by Amy Lane
He heard the rustling around the apartment as he twined the towel around his wrist again, tighter, concerned at the way it just saturated so quickly without stopping. He was leaning back against the toilet, holding his hand over his head, when Mercy shoved his jeans, some boxers, a T-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt on the floor. His cell phone was on top. Excellent. No questions so far. Batting a thousand.
“Thanks, baby,” he said, thinking that might be the last time he got to call her that. “Now, I’m going to call Donnie, and I need you to do one last thing for me, okay?”
“Chase, why are you going to call Donnie?” The door started to inch forward and Chase slammed it shut with his foot.
“Darlin’, I need you to hold your questions for a bit, okay? Now, I’m going to ask you a huge favor, and try not to hold it against me.” He had Donnie’s number pinned to the front of his smart phone, or he might not have been able to dial it. “I want you to gather all of my clothes together and shove them in a garbage bag or two, okay?”
“You want me to do what?”
“Donnie?”
“Chase? It’s 2 a.m.!”
He felt a sudden shaft of hurt. “You promised!” he said plaintively, and then Donnie’s voice woke up a little.
“What’s wrong?”
Mercy started pounding on the door. “Chase? Chase Victor Summers, if you don’t get out here and explain….”
“Mercy, please, just do it. You’re going to want the head start, okay? You’re not going to want my shit here, and I’m going to need to wear something when I get out of the hospital, so just do it!”
“Hospital?”
“Hospital?” Donnie’s voice was actually a lot more panicked and a lot less puzzled than Mercy’s.
“Donnie, could you do me a favor and come get me? I’m going to need a ride. I can’t see too good, and I hate ambulances. I rode in an ambulance with Tommy, and I’d rather bleed out, okay? I just would. I don’t know why, but I swear, it was worse than the damned hospital.” There was a silence, and then Chase heard some thumps and a muffled curse word over the phone. In the background he heard Alejandro’s voice, sleepy and protesting, and Donnie saying “Please, ’Yandro—God, I think he really needs me!” ’Yandro mumbled something else, and when Donnie spoke next, it was into the phone.
“I’m fucking coming, Chase. Remember, I’m like ten minutes away. I’ll be there in two.”
“Good,” Chase mumbled, and then he made a pad out of a clean washrag and shoved it under the saturated towel. He found the last hand towel and swore. Dammit, he was going to need Mercy’s help for this.
“Mercy? Mercy, have you thrown all my shit in a garbage bag yet?”
“No!” Oh fuck, she was crying. Well, he was sure she’d be pretty crying too, but he didn’t want her to be sad. He’d been sad all his life. Sucked.
“Mercy, don’t cry, okay? You’re gonna be pissed at me—go with that. Be pissed. I’ve seen you clean the apartment when you’re pissed. Be pissed. But first, I need your help, okay?”
He opened the door then, and she gasped, literally gasped, and started to cry harder into her hand.
“You can’t do that, baby. You can’t. I need you to tie the new towel around the pad, or this isn’t going to be a failed attempt, okay?”
“Chase? Oh my God… let me call an ambulance—”
“No!” Because when he got in the ambulance, Mercy would be his girlfriend, but if Donnie took him, he’d have a say. He didn’t have to be anybody. He could just be an admittee in the psych ward, and he’d be good with that. “No ambulances, Donnie’s on his way. I want to be dressed when he gets here, though, so could you help me out?”
Her hands shook, but she was brave, so brave. She tied the towel and he grimaced in pain and then had her tie it tighter. His hand was already cold and his fingers were stiff, so the pain was probably worth it.
“Good. Awesome. Now I need you to do that garbage bag thing, okay?”
Her little hand came up to his cheek. “Chase, baby, why are you throwing away all your clothes?”
“I’m not,” he said, smiling dreamily into her pretty brown eyes. Now her eyes were a warm brown. He liked that. But not as much as the black-brown, with the wicked Loki glitter. “You are. Now go do it, so I can get dressed.”
