by Cole McCade
“How long has it been?” he asked.
“Eight days.”
He started. “You kept me drugged for eight days?” he snarled, fists clenching. “You should have stopped when it wore off.”
Wally stared at him, his smile fading to leave a little pinch between his brows, his eyes dark, his lips pulling down at the corners with a sort of hurt, quiet softness. “You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
“You asked for it,” Wally said. “You asked for the Vicodin.” He shook his head, a slim hand fluttering to his chest and curling in to frills of his shirt. “You said you didn’t want to live through this again.”
Vin stilled, his surge of temper snuffing out before it could kindle beyond a few sparks, his stomach sinking.
“…again,” he repeated, lips numb, and looked away.
I don’t want to live through this again. He remembered saying that—not to Walford, but to the doctors, as they’d pieced his corpse back together and pronounced him still alive, if only in name. I don’t want to live.
“Vincent.” Warm fingers brushed his shoulder, and he flinched away.
“I do not remember any of that.”
Wally curled his hand against his chest again, watching him with his eyes darkened and strange, before looking away sharply. “Vicodin can have that effect,” he murmured, and climbed out of the bed with reserved, quiet grace. “I’ll get you some tea. It’ll help clear your head.”
* * *
BEING NANNIED WAS TEN TIMES worse when Vin no longer felt as if he hovered at death’s door. Twenty times worse when the gregarious, effusive man nannying him was no longer so gregarious or effusive, Wally’s eyes downcast and his touch brusque as he propped Vin up against the pillows, checked his wound, offered him a warm, soapy towel so he could sponge bathe himself.
So it was the silent treatment, then, for his mistrust? He didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh. Walford had had eight days to get used to his presence—and to be sure he wouldn’t wake up from his drugged haze and murder him. For Vin, their acquaintanceship was a matter of minutes, hours at most, and he was struggling to find trust in the fact that Wally had cared for him so gently, so carefully, but it was hard when nothing good ever came of Vin being wounded and immobilized.
And when you can’t stand it anymore will you tear him apart, too, the hook in his flesh and that terrible, wonderful wet ripping sound and the halves of his body peeling apart to spill out all the precious things inside?
Will you?
He looked away from Walford’s bustling, sharp movements as the man settled the bedsheets. Vin finished scrubbing the towel over the stiff, tired lines of his face before leaning over to drop it in the bowl himself. “I am bored,” he said.
Walford sighed and tsked. “It really is just like having children,” he said flatly, and pushed away from the bed to cross the room and turn the TV on. It came to in black and white flickers and a crackle of static. “I apologize that my telly’s a touch outdated, but I’d be happy to be your remote control if you’d like. Just push my buttons.”
What should have been light and teasing instead came out sharp-edged, curt. Vin tilted his head, studying him. “Do you flirt with everyone?”
A dry look. “You’re far too young for me to be flirting with you, dear boy.”
Yes. The thorns were out, the hedgehog’s prickles defensively up. With a sigh, Vin tilted his head back against the headboard, ignoring the TV—though he recognized the music and voices coming tinnily from old, crackly speakers. Silence, misery!
With a groan, he extended his hand. At least it no longer hurt to lift his arm, his life and strength and will flooding through his veins again to make his body his own. “Walford. Come here.” When Wally only gave him a suspicious look, he sighed again. “Come. Come here.”
Walford blinked, eyes widening briefly; a tinge of pink touched his cheeks before, with a sullen huff, he stepped closer and slipped his long, angular hand into Vin’s, that hot, smooth touch curling around his own.
Vin watched him for a moment, the way he avoided Vin’s eyes, the way he bowed his head. Shaking his head, Vin murmured, “I did not mean to be cold to you, or ungrateful.” He squeezed that slim hand captured in his own. “I am sorry. And I am grateful. It is only that sometimes remembering certain things…” He hesitated. He didn’t want those memories, but they came anyway, that crooked tooth swinging in the dark like a fateful pendulum, that metallic-rotten smell. He lowered his eyes, focusing on their clasped hands, Walford’s so pale against his own. “I feel numb, most of the time. And when I am not numb, there is only pain. Horror. Terrible things inside my head. Sometimes it is easier to bury, so as not to feel those terrible things. What you said I said…reminded me of things that cut deep; of things I do not wish to remember.”
