Big Man

by Matthew J. Metzger

  Max winced again.

  “Doesn’t,” he said. Then: “Double negative.” Then: “Anybody.”

  “Sorr-ee.” Cian finally lowered his fists.

  And came over to the edge of the mats.

  From clear across the room, Max hadn’t really seen it. But—wow. Cian’s face was a mess. His nose was still swollen. The entire left side, from temple to jawline, was a mottled medley of colours—green, purple, black, and brown—and his eye barely opened on that side, a sliver of blue showing. A gash, maybe two inches long, split his forehead cleanly—a straight line in a dark red pen from his hairline to his eyebrow. A single white slip of tape held it together, seeming almost precarious and delicate over the damage.

  “Oh shit,” Max said.

  “What?”

  “Your face.”

  Cian grinned. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Uhh…”

  “Come on, Max, it’s not fun if you don’t get a scar out of it.”

  “Should you be boxing when you look like that?” Max asked doubtfully.

  “Eh, don’t hit me in the face and we’ll be fine,” Cian said, shrugging. He bounced away across the mats, and Max hesitantly followed.

  They did warm up, though only stretches and a few laps each, and then Cian rummaged some pads out of a cupboard and put Max through enough jab and crosses to make his arms hurt.

  And then, when Max was sweaty and disgusting and his arms were shaking so hard that the fat wings could have lifted him off the ground, Cian said: “Lewis said he wants you to go to the proper class.”

  Max groaned and dropped his arms.

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Told him,” Max said. “They’ll laugh at me.”

  “Sure, but that’s why you kick ’em hard as you can.” Cian clapped the pads. “Hey, wanna do some push kicks?”

  “No. I want to walk home after.”

  “That can be your cool-down. Oh, hey, tell you what. I’ll show you how to grapple.”

  Max frowned suspiciously.

  “What’s grappling?”

  “Like a prolonged hug where you can shake someone around by the neck.”

  A hug? Max blanched. Crush Cian into his flabby, sweaty folds?

  “Um, no thanks.”

  “Why?”

  “Too—gross.”

  Cian’s face closed a little.

  “You can’t catch it, Max,” he said sharply.

  “Catch—what?”

  “Trans. You won’t turn into a girl if you freaking touch me.”

  Max felt the colour drain out of his face.

  “What? No! That’s not what I meant! I meant—I meant you won’t want to be touching me. Not—like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “All…sweaty. Gross.”

  “Hey, genius. See the pit stains? You’re not the only one who’s humming a bit right now.”

  “I just—don’t want to,” Max said.

  Not only would that be gross for Cian, but Max was terrified, given their haphazard and half-arsed warm up, that his body would betray him. It had been doing it more and more lately, trying to get…um…interested during a training session.

  Cian, though, wasn’t buying it. He frowned and dropped out of his fighting stance entirely.

  “Level with me, Max. Do you have an issue here?”

  “With…?”

  “Me.”

  “No,” Max said.

  “Then why do you stay a good five feet away from me all the time?”

  “Um. You might hit me. You know, you’re the scary boxer kid, and I’m—” Fatso Farrier.

  “—the kid who smashed my face open on his elbow on his sixth try.”

  Max opened his mouth to refute that…and then closed it again.

  “You got a problem training with a trans guy?”

  “No!”

  “Because if you do, say it. Lewis can train you on his own. Or Josh can. But I don’t like this—”

  “That’s not it,” Max insisted. “I don’t—I don’t care if you’re trans.” Except for the bit where he fancied Cian like mad and was possibly bisexual, but who really cared about that anyway when he was standing in a room with—

  “Really convincing, that. I’m not delicate. I can take it if you do. Just don’t screw around like thi—”

  “I’m standing mostly naked in a room with someone I fancy, all right?” Max said loudly.

  Cian’s jaw clicked shut.

  “And if—if I—lately…” Max ran both hands through his hair and sighed heavily. “Lately, all I do in training is stare at you, and if you actually start hugging me and touching my neck or whatever, it’s going to get really weird really fast, and that’s just—gross, nobody wants to have some fat disgusting slob—”

  “You don’t want to touch me because you might…what? Get hard?”

