Disposable Teens - chapter fourteen
For the first few seconds of consciousness, he was certain that Dief had climbed on to the bed and was demanding to be fed, until an arm tightened around his middle and he remembered that Dief was still in quarantine.
Behind him, Ray snuffled and burrowed further under the blankets. Ben wondered if it was possible to miss something he’d only ever experienced twice.
He turned to face Ray, wrapping one arm around him and pulling the blankets up to build a makeshift cocoon around them. The movement was enough to rouse Ray, and he opened his eyes, his unfocused, heavy-lidded stare making Ben smile. They cuddled together, constantly shifting and repositioning themselves to make the most of the warmth, until Ray’s roving hand steered further south, brushing over Ben’s hip and thigh. Automatically, he moaned softly and pushed his hips toward Ray, before remembering himself. He scooted back to the edge of the bed, forcing Ray to loosen his hold.
“Ray,” he began, before clearing his throat. His voice was thick with sleep and a dash of lust. “Ray, we really should talk.”
Ray pulled his arms away and flopped over on to his back. He ran a hand over his face, and Ben heard his breath hissing loudly as he exhaled.
“What time is it?”
He glanced at his watch.
“Six thirty.”
“In the morning? For crying out loud!” Ray rubbed at his eyes with both hands. “Benny, six thirty in the morning is no time for deep and meaningful conversations. Can’t you just wait, at least a little while?”
Ray was right. Of course he was. Talking could wait, surely. There were other things that required his attention, anyway.
He rolled out of bed and crossed the cabin to find his jeans and boots. As soon as he was dressed, he stepped outside to fetch enough to wood to build up the fire that had almost burnt out during the night. When he returned, Ray was still tucked up in bed, but sufficiently awake that he was watching Ben with a sleepy smile that Ben couldn’t help returning. While Ray wallowed, he added a couple of small logs to the stove to get the fire going again, then checked his supplies to see what kind of breakfast he could offer his guest. Normally he’d have made do with oatmeal; his decision not to purchase anything perishable from Foster’s store had been his way of reminding himself that he would be here for the foreseeable future. Somehow, though, he suspected that Ray wouldn’t be happy with oatmeal for breakfast.
“Hey, I know I caught you off-guard, Benny. Doesn’t matter if you don’t have much food,” Ray announced, almost as though he’d read Ben’s mind.
“I have oatmeal,” Ben told him by way of an apology. There was a pause, in which he knew Ray was most likely pulling a face at the thought of eating it.
“Well, it’s not like you were expecting guests, right?” He heard Ray climb out of bed, still talking as he rearranged the blankets. “I mean, who would expect guests all the way out here? You know I almost gave up on finding you? Took me two days just to get Young to give me the address you left him. Then two planes, then a train ride. When I showed the address to someone at the train station, they’d never even heard of it. I had to walk into town and start asking the locals. Lucky for me, I found a friend of yours. That guy, Foster, in the general store? It was getting late and there wasn’t anywhere I could rent a car, so he drove me up here. How the hell do you get up here without a four-by-four, Benny? I mean, it must be a full day’s walk from town, right?”
Ben kept his back turned during Ray’s monologue, allowing him to change. So he was surprised when, just as Ray stopped speaking, he felt two long and slender arms wrap around his middle. He’d been inspecting his supplies for something that would make their breakfast at least a little more interesting and had just found a bag of dried fruit when Ray came up and embraced him.
“Can breakfast wait? Just a little while?” Ray’s voice was low, wary and just a little hurt, and suddenly the last week felt desperately empty, like he’d spent his days in a cell, pacing the floor and counting the hours.
He allowed Ray, still in his pyjamas, to lead him back to bed, to remove his boots and jeans and sweater and draw him under the just-straightened blankets. Let Ray kiss him and work his hands inside Ben’s long johns, let Ray undress them both so they had no choice but to press together, sharing body heat and burrowing under the blankets until their quickening breath and constant motion created a hot little cave from which they emerged, some time later, sweating and panting and thoroughly dishevelled. Ben thought about dragging in the tin bath and heating some water as Ray wound one hand in his hair, no doubt mussing it up even further.
They lay together in relative silence for several minutes, until Ray’s stomach began to growl. The noise set both of them off into helpless laughter, and eventually they clambered back out of bed to dress and make breakfast. As Ben prepared two bowls of oatmeal and dried fruit, Ray took the time to look around the cabin, occasionally asking him about a particular piece of furniture, about the rifle leaning against the wall and about a photograph his father had left behind. Finally they sat together at the small table to eat, Ray seeming ravenous after the hours since his last meal. Ben was accustomed to eating only when he was hungry, but he made no comment about Ray’s habit of snacking and of his preference for lavish meals.
