In the Blaze of His Hungers (6 page)

“Uh. Javier…?”

Javier takes Ryan’s wrist in his hand. Gently. So very, very gently. And yet, there’s no mistaking the possessiveness of that gesture, with Javier’s thumb resting atop Ryan’s pulse, stroking lightly. “It didn’t even occur to him to see me as competition,” Javier says, still low, his eyes on Ryan’s, like he needs Ryan to get this. “Why would he? He’s young. You wouldn’t have to hide your relationship with him. You wouldn’t be betraying your closest friend by dating him. He has things in common with you. He’s got potential. For a proper career. He’s got no baggage to speak of. No years spent in rehab, trying to get his shit in order. He wouldn’t make you lie to your own father. He’d be good for you.”

Ryan stares at Javier. He doesn’t want to listen to this. It makes him feel ill, somehow, like Javier’s laying out justifications for breaking up with Ryan, and Ryan doesn’t want to hear them. Not when Javier’s touching him like this, like he
matters
, like Ryan had thought he’d begun to matter. “What the fuck?” he says, and struggles to pull away – but he can’t, of course, because Javier’s stronger than him. Stronger in more ways than one. More experienced. More impervious. Less needy –

Fuck it.

“You do what you want, then,” Ryan spits. “If you think you can chuck me outta here like – ”

“Are you sure?” Javier
drags him in, like an undertow, until Ryan’s pressed against his chest, until Ryan can taste his breath. Ryan turns his face to the side, but that only allows Javier to brush Ryan’s ear with his lips. “About letting me do what I want?”

“I’m done with your puzzles, man. Sleeping with you is like sleeping with the goddamn Rorschach test. I can see whatever I want and call it whatever I want, but none of it is real.”

“This is real.” Javier releases Ryan’s wrist and cups Ryan’s jaw instead, angling it toward him. “It’s more real than you know, Ryan. More real than you can understand.”

“I
understand
just fine.”

“No. No, you don’t. You can’t see what I’m doing to you. How I’m changing you. How every relationship you have
from now on will be shadowed by this one, and how every single thing I do to fuck you up will be repeated
ad nauseam
till you realize it isn’t the men you keep dating, it’s you. It’s what I did to you. It’s the cage I put you in, the cage you’ll spend years in therapy trying to unlock again.”

“Wait, so let me get this straight. No pun intended. We’re talking about fictional future people that don’t yet exist? And whose relationships with me will be damaged because my first relationship was with
you
? You think I haven’t thought of that already? Fuck you. If this is you pretending to be all noble so you can end things with me while sitting pretty on your high horse, making it look like it’s for
my
sake, then
fuck you
.”

“Ryan – ”

“What if I don’t have those other relationships? What if I don’t want to? What if we both spend years in therapy and work this out
together
? What’s wrong with that? Unless that isn’t what you want. If it isn’t, fine. Tell me that. Don’t lie to me about it. Don’t pretend it’s something else, some selfless sacrifice you’re making for me, for my hypothetical happiness. And don’t tell me what makes me happy. I’m… I’ve been happy. These past few weeks.”

“You wouldn’t have been happy if your father knew about it.
If Pete knew about it. If Fiona knew about it. That isn’t happiness, Ryan, it’s – it’s a bubble. Someday, it’ll burst, and where’ll that leave you?”

“With you. Trying to work it out. I
am
legally an adult, you know. It’s not like anyone can actually stop me from seeing you if I want to.”

“They can make you
want
to stop seeing me.”

“They can’t. We aren’t hiding because this is illegal; we’re just hiding it for convenience’s sake.”

“Relationships end for convenience’s sake.”

“So you admit we’re in a relationship.”

For a moment, Javier’s mouth twitches upward, but the smile – if it was a smile – is gone before Ryan can catalogue it in his internal library of Javier-expressions. Even if it is kind of pathetic to have an internal library.

“And clearly this relationship’s only survived so far because it’s been so fucking
convenient
,” Ryan drawls. “What was I thinking? Seeing a selfish bastard and ex-addict that can’t keep it in his pants around his son’s best friend and goes into a bizarre midlife crisis over Dennis fucking Irvine – ”

Javier growls.

