Chase in Shadow

by Amy Lane

  HE WASN’T sure how long he was sedated and he really wasn’t sure how long he had just lain there, being nothing, after the sedative wore off.

  He was vaguely aware of people—Donnie? Doc? Tommy?—shaking him and trying to get him to eat.

  “Later,” he mumbled. “Later. I’ll eat later.”

  Then Tommy didn’t just shake him, Tommy hauled him up by the shirtfront and shoved him against the wall.

  “Fuck later, asshole! Get up and fucking eat now!”

  “Tommy?” Chase squinted. Hadn’t Tommy just been there, telling him it was okay, he could sleep this once? “I thought you told me I could sleep?”

  “That was last night, Chase! I was here all night, I tried to get you up this morning, and now I’m pissed. Now get the fuck up. I went and got you some Thai food because it’s your favorite, and the clerk was fucking pissy about making Thai noodles without any spices and you’d better fucking eat it.”

  “Thai?” Chase was intrigued in spite of himself. “I haven’t had Thai in forever. You’re the only one I know who eats Thai food.”

  Tommy let out a shaky breath and let him settle back down into the bed. “Yeah, well, maybe you need to get better and stop this catatonic shit so you can come home and we can eat some. Hell, I’ll learn to cook it if you want. I’d love to fucking sit home and cook you Thai food for the rest of our lives if you’d just get up and eat now.”

  Chase nodded, feeling a little teary, but not, thank God, like he was going to fucking lose it. “Can I brush my teeth? My mouth tastes like….” He smacked his tongue on his palate. “There’s not a word for it, but it’s not good.”

  “Yeah, knock yourself out.” Tommy sat back on the bed—he’d been on his knees as he’d shoved Chase against the wall—and Chase went to stand up. And almost fell on his ass.

  “Jesus,” he said, feeling woozy. “What the fuck’s wrong with my legs?”

  “Twenty-four hours, Chase. You’ve been in fuckin’ la-la land for twenty-four hours. They were talking about feeding you intravenously until I told them to hold on a fuckin’ minute, I’d be back with Thai food. I don’t know what they feed you in this place, but it can’t be good.”

  Chase grimaced. “It’s not Thai food.”

  “Need my help to the bathroom?”

  Embarrassingly enough, yes, but once Chase got to the cubicle and could lean on the walls, he could pretty much take care of things from there. Tommy helped him back to the little bedside table with two chairs and sat him down, straightening the napkin extravagantly and tying it up around Chase’s neck.

  “Ha-ha. Are you going to put this shit on platters and present it to me, or can we just eat?”

  “Hey, forgive me if I’m trying to make a thing out of it, Chase. You’re eating without a needle in your arm—it’s cause for celebration, you know?”

  Chase looked at him for a minute, really looked at him. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had luggage you could ship to China. His bounciness—that constant, vital movement Chase had loved from the very beginning—wasn’t there. Tommy was exhausted—with worry, with being there, with everything.

  “I’m sorry,” Chase said softly. “I’ll try to give you more to celebrate.”

  Tommy looked him in the eyes and grimaced. “No worries. We ain’t cleaned up the champagne yet from when you left your girlfriend.”

  “You think Doc’ll let me come home for Thanksgiving?” Chase asked optimistically, and Tommy looked up and smiled. It was tired, but there was no forced cheerfulness in it, and Chase felt a little bit of optimism himself.

  “God, I hope so. That woman—you know, Donnie’s mom? She keeps coming over and bringing me food and plants and shit, and cleaning the house, like she’s getting it ready for you. She wants us over to her house really bad.”

  Chase looked at him funny. “Really? She hasn’t come to visit.”

  Tommy nodded, looking sad. “Yeah. She says she’d just cry all over you, and she didn’t think that’s what you needed right now. I guess you and Kevin were like her kids or something—she said you came over almost every day. Man, that woman really fuckin’ loves you.”

  Chase looked away, saying, “God. I was sort of afraid, you know? I brought Mercy over there for two years. I thought she’d be mad, you know?”

