Risk and English Muffins

I awoke with cold feet, and the events of the night before collapsed back into me, in the wrong order. Mark's here. We were holding hands. He had a fight with his parents. He's gay. And then, with a fluttery feeling something like wonder, He fell asleep on my lap.

I had sprawled at an odd angle, somewhere between sitting and lying down. My head was on the arm of the couch, but my feet were on the floor. Mark was lying across my legs, with his head on my stomach. My left arm, I discovered, was curled softly around him.

I carefully slid out from underneath him, gently sliding one of the little end-pillows under his head in my place. I looked around for a blanket, but this room wasn't meant to be slept in, no matter how expensively comfortable the couch was. We had a perfectly good guest room for that, as both of us had known last night and neither one mentioned.

I picked up the mugs we'd left empty on the coffee table and padded barefoot into the kitchen, trying to think. He'd let me hold his hand, but he could have interpreted that as simple comforting. He'd lain down on top of me, but he'd been half-asleep already. He'd never shown any sign of feelings for me, but then he never showed any sign of feelings about anything.

I was trudging upstairs to get the blanket from the guest room when I heard the doorbell. I went back down and opened the door, and saw Colleen standing there. I'd never thought she looked much like her brother, but this morning I knew otherwise. Cut her hair short, and she'd look very much like Mark when he was sleeping. It was as if she had his face with the armor plating removed. The sudden resemblance was a bit disturbing.

"Is he here?" she asked without preamble.

"Yeah. He's asleep on the couch." She sighed in clear relief. The sky behind her, I noticed, was dimly gray, and underneath it was something that was now less a rain and more a steadily descending fog. I tried to check my watch, but it was on my nightstand upstairs.

"What time is it, anyway?" I stepped aside to let her come in.

"About quarter to seven."

"Are we going to school?"

"I think school can do without us today." She looked at me. "He did tell you, right?"

"That he's gay, you mean? Yeah. Have your parents calmed down any?"

"Not that I've noticed. They were still asleep when I left though."

"He was gonna go back this morning. . ."

"Bad idea. Tonight's better, after they've been apart from each other and had time to really think about it." I nodded broodingly. We were sitting in the kitchen now, talking quietly so as not to wake Mark. "Hey, Sean?"

"What?"

"Did you tell him?"

A pause. "You don't miss much, do you?" There was an odd lurching in my chest, the sort an old secret makes when broken. "How'd you know?"

"The same way I knew about him, by the way you two are always looking at each other."

"You saw that? Wait a minute, 'each other'? Does that mean. . ."

"Oh, for crying out loud. I really don't know how relationships without girls in them ever happen, you guys are so hopeless. You didn't tell him, did you? And he didn't say anything to you other than 'I'm gay.' "

"Well. . ." I thought of how we'd held hands, and how we'd slept. "Maybe we managed to get the idea across. . ."

"Oh, bull. If you'd had any real idea last night that he liked you, you'd have gotten the grinning over with then." I was grinning. I hadn't noticed. "And if you didn't know, neither did he. Let's go wake him up, I think. At least we can get rid of one source of nonsense in my life." She was smiling now, too, a knowing, slightly superior smirk. She shooed me into the living room and gestured imperiously at the couch, as if to say "Go on!"

I reached tentatively for his shoulder, as if he were some sort of fragile sculpture I could break by touching it. Gently, I shook his arm. "Mark?" I whispered.

There was no response. Colleen rolled her eyes. "Hey, Mark!" He jumped awake - no surprise, you could have heard her across the street - and sat up, blinking.

"Leen? Why are you here?"

"Lots of reasons. Reason one is to see if you're okay. Are you?" He nodded, clearly still in the process of waking up. "Good. I was really worried, y'know. Reason two is to stop all this guyish stupidity. Mark, Sean basically just admitted he likes you. Right, Sean?"

My face was red hot. "Um, yeah," I managed. "Yeah." I noticed myself grinning again, though.

"Good. And you told me last night that you like him, right, Mark?"

"Well, I, um, yeah, I guess so," he admitted drowsily. His face still looked like Colleen's, like it had when he was sleeping. Unguarded. He gave me a wondering look, as if just registering what I'd said.

