Memento Amare

by G. D. Cox

  "Henry, you were there when he lost his shit after finding out about Cole being bisexual."

  "Ho yeah, I definitely remember that. I thought he was going to punch you in the face for real, Don. He was that mad."

  "Whoa, whoa, wait, what? How come I don't know about this?"

  "Oh, right, you weren't there in the break room with us."

  "I doubt Clyde is proud of how he behaved that day. I'm not surprised he buried that and didn't tell anyone. Don't take it too personally, Rajah."

  "I am going to kick his ass."

  "Still ... he never really gave us reason to believe he isn't straight, did he? Like Henry said, he's always flirted with women. Angie, he's even flirted with you! But we could clearly tell it was just harmless fun that went nowhere. Of course, now we know it was also deflection."

  "Well, he did ramp it up in the weeks before he quit and left. I'm not the only one who noticed that, am I?"

  "Ah, shit ... suddenly it makes sense."

  "What does, Don?"

  "Clyde flirting with that rookie in the mess and getting way up close to her. I was eating my lunch and I was watching them and then I saw Cole come in. And then Cole saw them too and he ... just turned around and walked away. Looking like a kicked dog."

  "Ouch. When was that?"

  "Over a week before Clyde left. Those were some weird days, man. We really should have known something was wrong when Clyde wouldn't even stand near Cole. Can you guys even think of a time before this whole shitfest when Clyde wasn't stuck to Cole's side like a conjoined twin?"

  "Okay, I gotta say, I'm still wrapping my brain around the fact that Clyde is gay. Gay and married to another guy. You know, Fabry's right-hand man, who's right there. Clyde's my bro, man, he is, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't also a homophobic ass when I first got to know him."

  "I remember when I was having lunch with him and Cole in the mess one time, and we got around to talking about Iowa finally legalizing same-sex marriage. Clyde was quieter than a, I dunno, a damn church mouse. But you could tell he was really uncomfortable, like his skin was crawling and he wanted to bail but didn't know how to do it without pissing off Cole, I guess."

  "Hah, you know what, we should have known Cole was nuts about Clyde all the way back then when he didn't react to Clyde's homophobic behavior."

  "Good point. Hey, Cole. You got something to say about that? You wanna tell us your side of the story now?"

  "Can he really hear us? Or are the doctors just messing with us? I mean, this is helping him, right?"

  "What else can we do? Even Powell's stumped. Cole may ... he may never wake up."

  "Nah. I'm not accepting that. Come on, Cole. You just gonna carry on being Sleeping Beauty? I took a bullet to the shoulder for you. You gonna waste that, huh?"

  "Yeah, Cole, it sucks to see you like this, okay? And it sucks to see Clyde breaking down. It really does. I think we all agree that we never, ever wanna see Clyde break down like that again."

  "I think Cole would agree, too."

  "Cole. Phelan. Listen to me. You are not allowed to go yet. You're still needed here."

  "Angie -"

  "Is she holding his hand - oh. She is."

  "You're safe now, Phelan. You're going to be all right. And Clyde ... Clyde's going to be all right, too, when you come back. So you better wake up soon, you hear me? Don't keep him waiting too long."

  XXV.

  FOUR MONTHS AFTER CLYDE's and Cole's classified wedding ceremony in Nate's office at HQ, Pa had secretly shipped Baby over to New York City as a gift with Nate's help.

  "Just get your ass to the Ark in the hangar with your newly wed husband, you sap," Nate said to him via his comm pad on the day Baby arrived, while he sat behind his desk with a massive pile of reports and Clyde lounged on the burgundy couch nearby in his black-and-red Long-Shot outfit with those amazing, brawny arms folded behind that golden head.

  Neither of them had any clue what Pa had planned, not until the Ark's ramp lowered to reveal Baby in all her very cherry red, polished glory within its steel belly, unclamped and ready to devour the blacktop and white lines of her new home city. Cole was struck dumb by the very vision of Baby there, by the fact that Pa wasn't there with her.

  "You knew that Baby was going to be yours sooner or later," Pa had said to him later with that low, resonant, benign voice when he called Pa to thank him. "You didn't think we were building her up and making her all majestic just for me, did you?"

