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II.
It’s close. Of all the places Angel could have chosen to sit, he’d picked the other seat on the couch, right next to OJ. And he’s manspreading, because of course he is. Poured into the couch, puddled and formless. And his leg is right next to OJ’s, up in his space. They could be knee to knee, if either of them wanted that.
What OJ wants is for things to be intentional. Purposeful. He doesn’t want an accidental closeness.
He keeps his knee where it is.
There are credits rolling on the TV. They have routines now, for the three of them. Smoking and fighting over who picks the movie is one. Em forgetting to actually push the button on the dishwasher is another, along with Angel constantly stopping the cycle so he can double and triple check that he didn’t load anything non-dishwasher safe. (OJ has taken it upon himself to do most of the dishes.) OJ can’t remember what tonight’s movie was. He decides not to think too much about why that is. Angel seems to have liked it, though. At least, he’s talking about it. But that could go either way, actually. Angel talks about all kinds of random shit.
“I like movies because, like. I don’t know if this makes sense, but, like, I like how I can be still. Does that make sense? Like, I can never just sit still normally, you know? Like, I have to be doing something , you know? But sometimes, if a movie is good enough, then I can forget about moving and just be super still. Like I can just be a statue, man. And it’s so fucking nice.”
Angel's eyelids droop down low, almost closed. His eyelashes beat against his cheeks, once, twice. They look like smudges of charcoal in the low light of the television.
“Mhm,” says OJ.
“Angel,” Em says. “Yo, Angel. Pass that shit.”
Angel looks down at the joint in his left hand. Even OJ can acknowledge that he’s been holding it for way too long.
“Oh, shit,” Angel says, laughing. Stoned laughter looks good on him. “Shit, my bad. Whose turn?”
It’s OJ’s turn, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t really care.
Em flutters her fingers in a gimme , reluctant to sit up from where she’s sprawled on the carpeted floor, but Angel bumps OJ’s thigh with his own and passes to him instead. They’ve been forgetting to ash it, so it becomes a whole affair, with fingers bumping as they both try to avoid the cherry. Angel giggles a little. Angel is a grown ass man who giggles.
“Oh, hell,” Em says, likely in response to whatever non-expression OJ has on his face. OJ has worked hard all his life to be stoic and unreadable, and he is, except that Em has worked hard all her life to bother OJ in every way possible. Whatever Em might think she sees on his face, well. There isn’t anything to see.
“It’s the nostrils,” she told him once. “Your tell. It’s all the nostrils and the jaw. Like a–”
“Nope.”
“Like a horse!”
“It was definitely OJ’s turn,” Angel says diplomatically. Misunderstanding.
“Mhm,” OJ says again. He looks at the seven inches of space between Angel’s leg and his own, inhales, holds for two, lets it out slow. A very diplomatic seven inches. Damn.
Em cackles and slaps her hands together. She’s over the moon, clearly. He clicks his tongue at her, says “ yo,” but of course she just laughs harder, slapping the floor a couple times, even. Angel smiles at them, a little confused, but he doesn’t seem upset at being left out of the joke. He’s a good sport like that.
“Hey don’t worry about it, Angel, baby,” Em says. “Hey, wanna see some real shit?”
Angel grins. “Uh, fuck yes I do.”
The “real shit” turns out to be a vape trick where Em putters out a series of little smoke clouds. They go pop pop pop like Roman candles.
“Yoooooo,” Angel says. “How the fuck? How the fuck do you do that. Do you know other ones?”
“Angel,” Em says, “there are many, many ways to impress a woman, but it doesn’t hurt to have a variety of options.” She grins. “Of fucking course I know other ones.”
Em can ghost (basic, elementary, OJ is not impressed, Angel is politely interested) but can also make a cloud that looks like a jellyfish (decidedly more challenging, OJ grudgingly gives props, Angel is delighted). But after a while, OJ gets fed up with the smell of Vuse and they’ve all remembered that they have the munchies, so they occupy themselves with eating and refocus on the TV. Onscreen, the main character of the telenovela is waking up from her coma. Or something.
“In a hospital bed with a whole beat face,” Em muses.
“Right,” Angel says. “Like, when did she have time for a whole ass blowout?”
OJ doesn’t get it. Her face looks fine.
“You guys should for real like, let me get you a Roku,” Angel says around a mouthful of Pringle. They’ve upgraded to brand name snacks, now, with all the Jean Jacket money. Angel changes the channel every two seconds. Infomercial, another telenovela, Judge Judy. Crunch crunch crunch. “I could give you a discount on the install,” he says. “Friends and family.”
“Discount?” Em says incredulously, clambering off the floor and onto the couch so she can be closer to the chips. “Discount? Are we just regular friends to you? ”
“Well I also said family.”
OJ prods Angel with the chip can. “Just pick something.”
The next channel is playing the 1997 version of Cinderella. Angel goes to skip that too, but two hands grab for the remote.
“Yo,” says OJ.
“Ay, go back, what’s wrong with you!” yells Em.
“Alright, okay, I’m not doing anything,” Angel says, but OJ pries the remote out of his hand just in case.
“Skipping Cinderella,” Em mumbles viciously. “That just ain’t right.”
They watch Cinderella. Usually Em and Angel play the peanut gallery, but for once they seem content with just watching in silence. OJ looks over at them and feels something funny, because Em has her arm looped around Angel’s and her head on his shoulder and it looks so ordinary. He thinks the funny thing might be joy.
Angel sees him looking. He gives him a smile, soft and sleepy, and it's special because it lingers for a second. It’s got nowhere to be. Stoned Angel, OJ thinks, is something precious.
“Think she’s sleeping,” Angel stage whispers, eyes crinkling.
OJ hums. No wonder she’s been so quiet. He’ll have to carry her. But for now, it’s him and Angel in the dark. Just them and the pretense of watching Cinderella.
OJ looks at the relaxed lines of him. Completely at rest.
Angel looks back at him steadily.
“Any movie?”
“Hm?” Angel says.
“Is it any movie? You know,” and OJ makes a coasting motion with his hand.
“Oh, that. Man, it’s so embarrassing that I said all that. You really wanna know?”
OJ spreads his palms. “I’m asking.”
Angel smiles, because yeah, he walked into that one. “Yeah. Yeah, I mean. Sometimes. But it has to be good, you know? Like, really good. It can’t just be any… thing, you know?”
OJ nods. Takes in the way Angel’s head is lolled against the back of the couch, the graphite strokes of him, smudged into the cushions. It’s one neat line for his jawline, though. Black and white. If OJ touched him there, if he smoothed his thumb across it, would it be sharp under his hand? It looks like it would be.
Not just any thing, Angel had said, mouth crooked and sheepish. Like it was a throwaway comment from the start. Like he wasn’t expecting that it would collide with OJ, rattle him down to the core and hold fast there. A cosmic event, a critical restructuring.
In the back of OJ’s mind, something shakes loose.
