Closing Time

Phew, nevermind. Okay, heart emoticons are bad. xD

Chapter One

by Ember

A/N: Whew. It’s been a while since I buckled down and actually wrote something of some quality that resembles merit. I’ve been pretty busy lately, but it feels good to get something done. Sort of. ^_^() Anywho. Here’s a story. There’s some sex in it (starting next chapter, though, sorry. =P), and some substance abuse; some love, way too much religious context, and affairs and heartbreak and all sorts of illegal activity. But, mostly sex. It’s a party. You’re invited.

Closing time
Open all the doors and let you out into the world.
Closing time
Turn all the lights on over every boy and every girl

–Semisonic, “Closing Time”

+

6 years earlier

Micah stretched out, balancing one elbow on the arm of the sofa, the other folded over his chest, both hands toying with the Game Boy resting on his stomach. Resonating beeps in a musical masquerade chinked and chimed at them from the lower left corner of the gray box, punctuated every few tunes by the decisive clink when he pressed the buttons. “So, man, what’re we doing?” he asked, not looking up from the dimly-glowing screen.

“Hmm?” Aidan was reading a magazine on the floor, his back against the side of Micah’s sofa. There were three other chairs in Aidan’s basement, but two of them were all the way across the room, and the third was covered in string and fabric- they’d been talking about flying a kite all day at school, like they used to before High School, and they’d decided to give it a shot. Building it was messier and more involved than they’d thought it would be, however, and they’d soon found themselves bored with the canvas and glue. “What else do you wanna do?”

“I dunno.” Micah thumbed at a couple of the buttons on his game, either saving it or overcoming a Game Over. “You’re the one that said you had something to tell me.”

He did? Alarmed by his own rash brevity, Aidan struggled to remember the train of events that had caused him to slip and say something like that. He’d been planning to tell Micah he had something to tell him for a month, now, without much thought to how to disclose the information once the plans to disclose had been cemented. “Oh,” he managed. “Right. That thing.”

Micah switched his game off and tossed it on the cushion, then struggled to sit up, with his back resting on the arm of the sofa and the tip of his dark brown ponytail brushing against the fabric. “Yeah,” he said, sounding, somewhat, bored and impatient, as though he’d had other plans that he’d had to cancel to talk with Aidan. It was the tone of voice he usually adopted when he was secretly very curious, but didn’t want to sound too desperate for the information. Micah was tall for a fifteen-year-old, one of their only contemporaries that was taller than the girls in their class, and unusually thin. He always had his brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, and always wore a button-down shirt and a silver cross around his neck. Micah was very big on crosses- his family had started with the holy union of a very strict Baptist accountant and his Methodist stay-at-home wife. The father also wrote religious self-help packets in his spare time, while she cooked for every Church event in either of their respective temples, often juggling two events at once. They’d had three children, the middle of which was Micah. He’d had that cross around his neck since he was an infant, and usually toyed with it before a test or something, like he hoped the luck would roll off of it in waves. Aidan told his parents about it, once; his father rolled his eyes and his mother laughed a little, then told him not to worry about it. Everyone had their own ways to cope with life.

Aidan’s father was a gastroenterologist, and would never tell his son what that meant. Every time Aidan asked, the older man would laugh, deep and throaty around the smoke-scarred skin in his throat and point to the dictionary that collected dust on their coffee table. ‘Gastroenterologist’ was not listed, so, at his mother’s insistence, Aidan pieced together the Latin base words. He had decided at the time it had something to do with the digestive systems of trees, and, by the time he was old enough to know better, he simply no longer cared. His mother was a botanist for the United States Department of Agriculture, and was nearly single-handedly responsible for splicing the wildly-popular plumagranites and helping the USDA receive public approval for their hybrid fruits and vegetables.

