there once was a time i was sure of the bond

when my hands and my tongue and my thoughts were enough

~ vienna teng, ‘between’.

Disclaimer: I lay no claim upon the characters depicted within. All resemblance to people either living or dead is entirely intentional. They do, however, own themselves. Names, faces, actions, voice are all property of their individual owners and Warner Bros. music. The events herein, however, are entirely my own. This is fiction.

Title: Afraid of the Dark

Fandom: Linkin Park

Pairing: Chester/Phoenix

Genre: Angst

Status: Standalone

Rated: R, for imagery

Summary: ‘For there, that golden glow upon his face at long last, his past finally behind him – it was there that his fragile hopes imploded…’ When a tragic accident leaves him blind and alone, Chester must begin once more, learning first that he people do still care and that he wasn’t the only one to whom David had meant everything…

Afraid of the Dark

How do these stories start? Once upon a time…

Once upon a time, then – I suppose it is as fitting a place as any. Once upon a time there was a boy; wretched, lonely, unloved. Quite probably unlovable. Everything about him was abhorrent to everybody he knew. Everything: his troubled past, his troubled present, his broken psyche and his shattered dreams; his absolute desolation and palpable fear. No one knew how to approach him. No one could break through the barriers he built around himself. No one could make him believe he was anything other than expendable.

And into this boy’s life came an angel. He smoked, told rude jokes and tall tales. He drank, he danced dirtily and fought even dirtier. He used his halo as elaborate costume jewellery. At all the right moments, he whispered a three word mantra that over time had turned to rotten cliché, but still seemed beautiful on his lips and on his tongue.

Slowly, the boy’s life began to change. With time and dedication, he found the road through purgatory, right to the gates of heaven. And it was there that he was defeated. For there, that golden glow upon his face at long last, his past finally behind him – it was there that his fragile hopes imploded…

His name was Chester.

*

I listened in silence the ticking of the clock. I knew from long experience that the nurses changed shifts at seven, and then again at perhaps five. When the busy sounds from the wings increased, I reasoned that it must be morning, and when the squeaking wheels of the food trolley rolled along the corridor, I knew that it must be around eleven.

“Chester?”

I knew the voice. It was one of the few I had come to know intimately in the time I had been at the hospital. I turned my face away from it, staring blankly at the wall. There was an audible sigh, and then the sound of the door being jammed open.

“Chester, if you don’t eat, you’re going to be put back on a drip. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I murmured. “What have you brought?”

It smelled noxious, and my stomach revolted as he placed it in front of me. I turned blind eyes back to where I thought his face should be, and reached out for him. He pressed the back of his hand against my forehead. “Nothing you’ll like,” he said with a small laugh. I smiled weakly. “Just try to eat some of it, and later we’ll get you washed. Okay?”

“Sure. Have you-”

“It’s been cut up for you.”

I nodded half-heartedly, and didn’t resist when he pressed a spoon into my hand. “What time is it, Brad?”

“Breakfast time.” I could hear the smile in his voice, but his joke only brought tears to my eyes. “It’s just after eleven, Ches. Maybe 11.15.”

*

How do all the best novelists begin their sortie into the realm of the written word? Or rather, the dictated word in this case, I suppose. Think of this as one long soliloquy, my eulogy to the past and that which I cannot change.

I was born in Phoenix, Arizona. My father was a policeman, my mother a nurse. We moved around a lot. I was the youngest of four, and my eldest brother was a good thirteen years older than me. Although the neglect of my health overshadows a lot of my childhood, there is a hazy memory that my parents loved me. We were simply dysfunctional in all senses of the word.

In my teens, I slipped easily into a rut that I would inhabit into my twenties. Alcohol, sex and cocaine fuelled me. I became a parody of myself, somebody that I barely recognised and failed entirely to love. I worked to get high, and got high simply to avoid facing things that I shouldn’t have avoided. Addiction fuelled the need for money, and the easiest way to make money to whore myself out to whoever would want a broken crack fiend. Depressingly, the number of desperate men living straight lives reached triple figures within six months.

