Needle Freak, page 21
Jack kept waiting for the grief to hit him about Steve like it had the first time when he only thought he was dead. It didn’t and he wasn’t sure what to think of that. Was it messed up that he couldn’t feel bad about it? Or was not feeling bad about it the right reaction? He rather thought it might be the latter. Steve hadn’t been a good guy, not even to Jack when all was said and done. Some time away from him among genuinely decent people had shifted his perspective and he saw Steve as he really had been. He saw himself more clearly, too; Jack Handy and Jack Donovan. Steve had earned his death a hundred times over and Jack mourned a little, but not for him. He mourned for the dead girls he’d once envied and for Shane who’d had to put him down.
They didn’t get to bed that night until the sun was coming up and it was technically—and officially—morning. Shane called Chris and told him he wouldn’t be in that day, he had a personal emergency. Chris would open the shop at the regular time, but they only had to stay until one. After one o’clock they could close up early and go home. Jack listened to him talking on the phone while he closed the drapes around his windows to block out the light and climbed into bed, all the time very carefully not thinking about Steve chasing him down the hallway and catching him because he’d forgotten in his panic that he’d closed the door. He listened to Shane’s voice, heard him laugh and heard it cut off when Shane realized he was doing it.
Jack lay there, sure that he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and fell asleep.
In his dreams he wasn’t blind. He was alone and there was a knock at the door. Jack got up, moving slowly and inexorably to the door the way you do in dreams when you want to run the other way and can’t. It was Phineas. It would be Phineas. Perhaps Phineas would be the little boy in his Halloween best; his clothes clean, his makeup fresh, his pillowcase spotted with blood and open to receive his treat. Or he would be Jack’s old friend the clown; the black in his clothes faded, the white dingy and grey with age, cheap cloth frayed, makeup flaked, wig home to nesting spiders. It didn’t matter what face he wore, his eyes were always the same. An impossible, glowing shade of chartreuse green. He was Jack’s salvation and his damnation. He hated him and he was afraid of him and he didn’t think he could live without him.
His hand reached for the doorknob and Jack stared at it. His skin was pale, there was a mole, flat and dark like chocolate—like cancer—on the back of his right hand below his thumb. He watched his fingers close around the doorknob and screamed at himself not to open it even as he turned the knob and opened it.
It wasn’t Phineas, it was Steve. Steve with his gold brown hair and his faded denim blue eyes and Jack realized he should have known all along that it would be Steve. It only made sense.
Jack screamed, “No!” and tried to slam the door closed, but Steve’s hand was there to stop him. He pushed at the door, desperate to close it and lock him out. If he could just get it closed, there was a bolt lock and all he had to do was twist it to the side and Steve would never get in. He tried, he pushed with everything he had, but the door wouldn’t budge. Then Steve’s fingers came around the edge of the door. They stretched, grew longer and inhuman until talons popped through the skin, gleaming with blood like razorblades. Jack looked on in horror and realized that Steve wasn’t human at all. He had never been human. He was a monster wearing a man-skin.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? It was so obvious.
One of Steve’s finger-talons reached him and sliced open Jack’s arm. He screamed and backed away from the door as it began to splinter inward.
“Jack, wake up!”
Jack snapped awake to find himself in Shane’s arms being shaken. Shane had his hands around his upper arms and had pulled him upright in bed to shake him awake and he didn’t immediately stop when Jack opened his eyes. Jack finally had to shout his name.
“Shane! I’m awake, stop it.”
Shane stopped shaking him and let him go like his skin had turned burning hot. “Sorry, but fuck. You scared me to death, Jack.”
“I was dreaming,” Jack said. He scooted back on the bed to sit with his back to the headboard. “What time is it?”
“Who gives a shit?” Shane said. Then he sighed and said, “It’s about noon.”
Jack yawned. “Did you sleep?”
“A little bit,” Shane said. “I might have slept more if you hadn’t started screaming like that. What the fuck was that about?”
“Steve,” Jack said.
