Prose: Minor Chord
Title: Minor Chord
Rating: R (language, mild violence, reference to drug use)
Summary: One event, told three ways.
A/N: Finally finished. 7800 words. Special thanks to stardustandsand for talking me through every step of the way.
Dissonance
I learned quickly, after the destruction of several precious records, never to play music during the daylight hours. Me dad worked nights when I was a kid an’ made it very clear he didn’t appreciate hearin’ Buddy Holly first thing on a Saturday morning. By this time, he’d moved to days, and tolerated rock and roll up to the occasional “Would ya turn down that racket!”, but I still kept the player silent most times.
See, me older brother had taken to keeping hours resembling those of a vampire bat. Minutes past the sun’s fadin’, he was outta the house, off doin’ what have you an’ worse. Touches of grey in the sky trailed after him as he fell to bed in the wee hours. I know this ‘cause I’ve come in after him more than a few times. Our poor mum’s driven to distraction, but that blame’s on him; the worst that’s under my belt is a few joints a night and a dent in a pinball machine. Which is a funny story, actually, but not the one I’m tellin’.
Mum an’ dad were out, and I thought me brother was, too. So on went the player, and I hummed cheerfully along with the sultry southern blues drafting upward like smoke on the warm night air floating in through the window.
I checked myself in the mirror, just about ready to go. My reflection puzzled back at me, in my smart jacket an’ cap. I dressed alright, but, when it came time to hand out faces, God looked at me an’ laughed. Watery eyes, sharp cheeks, an’ a mouth takin’ up half me face, hair stickin’ up like straw in a scarecrow. Only thing I could do about that, short of takin’ a razor to it, was pull on a scally cap an’ try like hell to look sharp. The mirror offered me a shy smile and a wink.
Ready to brave the world, I was, an’ ready, maybe, to brave Simon.
I might’ve smiled more broadly. I might’ve got nervous and changed me clothes again. I might’ve turned up the music and got lost for a while in the deep blue chords. I might’ve had a moment to choose, but all I had was a touch of motion and time to turn before my brother’s fist came crashing against my head and knocked me against the wall.
“…fuckin’ queer!” I heard through the ringing in my ears. He stood there shakin’, fingers clenched cold white, his cheeks flushed dark with drink and terrifying rage.
“The hell are you on about?” I sputtered, putting a hand to my bruised temple.
His answer fell amid a rain of blows against my upraised forearms. His voice quaked “Can’t believe… fuckin’ poof! …slut! … saw you!” and the words choked out in hard bursts of saliva and venom. Somewhere beneath it all, I could still hear blue notes from the record player dripping up my skin.
I ducked under his arm and made for the door, him grasping after me like a child chasin’ fireflies. At the top of the stairs, he caught my jacket by the collar. He made a grab at my arms, but I slipped out of the coat before he could get a hold. The pushin’ an’ pullin’ threw me off my balance, and I found suddenly that all space had opened around me, the floor fallen from beneath my feet, and I tumbled like a rag doll down the narrow stairs.
In between crashing contacts, I was weightless and flooded by a wild sort of clarity. I saw the source of my brother’s rage and, in my mind, laughed without fear.
In memory, I was clouded again in sweet smoke and the ecstasy of blood flowing, the taste of cigarettes and Simon’s lips unbounded in my mouth.
Someone must have seen us, one of me brother’s mates.
And this, this, blows and bruises and a broken neck, this was the cost of hope an’ glory. As I hit the bottom in a crumpled heap, I thought it had been a kiss well worth the price of a few cracked ribs.
Dazed, I registered distantly that my brother had come down the stairs and was shouting at me to stand up. Somehow, this struck me as a very bad idea, but, when I tried to turn over onto my knees, my brother also struck me, a hard kick against the ribs, and hauled me to my feet.
“You fuckin’ cunt.” The stale heat of his breath burned in my eyes, and my skin crept and crawled. “Wha’d’ya think you’re doin’?”
“Piss off,” I spat, trying weakly to tear his hands off my collar. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
His face flushed darker, and he shook me. “The fuck you didn’t! You’re havin’ it off with that mate of yours.”
I coughed a choked off little laugh and thought of Simon’s long hands and the steel string calluses on the tips of his fingers. “Sure, I wish.”
In retrospect, I might have chosen a better reply, but there it is.
He fairly threw me away from him, as if there could never be enough distance between his skin and mine. But fury won out over repulsion, and, a second later, he was after me again.
I made for the front door, straight ahead, reaching as if my life depended on it. He caught me round the arms, my hand just slipping on the handle, and tore me backward. In a tangle of motion, I went to my knees, scrambling into the tiny kitchen adjacent in the front hall. There was blood on my hands, I saw, and blood streaking the white plastic tile beneath me. I tasted salt and copper on the backs of my lips and wondered what part of my face was bleeding.
I climbed to my feet and reached for the knife block on the counter, glancing frantically over my shoulder for my brother’s inevitable entrance. I pulled something from the block just as he appeared and held it up in defence.
This might have been more effective had I grabbed a large butcher knife, or even a bread knife, but I found, to some dismay, that the utensil in my hand was little more than a glorified fork. But he was coming quickly, without pause and without expression, so I, frightened and desperate and dizzy, crouched low an’ lunged forward, driving the double prongs deep into his thigh as I darted past.
He caught hold of my ankle with one heavy hand and pried the tines loose with the other. I came crashing to the floor, blood roaring in my ears beside the sound of his pain and anger, turned now to wordless raging. His fists kept swingin’ as he pinned me down, thrashing and beating a violent rhythm against my bones.
I might have been shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything. Sounds dissolved into a crushing wall of white noise as I fought to breathe through the torrent.
It must have been quiet enough, though, because I heard the knock on the door. My brother froze, listening, and put a hand over my mouth. Through the door and the tense air, through the pressure of my pulse pounding in my head, I heard Simon calling.
“Daniel!”
John’s voice joined his. “C’mon, ya tosser, let’s go!”
Another barrage of knocking and a rattle of the knob.
Simon again. “Quit primpin’ an’ op’n the bloody door!”
My brother bent close, just a breath from my face, and growled. “You make. One. Fucking. Sound. An’ you’re dead. Savvy?” I gave what little nod I could, an’ he pulled back, lifting his hand from my mouth. I gulped against the sudden coolness that flooded onto my skin and tried not to breathe too loudly.
“Daniel!” They were knocking in unison now, a rapid, arrhythmic drumming that seemed to fall in frantic harmony with my wild heartbeat.
Hope called out in staccato.
I took a deep breath and shouted for my life.
“SIMON!”
“Fuck.” My brother grabbed at my face. The knocking stopped.
“JOHN! SIMON! HELP!”
Hot fingers closed round my throat, catching cries half-formed in the space behind my tongue. “You little cunt!” He slammed my head into the ground, and bright stars exploded in the kitchen lights. “Gonna fuckin’ kill you!”
“DANIEL!” I heard Simon screamin’ through the door; the pounding turned to slow, heavy thuds.
The edges of my vision blurred to grey, sounds dimmed into a roaring cacophony, almost symphonic in its overlapping themes.
“Gonna kill your fuckin’ boyfriend, too.” That was the last thing I heard, the last clear sentence, swirling in malice, as the tide flowed in.
Two things occurred to me then.
They were trying to break down the door.
And I was going to die before they did.
I would swear there was music in the black that washed over me, the sound and fury of synapses fighting their last brawl. It may have been angel choirs singin’ a great welcome, but it sure sounded like Elvis.
I floated in the darkness and knew nothing but the music and the sound of crashing waves. Time and space detached in the ebb and flow of my self, and I heard my name, soft in the minor chords.
It wasn’t angels, or God, of the summoning of some ephemeral eternity. It was Simon, calling to me as from a great distance, his strong voice quaking in frantic fear. Like a slow awakening from sleep, I felt my body again, and, like a child in the dark, I ran to him.
With a shattering cough the black receded into dim static, and I opened my eyes.
“Jesus Christ….” That would be John, outside of my swimming vision, an exhalation of relief.
Simon said nothing, only stared, frightened and overjoyed, an’ I knew that his hands were on my face, his body over me, protecting me. I didn’t know where my brother was, and it didn’t matter. Here, in Simon’s shadow, I was safe.
I opened my mouth to speak, to say what, exactly, isn’t important. In the haze of consciousness, however, I had not considered that effort of any kind might be ill-advised.
With the drawing of one breath, my chest clenched and pressure filled my head. I tasted blood and knew there was too much in my mouth to be from a split lip alone.
But that was alright, I thought dizzily, I could die here.
Then I passed out.
Theme
Saturday night was pinball night and tended to be the highlight of my week.
Well, secondary highlight, anyway.
If I’m bein’ honest, I’d have to say the real high point was every Friday round seven, comin’ up Queensland Avenue, which is not nearly so regal as it sounds, to number fifty-two. Every week, the door opens, some times more quickly than others, and every week, my heart stops at the sudden sight of Daniel’s winter sky eyes, always so shocking and unexpected in spite of the fact that I have spent every step on this street, all one hundred twenty-eight of them, steeling myself for the impact. I have schooled my face from fascination into typical casual disdain and pray that the turn of my mouth will not give me away.
I know it does. Every time.
Anyway, second to that shattering moment of perpetual rediscovery, I looked forward most to weekly pinball at the arcade. I never played much, wasn’t very good, but I liked proppin’ up between the machines as John and Daniel rattled them, shoutin’ an’ wathin’ the numbers climb. Made me feel like a kid. Which, of course, I was, but that was the only time I really felt it.
The problem, though, with this particular Saturday was that it came after Friday, and Friday had knocked me over like a fencepost in a gale.
Friday night we cleansed ourselves of the week’s iniquities, washing them away in a sacramental flood of beer and booze, burning cannabis like incense and letting our prayers rise on its sweet smoke.