Standing on the porch of the house, the sky a big blue bowl overheard, it was possible to see for miles. OJ has memories of being much younger, but not less contemplative, and sitting on the porch with Em and watching storm clouds roll in. These were some of the rare moments that Em would be quiet, too. There was some kind of magic in the atmosphere that seemed to soak down into their bones. They could look out and see the exact boundary of the storm, the exact line on the ground where the shadow of the clouds began to eat up the sunlight. They would watch, silently, as the clouds turned the yellow land blue and purple. If the storm made it over the mountains, and only the lucky ones did, then they could watch the mountains change colors, one by one, like blue water color, starting at the tip of the mountain and bleeding down the slopes. Those ones always felt like a gift. He and Em never spoke of it, but he knew she agreed. No matter how much they were fighting that day, he would find her at his shoulder, sitting on the porch steps, watching the curtains of rain paint the mountains in swaths of changing color, like swatches of cellophane over studio lights.
OJ isn’t one to romanticize. But he liked seeing the before and after of something, so clearly drawn out. It was reassuring, in its own way.
There was always something captivating about the anticipation of it.
Sometimes, when OJ looks at Angel, at the light and dark landscape of him, he thinks about that slow arrival, and the smell of rain on earth, and wishes he could see it all drawn on the ground.
I.
Em wants to stay to talk to the reporters. OJ is against it. The remains of Jean Jacket are just now floating to the ground, and still there are reporters crowding in over the yellow crime scene tape and clamoring for a quote.
OJ hates it. He wants to give Em a break. Just a minute or two, just to breathe, after fighting for their lives. But she is determined to own their story from start to finish, and that means no respite. Not even a minute.
She tells him that she’ll handle it, if he walks Lucky home and finds Angel.
So he trusts her to handle it. Instead, he walks Lucky home and finds Angel, all swaddled in a blue tarp, lacerations all over his body.
“You bleeding?” OJ demands, when he finds Angel.
Angel just babbles, because he’s going into shock, probably. “What? I mean, yeah, a little. I don’t think it’s too bad, though? What about your foot, that looks bad, man. Did you notice that your foot is fucked up?”
OJ tsks. “Hey, hey. Look at me. Where are you bleeding?”
Angel looks at him. His pupils are blown wide and dark. He has a smear of blood on his left temple, matted into his eyebrow and the beginnings of his hairline, and OJ can’t tell if he has a head wound or if he’s been nervously tugging at his hair with his bloody hands.
Something in OJ’s face must say that it is too bad, because Angel looks down at the gouges in his palms like he’s seeing them for the very first time.
“Oh, fuck,” Angel says, and vomits into the dirt. And then he dry heaves. OJ doesn’t know what to do, so he gets his hand on the back of Angel’s neck, because it feels right that he does that. When it’s over, Angel goes to wipe his chin with his wrist, and then winces when he thinks better of it.
“Hospital?” he croaks.
“Hospital,” OJ agrees.
As they make their slow trek to the truck, OJ keeps his hand on the back of Angel’s neck, and Angel lets it stay there.
On the way off the property, they come across Em, who is facing down at least seven people with cameras and microphones. OJ leans on the horn.
Em excuses herself and comes running over. She leans in the driver side window and looks ready to burst into tears when she sees Angel in the passenger seat. “Oh, Angel, thank God, oh my god.”
“We’re going to the hospital,” OJ says.
Em nods. “Okay, yes, yeah. That’s good, you better go.”
OJ rolls his eyes. He does a back and forth motion with his finger, to indicate “the both of us.” “ We are going to the hospital.”
Em looks torn. “You know I can’t.” She gestures helplessly. “The reporters, they’ll. I don’t want them to start writing this story like we weren’t a part of it. I gotta. I gotta defend it.”
OJ feels a conflicting mix of pride for his baby sister, so determinedly standing her ground, and protectiveness, because she so clearly needs a break. He just wants to give her a chance to rest.
Angel pipes up from the passenger seat. “Um, I mean. You’ve already talked to a lot of people, right? And they’ve taken pictures of you already. I think you’re pretty much the face of this event already. And there will be speculation regardless. There’s only so much you can do.”
OJ nods back at him, like, what he said.
Em still looks anxious. She leans in closer, sticking her head in the window. She speaks in an urgent whisper. “Okay, but. But what if.”
“Uh huh.”
“What if they think we’re running? Like it makes us look guilty, or something.”
Angel raises a hand. “Again, unavoidable.”
“You think so?”
OJ is ready to say to hell with it and just haul Em into the car, but Angel is apparently a fan of the “break it all down from square one” approach.
“Yes,” he says seriously. “I think at this point no matter what we do there will be grounds for speculation. Even with concrete proof there will be skeptics. We’re probably looking at a lifetime of questioning, and honestly, I’d rather get X-rayed before it all starts.”
Angel, OJ thinks, is almost a damned professional with talking out anxiety.
Em nods, seeming to come to a conclusion. “Okay,” she says, “okay, scootch over.”
They drive past all the reporters, who stare at them with varying faces of confusion. Even as Em smiles at them and yells out a “Be right back, going to the hospital!” with fake enthusiasm, she has one hand tight on OJ’s shoulder and one hand on Angel’s knee, and they’re still shaking.
They don’t cross-check their stories before they get to the hospital, and they probably should have.
The receptionist looks like she still sleeps with curlers in. Her smile is fake and relentless. “So, what brings you in here today?”
“Barbed wire,” Angel says, at the same time that Em says “ATV accident” and OJ says “horse.”
There’s a beat of silence.
Em rallies quickly. “Yes. Yeah, he ran the ATV into some barbed wire and spooked the horse.”
“Right,” the receptionist says, typing, “uh huh. And you were on the horse, sir?”
“Yes,” Emerald says, gesturing to OJ. “He was uh, implicated.”
The receptionist doesn’t stop smiling. “Implicated,” she repeats.
All three of them smile back at her.
“Well,” she says, heavy with skepticism, “well, if you’d just take a seat and fill this out here.” She holds out a clipboard, which for some reason Angel tries to take with his hands.
“No,” OJ says, rolling his eyes, and grabs it instead.
“Actually, um, just one more thing,” Em says, and now there’s three of them holding the clipboard, OJ and Em and the receptionist. The receptionist’s smile is starting to look a little plastic.
“Yes?”
“Would it be possible for us to all go back there together?”
“Em,” OJ starts.
“Please,” Em blurts out.
OJ doesn’t say anything else. There’s a tense moment when OJ thinks the receptionist might ask why three whole grown ass adults feel the need to face a triage nurse together, but finally she relinquishes the clipboard. She seems like she just wants this exchange to be over with. “I’m sure that will be fine.”
They settle in the creaky plastic chairs.
“White lady smile,” Angel mumbles.
“Scariest thing I’ve seen all day,” Em says.
“Counting the alien?”
Em laughs a little desperately. “That wasn’t shit, man.”
