Autumn: A Crow City Side Story

by Cole McCade

  Joseph’s hands dragged up his back, feverish and possessive, and Wally arched into him, gasping out a moan. Then he was tumbling—falling, spilling onto his back against the couch cushions, Joseph a tumult and a tempest blowing him back and pinning him down and sweeping him up until he trembled underneath Joseph’s crushing weight. Wally dragged at Joseph’s shirt, daring to slide his fingers underneath the fabric, daring to stroke the sleek coils of sinew under tanned skin and slip his fingers through the luxurious, curling caress of chest hair.

  His desire was a beast waking from a long hibernation, and it came to with a roar and a wild and vivid hunger, until he was desperate: desperate for the searing, claiming pressure of Joseph’s kiss, desperate for the way those hands touched him, gripped him, clasped at him as if Joseph feared if he let Wally go he would slip away faster than sand through an hourglass, forever lost. And Wally clutched right back, needing this, needing the glory and wonder and dazed, lovely beauty of knowing that this frustrating, stubborn, wondrous man he loved craved him enough to kiss him like his blood was liquor and Joseph wanted to be drunk.

  Their legs tangled. Heavy weight pressed down on him, and he reveled in the crush of hardened muscle, in being trapped and pinned by the movements that made up a man’s body, the flow as one line of sinew poured into the next, each pushing and pulling and coiling and slinking in a delicious machine of heat and sensuality that had captured Wally in its grip. In Joseph’s grip, and as those beautiful lips seared down his throat he gave himself over, gasping out and stroking at Joseph’s hair wildly, arching up against the couch.

  Their hips fit together. Wally could hardly stand it, the surge of need almost unfamiliar, yet so very needed when he could drown endlessly in the rough bursts of pleasure that rocked him each time their bodies slid together.

  “Joseph,” he gasped.

  “Fuck,” Joseph answered, and pulled back. “God fucking dammit.”

  Wally looked blankly up at him, the desire shrouding his vision turning Joseph into a haze—but through that haze the bitter frustration furrowing his face was clear, frustration and regret and so many things that froze Wally’s blood to ice and made him wonder if he’d made an awful mistake.

  “Joseph…?” he repeated, struggling to catch his breath, to clear his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Joseph said, then swore again, closing his eyes. “It’s not working. It’s not you, I don’t…” He opened his eyes again, and curled a hand against Wally’s cheek, his thumb stroking, tracing. “I want to. But what I want and what I can do…it’s not going to happen today.”

  Wally understood, then: that for all Joseph’s body was hot and heavy against his own, that pressure against his hips was only weight and the ridge of his zipper and nothing else. For a single selfish moment he was mortified, stomach sinking with too many questions: whether or not Wally was enough, doubt that Joseph was really so easily open in his sexuality, terror that the anger and bitterness between them would never fade and underneath his smiles and teasing, Joseph found Wally repellent, undesirable, hateful, hated.

  But one look into Joseph’s eyes chased those thoughts from his mind. Chased away anything but an echo of longing, mirrored by the ache in Joseph’s eyes, the helpless frustration of sheer and utter powerlessness, and a glimmer of…oh God, he could almost swear that was fear. Vulnerability. And Wally’s thoughts echoed with the memory of Joseph’s voice on that day when they’d spilled so many truths over each other, when he’d so very bitterly and quietly said, It’s like…whatever drove that inside me is just broken.

  Ah…Joseph.

  Joseph, my love.

  Wally smiled, and touched Joseph’s lips. They burned feverish, as if Wally’s kiss had flushed them with lovely fire. “It’s all right, darling dear.”

  “It’s not all right,” Joseph bit off—and jerked his head back with a sharp, sudden movement. Vulnerability closed off to leave a scowl, dark with…Wally didn’t know. Anger. Pain. But it hurt, when Joseph glared at him and snapped, “Stop saying it’s all right. Stop…stop passively accepting everything. It’s not all right, and nothing will ever be all right again.”

