Chapter Text
Billy flopped onto his back to examine the constellations on the treehouse roof. “F+Z 4 Ever,” encircled in a heart, studded in plastic glowstars. Freddy’s handiwork, or Zack’s doppelganger’s. He looked up to see what Billy saw. But there wasn’t much up there. Just toys arranged to please ungrateful brats who would outgrow and forget.
“ You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch… You're a nasty wasty skunk… Your heart is full of unwashed socks… Your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Grinch!” Billy sang. He sounded pretty good, actually. Solid tone control.
“I don’t do Christmas carols,” Zack informed him, sniffing. God, he was pathetic, but his wounded pride rankled at being called a “nasty wasty skunk.” In his real life, he’d been called far worse. But here he was, reduced to sneering over playground insults. Undignified, that’s what it was.
“If I said the only way I switch you back into your real life is to go door-to-door, singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” would you?” Billy wanted to know. He didn’t so much as look up, merely flicked his boot tips back and forth briskly, in wiper-like motions.
“What, really?” Zack asked, both hopefully and dismayed. “You suck, dude. I haven’t fucking suffered enough?”
Billy laughed, so hard he started coughing, thumping his chest with the heel of his hand.
“Okay. Wow. I wasn’t going to make you do it. But…suffered?” He grabbed Zack’s hand—the grip was ice, steel, unbreakable, inhuman. Zack was sure his brittle fingers would snap off if he struggled. He breathed and cold air turned sub-zero.
Like an astronaut gasping for breath on Saturn. Like the man freezing to death in To Build A Fire. Ice formed in his venules, in the membranes of his lungs. He gagged, choking on air less breathable than water. His eyes fluttered shut. His body fought death, fists flailing, though he’d always believed he’d welcome it—
And he tumbled onto the flat, slushy sidewalk.
“Come on, Zacky.” Billy hauled him up by the elbow. “Let’s spread some Christmas cheer.”
Zack instinctively reached down to brush himself off as he gasped…and found a wooly overcoat. A jaunty knit scarf. Stripey mittens. He yanked and shook them off like a housecat refusing to wear booties.
"Stop that!" he choked out, more desperate than he liked. "J-just tell me what's going on! I didn't do shit to you, dude. Why are you dicking me around? Tell me right now or I swear to God—I don't care if you're Cthulhu or Jesus—I will kill you with my bare hands."
"You already did," Billy said, tilting his head with inhuman curiosity. No surprise. No anger. Just mild frustration, like he was debugging a broken machine. “Let’s start with the Wilsons. They could use some holiday cheer.”
He turned towards a blue house with snowy trim, half-buried Flyer trikes in the yard. Zack planted his feet and refused to follow.
“Fuck off!” Zack all but screamed, voice echoing and bouncing down the wet, serene street. “You can’t screw with my life like this. I barely know you. Okay? What’s in it for you? Just leave me alone!”
The streetlamps hung heavy with holly. Zack’s breath fogged heavily in front of him. And the ambient, cheery roar of traffic and faraway water lapped in ambient pulses. Zack crossed his arms tightly; he felt small in his anger, impotent.
Billy trudged back over to hand him a heavy steel thermos seemingly conjured from nowhere and a single candy cane in a sad plastic wrapper.
“Here. That’ll keep you warm,” Billy reassured him. “Don’t drink it all at once.”
Zack tried to throw it, but looked at Billy’s eerie, smiling face and decided, quietly, against it. He clutched the tumbler of what he suspected was unspiked hot chocolate like a weapon and silently waited for Billy to elaborate, to tell him what to do. But Billy smiled. Said nothing. Until—
“You’re really not curious, huh?”
“I’m super curious!” Zack snapped. “About why you’re torturing me! Why I’m here, instead of my own goddamned—”
“Not me-me. The guy whose face I’m borrowing. The real Billy. I told you his backstory. Mom with dementia. And you met his twin in this world. You didn’t catch it?” He grinned, a little pitying. “This Billy thinks you’re best friends. And you’re not even curious why?”
Zack rolled his eyes and drew the warm metal closer to his chest. “I've been a little preoccupied. Forgive me for not thinking of everything. I only lost my entire life.”