  Cole had thought that, knowing how much Pa loves the car, almost like a child of his own, like the second child he and Ma wanted but never had (until Clyde came long). Although they'd both tinkered together with Baby throughout the decades, it was always Pa who took the time and effort to maintain her in peak, top dollar condition, dutifully rubbing away any scratches and replacing old or dinged components with authentic ones painstakingly searched at auto parts warehouses or online.

  "Thanks, Pa. I really appreciate it. And Clyde, too."

  "I know you'll both keep her fast, beautiful and clean, son. And now I've got even more reason to visit NYC, don't I?"

  He and Clyde did indeed keep her fast and beautiful long after Ma's and Pa's next visit. Clean, however, was ... a matter of opinion.

  "I think - I think we'll keep this from Pa," Cole panted, trying to catch his breath after coming all over himself between the open folds of his dress shirt, sprawled loose-limbed against Baby's red vinyl backseat.

  "Yeah," Clyde panted in reply, his hand still grasping their softening cocks between their heaving, splattered bellies, sitting on Cole's lap with his thighs spread and his jeans hanging off one foot. "Good idea."

  He and Clyde had meticulously wiped down the seat afterward in the apartment building's basement parking garage (thankfully vacant of other people at the time). Clyde had stroked the length of the backseat once with his left hand. Gave Baby a fond pat on her glossy roof with lips curved in a smile Cole would see mirrored on Pa's face whenever Pa was around Baby. Clyde sincerely liked the car, not only because it was one of Pa's pride-and-joys - "You realize you're Pa's number one pride-and-joy, right? Being his baby boy and all?" - but because it was an intrinsic part of Cole's past since childhood, a part that he could share with Clyde in the present.

  So to see Clyde now touching Baby's vivid cherry red surface and black racing stripes as if for the first time and with such deference is a bittersweet agony to Cole. Unsurprisingly, Clyde doesn't recall Baby either. Clyde doesn't make any verbal comment on her, but Clyde doesn't have to, not with the way Clyde carefully gets in and sits primly on her red vinyl passenger seat, with the way Clyde scrutinizes the red vinyl interiors and black-and-silver dash, steering wheel and gearshift with admiring eyes. Not with the way Clyde runs a reverent hand across the red vinyl above the glove compartment, just like he did the first time in the garage of the family home. It's as if Clyde knows on a subconscious level, somehow, without needing to be told, that Baby is significant.

  It's another sign to him that Clyde, the Clyde he knows and loves is gradually returning (and it isn't just in his head, it's not, it's not). It was Clyde who suggested that they go on this date tonight, almost two weeks since that goddamn mission in Croenia. It was Clyde who said that maybe it'll jog his brain and help to him to remember again. They're even dressed like they would on an intimate date: he in a dark red blazer, white t-shirt, jeans and brown shoes, and Clyde in a navy blue, v-neck sweater, white shirt, jeans and boots.

  "It's worth the try, I guess," Clyde says, the corners of his lips bowed up in what appears to be a hopeful smile.

  "Yes," Cole replies, needing to consciously tell himself to breathe again at the sight of that smile.

  Is it yet another sign that his Clyde is returning?

  He hopes it is. He hopes.

  Come back to me, sweetheart. Come back to me soon.

  Cole almost drives them over in Baby to Dees' Steakhouse. He almost does. At the last minute, he changes his mind and decides
on another dining place they also frequent, a Chinese restaurant in another part of Brooklyn. There's something about bringing this ... different Clyde to the steakhouse that rankles him. It feels almost sacrilegious to do so, as if it'll corrupt the place and all the sanguine, precious memories he has of them in it.

  He's already lost too much as it is.

  Clyde seems fine, indulgent even, as they are seated at a square, white cloth-draped table in their favorite secluded corner of the restaurant. (This Clyde doesn't know that, of course. This Clyde doesn't remember.) They sit facing each other, which is how it's always been unless Clyde wants to be nearer to him, which is when Clyde will sit perpendicular to him so they can touch and steal kisses more easily.

  "Nice place," Clyde says, inspecting the warmly lit interiors, glancing around at the numerous red lanterns hanging from the ceiling and the dark red walls and suspended Chinese tapestries of undulating dragons and phoenixes. "I like the decor."

