Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

I wouldn’t even know what to do with a third chance,
another halo to shake loose galloping into the crossfire.
Should I be apologizing? Supposedly, what’s inside my

body is more or less the same as what’s inside yours—
here, the river girl clutching her toy whistle. There,
the black snake covered in scabs. Follow my neckline,

the beginning will start beginning again. I swear on my
head and eyes, there are moments in every day when
if you asked me to leave, I would. Heaven is mostly

preposition—up, above, around—and you can live
any place that’s a place. A failure of courage is still
a victory of safety. Bravery pitches its refugee tent

at the base of my brain and slowly starves, chipping into
darkness like a clay bird bouncing down a well. All night
I eat yogurt and eggplant and garlic, water my dead

orchids. In what world would any of me seem credible?
God’s word is a melody, and melody requires repetition.
God’s word is a melody I sang once then forgot.

— Kaveh Akbar

BRIAN LACKEY

In Eric’s backseat, Neil’s cold, slender hands soothe Brian’s face, and just as he thinks he’s left the murkiest blue, Neil’s eyes set on his. He says something Brian can’t hear until he leans close and repeats it. “I’m gonna stop your nose.”

He can’t speak, but what would words do? That summer’s sealed away like an impacted tooth. There isn’t another planet to go to.

Neil turns to Eric. “Do you have any napkins?” Brian thinks he says.

Eric is too quiet to hear. Ringed fingers eventually offer a clump of leftover McDonald’s napkins. Neil grabs them and wipes Brian’s skin until it’s clean, rubbed raw.

“Lean back.” He pries his nostrils to dam them, crumpling a napkin inside both. Brian lets it happen — Neil’s already seen deeper than this. “Okay.” Neil pauses. “You wanna take your glasses off?”

They’re bloody too, fogged by his hot breaths. Brian nods what he can. Hands them over. Without them, Neil’s the only clear thing, even as his touch is relinquished, even as the lack of it threatens to sink Brian somewhere forgotten, damp, and warm.

A hand on his shoulder, Neil’s voice: “You here?”

Brian’s eyes flutter from where he didn’t notice they rolled, and instantly, he nudges their knees together.

“Alright,” Neil eventually mutters, slouching again; Brian hadn’t realized he tensed. He wipes his glasses on his shirt, deft with his hem like he lifts it often. Brian’s mother used to scold him for cleaning them like that. Lens wipes were always in his stockings.

“My mom,” Brian blurts.

Neil blinks, stills, then blinks at Eric.

In the rearview, Eric’s eyes go wide. “What about her?”

“I can’t — I can’t see her like this.”

“Do you need to stay at mine? You know my grannies conk at, like, eight. You’d just have to leave early.”

“Can you tell my mom I’m sick?” Brian asks.

Eric squints. “Sick how?”

“Sick however.” Salted so nothing can grow.

Neil nudges his leg. “Here.” He slides Brian’s glasses on, fingertips whispering at his ears. They’re sat too high; his eyelashes cram on the lenses. Neil faintly smiles at that, bruised, and says, “Sorry,” like a foreign word.

Brian can’t say it’s fine. He adjusts his glasses, slouches into Neil, and stares upward, to the window. He gently startles when his cheek settles — Neil’s heart is pounding.

Slowly, Neil slots an arm under his, around his body. “Just close your eyes,” he says, maybe a few times. His voice lulls him as the carolers’ had. It sings with the memory of lube under his nails. Fleshen cowhide. Beady blackberry eyes. Brian’s breathing tempers with Neil’s until they sync.

Brian stirs when they arrive at Neil’s house. The rush in his ears has quelled. Now, he only hears Neil’s heart, feels his fingers in his hair. His brows raise when Brian rouses.

“Were you asleep?”

“Light sleeper,” he answers, hoarse. He became one to journal after his dreams, but he guesses it has no use now.

With the shift’s click, Eric parks the car, eyes cautious on Neil in the rearview. “Walk you to the door?”

He tongues his purpled cheek, hand already slithering toward the passenger seat, pressing it down. “Nah.”

Neil turns to Brian to say something, but Eric repeats, “I’m gonna walk you to the door.”

Neil rolls his eyes or looks away. Too subtle to tell. “Well. Goodnight, Brian.”

“Merry Christmas,” he mutters back.

He sort of grimaces. His front tooth is chipped. It didn’t used to be. “Yeah. Merry Christmas.” He slinks through the passenger side with all his effortlessness, and Brian clambers after, sagging into the seat, watching them walk to the door.

Eric kicks a pebble through the snow. It’s falling harder, clinging to their hair and jackets like descending stars. Neil tries to shake it off like a dog. Gives up when it gets in his lashes. They reach the doorway, too far to hear, and suddenly, the car's interior lights dim, leaving Brian to the overcast moon and streetlamps.

Sniffling at his napkins, he idly skims the dashboard’s stickers, but he can’t stop thinking: There are no crop circles. Nothing is carved into herd-bitten pastures, cut cornstalks, sown soil. There’s no nose trick or tracker pinging sky surfers. Extraterrestrial wonder is just that, wonder — there are no gravity guns, inspection tables, or jelly fingers. Just a station wagon, a couch, and sweat. The emptiest ever sky.

His chest grows taut, like he’s about to cry again, but a creaky SLAM! comes from Neil’s front door, making him blink back into himself. Eric stands in its silent wake, hands sighing into his pockets. He calls Neil’s name a couple of times, forehead pressed below the tinseled wreath. A few more misty breaths. No answer. Neil’s atmosphere is remote again, no address for letters.

Eric turns, skids another pebble across the yard, and retreats with a downcast gaze. It’s only when he gets inside and the lights flick back that Brian sees wet under his eyes, smudging his makeup.

A sober beat throbs until Eric swallows and asks: “What the hell is happening?”

It already happened. He shrugs, glances away.

“Come on.” As he pets the snowflakes from his hair, he pulls it at the roots, brows furrowed. He’s usually like this when Neil hasn’t written. “I just — ” He looks away and says, “I think I already know.”

It doesn’t change anything. Brian only shakes his head, mouth numb. “From Neil, I guess?”

“I didn’t want to assume it was related, because Neil doesn’t — he doesn’t know I know. I mean — it was shitty of me, but” — his voice lowers like Neil could hear — “I snooped through his stuff once and found out then. I wondered if you — you know? Because of what you drew, and — ”

“I wanna go now.”

“Yeah, okay,” Eric says. “Just forget it, we can talk about it whenever or never or… yeah.” He wipes his eyes, shifts into drive, and leaves the street, but Brian’s mind lingers there, mulling what’s in Neil’s room. Something he wrote, maybe, or something more indicative. More naked. Gooseflesh eats his arms, and he puddles in his jacket.

Eric unlocks his front door while Brian waits, snow dusting his glasses. His eyes feel puffed as floury dough. “I just realized I don’t have pajamas.”

