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Something was wrong. And it wasn’t just the through-and-through bullet wound in Ray’s upper arm, the one still sluggishly leaking blood. Ray thought it would have cut that out by now, seeing as it had been washed out by the river (on second thought maybe not the best idea) and wrapped in the cleanest fabric they could find (a dusty extra sock at the bottom of Pete’s knapsack). But it was still pushing out slow red trickles of blood like sap from a maple tree, and so Pete had pulled over the car they’d jumped outside Yarmouth and said with a serious look in his eyes, “We gotta get some medicine.”
“Yeah? And with what money, Pete?”
Pete’s eyebrow bent. “Who said anything about money, Raymond?”
And that was fair. Ray was a little testy, okay, because the wound did hurt like a motherfucker, even now that it had dulled. It festered in him low and slow like his rage usually did, a hotplate of discomfort. They were both more than a little short-tempered, going on nine days of running, after the Walk had already done more damage than any number of bullets could do, save perhaps the final one.
Nine days. Nine days of burst blisters and sloughing skin, of shards of toenails and bruises that stayed black and sore. One day Ray was grated to bleeding between his legs where his skin stuttered against itself, and when they took furtive breaks in ditches and behind fallen trees, the flesh would meld together and tear when he took his first steps. Pete stole him a new pair of pants after that, but Pete was suffering in his own way. Prone to dryness, his skin had formed deep raw canyons cut around Pete’s wrists and elbows and knees, while his feet he couldn’t get dry enough, no matter how often they changed his socks and aired his toes. Ray worried always in some corner of his mind that Pete would lose a toe or maybe a foot, and that was only if they ever got somewhere safe enough to see a doctor.
Ray didn’t recognize his own body; before the Walk, he never even thought about it, beyond the adolescent worryings of vanity—the already thinning of hair over his brow, which is how he knew he’d get those deep parking spaces on his scalp like his father had; the chipped tooth that was the bane of his existence as teenager desperately trying to get a girl to take to the dance; the meaty shape of his body, such as it was, that his grandmother had once pinched between her thumb and forefinger and made dissatisfied noises at. But that was what it was to have a body. What Ray had now was more rotten than a halved cow corpse hanging up at a butcher’s shop. He was mealy meat and wobbly skin. When he walked, he lunged and stuttered like a zombie. His feet reeked and oozed and left behind strips of flesh. He dreamed once, tucked under Pete’s arm, that he woke with his mouth full of maggots, his hair crawling with flesh-eating flies. Pete had shushed him gently back into a kinder sleep, but the memory of it was worse than the dreaming. He kept inspecting his shoes for the white smile of a maggot or two. He ached fit to crying most moments, and now he had this goddamn bullet hole drooling blood. Most days he wanted to give up, and maybe would have, if not for Pete.
Pete. He was here for Pete. His mind couldn’t wrap itself around any alternative. Staying on the Walk. Winning. Losing. Never having Walked at all. This horrid reality was the only one he could bear, because it was the one with Pete alive and nearby to touch. Most moments Pete’s hand was on his shoulder or his arm was around his. Once, they sobbed through the night together with hands clasped, and though Ray hadn’t held Pete’s hand since, he felt he knew the topography of it like a hometown. Pete, who knew how to hotwire a car, who let Ray use his toothbrush so they could feel a little more human. Pete, who tucked himself behind Ray most nights and breathed deep and slow into Ray’s neck, even though he must smell like roadkill in summer. Pete, who walked through the woods clutching Ray’s baseball like a holy relic before remembering to toss it carefully back. Pete, who two days ago had fallen asleep in the abandoned fuel station they called home temporarily, and woken from a dream sobbing for Ray, Ray, what did you do, no, Ray, Ray! And clutched Ray hard enough to bruise even as Ray talked him down as gently as he could with his own heart hammering. Pete who had stared at him in the dark like he was seeing a ghost, or worse, a corpse, tears leaking from his eyes, and Ray couldn’t help but wipe them away and kiss his forehead where his eyebrows were peaked in a horrible rictus of grief. Ray, Ray, Ray, he kept saying until it became a whisper, and Ray held his head, felt the dear weight of it, and did what came naturally to him, and kissed him on the mouth, tender as he could manage.
And Pete had kissed him back, is the thing. Pete had kissed him back.
“Stay here,” Pete said about, oh, maybe thirty minutes ago? Just after he’d come back to the car where it was parked under a broken street lamp and shucked off his jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his stolen T-shirt until the dune shapes of his upper arms were bare.
“The fuck are you doing,” Ray’d said, staring. His own arm throbbed.
“The pharmacist is about to take a smoke break,” Pete explained, but Ray didn’t understand, just watched him melt into the night.
