Clear Water

by Amy Lane

  Patrick knew his aching jaw was hanging open, and he couldn’t seem to set it right. “Blow up my dad’s factory? How?”

  Cal twitched his mouth a little—that flat, grim, terrifying mouth twitched up, and Patrick felt the first wave of nausea that usually came with being really hurt. “You think I didn’t listen to all of that ‘Daddy saves the world’ bullshit? The guy was footing the bill for part of my little operation here, Patrick. I mean, having you fall on my dick was an accident, but a lucky one. You said it yourself. Every morning, he gets there, in his little inner office, at eight o’clock, before anyone else, so he can do books. All we gotta do is set the bombs tonight, my man, and leave you two locked in the fucking warehouse. We’ve already got the growth area wired—all your Daddy has to do is open his office door and his factory, this warehouse—it all goes up in flames. And us? We’ll be long gone and out of here.”

  Patrick squinted at him and his sallow face and his unpleasant, evil-imp-from-hell smile, and thought, I can’t believe I ever liked this fucker. “You ever gonna answer the meth thing, dickhead? I mean, you’re monologue-ing and you’re about to stick us in a little room and leave us to die. The least you could do is satisfy my fucking curiosity.”

  Cal shrugged and said the only truly absurd thing Patrick had heard since he’d first seen the two-headed frog with his name. “Have you seen the literature on meth labs? Seriously—they’re way too dangerous. I mean, I like me a noseful of party, but I’d rather just earn the money for it, you know?”

  Patrick shook his head and allowed the gorilla with the closest gun to prod him toward the big featureless warehouse. “I know I spent most of the summer talking to a two-headed frog who made more sense than you. Sweartagod, Cal. I don’t know how people like you can even learn to walk and breathe—you should donate your body to science.”

  Cal clocked him across the back of the head with his gun, and Patrick went down. His last really conscious moment was being slung over some gun monkey’s shoulder and shaken like a frog in martini mixer until the pain behind his eyes made him black out.

  HE WOKE up with his head on Whiskey’s lap. Whiskey was smoothing water on his face with a strip of his own T-shirt—and squinting at him from his own black eye.

  “Jesus, Whiskey,” Patrick coughed. “What did they do to you?”

  Whiskey shook his head. “Man, that was one of the ugliest breakup scenes I’ve ever seen. I’m totally serious about that—was there any way that could have gone any worse?”

  Patrick shrugged and then winced as he pulled one of the muscles in his stomach. He might have cracked a rib or two—breathing wasn’t as easy as it used to be. “We were surrounded by jokers with guns. I think it’s a real good sign that they didn’t shoot us!”

  One side of Whiskey’s lean mouth pulled up, and Patrick let himself get lost in those warm brown eyes for a minute. He raised his hand up and cupped Whiskey’s cheek, and Whiskey closed his eyes and leaned into the touch.

  “How long was I out?” he asked. The light from the window at the top of the warehouse was twilight gray.

  “A long fucking time, you bastard.” Patrick didn’t have to ask how much of a picnic that time had been for Whiskey, and he stroked that square, dependable cheekbone with his thumb in silent apology.

  “You know we’re not gonna die here,” Patrick said seriously, and Whiskey nodded.

  “I’m pretty sure Fly Bait’s bringing the cavalry,” he said quietly, and Patrick struggled to sit up.

  “Yeah, but even if she wasn’t—we’re not going to die here.” He stretched a little, breathing past the tightness of the abused muscles, and then he stretched some more, looking at the little room they were in.

  It had once been an office cubicle: it had a computer desk in it, and an old chair, and even a filing cabinet. He and Whiskey were on the floor, though Patrick thought there might have even been a couch inside the little thing once—but there wasn’t a ceiling. Not really.

  The walls were eight feet tall—the cubicle was meant to go inside an actual office building, maybe, and it was backed up against the wall of the warehouse itself, the better to make use of the old electrical fixtures and probably even some plumbing. Patrick could see a tiny bathroom cubicle outside of their office cubicle, so the plumbing must have been run on the inside of the warehouse walls too, as well as the ventilation.

  It was the ventilation and the electrical fixtures that would probably get them the hell out of there.