“So did Billy,” Clearly-Not-Billy said. “In your world. Where you’re not friends. So you weren’t there to stop him from jumping.” He shrugged. “Sorry to spell it out for you. But for someone who thinks he knows everything, you’re kinda slow on the uptake. I have other things to do, ya know.”
“No,” Zack argued, though the sinking of his heart let him know it was useless. “I talked you down. I stopped you. We—”
“Dude.” Billy giggled. “I’m not Billy. The real Billy, in your world, is in a care home. Because he jumped. No one stopped him. Wanna see the police report? He jumped off the roof of a church, actually. For the spectacle. The drama. Didn’t die, but the brain damage—”
The words were so awful Zack could hardly parse them. He tried to push them out of his brain. It had nothing to do with him, and yet he felt inculcated. His gut twisted violent, and he fought not to picture it: Billy’s head, cracked like a scarlet egg on the pavement—
“Not my fault.” Zack wanted to plug his ears. “You can’t make me feel fucking guilty for not saving a guy I haven’t seen since I was 15! That’s—”
“Fault is such a human concept.” Billy mused. He took the thermos. Unscrewed, poured, sipped. Then winced and offered it to Zack. “Ugh. Too sweet.”
Zack took it back. His stomach squirmed at the idea of trying to hold anything down. But he tried to appease. …Huh. A familiar taste. He’d know Fireball anywhere. Spiked after all. He swallowed a second gulp more readily than the first. The cinnamon burned his nose, and he was grateful for the painful, teary distraction.
“Anyway. The thing is, he didn’t jump in this universe, obviously,” Not-Billy explained. “In fact, he’s your darling baby’s godmother—no matter what Summer claims. Love that bitch, but she sure is possessive. You’re the last good thing she’s got, after all. Well. The other you is.”
Zack clutched his head, suddenly fucking tired of the reminder that he wasn’t the right Zack. That wasn’t his fucking fault. He never asked to come here.
“Can you just switch us back?” Zack pleaded. “I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll start a foundation. I’ll dedicate myself to rescuing war orphans. I’ll—”
“Still not curious?” Billy’s brow pinched with concern. “I thought a nudge would be all you needed.”
“Curious about what?!” Zack crushed the candycane in his fist, shamefully near tears. Passing people stared at him as he ranted on the sidewalk, and he wondered if they could see not-Billy too, or if it was only him. Billy let him stand in his befuddling humiliation for several agonizing seconds before saying:
“The other you? Duh. Zack Prime. In your universe. So much ado about your troubles, your worries. Not even one thought about the other side of the equation, huh? I gave you such a good hint, too.”
“Oh fuck that guy!” Zack cried, waving an arm, and desperately chugging down as much Fireball hot chocolate as he could. He welcomed the sting as the liquid scalded his throat, the rawness after. “What does he have to worry about? He’s about to win a Grammy! He has everything he ever wanted. He could snap his fingers and be in Dubai by midnight licking the hottest twink in 3000 miles’ ass.”
“And…after spending two days in his life…that’s what you think he’d wanna do.” Billy crossed his arms, unimpressed.
Zack knew the answer but doubled down anyway.
“Yeah,” he said. “At the end of the day, who the fuck wouldn’t? If you could have it all, with the snap of your fingers, who wouldn’t—”
“Okay let’s walk through it.” Billy sighed, long-suffering. “The other you wakes up…and his husband—you’ve met Freddy, right?” He winked, wickedly.
Zack shuddered, heart quaking in his ribcage at just the name. Billy seemed amused by his involuntary reaction.
“Is gone. No Freddy. No Ziggy, the baby he wore like mama kangaroo for over a year, gave up travel, sleep, oh and every inch of personal privacy for. Just to give him a chance at life. Best friend threw himself off a roof. Daughter he fought tooth and nail to keep—gone.” Billy exhaled slowly, like saying it all in one breath winded him. Liar—he probably didn’t even need to breathe, inhuman fucker. "But sure," Billy continued with a razor-blade smile. "I'm sure a little cocaine and ass-eating will fix that."
