Bleeding Like Me

by Riley Parks

  They seized the moment when Evan’s roommates left for a two-day drug run through Indiana and Ohio, knowing that there wasn’t likely to be another chance for a while. It was strange to think he’d never seen Evan’s place. He had a picture in his mind of what he thought it looked like, but as he stood in his boyfriend’s bedroom, he realized he couldn’t have been further off.

  A single bed was pushed into the corner next to a window with kinked blinds that didn’t do anything to stop the daylight from pouring in. The walls were a dingy white and there were splatters of multicolored paint all over the rotting hardwood floors. It smelled vaguely like mold, weed, stale beer, and acrylic, a combination strange enough to make Jackson’s stomach turn. Empty baggies were piled on the nightstand and strewn over the bed; a junkie’s touch.

  Compared to the squalor he grew up in, it wasn’t too bad, but he’d chosen to keep his space cleaner, feeling it would stop him from allowing himself to be like his father, as if a mess could make a man a monster.

  “It’s not much,” Evan said, sounding apologetic, “but it’s mine.”

  “It’s nice,” Jackson lied, grinning back at the smile on his boyfriend’s face.

  “You’re full of shit.” The redhead laughed, crouching down so he could slide a few canvases out from under the bed. “Here are some of them,” he said as he leaned five paintings against the wall. He pointed to the piece in the middle. “That’s my favorite.”

  Jackson nodded and bit his lip as he looked over the artwork, all featuring him in some degenerated way, each one more disturbing than the next.

  Somehow every painting screamed in torture but settled into solace, leaving Jack wondering whose pain was reflected, his or Evan’s. It was the first time Jackson had ever truly admired a piece of art, and he felt it in his bones. It was as if Evan had scooped out the marrow and spread it across each canvas. The paintings were as unnerving as they were beautiful—how Evan saw Jack, how Evan saw himself

  “You hate them,” Evan stated, his tone indicating that he knew he would.

  “They’re all me,” Jack said in a hush.

  Evan shook his head in disagreement. “No, they’re all me.” He sniffed uncomfortably. “My fears I think.”

  “Afraid of me?” Jackson questioned. “Don’t act like it.”

  “Afraid of what I could do to you,” Evan admitted, sitting down on the edge of the bed and pulling a baggie out of his nightstand. Jackson turned away as Evan snorted the cocaine, unable to watch him give in again. Jack’s heart cracked with every line his boyfriend cut. He’d never seen a strong man be so weak; a slave to a substance.

  “More worried about what you do to yourself than what you do to me,” Jackson muttered, studying the paintings again.

  “It impacts you though, right? What I do to myself?” Evan asked after he let out the familiar sigh of the last line bumped.

  “Rather be destroyed by you than never fucking know you,” Jack confessed, feeling the weight of the statement. Maybe Evan had ruined him after all. “You’re really talented, Evan.”

  “At fucking up?” Evan teased wryly, getting up so he could come behind Jackson and drape his arms over his shoulders. Evan pressed a kiss on the back of Jack’s head and breathed into his hair.

  “At this shit,” Jack replied, waving toward the paintings. “Love them.”

  “I’m more talented at other things,” Evan flirted, reaching down and grabbing Jackson by the wrist to flip him around. Evan pushed Jack hard against the wall, cupping the crotch of his pants roughly.

  “That right?” Jackson smirked as his boyfriend unzipped Jack’s jeans. He kicked off his shoes and shimmied out of his pants while Evan yanked off Jack’s shirt, leaving him naked while Evan remained fully clothed.

  “This body,” Evan crooned, rubbing his hands over every inch of Jackson’s torso as he kept his eyes trained on his hard cock. “Want to get dirty? Be my muse?”

  “What I gotta do?” Jackson grinned, knowing that whatever it was, he was putty in his lover’s hands. Jack wondered how another person could hold that type of power over him, making him happily and dutifully kneel to his will.

  “Just gotta take it like I know you can,” the redhead stated as he dug his fingers into the fleshy bits of Jackson’s ass. “Ready to do that for me?”

  “Do I look fucking ready?” he retorted, knocking his dick against the thigh of his boyfriend’s sweatpants and lifting his eyebrows. “Bet I feel ready, too. That big dick stretched my ass out good this morning.”