At twenty, knowing that I needed to get out of Phoenix before it killed me, I packed my belongings and few possessions into a friend’s car. I figured he wouldn’t be needing it where he had gone. Prison, that is, sentenced for aggravated assault and possession with intent to sell. Something nagged in the back of my mind that it wouldn’t be long before it was my door they were hammering down, so I took my skeletal frame and meagre milk-crate of a life and I left.

*

When the sun shone, I could feel it on my face as it came in through the window. I learned to tell the different nurses by the way they walked, by the perfume or cologne that they wore, and in the case of the nurse who never spoke to me, the difference in the atmosphere when she entered my room. Most often, however, it was Brad who tended to me. He brought me breakfast and lunch, and it was him that took me to the shower unit. Every time they checked me out and then readmitted me a week or so later, it was Brad that was the one constant amidst the turmoil. I never asked why he was so vigilant over my health. I never wanted to know, and it never seemed appropriate to ask.

“You’ve got to stop doing this,” he said one day, out of the blue. I tangled my fingers in the sheets on the bed, stared at him – or in his direction.

“I’m not doing anything.”

His sigh was audible in the silence of the room. Fresh air filtered in through a crack in the window, the cooling rush of the summer breeze. “Once more, Chester, and we won’t be able to help you.”

I fixed a smile on my lips and nodded absently. “What month is it?”

“Early August. You’ve been here for almost five months.”

I felt my smile slip. Five months. “I’m never going to see again, am I?”

“No,” he whispered. “No, chances are you’re going to have to learn to live with blindness.”

The silence was heavy as he resumed cutting my dinner into small pieces. I pressed my fingers to my eyelids, praying for a miracle. If I couldn’t see, I couldn’t write. There was no way I could dictate my feelings to another. If I couldn’t write, I couldn’t work. Panic flared in my chest and I groped for Brad’s hand as tears welled in my eyes. His arms slipped around me, hugging my gently as I clung to him.

“Don’t assume you’re the only person who misses him,” he whispered as he released me. I felt the frown flicker on my face. He took my hands and pressed them to his face, to the damp tracks of tears on his cheeks, to the symbol of the grief absent in his voice. “I can’t blame you. You lost him as well, but don’t assume you’re the only person who loved him.”

“I don’t,” I whispered, choking on the lump in my throat.

“You do. And that’s why you’re still here. You blame yourself for the accident.”

“No-”

“Yes!”

“It was his birthday, Brad. I just wanted us to do something nice. It was a meal, a couple of drinks. We smoked, we danced, we fucked against the car-” I paused and shook my head. “We should have just stayed in a hotel overnight. God knows between, us we could have afforded it.”

“The way I heard it, the truck ran a red light. The driver was asleep at the wheel. Half-asleep, at any rate. You didn’t stand a chance. Your car was ploughed off the road. The emergency services cut you both out of the wreckage. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Lucky?”

“Yes, lucky. You lost your vision. Dave lost his life.”

*

I just kept driving until I hit the coast, and when I got there I knew that there was nowhere else for me to run. Los Angeles seemed somehow fitting. There, amidst the neon lights and the noise of the city, I knew that I could disappear forever. Old habits die hard, however, and while I tried to find myself a job that I could tell my mom about, I found myself drifting back to the clubs and bars. I couldn’t decide in my mind whether they were abusing me, or if I was abusing them – abusing their desperation and their ready money.

I met him in chairs at the hospital. A friend of mine had lost a bet. It had seemed so trivial when he made it, and we had laughed about it together as we drank ourselves into a hazy stupor. They broke down the door to his room, and one of them took me down into the bar. He plied me with more alcohol, and I blew him in the restroom. The dirty tiles stained my knees. I threw up in my friend’s bathroom, and called for an ambulance. He lay curled in a ball on the floor, his knees pulled up to his chest, blood streaming from his nose and from the lacerations criss-crossing his spine and ribs.

I sat in chairs waiting for an update on Mike’s condition when this stranger sat down beside me. I glanced at him, a small smile flickering on my lips. He smiled back and then turned his serene hazel gaze back to the main reception. I wondered if perhaps the rest of the waiting area had filled up, and glanced over my shoulder. Still empty – so why did he have to sit there?