  Wally stared, his mouth working, but once more he had lost his words, had no words for the sharp stabbing things cutting inside him, a knife wound plunged in deepest right when he was most vulnerable and least expecting that vicious, bleeding slash.

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I hadn’t realized I was upsetting you.”

  “Just…go away.”

  Joseph rolled off him, pulling back to sit up and draping himself to the side of the couch. Wally sat up dazedly; cracks seamed down his heart as he stared at Joseph, but Joseph refused to look at him, his scowl fixated on the far wall. He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He parted his lips, then closed them again, clenching his hands helplessly, until Joseph snapped another glare at him.

  “Go. I want to be alone in my own damned house for a while. Is that all right? Is that allowed?”

  Each word drove a wedge into the cracks in Wally’s heart and forced them wider, turning seams into chasms. He swallowed back the hurt sound welling in his throat. “Of course,” he whispered.

  Joseph said nothing. And so Wally stood; his movements didn’t feel real, his limbs floating and disconnected, as if his thoughts were a balloon come unmoored from the rest of him and barely held in place by a thin thread, detachment to ease the ache. He slid his feet into his shoes, then gathered his waistcoat and draped it over his arm before standing there helplessly, looking down at the man he loved so much that he’d given him every power to crush him, without even the thinnest layer of defense.

  “Call me if you need me, Joseph,” he said.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Nothing but that. Yeah. Sure. Wally didn’t understand, but Joseph had asked, and Wally would respect that. Respect his space.

  But walking away tore at him, every piece of his heart trying to claw its way out of the hole in his chest and scramble back to Joseph. He held those trembling, broken pieces fast, and made himself step from the living room, from the kitchen, from the house, down the walk. Until walking away became simply away, and he was leaving Joseph behind.

  And only hoping it wouldn’t be another twenty years, before the walls between them came down again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GOD, HE WAS SUCH A fucking asshole.

  For hours after Wally had left, Joseph had sat on the couch, glaring at the wall like he was glaring at his own damned pride. He didn’t know who pissed him off more—himself, or Walford.

  Mostly himself. He shouldn’t be angry at Wally at all…but if he was honest with himself? He wasn’t angry.

  He was hurt.

  And he felt no better than a damned child for it, which irritated him more. Fuming wouldn’t do any good. Hell, working himself up into this froth was asking to spend the next week with his muscles locking every time he tried to move. His brain was probably pumping out a fountain of cortisol right now, while he huffed and ground his teeth and glowered at nothing at all, and the TV sat there silently judging while it flashed through dramas just as pointless as the hell he was putting himself through.

  Call him.

  Be an adult and fucking call Wally. Explain. Articulate what was bothering him, talk things out like two people with at least half an ounce of maturity between them. Yet he couldn’t even do that, when he didn’t know how to explain why he was upset.

  Only that when Wally had said It’s all right, darling dear with that placid, accepting smile, Joseph had wanted to explode with sheer frustration.

  Maybe you’re being every fucking ego-driven male out there. When your penis doesn’t work, you take it out on everyone around you because how dare the world not cater to the almighty dick.

  He snorted, lips cracking into a bitter smile.

  He was an asshole, and an idiot.

  As he discovered when he tried to stand—and cramps shot up his legs, tur
ning his muscles into petrified wood and sending him crashing back down to the couch, gasping as pain wound through every muscle fiber in coiling steel springs crushing tighter and tighter and tighter, a boa constrictor’s unrelenting grip.

  Fuck.

  He slept on the couch that night—because he needed the rest, and because the couch was just as good as getting up. He pulled the ratty throw from the back of the couch, then paused to finger the lumpy, multicolored yarn, its fibers tatted and frizzing, the hand that had made it clumsy and unskilled. Willow had made this, he remembered—Willow, and Wally. Years ago, back when he’d still thought Miriam would come back and Wally wasn’t the interloper but simply someone who was there, supporting him when he had a five-year-old daughter and a deteriorating nervous system and his hands completely full figuring out how to live.

