It had never been funny with Enzo. Enzo was pushy, rough, assertive in a way that Adam (or Linus) never dared. He never would have stopped to ask if Adam was comfortable, never did, just assumed that Adam would get used to it, assumed Adam liked it that way. Sometimes Adam did. But sometimes it wasn’t fun at all. Sometimes the pain never stopped and Adam would close his eyes, waiting for Enzo to finish, waiting for that grunt and gasp that Enzo always did, before he collapsed around Adam’s neck, panting into his collarbone. Then he’d withdraw, two fingers holding the condom in place, which he then snapped off, threw into the bin by his bed and lay down to wait for Adam to finish himself.
Was that fair? Not Enzo’s behaviour, but Adam’s memory of it. Was it accurate? Was it hindsight rearranging things to make Adam more of the victim? He genuinely didn’t know. But when he jerked off at home, he still hated himself for picturing Enzo more often than Linus.
“You’re gone again,” Linus whispered. “I need you here.”
“Why are you whispering? We’re alone in the house, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but…” Linus pushed gently but deeply. Adam breathed again. “Doesn’t this feel like our own little world? Our own place, just the two of us, separate not only from other people, but from existence altogether?” He pushed again. “Like time has stopped. Like it’s stopped and…”
“…and? God, that feels good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Adam,” Linus said, just Adam’s name, putting his face into Adam’s chest, nosing around the few blond hairs that sprouted there. He kissed the space between Adam’s nipples, inhaling deeply, smelling Adam’s skin. Most of Linus’s upper body was between Adam’s rucked-up thighs, Adam’s ankles crossed against Linus’s back. Adam lowered one foot until it came up against the ridge of Linus’s butt, which – as previously mentioned – was a thing of almost punishing beauty. And something Linus shared much more democratically than Enzo ever had. Not that that was the one thing they always had to do. There were plenty of other things. Plenty. Linus was also a lot less single-minded in what he liked than Enzo ever was.
And Enzo definitely didn’t have the butt of a dancer.
“You’re so beautiful,” Adam whispered, even quieter than Linus had. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Linus.” Linus kissed him again on the chest. Adam scooped up Linus’s face in his hands. “No, I mean it.” He ran his thumbs gently across Linus’s cheeks, under the lower edge of his spectacles – which he amusingly kept on, both of them liking it, Linus in particular liking being able to see – and down around Linus’s lips.
“Wish I was tall enough to kiss you properly like this,” Linus said.
“What you’re doing right now is pretty good on its own.”
Taking the encouragement, Linus pushed again. And again. “Faster?” he asked.
Adam nodded. Yeah, faster was pretty good, all right.
And this, this was the rebuke to the Wades of the world, this was what Wade would never understand. Marty neither. Not even Enzo most of the time, now that Adam thought about it. There was so much more to it than just the body. The body was important, obviously, but in their different ways, neither Wade with his sleaze, nor Marty in his refusal to imagine beyond himself, nor Enzo in his just-friends retrospective boundary, none of them could see past the body. So many people couldn’t when it wasn’t society’s usual combo.
But here, now, again, this was more than the body, or the mind, or the personality. It wasn’t holy, that was a whole other mess, but it was something that could be touched only here. He’d touched it – to various degrees and from various angles – with Enzo a few times, with Philip Matheson, even with Larry from the teen choir. But nowhere like how he could touch it with Linus.
Then why–? Why why why–
Look at Linus, look at him there, look at the cute whorl of hair where it parted on the crown of his head, look at the hand that ran across Adam’s stomach, look at the skin at the bend of his elbow where the fold gave him a little tan line. Just look at him. Look at him loving Adam.
“I love you,” Adam said. He said it to Linus.
Linus gave him a mischievous wink. “Doesn’t count when you say it during sex.” But then Linus noticed the tears squeezing out of Adam’s eyes on either side and, with gentleness, brushed them away. “Adam?”
“Please don’t leave me unloved,” Adam answered, and cried some more, ashamed.
“The blame,” the Queen says again. “I keep looking for it. Where is it? Where is the blame?”
The faun moves around her to try and calm this Sarah, who continues to weep, her fear obviously growing that this may not, after all, be a drug dream. He does this not out of compassion, for he can smell her weakness from here, but because this person has some hold, some claim on the spirit that traps his Queen. Strong enough to make it release her for a moment, and if he can make the release happen again–
“Where is the blame?” the Queen keeps asking.
Sarah stares back at the Queen, her red eyes wide, unburning as this spirit again masks the Queen’s full glory.
At least he knows she is in there still. Strong and magnificent.
He will not miss his chance a second time.
“I find a strand of it in myself,” the Queen hears herself say. “I do find it there.”
But then she thinks, feels, reaches out, and knowing exactly what blame is – a human construct, one of its blackest and most selfish and self-blinding – she can find further strands of it, emanating in all directions, for blame is something that is shared but denied in equal measure.
“And yes,” she says to Sarah, “I find a strand in you.”
She sees that Sarah is afraid of this sentence, but welcomes it, too, a woman used to the burden of blame, secretly wanting it even if it kills her, because at least it is familiar.