They still hadn’t talked about the kiss. Two days and Ray didn’t even know where to start. With why he did it, maybe? Why he’d felt a physical pain to see Pete so scared, so bereft, why he had to do something to ease it. Or maybe with the way Pete had kissed him back, lips soft and dry but getting wetter, before he pulled back and stared. And the way he had stared. Like Ray had done something not of this earth, like he’d broken some fundamental law of the universe, like it just wasn’t fucking computing in his head. Ray had leaned forward, he didn’t even know why, it was like he was tipping over a cliff and gravity was doing the work—
And Pete had flinched.
“Jesus, Pete, where are you,” Ray muttered in the car. His head was foggy with memories and regret. Obviously he should not have done it, even though it quieted Pete down and stole all the shaking from his body, even though it hadn’t been so bad after, both of them too tired to do more than settle back down and drift back to sleep. He’d gone too far, and it hadn’t been the same between them since. Silences once comfortable as wool blankets were now stiff, awkward. Once or twice Pete snapped at him when before he would have laughed. Worst of all was that Pete stopped touching him, and Ray missed it so much he had to bite down on the flesh of his tongue not to beg for it back.
It wasn’t until they got caught pilfering a potato cellar by an armed farmer that things felt right again—the panic, the scuffle, the agony of running, the thrill of Pete dragging at his jacket, the crack of the gunshot, the firebolt of pain. Pete quaking like a tree in a hurricane when they came to a stop. Pete grabbing him and looking him all over. Pete babbling worriedly, Pete with Ray’s blood on his fingers looking like he was gonna vomit, Pete digging around for something to stop the bleeding.
It was a relief to be touched by him again, to feel that umbilical pull from him again. But quick as it returned it left again as they drove to the nearest town and parked, Pete kicking off into the night without a word save one about getting some medicine.
Ray was fucking sick of it, frankly. He wanted his Pete back.
He heaved the car door open—a pre-War truck, built like a battle engine, the bed of which had been their place of rest these past nights. The whole thing shook when Ray shut the door.
It was a quiet little town, missing the ocean stink of Freeport and the comfort of home, but it was Maine. There was a diner, a bank, a convenience store. Ray struck out for this, assuming that’s where the pharmacist was, though what Pete would pay him with, Ray still didn’t understand. A bag of musty potatoes? An autograph from a survivor of the Walk? Maybe Pete had been holding out on him, maybe he brought cash on the Walk the way he seemed to have brought everything else he owned. But Ray knew that was wrong; they’d both pooled their resources after escaping, and Ray knew the inside of Pete’s bag as well as he knew his own. As well as he knew the feel of Pete’s hand. As well as he thought he knew Pete.
He shouldn’t have kissed him. He was clearly wrong. He’d read Pete all wrong. All those glances and playful nudges, those lingering touches, the things Barkovitch said that’d gotten under his skin. So maybe Ray had read Pete wrong. Maybe Ray didn’t know what made a man queer. Maybe he’d mistakenly thought he’d had a fast education on this matter these last glorious days with Pete. But he knew he could love Pete without kissing him. He’d done it before; he’d do it again.
Between the store and the dark back of the diner gaped an alley, shadowed with skip bins. Ray passed it, reaching for the door of the store, when he heard a voice.
“—eager, huh? Must really want that shit. Yeah, like that.”
And Ray’s stomach started yawning deep as a pit before he even understood why. He waded into the shadows, his arm aching like a bitch, but it felt like a caress compared to what hit him when he saw Pete on his knees on the pavement, sucking the cock of a man old enough to be his father, wearing a white coat and putting his filthy goddamn hands in Pete’s hair, Pete’s beautiful hair that smelled like him, Pete’s hair that Ray breathed into when Pete was asleep because he couldn’t get enough of him.
“Desperate little thing,” said the pharmacist, almost absently, who was smoking a cigarette. Pete’s head bobbed, working with dedication. Had he been there this whole time, thirty whole minutes? Knees on concrete for half a fucking hour? Ray found himself worrying about Pete’s knees, which cracked with a sounds so familiar by now he heard it in his sleep. Pete’s left one had been bothering him since the Walk, though he’d tried not to let Ray know. Ray fantasized about when they were safe, how he’d heat a hot water bottle and wrap it in a towel, like his mom used to do, and prop up Pete’s leg nice and comfy on pillows and put the bottle where it ached most. And Pete would look up and him and smile and say—
“You like that?” Pete had pulled off the guy’s dick—and it was just a dick, Ray had seen dozens of them, felt nothing for them, but Ray hated it, he hated that thing, he hated that man—but Pete pulled off and looked up at the guy as he pumped it with his hand and smiled. Smiled, and said, “Yeah, you like that?”