  Right here in this living room, Wally sitting on the floor, this fucking scarecrow of a man with his stovepipe slacks and his gentle, capable hands, surrounded by baskets of yarn while Willow played kitten, tumbling in the multicolored skeins. And Joseph watching them, smiling, unable to resist the pull of warmth, of family, as Wally had laughed and gently disentangled Willow and showed her how to make a loop in the yarn and fit the crochet hook in. Wally had made the throw, really; Willow had made the lumps.

  Joseph fingered one of those lumps, trailed it into the smoother, neater, heart-shaped interlocking chains of yarn. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine the throw smelled like Wally and drift into the memory of last night: falling asleep with someone for the first time in an endless stretch of forever, with those supportive arms sheltering him and keeping him safe, holding him up the way Wally always had.

  With a low groan, he buried his face in the couch cushion and drew the throw up over his head.

  Asshole. Idiot.

  And if he tried to explain he would just upset Wally, and prove every damned reason why Wally shouldn’t want him in the first place.

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, HE WOKE to the sound of footsteps on the front stoop. A light knock, so very familiar. He’d know that knock anywhere, and through the door to the kitchen he caught the shadow moving past the front door, tall and lean and restless.

  He didn’t answer. He was afraid to test his legs, even if he wasn’t yet in any pain, but even more he was afraid to look Wally in the eye and say…

  Fuck, he didn’t know.

  He didn’t even know what he was tangling himself up in, right now. He’d fucking…he’d chased Wally away, and he was sitting here fumbling with helpless hands, with no idea how to pull him back.

  That silhouette lingered, then moved away. Those steps receded. Joseph waited long minutes, then pulled himself upright gingerly and limped to the front door.

  A basket sat on the front stoop, padded with froths of checkered cloth and filled with a mound of blueberry muffins safeguarded by Saran wrap. Perched atop the muffins was a wrapped croissant sandwich practically oozing eggs and cheese into the plastic, strips of bacon poking out the sides. Even through the plastic, the scent made Joseph’s mouth water, his stomach rumbling and hunger rushing dizzily to his head.

  At the apex of the heap perched a pale blue Post-It note, dashed in swooping letters marked out in purple highlighter.

  Eat it while it’s fresh, darling one.

  The only signature was a calligraphic, slanting heart drawn in a looping hand.

  Wedged down the side was a thick leather-bound book, its cover red and stamped in beautifully gilt designs. Even the feel of it was old, from the buttery smoothness of the leather to the textured heaviness of the archival paper sewn into the binding. Elegant gold script on the spine read Pride and Prejudice, and when he flipped open the cover he found another Post-It note next to a gilded seal certifying the book as a first edition, first printing.

  Have a care, the second Post-It read, Wally’s droll, teasing voice in the back of his mind. It’s not quite as old as my old bones, but it’s still fragile.

  Again that swooping heart for a signature. Joseph closed his eyes; his own heart was made of lead, heavy and unmoving. He should’ve answered the door. Shouldn’t have been so fucking prideful, so fucking stubborn.

  He bent and gathered the basket, and carried it inside.

  He’d call Wally tomorrow. Once he’d had time to organize his thoughts.

  Tomorrow.

  * * *

  TOMORROW NEVER CAME.

  It was his own damned fault. He’d curled up on the couch like a moping teenager, savoring that omelet and croissant sandwich, then starting on the muffins while he paged through Pride and Prejudice, wiping his fingers carefully on a paper towel before turning each page, trashy morning talk show TV playing on mute in the background. Before he knew what was happening, more than half the muffins were gone, and he was rushing to the bathroom—or as much as he could rush, pushing himself from one wall to the other, pinballing back and forth to move faster—to be ill, only this time there was no Walford to brush the clammy sweat from his brow.

  He should’ve known better. That much sugar and fat all at once, when he was already in the middle of a downswing, was asking for everything inside him to revolt. Sometimes he could eat whatever he wanted without a care—but sometimes his system couldn’t handle sugars, saturated fats, pretty much all the foods that made eating pleasurable. Not in anything more than small, measured doses. He should’ve paced himself, but he’d been too busy…

  Say it. You were sulking.

