Brian
“HEY! HOW was your Thanksgiving?” Landon asked with a huge smile as I got into his car.
I dropped my backpack, filled with stuff for an overnight stay, in the back seat. I felt giddy. I hadn’t been able to see Landon on Thursday or Friday because we had a full house for Thanksgiving. Getting in the car with him felt like making a jailbreak.
“It was okay. Aunts and uncles and cousins I hadn’t seen in years came over. Nothing like nearly dying to make your relatives appreciate you.”
I meant it as a joke, but his smile was sad. “Yeah? Was that nice? Seeing everyone? What’d you guys do?”
I wrinkled my nose. Landon didn’t want to hear about how much my aunt Lucy hated her boss, my grandma’s sciatica, or my dad’s constant “Bull says this” and “Bull says that.”
“It was fine. All my cousins are younger than me, so it was more fun for Lisa. Mostly we watched football and ate. What about you?” I asked. “Anything new?”
Landon’s eyes were bright. He looked excited. “Take a look.” He handed me his phone. It was on his Twitter home page. I scrolled down the messages. There were a lot of messages from people I didn’t know.
“Look at my number of followers,” he said.
11,361.
“Holy shit!”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
“You know how in Chattanooga we all agreed to do video testimonies? Well, Madison and I filmed ours on Thanksgiving Day. And they went live last night on that March for Our Lives site. And the Parkland peeps have been tweeting the video link and recommending people follow us, and it just sort of blew up.”
“Shit.” I scrolled through the messages. Most of them were from people saying how moved they were and being crazy supportive. But some were hate posts. There were quite a few hate posts actually.
I put the phone down and forced a smile. “That’s great, Landon.”
“You can watch my video if you want.”
He sounded proud, and I knew he wanted me to watch it. But I really didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see Landon talking about finding me gut shot.
I’d been so excited to see him, be with him. And now the black feelings were creeping in again. My personal Gollum whispering in my ear. Memories of the cafeteria. Of finding the hole in my stomach. Sweat broke out on my neck.
“I’ll watch it later,” I said, my voice raspy. “So. Um. How was your Thanksgiving? Did you guys eat good?”
Yeah, eat good. That was the level of conversation I was capable of. Landon studied my face before pulling out of my driveway. Fortunately, he went along with the subject change. He talked about the food his mom had made and about how he’d helped his dad work on the furnace because of the cold weather. The way he described them both sitting cross-legged in the basement with hiking headlamps on, reading through the furnace manual, was so beautifully geeky, and so them, that it made me smile.
And then, just like that, the bad feelings receded like floodwater, and the Gollum crept back into his hole.
Mental trauma is really weird. It’s hard to get a handle on something so random.
When we got to Landon’s house, we were both feeling antsy, so we walked over to a nearby park. It was cold outside, and there was hardly anyone there. The fall leaves were gone, giving the park that deserted, barren feeling of winter. Being out in the open was easier when it was just me or one or two other people. It hardly seemed worth someone’s effort to pick us off. Besides, the shooters were hopefully too full of pumpkin pie to bother.
Landon had on a plaid wool coat with sheepskin lining that looked warm and comfortable. I wanted to stick my hands in his pockets. Or lean against him as we stood at the rail at the empty playground. Press chest to chest. Watch our breaths’ steamy condensation mix like fornicating volcanoes.
Forget writing poetry. Landon made me think poetry.
“Your dad didn’t get on your case about Chattanooga, did he?” Landon asked me.
I shook my head. “The holidays are a busy time at the car dealership and then we’ve had so many visitors. He’s been distracted. Hopefully anything he might have seen about it online has passed by now.”
“That’s good.”
“Yup.” I almost said bullet dodged. But the words stuck in my throat. You don’t realize how many idioms have to do with guns or being shot until you’ve, well, been shot. Stupid English language.
Landon’s gaze kept meeting mine, then he’d look away again, then he’d look back into my eyes.
I grabbed the top of the railing and twisted my hands around it, just to keep from reaching out for him. God, I’d missed him. We’d been spending so much time together, it felt unnatural being apart. Like missing a limb. But now that we were together, there was a tension between us that was almost unbearable.
Unbearable. I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
I knew what I wanted, but it was complicated. It was like the potential thing between us was a polyhedron in shape. No matter what angle I tried to approach it from, there were all these pointy bits that looked dangerous. Would he want to be with me if I was closeted? Was it rude to even suggest such a half-assed deal? What if it screwed up our friendship?
Did he want me as much as I wanted him? ’Cause I did want him. So much it hurt. I looked at him, and I’d never seen anyone so breathtakingly beautiful in my life.