“You know, acting like a territorial caveman and breaking up don’t really go together.”

“I wasn’t breaking up with you.”

“No? Then what was that sideshow about?”

“It was about letting you know that I’m all right with you leaving me. And you should.”

“That… that’s the same as breaking up, Javier.”

“No, it isn’t. The choice is yours, not mine.”

“That’s easy. I choose not to break up.” Ryan puts a hand on top of Javier’s, clasping it to his face. He feels calmer now, although it might just be the calm of a man facing execution. Javier is like the world’s sexiest firing squad. “What do you want, Javier? No bullshit, no pop psychology, no phony altruism. What do
you
want?”

“Don’t ask me what I want,” Javier says. His composure seems to have fled, abruptly and completely. It’s like Ryan’s touch has cracked him open; his eyes are wild, the hunger in them no longer
banked. His hand is trembling minutely under Ryan’s, but he isn’t letting go, isn’t stepping away, isn’t giving up, and Ryan’s heart soars. “You have no idea. You have no idea what I – and you’re so – ”

“Say it,” Ryan murmurs, beginning to tremble himself.
A strange electricity is bridging the gap between them, transferring Javier’s emotions to him, making them his own. “Say what you want.”

“What I
want
is to tie you up and blindfold you and make you learn my touch, so you can’t come with anyone else touching you, can’t sleep in the dark without remembering my hands on you.” Javier’s voice drops even further, hushed, secret, only between them. “What I want is to ruin you for anyone else, shape you into something only my hands can hold.”

Ryan closes his eyes. Swallows. Javier doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing – if he’s seducing Ryan or if he’s only confessing – but a spark leaps through Ryan all the same, at the very image, the fantasy of Javier claiming him. Touching him over and over and over, so deep it goes beyond the skin, a brand upon Ryan’s soul.
A bruise, spreading without end. His blood nothing but ink.

They must look like idiots, standing there and shaking in the middle of the garage, and if anyone comes in right now, they won’t be able to compose themselves in time. That doesn’t seem important, though. What’s important is what they do next.

Ryan inches forward until they’re kissing, and it’s a kiss that doesn’t end so much as segue into something else, into Ryan and Javier leaning their foreheads together, sharing each other’s breaths.

“Do it,” Ryan says.

“Hm?”

“What you said you wanted to do. Do it.”

Javier inhales sharply.

And then, he locks the ga
rage door and leads Ryan upstairs.

* * *

Ryan hadn’t known sex could be like this. He’s seen porn on the internet in which people get tied up and blindfolded and have all types of things done to them – but none of that porn is about this feeling, this freedom, this silence in his head.

The cloth binding his wrists behind his back is what frees him to just
feel
; the blindfold forces him to see with his skin, to arch and twist into every glancing caress, every kiss. He’s trusting Javier with his blindness, moving where Javier moves him, rising and falling to the wordless urging of Javier’s hips. He rides Javier’s cock while Javier plays with his nipples, coaxing them into stiff, aching peaks. Ryan can’t see what Javier’s doing or when he’s going to do it – all he can do is
take
it, gradually uncoiling, relaxing, allowing himself to be used. Javier fucks up and into him with smooth, even thrusts, not speeding up till Ryan starts begging him, asking for it, his throat drying up around cries he’s too weak to make. All he can do, in the end, is gasp and sob, unable to so much as touch himself. Javier brings him to the edge and eases him down again, tunes him like an instrument, alternately tightening the string of Ryan’s spine and loosening it.

It’s only when Ryan collapses atop him that Javier shushes him and comforts him and lets him come, Ryan’s tears hot on his own face and Javier’s shoulder, Javier’s arms solid around his waist, grounding him as he shatters and tremulously rebuilds himself.

It should be over. It’s been hours; it must’ve been hours. Still, when Javier tugs at the tie doubling as Ryan’s blindfold, Ryan says no, says he wants it to stay. He wants to linger in here for a little more, in this warm, sheltering darkness, where Javier is his only guide and his entire body is a thing of thirst, a thirst no one else can slake.

