Ship It

by Britta Lundin

  “Cowabunga,” she says, laughing.

  “So that’s how I found fanfic, which led me to Tumblr, which introduced me to so, so many other fandoms. And so I was an old fandom hag ready for a new obsession when Demon Heart premiered.”

  “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” she repeats, shaking her head.

  “Yeah, well, they say you don’t get to pick your first fandom, it picks you.”

  “So why do you think April picked you?”

  I shrug. “I’m not sure. She was smart, she was fearless, she didn’t get enough story….”

  “She was the only woman,” Tess points out.

  Oh. Yeah, huh. That, too, probably.

  Tess gives me a little look and says, low, “Do you often find yourself thinking about women, Claire?”

  The way she says it gives me shivers. I look at her, and she’s giving me these eyes that are asking me a question I don’t know how to answer.

  Do I?

  Am I?

  I honestly don’t know.

  I sidestep the subtext and answer the question literally. “We’re hardwired to look for the character who’s like us, right? That’s just reality. I guess I saw myself in the intrepid woman reporter. Not so much in Rafael.”

  “Maybe if she’d been Rafaela…” Tess jokes, and the mood seamlessly shifts back to fun banter.

  “Ooh, do you think we could get Jamie to reboot TMNT with all lady-turtles?”

  “Oh my god, can you even imagine?” We’re both giggling now. The idea is so absurd. Jamie making a movie about women? Ridiculous.

  “Rico can play Shredder!” I offer.

  “And Forest is April, no, wait…Abe O’Neil!”

  “Oh my god, in a little yellow bodysuit, he’d be so cute!” We’re dying laughing now.

  Tess stops walking as we cross to a sidewalk, where her old red Toyota Tercel is parked under a streetlight. I hadn’t even realized we’d made it back to her car.

  “Well, this is us,” she says. “I’ll give you a ride back to your hotel. This was a nice night.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I can’t believe I almost didn’t come tonight. This was more fun than I’ve had in a long time.

  On the short drive back to the hotel, I feel a sort of dread, for the end of the night, for the end of this trip… for being alone again. Back to Pine Bluff, back inside my own mind, my only escape the internet and the occasional conversation about horses with Joanie on the school bus. Tess drums her deep purple–painted fingernails on the steering wheel, nodding her head along to the radio, her hair bouncing over her forehead, down her neck. I finally made a friend, and soon we have to say good-bye. What then?

  Tess pulls into our hotel parking lot, puts the parking brake on, and turns the car off. She rubs at the ribbon around her dress, worrying the wrinkles out. And I finally have my answer because I can tell from the way it moves that it’s not sewed down, that it’s keeping her dress snug around her middle, that if I reached over and pulled on one end… I blink hard, pushing the mental image away.

  “So, ah, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow in Seattle. That’s my last stop.”

  “Yeah, mine, too,” I say. We’re flying out of Sea-Tac Airport in two days.

  “We should hang out there, though, you know? I heard they’re doing a big screening for the finale. Outdoors in a park, like a thousand Demon Heart fans all watching together. Should be rad.”

  “Yeah, definitely! Let’s do it.” I feel a little sick thinking about Demon Heart ending for the season, but it has to happen sometime, and I’d rather watch the finale next to Tess than all alone in my hotel room.

  “Cool, cool,” she says.

  And it’s time to make my exit. She looks at me with the same look she had back on our walk—casually upturned mouth, intent unblinking eyes, and I wonder, is she thinking about kissing me? Am I thinking about kissing her? I guess I am now….

  Her gaze is so intense, I have to look away. Out of my peripheral vision, I can tell she drops her eyes, too.

  “I, uh, I better find a place to park for the night,” she says.

  “Wait,” I start, putting together what she’s saying with what she told me back in Boise. “Are you really sleeping in your car?”

  “Yeah. It’s no big deal,” she says. “My sleeping bag is warm, and I lock the doors.”

  “No,” I say. That’s not acceptable.

  “Claire, relax, it’s fine.”

  “No. Nope. You get a bed. You can sleep in my room.”

  She looks at me a moment, as though trying to decide what I mean by the offer. I don’t know what I mean by the offer.

  “How many…” she starts, and stumbles, then tries again. “How many beds does your room have?”

