by Lee French
Barnyard Explosions
Albert
“Awesome.” Pushing up his safety goggles, Greg looked up from his current project to watch Jayce, currently shiny silver, set down five cardboard boxes, all full of the things he’d asked for.
“If you need anything else, there’re a few hardware stores relatively nearby, but most of it was pretty hard to find.” With a tip of an imaginary hat, Jayce left the barn. He had other heavy things to lift and move.
“Is it Christmas?” Albert sat with his laptop, transcribing Greg’s notes for him.
“Better. This day doesn’t rely on religion for existence, just science.” Greg grinned and waggled his eyebrows.
Albert snorted. “And what will science be bringing us today?” The question would, he knew, keep his inventor talking for at least five minutes.
“A plane. I’m building a plane that will run on a second generator, just like the one we’re using.” He went on for several minutes, talking about drag and coefficients and sonic booms.
Most of it went over Albert’s head, as he’d known it would. He’d asked the question to fill the barn with the pleasant sound of Greg’s voice while he chattered about some part of his favorite subject: applied science. Nothing beat the way his eyes lit up when he explained physics and electrical engineering.
As Greg spoke, he wielded a soldering iron with practised expertise, tiny wisps of smoke dispersed by a small fan whirring on the edge of the table. Eventually, he sat up and rolled his shoulders. “Which all mostly just means it’ll be a really fast jet airplane capable of flying indefinitely and evading modern detection capabilities.”
“Sounds useful.” Albert finished his work and saved the document, then sent it to Greg’s tablet so he could refer to it. The man could build a supersonic stealth jet from spare parts in a rundown barn, but he couldn’t open his email without help. He grabbed the tablet to make sure the document went where he wanted it to.
“It’ll take a couple of months to build, which kind of sucks, but we don’t happen to have a chassis to gut. That would make it go faster.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Albert’s stomach rumbled. “I’m going to get lunch. Hungry?”
“Not quite yet. Bring me back something?”
Setting the tablet aside, Albert nodded. He expected little in the way of attention while Greg worked. Once, he’d set a project in process aside in favor of Albert. It had taken the University of Wisconsin six months to rebuild that lab. Everyone appreciated that the insurance company decided to call it an accident.
“Sure.” He squeezed Greg’s shoulder and stepped out from under the tarp tent protecting the workshop. The farmhouse had higher priority for repairs, which made sense given how many people slept there. He and Greg could live with a leaky roof until people had time to fix it.
Albert strolled in dappled sunshine past John’s garden and to the back door. He’d never lived outside of a city before, and all the trees made this feel like a bizarre camping adventure. In many ways, that described it perfectly.
He saw Owen, shirtless and muscular and delicious, handing a sheet of plywood up to Matthew on the farmhouse roof, also shirtless and muscular and delicious. Violet, hovering several feet above the ground, guided it for them. Jayce walked around the corner, still silver from head to toe, carrying a stack of cement blocks.
Lizzie sashayed away from the house as she ran her fingers through her hair and lifted it off her neck. Such a gross vamping display had to be meant for Dan, who followed her into the woods with a hand on her hip. Albert caught John’s eye as he straightened from picking tomatoes and they shared a moment of incredulity at her.
This place definitely fit the word “bizarre.”
Inside, he headed straight for the large kitchen. Aside from the appliances and plenty of counterspace, it held two picnic tables. Sam and Ai sat around a large platter full of sandwiches with Lisa and her husband, Clive. As a fellow hanger-on for all these superpowered people, Albert felt like he ought to be able to befriend Clive. It seemed, so far, that they had nothing else in common and Clive preferred to spend his time with Lisa. Albert could hardly cast stones on that count.
“Hello, ladies,” Albert said with a cheerful wave. “And gentleman.”
Ai waved him over and patted the spot beside her. The slim Japanese woman had been the one to bring him and Greg here. He had yet to decide if he truly felt grateful for that. “By yourself?”
