Memento Amare

by G. D. Cox

  Clyde gapes at Stewart, frozen with his mug gripped tight in his left hand. What the fuck? Cole ... and a guy? What the fuck is Stewart going on about?

  "Things?" Perez snorts (and somehow still sounds sexy while she does it). "There was never anything between them, Don. It was one date."

  "Two," Stewart says, taking another sip of his coffee, oblivious to Clyde staring at him.

  Perez gives Stewart a wide-eyed look of surprise and smirks.

  "Really? They had a second date?"

  "So I hear. I think it was more like Dave -Dave? Is that his name? - well, whatever it is, it was more like the guy was in the mess the same time as Cole and they had dinner together."

  "Don. You realize a dinner in the mess doesn't count as a date. Even more so when it was accidental."

  "Hey, it's a pretty classy joint, Angie, and the food is still fantastic after all these years. I'd gladly take Susan and the kids there for a meal if I was allowed to. And anyway, it seems the guy's disappointed that Cole isn't into him after all. But then again, he was the one who went after Cole after finding out Cole apparently hasn't dated anyone in two years, so -"

  "What did you say?"

  Clyde places his mug of coffee on the table. The rim of its ceramic base clinks loudly on the table's burnished surface.

  Perez and Stewart have gone utterly silent. They're looking at him now with stark eyes, as if he's just whipped out a loaded gun and is pointing it at them. Lim has stopped typing on his comm pad and is looking at him too, chewing jaws moving slower and slower as the tension in the room skyrockets.

  "What the fuck did you mean, Cole 'breaking things off with a guy'? Huh?" Clyde asks in the same low, menacing tone, glaring at Stewart.

  "You mean you don't know -"

  Stewart bites his lower lip, looking like he's just realized how much he's screwed up with his big mouth. Yeah, big fucking mouth.

  Clyde stands up slowly, his spine ramrod straight, his teeth gritted, his shoulders broad acres of rigid hostility. The other three agents stare at him, Lim wide-eyed with his closed mouth still half-full, Stewart with his face scrunched up in consternation and Perez with a visage that's turned to cool stone.

  "He meant precisely what he meant," Perez says, and her tone is just as low and menacing as Clyde's.

  Clyde glares at her, then at Stewart who doesn't avert his eyes. He takes one step forward and points a belligerent forefinger at Stewart.

  "No. Okay? No. No, you got it wrong," Clyde snarls, his teeth bared. "What the hell's wrong with you, Stewart? Spreading nasty bullshit like that about Cole?!"

  Stewart shares a gravid glance with Perez. Then Stewart looks at him again and says, "It's not bullshit, man. It's the truth. Why would I lie about something like that?"

  "Because Cole isn't gay!"

  He doesn't know what expression he's got on his face, but it makes Stewart grimace. It makes Perez's expression become even stonier. Even angrier.

  "Well, you are right about that," Perez says, glaring back at him, folding her arms over her chest. "Cole's bisexual, not gay."

  He still doesn't know what expression he's got on his face now, but Perez isn't backing down one bit and has taken a step towards him, her eyes ablaze.

  "Bullshit." Clyde takes another livid step forward and jabs a finger at her face. "You're lying!"

  "No, we aren't," Perez snaps back. "I know it's the truth because Cole told me."

  "And me," Stewart says, scratching the side of his neck above the collar of his white dress shirt.

  Lim clears his throat and says, "Me three," lifting one of his hands in the air next to his head.

  Clyde gapes at them, his lips parted, his eyes as wide as they can go on his wan face. He feels goosebumps erupting all over his skin. He feels cold, as if all the heat in his body's been abruptly leeched out of him via his feet and into the tiled floor. He feels as if that very floor has vanished from beneath him, that he's falling and falling, that he's plummeting towards jagged rocks and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

  He takes a step back away from them, eying each of them. His fingers hook into his palms. What the fuck ... what the fuck is this. Cole isn't ... bisexual. Cole can't be. Not once has Cole ever mentioned being attracted to other men. Not once. No. He ... he would know if Cole's a ... a faggot. There are particular ways that faggots look and act, and Cole isn't like that, not at all, no. No way. No fucking way.

