Stories of Us

Long before the end, that final blackout night of angry storms and bone-shattering words; before the shouting matches, the disagreements, the tentative, apologetic touches; before the crowding of limbs, clandestine whispers, the mingling of faith and fingers; long before there was a strange, momentary loss of gravity, before the car ride along an unlit highway; long before the echo of the moon, a beautiful face revealed upon a single plane of glass, Gerard met Frank. Not too long, but time enough for it to become history. A part of the minutes of their skin.

It starts right here on a Tuesday night with Gerard sitting alone on a rotating bar stool, pushing a wedge of lime into his club soda and staring miserably at his chewed-up fingernails. He is here, very much sober, specifically by the reasoning that Mikey is over there, hovering over the neon-bubbling chrome jukebox, singing along with Diana Ross just a decibel too loud while trying to feed his bathroom tokens to the thin coin slot. Mikey’s eyes are watery, pink-rimmed, too large for his flushed face. All parts of him a different shade of red. His hair a mess. Gerard loves his brother, but he also wishes sometimes that Mikey would grow a fucking taste in music, and that he would stop getting smashed every time he let his heart get splintered into pieces by some chick standing just a little over 5’1, with a silver nose piercing and a misplaced affection for eight-pound combat boots.

He hates these crummy night bars, specifically the kind with velvet-lined pool tables and signed posters of Depeche Mode tacked up behind the cash register. He hates bars, not because he can’t order himself a drink, but because the liquor-stained napkins and vinyl booths remind him that he’s been sober for three years now, and he still remembers amnesiac nights with his head plugging up some scummy toilet bowl, the ends of his hair dripping with vomit while some stranger plowed into his ass from behind. Gerard takes a sip from his soda and winces. The carbonation makes his nose sting.

Now this is the moment when it begins. Lose a second here, take a minute there, and a whole new reality might have been sketched out in ink. Watch closely, or you might just miss it. Here is Gerard, his wrinkled shirt with the chocolate syrup stain on the right sleeve. He’s thinking a lot about the ring of keys in his pocket, about how he really should be dragging Mikey’s sappy ass out of here before they get kicked to the street again; but for some reason, he doesn’t move. And he will look back so many nights from now, his throat raw from screaming and his body tense from the fight, and he will wonder just what might have happened if he had reached into his pocket and gone home. He will wonder what difference it might have made in the transient outcome of his life.

But at this moment, a stranger plops down onto the seat next to him, a stranger with hooded brown eyes and pink seashell lips. This stranger who is small, angular, his limbs thin like wires jutting out from his body. He blinks drowsily in Gerard’s direction.

Whatcha drinkin’? he asks, not quite at the level of a slur just yet. His voice is soft and low, surprisingly deep for a man of his frame. The way he speaks, Gerard has to lean in closer just to hear him. The way he has of making words, Gerard notices that his tongue curls up behind his crooked teeth and flicks out like a secret over his lips.

Gerard sighs and pushes the glass away. Why don’t you taste for yourself? he says.

When Gerard should really be standing, should be shrugging on his coat, should be looping his arm over his drunk brother’s shoulders, he’s actually just sitting at the bar, watching as this stranger wraps his hand around the sweating glass of soda. The fingers are long, thin, oddly feminine. As the stranger lifts the drink away from his lips, a web-like strand of saliva strings away from the imprinted rim of the short glass.

It’s fizzy, the man remarks, pulling a distorted face. There’s not even any alcohol in it.

I don’t drink, Gerard says.

This stranger, he looks exactly like he just woke up, his lightly-chapped lips parted and his eyelashes tangled. He rubs a long sleeve over his face and smiles, says, I’m Frank.

The moment passes with neither of them aware of its repercussions. All they know is that, as Gerard brings the glass back up to his lips, placing his mouth over the place Frank put his mouth, they already know each other’s taste. It’s something that will stick with them, like the particular scent of Gerard’s mother’s perfume, or the leather seats in the back of Frank’s grandfather’s Caddy. And let us pause now to fully understand the gravity of what happens next. There are three out of an infinite number of actions that take place, speeding up time and bringing them closer to the end of what has hardly begun.