“Oh,” Shane said. “I suppose that’s a dumb question.”
“It’s all right,” Jack said. “Shane?”
“Huh?”
“Are you still mad at me?”
“I don’t know. I guess not. It seems kind of… stupid now.”
“Okay. Shane?”
“What, Jack?”
“Will you stay with me?”
“Jack…”
“No, not for… not for that. For… just because… I don’t want to be alone. That’s all. Maybe we can, um… Could you read to me?”
“Seriously?” Shane laughed a little. “You do remember I have dyslexia, right?”
“Yeah, but you graduated, didn’t you?” Jack asked.
“Barely,” Shane said. “Fine. What about… the newspaper?”
“Sure,” Jack said.
Shane left for a little while to get the paper and when he returned he went around to the other side of the bed and crawled up beside Jack to sit against the headboard. He cleared his throat and started reading. There had been a car accident just outside of town the previous Monday. A woman described as “a mother of two” had been killed instantly when a truck ran a stop sign. The owner of a bar in town called Sweeny’s was being sued because some guy had gotten drunk, got behind the wheel and run over a kid walking on the side of the road. The guy had not drank enough at Sweeny’s to be that drunk, but Sweeny’s had been the last place to serve him, so mom and dad were suing. Crawdaddy’s was offering 50% off on the buffet between five o’clock and six o’clock Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Jack expressed a desire to go and Shane agreed to take him for Christmas Eve; so he wouldn’t have to worry about cooking anything, Jack suspected. They were already going to Grandma Chloe’s for Christmas Day.
It was the sound of Shane’s voice and his presence there with him more than what he was reading that mattered to Jack. Shane was relaxed. He wasn’t thinking about the things that had been bothering him, about their fights or about Steve, he was just there with Jack and Jack relaxed himself as he read to him. He rested his head on Shane’s arm and Shane didn’t shrug him off or become tense. That was worth everything.
Jack yawned some more and slid down on the bed to lie beside Shane, still listening to him read, but drifting toward sleep again. He thought of it as a first step and that warmed him with pleasure. Perhaps he hadn’t ruined everything. Perhaps they would find a way to mesh what they were now with what they had always been and be happy. Could they be lovers and still find a way to go on being brothers? Shane loved him still; that had never been in doubt. He didn’t love Jack the way he had loved him when they were kids though. The same was true for Jack, but where they went from here had to be Shane’s choice.
Shane wanted him. Jack had allowed him to have him and made it clear that he could have him indefinitely if that was his wish. Shane was just screwed up enough that, even if Jack had not been his brother, that might have been all the reason he needed to determine he couldn’t have it all. How long had it been since Shane had had a girlfriend or boyfriend or anyone he dared to love like that?
A long time, Jack would bet. Maybe never. With Jack, he couldn’t separate the sex from the love like he could have done if Jack had been a stranger or just a friend. That was part of the problem.
They could stop; that was always an option. They could make a pact; they could forget it and swear to never do it again. They might even mean it. But Jack knew even if Shane didn’t that it would never work. It would put stress on them and their relationship, it would create tension and maybe one day even resentment, and in the end they were likely to fail anyway because it had happened once and that hadn’t been enough.
After Steve was gone, they both put him out of their minds. It was a lot easier to forget about Steve than it was to forget about what they had done together. Shane tried to forget it and he didn’t swear to it aloud, but he had promised himself that it wouldn’t happen again. Jack knew it because he was different. He was a little distant, a little tense, he had a tendency to snap at him over nothing and he didn’t laugh anymore. Shane had never laughed very much anyway, but Jack had been able to make him laugh and he missed the way Shane’s voice got a little deeper when he was trying not to smile. If Shane kept it up too much longer, he was either going to explode or Jack was.
There were moments when Shane was almost himself again and that hurt the worst. Jack had told him that if Shane couldn’t let it go, he would have to leave, but he stayed and he was sure he stayed just because of those moments.
