Gasp!

by Z. A. Maxfield

“I think Nigel and I reached a place of mutual respect.” More like mutual satisfaction, but it was one thing to land in bed with Nigel Gasp after isolating him completely. There was no one else around. It didn’t mean he’d be the Chosen One if Nigel had anything else on offer.

  Jeff Paxton, fish tapeworm and all, was Nigel’s catch of the day, but he was the only fish running. He wondered what would happen when they let Nigel back out into open water.

  God. I am never going to eat fish again.

  When they finally pulled into the rustic estate’s gated drive, the front door flew open and Nigel raced out. Jeff barely had time to snort with laughter before Amil stomped the brakes.

  “What the hell?” Amil let the car idle.

  Nigel, clad in the white shirtdress and sensible shoes of a fifties-style nurse, flew down the porch steps on his way to the car. His tightly fitting costume came complete with some little blue capelet, a starched white hat, and fake boobs that could be seen from space.

  “Have mercy,” Jeff muttered, laughing. “I feel very Benny Hill right now.”

  Amil turned to him just as Nigel got to Jeff’s car door. “Do you have any idea what this is all about?”

  “It’s all about Nigel. Isn’t everything?” Jeff let Nigel open the door and help him out. Up close, he was terrifying. He’d pulled his hair back into a severe bun and painted his lips a startling shade of Chinese lacquer-box red. A brusque Scots accent completed his character du jour.

  “Let me help you out of the car, Mr. Paxton. There’s a dear boy. I have a pot of good hearty soup on the stove and a hot water bottle at the ready. You’ll be right as rain in no time.”

  “If you can laugh at that, you deserve each other.” Amil handed Jeff his prescription. “May your worm turn, my friend.”

  “Thank you.” Jeff let himself be helped to the porch by his new nurse. “Wave good-bye to the nice man, Nigel.”

  Nurse Nigel smiled brightly and waved like the queen of England. “He thinks I’m insane, doesn’t he?”

  “He might, but as long as Deidre signs his checks, I doubt he’ll say so.”

  Amil backed out of the drive, giving one last wave before the electronic gate closed behind him.

  “Come inside. Everything’s all fixed up.”

  Laughing, Jeff let Nigel lead him inside.

  Nigel’s stomach lurched. “Let me get this straight. You have a parasitic tapeworm in your intestines that could grow to thirty feet long. Its job—its entire job—is to produce eggs which pass through… Thirty feet long?”

  “There’s no telling how long I’ve had mine, but they guess awhile, because it’s made me anemic, and—”

  “If I were to look this up online…”

  “You would never eat fish again,” Jeff said decisively. “You’d probably never eat anything again.”

  “I might never eat again anyway. My imagination is running away with me.”

  “Your imagination probably can’t compare to the little PowerPoint presentation Dr. Rosen shared with me. Apparently it’s fairly rare here, and he was thrilled. I think he was calling all his pals when I left.” Jeff swirled the water in his bottle and went on. “A fish tapeworm is a long, flat thing with hermaphroditic egg-laying segments. It can produce a million eggs daily. It hooks onto the wall of your intestine with this barbed tentacle, and—”

  Nigel dropped into a chair when his leg muscles failed him. “You can stop talking now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “How did they even know what to look for?”

  Jeff’s face caught fire. “I was obliged to give them a—”

  “Never mind. I need tea.” Nigel’s eyes rose to meet Jeff’s. Despite the fact that he’d planned to help out if Jeff was actually coming down with something, he’d never had a very strong stomach. “And a cracker or two.”

  Jeff shot him an indulgent smile. “No problem. I’ll get it. I feel fine, really. The anemia was causing fatigue. I had a vitamin B12 shot. I have to take something to kill my tapeworm, and then I’ll be good as new.”

  Nigel breathed through his nose as he watched Jeff plug in an electric kettle. When Jeff placed a small dish of toffee peanuts in front of him, he smiled up gratefully. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t know how I got it, but I guess undercooked fish, ceviche, or sushi is the usual… Well. I won’t bore you with the details. Apparently it’s still rare but getting more common, and the cure isn’t difficult or painful. I just chew some tablets in the morning on an empty stomach and follow up with the doctor for a few months to make sure.”

