Defining Us: The Calvin & Eric Story (69 Bottles)

by Derrick, Zoey

  I feel both his hands glide up my back. He’s attempting to relax me and it works. My back arches down and I am better able to settle into waiting for him to proceed. He keeps one hand on my back, holding me there, but also reminding me that he hasn’t gone anywhere. It helps keep me here, with him, and not in my head with the sludge.

  “This is gonna be cold,” he warns before he drops the lube right onto my entrance. I jump again but his hand on my back moves in a soothing pattern and I feel his fingers rubbing along my entrance, working the lube on his fingers and then I feel the gentle pressure as he pushes in. His hand on my back moves once again, it’s his way of helping me relax without telling me to do so.

  I take a deep breath and put my head down on my forearms, holding my upper body off of the bed and I do my best to relax, to settle down, and it seems to work when he presses into me farther. The pain returns, but it doesn’t last, his fingers won’t let it as he strokes in and out gently, helping me to feel the pleasure coming from his actions and I can’t help but feel exactly that.

  I let out a rush of air from my lungs as he pushes a second finger in, joining the first, stretching me, helping me to better accommodate his girth. There is that sharp burning sensation that is cooled again when he moves his fingers in and out of me.

  His hand comes off of my back and I tense up again. “Easy, Cal.” His voice is soft and comforting as he adds some more lube to his hand. The cool helps settle the burn as he adds a third finger and then I hear the squirt of lube, but feel nothing more as he takes his cock in his other hand, preparing himself to take me.

  When he’s satisfied, he pulls his fingers out slowly before replacing them with the head of his cock, pressing against my entrance and when he pushes past that barrier, I’m immediately transported back to that hospital room, back to the room where I was… my entire world falls black.

  BLOOD rushes through my ears in fear and anger. “Calvin?” I shout at him from across the room.

  I flipped his fucking switch, I fucking did this to him. Fuck. “Calvin?” I need to stop this, stop him, how? How do I take back control of this situation?

  I couldn’t pull myself out of him fast enough the moment I realized he’d completely checked out on me. His demeanor turned cold, his body tensed up in ways that should be completely unnatural for any one. What happened afterward was well, words can’t even explain it. He turned possessed by something. I would have never believed a person could switch so fast before. Go from perfectly fine to manic faster than a speeding bullet.

  I can’t pull my eyes away, I’m frozen as I watch him writhe in pain from some unknown memory. Tears streak down his face, his body is contorted in ways that shouldn’t be possible. His hand is gripping his cock so hard that I can see it turning purple. He’s screaming out, begging it to stop, begging ‘him’ to stop.

  Calvin writhes on the bed, screaming in pain, much like he was that first night, the one with the dream, but this time he has his cock in his hand. He starts stroking it like his life depends on it.

  His eyes are open, wide with fear, completely glazed over as if someone has shocked him. “Calvin?” I shout again.

  Realizing that my shouting at him from here is doing no good, I rip the condom off, my cock is flaccid since he checked out and freaked out. I throw the condom in the trash and go for my jeans. I can’t wake him up naked. He needs to feel safe, secure.

  He is grunting, crying, groaning on the bed and I want to fucking scream. I manage to pull my jeans on and then find my t-shirt. I figure the more dressed I am, the less intimidating I will be when I can finally manage to get him out of this episode.

  He flips over onto his back, his hand is still stroking his cock so fucking hard that I can’t…I know that can’t feel good.

  Finally dressed, I grab his wrist, stilling him. He switches from his hand pumping to his hips sliding up and down with his cock inside his fist. “Fuck!” I fight his strength. Fuck me, I hadn’t realized he could be this strong. I struggle trying to separate his cock from his fist, pulling his arm up and away, but he is determined. The harder I pull up and the further away I get, the higher his hips get. I have got to separate him from his cock.

  “I just have to come, if I come, he’ll stop. It will…I just have to…” His voice is a strangled, garbled mess, I’m barely able to make it out. My heart rips in two and I’m spurred into action once again and I find the strength to finally free his cock from his grip. I watch in horror as he falls back onto the bed and the other hand finds his cock lightning fast and the process starts all over again.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I growl as I take his other hand in mine and I pull it away from his dick, adrenaline courses through my veins like fire. With nothing else to do with his hands, I manage to pin them up near his head and I lay across his stomach. I’m trying hard not to squish him, but I have to put some type of a barrier between the two of us. I have to stop him from grabbing himself. He’s writhing, crying out, screaming for me to get off of him, but I know he hasn’t come back to me yet.

  His hips are still doing their best to thrust upward, seeking release, and I press into him a little harder.

  I never, not in a million years, thought that someone could go into full nightmare mode without being asleep and this is some seriously scary shit. Finally his hips settle a little. He cries out and he shudders under me as I feel the first few drops hit my t-shirt, on my back.

  “Fuck!” I growl as I realize that he’s come, all over me and himself without any contact from anyone or anything, but his body instantly relaxes and his eyes close in defeat, fresh tears trickle down his temples and on to the bed.