“Sure, kid,” said the man, with no small amount of clear utter fucking contempt, and pushed Pete’s head back down onto his cock. As he did, ashes from his cigarette fell into Pete’s hair.
Ray’s arm hurt. It hurt bad. It hurt worse than before. It hurt because he used it to smash the cigarette-holding hand into the brick so hard something cracked in the wrist loud and meaty, and the man bellowed but not before Ray swung his batter’s swing with a fist at the end into the man’s mouth so hard he got a tooth stuck into his skin. A tooth, gleaming white and wet, lodged into his fist as the man held his mouth where he sprawled on the concrete and shouted. Ray picked the tooth out of his flesh, barely feeling it. He went to swing again.
“Ray!”
Pete. Holding him back, pushing him back, gripping the front of his shirt like a drowning man.
Ray spat. “Don’t you fucking touch him, you piece of disgusting fucking shit—”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” the man said, his voice wobbling. Probably he had discovered his missing tooth.
“Ray,” hissed Pete. “You fucking—I told you to wait—”
“I’ll call the squads,” shouted the man, lurching up, glasses askew.
“And tell them you were doing what, asshole?” Ray shot back. The man’s cock was still out, for chrissake.
“Ray! Shut the fuck up!”
The pharmacist’s blood sprayed as he spoke. “Your pal was the one sucking my cock, or did you not notice that? Lay into him if you hate faggots so much.”
Pete, in the corner of Ray’s vision, flinched hard. Ray turned to him, ready to say he’d never, he wouldn’t, it wasn’t the cocksucking that bothered him—it was, though, it was, but not because—they were men, no, not because of that, but he and Pete were men, were boys—and here the shame began to creep in because of course it would seem like Ray had a problem with homos after this, when really it was—it was because Pete—
“You can say goodbye to that medicine, and you can thank your dog here for it,” the man was saying now, stooping to grab something, a paper bag on the ground, but Pete lurched forward, hands harmlessly outstretched.
“Hey,” Pete said in a low, sweet voice. “I’m so sorry, man, really. Don’t mind him, he’s just protective is all. Are you okay? You don’t look half bad to me.”
Ray’s stomach roiled, and he knew he was being the worst kind of asshole, to be so—so jealous, so possessive, so much a snarling dog just as the man had said. And what was that about medicine? Nausea overtook him in a sudden wave, a flush of warning saliva hitting his mouth while his mouth puckered like he’d sucked a lemon.
“I’m down a tooth,” the man said flatly.
“Come on, now,” Pete said. “Fair is fair, right? I did you a solid, now it’s your turn. ”
The pharmacist glared, and for a second Ray knew it was no use; Squads would be called, the medicine gone, and it would be back to running, only it would be so much worse with this chasm between him and Pete that Ray had just placed a wedge in and hammered down until the whole thing cracked further apart.
Then: “Fuck it. Get out of here.” The bag was flung at Pete, who caught it with a jerk. “Fucking punks.”
“You’re a fucking sick pervert, you know that?” Ray hissed, even though Pete was at him again, pulling him back toward the street. “You’re sick! You old fucking freak!” Pete got him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him hard. For good measure: “Touch him again and you’re dead!”
“Shut your goddamn mouth,” snapped Pete; there were lights flickering on down the street, lights that had been cold and black before.
Ray felt light-headed. The truck crouched in the dark like a stray animal. “Pete,” he said, not knowing what else would come out of his mouth next. “Pete—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
That was a knife to the gut.
Pete lobbed the bag of medicine into the cab and climbed in. Ray followed, shocked at how the whole interior of the cab smelled of blood, wetness still smearing the seats. His arm throbbed, hot and tender, as Pete got the engine to cough to life and the pavement rolled away.
It was far from silent; the truck chugged like a freight engine, and one of the windows was cracked, so the wind always buffeted their ears. The headlights tunneled through the night until they were out of town, and then Pete switched them to dark along the country road that led to their abandoned fuel station and its garage, lost somewhere at a forgotten crossroad. He drove with both hands clutching the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead.
Ray wanted to say so many things, but his tongue was all tangled. He clutched his arm to keep it from jostling along with the potholes and felt his heart lash a hectic pulse. The wind hissed through the broken window like air through Ray’s chipped tooth.
“You okay?” Ray tried after a while. He had to raise his voice to be heard.
Pete didn’t answer, just turned them down the abandoned route, keeping an eye out for deer and rabbits scampering across the asphalt.
“Pete,” Ray tried again.
