{Cary}

It was early evening, and the house was quiet except for the faint murmur of the radio in Tru's room. Cary padded down the hall, feeling like Kadee had turned Jon a new way and fit him into a puzzle Cary had been trying to figure out for days. He pushed open the door of his own room, wondering if the quiet meant Jon had gone out the back door for a smoke.

Jon had not. He was lying on his face on the bed in the clothes he'd worked in, looking like he'd been crumpled and tossed on top of the covers. His sock feet were grey with dirt on the bottom. Cary let out his breath. He didn't know what to do with this new information that wouldn't hurt Jon more.

He tapped a knuckle on the open door, and Jon brought his arm up to hide his face against it.

Cary took a careful breath. "It's not just your fault," he said, low. "It's my fault, too."

Jon made a small, cracked noise. "You didn't get your dad fired."

Cary's eyes touched the corner of the ceiling, remembering Conall's absence from the university website. "I think I did, actually," he muttered.

Jon didn't move, and Cary swallowed, running his eyes over the skin of his friend's arms, then scanning the disorderly room for anything that could be used as a sharp.

"I need a shower," he said finally. "Unless you want to go first?"

Jon shook his head once.

"Don't—don't go anywhere," Cary said.

He took the fastest shower possible, barely putting his head under the rain of water. As he toweled off and tugged on his pyjama pants, his thoughts shuttled back to all the weeks he'd shared a room with Jon. His friend had politely turned his back when Cary shucked his clothes off to change or when he came in from the shower in his towel. If he'd given it a thought, he would have assumed Jon did it for him, out of respect for his privacy. It never occurred to him that his naked body might have made his friend uncomfortable.

He felt like an idiot—angry at himself for not guessing, angry at Jon for not telling him, angry at whatever it was that kept Jon bound so tightly around his secret that the edges looked to be cutting him to the quick.

When he returned to the bedroom, Jon had not moved. Cary stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, looking at his friend's collapsed body. "Hey," he said quietly.

Jon curled away from him. The tips of his fingers were black with dirt, pressing into the back of his neck. Cary tried to think what someone like Mel would do to care for him right now.

"You should shower. You'll feel better when you're clean. Plus...you stink."

Jon made a small, dry noise. That was something.

Cary tucked his freezing hands under his arms. "And I want to fix your cuts before bed."

Stiffly, Jon unfolded and sat up. His hair was rumpled up over his white face, and the skin around his eyes looked blotchy and raw. "I'll do them myself," he said in a strained voice. "There's nothing new."

"Show me," Cary said.

Bowing his head, Jon stripped off his shirt. The cuts lining his upper arm to his shoulder were scabbed and healing, and when he got to his feet to gather up a change of clothes, Cary could see the ones on his stomach were too. He stepped aside to let Jon go shower.

Waiting, he curled on his side in the nest of blankets on the floor, pulling the Bible Pete had given him toward himself. He paged through the Jesus stories, the rustle of their thin leaves and the now-familiar words steadying him. When Jon returned and saw what he was doing, his mouth twisted like he'd bitten into something bad. Cary tucked the book under his pillow.

Jon twitched the blankets on the bed, attempting to straighten them. "You never told me..." His voice was unsteady. "Who gave you the bruise on your face."

Cary rubbed his thumb over the edge of the bruise on his cheekbone. It had turned a rainbow of colors as it healed, and was now faded to yellow. He couldn't find a good reason not to tell Jon the truth. "Kurtis Klassen," he admitted. "I took his brother down. He couldn't let that pass."

Jon sank onto the bed, his face white and shattered. "I thought we were friends. I trusted him with things I never told anyone else." He took a sharp breath, clenching his hands against his stomach.

Watching him, Cary shoved to a sitting position. "Are you going to be okay tonight?"

Jon put his hands up like it was some effort to keep them off his cuts. "Yes," he whispered. "I'm fine."

Cary's fists closed in the blankets. "You don't have to lie to be family with me, Jon."

"I don't—" Jon's voice cracked, "—want to talk about this."