  My heart shatters into a million pieces and the adrenaline flowing through my body starts to wane a little, but I hang my head in defeat.

  This is my fault. I did this to him. I set him off. He’ll never forgive me for this, hell, I don’t know if I can forgive me for this, not now at least.

  I knew I should have let it go, after the minor episode in the living room, I knew he was primed up, I knew his darkness was lurking in the corners and I just had to ask him. I shake my head and release his arms as I feel no more fight left in him, though the tears still trickle down his temples, he still hasn’t returned to me.

  I don’t know how to be here, to handle this, when he comes to. I haven’t got a single fucking idea what frame of mind he’s going to be in and all I feel like doing is falling to pieces. But I can’t. Not now.

  I get up off of the bed and watch him closely. He’s calm, but his breathing is still pretty intense. That had to be like a workout for him. I take a deep cleansing breath and try and find my center, try to wrap my head around what’s just happened.

  I start to pace the room. My mind is a raceway of thoughts rolling past at two-hundred miles an hour. Stay, go, wake him, put him in the shower, clean him up, let him be, wake him…it’s all a jumbled mess.

  After a couple of minutes, he answers that question for me when I hear him softly snoring on the bed. Though still naked, he’s managed to find some comfort somewhere and falls asleep.

  Biting back my own sadness, I pull the covers from the other side of the bed, but grab the towel and gently clean him up before covering him up. He rolls over and snuggles in on himself and my heart is in my throat.

  I lean down and gently kiss his forehead before walking out of the room and gently closing the door.

  I vaguely remember waking up at one point during the night to throw the covers off of me because I was hot, but then I started shaking with a cold sweat. All I really remember thinking was, fuck, I hope I’m not getting sick, before rolling back over and falling back to sleep.

  When I come to, I look at the clock, it’s eleven-thirty. It has to be nighttime because my room is pitch black. I feel like I’ve slept for days and…I shake my head, dismissing a memory before I capture what it was. I get out of bed and notice that something is off. “Why I am I upside down?” I ask myself and I shrug it off, unable
to fully understand how I ended up upside down on the bed. I walk around the bed, catching myself on something on the floor. I reach down and find…jeans? Why would these be on the floor? I shake that off too before I step into the bathroom, flipping on the light and I’m blinded by it. I rub my eyes to adjust to the brightness before heading toward the toilet, reaching for my boxers only to realize that I’m not wearing any. “Fuck, how drunk did I get last night?” I grumble to myself, then a massive wave of nausea overcomes me so fast I don’t have time to think about it before I’m hurling into the toilet. Cold sweat breaks out over my entire body as I keep heaving into the toilet.

  But I feel fine. In fact, I feel like I do when I hurl from…

  It’s like a sledgehammer hitting me, sending me hurling into the toilet again. The memory slides inside, flashing before me. Eric, here, kissing, fighting, arguing, talking, kissing, making up, walking into the bedroom, kissing, sucking, licking, sixty-nine, leaving, lube, condoms. I want to try something…what is it…I’d like to take you from behind.

  I hurl into the toilet again as the nightmare consumes me. Sliding back into the institution and being raped, being forced to come, being…. “Oh! My! God!” I scream as I hurl into the toilet once more.

  Eric…where…

  Oh god…Fuck!

  I manage to swallow back the nausea a little bit. My stomach is empty as hell, nothing is left to come back up anymore anyway, and I stumble into the shower. Unsure of what to do, I clean myself off, brush my teeth and get dressed as fast as I possibly can. I have to go find him, I have to… fuck, he is never going to forgive me for this. If he tucked me into bed and left me alone in the dark, then he’s not here, he obviously doesn’t…I hang my head, shame wracking my body to the point of throwing up again. He will never forgive me for this.

  I race out of my room, down the hall toward the living room. “Shit.” Where are my keys? The couch. I hit the light switch near the front door and turn around and scream, falling back against the door as Eric sits up stick straight on the couch.

  “What the…oh shit. Cal, you all right?”

  My breathing slowly settles, returning to normal. “You didn’t leave,” I breathe as I fall to pieces on the floor in front of my door. I slide down, putting my head in my hands as I fight to find what I need to say to him, to apologize to him, but there’s nothing. He’s here, he didn’t leave, he didn’t…sobs rack through me and the next thing I know, Eric is lifting me up off of the floor.

  He carries me somewhere, the couch, and sets me back down before moving away from me. I don’t blame him, I’d move away from me too. “I’d never leave you like that. I,” he hesitates, “I didn’t know what you were going to be like when you woke up. I figured the last place I should be was in your bed, with you.”

  I shake my head. “Eric, I am so fucking sorry.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I wipe at my eyes, trying to clear them up so that I can see and I look up, look to him, sitting on the opposite side of the couch, his hand on his forehead looking like he’s been bulldozed. His expression is stoic and unreadable and I don’t like that, not one single bit.

  “Eric, please? I’m sorry.”