“But so much less than what you think binds you,” the Queen says. “The bigger strand is within me and yet again that is not even the biggest portion.”
Like a cloud parting, Sarah finally seems to see, to really see.
“Is it…?” Sarah sits up, shock stilling her convulsions, stilling even the pain in her eyes, for she now looks at her friend, her friend who was murdered. “Is it really you?”
And she takes the Queen’s hand.
The faun leaps.
“It’s all right,” Linus said, holding him a few minutes later, curved against him in the bed, breathing into the bend of his neck.
“I don’t even know,” Adam said. “I really don’t.”
“Wade, probably.”
“God, don’t say his name.”
“Anything happening at home?”
“Marty got a girl pregnant.”
Linus sat all the way up for that. “I beg your pardon? Why wasn’t that the first thing you said when you walked in the door?”
“Wade, remember? And Angela.”
“Well, as remarkable as the news that Marty’s not a virgin actually is, that’s not really enough to make you cry. Is it?”
“No.”
“What’s up then, babe?”
Adam wished he knew. Everything was always so clear in books and movies. Everyone always knew their reasons. But real life was such a mess. Just look at today so far. The release with Linus was so wonderful – and though they were currently in an interruption, what they’d been leading to had pulled so strong on his heart – and yeah, the thing with Wade and Angela leaving and the tension at home and the still-pending afternoon at the church to help out his dad, and–
“It’s Enzo, isn’t it?” Linus said, just a little bit too quietly.
“No,” Adam said, immediately. But then he wondered. Because underneath everything else, today was the day Enzo left forever.
“I don’t mind,” Linus said, sounding like he minded.
“You should mind. I mind.”
Linus lowered his head until his chin rested on Adam’s chest. “I wish I knew how he got a
hook so deep in your heart. He’s not even very nice.”
“No,” Adam said. “Well, he could be, but no. Not on the whole.”
Linus tapped his middle finger over Adam’s actual heart. “And yet he’s still in there.”
“It’s not him, Linus, that’s not why I’m crying.”
“Maybe a little.”
“Maybe a little. But if so, then only a little.” He wondered if that were true. He hoped it was. And maybe it was.
“Then what is it?”
“Linus–”
“Is it me?”
“No–”
“I know he told you lies. Or things he believed were true when he said them but he let be untrue later. I haven’t done that, Adam. And I’m not an angel here or anything, but I haven’t lied to you. Not about us. Not about how I feel.”
“I know–”
“Is it the height difference?”
“Jesus, no–”
“Is it because I’m more obviously gay than you, because sometimes there’s internal homophobia–”
“It’s definitely not that.”
“So it is something?”
Adam suddenly felt like he was falling, like the centre of the bed beneath him had opened up and he had tumbled through, leaving Linus on the lip, looking down on him, too far to reach. All the time. He felt like this all the time. That everyone up there was out of reach. Linus, even Angela sometimes, definitely his family–
“Don’t leave me unloved.” Linus repeated his words. “What did you mean? It can’t be that Enzo was the only one who loved you because–”
“That’s not it. It isn’t.”
“Then what?”
Adam breathed now. There it sat. There it always sat, waiting to be said. “Oh, hell. I know what it is.”
“What is it?”
“Why I haven’t been letting myself love you back. Not properly.”
Linus’s forehead crimped at this, like he’d just taken a small blow.
“No,” Adam said, “I don’t mean it like that.”
“Then how do you mean it?”
“Linus, I…”
“I can’t love you any more than I do,” Linus said, sadly. “I don’t know how. I keep hoping it’s enough. If it’s not–”
“It is. It’s me who’s got the issue.”
Linus started to pull away. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew you couldn’t let him go–”
“It’s really not Enzo, Linus, I swear.”
Linus was sitting up now, looking down at him, wounded. He waited, though.
“Today,” Adam said, “this morning, Marty stopped me on my run to tell me about the girl he got pregnant and how they were going to get married and how her name meant happiness or something.”
“This is the Russian girl?”
“Belarusian, and no, someone new.”
“Go Marty.”
“But he said… We were talking and he said…” Adam’s throat tightened and he grimaced. “He said what I feel isn’t real love. That I think it is, but it isn’t. That I’m fooling myself because…”
Linus finished for him. “Because how could this ever be as real as the girl he got pregnant after meeting her five minutes ago.”
Adam looked at Linus, almost desperately, his eyes widening. “Oh, my God. Linus, I believed him. I believed him. I still believe him. There’s still a voice in my head saying this isn’t real, that it can’t be.”
“Because I’m not a girl?”
“That, and because…” He couldn’t finish, his throat was too tight, his face screwed up, the tears coming painfully now, like a choke. Linus gently pulled himself closer again, onto Adam’s chest, touching Adam’s face lightly.
“Because,” Linus said, finishing Adam’s sentence again, “Adam Thorn doesn’t deserve it. And never will.”
“I’m sorry,” Adam said.
“You are so not the one who should be sorry.” Linus kissed Adam’s nose, chin, lips. Adam just cried for a little while more, but then he began to kiss Linus back. And some more. He could taste himself in Linus’s mouth, smell his own body on Linus’s lips, knew Linus could do the same. The kisses grew deeper, hungrier. Adam could feel himself responding, could feel Linus responding.