  Whiskey followed his gaze and saw, like Patrick, that the desk would get them to the fixtures, and then the rest was monkey business—scaling shit, swinging to shit, basically being like a kid in a playground.

  The look on Whiskey’s face as he rubbed the back of his neck and tried to go where Patrick had gone in his mind was pure admiration—and also apology. “Patrick?” he said in a tentative whisper, and Patrick shook himself from his contemplation of his tenth or maybe twelfth move after he scaled the electrical fixture to the light fixture hanging overhead to concentrate on Whiskey instead.

  “Yeah, Whiskey?”

  “Two things.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The first is that we’re going to have to wait until people are gone—or at least way over on the other side of the warehouse and not paying attention to us, because no one’s dumb enough to not see that.”

  Patrick nodded. That had occurred to him—and as long as he could be at his father’s factory to warn him by eight in the morning, that didn’t seem to be such a bad thing. “Yeah. I know. What’s the other thing?”

  “I can’t follow you up there.”

  Patrick looked at him—with appreciation, as always—but looked at him with assessment for the task. “You’re fit,” he said appraisingly.

  Whiskey shook his head and gave Patrick’s bottom an affectionate pat. “I’m not you, baby. You can make that. I can get out of the cubicle, but I’ll have to open the warehouse door.”

  Patrick nodded and grimaced. “M’kay.” He sighed. “That’ll take longer. It’s already almost dark. I hope I can get out of here in time. Why do you think they wired the inner office instead of the outside one? Why is it tied to my dad?”

  Whiskey shrugged. “Like you said. Your dad runs like clockwork. Any idiot can open the outside of the factory—maintenance, an over-eager foreman. But that inner office is only your dad, and they know what time that’s going to happen.”

  Patrick snorted. “Yup. Anal-retentive asshole. Let’s hope it doesn’t get him killed.”

  Whiskey draped a careful arm around Patrick’s shoulders. “You know this isn’t your fault, right?”

  Patrick leaned into him shamelessly, even in the heat and airlessness of the little warehouse cubicle. “I’m a brainless twink, Whiskey—not even I could figure this far ahead.”

  Whiskey kissed his temple—gingerly, but the gentle pressure was still reassuring. “You’re only brainless when you’re trying to get someone to pound the brains out of you. You really couldn’t have had that scene with Cal without the violence?”

  Patrick shook his head, feeling it down to his aching bones. “Cal’s wanted to do that for a long time. Maybe he needed to do that. I kept thinking he was a good guy until I fucked him up by being me. Maybe he had to pound the shit out of me for me to realize I didn’t deserve it.”

  Whiskey’s chest quivered against the side of Patrick’s head. “God, that’s fucked up.” Whiskey looked out over the top of the cubicle for a minute and seemed to get hold of himself. “Patrick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You ever let anyone touch you like that again like you deserve it, and I’ll kill myself keeping their hands off you, okay?”

  He meant it too. Patrick swallowed, remembering the way he’d struggled against the gun-monkeys and the two black eyes. “I hear you. So, I’m thinking….”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking we should look at the door before I open it for you. I’m betting it’s
wired, like Cal was talking ’bout my Dad’s door. I may get out of here okay, but I’m going to have to leave you behind.”

  Whiskey nodded, and that companionable arm around his shoulder became the arm of the lover Patrick would die for. “Well, you get to your Dad. You stop his bomb from going off, you stop the whole thing.”

  “I’d rather stay here and get blown to bits with you,” Patrick muttered. “In fact, I’d rather you try. Couldn’t you at least try?” Patrick lost all pretense of being cool or casual or dry or analytical. Fuck it. Whiskey was the fucking scientist, Patrick was the spaz. He burrowed into Whiskey’s chest and shivered, even when Whiskey’s strong arms came around his shoulders and held him close like nothing was going to hurt him ever again.

  “Patrick, I’m six two, 200 pounds easy—that shit’ll hold your weight, but it’s gonna drop me on my ass.”

