Hush

by Tal Bauer

  “You’re coming out for drinks after, right?” Kris was different, had seemingly ditched the snark. He stared hard into Tom’s eyes. Mike watched the final set, but Kris leaned in, speaking softly to Tom alone.

  “Yes. I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone again.”

  “They’re going to want to see you, too. Mike’s new man.”

  Tom smiled.

  “Hey, for real, though?” Kris pressed his shoulder into Tom’s. “You need to do right by Mike. He’s a good guy. One of the very, very few good men left. He’s been used and tossed aside more times than you would believe. He’s worked hard to get himself to where he is right now, and I know he wants this to work out between you two. He’s like a firehose to the face sometimes. Lord help me, I know.” Kris tried to smile, but it was sad, turned down at the edges. “Just… be gentle with his heart, okay?”

  He couldn’t speak, not after that. He nodded, swallowing hard. “We, uh. We both want it to work.”

  “That’s what they all say in the beginning.”

  “I’m going to come out for him.”

  “Come out for you. And then be you with him.”

  “You guys okay?” Mike shoved his head between them both, looking wide-eyed at the two of them. “Plotting my untimely demise and conspiring against me already?”

  “No, meathead, I had to give Tom the ‘hurt him and I’ll cut you’ lecture. What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t?”

  “Don’t listen to him.” Mike pretended to wave Kris off, making yapping motions with his hands. “All that hairspray, it’s gone to his head. He’s—” Mike whistled.

  Kris punched him in his bicep, and they started bickering like old friends. They kept it up, all the way to the bar, but Mike bought the first round and Kris graciously accepted his apology.

  As predicted, everyone wanted to meet Tom. All the players, the referee, who stared at Tom long enough to start to unnerve him, and even some of Mike’s bar acquaintances, all came over to see “the daddy Mike Lucciano found”. Tom blushed his way through the evening, shaking hands with guys who eyed him up and down, winking at him and sliding close, whispering in his ear that he was a lucky, lucky man. Mike sat by his side through it all, one arm wrapped firmly around Tom’s waist, and he shooed away the men who tried to sneak a feel of Tom’s ass.

  “So, uh. I’m definitely different from your usual guy.”

  Mike nodded. He sucked down his beer. “Yeah. And, I’m not gonna lie, I kinda like showing you off. Everyone in here is jealous.”

  “Yes, of me! They all want you, Mike.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Mike shook his head. “They’re all jealous of me, and they all want you. You’re amazing.” Mike tugged Tom close and pressed their foreheads together, smiling. Tom kissed him sweetly, and then less sweetly, and Mike wrapped his arms around Tom’s waist.

  “Mike?”

  Mike stiffened. He stood, keeping his arms around Tom’s waist. Tom turned in his hold and came face to face with Mike’s ex, the man from the photo Mike had shown him months ago.

  “Silvio.”

  Silvio. Well, that name fit. He was slender and short, only up to Tom’s chin, and wore skinny pants and a violently-lime button-down with a black three-button vest over the top. His hair was spiked, his lips glossy. He looked painfully put together, like a movie actor without a set. Out of place, overdressed, and trying too hard.

  Silvio looked Tom up and down. “I wanted to call you, Mike.”

  “Why?” Mike frowned.

  Silvio licked his lips. One hip stuck out. “I’ve been thinking about you. About us.”

  “Us is ancient history. Where’s your new boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend—”

  “The guy who was drilling you in my kitchen? You cut him loose already?”

  “We weren’t dating,” Silvio said through clenched teeth. “I didn’t care about him. Not like you—”

  Mike laughed. “Save it. I’m done with you. I’ve moved on to far better things.” He kissed Tom’s cheek. “Call me never, Silvio.”

  “Fuck off, Michael, you and your old-ass daddy.” Silvio sneered and flounced away.

  “Sorry.” Mike’s eyes skittered away from Tom’s. “I didn’t know he’d be here.”

  “It’s okay.” Tom cupped his cheek, and then kissed him. “And you were right. He is an asshole. He doesn’t deserve you at all.”

