Outlier, Chapter 12
Chapter 12
“Dr. Oliver?”
The voice knocked again. “Please, Dr. Oliver…I just need to… Just one second-please…” The doorknob turned slowly; the door opened even more so.
“D-Doctor? I’m sorry, I just…” Brown ringlets framed a sideways head. “Um, Doctor? Dr. Oliver?” A frown momentarily crowded out the fright on Curly Nurse’s face. “Is everything…” One could almost see her weighing the costs and benefits of her job. The last words were rushed as the head disappeared. “Dr. Hughes just wanted me to remind you, uh, about the surgery? That it’s been pushed up? The team is…um, whenever you’re ready.” The door clicked closed.
Reid was sitting at his desk. He hadn’t blinked, hadn’t moved. Hadn’t looked up from the open laptop. His hands were on either side, palms down on the desk. His eyes were fixed on the screen. Cosmic colors of the default background image glowed back.
His mind was in an empty house. Unclaimed paint sprayers and power tools lay haphazard in abandoned rooms. Stacks of recycled-glass tiles and reclaimed hardwood clustered in corners. A farmhouse hand-pump faucet rested against the kitchen doorway, its installation indefinitely delayed. Scattered across canvas-covered floors were shards of The Plan.
Luke was everywhere. Luke was gone.
Luke had never been there.
What was I thinking?
How could I have ever thought…how could I have assumed… I’m nothing to him. The opposite of his type. Fourteen years older, an ossified old man. He’s young and shiny and…beautiful.
He’s beautiful.
Reid closed his eyes.
And I’m Reid Oliver. Social pathogen. I’ve never pursued anyone in my life. Wouldn’t even know where to begin. Not that he’d want me to. Why would he want me to?
The computer screen dimmed, unseen.
Just because I come to a life-transmogrifying decision, I expect him to…to forget that I’ve been nothing but an unpardonable ass to him. To forget that I’d be incapable of playing nice with anyone else in his life. To forget that he has a…that, of course, he and Noah are…
Reid’s palms pressed against cherry wood.
I’d just assumed he’d see me as a man. But he doesn’t even see me. Because I’m nothing to him. Here I am considering touching another man’s penis, and I’m nothing to him.
Reid squeezed his eyes shut, his face folding inward.
Fucking Katie.
But the rage didn’t ignite; there was no fire when he opened his eyes, no rising smoke as he closed the laptop, pushed back the chair, walked slowly to the door. There was only the stale smell of an abandoned house.
______________________________
Sweat stuck and curled. Reid blinked jeweled lashes, licked salted lips, counting the steps to the shower as he passed empty work stations and sleep-quiet rooms. The marathon surgery had simultaneously numbed and energized, a familiar combination at least partially welcomed. It should have reaffirmed, reassured, reframed. Instead, it had merely passed the time. All that was left was to try to wash the rest away, to scour and scald, feel and forget. He focused on the shortest distance between points, his steps speeding as he cut corners, skipped steps, played the angles. Shower, sleep, rounds, surgery, shower. Food. He supposed there was always food. He supposed he’d eventually feel hungry again.
He supposed he should have expected the detour. His simple trajectory toward the shower had been illusory, the equivalent of infinite random walks over a landscape of predetermined probabilities. All roads converged on this room, as dark as the rest, its door ajar. Equilibrium lay inside, red lips against white sheets, but Reid knew now it was a specious state, a false approximation of the truth, most likely the result of sampling error, of faulty measurements. It wasn’t his truth. It wasn’t for him.
There was nothing here for him.
He pushed off the wall beside Luke’s door with hands he hadn’t remembered raising. Stirred air teased sweat on his neck as he turned to leave. It carried a hidden directive, a weak whisper to keep going, past the shower, past Katie’s, away from things he didn’t want to want, things he could never have, things it would cripple him to see…
A strangled sound came from the darkness of Luke’s room.
No. No.
Not again.
Reid pushed open the door, quickly and quietly, hoping, for once, that he was wrong. A Luke that wasn’t his was bad enough; a Luke that was sick…or…
A shuddering breath stopped Reid just inside the room. He stepped to the side, trying to see past the partially drawn curtain, to see more than just legs bent beneath a white sheet. A sheet that was vibrating.
Seizure.
Mastering the swift despair, Reid marshaled mind and muscles to act. This was what he could do for Luke. What no one could do better. A parting gift.
“Hunngh.”
A last-minute override of Reid’s alpha motor neurons suspended the transfer of weight to the forward leg; the ball of his foot bore the brunt, heel hovering, thigh muscles firing in perpetual engagement. The signal characteristics of Luke’s soft whine had effectively shut down nearly all higher-order systems. Only the most rudimentary messages were now being processed.
Not a seizure.
The sounds of rhythmically rustling sheets, indistinct pants, and swallowed words had to push past the crescendoing whirr in Reid’s ears. He leaned incrementally farther onto his flexed foot - perspective pulled back the curtain to just beyond raised knees, to the point where the sheet fluttered like a slack drum being beaten from beneath. Luke’s covered legs swayed and opened, his hips lifted, rocked, the flurry at the center speeding and slowing.