"Secrets keep us sick," Cary said roughly. "Didn't they tell you that in treatment? You haven't learnt this from me by now?"

Jon swayed back, pressing his lips in a flat line. "You said. You wouldn't ask. And I'm not. Cutting." His chin jutted sharply, and for a second, he looked exactly like the angry asshole Cary had lived with all summer. "So fuck off."

Cary curled his shoulders small, looking at Jon from under his eyebrows. He didn't see an asshole anymore. He saw himself, all the times he'd lashed out when someone had bumped a bruise or a broken bone he was hiding under his jacket. He dropped his eyes. "I'm worried about you."

Jon shook his head, slapping the pillow on the bed and then rolling into the blankets fully clothed, his back to Cary. "Turn out the light."

It felt like the light was already off. Cary reached up a hand to the switch and the room fell into darkness, except for the faint orange light from the yard, broken into waving, shadowy shapes by the leaves on the trees. Silently, Cary said their prayer and laid down with his back against the door.

{Jon}

From the moment Kurtis Klassen had swung down from the church stage, narrowing his electric blue eyes in a smile and inviting Jon to play on the worship band, Jon had felt drawn to the other guy. He'd told himself it was the kind of feeling you had for someone you wanted for a friend and worked really hard to keep his mind from wandering anywhere else. They had a lot in common: music and playing multiple instruments and making sacrifices to get along with their church dads.

The first time Kadee had brought him to Kurtis's garage to hang out, Jon couldn't stop stealing glances at the unmade bed in one corner, at the dent where Kurtis's body had lain and the fold of the covers where he had thrown them off to get ready for church. It was the first time he had admitted to himself, through a blur of pain and opiod meds, that he might be in trouble.

Kurtis had joined him on the massive couch that day and apologized for asking Jon to step down from the worship team. They laughed about how quickly rumours travelled in youth group, and this led to a longer conversation about their dads and the expectations at church. Jon had found a completely different Klassen brother than he'd expected.

In the following days, the memory of Kurtis's wry smile troubled Jon's mind, and he tried not to panic. The truth was, no one knew the truth about Jon White. He barely permitted himself to admit it in the privacy of his own thoughts.

Two years before, he'd become aware that while his friends were increasingly interested in the girls at youth group, all Jon noticed was his guy friends' deepening voices, their broadening shoulders and hands. In secret, Jon begged and made bargains with God to take these feelings away, but he felt powerless to stop his attraction to guy bodies.

When his dad had told their family that he was taking a new church in another city, Jon had felt the severing of those friendships with a mix of grief and relief. He'd hoped that the move would be the answer to his prayers—that in a new place he could wipe the past clean and be normal.

In the midst of all the difficulty of trying to fit in at a new school, he'd been happy to discover he liked Kadee in a way that was maybe more than friends—and that he didn't have feelings like that for Cary. He wanted his previous attraction to guys to be a weird phase of adolescence that he'd finally outgrown and never needed to tell anyone about.

But it wasn't.

With growing alarm, Jon realized that, when Kurt was in the room, his whole body was drawn to him like his skin was full of iron filings and Kurt was the magnet. It wasn't even comparable to the feelings he had for Kadee, as much as he liked her as a friend. He didn't daydream about her lips or wish he could tuck her hair behind her ear. He had tried to conjure those feelings for her by picturing those things in his bed one night and just ended up giggling—and then crying with his hot face buried in his pillow.

He could hide it from everyone else, but he couldn't conceal the truth from himself anymore. Disgusted and horrified, he would have cut a chunk right out of his body if he thought it would fix him.

At the same time, he hadn't been able to stop going to Kurt's. For whole hours, he would feel lifted above the pain in his ribs, soaking up Kurt's friendship and attention like sunshine. Was there anything wrong with that, as long as he kept his more-than-friend feelings to himself? Or was he unclean in a way that contaminated everyone around him?

