seventeen (part two)
They were sitting across from each other in the living room that evening when Evan realized. He’d been dissecting it for ages, the entire breakfast between the two of them, down to the way that he moved his hands when he spoke and how loud Barty laughed at the jokes he made.
“You didn’t say people.”
Barty looked up from the Nintendo Switch, which he’d been locked in on for the last hour and a half. Super Smash Bros was very serious. His hair was still a little damp from an earlier shower, clumps of it going every direction from rubbing a towel across it. “What?”
“Earlier at the restaurant. You didn’t say ‘people’ when you asked if I was interested in dating. You didn’t ask if I was interested in dating people, you asked if I was interested in dating,” Evan held his breath pathetically, his fingers slipping out from where he’d been holding his place in his book. He’d have to search for the page later.
The split second before Barty sat up straighter was enough for Evan to begin down a spiral, wondering if he had made the entire insinuation up in his head. He knew he could be an idiot, and was very much so famous for missing the clues of others, but there was only a slim chance he was reading things wrong this time. Hopefully.
Barty’s face gave away absolutely nothing while he responded. “You didn’t say it either.”
A wave of relief hit before the realization did, slamming into Evan like a punch to the gut. He hadn’t said it. An inkling of self awareness made him realize that he’d meant to leave it off. Fuck. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
He opened his mouth once, twice, before muttering out right and opening his book back up. He reread the same page six times before flipping to find the page he’d actually been on, well aware of Barty’s stare burning into the side of his face the entire time.
—
The next morning, they brushed their teeth while standing shoulder to shoulder. Barty’s eyes were half squinted shut, still fogged over with sleep and downturned towards the lower part of the mirror.
Evan knocked his hip into Barty’s softly, grabbing his attention. He teetered sideways for just a moment, a hand grasping onto Evan in order to keep his balance.
Evan spit into the sink but the hand didn’t leave. It was burning into the skin of his lower back, every cell of him aware of where it was. Each individual finger was making its mark, cementing themselves into his memory. He glanced up at the mirror, finding Barty’s reflection to already be watching him. He held eye contact while rinsing out the sink.
He felt Barty’s thumb move back and forth a few times, a silent shiver going up his spine. A static beat of silence passed between the two of them, fleeting eye contact through the mirror with soft touches.
Eventually, Barty coughed and his hand retreated back to his side. “Swim?”
—
The water was much warmer than it had been at the beginning of the summer. Still a bit to get used to on the initial plunge, but it didn’t leave them shivering within seconds of exposing themselves to the air, which was enough in both of their books.
One of the neighbours had put out a water pad for their grandkids, and had given Barty permission very enthusiastically when he asked for the two of them–which meant that most swim-based days were spent trying to shove each other off of the mat, or trying to pull it out from beneath the other.
“Shit,” Barty’s voice wavered while he tried to keep his balance, Evan having been shoving the water pad back and forth in an attempt to send him flying. “You’re getting too good at this, not fair!”
His complaints were short lived, being chased by a splash in the water ten feet from Evan’s side. The practice had certainly honed his skills, but he was fairly certain that Barty just liked to try and sneak up on him each time he fell off.
Still, Evan jumps when hands latch around his hips and tug him beneath the surface. Barty only holds him under for a moment, presumably pushing off his feet to launch the two of them back up for air. In one quick movement, he sends Evan flying onto the foam mat.
Evan hacked up an embarrassing amount of water for having expected the ‘surprise’ attack, and gave a scowl towards Barty, who gave a sweet smile in return. ‘Ol’ reliable’, he would call it whenever Evan pointed out him using the smile to get away with something. It wasn’t like Evan could really chastise him for it, seeing as it worked on him. A lot of things that Barty did seemed to, nowadays.
—
Last night Evan decided that today would be the day. He needed to pull himself together, suck it up, and do his best to make the first move. Well. Something like that. Doing so at dinner was his original plan, giving himself plenty of time to worry about it during the rest of the day.
There were only two more weeks until they were set to leave, so this was the time to do things, he figured. If it goes terribly he could beg Lily to let him stay with her. If it went well, nothing would have to change.
