Chapter 88 Avert Your Eyes
Avert Your Eyes
Surely it was a dream.
Kyle sat in a glassed-in booth, surrounded by impressive keyboard consoles and wraparound monitors.
Every display had a scene from the Three Hares game, and the floor was littered with collected pieces of art and architecture and cached jewels.
The casters of Kyle’s chair made little paths as he rolled from screen to screen, one earphone pushed back, cheek pressed against the cell phone tucked in his shoulder.
He was talking fast, typing faster, consulting notes, gesticulating wildly.
He was on and it was exhilarating to watch.
Liko tapped on the glass, bursting with clues, dying to tell his son all he knew about the Green Man Chamber.
But Kyle couldn’t hear him.
Liko’s tapping finger turned to a knuckle.
Then to a fist. Then his flat palms beat on the windows but Kyle couldn’t hear him.
Soon Liko was throwing himself against the glass, battering it with his shoulder as water began to drip from the joints, the rivulets growing stronger until they poured like rain and puddled around Liko’s feet.
He called his son’s name. Over and over, timed to the thump of his shoulder.
Finally Kyle looked up. His eyes rolled around the Universe and he scowled, chucking his hair out of his face.
He reached and touched his index finger to the window between him and his father.
His mouth shaped words, Get the fuck out of here, I’m busy.
Then the booth went dark.
Liko’s eyes popped open. He was on his side, his left arm twisted beneath him and his entire deadweight pressing on his shoulder. Outside the rain poured down.
With a groan, Liko rolled over, his heart pounding. The other side of the bed was empty. He rolled back and groped for his phone. Eight-thirty. A text from Dane was in his notifications:
Having a “Norwalk Day.” Bunch of appointments and errands. Back later. Left you coffee.
Liko sat up, tilting his head away from his sore shoulder and wincing, reading the words again, a third time, feeling confused.
Confused and downright jellyfingered.
No good morning, no you were great last night, no when I get home you’re in trouble…
He looked at Nomi With Dusk Tiara as if she’d have answers. She gazed back from the fabulous décolleté of wisteria blossoms and shrugged.
“Okay,” he said to himself, taking a panoramic look around the king-sized mattress and all it had contained last night.
He touched his collarbone and tried to give a careless smirk, but already a heaviness was descending into his chest. Thick and humid, like a rainy day.
The dream about Kyle hopped in for the ride, replaying the part when the booth windows blacked out and the water rose around Liko’s shins.
Get the fuck out of here.
Liko tried to get the fuck away from the dream but it piggybacked on his shoulders to the kitchen, where the coffee had gone cold and nothing in the fridge appealed. It dragged on his ankle as he went into the office and tried to work.
Where is my friend?
He alternated hot and cold. Throat tightening and loosening.
His heart hurting. Feeling abjured, like he was suffering a throwing up and throwing down apocalypse with nobody to know or care.
Feeling like an idiot because he was a grown-ass man, why didn’t he just pick up his damn phone and text something witty?
Nice try sneaking away, get your ass back here.
Or at least share your location so I can stalk you like a needy lover.
Were they lovers now?
“What is wrong with you?” he muttered, staring out the windows for the umpteenth time. “Just fucking call him.”
I don’t want to call, his heart sulked. I want to be called. I don’t want leaving, I want staying.
He pulled on rain jacket and ball cap, took an umbrella and walked around the sodden farm. He sat on a boulder by the duck pond, holding a handful of peas, but naturally Jeffrey wouldn’t come to him.
“Some emotional support duck you are.” Liko flung the pods into the water and got up. If he couldn’t get words on paper, he’d get steps onto his fitness tracker.
He took the path through the woods, only wanting to go back to bed.
Where is my friend?
Get in, get off, get out.
I don’t want the get out part.
I don’t want last night to be a service.
I want to see you right now.
Kyle touching a finger to the glass and the booth imploding with darkness.
Dane pulling the shades, putting the bedroom into near-darkness.
Maybe he doesn’t want to see me.
He’s busy.