  Max closed his eyes with a grimace.

  “Yeah,” he mumbled.

  “And I can’t touch you because it’s disgusting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What is?”

  “Me.”

  “You think you’re disgusting?”

  Max snorted and opened his eyes again to scowl at Cian.

  “Get real. I’m gross. I don’t even have ankles, and my calves just go straight into feet. These are triple-extra-large shorts, and they’re cutting a groove into my gut. I haven’t seen my feet without bending over for years. It doesn’t matter who I fancy, nobody would ever want—”

  “Weird,” Cian interrupted in the softest voice Max had ever heard, “because I see a guy with shoulders like a rugby player and the kind of jaw that could cut glass.”

  Max frowned.

  “You what?”

  “I see someone with a mean right hook and an even meaner elbow strike,” Cian continued, stepping carefully across the mats, toes flexing, bare and vulnerable. “I see someone who would rather roll his eyes and huff than admit something’s funny or that he’s kind of secretly proud of what he just did.”

  Then he was just sort of—there.

  Right there. Like…breathing on Max’s face, right there.

  “When you strip away the self-loathing,” Cian whispered, so soft that his voice barely existed in the space between their faces, “there’s somebody beautiful. Right. Here.”

  The kiss was soft.

  Sweet.

  The gentlest clasp of lip to lip. A sense, rather than a sensation, of heat and hope.

  And Cian’s palm was smooth and cool on Max’s bare neck. Touching him.

  Just…touching him.

  Max pulled back like he was moving through water. He stared and then slowly lifted his fingers to his lips.

  “I—”

  The oddest smile crossed Cian’s features, and the hand on Max’s neck squeezed lightly before falling away.

  “Yeah, well.” Cian’s voice was a little hoarse. “You, uh. You don’t kiss during grappling. Usually.”

  “I—” Max repeated.

  “I’ll leave you to it. Don’t…don’t forget to cool down.”

  And then Cian was gone. The door banged.

  And Max stood in the middle of the mats, fingers on his lips, all alone but for the electric shocks fading away from where Cian’s skin had met his own.

  Chapter Eleven

  “MAX? WHAT THE hell you still doing here, kid?”

  Max blinked the sweat out of his eyes and glanced down at his hands.

  Oh.

  “Jesus, kid, when I said you could make the competition circuit one day, this isn’t how you train for it,” Lewis groused. He slapped his dry hand down on Max’s sweat-soaked shoulder and steered him away from the bag. “Come on; let’s get a first aid kit on them knuckles then call Donna to come and pick you up. Bad day?”

  “Uh—”

  “Come on, sit on the bench. Let’s see.”

  Max’s knuckles were
split open, bleeding sluggishly, and he hadn’t even noticed. He stared dumbly at them as his body slowly came back online. His biceps were tight and painful. His neck and shoulders ached, and his hands were twin balls of agony glued onto the ends of his arms.

  And yet over all of it, there was a buzz on his mouth like some invisible bee where Cian had kissed him.

  Cian had—

  Max swallowed and said, “Cian and I had a bit of a row.”

  “That’s when you hit him, not the bags,” Lewis said, popping open a green first aid box. “He’s a prickly little shit sometimes. Nobody’d blame you for hauling off and clocking him one.”

  “He’s your nephew, isn’t he?”

  “And Josh is my brother, my flesh and blood, but he’s a useless waste of space at the best of times.” Lewis glanced up at Max’s face. “This, ah. Wouldn’t be anything to do with that torch you’re carrying for Cian, would it?”

  Max blanched, and Lewis shrugged.

  “You wear your thoughts on your face, Max.”

  “He, um. He already knew. But. Yeah, it was…kind of about that.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Lewis said, “but I’ll say this. He blows up fast, and like I said, he’s prickly. But he’s also easy-going. If you’ve had a bit of a bust-up, he won’t remember by the morning.”

