Foxes (29 page)

“No. Maybe it was before that….” He curls in closer, hiding his face. “Dominic da Silva died at a party one night. A party thrown by his father to show off his favorite son to all his rich friends.” His voice is so small. I know he’s in pain, that this hurts. I touch his face… his lips, wanting him to know he can stop the words, but he carries on.

“Dominic wasn’t really invited to this party, and neither was his brother Benjamin. Thing was, although Benico da Silva, their father, had three sons, he would have been happy to have had just one. The one who got into law school, played baseball, had a girlfriend, and looked the fucking part. Because even though Benjamin was an amazing clarinetist and in the PYO, and is one of the cleverest people you’re ever likely to meet, he was diagnosed as having Asperger’s when he was fourteen. He’d always had trouble dealing with school, but as soon as he was diagnosed, his father treated him like he was damaged goods and let him do whatever he wanted as long as it kept him out of the way. As for Dominic, he wasn’t really good at anything. He liked things that he was told boys shouldn’t, like makeup, clothes, pretty things—and his father saw him as an embarrassment. It was as if everything Dominic liked or wanted, his father hated him for. Or maybe his father just hated him….”

Micky takes a deep breath, and I stroke his hair. The more words he says, the more pronounced his accent becomes. God, I love his voice, but I hate how much this seems to hurt him.

“Anyway, this one night Dominic goes to the party he’s not invited to, and he convinces Benjamin he’s got to go too. It’s black tie. He never liked black tie, so he does something that he doesn’t realize at the time is going to change his life forever—Dominic gets dressed up in one of his mother’s ball gowns. He loves the gown. It’s this glowy blue that shimmers in the light, and it fits him so well. He does his makeup, sitting at his mother’s dressing table, and squeezes into a pair of her heels. And, you know, for a few minutes as he stands in front of the mirror in his parents’ bedroom, he feels beautiful. He’s never felt beautiful before. Mostly he kind of hates himself. And he’s never worn a dress like this before—never gone this far with dressing up—but he likes it.

“When he’s ready, he walks down the stairs to the party.”

Micky pauses to breathe, and he kisses my chest.

“At first everyone just kind of assumes Dominic’s a girl, and they glance up and smile, wondering who she is. Benjamin knows, of course, but he keeps back because he doesn’t want to give the game away. As Dominic gets nearer the bottom of the stairs, people start to recognize him and realize, and this god-awful unearthly hush falls on the room. His mother faints when she sees him. She always was a drama queen, though. When his father comes rushing over, Dominic suddenly knows how much his father is going to hate him. He thinks he knows anyway, but it’s the disgust, the words his father says in front of the gathering crowd of horrified onlookers, when he tells them he wishes his abomination of a son had never been born, that cut Dominic’s heart right out.”

Micky sort of gasps the last words, and I hold him so tight I think I’m going to leave bruises on his arms.

“Dominic feels like he’s flying apart, and there is nothing to stop him. He screams, and Benjamin is there. Dominic can see Benjamin is there. He and Benjamin are so close, they look after each other. But several people are holding Benjamin back. No one is coming to help Dominic. Everyone is staring. So he does the only thing he can think of. He takes off the dress. In the middle of the party, he takes off the dress and walks naked up the stairs to his room.

“He trashes his room. No one comes. He trashes Benjamin’s room, then lies sobbing on Benjamin’s bed after. Still no one comes. He has to get out of there before he explodes. He knows Benjamin is leaving with the PYO tour to Europe in a few days. The plane tickets and Benjamin’s passport are on the nightstand—he’s been looking forward to it. Dominic is hurting so badly he doesn’t think he has a heart anymore. He takes the tickets, Benjamin’s passport, and everything of value he can find in the room, which isn’t much, and shoves it all in a backpack. He goes back to his room and gets his makeup case and some clothes, and he leaves. Just walks out the back door.

“The house is silent by then. He sees no one. No one tries to stop him. He gets a night bus to the airport and pays to change Benjamin’s ticket to London instead of Paris. And Dominic is gone.”

