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The lawyer who summoned Billy—about an inheritance, he said—was...weird. Straight out of a movie, with long incisors and a cravat, and he steepled his fingers as he talked.
Max said he was probably actually a vampire, which was likely—and weird, because as far as Billy knew, his mom’s family wasn’t exactly old money, and it was hard to imagine a vampire getting on a plane to fly clear to California and summoning him to a crypt full of file cabinets, all just to read a will about his mom’s collection of surfing stickers and pile of old National Geographics.
Billy knew his father had disowned him, so he bit his lips together, waiting to hear that his mother had died.
“I am here about the estate of your grandmother,” said the vampire lawyer, and Billy drew a shaky breath of relief. “Your mother was disowned—” he said, and Billy almost snorted a laugh— like mother, like son, he thought, “—and so her domicile has passed to you.”
“Wait, what,” Billy breathed, wide-eyed.
“It is an unusual case,” said the lawyer—Fangun and Stayk, est. 986, read his card, but Billy wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to Fangun or Stayk, or whether the whole thing was a joke yet, so he kept his mouth shut. “You will take ownership of the house and land, however, you may not live there—that is, not year-round, not unless you are given an invitation by a resident. It is a closed community.”
“...can I sell it?” Billy asked, and the deepset eyes of the lawyer stared back at him, bloodshot and dry.
“At well below market value,” he said, steepling his fingers again. They made a dryish, papery noise. “As I said, they dislike outsiders. And a stranger will be even more of an outsider than you, in whom runs...the blood of the place.”
Billy wondered, dully, whether he’d inherited a haunted graveyard, or a den of werewolves, and groaned into his hands. Maybe he was part zombie somehow. Just his luck. “Where is it,” he sighed.
“It is not on commonly available maps,” said the vampire, and Billy nodded. It figured, he thought, though his ears perked up considerably when his grandmother’s lawyer laid out a map of Hawaii.
They got a ride from the shore on a fishing boat at four o’clock in the morning. “It’s barely tourist season yet,” said the fisherwoman, showing Max how to steer. “There will be a ferry, in a week or two, but I can give you two a ride out the day your visa’s up if the ferry quits sooner.”
“We want enough time to look around,” Max said, glancing at Billy. They’d let their lease run out, and sold most of their things, because a few orange crates of records were a small price to pay for never having to run into Neil Hargrove around town. “You could get a job on one of the normal islands,” Max had suggested, quietly, over and over. “If they don’t like us enough.”
Billy’d never suggested moving Max so far away, but she’d assumed they were going, and after a while he went along with it. It wouldn’t be so bad, he thought, getting a job in a hotel somewhere after the islanders threw him out. Max would probably love it, in Hawaii.
A fresh start, she had said, and it sounded good.
He and Max were greeted by a woman in a wheelchair, who stamped their passports. “Technically, we’re a different country,” she said, smiling. She had very brown skin, and looked contentedly half-asleep in the sun. “You’re the only visitors on the island for a week or two,” she said, cocking her head. “We’re not always in a big hurry to scrub up the ferry for the summer. We love the money, but the tourists...” she laughed, shaking her head. “Anyway, that's a three-month pleasure trip visa. Have a nice summer,” she said, waving them away.
Her benign lack of interest lessened Billy’s initial fears that he’d inherited membership in some rich, yoga-pants-wearing, white-skinned-only Human Superiority cult, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
The house was traditional-ish, with a grass roof and walls, big open windows with no glass, only shutters, and a wide shaded veranda all the way around. It looked over a beach with rolling waves, and Billy couldn’t wait to get his board out there.
“I’m gonna look around the house,” Max said. “See if I can find any neighbors. Maybe I can bring them cookies.” She set her jaw, frowning around at their luggage, and the scattered pillows. “Maybe we can buy some furniture somewhere.”
“...we can always just come here for summers,” Billy told her, breathing in the salty air, and the smell of green growing things in the sunlight.
