Bones

The stinging wind bit at the tip of Mike's red nose, irritating the skin and peeling it away, layer by itching layer. He didn't notice. Mike didn't notice much of anything anymore, not since Billie had left.

Not since Billie had died, he corrected himself dully.

It was cold in Maine. It was a sharp contrast from the warmth and sunlight of California that Billie Joe was born and raised in, far away from where he spent the beginning of his life. It was in his will, though - I want my ashes scattered off the coast of Maine, into to the darkest water you can find. Many people had clucked their tongues in pity - Poor man lost it toward the end, didn't he? Shame, shame. But Mike hadn't doubted his sanity for a minute. He knew why Billie wanted it this way, why he wanted his ashes here, so far from his home.

This was always his home. This small bit of coast that belonged to the small town - Rosewood. This was where his love story had started, and hadn't he said that was the only story he cared about? Billie made his living writing stories, horror stories and mystery stories of killers and locked rooms and terrible, scary people, but hadn't he told Mike once, long ago, that their story was the most important of them all?

Mike remembered the first time he'd taken Billie in his arms, on this same rocky cliff, on that day long ago. He remembered the warmth of the sun, an uncharacteristic warmth, and he remembered how strong Billie had felt, how... solid. Real. As his arms wrapped around him and his lips had settled on Billie's, he remembered feeling very powerful, very tall, and very, very much in love.

While Mike was remembering, someone set a heavy weight in his outstretched arms.

"Ollie?" He asked, knowing it was her.

"Yes. It's... it's time, I think." Thunder cracked behind her blonde head and Mike knew she was right. There was a storm coming.

He got a firmer grip on the round, black urn and stepped closer to the edge of the cliff. He turned, once, eyes shining bright.

"Anyone else want to say goodbye?" His voice was surprisingly steady, and the only hint that he was carrying his lover's ashes in his arms was the unnaturally shiny sheen of his blue eyes.

Billie's mother suddenly fell on her husband's chest with a choked cry, sinking into that unique brand of dehabilitating grief reserved for a mother losing a son, letting loose the wretched sobs she'd held in all day. Mike turned his eyes to her briefly, then turned back around, nothing but the tumbling, dark ocean in front of him.

He took off the cap on the urn, and the brightness in his eyes broke. His tear ducts began to leak, then overflow, his eyes nothing but soft orbs lost in a streaming ocean. Salty tears washed down his face, streaking rivers of lava down the frozen tundra of skin. He put two of his big fingers in the gray mass, feeling the powder sift underneath his touch. He touched the only remains - besides memories - of his Billie, and threw the first handful off the cliff. The driving wind carried it away, and with a pang of revulsion, Mike saw flecks of bone. The very bones that had betrayed him.

No time to think about that now. He hugged the urn to his chest, and threw the second handful off the cliff. This time, the wind had died down and they fell straight down, down into the unforgiving ocean. Mike's back bent with the force of his sobs, and he fell to his knees, the racking cries and weeping turning his strong body into a useless mass of flesh and bone. His strength dissolved, his will dissolved, and most of all, his ability to cope dissolved.

He dumped the rest of the gray ashes haphazardly into the next driving wind, throwing the urn into the ocean with the last bit he had left in him. He lay curled into a ball, precariously close to the edge, and shrieked and wailed into the wind. Screamed and pleaded - Bring him back, won't you? I'll do anything, anything, please - can I just tell him how much I love him one last time? Billie, my Billie, Billie Joe! BILLIE! COME BACK TO ME RIGHT NOW! PLEASE!

And of course no one answered.

---

Brad, Ollie Armstrong's second husband, picked Mike up after he passed out and drove him back to his hotel. He laid his limp, tall frame on top of the handmade quilt on the queen-sized bed and stood there for a moment, watching the other man breathe. His nose was stung red, white residue across his face from his dried, unwiped tears. Brad stood and watched his dead stepson's gay lover breathe, feeling nothing but pity and sadness in a place deep within his blue-collar mind. Nothing in his American Dream upbringing could have prepared him for this experience, for this sadness, for witnessing this kind of love.

Brad ran his fingers through Mike's ratted hair, pushing it away from his forehead, a gesture of unplanned and unexplainable affection, and walked back outside to Ollie, back to California, back to his life, and away from the mess of emotions that is Billie Joe and Mike.

