The Sky Is Dead (18 page)

The dude at the gate coughs impatiently. I resist the urge to glare at him. “We’re coming. Just give us a moment.”

I put my arm around Jack’s shoulders as we walk away. The man doesn’t give us a second look. I guess people holding each other is common in this place.

“Where do you want to go?” Jack asks as we reach the outer gates.

“Let’s get drunk,” I say. “I haven’t had the chance to do that before.”

The gates clang behind us as Jack looks at me speculatively. “You want to get drunk on cheap booze and have a hangover tomorrow?”

I nod. “That sounds like a hell of a good idea.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says as we head toward the bus stop.

“Warn me of what?”

Chapter Fifteen

December 29

“I’
M
DYING
.”
I retch miserably into the toilet, feeling the strain in my poor stomach muscles.

“I did warn you,” Jack says. He doesn’t make a move to help me since he says if he lifts a finger he’s going to hurl again.

I think this is unfair. “You didn’t tell me I was going to die from a couple of drinks.”

“A couple? More like eight. For a guy who’s never drunk before, you sure can down ’em.”

“You made me drink them. And you didn’t tell me what I was drinking.”

The previous night, Jack introduced me to snakebite and black. Equal parts lager and cider, and add a dash of black currant. Smooth going down and vile coming back up. As I said, I’m dying. I complain loudly again. Jack is unsympathetic.

“Shut up. You love me.”

I freeze. I must look a complete idiot wrapped around the john, unable to move, to speak, because, yeah, I think I do love him. Hell, I’ve loved this kid since the minute I saved his sorry arse from getting knifed by that psycho. But Jack doesn’t know that, and it’s way too soon to be declaring undying love for a guy I met four days ago.

“I love you too,” Jack says unhelpfully, when my god-awful brain doesn’t catch up.

“No, you don’t.” That’s about as much as I can manage.

“Yes, I do. I know we’ve only just met, but you’re amazing, and I’m in love with you.”

“You’re eighteen years old. You fall in love every five minutes.” Christ, could I sound more patronizing?

“Says the twenty-year-old,” he shoots back.

Okay, I deserve that. “Jack, you’re going home in five days. You’ve got all the hot guys there. What do you want with me?”

I hear a thump, and a minute later he’s wrapped his long arms around me and I feel home.

“Don’t you believe in love at first sight, David?” he says.

I shake my head. “No,” I lie.

“Liar.”

“No, I’m not.”

He chuckles, his breath brushing my cheek. It smells of toothpaste and the underlying sour/sweet smell of snakebite and vomit. It isn’t pleasant, but I don’t want him to move. “You’d be more convincing if you weren’t hanging on to me so tightly.” He doesn’t let me go even when I shift in his arms. Once again, I’m reminded just how big the kid is. “I’m in love with a skinny older guy with dark secrets, who needs to trust someone.”

I sigh and try to pull away again. “I don’t trust anyone.”

“I can see that. You can trust me.”

“No, I can’t, Jack.” I turn in his arms, trying not to breathe over him. I haven’t had the benefit of having brushed my teeth yet. “You’ll go home and I’ll be on my own again. You don’t know me, you don’t know what’s going on here.”

“Because you won’t tell me,” he points out. “It’s all secrets with you, David.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t. I’m just some stupid kid.”

Fuck. David wasn’t meant to come with issues. Danny had the issues. David is a clean slate. No issues—sure.

“I….”

“It doesn’t matter, David.”

Jack pulls away from me, and we sit on the tiled floor staring at each other. My mouth feels like someone died in it, and so does my head.

“It does matter,” I say, determined he see that. “I’ve got… trust issues… but I love you, Jack Cooper.” I give a shaky laugh. “We’re sitting on the floor of my bathroom, stinking of puke, and we’re having a relationship conversation. Christ, I thought girls wanted these moments, not blokes.”

“Are you calling me a girl?” Jack pretends to be outraged, but I can see the relief shining in his eyes.

“You… are… a… girl,” I say, grinning at him.

He growls at me and goes to wrestle me to the floor, but I fend him off.

“Uh-uh. Not ’til I’ve cleaned my teeth. My mouth tastes fucking horrible.”

In less than a week this boy will leave me, but until then I’m going to make the most of our time together.

