“Aw, come on, don’t stop now,” Liam protested, glancing up from his spot on a dusty, old chair that had lost most of its vigor and fluff, situated near one of the corners of Daniel’s garage. He sent a pointed glare over the ridge of his glasses at the boy who sat behind his drum set, sticks still in hand, hovering only centimeters over the heads. The boy cocked one brow in response, as his lips transformed into almost a devilish grin and he dropped the sticks to his lap. Liam scoffed, almost jumping from the chair in objection, but the books he had piled in his lap began to fall with the movement. “Don’t do that to me, Dan, I was just getting a good groove going with this assignment,” he whined, flailing to catch some of his papers before they could slide from his thighs to the floor.
“Groove?” Daniel questioned the word with a snigger. “God, you really are old, aren’t you?”
“Says the boy about to become an adult in,” Liam turned his wrist to catch a glance at the time, “oh, less than an hour now.”
Daniel jiggled his leg, trying his best to hide the smile that tried to steal his lips. “Right,” he said, sounding indifferent. “‘Cause I’m magically going to change from one second to the next once midnight gets here. That’s logical.” Though he was itching until the moment that his phone would beep, informing him that it was now October the thirteenth and that he would no longer be a kid, not in terms of age. Suddenly, he would be eighteen. He would be an adult. That knowledge alone made his leg jiggle even more in anticipation, and he looked across the garage at the young man seated not too far away.
Liam was smiling and he didn’t look away under Daniel’s stare, not like he usually would. He held his eyes. “Hey, don’t make fun,” he said, giggling as he dropped his legs from beneath him on the oversized chair. “Turning eighteen was big for me.”
Daniel licked his lips, a nervous habit of his, Liam had noticed, and began tapping out a simple rhythm on the drums. “Why? I mean, woo, you can go and vote and enlist and buy M-rated video games and buy dirty mags and cigarettes or whatever, but other than that?” He looked doubtful. “It’s really not that special. Just another age.”
“For reasons,” Liam answered with a shrug, smiling secretively. He very well couldn’t tell Daniel that when a Maeroksigne reaches the age of eighteen that their abilities became much more fine-tuned. The age was more important and much more of a milestone for the earlier generations, for it was once the age at which a Maeroksigne was given the full ability to use thought inception and numerous kinds of more advanced mind control. Even as the powers dwindled, however, the milestone still remained in place, and it was regarded in the Maeroksigne culture as the true age of adulthood. Liam was not one to take that milestone lightly, either. “Let’s just say I was ready to get out on my own,” he summed up, knowing it was a typical excuse.
That much was obvious as Daniel rolled his eyes. “Do you know anyone who isn’t?” He shook his head, though the movement resulted more as an uncertain nod as he was bobbing his head to the beat he had gotten a bit more into.
“Jez was looking forward to being eighteen, but she definitely wasn’t looking forward to spreading her wings and flying away,” Liam offered for example. “She liked having Mom and Dad buy her things and put food on the table a few times a day and just making sure everything was going well. She didn’t move out until I promised I’d move in with her.”
“Really?” Daniel raised his brow. “She doesn’t seem like the dependent type.”
“She’s not, not really,” Liam shook his head. “She just likes being around people. Well, around family, mostly, I guess, since she didn’t even want to live in the dorms. She preferred to live at home and spend almost an hour commuting to classes every day.”
“How far away did you guys live?”
“Only over on Oakmont, closer to Roosevelt elementary,” Liam explained, waving over his shoulder in a wavy motion as he turned his attention back to his assignment. “But the bus she had to catch downtown only came once every hour, so she’d have to get up and leave ridiculously early for class most of the time.”
Daniel nodded, though it wasn’t clear if he was nodding in response to Liam or simply nodding along with what he was playing. “And your parents don’t live around here anymore?” he asked a few minutes later.
Liam laughed, shaking his head as he threw down his pen onto his open book and stretched fully, reaching his arms up above his head as he sunk down a little deeper into the limp cushions of the chair. “Goodness, no,” he said around his laughter, “they got out of here as soon as they got both of us out of the house. Moved up farther north to live near some, um, family friends, I guess you could say.”
