by Damon Suede
“I died every fucking time.” Jillian pretended to hurl. “And they’d sit out there and applaud like their hands were made of wet Saltines. Like that phony-ass song was my fault.” She closed her eyes and shook herself again.
Ben nudged his wife fondly. “And then she came home and rescued me from a whirlpool of J-Dating and ESPN.” Big grin. He leaned close to her neck and smelled her skin. “For a life of Friday the 13th marathons, Volvo financing, and Hebrew Pokémon.” He kissed her smile and sighed. “Heaven.”
“Well,” Jillian piped up, “better than lollipops and rainbows.”
Trip chuckled. “High praise.”
“And that is because Ben Stone—” She kissed his face. “—is my fucking spirit animal.”
Her husband’s eyelids were closed and peaceful. “A sloth.” He sighed.
“Trip, you’ll find your Mothra. And invite him over here.” Jillian laced her fingers through his. “Better late than never.” She smiled at their hands.
Ben inclined his head. “Hey, late is fine. Later is greater.” He scratched at the back of the couch, almost but not quite touching Trip.
Since the coming-out speech in eleventh grade and Trip confessing his awful crush, Ben had always been a little funny about physical affection with him. Not mean or cold, but definitely drawing a clear line between their friendship and anything else. He could even flirt at times, as a joke, but he wasn’t a cheater or even a little queer. At first Trip had resented it, but over time he’d learned to appreciate Ben’s honesty and strength. He understood the hips-held-back, thap-thap straight-boy hugs. A lotta guys would have simply disappeared from his life, but Ben had included him completely and guarded their friendship from sexual tension. And Jillian kept dragging Trip out of his cave into the light of day.
Before the feeling slipped away, Trip smiled. “I love you guys.”
Ben swung an imaginary tennis racket and mouthed a smott sound for the imaginary ball. “Back atcha, boy wonder.”
Jillian punched his shoulder. “Who else is gonna gimme advice on how to massage my husband’s butt-nut?” In a flash, she scooted away from Trip, giggling. Ben cracked up.
“Gross!” Trip gasped. “Bull!” He swatted at her with a pillow. “That is bullshit.”
“So that’s where…. Sweet!” Ben held a stubby hand up for a high five. “Thanks, man.”
Trip threw a cushion at Ben, gagged, and grimaced. “Gah! Eggh!”
Jillian crowed. “Prostate cancer is no laughing matter.”
“Hitting the headboard with your spratz is no laughing matter.” Ben tried to look serious.
Trip shouted. “Augh!”
“Can you people please keep it down?” Max stood on the lowest step, exasperated and exhausted. Eye roll.
Jillian got ahold of herself first. “Sorry, booger.”
“We’re sorry. You’re right, kiddo.” Ben fought his smile into submission. Trip held up a hand by way of apology.
Max scowled at the grown-ups and stomped upstairs. From faraway they heard his nine-year-old voice mutter, “Not a booger,” just before a door closed.
They busted into stifled snickers.
Trip sighed. His knotted stomach had eased a bit and his eyes had stopped itching. The Benadryl and whiskey had helped him calm the fuck down. He had his job. Cliff could still come through. He had a date with Silas next week. He had his crazy demon book to play with. Better that he fuck up than fuck off completely.
Jillian jostled him. “Just keep making all the wrong moves and you’ll be fine.”
8
TRIP was stuck at the staple.
He’d stalled out in the middle of his story where the staples held the comic book together.
Comics were often stapled right at climactic midpoints… and woe betide the writer who can’t conquer that little piece of metal. He’d started pencilling the first twelve pages, at which point the story…stopped. In desperation, he went out to the fenced-in Fourth Street basketball court to sketch the guys in the Cage.
After some flirty texting back and forth, Silas was back in town. They’d planned a dinner date. With Trip’s apartment only a couple of minutes’ walk away, he’d told Silas to meet him at the court and then hunkered down to watch the last game of pickup before the park shut down for the night.
Even in January, the air was warm enough that the teams were Shirts versus Skins. Silas should have arrived a half hour ago, but he’d texted an on-his-way, so Trip had pulled out his book and doodled.
