Talker (5 page)

“That’s all?”

Lyndie shrugged. “Brian, baby, I’ve raised you since you were a rug rat. You think something like that is going to matter?” Her Talker |
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lower lip thrust out and grew pouty. “I thought I taught you better than that.”

Brian smiled shyly at her. “You taught me awesome, Aunt Lyndie.” He shrugged and told her the truth. “Honestly? I’m just glad you believe me—because that’s sort of my problem.”

Ah G od, but it felt good to spil out the whole thing to her. It felt good to sit in the kitchen where she’d helped him with his first times tables and helped him write his first words, and set out this newer, trickier problem and ask for her help to unravel it. How could he have done this without her? He thought of Tate and his father’s ugly word ringing through the phone lines, and his heart bled a little.

Tate needed this. Tate needed to come here more often and spend time with Lyndie and see more of her pretty, pretty art. He needed to know that Brian wasn’t the only person on the planet who could look out for him. Whether or not Tate loved Brian back, Brian needed to bring him here again, and let him know that unconditional acceptance was not a myth.

He finished the story, and saw that Lyndie’s wide, smiling mouth was pursed and grim.

“O h, Brian. Baby—poor Tate. This thing he’s doing. That’s a bad thing.”

Brian nodded, relieved. It wasn’t just him and his innocence. “It is for him,” Brian said softly. Tate, who was so vulnerable. There were some guys out there who could probably do this for kicks—but not Tate. Tate was doing this because he needed… needed so badly and so completely that he was wil ing to give away pieces of himself to get what he needed.

“This….” Lyndsey took a drink of her tea and looked at him again. “This is a self-hating sort of thing—at least if this kid is like you’ve told me. That doesn’t seem like your roommate, you know? I mean….” She sighed and searched for words. “He seemed fragile, Talker |
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when you came for Christmas. He did—I didn’t say anything because I thought you already saw it. But he didn’t seem like this.

What am I missing here? What did you leave out?”

Brian flushed and looked away. He’d known it might come to this when he first cal ed her up.

“The thing is,” he said, swal owing, “that it’s not really my story to tell. But… but Tate won’t tel it.” At least not the way he should tell it. “Tate keeps saying that he wanted it to happen, that he was in control… but… you know, I’ve heard girls talk, and… what happened to him wasn’t right. And he won’t admit it. He….” Brian’s eyes went hot, and his throat swel ed tightly, and he could hardly look at Aunt Lyndie. “He keeps saying it was his fault, and it wasn’t.”

Lyndie took a deep breath and let it out in careful shivers.

“O kay, baby. You’ve got to tel me what happened. You’ve got to.

E ven if he’s okay with it, you’re not. This is hurting you—that makes it your story to tel , okay? You go ahead and tel me, okay?”

Brian nodded and wiped his eyes and his aunt gave him a paper napkin and that helped. He hoped he wouldn’t have to wear eye makeup like Tate, he thought dismally, because he had a feeling that before this day was over, he’d be crying some more.

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P a rt V I

I Should Have Been Brave

TWO days after that last disastrous party (the one with the hangover that Virginia nursed him through), Brian resolved to tell Tate that he was gay, and it was love, and that Tate could stop playing the teenaged-girl-he-likes-me locker game with the customer who was his latest crush.

O f course, he would come home from school that day and find Tate all excited about his latest date.

Brian watched Tate spiking his hair, choosing the exact right sparkly shirt and ripped jeans, pulling his favorite leather cuffs and studded collar out of his drawer, and thought, I’m right here!

Dammit, Tate, you don’t need al that shit, I’m right HE RE !

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he’d ended up asking weakly. “You don’t real y know anything about this guy.” Aw, geez… lame much, Brian? “I mean—” he closed his eyes and swallowed,“—maybe you should have him here for dinner, or, you know, go to the movies or something.”

Tate looked at him incredulously. “I’m not a girl in the Victorian age, Brian. I want to get laid, remember? I mean, I’m giving it up!

It’s here! It’s free! How bad can this go?”

It’s free? “Well, maybe it shouldn’t be free!” Brian snapped.