When I glanced at him once more, he was gazing at me. He didn’t look away sharply or pretend that he hadn’t been watching me, nothing. He just stretched his lips into a broad, infectious smile.

“You’ve got me all wrong,” I said at length. “I’m not-”

He laughed before I finished the sentence. “I’m not offering,” he said. I tilted my head, gazing at him steadily before a frown wrinkled my forehead.

“What?”

“I’m not offering anything. You just looked lonely, so I figured I’d sit here next to you.”

My teeth clicked together audibly and I turned my head to stare back at the reception desk. He sank lower into his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. He wrapped his arms around himself.

“Why are you here?” he asked suddenly, conversationally. I shrugged. I had no intention of answering, and yet the truth slipped from my lips, words rolling effortlessly off of my tongue.

“My friend owed someone a favour and couldn’t pay up. They beat him half to death and raped him.”

“You called the ambulance?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Someone had to. He’s not a bad guy.”

“None of us are.”

His eyes met mine as I started, glancing at him sharply. His smiled knowingly and nodded just once. “He’ll be fine, Chester.”

*

Brad sat me in a chair as he turned the linen on the bed down, changing the sheets and freshening the whole ensemble. The sun was warm on my face and I turned towards it, pressing my fingers to the crack in the window.

“Do you want to go outside?” he asked. I jumped and frowned.

“Yeah,” I said at length. “Yeah, I want to go out.”

Brad had taken time out of his day off to come in and see me the day before. He had taken me outside then as well, and he had sat beside me on the grass. He had explained with great patience and understanding that I had been transferred to the psych ward at the hospital because I was a danger to myself at the present time. I hadn’t adjusted.

“Adjusted?” I laughed. “I’ve lost everything!”

“No,” he murmured. I could hear the sadness in his voice as I sat before him. “No, you’ve gained so much. Think of everything you have now that you wouldn’t have had if you had never met David.”

*

Mike wasn’t fine. They transferred him from the ER to ICU. He died two days later. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and it was decided that the kindest thing to do would be to simply switch off his machine. They allowed me to see him before they wheeled him away to the morgue. They assumed we were lovers, and I took no time to disillusion them. We’d had nothing in common beyond the way we made our money and a desperate need to forget, even if it was just for a few hours. But I felt I owed it to him to see him before he was buried forever, forgotten for good. I was the only person who would ever know he’d died, and probably the only one who would ever care.

In the aftermath of Mike’s death, I tried to break away from the cycle. I had been an addict and a rent boy for too long. With sudden, searing clarity, I understood the truth of that. I thought I would be the only person there to see Mike lowered into the ground. I was shocked to see at least two of his regular punters, and two other boys that we had both known.

“We all lost something special today,” a voice said as I walked away. I stopped in my tracks and looked around desperately. It was the voice from the hospital. I knew it, I recognised it instantly. I felt the smile on my lips as he emerged from behind a beautiful, decadent stone angel. He ran his fingertips lightly across the ridges of her dress and crossed himself, inclining his head as he moved away. He turned to me with a broad smile.

“You knew him?” I whispered, and he nodded his head up and down just once.

“Knew him well. Knew him – knew him intimately.”

I lowered my gaze, my own smile fading. “He – we… There was nothing I could do.”

“I don’t blame you. You were there with him. You didn’t leave his side. I owe you.” His hands cupped my face and brought my gaze up to meet his. His hazel stare was serene, calming, contagious and beautiful. “Let me help you, Chester.”

*

“How did you know him, then?”

I felt Brad freeze. The water from the shower drummed onto my skin, needle sharp against my flesh. Every time, the heat made me gasp. All the same, I felt reinvigorated standing beneath its stream. I turned back to him, running my hands self-consciously across my body. Despite the pounding drum of the water, I could hear Brad trying to swallow his sadness.

“Brad?” I whispered, reaching out for him. He caught my hand and pressed it to his face, sighing softly.

