The Star Man (2 page)

But losing himself in fantasy seemed the thing to do since he’d lost his job, and unfortunately Matthew had plenty of experience since he invariably mouthed off to the wrong person. Even prison hadn’t hammered that defiance out of him, though it had left him weary, like a ram that had struck a wall over and over again and broken its horns, lost its fire.

He wasn’t stupid; he knew it was probably himself he was really battling, himself he didn’t like so much. He’d been trying to kick his habit of getting his back up, but Dove got to him where he lived, so beautiful and untouchable.

He’d wanted him, wanted him to be the sweet man of his fantasies.

“I can’t give you a urine sample. I’m sorry,” Dove said now, very politely, as he stubbornly passed the container back, a look of patrician distaste on his face.

Typical. Apparently Mr. High and Mighty didn’t take a piss on command.

“Look, honey, it’s not like I’m asking you for the other kind of sample so just get your pretty-boy rear end into the men’s and bring me back some, huh?” The nurse widened her eyes in emphasis, obviously not any more impressed with Dove’s lack of cooperation than Matthew was.

“Other kind of sample?” Dove frowned, and Matthew noticed how dilated his pupils were. Something was definitely off with him. “I’m sorry. I just… can’t.”

Matthew shrugged when the nurse glared, silently telling her he couldn’t intervene. Dove was his former boss, not his boyfriend.

“I’ll be back for a blood sample, and I
will
be gettin’ that!” she stated, giving them both a stern look before she hustled off to another patient.

Matthew guessed since he was here, he might as well try reaching Dove. He slouched closer to him, offering, “You need to help them find out what’s wrong with you. You really aren’t, uh, acting like yourself.”

“How do I usually appear to you?” Dove asked, looking curious.

“Like an asshole.” Matthew flushed. He guessed that wasn’t quite a bedside manner type of deal. “Uh, you just seem….” Bewildered. Innocent. Sweet.

Matthew rubbed his forehead and the growing thundercloud of a headache. He did not just think his former boss was sweet. Christ!

“There’s nothing wrong with me. I- I do not….” Unbelievably, Dove’s eyes filled with tears. Seeing that, Matthew felt an odd punch to the gut. It was unbelievable that this hardened man would suddenly be so vulnerable.

“Don’t what?” He made sure his tone was impatient. He was not going to fall for Dove’s sudden appeal, which seemed designed perfectly to get under Matthew’s skin. It had to be an act!

“I don’t pee.” Dove whispered the words very firmly directly into Matthew’s ear, making him harden instantly at the touch of soft lips brushing his sensitive skin. As a result, it took him a beat to absorb Dove’s meaning.

Matthew’s head fell back, his headache increasing so the blood struck against his temples.

Oh man, what had he gotten himself into?

*  *  *

Matthew
almost fell asleep in the chair next to Dove’s bed in the time it took the nurse to return to take a blood sample. He was so tired from his long day. Right now he was working two jobs to try to save a little money so he could go back to school, just put the shit behind him from his past, and maybe learn a bit of a trade. He didn’t hope for the things he had when he’d been a boy, sleeping under a
Star Trek
comforter and looking up at a ceiling he’d painted himself of the solar system: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Venus….

Small hopes. They were all Matthew had now, all he dared to wish for.

As he sat up, blinking and rubbing his jaw, which was raspy now, he saw that the nurse had wrapped Dove’s arm in a rubber tube, checking his blood pressure.

Dove gazed up at her, as if an interested spectator and not a patient.

She frowned, shaking her head. “That can’t be right!”

“What’s wrong?” Matthew asked, belly tightening, still uneasy since he couldn’t shake the memory of touching Dove’s cold, crumpled body.

“Something must be faulty with my stethoscope because I can’t hear his heart beating.” The nurse shook it. “I’ll get another in a moment, but I need to take some blood, so just one second,” she told Dove. “This won’t hurt.” She had a needle in her hand.

“No, it won’t hurt,” Dove repeated in a serene voice.

The nurse pushed a needle to his skin… and broke it. “What the—! Uh, it must have been defective or something. Are you all right, sugar?” Concerned cocoa eyes focused on Dove’s face.

Matthew found himself staring at Dove, a chill tingling down his back. Dove looked absolutely calm, like a statue of the Buddha in the new age store where Matthew worked. There was no blood on his arm from the broken needle, though the nurse had searched his skin, frantic to ensure he was okay after the unsettling accident.

