Wishing on a Blue Star

by Kris Jacen

  “Tell me.”

  “I told you I went to a club last night, right?” Kip pulled a cigarette from a pack in his pocket and lit it with hands that still shook.

  Crash reached out and grabbed the cigarette away. “And I told you. You may not smoke.” Crash frowned when Kip surrendered without a fight. “You went dancing with Stacey, didn’t you?”

  “Not exactly.” Kip turned and sat in a rolling chair behind a computer, making notes, still avoiding his eyes.

  “What do you mean not exactly.”

  Kip put up a token resistance. “You’re not my mother.”

  “No.” Crash agreed. “I’m not your mother.” He sat down beside Kip and waited patiently, which he knew Kip hated. Kip despised patience in any form.

  Kip sighed and rolled his head. Crash swiveled Kip’s chair around and began to massage his shoulders before he even thought about it, using his strong hands to knead the ropy muscles that ran down Kip’s neck and across his back. They probably burned with agony as he dug into knots that seemed like acorns, but Kip leaned into his touch as if it were hot water.

  “That’s good.”

  Crash said nothing, merely continued to push with his thumbs, relaxing Kip’s still tense body until he chose to break his silence.

  “I went to a club alone. The one on 19th Street. Pulse.”

  “Pulse?” Crash tried to hear what Kip wasn’t saying. “What happened there?”

  “I danced.” Kip hissed when Crash pressed his elbow into the knot just below his shoulder blades. “I met someone I thought was nice and we went outside for a smoke.”

  “I hate that you do that.”

  “I know.” Kip swallowed hard. “Prepare to hate this even more. I didn’t just go outside to smoke. The person I met was hot.”

  “I see.” Crash’s hands stopped moving.

  “I thought—” Kip slumped into Crash’s touch, silently asking for it to continue, like a dog that wanted to be scratched. “I thought we had something going. It turned out it was all some sort of awful prank and I ran away.”

  “You didn’t tell me.” Crash’s heart slammed into the bones that surrounded and protected it, very much like it had when he’d run. He’d always found the sensation interesting. Apparently it happened for a number of different reasons. Like now, when he realized he’d been inadequate in his care of Kipling Rush. “How could I not know about this?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you.” Kip didn’t turn. “I thought maybe you’d rather not know.”

  Hmph. “And?”

  “It was one of those guys, and he came with his friends tonight to finish what we started.”

  Crash’s blood went cold and he wondered if there were times when the pump in his chest could stop altogether. “I don’t think I comprehend.”

  Kip rolled his chair out of reach. “There was a kind of scavenger hunt. Like a game. I found about it from a friend, later. They broke up into groups of three with a list of things to get, and the first team back would win.”

  Crash shook his head, still not able to understand. “But what did they want?”

  “The list apparently said blowjob from a queer.”

  “But,” Crash blinked. “That’s…”

  “Over.” Kip waved off Crash’s outrage. “It’s over now.”

  “But did… Did you want…?”

  Kip lifted his chin and finally, finally looked directly at Crash. “I did. Yes.” Kip moved suddenly, gripping Crash by his upper arms. “Look. I’m sorry I never told you. You’re my best friend and I didn’t want things to get weird between us.”

  Crash stared at him. “News flash…”

  “Yeah. Okay. I get that it’s weird now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want it to ruin our friendship.” Kip pushed a hand through his hair. “But I don’t want to have to hide who I am all the time either. I can’t see it making a difference but if it does, that’s your damn problem, not mine.”

  “If you recall, I asked you to make all your problems mine.” Crash thought he knew every emotion that could play over Kip’s face but he couldn’t begin to fathom what he saw there right then. His heart sank as he realized Kip didn’t trust him with his truth. “Didn’t you have faith that I could see past that?”

  Kip’s voice, when he finally spoke, came out small. “I guess I… maybe not.”

  “I did not foresee this,” Crash said, more to himself than Kip. “I thought I knew what all your possibilities could be.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Crash leaned back against the counter. “So when you want to meet someone you go to this place, this Pulse?”