“Medicine in the bag,” said Pete. “Alcohol. Not the kind you drink, the kind you clean cuts with. Bandages. Pills for the fever.”
All that for a blowjob? And then Ray was back in the alley, Pete on his knees, rage clumped so thick in Ray’s throat he’d almost vomited.
“Thanks,” he croaked.
Not-silence. “Did you hurt it more?” Pete asked.
“The arm?” Probably. “No.” Definitely. “I’m fine.”
“I’m glad you’re fine, Ray,” said Pete, who had dragged Ray up the midnight hill with guns pointed to their heads, who swallowed Ray’s foul words and then showed up for him regardless. Christ. Two days ago they slept tangled as seaweed around driftwood, breathing the same warm air, in one mouth, out the other, planning their anemic future when they could bear to face it. They’d drive until they hit train tracks, hitch a ride on a westbound train and wake up in some middle state like Colorado or Nebraska. Look around for work once things died down. Get jobs on farms or in mines and rent out some shitty hole-in-the-wall room until they could afford more. If they could afford more. Ray always pictured them in a single shitty room though, with one rickety bed and two pillows. In his mind, it became two rooms, two beds, each with a single pillow, a wall between him and Pete, the air in his lungs too cold and sharp, hands aching for the valleys and hills of Pete’s.
Through the fog of smarting tears, Ray could make out the abandoned garage, flat black against the night.
Pete pulled the truck behind the garage and let the engine give out. Neither of them moved.
“Ray?” Pete’s voice came velvet-soft in the dark.
Ray swallowed hard, four or five times. His face was wet.
“Ray.”
“Pete, I—” Two beds. Two rooms. Two empty hands. “I’m sorry I kissed you.”
Pete said nothing.
It was silent now, not even the bugs encroaching upon them. No wind. No owl-call. Ray bit his tongue to keep himself from sobbing like a baby. His arm fucking hurt. His throat caught with tears. He wanted his Pete back.
Then, calmly: “Fuck you, Raymond.”
Pete shoved the door open and disappeared into the night. Ray scrambled sightlessly for the door handle and— “Wait,” he called, barely making out the shape of Pete in shadow, walking away. “Wait, Pete, I—”
And then Pete was back, standing before him, a beloved shape and two shining eyes in the dark.
“That’s enough from you, Garraty,” said Pete. “I mean it. Shut your fucking mouth, or you’ll see how hard I can swing myself.” Ray shut his mouth. The night stretched on. “Just—why’d you do it then? Huh? Why’d you kiss me if you didn’t—if you—”
Pete was quiet for a long moment. He talked with his hands, Pete, and in the blackness Ray was lost without seeing them. Were they clenched? Flying around in rage? Boneless and quiet?All he could make out was a ghost of Pete, head tilted to the ground.
“Once we’re on the train,” Pete said, low and quiet. “That’s when it’d be best to split. I’ll ride long enough to hit a northern line, maybe cross to Canada that way. Till then it’s not safe. Nowhere’s safe, but on our own—better to keep together. And I won’t bother you none. I’ll keep to me, you keep to you. That suit you, Ray?”
Panic. “Pete,” he said, choked, “no—what? That doesn’t fucking suit me! Jesus Christ, are you—have you—you really—” He’d really fucked up that bad? He was going to be sick.
“Then what? You wanna split here, now?” Pete laughed bitterly. “At least let a man get some shut-eye. I’m worn out, Ray. I can’t—can’t do this.” And that ghostly shape of him moved, shrank, footsteps scraping on dirt.
“Hey!” Ray struck out, grabbing for shadow. “Pete, wait, don’t just fucking—”
He caught a sleeve, a dear, solid arm underneath, and pulled. In the confusion of night Ray didn’t understand what happened next, how he ended up with Pete’s hands fisted in his jacket, dragging him backward until his back solidly met the exoskeleton of the truck hard enough to knock the breath out of him. The pain in his arm gnawed deeper.
“Pete,” he gasped, patting around until he found a shoulder, a neck where a pulse ratcheted faster, hotter. A face which dripped wetness. “Pete,” he said again, quieter.
“I told you to shut your mouth,” Pete gritted out.
Ray shivered. May nights still got chilly, and Pete was the one wearing the oversized leather jacket they’d pinched and took turns wearing, until it stopped smelling like the stranger who owned it and started smelling like both of them, like some third person that was two halves of them glued together. It had Ray’s blood on it now, forever stained by him. If they split now, that blood would be the last piece of Ray for Pete to remember him by.
Pete’s breath hitched. His whole body shook with the effort of not crying.
“Pete,” Ray said again. “Come on. Hey. Hey, Pete.”
“Why’d you do it,” Pete whispered between not-sobs.