Thus the rite ended, as it often did, with Daniel and I stumbling down Queensland, John having taken another route to his house on the next block, and doing a piss poor job of holdin’ each other upright.
“You got funny eyebrows,” Daniel was sayin’, trying clumsily to touch them and succeeding only in pokin’ the side of my nose.
I, on the other hand, was doin’ my best to stay standin’ whilst simultaneously trying not to think of his proximity, his fingers on my face, and the fact that he looked weightless as air when he was stoned.
“Gerroff me. You smell like piss,” I grumbled an’ swatted his hand away.
“Grouch,” he said, jabbing me in the ribs. I meant to turn an’ glare at him, but when I caught his eye he grinned, an’ I felt sick.
To cover my nausea, I pulled out a fag and lit it, fingers shakin’ round the match, achingly aware of the vacuous hairsbreadth of physical space that separated me from him.
Laughin’, he linked his arm through mine as if we were children and sauntered unsteadily along beside me.
My breath caught, an’ the brush of his wild hair against my face set my blood runnin’ to awkward places. I started countin’ numbers on doors an’ breathed a little easier the closer we got to fifty-two.
He chattered an’ teased me, and I scarcely heard a thing til he leapt light up the steps to his house an’ stood just above me. With an angelic smile and a hand on my shoulder, he tilted forward and kissed me sweetly.
Time did not stop, the spinning earth did not still. I only knew the moment after it was over, when only the ghost of him burned on my lips and trails of perfect light hung about the doorway in his wake.
I think he smiled at me again before going inside, a knowing curve of his wide mouth, ambiguous and haunting. I walked home tastin’ him an’ jerked off before I fell into shell-shocked slumber, still smelling the night breeze as it drifted through his hair.
So Saturday night came, bringing with it the anticipation of pinball and a widening hollowness in my gut as John and I ambled up the way.
John’s got a way of walkin’ makes him look like a poofter, strollin’ along with his hair lacquered back. The purple blazer don’t help much. Me, I slouch. Where John struts, I swing my legs an’ fill up every bit of the space taken by six feet and one inch of antisocial, disaffected teenager. I look like a mean bastard, but I’m bollocks in a fight. John’s flamin’ purple blazer, on the other hand, has a wicked switchblade in the left pocket. So there it is.
“…enough quarters to play through Christmas,” John was sayin’. “Hope that skeevey bastard’s not around.”
“That skeevey bastard” was a punk called Walker, as much a bully as he was a pinball player an’ damn good at both. We’d had a few run-ins with him, but not many since John an’ Daniel’d helped him put a head-shaped dent in the side of an arcade machine.
“Heard he was in prison,” I said absently.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Got picked up for assault or summat an’ ain’t made bail yet.”
“Ah, well. Cheers.”
I rapped on the door and tried to keep my calming breaths inconspicuous. No answer came, and John took his turn pounding on the portal and calling out, rattling the locked door. This was habit, ritual, and it served to ease my mind til Daniel’s voice sliced through the normalcy, silencing all discord.
“SIMON!”
The sound of my heart stuttered and stilled. All I heard was the ringing of my name in Daniel’s scream.
“JOHN! SIMON! HELP!”
The razor-sharp silence that chopped off the end of his cry pleaded to be answered. I filled it with volume and violence and felt his name come tearing out of me as all my senses narrowed to know only that frail and flaking rust-coloured door, the thinnest and most meaningless of barriers, my most mortal enemy in that moment.
I threw myself against it.
Silence descended upon me, and I knew nothing but the absence of sound on the other side.
I threw myself again.
John joined me. The door shuddered.
Every second, I felt, was wasted, every lag between blows was an infinity in which the world might shatter.
An’ all the while, I was screamin’ my bloody head off.
I felt the door start to give just before it did. John and I caught ourselves against the frame as it burst in to slam against the wall, just a handwidth from the kitchen entry in which was situated Daniel on his back, head an’ shoulders in the hallway, hardly visible beneath his brother’s broad shape an’ big hands round his throat.
His brother came up swingin’ in a rage, but not fast enough. I bowled him over backward into the kitchen, shovin’ a heel into his crotch for good measure as he went down. He grabbed at my foot, an’ I brought my knee down hard onto his chest, roundin’ my fist into his head. He tried to shield his face, but I kept pounding til I saw blood on my white knuckles.
Later, I would think that he must have done much the same to Daniel, holdin’ him down, beating with such a single-minded fury that the air itself shook and cried.
At the time, no thought was in my mind but gettin’ him down and keepin’ him down, keeping his heavy hands off an’ away from my sacred space, the sanctified skin of Daniel’s battered body. John was callin’ to me, but I didn’t hear it, it didn’t register, wasn’t relevant. A sharp jerk on my collar pulled me back, and I looked up at him, dazed. His face was impassive, unreadable, switchblade steady in his grip.
“Daniel’s hurt.”
The sound came back, but only as a dull reverberation. Everything echoed as I moved much much much too slow to kneel beside Daniel. I wanted to touch him, hold him, feel for myself that he was whole an’ sound, but fear of furthering the damage done kept my fingers hovering a breath above his lips. Pale pale pale and so still, he looked like stained glass about to shatter.
“Daniel,” I breathed, the sound of his name echoing inside my emptiness, the sound of ocean waves crashing in muted violence. “Daniel.”
My voice shook, and I cupped my palm around his face as though the touch of him could keep me present, keep me from dissolving into fear and white noise.
“Daniel.”
He breathed.
My heart remembered how to beat.
He coughed.
I held his head in both my hands an’ prayed.
He opened his eyes.
I could not speak.
“Jesus Christ…” I heard John mutter, relieved.
The clouds in Daniel’s blue eyes parted, and there I saw recognition an’ a calm trust so deep my heart crumbled like ash. I should’ve said something, should’ve told him to be still, that I was here, that it was alright, but I couldn’t. I should’ve told him not to say anythin’ when I saw the intent. He opened his mouth, bruised an’ bloodied lips trembling, but syllables turned into choking coughs, and faint, agonized panic swelled in his bright blue eyes before they rolled upward and closed.
“Daniel?”
His body was slack beneath my shaking hands, and I felt as though the life were trickling out of him and pooling on the floor round my knees.
I gripped his shoulders, like I could stop the flow with nothin’ but the strength of my holding. John was leanin’ over me, a hand on my arm, sayin’ something. Slowly, sound became speech.
“…in shock. We have to get him to a hospital.” Calm an’ steady, he pulled me back an’ helped gather Daniel into my arms.
Ambulances don’t come to our neighbourhood, least not with any considerable haste, an’ time wasn’t somethin’ we were keen to lose. Daniel’s brother was down for the count, but for how long, we didn’t know. I was aware of all this only as a distant recollection, so I followed John’s lead out the broken door.
I held Daniel to me like a child, as if all the hope in the world were poured into that badly used vessel. So small an’ light, I barely felt his weight, only his sharp bones an’ the soft warmth of his breath against my neck.
At least I knew he was breathing.
The bus stop was four blocks away, and we made it in record time. Every footstep sounded out in the stillness and rang in my ears like the hollow crash of mortar fire.
I shifted Daniel in my arms to fit up the steps into the bus, and he breathed a little moan that shredded my heart and sent a rolling nausea pushin’ up from my gut. I took a deep, shaky breath an’ clutched him tight as John paid our fare over protest from the driver. What the other passengers must have thought of us, shakin’ an’ covered in blood, Daniel’s slight body cradled against my chest, I dunno, but I imagine most of ‘em were horrified.
I slipped gingerly into the first empty row, mindful of knockin’ Daniel, an’ John slid in across the aisle.
Daniel shifted in my grip an’ groaned. The faintest slip of blue appeared beneath his eyelids, and I was momentarily mesmerised by the flutter of his pale gold lashes. His half-open gaze fell about aimlessly before settlin’ and focusing on my face. He smiled thinly, serenely, and I felt somethin’ inside me split apart like a wound, leaving the softest tissue open and exposed.
He coughed. I held him still, and a fine spay of blood an’ saliva hit the cuff of my jacket. The distant smile returned, and he looked at me a little more clearly.
“Not dead, am I?” His voice was a small thing dragged through nettles, and he trembled with the effort of speech.
“Not just yet,” I managed round the sharp stone that seemed to be lodged in my throat.
He closed his eyes an’ gave the softest of sighs, leanin’ into the curve of my arm. “Knew you’d rescue me.” He coughed again.
“Yeah, well,” I grunted over the sound of my heart breakin’. “I’d prefer you didn’t need rescuin’.”
He was silent an’ still.
“Daniel?”
I put a hand to his face.
“Daniel?”
He stirred an’ shivered, lidded eyes shaking.
“’M cold.”
Carefully, I kept him cradled in one arm an’ pulled my jacket off, one sleeve at a time, wrappin’ it round him. His narrow shoulders seemed lost within it, small an’ fragile, like an infant enveloped in his mother’s coat.
He muttered somethin’ that may have been thanks, then tensed suddenly, thin face twisted in pain.
My heart spasmed as I held him closer an’ whispered, “Alright. It’s alright.” Like a child, I rocked him, praying and praying and speaking softly, gently wiping the blood from his cheeks as best I could with shaking fingers.
“It’s alright. It’s alright.”
He relaxed, then tensed again briefly, relaxed, an’ tensed, over an’ over in an ever slowing rhythm that to me was requiem. All the while, I murmured meaningless reassurance
“Alright. It’s alright.”
til his breathing slowed and he was still in my arms once more.
Silence came over me, again. All I knew were the minute motions of his body and the slow sound of my own voice, a theme in minor chords winding down to its resolve.
“Alright,” I whispered. “It’s alright.
Resolve
Simon’s been in love with Daniel since we were kids.
