Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

PROLOGUE

2012.

Zack Mooneyham avoided his parents as a general rule, but his mom threatened to write him out of the will if he didn’t come home for Christmas. So. Whatever, he thought. Two days was probably worth the couple million dollars they’d leave their only child unless he pissed them off so much they shorted him out of spite.

Resigned, he called his dealer, made sure to pack the pockets of his leather jacket—and his jeans too—with oxy and benzos so he wouldn’t give a fuck about anything. His dick dad might talk shit, and he wanted his face to be numb if he had to punch the guy. He also wanted to not care when his mom inevitably got drunk and tearfully told him how bad things had gotten between them. He already knew he wasn’t gonna do shit about it, so he thought he’d at least chemically block off the heartache.

Mind made up, however unhappily, he told his ugly assistant to book the ticket. He was calling her Priscilla because she had a Priscilla face. She was so sensitive—everyone heard her cry in the empty conference room after she fucked up his lunch order, and he threw a stapler at her face for embarrassing him in front of the label heads. So. Obviously, she’d be fired within the week anyway. Why bother learning her real name? He signed the pathetic paychecks she depended on to live in Los Angeles instead of whatever fuck-flat state she came from—probably the same place the last shit-for-brains assistant came from. He was basically her god. He could rename her if he wanted.

Only after she booked him the ticket did he realize he did not want to fly commercial. 

What the fuck, he hadn’t flown commercial since before his first chart topper. He’d get mobbed in an airport. They’d have to call security. 

Plus, he hated being told where to sit and what he could and could not have on his person (the no-fun TSA pricks would definitely confiscate his drugs, even if he flew First Class, which was basically Communist). And honestly he hated being told what to do period. Avoided it whenever he could. So he had the jet he time-shared gassed up and fired Priscilla for wasting his time, forcing him to place the phone call himself and scream at representatives until the company kicked out the rich WASP-y family planning to use it for their stupid pointless vacation to Florida. No one needed to go to Florida anyway; fuck the Waste of Sunshine State. He was doing them a favor, saving them the disappointment and humidity. It was honestly all Priscilla’s fault for not anticipating such an obvious switch up. She couldn’t anticipate his needs, so she was both unattractive and useless to him.

Sal didn’t want to fly with him. Had something to do—something about a pregnant wife who could go into labor at any time, boo hoo. One, she wasn’t actually popping the thing out yet, so Sal was kinda counting his chickens before they hatched. So what if the doctor said “any hour now” and her due date had passed? Zack couldn’t fathom why Sal hadn’t just booked an appointment to have it cut out of her and been done with it. And two, he considered himself better company than a freaked out pregnant woman and baby covered in goo. Babies weren’t even cute when they were born with their freaky misshapen heads the doctors had to mush into place. Soft skull bones. Ick. Zack remembered health class. After watching the birthing video, he’d literally gotten down on his knees and thanked God for making him gay as fuck.

Anyway, he told Sal he better get his ass on the jet ASAP else he could kiss any future recording contracts as Zack’s producer goodbye. So his wife was gonna have to deal with the gross lumpy baby head on her own. Or hold it in ‘til he got back after Christmas. Whichever.

The truth was, he didn’t exactly need Sal to come with him to a family thing on Staten island, but it sucked to fly alone. And Sal was one of the few people he respected enough to spend more than five minutes with one-on-one. He guessed he could have found some hot 22 year old twink to come with, but then his mom might read into it and think he was bringing home a boyfriend for the holidays. And, nah. Not even. Sal would be way less likely to annoy him than some potential stage 5 clinger who wanted Zack to “change for him,” and “stop snorting coke at weddings” (why else did people even go to weddings, except to get fucked up and fuck each other?), and “stop randomly flying to France instead of celebrating their anniversary” like Zack was some kind of stupid Hallmark card. No way. He wasn’t dealing with THAT again.

So flabby, boring—and pouty, grumpy due to missing a “life changing event”—Sal it was.

Zack crashed out less than an hour in the air. Mixing wine coolers and oxy’s always knocked him the fuck out. But before he totally blacked out, he managed to somehow pry open the Emergency Exit and throw Sal’s laptop out of the plane. Sal kept checking the thing for baby updates and it was harshing the vibe; Zack got so paranoid when he mixed pills with booze that he just couldn’t handle the ambient anxiety. 

He guessed that was why he woke up strapped with like 8 seat belts to a plane seat. His security guard must have bound him up so he wouldn’t accidentally fall out of the plane, too. Fucker was so fired. 

“It’s a girl,” Sal babbled in his ear as Zack frantically texted everyone he knew in the New York area. 

Someone in a 100 mile radius had to have Trazodone. It was the only thing that worked on his migraines, and there was no way he was rawdogging this hangover.

“Sorry,” Zack told Sal. “That sucks.”

“What? No, it doesn’t.” Sal sounded pissed. 

“Oh. Cool. Hey, Priscilla, send Mrs. Sal a case of the good shit.”

Sal stared at him for so long that Zack actually lowered his phone slightly. “What?” 

“Do you think my first and last name are both Sal?” Sal asked. 

Was the dude high? Zack wouldn’t blame him if he bummed a couple pills, but Jesus. The guy had to get it together. What a stupid question. 

“Never thought about it.” Zack shrugged, went back to his phone. No updates on the Traz yet, and it was making him anxious.

“Also. You fired Kat. …Not Priscilla, by the way. Her name is Kat,” Sal added, after a long pause.

“Right. Bob! Send Sal’s wife some Dom. She just made this dude a father.” Zack clamped a hand briefly on his shoulder, hoping the sappy display would be enough to end this irritating conversation. 

God, why did it take so long to get off a plane? Lame ass deplaning safety laws. Zack didn’t think stuff like that should apply to people with private jets.

“Um. Shipping stuff is outside my job duties, as security,” Bob said, cautiously. “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t do that for you.”

Zack’s gaze snapped up. “You can’t figure out how to use the fucking mail system?” Zack repeated, mockingly. “You know, you’re really right. It is outside your job duties. ‘Cause you don’t have a job anymore.”

Drag. He had to call his manager to hire a new assistant and new security guard. But his idiot manager whined that she wasn’t going to be able to find anyone who was willing to start working a day before Christmas Eve. Then Sal got all teary about missing baby’s first Christmas and his wife being already so bitchy about how much time he spent away from her.

Zack couldn’t take it anymore at last—he’d displayed the patience of a goddamned saint so far, so no wonder he was out of fucks to give, God, what was he running, some kind of charity foundation? The nerve of these people—and he put on a big pair of Sennheiser HE headphones he’d wasted $60,000 on and definitely didn’t make that much of a difference audio-quality wise. But they sure were good at blocking out the incompetent losers wasting his brainpower on their bullshit nonsense noise. 

_____

Staten Island was the wet armpit of New York, and Zack was ashamed that it was where he came from. 

He wandered down the street where he grew up, vaping because his mom didn’t want him doing it in the house—it was his dad’s fault he had emphysema. Should have switched to e-cigs like everyone else instead of those shit-smelling cigarettes that turned his teeth yellow. Zack thought it was bullshit he had to be outside shivering his balls off because of his dad’s life choices, but what was Christmas all about if not finding new reasons to hate the people who gave birth to you?

He walked past the cookie cutter houses and white snow blanketing the lawns in fluffy squares like quilt patchwork. The homes formed two neat, straight lines on either side of the street. The buildings were tall: not much space, so people built up instead of out. It was all so boring Zack could have cried. This neighborhood was worse than Attica. He wondered how no one had ever started a fucking riot.

He made no plans as to where he was going, but after a few blocks, he became aware that he was actually headed somewhere. Painfully aware.

It was a long-ish walk. As a teenager, this was a route he usually took on his bike. But it seemed no matter the mode of transportation, his body would inevitably carry him in just one direction: towards the very thing he had to leave New York to get away from. 

It was pointless to turn back because some part of him had always known he’d find himself back on the Jones familiar front porch. Knocking. Feeling like a grade-A asshole, until Freddy opened up, squinted at him, and said:

“What the fuck happened to your face?”

Zack touched it, self-consciously, and couldn’t let Freddy get away with knowing he put him off balance. So he replied:

“Your dad fucked me up when he found out I was coming back here for round two with your mom.”

Freddy snorted, rolled his eyes, and came outside instead of inviting Zack in. He was wearing a holey gray System of a Down t-shirt and dirty jeans, but didn’t seem to be that cold, somehow.

As soon as Zack got a real look at him, he could tell that Freddy had grown up good. 

Hot and tall. Admittedly, he always was, and Zack was both dismayed and pleased to find him 19 and still scrawny, and still sexy in that grubby, scowly-yet-sunny way he always had been. Only now, moreso, on account of growing up. 

Freddy wore his blonde hair longer now, parted messily on one side, flicks and licks sticking up here and there, like he scrabbled it down with his fingers instead of a comb. And the eyes. Zack didn’t want to be dumb about it, because eyes were just eyes—everyone’s kind of looked the same at the end of the day. But Freddy’s were large and brown and extra round in the corners, where his dark lower lashes were the thickest. Something pretty about his face, always had been. Something that made girls act giggly and stupid around him, even though he looked kind of girly and delicate himself. 

Zack forced himself to look at the scar in Freddy’s eyebrow where it left the hair sparse instead of continuing to look at his face. 

“No, seriously. Did you get a nose job?” Freddy pressed. “You look weird as fuck. What happened?”

Zack had, actually. And a chin implant to give him a more “leading man” face. It had looked so gnarly and fucked up when they put it in. His whole face was black and blue and swollen; they had to break his jaw and reset it so it would sit further back in his skull, plus shave down his chin bones a tiny bit so his face wouldn’t be too long in the front. Ever since the surgery, the bones clicked if he moved his mouth a certain way. He had to drink liquid food through a straw for months. But at least they weren’t stingy with the morphine. Enough of that shit, and Zack wouldn’t have cared if they hung him by his ankles over a lava pit, truthfully. 

But he wasn’t going to admit he’d gone under the knife to Freddy Fucking Jones. Never.

“Happy holidays to you too, fucker.” Zack punched his shoulder, maybe a little too hard. 

Freddy laughed, stiffly.  But his laughter abruptly stopped. He seemed unable to keep it up.

For a long while, he said nothing, just looked at Zack’s face with a mix of caution and curiosity. Zack wished he wouldn’t do that; it made him feel like he was reliving the worst parts of being 16. The insecurity. The uncertainty. Freddy always brought that kind of shit out in him; he had no idea why he’d sought him out. He’d known it would go down like this. 

“Yeah. Didn’t expect to see you around here. Been a minute.” Freddy crossed his arms, looked away. 

“Well. Came to check and see if you were still stuck at home like a loser.” Zack leaned against the entryway wall, casually. “Never left the nest, huh?”

Freddy shuffled, self-conscious. “...Fuck you,” he said.

Zack grinned. He took a long, deep puff of his vape and blew it out of the side of his mouth. Freddy was so expressive. It made him incredibly easy to mess with. His weak spots were so obvious. When his feelings were hurt, Zack could tell no matter how he tried to hide it. Poking him right in the sweet spot to get a reaction was one of Zack’s favorite pastimes. It was just kind of fun to see how far he could take it. Freddy was surprisingly willing to let him push it way, way further than Zack would have personally allowed.

“Not happy to see me then?” he asked, blew a smoke ring and snapped his fingers through it to make a heart. An ironic heart, obviously. It dissipated quickly.

“No, I am,” Freddy said. Earnest. Earnesty was always his mistake. 

Zack had no idea why Freddy insisted on being so stupidly open. It only set him up for all manner of ball busting. 

“I’m just, like. Surprised. I haven’t seen you or heard from you since you bailed,” Freddy said, quietly, a note of hurt in his voice.

That was over two years ago. When Zack dropped out of high school to record and go on his first tour at the behest of his agent. He hadn’t even bothered telling Freddy he was going. Just left. Didn’t figure he owed anyone an explanation.

“Aw. Well. If you’re butthurt, I can go.” Zack stepped back, half-turned away, making to leave. “Or, if you can get over yourself, you can come with me.”

Freddy hesitated. “Where?”

“Who cares?” Zack asked. “Away from this shit hole.” 

Freddy nodded, jerkily, like he was agreeing in spite of himself. “Lemme get my coat.” He went back inside and left the door open as if reminding Zack the interaction wasn’t over: he’d be right back. Like he was afraid Zack would disappear again if he left him alone too long.

A tiny pang of guilt fluttered in Zack’s chest. But he stomped it out. In his shoes, Freddy would have done the same thing, he was sure. Would have bailed on this whole shit ass town for a chance to do the thing, get famous, play music. Freddy had to get it, understand that Zack wasn’t going to let anyone or anything hold him back from what he wanted.

And for fuck’s sake. Just because you made out with your best friend a couple times didn’t mean you had to give up your dreams for him. 

_______

It had all started when they were 16 and very, very drunk at Tomika’s birthday party. Playing spin the bottle, of course, unsupervised in the Jones basement. Freddy magnanimously hosted many parties down there through high school. Mommy’s favorite kid was very trusted, clearly would never do anything bad or degenerate. Mrs. Jones never bothered to check on them down there. So it was kind of the perfect place to host such shindigs. Technically supervised, so as to lower the defenses of the other private school kids’ parents. But not actually supervised so they could get into all kinds of trouble, as long as no cops needed to be called.

They all sat in a circle on the cold floor. Laughing, choking down shots from red solo cups—they’d run out of anything more palatable than shit-cheap vodka-mixed-with-tequila because Marta was a fucking moron and mixed them, couldn’t tell them apart, just thought all clear liquor was the same. 

And for once, Zack wasn’t sitting next to Freddy—he usually would be. They were best friends, had been since Zack punched him in the face in the sixth grade for pantsing him during PE. Freddy punched him back. Pretty much every day afterwards, they’d been pals who occasionally punched the shit out of each other. 

Freddy was an angry kid. Seemed like he felt the world was disappointing. Zack suspected it was because Freddy wanted a whole shit load of love and attention he never got. It was unreasonable how much Freddy wanted from the world. There was no such thing as unconditional love. There were always conditions, and Zack privately thought that the sooner Freddy grasped that, the better.

But Freddy was in denial, taking the lesson hard. In fact, he took it out on the people around him. Freddy was always getting in scuffles. Pulling weird pranks. Threatening people. And Zack related to that anger, though he was cooler about it. Something about Freddy’s resentment smacked of feeling shorted by his situation, wanting people to notice him, wanting someone to come to his rescue. Zack? He just wanted to fuck things up for the hell of it.

Sometimes Zack would look back and wonder how different things would be if he hadn’t been so annoyed with Freddy that day of the party. Needling him, harassing him, moping around. They’d had a minor disagreement about college. 

Freddy said, “We should go somewhere together.”

Zack told him, “Fuck that, college is for losers.”

But Freddy whined that his mother wanted him to get a real education. Zack gave him shit about doing what his mommy said. And teasing Freddy about his mom too much was a recipe for drama. So Zack was waiting him out. Freddy would pull the stick out of his asshole eventually, but in the meantime, he was being a big baby about the whole thing, refusing to so much as make eye contact. All Zack could do to get him to knock it off was refuse to engage until he grew the fuck up.

Problem was, in that basement that night, the bottle landed on Freddy first. And when Freddy spun it, it landed on Zack.

The girls in the room laughed and whooped, the guys chuckled, shaking their heads, jostling him. 

And Zack just kind of hated all of them. 

For being such squares. Children, fucking squalling, brainless morons, who thought it was sooo scandalous if two dudes kissed. So scandalous they probably thought he wouldn’t do it, would be too pussy. Everyone was so sheltered and pathetic that Zack couldn’t stand it for a second longer. 

He lunged across the circle and grabbed Freddy under the chin with one hand. To give them a show, he climbed into Freddy’s lap too, straddled him, plopping down right in the middle of his criss-crossed legs, ass balanced on top of Freddy’s sneakers. 

The problem was, the second he’d done it, Zack knew he was in over his head.

Freddy’s arms went around his waist to hold him steady, and Zack felt small: overwhelmed and surrounded. Freddy’s mouth tasted sweet and fruity, like Hawaiian Punch he mixed with the shooters, ‘cause he was too much of a bitchboy to drink it straight. His body was warm, and he smelled so weirdly good up close: Zack never much noticed before, the faint piney, spicy smell, mixed pleasantly with the unobtrusive, clean scent of his laundry detergent. Freddy kissed him back hard, mouth open. And Zack couldn’t help it. He clutched Freddy’s face closer in both hands, cupping it like something precious, and moved his mouth, wanting friction. Wanting closeness. Wanting more.

Something clicked in his brain and body. Everything aligned. All Zack could think about was shoving Freddy forward, laying him out flat on the basement floor, climbing on top of him, pushing his tongue in deep. God, he really tasted as good as he seemed to, all the way back.  

He did all those things, but the shocking part was that Freddy let him. In front of everyone. Freddy didn’t seem to care. His leg went up between Zack’s legs, and he bit Zack’s lower lip—and it was all Zack could do to pull off before doing something embarrassing. Like moaning. Pushing himself against Freddy’s thigh. Putting his hands up Freddy’s shirt.

Panting, Zack dragged his wrist over his mouth to wipe it, trying to get a grip as he extricated himself, put a buffer between them. The room was rowdy now, people staring, laughing. Zack sat back on his haunches, unable to take his eyes off Freddy, who remained lying on the floor in his blue Cubs sweatshirt, his chunky skater shoes. 

He still looked like Zack’s same dork face best friend. But everything was different now, and they both knew it. 

_______

As they sat in the broken down bus in the shed beside their old elementary school, Zack couldn’t help but to reminisce. It’d been a long time since they were here together. Over two years, in fact.

Freddy had been the one to find this spot. He was an excellent lock picker, had great dexterity and was able to use his jack-knife-like lock picking set to jimmy open almost any deadbolt like it was mere token resistance. The old yellow bus hadn’t run for years: evident from the cracked vinyl seats and thick layer of dust over the floor. All four tires were flat. And as far as Zack could tell, no one ever came in here.

Which made it the perfect place to hide out, cut class with Freddy, smoke weed, drink stolen beers, or snort Freddy’s Adderall, and talk shit. 

…Or, that one time, make out until all the windows fogged up. Zack felt how dangerous it was, making out in private with Freddy. How easily the situation could go from just messing around to getting in too deep. Freddy’s cold fingers brushing against his ribs curiously, Freddy’s hot, sucking mouth against his neck, Freddy’s warmth and smell and taste—Zack made sounds he didn’t know he was capable of making.

It was nothing like the girls he’d fucked around with—just to make absolute-certain he was gay. He was.

And Freddy kissed him so gently, almost reverently. His hands were big, splayed out against the sides of Zack’s ribcage. And Zack felt consumed, so turned on by how much larger Freddy was, by the fact that Freddy was a boy, by the fact that it was fucking Freddy of all people, and somehow the way he kissed and moaned and whimpered and bit and sucked and panted all made perfect sense to Zack, felt totally consonant with everything else he knew about Freddy. 

After their second kiss, he knew he had to leave. Felt like he’d been given the tiniest taste of a drug that had the ability to wrap him all the way around its finger and make him its bitch forever. The most addictive shit, the highest high of his life. He had to deny it to himself. Knew he couldn’t afford the life-suck it surely was. Couldn’t get hooked on this. He’d never get clean if he did.

The thing was that Zack couldn’t stay in this shitty one horse town. He had dreams to hunt down, stuff that couldn’t be done here.

And if he stayed, he was certain, he could feel in his bones that Freddy Jones would drag him down, pull him into some bullshit emotional undertow and never let him up. He wanted more in this life than to be the gormless boyfriend of some blonde idiot who would never leave this place, never escape. No matter how good a kisser that idiot was. 

So Zack found his own way to freedom. 

Unfortunately, he was also a weak ass fucker. So he’d ended up right back here again, sitting with Freddy in the back of the bus, passing his vape back and forth, trying not to be too aware of the fact that he could taste Freddy’s mouth on the plastic tip of the mouthpiece from sharing it.

He felt that somehow, Freddy had slipped one guilty hook through the dead center of his heart. And even when they were far apart, he could feel the tugging from Freddy’s line, pulling him back. He needed to be tough enough to just fucking rip it out already, but he was being a pussy. Knew it would hurt, even though it’d be for the better.

“So.” Freddy said, leg bouncing. He never could hold still for long. “Why’d you come back?”

“Parents threatened to write me out of the will.” Zack wrapped his knuckles against the dirty glass window beside him and shifted his weight on the seat. Bits of decaying vinyl flaked off, fluttered to the ground. It was fucking disgusting in here. 

“Oh.” Freddy picked at a hangnail ‘til his cuticle bled, then he stuck the side of his thumb in his mouth to “clean” the small wound.

Zack hated how jealous he was of that thumb.

“Been playing drums any?” Zack asked, lamely. 

Of course Freddy had—he loved to play, annoying, bouncing bastard. But also, Zack didn’t care.

“Yeah, dude. We should jam, while you’re here.” Freddy smiled, hesitant but brighter, more enthusiastic. “I miss it.”

Zack inhaled deep, took a big rip of the vape and held it in until he was almost sick with it. When he spoke, the steamy plumes made his words froggy, thick.

“Sappy fuck,” he said, shaking his head. “Sure, Fred. We can…jam.” He said the last word disdainfully, to make fun of Freddy’s lame word choice, make him feel dumb for even asking.

Freddy flinched, and Zack was satisfied that he’d put him off any more attempts to pull at his heartstrings. Freddy had to learn not to do that shit. Wasn’t going to change the math on their situation. The sooner Freddy understood that, the better. For both of them.

Freddy looked at the ceiling for a moment, and then fixed his gaze on Zack. Intense, like he was trying to bore into him.

“I have to ask you something,” Freddy said, softly.

“Doubt you actually have to,” Zack retorted, but his heart was thumping. Something about Freddy’s tone was too serious. Not confrontational, exactly. Something else.

“Can you shut up a minute?” Freddy sighed. “I’ve thought about this a long time, and I might not get another chance. Need to do it now. While I have the nerve.”

Zack wanted to say something smart-assy, but he couldn’t seem to find the words. Freddy had doubled forward now, elbows resting on his knees, body primed in Zack’s direction. 

Freddy took a deep breath. “I want…” he was bright pink, all the way to his ear-tips, and unfortunately, it was a fucking good look on him. “I want to lose my virginity. And I want it to be you.”

Zack almost fell off the bus seat. He’d been propositioned many times in his life, but never like this. They were so sober. Freddy was earnest and serious, and Zack kind of felt like he’d been pushed off a pier into dark, whirling waters.

Fuck, he could barely breathe.

“You serious?” he all but squeaked. Cleared his throat. Tried again. “Dude.”

It was so unfair. If Freddy had asked for almost anything else, any other deepening of their emotional-whatever, it would have been easy to say no. Zack had practiced and practiced it. He knew how to keep Freddy at an arm’s length. Knew how to punish him for clinging too hard, staying too close.

But he didn’t know how to walk away from this. He didn’t know how he could refuse something so tempting. Freddy sat there, young and gorgeous and nervous. And Zack already knew how he tasted. Knew how good he felt, with his warmth and his soft breathing, big hands and eager mouth. Freddy was a fool. An idiot of the highest order. To trust Zack with something so fragile and tender—his first time, Jesus Christ. Zack’s first time had been with some dude in a glitter strewn ad-hoc bathroom at a pop-up club while they were both on molly. He couldn’t even recall the guy’s face. A rough, bruising, educational affair that cost Zack his favorite pair of Hugo Boss Boxers, ripped and unwearable, and left abandoned on the bathroom floor somewhere. 

He didn’t think Freddy could handle something like that. Freddy was so sensitive. He’d want it to be special and slow and meaningful. Zack just wasn’t the guy for something like that.

…Yet. 

Part of Zack’s competitive little heart wanted to get there first. Couldn’t bear the idea of someone else. Freddy was his. On some level, they both knew it; Freddy had basically confirmed it with his proposition. It should be him. For better and for worse, the universe put Freddy squarely in Zack’s hands, and it was pure insanity to try to resist what was destined.

Their friendship always felt so loaded. It was annoying. Zack felt constantly tapped on the shoulder by the feeling that he was involved in a Big Something he never signed up for. But Freddy’s long, shy, shrimpy looks, the way he always wanted them to be touching in some way—even if it was through violence and tussling, the too-long hugs…Zack knew what it was. And he resented it as much as he hadn’t been able to hold back. Best friends. Such a girly, stupid arrangement, but—

Zack could still remember the day Freddy first said it. They were supposed to be cleaning up the cafeteria during detention. Freddy started a foodfight. Zack finished it by shoving someone through the glass food warmer. Kid had only needed a couple stitches, so the whole thing was overblown. But detention wasn’t that bad, as it turned out. ‘Cause as he and Freddy mopped up, they screamed the lyrics of “The Neden Game” by Insane Clown Posse back and forth at each other from across the cafeteria. Ended up laughing so hard they almost puked. A good time, overall—there were worse ways to kill an afternoon.

After an hour, as they mopped up the last of the red spaghetti stains from the floor tiles, Freddy stopped. Looked at him, real serious, and Zack just knew he was about to piss him off again.

“You know,” Freddy said, fake-thoughtful, real-vulnerable even though he was trying to be cool, leaning against the mop handle. “I think you’re my best friend, dude.”

For some reason, it was the “I think” that fucked with Zack. Made it feel too real—like Freddy was only adding it for his sake, so as not to come off too certain and intense, but he’d been turning it over in his mind for a long time.

“Shut up,” Zack told him, throwing a dirty rag at his face.

Freddy caught it, laughing. Made a kissy face at him. “Love you too, dickhole.”

They got back to work, but Zack wanted to ram his head through something to forget those words. Freddy shouldn’t have been saying anything remotely similar to “love” to him. What did they know about love anyway? When Freddy said it, they were only 14. 14-year-olds shouldn’t be legally allowed to use that word, in Zack’s opinion. In fact, even adults should have to file a fucking permit or something. The punishment, he felt, for using that word out of turn, should be execution. And no, he didn’t think that was too harsh. 

What Zack couldn’t understand was why Freddy always wanted more from him. Why couldn’t he just fuck off and leave it be? Wasn’t it bad enough that they somehow got rolled up together in this weird, intense friendship without making it worse by declaring it? Words made everything more unsafe. If you could deny it, you didn’t have to deal with it. 

But it seemed like Freddy wanted to deal with it. And he was determined to force Zack to, too.

“I just wanna know what it would be like,” Freddy said, heartbreakingly quick and whispery. “With you. I wanna know what you feel like.”

Zack turned his own hand over, traced a finger down one green line of a vein. Bulging, thick, knotted—read somewhere that it meant there was a break in the line. 

“You don’t,” he tried to argue with Freddy. “You really don’t.”

“Stop.” Freddy’s voice got louder. “I know what I want. I didn’t think I’d ever get to say it. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. But you’re back. You came after me. You came to my house, knocked the door, brought me here. You knew. I know you knew. So deal with it already.” He glared. “If you don’t want me, tell me to fuck off. But you don’t get to tell me that I don’t want you. Zack, you have no idea. I’ve wanted you since—”

“Okay, okay.” Zack was desperate for him not to finish that sentence. “I’ll fuck you, man. Jesus. Calm down.”

Freddy froze, fingers stopped drumming on his thighs, feet stopped tapping nervously. He stared suspiciously at Zack, like it might be some kind of trick. 

“...Yeah?” Freddy asked, hoarsely. 

Zack sighed. “Do we have to do this part?” he asked. “I’m done talking about it. So. Just. Get over here if you want it done.” 

The way Freddy practically tripped as he lunged over to kiss him was dorky, desperate, and everything that was wrong with this situation. Zack kissed him back, helpless—tasted the Toasted Marshmallow flavoring of his stupid vape pen, the underlying skunky flavor of the weed, and the taste of Freddy: un-namable, slightly sweet, acidic. He licked the backsides of Freddy’s teeth, ran a thumb under his jaw, inhaled. That same smell: abietic, outdoorsy, but also warm and homey, like the Jones home came with him even when he left it. Tide laundry detergent, same as high school. It was like Zack time traveled: stupid scent, with its stupid nostalgic brain pathways. 

But he could feel Freddy melting, muscles gone slack and touch gone gentle, in his arms. Soft. So weird. Freddy kissed him like he could break him, like Zack was some kind of baby animal whose neck needed to be supported, who could barely withstand the pressure of fingertips. 

Laughable. Zack had been bruised in bed in pretty much every way a person could be. Slapped, kicked, spit on. Once, some guy he fucked on vacation tried to drown him under the shower. Another actually put him in a chokehold and punched him in the kidney. He pissed blood after, fucked up. But the truth was, he kind of liked it like that. Sex was a transaction. Distraction. Sensation in exchange for a pound of flesh. It was easier when it was so literal. No one could expect intimacy from someone who had suplexed and sucker punched him. If there was anything Zack valued in relationships, it was clarity. It was why he made all his hookups sign an NDA.

Well, all his hook ups but this one, anyway. For some reason, it seemed too cold and harsh to have Freddy sign a document about this. It was his first time. It should be kinda sacred—which everyone knew was the opposite of clinical. Nah, Zack could be a gentleman instead of a bastard. This once. Least he could do.

He would have been offended that Freddy seemed to think he could break him. But it just felt so good. He wanted to fight it, but found nothing to strike back at. Just Freddy, climbing into his lap, careful not to jostle him too much, slowly but urgently pressing his body against Zack’s like a warm, heavy pressure blanket, seeking contact along every surface. 

Zack tugged at the hood strings of Freddy’s nylon shell windbreaker, urging him to duck his head down, deepen the kiss. He knew he had to keep Freddy’s mouth busy, else he’d start to talk. Freddy was so talkative. And talking about this was the one thing Zack didn’t think he could bear. They had to stay quiet if they were going to get through this.

But Freddy’s tongue swept tentatively along his lower lip, and he shuddered; it kind of tickled. Plus, one of Freddy’s palms pressed flat over his heart, so Zack knew he could feel how it was beating.

He found he couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t treat Freddy like some sexy PA he pulled back into his trailer to pass the lunch hour with. “Come here, kiddo, I’m an artist, and an artist’s job is to teach you about things you don’t know that you want yet, but trust me. You do.”

No, he couldn’t give Freddy the fucking rose petals and declarations he probably wanted—the world was just gonna keep disappointing the dude if he kept looking for princess treatment in the age of Tinder—but Zack could at least be a little considerate. If not romance, at least Zack could make Freddy feel like he was being accommodated. Maybe that’d feel better, safer. It was the best Zack could do anyway. 

“How do you wanna do this?” he asked, breaking his talking embargo. Freddy better be grateful.

Freddy pulled back and looked at him startled, like he hadn’t thought about it.

“What do you mean?”

Zack rolled his eyes. But instead of being a dick and making Freddy feel stupid and unprepared, he tried to be helpful. 

“Just. Tell me how you pictured it, dude. And we’ll go from there.”

“Oh, I…” Freddy struggled, turning very, very red. 

Zack touched his face. It was so pretty, lit up like it was. Eyes sparkling because his pupils were so dilated. Mouth wet with kissing. So pink, blushing up through his hairline. Zack couldn’t help petting his hair. It was softer than it looked—spiky and messy solely because Freddy failed to brush it. He didn’t style it and hold it up with gel or anything like that. Zack got the idea he’d just rolled out of bed from a nap to answer the door. There was something sexy about it, imagining Freddy dead asleep, unaware that soon he’d be panting and whimpering in Zack’s hands.

“Could you just, um.” Freddy leaned his face against Zack’s palm, like it made him more steady. “I trust you. I want you to touch me how you want.”

Zack sighed. “Not very specific. Not very helpful.” But he took the sting out of it with a compliment (sort of). “Okay. Got it. I can think of lots of things I want, so that’s no problem. I’ll take it from here.”

Freddy lit up, sat straighter, and kissed him again, excitedly, practically bouncing. God, that was the most frustrating part about Freddy. He was just too happy. Even his anger had an energetic tinge of manic joy to it. Freddy enjoyed things. Liked stuff. Lacked bitterness. He had too much trust that the world was good and would bring him good things. Zack didn’t trust that, never had.

“You’re so cool,” Freddy told him, no trace of irony. “Zack. Zack, I missed you so much. I missed my best friend. I fucking missed you.”

Zack thought about the gap between them, created by all he’d experienced in the two years he’d been gone. He felt like every cell in his body had been replaced with new ones. Like he’d burned up and burst everything he used to be, and though he might look like Freddy’s school boy crush (kind of, even his face was new, so he didn’t even resemble him that much), he was actually a total stranger. Someone who’d traveled. Met all kinds of people. Sat in on high-power business meetings. Been in the back of cop cars. Played on stages. Vomited on stages. Was on TV so often it was an annoyance to him now. 

And he never regretted trading the last years of his childhood for the life he lived except now, when it was making him feel so far away from the beautiful boy in his arms.

“Missed you too,” he told Freddy, and he knew Freddy would misinterpret what he meant, but it was for the best. 

Let Freddy remain in his simple world of things lost and things regained. No need for them both to be aware of how entropy ate up the world and left nothing but lost connections.

He felt himself slipping, sliding down into the level of consciousness where it was most dangerous to be, where Freddy could find him and stick him right in the heart with another hook. But, oh. It was so hard to resist. 

Freddy led with his mouth. Some people—like Zack—advanced with their hands, reaching for a new partner with touches and exploratory grabbing, groping. But Freddy broke new ground with kisses, licks, and bites. With uninhibited gusto, he bit down on Zack’s tricep, through his shirt. Sucked on his earlobe. Kissed the tiny hollow between his collarbones, followed it up with his tongue just to be thorough. It was all so weird. So specific. No other lover wanted to know Zack in these tiny, particular ways. It was like Freddy was marking out all the little sites, leaving affectionate torches for Zack to find later, like roadsigns indicating “Freddy was here, with love.”

Love. Freddy didn’t say it. But Zack knew. That’s what this was. What it always had been. On Freddy’s side anyway. Zack didn’t know what he felt, but he doubted he was the kind of person even capable of giving any kind of emotional commitment that Freddy would want, if he could truly have seen Zack’s heart in the cold, clear light of day.

So he tried to give him one more out. Because very soon, there would be no escaping this. Zack was going to lose his mind, could feel Freddy’s hands, touching the bare skin of his belly and trailing around to his lower back, and fuck. A few more seconds of those fluttery hot touches, and Zack wasn’t even going to be able to stop, not for either of their sakes. Freddy was reckless, careless with the power he wielded: how irresistible he was. How pretty, and pliant, and practically fucking edible he was. Zack was only fucking human. Eventually he was going to have to fully bite down on what Freddy was offering him.

But he could be a gentleman just this one more time. For his best friend. Maybe the best friend he’d ever had. It was more than he’d do for anyone else throwing themself at him, in Freddy’s position.

Zack stopped him by grabbing the outsides of his shoulders and physically holding him away for a moment, so Freddy couldn’t fight dirty and circumvent the conversation with that clever, hungry mouth of his.

“You sure you want to do this?” Zack asked, all but shaking him. “You can still bail. I won’t be pissed. We can walk away.”

He half hoped Freddy would say yes. And half hoped he’d say hell no.

Freddy smirked. “You promised,” he said. “Let’s fucking go, Z.”

Fuck. 

So Zack took off his own jacket and laid it down on the dusty bus floor. The grime would probably ruin his unwashable, original Pyrex Vision streetwear piece that his agent assured him would be very valuable someday—Zack thought it didn't look that special, though he supposed he’d wear worse for the kind of money they were offering him to sport it. But it couldn’t be helped. Zack wanted to do the small things he could for Freddy, since he knew he couldn’t do any of the stuff that really mattered.

He took a tiny sample bottle of Aquaphor from his pocket, showed it to Freddy, who was still seated on the bus bench, watching him. 

Such a small, plastic bottle, but Freddy looked kind of afraid of it. Probably because he knew what it meant.

“I’m clean,” Zack reassured him. “I promise.” 

He was anal and rigorous about check ups and protection. You could get sued for passing something on that you shouldn’t. Plus, transferable diseases weren’t discrete, as Zack preferred to be. But he understood if Freddy didn’t trust him. He wouldn’t trust himself, in Freddy’s shoes. 

