Screwups (11 page)

Jake gave him a light slap to the top of the head and whispered, “Bad boy!”

Danny snickered but moved his hand back to Jake’s lower thigh. At least he was no longer brooding about his past continuing to dog him. Still, it was probably a good thing that they arrived at the house in Worcester a few minutes later.

Karl’s house didn’t really belong to Karl. He wasn’t even the only person living there. He just happened to be the only one Danny knew well. They’d met at Dragon Con two years ago and, yes, they’d ended up in bed. But Karl wasn’t really Danny’s type and vice versa. Danny had visited him—and fucked him—once last year, but that was it.

One of Karl’s housemates came out of the house when they pulled into the driveway, directing them to a spot in the back where they could park. Serena was a large, olive-skinned woman in her midtwenties. She might have been part Hispanic, but Danny had never asked. She hugged him warmly when he climbed out of the car and said, “It’s good to see you again. We’ve been trying to get you back down here for ages!”

“I have returned,” Danny said dramatically. He gestured to his friends. “And look! I brought exotic slaves from the north!”

Danny and Karl had been relaying messages between their two groups of friends for ages, trying to get them all together for the LARP, but this was the first time any of them had actually met face-to-face. He introduced everybody, and Serena insisted upon hugging them all. Eva was fine with that, but Paul looked as if he might have a seizure.
Jesus
, Danny thought,
we really need to get him laid
.

After she’d hugged Jake, she stepped back and admired him. “Is this a new boyfriend? He’s handsome!”

Jake immediately turned beet red and Danny hastily told her, “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my new roommate, but he’s straight.” He hated lying to her, but he was afraid Jake would think he’d outed him in one of the phone calls to Karl. He hadn’t. He’d never said one word about having a new boyfriend or Jake’s orientation.

Serena smiled. “Oh, that’s even better!” She hooked an arm through one of Jake’s and turned toward the house. “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”

The house was huge—the kind of place Danny and Eva had often talked about renting together after college, where friends could come and go as they pleased, crashing in empty rooms, and gaming 24/7 if they wanted to. Karl was, in fact, currently camped out in the living room with his other two housemates, Tara and Becky, amid piles of medieval-style clothing and weaponry.

Karl jumped up the moment they entered the house and ran up to Danny to give him a hug and a rather familiar kiss on the mouth—with tongue. “I’m so glad you could make it, sweetheart!” he said, when he finally broke the kiss. He stepped back and got a good look at Jake. “Oh my God! You’ve brought me a present!”

“He’s straight, Karl,” Serena admonished him. She patted Jake’s arm comfortingly, “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

Jake did, in fact, look as if he could use some protection. The poor guy had probably never been exposed to a flamboyantly gay man in his life, Danny guessed. He might not be afraid of Karl turning him gay, necessarily, but he’d put so much effort into appearing straight, someone like Karl was still a little intimidating. But Jake smiled, if a little uncertainly, and extended a hand. “Hey. I’m Danny’s roommate, Jake.”

“Sweetheart, we don’t shake hands in this house.” Karl opened his arms. “Come along. I won’t bite you.”

Jake hesitated but submitted to the hug. Then Danny introduced Eva and Paul. To be fair to Jake, Paul looked even more uncomfortable with the idea of everyone hugging him, but Danny was reasonably certain it wasn’t discomfort with Karl being gay—Paul seemed uncomfortable with
anybody
touching him. Serena then introduced them to Tara and Becky and bustled off to the kitchen to scrounge up something for everyone to snack on.

“Can any of you sew?” Becky asked.

“Don’t look at me,” Eva answered immediately. “I skipped Home Ec.”

To Danny’s surprise, the only person who raised his hand was Jake. When he noticed Paul giving him a curious look, he said defensively, “Boy Scouts. You have to sew your merit badges on your uniform.”

Danny tried not to look amused, but Karl put a fluttering hand to his chest. “He’s even a former boy scout. How could destiny be so cruel to me?”

Tara rolled her eyes. “It’s not all about you, Karl.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course it is.”

“Jake,” Becky said, patting the carpet beside her, “come be my new best friend. I have a ton of garb here that needs to be repaired before tomorrow, and Karl and I are the only ones who can sew.”

