Chapter Fifteen #2
In the end he had to stuff his hand into his mouth just to shut himself up.
Rest , he kept thinking, Eli needs to rest .
But he was the one who fell asleep. It was the stupid side effect of crying his eyes out.
When he woke up the dimmers were still on, and Eli’s breath was fast and shallow.
He sat up, terrified of what he might have missed, and Eli’s hand slid down his back with the motion.
“Eli?” he asked, softer than a whisper. But Eli didn’t answer.
He slid his hand to the pulse point on the man’s neck.
Too fast. It should have been too fast for sleep, but he hoped Eli was sleeping, and not just too hurt to answer.
The empty IV stood on the pole. Someone must have disconnected it. Bee was still standing over them, a much better guard than he himself had proved to be. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice sounded rough as roof shingles. “I won’t forget this.”
But Bee said nothing. He never spoke to anyone but Eli. Besides, what was there to say? There wasn’t much to do either, except to lay back down with his hand on the pulse point, and count and worry and wait for morning.
Eli slept only fitfully, but he didn’t come fully conscious either.
Samuel knew it because awake, Eli would have better controlled himself, but asleep he would gasp and make soft sounds of pain that twisted guilt like a knife in his gut.
“I’m here,” he whispered to Eli every time, much good that would do him.
He was the worst thing that had ever happened to the man.
Well, maybe right after that shithead partner Andrew.
Eli did wake up when they were connecting him to the fluids again, and when he said, “I need to pee,” he rolled off the bed instead of waiting to get kicked out and went to call Nathaniel. It was clear from the moment the man picked up that he hadn’t slept.
“How is he?” was the greeting Nathaniel used, and he was forced to tell him how much pain Eli was in, and how useless he was being.
That should have been it. The whole report.
But then he clutched the receiver even closer, until he was almost eating it, and vomited forth with, “I can’t stand it. I want to die.”
It was more selfish drivel, and once again it meant being comforted, because Nathaniel said, “I’m sorry, Sam.”
And he was horrified at himself but not horrified enough to stop. He had practically crawled into the phone cage, but he couldn’t crawl into Nathaniel’s arms. “When does it get better? When does he stop hurting?”
And Nathaniel said, “Oh, Sam.” Which was the worst kind of answer because it told him that Nathaniel didn’t know.
He’d promised not to cry again, but there he was weeping like a goddamn pipe.
“Take him back,” he begged. “Just come and take him. He can’t stay in this awful place anymore.
Please, Nat. Please don’t let him hurt anymore. ”
And then Nathaniel was crying with him, and that was even worse, because even more than the glutening, he knew Eli wouldn’t forgive him for making Nathaniel cry.
But he didn’t know how to make it stop, not his own tears and not Nathaniel’s, and then he made it even worse—his worst, most stupid mistake—because he said, “Tell me how it will be when we leave.’
And Nathaniel told him a fairy tale. A story about a place far away.
He spoke about a big cozy bed with a wonderful mattress and sheets washed to freshness but still smelling of Eli.
And lights that turned all the way off, and a shower that lasted as long as he wanted and then coffee—real coffee—with milk and cream and whatever the hell he wanted to put in it.
And Eli. Eli’s arms. Eli’s smiles. Eli singing in the morning while he cooked eggs in the pan.
“And you,” he croaked, because he was selfish enough to demand even more.
“And me,” Nathaniel agreed.
“I wish we were there now. I wish it could be real.”
“It is real. I promise.”
But when he tried to picture it, the image went all fuzzy in his head. He could only think of the prison, of fear and vigilance. “I need to see you,” he said, and he knew it was the whiny demand of a toddler. “Not just once a week, but every day. I need to see you every day.”
“I miss you too,” Nathaniel said.
But that wasn’t what he meant. It wasn’t as simple as missing him.
He felt like he was coming apart, like his sanity was unraveling again, back like how it had been in the beginning.
In the dark time, alone with predators. He should have been stronger by then, more secure.