Christmas came and went and it wasn’t as joyful as Jack had wanted it to be. His first real Christmas in a place he could call home without any irony at all, with people he shared blood and history with, who he really loved and didn’t have to fake it. But there was that big ugly elephant in the room ruining everything. A monster so heavy that Jack sometimes felt like he was being crushed beneath it and surely Shane had to feel the same. The colossal weight was made up of touches they regretted and could not make themselves regret, of memories and secrets and lost chances and endless days and nights of waiting and waiting and waiting…
They pretended to be happy and smiled for Grandma Chloe’s sake, but their hearts weren’t in it and Jack suspected the old woman knew it.
That night, after dinner with their grandmother was over and they had exchanged gifts and said goodnight, they got in the truck and Shane drove them around the residential neighborhoods in White Castle to look at the Christmas lights. Jack couldn’t see them, except for the indistinct glowing colors passing by, but Shane described them to him and, as Phineas had remarked, he had a talent for painting pictures with words. In another life, he might have told stories for a living as a teacher or a writer or even as a father. Sitting there with him, belly full of turkey and stuffing, listening to Shane’s voice as he brought to life lawns decorated with blow-up Santas and snowmen, reindeer made of tiny lights and porches lit up with color, Jack was as close to happy as he had been all day.
When they got home, Jack went ahead of Shane into the house. He heard his steps behind him and turned to tell him he was tired and going to bed, but the words never left his tongue. Shane was closer than he had expected and when Jack turned around, Shane cupped his face in his hands and kissed him. Jack was so surprised by the kiss that he opened his mouth on a gasp and Shane’s tongue was there, slipping inside like the hand of a thief. Jack was confused, but his body wasn’t. Kissing still threw him for a loop sometimes and he still hadn’t quite mastered the art, but he knew sex and kissing the way Shane kissed him was nothing if not body language inviting and asking for sex. While he was still trying to make sense of it, Jack responded to it and kissed him back.
Shane made a sound in his throat, part denial, part frustrated arousal. It escaped as a low growl that vibrated along their tongues and made Jack’s lips tingle. He pressed against Shane and Shane pulled him closer, his hands moving from Jack’s face into his hair as he backed him through the kitchen to the nearest wall. His hands were big and hard with calluses, but he was careful and gentle with his touches and Jack braced himself for the impact of his back against the wall, but it never came. Shane backed him up to it and pressed against him, but he didn’t throw him against it. He held him there and kissed him breathless, lingering over it for all the world like he intended to go on doing that and only that forever.
Jack slipped his hands under Shane’s loose sweater and for a moment he knew what was happening and what was going to happen and in another moment he would have had that sweater off of him and thrown it to the floor. But Shane stopped him and broke away, cursing. Like the kiss, Shane’s sudden withdrawal surprised him and left Jack floundering and stunned. His heart was pounding, his breath was ragged, he could still feel Shane’s warmth and the weight of his body against him. The physical impression of him was still on Jack’s body, the taste of him still on his tongue when the cold air of his absence hit him like a slap.
“I’m sorry,” Shane said. He sounded both angry and desperate for Jack to understand and forgive him. “I’m sorry, Jack. Jesus, I can’t believe I… I don’t know what I was… Fuck. I’m sorry.”
Jack’s first reaction was anger. He was frustrated, too. He was just as tightly wound as Shane, but he hadn’t kissed him. He hadn’t started anything he wasn’t prepared to finish. He had left him alone because that was what he said he wanted.
But he put his anger aside because it wasn’t fair. He took a deep breath, ran the back of his hand over his mouth and let it out on a sigh. “All right,” he said.
“Jack, I’m sorry,” Shane said again.
“It’s okay,” Jack said. He stood away from the wall and felt along it. His fingers encountered the light switch just inside the kitchen door. He knew where he was then and turned to leave. “It’s okay, Shane. I’m going to bed though. Goodnight.”
“Goddamn it,” Shane said. “Jack…” Jack paused, waiting for him to say more, but Shane didn’t. He sighed and just said, “Goodnight, Jack.”