Sometimes on Saturdays Trip braved the streets and came down here to draw because the games got so acrobatic, and even if they were ripped, the players weren’t models by any stretch. The court was smaller than regulation and the chain-link surrounding it meant the games often got bloody. The acrobatic showmanship and exaggerated expressions made for wild comic-ready images.
A couple of players were nodding acquaintances, but they ignored the skinny fag with the big pad. Rubberneckers tended to crowd the Cage and howl at the men. Trip’s favorite bench was tucked around the side and gave no great view of the games, but a superb view of the players. Sitting there offered some of the best athletic modeling in Manhattan, and it didn’t cost a dime.
At the moment, the bodies under the streetlamps added up to something else on the page under his scudding pencil. Trip had drawn a lanky character he hadn’t named yet. The demon’s love interest, once lust and panic burnt away his humanity. After he’d succumbed—
“Mr. Spector.” A husky voice crooned from the dim subway steps. “You’re a sports fan?”
When Trip twisted in his seat, he didn’t see Silas, but an anticipatory spark lit him up inside. Their Catwoman date had been nine days ago.
There. Wholesome, hard-limbed Goolsby goodness jogging his way.
“Sorry!” Silas came up the sidewalk flushed and rushed. “Normally, I take the train, but Leigh Ann convinced me to share the actor shuttle to Times Square.” He dropped his eyes. “It’s late.”
Is he embarrassed?
“Hi.”
“Commuting sucks.” Silas dropped his backpack and a grocery bag. His stubble had flecks of red and gold in it. He’d gotten a lot of sun somewhere. “Hate missing time with you.”
“Don’t sweat it.” The words sounded right. Trip meant them. “I knew you wouldn’t stand me up.” True. He didn’t even mind sitting this close, if no one paid attention.
“I forgot to shave.” Silas seemed guilty and ran a hand over the scruff on his jaw. “I meant to, I mean. I wanted to look nice for you.”
“Well, you don’t look mean. No worries.” The light emphasized how thick Silas’s whiskers were. His whole face had scruffed out with several days’ growth at least; not quite a beard yet, but about two days past five-o’clock shadow. It appeared soft to the touch—but he didn’t. “Very handsome.”
“My dad was Finnish, so I gotta shave twice a day.”
“That’s why you stay so tan. Gold, I mean. You keep your color. I’m always like an overexposed photo.” Trip rubbed his arms.
“C’mon. You’re not that pale.” Silas held out his thick forearm next to Trip’s bony one. “Well, you’re lighter than me, but I was in Miami for a week.”
“Vacation?”
“Shoot. ’S’crazy! The partying down there.”
Trip gulped and waited for a punch line, any punch line. “Not really my scene.”
Silas shook his head. “No. Me neither. I just meant that’s what they all do down there. All that salty sunlight and everybody’s in the discos till daybreak.”
“Vato!” On the street ball court, a stocky Cuban kid in blue shorts scored a point. The crowd hanging on the chain-link roared approval and dismay.
“I’m really sorry. I shoulda taken a cab.” Silas sighed, and finally he grinned. “Hey, sailor.”
“We’re good.” Trip grinned. “I hid over here to sketch like a lazy bum.” He leaned and whispered, “Free models.”
“How izzat lazy?”
Silas plopped down beside him on the bench. He put his hand next to Trip’s, obviously wanting to take it.
Trip moved his fingers away, faux-casually, and battled the impulse to slam the sketchbook closed. He hated anyone watching him work up close. Even at comic cons, he took commissions but wouldn’t put marker to page till the fans cleared out of artist alley.
“Not work-work. Not the Mighty Mites.” Trip lowered his head and finished the jawline on the page. “I took your advice.”
“Don’t do that. I give the worst advice!” Silas snickered and leaned over to look.
Again, Trip’s chest tightened as he restrained himself. He gets it.
Oddly enough, Silas only glanced at the page before he rummaged in his backpack. “My ideas usually don’t turn out that good.”
“About drawing my own book.” Trip crosshatched rough shading around the margins. “I think you said, ‘Something I wish I could buy.’ So I’m drawing it.”
Big grin from Silas. “F’real?”
