Infected Freefall

by Andrea Speed

  Roan stared at him, aware this was his subconscious lecturing him about something, using Connor as a warning and a reminder. He really resented it. “I am not you.”

  “’Course you’re not. You wouldn’t even know how to write a play.” Connor gave him a broken half grin, the kind he always used to give him after making a smart-ass remark. He knew it made him look endearing. “We had some good times, yeah?”

  Roan rubbed his forehead. What had happened to him? Something had happened; he was pretty sure of that. “Yeah, we did. And some pretty miserable ones.”

  “I was a miserable bastard at times,” he admitted. “But so were you. You were so fuckin’ unhappy bein’ a cop.”

  “It wasn’t easy. I got a lotta shit.” Roan thought about it for the first time in a long time. He didn’t let himself think of those days too often, because his memories of Connor were inextricably tied in with it. But thinking about that, he also recalled what a relief it had been to shuck off the uniform at the end of the day (or night, depending on the shift), and how he felt free when he was with Con. He’d felt like he was truly himself, while at work he’d felt constrained. He didn’t feel that way anymore, but he did feel lost more often than not, and the only reason he could see for that was the absence of Paris. He was his polar north, and now that he was gone, Roan’s own internal compass just didn’t work anymore.

  Connor hugged him, and for a moment Roan panicked. He didn’t know what to do. The smell of Connor brought back so many memories, half bad and half good: the small tattoo on the back of his neck (a heart—Con said his mother always told him he wore his heart on his sleeve, so he decided to put it somewhere else) that Roan used to kiss to wake him up on Sunday mornings; the ugly drunken fights; the incredibly hot make-up sex; the low points of finding Con passed out at his computer or on the couch, a mostly empty bottle of Glenfiddich dribbling on the floor next to him; going to the opening of one of his plays and seeing the pure, giddy joy on Con’s face; coming back from the gym to find Con burning one of his manuscripts in a garbage can, setting off the fire alarm. So many ups and downs, so many good times and bad. There were few middle times. With Con, it had always been great or horrid, almost never something in between. Connor may have had an abbreviated life, but while he lived it, he lived it full throttle; Roan had to give him that.

  Roan hugged him back, inhaling the memories along with his scent, and told him, “You were such a son of a bitch. I miss you.”

  “You know I loved it when ya talked dirty to me,” he replied, and Roan laughed. Con pulled back and gave him that heartbreaking crooked grin, the one that always looked slightly lopsided, like he was imperfectly mimicking someone else’s smile.

  Shortly after his death, Roan had been contacted by a journalist who wanted to interview him about Con and the “secret pain that killed him.” Roan declined to talk to anyone about Con, ever, under any circumstances. Everyone assumed it was his childhood sexual abuse—often acknowledged in some form or another in his plays—that was the biggest trauma in his life, but during a drunken ramble one night, Con had told him that hurt, but it wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him. No, the worst thing, as far as he was concerned, was that his parents chose to believe his abuser over him, for years and years. Only when others started coming forward, accusing the priest of similar abuse, and a reporter discovered that the church had moved him around Ireland in advance of other sex scandals at the various parishes he had worked for, did they decide to believe him. But by then it was too late; he was gone, emotionally, mentally, physically. As far as he was concerned, they had chosen the Church over him. His anger toward them was unabated by time. In Connor’s will, he had a special message for his parents: “Not one cent. You don’t get my body, my ashes, a single scrap of paper. You abandoned me, and now I abandon you.” He left it all to his ex-wife and Roan: everything he owned, rights to his work, money, his ashes.

  Maybe the Monaghans knew—they didn’t show up for his memorial service, but they did show up for his will reading. Roan knew if Con had left everything to him, they’d have taken it to court—no queer boy was getting anything else from their son—but since his ex-wife was made the executrix of his estate, they didn’t. No matter that it was a sexless sham marriage, a last-ditch attempt to earn acceptance from his parents. They still felt she was his wife, divorce or no divorce. It probably helped that, at the time of his death, he was barely scraping by. Only after his death was he suddenly considered a “genius,” and the money started coming in. Roan had thought that was a cliché, but apparently it was still true in some cases.