  “Two,” I say quickly. “You can have your own, I’ll sleep with my mom. She won’t care, I promise. You’re not staying in this car. Can you even stretch out? I mean, jeez!”

  “You’re sure?” she asks.

  “A hundred percent. Come on.” I open my door and step out, then bend over to look back in at her.

  “Okay,” she says, and reaches into the back for her stuff.

  What am I doing?

  BACK IN THE privacy of my own room, I type heart of lightness into Google, hesitate a moment, then hit ENTER.

  It’s time I figured out for myself what the hell Claire’s been writing about me online. Well, she says it’s not about me, but that’s just semantics, right? Because Forest is Smokey, and Smokey is Forest. And all of this, whether she likes it or not, is inextricably tied up in me.

  I click a link, which takes me to her page on a fanfiction site, and the first thing I see is she has so many stories.

  “Whoa.”

  I scroll through the titles but they just keep coming. I don’t know what I’m waiting for, I just click one at random. It says 48,000 views. Jeeeeeesus. She’s not messing around.

  Okay, Claire, let’s see what you’ve been up to.

  THE FIRST TIME Smokey kissed anyone, he was twelve years old, impressing his friends by surprising Tammy Rose with a peck on the lips as she came out of the movie theater. Immediately after he pulled away, she’d spat on the ground, screwed up her face, and hollered curses after him as he and his friends ran away. Smokey had laughed with his friends all the way back to his house until he closed his front door behind him, and, alone, sighed against it with a feeling he couldn’t name.

  The next time he kissed anyone, he was seventeen, pressing that neighborhood boy Tyler against the shingles of his house, their scuffed-up sneakers nudging together. Smokey’s dad moved them three states away the next day. He never saw Tyler again, but he sometimes thought about him, hoping his life was easier than Smokey’s turned out to be.

  The first time Smokey went down on a man was three years later, dropping to his knees in a soybean field in front of the son of a farmer whose name he never quite caught. The farmer boy-nearly-a-man leaned his broad, tanned shoulders back against the enormous tire of the family John Deere and urged Smokey on, the lights of the farmhouse just hidden from view behind the tractor in the dimming evening Iowa light. When Smokey finished, the farmer boy buttoned up his Wranglers and practically ran back into his house, leaving Smokey with a hard-on and a hurting heart. Smokey was always living his life outside, never quite welcome indoors.

  The first time Smokey had sex, it was with the pretty and curvy young bartender of a dusty hole-in-the-wall just outside Austin who’d been shamelessly flirting with him all night. What the hell, he thought, and let her drive him back to her apartment, a studio by the airport with a fuzzy orange couch that was missing most of its fuzz and a live oak brushing against the outside of her window. He poured whiskey for them both, but it turned out he didn’t need it. As soon as she guided his hands on her, letting him run his fingers over her belly, her back, reaching down her skirt to find she had lost her panties somewhere between the door and the kitchen, he was ready to go. If he was nervous about performance, he didn’t need to be, b
ecause she was assertive and wasn’t afraid to tell him exactly what to do and how slow to do it. He left town three days later with her number in his phone and explicit instructions to text her the next time he was in Hill Country. And he would have, but then the portal opened, and hell literally broke loose, and Smokey met Heart and found that he had a purpose larger than himself.

  Smokey and Heart were always meant to be enemies. A man dedicated to sending demons back to hell wasn’t supposed to just up and befriend a demon. But Heart wasn’t like the others—he was smarter and seemed to understand Smokey, and unlike every other demon that crossed Smokey’s path, Smokey couldn’t kill him. They were an even match, and not just physically. Like Smokey, Heart’s words seemed to suggest a past that was less than sterling, and a deep well of pain that he could cover up for polite company but that haunted him in moments of solitude, or toward the bottom of a bottle. Smokey knew that pain well and didn’t wish it on anyone else, not even a grossly attractive Hellhorn Demon who didn’t know how to stay in his lane.

  Yes, Smokey had met so many people in his short life, had kept track of most of the ones who didn’t piss him off or end up dead, and he was certain that despite many attempts, he had never fallen in love with anyone.