Trip peered down at the drawing again. He’d slowed his hand, but he hadn’t stopped. “Yup. Making up a book from scratch.”
“That’s….” Silas beamed before he finished the thought. “Amazing. I knew at least one of my ideas hadda be good.”
Trip shrugged. “Your fault.” He narrowed his eyes and tested the idea gently with a single word. “Incubus.”
“No way!” Silas clapped and his face lit up.
“A lonely, horny demon who rejects the world he’s addicted to.”
“Asmodeus, Lord of Asslicking?”
“Not porno, though.” Trip glanced around them to make sure Silas hadn’t offended anyone. They were in the Village, surrounded by NYU students and gym rats. Some of these hipsters probably licked ass on public access channels.
“So… not cumshots. More erotica.” Silas almost tasted the word.
“My friend Rina says it’s erotic romance. Love stories for geeks and zombies.” Trip snickered. “If you can’t join ’em, eat ’em.”
“From the creator of Hero High?” Silas nodded appreciatively. “You, sir, are a mad genius.” He plucked at his crotch for a minute and saw Trip seeing it.
For a second he seemed about to lean forward and kiss Trip, but Trip stiffened and returned to his page. He’d only half finished the drawing, but he’d use lots of detail later. “Crazy is what it is.”
Silas rubbed his nose. “Or badass. Anything graphic can be revolutionary. I mean, there’s Barb Wire and then there’s Belle de Jour. It isn’t just pimping.”
Trip raised a shoulder in assent. He didn’t know movies, but he got the gist. “We can go.”
Silas moved with easy grace, all the time in the world. “But you don’t look finished.”
“I can be.” He closed his pad.
Silas studied Trip’s face instead of the page. “Naw. Go ’head.”
“I’m stuck. Same diff.”
“C’mon, man.” Silas spoke softly. “I been cooped up all day. Feels good to sit outside. You thirsty?”
“Please.”
“Two secs. Watch my bag?”
And then Silas left to jog across Sixth Avenue on his fuzzy muscular legs, past the playground, and toward the fluorescent glare of a bodega. Trip smiled at the way Silas threw himself into everything with so much appetite.
Silas understands. The bubble of happiness in Trip’s gut swelled and wobbled. So, this was what it felt like to date a grown-up.
He opened the sketchbook again and drew. Maybe he’d finish out the drawing before the game finished. The tall figure under his hand didn’t feel like any kind of nemesis. The long stretch of his muscles seemed potent and painful.
Trip needed a big battle, but he still hadn’t cooked up any kind of real villain. It drove him nuts. Years of working on Hero High had atrophied his story muscles. Cliff handed him pages and he drew them. Easy to bitch about something you hadn’t made. He’d gotten lazy and sloppy.
Without an adversary, Trip had no book, and he knew it. Fucking staple.
The fact that Trip had filled half a book with Silas reimagined as a barbaric sex demon only rubbed salt into the situation. The interiors he’d drawn were ecstatic and uncanny. Something felt so strange about his furtive obsession with Silas and him wondering who his villains might be. It felt like stealing. Trip considered showing Silas the entire sketchbook and asking, What would you come back from hell to fight for?
Still, he’d opened with his incubus tortured and imprisoned. Most of the pieces had popped into place: occult mystery, spooky sex club, the nosy mortal sidekick who rushed in to free a horny demon… he just didn’t know whodunit. Yet.
Trip needed a big baddie to carry him past the staple.
“Whatsamatter?”
Silas stood over him and held out a bottle of water.
“Nothing.” Trip sighed heavily.
“You muttered something.”
“Bad habit. I’m a little stumped.” Trip took the bottle from the square hand.
Silas sat down and crossed his legs. “Wanna talk about it?”
“My own fault.” Trip shrugged. “I’ve gotten so flabby at Big Dog. Four years I been griping about creative freedom, but comes down to it, and I wish Cliff would just hand me a script and tell me what to do.”
“’S’fucking scary. Fuck up and there’s nobody to blame.”
Trip’s pencil traced the lines roughly. The man on his page looked injured; his face stretched into pain. “Exactly. Now I’m off doing my own thing, totally lost.”