Angel peers at the clipboard over OJ’s shoulder. “Shit, you guys, I definitely do not have insurance. Also, it’s Torres with an ‘S.’”
“Shut up,” OJ says, erasing.
“No, like, there’s no way I can afford this shit.”
“Motherfucker you got filleted, ” Em points out.
“Not really the word I would have chosen.”
“Well, look at yourself.”
“It’s just a little gruesome?”
“They want your social,” OJ prompts.
Angel swears, then leans in and starts rattling it off so quietly that not even OJ can hear.
“What,” he says.
Angel does a quick scan of the room and then repeats it, only slightly louder.
“Don’t worry about the bill, Angel, baby,” Em says, patting him on the knee. “Hey, who named you Angel?”
“Ask my lola .”
“Oh, okay. Well, don’t worry. We are about to cash in big, alright. I’ll be answering way too many questions on Vogue and playing with puppies on Buzzfeed. And then people are gonna like, be doing mukbangs while they talk about us.”
Angel huffs a tiny laugh. “Is that your measure of success? Shouldn’t we think bigger?”
“What’s a mukbang,” OJ demands.
“No, muk- bang, ” Angel corrects.
“Okay?”
“They’re like. I mean. I feel like I’d have to show you.”
“He’d hate them,” Em says.
“Yeah, nah, you’d hate them.” Alright, so OJ would hate them.
“What is the cooling off period for shit like this though, is what I’m wondering,” Angel clarifies.
“Like legally?” Em answers.
“Oh, I meant, like, socially? I didn’t even think of like. Damn, I should have thought about that! But I meant like, when will it be okay ethically for people to talk about it during their mukbangs, and stuff.”
Em squeezes his knee in a gesture that feels too maternal. “I don’t think they really care, baby."
Angel’s mouth makes an “oh” shape. “Touché.”
Angel braves his stitches with only a slight grimace and is otherwise a perfect patient. It’s when the nurse steps out of the room for a second that he starts fidgeting. He starts flexing his hands as if to test their mobility, which the nurse has just explicitly instructed him not to do.
“Stop that,” OJ says, but Angel doesn’t listen, too absorbed. OJ can’t imagine why, when it must hurt.
“Yo, stop,” OJ repeats, and grabs Angel around the wrist.
Angel snaps his head up and looks at OJ, eyes huge and surprised and a little vulnerable. He stops moving completely. His skin is warm, and for some reason that surprises OJ.
And that’s the first time.
III.
“Hey, should I dye my hair back, do you think?” Angel appears to be halfway through shaving, but he’s also simultaneously brushing his teeth and gelling his hair and a million other things, probably.
“You’ve been in here for twenty minutes,” OJ says, which he thinks is the most important thing. He smells like hay and horse and he needs a shower. Angel smells like shaving cream and clean skin and the cheap deodorant that leaves blue stains in the armpits of shirts. He’s wearing his Spider-Man boxers and nothing else. The scar on his torso starts just over his right hip and spirals up in a jagged line over his left ribs. OJ stares hard at the crust of calcium buildup on the faucet.
Em comes skidding down the hallway in her giant unicorn slippers. “Scoot, boy!” she says, smacking OJ on the side until he vacates the doorway. “Aw, come on, Angel, you’re still in here? A lady needs her chambers!”
“Sorry,” Angel says, “but for real, you guys, should I dye it back? It was kind of an impulse decision after, you know. Rebecca dumped me.” And then he laughs, but it’s fake.
OJ frowns.
“I like it, babe,” Em says. “Very trendy. It works real well, promise. Now can I please get my toothbrush.”
Absent-mindedly, Angel hands over the toothbrush, but he still stares at his hair in the mirror, seemingly unsatisfied.
OJ reaches forward, runs his blunt fingers through Angel's hair. It’s soft without the usual gel in it. A little longer, now, too. He could probably get a good hold in it. “Hm,” he says. “Roots are showing.”
Em is saying, “That’s on purpose, dumbass,” but OJ pays no mind, because Angel has gone completely still under his hand. The only sounds are the bathroom fan working overtime and the clink of Angel’s razor as he sets it down on the sink and the shutter of Angel’s throat as he swallows.
OJ meets his eyes in the mirror.
“Yup, what Em said, um anyway, I’m just gonna,” and then Angel is pushing past them both and vanishing into his room down the hall, still with half a face of shaving cream.
OJ curls his fingers into his palm.
“Lord Almighty,” Em says in disbelief. And then, “You gotta stop putting me through all this homosexual man energy. It’s seriously fucking with my aura, man. Just nasty.”
Angel doesn’t move in with them, right away.
“The house is fucked up ,” Em says, when they have a moment to reflect.
Em is the first to break the silence. For the first few minutes the three of them just stand there, contemplating the gaping hole in the roof. The police had taken the liberty of collecting all of the possessions that Jean Jacket had kindly deposited, which was a small relief, but OJ is already listing all of the work he’ll need to do despite himself. Extra attention to the horses to combat the trauma, fix the hole, clean off all the blood. A new barbed wire fence. It’s a relief when Em interrupts. He knows it’s just how she is, but he almost wonders if she knows he was getting carried away.
“We can see that,” he says anyway.
“‘ We can see that,’” Em repeats, pulling a face. She’s making fun of him, but her heart isn’t in it. Her eyes, still on the bloody second floor window, look haunted.
“Yeah, shit, that’s. That’s a big fucking hole, right there.” Angel looks like he’d be tugging at his hair, if his hands weren’t still stitched up and bandaged.
“You make it too easy,” Em says mindlessly.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what she said, my mom, whatever.”
Neither of them look away from the wreckage of the house. They’re just going through the motions. OJ waits for Angel to launch into a spiel about the structural integrity of buildings, or for Em to adopt some sort of corny affectation and say, “Well, let’s see the damage.” But they both stay eerily quiet.
“You could both always stay at mine,” Angel offers finally. Em looks like she’s considering it. And it has an appeal, honestly. A safe place, away from the constant reminder of the worst night of their lives. It would be nice to retreat for just a little while.
“Nah,” OJ says. “Can’t.”
He smiles, and Em mouths it along with him, making a face. “I got work to do.”
So Angel doesn’t move in right away, because there’s barely a house for him to move into. They all crash wherever they can, usually the living room, and Angel usually crashes there with them, exhausted after the day's work. None of them really think of it as anything more than that, just a friend crashing with them while they work on the house. Adults do that, probably.
Angel is almost always in motion. It kind of reminds OJ of when he lived with Emerald. Except he’s now living with both Angel and Emerald, so. It’s a lot. But it’s also nice. It feels familiar. It feels like something was missing, and now it's been returned.
And that’s another thing. Angel seemingly never runs out of projects that he can help with.