"So both of you like each other, right?" We nodded. "Good. Now hug. Hug, I said!" Sheepishly, I sat down next to him and did as she said. He returned the hug, surprisingly gentle, and we stayed that way for a couple seconds before I gave him a final squeeze and let go. "There," Colleen said when we were done. "That should have happened six months ago." Mark spluttered, and I half-choked. I hadn't even had a crush on him yet six months before. Well, not that I'd known about, anyway.

There was an awkward pause, which I broke with, "Um, how about hot chocolate again?"

"I'll help," Colleen offered.

"Thanks, Leen," Mark said quietly as we left.

"Did you catch that?" Colleen asked me as I was getting clean mugs out. "If you want an honest answer out of him, you need to ask him right after he wakes up." I stared at her, then laughed. Sure enough, when we went back into the living room with the drinks, Mark looked as he usually did, instead of the sleepy, open look he'd had when we left. Colleen sat down, giggling. "I feel like a criminal, sitting on this couch with a staining liquid. Are you sure your Mom's not gonna walk through the door, Sean?"

I took a seat on Mark's other side. "She said she'd go right to work from Peter's."

"Speaking of which, Leen," Mark said casually, "how are Mom and Dad?"

"They were still asleep when I left." We were speaking Markish again. A non-description like that meant "no change." "I think we should hang out here today," she added.

"Really?" He sighed. "Yeah, maybe you're right. But tonight I'm going home." Going home meant confronting his parents again, trying for reconciliation. I squeezed his knee comfortingly with my free hand. Then it occurred to me that I had reason to go with him, now. Should I? Would he want them to know about us? Was I even brave enough to go through with it? Telling my own mother had been sufficiently nerve-wracking, and I'd been pretty sure she'd be completely comfortable about it.

"I'll come with you."

"Ooh." Colleen sounded doubtful. "Um. . ."

"Thanks, Sean." Mark put his hand over mine, though his voice was casual as always. "But when I told Mom and Dad I was, ah, gay, the first thing Dad said was, 'Was it that Sean kid that did this to you?' "

" 'Did it to you'? Like it was a black eye, or something? Did he really say that?"

"Well," Colleen said, "he didn't describe you so mildly. But basically, yeah." Mark looked at her. "I couldn't help hearing, you could hear him all the way through the house. But Sean, if you go along, they'll go right back to saying it's your fault."

"First thing he said, huh? Was I that obvious?" Talking about it still made various organs lurch around, even with my hand between Mark's fingers and his knee. My boyfriend's fingers, I supposed. Another lurch.

"Not really," Colleen said, "you just happened to match a couple stereotypes. You've got no dad or brothers in the house, and you don't play sports." I rolled my eyes. "He's convinced my friend Sarah's gay, for the same kind of reason, and she's had the same boyfriend for over a year now."

"Well, what do I care what they say to me? If Mark needs me there, I'm not going to abandon him."

"Thanks, but. . . It'd be nice if you could come, Sean. But I think it would hurt more than help."

"He's right. First, they'd immediately forbid him from seeing you. I doubt he'd obey, but it would be a pain in the ass. Second, it would erase all the progress Mark made last night."

"You made progress?"

"Sort of. I managed to establish that no one 'did this to me' and that as far as I knew, you weren't gay." Colleen laughed. Mark and I looked down at our hands, and he chuckled a bit, too. "Ironically enough."

"I think I'm bi, actually."

Colleen laughed again. "Even better. Now Mark can say right out that you told him you weren't gay, and it'll be the truth."

"I'd rather not," Mark said, "unless we were going to keep this secret from them forever." It surprised me how casually he used the word "forever," although it occurred to me that we might break up and still have to keep the secret. "Speaking of which, who are we going to tell?"

"My mom," I said immediately. "She'll be cool, she already knows I'm bi. And it lets us hang out here."

"You told her and not me?" Mark asked mildly.

"Sorry. But by the time I was sure it was. . . more complicated, when it came to you."

"Oh. Well, it's okay. Just regretting missed opportunities." I grinned again - apparently I was developing a habit. "So we tell your mom. And I doubt we could keep it from Ritchie."

"Probably not, he's around us too much." Ritchie was my other best friend, and the three of us generally did things as a group. Well, we had; Mark and I had probably managed to change the group dynamic a bit. "I think he'll be okay. But is that it? Just Mom and Ritchie?"

"Can you think of anyone else who you'd want to know?" Mark asked.

I sighed. "Maybe not. We can figure that out later."

