by Todd Young
Angel tucked his chin in. “Sure.” He handed Finn the baby lotion, licking the last dribble of banana ice cream from around his lips as he resettled his cock in his briefs, trying to get it to sit comfortably, but trying, more importantly, to hide the fact that he was getting hard.
“You going in naked?” Finn said, and glanced at Angel’s cock.
“Naked?”
“Yeah. I thought. I mean, you’ve got a high fence.”
Angel hesitated for a moment and then, pushed on by the rush of sexual feeling spreading from his groin, he dropped his briefs. What the hell did it matter? He slung them over the back of a chair and itched his lower back as he turned it on Finn, trying to act nonchalant, ignorant of the fact that his cock was ballooning until it jutted awkwardly at the sky. Angel gripped it unthinkingly and bit his lip as Finn poured baby lotion into the palm of his hand. But then, as Finn slapped the baby lotion onto Angel’s shoulder blades, Angel cried out. “Shit!” he said.
“Tender?”
“Yeah. It feels like — I don’t know — a tongue.”
“Just here … and here,” Finn said, touching the arches of his blades tenderly.
“What the hell is it?” Angel said.
“Wings. Or wings in utero, they say. This is where they’d spring from, if …”
Angel closed his eyes. It was preferable not to think about it, and difficult to keep his mind on anyway as Finn gently worked his hands down his back until he had them clasped in the small of it. Then his hands expanded quickly, naturally and inevitably, until his palms were pressed against the swell of Angel’s butt. His fingers were slippery and warm and as he worked them into Angel’s crack, Angel closed his eyes and sighed.
“Good?”
“Yeah.”
“Bend forward a little.”
Angel leaned forward and his cheeks spread, Finn’s fingers filling the empty space, moving randomly and with insistence in Angel’s tender cleft, so that Angel pretty soon didn’t know if he wanted to come or piss or shit. Finn’s fingers found his hole, began to tickle it, and a string of precum fell from Angel’s eye and strung toward the ground. It glittered in the sunshine for a moment before snapping. Finn cupped his hand over Angel’s balls, and Angel locked his thighs together, trapping Finn’s wrist.
“Okay,” Finn said, and Angel released his wrist. Finn stood up, and Angel turned to him, automatically releasing his cock and more than a little disappointed. He hadn’t wanted to start, but once it started, he hadn’t necessarily wanted Finn to stop. He was aware of a look of eager questioning on his face, of a wanting to go on, but Finn cut across it by unexpectedly saying, “Dude!” his eyes locked on Angel’s cock.
Automatically, Angel glanced down and reached for it again, though this time protectively. “What?” he said, his hand resting gently on his rigid shaft.
“That’s — beautiful.”
“Beautiful?”
“Yeah. Beautiful. Look at it.”
Angel lowered his head to his collarbone and stared at his cock, which seemed to have grown again. In the institute, on the ZFU, all of the guys had gained both length and girth. But now Angel’s seemed to have grown again. And it was different somehow. Not quite — human.
“Look at the ridges underneath it,” Finn said.
Tentatively, Angel lifted his head and studied the underside of his dick. He’d never been circumcised, which had been a sore point at school, though now, looking at the way his foreskin bulged around his head, like the bud of a flower, at the way it merged into the skin on the underside, where there now seemed to be a pattern of concentric ridges, splaying outwards, he couldn’t help thinking how natural — how beautiful — it looked.
“That’s so … weird,” Angel said.
“Does it feel good?”
“Well, it wasn’t. I hadn’t even touched myself until last night — this morning. I had a wet dream.”
Finn smiled at Angel, his eyes glittering. “Were you in water?”
Angel nodded, transfixed by the expression on Finn’s face.
“And was I — was it me?”
Again, he nodded.
“Don’t trust it,” Finn said. “Don’t trust anything.” He grinned broadly. “Swimming?” he said, and tweaked Angel’s nipple with his fingers.