Maybe that was the worst part, that nothing would change apart from their ‘title’ with each other. Friends to best friends to boyfriends? It was something that elicited a big change in other people's lives–they’ll spend the night with each other, go on trips with each other, wake up with the other person wrapped in their arms. Between Evan and Barty, this was nothing new.
The grade school tiptoeing was beginning to come to a close, and things were going fine between them. Their days were normal, some unspoken agreement passing between the two of them. Things were easy again. Maybe talking about your emotions is the solution to a lot of things. Even if it’s just one cryptic sentence passed between two people like a token of endearment.
Barty demanding to come along on his morning run changed things.
He led the two of them through streets Evan didn’t recognize, making comments every now and then about missing the shape he was in during football or pointing at a dog across the way. He was still in shape, maybe not built for as much endurance as he was a few months ago, but the lean, stray dog look remained. No complaints on Evan’s end, he was sure of that.
“--parents eager for us to be back?” Barty asked, tearing Evan away from his focus on Barty’s back.
“Pan makes it sound like she’s going insane with just her, Mum, and Mare there,” He referred to his Grandma by her first name with ease, as that’s what Barty called her. “Dad went home a week or two ago, and Xeno’s at work with Dorcas most of the day.”
“Tragic,” Barty mused, slowing down at the sight of a bench. He dropped onto it with a sigh, left hand darting out to catch Evan’s wrist. Evan moved willingly, letting himself be tugged down until they were sitting next to each other. He tried not to stare when Barty didn’t let go.
A few moments passed, full of puffs of breaths and hands sloppily trying to shove damp hair out of their eyes. Well, Barty had a new thing of wearing a bandana to control his hair, so he was tucking strands back beneath it. Even if it wasn’t that warm out, they’d been going for a while.
Evan hunched over to tie one of his shoes, forgetting about Barty’s hand around his wrist. It travelled with him as he moved, loosening to slide up his arm and land on his bare shoulder. That was fine.
Each second passed as though it was a year. He needed to do something. Now.
“B?”
“Evan?”
“When you didn’t say people,” Evan began, flush with confidence due to the fact he didn’t have to look at Barty’s face while spoke. He took his sweet time tying his shoe, spending far too long on it. He could feel Barty’s fingers twitch on his shoulder. “Did you mean–”
“Yes,” Barty said.
Evan tilted his head to the side to look up and meet Barty’s gaze. He hoped it hid the fact that his hands were shaking around his laces. He wasn’t all that sure what to do with his face, or the rest of his body, so several moments passed before he managed to push words out of his mouth. “Oh, alright.”
The laugh that bubbled out from Barty’s lips sounded like a future.
Evan was hardly aware of the time passing between him sitting up and leaning towards Barty, only coming back to awareness when his own mouth started to move. “Okay?”
A choppy nod in response and his hands were moving to cradle Barty’s face in a flash, thumbs resting on his cheekbones as everything came together. The pad of his thumb passed over the healed scar on Barty’s cheek, the one from his father’s ring when they were eight. It was just barely there, something that would be undetectable if you didn’t know where to feel. As soon as the space closed between them, Barty’s hands made their way up Evan’s neck and into his hair, fingers scratching over his scalp.
Something felt weird, and after a moment, Evan pulled back just slightly. He hovered only a few inches away from Barty’s face, close enough to brush his lips across Barty’s cheekbones if he wished. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Barty asked hesitantly, prompting Evan to realise that was not something you said after kissing someone.
“It wasn’t like this the other times,” Evan said, his chest becoming uncharacteristically light. Something akin to relief left his body tingling as he remembered the ghost of Barty’s lips against his own. He skimmed his lips over the scar beneath Barty’s eye.
“Fucking hell, Ev,” He could feel Barty's fingers clench just slightly at the base of his neck. Barty laughed quietly, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to, and Evan couldn’t help but smile at the puffs of air against his neck. “Are you sure this is okay?”
“Yes, yeah,” Evan was realising that this was what had been in front of him all along–what he’d been missing out on for weeks, months, years. Everything was finally slot into its rightful place. “This is what it’s supposed to be like.”
—
Ten days before they were set to leave, an email from Mr. Crouch came through.
