men saunter up to the ute.
As always, Steve pretends he doesn’t hear that abomination of a nickname fall from Jack’s lips. “Darrensford. Rock climbing.”
Jack rolls his eyes in much the same way Steve wants to every time Jack mentions fishing. “Well, we got something for you. I mean, mate, we feel so guilty about this. We put your life at risk. That was an awful, horrible thing for us to do, and we are so fucking sorry. We’re just so lucky that you didn’t die, man.”
Steve stares with a great deal of incredulity, but he says nothing, quite sure that everyone here knows that there is no way Steve could have known Jack’s dare might prove as interesting as it did—and quite sure he doesn’t want to know why Jack is laying it on quite so thick. It’s not as though he didn’t put Johanna’s life at risk with the zombies, after all, even if everyone stood by with assault rifles at the ready in case something went wrong.
Greg’s eyebrows reach his hairline, but he too doesn’t speak.
“Because of that, and because you did your best to carry out the dare—we saw you give it everything you’ve got, man. Fuck, did we see! So, we’re going to give you the chance to attempt another one. This time, we’re going to make sure that it’s safe, that there is absolutely no risk to you at all, because we’re just so cut up with guilt over this.” Jack draws in a deep breath; beside him, Phil just nods, his tanned face so innocent Steve knows there’s got to be a punch coming. “So. The community sewing group’s running classes again this summer down at the library. We’re going to dare you to sign up for the embroidery class.”
“Embroidery,” Steve says slowly. “That’s it?” No fucking punch?
“Mostly.” Jack shrugs. Phil, though, breaks into a broad, shit-eating smile. “All you have to do is complete the six-week embroidery course. By that time, you’ll get old Sian MacGillycuddy to help you embroider a tapestry thing—you know, those embroidered things you hang on the wall?—of the Lord’s Prayer. Then you enter your marvellous embroidered creation in the handcraft division at the Ag Show. Along with all the wonderful, old scone-baking ladies of the CWA, of course.” He grins far too broadly—and his dare is already bad enough as it is. “After the Ag Show, and the whole municipality has admired your oh-so-devout creation, you win. See? Perfectly easy and perfectly safe. All you have to do is avoid pricking your finger with a needle around the vampires. There’s no way you could fail to pull off this one!”
Learning embroidery is one thing, although certainly not on Steve’s list of needed skills. He can already sew buttons onto his blazers and hem his own jeans, thank you very much. Learning to embroider the Lord’s Prayer—which will make his atheist parents become quite concerned about his mental state—is another thing. Displaying that embroidered religious monstrosity before everyone at the Port Carmila Agricultural Show?
No one will ever let him forget it. No one. Every year it will come up, just as every year the town talks about Aggie Skipton’s hideous hand-sculpted clay pigs from 1976. They’re town legend, those pigs, and Steve can see whatever woeful attempt he makes at embroidery going the same way. That’s if he survives a couple of hours a week with the gossiping old ladies who flock to the community sewing group. He can see it now: the incessant questions about his allergies, his sexuality, his career path, his life as a university student in the city, and whether or not he thinks their great-grandchildren are cute in hand-knitted beanies. Complete with wallet-sized photos, probably.
Yes, he’s generalising, but he thought makes his legs shake. Great-grandchildren. Wallet-sized photos—or, fuck, what if a few of them have smartphones? Smartphones and Facebook and great-grandchildren.
He’d rather do another round in the ED.
Greg starts snickering so hard he all but lies across the fence for balance.
Jack and Phil just grin at him, both of them looking so innocent Steve feels like contemplating murder. Does he really need to attempt this one? The eight AM Saturday morning call-in show might cover allergies or new innovations in immunotherapy. Who knows what kind of awesome talkback radio he might be missing out on? Isn’t a journalist supposed to keep up with the media, anyway?
“I think,” Steve says with as much gravitas as he can muster, “that I’d rather kiss a vampire.” He pauses just as he hears the sound of flesh smacking against wood. “Um, Greg? You can stop banging your head against the fence right about now.”
Greg snorts. “If I catch you lip-locking with that greyskin, I’ll leave you for the zombies to devour. Can’t you find some breather pretty-boy to fuck?”