“I did the laundry you left here last time.”

“Oh, thanks.” They scrape their shoes on the welcome mat, set them by the door, and shuffle in, their way lit by the Christmas tree. A sleepy breath’s pace, its star fades then glows, fades then glows, gleaming off Eric’s jewelry. Its ornaments are mostly quaint, but one’s bright blue, a molded handprint. “I had to make one of those, too,” Brian whispers.

Eric puts his jacket up, then takes Brian’s. “What?”

“That hand ornament. I made one in elementary school.”

He follows Brian’s eye, then wilts. “I’m pretty sure that’s my dad’s.”

“Oh,” he says again, more despondent by the second. It’s like Eric’s room matches him, a plunge into black walls, limp curtains, and cramped shelves.

“Weird fucking night, man, don’t even worry about it.” He claps Brian’s shoulder. He’s afraid the touch will make him bleed or faint, but from Eric, it remains good. Some of life will stay the same. It has to. “Let me find your clothes.”

Tentative silence yawns as Eric searches, and Brian can’t stand it. He eventually murmurs, “I think I… knew, deep down, ever since Neil was in my dreams. But I didn’t want it to be true.” He smoothes his pants. “It kept getting closer until… it got here. Like a birthday or something.”

Eric doesn’t know how to comfort him; Eric is comforted by movies where people get eaten alive. Brian sees him ignore his closet’s top rack a few times, where his clothes sit, so he doesn’t have to turn yet.

Brian picks at a fleck of blood on his collar. “Do you care if I get a towel? In case I bleed in my sleep?”

“My grandma is, like, crazy about her towels, but you can use one of my old shirts if you want.” His Californian accent is strong when he’s nervous. Finally, he pretends to find Brian’s clothes, handing them off in a wad of baby blue and gray. He’s standing close, and his teeth peek, worrying at his lip. “You want me to put on a movie or music or something?”

“Uh, if you want. I don’t mind. I’m tired.”

“Ditto.” His eyes fall to something behind Brian. “After you get changed, I have something for you.”

A few gifts are stacked on Eric’s desk among his coursework, tarot cards, and pendulum, their wrapping paper black and orange, taped ends jutting. The present on top is small, rectangular, Brian’s name scrawled across.

“The craft store was closed today,” Eric says, “and I only had wrapping paper from when I — from Halloween, a while ago.” He points at the top. “That one’s yours.”

He notes that stammer, and as he weighs the present in his hand — heavier than he expected —, he asks, “Why’d you need it for Halloween?”

“It was forever ago.”

He stays silent until Eric elaborates.

“You know how I’m, like, in love with Neil?”

Sometimes, Brian feels like he’s the only person who doesn’t know what that’s like. “Yeah.”

“After I first moved here and started hanging out with him and Wendy, before I knew Neil is… Neil, I decided I was gonna make him a mixtape for Halloween? Hopeless. Thank god Halloween was the closest holiday and not, like, Labor Day, ‘cause I think I would’ve used any of them as an excuse. Anyways.”

That’s the look of someone who doesn’t want to overstay a welcome. “You don’t have to avoid talking about that stuff,” Brian murmurs. “It’s not that this made me different. Or that anything is different, honestly. It was always here, with me, and it’s gonna have to be fine.”

Eric slowly nods, his throat bobbing. “Okay. Well, get changed so you can open your present and crash, dude. You want me to call your mom?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

When Brian goes to the bathroom to change, it takes many sore seconds to unbutton his pants, longer to kick them off. He dresses, unfurls the napkins from his nose, and doesn’t check how he looks, doesn’t care or want to know. His tee is looser around his collar than before. Perhaps his mother had been right about the lost weight.

He steps into the hall. Eric’s at the other end in pajama pants, the kitchen landline tugged across the room while he rambles, trying to get a word in. “No, he’s not — Mrs. Lackey — ”

“What’s she saying?” Brian mouths.

Eric covers the receiver. “She said she’s not hanging up until she talks to you.”

“God, come on…” She’ll know he’s lying, he couldn’t even lie to himself anymore. “Fine.” Brian takes the phone from Eric, clears his throat, and says, “Hey, mom.”

“Brian Kenan Lackey!” Loud. He inches the speaker from his ear.

“… Yeah?”

“I’ve been sat up waiting for you!”

Brian looks at Eric’s oven. It reads 9:45. “Sorry. I had a blackout — ”

Eric suddenly makes a cut motion with his hand. “I told her you had bad gingerbread.”

Of all the things that could appeal to her hypochondria. “ — and I’m just not feelin’ well. I’ll be back tomorrow for Christmas breakfast, I promise — ”

“Are you drunk?”

“What?”

“Your father told me you came home drunk on the night of your birthday, and I didn’t mention anything because I was just glad you had met Eric and made a friend.” Brian covers the speaker and turns from Eric, ears burning. “But if it’s often, especially when your sister came all this way for you to blow her off — ”

“I’m not drunk,” Brian rushes, running a hand down his face. Thank goodness his grandparents are half-deaf. He lowers his voice and continues, “I’m just tired, mom, and I don’t feel well, and I don’t see why it would even matter if I was or wasn’t sick. Maybe I just don’t wanna come home tonight.”

“Well, do you, Brian?”

Screw it all. “No. I don’t.” Static on the other line. “And if Deb feels a way she can say it to me. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Brian goes to set the phone in the wall, forgetting they’re in the hall, and it nearly slips through his fingers. He catches it by the cord.

“Brian? Brian Lackey?” his mother is saying. “What is the matter with you? Hello? You’ve never — ”

“Jesus.” He scurries to the kitchen to hang up, his mother shrill until mummed.

Eric’s covering his mouth when Brian looks back. “Did I totally blow it?”

“No, I should’ve asked you what you told her.” He rubs his face under his glasses. “I wanna lay down.”

They sit together while Brian opens his gift, gently peeling the corners back, habitual — his mother likes to reuse her wrapping paper. He shakes the box out from the open side.

A handheld tape recorder. Brian turns it in his hands, lips parting to ask why.

“I got it so you didn’t have to journal about your nightmares in the middle of the night,” Eric explains. Realization weathers his smile. “But I guess you can use it for recording lectures or something if you don’t see the point anymore. I have tons of tapes you can use, too.”

He tries not to sigh about his obsolete dreams, but he does, soft and meek. “Thank you. It means a lot that you wanted to help.”

“I want to help.”

“There’s nothing left to do.” Brian sets the box on Eric’s desk, then his glasses. “Your gift is at mine.” It’s a couple of tickets to Siouxsie and the Banshees’ current tour. Brian overheard a classmate talking about how her boyfriend wouldn’t go all the way to Denver for it, especially near Valentine’s, and he was able to buy them off her for less than new.

Now, he just has to make sure he didn’t irk his mother enough to have the Toyota taken. No way Eric’s Gremlin could putter to Denver.

“Is it… jewelry?”