Y’know, in case you hadn’t figured that out.
There’s a photo of the three of us, round age eight, sittin’ in the grass on somebody’s lawn. In the picture, I’m staring at the camera, lookin’ like I’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Daniel’s gazin’ off at somethin’, probably a bird, and Simon’s looking at Daniel. He’s not smiling or frowning, just looking, completely impassive and completely transfixed. How rare to have that moment, the very instant of captivation, so permanently preserved.
Exactly when Daniel fell in love with Simon is a little harder to pin down. Doubt he’s sure of that, himself.
All I know is he come to my door one day, hands in his pockets, hunched over an’ fidgetin’ like a kid what’s done somethin’ he shouldn’t.
“Need to talk,” he said, an oddly grave expression on his baby face. “Got a mo’?”
I stood aside and waved him past. Up in my room, he perched on the edge of my bed, pulling up his knees. Now, I ain’t a real tall bloke, especially next to Simon, but Daniel’s a tiny slip of a thing, an’ sittin’ there, folded up on himself, he looked small an’ lost, like a little boy, a latchkey kid whose misplaced the front door key.
“You wouldn’t hate me if I was queer, would you?” he said all in one breath.
Leave it to Daniel to make short work of difficult conversation.
“Depends on who your chasin’.” I hesitated. “Not me, is it?”
I ought to have been offended at the face he made, but then my head caught up to where this was going.
“Daniel?”
He looked up, biting his lip nervously.
“What’re you gettin’ at, here?”
Six shades of pink flooded straight up into his hair, an’ the tips of his ears, peekin’ out from the blonde shock, turned violently red. He looked fit to burst, an’ burst he did.
“Well he ain’t bad lookin’, is he? Plus he’s smart, y’know, real smart. An’ it’s not like I can help it anyway, I mean, ‘s not like I asked for it, but it’s not so bad, not like bein’ ill or nothin’, like they say, nonna that heartache bollocks. ‘S like flyin’, really, feels like flyin’, only safe, y’know, like it don’t matter ‘cause it’ll all be alright in the end, an’….”
I held up a hand, and he paused.
“Simon, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, jus’ checkin’.”
“Yeah, anyway, so I don’t know. It’s like somethin’ that just happened, somethin’ I jus’ know without knowin’, y’know? Like onna those, what’s it called? Where y’just all of a sudden know.”
“Epiphany?”
“Yeah, that. It’s like an epiphany, with all these fireworks in my head, an’….”
I raised my hand again. “Why are you telling me this?”
He looked genuinely baffled. “Well I couldn’t very well tell Simon, could I?”
There was some wisdom in that, anyway.
“Or maybe I should.”
Maybe not.
“Had to tell somebody, at least. But I guess I ought to tell him, right? I mean, you’re s’posed to tell, yeah? Somethin’ like this, somethin’ this good, I ought….”
Both hands came up this time, Daniel’s unstoppable kinesis making my head spin. “You want to tell Simon… what, exactly?”
“Well I fancy him, don’t I? But not fancy like you fancy that girl at the fish shop, but really like, y’ know? Like that film we saw, the one with that bloke an’ everybody was cryin’, only better’n that, an’ I think that….”
“Daniel.”
“What?”
The implications of what he was tellin’ me crashed into the fore of my thoughts. Visions of beatings an’ dirty looks an’ families disowning their sons swam before my eyes, and a thousand protestations rose into my mouth.
But there he was before me, a reality in front of vicious abstractions, face caught up in breathless ecstasy. I thought of Simon’s heavy eyes an’ sidelong glances, the careful distance he kept between them an’ the softening of his smile, cynicism drownin’ in the music of Daniel’s laugh.
I sighed. Well, fuck.
“If you really think you ought to tell him….” His eyes lit up like I’d just told him Christmas had come early. “Now wait. Wait,” I said, stemming the torrent before he could start. “I’m thinkin’ maybe I ought to tell him for you. So’s not to overwhelm him.” Which was true, but, more to the point, when left to his own devices, Daniel tended to make things explode, often literally.
Rather than bein’ crestfallen, as I’d expected, he seemed relieved. “Really? That’s stand-up, mate, really tops. I know I’d bollocks it up somethin’ hopeless.”
Stand-up. Really tops. I felt sick. I knew I had to tell Simon, an’ do it before Daniel decided he’d waited long enough, but I’d no idea where to begin.
Unaware of anything but his own high, Daniel fairly danced out the door.
As we left, I caught hold of his arm. “Daniel, mate, be careful, alright? Lotta folks don’t like that sort of thing.”
For a moment, he looked almost chastened. Then his spirit returned in full force, and he gave me a dazzling smile. “Well bollocks to them. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”
Somewhere in the back of my head, I had a creepin’ sense of certainty that this could not possibly end well.
Now, this was Friday afternoon, an’ when we left it was to go meet the object of Daniel’s infatuation.
Ah, who’m I kidding? It weren’t a crush, it was love, pure an’ simple. So there you have it.
I found neither the opportunity nor the inclination to initiate The Talk, in part because Daniel spent most of the night taking every possibly chance to touch Simon. I was still mulling over an approach the next evening as we walked to Daniel’s house.
Simon was quiet. I mean, Simon’s always quiet, but this was a tense, pensive silence, and I wondered if perhaps the little bastard had gone an’ mouthed off, after all.
You know most of this story already, but here’s what I saw. When Daniel’s shout sounded through the door, Simon went so white he nearly disappeared. When he started breaking down the door, I had to help for fear that he’d kill himself tryin’ to get it down.
All the eventualities I’d thought of the day before came risin’ up in my mind. Someone’d found out. His brother found out. The thought of little Daniel, tough as he was, at the mercy of that maniac bastard made my blood run cold, and I pushed harder. All the while, Simon’s screaming rang in my ears, Daniel’s name is desperate repetition.
As the door broke open onto that sickening tableau, two thoughts emerged with startling clarity.
Shit.
and
I’m going to kill him.
which was immediately superseded by
Simon’s going to kill him.
He didn’t, fortunately, but he certainly seemed to be makin’ a valiant effort. As he ‘subdued’ Daniel’s brother, I looked to the lad himself. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He sure as fuck wasn’t moving. I searched desperately for any sign of life beneath the blood an’ bruises that covered his face.
He wasn’t dead, I decided. He couldn’t be, an’ that’s all there was to it.
Afraid of having an actual, and possibly second, murder on our hands, I had to get Simon off of Daniel’s brother.
I called his name, but he didn’t flinch, just kept pounding as though his fists were keeping the Devil himself at bay.
“Simon, stop!” I jerked him back by the collar of his shirt, and he looked at me for a moment without the slightest flicker of recognition, pure and perfect rage burnin’ deep in his eyes. Then I said the magic words.
“Daniel’s hurt.”
The fire in his face went out, like he been doused with freezing rain, and he pushed past me without a word to kneel as best he could beside Daniel’s prone form. I watched him from the corner of one eye an’ kept the other fixed on Daniel’s brother, out cold an’ definitely in for one hell of a headache. My little switch action knife was in my grip, ready for action, though I didn’t remember pulling it. I prayed Daniel’s brother stayed down, at least for now. I really didn’t want to kill anyone today.
Over the dissonance of my own thoughts, I heard Simon’s voice an’ Daniel’s name like a missal litany, hushed an’ sacred and begging beyond all hope.
When Daniel coughed and shifted, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
“Jesus Christ.”
I doubt they heard me, but I did hear the panic in Simon’s voice as Daniel blacked out again. The terror that clouded over him was palpable, and I knew that, left to himself, he would stay there, paralyzed, until time ran out.
“Simon.” I went to him, taking gentle hold of his arm, almost afraid that the touch would spur him to the defensive, and I didn’t want to get decked. “Simon, he’s in shock. We have to get him to a hospital.”
Without acknowledgement, he rose, and I helped him lift Daniel’s body, so frail, which he carried as if the very last of what was good in the world were held there in his arms.
The front door, obviously, was not entirely functional, but it was still mostly on its hinges, and I pulled it closed as best I could. Wouldn’t do have anyone pokin’ round or Daniel’s brother comin’ after us too quickly.
Getting’ onto the bus was its own little challenge. The driver saw us comin’ an’ started to close the door, but I shoved my arm between the panels and held them open.
“Piss off,” he growled, inching the bus forward and pulling me with it.
“Op’n the door, you fuckin’ tosser!” I shouted back, fist pounding on the door in punctuation.
“No fuckin’ way! You can bloody well walk.”
Fear and frustration mounted, and I pulled harder on the sliding panes. While I was throwin’ insults with this bastard, Daniel might be bleeding to death, might die there, just a breath behind me in Simon’s arms. I pulled out a tenner, showed it to him through the glass.
“Open the fucking door.”
He groused loudly, but open it he did. I shoved my cash in the till an’ pushed forward past rows of commuters cranin’ their necks to see what the fuss was about. Simon took two empty seats together, and I sat across the aisle, trading dirty looks with a few of the other passengers.
Then the waitin’ began.
I heard Daniel groan, and I looked over quickly, heart thudding. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t that bad, that he looked worse off than he was, but the dark bruises blossoming on his thin face an’ the blood that hung like a death omen at the corners of his mouth brought bile risin’ in my throat.
I saw Simon’s face in profile, tense and pale, razor-sharp worry cutting his expression open an’ raw. He was speaking softly to Daniel, words of care an’ comfort welling up with overwhelming tenderness.
I looked away, stared out the window. The sight of them set a sickness low in my gut. Daniel beaten, Simon open, my senses flipped over an’ folded in on me. This was wrong. this was not how the world should be. Like a child I protested, railed against this upheaval.