But Freddy just nodded, slowly. “Me too,” he said, unnecessarily. 

Because, duh. If this was his first time, there was virtually no chance he’d be anything but.

Zack inched over, still low on his haunches to lean up and kiss Freddy to reassure him, just to be nice. He suddenly looked so much younger, watching Zack’s face with big-eyed worry and naive intent.

“Not gonna ask you again if you wanna bow out,” Zack said, knowing it’d just piss Freddy off to keep offering. “So.” He made an indicative gesture with both hands, tilting his fingers at Freddy and sliding them over to the jacket on the floor, implying Freddy should get down on his level.

Freddy took a deep breath and did so, quick, like he wasn’t giving himself time to overthink it. Zack grinned, kind of impressed. Dude had balls, that was for sure.

At this point, Zack finally had to give his actual plan some thought. He climbed on top of Freddy, laid him down slowly—hoping he’d lined them up right, so Freddy’s head landed on the jacket and not on the floor. He grabbed the back of Freddy’s neck, brought him in for a bruising kiss, and reached for his belt buckle. Freddy grabbed his ass, squeezed, but soon slid his hands up his spine. Zack sipped in mouthfuls of air, quick and hard as Freddy’s nails drew out involuntary shudders.

Zack didn’t like to give head. Not particularly. He’d do it, mostly if he wanted it reciprocated, but found it kind of mechanical, unwieldy, slobbery, drippy and slimy at the best of times. But if the dude was too rough, grabbed his head, thrust in too hard, it’d cut up Zack’s lip—no good deed went unpunished, and that was what he got, he supposed, for trying to cover his teeth. Or it’d leave his throat raw and tender-feeling. Once he genuinely choked while getting throat-fucked, but couldn’t escape ‘cause the dude had a visegrip over his ears. He was partially worried he’d asphyxiate on his own vomit as he gagged, and also partially worried the dude would accidentally pop his fucking ear drums. Not the best experiences.

But he found he really, really wanted to suck Freddy’s dick.

He wasn’t sure why. 

It was especially weird because he was pretty sure he’d never been so hard in his life. Any other hook up, and if he was here, arousal-wise, he’d be way past considering screwing around with a dalliance that in his mind was basically just foreplay. But he wanted to look up into Freddy’s eyes and see the surprise there, the anticipation. Wanted to see his nervousness dissipate into pleasure. Wanted to just…give him something. Something good, out of all of this. Something he could just enjoy, no strings attached. There was so much he’d never be able to offer Freddy, so many things Freddy clearly wanted from him that were beyond him. But here was one thing, maybe, that Freddy didn’t even know how to ask for yet, that Zack could give him for free.

So he got to work, got Freddy’s pants and boxers all the way down, kicked off, tossed to the side. Kissed the tops of Freddy’s knuckles with a smirk; Freddy had no idea that he was the exception here, getting special treatment. But Zack wanted to preserve his innocence on that front, didn’t want Freddy thinking at this moment about anyone else Zack had been with. And then he kissed Freddy’s mouth one more time, and slowly pulled back, inch by inch, watched Freddy’s face as it dawned on him what Zack was going to do. And when Freddy’s eyebrows were all the way up in his hairline…Zack lowered his head.

“Don’t touch my hair,” he warned Freddy before he got down to business. 

Freddy nodded, his whole body bobbing. “Holy fuck,” he said. “Shit.”

Once upon a time, Zack believed that anything worth doing was worth doing well. He had grown up since then. Wasn’t the try-hard dweeby kid he’d been at one point. And though there were many things he half-assed now because he just couldn’t be fucked to care about doing them right, this wasn’t one of them. He always kept an eye out during his hookups, for things that could make him a better lover. 

Zack made good use of the twisty-jerk motion that he picked up at a gay Korean bathhouse he found while touring Asia. The dude he got it from was a masseur in a “happy endings” joint, and a total master: could make someone "happy" with three expert jerks using just his wrists (necessary, as the law in some areas forbade the usage of actual hands on genitalia, so it was a neat work around). Zack wasn’t that skilled, needed way more than three, but he got the technique down okay with his hands. Supplemented by his mouth.

And he used this trick and more on Freddy as he inhaled the musky, pungent, pheromone-rich scent of the sweat between Freddy’s thighs, licked and tortured him. Sucked the insides of his legs, right under the joint, until Freddy was fully spreading and begging for him, then went in for the kill, taking as much as he could in one swallow. Freddy whined, reached for his hair to drag him in, keep him there, but Zack smacked his hands away. Then he had to hold Freddy down, because the guy was out of control, writhing around. He was gonna put out Zack’s eye. So Zack forced his hips to the floor, hard. He could tell Freddy tried to hold still after that, but with minimal success.

He watched Freddy, rolling his eyes back, nails raking through the dust, panting and shattered. His precum was slightly bitter, and the lubrication caused a quiet, rubbery squeak when Zack ran his own tongue against the top of his mouth. Zack’s body thrummed, sensitized—he could feel the tension as Freddy’s spine bent back, dick so rigid that every tiny stroke had to feel like direct contact with raw nerve endings. He was already so close. So fucking close. 

Zack wanted to just enjoy his good work. Wanted to congratulate himself on a job well done, but he just couldn’t get perspective. His own body was speaking up louder and louder. Wanted. Wanted more touching. Contact . Contact with the mind-crushingly, devastatingly gorgeous, half-naked boy reduced to a pleasure-ruined mess on the floor. The sheer power of it was fucking with Zack. The intimacy of Freddy’s trust was like heat in the air; Zack was just sweltering now. And he wanted—he wanted—he wanted—

He almost let Freddy believe that was where it was going to end. 

Zack wasn’t a spitter or a swallower. He usually just waited until his partner’s climax was inevitable, and then he’d pop off, let him make a mess of himself, maybe help with a hand. He knew that was selfish, and the last couple pumps were the fucking best part, so denying someone that just ‘cause he didn’t want that weird, sometimes-almost-mustardy taste in his mouth for two seconds was asshole behavior. 

But he wasn’t just being an asshole to Freddy. He’d promised him a first time, hadn’t he? So he had to check all the boxes. He reached for the tube of Aquaphor again. Uncapped it. Put a dime-sized amount on his index finger. 

“Wait, Zack. Hey, wait—” Freddy said, opening his eyes just in time to realize what was about to happen. 

Too late. 

“It’s just one. You’re fine,” Zack said, calmly, as Freddy gurgled, feet scrabbling, body wriggling as he adjusted to the sensation. 

Zack couldn’t help but stare down at him, fascinated. A person couldn’t be more vulnerable than Freddy was right then, lying there on the dirty floor, dick hard and exposed, Zack’s index finger up his ass, each breath stuttering out, accompanied with small, groaning pips of sound. 

Why—why—had Freddy let him do this to him? He shouldn’t be seeing Freddy like this. Freddy was so bright, a never-still blur of energy and zest for life, so funny and, well. Good. Freddy was good. Zack could tell. His heart was as warm and soft as the rest of him, despite his anger. 

Suddenly, Zack kind of wanted to cry. How could this good, lovely person allow someone like Zack to fucking do this to him?

Zack had planned to torture him some more. Negotiate with him—how many fingers could he take, and how long before he was borderline sobbing, needing Zack to touch his dick again? And Zack would oblige only when he was fucking Freddy down on all fours. Only then would he allow it to end; he planned to get Freddy so worked up and desperate, begging to be fucked without even knowing what that meant before Zack gave it to him.

But.

It suddenly seemed wrong to toy with Freddy. Profoundly, spiritually wrong—almost evil. And Zack couldn't go through with it, not when he was looking at the white of Freddy’s stomach, visible because his shirt rucked up his chest as he thrashed around. Something so vulnerable about it, Freddy’s outie belly button, rising and falling with his ragged breathing.

“Did you wait for me?” Zack asked him. Suddenly, he had to know. “Is this your first time because you waited for me, Freddy?”

Freddy’s eyes snapped open. He bit his lip. “Not on purpose.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I…” Freddy’s voice was airy, like he didn’t have full use of his diaphragm, to put any power behind his words. “I always thought you’d be my first. And-and. Even when you were gone, I still thought so. Made me. Um. Too sad. To let go of the idea. So. I didn’t.”

“Too sad?” Zack still didn’t dare try to move.

It seemed like Freddy was still adjusting: staring at the ceiling, trying to steady himself, flexing every muscle, lifting his hips slightly every few seconds. Getting used to the unfamiliar sensation. Zack didn’t want to rush him. 

“We’re…we’re supposed to be…” Freddy looked at him, desperately. “I don’t know. I just know that this is how it was supposed to go.”

Zack wanted to believe him, but couldn’t. He didn’t think there was such a thing as fate. He did think, however, that Freddy had tried everything else to get close to him. Every other method of penetrating Zack’s defenses. And so it was possible that sex was like the bait Freddy was using, to try to pull him in, trap him. Freddy must have known that Zack wouldn’t be able to say no to this, but he was hoping he’d be able to leverage sex into emotional intimacy.

Oh, Freddy. Only a fucking virgin would think it was a solvent plan.

Of course, Zack didn’t actually know if that was Freddy’s plan, but it was easier to proceed if he was a little mad at Freddy, had something to resent him for. He needed a reason not to fall straight into those big brown eyes and just keep falling. Anger was his seatbelt—his lifeline.

But he was also getting impatient. Freddy was taking forever to adjust. Zack couldn’t sit here all day. Eventually, he’d need his finger back. So he tipped forward again, took Freddy’s dick into his mouth, because god forbid this turn into a real conversation. No way. Freddy had already said too much.

“Holy shit,” Freddy whimpered. He didn’t put his hands in Zack’s hair, but he did reach for one of Zack’s hands to hold. That was almost worse.

Zack let him hold his hand for all of two seconds. Then he pulled his mouth off Freddy’s dick, squeezed his hand briefly, and let go. So Freddy wouldn’t be too forlorn about the loss, Zack stroked his dick, lightly. Soothingly, almost. Freddy wheezed, eyelids half-shuttered, watching Zack with utter trust.

Poor, stupid Freddy. Zack didn’t know what he’d done to merit such trust, but he did know what he was going to do next: shatter it.

An orgasm brought on by the double stimulation of Freddy’s prostate and Zack’s mouth on his dick at the same time would wipe Freddy out. It was irresponsible, likely way too much for a first time. No way was Freddy ready for it; Zack hadn’t been, his first time with both at the same time. And that wasn't even his first time overall. But Zack decided Freddy had better get ready. Because now that Zack’s mind was made up, this was happening one way or another. 

He curled his finger the tiniest bit, wriggled it around inside Freddy’s asshole. Freddy choked. For good measure, Zack added a second finger. Then, without much of a grace period, a third.

“Fuck! Zack.” Freddy’s always raspy voice was completely raw and hoarse. He sounded like he was weeping. “Please, I. Zack. I need—please. Please. Fuck. Please. Zack. Please.”

“Since you asked so nicely.” Zack smiled. He got ready to suppress his gag reflex, took Freddy’s whole dick, let his mouth fill with saliva, pulled up with a slight twist, and followed his mouth with his free hand, pumping at the base. 

And as he sucked Freddy off, he deliberately stroked Freddy’s prostate with the three fingers inside him.

The response was immediate. Freddy lost his mind:

“Fucking—shit! Zack, Zack, please, please, God. God, Zack. Please.”

Zack didn’t want to let Freddy off the hook in any way shape or form, so he made an exception to his “no spitting or swallowing rule” and became a swallower, just this once. Freddy needed to be bodily held down; he was thrashing around wildly, so Zack did his best to pin him with his body weight, having no free hands.

“Fuck, fuck, fucking, shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. Shit!” 

Zack watched Freddy grab two handfuls of his own hair and nearly tear them out of his head as he came. It was undeniably a pretty sight. 

His body twitched and rolled as he drove his dick right into Zack’s throat; he barely restrained a surprised cough as he held his breath so as not to taste the spurt of warm, unpleasantly thick, miso-tasting cum. Freddy moaned and turned his hips, trying to get away, but Zack kept pumping through the orgasm and once or twice after, knowing for a fact that this was when Freddy would be at his most sensitive, nearly unable to bear even the slightest brush, let alone the full bore, sucking power of Zack’s determined mouth.

Freddy strangled back a scream and bit down on the back of his own hand. 

Huh. Only took about three jerks after all. 

Tears rolled from the sides of Freddy’s eyes as he came down. His stiff, bent knees relaxed and flattened out, and he gasped, taking full breaths again. He was sweating and trembling—filthy, streaked with dust and grime, dirty gray smudges on his forehead, caked into his hair. And he was panting with heat, probably regretting keeping his shirt on. 

Zack slowly withdrew his fingers from inside him, and Freddy winced, even though Zack tried to be gentle.

“You okay?” Zack asked. He didn’t look it.

Freddy nodded, tears still rolling. He wiped at them, pointlessly, dirtying his face further. 

“Fuck,” he said. “Holy fuck.”

Zack cleaned off his hands on the $2000 jacket like it was a napkin. It had become balled up and useless due to Freddy’s tossing and turning. When he was done, he handed it to Freddy to wipe his face. He took it gratefully and blew his nose on the expensive fabric.

“Um.” Freddy said, interrupting the quiet before it became too long. “I have a question.”

“I bet you do.”

Freddy sat up. “What now?” he asked, sniffling, still only half-clothed. 

It felt so very imbalanced. Freddy’s whole lower half was bare-ass naked, and Zack hadn’t removed anything but his jacket.

“What do you mean, what now?” Zack was amused. “I just made you see heaven, so now you say, ‘thank you, Zack,’ I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Freddy laughed. “I meant, like. What are we gonna do about you?”

If he weren’t already bright red from exertion, he’d definitely be blushing again. Yet he still stared at Zack with stubborn determination and aroused curiosity. 

Zack leaned over him again, kissing him, forcing him to taste what lingered of his own cum. 

“Freddy, my dear,” Zack purred. “What exactly did you think I was prepping you for?” He kissed Freddy’s cheek. Silly creature thought Zack was being totally selfless. 

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head. We’re definitely not forgetting me.” 

Chapter Text

2024. December 1st.

Simple fact: the best way to celebrate the holidays was to piss off as many people as possible. Fuck, the only good thing about missing the Los Angeles December heat-drone was that no one on his scene in New York proper so much as bothered to ask what his holiday plans were. Nor bitch about the fact that he was making a whole crew of people work with him to record and shoot his next album and promo material through the holidays.  

Everyone was gloomy and sullen and resentful, and honestly, that filled Zack's heart with glad tidings. This was the true face of the world. Shitty and pissed off, not merry and bright. Truth over bullshit any day.

And that was how Zack got right to work on his favorite holiday tradition on December 1st. He busted out of his trailer at 11 AM, already an hour and a half late for a recording session at the studio he wasn't technically invited to. But his useless assistant accidentally added it to his calendar. The only reason he was going was because she'd removed it. The studio didn't want him there? Something was definitely up.

He was, uncharacteristically, slightly more on time than usual. Usually, he stopped at Starbucks on the way to any obligations, so by the time he got there, he was a full two hours late and toting a frappuccino (which he would take a few sips of and then demonstratively toss in the trash for being “disappointing”).

“Zack!” Edgar Weiss jogged out through the glass double doors of the studio before Zack had even fully set foot outside the label’s company car.

Zack would have blown him off...but Edgar was the lawyer. Representing the label head, Maria Ramirez. A quiet, tired man. Either in his fifties or seventies; no one could tell. Also the one person Zack could not fully ignore, if he wanted to keep his name on the label contract.

“What,” Zack snapped. Not a question. Fuck, he hated authority, always had, and Edgar wielded the kind of terrifying institutional power that did not need to announce itself. It simply moved, and everyone else got out of the way.

“I just want you to stay calm when you go in there,” Edgar said, cautiously. 

Zack already knew "staying calm" wasn’t going to happen, based on Edgar's tone. So he made no promises. He just shouldered past Edgar with a sneer, pausing only to hold his gaze: a silent challenge. And then Edgar stepped aside, resigned.

When Zack entered the recording booth, it was immediately obvious why Edgar had been worried.

Some kid, maybe 23 at the oldest. Scrawny. Sweatshirt washed too many times, long hair he probably cut himself. Bad skin. Cheap, dirty shoes. And the ability to use both hands to pluck. In other words, a fucking geek. One of these dudes who thought they could just index heavily on guitar skills, and that made them hot shit. 

“The fuck is that.” Zack spat on the ground; he’d stopped chewing tobacco because the shit stained his teeth, and he was tired of his Nancy Reagan-esque oral hygienist's pathetic whining about mouth cancer every time he had to get them whitened again. But the spitting habit was tough to kick, plug or no.

“That’s, um. Gordon,” Bob told him. She tucked a flat, greasy strand of ponytail back nervously. “We hired him so your time doesn’t get wasted, sir.”

The new Bob pissed Zack off more than the last one. She was so fucking nervous. And chubby. Plus, she looked at him like he was crazy when he said all his assistants were called “Bob” to him. Like he was supposed to remember the names of all the people he worked with every day? He had better things to put in his fucking brain. Unlike Bob. She looked like the type to memorize video game stats in hopes of sitting at the nerd table instead of behind the dumpsters. Fuck, how had she even gotten this job? Didn’t anyone believe in quality control anymore? 

“If you hired another session musician,” Zack said evenly, “I swear to god, I will email Wendy’s your application right now, and then call them and tell them why they shouldn’t fucking hire your incompetent ass.”

“Not me,” Bob begged. “I didn’t hire Gordon. It was your label—”

Zack walked past her, trying to move fast. But since stage diving two weeks ago, his hip was messed up. So he sort of hobbled.

“Who hired the tech?” Zack busted into the recording room, and the geeky tech stared at him.

“Not a tech,” the tech mumbled. “A tech is someone who can repair and alter the physical guitar. I’m a session musician.”

Zack ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken.

“We don’t need a tech,” Zack said, loudly, into the microphone, hopefully busting the producer’s eardrums. He hated how he was sounding whiny, so he made his voice loud and bellowing to feel less pathetic. “I can play my own goddamned song. Where’s Sandra?”

“Sandra’s not—”

“You’re wasting time and money. We hired Gordon to play because your time is better spent elsewhere. You don’t need to be here.” Edgar finally appeared in the room, wiping his dry face with a handkerchief, touching his scalp through his thin hair.

“I don’t need to be in the studio when you’re recording my own fucking song?” Zack repeated, shrill. He hated feeling like a kid that the grown ups were trying to distract by petting his ego. He wasn’t a moron. He knew what this was.

“We already got your vocals, your version of the guitar. We’re just having Gordon here do some versions too, in case we want to tweak things. We’re taking it off your plate, Zack. You don’t need to be obsessing about the silly technical song details. You’re the face.” Edgar’s voice was so oily and sincere that Zack knew he was lying through his stupid lawyer teeth.

What hurt the most was that these people thought he needed to be lied to, that he couldn’t handle the truth. It was the ultimate disrespect, these freaks tiptoeing around him. Like he couldn’t be trusted. Like he was the actual problem here.

“If you already have my version, you don’t need this NOBODY to do it over,” Zack said. “Just use mine.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. 

In half a second, Zack knew—it occurred to him, wholly against his will, piercing through his ego like a red hot poker thrust through his chest—that his take was unusable. 

On the day of recording, he’d stumbled in, already down half a bottle of valium washed down with five fingers of whiskey to calm his nerves. Recording always made him nervous, all those people watching him, timing him, making him start over if he messed up. His memory had big holes in it, so he could only remember dribs and drabs of the session.

But he noticed that there was a square table in the kitchen area with only three chairs, and a long scuff and dent along the door that was the same color as the rubber on his sneakers—no wonder his foot was throbbing—and everything that could be thrown or smashed had been removed. 

…So, he guessed he hadn’t exactly brought the house down, except very literally.

“Let me play it,” Zack insisted. He was sober enough now, only three rails of coke when he first woke up, and that was practically kindergarten shit. Like drinking coffee. Same shit, same thing.

“I can do it,” he said, confidence mounting. “Fuck this tech. He doesn’t understand the song. He can’t play it, because he hasn’t lived it. Let me do it again. I can really get it. Really connect. I can—”

“There’s no time,” Edgar said, in a way that let Zack know his next move would be to call the whole session, but then backchannel with the label about Zack’s career. This was his last chance to get in line. “We want this album finished. This week. Gordon has already done five takes in the time it took us to get 1 full version of the song out of you. It’s not personal.”

He sighed, tapping the face of his old, rattly watch with the backside of his knuckle.

“Just go get a massage or something, son,” he advised. “And let everyone else work.”

But Zack Motherfucking Mooneyham built his career on telling The Man where to stick it. And no Stuffed Shirt was ever going to tell him what the fuck to do with his own music. Not without a fight.

“How many were in your class when you graduated from Baylor Law?” he asked, deadly calm.

“About 80 of us,” Edgar said, flat. 

Too flat, so Zack knew he was smothering his surprise.

“80 of you, huh?” Zack said, pleasantly. “About that every year? 80 lawyers from Baylor, give or take?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“So like, in ten years, there’ll be 800 people exactly as qualified as you are to do your job. Wow. You must be so proud.”

“I get it, Zack.” 

“Do you? Doesn’t seem like you do,” Zack reminded him. “Fuck off, Edgar. Don’t imply I’m replaceable. That’s a joke. You’re here because I made it. Everyone is. Without me, there’d be to reason to cover your ass in the first place. Don’t fuck with me”

And with that, he ducked out to call Sandra.

_______

None of his so-called team was of any help, so Zack did what he always did and saved himself.

It wasn’t really that hard. He just posted on his social media: a message to his fans. If they wanted to make the world a better place, they should fucking grow some balls and shake things up. Then he dropped a pin to let everyone know where he was.

In a little cafe just a few blocks from city hall, Texan Senator Skip Peters sat drinking a tiny espresso. He’d recently been on Fox news, babbling about DOMA and leveraging the Supreme Court to bring it back and restore moral order to the country.

He recognized Zack when he entered, looked surprised, waved him over. Probably recognized Zack’s face from pretty much every tabloid cover and awards show since he was 17. 

Zack obliged. And as people with cameras pushed their faces and lenses against the big picture windows, he lunged across the table and made out with that senator right over the little metal table. One leg was slightly shorter than the others, so the table rocked and banged and squeaked as the man struggled.

Flashes erupted around them. Skip’s security team tackled Zack to the ground, and Zack flipped the man off, screaming, “Fuck you, you hypocrite!”

A PR crisis-slash-boon of the century that painted Zack as either a maniac or a vigilante hero for gay rights, ended up being covered in every publication from The New Yorker to Star Magazine. An internet firestorm about the morality of his actions. And millions of downloads and streams of all of his music. His concert tickets were already sold out, but an online petition went out for him to have another one, as his lawyers scrambled to get him out of jail and recused so he could do the first one.

His favorite headline was the Boston Globes: The Last Bastion Of The Soul Of Punk Rock , they called him. He hadn’t played true punk rock music in years, more like over-produced synth laden, danceable bullshit with some shredding added as a treat. But it was nice to get the street credit anyway.

Zack was once again, the highest performing artist on his label, busting through his previous record in one fell swoop. He did his time—less than a day—with a smile on his face.

Zack’s manager Sandra was pissed. Said Zack was representing the queer community as violent and predatory. Not a good example for the youth.

“Wrong. I’m the best example for the youth,” Zack dismissed, summarily. “You know what these politicians want? They want us to be nice. They want us to be quiet. They want us to be afraid. I say, fuck that. I don’t care what people think of my community. I want my community to fight back. It’s good if politicians are afraid of us. They should be.”

“Zack,” Sandra sighed. “It’s not so black and white. Progressivism—”

“Fuck your progressivism, and you can quote me on that.”

He left her, and Edgar, and whoever else the label hired to clean up his mess, to deal with it, and went back to his penthouse. He was supposed to stay in the trailer until they were finished shooting his music video, but his stint in jail had set production back anyway, he guessed. So he could go home.

And no one could do shit, couldn’t fire him or even chastise him, because he was the fucking man.

_________

Maybe Zack should have been on top of the world, having conquered all the pissants trying to bring him down, from Gordon the tech, to Edgar the hater, and even the Republican fucking senator. 

But he just…didn’t care.

All he felt inside was a yawning hollow. The city streets of New York were full of people and smelly gray snow boot-kicked and gutter black, and he should have brought a scarf to lessen the windchill around his neck and face, but scarves were for old women and toddlers, and certainly not for rockstars. So he’d freeze his ass off in his leather motorcycle jacket for the sake of his image.

Besides, who cared anyway, if he was comfortable or freezing? Not him. He’d traded comfort for success so many times he should have been used to it by now.

The only good thing about winter was that the colder it got, the less likely paparazzi were lying in wait on random street corners. Though everyone knew—celebrity sightings in public were most often called in by the celebrities themselves. Or by so-called  friends who wanted to ensure an unflattering fat photo of some unmade up sloppy celebrity doing the walk of shame or something. But truly unflattering candids were easy to avoid if you weren’t totally braindead. 

A gas station loomed ahead, and Zack wanted a reprieve from the air, so cold it was like a wet slap against his face. He also wanted a pack of cigarettes, and to talk to a human being to drown out the buzzing ennui. He knew cigarettes were foul. He should stick to vapes. But he wanted something bad for him, something truly self destructive, something that would linger on his skin.

Zack entered, waved at the cashier who barely looked at him.

“Hey.” He pointed at the glass behind the register. “Don’t suppose you have Nat Shermans back there?”

The cashier, a tired looking teenager in a hoodie and hoop earrings, rolled her eyes. “Marlboros okay?” she asked instead of contradicting him.

Zack shrugged. “Whatever. I usually vape. Stressful day.”

She squinted at him, turned to unlock the glass cabinet. When she slid it open, he could hear the heavy panel bump like a train over rocky rails, something caught in the track. She slid him the pack of Malboros, and as he reached for it, her eyes lit up.

“...Hey you’re that guy!” she said.

Zack perked up a little, used to be recognized but never really over it. He smiled, modestly, prepared to shrug and act embarrassed if she asked him to sign something.

“The old guy who played at Bonnaroo last year,” she continued, nodding. “I saw you! Before Harry Styles.”

Zack’s good mood deflated at once, a resounding, pinging pop, the round fullness of happy-swelling dissolved into rubber scraps.

“Fuck Harry Styles.” Zack snatched the cigarettes off the counter and pressed his fingers down on top of his credit card on the counter, tempted to flick it at her, hard.

Just then, another teenager came banging down the fire escape, tiny pigtails on top of her head bouncing, pom poms on her jacket ricocheting off her shoulders, eyes wheeling about with alarm. 

“Marah, I’m so sorry, I’m late I…” she huffed, breathless. “Up there, I stopped to…I just needed…I was…” she held up a little plastic purple rectangle loaded with a clear amber cartridge to explain. “ANYWAY, there’s a man up there. And I think he’s going to jump.”

Zack didn’t know why, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, he found himself pushing past her, clamoring up the noisy, rickety metal steps, clinging to the rusty rails…up to the roof.

________

At the edge of the roof: a small, shuddering silhouette sat. Someone, dangling his feet over the ledge. As Zack got closer, to his surprise…he recognized the sullen profile. Flakes of snow sprinkled lightly down from the black sky to land in his dark, frizzy curls. His thin weaselly face and downturned eyes peered down unseeingly below. They weren’t even up that high. He would probably survive, unless he swan-dived or something.

“...Billy?” Zack asked, finding the name as soon as he opened his mouth. His old schoolmate. Well ho-ly shit. Small damn world.

Billy didn’t look up, just jerked his head in Zack’s direction faintly. Ah. Zack recognized the sluggish, noncommittal movement immediately. Billy’s muscles pulled tight, inward. Body pulsing in sharp, involuntary shivers—not the continuous shaking of cold-shivering, but abrupt, random quiver-events. The man was on psychedelics, or Zack would eat his boot. 

“Can’t believe you remember my name,” Billy said, doing a sarcastic impression of a simper. “We only went to school together for what, seven years?” He snorted, or maybe sneezed, hard to tell with all the street noise. “Interesting how we hung out zero times, in all those years. Too busy walking around arm in arm with golden jock boy Freddy Jones, I guess.”

Zack startled at the name, which he hadn’t heard for so long it was like seeing a ghost. But he got himself together as best as he could. 

“Uh huh… So. How ya been?” He asked in his most shameless “isn’t it funny how I don’t give a fuck” voice.

Billy laughed. “Fantastic.” He looked down at the pavement below and kicked his feet, toes wiggling. 

A tiny trickle of fear zipped through Zack’s body. When he breathed, he felt the winter down deep, aching in his weakened, smoke-vandalized lungs. He’d never seen someone die. 

But he didn’t know how to come at things delicately, had not been forced during his formative years to tread lightly in any social sense, except kind of in front of the press—and that wasn’t about tact so much as sticking to a script. So all Zack could think to do was blurt out what he wanted to say; fuck the consequences.

“Uh. Man. Are…you gonna jump?” he asked, pulling out a cigarette he only realized then he hadn’t paid for. After a pause, he offered one to Billy, who took it, and rolled it up and down his thumb, absently, distractedly, not seeming all too keen on lighting it. 

Billy didn’t answer him for a long time.

“I have a lot of reasons for this,” Billy murmured at last. His matter of fact voice was quiet, unnerving. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Good. I don’t really want one,” Zack admitted. He did not like to hear stories about people who weren’t himself, particularly. 

Billy smiled, humorlessly. 

“In German, there’s a phrase,” Billy told him, leaning back on his palms, for a moment, and Zack wasn’t too proud to say it gave him some measure of relief when Billy wasn’t actively pitching forward. “Lebensmüde. It means ‘life tired.’ Like you aren’t even depressed anymore. You’re just kind of done. Exhausted by existing.”

Zack thought about that for a while. He had learned to let people’s words hang in the air. People credited him with wisdom, power, and worthiness for saying nothing. 

Plus, he had to choose his words carefully here.

“I think the most powerful for of transcendence is ‘fuck it,’” Zack said at last. “When nothing means anything to you, you are free. To do whatever you want.”

Billy turned to him sharply. “And what do you want?”

The way he asked it made Zack’s heart freeze. So pointed, like Billy knew secrets Zack’s soul had not yet admitted to itself. Zack shook himself, trying not to be gripped too tightly by this ridiculous notion. He was not a superstitious person. Was not even convinced he had a soul. Just one of those things that sounded too good to be true.

He cleared his throat. “I want to go back inside. Freezing my balls off out here, dude.”

“So go.” Billy’s command was absolute.

But Zack had never been good at listening to authority.

“Nah,” he said, mimicking Billy’s posture, resting his hands, fingers splayed backwards, on the filthy grit, the small rocks, husks of insects, butts of old matches, yellow receipts, food refuse, and God knew what else coating the flat cement roofing. He leaned his weight slouchily into his shoulders. Planted firm. Not going anywhere, especially not now that he’d been ordered to. 

“Hey. If I tell you why I’m here,” Billy said, “will you get grossed out and leave?”

Ah. Reverse psychology. Clever little shit. Huh. Maybe they could have been friends in high school. Zack's preferred company was always snark flavored nihilism,

“No, I won't go,” Zack told him, because the only thing he hated worse than trying to be someone’s shoulder to cry on was falling for manipulation or negative suggestion. “I'll just give you shit about whatever you say.”

Billy sighed, gustily, white tufts of breath tumbling out and dissipating. His small hands shook, many rings clinking faintly as he pressed his fingertips into his jeans, flattening the cigarette against his thigh.

“I’m just saying. Your conscience would be clear, if you left me here.” Billy’s voice was soft as the inky, satin drape of the night sky. “My mom has dementia, and even though I take care of her, she doesn’t remember who I am. Not even in her moments of clarity. She had psychotic depression all her life…so you know. She didn’t see much of me growing up anyway. Had to spend about 80% of her time in bed. So as she gets further and further erased…the unmemorable stuff is going first.” He eyed the foggy heavens, where there should have been stars but the city lights blocked them out. “My boyfriend died of prostate cancer like seven years ago—I told him that guys over 35 should start getting checked. But. Stubborn.” His voice almost cracked, but he coughed, rolled the cigarette slowly down to his knee, then back up.

“Ew. You dated an old ass man then,” Zack said; even the cursory math was icky. 

Billy giggled like it escaped him; he couldn’t stop it.

“I miss him though,” Billy admitted. “I made a little shrine. It’s creepy, but no one comes over to see it.”

Zack finally decided to light his own cigarette, feeling a bit stupid just sitting there impotently holding it. He took a drag, then held the glowing tip of his out to Billy to catch the embers. Billy hesitated, then did so. It was good to have something to do with their mouths other than talk.

“You can always kill yourself tomorrow,” Zack mused, when his cigarette threatened to burn down past the filter. A dumb thing to say, but people repeated cliches for a reason, he figured. Grain of truth.

“What’s the difference?” Billy asked, looking down again, longingly. “Today, tomorrow. It’s always the same.”

“The difference,” Zack said, voice higher in his throat, tonsils wreathed, dampered, dried out by the veil of smoke he pulled in, “is that if you jump tomorrow, I won’t be here.”

“Not sure I care enough to call that a difference,” Billy retorted, petulant.

So Zack squared his shoulders, got louder as he always did to make his point.

“Yeah, well. Up to you.” Zack stubbed out his cigarette, smashed the paper tube into the whitest part of the concrete. “But I’m telling you. …If you’re suicidal, your homicidal. If you kill yourself, you’re killing two people tonight. Do you really want that on your conscience right before you meet God? If there is a God, anyway.”

Billy stared at him, let his cigarette burn ‘til it dripped ash on his pantleg, embers biting his cuticles. He shook his hand, frantic with scorch pain, but unable to peel his eyes off Zack. 

“You wouldn’t,” Billy said at last. “You’re a dick. You’re fucking bluffing. You don’t care. You don’t know me or care about me well enough to—”

“You’re right. I don’t care,” Zack told him, softly. “Don’t give a crap about my life. Haven’t made a single piece of art I care about in years. Don’t care about the people I see every day. The only part of my day I enjoy is fucking people over before they fuck me.” He bared his teeth; it could hardly be called a smile. “So. If it may as well be your last night, it may as well be mine. Call it inspiration.”

Billy glared like his squint and frown were the only thing keeping back a swell of angry tears. Zack didn’t want him to pitch forward to prove a point or worse escape the embarrassment of crying, as he himself would have been tempted to in Billy’s shoes, so he pressed on, a little gentler.

“Look.” Zack spoke it into the universe with solemnity of a prayer: “I’m serious. I will follow you off the ledge. I don’t give a fuck. But if you wait until tomorrow, you won’t have this problem.”

He held out another cigarette in lieu of a handshake. Billy looked at it like he suddenly did not recognize the familiar object, the same one that had just fire-bitten him.

There was a long, heavy pause. Billy didn’t snipe or quibble or retort. He wouldn’t even look at Zack’s face.

But he did take the cigarette. And they smoked the rest of the stolen pack together.

_______

As Zack walked Billy home, he noticed a strange tattoo on his wrist. Green leaves, not ivy or anything pretty. Just thin, cylindro-conical green growths and dotty green berries. 

“What’s that? Holly? Festive,” Zack teased, half-heartedly, tiredly dragging his feet. Their conversation that night had been surprisingly exhausting, though they had not actually exchanged many words. 

Billy smiled. “Olive branch,” he said.

“Peace and love.” Zack held up two fingers like a hippie and pulled a silly face, mocking with no bite.

But Billy just shook his head. “Nah. Boyfriend’s name was Oliver.” 

“Oh.”

“Plus, olive trees. Even if you cut them down to the stump, they grow back.” Billy smacked the words with fierceness. “Something comforting about that.”

Zack did not bother to state the ways in which Billy did not act like an olive tree tonight.

But as they stood near a steaming trashcan, boots wetly glistening in the dirty snow, Billy turned to him.

“Do you think I need to be rescued, Zack?” he asked—his tone suddenly curious, objective. “Is that why you stayed with me tonight?” 

He looked shrewdly into Zack’s eyes, and Zack shuddered, not just from the night, which grew colder the further their spot on the earth turned away from the sun. 

Zack shoved his hands deep in his pockets, lined with slippery vinyl, which offered no warmth. He held the clothing away from his body by pushing it down and out with two fists, stretching and deforming it as he struggled to answer.

