To Autumn

The smell of woodsmoke and hot food weaves through the chill. A sea of babbling voices bobs under a massive orange sky dappled with clouds. They sop up the last colours of the day like feathery white sponges. It is November, and the town fête pushes on into the night.
Shade, flecked with fairy lights, sparklers and bonfires. He catches the distant boom of pop songs over amplifiers as his vapourous breath unfurls before him. He has always been so skillful at eavesdropping, but there is no joy in the practice tonight. Jersey-clad country folk pass in front of him, rattling off complaints as they devour their sausage sandwiches. Mortgages, PTA meetings, insolent shop clerks. Their bratty larvae scamper and squeal about their feet.
The stalls sag under the weight of Autumnal, harvest-time parephenalia. Baskets of root vegetables, reddened maple leaves. He scoffs at the thought that all this imagery stops short of the reaper, his scythe and scavenging ravens. There never seems to be a dark side to anything in this damned town, it's simply not allowed.

Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

His brooding is interrupted as he bumps into a small, fleshy, bare shoulder.
"Oh. Hi, Robbie."
He nods rigidly in greeting, unsmiling. "Jeannie."
Jeannie used to be okay. They'd laugh along at sitcoms together, skive off P.E., and sometimes he let her kiss him. At some point, the cornflake girls must have changed their admission policy to allow fat girls in. (Nancy boys with crazy Ruskie accents need not apply.) God, her make-up looks horrid now.
All the girls in this group resemble sickly pandas with their exposed skin and excess of eyeshadow. Oversized sunglasses crown their bleached bangs. Oblivious to the cold and their parents, they insist on being perennial California girls. They need not insult him to banish him into the jungle of the crowd.
Against the rapidly fading sky, a football skyrockets. His eyes follow its ascent as if it were one of this evening's impending fireworks. Danny must be here.
There is a makeshift rugby oval set up next to the church. Muddy boys pounce upon each other as worrisome mothers reprimand them from the sidelines. There's Danny's respectably cornflakey girlfriend toying with her earrings. And… his pulse throbs when he catches a flash of those wavy caramel locks. He swears he is also favoured with Danny's glance for a ghost of a second.
He could watch the boy all night.
At some point, the pop song droning out of the speakers melts into another one, and Danny's glorious mud-kissed form drags itself from the fray. A towel is draped about the firm, vigourous shoulders by a mother, and thumped briskly with mannish praise by a father. The girlfriend drapes herself about Danny more slavishly than the towel, and the brief glance that the suntanned Apollo gives him at this moment is unmistakable: "Not now." There is nothing for it but to don a disguise of a smile and dissolve into the carnage.
It would not be a carnival without sweetmeats, and there are other outlets for his earthly desires present. His neck is soon draped with glo-sticks, his long-fingered hands clenching all sorts of gooey fried treats, and his nymphish hips almost shamefully shimmy in the dim light to the thumpa-thumpa of vaguely bawdy eurodance. Thank God that the Old Man has become such an isolated shut-in, there was no way he could have snuck out so easily last year. The townies are gracious enough to ignore him as usual, turning a blind eye to the presence of a darkling in their clean-cut midst. He pulls out his wallet yet again and impulsively adds a hand-made Venetian mask to his swag. Feathery, glittery, gloriously unnecessary.
At some point through the sugary, heavy-smelling night, the meat raffle is called like a gently prodding countdown. In the middle of yet another toffee apple, he is vaguely aware of the fairy lights dimming and the crowd draining out to the open grass. After the first few fireworks bloom in the now inky sky, he obliges, and joins in the collective oohs and ahhs.
Something barrels into the back of his neck, doubling him over and sending his toffee apple into the mud beneath his feet.
"Oi, Deverhill."
The fragrance of sweat, musk and cologne strikes like a storm, and he relishes the quiver it sends through him. Danny smirks, unzipping a duffel bag. The corner of a six-pack of beer, pilfered from a cool-box and glistening with condensation, peers out at him.
"If you're done with your kiddie treats, we can go knock these back."
Without another word, Danny grabs his sleeve and hauls him away, weaving through the flanks of people. The throng is fixed on the spectacle of the fireworks, oblivious to the two teenaged boys sneaking off with their alcoholic plunder.
As they lope along, the radiant aura of the fireworks bounces off their backs. In their wordless flight from the fête, he muses upon the reasons that Danny came to him only once all eyes were averted. The illegality of this moment exists on every level: disapproval of parents, the stigma of a star athlete who is groomed for university fraternising with a lowly fifteen-year-old, the intoxicating effects of the amber brew itself. And underlying all of this, the indiscretion that dare not speak its name.
They come to rest on a lonely hillock smattered with large shrubs and small trees. The town and its fête beneath them are a disordered, softly glowing puddle on the darkened earth.
Danny tosses him one of the cans, which further freezes his chapped fingertips. The malty, bitter lager is so different to the deep taste of the red and gold elixirs hidden in the Old Man's liquor cabinet. This is earthy, tingly and coarse on the tongue. It overpowers the residual sugar lingering in his mouth, washing away the ghost of the childhood fancies. A man's flavour. The warmth that blooms in his head from the alcohol reddens his lips and cheeks.
After swigging away his own can easily, Danny stares at his companion with a smile that bares his even, white teeth.
"You are such a lightweight, Deverhill."
He says nothing in response, averting his gaze. He hates the feeling of his rapid heartbeat.
Danny starts on another can, making the other boy feel quite inconsequential. After a long, humbling silence:
"When's your next game?" He concentrates on his fingernails.
"The Friday after next, against St. Sebastian's. As long as the ref isn't that cocksucker Owens, it'll be a sure thing."
Danny looks into his eyes.
"Since when are you interested?"
It's almost impossible to sound nonchalant. "I might come and watch you again."
He scoffs. "I hope you don't expect me to come see your poofy drama club performance." With an aggrieved sigh, "What are you doing this term again?"
"A pantomime of 'Aladdin'. For the holidays."
Danny scoffs again, the distant fireworks reflected in aloof blue eyes. "At least it's not Shakespeare."
He feels painfully small, his face now turned fully to the ground. The beer helps.
The last few florets of fireworks fizzle in the sky, and soon the thumping pop music gains in volume, reaching the ears of the two boys. The fête's fairy lights rise with it, and Danny's hair is wispy and radiant. Finished with the empty lager can, and feeling its effects, he tosses it aside. In its place he finds a blazingly scarlet maple leaf to toy with, fallen from the brittle branches above. He relaxes into tracing its delicate veins with his fingers, like foreign script in an old book.
The aroma of Danny's sweat and musk and cologne, now augmented with the tang of lager, slowly seep into his head.
When he looks up, he is suddenly petrified by ice blue eyes searing into him. Danny's arm envelops his back, their faces are inches apart. Slowly, strong, bronze, stout hands close over his own, grasping the maple leaf and crumpling it away. His heart thumps like a trapped bird. He feels lips smashed aggressively up against his own.
He is vaguely aware of a dull pain in his head as he is pushed up against the base of the maple tree.