He comes up with things pretty much incessantly. He brainstorms out loud about a website that he could build for them, or a new security system for the stables, or actually, honest-to-god, figuring out how to digitize film footage. Every time, he remembers that he doesn’t have full use of his hands, and he looks crushed, but every time he assures them that once his hands are healed, he’ll be back in the game and stop imposing on them, he swears.
It’s pissing OJ off.
Probably, the responsible thing to do would be to pull Angel aside and explain that OJ and Em want him here for the long run, possibly indefinitely. Probably, it would be in everybody’s best interest if OJ initiated a heart to heart so he could lay all of Angel’s doubts to rest, do Em and OJ both the favor of ensuring that they keep their second favorite person around for a good while, and maybe he could do it all while he’s down on one knee, just for convenience’s sake.
“Be fucking for real,” OJ says.
Em sighs. “Worth a shot.”
“And what the fuck do you mean, second favorite person?”
“Excuse me, I’m your little sister!”
OJ tells himself that he doesn’t need to say anything. His actions say enough. Angel has always been able to read what he’s trying to say.
He quickly realizes that he’s miscalculated.
It’s Saturday, and nobody has anything scheduled, so they’re all in the kitchen. Angel is noisily eating Captain Crunch and playing Minesweeper. He wears glasses, which is devastating. Em is responding to some emails on behalf of [email protected], also in her glasses, but hers are on a ridiculous pink chain that she likes but which makes her look about ten years older than she is. Hopefully she’s not emailing about another TV interview. OJ can’t listen to another reporter learn that their horse’s name is Lucky and say “Well, he certainly is!”
OJ is standing in front of the fridge.
“Damn Father Winter,” Em grumbles at him, “can’t you close the door? My nipples could cut diamonds over here, man.”
“Why are there two milks,” OJ says.
“Oh!” Angel raises his bowl of Captain Crunch. “Sorry, that’s me. You know I’m not a lactose guy, so I bought some soy.”
OJ emerges from the fridge, holding two cartons of eggs. “Why are there two egg cartons.”
“Now OJ,” Em says, grabbing her coffee and breakfast and moving it into the protective circle of her arms, “let’s calm down.”
“I’m calm.”
Angel is oblivious. He laughs a little sheepishly. “This is a little awkward. I mean, I didn’t want to keep imposing on you guys, so. I figured I better start buying my own groceries, and stuff. I mean, just as long as I’m here. Like, with all the projects to catch up on.”
The gray cardboard of the egg carton starts to crunch under OJ’s hand.
“OJ,” Em warns, “eggs are fragile. They’re like, the quintessential fragile thing. Their whole brand is breakable. And they’re four dollars now because of inflation in California. Are you listening to me?”
“I’m calm,” OJ repeats.
Angel chews more slowly, finally sensing the temperature of the room. “Oh,” he says, setting his spoon down in his bowl of sugary milk. “Oh, um. Am I taking up too much space in the fridge? I’m sorry, I probably should have asked before putting that stuff in there.”
Em mouths “Wow,” into her cup of coffee.
OJ puts the eggs back in the fridge and doesn’t bang an angry fist on the table. He doesn’t say another word and walks out onto the porch.
Angel follows him a few seconds later. He’s already apologizing.
“Look, I’m really sorry. I know I should have asked first. Honestly I don’t even like cooking. I just felt bad making a DoorDash driver come all the way up here. I mean, honestly I don’t think any DoorDash drivers would even take my order because like, why would they want to come all the way out here, like, that’s just asking to be murdered.”
OJ holds up a hand. “Just. Just hold on a second.”
Angel stops talking. OJ thinks about what to say.
“You can use our groceries,” he says finally, “for as long as you’re here. We don’t care about that.”
It’s a cop out. OJ knows that. But he doesn’t know how to say, “move in with us,” in any kind of delicate way, because he doesn’t do delicate, and he’s learned that there are some conversations in that category that he will just never know how to have. Or at least, have successfully.
Angel looks at him sideways. “I don’t know, man. I’d feel bad. At least let me pay you back, or something.”
OJ frowns. “No, just. You’re living here, right? So just don’t worry about it.”
Angel laughs but there’s something else there, something anxious. “I mean, OJ, I’m going to run out of cameras to set up eventually.”
OJ realizes that he’s actually been a huge dumbass. Angel, he realizes, has been waiting for them to kick him out this whole time. And the worst part is, he probably wouldn’t even be mad if they did it. He would probably just take it as his due.
“We want you to move in with us,” OJ says. It comes out blunt, not delicate at all, but maybe his problem is that he’s treating Angel like Angel is everybody else. “Me and Em. We talked about it.”
Actually, what Em said was, “If you’d hurry up and hit that we wouldn’t even have to worry about remodeling the guest bedroom, oh c’mon, don’t act like you don’t want him to stay forever and have babies. ” But the important thing was that they agreed.
Angel stalls. “Really?”
OJ says, “Yeah.”
Angel looks like he’s trying not to smile. He’s scratching at his neck, like he does. “I mean, are you sure?”
“Yes, bitch!” Em calls, from where she’s been eavesdropping out the window. OJ is going to murder her. “Now come inside and smoke this with me!”
Half a blunt later, while Angel excuses himself for a few minutes to use the bathroom, Em passes to him and knocks their shoulders together.
“See? That wasn’t so bad. It’s about trust, OJ.”
He hates it, but she’s right.
IV.
OJ’s creaking along in the rocking chair on the porch, beer in hand, watching the sky. He’s thinking maybe he should smoke, too. Angel probably has something rolled up. It’s odd that OJ finishes work so early these days, but with Angel automating some of OJ’s usual chores and both Angel and Emerald there to lend a hand, everything goes a little bit faster. OJ’s grudgingly growing to like it.
Em slams through the screen door. She’s got a duffle bag on her shoulder.
She squints at him in the chair. “Okay, Gramps.”
OJ flips her off. “Appointment with your therapist?”
Em flips him off right back. “She’s a PR consultant, actually. And aspiring PR manager, if what she said is to be believed.”
“Mhm.”
“I’m networking.”
“Mhm. How you getting there?”
“I’m driving?”
“You and what license?”
Em mumbles something that sounds sort of like “fuck a fucking license, man.”
OJ hmms. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I need the truck tomorrow for work.”
“What work?”
“Lumber pickup.”
“Shit. Forgot.”
They fall silent. Em taps around on her phone while OJ goes back to watching the sky. It’s a clear day, no clouds, the kind that makes him squint. Some of the blue has evaporated out of the sky, leaving behind a weaker, less optimistic blue. There’s a lot of sky to cover, to be fair. Blue stretched too thin.
Em mutters, hits her vape. She doesn’t look up from her phone. “Hate when you do that shit.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
He knows. “Nothing to be afraid of anymore.”
Still no clouds. And maybe he’s a liar. They fall back into silence.
“Her name is Julian,” Em says, after a few beats of quiet.
It takes OJ a few seconds to remember what they had been talking about. “The PR consultant?”
“S’what I said.” The hunch of her shoulders is a little defensive, now.