Balled up on Tru's lumpy guest mattress, Jon buried his head in his arm and clenched his hand on his stomach, haunted by Kurt's voice on the phone. We're still good, right? He had just wanted to feel happy for one goddamn second. After doing everything right to be good for his parents, he had wanted this one small thing for himself. Just a couple hours a week when he didn't have to play a part, when he could bring out almost everything about him and earn a smirk of approval from Kurt, a nudge of his shoulder, a wry confession in return. He flayed himself with the thought that if he hadn't screwed up by misusing his pain pills, he could still have that friendship.

If he could manage the agony of secretly crushing on a straight guy without opes.

If it wasn't inevitable that he would fuck it up eventually in some other spectacular way.

Jon swallowed those thoughts back down. He abandoned the present to remember the best day of his summer, as if Kurt had never betrayed him. One Sunday afternoon in August, they had buried themselves together under a blanket fort made of all the cushions of Kurt's monster couch, and the covers off his bed. The soft, dim cave had smelled of the unwashed musk of Kurt's bedsheets mixed with the spice of the cologne he wore for church. His breath had tickled warm against Jon's ear as they had talked, secret and safe.

Jon fell asleep with tears on his face.

///

The mask covered his nose and mouth, and his dad tugged the knots securely behind his head. "In case you're sick," Pete said in a low voice. "To protect Mom and the girls."

The sanctuary was crowded with people shuffling forward in a line. The pews were missing and though Jon recognized his dad's old church, he knew with the certainty of dream logic that they were in a hospital—a treatment centre. He glanced at his parents beside him, their faces lined with worry and exhaustion. Bea whimpered softly, hanging onto Mel's hand. A few others in the press of people were wearing masks: fabric scarves, round construction masks, or the crisp white rectangles of medical masks. The layered fabric over Jon's mouth was hot and stifled his breathing. He was trembling; his hands were sweating. There was a test ahead, and what his father feared—why he'd put this mask over Jon's mouth, just in case—would almost certainly be found out.

"Be quiet," a voice snapped behind him, and Jon glanced back. The entire Klassen family was crowded behind them. Kurt's eyes met his, electric blue above the woman's scarf wrapped over and over the lower half of his face.

Jon quickly turned back, touching the edges of the mask on his cheeks to check that it was still in place. His stomach turned, sick. He already knew the ending of this story: his family would be held for questioning if they arrived without him. Bea would cry, and his mother would cry, and his father would give all he had to try and buy them a pass to freedom. But he also knew the ending if he stayed—and he wanted to live.

Jon stepped out of line. He allowed his family to go ahead of him, his absence unnoticed. He nudged through the other people numbly moving forward until he made it to a low booth beside the wall. It looked like something an airline stewardess would stand behind to collect tickets, and then he recognized the sturdy old pulpit his father used to preach from. He ducked behind it, wedging himself into the wooden compartment like he had as a child playing hide and seek while he waited for his dad to be finished in his office. His ears buzzed as he listened for an alarm, for someone to notice he was missing.

There was a soft step, and then Kurt Klassen crouched behind the pulpit, looking at him. "White." His voice was muffled and his expression was unreadable behind the thick wrappings of the scarf.

Jon shivered with the knowledge that discovery was still all too likely with a crowd of people just feet away. His hands lifted to the knots behind his head, loosening them. He felt like he was apart from his body, silently screaming at himself to stop. He lowered his mask. The fabric of Kurt's scarf sucked against his mouth, and he ducked into the boxy space next to Jon. Their legs intertwined to fit, and the weight of Kurt's body leaned against Jon's aching chest.

"Help me with the knots," Kurt whispered, strangled, his long fingers scrabbling at the edge of the scarf cutting into his face. There were a series of them, one for each wrap of the scarf around his face and throat. The last knot pressed against his Adam's apple.

As Jon fumbled with one knot after another, tiny flakes began to fall through the air, brushing the skin of his arm like snow, but dry and warm. The scarf pulled free with a silken sound, and Kurt took a gasping breath, sagging with his face against Jon's neck to breathe. Jon's heart felt as if it would burn through his chest like the sun as he carefully wrapped his arms around his friend's body.