Memories of my childhood, of my life, are peppered and coloured with Daniel’s smile. I got nothin’ next to what Simon feels, not even close, but Daniel is a bright and shining thing, a source of such light that his absence would cast all the world into darkness and cold. I thought of this and shuddered, feeling infinitely empty and powerless.
For all our haste in getting there, the bus ride seemed to last decades. The seconds ticked by as I stared resolutely through the window. All the while, Simon’s voice, soft and strained, sang just above the ambient noise, a steady theme of desperation.
“Alright. It’s alright.”
My heart beat weaker, sank lower, with every passing street sign. Time itself slipped past in the deepening night and, with it, hope.
The bus stop was half a block from the hospital, and I was glad to wind my way past the passengers again. My heels’d hardly hit the ground before the driver slammed closed the doors an’ sped off like Hellhounds were chasin’ his tail. Bastard. I spared a hot look for the retreating bus, then hurried after Simon, who’d not so much as paused to get his bearings. I caught his elbow an’ steered him back round in the opposite direction.
“This way, mate.”
He grunted acquiescence and resumed his pace, still looking lost and unspeakably bewildered.
The emergency room was crowded, loud, and a mess. I guided Simon to the only empty bank of seats an’ made a line for the desk. I got a bored and slightly frazzled glance from the receptionist, who told me to please wait a moment. I fought the impulse to scream at her an’ stood drummin’ my fingers on the countertop.
Finally, she looked up at me expectantly, and I did my best to be politely frantic.
“Me mate’s been beaten real badly,” I said. “I don’t know if he’s alright.”
“Is he conscious?”
“Um… sort of.”
She sighed an’ pulled out a form. “Name?”
“Coolidge. Daniel Coolidge.”
“Can he walk?”
“No.” I pointed back to where Simon sat cradling Daniel’s battered body. “He’s over there.”
“You a relation?”
“No.”
She didn’t look up, only handed me a clipboard an’ said shortly, “Fill these out best you can.”
As I turned away, I heard a muttered “Bloody kids” an’ clenched my fist.
Mother’s name, father’s name, date of birth, previous illness….
“D’you know if Daniel’s allergic to anythin’?”
“Peanuts.”
I made a note. “What about pills?”
Simon shrugged. I skipped down.
Daniel coughed an’ shivered. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw Simon’s clear enough, and I knew we were runnin’ out of time. I dashed through the remaining papers and practically threw them at the receptionist.
“Have a seat,” she said primly. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”
“Please.” I leaned over the desk and forced her to look at me, to see, somehow, the mortal imperative. “Please hurry.”
She nodded dumbly and waved me off. Shaking, I went back to sit beside Simon, who seemed to be growing more frightened by the minute.
Daniel was trembling, no longer brief tremors, but a sustained quaking that rose and fell with each breath. Simon held him closer an’ closer. I could imagine that, if anything, would be enough, that the force of Simon’s will an’ the warmth of his arms might still time and keep life from slipping away.
When they called his name, we leapt up an’ nearly ran to where the nurse stood waiting. She looked disdainfully at Daniel an’ rolled her eyes, callin’ for a gurney.
“What happened?” she asked without interest.
“Got beat up by a coupla rockers,” I replied quickly. That was reasonable, we looked enough like Mods. Not that adults usually know the difference, anyway.
Carefully, Simon laid Daniel down on the white sheets, surrendering, finally, his hope to other hands. They started wheelin’ him away immediately.
“Wait….” Simon took a step forward. I put a hand to his chest, gently restraining.
Over her shoulder, the nurse said, “Immediate family only,” in a dismissive voice that turned my stomach.
Keepin’ my hand on his arm, I led Simon back to our seats. He sat down heavily, all the tension gone from his body.
“He’ll be alright,” I assured him, sounding weak and hollow, even to myself.
He said nothing for so long I thought he’d retreated into himself, unable to focus in Daniel’s absence. Then he spoke, so softly I might not’ve heard it.
“He kissed me.”
Oh. It was my turn for silence. Missing pieces fell into the chain of events, and I was absolutely floored that one small kiss, a single stolen moment, could have led so directly to this, sitting here with Simon, splashes of blood on his white T-shirt like gaping craters in the bright bright lights.
The bitter twist of his mouth told me he was thinkin’ much the same.
“’S my fault, innit?”
I sighed. “No it ain’t. An’ you know it.”
“But….”
“But nothin’.” An edge crept into my voice. “You didn’t beat ‘im, an’ you didn’t kiss ‘im.”
Another long quiet. Then he said, even more softly, “I wanted to.”
“Yeah, well, everybody wants to kick the shit out of Daniel sometime.”
He gave me a sick look, very much Not Amused.
I swallowed. “Right. Sorry.”
He hung his head, so utterly slack and without hope that my heart cracked. I took a deep breath and steadied myself.
“He quite fancies you, y’know.”
Simon stared at me, face so open, so completely exposed, it unsettled me to my very core, but I pushed on ahead.
“Tol’ me so himself. Fit to burst, he was. Kept goin’ on about flyin’ an’ fireworks an’ such. Quite the speech, he made.”
Simon’s expression was blank, as though he could not process what I’d said. Slowly, he turned away and stood, walking dizzily toward the door of the loo. Unsure, I followed and watched him fall to his knees in front of a toilet as he proceeded to vomit up what appeared to be a week’s worth of meals.
I stood behind him, wanting with all my soul to soothe, to comfort, but my hands felt big an’ awkward, and all the words I knew failed as my tongue formed them.
Once his stomach was empty an’ the convulsions had stopped, he sat back against the side of the stall, pale and exhausted, wipin’ his mouth.
After a moment, I queried, “Feel better?”
To my surprise, he replied, “A bit, yeah.”
“Bit much to take on, I guess.”
He was quiet, thinking, then he asked, “What did he tell you?”
I shrugged. “Mostly just babbled. Asked if I’d hate him if he was queer.”
Simon tensed. “Would you?”
This time, I thought about the question before I answered, truthfully, “Neh, ‘s fine. Long as I don’t have to hear about it.” I thought again. “Or see it.” Then, “Or think about it.”
“See no evil. Hear no evil.”
“Well, evil’s a bit harsh….”
He snorted. Crouching down beside him, I said, “Look, mate, I can’t pretend this don’t freak me out some, but you been pinin’ after Daniel since your hormones kicked in.”
He looked up at me, horrified. “How did you…?”
“Jesus fuck, Simon. You light up like a fuckin’ lighthouse when he’s around. Since we were kids, you been silly over him. Be a damn fool not to see it.”
A dark flush flooded his cheeks, an’ he looked away, whispering, “Didn’t think anyone knew.”
“Just me,” I replied, settling onto the floor. “Y’know, your best mate. Who you didn’t tell.”
His head sank lower. “Thought you’d be disgusted.”
“Bollocks,” I spat. “And anyway, it don’t matter. I’m just glad you can quit mopin’ about now.” Assuming, of course, Daniel made it out alright, but I couldn’t bring myself to think of the alternative, much less say it.
A series of changes crossed his face, settling finally into dejected resolution. “No. This happened ‘cause of me. Ain’t gonna happen again.”
He was right, of course. Someone would always find out, there’d always be some punk lookin’ to beat up on a coupla queers, families to throw them out, suspicious neighbours, smashed windows an’ contemptuous looks. All this extended clearly before me as though it were already past. Secrets and lies and hospital visits.
Then Simon looked at me again an’ said, “I can’t do this.”
His dark eyes brimmed with frustrated hope, aching and cracked open like a bud split too soon. I thought of Daniel’s eyes, bright an’ wide, as he spoke of flying an’ fireworks. I heard a lifetime of unsaid things, unspoken truths, playing behind the din in a soft theme built of mournful minor chords.
“Yes you can,” I said. “And you will.”
Three hours later, the doctor appeared to tell us that Daniel would be fine, he was in recovery, and we could see him. There was something about internal bleeding an’ a minor concussion, but I didn’t hear a word. The list of injuries was a meaningless litany, an’ it was hard to focus with Simon beside me, vibrating in anticipation.
Daniel looked lost among the tubes and machines and the white room. But he smiled broadly, if a little dazedly, as we came in, an’ my heart beat properly for the first time that day.
Simon seemed to lose his breath for a moment, and I nudge him forward. He started, then took a step closer, awkward as a kid on the first day of school. Pushing past his uncertainty, I went to stand beside the bed, grinning genuinely.
“You look like shit,” I said, ruffling his hair, careful to avoid one spot that had been clipped short to allow for stitches.
“Least ‘s temp’ry,” he rejoined, slurring just slightly. “Y’ always look like shit.”
I laughed an’ turned to see Simon, with a soft, sweet smile, watching Daniel in rapturous contentment.
I cleared my throat an’ looked back to the patient. “I’m gonna phone you’re mum. Let her know not to worry.”
Simon didn’t even glance at me as I walked out, an’ Daniel’s attention seemed to have shifted instantly.
It was late, but Daniel’s mum’d be up. I called, told her some story about a fight at the arcade, and no, of course we didn’t start it, everything was fine, and Daniel was going to stay with me, so she didn’t need to wait up.
After that, I took my time getting’ back, filched some geezer’s pop, chatted with one of the younger nurses, almost got myself lost, and mused on my deep and unrelenting hatred of hospitals.
When I made my way back to the room, I peered in through the little window. Simon was seated, now, beside the bed, sayin’ somethin’ at which Daniel was laughing. Daniel, high on Simon’s proximity an’ six kinds of pain medication, had an expression of perfect happiness. Their hands were clasped, Simon’s rough fingers closed round Daniel’s pale palm.
Whistling tunelessly, I opened the door, and Simon withdrew his hand quickly. I offered him the remainder of my pilfered drink an’ settled on the bed at Daniel’s feet. Simon blushed nervously, but Daniel beamed at him, serene and utterly unaffected.
