January 2, 2016

Mitch:

I have never seen Jerome get this upset about something this small. It was just a picture, and it was for Instagram. It was all according to plan, but he still won't talk to me. I have spent half of the afternoon chasing him down ski slopes, which isn't helpful when I'm also trying to keep Lachlan from flirting with Abby, my sisters, and pretty much anything else that moves. I'm halfway surprised that he hasn't started hitting on Mom yet. The last thing we need is for him or someone else to get a picture of him getting it on with Abby in her off-time. Even she needs to take breaks from being my girlfriend, and if I'm having to hunt down Jerome to keep him from losing his shit at me, I can't be there to see what Lachlan, Vik, and Poofless's camera guy are getting on film. This is turning into a fucking disaster.

"Hey!" He skids to an annoyed halt on the side of the slope, obviously pissed off that I caught up to him. Did he honestly think he could avoid me for the entire trip? "Can you just stop for five minutes?"

"What now?!" His usually loud voice is just a notch below a scream, his voice cracking in anger. Why is he acting like this?

"Jerome, you can't keep running away from this; usually I'm the one running and even I know the joke is up. You know I don't like her and we hired-"

"I fucking know that. Okay? That's not what's fucking pissing me off."

"What is it, then?" I can't see his face through his coat collar and goggles, but I can tell that he's glaring at me with a vengeance. He has the balls to call me the bitchy one when he goes off on me about this every other day.

"Like you don't fucking know." I sit down on the icy rock sticking out of the snow and he sighs and stays standing, his skis looking like comically large shoes. "I don't like this, Mitch. You know that. Even Poofless is over their fucking closet act and here we are, hiding halfway down a mountain so no one'll hear us. I'm sicka this shit. I don't want Helen involved anymore and I sure as hell don't want Abby around. How bad could it be, us just tellin' 'em? All of 'em. I'm sicka feeling like we're doing somethin' wrong when we're not. I'm sicka this." I crawl over on my knees and pull him by the hand to sit next to me. He reluctantly follows my lead and we squeeze in together on the cold, spikey rock.

"Look, I know you hate playing so many parts, and I hate it, too. But could you imagine the shit we would have to deal with if we came out about it? To make it even worse, we can't even tell any of the guys about it because you and I both know that Vik and Rob are the only ones who can even pretend to keep a secret. We just can't risk it, Biggums. Maybe someday when people don't make such a big deal out of it we can drop the act, but until then there's so much we could lose."

" 'Could lose,' Mitch. 'Could.' You don't know for sure."

"What are the odds it wouldn't hurt us? Do you really want to take that risk? Look what happened to Bash. Look how they reacted to Rob. Even Preston refuses to do a coming out video and their relationship is on the list of the top five most obvious things in the fucking world."

"It should be on Cracked," he agrees, rubbing his hands together like his dad always does when things get tense. I hate seeing him like this, but there is nothing that I can reasonably do to solve the problem without causing a dozen bigger problems. As he always says to me, he has to 'suck it up, Donald Trump' and move on. "You gonna marry her, too?"

"I won't walk down the aisle, but I'll wear a ring if I have to. What they don't know won't hurt them."

"Yeah, 'cause it's none of their goddamn business. That's why I don't understand why we hafta pretend. Why can't we just say nothing?"

"Jerome... Sometimes silence speaks louder than words." There is a long pause and he bobs his head in amusement.

"Didn't know I was philosophizing with fucking Plato."

"Honestly, dood, if YouTube starts going downhill faster than it is now, it might be worth a shot to come out. Imagine the views the conspiracy theory reveal would get. For right now, though, all it could do is hurt us. I don't want the flame wars or the money to come between us. You mean a lot more to me than that." That hits a chord and we just sit in silence for a few minutes, watching strangers slide down the slope past us. He knows that I know that he would lose his shit at one too many ignorant teenagers online and screw both of us over. He knows how this story goes and I don't want him to ruin his career because he sticks his nose in too deep trying to defend me.

He knows that isn't the only reason, too. He knows that coming out would open new doors where old horrors could come creeping back in. Even now, they paint me as the submissive, sensitive, effeminate one, at least if the fuckery we saw during the Merome lovefest video we did was any indication. Confirming that we are together would only cause them to go looking for something else, evidence to prove to themselves and their obsessiveness that I am the bottom. If they start putting the clues together, they might figure out that I am trans. If anyone thinks to look deep enough in the archives in New Jersey or Montreal, they could potentially find copies of the court order for my name change. If someone finds that, both of us are officially over, and we might bring the rest of the Pack, Ryan, and Nooch down with us. We would be a modern day Titanic, powerful and world-renowned but not too big to fail. We would be trucking up to Jersey to go back to college faster than anyone could say 'Michelle.' He knows that when I say 'maybe someday' I mean that this arrangement is going to be permanent until something gives us away.

Until that day, I am going to enjoy the life we've built for ourselves. Who knows what will happen if someone forces us out of the closet and into the spotlight? Can you imagine the photo edits? Can you imagine the porn? He sighs and gets back to his feet, and I follow suit, shoving him gently out of the way so I can straighten out my snowboard and continue down the steep slope. He mutters something under his breath before he follows me, and for just a second I catch myself thinking what a good couple's challenge video this could be.

Can you imagine how good that would feel?

---

March 10, 2016

Jerome:

"Ugh... Fuck," he groans, reaching over to turn the alarm on my phone off. It doesn't know his fingerprint and it won't listen to him so he snatches it off the table and tosses it at my head to shut it up. That's what he gets for always turnin' my alarms off. Thank Notch for the new magic iPhone. It's ten in the morning the day after my birthday party and even I'm sore. I can't speak for him but he doesn't look like he wants to move ever again. But Ryan's buying us food. Good food. So he's gettin' his stiff ass up.

"Come on, Bitchy Mitch. The ache'll go away in a couple days." He snorts and pulls the covers up further until I throw 'em off both of us. He's laying there with his eyes covered by his arm and his forehead wrinkled against the bright sunlight. Somewhere along the line he put his underwear back on, like we both haven't seen everything a hundred times now. Guess I can't really blame him too much. Probably shouldn't question it after what he let me do last night. Happy fucking birthday to me.

"That's easy for you to say - you were the one on top. Next time, I'm doing the lube so you don't end up turning me inside out."

"Well, if you'd just let me slurp you real good, we wouldn't have this problem." He raises his eyebrow at me in pretend annoyance and I lean in closer and slurp right in his ear. Even after all this time, he still cringes.

"You could slurp me all you want, but even with lube it hurts like hell. This is why it isn't an everyday thing." Well, it's one of the reasons, at least. Third time was the best but it still wasn't the charm. He grimaces as he gets up and he stumbles a little bit when he starts heading to the mega master bath. You'd think he's hungover every time he wakes up because he acts like a fucking zombie. There're few things that're more satisfying than watching Mitch stagger by with a huge white cum stain on the back of his skin-tight undies from where it leaked. I grab him around the waist as he walks by and I laugh as he immediately tries to pull away. You'd think he's a cat being thrown in a tub of water.

"I appreciate it, ya know? I get how hard it is for you to do that. Thank you." I see his ears turn bright red and I lean forward and run my tongue along the back of his neck like an anteater before I step around him to turn the shower on. He's got a snotty glare pointed right at me when I turn around and I can't help but notice how red his face is. That's fucking adorable.