Barty didn’t let him read it. He refused to speak of it, only giving the explanation that it was from his father after he slammed the laptop shut and shoved it to the other side of the table.
It was fine that Barty didn’t want him to read it, Evan knew he wasn’t owed anything. There was no metaphorical impact on his end, apart from overwhelming anger at Mr. Crouch, these things usually rolled off of Barty in a way that was probably not healthy and certainly detrimental to his well being.
Well, they mostly rolled off. This time seemed to be worse than everything prior, because Barty was unusually quiet. It wasn’t necessarily abnormal for him to be quiet when it was just the two of them. As much of a boisterous and loud person he was, things always toned down when they were alone.
But it was beyond the verge of his typical quietness, his mindless finger tapping and trailing halted, hands both tucked beneath him as he lay on the couch instead. His legs were splayed across Evans, body stretched the length of the cushions.
Evan dug through every possible streaming app relentlessly, remote clicking loudly with every flick between different films. It only took a few minutes for Barty to swing his hand back at him, snatching the remote with a grumble. He appeared to click the very first movie he landed on, opening score to Captain Marvel filling the space.
The movie was long over before either of them said a word. Evan had gotten up and been moving around the house relatively silently, doing laundry and picking up the place, for a while before the silence was broken.
“Do you think it’s my fault?” Barty’s voice was small, his words slightly muffled from being turned towards the back of the couch. He hadn’t moved much since morning.
Evan finished folding the shirt in his hands, one of his own that Barty had stolen immediately, before speaking. “No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“I can guess,” said Evan. He made his way back to the couch, lounging by Barty’s head this time. His hand settled into Barty’s hair, something that had become second nature. “You were only a kid. How could it be your fault?”
“I don’t know,” Barty admitted, sucking in a deep breath. “I have to be to blame at some point along the way though, don’t I? I mean, fuck, all I did was exist.”
Evan scooted down until he was lying flat, pressing a chaste kiss to the top of Barty’s head. “The only person to blame is him. He has no grounds to say anything about you, anything that matters. He wasn’t ever there for you when you needed it, hell, your butler raised you more than he did. Whatever he’s said is bullshit, okay?”
“It was stupid. He’s stupid.”
“You don’t need to tell me.”
“I know. It’s all just fucking stupid. I haven’t seen him in nearly a year and yet it feels like he’s always, just, surrounding me. I don’t–whatever.”
It was hard to lay there and not know what to say. Barty always seemed better at calming people down, or being able to discuss what he was feeling. Evan clammed up everytime, having to work at it to not turn to a random joke or comment that didn’t belong. He didn’t want to act that way, of course he didn’t, it was just difficult. Still, he tried.
“It’s impossible to push away an entire childhood, to not feel the way that it formed you,” Evan spoke softly, hoping that what he was saying wasn’t coming off as pretentious as it was beginning to sound in his head. “I don’t mean that in the way that it sounds, I mean in the way that…in the way that when I’m about to do something stupid, I can almost hear my mom chiding me in the back of my mind. Or how we have assigned sides of the bed, because it’s what we know.
I know that in this situation, my word doesn’t mean all that much, but you aren’t him. You don’t act like him, B, and you don’t owe him anything. The only similarity you two share is the shape of your eyebrows and your full names. You’re more than what he made you believe you are, I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it.”
I wish you could see yourself the way I see you, he wanted to say.
Barty lifted himself to rest on his elbows. His head was tilted down to look at Evan, his eyes slightly misted. “You’d get sick of it after three days, if I asked you to do that.”
“Would I?” Evan asked back, determinedly.
They stared at each other, probably in some sort of unannounced staring contest, before Barty glanced away and responded. “Probably not. You’re you.”
—
The sentence ‘you didn’t say people’ stuck around, passing through their lips like a manta.
Barty would curl his arms around Evans shoulders in the kitchen, muttering the words into his ear before pressing lips to the side of his neck.
Evan grabbed Barty’s hand when they were walking through downtown before they left for the lake, repeating it when he was given a brow raised in surprise.
They’d hover over each other in the dead of night, words passing through their lips while hands travelled.