  He lined the bedroom nightstand with water bottles, set the bucket in easy reach, and dragged himself into bed. He would be sleeping this one off for days; he knew from past experience, and if he was honest with himself he should check himself into the hospital for monitoring—but he fucking hated hospitals. Hated the smell of them; they always stank of some artificial citrus mess laid in a cloying shell over the underlying stink of years and years of diseased, dying piss. He’d rather have Wally; Wally was more comfort than any nurse, those long fingers in his hair, those capable hands soothing his pains and touching him so gently that he didn’t even mind his medications quite so much, even if nothing could ever make them wholly tolerable.

  If he called right now, Wally would understand. He’d come, he’d stay, and when Joseph was no longer curled up in a wrecked, trembling ball, they’d talk. He’d never wanted to think of himself as emotionally stunted, but he had no damned choice now. When Miriam was the only thing he’d ever known of love, of relationships, he’d never really absorbed the things most people picked up from dating, falling in and out of love, getting together and breaking up and growing together and growing up. When he’d been upset, Miriam had walked away, and stayed gone until by the time she came back he could either be grateful she was there at all, or expect her to leave again if he said a word.

  He didn’t know how to handle being upset with Wally, yet still wanting Wally.

  But if he just made that damned call…

  He pawed his phone off the nightstand and dragged it onto his pillow; he pulled up Wally’s number, tapped the Call button, then closed his eyes and pressed his cheek to the phone and listened to every shrill ring, cutting through him like a violin tripwire quivering against his heart and slicing out another piece with every trembling sound.

  Wally picked up on the fourth ring—breathless, a fumbling sound on the other end, then a gasped, “Yes? Hello? Joseph? Are you all right?”

  Come over, he wanted to say. Come over. We need to talk. Come over. I need you. Come over. I want you.

  Please…come over. Be with me.

  That’s all I need.

  “I…”

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t make the words come out, couldn’t make himself that fucking vulnerable when suddenly he saw not Wally, but a flaming cloud of red hair and snapping green eyes and Miriam’s disgust, her pity, her sneer as she walked away from him, telling him he wasn’t a man.

  He was nothing but a broken toy.

  “I’m down for
a while,” he said. Why was his throat constricting, his voice so strange and gravelly and broken? “I don’t need anything. I can handle myself. I’d rather be alone when it’s this way. I just didn’t want you to worry.”

  Wally didn’t answer at first, yet his hurt spoke in his silence. And in how soft his voice was, weak, so very confused, when he said, “I…I appreciate that.”

  Fuck. Wally wasn’t Miriam. Why was Joseph doing this?

  Why was he so certain that if he told Wally what was wrong, how he felt, how he needed, Wally would only walk away?

  “Listen…Walford…”

  “Yes?” Wally asked, inhaled on a note of hope, of pleading.

  But it wouldn’t come out. No matter how he tried, those simple words wouldn’t come out. He squeezed his eyes shut, taking in a shaky breath. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “Oh,” Wally said faintly. “All right, then.”

  “Later.”

  “Of course, darling dear.” Gentle, understanding as always, even if a thick edge to Wally’s voice said he was holding something back. “I will be here. Call me when you wish to see me.”

  “Sure. Yeah. Of course.”

  Joseph hung up the call, and buried his face in the pillow.

  Fucking asshole.

  * * *

  AN ASSHOLE WHO SHOULD HAVE called Wally back. After one day had passed. Two. Three.

  But he didn’t.

  Joseph didn’t because it was hard to call when he was lost in a haze of oxycodone, drifting on a drugged cloud. He’d run out, at this rate, but he didn’t care. The methylprednisolone wasn’t doing shit—not to ease the pain, not to reduce the inflammation that made him burn with fever and shiver with chills all at the same time, while every time he tried to move, muscle groups he hadn’t even shifted locked up and paralyzed themselves in godawful knots. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in this much pain; the last time he’d been so far gone, he’d barely dragged himself out of bed between doses long enough to pull himself to the bathroom hand over hand and take a goddamned piss.