A silky rustling noise intruded on Jon's awareness, not unlike the sound the scarf had made, but larger. "What is that?" Jon whispered.

Kurt stirred, lifting his flushed face off Jon's shoulder. He brushed his knuckles over Jon's cheekbone, the blue of his eyes the only light in the dim space. "Fire." His voice was husky. "They're burning the sick. And those who've been in contact with the sick."

Jon stopped breathing. His family. Kurt's fingers brushed Jon's lips, a question in his eyes, and Jon pulled him closer, desperate to forget. Kurt's mouth tasted of ashes, and his hands on Jon's skin were fire.

///

With a gasp, Jon woke, bringing his fingers to his face. There was no mask—his cheeks were damp and he tasted ashes and salt on his lips. His body was achingly aroused and he was crying, waves of sobs shaking him on the bed.

He staggered to his feet, his hands outstretched to find the door to the hall. He stumbled against something heavy and soft, which made a deep oof sound and grabbed his bare ankle, gripping it hard. Jon let out a thin scream, falling back and kicking away—where the hell was he?

Light blazed out and he covered his face with his hands, tears slippery under his palms.

"Jon?" A hoarse voice asked. "Where you going?"

He got to his hands and knees, his head hanging. His whole body rocked with the tears.

He smacked away a touch on his shoulder, pushing to his feet and past Cary through the door. He clasped his hands against his stomach, swaying against the walls in the hallway. He was in Tru's house. It smelled of dust and mildew—but nothing was burning. Nothing was burning.

In the bathroom, he stuck his head under the stream of cold, rust-flavoured water from the tub, trying to wash away the taste of ash. He thrust his freezing hands inside his pants with a gasp, shrivelling inside himself. You're so disgusting. Digging his fist into the cuts beside the jutting bone of his hip, he groaned, laying his face against the worn linoleum floor of the bathroom.

He'd failed to lock the door. It nudged against the soles of his feet and then shoved wide enough for Cary. He loomed over Jon, ending the thunder of water, and then his hands were on Jon's arms, rolling him over. Jon blinked at his friend's white face. He needed to get up, so Cary wouldn't look so worried, and go back to bed like a normal person. His fingers left red smears on the side of the tub, and Cary made a sharp noise.

"What'd you do?"

"I can't breathe." Jon's voice was thin. "I need to get out."

Cary threaded his arm under Jon's shoulders to pull him up, and hauled him, stumbling, down the hall and out the back door.

Jon sank onto the single splintered back step of Tru's cabin, shaking in the cold and taking big gulps of fresh air that smelled of green things and dew. Everything alive. He opened his mouth like he could take a bite of that good air and eat it whole.

Cary reappeared with an armful of blankets from their room. Jon was shaking too hard to get one around his shoulders, so Cary did it for him, kneeling in the dew-damp grass.

"You cut again?" he asked hoarsely.

Jon shook his head, making the world sway around him. He dropped his head to rest against his arm, lying over his knee. It still felt like he was crammed in the dark, in the wooden box of his father's pulpit, like he hadn't really gotten free of that dream. He never should have made that phone call to Kurt. "I don't feel good," he said.

Cary's calloused hand pushed the hair back from his temple and rested a moment, cool against his skin. It was so much like his mother's touch when he was sick that Jon didn't flinch away.

"Had a bad dream," Jon said, his voice muffled. "That I was sick. My parents—burned. It should have been me." A shudder went down his whole body, and he made a helpless noise. "How do you stop having nightmares?" He lifted his face.

Starlight glittered in Cary's dark eyes. "I worked through my shit." His mouth flattened. "Still get them sometimes. I think they're worse when you're running. Or hiding."

Jon shrank into himself, holding Cary's look with difficulty. Either he was going to throw up or he was going to tell his secret. "I kissed Kurtis. In the dream." Saying it out loud made him feel like he'd just taken the mask off his face, both terrified and like he could finally breathe. He tasted ashes and swallowed hard.