—
The trip back to the lake passed a lot quicker than the trip to Barty’s, likely aided by the fact that Evan was no longer inching closer to the edge of the cliff with anxiety. When they pulled in, the afternoon sun beating down on the house, Pandora gaped at them.
“No way,” She pointed at them where they stood, each of them having grabbed an over-packed grocery bag full of laundry when they climbed out of the car. Her platinum hair was tied back into two separate braids, clips tucking the pieces in the front away from her face. “No fucking way, I knew it. My twin senses. They tingled.”
Neither Evan nor Barty had told anyone about their recent developments, choosing to keep it to themselves until they were back. Now that his sister knew, everyone else would certainly know within the hour. They’d come to terms with that in the car, deciding that it was probably better to have everyone find out beforehand, rather than dealing with the ‘told you so!’’s they’d earn from their classmates.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And, those don’t exist,” Evan said, nudging past her to get to the door. Barty followed behind him, dropping his batch of bags onto the counter.
“Oh, come on,” Pandora came in a few seconds after Barty did, holding one of their bags. “It happened. The thing happened. Who said it first? Wait, no. Who did it first?”
“Gross, dude,” Evan flicked her shoulder.
“Ew, Van,” She gagged at the implication. “There are bigger things in life than shagging, you know.”
He was well aware. The sex thing was still, well, a thing. Barty didn’t seem to mind it, not doing certain things together, but the anxiety still lingered beneath Evan’s skin regardless.
“Evan did,” Barty finally fed her an answer, flicking through the stack of mail in front of him. He sorted them into piles for each person, tossing two into the garbage–ones that more than likely were sent from a Crouch address.
“That’s a good one,” Pandora snorted, hands resting on her hips.
Evan rolled his eyes and sighed, though he wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t expected himself to encourage things along, either.
“Wait. You’re not kidding? Fuck. I owe Regulus so much money.”
Barty moved to be beside him and slung an arm over Evan’s shoulder, beaming with a well rehearsed grin. “He came on me faster than the speed of light, grabbing my face and everything. It was crazy, Dora. You should’ve been there. Didn’t know our sweet Ev was such an animal.”
—
They decided to tell his Mum at dinner. It seemed like a smart way to do it, seeing as they could split into their separate bedrooms if it went poorly. Not that it would. Pandora was convinced that their mother had a secret girlfriend when she was in university.
Evan poked at his food, leftover lasagna, with his fork. “Mum?”
She was enraptured in something in one of the magazines that came in earlier that day, but she still answered. “Yeah, sweetheart?”
The distraction seemed perfect. It lowered the stakes significantly, seeing as she might not even be paying full attention to the words coming out of his mouth. It was like when you save asking permission to do something until your parents are on the phone, so they just mouth yes and wave you away.
“Barty and I are dating.”
“I know,” She said immediately, her finger tracing down a few lines. “It’s been a bit, hasn’t it?”
Evan stared at her. He glanced to his right, seeing Barty doing the same. Pandora, across the table, was giggling around the fork in her mouth. Dolly, his grandma's new puppy, even seemed to still from where she rolled around under the dining room table.
“I mean, a few weeks,” He spoke slowly, unsure. Her eyes snapped up to his.
“Oh!”
This time it was Barty who was laughing, one of his hands coming up to grasp onto Evan’s shoulder. Evan was quickly becoming aware that his own mother was just like everyone else who assumed they were either together. Betrayed by his own blood.
“That’s great, honey! I’m happy for the two of you,” She smiled like she was trying to evade something.
Pandora leaned forward and whispered, like she was telling some forbidden secret. The entire table could hear her. “She thought you guys have been together since last summer.”
“What about Kir–” Evan began, Barty’s hand coming over his mouth before the name could leave his mouth. He shushed him loudly, like he was about to say some forbidden word.
His Mum’s mouth turned into a clearly restrained frown.
“Well, I never liked that boy very much.”
She’d never even met him. Evan was fairly certain he’d only said a few sentences about him in maybe two letters over the span of the school year. What the hell were Pandora and Barty saying in their letters?
“I know, I know, I didn’t meet him,” She raised her hands in surrender. Barty’s hand squeezed his shoulder, which earned a small smile in return. “Still, I know what’s best. Who’s best!”
