Initiate

By Danny White

“You going, then?” 

Slowly, Trevor blinks an eye open at the sound, then the other. He knows, without looking, what Maya’s face will look like as she peers over at him, her chin atop folded hands, hopeful, only a little expectant.  

“The lax thing?” he mumbles. The clouds above seem to swirl like water down a sink drain. He feels, for a moment, as if he could reach out and touch them, disturb their patterns with a swipe of a finger.  

“Yeah.” Maya makes a weird noise with her teeth, a half-clicking, half-sucking sound. “You should.” 

He thinks to turn his head and frown at her, but the fuzzy July heat has made him lazy; instead, he opts simply for squinting up at the clouds some more before sighing. 

“I dunno,” he says. “Maybe.” 

A flash of chipping nail polish in the corner of his vision announces Maya’s prod before he feels it.  

“You’re no fun,” she protests, which is what she always says when they have these conversations. Predictably, in response he’ll say something along the lines of I’m fun, I’m just not stupid; Maya, in swift retaliation, will probably kick him until he’s groaning and acquiescing. They’ll go in together, heads held high to avoid coming across like they don’t belong there, and camp out in one of the corners, passing one of Maya’s dad’s artisanal beers between the two of them while making fun of all the other partygoers under their breaths. After a while, Maya will say she needs to go to the bathroom, which is unsubtle code for the fact that her sort-of-kind-of-not-really boyfriend Devin Kerr has landed on the premise, and she needs to go make out with him/kick him in the balls/throw him in the pool/have sex with him in the hall bathroom and pretend to be throwing up when someone tries to kick them out.  

At that point, Trevor will have a decision: stay or leave. Leaving is usually the wise option, but Maya’s car is defunct enough without letting his barely-licensed self behind the wheel, and the Ubers across town are as expensive as they are uncomfortable. Staying, though, presents other problems. The problems are usually tall and broad-shouldered and named things like Jack and Nate and Drew. They will be the ones to corner him and yet Trevor knows, if it ever got out, that he would be the one framed as the dirty pervert who basically strong-armed their two hundred pound selves into one of the empty upstairs bedrooms and took their pants off, and then that will probably be the point at which his 18 years on this earth come to an end. 

Though, truthfully, little strong-arming happens from either party. Silent sex with all the lights off on a bed that smells like the kind of pre-perfume body spray seventh grade girls are into is not good sex, but it is sex, and beggars can’t be choosers.  

Aloud, Trevor snorts, and Maya turns. 

“What?” Her voice sounds loud in his ear. In eighth grade, she had asked him out with the stony-faced determination of a seasoned war veteran. They had made it through approximately 15 minutes of their dinner before Trevor had excused himself to go throw up his stomach’s worth of Panda Express egg rolls with Britney Spears playing on the bathroom radio behind him. Head still in the ceramic bowl, Trevor had confessed that he, in fact, was gay. Maya’s response, given from outside the locked stall door, had been a simple, “You couldn’t have led with that?” 

But she hadn’t cared, and she still doesn’t care, and, really, that’s a blessing. Trevor should be more grateful. He should go to more parties with her so she can suck face with Devin. It’s the least she deserves.  

So he just shrugs, shoulders shifting over the cool grass on which they lay. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll go.” 

Maya gives a celebratory fist pump and lays back down, crown of her head resting on his shoulder.  

“Thank fucking god. ‘Cause I was not gonna go to that thing without you, you know that?” 

“I know.” He presses his cheek to her brown hair, reaches across her to pick a loose strand of grass from her curls. “And then Devin’s balls would remain un-kicked and his face un-sucked, and the world would probably blow up, or something. It’d be so depressing.” 

A buzz in his pocket saves Trevor from further rumination on face-sucking of any kind. He pulls his phone out and squints at the screen. 

The message displays a photo: through pixels, he’s able to discern the image of himself, bright blue t-shirt clashing garishly with the grass he’s laying on. The downwards angle suggests the photographer is planted at the top of the hill, and sure enough, when Trevor looks up, there it is: the familiar white Jeep, engine rumbling. 