“Yes, I’m sorry; I can’t let you take my blood.” Dove pushed the blanket off his lap, straightening. “I can’t stay here,” he confided in her softly. “I really need to try to figure out how to get back home now, but thank you for being so nice to me.”

“Your wife is going to be here soon!” the nurse warned, obviously a bit shaken after the incident. “We called her for you, so you should really wait for her. Besides, I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere just yet, Mr. Hollister. I’d really like the doctor to take a look at your arm and make sure you’re all right.”

Dove only smiled that Buddha smile, cocking his head as if analyzing the nurse’s words and finding some private amusement in her concern. “The man Dove will be nicer to his wife in the future; he will also be nicer to his son,” Dove informed her. “He merely needed a new perspective.”

Matthew stared at him, hit by that eerie feeling that he was in the presence of some kind of other version of his ex-boss, because Dove’s smile was so full of sweetness. He did not seem at all like the stick-up-his-ass jerk who had fired Matthew.

“I’m going to go get your doctor!” The nurse left the room in a huff.

As if feeling Matthew’s gaze, Dove looked at him, his eyes not dark and snapping now, but more doe-like. Oh yeah, he was different. Fuck, he got to Matthew even more than he had before, appealing to the protector, making Matthew want to take care of him and touch him. Shit!

“Matthew?” Dove chewed his lip, thankfully seeming to be oblivious to Matthew’s thoughts.

“Yeah?”

“It’s time to go now.” Dove climbed out of the bed, but Matthew instinctively blocked his path.

“Dove, look, I know I called you a prick before, and you really are, but you’re not acting like yourself, and I’m… worried about you.”

“That’s because I’m not,” Dove admitted.

Again the chilly feather touched Matthew’s back.

Dove walked over to the window and lifted the sill, which gave in a long grinding creak. The rain and cold breath of the remainder of the storm swept into the room.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Matthew snagged Dove’s hand. “Dove!”

Dove smiled, still very sure of himself. He squeezed Matthew’s hand, and Matthew glanced at their entwined fingers, gut knotting, feeling a connection he’d never experienced with anyone before.

And then—

“Oh. My. God!”

Dove still clasped Matthew’s hand firmly. He was smiling, happy. His eyes were glowing a little with a strange silvery sheen in the dark, velvet depths. His hospital gown ruffled in the breeze as they floated easily out of the tall window.

Matthew squeezed his eyes shut, jean-clad legs wrapped desperately around Dove’s bare legs now. Gripping him tight, not breathing, too fucking scared to breathe!

“Open your eyes, Matthew,” Dove murmured. “Don’t be afraid. Didn’t you dream about doing this many times?”

Somehow Matthew couldn’t deny his strange companion, and a touch of wonder poked through his terror.

This was like one of his daydreams, like a dream he might have had as a child of innocently flying through the air. No one to hurt him, to grind him into the dirt.

Feeling the updraft, seeing palm trees below like matchsticks sprouting brooms of green, the lights of the city like a carpet unrolled just for them. The giant Santa Claus at the car dealership two blocks away leering at them as it bobbed as freely as they did.

The wind in his hair and then Dove’s fingers. He looked at Dove, transfixed. Dove’s lips parted and he frowned slightly, as if perplexed. “Matthew?”

His tone had something in it that caught at Matthew’s chest, so for a moment, insanely, he forget they were hovering over a hospital parking lot.

There was only Dove. Dove’s soft chocolate eyes on him. His fingers knitted to Matthew’s.

“Where did you get the name ‘Dove’?” Matthew asked in a bemused voice. He’d always been curious.

“This body once belonged to a good man,” Dove answered. “But he didn’t want anyone to know. He didn’t want
you
to know.”

“Huh?” Sweat broke out on Matthew’s forehead as his attention returned to their height, but they only continued gently down fourteen stories to the glistening cars, toll booths, and puddles waiting below.

“I like to fly,” Dove said when they landed. “Matthew, what’s the matter?”

Matthew had collapsed onto the tarmac, panting. “Shit!”

“Are you sick? We can go back and you can pee in a cup if you need to.”