Ray insisted on washing dishes while Ben remade the bed. His plans for the day had previously centred around clearing out the barn and perhaps working on the old tractor still stored in there, but that would have to wait now. He puttered around for a while, finding meaningless small tasks in the cabin, until eventually he could procrastinate no longer.
He came to sit opposite Ray at the table where they had eaten.
“I assume,” he began when Ray said nothing, “that you came all this way to persuade me to return to Chicago?”
“I was hardly thinking of moving up here.” Ray gestured around him, to the cabin and the landscape beyond.
“And if I return to Chicago, what then?” He quirked an eyebrow, indicating that the impetus was on Ray to persuade him, rather than on Ben to convince Ray of any other possibility.
“You get your job back. This late in the semester, it’s gonna be real tough for the school to get a replacement, and if you tell Young you made a mistake I’m sure he’ll let you come back. Or else you find something else. There’s plenty of schools that’d take you, and plenty of other places besides.” Ray was resolute, almost enthusiastic, leaving Ben to play Devil’s advocate.
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
Ray closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.
“And you know I’m gonna go crazy if I have to go back home without you.” He looked at Ben, his face radiating sincerity. Desperation, maybe? Need? Ben knew the feeling was genuine at least.
“Would we go back home together? We would really be together?”
“Course we would.”
“Would you tell your family we were together?” He fixed Ray with a piercing gaze, knowing the question would make him uncomfortable but refusing to relent.
“Benny, you know how they’d take it. My mother, Frannie…”
“What about your colleagues? Would they know you were in a relationship with another man?”
“I already told you about that. It’s risky when you work with kids.”
“Everything important involves a risk of some kind!” He shocked himself by shouting. Across the table, Ray gaped at him, but he refused to apologise for his outburst. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Tried to find the words for what suddenly seemed so difficult to say. “You - you are important to me.”
Ray looked away, letting one fist fall to the table with a thump.
“You think I don’t feel that?”
“I don’t know.” He let his hand rest just by Ray’s. “You’ve never - we’ve never talked about this.”
Ray, restless, leaned both elbows on the table and rubbed both hands over his head, smoothing his hair.
“’Cause I don’t…It’s not…” Frustrated, he shook his head. “I felt like this before, once.”
“And?”
“And I married her.” Finally he looked up at Ben.
Ben actually leaned back in his chair, blinking a few times as he tried to process the full implications of what Ray had said.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Ray looked away again before he continued. “And now that I’m done worrying myself sick that I feel that way about a guy, there’s a part of me that’s going nuts because I know this can’t work out the same way.
Ben knew they were locked in a stalemate. The thought of sneaking and skulking to hide his feelings for Ray had no more appeal than a life without Ray at all, but Ray was convinced those were the only options available. The possibility of Ray leaving Chicago behind was a wonderful idea, but equally as unrealistic. To think that whatever it was they shared could only exist in private, hidden little spaces - in his old apartment, in Ray's bedroom, in closets, in this cabin in the middle of nowhere - was painful because it seemed more and more likely to be true.
Somehow they seemed to convey this understanding through nothing more than a series of looks; hours of conversation reduced to a few seconds of meaningful silence, although he felt certain that the pain was much more evident on Ray's face than his own, so diligently schooled into blank impassiveness. He wished, for a brief moment, that his feelings could bubble so readily to the surface, before scolding himself for such foolish imaginings.
Suddenly tired, he pushed away from the table, letting out a frustrated sigh, and moved to stand by the window, hoping the white, blank expanse outside might help to soothe his mind. He heard Ray fidgeting at the table for a moment before his chair squeaked back across the floor. After a few seconds he felt Ray's warmth behind him, then that long, lean body was pressed against him, arms wound around his middle and Ray's chin resting on his shoulder.
And why shouldn't he be able to enjoy this? Ray was here, right now, with no one else to berate or deride them. Why shouldn't he turn to look at Ray, to place his hands around Ray's slim waist and seek a little happiness in the warm skin of Ray's neck? Touch the tip of his tongue to the hollow of Ray’s throat? Kiss his way up to Ray’s ear? There was, after all, no one to hear when Ray moaned at the feel of Ben’s teeth on his earlobe, and no one objected when he walked Ray backwards to the bed.
Afterwards, Ray refused to emerge from their cocoon of blankets, dozing peacefully while Ben roused himself enough to stoke up the fire and make a lunch which they ate in bed before setting the plates on the floor and disappearing once more under the covers.
It was early evening before Ben felt the need to leave the bed again. The cabin was beginning to feel stale, and smelled of sweat and sex. He pulled on jeans, socks and sweater before daring to open the door; the cool evening air caught him by surprise as it stung his flushed cheeks, and he laughed quietly at the small shock.