“…mmph…mmm…yes…yes…”
Reid’s view continued to open as he tilted steadily more forward. He saw Luke’s back bow, the sheet edge rippled under his ribcage, his right arm extended across, down, disappearing. Another inch - there was Luke’s neck, a taut upward arc, his Adam’s apple on offer. Next, his chin, aimed up and back, then slanting downward as his chest collapsed sharply before opening again, elbows jabbing the mattress.
“Hmmngh…unngh…yesss…”
At last Reid could see Luke’s shadowed face. Luke’s lips parted for pants, closed as he struggled to muffle the moans. Blonde bangs fell to the tops of lowered lids; underneath, his forehead creased with concentration. He bit his bottom lip.
“Mmmmngh.”
Luke’s hand slowed for several beats before accelerating, the tempo eventually approximating a double-stroke drum roll. His other hand slithered to his waist, slipping beneath the bunched sheet. He hunched slightly to his left side, the shoulder dipping as he stretched his arm down.
“Ah!”
Luke jerked the side of his head against the pillow, pressing down as his two hands worked. He rolled his head, re-centering it, his face softening, mouth slackening.
“Hunnngh…ohhh, yes…Reeeeid…”
The thigh muscles stopped firing. The foot Reid was balancing on slid forward abruptly, the sound of his heel striking the floor bright in the dark room.
The force of Luke’s gasp nearly ruffled Reid’s hair. The two men faced each other, brittle silhouettes, trying to see the other’s wide eyes in the low light. Trying to sort order into what was happening.
What couldn’t possibly have just happened.
Luke’s expression shifted first. Comprehension dawned, its garish colors creeping across his face, a grotesque lightshow prompting Reid to postpone his own processing. He instead evaluated next moves, courses of action that wouldn’t necessarily end in mutual checkmate.
He could think of only one.
Reid looked back once as stepped into the hall, closing the door behind him, a lightning glance, peripheral, compulsive. His view included only the foot of Luke’s bed, but it was enough to see Luke’s upper body jackknifed over his legs, his hands gripping the hair on either side of his head.
______________________________
The water burned. Reid turned up the heat.
His head hung, an outstretched arm braced against the tiles in front of him. Hard water stung the back of his neck and shoulders, seared paths across stubborn stiffness, down reddened skin to the dip of his lower back.
He wasn’t thinking about Noah.
The words formed slowly, leaking in, testing the integrity of the flood wall. Reid tried relieving the pressure. Allowed an experimental flow.
Or maybe he was thinking about him. At first. Reid was sure Luke had been, or, rather, would have been sure had his pattern-processors been fully functional at the time. Maybe it had started with Noah - remembering, anticipating. Playing out the candlelit homecoming. It could have shifted, then, others appearing, faceless or famous, taking over or joining in. (Double-teaming.)
Reid shut off the cold water completely.
But by the end…the crowd had cleared. Luke wasn’t thinking about celebrities. He wasn’t thinking about Noah.
He was thinking about me.
Reid dropped his head back, water singeing his face and scalding his tongue. He reached for the shampoo.
He scrubbed his mind. Shut it down. It means nothing. Hell, the majority of my guest stars are women I have negative interest in otherwise engaging with. So he finds me attractive. (he sees me) He’d never act on it. He’s too loyal for that. Too…good. Too taken. He’d never betray him. The “love of his life.”
He let the water run into his eyes.
It probably wasn’t even me. I’m not “Reid.” Reid is his imaginary friend, the one he had secret-sharing tea parties with. That’s the guy who does it for him. I’m just the inconvenient reality. The disappointment.
The flow of water pressed in, spilling over the wall, seeping through cracks, threatening to flood the unfinished basement.
That Reid probably knew what to do with him.
The shower air had become opaque, impenetrable steam penetrating, flooding Reid from the inside.
I wonder…what was he…
Reid closed his eyes, his mind. Fortified the front door, activated the sump pump. He couldn’t do this. There wasn’t enough of him left.
He felt for the soap blindly.
(What was he thinking about?)
As Reid retreated to higher ground, slippery fingers circled his belly button.
(Was he touching me?)
He spread suds along the thin line of hair, following it down. He encouraged his mind to short circuit, let himself fall into the familiar rhythm of post-surgery release, a ritual he’d lately been denying himself. He focused solely on sensations, on the build, the promised catharsis, a purging of days and weeks of dislocation and disquiet, of existential affliction and corporeal consequences, of powerlessness and near loss. He stroked toward oblivion.
He saw candy-red lips curving into a sleepy smile.
Reid doubled-down, reestablishing his hand on the wall, rerouting neural connections.
Madeline Stowe opened the shower door.
(Was I touching him?)
Reid reached for her, willed, bargained.
Begged.
The spray dappled vanishing skin as she buttoned her blouse, backing away. Shaking her head. Wry eyes lowered, lingering for a last look.
Head down, weight forward, Reid jammed all signals, powering to the end, channeling autonomic impulses, riding pathways from sacral plexus to bulb and crus. The fulcrum of existence was the friction of palm and fingers. No thoughts, no images, no sounds…certainly not those sounds…his sounds…
Where was his other hand?
Reid choked on the cries as they scratched their way out, a feral pack of ricochets trapped in the ringing space. He collapsed forward, his forehead and semen striking wet tiles, the surge dragging him under, ripping him out to sea. He grasped at floating debris, at what had once been his roof. He breathed water, gulped thick air, submitting to stripping currents, last moments, last thoughts. Last words.
“Luke.”