Alright. I thought. We’ll be alright.
Rating: R (language, mild violence, reference to drug use)
Summary: One event, told three ways.
A/N: Finally finished. 7800 words. Special thanks to stardustandsand for talking me through every step of the way.
Dissonance
I learned quickly, after the destruction of several precious records, never to play music during the daylight hours. Me dad worked nights when I was a kid an’ made it very clear he didn’t appreciate hearin’ Buddy Holly first thing on a Saturday morning. By this time, he’d moved to days, and tolerated rock and roll up to the occasional “Would ya turn down that racket!”, but I still kept the player silent most times.
See, me older brother had taken to keeping hours resembling those of a vampire bat. Minutes past the sun’s fadin’, he was outta the house, off doin’ what have you an’ worse. Touches of grey in the sky trailed after him as he fell to bed in the wee hours. I know this ‘cause I’ve come in after him more than a few times. Our poor mum’s driven to distraction, but that blame’s on him; the worst that’s under my belt is a few joints a night and a dent in a pinball machine. Which is a funny story, actually, but not the one I’m tellin’.
Mum an’ dad were out, and I thought me brother was, too. So on went the player, and I hummed cheerfully along with the sultry southern blues drafting upward like smoke on the warm night air floating in through the window.
I checked myself in the mirror, just about ready to go. My reflection puzzled back at me, in my smart jacket an’ cap. I dressed alright, but, when it came time to hand out faces, God looked at me an’ laughed. Watery eyes, sharp cheeks, an’ a mouth takin’ up half me face, hair stickin’ up like straw in a scarecrow. Only thing I could do about that, short of takin’ a razor to it, was pull on a scally cap an’ try like hell to look sharp. The mirror offered me a shy smile and a wink.
Ready to brave the world, I was, an’ ready, maybe, to brave Simon.
I might’ve smiled more broadly. I might’ve got nervous and changed me clothes again. I might’ve turned up the music and got lost for a while in the deep blue chords. I might’ve had a moment to choose, but all I had was a touch of motion and time to turn before my brother’s fist came crashing against my head and knocked me against the wall.
“…fuckin’ queer!” I heard through the ringing in my ears. He stood there shakin’, fingers clenched cold white, his cheeks flushed dark with drink and terrifying rage.
“The hell are you on about?” I sputtered, putting a hand to my bruised temple.
His answer fell amid a rain of blows against my upraised forearms. His voice quaked “Can’t believe… fuckin’ poof! …slut! … saw you!” and the words choked out in hard bursts of saliva and venom. Somewhere beneath it all, I could still hear blue notes from the record player dripping up my skin.
I ducked under his arm and made for the door, him grasping after me like a child chasin’ fireflies. At the top of the stairs, he caught my jacket by the collar. He made a grab at my arms, but I slipped out of the coat before he could get a hold. The pushin’ an’ pullin’ threw me off my balance, and I found suddenly that all space had opened around me, the floor fallen from beneath my feet, and I tumbled like a rag doll down the narrow stairs.
In between crashing contacts, I was weightless and flooded by a wild sort of clarity. I saw the source of my brother’s rage and, in my mind, laughed without fear.
In memory, I was clouded again in sweet smoke and the ecstasy of blood flowing, the taste of cigarettes and Simon’s lips unbounded in my mouth.
Someone must have seen us, one of me brother’s mates.
And this, this, blows and bruises and a broken neck, this was the cost of hope an’ glory. As I hit the bottom in a crumpled heap, I thought it had been a kiss well worth the price of a few cracked ribs.
Dazed, I registered distantly that my brother had come down the stairs and was shouting at me to stand up. Somehow, this struck me as a very bad idea, but, when I tried to turn over onto my knees, my brother also struck me, a hard kick against the ribs, and hauled me to my feet.
“You fuckin’ cunt.” The stale heat of his breath burned in my eyes, and my skin crept and crawled. “Wha’d’ya think you’re doin’?”
“Piss off,” I spat, trying weakly to tear his hands off my collar. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
His face flushed darker, and he shook me. “The fuck you didn’t! You’re havin’ it off with that mate of yours.”
I coughed a choked off little laugh and thought of Simon’s long hands and the steel string calluses on the tips of his fingers. “Sure, I wish.”
In retrospect, I might have chosen a better reply, but there it is.
He fairly threw me away from him, as if there could never be enough distance between his skin and mine. But fury won out over repulsion, and, a second later, he was after me again.
I made for the front door, straight ahead, reaching as if my life depended on it. He caught me round the arms, my hand just slipping on the handle, and tore me backward. In a tangle of motion, I went to my knees, scrambling into the tiny kitchen adjacent in the front hall. There was blood on my hands, I saw, and blood streaking the white plastic tile beneath me. I tasted salt and copper on the backs of my lips and wondered what part of my face was bleeding.
I climbed to my feet and reached for the knife block on the counter, glancing frantically over my shoulder for my brother’s inevitable entrance. I pulled something from the block just as he appeared and held it up in defence.
This might have been more effective had I grabbed a large butcher knife, or even a bread knife, but I found, to some dismay, that the utensil in my hand was little more than a glorified fork. But he was coming quickly, without pause and without expression, so I, frightened and desperate and dizzy, crouched low an’ lunged forward, driving the double prongs deep into his thigh as I darted past.
He caught hold of my ankle with one heavy hand and pried the tines loose with the other. I came crashing to the floor, blood roaring in my ears beside the sound of his pain and anger, turned now to wordless raging. His fists kept swingin’ as he pinned me down, thrashing and beating a violent rhythm against my bones.
I might have been shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything. Sounds dissolved into a crushing wall of white noise as I fought to breathe through the torrent.
It must have been quiet enough, though, because I heard the knock on the door. My brother froze, listening, and put a hand over my mouth. Through the door and the tense air, through the pressure of my pulse pounding in my head, I heard Simon calling.
“Daniel!”
John’s voice joined his. “C’mon, ya tosser, let’s go!”
Another barrage of knocking and a rattle of the knob.
Simon again. “Quit primpin’ an’ op’n the bloody door!”
My brother bent close, just a breath from my face, and growled. “You make. One. Fucking. Sound. An’ you’re dead. Savvy?” I gave what little nod I could, an’ he pulled back, lifting his hand from my mouth. I gulped against the sudden coolness that flooded onto my skin and tried not to breathe too loudly.
“Daniel!” They were knocking in unison now, a rapid, arrhythmic drumming that seemed to fall in frantic harmony with my wild heartbeat.
Hope called out in staccato.
I took a deep breath and shouted for my life.
“SIMON!”
“Fuck.” My brother grabbed at my face. The knocking stopped.
“JOHN! SIMON! HELP!”
Hot fingers closed round my throat, catching cries half-formed in the space behind my tongue. “You little cunt!” He slammed my head into the ground, and bright stars exploded in the kitchen lights. “Gonna fuckin’ kill you!”
“DANIEL!” I heard Simon screamin’ through the door; the pounding turned to slow, heavy thuds.
The edges of my vision blurred to grey, sounds dimmed into a roaring cacophony, almost symphonic in its overlapping themes.
“Gonna kill your fuckin’ boyfriend, too.” That was the last thing I heard, the last clear sentence, swirling in malice, as the tide flowed in.
Two things occurred to me then.
They were trying to break down the door.
And I was going to die before they did.
I would swear there was music in the black that washed over me, the sound and fury of synapses fighting their last brawl. It may have been angel choirs singin’ a great welcome, but it sure sounded like Elvis.
I floated in the darkness and knew nothing but the music and the sound of crashing waves. Time and space detached in the ebb and flow of my self, and I heard my name, soft in the minor chords.
It wasn’t angels, or God, of the summoning of some ephemeral eternity. It was Simon, calling to me as from a great distance, his strong voice quaking in frantic fear. Like a slow awakening from sleep, I felt my body again, and, like a child in the dark, I ran to him.
With a shattering cough the black receded into dim static, and I opened my eyes.
“Jesus Christ….” That would be John, outside of my swimming vision, an exhalation of relief.
Simon said nothing, only stared, frightened and overjoyed, an’ I knew that his hands were on my face, his body over me, protecting me. I didn’t know where my brother was, and it didn’t matter. Here, in Simon’s shadow, I was safe.
I opened my mouth to speak, to say what, exactly, isn’t important. In the haze of consciousness, however, I had not considered that effort of any kind might be ill-advised.
With the drawing of one breath, my chest clenched and pressure filled my head. I tasted blood and knew there was too much in my mouth to be from a split lip alone.
But that was alright, I thought dizzily, I could die here.
Then I passed out.
Theme
Saturday night was pinball night and tended to be the highlight of my week.
Well, secondary highlight, anyway.
If I’m bein’ honest, I’d have to say the real high point was every Friday round seven, comin’ up Queensland Avenue, which is not nearly so regal as it sounds, to number fifty-two. Every week, the door opens, some times more quickly than others, and every week, my heart stops at the sudden sight of Daniel’s winter sky eyes, always so shocking and unexpected in spite of the fact that I have spent every step on this street, all one hundred twenty-eight of them, steeling myself for the impact. I have schooled my face from fascination into typical casual disdain and pray that the turn of my mouth will not give me away.
I know it does. Every time.
Anyway, second to that shattering moment of perpetual rediscovery, I looked forward most to weekly pinball at the arcade. I never played much, wasn’t very good, but I liked proppin’ up between the machines as John and Daniel rattled them, shoutin’ an’ wathin’ the numbers climb. Made me feel like a kid. Which, of course, I was, but that was the only time I really felt it.
The problem, though, with this particular Saturday was that it came after Friday, and Friday had knocked me over like a fencepost in a gale.
Friday night we cleansed ourselves of the week’s iniquities, washing them away in a sacramental flood of beer and booze, burning cannabis like incense and letting our prayers rise on its sweet smoke.