“Duty calls?” Maya says, following his gaze up, and he huffs. 

“I wouldn’t say that.” 

“No?” She arches an eyebrow, but leaves it at that. “I’ll pick you up at eight.” 

“That’s so early, dude. Eight-thirty.” 

“Jeez, fine. Everyone’s gonna fucking show up at six, anyways, though. So we can get there whenever.” 

On his feet, now, Trevor frowns down at her. “Why so early?” 

“It’s an initiation.” 

“Oh, are you kidding me? We can’t go, Maya.” 

“No, come on!” She rolls onto her stomach, staring up at him. “Please. I’ve never been to one before.” 

“They’re freaky, trust me, you don’t want to. They, like, take off all their clothes and stand in a big circle and scream, it’s so fucking weird—” 

“You do realize that only makes me want to go more, right?” 

“Maya.” Trevor tries to look as serious as possible. The last initiation he’d been to had been in sophomore year. The kid on the docket that day—some scrawny freshman with jug-ears and staticky hair—had left the circle, his baby-fat face red and sopping with tears. Trevor had left soon after, too, with a bad taste in his mouth that, for once, had nothing to do with the artisanal beer. “We can’t. I don’t wanna.” 

“Please,” she says at the same time as the Jeep honks: loud, insistent. Trevor grits his teeth. “Think about it, okay? I’ll text you?” She flicks his ankle once more.  

“Sure, fine,” he says, and heads up the hill. 

“Fuckin’ there you are, dude.” 

Mason Cooper is not a Jack, or a Nate, or even a Drew. He is just a Mason: a KUIU cap pressed down over permanently sweaty hair, dirty jeaned and clad in an ever-changing line of Chargers memorabilia. Today: a jersey with HERBERT stamped on the back in big, white letters. 

“Sorry,” Trevor says, pausing at the open driver’s window. Smoke curls up from Mason’s outstretched hand, a glowing ember barely visible between fingers. Trevor nods down at it. “Thought you quit.” 

Mason’s face is not boyish, but the scowl makes it look the part, the sort of expression a kid being scolded for playing too rough on the playground might give. He flicks the cigarette butt onto the pavement below and jerks his chin. “Get in.” 

“Alright.” 

They drive around in silence for a while, Mason flipping through the radio channels with increasing agitation. Finally, he lets out a grunt through gritted teeth and holds out an aux cord for Trevor to take. 

“Put somethin’ on.” 

He obliges, flipping through songs until he finds something Mason won’t object to: melodic rapping over some lazy trap beat. Sure enough, the KUIU cap bobs in approval, a hand drumming fingers against the wheel. The other one seems to be moving of its own accord, fiddling with trash in the cupholder for a moment before reaching out, silently, to position itself behind Trevor’s headrest. The fingers attached drum the same rhythm as the one being tapped out on the steering wheel: a steady, regular tha-thump.  

“Where’re we going?” Trevor asks. The silence is starting to make him feel itchy. 

Tha-thump. “You coming to the party tonight?” Mason asks instead. Tha-thump. 

“Yeah,” he says, not feeling up for the same back-and-forth as he’d gone through with Maya, all of a sudden. “You?” 

It’s a dumb question: Mason is on the team, so of course he’s going. Trevor half-expects some sort of snide comment in response; what he gets, though, is nothing but silence, Mason’s lip captured between teeth. 

“It’s my turn,” he says suddenly, brakes grinding to a halt at the light. “For the stupid ‘nitiation thing.” 

Trevor lets himself turn, pulling a face. “Huh?” 

“Y’heard me.” He shrugs. “So, yeah. I’m goin’.” 

“But this is—what, your third year on the team? Why now?” 

“Missed it ‘cause of that stupid quarantine shit. They were gonna do one of the rookies, but he wussed out. But—” Mason lifts his hand off the wheel for a second before letting it fall back with a thump, “—they gotta do someone, so.” The hand behind Trevor’s head has stopped drumming its fingers. “So.” 