  It occurred to him that Con’s ex-wife had left a message on his machine a week or two ago. He’d never returned it, but only because he’d got busy and forgot. Was this his subconscious’s way of reminding him? No, probably not. There was probably more to it than that. As if to send that point home, Con told him, “If numbing yourself is all you can think about, something’s wrong.”

  He sighed wearily. “You are so not the person to tell me that.”

  Connor grimaced slightly before cupping Roan’s face in his hand. “No, love, there’s no one better to tell you that.”

  And then he suddenly remembered what had happened.

  Roan woke up with a head full of cotton wool and a mouth full of sourness, his throat and stomach aching, a tube under his nose pumping air that was scented vaguely like plastic. It felt like his stomach and throat lining had been scrubbed away with a wire brush. Stomach pumped? Probably. He gave himself a moment to acclimate, then took the tube off and let it fall on the floor. He knew there was another patient in the room, separated by a curtain, but judging from the sounds of a monitor that wasn’t his, that guy wasn’t going to be bothered by anything he did.

  How stupid—he had taken too many pills. The worst part was he had several more aches on top of the old one. What a fucking pain in the ass. (Actually the only part of him that didn’t hurt at the moment.) As he sat up, he saw movement in the dark near the doorway, and a familiar voice asked, “I just can’t leave you alone for one second tonight, can I?”

  Holden. Oh Jesus. “How long have I been here?”

  Mostly by the shadow of his posture alone, Roan could tell Holden was at once amused and appalled by the whole situation. He couldn’t blame him. “At the hospital? No idea. But it’s been almost two hours since they pumped your stomach.”

  “Fuck.” It was bad enough to feel totally humiliated—it was worse to be so in front of Holden for the second (or possibly third) time tonight. He sat on the side of the hard hospital bed, the cool air on his legs letting him know he was in a paper hospital gown. Great, another humiliation. “I have your clothes,” Holden said and stepped forward to put them on the end of the bed. It was dark enough that Roan couldn’t see his face, for which he was glad. “This has been a remarkably shitty night for you, hasn’t it?”

  “I think that’s an understatement.” Roan grabbed the clothes and slipped on his jeans under his gown. He felt unsteady on his feet, hollow in the gut, but he didn’t know what was physical and what was emotional. Yeah, you knew when you were self-destructive, but you thought you had it under control… until you didn’t. Connor must have gone through something similar, thinking his alcoholism and depression and self-loathing was nothing he couldn’t handle, until it killed him. He never wanted to become Con, but at some point he had.

  After he ripped off the gown and pulled his shirt on, Roan asked, “How’s the Harvey situation?”

  Holden leaned back beside the doorway, so Roan could see him as a solid shape in the dark, with a casually cocked hip and his arms folded over his chest, like he was trying to hold in everything he actually wanted to say. “You’ll never see him again.”

  “Do I get details with that?”

  “Be happy without them.” He paused briefly, signaling a topic shift. “There was some speculation over whether it was a suicide attempt, but I was able to convince them it was accidental, that this is
your transformation week, and you were so desperate to check up on Dylan that you came here straight from home. Apparently a lot of infecteds accidentally OD on pain meds around transformation time, because you guys are in so much pain, and things are so wacky what with being a cat and being a person and whatnot.”

  “And you knew that how?”

  “PBS had a report about it.” In spite of the darkness, he must have known that Roan was staring at him, because he added defensively, “Hey, I sometimes have some time to kill in client’s hotel rooms, and there’s shit on, okay?”

  Dressed and standing as straight as he could at the moment, he had to ask, “How’s Dylan?”

  “Asleep, as far as I know. But there’s no way you’re getting back in his room. Not only is Nurse Ratched on guard, but the intern you passed out in front of is still pushing for a psych consult.”