Get the fuck out of here, I’m busy…
By the time he strode to the middle of the Hare Ring and sat on the great, carved stone, he was feeling lower than low and twice as dumb.
You are fifty-five years old and surviving immeasurable grief. The snub of a dude you had a wank with last night is not going to kill you.
“It will if I want it to,” he said, which was so pathetic he actually chuckled. “Go home, drama queen. Practice some self-care.”
He mindfully started over with a hot shower, smart clothes and two scrambled eggs.
Feeling nostalgic, he made tea instead of coffee.
Nostalgia made him spontaneously call his parents for a chat.
Hanging up, he still felt off-kilter and weirdly bereft, but he settled back down to work and banged out his chapters.
He kept an ear peeled for the chime of his phone in the kitchen, but heard none.
In the afternoon, he took his laptop to the kitchen couch and opened Three Hares. He walked through the Green Man Chamber from the beginning, starting outside Paderborn and ending at the pine needle letters spelling out Tinner Wheeled.
He ignored how rearranging the letters to Helen deWinter felt like cheating, both at the game and on Dane. He dropped the last D into place—D for defiant—and watched what happened next.
An invisible breeze picked up the needles and blew them in a cloud toward the ceiling. They moved in a circle around the spinning hares, which slowly came to a stop. They sat in their allotted spaces, panting. Ears and noses twitching. Then they turned and began to run the other way.
From offscreen, a dog barked
From outside, Salma barked.
An explosion of sound in the front hall. Dane had come in like a teenager, asserting presence with as much noise as possible. Bundles dropped, shoes kicked off, the thwack of a jacket shook out. Gorilla footsteps into the kitchen. “Oh, hi.”
“Hey.” Liko toggled from the game to his email, as if he’d been caught surfing porn.
“God, it’s fucking miserable out there.” Dane flung a bunch of bags on the kitchen table.
Liko looked over the back of a couch, sure a snog would be forthcoming, but Dane was rubbing Salma off with a towel, baby talking an earful of praise and giving her a treat. Then he left and soon Liko heard a rumble of feet going up the stairs.
He sighed and went to the fridge. Last night’s pasta was in one container, the caramelized onions and peas in another. He wasn’t hungry at all, but he opened the pasta, sat down and took a cold bite.
“That’s better,” Dane said, coming back in. He’d changed into sweats and pulled the longer sections of his hair into an elastic. “Going in and out of seven different places, I got soaked. Then I got all chilled in the car.” Walking past Liko’s chair, he bent and kissed the top of his head. “Hey.”
“What’s up?”
Dane washed his hands, then stood at the sink a few minutes, kneading the small of his back and twisting side to side.
“Your back still bothering you?” Liko asked.
“The chiropractor was one of my appointments. He got some of the kinks out but the rain isn’t helping.
I might go soak in the tub later. Gotta take care of this first…
” He sat and shook one of the bags out, dropping a small box and a disposable syringe onto the table.
“T minus zero,” he said, then frowned at the inside of the bag.
“She usually throws in alcohol swabs. Goddammit…”
And he was gone again, leaving Liko with the same bite of pasta in his mouth and no desire to swallow it. He didn’t want this. Didn’t want perfunctory head kisses and excuses to get out of the room. Maybe from any other guy but not from Dane.
Maybe he doesn’t want to see me.
Get the fuck out of here, I’m busy.
“Here we go,” Dane said, throwing down a few pre-packaged alcohol wipes and a Band-Aid.
Liko went to the fridge for a seltzer. More invented business. Like the little sentences he often wrote between lines of dialogue to inject action into a conversation, or move his characters invisibly between here and there.
“The needles of my youth were nasty,” Dane was saying. “When I was eighteen I switched to a transdermal patch. Then to a topical gel when I was thirty-two.”
“Who prescribes it?” Liko asked. “GP or a specialist?”
“Endocrinologist. She’s in New City which is a hike, but she’s good so I don’t mind too much. She started me on this stuff in twenty-fourteen. Testosterone undecanoate, suspended in oil.”
“How often?”
Dane gave the syringe a few flicks. “Every twelve weeks.”
