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“It is I,” Lark announced, opening the door to Grant’s new place, “Sparrow Oak Garcia, and I love you all, as I love all creatures on earth.”
“And I,” Sparrow continued, pushing through the door as well to face the small group in Grant’s living room, the familiar faces lighting up, even as Grant rolled his eyes and Terry let out a long sigh, Nick’s laugh bubbling up over him as he spoke, “Lark Oak Garcia. Who here can best me in single combat?”
Nick, always the first in on a bit, leapt from the couch and bounded over to him, pulling him into a headlock. Sparrow ducked under his arms, loose from laughter and intoxication and slapped his fist out of the way, and went in for an exaggerated, pulled gut punch.
Nick doubled over, clutching his side. “My kidneys!” he cried, grasping for Lark’s arm.
“They do this sort of thing sometimes,” Sparrow heard Grant explain over Nick’s feigned wailing, “since we were kids.”
“Please Brother,” Lark pleaded, making his eyes huge behind Sparrow’s glasses, “violence is not the answer. We must love everyone. Nicholas,” Lark said solemnly, putting a hand on Nick’s shoulder, “I love you.”
“Nicholas,” Sparrow mirrored Lark’s hand on Nick’s other shoulder, “I remain undefeated.” Sparrow shot his foot out and swept Nick’s leg and Nick reached out to pull him close for stability and Lark didn’t let go and they all went down in a flurry of limbs and yelps.
Nick took the brunt of the fall with a violent exhale and Sparrow’s forehead hit his solar plexus. He heaved and wheezed out what could have been a laugh. Sparrow’s head felt light and he couldn’t stop giggling.
He felt somebody pulling him up and steadied himself against Grant’s familiar shoulder. “Did you guys pre-game?”
“Cone sold stober,”’ Sparrow said and felt a grin split his face wider than he’d felt in years. He glanced down and Lark, red spot on his forehead where he’d collided with something harder than Nick’s diaphragm and felt his smile grow
He reached down and Lark gripped his wrist, allowing himself to get pulled upright.
“Well fought,” Sparrow said as he turned to offer Nick his hand, who grinned back and took it.
“After that entrance, I hesitate to offer,” Grant said, steadying Sparrow, wobbling under Nick’s weight, “but you want to come meet everybody?”
Lark hadn’t let himself this close to Terry in a long while, the ball of his shoulder pressed into Terry’s armpit, the heavy weight of Terry’s arm around the back of the couch, warm against Lark’s neck, his expanding ribcage pressing into Lark’s before retreating again.
Sparrow wasn’t a coward though, so Lark sank into it and pushed Sparrow’s glasses up his forehead so he could see the Monopoly board better.
“Ideologically,” Lark said, “our family has always been against Monopoly.”
“We can play something else?” Marco offered.
“No,” Lark said quickly. “I will cave to the group’s desires in order to maintain the peace.”
“Don’t be fooled,” Terry said, arm dropping to Lark’s shoulder as he shifted forward to place the top hat piece on Start, “he wants to win.”
“We could always play Life instead,” Lark said, “practice for those 2.5 kids, small business owner life.”
“Yeah,” Terry agreed easily, “cheers to your suburban future, Sparrow.”
“That’s me,” Lark said, “the American Dream.”
“So you’re a small business owner?” Marco asked politely, setting the cards and cash out in front of him in neat little piles.
“Marrying into it actually,” Lark said, “I’ll make an excellent trophy husband.” Terry pinched his ear as Marco smiled uncertainly, and Lark’s shoulder shot up to dislodge Terry. “What? I could be.”
“Come on, let’s play,” Terry prompted.
“I call the dog,” Lark said and leaned over out of Terry’s reach to grab the piece from the box.
“What’s your tattoo of?” Marco, desperate for some normal, common ground, asked, gesturing to where Lark’s sleeve has ridden up his bicep.
He tugged it up a little further to show. “Most important person in the world to me.”
“I thought your name was Sparrow?” the Bride of Frankenstein to Marco’s left asked, cocking her head slightly.
Lark’s lips split wide, teeth poking out.
“Hey,” Grant called from the doorway to the kitchen, “Lar—Sparrow, could I get a hand in here?”
Marco’s head shot up. “You need a hand?”
