by Todd Young
He fell on his ass.
“Not good?”
Cole shook his head.
Angel lifted him to his feet and held him. As he sensed warmth spread between them, he began to feel as though they were merging. Something rhythmic and harmonious seemed to be vibrating between them, and Angel felt as though they might somehow seep into each other and become one.
Cole sighed. “I’ve got you,” he said, as though testing it out.
“Yeah. You’ve got me.”
“You mean that?”
Angel nodded, his head alongside Cole’s, his ear brushing Cole’s hair.
“You don’t have to pay me for anything. Just let me stay here. Let me be with you.”
“That’s all I want, Cole.”
38
They walked over to Jason’s, Cole jittery the whole way. He wanted to hold Angel’s hand, but Angel reminded him of the attacks on gay guys, which seemed to be centered on New York.
Cole nodded shakily.
To Angel, it seemed a bright and sunny day, a little cool, but with plenty of life on the street. He could pick out someone dark as easily now as Finn could, he thought, and he watched Cole flinch as a large guy came toward them and passed. He’d had a heavy looking package under his coat, something that might have been a gun.
On the landing of Jason’s apartment, Cole said, “I’ve never seen it like that before. I mean, I’ve seen it. I know. But I always see — I mean, I always see the good people too, or some of them.”
“It’s all dark?”
Cole nodded.
Angel knocked and then tried the door. It opened, and inside there was a sweet smell, as of incense burning. Everything seemed clean and ordered, but Finn and Jason were out, and not only out, they’d left the door unlocked.
Angel frowned. “That’s pretty weird, don’t you think? To go out and leave the door unlocked?”
Cole was standing in the corner, shivering, his arms clasped over his chest. His face had taken on an ashen appearance, and the rings around his eyes had darkened. He certainly didn’t look attractive now, and Angel wondered what the hell was happening to him. Then he noticed a scuff mark on the floor. The glass elephant that usually stood on the side table was lying on its side on the floorboards. He walked into the bedroom, saw the sheets torn from the bed, and guessed something must have happened, and not something good.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Cole said. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Yeah,” Angel said, and frowned, wondering what the smell was. At first he’d thought it was incense burning, but now it seemed to be more than that, something he thought he’d smelled before, though he couldn’t place it right at the moment. They agreed to leave, but on the way out, Angel caught sight of a purple card on the table by the door. He picked it up and frowned over the single telephone number printed on one side before he thrust it into the back pocket of his jeans.
They walked back home, and once inside, Cole deadlocked the door.
“Can you hold me?” he said.
“Hold you?”
“Yeah. Just like before. Just hold me.”
Angel stepped forward and wrapped Cole in his arms. Cole felt cool and insubstantial, but as Angel held him, the harmonious rapport he’d felt before began to well between them again, and he squeezed a little tighter.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” Cole said.
“In love with me?”
“Yeah. I’ve never felt like this about anyone, but when you touch me, it seems to give me strength, like instead of taking it, you’re giving.”
Angel nodded and kissed Cole on the forehead. He was happy enough to hear Cole talk, but he couldn’t say he was in love with him. What did he know about love?
That night, they slept tangled in each other’s arms, and Angel woke warm, to sunshine, and felt euphoric, a feeling his mother had warned him not to trust, as waking to euphoria meant a bad day ahead. He frowned, wondering what it could be.
After breakfast, he stood by the window with Cole and pointed at the passing mundane, at the couriers on bikes and the businessmen in cars, at the schoolchildren on the sidewalk and the mothers with strollers, at the cars and the advertisements and the birds in the sky. Occasionally Cole would see something and manage to make it tangible in his world, and Angel would smile and tell him he was doing fine, though in truth he was wondering how Finn had helped him see the mundane world so easily again.
Cole stayed in the apartment and Angel went out for food. Periodically, he tried Finn and Jason, but there was no reply. He returned to Jason’s apartment more than once, but nothing there changed, the rooms sitting silent and still and empty against the noisy backdrop of the city.