  Mike bit his lip. “Wanna get out of here?”

  “Yes.”

  They waved to Kris and made their escape. Kris was reeling in an older man, a silver fox with a few years on Tom, who had the slick look of a lobbyist and was clearly eating out of Kris’s manicured hand. The rest of the teams had scattered.

  They made out in shadowed overhangs and against buildings on the way back to Tom’s place, kissing and laughing and rutting against each other like they were teenagers. Etta Mae cooled their frantic pace, bounding down the hall for them when they got back. But then Tom ambushed Mike, and they ended up in the bedroom, clutching at each other, panting, kissing every inch of skin they could reach.

  “You’re gonna kill me,” Mike finally breathed, after. “I’ve unleashed a monster. A ravenous sex-monster.” He nuzzled Tom’s neck, his collarbone. Kissed his chin.

  “Get some rest. You need your strength. Round two begins soon.” Tom laughed as Mike groaned, hiding his face in Tom’s chest. He was smiling though. Tom could feel it, the curve of his lips against his skin.

  Tom fell asleep with his forehead pressed to Mike’s, their noses brushing, trading sleepy kisses until they both drifted off.

  Chapter 16

  He got the text Thursday morning.

  The target.

  The location.

  The time.

  The text came from a new number, but that was normal. His handler used burner cell phones, impossible-to-trace throwaways paid for in cash. This was another DC number, a long line of DC numbers, meaningless digits on the screen.

  He knew it was authentic, and from his contact, the man who had hired him for this hit, because of the code: 621. Added to the end of all texts and communications, it was an easy way to validate the authenticity of the message, and the sender.

  If 621 was in the message, it was legitimate. If not…

  Time to pack up and get out of town.

  But, finally. After months. From the first phone call, all the way back in Ukraine until now, after all the waiting, the bullshit in DC, living like an immigrant just learning how to bumble his way around bananas and the Metro—

  He finally had everything. The who, where, and when.

  Only a few days to go.

  Chapter 17

  June 27th

  After an indolent, languorous Saturday morning, Mike and Tom dragged themselves out of bed and took Etta Mae to Georgetown for a late brunch. Etta Mae napped in the shade beneath the patio table as they shared a plate of French toast and held hands beneath the tabletop. It was a budding routine, two weeks in a row. Something they’d begun together, which made it ten times as special.

  Nervousness, though, crept up Tom’s throat, strangling his voice. His memories kept skipping back to the little rainbow pyramid advertisement, the one he’d played with the night he thought Mike had ditched him for a date. A date he now knew was just Kris—and, now he knew Kris, too. Could call Kris a friend, albeit a new friend. But still, a friend.

  “The, uh…” He swallowed. Mike watched him, frown lines appearing on his face around the edges of his sunglasses. He squeezed Tom’s hand beneath the table. “Pride Month ends this weekend. There’s a march over by the Mall today. This afternoon.”

  “I know.”

  “Have you ever been?”

  “I have. I marched my first year here in DC. Kris and I went together for a while, and then I would go with whoever I was dating at the time.”

  Tom inhaled sharply. He chewed on his upper lip.

  “Do you want to go?”

  �
�I do. I don’t know if I’m ready to march yet.” He looked down. “The last march I was in was in 1987. It was hard. Things… weren’t great.”

  Mike squeezed his hand, hard. “It’s different now. I swear.”

  “I know. Everything is so, so different. It’s amazing. It’s just…” He trailed off. “It’s hard to let go of the past. The fear.”

  “You lived something I’ll never know. Never fully understand. I never faced that kind of hate, from individuals or from society. I hate that you experienced all that.” Mike’s face screwed up, like he was fighting back his bad temper, a rage that wanted to let loose. His frustration melted a moment later and he laced their fingers together on top of Tom’s thigh. “I’m just happy you’re taking this second chance. On us.”

  “This is worth it.”

  Another squeeze, and Mike’s slow smile. “So, we’re going to go to the National Mall? Watch the march? It gets real lively in front of the Capitol.”