“No,” Grant said, “you keep playing, we’ve got it.”
“Always happy to help,” Lark chirped, hopping up and following Grant to the kitchen.
“Here,” Grant said, passing him a cardboard sleeve of soda, “pop these in the fridge.”
Lark opened up the top and hefted the box onto his hip. “Marco seems great.”
“Yeah,” Grant agreed rummaging through the cupboard, his back to Lark, “he is.”
“You think we deserve that?” Lark asked, the off-brand root beer mascot saluting him from the fridge as he turns the can to face him. “Marriage and kids. You and I, we’re gonna be the ones to get it.”
“Lark,” Grant started and Lark spared a glance over his shoulder to see Grant, spine rigid, head still in the cupboard, “drop it.”
“I’m just saying. We’re kind of the same.”
Grant sighed, his shoulders loosening, but still turned way from him. “Doesn’t matter if we deserve it. We get it or we don’t.”
“What if we ruin it?” Lark asked. “What if we’ve already ruined it?”
At that, Grant pulled his head from the cabinet. “What?” he asked, eyebrows furrowing in a concerned expression that hadn’t changed since they were twelve. “Hey. What’s—”
“Nothing, doesn’t matter,” Lark shook himself, letting his shoulders drop and feeling his forehead smooth out. “Grant, I love you,” he said, drawing out the vowels and rounding out the consonants until he sounded more like Sparrow, like he wasn’t trying to start a fight, “and you and Marco are gonna make it work. I can tell.”
Grant frowned, the furrow in his brow returning. He opened his mouth but an outcry came from the other room and his shoulders stiffened, eyes narrowing to focused slits and he held out a hand, almost touching Lark’s chest. An order. “You finish up. I’ll be right back.”
Sparrow’s head swam and his face burned. His hands convulsed by his side. “Take it back.”
Everything was a little fuzzy already, since Lark took his glasses, but the blurry face in front of him, half done up with face paint as a skull, looked startled by his reaction. “Hey,” he said, “I didn’t mean anything by it, chill.”
“Don’t tell me to chill!” Sparrow yelled and the delight of it hit him faster than the vodka, burned his chest and throat just the same. He grinned and stepped closer, the individual teeth of the skull’s rictus painted across the guy’s lips coming into focus. “Take it back.”
“Hey!”
That was Grant’s voice and Sparrow stopped as a familiar hand gripped his shoulder. He frowned, opened his mouth, but Grant kept talking past him, like he wasn’t even there. “He’s just a little drunk. I promise he’s a sweetheart, wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Of course I wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Sparrow said, resisting as Grant tugged him backwards, “a fly never insulted my family’s honor.”
“He’s a vegan,” Grant offered as a last ditch effort, over his shoulder as he turned Sparrow around and marched him away.
“Grant,” Sparrow said, and his voice wobbled a bit. He tried to steel it, to sound more angry than upset, more like Lark, not so ready to crumble under everything. “He said my tattoo was weird.”
“I know he did,” Grant said and Sparrow broke character long enough to let Grant slide under his arm and grip his side. “It is a little weird.”
“Them’s fighting words Wilson,” Sparrow said, and tapped a fist to Grant’s temple.
“Yeah, you can fight me when you’re sober,” Grant said, leaning into Sparrow’s knuckles like a caress. “Let’s get you to the bathroom.”
Sparrow let himself be led, and sat on the cool edge of Grant’s pristine bathtub. He gripped the edge, like he might sway and overbalance, sliding backward into the tub, and Grant lifted the toilet seat.
“Throw up if you have to, I’ll be back with water in a minute.” Grant laid a careful hand on Sparrow’s forehead, warm and a little sweaty. Alcohol had always made Grant run hot.
Sparrow nodded and closed his eyes, and leaned into Grant’s touch.
“Sparrow,” he started then hesitated. “They just don’t know you.”
“So?” Sparrow said, lips a little numb. “I don’t care what they think.”
“Yeah, okay,” Grant said on an exhale, more a sigh than a word. “I’ll be right back.”
The hand disappeared from Sparrow’s forehead and he leaned forward and puked into the toilet.
“Need any help in here?”
“Depends,” Lark said, “you on babysitting duty?”
“Depends,” Terry responded, leaning up against the counter as Lark shut the fridge and started breaking down the cardboard box, “you behaving yourself?”
