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There was a man in the library who was difficult not to notice, and he looked unhappy. Michael was not an observant person, but the stranger stood out: long coat, thick platform boots, eyes that seemed perpetually, suspiciously narrowed. And eyes in dark ink, circling his knuckles and elbows, gracing his shoulders — ribboning down his back, Michael suspected, because he’d put his hair up once and they’d been peeking out from behind his shirt collar, peering out along his spine and the back of his neck.
His hair was long, rarely clean, poorly dyed — cheap plasticky black bleeding into a dull blond at the crown of his head. His hands were beautiful, his nailpolish chipped, which Michael wondered if he ought to have noticed. He was hard to look away from. Something about him seemed frayed, like the crumbled edges of scorched paper, a spark falling to the floor. Michael felt like looking at him too long might set him alight. It wasn’t at all a feeling he disliked.
And it was a good distraction, which was what he liked the library for. The people who passed through every week, the familiar smiles and occasional laughing comments as they checked out another book, or the same one again, or something that made them get that abashed look that Michael always greeted with a comforting smile, a shake of the head to brush away their worries — such quiet, regular exchanges felt like a lifeline some days.
Part of him knew, or felt, that it was pathetic, that no patron thought of him with more than an idle, shallow fondness. There was nothing to the connections — they were little more than formality — but the streets outside were cold and dark and Michael hadn’t had anyone in such a long time. The library was warm. The lights were always on from the moment he arrived until he flicked them off in the evening, blowing a kiss to the dark room and its lingering heat, the memory of rustling pages and hushed conversation.
Still, lately even that hadn’t felt like enough — it was winter, and things were slower, and home was colder and bleaker and even the yellow light of his library didn’t feel enough to thaw Michael’s heart, which was cold and tired and unwilling to beat. The stranger with his strange hair, the stained leather of his coat, his tired eyes, was a welcome distraction.
He had first come in a couple of weeks ago, eyes low and angry and hands held too deliberately at his sides, and Michael had not trusted him. But he had been quiet and waited, and the stranger had done nothing more than browse the shelves with a wary, near-frightened look — he seemed more as if he were afraid of the books than as though they had cause to fear him. In the end he had placed a heavy leather volume on the counter, and Michael had not been able to meet his eyes as he checked it out.
The more he had come by the clearer it had become that he was tense, not dangerous. Nervous. Unhappy. Michael’s instinct had always been to help. The stranger looked in need of it, and Michael was curious, too — something in the way his eyes moved, or the curve of his mouth when he gave a book a sardonic half-smile — Michael found him enticing.
He had more or less abandoned the idea of a genuine end to loneliness, to the sadness that always found a way to lay its clammy hands on him even when the sun was bright and the air warm. Venturing out rarely treated him well, and he had come home shaking and more miserable than he had begun too many nights; close, singular relationships tended to fare worse. They wanted what he could or would not give, or he got too attached, demanded too much in his own way. But in the daylight, with the hum and chatter of others at their own business around, a brief, fleeting interaction or three could breathe brief, fragile life into the forgotten spark languishing between his ribs, and he could go to sleep feeling a little warmer than usual.
The man in the library looked like he might be the sort of person who made that possible — sad eyes, a rare sarcastic smile that only touched the left side of his mouth, a certain deliberate quality to the way he moved that drew Michael’s eyes and held them. And he kept returning; he hadn’t said a word yet, and sometimes there were bruises on his face, his upper arms, and always there were bruises under his eyes, but Michael had hope. It had always been a failing of his.
“Can I help you find anything?” The question was soft-spoken, so much so that Gerry might not have realised it was directed at him had this part of the library not been so empty. He turned, thankful for the excuse to pull his eyes away from the mouldering book in his hands. It smelled of mildew. Most of the books she liked did, and it made him feel slightly ill.
It was the librarian. The pretty one with wide grey eyes, too attentive, whose gaze was gentle and interested and everything Gerry did not want. He had avoided looking at him too closely, but he was close now and in the dreary aisle he was the brightest thing — strawberry earrings, a pale blue sweater with soft white clouds, round glasses and a cinnamon-dusting of freckles. A few curls were escaping his low ponytail, and he tucked them behind his ear. He looked earnest. Curious.
He couldn’t help Gerry. “No,” he said. The book was very heavy in his hands. “Thanks.”
“Oh,” said the librarian; and then, “Are you sure?”
Gerry raised an eyebrow, not looking up. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Oh, y- you just tend to spend a lot of time back here, and — and I thought maybe you were looking for something specific and I could help speed up the search, but I — maybe you’re just browsing, I’m sorry —” he sounded flustered. Gerry wondered, idly, if he’d be blushing when he looked up. He was, lightly, a dusting of pink on his cheeks, creeping up from under his turtleneck.
“Don’t worry,” said Gerry lightly. “I appreciate the offer. But I’m really fine.” He kept his voice even, careful not to betray the frustrating swell and tangle of emotion, a knotted ball at the bottom of the deep unplumbed well in his chest. He had spoken the word help so softly, tilted his head so curiously, and Gerry couldn’t remember the last time he’d been listened to, offered anything out of kindness.
He was weak; but he knew that. Mary knew that. He didn’t know the difference, really.
“Alright, well.” The librarian sighed, a sweet strange sound, a gentler creaking of branches in the wind. “Let me know if you do need anything. Ask for Michael.” And he offered a gap-toothed smile and turned away.
