in a would-be-casual voice, “that it seems a shame fucking Swanston got him all bothered about it. I mean, Swanston’s the only person who cares, right? Nobody cares that you’re getting up to some incredibly sexy things with another woman, Yo.”
Izzy can’t blush, if her skin were even light enough to show it, but she can focus so intently on her sewing the effect is very little different.
“Incredibly amazing, sexy things, Jack, that you’re never going to see.” Johanna drawls the words as slowly as she can and pokes her tongue out at Jack just to punctuate the torment. No, nobody here really cares that she’s dating a girl: it is, after all, the twenty-first century, and both vampires and fae tend to be more relaxed about that sort of thing: vampires, after all, don’t have the excuse of sex-as-procreation. If the breather population pretend to be okay just because they don’t want to be more bigoted than a fae, that’s all to the good as far as Johanna is concerned. People do care that she’s dating a zombie, especially a quasi-feral zombie who lived as a recluse for more than a century from the fear that her own people will kill her, but now that Izzy’s working at the Historical Society the gossip is winding down: they don’t say shit to her face, at least.
Then again, people are generally careful about what they say to Johanna, the best marksman in Port Carmila for the last four Agricultural Shows running. She might not have been born here, but she works with the Port Carmila Police Department as a licenced hunter, and she’s got a kill count to equal born-and-bred locals like Phil and Jack. She’s no tourist.
Who she fucks doesn’t matter when she’s contributed more to the town’s safety than those who whisper behind her back.
Steve, of all people, should know that.
Jack snickers. “We’ll fucking see about that one, Yo.”
“Try it and you’ll start shambling.” Johanna smirks at him before changing the subject: Jack can spend half his life shooting back insults and think nothing of the waste of time. Time, he says when called out on it, is an invader invention. “What’s up with Swanston, anyway? Izzy and I went to Feeders last week, and when we left, he was on his knees in the alley, right in plain sight, with Ares’s cock halfway down his throat.”
“We would not have seen him if you did not want to put your broken handbag in the dumpster,” Izzy says with a pointed look at Johanna: she’s never quite gotten dramatic licence. “And he was just licking.”
Phil and Jack look at each other and break out into broad, cheek-splitting grins.
“Serve him fucking right.” Phil holds up one palm; Jack smashes it with his own. “Man! Pot calling the kettle Jack or what!”
Jack rolls his eyes and gives Phil the finger. “Ignoring that shocking and terrible piece of racism from a white fucking invader…”
Izzy raises her eyebrows at Johanna, but she shakes her head: she knows how these idiots talk. She’s heard Jack and Steve shoot off exchanges that begin with ‘suicidal Jap’ and ‘drunk blackfella’ and only become the horrific inverse of political correctness before they turn around and insult Phil’s Swedish grandparents—and while there must be an invisible line for a white guy somewhere, Phil seems to know just how to stay on the right side of permissible racism.
It probably helps that the three have known each other since kindergarten.
“Well, well, well.” Jack grins and leans back against a large, rounded piece of basalt. “So the guy who called Steve a fag queen is actually—hey, Yo, can a bi dude be a fag?”
“I’m fairly sure that even asking is homophobic,” she says, but then she blinks. “I don’t know, actually.”
“So he’s not completely wrong, but he’s also a fucking fag queen himself—Ares! Seriously?—and that just makes it all the more right that we do something to help Steve, well, discover himself.” Jack’s eyes seem to glow with enthusiasm as he pounds his fist against his kneecap, chips and fishing rods forgotten. “He should be getting out and hooking up with dudes into that sort of thing, and if he’s not doing that because of fucking Swanston, we, as his friends, should do something about that. A dude shouldn’t be turning twenty-one not knowing he’s fucking bi.”
“I don’t think buying him a prostitute is going to work, Jack.” Greg stands up and moves to a higher boulder just to get out of Jack’s reach—or odour. “My shift starts in an hour, so please get a move on.”
“Oh, a hooker would be fucking weird.” Jack shakes his head, purses his lips—and then he grins right at Johanna as he jumps to his feet, pumping both fists in the air. “Got it! What if he fucking sees Swanston doing his thing at Feeders? Then he’ll fucking know that his only reason for not figuring this shit out is because Swanston’s got issues. We just got to get him to Feeders, so we dare him to—we dare him to fuck a vampire! There won’t be girls looking for guys at Feeders, right?”
