by J. A. Rock
“I said, who does who?” Nick repeated.
“Both of us,” Patrick lied, clear and calm. “Each other.”
Shy Patrick, with his big mouth, his dangerous courage. Ilia braced for whatever Nick was going to do to Patrick.
Nick came over to Ilia instead. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “Why are you lying here?”
Ilia barely had time to turn before Nick jerked him up by the arm. Nick spun him in a half circle, hand colliding with his ass, and when Ilia lunged forward to get away, Nick stuck out a leg and tripped him. Ilia crashed to his knees, hard enough to make the TV shake.
Nick pulled him up again. Hit him a few more times and then kicked his legs out from under him again. Ilia was aware of Patrick running into the living room. Patrick grabbed Nick’s shoulders, but Nick whirled and shoved him across the room.
Nick hauled, kicked, and slapped Ilia toward the bedroom. Threw him to the floor just inside the doorway. Ilia lay there gasping, trying to move his arm.
“I don’t care what you do!” Nick shouted. “Just don’t—lie there! Don’t be nothing!”
Ilia didn’t dare get up as Nick’s footsteps retreated. A moment later, Nick hurled Patrick into the room too and shut the door.
VII
Late that night, Ilia and Patrick lay in bed together. Nick had left the apartment hours ago. He hadn’t turned the gas back on before he left, and so the apartment had no heat to counter the dropping temperature. They were warm enough in the bed, but they were both hungry, and Patrick had said a while ago that he needed to piss.
Patrick had examined Ilia’s shoulder and determined that it wasn’t dislocated. It was still sore, but Ilia could use it okay.
Ilia couldn’t get past the humiliation of what Nick had done. Seemed stupid, since Nick had done things that hurt much worse. But the shame of being yanked around like that—hit, tripped, shouted at—was so acute that Ilia couldn’t think about anything else.
Anything good, Nick makes it ugly.
He lay facing away from Patrick, trying not to remember. Patrick held him in a loose embrace, like he had the other day on the couch. Every so often, Ilia seized with panic and would tell Patrick to stop touching him. Patrick would give Ilia some space, and Ilia would force himself back under control, and once loneliness outweighed the fear again, he’d shift close to Patrick once more.
Hours later, when they were both still awake, Ilia shrugged out from Patrick’s embrace. Rolled Patrick onto his other side—gently, but he could feel Patrick tense anyway—and wrapped his arms around him. Ilia felt quiet now, less afraid. He tried to imagine being Mikhail. He wanted to know what it felt like, to hold somebody. To make someone else feel safe. I love you, he thought to Patrick, to Mikhail’s memory. I love you, and you’re safe. I’ll never let you go. Won’t let anything bad happen to you.
Tears blurred the shadows of the room. He held Patrick so tightly that Patrick made a small noise of discomfort.
Shhh. It’s okay. You’re my beautiful boy, my light.
Patrick twisted a little. But he didn’t speak, and he didn’t try to get away.
I’m not mad. You’re trying to be so good. I won’t hurt you. Wouldn’t hurt you.
What would it be like, to have that power? The power to give pain and take it away. Like Nick.
Except Nick didn’t take away pain. Only gave it.
Wouldn’t hurt you, sweet boy. As long as you’re good for me.
He kissed Patrick’s hair.
The power to make someone else feel small. Make them know their place. Captain Louis Porter in his uniform. That was power. That was being a man. Ilia gave Patrick a warning squeeze. If you fight me, there’ll be trouble.
Tears spilled hot down his cheeks.
No. No trouble, not tonight.
Nick was gone. They could both be safe.
“Ilia?” Patrick murmured. “You’re kind of hurting me.”
With a slow sigh, Ilia eased his grip on Patrick. Touched Patrick’s shoulder. Moved his fingertips back and forth along the ridge of muscle.
“That’s nice,” Patrick whispered.
Ilia wanted to do something good.
Don’t be nothing.
Don’t be nothing.
Too late.
Captain Louis Porter, heading out the door on his way to work, deliberately not saying goodbye to Ilia.