“Huh.” Trevor sits back in his seat. “Shit.” 

“Shit.” Mason agrees. 

“You nervous?” 

That earns him another scowl. “‘Course not. But it’s a big deal.” 

“I know.” 

“I mean, it’s serious. I gotta take it serious.” 

“I know.” He wants to add you do onto the end of his sentence, but that feels inappropriate—not the kind of thing he says to a Mason. Usually, the kinds of things he says to a Mason—to the Mason—are few and far between. They text more than they talk, and even that is mostly uncaptioned pictures from Mason, the responses to which go unacknowledged for days, weeks. The fact that he’d actually picked Trevor up like he’d said he would is astounding in and of itself; the fact that they’re clearly taking the long way back to Trevor’s house instead of the short, five-minute trip this could’ve been is enough to tell him that Mason is nervous. Really nervous. 

So he tries. “It’ll be fine,” he offers, and Mason snorts. They’re nearing Trevor’s house, finally; the buildings are starting to look familiar once more.  

“I’m not nervous,” he says, skidding through one of the roundabouts.  

“Didn’t say you were.” 

“Well.” Mason slams on the breaks; an older woman gives the two of them a glare before hobbling across the crosswalk. “Fuckin’ hurry up,” Mason grumbles at her. 

Trevor half-flicks him. “Shut up, your window’s open.” 

“Whatever,” Mason mutters, but rolls it up all the same. 

“Thanks,” Trevor says as Mason pulls up to the curb outside his house. He unbuckles his seatbelt but doesn’t move. “It really is gonna be fine, you know.” 

“Jeez, man.” Mason drops his hand from the wheel, resting a palm flat on his thigh. The other hand comes down from behind the passenger seat’s headrest to thump Trevor’s shoulder, knuckles first. “Stop fuckin’ nagging.” 

“I’m not nagging.” 

“Fussing, whatever.” A muscle in his jaw jumps. “I’m not fuckin’ worried.” 

“I’m just saying you’re gonna do fine.” Trevor thumbs the lock above the door handle. “No need to crawl up my ass.” 

“Not fuckin’—whatever.” Mason pinches his nose, sighs. “You’re comin’, though.” 

The words sound like a question but land like a command. With a sigh of his own, Trevor unlocks the door and throws it open. “See you,” he says over his shoulder, and kicks it shut. 

Mason drives away without another word.  

— 

True to Maya’s promise, the party is pretty packed by the time they arrive, eight-thirty on the dot. 

“Told ya,” Maya says with a smirk. Trevor vaguely recognizes her shirt as the one Devin got her for Christmas last year, and he does a good job of not rolling his eyes at it. “Packed.” 

She pops the P with fervor, and, as if on cue, a crop of dirty brown hair appears at her shoulder.  

“People’re downstairs,” says the newly arrived Devin, hand lingering on Maya’s back in silent greeting. “‘Sup, Ford.” 

“Hey.” Trevor nods at him, once. “The thing started yet?” 

“Soon.” Devin trails a lazy finger up the length of Maya’s spine, his grin toothy. “We should go if we wanna get a good spot.” 

“Okay,” Trevor says, then leans into Maya’s ear. “Gonna go to the bathroom. You guys go down.” 

Where he goes instead: back out the way he came, taking a sharp right at the door and skirting around the edge of the building towards where he knows the basement entrance is. He has a hunch, idly, in the base of his stomach, and sure enough, he’s right: there Mason is, one heel resting against the brick as he stands there, same frown, same jersey, same cigarette as before. 

“What’re you doin’ here?” Mason’s tone is hard-edged, but he doesn’t immediately spring away as Trevor comes up beside him, mimicking his pose against the wall. “You should go downstairs.”  

But he doesn’t let Trevor get an answer out before leaning in suddenly, smashing their lips together in a parody of a kiss that isn’t as unpleasant as it should be, despite the sour smoke still on his breath.  