Aidan, himself, had no great scientific talent, which his parents pretended didn’t bother them, though he wasn’t entirely certain that they noticed at all. When his mother had some sort of new genetic code to break through and his father had some enterology to gastrate, Aidan could leave his report card on the counter for two weeks, collecting dust, unnoticed and unsigned. It suited him fine; he didn’t want his parents to know exactly what was going on in his life, anyway. “You have to promise,” he muttered, folding his arms over his knees, “that you’ll still be my friend.”

“Dude. What are we, six?” He heard Micah readjusting, turning around on the couch so he could lean over the other arm and stare down at his best friend since they were too young to know what best friend meant. His expression, however, softened when he saw how vulnerable the other teenager looked. “Of course I’ll still be your friend. What’s up?”

He didn’t know where to start, so he decided to start where he’d found it out. “You know Jenny?” He couldn’t believe he was actually saying this. He’d never told this to anyone.

“Roseburg or Huesen?”

“I don’t know. The one with blonde hair.” He was bad enough with first names, and incapable of remembering last names. He struggled to think of whether both tenth-grade Jenny’s were blonde, but when Micah grinned and nodded he guessed it didn’t matter.

“The chick who’s totally into you, right?” The dark-haired Christian smirked, messing up his best friend’s strawberry curls with one hand. “She’s pretty hot, man.”

“Maybe to you.”

“Not to you? Man, if you’re waiting for better, I’d work on that acne problem. Jen’s the best you’re gonna get.”

“I’m not into girls.” Just like that. He had to force himself to say it; the words caught in his throat and came out in a sort of half-hearted croak.

“Oh,” Micah responded, processing the words one at a time, then coming to the obvious conclusion. “Ugh!” He jerked back, away from the edge of the sofa, staring down at his best friend. Aidan was avoiding his eyes. “You’re into dudes, man?”

What could he say? He’d known that reaction was forthcoming. He stared at a crack in the paint on the wall and didn’t say anything. Micah didn’t move. Soon, he guessed (he hoped) he’d get up and leave, and the whole awkward, painful stretch of silent seconds that didn’t seem like it would ever wind down, disapate into embarrassed snatches of memory to spring up whenever fate decided he needed to feel disgusted about himself, would end. The whole thing would be over.

“It’s good you came to me, man.”

Aidan laughed a little bit. How much longer was this gonna be stretched out? He could feel his face heating up; here was his biggest, most disgusting secret and he’d chucked it out into the open, at his best friend’s face. “Why’s that?”

“I can help you, man!” The other boy’s fingers closed on his shoulder, shook him a little bit. “This isn’t one of those things you can’t change about yourself. You can make the choice, Aidan.”

“What choice?” He wasn’t going to start crying. That’d be stupid, so he ignored how his chest was tightening up, how his throat clenched around the words like he just couldn’t bear putting more of them out there. “I’m not going to kill myself...”

“No! No, not that choice. God, don't say that." For his credit, Micah looked genuinely disturbed for a moment before the spark reignited in his expression. "Aidan! Dad told me, when he first met you, he told me, God had a reason for making us friends. He said, with your parents, you were at risk, Aidan, and that’s not fair to you. You didn’t ask to be born to them.” Aidan had never seen Micah like this. The taller boy launched himself off the sofa with a fervent passion last seen in a rabid raccoon offered a struggling kitten. Eyes glittering, he prowled around his best friend and dropped to his knees, eye-level with the top of Aidan’s scarlet brush, too far into his friend’s personal space. The energy in everything from his expression to his poise was off-putting. “You’re sick, Aidan, but you can be helped. I can help you.”

Oh. That was what this was all about. “I’m not sick, Micah,” Aidan protested, shaking his head slowly, eyes shut tightly against his friend’s passionate expression. “I’m gay.” He didn’t think he could take the Christian reaction to this; it wasn’t why he went to Micah first. He needed the friend reaction.