“I mean it, no hints, it’s a good gift.”

Eric thinks hard, then lights up. “A tattoo gun?”

His brow wrinkles. “They just sell those?” There’s a gift for his birthday, at least.

He surveys the room for an inkling, thoughtful. “Is it a record?”

Too close. Brian huffs and lies down, head at the foot of the bed; he and Eric always sleep head-toe. It reminds him of when he’d go camping as a kid and be crammed with his sister, the bullfrogs’ croons a shimmering world. “Can I have a pillow? And that shirt?”

Eric tosses him both, flops onto the bed, and pulls the lamp string. “Goodnight, man.”

“Goodnight.”

Snow’s frosted over the window, and while he tries to sleep, Brian counts the headlights that vein through, watching them course the icy cracks like blood. Their coach’s voice replays in his head then, belt buckle at Brian’s eye level, the station wagon’s lights glimmering on the lake.

I sure liked you, Brian. I always hoped I’d see you again.

His skin warms, like he’s in that devil costume, pressed against another body. It’s coming back to him. Neil colored all the gray.

At the haunted house, there were older boys who bullied him, as usual, and that’s how he got lost: Fleeing. That’s all he ever remembered, just their jeers and the mud soaking his elbows. But when he follows the bleary memory up from where he’d fallen, he sees familiar faces that could be in a yearbook of his or Deborah's, and then: Baseball caps.

“There was another time,” Brian murmurs, soft enough that it won’t disturb Eric if he’s asleep.

He’s not. He’s up immediately, looking down at Brian. “Yeah?”

“On Halloween, a couple years later. I’m just now remembering… some of it. I think I’ve still blocked most of it out, but I remember some of the older Little League kids being there. And I guess he was with them.” They live in such a small area. Brian doesn’t know how he wouldn’t have been caught if he’d stayed longer than a couple years. “I don’t know where he is now. Neil doesn’t either. He could be dead. He could be doing fine.”

“I mean, are you thinking of maybe doing something about it? Telling the cops? Though I’m not sure they’d help.”

Brian shakes his head. The last thing he needs is his mother learning about it through her job. “Not if he’s near here.”

“He probably isn’t. Do you remember his name?”

“God.” The back of the team’s photograph had read Coach J. Heider. He closes his eyes, reaches into that sopping, milky blue for a first name, but returns with nothing. “Only his surname. Which might be good enough. I just — I don’t know if I could live with myself knowing he was continuing to do the same. At the same time, I don’t want to go near it.”

“Yeah.” Eric sighs, fidgeting with his earring. “You could leave an anonymous tip if you knew where he is, his name. Then you wouldn’t have to get close. I mean, Brian, you don’t have to do anything at all, this isn’t your responsibility.”

Not his fault, not Neil’s fault, yet they bear the consequences. Suddenly, for the first time since seeing his father, hot, syrupy hatred bubbles in Brian’s chest. His hands shake. “Maybe. I feel so angry when I think about it, and Neil said that, even then, there were others aside from me. Where are they now? Do they remember, were they there with me that Halloween? Was he their coach? I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know.” He never thought he’d say that. “But I can’t let him walk around.”

Eric’s eyes get shiny. “I don’t know what to say.” He looks down. “I’m just so sorry, Brian. You’re my best friend, and I love you. I’m sorry.”

No one’s ever called him that. His quivering stutters, lessens. “What?”

He sniffs. “What?”

“I’m your best friend?”

“I mean… yeah, man. You’re the best friend.” Fingertips feathery, he brushes the hair from Brian’s brows, then warmly smiles. “You have an eyelash under your eye.”

“Really?” Brian feels until it sticks to his pinky, only visible under the window’s light, a muddy blond. “One time, my mom helped me blow a wish on one in front of my dad, and he made me tell him what I wished for. Even though I really wanted it to come true.” He pinches the lash between his fingers. “I wished for another dad. I told him I wished for a puppy.”

Eric rolls his eyes. “And what did dad of the year say to that?”

“He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was disappointed. Never got a puppy.”

Brian thinks about where he can go, what he really, truly wants, and he doesn’t know. All he does know is that he can’t lose his only friend, too. He glances at him and wishes, I wish for Eric to stay with me through this. Feeling like a kid, Brian blows the lash away, and it wisps from the window light.

“Was it a good one?”

“Yeah.” He turns onto Eric’s shirt and gazes in the night. Any of the passing headlights could be their coach’s, or, if this was a dream: An earthbound UFO from somewhere better.

Brian has to be gone by six, when Eric’s grandma wakes, but they drive around until ten, looking at Christmas lights, avoiding Brian’s imminent scolding. While Brian walks up to his door, steps heavier than when he left, Eric waits in the car for his present.

He doesn’t get to twist his key before his mother is in front of him. She must have heard the engine purring. An overwashed yellow nightgown pools at her slippers, and pink curlers spring from her head. She appraises Brian like he’s in a suspect line, frown lines deep as ravines, but they become a tight smile when she notices Eric is still parked. She beckons him.

Eric politely gestures the invitation away until he can’t. His breath fogs the air as leaves the car and approaches. “Merry Christmas.” He’s apprehensive, glancing sidelong at Brian. He can’t imagine what his mother said to him on the phone.

His mother gives him a swift look over. “You two must have had a fun night.”

Brian shrugs. “I was gonna give Eric his gift now.”

Her smile stiffens. “Fine.” She sidesteps the door, and the scent of syrup and powdered sugar wafts from inside. “You may as well come in, have some breakfast leftovers if you like. I made French toast.”

“We already had breakfast.”

They went to a diner Eric likes called Maisie's. He had waffles while Brian chewed his cheek until it was tender, pushing the eggs he had ordered around his plate, their yolks wept and lukewarm. Oddly, that’s all he really remembers from this morning. It flew like wind behind his ears.

She sighs. “French toast is your favorite, Brian. I make it every year.” It’s a fight picked disguised as concern. “Why would you spoil your breakfast?”

He’ll go down the bullet points. “I dunno. Sorry. I’m going to my room with Eric for a second.”

His mother’s lips part, but Brian nods Eric upstairs before they’re subject to whatever she’s going to say.

“It won’t be long,” Eric calls after them.

A holly berry garland drips off the staircase’s railing, and silky white bows frill along its length, their ribbons hanging. On the opposite wall, photographs of Brian, Deborah, and his mother hang in golden frames, some of them folded to obscure his father. As if guarding the way, a nutcracker sits in the corner. His mother decorates like they have guests often. There’s Eric, Brian supposes, but he’s hardly a guest anymore.

In the hall, Deborah’s bedroom door is splayed, propped by a black kitten heel. She’s doing coursework at her desk, visible through the doorway, and Brian hopes that’s distraction enough, but she notices them, perking instantly. She must have been waiting. “Where were you last night?” Deborah asks, standing but her eyes fall on Eric before Brian can respond. As if getting good news, she beams. “Is this your friend?”