“I knew there was something wrong with you. Knew you were different but—!” Matthew shook his head. He thought of his life. Remembered sleeping with a shiv under his pillow. The way he never sat with his back exposed to anyone in a restaurant or bar. The young man he’d hired his first night out to give him the works. The lousy jobs he kept losing.

Nothing in his ordinary, stained life had prepared him for something like this!

“Holy shit! You’re some kind of fucking E.T., aren’t you?”

Chapter Three

Matthew
looked around his small basement apartment and flushed because of all the dirty laundry and shit everywhere; he shoved some stuff off his couch so Dove could sit down.

“I’ll lend you my jeans, but they’ll be tight, I reckon.”

Dove looked over his shoulder at his bare rear end which was revealed by his cut-out hospital gown. “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not. You can’t walk around like that. And I need my coat.” Matthew’s voice was tight as he caught another glimpse of the high globes of Dove’s ass. “Only one I got.”

Fortunately, he’d been able to bundle Dove up in his long leather coat, which had made it possible to use local transit from the hospital to Matthew’s shit hole apartment.  Matthew hadn’t been up to flying again, to trusting the freaky experience, so the coat had shielded Dove as they worked their way through the bad part of town.

Matthew shook his head, trying not to look at Dove’s alluring body now. “So, can I get you a beer?” he offered. “If you drink beer, that is.”

“I would like to experience alcohol.” Dove smiled at him, looking so impressed with the crappy apartment that Matthew experienced a wave of weariness. “What’s wrong, Earth friend?” Dove added.

“Don’t keep calling me ‘Earth friend’, all right? It sounds dorky.” Matthew opened the fridge and took out a beer for Dove.

Dove’s gaze fell. “I’m sorry.”

Matthew was abruptly ashamed of himself because of the crankiness his odd visitor was bringing out in him. He didn’t understand it. Why did he want to take digs at him just because he was so happy and peaceful?

But it was like Matthew had experienced the world one way, and Dove another, and Matthew couldn’t help but want to throw mud all over Dove’s rosy picture. It didn’t make sense, since as a kid, he’d yearned to live in Dove’s world.

“What’s this?” Dove lifted a magazine off the floor that Matthew had been given by a prison friend before he left the joint.

“
Shit!
”

“They look energetic.” Dove turned the picture on its side. “Except the young man is tied down, so it’s hard to see if he’s smiling or not.”

“He’s… very, uh, content, I’m sure.” Matthew snatched the magazine full of pictures showing the adventures of a young submissive being “broken in” by multiple masters and shoved it behind the couch. He was blushing. Fuck!

Dove blinked at him, looking interested. “Are you embarrassed by your sexuality?”

This was surer ground. “
No!
” Matthew shoved back his hair. “Can you tell me what happened? I mean, you are obviously not Dove-my-boss. Is he dead?”

“No, he is sleeping inside of me,” Dove-E.T. explained. “I sustained him when he might not have continued. And also, I think my joining with him will make him a happier person.”

“Peachy.” Matthew scratched his beard shadow. Shit, that was weird, but he guessed no weirder than his beloved science fiction books and movies. “You said you were an angel, but… you don’t mean with wings and shit, right?”

Dove gave the back of the couch a curious look, as if he’d like to flip through more of Matthew’s magazine. “We watch your people. Sometimes we slip inside someone’s body to better understand them. So I know what Dove knew, but I’m not sure I truly understand what it is to be human; I’ve only been here a few thousand years.”

Matthew blinked, feeling a need to sit down. He’d think he’d finally cracked if he hadn’t played Lois Lane to Dove’s Superman an hour ago.

“Guess it was just your bad luck you wound up latched on to me.”

Dove swallowed. In a softer voice, he said, “No, it was not bad luck.”

“What do you mean?” Matthew frowned.

“I mean I have watched you since you were a child, Matthew-friend. Your… yearning called to me.”

Matthew’s flushed, not sure what the hell that meant. “What about when I was in prison?”

Dove shook his head. “Your anger burned; I couldn’t get close to you.”

“Lucky you,” he rasped, relieved the angel or whatever the fuck he was hadn’t played voyeur then. “So you said you needed to get back?”

Dove nodded. “The last time I walked among humans, you all wore different clothing and thought I was a god. It was fun!”

Matthew smiled reluctantly. “Well, what do you need to get home; put up a big signal fire and then your little green buddies will find you?”