“You’re not gay, Aidan. No one’s just... gay. You’re tempted.” He hesitated in mid-motion, then managed to put his hand on Aidan’s shoulder, light contact through his shirt. “Everyone feels tempted sometimes- to cheat on a test, or change religions, or laugh in church, or jerk off to dudes. But God wouldn’t make you inherently sinful. You just need help.”

“I don’t need a preacher, Micah.” He didn’t know whether to be grateful that his friend wasn’t leaving him, or hurt that he thought he was... sick. That he needed help.

“Let me help you.”

“I don’t need help.” He looked away as he snarled out the words, harsher than he had intended them to be. But when he turned back, the passion had flickered out of Micah’s face, leaving a pleading, sympathetic expression dominating the other boy’s features, and it made it so much harder to deny him. “I need a friend.”

“I am your friend.” Micah’s fingers were wound around the silver cross, and Aidan hadn’t even seen them move there. Maybe they’d always been there. “I just want to help you.”

Aidan paused, and fidgeted, and sighed. “I don’t need help,” he protested, weakly.

“Yes, you do.” The Baptist drew in a few inches, staring straight into Aidan’s eyes. “You know you do. Let me help you.”

Second passed, maybe a minute. Aidan wanted to fight, but it wasn’t worth it to say no. To argue. He just wanted to keep his friend. “Alright,” he said, finally, faintly. Micah smiled.

+

Time Reset

Aidan pressed the clutch in as far as it could go, wrenched the stick out of second and thrust it into reverse with almost fervent force. The old gears groaned a little, then shuffled into the appropriate alignment. A sharp tug brought the parking brake up with a squeak, and the old Jeep started to slide back, then groaned to a rusty stop. Another ride successfully brought to a close, Aidan thought as he patted the frayed pleather steering wheel, affectionately, then twisted off the ignition, listening to the old engine sigh as it shut down.

The University of Maryland had a range of old, beaten-down cars lined up in student parking, but Aidan liked to think Blue took the cake. A ’91 Jeep, mottled rust-orange and cerulean, with a tan, black and duct-tape interior, it had been his car since he was sixteen. He shut the door carefully climbing out, taking caution not to disturb the joists, and impulsively rubbing flakes of burnt-orange rust from the handle. They floated down and onto the pavement at his feet.

He had just started towards the big brick building when he heard a female voice call his name from across the parking lot. He hadn’t noticed student housing’s double glass doors swinging open, or the knot of students sauntering out in a herd, chatting and smiling; Aidan didn’t recognize most of them, though he did spot the girl who’d called out to him, and a couple other friends in the group. He waved back, and jogged across the pavement, catching up as the three he knew broke away from the main group.

Calling a cheerful goodbye to a an Asian couple Aidan didn’t recognize, the girl who’d called him ran skinny fingers through her short afro-cut and hustled over to him, hips waving side-to-side as they always did when she walked. “Hey, there, Ai!” she chirped, hugging him lightly around the shoulders, then turning the side of her face to him.

“Hey, Jasmine,” he said, bending down to give her a peck on the cheek, grinning as she blushed. Her bony arms tightened around him, then slipped down to her sides. Her best friend since middle school, Brittney, shoved her out of the way and tilted her cheek to him; he had to lean up to kiss her, but he obligingly obeyed. Brandon, Brittney’s boyfriend, personal chef and entourage, made no such move, and shook his head when Aidan looked at him, inquisitively, to ask if he wanted a similar greeting.

“I don’t believe it, man,” he said, rolling his eyes a little in rather convincing irritation. “After all I’ve done for her, my girl falls for you over me every time. What is it about chicks and gay guys?”

Brittney rolled her eyes in response, and Jasmine managed a half-hearted titter, but neither deigned to respond. “For one,” Aidan said, putting on the most camp face he could muster, and sidling between the two girls, “they know when we say they look amazing in those shoes, we aren’t just trying to get into their pants.”

“Mm hmm,” Brandon responded, both eyebrows rising. “Personally, Aidan, I think I’d be insulted if you complimented my shoes. Or, to be perfectly honest, any of my fashion choices.”