  This September, after he and Heart had accidentally worked together to send a Redbeast Demon back to his home in hell, they had decided to attempt a tenuous truce at last. And, to make it more official, they sealed it with a clink of glasses of Bulleit and a game of pool in the back room of a roadside place they both happened to know outside Denton.

  The bar was dark and smelled of day-old chicken, fried steak, and spilled beer. Lit mostly by the neon signs hanging on every wall, it did two things right: good billiards and cheap prices. The other patrons—looked to be mostly regulars—eyed Smokey and Heart but gave them no guff, just tossed their peanut shells on the ground and ordered their doubles in peace.

  The first game of pool nearly ended early after Smokey accused Heart of moving the cue ball when he wasn’t looking. Heart laughed him off, which only made Smokey angrier. Strong words were exchanged, and the whole ordeal would have blown up in their faces if Heart hadn’t generously offered to buy the next round. Then, while he was at the bar, leaning over the counter, Smokey caught a glimpse of Heart’s shirt riding up in the back to show off a tiny sliver of pale brown skin above his waistband and felt a familiar hitch in his chest.

  Stop it, he whispered angrily to himself. Not now, not here.

  Smokey could slay demons all night long. He could stare down the dirtiest, ugliest dreck that hell chose to spit out at him, and he could do it with a fire in his eye until his legs gave out from exhaustion. He could do all that and keep the fear in his belly at bay, but he couldn’t have a straightforward conversation and game of pool with Heart without feeling like he had to lob a bomb in the middle of everything and make his escape. His bravery had a county line, and Heart was far, far on the other side of it.

  Half a bottle later, Smokey found himself subject to an impromptu pool lesson from Heart. A patronizing one—Heart explaining that Smokey’s bridge was too stiff, that he needed to put a little give in it, here, like this… and then Smokey found Heart’s fingers molding his own, Heart’s body brushed up against his side, the unnatural heat from the demon blood that coursed through his system making the hairs on Smokey’s arm stand up.

  “I… I got it,” Smokey coughed out weakly, softly, not nearly rough enough to get this man away from him.

  No, not man, demon. Demon. He couldn’t let himself forget that.

  Heart didn’t move away. Instead, he leaned into Smokey’s ear, his whiskey-thick breath warm on Smokey’s neck, and whispered, “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  Smokey shivered, the goose bumps crawling unbidden up his arms. His heart jackhammered in his chest as he tried to ignore the growing knot in his stomach.

  Smokey couldn’t take it, the warmth in his voice, as if Heart gave a shit what Smokey was feeling. As if Smokey mattered. He focused on steadying his breath so that his next words came out clearly, without wavering: “I said, I got it,” he growled, rough and low.

  Heart let go, almost immediately. “Okay,” he said, “sure.” As Heart pulled away, the cool air flowed back in between them, and Smokey felt only disgust in himself for his cowardice. How long had he thought of a moment like this, and he had just let it slip right through his fingers. The swirl of emotions in his gut blackened into anger—at himself, at Heart for making him feel this way and for being a demon, at this bar for existing, at the world for going to shit, at himself, always at himself.

  Heart stepped farther away as Smokey spiraled. “I’m sorry,” Heart murmured low. “It didn’t mean anything.”

  Smokey had snapped the pool cue before he even realized he was going to do it, sharp splinters of wood flying across the green felt. He took a swing at Heart, who leapt back, surprised, but ready for battle, always—the life of a demon, perpetually hunted.

  “Whoa, man, what’re you doing?” Heart cried as he scrambled to put the pool table between them, but Smokey sprang onto the tabletop and took another swing, this time connecting with Heart’s shoulder. The cue shattered across his granite-hard demon muscles, leaving Smokey with just a shard of wood and his own fists. Heart let out a string of curses in demontongue as Smokey tossed what was left of the pool cue away and dropped from the table to a spot in front of Heart, who had the perfect opening to land a few blows as Smokey caught his balance, but he didn’t take it.

  Smokey didn’t know why he was doing it except that he was already doing it and couldn’t stop now. He picked up a chair and sent it splintering against Heart’s abs. Heart staggered back but still didn’t fight. Instead, he hollered at the barman and patrons to leave out the front doors and not come back in, not for anything. Then he used his demon strength to flip the pool table a full turn and a half, sending the balls flying across the room, rolling under tables and chairs. The superhuman action was more than enough to convince the other patrons that leaving was wise.