“I think,” Zack said, slow, chewing over the sentiment even as he spoke, “that not every impulse is going to be selfish or destructive shitty. An impulse by definition is unpredictable so. Mixed bag.” He tilted his head sideways, not-quite looking at Billy as he posed carelessly. “Guess you got lucky. I felt like mixing it up tonight.”

“Not going to take credit for your good deed, huh?” Billy put a hand on his hip, too energetic for Zack’s taste at the moment. “Do you do that a lot? Take on the bad stuff, brush off the good?”

“Don’t know.” Zack shrugged. “Don’t like to talk about myself much. Don’t like to think about me either. So I don’t.”

“I can walk home myself from here,” Billy told him cheerily, turning, preparing to turn off and break away from him. “But I want you to remember this conversation.”

Zack frowned, watching Billy take his first steps away. He suppressed the urge to go after him, make sure he reached the door. What difference would it make, anyhow? If Billy planned to finish what he started the second he was behind closed doors, Zack would be stuck on the wrong side of it no matter how close he got.

“Why?” He called after Billy, confused.

“Because I’m giving you permission to think about yourself,” Billy said. “In fact, I’m giving you the gift of introspection. Use it, okay?” He blew Zack a kiss. “Tonight, your selfishness saved my life. I wonder if it could save yours, too.”

“What? What do you mean—”

A drift of snow blew across the sidewalk, and Zack had to turn against it, to protect his face from the stinging, to prevent himself from inhaling the sharp, freezing flakes directly, to shut his eyes against the onslaught.

But when he opened them again, Billy was gone as if he’d never been there.

Chapter Text

2024. December 2nd.

Zack was having a weird dream.

In this dream, someone was holding him.

Not the regular bullshit either: clingy fuck buddies who didn’t understand the rules. 

Or maybe it was a friend who fell asleep while on molly and thus sought out a human pillow. Zack was bombed on the cough syrup he’d taken pre-party to ward off the shitty talk he’s had with Billy setting any deeper in his brain, and then unwisely mixed the cold medicine with ketamine. 

At least he probably made a good pillow: still as a rock, completely insensate.

Or maybe it was whatever strangers he’d gone out into the desert with this time, hugging him for warmth because everyone always forgot until they were freezing their balls off, just how cold the desert got at night. …He really had to stop doing that; Zack couldn’t fathom why he always fled to the desert like fucking Moses when he reached a certain level of wasted.

However, after a second or two of semi-consciousness, Zack realized that the arms pulling him tight into the wide, warm, hairy chest behind him belonged to someone he knew. They were so familiar somehow. But Zack couldn’t place the memory. 

Whoever it was smelled woodsy, outdoorsy. Deep down in Zack’s subconscious, he could feel the stirring the scent caused. And a scratchy, coarse beard rubbed against the back of his neck in an intimate way—his body recognized this sensation, and responded to it with a steadily recurring pulse of pure desire that Zack felt all through him. It disturbed him greatly. Because he was going to have to kick this guy out on principle, and people were such whiny little bitches about getting the boot. Also, Zack was going to have to be extra dick-ish to this guy, because he could already tell he really liked him. Liked the smell, and weight, and feel of him. Even the way his hot, sleepy breath felt, how tight he squeezed him in his sleep. Yeah, this one definitely couldn’t stay.

…Maybe five more minutes. Zack nestled down, safe in the privacy of his own turned back. He could enjoy being held for a moment or two, and no one had to know. Plus he was shockingly not-hungover somehow. He would have thought he’d wake up feeling like death warmed over, after how he’d treated himself the night before. But he felt loose and clear, well-rested in a way he hadn’t been in years. Weird. Best not to argue with a good dream, temporarily free of the consequences of the day before. He decided to just enjoy it ‘til the aches and shakes kicked in with full consciousness.

It wasn’t all perfect. He could also smell a fucking dog—had to be, wet dog smellled like nothing else, ugh. There was also a foot in his face. Not a smelly foot, actually probably some girl’s. Had to be, it was so small. No guy had a foot like that, little heel fitting perfectly into the hollow of his cheek.

…Wait. A small foot? Fuck.

Zack tried to sit up immediately, shaking off the last of the sleep as he knocked it aside. Had he accidentally had a threesome with a woman again? God, WHY was he so slutty that he forgot how fucking gay he was when he mixed his depressants?

But it wasn’t a chick’s foot. And he only made it halfway up before the pain of vicious hair pulling forced him right back down to the pillow.

The hair grabber and owner of the foot was a kid, maybe three or four, who’d been curled around his head like some kind of hat. Dark, long, fuzzy curls, one grubby hand twined into his hair. A fist that instinctively closed when Zack tried to pull away.

“Ow! Fucker!” Zack clutched his forehead as the skin tented. He tried to loosen the kid’s hand but it held on, sticky fingers yanking mercilessly at Zack’s sore scalp. 

“Dude. Let GO!” Zack whisper-plead, panicking. He didn’t know what to do when a child interacted with him. He had no experience in the arena but suspected he should stay as far away as possible. He tried to gently disentangle himself from it. But the kid only entwined itself deeper, clinging fast.

Zack squirmed, but the kid barely stirred. It just made a gurgle as it slept like the dead.

“Kid.” Zack cleared his throat. “Not cool. Come ON. Get off me.”

The person holding him chuckled now, a rumbling sound—warm thunder, rolling down on him, rattling him down to his soul. Zack went stock still. Insistent lips started at the back of his neck. The arms dragged him deeper into the naked chest behind him. Zack wanted to fight, to roll away, but there was a child holding onto his hair like a horse’s reins and a stranger who felt like a memory running one heavy hand down from his hip to his thigh, and he couldn’t make himself move.

Because at the sound of the voice, even though it was deeper now and raspy with sleep, Zack’s whole body started like a car engine sparking to life. The name surfaced slowly. The awareness though was instant.

Freddy Fucking Jones.

“Dude. Do NOT read into this!” Zack ripped the kid off his hair, losing probably fistfuls of the stuff in the process. But he was beyond caring, fully in damage control mode now. Fuck, he’d really stepped in it this time. “It meant nothing, Freddy. I mean it. I was so wasted last night sleeping with me at all was probably some kind of felony.”

He hissed the words out, choosing them for maximum sting, but Freddy didn’t even open his eyes. He smiled, peacefully, and reached forward, blindly, trying to pull him back in again. Zack avoided him, narrowly. But as he was distracted, the kid silently crawled over from where Zack had set him down on the pillow and draped itself over his lap to fall asleep again.

“‘Kay. Your tip’s on the dresser. You were unforgettable, baby,” Freddy said, easily, giggling.

He was obviously joking. Joking. Like they were doing some kind of bit. 

Not only had Freddy seemingly gained fifty pounds in the eight years since they’d last seen each other (and he did NOT look good, pasty, flabby, long fuzzy Jesus mane and Viking beard wooly and out of control) but he’d also apparently grown far too comfortable around him. How dare he JOKE with Zack in his sleep, like they were old friends with a rapport? After waking up practically naked in bed together? Zack quickly looked down—Mickey Mouse boxers. Ugh, WHO had he lifted these from? Drunk-him made the absolute worst decisions. Naked would definitely have been better than this. 

“Is this yours?” Zack asked, trying to shove the kid off his lap and onto Freddy, but the little barnacle would simply not budge. “Can you please take this thing off me, dude?”

Freddy’s eyes fluttered open, and he smiled, slow and fond. 

“Hiya,” he said, sounding happy to see him, nothing else. 

Zack couldn’t understand it. Where the fuck was he? He looked around, trying to piece together where he’d been, what he’d done the night before. But he couldn’t trace his steps, certainly not to a place like this—a bedroom, shared by two fucking geeks, from the looks of it. Obscure bands and music posters pasted to the walls and ceiling. Who the fuck was Streelight Manifesto? At least three different guitars in the corner, all modified, played to shit, not display axes, but nerdy pieces, shaped weird and covered in dials and capos and hooked up to all kinds of crazy pedals and custom amps to change the sounds. Keyboards, electric drums, single snares littered one side of the room. 

And a trail of clothes that led from the door to the bed said these two nerds were into each other. Really into each other, if the silver handcuffs and mostly-empty bottle of lube poking out from the half-open side drawer were any indication.

He shook his head frantically for a moment. Had he seduced Freddy, gotten him to cheat on his spouse in their own bed? Of all the fucked up things he’d done…this one was particularly low, even he had to admit. It was bad enough he’d broken Freddy’s heart. Now that Freddy had gone and found happiness elsewhere, Zack was screwing up his marriage? 

He had to get the fuck out of here, STAT.

But he had the problem of the little magnet to deal with first. The kid in his lap grabbed his hand and put several of his fingers in its mouth, and Zack sighed and gave up prying it off himself.

“Hi. Can you help me here?” he asked Freddy, desperately. “I think it's trying to eat me.” 

“I gotchu. Come on Zig. Daddy needs to go potty.” He winked at Zack and gently picked the kid up.

But Zack stared at him in unmitigated horror.

“You can’t say that in front of your kid!” Zack was not one to wring his pearls but this was sick and wrong. “Dude!”

God, even if they had called each other that the night before—and Zack had no idea if they had, couldn’t recall even a flicker—Freddy couldn’t seriously think it was okay to continue in front of a child. Mixed with baby talk no less! Depraved!

Freddy laughed outright, kissing the kid’s head, even as it started to pout, fat tears gathering in its eyes as it reached for Zack with desperate grabby hands. 

“Hurry up and come back, before your son wakes Mack up with his screaming!” Freddy urged, both amused and sounding like he meant it. “She’s gonna be crabby if the baby wakes her again.”

“That-that’s not my son.” Zack pointed, blanching, too petrified and confused to say much else. 

Freddy threw a pillow at him, laughing. “You’re hilarious. Now GO PEE before he has a stage five meltdown, dude, I can’t hold him for long!”

Freddy gave the kid a bear hug and appeared to play with it for a second, rubbing his beard on its face ‘til it chortled, grabbing at him. 

“WHILE HE’S DISTRACTED, ZACK!!! HURRY!”

Not knowing what else to do, Zack sprang out of bed, taking in his surroundings, as if looking at them again would change what he saw. He was hoping a closer look would reveal it all to be a hallucination of some kind, or a prank. But the room remained as it was. A pinboard full of pictures of them—as teenagers. As adults. Wedding photos. Family vacations. A turkey made of construction paper, a child’s foot shape for the body, two handprints for feathers, and googly eyes. 

He looked down at his own hand. A band—too heavy for silver. Too hard for white gold. Platinum?

Oh, who the fuck cared what kind of expensive metal it was? The thing was a goddamned wedding band. As soon as he’d stumbled into the safety of the bathroom, Zack immediately yanked it off like it’d burned him, and flung it away with a clang.

He turned and caught sight of himself in the mirror. Froze. Touched his cheeks: the strange, elongated angle of his chin, his uneven eyelids, the sleepy shape, the over-extended, pointy nose tip, the unbalanced jaw, and the beginnings of deep wrinkles in his forehead. 

His fucking analogue face, before the tweaks. Before the recent pre-forty facelift he’d gotten to ward off looking his age (Tom Cruise swore by his own, so Zack figured if it was good enough for Tom…).

He touched his face, feeling the hard bones, the lack of clicking where his ill-fitting implant rubbed against the natural bone, the way he could feel his fingertips wherever they pressed down—no numb patches due to Botox…

The sight and feel of his own face was what convinced him more than anything that something was very, very amiss. It couldn’t be a prank. Nothing explained this except divine intervention: a huge cosmic mistake of some kind.

The kid, in the other room, started shrieking.

“Zack! Come on. Ziggy is gonna wake up the whole neighborhood if you don’t get your fine ass back out here and take him,” Freddy demanded. 

Panic curdled whatever contents of his stomach there were and sat in his gut like slugs of lead. He began to hyperventilate. He had to get the fuck out.

“Why me?” Zack screamed back. He didn’t just mean to ask why it had to be HIM that kid he didn’t know was screaming for. He meant, more like, in general.

He wandered out, pissed suddenly. Wildly, his instinct was to blame Freddy for all this, to maybe beat the fuck out of him for whatever Freddy had done to him. But when Zack finally got himself together enough to come back out, there was another person in the room. It threw him off.

A surly, short teenager in a black hoodie and pink piggy pajama bottoms. Dark curls, like the little kid’s, only hers were streaked with muddled purple, not well maintained, bleached brittle under the color and already black again at the roots. She was stocky—one width all the way down shoulder to thigh—like some force had accordion-squashed her down from above.

And she seemed so pissed at everyone that Zack’s own anger felt redundant.

“It’s fucking Saturday morning,” she whined. “You guys can’t let me sleep in even one day?” 

She walked over and picked up the toddler out of Freddy’s arms. It immediately calmed down, but Freddy for some reason looked guilty, though he seemed to try to hide it from her.

“Uh. No offense, but who are you?” Zack asked, crossing his arms.

“You think you’re so hilarious, Zack.” She rolled her eyes. For some reason, she really put the stink on the word “Zack,” like he was supposed to be offended by the sound of his own name. “But my sense of humor doesn’t wake up ‘til TEN FORTY FIVE. God.”

She marched out, carrying the kid away, Thank God. But Freddy bit his lip.

“Sorry,” he said quietly to Zack when she had gone. “I tried.”

Zack shrugged, honestly having no clue what was happening, let alone why he should be upset. 

“Maybe we can take Ziggy to the Natural History Museum today, so Mack can go out with her friends,” Freddy suggested. “God. It’s hard to keep them apart. I know the therapist said it’s important to create space for Mack to be a kid, not let her spend all her time caretaking for her brother, but don’t you think she misses him sometimes?”

“I hate the Natural History Museum,” Zack replied, because it was the only concept within what Freddy had said he was even remotely grasping. “It’s fucking lame as shit. I’m not going.”

Freddy cracked a grateful smile. “No matter how much you pretend to hate dork things, I’m still gonna call you a dork, ya know.” 

Zack glared at him. “You can go. I’m not going.”

“Fine,” Freddy sighed, half-laughing—he clearly still thought Zack was kidding.“We can start with the Butterfly Exhibit. But if we never make it to the dinosaurs, because a monarch lands on you again, and we have to stay for three hours ‘til it flies off, that’s on you. Won’t be having any whining that we missed the big t-rex skeleton this time.”

Zack was getting pretty tired of hearing words that he comprehended in theory, but he had absolutely no means of understanding in real time.

“...I have to go,” Zack said, because even if it WAS a cosmic clerical error, he wasn’t staying one more minute in this crazy house, no way.

There was just no way he was spending the day in a museum with his ex best friend and his freakazoid child. No fucking WAY.

“All that time back there, and you never got around to peeing?” Freddy said, amused, as he stretched to get up out of bed himself and come after him. “Man, you are stressed out. Spacing. You need to take it easy today.”

There were no stall doors in the bathroom. Freddy entered casually, unbothered by this fact. Zack had several legal wrist-slaps on his record for public indecency due to pissing parks and alleyways. But it was different, in front of Freddy. He forced himself through the shyness, but a defensive wave of irritation rose when Freddy shoved him slightly while his dick was out, mid-stream. 

“What the fuck?” he snapped, glaring. He could not believe any two people could be so comfortable with each other to be this unphased by pissing in front of each other.

“Move over, babe.” Freddy said. “I have to too.”

“Are you three years old?? You can wait five seconds,” Zack insisted. No way was he crossing streams with Freddy Jones, even this freak version of him.

But Freddy ignored him, blithely kissing his cheek—a wet, unapologetic smack—and pulling his dick out, and Zack had to squeeze his bladder and scramble to get out of dodge. If Freddy’s idea of a date was holding hands while they pissed, Zack was going to have to disappoint him. What the fuck?

As Zack wiggled his boxers back into place and hopped back, trying not to listen to Freddy relieve himself, he shook his head with disgust. This Other-Zack and Freddy had gone to the dark side, he decided. They probably farted in front of each other too. Freddy probably still shouted “safety” when he did it, so as not to get punched, like he was 13 years old. 

Marriage really was the kiss of death for any hope of remaining sane, normal, and sexy.

“All right. Let’s get Saturday started.” Freddy turned to him brightly, completely oblivious to Zack’s dark musings.

Suddenly, he felt he had to look away. Freddy, shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of tattered Simpsons pajama pants decorated with frosted cartoon donuts, was making him blush. Big pot belly and a smattering fuzzy hair across his chest, down his stomach. Freddy was about as attractive as your average bowling alley attendant, and yet there was something appealing about how broad and large all over he was. Zack’s stomach lifted and thudded back down, hot and ticklish, heat flushing through him when Freddy put a hand on his lower back, guided him to the shower.

That large, warm, flat hand on his bare skin was making it hard for Zack to remember that he was walking in the wrong direction.

“Freddy,” Zack was surprised by how close his voice sounded to whining. He shook himself, had to stop being a pussy. “Something’s wrong.”

“I know,” Freddy sighed and bodily turned Zack around to face him, holding the sides of his face in his hands. 

Zack felt small, couldn’t escape. It wasn’t just that Freddy was three or four inches taller, and he literally had to look up at him. He just felt completely overwhelmed, by the warmth coming off Freddy standing so close to him, the way his hands held him, reached for him with no hesitation. But most of all, by the way Zack’s own body reacted instinctively, inching closer all the time like all he wanted in the world was for every part of them to be touching, always. Belly to belly. Even their knees bumped. How had that even happened? He didn’t remember sidling closer, never made the choice to do so. He felt drunk, but not in the fun way or even the pukey way. In the foggy way, where he kind of couldn’t tell if he was sitting or standing, like he was floating above the world, punching in slow motion, dreamlike. 

But god, he was so turned on. Freddy’s eyes, the same since childhood, though everything else about him had changed, half-moon shaped and sparkling and expressive and wide. His squirming brows, the partial grimace that spread into a smile. And this new, soft, paunchy adult body. It was all fucking with him, confusing him, making his head spin and careen like a moth into a lightbulb. Dizzy, lost all perspective and sense of direction. Crash, crash, crash.

“I know things are more complicated than we thought they were going to be with the kids. One day at a time, right? Thank you so much for being my rock. I couldn’t do this without you, you know,” Freddy murmured, kissing his nose. “Do I tell you that enough? Do I tell you how grateful I am? How in awe I am, of the kind of man I married? You’re just…” He pulled Zack into the world’s most undeserved hug, but Zack clung back because his body just kept betraying him and he kind of felt, on some level, like this was the type of hug that could go on a hundred years and he’d still wish for more.

“I got the best soulmate,” Freddy said, with fierce certainty. “The fucking best.”

Zack swallowed. 

Freddy kissed his neck, and Zack could tell it was something he’d done thousands of times, because he knew just where Zack was sensitive, just how much pressure to apply. His fingers found their way immediately: prodded along the underside of Zack’s bottom ribs, tucking into the ribcage, where Zack’s favorite ticklish-tender areas were, under his lungs, and Zack could tell, immediately, from the way Freddy kissed him, the way his tongue moved in his mouth, the way his palms found purchase…this version of Freddy had never been touched with anything but gentleness and pure, innocent desire in all his life. There was no tenseness in all his body, not one flicker of hesitation nor fear. He kissed Zack slow, like they had all the time in the world, romantic and familiar all at once, and it felt obscene because he knew this kiss was not for him.

Yet he could not help it. He let Freddy undress them both. Felt bizarrely like crying as Freddy lathered up a fluffy yellow loofah and actually washed him, whistling cheerily the whole time, shampooed and rinsed his hair like he was five years old, kissed his eyes while he wiped water from them, then frowned at last at the sight of his empty hand.

“Lose your ring?” Freddy asked, concerned, plucking his fingers, worrying.

“Uh, yeah,” Zack lied, blinking, full of confused, resentful hesitation to disappoint him.

This was nothing like the time he took his version of Freddy’s virginity. When they fucked around on the bus, Zack had felt the ways Freddy was holding back, scared to trust him. Pushing past Freddy’s hesitation in bruising, punishing ways had been a sick sort of pleasure; there was always something thrilling in doing something you knew you shouldn’t, something you’d regret later. 

But this version of Freddy’s trust had no asterisks. No qualifiers. He touched Zack like it was his birthright, and he expected Zack to touch him the same way. You are mine. The message was clear. Every inch of this body belonged to his husband, and vice versa. Why anyone would agree to such a trade, Zack would never know. He felt like he’d been sucked down into a deep, cold well, had no hope of ever swimming to the surface. No air. Death awaited.

“Oh well. Here’s something so the world knows your mine ‘til you find it again.” Freddy bit down suddenly, sucked his neck—Zack could feel that there’d be a huge bruise there as soon as Freddy pulled off.

And goddamn it—it was so sweet, and sexy, and stupidly painful all at once that Zack was glad they were in the shower, and Freddy wouldn’t see how the tears had broken free.

As Freddy proudly ran a thumb over his handiwork, he finally seemed to notice something was amiss and touched Zack’s cheek, wet fingertips sliding through the rough hair on his jaw.

“You okay?” he asked. “You look…faraway. I know you know this, but I’m gonna repeat it in case you’re beating yourself up for struggling…Mack’s gonna be okay, you know.” Freddy smiled. “The therapist said it’s just gonna take time. Before she came here, Mack had to take care of Ziggy basically by herself. So she’s not used to sharing the responsibility. We just gotta give her time to let us be the parents, so she can be a kid. Trust isn’t going to happen overnight.”

Zack coughed. “Freddy. Why’d we adopt kids?” he asked, weakly, unable to hold the question back. He couldn’t imagine how any version of himself would allow it to happen.

For a second, he thought Freddy would be offended or upset, but Freddy just took a washcloth and started scrubbing him—really scrubbing him, under his arms, between his legs. It was the kind of scrubbing only someone who really wanted you clean would do. Kind of uncomfortable, immediately calling back memories of his mother, and the kitchen sink, when he was small enough to fit in there. Ticklish to the point of flinching, but he didn't flinch, couldn’t bear to pull away. No one touched him like this, hadn’t for over 30 years. Only now was he realizing he missed it.

“I’m so lucky,” Freddy said, again, and Zack got the feeling he said it a lot. Even more surprising was how deeply he seemed to mean it. “Honestly, I never thought it would be like this, having a family. It’s so hard. I’d crack up, if you weren’t so sure. So good at it. So steady. I feel like…”

He stopped his rubbing and soaping and hugged Zack with all his might, encompassing him for an airless second, water pounding all around them, steam rising.

“I feel like I put my dreams at your feet, and you built them into this.” He spoke the words into Zack’s neck. “I’m so happy. Our life makes me so damn happy. And even though I feel like I owe it all to you, I know we did it together. You and me, like always. So even if it’s not exactly how we planned, we’re gonna figure it out. If I got you, the rest makes sense. The whole world.”

Freddy pressed him up against the glass door, and God. They were both so hard—boners sliding against each other, bumping against their legs and stomachs, almost the same temperature as the hot water pouring down on them. And amidst all the heat, it was the first time Zack wondered how long they’d been married. In his real life, he got bored with people usually before the first fuck even ended, which was why there was so seldom a second time. 

“Freddy. Jesus. How long have we been together?” Zack decided to ask, breathless, clinging to Freddy, who ran hands up and down Zack’s stomach, then pushed his thighs apart. 

The glass was cold down his back, against his ass, the tiles so slippery under his feet, and fuck everyone knew shower sex sort of sucked, washed away all sources of lubrication and a hard tile floor was a much worse place to get laid than a warm bed that was less than 15 feet away. 

But he kind of understood, in this moment, how someone might decide they couldn’t wait.

“I know,” Freddy said. “God. I fucking want you. C’mere.”

There was nowhere to “come” to. Freddy seemed to be everywhere, surrounding him. But Zack still thought he knew what Freddy meant by that.

What he didn’t know was how it could be so. Wanting was for things out of your reach. A husband was by definition “in hand.” Someone to have and hold, not chase and desire. That was why marriage was the death of love. And sex. It was only logical.

Except, apparently—

Zack almost wanted it to hurt. When he fucked around with someone he had any kind of intense reaction to, pain was bracing. Reminded him to stay in his body, not float away into his anxieties or worries. But it also kept the person real in his mind—a body to interact with, physically, not a theoretical source of confusion, or worse possibility. 

But the faint stinging where Freddy teeth and lips left the hickey on Zack’s neck only sweetened the heat of the rest of his touches. It was all so intentional. Freddy laid him out on the tile, taking care not to let his head bounce against the unforgiving floor, water draining under him, fizzing droplets splattering from above, Freddy’s hot mouth on him…

No pain. Nothing to separate his mind and body, no way to stop the present from blurring into the past and future, especially not when he could feel it was all the same to Freddy: nostalgia, dreams of what was to come for them, and what they meant to each other day-to-day. 

“I’m not,” Zack choked, as Freddy kissed up the inside of his thigh, “...as good as you think I am.”

“No, you’re not. You’re better,” Freddy told him, with utmost certainty. “I could never think up something as good as you. You are so, so better than my dream man. I want you for my whole life, could never just fit you inside my imagination.”

It was way too sentimental for pillow talk, so Zack was dismayed by how much it turned him on. He felt like he was losing his fucking mind. Who WAS he anymore?

By the time Freddy was drying him off—semi-violently rubbing his hair with a towel—kissing him and throwing a pile of clothes at him from their walk-in closet (baggy joggers and dark blue Geese t-shirt—a band he’d never fucking heard of), Zack felt practically like he was walking on the moon. Gravity barely held him.

“Don’t you dare feel guilty,” Freddy paused, eyeing him, knowingly. “We needed the us time! Calling marriage today. I needed to get laid. So did you. Okay? Write it off as cost of doing business.”

“Uh. Why would I feel guilty?” Zack genuinely wanted to know. Well, other than the fact that this was not his life, his husband, nor his shower for that matter. But Freddy didn’t appear to know that. 

“Exactly, dude.” Freddy sounded pleased and kissed him again, though Zack was no closer to understanding the conversation they were having. 

Zack got dressed, quickly, even though it was all cheap polyester crap—he did notice it fit really well, like it’d been personally tailored, which was weird. This did not seem like the kind of life where things like personal tailoring featured. But because of the good fit, he also noticed his own fucking body for the first time. Biceps, actual biceps: not big showy ones, but he’d never had the patience to hit the gym regularly, so his real arms never looked like this, wide and solid. He caught a glimpse in the mirror, and had to admit. Other Him was in great shape. Chest and back all built out, completely flat and toned in the front. No effort to starve down to show that muscle V by his crotch or get a six pack popping. But, Zack thought, all the groundwork was there. This guy could look incredibly cut if he bulked up just a little, dehydrated himself on purpose for a couple days, maybe lost one or two percent more body fat. He’d practically be a, well, not quite a, Hemsworth. But a less attractive famous Chris maybe.

“Now.” Freddy put half his hair into a ponytail—very unflattering, made his head look huge and square. Plus he didn’t even bother drying it, just let it drip down his back and shoulders. The water turned his gray Velvet Revolver t-shirt darker around his neck. His mane was curlier than ever. “You take the morning off, please. You pulled, what? 3 hours of sleep last night? Maybe 4 the night before. I don’t wanna see you TOUCH your Launchpad or guitar until tonight. Plus, no texting Summer, checking your email, or even THINKING about Sidewalks, okay?  I’ll make breakfast for the kids, and then we’ll go to the museum around 1pm. You sit there, read, listen to Geordie Greep or watch TikTok or whatever. Deal?”

Zack got the sense, belatedly, that he was being spoiled. He had literally done nothing to warrant such treatment, and yet he felt obliged to go along with it. Sensed somehow that rejecting it would upset some natural order of things, and worse…deny Freddy something he enjoyed doing. Why he was suddenly up in arms about what Freddy wanted, he had no idea, but chalk it up to walking up literally fucking body-snatched, he guessed. All his instincts were off.

He was used to being treated, given everything he wanted, in a certain sense, of course. In his real life, his assistants did whatever he told them, and they scurried to it, too, given his reputation for intolerance for any kind of slowness or incompetence. His fans sent him adoring messages. He got the VIP treatment wherever he went.

But his husband, ordering him to stay in bed after making love to him in the shower, physically washing and dressing him, and reminding him all the while what wonderful husband and father he was? Really felt nothing whatsoever like anything he’d ever experienced. It was so customized, cozy, intimate. He should have found it gross. He did, kind of. But also for the first time in maybe ever, he thought he could understand why someone would sign up for this. It was like being a celebrity, a little bit, or a king. On a small, insignificant scale. But felt more personal, rooting his place on the Earth deeper.

Deep or not, it was making him shy. He wasn’t even able to do his usual thing, which was hate Freddy for any and all efforts to bring them closer. It just felt impossible here, immature, pointless. There was nowhere to hide, no chinks in the armor of this older, married version of Freddy, who never so much as paused for Return-on-Affection—like he wasn’t keeping score, knew reciprocity was fully pre-determined, He seemed to feel entirely entitled to love in equal measure. 

The dynamic was terrifying. Zack felt swallowed whole. So much so, that he did exactly what Freddy asked, crawled right back into bed, and asked, stupidly:

“Um. Can I have coffee though?”

He wasn’t sure, because Freddy’s instructions didn’t say he could come downstairs. But he was pretty sure in any universe, caffeine deprivation was not an option. His brain would surely go on strike. 

“‘Course you can,” Freddy told him, fondly. “I’ll bring it to you, though. Stay.”

Ordered around like a fucking dog, but Zack couldn’t find it in himself to fight back. He was pretty sure he’d never orgasmed so hard in his life. However long he and Freddy had been together in this bizarro world, Freddy knew how to make him fucking explode within a matter of seconds, though he’d obviously purposely drawn it out as much as he could. It was the one thing about fuck buddies that sucked. He never gave anyone time to really learn what he liked, though he did get pretty good at offering a crash course. But it was something else to fuck someone who just knew, maybe knew even better than he himself did, how to work the controls, so to speak.

Freddy brushed his own teeth—for some reason, their matching electric toothbrushes, side by side next to the sink was a detail that made Zack nauseous, like it was the damn toothbrushes making everything too real. Freddy put on a pair of beat up, brown house slippers by the door, again, one of a His-and-His set. An identical pair in a slightly smaller size were lined up next to the ones Freddy put on. Zack’s own hideous slippers, obviously. 

And right before Freddy left the bathroom, he bent down, picked something up, and brought it back to Zack with a grin on his face.

“Oh hey! Look! Lucky find.” Freddy held up the wedding ring, not so much as scratched or dented despite how hard Zack had whipped the thing.

Freddy took his hand, put the ring in his mouth, teasingly lifted his brows, and put it back on Zack’s ring finger by slowly, seductively sliding the digit through the metal circle, and deep into his throat as it would go.

Zack’s brain spluttered, screeching to a halt. He stared helplessly at Freddy—why was this man trying to kill him? They’d just had explosive, mind-altering shower sex, but now he already felt ready for another go. …Maybe it helped that he wasn’t high or fucked up at all. Whiskey dick always put a damper on his endurance, for sure. 

But after teasing him for a while, running his tongue subtly up and down his finger, Freddy pulled off, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, kissed Zack’s forehead, and went, “There. Love you!” before practically skipping down stairs to make breakfast for those two kids. 

Zack twisted the slightly damp wedding band around his finger, not daring to take it off again. And he struggled to repress a single thought that kept fighting its way to the top of his brain.

In his world, this was what his version of Freddy probably wanted. Exactly this. Matching slippers. Kids. Happily ever after. Zack always assumed the happy part was a myth, something that was part of the wedding package that made the whole arrangement easier to swallow. You were signed on to take care of someone through the ugly bits of life. Honestly, a totally raw deal. But with the sappy romantic frosting on the shit cake, people ate it up.

It really seemed like this version of Freddy was happy though. Even from upstairs, he could hear him—singing something about a “froggy" who went"a’courting (and he did ride), uh huh...” Followed by the baby’s delighted giggles, and even the teenagers reluctant laughter through protests.

In Freddy's voice, Zack could head such fondness. It was the unequivocal sound of fatherhood. Freddy seemed born for it: totally content and joyful in this role, so completely natural in it that Zack couldn't help but remember his last memory of Freddy, before waking up in this bizarre situation.

...When they were 19.

Back then, Zack could see the anger and cynicism seeping into Freddy. Even though his vulnerability, his openness, his eager offer of himself into Zack's hands. The wall was there, just starting to form. Maybe only a cynic could have seen it, but Zack felt the edges of a jaded outlook on life forming like ice crystals ringing a car dashboard in Freddy's psyche. With every sarcastic shrug, with the defeat in his smile even as he made a desperate hopeful play.

Zack couldn't help but wonder now...was that his fault? Was Freddy's loss of hope...because he felt abandoned? Did Freddy feel denied something he expected and needed from the world?

Was Zack supposed to give it to him?

He thrashed with hatred at the idea. Why should he HAVE to give Freddy anything? This life seemed expensive, exhausting. Freddy was only giving him the red carpet treatment on this particular morning because he’d apparently been worked like a dog all week, barely slept. Two ungrateful kids depending on him, shitty polyester clothes, and for what? So Freddy could play house? 

Zack was no one’s rock. He was a rock STAR, and he lived for himself and no one else.

This was what he’d fought tooth and nail to get away from, to leave behind, to eliminate as ever becoming a possibility. Now he knew why. Because he’d been right all along. Freddy wanted everything from him, could not settle for less. Freddy’s dream life came at the cost of his dreams, and Zack hated him—hated that in an alternate universe, he’d been coerced to make this bum trade, to give up the high flying life he could have had, for this quiet nothing-life.

On the other hand, some tiny click in his soul had occurred. Some part of his brain and body felt as if they slipped into a preset groove and were sliding along now, easy where it had always been difficult before. To live…but more specifically…to feel at home in his life.

Some part of him knew this was home. And in his world, it didn’t even exist.

Fuck, home was a sticky trap. One morning inside it, and he was already wondering… 

Had it been a mistake?

Fuck. Had it all been a mistake?

Chapter Text

2024. December 2nd.

If Zack had been allowed to wallow in the cocoon of Freddy’s largesse, in bed—the low-thread-count polyester crap sheets, ugly rayon blanket full of holes, and knit comforter quilt he was pretty sure came straight off Freddy’s childhood bed—maybe things would have been alright.

But he felt entitled to more time to adjust. His reprieve blew cruelly by.

Or maybe time was simply on a hyperloop, because he was still struggling to get his head around the circumstances. Husband. Kids he didn’t recognize. Hot shower sex notwithstanding: he did not belong here, nor did he have a clue how he’d gotten here. 

He tried to puzzle out how it had happened, and what to do about it. But problem solving was not his strong suit. His brain was specialized after so long on the fast track. He was fully outfitted for rockstar tasks only. His people figured out logistical issues for him. 

He tried. He really struggled with the fogginess of his thoughts, the frustration of trying to fit the pieces of evidence together, but he came up empty handed. 

Then, before he knew it, Freddy was barging back through the bedroom door, grabbing his hands, and dragging him downstairs. 

“Come on, Zack!” Freddy said, kissing his face, pulling him along. “Hurry! We can beat traffic if we leave now.”

Zack barely bit back his automatic reply: “Traffic? Who the fuck cares? My limo driver is also my fentanyl supplier. The ride there is the best part.”  

…Because he no longer had a limo driver. Ugh.

What he did have, apparently, was the sexual appetite of a fucking teenager. He couldn’t remember ever being so trigger-ready with the arousal, not in his whole life. But the moment he arrived at the bottom of the stairs at Freddy’s heels, Freddy turned him around. He slammed Zack flat against the hall closet door, causing a small wreath made of gold and red jingle bells to tinkle. Fuck. 

“You are so cute.” Freddy told him, stroking the underside of his jaw. “I love when you’re grouchy and sleepy. You look so good. You feel so good. Taste so good.” He kissed Zack’s neck, slipped his arms around his waist, kissed him indulgently. 

Horrifying. Because Zack knew somewhere in his struggling brain that he should be telling Freddy to stop, that he wasn’t who Freddy thought he was, that this wasn’t his life. But he couldn’t seem to get his body to do anything but press up closer, open his mouth wider, welcome Freddy in with his hands, his mouth, and every other body part.

Fuck, so inconvenient. How was he supposed to articulate this complicated situation when Freddy took away his basic abilities to breathe and think?