“I—” Ray’s heart throbbed in his arm. “It felt right.”
That quieted Pete. “It felt right,” he repeated, voice hollow.
“Yeah. At the time.”
Again. “At the time.”
“Jesus, Pete, what do you want me to say? I was half asleep and you were upset, and you’d comforted me when I had nightmares, and I—” Ray thought he’d be nervous, but all he felt was cold. “I think I’ve been in love with you since we shook hands. So.”
Suddenly, Pete shook him. “No, I don’t want to hear that, Raymond, fucking hell. You think I can’t survive without thinking you love me or something? What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time, man? Tell me the real reason.”
“Wait,” said Ray. His hands cupped Pete’s neck up to the shell of his ears, palms wet with tears he couldn’t see. “Wait, you—what?”
Pete shook him again, hard enough to make the truck shudder. “I told you, Ray. I’ve been walking my whole life. I see the world as it is, the good and the bad. The reasons to stay and the shit you gotta take. If you think I’ve b-been pining after someone I can’t have—well, maybe I have. Maybe I was. Maybe I thought if I was careful, if you liked me enough, if we stuck together long enough then you’d maybe not care so much when you found out that I—that I’m—”
“What, Pete? You’re what?”
“Fuck you. A queer. Fuck you, man.”
Ray swallowed, wondering if he was misunderstanding. “Pete. I know that.” So am I.
“You know that now. Maybe you guessed before, but you know that now that you’ve seen me get on my knees for some john in an alley, and don’t lie and tell me that you’re fine with it, Ray. Don’t tell me you like it.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Of course I don’t like it!” It was Ray’s turn to shake Pete, but he did it gentle. “If I saw you—kissing a girl or some shit I wouldn’t like that either, okay? Is that what all this is about? You think I’m some homo hater or something?”
And Ray was laughing. Jesus, that hurt. Under his hands, Pete was totally still, frozen like one of those statues Ray saw in magazines of museums in Europe.
“Sorry,” Ray said after a moment. “God, Pete, tell me that’s not it. Tell me you don’t think that of me. Pete, I—I kissed you. I kissed you. And you think I’d care that you’re queer? You’d think I’m not queer myself?”
“Don’t,” said Pete. His voice didn’t sound entirely steady. “Don’t. Ray.”
“I cared that you were sucking that sick motherfucker’s cock, and the way he treated you made me sick to my stomach, and you were doing it for medicine, for me, and you didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you—we could have figured something out, Pete, we could have stolen it, or worked for it, or something.”
“It’s what I do, Ray.” Pete whispered this. “What I done. You can’t like that, you can’t be fine with that, you—”
“Yeah, you’re right, asshole, because I hated the way he touched you, okay? How clear can I make this—I want you, all of you, every part of you, every moment you spend awake and maybe the ones you spend sleeping too. Every time you touch someone I want it to be me. Every time you talk it should be to me. I wanna be the lint in your fucking pockets, Pete. I want to wear all your clothes so part of me’s always touching you. I’m not—I’m not sane about this, I know that, but it’s what I want, and it’s why I kissed you. I’d do more than kiss you. If you let me. I’d kiss you everywhere. I’d—I don’t know a lot about how it works, or what you like. But if you told me, I’d do it. I’d suck your dick, Pete. God, I want that so much. I’d let you fuck me. I’d fuck you if you wanted it. I’d let you tie me up and hit me black and blue if it meant you’d kiss me at the end. Hell, I’ll get on my knees right now, don’t think I won’t.”
Pete was silent and still.
“God, I wish I could see you. You’d be able to see I mean it. I mean it, Pete.”
“I,” said Pete. “You mean it?”
“I mean it. I meant it. When I kissed you, it was like, coming home. That’s how I wanted it to be.” And up rose a pressure in his throat. “But you pulled away, Pete. Why’d you—you didn’t want it? Want me?” Ray felt naked and small, raw as his wound.
“’m sorry. Really. I didn’t think—I guess after all the hintin’, I thought things were going to stay as they were. Truth is, I wanted that kiss so much I thought I’d eat you alive.” Pete’s fists in his jacket pulled Ray inches forward into the dark. When he spoke again, breath gusted across Ray’s face. “I still could.”
“Oh.” It was such a relief that Ray swayed a little, lightheaded with it. His voice wobbled like a kid’s. “Okay. Okay, then.”
“Ray. Ray,” Pete said. “This real? Tell me it’s real. Tell me, baby.”
“If it’s not real, I’ll—”
But Pete was shushing him, dry lips leaving feather-touches across Ray’s face, cheeks and chin, forehead, eyebrow. “I think it’s real. Won’t know for sure until morning, though.”