OJ just squints up at her, smiling a little.
“What?”
OJ keeps smiling. “Nothing.”
Em hops off the porch, Nikes going poof into the dirt. “Whatever,” she says. “You stay here with your cryptic self. Now gimme the keys.”
“What? No. I told you I need the truck tomorrow.”
“Chill, Angel will drive me and drive it back, okay?”
“Does he know that?”
Em flips her phone around. OJ squints against the glare of the screen.
5 stars angel: Sure i can drive you :)
5 stars angel: What about haywood 1?
haywood2: thank you so muchh bbygirl
haywood2: and oh you know just the oj special
haywood2: “i got work to do”
5 stars angel: Hahaha
5 stars angel: Um
5 stars angel: You think he needs help?
haywood2: boy you need help
5 stars angel: Okay ouch
haywood2: idk about this “help” you speak of but i sure would appreciate it if you made sure my big brother didn’t get all lonely without me
OJ tries to scroll but Em snatches the phone away, and thus begins a tirade about privacy and bad manners in the digital age, OJ’s lack of participation in such notwithstanding, and why didn’t he just get a “real phone” anyway, so he could be in the groupchat, too, and then they wouldn’t even have this problem.
Eventually Angel comes down from the house. He’s swinging the keys around like a douchebag, and the socks and slides combination doesn’t really help. OJ internally despairs when he realizes that it’s still working for him.
“Ready to go?” Angel says. He throws the keys up in the air and then fails to catch them and they land dully on the ground. As he’s picking them up he gives OJ a sheepish smile, looking embarrassed. OJ doesn’t know which expression would be correct in this instance, so his face probably just does nothing. Small miracles.
Damn it, OJ thinks, god damn it, because even after all of that he’s still turned the fuck on.
“You know how to drive it?” he asks, just to ensure that his brain is still working despite whatever lapse in judgment has just occurred.
“Bro, c’mon, give me some credit.”
Em props an elbow on OJ’s shoulder. “You wish you could see him drive it.”
OJ shakes her off. Yeah, whatever. “You got everything?”
“Oh, shit, my phone charger.” She jogs back inside.
Angel starts making some noise about checking tire pressure, which sounds an awful lot like the start and end of what he knows about vehicle maintenance, and involves him just tapping all the tires with his foot, but OJ’s mind is somewhere else.
Em leaves the ranch all the time. It’s not new. She has errands to run, people to talk to. She comes back, now. But for some reason, OJ feels nervous about this one, and he doesn’t know why.
OJ knows that Em will follow this fame wherever it takes her, wherever it needs her to go, because that’s who she is. OJ accepted that long ago, that he will stay while Emerald leaves. It was just how it was. Whatever she felt she needed to find, or whatever she felt she needed to leave behind, that was her business. No use in OJ being sad about it. He would stay and hope that his fixed presence would be enough to support her and make up for all the things he couldn’t do alongside her.
But sometimes, now, in the aftermath of everything, he wonders if she would want to stay. As much as he wants the farm to return to normal, he wonders. If they spun their big break in such a way that kept the ranch at the center of it, would Em have to stay? Would she want to? Would she want to stay here where the story is, or would she still feel drawn by that inexplicable pull, to the thought of out there.
He knows the answer. But,
“She’ll be back,” Angel says. “You know she’s coming back, man.”
OJ is too surprised to answer. He doesn’t know how Angel picked all of that up just from watching OJ stare tortured at the wheel of the ancient pickup. Maybe that’s just Angel. But OJ still nods, because he’s grateful.
Angel does his douchey little two finger salute as he climbs in the cab. “Hey man, don’t mention it.” He punctuates his statement with two raps on the driver’s side door.
OJ watches them drive away. Even as he walks back towards the house, his body orients itself towards the receding truck, so he ends up doing a diagonal sort of shuffle thing. Full-pass. It’s only when his boots knock against the porch that he looks away, if only so he doesn’t trip on the stairs.
It’s not new. If OJ is inclined to be honest, it started years ago. This wrongness. Like reaching for something that should be there only to find that it’s not. It wasn’t complicated. OJ started missing Em when Em started leaving. But now Em’s back, and OJ misses her even harder when she leaves, and he doesn’t think he needs to puzzle through that one, either.
And Angel, now. Whatever that is.
OJ finishes his chores for the day. He reheats a leftover enchilada. He scrolls through all of the streaming services on the new Roku, but his enchilada is gone before he even picks anything, so he fiddles with the record player. It’s nice to have some background noise, even if it still feels a little quiet. Well, he can get drunk, or something. He walks into the kitchen, and stops short, standing dumbly in front of the open freezer, because for the first time in years, OJ is bored.
On autopilot, he grabs a glass, pours some of the good liquor, walks back to the couch. He’s become so used to Angel and Emerald and their liveliness all around him that the silence is huge without them. OJ rubs at his chest, trying to get at the feeling that’s lodged itself there.
At some point, OJ falls asleep.
The storm comes fast and heavy. There’s no slow gauzy curtain of rain sweeping over the mountains. The clouds swarm together, and then it pours.
It’s the crash of rain on the roof that jolts OJ awake.
OJ tells himself that this is a normal weather phenomenon in Agua Dulce. He’s seen it many times before. But that doesn’t stop him from peering out the window and up into the sky. He counts to ten, and then to thirty, and then he decides he’ll stop counting when it feels right.
When they were first rebuilding, Em and Angel drew up a whole schematic for security cameras. There was a veritable legion of them, enough to cover the whole property. Em claimed they were in case of any over-eager reporters or alien hobbyists, which, admittedly, had become somewhat of a problem. As their publicity grew, more and more people had begun trekking out to Agua Dulce in the hopes of something or other. A selfie, an undiscovered artifact. To bask in the grim atmosphere, maybe. Even to conduct a seance, on one occasion. Angel had tried to explain the “subreddit of people hoping to be actually abducted,” but the absurdity was more uncomfortable than it was funny. OJ couldn’t imagine how something that had caused them so much loss could be romanticized. It left a bad taste in his mouth. Showbiz, baby.
Even so, the reporters stayed more of a nuisance than anything. And OJ’s never heard of reporters coming down from the sky, but he doesn’t say anything if half of the cameras are pointed upwards ninety degrees. He won’t begrudge them their peace of mind.
Angel joked that all of the cameras were really just a ploy to keep himself employed. Be careful, he said, or I’ll charge you out the ass. But OJ couldn’t recall him ever asking for a single dime, even after the sweaty, backbreaking installation of thirty plus different cameras.
OJ doesn’t really fuck with the cameras, though. He could check them right now, but he can’t see how they would make much difference. OJ knows animals. He knows they have a presence. And he knows, staring up at the sky, that it’s just rain.
He stops at 146.
But something still isn’t right.
