by Amy Lane
“Aren’t we all, baby. Every fucking one of us.”
“Tommy’s not.”
“You made Tommy strong.”
“You’ll check in on him, right? Keep him company?”
“I’m not gonna sleep with him.”
It was more than Chase deserved. “I’m fucking grateful.”
“I know you are, baby. I know you are.”
They finished late into the night, and Chase gave one more reluctant good-bye to Buster. Dex got a text that said Kane had turned “Tommy-watch” over to Cameron, and Chase was grateful. Dex said he had to stop at the all-night Walgreens on the way to Chase’s apartment to get some more scented soap and laundry detergent for himself because, in his words, “I’m gonna be smelling shit for weeks if I don’t wash everything I own twice after that.”
Chase wandered in with him and gazed sightlessly at toiletries, since that was the row the scented soaps were in.
That’s when he saw the razor blades.
He bought them, with some masculine-scented hand cream and Reese’s Pieces, and stashed them in his medicine cabinet behind the shaving cream. He came into his apartment late, tiptoeing quietly in, and jumped into the shower to get rid of the last of the smell. He ran the water until it was cold and didn’t look his red eyes in the mirror while he brushed his teeth. He wasn’t really sure if he’d focused his vision once since the drugstore, and curiously enough, it felt like he’d managed to keep that same detachment, that same sense of seeing but not seeing, for the next few weeks.
It was surprisingly easy.
“Can you fill up the car, baby?” Mercy would ask, and Chase nodded and said “Sure.” Then he’d wait until the Johnnies guys were done with their workouts (because Dex texted him, that’s how he knew) and then go to the gym, work out on automatic, and then drive home.
“Baby,” she’d say the next day, “you said you’d fill the car, but it’s empty!”
“Sorry,” he’d say, turning his face in the direction of her voice but not really seeing her. “I’m sorry. Did you run out of gas?”
“No, but seriously, Chase, where is your head?”
In a hospital room with Tommy.
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly Mercy was there, on top of him as he sat on the couch, kissing him, and he gazed sightlessly into her eyes.
“Chase, is everything okay?” she asked, and Chase smiled vacantly.
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
She pressed her lips to his, and he opened his mouth and responded. His body could do that, respond when his heart wasn’t engaged. That’s what he did. They made their way to the bedroom, and Mercy grabbed a condom from the drawer and gave it to him.
“Different brand?” The strangest small things caught his attention these days.
“Yeah. Just got them.”
But he wasn’t really listening for her answer. Most of his soul was still in that damned hospital room.
Tommy wasn’t in the hospital room, of course. He came home on the third day, with strict instructions to eat well, and Chase and Dex texted furiously to make sure it was nothing but healthy, vitamin-rich fruits, vegetables, and lean meat. Dex told him sourly one night at the gym (because Dex surprised him there and said it wasn’t a fucking divorce) that Dex had lost five pounds in the last couple of weeks because now he was eating healthy.
“Thanks a lot, you rat bastard,” Dex grunted as Chase spotted him for a bench press. “I was sort of enjoying my pizza/cookie dough days. I was gonna eat that shit until I turned thirty and absolutely had to stop.”
Chase’s mouth quirked upward on both ends and he grunted, setting the bar in the slots. It seemed to be the expected response.
Dex stopped and sat up, looking at him closely. “Chase, is anyone home up there?”
“I dunno,” Chase said, forcing a smile. “Was there ever anybody there?”
Dex looked at him and shivered. “You don’t look right, man. Tommy, he’s looking healthy—sad, but, you know. Like he’s going to do okay. You—I’m not sure about you.”
Chase’s smile got a little more real. “He’s going to be okay?”
Tommy.
“Yeah,” Dex said, walking to their next set. It’s a good thing he’d opted to go after Chase on the bench presses, because Chase wouldn’t have remembered where to go next. They were working on upper body today. They did the same routine every other day.
It’s all I need to know.