Even if Ilia got free of Nick, what would he go back to?
“I’d die if we didn’t both get out,” he said softly.
Patrick turned toward him. “What?”
“We have to both get out. I’d rather die than make it out if you didn’t.” Ilia knew it was the wrong thing to say. But he needed to know they really were in this together. That if Patrick got free, he wouldn’t leave Ilia behind. “And if you made it out, and I didn’t, I’d kill myself. If he didn’t kill me first.”
“Stop it.” Patrick sounded wide-awake now. He rolled to face Ilia. “Just stop.”
Ilia cringed. “You’re not mad!” he insisted. “You’re not mad at me; I didn’t do anything!”
“Shhh, sh-sh, no, I’m not mad.” Patrick sounded nervous. “Are you dreaming?”
“No.” Ilia gave his best imitation of a smile. “I’m not dreaming. When you get out—” he scooted toward Patrick, close enough to feel Patrick’s breath on his face. “If you get out, and I don’t, you’ll tell my mom. Tell her I wanted to come home.”
He laughed against Patrick’s throat, then pushed his lips against the skin there to silence himself.
“Ilia, shh. Focus on me.”
Hard, when Patrick was just shadows. The whole room, ghosts. A bloodstain. “Drop your weapon.”
The whole world in an endless ocean, floats up, shows its wounded belly, bobs there for a second, sinks.
And you’re bleeding. From all the little rings, you are bleeding, but it feels good, to bleed for love.
It’s something to tide you over, that small bleeding. Until you’re ready to sacrifice everything you have, everything you are—until you starve for that chance. Until blood’s not enough, and maybe not bone and skin and heart either.
“Ilia!”
A jerky, shuffling sound. His own breath. Patrick’s hands on his shoulders.
“Ilia, please. Please look at me.”
He looked at Patrick. Saw a ghost-to-be.
He let Patrick pull him close. Easier to hide in skin than in memories. To focus on the taste of that one spot his lips pressed against.
Patrick was undoing his laces. Pulling the ribbon out. Then Patrick’s hand moved across his back, between the rows of rings. Up and down, up and down in that empty space. Ilia didn’t sleep, but he concentrated on the goodness in a touch like this. On the wounds that did heal, and the way the world surfaced each time from that endless ocean and staggered on, scarred and braver for it.
“We’ll both make it out,” Patrick whispered. “I won’t leave you behind.”
How cold was it, Ilia wondered, to walk away from Mikhail’s memory without saying goodbye?
He turned back toward Mikhail’s ghost and whispered the word as many times as he could, but his throat was ragged and no sound came out. Turned back again and again as he was pulled toward morning, looking for something apart from emptiness.
Mikhail was always there, but he didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. He sat and he waited, and Ilia knew it was for a goodbye Ilia still couldn’t offer.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I
“Tonight,” Nick said.
The blood roared in Ilia’s skull, drowning out every other thought. Tonight. Tonight. Tonight. He jerked his head in a nod.
“Don’t fuck it up, whore.”
II
Ilia forced himself to eat.
Nick sat at the head of the small table, pushing his dinner around his plate like a petulant child. “What the fuck is this shit?”
“It’s pasta primavera,” Patrick said. “It’s zucchini, and cashews, and—
”
And Brugmansia.
“Where’s the meat?”
“It’s vegetarian,” Patrick said.
“Why the fuck would you serve something without meat?” Nick asked. “I’m not a little fag like you. I’m a fucking man.”
“But we—” Patrick faltered, and looked at Ilia. “But we had vegetarian the other night and you liked it.”
Ilia couldn’t meet his gaze.
Eat it. Fucking eat it.
He glanced out the window. Had to be past nine now, though he couldn’t see the clock on the stove from where he sat. Nick had said they’d leave at ten-thirty.
“Stupid little cunt,” Nick said. He dug his fork into the pasta and raised it to his mouth. Chewed and swallowed.
Ilia did the same. Didn’t want Nick to get suspicious. Wanted to get the taste of him out of his mouth, because—
“Distract him,” Patrick had whispered, shoving the hair gel tub into the microwave to hide it.
