Christmas with Danny Fit (9 page)

once Jesse was activated, Danny Fit became just another fitness guru, putting Kit’s body through some twisty-puffy cardio-strength pain.

They went and got a Christmas tree—a small one, so they could put it up on a bookshelf and the kittens wouldn’t wreak havoc with it. Jesse had never had a tree—he said something about his mom always promising and never delivering and left it at that. Kit took him to Target, and they picked out ornaments—

Jesse made sure they matched Kit’s décor.

And then Kit took his courage in both hands and called his mother. “Ma, we’ve got a Christmas tree. Come see it.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and my boyfriend. You have to be nice to him, or I’m taking you home.”

“I’ll be Mary-fucking-Sunshine. Don’t gross me out or anything. You two fags neck, and I’m out of there.”

The words were harsh, but she actually managed a pair of jeans and a Christmas sweater to meet Jesse. She brought some smoke-flavored cookies, and Jesse ate one politely, and she played Amy Lane

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with the kittens for half an hour while bitching about the neighbors behind her and how their goddamned Christmas lights would flash to music until eight o’clock at night.

Kit considered the visit a success—especially when Jesse stopped at the drugstore the next day and bought a box of nicotine patches.

“Anything inspire that?” Kit asked innocently, and Jesse shuddered.

“I have seen my future, and it’s wearing a reindeer sweater and espadrilles,” he said back, and Kit nodded seriously. He was very conscientious about supporting Jesse’s efforts after that, and two weeks before Christmas, Jesse was proud to announce he was patch free.

Three days later, they got a call from Emmy’s parents, and Jesse cried all night. Kit called up the office and told the girl in personnel that neither of them would be at work until after Christmas. Jesse listened to him take charge with liquid eyes and lashes spiked with tears.

“What if I can’t make rent?” he asked, his voice clogged and listless.

“What’s wrong with living here?” Kit said, trying to keep it light. Jesse sobbed on him again without answering, and Kit wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.

The funeral was two days later, and they drove up together, listening to Jesse’s alternative rock music, which Kit had never really heard before.

They had just passed Auburn when Jesse started to talk, seemingly at random.

Amy Lane

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“You’re going to meet my mom—she’ll be there. She’ll have my little brother with her. See, she never kept promises. Like, she’d always promise to have a tree, or that the next boyfriend or husband wasn’t going to suck and hit on me or Jakey, or that her next job would last longer than it would take for welfare to cancel the check. So, you tell me that you want me to move in, and that’s a promise. You can’t just say that because it’s easy. You’ve got a home, Kit. A real home. You want me to be a part of that, I’m going to take it serious, and I don’t know how serious you can be when we’ve only been together for a month, you know?”

Kit opened his mouth to say he was serious, and Jesse cast him a sideways glance over the steering wheel. “Man, you still have a crush on Danny Fit—how serious can you be?”

Kit didn’t want to argue with him, but short of burning all the guy’s DVDs, he didn’t know what else to do.

The funeral was… was sad. A child had died in a small community—most of the town turned out to the little roughhewn funeral home off the main drag of Donner Pass. When the service was over, Jesse grabbed Kit’s hand and tried to drag him out before anyone could see him, but a woman—spit-whip thin with Jesse’s sharp cheekbones and a mouth as sour as Kit’s mother’s, came up to them, a sulky boy in her wake.

“Hi, Mom,” Jesse said weakly. Kit put his hand in the small of Jesse’s back and was proud when his back straightened. Jesse looked up, and a real smile thawed the pinched expression around his eyes. “Hi, Jakey.”

Jakey smiled back, and both of them looked unhappily at their mother.

“You coming for Christmas?” the woman asked, and Jesse shook his head.

Amy Lane

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“I’m staying with Kit.”

Jakey gave him a real smile then. “Can I come with you?” he asked eagerly, and Kit was opening his mouth to say, “Christ yes!”

just to make Jesse smile again when Jesse’s mom sneered and shook her head.

“Come along, Jakey—we’ll have a real nice Christmas at our place this year. I promise.”

Jakey cast a forlorn look over his shoulder, and Jesse held up his hand, thumb and forefinger extended in the universal “call me” gesture. The two of them disappeared into the crowd, and Jesse said it was time to leave.