14
Angel still got the glow, but his skin didn’t sting. In the water, Finn asked Angel to fuck him, and Angel said he couldn’t do that.
“It’s hard to get, dude.”
“How hard?”
“Really hard. That’s why Hunter, after that bet with the pool balls, fucked you so many times. He wanted to make sure you got it, and then, hoping against hope, that you’d somehow fall in love with him, as if anyone could fall in love with that fuck.”
“Still. I couldn’t. I mean, I might catch something from you.”
“From me?”
“Yeah. You can catch things through the eye of your cock.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit. You learn something new everyday. But I sure would like your dick up my ass.”
Angel lowered his brows. It’d been fine before, when he was worked up for it, but now … “Finn. Not to be rude or anything, but this is going a little fast for me. I mean, I hardly know you, and I’m not the sort of guy, not ordinarily, who’d just get into bed with a guy for the hell of it. I like there to be some kind of connection. Something emotional.”
Finn turned away and disappeared beneath the surface of the pool. A moment later, Angel saw him swimming silently beneath the surface, making his way to the far end of the pool. Angel stood in the sunshine, waist-deep in the pool, sliding his fingers through the silky water and watching Finn, the boy’s ass pale and taut. Finn broke the surface at the far end, locked his elbows over the edge and stared at the house.
Angel figured he’d been a little harsh, but Finn wasn’t exactly the sort of person he had in mind as a partner. He was beautiful. There was no denying that. But there was something — lacking. Something unstable. And possibly untrustworthy. Angel had a feeling he was being played in some way. Finn seemed to know all about this disease, and though Angel had pretty much accepted what he’d said after the incident in the diner, he wondered if Finn really knew what he was talking about.
Then there was the time spent in the institute. The two of them had barely spoken to one another, Angel being locked in his room first, and then, later, Finn, so that the two of them had never really hung out. And though Joel and the others had said little about Finn, no one had seemed to like him. Only Tomas, who seemed to have a kind thought for everyone.
Angel breaststroked slowly to the other end, keeping his eyes fixed on the back of Finn’s head. His hair had knotted into a thick, wet twirl. Angel gripped the edge with his fingers and locked his elbows over it. “I’m sorry,” he said, and nudged Finn.
“No. It’s okay, dude. I’m used to it. It’s just that … you’re so — good. I wouldn’t care if you were seventy and bald, I’d feel the same way. People like you, Angel, you just don’t know what you’ve got.”
15
They showered together. It was Angel’s idea, and when he suggested it, Finn drew his head back, surprised. They jacked each other off and washed each other down, Angel’s body a rosy glow by the time they got out. As they were toweling themselves off, they joked around, flicking red blushes onto the naked skin of their asses. Angel watched closely, guessing Finn was getting a sexual thrill out of the sadistic nature of the game, his cock bobbing taut as he kept Angel cornered, the far corner of the towel held suspended like a slingshot. Eventually, it finished. Angel gave Finn the shot, crying out as the corner of the towel licked its way into the cleft of his ass. As Finn was hanging his towel over the rail, he turned to Angel beside him and said, “Your skin’s like marble. Your body’s like a statue.”
Angel nodded once and stared at the floor. He’d never been good at taking compliments, but his new appearance wasn’t
something he was happy with. What it meant to him was misery, if what Finn had said were true — a lifetime of never being with anyone, or, conversely, of being with anyone he chose and hoping for some sort of idealized love — the sort you saw in movies. Even at nineteen, Angel knew that sort of love didn’t exist. He’d had his own breakups, and had seen the failings of his friends. People didn’t stay together, not forever, and when you saw some elderly couple on TV who’d been together for 50 years or more, it was heartening, though the point of the story was the novelty of it.
As Finn pulled a pair of white cotton briefs on and walked into the living room, Angel was aware of registering a moment in time, of registering a thing he would never forget: Finn’s beauty, his apparent innocence in the flimsy white briefs, the smell of the baby lotion, the chlorine in the pool, the soap they’d used in the shower, the smell of freshly cut grass in the yard, the aftertaste of the banana ice cream — all of which now seemed inextricably linked with Finn, whose threadbare briefs had a hole in the rear.