  “That’s good then.” Nigel couldn’t help picturing a thirty-foot worm. With a tentacle head. Laying a million eggs a day.

  “So…” Jeff shifted from foot to foot while they waited for the water to boil.

  “Thirty feet?”

  “Yes, sometimes.”

  “Contagious?”

  Jeff laughed. “No. Well…no. Not to you. Probably not.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m sure you don’t want to know.” Jeff found teabags in the cupboard and gave them a sniff. “All you need to know is that I talked to the doctor all about it, and my ass is off-limits for a while.”

  “I see.”

  “Not that… If you were wearing a condom and wanted to fuck me…but frankly I can’t see how that would have any appeal at this point.”

  “Oh Christ no. I can’t see my dick stepping up to spend time in the presence of a thirty-foot-long worm with a barbed tentacle head and prolific egg-laying capability.”

  “I know. God, I know.” Jeff glanced up at the ceiling.

  “I feel like we should call an exorcist.” Running a trembling hand over his face, Nigel asked, “Is something bothering you besides the fact that your intestines are now the backdrop for all my least favorite scenes from Dune?”

  Jeff swallowed. “I guess I’m just now realizing it could have been something worse.”

  “Like what?”

  Jeff leaned against the counter and looked down. “I’ve been in some hellholes. Bad sanitation, disease, badly cooked food. I’ve taken calculated risks. I guess I wasn’t letting myself think about things like toxic chemical exposure, hepatitis, or HIV. But I must have had that in the back of my mind for a while, because I nearly cried with relief when the doctor said all I had was a tapeworm.”

  Nigel looked at his hands. “You don’t talk much about the time you spent in Afghanistan.”

  “No.”

  That wasn’t an invitation to ask further questions, Nigel guessed. “But you made it home in one piece.”

  “Did Deidre tell you I did three tours?” Jeff poured hot water for both of them and dropped in the teabags. “When I started feeling tired, at first I thought it was because I’d let myself go soft.”

  “There’s nothing soft about you.” Nigel stood and accepted his mug of tea at the sink.

  “I’m soft in the head sometimes,” Jeff admitted.

  Nigel blew on the steaming brew. “Your head has been described to me as the hardest thing about you.”

  Jeff flushed. “That’s not exactly flattering. Deidre said that?”

  “It wasn’t a sexual innuendo at the time. She said you’re not precisely a follower.”

  “They worried about me when I joined the army. Thought I’d never fit in.”

  “But you liked it?”

  “I understood it.” Jeff draped an arm around Nigel’s shoulders. “There were rules, and I understood them.”

  “I don’t like rules.” Nigel leaned his head against Jeff’s muscled arm. “Rules are made for ordinary people, and if you want to be extraordinary, the first thing you have to do is break the rules.”

  “The world according to Nigel Gasp.” Jeff smiled down at him. “I need some kind of structure. Something strong enough to lean into. Maybe that’s why the army appealed, even to a hothead like me. What I found at the very center of it was…”

  Nigel watched him carefully. This new
, candid Jeff fascinated him. “What?”

  Jeff’s thoughts seemed to take him someplace else. “There are things worth fighting for. There are things worth dying for. They aren’t always what you’re told in the job description, and sometimes you have to break the rules and pay the price.”

  Nigel thumbed the fullness of Jeff’s lower lip.

  Jeff leaned into his caress and offered the base of his thumb a soft kiss. “You make a terrifying nurse.”

  “You think it’s a little much?”

  “I think maybe.” The corner of Jeff’s mouth lifted into a wry smile. “A little.”

  Nigel leaned in, drawn by the teasing light in Jeff’s soft brown eyes. “Discretion and valor and all that then, eh?”

  Jeff cupped Nigel’s face and brushed a kiss over his lips. “Everyone should have a face like yours, Nigel.”

  “Really?”

  “Let me tell you what’s true, okay?”

  Nigel nodded.

  “I’m charmed by you. You make me laugh, you make me furious, and I want you. But the whole cross-dressing thing? Well…”

  Nigel braced himself. “You hate it?”