Mark suddenly sat up straighter. "Hey, isn't it a school day? What time is it?" I checked my wrist again, but my watch was still upstairs.

"It's eight o'clock," Colleen said. "First period's started already. Did you want to go to school?"

"Not really, I guess. I think I'd rather do something mindless."

"TV?" I suggested. "Morning cartoons are on, I think."

"Not that mindless." Mark didn't share my taste for cartoons, except for the more serious sort of anime, which was hard to find in our town. I wasn't sure why; maybe he shared his sister's ambition to decrease the amount of nonsense in his life.

We ended up playing Risk. If you've ever played a serious game of Risk, you know how long it takes, and how important alliances between players are. And there's nothing like a new couple for a natural alliance. Or so I thought, until Colleen bribed him away by making English muffin pizzas for brunch. I managed to hold out for a while - it was my set, and the dice were friendly - but eventually I was pinned down in Africa with no way to attack, a losing proposition.

At this point I was desperate enough to take advantage of the fact that Mark and I were both still barefoot and sitting across from each other. I was blushing, and he barely raised an eyebrow. . . but he attacked Colleen. After losing a chunk of Europe to me and half of Asia to Mark, she blackmailed him, mentioning something about baby pictures. At this point the poor guy was so confused he tried to attack himself, which had us all laughing for about ten minutes.

It was about then that the tickle fight started. I was doing fine until Colleen interfered, and this time I had no luck converting Mark to my cause. I got the impression he picked sides based on who he'd rather tickle, instead of who he'd rather help. Traitor.

Anyway, that was why Mom found us with Colleen holding my feet and Mark kneeling on my arms. "I hope you three are going to clean this up," was all she said. I couldn't see her from that position, but it sounded like she was smiling. I couldn't see the mess, either, but I remembered Mark knocking over his chair and me kicking the table a couple times, which had probably sent the pieces everywhere.

"Um, hi, Ms. Perry." Colleen sounded embarrassed, as she didn't know my Mom as well as Mark did.

"Hi, Kathy," Mark said, sounding completely unabashed.

"Hi, Mom! Back from work early?"

"No, this is when I always get home." Was it that late already? "If you two are kidnapping my son, I need him back for dinner."

"Actually, Mom, could you make extra?"

"Sure, I'll just put more spaghetti in."

Mark stood up. "No, that's okay, thanks. My parent's should be getting home, soon. I'd better get back." Mom didn't know what this meant, yet, but I'm sure she caught the way Colleen and I reacted.

"You sure, dear?" she asked. "You're both welcome anytime, you know."

"No, I really should go. Thanks, though. Coming, Leen?"

"Of course, Mark."

I couldn't let him just leave like that. "Hey, Mark," I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Then I didn't know what to say. He turned and looked at me, which didn't help my concentration. We probably looked pretty stupid, just standing there. Finally, I decided on, "Good luck." He smiled a bit, though his eyes were troubled. And they left.

* * * * *

Author's Note:

Well, you asked for it, and I wrote it. Though I sort of asked for you to ask for it, in the first A/N. I'm still not promising to continue. It's not that I don't want to, but I have a long history of not being able to finish long projects; I have a plot disorder. I updated this because I liked it and couldn't stand not to, but I can't guarantee a Chapter 3, much as I'd like to. Sorry.

This is much, much fluffier than the first part; I hope that doesn't wreck the flow when you read them both in a row. But writing pure angst makes me moody; writing a long piece of pure angst would probably make me neurotic. -Er.

To my reviewers from last time:

Nobody's Listening: Thanks a lot. The characters are the most important part of a story like this; I'm glad to hear I did them well.

Cassendra: Hmm. I thought the context and the fact that it was first person kept it straight who was who. I don't like to clutter up dialogue with "I said, he said" if I don't have to. Was there a specific part that confused you? As for the beginning, the repetition was intentional, for dramatic effect, but I don't think it worked as well as I'd like. Can't really think of a better way to put it, though.

V-45: Thanks. I think that not saying things directly tends to keep readers on their toes and involved with the story; you just have to be sure not to confuse them, which apparently I avoided.

Ever Be: Like I said, I'm basically making up Mark's parents out of whole cloth. They probably won't show up in person too often. About your problem with your favorites list, you might try making me a favorite author if the story itself won't fit.

A Yellow Tree, Saint Anger: Thank you both, I appreciate it.