  Max had the distinct impression Lewis wouldn’t be right about that one.

  “Best act like you’ve forgotten too, eh?”

  Then his hands were wrapped in gauze and sticky antiseptic cream, sharp and stinging, and Lewis was saying something about ringing Aunt Donna.

  “I was going to walk home,” Max said, and Lewis coughed a laugh.

  “You’ve been in there beating up a punching bag for the better part of three hours, kid. You’re not walking home on your own.”

  Three hours?

  Max stared at his hands and slowly curled them into fists.

  The pain beat against his shredded knuckles and still wasn’t as loud as the buzzing on his lips.

  THE FIRST THING Grandma Gracie said when Max got home was, “Oh dear.”

  And she wasn’t looking at his hands.

  “Oh dear, dearie,” she repeated, peering at him over the top of her glasses. “Lucy, dear, you really ought to get him into Weight Watchers. There’s a—”

  “Grace!” Mum said, a look of outrage on her face.

  Max simply stared at them. At his not-grandmother sitting at the kitchen table like she owned the place. At his mother’s appalled face and her hands shaking around the kettle as she poured the witch another cup of tea.

  “He’s boxing several times a week.” Aunt Donna edged around him in the hall and marched into the kitchen in her best obnoxious electrician impression. She opened the fridge hard enough to rattle the bottles in the door.

  “Boxing,” Grandma Gracie said with a wrinkle of her nose. “Brainless sort of sport if you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked you,” Max said loudly.

  Silence.

  He felt a flush creeping up his face and neck and turned away from the stunned faces in the kitchen, forcing his aching legs to heave him up the stairs one painful step at a time.

  “There, you see?” he heard Grandma Gracie say shrilly. “Loutish behaviour. You can’t let it carry on, Lucy!”

  “Max!”

  Max stopped at the top of the stairs and glowered back down. He wasn’t going to apologise. He wasn’t.

  Aunt Donna stood at the bottom, staring up at him.

  Then she winked. Grinned. And proffered a thumbs up.

  Nice one, she mouthed—and then she was gone again.

  A tiny smile found its way onto Max’s mouth, but he slammed his bedroom door anyway.

  Just to make the point.

  Chapter Twelve

  MONDAY WAS TORTURE.

  Sometimes the sessions changed times because Cian did something twice a week and at weekends that shifted occasionally. But whatever it was, it didn’t affect Monday.

  So Max knew—knew he’d be going boxing again after school.

  He couldn’t decide which would be worse: training with a mostly naked Cian again, or Cian deciding not to come anymore and just training with Lewis. As if Max’s reaction was too awful for Cian to face.

  Max hadn’t meant to just stand there like a moron, but Cian wasn’t supposed to have done that. He was supposed to be grossed out. Like everybody else. He wasn’t supposed to want to touch Max, much less kiss him. And Max had been stunned. Nobody had ever kissed him before. Nobody had ever liked him before.

  And then along came Cian.

  Max blamed the distraction for what happened next.

  He ducked out of history as quickly as possible so Mrs Pellow wouldn’t try talking to him about his independent study project, and then he failed to keep going. Because leaving early meant getting to the gym and seeing Cian early.

  But leaving late meant—

  The hand slammed into the locker beside his head, and Aidan’s high snigger came from somewhere behind his shoulder. The buzzing on Max’s mouth stopped, nearly a full twenty-four hours after Cian left it there.

  “Did you hear the news, Fatso?”

  Jazz. Aidan. But when Max closed his locker with shaking fingers and turned, no Tom.

  “No.”

  “No, sir.”

  Max said nothing and Jazz’s lip curled.

  “They booted Tom out. Because of you.”

  Max’s gut clenched. Tom gone was good.

  “He’s kind of pissed off.”

  And bad. Really bad.

  “So I suggest,” Jazz crooned, pushing his face up close to Max’s, “that you and your lezzer girlfriend watch your backs.”

  Max blinked.

  Then—

  “My what.”