The moment spins out on a spool, unraveling in the space between their shoulders. The first thing that happens is that Frank stands up. His shirt, two sizes too small, rides up over the blades of his narrow hips. Standing, he is barely taller than Gerard seated on his stool. His jeans bunch up around the knees.

Event number two is more of an accident, really, but it sets things in motion. Just as quickly as Frank finds his feet, he begins to sway to the right. His heavy-lidded eyes faze out of focus, the browns glazing over. One tan, spindly hand reaches forward like a sloping branch. Gerard sees this, recognizes the pale mask of falling, and he too stands.

The third action happens so quickly that a single blink washes it away from the light; in the dim of the bar, as the alcohol drains his balance, Frank’s hand falls into the off-center of Gerard’s chest. He is no longer crashing forward, but attached to this one section of sinew and bone, of space between lying flat on his back or his stomach, as a result of denied momentum and the reality of heated flesh. Neither of them is entirely sure if this is an accident or not. Yet as Gerard’s heart picks up pace, as his cheeks flush noticeably red in the strange bronze lighting, Frank’s hand is already falling away.

The aftermath is the equivalent of being stuck on a midnight elevator.

Frank grins sheepishly and says, Thanks…

Reaching out blindly again, this time for a name.

Gerard just mumbles, I’ve got to take a piss, and for the first time, he begins to turn away.

In the broader scope of things, of their bodies’ acquaintances with each other’s, Gerard begins to turn this night and never quite stops turning. It becomes the first in a slow succession of turnings from Frank’s sly-smiling face.

He shoulders his way through the crowd, averting his eyes to the untied laces dragging across the floor. Nobody else is looking at him as feverishly. The bathroom smells of stale piss and spilled beer, the same smell at its root, the tiles sticking to the soles of his battered Docs. Gerard tugs on the collar of his shirt and scrunches up his short-cropped hair in the back. In the cracked mirror he begins to resemble a broken deity, beautiful only in the way his dark eyes seem to spill over his cracked porcelain cheeks, the sharp teeth peeking out from between his lips.

Some asshole’s taken a shit in one of the urinals, the next two clogged with wads of stained paper towels. He feels his face twist in a cringe at the sight of the stalls, covered up with names and initials and harshly-scrawled phone numbers in permanent ink. Still, his bladder is swollen under his pelvic bone, so he bumps open a door with one of his hips and reaches through his zipper to pull out his cock. Gerard, he’s thinking things over as this stream of hot piss leaves his body; his mind is on the sad, dark circles ringing his brother’s eyes, the rings of gold surrounding a stranger’s. On the swirls and whorls that align each pad on a stranger’s fingers, the lungs and limbs that lie quietly underneath. He admits to himself, reluctantly, that he had wanted to believe that the momentary silence of the jukebox had meant that they were no longer outside of their heads.

And here is what happens as Gerard allows his eyes to shut and lets out a weary sigh: the bathroom door blows open, flooding the chamber with loud music and barroom chatter. There is the squeak of sneakers on wet tile, like skin on a latex balloon. And then a low groan.

Gerard, he finishes up and lifts the zipper on his pants. Upon reaching for the flush-plunger, he reconsiders, and instead raises up one lazy foot to press down until the roar of the flushing toilet mutes all other noises, like the weepy dregs of sleep. Using the same foot he pries open the dirty stall door, careful to touch nothing, and catches a second glimpse of himself in the water-stained mirror; this time around he recognizes something new about the planes of his pale face. It is the coldness of skin untouched. He pauses by the sink, watches his eyes grow unexpectedly moist.

In this moment, a pair of hands wrap tightly around the dents just beneath his ribcage, followed by a darkened, sweat-sheened face and a shock of dark hair. The stranger Frank barrels into Gerard, weeping without tears, paled by the buzz of alcohol inside of his veins. He says, I’d like to know your name. He says it in a voice that is miserable and elated in exactly the same second. How those two emotions can occupy the same tone of voice.