  Because if Cole really is like that ... then what is he?

  "You got a problem with it, Barnett?"

  Perez hasn't called him by his surname for a while, certainly not in that arctic, steely tone.

  Clyde pivots around and bolts from the break room.

  "Oh, shit," he hears Stewart say behind him. He hears Perez say something to Stewart but he doesn't turn around, he doesn't look back. He keeps walking, he keeps running until he finds himself back in his assigned lodgings, the door slamming behind him and locking automatically. He stands where he is, staring blindly ahead at nothing, his clenched hands and arms quivering, his breaths harsh and erratic and so loud in the silence of the room.

  He still can't sense the floor beneath him. He blinks hard. Rubs both his hands down his face and feels them shaking against his clammy skin. He feels like throwing up, like roaring, like snatching up whatever he can find in the room and hurl them at the wall until they break into pieces beyond repair.

  He feels like he is already broken in pieces beyond repair, still reeling from the impact.

  He scrunches his eyes shut. He knows he's pacing the room now, up and down, up and down, rubbing his face with both hands again and then covering it. He can't stop it. He wants to stomp back to the break room and shout at everyone there all the reasons that Cole can't be a faggot, that Cole can't possibly be goddamn dating this Dave but he can't stop pacing.

  Fuck ... fucking fuck, he thinks he knows who this Dave bastard is in Admin. Some goddamn data analyst manager or something. Yeah, it's got to be that blond asshole he'd seen Cole chatting with in Cole's office a few weeks ago when he went there intending to hang out with his handler (his friend).

  Cole rarely sees anyone in his office by choice, he knows that. Everyone knows that. Cole values his privacy and prefers meeting other agents in their offices or conference rooms. Until Clyde became his asset, word was that Cole's office was pretty much sacred ground to the guy, that only an idiot would dare barge in on him without any forewarning. Clyde was one such idiot - the only one, really, and he likes it that way - who would march in without so much as a knock on the door and then fling himself on that cushioned burgundy couch with his head on one armrest and his feet on the other.

  Not once has Cole kicked him out. Oh, he'd surprised the guy, all right, the first time he did it. Cole had stared at him with that renowned deadpan face of his for a full minute before returning to his piles of paperwork, as if Clyde bursting in and lounging on his couch's an everyday occurrence. (It would be if he's got any say about that.)

  But now, there's this Dave. This blond, blue-eyed asshole who manages an entire team of agents and looks smart in a suit and is smart unlike Clyde who never finished high school, who learned what he could about the world and how fucked up it is from fellow carnies and then on his own. He doesn't have a single certificate to his name. Never set foot in a college because he's probably too dumb for it. But now this asshole dares to come into Cole's office, dares to sit there in front of Cole's desk like he has the right to be there. To ... to fucking ask Cole out on a date and Cole, he ... Cole agreed, why, why did Cole agree when Cole isn't gay and never said anything to him about wanting to fuck other men, Cole's not a faggot, he's not, he's not -

  And suddenly, Clyde isn't in GATF headquarters anymore, he isn't in New York anymore but in another big city somewhere in the Midwest years and years ago, lurking in a bar and hitting on a pretty woman in a skimpy minidress. She's batting her eyelashes at him and twirling her hair with her fingers and yeah, he's doing all the righ
t things and moving into her personal space when she smiles at him and suddenly, suddenly there's this fucker all up in his face, calling him a homo and shoving his shoulder. The fucker's blond and blue-eyed and laughing at him and he's got both hands around the fucker's neck now, choking that laughter to a gurgle and somebody's screaming like a damn banshee and there are hands on his shoulders and arms and no, fuck off, fuck off! Fuck off and get away from me!

  Fuck off and stay away!

  Fuck off, he's mine! Cole is MINE!

  Clyde snaps open his eyes. He's ... he's in his room in GATF headquarters. He's panting into his shaking hands covering his nose and mouth, rooted where he stands like a tree about to topple over and shatter into kindling only good for trampling. He stares out framed, ballistic-resistant windows at an overcast sky with wide, stark eyes.