“Yeah, you’re gonna have a great time getting a tourism job where you don’t work summers,” Max said, raising a sarcastic eyebrow, and Billy realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach that she expected him to figure it out. Find someone who wanted him to stay, here on the island, at his grandmother’s house.
“I’m no good at making friends, Max,” he reminded her, and she snorted.
“Better get out of my hair, then.” She folded her arms, taking another deep breath of the smell of woven grass in the sun. After a long moment, she looked back at him again. “...we’ve got a little over three months, Billy.”
He suspected it sounded longer to her.
When he wandered down to the beach, Billy could see someone’s tanned shoulders lying across a jutting rock about fifty feet out, and he paddled a ways towards it on his surfboard, getting the lay of the ocean. There was a rip tide, dark and eerily quiet, to his right, but the rest of the beach had shallow, warm, clear waves over white sand and coral until a dark dropoff about fifty feet out where the rolling waves began.
As he paddled closer to the rock, he could see the man on it—asleep, Billy thought, just lying in the sun as the waves lapped at his skin. As Billy drifted closer, paddling with his hands, he could see a long-fingered hand hanging in the water, and he paddled faster, suddenly wondering whether the man wanted to be out on a rock, or whether he was a Dude In Distress, his leg cramped, needing a ride to the beach on Billy’s surfboard...and maybe a trip around the boardwalk, maybe some shaved ice.
As Billy approached, the guy opened his eyes, frowning over at Billy with wide, half-awake brown eyes. He pushed himself up on the rock with his arms like the goddamn Little Mermaid, Billy thought, amused. His throat went dry watching the flex of muscle, and the water droplets where the dude had lifted himself out of the bay.
Billy paddled at random, a little, unable to tear his eyes away. He cleared his throat. “Just, uh, making sure you didn’t need any help,” he said, staring at the tanned arms and swimmer’s chest in front of him, nearly triangular, like a superhero. “I, um. Guess you’re fine.”
The guy raised his eyebrows, starting to smirk, and then his eyes widened, and Billy realized in a flash of blue and foam that he’d drifted right into the fucking rip tide. Right in front of the gorgeous dude on the rock, Billy thought in the back of his mind, trying to hold onto his surfboard and let the rip tide take him wherever it would. Just his luck, he thought, dying because he was so damn gay he saw nice shoulders and his brain switched off. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to breathe before he got sucked down, and his lungs and sinuses were starting to ache worse than the rest of him, even as he was buffeted around against his board, when an arm slid around his waist.
He wanted to yell at the guy—and he did, in an explosion of bubbles—because what the hell good was it gonna do, swimming into a rip tide, but the muscles against his back and butt flexed, and they were moving sideways out of the rip tide, and then Billy’s head was above water. He gasped and choked, coughing up half the sea. The ocean moved soothingly around them, as this dude had no trouble holding Billy up, and Billy tried to clear his throat and eyes.
“Have you seriously never seen a tail before,” the guy groaned, hauling Billy along like he was no more effort to lift than a little kid at the pool. Billy felt rock against his thigh, suddenly, and scrambled onto it, coughing and wiping his eyes to see he was on the jutting rock the dude must have jumped off of, to save him.
“How-how fucking humiliating,” he gasped out loud. “Can’t believe. C-can’t believe I fucking p-paddled into a rip tide.”
“You drifted back into the...yeah,” his hot rescuer said, still in the water, with one hand on the rock to hold him steady as he frowned at Billy. His voice sounded a little odd—Billy was reminded of the Chinese grocery by his house, where their English was perfect, but they had a lilt as they tried to speak an atonal language with a tonal ear. Up close, he was even prettier, with moles Billy wanted to track down his neck and shoulders, and a doubtful, scrunched-up mouth Billy wanted to kiss.
“Sorry,” Billy wheezed, still coughing. “Sorry, I’m such a moron, sorry.” He tried to keep his eyes above the water level, but some part of his brain kept looking for tanned legs kicking under the surface, and he suddenly registered that the moving colors weren’t just fish and anemones. “Holy shit,” he coughed out. “You have a tail.”
