Memento Amare

by G. D. Cox

  But even if Cole is bisexual ... that doesn't mean that Cole will ever see him as anything more than colleague, a friend, will he?

  Clyde keeps his hands flat on his lap. He gazes on at Cole's face. He swallows hard, pressing his lips into a taut line to stop them from wobbling.

  Hah. Hah, so this is his life: to finally start to figure out who the fuck he is, to finally find someone who accepts him, fucked up parts and all ... and to realize that that person may never reciprocate his feelings, so close and yet an infinity away. But that's ... that's okay. It is. He's okay. He's a tough muthafucker and everyone knows that, even himself. He'll be okay. He will be.

  Cole doesn't stop him when he pushes himself off the couch and stands up on less-than-steady legs. Cole remains seated and gazes up at him with those bright blue, compassionate eyes. He gazes back, his hands no longer shaking, his breaths slow and deep, his belly slumbering and his chest brimming with something bitter yet so sweet.

  For this man, I will lay down my life. For this man I love.

  His whole universe doesn't end with that thought, either. It feels like it is just beginning. He feels like he's flying and the ground can't touch him or swallow him up.

  "If you ..."

  Clyde stands and waits patiently for Cole to speak his mind. Cole lowers his eyes, then glances up at him again.

  "If you should wish to change handlers later on, I will approve it. No questions asked."

  Clyde stares at Cole's handsome face. He stares openly and he doesn't care that he's doing so. He considers a future where Cole isn't in it. He considers marching into battle without Cole at his side, without Cole talking to him via his earpiece. He considers walking down a hallway here in HQ, and seeing Cole with another agent as his new asset, another agent who will take his place at Cole's side and fill it until there's no room for him in Cole's life anymore. He considers the Cole-shaped void that would surely be within him, growing and growing until it's all there is of him.

  "I do not want that, sir," he says, looking Cole in the eye and making sure that Cole sees that it's the truth. "And I will not want that."

  Although Cole's expression is stoic, he sees the Adam's apple in Cole's throat bob once and hard above that dark red tie.

  "All right," Cole murmurs, his lips quirking up in that tiny smile, relief evident in every letter. Clyde smiles too, a closed-lipped and soft one.

  Yeah, they'll be all right, one way or another. They'll be all right, as long as they're together.

  XVI.

  THERE ARE SOME DAYS when Clyde does think about Melissa. He's usually alone when he does, when he and Phelan end up on different missions and Phelan's absence is an emptiness deep within him where no one else can see until he stands at Phelan's side again.

  Sometimes, it isn't enough to hear Phelan's voice through his earpiece or through his comm pad, to see Phelan in the flesh. Sometimes, even wrapping his arms around Phelan, burying his face in the warm smoothness of Phelan's neck and hearing that low huff of fond laughter isn't enough. Sometimes, he thinks that it can possibly only be enough when he can climb into Phelan's body, his soul, and swaddle himself in the sanctuary he finds there.

  It's been eight years since he last saw Melissa, in mid 2004 in what was their cozy, rented apartment in Rochester, Minnesota. Eight years since she looked at him for the last time with those sweet, brown eyes gone so wet and red, telling him with that subdued, sad voice that she couldn't go on like this anymore, that it was over between them. She'd tried so hard to make things work, he knows that. She'd tried and he'd tried, he did, he really did and she knew that too. Tried, in their own, isolated ways, to sweeten the slow, inevitable death of what they'd both hoped was a bezoar to their loneliness.

  For once in his twenty-two years of existence, he'd gotten himself a job that had nothing to do with circus acrobatics and shooting arrows at iridescent targets and throwing knives at people while theatric music played in the background. He delivered goods for a local supermarket chain (on a fake driver's license, but only he knew that) while Melissa worked as a cashier in the same chain. He had, in fact, met her while she was handling one of the registers on a really slow night, flashing his well-practiced smile at her and feeling a tug in his chest when she smiled back.

