Chapter Two
A certain level of feigned ignorance was essential for close-quarters survival in the plague times. It allowed for some real privacy and the illusion of greater privacy.
Trevor greeted an excited Ellie and opened the sliding glass door to the backyard to let her out then got his grandmother settled on the couch with an afghan and the remote for the TV she would fall asleep watching. The cushion next to her was empty, but her cat, Mr. Tammy, would show up once she was asleep to keep her company. Where the cat was now, Trevor had no idea. Probably in a window in whatever sunshine was available at this hour.
He put the mystery package—undoubtedly a DVD gift for her from Sky—their leftover snacks and the new meds on the kitchen counter to be dealt with later, then sat outside for a few minutes, checking emails on his phone and scratching Ellie’s butt when she enthusiastically bumped against him a few times as a hint.
Standard poodles were tall enough that Ellie could make herself a charming pest he couldn’t ignore, and after the fourth time she stuck her apricot mug over his phone, Trevor got up to chase her around the yard. She went on his morning jogs with him and his evening walks too, but had more than enough energy to spare.
They gained an audience. In one screened window sat Mr. Tammy, a.k.a. Mr. Tammy Tams a.k.a. Tammy Tams a.k.a. Tamsy and so on. Mr. Tammy was a silver and black female cat, but Trevor’s grandmother had decided early in Tammy’s life that Tammy had masculine energy. To which Trevor had jokedAssigned Male by Grandmother, which his grandma had not understood or thought was funny, although Sky had.
When Trevor’s head started to burn in the sun, he went in, rubbing his bare scalp self-consciously although no one was awake or around to see him. He’d noticed the thinning last year and had shaved the remaining hair down in an attempt to both ease the process along and deny that male-pattern-baldness was a thing.
It could have at least waited until his thirties, he decided resentfully. Trevor was somewhat lanky, with a hawky beak nose, and now a bald head that burned in the sun. The lack of hair just made his nose more obvious. If he had known he’d be spending his last years with a full head of hair in his grandmother’s house and never going out, he would’ve… probably done the same things, but at least tried to get laid more or worked harder find someone—tokeepsomeone—before the plague.
Though a full head of hair wouldn’t have helped him with that last one.
His brother kept insisting baldness was manly because it meant more testosterone. But Patrick looked good bald and had a regular-size nose. Trevor could lie down on his back and double as a sundial.
He used some aloe because he didn’t want apeelingbald head either, then rubbed some into his cheeks as well. He would tan as the summer went on, but Nancy was probably right about sunblock and how to get his grandmother to use it.
Ellie was waiting for him outside the bathroom and followed him to the kitchen, where Trevor grabbed a can of iced tea from the fridge before going back down the short hall to his bedroom and office.
He pointed to the dog bed to one side of his desk and Ellie went, plopping down with an exaggerated doggy sigh. To his long mental to-do list, Trevor added: give Ellie a bath in the next few days and call next week for her grooming appointment, although it was a little early in the year for it. Ellie got a haircut toward the end of spring and another halfway through the summer. Then he let her fur grow out again for fall and winter. She looked cute either way but Trevor enjoyed the way his family members sighed whenever they remembered that he publicly walked a dog that looked like the cliché of a frou-frou poodle. Anyway, Ellie seemed to like her haircuts, vigorously wagging her pom-pom tail after trips to the pet groomer.
Trevor reached into the canister on his desk where he kept Ellie’s treats and tossed her one before he cracked his iced tea and had a sip. He checked more emails without answering any, not quite ready to start his work day. His gaze went to the boxes and plastic bins from his move from his apartment at the start of everything, now stacked against the wall. He had more stuff in storage and in the home’s other small spare room that been his uncle’s childhood bedroom. The rest of his bedroom-slash-office was comprised of his bed and the build-it-yourself desk that hadn’t done well in the move over here and was held together with duct tape in several places. He tried not to think about it. This wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
But it was where he was. So if he had to think of it, he tried to regard it as motivation to do something great.