Jack lay in bed listening to Shane walk through the house. He talked to the dog, he drank. When his walking became unsteady and his voice sometimes got louder, Jack became less certain that it was the dog he was talking to after all. It broke his heart to think that he might have infected Shane with his madness. With everything else Jack had put him through, adding Phineas to the mix seemed cruel, but if Shane was talking to the clown, it was already too late.
Tears spilled over and ran down Jack’s cheeks into his hair. He wiped them away and rolled onto his side, his back to the door, and tried to tell himself it was impossible. He fell asleep still not believing it.
He woke several hours later, not knowing if it was morning or still night, and lay there in the dark behind his blind eyes listening for the thing that had awakened him. For a long time there was nothing and he started to think he had come awake naturally. Then Shane said his name. He said it hesitantly and so softly it might have been mistaken for a sigh by ears that were not as sensitive to sound as Jack’s had become. Jack could have pretended to think it was a sigh or that he was still asleep and Shane would never have known otherwise.
Jack sat up and felt along the cold side of his mattress until his fingers found the nightstand and the lamp. He turned it on and the sudden light made him wince. “Shane?”
His only answer was the sound of Shane’s deep indrawn breath and the whisper of fabric against the open bedroom door as he either took a step out of the room or another one in. Jack tilted his head, listening for him, but when he didn’t hear him either retreating or drawing nearer, Jack threw off the covers and got out of the bed.
“Jack,” Shane said. It wasn’t as soft as before, not as hesitant; there was a warning in his voice.
Jack ignored it and walked toward the sound of his voice. He heard it then; the creak of retreating footsteps on the old wood floor. His hand shot out and he snatched the sleeve of Shane’s shirt and held him there. “I will not chase you,” he said. “Even if I wanted to, try to imagine how stupid that would look. Come here.”
“No, Jack,” Shane said. He tried to remove Jack’s fingers from his shirtsleeve but Jack tightened his grip and pulled, dragging him a step closer. “Jack—”
“Then why are you here?” Jack demanded. “If you didn’t want me, I could handle that. I would understand. But you do or you wouldn’t do this shit.”
“Jack, it’s not—”
“Stop it.”
They stood there without speaking for a minute, listening to their breath, their heartbeats, the sound of the wind outside howling beneath the roof. It was tension that had to break or become painful. Jack stepped toward him and Shane didn’t back away from him. Jack wished like hell that he could see him. It was almost impossible to read his body language and know his intent when he couldn’t.
Another step and Jack could feel the heat of Shane’s body. Another and he felt it against his own. “You can have everything you want,” he said. He waited for Shane to bolt, but he just shivered. “It’s okay.”
“It’s wrong,” Shane said. His voice was raspy and strained like it hurt him to speak. Like he had been screaming not too long ago. “It’s—”
“Who cares?” Jack said. “In our whole lives, we… That one thing—this one thing—Who the fuck cares, Shane?”
Shane jerked his arm and for an instant Jack thought he was making another attempt to pull free, but he wasn’t. He grabbed Jack’s wrist and pulled him against him. Though he had invited it, Jack wasn’t ready for it or for the ferocity of Shane’s desire when he finally let go and gave in to it.
Shane bit his mouth, licked it, all the while tugging at Jack’s clothes and pressing him back against the edge of the doorway until the latch of the door dug in enough that Jack made a sound of pain and pushed against him. Jack half expected that to be the end of it then and there, for Shane to mistake his protest for rejection, but Shane didn’t. He turned them and backed Jack into the bedroom to the soft bed and sank down on it with him.
Shane stripped the rest of Jack’s clothes off then stripped him down to a raw, painfully aroused jangle of nerves with his mouth and his hands and the warm weight and touch of his body before he finally thrust inside of him. Jack wanted him so badly by then that the slight pain of that initial penetration was nothing to him. He arched to meet him and tasted the sweat on Shane’s skin when he pressed his mouth to his shoulder to muffle a shout.
