In Morpheus' Embrace

by Andy Finch

  A breath held still with the notion of thought, “No,” Geneva sets her brush down. A fresh one, still not used to the feeling of paint in its bristles, “I don’t think I know any other dudes named Morpheus,” she wipes her hand on her apron without much given thought, “Why does it matter?”

  “No reason,” Draven more mumbles than speaks, “I heard it last night. Just got curious.”

  “Look it up,” Geneva turns her cheek, “There’s always more to be learned, you know. And I sure as hell ain’t an encyclopedia.”

  “I never said you were,” Draven looks at the canvas. A brew of reds and blues in abstract strokes. Painted with thought, but thoughts that were largely incoherent and loose, “You’ve just got a bigger brain than me.”

  A laugh, stifled cold between clenched teeth, “You’re an odd one, Dray,” her attention wanes, “Where’d you hear it?”

  “It was a name of a float,” he explains, “It went through Jackson Square last night.”

  “Oh, then,” her lips dance together in the giddy of thought, “I’m gonna guess, with that kind of name, it might have something to do with the Muses.”

  The Muses. Old Greek names in light of the spark in Greek culture during the 18th century. The city planner of New Orleans named eight streets after some of the muses. They’ve been coined the most unpronounceable street names in the whole city. Most of the streets, too, have withered and become husks of what they were intentionally meant to be. Ghettos now, the rich folk would call them.

  Draven finally finds himself asking, do Greeks have angels? How illiterate on his part, being so lame when it came to other religions and deities.

  “What are you painting?” Draven asks, his eyes studying the rolling colors of reds, blues, and purples that cover the canvas. He asks for clarity, not for small talk. It nags him that he can’t put a finger on what she was drawing.

  “A self-portrait.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m goin’ Picasso style, y’know?” She smirks whilst picking up the brush. She dips the bristles in pink paint and draws two fat circles in the middle of the canvas. Eyes, Draven guesses, or maybe ears? “Back to this Morpheus guy, yeah? What kind of float was it?”

  “People were dressed in pajamas,” Draven recalls the night of partying, the night of suffering, the night of Mardi Gras. He had too many names for last night, now. Each one deserving its own backstory. One he was unwilling to share openly. He settles with the fine details, “And they were throwing sleeping masks. And there was a moon, it looked really high.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “That sounds like my kind of float then,” Geneva snorts, letting her eyes flick to Draven before back to the canvas. Soon, the mix of paints begins to form honorable renditions of nude in towel by Picasso, though with more vibrant colors than nudes, “Damn. I really wish I was there.”

  “It was weird, honestly.”

  “How come?” She looks over from her painting for a long moment.

  A tension forms aimed inwardly towards himself. Does he tell her of Morris? The so-called nurse who was at the hospital who now seemed more of a spirit or entity than a man? No, never. Geneva already had a stern opinion on the state of his mind, from the morphine and beyond. This would be the cherry on top. He sighs, openly, calling forth her attention again, as if it ever waned.

  “I was just lonely,” a good cover story, “Ian usually stays with me during Mardi Gras.”

  “Oh,” Geneva nods, the brush no longer in her hands, “I know you two are such lovebirds,” a breath, wet with words she wants to say, but refuses to, “But maybe you shouldn’t be so attached.”

  “What?” Draven blinks, wondering how and why the conversation has steered to this. Was he stuck in between worlds? Would Morris pop out of the blue? He holds his breath, counting backward from ten, hoping, praying that Geneva would not continue down this conversation. His pleads fall on deaf ears.

  “It’s not healthy,” she says, “If you rely on him to enjoy things.” There’s a twinkle in her eye, a glimmer of fabrication, “You should be able to enjoy life by yourself, sober, too.”

  He sees the irony here. Sees what she really wants him to hear. This was not about Ian, no. He was metaphorical. An illusion cast to hide the true nature of the question. She was pointing a finger, just like everyone else in his clique.

  Draven breaths deep. A vise squeezes his chest upon the realization. This was never about Ian.

  This was about morphine.

  8

  Happiness comes in a little orange bottle, the word Morphine engraved in bleeding ink. The bottle is empty. It has been for three days. Underneath the title, even more heavily fades words read ‘no refills. Doctor’s authorization required’. Draven drops the bottle into the open awaiting drawer of his nightstand. He shuts it with an unsatisfying thud. There was nothing wrong with the pills, he kept telling himself. He was always in pain. He needed the morphine. He wasn’t an addict. No, he was in pain. He just needed a good fix-me-up. The one that came in the little pills with M etched into them. The artificial happiness.

  “My love,” Ian’s voice is heard, but not seen, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  Draven’s headache was non-stop. Every little noise had nagged the pain in every direction. He tries to make Ian the exception, but this irritation knew no bounds. It was greed. He forces himself to smile. He forces himself to call back out to his lover, even if he feels like his body was rotting from the inside out. Maybe he was dying, he just didn’t know it. Death would be a better end than this suffering.

