by Gregory Ashe
Then Shaw lurched again, but this time for a different reason. Matty’s fingers were cold where they touched low on Shaw’s hip, the hooked J where the scar terminated. Shaw knew how the skin felt there: textured and raised, an ugly line against everything else. Matty traced it across Shaw’s thigh, following it between Shaw’s legs, his touch like a static spark that made Shaw groan and spread his knees. The scar was ugliest here where it cut into Shaw’s balls, where it had almost taken them completely off and only hours of surgery had managed to keep Shaw relatively intact. Matty paused here. And then he took the sack in one hand, the velvet pad of his thumb scraping along the scar tissue, and Shaw began to shake.
“You are so beautiful,” Matty whispered.
Shaw bent forward, a garbled, inarticulate warning trying to come to his lips, but it was too late. It was tetanic, the force of the orgasm tightening every muscle, arching Shaw’s back, curling his toes, and then Matty took Shaw’s dick in his mouth and that, that, that was the entire fucking world, just that wet heat, and Shaw exploded. He was vaguely aware of his hands in Matty’s hair, of rutting, of screaming.
And then it was over, and he was falling back against the couch, struggling to capture air, his hands drifting down from the haystack of Matty’s mussed hair. Matty pulled back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’m—” Shaw was crying again, and he put a hand over his eyes because he could feel everything breaking and tumbling apart inside him. “I’m sor—”
Matty was there, perched in his lap, peeling back his hand, kissing him, the taste, kissing him, that taste, kissing him until Shaw stopped crying.
Then, somehow, they were looking eye to eye, and Shaw was surprised to see the fear in Matty’s face. The terror. And Shaw’s mind, even sleepy with the powerful undertow after sex, understood immediately. Matty was wondering if this would end the same way as his first encounter: taken advantage of, rejected, humiliated.
So Shaw wrapped both arms around him and kissed him. He felt the hot dart of heat where Matty’s dick poked his stomach, and he rocked forward, getting them both to their feet.
“Are you—” Matty whispered.
Shaw kissed him and walked him backward, toward the bedroom.
“Shaw, I shouldn’t have—”
Shaw kissed him again; they stumbled, Shaw’s shoulder checked the doorframe, and they both laughed as they spun and staggered and caught their footing.
“I should have asked, I should have—”
They hit the bed, and Shaw found his hands flying all on their own, unbuttoning Matty’s slacks, shoving down his boxers, taking Matty into his hand so that the blond boy moaned and thrust up. With another kiss and a soft laugh, Shaw shoved him down onto the bed and crawled after him.
“Stay,” Shaw whispered as he took Matty in hand again, as the boy groaned, as Matty thrust up and fell back so hard that the whole bed shook. “With me. Right here. All night.”
Matty managed to raise his head. His voice was thick, drunken, as he said, “All night?”
Shaw tightened his grip, and Matty whimpered. “Let’s see if we can set some new world records.”
Chapter 20
The shower upstairs had been running for at least an hour.
Listening to the steady thrum of water, North sat in the corner of the office. A few months ago, he had put the chair there. He had shoved the desk up against the wall, dividing the office—not down the middle, but into two parts: detective and not detective. He had done all this after his license was suspended, after the Marvin Hanson case had been settled, after he was sure Shaw still wanted him coming to work. But shuffling seats and rearranging furniture and putting himself in the corner, those were all just physical things. Precise spatial adjustments that were supposed to reflect where everything stood for North: close but not too close; friends and colleagues but, temporarily, not professional equals. From this distance, North could clock Shaw right in the forehead with a crumpled piece of paper. At exactly this amount of yards and feet and inches, North could watch every smile, hear every hummed note to every bizarrely obscure opera, smell the spiky musk of whatever hipster-boutique-bespoke product was in his hair—and, of course, smell the pot on him too. North could sit where he was and take it all in without giving himself away, without altering where they stood. And knowing where they stood was a matter of life and death, for North, when it came to Shaw.