“Tonight,” Freddy promised him heavily, “tonight, I am going to do so many things to you. I love you so fucking much. God, can hardly wait.”

“I—” Zack gasped, clinging pathetically to Freddy’s shoulders. “Okay.”

At Zack’s response, Freddy hesitated, and Zack felt a start of fear. He did not know why. But he felt Freddy was waiting for him to say something, or do something, but he couldn’t figure out, for the life of him, what. 

He was, however, quite disturbed by his own desire to supply it. He wanted to say whatever it was that Freddy was wanting from him. But he couldn’t. He didn’t know what it was.

“We should get going.” Freddy let him go, something worried flashing across his face 

Zack fought not to hang onto him, to ask what was wrong. He didn’t care .

“I’ll get the baby.” Freddy went to the living room, and spared a strange glance backward.

Behind Freddy’s back, Zack rubbed his head and slumped sullenly. The last thing he wanted was Freddy to go fetch the human-ambulance siren.

But what was the point in telling Freddy not to get that kid? Freddy would only want to know why, and Zack could not begin to explain. Not any of it. 

Zack didn’t have long to stew in dread, because Freddy soon returned, grinning and bright as ever. Unlike the kid, whose head tipped back: howling. Zack instinctively backed away, though there was truly nowhere to escape to.

“See? There’s Dad.” Freddy pointed a damning finger at Zack. “There’s Dada! It’s okay Ziggy-Zag. He’s right there. Smiley boy! There we go!”

It was almost comical, the way the kid’s mouth closed with a faint pop, its eyes still shining with tears, and reached two grabby hands towards him. Zack would have given anything to have an assistant to pass this task onto.

“Uh, what’s up, dude?” Zack mumbled, awkwardly, not holding his arms out to take the kid in vain hopes that Freddy would take the hint and not pass it to him.

But of course, Freddy shoved that extremely heavy baby right into Zack’s arms, and it immediately grabbed his shirt in its fists and let out an ear-piercing whistle-cry. A happy one, this time. Zack winced. 

“Here, you go, Love.” Freddy extracted a heinous, green and blue waterproof snow jacket from the hall closet to pass it his way. 

“No.” Zack shook his head automatically. “I’m not wearing that.”

Freddy ignored him and draped the coat over Ziggy’s head, then pulled it off quickly.

“Oh my gosh! There you are!” Freddy pretended to be surprised. Then covered Ziggy again. Ziggy burst into hysterical laughter before Freddy even pulled the coat free a second time.

“Where were you hiding?” Freddy asked, tickling him. “Huh? Are you Houdini? Where did you go?”

Zack grit his teeth and squinted to avoid rolling his eyes. He was annoyed with everything, all of the sudden. How exactly was he supposed to put the ugly jacket on while also holding the kid? Freddy’s game was dumb and loud and irritating. And he was getting pissy and insecure because he knew, in his own true body, with his own unexercised noodle arms, the baby would be feeling really heavy right now. 

But in this body? Ziggy rested easy on his hip, no strain—arms steady, and stable. Familiar with the responsibilities of the strange life. 

He tried to repress the intuition that rose like a fist in his throat. But he couldn’t stop the realization. He was annoyed…because he was jealous. He didn’t know how to interact with Freddy or his kid, and for one blinding second, he wished that knowledge belonged to him, that he’d authored the script he could not improvise now.  

Freddy’s pampering, his tenderness, his desire contextualized in a single stroke that completed the picture. He loved his partner—his partner in this. Parenting. Family-making. The friendship that underlined it all and sustained the dynamic. And though Zack wore his face for the moment, he knew in his heart…he was not Freddy’s partner. And it was genuinely painful to imagine what Freddy might say or do, if he knew.

As Zack silently swallowed down the lump lodged in his esophagus, Freddy herded him out the door, dragging a plastic trap-looking thing behind him—which Zack had no idea was a car seat until Freddy was yelling at him to strap the baby into it.

“I’m f—. I’m trying!” Zack snapped. He bit down on a string of swear words as he tried to jam the seat buckle together, and it unhelpfully resisted his efforts.

The kid twined two sticky pink fists into the lapels of the unzipped jacket Zack somehow managed to struggle on—much too big, probably Freddy’s, Zack realized belatedly. Ziggy’s face grew redder, eyes watering. It clearly did not have any plans to release Zack from its grip willingly.

“Let’s go, babe!” Freddy honked the horn of the car: a goddamned Toyota SUV. Square and enormous. Homely. The car choice of the invisible. 

“I can’t,” Zack shouted back at him. “This… kid won’t…” He tried to pry the kid’s fingers loose, but it held fast, lip wobbling. 

“I got the earplugs,” Freddy told him, unbothered. “Don’t worry. It’s a short drive to the museum.”

Zack needed the earplugs. Because just as he predicted, the second he extricated himself from the little gremlin’s paws, it threw back its head and shrieked. The sound was unearthly, high pitched and so desperately sad and scared you’d think someone was tying the kid up in a bag and tossing it in a river. 

“Does it ever stop?” Zack yelled over the barrage as Freddy drove—so slowly. The Freddy of his own youth drove like a fucking maniac, traffic signs a mere suggestion and speed limits a laughable token measure. 

But this boring, suburban dad version of Freddy patted his knee, sympathetically.

“You’re my hero,” Freddy shouted over the baby’s caterwauling. “I can’t believe how strong you’ve been through all this!”

Zack’s head genuinely started to hurt. There should never be so many people trying to break the sound barrier within the confines of a moving vehicle. This was some Ninth Circle shit.

“What?” Zack asked, one eye closing into a wince. “...What are you talking about, dude?”

“This whole year,” Freddy continued speaking, his raspy voice booming over the panicking toddler’s increasingly sharp squeaks. “Ziggy’s hardly given you a break. But there you are, day in and day out, being the best dad ever, never impatient with him. He is so lucky to be your kid. I don’t know how you do it. I’m in awe. I love you so much. You fucking inspire me.”

Zack turned around to look at the kid again. Snot bubbled in its nose. Its feet kicked and scrabbled in its tiny black snow boots. Tears streaked and glistened down its fat cheeks. And it reached for Zack, hands opening and closing in the air as it strained against the carseat pitifully.

Zack turned back around to face the road, eyes wide. 

Freddy may have been under the delusion that Zack was a candidate for Father Of The Year, but Zack would have to disabuse him of it. He was laughably underqualified, already coming undone at the seams after less than ten minutes of interaction.

No WAY could he stay here and deal with the kid. He was going to have to find a way to escape, somehow. 

The problem was…where would we go? What would he do?

It was only Zack’s inability to answer those questions that kept him from popping the child-locked and tumbling out the passenger side door.

After they parked, he was so relieved to get out of the car. He more-or-less threw himself out of the vehicle and kissed the asphalt like a sailor touching down on land. But his relief was short-lived. 

He scarcely had time to get to his feet when Freddy handed the screaming kid off to him—it was now going slightly hoarse, but its face screwed up in concentration, so Zack knew the evil little shit was determined to not relent, to scream them into oblivion. 

He would have protested having to touch it again…but the second the kid was in his arms, it immediately quieted down.

The silence was blessed. There were worse things he would have done for some peace. 

So he let it slide. For the time being, at least. Until he could figure out a way to leave the kid behind a planter or something and sneak off while Freddy wasn’t looking. Kid would probably blow up his spot though and scream, alerting Freddy the second he tried to bail. Kid was a goddamned miniature snitch.

Oblivious, Freddy smiled at him as Zack adjusted the child in his grip, trying to find a way to hold it that felt natural. There was no such way.

“What are you staring at?” Zack asked, annoyed. His body sort of bobbed, automatically. He’d never made the decision to rock the thing in his arms, but his shoulders started swaying back and forth, ocean-like. Spooky. He shuddered.

“Just. Makes me happy.” Freddy took out his phone to snap a picture. 

Zack ducked his head a bit, not wanting Freddy to get an image of his full face with its shitty, un-surgerized angles: another reflex, this one less paternal and more having to do with his media training.

“What does? That the kid is basically holding me hostage?” Zack wanted to know. Fuck, was it going to scream every time he put it down? Or was it just a car thing?

“How much he loves you,” Freddy said, simply, stepping in closer to get another shot.

Zack glanced down at the top of the kid’s head, mostly because he didn’t want to look at Freddy’s face anymore. His eyes—those pretty, lash-starred, sparkling dark brown half-moons, crinkled with pleasure. He smiled warmly at Zack, as if he just enjoyed…looking at him. Zack’s heart thudded unsteadily. He really wished Freddy would not look at him at all. It was too weird. Too familiar, but also not.

Things did not improve from there. 

Previously, Zack’s museum attendance was mostly confined to strategic public sightings where he dipped in long enough to be photographed doing something artsy, cultural, and “deep.” Then he would bail as soon as the cameras were off him. Zack had been inside The Natural History Museum a couple times for various benefits. That, and lavish parties after hours, wherein some celebrity inevitably ended up getting shit-faced enough to buy some priceless artifact right out of an exhibit just to prove they could. Zack had always been free to move at his own pace through these spaces. To stop if he felt like stopping, and walk on if he got bored.

This was not the status quo with a child, he discovered. 

They entered the quiet, echoing hall. The domed ceiling and replica tyrannosaurus fossil loomed above, and the overly-waxed marble floors shined underfoot. Zack could only pray they didn’t spend the whole day in the shitty, boring parts, like the aerospace crap or even worse, the ancient cultures area. But he needn’t have worried, because it seemed possible they would not make it into the museum proper at all.

“Look! Ziggy, look at the big snake!” Freddy said—before they even stopped at any animal exhibit. Freddy was just pointing at a mural on the wall a few feet from the front desk area. 

They proceeded to spend no less than fifteen minutes going through what seemed like every animal in the jungle depicted in the painting. All the while, Zack contemplated his mistakes in life: namely not jumping off the building with Billy while he had the chance.

“What’s that Zig? Is that an elephant?” Freddy made elephant noises. 

Ziggy laughed, blinking against the onslaught of delight as if it was a physical gust of wind against his face. 

“What sound does a fish make? Huh?” Freddy puffed up his cheeks, fish-like. 

Ziggy smashed the sides of Freddy’s face in with two flat hands. Then he squealed, amused by the fart-y noise the air made forced out of his lips. Zack just could not believe Freddy would let a baby turn his face into a goddamned whoopee cushion. 

A somewhat bothersome notion occurred to Zack while Freddy performed an entire USO Floor Show for the brat. …This kid was not an infant. He had to be like three or four. But he never said a word. Refused to even walk on his own. Zack knew nothing about kids. He did, however, wonder if something was wrong or defective with this one. 

Freddy didn’t seem to care either way. Looking at him, you’d think he actually enjoyed humiliating himself in public for his audience of one. Well, two, counting Zack, however much he wished not to be included in the number.

“All right, Dad,” Freddy turned to him, overly serious. “What sound does a chipmunk make?” 

He pointed to the mural, and Zack squinted. It looked like Freddy was pointing to a random, brown, furry mammal—no evidence that it was a chipmunk at all. Moron.

“Fuck off.” Zack’s response was automatic, immediate, but he did his best not to sound too sharp. “I’m not playing.”

No way was he going to make stupid animal noises in public, especially not sober.

“Uh oh, Daddy doesn’t know the answer!” Freddy pulled a dramatic face. “Should we help him out, ZigZag? What sound does a chipmunk make?” He paused, waiting for Ziggy to talk back, but the kid was silent as a sack of potatoes. So Freddy made a bunch of chittering, munching sounds and grabbed at Ziggy’s feet, wiggling them.

Zack didn’t want to, didn’t want to give a shit, wanted to get the fuck OUT of there. But he felt the sting nonetheless: shame. Guilt. He snapped at Freddy. He let him down. He owed NOTHING to this person or his broken kid. 

…But he felt it all the time. The pinch between his shoulder blades, the burn in his empty stomach. What would it have cost him to make stupid noises? Or even to give a wrong answer, in a silly voice, and make Freddy laugh? 

Anything but refuse to engage entirely. Jesus. He felt like an asshole, like the dude pointing out to a room full of kindergarteners that Santa wasn’t real. And it was all Freddy’s fault because Zack never asked for this. But Freddy made him feel something was due, something was required of him, and worse—that it was something he wanted to give, but just didn’t know how.

Because, he thought again, with a bitter pang…this wasn’t his goddamned LIFE. None of it belonged to him. Not even a little bit.

Fuck, fuck, fuck he had to get OUT of here. The longer he was here, the more it messed with him.

Every minute inside only proved this thesis. A trip to a museum sounded simple. Just walk around. Look at all the animals and fossils, then leave. But with a kid, Zack found, it was not simple at all. 

Ziggy needed to go potty. He was hungry. He wanted to stop and push every button in every exhibit, even the ones meant for blind people that caused a robotic voice to read out the exhibit description cards in English and Spanish. 

They blew past anything Zack would have liked to stop and see himself. Live, hissing cockroaches? Pass. Ziggy couldn’t be assed to even glance. Button-laden informationals laying out the fascinating history behind every known location on the Argentine swallows migratory route? Hours of fun.

To top it all off, the giant blue whale model hanging off the ceiling so terrified Ziggy that they had to go outside to calm him down.

It was agonizing. It felt like walking a mile while forced to take only two tiny, shuffling steps at a time. It felt like it took a hundred years. And his arms ached. If Zack so much as set Ziggy down to relieve himself, the little pissant screamed bloody murder. He had no idea how the other Zack did not chuck Ziggy into a bush and be done with the whole deal. Nothing was worth this.

“Ziggybear! Come on, swallow for Dada,” Freddy cooed as he tried to feed Ziggy something gooey and fruity-smelling from a weird silver pouch, but the kid seemed to think it was hilarious to let it drip from between his lips and all down the front of his powder blue stripey-shirt. 

Ziggy giggled and clapped his hands. Selfish little prick was getting that baby food crap all over everything, including Zack.

“Shouldn’t it—I mean he—be talking?” Zack asked, impatiently. “He’s what, like three? Four? He seems too old to not be talking.”

Freddy’s gaze fell for a second, shoulders slumping.

“I know you’re worried,” Freddy said. 

Wrong. Freddy knew shit. Zack was absolutely not worried. What did he care if the kid was too stupid to talk or not? But he waited for Freddy to continue anyway.

“But considering his background, I think he’s doing amazing,” Freddy went on, eyes searching Zack’s for…agreement? Comfort? Zack tried to make his face reassuring so this conversation could end. He already regretted asking any questions.

“Our little trooper here is gonna be just fine. He’s already so much stronger and more interactive than he was when we first brought him home. …Thanks to you.” Freddy smiled at him again, and there was that look. That reverent, grateful look that did weird, back-flippy things to Zack’s stomach. “Wish I could always cling to you, lucky kid.” Freddy winked at him, flirting.

But Zack was disturbed beyond the ability to be charmed.

“...I mean, it’s not all the time. Right?” Zack said, a sense of dread building in his gut. 

Freddy sighed. “I love you. You’re so strong. I wish I could take more of the load off your shoulders, Love.” He kissed Zack’s cheek. “Ziggy’s so lucky to have a dad like you. I don’t know how you do it. You’re so patient with our barnacle.”

Freddy wiped the food leftovers from Ziggy’s face with a napkin as Ziggy batted at his hands, thinking they were playing some kind of terrible child game. Freddy humored him, making the napkin into a “puppet” for the kid to gleefully grab and throttle as Freddy made it “zoom” in close to “nip” at Ziggy’s nose. 

Zack exhaled and tapped his foot, waiting for them to be done. 

After cleaning Ziggy’s face with a wet wipe and handing him a Ziploc bag of crackers that he seemed more interested in throwing on the floor than eating, Freddy got to his feet. He smiled at Zack, oblivious. And Zack blanched, dreading heading back into the Museum of Slow Pain. 

“Should we go to the gift shop? Freddy asked, sounding excited by the idea himself. “Maybe Ziggy wants a little telescope or something?”

A horrible idea. 

Thirty agonizing minutes of Freddy making up stupid voices for every stuffed dinosaur and plastic mammoth in the place. And ten more of Ziggy wanting to touch the rocks in the minerals section, dropping them, and forcing Zack to bend down to pick them up. Weighted squats, basically, if the weights could laugh at him and put sticky, dirty fingers in his ears.

All Zack could do, as he cursed his situation was wonder, what exact sin he’d committed that was bad enough to warrant this torture? It would be bad enough to find himself conscripted into normal parenthood. But this wasn’t even a normal kid. This was the world’s clingiest kid! Zack could not stand to cuddle his lovers in bed because someone wanting to spend the night felt too needy to Zack. He could not imagine a more painful situation than child parole duty.

Museums were bullshit, top to bottom, as it turned out.

_______

Later, Freddy told him he was going to the studio for a few hours and laughed off Zack’s insistence that they needed a babysitter. So Zack knew for sure he was fucked.

As he slumped on the couch, wondering if anyone would notice if he just snuck out and skipped town, he contemplated Ziggy, who seemed quite content to sit on the living room carpet, playing happily with his own toes. Once inside the home, he at least gave Zack a moderate buffer of space, so long as Zack stayed visible. It was a small but significant relief not to have the kid touching him.

But this relief did not soothe his rage at being reduced to a babysitter. He sold out SoFi stadium. He was in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His guitar from his first tour was sold for $50 million dollars. 

“I’m a rockstar, you know.” He told the kid, feeling the need to remind SOMEONE of the fact. “There is a cult about me in Japan.”

Ziggy stared at him with big, stupid eyes.

“Don’t get me wrong. This fatherhood shit is fine for people like Freddy,” Zack explained, feeling kind of dumb for justifying himself to his current audience, but needing to speak his thoughts out loud to try to sort them out. “But…it’s just. Not me. This isn’t my life. This isn’t what I wanted. This is a mistake. I don’t belong here.”

His chest suddenly felt too tight, like his own lungs overfilled it. He looked around himself, at the plastic  protectors on every sharp corner, the Sound Design and Composition awards on the bookshelf, the giant window-shaped collage of wedding photos, the Hot Wheels tracks and stuffed toys in orderly boxes next to the TV. This was a home, but not his. He didn’t know why the thought ached like ice held too long against a vital body part. 

“How did I even get here?” Zack asked. “Who did this to me? Who can I fucking sue for this?”

Instead of answering, Ziggy climbed up next to him. He crawled onto Zack’s lap and put two hands on either side of his face, smooshing it.

“What are you doing?” Zack frowned. “Get down. Bad.”

Ziggy wasn’t a dog, but Zack didn’t know how else to get him away. He wasn’t really sure of Ziggy’s grip on English after all. Freddy implied there was a reason for this, something tragic to do with Ziggy’s background. For a moment, Zack wondered…who could do something like that to an innocent kid? He didn’t like children. Avoided them when possible. But ostensibly, people who had them on purpose wanted them around, right? So how could they—

But boo hoo, right? Ziggy was no worse off than anyone else, even if his parents were pieces of shit. Weren’t all parents awful, in their own ways? Everyone had a fucking sad song to sing. Kid drew a shitty lot in life, but it currently seemed like it didn’t bother him too much. Right now, he was luckier than Zack, ‘cause he didn’t even know how bad the world sucked yet.

Whatever. Zack just needed Ziggy to know not to come near him. He’d never been physically touched so much in his life. The constant contact was fucking with Zack, driving him nuts. Like being claustrophobic in his own damn skin. 

What did a baby need comfort for anyway? Zack wondered bitterly. Ziggy was free from the worst part of existence, which was awareness of existence. When Ziggy got older, he’d be like everyone else. Realize how pointless it all was. That was why parents all sucked at the end of the day. They brought unwilling children into the world to suffer life’s indignities. 

And what good did that do? Who would actually ask to be born into this shit rag of a life? Why would parents inflict the shittiness of life on an innocent baby, who would only grow up to hate them for it? Or worse. Maybe Ziggy would grow up and end up like Billy, sitting on that ledge—

“Dude. I bet that asshole Billy did this to me!” Zack snapped his fingers and seized Ziggy’s shoulders. “That HAS to be it! I’m a genius, man. Everything in my life was normal, but after that night on the roof, I KNEW something felt spooky. And then I woke up here! I bet all I have to do is find Billy. And…then. I don’t know. POUND him until he fixes this shit.” He shook Ziggy slightly. “Oh my god. That’s it. I figured it out.

But the kid just giggled, grabbed Zack’s hand, and after examining it for a moment, bit down.

“Ouch! What the fuck!” He yanked his hand away. “Don’t do that, you little turd. I will punt you like a football! I am so fucking serious.”

The kid laughed louder and reached up. Touched one of his earrings. Zack swatted his hand away. The kid seemed to think this was a riot. He kept reaching for the shiny object, chortling. Ugh. No matter how Zack snarked or snapped or shouted, Ziggy showed zero fear. It was wildly inconvenient. Zack had never had so much trouble intimidating someone. 

“Oh no. If you grab my earring, I know I’m gonna need the fucking jaws of life to get free.” He set the kid back down on the carpet. “Shoo!” He made the accompanying gesture. “Go away! Go play or whatever.”

Surprisingly, the kid did leave. He crawled away with surprising speed. But he promptly came back, dragging what appeared to be a skateboard.

He sat on it and looked at Zack expectantly. 

“Hey, Tony Hawk, I’m busy. I gotta figure out where Billy is, so he can use whatever evil supernatural powers he’s got to send me back to my cool world and out of your lame one.” 

To make his point further, he put a socked foot on the end of the board and pushed it away.

The board rolled through the living room, and Ziggy squealed, birdlike and shrill, with reckless happiness. Zack thought he’d solved the problem for exactly seven seconds. Then Ziggy dog-paddled on the board—on his belly, tiny limbs propelling him forward like a turtle on wheels—back to Zack’s feet.

And Zack realized he’d been outplayed. 

This was what the kid wanted all along: to be pushed on the stupid skateboard. Zack walked right into his trap.

“Push yourself,” he told Ziggy, tucking his legs up under himself defensively. “Figure it out. You’ll have more fun if you control when it starts and stops anyway. That’s a lesson from me to you, kid.”

When it became clear Zack would not cooperate, Ziggy’s smile shrank, and he coughed, turning slightly red. Worse yet, his mouth started deforming into that mushy “o” shape that meant noise was coming.

“No! No, I’m not falling for that,” Zack cried, angrily. “You can’t have everything you want just because you throw a fit! You can’t fucking blackmail me. I invented temper tantrums. Nice try.”

The cough became teary, and Ziggy let out a few warning cries, fussing. 

Zack knew it kind of made him a pussy, but he just couldn’t take it. He couldn’t think straight when that kid really got to wailing. So he glared, rolled his eyes, and then set one foot on the board. He kicked the board too hard and sent it rolling fast into a wall.

Ziggy’s laughter was short lived, because apparently, he sucked at balance. He could not hold on, and he tumbled off as soon as the board was going more than one mile-per-hour. His big melon head smacked against the ground.

A horrible moment of silence, before the tears came pouring down—

“Fuck! God fucking DAMN IT! No way, I can’t kill Freddy’s kid. No WAY!” Zack leapt to his feet, not knowing what to do. Because if the kid needed to go to the hospital, he didn’t even know how to explain that this was technically his kid but also technically NOT his kid—

Zack ran into the kitchen and ripped open the freezer. Ice pack. Ice pack. Bumps on the head needed ice, right? What would Bugs Bunny do?

Of course, leaving the room made the problem worse. Ziggy’s cries gained the urgency of impending-death-terror as soon as Zack moved out of his eyeline. Without intending to, Zack’s search became more frenzied as he dug through the frozen baby formula bags, organic fruit popsicles, vegan ice cream tubs, neon-colored-plastic ice cube animal shapes, and finally—

Yes! A frozen bag of peas! Perfect.

He hurried back into the living room, peas in hand, and squatted next to Ziggy, who was sprawled out on the carpet, crying miserably into the pyle.

“Here.” He plunked the peas down on the spot where he guessed Ziggy hit it on the floor. “Now shut up.”

Ziggy did quiet down, but that was probably more because Zack was back than anything else. It was plain uncomfortable how Ziggy mellowed out, became practically a different kid, the second he laid eyes on Zack. No one was ever that happy to see him. His fans and team all pretended to be. They were liars. Sycophants.

But Zack seriously doubted this kid was smart enough to bullshit.

Ziggy took the frozen peas off his head, held the bag curiously. Then, for seemingly no reason at all, he flung it away. He laughed too, and looked at Zack with this satisfied expression that clearly said, “hah, hah. I tricked you. I wasn’t hurt at all, just making a jackass out of you by crying until you become my frozen vegetable slave.”

“Stop it! Just…keep that there.” Zack picked up the peas and placed them back on Ziggy’s head. But Ziggy just grabbed the bag and threw it down with even more force. He grinned and clapped at the faint wet splatting sound it made when it hit the floor.

Zack tried to pick the peas up again, but Ziggy beat him to it, grabbing the peas and shaking them like a maraca. 

“Dumbass, that is not a toy. It’s…it’s medical supplies!”

Ziggy soon grew bored with his noise making and turned to Zack. There was something menacing about his hands, now wet and cold, as he put them on Zack’s neck, and then without warning, pushed the peas against Zack’s face.

“No! They’re for your head! Not mine! I’m not the idiot who tried to ride a skateboard in the house!” Zack tried to take the peas off, but the more he resisted, the more Ziggy seemed to relish putting the peas on him.

“Shit! That’s fucking cold! And it was on the floor, thanks to you! Don’t put that on my face, dude—my face is insured for ten million dollars! STOP!”

Freddy came back home to find Zack asleep on the couch, Ziggy victoriously flopped on top of him, sucking on a bag of once-frozen peas. 

________

Zack thought he’d get a break when Freddy told him he had to go to a gig. 

Not that he was looking forward to it or anything. Actually, he had a bad feeling about the gig. Like, judging from the amount of sound equipment, the types of guitars and guitar mods and pedals, the sheets of music laying around the house, and even the track lists on this Zack’s phone and computers…he felt pretty safe in guessing:

This other version of Zack? This lame, unfamous father? Was a fucking guitar tech. Like Gordon. A nerd. 

And this was terrifying because…though he was more successful on paper…Zack wasn’t sure he could…do it. He was really more of a performer than a musician, and had been for years.

He hadn’t sight read anything since the tenth grade. He’d never had perfect pitch. He didn’t practice guitar bends, or remember how to do vibrato. And he had never “played the knobs” let alone a full on keyboard or soundboard. 

Still, he wanted to go. Anything to get out of the house. To get away from the kids—especially Ziggy—and the noise. And Freddy. It was way too confusing to be around Freddy. Zack found himself both annoyed with him and terrified of letting him down.

There was only one solution, and that was to set things right. To go back to his real life. …If he could get out of the house, maybe he could find Billy. If he could find Billy, maybe he could force him to make this nightmare end.

Especially the Child House Arrest predicament. Why Zack? It seemed no one really knew. But it was clear that no one else would do. Ziggy chose him and would accept no substitutes. Zack wondered offhand if it ever hurt Freddy’s feelings, at least a little bit.

Thus, he should have figured—but he was still completely distraught when Freddy handed him a giant bag full of diapers, snacks, toys, and a pair of child-sized headphones when he was halfway out the front door. Notably, Freddy did not reach out and take Ziggy out of Zack’s arms. Fuck.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Zack refused to take the bag, as if this refusal would save him. “I have to take him to work?”

Freddy laughed like this was somehow funny. 

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very funny, Z,” he said, like he was in on the joke. Then he grabbed Zack’s head to kiss him hard against the temple. “Yes, yes, I admit it. I’m the luckiest man in the world. I love you. Angel status husband, ugh.”

“...But this is nuts,” Zack tried to argue, and tried vainly to hand Ziggy off to Freddy. Freddy didn’t seem to get the hint. “Can’t we just put him in a pen and let him scream himself asleep? Teach him self soothing or whatever?”

Freddy kissed him. “You fucker. You’re lucky I love your sarcasm. …God. I love you. Have a great day, babe. See you tonight!  Oh, and send me that thing we worked on last Wednesday? I think Marv wants to mess with it.”

And with that, Zack was shut out in the cold. He looked down to Ziggy, who wore a pink baby jacket complete with teddy bear ears. Ziggy blinked up at him without a care in the world.

“This is your fault,” Zack told him. “Somehow. You orchestrated this. I’m onto you.”

But Ziggy only blew a few spit bubbles, smiled, and wiped his face on Zack’s shoulder.

________

It was a gruelling, brutal day at the studio. Everyone was polite, but Zack could tell they were confused. Because he didn’t know what “pick it up, can we mix the trap and 808’s, create some funky staccato?” meant. Or “The back and front are competing—let’s dip 300Hz with an EQ and see if that helps.”  Or “What’s making the clip light trigger? Zack, the 2bus and master bus are at zero, right? You said everything’s passing the end of the chain limiter. Dude. Do your group busses have the same effects across all instrumentals? What gives? We’re gonna run out of CPU here if we put it on more than 8x oversampling!”

Zack had never felt so stupid in his life. A person could only withstand so many people saying incomprehensible words at him before he genuinely questioned his sanity.

Ziggy was the sole reason he didn’t curse them all out. Peacefully nestled down in the humiliating child-kangaroo pouch strapped across Zack’s chest, Ziggy slept peacefully through most of the session. Even when he woke up, he was not super disruptive, just watching every interaction with wide eyes. Zack didn’t want to start him crying, so he kept his voice low and calm. He wanted to tell all these snooty producers and instrumentalists to get fucked and eat dicks. But he wanted Ziggy to stay quiet more. So he held his tongue.

Truly, the kid was an emotional terrorist, coercing Zack’s silence. 

He was bone-tired by the time he got home, but there were no breaks to be had. Because sitting in the living room with Freddy…was a woman in a boxy, soupy-brown polyester pantsuit that screamed one thing and one thing only. Government worker.

“Hi.” She stood to greet him when he got in through the door. She lowered her voice when she noticed Ziggy, sleeping on his shoulder. “Good to see you two. Was worrying that I’d miss you.”

“Um.” Zack fought not to sound irritated. “Okay.”

“I was just catching Helen up,” Freddy supplied helpfully. “Showing her our notes for Ziggy’s daily food schedule and telling her about how we think he’s gonna start talking soon.”

He bounced a little, over-eager in his seat, and Zack could see that he was nervous. The pieces came together in his mind as he realized: Helen was a social worker. Freddy was giving her a progress report. This was a random home visit to make sure the kid was being taken care of properly. Wow, no good deed went unpunished, apparently.

The social worker carefully looked Ziggy over with a sharp, critical gaze.

“Has he gained weight?” she wanted to know. “It looks like he has.”

“Doctor said he gained two more pounds last visit,” Freddy reported, dutifully. “That’s eight pounds in the last month and a half!”

“He still feels small to me,” Zack defended, bewildered. …Were these people trying to fat-shame a fucking baby? A tiny baby at that.

“Oh! That’s very positive!” Helen’s brows lifted approvingly. “And he’s not suffering any stomach distress with all the diet changes?”

“Um, he gets the rumblies,” Freddy said. “Fusses with gas sometimes, but we think that’s because we’re letting him have extra avocados. He really likes them and if we mix them with other fruits, he’s more likely to eat a whole serving.”

“We like to see it.” Helen patted Ziggy’s head, softly. 

Zack had the bizarre instinct to bat her away. What business was it of this bitch’s if the kid was eating extra avocados?!

“What makes you think he’s on the cusp of speaking?” Helen asked.

“He’s always watching,” Freddy said. “He looks at our faces when we talk to him and sometimes moves his mouth a little. You can just tell he wants to respond. Can see it in his eyes, the lights coming on, you know? I feel like he’s so close.”

Zack frowned. “Is there a way to make him talk sooner?” he wanted to know. 

He didn’t know why he bothered asking. With any luck, he wasn’t going to be here long enough to hear Ziggy’s first word. But the question fell out of him earnest and fully formed before he could stop it.

Freddy’s eyes shone as he watched the social worker for an answer. Hopeful. It broke Zack’s heart a little, somehow, Freddy’s hope. What a small thing to ask from the universe, for a kid to say a single word.

“Let’s just…keep being patient,” Helen appeased. 

Freddy’s shoulders slumped, and Zack felt his stomach plummet. …And what the hell! Zack had to skip lunch—spent his one hour break trying to get Ziggy to eat a weird-smelling rice porridge with ginger and soybeans labeled “congee for Thursday”—so maybe the low blood sugar was making him emotional.

“Is he sleeping through the night yet?” Helen wanted to know. “Or still waking up at intervals?”

“Nah, he’s a good sleeper,” Freddy said, sounding a bit restored to his usual chipper mode. “Still sleeps with us, so if we wake, he wakes. But for the most part, he’s down for the count from 10PM to 5AM.”

…5AM. Good LORD. There was no way he was waking up at 5AM to tend to the word’s smallest monster.

“And he naps outside that range too?”

“Yeah. A lot. After he wakes up, and we change him and feed him and sometimes take him on a walk, or bounce him around on the trampoline at the neighbor’s house…he really likes that…or push him on the swings…he gets tired again around 9:30AM and usually we can all take a mid-morning nap together, unless Z has work, then Zig just sleeps at the studio with him. Then he naps at this time, in the afternoon…and sometimes one more evening nap if he had a big day.” Freddy said all this in a long, breathless gust, then paused self consciously. “Is that bad? Is he sleeping too much? Should we be waking him up?”

“No, no,” Helen soothed. “It is more than an average child. But he’s finally getting regular meals, so he is growing at a more rapid weight than a child his age usually would be, catching up. So he needs to rest more so his body has energy to grow. Also, after significant trauma, it’s a normal response to sleep more. It’s how the brain heals.” She smiled kindly at Freddy. “You’re giving him exactly what he needs. Don’t worry.”

Freddy visibly exhaled, relieved. 

Zack had unconsciously begun bouncing. He found himself doing it often, holding Ziggy. He wasn’t sure why. Presumably, the kid enjoyed it, but as he was asleep now, Zack wasn’t sure why he bothered. But maybe it was nice, like being in a hammock or out at sea or something. Maybe it would make Ziggy sleep longer. Grow faster. Heal better.

“How’s his sister doing?” Helen asked. “Has she bonded any further with either of you?”

“...He has a sister?” Zack asked, bewildered. Since when?

Freddy laughed, shortly. “Exactly. She barely comes out of her room, to be honest. The family therapist says not to push her too hard but to keep giving her opportunities to hang out. She really only comes out if she hears Ziggy cry though.” He paused. “I think she misses him. I know we’re supposed to be keeping all the caregiving off her plate. But I think it’s hurting her feelings.”

Oh shit. That surly teenager. Zack had completely forgotten about her since he saw her the day before, yelling at them for waking her up.

“She’s MAD she doesn’t have to babysit?” Zack demanded, flabbergasted. “Spoiled brat.”

Freddy smiled at him gratefully, huffing with humor. “He keeps me laughing through it at least.”

“I’m glad to see your marriage still healthy and thriving,” Helen said. “It’s good, especially for Mack, to see her caregivers in a stable, happy relationship. So it’s very important for you two not to let parenting erode your bond with each other.”

“Never,” Freddy said, with total assurance. “Zack’s my soulmate.”

“Uh,” Zack added, mostly unhelpful but doing his best to contribute to this conversation he was clearly supposed to be participating in. “We had sex this morning.”

Helen chuckled. “Glad to hear it.”

Apparently, social workers were kind of perverts. Lookie Loos, wanting dirty details about other people’s love lives. Yeesh.

“So…I actually stopped by to give you this.” Helen hesitated, then pulled a thick, manilla file from her briefcase. “This is the file with all the legal and medical details from the night we picked the kids up from their biological parents’ home. It’s got all the police report notes from the interviews we did with Mack at the station. The doctor’s notes from the medical follow ups. The investigator’s notes from the scene of the home we pulled them from.” She offered it to Freddy with significant gravity. “I know you guys know the broad strokes. But I warn you, it’s harrowing. Try to read it when you’re in a good place. …And try to keep in mind that the kids are safe now, in your lovely home.” She looked down as Freddy took it, conflict on her face.

“Wait,” Zack said. “This is the first time you’re giving us details about where we got these kids from? Seriously?”

What the fuck was WRONG with the government?! He heard rumors they were slow. But having dealt with them only tangentially—his lawyers and team handled all his legal run-ins—he didn’t know first hand.