Hours in the dark, like this. Suddenly, Ray reached for Pete’s hand and found it, uncurled the fingers, caressed the sweat-damp palm, the heartlines, the callouses, the entire familiar landscape of it. He sighed and held on.
“I can wait till morning,” he said.
He couldn’t. Of course he couldn’t. Entangled, they drifted toward the garage and managed, somehow, to get inside. Ray felt dazed and happy, lighter than air the way he use to feel back when they had county fairs and his mom would let him ride the carousel. For some reason, he told Pete this, and Pete immediately got quiet and started steering Ray around like he meant business. Next moment, he was sitting on a dirty old footstool while Pete began to bring the place to life.
They’d only been here a few days, but it was long enough that they had started to miss some creature comforts. Ray’d come up with the idea of using a flashlight they stole balanced on its end in a tin can and covered over with a makeshift dome of newspaper: And God said, let there be a lamp, and there was a lamp. Pete had made them a little bathroom station, cobbling together abandoned hub caps and the business end of a hose. He’d swept the floor as clean as it could get and layered dirty magazines under one of their stolen blankets, making the bed upon which they slept together, barnacled close against the cold. Ray couldn’t help but see more in this place, the whole of it slowly transforming: Maybe they get work on a farm nearby, enough to earn coins to start turning this place into something real. Maybe they fix it up enough to start selling fuel again for the few cars passing this way north. Maybe Ray could run an auto shop out of this garage, like his dad did, and Pete could sell cigarettes and whiskey in the shop.
It was a stupid dream, but one without the sting of hopelessness, and he laughed as he thought of it.
“What’s ticklin’ your funny bone,” said Pete, who was dismantling Ray’s lamp so he could see the medical supplies clearer.
Ray told him and had to laugh again. “I know, I know, it’s stupid, it’s—the train is still the plan, I know that. It’s a good plan. We gotta get out of here, at least somewhere farther from the Walk, but I could see it so clear.”
“That’s the blood loss talking.” Pete set out the medical supplies: A first-aid kit, pads of gauze, white bandages untouched yet by grime, thread and needles. Ray grimaced. “I shouldn’t have waited this long. We gotta get you patched up before I lose you.”
“Hey,” said Ray, just as Pete pulled out a hip flask from the bag and handed it to him. “You’re not gonna lose—what’s that?” He sniffed it. “Jesus H. Christ, I thought you said it wasn’t the kind you drink?”
“Yeah, I got that too,” Pete said. “Drink up, compadre.”
Ray drank, and needed it. He thought the Walk had toughened him up beyond recognition, but the stitches fucking hurt, and there was more blood, and maybe Pete had a point about the blood loss. Ray swayed on the footstool, blinking at the intent shape of Pete, peering over the dark pucker where the stitches patched the hole the bullet made in him.
“Pete,” he said, maybe slurred. The garage moved like a calm sea underneath him. “Were you never really gonna do anything?”
“What?”
“Or say anything? About, you know.” Ray blinked several times; multiple Petes came together and split and came together. “About us. About me. Uh. You know. Just. You said you were gonna wait until I. But were you never gonna say anything?”
He thought about those sweet, tortured nights, piled together on blankets, on leaves, in the truck cab. Ray had felt so complete, like the world had taken a mighty bite outta him and finally he’d grown something back in that space, and what he’d grown was shaped like Pete. He’d been happy, is the thing. And all the while Pete was holding himself back, waiting, waiting. Thinking Ray didn’t want him, never could want him. Nothing between them but clothes and dirt, and all the things they’d gotten wrong. Ray imagined that world stretching on, the one where he’d never kissed Pete, and he saw the gaps forming between them, sleeping further and further apart, speaking less, understanding less. Coming to a fork in the tracks and Pete hopping on the train north and Ray running after him, running running, not fast enough, Pete disappearing, Pete gone, never having been kissed by Ray.
“Are you—Ray? Ray, come on, now,” Pete said, on his feet and leaving the flashlight behind to roll across the floor. “Baby. Baby. Hey.”
“’m okay,” Ray said, halfway to crying, mostly just drunk. Pete’s hands cupped his face, rubbing across his cheeks, where a half-hearted beard was starting to mean business more and more every day. “Just—tell me you were gonna say something.”
“I’m saying it now, Ray,” said Pete. With the light behind him, he looked like an angel, smile just visible as he leaned down. “Okay? I’m saying it: I’m pretty keen on you, Mr. Garraty.”
“Say it like you mean it,” Ray said, muffled.
Pete chuckled. “I love you, Ray. Hear that? I love you, I’ve been sick with love for you for days, weeks. Maybe my whole life. And if I ever told myself otherwise, well, God strike me down for it.”