He couldn’t help but be a little offended. “What does that mean?”

“Ai, you’re wearing cowboy boots,” Jasmine pointed out, smirking. She planted her palms on either side of her skinny hips, and tapped the pointed tips of her own light-brown fake-suede shoes against the sidewalk. “I’ve never seen them before, and they’re already dirty.”

Aidan held up his hands in self-defense. “They were on sale.” When sneakers are more than thirty dollars and embroidered pleather boots are $5.99, you do what you can.

“You’re wearing the same Pink Floyd shirt you wore three times in the past week,” Brittney offered, gesturing. Taller, huskier and bustier than her friend, Brittney wore high heels and bright, tight clothes and her hair in long, tight braids. Still, her face was so similar to Jasmine’s, and they were so inseparable that initially Aidan had thought they were sisters.

“Laundry is seventy-five cents a load and gas is three-fifty a gallon. I only make so much money and I had to prune something.” He shrugged and picked at the bottom of the shirt in question. “Black shirts don’t show it.”

“Ew,” Brittney offered. “Even Brandon’s better than that.” Her boyfriend was, as usual, pressed and permed in a pair of slacks, a pale blue shirt and a jean jacket, with a shiny pair of black loafers that had to cost seventy-five dollars, per shoe.

“Brandon has you to dress him, though.”

“She doesn’t dress me!” Brandon protested, almost pouting. “And speaking of wasting money on gas, Micah was lookin’ for you, man. He needs a ride.”

Aidan was just as glad to avoid further evaluation of his fashion choices. “Is he in the room?” he asked, already starting towards the dorm building, to protect his jeans from too much speculation.

Brandon shrugged. “He was when I left. He was gonna try to keep calling you. Charge your phone for once and keep it on.”

“Alright.” Aidan had no such intentions, but he flashed a grin and waved; then, as Jasmine jogged forward to catch up with her knot of friends and Brandon and Brittney locked arms and walked their own way, he turned on a heel and made for the doors.

Sometimes he forgot how hot it was outside until he sank into the comfortable cool inside. The dorm building was a lot of things, but one thing it wasn’t was stingy with air conditioning. Aidan slowed down a little, and walked more sedately down the hall, jamming in the ‘up’ button on the elevator and leaning against the cool, white-painted lobby walls.

It took a few seconds for the elevator’s single bell to sound its arrival. The doors slid open; two girls, talking a mile a minute, bustled out, one leaving a lingering trail of spearmint gum-scented air behind her. Aidan jammed in the button for the eighth floor and listened to the subtle jingles of half-hearted elevator music playing around him as the metal box climbed one floor at a time before settling to roost at the eighth floor.

Room 802 was usually left unlocked when someone was still around or the last person to leave had forgotten to lock it. Either way, the knob twisted easily in Aidan’s hand. “Micah?” he called as he walked in, kicking the door closed and flipping on the main light switch that Brandon tended to impulsively switch off as he left. “Micah? You still around?”

The dorms were, more or less, a small main living area, with a fridge for coke and snacks and, rarely, alcoholic contraband, an old color TV in a corner with three beat-up plush chairs and one folding lawn-chair around it, a linoleum counter with a bowl of fruit, some of it still edible, against one wall, a bathroom that never had toilet paper or enough soap and that was almost big enough for three decent-sized human beings to stand together inside, if one was in the sink and the other stood on the toilet, and two tiny bedrooms branching off. Micah and Aidan slept in the room to the right, and, after a second, the right door lurched partially open and Micah’s head popped out, grinned, and shrunk back in, the door swinging all the way open. The melodious throb of Christian rock pulsed out of the brunette’s computer behind him. “Ai! I was lookin’ for you!”

“I know,” Aidan answered, following his best friend back into the room they shared and perching on his bed, the unmade one on the left, while Micah switched off his music, then shut down his laptop. “Brandon told me. What do you need, man?”