  Ian steps out from the bathroom, a velvet robe given to him as a Christmas present this year wrapped around his nude figure. Draven’s smile evaporates. The pleasure was the last thing on his mind. Not this type of pleasure, anyways. Ian ties the ropes on either side of his robes shut, covering up his masculinity.

  “You never look happy,” Ian says. And he was right. How could Draven be happy without his pills? Prozac be damned, morphine did more for his mood than any other SSRIs. He still tries to wear the guise. It was hard.

  “I am happy,” Draven bites, “I’m just…”

  “Hurting, I know.”

  Ian sits beside Draven. The air circling the room runs rotten with tension. There’s a pause where neither of them looks at each other. Draven’s vision fades in and out. In his daydreams, he sees himself. The bottle of morphine full to the brim. He is happy. So is Ian. Their room smells of sex and cigarettes. It wasn’t stale like it was now.

  “You’re sick,” Ian says. A hint of disdain in his tone.

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t,” Ian sniffles, “You’re… Just… You’re wasting away. I hate it. Nothing I do snaps you out of your trance. You fuckin’ picked up MRSA at the hospital, huh? I knew we should’ve taken you to the nice one. Then you would’ve been fine, and happy, and our fucking relationship wouldn’t be crumbling.”

  “We’re not crumbling,” Draven says. He’s caught somewhere between being awake and asleep, “It’s just a rough patch.”

  “Do you still love me?” His breath hitches. A clump of anxiety sits in that part of the throat between the stomach and his tongue. It threatens to choke Ian.

  Draven seals that fear away by planting a gentle kiss on his lover’s lips. The embrace shocks away the insecurities his lover held. For a moment, the world stopped. The moon watched as their lips danced back and forth. Sweet kisses turn wet and sloppy. Before long, Ian was back in the nude. Draven not too far behind him. Electricity booms around them. The pain is pushed to the back of his mind. Not forgotten, simply lost amongst the other emotions running rampant in his head and body.

  Draven’s heart begins to gallop in his chest, the rhythm of horse hooves beat against his ribs. Ian’s vanilla scent elopes Draven, mingling with his scent of sweat born from this friction and the stress from workdays. Their skin touches, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. The burden of desire crashes down arou
nd them. Something so foreign in their minds, yet so pronounced in their bodies. It was time to let that desire shine through. The firmness between Draven’s hands burns a feverish love. The jerks of Ian’s hip tell Draven that he is close. The desire was in their grasp, teasing their fingertips. A kiss seals their grip on the desire that tries to put the world on fire around them. Ian’s sword shivers at Draven’s added touch, sweating as their arousal finally finds its end.

  The couple lay together in bed, their sweat and moans pressed into the sheets. Ian had resigned himself, succumbing to the comedown of his high. He sleeps with no fear in Draven’s arms. Draven had other things on his mind than sleep. One thing stuck out. He needed morphine. Tylenol just didn’t kill his headache. Neither did Advil. It was morphine that knew how to work his body so well.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Ian’s somnolent voice disperses the lingering vibe of sex.

  “Hm?” Draven cocks a brow.

  “Do you still love me?” Ian asks, almost scared to know the answer.

  Then comes a pause, pregnant with thought. Ian sniffles. Draven lets his face twist in the pose for confusion. It felt like a rhetorical question, really. Something Ian proposed that he did not want to be answered. Maybe he couldn’t handle the truth. Maybe he thought he couldn’t handle the truth.

  “Must I really say it aloud?” Draven says, letting his features soften as he lays his eyes on Ian. He does not seem impressed with the answer.

  “I would like it if you did.”

  He was a child, needing that constant reassurance. To have that one special person in his life tell him ‘it will be alright,’ whenever things seemed too big for his head. The pat on the back, the kiss without reluctance.

  “I love you with all my heart.”

  Satisfied with that answer, Ian sinks his head back into the sweat-damp pillow. It’s too hot to use the blanket. Draven smiles to himself, though hunger quickly saps his attention. He craved no food, no drink. He craved released. Release from the headache and chills, release from all the pain that beset him. He thinks of the crinkled note passed on to him from Morris. It was probably still abandoned in his pants’ pocket in the laundry bin. He tries to remember the name of the provider. It evades him for a good minute, then he remembers.

  Moving as little as possible, Draven fishes for his phone on the nightstand. Ian does not object to the movement, thankfully. Draven occupies himself by setting up a doctor’s appointment with Erin. Her official name was Doctor Erin Petrov. Her name is new around the city. His appointment is set for two in the afternoon tomorrow.

  ✽✽✽

  The night comes and goes. Every hour adds another pain that Draven knows only morphine would fix. He’s not addicted, he swears. His body is just resistant to the over the counter NSAIDs and acetaminophen. It was sinuses that causes the headache, too. And that cold he just got over that made his muscles ache. It was the nausea that made him lose weight, too. Morphine wasn’t his addiction. Morphine did not control him.

  Draven pulls up his baggy sweatpants that hid his bony legs. Ian comes into the room just as he was getting dressed. His face knit with worry and confusion. He stays in the doorway, afraid to take another step in. The room slowly trickles in the same breath of decay from last night. It wasn’t gone, just lost. Hidden beneath their air of sex.