“I’m so glad,” Chase said, and then watched what Dex was doing carefully because he couldn’t quite focus on this next exercise and he didn’t want to strain anything.
THE Hornets lost their last game, the one that would have gotten them into the play-offs. When the game was over and they were trotting dispiritedly to the dugout, Chase had a sudden sense of dislocation, a giant twitch, as though he had stepped off a step when he’d thought he was on flat ground. His shoulders jerked and his ankle turned and he went down on one knee, and Donnie turned to him in alarm.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m the reason we lost,” Chase muttered, but for a minute, he couldn’t remember if that was true or not.
“Were not!” Donnie muttered, looking with irritation over his shoulder. “Kevin dropped that fucking fly ball in the sixth inning. But don’t tell him that. He’ll feel bad enough as it is.”
“It was me,” Chase said, and then, he seemed to remember that he’d pitched a nearly flawless game. Three hits? In the third game of a series? He’d been awesome. He seemed to pitch from the same place he did math or attended class. It was so strange, this last month, how this entire portion of his brain had seemed to be engaged without him. “It was me?” he asked, and Donnie came back and draped an arm over his shoulders.
“No, buddy. It’s just the way things are. One more year of ball, right?”
One more year without Tommy.
“Yeah,” Chase said, his voice flat, and Donnie stopped him on their jog to the locker rooms.
“I haven’t seen your guy out here in the last couple weeks.”
“I wasn’t doing right by him,” Chase said, proud of how his voice didn’t quaver.
Donnie shook his head and sighed. “God, Chase. All the best intentions, all the wrong fucking moves. I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
Chase looked around, surprised. “Where did everybody go?” The field was still lit, but the rest of the team was gone, probably in the locker rooms. Even most of the fans had disappeared, trickling into cars and disappearing, in spite of the almost balmy late-September air.
Donnie’s arm tightened on his shoulders, and for a minute, just a bare fucking minute, Chase felt like he was himself and he could breathe again. Contact. Uncomplicated, unconditional human contact. He shook his head and laughed a little.
“We should get inside before Kevin thinks we hate him. He’s going to need some beer and some ice cream tonight.”
Donnie grunted.
“He’s not going to need some beer and ice cream tonight?”
“Chase, how long’s it been since you’ve slept?”
I can’t sleep. I just lie there awake and listen to Mercy’s breathing and wonder if she’d hear it if mine stopped.
“You know school, Donnie. I’m not that bright. The homework takes a while.”
“Yeah. You ever think about maybe talking to the school shrink? Maybe he could help you sleep.”
“I’ve met him. He’s a nice guy, but I’m fine.”
Donnie looked away. “Chase, when we were kids, I wanted you and Kevin to be my brothers. I mean, ’Chelle was fine, but I wanted brothers like you can’t believe. Now Kevin is the goofy one, and I love him, but I don’t worry about him. But you… you, I worry about. Even when we were kids, I knew there was something to worry about. But you—right now? I swear, I want to call my dad and have him just take you home and lock you in my old room until you don’t make my stomach quite so weird. It’s… I don’t know. Remember when
we were kids, and my parents took us to Disneyland? We got home, and you were waiting on our porch, and you were wrapped up in a blanket and there were granola bar wrappers everywhere. How long had you been there?”
You were gone for a week. I slept there for three days.
“Couple of hours.”
Donnie hawked and spat. “That’s a fucking lie. I’ve never seen anyone look so lost in my life.”
“Your mom made the best meat loaf,” Chase said with a game smile, and Donnie stopped right there in the middle of the parking lot and hugged him. Chase sagged into him and then straightened. It was dangerous, falling into that human touch. It was one thing with Mercy—he got to be all he-man and protective. He could hold a distance while he was pretending to shield her from his mighty muscles. But not Donnie. Donnie could hold him up, so he couldn’t come even close to falling down on him.