The mess of emotions that was Billie Joe and Mike.

---

He could hear the pounding of the water hitting the porcelain walls of the bathtub. He could smell the girly bubble bath Billie Joe used, the perfume wafting across the cold, splintery wooden floor and up into Mike's welcoming nose. Best of all, he could see Billie's naked form bent over the tub, fiddling with the taps. He was humming something under his breath, a light tune that flowed and twirled along with the water. He was still young enough - his body was still firm and somehow welcoming and soft, the knobs of his spine prominent in the curve of his back. Suddenly, Mike wanted nothing more than to run his fingers across those protrusions, to kiss each and every one.

And then, as Billie’s hand went to the small of his back and he groaned a little in pain, Mike remembered that he couldn’t.

"Mike?" Mike's eyes swiveled up to meet Billie's across the room - while lost in his thoughts, Billie had stood up and left the bathroom, and was now standing at the foot of the bed, his frame bent a bit - some might say he stood crooked because of his days spent bent over a desk, writing out the demons from his head onto paper. But Mike knew differently. Mike knew it was because of his pain.

Because of his cancer.

---

The doctors weren’t helpful. After spitting unintelligible medical jargon to the bewildered Mike and stoic Billie for a few minutes, their faces entirely apologetic and somber, they said he had bone cancer.

“But he’s… he’s only 31! Why would be get bone cancer, of all fucking things?” Mike almost screamed out, the initial bewilderment on his face fading and changing slowly into the fierce disbelief the doctors had seen so many times before, on the faces of many different lovers and mothers and fathers and sons.

“Mr. Pritchard,” The doctor on the left said, speaking to both Mike and Billie. “This type of cancer is very rare, but most common in males over 30. There are only about 300 cases in the United States a year.”

Mike gaped at the doctor and looked back to Billie. “So… so why him? Why Billie? Is it hereditary?” Mike rounded on Billie. “Did your father…”

Billie shook his lowered head. “Wasn’t bone cancer.”

It was the doctor on the right who spoke this time. “This type of cancer isn’t hereditary, Mr. Pritchard. It can occur spontaneously.”

There was a silence as Mike tried to find another loophole in the diagnosis, another fact for the doctors to check, any way they could be mistaken. The doctors were quiet.

Finally, a small voice broke the silence. “Am I going to die?” Billie asked, his head still down.

Mike in took breath so fast it was like a hiss, but no one paid him any attention. It looked like the doctors had been waiting for this, because they nodded at each other and the one on the left spoke.

“Mr. Armstrong, we can do wonderful things to ease your pain with medication and chemotherapy. But judging from your MRI and symptoms, the type of cancer you have is fatal. I’m sorry.”

---

Mike cried for three hours and Billie laid on their rickety bed with him, patting his hair and kissing his forehead, dry-eyed. The doctors had said that Billie would need to see someone who specialized in bone cancer to get a clear idea of how long he had to live, so right now was maybe the last time they could lay together without a deadline.

“Billie… Billie, please, you can’t leave me… Billie…” Mike chanted this litany, his words strangled and warped through his tears, his anguish, his disbelief.

“Mike,” Billie interrupted gently, lifting up Mike’s chin with his finger and staring him right in the eyes, so close he could see each and every red vein twisting up into his iris. “Mike, baby, you know I’ll never leave you.”

“But…”

“Maybe physically I will. Maybe I won’t be here to hold you and kiss you and love you,” Billie stopped, as Mike’s face had just stretched into a perfect mask of pain, like a man who is losing everything and knows that there is worse yet to come. Billie felt his heart splinter a little, his eyes water for the first time. He reached out and rubbed the side of Mike’s face, washing away the tears and trying to erase that mask of pain etched into his tall cheekbones, his beautifully elegant face.

“And I know it’ll hurt, Mike, but… but I don’t think either of us can do anything about it.” Billie said quietly, looking straight into Mike’s eyes.

“But you know I’ll never really leave you. You know I’ll always be here, be in this bed, be in my books and I’ll always be inside you.” Billie closed his eyes, cutting off the image of Mike’s tortured face for a moment, as he tried to fit together the words he wanted to say next.

“You have my heart, remember.”

And Billie finally cried, his tears running down his face and spilling down his heaving chest, and it was Mike’s turn to hold and comfort him.