But it was different from before. That was great fun, the usual smiles, the togetherness, but this was… This was intimacy.
He put his hands down Linus’s body, pressed it into his own, smelled it, touched it, put his ear against Linus’s chest to hear his heart, but always returning to the kiss, always, always. They didn’t speak this time, but Linus was here, right now, in this space, with Adam, nosing his way into Adam’s crevices, hands pulling him closer and closer, as if trying to merge them into one person, and with a gentle push, guiding himself back inside Adam, an act that didn’t feel like penetration, but like combination.
And here, now, again, was Linus. The low scars on his back where he’d had lung nodules removed when he was a child. The faint line of hair that extended down between his butt cheeks. The mole on the front of his right thigh. And the mid-sex scent of him, close and private, not sweat but something different, something only for Adam, as the point of no return was reached.
“I’m gonna come,” Linus whispered, almost as a question, meeting Adam’s eyes. Adam nodded. Linus stiffened – Adam could feel Linus’s butt flex under the pad of his foot – held his breath for a second, then let it out in a gasp. They said nothing, but Linus’s hand was already on Adam, helping him the rest of the way. It only took a moment, and when it was done, they were still there, panting together, the muscles of their bodies relaxing towards the next few seconds, but not just yet, not just yet.
“My Queen,” says the faun, a forbidden, fatal arm around her, trying to pull her physically from the grip of this spirit. He can feel the separation, caused again by the touch of Sarah, who watches him goggle-eyed, though those same eyes burn again as the Queen separates from the spirit of the dead girl.
“You dare touch me!” thunders the Queen. “You dare–!”
And she stops. The faun stops, too, feeling an unexpected resistance. The Queen has paused.
The spirit – who is still the Queen, who is still the spirit, who is still the Queen – remains caught by the hand of Sarah, who for the moment has wisely abandoned all attempts at sense.
“Hold,” says the Queen, softly, but unmistakably a command. The faun pauses. She is half in and half out of the spirit, as if she has leaned back and merely found the spirit sitting in front of her. “Hold,” the Queen says again.
And they both listen.
“You have to release me,” says the spirit.
“You have to release me,” says the Queen in perfect tandem, watching like one of her great hunting pikes who wait patiently to strike.
“To whom are you speaking, my Queen?” the faun asks.
“Katie?” says Sarah. “I’ve missed you so much. I can’t… I can’t even seem to get through the days any more.”
“You have to let me go,” says the spirit, says the Queen.
Sarah looks down at the hand that holds the girl’s arm.
“I do not mean your hand,” says the spirit, says the Queen.
“My Queen,” the faun says. “There is doom coming if you do not–”
“I said, Hold,” says the Queen, not looking at the faun.
“You must release me or you will never be released,” says the spirit, says the Queen to Sarah. “You must let me go. You are not to blame.”
Sarah begins to weep, her hand still on the Queen.
“You must let go now, my Queen,” says the faun.
“There is nothing a Queen must do,” says the Queen, eyes still on the spirit and the girl on the couch.
“You lose yourself within her. The spirit will drag you to your death. To the death of us all.”
“The spirit hunts. The spirit quests for her own release.” The Queen raises the smallest of fingers, but it is enough for the faun to let her
go immediately. She sinks back into the spirit, but before she does, she tells him, “I will follow her. I will go where she leads.”
“It may cost you, my Queen. It may cost you dear.”
“All the best journeys do, faun.”
Then she is gone, gripped again by the spirit, now freed from Sarah, who she leaves weeping on the sofa. She stands, no longer seeing the faun, perhaps no longer even knowing he is there, and she heads to the front door, to who knows what beyond.
And once again, there is nothing the faun can do but clear the memories of Sarah and follow his Queen, glancing at the sun and wondering at his last day in existence.
“Off to the church now?” Linus said, leaning in Adam’s driver side window.
“Yeah,” Adam said. “Setting up for tomorrow’s services. His main ushers are both out sick, and I’m always backup number one.”
Linus leaned further inside. “You still smell like us.”
“My dad won’t know what that is.” Adam looked up. “Will he?”
“You can shower. Again.”
“I’m late as it is.”
“I’ll see you at Enzo’s party, yeah?”
“You’re still going? After…”
“I get to see you and there’s free beer. Of course I’m still going.” Linus kissed him again. “I wasn’t kidding. I know it’s high school. I know we’re young. I know these things may or may not last or even if they should. But I love you, Adam Thorn. Today, right now, I do.”
“And I love you,” Adam said, seriously, meaning it.
“Maybe not yet,” Linus grinned, “but possibly soon.”
Adam drove off, waving in the rear-view mirror to Linus who, right now, yes, he did love. Enough to make his heart ache. He hoped it would last.
He hoped he would deserve it.
He glanced at his phone as he turned onto the main road into town. A missed call from Marty. None from his parents. Nothing from Angela, but she’d probably just got stuck at work. One from Karen at the Evil International Mega-Conglomerate asking if he was okay. And–