“I’m beat,” Finn said. He threw himself onto the couch and sprawled, his arms and legs askew.
“Sun does that to you,” Angel said, hovering hesitantly.
“Yeah, and I’m hungry as well.”
“You want to order pizza in?”
“Dude, I don’t have any money. I could look for some work, but if you’re going to New York, then I’d really like to follow along, if that’s okay. I feel at home in New York.”
“What do you do for cash?”
Finn tucked his head onto his collarbone and picked at his fingernails. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m a hustler. Bone lazy, really, if you want to know the truth. And being a shard, well, I can pick a dark guy from a mile away. I keep myself safe.”
Angel turned and walked into the kitchen, feeling as though another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. Finn had left home when? Three years ago? He would have been fifteen. He’d been hustling since then? Living on the streets?
He was lucky to be alive.
Angel put his hands on the counter and stared at the sunlit garden. If he walked back through to the living room now he wouldn’t be surprised to find Finn doing a line of coke. Why the hell had Angel done this? Invited the guy here? Now there was some thing, some thing happening between them, and Angel couldn’t say he wasn’t interested. Hell, the way he’d seen Finn just now in the living room was a vision of splendid beauty. And they had just jacked each other off. But if Finn was a hustler, who knew where the hell he’d been? And with whom?
“You get yourself tested regularly?” Angel said, walking back into the living room, a measure of anger in the tone of his voice.
“Sure I do.”
“And what? You’ve never had a problem? You’ve always been clean.”
“I had a case of syphilis. Caught it early, though.”
Angel clenched his fists. “You wanted me to fuck you. Bareback. And now you tell me you’re a hustler. What sort of hustler barebacks?”
“Shit, I don’t know.” Finn leaned forward and put his head in his hands. Then he turned to Angel, anger distorting his face. “You want to know why?” he said, standing quickly. “I want it. What you’ve got. I want it.”
“You want it?”
“Yeah. I want the angel thing. Hell,” he said, turning toward the window before turning back again, “it’d be a hell of a lot easier for me to cope — with what I’ve got,” he said, his voice failing as the final phrase slipped from his mouth.
“With what you’ve got?”
“Yeah. With what I’ve got. It’s not all about you, Angel. There’s a whole mix of this shit going around. You want to be a noncer? You want to be a vampire? No. Of course you don’t. You’re out of it. You’re home free. Me? What have I got? Shit all, Angel. I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me ten ways to Sunday.”
“Then you’ll have what I’ve got.”
“Yeah. And you know what I have right now? This.” He plucked at his briefs. “A body someone’ll pay for, for the next ten years maybe, and then nothing. No one. No love. No family. I’m an outcast. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere. I take up with a guy like you. I see you want me. I can see it in your eyes. I think, maybe, just maybe, this one will love me. But no. Fuck that. I’m unlovable.”
“You’re not unlovable.”
“Do you love me?”
“I hardly know you, Finn.”
“But you sure had a great old time jacking me off in the shower. You sure loved having your hands on my body.”
Angel drew his head back. “That’s — a physical thing. It’s … what happens.”
“Yeah. But you know what doesn’t happen, ever? Love. Never. Not even from my family. Not even a guy I could call a friend.”
“I’m your friend.”
“Are you?” Finn said, and wiped a tear from his cheek as he got off the couch. “Are you, Angel? Because you know what? I could be the best damn friend you ever had.”
Angel nodded slowly.
They were silent for a moment. Then Angel said, “So what have you got? You’ve got something?”
16
“I’m a hopeless romantic.”
“What?”
“That’s what I’ve got — and no, it’s not a disease. I’m fucking with you. Something about the headspace I’ve been living in since I was a kid — seeing things no one else sees and taking six fucking years to work out that no, I’m not crazy, the fucking shit is real.”
“The shit is real?”