Cary let out a long breath like he'd been holding it. "You like him?"

Jon nodded once, his fingers frozen and clenched into fists, unable to look away from the only person he'd ever told this secret to. He couldn't tell what Cary was thinking.

"Does he know?" Cary's voice sounded rough.

"You think I'm stupid?" The words flew out, thin and sharp. "After all the times his brother shoved me into lockers and called me a faggot? No, he doesn't know."

There was a pause. "I don't think you're stupid," Cary said evenly. He held Jon's eyes steadily. "Do you think he likes you back?"

"No, of course he doesn't," Jon snapped. "He's not—" He shut his teeth, almost biting his tongue, his cheeks aflame. He couldn't say the word out loud—he hated to even think it to himself.

Cary watched him like was still waiting for the end of that sentence, his mouth pressed in at the corner. When Jon didn't finish it, he shrugged carefully. "He might. He called you back. He sounded like—he cares about you." Cary seemed to have trouble saying the words.

It made Jon's head feel like he was falling. It wasn't possible, was it? The hundreds of texts he'd received from Kurt rose up in his mind, a thread of GIFs to make him laugh and daily song recommendations for his morning. He knew exactly how many of those songs had been by gay artists—how was it possible that he hadn't even wondered about that before now?

Tears stung him unexpectedly, and he shook his head quickly. "He can't. I can't—" It was hard to breathe, like his rib had broken again, and he gulped back tears, trying to keep his breaths shallow. He was going back with his family; he was fitting in with them. He was going to be better—or at least act like it.

Cary's worried expression was blurry in the dim light. "'Cause of your parents? Or your church?"

"Both," Jon whispered, bending his head. "My parents more." He never should have spoken. He wished Cary would drop it. "It doesn't matter."

Cary's silence disagreed. "How long's this been on your mind?" he finally asked, his voice careful.

Jon slid his fingers under his shirt to touch each line, one by one, counting them. "A while. I thought I fixed it—when we moved. I thought I was better. But—" The smell of Kurt's skin, the bristle of his cheek, his fingers touching Jon's on the neck of the guitar flooded his thoughts. "—I'm not."

"I don't see why you think you need to be 'fixed.'" Cary said roughly. "Maybe your taste in guys sucks, but you're not—this isn't something wrong with you."

Jon shrank inside his blanket. He was never getting this secret back—he felt so stupid for blurting it out. "Please don't tell my mom and dad," he said dully. "Like you told them I was using. I won't—" he pressed his hand flat against his stomach. "I won't see him again. Please don't, Care."

There was a long silence. "I won't," Cary said. "It's nothing the same. Jesus."

Jon looked sideways at his friend, relief easing his aching stomach. None of the things he'd been afraid of had happened: Cary hadn't mocked him or disbelieved him or pulled back in disgust.

Cary was watching him with his eyebrows pulled down low. "What are you afraid will happen—if Mom and Dad find out?" he asked carefully.

Jon took a breath and held it, seeing for a second the ashes falling like snow in his nightmare. The answer to Cary's question was as knotted and painful as the scarf over Kurt's face. "You need to know what they were like—when Judah died." He knuckled his stinging eyes. They never talked about this in his family; he'd only recently put the story into words for himself. "Mom—fell apart. She wasn't there. And Pete—was like a robot-dad. Always doing something: working, cooking, cleaning, looking after me. He was there, but he never talked. About anything we were feeling. And it's taken years for them to put the pieces back together. They're still fragile. And I'm their only son."

He exhaled, the weight of that pressing the air out of him. "I can't just—do my own thing. If I keep fucking this up, it all falls apart again. And that's on me." He made a dry sound, trying to ease the weight on his chest. "I can't. Let my family down. Like that."

Cary said slowly, "You think—liking guys—would let your family down?"