Albert sat and let Sam put a sandwich on a plate for him. She added a pile of cut vegetables and a cup of ranch dip. “Boy Genius is hard at work. I’ll need something to take for him.”
Ai filled a cup with water from a pitcher for him. “How’s the barn working out for you guys? ”
“Oh, it’s a little drafty, but we’ve got plenty of body heat to spare. John said he’d put up some shrubs or something to help block the wind.” He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed it up. “Is that rosemary in the mayo?”
Sam nodded and ducked her head. “It’s my dad’s recipe.”
“It’s delicious. I’m not sure—” A minor earthquake rocked the building, followed by a boom Albert felt in his chest. His heart stopped. He dropped his sandwich and sprinted for the door. The most likely source—and victim—of an explosion here was Greg.
Black smoke belched from the barn in every direction and Greg stumbled out of the dark cloud, coughing and waving his gloved hands in front of his face. He bent over and sucked in clean air, punctuated by more coughing.
“Are you okay?” Albert ducked to avoid the miasma as he hurried to Greg’s side.
Nodding, Greg let himself be pulled farther from the smoke. When he could straighten, he pulled his gloves off and pushed his safety goggles up. “All fingers, toes, and limbs accounted for.” Though his words came out coherent, his voice had a dazed quality. “Eyes and ears functioning within normal parameters. I seem to be okay.”
Albert hugged him, forcing another spate of coughing. “What happened?”
“Oh, you know. The usual.” Greg sighed with contentment. “Science.”
With a roll of his eyes, Albert pushed him away and looked him over. “You’re filthy. Did you roll around in ashes?” He saw no signs of burns or scratches, which filled him with relief.
Greg chuckled without coughing. “Yes. I know how much you love that. Thought it would be a special treat.”
“It’s special, all right.” Furious he’d done something to make him worry, Albert thumped him in the arm. Then he grabbed Greg and hugged him again. “Remind me again why I put up with this?”
Greg tilted his soot covered face down and brushed his lips across Albert’s. The last time he’d done that where other people might see had been in Madison, at a dinner party with their gay friends. Afraid of being targeted for it, they barely touched in public.
Eyes watering, Albert straightened and smoothed Greg’s leather apron. “Of course, silly me. I forgot. It’s for the sex.” He noticed a crowd had gathered, making that tiny kiss all the sweeter.
“And you like programming my phone and tablet for me.”
Albert gave him a watery smile. Movement made his eyes flick over Greg’s shoulder and he watched Lizzie strut by with a sour frown.
“There’s no fire,” she whined.
Out of reflex, Greg and Albert each took a small step apart.
Lizzie smirked. “Don’t stop on my account.”
Albert rolled his eyes. “Is there anything you need to do to stop the smoke?”
“Nah, it’ll run itself out in a minute or two.” Greg straightened his shoulders and took Albert’s hand. Such a deliberate statement in front of others made Albert want to cry. “I guess it’s time for a lunch break.”
“If you ask me,” Lizzie said as she walked away, “it’s more time for shower sex.”
Afraid of what might come out, Albert covered his mouth. He agreed but had no intention of saying so out loud.
Greg coughed awkwardly and sque
ezed his hand. Setting off for the house, he tugged Albert along.
Albert swallowed past the lump in his throat and sniffled. “She, ah, does have a point. Look at my hand. I’m almost as dirty as you are.”
“I think it’s safe to say that, between the two of us, you’re definitely the dirtier one.” Greg opened the door and smirked at him.
“I’ve just read more porn than you. Really, though, we should at least wash our hands before using them to eat.” Albert tugged him toward the nearest bathroom.
Looking himself over, Greg nodded. “You and your sensible ideas. Let’s go do that.”
After three years together, Albert knew the look Greg got in his eyes. The gears in that colossal brain whirred and clicked. His mind jumped back onto the Science train, chugging along to some destination only Greg understood. His boyfriend had a woman on the side—a distressingly needy woman. Nothing he could do would ever pry her claws out of Greg’s side, and he’d be unhappy if he ever found a way. Without his obsession, Greg wouldn’t be the man Albert fell in love with in the first place.