  “Yes. And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. Not between us.” Kip turned away and picked up his sweatshirt, apparently done for the evening both at the lab and with the conversation. “I’m just getting ready to lock up.”

  “All right.” Crash followed him.

  Kip turned off the lights, closed the door behind him, and fumbled for his keys. At the last minute he seemed to change his mind. “I don’t go to Pulse often. I never really meet anyone. Sometimes a parking lot hook-up.”

  “Kip—”

  Kip held his hand up. “Before you ask, I always have safe sex. I don’t plan on getting a disease and anyways, normally tricking isn’t really my thing.”

  “Kip—”

  “Hear me out, alright? Sometimes I get a little lonely, and I think why not, you know?” He turned the key in the lock and tugged it hard to make sure. “I’m a junior in college. I work hard. I get good grades. I just want a little fun.”

  Crash stopped him so they were eye to eye. “Kip—”

  Kip let out a long shuddering sigh. “Please don’t lecture. It’s not like I’m playing Russian roulette or shopping the after Christmas sale at Best Buy. I don’t even hook up, half the time. I just—”

  Crash covered Kip’s mouth with his own. It was a move guaranteed to stop him from talking, but beyond that, it was something he’d always wanted to do but had never dared.

  Crash experienced his own surprise. His heart—which had already had such a busy night—had only just begun it work. It thudded loudly in his ears and seemed to throb in his groin. He backed Kip up to the door they’d just firmly locked and held him there, teasing and tasting and testing the limitations of their new connection.

  Kip pressed both hands to Crash’s chest, at first to push him away, which Crash didn’t allow, and then to grab the lapels of his jacket in order to hang on. Crash found a way to wedge his knees between Kip’s, pushing his feet apart, and before he knew it they were cock to cock.

  “Crash.” Kip still struggled weakly. “Don’t do this.”

  Crash stopped, but didn’t move away, he lifted his head. “You want me to stop?”

  Kip shook his head as if to clear it. “Just tell me why?”

  Crash was unable to find words.

  Kip pushed past him for real, and Crash let him, following at a discreet distance, knowing he’d messed up, knowing he had to do something, but his body was vibrating with something he’d never felt before and he couldn’t think.

  When Kip got to the outer doors he looked back. In that moment he looked so devastated, so completely alone, that Crash took a chance that he could find the right thing to say if he simply tried. “I knew there would eventually be somebody.”

  Kip turned his body and folded his arms, waiting.

  “I knew that you’d want someone, someday.” Crash swallowed. “I never foresaw that it could be me. I never imagined… But—”

  Kip shrugged and started walking again.

  “Kip.” Crash nearly wept with frustration. There was a time when his voice held a deep and resonant beauty so powerful that it made humans fall to their knees. Now he pushed air through folds of flesh, mucous membranes, he’d read, to vibrate them. No matter how hard he tried, he could never say what was in his heart. “I really, really wanted it to be me.�
��

  Kip turned back to Crash in shock. The last thing, the very, very last thing he ever thought he’d hear was that Crash wanted him. They’d been friends forever. Deeply, richly connected in ways that he’d felt with no one else, but Crash… Well… Crash was beautiful. Golden and shiny and almost perfectly inhuman… And he’d never, ever showed one hint of attraction to anyone that way.

  Kip had long ago written his best friend off as one of those guys who was simply asexual. Not interested. While the rest of their friends had been spanking it and reading skin rags, Crash hit the library or helped out at the local soup kitchen. That was just…Crash.

  Kip chalked it up to the fact that he was Home-School-Kid; that he was innocent and decent. That he hadn’t been nurtured in the high octane, erotically charged yet sexually crippling crucible of public school and their family didn’t watch television or read the paper. He’d imagined that Crash’s family probably spent most of their time playing various musical instruments and singing hymns in eight-part harmony.

  “Oh, hell no.” Kip turned his back on Crash a final time and walked away.