Shivering, he hunched his shoulders and tugged the blanket closer. This particular knot pressed hard against his throat, and it hurt to try and push the words past it. "My dad is a pastor, Cary. He'll get another job in a church because he's really—really good at it. And I'm proud of him. But there's—standards—for our family. Because he works for a church." He tried to swallow. "The Bible says a guy with another guy isn't God's design."

"I never read nothing like that." Cary's voice growled low in the dark.

Jon pulled the blanket over his head, wrapping his arms around himself. How many hours had he spent combing through his Bible, looking up words and trying to understand what he was seeing on the page? He could hardly bear to look at the book anymore. "You haven't read all of it," he said. "Can we not—talk about this anymore?"

There was a long silence, and Cary sighed. "So what's your plan?" he asked. "For going back?"

"I just need time," Jon said, his voice small under the blanket. "To get my shit back together here."

Cary made a cracked noise. "Time don't heal by itself, Jon. You were taking those pills for a reason. And if you go back—you're going to need something again."

Jon shook his head; it felt too heavy to lift. "I know better; I'll be okay."

"I think you won't," Cary said, his voice tight and frayed.

Jon shrank inside his blanket, shivering.

"Jon." Cary exhaled. "Trust me, you're not shoving this summer in a hole and piling a bunch of school work and shit on top. It's gonna bleed out. If you don't get help, you're gonna bleed out. I'm fucking watching it happen—right now." His breath caught and Jon peeked out from his blanket, catching his friend scooping tears out of his eyes with the palms of his hands. "I don't want to do this anymore," Cary said unsteadily. "I'm so fucking tired."

Jon pulled the blanket tight over his mouth and nose, trying not to hyperventilate. "You're my only friend."

Cary looked sideways at him, the hard line of his mouth slipping crooked. "That's why I'm saying this. I'm tired of hearing you lie to me that you're okay. Just stop." He pushed his hands against his chest. "Stop trying to do this on your own. Open your fucking mouth and tell someone you're not okay."

Jon drew a sharp breath, tears dropping out of his eyes and dampening the blanket against his cheeks. He lowered the edge, exposing his face. "I'm not okay," he whispered.

Cary closed his eyes. "Someone who can help you. Your parents. Or a counsellor."

Jon swiped his hand over his face. "What if I lose them? What if they don't want me like that? What if I break their hearts?" These words came out, clear and trembling, as if the child he had been was speaking with his mouth. Like he was as afraid of losing his parents now as he had been when he was six, in the aftermath of losing his brother.

"It doesn't have to be them," Cary said, his own voice cracking. "But...maybe they're not fragile. Maybe it would do them good to hear you. Maybe they'll love you same as they do now." He brushed the back of his hand over the side of his face. "I never regretted telling your dad. All my shit. Both times he saved my life—listening."

Jon caught his breath. How had Cary found it in him to open his mouth and tell Pete his worst secret when he'd still believed that it was his fault that his baby sister was dead? He could barely imagine how terrified and ashamed his friend must have felt to open his mouth on those words. Yet somehow that confession had made way for this Cary, with his whole skin and steady gaze. He'd watched the transformation happen all summer.

"What would I even say?" Jon whispered. "Care. What do I even tell them?"

There was a quiet moment. "I guess that's what you need to figure out," Cary said. "Out of all the things you been carrying, what needs to not be a secret anymore."

Shivering, Jon let those words sink in. "Can I have time to think about it?"

Cary rubbed his hands over his face, looking genuinely exhausted, purple thumbprints under his eyes and lines drawn around his mouth.

Jon drew an "x" on his chest. "No lying," he whispered. "No cutting. I promise. I just need time to figure this out. Okay?"

Cary exhaled and ducked his head in a nod, pushing stiffly to his feet. "If it means I sleep tonight. I guess you can take the time."

*This nightmare was one of the last things I finished on WAKE and you guessed it, it was April 2020. In the early drafts, Jon's nightmare was that he was sick but as I polished these last chapters in the first months of COVID19, masks became such a creepy symbol of paranoia and contagion. This story takes place long before 2020 but the imagery was too good not to use! 

I wonder how the pandemic will change our storytelling in the future?*