  “Stop, alright, just,” he puts his arm down along the back of the couch, “Stop apologizing, Calvin. I don’t want your apology. You’re not the one who needs to apologize for any of this. I should have never even considered trying to do what I did. I knew you were already high strung because of what happened earlier, and I still pushed it. You don’t need someone pushing you into something like that.” He pushes himself up off of the couch and goes to stand near his stuff, which has been moved into a pile, organized and ready to go. I cock my head at him. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he says as he picks up his bass and throws it over his head.

  I’m stunned into inaction, unsure of what I should be doing in this moment, but it is clear to me that his guilt is getting the better of him right now and I don’t know what else to do besides let him walk out the door. “I don’t want you to go,” I breathe.

  “I don’t want to go either, but I, I can’t look at you right now without feeling guilty.”

  “Feeling guilty is pointless, Eric, and you fucking know it.” My voice is laced with anger and frustration. “You didn’t do that to me, you didn’t…it had nothing to do with you,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, this time it did, Cal, this time it was me. I should have known you weren’t ready for that, I should have stopped or tried something else that worked better, but I didn’t. I let my dick do the thinking and look where it put you. I’m surprised that you even remember any of it.” His back is still turned to me, but by the time his speech is over, his voice is soft, thoughtful and laced with the pain I know he’s feeling over what happened.

  “I remember, though it took me more than a few minutes after waking up. But once I realized what happened, I…I was headed to your house. I only turned the light on so that I could find my keys on the couch.”

  He turns around to face me, pain marring his beautiful features. “I could never leave without first making sure you’re okay. You are, so I’m going to go.”

  “But I’m not okay, Eric. I am anything but okay. I am a fucking mess. I…I’m not okay,” I admit. The anger and frustration that fueled me before is subsiding. “I need you to stay.”

  He hangs his head before muttering, “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because every time I fucking look at you I want to cry. I want to fucking punch something or I want to get on a plane to fucking Iowa and start picking them off one by fucking one, starting with your father. You are too fucking important to me, Calvin Caldwell. Every time I watch you fall apart, every time your past takes over you, I want to kill something or someone. I want to destroy them for destroying you. It fucking kills me to watch it all come apart. To watch everything we’d built up on the road just completely unravel into a pile of garbage on the floor.”

  “You knew this was going to be three steps forward and ten steps back, Eric. You fucking knew that I wasn’t going to be magically cured of everything and you’re letting your guilt about it consume you, and drive you into doing the most ridiculous of bullshit actions. The most selfish thing you can do is walk out that door right now. Walking out that door means that you can’t accept that this is a part of who I am, that this is a part of me that will likely never go away, that something some time is going to trigger me in ways even I don’t know or understand. If you think what happened tonight doesn’t scare the hell out of me, you’re sadly mistaken.” I stand up from the couch and hold my ground. “You stood here, in this very fucking room, and told me that it didn’t matter, that no matter what you would be by my side, that you would help me through this, that you would be here to pick up the goddamn pieces when I fell apart and what? You want out?”

  He doesn’t say anything to me. He just looks away from me, his manhood and dignity fly right out the window. I stomp my way over to the front door.

  “Of all the things I’ve known you to be, Eric Richardson, a coward was never one of them.” I open the door for him. “Get out,” I tell him, my voice is far stronger than I feel but it’s enough to get my point across. He grabs his other bass, throws it over his back then he picks up his bags, balancing the smaller on his roller and he looks up, his eyes meeting mine. Despite the anger, the frustration, the pure hatred I have for him right now, that overwhelming connection is there between us. I know he feels it when his mouth falls slack. “Get out,” I demand, unable to look at him any longer.

  My fucked up night has just turned to pure utter bullshit and I want to break something.

  He readjusts his bags, looking at me as he comes to stand in front of me. “I just need some time,” he breathes.

  “You’re the one walking out the door, Eric, not me,” I tell him and he nods, pulling him and his stuff past me and out the door. He turns to look back at me like he wants to say something. “Goodbye, Eric,” I s
ay and shut the door in his face.

  The minute he’s out of sight, I fall to pieces all over again. This time it’s because I just saw my life, my future, walk right out the door.

  STANDING in front of my mirror as I finish messing with my hair for the last time, I want to break down again. I want to fall to pieces, but I can’t. I have a show to do, Calvin has a show to do, we all do. Two more times, then we’re free. Two more times and then life can go back to normal, at least until we get into the studio again. Fortunately for me, I rarely need to be there with him. Dex and I often record together, laying the bass and drums before guitars and vocals.

  I shake my head, dispelling the idea that this is going to be easy. I know it’s not, but maybe it is for the best, maybe I’m not cut out to be the rock that he needs me to be for him. Maybe I’m not the right person for him in general.

  “Keep telling yourself that, you idiot.”

  Everything on the outside screams that I’m okay, but everything on the inside is liquid disaster on so many levels.

  “Pull your shit together, Peacock, you got this.”

  Yeah, even my own pep talk is nowhere near convincing, but it has to be. I have to be able to deal with this as a man, to deal with the fact that I’m a goddamn moron. That I walked out and away from the only person who’s ever meant anything to me. The only person who’s ever shown me what it means to love and be loved. My vow to love him unconditionally has faltered big time.

  “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done with it.”