  Patrick nodded, because he understood, but his brain was stuck on auto-loop, and he hoped Whiskey understood too. “You could balance. Balancing spreads your weight out so that it is less concentrated on any spot.” He knew these things he blurted were silly, obvious, insane, or weird. But when he was stressed, they showed up in the forefront of his brain, and he had to get rid of them before he could move on.

  Whiskey knew it too. “Yeah. Yeah. I could balance. We’ll just put a pin in that idea for a minute okay?”

  “I’m sorry I’m such a spaz,” Patrick mumbled. “I’m gonna get us out of here, but I’m a total spaz.”

  Whiskey had started rocking the two of them. It was childish, probably, but it felt wonderful, and Patrick’s wild tangle of jungle garage sale brain began to sort itself with the motion alone. “You’re totally wonderful. You’re gonna do great, baby. I have no doubt.”

  THEY perched on the plain desk and watched as the last twilight from the sky faded in the tiny patch of window.

  “I keep worrying that they got Fly Bait somehow,” Patrick confessed. “You’d think the cops would be here by now,” and Whiskey shook his head, not taking his eyes from the spot of window. Neither of them had watches, and Whiskey had chucked his phone/walkie into the bushes before the gun-monkeys had gotten to them.

  “Naw. They didn’t get her if she went directly to the cops. She’s unassuming. If she goes back and Cal’s people are there, she’ll slip under the radar.”

  “But where is she? I mean, we’ve got plans to get out, but—”

  Whiskey sighed. “Patrick, first of all, no one is going to believe her. I mean, would you? And she’s not going to be great with them. We’re not exactly great with cops.”

  Patrick thought about it, thought about how he’d woken up in Whiskey’s bed with no cops in sight, and was suddenly belatedly curious. “Yeah—why is that? You probably should have given me to the police when you pulled me out of the drink.”

  Whiskey rolled his eyes, blushed, looked away. “Let’s just say I didn’t learn about marijuana in botany and leave it at that, okay?”

  Patrick looked at him, connected the dots, and laughed like a second grader. “Huah, huah, huah, huah… yeah? Whiskey that’s hella fucking illegal.”

  Whiskey shook his head. “Me and Fly Bait had some very good times in our senior year. We had the biggest plant for three dorms. Told our RA it was oregano… our RA wasn’t very bright.”

  Patrick couldn’t stop another throaty giggle. “Really?”

  Whiskey looked at him in the descending darkness, and the only color that seemed to have survived was the warm color in his eyes. “Really.”

  “You know those things are as illegal as fuck, right?”

  Whiskey grinned. “As far as I know, not even the religious right has made fucking illegal, Patrick.”

  Patrick grinned back through the swelling in his face and his panic and everything. Whiskey was here, and it was going to be all right.

  IT SEEMED to take the bad guys forever to leave. There was a big bustle of noise and people yelling and giving orders and packing up like some sort of paramilitary organization, but in the corner of that, Patrick and Whiskey hung out in their little cubicle container like a good two-headed frog.

  Patrick, never good at waiting long, much less forever, spent his time pacing, doing handstands on the dresser, and trying to stretch through the bruising of his chest and abdomen. When he started coughing up a little bit of blood, Whiskey made him stop that and told him to save his stretching for the climb, and Patrick subsided, crouching on top of the desk with his arms around his knees and glaring into the darkness.

  “You know, if this was a romance book or some shit like that, we’d be having crazy orangutan sex right now. You know that, don’t you?”

  Whiskey squinted at him. “Yeah, well, if it was a romance book or some shit like that, I would have knocked those fuckers on the head with their own damned guns and Rambo-ed my way out of there. I think we’ll just have to settle for yoga boy and science nerd and hope that’s what works!”

  Patrick stopped and felt stupid. “You think you can un-wire or deactivate or whatever, don’t you? You’re going to watch me disappear and get out of the warehouse and then you’re going to try to blow yourself up.”

  Whiskey looked affronted. “I was not going to blow myself up!” Patrick’s mute panic must have penetrated his complete insouciance. “But I wasn’t going to mess with that shit while you were in the warehouse, no.”