“I’m sure bi and pan people go there, too,” Johanna says, not at all sure what to think about this plan—and she knows Jack! She was the one that helped ensure Phil had no chance of finding any scuba gear to hire in a hundred kilometre radius! “And tourists who don’t realise that the vampire club has become a gay club and all the straight vamps go to the Broken Post.”
Jack shakes his head with such frenzied energy that Johanna feels tired just watching him. “Yes, but he’s not going to know all that, and, anyway, this is his first fucking opportunity to actually go and hook a guy—we’ve given him an excuse, right? He’s not going to look at the girls. Trust me.” He turns his head and grins at Phil, hand outstretched. “Twenty bucks says he’s necking the first dude he meets.”
“Done. I know what I’m buying with the money.” Phil reaches up, takes the hand, shakes it. “But we’ll need to make sure the kitty’s big enough Steve’s got no choice but to go with it. He’s been moaning about his broken tape deck for months. Can we get him that much?”
“I can do that—between the cop shop and the chop shop, we’ll get enough.” Greg nods and hands over the last of the chips to Jack, who plonks himself down on the closest piece of basalt and shoves a handful into his mouth. “It’ll be a relief to spend at least one birthday not driving out to the middle of nowhere at midnight to save idiots from zombies.” He brushes his hands on his jeans. “Yes, I mean you lot.”
“We love you too, dude.” Phil snatches the chips from Jack’s hands. “Never mind how many more fucking tourists would be shambling if not for us.”
Greg just snorts. “Not as many as you think, mate. I’ll text you when we’ve got the money. What do you want me to tell Deb?”
Sergeant Debra Nakamura, Johanna thinks, isn’t going to much care: she’s got more important things to worry about than her son being dared to fuck a male vampire in order to rediscover his long-repressed sexuality. Besides, there are very few people—of any gender—that are going bother her more than Emma the topless trapeze artist. She’s not so sure that Steve’s dad will be quite as comfortable with it, and from the angled set of Jack’s head, he’s thinking much the same thing.
“Just say we’re daring him to fuck a vampire,” Jack says finally. “Say you talked us into doing something less dangerous this time, or I’m running out of ideas—just bullshit them. We’ll spring it on him and them.”
“Right.” Greg waves and heads down the breakwater.
“Will Steve be angry at this?” Izzy puts down her needle and gives the group quite a worried look. “Are you not setting him up?”
“We’re helping him.” Phil scrunches up the chip paper and punches Jack on the shoulder. “What friends are for, right?”
Izzy shakes her head. “Can you not just tell him?”
She’ll explain at home, Johanna thinks, just as Phil and Jack burst out in explosive, near-hysterical laughter.
No, nobody in Port Carmila is going to sit her down and politely suggest that Johanna needs to stop talking about her interest in men because no one believes it, but they will invent a ridiculous excuse to go to Sydney for the weekend and just happen to end up at a lesbian boo
kstore where Jack talks about hot butch ladies, Phil tries to pick out the best queer lady romances and Steve charms half-a-dozen phone numbers from the customers. It might be a whole lot easier just to say it, but why do that when they can interfere, meddle and make a colossal mess of both the bookstore and Johanna’s head, all in the name of showing their friendship?
There’s a reason she’s writing a thesis about a tiny zombie-prone town in the middle of nowhere, after all, and it’s not because Port Carmila is all that historically interesting—not when she hoped to write her thesis about topics that don’t involve the roaming undead.
“He won’t mind, Izzy,” she says instead as she picks up Izzy’s cool hand and entwines their fingers together. “He’s born here, even if he forgets that sometimes. He’ll understand.”
Besides, she owes him for all those bloody phone numbers.
“Right.” Jack slaps Phil on the head as he stands. “Now we’re done with that, anyone want to come with to the Collective? I’ve got to knock off a flag…”
Acknowledgements
This story and its sequels wouldn’t exist without the LiveJournal gang Kimberley Beattie, I. D. Locke, Emily C, Saskia, Frogs, Meep, Charis, Nae and Haldoor who, among many others I’ve forgotten, delivered such enthusiastic and supportive comments on my work. Thank