The following morning, Cole seemed to have some of his confidence back, and he was looking better. He had a bath, something he seemed fond of doing, and came out with his hair combed back over his head, his style, it seemed. After a few minutes it would flop forward from either side, framing his face, and Angel would feel something falter in his chest.
Cole was eating more too. He’d filled out a little and had perhaps gained an inch in height. His body began to twist and turn in unexpected ways, his back becoming angular while his chest expanded. His hips narrowed, his ass firmed, and the faintest of muscled ridges began to appear beneath the skin of his stomach. When he was fresh from the shower, or Angel caught a glimpse of him naked, he had to stop and hold his breath. Cole was turning into someone startling, into a guy anyone on the street might turn and look at twice.
Angel took Cole shopping at Macy’s and bought him a bunch clothes to fit his new physique. Cole had a thing for briefs, and spent more than half an hour choosing a dozen pairs in various colors and styles. When they’d finished, they caught a cab home again, and Cole began to do a sort of parade, cutting the labels off the clothes and coming out of the bedroom in a new outfit every few minutes. Angel sat on the couch, nodding and smiling.
“You think I look good?”
“You look wonderful.”
“No need for these old things,” Angel said a few minutes later, lifting Cole’s clothes from the bathroom floor. He carried them into the living room and Cole said,
“Hang on a minute.” He began to search through his pockets, withdrawing a battered wallet, and then a card.
A purple card.
“What’s that?” Angel said, stepping toward him eagerly.
Cole frowned, and then his face darkened. “That fuck gave it to me. Said to call him in a couple weeks.”
Angel searched for the card he’d picked up at Jason’s place and compared them. So this was Hunter’s number? He frowned. It’d be so easy to call. But where might it lead? He hesitated over it, pulled his phone out, but then said, “Tomorrow. I’ll call it tomorrow.”
“You want to what? Get in touch with that fuck?”
“You don’t want me to call?”
Cole shook his head.
“What about Finn and Jason?”
“You think he …?”
“It’s related somehow.”
“But they’re infected.”
“Yeah. But he’s …” Angel tried to think. What? What would Hunter be thinking, and how could Angel possibly know?
“I don’t want you to call it.”
“You don’t want me to.”
“I want you to burn them.”
“I can’t do that, Cole. Finn and Jason — they’re my friends.” Though Angel wondered as he said it exactly what sort of friends Finn and Jason were.
39
Later that night, while Cole was sleeping, Angel called the number on the card. It went to message.
“You’ve reached Hunter,” a voice said. “Leave your number or try me again some other time.”
Angel shivered at the sound of Hunter’s voice. An image rose in his mind — an image of Hunter over him, at the institute, fucking Angel until he could barely breathe. Hunter had seemed so … desirable then. How was that possibl
e when Angel now loathed him, when he now thought of him as the most repulsive person he’d ever seen? The thought that Hunter had fucked Angel sickened him.
He slipped into bed and Cole muttered something incoherent. As Angel was drifting off to sleep he supposed that that was what the day had held if his mother’s theory was correct — hearing Hunter’s voice and picturing, as he hadn’t pictured since it happened, exactly what Hunter had done to him.
He lay awake late into the night, listening to Cole’s breathing and his occasional mutter. When Cole turned silently and placed his hand on Angel’s chest, Angel closed his eyes and fell into a fitful sleep.
40
“I want you to call him.”
“You want me to call him?”
“Yeah.”
Cole turned away and paced across the room before turning back to Angel. He was naked but for a pair of bright blue briefs, a pair with a wide, white waistband, high on his hips. He looked spectacular, though he’d barely woken and his hair was askew.
Angel glanced away, supposing he should have let Cole eat something before he’d started on this. Thinking of it now, he walked into the kitchen and pulled the Nutri-Grain out of the cupboard.
“Have something to eat,” he said.
“I’m not calling him.”