“So switch us back.” Zack felt insane, repeating the obvious line. “What the fuck bullshit is this? You have such a boner for that guy? Give him his perfect life back, and I—”
“Good lord.” Billy slapped his shoulder. “Stupid-selfish really is immune to logic. I just told you a man is suffering the loss of everything he ever cared about. You watched his husband go through the same thing, saw how it looks on the other side! You’re literally standing between soulmates screaming across time and space for each other and still stubbornly clueless about what that means for you.”
Zack flinched, heart lurching. The words crackled viciously—but he fought his own understanding of the implication. Never asked for this shit.
“...What do you want from me?” he asked, low. The surrender was his final deflection. Give in, give everything, and the questions finally stop.
“Zack, you did a good thing," Billy said, quieter now. "You stopped me from stepping off that roof. You put yourself on the line. Sure, it was a dumb strategy. Could've made everything worse. But it was real. It was a gift. And so is this.” His smile flickered, sad and warm. “’Tis the season.”
“A gift? What the fuck is that supposed to mean. This is not a—”
“Here.” Billy reached into his inside pocket to procure…a shitty looking pair of earbuds. Not even Airpods. The cheap kind connected by a chord that came free with a phone.
“Gee I feel so much better now. What a thoughtful gesture.” Free shitty headphones. He thought longingly of his Sennheisers HE’s. Zack did not so much as deign to take the pathetic, tangled mass of white wires until Billy shoved them into his hand, forced his fingers closed.
“Put it in.”
Zack rolled his eyes, but did as bid. And his eyes widened…because despite the fact that the headphones were not plugged into anything…something played over them.
Music. His music. His voice. But not the scratchy voice notes he left on his phone, not the undercooked demos in old email chains we always meant to get back around to someday. This was produced. Tight. Alive. Studio guitars. Real drums. Stacked harmonies. The exact melody he’d written at nineteen in a blackout rage and never played for anyone.
“...That’s me,” he whispered.
“Nope,” Billy said. “That’s him. Other Zack.”
Zack couldn’t process it. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even think. He latched onto the only feeling left. Rage.
“He’s in my studio? Stealing my shit?” Zack could hear himself, knew it was insane, but still felt it was spiritual theft. It wasn’t just that the other Zack had made the song better. It was that he’d finished it. Trusted it. Loved it enough to carry it through.
“Well. You’re fucking his husband. Seems like you’re getting the better end of the deal.”
Zack blushed and barely resisted the urge to kick Billy in the shin. Why should he be ashamed that Freddy couldn’t keep his hands to himself? But even as he spitefully wondered, he knew why. Because Freddy didn’t know who he was. If he did, he would never—
A tiny shrill of shame trickled through him as he recognized what he was doing: arguing, justifying, moralizing. …Because he wanted to keep doing what he was doing. He didn’t want to stop fucking Freddy. Stop kissing him. Stop going to bed, Freddy’s too-hot body spooned around him, even though it made him sweat. And even as he fought it, he knew there would be nothing to fight if it weren’t true.
Over the headphones, he heard himself laugh over the track.
“Shit,” his own voice said, “I can already tell this EQ is gonna take hours. Take five, guys. I think we got what we need, but I need to doodle on the board for a second to figure out if we need another take.”
Surreal, to hear himself say words he never said. Disturbing. But then the headphones fell silent, and Zack frowned.
"I, uh. I think I broke them," he said. Pathetic. As if he'd get scolded. As if he even deserved the attention. Well. Who knew what dimension Billy would send him to next if he pissed him off sufficiently. He tried to offer them back to Billy, awkward and guilty, like a kid trying to return a toy he’d broken.
“Nope. Just can’t hear him unless he’s playing music,” Billy said. “Those are yours to keep by the way. I’d keep them close.”
“For what?” Zack asked. He didn’t really want to listen to the other him be a better musician.
Around them, the world moved at a snow-sleepy pace. Now and then, small clusters of people trudged through the cold, heads down. They stood at a corner in a suburban area, near a park—within walking distance of several small neighborhoods. Zack wasn’t sure how close they were to where he lived. He wasn’t 100% sure of where he lived, actually, still depended utterly on phone GPS to get the kids to and from school and also to work.
Billy lifted his hands in an impish, mysterious, theatrical shrug.
