Shadows You Left

by Jude Sierra

  River glanced at him.

  “A Knucker,” Erik said. “A water dragon from England that wreaked havoc on a small town. No one could defeat it. It ate their livestock, destroyed their houses, stole their virgins.” River chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Story has it, after years of the town being tortured, a farm boy baked a poison pie, put it in a cart with his horse, and sent it to the dragon. The dragon ate the whole thing—pie, horse, cart, everything—and it died. The boy cut off its head to claim the reward, but before he could get to the king, he got sick. The Knucker’s blood was on his hands and the same poison he used to kill the dragon ended up killing him, too.”

  River’s brows knit. A grin twitched on his mouth, and he said, “That’s a terrible story.”

  “It’s about someone unknowingly sacrificing themself for the greater good,” Erik countered.

  “It’s about someone unwillingly sacrificing themself for the greater good,” River said matter-of-factly. “Don’t huff at me. It’s true.”

  “Whatever.” Erik touched River’s still-healing back, brushing over flaky, inked skin. “It’s a cool dragon. Really long and bright-red with wings. Where would it look good?”

  “Right here,” River teased, sliding his palm along the inside of Erik’s thigh. They both laughed, and Erik shook his head. “What about here.” River touched the outside of Erik’s leg, his hip and side. “It’ll hurt, but it’ll fit well.”

  “All right.”

  River closed his eyes. Erik did the same. They were stitched together, River’s arm around Erik’s middle, Erik’s foot tucked between River’s ankles. Erik listened to the shush of rain outside and the lull of River’s breathing beside him. He wanted to understand this. What was happening to him, what River was doing to him. He was at ease, comfortable and completely enraptured, and he didn’t recognize himself.

  “Will you tell me about them?” River whispered.

  Erik cracked his eyes open and found River watching him, half asleep, gentled by midnight. He didn’t have to ask. He’d seen River pick up the photographs hidden around his apartment countless times, watched River pause as he dug through the nightstand for the remote or a condom or something else, and knew it was the old picture that stopped him.

  “Beverly wanted to be a therapist,” Erik said. “That was her plan. Finish high school, go to college, get the degree. She has this… I don’t know, this way about her. She always knew when something was wrong. But then everything got fucked up. I don’t know what she’s up to now.”

  “And Lee?”

  Hearing Lee’s name in someone else’s mouth made Erik’s heart seize and flutter. A jagged, ice-cold lump formed in his throat. He swallowed it. “Lee loved everyone way too much. Never did anything for himself, always went above and beyond for his friends. He used to tell people that life was too short to spend it surviving.” Erik closed his eyes. His voice was brittle and sharp. “Ironic.”

  River’s head was on his shoulder. He sighed, a patient, coaxing sound, and didn’t press for more information. They fell asleep sometime after that, still wrapped around each other.

  …

  Rain streaked the bedroom window. Morning lit the room, the too-early kind that turned the sky from navy to ghostly green. Erik opened his eyes, and River looked back at him. They were barely awake. Limbs were still heavy and pliant. River kissed him, the kind of kissing that had a purpose.

  The sun started to rise. Night clung to the edges of the city.

  River climbed on top of Erik and looked down at him. “I…”

  “What?” Erik whispered.

  River rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. They stayed there, staring at each other, bare and haunted. Say it, Erik urged. His breath caught when River pressed him into the bed. Say something.

  Their breathing bent the silence. River licked into Erik’s mouth instead of answering. He kissed Erik like they hadn’t seen each other in weeks, like they’d been lost.

  Maybe they had been. Maybe they still were.

  Erik would stay lost as long as River kept finding him.

  III

  Ouroboros

  To come full circle.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Erik haunted the corners of his mind, the shadows of his bed. River could smell him on his sheets, find him in the shirt he’d accidentally left behind. In the extra coffee mug in the sink and the bruises on his shoulders.

  More, Erik haunted him in his fault lines and unknowns.

  With him, River was a senseless and too sensual mess, a bundle of contradictions and potentially bad choices. With him, River tasted confessions on the tip of his tongue, wanted too badly to say the words. How could he, though? How could love curl so tightly within him when Erik was a stranger in so many ways?