Thus the rite ended, as it often did, with Daniel and I stumbling down Queensland, John having taken another route to his house on the next block, and doing a piss poor job of holdin’ each other upright.
“You got funny eyebrows,” Daniel was sayin’, trying clumsily to touch them and succeeding only in pokin’ the side of my nose.
I, on the other hand, was doin’ my best to stay standin’ whilst simultaneously trying not to think of his proximity, his fingers on my face, and the fact that he looked weightless as air when he was stoned.
“Gerroff me. You smell like piss,” I grumbled an’ swatted his hand away.
“Grouch,” he said, jabbing me in the ribs. I meant to turn an’ glare at him, but when I caught his eye he grinned, an’ I felt sick.
To cover my nausea, I pulled out a fag and lit it, fingers shakin’ round the match, achingly aware of the vacuous hairsbreadth of physical space that separated me from him.
Laughin’, he linked his arm through mine as if we were children and sauntered unsteadily along beside me.
My breath caught, an’ the brush of his wild hair against my face set my blood runnin’ to awkward places. I started countin’ numbers on doors an’ breathed a little easier the closer we got to fifty-two.
He chattered an’ teased me, and I scarcely heard a thing til he leapt light up the steps to his house an’ stood just above me. With an angelic smile and a hand on my shoulder, he tilted forward and kissed me sweetly.
Time did not stop, the spinning earth did not still. I only knew the moment after it was over, when only the ghost of him burned on my lips and trails of perfect light hung about the doorway in his wake.
I think he smiled at me again before going inside, a knowing curve of his wide mouth, ambiguous and haunting. I walked home tastin’ him an’ jerked off before I fell into shell-shocked slumber, still smelling the night breeze as it drifted through his hair.
So Saturday night came, bringing with it the anticipation of pinball and a widening hollowness in my gut as John and I ambled up the way.
John’s got a way of walkin’ makes him look like a poofter, strollin’ along with his hair lacquered back. The purple blazer don’t help much. Me, I slouch. Where John struts, I swing my legs an’ fill up every bit of the space taken by six feet and one inch of antisocial, disaffected teenager. I look like a mean bastard, but I’m bollocks in a fight. John’s flamin’ purple blazer, on the other hand, has a wicked switchblade in the left pocket. So there it is.
“…enough quarters to play through Christmas,” John was sayin’. “Hope that skeevey bastard’s not around.”
“That skeevey bastard” was a punk called Walker, as much a bully as he was a pinball player an’ damn good at both. We’d had a few run-ins with him, but not many since John an’ Daniel’d helped him put a head-shaped dent in the side of an arcade machine.
“Heard he was in prison,” I said absently.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Got picked up for assault or summat an’ ain’t made bail yet.”
“Ah, well. Cheers.”
I rapped on the door and tried to keep my calming breaths inconspicuous. No answer came, and John took his turn pounding on the portal and calling out, rattling the locked door. This was habit, ritual, and it served to ease my mind til Daniel’s voice sliced through the normalcy, silencing all discord.
“SIMON!”
The sound of my heart stuttered and stilled. All I heard was the ringing of my name in Daniel’s scream.
“JOHN! SIMON! HELP!”
The razor-sharp silence that chopped off the end of his cry pleaded to be answered. I filled it with volume and violence and felt his name come tearing out of me as all my senses narrowed to know only that frail and flaking rust-coloured door, the thinnest and most meaningless of barriers, my most mortal enemy in that moment.
I threw myself against it.
Silence descended upon me, and I knew nothing but the absence of sound on the other side.
I threw myself again.
John joined me. The door shuddered.
Every second, I felt, was wasted, every lag between blows was an infinity in which the world might shatter.
An’ all the while, I was screamin’ my bloody head off.
I felt the door start to give just before it did. John and I caught ourselves against the frame as it burst in to slam against the wall, just a handwidth from the kitchen entry in which was situated Daniel on his back, head an’ shoulders in the hallway, hardly visible beneath his brother’s broad shape an’ big hands round his throat.
His brother came up swingin’ in a rage, but not fast enough. I bowled him over backward into the kitchen, shovin’ a heel into his crotch for good measure as he went down. He grabbed at my foot, an’ I brought my knee down hard onto his chest, roundin’ my fist into his head. He tried to shield his face, but I kept pounding til I saw blood on my white knuckles.
Later, I would think that he must have done much the same to Daniel, holdin’ him down, beating with such a single-minded fury that the air itself shook and cried.
At the time, no thought was in my mind but gettin’ him down and keepin’ him down, keeping his heavy hands off an’ away from my sacred space, the sanctified skin of Daniel’s battered body. John was callin’ to me, but I didn’t hear it, it didn’t register, wasn’t relevant. A sharp jerk on my collar pulled me back, and I looked up at him, dazed. His face was impassive, unreadable, switchblade steady in his grip.
“Daniel’s hurt.”
The sound came back, but only as a dull reverberation. Everything echoed as I moved much much much too slow to kneel beside Daniel. I wanted to touch him, hold him, feel for myself that he was whole an’ sound, but fear of furthering the damage done kept my fingers hovering a breath above his lips. Pale pale pale and so still, he looked like stained glass about to shatter.
“Daniel,” I breathed, the sound of his name echoing inside my emptiness, the sound of ocean waves crashing in muted violence. “Daniel.”
My voice shook, and I cupped my palm around his face as though the touch of him could keep me present, keep me from dissolving into fear and white noise.
“Daniel.”
He breathed.
My heart remembered how to beat.
He coughed.
I held his head in both my hands an’ prayed.
He opened his eyes.
I could not speak.
“Jesus Christ…” I heard John mutter, relieved.
The clouds in Daniel’s blue eyes parted, and there I saw recognition an’ a calm trust so deep my heart crumbled like ash. I should’ve said something, should’ve told him to be still, that I was here, that it was alright, but I couldn’t. I should’ve told him not to say anythin’ when I saw the intent. He opened his mouth, bruised an’ bloodied lips trembling, but syllables turned into choking coughs, and faint, agonized panic swelled in his bright blue eyes before they rolled upward and closed.
“Daniel?”
His body was slack beneath my shaking hands, and I felt as though the life were trickling out of him and pooling on the floor round my knees.
I gripped his shoulders, like I could stop the flow with nothin’ but the strength of my holding. John was leanin’ over me, a hand on my arm, sayin’ something. Slowly, sound became speech.
“…in shock. We have to get him to a hospital.” Calm an’ steady, he pulled me back an’ helped gather Daniel into my arms.
Ambulances don’t come to our neighbourhood, least not with any considerable haste, an’ time wasn’t somethin’ we were keen to lose. Daniel’s brother was down for the count, but for how long, we didn’t know. I was aware of all this only as a distant recollection, so I followed John’s lead out the broken door.
I held Daniel to me like a child, as if all the hope in the world were poured into that badly used vessel. So small an’ light, I barely felt his weight, only his sharp bones an’ the soft warmth of his breath against my neck.
At least I knew he was breathing.
The bus stop was four blocks away, and we made it in record time. Every footstep sounded out in the stillness and rang in my ears like the hollow crash of mortar fire.
I shifted Daniel in my arms to fit up the steps into the bus, and he breathed a little moan that shredded my heart and sent a rolling nausea pushin’ up from my gut. I took a deep, shaky breath an’ clutched him tight as John paid our fare over protest from the driver. What the other passengers must have thought of us, shakin’ an’ covered in blood, Daniel’s slight body cradled against my chest, I dunno, but I imagine most of ‘em were horrified.
I slipped gingerly into the first empty row, mindful of knockin’ Daniel, an’ John slid in across the aisle.
Daniel shifted in my grip an’ groaned. The faintest slip of blue appeared beneath his eyelids, and I was momentarily mesmerised by the flutter of his pale gold lashes. His half-open gaze fell about aimlessly before settlin’ and focusing on my face. He smiled thinly, serenely, and I felt somethin’ inside me split apart like a wound, leaving the softest tissue open and exposed.
He coughed. I held him still, and a fine spay of blood an’ saliva hit the cuff of my jacket. The distant smile returned, and he looked at me a little more clearly.
“Not dead, am I?” His voice was a small thing dragged through nettles, and he trembled with the effort of speech.
“Not just yet,” I managed round the sharp stone that seemed to be lodged in my throat.
He closed his eyes an’ gave the softest of sighs, leanin’ into the curve of my arm. “Knew you’d rescue me.” He coughed again.
“Yeah, well,” I grunted over the sound of my heart breakin’. “I’d prefer you didn’t need rescuin’.”
He was silent an’ still.
“Daniel?”
I put a hand to his face.
“Daniel?”
He stirred an’ shivered, lidded eyes shaking.
“’M cold.”
Carefully, I kept him cradled in one arm an’ pulled my jacket off, one sleeve at a time, wrappin’ it round him. His narrow shoulders seemed lost within it, small an’ fragile, like an infant enveloped in his mother’s coat.
He muttered somethin’ that may have been thanks, then tensed suddenly, thin face twisted in pain.
My heart spasmed as I held him closer an’ whispered, “Alright. It’s alright.” Like a child, I rocked him, praying and praying and speaking softly, gently wiping the blood from his cheeks as best I could with shaking fingers.
“It’s alright. It’s alright.”
He relaxed, then tensed again briefly, relaxed, an’ tensed, over an’ over in an ever slowing rhythm that to me was requiem. All the while, I murmured meaningless reassurance
“Alright. It’s alright.”
til his breathing slowed and he was still in my arms once more.
Silence came over me, again. All I knew were the minute motions of his body and the slow sound of my own voice, a theme in minor chords winding down to its resolve.
“Alright,” I whispered. “It’s alright.
Resolve
Simon’s been in love with Daniel since we were kids.