He stepped inside the bathroom and turned on the water. Greg shut the door with his hip and stuck his hands in the stream. Albert picked up the soap and rubbed it over Greg’s skin, gently washing the soot and dirt and grease away. His eyes flicked up to the mirror to see Greg smiling at him.
“Was it a major setback?”
Greg blinked and seemed to come out of a trance. Science, of course. “Hm?”
Albert sighed. “The explosion. Do we need to get replacement parts because of it?”
“Oh. Nah. I’ve got plenty of all that.”
Albert shut off the water and noticed Greg smiling at him again. He wrapped his Brainiac’s hands in a towel and patted them dry. To his surprise, Greg tossed the towel aside to cup his cheeks and kiss him. It felt less hungry and demanding than what usually followed an explosion.
When he broke it off, Greg stared into his eyes. “We should get married.”
His heart stopped again. Albert held his breath, wishing with all his might that he hadn’t imagined those words coming from Greg’s mouth. “What?”
“I love you. Marry me.”
Albert’s eyes burned and tears slid down his cheeks. “We’re on the run from the government and you want to go file paperwork with it?”
Greg’s hopeful smile faded. “We can…go to Canada? They do it there, don’t they? ”
A noise halfway between a laugh and a sob burst out of Albert and he wrapped his arms around Greg’s neck. “I don’t think that’s feasible right now, but yes, if there’s a chance, of course I will.”
Greg held him close and kissed his cheek. “Good. For a minute there, I thought you were turning me down. I know I’m a pain in the ass sometimes, but I didn’t think I was that bad.”
“You’re awful.”
Chuckling, Greg squeezed him and let go. “Damn. I made a mess all over you.” He brushed at soot on Albert’s shirt, but gave up after only two swipes. “I’m making it worse. Come on, we should hurry up and eat so we only have to clean up once.”
Wiping his face, Albert swatted playfully at Greg’s arm. “You say that like cleaning up is a bad thing.” He shoved Greg away and turned to the mirror, despairing at the streaks on his face and red in his eyes. “You go ahead, I’ll catch up.”
“You look fine.” Greg put a hand on Albert’s shoulder. “No one cares, especially not me.”
Albert huffed. “I care.” Shooing Greg out, he pretended to be affronted.
“Well, fine. If it matters to you, then I can pretend to care.” Greg grabbed Albert’s hand and kissed it, then left the room with a smile.
Albert splashed some water on his face, hoping it would help him stop crying. “He asked me to marry him,” he whispered as he stared into the sink basin. “He’s never even joked about it before. Does that mean we’re engaged? That’s how it works, isn’t it?” None of their gay friends had considered marriage before they left, so he had no role models for the etiquette. Several of their straight friends and relatives had tied the knot, of course, but he had no idea if the rules worked the same.
Should he ask for a piece of jewelry? For Christmas last year, Greg gave him a pair of diamond stud earrings made in his own lab and personalized with a blue tint to match Greg’s eyes.
He toweled off his face and checked himself in the mirror. Greg’s mother would be a nightmare about the whole thing. She’d already offered to let Albert rifle through her closet. No doubt she’d pull out her old wedding dress to make him try it on. His protestations that he had no interest in wearing dresses or skirts fell on deaf ears. Just because everybody—including Albert and Greg—knew he’d be the wife in this relationship didn’t mean wanted to pretend to be a woman.
With a sigh, he resigned himself to red, weepy eyes. At least his Chinese ancestry meant he avoided the unpleasantness of blotchy cheeks. After splashing water on his face and toweling it off, he left the bathroom to find Greg sitting next to Ai in the kitchen, grinning while she filled a cup with water for him. Since boobs held no appeal for Boy Genius, he didn’t care. Still, Albert slipped in beside his man and took over the duty of making sure he ate.
“It’s not a major setback, I don’t think,” Greg said. “I’ll know more when I go back in, after the smoke clears. We should have a plane at our disposal in a few months, I think.”