  “I don’t hate it.” Nigel felt Jeff’s hands tighten. The strength of that grip stopped him from turning away. “I don’t hate it. But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to get out of it. You’re a beautiful, beautiful man, Red Chief. And funny. You’re a great actor, a terrific musician, and when I’m close to you, no matter what you’re doing, no matter what you’re wearing, I can smell your skin and I want you. I want Nigel Hazard, Nigel Gasp, Ivy the Librarian, Nurse Nigel, and probably all the Nigels to come. That’s what I know is true.”

  Nigel swallowed hard. “You left out Keiko the Kitten.”

  Jeff’s face registered distaste. “Please retire Keiko. I find the whole schoolgirl thing revolting.”

  Nigel sighed. “All right. Prude.”

  “Yeah. I’m a prude. Hey,” Jeff said suddenly, “let’s do that World War II picture.”

  Nigel’s world turned upside down when Jeff bent him back for a passionate kiss, à la V-E day. Nigel loved it, loved dangling precariously over Jeff’s strong arm. It stole his breath and made him grab on to his little cap. His toes curled.

  They fucking curled.

  The next thing Nigel knew, he was bending his leg at the knee, lifting his foot in the classic pose of feminine romantic anticipation. And he fucking loved it, loved being with a guy who could make him feel that way.

  I love being this man’s beautiful person.

  Maybe that was all that mattered just then. Jeff wanted him, and oh God, the things Jeff made him feel. Things he’d never felt before for anyone. Stupid things. Unselfish things. Jeff made him feel beautiful inside as well as out.

  He put his arms around Jeff’s neck. “You want some soup? I opened the can all by myself.”

  “Soup.” Jeff’s chest rumbled with laughter where Nigel’s face pressed against it. “Yeah, okay.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jeff lifted his guitar from its case with shaking hands. It was one thing to play for a bunch of rednecks around a campfire or to entertain his pals on base. It was another entirely to jam with Nigel Gasp. He’d seen Nigel Gasp go from instrument to instrument while performing, taking over for his bandmates and playing each of them with ease. Musically, there wasn't anything Nigel couldn’t do. So yeah, just getting his guitar out was intimidating.

  Nigel sat at the piano wearing an old pair of jeans and a tight Pretenders T-shirt—so old and thin he could see Nigel’s skin through what was left of the fabric. That tattoo dragon twined down his arm to his wrist where his hands had gone still on the keys.

  Jeff’s body was still languid from an afternoon of lovemaking. When Nigel had suggested they play together, he’d tightened right up again with nervous anticipation.

  “Go on.” Nigel’s eyebrow rose. “Play something.”

  Jeff froze. “You realize I feel like an idiot now, right?”

  “Why? It’s just the two of us.”

  “Yeah but one of us is Nigel Gasp.”

  “Right. Warm up. I need a beer. You?”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Nigel got up and headed for the kitchen while Jeff tuned his old guitar. He used the piano instead of his ears for a change, surprised that it wasn’t too bad to begin with, given the altitude. He was glad he’d replaced the strings when he got back to the States.

  On the one hand, who didn’t have a dream of noodling around while their favorite rock star played the piano and sang? On the other, he was about to get his musical dick handed to him on a plate with a garnish of humiliation and a slice of despair.

  “Here.” Nigel handed him a Guinness. “I’ll just play something, and you jump in whenever you feel like it. We’ll see what happens.”

  “But no pressure or anything, Mr. I Was Inducted Into The Rock-and-Roll Hall Of Fame.”

  “Now that you mention it…” Nigel shot him a wicked grin and began with a classic piano riff from Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” showing off some intimidating keyboard skills. Then he segued into another one of his soft, sad folk tunes. Jeff sat, just listening for a while. He couldn’t make himself join in. It wasn’t that he couldn’t play the notes. He simply couldn’t bring himself to spoil the moment. It felt too good to simply receive the gift of that plaintive tune and Nigel’s sweet voice to interfere.

  A few measures into that, Nigel stopped to glare at him. “Jump in anytime, mate.”

