“Fine, fine,” Casey relents, laughing, and it’s quick work after that. He and Will each take a box of long camping matches out of Casey’s bag and get to work catching pieces of fatwood on fire, which they slot into the larger woodpile once a proper flame gets going. After a few minutes, the faint crackling of a few pieces of wood burning starts to grow into the louder roar of a proper fire, and Casey yells, “Stand back!” and then tosses a slow arc of the ice cider towards the flames. It’s not a lot, just enough that the short-lived cascade of liquid catches the firelight before the alcohol brightens it considerably, a blinding flare that seems to solidify the blaze.
There isn’t time, after that, to circle back to who owns the ice cider, or all Casey’s hard work, or the fact that with every passing day Will becomes more sure that selling this farm to Catherine Rose’s buyers would be a godawful thing to do to someone who seems, reckless driving habits aside, like a pretty excellent person. There’s dancing, instead, and more drinking, and so many people and conversations that Will can’t quite keep track of them all. There’s singing and laughing and a late-night slice of cherry pie from the trunk of someone’s car that is maybe the most delicious thing Will has ever eaten in his life, and Will can’t make the space to go back to it. He’s having too much fun with Casey, who makes him feel sopresent, soalive, that it’s hard to remember the Will he was just a few weeks ago, lurking at the edges of Selma’s parties, getting into emotional showdowns with his ex-boyfriends’ untamed lizards. It’s not as though they don’t have time, after all. It’s not as though, just because the bridge is being repaired tomorrow, they have to get into all of this right now.
It’s a good night, a golden night, a night that makes a painful, aching hope—the kind of hope, Will thinks, that really does kill you—throb like a fresh bruise in his chest. When,eventually, he and Casey walk home together, they are bathed both in the edge-softening moonlight and the hazy wash of yellowish lamp-glow from the motion-activated lights on the side of the market, forever triggered by bugs and so on most of the night. Will thinks, for a second, when they reach the porch, that maybe Casey might lean closer, into Will’s space, and change the rules again, between them. He pauses at the foot of the stairs, turning to face Will, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes as their gazes lock. Then Casey’s falls, sliding down slowly over Will’s body, and his smile falls, too, into a headier, more intent expression. It makes Will’s mouth go bone dry, the moisture seeming to migrate to his suddenly sweating palms. Casey steps forward, and for a single, blissful second, Will thinks he’s going to feel one of those long-fingered hands against his neck, sliding up the back of his shirt, and?—
“Night, Casey! Night, Will!” The voice is Todd’s, and slightly pointed, and hugely effective. Casey steps back with the same calm efficiency he did three days ago when they’d encountered a swamp rattler in some brush they were clearing together, his face carefully blank. Will, certain his own face is flaming red, glances over with atleastas much venom as a swamp rattler to see Todd passing, affecting an expression of exaggerated innocence, with Noel, who’s looking highly amused.
“Good night,” he calls back through gritted teeth. Mortifyingly, he thinks he hears Noel snort as they walk off with Todd.
And, worse: “God save me fromteenagers,” Casey mutters, turning away and hurrying up the steps. He’s not looking at Will; Will, amazed, wonders if he’sembarrassed. If maybe those damn kids reallyhadinterrupted him, crashing into this moment he spent all night building. It certainly seems that way when Casey adds, “They’re more trouble than they’re worth!” and disappears into the house before Will can reply.
He’s retreated up to his bedroom by the time Will gets inside, and after some consideration, Will decides to leave italone for tonight. If Casey wanted to talk, he wouldn’t have gone up to the attic, and Will can let it lie, for now.
The morning, he decides, is the moment for him to act. Before all of his neuroses and doubts and unfortunate quirks of personality have completely woken up; before he can talk himself out of it. He’ll just—he’ll—tell Casey everything, maybe, or perhaps just go for broke and pin him up against the kitchen counter—better yet, let Casey pinhimagainst the kitchen counter…
Abruptly, Will finds himself standing in front of the door to Casey’s attic bedroom, gnawing on his lower lip as he stares at the polished wooden surface. It’s slightly ajar, the door—it often is—but Will has never gone upstairs, or even knocked. Casey, he’s noticed, has maintained a similar tacit boundary ever since the first night Will spent in the guest room, giving his private living space a wide berth. He can’t speak to Casey’s reasons, but it had seemed to Will like a bridge too far, to ask for passage into a space that was entirely Casey’s own. The house, the market, the farm: Will has a claim to all of that, if an awkward and uncomfortable one. But the last time Will saw the attic it was just unfinished rafters, and loose insulation, and more spiders than he felt was compatible with his continued presence there. Whatever’s up therenowis Casey’s and only Casey’s, and even in his most irritated and self-righteous moments, Will’s felt honor-bound to respect that.
