneak out once infamous Night Owl Mary Sledge had given up reading her latest novel and gone upstairs, and he’d spend the night in Gene’s bed.
The linens were always the same on the last day as the first. He used to make a proper show of pretending to sleep in them, but he didn’t need to anymore.
At first, the blatant display had been a rebellion, a challenge, a deliberate provocation. But just like their son, Mr. and Mrs. Sledge hadn’t countered with violence. Rather the opposite, even if it sometimes felt worse than any beating ever could. Not because of them, mind you, but rather his own inability to accept that sort of kindness. He’s working on it.
The side door he’d slinked off through creaks open, startling him out of his thoughts.
And there he is—backlit, like a saint—Gene.
“Figured you’d hide out here.”
Stepping out onto the porch Gene closes the door behind him. Just as suddenly as the light had appeared, it’s gone. The sounds from the party are once again muffled. It’s just them standing there with the silence and the night weighing heavy on their shoulders.
“Guilty as charged.” He fumbles with the lighter for a moment, hands shaky as he lights another cigarette.
Gene doesn’t ask to bum his smoke. Instead, he hikes himself up on the railing beside Merriell. Once secure, he reaches out a hand to curl around the bones of Merriell’s ankle where it peeks through between his dress shoes and slacks; a small sliver of skin that Gene hones in on like a missile.
“What’s eatin’ you, Snaf?”
His voice is gentle, as it always is. Gene is gentle. The time back home with his folks helped soften the rough edges some. When it comes to this—Snafu pulling away, locking himself in behind walls as a means of protection—that gentleness doesn’t leave any room for evasion.
He meets Gene’s green, dark eyes that peer at him expectantly. They’ve been together for too long now for Merriell to bury his emotions. Gene waits for Merriell to take a breath and let him in.
“I ain’t used to this,” Merriell murmurs quietly, as he gazes out into the dark night sky, the well-manicured lawn of the Sledge household. It’s slightly yellow in the December air, but the majority is still green. It’s fucked. What a damn waste of water.
He takes a drag off his cigarette, and considers stubbing it out on the railing, but he doesn’t.
“Used to what, darlin’?”
“Y’know. Havin’ folks that actually give a shit. Or… Whatever the hell they’re doin’ in there.”
To his left, Gene hums, leaning back on his hands; his back arched effortlessly with the pose, neck exposed. His suit jacket is long since disposed of, who knows where, and the sleeves of his pristine white shirt are rolled up to his elbows. In the delicate, warm light emitting from the living room windows, the hairs on Gene’s arms appear almost golden, instead of their usual copper tint.
And shit, Gene truly is the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. Toughest, too, which means more. It was what he fell in love with. He’s seen Gene in the dirtiest, the lowest of lowly places, worn-out and disillusioned; he’s also watched him dig himself back out. It had changed him, certainly, but somehow, he still keeps as gentle and handsome as ever.
“They know there’s no use fightin’. I ain’t changing my mind, and they’ll have me any way they get me. That includes carin’ for you, whether you like it or not.”
There’s a note of fierce pride in his voice. He loves his family. Fuck. And Merriell, he is in love with Gene. He’s said it, maybe a hundred times to Gene, muttered it into the heat between Gene’s thighs, but this is him revelling in it.
Merriell rolls the now burnt-down cigarette between his fingers. “Didn’t say it ain’t nice, Genie,” he says, more an exhale than actual words. “Just strange.”
Gene tilts his head. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The music from inside the house picks up, changing into a rhythm more akin to those he’d heard filter out from the jazz clubs across from his Ma’s place.
“Well, then I oughta throw off those blues. C’mon.”
He steals the smoldering cigarette from Merriell’s fingers, and takes a quick drag of it, before returning it and hopping off the railing. Merriell takes one last inhale and then, fuck it, stabs it out on the cool steel railing of the porch, before flicking it away with his thumb and forefinger.
“You love this song, don’t you?” Merriell murmurs, fingers itching to pull another cigarette from the worn cardboard box weighing heavy against his trousers. He doesn’t grab for one. Instead, his fingers twine together with Gene’s from his perch on the railing.
As always, Gene’s hands are warm, only the occasional smoker that he is. Some folks in the Bayou love to say cold hands, warm heart, but Gene’s gotta be the exception. Warm hands, warm heart. Eugene Sledge is fire from head to toe; fiesty little redhead that he is. He’s fire from the moment he opens his mouth to the heat of his anger.
Gene laughs, quietly. “I do. C’mon, get down from there,” he says, tugging at Merriell’s hand.
Merriell goes.
He’ll go wherever Gene wants him.
Gene bows dramatically, and Merriell rolls his eyes. Immediately, he’s spun around in some bastardized version of a twirl. Their dance is wild and passionate, with hardly any rhyme or reason, but they’re at it together . He can’t help but laugh as he shakes the blues off his shoulders. As they spin and twirl in the shadows of the wrap-around porch, sometimes Merriell takes the role of the man and sometimes the woman. It’s chaotic and romantic in its exuberance, and it has Merriell breathless by the end of it. His cheeks hurt from smiling so much.
Gene pulls away from him, with a tease as he thrums his fingers in a fucking poor imitation of a guitar player. Merriell snorts.
“Can’t fool me, sugar, you’re a goody-goody who was raised to play piano and never even looked at a guitar. “
The music slows.
Merriell figures this is as good a reason as any to go back inside, so he drops their fingers together and reaches for another cigarette. After one more smoke.
“Darlin’, wait. One more dance.”
Gene laces their fingers together again and pulls him in close against his chest. Merriell doesn’t fight it. He puts his cigarette behind his ear and lets Gene lead him around their little corner of the porch; partly shrouded in shadow. It probably resembles little more than a slow shuffling, hardly enough to count as a proper dance. But as with so many other things, it’s the outcome that matters:
It’s intended as a dance, and so it is.
Merriell buries a smile against the crook of Gene’s neck as the slow dance continues on.
“This is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart,” Gene quotes softly, hand threading through Merriell’s curly hair. “I carry your heart—I carry it in my heart.”
In the morning, he wakes to the puttering of the maids downstairs. It’s only a few hours after Gene woke him up at the heels of a nightmare, but he still feels more rested than he has in weeks. Yet, there’s that inkling of something starting up in his chest. He closes his eyes and tries to let the anxious energy, the one that is perpetually buzzing like a swarm of bees under his skin, settle to rest.
It’s getting easier with each year, and easier still with his head resting against Gene’s sternum, him feeling the rise and fall of chest underneath him. He’s not as bony as they both were overseas and while this isn’t their bed, their home, this moment is.
He notices:
the too-nice guest sheets against his skin; the sliver of sunlight now cooling Gene’s freckles down; the steady pulse of Gene’s heartbeat under his ear; the fiery warmth that has Gene kicking the sheets down around his ankles; the feeling of loving and being loved.
Here, in this moment, he can finally breathe.