  Unlike the other girls in his past - the few one night stands whose faces he can't even recall, who he couldn't even fuck unless he shut his eyes and primed himself - Melissa was different. Melissa didn't laugh at him when he couldn't get hard the first time they went beyond making out on the timeworn couch in their apartment's living room, when she slipped her hand under the waistband of his boxer shorts and felt how limp he was. Melissa didn't laugh at him when he couldn't get hard the second time around, after he'd eaten her out on the bed until she came. She'd touched his burning cheek and waited until he could look at her again before saying, it's okay, Blondie, it's okay.

  The thing was, she really meant it. She really did love him despite how rare it was that he managed to get fully erect while they had sex, how much more rarer it was that he managed to come at all. He'd blame it on the stress from work or the condoms he used. (Or the nightmares of Pop screaming fag, fag, fag at him and beating him until he was dead while Mom and Danny stared and did nothing to help him, but he never told her about them, not even when she asked.)

  Sometimes the mere thought of sex made him feel like crawling into a hole in the ground and curling up in there like a pangolin, alone and armored and safe in the dark. Sometimes he would be on the road and he'd forget that there was something wrong with him until he caught himself looking at other men longer than he was supposed to, men he shouldn't even be looking at because he's straight and not a faggot. When that happened, he would come back to their cozy, rented apartment an embodiment of fury and resentment - and self-loathing, so much of that, he knows that now - and he wouldn't be able to look at Melissa at all.

  He hated himself for ever treating her that way when she never deserved it. It wasn't her fault he was fucked up in the head and body, and he did his best to please her in and out of bed. It was of course much easier to do it outside of the bedroom, when he could take her out on dates and put his arm around her and kiss her and not worry about why his body wouldn't respond to such a lovely woman like her. In the bedroom, he would keep telling himself how much he loved her, how much he loved her dark brown, long hair that undulated down to the middle of her back and her sloped nose and shapely lips. He would kiss her and finger her and lick her until she came, and he would shut his eyes and tell himself a real man would be honored to have sex with someone as beautiful and amazing as her.

  The first time he managed to fuck her and come inside her, he'd waited until she fell asleep before lurching out the bedroom to the bathroom across the narrow hallway. He locked the door. Barely made it to the toilet before going down on his knees and vomiting into it. He couldn't stop heaving until all that was coming up was bitter bile. His hand shook when he lifted it to flush the toilet.

  Then he'd sat down hard on the lowered toilet lid. Rubbed his face with both hands, again and again, until he realized his cheeks were wet and his squeezed-shut eyes were stinging and the noises he was making and muffling were sobs. He was rocking back and forth and he couldn't stop, he couldn't stop until his hands were clamped over his mouth and there was no water left to seep from his sore eyes. What was wrong with him? What the fuck was wrong with him?

  Melissa was still asleep when he returned to the bed. He'd curled up on his side and stared at her and held his hands close to his chilled body. He felt unclean, unworthy. He felt like he was defiling her somehow, like he was robbing her of something good when he didn't mean to. Like he really was poison, and that there was no bezoar in this world that could ever cure him, that maybe he was slowly killing her every day and just didn't know it.

  So when he came back to the apartment and saw her packed bags by the door almost two years after they met, he was ... relieved. Sure, he was upset too, and furiou
s at himself for not being able to make her happy, for not giving her the life she wanted, but he was relieved. He didn't have to dance anymore to a tune he could never hear, to tread black, unending water and flounder while struggling to find in himself anything to give while holding himself together. Still, his own eyes were wet and red by the time the front door shut behind her. He sat on the couch with his head on its backrest and stared up at the ceiling for fuck knows how long and just ... hated himself. The rent had been paid for another two weeks but he wasn't sticking around. He had nothing to stick around for anymore.

  He quit the one legit job he ever had. He stuffed all his belongings into a duffel bag and walked out of the place that had been something close to home but wasn't, not really. From there, he hopped all over the country, jumping back into stealing cars, pickpocketing, making forged IDs and credit cards, pissing off all the wrong people and ... doing things that a straight man wouldn't, not unless he was beyond desperate (and Clyde knew what that was like, he knew that well). Throughout those two years, he tried not to think about Melissa. He succeeded for the most part, too busy dodging the cops and thugs and bullets, surviving from one day to the next.