Eric gives an awkward wave. “I’m Eric.”

“Deborah, Brian’s sister.” Something about his hand piques her attention. “Is that nail polish?”

Eric answers, “Yeah?” Like she’s insinuating something.

“My friends at Berkeley all wear dark colors like that, too! Y’know, I think it looks kinda cool, but Mom thinks — ”

In one breath, Brian interrupts, “He’s just stopping by for his Christmas present. He kinda has places to be, so…”

Deborah deflates. “Oh. Okay.” Cloying worry dampens her smile. “You’ve been acting so weird, Brian, we just wanna know that…”

Her voice fades. He shouldn’t have come home so soon. Pressure builds, ready to burst in a blackout or nosebleed, and he has to consciously breathe in, out. When he checks if he’s bleeding, his periphery moves.

Downstairs, his mother is eavesdropping. She doesn’t say anything, nor does he. Numb blood gobs down his face. It trickles wispy as their coach’s mustache. His heartbeat ramps, thud thud thud. She takes a step, and as if pushed by it, Brian flees to his room, footfalls toppling the nutcracker.

He knows it’s juvenile. He can’t feel anything but. His solar system sits untouched in the corner, crowning the box of his old decorations. That summer day wasn’t half the meteor crash Brian thought. He grips the sun and slams it all down, watching them roll like doll heads. His blood drips onto Jupiter’s eye.

A soupy, faraway echo, his mother calls his name. Their coach shouted the same when Brian collapsed. The voices clash.

Eric rushes after him. “Brian — ”

“Just come in here,” he says. “Close the door.” Eric tries when he does, and they slam it louder than meant. Brian startles away. “God, I’m sorry, they just — they’re too much sometimes.”

To say that to Eric, who’s without his parents — it’s ridiculous, he knows. Sometimes he just wonders who he’d be if he weren’t so smothered. The rain that day would’ve come regardless; nothing could keep him dry. But if he had more resolve then, maybe he would have asked one of the other moms for a ride home. Maybe he would have ran. Maybe they would have come to his games in the first place.

Brian grabs a handful of tissues from his nightstand, holding them to his nose. “Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Eric meanders at the door. “Your mom is saying something to your sister.”

He huffs. Blood spurts, gooping between his knuckles. “I don’t care. Let me — let me stop the blood.” But when he tries to steady his breaths, his chest tightens like a fist made, his vision freckling until it blanks. He collapses on the foot of his bed, head in his hands.

Eric sits beside him. It takes a few minutes to stop bleeding, and there’s relief until he realizes: It’ll return. He doesn’t know when it’ll come. Can’t control it. Brian stares at his floor, napkins sticking from his face like shrapnel.

“I don’t want to do this forever,” Brian says. “I won’t.” He stands on wobbling feet and walks to his desk, tearing the first drawer out and pawing past his spare tissues, the team’s photograph, his dream journal, pitiful thing, until his fingers brush the tickets. “I didn’t wrap it or anything ‘cause it’s small.” Trembling, he holds them out.

Eric squints and leans forward, scanning the ticket, and his jaw drops farther than Brian’s ever seen. “This isn’t funny.”

Unable to muster a smile, he only says, “Merry Christmas.”

“You’re kidding!” Eric leaps to embrace him, but after a few seconds, he tenses and pulls away to reread them. “I don’t think my car can get to Denver.”

“Well, let’s hope I still have mine.”

“You’ve already planned it all out?”

He nods. “She called a hotel for us and everything.”

“Oh my god, dude. I wanna ask who you blackmailed for these, but I don’t care.”

Brian sets them on his desk, a reminder of something good to come. “I’m excited.”

“My suicide ideation is, like, entirely cured.” They laugh, somewhat stifled, and the air quiets. Eric looks around like he hasn’t seen his room before. All of Brian’s band posters are from him. “You want help cleaning this up?”

He shakes his head.

“And you wanna deal with your mom by yourself?”

“Not like it’s my dad.” He doesn’t have to wonder how his father would react to this. He all but told him on his birthday. How many ways are there to skin a turtle? How many reasons are there for wetting the bed? “I’ll be fine.”

“I might steal that as a mantra — at least I don’t have to deal with Mr. Lackey.”

They’re stalling. Brian sighs, eyes dully flicking to the bloody tissues in his floor. He picks them up and tosses them in the trash. “Want me to walk you out?”

Eric nods. Brian accompanies him to the car, and he expects his mother to follow with some trill goodbye bade, but she doesn’t, nor does Deborah. They must be convening. The thought makes Brian shudder with the breeze, the hair on his neck rising.

He lingers outside, watching the Gremlin purr away. He wonders what Neil is doing right now, if Eric is on his way to see him. Brian would have better luck severing a limb than forgetting those icebox lips again.

Not for the first time, Brian quells that memory’s quease with, It doesn’t matter. It happened.

He walks back inside, and still, his mother isn’t there. She never passes up an opportunity to hound him, so despite the annoyance of it all, Brian can’t help but tread lighter, speak softer. “Mom?” Nothing. He drifts toward the kitchen, which is empty apart from the lingering breakfast smell, then the backyard, which is without any footprints but his own. He sighs, watching it swell through the air like when Eric smokes. The sky is cloudless, cold. Unblighted by whatever happens below.

Brian only sees her when he’s about to go back to his room. She leaves Deborah’s with watery eyes, a curler dangling from her hair. She can’t stay mad for long, either. “Do you still want to open presents with your sister?”

His mouth is dry, so dry he has to swallow before he speaks. “What’s the matter?”

“You don’t want to talk about it, Brian, that much is obvious. I’ll just save my breath, because this” — she gestures vaguely around — “is making me a nervous wreck. Which I can’t make you care about. I don’t know how to get you to open up to me, so — ”

“What am I doing right now?”

Her hands fall. “Fine. Okay. Tell Deb to come down when you do.” When she leaves, it’s like she’s retreating.

Exasperation warms Brian’s cheeks. He returns to his room and punts Mercury against his bedpost, watching it ricochet into Mars like a cue ball. He’ll clean this later, resell it. He needs gas money for the concert and to pay his mother back for the hotel. He drags his feet, tosses his jacket somewhere, then his beaten shoes, and crawls into bed.

On his ceiling are glow-in-the-dark stars as old as that summer. When he takes off his glasses, they blur into dots. Speckly, sparkly things.

Brian rolls onto his side and noiselessly cries.

NEIL MCCORMICK

Neil dodges Wendy’s calls until Christmas, midday.

He’s been in bed since opening presents. His mom got him a few movies, and his VCR’s pulled into the floor so he doesn’t have to leave bed for it, or even use two hands. He’s great with one. The Silence of the Lambs plays, nostalgic; he saw it with Wendy last Valentine’s.

Clarice is meeting Hannibal for the first time, boring those carnivorous eyes into hers, when his mom opens his door, landline in her hand. She covers the receiver. “She’s called at least four times. Talk to her for a minute.”