The desperation that clawed at his chest had no business being so strong. “No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
And that should have been terror. That Nathaniel could know, but Eli had already taken up all his room for fear, so the words could do nothing to him except form a kind of rope in his head, one he wanted and one he reached for, but Nathaniel wasn’t done.
“I hated you. At first. I’ve always hated people like you.
The ones who look good at Eli’s side—who match.
And yes, the feeling has gotten less urgent with time, but it’s still there.
It will always be there. And it was worse with you, and not just because you’re the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen, but because you were good.
You were behaved. And Eli liked you so much.
From the first day, from the first moment.
And yes, it was a relief to have you protecting him, and yes, I preferred to have you there than to not have you, but that didn’t mean I didn’t bleed with it.
Didn’t curse you with it. Didn’t want to rip the love out of your eyes with it.
But how could I? When your anxiety over what you might do was so high—as high as mine, even.
Maybe higher. When you looked like you’d splinter to shards to have him touch you.
When the way you forbid yourself was stronger than even I had a right to demand.
So controlled. So careful. And all the while it was growing.
What he was to you. What you were to him.
Growing and growing until I couldn’t think of you without him and him without you.
Samuel, it hurts. It hurts me, but to the point where I no longer know whether keeping you or losing you would hurt more.
So help me take it. If it’s inevitable—if there’s no way you can help but feel it—then love him.
Love more than you already do. Harder than you already do.
Love him until you’re breaking with it and there’s no choice but to break everything for it.
Make him first. Make him always. Because if you do, if he becomes everything and always, then you'll have become me. You’ll be me, Samuel, and it will stop hurting, because I can't be hurt by myself.
Can't be jealous of myself. Love him, Sam, and I swear I'll make it so that neither of you has to cry anymore. "
There was a clock up on the wall over the bank of phones.
It was there so prisoners could keep track of the time and calculate how much their calls might be costing.
But that wasn’t why Samuel was looking at it, each tick of the second hand another laceration.
He was calculating not just the time of the call, but of everything.
The stack of all the words. Of all the letters.
The visits and the thoughts and all those many endless and necessary moments that this man had spent on him.
Nathaniel, a man who could take an enemy, the secret fury of his soul, and craft it, that feeling, so well that Samuel only wanted to have it, to open his mouth and swallow it down, filling himself with a feeling so sweet he couldn’t help but demand more.
Was the man a demon? A god? What other kind of being could turn resentment into redemption? Hate into Home?
“I need to go,” he told the receiver. It wasn't a dismissal, and Nathaniel knew it wasn't. They'd become the same person after all. And still, the words felt like rusty nails in his mouth. He wished it were different. He wished he could give the man words like what Nathaniel had just given him. But he wasn’t a man as Nathaniel was.
Just a boy. A little murderer boy whose beloved was passed out on a bed he needed to return to.
“I love you,” Nathaniel told him, and he suddenly sounded just as desperate, just as worried, just as aware. Eli holding the same place in their hearts. “Okay?”
And it was like Nathaniel had said, like breaking apart.
He wanted to tell the man he couldn’t say things like that.
Not in that voice. Like the words were real and not just a comfort.
But he needed the lie. He needed it so much.
So he grabbed hold of the words and pushed them deep inside of him, right next to all the others he’d been given, his beautiful lies, and hung up.
Eli looked even worse when he returned. He was covered in sweat, and he was breathing through his teeth.
“Get me a basin of water,” Samuel said to Jabbers, forgetting to be anything but rude, but Jabbers listened to him, and Samuel tore a piece out of an undershirt and used it to sponge at Eli’s skin, the sudsy water taking the sweat even if it couldn’t take the pain.
It felt like a mistake because Eli shuddered with cold when the blankets were pulled away, but he needed to change those anyway.
He knew how much Eli loved to be clean, and he needed at least one thing to be the way he remembered it.
“Almost done,” he told the shivering man as he put him into new clothes.
Eli usually slept in just a pair of sweats, but now he put him in two shirts and tucked him in with more blankets.
When that was done, he eased himself around Eli, lending him all the warmth he could, but still Eli shivered.
The man tried to clutch at him, but his grip was even weaker than it had been the night before.