“You never know,” Billy told him, annoyingly vague, “when you might need the clarity.”
“What do you mean?” Zack demanded. His belly was warm from the alcohol, but his hands and feet trembled. “Can you please just tell me what you mean? No more riddles. No more clues. Just tell me what I need to do to get out of here.”
“The Connors,” Billy decided, pointing to a squat two-story. “Their grandkids aren’t coming to visit this year. We have to start with them. They could use a good old ‘Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer’ to raise their spirits.”
Because, however foolishly, he thought maybe if he sang, Not-Billy would switch him back…he went to the Connors. Rang the bell. Billy conveniently vanished.
When the nice elderly couple opened it, Zack had to awkwardly explain he was carolling alone. And then he actually had to sing, because he couldn’t just ding-dong ditch the old farts.
He sang ‘Rudolph’ off-key. Halfway through, he forgot the words. They gave him cookies anyway. Apparently he reminded them of Lyndon B. Johnson. Swell.
__________
The best way to describe going home to someone actively mad at him was “itchy.”
Zack finally found his way back to the unremarkable block where he’d been living for the past few days with Freddy. As he wandered lost through miles and miles near-identical suburban acreage, irritation festered. But as the now-familiar house loomed into view, a new feeling rose up.
Not quite anxiety. Not quite fear.
He scaled the steps—they’d been ice-slick that morning, but Freddy poured alcohol, dish soap and hot water on them so the kids wouldn’t slip. His feet dragged, heavy. He wished Freddy hadn’t bothered so there could be a chance he could slip, bash his head, and leave Freddy with the cleanup. A timely death seemed less complicated than a confrontation.
He didn’t bother to announce himself as he tapped the keycode into the pad. He took off his shoes and placed them in the wooden rack painted with giraffe spots—big furry animals made Ziggy laugh. And as he trudged into the kitchen, he felt distinctly like a teenager, sneaking back home after a night out. He wondered if Freddy would nag him, if his “husband” had fully become his mom.
Instead, what he found was Freddy, sitting on the tiled floor with Ziggy and Mack. All three covered head to toe in flour, a paste-puddle between them.
“Okay, Ziggyzag,” Freddy said. “Go ahead and touch it. See?”
Ziggy looked at the whitish mass, skeptically.
“Such a good boy.” Freddy laughed. “No, it’s all good, bud. It’s not like when Papa is cooking dinner, and you need to be polite and not touch. Go ahead. It’s slimy like a stingray!”
“He did like touching the stingrays,” Mack commented, rolling a pinch of dough between her fingers. She didn’t look at her hand, like if she didn’t acknowledge her own participation, she could forgive herself for indulging. Zack had done that trick plenty of times. It never worked.
After hesitating another moment, Ziggy flapped a hand down onto the dough. His cockatiel-like, giggling shrill pierced the air. Zack smiled in spite of himself. He felt he could not pass the threshold of the doorway, that the scene was forbidden, belonged to another man—one who had earned his way into it. But Freddy met his eye.
“Come on, Dad.” Freddy smiled. “The snow was too dirty to play with outside, so we made our own in here.”
The invitation was a kindness so undeserved it made Zack’s throat close. He almost rejected it out of hand, pure reflex. But he sucked in a breath and entered, feeling stupidly brave for taking what was offered.
Zack awkwardly took a seat next to Mack on the floor. His shirt was black, as were his jeans; he wasn’t dressed for this kind of game.
“Uh.” Zack half-heartedly rolled a ball of dough between his hands. A memory sprang to mind: challah dough, in the Jones kitchen, with Freddy’s bubbe when they were ten. The warm, yeasty scent thick in the air. Bubbe scolding Freddy for dirty hands, roughly yanking him in to kiss the side of his head with irritated affection. Gnarled, expert hands braiding ropes of bread, setting them beneath hand towels to rise. …Did this version of Freddy, in this universe, share the memory? Tears clouded Zack’s eyes—he wished he could ask. He wished there were anyone he could ask, just to verify he still existed the way he remembered himself.
“My bubbe used to let us do this,” Freddy said absently, pressing his nose to Ziggy’s hair. “Well. We made bread for eating, not just for play. But same idea.”
