Beneath the Stain - Part 4 (8 page)

“I’ll go downstairs and get us some dinner,” Trav said. “The others will be back soon. Do you want me to tell them?”

Mackey closed his eyes. “Crap. Yeah. They’ll want to know.” He opened his eyes and squared his face determinedly. “I should tell them,” he said. “I’m the one—”

“Please,” Trav said, something in him wavering, crumbling. Later he’d realize how big a thing this was, but right now it was a simple act of kindness. “Please, Mackey. You didn’t do anything wrong. Let me do this for you. Goop up your owies and come downstairs. Let me protect you. It’s my job—let me do it.”

Mackey narrowed his eyes. “I’m pretty sure your job is to book us gigs—”

“As your lover, Mackey. Not as your manager. Let me do this as the guy who wants to get in your pants.”

Mackey’s jaw dropped in surprise, and Trav took his opportunity to exit. It was as close to an “okay” as he was going to get.

He got downstairs just as the rest of the household arrived with Thai takeout, for which Trav was supremely grateful. He and Shelia set everything out on the counter, and he gathered the guys together.

“Uhm, guys from Tyson? Mackey got some bad news today—you all remember a guy named Tony?”

Kell said, “Oh. Oh no.”

“What?” Jefferson and Stevie said, predictably in stereo.

“You knew?” Trav gaped. “You didn’t think of telling Mackey?”

“He was… I mean, we were in Japan! We were in Japan, and there was fucking drugs everywhere, and Mackey wasn’t letting up on the fucking rehearsing unless he was getting high! And it was sad, but Grant didn’t text me until the funeral—what the hell was Mackey going to do then?”

Trav held up both hands and blew out a breath. “God. Okay. God. Man, just a word to the wise, Kellogg, but if your brother is ever too damned high to tell him someone’s
dead
, maybe you grab him by the
hair
and haul him to rehab, you think?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Kell said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. He looked like he was going to cry, and Trav tried hard to remember that the reason he was doing this was that he was supposedly more mature than Mackey.

“I’m sorry,” Trav said on a breath. “Mackey didn’t take it well. If you guys want to be especially nice to him, say something nice about Tony—and
don’t
tell him you didn’t tell him back in Japan.”

“How?” Stevie and Jefferson asked. They were holding hands, not like lovers but like little kids, and Trav wondered for the fifty-eleventh time if Mackey was pulling attention that these two desperately needed.

“He killed himself,” Kell said, saving Trav from the hard words. They all looked at him and he shrugged, looking away. “I’m only a little stupid, guys. Mackey was walking a fine line—even I could see it. Grant texted me and I told him not to tell Mackey. I just…. Tony was a sweet kid. I wasn’t always nice to him, but he was a sweet guy, and he didn’t deserve to be all alone. But I’ll be honest. If we hadn’t gotten the hell out of Tyson, I might have done it first. I don’t even have his baggage, or Mackey’s, or—” Kell looked at his brothers holding hands like kids, and looked away. “I’m glad that if one of us was gonna stay, it was Grant. He’s got a life there. He’ll be okay.”

Trav looked away and by sheer accident met Jefferson’s red-rimmed eyes. They were both thinking the same thing, it was clear: Grant was probably not as okay as Kell thought.

As far as Trav knew, it was the first time he’d had a nice thought about Grant Adams, and it left him with a sort of queasy feeling in his stomach. Abruptly he decided that taking care of the band was probably going to have to be where his circle of sympathy ended.

“Whether he is or not, maybe if we could go a little easy on your brother tonight—let him pick the damned show, fetch him orange juice like it is your goddamned mission in life, whatever, I would be supremely grateful. Are we all on that train?”

“Choo-choo!” Stevie and Jefferson said. Their hands were still clasped, but they both pulled the imaginary steam-release valve with their free hands.

Trav decided that those creepy kids from
The Shining
had
nothing
on Stevie and Jefferson when they decided to be the same goddamned person.

But in a way, that helped things go better too. Shelia served the Thai food, and Mackey came down to a full plate of Thai, some orange juice, and a new episode of
Real Detectives
pulled up from HBO Go. Outbreak Monkey, band of lost boys, spent the night in, and by the end of the night, with Mackey limp and melted against him, Trav had cause to be grateful.

Look what they had become.

Kell had even gone and made milkshakes for everyone—Mackey got extra chocolate ice cream—and Mackey’s shy smile at his older brother let them all know he wasn’t fooled.

But he wasn’t a dick about it either.