Ryan has always lived with the knowledge that he can lose anyone at any moment. That’s what Mom’s death taught him; you can have someone for a while, and it’ll feel like they’ll be there forever, but they won’t be. It’s a lesson that’s easy to forget, however, because you have family and you have friends and they grow so dear to you that you fool yourself into believing that they’ll stay, that maybe your losses are at an end. It isn’t surprising, then, that life gives you reminders by regularly taking people away from you. That’s just the way it is.

Ryan doesn’t expect to get a reminder so soon.

Summer vacation is due to begin in two days. Ryan’s in his room, sorting out his schoolbooks so he can sell them second-hand before he goes to college.

That’s when he gets the call.

Tucking a book under his arm, he takes his phone out of his back pocket and clutches it to his ear. “‘llo?”

“Is this Ryan Carpenter?” It’s a woman, clipped and professional, and there’s something about her tone that Ryan can’t put his finger on, but instantly makes him go cold.

“Yes,” he says. “That’s me.”

“It’s about your father,” she says.

The book slips from Ryan’s grasp and crashes to the floor.

* * *

Ryan’s so badly shaken he probably shouldn’t drive, but he does anyway, jamming his foot against the accelerator and gripping the steering wheel with clammy hands. There’s too much traffic on the goddamn roads; it’s the end of the workday and everyone’s heading home. Every minute seems like an hour as red light after red light delays him, until he’s cursing, terrified, quaking in his seat. Nausea at the thought of what he’ll find chokes him; the air scorches in and out of his throat and bile threatens to rise at every swerve.

Finally, he’s at the hospital, his car screeching to a halt in the emergency parking lot. He races into the building, past the heavy double doors and toward the reception. Inside, everything smells of antiseptics and despair, and he hates it, hates how it’s still the same, how he still remembers where the cancer ward is.

But he isn’t going to the cancer ward, this time.

It’s the burn unit.

He’s given a map with directions on it; he heads for the burn unit immediately, even though, when he gets there, he’s told to remain to the waiting room because Mr. William Carpenter is currently in surgery, getting skin grafted onto his legs. More on his right leg than his left, and he’s lost a lot of fluid, but he should make it. A kindly nurse with too-thick mascara tells Ryan the odds are in Dad’s favor.

But Ryan’s been told the odds were good before. Mom hadn’t survived those odds. Dad may not survive them, either. He could get infected. He could go into
hypovolaemic shock. Hell, he could go into renal failure because of plummeting plasma levels. Ryan knows what damage burns can do, because as a firefighter’s son he couldn’t help but read about it, even when he was only nine years old, as though knowing what could happen might prevent it from happening at all.

It’s happening now. Knowing about it doesn’t change anything. Ryan’s here again, helpless again, on the brink of losing the only parent he has left.

And why? All because Dad’s brave, because he’d never leave a victim trapped in a burning house. The lady on the phone had told Ryan that he’d been the last firefighter to leave, and there had been a gas explosion before he’d made it out.

There’s a couple folks from Dad’s squad
occupying in the waiting room, ash-stained and weary and still in uniform, their faces lined with worry. Brad Evans, Tom Sutton and Raquel Cruz are there, along with a newbie Ryan doesn’t recognize. Brad, who’s the same age as Dad and is one of his poker buddies, comes forward to clap Ryan on the back and say, “It’ll be all right, kid.”

It won’t be. It can’t be. Ryan’s father is in there, unconscious, with third-degree burns to 22% of his body. That’s what the nurses at the ward desk had said, and Ryan can’t stop picturing it – the skin melting off his father’s legs, the raw, bloody mess they must be beneath the grafts.

At some point, when he feels less likely to vomit at the slightest provocation, he calls Javier. If he was thinking objectively, Ryan would know it isn’t wise for Javier to show up here, where people can see that he’s there for Ryan, that he’s more than Ryan’s boss.

But Ryan isn’t thinking objectively. He needs Javier with him, as much as he’s ever needed anyone. Javier must be able to hear it in his voice, because he doesn’t ask any questions, doesn’t say he’s anxious or sorry, doesn’t offer any pity.
All he says is, “I’ll be there,” and Ryan’s knees all but give out with relief.