“I roomed with him for a while,” he said. “He was a friend of a friend at college. He used to crash on our couch. I – Dave was the first man I ever loved.”

I felt him move away from me, and the water stopped. I stepped forward and he caught me with a towel, wrapping it around me before allowing me to rub myself dry.

“You loved him?” I murmured. He sniffed and a low, bitter laugh escaped him.

“Yeah, I loved him. He was trying to get through college as well. He said he worked. I had no idea at the time exactly what he did.”

I paused and looked up sharply. With a pang of aching regret, I realised again how much my vision had meant to me. I would have been able to gauge everything in a moment if I could have just seen Brad’s face. “He – he said he never finished,” I whispered instead. I felt the bench I sat on give a little as Brad sat beside me.

“He didn’t,” he said. I closed my eyes and leant my head back against the wall, listening to the low, heartbreaking sound of his voice. “He didn’t finish college. His grades were already failing when I met him. He was working to try to make money for his rent. His roommate dropped out. Slowly, he became disinterested in college, and more interested in this job of his.”

“When did you realise?”

“Realise?” Brad’s voice dropped once more, and this time the sob in his throat actually caught and stuck. “I didn’t realise. I didn’t know there was something to realise. We had a healthy relationship. You don’t need me to spell it out. Phi told me. Right before he left, Phi told me exactly what he did for a living, and then he suggested I get myself checked.”

“Did you?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

“I just-”

He sighed again and his hand came to rest on my leg. I froze momentarily, and he released me. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I got myself checked. Phi was clean. His mom told me that nothing abnormal had come back from any of his tests while he was still working. I guess you’d know that.”

I nodded absently, casting my eyes to my left, wishing that I could see what Brad looked like, wishing I could know what David had seen in him as well. “He used to insist I get myself checked every six months when I was working, while he knew me. Last time was – was eighteen months after I stopped. Just in case, he said. Just in case. He’d been with me then as well, so he was checked again. Just in case.” I paused and laughed a little. “He was paranoid about one of us carrying it, you know? Just in case. Always, always just in case.”

“You’re still clean, Ches, if that eases your mind. You’re an out and active member of the gay community. You were checked when you came in.”

“I never considered that I might not be,” I murmured. “I’ve only been with David in the last four years. I sort of assumed – hoped, maybe – that the same was true of him.”

*

It took me more than a week to find the address that he had pushed into my palm, and when I did there was nobody at home. I sat on the concrete steps, hugging my knees. I pressed my head to the cold steel of the handrail, wondering if perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t see him approaching, or realise his arrival until I heard his laugh.

“I didn’t think you would come,” he said. I shrugged my shoulders, smiling back weakly.

“I didn’t think I would either. Who are you?”

“The only person you have left,” he said easily, his self-assurance mesmerising. I got slowly to my feet, hoisting my pack onto my shoulder as I got out of his way. He jogged up the steps toward me and squeezed past to unlock the door. “Come in. Make yourself at home.”

I stood on his doorstep and stared at him. “How do you know my name?”

He glanced over his shoulder, his smile warm as he shrugged. “Everyone knows you,” he said. “Everyone’s heard of you. You’re good, that’s what they’re saying. You’re too good. You’re stealing their business. Do you know how vicious this trade is?”

I nodded absently and stepped over the threshold. “Yeah,” I murmured. “I’m not exactly new to it, you know? But I don’t understand. Why do you want to help me?”

“You were there for him, Chester. You helped a friend of a friend. I owe you a favour, and you interest me enough to make me want to see you safe. Would you like a drink?”

I frowned and collapsed onto the couch, kicking off my shoes before pulling my knees up to my chest. “Er – can I just get coffee?”

*

Brad came in with an entirely different attitude one day. I could tell immediately that there was someone with him. Someone unfamiliar, someone new. I pulled my knees up to my chest, turning my face towards the door. Panic stabbed through me once again. There was someone here, watching me, and I couldn’t even locate them in the room.

“Brad?” I whispered, and I felt his hand squeeze my arm reassuringly.

“Someone to see you, Chester. Please, talk to her, huh?”