His rescuer frowned harder, probably worried Billy had brain damage. “I figured that’s why you swam into the rip tide,” he said slowly, and Billy shook his head, groaning.
“No—fuck, I’m sorry, you—you’re just hot as fuck, I’m just a moron, I’m—damn it,” he sighed. “Sorry, jesus, I’m so fucking rude, sorry, I just didn’t notice, I was like ‘How the hell did he get me out of there? OH!’, sorry,” he muttered, sighing. “...drown me.”
“I am though, right,” the merman said, grinning, “—hotter than you,” and Billy realized he’d found the only person on the island more annoying than he was.
“Yeah, yeah, just laugh at the poor gay moron who nearly drowned staring at you, that’s nice,” he huffed, lying back against the warm rock to catch his breath.
“Was it love at first sight?” asked his rescuer, and Billy opened his eyes to glare.
“Shut up, asshole,” he grunted.
“Just asking,” his tormenter asked. “Are you gonna pine away, sighing over me? Hey, d’you think you’ll always do that? If I swim over in town, you think you’ll fall off the boardwalk?”
“Fuck you,” Billy told him, leaning his face in his arms and laughing. “Yeah, probably, you shithead. Are you gonna...follow me around? So I can look like more of an idiot?”
“Mmm, can you though…” the gorgeous merman asked thoughtfully, and Billy growled into his arms, feeling his whole body warm. He blamed it on the sun. “Why you asking,” his rescuer asked, pulling himself up to laugh against Billy’s ear. “—you want me to follow you someplace?”
“Oh my god,” Billy groaned, laughing harder. “Are you afraid to leave me alone now? What if I try and eat my surfboard?”
“...are you gonna?”
“Maybe?!” Billy told him, then pushed himself up, frowning around to look for it.
“I’ve got it, it’s right here,” the smug asshole told him, waggling the surfboard in the water. “Want me to take you back to shore?”
“No!” Billy laughed, sighing. “I’m going surfing, just because I nearly died making an ass of myself doesn’t mean—”
“Hrm, maybe I should keep an eye on you.”
“Why,” Billy asked, then pitched his voice just a little lower. “You like what you see?”
“I could get used to it,” the merman said, and Billy started to preen, but the dickhead finished with “—kind of a comedy special, kind of thing,” and Billy reached over and smacked a big splash of water at him.
The guy laughed, his throat arching back, the gills along it thin dark lines that Billy fantasized kissing around.
Just as Billy was considering grabbing the surfboard and using it as a weapon of blunt force trauma, the merman leaned in close, his smirk widening around pointed teeth, and his cool, salty lips pressed firmly against Billy’s. Billy made a weird gulping noise in his throat, and the asshole started to pull away, but Billy leaned in, and fell clean off the rock. His weight dunked them both, and they rose sputtering and laughing, Billy held securely in his merman’s arms as his surfboard floated away. He couldn’t really bring himself to care.
“...my name’s Billy,” he panted.
“...Steve,” the mer-dickhead said, raising his eyebrows, like it was weird to want to know his name.
“...I inherited a house here,” Billy told him in a rush, drunk on kisses. “I’m from California. My mom used to talk about this place when I was a kid. Surfing here. With her mom.”
“...is she here?” Steve asked, steadying them with one hand on the rock, and glancing back at the beach.
Billy laughed, shaking his head. “Fuck, sorry, you don’t need to know my shit. We can make out. You’re short-circuiting my brain.”
“...I should probably get your surfboard,” Steve told him, grinning, but he leaned his head in again, gentle with his sharp teeth, and Billy inhaled shakily as the points grazed his lips and tongue.
“Jesus,” he whispered, once he could talk, and then he licked his lips and wrenched himself away to swim after his surfboard, just so his smug rescuer wouldn’t have to fetch it for him. The waves got bigger as he got out to where the trees weren’t acting as a windbreak, and he clambered up on his board, glaring back as Steve wolf-whistled.