  Tommy shook his head. “Naw—I think it’s like when your kid goes through a divorce. Anyone else, they get to pick sides, but not the parents. They stick with their kid. You’re her kid.”

  Chase smiled a little. “That’s nice,” he said, and Tommy nodded. Their eyes met, shiny and wordless. “I never thought about it, but it’s good to be somebody’s kid.”

  “It’s good to be somebody’s everything,” Tommy said seriously.

  “You’re my everything. I could have lived my whole life locked in my head, but you forced me out.”

  Tommy looked down at his hands, where he was dishing up Thai noodles onto a little paper plate.

  “You can be grateful for that now?” he asked in a whisper. “’Cause coming out of your head ain’t been a picnic.”

  “That depends,” Chase said, taking the noodles from him and grabbing a plastic fork. “Are we going to eat—what meal is this, anyway?”

  “Lunch.”

  “Yeah. If we’re going to eat lunch it’s totally worth it. I’m suddenly starving.”

  Tommy’s smile was huge, the kind of smile that showed the long canines and made his eyes bright and shiny like obsidian, and for a moment, Chase saw Loki the lunatic sex god sitting right there at the little institutional table, eating Thai food.

  His hands were shaking, and he still felt a little queasy, and Tommy was right—he was still a big puddle. But he was pretty sure he could be cleaned up.

  DOC let him go after the forty-five days. They were not easy days. Some of them were just fucking horrible. Some of them were days when Tommy came to visit and Chase just huddled in a corner and cried, Tommy’s hand in the middle of his back, his head tilted back against the wall, like he was conserving his strength for another battle on another day.

  Some days he came out of counseling with Doc almost frighteningly euphoric, dancing with lightness, like he’d lived his entire life wearing a three-ton weight on his shoulder. Those days were hard; he saw Tommy, and his entire soul ached with an unbearable need to be touched. One night he pulled Tommy by the hand into the dark, foggy little wooded area behind the facility and kissed him, kissed him so hard and so urgently, with so much terrible desire that his skin almost hurt.

  Tommy groaned, and growled, and their bodies heaved against each other, needing bare skin but not wanting to bare it in the chill, gray air. The kiss never ended, never faltered, never stopped, and when Tommy’s hands slid under his sweatshirt to glide on his bare skin, Chase almost wept. Those cold fingers on his sensitive nipples were perfect, and he leaned back against a tree because his knees almost buckled. Then one of those chilly hands slid lower, down over his stomach, under the loose waistband of his jeans, and the clasp around his aching erection made him groan. One stroke, two strokes, and while Chase was still fumbling for Tommy through his pants, he felt it, everything from his testicles to his asshole clenched, and he shuddered so hard with orgasm it felt like his skin exploded. One second he was trying to give Tommy some reciprocation, the next he was sobbing into Tommy’s neck, so overwhelmed by it, by the joy of it, by the lack of shame, by the glory, that he couldn’t even stand.

  Tommy helped him slide down to sit down and then sat down next to him. Chase leaned on his shoulder without reservation and panted through the tears.

  “Thank you,” he said when he could speak. “God, I’m so sorry—I shot early.”

  Tommy looked at him, a wry smile on his face. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I’m beating off a lot more than you. I’ll get my turn.”

  Chase chuckled. “God yes. You will. I swear, by the time we visit Donnie’s mom on Thanksgiving, you’ll be raw. Giving, receiving, oral, anal, manual, clutch and stick
—it’s gonna be fuckapalooza at Tommy’s house, that’s for fucking sure.”

  “Our house,” Tommy said softly. “Our house. You’re coming to live with me, right? Please?” He looked away, although he kept the comforting hand on Chase’s knee.

  “Yeah,” Chase said, clasping his hand. “Yeah. I want to live with you. I want to live with you forever. I want to go live with you and Paulie the kitten and Buster the grandpa cat and Oliver the turtle. I want to get my degree and be an engineer and figure out what you want to be—besides a pet shop owner, but maybe we can do that too. I want a future. A real future. Not a movie set one. I want an us.”

  Tommy’s shoulders shook, and Chase looked up in time to see him wipe his cheek with the palm of his hand.