Micky’s chest heaves as he sobs. “I never told anyone that. I tried to tell Jack, but I just couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, curling myself around him. I don’t want Dominic to hurt anymore. I want to take it. All of it.

I will hurt for him.

In my crazy brain, I know Micky is Dominic, I do, but because he’s separated himself, I think of Dominic as someone else too. Maybe that’s why Micky did it—maybe he can cut away that part of himself and come away all the lighter. Maybe that’s what people have to do to live through all the bad things that happen to them.

I hold him as he sobs and hope that’s how it works, because if it doesn’t, I’ve no idea what to do or how to help him.

WE SLEEP
like that. It’s still dark when I wake, as though time has become lost in the space around us.

Micky is kissing me, as gentle as feathers. “Tell me if it gets too much,” he whispers.

We’re slower this time. It’s strange in the dark, as though all there is and all there ever will be is the touch of warm skin, and whispers.

I like his dick when it’s small and soft, and when it’s a hard rod jutting out from his body. I like the way he can’t stop touching it, and the way he keeps touching mine and groaning. I like sex. I don’t think I want any more than this. Fucking seems far too scary.

Micky spits and rubs it on my dick, tells me to push it between his closed thighs. He tells me that’s what fucking feels like, but nicer, tighter. I might lose it at that point. And my losing it makes Micky lose it too.

I never figured someone else’s orgasm was all that was needed to trigger your own. That someone wanting you and getting off at the thought of you is a better stimulant than your own hand.

And again I don’t accidentally piss on him afterward, so it’s all good.

Micky gets very quiet when I tell him about that particular worry. I guess maybe it’s because I’m telling him a piece of my past, like he told me a piece of his, and he doesn’t want to interrupt and break the story. But it’s not a story really, just a few words. I reassure him that it was a long time ago, and I make sense of pretending and not pretending much better now—though I’ve not really proved this fact to him. I wasn’t certain if Micky was still pretending with me, even when he told me he wasn’t.

“I don’t like to think of anyone treating you badly,” he says after a while.

I shrug. “It’s okay.”

“Not okay.” He touches my face. “Never okay. And if you saw someone else being treated like that, you wouldn’t think it was okay either. Just because it’s you doesn’t make it different.”

But it kind of does
, I think,
because this is my life
.

THE NEXT
morning, Micky is gone again. This time he’s left me a pretty accurate and artistic drawing of a dick—my dick? I’m not sure; they’re not as easy to decipher as faces—and a little note telling me he’s gone to take the suits back and to get some gas for my cooker since we used it all up last night with the bath, and that he’ll be back really soon.

I put the note under my pillow with the first one he left, and curl back up in my blankets. I’m tired, even though my shell is full of midmorning sunshine. I think it must mean a lot that I can actually go to sleep with him, but we did a lot of not-sleeping last night too.

I’M DRINKING
tea and looking out the window for foxes when Micky returns. His arms are weighed down with carrier bags of shopping—food and gas, a tube of something that says lube, and
condoms
. I pick up the red-and-orange packet by accident, thinking it’s some kind of exciting spicy tea, the kind that comes in a box full of those little tea bags in their own separate packets, and I drop it when I realize what’s inside it.

I have to remind myself that we’ve had sex, that sex is something we do. I get hard just thinking about it, but condoms, I have no idea about.

“Just in case,” Micky says with a shrug.

Curious, I look through the rest of the shopping—there’s bread and ham and some leaves in a sealed bag.

“Thought we could make sandwiches,” he says with a sort of forced lightness, as though he’s trying to be casual about something he feels the opposite of casual about.

I’m starving, and I don’t know when Micky last ate because it wasn’t with me. Sandwiches are a great idea. I nod and manage to tear open the bag of bread in my enthusiasm, spilling slices everywhere. At least it makes Micky laugh.

We boil some water for a bath and make a couple of spectacular sandwiches. They look a million times better than the food I usually inhale out of the tin. And just like the other day with the ravioli, Micky picks at his food until I suggest he comes to sit next to me so I can put my arm around him. Only then does he begin to eat.