“My face is killing me,” Neil moans, trying to melt into his mattress. He’s not lying. His ass aches, too. More marks darkened overnight, ones his mom can’t see. Like rain-heavy storms, bruises fester on his hips, and where the guy had thrusted into his bony ass, there are two huge spots that pang when he sits. He’s been laying on his stomach, hugging his pillow like a sniveling kid to a teddy. Like Brian.

Her eyes are pleading. “I hate listening to her cry.”

That was all she had to say, and she knows it. Neil rises as if reanimated, willing the hurt not to flare, but it does, jabbing his guts, thighs, head. “You shouldn’t have told her what happened.” He makes a gimme motion for the phone, having to slouch at the foot of his bed to reach it. His shirt, one he had left in Hutchinson, slumps down his collarbones. He never wants to smell New York again.

“He’s here now.” His mom hands it over.

It hasn’t reached his ear before Wendy whispers, “Can your mom hear me?” She’s raspy, weepy. Trying not to be.

Neil motions her away, and when she’s gone, he mutters, “Nuh uh. What’s up?”

“What’s up…” He thinks she laughs, but it’s a cry. “Whatever. You have to hate me.”

He pulls his comforter around himself. “What?”

“I want you to tell me what happened.”

If she were here, she’d be gripping his chin. “I got mugged on my way to the airport, my mom already told you.”

“I’m not paying a quarter a minute to hear you lie to me.”

“Think what you want.” He rubs his jaw, feeling where its bruise bulges. His lip is still busted, his words are still slurring.

The longer Wendy’s quiet, the louder New York becomes from the other line, cars and foot traffic tugging Neil back until she whimpers, “What the fuck. Fuck, Neil, you have to be kidding me.”

Neil says nothing.

“I got you a job, so I thought… why did you go and… Jesus, Neil…”

He doesn’t know either. “Wendy, it’s fuckin’ Christmas. Don’t waste it on this.” She keeps crying, and he pinches his brows. Thank god she’s not here to hold him. He thinks he’d collapse on her. “Look, when you get back to the apartment from wherever you are, there’s a gift under my pillow for you.” A Blondie CD he snatched from a trick’s place. It’s got Debbie Harry’s signature on it. Leave it to the burliest fags to have effeminate taste. “I didn’t wrap it. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“How’d you get it?”

He doesn’t answer.

She tearily scoffs, “Neil, I just want you to be safe. If you don’t get sick, you’re gonna get killed. Or you’ll have to live with more and worse.” She pauses for a shuddering inhale, then whispers, “I couldn’t stand that.”

“I’m fine.” It hurts to imagine the makeup running down her face. “Look, I gotta go.” He looks around his room for a lie, landing on one of Eric’s lost earrings. “I’ve blown Eric off all day. Merry Christmas.” It’s surreal as telling Brian the same, as if Neil’s done anything jolly.

A knock, something frustrated against the payphone wall. “Should I bother with calling again?”

“Um, sure.” The speaker goes echoey, but for some reason, Neil can’t let her go without leaning forward: “Hey, hey, you there?”

Frenzy for quarters. “I thought you had to go.”

“I am, don’t put another in, I just — you’re my girl. Wanted you to remember that.”

She softens. “I know. I’ll call you later.”

The call ends, and Neil finds his sore footing to put the landline up. He passes the bathroom, where his mom is leaned over the sink, fiddling with her new curling iron. It’s the latest guy’s gift. Neil stopped caring about their names before he got leg hair.

His mom glances at him. “She okay?”

“She was just worried. It’s fine.” Like always, she doesn’t question it. She only nods and dives back into her reflection. Neil takes the opportunity to eat the last piece of apple pie. Standing feels better than sitting, and his mom prefers peach anyway. A snowplow is clearing their street, and he watches it work while he eats with his hands, picking the graham cracker crust, wondering what Brian is doing. He knows nothing about him yet more than anyone. Maybe he’s at church. Maybe he doesn’t believe in God.

As a kid, God’s existence made sense to Neil. What else could Coach be? How else could Neil be an angel? He never was. He knows that now.

When he’s finished, most of the slush has been piled into mounds the color of cookies and cream, white-cold sun rippling down their summits, bleaching the streaks of dirt pure. Eric was gonna pick him up later, but Neil doesn’t know if he still is. He guesses he’ll call if he wants to.

He limps back to his room, sidestepping his suitcase’s open maw to crawl in bed and grab painkillers from his nightstand. They’re his mom’s, ones from when she sprained her ankle a couple years back. He takes three, one for the pain, another to sleep well, and finally, one just because.

He lies on his stomach, embracing his drool-stained pillow. The movie’s been going since he left. It’s like Wendy’s still petting his hair, the both of them landlocked, that one-way bus not even a thought.

Coach is showering with him. Even though him having Neil shower alone is typical — You’re sweaty from the game, he reasons —, they hardly get to do this together. It’s incentive for him to play well, and he did, batting that ball into the blistering sun, homerun smile hurting his cheeks. He tries not to smile into his sunblock, because it crinkles, but he can’t help it when he sees Coach happy. It’s contagious, makes his heartbeat go candied honey sweet.

He’s behind Neil now, wetted naval hair and flaccid groin tickling his neck. His shower is better than the one at home, its porcelain unyellowed white. Its head even detaches, and with it, he sprays Neil all over, soaking him warm, safe. “You wash your hair today?” he asks.

He shakes his head. His mom has to wait until payday for shampoo, so she’s been mixing their last dregs with water. It doesn’t even lather anymore. “Can you do it?”

“Of course, big guy.” Coach shelves the shower head and grabs something from the tub’s rim: A shampoo bottle gold as a halo. Its pink text reads, NO MORE TEARS. “Here we go.”

THWACK!

Coach bangs the bottle on his temple. Neil topples toward him like he’ll be caught, but he isn’t — the only thing that comes is that beating hand, its hollow thwups a metronome. Colors bloom in his eyelids, crimson supernovas. How could he be bleeding in this impossible white, under Coach’s love?

The next bash hits his nose so hard blood bursts down his throat, bubbling out of his mouth when he tries to shout, reddening the water.

Coach murmurs, “There’s nothing wrong with loving somebody like this.”

Neil withstands one more hit before the stars blind him, and his head lolls. All he can do is shield his face with a hand.

There’s a tense pause from Coach, like when he decides who to put in the game. Always Neil. He grabs under his arms and wrestles his slippery body upright for what seems like too long, until he realizes his legs have become an adult’s, his dick has hair.

Unloving as Brighton Beach’s pavement, Coach stares into him. Something is about to snap. A lock is about to be flipped.

“Please stop,” Neil chokes.

He tosses him like a burnt match.