  “Yes. We’re going.” He smiled, and Mike squeezed his hand again. “I don’t think Etta Mae can last all day in the sun.” It was already ninety degrees and only getting hotter.

  “Let’s take her home and then head down.”

  Home. Mike casually referred to his place as home. It was too early for that, but still… Tom couldn’t stop the smile breaking over his face.

  The Pride March was everything and nothing he’d expected.

  It was a celebration, like the day on the National Mall when he’d played frisbee with Mike and Kris. Bucket drums banged, cheers roared, songs sang out. Laughter floated on sunbeams, smiles traveled on the wind. Rainbow streamers and balloons and body paint created a moving canvas of light and pride, buoyed by hope, and every happy step of the march was another earthshaking accomplishment on the long, long road of their history.

  It was a memorial, a somber reflection on lives loved and lost. Marchers carried posters with blown-up pictures of the faces of loved ones lost too early in life. Men and women, taken too soon by disease or violence. Twenty-six marchers in black, wreathed in white, pink, and blue striped ribbons, carried individual posters with pictures of the trans men and women murdered the year before in the U.S.

  Tears flowed in the same space as cheers, as smiles. Wet faces turned up to the sun, people wreathed in rainbows and light doubling over and sobbing, lost in the combined anguish and joy.

  It was a moment in time in which everything could be felt: the pride, the joy, the surge of exultation, rage, relief, and empowerment, hand in hand with the loss, the crushing pain of burying too many friends and the million tiny defeats they all felt every day. The curled lips, the snide looks. The sneers. The everyday hate that turned into normalcy, set against the dry victories of legal protections that were supposed to stop all of that, and sometimes actually did.

  In 1991, he’d died a thousand different deaths, had seen a million different ways the world could hate him and his people.

  Today, he saw a thousand and one dreams that had come true for them all, and a million and one ways in which they had all fought back, and the world had changed for them. Was still changing for them.

  And… perhaps the biggest dream he ever dared imagine was standing beside him. He and Mike weren’t holding hands anymore, but Mike stood close enough to press his body against Tom’s shoulder, the curve of his back. Close enough to be there, really be there. He leaned back into Mike’s touch, just a bit.

  Tom wanted to clap and he wanted to sob, scream at the top of his lungs in pride, in relief, in crazed, delirious happiness. Look at this! Look at what changed! And, he wanted to sob, collapse to his knees, cling to the grass—the same grass where he’d watched the AIDS quilt be unfolded for the very first time—and try to pull the ghosts of those men from the dirt, rip them back from dead like he could pull up the sun-warmed blades of grass. Do you believe this? he wanted to ask. Do you believe that this is happening, when all the world gave you was silence?

  Where were the men who’d chased him and Peter with baseball bats? They hadn’t just disappeared in a cloud of smoke. They didn’t just fade away, a Hollywood movie where the bad guys get what’s coming, and the threads are neatly tied up in the end.

  A hand landed on the small of his back, big and warm, even through his t-shirt. Mike shifted, stood behind him, hiding his touch. “It’s hard. I know,” Mike murmured.

  “These are our museums. This is our living history. Everything, tangled together.” Tears rolled down Tom’s cheeks, sliding from beneath his sunglasses.

  “I’d like to know more about your past. What you saw. What you experienced.” Mike was still speaking quietly into his ear, over his shoulder. “If you want to talk about it.”

  “I do. With you.” Tom reached behind his back and covered Mike’s hand with his own. It was a risk, touching Mike so intimately out in the open, but he craved Mike’s touch, everything about him. He took a breath, and then another. “Maybe… next year we can march together?”

  Mike squeezed his hand hard, until his own hand trembled. “When you’re ready.”

  The march stopped in front of Capitol Hill, turning into a rally. People swarmed into Union Square in front of the U.S. Capitol and surrounded the smaller reflecting pool at the base of the Capitol steps. Maryland and Pennsylvania Ave were closed to traffic, and the marchers turned into street partiers, chanting, beating on their drums, and clapping in time to raucous chants. Tom and Mike followed on the edges and clung to Pennsylvania Ave, watching from the northern edge of the reflecting pool.