The desk was overflowing with tools he didn’t often much anymore, like paper and pencils and boxes of paints. A few of the shelves held sketchpads and notebooks that he did use, though mostly for ideas for an original project he had yet to commit to, or old sketches he didn’t want to part with. His commissions were largely digital. So was most of the work he did for his family’s various businesses and activities. Graphic design and website construction wasn’t his chosen career, but he knew enough to do business cards and logos and posters for the family and friends of the family—and get paid for it. His grandpa had insisted that ‘computer things’ were a skill and that meant Trevor should be compensated for his time, even with family.
Trevor still smiled at the memory.
He also did artwork commissions, which meant when he quit his part-time day job, he could work from home. And by ‘quit,’ he meant, ‘be laid off when the business closed because of Covid,’ but it amounted to the same thing. Since he had also been newly single at the time, it had been natural for his family to ‘suggest’ Trevor be the one to move in with his grandmother to keep her company for the duration of this and to save money. He paid toward the utilities and groceries but no rent.
It wasn’t terrible, in all honesty. Trevor had adapted too well to the Grandma Lifestyle, which said something about him. It was Trevor, his grandmother, his dog and her cat, in a small house with a big garden and he was… more or less okay with it.
He could use more sex. And physical affection. And… some other things. But it was no good thinking about those, either. He had emails and then a commission to finish. He could channel his frustration into his original project, which was currently contained in the battered notebook shoved to one side on his desk. A messy collection of unfinished ideas that he would have blushed to see if he’d been the type to blush.
He’d done standalone comics before. Essentially short stories, with dragons, and knights, and rangers, and elves and the like falling in love and sometimes fucking—or fucking and sometimes falling in love. But this project was different. He wanted something significant to his name before he turned thirty, something with an actualplot. He was thinking about a big umbrella story with smaller ones going on at the same time beneath that, hopefully with characters that readers would get invested in and want to see fall in love.
That part was important because he knew how writing went. Sometimes he planned things, and other times, the characters would decide for themselves and screw over his planning. His goal was to, hopefully, create enough fun characters and situations that if people—if he got any followers for this—chose a ship, or if a ship presented itself, he could make it happen. Go where the chemistry was while keeping everything satisfying.
At the same time, he had to think about the rest of it and do some plotting. Which he could do. The whole thing was just bigger than anything he’d done before, and there were so many choices of where to go. That was why the notebook was overflowing with ideas and sketches, and why Trevor felt like he was spending months debating whether or not to get started on his life-changing adventure without ever actually moving forward.
He went through his wrist warm-up exercises while he frowned over it all, leaned down to scratch the top of Ellie’s head, had another swallow of tea, then opened his laptop.
Work first. Scary future later.
He finished the fanart commission but set it aside before sending it off, intending to look it over one last time with fresh eyes. His mother had messaged him by then, so he responded to her while shaking the last drop of tea from the can into his mouth. Ellie was sleeping and content and Trevor was reluctant to move and disturb her. When his phone stopped lighting up, he grabbed the heavy notebook and opened it to about halfway through. The tattoos on his forearms rippled as he twirled a pencil in his fingers and considered characters.
The plot was basically a quest, but the main characters had yet to be determined. He could do the usual heroic types, which to be honest, he thought would be more popular with readers… or he could do an unlikely dirty dozen of monsters and nerds and weirdos. Both might be nice, if he could manage it. He already had the wizard; a short, oddball genius with a bit of an attitude and a thing for bondage.
He frowned at some quick studies he’d done of more typical heroes, human or maybe elf, incredibly fit, able-bodied, aristocratic background, all of that. Nothing wrong with that, but Trevor found the idea of the world’s destiny in the hands of a tiny twink, or a grizzled soldier with a prosthetic, or a fucking poet orc, way more entertaining. The more traditionally heroic types could be there, but if at least one of them didn’t get fucked by a dragon, then what was even the point?
In fact, the story definitely needed someone to get fucked by a dragon. That was so much more interesting than a princess in a tower. …Though maybe she could also fuck the dragon.
Trevor spent several seconds thinking about the possibilities of that, and if people would want to look at a comic in which someone pegged a dragon, and would they want anyone to alsolovethe dragon, then sighed and flipped pages in the notebook until he found a blank one.