Gerry told himself he wouldn’t accept the offer, but he did. Two weeks later, when the cold winter rain was so harsh he was sure it’d turn to snow, and by the time the next morning came they’d be snowed in, and he didn’t want to return to Mary for that. Of course, he had nowhere else to go; and he knew by the end of the night he’d drive his way through sleet and gathering winds to knock pitifully at her front door, and she’d come down the stairs and welcome him home with pursed lips and a scornful cough. There would be a candle dripping the last of its waxy life out onto the splintering table, the cobwebs whispering up in the corners, the rust-red sickening sheen his mother cast over everything.
But for now he could turn left at the corner for the library, shake himself off and comb the water from his hair as best he could in the lobby, and walk out of the ice-white dripping blackness into the library.
It was very quiet. He realised too late that it was well past seven, probably closing in on closing time, and the only other patron was an old man browsing the movie shelves with a shaking hand. The pretty librarian — Michael — was bent over something in one of the cozy little offices visible behind the main desk, his hair tumbling over his face, lamplight dancing low and burnished along his already-golden curls.
What the hell. It was late, and Gerry was tired and desperate and wanted to hear somebody’s voice. He approached the desk, hesitant and unsure of himself, looking for a bell; but Michael must have noticed the motion and glanced up, because suddenly he was there, speaking some warm greeting and smiling. His eyes crinkled at the corners. His glasses were a little smudged.
“Hi,” said Gerry.
“Welcome,” said Michael, for what Gerry thought was the second time. “Do — can I help?”
Gerry laughed, not really amused but somewhat endeared by the question. “Do you have a minute?”
Michael turned, glanced at the clock high on the wall behind him; a few curls spilled over his shoulder with the motion, straw-blond against the pleasant green of his sweater. “I do, yeah,” he said, turning back. “About thirty of them, actually, before I should start closing.”
Gerry nodded. “Thanks,” he said, feeling a bit adrift. He didn’t have a plan for what he might ask. “Do you … I mean, I usually come here for rare books or — or old ones, but I don’t really … want to … this time …”
A crease appeared between Michael’s brows. “Come here,” he said, moving out from behind the desk and over to a little round table in a snug corner of the main room. Wide windows stretched very nearly floor to ceiling, and the rain ran down them in dark ceaseless rivulets, pooling at the bottom before spilling or trickling out of sight. Gerry cast a concerned look toward the desk, but Michael just shook his head and gestured toward the seat he’d pulled out. “Go on, don’t worry. I’ll notice if anyone comes in, but they won’t.” He sounded almost sad at the idea. But he looked almost eager, holding out the chair, so Gerry sat down and watched as Michael took the place opposite him.
“What brings you here?” he asked, voice quiet but still clear, even with the muffled rush of rain against the windows. The whole building was quiet. Serene, in the eerie way public places are late at night in a storm.
Gerry wasn’t certain how to answer.
After a few moments of silence, Michael tried again. “Um, is there … is there something I can call you?”
Gerry blinked. He’d forgotten he hadn’t shared his name, or he’d fallen so out of the habit of doing so that it hadn’t occurred to him. “Ger — Gerry,” he said, and then stopped. He hadn’t meant to share that name, hadn’t really planned to; but it felt right. It was a strange night, wild and wilful, and Gerry felt reckless.
“Thank you, Gerry,” said Michael, which struck him as an odd response. The tone was a touch too sincere, the thank you too genuine to make sense.
“Not a problem,” muttered Gerry. He wanted to say something else, give Michael something else to go on, but there was nothing. The rain beat the windows. Mary’s voice echoed in his head, calling him home. The chair he was sitting in was comfortable, cushioned.
“You said you usually come here about old books?” asked Michael, curiosity in that strange uneven voice of his.
“Yeah,” sighed Gerry. “For my mum.”
Michael brightened. He was so expressive, so open, his face unguarded and honest. And also usually sad, Gerry remembered, and worried that that was honesty too. “Is she an enthusiast? You should bring her someti—”
“No,” said Gerry, and watched the little crease between his brows reform. “She’s …” she was many things. She was going to kill him one day. “She isn’t very nice,” he said at last; “I don’t think you’d like her.”
Michael’s face fell; his hand twitched, and then went still.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mention it.” Gerry cast about for a change of subject. “Do you, uh — are you an enthusiast?”
Michael giggled, hid the sound behind his hand. He had very pleasantly shaped fingernails. “I’m enthusiastic about all books. They’re … my friends.” It rang hollow, too much like the complete truth, the omitted only echoing in the dull air. “Do you want any recommendations?”
Gerry shook his head. Shrugged. “I rarely read myself.” Michael’s eyes widened a bit. It was cute, the look of near-surprise at the statement. Gerry was playing with fire, getting endeared. He didn’t want a friend. He couldn’t need one. He needed Mary, or to get away from Mary, and he didn’t need anyone else’s worry — or worse, to worry about anyone else and the sadness in their foggy eyes. “I mean, you can if you want,” he said, mouth moving on its own. “Maybe you’ll change my mind.” He half-smiled.
Michael returned it hesitantly. “I’ll write a list,” he said, pulling a pad of paper and an abandoned pen toward him. “You can check a few out. Tell me if you liked them — or if you read them — when you come back.”
Gerry nodded, watched his hand move across the paper. His writing was pleasant, not neat but satisfying to look at, to see form. A minute later Michael handed him the list and he examined it, picked out a few titles that Michael had starred, and stood up in search of them.
He felt awkward, out of place. The clock was counting down to closing time and the old man had left, and the building did not echo but it seemed to, his footprints harsh against carpeted floors, Michael’s shuffling of paper too loud in the quiet.
“Take care of yourself,” said Michael when he had scanned the last book and slid it across the table to Gerry. “See you again soon.”
“Yeah, you too.” His voice rushed, watery — he was weak. He didn’t want to go home.