“Taking one in the ass?”
“I can’t jab my own butt without bruising myself, so it’s the leg. Avert your eyes.” He waggled his brows and slid his sweatpants down.
Liko put his jaw on the heel of his hand and stared. “You lube that needle or just raw dog it?”
“Little spit is all I need.”
What the fuck are we doing? Liko thought, as the needle went into Dane’s quadricep. We made love last night and now it’s locker room talk?
One half his brain scoffed at made love, while the other insisted it couldn’t be called anything else.
Please. You never made love with a guy in your life.
He’s not a guy, he’s a person.
You didn’t even touch each other.
The fuck are you talking about, yes we d—
His thoughts stopped. He watched Dane’s index finger slowly depress the syringe and his tangled thoughts followed it down.
You didn’t even touch each other.
Down, down. Dane breathing deep. His eyes giving a little wince, then going smooth again.
The lights in the booth going down.
Avert your eyes.
You didn’t touch.
Down. The oily, viscous solution going through the needle, under the skin, straight into muscle.
Digging my one ball, ya freak?
Get the fuck out of here, I’m busy…
“That’s it,” Dane said, withdrawing the needle and pressing the alcohol-soaked gauze on the mark. “T plus one.”
“When will the antlers emerge?”
Dane smiled, dealing with the bandage. “In about an hour.” His fingers pressed the ends of the adhesive. The skin of his thigh was smooth over corded muscle, with a down of fine hair lying close to the skin.
Avert your eyes.
I have a thing for the dark.
Dane slid his sweats up, then took the empty syringe to the sink. “In case you were wondering, I keep my sharps containers under here. Then they can go safely in the trash. Don’t worry about jabbing yourself.”
He flicked on the faucet to wash his hands again. Liko got up and moved behind him. Slid close, pinning Dane between his body and the cabinets, reaching an arm around his waist. The other he slid up Dane’s chest, until the curve made by Liko’s thumb and index finger cradled Dane’s lower jaw.
“Hi.”
Dane swallowed against Liko’s palm. “Hi.”
Liko was careful. He didn’t want the guy to feel collared, just contained. He drew Dane back against him and put his mouth against Dane’s hair. The scent of his skin made Liko remember last night, which started to get him hard. He pulled Dane closer and whispered, “Feel that?”
“Yeah.” The water ran on, though Dane had taken his hands out and they were now fisted on the edge of the sink. Liko reached and turned the faucet off. “Open your hands,” he said softly.
Slowly Dane’s fingers unfolded. Water dripped off them, making dull plinks and plunks on the dishes.
When the palms rested flat, Liko ran a hand under Dane’s shirt, slowly across his stomach, then up between his pectoral muscles, pressing his heart.
Dane sighed and swayed back a little, settling against Liko’s growing erection.
“Still so hard for you,” Liko said, kissing up the side of Dane’s neck.
“Mm.”
“Can’t stop thinking about last night.”
“Me too,” Dane whispered.
“I want you to come upstairs with me. Something we need to talk about.”
“You mean why I’m acting like such an ass right now?” Dane’s head lolled from shoulder to shoulder, showing his nape, letting Liko’s mouth reach it from all sides.
“I know why.”
“Do you?” A faint smile was on his mouth, but the fingers on the sink ledge were twitching.
“Mmhm.” Liko kept a hand pressed to Dane’s heart. The other glided across his stomach until his fingertips slid beneath the waistband of Dane’s sweats. Dane drew a deep breath in. His hands went to fists again, then opened.
“Don’t be afraid,” Liko whispered, sliding his hand a bit further. “We’re going to talk about this. Okay?”
Dane closed his eyes and nodded.
“We won’t turn any lights on. You can tap out any time. And truth or silence rules are in effect. Fair?”
“Fair.”
“Don’t be afraid.” Liko put both arms around Dane and squeezed him hard. Held still through one shared inhale and exhale. “Come upstairs with me.”
“Say the first part one more time.”
Liko turned Dane around and gathered him in. “Don’t be afraid.”