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With thanks to Jess, who gave a word-for-word edit and put up with my whining.

Monedas Oras
by Hetre Z

In the light, they look like bronze, and Chris can't think anything but third place. He's been to the Olympics, he should be able to tell the difference. JC's rolling them around between his fingers, smiling, flashes of yellow light on the bottom of his chin. Chris remembers buttercups in his yard, before he got too old for superstition, and he knows that gold is always brighter when it's polished. JC looks like a pirate when he smiles.

"Are they real?" There are five of them, two in JC's hand and three on the table, and he'll be fucked if JC thinks he's going to call them "gold", or "coins", or anything, before JC's proven that they're not just a carnival prize.

"Yeah, I bit one to check. You know, because that's what they say to do. Tasted funny," JC says. Chris can't turn cartwheels anymore, but he bends his back and tosses his legs up and sometimes the world turns over for him anyway. JC flips the coin, and catches it.

"You put that thing in your mouth." He picks one up, metallic-smelly and a bright cold spot on his palm. "Fuck, JC, that's. Couldn't you just, I dunno, take it to a jeweler or something?"

"When I was a kid, I used to get quarters caught in the roof of my mouth," JC points in between his teeth. His smile is even wider, stretched open and demonic. "You know what you can buy with gold coins? Probably a lot. Like, how many candy apples could I get with this?"

"A million bags of kettle corn," the metal scrapes his fingers, the pad of his thumb. If he pressed harder it might slice right through.

"Yeah! And those things, the Spyro games. And manga DVDs."

JC bit into the coin; he said so. Chris imagines the give of the metal as his teeth push in, the cold slimy taste of it. "JC."

"Yeah?" JC is staring at his fingers, the coins layered over like a magic trick. He could close his hand into a fist, and open, and there'd be nothing left but skin and fingernails a faint yellow smell on his palm.

"We can buy all those now, you know."

JC looks up. "Oh, but. It's not the same."

There's a tiny drop of stale beer, round and yellow on the tabletop. Light's hitting the coin and refracting through the beer over and over, reflecting itself. Chris never drinks for the color, red is as good as yellow is as good as brown. But the more he watches it the brighter it gets, and he thinks maybe drinking the right kind of alcohol is like swallowing swords. Chris knows the next time he has vodka, he'll taste metal.

JC says, "The lady I bought them from called them 'doubloons'. Like 'avast, me hearties' and a parrot and stuff. She looked really serious about it."

"You believed her," Chris says.

"I shouldn't have?" JC stops fiddling with the coins and looks at him. Light shines gold on his eyelashes. Lance taught Chris how to hunt once, real animals, the kind with eyes that shine in the woods. He pulled the trigger and his arm ached for days. "You don't think they're real," JC says.

"I think a million bags of kettle corn is real. Those things are just yellow."

JC leans toward him. Across the table he's spinning a coin on its side, heads I win, tails you lose. "You're too cynical. After I buy the candy apples, I'm going to get you a babushka doll. You need it."

Chris shakes his head. "You're going to spend your gold coin, which is not accepted in any American market that I can think of, which you bought for the sake of whatever you bought it for, but which you bought to keep, which by the way I still don't believe is real, to buy me a doll?"

"A babushka doll. They're good luck. And it is too real. I bit it, I'm sure it's real." He stands up and takes a coin, walks around the table. There are no other chairs, so JC folds himself seated on the floor, hands resting on his knees and slices of gold showing between his fingers.

"That doesn't prove anything, you know."

JC reaches up, and his hands are warm on Chris's arm. "It proves lots."

Chris takes a breath, lets it out. "It proves that you have strong teeth, and she couldn't afford real metal so she got copper or something. There are all kinds of ways to fool people."

"Chris --"

"You know it's true. I could be fooling you right now. I might not even be here, did you think of that?"

JC holds the coin up and presses the thin side into Chris's jaw, so light he can hardly feel it. "Okay, so, what you do is. Put it in your mouth," he pushes the edge into Chris's mouth, and it tastes like salt, and age, and something faintly green. Chris is picturing toothpaste ads and Listerine as the coin slips in all the way to the tip of JC's thumb.

JC's skin tastes the same as the coin, slightly warmer, and Chris makes a small noise that buzzes the metal on his tongue. JC sits up on his knees, his face close, breath like gypsy earrings and throwing-knives.

He's still talking. "And you bite it, and if it makes a mark, it's for real." He presses his teeth against Chris's mouth, "like that, see?" JC sits back and smiles. "Try it."

Chris is too surprised to do anything else.

End