Angel kept his head lowered. He poured the Nutri-Grain into a bowl and then turned to the fridge. Once he’d added milk, Cole hesitantly took a seat at the table. Angel poured a bowl for himself and they sat in silence, the sound of the morning traffic filtering through the windows.
“What would I say to him?” Cole said.
Angel forced a mouthful down and wiped some milk from his chin. “Tell him you want to see him again.”
“Tell him I want to see him again.”
Angel nodded.
“You’ve got to be crazy.” Cole frowned at the table and ate in silence, his brow creasing as he struggled with his thoughts. When he’d finished, he lifted the bowl and drank the milk from it. Then he set it on the table. “Is this a condition?” he said.
“A condition?”
“Of me staying here?”
Angel drew his head back. “Cole.” He said, “Cole. There’s no conditions. I want you here.”
“You want me here?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to fuck me?”
Angel glanced aside. He stared at a greasy stain on a cupboard door for a moment, and then, turning back to Cole, he shrugged.
Their eyes met, Cole’s glittering with sudden, eager life. “You do want to, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, come on then.”
“What? Right now?”
“When it comes to sex, there’s no better time than right now. In fact, if you let ‘right now’ go, then it doesn’t happen at all.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“In school.”
“They taught you that?”
Cole smiled, the smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he grasped that Angel was messing with him.
“Some guy you had a crush on?” Angel said.
“That’s it.”
“And you let him go?”
“Yeah,” Cole said, and a shadow appeared to cross his features.
Angel could only wonder at who Cole was picturing, his first love, some jock perhaps, or some guy, at any rate, who Cole had wanted, and perhaps even loved. There’d been some chance, he gathered, but Cole’d let it go.
“I need coffee,” Angel said.
“You need coffee?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
“Come on. I just woke up. I can have a coffee, can’t I?”
Cole nodded slowly and then grinned. “Okay. Coffee.”
“You want coffee?”
“Do I want coffee? Hell, Angel, I want you.”
41
Cole flopped chest-first onto the bed, his briefs caught in the crack of his ass. Angel hooked a finger into them and tugged, yanking them over the backs of Cole’s thighs teasingly with a series of arrhythmic tweaks. Cole giggled as they slid over the backs of his knees. His legs began to jerk spasmodically and Angel bent forward and kissed him on the ass. Then he drew Cole’s briefs over his feet and bunched them up. He tossed them into the corner of the room. In the bright light of a sunny morning Cole looked irresistible, his pale skin glowing, his ass firm and plump, his lower back dipping inwards in a way that seemed not quite possible.
Angel slipped his boxers off and climbed onto the bed.
“You want it just like that? On your stomach?”
“Just do it,” Cole said.
“And those tests?”
“Like I told you, she said I was clean.”
Angel found the lube and slipped his fingers into Cole’s ass. Cole giggled again, shivering at the touch of Angel’s fingers. He laughed, and at the sound of it, Angel smiled quietly to himself. He dribbled the lube onto his cock, snapped the lid shut and then struggled awkwardly over Cole for a few moments, supporting himself on his elbows. He kissed Cole’s neck, nibbled his ear, and then, as Cole drew his head away, angled his cock at the base of Cole’s ass.
Cole exhaled noisily as Angel slipped into him. He groaned and said, “Hell, that’s big,” and then, as Angel pressed the base of his cock against Cole’s ass, “Oh, hell, Angel, I’m going to come.”
“Come?”
“Oh, hell, yeah,” he said, sounding strangely panicked. He writhed for a moment, lifted himself onto his elbows and froze rigid. Then he sank onto the mattress with a loud, low groan of release.
“You came?”
“Yeah.”
Angel chuckled.
“It’s been a while since I did that. I don’t usually …” Cole said, but his voice trailed off as though it no longer mattered. He nestled his head into the pillow and lay as if asleep.
“You okay?”
“Mm-mmm.”