So Ilia had knelt between Nick’s legs and blown him while he watched TV. Sucked Nick’s cock until Nick got tired of that gentleness and skull-fucked him instead. Made fists in Ilia’s hair. Made him gag on every thrust.
On his knees like that, he’d almost panicked.
Tonight.
He’d almost panicked that everything would go right.
Even now, he was panicking.
He imagined himself back in that room in the police station, picking at a chip on the tabletop, the camera on the wall trained on his face as he recounted every fucking minute he’d spent with Nick Kadyrov.
At first, he imagined saying, just a blowjob.
His father’s face, twisted with disgust because of that word. Just. As though letting a man shove his cock down your throat didn’t count for anything. Didn’t matter. One of the most disgusting things his father could imagine, sucking on a man’s dick, and Ilia had called it just a blowjob. Because there was worse.
He fucked me in the shower.
Fucked me over the couch.
Fucked me on the kitchen table.
Fucked me while I sucked Patrick’s cock.
For a moment Ilia wondered if he could bear see the disgust on his dad’s face. If it wouldn’t be easier, in the end, to shoot him. Killer or cocksucker? It made him sick that he couldn’t decide which one his father would hate more. Which one Ilia himself would rather be remembered as.
He imagined men in uniforms at the station. “You remember Louis Porter? His own fucking son killed him.”
“Shit. Really?”
“Yeah, got mixed up with the Kadyrovs.”
He wondered why that sounded better than the alternative.
“Yeah, that was Louis Porter’s kid. Got fucked over by the Kadyrov brothers. Both of them. And when I say got fucked over...”
Not that the two were mutually exclusive.
“You remember Louis Porter? His own son killed him. Kid’s Nick Kadyrov’s little faggot.”
A twisted little monster. An unnatural son. A heartless inhuman thing that would make cops go home and look at their own kids differently. Make them wonder if they were nurturing that same kind of hatred in their own homes. Make them lie awake at night for a while.
To be hated and feared was better than to be pitied, wasn’t it?
Ilia closed his eyes briefly and imagined himself pulling the trigger.
“Dad, this is for Mikhail.”
But the thought of it made him sick.
III
“Eli, what is this?”
“It’s a D.”
“Yeah, it is. You got a D in history.” His dad shook his head. “What the hell is up with you lately?”
Eli rolled his eyes. “Why are you making such a big deal out of this?”
“Are you on drugs?”
“What?” Eli gaped. “Are you fucking kidding me? One D and I’m a junkie?”
“Watch your language!”
“This is bullshit!” Eli stalked down the hallway and into his room. He slammed the door so hard that it shook the frame. “Bullshit!” he screamed, flinging himself on his bed, just in case his dad had missed it the first time. “I fucking hate you!”
Angry tears streamed down his face, and Eli scrubbed them away. He rolled off his bed and hauled his sports bag out from underneath. Unlocked the combination padlock and opened the bag.
Three hardcore porn mags, full of guys with waxed pubes and thick, hard dicks. Eli slid his hand under his shirt and pinched his barbell piercing. He’d only gotten his left nipple done, but he was saving to get the right too. Would have to go to another place though, because the guy had started asking too many questions about his fake ID. Only once he got his money though, the asshole.
Eli flipped to his favorite page. Devon. 25. Likes: partying with friends, and big uncut cocks. Eli didn’t care if the guy was a bottom. Not in Eli’s fantasy. In Eli’s fantasy Devon shoved him down onto his bed, held his wrists above his head, and plowed into him with that monster cock.
“It’s my first time,” Eli always whimpered in his fantasy.
“Take it, baby,” Devon grunted, in a voice that was exactly like Gray’s.
Gray Harrison. His classmate Carter’s big brother. And, until one month ago, as unattainable as all of Eli’s fantasies. Gray was twenty, and home from college for the weekend, and making sure Carter and his friends didn’t have a party when their parents went away for the weekend.
“Hey,” he’d said. “You sleeping?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. Eli, right?”