“It’s gonna start soon,” Mason says as he pulls back, still pinching Trevor’s jaw with his thumb and forefingers. His hands smell ashy and metallic.  

“Wanted to say hi,” Trevor says, and Mason drops his chin. 

“Well. Hi.” 

“Hi.” 

“Jesus.” Mason takes another drag of the cigarette, then crunches the end against the brick, leaving a smear of ash. He flicks it into a nearby bush. 

“You excited?” 

“Eh.” Mason rubs at his mouth, as if the kiss can be scrubbed away with the back of cracked knuckles. “Sure.” 

“Don’t sound so sure.” 

“Okay, Trev, Jesus.” Mason whips his hat off, bending the brim back and forth in his hands. “All you come here to do is fuckin’ fuss some more, then, huh?” 

“I just wanted to say hi,” Trevor repeats. I wanted to see if you were okay bubbles up from somewhere solitary inside him, and he shoves it away with a miniscule jerk of his head.  

“Well, you fuckin’ said it.” 

“So you want me to go?” 

“Jesus, can you not, man?” But the glare that hits Trevor is more scared than anything, all upturned eyebrows and quick, fast blinks. “Comin’ over here and fuckin’ lecturing me—” 

“Where did I lecture you?” 

“—fuckin’ trying to—man, I dunno.” He scowls at the dirt at their feet, still wet from the previous night’s rain, clumping around twin pairs of boots. “Worm shit outta me, like—” 

“I just asked you a question.” Trevor pushes himself off the wall, hands buzzing. Maybe he will Uber home. “Sorry, I guess.” 

“And now you’re gettin’ all—fuckin’ passive aggressive at me, and shit. It’s a fuckin’ faggy move—” He waves a hand, sharply, and Trevor lets out a long, slow breath through gritted teeth. “Whatever. You’re not my fuckin’ girlfriend.”  

Which, somehow, is even meaner than the first thing.  

“Alright,” he says, low and quiet, and starts walking away. An immediate hand locks around his wrist. 

“Trev.” He knows, without turning, what Mason’s expression will look like: lips pressed in a thin line, jaw tight, eyes wide in the way he always thinks makes him look more apologetic but, really, just makes him look kind of crazy. “Man, wait, okay. I’m sorry for saying fag, or whatever. I’m sorry, okay?” 

“Sure.” But Trevor leans back against the wall all the same. He’s being an asshole, too, in his own way. They both are.  

“I’m nervous, okay?” Mason’s grip hasn’t left Trevor’s wrist; his palm is cold, sweaty, thumbnail biting into the fleshy part underneath bone. “Jesus. ‘S’that what you wanna hear?” 

“I don’t wanna hear anything.” With his free hand, Trevor rubs at his forehead. “Just—whatever. It’s gonna be fine.” 

“Yeah.” Mason’s eyes are still wide, blue beams glowing through the falling dark. Behind them, through the wall, Trevor hears a throaty shout, a banging sound, and the ambient voices around them fall silent all at once. Mason’s fingers twitch around his wrist. “You’re still comin’ right?” 

“I’m here, aren’t I?” 

“To the thing, I mean.” He licks his lips. Without his hat on, Mason’s hair stands up on end, baby-bird fresh for once. “Trev.” 

The sound of wood smacking against brick fills the silence as the basement door opens. A disembodied voice that sounds more familiar than Trevor would like to think about—a Jack, maybe—calls out: “Yo, Coops, c’mon.” 

“I’m here,” Trevor repeats, then shakes the grip off, nodding at the door. “Think you’re being summoned.” 

For a second, Mason’s mouth hangs open, eyes darting around, looking for a foothold, a block to bounce of.  

“You’re makin’ me freak out,” he whispers. 

“Go, Mason.” 

And he does. 

— 

By the time Trevor makes it down into the basement from the other side, the initiation is well underway, and Mason’s nose is bleeding. 