  It takes him countless minutes to breathe at a normal pace again, to loosen his hunched and tense shoulders. He squeezes his eyes shut. Bows his head, still covering his nose and mouth with his hands. The breath he sucks in behind them is long and tremulous.

  Damn ... damn, it's been a long time since he recalled that particular ... incident. It isn't on his GATF profile as far as he knows, but he's certain that Fabry and Dr. Fisher know about it and have their own files on him with details of other similar fuck-ups. But the guy he'd ... strangled then had not been blond and blue-eyed. No, he had black hair and hazel eyes.

  Dave is blond and blue-eyed. Dave is the guy going after Cole, going after Cole to date him and Cole said yes and the mere thought of that is making Clyde feel ... sick.

  "Oh god," he whispers into his palms, trapping the damning words there. "What's wrong with me?"

  He totters over to the army-neat single bed several feet away. He sits down heavily on it, his head still bowed, his hands trembling and cold at his sides. He had envisioned himself strangling Dave instead. He had envisioned himself removing a threat, but ... it wasn't a threat to himself. No, the threat's to ... him and Cole. To them.

  He shuts his eyes once more, his brow furrowing.

  Dave's a threat and he wants Dave gone because ... because he can't stand the thought of Cole showing even the most remote interest in the guy. Because Cole doesn't let just anybody into his office, it's Cole's sacred ground and the only person Cole's allowed to come and go whenever he likes is him. Because he ... because he's the one Cole talks to, when it's just them in Cole's office, him reclined on that couch and Cole sitting behind his desk with that tiny smile, that quirk of dark pink lips that nobody else seems to notice except him. He's the one who sits beside Cole in the mess and gets extra meatloaf so Cole doesn't have to keep going back to the food bar for more. He's the one Cole chose to be his asset, Cole's most trusted partner after years of never wanting to be a handler. He's the one who charges into the battlefield at Cole's side, who makes sure Cole comes home unharmed and with another job well done, who keeps Cole safe.

  He's the one who stands at Cole's side, no matter where and when and why.

  He's mine. Cole is mine, only mine.

  Clyde sucks in yet another long and tremulous breath. He presses his palms to his temples. He waits for that voice in his head, the one that sounds just like Pop, to condemn him again, to rip him apart for acting and thinking just like damn faggot and not like a real man.

  But he hears ... nothing like that.

  He hears only one voice, a voice that sounds so much like him. He hears ... only himself, and maybe ... maybe when his entire universe flipped on its axis, it'd also squashed that other voice to a mute pulp and bared to his eyes an immense side of himself that had been suppressed in the dark for so very long. Maybe that voice is dead just like Pop. Maybe that voice never mattered to begin with. Maybe he should have listened to his own voice all along instead of beating it scared and bloody like Pop beat him.

  And oh, he's scared. He's never been this scared in his whole life. Who ... who is he? Who has he been all this time? Who will he be tomorrow?

  There is only one man he can go to for any kind of answer.

  Hours after bolting from the break room, he's in Cole's office, hearing the door slam shut behind him. Cole is seated behind his desk like he usually is. Cole had been scrutinizing a short stack of reports in an open file and had sat upright the moment he stormed in. Cole's face is a blank slate as he stands up with his back straight and his head level, pressing the tips of those long, callused fingers to the desk top.

  Clyde stands where he is, staring back at Cole. His arms and hands are quivering again. His mouth feels as arid as a desert. His belly twists and turns inside him. It'd be pretty damn humiliating - not to mention gross and such an annoyance for Cole - if he vomits right now. The last time he felt like this, it'd been when those cops showed up at the front door of the family house in St. Louis to tell him and Danny that Mom and Pop were dead. He feels like he's dying himself, like he's being shrouded in a cocoon and he doesn't know if he'll wake up again, or what he'll be if he wakes up again.

  But he's here, still alive. Cole is here. Pop is dead while Cole is here, in a tailored navy blue suit, mid-blue shirt and a dark red tie, gazing at him with those bright blue eyes that have never looked at him with derision or disapproval.

  Cole is still the most gorgeous bastard he's ever laid eyes on. Cole, his handler. His friend. His best friend.