“Cool,” Daniel replied, eyes concentrated on his drums as he diverted to a quick solo that made Liam’s heart beat a little faster. He slowed things back down after a moment and looked up to find Liam staring at him with those same fascinated eyes. His cheeks warmed and he tore his eyes away, tapping lightly on one of the cymbals. “We just lucked out that my grandma lives here,” he said, brow turning down on the sides as he spoke. “Otherwise we probably would’ve had to make a move out toward, like, Colorado where my dad’s sister lives. And that would’ve been hell. They already have four kids. All girls, ages twelve to seventeen. Family reunions are ridiculous, especially when the two oldest were thirteen and fourteen. I don’t think they stopped fighting for an entire five minutes the whole time we were there.”
Liam frowned, wishing he knew the whole back story as to why Daniel and his family had to move in with his grandmother, but the most he had told him thus far was that they had moved for financial reasons. Among other things. All of which he wouldn’t tell Liam. Liam never was one to pry, but he had to bite his tongue to not push further on the topic. Daniel would tell him when he was ready, he had decided. But, oh, did he wish he could hear the boy’s thoughts right then, and maybe even his feelings. From the look that clouded over Daniel’s features as he almost stopped playing altogether, Liam could tell there was a reason graver than what the boy was willing to tell him at the moment.
With a sigh, Liam told him with a smile, “Well, it’s not like Bryan and Anya are much of a trade off, you know.”
Daniel grinned, transitioning into a more upbeat tempo. “Jenna and Sophie are about a million times worse than Bryan and Anya, though. That’s how bad they are. And at least Bryan and Anya only argue about things of… I don’t know, substance. Like video games or food or crayons and shit. Those two, Jenna and Sophie, they’ll get at each other’s throats for the stupidest shit ever, like last year they were fighting over which one of them was Edward’s. They were yanking out each other’s hair over a fictional character.”
“Okay, so your brother and sister are little angels, got it,” Liam said giggled, scribbling down an answer on his assignment and flipping the page.
“They are,” Daniel confirmed with a smash to one of the crash cymbals. He continued on with a steady beat, occasionally slipping into some improvised arrangement to regain Liam’s attention. He watched the man seated in the chair as he lightened his hits, watching as Liam snaked the fingers of his left hand through his loose, dark hair like he always did when he was stumped on a problem; watching as Liam bit his lower lip while taking down an answer only to erase it several seconds later; watching as Liam’s right foot tapped the air in synchrony with the beat he was tapping out. It made him want to play a bit harder, push the tempo a bit faster, and he couldn’t help the smile that spread across his lips. “How much you got left?” he asked, eager and curious.
“Just one more and then I’ll be all yours,” Liam replied without bothering to look up from his book, the eraser of his pencil pressed against his lips as his eyes scanned the page from left to right, left to right, left to right.
“Mean it?” Daniel smirked, his brow raised.
Liam nodded in response, humming in the affirmative as he kept his head bowed. “Yup, all yours.”
The smirk smoothed into a full smile. “Perfect,” he said, hitting the crash cymbal once again and moving into a solo that got Liam’s foot tapping a bit faster than before. He pounded out the beats impatiently and watched with eagerness as Liam flipped between a few pages, jotting down a few words at a speed noticeably more rushed than he had taken at all that night.
Not even five minutes had passed by the time he clicked the lead back into his pencil, slammed his books shut, and met Daniel’s eyes over the drum set with a cheeky grin. “Done.”
“What time is it?”
Liam dropped his materials onto the floor beside the chair, letting them fall as he stole a quick glance at his watch. “You’ve still got eight minutes to go.”
“Damn,” Daniel muttered as he hit the bass drum, receiving a cocked brow from his companion at the sudden outburst. “Nothing, it’s nothing, I just,” he said and drew his arms away from the set, letting out a huff of a sigh. “Wanna play?”
A look of skepticism stole Liam’s features. “What?”
“Drums.” Daniel motioned to the set with his sticks. “Come on, I’ll teach you. It’s not that hard.”
Liam scoffed. “Says the boy who’s been pounding on pots and pans since he was in diapers. Yeah, right, not hard at all.”
Daniel beckoned Liam over, rolling his eyes. “Grandma exaggerates, you know that.”
“Then is she good at photo manipulation, too?” Liam asked, smirking as he came up to the set. “‘Cause that photo she showed me looked pretty authentic.”
“She didn’t.”
“Oh, she did.”
“I could kill her.”
“You couldn’t,” Liam countered as he took his spot on the stool behind the set as Daniel directed him to. “You’re a softie for your grandma and you know it.”