Still, he went to bed early, and Trav was tired enough from the run and the emotion to follow him. Downstairs he heard the others settling down for what sounded like another hour of television, and that was fine too. Sometimes it was harder to fall asleep when you thought yours was the only waking heartbeat in the big, lonely house.

But that didn’t mean Trav didn’t spend a few sleepless moments wondering how Mackey would sleep this night or wishing they were in a place where Mackey could just stay with him, sleep in his arms, be comforted.

The thought of Mackey in his arms made him hard, and he fell asleep aching and wanting and not comforted at all.

“T
RAV
?” M
ACKEY
’
S
voice shook, and the soft glow of the hall light outlined his slight, wiry body in the doorway of Trav’s room.

“Mwha?” Trav yanked himself out of a pleasant half sleep where he’d been imagining Mackey warm in his arms.

“I…. God. I know the stuff about rehab. How you’re supposed to wait.”

“Mackey?” Trav couldn’t focus—his entire body was caught between the waking and the dream.

“That’s why we’re not together right now, isn’t it?” Mackey whispered.

Trav grunted, sitting up. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I can’t be your new drug—that’s what it’s about.”

“
You
would be the world’s shittiest Valium,” Mackey grumbled. “Man, I can’t fall asleep thinking about you right here. Can’t we just skip this part?”

“The abstinence part?” Ugh! Trav wanted to say no, they couldn’t just skip this part, because it was important. But he ached to hold Mackey, to show him what sex could be like clean and sober and cared for and….

Could he even say it?

“I’m not saying I’ll go out and use if you say no,” Mackey said hastily. “I wouldn’t do that to you, because that’s not what it’s about.”

Trav sat up straighter. “Mackey, come in. Sit down.” He yawned and tried to take stock of Mackey’s mental state in the faint light from the hallway. “Tell me what it
is
all about.”

Mackey turned and shut the door, which didn’t help at all, but by the time Travis felt his weight depress the bed, he had a pretty good bead on Mackey’s expression:

Longing.

“Mackey?” he said uncertainly.

“I’m trying to do it all right, Trav,” Mackey begged, meeting Trav’s eyes bleakly in the dark. “I’m trying to follow all the steps and check all the boxes. But my heart hurts and my skin aches, and God, I just want to be touched. I’m sorry I can’t raise the plant and then the dog and wait a year and… I just…. Can you touch me and then look at me tomorrow, and it will be okay?”

Trav was all awake now. “Mackey,” he said gruffly, reaching out to cup Mackey’s cheek. Right up until he felt the stubble rasping on his palm, he was going to say no. “We’re not hiding,” he said instead. “You can’t sneak back into your room and pretend we didn’t do this.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“You could,” Trav said, his chest aching. “But it would….” He hated to admit this. “Secrecy would hurt me, Mackey. I gave up too much to be a dirty little secret. You will sleep in this room, and you’ll mention your boyfriend at press conferences, and we’ll be a thing. And then if we break up, we can still be manager and band guy, because everyone will know. Do you understand?”

Mackey shook his head. “No—I mean yes. Not all of it, but some. I get that this is real. That it’s not just an after-rehab thing, or convenient ’cause we’re in the same house. I get that you want to tell people like my mom or your parents. That it’s not dirty and it’s not anybody’s business but our own but it’s not secret either. We’re not a reality show—the fuckers outside the house don’t get to film us. We got enough bullshit to deal with besides them. Is that what you mean?”

Throughout the long speech, Mackey kept his cheek against Trav’s hand, laced Trav’s fingers with his own, trapping them there, in this still moment in the dark.

“I didn’t leave the military so I could be just a rock song, Mackey,” Trav said, feeling the ache, the hole in his chest, that the thought caused.

“It’s real,” Mackey said, leaning close enough that Trav could feel his body heat through the comforter. “You want us to be a real thing. Not a one-time comfort thing. Not a thing after rehab thing. I get it, Trav. If you can help me when I screw up, I can try not to.”

Trav felt Mackey’s breath on his face and closed his eyes in the dark. How much honesty could Mackey take? How much could Trav stand not to give?

“I love you, McKay. I love you so much it would kill me not to try.”

Mackey’s breath caught, and his gray eyes lit up the darkness. “That’s a big magic word,” he said softly. Hurt resonated from every syllable.

“Someday maybe you’ll say it to me.”