Javier arrives soon after. He catches Ryan’s eyes as he enters the unit and walks straight to him, not pausing to speak before wrapping an arm around Ryan’s shoulders, pulling him close.

Ryan buries his face against Javier’s jacket, breathing in the familiar scents of motor oil and leather and aftershave.

The firefighters are
gazing at them with confusion, but nobody seems scandalized, so they must consider Javier a family member or a friend. For once, Javier’s age comes in handy; he looks more like Ryan’s uncle than his lover, although that’s usually something Ryan tries not to think about.

“When’s he due out of surgery?” Javier asks, and Ryan draws away to sit down on the nearest plastic chair. It creaks under him.

“Dunno. Nurses said it could take hours.”

Dad’s squad leaves eventually, to go back to work or to their homes. Brad ruffles Ryan’s hair and shakes Javier’s hand, and Raquel asks him to contact the fire department when Dad’s
discharged from theater.

Then it’s just Javier and Ryan, sitting side by side, Ryan’s hand in Javier’s.

* * *

Pete turns up an hour later, looking panicked, and Ryan spares a second to feel guilty about not calling him. Pete must’ve found out from someone else, maybe even his Mom, who works at the hospital.  Or maybe not, since Fiona hasn’t shown up herself, which she definitely
would’ve had she known.

“Ryan!” Pete says,
but freezes when he sees Javier seated next to Ryan.

Ryan doesn’t take his hand out of Javier’s; he’s too tired to. He feels hollowed out, emptied of all his fears – all except for one, the fear that his dad won’t make it.

At this point, it seems insignificant that Pete understands him well enough to know that Ryan isn’t treating Javier like a casual acquaintance, that Ryan never touches people unless he regards them as his own.

Pete’s eyes dart back and forth between Ryan and Javier, visibly suspicious, and he says: “I ran into Mr. Evans at the convenience store… He told me about the explosion. How’s your dad? He out of surgery yet?”

“No,” says Ryan, and dimly realizes that it isn’t only him; Javier also isn’t moving away. He’s meeting Pete’s gaze evenly, keeping his fingers interlaced with Ryan’s, as if daring Pete to comment.

But Pete doesn’t comment. He just goes quiet, for a long, tense interval, and then goes suddenly pale. Ryan can almost read his thoughts at that moment, can almost see Pete putting the pieces together – Ryan’s mysterious ‘fling’, followed by his job at the garage, followed by his calling Javier here before he called anyone else, before he called
Pete
, and Pete had always been the first person Ryan called. For everything.

“No,” he
says, faintly, as if he’s hoping Ryan will deny it, will come up with an excuse to explain why Ryan and Javier are still touching. “Ryan, you can’t – ”

“Not now, Pete,” Ryan says. He should be horrified at what’s happening, scrambling to make this
seem like anything but what it is. And yet, he finds he doesn’t want to. He’s mentally exhausted, and he needs Javier, and he’ll bloody well
have
Javier if that’s what he needs. “We’ll talk later.”

“We – you – ” Pete takes a step back.

“Pete,” Javier says, and there’s a note of caution in how he says his son’s name, like it’s something rare and fragile, something he’s trying not to break, but fully expects to.

“This is all you,” Pete hisses at Javier, “isn’t it? You made him – did things – ”

“Not. Now,” Ryan repeats, and is startled by how brittle he sounds.

Pete stares at him, and
what’s horrible about it is that he doesn’t even look especially betrayed – he looks frightened for Ryan, instead, like Ryan’s hurting himself in ways Pete doesn’t know how to stop. “You can’t trust him,” he says to Ryan, at last. “You can never trust him, Ryan.”

Javier doesn’t deny it. He’d as much as said that to Ryan that himself, instructed him to leave, given him the reasons why.

Ryan had chosen Javier anyway. He’s choosing Javier today.

“
Lemme know how your dad does,” Pete says. “I… I’ve gotta go.”