He waved goodbye and tucked the books in his coat, and left the warmth behind for the weeping night. Through the rain on the windows of his car the library windows swam, golden and radiant and dripping with light, and Michael’s head with its halo of untidy curls wavered through the thin rivers of water for a moment before he flipped a switch and the lights went out, leaving Gerry in the dark.
He came back. More and more regularly, Michael could expect him, until in addition to his ordinary trips for his mother Gerry would return at the end of each week, late Friday nights when the library was very near empty. At first he read nothing Michael lent him, and he patiently renewed them at Gerry’s half-ironic, half-earnest insistence — that peculiar determined light in his eyes every time.
But it wasn’t really about the books. Gerry had an easy confidence to him, despite all his tension; he never really relaxed, but conversation seemed to come naturally, and he had a frank wry way of speaking that put Michael very much at ease. He was honest, not unguarded but uninhibited, and he made it easier for Michael to be open too.
He was not open enough, perhaps — or perhaps it was better that Michael didn’t know the source of the bruises and scrapes he seemed to gain daily — dark ugly things on his neck, too harsh to have any sort of pleasant origin; blossoms wilting from midnight purple to sickly yellow on his jaw; raw knuckles, scratched nose, and the fading marks around his wrist that he tried to cover up, purple welts and the dull scabbed-over imprints of nails. He could guess, anyway, where they came from. Gerry’s eyes glazed over and his voice grew low and flat whenever he brought up his mother. Michael’s hands itched looking at him, but he kept them still.
For all that Gerry worried him, he knew he did the same in return. Loneliness and his usual state of apathy were difficult to hide and more so every day. A misplaced comment, an idle wish or lamentation, and he did not miss the way Gerry’s eyes would focus, fix on him like he was a puzzle Gerry wanted to solve. It didn’t feel invasive, somehow, as it ought to; it felt gentle, worried in a way that was laced with understanding. The clammy grip around Michael’s heart tightened and he shook himself, shuddered the feeling away. He would not allow himself to be disappointed.
But it was difficult. When Gerry offered help he did so quietly, in attentive silences and quiet nods; invitations rather than demands, subtly given, difficult to refuse. Michael let himself be led by the hand, let Gerry’s listening draw out some sore ragged part of his heart and polish it, against his better judgement — but it felt good.
They talked. They took friendship at its usual price, the fear that came with loving, but Michael thought it felt different this time. Separate, surmountable. Fear was fear, and love was love, and as much as Michael was unwilling to think of it as such it was hard to feel anything else when Gerry smiled his crooked smile, leaned on the palms of his scarred hands and listened, held Michael’s hand and quietly offered him a tissue when he cried, scanning the room for any late-straggling patrons but finding none.
Spring came. Their meetings were less frequent — Gerry mumbled something about his mother keeping him busy, and the library too was more crowded and people lingered later into the night. Michael was needed; Gerry was needed. Crocuses bloomed and the spark hummed in its quiet way inside Michael’s chest, not really enough to keep the exhaustion out but enough to keep him going.
“Do you like it here?” asked Gerry.
Michael looked up at the room, the high wooden rafters and the simple shelves with their rows of books. The small, unassuming stack of leatherbound volumes at Gerry’s elbow that he kept casting half-fearful, half-frustrated glances toward. The desk. The comfortable chairs and benches with their few late-night patrons curled up and reading or tapping at their phones. The electric kettle and paper cups for tea.
“Yes,” he said, and then: “I don’t know. I … don’t know if I like it anywhere.”
Gerry’s brow furrowed, but he was steady — unlike Michael, he rarely fidgeted when anxious. “Why here specifically?”
“Why don’t I like it?”
Gerry shook his head, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Why do you like it a little more than anywhere else?”
Michael met his eyes. Steady, warm brown in the lamplight. “Can we go somewhere?”
“Huh?” Gerry looked taken aback.
“Tonight. Can we — get out somewhere. Together.” The clock ticked on the wall — ten minutes to eight, and Michael would close and go back to his flat, where it was cold and he’d remember Gerry’s expression closing, folding up and turning flat in anticipation of his own journey home.
It was folding up a little now, uncertain and guarded. “You want to go out with me?”
Michael flushed, froze; he had been speaking on instinct, frustrated and eager for a change, a way out, a way open even if only for the night. “I — oh no, no like that, I’m so sorry—”
“Oh.” Gerry smiled. “Michael, relax.” Michael did not relax, and Gerry reached out and let his hand hover over Michael’s, curled into a tight fist on the tabletop. Michael nodded. Gerry let his hand fall, settle clumsily on top of it. His fingers were rough, pleasant, and his thumb moved slowly back and forth against the juncture of Michael’s wrist. Soothing. “What do you want?”
He made it so easy to be brave. Straightforward. “I want you to take me out.”
“But not like that.” Gerry’s eyes were playful, his voice teasing. Michael giggled.
“I … yes. Not like that.” He knew he sounded abashed, could feel the blush colouring his cheeks, and he knew he might care later but now he didn’t — now Gerry was grinning at him across the table and he thought he might break through the apathy, even if only for a night.
“Where?”
Michael considered. “Somewhere with people.” He wanted warmth, voices raised and dancing in the night air, lights bouncing off indistinguishable faces; all the things he couldn’t have alone, but might enjoy if they were shared.
Gerry raised an eyebrow, his grin only broadening. “I’m not enough for you?” It was a statement of pure melodrama, stitched with sarcasm — Michael laughed in spite of himself.
“You know what I mean,” he mumbled, very nearly whining, and Gerry laughed.
“I do, I’m sorry. Anywhere you want, Michael.” A squeeze of the hand. His eyes steady on Michael’s. The clock on the wall said 8:00 and Michael nodded, rose.
