by Andrea Speed
She must have felt the same way, because she shook her head in disgust and turned away, saying, “I’ll go get you the meds.”
As soon as she was gone, Roan collapsed on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Shouldn’t he have been upset? Why wasn’t he upset? Did he really not care if he lived or died? He had no religion, believed in no gods and no afterlife, and yet maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind, he still held out some vain hope he’d see Paris again. Maybe. He could be an idiot as much as anyone else.
He was putting on his sneakers when Dylan came back, holding a fast-food bag and a paper cup. “You are so lucky I’m such a nice guy.”
He didn’t have to ask why. The smell hit his nose, and his stomach rumbled in anticipation. “Oh, you beautiful man. You got me a steak breakfast burrito.”
“I can’t believe you even eat breakfast burritos. They’re disgusting.”
“Many are disgusting, yes. But every now and then, you find one that’s pure ecstasy in a tortilla. And this one is, thanks to the chipotle sauce.” Roan got up, and found it easy with such impetus behind the movement. He went over to Dylan and kissed him before taking the bag and the cold cup from him.
Dylan shook his head, his lips thinning, but it was an affectionate sort of exasperation. “I’m glad I can’t have my vegetarian status revoked, because this would do it.”
“You’re doing it for love. People would understand. Well, maybe not PETA.” Even though he was eager to leave, he was ravenous, so Roan sat on the edge of the bed and opened the bag, pulling out the hot, paper-wrapped burrito, which he peeled open eagerly. It was probably still too hot to eat, but as soon as he sank his teeth into it, he didn’t care. Before the spicy sauce kicked in, he could taste all the hot fat and salty calories, the meat and the eggs and the crispy bit of hash-browned potatoes they threw in as well. Bliss. He might have had an orgasm if Dylan had gotten him a pumpkin-pie shake too, but he’d gotten him a Pepsi, which he had admittedly requested. (He needed the sugar and caffeine.)
He ate greedily, gulping half of it down in little over a minute, and Dylan sat down in the room’s only chair. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or do I have to pry it out of you?”
He finished chewing, washed it down with a gulp of soda so sweet and ice cold it made his teeth hurt, and said, “You’re gonna want me to stay here. But I want you to know I’m not going to. I’m doing this my own way, and I hope you’ll support me even if you think I’m the biggest idiot in the world.”
Dylan stared at him in a way that suggested he wasn’t sure what to do: punch him or laugh.
“You should get that printed on a card and hand it out to potential boyfriends. By the time most of us figure that part out, we’re in too deep.”
“I probably deserved that.”
“Look, I know you, okay? Something was wrong and you hid it from me, because you didn’t want to admit weakness. And you’re terrified of hospitals, so you want to get out of here as fast as possible, even if it hastens your death. How am I doing?”
Roan let a pause linger. “I wouldn’t say terrified.”
He rolled his eyes. “You also use humor to try and defuse situations and change the subject, or alternately you use it as a weapon. You do it a lot. You’re a closet comedian.”
“I make you laugh.”
“All the time. But that isn’t the point. The point is I just found you, you selfish bastard, and you can’t die on me now.” Dylan tried to blink away nascent tears, then gave up and just ran the back of his hand across his eyes.
A weight seemed to settle in Roan’s stomach, unrelated to the food, and it seemed to want to clog his throat. Roan didn’t let it. “I promise you, Dylan, I’m not gonna die. Not without a fight. You know how I love to fight. That hasn’t changed.”
“It better not.”
Roan sat there, wondering how far ahead Paris had planned. He’d discovered only after he met Dylan that Paris had actively singled Dylan out and all but groomed him to take his place. He had selected Roan’s next boyfriend for him, which was exactly like Par, so much so that he didn’t know why it shocked him that he had. Like he’d let him find someone that Par didn’t judge worthy? As if. But was this part of the reason why? Paris knew Roan would be eager to join him in the nothingness of death, sweet oblivion, so he made sure there was something that would pull him back, make him want to stay alive even if only by sheer guilt. Was that the entire intent?