  Jackson never thought he’d be a morning person, but waking up next to Evan had a hell of an effect on his body. It was barely 9 a.m. and while they’d already banged hard once, he was more than ready to do it again. Everything about Evan was sexy, from the way he looked to his attitude. He had a perfect face and a body to match it. Just being next to him in bed drove Jackson crazy.

  “Bend over and show me that hole,” Evan directed. “Spread your cheeks, baby, c’mon,” he prompted. He leaned down and spit into the gap, and Jackson’s muscles contracted at the sensation. “Looks so good. Now, go lean your elbows on the bed, stick that ass in the air, and wait for me.”

  Jackson obliged, glancing over his shoulder to watch as Evan stripped off his clothes and grabbed two tubes, one paint and the other lube. “Don’t get those two tubes confused,” Jack warned, smiling at the grin on Evan’s face.

  “That rhymed,” he stated, tossing the lube onto the bed and covering his palm with red paint. He smoothed it up each of his fingers carefully as Jackson narrowed his eyes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Evan replied with an indulgent hum. “Finger yourself,” he ordered, watching as Jackson popped the top of the lube, squeezed some out, and began to dip a digit in and out of his hole. He let out a breathy moan as he did, causing Evan to shake his head. “So fucking sexy, Jack.”

  Hands that were completely washed in crimson reached around and pressed onto Jackson’s hipbones. Hunched over Jackson’s back, Evan put his right hand over Jack’s heart.

  “Line me up,” Evan directed, letting out a sigh when Jackson did as he was told. Evan pressed the thick head of his huge cock against Jackson’s hole. He pushed back as Evan wiggled his hips, groaning when he bottomed out. He mounted Jackson and settled those paint-wet hands around his neck, squeezing gently so the paint left hand marks on his skin.

  “Harder,” Jackson rasped, overwhelmed by the desire to be fucked brutally and choked out. “Just don’t let my body go limp.”

  Evan did as he was told. They were alike in a lot of ways: both having addictions to things that fucked them up. Jackson gritted his teeth as Evan drove into him hard, and he was desperate to feel the release he craved; a recharge and reset.

  Jackson’s body wanted to inch forward with each thrust of Evan’s powerful cock, but the strong hands clenched tightly around Jack’s neck held him back. The blood drained from his head as his body arched under the weight of Evan’s, pleasure pumping through his veins as his mind floated away. He saw flashes of red hair in his peripheral vision; black dots dancing in front of his eyes before everything went dark. Evan’s animalistic grunting sounded miles away as Jackson found a space in the quiet, his body trembling as he left it.

  Gone.

  He came to when he heard gunshots. Three distinct pops, in close succession to one another. His head was pounding as he tried to open his eyes, wondering if he’d dreamt them. If it wasn’t for the bed being wet underneath him, he wouldn’t have thought they were real.

  Sticky puddles of come and sweat adhered the sheets to his thighs, and his body felt empty in a satisfying and alarming way.

  “Evan,” he croaked, voice as broken as his body felt. He willed himself to stand as the room spun around him, forcing him to the ground. He blinked several times, trying to get his bearings, looking past the open door at the streaks of red spread across the wall of the hallway.

  “Evan,” he called loud
er, closing his eyes again, willing his fuzzy brain to focus. When his eyelids lifted, he saw himself in the mirror that hung on the door of Evan’s closet, covered in blood.

  Maybe he was dead.

  “Evan!”

  31

  Blood. Jackson needed blood to make its way back to his brain and carry with it the oxygen that would make him more coherent. Evan had choked him too hard. He wondered how long he’d been out. Closing his eyes tight, he hoped that when he opened them he would be lying on Evan’s bed with his boyfriend on top of him, that there wouldn’t be blood splattered across the wall, and that he’d know what the fuck was going on. No such luck. Finding himself in the same position he’d been in prior but now he had more panic pressing against his chest. He rose to his feet and steadied his wobbly legs, letting the worry guide him out of the room.