“I want to see life,” he said.
Gerry didn’t miss the phrasing. The passive, observational tone of it. He recognized the withdrawn look in his eyes, the caution, and he offered his hand again when they were both standing. He wanted to do something. Michael was lovely, and Gerry wasn’t certain he entirely understood him but in spite of his best intentions, he cared for him. He didn’t need to understand to want Michael well, to accept that something hurt in him and try his best to draw it out, a thorn from tender skin.
If he wanted to go out, Gerry would take him out.
He had watched Michael closing before — the slow, methodical way he moved from room to room, almost ghostlike, straightening piles of books and closing shades and flicking off lights, the warm dusty dark following him like a cloak, a long shadowy train behind his sparklike form. His sweater today was dusk-pink, the cuffs scattered with purple flowers, and his hair was tightly braided as it so rarely was. He carried himself so strangely, always — the hesitant way he moved somehow still elegant, his height doing little to make him seem less small.
He always stood in the big window last, looked out into the fathomless night past the reflection of his own eyes in the dark glass before dousing the light with a twitch of his hand. Gerry blinked in the sudden blackness, listening to the sound of Michael drawing down the blind, and then his breathing was at Gerry’s side and his face swam into focus through the grey-black air, smiling sweet and soft, his fingers feeling for Gerry’s and lacing tight.
Being in the car with Michael felt strange — they’d never driven together, had always parted at the library door, and Gerry was too aware of Michael’s presence in the passenger seat, couldn’t help casting him anxious glances as he turned the keys, rolled out of the library parking lot and into the night. Michael looked about as uncertain as he felt, long spindly fingers fiddling with his seatbelt or a curl that had sprung loose from his braid.
“So … just anywhere?” asked Gerry.
“Anywhere,” said Michael, thin-voiced. Gerry glanced at him, his face pale and solemn, shadowed under the eyes. “Somewhere with music. And dancing.” It wouldn’t have been what Gerry had expected, and he huffed a laugh as he chose a direction and turned his eyes back to the road. The library was off a ways down a quieter street, tree-lined and dim, and the faint shimmer of lights from the town at the end of the road grew larger and brighter until they were there, where illuminated signs and stoplights and the headlights of other cars dazzled their eyes, slowed Gerry’s driving, trapped them between the shine and the shadow, the cheap dingy glamour of neon and the flicker of failing electric streetlamps.
Nothing looked quite right. Gerry checked on Michael every few seconds, watched his expression shift from anxiety to a kind of dull curiosity, never quite lighting up but paying close attention to the signs they passed, the words etched in luminescent pink and green against the night.
And after a while he made some quiet sound and Gerry slowed the car to a crawl, followed his pointing finger to a half-dead sign and a grimy window. Michael rolled down his own window, and through the faint hiss of traffic on some nearby highway and the rustling of fresh-formed leaves in the breeze came the muffled clamour of music and raised voices.
“There?” asked Gerry. Michael nodded, the uncertain smile on his face growing to that strange half-confident grin he got sometimes, gap-toothed and adorable, and led Gerry by the hand, down a short set of steps and into the club.
“I used to go here,” he muttered as they entered — nothing more, just a tacit acknowledgement of known ground. No particular fondness, no particular pain. It was an empty statement.
But Michael didn’t look empty. He was slow at first, and shy, keeping to himself in a corner of the room while Gerry went to the bar and ordered two glasses of orange juice, remembering that Michael didn’t drink and not wanting him to feel alienated. The widening of his eyes was familiar by now, and Gerry noticed it with satisfaction when Michael took his drink, held it to his face to hide his quiet giggle.
And slowly, as the night wore on and time lost meaning and lights shifted with the tone of the music, Gerry watched something very strange happen to Michael Shelley. He lost himself, a little at a time, dropping the careful mannerisms of his composure one by one, his face relaxing and his smile growing easy, unselfconscious. Gerry had moved into the crowd of dancing people some time ago — hesitant to leave Michael behind, but convinced at last by his eager encouragement — and now Michael danced out to join him, swaying with the push and pull of the music, the slow liquid slide of droning notes or the harsher rhythm of drums, and he held out his hands and Gerry took them and they were dancing together.
Gerry probably lost himself too in that dance. He wasn’t sure. He felt lighter than he had in years — maybe ever — and Michael’s hands had found their way to his waist, his hips, an easy comfortable gesture of closeness, friendship, that felt somehow foreign and right at the same time. And then Michael would move off somewhere in the crowd and Gerry would watch him through the blur of lights and bodies and sound as he moved to the music, tugged at the elastics holding his braids together and ran frustrated fingers through them until his curls sprang loose, tangled and frizzy and radiant, a thousand colours in the competing illuminations of that place.
It buzzed. Hummed. The night was alive with chatter and music and Michael was so close and so joyful, briefly and incandescently, and Gerry had abandoned his coat on a chair and thrown himself into the music with as much abandon and his heart was fast and he felt too hot and dizzy and alive. It could have been any time when at last they settled, picked up Gerry’s coat and Michael’s sweater and stumbled out into the cool night.
Michael sighed, and it sounded lighter than usual, stretching his bare arms to the stuttering streetlight above and shaking out his tangled curls with a yawn. “Thank you, Gerry,” he said, not meeting Gerry’s eyes. A small, shy smile on his lips, the high fevered flush in his face fading now as they made their way back to the car.
It became regular. Gerry would stay late at the library on weekends and they’d leave together in his car, drive for ten minutes or half an hour or an hour until they found some bright-dark place brimming with noise. For a month or two Gerry vanished with his mother, grateful to have asked for Michael’s number just the week before; and when he returned it was Summer, the trees full-leafed and the nighttimes louder than ever. There were new scars along Gerry’s jaw, some puckered skin at the collar of his shirt that looked like a bad burn; but he frowned when Michael asked and muttered that it didn’t matter.