I nodded weakly, and listened as he closed the door. I wanted to be able to at least face the person I was supposed to speak to, but whilst Brad had spoken they had already settled themselves in the chair.

“Chester?” murmured a voice, and I turned my head, trying desperately to pinpoint the source. I heard the rustle of clothing, and then a gentle hand pressed against my arm. Settling slowly, I turned my face in the direction of that soft touch, swiping roughly at the tears on my cheeks.

“Yes?” I responded, swallowing the lump in my throat.

“I didn’t believe them when they said you were here,” the voice continued. “I don’t think I appreciated how much you really cared for him.”

I felt the frown on my face and tried desperately to erase it. I knew the voice, although I had only ever spoken to it on the phone. I parted my lips to speak, but she continued without giving me the chance.

“He told me,” she said. “I remember it clearly. I remember how hard it was to believe. My baby was gay. My baby was gay, and he had dropped out of college the year before. He told me because he was scared that he didn’t have long to live. He thought he had AIDS. He said he had to clear his conscience before he died, so he told me how he made his money. He told me about this boy he’d been living with in a grimy room above a bar downtown. He told me about Brad, and gave me Brad’s mom’s phone number. He said he needed me to make sure that Brad was doing okay. He said that if he was going to die, he didn’t want to think he was taking anyone with him. He moved back home, brining all of his things with him. Not that he really had much. His clothes he burned, except for the olive cargo pants he seemed to live in.”

I could hear the absolute devastation in her voice, and I wanted to be able to comfort her. I wanted to know what the right words were. All I understood with any clarity was why Brad had left her here alone. I knew; despite Brad’s words, I was convinced that I was the only person missing David. And now here was his mother, and I had to know that she missed him as much as I did. I had to understand that he had meant as much and more to her. She had her memories of him as well, built up over the twenty-seven years he had been alive. I had only known him for four. I heard her broken sob, and I found myself sliding off the bed, wrapping my arms around her.

“I remember when they redid the tests, just to double check. They came back clear. Years fell off of him again, but he knew that he couldn’t go back to living the way he had done. He got himself a legal job, gave up the drugs and the alcohol completely. And then he met you, and because of all you had done for Mike, he knew that he had to help you. He had to help you like he hadn’t been able to help anyone else. He loved you like he hadn’t loved anybody before. He’d willingly have given up everything for you, laid down his life.”

She stopped again, her arms tightening around me. I pulled back, shaking my head as silent tears rolled from my own dead eyes. “I never meant for it to be literal,” I whispered. “I would so willingly switch places with him. Because he was beautiful, and because he deserves to be here with you. With the people who loved him.”

“Who still love him, Chester.”

*

Waking up with him was always beautiful. Waking up without him, curled beneath his sheets was bliss. Sitting on his couch watching daytime television and drinking red wine was a new form of heaven.

The first time – the day he found me sitting on his steps – he let me go back to the apartment above the bar. I found myself sitting in the silence, smoking and drinking but remarkably lucid all the same. I found myself contemplating all the things that he had. He had his house, his car, his dog; he had his health and his sanity. He still managed to smile and laugh. I realised in a heartbeat that I wanted that as well. I wanted to do normal things. I knew and understood that I was tired of the drugs and the lifestyle I had been forced into by my friends and my childhood.

I found myself staring in the mirror, staring at my bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes. I stood there examining the bruises and the scars, the burns and the needle marks pocking my skin. When I turned my attention back to my eyes, I was alarmed to see tears in them. Crying? I swiped at my eyes and forced a smile onto my lips. It faltered and failed within seconds. I had always managed to convince myself that I enjoyed living vicariously, never sure if I’d make it all the way through the night. I’d seen friends die, spent time worrying about my health and I was still out there. I’d switched cities and still the life found me. Crying? I couldn’t be crying.

Within a week, I was back there, sitting on his steps with my head pressed against the handrail. He laughed when he saw me, and I pulled my knees up to my chest, smiling forlornly.

“Help me,” I murmured. “Save me.”

“We’ll get your things,” he said.