  "You also like their soft shell crab appetizer and grilled scallop in XO sauce."

  Clyde's eyes light up particularly at the second item, just like Cole knows they would.

  "Okay, that second one sounds really good."

  "We'll get that."

  The waiter who serves them is someone new, and Cole is relieved about that. Lau, the waiter who usually serves them, would have known right off the bat that something is wrong if Clyde didn't recognize him, and that kind of awkwardness? Cole can really do without, tonight. He does not need yet another person asking him why Clyde is acting so strangely around him, why Clyde treats him like a stranger. Or worse, like a co-worker with whom he's acquainted only on a professional basis. Which is pretty much how Clyde's been behaving around him for the past week, at HQ and away from it. Even so, it's an improvement from Clyde scuttling from the room within minutes of him being in it too.

  It still fucking hurts.

  Cole orders for both of them: hot tea, grilled scallop in XO sauce as an appetizer, then black pepper crispy chicken, stir-fried sauteed prawns with vegetables, pork in hoisin sauce and lo mein for the main meal. He knows he's made the right choices when he sees Clyde's pleased expression. They're all Clyde's favorite dishes. The amnesia hasn't erased those preferences, at least.

  It's an extremely small consolation to Cole.

  "We came here a lot, didn't we?"

  Cole doesn't show so much as a twitch at Clyde's use of past tense.

  "Yes. We come here often."

  Clyde says nothing about his use of present tense. Instead, Clyde says, "Tell me more about our missions. How we worked together."

  He does so, touching briefly on a few at the beginning of their handler-asset relationship before detailing the giant clusterfuck that was the mission in Rio Rancho. Yes, ultimately he and his team had succeeded in accomplishing what they'd been dispatched to do, but between him and Nate, Nate still considered it a clusterfuck: Cole had almost died. If it hadn't been for Clyde holding him still, stopping him from exacerbating his crippling, severe wounds until the medics got to him, he would have. If it hadn't been for Clyde sticking to his side throughout the breakneck ride to the nearest hospital, whispering harshly into his ear, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay, we're gonna make it, he would have. (And that, he only learned from Clyde after waking up in the ICU, stapled and bandaged, an odd and pallid creature of tubes trailing from various portions of him like transparent tentacles.)

  Clyde doesn't remember any of this. Clyde certainly doesn't remember keeping vigil at his bedside and slumbering there in that cramped chair, that golden head of lush hair upon his thigh. Clyde certainly doesn't remember him touching Clyde's bristly face, doesn't remember clutching his trembling hand in return and kissing its palm, its knuckles, the back of its fingers and then his forehead, his stubbly cheek.

  Clyde certainly does not like that his hand is now on top of Clyde's on the table, although Clyde does his best to conceal his ... distaste.

  Cole doesn't know how and when he'd reached out and placed his hand over Clyde's. Sitting and chatting here in this restaurant they've frequented so much, sitting in this familiar, intimate place where he and Clyde had shared so many murmured words and laughs and kisses, it's so easy for him to forget that the Clyde sitting before him now is not his best friend, his lover, his husband. So easy for him to forget that this Clyde can barely ... tolerate him if he behaves in any way beyond his role of Agent Phelan Cole, top-level agent of the Global Anti Terrorist Force and Long-Shot's handler. Nothing more, nothing more.

  And it fucking hurts. It hurts, when he withdraws his hand and sees the utter relief in Clyde's eyes.

  Clyde at least endeavors to resume and carry on their conversation throughout their meal after their orders have been served, as if nothing occurred. Cole wants to let the stone mask that has become his face fracture from forehead to chin, to swipe everything off the table and roar, give him back, give me back my Clyde, GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!

  But it isn't the fault of this stranger wearing Clyde's face that his Clyde is gone. It's no one's fault. And that's the real problem, isn't it?

  There's no one, nothing he can shoot at or beat into submission to resolve this situation. There's nothing he can do, except mutely observe what remains of the dead world he once knew wither to nothing as Clyde smiles at the young, pretty Asian waitress who clears their table and smiles back, as Clyde watches her leave and scans her slim body from shoulders to calves with heavy-lidded eyes, lingering on her pert backside.

  His wedding ring blisters the skin of his chest like a brand under his white t-shirt.