“I have to repair these swords!” Tara protested.

“I understand. I’m just saying, unless Jake and his friends brought their own garb, they’ll probably have to borrow some of these.”

“We didn’t bring anything,” Eva confessed. “Is there anything else I can do to be helpful?”

“I have to pee,” Paul said petulantly.

While Karl showed him to the bathroom, Serena returned from the kitchen with a large tray of herbal teas and cookies for everyone. Jake took his place beside Becky, and Eva and Danny settled down beside Tara to help with the weapon repair. The “weapons” turned out to be constructed largely of PVC pipe covered in insulating foam and then wrapped in colored duct tape and electrical tape. The pommels of the “boffer swords,” as Becky called them, were wrapped in cloth grip tape—the kind used for tennis rackets. Most of the repairs had to do with taping up tears in the duct tape or rewrapping the grip tape.

When Paul returned from the bathroom, Serena drafted him to help her in the kitchen, where she was baking shortbread and other food for tomorrow’s event.

The rest of the day was largely spent preparing for the LARP—referred to as The Shires by everyone in the house. Not that Karl and his friends weren’t good hosts. There was plenty of food and conversation, and everyone was welcoming to the newcomers. But the conversation rarely strayed from The Shires or the specific “shire” the household belonged to, known as Griffinmyre. Everyone even used their LARP names in casual conversation, such as when Serena called for “Lord Merek” to assist her with something in the kitchen and Karl responded. Danny had stayed here during spring break the year before, and it had been the same back then, but he was much more conscious of it with Jake there. If people in the dorm had thought Danny, Paul, and Eva were hardcore gamers, that was nothing compared to the denizens of Griffinmyre.

During the course of the day, several more people arrived until the house was bustling with activity. Danny learned that they would all be staying the night, camped out wherever they could find a spot in the many rooms of the house. “Is there a guest room we can crash in?” Danny asked Karl, worried that he and his friends would end up on the floor somewhere.

“You can sleep in my bed, sweetheart.”

“What about Jake?”

“Well,” Karl said reluctantly, “if your gorgeous friend doesn’t mind, I suppose there’s room for him too. It’s a queen-size futon.” Danny knew the reason for his hesitancy—he’d been hoping to get laid. But Danny wasn’t really in the mood to have sex with Karl.

Jake overheard them and interjected, “I guess I don’t mind.” He was looking down at his stitching, concentrating on it perhaps a bit more intently than necessary.

“Dibs on the middle,” Danny said quickly, before Karl started getting ideas of being the filling in a Jake and Danny sandwich. He was apparently too late, because Karl gave him a sour look.

Back off, buddy. You’re not getting your hands on him.

“Where am I going to sleep?” Paul asked.

“You can share my bed,” Tara said. “It’s a double.” Paul looked scandalized, his eyebrows jumping up so high they threatened to pop off his forehead like in a Looney Tunes cartoon, but before he could say anything, Tara grimaced and said, “Don’t worry. I’m a dyke. I’m not going to molest you.”

“Oh,” Paul said uncertainly. “Okay.”

“Do you mind sleeping with me?” Becky asked Eva.

“Only if we have wild lesbian sex.”

“It could be arranged.”

Despite the joke he’d made while planning the nude pizza party, Danny had no idea whether Eva would seriously consider having sex with a woman or not, but he quickly decided he didn’t need to know. At least everybody was accounted for. And he’d just arranged to spend his night sleeping beside Jake in a bed that wasn’t all that roomy for three people.

I’m not going to get a wink of sleep.

J
AKE
HAD
to wonder if he wasn’t cramping Danny’s style by saying he’d share a bed with him and Karl. He’d seen the way Karl kissed him. They’d slept together before, he was pretty sure. The thought of it made Jake… well, he had to admit he was jealous. But he knew he didn’t have any right to be. Danny wasn’t his boyfriend. He could sleep with Karl if he wanted to. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Even if the thought of it made Jake want to storm out and walk all the way back to New Hampshire.