  Crash kept following after him, his footsteps remarkably uncertain.

  “Don’t, Crash. Don’t follow me, not tonight.”

  “Why?” Crash sounded…odd.

  “Why?” Kip turned to find him flushed and angry. “Because you have no idea what you’re asking, that’s why. You want me to blow off a friendship I’ve had forever—the best thing in my life—on the off chance that you know enough to know that it’s me you want, when you’ve never, ever showed one bit of interest in me before?”

  “Never showed…” Crash drew back. He looked as if he wanted to tear his hair out. “I never showed one bit of interest in you? Are you out of your mind?”

  “That way. You’ve never been interested that way.”

  “Because I thought you were interested in women. Because I thought when you chose someone to love it would be a woman.”

  Kip shook his head in disbelief. “But all this time, there’s never been anyone you’ve even glanced at—”

  “Except for you!” Crash poked his chest. “I’ve never glanced at anyone except for you. I’ve lived for you. I’ve been here for you every single time you needed me. I’ve loved you since I first laid eyes on you!”

  “But, Crash, that’s different from wanting to fuck me.”

  Crash frowned. “But loving you. That’s what drives desire, right?”

  “Not always,” Kip said gently. “I just don’t think you understand, and it isn’t something you can offer lightly, all right?”

  Crash took Kips hands. “I don’t offer it lightly. I give my entire being. You’re right when you say that I don’t understand but if ever I did, it could only be with you. I belong to you, Kipling Rush. I’ve waited whole lifetimes to say that.”

  Kip wanted to look away but couldn’t. Tears glittered in Crash’s eyes.

  “Please understand.” Crash crushed his hands and the pain made his words grow sharper and gave them a resonance that tripped some kind of wire in Kip’s heart that blew it up until it nearly burst. “I am yours.”

  “No pressure or anything,” Kip complained, keeping hold of Crash’s hand. He started walking with no particular destination in mind to allow himself time to think. He and Crash had literally slammed into one another in the fifth grade, and he’d always felt, always known they had more than a bond of friendship.

  Something happened to him when he was with Crash. Night air got crisper. Scents and sounds that were elusive and distant teased and tickled him, begging to be explored. Books were better, jokes funnier, films more poignant, even the sun was brighter and warmer when shared with Crash, so yeah. It stood to reason that sex… That would have to be something else, right?

  Kip was the first to admit that— together—he and Crash were more than the sum of their parts. He couldn’t speak for Crash, but he hated to jeopardize that for anything. It reminded him of a story in a children’s book he’d allowed his mother to read to him just once before he demanded she staple the pages together, because he’d been upset—was traumatized even now— by the illustration. It was about a dog who had a bone, but saw what he thought was a bigger bone in another dog’s mouth. Being greedy, he snapped for it to try to take it away and lost his own bone because what he saw was actually his reflection in a pool of water.

  The moral of the story was supposed to be about selfishness, or being grateful, but all he could see were the dog’s sad eyes in the aftermath of bad choices, of not being glad that things were perfectly fine, but instead trying to get more somehow, and he’d never forgotten it.

  Crash snapped, “Don’t you start with the dog story.”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t that.”

  “It’s apt.” Kip argued, not even curious, after all the years they’d spent together, how Crash seemed to read his mind. “It’s got that bone, and it’s a perfectly fine bone, a great bone…”

  “Enough with the fucking dog already, Kip.”

  Kip stared. Crash, uncharacteristically profane. Wow.

  “You always use that story to illustrate why you can’t have more. Why you won’t dare try to make things better. You’re happy to carry a spear in the school play so you don’t audition for the lead, you’re happy to work in the lab feeding the animals but you don’t apply to veterinary school even though you have the grades. You’re happy to have nameless, faceless encounters but you’re afraid to be with someone who loves you.”

  “Crash, don’t do this man. You are my one good thing. If I fuck that up…”

  “I will always be your one good thing. Always.”