She walked away uncertainly, drying her hands on the big bath towel that was left on the rack. He thought he’d grab that on his way out. His pad was already pink. He stayed sitting on the toilet mostly, but managed to struggle into his clothes by the time Donnie got there. He was pretty sure his sweatshirt was going to be stained, but she’d grabbed an old one, so that was okay.
He heard Mercy let Donnie in, still crying, uncertain, and he thought that if it had been Tommy, Tommy would have shouted in his face and called the paramedics already. But then, if he’d been living with Tommy, he wouldn’t be bleeding right now, so he could probably forgive her.
“Donnie?” he called plaintively, needing to see his friend’s face. His vision was getting incrementally darker, but he still recognized Donnie’s wide happy features, his expressive, full mouth, and his shock of blond hair. Donnie just was Donnie. It’s what made Donnie so much awesome!
“Chase, man—you don’t even have any shoes on!”
For some reason that seemed funny. “Get my flip-flops, ’kay? They’re the leather ones in the closet,” Chase mumbled, trying to remember if they let you wear those in the hospital. Donnie helped him into his flip-flops, and he unselfconsciously leaned on his best friend. He remembered to put his cell phone into the pocket of his hooded sweater, because he was going to want to make another call when he got into the car. He looked around vaguely at the three garbage bags of clothes in the living room and felt some satisfaction.
“Mercy, you need to throw them over the stairwell, okay? So Donnie can put them in his car.”
Mercy squinted at him and Donnie’s eyes widened as though he understood something truly shocking. Without asking, Donnie shoved Chase against the door frame and started popping garbage bags full of clothes over Chase’s head and over the landing—they must have been pretty securely tied, because Chase didn’t see anything burst on the ground.
“Chase?” Oh God. She sounded so lost, and so hurt. There was no good way to do this. None. There was only the worst way, and he’d been going to do that, but he figured he could spare her that.
He looked at her in her prettiest nightgown with her makeup running from the tears.
“You were such a good friend,” he said seriously. “I loved you so much as a friend. I wanted to make you happy. None of this is your fault, Mercy. None of this. But if I’d died in the bathroom, you wouldn’t have been able to hate me, and you’ve earned that. You had so much invested in our future—you earned the right. So here you go. This is gonna set us both free.” He paused for a minute and almost slid down the wall, then felt Donnie’s hand under his arm, shoring him up.
“I’m not your future, Mercy. I’m so sorry. I’m so gay. Gay. Gay gay gay gay gay.” He giggled a little. “Gay!”
Mercy gaped at him, her mouth opening and closing, the hurt spreading across her delicate, lovely face, every bit as awful as he’d imagined. Good. He was glad he was conscious. He’d earned this.
“Chase?”
“I’m gonna miss being your friend, Mercy,” he said mournfully. “I really love you, just not like that. The apartment is paid up for the end of the year; you can keep the car. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t burn anything, but I get it if you do.” Oh fuck. “Jesus, Donnie, you need to get my wallet, man. It’s in the slacks by the hamper.”
Donnie grunted. “Thanks a lot, asshole. You couldn’t have remembered that before the good-bye speech?” He shoved Chase against the wall then and trotted inside the bedroom, leaving Chase woozy and dripping single, thick drops of blood onto the carpet.
“You’re gay?” Mercy repeated, her voice wandering, and then she seemed to focus on the big towel and blood, and h
er eyes widened as though the truth had finally dawned on her.
“You’d rather kill yourself than be with me?”
Chase shook his head adamantly and almost lost his balance. “No, sweetheart. You can’t think that. I’d rather kill myself than live without Tommy. I broke up with Tommy ’cause I hated cheating on you. That was the right thing to do.” He shook his head gravely and thought that he really didn’t have a whole lot more consciousness to go. “Donnie, man, I’d hate to die on my porch. Can we go?”
Donnie came out with Chase’s wallet in one hand and a boxful of Chase’s old trophies under the other arm. Chase nodded approvingly.
“Thanks. I would have missed those.”
“Tommy?” Mercy was looking confused and lost and out of it, and Chase was just not going to be able to hang around for the rest of this part. He felt bad, like he was cheating her of something important, but it couldn’t be helped. “The guy you work with? From the road crew?”