Angel slipped his hands into Cole’s armpits and held him as he began to drive gently, kissing the nape of Cole’s neck. He didn’t suppose there could be too much pleasure for Cole in this now, seeing as he’d already come, but as Angel pushed himself toward a gentle release, he was surprised to feel Cole begin to respond.
It threw his rhythm off and there was a moment of confusion, as though Angel had forgotten where he was. His head seemed to be floating, as if it were drenched in some thick, gelatinous fluid, or as if his whole body were drenched. Then it seemed as if the air itself were this fluid, and both he and Cole were alive within it, within something green and golden — sunshine itself perhaps, liquefied and crystalline.
Slowly, Angel grew aware of his groin, as if it were the foundation of his being. He was moving tenderly, as though in water, as though on a raft at sea, floating with the insistence of waves, thrusting forward and withdrawing, moving into Cole and away again, yet with every gesture, he and Cole seemed to be intermingling, to be coalescing and knitting into one another. An overwhelming sense of fluttering filled his chest, as though something impossibly tender and sensitive and striving for life was trembling within him. A harmonious rushing filled his ears, and then, as he unexpectedly came, he knew that Cole had come as well, the tail end of Cole’s cry of release echoing in the room.
Angel relaxed and felt as though he were slipping forward and into Cole, and then, for a long moment, they lay like this, entwined with one another.
Finally, wondering where he was, Angel lifted his head. He opened his eyes to bright sunshine and the nape of Cole’s neck, which he kissed.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Cole lay his head to one side, closed his eyes and swallowed.
Angel stared in wonder at Cole’s fair hair, which now seemed to be striated with the palest of fluorescent colors. He didn’t think there could be a boy, anywhere, who was as beautiful as Cole.
He shuffled a little, lay his head alongside Cole’s and sighed. Cole was warm and breath
ing beneath him. But surely, for a moment there, the two of them had been one.
Without warning, Angel unexpectedly came again, his cock soft in Cole’s ass. Abruptly, it brought the institute to mind, reminding him of the spontaneous orgasms they’d had there. The memory sickened him and he got up. He turned away for a moment, but then turned to the bed again as Cole rolled onto his back. Cole drew his knees up and placed his hands behind his head. He frowned, and then grinned at Angel.
“What the fuck was that?” he said.
Angel shrugged. A shy smile began to form, but at that moment he caught sight of a dark stain on the sheets. Cum. But not his own. And it now occurred to him that he’d barebacked Cole without a second thought.
Cole twisted his hips and followed Angel’s eyes to the dark stain. At the sight of it he got up quickly and stumbled away from the bed.
In a dazed voice he said, “So I really have it?”
“You know you have it, Cole.”
42
“Hi,” Cole said, gripping the phone in a bloodless fist. “It’s Cole.”
Angel stood anxiously, watching the expression on Cole’s face and listening intently.
“Yeah. We met at Bernie’s. A few days ago — a week back?”
There was a pause. Cole nodded. He closed his eyes and swallowed, and Angel wondered for a moment if he’d be able to go through with it.
“No. You barebacked me. Gave me a hell of a fuck,” Cole said with a sudden, hopeful lift of tone. He glanced at Angel, and Angel nodded, wondering what the hell Hunter would think of that.
Cole was listening again, now with his left hand covering his ear.
“No. I like it rough. I like it like you did it, and you gave me your card. But you never paid me,” Cole said, and then pouted like a sulky child.
After a momentary pause, he said, “How much?”
Another pause.
Angel turned away, walked toward the window and forced his hands into fists.
“Well, how do I know — look, what’s your name … Hunter?” Another pause. “Well, okay, if you’re saying five hundred, then yeah, I’ll do it again. But Hunter, I’ve got this problem. Something’s happening to me.” Cole started to rattle off the changes that were occurring to his body, though as Angel had suggested, he mentioned nothing of the dark, or of being able to see them. “Well, it’s like this. Five hundred dollars. That’s fine. But you see, well, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’ve got this thing about you. I keep seeing your face. I really want to see you again.”