*

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Brad’s hands froze against my arm, his whole body tensing as he walked me around the hospital gardens.

“Sorry for what?” he asked, forced good humour in his voice. I could feel it as he touched me. He was fighting with his emotions again. He had loved David. I had stolen David forever. He had to look after me day after day. In his position, I would have let me rot.

“Just sorry,” I said. My hands hung limp by my sides. I could feel his eyes on me and my skin crawled. I sagged physically, my composure leaving me as the tears I had crushed for too long tumbled free. “I’m so sorry. It should have been me, Brad. I should have died, and he should be here, alive, with all the people who loved him so much. It should be him-”

“It would be him here saying the same things to me, Chester. Just because we didn’t see one another didn’t mean we never spoke. We wrote, he would call. He didn’t plan it, but he fell so in love with you. It would be him standing where you are, wishing he could have switched places with you, wishing he could bring you back because he couldn’t quite comprehend how he had ever lived without you. Do you see? Do you understand?”

I lapsed into mute silence, backing away from him until my back pressed against the wall. I inched along it until I felt the corner, sinking into it as I pulled my knees towards my chest. “Why did his mom come?”

“She wanted to see you.”

“We’d spoken before.”

“She wanted to see you, Chester. Face to face. She wanted to know what you looked like, what it was the David had loved so much. Who it was that had been with her son when-”

He stopped, and I laughed bitterly. “When he died, huh? She wanted to come stare at the monster who killed her baby boy.”

Brad sighed, and I heard the rustle of his pants as he moved. I jumped when his hand came to rest on my shoulder, closing my eyes for all the difference that it made.

“You didn’t kill him, okay? You were there with him, there for him, and he loved you. She just wanted confirmation in her own mind that someone else is missing him as well, that someone else is feeling the same loss as she is.”

I nodded weakly and moved forward from the corner, wrapping my arms around him. “I don’t think I’ll ever learn to live without him.”

*

He had found it easy to give up his old life. He changed his image completely, shaking off the shackles of his past. Only his mother and his closest friends knew where he had come from to be the person he was. There were pictures of him in a shoebox, stuffed into the furthest corner of his closet. I found it one morning after he had gone to work. I had no comprehension of what it might contain, but I figured that if he didn’t want anyone to see its contents it would be secured with something more than an elastic band.

I had kept no mementos of my life, save for the scars on my body, but flicking through the photographs and trinkets in his box made me wish I had something similar. Despite everything, he was smiling and laughing, his arms carelessly looped around his friends. Pictures of him sleeping, waking, dancing, drinking, smoking – pictures of him living. Some had obviously been sent to him with the letters, still in their envelopes, pictures with names and places scrawled sloppily on the backs. Pictures that were clearly snapshot memories that had been shared years after the events. Do you remember this, Nix? Mike’s 21st! I felt like I was prying, seeing things that I shouldn’t. I flicked carelessly through a notebook, and found scribbled in the back a note from Brad. David had drawn a square around it, and highlighted key points in his friend’s ballpoint eulogy to him. Underneath it, he’d written five words: I’m not dead yet, Brad.

I made sure to put the box back where I had found it, and I told Dave I had looked when he came back home that evening. For a moment, his eyes clouded as memory consumed him. And then he smiled, kissing me gently as his hands slipped around my waist, his fingers sliding down the back of my pants.

“Let’s go out for dinner,” he murmured.

The date was February 8th. He was 27. It was his birthday. I smiled back at him, cupping his face between my hands as I pressed my lips to his, responding wilfully to his every move.

“I’d love to,” I whispered, straightening his shirt. He laughed, making his hazel eyes dance. He ran a hand across his shaved head, and glanced at his keys on the table.

“Taxi?” he asked and I shook my head.

“I’ll drive,” I said.

*

“Why?” I asked out of the blue. Brad paused, and then suggested perhaps we should sit down on the bench. The early-August sun warmed my skin, and yet I rubbed my arms regardless. His voice was rueful when he spoke at last.

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Say what? Why didn’t I tell you what?”

“You knew Mike as well.”