  Filled with misgiving, Kip couldn’t help but notice that the hand in his felt good. It felt right. He continued to walk and hold Crash’s hand until he saw his car in the parking lot, which meant they had another decision to make. “Do you want to come home with me?”

  Crash smiled pleasantly, as though Kip had asked if he wanted a stick of gum. “Yes, please.”

  Kip’s Honda chirped when he unlocked it remotely and they got in. As soon as he keyed the ignition the radio started playing, loud, some hip hop, and Crash turned it off.

  “Nervous?” Kip asked. He’d have to stop swiveling his head to look at Crash or his neck would be sore in the morning.

  “No.”

  “‘Cause if you’re nervous you know you can back out at any time. I’m not going to think any less of you. I get that we’re close, maybe we should just—”

  “I’m not nervous, Kip.” Crash hummed something quietly and Kip found it beautiful. “Are you?”

  “Me? No.” Kip reared back in his seat, fiddling with his shoulder belt. “No. Why should I be nervous? I mean, I’ve done this lots of times. I was just thinking you might be nervous because it’s your first time and all…” Kip stomped his foot on the brake; he needed to watch the damn lights or he’d get them both killed.

  Crash gazed at him. “Were you nervous your first time?”

  “No.” Kip made himself keep his eyes on the light. “Me? No.”

  “Then why would you think I’d be?”

  When the light changed Kip didn’t let the clutch out fast enough and it made the transmission grind— metal against metal. Kip’s lips were pinched by the time he got the car into gear and smoothed it out.

  Crash grinned. “Forgive me, but you seem nervous now.”

  Fucking Crash, pointing out the obvious.

  Crash started to hum again. Kip sighed. The tune seemed old; it had a piercing sweetness, each note sung with simple clarity, but it traveled along a minor key that gave him gooseflesh. After a few moments of listening to its haunting transitions he felt relaxed and at peace, although he couldn’t say exactly why. Maybe it was simply Crash’s voice and not the song. At the worst moments of his life, like when he’d been attacked that evening, he could always hear Crash’s voice inside his head soothing him.

  Kip looked over at the man s
itting next to him in the car and decided he wasn’t going to ever tell anyone that.

  “Feel better?” Crash asked idly.

  “Yes.”

  Kip pulled into the driveway that led to the back of his apartment building and parked in his carport. They walked through the grounds together in relative silence, then mounted the stairs to the two-bedroom Kip shared with his roommates, two other students who had both returned to their families for the holidays. There was a wreath on the door and when Kip unlocked and opened it, he ushered Crash in. He had a tiny Douglas fir tree in the corner, covered with inexpensive ornaments and icicles and when he toggled the switch, the multicolored lights he’d strung painstakingly around the apartment and on the tree lit up.

  “This is nice,” Crash stood in the entry and waited. Kip rubbed his hands together.

  “I’m going to have a beer,” Kip pulled Crash to the kitchen. “What do you want?”

  “A beer would be fine, Kip.” Crash’s eyes followed him like short shadows.

  Kip froze. “You never drink beer.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Yet you’re having one now?”

  “Based on my perception of what is going to happen, I thought it might be wise to have relaxed muscles. Was I wrong?” Crash blinked at him.

  Kip let himself fall backwards against the refrigerator, which thunked against the wall behind him. He rolled his eyes. “Crash—”

  Crash stepped forward and pressed dry lips to Kip’s. He must have sensed there was something not quite right, because he leaned back and licked his lips while his gentle hands fluttered from Kip’s shoulders to the sides of his face. Kip felt Crash’s thumbs trace the arch of his brows, then the curve of his cheek. The tip of Crash’s tongue touched the fullness of his mouth and he groaned.

  “Crash.” Kip leaned in and pulled Crash close, slipping his hands into the waistband of his jeans. He felt a sweet heat building in the pit of his belly, like the warmth of hot coffee or even booze. Crash’s lips opened to his exploration and their tongues found one another in a delicious slip and slide of flesh, moist air, and noses pressed together. A bristly upper lip scratched like crisp crumbs on his skin.