Y’know, in case you hadn’t figured that out.
There’s a photo of the three of us, round age eight, sittin’ in the grass on somebody’s lawn. In the picture, I’m staring at the camera, lookin’ like I’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Daniel’s gazin’ off at somethin’, probably a bird, and Simon’s looking at Daniel. He’s not smiling or frowning, just looking, completely impassive and completely transfixed. How rare to have that moment, the very instant of captivation, so permanently preserved.
Exactly when Daniel fell in love with Simon is a little harder to pin down. Doubt he’s sure of that, himself.
All I know is he come to my door one day, hands in his pockets, hunched over an’ fidgetin’ like a kid what’s done somethin’ he shouldn’t.
“Need to talk,” he said, an oddly grave expression on his baby face. “Got a mo’?”
I stood aside and waved him past. Up in my room, he perched on the edge of my bed, pulling up his knees. Now, I ain’t a real tall bloke, especially next to Simon, but Daniel’s a tiny slip of a thing, an’ sittin’ there, folded up on himself, he looked small an’ lost, like a little boy, a latchkey kid whose misplaced the front door key.
“You wouldn’t hate me if I was queer, would you?” he said all in one breath.
Leave it to Daniel to make short work of difficult conversation.
“Depends on who your chasin’.” I hesitated. “Not me, is it?”
I ought to have been offended at the face he made, but then my head caught up to where this was going.
“Daniel?”
He looked up, biting his lip nervously.
“What’re you gettin’ at, here?”
Six shades of pink flooded straight up into his hair, an’ the tips of his ears, peekin’ out from the blonde shock, turned violently red. He looked fit to burst, an’ burst he did.
“Well he ain’t bad lookin’, is he? Plus he’s smart, y’know, real smart. An’ it’s not like I can help it anyway, I mean, ‘s not like I asked for it, but it’s not so bad, not like bein’ ill or nothin’, like they say, nonna that heartache bollocks. ‘S like flyin’, really, feels like flyin’, only safe, y’know, like it don’t matter ‘cause it’ll all be alright in the end, an’….”
I held up a hand, and he paused.
“Simon, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, jus’ checkin’.”
“Yeah, anyway, so I don’t know. It’s like somethin’ that just happened, somethin’ I jus’ know without knowin’, y’know? Like onna those, what’s it called? Where y’just all of a sudden know.”
“Epiphany?”
“Yeah, that. It’s like an epiphany, with all these fireworks in my head, an’….”
I raised my hand again. “Why are you telling me this?”
He looked genuinely baffled. “Well I couldn’t very well tell Simon, could I?”
There was some wisdom in that, anyway.
“Or maybe I should.”
Maybe not.
“Had to tell somebody, at least. But I guess I ought to tell him, right? I mean, you’re s’posed to tell, yeah? Somethin’ like this, somethin’ this good, I ought….”
Both hands came up this time, Daniel’s unstoppable kinesis making my head spin. “You want to tell Simon… what, exactly?”
“Well I fancy him, don’t I? But not fancy like you fancy that girl at the fish shop, but really like, y’ know? Like that film we saw, the one with that bloke an’ everybody was cryin’, only better’n that, an’ I think that….”
“Daniel.”
“What?”
The implications of what he was tellin’ me crashed into the fore of my thoughts. Visions of beatings an’ dirty looks an’ families disowning their sons swam before my eyes, and a thousand protestations rose into my mouth.
But there he was before me, a reality in front of vicious abstractions, face caught up in breathless ecstasy. I thought of Simon’s heavy eyes an’ sidelong glances, the careful distance he kept between them an’ the softening of his smile, cynicism drownin’ in the music of Daniel’s laugh.
I sighed. Well, fuck.
“If you really think you ought to tell him….” His eyes lit up like I’d just told him Christmas had come early. “Now wait. Wait,” I said, stemming the torrent before he could start. “I’m thinkin’ maybe I ought to tell him for you. So’s not to overwhelm him.” Which was true, but, more to the point, when left to his own devices, Daniel tended to make things explode, often literally.
Rather than bein’ crestfallen, as I’d expected, he seemed relieved. “Really? That’s stand-up, mate, really tops. I know I’d bollocks it up somethin’ hopeless.”
Stand-up. Really tops. I felt sick. I knew I had to tell Simon, an’ do it before Daniel decided he’d waited long enough, but I’d no idea where to begin.
Unaware of anything but his own high, Daniel fairly danced out the door.
As we left, I caught hold of his arm. “Daniel, mate, be careful, alright? Lotta folks don’t like that sort of thing.”
For a moment, he looked almost chastened. Then his spirit returned in full force, and he gave me a dazzling smile. “Well bollocks to them. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”
Somewhere in the back of my head, I had a creepin’ sense of certainty that this could not possibly end well.
Now, this was Friday afternoon, an’ when we left it was to go meet the object of Daniel’s infatuation.
Ah, who’m I kidding? It weren’t a crush, it was love, pure an’ simple. So there you have it.
I found neither the opportunity nor the inclination to initiate The Talk, in part because Daniel spent most of the night taking every possibly chance to touch Simon. I was still mulling over an approach the next evening as we walked to Daniel’s house.
Simon was quiet. I mean, Simon’s always quiet, but this was a tense, pensive silence, and I wondered if perhaps the little bastard had gone an’ mouthed off, after all.
You know most of this story already, but here’s what I saw. When Daniel’s shout sounded through the door, Simon went so white he nearly disappeared. When he started breaking down the door, I had to help for fear that he’d kill himself tryin’ to get it down.
All the eventualities I’d thought of the day before came risin’ up in my mind. Someone’d found out. His brother found out. The thought of little Daniel, tough as he was, at the mercy of that maniac bastard made my blood run cold, and I pushed harder. All the while, Simon’s screaming rang in my ears, Daniel’s name is desperate repetition.
As the door broke open onto that sickening tableau, two thoughts emerged with startling clarity.
Shit.
and
I’m going to kill him.
which was immediately superseded by
Simon’s going to kill him.
He didn’t, fortunately, but he certainly seemed to be makin’ a valiant effort. As he ‘subdued’ Daniel’s brother, I looked to the lad himself. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He sure as fuck wasn’t moving. I searched desperately for any sign of life beneath the blood an’ bruises that covered his face.
He wasn’t dead, I decided. He couldn’t be, an’ that’s all there was to it.
Afraid of having an actual, and possibly second, murder on our hands, I had to get Simon off of Daniel’s brother.
I called his name, but he didn’t flinch, just kept pounding as though his fists were keeping the Devil himself at bay.
“Simon, stop!” I jerked him back by the collar of his shirt, and he looked at me for a moment without the slightest flicker of recognition, pure and perfect rage burnin’ deep in his eyes. Then I said the magic words.
“Daniel’s hurt.”
The fire in his face went out, like he been doused with freezing rain, and he pushed past me without a word to kneel as best he could beside Daniel’s prone form. I watched him from the corner of one eye an’ kept the other fixed on Daniel’s brother, out cold an’ definitely in for one hell of a headache. My little switch action knife was in my grip, ready for action, though I didn’t remember pulling it. I prayed Daniel’s brother stayed down, at least for now. I really didn’t want to kill anyone today.
Over the dissonance of my own thoughts, I heard Simon’s voice an’ Daniel’s name like a missal litany, hushed an’ sacred and begging beyond all hope.
When Daniel coughed and shifted, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
“Jesus Christ.”
I doubt they heard me, but I did hear the panic in Simon’s voice as Daniel blacked out again. The terror that clouded over him was palpable, and I knew that, left to himself, he would stay there, paralyzed, until time ran out.
“Simon.” I went to him, taking gentle hold of his arm, almost afraid that the touch would spur him to the defensive, and I didn’t want to get decked. “Simon, he’s in shock. We have to get him to a hospital.”
Without acknowledgement, he rose, and I helped him lift Daniel’s body, so frail, which he carried as if the very last of what was good in the world were held there in his arms.
The front door, obviously, was not entirely functional, but it was still mostly on its hinges, and I pulled it closed as best I could. Wouldn’t do have anyone pokin’ round or Daniel’s brother comin’ after us too quickly.
Getting’ onto the bus was its own little challenge. The driver saw us comin’ an’ started to close the door, but I shoved my arm between the panels and held them open.
“Piss off,” he growled, inching the bus forward and pulling me with it.
“Op’n the door, you fuckin’ tosser!” I shouted back, fist pounding on the door in punctuation.
“No fuckin’ way! You can bloody well walk.”
Fear and frustration mounted, and I pulled harder on the sliding panes. While I was throwin’ insults with this bastard, Daniel might be bleeding to death, might die there, just a breath behind me in Simon’s arms. I pulled out a tenner, showed it to him through the glass.
“Open the fucking door.”
He groused loudly, but open it he did. I shoved my cash in the till an’ pushed forward past rows of commuters cranin’ their necks to see what the fuss was about. Simon took two empty seats together, and I sat across the aisle, trading dirty looks with a few of the other passengers.
Then the waitin’ began.
I heard Daniel groan, and I looked over quickly, heart thudding. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t that bad, that he looked worse off than he was, but the dark bruises blossoming on his thin face an’ the blood that hung like a death omen at the corners of his mouth brought bile risin’ in my throat.
I saw Simon’s face in profile, tense and pale, razor-sharp worry cutting his expression open an’ raw. He was speaking softly to Daniel, words of care an’ comfort welling up with overwhelming tenderness.
I looked away, stared out the window. The sight of them set a sickness low in my gut. Daniel beaten, Simon open, my senses flipped over an’ folded in on me. This was wrong. this was not how the world should be. Like a child I protested, railed against this upheaval.