  "Clyde?"

  Clyde stares at Cole, hearing the quaver of his own breaths as they escape his lips. It's the first time Cole has ever addressed him by his first name. It's crazy how right it sounds rolling off Cole's tongue like that, like his name means something when Cole utters it with that voice that's still so resonant and sublime. Like he means something.

  "You're not straight," Clyde says scratchily.

  Cole says nothing to deny it. Cole doesn't look away from him. Cole's whole face softens and for some reason, there's such melancholy to it, as if Cole's been waiting for this moment from the day they met, this moment for his head to be placed on a chopping block and Clyde's the one who's put that look on Cole's face. Him, of all the people in the world. The last one who should.

  He's pacing the length of Cole's office before he realizes it, rubbing at his face with both hands once more, babbling distraught words that he won't quite remember. He still can't believe that Cole isn't straight, that Cole is attracted to other men because brave, tough, noble men like Cole can't be that way. They just can't. Faggots are weak and evil and AIDS spreaders and all of them are going to burn in hell forever because they deserve it. That's what Pop told him everyday until the bastard died. That's what the church, the bible told Pop and Mom and the rest of the world. That's what the world told him for all his life, no matter where he went in this country, whether it was with the circus or he was alone on the streets. (Don't think about Melissa, don't think about how he'd failed her.) Cole just can't be that way. He just can't. Cole's the bravest, toughest, most noble guy Clyde has ever met and known.

  Then Cole, still standing behind his desk with his back straight and his head held level, looking so goddamn handsome and untouchable, says with a voice gone hoarse, "Clyde. So are you, to me."

  Clyde stares at Cole. Cole stares back, and Clyde feels like he's standing on a precipice looming over a bottomless chasm, like he's about step out into thin air and he doesn't know whether he's going to fall or fly.

  If ... if Cole thinks that Clyde is the bravest, toughest, most noble guy Cole has ever met and known, if Cole is and has always been attracted to other men too ... then what is he? What has he been all this time?

  Clyde staggers to the burgundy couch, slumping on it with his head bowed. His vision's gone blurry and hot. His breath hitches in his constricted throat. His chest feels like it's trying to cave in, trying to keep that hammering thing in its left side from bursting out.

  He has no clue how long he sits there, how long Cole stands where he is while gazing at him.

  He leaps over that precipice when he whispers, "Sir ... I think ... I think I'm ga
y. I'm so fucked up. What's wrong with me?"

  He doesn't fall. His whole universe doesn't end. The world doesn't end. He doesn't end, and that's a massive shock in itself. He'd expected to fall and fall in the dark and never see light again. He'd expected a ... a fucking lightning bolt from heaven, maybe, to strike him dead the instant he said those words. Or the earth to swallow him up whole and crush him to dust in its lightless, forsaken bowels.

  But then ... he never asked to born gay, did he? He never asked to be hated and abandoned by his own family, by the world, just for being who and what he is. If there's a god who made him this way from the start, then ... it's not his fault he's gay, is it? It's not a fault to be gay then, is it?

  He is fucked up, but maybe not in the way he's always thought he was.

  Clyde doesn't shy away when Cole walks over to the couch to sit next to him. There's a foot of space between them, but Clyde feels Cole's presence as if Cole is the sun itself, fiery and undeniable and vital. Cole talks to him with low, placid tones about how Cole had discovered his bisexuality when he was thirteen years old and secretly crushing on a male classmate, about how Cole had stayed in the closet until he was twenty-four and came out to his parents, how Cole had later come out to Fabry and then made the choice to no longer be caged in the dark.

  Clyde stares down at his hands on his lap. He listens raptly to every word. And he finally looks at Cole when Cole murmurs, "You are not fucked up. This world may be fucked up but you are not."

  He gazes at Cole's face, agonizingly aware of how near and warm Cole is. He ... wants to reach out to touch Cole's cheek. He wants his touch to be the only one that Cole remembers, that Cole yearns for. He ... he wants Cole to feel the same way about him like he does about Cole, like he's always felt about Cole since they met in Fabry's office two years ago.