“If you’re not doin’ anything else, I’d love a ride,” Micah answered, with a small, hopeful grin, snapping his computer closed and leaning casually back against his desk. “Were you getting next semester’s schedule?”

“Yeah. I’ve got Professor Wolfe again.” Aidan fished in his pocket and finally pulled out the folded piece of paper he’d just gotten from the guidance office. “Thursdays at 11, and noon on Fridays.” He grinned up at the other kid, who snorted and looked away.

“Has there been one semester since we got here you didn’t have a class with Wolfe?” He snatched the paper from the red-head’s fingers and scanned over the short message. “You have three classes next semester. How is it that two of them are with that same guy?” Micah may have thought it was funny when Aidan had wiggled his way into Wolfe’s class for the second time their second semester, but the fact that he’d also managed to land the school’s most lax professor both semesters of their second year, now, had struck the brunette as utmost irony.

“I know how to work the system,” Aidan replied, flashing a grin. “I ace Wolfe’s classes. If I get him for three classes a year, I’ll graduate with an A average.”

Micah was coasting by on a low C, and responded with a rude gesture as he finished scanning over the paper. “Two easy-A science courses and a semester of Sculpting 1. Of course you’ll graduate with an A average. Some of us take theoretical math courses and science courses with asshole professors and have actually managed to complete our English requirements for our programs, as opposed to arguing our way out of three classes and wringing enough dicks to get away with it.”

Aidan frowned. Micah didn’t talk about Aidan and dicks unless he was upset enough to let it slip; after all these years, putting the two together, in the same bed, still made him uncomfortable. “Aww, don’t be bitter. Where’d you want me to drive you?”

Micah stuck out his tongue, childishly, but still looked a little sour. “Three classes a semester. Man. I’m meeting a chick down in a club in College Park.” He smirked a little, looked over at his friend, and allowed himself to smile. Micah shed emotions like skin cells, and there were always fresh ones underneath. “Met her online. She’s apparently Steph’s sister’s friend. Says she’s of age.” Micah had grown a lot in six years, and Aidan allowed himself to acknowledge that he’d gotten pretty hot- he tried to refrain from acknowledging any more than that. Still taller than most of the guys (and, now, the girls, too), and still the guy with the long brown hair pulled back with a rubber band to keep it out of his eyes, he’d filled out a bit, gotten a cover of muscle and an easier smile. His big, brown eyes had always seemed adorable; now they were enough to make any smooth-skinned, skinny chick smile to herself. Micah was, at heart, a good Christian, and tried to be as monogamous as he could, but the sad fact of the matter was that he was a butterfly among the beautiful flowers, and no girl held his interest for too long. Steph had taken it in stride and they were great friends; other girls, unfortunately, had not. Silently, Aidan wished this new girl luck, and quieted any other, less favorable feelings he might have had towards her.

“What time you meeting her?” He hoped it wasn’t too soon; he fished his phone out of his pocket, switched it on (no messages, no missed calls) and plugged it into the charger sitting beside his own laptop on his tiny bedside table. He was expecting a call and wanted to be around; Micah tended to mind his own business, but Brandon and Jose had no issues answering someone else’s cell.

Micah swung himself out of his computer chair, crossed the tiny room in one step, and snatched the cell out of its charger, holding it up so he could see the time. “Five, maybe ten minutes ago,” he said with wicked humor, dropping the phone back where it belonged.

Aidan frowned and checked the phone’s digital clock; it wasn’t so late that he had to worry. He wasn’t expecting anyone important to try and reach him for another twenty minutes, and the University was, of course, right outside downtown College Park. It wouldn’t be more than a ten-minute drive round-trip. “Alright, then maybe we should go now,” he allowed, and fought down a smile when Micah grinned cheerfully at him and led the way out, spewing words nonstop about how he hoped she looked, and something about the bedside value of a redhead versus a blonde.