“Chase,” Donnie whispered in his ear, “if you ever want to leave her, or even just want to talk in real words, call me. Don’t worry about the time of day or what I’ll be doing or what you think you’ll be interrupting, just call me. I’m not going to be sleeping real well until I hear your voice anyway.”
“’Kay,” Chase said, trying a reassuring smile. It must not have worked, because Donnie shook his shoulders hard.
“Promise. You don’t ever fucking promise anything. Promise you’ll fucking call me!”
I can’t keep promises!
“Donnie!”
“Promise!”
And for a moment, Chase was in the here and the now and he was startled enough by the here and the now to say something rash.
“Fine. I promise.”
And that seemed to appease Donnie, which was good, because it meant Chase could drift away from the here and the now and go back to that place where some other part of his brain took his classes and talked to his girlfriend, and the part that was really Chase simply drifted, in an endless sea of numb and gray, thrilled that it didn’t have to care.
That all went away the minute the scene with Ethan and Kane started.
The second Kane bore him to the mattress with one of those punishing, hard kisses that he specialized in, and Ethan engulfed his cock in tight, wet, heat, he screamed into Kane’s mouth. The intensity he’d always felt on the set, the freedom, the absolute joy in feeling, surged to his skin, but it was like when you’d slept on your arm for too long, making it dead to the world.
The surge of emotion, even joy, was so intense, it hurt.
Kane had taken his scream for pleasure, and it had been, but it had also been the moment when Chase, who had existed in such a comfortable, gray, detached fugue state for the last month, completely checked out of his own head.
It wasn’t until he was kneeling on the floor of the shower, sobbing into Tommy’s shoulder, that he realized that the whole time his emotions had been asleep, his heart had been flayed and bleeding. The pain… God, it was excoriating and unbearable, and it ruled him as he howled into Tommy’s body and bled his sorrow all over the bathroom floor.
He eventually had to stop. He had to. The pain was still there, but his body just ceased to sob, and he found himself clean and dry, huddled in one of the gargantuan, plush white robes they handed the models when they got out of the shower. His head was in Tommy’s lap, and Tommy was just running his fingers through Chase’s lengthening, natural-colored hair.
“You with me?” Tommy asked softly, and Chase made a sound, because that was about all he could manage.
“I talked to that doctor you set me up with,” Tommy said, and Chase relaxed a little more. “He’s a good guy. You’re right. He’s got me looking at that food thing in a whole new way.”
“No more barfing?” Chase asked, pleased that he had words now.
“No. I’m tempted sometimes, and I’ve had to work out like a motherfucker because sometimes I binge when I shouldn’t, but no barfing.”
“I’m glad.”
“Of course, when I realized I was just hanging around the gym waiting for you, you big stupid bastard, I stopped eating ice cream at night.”
“I didn’t want things to be awkward.”
“Fucking coward.” But Tommy’s voice lacked venom.
“You knew that all along.” Oh God, it felt so good to talk to him. Chase started to feel like he could sit up and look around, but he put it off a little longer. As soon as he could sit up and collect his thoughts and pretend to be a person again, he was going to have to bail. If this part hurt, this one little part with Tommy, what would it feel like to have a whole conversation again?
“I just wish I knew what you were afraid of,” Tommy whispered. “I don’t think it’s of people thinking you’re gay, because there’s a whole other closet for that. I think I know what it is, and what it has to do with, but you won’t say it, and it’s just like Doc Stevenson says, if you won’t say it, we can’t fix it. So won’t you tell me what you’re afraid of, Chase? It would be awesome if we didn’t have to dance on nails anymore.”
“Is that what we’ve been doing?”
“Isn’t that what it feels like?”
“You forgot the rubbing alcohol and full body contact with the razorblades.”
Tommy laughed a little, and Chase closed his eyes. “Can I get a bottle of water, Tommy?”
“Yeah, sure. You’re not going to run away while I’m out?”
Chase grunted. He was lucky, because Tommy apparently considered it a “No.”