Trevor sinks teeth into his own lip until the taste of metal floods his mouth—an act of solidarity, maybe. He stops on the last step of the staircase, knuckles whitening around the railing, and watches as Mason swipes messily at his face, streaks of red dribbling all the way down his neck. His eyes are wrapped tightly in a black blindfold, and on his ears rests a pair of chunky headphones. 

“‘S’for the music,” says a kid at Trevor’s elbow, wide smirk visible even in the underground gloom. He looks like a frog when he smiles like that. “I heard they weren’t even doing music this time, actually. It’s probably like, audio clips of little kids dying, or something.” 

The kid cackles, and Trevor hones on the feeling of cold metal biting into his palm. In ninth grade, he and Mason had watched Bridge to Terabithia, but he’d made them turn it off after the girl died, eyes shining as he’d scowled at the TV. That’s his problem, maybe: despite it all, he’s nice. He’s a nice guy. 

“Fuck off,” Trevor mutters to the kid beside him, who gives him a weird look but edges away all the same. On the quasi-stage set up in the center of the room, he can now see Mason on his knees, head tipped up as one of the lacrosse guys holds a Bud Light to his lips. He shoves the neck deep in Mason’s open mouth suddenly, and a roar of laughter picks up as Trevor watches Mason’s throat shift with a gag.  

And for a second, he is selfish: he closes his eyes.  

When he opens them again, Mason is swallowing the dregs of another beer, the bottle tossed unceremoniously into the pile that’s already accrued. One of the ringleaders, a big, hulking boy with a nasty shag mullet stands before the crowd, cupping hands to his ears as the cheers from onlookers pick up. 

“Isn’t he doin’ so well?” The boy’s teeth are yellow when he grins. “Our pretty Coopie.” 

“Kiss him!” someone shouts from the crowd, and the ringleader throws his head back in a laugh. 

“You wanna kiss, Coops?” he says, bending down to Mason’s level. Trevor sees his shoulders shake in a weak laugh, lips parting in an aborted attempt at a grin before they’re swallowed up by the ringleader. He fists a hand in Mason’s hair as the crowd cheers, wolf whistles punctuating the din.  

“Hey,” says a voice at Trevor’s elbow, and he starts, thinking it’s that stupid kid again. But it’s just Maya, lipstick smeared off, eyes wide. 

“Hey,” he whispers back, his voice drowned out by the noise, and Maya fumbles, takes his hand and squeezes once. Her fingers are cold. 

“I think Coopie liked that, eh? Little too much, maybe.”  

The crowd is a mix of cheers and hisses, a mismatched din, like they can’t decide if that’s hot or disgusting or both or neither and suddenly, the ringleader stands once again, his own cheeks flushing. He leans over, landing a pat on Mason’s cheek that looks more like a slap in this light.  

“What should we do with him next, huh, guys?” 

“We should go,” Maya says, fingers tightening around him. Unable to remove his eyes from the scene before him, Trevor nods. His throat is dry and sawdust-thick.  

A chorus of shouting breaks out, voices overlapping. Ringleader boy laughs while two other lacrosse guys haul Mason to his feet, grips tight around his arms. Finally, a clear consensus among the crowd begins to emerge: “String him up!” someone shouts over the noise, and it’s met with enthusiastic applause. “String Cooper up!” 

This had been the point at which the last initiation Trevor had attended had ended; that jug-eared kid had freaked out, crying and flailing too hard for even the largest of the lacrosse guys to manhandle him to where they wanted. What stringing him up would’ve entailed was mostly lost to Trevor then, the finer details overshadowed by his own revulsion. He’d wagered—and he still does, standing there now—that it had something to do with the huge wrought-iron rack propped up against the back wall. Mason is no chicken, though; he meets the crowd’s cheers with a wavering grin of his own, and to his credit, Trevor does a very good job of not thinking about what expression his eyes hold under that blindfold.  