Neil winces before the impact, but porcelain doesn’t slam against him — nothing does. He barrels through sudden, whole blue, grasping for something solid in its midst, but only air whips past his pruney fingers, and the bathroom light gets farther, a pinhole he no longer fits. He doesn’t think moths are as desperate as he is.

The blue doesn’t dull when he wakes. Neil’s drowning until he rolls over, onto his back. “Fuck,” he groans, smoothing a hand across his forehead. The pills still weigh him down, more claustrophobic than cozy. He looks around and sees that his room is the same apart from a blue tinge. Nothing swallowed him whole. The VHS tape is over. His TV’s on its blue screen. “Fuck.” Soft relief.

He buries his face in his pillow, trying to catch any drowsiness left, but the high’s ruined. He might as well walk around. Readjust his insides. He blindly pats his nightstand for his remote, turns off the TV, and hobbles out.

His mom’s voice lilts down the hall, though the landline is docked. Whatever company they have is either Eric or her monster of the week. Neil doesn’t bother fixing his hair for either, dawdling at the hall’s lip to eavesdrop.

From his mom, he catches: “... always like that.”

Eric’s sigh. Neil would relax if they hadn’t fought last night. You don’t know shit, Neil had said. In just two days, he’s felt so much regret it’s tumefied in his chest like cancer.

“Have you tried asking him more about it?” Eric says.

“Again, y’know how he is... he won’t answer questions that aren’t about dinner.” She’s slurring, drunk or tired or both.

“Well.” A beat. “Maybe I can ask.”

Neil wants to shock them. He steps into the living room, hands easing into his sweats’ pockets. “Ask me what?”

Eric’s painting his nails. Neil’s appearance makes his delicate brushstroke jerk, dripping black down his middle finger like an oil spill. “Jesus, McCormick.”

His mom doesn’t startle. A bottle of wine cuddles her hip, and her French-tipped toes are propped on the coffee table to dry. “You’re nosier than the neighbors.” His mom reaches for something too far to grab. “Honey, will you grab Eric the nail polish remover?”

The table is deranged by a half-devoured cookie platter, nail files, Q-tips, a rainbow of bottles, and shit Neil can’t even name. He eventually spots the rubbing alcohol, a clear bottle stuffed with a rag like a Molotov. Neil dribbles a bit. “Scoot.”

His mom doesn’t, in her own world, eyelids fluttering, so Eric picks up the slack, leaving a crescent of the couch for Neil. He sits so gravity’s easier on his insides, a knee bent in Eric’s lap. “What were you guys talking about?” Neil takes his hand and starts scrubbing. He’s reminded of Brian’s bloodstained face. He wishes he would stop being reminded.

“You.” Eric’s squinting like he’s trying to sus out whether he’s the real Neil or a clone. “We were just wondering what you lost when you got mugged.”

“My wallet. Not like I had much else.” Now Neil has to get a new one.

His mom hums, content with that answer. She’s so easy.

Eric’s expression doesn’t change. His gaze lingers on his hands, roving like Neil’s accustomed to. “Except a suitcase.”

So this wasn’t Neil’s best lie. “Nothin’ in there but clothes.” He peeks over Eric’s shoulder at his mom, and fortunately, her eyes are closed, mascara smudged down her waterline. Shut up, Neil mouths. He appraises Eric’s hand and, seeing that its clean, lets it fall. “Mom?”

“I’m up…” She has about a minute, if that.

“I think me and Eric are gonna go to bed.”

Inaudible.

Neil grabs her wine bottle and stands, nodding toward his room. “I have some pot left in my grinder. And a gift for you.” The piercing gun he’s always gone on about. Even with New York’s johns paying premium, a tattoo gun with its ink overshot his and Wendy’s budget, so this will do.

“Same here. I dunno if you’d want it, though, considering I don’t know a fucking thing, or whatever you said.”

Eric’s cadence isn’t entirely biting, but still, Neil rolls his eyes and takes a swig of wine. It’s disgusting, but he’s stopped expecting stellar liquor from his mom. “I was tired.”

“That works for cranky babies and grandpas with Alzheimers.”

“Do you want it or not?”

As if searching for his resolve, Eric sighs and contemplates. “Fine. Let me grab yours, it’s in my car.”

While he’s retrieving it, Neil treks back to his room and nudges his VCR to his TV stand, then flicks the bloody Band-Aids on his desk into the trash. He makes sure there isn’t anything of Coach’s out. There’s not; he remembers that he piled all of it into a locked drawer before he left for New York. All that remains in the open are his two trophies from that summer.

He hasn’t accomplished anything like most RBIs since ‘81.

Neil rereads the plaque three times before he hears footsteps, sets the wine down, and crouches at his suitcase, pawing through his luggage for the gift. To avoid airport security’s suspicion, Wendy put it into a plain cardboard box, then wrapped that. Fat, merry Santas dot the paper.

Eric enters with his hands behind his back. His brows raise at the box. “Huh.”

“From me and Wendy.”

“I was wondering why it was wrapped.” Eric reveals what he’s holding: A plastic bag filled with what seems like clumped clothes. “You may have outdone me this year.”

They trade. Neil has to sit down to properly sift through the contents. The first thing he pulls out is a dark cobalt sweater that reminds him of when he first started tricking. He wore one like this when he nearly got his cock gnawed off. “Are these from the thrift?”

He’s past the wrapping paper, trying to scratch the cardboard’s tape under his nail. “I wasn’t gonna let you miss out while you were gone.”

Neil inspects more of the clothes before he hums his appreciation — he’d wear all of this. “Thanks. These are actually nice.”

“You’re, like, the president of being backhanded.”

“I’m used to what my mom gets.” Airy colors, stuff that would’ve fit him four years ago.

Eric gives up picking and rips a ring through like a boxcutter. “What is this, blood money…?” His lips part when he sees inside, and he blinks like it’s a trick of the light. “Woah.”

Neil simpers, forgetting his split lip, that it’ll hurt. “Do I get a free eyebrow stud?”

“Didn’t the last time you try get infected?”

“Well, yeah, Chris did that one. We can try the other side.” When he touches his left brow, he feels the pinprick scar. Eric’s a better piercer. He did Neil’s ear with a sewing needle and handful of ice back in senior year. It’s mangled now; Brighton’s john had torn it out.

He recalls that too late.

“I’m doing your ear first. Maybe near the top?” He sits down and rifles through the kit’s jewelry — silver barbells, studs, and rings. “Can I try it now — ?” He looks up. “Holy fucking shit, your ear.”

He covers it and turns away. “The other side.”

Eric’s looking at him like he’s a dog with something he shouldn’t have, something that needs spat out. “You never told me what happened.”

“You don’t have to think too hard.” He stands, putting space between them, and walks over to his nightstand to grind some weed buds. His hand on it, twisting, metal — a rusty shower knob, cold water drizzling down his back. He closes his eyes as if he’s there all over again, breathes it away like a sneeze. “Do you see my bowl anywhere?”

No response. He looks back. Eric’s head is in his hands.