Maybe it’s the unexpected nap. The disorientation of a changed routine. Maybe he just needs to walk it off. With this in mind, he starts a series of little tasks. He dumps out his glass, now more melted ice than alcohol, and sighs at the dishes in the sink. Emerald’s turn. He puts the records back in order with a kind of solemnity. Even Em keeps this oath, the sacred alphabetization. It feels weird to play the records without her, so he doesn’t put on another one.
It occurs to him that he should check his phone.
A couple times, or maybe seven or eight times, Angel has tried to sell him on a smartphone. His main pitch was always location sharing. Look, he would say, you can see where everybody is. And there on the map were little dots for “haywood2” and “vampire baby” and a couple other people OJ doesn’t recognize.
“Can we use this for the horses?” OJ had said.
“I could probably figure it out,” Angel had answered, seeming to actually consider it. “Wait but, man, that's totally not the point, this is about you . Actually wait, if I made this about horses, would it change your mind?”
It still seemed unnecessary. OJ didn’t need to know where everyone was, because these days everyone was always at the ranch. He saw Angel at the coffee pot in the morning and Em at the television in the evening. If they were going somewhere, they said where it was and when.
And hadn’t they learned that technology was fallible? Wasn’t that one of the big takeaways from this whole ordeal? Jean Jacket didn’t discriminate when it came to cell phone models.
He did sort of see the appeal of seeing all his horses in his phone though, just to see what they were up to. He tells this to Angel and gets a laugh.
“Oh man, remind me to tell you about Neko Atsume.”
But now, for the first time in a while, OJ is alone in the house, and it’s raining to all hell, and he feels dumb as fucking shit. Of course they wouldn’t all always be at the ranch. Of course he should be exhausting every available option. Why wasn’t he doing that?
OJ digs out his phone from where it's wedged in the couch cushions, flips it open. Just one text, from Em.
Emerald Haywood: made it to destination, have FUN tonight ;)
Disregarding that. Nothing from Angel. OJ checks the timestamp. 6:45 PM. OJ does some quick math. Even if Angel fucked around and got food or something, he still should have been back over an hour ago.
OJ gets on his hoodie and his hat and slams out the front door before he thinks it through, and gets soaked to the bone almost instantly. The rain is almost deafening out here. He doesn’t know what the fuck he plans to do without the truck, besides some stupid half-baked plan of taking Lucky and scouring the property, but he stops up short because there, parked in front of the house, is the truck. The headlights are off but the wipers are on. There’s no sound but the rain and the back and forth of the wipers, steady and haunting.
The lights in the cab are off.
OJ walks around to the driver’s side, and there’s Angel, sitting in the dark, staring blankly at the dashboard. Staring at nothing.
OJ waves, gets nothing. He doesn’t want to knock, but. He does and Angel flinches so hard it looks like it hurts.
OJ eases the door open. “Hey, you good,” he says. He has to raise his voice a little to be heard over the rain. “Hey, look at me, we good, right?”
Angel just shakes his head. He’s pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes so hard it must be painful. His fingers are shaking. Actually, OJ realizes, all of him is shaking.
“Fuck, sorry,” Angel says. “Sorry, it’s so stupid, I know it’s so stupid. I was driving and everything was fine but then it started raining out of like fucking nowhere and I just, it was just like.” His voice cracks. “I just couldn’t.”
How long has he been waiting out here, OJ thinks. How long, and OJ didn’t even fucking notice.
“Just a storm,” he says out loud. “Sometimes we get fast ones.”
Angel does a jerky nod. “Right, right, yeah. Just a storm. Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Can you look at me?”
Angel grits his teeth. He shakes his head.
“Hey, that’s okay. I’ll stay right here, okay?”
A large gust of wind sends a spray of water near horizontal, so OJ huddles closer to the truck, hoping to shield the inside of the cab. Fuck, it’s a cold one, too. He bites back on a swear.
“You’re getting soaked, aren’t you,” Angel says helplessly. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” OJ repeats. That ship sailed when he first walked out of the house, and also, he doesn’t really give a shit. Instead he asks, “You want to stay here?”
Angel doesn’t seem to hear him. His breath is coming out knife-fast and loud, louder than the rain, even.
“I’m always doing shit like this,” Angel is saying, and it's so acidic and bitter that OJ blinks a little. And then, somehow worse, he says, “You guys must be so tired of me by now.”
Something inside of OJ keens in frustration.
“Hey, no,” he says. “Nobody is thinking that, alright? You don’t have to look at me, but I need you to breathe, alright? Can you take a breath? Okay, that’s nice, nice and easy, let’s do another one, alright. Real good. We good, yeah? You good?”
Angel still hasn’t uncovered his eyes, and his breath is still shaky, but he isn’t wheezing anymore. Slow and steady, OJ thinks. “Yeah, yeah,” Angel says. “I’m good.”
“Okay, that’s good. Do you want to stay here?”
“Um. I don’t know.”
“That’s fine. Do you want me to sit in there with you?”
Angel sucks in some deep breaths. “I want to go inside,” he says. “But I just. Can’t do it.” He laughs self-deprecatingly. “Fuck, this is so stupid.”
At that moment there’s a clap of thunder, and Angel recoils so violently that his head thuds against the headrest.
“Hey, hey, easy,” OJ says, thinking, enough . “I’m gonna get you inside, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.”
OJ reaches over and turns the truck off and pockets the keys. The wipers stall at a forty-five degree angle, severing the rhythm too soon, and the jagged stop makes his teeth hurt. But there’s no time for that. He takes off his hat and puts it on Angel’s head and pulls the brim down low. And then he sets his hand on the back of Angel’s neck, thumb and forefinger up against the soft hairs at his hairline, Angel’s skin clammy with nervous sweat or rainwater or both.
“Seatbelt,” he warns.
“Seatbelt,” Angel echoes mindlessly, but he still jumps a little when OJ ejects the clasp.
“Up we go,” OJ mutters, and he’s pulling Angel out of the cab. He guides Angel’s face into the dip of his shoulder. The brim of the hat jabs awkwardly into chest, but he just angles Angel’s head down so that he’ll be staring at the ground should he open his eyes, and so the brim of the hat is flat against his chest instead. It’s a small chore to maneuver them both so that he can close the door without Angel in the way, but he manages.
“Shit, fuck fuck fuck fuck, oh my fucking god.”
“Easy,” OJ coaxes. “Nice and easy.”
Despite everything, Angel huffs. “You put horse blinders on me?”
OJ is too busy walking himself backwards, trying not to slip in all the fucking goddamn rain, with Angel still tucked up against his chest. “I did.”
“This is so embarrassing,” Angel says, because he talks when he’s stressed. He was probably talking to himself the whole time he was in the truck. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“Okay, sorry. Fuck, I mean. I really think I should be saying sorry, though. I’m all up in your space, man. In your, uh. Pectorals. Not how I hoped this would happen. Figures I would just screw that up for myself, too. Typical fucking Angel.”