“Ew,” Pandora and Evan whined simultaneously.
—
The closer the end of summer grew, the more and more letters Evan got in the mail regarding his future. He was surprised that so many teams were interested, despite knowing it was everything that he’d worked for ever since he was a child. Imposter syndrome, and all.
Before last semester ended, his coach gave him an outline to follow regarding schools that should be considered as top contenders and those who could be discarded. He felt a little bad shredding those letters, the ones that belonged to schools who hadn’t seen any sort of substantial competition or stardom in the time that he’d been alive. Sure, it was his career he needed to consider, and he was being offered double the money elsewhere, but everyone holds an underdog pipedream somewhere in their bones.
Evan’s first call was to Marlene, but she’d been committed to a team for over a year now, so she wisely said, “Fuck if I know. I picked the first offer I got. Call James.”
It turned out a lot harder than expected to reach James, so the two of them played phone tag back and forth until finally scheduling a time.
Evan was thankful James agreed to talk, but his advice turned out to be less than helpful–or maybe it just wasn’t what he was looking for. Maybe a part of him wanted an excuse to sign with the lower league team near his childhood home over the larger teams, where he’d end up further away. James pointed this out to him, of course, citing that he’d cried to his mum about picking a contract several times before he signed–he was equally as reluctant to leave what he knew.
In the end, between the roster that his coach gave him, the recommendations from James, and his own careful deliberation process, he was left with three teams. He had some time to pick. Sort of. The season wouldn’t start until the August after graduation, but that didn’t account for when practices began–or the process of finding somewhere to live and finding his place within the group of new teammates.
That was another thing that bothered him, having to play with all new people. He and the rest of the Slytherins were a well oiled machine. Many of them had been playing together ever since they started attending the school, and knew each other's mechanics like the back of their hands. This, selfishly, made him want to pick a team with people he recognized–whether they were players he’d followed for years or alumni from school that he knew once upon a time.
There was also the Barty Problem.
“The Barty Problem? Seriously?” Pandora sat across from him at the table, folding discarded letters into different shapes. Barty was off in the shower, leaving the two of them alone for a few. “I think he would happily follow you to the end of the earth, Van. It’s disgusting. Besides, there are more important things to be concerned about, like a sign on bonus.”
She’d already, very enthusiastically, gone through and highlighted the perks of each offer. Which, well, was helpful.
“It’s not a problem,” Evan declared, despite creating the name himself. “Just a factor. A big one.”
“Like I said. I don’t think he cares where you go, he’ll follow. Isn’t the field he’s looking at online, anyway?”
Barty was still up in the air on what he wanted to pursue, like every other seventeen year old on the Earth. Sometimes Evan forgot most people weren’t dead set on something their whole lives.
He didn’t envy it, that was for sure. Barty seemed to go back and forth between things everyday. Which was fine, he had plenty of time and Evan could cover rent as long as needed if they ran off together judging by the offer amounts. Not that he’d been kept awake by that, or anything. He didn’t expect Barty to come and live with him because Evan was going wherever for football. He wanted Barty to find his own vein and do what he wanted, but there was a healthy chunk of selfishness that wanted to keep him tucked into his pocket.
“He might go back to school,” Evan explained, picking up a paper airplane his sister had folded and throwing it into the wall. Dolly picked it up and promptly began tearing it to shreds. She looked scarily similar to the photos of Gracie as a puppy, just black fur replaced by brown. He hadn’t realised how much he missed having a dog in the house. “Or he might not.”
“Don’t talk about me behind my back,” Barty emerged from the door, rubbing his hair dry with a towel. “What’s the subject? Wait, don’t tell me. Is it our crippling fear of the future and growing up?”
“When’d you get so smart?” Pandora asked, looking remarkably honest as she parked her chin on her hand. “But it’s Evan’s crippling fear of the future and growing up at hand.”
Evan sighed as Barty’s hand ran up his back, resting it on his shoulder while he bent over the table to look at the remaining options.