“It took a while for the court case with their parents to conclude,” Helen explained. “The records were sealed until then.”

“And you just kept us in the dark?” Zack’s voice raised a pitch. “What kind of an agency are you? It’s disgusting! I—”

Freddy put a hand on his elbow to calm him, but his face looked white and stressed.

“Thank you for this,” Freddy cut in, quietly. “For the information.”

Helen nodded, her face pained and grim. “Everything here in the home looks in order. …You two are wonderful parents. The kids are lucky to have you, after everything they went through.”

“Ooh! Yes! By the way! I’ve been baby proofing!” Freddy waved a hand around the room. “I had a contractor install a carpet runner down the stairs. And I put corner protectors on the coffee table and outlet covers on the sockets. Plus I got a locked wifi box so that Ziggy can’t get to it. And—”

“Freddy,” Helen’s voice was quite gentle. “It’s really smart to be prepared. I love that you’re being so proactive. But…I want to be straightforward with you. It may be some time before those precautions are relevant. Let’s just celebrate Ziggy’s progress so far, okay? He’s clearly completely bonded to Zack! That’s amazing. Ziggy’s confidence in his bond with Zack, and eventually you, is going to be the way he learns—by mimicking you guys. Some kids who are neglected to the extent he was, especially during crucial developmental years, struggle to bond with anyone. They can’t attend to learning or any higher needs, because they are stuck in survival mode. And they can’t believe any adults are safe. So we’re already in a good place. His nervous system isn’t overriding his ability to attach. Attachment is the foundation of development! So really, you should be SO proud of how far he’s come, in just two years. It’s astounding. ‘Miraculous and moving’ is the exact phrasing I’m using in my report.”

Freddy took Zack’s free hand and squeezed, and somehow, someway, Zack could feel Freddy’s sadness flowing up from the connection like a heavy blue river up his veins. 

“Actually,” Zack snapped, impatiently. “We might need all the babyproofing shit. Ziggy crawled off to get Freddy’s skateboard today to force me to push him on it. So, kid’s already kind of mobile. Corner protectors seem logical to me, ma’am.” He put the stink on the word ‘ma’am,’ to let her know how dumb and out of touch she was.

He wasn’t sure why he wanted her to know that, but it probably had something to do with the waves of disappointment coming off Freddy. Zack was finding them unbearable. 

Silence followed his statement.

“He did?” Helen asked, shocked. “...He went, unprompted, to another room, got a toy, and brought it to you?”

Freddy’s voice was high and excited, near loud enough to wake Ziggy. “Really?! Oh my god. Why didn’t you TELL me? Why didn’t you FILM it! Oh my GOD, Zack!” 

“What’s the big deal?” Zack wanted to know, wary. “He was just being annoying.”

“...Zack. He is gaining locational awareness of the house! And motor autonomy! And the confidence to demand what he wants!” Helen sounded like she was about to dance. “This is HUGE.”

“He just wanted to ride the skateboard,” Zack insisted. “Took a spill, too. Not headed for the X games, this one.”

“You have to understand,” Helen said, looking at Zack with a huge smile. “Ziggy is physically four. But because his former caregivers barely interacted with him during his earliest years, developmentally, Ziggy is about one and a half years old. The fact that he knew where to get the skateboard and how to ask you to play with it is…” she paused for dramatic effect. “Well. To be frank with you, it gives me hope. True hope, for his future.”

Freddy’s eyes filled with tears, and he placed one large hand on Ziggy’s sleepy face.

“Good job, ZiggyZag,” he whispered, softly. “You’re killing it. A+.”

Zack swallowed, the heat of poisonous bitterness spreading through him. Memories rose up from his own much repressed and embattled subconscious. Images and thoughts he tried to suppress with pills and casual sex and parties, for a good reason. His own asshole dad, sneering at every B on his report card. Calling every guitar lesson a waste of money, because he hadn’t practiced well enough to make the teacher’s time worth it. Refusing to celebrate his birthday, because it was “just a calendar date” and not an achievement.

…Why exactly was this kid getting a goddamned parade over sitting on a skateboard? Zack barely got an attaboy for scoring a record contract with Warner Brothers Music at age 16.

“Hey. Do you think we’re coddling him?” Zack asked, sharply veering. “Like, do you think celebrating stupid stuff breeds mediocrity? Like when he’s twenty, he’s going to think riding a skateboard is a life accomplishment or something?”

Freddy goggled at him like he’d never seen him before, but Zack ignored him, staring down Helen with more hostility than even he understood. It emanated from his very center, a wounded blast of sheer anger, though he wasn’t sure what the source truly was. It was no less potent for Zack’s lack of answers for it.

“...Um, no.” Helen said, sounding confused. “This is a temporary phase. We’re just capitalizing on the window of brain plasticity before he turns five. The hope is that full attachment parenting will give him the confidence to reach for normal milestones at a more rapid pace, due to the constant interaction…” She frowned. “Why? Are you worried about something? Are the demands wearing on you?”

“No.” Zack sneered, unwilling to admit weakness.

But a dark truth occurred to him as he gazed down into Ziggy’s curls. This kid? Was just like him. Dealt a rough hand. But he took what he was given and demanded the whole goddamned world. Demanded every little thing he wanted, empowered by the knowledge that life wasn’t fair, so he had no reason to be.

This kid was a genius. Turned his victim story into his meal ticket. Into his empowerment to howl and scream and terrorize anyone in his way.

It was impressive, really. A lesson about how the world worked on a fundamental level. Even a baby understood the basic cause and effect. Pity was the best tool for playing people like fiddles. And the world rewarded those unafraid to ask for everything.

Freddy and the social worker continued chatting, and Zack pretended to be contrite so they would leave him uninterrogated. But Ziggy’s weight in his arms…the toll on his hips and spine from carrying the sling, the way he was strapped with Ziggy like Prometheus to the rock so the eagle could eat his liver…suddenly felt heavier.

Because he understood the situation now. There were suckers and winners in this world. And he now knew what Ziggy was playing him—playing them all—for.

_____

At least the night afforded him some much needed time to stew. Freddy went to bed, and Zack stayed up to watch Ziggy, who was uninterested in sleep, as he’d slept most of the afternoon. Instead, he seemed most interested in arranging toy trains in long lines on the floor. These lines didn’t seem to have a purpose. He just liked to arrange them. He was so focused that Zack wondered if he’d notice Zack leave the room.

…A trap. Obviously. If he left, there’d be hell to pay. Ziggy was a master of seeming cool and calm, but then bringing down the house over a small slight. Kids, Zack was learning, were absolutely emotional terrorists.

Part of Zack knew he was being ridiculous.

His logical brain kept getting shouted down by his wounded ego, but it did make its noise. Ziggy was four. He wasn’t some evil archvillain trying to take over the world. But he was a human, and humans were petty creatures, fueled by attention. Ziggy’s cunning was learning how to force it out of people by acting more helpless than he was.

“You could talk if you wanted, couldn’t you?” Zack hissed at the kid, who dug through a plastic box for another train to add to his orderly files. “You’re just holding out for dramatic effect.”

Ziggy paused in his search, selected a Thomas The Tank Engine from his arrangement, and offered it to Zack, smiling.

Zack sighed, squatted, and took it. 

“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked, though he didn’t expect an answer. “I don’t want your toys, kid.”

Ziggy appeared to think it over, then took the train back. He rummaged around in the bin and found a bigger tank engine—no face this time. He handed it to Zack solemnly.

“Thank you?” Zack held it awkwardly. “Again, not sure why you…” he sighed. “Forget it.” 

He put the train in one of Ziggy’s lines and started to stand, but Ziggy began to fuss, little “popcorn” cries bursting out of him. Not a meltdown, but the beginnings of a tantrum. A few warning shots before a full volley. So Zack picked the train back up.

“Stop that,” Zack demanded, though he knew it was futile. “What do you even want from me, dude?”

Ziggy calmed down a tiny bit when the train was once again in Zack’s hands. Zack rolled his eyes, put the train on the ground, and rolled it back and forth half-heartedly. 

“Are you happy now?” he asked, annoyed. “Is this better?”

Ziggy took Thomas from his line and imitated Zack, rolling the toy back and forth. He then paused, lifted Thomas, smashed him suddenly into Zack’s train, and laughed raucously. 

“Why.” Zack said the word as if it contained the bottled essence of pointlessness. 

Ziggy looked at him, clearly waiting for him to do something, so Zack tried to roll the train again—the toys intended purpose by the way— but Ziggy just pounded it down again, delighted. The violence seemed to please him.

And so began a very tedious “game,” where he tried to roll the train, and Ziggy stopped him from doing so by hitting the train. With other trains. With his fists and feet. And eventually, laughing, he threw his whole body down on the toy so Zack couldn’t touch it at all. 

“C’mon, you cheater.” Zack picked Ziggy up, and Ziggy curled into a defensive ball but giggled happily. This was clearly a kid who loved being manhandled for any reason. Part of the stupid game, probably.

“I think,” Zack told Ziggy as he dangled him in the air, “that your dads go too easy on you.”

He swung Ziggy in a small circle, coaxing excited squeals from him. Ah, yes, kids liked to go round-and-round. Of course. Ziggy didn’t want to earn his fun with hard work. He just wanted instant gratification. A strategy for failure, the mindset of losers.

“How are you ever going to learn about survival?” Zack said. “It’s a hard world. There are no free lunches. People are out to fuck you or fuck you over. Do you know that?”

As soon as he stopped spinning Ziggy, he began to squirm, so Zack set him down again. But as soon as Ziggy’s butt touched the carpet, he rolled over and grabbed Zack’s leg, arms wrapped tight around his calf.

“I guess there’s no harm in letting you keep running your game,” Zack said, looking down at him. His heart felt too big. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw a doctor. Maybe he had a condition. “You’re not really hurting anyone. And if Freddy and the other me are dumb enough to let a baby run their lives, that’s not really my problem, is it?”

Ziggy began running a toy train up Zack’s leg and around his knee. And it was probably survival of the fittest in the end after all. Anyone willing to let themselves be twisted into a pretzel by the whims of a toddler deserved what they got.

______

Ziggy did not fall asleep until 3AM, and Zack had to consume massive quantities of coffee so as not to pass out. Clearly the kid had studied torture techniques at Guatanamo. 

But the problem with drinking 50 oz of coffee after 1AM was that Zack couldn’t fall asleep after. Wandering the house like a ghost, he was tired mentally but his body buzzed. Ziggy benefitted from this, of course. Maybe it was purposeful: keep him awake until he needed to excessively rely on coffee to fight off the sleep deprivation. Then when he was a caffeine fueled zombie kept awake by sheer chemical force, Ziggy benefited because he got to sleep in the arms of a caregiver doomed to walk around in sleepless circles. The kid always seemed to prefer being held by someone in motion than holding still. Why were babies so stupidly NEEDY? Why did they always demand the highest effort route possible? Could the kid be satisfied with a comfy crib? Or at least being held by someone SITTING? No. He wanted his human cradle to be in motion. The indignities were unfathomable.

In his boredom, Zack surveyed the still, quiet home. There was a long list on the fridge written in dry erase marker labeled High Stress Items (Scary for Ziggy!). The list was stupidly lengthy, and if it was true, this kid was scared of completely idiotic things. Zack could understand if he had normal kid fears, like the furnace or loud dogs. But the list contained things like suitcases. And the hall closet. If Freddy and the other Zack kept enabling the kid like this, he was going to be a pansy of the highest order, no joke.

When he was half-hallucinating with exhaustion, he finally collapsed into the breakfast nook. He laid down across the cushioned bench embedded beneath the picturesque windowsill, and Ziggy laid weightily over his chest. One fist curled and pressed under his chin, and Ziggy’s warm breath wheezed against the side of his face. It smelled like baby saliva: watery, fresh neutrality. Zack closed his eyes, tried to let his mind rest, but his thoughts bounced like ping pong balls.

He didn’t know why it bothered him so much, Freddy and that snooty social worker’s reaction to the skateboard thing. It just felt wrong—wrong that Ziggy should be lauded for such a nothing-burger event. So the kid could fetch! Golden retrievers could also fetch. Should they cordon off the street for all Ziggy’s inane bullshit kid-behaviors? Would there be a ticker tape parade for his ability to use the potty or the first time he used a goddamn fork? It was sickening the way they rewarded mediocrity. Ziggy didn’t deserve a participation trophy for the bare minimum. No one did.

But on the other hand, who really cared? So what if Freddy and the other Zack were indulgent and spoiling their kid? That was their business, their poor parenting decisions. When he got back to his real life, he’d never think about them or their nutty kid ever again.

…It did bother him. No matter how he tried to dismiss it, the thoughts ate away at his psyche, needled him, made him so angry he could scarcely hold still, and the more sleep deprived he became, the more it drove deep into his brain. He’d detoxed multiple times from oxys—just the first stage of withdrawal, the acute kind when he had to spend a couple nights in jail or they hit a long driving spell on tour with delays that caused his supply to run dry. The sweating, the feeling of pressure and uncomfortable tickling sensation from within, the feverish mind-cycles of desperation—they very much reminded him of his feelings now. He felt flooded with unpleasant emotions. Just mentally, though. This narc version of himself was cleaner than a preacher. He wouldn’t be surprised if other Zack had never so much as gotten alcohol poisoning in his life. He just seemed the square type. Hard to believe they were kind of the same person.

The fact remained that anger, resentment…and guilt…were nearly as bad as detoxing from chemical dependencies. He also felt so incredibly stupid. Afterall, he’d been the one to witness the supposed skateboard miracle, this incredible sign of Ziggy’s progress. But he’d just found it annoying. Had snapped at Ziggy for it in fact. …Not to mention pushed the skateboard into a wall to discourage Ziggy from continuing to bother him with it.

How was that HIS fault though? How was he supposed to know it was a freaking milestone or whatever? It WASN’T a milestone. It was nothing. Just people with nothing better to do with their time, obsessing about NOTHING.

He had to distract himself, somehow, or he’d go crazy, so he reached for the iPad left on the table. It was locked, powered down, because apparently Ziggy loved screens and would focus on them if he saw them. So all phones and TV’s had to be kept more or less off and out of his sight except during the allotted 20 minutes or so of screentime per day he was allowed. Something about…depth of field of his vision? Apparently, the child eye doctor wasn’t sure Ziggy was able to judge distances, due to being kept in mostly one room when he was little. How would they know, anyway? Not like Ziggy could tell them what he could and couldn’t see. But apparently, it was part of the reason he was kind of unsteady on his feet. So they thought it better for him to interact with 3D instead of 2D objects.

Whatever. Freddy and the other Zack had clearly WAY over-thought this parenting thing. No way did it have to be this fucking complicated.

He turned the iPad on, and began flicking through files. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. There truly was not much of interest. Downloaded articles about brain foods for kids and trauma informed parenting techniques. Search history was filled with baby proofing queries and how to isolate diets to test for food allergies and how to integrate learning and play. Plus music stuff he didn’t really understand—files from obscure bands, random sound samples, mixing advice, drum techniques using both sides of the sticks. These fucking nerds were so BORING. If home movies of their sex life or anything even mildly interesting existed, they certainly weren’t on THIS device.

In a folder labeled “For CPS,” he found a series of videos. Each was labeled with a date. There were about 30 of them.

And when he clicked one, he nearly squished Ziggy against himself as he rapidly bent his elbows to bring the image closer to his face.

A younger version of Freddy hovered on screen—much younger looking, though the date was only about two years back. But Freddy seemed like he had more hair back then. Fewer wrinkles. More volume in his lips, less deep dark circles under his eyes. Plus he wore a slightly-sideways trucker hat, very dude-bro-ish, as opposed to the sedate, charmless, style-less nonsense he wore now. He looked ridiculous of course, but at least intentionally so. More like the Freddy he remembered from his own universe. Though bigger, fatter. His Freddy’s overuse of Adderall kept him leaned out and much more attractive, obviously.  

Jeez, being a parent had aged Freddy. Zack felt quite validated by his decision to never, ever procreate.

But it wasn’t the image of Freddy, kneeling down next to an infant carrier of some kind made of industrial gray polymer plastic and sadness, that caught Zack’s attention. It was the kid inside the carrier that Zack could not reconcile with reality.

Clearly Ziggy. Same dark curls and long, thick lashes. Same mouth shape. But…so small. Fit inside a carrier meant for a newborn, apparently. Limbs still and listless. Crusty mouth, plastic tubes attached to his arms and chest.

And the eyes. Glassy. Staring ahead dead-blank. Like a creepy doll, void of a soul. Zack shuddered. Was this the state this kid had come to Freddy and Zack in? 

He looked down quickly at the top of Ziggy’s head again, suddenly felt kind of grateful for how heavy he actually was. 

He didn’t want to but kind of felt he had to. So he pressed play. 

“Hi, it’s December twenty third, and my name is Zack Mooneyham-Jones, and this is my husband Freddy Mooneyham-Jones. And about four hours ago, a social worker named Paula called us to ask if we could provide emergency placement for a child named Ezekiel. And we said yes, and they brought him here. And this is him.”

“...Is he breathing?” Freddy wanted to know, poking at the tubes, face distraught. “Zack, what did the lady tell us to do again?”

“Uh. Just to give him these fluids.” The camera panned over to a clear, liquid bag attached to a long plastic…straw-thing on the kitchen table. Medical, clearly. Very serious-looking. “Under the skin every four hours or so. And see if we can get him to eat the liquid food. And uh…monitor his breathing.”

“Are the tubes for breathing?” Freddy wanted to know. “Shouldn’t he be in the hospital still if he can’t breath on his own?”

“No. They’re so we don’t have to pierce him to give fluids.”  Zack found it disturbing to hear his own voice say words that he himself never had. “Prevent infection.”

“Oh.” Freddy touched the kid’s tiny, socked foot. “He’s so small. He doesn’t even seem real. Are we supposed to hold him, or just leave him in there? Will it hurt him if we try to move him?”

“I don’t know.” Zack’s voice sounded raspy, tired. “I’m sorry, Baby. I’ll try Googling it. I think it’s okay to hold him if we’re careful? They didn’t say not to. …They barely told us anything.”

“We’re going to have to pick him up if we need to change him.” Freddy studied the kid with panic in his eyes. “I’m afraid to break him or something.”

Zack stroked two fingers down Ziggy’s spine. No fucking wonder the social worker was so pumped he gained weight. The image of him just two years ago, with his toothpick limbs and the slightly hollow sockets around his eyes… Zack felt sick. Absolutely sick at the sight.

The next video in the series featured Freddy holding the camera. The other Zack held Ziggy over his shoulder. The kid barely seemed to register he was being held—just stared forward blankly, unblinking. Not resting his body nor his head. Rigid. Puppetlike. 

“So Zack’s been holding Zeke here for the past 12 hours,” Freddy’s voice reported dutifully. “We thought you people would like an update, though no one’s contacted us. He seems…fine? I don’t know. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t make any sound. But Zack was scared he’d stop breathing, and we wouldn’t know. So he’s just been holding him…sorry if we’re not supposed to do that. But Zack was also worried he’d be cold. He was kind of shivering. We got him to eat a little of that green food in the bags you guys gave us. He doesn’t like it much, but we sort of have been squeezing it down his throat and making sure he swallows. He does it better if we hold him up…”

Zack watched them all, all the videos, one by one. Each about 2-5 minutes long, day by day, sometimes two or three in a day. It felt like a harrowing journey, and Zack wanted to stop…but he found he couldn’t look away.

“It’s Christmas day, but we’ve opted to just stay in with Zekey,” Zack told the camera dutifully, holding it with one hand. “The social worker told us they’d be sending someone to give more information soon, but no one’s called. We don’t know when or if they are going to bring his sister here. But Freddy’s getting the room ready just in case. I gotta be honest. This kid is super quiet. He hasn’t made a peep. Not even when he changed him. Plus his poops were like…yellow. Water-ish. I don’t think that’s normal. But what do I know? Anyway, we got him to eat some rice crackers we soaked in water. I think he liked that more than the mushy green crap from the bags. Don’t worry, we’re feeding that to him too, in case it has, like, vitamins and stuff he needs. We also got a bunch of baby formula, and we’re going to try that. He hates the needle fluids. He squirms, and I think they make him really cold, so it’d be better if he could just drink right? I asked the social worker, and she said if he WOULD drink, then we should let him drink…”

Zack could not believe how blind these two had been flying. The social worker really just dumped this kid on their doorstep with no instructions except “keep him alive” and barely any follow up? It was incredible, unbelievable. This sick kid needed a LOT more care than a regular kid, and though they meant well, it was obvious Freddy and his alternate self had no idea what to do. 

…Their efforts though, were moving. Zack couldn’t deny it. With each video they got greyer and more tired, but they kept on trying.

“Zack and ZigZag are sleeping now,” Freddy narrated in the video labeled January 3rd. On screen, Zack lay passed out on the same couch that still occupied the living room. Ziggy, swaddled in a comically huge comforter, lay on top of him. Eyes closed, body loose and unconscious. “...My husband’s so handsome. Aren’t you, Love?”

He pushed the camera up close and Zack’s hand batted him away, lightly.

“Zig’s been sleeping okay. On and off, just for a few hours at a time. Zack drops when he drops. We’re afraid to disturb him. It’s good if he sleeps, right? We don’t want to discourage him, so Zack just lets him nap whenever. We’re trying to keep him warm. We got him eating bananas. We called a pediatrician who said if he’s drinking the formula regularly, it’s okay to stop with the needle fluids. We’ve still been giving them though, just in case. He seems really dehydrated and the social worker didn’t say when we could stop, so we figured we’d just go through the whole bag here…”

…Ziggy. Like Stardust. And the taxonomy of the name was revolting; he literally watched it happen in real time over the course of the videos. From Ezekiel, the kid’s birth name, shortened to Zeke. Then Zekey. Then riffed on by his loving fathers: impromptu, it became “Zig-Zag.” And Zig-Zag became Ziggy. Ugh, the cutesy devolution of pet names into incomprehensible nonsense words was the grossest thing. It was something that only happened when people were extremely overly familiar with each other. 

This pet name process had never happened to Zack. His parents shortened “Zackary” like the full effort was too much to bother with.

The most infuriating video was titled January 7th.

“Hi, so, my husband is both a figurative and literal rockstar, because ever since we got Zig, he’s been keeping records of everything he eats, every call to the pediatrician. Plus all those parenting classes we took when we were trying to adopt, records of our home visits, background checks—we already did all that. We’re also keeping this video diary and pictures of his progress. We do a little photoshoot of Zig next to the daily newspaper every day. I think he’s getting bigger! Zack has everything ready for the foster people when they ask for it. But anyway, the social worker is finally coming today because Zeke’s sister is being discharged from the ICU and might be coming here to live. And—oh, shit!”

The video cut off, and Zack thought he heard the doorbell ring. Less than two seconds laster, a part two followed:

“Yeah, so apparently the adoption people didn't talk to the foster people, because they didn’t have ANY of our information. They actually were just here to take Ziggy away. Because he was placed with us before anyone did any checking—and it was fucking lucky my perfect ass husband had the papers ready and had sent them to our case worker WEEKS ago, because I really think they were just going to swoop in and take the kid, if Zack hadn’t of called her and confirmed she had all our stuff. DO THESE PEOPLE FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER AT ALL?”

Zack almost had to stop watching, he was so pissed. Freddy and his alternate self gave up their holidays to care for a kid they did not even know. They scrambled together care as best as they could, barely slept for weeks, and the thanks they got was social workers descending down on their house like a SWAT team arresting criminals to take the kid away? After everything?

At least he knew how it ended. The boy, fast asleep in his arms, remained at the house of the only two people who had ever done right by him. As it should be.

February 14th, Zack held the camera and filmed Freddy, who joined Ziggy on the livingroom floor. Ziggy sat propped against pillows—bigger than he was in December, fat gathering on his cheeks, no longer hollow around the eyes. Screaming, that big, familiar scream. But this time…it was a good sound. A healthy sound.

“So, we passed our 800th home check and Zig’s relatives are going to be arraigned as accessories to neglect, so their petition to have Zig live with them has been officially denied.” Freddy rolled his eyes. “And Mackenzie…still won’t talk to us, but we bought her an XBox and had my techie friend Gordon install parental controls that block the internet, plus we gave her a bunch of books, and Zack goes up to bring her snacks and try to talk to her through the wall every hour or so. So things are pretty stable—watch this.” He turned to the kid. “Ziggy!”

He looked right at Freddy, and his dark eyes looked…wetter, than they were, in earlier videos. Like before, they seemed dry, dull. They shone then, as the boy clearly responded to his own name.

“See! He knows who he is! Don’t you, little dude? You’re super, super smart, huh! Calculus next!”

As Zack drifted off, unable to even hold the iPad over his face anymore to view the videos, dopamine finally overriding the caffeine in his system…all he could think about was Ziggy’s gaunt little face. He looked like he was made of wax or something. It was hard to believe any personality at all was even in there.

Now, the child who bit him for fun and used Thomas the Tank Engine as a bludgeon and wanted to push every damn button at the museum was bursting with life. His eyes tracked everything. He had opinions, desires. He seemed mostly like a normal kid. Zack never would have guessed what he looked like before, where he came from.

He thought just maybe, he understood why the skateboard thing was such a big fucking deal.

_______

Exhaustion made the world blurry, but Zack found after viewing the videos, that it was impossible to stay annoyed at Ziggy for long.

Even when Ziggy threw his waffles onto the floor. Even when he picked his nose and wiped the boogers on Zack’s shirt. Even when he cried for thirty minutes because he saw a stray cat he wasn’t allowed to pet. Zack couldn’t think of him as a brat trying to get his way. 

All he could see in his mind, over and over, was the haunted, unseeing stare of the child in those videos. How he barely twitched when the other Zack picked him up. The scary tubes taped to him. That creature in the videos barely seemed human. 

But the toddler Zack was now charged with babysitting? Extremely human. This kid laughed at Freddy’s farts, carried a stick for four blocks and was only persuaded to drop it when traded for a bigger stick, and liked the song “Come With Me Now” by The KONGOS so much that it was damn near the only way to get him to quiet down for even a minute in the car.

It was hard to resent him for being so very alive, when he’d come so close to…not being so.

Thus, the next day, in the studio, he put Ziggy’s child-sized headphones on Ziggy’s head with a smile. It was cute. The alien antennae attached to the top, the way Ziggy seemed to know the drill and did not immediately throw them off, as he did every other time they tried to put a hat of any kind on his head. Zack touched his own face as he stood outside the soundbooth, Ziggy in his arms, bouncing and waiting for the singer behind the mic to give them some variations. A smile pushed its way across his cheeks. He made no effort to suppress it.

He’d been behind so many mics. He wondered if the only reason this other Zack hadn’t was knowing that it wasn’t something terribly possible with a baby in hand. Maybe the other Zack chose to work in music production…because he knew he’d need his hands for other things. Like carrying a kid. Did he do it for Freddy? Or did he want kids on his own? 

Zack had never wanted kids. Couldn’t imagine any version of himself natively longing for diaper duty or Teletubby marathons. But he could…imagine, if he loved someone enough—maybe, if he ever loved a person as much as he loved his career—possibly accommodating for his wants. To be a rockstar, Zack gave up his home, his identity, his rosy view of the world without a second thought. Had this other Zack done the exact same thing…for Freddy?

In the booth, the singer warmed up. She had a pitch modulator with her, and she watched it as she sang arpeggios. 

She missed a step, and before it had the time to change and light up red with a false note flag…Ziggy winced.

Zack’s whole body stilled. 

“Wait, wait.” He pushed the button to talk to the singer in the booth. “Do that again.”

“I’m just warming up! I—”

“No, I’m serious. Do exactly that again.”

She sang the arpeggio again, but this time, every note was in order. Zack impatiently hit the intercom a second time.

“No. Screw up the note. Like you did the first time.”

He stared at Ziggy, who innocently shook his juice bottle in the air, spraying droplets on the floor. He could have SWORN the kid reacted to the false note. 

“Hey, if you’re trying to haze me, it’s really unprofessional—”

“I’m not—lady. Just hit the note again. This isn’t a test. I just need to see something. Okay? I’m the sound guy. Just trust me!” Zack interrupted the singer with exasperation.

Looking suspicious, she did as he said, missed the note.

…And Ziggy stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry, wrinkling his nose.

“HAH!” Zack nearly jumped in the air. “He can tell! He knows that wasn’t right. Dude! Do it again!”

The other producer came running into the room at the sound of Zack’s yelling.

“Is everything okay in here?” He asked, looking frazzled. “Zack, are you—”

“Shut up,” Zack demanded. Then he pushed the intercom again as the baffled singer watched him through the glass, utter confusion on her face. “One more time! Fuck that note up! Let’s hear it!”

“Zack, we don’t have endless time in the booth, we have to—”

Ziggy, for a third time, screwed up his face in displeasure when she missed the note, looking like he smelled something rotten.

“Fuck yes,” Zack said, whispery with wonder. “Your brain is just fine, kid. Even if you never TALK, you know music. You really are my kid. Holy shit.”

“Zack, what—”

But Zack didn’t even have time to explain it to the other producer. He was already calling Freddy.

He felt only the slightest pang in all the excitement. Because he knew as much as it meant to him, after watching those videos…it would have meant even more to Ziggy’s real father. The Zack he’d replaced. Who should have been here, to see this.

______

Zack was not a person who often suffered bouts of conscience. He stole producer Ryan Hewitt from blink-182, sniped him right out of his contract to produce their anniversary album by just doubling the pay and timing it right, and never lost a night of sleep over it. He slept with his agent’s boyfriend (just a couple times, when they were drunk, and anyway, he came onto Zack, not the other way around). He vomited in Sal’s Nike Air Max 1 Masters and never told him. Never did he worry he was going to hell for any of these things, though they caused a fair amount of grief.

But he was suffering now, with an extremely inconvenient heaving, lurching pain in his soul, over lying to Freddy about being his husband.

It was just that Freddy loved him—or rather, the other him—so much. In his sleep, Freddy reached for him. He came home one day to find Freddy, listening intently to a song the other Zack produced, and when he walked through the door, all Freddy could say, eyes big with reverence was: “God. You’re so talented.”

Freddy kissed him like he meant it every time. Held his hand when they walked. And the whole house was positively plastered with pictures of them, through every stage of their lives, hugging each other, laughing. Kissing on their wedding day.

It wasn’t really hard to understand why. The other version of Zack, from what he could tell, was amazing. Went to work every day with the barnacle child glued to him. Produced all his own work, but mastered and mixed a lot of Freddy’s too. Ran their studio business. Called Freddy’s mom every fucking day—which was apparently from the frantic texts: “Missed my call today! Are you okay?? Love you, Elaine.” 

The call log on his cellphone painted the rest of the picture. Sure enough, a nightly call. Like clockwork. 20-30 minutes, every day. Unbelievable. In his own universe, Elaine tolerated him at BEST.

The situation with Ziggy was also getting hairy. Zack didn’t want to get attached. He’d been slacking, overwhelmed with the chaotic whirlwind of demands of the life he’d been thrust into. But he had to try to make a run for it before it hurt too much. Before it became impossible to let go. The problem with letting Ziggy in, even a little, was the way nature fucked him over. Humans were hardwired, biologically drugged and chemically forced, to bond with smaller humans. That damn kid was going to drag Zack’s heart into this with his nasty invisible biochemical chains, and Zack couldn’t let it happen.

So when Freddy went to the studio to work with some artists, Zack found a suitcase under the stairs in the hall closet, and started packing it. He guessed it was technically stealing, but this Zack’s clothes weren’t like his own wardrobe in his own universe. The nicest stuff this other Zack owned was worth no more than a couple hundred dollars. No one would miss a few pairs of unremarkable jeans and black socks and band t-shirts.

Ziggy napped so soundly he allowed Zack to put him down on the bed. Zack tried not to look at his face in repose. Tried not to think about it. About anything, but finding Billy, and reversing this mistake before it became permanent.

But as he was raiding the bedside drawer, looking for an emergency credit card or something, he made the mistake of turning his back to the suitcase. When he turned around again, Ziggy was sitting in it.

“Zig.” He ran his fingers through his hair, distressed. “It would really be easier if you went back to sleep, okay?”

Ziggy picked up a sock from the suitcase and stretched it experimentally, then looked at Zack with an expression that said he was impressed by the elasticity. 

“Yes. Stretchy sock. You can keep it if you just…” Zack carefully picked Ziggy up and set him on the floor. 

But Ziggy used the lip of the bed to pull himself up to his feet, grabbed the suitcase, and yanked it back down with him. Before Zack could get it back, he sat in it again, looking proud of himself.

“Come on.” Zack groaned. “I don’t have time to—”

Ziggy started ootching, bumping up and down, kicking his legs out to make the suitcase move under him, inch by inch.

“Hey!” Zack called as the kid ootched to the door. “Where are you going?! Come back here!”

Zack chased him, and Ziggy ootched faster, laughing. Zack didn’t have the heart to scoop him up and disappoint him. Kid thought he was a regular Speed Racer. So Zack just sort of shuffled after him, grousing.

“Okay, okay, you’ve had your fun. Now can I just…” Zack bent down, grabbed the handle of the suitcase, and tried to gently drag it out from under Ziggy.

But this backfired immediately because Ziggy screeched with delight as soon as the suitcase picked up speed.

“Oh, you like that?” Zack asked, grinning. “How about THIS?”

He took off running, dragging Ziggy behind him, and judging by Ziggy’s happy yells and giggly spit bubbles, he liked the velocity bump.

When Freddy got home, Zack was still pulling Ziggy around the house like some kind of draft horse—man, this would have been easier if the fucking suitcase had wheels! 

“What’s going on?” Freddy asked, and his tone sounded strained.

Surprised, Zack dropped the suitcase. Then he stood bashfully, scratching the back of his neck. Fuck, there were his escape plans out the window. Lost track of time, apparently.

Ziggy bounced impatiently, wanting more pulling. Freddy crossed and picked him up instead, cradling him tenderly. Ziggy allowed it for four seconds before issuing a few hiccups of displeasure, grabbing towards Zack. Freddy wordlessly passed him over.

Zack couldn’t resist a small smile. It was good to be the favorite. Kind of like being famous but warmer, sweeter.

He wasn’t sure how to explain the current status quo to Freddy, though. Nothing made it seem like a good situation, honestly. Freddy would not enjoy hearing about how Zack was trying to escape, but Ziggy thwarted him, and Zack let himself be thrown off course by a meddling tot.

“Uh,” Zack said, haltingly. “He, uh. Likes my suitcase.”

Freddy blinked, face red. “...He does?”

Suddenly Zack remembered the refrigerator list. His heart sank. 

“I didn’t put him in it,” Zack tried to explain. “I promise. I didn’t make him sit in there. I was just…pre-packing it. For that gig next week. While I had a minute. And, I swear. He came to sit in it on his own.”

Exactly 50 percent a lie and 50 percent the truth. Zack prayed Freddy would buy it. 

“Did, um.” Freddy swallowed, lowered his voice. “Did you read the file the social worker brought?”

Zack shook his head, unsure what that had to do with anything. “Haven’t had the chance.” 

Instinctively, he held Ziggy closer, because he doubted anything in that file was going to make him believe more deeply in the goodness of mankind.

“Well he was afraid of suitcases when we got him—you remember. How he used to start shaking, if he saw you packing. And we thought it was because he knew you were leaving…” Freddy shook his head. “Actually, according to the evidence they found in the room where he was being kept…in all likelihood, they kept Ziggy in one of those.”

“What, in a suitcase?” Zack asked, floored. “There was like, no crib, or—”

“No, there was a crib. And the parents aren’t talking. But…the theory goes…” Freddy touched Ziggy’s hand, tenderly. “That if he was loud, they’d zip him in there. For a while, probably. There was fecal matter in there. So they left him for at least long enough to soil himself through a diaper. Or they’d put him in the closet. His sister said she remembers the closet. Never saw the suitcase, but they usually wouldn’t let her in the room if he cried either. So. Could be possible.”

Zack looked at the innocent suitcase that had become Ziggy’s chariot. Hard bits churned painfully inside the walls of his stomach like he’d swallowed cold, indigestible pebbles.

Zack had no idea what to say. He wanted to apologize but “sorry” didn’t quite capture the magnitude of what he was feeling.