His laugh was short, and I could sense his bitter anguish. I reached out for him and he clasped my hand between his own. Tears prickled behind my eyes as I sat beside him. “Yeah,” he said at length. “Yeah, I knew Mike as well. I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” I whispered, leaning in towards him, resting my head against his shoulder.

“Why would it?”

“Your friend and your lover,” I said simply, struggling with my composure. “I was there when they both died.”

Brad squeezed my hand and moved to get back to his feet, helping me as he did so. “I know,” he said gently. “You’re an angel.”

“A what?”

“An angel. Neither of them died alone, all because of you.”

*

We decided on Chinese, a beautiful restaurant a way out of town. David said he had always loved it. He described the man who had first taken him there as a friend. We both knew the truth, but neither of us destroyed the illusion. We sat opposite one another, and his smile felt entirely for me when he flickered across his lips.

“Love you,” he whispered, and I glanced up at him sharply. He said the words frequently, lest I forget that they were true, but this time his voice sounded different.

“What is it?” I murmured, and he shrugged his shoulders, leaning back in his seat as he lit a cigarette from the carton on the table. My cigarettes – he didn’t smoke except for when he’d had too much to drink or needed something to smooth his nerves.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes caught the soft light, and there in their depths glittered crystal tears.

“Dave-”

“Shush. Don’t say anything. Let me take you out, show you off. Just this once?”

“This once?”

“Well, it’s only twice a year that I get the chance. My birthday, and yours.”

I laughed softly and bowed my head, staring once more at the scars on my arms. I saw the jaded look in my eyes, I saw the way I held myself. I knew what I was.

“What you were,” he stressed. “Not what you are. Chester, please.”

I couldn’t deny him anything. We headed back into the city, tumbling through the doors of brightly lit bars, neon lights dazzling our eyes. His body pressed against mine, his heart hammering a beautiful rhythm as his lips sought my lips, as his tongue cavorted playfully with my own.

He drank, I didn’t. It was his birthday and one of us had to drive home. His body and his presence were intoxicating, and I found myself dancing with him, the same abandon in my every move as there was in his. It was nearing four when the bars closed finally. Together, we stumbled and crawled back to the car, laughing and giggling and clutching at one another like teenagers. I tried to unlock the doors, and when I failed we both laughed at our sheer uselessness. I knew I wasn’t drunk, but being with him made me feel alive that night.

A second attempt got the car unlocked, but by that time, David’s hands had snaked around my waist and his lips pressed against the back of my neck. I glanced back at him and he grinned, turning my easily as he pinned me bodily against the car. I didn’t resist as he unbuckled my belt, one hand cupping my neck as the other slipped down the front of my pants. My fingers tangled in his shirt, and then pressed against the back of his head as his tongue invaded my mouth. I moaned his name, and felt the vibration as he responded. He was breathless as he pulled away, his shoulders and chest heaving. He wasted no time, his fingers deft against the button and zip of my pants, pushing them down my hips as I splayed my fingers against the door of the car.

His name was breathless on my lips as he took me into his mouth. His fingers pressed against my hips, sliding up my abdomen beneath my shirt. My eyes closed and my teeth caught my lower lip as I struggled against the moan rising in my throat, struggled against forcing myself deeper into his mouth. His tongue felt like heaven, every breath erotic against my skin. The night air was chill, but my blood was on fire. I pressed my hand against the back of his head, my grip tightening as my muscles tensed. I didn’t say a word – didn’t have to, and David didn’t move as I came. Climbing back to his feet, he pressed his lips to mine once more, his tongue entering the willing cavity of my mouth as his hands did my pants up once more.

“Let’s go home,” he whispered, a fey smile flickering across his face.

*

“Just one question,” I said. I heard the flick of the light switch, but the gentle swing of the door paused.

“Is it a quick question?”

“Yeah, it’s a quick one. Did he suffer?”

Brad breathed in heavily, and the silence was heavy as he contemplated the answer. “No,” he said at last. “No, I don’t suppose he did. He was dead when the emergency services arrived. They think he died when the car rolled. His neck broke. It was probably instant.”