  He passed the dead body in the hallway, sidestepping the busted skull and cursing when he got blood on his foot. He smeared it down the hallway, purposely pushing down his toe to rub it off against the floor, and into the kitchen where his boyfriend was pacing, Glock in his shaky hand, naked body splashed with blood. “The fuck’s with you strangling me like that, bitch? You were supposed to stop before I passed out.”

  “You came like a motherfucker. What the hell are you complaining about?” Evan snapped, shooting Jack an aggravated look. “You see the dead guy in the hallway?”

  “Mmmhmm.” He nodded nonchalantly as he glanced over his shoulder at the carnage. “Who is it?”

  “Jamal,” Evan replied solemnly, tilting his head so he could see past Jackson.

  “The one with the ‘ginger anger’ theory?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Kind of ironic, huh?” he smirked as the redhead stared at him completely unamused. “Thought he was on a run. What the fuck happened?” He took the gun from Evan’s hands and placed it on the kitchen table before sitting on one of the chairs and pulling his trembling boyfriend onto his lap. “First time?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, finding that he was short on words and long on worry.

  “Pretty decent shot.”

  Evan glared again but relaxed when Jack gently scratched circles into Evan’s back, attempting to soothe his stress. “This doesn’t fucking faze you at all?”

  “It ain’t you,” Jackson answered. “And it could’ve been. So nah, this shit don’t faze me.” Evan nodded as Jackson tickled up his spine. “You did what you fucking had to.” He paused and licked his lips, studying his lover’s freckled face. “Going to tell me what went down?”

  “Yeah, uh,” Evan sighed heavily and rubbed his palm over his forehead, shaking his head as if he was in disbelief of what had occurred. “I squeezed too hard, got too into it I think. You blacked out. Thought you might’ve had a seizure but you were just coming. It was kinda weird. You were convulsing but like, eerily quiet. I’m used to you whining or whimpering.”

  “All right, all right.” Jackson cringed. “You want to get to the part where you killed the dude or keep chitchatting about shit that don’t matter.” He knocked the side of his nostril with his knuckle and sniffed uncomfortably, quite done with discussing his partially conscious orgasm.

  “I went into the bathroom to wet a few towels so I could clean you up or whatever, wipe off the paint. I was halfway down the hallway when I saw him standing by the doorway, looking at you. It freaked me the fuck out. I was kind of frozen.”

  “He saw me lying there like that?” Jackson questioned with a grimace. He could only imagine how he must’ve looked: bent over the bed, fucked out in a puddle of his own jizz with come leaking down the back of his legs. He was glad the fucker was dead. Nobody but Evan should be allowed to live after seeing that shit.

  The redhead nodded. “So, he starts walking farther into the room. I think he was going to check if you were dead or something. He said your name. ‘Jackson fucking Jablonic,’ and let out this crazy laugh like he’d found something out, you know.”

  “How’d he know my fucking name? Don’t know that fucker from shit.”

  “All the KKz know who you are,” Evan replied, waving away Jackson’s grin. “He’s still talking but I don’t know if he’s on the phone or, you know, just talking to himself, but he keeps repeating ‘They’re fucking faggots’ and shit like that.”

  Jackson rolled his tongue up tight between his bottom teeth and the interior of his lip. “And…?”

  “Snuck into Kane’s room, grabbed his AK, went back into the hallway, and called his name,” Evan said, his eyes growing wider as he relived the moment. “As soon as he came out of the room I lit him up. Put three bullets right in his head. Sent him flying back. Done.”

  “Done,” Jackson agreed, reaching up to rake his fingers through Evan’s hair. It was hard to think of something to say to empathize with the emotions his boyfriend was experiencing, as he’d been far removed from his own for so long. “I killed my best friend. Sold my coke out from under me. Said it was stolen. Shot him in the head. Didn’t think twice about it. Just fucking did it.”

  Evan’s eyes widened, but if there was fear there, it didn’t register. “Was it hard for you?”

  Jackson shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Harder to distrust people around you than to take them out when they prove they ain’t worth it.” He paused and lowered his hand to the nape of Evan’s neck. “Is it harder to shoot him or wait for him expose you, hmm? Sometimes you got to do the easier thing and not wait for the hard shit to fuck you in the ass.”