“Y-yeah.”
“You wanna smoke a bowl with me, Eli?”
“Um, okay.”
Half an hour later he was sprawled on Gray’s bed, his heart pounding and his head spinning, while Gray sucked him off. “Fuck, yeah. You taste good, jailbait.”
Since then Eli had been skipping school to meet up with Gray. To get high and get off together. Gray had bought him the magazines. Told him to think of him when he jerked off. Told him that he was going to fuck him real soon. Make him his sweet sixteen.
So fuck school, and fuck his grades, and fuck whatever his dad thought.
“Eli!” His dad banged on the door. “Get the hell out here!”
“Go away!” Eli shoved the magazines bag in the bag, checking that his weed was still there.
His dad stomped back down the hallway.
Eli rested his head on his bed, his arms slack, and panted. Shit. He had to get out. He hated living here, stuck between his dad who was just an asshole, and his mom who didn’t do anything to stick up for him.
Maybe... Eli fumbled in his pocket for his phone. Maybe he could go to Georgetown.
The fantasy swept over him while he dialed. Gray would look out for him. “Hello?”
“Hey, Eli. What’s up?”
“I’m...um, can I come and see you?”
“I’m busy right now, little guy.”
Eli heard voices in the background; laughter. “Oh. My dad’s real mad. He—”
“You didn’t say anything to him, did you?”
“No.”
“Thank fuck for that!” Gray gave a shaky laugh.
Eli squeezed his eyes shut. “No, I would never do that. Gray, I lo—”
“I gotta go, okay? There’s this thing. But I tell you what. I’ll call you next weekend and we’ll meet up, okay?”
“Okay,” Eli whispered, pushing to get the word out past the ache in his chest.
Gray’s voice grew muffled, as though he’d cupped his hand around the phone. “I’m gonna fuck you, yeah, baby? Fuck that virgin ass of yours. You want that?”
“Y-yeah.” He didn’t know. He was scared.
“Good boy.” There was a burst of laughter somewhere in the background. “I’ll call you then.” Gray disconnected the call.
Eli stared at the blank screen of his phone for a while, until another barrage of bangs on the door jolted him to his feet.
“Eli! Get out here now, o
r I’ll take this door off its hinges!”
“Leave me alone!”
Shit shit shit.
He zipped his bag up again, locked it, and opened his closet. Dragged the chair from his desk over, climbed on it, and shoved his bag as far into the top of his closet as he could. Behind his winter gear. Behind the plush Tigger he’d had since he was five that he’d never been able to throw out or pass on to charity. He’d kept it almost through a strange sense of obligation, or as a remembrance to the child he’d once been. He’d loved Tigger fiercely, possessively. He’d cried when he wasn’t allowed to take him to the supermarket. He’d whispered all his secrets into those orange ears. It didn’t seem right to get rid of him now, when Eli had once poured his heart into him.
He shoved Tigger in front of the sports bag then closed the cupboard again.
Lay on his bed and seethed as he heard the power drill start up outside. Heard his mom’s voice: “Louis. Louis!”
His dad hauled the door out of its frame.
“You don’t have any right to do that!” Eli shouted.
Louis set the drill aside. “While you’re under my roof, I have all the right in the world.”
“Oh, yes, sir, Captain, sir!” Eli pulled his phone out of his pocket and began to play a game.
His dad went straight for his closet. Straight for the top fucking shelf. Hauled the bag down, and Tigger went tumbling.
“What’s this? Why is it locked?”
Eli sat bolt upright. “You can’t open that. It’s mine! Mom!”
“Louis,” she said from the doorway, her tone quiet. Beseeching. Useless.
Louis pulled his pocketknife out.
“Dad! Don’t!”
He stabbed the bag and tore it. Tipped it up and exposed all of Eli’s sins.
“I fucking hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” Eli yelled, rage and shame boiling up inside him, boiling over. “Fuck you! I hate you!”
Louis stared down at the weed, at the porn, and then stared at Eli with such shock on his face that Eli’s words twisted into an impotent scream.