“...It’s a good thing,” Freddy said, leaning in to kiss him. “It’s good that he’s not afraid anymore.” Freddy kissed him again like the first one wasn’t enough, and Zack squirmed with guilt because what would Freddy have thought if he came home to find his husband just gone, suitcase packed?

“A good thing,” Zack repeated, and kissed Freddy back.

He also held Ziggy so tight he was surprised the kid didn’t protest, but the kid just clung right back. Like he knew.

Chapter Text

2024. December 5th.

6:30AM. 

Zack didn’t know how he could hate a sound so much as the quiet chime of his phone alarm. He also hadn’t really been aware there was a second 6:30, other than the one in the evening. The morning one had only ever been attended by him as a sign he’d been out partying too late. He was in his thirties now, so he generally turned into a pumpkin by 3AM. Lame. 

Still. He’d woken up in worse positions, though Ziggy’s tiny baby foot jostled against his cheek all night. Freddy’s head rested on his shoulder and put his whole arm to sleep—as soon as he got it free, it’d be rife with pins and needles. Plus, the dog had somehow hogged all the covers to himself. 

At least this was not the strangest pickle he’d ever woken up in. Once, he’d found himself naked and alone on a yacht in the middle of the ocean. Not his yacht. Whose yacht was it? Had he driven it out to the middle of the harbor himself? Sandra had sorted it out. He still had no answers to those questions. Nor did he know how he’d avoided trouble with the coast guard for Grand Theft Boat. He never bothered to ask.

“Z,” Freddy said as soon as he stirred. “Mmm, love you. Had a good dream.” 

Zack knew in his body and intuition exactly what Freddy meant by that. Spooky. Freddy didn’t even use the overt “innuendo voice,” but Zack still knew. He wasn’t sure he liked that. It was unsettling to think it worked the other way, that Freddy could guess what he was thinking and feeling. Though he didn’t think it did, else Freddy would for sure know he was The Wrong Zack. 

Why it mattered if Freddy knew he was the wrong Zack…was hard to say. Why keep up the ruse? It would have been easier to just walk out of here. 

Plus, the guilt. He had to find a way to stop feeling it: like a cold, clammy hand around his throat every time he pictured Freddy’s face after learning there was an imposter in his bed. The fear Zack would see flash in those gorgeous brown eyes. Or worse, the disgust. 

Zack shook himself, trying to clear the ridiculous sentimental clutter. What did he care if Freddy got upset, worried about where the love of his life had gone? This wasn’t Zack’s fault. He was a victim as much as Freddy was! That other Zack was about to sign his record deal after all, and possibly win his Grammy for album of the year.

Zack reached for the other Zack’s phone to silence it. The background picture was, of course, Freddy—it looked like a photo taken right before some kind of high school dance. Teenaged Freddy jumped on his doppelganger’s back, both laughing, Freddy’s arms clinging tight around his shoulders, as he leaned forward to support Freddy’s weight, holding him up piggy-back style by the thighs. A silly moment. Happy, matching…flower things, pinned to their suits. Twinkling eyes: two people who knew they were for sure getting laid on prom night.

It occurred to Zack he’d never been to a high school dance. He and his version of Freddy skipped Freshman homecoming to throw glass bottles off an overpass. It was one of the last things they ever did together, kind of a goodbye, though Freddy didn’t know it.

“I feel like we’re gonna make it,” his version of Freddy had said that night.

Zack didn’t know if he meant their stupid rock band or their friendship but knew Freddy was wrong either way. He’d already signed, just himself, with Sandra. Already knew he’d be taking off before Thanksgiving. That he’d never look back.

But at age 16, he had even less patience than he would have at age 32. Back then, he didn’t want to deal with the way Freddy would look at him when he realized Zack was going somewhere he couldn’t follow. Through middle school, Freddy trailed him like a puppy dog. And Zack was going to Old Yeller him. Zack just wanted to enjoy his victory, not temper it with Freddy’s butthurt attachment issues. 

Now though, lying there in bed, this older, Other Freddy holding him down, nestling his face into the side of his shoulder, muttering, “five more minutes,” kissing his bicep just because it was the closest thing to him…

It was like all the feelings of that deferred goodbye caught up to him. With interest. 

“Still so sorry,” Freddy said, pained though he was sleepy, like he was feeling the wave of sorrow coming off Zack and even though he had no idea where it was actually coming from, he still wanted to be soothing.

“You’re good,” Zack reassured. He was so lost in his own thoughts, the memory of how Freddy looked at him that last night, like there was nowhere he’d rather be than on the bridge. 

He knew Freddy liked pranks as much as the next person. But that wasn’t why his eyes lit up, bright and eager like that. No, that was a look Freddy reserved for being alone together. Like he’d been looking forward to just that part, and the rest was frosting on the cake. It wasn’t fair. Zack had done whatever he could to communicate to Freddy that he did not belong to him. He belonged to only himself, and wouldn’t give Freddy even the tiniest part of him to keep. Their friendship was a rental, a cheap one, and Freddy had better not invest in such a short term alliance. 

But Zack secretly looked forward to it too. When they were alone, things were blurrier. The pressure of his need to escape, to prove himself seemed more theoretical. Freddy on the other hand, became real, not a source of annoying complication but a person. Warm hands, broad shoulders, so tall and sunny and pretty. 

“I’m not good, not like you,” the words came to him in real time, from the mouth of this other, older, decidedly less pretty version of Freddy. His voice was thick with residual sleep, trailing but sincere. “Never forgive myself for those six years.”

“...Wait. What six years?” Zack asked, curiosity getting the better of him. 

Oh shit, had this Freddy cheated or something?

“Come on,” Freddy said, sounding marginally more alert. “I know you say you completely forgive me. But those six years after I broke up with you…before we got back together…are the biggest regret of my life. Always will be. I’d do anything to get those years back.”

Zack sat up. FREDDY had left HIM? 

Not. Fucking. Possible.

“It was kind of mutual, right?” he demanded, shaking Freddy—and by proxy, Ziggy—off himself. 

Ziggy whined. Zack had no idea why that kid was so attached to him. As soon as he opened his eyes, he reached for Zack’s face. Grabbed two big handholds of his beard. Clung gleefully. Zack tried to pry him off and only received baby spit bubbles in his face for his trouble. He rolled his eyes and and gently patted the kid ‘til he loosened his grip, settled against Zack’s chest, soft little cheek against his pec. Zack didn’t mean to, but he wrapped a hand around the kid’s tiny shoulder, drew him just a bit closer.

Freddy, on the other hand, laughed heartily. 

“Thanks,” he said, sincere. “God, Z, you’re the best. I love you. For never holding it against me. But you and I both know that a blindsiding phone call, dumping your boyfriend, best friend, and soulmate of five years without bothering to give a reason is the opposite of mutual. I own my mistakes. I did that. I broke us. We fixed it…but I’m still so fucking sorry.”

“No,” Zack said, the word falling out almost involuntarily. He shook his head, disbelieving. “...No way, dude. There had to be more to it than that.”

Freddy looked at him, the weight of regret and love softening his expression to a sad smile.

“I know, I know. I had growing to do. I didn’t know who I was. But I will never think that’s an excuse. Six years more we could have had—in our twenties, too! Think of all the memories, the good times, you know. Being young, sexy and in love.” He glanced quickly to Ziggy, and winked at Zack. “It’s hard to forgive myself. For what we lost.”

They were having two very different conversations. Zack knew it but couldn’t stop himself from continuing down the parallel track, too distraught.

“But I was pulling away anyway, right?” Zack said, floundering. “It wasn’t all you. I was cold, treating you bad. You did what you had to do to protect yourself, right?”

Now Freddy’s brow furrowed. 

“Don’t do that,” he said. “You can’t take this one on for me. You did nothing but love me.”

“I…” Zack struggled. 

Ziggy vied for his attention again and seemed to be trying to put his fist into Zack’s mouth but he was too wrecked and confused to even try to extract his face from the baby’s sticky grip. A sudden wave of anger passed through him, overriding his instinct to avoid rocking the boat with Freddy, to keep the peace. 

“It’s just. Freddy. You can’t seriously be saying I was the perfect boyfriend, and you still dumped my ass for no reason and didn’t even tell me why.” Zack said it all in one breath, not able to keep the raw dismay from his voice.

He could not reconcile the facts. Apparently, in a world where he treated Freddy right, Freddy fucked him over. Giving into Freddy’s love didn’t lead to happily-ever-after at all! No, it led to Freddy dumping him. Abandoning him for six years. Zack’s anger transformed to righteous validation. He’d clearly made the right choice in his own universe, leaving Freddy behind. He’d never needed to feel guilty. He retroactively resolved himself of ever needing to feel bad whatsoever.

Because if he’d allowed Freddy to worm his way into his heart…Zack now had concrete evidence that Freddy would just break it for no reason. 

Suddenly he was glad. Glad of every wound he’d inflicted. Now Zack knew the truth: his Freddy deserved every inch of rejection Zack served him, even if he’d never know why.  

But Freddy merely nodded, still not defensive somehow. Just…sad, a bit, with the worn, wistful regret of long-healed wounds. 

“Zack, it’s fine.” He smiled, rolling his eyes. “You don’t have to pretend to be mad at me.”

“Pretend?! But I’m not! I—”

“No amount of reconciliation roleplay is going to change the outcome, Love. We lost those six years, and it was my fault. No matter how many times I apologize to you, and you forgive me, that time will still be gone. I made the choices. I bear the consequences, and unfortunately, I inflicted them on you, too. All I can do is spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

He leaned over, soundly kissed the side of Zack’s head. And Zack stared down at him as he rolled over and went back to sleep like he hadn’t just pulled the rug out from Zack’s whole world.

But before Zack could press him any further about it, Freddy yawned and said:

“Babe, remember, carpool today. You gotta pick up Jake and Ryler. Oh, and the car’s almost out. Could you stop for gas? Also, and on your way back, you might want to stop at Bertolini's for tarts. Mom’s doing that birthday thing for Chris.”

And from his tone, it was clear that Zack was expected to start on all that right now.

Suddenly, he completely, spiritually understood the phrase “it is better to die free than live one’s life in chains.”

Against his will, he felt a pang. Freddy’s only regret was that they lost time together. They already saw each other every day, had for years, and it still didn’t feel like enough. Jesus Christ…what must it feel like, to love someone so much—to ceaselessly crave, to the point of regret—that the only request you had of the universe was eternally more? 

_________

“Has school always started at 8:00AM? I feel like when I was your age, it was later,” Zack said to the girl child, who sullenly shoved a soggy bowl of Trix cereal down her gullet and glared in the opposite direction.

“Hah hah.” The girl clanged her spoon into the sink forcefully. “How about this? You go to school, and I’ll go hang out with Timbaland at your work.”

Zack held Ziggy with one arm, bouncing on his toes where he stood. It was so unfair. The baby didn’t have to wake up at buttfuck o’clock. He could just sleep on Zack, snoozing away like a happy marsupial in a grouchy, sleep-deprived tree. 

“Timbaland?” Zack sneered, disgusted. “Nah, fuck that guy. You know he got a music video of mine pushed back two months ‘cause he hired our back up dancers out from under us? For Justin Timberlake of all people. Justin’s agent said it was just bad timing, but I KNOW. I know it was that fucker trying to dick me over. He doesn’t deserve to bear the name Zachery. There can only be one!”

Her eyebrows pinched together, confused, but it was too early for Zack to care about that. In his real life, he never got out of bed before 11AM for less than half a million. This life expected him to do it every single day for free.

As he ranted, he chewed on dry handfuls of Cocoa Pebbles. He was going to get fat if he kept eating this sugary crap, but he needed something—all other fixes were unavailable to him in this godforsaken house. It was plain cruel and unusual to expect him to be sober at 7:30AM.

Cereal flakes landed in the hood of Ziggy’s baby sweater. This time, it was an AC DC jacket—a miniaturized version of Freddy’s day-to-day wear. Zack left the food refuse where it fell. Babies were supposed to be dirty, sticky creatures anyway.

“I thought you liked Mr. Mosley.” The girl’ quoted, dry and unimpressed as she washed out her bowl. “You said he pushes the envelope with rhythm breakage and innovative sound integration within his layering techniques.”

God, he was really getting tired of the other Zack’s nerdly ways. That guy was not shoved into a dumpster or glued to a wall enough times in elementary school, clearly. 

Zack crossed his arms tightly over his chest and glared. “Any idiot can dick around on a computer with noise.”

She paused, a bit stunned, then wrinkled her nose at him. For a split second, Zack’s heart seized with terror. He was partially-certain she was on to him and about to accuse him of being an imposter—which he was. He didn’t really know why he gave a shit, nor why he did not want her to tell Freddy that he wasn’t who Freddy thought he was. But Zack didn’t know what he’d do if—

“...I get it, I get it, Zack. I’ll cool it with the sarcasm today.” She looked down, voice soft.

For the first time, he noticed: the girl kid was not a teenager. She could not be older than ten. She talked tough and had a teenager’s empty, bitter bravado. But her thin pencil neck and the way she deferred—folded like a cheap lawn chair under the slightest pressure—could mean only one thing: this was a kid. And a young one. Zack felt particularly unobservant for not seeing it before. 

“Uh.” Zack scratched the back of his neck. The girl looked at him with wide, dark eyes, blatantly searching for approval. And all Zack could think to do was awkwardly smile back and shrug. 

A couple kids had asked to meet him for Make A Wish, and he suddenly remembered why he stopped taking those requests. He had no idea how to deal with the vulnerability of young people, seeking guidance and reassurance from him. 

“Dude. You can be sarcastic,” he offered. “I really don’t care.”

The wrong thing to say, clearly, because her face fell, broken in by abject hurt. …Apparently, she wanted him to care.

“Okay,” she said, turning her back to him.

For the life of him, he didn’t know what she wanted. Kids were so sensitive. One moment, practically groveled, like he gave two shits about her “tone.” And the next, she teared up, butthurt because he actually wasn’t upset with her. 

Zack truly could not fathom reproducing and thus saddling oneself with this kind of nonsense on purpose.

She grabbed her purple backpack from the floor and shouldered it on, looking for all the world like she was about to be banished from the house, and a thought occurred to Zack:

“Hey. Am I supposed to check your homework or something?” Zack wanted to know. He wished he hadn’t asked as soon as the words were out of his mouth, because he’d dropped out of high school and would be of little use in this area. But still, if Freddy expected him to do it, it would look suspicious to not to at least offer.

“Why?” She demanded, sharply. “I did it. You don’t need to be my academic parole officer.”

Oh, man. Zack could tell just from her defensive posture that he’d stumbled into a sore spot, and she was hiding something. She clearly hadn’t yet perfected a poker face. He couldn’t resist pressing. 

“Can I see?” He asked. He couldn’t help slipping the tiniest teasing note into his voice. Defensive people blew their tops over even slight shit-giving; he had to do it. 

She squinted, crossed her arms, took a few steps back. But she was not a deft enough liar to maneuver her way out of this one. Shame: what were her fathers teaching her? She had to learn to lie right to get by in this world.

Zack said nothing more, just watched her squirm. Watched her dig into her backpack, retract a large, badly-organized 3 ring binder stuffed with unfiled papers. And smirked as she dug through it, found a single printed page, and handed it over to him.

“You didn’t use ChatGPT to write this, did you?” he asked, intently watching her face. If she had, it would probably be obvious in her split second reaction to him.

Based on the sheer panic that flashed across her face, he guessed she didn’t, actually. Because it was harder to prove a negative. And she wanted him to like her—or at least, she wanted the Other Zack to. Her naked desire to please was glaringly apparent in retrospect; even her sharpness was a performance meant to engage.

“Asshole.” She all but spat at him. “I’m not stupid. I can write! English is my best subject.”

Something about her pride when she said this made Zack uncomfortably aware of how much the smallest word of criticism from him could break her.

Unwelcome, intrusive flashbacks bombarded him. In middle school and through the singular year of high school Zack had bothered to attend, Freddy perpetually wore the same desperation on his sleeve—to be seen as intelligent, competent, worthy. He was so obviously, openly fond of Zack, so plainly hungry for Zack’s good opinion.

…And Zack had turned it against him every time. He couldn’t stop himself. He sensed the enormous burden of responsibility Freddy put on him and violently bucked and bridled at the intimacy it implied. He didn’t want the keys to Freddy’s emotional wellbeing. He never asked for the power to bruise Freddy’s unprotected emotional core. So he lashed out, verbally violent, teaching Freddy to stop asking Zack to take custody of his stupid, soft, needy heart.

If it was a character test, Zack had failed it. At the time, he was convinced it was an act of self-preservation, and he owed Freddy nothing. But now, there was guilt. Staring at this girl, whom he also owed nothing, a horrible revelation occurred to him.

Her innocent vulnerability was not her fault. She wanted his approval because she cared for him. And caring? Was involuntary. Especially in children. As a child, he himself sought his father’s approval, before he trained himself not to care anymore. But the urge to ask for it, to crave it, was instinctive, not a choice.

Freddy was a child too, when Zack threw his love back in his face. Zack wished he could erase the inconvenient, shame-inducing epiphany from his brain when it popped up, but the force of it nearly brought him to his knees.

He couldn’t help but know the truth: if Zack punished this kid for reaching for him, the way he punished Freddy, not only was he just as bad as his hated father…but also he did not deserve love. Because the transaction was simple. Returning love with violence meant it would not be offered again. This was his own essential justification for refusing to visit his father, even when his mother begged him to, even when Rob was on his deathbed.

Too fucking late. You get what you give, fucker.

The black, clawing feeling inside him would not relent, until he skimmed the sentences the girl reluctantly passed to him, and said:

“Huh, you’re really smart.”

The split-second reaction this time was a bright pink blush and a smile she tried to hide by shaking her bangs into her eyes. ...Huh, so what she'd been hiding was her vulnerability. She didn't want him to know how much his opinion meant to her. Predictable. 

But the sight of her unguarded delight brought with it a second wave of nauseous horror.  

Because Freddy, back in Zack’s own universe? Freddy kept offering him love and trust even when Zack purposely rebutted it with cruelty. Freddy didn’t do what Zack himself did, and cut him off—feeling righteous about it in his frustrated anger at being denied the affection he sought. Zack left home and conceptualized every success as a dagger to his father’s ego. That weak, enormous ego: Zack hoped it just killed him. Every Grammy, every primetime TV spot, every time his father was FORCED to look at his son’s face on the cover of Rolling Stone or Variety was a dagger to the heart. Rob would never be as successful as the son he’d scorned. Never be hailed as a genius, a rebel, the voice of a generation. Rob was no one. No one would be sad when he died; no one would remember him fondly; few would remember him at all. 

Zack took sick pleasure in it, in feeling he’d abandoned and outstripped his own father. But Freddy never resorted to bitterness. Freddy kept hoping. Freddy still believed in Zack’s better angels…because…

Freddy was a better person than he was. 

The sleeping baby in Zack’s arms, and this girl child—the other Freddy’s children—were proof of what Zack had always suspected. Freddy was not just kinder than he was. He was braver. Freddy had love to offer in spades because he was not stingy with it, not afraid of opening himself up to the damage made possible only by emotional intimacy. Given the chance, Freddy would have married him. Would had taken in these two fucked up kids and loved them back to life, no matter the cost.

Zack thought, when he first got to this house, that it was just a normal suburban home full of baby proofing and children’s toys. But it was so much more than that. This whole home was a battleground: a place where two people out of their depth fought for a dying baby, a Failure To Thrive, and with no guidance or experience, took on the enormously emotionally fraught and devastating lifestyle of true heroes in a thankless situation. 

Zack saw it for himself in those videos. They had held this baby every second. They fed him mushy food when he could barely chew and counted up every calorie. They braced themselves for the real possibility that he’d never learn to speak, never play like normal kids did. And all the while they still put 100% effort into giving him the best chance possible, into fighting for his future, for the best case scenario. And based on the fact that Freddy baby proofed the whole house despite the social worker’s cautionary warnings that Ziggy may never be confident or stable enough to explore the house freely…

This was a fight they were preparing to win.

And a war on two fronts, apparently. It wasn’t enough these people took in a dying toddler. They also took in his emotionally compromised sister. 

A sister who looked at Zack with the wary expression of someone who’d been given every reason to give up hope…and yet somehow hadn’t.

Zack had just one guess as to why. 

Ziggy, sleeping soundly in Zack’s arms, had unknowingly fucked him up beyond repair. The stupid kid—with his tragic backstory of parents who could not have given less of a shit if he lived or died. With his miraculous recovery. The spawn who could have ended up mute, hobbled, unable to recover from the shit hand he’d been dealt. But in fact, he was communicating (nonverbally, but still), a healthy weight, fully mobile…and possessing perfect fucking pitch at age 3. 

Zack shifted Ziggy's warm, dozy weight, felt his sticky breath on his neck. And god. Zack had not done any of the work to get the kid to this place, and yet? He was so proud. So fiercely, unfairly, unreservedly invested in this random child’s wellbeing. All because he’d watched a few videos on an iPad, and his stupid body was biologically wired to respond to keeping the smallest members of his species alive. He had no CHANCE of remaining detached.

“Uh, you okay?” The girl asked, frowning at him as she threw GoGurt and sliced apples and a pizza Lunchable in a brown paper bag for herself. “You’ve been standing there, staring into space for like five minutes. Also, can I have that back?”

She glanced at the essay she’d written, hanging limply from Zack’s free hand.

“I’m good,” Zack lied to her. “Just. Uh, thinking.”

“Thinking what?” she asked. Her curiosity was a hallmark of her age. She wanted to be included, wanted to know everything. This raw, open curiosity faded out of adults, who became too attached to their patterns of thought and assumptions to be open to inconvenient data. All kids wanted to do was bond, and then absorb all new information possible through those bonds.

“Thinking…” Zack said, slowly, “that I won’t tell Freddy if you won’t that I don’t feel like doing carpool today.”

“What?”

“Wanna ditch?” he asked her, impulsive. Reckless. 

The comical war between her skepticism and hope played out with extreme drama across her features.

“Really?” she demanded, voice heightening.

“Offer expires in ten seconds,” Zack warned.

Her excitement, her joy, lit something up in Zack’s chest. Maybe he would never be as good and saintly as the other Zack and the other Freddy. But he was a competitive person. He knew the subtle stuff was no match for the flashy shit.

Maybe she’d always love her real dad more. But Zack betted he could make this kid like him, and think he was the coolest. With a little indulgence, and punk rock spirit: the same stuff that made him a star.

“Then, yes,” she said, almost squeaking with disbelief. “Yes, I want to ditch.”

Zack immediately opened his lockscreen on his phone and turned off his location. 

Zack wanted to crumple the essay up and toss it over his shoulder for dramatic effect. But she looked at it quickly, that needy, shrimpy look on her face. 

And Zack managed to hold back his eye roll as he pinned it with a magnet to the fridge, the way his own father had never once done for him. 

“Freddy should see this,” he told her, matter of fact. And he turned his back to give her the privacy to adore him.

______

Zack had just one good memory with his father. 

When he was 11 years old, his mother came down with a bad case of shingles and could not leave the house. Unfortunately, Zack had an orthodontist appointment at 12:00PM—a supernumerary tooth was growing in, and Beatrice Mooneyham could simply not bear the thought of her son growing up with a crooked, snaggle-tooth smile. But the partial eruption made his teeth come in all wonky, requiring braces. Zack was not allowed to miss school for anything under an ER-worthy fever. But for a clear, straight smile? Beatrice was meant to pick him up right out of social studies class.

When she could not, the job fell to Rob, who was loath to leave his firm to tend to what he viewed as his wife’s responsibilities. But he’d already paid for the damn orthodontist, so he would be damned if his investment went to waste. 

Zack got called up to the office, where his father picked him up and shuttled him into the passenger seat of his Bentley, muttering the whole time about all the meetings that had to be reshuffled, the filing dates he had to shuck onto a paralegal, the way he was missing the opportunity to catch a judge he needed to touch base with on his lunch. Then Zack sat for 45 minutes as the ortho-tech twisted a wire by his back molars tighter and tighter to try to close the gap between his front teeth with sheer force.

“You might get pressure headaches for a couple days,” the tech told him, somewhat regretfully. “Ask your mom for a Tylenol if it gets too bad, okay?”

At age 11, Zack had already known he wouldn’t ask. Pills that didn’t fix you only made you dependent.

But about a week after Zack charted for the first time at age 17, he learned pills could erase your dependence on human emotions…which was an eye-opening lesson, to say the least. He made the trade happily and never looked back, feeling sharp, angry pride every time he used, for the sheer indulgence of shucking the wisdom of his upbringing.

In any case, that day at the orthodontist, as Zack and his dad walked back to the car in the medical building adjacent to the parking structure, Rob said the only thing that could have made Zack stop thinking about the throbbing radiating up from his teeth to his skull cavity.

“That wizard movie.” Rob jangled the car keys in his hand. “With the British kids. It just came out, yes?”

“...Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?” Zack asked, a little breathless at the idea Rob even knew Harry Potter existed. Fantasy books of any kind seemed so outside the harsh, no-nonsense world his father inhabited. 

Rob sniffed, not bothering to acknowledge Zack’s contribution to the conversation.

“Your school day is mostly over anyway,” Rob said, instead. “And I’m in no hurry to get back to work—apparently they’re assigning a patent lawsuit over formulations today, and I’ve no desire to spend the next six years embroiled in another chemist-vs.-chemist pissing contest.” He looked down at Zack, and suddenly Rob seemed mightily tall and towering. “Would you like to go see the wizard movie?”

“What? Right now?” Zack squeaked, unable to believe his ears. He’d never seen his dad sit down to watch anything but football or basketball or the news or Cold War Documentaries.

“No popcorn,” Rob scolded him, preemptively. “That prissy tooth assistant prattled on about all the things you’re not supposed to have with that damned expensive headgear, and that was on the list, I believe.” 

Zack had no friends at school, and thus had not seen any of the other Harry Potter films, having received no invitations to do so from his classmates. But he’d voraciously devoured every single volume published to date and had been secretly dying to see the film adaptation. He knew his father wouldn’t approve of his love for “frivolous fiction novels” however (much preferred Zack to stick to his Proust, Flaubert, and D.H. Lawrence). So Zack stuffed down his excitement and just nodded, fighting to keep his expression neutral.

“Thanks,” he said, quietly. He was glad at least that his father probably wouldn’t want to talk much. Moving his mouth hurt a lot; even gentle flicks of his tongue against his teeth caused a pulsing ache to spread across the whole front of his face.

Rob sighed through the entire film, and Zack sucked on the ice cubes from his lemonade (he'd wanted Coke, but the orthodonist also said no to bubbles) to try to numb his tooth-pain. And Rob did not understand a single thing that was going on because he had no context, so he quietly snorted as the events unfolded on screen and said stuff like, “fine, that might as well happen” in a drippingly condescending sort of way.

On their way out, Rob summarized all the things he found lacking about the story and characters. Zack didn’t bother filling in the background, knowing his father would only be annoyed with his “trivial, childish interest in the pretend details of a meaningless story with no factual basis.” But Zack got to skip the second half of the school day and hang out one-on-one with Rob, which was something he couldn’t remember ever happening previously, so overall, he considered it a win.

This was why when Zack cast about his mind for where to take the girl child—whose name turned out to be Mackenzie; Zack managed to catch a glimpse of it in the upper right corner of her school paper—his first instinct was to take her to a movie.

Of course, her brother was a problem. Ziggy had to come with Zack everywhere he went, and there was no guarantee he’d be quiet through an entire movie. The other Zack and Freddy must have been on baby house arrest since they got this kid; toddlers were not exactly public-space friendly, and not like they could get a sitter, given their full-attachment parenting commitment. 

But Mackenzie’s face instantly fell when Zack mused out loud that Ziggy could cause logistical issues. She turned away, stared blankly out the window, when just a second previous she’d been all but bouncing in her seat.

Guilt seized Zack and took him prisoner with no warning. He realized he’d dangled the experience in front of her, then threatened to take it away right after in favor of her brother. So now, to avoid looking like an asshole, he had to come through. Somehow. 

The nearly-empty discount theater, where they’d surely be guaranteed an empty screening, became Zack’s brilliant solution. If he’d had access to his true life and its resources, he could have paid to clear a good theater out for the afternoon. However, in this life, the poor-people-version of a private screening  would have to do.

Ironically, it was Freddy—the Freddy he’d grown up with, back in his own universe—who taught him the discount movie theater trick. One of their favorite lowkey delinquent activities was sneaking into discount movies instead of going to class and sneaking in McDonalds and Mike’s Hard Lemonades.

“But they only have lame, old movies there,” Mackenzie complained, sitting in the back of the 4 door Lexus hybrid; Zack REFUSED to drive that 4Runner. “They don’t have any of the stuff that just came out!”

“That’s the point,” Zack teased her, “you pay less because you’re watching a movie most everyone’s already seen.” 

Wow, maybe this kid wasn’t too bright after all.

“I’d rather see something new,” she huffed, and in the statement, Zack heard her resentment. This confirmed his suspicions: she was definitely starting to feel slighted by how her parents prioritized her brother’s needs. She had a kid’s sense of justice, or really the lack of one. Anything that inconvenienced her was an injustice to be endured.

Zack knew because he never really outgrew that mindset. He’d never had to. His newfound awareness of that fact…sucked, actually. But it was hard to avoid, given how recently he’d been forced to recontextualize his understanding of the people around him over and over. He’d come to the same conclusion about a dozen times by now: many massively cumbersome, uncomfortable behaviors were reactions to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. Everyone was sort of just doing the best they could. The most unreasonable seeming people ultimately had their reasons. Ziggy seemed clingy because he was afraid to die. Zack seemed like an asshole because he was anticipating everyone else would be an asshole to him first and he was just beating them to it. 

….Freddy was wonderful in any universe because he was Freddy…

Zack shook himself, refocusing on the situation at hand. 

Mackenzie had a bad attitude. But probably there were lots of things Mackenzie missed out on, lots of attention that she simply didn’t receive, because her baby brother siphoned it all. Zack could relate to craving attention he didn’t receive enough of. 

But she was going to have to get over it. At least she had a sibling, who she could one day conspire with even if she resented him. Zack had no one in the cold, empty tomb of a house where he grew up. He had not a soul to share his childhood miseries with. Mackenzie didn’t even know how good she had it. Ziggy couldn’t talk yet—hopefully soon—and right now, he was basically just a noisy, needy lump. But he was better than nothing, wasn’t he?

Ziggy cried—not hard, just pathetic little popcorn cries—in his carseat because the little gremlin wanted to be held even while strapped into a moving vehicle. Mackenzie continued watching the painted lines on the asphalt running by in endless neon stripes down the black. And Zack decided they’d watch Gladiator II because it was the only title on the list that didn’t make him want to actively vomit.

_________

If Freddy were leading this movie-going experience, he would have made it fun.

This was the thing about Freddy. Both in this universe and Zack’s true one, Freddy was a ball of energy and light. He never sat still. He could turn Jury Duty into an interactive murder mystery party. That was just how he was. Zack had always been both secretly envious and extremely annoyed by Freddy’s need to zing around, following his whims to new discoveries, new games, new angles on the same boring minutiae everyone else took for granted. 

But as this movie outing was clandestine, and Freddy was not supposed to know Zack had allowed his daughter to skip school to watch a bad reboot cash grab…Zack would have to figure out how to make magic on his own.

The problem was, he only had negative examples to draw from. He knew not to rant about war crimes committed in the USSR in the 1950’s-1980’s, like his father would. He knew not to spend the entire time ranting about how improper the lengths of modern tennis skirts had become, like his mother would. But not like he could just copy how Freddy played with Ziggy the day before. Mack would certainly not enjoy peek-a-boo under a jacket or 30 minutes of silly animal noises.

Fuck, how DID one even begin to entertain a 9 year old girl?

“You can get candy if you want,” Zack tried, lamely, as they trekked past the glass counter displays: popcorn buckets full of Sour Punch Straws, M&M’s, and movie swag. The hot, buttery scent that permeated the lobby of the theater made Zack hungry, even though he knew the actual experience of eating popcorn was not as good as smelling it.

“I’ll get fat.” Mackenzie sulked, dully. 

Zack bit his tongue to prevent himself from snapping at her. She was a kid, not a starlet who needed to stay red carpet ready. Who cared if she was chunky? Who was even looking at a child her age in that way?

Somehow, he knew that to say this was certifiably not fun or cool, however, so instead he cleared his throat.

“Okay. Well, I want candy and shit. And so you know, if you get hungry later, you’re not stealing any of mine.”

Mackenzie seemed to hesitate as they approached the concessions stand. She stopped walking, face a mask of pure conflict.

“Maybe I’ll get something,” she said, slowly. “Not to eat. Just to…have. For later.”

Something about the way she said it. Kind of greedy and anxious, the way Zack got when he didn’t know when he’d see his dealer next, caught in his mind like a plastic bag blown into a tree branch

Shit. Mackenzie came from the same place Ziggy did. They were siblings. In the videos, Ezekiel had been starving, emaciated, barely able to keep his head up. It was unlikely his sister feasted while he wasted away. Fuck.

“Yeah, get whatever you want,” Zack told her, a beat too quickly. “It’s fine.”

Mackenzie didn’t look at him, just went to the candy display and studied it carefully. She seemed hesitant to touch anything. Zack bounced Ziggy a bit in his arms—it was odd how used to it he’d become. How quickly he’d adjusted to always having an armload of toddler wherever he went.

Objectively, Ziggy was quiet a lot of the time, as long as he was being held. Zack felt a little guilty. Did other kids his age babble more? Make more noise?  It occurred to him he was supposed to be talking to Ziggy, encouraging him to interact. For brain development, right? Catching him up. But it felt too…awkward, too squelchy…to attempt babytalk. Zack couldn’t find it in his heart to make himself try.

At least he could talk to Ziggy like a normal person. That would help too, wouldn’t it? Better than baby talk, even. Maybe Ziggy would skip the annoying stage where kids used stupid made up words and broken grammar and jump straight to talking like a normal person. People often encouraged mediocrity in the name of kindness, after all.

“What do you think we should get?” he asked Ziggy, feeling stupid, coming up behind Mackenzie. “I’m thinking Sour Skittles. Uh, or is it more responsible to get chocolate covered raisins? For vitamins and shit.”

Ziggy looked up at him with wide, attentive eyes, and Zack felt his stupid, traitorous heart flatten and broaden inside his ribcage. It was so relieving, so gratifying, that despite his silence, this kid at least knew when he was being directly addressed. That had to mean his brain wasn’t totally fried. At least, Zack hoped. 

Ziggy took a bright green bag of Sour Skittles off the shelf and waved it around, spluttering happily at the rattling sound, so Zack guessed that was his pick.

Meanwhile, Mackenzie selected three things: a Nerds rope, a bag of Twizzlers, and Sour Patch Watermelons. She held them all at once, and used a hesitant, shy tone that let Zack know immediately that she had an angle. She wanted something. But she didn’t want to say it.

“Which one do you think I should get?” she asked him, eyes scanning his face timidly. Hopefully.

Ah. Zack knew this game. Plenty of ex-lovers played it with him, a kind of emotional chicken, trying to coax things out of him that they weren’t sure he wanted to give. Mackenzie here wanted him to tell her to get all three. If he told her that, she wasn’t being a pig and asking for too much. He was technically offering.

It would be so easy to stick the screws to her. To insist she choose. He could even justify it, as he had done so many times with ex boyfriends. She had to learn to say what she wanted, didn’t she? Squeaky wheel got the grease. Couldn’t be expecting people to read her damn mind. Had to pick up some clear communication skills and shit. That was her responsibility. Not his.

But he couldn’t make himself do it. She was a starved child asking for extra candy. It was annoying of her to be indirect, but…maybe she grew up in a world where if she asked, she’d be told no. Or worse.

“Fuck it.” Zack shrugged. He walked up to the counter and said, “Give me…all the packs of Twizzlers, Nerds and Sour Patch you got, two large cherry ICEE’s, an extra large popcorn, two hot dogs…and some Nibs. Fuckin’ love Nibs.” He paused. “And sure, why not—throw some Raisinets in there too.”

Mackenzie goggled at him. “Freddy’s gonna be mad you brought home all this junk food.”