It was, in fact, a “You bet your sweet ass I’m going to run away while you go get me a water, because otherwise I’ll promise you the world.”
Not a soul in the building, not even Kelsey the receptionist, who kept the guys supplied with gum, bathrobes, and an endless supply of sarcasm, saw him sneak out on wobbly legs and drive away.
He’d been going to check into a hotel, but he found that he barely had enough strength of will to get to his apartment. He walked up the steps and into the apartment and kicked off his shoes and shucked his jeans, turning the ringer off his phone while he did so.
He crawled into bed and didn’t get out for the rest of the day.
EVENTUALLY he had to get up. He told Mercy he was sick, but the horrible truth was, he couldn’t even sleep. He just lay there with his eyes closed, listening to the angry buzzing of his cell phone on vibrate until the battery ran down. His bladder drove him out of bed at one point, and he sighed and plugged his phone into the charger, skipping over Tommy’s increasingly desperate texts and settling on a reply to John’s request for an opinion on the rushes. He okayed them without looking and closed his eyes again, and apparently that was enough activity to send him to sleep, because sleep he did.
For eighteen hours.
Mercy checked his head every four hours, and grew increasingly suspicious when he didn’t spike a fever.
“Are you just trying to get out of Saturday night?” she asked, trying to mask her suspicion with the faux-joke. “I thought you liked dancing.”
Unless Tommy’s there it makes me queasy.
“I love dancing.” With Tommy.
“Then you kick this thing, okay? We haven’t been out in a dog’s age, Chase! I need something to look forward to!”
Chase managed a smile.
I’m glad one of us can have something to look forward to. I certainly don’t.
“I’ll be up and around, I promise,” he said.
And he was. He even made it to the gym two days in a row, and to his classes one of those days. He picked up his extra work and came home and did it, and was feeling pretty damned good about himself by the time their dance date arrived.
He could function pretty well for a dead man.
WHICH was why it was no surprise to find himself standing there, in front of the mirror, holding the razorblade to his wrist. A thin line of scarlet-colored beads had gathered where the blade was touching the skin, running vertically in the direction of his vein, and he pushed down curiously, to see when exactly they would become fat enough
to break, join each other, and run crimson down the sink.
His skin was so soft the blade almost whispered through it, and as Mercy pounded on the door, he wondered how hard he’d have to push to feel pain.
He gave it a try, finding that finally, after these weeks of missing Tommy, he had something to look forward to.
The Boy with the
Detachable Soul
THE boy in the bathroom was staring at the mirror, the trick of the steam on the glass making his eyes look vacant and soulless, which was fitting. His skin was pale, his hair was colorless with wet, and the towel was white. Even the bathroom walls were basic apartment white. The only color on the set was the steadily increasing line of crimson draining into the sink. Oops… must have hit a vein there, because it spurted, badly, spattering the mirror, the sink, the white towel, and suddenly the boy gasped, blinking his eyes like a waking sleeper.
OH SHIT! Chase was bleeding! And all he could think of was “Someone’s going to have to clean this up!” He’d done cleanup on Tommy’s apartment, he’d seen the mess a cracked soul left behind. Hell, he’d practically waded in it.
He couldn’t leave that mess for Mercy to clean up.
A small arterial spurt hit him in the face right when the irony did, and he pulled a hand towel off the towel rack and wrapped it tight around his wrist.
Tommy’s mess to clean up would be worse.
“Chase, are you okay?” Mercy was sounding truly panicked now, and Chase’s vision was swimming with little black dots.
“Mercy.” His voice sounded thin to his own ears. He shored it up. He was going to need to be strong here. “Mercy, sweetheart, I’m going to need you to do a couple of things for me, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Do you want me to come in?”
“No!” No. No. He had a plan—an entire plan, in his dumb jock brain. Whodathunkit?
“What do you want me to do?”
“Okay, darlin’, I’m going to open the door a little, and I want you to throw me some clean clothes and my cell phone, okay?”