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Carl doesn't remember it's his birthday. Nor does he remember telling Pete, but Carl wakes up sometime just before dawn, and Pete's holding a tiny birthday candle and singing quietly under his breath. He's already on the third line happy birthday dear Carlos, breathy and maybe a bit like Marilyn Monroe if it wasn't so unselfconscious and early-morning innocent. Carl holds his breath, waiting for the last youuuu to trail away. He watches Pete's eyes in the candlelight, fixed as they are on the flame. Despite the fact Pete is crouched beside Carl's bed, and is singing to him, Carl suspects this is a private moment and too precious to interrupt. Eventually, though, he has to exhale, and the flame dances, dripping wax down onto Pete's fingers. The candle falls, extinguishing itself on the concrete floor.
Carl untucks his hand from the blanket, wraps palm and fingers around Pete's wrist and pulls his hand close enough to blow on. Even though the candle is long gone, and he doesn't have his mother's directive wish Carlos make a wish, blowing the wax cool on Pete's fingers makes two wishes rise anyway. One (freedom), is old and well-worn now, but the other, which trails along like it's always been there, though new, shouldn't surprise him. He wants Peter with that freedom.
Pete leans over and kisses Carl, alternating chaste closemouthed tenderness with whispered happy birthdays. It's sweet, so sweet, the icing on the non-existent cake, to kiss and be kissed by Peter with open and genuine affection. Carl shies away from calling it lovingly, even in his own mind, even though Pete says I love you often enough. After all, Pete only uses those words in moments of deepest desperation or when stratospherically high, never when lucid and cheerful. Carl always reciprocates, but it's much too dangerous to initiate, leaving himself vulnerable to attack from the only source of comfort in this place. But now, Pete is giving, giving of himself freely, and Carl tries to forgive himself for the joy that effervesces everywhere he is touched is touching him.