HOURS LATER
my whole shell is filled with steam and the deep, heady scent of roses.

“I think I might be in heaven,” Micky murmurs.

We’re in the bath, Micky lying on top of me, his back to my front, and I have to agree with him. It’s blissful being close to him like this in the warm water, feeling his heartbeat shudder through me, echoing with my own.

With tingling fingers I brush back a damp lock of hair from his forehead.

Micky tilts his head. “Kiss me,” he whispers, closing his eyes and trembling as I draw my tongue across his lips.

My dick is hard. Micky drew it between his legs so our dicks could nestle together. When he touched them both a few minutes ago, I got excited and really close to coming, so he’s not touching them at all now. He holds my hands and only occasionally lifts his hips so that we slide against one another. He wants this to last until we both want it so bad we can’t think about anything else.

I’m not sure if this is classified as sex stuff, or being intimate, or what. I only know that it’s better than anything.

If I’d been aware of what I was missing out on—on what the ache deep inside me was actually craving for—and let myself think that being with someone like this was possible instead of impossible, I don’t think I would have coped as well as I did for the past few years. Because
this
, being close with someone, loving them, feels like something basic and necessary, like eating or breathing.

For a while we kiss without doing anything more, but Micky gets excited really easily, as soon as I start kissing places other than his mouth. When I lick and nuzzle his neck, he twists our fingers together like he’s finding it hard to keep hold of my hands.

I start to focus on making him lose control. The way he tilts his head and pants against me as I tongue and suck the sensitive skin just below his ear makes me feel intoxicated. Letting go of one of his hands, I clasp him tightly around the waist with my good arm. I lift my hips and rub against him, and he makes the best sex noises: these little grunts and high-pitched gasps that shouldn’t sound so good, but they just do.

“We can fuck,” he whines. “I really want to feel you in me.”

I shake my head and hold him closer. I’m not ready for that. I wonder if I can make him come like this with just my dick and my hips. He clutches the edge of the bath to hold off touching himself, and our heartbeats go crazy as we rub against one another. But no, we can’t come like this, instead it becomes really intense and we seem to be balancing on the brink, so when Micky gives in and touches us both, we shoot at the same time. The sensation of Micky’s dick pulsing against mine is enough to make my orgasm go on and on.

ANOTHER NEW
realization: sex makes you tired.

After the bath we sleep the day away. Every so often I’m aware of things outside our little bubble, like Milo moving around and singing, but nothing big enough or sharp enough to break through to us. My shoulder aches, but I ignore it, too content to want to move from exactly where we are.

“CAN I
come shark hunting with you?” Micky asks, watching from my nest as I pull my trousers on.

As soon as I nod, he jumps up and eagerly throws his clothes on.

It’s dark and cold in my shell, and I know it’s going to be darker and colder outside. I eat some more of the bread with something tomato-flavored from one of my label-less cans—we ate all the ham earlier. I don’t even taste it, really.

Micky doesn’t want anything, but I put a few slices of bread in a bag in my pocket, in case he gets hungry. Even if he doesn’t want to listen to his body, I know he’s hungry. His stomach was rumbling while he slept.

AS SOON
as we reach the end of the dark dead-end road, Micky shouts my name and takes off down the side of the common.

He’s so alive tonight.

I jog after him, clutching my bad arm to my chest to try to stop my shoulder hurting with every step.

He runs with the wind, his golden hair streaming out behind him, but after a minute he turns and jogs back to me.

I love that he’s wearing most of my clothes—as in he’s wearing
all
my jumpers, one on top of the other, apart from the one I’m wearing.

“I’m sorry, I forgot your shoulder would hurt running,” he says breathlessly, coming to walk beside me. “Sometimes I just want to run and run, as fast as I can.”

I smile. I know what he means. And yeah, if my shoulder wasn’t injured, I’d run with him.

WE MAKE
our way slowly toward the city, walking close together, our hands tightly entwined in the pocket of my hooded top.