Touching the throbbing cut at the corner of his eye, North checked to make sure the bandage hadn’t peeled away. In light of all the effort to make perfect, visual sense of where the two of them stood, North couldn’t figure out how things had slipped so far out of the frame. Part of it, he knew, was the lying. North adjusted the tape over the fresh, broken weal that Tuck had opened along the back of his hand last night. His mind followed its usual divided path. One part of him was already explaining, a kind of internal autocorrect that wrote over the events of last night. Tuck had been tired. Tuck had been worried. Tuck had a temper, and he was jealous, and North—if he were totally honest with himself—liked that he was still able to get a rise out of Tuck, liked that just by coming home smelling like leather and sweat and cigarette smoke, he could turn Tuck into a maniac. North had basically been asking for the strap. He really only had himself to blame.
But the other part of his mind was tiptoeing through dark rooms, already stitching together the story he’d tell Shaw to explain the split skin near his eyes, the bruises, the broken weal on the back of his hand. Boxing. Boxing had worked for a long time. North would just say that he’d gotten up early, headed to the gym, and gotten in a few rounds of sparring. It’s not like Shaw would wonder. It’s not like Shaw would even know what time boxing gyms opened. Hell, for that matter, North didn’t know what time boxing gyms opened.
And the upstairs shower was still running. At some point, North knew, he’d run out of track on one of those two paths inside his head. At some point, he’d stop being able to tell the right story. At some point, that internal autocorrect would stop editing. He wasn’t sure what he’d do then. When it had first gotten really bad with Tuck, when the lawyers’ bills had started piling up and the Marvin Hanson case was on every channel, North had never allowed himself even to consider telling Shaw. But an idea had germinated in the darkness of that second path in his mind. Just a small idea, really. A keyhole shaped glimmer of a possibility that North was spying through all the doors he’d locked and bolted on the inside. They’d be upstairs in Shaw’s living room. Shaw would be holding one of those ridiculous knock-off Louis XIV teacups, his slender fingers curled around the porcelain, and North would have a bottle of Schlafly’s and he’d have his thumb under the label and he’d be picking away at it, and they’d talk.
The thrum of the shower had become a kind of white noise in North’s head, and for a moment, he was inside that glimmer, could practically feel the paper and adhesive coming up under his thumb nail. They’d talk. And at some point, North would just start talking about all of it. And he’d tell about Tuck. And he’d tell about the lies. And he wouldn’t cry—Christ, the time for crying was long past—but Shaw probably would. Shaw would probably cry so hard he refilled his own teacup. And—this part of the glimmer was new, something that North hadn’t even realized he’d added since the day before—Shaw would tell North the truth too. He’d tell the truth about what he’d been struggling with since Carl’s death. He’d tell the truth about being a virgin. He’d have some bullshit explanation about how he was still processing, and then he’d laugh nervously, and neither of them would know what to say. And then—here was the real fantasy, the thing North had dreamed about, on and off, since second semester of freshman year—then North would know exactly the right thing to say, and finally Shaw wouldn’t look at him like North was some kind of an obnoxious brother. That glimmer-dream always ended the same way: North setting down the bottle of Schlafly, slowly, carefully, and then rising, the couch shifting under his weight, and then p
eeling Shaw’s long fingers away from the porcelain, setting down the cup, and—
In North’s head, the blanked-out roar of the shower swallowed everything else. He worked his jaw, trying to get moisture in his mouth, and got up from the chair. He crisscrossed the office a few times, trying to get the circulation back in his legs, trying not to feel like he’d been rolling gravel around inside his mouth for the last hour.
When North was sure it was safe, he left the office. Pari was asleep in her chair, her head thrown back, her silken black hair spilling behind her. The bindi today was neon blue. She was clutching a thick textbook in her lap, and the page was open to a timeline of events in the Vietnam war. Christ, North thought, and he did his best to walk quietly. The last thing they needed was another round of final exams.
