Rattlebones (bxbxb)

Awkward

I rinse off Eugene's puke in the upstairs shower and try to ignore the fact that I've just made history by raising him from the dead without even lifting a finger.

What would they call my biography? The Brown Theory? The Immortality of Darcy? There's a chance that I might win a Nobel Prize for my brilliant work.

Or go to prison.

Either way.

I get out of the shower and skip blow-drying and gelling my hair into compliance. There's just no time. I'm afraid of leaving Eugene downstairs for too long because he seems to have a tendency to run off without warning. The last thing that we needed was a dead guy wandering around in the middle of town looking for the nearest party to crash.

"Okay. Clothes, Darcy..." I murmur and step back out into my uncle's bedroom to look for something of interest in his closet. Shit, didn't he have anything that wouldn't make me look like a pompous asshole? There were silks of every color and nauseating patterns that made my head spin.

I flip through thousand-dollar suits and ties, throwing them over my shoulder. Not one article of clothing was neutral colored.

"Darcy? Are you okay in here, dude?" The bedroom door opens and Iggy steps inside even though I'm butt-naked.

"Don't you knock!?" I shout at him and snatch my towel off the ground, quickly wrapping it around my waist. My God, I lived in a house of neanderthals.

"Sorry, guess it's just a habit. I used to shower with a bunch of football players when I was on the team." Iggy admits, and then shrugs a little, still looking embarrassed.

"Yeah, well. You might be completely shameless, but I'm not. What if Eugene had walked in, instead of you?" I would have honestly died if he had seen me naked. I tighten my hold on my towel at the thought and try not to blush. "I'm trying to find something to wear, but my uncle has nothing but luxury brands and animal skins in his closet. I'm going to look like Vlad the Impaler."

"Come on, Brown, there's gotta be something in a closet this size. Maybe you're just being picky." Iggy comes over to the closet to begin pawing through it and stands dangerously close to me. Now that I've forsaken my puke-covered hoodie, I feel completely exposed in nothing but my towel. Especially standing next to him, he's like six-feet tall.

"How about this?" He offers up a silk shirt with weird swirly blue patterns on it.

I stare up at him and he stares back at my eyeliner and hair as dark as my soul. "Nevermind." He says quickly and then he puts it back.

We go further into the closet, and I follow him because I'm curious to know what he thinks that I should wear. Iggy didn't exactly seem like the type of guy who was into fashion or dressing nice. He wore plain jeans, a baggy sweater, and sneakers. Plain and simple.

"Oh hey, try this on. It's kind of cool." He announces after a moment, and then turns, holding up this long white coat with black buttons going down the left side. It looks like something out of a horror movie, but it's old as heck and smells faintly of mothballs.

"Are you crazy?" I ask him, but I take it from him anyway. The fabric is nice and soft despite its age, and I kind of feel compelled to put it on just because. "It's a surgeon's uniform from the eighteen-hundreds. My Uncle probably used it during one of his weird parties."

Iggy closes the closet door and leans against it. "Put it on." He says, but he's smiling.

I roll my eyes, hand him the jacket and lower my towel.

Iggy stares at me, but it's a whole stare where he's looking me up and down and trying to be discreet about it by turning his head a little. But I knew what a man looked like when he wanted to grind the metaphorical corn. I had watched an assortment of sex-education videos in my spare time while discovering my sexuality. Iggy was into me.

Like way into me.

"Igor, darling..." I breathe, and I reach up to slide my fingers dramatically into my hair. "Do you see something that you like or is there something wrong with your eyes?"

His face turns bright red at record speed. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

I approach him slowly and lean up so that our lips are inches from one another. "If you're going to play these games with me, then you might as well just stab me in the heart."

Iggy pushes me back down, looking somewhat perplexed. "Dude. I'm not gay."

Oh. Fuck.

I want the ground to swallow me up right then and there. I had interpreted his easy-going attitude and unusual closeness as something more. Something romantic. How stupid could I be? How disrespectful to assume that Iggy was into me purely because he was a kind person!

"Darcy?" His voice filters back in. "Hey, man. You look kind of pale. Are you okay?"

I pick up my towel and quickly cover myself. "Yes," I reply hoarsely. "For a moment, my dark heart leaped at the thought of you being attracted to me."

Iggy is speechless.

I grab my lab coat and then exit the closet like a distressed damsel. This very well may be one of the worst moments of my life, aside from finding out that my mother's wanted to send me to art camp to bond with other kids my age when I was eight.

"Darcy!" Iggy follows me out of the closet. "Look, I don't have anything against gay people." He tells me. "In fact, I have an aunt who's gay, I think. Either that or she's just really into ten-gallon hats and likes the name Earl."

I throw myself down on the bed and cover my eyes. "You're not helping!" I lament. "My heart has been broken into a thousand pieces!" Not really, but I was enjoying the attention.

Iggy comes over and he sits down on the edge of the bed. "Just because I'm not into you, doesn't mean that you have to give up on love. Especially because we're in high school. I mean, today I might like women and boobs. But tomorrow or even ten years from now I might change my mind."

It's like the nicest rejection that anyone's ever given me.

"Igor," I reach over and I put my hand on his knee. "I won't wait ten years," I tell him quietly. "Besides, there's someone else with who I'm destined to spend my eternal damnation with."

His eyebrows furrow. "Really? Who?"

The door suddenly flies open and Eugene Wilder appears in a flurry of angel feathers and angelic music. "Holy fucking shit!" He gawks when he sees me still in my towel and Iggy on the edge of the bed. "Were you two--?"

I rip my hand away from Iggy's knee, horrified. "No!"

"Why does everyone think I'm gay?" Iggy questions and he stands up, tossing the eighteen-hundreds lab coat down at me. "I was helping him get dressed."

Eugene rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. "Well, hate to break it to you two lovebirds, but someone just pulled up in a fancy white SUV outside."

Wait. What?