“What?” Landon asked with a puzzled smile.
“Nothing.”
He cleared his throat and took out his phone. Probably checking his Twitter account.
“More new followers?”
He put the phone away guiltily. “Sorry. Just feeling restless.”
“I don’t mind.”
“No, I wanna be with you. I spend too much time on that thing anyway.” His Adam’s apple bobbed after he said it, like he’d given too much away, crossed a line. There was an embarrassed spark in his eyes and an anxious lick of his lips that told me he was as nervous as I was.
This wasn’t flirting. It was, like, denial of flirting. Antiflirting. Which was much more telling, really. I was disconcerting Landon Hughes. Now that was something.
I leaned into him slowly, coat arm to coat arm. He tensed instead of pulling away, so he could hold me up. I turned my head to look at him and gave him a slow smile.
“What?” he said, his gaze darting to mine for just a moment.
“You’re warm.”
He chuckled nervously. Then he looked at me for real. His brow furrowed. He brought up his hand, cold without a glove, and brushed his thumb under my eyes. “Not sleeping again?”
“Cousins,” I lied. “Stayed up too late.”
“Ah.”
I went to pull his hand down, because I was tired of being the invalid. I wanted him to touch me, but not like that. I would have held on to his hand too. But he moved before I could, stepping back. “I’m freezing my butt off. Wanna go back?”
“Wimp.”
“You know it. I prefer my balls room temperature.”
I laughed. “Oh really?”
“Shut up.” Landon smirked.
He shoved me, and I shoved him, and we went back to his house.
Landon
MY DAD picked up Indian takeout for dinner. It was amazing. Potato naan, chicken tikka masala, aloo gobi, and tandoori chicken. All my favorites.
Brian said he’d never had Indian food, and he loved it. He ate more than I’d ever seen him eat, lots of the masala sauce over rice and naan. My mom and I exchanged a pleased look. But afterward, in my room, when we tried to play a video game, his face got pale and he put down the controller.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Not feeling great,” he admitted. He rubbed his stomach. “I ate too much. Maybe I should go home. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t want him to go home. I’d missed him the past two days like crazy, and I’d been stoked about him spending the night.
“Maybe if you lie down for a bit, you’ll feel better?”
He blew out a pained breath and nodded. “Okay.”
“Want to lie down in the guest room?” I thought maybe he wanted privacy.
But he glanced at my bed. “Mind if I lie down here?”
“Sure. Yeah. Absolutely.”
He seemed to be in too much pain to be embarrassed. He stood up and dropped his jeans. Wearing an old red T-shirt and a pair of navy briefs, he climbed under my comforter and lay on his side.
“Would Tylenol help?” I asked.
“I have some prescription Aleve in my bag.”
“I’ll get it.”
I found the bottle in his bag, read the dosage, and went to get some water. He sat up and took the pills, then lay back down again.
“What does it feel like?” I asked, sitting next to him on the bed.
He looked up at me, pain in his eyes. “After the surgery, I couldn’t eat much. Just liquids for a while and then soft foods like ice cream. Because they had to sew my intestines together. And there were sutures and stuff in there. So when food passed through, it hurt.”
I gritted my teeth. Fucking bullets. I rubbed his back through the comforter.
“The weird part is, the doctor says by now I shouldn’t have pain like this. Like, he thinks it’s psychosomatic or something.”
“Prick.”
Brian shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe he’s right. Sometimes it’s like… like I can feel the bullet inside. And that’s definitely all in my head. The bullet went all the way through.”
Hearing him talk about it made me feel enraged all over again. No seventeen-year-old should be hurt like this. I hated that Brian’s beautiful body had been ripped apart, that his glorious health—yes, he’d been fucking glorious—was being wasted away by nightmares and a gut that no longer worked right. I kept rubbing his back.
He barked a laugh. “God, Landon. Look at yourself in the mirror.” He nudged my arm and tilted his chin at the mirror across the room.
I looked over there. I was glowering so hard my face looked like a thundercloud. It made me laugh.
“Shut up! I can’t help it! I hate that you’re in pain.”
His smile softened. “Dude. It’ll pass. But that feels good. Could you, um, rub my back without the covers?”
“Sure.”
He pushed the comforter down to his hips, and I started rubbing the lower part of his back. He closed his eyes. “You can do it harder.”
I was worried about pressing directly on his scar, so I pushed up his T-shirt. The scar on his back was from the entry wound, small and round. It was more of a divot in his flesh, almost like a vaccination scar. I avoided it, pushing my thumb along the muscles on either side of his spine and the small of his back.