North took the stairs less quietly, and when he got to the top of the stairs, he rattled the doorknob. Then he pushed into the room without waiting for an answer, and the rush of the shower was louder here, and Shaw was naked in bed, a thin fold of the sheet pulled over his crotch and the rest of his long, lean body sprawled open on the bed. North coughed; he felt like he had a piece of that same gravel stuck in his throat.
Blinking up at North, Shaw arched his back lazily. North ignored him for the moment—fuck, that was a lie, every sense was attuned to Shaw like he was hooked up to electrodes—but something was different in the room. The bookshelves looked the same. The dresser looked the same. The copies of Goethe looked the same. That painting of the Mississippi, the one that looked to North like something worthy of Turner. Even the dirty clothes were the same—well, the sock was gone from the mirror.
Turning his eyes back to Shaw, North felt a few more pieces of gravel get lodged in his throat. Yes, something was different. And that difference was in Shaw. Not the near-total nudity; Shaw loved to be almost naked. North was convinced that the only reason Shaw wore anything some days was because of the scar. No, the difference was something else, maybe in that one beautiful arch of the back that had shown off the smooth planes of Shaw’s chest, that had been eerily reminiscent of North’s dreams—a long time ago, before Tuck—of what Shaw would look like getting fucked. It was something else. It was the eyes, those hazel eyes.
“Morning,” Shaw said.
North found a chair under a pile of shoes—most of them looked like they’d never been worn, which was a very real possibility with Shaw—and dragged it over to the bed. North sat, his legs spread, his elbows on his knees and looked at Shaw. Looked at the shower.
“You know, it doesn’t really work if you don’t get under the water.”
“It’s called a hydro-pneumatic bath. They’re all the rage in Israel. You just run the shower as hot as you can and soak up the steam.”
North studied him, trying to read the lie. “Bullshit.”
Shaw shrugged. That fold of cotton slipped, exposing a sliver of matted, dark hair.
“You reek. Maybe it’s just last night. Maybe it’s because you’re trying to go off deodorant again—”
“That was one time junior year.”
“—but you need a real shower. Not an Israeli steam.”
“Hydro-pneumatic bath.”
“And soap, Shaw. Lots and lots of soap.”
“Are you going to watch me and make sure I do it right?”
North grinned, but it felt weird and crooked. “Only if you make me. I’ve seen enough bony asses in my life.”
“Really? How many?”
“One is enough, and I have to see yours every time you wear those goddamn Lululemon pants. You know they’re see-through, right? Like, you pretty much gave those kids a ‘your wonderful body’ lesson the last time you tried to do yoga in the park.”
Shaw didn’t smile. He was just lying there, arms behind his head, studying North. And then he rolled onto his side, carrying that tiny swatch of the sheet with him, and caught North’s wrist. He turned over his hand, studied the taped-up lacerations, and then his eyes floated up to the cut on North’s cheek. Those hazel eyes were so deep, so variegated. North could have spent a lifetime cataloguing every green and brown.
Just say boxing, North told himself. Just explain it: early start, straight to the gym, sparring. But nothing came out of his mouth. It was those eyes. They were just so fucking spectacular. And the way Shaw was looking at him: compassionate, understanding, expecting. Just say boxing, North told himself again. Just squeak out that one little word, and it’ll be enough.
Neither of them spoke. And after a moment, Shaw said, “Boxing?”
All North could do was nod and pull his hand free.
That white roar of the shower filled North’s head again. They weren’t in the living room. They weren’t holding a beer and a knock-off Louis XIV teacup. They weren’t doing any of it the way North had seen through that keyhole glimmer, but all of the sudden, he knew he was going to tell Shaw. He was going to lay it all out. And fuck it all, North might even cry. His eyes felt hot. His whole body felt hot and stinging like he’d rolled in fire ants. Especially his mouth. Especially his tongue, fat and prickling.
“Shaw—” North began.
The hiss of the shower shut off. Wet footsteps slapped against tile.