When he let the tides pull him back towards the gorgeous merman on the rock, he lost his mind again, telling him his tail looked like a peacock butt, and Steve cracked up, grinning at him.
“...so, neighbor, you have to win someone over enough to invite you to stay,” he said, cocking his head.
“Yup,” Billy told him, pointing up at the house he’d inherited, built into the hill, the old grass vacation cottage blending in with the trees.
“And your method is to tell me I look like bird ass,” Steve continued, and Billy grimaced, waving his hands.
“No! No, I don’t—I know people have to get to know you. Here. I’ll…” he sighed. “I’ll try for a few months and see what happens. If nothing...clicks, maybe I’ll try again next summer,” he said, grimacing, and wondering what Max would do, if they weren’t allowed to stay. Leave, maybe, he thought—she was seventeen, and she could get a job herself.
He ended up teaching Steve to surf, after showing off his best efforts. (When he'd swam back to the rock, panting, Steve looked properly impressed, and even more tanned. “Teach me,” he said, and Billy leaned in to kiss him again, nodding.
“That gonna get you to like me enough to let me stay?” Billy asked, and Steve frowned at him, but Billy laughed, and leaned in for another kiss.)
“See you again tomorrow?” Steve whispered against his lips, and Billy got no sleep at all that night, he just rolled over every couple hours to check the clock, and see that another two minutes had passed.
Steve was just as fascinating to watch on the board, his tail trailing as he controlled his motion with his hands around either side, his abs flexing as he held himself in a kind of plank pose with the support of his tail. Billy watched, and realized he was drooling.
“You like me enough to keep me?” he asked the next night, teasing, and Steve laughed.
“Ask me again tomorrow.”
Merpeople—or at least Steve, Billy corrected mentally, realizing he was dealing with a sample size of one—loved bread. Like a cat, Billy thought, watching Steve eye his croissant, or bagel. He started just bringing one every morning for Steve, and some coffee, and it was hilarious watching the fluffy flesh of a croissant dangling between Steve’s shark-like teeth. He waited every morning, and even though Billy wasn’t sure whether Steve was waiting for Billy or the bread he was carrying, he got heart palpitations every time he came down the ramp to the dock, and he could see the little lump of Steve’s head on his folded arms, the rest of him hanging off into the water.
“A few bagels aren’t enough to win me over,” Steve told him, and Billy’s stomach twisted, a little. He wished he hadn’t brought it up, kind of—the knowledge that he might have to leave hurt, like a sore tooth he couldn’t stop worrying at in his mouth. “Maybe more croissants,” Steve said, smiling, and Billy brought him more croissants.
When they’d arrived they’d discovered the town was filled with mermaid stuff, and at first Max and Billy had snickered at it, because surely even if there’d been a merperson or two living near a human town once, they’d died decades ago, or they just traded with fishing boats, far out at sea. They hadn’t considered the amount of people in wheelchairs, or the spray bottles close to hand.
The day Billy suggested he bring lunch down from town, Steve swam over to haul himself up—his tail flashing in the light—through the bottom of one of the little sheds on the dock. Moments later, he banged the door open, wheeling out in an old rusty wheelchair. He spun it in a circle, waiting for Billy to climb out of the water, and then zipped ahead up the ramp to the path.
“Wait up, jesus,” Billy yelled after him, and Steve laughed, the muscles in his arms mesmerizing as they spun the wheels . He slowed down eventually, panting, enough for Billy to jog and catch up. “...lemme know if you want me to push,” Billy told him, and Steve snorted.
“Touch my chair and die,” he said.
“Fair enough,” Billy said, holding his hands up, and Steve laughed.
“It makes me…” he squinted, thinking. “...seasick…?” he offered, and Billy nodded, trotting along next to him.
“Motion-sick, probably,” he suggested, and Steve mouthed it as he rolled along.
