Southern Comfort

The next morning comes so fast he’s definitely not prepared for it. He showers off the smell of musk and stale beer, opts for a clean polo and some jeans before taking the stairs down two at a time and skidding into the kitchen. His mother already has an apple and a piece of toast ready for him. “Thanks mom, gotta run!”

He somehow makes it to school on time, dropping into his first period chair and finally chowing down on his breakfast. Red saunters in, looking immaculate compared to a few of the other football jocks. They look like someone smacked them over the head with a baseball bat.

“Hey man!” Red bounces over, throwing himself into the empty chair next to him. “Results for the team are going to be posted after school today, you excited?” Duke would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little excited to have something more to do outside of school. Being in a town where he barely knows anyone let alone the area would probably lead to a lot of bored nights. Football would take care of a lot of that.

“Hell yeah,” that seems good enough for Red who slaps him on the shoulder and starts rambling about this girl that Duke doesn’t know. It seemed she was Red’s ideal vision of the perfect woman, but he couldn’t get up the nerve to ask her out…which seemed ridiculous because all Red had, in Duke’s opinion, was courage and endless, endless amounts of it. “—and she’s got this amazing hair, and her skin, and her lips and—“ Duke chuckles as Red goes on extolling her many virtues.

“Dude, you’re a score, just ask her out.” Anyone would be stupid to turn Red down. In the short time that Duke had known him he found him to be an incredibly great guy.

His face falls so quickly Duke gets whiplash, “she’s got a boyfriend…an asshole on the wrestling team. Stupid roided out jerk.” He’s still complaining about the guy when the teacher comes in and quiets them down.

||

“I knew you’d make it, lookit there,” Red slaps the bulletin board for emphasis. “Didn’t have any doubts.”

It felt more than a little good to already have Red supporting him so wholeheartedly, Duke grins at his new friend, “well, now I’m going to have to try and not embarrass myself.”

Red just laughs, slinging an arm over Duke’s shoulders and drawing him away from the board. Other crestfallen freshmen are eyeing him enviously, and Duke would be worried if they weren’t half his height. “We should go out and celebrate! I’m thinking pizza or—“ Duke zones out for a second, still unable to understand that he made it on the team somehow. Red shocks him back to real life with a slap to his chest, “hey, pizza or chinese?”

And if this is what their friendship came down to Duke’s happy to have a best friend that already seems perfect for him, “definitely chinese.”

||

“So where’d you move from?” Red questions through a mouth of orange chicken. There are a few pieces of rice stuck to the corner of his mouth, but they’re amusing so Duke refrains from letting his buddy know what an idiot he looks like for the meanwhile.

“Bama, it’s a lot different than here that’s for sure,” Duke huffs, momentarily thinking about the group of friends he gave up in coming here. He hadn’t had the heart to respond to some of the text messages that had been waiting in his inbox this morning.

“I can imagine, Alabama’s kinda the exact opposite of Cali,” he throws a fortune cookie at Duke with a grin, “I’ve only ever lived in California, born and raised. Why’d you move?”

Duke sighs heavily, getting that knowing look from his friend before he even begins, “mom decided she was done with my useless jackass of a father, all he ever did was work and verbally berate her. At least this way he’s going to pay for university and I won’t have to deal with him.” He looks up to find Red nodding along, understanding that it’s probably more complicated than Duke’s leading on, and he’s right. It wasn’t just the long hours and the dick that was his father that drove them apart. Mom caught him trying to start an affair with his coworker. It was just in the fledgling state, but mom wasn’t going to have any of it. She saw the emails and decided there and then that it wasn’t worth sacrificing her happiness to keep a family together, they were probably better off apart. “What about your parents,” Duke murmurs, wanting to let go of the topic of his father.

Red stiffens, making Duke nervous; did he overstep some sort of line? He didn’t want to offend the guy. “Uh, they’re dead…passed away ten years ago. Some family came and lived with us until my brother was legal and then it’s been just the two of us.”