Zack wanted to say, “what Freddy doesn’t know won’t kill him.” But he found the words stuck like caramel to the back of his throat.

“I’ll tell him you were extra good today.” Zack winked instead. “Deserved a treat. The works.”

“I didn’t do anything though.” Mackenzie tucked her candy into her black sweatshirt front pocket, glancing around discretely as if she were stealing it even though Zack was literally extracting a credit card to pay as she spoke. 

“What can I say.” Zack saluted her sardonically. “That was some essay.”

It wasn’t. Even a cursory skim revealed that she’d written a sentence that went: “Everytime the time was twelve o’clock, it felt heavier like a weight.” 

But then again Nikki Minaj once wrote: “ But fuck who you want and fuck who you like // Dancehall life, there's no end in sight // Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” And she made millions of dollars for that bar. So art was pretty much dead anyway.

Mackenzie helped him move the glut of snacks into a flotilla of little cardboard boxes, and couldn’t seem to find a single snarky thing to say about it. 

All Zack could think was, “Take that, other Zack! Who’s the superior dad now?”

______

It was probably the CGI sharks that tipped Zack off. Gladiator II was not a film appropriate for a nine year old.

But Mackenzie was weirdly chill about the whole thing. The monkeys and rhinos ripping people to bits on screen didn’t seem to faze her. She watched people get butchered and beheaded with prop swords and drank her ICEE through a Twizzler like it sort of bored her. 

Zack glanced at her nervously, but she hardly twitched. To be fair, none of the deaths looked particularly real, and the performances didn’t exactly sell what was happening. He mostly just enjoyed ogling Pedro Pascal between checking in on Mackenzie. Ziggy didn’t seem overwrought either, but that was probably because he immediately dozed off against Zack’s chest, fingers curled tight into his t-shirt.

Zack’s instinct was to complain. About the stiff acting, the cheesy special effects, the derivative story. The original Gladiator hyped him up so much at age 16 that he and Freddy gave each other thumbs downs and hit each other with PVC pipes for MONTHS. The sequel was duller and more unnecessary that Attack of the Clones.

But he kept thinking about his own father. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was a b-tier movie at best. It was his first Harry Potter film though. He wasn’t much of a media critic at age 11 and probably would have enjoyed it if his father hadn’t actively shit on the experience the whole time. 

So he held his tongue and let Mack form her own opinions.

Despite claiming she wasn’t hungry, she ate a whole package of Twizzlers, both hot dogs, half the bucket of popcorn, and stole a bunch of Zack’s Nibs, too. So, either she was a liar or way hungrier than she was aware of.

“What do you think?” Zack whispered to her during a boring moment, just an over dramatic monologue Denzel Washington’s backstory.

Mackenzie squinted. “It’s long.”

“Not too scary for you?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“Dad and I used to watch horror movies,” she said. “It’s not as bad as Terrifier.”

Zack himself watched Terrifier on an acid trip and freaked out so bad he jumped out a window.

“That’s…” Zack coughed, trying not to betray his shock. “An intense movie.”

“It’s just a movie,” Mackenzie scolded him. “It isn’t real.”

Well, goddamn.

“Honestly the movie that messed me up the most is Megan Is Missing,” Mackenzie continued in a softer voice. “It’s really cheesy and bad. But the end scene. Where she gets stuffed in the barrel with her dead friend, and the guy just walks away…” She shook her head. “Way worse to me than someone being flipped upside down and sawed in half, for some reason.”

Zack blinked. Scrambled for a reply, but came up only with the truth.

“I have stuff like that too,” he told her. “The end of the Sophie Scholl movie? Where she and her conspirators all get their heads chopped off by Nazis. But you don’t see it. You just hear them say their final words and the blade falling?” Zack shuddered. “I don’t know why. I watched the REAL beheading of those Egyptian prisoners that leaked online, and that scene still got to me more.”

Mackenzie fully turned to stare at him, eyes near-black in the low-lights of the theater, glistening.

“Why does that happen?” she asked. “Why do some things just hit like that? While others don’t, even if they are technically worse?”

“I don’t know,” Zack confessed, stroking down Ziggy’s back, gently. “Brains are weird. The things that push in the deepest…they’re rarely what you think they’re gonna be. We remember random stuff. Can almost never be sure when you’re living it, what you’ll be left with.”

She seemed to turn this over in her mind for a couple seconds, before saying, eyes resolutely on the screen once more, “...I think I’ll remember this.” A beat passed. “I hope so.”

Zack swallowed. Didn’t know how to reply. Didn’t know how to do anything but burst out:

“Did that guy just bite a fucking monkey?” he pointed at the screen, indignantly. “I’m sorry, but did that just happen?”

She burst into giggles so raucous that for a second she really did look and sound her age.

____________

“What kind of a man,” Freddy shrieked at him the second he got home, “stops answering his phone, turns off his location-sharing, and lets me find out he’s missing from the NEIGHBOR, pissed off you never showed for carpool?”

Freddy surged in, hugged him so tight Zack could barely breathe. But then pulled back out abruptly. He practically shook with fury. Elaine carefully took Ziggy in her arms and ushered the kids to the other room.

“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” Freddy paced, like he couldn’t hold still. “I called the sheriff. I called every single business contact. Shawn Mendes tweeted about you going missing, Zack. Summer was about to start a search party and call in the Coast Guard or something!”

“We were just at a movie,” Zack explained, lamely.

 Ziggy and Mackenzie played in the living room under Freddy’s mom Elaine’s watchful eye, still in view. But Freddy did not seem to care about fully chewing him out in front of the kids. 

“You couldn’t text me?” Freddy sounded apoplectic. “Couldn’t spare five seconds to go, ‘Hey, Baby, playing hooky today with the kids?’ I thought you’d all been kidnapped. I was on the phone with the local police, and Ma was checking hospitals, and Billy was Googling recent abductions—and why would you SCARE US like that? Huh? You fucker, you made me think I’d lost my whole fucking family at once. I…”

Freddy sagged, trembling, choking. Zack could think of nothing to do but hold his arms out again. Freddy collapsed into them, clinging for dear life.

“Sorry,” Zack mumbled into his shoulder. 

No one had ever been so upset with him for flaking. Annoyed. Pissed. But this didn’t feel like a boyfriend angry he’d failed to show up for a funeral or movie premiere. Freddy’s anger wasn’t petty, wasn’t rooted in disappointment or foiled fantasies and expectations. It seemed to stem from…somewhere else entirely.

“My whole life flashed before my eyes.” Freddy wept, sniffling, body going slack as he clung. “My husband—gone. My kids too. No one could tell me anything. No one had seen you or heard from you. I called your mom. I called Sal. I called Ritchie. Ritchie said you bailed on Timbaland, Zack! What was I supposed to think, except the worst, huh?”

Freddy kissed his neck, and his mouth was warm and wet with tears. Zack felt a little ashamed of how hard it made him.

“I thought you’d be mad we ditched school to watch a movie,” Zack confessed, not knowing what else to say. God, it felt small. Such an inconsequential fear, compared to Freddy’s.

“The neighbor called,” Freddy repeated, voice hollow and far away. “And that freaked me out, because we always do carpool on Mondays. But I thought maybe you forgot, so I tried to call you. But your phone was off, and that freaked me out because you NEVER turn your phone off. And then I thought, if I don’t know where you are, I also don’t know where Ziggy is, so I called my mom to ask if you went to see her, but you didn’t. THEN I called Ritchie, who was about to call ME, wondering where you were, because Timbaland had left the studio pissed you blew him off. And so I called Summer, but she hadn’t heard from you. And then when I thought nothing could get worse, the school called and said Mack was missing, and I thought…what if you guys drove over a fucking bridge or something? What if you’d be kidnapped like in Taken? What if you got run over, pancaked by a semi truck? I…called every SINGLE person on your contact list and mine but no one-no one-no one had fucking heard from you, you fucker, I fucking…thought, I thought…”

Zack could hear the mounting terror and anxiety as Freddy recalled the experience of learning his entire family was off grid, and he just…felt weird. Entire production teams practically hunted him down when he went AWOL for concerts or shoots, sure. But it never felt like this. There was no possibility of getting defensive or justifying it or arguing with Freddy’s anger.

Because Zack knew instinctively what this was: family. He’d never had a real one, not like this, where losing each other was worse than losing a limb, lives wound so tight around each other that all losses were catastrophic and unthinkable. But he could feel the weight—deeper than attachment. This was not Freddy’s heart. …This was Freddy’s fucking life.

The most disturbing part occurred to Zack not ten seconds later. Freddy thought he should be relieved to have Zack back.

But Freddy didn’t actually have Zack back. Not the real Zack. Not the Zack he married.  

Zack hugged Freddy tighter and internally vowed to play the part better, to spare Freddy from the obviously unsurvivable knowledge that his husband was gone.

“At least you’re fine,” Freddy said. “The kids are fine. Everyone’s fine.” He breathed deeply, reassuring himself, and the guilt sunk its teeth deep into Zack’s heart.

“Yep,” Zack said, faintly. “All fine.”

Freddy's grip loosened around his shoulders, as he caught sight of something over Zack's shoulder. He stepped around Zack and put his hands on his hips.

"Uh, Babe," Freddy's voice was incredulous, "why is the entire coffee table covered in boxes of movie candy?"

As Zack and Freddy talked, Mackenzie had emptied out her entire candy trove from her school backpack. The evidence was damning, unmistakable.

...Oops.

Chapter Text

December 7th.

Zack zombie-dragged his body out of bed to silence his phone before it could ring. His deep subconscious knew his call time. He feared the alarm, the shrill pulse. So his brain woke him up at 6:27AM, early enough to kill it preemptively. 

Half-conscious, he made Eggos for Mack and mac-and-cheese for Ziggy—on a kick, would eat nothing else. Zack cut up miniature hot dog because Freddy fretted about Zig’s protein intake and bone health. But Ziggy would not eat them. At best, he’d toss them down to the dog. 

Zack counted it among miracles that he didn’t burn himself on the toaster oven, nor slice off his fingers. He drove Mack and the neighbor kids Jake and Ryler to school without crashing the SUV. Ziggy screamed through the ride. Bad separation-anxiety day. But Zack dutifully put in his earplugs and muddled through fifteen minutes of carpool agony. 

By the time he got to the studio, he was dead on his feet, body re-composited: pure fuzzy antimatter due to sleep deprivation.

Fuck this life . Waking up every day, smelling like baby drool and dog farts. Fuck Freddy’s happy shower singing. His throughout-the-day texts, checking in on Zack’s wellbeing. Sleep shirts full of holes and faded red sweatpants from Target. In his real life, he slept in silk underwear or nothing at all. In this life, a child blew his nose into Zack’s hair.

This was not his goddamned life. Every second of pressure made him more desperate to leave. …But also, somehow, more unable to. 

There was barely time to bat the yarn ball of dread around. Some producer guy with a MIDI keyboard and a Tascam barged into his office, as he tried to figure out what the hell a DAW was, to insist he fix a “problem” with “binaural levels.” 

This entire life was a series of small crises. No reward at the end.

_________

“Babe don’t forget Summer’s party tonight. ” 

He read Freddy’s text as he hid from the sound geeks in the studio bathroom.

Fucking vultures. He had no idea what a “whistle tube” was. Or why they had to “spin them” to…produce a “range of octaves” and generate and tune a “patch” for a sample. Why couldn’t they use an already-made sample? What did it mean that the “frequency has to match the organic levels?” 

He felt stupid, like an itch inside his skull. He wanted to crawl out of his skin to escape. Freddy’s text added fuel to the fire of his burnout. A fucking party was the last thing he wanted to do.

“No,” he texted back.

“Aight I’ll tell Mel she doesn’t have to stay with the kids” 

No fucking escape. Zack wanted to pour his spite into his reply. But that would only lead to an annoying conversation about his feelings. Every interaction was a capitulation. 

“Don’t its fine. Just tired.”

Freddy thumbs-up’d his message. Bleak. Was this marriage? It felt like a hostage negotiation. 

Ziggy in his sling hung heavy as the boulder the gods cursed Sisyphus to roll up the hill. This version of Zack’s life brimmed with pointless hardship. The kid who refused to speak but eternally clung to him. The traumatized girl who punished her adoptive parents for crimes they never committed. The thankless job, squabbling amongst techs about “analogue modeled plug-ins” and “clean, articulate guitar tones with tons of headroom.” For what? The public would only see the face, the performer, not the wonks in the wings who obsessed over the bullshit background noise.

Why had this Zack chosen the path of greatest resistance in every category? Why didn’t he just cash in his generational wealth, buy Freddy a nanny, and go tour for six months, adored by fans while tripling his net worth—all for minimal effort?

Other Zack could have had it all. 

He knew it was true, because he had it, in his real life. If he’d wanted Freddy too, he could have had him. He could have given him this stupid domestic, white-picket bullshit, but he’d have done it way better than this.

He would have got Freddy some normal kids, birthed by healthy surrogates instead of adopted like trembling shelter mutts from the scariest pound in the city. Yo, it was difficult to train a traumatized dog—much easier to buy a puppy. Train good behavior from the beginning.

Plus, he’d equip Freddy with an army of help. Nannies, tutors, maybe ship the kids to a French finishing school for a year or two, military school if they had personality deficits. Why try to fix issues himself, when he could delegate the problem to professionals?

Zack could have built this life for maximum pleasure and impact. Easier along every axis. Then when it was running by itself, go off gallivanting, exploring the world and playing every stadium worth playing. And return home when he felt like it, on his own schedule, well-rested, well-adored by groupies. Rich, famous, and unbothered.

Why did the other Zack choose instead to run himself ragged? He could have been 100 times the man he settled for becoming. A global sensation, not a tired soundboard guy by day and child servant by night.

Zack glared into the mirror, staring down his reflection as if confronting the other version of himself. Rage roiled. How could Freddy do this to him? Let him settle?

“Zack? Are you done in there? Sal thinks the reverb and delay is muddling the track when we layer it. We need to re-mic the drum and do another take—can you call the guy, please? He’ll listen to you if you. Ask for another session. Tell him we didn’t make enough space in the comp. Phase alignment is weird and the arrangement balance is off. We’re losing detail.” 

The producer’s voice woke Ziggy, who cried into Zack’s chest. Fussy, miserable tone indicated he probably crapped his pants.

God, Zack knew how the kid felt.

_______

Zack had a PhD in parties. His true life was full of them: every stripe and flavor. The best perk of being a rockstar was the invitations. No shortage. Everyone wanted him on the scene, everywhere. His assistant’s main job was making sure his social calendar was stuffed to perfection.

He could tell from the invitations, which parties would be awesome and which would suck ass. Text from an anon number with geo coordinates? Awesome. Cream coloured RSVP printed on cardstock? Suck-o. He had a vetting system for weddings that needed to be attended and ones where he would just send an opulent gift and congrats via email, which afterparties were unmissable even if he had COVID or would certainly run into an ex. 

His manager’s birthday fell into the category of “skip with a good excuse.” Except that in this universe, his manager was also his best friend. When he said he wouldn’t go, Freddy demanded, “Love, are you okay? What’s up?” 

Freddy would probably 51/50 him if he told the truth. As fun as a thorazine drip sounded, he’d rather not be high in a psych ward. Way better places to be high.

But not at Summer’s party, because this party sucked ass.

Children were in attendance. Zack’s children, but still. Any party with cupcakes on the food table—hell, any party that had a food table—would be slow. 

Zack was used to bursting into a room, bee-lining to the bar, floating around, talking to people for short snippets. Finding whoever had the good shit and getting the real party started. But Freddy met him at the door the moment he arrived.

“Zack.” He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath until the very second they reunited. “God, c’mere.”

Freddy hugged him tight and kissed him hungrily. He also kissed Ziggy’s head. Zack got the sinking feeling that Freddy’d remain at his side the entire night. No floating anywhere; this was why they called marriage being “tied down.”

Ziggy did not like the strange environment at first and hid inside the flap of Zack’s leather jacket. But he came out of his shell as soon as Freddy played with him. Grabbed his toes and wiggled his legs. Made farty noises on his arms. Used his hands to give himself “moose antlers.” Ziggy forgot about the noise and crowd and gave himself entirely over to giggles.

“Happy boy,” Freddy declared, proud. “Can I hold him?”

Zack was delighted to hand him over. He’d been holding the kid more or less the entire day. The lightness when he got free was unsettling, odd, unbalanced. He’d grown used to his chains. Ziggy’s eyes stayed on Zack’s face, even as Freddy took him. And Zack found himself reaching, offering Ziggy a finger to hold onto, so he wouldn’t feel nervous about the transition. Ziggy took it, solemnly, held on for a long, meaningful beat before releasing him, reluctant.

“You should get something to eat,” Freddy commanded. “Did you skip lunch? Please go get a hot dog, babe. You look like shit.”

No one told Zack what the fuck to do. His agent occasionally reminded him to eat before a show so he wouldn’t throw up or pass out on stage during a long set (again). But Freddy wasn’t bossing him around to pump him full of energy and steady his stomach. 

No, the idea that he was hungry, suffering bothered Freddy. He wanted to fix it, saw Zack’s discomfort as his own personal issue. Fucking bizarre, even more bizarre that Zack could tell that this was the case.

He wanted to fight back. He had no desire to eat a burnt backyard hot dog prepared by Summer’s father on a grill. He would rather drink five slammers and make out with the poolboy. But Freddy touched his cheek briefly, looked into his eyes. “Are you okay? You can tell me.” 

Zack couldn’t find it in himself to resist or make Freddy worry. He ate the damn hot dog. 

The party rushed around him. He felt like a rock in a stream, water breaking over and under him, eroding him from every angle. Summer’s condo was no-nonsense; it was fairly clear she barely used it. The photographs on the walls—stills of cityscapes and mountain sides—probably came with the furniture. Not a speck of dust anywhere.

Summer had grown up hot. Zack was gay as they came—but he could tell. The woman was a stunner. Her pretty, ageless face, shiny hair? Dead giveaways. Plus, the tiny body. Like a porcelain doll. A doll with an incredibly mean bossy voice, some things never changed. He barely remembered her from school, but her nasty, relentless authority came floating back to him from the annals of deep subconscious. 

The Summer he remembered had no friends. She did have a crush on Freddy in the eighth grade and sat at their lunch table a couple times. But she promptly stopped when Zack called her out for her embarrassing fangirl behavior. They weren’t on the best terms after that.

But this Summer, in the bad universe, seemed to think they were practically family. Mack called her “Auntie Summer.” Summer cooed over Ziggy, voice soft—almost maternal. It was Summer’s birthday, but she brought the kid a blow up guitar toy to play with that lit up and played “Welcome To The Jungle” when he pushed buttons embedded in the neck. 

“Thanks a lot Summer,” Freddy teased. 

Delightedly, Ziggy pushed the button and restarted the song over and over and over. He was going to break it. At least he seemed to be enjoying himself. He was the only one. God, why did kids need to make annoying noises all the time?

“He’s got so big.” Summer’s eyes shone, round and moony. “You guys are doing incredible with him. He’s twice the size he was last month.”

Freddy put a hand on her arm, grateful and devotional. 

“Thanks to you,” he said very seriously. “He wouldn’t even be here without you.”

Zack wanted to ask. He could have sworn Ziggy was adopted. The government files, the foster videos. Summer couldn’t be the surrogate. So what did Freddy mean?

He couldn’t press. He was supposed to already know that information.

“Well. I had ulterior motives. Evan and I have a date on Saturday.” She sniffed. 

Freddy’s mouth dropped open with delight.

“Fuck yeah, you dumped the dickhole?” He bounced Ziggy with his enthusiasm. Ziggy did not enjoy being left out of the grown up conversation and fisted two handfuls of Freddy’s long hair. He winced, but spoke calmly to Ziggy, correcting with love: “...Baby, too hard. You’re hurting me. Be gentle.”

Ziggy let go, and Zack couldn’t help it. He clocked the interaction as proof Ziggy understood words …and an ever-present worry loosened slightly in his chest. 

….Was this parenthood? Worrying about things he had no control over constantly? Awful. Why would anyone agree to this? 

“Nick and I are on a break,” Summer elaborated. She thoughtlessly reached over to push Ziggy’s tiny sneaker back onto his foot; kid was always trying to kick his shoes off. “And you know what they say. Never let a man think you’d wait for him.”

“Hey, you know what I think. By all means. Date our lawyer. Date anyone but that bloodless psychopath.”

Zack’s lawyer—a woman named Gloria with a guillotine bob and clipped Colombian accent—in his true universe was a bloodless psychopath. In truth, so was Summer. Hell, so was he. But this universe generally seemed less populated with utilitarians.

“Zack, babe. Can you check on Mack?” Freddy asked. Even as he sent Zack away, he pulled him by the waist, right up to his body. “I wanna make sure she’s okay. Ask her if Troye snapped her bra strap again.”

Zack had no idea where Mack disappeared off to. There were no other children he could see here. At Mack’s age, Zack would have fully climbed the back fence and escaped to the nearest bonfire in the woods or parent-free home hang out he could find. Couldn’t keep him on a scene like this with a gun to his head. But Freddy seemed confident his daughter stayed on the premises.

“‘Kay.” He said, and before he turned to go, Freddy handed Ziggy to him once more. Because of course—he could not go ten minutes without being re-saddled with the little limpet.

…It was affirming, he hated to admit, that Ziggy loved him so much more than Freddy. If he left the room, and Ziggy could not see him, he would scream. Zack’s fans in his own universe screamed when he entered a room back in his teen heartthrob years. But not when he left. 

_____

Billy Flittner entered the backyard wearing a bolero jacket that appeared to be made of pink fur. But no one turned to stare at him except for Zack.

The second Zack saw Billy’s face—nothing at all like it had looked on the roof, fake lashes and glittery cheekbones, rather than tear streaked, 7 o’clock shadow and the deep set black bags of existential exhaustion—everything rushed back to him. Edgar, the senator, the stolen cigarettes. Two icy fists reached out, seized his lungs, squeezed. Zack’s delayed gasp exited his body like a ghost expelled.

He forgot about Mack, about Ziggy still clamped to him like he’d been welded to Zack’s body. Forgot about Freddy, who asked him to do one simple thing and trusted him to get it done. All he saw was his one desperate chance…to regain what he’d lost. He ran, forced his way through the maddeningly unhurried group of people standing around drinking pina coladas and bullshitting about their shitty jobs. Billy eluded him, dreamily, a strange pink tropical bird, floating away like a mirage, disappearing through the screen door—

Zack seized his shoulder.  

“Babe.” Billy turned like he was barely surprised, and air kissed each of Zack’s cheeks. He smelled like Jo Malone—Princess Kate’s signature favorite orange blossom scent. Zack knew it because his favorite fuck buddy in his own universe liked it too, sprayed it on his throw pillows so it’d subtly tilt the scent scape of his bed. 

“You fucker,” Zack hissed at him, not even bothering to keep his voice down. “What have you fucking done? Fix it. Right now.”

Zack didn’t mean to, but his hands moved on their own, to pat Ziggy’s back, soothe the wordless worry that rose within him: he didn’t want to scare the kid, with his rage. Guilt swarmed him for a horrible, nauseous second. He’d been thoughtless, but that wasn’t fair to Ziggy. He wouldn’t understand. He trusted Zack. Couldn’t just—

Fucking, fuck, he had to get out of here. He poured the intensity of his desperation into a menacing glare, which Billy did not seem to clock at all.

Billy reached out…to touch his hair. Not touch—fix. This fucking dork version of Zack had a very specific hairstyle—which he gleaned from pictures around the house. Up, in a fussy quiff, every day since the eighth grade.  To get Freddy off his back (“Babe, are you okay? You look kinda tired. Do you need a break?”) , he tried to recreate it. His own version looked sad and defeated: stringy, lopsided. Billy tutted over the greasy, drooping strands, disturbed.

“Zacky, you are a mess. You’re not sleeping. And you’re wearing brown loafers with a pleated pant. Not even a Gucci moment. I spy with my little eye…off the rack Calvin Klein. And not so much as a lapel pin to show you’re still trying. Do not quit on me, Daddy-o. Parents can still be hot. You are better than this. I’m going to have some skincare messengered to your office.”

“Stop it.” Zack swatted Billy’s hand away. “Stop shitting around. I know. I know it was you.”

Billy sighed, long sufferingly. He took a step back, evaluated Zack’s hair once more, shook his hear, and resumed his mission to separate clumps with skillful fingers. 

“Okay…okay…I admit it,” Billy said, looking truly guilty. “I did stand up that suit you set me up with. Ghosted him too. Look, I know he was your colleague, but in my defense, I said that it’s not a Libra month, and I can’t fall in love unless I have the spiritual energy. Plus I scammed his Insta. He wore athletic socks with Thom Browne. That’s a shootable offense, Zack. It’s not on me.”

Zack smacked Billy’s hands away and took a healthy step back. The slight pulling and detangling process was starting to sting, to give him a headache.

For one glassy, beautiful instant, he felt it: this was it. The universe righted. He was going back where he came from. No more late nights, spooning porridge into a baby’s face while Freddy cracked Exorcist jokes and leaned on his shoulder. Both of them so tired they could barely move, Freddy staying up just to keep him company, though Ziggy-watching required only one person. No more Mack screaming that she hated him for telling her it was time for school. No more pumping his own gas. Waking up before the sun to squint into the sunrise glare for carpool. No more sensible vegan-yogurt-substitute. No more sound techs pompously explaining “gala level-crystalline production, tight bass, the importance of the 2:13 mark.” 

He was free. At last. From all of it. 

And for just one second, he wanted to say, “never mind.” Wanted to disappear back into the crowd, slip back to Freddy’s side, act like he’d never seen Billy at all. Just carry on—

But that was ridiculous. He shook the notion free and faced Billy once more, shoring up his determined rage against sentimental nonsense. His mind was spiralling free, identity cracking under the pressure of reality breakage. All the more reason to get the fuck out. 

“Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?” Zack didn’t mean to start pleading, but he felt trapped inside an hourglass, now buried so deep the slow trickle felt immediately deadly. “I’m suffocating. This isn’t right. You have to send me back.”

“...What?” Billy’s face changed. All the bravado, defensiveness…familiarity, affection…gone. Replaced with one fucking thing and one alone…

Confusion. Pure and simple. This Billy, this version of him? Had absolutely no idea what Zack was talking about.

“Are you okay?” Billy sounded angry—in a way Zack had only recently learned meant…love. Anger had so many tones. In a previous life, Zack thought he knew them all. But this one, “I’m angry because I’m worried about you, and anger is the force driving the instinct to help, to fix, to protect myself from falling apart too because your well-being is so important to me”...this was an entirely new face for the emotion he thought he knew.

Zack shook his head. He backed away. He clutched Ziggy so he wouldn’t jostle around too much, and fled. If Billy forced him to explain himself, he might actually fucking cry.

No escape. No exit. No help coming. No one even knew he was drowning.

________

He wandered, wounded, until he found Mack exactly where he would have hidden, if he couldn’t find a way to leave. In the master bedroom, with a stolen bottle of beer between her knees. She stared at it, defiantly. Startled when Zack entered, but clutched the stolen alcohol tighter. She glared, daring him to take it away, to scold her.

Zack smiled; at ten years old, he also stole his first beer. Well, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, technically. And puked it into his mother’s potted begonia.

Fear flickered across Mack’s face even as she sneered. She had not yet outgrown the all-encompassing, pre-adolescent desire not to get in trouble. Zack had been an early adopter in that regard; it helped his dad was pissed at him as a default setting. He was always in trouble anyway. Couldn’t fear what had already come to pass.

He walked over, took a seat on the bed by Mackenzie’s side, and casually leaned back.

“No bottle opener? Amateur move.”

She winced, eartips red, eyes glassy.

“My real dad let me,” she insisted, voice cracking. “He let me, sometimes.”

Zack shrugged.

“Parties make me wanna drink too.”

“I’ve never seen you drink anything bad.” She fiddled uncomfortably with the wet label of the beer, affixed to the glass with condensation.  

“Dude. You don’t know me that well.” Zack relished the way her mouth dropped open with surprise. Kids didn’t know what they didn’t know. Naivete? Hilarious.

“...I hit Troye with my binder today. He didn’t snap my bra again. But he was laughing at me. Probably saying shit behind my back. He’s always saying shit. I just wanted him to stop.”

“Binder? Why binder? I fill that metal water bottle for you every day. Why didn’t you use that?”

“...What? Wh...what?”

“I mean don’t start fights you can’t finish. Troye’s bigger than you, right? Gotta end it before it even starts. Gotta—” he pantomined swinging a bat, fast and hard. “Bam. Down for the count. Too scared to fuck with you again.”

God, what was Freddy teaching these kids?

“You…you’re not going to make me apologize?” 

“Why? Are you sorry?”

“No.”

“Then don’t apologize. There are only two options. Say nothing or crush your enemies with the truth.”

“I got in trouble with the dean though He said they’d kick me out if I kept starting fights.”

“Pfff. We pay what, 20k for that school every semester?” 

“I don’t want to be kicked out.”

“As if! They want my 20k. Even if they do kick you out, there are a million schools that will happily cash our checks. Who cares? The government says you have to go to school. Worse comes to worse, you go to public. People have survived worse.”

He carefully adjusted Ziggy’s jacket, falling off one shoulder. He’d grown sleepy, drooped against him. Sort of sweet. Kid needed to catch up on rest so he could grow. Only slept sound in Zack’s arms.

No one ever trusted or needed him like this. Strange, disconcerting tears rose hotly at the thought. He scoffed at himself. 

Mack wiggled her toes in her purple socks. 

“Think Freddy will be mad?” She asked. A test. Would Zack keep her secret? Was he on her side or Freddy’s?

“Wanna know something about your…uh. Papa.” Ugh Papa. The title Freddy gave himself; it made Zack’s hair stand on end. Too…mushy, too silly, too much . “He is so worried about you. You could be cashing the pity card so much harder. Getting away with fucking murder.”

“Zack. Are you okay? You’re…different. You let me skip school. You don’t care if I fight. You didn’t even ask if I brushed my teeth. Usually you make me brush my teeth ‘til the little hourglass thing runs out.”

Zack snorted, humorless, nostrils flared with disbelief.

“No way. I’m not okay. Are you kidding me? My life fucking sucks.”

“...What?”

“I wake up every morning and haul your ass to school. I carry your brother everywhere. By the way, did you know he likes to lick his fingers and touch my face? I have a permanent low grade cold. I barely get to sit down and eat. All day at work, people just shout boring technical garbage at me. And what’s my reward for all that? I get to pick up toys from the floor, wash your dirty dishes, sleep for four or five hours, then pester you about the homework—if you even bothered to do it.”

Mack's face went blank with shock. Waiting for him to say, “but it’s okay though, ‘cause I’m your dad, and that’s what dads do.” Comforting crap. 

Well, tough toenails. He already had to bust his ass. Why should he also take the edge off for her comfort? 

“I could have been so much more.” He knew he shouldn’t unload on a ten year old, but it felt so good to confide in someone who understood, instead of just uncomprehending Ziggy. “I could have won Grammys. I’d be a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. Sleep in ‘til 4PM every day. Done coke off the asses of the young and hungry. Instead? I have to go to Costco on a fucking Thursday evening and run through the aisles to make sure we get some of the big pears on sale before they’re all gone. My life is small. Three people total give a fuck if I live or die.”

Mack picked at the black polish on her thumbnail self-consciously. She shook her hair over her face, shrinking down more the longer he ranted.

“I think you have a Grammy,” she said, quietly. “Producer of the Year. Twice. I saw it in the living room.”

“Who the hell cares about the geek prizes? I could have headlined the Superbowl twice by now. But instead…congrats! Here’s a trophy for helping someone else get famous. Enjoy being a footnote in someone else’s Wikipedia page.”

Mack put her knees to her chest and squeezed.

“Why didn’t you then? If you could have done all that. Why are you here, when you could be somewhere better?”

A very good question, honestly. Zack exhaled, rubbing his face. He’d reached the end of the things he could tell her and not sound insane.

“Your…Papa, I guess.” He let the bitterness seep into his voice. “I guess I fell in love with him like a fucking sucker and ended up here.”

“You don’t love Freddy anymore?” She tried to hide her dismay but sat up straighter in alarm, fingers like claws dug into her pants.

“That’s, uh. Complicated.” In both universes, true.

“But he loves you. I can tell. He loves you, and you’re saying you’re mad at him.”

“Not mad,” Zack lied. “Not at him. At me. For…” 

He gazed around himself at Summer’s un-slept-in bedroom. Her empty jewelry tree, the framed photo of herself, Zack, and Billy for some reason, dressed in matching tuxes with dark sunglasses, like they were the Blues Brothers. 

Everything.

“...For adopting me and Ezekiel,” Mack finished for him.

“Dude. I wasn’t even talking about you. Is that a kid thing? Making shit that ain’t about you, about you?” 

He shifted Ziggy to his other arm. The one currently holding him up had gone numb. Mack’s expression collapsed into dismayed chagrin.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. 

She wasn’t the only one. He also didn’t know what to do. Panic seized his heart. Was he psychologically damaging this child? Or was this a nothing-conversation, and the weirdness of the body swap was making him overthink an insignificant moment? She’d probably forget all about it in a few days anyway. Kids were like Etch-a-Sketches. He didn’t remember most of his own childhood. Shake a kid enough, and you could reset most anything.

“If you’re not gonna drink that…” he reached over, grabbed the beer, pried it open with his belt buckle. He drank with abandon, drained about half in three gulps.

A few drops splattered into Ziggy’s jacket. With dull and tired eyes, he watched them absorb into the fabric

“...You’re different,” she repeated, low, almost to herself. 

“People change,” he snapped back. 

She might as well accept it now.

__________

Zack did not want to sit for a family photo. The last time he did, he was seven years old, and his mother parted his hair with a wet comb and told him he had his grandmother’s eyes. She said it real loving, but what kid wanted to be told they had a dead person’s body parts stuck in his face?

Freddy seemed excited. He put Ziggy in a yellow bowtie and white vest. Zack was apparently expected to wear a soft, burgundy cashmere sweater under a leather jacket. And Freddy himself put on cozy plaid, his long, wild hair tied tidily in a man-bun.

“You look hot,” Freddy proclaimed when Zack trudged out of their closet. “How long do you need to do your hair?”

Freddy came up behind him while he brushed the hair up, futilely trying to get the gel to do its damn job. He put the free hand—the one not holding Ziggy around—Zack’s waist.

“Is it freaky that I think it’s sexy that we’re doing this?” Freddy murmured in his ear. “I love that we’re lame dads together who take family pictures. It’s hot that we’re each other’s emergency contacts.”

Zack flinched. This domestic shit was killing him. Not sexy at all. Freddy drew back, injured.

“Zack…” he thoughtlessly tucked the tag of Zack’s sweater in at the back of his neck. “Love. Come on. You’re…like. A million miles away. …Are you stressed? Mad at me? Dude, just tell me. Please talk to me? It’s freaking me out.”

Zack sighed. Irritation rose up in his gut. He was here, wasn’t he? Showing up. Putting on stupid church clothes and doing his hair for a dumb picture he didn’t even want to take. What more could Freddy want from him? This life was so goddamned relentless.

Freddy all but pinned him against the sink, slid his free hand down the side of his face—but the look on his face. This…sadness. This pathetic, desperate fear. Zack had done nothing whatsoever. He couldn’t understand why Freddy looked so desolate, nor what he searched Zack’s face for.

“Z. I love you. Where are you?”

“Here. Where the fuck do you think I am?”

Freddy blanched, all color drained from his usually ruddy cheeks, and his brows squirmed in distress. His grip on Zack loosened, but he didn’t step back. Zack looked at Ziggy instead to alleviate his guilt, who was trying fruitlessly to yank off his bowtie. 

“Never,” said Freddy hoarsely, “in all the years I have loved you, have I ever felt…” he swallowed, forced himself to be brave, plow on, “that you were annoyed with me. But now…” He shook his head, as if the notion hit him painfully in the temple and he was trying to reorient. “What did I do? How do I stop? Z, I… Can’t we go back? You seem so…unhappy.”

Zack reared back, shame like a spike through his diaphragm—the pain was exquisite, sharp, airless.