  Shit. Roan considered his options and wasn’t too surprised that he had few. He absolutely didn’t want to stay here if he didn’t have the option to leave. He needed to stay with Dylan… but he really didn’t like the sound of a psych consult. That was a one way ticket to Crazyville for good. “Can you get me out of here?”

  Holden’s silhouette cocked his head like that was the stupidest question he’d heard all night (quite possibly). “Did you forget who you were talking to? Honey, I can get you out of almost anything.”

  There was a joke there, but he decided not to make it. He was going to owe Holden a lot for this, so he supposed he should simply be grateful for his generosity and his easy gift of gab.

  Holden snuck him out of the hospital through a way he didn’t know existed, but was apparently for the janitorial staff. Roan almost asked him how he knew about it but decided that this was just the type of thing Holden would go out of his way to know. Roan never entered a place without being aware of the immediate exits, and Holden never went anywhere without taking note of the more obscure ways out. He had the spirit of a sneak thief in him.

  Holden led him toward his car, and Roan was going to object but then realized he probably was in no shape to drive right now. He was lucky to have gotten away with it earlier. The drugs may have been theoretically out of his system, but his head was still swimming, and he felt unconscionably hollow, like he was just the husk of a human being. “Where am I taking you?” Holden asked.

  That was a good question. If he went home, the cops could find him easily, as could Dee, whom he was more concerned about. Dee was just going to kill him once Shep told him what had happened. He wanted to put this off as long as possible. Also, there were a whole bunch of nice, comforting pills waiting for him at home, and he didn’t know if he was strong enough to fight the need for them right now. “Not home. I can’t deal with that right now. How about a motel or something?”

  Holden shrugged and got in the car, and Roan got in the passenger side, figuring that was okay. “You know, you caught a break,” Holden told him, once Roan had collapsed into the passenger seat. “The guy whose arm you snapped like a swizzle stick? He couldn’t give a description to the police, and seemed to think you were wearing a prosthesis on your face. “

  Roan didn’t even remember anything coherent after arriving at the church. His memory was like a broken mirror, something so completely shattered and disconnected it was hard to imagine that it had ever been one whole piece. “The cops will know who it was.” And they would, too. What they would do about it was another story.

  “They’d have to prove it. And I caught up with you before you reached the church, so we have no idea who the fuck that could have been.”

  Just like that; an easy lie, casually delivered, so reflexive it almost sounded like a natural truth. Roan looked at him curiously, but Holden was watching the road. His face flashed in and out as it was illuminated briefly by passing lights and plunged back into darkness again. Roan hadn’t even noticed when he started the car. “Why are you helping me?”

  “It’s called friendship. Look it up.” Holden glanced at him, then shot him a brief, almost feral smile, all teeth and confidence. “C’mon, Roan, you were always good to me and my boys. Consider this good karma coming back at you.”

  And the more cynical side of him knew that Holden liked to collect favors and people who might turn out to be good to know at some point in time, and he may have just fallen into that category. Was he going to protest it right now, though? No. He leaned his head against the cool glass of the passenger window, which felt inordinately good right now. He watched the road slip by like a fast-running river and wondered how long he would feel this empty. “Am I going crazy?”

  “No, you’re just self-destructing. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of people. Most people do it one drink at a time, but you just had to go and prove to everyone you were gay by being flamboyant about it.” He scoffed in mock disgust. “Okay, we get it, you’re dying inside. Do you have to make a big deal out of it, cocksucker?”

  Roan wasn’t sure if trying to make a joke out of it was helpful. Well, it was laugh or cry, wasn’t it? “Are you saying you’ve never self-destructed?”

  “Oh, fuck no. I love myself too much to do that. That’s the key—be a conceited fuck, and you’ll never want to implode.” He winked at him as they passed beneath the halo of a streetlight.

  It almost made Roan laugh. Not quite, but the fact that he nearly wanted to seemed remarkable. He thought about Connor for a moment and realized it didn’t hurt quite like it used to. Would he get there with Paris one of these days? Maybe. Not just now, though. “Are you still bucking for an assistant job?”