How weird was it that most of the important men in Roan’s life were dead, and yet he could still feel them in his life?
Wow. His existence was so much weirder than he’d thought.
IT WAS like stepping out into a new world. Well, no, the same old fucked-up one, with a few minor changes.
The “Sex Tape Scandal!” headlines seemed to suggest that the Newberry sex video had been found and released to the world, and Roan knew instantly that Holden was responsible. He had found it, and he’d leaked it. Why? Because that was him. Hide something from him, and he would share it just to be an ass. Not that he would do anything different, but Holden was a bit more flamboyantly nasty.
The surprising thing was Jessie Newberry had apparently committed suicide. Reports had it happening shortly after the video was leaked on the web, and while he left no note, it was assumed the video was enough to send him over the edge. He was a troubled person, it seemed. Speaking of which, Kyle Newberry had supposedly checked into rehab ahead of the PR shitstorm. Was there an incest rehab? Well, why not? There seemed to be a rehab for everything else.
Grant was in legal custody, and many people were rather angry about the whole thing. It was understandable, but he didn’t kill anyone on purpose. No matter, many people still wanted his head. Roan wondered if Randi hated him now.
On a similar note, remains had been discovered in a wooded area, and they were assumed to be Tiffany Jones, although identification was still pending. Roan hoped it wasn’t, for Grant’s sake.
Gordo was out of the hospital, but he was still on leave from the cop shop and rather unhappy about it. He was a man who defined himself by his job, so without it, he felt lost. Roan could understand. He was the same way, sort of, but usually he had so much shit going on that he could only muster a half definition at best. There was also the fact that macho cops like them hated being labeled as fragile.
At least Dylan waited until they got home before they started arguing. Dylan thought the diagnosis was very serious, and Roan wasn’t treating it as such. That seemed unfair, as he agreed it was serious. It just wasn’t something he could get worked up about. Why, he didn’t know. It didn’t really help his side in the fight.
Roan left Dylan to stew and fume at him in private and went down to the basement, where he sat on the stairs and looked at the cage—his cage. The door was still ajar from the last time he’d used it, and Dylan didn’t touch the thing. It wasn’t so much that he was scared of it… okay, yeah, that was part of it. Most of it.
Why didn’t the prospect of dying in it bother him? Roan knew it should, but it didn’t. It bothered Paris. That’s why he’d committed suicide ahead of his final transformation. He wanted to die a Human, not a half-tiger monstrosity. He understood that totally.
But the idea of it didn’t really bother Roan. Maybe because the lion had as much claim to him as his Human form. He didn’t know what it was like to be just Human. He had always been something else, something caught between what he seemed to be and what he actually was. Human, lion, virus. A freak amongst freaks. He deserved to die as he lived, neither here nor there, torn between Human and other.
Dim sunlight was bleeding through the tiny rectangular window at the very top of the basement, casting a shaft of light inside the cage itself, a vivid line on the poured-concrete floor. Roan could still catch a whiff of tiger deep down beneath the more dominant scent of lion, or at least he thought he could. It could have been psychosomatic, something he wanted to believe.
Just like he wanted to believe his dea
th would be as simple as transforming and causing a blood vessel to burst in his brain. In a bizarre way, Roan thought it might be nice, a peaceful, quick death.
But he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy. Nothing ever was.
Don’t miss Roan’s story
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About the Author
ANDREA SPEED writes way too much. She is the Editor in Chief of CxPulp.com, where she reviews comics as well as movies and occasionally interviews comic creators. She also has a serial fiction blog where she writes even more, and she occasionally reviews books for Joe Bob Briggs’s site. She might be willing to review you, if you ask nicely enough, but really she should knock it off while she’s ahead.
Visit her web site at http://www.andreaspeed.com and find her on Facebook. She tweets at http://twitter.com/aspeed.