“I’m sorry.” Duke can’t think of anything else to say, he’d lost his grandma quite a few years ago but he’d never really known her that well. She’d been a recluse and the ceremony was basically his mom, dad, and he plus his dad’s brother’s family. It was over in less than an hour with only the minimal amount of tears shed. His mom confessed later, when she’d been hitting the alcohol a little hard as her way of grieving, that grandma had never accepted either of her son’s wives or children. She’d always thought that Dad and his brother should have just stayed living in her house taking care of her. The fact that there was no love lost made it a lot easier for Duke to come to terms with death.

Red looks up through his lashes, soft, sad, smile silently thanking Duke for understanding.

They eat in silence for a few more minutes, each mulling over their own thoughts. Duke’s brain is stuck on a rerun of the funeral. They’d had a closed casket, but a young Duke had nightmares for weeks afterwards about the lid opening and swallowing him whole. They look up at the same time, Duke’s eyes a little wild, Red’s eyes a little morose, and both try to speak at the same time. It’s that fact which finally breaks their silence, laughter spilling easily from them.

“You go first, what were you gonna say?” Red questions, clutching his stomach from laughing too hard.

“I don’t even know!” That sent them laughing again, tears leaking from the corner of their eyes with amusement.

“You’re such a dork you know that right?” Red kids, throwing a packet of soy sauce at Duke as a joke.

“Hey, you’re the one who wants to be friends with this supposed dork,” Duke reminds him, gesturing to his form ostentatiously.

“Whatever, I have good taste, you should be honored,” Red holds his chin up, faking snobbiness.

Duke pretends to bow down to him, chuckling along with Red when a waitress saunters by giving them strange looks.

||

“Hey, bro I’m home, I’ve got a friend with me!” Red shouts into the large house. Duke decided to come with him when Red offered after their celebratory dinner. They hear a grunt from somewhere in the house, which must mean something to Red because he just shrugs and heads up the stairs to his room. It’s kind of what Duke expected, but then not at all what he expected as well. There’s one wall that has a high definition picture of a forest printed out as wallpaper and is attached to the full length and width of the wall. Along with a workout bench there’s multiple things of football paraphernalia, trophies from every sport known to man it seems, and even more pictures of nature scenes. Red catches him staring at one and smiles that melancholy grin again.

“They’re my mom’s. She used to be a really big nature photographer, these are some of my favorites of her pictures,” Red’s hand traces the frame of one, it depicts a cliff overlooking more forest, off in the shadows at the left a dark shadow of a wolf is seen lurking. Duke loves it.

“They’re amazing man,” Duke takes his time looking at the rest of them and finds that the winter scenes are fantastic. He finally rips his eyes away when Red flops on his bed with a grunt. He looks happy that someone is recognizing his mom’s work for all it’s worth.

“You should see Greyson’s room, he got one of her panoramas that she did and made it wrap around all the walls of his room. It kinda feels like you’re in a forest when you’re in there.” He falls silent, but it doesn’t bother Greyson, he understands the inability to talk right now.

They spend the next few hours telling hilarious memories to rid them of the dark atmosphere. Duke’s just telling Red about the time when he’d been trying to impress his crush by boogie boarding down a homemade slip-n-slide into a lake. He’d thought that getting pulled by a pick up would be a fantastic idea, except he caught too much speed and the force that he flung into the lake made him lose his trunks.

Red’s dying of laughter as Duke tells him about how he had to wade to the edge and get out buck-naked. Thankfully someone had found his trunks though.

“I really doubt anyone was complaining about the view, I mean look at you,” Red gestures, laughing even more when Duke flushes lightly.

Greyson takes that moment to poke his head in the room, lopsided grin lighting his face when he sees them. Duke flushes even further, sighing lightly, “you heard all of that didn’t you?”

Greyson smirks even harder, nodding his ascent, “you guys want some dinner? I was thinking about grilling up some burgs and dogs.”

Show a boy who would turn down a free meal, honestly, Duke couldn’t pass up a good barbequed meal, and this was no different. Duke tries to ignore the fact that Greyson now knows one of the most embarrassing stories of Duke’s young life.

