Guest Post: Legion and Lover (5/6)

by Seuzz

"Ryan? Baby?" Vincent stood in the living room and called. "I got back from Toronto early, and I don't gotta go back in for a new sculpt until -- " He padded through the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom. "Honey? My man here -- " He slapped his chest proudly. "Played college football, kept in shape. Hung like a -- "

He broke off. The house was empty. Empty? It felt abandoned. Sterile beneath the faded floral scents.

Floral scents. Vincent tried to do what Tito had once suggested he do: Try to think more than three steps ahead.

The service came on Mondays, and this was Friday. Ryan was constitutionally incapable of not reducing a house to a pig sty in the space of four days. Ergo, he was out of town or at least on vacation from the house. But he had left no message for Vincent on where to find him. Ergo, Ryan was expecting to be back home before Vincent was scheduled to get back on Sunday. Ergo, Ryan was taking a vacation that he expected Vincent would not notice, and probably would not want his boyfriend noticing he had taken.

An ache opened up in Vincent's chest. His legs turned numb from the knees down as he went into the bedroom and began to methodically search the dressers, bureaus, and closets. The terrible thing was that even if he found nothing, that wouldn't prove a negative. But if he did find what he was afraid of finding --

And he found it. A box of condoms, something he and Ryan had never had in the house.

Worse, it was almost empty.

Vincent closed everything up, and checked into a hotel without leaving a note of his own behind.

* * * * *

"You want the good news or the bad news first?" Tito asked.

"There's good news?"

"The good news is I'm paying for these." Tito raised his whiskey in an ironic toast.

To Vincent it felt like iron fingers closing around his chest. Those fingers pressed hard at his breastbone, as if trying to crack it open and plunge through to pierce his heart. He let his head sink. He cupped his own whiskey in a nerveless hand.

Harsh music thumped nearby, and crimson lights strobed and throbbed against the wall. He was sitting in one of Cesar's crummy titty bars, and his alienation from the gyrating bodies on stage was like a commentary on the hollow place opening up within his chest. There was nothing here for him, either inside himself or outside.

"I suppose there's more good news, depending on how you want to interpret it," continued Tito. "They were all black like us."

Vincent spared Tito -- Trevon, now -- a wry glance. For a year now he had been a handsome son of a bitch, and a shade of ebony even deeper than Vincent's natural color. He was massive, solid, imperturbable, and with his shaved dome he exuded a granite-like gravity. Tito had always been competent; but in this face and form he now radiated it like a dark god.

If Tito hadn't been almost comically heterosexual, Vincent would have crawled into his lap and bawled like a child.

"But it was 'they'," said Vincent sourly. "More than one."

Tito seemed to weigh his words very carefully before surrendering to them with a sigh. "Yes, more than one. He's awfully cute, you know that. For years now he's been going to bars and sitting in the most visible spot until he's got a dozen brothers clustered all around him and jostling each other to -- " He stopped as Vincent drew a ragged breath. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to paint you a picture."

"You can cut out the 'brother' and 'black like me' shit while you're at it," Vincent said. "So you got yourself a sculpt. You ain't lived the life. You findin' it so easy, so smooth, so sweet to be -- ?"

Tito shrugged. "Sure, and I know I cheated to get it. Look at me, I got a secure job, I wear a suit, talk in a well-spoken way, and no one gives me any shit for fear I'll break their face with one good tap." He briefly flexed his hand. "That and the woman back home are the reason I went for this retirement package."

"I thought it was to stay alive."

"That too, but I think more about the fringe benefits."

Vincent said nothing for a very long time, and Tito let him be. Vincent felt the kind of numbness steal over him that bespoke a buzz turning into a drunk, and in the very back of his head he felt the prickling heat of anger that meant it could easily turn into a blistering, blind rage of a drunk. He alternately gripped and relaxed his hand around a whiskey glass that Tito pointedly did not offer to refill.

"I was putting off retirement," Vincent finally said in a slur. He got a firmer grip on his vocal muscles and started again. "I took to heart what you told me, but I put it off and put it off until that asshole doctor made a joke about cuttin' me up. I put it off and put it off 'cos that's all I got, just got this job. It was hard, but it got me outta where I was and who I was, got outta my shit life -- " He ground the heel of his hand into his eye and tried pushing back the wave of self-pity. "Got me away from Ryan even. I see that now. Think I always suspected, musta always knowed. I know he used to come into clubs, sit around and wait to be picked up. I caught him once and he told me what it was and I believed him like a fool, like a goddam' fool. I never let myself think he was lyin', 'cos I was too busy lyin' to myself about him and what he was doin', an' I think I musta just stayed away 'cos I didn't wanna risk havin' it shoved inna my face.

"But it was my own fault, basically," he continued after a long pause, during which he twisted and twisted the whiskey glass around. "I tempted him. Tempted him into lookin' at other guys 'cos he thought they might be me. Can't blame him for givin' in when it was just a tiny step from lookin' for a strange new man in his bed to pickin' one up and bringin' him in." Vincent's voice turned sloppier and sobbier. "An' it's because I moved into Plastics. Ryan wasn't enough for me, I had to get out of my own skin, to get away from all the shit I was carryin' with me. Ryan wasn't enough for me, so now I'm not enough for him. Even after I tried to be a couple of other people for him."

Tito let Vincent sit silently for a bit, then got him a tall glass of water from the bar and slapped some life into his hands, all to bring him back to a little clarity. And when he judged that Vincent  had beaten back the worst of the drunken self-pity, he said, "Ryan was a whore from the day you met him."

Vincent didn't react at first. Then he turned very black in the face and looked up at Tito.

"It didn't start when you transferred to Plastics," Tito said. "That just made it easier for him to screw around behind your back. The Company turns its people inside out, and it turns their friends and family inside out too. The day you joined the Company, the Company knew what kind of trash you were sleeping with. But you were happy not knowing, and the Company was just happy you were happy."

Tito took out a cell phone, and with a brush of his finger tip turned on the screen. "I took the liberty of hacking your boy's cell before coming to this meeting, so I had more than my word for it."

"For what?" Vincent growled.

"That for fifteen uninterrupted years Ryan has had lots of guys taking care of him," Tito said calmly. "You're just the asshole he wheedled a house and car out of, and are the one who didn't know about the others."

Vincent looked down at the screen. He scrolled down the contact list, numbly punching up details as they caught his eye. He was still in the C's when he was overborne by a need for another drink. He remembered swallowing it down with a shaking hand, but nothing else after that until waking the next morning.

* * * * *

"It's our ten year anniversary next month," Vincent said, and pulled Ryan closer to him.

"Oh God, don't say that," Ryan moaned. "Ten years. You know it sucks that you only look your best for the first half of your life, and for half of that period you aren't even legal."

Vincent snickered. "Do I need to book you for a little more preventative maintenance? Or will a kiss make it better? Here? Or here? Or maybe -- ?"

He got a third kiss onto Ryan before the latter squirmed away. "I have to get up early," he snapped, and turned over.

"Alright, baby." Ryan's hair tickled Vincent's nose as he kissed the back of his neck. "But I got six weeks off, and something special planned for our anniversary."

"Yeah?" Ryan said. He sounded interested, though he didn't turn around.

"Yeah. I was inspired by something you said a long time ago, kept it in the back of my mind as a surprise for you."

Now Ryan did turn over. "What? What is it?"

"I'm not going to tell you, it's a surprise."

"Tell me! Oh, I'll tickle you all over if you don't -- "

They laughed and probed and played, but when Vincent steadfastly refused to let slip the secret, Ryan quickly turned it into a bad sulk and slept the rest of the night with his shoulder to his lover ...