“Maybe it’s more valuable than that. Maybe you should put a price Talker |
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on it, dammit, and wait for a relationship instead of some guy you think is going to pop your cherry just be-fucking-cause!”

Tate’s body had given a convulsive jerk—yup, things just got too intense for him, no doubt about it. “I’m not into anything serious,” he lied. He pulled out face powder—he got his in the shade of ghostly white, and Brian reached out a shaking hand and took it from him.

“Don’t,” he said gruffly, and Tate looked at him, surprised.

“You put that shit on so no one has to see you. I like you. If this guy doesn’t like you for you, he doesn’t deserve to touch you.”

Tate’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down several times in quick succession, and the skin around his high cheekbones grew tight. “Look, G ranola,” he tried to joke, “not everybody can carry off the homegrown look like you do, okay? Some of us need a little help.” He reached out to take his face powder back, and Brian found he’d clenched his fingers around it fiercely.

“You spend your food money on this shit, Tate. I may be

‘granola,’ but I’ve got a feeling for what’s good for you. This date…

this idea… these things are not good for you.”

Tate sighed and looked down at his hand reaching for the powder. It was the hand with the scars, and although Tate had the entire sleeve tattoo done by this time (thank you, scholarship), the hand was too scarred to take the ink. It was, in fact, disfigured.

There had been some muscle damage during the fire and two of his fingers and the side of his palm were only partial y functional, as well as withered and twisted. He had a variety of half-fingered gloves in leather, wool, and cotton, most of them black, to cover his right hand, but he wasn’t wearing one of those now. Although it was the hand he wrote with, very few people guessed how hard he had to work to make that happen.

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“It’s sweet of you to worry,” he said, looking at his fingers as they touched Brian’s. Brian looked, too, and deliberately moved his hand so that it covered Tate’s.

“I care about you,” he said roughly, and his heart started hammering wildly. This is it! I’m going to tel him! I’m going to tel him and he won’t go!

And then there was a different sort of hammering. Tate’s shoulders spasmed and he dropped the powder. The case shattered and the little cake inside crumbled on the peeling vinyl of the floor.

“F uck!” they both said in tandem, except Tate was crouching on the ground, picking up the pieces, and Brian was stepping around him to go get the broom from the kitchen.

“I’ll get it!” Tate commanded. “Just get the door.”

The hammering continued, and Brian scowled; the guy sounded like an asshole already and Brian hadn’t even met him.

“Tate, don’t do this,” he said quietly, and Tate scowled up at him.

“Brian, man, I’m sorry I cal ed you ‘G ranola,’ but please… just let me have a date. Just let me get this over with, you know?

You’ve had girls like Virginia. I haven’t had anyone.”

“You’ve got me!”

Tate rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Jesus, try to be serious with a guy.”

AUNT LYNDIE heard this part of the story and shook her head with a smile. “O uch,” she said quietly.

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Brian looked at her with wide eyes and nodded. “Yeah! That’s what I’m saying!” O h thank G od—someone who thought he was serious.

“So, did you tell him and make it stick?”

Brian grimaced, embarrassed. “I thought I’d wait until he got back from his date,” he said with a sigh. “It was stupid—I know it was stupid. But the last time he went out just to get laid, it was just such a disaster. I didn’t expect….” O h Jesus, he real y hadn’t. “I real y didn’t expect this one to be worse.”

Lyndie put down her iced tea and grabbed Brian’s shaking, clammy hand.

“O kay,” she said, and damn, he thought, she was real y wise.

“In what way worse?”

THE guy’s name was Trevor: he looked like a calendar pinup and knew it. He cast Brian a smarmy look as Brian opened the door, and Brian returned it with a scowl. Bastard. E xpensively cut black hair, designer jeans, pricey button-up shirt, celebrity kicks on the feet. Liked to show off his money like it meant something.

“Hey,” Trevor said as he shook Brian’s hand. “The straight roommate. How you doing, big guy—gonna go get laid tonight?”

“It’s not on the menu,” Brian said tightly. “So what did you say you did again?”

“Not on the menu? Too bad, man, because I’m gonna get me…” Trevor trailed off as Tate dashed from the bathroom to his bedroom, giving an “in-a-minute” wave as he went, “I’m gonna get me some sweet ass tonight. Too bad you don’t know what you’re missing.”