So they took to the road and the roadside and the dancefloor, the darkened corners of hot noisy rooms where they drank orange juice and laughed with each other through the fog of people’s voices. It was good. Michael didn’t know if he was better — the months of Gerry’s absence, and even the early-morning-late-night hours after Gerry dropped him back at home, were still gloomy and cold — but the reprieves felt better, fuller than they had in a long time.
And Gerry looked good dancing. Better, happier than he had when Michael had met him, or than he did early on in their evenings, before the music took hold of him and he moved with a strange kind of fervor — something very nearly angry about the motions, but not harsh; it looked like catharsis.
And he was gentle, unbearably so, with Michael — even as they moved together to the loudest of songs, even when there was nothing soft in the music or the motions, his hands in Michael’s — or gracing his hips or settling briefly on his shoulders — were only strong and steady. There was something reassuring about it, thrilling in being able to trust him to dance in synchrony, comfort in the press of his body and the way it felt like shelter rather than invasion.
One night when the clock on the wall was blurred by adrenaline and smoke — it might have been midnight or three in the morning and Michael didn’t care, didn’t wonder with Gerry’s hands guiding him closer and the music making him feel alight with a pleasant kind of nerves — Gerry paused, smiled strangely at him, blue light dancing dim over the uncertain angles of his face.
“Can I kiss you?” he said.
And Michael said “Yes,” and Gerry grinned and cupped his cheek in one strong hand and kissed him, his free arm wrapping around Michael’s waist when he kissed back. Something about it still seemed in time with the music, or maybe nothing was in time with anything and Michael was delighting in the asynchrony, the thrum of guitars over the speakers and the movement of Gerry’s lips and the dance of multicoloured light behind his closed eyelids. The hand burying itself in his wild hair. He wrapped his arms around Gerry’s neck and swayed slightly to the music, and Gerry chuckled against his lips and pulled away to continue their dance.
Michael had expected a discussion after that but none came, beyond the question — repeated regularly — of whether this was okay at all, if Michael enjoyed it, if he wanted Gerry to stop. He didn’t want Gerry to stop. Some nights they greeted one another with a kiss, and others they only waved, grinned, and set out laughing for the next patch of lights. Michael offered to drive and Gerry said yes, curled up oddly small in the passenger seat of his own car and closed his eyes, humming under his breath all the way to the next town over.
On the way home, Gerry sat facing him again, watching his beautiful face be swallowed by shadows, briefly illuminated by passing headlights until they were far enough out of town — taking the backroads home — that they were the only ones on the road.
After a while Michael pointed ahead of them, where an underpass loomed dark across the empty roadway. “Can we stop there?”
Gerry raised an eyebrow. “In the middle of the road?”
“Nobody else is on it,” Michael said, shrugging. “And I want to see the stars.” He pulled to the side of the road beneath the underpass, opened the car door, and stepped out, beckoning Gerry into the night with him. Gerry joined him. It was strange and stark, a silent stretch of tarmac in either direction, the shadow of the underpass embracing them before they stepped out into a pool of moonlight, Michael’s hand finding Gerry’s and squeezing.
“No stars,” said Gerry. The leaves at the side of the road rustled, as if in agreement.
“A few,” Michael corrected him, pointing to the lower part of the sky in front of them where the moonlight wasn’t as overwhelming. He was right. A few stars lay scattered above the treeline, dropped and forgotten and found again. “Thank you.”
Gerry nodded. “We should go back to the car soon, though.”
Michael leaned against his shoulder, and there was a smile in his voice when he spoke next. “Yes. Can I have a minute?” Gerry glanced at him curiously, but nodded, letting go of his hand with the usual lingering of fingertips and turning back to the car.
From the passenger seat he watched Michael standing in the drooping moonlight, hands clasped in front of him, staring at the road. The horizon, maybe, or the thick yellow lines or the limitless expanse of tar waiting to be travelled anywhere. He looked like he was praying, but Gerry knew Michael didn’t pray. Wishing, maybe.
It might have been selfish. But he couldn’t help it — he wondered if it was the same wish he had, to keep driving with Michael until the world fell away and they could leave it behind. The dark-windowed apartment Michael always looked at with something like dread, pulling himself away from the warmth of the car and trudging up the steps to his building like he was walking to the gallows, whatever sweater he’d discarded dancing clutched limply at his side. The narrow, stifling walls of Pinhole Books, with their rare and virtueless treasures and his mother’s cold voice, cold gaze, cold hands digging into his wrists. Everything that did not serve them, dropping down behind them like so many cardboard images, and only the music and the lights and some inevitable, better place in front of them always.
Maybe that was what Michael was thinking about. Maybe he wanted it as much as Gerry did, and maybe — he was turning back now, brushing his hair behind his ear and glancing at the ground — maybe when he opened the car door and sat down Gerry could ask him. Take me away. Drive me out of here, please, and don’t ever bring me back. Will you? Won’t you?
And then he was close, waving with his gentle smile through the windshield and pulling open his door. Gerry opened his mouth, and Michael settled with a sigh into the driver’s seat, tossing his hair back over his shoulders and flashing Gerry a sweet smile as he turned the key; and Gerry was afraid, suddenly, to say anything that might ruin that perfect image of contentment, shatter this brief, already-fragmentary joy they’d found.
Michael turned the key and the shadow of the underpass flowed over them and collapsed in flat, dark static behind them, and the road would not remember that they were there, but Gerry would. Gerry didn’t want to be anywhere else. Gerry desperately, achingly did not want to go home.