  “Aw, Jesus, Tommy. Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to cry?”

  Tommy shook his head. “Oh God, Chase. I never thought you’d say it. This whole time, I never thought you’d say it. I wanted it so bad, for so long, I never thought you’d say it, and now you have, and….”

  He leaned over sideways into Chase’s lap, and this time he cried, and Chase picked up the pieces, and he was shocked as hell to realize that he could.

  They couldn’t stay that long—the ground was damp, and Chase’s jeans were wet, and eventually they had to make their way back to the hospital, where they checked in under the censorious eyes of the admitting nurse, who gave them a strong speech about hours and admitting times and reiterated that, if it happened again, Chase’s checkout might be delayed.

  They both took the advice very soberly and then smiled shy and secret smiles as Tommy walked Chase to his room.

  “Why?” Tommy asked abruptly as they turned on the light and went in. Donnie’s mom had sent Chase a quilt that she’d sewn just for him. The squares were all baseball-themed: catcher’s mitts, bats, players sliding into first. She’d backed it with something soft and cushy—fleece, probably—and Chase loved it because this was his room, until he took that homey, tacky quilt to Tommy’s house, and then that would be his too, without the smell of ammonia and piss, which had only recently begun to bother the hell out of him as he tried to sleep at night.

  “Why what?” Chase asked, taking his customary position on the bed with one knee pulled up against his chest. He’d lost weight, no two ways about it. He’d lost muscle mass and any fat at all that he’d had, and it made holding his knees to his chest feel like that was the only defensive position that would work.

  “Why so hot and horny?” Tommy grinned again, and if Chase hadn’t been in love—deliriously, perfectly in love—that grin right there would have done it. “Not that I mind in the least.”

  Chase smiled and blushed. “’Cause my father’s a tool, and I may be a faggot, but that’s not a bad thing. I like my body. I like sex. I like sex with you better than any sex on the fucking planet. And that’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

  Tommy stood up then and took Chase’s face between his palms, stroking Chase’s cheeks with gentle thumbs. His throat worked, and Chase could tell he was moved, because those Loki-bright eyes were intent on Chase’s face.

  “So that’s therapy?” he asked after a minute.

  Chase smiled shyly, blushing under that intense scrutiny, trying his best to keep looking at Tommy like he was proud and unashamed. “I’m sayin’.”

  “I like it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Tommy’s lips were as gentle as they ever had been. When he broke off the kiss, he whispered, “Keep your eyes closed and think of me,” and then he backed away. Chase did just what he asked, and when the light turned off and Tommy was gone, Chase was still sitting in the dark with his eyes closed, thinking for the first time of their future together.

  There were very few things in the vision that frightened him, and he thought maybe the shit that was scary could be overcome.

  “SO I can go home?” Chase asked Doc Stevenson for what must have felt like the hundredth time. “Seriously—three days, you promised, right? You said as long as I come back a couple of times a week, I’m good.”

  “And take your medication.”

  “I promise,” Chase said with the fervency of a child. It didn’t matter. He felt like a child, a kid let out of school early, or that kid at Christmas—he knew how that kid felt now, the kid who got the bike. Tommy had given him plenty of Christmas bikes, and there weren’t any strings attached anymore. They were beautiful and shiny and bright and they could take him anywhere, and he was thrilled to have gotten them. This felt like a Christmas bike. He wanted it. He wanted to go home with Tommy so badly. He wanted to start that future of the two of them. He’d talked with the Doc about it; he knew there would be tough times. He knew he’d get sad again, and that the Prozac and Cymbalta might be for life. He was aware that there was some shit that might set him off.

  And he knew that his biggest test was waiting in the lobby of the facility even as he finished up his session.

  Doc knew it too. “Well, Chase, I think it all hinges on how well the next half hour goes, don’t you think?” His voice was gentle, and Chase sighed.

  “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

  “No. I’ll be here in my office, doing paperwork if you need me when she’s gone. And Tommy knows about the visit, you said that. He’ll be here early today, so you’ve got your support staff, Chase. But—”

  “I know, I know.” Chase nodded and swallowed. “This part I’ve got to face myself.”