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“Too bad you don’t know what you’re getting,” Brian muttered, and Trevor gave him a quick look.

“What’s that?”

“He’s a good guy. You need to treat him nice.”

Trevor smirked. “That kind of kid? He don’t want to be treated nice, sweetie—he just wants the treatment, you know what I mean?”

“That’s not Tate!” Brian said, feeling a nasty bout of worry congeal in his stomach and start to ferment. Trevor didn’t hear him.

Tate was trotting down the hal , wearing his leather jacket and a new set of rainbow studs winking from his tattooed ear.

Trevor grabbed his hand with a proprietary air that made Brian a little il , and hauled him in for a kiss that Brian would have saved for the darkest corner of a crowded hal , if in public at al . Tate looked up from the kiss dreamily and threw Brian an optimistic grin.

Brian managed a sick smile back.

“Don’t wait up,” Tate said, and then he closed his eyes like it was too painful to see what Brian would say to that.

“Don’t do anything you don’t want to,” Brian told him in desperation, and Tate wrinkled his nose in a characteristic attempt to brush off any worry whatsoever.

“Baby, ain’t much I don’t want to do!” he said, winking, and then Trevor rol ed his eyes and practical y shoved him out the door.

But Tate was looking over his shoulder as he went. His face was bare of powder, and Brian would always regret that. O f all the nights for Tate to have some extra protection from an indifferent world, this would have been the one.

Brian worked that night. When he got home, the door was open a little, and there was a light on in the bathroom. F or a moment, Brian felt a profound sense of relief. Tate was back.

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Screw the open door (like they had much to steal—even his laptop was severely out of date), at least he hadn’t spent the night with that guy.

Then Brian heard the sounds from the bathroom. He knew the sound of Tate’s tears by now. Tate, for al his shields against the world, often wore his heart on his sleeve. This was different. This was tears and pain, and keeping the pain suppressed and keeping the tears tamped down in the chest and….

“Tate? Tate… man, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” The word was whispered.

“Tate, I know your sounds now, okay? You’re not all right.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bullshit.” Brian was alarmed—truly alarmed. He didn’t sound right. He didn’t sound right at al .

“Just go away, okay?”

Brian was strong—even if he didn’t throw shot anymore, he stil worked out, just to keep his shoulder from locking up on him.

He was not aware of how strong he was until he cracked the cheap lock on the doorknob with a vicious twist of his hand and shouldered open the door. Tate was naked, his hair down and limply wet around his shoulders. His skin was red and raw, like he’d been scrubbing himself until the water went cold and beyond. He was standing with his back to the mirror, trying to look at his own backside.

A thin smear of blood mixed with the water from the shower; it pinkened one cheek and ran down the back of his thigh.

Tate glared at Brian and was about to say “G o the fuck away!”

or something like that when Brian did his first smart thing in the whole affair.

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“Turn around,” he said gently. “Turn around and I’l clean you off. Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

“Brian….”

“Don’t worry,” Brian said, keeping his voice soft with a supreme effort. “I’m safe, remember?”

A rape center was out of the question. F or one thing, Tate wouldn’t admit that he’d been raped. He’d wanted it, remember?

But he’d asked the guy to wear a condom, and the guy must have forgotten, and he’d begged the guy for some lube or some spit and had been told that it felt better naked and rough, and when the guy (he no longer had a name) had been done, he’d laughed, smacked Tate on the ass, and told him it was al over, he could find his own way home.

Brian had listened to the story, spil ed out as Tate bent over the seat of the toilet, as docile and exposed as a man had ever been. Brian had some antibiotic cream, and that helped stop the bleeding too. Touching Tate like this was not romantic. It wasn’t tender. It was not the things he’d dreamed at night for the past few months. It was certainly not what he’d longed for when he’d walked away from the faceless party encounters. It was as gentle and as impersonal as handling an infant with diaper rash, and it was one more little wound he doctored himself that night.

He sat Tate down with a cup of hot chocolate and a pirated video of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and ran across the street to an all night drugstore for a doughnut pil ow and witch hazel pads.