“But that also means that when this thing takes off, you get the credit. Art, my man. That’s the deal.”
“I don’t have a bad guy. I don’t have a plot. I don’t even have a name for my main character. What have I got? A horny devil. A clumsy sidekick.”
The crowd hanging on the chain-link applauded and catcalled. Inside the Cage, the game had ended. The players thumped each other and walked toward the gate. From the smiles, he’d say the Skins had won.
Silas twisted to check, and the bronze chevron of his hairline gleamed above his collar. Trip fought the urge to lick his neck like a dog.
They hadn’t yet spent a whole night together. Hell, Cliff was the only guy who’d slept over in years. Trip got weird about people being in his personal space, and once Silas spent time there, who knew what he’d think? And Silas appeared relaxed, not at all rushed. The attraction obviously existed, their unspoken agreement to delay the inevitable felt simultaneously sexy and maddening.
Big mojo, my man. Ben’s honest gate of horn popped into his head. “You wanna….” Trip blinked. “Maybe come back—”
Silas popped to his feet, his jaw rigid. “Yes.”
“Well, okay, then.” He wheezed nervously.
“I mean, yes, please, Mr. Spector.” Silas grinned.
Trip was pretty sure a whole lot of fucking would happen, and fucking in his bed would feel intense because he couldn’t pretend it happened to someone else or that he’d imagined it. Come to think of it, he hadn’t taken anyone home in a long time. He could hear Jillian’s scolding voice in his head. Besides the Unboyfriend. Had he done laundry or made his bed this week?
“May I please come back to your house and slip into something more comfortable?” Silas hefted the overfilled grocery bag: “I picked up some groceries, so I could make dinner. Wherever we ended up.”
Whole Foods bag. Trip could see a lot of adamantly fresh produce, red and green. Zero cans or snacks. Food which obviously required some kind of expert preparation. Nutrition. Eek. “Or we could order—”
“Trust me.”
What did folks say about the devil you know? Trip realized Silas was holding out a hand to him. “I wasn’t sure if—”
“No.” Silas closed his eyes for a beat. “We’re taking it slow, but I’d like to hang out somewhere that we won’t get arrested for making out.”
Trip remembered how Silas had surrendered and squirted on him after the movie. Now he did have
a branch in his briefs.
Silas noticed. Great.
“Tell you what. How about we both pretend to be grown-ups for as long as we can?” The knot in Trip’s stomach warred with the great musky truncheon trapped against his leg.
Silas brandished a defiant fist. “You wanna live forever?”
Trip stared at him a moment.
Silas tossed his empty water bottle into a trash can, then slung Trip’s backpack over his thick shoulder and scooped up the groceries with that arm. “What?”
“That’s what Jillian and Ben say alla time.” Trip stood up, closer than he’d intended. “College friends.”
“Any fan of Conan is a friend of mine.” Silas scanned the dark clouds and then looked back at Trip. His eyes softened at something he saw.
As they headed uptown, the Fourth Street Station belched commuters onto the sidewalk. The lights changed, but the cars sat parked in traffic while people jaywalked toward the smoke shops, tattoo parlors, and porn emporiums.
“I never would’ve survived that first year without Ben. No money. My folks dead against it. Couch surfing. And he and Jilly just let me have the basement for four months while I got my feet under me. Ben’s been my best friend since high school.”
“Did you two ever…?” Silas kept his eyes on Trip.
“No!” Trip sniffed. “No. Nothing like—I mean, I had the worst crush on him junior year, but he was so straight that he didn’t even get offended. Hell, he used to try and fix me up with curious guys on the wrestling team.” Trip snorted quietly. “Ben’s so real. And Jillian.”
They navigated the roving packs of students and tourists, and somehow Silas knew not to take his hand. He proved surprisingly nimble for a big lug: when they had to get through a passel of bodies, he’d step a little forward and sort of clear the way for Trip with his free arm. Very old school.
“’S’important to have old friends.” Silas wagged a finger. “They remember who you were before you made yourself up. That’s what my dad used to say.” He dropped his voice to a sorghum drawl. “They keep ya honest and call your shit.”
“You miss him.” Not a question.