W
ITH
a loud groan, Jack rolls over and grins wearily at me. He grumbles as he ends up in the wet patch, but I don’t pay any attention. I’m more interested in the state of him. He’s a wreck. His dark hair’s plastered to his forehead and there are bruises on his hips. I feel smug. I put those marks there and I’m proud of them. I lean forward and lick the dark marks, smiling against his hipbone as I feel his cock twitch.

“You like that, don’t you?” he says softly, carding his fingers through my hair.

I nod, not bothering to pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about. I do like it. I love knowing for these few days he is mine. That each and every mark on his body was put there by me. I licked him, and bit him, and pressed bruises into his skin—and he loved it. With Steve, he was the leader, and I’d followed willingly. But Jack likes to be guided, likes to be held down and fucked. Maybe we’re too young to play these games, but we don’t have time to wait for our relationship to develop. In a few days, he will be gone, and I will be alone. In the meantime, I’m going to fuck him until he can barely walk.

“How’s your head?” he asks.

“I’m dealing. Yours?” Hours of loving later, I barely remember my hangover.

“Same. Listen, my dad is holding a New Year’s Eve party. You’re invited,” Jack says, as I stop marking my territory and lay on his belly, listening to it gurgle under my ear.

“No, thanks.” My reaction is so fierce I can’t soften the blow.

Jack stops caressing my scalp. “David? More secrets?” he asks, and I can hear the hurt in his voice.

I close my eyes, hoping to drown out the kaleidoscope of images. Steve kissing me. Dad yelling at me, and Mum’s face, disappointed and fearful as I’m thrown out of the house. “Don’t ask me to explain, Jack. I can’t go to your party.”

“What are you going to do instead?”

Sleep. Hide. Pretend it’s just another night. “Nothing much. I just don’t like New Year that much. Can’t see the point of a party.”

“I’d have thought being with me and celebrating the New Year together was enough?”

I sit up, hiding my face from him. “I can’t, Jack.”

He puts his hand on my shoulder and the gentle touch almost undoes me. I’m so fucking
weak
now. “Another one of those things you won’t talk about?” At my nod I hear him sigh, but he wraps himself around me, enveloping me in his strong arms. “I’ve got to go. Dad will be pissed if I don’t turn up.”

“That’s cool.” I don’t want him watching me with those all-knowing eyes. Jack is little more than a boy but he has an old soul, and he makes me want to break down and tell him everything.

“I’ll come round as soon as I can,” he says.

It’s my turn to sigh. I press back into his warmth, feeling his chest hair tickle my back. “I’m sorry, Jack.” I feel I’m letting him down.

“You don’t have to feel guilty, prat.” He holds me tighter. “I just wish you trusted me enough to tell me some of your secrets. You’re only twenty. You should be out every night, shagging the girls and boasting about the size of your dick.” He laughs at my noise of disgust.

“Firstly, I’d be boasting about shagging the lads, and secondly, your dick is bigger than mine.”

“True,” he says smugly, “but yours fits my hand,” and he demonstrates. He’s right. My dick fits snugly into his large hand, and judging from the way it’s hardening, my cock is not at all unhappy to be there.

“You think you’re so funny, don’t you?” I say, blushing at the way my body automatically thrusts into his hand.

“I don’t think. I know.”

I don’t care what he does after that, as he’s biting down on my neck and slowly wanking me. What did I say about me leading him? This time he’s in control. Perhaps he’s trying to make a point.

His hard cock is hot and sticky against my spine. My balls are tight and so sensitive, the brush of his knuckles as he jacks my cock heightening their sensitivity. I come over his fingers as he thumbs the head of my dick. I’m left shaking in his arms, too far gone to help as he rubs himself against my back to climax.

We fall asleep, sticky and sweaty, happy to be together.

H
AVE
you ever waited for it all to fall apart? Known that every time you find some happiness it all goes tits up? I was waiting. Sylvia’s meltdown, the fact I wouldn’t go to the party with Jack, keeping that big-arsed secret… all these things were signs it wasn’t going to last. I didn’t care, either. I made love—oh, yeah, I’d started to call it making love in my head—to Jack, cooked with Mary, even went back and helped at the shelter with Jack in the run up to New Year, because I just knew the second Big Ben chimed the last fucking bell, the whole being-happy thing would end.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before that, we found more time to be sticky and happy.