  Heart turned back to Smokey. “Just you and me now, let it out,” Heart said, low and warm, like he was Smokey’s mother or some shit, and the fact that Heart still wouldn’t hate Smokey, even after this, made him even angrier.

  Smokey kicked a few pool balls aside, then lunged at Heart, who tried to dodge, but they had fought too many damn times before, and Smokey knew just how Heart would react. Smokey tackled him hard, landing with a crack of bone and muscle on the slick, dirty floor. Smokey managed a few blows across the face before Heart was able to judo Smokey off him, spitting blood and getting back to his feet.

  “That’s it,” Heart said. “Keep it coming.”

  Smokey could stop and think about what he was doing. He could open that part of his heart that felt feelings other than run and snarl and fight. He could talk, or he could cry. But instead, he curled his fingers in against his palm so they didn’t break, tucked his shoulder, and slammed Heart against the wall of the bar so hard that the Miller sign dropped off its nail and shattered on the ground, sending shards of the glass tubes skittering across the dirty cement floor.

  Smokey fit his arm against Heart’s neck and pinned him against the wall. “Why aren’t you fighting back?” he barked.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Heart said simply.

  “Well, I want to hurt you,” Smokey growled into him.

  “I don’t think you do,” Heart whispered, their faces so close together now, Smokey could see the grain of yellow in Heart’s brown eyes.

  But Heart was wrong. Smokey did want to hurt him. Wanted him to disappear back into the hellhole he crawled out of. Wanted to wipe him from his memory so that he didn’t have to face what Heart made him think about every time he looked at him with those fiery eyes that reminded Smokey of a hearth on a cold day. Of safety in a storm.

  “You don’t have to be scared,” Heart said, so low Smokey almost couldn’t hear him over the thumping pulse in
his ears. “You deserve to feel this way.”

  That wasn’t true, not even a little, but looking into those eyes, Smokey felt the cold beat of anger still into quiet. Heart believed it, even if Smokey didn’t.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay. I forgive you,” Heart said, still pinned against the wall. And why should he forgive Smokey before the fight was even over? Or maybe it was over. The muscles in Smokey’s shoulders released, his forearm fell away from Heart’s neck, but he didn’t step back. It was true, he didn’t want to hurt Heart; he had wanted Heart to hurt him back, had wanted to feel the sharp crack of his nose breaking, the taste of blood in his mouth, the comforting wail of his muscles afterward.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Heart whispered. Smokey wanted to believe him. He knew Heart wasn’t going to fight him, but he wasn’t so sure this wouldn’t hurt. He wanted Heart to grab him, to flip him against the wall and press their lips together. He wanted Heart’s hands in his hair, on his chest, down his pants. But he couldn’t say it.

  No, there’s no way this wouldn’t hurt.

  Smokey was still standing so close he could smell the demon’s blood, but he didn’t step away. He let his gaze drop down Heart’s body, over his chest, his shoulders where he was bleeding a bit from the hit from the pool cue. Smokey wanted to take it back, undo the pain, fix the damage.

  When he met Heart’s eyes again, Heart was smirking.

  “What?” Smokey demanded.

  “Dude, you just kicked my ass pretty good, so if you’re waiting for me to make the first move—”

  So Smokey kissed him.

  He felt a little dizzy, but not from the alcohol, and Heart’s lips were warm and heavy. Heart hooked his hands around Smokey’s hips and pulled Smokey against him so their bodies fit together like a knife and its sheath. Heart’s mouth opened, and Smokey slipped his tongue in and found he tasted like Bulleit and demon blood and firewood, and he wanted more.

  Smokey’s defenses fell away faster than he would’ve liked, and before he knew it, he was moaning softly into Heart’s mouth as Heart half smiled and pulled Smokey even closer to him so that Smokey could feel the unmistakable bulge pressing into his hip, his own erection growing uncomfortably thick in his Levi’s. But the only important thing right now was the feel of Heart’s hands hot on his back, dipping under the waist of Smokey’s jeans, the taste of Heart in his mouth, the feeling of being held and needed and loved.