  “What’s… going on?” Mike shifted, moving from relaxed and at ease to his law enforcement stance, assuming the hypervigilance that his lawman senses demanded. Tom felt it, the shift in Mike behind him, the way the air around him charged. “Why do the marchers all have Russian flags all of a sudden?”

  The march had turned into a street rally, and then shifted into a protest in the space of minutes. Russian flags streaked with rainbows, posters of jailed Russian dissidents, chants decrying the Russian political stance against LGBT people. Everyone faced the Capitol, shouting, screaming, beating their drums and waving their flags as loud and proud as they could.

  “Oh my God,” Mike breathed. “The Russian president. He’s here in DC. He’s here at the Capitol.”

  “Jesus…”

  First Street, between Union Square and the Capitol, was permanently closed to civilian traffic, but was used for dignitary travel and VIP motorcades. A line of slick black SUVs sat in front of the Capitol steps, and in the center, two of the SUVs had little Russian flags waving from the front corners of the hood. Men in dark suits stood at posts around the motorcade, glaring at the crowd across the street in Union Square. Uniformed Capitol police and DC Metro police lined the edge of the square, keeping the protestors away from the Russian motorcade. Men and women in FBI jackets waited on the steps, and more men in dark suits with coiled wires leading from their ear kept a tight perimeter around the motorcade.

  And then, the crowd erupted, protestors going wild, bellowing at the tops of their lungs. A group of men stood at the top of the Capitol steps, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Senate Majority Leader. The minority leaders and the right-hand men and women of the leadership clustered in the background. In the center of the group, the Russian president stood, flanked by a joint team of Secret Service agents and Russian security personnel. Even from a distance, the Secret Service and Russian security personnel looked about as pleased to be working together as two bitterly hateful rivals could be.

  “I want to see this.” Mike led Tom through the crowd, getting them closer to the Peace Monument at the northwest corner of the base of the grand steps to the Capitol. White marble seemed to stretch forever, steps to the sky it seemed, a deep, cloudless blue sky painted off the edges of the world behind the Capitol dome. “They’re probably going to pass right by us. Head up Pennsylvania to Constitution and then over to Blair House. Usually foreign dignitaries stay at Blair House, across the st
reet from the White House.” Mike made space for Tom near the planters at the water’s edge of the Peace Monument. Above them, marble statues draped in classical robes hid their faces and sobbed. Grief, one of the women, leaned against the shoulder of History. History, the marble statue staring down the National Mall and over the crowd of Pride protesters, held a stone tablet, inscribed: They died that their country might live.

  Tom’s blood ran cold, and a shiver tip-tapped down his spine, the patter of a thousand spiders’ feet sliding down his skin.

  The Russian president strode down the long Capitol steps, his security team flanking him in a wide V formation. Secret Service, FBI, Russian security. The U.S. congressional leaders stayed at the top, watching him stride away.

  The shouts of the protestors grew louder, rose on the furious beats of the bucket drums and the clap-clap-clap of their chants. A megaphone wielded by a slender man with long blond hair bellowed out the names of gay Russians who had been killed, and others wallowing in prison. An effigy of the Russian president rose on a pole, dressed in a tutu, covered in lipstick kisses and holding a rainbow flag in both of his puppet hands. The crowd roared. Tom’s molars vibrated, even through his clenched teeth.

  Police sirens whined, chirping on and belting out the harsh warning beep-beep-beep. DC Metro police on motorcycles revved their engines, waiting for the Russian president to enter the motorcade and be hurried away. The frenzy, the roar of the crowd, the strain of the motorcade—the passion in the air was thick as lead. Only a diamond blade could cut through this tension.

  As if mocking them, the Russian president stopped a third of the way from the base of the Capitol steps and waved to the protestors, a political kind of fuck you. He waved and waved, and the protestors roared. Bellowed. Held up their rainbow flags and signs and posters, saying fuck you right back. The man on the megaphone screeched in blistering Russian. Men in the Russian president’s security team all shifted, heads swiveling, and stared the protestor down.