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“How’s it feel to be back home?”
They’re wandering down the dirt road that leads away from the camp, lined with tire tracks and Spanish moss. Gabe tucks his hands in the pockets of his hoodie; there’s a slight breeze that bites at his face, but the weather’s not bad. Nothing like winter in Jersey.
Chris laughs dryly at the question and glances up at Gabe. “It’s not really like being home. North and south Florida may as well be different states.”
“Just pretend the swamp is the ocean,” Gabe says with a shrug.
They’ve ended up in Gainesville, playing some hardcore fest after more than a month of touring. Gabe has been going going going, because if he thinks for too long about how tired he is, he’ll crash. But Chris is easy to read, more sensitive and introverted, and the exhaustion is evident in his eyes.
“It feels like everything is happening so fast,” he’d said one night, after a crowd of kids screamed his words back at him. “Don’t you ever feel like that?”
“I don’t want things to slow down. This is it for me,” Gabe replied.
He’s never been to Florida before. Now he’s here with the anoles and the water moccasins and every other billboard on the highway is for a stand selling oranges. The Hot Water Music guys told him to run zig zag away from alligators. Dragonflies still buzz over stagnant water, but luckily it’s too cold for mosquitoes. It feels like a different world. But then, it’s been that way a lot since they started touring. Each new city is a culture shock in its own right.
Chris is even more wide-eyed about it than him. He’s used to piers that overlook sandy beaches. Girls in sundresses, hair stiff with saltwater, and malls with skylights and fountains and marble floors. They have dive bars, sure, but Gabe doesn’t think it’s anywhere like the kind of places they’ve been playing in Jersey and Philly, where the bands are bleeding by the time they get offstage.
“I’m just worried,” Chris says after they’ve walked in silence for a while. “I’m worried that things won’t be the same when I get home. That I’ll feel like a tourist in my own town.”
Gabe wonders if he’ll ever feel that way. Wonders if someday he’ll end up in LA, a hot shot sellout who’s completely forgotten his roots. “Home isn’t all about the place, though,” he answers. “I think I find my home with people.”
The other man nods thoughtfully, but doesn’t add anything else. After a while, they begin to make their way back to the camp. Gabe isn’t sure where they’re playing—the gymnasium, probably, but there’s still some time before load-in. He should find the other Midtown guys, see if they need him for anything, but... he catches himself staring at Chris, with his red nose and cheeks. Pulling his jacket tighter around himself.
“Cold?” Gabe teases.
Chris rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything below 70 degrees may as well be freezing.”
Gabe smiles mischievously, freeing one hand from his pocket to place it on the small of Chris’s back. “I bet we could find a cabin that’s empty... I can think of some great ways to keep warm. And to make you forget about all this homesick bullshit.”
The shiver that runs through Chris might be partially from the cold, but mostly from the way Gabe’s hand dips beneath the waistband of his jeans. He quips, “Do any of your distractions involve me on my knees?”
Gabe smirks approvingly. He’s not sure what it is about Chris—a sort of practiced innocence, maybe, this good boy persona just barely offset with tattoos. It’s intoxicating in a stupid instinctual way, where Gabe wants to pick him up from Bible study and then fuck him in the backseat of the car. One less straightedge Christian boy from Florida (because the Underoath guys are enough as it is.) “I’m an open book, huh?” he drawls in response to Chris’s question.
He stops in the middle of the path and Gabe follows suit, turning to face him. Chris—seeming so small as he looks up at Gabe and puts his hands ( cold , icy hands) on Gabe’s neck, and asks, “Can I tell you something?”
“Anything,” comes the reply.
Chris thinks for a moment, formulating his words. He’s used to school essays, smart kid shit, where he can edit and revise his sentences endlessly. He’s used to being the funniest, prettiest boy in every room. And Gabe can’t fault him—he’s hanging on every word, thinking if he wasn’t in a band too, he’d be a groupie. “I think,” Chris says finally, “that you’re right. You can find home anywhere if you’re with good people. People that make the shit you’re going through seem a little less terrifying.”
Gabe smiles, and in the quiet stillness of the Micanopy woods, he leans down and kisses the other man. “Well,” he murmurs against his lips, “if you ever get tired of the sunshine and beaches, you’ll always have a home with me in Jersey.”