Walford made a soft, reluctant sound, but drifted closer to the bed; his fingers twitched, then settled against Vin’s. “Are those the things that left you on my doorstep?”
“No. Only their haunts.” Vin shook his head. “What brought me here…there is something I must do. I made a choice. That choice made a mess. And now I need to clean it up.”
After quiet, sulky moments, Walford lifted his head, looking at Vin. Searching, studying him with a clear question swimming in those dark eyes like stars swimming against the night. “This thing you feel you must do,” he murmured. “It’s something you don’t want to do, I think.”
I don’t know.
Part of me wants it. Part of me needs it like Gabriel needs that next pill. A drug I shouldn’t crave, but just one more hit will ease the pain.
Vin hesitated, idly stroking the pad of his thumb over the fine ridges of Wally’s knuckles; they were like china in their texture, like a thin frail glaze of ceramic that would chip and crack if he held it too hard. “Would you believe me if I said I was dangerous, Walford Gallifrey?”
Wally chuckled and sank to sit on the edge of the bed, his hip settled against Vin’s thigh, warm through the blankets. “I knew that the moment I set eyes on you, Vincent Manion.” The pouting knit eased from his brows, and he smiled. “But some kinds of danger are more appealing than others.” He lifted his free hand and reached out to cup Vin’s cheek in that warm palm and those spidery fingers, gently coaxing him to lift his head. “This thing you must do, dear boy. Tell me. Is it a matter of life and death?”
“It might be,” Vin whispered.
“Your life, or someone else’s?”
“Both.”
“That is a conundrum.” Wally brushed Vin’s hair back, stroking his fingers through to catch a sleep-tousled knot and carefully begin to work it loose, his touch a feather-light thing flirting with Vin’s temple, his cheek, the crest of his eye. “When I cannot make a decision, I ask myself: is it a matter of life and death? If the answer is no, then it’s not something I need to do. It’s just something I want to do, even if sometimes we do have trouble separating want from need when it comes to base creature comforts.” He tucked the untangled lock of hair behind Vin’s ear, lingering to trace his strangely smooth fingertips over the upper curve of his ear until Vin felt like a wildcat being stroked. “If the answer is yes…ah, that’s when it gets more tricky. Because sometimes ‘life or death’ can mean my life, or someone else’s death. Or vice versa.”
Walford was a tactile creature, Vin thought. And Vin…Vin was not. Not anymore. His need for touch had led him down this road, and it had been so long since he had let himself. And yet here he was, Wally’s hand in his, those smooth fingers tracing over his brow, and he wondered that he let him rather than pulling away; wondered that his pride was quiet, in this moment.
Are you so broken that any soft touch will do?
“Have you ever had to choose your life over another’s?” he asked.
“A few times. Have you ever chosen someone else’s life over your own?” Wally countered.
“More than once.” Every time he had put on that uniform, those fati
gues, and willingly accepted his next mission, his next deployment. He’d chosen to take the bullets, the pain, the torment meant for innocents…and yet still far too many innocents had fallen nonetheless. He pressed his lips together. That numbness was threatening again, that dulling filter promising to take away the warmth of Walford’s touch and the brightness of his presence to leave only gray. “And yet still I am here.”
“You live in the past,” Wally murmured with a searching look, as if just now realizing something—before he shifted to slide further onto the bed, twisting to sit side by side with Vin—pressed arm to arm, leaning against the headboard, with their clasped hands held in his lap. He turned his head, his pointed chin resting to one narrow shoulder as he watched Vin close, so close. “Tell me who you were, Vincent. Before I found you in that alley.”
“A priest,” Vin confessed, the words dry ash in his throat. “Then a soldier. Then nothing.”
Wally’s eyes widened. “A priest?” he repeated, and Vin couldn’t help a laugh, forcing past the tightness in his throat.
“A priest.”
“You.” Wally stared at him, then down at his rosary, then up at Vin again. “You. A priest.” Then he, too, laughed—incredulous, bright, that merriment that seemed to light a room up until Vin could hear the faint, brassy echoes of cheerful carnival music in every pealing sound. Wally trailed off with a soft sigh, shaking his head. “That would have been a waste of a man, my friend.”