And… it’s not that hedoesn’tfeel bound by honor just now. That’s not it at all. It’s that there’s a corner of him, not particularly impressive in size but quite doggedly stubborn, insisting that those teenagersdidinterrupt Casey in a delicate moment. Insisting that he, Will, is standing in front of the bedroom door of thesingle most attractive human beingwith whom he has ever sharedair, let alone houseroom, on the last night before his own excuse to stay here is swept away like the Glen River Bridge. Insisting that if there’s even achance, even a glimmer ofpossibility, that those damn kids really did cut Casey off seconds before he could lean in for a kiss, that Will would be wasting the opportunity of a lifetime to walk past, call it a night.
He tries, for a second, to walk past anyway. But his feet won’t move; he’s every inch as rooted to the hardwood floor as the trees out in the orchard are to the earth, somehow both fixed in place and growing. He takes a breath; another one. What could it hurt, really? What harm could it do, at this point, to see what would happen if Will just reached within himself and found the courage to ask for what he wanted?
Will reaches within himself. He lifts a hand. He knocks.
There is a pause. Then, “One second,” Casey calls, in a voice Will can’t read at all. Surprised? Pleased? Panicked? It’s not enoughdata, those two words—three syllables—God, Casey’s making crashing noises up there like he’s knocked something over… wait, is he taking the steps two at a?—
“Hi,” Casey says, ripping the door open to reveal a small landing, a set of stairs ascending into the attic behind him. He sounds slightly breathless, and for a moment he looks thunderstruck, as though the world has shifted underneath him. Then, slowly, he starts to smile as he leans against the doorframe, affecting a casual pose. God,hell, he must have been partway through changing for bed—he’s wearing a pair of loose pajama bottoms, which Will notes with distant amusement are printed with a pattern of little radishes… and, as far as Will can tell,absolutely nothing else.Raking a hand through his thick blond hair, his voice threaded with an invitation that thrills Will as much as it frightens him, Casey says, “Diiiiiidya want something?”
“Did I… want something.” It’s a question, technically, but Will doesn’t say it like one. He’s forgotten how to ask questions, and maybe also how toproduce saliva, if the sudden dryness of his mouth is anything to go by. Casey’s shirtless body is more distracting than Will would have expected it to be by such awide margin that it’s a little disquieting. It’s just atorso, first of all, and Will has seen itbefore: in fleeting glimpses as Casey exited the bathroom after a shower, and in far less fleeting glimpses while Casey was just wearing a tank top. And those tank tops are practically nothing! Gossamer thin, some of them! No one alive, surely, is more aware of this fact than Will! But somehow none of that has allowed Will the chance to really… take it in, to catalogue this part of Casey the way he’s catalogued everything else. It shouldn’t be surprising. This is the torso that makes sense for someone who throws around sacks of feed as though they’re full of feathers—no beefed-up vanity muscles, just a solid wall of strength—but being so close to it short-circuits the bulk of Will’s brain.
Actually, maybe it’s more accurate to say that it reroutes most of the energy in his brain… somewhere south.
The little part of Will remaining up top to run the ship thinks,You’ve been quiet too long – words, William! Surely you’ve heard one or two in your life!It’s not particularly helpful in terms of pulling anyup, but his mouth opens anyway: “I, um. I just wanted…” Helplessly, his eyes flick from Casey’s warm, open, inviting face to his chest, which also looks, to Will, warm, open and inviting. “Sorry, uh. I mean, I want…”
All at once Will realizes this ishumiliating, that he is making afoolof himself standing here babbling, all butdrooling, like he’s… he’s… one of the stupid gawkingtownspeoplewho talk about Casey like he’s a piece of meat! Like he’sNoah Anderson! It’s shameful, is what it is, and Will should be ashamed of himself. He should have to do the Unfortunate Piece of String as a punishment.