  The drive back to the apartment is silent and awkward in a prickly way that had never been before between him and Clyde (before the box, that goddamn mind-fucking box). He hates himself for even thinking, just for an iota of a second, about lurching Baby to a halt and telling Clyde to get out so he doesn't have to see this apathetic stranger who can't even look at him. He feels tired, so tired as he trudges out of the elevator and down the hallway to the apartment's front door, acutely feeling Clyde a few steps behind him. He doesn't glance back after opening the door and entering the apartment. He places his ring of keys on the marble counter of the open kitchen's curved, central island and hears Clyde shuffle in and shut the door behind him.

  He's still facing the kitchen island, facing away from Clyde when Clyde mutters, "I'm thinking of ... I'm thinking of taking a break. From the GATF."

  From you, Cole hears like a gunshot in the dead of night, in the seams between Clyde's words.

  He hears Clyde fidgeting behind him, standing a ... safe distance away from him.

  "I figured, maybe I should look up other people I know outside of the GATF, too. See if they can ... make a difference."

  Cole continues to face the kitchen island, his hands pressed flat on its marble counter. They feel cold and weak and shivery and his insides are beginning to feel the same way too. It's suddenly become so much more difficult to inhale any air, so much more strenuous to remain standing on unsteady legs (and they've been unsteady since he touched Clyde after so long, so long and Clyde had looked at him like he was dirt).

  He knows who Clyde will search for. Clyde doesn't have to say her name for him to know. Clyde is just ... Clyde is going to leave, just like that, and Clyde doesn't even care, doesn't -

  "Look, Cole ... Phelan, I -"

  Before Cole's brain even thinks it, he's already swiveling around and seizing Clyde's head with both hands and yanking Clyde to him, crashing their lips together, propelling everything, everything he's got into this kiss. It's a goddamn miracle that Clyde isn't already shoving him away or breaking his neck. It's a goddamn miracle that Clyde's mouth is opening, that Clyde is making that small, wistful sound and Clyde is - his Clyde is coming back, it has to be -

  Their mouths break apart with wet, cleaving noise. A warm, callused hand is pressing against his chest. Firmly pushing him back. Pushing him away.

  "Phelan, I ... I can't. I - ... No," Clyde
stammers so quietly, the words sounding so gentle in their total, fatal evisceration of Cole. "This - this isn't me, okay? I'm not ... I'm not this. I'm not gay. I'm not."

  Clyde is shaking his head and averting those big, wide-set, blue eyes as if it's too awful to look at Cole, as if he's an ... an embarrassment.

  No.

  As if he's monstrous.

  He's still standing where he is, statue-still and blind and devastated, when Clyde's hand falls away from his chest, when Clyde strides out of sight. When the front door opens and then clicks shut so quietly, so damn quietly.

  Truly, this is the way his whole world ends: not with a bang, but with a creak and a whimper.

  Somehow, after countless minutes - hours? days? years? - he totters to the bedroom with one cold, shivery hand dragging along the kitchen island's curved counter and then on the walls leading to it, as if a ravenous panther has taken hold of him in its fangs in his shock and is creeping to its lair to feast on his shriveling heart. His chest scorches, scorches where Clyde had laid that warm, callused hand that had touched him with love instead of fear once upon a time. He slumps against the door frame and stares for more countless minutes at the unmade, king-sized bed that he hasn't slept in for ... for almost two weeks now.

  He totters over to the bed and succumbs like a smashed house of cards onto the side of the bed, rubbing at the burn of Clyde's hand seared onto his chest (his heart, his shriveling heart), his lips still tingling from their brief, costly contact with Clyde's. He feels like he's sitting on a stranger's bed, like he's in a stranger's room and he doesn't know how he got here and he just wants to go home.

  But his home ... just left. His home just left and if he tries to hunt Clyde down and drag him back and cage him, Clyde will hate him and his Clyde will never come back, never and he will never go home again, he -

  He switches on the white, glass-globe table lamp with a quavering hand. He mechanically takes out his comm pad from his blazer and places it on the nightstand. He collapses against the wooden, ornate headboard of the bed. He stares with empty eyes at a spot on the wall, his chest throbbing inside and out, as if something inside has torn open again and won't heal, can't heal.