They went so Jesse could embrace Emmy’s parents and hug his ex—an extremely handsome, fit young man with beautiful blue eyes, who looked so thoroughly devastated that Kit couldn’t even think about him being Jesse’s ex and could only hope the poor man’s heart healed sometime soon. After Jesse’s murmured promises to call, he grabbed Kit’s hand and dodged people who seemed to want to talk to him, and they slipped out the back.

“You don’t want to stay longer?” Kit asked cautiously as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“That’s my past,” Jesse said resolutely. “Jake and Emmy were the best parts about it.” Kit was driving back, but he could still see Jesse’s chin tremble. Maybe when things didn’t seem to hurt so much, Jesse would go back there. Maybe he would get his little brother out of a home that obviously hurt to live in. But right now, all Kit really cared about was that Jesse was still hurt, and Kit needed to find some way to convince him that Kit could keep a promise, new lover or not.

“Jesse….” Kit reached out and took Jesse’s hand, keeping his Amy Lane

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eyes on the road.

Jesse didn’t say anything back, but he clung to that hand until Kit needed it to drive. Randomly, Kit remembered that he’d asked Jesse if he wanted to go to the soup kitchen Christmas morning. Jesse had flushed and looked away and said it sounded too much like the community Christmas breakfast at the Elks Lodge that had been meant for the poorer families in the community. “We were there a couple of times,” he said through a tight mouth, and Kit resolved to go alone on another day.

Then Kit remembered that moment in November, when Jesse seemed wondrous and perfect, and unattainable. That bony hand, tight and uncomfortable, was so much more important than the imaginary Jesse that Kit couldn’t figure out how he’d had the courage to love at all with only the illusion to hope for.

They went home—Kit’s home, but it was becoming Jesse’s too—and sat on the couch sideways, Jesse pulled back into Kit’s body, and played with the kittens and didn’t speak for a long time.

THREE days later, Kit spotted the announcement on a flier in the newspaper.

“Look!” he said, trying not to sound like a schoolgirl. “Danny Fit is going to be in town!”

Jesse looked over his shoulder and smacked Kit in the arm.

“Yeah, but you can’t go—it’s in two days!” Kit looked and sighed.

He’d bought tickets for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra that night—

he’d never been. In fact, until Jesse, he never would have had the courage to go, but they’d been looking forward to it for two weeks.

Amy Lane

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Kit looked back at the flier. “But it’s only downtown—and he’ll be done by two o’clock. I can get here in time to get ready—

totally easy.”

“Right,” Jesse snapped, abruptly angry. “Yeah—you do that.

You go ahead and risk plans you’ve had with me for weeks so you can go meet your imaginary crush. Peachy. I’ll meet you there—

I’m going home.”

It was late afternoon—they’d been planning on dinner and a movie.

“Jesse!” Kit stood up away from the computer. “Wait a minute! You said this was no big deal! ‘Stroke off to who you want to’, remember?”

“Well yeah!” Jesse snapped. “But look at you—you find out he’s, you know, real, and you can meet him, and you slobber all over yourself to go shake the guy’s hand. It’s like, I’m what?

Second choice? You really wanted Danny Fit, but you ended up with me? Fucking awesome!”

“Fucking wrong!” Kit snapped back. He thought with wonder,
Oh—this is a fight. Now I know. It sucks. I’ll try not to do this often.

“I really wanted you….” His voice broke, just that suddenly, because he’d never said this. “I
really
wanted you. And you were so… so beautiful, so kind, and it just broke my heart. And I thought that getting you would be the one thing that never would happen. So I got the workout stuff, and I felt so pathetic, like here I was, trying to make myself perfect so I could get you….”

“I’m not perfect!” Jesse looked appalled, and Kit had to stop him, or he’d get hysterical about the wrong thing.