The lady at the shaved ice stand leaned out and folded her arms on the edge of the little window, laughing at Steve. “You know they make those that work!” she called, and he flipped her off. “They don’t have to be electric! They make ‘em that just move smoothly.”
“It’ll just rust in my shed,” Steve told her, shrugging. “It’s fine.” As they waited for their tacos, Steve pulled up to a table, and his rusty, janky wheels kept rolling backwards, until Steve sighed and bent down to stuff some rocks under there.
“My friend Robin and I went in together on a nicer one,” he said, “—but I can’t park it in the shed. This one’s not so bad,” and Billy’s perception of it shifted a bit—maybe it was more like getting stuck with an old beater car occasionally, instead of something Steve needed help with.
“...want to wander around, after?” Billy asked. “I haven’t got any souvenirs yet.”
Steve paused, then licked his lips. “Planning your trip home already?”
“...dunno yet,” Billy said, the invitation unspoken between them. It seemed ridiculous to want to stay so badly just because he’d met a pair of gorgeously tanned shoulders and a teasing smile, but it also wasn’t...hard to imagine, lingering on the island to go snorkeling with Steve, and learning about the reefs—he’d absorbed enough for a few semesters of marine biology, he was fairly sure, but told as stories, just off-handed things Steve had seen—and Billy was already wanting a drysuit, so he could go in the fall. Maybe Billy could get a job on a fishing boat, he thought vaguely, or help out in one of the shops.
If Steve would invite him.
Steve had slid his hands under Billy’s swimsuit a few times, pressing him back on their rock, or on the docks, rocking into him as Billy panted and gasped and fell apart under his hands—but he never said anything, after, and Billy hesitated to ask whether it was...anything, to Steve. Maybe he picks an idiot every summer, he thought, watching Steve smile at the depictions of mermaids on every surface of every shop on the main street.
“You all spend so much time keeping everything dry and dead,” he said, grinning over at Billy, who’d been anticipating a comment on the mermaid’s hourglass-like proportions, not her lack of water damage.
“...oh,” he said.
“I have a figurehead like that, but covered in anemones,” Steve said, cocking his head. “It’s beautiful.”
“I mean...you could...plant a vine on it, maybe?”
Steve nodded. “Put it outside in the rain, let it grow.” The lady behind the counter sighed, rolling her eyes, and Steve laughed.
“There’s a whole movement to ‘preserve’ our art,” he whispered to Billy. “Which mostly means they don’t let it become our art.”
“Huh,” Billy said, wondering whether human houses looked like museums, or mausoleums, to merpeople.
“Not to say that I’d pour water on your television set, or drop your mattress in the bay,” Steve said, grimacing a little, and watching Billy’s face. “I get that much.” He looked kind of uncomfortable with the lady behind the counter glaring at him, ducking his head.
Billy leaned to kiss him. He nearly steadied himself on the chair, and then remembered it would roll, and just held his hands goofily out to the side. Steve grinned up at him, particularly at his outstretched hands, and yanked Billy down on his not very much of a lap, hurriedly curling his tail up and around Billy’s waist as Billy threatened to slide down the smooth scales to the ground. Billy threw his arms around Steve’s neck, wide-eyed, as Steve held the wheels firmly, keeping the chair from rolling backwards under the weight of two grown men.
“Let’s go,” Steve whispered, and Billy nodded, breathing Steve’s sun-and-salt smell, and wondering whether it was okay to ask whether Steve would consider inviting him to stay—just until the next season, Billy thought, as the chair and Steve’s tail moved under him. Until the next summer, when he could ask whether Steve wanted him to stay again, or whether he wanted Billy gone.
After staying a whole year, Billy thought he might not have it in him to ask whether Steve was tired of him yet, but the thought of waking every morning to run down to the docks with coffee and banana bread was addictive, and he tried not to think about the end.