Outside Michael’s building, in the dull glare of the streetlights, Michael stopped the car and mumbled a sleepy farewell, moved to get out and meet Gerry at the front of the car, to clasp him briefly in a hug before Gerry took the driver’s seat and watched him until he vanished inside. But Gerry’s heart was worn out and flayed, and he couldn’t let go — clung to the back of Michael’s top, a washed-out orange-pink in this poor luminescence.
“Are you alright?” Michael murmured after a minute, fingering Gerry’s hair, an idle, anxious fidget.
“Can I stay?” asked Gerry, voice muffled in the crook of his neck. “Can I — can I please stay?”
Michael took him by the shoulders, held him a little ways away — still close enough to feel his warmth — and regarded him seriously. “Of course,” he said, eyes darting back to his building with not a little trepidation. “Of … of course you can. You can stay.”
The inside of Michael’s flat was not spare or lonely as Gerry had half-expected, but warm and cluttered with little things — multicoloured stickynotes on the inside of the door, bearing scribbled reminders for appointments and overdue books; a sunflower, slightly wilted, in the centre of the table — books stacked on the corners of his desk, spiralling up from the floor like staircases that weren’t quite sure of themselves. It looked cozy, warm, and the lights were Gerry’s favourite shade of pale, warm orange-gold — welcoming.
“Make yourself at home,” said Michael, and Gerry didn’t know how to say that he didn’t have to, that this place smelled and looked like Michael and he already wanted to cry from how much he felt at home. Maybe they wouldn’t have to travel. Maybe they could stay here, together, and he would never see Mary again though she was only a ten-minute drive away.
Of course he couldn’t. Mary had always been adept at finding him. The thought stayed as Michael made them both tea, as they sat together in comfortable, tired silence at the table, worn out from dancing the night away; as they showered, washed the sweat and exhaustion from their hair, their weary bodies; as he accepted a soft blanket from Michael and a goodnight kiss, slow and sweet and lingering, and took his place on the couch.
He stared up at the ceiling. A small green light was blinking from some electronic device or another. He was tired, but he wasn’t sleepy — he could hear Michael tossing and turning in the next room, probably struggling to get any rest himself.
He could never run. He didn’t remember a time when he hadn’t wanted to. Five years old, clutching at his father’s hand, his voice weak and broken from screaming when Mary had taken him on a field trip earlier that day. “Can you take me away, Da?”
His father, months from death, weeks from the accident with a scalpel that Gerry, even then, would know was deliberate: “I can’t, Gerry.” That nickname, so gently spoken — “I’m sorry,” — and Gerry, small and tired and hoarse, was gathered into strong arms and protected.
“Why not?”
Eric rubbed his back, held him close in the gathering dark. “She’d find us, honey.”
Gerry looked up at him, exhaustion sagging under his eyes, etched heavy in the set of his mouth. “How?”
Eric shook his head. “I don’t know. I … I don’t know.”
Thirteen, and he tried to run away. It didn’t even last a day, nor did it at fifteen, nor at sixteen. If he were going to try again, he’d have to go fast and far and without preparation — without warning, without leaving any sign that she could see and know to prepare by. To stay here, where it was warm and sweet-smelling and soft, was laughable.
He fell, fitfully, into sleep, and managed a few hours before dawn.
Michael woke up feeling less miserable than usual, and he rolled over and blinked at the clock — 8:30, earlier than he usually managed after their late nights out — before he remembered why. The shuffle of someone moving in the other room — Gerry — and Michael was out of bed, brushing back his hair and stepping out into the light of the next room to greet him. His door was open; not his habit at night, but he had wanted to be available for Gerry should he need anything, and maybe it was the light flooding into his room that had woken him.
“Good morning,” he said, surprised to feel himself smiling so early in the day.
“Hi,” said Gerry, looking up from the sofa and the book that he must have brought in from his car. “You look sleepy.”
Michael laughed, threw himself down on the couch and cuddled close. Comfort like this still felt dangerous, but it had also started to feel so complete — utter contentment in the way Gerry wrapped an arm close around his shoulders, hummed at the kiss Michael pressed to his neck and rested his head against Michael’s curls as he continued to read.
Something about being together in the morning was strange, and Michael was starting to realise how rarely he’d seen Gerry in natural daylight — the lamps of the library or the dark of the road or the bright flash and shift of club lighting were their routine. He looked more drawn in the sun, the circles under his eyes and the tension in the set of his mouth and jaw less washed-out, clearer. Michael idly brought a finger to trace his eyebrow, pleased at the sigh he let out and the way his face relaxed a bit.
“Tell me when you want me to leave,” said Gerry; and Michael thought never, please , but only shrugged and hummed.
“When you like. I have no plans.” It was Sunday. The library was closed.
So the day wore on, and felt a bit wrong, a bit strange and unreal with Gerry in the rooms Michael had come to associate so strongly with loneliness.
“I love you,” said one of them at one point — the sun making everything into dreamland, and duly vulnerable — “I love you,” said the other, and that was that.
The sun set.
“I don’t know if I want to go out,” said Michael, still tired, still floating aimlessly through an illusion he knew — was certain — would collapse.
“Me neither,” said Gerry. “But I don’t want to go home.”
Michael knew. Gerry never wanted to go home.
“What if we just drove?” he offered, and Gerry’s eyes widened, his lips parted slightly in surprise.
“What?”
“You don’t want to go home. Will you want to go home tomorrow? Where do you want to go instead?”
Eyes narrowed; not in suspicion, Michael knew by now, but in disbelief. “What are you saying?”