“Maybe we could make bread out of this,” Mack posed, thoughtful. “Just add…what else is in bread? Eggs?”
“For challah, yeah. But I think it’s too late for this batch,” Freddy told her. “It’s already been where feet go. Yucky-yuck.”
Ziggy threw a plop of dough down with a gleeful splat on the kitchen tiles. Zack silently handed him the dough he’d been working in his own hands. Ziggy took it and immediately put it in his mouth.
“Not for eating,” Zack repeated. Unnecessary, as it turned out. Ziggy’s blanching little face reflected his regret.
“Too salty, huh, Bud?” Freddy shook his head. “I told you. Yuck.”
An acidic question boiled to the surface of Zack’s mind. His reflex to puncture, to punish, emerged violently through the bubbles of his discomfort. What is the point of this? He could imagine the looks on their faces if he asked with a sneer. If he made them aware of how empty it all was. …Especially Mack, he sensed, would feel the deflation, the way everything could be reduced to meaningless dreck under the lightest touch of existential skepticism.
But he swallowed it. Penance. He was an intruder, and these people weren’t responsible for his exile. Punishing a ten year old, a baby, and their father seemed low and callous, even for him. He’d done enough. He didn’t want to fight any more, tired of feeling like there was no way to win.
“I remember your bubbe,” Zack said instead. “She had that thing about escalators.” When they were eleven, she took them to the aquarium to look at the shark tank with a moving walkway through it. She clutched Freddy to her side, eyes bugging out of her head if so much as a sneaker ran against the machine’s side bristles.
“Huh? I don’t think you ever met her.” Freddy’s brows pressed together.
Zack’s chest seized with shame and rejection. Nothing made sense here. He was so, so lost.
“Yeah, but you told me,” Zack guessed, covering his mistake, eyes down.
“She would have loved you.” Freddy bumped their shoulders together, hands preoccupied with mixing more flour into the dough so it’d be less sticky. Like he knew Zack needed a touch point, something to keep him from feeling like he was being sucked under. “All of you guys.” He kissed Ziggy’s temple to punctuate the point.
And Zack couldn’t stop himself. He let his body fall against Freddy’s side. He was so, just so tired of resisting. Freddy’s heat, his light, his assurance that Zack belonged in his world was maybe a false tether. But it was all Zack had, right now.
“Look, a snowman,” Mack said, stacking a small ball of dough on top of two others.
“Hey, neat! If we bake it, you could paint him and put him on the tree,” Freddy said. “If you want.”
Mack nodded, and of course she did. Everyone wanted things to last a little longer, to hold.
_____
As Zack and Freddy got ready for bed, Zack was feeling paranoid. He tried to talk himself out of it. There was nothing so uncomfortable about brushing his teeth while standing next to someone potentially irritated with him. He was overthinking it. So what if Freddy was mad? He could die mad about it.
Of course, he didn’t know if Freddy was truly irritated with him. He seemed fine through the rest of the afternoon. But perhaps it was a “not in front of the kids” type of concession.
The fresh, scratchy tooth-scrubbing sounds were inordinately loud to Zack’s ears as he flailed internally, wondering when the other shoe would drop.
But Freddy merely hummed—“God Blessed The Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts of all things, yikes—and put on a cozy plaid matched set that stretched over his belly, baring small holes around the buttons.
Zack had the strangest urge to apologize, to beat Freddy to the awkward discussion, before he could get clobbered by interrogation. Instead, he slunk to bed, ignoring the pajamas left in a folding pile on top of the covers for him. No way was he wearing bottoms with dancing teddy bears on them. He shucked off his flour-dusted clothes, tossed them in the hamper, and crawled under the coverlet, hoping not to be noticed.
Freddy yawned as he trundled in and fluffed a pillow. Zack believed for half a second that maybe he was in the clear.
“Okay.” Freddy said, taking a seat on the other side of the bed, back turned. “Let’s talk.”
Fuck.
Zack froze. His spine went straight, like a string had been yanked from the base of his skull.