Those careful months with Terry were forgotten, the responsible adult plan for Mackey cast out the window. Trav’s hands shook on Mackey’s cheeks, and he slid them back through Mackey’s hair. The clean strands caught at his fingers, and he did it again, clenching his hands, holding Mackey still, lightning in a bottle, before he crushed Mackey’s mouth to his for a kiss.

Blood rushed his skin in a torrent, a conflagration of need leveling him. He groaned softly, pressed Mackey back into the mattress, and took over. Soft, warm, wet, urgent—Mackey opened his mouth and let Trav in again and again, fingers squeezing, digging into Trav’s biceps, the muscles in his back, his sides.

Trav was shaking, every kiss harder to pull away from, every touch on Mackey’s small body harder and more insistent.

“More skin,” Mackey gasped, shoving at Trav’s T-shirt and sweats.

“Pushy little shit,” Trav muttered, stripping as fast as he could.

“You know me.” Mackey kicked off his own sweats and skinned out of his own shirt. “You know me. You know I’m pushy and selfish and mean.”

He paused, naked in the ambient light from Trav’s window, and Trav stood up, naked himself.

Mackey stretched out on Trav’s sheets almost defiantly, one knee drawn up, his cock larger than Trav had expected now that it was hard and extended up over his thigh.

“You’re a good person,” Trav whispered reverently. He put one knee on the bed and bent to kiss the inside of Mackey’s leg. “You’re brilliant and hardworking and kind. You have the best intentions in the world.” He took a mouthful of the soft skin of Mackey’s thigh, and Mackey pressed himself into the bed, arching his hips up, hoping for more.

“Intentions don’t mean shit,” Mackey muttered. “I meant to do it all right, to wait for the plant and the dog and the… ah….”

Trav moved around his swollen cock and balls, going for a nibbling kiss on his lower belly instead. “You’re an artist,” Trav murmured against his abdomen. “Reality is fluid.”

Mackey’s giggle had a strained, painful sound to it, and Trav moved up to the delicate pink nipple against his fair skin. He outlined it with a pointed tongue, and Mackey’s little cry told him the teasing was doing its job.

“You’re fulla shit,” he breathed. “But God, you touch me nice.”

Trav glided his hand down Mackey’s ribs, rubbing softly on his tender stomach, tracing the outline of his cock as it rested on his thigh.

Mackey grunted some more and Trav took pity on him, grasping him, erect and urgent, and stroking, hard and slow.

“Ah….” Mackey arched up into his palm and then sighed, sounding lost and a little frightened. Trav took his mouth again and Mackey devoured him, thrust his tongue inside, swept Trav’s palate, tasted, possessed. Trav let him.
Damn
, Trav wanted this, had barely dared dream of it, yearned for the time Mackey Sanders would be old enough, whole enough,
well
enough, to possess like this, like a man, an equal, a partner.

Mackey had all but admitted he was claiming some of that adulthood on faith, but after the months of rehab, of rebuilding, of clinging to hope, Trav needed that faith.

A spurt of precome in Trav’s palm made him let go, almost weeping.

“You’re
stopping
?” Mackey demanded.

Trav grunted, reaching for his end table. Lubricant—every boy needed it, especially when he was spending nights next to the person he wanted most, their bodies divided by moral constructs and thin walls.

“I’m taking you,” Trav muttered. “No half measures. We’ve seen each other’s HIV status, Mackey—you got any qualms about no condoms?”

Mackey made a sudden sound, and Trav looked up into his eyes, suddenly young and vulnerable, all Trav could see in the shadowed room.

“I’ve… only done it that way with…,” he muttered. “We did it once without condoms, ’cause he used them with his girlfriend. But yeah. I want it to be all of you.” Mackey paused and reached out, taking Trav’s face in his hands. “All of you,” he whispered, a sort of wondering smile on his face. “All of you. I can have all of you.”

He pulled Trav down into a kiss, a soul-searing lightning strike of flesh and passion, and Trav wanted to cry.

You have all of me. How can you have all of me? I’m breaking rules for you, McKay, and I’ll give you more of me than that.

And still the lightning went on, raising the hairs on the back of Trav’s neck with the electricity, the anticipation of what Mackey was demanding. Trav fumbled with the lubricant bottle, squeezed a dollop into his hand, and eased his fingers between Mackey’s cheeks so he could find Mackey’s delicate, scarred entrance. God, he seemed to hit everything in between, didn’t he? He grazed Mackey’s balls, his base, his taint on his way down, and Mackey spread his legs wide, propped up both knees, and ripped through the kiss like he was trying to rip through Trav’s soul by way of teeth, mouth, and tongue.