Xavier Lundstrom
March 30, 2022 6:39 AM
I am going to talk to my brother by Xavier Lundstrom
“I’m making hot chocolate. Want some?” Joel asked.Xavier shook his head, eyes staring through the television.
“Are you okay?” Joel asked, perching on the arm of the sofa.
“Not great,” Xavier admitted. He’d been feeling kind of wrung out and shivery for the past couple of days, though none of that was anything new. He hoped he could pass it off as tiredness until it passed, which he knew it would…
“Getting a migraine? Or wizard stuff?” Joel asked, the second question coming out a little stiffly.
“Neither.” He hadn’t had a migraine all term. He’d had other things—days of feeling like this, or like his stomach was being squeezed, or his eyes were falling out of his skull—but he hadn’t had a single migraine. And only once had he made himself so sick that he’d had to skip class. “Just a stomach ache.” Though that wasn’t totally true. That wasn’t the only reason he was flomped on the sofa, skipping channels and unable to focus. “And boy trouble,” he admitted.
“Oh.” Joel almost looked like he was trying not to smile. “Who do I need to beat up?”
“No. It’s not like that. It’s just complicated because he’s my friend.”
“Ah. Been there,” Joel said, and there was a definite smile on his face now.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No. Just… happy that I might be able to understand.”
“Oh, I’m glad my pain is so convenient for you. And like you’d understand. You like girls.” Xavier snapped, and the smile dropped from Joel’s face.
“Urgh, you’re such a middle child sometimes,” Joel rolled his eyes. “Everything’s so much worse for you. Every time you have a problem it’s so special and unique. I, the stupid straight Muggle couldn’t possibly understand your special middle child, wizardy snowflake problems! Pardon me for thinking I could help, for once.” He pushed himself up off the arm of the sofa, heading into the kitchen, and slamming the door behind him.
The laugh track from the comedy show on television did its best to fill the silence. Xavier channel hopped, past children sledding down a hill, a seasonal movie he’d seen dozens of times, and a cartoon he was too out of the loop to recognise, before giving up and clicking it off.
Joel was being a butt. That wasn’t his fault.
But the silence around him made him feel uncertain. Or at least, lonely. He wasn’t sure he was up to much right now, but having Joel there had been better than being sad and alone all by himself.
Xavier was alternating between staring into space and watching the four or so birds that were hopping about outside and calling to each other, when Joel walked back in. He was cradling his hot chocolate in what Xavier thought of as one of the ‘fancy’ mugs because it had a little ring of gold around the top and the bottom. He was watching Xavier warily, as if assessing whether he’d bite if spoken to.
“You actually want to help?” Xavier asked.
“Yeah. I mean, I know I don’t get it get it, but I get it more than the magic stuff. I’d like to think I can still be useful sometimes.”
“You’re such a Teppenpaw,” Xavier muttered.
“Thanks, I think?” Joel confirmed, as Xavier scooched up enough to make room for him. “So, boy trouble?”
“Crushing on a straight boy. Doomed,” Xavier shrugged.
“Do you know for sure he’s straight? Look, I know you’ve had it all figured out since you were five or whatever, but there’s people who still come out when they’re at uni, or later.”
“Which doesn’t help me,” Xavier pointed out.
“I’m just saying, you don’t know—"
“I know.” Xavier was trying not to be snappy but he couldn’t help but cut Joel off. He couldn’t spend time going down the ‘what ifs’ of something that was never going to happen. “I… I kind of said something to him. And he acted like it never happened.”
“And you’re sure he got what you were saying?” Joel checked.
“Joel, let it go! There is no possibility here. That’s the whole problem. I was… pretty direct,” Xavier winced, as the memory slid through his mind. Oz’s face just in front of his, his mind swirling as he reached out a hand to touch his cheek. I can see you and me making a lot of sense… And afterwards, when Oz, cold and stiff, avoiding his eyes had told him Nothing happened. “He won’t talk to me about it”
“Ouch. That’s not cool. You sure you don’t want to set me on him?”
This time, Xavier managed a small laugh. He felt a little guilty, twisting how things had gone down. But there were cerain parts he couldn’t tell. it also felt good to have someone on his side.
“So.. you gonna tell me that it’s fine and I’ll get over it and meet someone when I’m older?” Xavier asked.
“No. I know I’m older than you but I’m not that old. I know it still sucks not being able to have the person you want now. And that being eighteen is forever away.”
“So what do I do?”
“I dunno. Jump on him and double check he’s not secretly gay? Run away to Hollywood and meet… Who do you have a celebrity crush on these days?”
“I don’t even know. I’m so out of the loop.”
“Okay. Well, you wanna watch a movie and pick a new one?” he asked.
“I can’t make my mind up. You pick something.”
Joel flicked for a while, eventually clicking.
“You want to watch Highschool Musical, The Holiday Special’” Xavier asked, raising his eyebrows.
“With one hundred percent of my heart and soul,” Joel promised him.
“To be clear, I don’t actually like the singing and dancing, I just—”
“Think Joshua Bassett has really cute hair. I know.”
13
Xavier Lundstrom
I am going to talk to my brother
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