Billy ran into the lady who’d stamped his passport, and caught himself staring at her tanned legs propped up on the railing. “Oh, I’m human,” she said, laughing. “But I love it here. I can even shop in the little bookstore, imagine,” she said, and now that Billy thought about it, he realized it had an elevator in the back, and little lifts for the walkways along the higher shelves. “I’ve never had someone offer to lift me into their cafe, here,” she said, her nose wrinkled, and Billy nodded slowly.
“Shoot that thing!” she yelled, when she saw Steve’s awful old wheelchair, and he flipped her off.
“We can only invite a few people,” Steve told him, as they ate noodle bowls. “It’s for somebody you marry, you know, their family, maybe. Or if you leave the island, and have a kid.”
“Yeah,” Billy said softly, hearing the message clearly—invitations were not to be wasted, and Billy wasn’t special enough to keep. He finished his lunch, trying not to feel all butthurt about it. Max would probably understand.
Steve kissed him again, on the docks, and Billy leaned into it, feeling the familiar pressure of tears in his sinuses, and behind his eyes. He had three weeks left, he told himself. Three more weeks. Steve slid a hand up the back of Billy’s head, humming against his mouth, and Billy let himself go soft in his arms.
When they returned to the docks, Steve dug a big beach blanket out, and they spread it out on the sand, and Billy stayed out that night, losing himself in Steve’s warm hands and mouth, under stars like he’d never seen before.
Billy woke to Steve watching his face the next morning, with a little frown, and Billy pulled away, sitting up.
“Better than croissants?” Billy asked, smirking a little, and Steve sighed.
“Was that what this was? Fucking me won’t make me give you an invitation,” he said. He didn’t look amused, the way he had over the bagels, and Billy wondered whether it had worked, a little. Billy’d always had a talented mouth.
“I won’t know if I don’t try, will I,” he said, laughing. “Maybe another round will help?”
“...I have to go,” Steve said, and he didn’t even fold up the blanket, just pushed himself off the edge and slid over the wet sand into the water, gone in a flip of tail. Billy watched for long minutes to see whether he’d come back—they’d been spending every day together, but probably Steve had stuff he needed to do, all the things he’d done before Billy had shown up at the island, easy with his body and his affections.
Billy folded up the blanket, and sat it in the shed, looking around. There really wasn’t much in there—it was the size of a small bathroom, with some knives for gutting fish, a frayed net, and the beat-up wheelchair.
It smelled like Steve, and Billy stood and breathed, his eyes blurring with tears.
Steve didn’t come back, and after an hour or so Billy walked home, and ran into Max returning. “Billy!” she said, with a wide grin. “Nice night? I was out getting breakfast.” She told him about somebody named El, and somebody else named Lucas, and a Dustin.
Max was making friends too, he realized, which kind of made everything worse—she was doing her best, and Billy was just mooning over some guy who thought he was barely good enough for a fuck on the beach. She’d even met their families, he realized, listening, and registered that he hadn’t met any of Steve’s friends. He groaned into the pillows tossed around on the mat floor, and sighed.
“Should I stop seeing him?” he asked, mostly at the ceiling.
“I dunno why now,” Max said. “You’re not gonna find somebody else in a couple weeks.”
“Shit,” Billy groaned again.
“We can try again next summer,” Max said. “I like it here.”
The idea of returning the next summer, once Steve was bored, was enough to make Billy clench his jaw tight against the pillow he was hugging, squeezing his eyes shut against tears. “...yeah,” he said softly.
“God, you sound tragic,” she sighed, wandering over and dropping to sit on his butt. He grunted, and she groaned. “It’s fine, jesus. Worst case scenario we have a, like, vacation home. The vampire dude said we didn’t have to pay taxes on it.”
“Yeah, just pay for plane fare,” Billy sighed.
“He’s out there, y’know,” she said, her weight shifting on his ass as she pointed, “—tanning,” and Billy scrambled up so fast he dumped her with a solid drum-like noise on the taut mats.
When he swam out, Steve just stared out to sea, and Billy clung to the edge of the rock, biting his lips.