  River made an effort with Steve. He’d left their disastrous lunch date riding a righteous high; hours later, once he’d calmed down, he realized his defensiveness had colored his reaction—perhaps overreaction—to Steve’s concern. He’d texted Steve an apology and called Val and arranged a family dinner at her place. He tried, unobtrusively, to carve out a little space that wasn’t about Erik. And in that space, he wanted, constantly.

  When they fucked, River didn’t have to think about Erik as a numb, bloody mess with blown pupils and drugs still in his system, swaying, sharp-tongued, and cold in his bathroom. Weeks ago, River had asked if it was a one-time thing. Then Erik had kissed him in his doorway, and River forgot that his question had gone unanswered.

  “What’s this?” Cheyenne’s fingernail, a deep mauve that matched her dress, tapped the drawing River was fiddling with. “Pretty routine tattoo.”

  River blew graphite dust off the page. “Yeah, I guess.” It was an Ouroboros. Most customers wanted what it symbolized; the implied infinite movement appealed to them. While common tattoos weren’t as exciting for River artistically, he appreciated clients who wanted positive symbols in their lives. Many clients came to him with stories of heartbreaking loss. These tattoos were a different sort of memorial.

  “I’m assuming this is for Erik?”

  “Maybe. I was playing with it. Seeing how I could make it my own. Make it more unique.”

  “For him or for you?” Cheyenne sat. She was feline movement and power, aware of her body and presentation, beautiful even in strangeness.

  “Seems pretty egocentric, right? To want to give him something uniquely me?”

  “Why? Isn’t that how love works?”

  River’s heart tripped over the word. Love. He wouldn’t say it. In her mouth, it was utterly naked and, to her, true.

  “He wanted something else. I’ll give him the Knucker if he really wants it. But I thought—this one just seems so much…nicer?”

  “The… What…? Yeah, whatever. Anyway. That’s maybe the blandest explanation for changing a tattoo a client has asked for, ever.” Cheyenne’s sharp smile challenged him, but he could hardly offer Cheyenne honesty when he and Erik didn’t quite have it. Its lack was more than a held-back declaration of love. In fact, withholding the words was a symptom of it and not the cause. Still, River hadn’t a clue how to articulate the meaning of the tattoo he wanted to design.

  “I—”

  “Look, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. But if you’re going to gift something—something forever—you might want the words to explain what you’re trying to do, even just for yourself. Wanting to give him something uniquely you isn’t egocentric. It’s why you want to give him something he doesn’t know he needs. Or that you think he needs. Know that, at the very least.”

  River ran a finger along the edge of the paper with enough pressure to almost break the skin—he’d bled on perfectly good sketches before. He almost wished for it now, thinking back to Valentine’s Day, to the night a week ago in Erik’s bed. Erik’s voice dimmed around Lee’s name. Even in pictures, River saw how vibrant and alive Lee had been. Was it wrong to want that for Erik? He’d asked River for a story, to etch so
mething into his skin that was bound to a memory River had only felt the outline of.

  Poison tipped the edges of each tattoo River had put on Erik, and despite the permanent artwork, the intense physicality and newfound comfort, River had yet to see where the depth of his feelings for Erik went. He wondered sometimes, in Erik’s hands and lost in the breath before each kiss, if there were limits at all.

  River had researched Knuckers—Erik was right, they’d make for stunning art, and the prospect of doing color was enticing. But River saw now, so clearly, that Erik was broken…perhaps still breaking. He was the light and the dark, the chiaroscuro of poison and loss and anger, and under it all, a terrible need for love. Perhaps it was ego, then, because River wanted Erik to want love. Specifically, his.

  A distinct difference fell between unknowing and unwilling sacrifice. River couldn’t escape knowing what Erik was capable of, wondering how much of that was a chemical high and how much was self-loathing. Or if it all was. He knew the stories addicts could spin, how burning everything around them was a self-fulfilling prophecy. His mother sang that tune over and over. River knew, academically, that she deserved every repercussion of her actions even as she turned them on everyone else. And yet, he still hadn’t decided if he would bail his mother out again. If Erik was an addict—that was a big if—River wasn’t sure he could take any more consequences for behavior he had no control over.