“Always,” Lark answered, baring his teeth.
“Then I’m just here to help,” Terry said, shrugging.
Lark folded up the cardboard and leaned his tailbone against the counter next to Terry, and let his head drop onto his shoulder.
He tugged on the dramatic, swooping collar of the cloak flattened against Terry’s shoulder under his cheek. “Kind of a fucked up costume,” he commented as lightly as he could. “For you, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Terry agreed, baring his faux fangs at Lark, “a little funny though, right?” he continued in an exaggerated Dracula voice.
Lark snorted. “How’d you, out of any of us, end up the most okay about everything?”
“I don’t know about okay,” Terry said with a low laugh. Lark closed his eyes. Terry had a nice laugh. “Some things you never recover from. Some old wounds are always gonna stay open, you just have to let the new things in too, even if they don’t replace the old things. Even if they don’t fix anything.”
Lark hummed. He didn’t really let people close to him if they weren’t Sparrow, but Terry hadn’t moved an inch, solid and straight-backed next to him, breathing through his diaphragm so his shoulder didn’t even rise or fall under Lark’s temple.
He squeezed his eyes shut tighter.
“I can do that,” he said aloud, and didn’t flinch away when Terry’s cheek rested against the crown of his head.
“Hey man,” Nick said with a perfunctory knock to the door frame as he came in. “Brought you water.”
“Thanks,” Sparrow said, reaching for it. He gulped down about half of it as Nick sank onto the bathroom floor next to him, back to the tub.
“I think it’s cool you guys got tattoos when we were like, twelve,” Nick said, pulling out a pre-rolled joint from an interior pocket in his jacket and raising an eyebrow. “For the nausea?” he offered.
Sparrow nodded and rolled his shoulders before standing to open the bathroom window. He stuck his head out and breathed the fresh air in deep as Nick joined him, forearms resting on the narrow sill, pushed up against him, shoulder to elbow.
The light from where his fingertips met the end of joint lit up his face like the flashlight of a kid telling a scary story at camp. He’d come to the party only partially disguised in honor of Halloween, with too-realistic horns that he’d been complimented on all night and the hint of fangs poking out from between his lips as he inhaled deeply.
“That’s a good look on you,” Sparrow said, fingers itching. He balled his hands up into fists and waited his turn.
Nick looked at him out of the corner of his eye, lips twitching. He exhaled on a little laugh, pungent smoke pooling out into the air before them, and held out the lit joint to Sparrow. “Right back atcha, Lark.”
Sparrow let out a snort that was a little more like a honk and less like the scoff he’d been going for and Nick’s grin widened.
“I never got any tattoos,” Nick said as Sparrow breathed the smoke in, his lungs aching, “Jodie would have lost his shit and then I was in Hell for a while so. Not a whole lot of opportunities.”
“What,” Sparrow asked, coughing until Nick passed him the water again, “all tattoo artists go to heaven?” he continued after he’d stopped coughing, his throat still raw.
Nick laughed again and Sparrow swayed a bit, feeling suddenly lightheaded. “Something like that.”
He took another hit and passed it back to Sparrow, who, throat still aching, inhaled shallowly and immediately chased it with water before he could cough.
“They say you get higher if you cough,” Nick said, not unsympathetically.
“That can’t be true.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t know,” Nick agreed, “never coughed in my life.”
Sparrow shoved into him with his shoulder, knocking him back against the other side of the window frame. “Asshole.”
Nick gave him another one of those smiles around the joint, dark irises flicking to him as his eyes went lidded in amusement, like a cat.
“I could give you a tattoo,” Sparrow said. He licked his lips, dry and numb like his tongue was coated in cloth. “I’m clearly very experienced.”
“Of what,” Nicky asked, still smiling, joint in hand as he angled his face toward Sparrow, “your name?”
“Don’t you want to commemorate our bond?”
“Yeah,” Nick said, “okay. You can give me my first tattoo.”
Sparrow brushed his fingertips over Nick’s leather clad forearm, a mirror of where his own tattoo sat, and his fingers lingered on the thin skin of his wrist, where his cuff ended and his pulse fluttered. “We could match.”