The rain is still sluicing down, and it’s in his eyes and his mouth, and it’s so cold, and every word Angel says is texturized by his chattering teeth. OJ doesn’t think he was hearing things. He wants to stop and clarify, but now isn’t the time. They still have so far to walk. Maybe he should think about a driveway that goes right up to the house. Or hell, a garage.
They slam inside. OJ guides Angel to a seat on the couch.
“Wait, but I’m soaked, man,” Angel tries to protest.
“Don’t give a fuck.”
“Wait, wait, where are you going?”
“Just getting you some clothes.”
Angel nods, even though it looks like it pains him.
He feels weird digging through Angel’s clothes, so he grabs some of his own, trying not to think about it too hard. He changes his own as fast as possible, all the while thinking of Angel sitting small and miserable on the couch, all by himself. He gets irrationally angry when he tries to peel off his soaking jeans and the wet denim only clings harder.
OJ returns to where Angel hasn’t moved an inch. He hands over the clothes wordlessly.
Angel takes them, but makes no move to put them on.
“You need, uh. You need boxers?”
OJ’s awkwardness must be enough to reach Angel, finally, because he cracks a little smile. “Nah, man, I’m good.”
OJ mumbles something about grabbing a glass of water.
On the way to the kitchen, he turns on every light that he can see.
When he gets back, Angel has changed into OJ’s clothes. The sweatshirt is predictably huge on him. The sweatpants, too, probably, but OJ isn't thinking about it.
“Thank you,” Angel says, when OJ hands over the glass of water. OJ just nods and sits down next to him.
He’s just gotten settled when the thunder of the rain suddenly stops. The storm has finished and is moving on.
“Just like that,” Angel mutters.
OJ wonders if he’s angry. “Would you have come inside once it stopped?”
Angel laughs humorlessly. “You know, honestly, I have no fucking clue.”
There’s something half-smoked in the ashtray. OJ starts scanning around for a lighter.
“I would have died,” Angel says suddenly.
Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like they’re just talking about the storm. “You didn’t.”
“I would have, though. I was okay with that. I was just happy to be a part of something, you know?”
There’s a drop of rain clinging behind the shell of Angel’s ear. Just ten minutes ago, OJ had his thumb there. OJ knows that this sweatshirt is his softest, because it’s his favorite. He can imagine what it must feel like against Angel’s skin. He imagines what it would feel like to slip his hands in that space between the fabric and Angel’s skin.
“You can still feel like this,” OJ says. “You don’t have to make peace or find… gratitude, or whatever. We survived some fucked up shit.”
Angel huffs something that might be laugh. “You’re telling me.”
OJ doesn’t say, “easier said than done,” but it feels like they’re both acknowledging it anyway.
Em always wants space. Or, at least, she finds space, and she’s three steps away before OJ can try to catch her and ask her what the fucks she wants him to do. He assumes it helps somehow, if she keeps doing it.
Pops never asked for comfort even once.
OJ’s mother, though. She kept them all together. Being around her was like being draped with a warm blanket. When she was sad, she reached out her arms.
“Oh, my babies, come here, come sit with your mother,” she would say, and even when they wriggled and protested just to keep up appearances, she would hold fast. “All I need,” she would say happily. “All I need, right here.”
Her arms were somehow clever enough to corral a flighty Emerald, somehow long enough to reach around Pop’s imposing figure, somehow gentle enough to make a space for OJ inside.
Angel would have liked that, OJ thinks. He watches as Angel bites almost desperately at his nails on one hand while hugging himself with the other, water glass untouched on the table. He wonders if Angel would reach out, if it was anyone else sitting beside him.
OJ finds a lighter, peeking out from under a stack of junk mail. He puffs just enough on the joint to get it lit, inspects it to make sure it won’t canoe, then passes it to Angel.
He leaves his arm on the back of the couch. It’s inches away from Angel’s hair, still spiky from the rainwater.
“I met Julian,” Angel says. He takes a fifth hit, then a sixth.
OJ blinks. “For real?”
Angel smiles with his eyes. “Yeah. She’s nice.”
OJ accepts the joint. He doesn’t know what to say to that.
Angel lets himself sink more fully into the couch. His head rests on OJ’s arm, now. OJ keeps smoking, just watching. As he watches, Angel lets his eyes slip shut.
“You want a hit?” OJ says, meaning, of the joint before he puts it out.
“I’m good.”
OJ leans forward just enough to drop it in the ashtray. The high makes it feel like the storm was ten hours ago and not thirty minutes. The air outside still has that sparkling feeling, washed clean by the rainwater, and the lamplight in the living room makes everything orange and cozy. OJ’s arm is starting to feel warm and damp from Angel’s hair.
Slowly, deliberately, OJ moves his hand so it’s cradling the back of Angel’s head instead, finding the place on the back of his neck that has become so familiar. It’s like a charm. Angel inhales one sharp breath, and then goes boneless.
Not how I hoped this would happen, Angel had said. OJ thinks he heard it correctly. But he also knows he’s a hopeful creature, at heart.
He thinks of condemning all of his horses to an excruciating death, all for some naive idea that Jupe would let him buy them back. How could you have known, Em would say. And it was true. The truth was beyond imagination. But he still felt responsible. Carnivorous alien aside, he had still entrusted care of Haywood horses to a stranger. His horses.
He had never quite learned not to take people at their word.
OJ waits for Angel’s breathing to relax into sleep, and then he retreats back to his own room.
V.
They don’t talk about it.
But Angel hangs a little bit closer, in the days after. When they find themselves in the same room, OJ feels Angel’s eyes on him, but they’re gone before he glances over. Somehow, his tasks for the day seem to align more often than not with OJ’s. Today, he tells OJ that he’s “calibrating the cameras in the stables,” but it looks a lot like he’s moving his ladder back and forth and stopping to watch OJ work.
OJ is checking Lucky’s legs. He’s been walking fine, honestly, and he’s only been doing very light work in the past month. A couple commercials, here and there. But maybe OJ is a little overprotective, now, sue him.
Angel gives up on his charade of doing work and comes over to lean against the door of Lucky’s stall.
“Dang, is he okay? His legs get hurt or something?”
Words come easier when it’s about the horses, and when it’s with Angel. “Nah,” OJ says. “I’m just being careful.”
Angel hmms . “What, you can tell just by feeling? Is it hard?”
OJ grins. “For me, no. You’re not gonna be able to do it.”
Angel laughs when he remembers.
OJ finds himself explaining. “This is the knee, and I just take both hands and I look for swelling or heat, like this. This,” he points, “is the fetlock. It’s like the ankle. And I do the same thing here. And I take his pulse, too, while I’m down here.”
OJ is moving around to the hind legs when he notices that Angel is tapping idly on the wood of the stall. It’s nothing that Lucky can’t handle, but habit still has OJ clicking his tongue. Lucky twitches an ear towards him. Angel stills completely. His eyes go round when they lock with OJ’s, and it’s that face again, the one that OJ keeps seeing but doesn’t have a name for.