“I’m not giving you one of my invitations,” Steve said. “So stop trying to manipulate me into it.”
“Yeah,” Billy said, kind of wishing they’d never met. “Yeah, okay. Do—is that all, or are you sticking around?”
“I’ll stay,” Steve said, frowning at him, “—if you still wanna waste your time on somebody who’s not—how do you say it? Putting out?”
“...it’s not a waste of time,” Billy told him, swallowing hard. “I just wanted it to last longer, is all—” and Steve’s eyes narrowed intently. He grabbed Billy around the back of the neck, and yanked him into a kiss.
The remaining weeks, he took Billy snorkeling, and they had sex every night under the stars, Billy panting Steve’s name, and Steve holding him so tightly it almost hurt. Billy took him to meet Max, and she eyed him warily, but Billy fought and succeeded at securing Steve a plate of brownies, and he was vocally appreciative. She softened a little, at that.
Two days before they had to leave, Steve was lying next to Billy on the wet sand, the waves lapping up nearly to their waists. His shoulder was warm under Billy’s head, and smelled like the high ocean waves.
“...d’you think you’ll come back next summer,” Steve asked, and Billy snorted.
“Depends on whether I can afford airfare,” he said, sighing. “Depends on whether I can get a job somewhere that doesn’t need me in the summer.”
“...so I might just never see you again?” Steve asked flatly, and Billy laughed, shrugging.
“I don’t know,” he said, “—do you want to?”
“...fuck you,” Steve sighed, and Billy pushed himself up to frown at Steve’s face.
“I don’t know what you want,” he said, glaring back at Steve’s narrowed brown eyes. “You wanted me to shut up about staying. What am I supposed to say?”
Steve bit his lips together, and looked away. “...you know I’m gonna give you an invitation. You can just tell me.”
“What,” Billy whispered, scrambling to sit up, his heart pounding as Steve flopped over to scrabble around under his wheelchair, his tail flapping around a little in concentration, like a cat’s. He held an envelope out to Billy without even looking over.
“There,” he said. “All yours.”
“What,” Billy breathed, and then he half-crumpled it, opening it clumsily. “You—you’re giving me one?”
“Two,” Steve said, flatly, frowning down at the sand under his hands. “You and Max, right?”
“Holy shit,” Billy whispered, scrambling over to kiss him, once, then twice, relishing the little noise Steve made in the back of his throat when his lip slid between Billy’s teeth. “I have to go tell her,” he said, half laughing, his vision blurring with tears.
“Okay,” Steve said, quietly, and Billy hugged him before scrambling up and running back to the house.
Max stared at the two calligraphed invitations on the odd plasticky “paper” the merfolk used, written in Sharpie, and shook her head slowly. “You did it,” she said, and Billy laughed, nodding.
“He wanted me to stay enough,” he said, wiping his eyes, and desperately wanting Max to offer to handle the paperwork, so he could run back and kiss Steve.
There was a knock on the door. Max ran and opened it, and a short-haired woman wheeled in on a small, fancy electric wheelchair, in a rainbow overall dress, her tail the reds and oranges of a sunset. Billy never quite stopped being envious of how pretty the merpeople were.
“Steve gave you his invites, didn’t he,” she said, and Max slid them around her back, her eyes narrowing.
“...yeah,” Billy said, warily.
“Give them back to him,” she ordered, glaring between them. “He’s been saving those a long-ass time. He’s got plans for those, and he doesn’t need guilt-tripping by a pair of manipulative orphans, jesus.”
“I didn’t guilt-trip him,” Billy said, feeling guilty, suddenly, and remembering Steve’s stiffness as he handed them over. “I didn’t,” he said, less certainly. “...he...he just likes me, he wants me to stay—”
“He’s known you three months, and you told him you fucked him to get someplace nice for your sister to live,” she said crisply. “Give them back.”
“He’s not giving them back,” Max hissed, but she was staring at Billy in horror.