But when he drags his eyes, with some force, back up to Casey’s face, there’s a smile on it that Will’s never seen before. It’s agoodsmile: one that has a lot of delightful things to say, very few of which would be repeatable in company.
“Jesus, I’m… sorry,” Will stammers, scrabbling to hold onto what he’s supposed to be saying in the face of that promising expression. “I don’t—I’m. I probably should’ve thought through what I wanted to say before I got up here, huh? But I didn’t, so.” His gaze drifts down again for a moment; he wrenches it back up. “Now I’m struggling with the, uh. Talking?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s some problems you don’t solve with talking.” Casey starts shifting his weight, leaning off the doorframe and towards Will, one arm snaking out. “Anyway, I figure I know what you want.”
All the times he’s pictured Casey kissing him—and it has, if Will’s going to be honest about it, been quite a few—he’s imagined being kissed as though by a hurricane, all force and power and too much at once to keep track of, a marvel of nature you can’t help but admire until the moment it rips you apart. But Casey doesn’t rush. Casey kisses Will like they’ve got all the time in the world, like the bridge repair’s been cancelled, like tomorrow’s never coming. He splays the hand that isn’t holding Will flush against himself along the side of Will’s neck, fingers sliding against the tender skin underneath Will’s ear. The sound Will makes into Casey’s mouth at this particular sensation is less than dignified, but far from making Casey back away, or snort in mockery, or roll his eyes, Casey tightens his grip and moves them both, spinning them so he has Will up against the stairwell wall.
Some time passes; Will couldn’t say how much. Who could possibly say how much? The minutes burn merrily away, hissing and crackling as they go, thoughts and logic and hesitations going up in smoke right along with them. He doesn’t pause when Casey says, “You wanna come up?” He doesn’t question himself, or the moment, or whether he’s making the best objective choice, the choice that runs the fewest risks in the circumstances. He’s busy following Casey up the stairs instead, and being interrupted halfway through to be thoroughly kissedagainst the banister before, eventually, Casey grabs him by the wrist and growls, “C’mon.”
As Will’s being pulled along behind him, he can’t help but remember thefirstencounter he and Casey had on a stairwell, which was somehow only the Saturday before last. What would have happened if it had all played out a little differently? If Will had come out to the farm first that morning, instead of going to Mike’s for breakfast, and caught Casey fresh from the shower, still dripping with a towel slung around his waist? Would they have screamed at each other and stormed away angry, the way it happened in reality? Or would the tension, Casey’s bare chest, the thin light of the early hour, have tipped things past the breaking point? Maybe Casey would have tossed him up against the landing wall, snarling, all that white-hot frustration pouring out of him as passion?—
“Will?” Casey’s staring at him, eyebrows up, when Will breaks out of this filthy train of thought at the top of the stairs. For the first time since he opened the door to the attic, he looks a little uncertain. “You good? We don’t have to do this, you know, if it’s too?—”
“No, God,” Will says, flushing. “Nothing like that. I was just…” He pauses, embarrassed, and then realizes that in the circumstances, he’s not sure he needs to be. “I was thinking about, um. How it might have gone differently the last time we were in close quarters on a set of stairs?”
Casey blinks at him for a second; then he smiles; then he laughs. “What,” he says, chuckling, “you mean if I’d said, ‘Is that a broom handle you’re poking me with, or are you just happy to?—’”
“Oh my Goddon’tmakethatjoke,” Will says, half-groaning on a laugh of his own. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you said that, Ihateyou—” He freezes, a deer in the headlights, abruptly sure that he’s gone too far, made it weird, misread the moment,said the wrong thing, or otherwise killed the mood. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time.
But Casey’s smile goes dark and purposeful again, and he steps close, right into Will’s space, until there’s only a single electric inch between them. “You hate me, huh?” he says, his voice low. “Go ahead, then. Prove it.”
Will launches himself forward like he’s leaping for shore, the very last dregs of his higher thinking skills swirling down the drain. He’s pretty sure he fails, over the next few hours, to prove that he hates Casey, but that’s all right; it’s not like he was ever really trying to.