  “After tonight, I better damn well have it.”

  “I’m on the verge of making you partner,” he admitted, and to his surprise, Holden chuckled at that.

  Maybe he wasn’t too far gone if he made someone else laugh. It gave Roan hope.

  17

  Ghosts

  HOLDEN actually ended up taking him to Holden’s apartment, arguing that no one would think to look for him there. Roan had to admit that was true, and besides, he was too tired to actually protest.

  As it was, Roan didn’t think he’d have to worry about Holden hitting on him, because once you saw a guy come within a few shattered bones of turning into a lion, could you actually be attracted to him? Well, perhaps if you were the kinky sort, into transformation porn, or if you had a cat fetish of some kind. There were quite a few people like that, especially on the Internet, but Holden had never been one. He’d have been pretty up front if that was his fetish.

  They’d barely been there five minutes, and Roan had said he was sleeping on the sofa, when Holden’s cell phone went off. It was his special phone, the one only his clients knew about. He answered it with an amused expression on his face, and Roan tried not to listen as he helped himself to a drink from Holden’s fridge. He could only hear Holden’s side of the conversation, but from what he could tell, Holden was surprised to hear from this client, whom he didn’t think was in town, and the client was both a little drunk and a little horny. Holden agreed to visit him at his hotel for double rate, since it was “off hours” and he was on a night off. The client apparently agreed to the double rate and requested something, because Holden said he’d bring “it” (he had no idea what “it” was, and he absolutely didn’t want to know under any circumstances).

  As soon as Holden closed his phone, he grimaced in embarrassment and said, “You’d never guess who that was.”

  He wasn’t actually offering to tell him. Holden kept his client confidentiality better than most private investigators and lawyers Roan knew. Oh sure, he’d talk about them, but with obviously phony names, and he never gave any identifying details. Sure, he’d tell you this one guy likes to get the shit beat out of him, but he never gave you details that could help identify him on the street. They were all vague, sad people, the ones you’d be scared of if you didn’t pity them. “A televangelist or a Republican senator,” Roan guessed.

  Holden chuckled. “Oh, you think they’re all closet queens, do you
?”

  “Self-loathing closet queens. If I were you, I’d secretly tape them and post it all over the Internet. Which, I’ve been led to believe, is a series of tubes.”

  Holden shook his head and smirked. “You’re such a cynic.”

  “Says the guy who sells his body for a living.”

  “Hey, I’m tapering off of that.”

  “And going into porn.”

  “It’s a better deal.”

  “I’m sure it is. That’s the scary part.”

  Holden smiled like he was suppressing a laugh and said, “Help yourself to anything, my casa is your casa and whatnot, although I’d appreciate you not going through my porn stash. I should be back in a couple of hours, tops.”

  Roan nodded, holding onto his can of soda like it was a lifeline. He wasn’t sure why. It stung like a son of a bitch going down. Carbonation and recent stomach pumping didn’t seem to mix. “Thanks.” Such a weak word, and yet he meant it sincerely, for everything.

  Holden seemed to understand the weight and breadth of it all, because his expression sobered. “It’s okay. You’re better than this, Roan. You don’t have to go this way.”

  Roan almost said that Holden didn’t either, but held it in. Holden probably knew that, and there was no point in stating the obvious. While he disappeared into his bedroom to get ready, Roan collapsed on Holden’s couch and was glad it was comfortable enough to sleep on. He felt like he was drifting off right now, going away to a happy place where he hadn’t come within two or three minutes of a full transformation, and where he didn’t accidentally overdose on painkillers in a hospital. And it was accidental, right? The scary thing was, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure himself. He was pretty sure if he was going to kill himself he’d just tuck his gun barrel underneath his chin at a slight angle, certain to blow the back of his skull out, and then pull the trigger, which would guarantee both success and the fact that he’d be dead before he even heard the shot. Only then did it occur to him that he should probably be worried that he had a planned suicide route.