Movement by a distant tree caught his eye; a dark blur almost disappearing behind the narrow trunk of a fir some hundred metres or so from the door. Immediately he remembered the sensation of being watched that had troubled him in the hours before Ray’s arrival, and without thinking he turned to check that Ray was indeed still in the cabin with him. In his mess of blankets, Ray stirred a little and caught his eye, sitting up when Ben looked puzzled and turned back to look out through the door. It took him a moment to locate the tree he’d been watching, but sure enough there was still a dark smudge on one side of it. Determined suddenly to find out who it was that had been watching the cabin, he stepped out on to what passed for a porch, heedless now of the cold.
As he stared, the smudge separated from the tree to become a figure, dressed in black. What he had first assumed to be a hat was now obviously long dark hair, and for a moment he remembered Mr Foster’s description of the long-haired man who’d inquired about him in town a few days earlier. But even from this distance it was easy to tell that the figure was not male. Easy too to see that the woman was looking directly at him, every bit as still as he was.
He was about to walk down the steps towards her, when he heard Ray come through the door. A second later, a warm hand wrapped around his arm and gave a sharp tug.
“Shoes, Benny!” Confused, he turned away finally, looking at Ray, trying to fathom the amused expression on his face. “I’m not letting you go any further until you got something on your feet.” He glanced down, realising for the first time that he’d been about to go running out into the snow in just his socks, and wondered why part of him didn’t care. His mouth opened, but he found he had nothing to say, could do nothing except turn again to look away from the cabin.
She was still out there, but as Ray stepped up behind him, wrapping both arms around his middle and murmuring in his ear about the cold, she turned from him, quickly disappearing between the tree trunks that seemed to close in on each other in the distance.
Ray’s chin rested on his shoulder as he followed Ben’s gaze.
“You see something?”
“I thought I…” For a second he thought he heard the rumble of an engine spluttering into life, but it was quickly lost. “I thought I saw someone. Someone I knew.”
Abruptly, Ray loosened his hold and stepped away from him.
“They still there?” There was fear in his voice, and guilt, as if he’d been caught committing some crime. Ben thought of the warmth of Ray’s body, and realised that in Ray’s mind, they probably had been caught. He sighed.
“They’re gone.” A sideways glance allowed him to see Ray relaxing fractionally, but he still scanned the treeline for signs of life. “When’s your flight back to Chicago?”
“Tomorrow night.” He heard the hint of suspicion in Ray’s voice, but Ray didn’t question his enquiry.
“We still haven’t talked.”
“Is there any point?”
Ben looked back towards the trees, remembering the strange familiarity of the figure in the snow, the agony of making a decision that would cost him no matter what he chose. The right decision this time might easily kill him, it seemed, but it was only the sense that there was a wrong decision that helped him to differentiate. Both paths ahead of him would be difficult, but one was so clearly a dead end.
Finally he turned to look at Ray. His face showed that he had made the same decision as Ben, and there was both dread and dejection in his eyes.
“We’ll have to set out early tomorrow morning to get into town to make the train,” he announced. Ray nodded, resigned.
There seemed to be nothing more to say then. He took a deep breath before walking back into the cabin. Ray followed close behind, and in less than a minute they were back in bed.
The fire died out some time during the night. Rather than getting up to relight it, Ben merely held Ray closer.
They were up before sunrise. Ben packed a bag with enough food for the hike into town; they ate breakfast an hour after setting out, when Ray’s grumbling stomach began to demand attention, and reached town in time to buy a hot lunch before moving on to the train station.
The station was quiet. For half an hour, they had the platform to themselves. Ben made deliberately vague enquiries about Ray’s family, but other than that they remained quiet. It seemed that their goodbyes had already been said during the night.
When the train pulled in, they did not embrace. Ben knew he would regret not taking every opportunity to touch Ray, but also that his journey home would be so much more arduous if he did. Before climbing on to the train, Ray turned, looking over Ben’s shoulder.
“Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be, you know?” he said, one side of his mouth pulled up in a sad mimic of a smile. “Impossible odds and just the faintest hope that one day, we'll beat them.”
Ben nodded, and stuffed both hands in his pockets. He allowed himself the indulgence of watching the train pull out of the station before he left the platform. At first, he had thought Ray’s words to be foolish sentiment, but as he walked back into town, he thought about the word ‘hope’. About how, in the midst of the wilderness, when there was nothing on the horizon to aim for, hope was sometimes all a man had to keep him going. He couldn’t say what was over that horizon, or whether he would even see Ray again. But he would keep going, he knew now.
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