By evening, the repair work and other preparations for the LARP were finally done and the gathering evolved into a party. Everyone pooled their money for pizza and soda, and Serena broke out the mead. Jake had never had mead before—he wasn’t even sure what it was until Karl explained it to him. It was basically an incredibly sweet alcohol made from fermented honey instead of grapes or grain. “Don’t let the sweetness fool you,” Karl warned. “The Vikings used to drink this. It’s very butch.”

It was definitely sweet but also very strong. Jake had to admit it tasted wonderful, though after a few glasses, he was feeling a little nauseous.

“We have to get some of this stuff,” he told Danny.

Danny laughed and touched his shoulder in a gesture that seemed halfway between a friendly pat and a caress. “Liquor stores can’t sell it in New Hampshire. But maybe we can grab a bottle before we leave Massachusetts.”

People started winding down and finding places to crash by one or two in the morning, but unfortunately for Jake, his friends had decided this was the perfect time to work on their characters for the event. They gathered together in Karl’s bedroom with Karl and Tara to go over the details. There was considerably less involved in creating a Shire character than there had been in rolling a character for the D&D game, and with the exception of Paul, who didn’t have a character in that game, everybody decided to just use those characters as their starting point. So Jake was once again a barbarian named Berengar, Danny was an elvish sorcerer named Kareth, and Eva was a halfling thief named Mala. Paul decided to be a human bard, hoping that would prevent him from getting hit.

That was about it. There wasn’t the obscenely complicated rolling up of stats, which Jake had loathed. If he got hit in the arm, he lost his arm. If he got hit in the chest or the head, and wasn’t wearing armor, he died. If he had armor, a good hit would destroy it, and the next good hit would kill him. It seemed simple and Jake liked that.

What wasn’t simple—what was absurdly complicated in this gaming world—was getting dressed. Everybody put massive amounts of time and energy into their garb, armor, weapons, and makeup. It was like they were all preparing for a run on Broadway. Eva and Danny tried on a dozen combinations of tunics, breeches, cloaks, hats, pantaloons, robes, you name it. It meant they were in their underwear half the time, something Jake still hadn’t gotten used to. In high school, he’d always gotten the impression that the geeky kids were chronically shy about their bodies. Certainly they’d always hated undressing in gym. But with the exception of Paul, these people were totally comfortable tossing their clothes off no matter where they were. He couldn’t figure it out.

At one point, Eva ended up in some kind of diaphanous harem girl outfit—which Jake had to admit she looked great in—but she decided it would be far too impractical to run around in the woods like that, especially in late November. Danny found a cool-looking gray robe with a burgundy cloak, and Paul settled for a rather plain brown tunic and breeches. Apparently, he was going to be a bard who blended into the background and didn’t talk much.

Jake wasn’t really into the whole dress-up thing, so he was having trouble picking something out. Unfortunately, that gave Karl an opportunity to swoop in.

“I have just the thing for you, sweetheart.” He got up from the futon and went to rummage through his closet, eventually pulling out something that looked like a big plaid blanket. “Ta-da!”

Tara and Eva laughed, but Danny groaned and rolled his eyes at Karl. “Will you stop trying to get into his pants?”

“This isn’t a pair of pants. It’s a kilt. And I think it would be perfect for his character.”

“You’re just hoping he’ll wear it regimental.”

Jake hadn’t heard the expression, but he knew enough about kilts to guess what it meant. “What? You want me to wear it without underwear?”

“Of course,” Karl answered. “That’s the proper way.”

Jake laughed at him. “You’re such a perv. They’d kick me out the moment a gust of wind blew it up.”

“It’s actually very heavy wool,” Tara interjected. “It would take a really strong wind to lift it up.”

“What if I spin around too fast or kick something?”

“They’re designed to lift up just enough to flare out around the bottom of your butt but still keep you covered, unless you get really carried away.”

“What happens then?”

“The rest of us will probably be very entertained.”

“Won’t I get in trouble for flashing everyone?” he persisted.

Tara shrugged. “If you’re doing it deliberately, someone might complain. But the occasional accidental flash is part of the fun of wearing a kilt and being around people who wear kilts.”

“So if I deliberately flash people, that’s creepy and disturbing,” Jake said. “But if I wear something that I know will probably lead to me flashing people
accidentally
… that’s okay.”

“Better than okay. It’s encouraged.”