“Porn set,” Chase mumbled. “But we never shot a scene together,” at which point Donnie said, “That’s my cue!” and tucked the wallet in his pocket so he could wrap his arm around Chase’s shoulders and help him totter his way down the stairs.
By the time they got to Donnie’s little Toyota, Chase’s vision was black and he thought he was going to puke. Donnie belted him in and grabbed the big white towel Chase had clutched on his way out, folded it, and wrapped it over Chase’s wrist, swearing up a storm.
“God, you were going to fucking go through with it, you stupid prick.” He started the car and screeched backward, ignoring all traffic laws and picking up his cell phone and dialing as he jammed the car into gear and tore out of the complex parking lot. “Kevin? Do I give a fuck what time it is? I need you to do me a favor and come over to Chase’s apartment. There’s a bunch of garbage bags on the ground under his landing with his shit in them; I need you to pick those up for me, okay? Why can’t I go? Because Chase changed his mind about killing himself tonight and I’ve got to take him to the hospital. Yeah, fuckin’ genius, it’s better than the fuckin’ morgue! Now get your ass in gear and hurry! She may decide to have a bonfire on the lawn if we leave her enough fuel, okay?” Suddenly Donnie was quiet and Kevin’s bright, spacey voice pattered over the line. “How’d you know? Seriously? You knew? Yeah, he finally came out. Jesus, Kevin, you think you know a guy. No, not him, you! Thanks, okay? Yeah, I’ll tell him. Bye.”
Donnie disconnected and Chase looked up in time to see his friend giving him a quick once-over. Chase opened his eyes, feeling a little better now that he’d been sitting, and tried to smile.
“That was Kevin,” Donnie said, all of the anger leached out of his voice. “He wants me to congratulate you on coming out and tell you he’ll come meet us in the hospital after he gets your stuff.”
Chase frowned. “How’d he know?”
Donnie shrugged. “He said he knew in high school when you had the big crush on me. He said it was okay, we never made him feel left out.”
Chase felt the sudden urge to cry. “God, you think you know a guy.”
“Yeah. Kevin’s good people. And you’re fucked up. How’re you doing?”
Chase wanted to sleep. He did. But dammit, he had a plan. “Gotta make a call,” he said drunkenly. He rooted his phone out with his good hand and typed in the passcode, then Tommy’s number. He was expecting to leave a message, so he was startled when Tommy picked it up on the first ring.
“Chase?” His voice was as lost as Chase felt, and Chase’s eyes stung.
“Sorry to wake you, baby,” Chase said, suddenly feeling better. “Just wanted to call and beg you to wait for me. Won’t be much longer. Moved out. Just gotta stay in the hospital a while. It’ll be good. Wait for me.”
“Chase?”
Chase started a slow giggle. God, he felt good. Who knew? Who knew that watching your life slip through your fingers would make it so much less awful?
“You’ll wait for me,” he mumbled. “I promise. I’m promising you, I am. I’m free, and I promise you, how’s that?”
His arm was too tired to hold the phone up, and he could hear Tommy shouting on the other end but couldn’t say anything. His eyes were closed but it was darker behind them than it should have been. Dark. So dark.
Tommy? Tommy can you hear me? I love you, Tommy. We’ll be together. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. You won’t ever be alone again. I promise, Tommy.
“Chase?” Donnie sounded panicked and Chase tried to tell him that it was all good now. Finally, finally, all good, but he was too tired, so tired, maybe when he woke up from his nap.
HE WOKE up with a splitting headache, a mouth that tasted like cotton and acetate, and a pain in his leg and in his wrist.
Tommy was asleep in the middle of the bed, his head buried against Chase’s thigh, and Chase went to stroke his hair, which had grown out a little in the last month, but there was something around his wrist, the one that didn’t hurt.
“What the hell?” he muttered and then tried to swallow. Donnie was suddenly there with a little bucket of water and a straw.
“It’s a restraint, genius,” Donnie muttered. “In case you change your mind and go after the other wrist.”