Dolly moved onto shredding tubes of cardboard at their feet, occasionally swinging the intact tubes into the legs of the chairs. Evan quickly discovered that the way they were so easy to keep occupied was the best part of a puppy. The teeth on the other hand? He, personally, was not a fan.
“That one’s logo looks like a fox,” Barty observed. “Seems good enough to me.”
Pandora nodded in agreement.
“One, that’s across the country. I can’t just–”
“Leave? Sure you can, I’m coming with you, and Dora’s going to wherever the hell for her internship.”
Pandora had been offered an internship in the States for marine biology a few weeks ago. It wasn’t even a question as if she was to do it or not.
Evan set his pen down and tilted his head up to look at Barty, realising he was never going to get to his second point. “I’m not going to make you leave your life behind.”
“Your life is my life too,” Barty said, like it was obvious. “Besides, Reg and James are in the same boat. The others are either going to be still at school or heading elsewhere for more school. My parents are doing whatever the fuck. Not that I won’t miss your parents, but I don’t think they want me to live in their house from August to May.”
After the email from his father, Barty’s access to his bank account managed by his father very quickly closed down. He still had access to the money from his mothers side, and a trust that would hit when he was of age, but that was still a year away–and he wouldn’t be able to reliably pay rent until then, if he was to get his own place.
“I think Mum would prefer it if you replaced Pan and I and lived with them,” Evan said truthfully, following up with many reiterations of compliments his mum had given Barty. He was so much better at folding laundry than Evan was, apparently. Mowing the lawn, too.
—
When Barty yelped from across the creek, Evan shot up from where he had crouched to look for him.
He was standing atop a pile of rocks across the creek, arms swinging while he attempted to regain his balance. There was a mud stain across the bottom of his swim trunks, courtesy of Dolly – who was sticking her head beneath the water in search of mouth-sized rocks.
“Puppy, puppy, puppy,” Barty chanted, having found his footing and sat down on the rocks. Dolly’s head darted up from the water, a rock dangling out the side of her mouth. Evan winced, grabbing a stick from nearby and trading with her for the rock. “C’mon!”
Evan squinted into the sun, watching her bounce her way across the muddy bank and up the rocks. Her paws were still too big for the rest of her body, so it was more of a long stumble across the incline rather than a walk.
She only made it halfway up before Barty made his way back down–the reward for the climb awfully short lived–and scooped the squirming puppy into his arms. She wiggled vigorously, seeming to be attempting to choose between holding onto her stick and covering his face in slobber.
“She reminds me of Gracie, just, psychotic,” Barty laughed as he set her back down into shallow water. She immediately turned back to him, pressing the stick into his knees.
It was clear she had no plans of letting go of it any time soon, but Evan pointed it out anyway. “She wants you to throw it.”
Barty rolled his eyes, brushing his over-grown hair out of his face. “Thanks, genius.”
When he bent and grabbed on to the stick, eliciting a tug-of-war between himself and Dolly, Evan felt a jolt of nostalgia. It flowed through him, from his fingers to his toes.
It was impossible to not think back to their first first summer, the one where they were seven year old strangers clad in ugly outfits. Despite the ten years between then and now, the height they’d grown, nothing had really changed. Just like back then, they’d head back to Evan’s for lunch. His Grandma would bicker with them over getting mud on the floor. Pandora would raid the fridge in front of them, Xeno peeking over her shoulder in search of something more interesting than a turkey sandwich.
That evening, they’d sprawl out next to each other in the tent like they always have. Shazam! would become background noise beneath huffed laughs. They’d whisper ‘I love you’’s in the middle of the night, lips pressed against the other's neck. Someone would say something about leaving for school in the morning and pull a groan out of the other.
Time would continue to pass, as it always has. It may have taken much of that time for them to truly find each other, but that was how it was meant to be – something for their friends to hold above their heads and tease them over, something to hold onto and prove how they were created.
He couldn’t help but know there was an aching sense of finality with this summer. Graduation, adulthood, and the challenges life would continue to throw loomed on the horizon, there were so many things to get through. Still, he knew that nothing real was ending–not the things he could hold between his hands and give promises of love to. Not the things that he woke up to everyday, or the ones that seemed to read his mind before he could open his mouth.
“Evan?”
Things would be okay.