What was he saying? He was saying that the flat was too big, that all the bright colours were lovely and made him warm some days but he was still too cold. He was saying that the world was warmer in Gerry’s car, the colours brighter at his side. He was saying that he didn’t have anywhere to call home, not really, and he didn’t think Gerry did either. “I’m saying …” he began, and stopped, slowed himself, made certain he was certain before going on. “I’m saying let’s drive and not stop. Take me out of here? I — where do you want to go ?”
Gerry was looking at him like he’d carved open the earth, layers of rock melting and bending aside at the touch of his hands, and shown him something soft and lovely at the centre. “Anywhere,” he breathed. “I don’t — I don’t care, I don’t care, Michael, as long as — with you? Would you come?”
“I’d come,” said Michael, and grinned through nerves, through sorrow, for Gerry. “I’d insist.”
Gerry nodded, his own smile bright enough to burn. Scorched paper catching alight at last, and it was beautiful and warm after all. “When?”
“Now?” said Michael.
“For how long?”
Another cursory glance around the flat. It couldn’t be forever, of course; but for a while, with what money he had saved, with what Gerry had spoken of taking from his mother, once or twice in his low sarcastic way — “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “As long as we want, I guess. However long … however long feels like enough.”
It wasn’t a plan, not really, and they both knew it. Still, Michael recognized hope in Gerry’s eyes when he saw it, and as sweet and fickle as it had always been for him it made him feel warm. “Long enough,” he mumbled. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He held out his hand, a grin growing crooked and lovely on his face, and Michael clasped his hand and leaned in to kiss him — and one kiss turned to many until they were a pile on the couch, giggling and pressed close, Michael’s nose against Gerry’s neck, Gerry’s breath brushing the shell of his ear.
Bags were packed. A brief stop outside Pinhole Books — which Michael had never seen, and which he did not like the look of, its tall dark sides staggering up into the sky like something hungry— for Gerry to take what funds he could from his mother, sound asleep; and then the road was theirs, and they were tired and giggly and feeling far too young for all their worn-out youth.
They drove for hours that first night. Past their usual haunts, the white-blue-crimson glare of hotel signs, the dizzying neon of bars and their favourite club, the pale forgetful streetlights lining the road alongside the dark river. Past the place where town gave way to empty forest and field, and past the place where again it all blossomed into light and sound, the bloom of exhaust and the glitter of lit apartment windows, late-night restaurants, roadside lights and the endless red eyes on the backs of passing cars.
“We could die out here,” said Gerry. Eyes on the road, hands loose around the steering wheel— there was no reason to say it, but Michael thought he understood. The late hour or the glimmering night, the rush of darker shapes on the road beside them; the mind wandered. “A bus … some truck that goes a little off course …” He made a quiet sound, a crashing sound, and it was oddly contemplative but still didn’t sound fully serious.
Michael regarded him for only a second before leaning back against his headrest, eyes fluttering closed. “It’d be a privilege,” he murmured, tucking one hand behind his neck.
There was a pause from the driver’s seat, and then, “Sorry?”
A brief flare of light — some passing car — lit the backs of Michael’s eyelids red. Curiosity in Gerry’s voice, confusion, and below them the old familiar concern, raw and genuine. Michael felt the corner of his mouth turn up in spite of himself. “To die by your side.”
The pause this time was a bit lighter, and then Gerry breathed a sigh that was more than half a laugh. “A pleasure,” he said, wry amusement in his voice, and Michael opened his eyes, turned his head sleepily to look at him in the low light. He’d had the same idea, and met Michael’s gaze with his crooked smile, tired around the edges, before turning back to the road.
He looked content. All the tension that had filled him at the beginning was gone, his shoulders relaxed, blue-orange-red blurring over the easy smile, the slack joints of his hands. Something like pride bubbled in Michael’s stomach. Something like happiness. It all felt endless, and the frail stuttering spark between his ribs hadn’t felt this alive in months — in years. He thought it might become a flame soon. A little candle, steady and burning in the white cage of his bones, warmed by the current of his blood, kept pumping just a little faster by the sweet quiet thrill of Gerry’s company.
Ahead a car wobbled a little along its route. A plane blinked overhead in the night sky, too low, closing in to land. A traffic light blinked from green to yellow to red, and Gerry slowed them to a stop, willing to wait — they had all the time in the world.
Gerry didn’t know how long they had been driving, but the freeway stretched its long limbs endlessly in both directions, light smudged in long red and gold trails, glittering purple-blue-green from the sides of the road. There was no music save the rush and hum of traffic, the hiss of the rain that had started half an hour ago, and Michael’s gentle breathing. He’d fallen asleep — Gerry wasn’t certain when — they had been talking, and then they had not, and after a while Michael had sighed quietly, murmured something incomprehensible and shifted in his seat, and Gerry had looked over to closed eyes, parted lips, and that strange calm look that Michael only had unconscious.
They didn’t know where they were going. It didn’t matter. Gerry would drive until he was tired, find some cheap motel or roadside inn and wake Michael, let him link his arm with Gerry’s and lean against him as they stumbled through payment and into a room, one bed or two, the second more often than not completely ignored. They weren’t picky. They weren’t much of anything these days but running and happy, or as close to happy as either of them had been in a long time.
Michael made him happy, excited, eager to try new things and regain love for old ones, or build something good out of what Mary had ruined. Gerry loved him. Traffic was slow and there beside him Michael’s head lolled against the seat, thick curls dimly catching light like the echo of the club’s shifting colours, the shadows of raindrops trailing over the curves of his face, their flow disjointed by the crook of his nose, the soft shape of his lips. A stray curl had fallen over his brow, tickling the tip of his nose, and he scrunched it up in his sleep, shook his head in irritation, but did not wake.