  Patrick rested his head in his hands and started rocking back and forth. “Oh, shit,” he murmured. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit—”

  “Hush!” Whiskey ordered, and Patrick was so surprised to hear him speak harshly at all that he did. They both sat in the absolute quiet, and Patrick realized that the thumps, bumps, and hollers of frantic industry had faded away.

  “Oh, God,” Patrick said, almost physically ill. “What time do you think it is?”

  Whiskey walked up to him from where he’d been crouching in the corner of the cubicle, copping some rest. Patrick looked up from the cradle of his hands and knees and body and found that his lover—perhaps the first man ever to really deserve to be called that—was looking at him with calmness and faith.

  “It’s time for you to start climbing, baby. Don’t worry about me. Don’t come back and open the door. I’ve got that part. Just climb up the fixtures and out of the window and shimmy down. There’s a light post right out the window—you’ll be fine.”

  “But—”

  “Have I mentioned the doctorate, cuteness?” Whiskey asked, smiling faintly. “I don’t hear a car or a person or a soul around. They threw us in here and forgot about us. It’s time for us to escape like good frogs, okay?”

  Patrick smiled in spite of himself. “Cal and Catherine never tried to escape.”

  “Yeah, well, no analogy’s perfect.” Whiskey lowered his head and opened his mouth and took Patrick in a kiss so soft, so tender, it could only be the beginning of something. Patrick followed him into the kiss, slid his feet down the side of the desk, and opened his thighs, pulling Whiskey in so he could wrap his legs around that solid, real body. Whiskey wrapped those leanly muscled arms around Patrick’s shoulders, and Patrick felt protected and cherished and, thank the gods, loved, even while Whiskey’s taste was surrounding him, permeating his every pore.

  And then it was gone.

  “You’re going to do fine,” Whiskey told him, and Patrick nodded. “Remember—don’t wait for me. It’s getting late—just go get your Dad and keep him from setting off drug kingdom Armageddon, okay? And keep an eye out for Fly Bait—she’s got to be on her way.”

  Patrick kissed him quickly on the mouth again, closing his eyes and remembering that fantabulous taste because it deserved to be remembered, and then stood on top of the desk and got ready to scale his first obstacle.

  Showtime.

  Whiskey

  Blown Away

  GOD, his lover (young lover, actually, although the age thing had never really come up between them) was graceful.

  Whiskey stood in the darkened, empty wa
rehouse, silently hoping it was four in the morning and not six in the morning like he was starting to think it was, and watched Patrick become a miracle.

  His initial climb was easy—or at least he made it look easy by jumping from the desk to the edge of the cubicle and pulling himself on top of the cubicle, balancing literally on the edge of the fiber-board construct. The silver duct-tape on his cheap shoes reflected a little bit of light from the window, he was so still and confident on that tiny ledge.

  Balancing is spreading your weight out so it’s not concentrated in one place.

  Oh Jesus, Patrick had been so scared.

  Whiskey had seen it, had calmed it as best he could, but the entire time he’d felt like a big old graying fraud, because Whiskey had been scared too. Whiskey felt like everything from his liver to his bowels to his spleen had just frozen in his body when the gun-monkeys had appeared, and the permafrost had spread with every moment. It had thawed for a minute when the motherfucker who deserved to die had been beating Patrick with his gun, and then everything had seemed about to boil over, but Patrick had picked himself up and gone boneless and sweet in Whiskey’s arms, and Whiskey thought that maybe he could completely forget about killing the guy who’d put bruises on Patrick’s face that would probably be there for weeks. His nose was probably close to broken too, but he hadn’t complained, not once. No, not Patrick. He’d figured out a way to get out of there, which was awesome, because Whiskey was only 30 to 40 percent sure he was going to be able to do that shit he’d just told Patrick he could do.

  He’d feel a lot better about disarming explosives using a basic conceptual theory of dynamite, nitro, and C-4 if he wasn’t going to blow Patrick up with his half-assery too.

  And now, watching Patrick shimmy confidently (if painfully) up the side of the warehouse holding on to the PVC piping that shielded the electrical cords, he thought that maybe seeing Patrick move fluidly, confident, unafraid, and graceful as a the river itself was going to be his consolation prize from God for the risk of fucking himself up beyond redemption, repair, or even the need of oxygen.