I nodded and pressed my lips together. “I see,” I whispered, trying to disguise the hitch in my voice.

“Chester?”

“Brad.”

“Nothing,” he said, and the door swung closed. I shifted down, burying my face in the pillow as I allowed the tears to fall. I didn’t stir when the door opened once more.

“I know how much you hurt,” Brad’s voice murmured from the door. I stayed silent, knowing that he couldn’t understand. “I turned Mike’s machine off, Chester. For the rest of my life, I know that I’ll see the trust in Mike’s eyes, the way he used to smile at me when we were kids, and I’ll live knowing that I was the last person to see him alive. I know how you feel.”

“It’s reverse romance,” I said softly, my voice muffled by the pillow. “The last thing I’ll ever remember seeing is David. Dying.”

*

He found a tape under his seat, and he rammed it into the car stereo. He grinned at me, and I smiled back. He sang along to the tape, and then indicated that I should be doing the same.

“I don’t know the words,” I laughed.

“Bullshit.”

I shrugged and gestured the clock. “It’s gone 5, Dave,” I said. “I’m too tired to sing.”

He arched a single disbelieving eyebrow. “Whatever,” he said as I slowed at the lights. He resumed singing along loudly to the tape, and I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He flipped me his middle finger, aware that I was watching.

“Light’s green,” he said, motioning for me to move the car forward.

I didn’t see the truck, and it certainly didn’t see us. It ploughed through the red light, and didn’t stop when it hit our car. The shunt of the car threw me against the door, and I gripped the wheel tightly as we were pushed up the road. There was no traffic, no one to witness the accident. The truck screamed as the driver tried to stop it, but by then it was too late. We were rolling, and the truck jack-knifed there in the road.

I blacked out. David was still alive when the car righted itself, his breathing shallow, blood bubbling from his lips. I felt the cold hand of death stealing across me and, knowing that there was no way David would survive, I slipped beneath it.

*

The hospital contacted my mother in the end, and she arranged for someone to take me home to Phoenix. I knew the voice the minute that I heard it.

“Sam?” I whispered. Her laugh was the same as well. Brad’s voice was gentle when he spoke.

“He can’t see you nod,” he said softly. “All he knows is that you haven’t answered.”

“Of course,” she murmured. “I forgot.”

I smiled awkwardly, realising suddenly the full extent of my disability. I had taken it for granted that Brad had answered all of my questions verbally automatically. I felt the smile flicker and then fade.

“I’m taking you home, Chaz,” she said. “They say you’re well enough to leave. Your mom wants to see you. She’s worried about you.”

I nodded weakly, and felt two strong arms wrap around me briefly. “Take care of yourself, huh?” Brad said. I grinned, and nodded my head once.

“I’ll try,” I said.

“He won’t have much choice,” Sam interjected. I found myself laughing in spite of myself.

“Let me know how he gets on,” Brad said softly, pulling away from me. “He means a lot to me. All things considered.”

I felt Sam’s hand against my arm, and I pushed myself to my feet. “Let me carry my bag,” I said, and she handed it to me without arguing. The silence hung heavy in the air, but she was gentle and patient with me. She buckled me into the car and put the music on quietly.

“Make sure you’re comfortable,” she said, turning the key in the ignition. I twitched, and gripped the seat. She sighed and laid a hand on my leg. “It’s a long way, Chester. But we’ll be okay.”

*

There was a time when I thought I’d always have David. I couldn’t imagine living without him. It still hurts every day to wake up knowing that I’m reliant on someone else for everything. Taking a shower; taking a walk; cooking dinner – everything I once took for granted. I’m a drain on someone who shouldn’t ever have had to worry about me again…

So then, how do such tragic tales end? There is no happily ever after. There is no prince, no knight in shining armour. This is a fairytale run amok, for in this telling the dashing white steed stumbled and the dragons ate the hero. All that remains of an angel is a damaged halo, its patina wearing thin as the forlorn, ever-distressed lost soul caresses it… Which three words could be used then instead?

Ah – yes, of course. So simple, in retrospect.

Rest in peace.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 2004