At a stoplight, Gerry reached out and brushed it away, lingered for a moment with his hand by Michael’s temple — the rough angles of it, the familiar thin lines of his tattoos, nearly spidery, looked wrong next to Michael’s tender expression. But he knew it was right. Michael loved his hands, had taken them in his more than once while dark harsh music pulsed through the floor, danced its soothing furious way through Gerry’s blood — had traced his veins and a line along his wrist, delicate and contemplative. Had kissed his palm, tenderly on the late drives home or quickly, with his peculiar brand of intensity, as they danced.
The light turned green. Michael smiled and brushed the back of his hand along his face as if to confirm the curl was out of the way, turning onto his back in sleep and mumbling something that might have been Gerry’s name.
Ahead, the road burned, scarlet-on-fire with the endless galaxy of taillights, a cavalcade that never ended, never faded, the nights always alive with people going places. Bound homeward or onward, racing toward some unknown but essential destination or moving slowly, the hazy silhouettes of the people inside moving in languid conversation. Gerry wondered, idly, if someone in one of the apartments high above them, or a car somewhere behind them on the road, could see their taillights moving along; wondered if they thought they might go on forever, never flickering or fading or turning off but burning up the night for miles and miles to come.
And somewhere — many somewheres — light blossomed in radiant spirals and electric swells, bathing the bare shoulders and shifting backs of dancers, washing over faces with their mouths open in song, in drowned-out exultant shouts that were swallowed by the waves of fading colour, red-blue-yellow-green-blue-purple. Light embraced and lifted up a crowd and glittered outside from neon signs with their strange liquid lettering, drawing in hungry faces and frustrated people looking for a place to be open like moths to a lamp. Radiant pink danced on glasses and abandoned, half-crushed cans; melancholy blue lost itself in spiralling curls and the trembling rush of percussion, shattering into the green of electric leaves with the thrum of a guitar. It was midnight. It was 3 A.M. It was today; it was tomorrow; it was yesterday. The music did not stop and the lights faded in but not out.
Back in the city they had come from, an upper window of Pinhole Books would be flickering on as dawn broke, the woman’s silhouette outlined in it before the greying sky thorny and too familiar. Gerry feared her. Gerry might have loved her. However long they ran, they would eventually have to turn back, and he did not doubt that she would be waiting when he arrived. She might find him even before then, on some unfamiliar street with Michael by his side; he didn’t like to think of it. But she was not home, and he was not home. Home was nowhere, no matter how long its light stayed on, no matter how it refused to ever go out. Or home was everywhere, lit up in the glare from road signs, the flash of headlights across Michael’s sleeping face. Pinhole Books could burn itself to the ground from that dim incandescent bulb, and keep burning as long as Gerry lived, and right now he would not care.
Michael slept, and did not dream of the warm lonely place he had thought of, halfheartedly, as home. They had left the lights out, but Gerry remembered the bright yellows and comfortable blues, the welcoming shades of that place that gave it a light all its own. Michael had not loved it — save on warm days when the sun had hit things just right, and the fog had lifted for a little while. Gerry had adored it. The flat would flood itself with sunlight, would stay flooded with the colours Michael had put there even while they were gone. It seemed unlikely that they would fade.
Someone else, someone who was not Michael, would open the library tomorrow. The warm lamps that Michael had adored, the comforting tone even of the overheads would drop slow and steady from the walls and ceiling, creep its way in an instant over the shelves with their endless treasure that Gerry had once — but no longer — feared. Someone who was not Gerry would come and find solace among them, comfort in the dry turning of pages or the warm smile of someone who was not Michael. All day and into the night the lights would glow from those windows, and when they went dark it was less an extinguishing than a retreating of light, a falling into a gentle slumber until the next day woke it. The pages spoke. The patrons moved like warm spirits between the stacks. Even when it slept, it was not dormant; only warm and sleepy.
Michael woke up beside Gerry and smiled his bright sleepy smile, the one Gerry was only just growing familiar with — the good morning smile, or the good waking smile on the nights and days that regular sleep cycles evaded them. I’m happy to see you. I love you. Hello. His shirt was warm yellow and too big for him; his curls were a tangled, dishevelled mess around his shoulders. He looked delightful. Adorable. He was Gerry’s best friend and Gerry loved him and Gerry thought here was light that could not be dimmed, not really — light that did not need to glow, only to grin, to blink in that slow unsure way Michael had, like the world was a wonder he was waiting to understand.
And Gerry, circles under his eyes and grease in his hair, visibly exhausted from hours on the road, was the soothing moonlight Michael had watched from beneath the underpass, wishing it would swallow him up and take him away. This was good. This was better than being swallowed — this was being guided by the hand out of the maw and into the chaos, which tasted sweeter with somebody there to speak it into sugar, to kiss it from his lips. Gerry burned like thin paper but did not crumble into ash, and Gerry smiled like he had stars stuck between his teeth and didn’t mind the scorching of his gums. And his eyes were always gentle, moon-bright and soil-soft, warmed by the sun but delicate as night. He did not fade; he did not diminish, as Michael feared all people must, or he must to them.
There was light. All around, brimming from the cracks in the pavement and hurling itself to the ground from high above, flaring or smouldering or glowing in a steady indefatigable pulse, moving to the rhythm of a bassline nobody could hear, but everybody could feel. It wormed its way out of the gaps between drawn blinds, shouldered through the cracks in the walls of ancient bookstores, shivered in the chill mornings and stretched out to sun itself into something warm against the concrete. And it never went out — not the music, not the light, not the people moving in time to the melancholic drums — and Gerry and Michael went out of the house and the town and the city and the world, and for a while, at least, they stayed that way.