O
N
THE
thirtieth, Jack had some family thing to go to. He invited me but I was tired when I woke up, and there was a pain in my chest Sylvia wasn’t happy with, so she forced me off to the doctors. It was that or she threatened to manhandle me into A&E. There was no appointment available at my new surgery, so she asked Ben to get the shelter doctor to look at me.

Dr. Roberts knows me and my history, and greets me warmly when he arrives.

“Danny, good to see you. After the last time, I wasn’t sure I’d see you upon your feet again.”

I look up from the reading Ben had shoved in my hand. He’d put me in the office with some sixth-form prospectuses “to keep you occupied.” Jesus, they could be so obvious. “Nor me, doc. Sorry you got dragged in here again. Sylvia is fussing.”

The doctor, a good-looking guy with twinkling green eyes and lips to die for—yeah, I thought he was hot—grinned at me. “No choice, huh?”

“You got it. I don’t think they’ve ever given me a choice.”

“Take off your shirt and let’s listen to your lungs.”

He fusses around me for a moment, listening to my chest and then looking down my throat and in my ears. I try not to pay attention to the frown on his face. Dr. Roberts only frowns when something is wrong. Like the day he told me I had to go into hospital or I would die, or the day he told Lil the cancer had spread.

“Hmmm.” The doctor unplugs his stethoscope from his ears.

“Not good, doc?” A resigned dread settles in the pit of my stomach.

“You’ve definitely got an infection brewing. Have you spent much time outdoors in the cold?”

I can’t help the blush that spreads across my cheeks, and from his raised eyebrows I can see the doctor notices.

“Oh? Oh….” Dr. Roberts sighs. “Well, stay indoors for anything like that. You aren’t well enough for outdoor… activities in the freezing cold. I’ll give you some antibiotics and you should be fine.” He finishes his scolding and sits down next to me to write the prescription. As he signs his name, the doctor looks up with such a serious expression that the feeling of dread comes back again. “You’ve got to take care of yourself, Danny. I mean it. You can’t afford to take any risks with your lungs. I’ve seen homeless kids dead within a week simply because they think they’re invincible.”

“David,” I say firmly.

He looks confused.

“My name is David, not Danny. And I won’t take any more risks.”

Dr. Roberts nods. “David. I’m sorry. You’re a sensible lad. That’s why you’ve survived this long.”

I’m partly offended. He’s not
that
much older than me, and I can’t have the hots for someone who thinks I’m a boy. Still, he’s a happily married man with two kids and dog. I need to put those adolescent fantasies aside and start thinking about the one who really wants me.

There’s a soft knock at the door, and when we both say, “Come in,” Ben pokes his head around the door.

“Hi,” he says. “Liam needs to see you, Doc. His feet are bad again.”

The doctor pulls a face. “Only if someone holds his legs. Last time he nearly broke my jaw when he kicked me.”

“I’ll do it,” I say, getting to my feet. Better than looking at those prospectuses of kids with happy, shining faces a minute longer.

Ben gives me and then the books a knowing look. “You’d rather hold onto Liam’s legs than look at extending your education?”

“They’re”—I wave at the books—“not me.”

“You can always study online,” Dr. Roberts suggests. “That way you could work maybe part time and study part time.”

Ben and I nod at the same time. That sounds more like me. I don’t think I could be surrounded by young kids all day, every day.

“Let’s get this over and done with,” the doctor mutters. “You do know how to ruin a man’s day, Ben.”

Maybe it was unprofessional, but the doctor has a point. Liam’s a long-term homeless, virtually uncommunicative except with his fists. His feet and legs are ulcerated and in such a state he needs to be in hospital, but he refuses to go and when they do get him there, he leaves as soon as he can walk again.

I don’t want to get like Liam, and I could see it happening. Whatever the outcome of my current situation, there has to be more for me than Liam’s lot in life.

W
HEN
I tell the ladies the results of the doctor’s visit, Sylvia fusses and scolds over me until Mary tells her to leave me alone.

“The boy’s all right. He just needs to take better care of himself. He’s got something else to think about now.”