“You guys are really cute together,” Ai said with a dreamy smile. Albert knew that look. It was the look of a girl who fantasized about romance. “How did you meet?”
“College.” Albert gestured with a carrot stick. “I was Greg’s English tutor. The poor boy didn’t even know what a dangling participle was.”
Greg waggled his eyebrows. “That was a fun lesson.”
“Yes,” Albert smacked him playfully on the arm, “yes it was.”
Ai giggled. “Was that your first date?”
“Dangling participles?” Albert thought back to their first date, getting his own wistful expression. “No, it was about two months after.”
“I didn’t really realize I was gay then. The idea of going out with a guy kind of confused me a little, but I really liked Albert, so I figured I should give it a shot and see what happened.”
Albert sniggered. “I used my gay predator wiles to woo him over to the dark side. Such an impressionable young boy, all ripe and eager to please.” A light blush colored Greg’s cheeks, letting Albert know he was going a little too far. “But we mostly just went out to a few places as friends at first, because it was so painfully obvious he didn’t really know what he wanted. It helped a lot that his mother is really great.”
Greg shook his head in amusement. “My mom figured it out before I did, I think. I mean, I dated a few girls in high school, and it was always…off, I guess. I figured I wasn’t as interested in them as I was in physics, but it turns out they didn’t do much for me because they were girls.”
“You’re disgusting.” Tony stepped into the room with a revolted sneer on his face. The Cubano walked up and snatched a sandwich from the part of the stack as far from them as possible.
Albert rolled his eyes. He’d lived with that sort of thing for years and it didn’t bother him. Much. Knowing how it still hurt Greg, though, he reached over and put his hand on his boyfr—fiancee’s thigh.
Ai, though, gave Tony an unfriendly look. “Greg is one of us.”
“So? That doesn’t make him any less a fag.”
“I’ll just go back to the barn.” Greg picked up his half-finished sandwich and left the room.
“That’s where the animals belong.”
Albert picked up extra food to follow Greg with. Out of pique, he tapped the rest of the visible sandwiches with his upraised pinky. He had no doubt this exchange would leave him with no appetite at all, but that didn’t mean he no longer needed to eat. “You know what’s really disgusting? Blind hate. How you can still cleave to your idea of God in the face of all this is beyond me, but y
ou’re welcome to keep it to yourself. Especially if you enjoy electricity and internet access.”
As he left the room with his bundle, he heard Ai say, “You can always leave if you don’t like relying on a gay man for anything.”
Finding Greg right now would actually be harder than it seemed on first blush. Back at school, whenever he got upset for one reason or another, Greg always went to the same place: the back stoop of their apartment. Here, it hadn’t happened yet, so Albert hadn’t the first clue where to find him. On the off chance it would turn out to be the barn, he checked there first.
He found the source of the explosion, now sitting inert on a table. Tools and other parts and things were scattered around from the blast. Judging by the minimal damage, the blast itself had been small. Breezing through, he checked the old horse stall they used for a bedroom and climbed the ladder to peek into the rickety loft above it.
With no sign of Greg anywhere, he went outside and walked around the entire building. He found Greg around the back, sitting on an old tree stump. Slipping up behind him, Albert laid his hands on the younger man’s shoulders and swirled his thumbs around his spine. The usual tension caused by hunching over his work seemed multiplied.
Greg sighed and let him work for several minutes before saying anything. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“I wasn’t, either. We’ve all been here for a few weeks now. I figured if it was going to happen, it would have been right away, at the beginning. I guess he’s finally comfortable enough to spend his time being judgmental.”
Greg nodded and looked down at his own hands. “I don’t know how you can listen to people say things like that. I don’t feel like it’ll ever not bother me.”
Albert shrugged. He knew Greg didn’t mean that the way it sounded. “I’m just more used to it. There’s a reason I never wanted take you home with me.”
“Yeah.” Greg took in a deep breath and let it out slowly then put a hand on one of Albert’s. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. Nothing anyone else says can change that.”
Tomatoes and Zucchini