“I’m fine,” Neil says. “Seriously, though, I dunno where my bowl is.”

“I feel sick.”

He rummages through his nightstand’s clutter for a glint of red, but it must have fallen from where he sat it last. Insides aching, he crouches and pats under his bed. “Mom. It’s okay.”

“Fuck you,” Eric murmurs, so soft he nearly doesn’t hear. “Fuck you.”

Neil lets his hands fall. “Another fight?”

“Did he — ?”

“The whole fuckin’ shebang, Preston, do you need all the details?”

“No. No.” Eric swallows. Neil hopes he isn’t about to cry — he’s spent all his comfort. “I just don’t know what to do — ”

He interrupts, “You don’t need to do anything but help me find my bowl.”

Well, he doesn’t help. He just keeps that same mortified look. “Are you gonna keep hustling?”

Neil shrugs, honest, and feels under his bed again. It depends on how long he stays in Hutchinson’s tarpit. He was supposed to fly back before the New Year, but tricking here is easier, if as boring as reruns, and he’s missed the smell of beer breath, the feel of blue jeans. He misses his mom. The Impala. Speeding. Rudy’s. Weightlessness.

He misses what he was before Brian showed him.

“Are you joking?”

“No?” His fingertip brushes something hard, small. He already knows it’s his bowl’s shattered piece before he sees it. Of course. He drags a hand over his face and flops onto the bed, muttering, “I dropped my bowl, d’you wanna go out for one tomorrow?” He has to get a switchblade, too, if he’s gonna trick.

“Um. Sure. When?”

“I dunno.”

“You’re mumbling.”

He raises his voice. “I don’t know. Hand me the wine.”

“Yes, McCormick sir, of course, McCormick sir…” Eric grabs its neck and holds it out, but when Neil reaches, he pulls back, brow raised. “What do you say?”

He’s missed Eric, too. A toothy grin catches his lip as he takes the bottle. “Fuck you.”

While he drinks, Eric’s uneasy — he can tell, sees it in his shoulders —, and it takes a few seconds for him to move closer, gazing down. “I don’t know why you hate yourself.”

That’s funny. Why can’t he laugh? “I’m not interested in wherever this is going.”

Slowly, Eric nods, tongue in his cheek. There’s a moment of quiet, like he’s wondering whether to cross a line. “It doesn’t have to be a secret anymore,” is what he finally murmurs. “Your coach.”

The wine’s aftertaste goes bitter. It’s not his secret anymore. “Yeah,” Neil lamely says. Nurses the bottle. Stares at his ceiling, unable to look at Eric and remember how disgusting all of this is. “I know it sounds fucked-up.”

“… What could be more fucked-up?”

“You can save the sympathy for Brian, I’m not the one who needs it. I know Coach was a sleaze, he liked fucking little boys, whatever, I’m not stupid.” Neil blurs his eyes at the ceiling like he always does before bed, and it almost looks like a timeless summer sky. “But…”

A shush on his lips. Angel.

“You don’t know how he looked at me.”

Coach is still gorgeous. Wherever he is, dead or dilapidated behind bars — that doesn’t matter. Neil will never see him again, and he’s gorgeous.

“No. I don’t.” He’s never pretended to understand Neil. He thinks that’s part of why Eric was initially drawn to him. “But I do know you were… god, eight? The same as Brian?”

That’s about all they had in common, that and fists made. “I was weird before I met Coach,” Neil blurts. “I wanted sex. I loved sex.” Playgirls, masturbating before school, blushing at his mom’s boyfriends. Neil rises, suddenly woozy, and sets the wine on his nightstand. “It wasn’t how you’re imagining.”

When he finally looks at Eric, Eric’s not looking at him. He’s looking across the room at his trophies. They’re reflected on them. “I don’t know if it was how you’re imagining, either.”

Neil squints. He heard that right. “Then tell me about it.”

He shakes his head. “Whatever, Neil, nevermind.”

The alcohol is loosening him up. He’s been told he has his mom’s mouth, and with it, he drawls, “Tell me all about it — ”

“Okay, fine, let’s say it’s all fine and he wasn’t treasurer of NAMBLA — ”

“Shut up.” His voice cracks young and petulant, unlike himself.

“ — and you’re fine and Brian is fine.” Eric throws his hands up, eyes made wider by smudged mascara. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That all of this is fine? That Brian was as deserving as you?”

“Of course not,” Neil hisses, shoving Eric’s chest. “And be fucking quiet, ‘cause Mom’s — ”

He pushes him back. Neil blinks; he never anticipated that. And before he can throw a hook, Eric shocks him again, asks, “Then why do you think you’re special?”

“What?”

As if it’s an obvious question: “If Brian wasn’t deserving, why were you?”

“... Because.” Neil’s voice breaks. Eric needs to go, or he does. This is a locked room, a reality he would always have to face. He was the best, Coach told him so, he told him so. He made him feel special. But that’s not being special, is it? “I’m taking a piss.”

Eric reaches for him, rings glinting in the window’s silvery moonlight. “Neil, I’m sorry — “

He clambers to the bathroom, slams the door, and bows over the sink, fingers gripping so hard his nails bend. “This is so fucked-up… it’s all fucked-up…” If acknowledging that could change it, that summer wouldn’t even be dreamt anymore. Neil grabs his toothbrush, dollops toothpaste, and furiously scrubs the wine taste out of his mouth, raking the bristles across his tongue until spit slides down his throat. He gags and spits his mouthful. It makes a spiderweb splatter. And he realizes he does have to piss.

When Neil leaves, Eric is standing at the end of the hall. “You didn’t wash your hands?”

“Wanna smell?” He waggles his fingers.

“Ew, asshole.” Fidgeting with his sleeve, he glances away. “I’m sorry about what I said.”

Neil shrugs, because no truth changes the love, though that word for it feels wrong now. He’s not sure of anything. “You’re not wrong.”

“Have you ever said that before?”

Has anything like this winter happened to him before? A deconstruction? Only when Coach left, and that was for the worse. He doesn’t yet know how this will pan. “I’m going to bed. Do you wanna stay the night?”

“Are you still pissed at me?”

Neil shrugs again.

A tentative smile tugs his lips. “Then I guess so.”

Neil takes his mom’s bed. He’d ordinarily sleep with Eric, but he doesn’t want to have a nightmare and wake up flailing, or worse, seek touch in his sleep. Her bedroom is the same size as Neil’s, her queen bed in the corner, right where he used to hide under it and jack off to her Playgirls. Woven violets decorate her bedspread, and the pillow on top of her stack is satin. She said something about it being good for her hair.

He furls in her blanket and burrows into the pillow like a weary cicada shed of skin, smelling her strawberry shampoo, imagining how she’d hold him if he told her the truth about New York. Just as he had there, he prayerfully murmurs, “Mom.”