  Then those GATF agents caught him in New York City.

  Then Fabry offered him the once-in-a-lifetime chance to clean his whole act, his whole life. To become a GATF agent too.

  Then, he met Agent Phelan Cole. His handler. His friend. His best friend. His lover.

  Now if you asked the man he used to be back in Rochester, Minnesota what he thought about being a gay man in the longest, most fulfilling relationship he's ever had, with another man no less, that man would have committed murder for a certainty. Hell, he almost did in that dingy bar in Wisconsin mere months after Melissa broke up with him. If those guys hadn't dragged him off, if they weren't stronger than he was, than his rage was, he would be rotting in jail now for being a murderer instead of being given a second chance at life. At love.

  Now if you ask the man he is what he thinks about being a gay man in the longest, most fulfilling relationship he's ever had, with another man no less, he'll say, "Thank fuck I stopped being such an ignorant, hateful asshole. Thank fuck I found the most incredible, smart, handsome, supreme badass of a man who, for reasons beyond my puny brain's processing power, loves me back and hasn't stopped."

  And Phelan, knowing that's exactly what he'll say, will probably say in addendum with that charming quirk of those dark pink lips, "Sometimes it takes a while to convince Clyde of certain facts that will never change. But that's fine. I have lots of time on my hands. Years. Decades, even." Because underneath that 'second scariest muthafucker on the planet' rep Phelan's got, Phelan is a complete mushbag and they both know it.

  No one's asked him that, though. Not that nobody wants to or anything. It's just really, really low on the probability scale since the only folks who know he's gay can be counted on one hand and they aren't the type to pry into his life (except Dr. Fisher, but even she has no idea about his romantic and sexual relationship with Phelan). It isn't something he's too pleased about but hey, if secrecy means being able to keep Phelan safe, if it means he can live with Phelan in this cozy, secure Brooklyn apartment that they share, that they call home, he can deal with it.

  "Hello," Phelan says with that sublime, resonant voice, home again after a mission in Babrusyk, Belarus that required Phelan's military expertise but didn't include Clyde. He doesn't like it when Phelan's out there without him, but Fabry's the boss and what the boss says always goes, especially when said boss is the scariest muthafucker on the planet.

  "Hi," he murmurs, after wrapping his arms around Phelan, burying his face in the warm smoothness of Phelan's neck and hearing that low huff of fond laughter while Phelan hugged him too. "How did it go?"

  He withdraws first, far enough for them to look each other in the eye and still remain in Phelan's embrace, his hands linked upon Phelan's lower back.

  "I would say I wish you were there, but mostly I just waited in the safe house until the mark showed up and then we finished the job."

  "Oh, you just wanted all the fun to yourself," Clyde says, trying not to smile at Phelan's epic deadpan face and delivery.

  "Yes, I wanted to hog the bliny and kryvyanka all to myself."

  Clyde chuckles and replies, "I dunno what the heck those are, so I'm gonna cook you up some scrambled eggs and toast instead."

  "Fine by me," Phelan murmurs, lips quirking up as Clyde grasps his hand and leads them to the kitchen with its marble counters, stainless steel fridge and sleek, white floor-to-ceiling cabinets and curved, central island and single wall of appliances.

  As Clyde cracks the eggs into the pan on the duel fuel, stainless steel stove while Phelan handles the toast, Clyde thinks about Melissa. It's one of the very rare times that he does when Phelan is present, and he thinks, I never cooked a meal together with her like this. He thinks, I never felt like I could relax around her, like I could be just me. I kept waiting for the other shoe to hit the ground, for the whole universe to end and stay dark forever.

  And he thinks, I've cooked countless meals for and with Phelan by now. He thinks, I've never felt more relaxed, more safe than I do around Phelan, because I really can be just me. The other shoe never hit because it was never thrown in the first place, and the whole universe may have flipped on its axis and never, ever came back down, but it never ended and it didn't get darker. It got brighter. It got better.