Chase sucked in what felt like half the bucket in one slurp. “I called for help. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Yeah,” Donnie muttered, taking the bucket when Chase had finished. “Yeah, it counts for you can have friends in when normally they’d isolate you during suicide watch.” He looked up and glared, and Chase followed the glare to an orderly, sitting inside the room, reading a magazine. Oh. Suicide watch in action.
“Aw, fuck,” Chase closed his eyes against the various pains in his head, arm, and legs. “I feel too shitty to kill myself. A real friend would do it for me.”
“NOT. Fucking. Funny.”
Chase’s eyes were closed, but he had the feeling Donnie’s eyes would be narrowed and he was scowling.
“It was a little funny,” he said in protest, because his shoulder felt about a million pounds lighter. Why did he feel like a helium balloon? “Why am I so loopy?”
Donnie hissed out a breath. “You know, in a million years, I didn’t expect you to have health insurance. What are you doing, twenty-one years old, and you’ve got this kick-ass fucking health insurance? I mean, the whole rest of the world would be sentenced to group therapy, but you get one on one. What in the fuck is that? I get mine from my parents.”
“I actually get it through Johnnies,” Chase mumbled. It was something John did even for graduates. “Can’t fuck if you feel like shit. Why are we talking about this?”
“Because if your health insurance had been less fucking stellar, I think they would have let you die. They had to go… what’s the word… resection your femoral artery so they could put a vein in your wrist. What in the fuck were you thinking?
“It didn’t hurt,” Chase said thoughtfully. “I was thinking that I’d stop when it hurt.”
“What made you stop?” Tommy asked, sitting up next to the bed. Chase’s restrained hand twitched and Tommy reached out to hold it. Oh God. Tommy. Chase’s hand tightened over those bony, uncomfortable fingers. I didn’t think I’d ever touch you again.
“I was thinking….” I didn’t want anyone to clean up my mess. I was too afraid to face the red water. Maybe I would make my own red water and I could disappear in it.
Tommy’s hand tightened to the point of pain and Chase jerked against it, then winced because he couldn’t go anywhere, because of the restraint.
“Answer me,” Tommy muttered.
“I was trying to think of the answer.”
“Bullshit!” Tommy stood up so quickly the chair he was sitting on shot backward, and Donnie barely dodged it as it clattered to the ground. “Bullshit!” he shouted again. He was furious: his lips were curled up in a snarl, the veins in his neck were popping out, and his shoulders were thrust forward like he would wrestle the world.
“Bullshit?” God, he was gorgeous. Chase’s fingers twitched because he just wanted to touch that little triangle of flat moles on Tommy’s neck. He always expected to feel a difference on his skin, but he never could.
“You say that, you fucking dare to say that to me? Look at you, Chase! You’re in a fucking hospital bed! I… I just can’t even believe you! A year… a year, I listen to the fucking silences in your head, wondering what you’re really saying, and this is it? That little voice in your head said you had to fucking bleed out? What in the fuck!”
“I don’t know what you want me to say!” Chase shot back, suddenly feeling the weight of not being able to stand and be taller. Usually he’d have some leverage in an argument like this. Usually he’d be able to touch Tommy and make it okay.
“Just fucking tell the truth! Just once! What is it going to hurt? Who’s going to hear? All we want to know is why you chose to live, and you can’t even tell us that? It’s the one thing on the planet guaranteed not to piss us off!”
That’s what you think!
“Don’t I get some sort of space here?” Chase asked desperately. “Don’t I have to feel better or some—”
“Oh bullshit, you get your space!” Tommy snapped. “Last time I gave you space you snuck out on me. You could barely fucking walk and you snuck out on me! Do you know I followed you back to your apartment to make sure you got home okay?”
Chase closed his eyes. “I’m sorr—”
“Fuck sorry! Just tell me why you lived!”
Chase didn’t hear what he shouted back, but he stopped and blinked because it must have been something. Tommy’s whole body went tight and then loose, and Donnie cringed like something hurt.
“What?” he asked, feeling suddenly tired. “What’d I say?”
“You said you didn’t want me to hate you,” Tommy said, his knees giving out. He was lucky Donnie was right behind him with the chair, or he would have ended up ass-flat on the floor.
“Well, yeah,” Chase mumbled. “Okay. Didn’t want that.”