Daniel’s cheeks reddened to a shade reminiscent of fresh tomatoes, and he ducked his head, handing over the drumsticks. “Doesn’t mean she had the right to go around showing off baby photos to strangers,” he mumbled before crossing his arms firmly against his chest. His jaw visibly tightened after he let out a sigh.
“Good thing I’m not a stranger, then,” Liam replied, smirking as he smacked one of the drums with both sticks. He cringed at the sound, squeaking, “Sorry.”
A grimace contorted Daniel’s features and he sighed, coming up behind Liam. “Here,” he said, reaching his arms around Liam and rearranging his hands and fingers to hold the sticks correctly in his grip. “Lighten up a bit, too, it’s like you’re gonna break the sticks before they even reach the drums. And I don’t know, you’re still kind of a stranger. My dad seems to think you are, at least. He’s seen you, like, once.”
“Guess I’ll have to invite myself over more often,” Liam suggested.
“Guess you will,” Daniel laughed, his hands still wrapped around Liam’s as he brought one of the sticks down to make contact with the drum. “Or I could invite you myself, you know. And okay, I can’t do this while hovering around you like this. Stand up.”
Liam turned his head at the demand, surprised to find his face only inches from Daniel’s. “What?”
“Just stand up,” Daniel repeated.
Liam furrowed his brow but stood up from the stool all the same, watching with curious eyes as Daniel took his spot on the stool and looked up at Liam, expectantly. “Well, come on, sit,” he said, patting his lap. He rolled his eyes at Liam’s hesitancy. “You don’t have to look so scared, you know. It’s just easier for me to help this way. I help Anya like this all the time.”
“Bryan, too?” Liam wondered, still eyeing Daniel’s lap as though it might be full of trickery.
“Bryan hates the drums now, but I used to, yeah, back when he thought they were the coolest thing ever. And would you please sit down already? Either that or hand over the sticks and I’ll forget I even offered to let you touch my set,” Daniel threatened while holding out his right hand for the sticks, though the look in his eyes pleaded for anything and everything else.
Before Daniel had the nerve to reach out and snatch the sticks from his friend, Liam settled himself upon Daniel’s lap and stretched his arms out in front of him, sticks gripped tightly in hand. “Okay, okay, teach me, Danny boy.”
With a snarky smile upon his lips, Daniel obliged. He returned his arms to their previous position, wrapped snugly around Liam’s and covering his hands and fingers like a strong shadow. He brought their hands back and thrust them forward, slowly at first and then gaining speed as he felt Liam relax within his embrace.
“Good,” he commented after a couple minutes, his heart thumping lowly, yet steadily in his ears as he felt Liam’s laughter escape in a line of breathy exhales. It made his hairs stand on end, and he found a lump in his throat as he went to swallow. Such an easy action, swallowing, one he never had to think about, but as Liam shifted on his lap and turned to look at Daniel for approval, he found himself forgetting how to complete even the simplest of involuntary actions.
Liam turned back toward the set and tapped out a simple beat, taking control for a moment as Daniel allowed his hands to be directed. He watched as Liam grinned after getting it right, feeling the man bounce slightly on his legs, feeling the way his friend moved between his arms. Liam continued on with his experimentation, banging away, but all Daniel could hear was his heart taking off with a rhythm of its own. It beat lowly in his ears at first and then quickened until its steady beating was the only thing Daniel could hear, echoing through the depths of his mind and shaking his entire chest like the low, archaic beats of a tribal drum.
Amidst the steady beats soon came a familiar three-tone ring and a vibration in the pocket of Daniel’s jeans.
Midnight.
The alert was enough to bring Daniel momentarily from his thoughts and back to reality long enough to hear Liam smash the crash cymbals several times before he turned toward Daniel with a childish giggle. “Happy birthday,” he said, grinning, and the only thing Daniel could think was how perfect he looked. How perfect he felt. How perfect the moment was. And before he could take a second to his thoughts, he leaned forward and pressed his lips soundly against Liam’s in a fervent kiss.
When they parted soon after, Daniel studied Liam’s expression with confusion and worry. He looked in a haze, his eyelids half drooped, though a hint of surprise clung to sparks of gold in his amber eyes. “What?” he asked, swallowing the urge to sputter out an apology and sprint away. But he stayed, letting his fingers loosen around Liam’s hands and slip to his forearms.
Liam blinked and met Daniel’s gaze with wider eyes, fixated. “Nothing,” he responded, his voice raspy.