“It was even my nickname in my Marine unit. Priest.” Shut it down, Priest. It’s time to go home. Priest, cover my back. Priest—Priest, man, you okay? Priest…Priest, where are you…Priest, it hurts…oh God, why won’t it stop… “It almost feels more like my name than Vincent.”
“There’s a softness in your voice, when you say that name. Priest.” Walford squeezed his hand. “The priesthood meant a great deal to you, didn’t it?”
Vin forced the memories down. The last time he had heard his name in Serafina’s voice, in Alex’s voice, as if they somehow thought he had the strength to save them when they didn’t have the strength to save themselves…they’d called on him as if he still wore the cloth and carried the faith and could at least bless their darkened souls before sending them on their way to peace. He swallowed thickly and turned his mind’s eye away from that, from the moments when those voices had stopped, looking through the veil of the past and deeper—into older memories, softer times, tinted in his mind as sweet a gold as the pale stone of Venice’s tall, sculpted buildings.
“It did then,” he said. “When I was younger. Back then my eyes were still closed, and I thought if I looked through the filter of God I could unsee the evil in the world. Or perhaps hide from the evil in myself. It was safer there, in seminary.”
“You aren’t so very evil.” Wally nudged him with his elbow. “If it was safe, why did you leave?”
“Not by choice.” Even if he wondered, now, if he’d been trying to be forced out, as reckless as he’d been. Trying by some subconscious desire to escape the cage of the Lord’s ever-so-pious bosom. “You know the rumors about priests and altar boys?”
Wally let out a delightfully scandalized gasp. “Vincent. You didn’t.”
“Not quite. Do not look as though it is such a delicious and torrid thing.” Vin snorted. “Not an altar boy, but a novitiate. One who was of age, so do not look at me with such skepticism.” Wally’s knowing grin prompted an answering smile, even if it felt strange and wrong, like someone had taken the point of an awl and etched into the hard marble of Vin’s face. “A young man by the name of Agnolo. Before it had been lovely Venetian girls, indiscretions the Holy See could overlook as long as the girls kept quiet. They enjoyed the secret; the taboo of defiling a priest. I think my robes made me even more attractive to them, even as they were to be my shield against temptation.” Yet he had ever and always been its victim; when given the choice between God and the wickedness of the flesh, he always chose lush, yielding, soft flesh that gave beneath his touch and arched to the press of his lips. A sinner always, and fallen before he had even acknowledged it. “But my robes could not shield me enough against Agnolo. Dio, he was…” Full, firm lips, the particular way his hands would curl, clutch in his robes, clutch in my robes… “Beautiful. A cherub given life, with such wide, innocent eyes that made me feel very much the unholy man.” And such unholy things he had whispered in Agnolo’s ear, caressing, enticing, as if he spoke for Lucifer to tempt the righteous. “I knew I should not. But now and then we found ourselves alone together, stolen glances, heavy with unspoken things and shame and need…and then we broke.” Like a river breaking its banks, crashing and roaring, we broke…and his skin tasted of the salt of the Dead Sea and the sweetness of purity, and I drank of every drop. “It was only one time. Torrid and stolen against the hard stone walls, rushed breaths and urgent desperation and a dark fire stoked so very hot by the sin of what we were doing.” He didn’t realize he had reached for his rosary until it was in his hand, its edges pressing to his palm. “Afterward, he could not stand the weight of it. He confessed to the Prior of our church.” A bitter laugh that tasted like old wood and old regrets. “Interesting how we had to have each other…but once we were excommunicated, put out and naught but lowly men once more, we could not even stand to look at each other.”
Wally’s weight shifted to lean more fully against him, his warmth like a comforting blanket on a cold day, draping over Vin; one hand rested to his chest as Walford looked up at him with sympathetic, thoughtful eyes. “Isn’t it better that way, though? To be who you are, rather than living by rules that tell you who you love is wrong.” His tongue clucked—that little rhythm, click-click-click, not two or four but so precisely three. “I’ve never understood living in such denial.”