  “Where are you going?” Ian asks. The confusion leaves his face, painting his skin paler than usual. It was a demand. The way a parent would ask where their teenaged child was sneaking off too. It causes Draven to sink into his clothes. His self-esteem had crumbled along with the fleeting resistance to withdrawal.

  “I’ve got an appointment.” Draven tries to hide his face. A rosy hue fills them in, marking his shame and embarrassment.

  “With?” Again, with that accusatory tone.

  “A new doctor,” Draven speaks no lie, “Someone who’ll make me feel better.”

  “Tell them to put you on something that’ll make you gain weight.”

  Ian exits without another word. His presence lingers in the air, the subtle breath of vanilla and disinfectant. It fades within a second, leaving only Draven alone in the darkness of their shared living quarter. He should reach out to his boyfriend. To say, ‘I love you,’ or ‘wait for me’. None of those words come barking at his vocal cord. None of them even grace his mind. He thinks of one thing only. The cure to his itch.

  Outside, the world was shrouded in a thick coat of humidity and flies. Or maybe they were mosquitoes. Draven couldn’t tell between the sun’s burning gaze. The sun cooked his infection and sickness. It burned him to the core. Sickness was all he was, now. Any untrained eye could tell that he was hurting. From the shiver of his bones to the pus sinking from his eyes.

  “It was the flu,” he told his boss during the last days of Mardi Gras.

  “Allergies,” he waved to Geneva.

  “Sinuses,” he told Ian on the days he worried most.

  He does not admit to himself, the place where the infection stemmed. A man who admits his defeat has already lost.

  Geneva’s beat-up truck pulls into the apartment complex’s parking lot. Her face is cramped with a seriousness Draven had not seen since they were children. The last time she wore this mask was back when they were teens. Draven had admitted to his sexuality. How boobs just didn’t cut it for him anymore. He thinks of some excuse to throw her way about his appearance. Nothing comes to mind, so he opts to remain silent.

  The trip is quiet. Geneva makes no remarks of his skinniness. Or the way his breath catches in his throat. She is the silent observer. She is the judge, jury, and executioner all wrapped into one. She withholds her judgment. Draven isn’t sure if he would rather her say something now than to keep the silence.

  “Be honest with me,” she finally says as they reach the doctor’s office, “You’re getting dope, huh?”

  There is nothing he can say. Not in this second. So, he sits, lost in thought, bug-eyes on Geneva.

  “I’m getting medicine,” he says, “I picked up something at the hospital. Ian and I agree on it—”

  Geneva interrupts without words. Her face molds into a scowl like a mother’s when they catch their child telling a white lie to get out of chores or schooling. She was the mother that Draven wished he had. She offered unwavering love and loyalty, gave her guidance when necessary, and reprimanded him when he truly needed it. But now, she seems to withhold her true thoughts. It was unlike her.

  “You don’t deserve him, y’know,” her voice is quiet. Usually, her tone matched her personality; booming and with no end, “You’re just going to get him hurt.”

  ✽✽✽

  That night, Ian and Draven were a mess of limbs and sweaty torsos. Draven had never felt so alive, now that the headache was gone. He knew happiness again, and he shared it with open arms to his lover. Geneva was wrong. They filled each other with such strength that would overcome any obstacle. Ian would know no hurt if Draven lived, that was what he promised himself at this very moment when their naked bodies danced.

  “I never realized how skinny you’ve gotten,” Ian’s sweat-thick voice rings in Draven’s ears. His hand touches the indentions of ribs on his lover’s sun-honeyed skin. Draven shivers under his touch as if he’s been exposed. As if Ian knew there was more to his story, “Did she give you vitamins?”

  Draven nods. A white lie, so Ian would not have to know the reality. It was for his own good, “The best she had to offer.”

  “Good,” Ian punctuates, “Have you missed me?”

  There’s a glint in his eyes. He speaks of physical deprivation. Friction, heat. His hands draw circles in Draven’s chest, gently though. He is afraid of causing any more pain. Draven makes a noise of agreement. It reaches a high pitch as Ian’s fingers linger downward.

  “Have you missed me here?” Ian touches Draven’s chest, where his heart would be. Draven nods, “And here?” His stomach now. Another nod. His fingers trail down, down, down. Tracing the c
urve of his hips. He touches the special piece of skin that makes Draven break out in gooseflesh, “What about here?”

  “More than anything—”

  They danced one last time before the sun peaked through the curtains. Draven downs another morphine. This orange bottle was new, untampered. Deep down, a part of him wishes it had a happier name. Morphine wasn’t as satisfying on the tongue anymore. It was like poison. Maybe it was poison. No matter, his happiness would not be out of his reach anymore. It was what was best for him. He was happy, which meant Ian was happy, which meant their relationship was happy, which meant their sex life had never been better. Draven loved it.

  “Those aren’t vitamins,” Ian’s voice startles Draven. His fingers point to the two pills sitting in Draven’s open palm.

  “I know,” was all Draven could force himself to say before swallowing both the morphine and his shame.