“The girl in the cafe? You remember her?”
Angel nodded.
“How many people do you think I’ve seen murdered, raped, beaten, knifed? How many of the dark do you think are walking the streets, able to be seen by the mundane, but able to hide, whenever they want, anything they want?”
“How do they do it?”
“Bravado — no, scrub that. They get away with it because they haven’t got a moral bone in their body. Not an ounce of humanity, not an ounce of generosity, not an ounce of sympathy. What it comes down to — and this is just my theory, mind you, because none of the doctors I’ve ever talked to have believed me to be anything other than a nut — what it comes down to is an inability to empathize. To put yourself in someone else’s shoes and say, ‘What if that were me?’ That’s what stops people knifing each other on the street, because they have whatever God-given gift it is to be able to think, yeah, that could be me: I won’t do that, because I wouldn’t want it to happen to me.
“Take that. Take all of that, and add a bit of glee. Add a rush into the mix. Add a world in which, to be a real bastard is to be a lord — someone who can get away with anything. Your average Joe, he kills his wife in a fit of rage, and it knocks him for a loop. The police are called, he goes to jail. Take the same case, take a guy from the other side, one of the seriously fucked up darksters. He kills his wife. He feels nothing. Answer: It never happened. He hazes it. The woman vanishes. People wonder what happened to her, but her body is gone, the dust and the blood nowhere to be found. No crime. No victim. Because there’s no criminal.
“If you can’t feel guilt, you can’t be a criminal. Simple as that. And the whole thing in this fucked up century is growing out of control. There’s sites. There’s people into it. ‘Find yourself in the power of conscience. The path to eternal life.’ Except it’s conscience you have to do away with.”
“So you haven’t — you haven’t got any sort of STD?”
Finn shook his head and wiped his bangs aside.
“So there’s no problem, then?”
“Problem?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re clean. You haven’t got any of this stuff you’re talking about.”
“You know what I’ve got, Angel? I’ve got an ability to love. A tenfold ability to love. I fall in love every which way, every which way I turn, and even though it shames me to say it, I’ve fallen in love with the dar
k.”
Angel nodded slowly.
“So I could love you — if you could love me. You could give me what you got, and then, if you could manage it, we could beat this thing.”
Angel sat in silence for a minute or more, and then, for some reason he was unable to fathom, said, “I just don’t think I could do it, Finn.”
17
In the morning, Finn was gone. Angel expected to find money missing from his wallet, or a credit card, but the house was just as he’d left it the previous night, a blanket folded on the end of the couch. Angel searched the kitchen for a note, but there was nothing. He thought of calling Finn. He’d been a bastard, he supposed. The guy had been crying out, crying out for someone, for a lifeline, and Angel had let him go. He found his phone, flipped through his contacts, and came to the final, reluctant conclusion that Finn’s number had been deleted. His one dishonest act, if Angel could call it that. The piece of paper he had written Finn’s number on had disappeared from the hall table.
Angel ran his fingers through his hair and paced the house. The look on Finn’s face, his pale beauty and beautiful gray eyes seemed to haunt the house as Angel played through his mind the moment when he’d told Finn that he couldn’t, in essence, love him. That hadn’t been exactly what he’d meant, but Finn had taken it that way, Angel now saw, and as he reached his mother’s door, he groaned. The curtains were open. Morning sunlight was flooding the bed. He thought of how he’d last seen her, expected the vision to occur again, but the house felt curiously empty now, as though even the spirit of his mother had fled.
Would he ever see her again? Was it possible there was a world somewhere, a different realm, a heaven complete with angels in which his mother might be alive, a place somehow contiguous with this existence?
If it was possible, then Angel hoped he might one day see it, and in it, his mother again. They’d fought about the institute the day he left. He hadn’t told her about the trial until the morning it started, and then, as he tried to explain, she became increasingly agitated. She hadn’t wanted him to go. She’d said it sounded all wrong — dangerous, even. But Angel had known better, or thought he had.