  Doc smiled at him and cocked his head. “Have I told you that I think you’re brave?”

  Chase looked at him with a fair amount of shock. “I fuckin’ doubt it!”

  “You are. Not everything you’ve done has been noble, but until the very last part there, you had some sort of vision for a happy future. It may have been with the wrong person for the wrong reasons, but you kept hoping that the future would be a good one. Maybe now that you’ve found the right person and the reasons that you can live with, you can maybe forgive yourself for this. I know it’s trite, Chase, but I’ve been with you for a month, and the one thing I can tell you that’s true is that you truly never meant to hurt her.”

  “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t.”

  “That’s true too. And that’s why this. You ready?”

  “Fuck no.” Chase stood up from his habitual position on the couch, one knee tucked in front of his chest. “But I’ll do it anyway.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Doc stood and, to Chase’s surprise, walked him through the echoing tile corridors to the lobby. The lobby was not actually too bad—for one thing, the walls were a nice sky blue, and the furniture was beige with little matching highlights. It was peaceful and pretty, and there was green carpet, and in general, it looked like the lobby of an old folks home, the kind that had Easter egg hunts for the grandkids, and nothing at all like a loony bin.

  Chase was grateful for Mercy’s sake, even if he didn’t have any illusions as to where he’d been the past month and a half.

  She was sitting nervously in one of the chairs and she startled when she saw him, frowning automatically in concern. The Doc smoothed things over, of course, offering her some water and a small sitting room with some privacy. The walk behind Doc, as he led them to the room, as Chase and Mercy stood together, almost as a couple, was one of the most awkward moments of Chase’s life.

  But eventually they were in the little room, which had a couple of recliners and a love seat and a little lamp between them. Chase was just as glad his visitors had come to the weight room or his room or gone for walks with him outside. This felt like an edict from the mental institution to behave as a family, and he wasn’t sure he didn’t resent the hell out of it.

  Mercy did too. “Great,” she muttered. “God, I feel like Martha Stewart’s ugly stepchild in here. Could there be someplace like that movie? With the bars on the windows and the people screaming in the background and shit?”

  “Most of us are here voluntarily, Merce. No bars on the w
indows, no people screaming. Just a lot of fuckin’ Kleenex.”

  She turned around and looked at him, and her face was a little rounder than he was used to, but there were bags under her red-rimmed eyes that said the extra weight wasn’t due to good health.

  “You shed any tears over me, Chase?”

  He kept his gaze steady. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how many.”

  She shook her head then. “You look like hell.”

  “Awesome. I’ll put that on my list of happy things.”

  “Fuck you. I… I just pictured this moment, and I could tell you that I hated you, and how bad you hurt me, and I got to be a raging bitch, but I can’t.”

  Chase swallowed. “You earned the right, hon, but it’s not really you.”

  She whirled, her face twisted. “And you lost the right to call me things like ‘hon’, asshole. And don’t think I don’t have some ugly in me, Chase. Because I totally do.” She deflated a little. “But not right now. I think it would have been one thing if you’d been all buff and shit, looking like a model like you have this last year, living with your boyfriend and being all happy, but you look like hell. I mean, I really thought I could hate you, but you look like shit, and this hasn’t been any easier on you than it has on me, has it?”

  A corner of Chase’s mouth turned up. “I’m probably going to be on antidepressants for the rest of my life. Is that what you wanted to hear? I left you and woke up in the hospital in restraints, so I didn’t finish the job. They had to take a section of the artery in my thigh and use it in my wrist so I didn’t bleed out.” He held up his wrist, where the scars were still pink and raw from the stitches they’d taken out the week before. “Mercy, whatever you may think of me, however you hate me, you gotta believe this hasn’t been anything like easy.”

  She hit the table with the flat of her hand and looked him in the eyes, her own eyes wet and red. “But why?” she demanded. “Why? I think back to when you and I started, and we were friends. You were my buddy, you know? And you didn’t judge me when I had to drop out of school and you made me laugh. And yeah, I hoped for more, but if you’d just once said ‘Mercy, sorry, don’t swing that way!’ I would have been okay!”