“Of course I’m unhappy,” he grit out. “Of fucking course I am. Look what you did to me.” He gestured around. “I’m fucking reduced. Diminished. A fucking servant to children. Oh, now you want me to have a good attitude, too?” He desperately wanted to spit in disgust, barely held it in. “Grow up.”

Freddy froze. Every muscle locked in place. Finally, he took a step back, wobbling as if dizzied. 

Zack felt both things: the familiar power of it. In any universe, it was so easy to wound Freddy, to pierce through to his unprotected heart. But he also felt the regret. It was no true victory to harm someone who always trusted you. Just made you rotten to the core.

With this Freddy, he didn’t even have his usual excuses. His version of Freddy had been trained not to come too close, that he’d have his head bitten off for his efforts. It was his own dumb fault for approaching anyway. This Freddy didn’t know better. Had never been dealt any such blow.

‘Til now.

“I know this was my dream.” Freddy pulled Ziggy to his chest, stroked his back for comfort. The tension seemed to make Ziggy nervous. He kept looking to Zack with those huge, dark eyes, wanting to be in his arms. But for once, Freddy made no move to exchange custody.

“But…” Freddy took a deep breath.

Zack thought this was the apology. The groveling. Freddy would confess to dragging him down into the mud of this mediocre life out of jealousy. He couldn’t shine, so didn’t want Zack to either. He’d doomed them both with his insecurity. 

Zack would hold it against him, deny him any relief, let him suffocate in his well deserved shame, for robbing him of—

“You chose me.” Freddy’s voice ran hard as steel. “You stood in front of our families and all our friends. You promised to love me. Forever.”

No I didn’t. I never did—

“You planned this family with me. I didn’t force you. No one did.” Freddy shook his head, softened. “I’ve watched you become an incredible father, step up and build this beautiful life with me. Every brick. You’ve never given me any reason to doubt. You gave me the courage, the faith, to believe this was even possible and…” Freddy turned his back. “If you’re buckling now, if the pressure’s too much, I understand. Things are harder than we thought. But it’s crazy to hear you blame me. To stand there and imply I ruined your life. Just fucking crazy, Zack. Because I thought you of all people understood that no one is responsible for your choices but you.”

The hurt and shock rolling off in thunderous waves Freddy as he walked away was incredible; Zack felt them like a second pulse.

___________

He felt pathetic hiding out in a treehouse, but it was the only place he could think of where Freddy wouldn’t look for him.

It was, of course, a great fucking tree house. Sealed against weather, carpeting, lit with strings of yellow fairy lights, pillows and blankets stacked in the corner. A fucking bookshelf, next to a beanbag for reading. And of course a series of weird plastic instruments made from PVC pipes and bamboo and hollowed out gourds, clearly handmade. So the banging and caterwauling could continue even outside. Zack glared at the pile, even though it was silent now.

He didn’t know how he knew for sure, but he was certain his doppelganger had built this stupid thing his kids would surely outgrow in just a couple years. The details were too familiar. Glow stars on the ceiling—like in Freddy’s bedroom growing up, a sight as familiar to Zack as his own bedroom ceiling. The books on the shelf: Cyrano De Bergerac. A Christmas Memory. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Freak the Mighty. His own elementary school favorites. 

His dad made him reseal the roof before every rainy season, and he could see how this version of Zack put that knowledge to work here. He could feel the intent of this place, rising from the boards like the scent of pinewood and brick: good memories. It was a place meant to hold them, build and bolster the creation of dreamy, childhood moments, pre-dipped in nostalgia.

He wanted to cry. So fucking stupid. Why set these kids up for disappointment? The world was shit. They may as well learn now. 

He laid flat on his back, gazing at the plastic garbage galaxy hovering so close above. A ceiling whimsically levelled for a child’s height—but for Zack, low and tomblike, enclosing him in a hopeless box. A strange urge seized him to seize one of those books, disappear into it like he was ten years old again, friendless, hiding out from his father and wishing himself somewhere better. But he hadn’t read a book in years. Barely even heard music anymore, just empty sound cues, filling up his brain with noise and voices. Hadn’t so much as hummed as he worked, taken a long walk to think deeply in the quiet, or scribbled down a word that rattled around his brain all day, the intrusive thought that formed the beginning of a song he’d write…

He’d lost so much when he lost his friendship with stillness. There was once a quiet voice in his head that whispered comfort, inspiration, and future in his ear whenever it was quiet. But the echoing silence around him now spoke to the violence he’d committed against those intuitive whispers. He was truly alone. He wished he didn’t know it, but he couldn’t even blame the knowledge on this alternate reality.

On some level, he’d always known.

Just as he thought he might sink down forever into the depths of despair…a familiar voice startled him so badly he flailed and smashed his hand into the wall.

“Well, well. Looks like someone’s slacking off.”

“OW! Fuck!” Zack shook his throbbing hand. “What the fuck, Billy, how did you get up here?”

But as he examined the Billy who sat, criss-cross-applesauce amid the soft, velour, primary colored cushions meant for children, Zack could tell immediately this was not the Billy from the party. Though he still wore the pink jacket, the glitter, even the dangly diamond earring…

On his wrist? An olive branch tattoo. And his eyes were darker, sharper, swirling with terrible, fathomless power. 

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.

Chapter Text

2024.

Zack woke up shivering. He assumed it was a fever. Who could be cold, tucked under Freddy’s warm, hairy body every night? Or with a little koala-boy for a son, breathing hot air onto his face, for that matter. Ugh, being sick sucked—Ziggy would almost certainly catch it from him.

But his forehead was dry, not clammy. Throat clear, no soreness. And he was alone in bed, for the first time in nearly eight years.

Alarmed, he sat up, fingers clawed into the empty sheets beside him. Cool, smooth, skinlike sheets—so fleshily silken they were practically alive. The room was dark and still. No shapes lurking in the dark: the giant teddy bear Freddy won him when they were teenagers hulking in the corner, the laundry hamper they never managed to keep empty for more than a few hours.

A chill raked down his spinal column; only then did he notice his bare chest and lack of underwear. Not right. Having kids meant remembering, usually, even after the most passionate night of making love to his husband, to throw a shirt back on. One never knew, after all, if there would be a vomiting emergency or anti-nightmare cuddling services requested. Better to get ready by staying ready. Zack hadn’t slept naked since before Ziggy came to them.

Not right. None of it was right.

He tried to get to his feet, but swooned, head-sick. The nausea unbalanced him, brain rolling like a heavy stone, lurching against the inside of his skull. His mouth was dry, stomach high and queasy in his abdomen. When he inhaled, the room smelled antiseptic, stinging. His vision swam as he quavered. Air rushed through his windpipe, clean and merciless. No burning dust scent from the heater; Mack needed it when she slept. The cold triggered her night terrors. Zack sniffed. There was no lingering chili scent from Freddy’s recent vegan chili surprise in the Crockpot. 

It took him a full minute or so to realize he was hung over. Fuck. He hadn’t been hung over since his wedding day. But this was worse, not just pounding headache, tight skin, aching gut full of bile. He felt…wrung out, drained, mentally unsteady. His thoughts skipped as if in a panic. His heart raced. His face ached; the migraine radiated through his jaw, pressed behind his eyes. 

He couldn’t remember having anything to drink the night before, and couldn’t remember falling asleep anywhere but his own house. He glanced around the room empty of familiar shapes, the too smooth sheets—charcoal gray, not flannel blue. Wrong. It was all wrong. His body was wrong; the smell was wrong; the room was wrong. Where was Freddy? Where was Ziggy?

Where the fuck was he?

He squinted in the low light, trying to find a light switch. But the walls were blank. He teased Freddy about the fingerpaint collage Ziggy made with his physical-therapist-for-babies, which looked like a giant bacteria colony in a dish. But its absence disturbed him. Gone were Freddy’s high school soccer medals, the musicianship plaques they’d accumulated over the years, together and apart. Wedding and family photos. Not a single band poster hanging on with painter’s tape—the clearest sign Freddy did not live here. Freddy’s bedroom, locker, even his car bore evidence of his obsession with Arctic Monkeys. New Found Glory. blink-182.

Zack fought through the vomit-sensation, a rising burn in his esophagus, to stand and stumble for the door. He had to find Freddy—did he have Ziggy? Was Ziggy calling for him? How long had it been? Were they okay? Freddy wouldn’t take Ziggy too far unless it was an emergency; Ziggy would scream, hated to be separated from Zack for more than a few minutes, attachment needs, co-regulating, shared nervous system—Zack knew, Freddy knew, just for now, they had to make sure Ziggy always felt safe, so he could—

As soon as Zack was up, unforgiving white light snapped on, and for a moment he genuinely believed he’d been hit by a train, gone to meet his Maker. 

He coughed, throat raw, a vile taste in his mouth, hunching as the light burned his eyes. And somehow in the blinking brightness…the silence felt more oppressive. No whir of the ancient heater hissing to life; no matter how many times they changed the filter, it still seemed to resent use. No whine and wail of Mack’s anime-influenced music taste straining through her door. No Ziggy, gurgling a laugh or shrieking, birdlike, alarming in its volume but relieving because he was screaming at all. 

And no Freddy, burping or belting a song or yelling for him to get his ass into the kitchen to taste these goddamned waffles, Babe!

Zack yanked a handful of his own hair and pulled, hard, searching for signs he was in a dream. But the pain did not ground him, did not register as anything but more stimulation, more wrongness. 

“Ziggy?” he yelled, gagging as the sound ruptured whatever fragile peace his body managed to hold. He knew it was pointless but called out anyway. “Baby? Freddy? Mack?” He whimpered. “...Anyone?”

A single photo of him—but not him, the face was different, nose and chin and mouth rebalanced, like the weird Snapchat filter of himself—standing next to Steve Tyler sat on the dresser. Six inches apart, both unsmiling.

Other than that, it was an empty room. Finally, Zack doubled over, and threw up on the hardwood.

___

Zack didn’t know what to do. The thought of coffee made him ill—what could be a clearer sign that something in the universe had gone horribly wrong? He stumbled through the strange apartment half convinced he was a ghost, materialized here in death to haunt a Manhattan penthouse full of unfamiliar nothing. Doomed to spiral, made of memory he was unable to hold in a linear fashion.

But maybe he was alive after all, because he did remember. Not how he got here, but everything that mattered. He knew where he belonged. So he set about trying to get there. He needed to find a phone. Any phone, any tether to the world outside, any way to get out of here. 

He stumbled through the apartment, which was strange, like a museum exhibit. Black marble cubes instead of tables. White, pincushion-like seats, stuffed and starchy. Zack could not imagine one person had ever sat in them. Windows on all sides. Nothing but breakable panes, sharp corners, and pristine, light-colored fabrics. No kids lived here. No Freddy either. If his husband were here even five minutes, there’d be handprints on the glass, from Freddy pressing up against it to see the city below. “Love! Love, look we’re up so high!”

Zack grunted as he whipped his head around, searching for any sign of a phone. So he could call and Uber and go the fuck home. Then maybe a doctor. There was an evil sensation in his body, squeezing, tightening, like his blood thickened to jelly and wouldn’t flow right, leaving his extremities cold. He couldn’t stop shaking.

He’d tried to clean up his vomit, but the kitchen was like a staged room in a model home. The appliances worked, but the cabinets were empty. Vodka in the freezer, but nothing in the fridge besides one long-wilted, yellowing bag of chives. One set of utensils in a drawer: one fork, one knife, one spoon. Dusty, unused glasses in the cabinets. And not one roll of paper towels nor so much as a dishrag. Certainly no cleaning supplies. Had anyone ever cooked in this place?

He resorted to cleaning it with a bathmat, unable to find a towel, and then put the bath mat in the kitchen sink. There was a rig for a washer and dryer, but no actual machines.

He dragged himself through the sunken living room area, past the bowl of plastic fruit set on a low, circular glass table set atop a black stone orb. A sticker shone on the curve of a waxy apple. Do not eat.

When Zack moved, he could smell himself, scent molecules disturbed by skin friction, pure body scent, sickly sweat. But he couldn’t understand what he was smelling. Gone was the residual of Freddy’s abietic piquant, the particular pong of Ziggy’s baby scent. These odors clung to him, usually, mixed with his own natural body odor from prolonged contact. But when he breathed now…nothing, but the storebought, ambery musk of something heady, manly. It churned his gut.

Zack found the phone charging on a desk in the corner next to a large, silver Mac desktop computer. No DAW, no desk mic, no Launchpad or Yamaha keyboard anywhere in sight, no evidence this person was related to music production at all. There was a 1958 Gibson Korina Explorer in the corner of the office area. Unplayed, by the looks of it. No wear on the back of the neck where someone’s thumb would rest, no fretboard damage or divots, no scratches or dents where the picking arm would sit. Gorgeous instrument, but a display axe, obviously, if anyone ever came into this place to see it.

He resisted the urge to pick it up to snag the phone instead. Not his—no case, cracked screen. Freddy bought him a lumpy green silicone case for his own phone, shaped like a turtle shell. Made it unwieldy, barely fit in his pocket. But reminded him of playing Mario Kart with Freddy as kids, laughing arguments over launching blue turtle shells at each other and whether that counted as “cheating.” Arguments that more often than not ended in play wrestling, kissing, rematches. His heart reminded him it was still there by throbbing as he touched the rough edge of the broken tempered glass of the stranger’s phone. It was sharper than expected, dragged a cut along the inside of his thumb. He frowned at the injury, unnerved. The picking callus he was supposed to have there, from perfecting Rasgueado techniques, was gone, just his baby-pink thumb bleeding raw. 

He looked at his hands then, really looked at them. The leathery, warped areas along the sides and pads of the thumbs and across the index finger joints and nail bases from his fingerstyle training were gone. Years of learning Travispicking, flamenco techniques, alternating bass blues rhythms…vanished. These hands seemed like they never mastered basic PIMA. Zack couldn’t quite believe it. Of all the unfamiliar things he’d seen, his hands freaked him out the most. 

Something was wrong, so very very wrong. Zack blanched, unable to process the sheer scale. His breathing shallowed. He began to suspect what had gone amiss could not be corrected with a $48 Uber ride home and trip on the ferry.

But his face unlocked the strange phone, and Freddy was not in his contacts list. Nor Billy, Summer, nor his own mother. Mack’s number, absent. The social worker who called to check on the kids, not saved. 

Zack’s shaking was such that he could hardly hold the phone anymore. He bolted to the bathroom, stared at his face. Touched it. For some reason, he could not feel his fingertips press into his face in places—his forehead, the sides of his eyes. Botox, he realized, numb to the touch, frozen in place. He could barely lift his eyebrows. He touched his nose bridge, his jaw, the shapes unfamiliar. Shaved down by knife, or augmented by polyethylene, nerves deadened to his touch in some places, hyper-sensitized in others.

His eyebrows were a different shape. His hair was so long, almost pony-tail length. The muscular definition in his arms and shoulders from regular gym work outs and lifting his baby in his arms all day, every day, for a year—gone. 

All the sickness rushed back at once. He had nothing left in his stomach, but he wretched and wretched.

_________

Not knowing where else to go, when his phone alerted him he had a studio session in thirty minutes, Zack simply obeyed. Maybe this stranger whose face…presumably once looked like his, before surgical alteration…knew someone, worked with someone, who could tell him what the hell was happening.

He barely survived the Lyft ride over. Had to put his nose through the window and breathe the cold, clear air just to keep steady. Was Freddy all right? Where was he? Where was Ziggy?

Hopefully, there would be someone he could ask at the studio. There were always helpful people in his studio. Zack couldn’t just stand in that empty apartment listening to his thoughts bounce off the walls anymore. He needed someone to help him figure out what the hell was happening. 

He had to admit, entering a workplace again was a relief to his brain, if not for his pain-wracked body. His teeth chattered. His muscles ached, like after a hard workout, but deeper—a fibrous, clenching tension. His fingertips, ears, and toes were on pins-and-needles—full of ants, as Freddy would say. It was uncomfortable to put pressure on them, ticklish and sharp. 

“Sorry,” Zack said immediately, the moment he swung through the doors. “There was a little…uh. Mix up. This morning. I got a little behind. Won’t happen again.”

In spite of everything else going on, he was stressing. His professional instincts went too deep. The session was supposed to start at 7:15AM. He arrived at 7:18AM, but knew it was better form for session musicians to arrive fifteen minutes to half an hour early, not three minutes late. He didn’t want to hold anyone up. He just hoped this wasn’t a new client. He’d hate to make a bad first impression. Even if it wasn’t technically his client.

Sal looked up in surprise as Zack entered.

“Wait, Sal?” Zack said, excitedly. It was so good to see a familiar face. “Dude, good to see you!” 

He approached for their customary low five, half-hug combo. But Sal just stared at him. Shock in his eyes. Something else too. Fear? Was Sal afraid of him? Why? Disorienting panic closed over Zack’s head like dark water.

“Why are you here?” Sal asked, bluntly. Then he cleared his throat, stood up straighter. “Uh, sir.”

Sir? Zack lowered his hand. 

No low five or hug apparently. He tried to hide his disappointment. He’d needed the hug. He’d known Sal for ten years, since college. Sal taught him how to explain EQ to non-sound-engineer types. Sal got him some of his first jobs. He held Sal’s daughter the day after she was born.

“I know I was supposed to be here at 7:15,” Zack said, slowly. “I’m a little late, but I figured everyone would still be here?”

Sal’s eyes practically boggled. “We always say 7:15…because you show up almost three hours late to everything at least, so it’s the best way to try to get going by 10AM.”

Right. Rockstar time. Zack had worked with the type—or rather, worked around them in studio sessions. Guys who purchased time to waste it, but you maybe had to push the next slot anyway. 

“Oh.” Zack said. “I can go and come back if you want?”

Sal blinked. “...Uh. No, I’ll call the band.” He cleared his throat. Hesitated. “Are you…alright, Zack?”

Zack trembled at the sound of his own name, the only thing familiar in this alien world. 

“I don’t know,” he babbled, pathetic. “Do you know where Freddy is? And my baby? He…I can’t be away from him for too long. Ziggy. We just got him to sleep through the night. And I’m sure he’s scared. It’s been too long. Can you…do you know where Freddy is? I need to talk to Freddy?” Saying the name, over and over, coaxed forth tears. Zack cupped his own elbows, rocked. He really, really needed to see his husband, to know where his kids were. Sal just had to help him.

Sal studied him a moment, then sighed gustily. He reached into his pocket, and came out with an orange bottle.

“Shit. All I got is hydrocodone.” Sal proffered it to Zack. “Will that hold you for a few hours while I send your assistant out to—”

“Sal, I don’t want…I just need to know where Freddy is!” Zack didn’t want to shout but his voice rose anyway; oh God he was going to be sick again. 

“You’re shaking,” Sal noted. “It’s, um. Going to be okay, sir. Just take these, and I’ll make sure we get you something better. The band will be here in an hour or so. You have time to rest. And such.”

Zack stared at the bottle he was supposed to take but didn’t. His brain put the pieces together, however horrifyingly. The shaking. The nausea. Withdrawal. He was going through withdrawal. As soon as he thought the word, something lit up in his body. His fingers twitched, wanting to reach for what Sal handed so willingly over.

He stuffed his hands into his armpits instead. Shook his head, like Mack when they told her she would be attending after school tutoring every day to get her caught up. Wordless. Stubborn. Disbelieving. 

Sal retracted the bottle when Zack wouldn’t take it. As the bottle disappeared back into Sal’s coat, a dull pang rang through Zack’s body—longing, regret. Zack mentally snarled at the ache. Fuck that. He was a father, for God’s sake. He would never.

“Who’s Freddy?” Sal wondered. His tone was guarded, but inviting, hoping Zack would shuffle to a less alarming social register. “New boyfriend?” 

Instinctively Zack checked his hand for what he already knew wouldn’t be there. No wedding band. The platinum ring he seldom took off, that Freddy kissed over the car console, inscribed with Talking Heads lyrics on the inside: “make it up as we go along.” Absent.

“Something’s wrong,” Zack told him, uselessly, miserably. “Sal, something’s wrong. I don’t know where I am.”

“Should I call Sandra?” Sal’s face was hollow and pale; he instinctively stepped backwards, rubbing his temple.

“I don’t know who that is,” Zack pleaded, and tried to cling to Sal’s sleeve. “I don’t know. I just want my baby. I want to go home.”

“Fuck. Wellp. That’s today, I guess.” And Sal pulled free left, presumably to call whoever Sandra was.

________

The woman with the low, gray ponytail called Sandra was more comforting than Sal had been. But Zack got the feeling she thought he was utterly nuts.

He laid on the worn couch in the studio green room, which spun slowly. It reminded him of the slow-rotating restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower he’d taken Freddy to for their second honeymoon. Freddy ordered the seafood platter, thinking it would be like Boiling Crab. But no plastic bib or cajun spice arrived. Just a sedate icy tray stacked high with lightly blanched shellfish and mollusks, eyestalks still glassy and accusing. Freddy gamely choked down two clams before begging for mercy, green from motion sickness and near-raw seafood. They still laughed about it.

“Zack,” Sandra was saying, as Zack relived Paris, “Zack, honey, I’m going to call the session today. You’re clearly having some kind of episode. Shall I call your doctor? Maybe get you something to help?”

“No,” Zack said automatically. “The other musicians' schedules will get messed up. Just keep it how it is. I can play.” He’d played with viral pneumonia, and through Ziggy’s collicky-est months wherein he got three hours tops of sleep per night. He could handle one single play session, no matter how homesick and spiritually dislocated he was. 

Sandra paused. “I’m sure they’ll understand. But it’s…kind of you, to consider their time.” She sounded wary, surprised.

“Yeah, I’m sure they’ll understand .” Zack almost laughed. “But if they have back-to-back booked gigs, they could miss out on a paycheck or piss off a collaborator. We don’t wanna alienate the talent, because there isn't an endless supply of them. I don’t want to be the kind of person serious people won’t work with, because I can’t even be on time.”

It felt good to say, affirming. Real. If everything else in his life changed, he still knew this. Messing with a musician’s time was sacrilege. 

“...Sal said you have a new boyfriend?” Sandra ventured, swallowing as she pressed him. Her eyes, so light brown they were almost green, flicked down. A little round bump—cyst of some kind?—on the ridge of her eyelid interrupted her lashline. “Someone named Freddy? That’s nice for you. Should I get him a press kit and find someone to manage his public affairs, to—”

“You know where Freddy is?” Zack sat up immediately despite the throb it caused. 

Sandra floundered. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

“No. Until today, I didn’t even know there was a Freddy,” she said, calmly, “but I’m happy to—”

“And Ziggy and Mack,” Zack added, “do you know where they are? Did Sal tell you?” He couldn’t remember if he’d explained to Sal about his kids, or what Sal already knew. The whole day was blurring together, smushed under the pressure of his seemingly-perpetual need to throw up from lack of pills. 

Sandra studied him carefully.

“Do you remember the clinic we sent you to, when you threw Shawn Mendes' backpack into the canal—”

“No, no, no!” Zack put his head in his hands. “I’m not crazy. I just…” He took a deep breath. “Could you find them for me, please? Freddy Mooneyham-Jones—” He stopped short, pain in his chest. “I mean. Freddy Jones. And Mackenzie and Ezekiel Mamani. They’re siblings. They…might be living in Brownsville right now…but they might be…um. In the foster system.” Suddenly Zack couldn’t breathe.

If Ziggy was still in the system—

“Can you please, can you…” He searched her face for signs she understood the urgency. “Can you just find out if they’re okay? Please? Now? As soon as possible, and tell me?”

“All right, Zack,” Sandra said in the tone of someone who said this phrase often. 

“I tried to Google them,” Zack choked. “But I can’t find anything.”

“If they’re in foster care, they might have protected status. In the system, it can be hard to…” She pressed her lips together. “I’ll make some calls.” 

Zack did not approve of diva rockstar behavior. But it was helpful she didn’t ask him why he wanted to know and just did what he said. He exhaled, gratefully. 

“Okay.” He nodded, planting his feet. He rubbed his face, though he couldn’t feel the heels of his palms against his forehead. “Thank you. Please hurry.”

_____________

Zack frowned at his fingers. The song was, luckily, easy. The pickwork was straightforward, not even very quick. But his hands trembled, and he had to put conscious thought into telling his hands what to do. Unnatural. Usually, a song like this…pop chords and 2/2 cut time…was a sleepwalk. But he had to use all his highly compromised brainpower to stay on it today.

He could feel the strange energy in the session, and it threw him off too. The bassist they hired was a good guy; Zack could tell. Blues trained. Improvisational, but a professional, staying on the map. The backing vocals singers came at 9:30AM instead and got warmed up. The drummer was a skinny chick with three puff ball ponytails. Friendly, arrived right on time, still holding her bus card, sticks in her bag.

Plus another guitarist. Gordon, they said his name was. A kid. Talented fingers, classical training. Why they needed a second guitar, Zack didn’t really know. Anyone trained in basic fingerstyle could more or less play both parts at the same time just fine: pick out bass lines with the thumb, pluck melodic or harmonic voices with the other fingers, and fill the midrange with rhythmic chords.

Then again, the man…whose life Zack was trapped in clearly could not play fingerstyle.

The other musicians stared at him. Waiting for him to…Zack didn’t want to guess what. Throw a tantrum? Yell? Over what? Everyone was being quite patient and accommodating. Other than the fact that Zack was an imposter…it was a very regular session.

“Um,” Gordon said, after Zack did a take of the solo section—not a real solo. Scripted, not improved, and rather uninspired. “Nice.”

Zack tilted his head. He knew what that meant. It made him feel better, despite the wracking shakes that grew worse by the hour, the cold sweats worse than when he had the stomach flu, the fact that he threw up water when he tried to drink it, he could still tell when a player had an opinion on a piece of music. 

“Sucks,” Zack validated softly. “Throws the composition off, doesn’t it. Emotional momentum’s all off. We build, we build. This is a break moment, but all solo does is build more.”

All five of the other players stared at him. Zack shifted uncomfortably. Yeah, sometimes it changed the energy in the room to voice critique, but it was common practice. The studio heads weren’t even present. They were just doing takes so someone in charge could listen back and choose one later. 

“Do you, ah.” The bass player cleared his throat, adjusted his porkpie hat nervously. There was a swallowtail feather in the band. “Do you not want to do your solo anymore?”

The way he asked it told Zack everything he needed to know. The bassist was trying to delicately unseat the solo without offending the presumed diva. Him, Zack. He was the diva in the room.

The reason the solo sounded bad was it wasn’t part of the original composition, grafted onto the song. A distortion. An indulgence. The only reason for its existence was the man who needed to be centered. An accommodation made to star power, the lead performer. Zack.

Except not him. God, Zack wanted just one thing to feel normal. He was not used to having people presume he was the thing breaking flow. Zack was not an executive mind. He was more comfortable behind the glass or over the switchboard, not in the boardroom making inscrutable decisions, dick-first, beholden to stock holders or publicists and not the art itself. Zack was not the ego landmine other artists skirted with care. Zack was the guy they came to for technical fixes, vision, followthrough.

Why the fuck was he here? He wanted to scream at everyone present that this was not his face, not his hands, not his solo. This was not not not not not his fucking life.

“My question is why is there a solo here at all?” Zack snapped, not at the bass player but in the general direction of the world. Maybe he should have been pretending to fit the role he was thrust into better, but his self-control waned in the face of his ontological distress, his body’s betrayal, the fact that all he could think about was whether his husband and kids were okay and what they were doing now. 

“Well,” the drummer piped in, “you said—”

“I was wrong,” Zack muttered. He didn’t want to cut her off but he didn’t want to argue with a ghost either. “I was wrong. Solo’s are for the stage. It’s amazing to watch a performer pull it off in real time. But let’s be real. This isn’t a Stevie Ray Vaughan live session recording. This is a mid-list top 20 pop rock release. Guitar solos aren’t in vogue. It doesn’t sound good, no one wants it, no one’s impressed. Why is it here?”

Silence reigned in the room. Zack would have recoiled with regret for the outburst, but his very soul felt sick. Usually, the hum of a session booth calmed him. The yellow fluorescents, the bouncy floors (or carpeting, dragged in to mute sound if the track merited the softening). This room was high class—sound absorbing panels inside the clean, eggshell walls instead of absorbing pads gerryrigged to plaster. In the small studio he built with Freddy, they embedded the sound proofing too. For the professional, homey feel. 

“...Because you said you were tired of people calling you ‘just the face,’” the drummer said, pointedly. Brave. Drummers always were, Zack thought affectionately. “That’s why it’s there.”

Zack wanted to tell her it wasn’t even his face. “Shouldn’t be.” He shrugged instead.

“To be honest, I’m more surprised you got it the first take,” Gordon said, ribbing slightly in the young-person-testing-the-edge voice Zack knew so well from his own daughter.

Zack made an incredulous face, squinting.

“Really?” he asked. He could have cleared this solo when he was ten. “...Wait. Really?”

No one was comfortable confirming. It was a lonely feeling. Zack was used to working with people who gave him shit if he deserved it. He felt completely exiled from the one space he had always belonged.  

“Uh, was your name Greta?” he asked one of the singers, trying to change the subject. A bolt of pure misery razed his brain—physical nausea, so richly painful his bowels corkscrewed with horror. He had to keep working through it to keep his sanity, couldn’t get lost in his own thought spiral. “Can I make a suggestion?”

Greta, squeezing her hands around the black scarf she wore even indoors, looked supremely shocked to be addressed at all. She nodded.

“Sync with—what was your name again?” he asked the drummer.

“Rhianna.” She said it like she never expected to speak her own name in his presence, heavily skeptical.

“Right. Greta, you should watch Rhianna. It’ll help you come in together.”

The session lasted another 45 minutes. Zack didn’t know why the time was booked two hours out. No way should recording three takes for a two minute song take that long. With the extra time, he pitched out some alts to the bridge, recorded the solo in a few versions in case the execs were in love with it for some reason, and took an extra take on his own vocals. His voice was raw from all the vomiting. He needed the grace.

“Hey,” Gordon thumped his back on the way out. “I had a good time today.”

Zack saw on his face—admiration. A session musician’s hungry look into the eyes of someone who made it, truly made it. An ask, under the compliment to be thought of well. Put up for other gigs. Mentored. Any ballast in the chaotic world of the industry, any ground beneath his feet that could be shared.  A name to say in a cold-call email. A small thread of continuity in a gig-based, favor-driven economy.

Gordon was a talent, and a breeze to work with. Zack wanted to help him automatically.

“You should talk to Summer,” Zack said automatically. “I’ll give you her card. She can—”

He stopped himself. He didn’t even know if he knew Summer here. The thought was a knife to the heart. Summer. Not just his manager, but a best friend since the eighth grade, and her number wasn’t even saved in his phone.

“Who’s Summer?” Gordon asked, eager and bright eyed.

Zack couldn’t say “my manager.” It wasn’t the correct answer here. For all he knew, Summer wasn’t a manager at all. Maybe she was on Wall Street, power brokering investments. He supposed he could check her LinkedIn. The thought was so depressing he almost collapsed to the floor.

“Know what, I’ll just have my agent touch base with you,” Zack said, wearily.

“Thanks, I—” Gordon wavered, unable to believe his luck. “Thanks.”

Zack nodded. He  wasn’t sure who his agent was. Sandra? Someone else?

Zack’s own hope deflated blow by blow, like a shrinking balloon puttering out gasps. But Gordon skipped out, full of enthusiasm. So hope lived somewhere. 

_________

Sandra returned to the studio about 15 minutes after the musicians left. She held a large, sweating drink in her hand and immediately gave it to Zack when he greeted her.

“Uh, thanks.” He eyed it, grossed out. He wasn’t a sugary coffee drinker, and right now the thought of putting anything in his stomach was unthinkably, unthinkably unappetizing. His face was gray from his session efforts. 

His body was in dire straits. Every hour weighed heavier. He couldn’t go on like this. He needed to get to a doctor, stat, to figure out how to make the sick stop. A withdrawal clinic maybe? Humiliating—he’d never needed such a thing in his life. But better than living as a strung out junkie. He didn’t know how long he’d be here—God, hopefully not forever. But he would rather spend the purgatorial stretch getting clean than live one single day as an addict.

“Shouldn’t an assistant be doing my coffee runs?” he asked her. Sandra was clearly not an assistant. She did not carry a backpack or briefcase. She lacked the scuffed tennis shoes, the “can do” quick-response of a scurrier.

“You fired Belinda,” she said, tiredly. “Don’t worry. She will be suitably replaced soon. I’m filling in the meantime.”

“Sorry,” Zack said. He couldn’t imagine firing Ritchie or Rach out from under Summer’s nose. She’d have him killed. “...Hey, the session musician today, Gordon? Can I talk to you about him for a second?

“Oh. Don’t worry, I know. Already looking for his replacement, I just have to deal with Edgar, and—”

“What, why?” Zack interrupted her, confused. “Gordon’s great. You’re my agent, or manager…er. Right? I was gonna ask if you knew anyone looking for talent. He’s green. He needs someone. Someone good.”

Sandra coughed. “I,” she started, recalibrated. “Sure. I’ll ask around. Do you still want him replaced or—”

“God, no.” Zack all but groaned in frustration. “Not unless he wants to go. Why make all that extra work for you and the others, getting adjusted to new hands? Kid’s doing a good job, why would I…” he sighed at the pointlessness of it all. “Thank you. No, don’t fire Gordon. But get him a referral if you have one handy…please.”

He bounced automatically on his feet for a second, and then withered, gutted. There was no Ziggy to bounce for. No happy, baby-boy three year old, touching his face through a work day. No sticky fist pressed to his cheek. No need to take fussy juice breaks. No ache in his lower back from babywearing all day. So odd that it was the inconveniences Zack was missing, the pauses, the fixes. 

The silly check in texts from Freddy. The way Ziggy could nap through Zack’s most impressive technical stretches, utterly unimpressed by the most virtuosic guitar playing. Cutting a session early to drive Mack to her psychiatrist, stopping on the way for Jamba Juice. His life. His fucking life. All gone.

Zack stared at a spot on the ground, the outline of a waterstain etched in white, filmy outline on green tile, to hold back the tears.

“...I found the information you asked for,” Sandra told him, awkwardly. “Well, some of it, anyway.”

Zack’s eyes snapped to her face.

“Freddy Jones is living on Staten Island,” Sandra told him. “I mean, there are lots of Freddy Joneses. But I called your mother to ask which one you might mean. She said you knew a Freddy Jones in grade school and wrangled his information for me. He’s living in an ADU behind his parents’ home.” 

Zack took the piece of paper she handed him reverently. A phone number. Freddy knew him, would recognize if he called. Even if they hadn’t spoken in a while. Old classmates. It was something. Freddy would help him remember. Could—

“Couldn’t find much on the girl, Mackenzie,” Sandra went on, not commenting on Zack’s soft, loopy expression as he tucked Freddy’s name in the pocket closest to his heart. “She’s a state case. Her parents are being tried for child abuse. So the court records exist, but she’s not named. No way to know where she is. Hospital records say she had heart surgery a year or so back, but…”

She shrugged. Zack’s previously lifted heart plummeted. Mack—his little girl, who hated him half the time, he just hoped whoever was taking care of her now knew how to—

“But the boy, Ezekiel.” Sandra shifted on her feet like her chunky heels hurt her toes. She shook her foot out at the ankle for a beat. “I found him.”

Zack reached out as if to collapse into her arms—

But she handed him a printed photo off the internet. Zack couldn’t interpret it, so dizzy was he with the unsorted implications—

“He, um, passed. Shortly after assignment to a foster family.” Sandra bit her lip. 

Zack stared at the image he could not make himself take. An obituary. “Ezekiel Mamani, age 2. Died February 4, 2022. Failure to thrive.” And there was Ziggy, in a baggy reindeer onesie, in the arms of some woman Zack did not know with a tired, lined face. Ziggy, his face sunken and ghostly as the day he and Freddy got him, eyes vacant, cheeks hollow.

Ziggy, who always laughed at the word “caterpillar.” Ziggy, who clapped at farts and was still scared of door slams and the hall closet. Ziggy, who carefully ate his Cheerios one by one and couldn’t be rushed no matter—

Ziggy.

“Did you know the family? Did you?”

Sandra’s voice was far away. Without thinking, Zack took the image from her hands and headed for the door, plunging, plummeting—

Freddy. He needed Freddy. He needed Freddy.