  For all River knew, it really was a one-time thing. Or a two or a three. It didn’t have to mean Erik was an addict. But it wouldn’t leave River alone—the way the ground always moved around his mother’s words and actions, her selfishness and fathomless need for love and forgiveness—the uncertainty was too familiar.

  …

  “So, I have a proposal for you,” River said. Belly down on Erik’s bed with his chin on folded arms, he’d been watching Erik play games on his phone for at least twenty minutes, admiring the flex of his arms and the play of light across his chest from the bedside lamp.

  “I know we’re young, but my recovery time isn’t that fast, babe,” Erik said. He smirked, but his eyes never left what River was pretty sure was Candy Crush. Erik wouldn’t tell.

  “Shut up, no.” River rested his cheek on Erik’s sheet-covered thigh. “I know you wanted a Knucker, but I had an idea.”

  “Okay.” Erik laid the phone down. His fingers combed through River’s hair and sent shivers across his skin. Caution lay between them, familiar and heavy.

  “A client came in the other day and asked for an Ouroboros.” River smoothed his voice around the lie. Erik shied away from the smallest inquiries sometimes, but River knew the language of white lies and transitions to truths well enough. “Are you familiar? It’s the one that’s a circle, the head eating the tail.”

  “Oh, yeah I’ve seen those.” Erik settled back against the wall. “What’s it mean?”

  Don’t throw yourself on a sword. Stop pretending you don’t hurt yourself on purpose.

  “It can mean different things to different people. Coming full circle, cycles of death and life. I mean, a lot of people just think it’s cool.”

  “The way it looks?”

  River shrugged and smiled. Erik’s hand was back in his lap. River’s skin strained for more touch, pressed up against the worry that he was pushing too far.

  “What else, River?”

  River pulled himself onto his knees, one hand on Erik’s thigh. “Well, it’s also sometimes a memorial tattoo. For sudden loss, or tragic loss. We tattoo memorials all the time.” Sometimes it was awful, grief pulling too hard on River’s heart. Often, though, there was a secondhand high. A connectedness that fed River’s art and commitment, when grief became a tool, when it accompanied growth and renewal. When clients took the worst and turned it into art.

  Something terrible sat inside Erik. It preyed on him, gnawed at him with unforgiving teeth. The Svara was that. The Knucker was, too. River would give Erik what he wanted in the end, but it was what River wanted that posed difficulty. River selfishly wanted everything Erik could give. Now, he wanted his trust.

  “A memorial?” Erik’s eyes and voice went flat.

  “Erik…” What happened? Where did you fall apart? “You’re here. I don’t know everything, but I know you’re here. And you’re with me.” River put a hand on Erik’s cheek, cold fingers seeking his heat. Erik accepted a kiss, melting into it despite an initial hesitation. “This is good, right?” he whispered, nose tracing the sharp jut of Erik’s cheek.

  Erik that first day in his workspace—what happened here and now had begun there, a magnetic pull he couldn’t have anticipated. But River had known this was a man who could cut him apart. Their broken breath, Erik’s hands under River’s elbows, the helpless noise he always made when River kissed under his ear. River would walk away bleeding from it and still want more.

  “Yeah,” Erik said. River closed his eyes. “Yeah, this is good.”

  …

  River asked Pax if he could have the apartment Friday. He set everything out precisely on a blue liner on the breakfast bar. He’d cleaned everything within an inch of its life and paced through jangling nerves.

  Can you do it here?

  It had taken hours for Erik to speak. Maybe he’d spent it gathering his courage by losing himself in River. Erik had only spoken in the heaviest part of the night as River dozed. He didn’t think the intimacy of the moment spoke, but fear of an audience. Of being this Erik, the one only River seemed to know, anywhere but here.

  But this was intimate, a room empty but for the gift River was trying to give, and soon, a man who might not be ready for it. Erik was pale, lips set and gaze steady, as though River might not feel the subterranean tremble in his fingers.