  Jeff stretched his fingers to buy himself time. “You like folk music a lot, don’t you?”

  Nigel nodded while he played just the chords. “Lately I have been obsessed with these Irish traditional songs. They’re all my mum’s favorites. When I was a kid, I couldn’t run fast enough or get far enough from home. Now…I don’t know. I miss these songs.”

  “She’s in England?”

  “Ireland. She spent her life in England, but I buried her with her people when she died.”

  “I’m sorry. That was nice though, taking her home.”

  “Least I could do. You know, when Deidre got pregnant, she and I talked about our families. What happened was I—” Nigel looked at his hands. “I kept picturing my mum. I saw how pregnancy changed your sister, how soft she grew and how much she loved the baby, even when he couldn’t have been more than the size of a pea. Something changed inside both of us. Now I can’t stop playing Irish tunes and I think–”

  Jeff waited, but Nigel didn’t finish. “You miss your mother more now?”

  “I didn’t know her.” Nigel’s fists hit the keys with a thud. “My goddamn fault. My mum called me the changeling and I never felt like I belonged with her. I was a weird kid.”

  Jeff laughed. “Nigel Hazard, a weird kid? Never. Were you more like your dad?”

  “My dad was some bloke in a Beatles cover band who married my mother and brought her to the north of England. She hated it. He left when I was born, but she was too stubborn to go back to her family. Besides rock and roll, Mum and I had fuck all in common. Our eyes, maybe. I’m nearly the age she was when she died. I never believed I’d make it this far and now…”

  Jeff said nothing to that. What could he say? His fingers found the strings of his guitar, and he played an F chord.

  Nigel nodded and took up the song again.

  “Oh, the lark in the morning,” Nigel sang. “She rises on the wing…”

  Jeff kept up, C, A minor, D minor, and so on, until he was unconsciously picking, and Nigel was singing, and they were mourning Nigel’s loss together.

  Jeff had losses of his own—a sergeant who got caught in the cross fire in Kabul, a combat engineer he knew who died clearing IEDs in Kandahar Province. So many people had died there. People he’d known. People he’d never get to know.

  He couldn’t think of a finer tribute than Nigel’s perfect, haunting voice.

  By the time the song was finished, it was easy for Nigel to start another and for Jeff to follow along,
and they stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon, playing companionably until the sun dropped low and the light faded.

  Nigel finally closed the piano. “I think I might go back to the studio and do an album of Irish folk standards.”

  “Your public will be surprised but pleased.”

  “I’ll do them my way. Find some people to do duets. That Black Eyed Peas girl has got a voice that strips me naked and ass-fucks me. Maybe she’d sing with me.”

  “I think that would be awesome.” Their voices would blend beautifully.

  “I’ll ask a few singers into the studio, do some traditional music for a change. Even hymns, maybe. I could dedicate that to my mother.”

  Jeff nodded. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he put his guitar on the floor between his knees and sort of held it there.

  “You can really play,” Nigel told him. “You can’t read music?”

  “I can read guitar tabs. But I pick by ear and instinct.”

  “You have a first-rate ear. Aunt Irene never let me skive off. I had to perform what was on the page exactly as it was written. She taught me to read music and how to arrange my compositions. I’ve always been grateful to her. Aunt Irene made a musician of me.”

  “Maybe you should dedicate your album to Aunt Irene too.”

  “Maybe.” Nigel lashes lowered. “Yeah. I should. You have some good ideas, Paxton.”

  “Are you hungry?” Jeff stood, breaking the intimacy of the moment. He put his guitar into its case with care. “I’m not but feel like we should give my tapeworm a last meal. I bought some steaks and asparagus. I could bake potatoes.”

  “You really feel like cooking?”

  “It’s no trouble. You open a red wine, and I’ll get things ready.”

  Jeff turned on the kitchen lights just as the sun dropped below the horizon, forming a halo of gilded light across the sky. Nigel followed a couple of minutes later and poked around in several kitchen drawers.

  “Are you looking for a corkscrew? Dishwasher,” Jeff told him. “I’ll broil the steaks because I don’t want to tempt our bear to come back.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Or I could pan sear them and make a sauce.”