“Yeah,” he whispers to Maya, voice hoarse. “Let’s go.” 

Outside, Trevor watches from the pavement, half-hidden behind a streetlamp as Maya and Devin bid each other goodbye. He watches as they shuffle off to the side, hidden in the shadows of the basement door where the sounds of Mason’s initiation float to Trevor’s ears no matter how hard he tries to focus on something, anything else. He watches as Devin’s hand lingers on Maya’s back first, then her hip, a telltale trace down her side, and then she’s leaning in, the kiss so quick he almost misses it, and then Trevor’s not watching anymore at all. When Maya finally walks up to him, keys swinging around her index finger, he hears her before he sees her; his eyes have squeezed shut.  

“Hey.” The hand on his arm is warm, uncomfortably so. He starts, half-suppresses it, grimaces at the look she flashes at him. The Look.  

“It’s fine,” he gets out before she can say anything. “You good to drive?” 

“Fine, yeah. Trev—” 

“Please.” He’s not sure what he’s asking for. “Not tonight.” 

Her hand doesn’t leave his arm, fingers tightening stubbornly on his wrist. Pooled in the light from the streetlamp, her eyes glitter, indiscernible, and nausea rips at Trevor’s stomach. It’s not her fault she’s happy and sort-of-not-really-but-also-totally in love and the stakes are invisible and they kiss on the pavement with people watching and they kiss—have he and Mason ever done that? There’s no tenderness when they do, just a secret trying to fight its way out from one body into the other. Trevor closes his eyes, biting down a gag.  

“Hey,” Maya says again, more urgently this time. “It’s okay.” 

“No, it isn’t.” In the distance, he can feel Devin watching, searching, cataloging—gossip for tomorrow? Gay guy has a public freak out about his not-gay not-boyfriend, more at six—and Trevor forces himself to jerk his head in the direction of her car. “Can we just—” 

“Yeah.” She nods, but doesn’t move. “Trevor.” 

“Maya, please.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s like this. It’s not fair. I’m sorry.” 

“Please,” he says again, a broken record, and walks away before she can say anything else. 

— 

The buzzcut isn’t bad, really, but it isn’t good, either. 

Mostly, it’s just odd. Mason has had the same hair since they were in elementary school: chin-length blonde curls that, when cleaned properly, look like something out of The Surfer’s Journal. Now his hair—what’s left of it—is cropped close to his scalp, the cut messy, uneven. Once again, Trevor runs a palm over it, feeling the bristles poke up at his skin, and frowns. 

It’s not bad. It just doesn’t look like him. But that’s fine. It will soon enough, anyways. 

From his position slouched forward in Trevor’s desk chair he wrangled in front of the bathroom mirror, Mason scowls. The bridge of his nose is knocked in slightly, an angry, purplish bruise spreading from it down to the undersides of swollen eyes. He’d pounded on Trevor’s bedroom window at four in the morning, beer-and-blood-soaked clothes exchanged for a clean shirt and a pair of boxers before passing out in Trevor’s bed without a word. It’s definitely broken, the nose, but that’s a problem for later. For after the haircut.  

The grimaces he’s been flashing aren’t reassuring, exactly. There’s still a smear of dried blood crusting around one of his nostrils, and yet again Trevor gets the urge to get on his knees, level with Mason, and dab at it gently until it’s gone.  

Instead, he turns the clippers back on and attacks the base of Mason’s skull once again. The main problem with the buzzcut is how clumsily done it is—some parts are shorn so close to the scalp that there’s nicks to the skin, and in other areas, the hair is still an inch long, sticking up stubbornly despite Mason’s many attempts to smooth it down. Trevor doesn’t want to know how drunk anyone was while this was happening. He asks no questions about the night, about how the rest of the initiation went, about what happens when someone gets strung up. He wants to know in a feverish, desperate way that has his skin crawling despite the AC blasting behind them, so he says nothing at all.  

He won’t like the answer, whatever it is. 