“Sounds great bro, you need help?” Red offers, hopping up off his bed.

“Definitely, thanks,” Greyson disappears from the crack in the door and Duke hears him heading down the hallway and down the back stairs to the kitchen. Red turns to him and slings an arm around his shoulder familiarly.

“Just to warn you, my brother likes his meat pretty…rare, you’re gonna have to speak up if you want your burger cooked more.” Red winks at him before loping out the bedroom door. Duke just raises an eyebrow and follows.

“Isn’t that unsanitary?” He hears himself asking, surely the thing wasn’t going to look like it was fresh off the cow…was it?

Duke just hears Red’s laughter as opposed to a response.

||

They spend the night out on the porch; the nights are pleasantly cool as opposed to how humid they were in Alabama. The food’s good, overly so, even after Duke had to ask Greyson to put his burger back on the barbeque for another five minutes. Red wasn’t kidding when he said his brother liked his meat rare, it was so pink Duke thought they were fucking with him, but Greyson ate it like a starving man.

The symphony of the forest around them came to life with the fall of night. Bugs of all sorts came out and started chirping away, Duke can feel his eyelids drooping.

Duke doesn’t even realize it at first, but suddenly the chorus of bugs and night creatures is dropping off, leaving complete silence in their wake, an odd thing for the forest. If he were really paying attention he would have seen the worried looks on Red and Greyson’s faces. This was an unnatural silence.

“Hey why don’t we head inside?” Greyson offers, pushing up and out of his chair rather swiftly. It scraps back against the stone floor eerily loud in the sudden silence of the night. This shocks Duke out of the food coma he had been sinking into. Red looks just as ill at ease as his brother.

“Is something wrong?” Duke can’t help asking, afraid he had breached some sort of etiquette.

They share a look, suddenly feigning relaxed postures, “I was just thinking we could watch a movie or something,” Greyson offers, gesturing inside rather quickly.

“Okay…” Duke draws the word out, a little weirded out, but hey, it’s their house.

They move inside and immediately the brothers relax, Duke tries not to focus on the click of the lock and how loud it sounds in the equally quiet house.

||

The night had gone fine, Duke mulls over the next morning on his way to school. They’d settled in to watch a movie on Netflix and the brothers were seemingly back to normal. Smushed between them on the couch Duke really couldn’t think of anything but the way Greyson’s heat was leeching into him so deliciously. The man’s strong thigh was pressed right against his and for that fact alone Duke can’t for the life of him remember what movie they’d put on. Whatever had made them react so weirdly when they were outside had disappeared the minute they were behind locked doors.

Duke can understand on a certain level, the night had gone from full of life to eerily silent in a matter of minutes. Maybe they just didn’t like the complete silence?

He nearly walks into a group of people huddled around a boy in the center. He’s reading a news report from his phone screen to the mass of people around him, “—found in the west part of Lupus Valley’s nature preserve, the victim, name unknown at this time, appears to have been brutally mauled. Detectives are as of yet unsure as to whether it was by animal or human doing. If you have any news or reports of missing persons please contact the police at—“ Duke walks off, face gone ashy white. Red smacks into him, mouth set in a grim line.

“You heard?” He grunts, pulling Duke over towards some lockers and away from the crowd.

“Yeah, holy shit, someone was murdered last night,” Duke recalls the dead silence of the woods, those same woods that had witnessed a murder.

Red looks torn, mouth opening and shutting a few times before closing for the final time. Duke just watches him. Finally, he opens his mouth, “the school’s flying around with rumors. People are frantically trying to contact everyone they know to make sure it wasn’t their friends or their family. The town’s in a panic.”

This kind of panic never would have happened in the city Duke was from in Alabama, it was too big. Here in Lupus Valley it was a lot more like small town life. Everyone knew someone who knew someone else sort of thing.

A desperate cry rings out, three girls falling to the floor in different states of distress, others look pasty and drawn with horror. People’s phones are lighting up with answers, Red takes a glance at his own and sighs sadly. He speaks with a voice that sounds like his throat has been rubbed with sand paper, “it was Jenny Walkins.”