He wanted to whine. Do we have to? Or deflect. There’s nothing to talk about. But instead he said nothing at all. He couldn’t stop thinking about Billy. The Billy in his own universe, brain broken after taking a spill from God’s lap. The one he never had a conversation with. Too late. Maybe he was a selfish bastard, someone who’d failed every person who ever relied on him. Every time he thought about it, his ledger felt soaked red, and he just wanted to stop the bleeding. Not his fault. Not his fault. But his brain wouldn’t listen to logic. He felt it all the same.
Whatever Freddy had to say—he let it come.
“Babe.” Freddy rubbed his face. “I’m sorry.”
“...For what?” Zack was baffled. This was not how he imagined the conversation starting.
“I rely on you for everything,” Freddy confessed, sounding tortured. “The studio, the books. Zig. Carpool. Mack. Social services. You’re better at that stuff. I know it’s hard on you. I’m trying to be helpful. But I know I could do better.”
Zack sat up. He didn’t know what to say. Freddy’s words reflected how he himself felt: treading water and letting someone else do the swimming because he was simply incapable. So he related.
…But Not-Billy, the ghost or angel, or whatever he was, came to mind once more. He couldn’t put the other Zack out of mind. The one stuck in his own world. Universes away from his husband, who appreciated him. Deeply. Other Zack deserved to hear this. It was a conversation so intimate that it was for no ears but his own. He was the one Freddy owed gratitude to. And the only one, certainly, who could absolve Freddy of his guilt for relying on him.
“I don’t mind.” Zack said what he was sure the other version of himself would. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do. But he could at least reassure Freddy with what he was sure was the truth. He could feel across time—this was the thing that the version of himself who married Freddy Jones would say.
Maybe Zack should have come clean. Maybe this was the moment for it. But he offered comfort instead: the tragic ventriloquy of a man speaking lines that weren’t his own—but could have been .The least he could do was let the two lovers he’d accidentally separated have a conversation, long distance, from one reality away.
“I got you. Always,” Zack told Freddy.
Freddy turned at last to smile. “I know. But it’s not fair.” It wasn’t, not for anyone, but that hardly seemed to matter.
Zack shrugged one shoulder. “It all evens out in the end.”
Freddy reached one arm back for him, expecting a hug. And Zack didn’t give his body permission to do it, but he crawled right in.
Freddy squeezed him. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re all alone,” Freddy murmured. “You can come to me, if you’re feeling stressed. I would…I’ll always…” Freddy sighed, nestled him closer. “I can’t do this without you, Zack. I love you.”
It didn’t feel like Freddy was just talking about the kids, the studio business. This wasn’t for him. He wasn’t the person Freddy loved. But the warmth of it soaked in, like rain into dry ground. And he greedily, shame-facedly, sucked it in.
“I miss you.” Zack sighed, without planning to. It had been so long. So long since sleeping overs in Freddy’s backyard tent. Since sharing sour Warheads in class. Since side-by-side arm-presses that were friendly but also something else. Since Freddy, sprawled out in the bed, dangling his head over the side to look at Zack on the floor in his sleeping bag, grinned at him in the middle of the night. “ I’m glad you’re here.” “Me, too.”
He gave it all up, every bit of Freddy, to chase his dreams. But maybe he could have called home. Just once.
“I’m sorry I snapped,” Freddy repeated. “It just hurts. When you pull away, when you go cold. It feels like everything that makes sense to me, everything in the world I’m standing on, just dissolves.” Zack’s innards twanged, with guilt, with limp surrender to the fact that he wanted Freddy to keep holding him. Like this. For a long, long time.
“I can’t keep hurting you,” Zack murmured, to himself above all. “Gotta find a better way.”
“It’s okay,” Freddy sighed, and the relief in his voice…Zack felt his own cowardice shine brightly. This wasn’t right at all. Freddy had no idea his true-felt relief was false. “You’d never hurt me. Not on purpose.”
Zack had no right, none at all, to press his face to Freddy’s chest. To mouth “I’m sorry” again, against a man who couldn’t forgive him, who didn’t know how wrong he was. Zack had hurt him—in ways this Freddy in this universe was innocent of. And he feared he would do it again. Even if he tried, even if he changed—he still was what he was. An imposter. He wouldn’t be able to stop it, nor protect Freddy, not from himself.