He stared at his fingers for a long moment, time stretching and sagging under its own weight like pulled taffy, before looking up to meet Nick’s eyes. His own crossed slightly, refocusing on Nick’s nose, a lot closer than he’d been expecting.
“Hey there,” Nick said, and Sparrow leaned in.
“Whoa,” Nick yelped, shoulder smacking against the window frame as he flinched back. It didn't do much to put distance between them, they were still nose to nose, but it was enough to stop Sparrow in his tracks. “Hey, Sparrow, man. What about Rebecca?”
“It’s fine,” Sparrow said, “it’s fine. It’s already ruined,” he swayed a bit, in and out of Nick’s space. “I ruined it, so it’s fine.”
“Okay,” Nick said long and slow, drawing out the vowels deliberately, his brows pulled together, dark eyes uncharacteristically thoughtful. “Okay, so you don’t get high too often and should probably talk to your girlfriend.”
“Yeah,” Sparrow said, more for something to say than an actual agreement, “yeah, sorry. I’m good I don’t know what that was.”
“No, you’re fine, I mean,” Nick’s eyebrows loosened and came apart, his eyes still analytical, “we’ve all been there, right?”
“Yeah,” Sparrow repeated, turning forward so he didn’t have to keep looking at Nick and instead into the dark of Grant’s neighbor’s back yard, “right. Right. Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” Nick said, checking his shoulder gently with his own, “I have that effect on people.”
Sparrow tried to laugh, take the olive branch that Nick was clearly offering, but it got lost and caught in his throat, coming out strangled and weak.
They said nothing for an agonizing minute.
“Look,” Nick finally sighed, “I gotta be up early tomorrow to help out at home, holiday season starts pretty immediately after Halloween, so I’m gonna do my goodbyes and bounce.”
“Okay,” Sparrow said.
“You go ahead and keep this,” Nick said, putting the last of the joint in Sparrow’s hand and patting his back gently. “You gonna be okay on your own?”
“I’m peachy,” Sparrow said squeezing his eyes shut, “um. Get home safe.”
Nick patted his back again. “Take care of yourself, yeah?”
“Will do,” Sparrow said and kept his eyes squeezed shut until he heard the door click shut behind Nick.
He waited fifteen breaths before sticking his leg over the window sill and clambering out into the night.
Lark was behaving well enough that Grant and Terry left him alone, so he stood in front of the tall glass sliding door just outside the kitchen, staring at his reflection in the dark glass and fiddling with the tab on his soda.
His reflection moved, turning around and walking away from him, arms stiff and straight out to its side.
Lark blinked, and glancing to confirm Terry and Grant were still in the living room, he opened the door and stepped outside to follow, breathing in the fresh air and slightest whiff of weed.
As he slid the door shut, he glanced around the little concrete patch that Grant’s condo boasted as a patio, finding Sparrow standing just out of the light, holding a neglected joint.
“Hey,” Lark called and Sparrow blinked several times before his eyes focused on Lark. “Where’s the Ghost of Christmas Hash?” he asked, gesturing to the joint.
Sparrow’s lips quirked, not the laugh that Lark had been going for, but something. “He had to head out. Holiday emergency in Hell or something. You want the rest of it?” He held out the sliver of joint left, barely a hit’s worth.
Lark shrugged and took it, finishing it off. Sparrow stood there, now empty hands entirely still by his sides.
“So,” Lark said, watching him out of the corner of his eye and smashing the butt of the joint against the brick siding of Grant’s place, “you ready to Freaky Friday this shit and go back to normal?”
“Yeah,” Sparrow said, sounding far away. “I missed you while you were me.”
Lark took off Sparrow’s glasses and passed them over. “These were starting to give me a headache anyway.”
This time Sparrow did chuckle and put his glasses on. “There you are,” he said, smiling at Lark, eyes looking a little clearer.
“Like looking in a mirror?”
“Not a very clean one,” Sparrow commented, pulling his glasses away from his face again to squint at them. “Are these fingerprints?”
“Hey, I was getting used to them,” Lark said, “cut me some slack.”
“Forgiven,” Sparrow said, wiping them clean on the hem of his shirt, “just pray you never need glasses if this is how they end up. Can we go home now?”
“Yeah.” He glanced back at the lit up living room where Terry and Grant were cleaning up, and back to Sparrow, unmoving and looking waxy in the dim light. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s go home.”