“I didn’t say that,” Billy said, waving his hands. “I didn’t! Not...exactly.”
“Fuck you,” the woman said, glaring. “You pressured him.”
“Fuck,” Billy agreed, his eyes tearing up again. “Lemme—lemme go talk to him. Max, give—give ‘em here.”
“No,” she said, sounding choked, but he walked over and grabbed them, and hugged her.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said under his breath, for her ears only, and ran back out.
Steve was perched up on his rock again, and Billy grabbed his surfboard and sat on it to glide out, paddling with his hands. The water was clear under him, his shadow passing over the anemones on the reef, and he watched the fish darting around, swallowing repeatedly.
“Hey,” he said, when he got close enough, and Steve’s head jerked around, glowering warily.
“...you came back,” he said.
“...you want me to stay, right,” Billy said, cutting straight to the chase. “You gave me these because you want me to stay.” Steve frowned back at him, and Billy’s heart sank. “Answer,” he said, his throat closing around the word.
“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it,” Steve said, reaching out, but he just grabbed Billy’s board before he could drift into the rip tide again. “You wanted to stay.” He was tense, and he wouldn’t meet Billy’s eyes.
“What do you want,” Billy asked again. “...because I think your friend Robin’s in my house, and she says I guilted you into it, talking about Max. Do you...if I didn’t need an invite. Would you want me to stay?”
“...I guess,” Steve sighed, and Billy swung his leg over the board, dumping himself straight down in the water, because he was definitely about to make some kind of awful noise, and the sea felt good on his hot, wet cheeks. Steve couldn’t see him crying underwater, he thought, grabbing a jut of rock to keep himself from floating back up.
He wished he could take a few slow breaths, he thought, closing his eyes, and then something brushed his arm. He opened his eyes on Steve’s wide-eyed face, his hair swirling in the water. Billy bit his lips together harder, his hands clenching on the rock, and Steve shook his head, pointing up.
“Up,” he mouthed. “Come on.”
Billy let himself be hauled upwards, and pushed up on the rock again, like when they’d first met.
“What are you doing,” Steve asked, hanging on to Billy’s surfboard.
“Nothing,” Billy said, keeping his voice level. “I thought you wanted me to stay. For me. You can have your invites back. I didn’t—” he took a deep breath, hearing Steve’s voice say stop trying to manipulate me, and Robin’s guilt-tripping. “I fucking know I’m pathetic, okay, you don’t have to pity me. Sorry I—sorry I fucking tried, jesus, I just—” he shut his eyes tightly again, laughing as he imagined Robin’s disgusted look knowing Billy’d gone out and cried.
“Wait, fuck,” Steve whispered, clambering up next to him, where Billy barely fit by himself, since it was high tide. He was warm from the sun, his tanned skin gleaming with water droplets, and Billy salivated, because his dick obviously hadn’t gotten the message it wasn’t wanted. “Wait,” Steve said, half on top of him, his weight grating Billy’s shoulder blades against the rock. Billy didn’t really mind. “You only want to stay if—if I want you, what—what does that mean—” His brown eyes were huge.
“...don’t really know how to be clearer,” Billy told him, unable to pull his eyes from Steve’s mouth.
“You don’t want to stay unless I’m happy about it,” Steve said, grabbing Billy’s hands.
“Yeah, that’s kinda how it gets, when you fall for somebody,” Billy told him, raising his eyebrows, and Steve took a shuddery breath and kissed him again. He didn’t stop, though, he just kissed Billy and kissed him, laughing shakily, his eyes welling up with tears.
“Don’t go,” he whispered, as Billy clung to him and the rock, trying to keep them from tumbling off. “I want you here, I want you. Stay with me.”
“I’m what you want?” Billy asked, startled, his brain hazy from warm kisses, and the scrape of pointed teeth. “‘M yours then,” he whispered. “All—all of me. S’yours.”
They laid there so long, whispering and giggling, that Billy had tan lines from Steve’s fingers on his shoulder for months.