Memories of my childhood, of my life, are peppered and coloured with Daniel’s smile. I got nothin’ next to what Simon feels, not even close, but Daniel is a bright and shining thing, a source of such light that his absence would cast all the world into darkness and cold. I thought of this and shuddered, feeling infinitely empty and powerless.
For all our haste in getting there, the bus ride seemed to last decades. The seconds ticked by as I stared resolutely through the window. All the while, Simon’s voice, soft and strained, sang just above the ambient noise, a steady theme of desperation.
“Alright. It’s alright.”
My heart beat weaker, sank lower, with every passing street sign. Time itself slipped past in the deepening night and, with it, hope.
The bus stop was half a block from the hospital, and I was glad to wind my way past the passengers again. My heels’d hardly hit the ground before the driver slammed closed the doors an’ sped off like Hellhounds were chasin’ his tail. Bastard. I spared a hot look for the retreating bus, then hurried after Simon, who’d not so much as paused to get his bearings. I caught his elbow an’ steered him back round in the opposite direction.
“This way, mate.”
He grunted acquiescence and resumed his pace, still looking lost and unspeakably bewildered.
The emergency room was crowded, loud, and a mess. I guided Simon to the only empty bank of seats an’ made a line for the desk. I got a bored and slightly frazzled glance from the receptionist, who told me to please wait a moment. I fought the impulse to scream at her an’ stood drummin’ my fingers on the countertop.
Finally, she looked up at me expectantly, and I did my best to be politely frantic.
“Me mate’s been beaten real badly,” I said. “I don’t know if he’s alright.”
“Is he conscious?”
“Um… sort of.”
She sighed an’ pulled out a form. “Name?”
“Coolidge. Daniel Coolidge.”
“Can he walk?”
“No.” I pointed back to where Simon sat cradling Daniel’s battered body. “He’s over there.”
“You a relation?”
“No.”
She didn’t look up, only handed me a clipboard an’ said shortly, “Fill these out best you can.”
As I turned away, I heard a muttered “Bloody kids” an’ clenched my fist.
Mother’s name, father’s name, date of birth, previous illness….
“D’you know if Daniel’s allergic to anythin’?”
“Peanuts.”
I made a note. “What about pills?”
Simon shrugged. I skipped down.
Daniel coughed an’ shivered. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw Simon’s clear enough, and I knew we were runnin’ out of time. I dashed through the remaining papers and practically threw them at the receptionist.
“Have a seat,” she said primly. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”
“Please.” I leaned over the desk and forced her to look at me, to see, somehow, the mortal imperative. “Please hurry.”
She nodded dumbly and waved me off. Shaking, I went back to sit beside Simon, who seemed to be growing more frightened by the minute.
Daniel was trembling, no longer brief tremors, but a sustained quaking that rose and fell with each breath. Simon held him closer an’ closer. I could imagine that, if anything, would be enough, that the force of Simon’s will an’ the warmth of his arms might still time and keep life from slipping away.
When they called his name, we leapt up an’ nearly ran to where the nurse stood waiting. She looked disdainfully at Daniel an’ rolled her eyes, callin’ for a gurney.
“What happened?” she asked without interest.
“Got beat up by a coupla rockers,” I replied quickly. That was reasonable, we looked enough like Mods. Not that adults usually know the difference, anyway.
Carefully, Simon laid Daniel down on the white sheets, surrendering, finally, his hope to other hands. They started wheelin’ him away immediately.
“Wait….” Simon took a step forward. I put a hand to his chest, gently restraining.
Over her shoulder, the nurse said, “Immediate family only,” in a dismissive voice that turned my stomach.
Keepin’ my hand on his arm, I led Simon back to our seats. He sat down heavily, all the tension gone from his body.
“He’ll be alright,” I assured him, sounding weak and hollow, even to myself.
He said nothing for so long I thought he’d retreated into himself, unable to focus in Daniel’s absence. Then he spoke, so softly I might not’ve heard it.
“He kissed me.”
Oh. It was my turn for silence. Missing pieces fell into the chain of events, and I was absolutely floored that one small kiss, a single stolen moment, could have led so directly to this, sitting here with Simon, splashes of blood on his white T-shirt like gaping craters in the bright bright lights.
The bitter twist of his mouth told me he was thinkin’ much the same.
“’S my fault, innit?”
I sighed. “No it ain’t. An’ you know it.”
“But….”
“But nothin’.” An edge crept into my voice. “You didn’t beat ‘im, an’ you didn’t kiss ‘im.”
Another long quiet. Then he said, even more softly, “I wanted to.”
“Yeah, well, everybody wants to kick the shit out of Daniel sometime.”
He gave me a sick look, very much Not Amused.
I swallowed. “Right. Sorry.”
He hung his head, so utterly slack and without hope that my heart cracked. I took a deep breath and steadied myself.
“He quite fancies you, y’know.”
Simon stared at me, face so open, so completely exposed, it unsettled me to my very core, but I pushed on ahead.
“Tol’ me so himself. Fit to burst, he was. Kept goin’ on about flyin’ an’ fireworks an’ such. Quite the speech, he made.”
Simon’s expression was blank, as though he could not process what I’d said. Slowly, he turned away and stood, walking dizzily toward the door of the loo. Unsure, I followed and watched him fall to his knees in front of a toilet as he proceeded to vomit up what appeared to be a week’s worth of meals.
I stood behind him, wanting with all my soul to soothe, to comfort, but my hands felt big an’ awkward, and all the words I knew failed as my tongue formed them.
Once his stomach was empty an’ the convulsions had stopped, he sat back against the side of the stall, pale and exhausted, wipin’ his mouth.
After a moment, I queried, “Feel better?”
To my surprise, he replied, “A bit, yeah.”
“Bit much to take on, I guess.”
He was quiet, thinking, then he asked, “What did he tell you?”
I shrugged. “Mostly just babbled. Asked if I’d hate him if he was queer.”
Simon tensed. “Would you?”
This time, I thought about the question before I answered, truthfully, “Neh, ‘s fine. Long as I don’t have to hear about it.” I thought again. “Or see it.” Then, “Or think about it.”
“See no evil. Hear no evil.”
“Well, evil’s a bit harsh….”
He snorted. Crouching down beside him, I said, “Look, mate, I can’t pretend this don’t freak me out some, but you been pinin’ after Daniel since your hormones kicked in.”
He looked up at me, horrified. “How did you…?”
“Jesus fuck, Simon. You light up like a fuckin’ lighthouse when he’s around. Since we were kids, you been silly over him. Be a damn fool not to see it.”
A dark flush flooded his cheeks, an’ he looked away, whispering, “Didn’t think anyone knew.”
“Just me,” I replied, settling onto the floor. “Y’know, your best mate. Who you didn’t tell.”
His head sank lower. “Thought you’d be disgusted.”
“Bollocks,” I spat. “And anyway, it don’t matter. I’m just glad you can quit mopin’ about now.” Assuming, of course, Daniel made it out alright, but I couldn’t bring myself to think of the alternative, much less say it.
A series of changes crossed his face, settling finally into dejected resolution. “No. This happened ‘cause of me. Ain’t gonna happen again.”
He was right, of course. Someone would always find out, there’d always be some punk lookin’ to beat up on a coupla queers, families to throw them out, suspicious neighbours, smashed windows an’ contemptuous looks. All this extended clearly before me as though it were already past. Secrets and lies and hospital visits.
Then Simon looked at me again an’ said, “I can’t do this.”
His dark eyes brimmed with frustrated hope, aching and cracked open like a bud split too soon. I thought of Daniel’s eyes, bright an’ wide, as he spoke of flying an’ fireworks. I heard a lifetime of unsaid things, unspoken truths, playing behind the din in a soft theme built of mournful minor chords.
“Yes you can,” I said. “And you will.”
Three hours later, the doctor appeared to tell us that Daniel would be fine, he was in recovery, and we could see him. There was something about internal bleeding an’ a minor concussion, but I didn’t hear a word. The list of injuries was a meaningless litany, an’ it was hard to focus with Simon beside me, vibrating in anticipation.
Daniel looked lost among the tubes and machines and the white room. But he smiled broadly, if a little dazedly, as we came in, an’ my heart beat properly for the first time that day.
Simon seemed to lose his breath for a moment, and I nudge him forward. He started, then took a step closer, awkward as a kid on the first day of school. Pushing past his uncertainty, I went to stand beside the bed, grinning genuinely.
“You look like shit,” I said, ruffling his hair, careful to avoid one spot that had been clipped short to allow for stitches.
“Least ‘s temp’ry,” he rejoined, slurring just slightly. “Y’ always look like shit.”
I laughed an’ turned to see Simon, with a soft, sweet smile, watching Daniel in rapturous contentment.
I cleared my throat an’ looked back to the patient. “I’m gonna phone you’re mum. Let her know not to worry.”
Simon didn’t even glance at me as I walked out, an’ Daniel’s attention seemed to have shifted instantly.
It was late, but Daniel’s mum’d be up. I called, told her some story about a fight at the arcade, and no, of course we didn’t start it, everything was fine, and Daniel was going to stay with me, so she didn’t need to wait up.
After that, I took my time getting’ back, filched some geezer’s pop, chatted with one of the younger nurses, almost got myself lost, and mused on my deep and unrelenting hatred of hospitals.
When I made my way back to the room, I peered in through the little window. Simon was seated, now, beside the bed, sayin’ somethin’ at which Daniel was laughing. Daniel, high on Simon’s proximity an’ six kinds of pain medication, had an expression of perfect happiness. Their hands were clasped, Simon’s rough fingers closed round Daniel’s pale palm.
Whistling tunelessly, I opened the door, and Simon withdrew his hand quickly. I offered him the remainder of my pilfered drink an’ settled on the bed at Daniel’s feet. Simon blushed nervously, but Daniel beamed at him, serene and utterly unaffected.
Alright. I thought. We’ll be alright.