“Do you not,” the younger man stammered in half question and swallowed hard, looking away with a blush scattering itself across his cheeks.
Liam understood though, somehow he understood, and he shook his head as he sent the boy the tiniest of smiles. “No,” he said, “I do, I just…”
Their eyes met. “What?”
Liam moved his lips wordlessly, searching for an answer but was unable to combine his thoughts into a logical response. Shaking his head, he leaned forward and reattached his lips to Daniel’s.
The kiss was soft and gentle, not much pressure, though overflowing with emotions. Liam’s chest tightened and he felt a fluttering sensation dash throughout his every limb, chasing down his spine in a chill of a motion as his lips moved against Daniel’s. But there was more than that surge of emotion.
There was more than his emotions.
There were feelings that were not his own, flowing into his body as their lips crashed together. Feelings that were not his own. Liam’s adrenaline rushed as he registered the familiar feeling, the one that felt so foreign in Daniel’s presence. There were no thoughts, no words, but the feelings… He could feel the excitement, the anticipation, the eagerness and curiosity, the want and desires, the anxiety, the fears, the turmoil of conflicting emotions; he felt them all. They crawled under his skin as though his own, and he didn’t know how to react. He had never had someone’s emotions flow into him so openly before, and only on contact, pouring into him like floodgates were just released.
Amidst the silence, those emotions were the loudest thing Liam could hear, and he deepened the kiss in response. He turned more on Daniel’s lap and brought his hands up to cup the boy’s face the best that he could, the drumsticks still held in his grip. His fingers brushed the corner of Daniel’s jaw and the tips of his ears as he tilted to bring his lips more fully against Daniel’s.
It was overwhelming. The feelings muddled with his own, a problem easily fixable, but Liam hadn’t the urge to sort the boy’s feelings from his own, not in that second. He was too caught up in savoring the moment, the skin beneath his fingertips, the lips meshing with his own, warm and welcoming, the tickle of Daniel’s exhales against his cheek as they finally parted, albeit unwillingly. When their eyes met, Daniel’s hands were but a ghostly caress on Liam’s upper arms.
But his lips tricked up into a smirk. “Happy birthday to me,” he coughed out, letting out a breathy laugh that Liam mimicked.
“Dork,” Liam chuckled in reply, though his mind was trying to work its way around the feelings still running throughout his insides in a chaotic jumble. The alien emotions, the ones he knew weren’t his own by instinct, were fleeting. Draining. He mindlessly brushed his thumb over the prominent corner of Daniel’s jaw while lost in his thoughts, and the emotions flared. He looked up just in time to catch Daniel’s eyes widen a bit, and a new sensation soared in to mingle with his own.
Confusion.
Liam furrowed his brow. “What?”
The younger man shook his head, forcing a half smile. “Nothing,” he said, though the way his eyes widened as Liam let his hands trace their way to rest at the back of his neck told him otherwise.
“Nothing?” Liam questioned, lips quirked in a slight smirk, though his eyes were somber.
Daniel released a sigh and lowered his gaze, watching as his hands made their way up to Liam’s shoulders and then smoothed their way down his sides, coming to a stop at his narrow waist. He furrowed his brow as he felt… Was that curiosity? Worry? But he wasn’t curious. He wasn’t worried. He was confused. “It’s like I,” he began and stopped as quickly as he had started, clamping his lips shut. He shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said, smiling at Liam.
Liam could feel he was holding something back, but he didn’t push it. Not then. Whatever it was, it could wait. Reciprocating the smile, he leaned forward and met Daniel’s lips in a short embrace. “Come on,” he said, standing up from Daniel’s lap far too quickly. “Let’s go inside. Edna promised midnight cake and coffee, remember?”
Daniel stared at Liam for a moment, eyes wide for the same reason Liam’s were—the foreign emotions were gone in an instant, as fast as a snap of the fingers, disappearing as though never even there. Liam recovered quickly, though, and reached out for Daniel’s hand after setting the drumsticks aside.
Daniel hesitated, looking at Liam’s outstretched hand with a weary eye for more reason than one, but smiled and accepted it a second later, allowing himself to be pulled from the stool and guided into the house.
Both young men’s heads were swimming with questions that night, long after they parted ways and were tucked up in their separate beds, several miles between them. One was still trying to figure out what he had felt, while the other was resisting the urge to smile and rejoice at the final hint of a breakthrough.
