Shadows in the Night

L’Ombre exited Mike’s hospital room with Gretchen and Stella in tow without so much as an inkling as to what specifically he had in store for Billie. The mere fact that he left without the only male Gloria gave the two men remaining in the room chills, the lack of knowledge and L’Ombre’s unpredictability with punishments luring them both dangerously close to madness. The vile shadow hadn’t uttered so much as a sinister threat alluding to how he would be dealing with the pure insolence Billie had shown. L’Ombre had abandoned the couple in the dark without a simple flash of malicious hazard to gradually guide them into security in knowing what was in store for them, but of course it was all part of his ingenious plan.

One cannot see or anticipate shadows when one is left in the dark.

Though L’Ombre’s physical being withdrew from the room, his lingering presence was heavily felt by both Billie Joe and his bedridden Christian as they remained silent for a full five minutes waiting for every inch of the silken darkness to cease its deliberate crawl about their skin. Even after their silence, the pair fell victim to a paranoia that convinced them both of the shadow being able to see and hear everything they did. In the literal sense, the feat was impossible…but that man had allies everywhere. For all Christian and Gloria knew, anyone from Mike’s doctor, to the nurses in charge of giving him his pain medications, to the janitor lurking in the hallway could be one of L’Ombre’s countless lackeys. The thought caused Mike to shudder violently, unwittingly hurling his body into a fresh burst of pain. Billie could see the agony in Mike’s eyes and wondered absently where the hell that nurse he had called for had run off to.

In three careful strides, Billie was directly at Mike’s side, tears threatening to render his vision subpar and his cheeks moist with the visual evidence of his internal grief and remorse. In a small, defeated voice, he mewled, “How could they do this to you?”

For a moment, Mike was stupefied. He was almost certain Billie’s tears were a sign of fear for the unknown, for the punishment that would, without a doubt, be severe…but the smaller man was not crying over himself. He was sobbing for the man he loved, the man he married, and the cruelty he had been forced to endure. After everything Mike had put him through, the inexperienced Gloria still retained his selflessness.

He truly was a saint among men.

“I deserved it,” Mike croaked, unable to meet his lover’s eye.

“How could you say that?! Mikey, no one deserves to be beaten and raped, hell, they tried to kill you! And for what?! Being gay? Not fitting in with their fucked up vision of what’s acceptable? It’s bullshit, Mike, and you did not deserve it,” Billie asserted, his volume increasing with each sentence. Mike may have continued with an explanation as to why he truly did deserve every ounce of pain the other Christians so willingly inflicted upon his body, but he was caught up on one simple word in Billie’s rant.

“I wasn’t raped,” Mike nearly shouted as his face rouged with humiliation. The smaller man flinched at his husband’s forceful declaration, unsure of how to approach the topic without bruising whatever pride the broken man had left.

“The, uh, forensics, say otherwise,” Billie stammered uneasily.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“You were fucking bleeding out the ass, what the hell else does it mean?!”

Mike shifted his gaze from his husband’s trembling form to stare blankly off into space, mentally scrambling for a recollection of some sort to prove or disprove the alleged rape. He wanted so badly to denounce the suggestion entirely, claiming that if he didn’t remember it then it surely never occurred, but if the alarming source of blood spill was correct…Mike wasn’t sure if he could ignore that entirely.

A spark then illuminated a scattered array of memories, all adding up to the one thing Mike wanted desperately to disappear. He recalled how the Christians’ fingers clawed at his pants, practically giddy at the opportunity to disgrace their victim in the worst way. He could hear the malevolent cackling of men as they pinned him down. He remembered how they taunted him and spat their despicable intolerance at him in the form of hateful words. Most importantly of all…he could vaguely remember a Christian brandishing the broom handle in front of him, practically pissing himself in anticipation to getting a rise out of the restrained man.

“Does this excite you, faggot?” he’d demanded, making a crude reference to how both the broom handle and his husband’s cock were long and hard.

“I wasn’t raped,” Mike insisted once more, conveniently using a simple literality as a crutch to persistently refute what he was being allowed to remember. Technically, he wasn’t raped, he was sodomized. Billie would have insisted that the two were practically one in the same, that both were used as horrific forms of humiliation and dominance, but Mike couldn’t bring himself to admit to the ominous r-word.

“You don’t have to hide this from me, Mikey. You’re not any less of a man because you were overpowered. There was no way you could have stopped them,” Billie cooed, though the hurt was eminent in his voice.

“I wasn’t supposed to stop them. I deserved it for what I did to you,” Mike growled, his self-hatred oozing unpleasantly from each syllable.

The smaller man fully intended to inform his lover that what the Christians did could hardly be compared to anything that Mike had done to him, but the nurse’s incredible bad timing interrupted the intense conversation. Not only was the woman inexcusably late to relieve her patient of the constant agony he felt, but she managed to interrupt one of the most important conversations the couple could possibly have. Her tardiness left far too many words unsaid, wounds unhealed, and truths withheld, and there was no feasible way in which the subject could be brought up again without immediately being shot down. Mike would continue to deny that he had been violated in any way, and Billie would carry on with his selfless worrying, not once taking the time to consider how much danger he was in himself.

“Sorry I’m late! There was a horrible pile-up on the interstate this morning, so the ER and OR have been terribly backed up,” the nurse rambled, bustling about the room to check the machines which were hooked up to the abused man and scribbling notes on her clipboard. At last, once she had given the chart a satisfied nod, she prepared a needle to inject the pain medication directly into Mike’s IV.

“Now, this may or may not knock you out. It all depends on your tolerance to such medication,” the nurse explained to Mike.

“Five bucks says I don’t so much as blink longer than usual,” Mike scoffed cynically, speaking softly enough to only be heard by his husband. Unfortunately, the nurse had caught every word and politely chose to ignore them.

“You’re on,” Billie whispered, watching with dismay as his husband slowly began to lose the bet. He would have assumed, considering Mike’s tendency to abuse the drugs he was supposed to be selling, that he would have built up an impressive tolerance to the milder forms of mind-altering substances. Ironically, Mike’s battle with retaining his awareness was lost the moment the painkiller entered his veins.

Just before Mike’s heavy-lidded eyes felt victim to unconsciousness, Billie shifted so that his face was inches from his lover’s and murmured, “You can pay me later,” before placing a gentle, passionate kiss on swollen lips. Seconds after, Mike was dead to the world.

“So I assume you’re Gloria?” the nurse asked Billie Joe, eyeing him with mounting curiosity. The question turned the smaller man’s insides to ice as he realized his paranoid ideas about L’Ombre having lackeys virtually everywhere hadn’t been so paranoid after all.

Through gritted teeth, Billie snapped, “Yes.”

“Wonderful. I have a message to pass along to you,” the woman announced cheerfully, as if the two were having a harmless congenial discussion. Odds are, she had no idea of the dangerous nature of the man who had given her the message.

“Fantastic,” Billie spat sarcastically.

“You are not to leave this man’s side. You are to stay with him until that charming young man and the police come to discuss the nature of the attack, though I’d bet you weren’t planning on leaving him, were you?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. I’ll be back later to give him another dose of medication. Until then…make yourself comfortable,” the nurse offered, adding a warm smile to her words in an attempt to appear approachable and caring. Billie nodded curtly in response and purposely failed to return the smile. He was too lost in his need to be the one holding Mike’s hand when he woke again, seeing as he had failed to do so the first time around.