  “It’ll be okay,” River promised.

  “I trust you,” Erik said.

  River weighed hope against the fear that Erik would always be unknowable, and smiled in blind faith.

  “The colors are good? You sure about these?”

  “Yeah,” Erik said. He shivered at the cold swipe of alcohol.

  “I can turn the heat up?” River didn’t want to tell him why he’d picked this palette. The greens and teals bleeding into blues would look gorgeous on Erik. His skin was meant to wear colors. That would be reason enough to give. Everything else was more hope, tucked under River’s skin, inked into Erik’s.

  “No, I’m good.”

  Gloved, machine in hand, River paused. Erik’s eyes were steady on his, unblinking. He never could at Styx, but here, in a space that was theirs, River kissed him. It was a reminder that neither of them was really alone, not so long as they could keep this.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Not too bad, O’Malley,” Jadis said. They put two fingers to Erik’s chin and pushed, examining the side of his face. “That sucks”—they paused to gesture to his split brow—“but the rest of you seems fine.”

  Erik leaned back in his chair. Gem was closed, and the Friday night staff were busy in the back room, mopping up blood and maybe a couple of teeth. Erik licked around his mouth to make sure his were all there, a habit he could never seem to shake.

  Jadis pulled their feet onto the chair. Bones carved lines along their face, and rose-petal shadows created pits beneath their eyes. They cocked their head, brows tense. “What?”

  “You just remind me of someone,” Erik said. You remind me of myself. “Someone I knew a while ago.”

  Jadis hummed. Their hair was arranged messily, spiked this way and that, and a thick black choker ringed their neck. “Everything okay with lover boy? You never told me what happened after the Warehouse.”

  Desiree plopped into the chair next to Erik and kicked her feet onto the table. Beer stains littered her white shirt. “You got”—she gestured at Erik’s cheek—“blood on your face, honey.”

  Erik’s smile was all sarcasm and bared teeth.

  “Don’t let him change the subject,” Jadis said. “So, River…” They nodded to Erik again. “How
goes it in lovebird-land with him?”

  If there was something on the table to throw, Erik would’ve chucked it at Jadis. “We’re good. No, we’re not ever having a threesome with you, yes, the sex is great, and no, he’s not interested in a massage.”

  Jadis suppressed a laugh. “Shut up. You’re no fun. Did you duke it out with him after the fight?”

  Erik considered his words. “We didn’t speak for a week.”

  Desiree swatted him playfully in the chest. His sweatshirt stuck to the sweat on his collarbones. She glared at him, black beanie slouched on the back of her head. “But?”

  “But we talked, and we’re good now. I just… I didn’t want him to see me fight. That’s all.”

  “Because you care about him,” Desiree said.

  “Because he loves him,” Jadis corrected.

  “I’m…” Erik groaned and sank deeper into his chair. “It’s been two fucking months, Jadis. There’s no way—no way—it’s impossible. One, because I’m demiromantic, which you know already, and two, because…”

  Erik was usually a good liar. But tonight, he couldn’t fool them, and he most certainly couldn’t fool himself.

  “You’re an idiot,” Desiree said. She had her chin propped in her palm, side-eyeing him.

  “Wow, thanks, you’re the fuckin’ best, Des. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.” Erik snorted at her and turned his gaze back to Jadis. “And you”—he flicked his hand up and down—“need to eat, or go back to rehab, or something.”

  “Don’t deflect,” Jadis snapped.

  “You know you’re allowed to explore the gigantic spectrum of your identity, right?” Desiree asked. She prodded his side, and he flinched. “Just because it might’ve taken a certain level of knowing to fall for someone else, that doesn’t mean you’ll follow the same pattern for the rest of the people you date. There’s no blueprint for this shit.”

  Erik knew that. He’d thought about it constantly, and sometimes, on some days, he knew he used his own romantic orientation as a shield. It was easy. It worked. But this time, Erik couldn’t get around his feelings and how absolute they were. “He has a drawer,” Erik muttered. His gaze swept to Desiree. “Like, not a drawer drawer, but some of his shit is at my apartment now.”