“I’ll use a dental dam first. Last thing I want is you giving me shit all the way to the hospital, again.” Steve shrugs just as Abe’s little silver hatchback pulls up and parks behind Jack’s ute. “Hey, mate! Get over here. These morons are just going.”
Jack’s eyes widen for the briefest of moments before he breaks into a grin broad enough to show the majority of his teeth. Steve told Johanna, of course, that he’d been going out with Abe, but he hadn’t hurried to tell anybody else. “You going rock climbing with the vampire, Akira-san?”
Steve nods and looks at Jack. “Mate, I know what you did, you know.”
Jack gives him a wide-eyed, rather wounded sort of look and blows away a droning blowfly with one hand. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You’ve been thinking all these years that I’m not straight—I like girls, but that doesn’t make me straight—but I’d never actually admit it because of fucking Swanston. So you use the birthday dare as an opportunity to make me figure it out.” He shrugs and stands. “You’re right. I’m a probably bit of a fag. Thank you for being a conniving arsehole of a good friend. Now fuck off, because I’m going on a date. Second date. Or third—no, fourth. Do I count Feeders as the first? Is it our fifth, now? And yes, I’m packing condoms and epinephrine, so don’t lie awake at night worrying over my health, right?”
He opens the driver’s-side door and waves at Abe as he heads up the driveway. He’s dressed as well as he can for a day in the bush: bright white runners, crisp jeans and a long pale-blue T-shirt under his trenchcoat. Sunglasses and a broad, floppy hat shadow his face; a cooler bag rests under his arm. Not exactly great for rock climbing, but Steve will get Abe there eventually, because that’s what friends are for. “You ready, man?”
Abe nods and looks askance at Phil, Jack and Greg, all grinning like evil, possessed schoolchildren. “Uh…”
“Ignore them,” Steve says as he slides behind the wheel and slams the door shut. Abe stands still for a moment before following suit, closing the passenger door just as the grinning trio on both sides of the fence burst into ridiculous, cackling laughter. “I just told them I’m dating you and blew their tiny minds. And Jack wants me to embroider the fucking Lord’s Prayer for the next dare, which he thinks is just hilarious. We’re stuck listening to talkback from here to eternity, because seriously, like fuck. So.” He turns the key in the ignition, which starts both the motor and a radio presenter droning on about thrips. “What are your thoughts on gardening?”
Abe’s eyes widen. “What?”
“Okay, no thoughts on gardening—”
“Dating?”
Steve pulls out of the drive and onto the road. “Feeders, game day, abseiling, the day you took me into your office to photocopy the action plan, today. I’m pretty sure that if you were a girl, they’d be dates—it’s really not different with a guy, right?”
Abe takes off his sunglasses and hat and gives Steve a desperate, horrified look. “But, you, uh—”
“So we don’t kiss,” Steve says. “Plenty of other things we can be doing. Like dancing. Want to go out tonight and dance? I’m sure it’s much more fun when you’re not wanting to rub out your own eyeballs.”
It seems to take Abe a long minute to blink, swallow, rub his hands against his knees. “Don’t you want to be dating someone to whom you’re not allergic?”
It’s cute that he cares so much, Steve thinks, but he seems to be missing
the point. They’re not friends. They’re two guys attracted to the other and trying to figure out how to be around the other without one of them dying from want of breath, and why deny that just because it’s difficult? Why waste time pretending that Abe doesn’t want to fuck Steve and Steve doesn’t want to let him do it? Why waste another breath on the delusion that Steve wouldn’t gladly park the car, jump on his lap and kiss him if he could? He glances at Abe out of the corner of his eye, because, fuck, a perplexed Abe is just fucking adorable, especially when he’s running his hands through his hair and looking as though he wishes to be anywhere but here—and wants to be nowhere but here.
Especially when he can’t take his eyes off Steve’s face.
“I’m already dating you,” he says as he turns the Toyota out onto the main highway towards the yellow-and-black “beware zombies” road sign. Phil had, for his second-last birthday dare, crossed out “zombies” and spray-painted “tourists” instead; the council apparently hadn’t bothered to tell Roads and Maritime Services about it. “So we find a way to figure it out. No kissing—well, you can’t kiss me, but I bet I could certain venom-free bits of you. Incredibly safe sex practices. Other things we’ll learn on the way. Because—well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not spending the