Days later, a new switchblade in his shoe, Neil prowls Carey Park, the single blip in its serenity. The morning’s frost nips each blade of grass. It crunches under his soles as he saunters around, trying to look desirable — something he’s never had to try before. He doesn’t know why anyone would want him now; his face is mostly healed, but every time he looks in the mirror, he sees age that wasn’t there before, some kind of scarred splotch on his spirit. A washed-up celebrity clinging to glory.

He wears a tee that Eric got for him, The Cure’s Disintegration its graphic, a black zip-up, and baggy, sun-washed blue jeans that would pool off his hips if not for his belt. Its buckle is a rattlesnake ready to devour, maw open, forked tongue salivating. He’s about smoke a cig on the swings when someone finally pulls around in a black Ford truck, its chrome rims reflecting the hiemal grays all around. Neil squints at the driver. He’s had a couple regulars with this model, but the rims are unfamiliar.

When the john rolls his window down, Neil simpers. It’s a guy — his name escapes him now, he’ll call him Rims — that he’s seen a few times. He’s married like most of Neil’s men, but his ring isn’t on when he beckons him forward.

“I haven’t seen you in a while, Neil,” Rims calls.

“I haven’t been around.” He leans into his window and summons a smirk. The guy’s handsome, beefy, clad in denim. His hairy shoulders flex when Neil fucks him from the back, and that memory makes the pulse in his dick stutter for the first time in a week. “No New Year’s plans?”

Rims isn’t listening. He’s ogling him. “Get in, you must be cold.”

The truck’s interior is nice, all dark, genuine leather. A pink air freshener is hooked in one of the fans, filtering raspberry-smell into the car alongside his musty cologne, and a twangy song plays low. “Not a lot of business out,” Neil breaks the silence.

“We can’t stay here,” he says quickly. “The cops have been around a lot more lately. Going undercover. Lots of arrests.” He spits tobacco into a diet coke bottle, sets it back down. “I’ll pay for the room.”

Neil thinks you’d have to be stupid to fall for someone undercover on either side of the exchange, but he pretends to heed his words, humming lightly. He presses his temple to the window, watching Hutchinson whirl past. He’s been to the motel so much he could fall asleep and sense when they got there, and he’s about to before Rims speaks again.

“What happened to your tooth, kid?”

He should start coming up with a funnier story. “I moved to New York. Got mugged. I’m only back for the holidays.”

“That’s a shame.” After glancing at his rearview, he edges a hand up Neil’s thigh, thumbing his belt. The metal brushes his crotch where he presses. It makes it look like the snake’s springing from a coil. “Hopefully this is still in one piece.”

Neil barks a laugh, not faux like usual. The idea of a split dick is so absurd — though he’s seen it in a few of Eric’s movies —, yet almost exactly what the afterward felt like in his ass. “Yeah, I don’t think he wanted that.”

They get to the motel with nothing more than that feel copped; Neil would charge for anything else. The check-in is so routine that, from the truck, he can tell when Rims is done at the front desk, and Neil strides after him, the salted pavement crushing under his sneakers. The slush has melted almost entirely. “Did you get an hour?”

He nods. Their room is far down the line, second to last. Neil wonders what the occasion for all the taken rooms is, then remembers: Holidays. Families. He opens the door for Neil. This room is one he’s seen only a few times. It has a blue bedspread and unglued tiles in the bathroom. “After you.”

They disrobe. The novelty of Neil’s young flesh wears off after a couple tricks, so his regulars get to the point like him. He prefers that. “Lay on the bed,” Neil grumbles, tossing his tee aside, but he keeps his pants on, huffing softly at the friction on his crotch as he adjusts his waistband.

Rims obeys, propping his soft, supple ass at the foot of the bed. It’s milkier than the rest of his body, covered in dark, downy fuzz. He’s utterly pregnable. It feels great. It feels like before. A travel-sized bottle of lube sits in the sheets beside him, probably from his jacket. Neil slathers his right hand in it and begins to finger him.

Coach only did this with him a few times, and they never fully fucked — with Neil being the catcher, anyways. I don’t want to hurt you, he would say, but he still pushed Neil to his limits. For tender kisses, ice cream, a warm pat on the back: More practice than any of his teammates, on any day the sun shone, until he was dizzy. And for a five dollar bill: Two big fingers crowded to the knuckles in him.

Neil’s pretty sure Coach would have fucked him if he would have been able to hide it. That would have made him woozily romantic once, but now, it makes his dick droop. “You like this?” he breathes, petting Rims’ prostate.

He moans, shoulders blushing below his sweat.

“Yeah, you like this…” Neil closes his eyes and humps the back of his thigh, trying to revive his dick. He invokes the usual supercut, Coach’s face splicing with Playgirl models and the stars of his favorite pornos, Frankensteined. Eventually, he feels hard enough to fuck, and he pulls his fingers out with a squelch. “Loose?”

“Come on.” He wriggles toward him.

Neil hasn’t fucked without a condom since Zeke, aside from Brighton. He’s never been sure about what he wants, but he’s always certain of what he doesn’t. Zeke’s condition is one of those things. He grabs his wallet, unravels his stringed condoms like some lewd magician, and bites the first patch open, then with deft experience, he swiftly undoes his buckle. He imagines a hiss from the snake’s mouth as he separates its jaws, making way for his dick. He rolls the condom on and lubes it. To this day, every single time, he still thinks: Here we go. He plumbs his cockhead in. The initial tight always makes him groan. “Good?”

His expression purses. “Condom?”

The switchblade bolstering him, he mocks his cadence, drawling, “Problem?”

Neil fucks him into whimpers, until that burliness puddles to something pathetic. Rims gets close quick, probably pent-up. When he’s about to shoot his load, he always buries his nails into his palms instead of the sheets. “Missed me?” Neil laughs, raking his nails down his ass. Just for the fun of it.

More desire than man, he grunts, “Call me your slut.”

Where it hadn’t before, that word catches in his throat like a swallowed fly. “Slut,” he manages. He tries to float to Coach’s Fruit Loop haven, where he always goes when the tricks get weird, but like that pupil of light in his dream, it's unreachable. Unreal. All he can see is his blood swirling down the drain. “Slut.”

Rims cums. Neil keeps fucking him, chasing his own end, but his dick is softening again. He’s never felt like this before, like he can’t get horny. He halts his hips into his ass and feigns a pinched expression, choking a moan. Thank Christ for the condom, or else he’d have to spit on his back, and his mouth is dry.

They clean up. Rims gives him a fifty and a five dollar tip. “Get your tooth fixed.”

Twenty, twenty, ten, five. Neil traces Lincoln’s face. Coach’s five dollar bills always smelled like his wallet. Cold, leathery. After he left, Neil smelled the last one he gave all the time, holding it to his nose like a porn mag’s scratch and sniff. He realizes Brian never got his — he had collapsed before Coach could give it to him, and Neil took it like he did everything else.

He'll owe Brian something for the rest of his life.