“Dude.” Mason’s sigh is empty-sounding, a breeze blowing through a pile of trash. “This fuckin’ sucks.” 

Trevor assumes, mostly for his own sake, that he’s talking about the hair. “It’s not that bad,” he says, brushing a stray clump onto the tile below them.  

“I look like a fuckin’ chemo patient. Like one of those kids in the fuckin’ St. Jude’s commercials.” 

“Dude.” Trevor blows more hair off the back of his neck, and Mason shudders under his hands. “You look like a totally normal person.”  

“Would you think I was some sorta freak?” Mason gnaws on his lip for a second, meeting Trevor’s gaze in the mirror for a split second before looking away. “If you saw me on the street? Would you think I’m, like, a fuckin’ escaped convict, or somethin’?” 

“No, I would not think you were an escaped convict.” Trevor switches the clippers off and holds Mason’s head up straight, studying his handiwork in the mirror. “Or a kid with cancer. I’d literally just think you were a normal dude with a buzzcut. Plenty of people get them, y’know.” Gingerly, he reaches out and rests a hand on Mason’s shoulder. When he doesn’t get shaken off, he squeezes. “Seriously. It kinda suits you, really.” 

“Really?” He sounds painfully hopeful, just for a second. Trevor bites the inside of his cheek.  

“Really,” he says after a moment, tapping the edge of Mason’s face with a cautious finger. “You got the jaw for it. You look all, I dunno. Older, I guess.” 

On cue, the skin under Trevor’s touch tenses as Mason bites down on thin air. He says nothing and Trevor says nothing and they both stare off into the distance until the silence starts growing hands and pulling at Trevor’s wrist, wrenching it until the clippers are whirring back to life and he’s dragging his free hand through his own hair. It’s flat and cardboard-brown, uninspiring and limp, nothing like Mason’s was. He doesn’t have the face shape for a buzzcut, not at all, but that realization isn’t enough to stop himself from reaching up to drag the clippers down the center of his head in one swift, neat stripe. 

The loose hair falls away, scattering on Trevor’s shoulders, the floor. Mason blinks at him once, twice, and says nothing. His eyes are wide. It’s not an encouragement, nothing like it, but Trevor keeps going. Carefully, he shaves strip after strip until his hair is as cropped as Mason’s is, clinging tightly to his own skull. He feels colder, all of a sudden; lighter, too. 

“You’ll have to get behind my ears, probably,” he says, tone as calm as he can make it. He can imagine the things running through Mason’s head right now as he stares up at him, lips parted, and he’d guess that none of them are very kind. You’re not my fuckin’ girlfriend. But a girlfriend wouldn’t do this, would she? “Can’t reach.” 

The silence hangs above them. Trevor wants to take it, mold it into something more familiar, more workable, but he stays frozen instead, hand still resting on Mason’s now-tense shoulder.  

“Why’d you fuckin’ do that?” Mason says finally. Emotions flit under the surface of his voice, moving too quickly for Trevor to get a hold of one; hold it up to the sterile bathroom light and see what it means.  

“Dunno.” Trevor shrugs, more tufts of hair scattering around him. “Why not?” 

“You look like shit.” 

His nervousness is angry, Mason’s. His uncertainty is an accusation, as if Trevor is to blame for not having the answers, the solutions to his messy ball of feelings—as if he’d ever let him close enough to look at it, really. But his eyes are brighter now, shining.  

“Yeah, well,” and Trevor swipes a thumb along the line of Mason’s neck, once, twice, “people’ll give me all the shit, then. And no one will give a fuck about you or your stupid cancer kid haircut.” 

“Don’t say that,” Mason whispers, a weak parody of earlier. He blinks furiously. “You’re such a fuckin’ asshole, Trevor.” 

“Sue me.” 

Mason turns his head, suddenly, pressing his cheek to the top of Trevor’s hand. His breathing is hot against his knuckles, the gusts coming in irregular, sharp pants. Slowly, he closes his eyes. 

And Trevor does, too.