  “You like to get fucked in the ass,” Evan reminded with a slight smile.

  “You know what I fucking mean,” Jackson chided with a grin and an eye roll. “Come here.” He pulled Evan toward him, pressing his lips softly against his and kissing him sweetly. Once they peeled their mouths apart, Jack assured, “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Evan bit his lip and nodded. “What the fuck do I do now?”

  “Get in the shower. I’ll start taking care of shit out here. You guys got to have bleach,” he said, patting Evan’s bare ass so he’d stand up to check under the sink. Yup. They had bleach. He held up the jug with a grin. “Call me when you think you got all the blood off and I’ll check you and get the tub.”

  He gestured with his head for Evan to get to it and watched as his boyfriend stepped over the body lying prostrate in the hallway to get to the bathroom. Without wasting another moment, Jackson wrapped a paper towel around his hand and began dumping drawers onto the ground. Once he felt the kitchen looked properly ransacked he made his way into the living room and did the same. After locating the laundry room, he stripped Evan’s bed and tossed all his shit into the washer along with detergent and bleach. Moving from room to room, he fucked with everything and collected all the drugs he could find. He was tossing about a pound of weed into Evan’s backpack when he heard his boyfriend call from the bathroom.

  “Look good,” Jack stated as he checked over Evan’s body. “Got to rinse yourself with some of this,” he said, holding up the bleach.

  Evan did as he was told and moved aside so Jackson could join him. When they were done, Jackson scrubbed the basin while Evan looked on.

  “It’s a shithole out there, had to make it look like a robbery. Took all the drugs in the house. No good thief would leave any of them. Put the bags in your backpack. I’ll carry it back to my place and you can have them back,” Jackson explained, noticing the concern in Evan’s eyes. “Hey, it’s going to be fine,” he promised. “You’re not going to go down for this, all right?”

  “Thanks,” Evan said sincerely, leaning down to kiss Jackson. “What would I do without you?”

  Jackson licked his lips and patted Evan’s ass. “Wipe the gun and put it in a duffle, okay? Don’t toss it too close by. Take it to a dumpster at least ten blocks away,” Jack continued as he put some gel into his hair. “Buy some groceries on your way back so that when you call the cops you can tell them you were out shopping. Got it?”

  Evan n
odded and then followed Jackson into his now-trashed bedroom. “Got it. When should I call them?”

  “Give it about an hour. They’re going to search everything, so you may want to mess up your paintings,” he suggested gently, knowing it was a fucked-up thing to have to do. He stopped pulling up his jeans so he could look Evan in the eye. “Glad I got to see them.”

  Evan gave him a half smile and lay back on the bed to finish watching him get dressed. “I love you.”

  “You got shit to do,” Jackson reminded, giving him a kick on the ankle. “Get to work.”

  “I love you,” Evan repeated. He grinned when Jackson climbed on top of him and slotted their mouths together.

  “Love you too, Goodwyn,” Jack whispered. “Now get the fuck to it and call me when they’re gone. You’ll stay with me for a while. Say you’re sad or some shit.”

  “I kinda am,” Evan admitted.

  Jackson stood up and shrugged. “That’s okay I guess. Always remember shit could be worse.” Evan tapped his fingers on his bare chest as Jackson slung the backpack over his shoulder. “See you soon.”

  “Can’t wait,” Evan replied.

  Jackson heard him muttering, “Shit could always be worse.”

  32

  Jackson’s head was aching as he made his way down the crowded South Side block. The adrenaline blast he’d gotten from the clean-up had waned, leaving him feeling like he’d been strangled by strong hands and pummeled by a nine-inch cock. It probably wasn’t the brightest idea to ask Evan to choke him out when he was high as a kite, but goddamn, his man was sexy; bad decisions wrapped in a good time.

  Everything about Evan made Jack want to do stupid shit, like make promises he couldn’t keep and commit to things he shouldn’t. He never realized he was so fucking gay. He knew he was into cock, but he was obsessed with a man, head over heels, heart busting in love.

  His knees got weak when he kissed him. He swooned at the sound of Evan’s voice. When Jack got lost gazing into Evan’s eyes, he never wanted to be found. He lived for the laughter and relished the touches and tickles.