I felt Brian relax. His face went slack. He shifted to lie more on his stomach. I kept massaging him.
With his shirt pushed up, I could see the golden, lightly fuzzy skin on his back. Snug navy briefs gave me the best view I’d ever had of that amazingly round little behind. I swallowed hard and shifted to sit on his legs, so I could rub his lower back with both hands. I kept working, rubbing up with my thumbs in a way I thought would feel good.
“Is it helping?” I asked after a long while. I was surprised at how wrecked my voice sounded.
Shit. I was completely turned-on. That was embarrassing.
“It feels great,” Brian said, and his voice was shaky too.
He raised his head to look over his shoulder at me. “Would you mind doing the front? It’s tighter there.”
I hesitated. My current state would be obvious with him faceup. But how could I refuse?
“Yeah, sure.” I got off him so he could move.
My heart tried to make a suicide leap out of my chest as he turned over, pausing to strip off his T-shirt. He settled on his back, looking up at me.
Oh my God. He was so beautiful. And at the same time, ravaged-looking. He still had muscles in his arms, shoulders, and chest, but I could count his ribs, and his stomach was so flat it was nearly hollow. The exit scar was big, maybe three inches. The skin looked sort of tucked in around it. And there was still some faint discoloration.
It made me want to cry. I blinked hard.
Brian reached out and took my right hand. He pulled it toward him and placed it on his stomach, on the opposite side from his scar. His dark blue eyes were burning, and his lips tugged down. “Do I look that bad?”
“No,” I said, voice rough. “God, no. You’re… perfect.”
I felt dampness on my cheeks and wiped it away.
His chest rose and fell in a heavy breath. “Right here,” he said, moving my hand to show me where to rub.
I did, trying to be gentle. I moved to straddle his thighs again, and he kicked the comforter out of the way, so we fit together better. I touched him with both palms, smoothing them over his stomach, using the heat of my hands to warm his belly, touching everything but the area right around his incision. He closed his eyes. His hands rested on my legs, just above the knees. His palms seared through the denim of my jeans.
He tilted his head back and licked his lips. I finally had the guts to look at his crotch and, fuck, he was completely hard in his briefs. A rush of fire spread through my body.
“Brian,” I groaned.
My thumbs stroked his hip bones through his underwear.
He opened his eyes and stared up at me. “Don’t stop.”
“Are you still in pain?”
He shook his head once. “The pain is gone.” Then he grinned. “Magic hands.”
I smiled too, and it knocked the tension back a little. But then I looked down at his body and it flooded over me again, a tidal wave of feels. Sorrow for what he’d been through. Want so thick I felt light-headed with it. Love.
I took a shaky breath and scooted back so I could lean over him. I kissed his stomach above the incision once, just once, then raised my head to look at him. “Okay?”
In answer, he carded his fingers through my hair and nudged my head back down.
I resisted. “Are you sure?”
“Hell yes. I’m sure. Want you, Landon. Please.”
I felt a thrill at those words, at hearing him say my name in that gravelly voice.
All right, then. I was all in.
I kissed the exit scar, softly. He spread his legs so I could settle between them. I kissed his stomach, nuzzled his belly button. I kissed his too-prominent ribs, mouthed his hip bone. His erection throbbed against my neck, and I had to stop for a minute and gasp, my forehead on his ribs. God, the smell of him, the feel of him hot and hard against my throat. I could hardly believe it was real, that he was under me like this. That this was happening.
I was shaking.
“Come up here,” Brian whispered.
He pulled me up to his mouth and kissed me. This time there was no rhythm or finesse, just tongues and teeth and trying to devour each other. We kissed and kissed, our bodies tangling on the sheets. We pushed against each other, waves of pleasure coursing through me as I thrust against his hip bone. We could have got off like that. But I’d started something earlier, and I had it fixed in my mind. I wanted to finish it.
I moved down his body, kissing as I went. I peeled down his briefs and saw him for the first time. He was gorgeous. How could he not be? I took him in my hand and then into my mouth. His groans ran through me like electricity.
I’d only done this once before, but it didn’t matter. It was as natural as touching myself. Everything poured through me—everything I’d ever wanted to say, all the times I’d wanted to hold him, comfort him, explore him, and hadn’t dared. The life and hope I wanted to give him when he’d been dying under my hands that terrible day. All the desperate need I had for him to be okay, the pleasure and love I wished for him then and still. It was all right there waiting for me, waiting for him.
For Brian Marshall.
I gave him everything I had inside me to give, his hands soft and gentle in my hair.