  “You heard. You fucked with my mate, Fatso. Now we’re gonna fuck with yours. Or just, you know. Fuck her.”

  Max opened his mouth.

  And he didn’t know where it came from, didn’t know where the stupid, suicidal impulse came from, but—

  “I didn’t know you were gay, Jazz.”

  “You what?”

  Jazz’s face twisted in revulsion. And Max’s mouth just kept running on ahead, like Cian on the mats, fast and flighty and unstoppable. Uncatchable.

  “Cian’s not a girl. But, you know, that’s okay. If you’re into boys.”

  Then Max saw stars and there was a ringing in his ears. The locker door was cold. His nose was warm and wet.

  “Hey!”

  A teacher’s voice and a coughing laugh.

  “Watch your fucking back, Farrier. You and that tranny lezzer bitch.”

  And then their shoes were running, squeaking on the tiles, and a hand was hard on Max’s arm. Mr Dunstable from the English department.

  “Come on,” he said. “Head’s office.”

  “No.” Max shrugged off the arm and touched his nose. He blinked away the dancing spots. It didn’t hurt that bad. Cian had done worse in class. “It’s fine. Look, it’s stopped bleeding already.”

  “Max—”

  “I have to get to the gym,” Max insisted and pulled away from Mr Dunstable entirely. “I’m going to be late if I don’t go.”

  He had to tell Cian.

  Whatever the hell else was going on, he had to tell Cian.

  THEY DIDN’T GET to talk all class. Maybe it was Cian’s intention, or maybe it was Lewis’s, but the entire class was the bleep test. Max hated the bleep test. Especially when compared to super-fit Cian, he felt like a lumbering dinosaur. And he couldn’t even get above level four.

  “It’s your baseline,” Lewis said after the first one. “Every grading you do, you have to score higher. Cian, you’re borderline. You need to be consistently above eleven point five.”

  Max was so winded they didn’t talk between tests, yet the only thing ringing in his head was Jazz’s threat.

  He didn’t know whether to believe it.

  He hadn’t really had
anyone for them to go after before. But then the other kids avoided him as if they knew they’d become targets by association. So maybe they would.

  Part of him was like: let them try it on. Cian was hard as nails. He’d kick them in the heads or something.

  But the other part…

  Come on. What kind of kid would kick someone in the head like a football in the middle of the school corridors and then be pissed he got expelled for it? Tom would do something really nasty; Max was sure of it.

  So sure that he skipped the shower, rubbing himself down with his towel and cramming himself back into his clothes so he could hightail it back into the corridor and catch Cian coming out of the private room, still in his shorts but with his shoes on and a different T-shirt in place.

  “Cian, I need to talk to you.”

  “Oh,” Cian said and flushed a funny pink colour.

  And then Jazz melted away.

  And Max found his heart was back around his throat and his lips were buzzing again.

  “Uh,” he said.

  Crap. Crap! He didn’t need to get tongue-tied. This wasn’t about—about them. It was about—

  “Sorry.”

  Max blinked.

  “What?”

  “Sorry,” Cian said again, and the pink was approaching a full-on red. “I shouldn’t have—just, sorry. Forget about it.”

  Max swallowed.

  “Forget it,” Cian repeated and then started for the door.

  “Wait!”

  The cool air outside was a pleasant shock, and Max reeled for a moment after the sweaty changing rooms. He grabbed for Cian’s elbow, the skin smooth and soft under his fingers, and then Cian was staring up at him, two steps down, with those blue eyes glittering black in the dark.

  “It’s—it’s about—” Max said.

  Then…

  Oh, screw it.

  His brain—or rather, his body—rearranged the priorities. Cian could kick people in the head without any boots to help him, and he could touch Fatso Farrier without wanting to throw up, and Max had just sort of frozen up and blanked out him.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Max said.

  “What?”

  “To—just stand there. Like an idiot.”

  Cian’s face crinkled up. “What?”

  “After you kissed me.”

  It sounded alien and wrong. Like something other people could say, but not Fatso Farrier. Who the hell would kiss Fatso Farrier?