“I
know
that! You’re better than perfect. You’re you. You
never
hang your jacket up, I have to beg you to do the dishes, and Amy Lane

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your car is almost as disgusting on the inside as your roommate’s refrigerator. I don’t care. I
love
the real you! But if I hadn’t been stroking off to Danny Fit, I never would have had the courage to…

to do
any
of it. To move out, to ask a friend to the movies, to…

to….” Kit’s face softened, and he tried not to sound maudlin. “To let you kiss me. To open the door and hold you when you needed it. You went back home and said, ‘I’m going to put my past behind me’ and walked away. I think part of that was a mistake, because any idiot can see you miss your little brother like crazy, but not all of it. Don’t you see? Danny Fit is the only past I’ve got. I want to say hello to the human so I can say goodbye to the fantasy. Is that so goddamned bad?”

There was silence between them, and Jesse fidgeted in the middle of it. It was the first time in a while that Kit was reminded of how very young he was.

“I’ll clean my car,” Jesse muttered, and Kit tried not to laugh.

“I could give a damn about your car. I want your trust.”

Jesse’s head snapped up. “I trust you….”

He was so transparent—but Kit wasn’t going to quibble.

“Then let me go visit my pathetic fantasy ex-boyfriend, Jesse. I promise—I’ll come back to you.”

God, those brown eyes were expressive. The hope in them was awful—as though it had been Jesse who had been holding back hope the entire time. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, and smiled as he moved into Kit’s arms, but his voice was as sober as a child’s funeral.

Kit woke up early the day of the concert and dressed while Jesse was still in bed. He looked… vulnerable in Kit’s bed, that honey-colored hair in disarray, his bee-stung mouth all swollen Amy Lane

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with kisses. He’d gotten his HIV test the week before, clear as expected, and since it had been three months since Jesse had been with anybody, they’d gotten to have sex without the condoms.

It had been good—really good—but the best part had been that Jesse had felt safe in Kit’s arms, safe with Kit’s body. Kit’s stomach was getting flatter, and his biceps and shoulders were becoming more muscular and less bulky, but mostly Kit was starting to think that the wonder of his body was that Jesse sought shelter in it like an unanchored boat in a harbor.

Being needed was a wonderful thing. Kit wouldn’t trade it in for all the Danny Fits in the world.

Kit started the coffee maker and left Jesse a note:
Had some
errands to run. Open the presents under the tree in blue paper. I’ll
be back by two.

The boxes in blue paper had a coat and gloves and a hat—

there had been a cold snap, and Sacramento had suffered temperatures in the thirties for the past week. All Jesse had was his denim jacket and hooded sweatshirt, and it just wasn’t enough.

Kit took care of his errands in time to get to the bookstore a little early, but it didn’t matter: the line was still really long. Kit grabbed the book on nutrition that Danny was selling and leafed patiently through it, thinking the recipes sounded good but that he’d have to get Jesse to look at it to see there weren’t any pictures of Danny besides the one on the front.

The crowd was not all gay men, Kit was happy to see—there were plenty of pretty, plump, engaging women who seemed to find Danny Fit’s warmth and style appealing. He wasn’t sure why, but for some reason, this made him feel much less perverted about his Amy Lane

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celebrity obsession. Kit watched Danny eagerly through the crowd so he could look for clues as to who he really was when he wasn’t the uber-positive workout buddy.

He seemed nice enough.

He smiled charmingly at people when they handed him their books, and cracked jokes with them if they looked nervous. A slightly younger man was sitting next to him, making sure he had water and being generally attentive. Kit, who had to admit he probably had the worst gaydar of any gay man in history, had no doubt that they were lovers.

When it was finally Kit’s turn, he found that he stammered, because what he wanted to say was so maudlin, so corny, and so awfully true.

“You probably hear this from about a thousand people,” he said, feeling inept and dumb, “but seriously—man, you really helped me get my act together.”

The handsome man with the toffee-colored hair looked up and gave Kit a tired but sincere smile. Kit realized that he was working—it was a job he loved, but he was tired too.

“That’s good to hear!” Danny said, making his voice warm and encouraging with an obvious effort. Kit was suddenly glad for the younger lover—Danny would have someone to go home to, someone to take care of him. “That’s awesome—how long have you been working out?”

Kit shrugged, embarrassed. “Only about six weeks. But I’m sort of committed now.”
In a lot of ways, actually
.

Danny nodded, and something about Kit’s quiet enthusiasm seemed to calm down the ragged edges in the sports superstar, and his next smile was less tired and more sincere. “Well good.