The shock of it went through North, paralyzing him. He couldn’t even turn. He could only glimpse, out of the corner of his eye, a hand running a towel through a mess of blond hair, the twinkie-cream body, the hint of a tattoo low on his waist
“I hope you don’t mind,” Matty Fennmore was saying, “but I just grabbed your towel. After last night, I absolutely had to have a shower, and I didn’t see—oh.”
The sensation that followed Matty’s voice inside North didn’t really have an equivalent. The closest thing he could conceive of, some way of making sense of what he was feeling, was fuses: three long fuses already sizzling toward a detonation.
The first fuse was Matty Fennmore, naked and fucking perfect, in Shaw’s shower.
The second fuse was Matty Fennmore saying, I just grabbed your towel.
The third fuse was the shortest and burning the fastest: After last night.
For a moment, neither North nor Shaw spoke. Shaw scooted backward until he was sitting up against the headboard, and he pulled the sheet across his chest. There was something strangely wild in Shaw’s face—a challenge. And North didn’t understand it. Didn’t understand it at all. All he could do was just sit there, staring, aware that his jaw had dropped and he was being a complete and total mouth breather, while inside him those fuses burned. The shortest one, the one that was burning fastest, detonated first. After last night. And then North couldn’t hide from it, couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.
North had come out when he was fifteen, and in the working-class streets of Lindenwood Park, his former friends had really only had one option: beat the shit out of the faggot. And thus had begun what North now remembered as the Red Week: seven days of fights and scrapes and surprise attacks that had culminated in Cal Crigler, Eddie McClear, and Gene Hartley cornering North in the alley behind Mom’s Deli. It had been a fight, a hell of a fight, and Cal had wet his pants and run home, and Eddie had lost two teeth, and Gene had his ear hanging halfway off his head by the time he got free of North. And North hadn’t gotten away clean either—he still had a jagged scar on his side. His father had refused to get involved in the Red Week; as far as David McKinney was concerned, his fag son could sink or swim on his own. That extended, it turned out, to a complete lack of interest in getting the cut stitched up, and so it had healed slowly into an ugly crease of flesh.
But after the Red Week, North had found himself in an uneasy truce with the other boys. And one day, he had been playing Mario Kart 64 on Dennis Neel’s N64. The N64 wasn’t exactly new, but it was new to Dennis Neel, and it was new to the kids in Lindenwood Park, and North had pleaded and threatened until Dennis invited him over to take a turn.
And it was awesome. North still remembered the feel of it, the out-of-body
rush of turning hard into a curve, watching Toad’s—he always played Toad—cart hop and skid and grab for traction. It was partially a sugar high, everything jittery except his hands, with the oversweet taste of tropical-punch Kool-Aid gritty between his teeth. He remembered the black-and-white finish line coming up, he remembered launching a red shell, he remembered pressing so hard that he thought the controller might break—Dennis would hate him forever, but it would be worth it for this first win on such an awesome game. And he remembered hearing Mrs. Neal talking to someone else in the kitchen. On the phone, maybe? Or perhaps North hadn’t noticed the other person in his haste to get to the N64. She had been saying something, her voice muted at the edge of North’s awareness, and then for some reason his ears had tuned in and he’d heard the next words like crystal: We couldn’t very well invite him to the birthday party, and I told Dennis, I told him, that it’s one thing to be polite but that he really shouldn’t make friends with the boy. It’s just not right, is it?
Toad skated across the finish line. A red shell zipped after him, blasting him into the air, but it didn’t matter because he’d already won. North rubbed his thumbs along the sweat-slick plastic of the controller, and all of the sudden the jitters had gotten into his hands, and the tropical-punch taste in his mouth made his stomach clench and flop and roll over. It was the first time in his life that something had been so sweet that it had made him sick.
Now, staring at Shaw, North ran his tongue along his teeth, practically tasting that same grit of sugar and powdered drink mix. Shaw was still staring back at him, his face set in that blend of challenge and defensiveness.
You can either scream, a very cold, very practical voice said inside North. You can either scream and punch and throw a hissy fit and make yourself fucking sick with it, or you can play along.