And Ryan lets him go. He may not have a friendship to return to, after this. The wound of it is too deep for Ryan to feel any pain, yet. He’s dull to all sensation, numb to all emotion.

“I took that from you,” Javier says, but it isn’t clear whether he’s blaming himself or stating a fact. His eyes have fallen shut and he’s gone very still, as though the tiniest movement will dislodge Ryan’s hand, and he can’t bear for it to. “I’m taking that from you.”

“Yeah,” says Ryan. “So you’d better stay.”

* * *

When they’re let in to see Dad, he’s still sedated, sleeping off the morphine. He’s hooked up to wires and beeping machines and his legs are wrapped in bandages so thick they don’t
resemble legs anymore. His vitals are stable, but his face is drawn and wan. Ryan’s eyes feel dry and gritty from how long they’ve been open, but he can’t sleep, not when he has to watch over his dad.

Still, the hospital doesn’t
permit visitors to stay overnight, so Ryan has to leave. He goes back with Javier, to the bedroom above the garage, and once they’re on the bed he rolls into Javier’s embrace, pulls Javier’s hand down between his legs.

“Ryan,” Javier says, but Ryan shushes him with a kiss.

“Just… make me come,” he says, and Javier does, and it’s good, so good it makes Ryan cry.

* * *

Dad’s awake the next day, but he’s still woozy. All his conversations with Ryan are brief, because he keeps slipping under. Ryan wonders if his dad can feel the pain with all those drugs, or if they’re holding it at bay. The doctors are still focused on giving Dad intravenous fluids to restore his body’s balance, and at this stage it’s pretty much that, pain management and the prevention of infections that are the most crucial aspects of his treatment. Ryan sends Javier texts about how it’s going, because Javier’s opened the garage for business again.

Fiona appears frequently throughout the day, whenever she can, helping Ryan understand the technical terminology the medical
staff tend to spout with dizzying consistency.

When Pete pays a visit, he talks to Dad but not to Ryan, and it’s so awkward and abnormal that even Dad, who’s drugged to the gills, notices.

“Did you two have a fight?” he asks Ryan, his words slurred and drowsy.

“It’s nothing much,” says Ryan, and smiles. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I remember when you were in third grade,” Dad says. “You fought for four straight weeks. Fiona and I went stir-crazy trying to get you kids to make up.”

“But we made up, right? We’ll make up again. It’ll
only… take a while.”

“
Mmm,” says Dad, drifting off again. “G’luck.”

* * *

Over the next month, Ryan’s daily schedule alters to suit the hospital’s visiting hours. He spends all day with Dad, bolstered by his hitch-free recovery, and then goes over to Javier’s place, where he’s got some clothes and an extra toothbrush. He doesn’t talk to Pete, but in a way, he doesn’t have to. He knows Pete won’t tell Dad or Fiona about Javier. Pete
will
make Ryan’s life hell once he decides to talk to him again, however. Ryan’s almost looking forward to that. Okay, he isn’t. But it’ll be a damn sight more bearable than this endless no man’s land stretching between them.

Ryan receives his acceptance letter from
Branston right after Dad comes home. They celebrate simply, with delivered pizza and ice cream. Ryan’s schedule alters again, his time with Javier severely curtailed now that Ryan’s priority is taking care of Dad, who’s still healing and needs to have his dressings changed and his food brought to him. Dad’s hilariously shy about being aided in the bathroom, and Ryan has to remind him repeatedly that Dad changed his
diapers
, so this is nothing.

It’s lonely without Javier, but he and Ryan still talk over the phone. Once, Dad almost catches Ryan in the middle of phone-sex, but other than that, Ryan’s relationship with Javier remains safely unrecognized. By anyone other than Pete, that is.

Everything will be fine. Ryan’s feeling stronger, surer, with his Dad out of the hospital and on the road to recovery. He misses being able to sleep over with Javier, but that’s a situation that’ll revert to the status quo when Dad’s back to being independent. Ryan’s first concern is making sure he does.

“There’s a Ferrari in the garage right now that you’d cream yourself over,” Javier says, and Ryan hitches the phone further up on his shoulder, tossing a bowl of salad with his hands.