“Denial is often what Catholicism is about.” Vin made himself let go of the rosary, letting it fall against his chest. It was just an object. A symbol. A symbol of a faith that had no use for him; of a Heaven he was denied entry to, when the mark of the murderer was stamped in red upon his hands. “We deny ourselves earthly pleasures and comforts so that we might strip away the trappings of what we have been taught to find the naked truth of ourselves, as we were made by God and in His service.”
Walford tilted his head: curious, discerning. “You say that as if by rote.”
“Because I am not certain that I believe it anymore. They are just words. I am not even sure if they mean anything. I still believed, for a long time. And I believed that by enlisting in the Marines, I was still doing God’s work. Protecting his lambs, a shepherd with an M4 Carbine.”
“Weren’t you, though?” Walford’s fingers curled against Vin’s chest. “Whether you did it for God or whatever reasons you had…not everyone would go to war to protect others.”
“That war was a mistake. We know that now. We knew that then, and we paid for it in blood and comrades lost.”
“Ah.” Soft with understanding, as soft as the cheek that pressed to Vin’s skin as Walford laid his head to his shoulder. “You found your crisis of faith not in Agnolo’s bed, but on the battlefield.”
Vin looked down at Walford. He was so different from Agnolo; Agnolo had been young and fresh and innocent, while Walford was whimsical and wise and steeped in years that seemed to have refined him rather than eroding him as age so often did. Yet there was a certain something, that same allure, that draw which promised to ease the pain and lure him so sweetly away from the dark quagmire of memories threatening to suck him down into a tarry and inescapable black.
“The battlefield showed me far worse things that could only exist in a Godless and loveless world,” he murmured.
“The world isn’t so very loveless.”
“Is it not?”
Wally’s gaze flicked over his face, lingering in a way that made Vin feel…seen. As if Walford saw not a broken and forgotten soldier, not a faithless priest, but simply a man searching for a way back to himself; a way to live when the rules of his world had ch
anged.
“Vincent.” Again that heated hand to his cheek, coaxing, ground him. “Come back to the now. Whatever happened back then…you don’t need to go back there.”
“I do not know if I ever left,” Vin whispered hoarsely.
Walford said nothing, but there was something in the space between them, something charged and breathless that made Vin wish, for just a moment, that he could forget the way others did. Bury himself in sensation until he could feel through sheer force of will and overwhelming saturation; pursue loveless, thoughtless hedonism without a thought for the consequences. Walford’s gaze dropped to his lips; his delicate, pointed chin tipped upward. For a second, for a breath, Vin let himself be tempted. Let himself be drawn toward soft lips and dark eyes that questioned, that wondered. For that second, for that breath, he leaned closer.
And what then?
When you have to leave, to disappear?
Will you kiss him, then leave him bloodied and broken to erase all trace?
He jerked back, sucking in a breath, the haze of prickling warmth that had fallen over him dashed by the cold rush of reality. He looked away, clearing his throat, and pulled his hand free from Walford’s.
“Scuzi,” he rasped. “My apologies. I did not mean to be inappropriate.”
Walford faltered, then smiled weakly. “If anyone was inappropriate, it was I. I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
“No,” Vin answered honestly, and dragged a hand through his hair, closing his eyes. “I am…confused. And every time I start to see my way toward an answer, I just…” He shook his head. “I keep thinking that I will fail. When I was in Afghanistan…we were captured. Held for days. Weeks. Put through unspeakable torture. I…I managed to break free. To this day I do not wholly remember everything that happened, but…” He remembered enough. The blood. The screaming. The awful rage that filled him like a primal element, so much emotion that it had burned him out in a scouring crimson rush, like channeling lightning through a light bulb until it seared to ash and couldn’t manage even the smallest spark of light. He closed his eyes, rubbing at his chest, the rosary beads rolling against his palm. “I killed them. The ones who captured us. But I was too late to save anyone but one other. Four people died. Four people I loved as my brothers and sisters, dead because I failed to find my strength until it was too late. How do I believe love can exist in a world where that can happen? How can I ever leave that place, when they cut every piece of me out and left it on that blood-stained floor?”