  And he thinks, Melissa leaving me was the best thing she did for me.

  "Penny for your thoughts?" Phelan asks later, while they're snuggled on their black, leather-bound couch and crimson throw pillows with the television set to some silly reality show that neither of them are really watching.

  Clyde lifts his head from Phelan's shoulder and sits straighter so he can gaze at Phelan's face. He considers telling Phelan that he was thinking about Melissa, about an admirable, sweet woman who loved him enough to walk away from him, to save him from the poison that was festering inside him but was not him. He considers telling Phelan that he hopes she's found her own happiness and the true bezoar to her loneliness, that she's all right wherever she is.

  "I'm glad you're here," he murmurs instead, stroking Phelan's stubbly cheek with a finger. "I'm glad I'm here, with you."

  I can't imagine a future without you, babe, he thinks. I can't imagine myself ever walking away from you.

  "So am I," Phelan murmurs back, those large, bright blue eyes crinkled in a smile that is Clyde's alone, and Clyde knows that Phelan really means it.

  XVII.

  IN THE MONTHS AFTER Clyde's departure from his life, Cole learns what it means to be absolutely disconnected from the rest of the world.

  He feels absolutely nothing about the absence of something metallic around his neck and upon his chest, of the vow it had once been, the vow he thought would last till death (and maybe even beyond it). He feels absolutely nothing when he finally listens to the voice message that Pa had left after that disastrous call days after Clyde's departure:

  "Phelan, I hope it's all right that I leave this message on this number. I can't remember if I should or not, but you're not picking up and I got the option to leave one. Your mother and I are worried, son. You ... you didn't sound too good. You didn't say much and you ended the call before Ma could talk to you. We called Clyde a few times, and he isn't answering either. Ma called Nathan but Ms. Jackson told us that he's out of the country and will get back to us when he can. We don't know what's happened but you know you can always talk to us. We're always here for you, son. You and Clyde. Please call us back when you can. Ma and I send our love to you both."

  He feels absolutely nothing when he sends the message to the trash folder and doesn't call Pa back. Pa told him once that there's no point in asking questions that can't be answered, that sometimes you have to move on. He gets that now. He really does. He does.

  Sometimes, bad things just happen to good people for no reason, and he has to move on. />
  He feels absolutely nothing when other agents approach him - cautiously, so cautiously - and ask him how he's doing and avoid making any mention of Clyde. He feels absolutely nothing when they look at him and think he isn't aware of it, when they look at him with such odd eyes, as if they pity him for some reason. Yes, Clyde who is ... was his asset he'd worked with for eight years was the other half of the most famous handler-asset team of the GATF (and his other half in every way, every way). Yes, Clyde is gone but there's no reason for such looks from them. They don't know he and Clyde are ... were married. (He has to start thinking of Clyde in the past tense now, he has to, if he doesn't want to go off the deep end for good.) There's nothing to feel bad about. Agents come and go all the time in the GATF.

  And really, he feels absolutely nothing when he hears down the fucking noisy, invasive vine that before leaving HQ, before leaving the GATF until further notice (without even a word in person to him, without saying goodbye), Clyde had mentioned a woman called Melissa several times. Had mentioned wanting to find her, to reconnect with her.

  Melissa Campbell.

  The only woman Clyde had ever really felt something for. Something almost like love.

  It's just a damn coincidence he catches some stomach flu that causes him to throw up multiple times that day. Really, a stomach flu. He can't think of a single other reason for feeling so sick like this. In his office, he can't bring himself to sit, much less recline on the burgundy couch there. There are too many memories inhabiting its velvety covers, its ample cushions (of him and Clyde making out on it, chatting quietly on it, napping on it with the door locked). He feels like shrouding it in winding sheets. He feels like shrouding himself in winding sheets.

  He thinks that maybe he should start selecting what color and material those winding sheets ought to be, after several missions without Clyde at his side or speaking into his earpiece. He almost gets fatally shot in the chest in one. He almost gets run over by a hauling truck in another.