“You want me?”
“I want you. So bad, baby. You got no idea, Ray. No idea how bad I want you.” Pete stepped closer. Ray’s legs opened to welcome him, straddle him. He was so warm. “You ever want a man before, Ray?”
“N-no.”
“Thought so. It’s okay, baby. I suppose it’s not all that different from wanting a girl. Wanting to know how she smells, how soft she is in places, how rough in others. How you wanna—wanna breathe in her hair or suck on her ponytail. How you dream of holding her breasts real gentle and then—and then squeezing hard. Dreaming of what nipples taste like when they’re so pink like that, like yours, dreaming about, oh, about what your sweat smells like in all your secret places. How thick your hair gets all over. And your sounds. I want all your sounds. I bet you make all kinds of them, one for every feeling. If I kissed you, you’d moan one way. If I tongued you open real slow and nice, you’d moan another, I bet. Ray, you listening?”
Ray’s mouth was open, gasping, eyes lidded so that Pete’s halo went all soft and feathery. “Yeah. Yeah.”
“Think of the tastes, Ray. I wanna taste everything. Your cum. Your sweat. Your blood even. I got your blood on my hands right now, Ray. Right here.”
And Ray could see it, the dark smear on Pete’s fingers, partly dried, fresh from his wound.
“Pete,” he said.
“I want it, Garraty,” said Pete, and licked Ray’s blood off his fingers. Tongue wet and just the tip of it, sliding up to the webbing between his fingers.
“Holy shit,” breathed Ray. “Fuck me.”
Pete gave out a little self-satisfied laugh in reply.
“No, I mean it, Pete. I want you to fuck me.” Ray leaned forward on his perch. “Fuck me, Pete, I want it, please. Oh, God.”
“Okay, someone’s hungry.” As Ray leaned forward, Pete shifted back, just enough to be out of reach. “And halfway to drunk, I think. How exactly are we gonna manage a fuck, compadre? Motor oil?”
Ray rubbed his hands over his face. “You’re teasing me, right?”
“I am not. And I’ll tell you now, I ain’t fucking you dry, Raymond, no matter how much you drive me crazy.”
Ray managed to get a hand on the back of Pete’s knee and gripped for dear life. “I need it, I—don’t you? Please, Pete, I can take it. Please. Please.” His forehead found Pete’s wide, warm thigh and trembled there.
“All right, hungry boy.” The delight of fingers in his hair. “Suppose you give me that kiss again, first, hm? Start slow?”
Ray tilted his face to the air and was met with a kiss; Pete, crouching down, leaned into him, his whole, hot presence brushing up against Ray, and he did not start slow. He kissed Ray’s mouth open, kissed his tongue between Ray’s teeth, entered him smooth and wet, and Ray understood how paltry his own kiss had been, a fraction of a kiss. This—this sucked the air from Ray’s lungs. He ignored the sting in his arm as he reached to grip Pete’s shoulders. Pete had a hand on Ray’s neck, slowly sliding over his flannel to grasp a handful of flesh. Ray moaned and shivered, hot speckled goosebumps errupting all over him like a sickness.
Pete swirled his tongue and withdrew it. “How’s that?” he whispered.
“Start slow, my ass.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve been waitin’. I’m hungry too.”
There was so much to experience, kissing Pete. The smell of his skin, his spit, the taste and slide of his inner flesh, the mountain ranges of his teeth. Ray felt every jolt and inch of Pete’s body as they pressed together, every movement creating ripples of pleasure, ripples upon ripples, stones tossed into a deep calm pond.
Ray found himself whining.
“Pete, come on, come on, I’m begging you, let me have this, lemme—”
Pete gripped Ray’s jaw, pressure popping his mouth open. “You trust me, Ray?”
Ray nodded, hooked like a fish.
“Yeah you do. Alright then.” Pete stood, still holding Ray captive. Ray’s dick bobbed in his pants, two violent lurches against the teeth of his fly. “I got your mouth all nice and wet, didn’t I, Ray? Shame to put that to waste.”
Pete began unclasping his pants with his other hand.
“Oh, God,” managed Ray.
Fuck the fucking flashlight casting a bright, round beam against the wall behind Pete. Ray could hardly see, but he could see some, could see the beautiful dark curve of Pete’s cock, stiff and slim and tilting to one side like a sly smile. Pete let his pants relax around his waist, and there was warm skin, Pete’s hipbones and the cut of muscle, and at the tops of his thighs were little whorls of hair dotted like lichen. Ray’s mouth drooled in Pete’s hand.
“This what you want?”