The moment stretches between them. And then Angel grimaces, face red.
“Ah, my bad,” he says. “I should know better by now.”
“S’fine,” OJ says, feeling like he’s missing something crucial.
But Angel just waves and goes back to his “work.” Even when he’s not wearing the Fry’s uniform, he still tucks his shirt in when he’s working, out of some habit, maybe. OJ can’t help looking at his waist as he walks away.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says to Lucky, “Get off my dick.”
OJ has a dream. He’s in his bed, and Angel is sprawled beneath him, half up on his elbows. Staring. And he’s got that face, the one he wears when he gets so absorbed that he forgets himself, almost like he’s somewhere else. That uncharacteristic stillness that he’s capable of, sometimes, when there’s a good enough movie or good enough weed. When there’s the not just any thing.
In the dream, OJ has one hand looped around the bottom of Angel’s calf, thumb against the Achilles tendon, fingers right against the ankle bone. With the other hand, he smooths the palm along the muscle of his calf, going up, up, into the soft skin under his knee, lingering there with his thumb, finding a pulse, then venturing higher. The motions are clinical. It feels like he’s done them a hundred times before. They don’t speak of any obvious sexuality. At least, it’s not the straightforward sex that OJ is used to.
But when OJ wakes up, his heart is racing.
The skies are clear all day, but the weather channel predicts rain around midnight, so OJ stays awake. He has some work that he should catch up on, anyway. Em is staying the night at Julian’s and last he checked Angel was dead asleep, but just to be safe. He turns the ringer on his phone up as loud as it can go, then camps out in the office.
He’s Googling “garage door installation” when he hears the tap running in the kitchen. He goes to investigate, and finds Angel. He’s holding a water glass, but it’s still full to the brim, and his eyes are fixed on the window.
“Can’t sleep?” OJ says.
Angel jumps. “Oh, shit. Jesus. Um, yeah.” He tugs at his hair. “I, um, checked the weather. It’s kind of a thing now.”
OJ hums. He knows about the weather thing. He stays silent and Angel stares back at him and doesn’t drink his water.
Angel clears his throat. “So, um, do you like the Brita filter? There’s a warranty if you don’t, so just tell me.”
“My room only has one window,” OJ interrupts.
Angel stares. OJ waits for him to laugh it off, to purposely misunderstand it for the invitation that it is.
He says, “Okay.”
When they get to OJ’s room, Angel is still holding his water glass for some reason, so OJ takes it out of his hands and sets it down on his desk. The click of the glass on the tabletop seems deafening. And then he turns back to Angel and pushes him gently back against the closed door. Angel gasps. His hands fly up to OJ’s shoulders.
“Um,” Angel starts, “shoulders? Are shoulders good?”
“Fine,” OJ says. He’s busy focusing.
OJ slips his hands up Angel’s shirt, just to indulge in that closeness. He likes that he can feel the hard planes of him, and the places where he’s soft. It's fine. OJ just likes Angel. Angel sucks in a breath as OJ’s hand slides firmly over his stomach. Always so expressive, OJ thinks, running his thumb knuckles under Angel’s bottom ribs. And then back across his navel, just to feel the tremble of the muscles that OJ knows is there. The key to any good habit, OJ knows, is repetition. Well, that’s alright. They’ll have plenty of time for that. And well, maybe it’s a little self-serving. Maybe OJ takes a little pride in the way that Angel’s stomach jumps under his hands.
“You good?” OJ says lowly.
“Yeah, yup,” Angel says. He sounds a little breathy. “I’m, I’m so good, man. Um, you? You good?”
“Yeah,” OJ says, thinking, you could never even know.
He considers. He wants Angel to go to that place that makes his eyes look so sweet and dark and hazy.
“Bed,” he decides. He tries to keep his voice even. He doesn’t want to be too demanding. But something tells him that Angel wouldn’t mind.
Angel goes. He sits and watches, waiting.
OJ puts a hand in Angel’s hair. It’s like a trance. Angel shudders once and then goes still, from head to toe, like the wash of a rain shower. OJ swallows, mouth dry with the trust he has implicitly been given. He tugs experimentally on Angel’s hair and is gifted with a quiet hum, trapped somewhere in Angel’s throat, and a flutter of eyelashes. Angel’s eyes go unfocused and glassy.
“You gonna stay?” OJ says.
Angel hums.
OJ clicks his tongue. “Yes or no. You gonna stay?”
Something flickers in Angel’s eyes, a flare of understanding. When OJ says stay, he means to keep still . Angel swallows, works the word around for a sec in his mouth. “Yes,” he says finally.
OJ makes a noise of approval. “Good, that’s good.”
Angel twitches at the praise. It’s just a small tightening in his shoulders, but OJ’s cataloging eyes don’t miss it. He marvels. Of course Angel would have a physical response. It’s still Angel, no matter the context. OJ was anticipating at least some kind of movement. But Angel is so affected by the desire to please and do what OJ asks that he trembles with the effort of keeping still.
OJ palms over the front of Angel’s boxers. Angel’s entire body trembles to contain his instinctive movements, but OJ can feel it there, under his skin, like a live wire.
“OJ,” Angel says, desperate.
OJ doesn’t answer. He puts his palm flat against Angel’s sternum, just resting there, but it feels purposeful, heavy with the knowledge that he could press down if he wanted to. Even without any pressure, Angel still leans backwards, onto his elbows. With his other hand OJ slides deliberately up Angel’s leg, from the dips around his ankle to the hollow behind his knee, to the soft, almost-invisible hair on the inside of Angel’s thighs.
“OJ,” Angel says again, gasping this time. His eyes are dark and liquid. He’s biting his lip helplessly.
“Come here,” OJ says, and Angel does.
Angel falls asleep pretty much right after he comes, which is so expected that OJ wants to laugh. OJ can’t seem to sleep, but he doesn’t mind.
If OJ listens hard enough, he can hear a faint patter of rain on the roof. He’s been watching for clouds on the horizon, and it’s been raining around them this whole time.
Angel stirs awake and catches him staring.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “Was I moving around too much? I can stop.”
OJ reaches out, runs his thumb along the ridge of Angel’s jaw, against the grain of his stubble. Even with his thick calluses, he can still feel its roughness against his skin.
“S’all good,” he says back.
Angel makes the face that he makes when he’s trying not to smile. “Okay, but I’m serious, dude. Wake me up if I’m bothering you.”
“Sure,” OJ lies. Dude. Jesus.
Angel shuts his eyes and, just a few minutes later, he’s back to tossing and turning. He wrinkles his nose, fighting an itch, apparently, then tries to scratch it with shoulder, fails, winds up with his face mashed into the pillow. He’s still again for maybe fifteen seconds before his leg twitches and his foot collides painfully with OJ’s shin.
“Jesus,” OJ huffs out loud, but he just clutches Angel tighter against his chest.