Ray nodded, nodded again, closing his eyes against the sting of sudden tears. Pete’s thumb caught one and rubbed it into Ray’s cheek.
“Say it for me, baby. I gotta be sure.”
“I want it,” Ray gasped. “I want it. Pete. Pete.”
He was still crying when Pete fed him his cock, slow and gentle and talking him through it the whole time. “Here you go, that’s it, wider for me, baby. Breathe through your nose, yeah, like that. You don’t gotta suck just yet, let it sit, get acquainted. You’re so wet in here, baby, so wet for me. Think you can take me deeper?”
The garage fragmented into a series of sensations: Ray’s own face, wet with hot tears, growing hotter still as Pete held his jaw; the salt-and-sweat taste of Pete on his tongue, soft skin sliding, the texture of veins, the tang of pre-spunk like a smack to the gut; the rhythm of breathing, careful at first, then lung-deep wrenching gasps; the liquid pleasure of movement, bobbing his head, sucking at first only so hard as to not make him choke, then sucking as if for dear life. Ray’s hands dragged Pete’s pants further down his legs until he was left grasping at the globes of Pete’s ass, lightly furred. He’d left the stool, knees smarting on concrete. And always, Ray’s eyes looked up, up, at Pete’s face and the dear, desperate shape of his mouth as he drew closer and closer.
“Fuck, Ray, Ray, your fucking mouth, baby. See, I’m fucking you, baby, lemme fuck you, lemme—” Pete grasped Ray’s head more firmly, two hands, and suddenly the head of Pete’s slim cock connected with the back of Ray’s throat, and white sparks hit his shadowed vision; he gagged, but he gripped Pete harder and willed his throat to open, and then Pete was fucking him in earnest. Fucking his mouth, like he had with his tongue. Ray garbled some choked noise and came with the same wrenching feeling of vomiting, whole body tense with so much pleasure that he couldn’t see for a moment, Pete’s face disappearing behind a throbbing red smear behind his eyelids. And when it melted away and the pleasure receded, Pete was still fucking him, thank God. Thank fucking God.
“Jesus, Ray, oh honey, I’m—don’t swallow this, baby, ‘kay, don’t—”
Hot as blood, spunk filled Ray’s mouth, coating his tongue. Thick and warm and from Pete. Ray didn’t swallow, even as his eyes smarted and his knees near gave out. Pete held him still as he came, beautiful face all screwed up like he couldn’t help it, like it was too much. And then, just as Ray was starting to feel pleased with himself, quick as it happened, Pete went lax and opened his eyes. The hands on Ray’s head didn’t loosen. A hot spike pierced Ray’s belly.
“Don’t swallow yet,” said Pete, withdrawing his softening dick from Ray’s lips. “Show me that cum, baby. Show me.”
Ray opened his mouth, wider, wider, and before he could beg for it, Pete gripped his jaw and spat once, neatly, into Ray’s mouth.
“Now swallow.”
Ray swallowed.
Slightly shocked, Pete said, “Jesus Christ, Ray. You okay? Was that—”
Ray could feel himself chubbing in his pants again already. He swallowed again, a second sour, hot line running down his throat. “Don’t chicken out on me now, McVries,” which got Pete laughing, and Ray joined along. His whole body chattered with the remnants of pleasure, mixed with the pain from his arm and the ache of his knees, and the sick of the alcohol. He felt grimy and tacky with tears and dust and drool. He felt better than he had in days.
“Let’s get you off the ground, baby.” Pete started to help him up.
“Hm. I like that.”
“The ground? Stay there, then.”
“Fuck you. I mean, you calling me baby.”
“Alright then. My baby. That’s you.”
Ray was on his feet now, swaying a little. He searched Pete’s face and its gentle smile, the fond look that that made Ray ache. “Was it, I mean, good for you too?”
“Man, I’m the one who should ask that. I came in your mouth, Ray. Harder than I’ve ever come, I think.”
“Yeah?”
Pete shot him a look. “Down, hungry boy.”
And down he went, onto their makeshift bed where Pete pushed him. He let Pete tug of his boots and check his bandages and toes for black spots, feeling utterly babied but maybe enjoying it a little. And then it was Pete’s turn to shrug off the leather jacket and lie down net to Ray. This time, instead of taking turns, he draped it over the both of them. They curled together underneath it as they had for many nights now, slowly melding together into one being.
“Pete?”
Pete sounded bone-tired. “Yeah, baby.”
“When the train comes. Once we’ve found the right tracks, I mean. We’re going together, right?”
Pete had switched off the flashlight, but the moon hit the window side of the garage and let a few gray beams creep across the floor. In the dark, a hand found his, familiar in its shape.
“Together.”