And Gerard, he can’t move. His back is pressed up against the faux-porcelain sink, the automatic faucet splashing water into his shirt. He breathes in the scent of booze and suddenly thinks he understands what this stranger is after; the oblivion of vomit, pants around his knees, eyelashes too blurred with water to take notice of anything at all. Gerard sneers until he becomes witness to Frank’s eyes. One hundred days from now, two hundred, he will look at Frank’s eyes, so pure and unabashed in their trust, and he will forget the words he is about to shout. How bitter they taste. And he will smile, unable to help the motion of muscles, and the pain will re-locate to another time and place, another battle, another sin.

Let go, he says quietly, reaching down to pry Frank’s fingers from his shirt. He gently pushes the smaller man back, holding onto his tattooed wrists and taking a few steps backwards. The addiction of contact, he can’t stop touching. Turning, Gerard walks to the bathroom door, and there are the sounds again: ice, the thrash of 70s guitar, an intoxicated babble of language and words. Almost the same thing. Frank simply stares at him, his neck twisted to watch Gerard go, his face still a step behind, still smiling blindly with all of his teeth.

Holding the bathroom door open with three fingers and a brown paper towel, Gerard says, If you give me a few minutes to distract my brother from the jukebox, I’ll drive you home.

As easy as that. As easy as words sinking to the bathroom floor.

He leaves Frank by the sink, the splash of water disguising the crawl and tingle of his confused skin. Three years ago he would have been three-quarters of the way to oblivion by now, his mouth dry, his eyes empty. The only thing he really misses is the bruised lips.

Back at the bar Gerard extracts his beat-up wallet, pays paper cash for his sodas and Mikey’s vodka martinis. The bartender offers him a light for his cigarette and says, I don’t mean any disrespect to ya, but I’d suggest it getting out of here before your pal over by the jukebox gets any further gone.

Yeah, Gerard says. Thanks for the light.

When he turns around, shrugging on his pea coat and tying his scarf snugly around his throat, Frank is waiting there, tipsy, content.

Is your brother the blond mountain man trying to wrestle the jukebox? he asks Gerard, crossing his arms over his thin chest.

Gerard, he sighs a couple of lungfuls of smoke out the side of his mouth. No, he replies balefully. My brother is the one trying to strip to the Bee Gees. He downs the rest of his soda as if it’s the dregs of a straight shot of whiskey.

As an afterthought, he says, The mountain man is Bob. He helps me babysit my brother Mikey sometimes when the poor kid gets dumped on his ass.

And Frank smiles, smiles, smiles.

Crossing the bar in six long-legged strides, Gerard reaches out and latches his fingers firmly around the back of Mikey’s neck. Like a puppy, the scruff of him, the thin hairs bristled there. He says, C’mon little brother, put your goddamned shirt back on. We’re leaving and we’ve got some company on the ride home.

The way Frank looks right now, like he’s bundled up all the trust in the world right in his big brown eyes.

They’re kicking us out again? Mikey slurs, his bared chest freckled with goose bumps and jagged red lines from where his nails caught the skin. Patterns that spell out words in a language that nobody knows.

Gerard says, ‘Fraid so, Mikes.

Mikey struggles to tug his shirt on, backwards and inside-out, the tags poking out to scratch at his chin. The feeling in Gerard’s heart, he loves his brother so much right then and he has to pull the younger man over and press a kiss right to the top of his head.

Gee? Mikey says.

Hmm?

I can’t remember where I live, Mikey says into the lapels of Gerard’s coat, so pitiful and so sad.

Gerard chuckles to himself and says, Don’t worry about it, Mikey, I think we’ll be able to find it between the two of us.

And right then it’s just them, just brothers like when Mikey was young and Gerard was at the cusp of being a kid or just being alone, just like it always was. Then Bob says, Hey Gerard, I can drive Mikey home if you’ve got other things to do. Saying it with his bushy blond eyebrows raised up just like that, just like they know that Gerard is missing alcohol and Southern California where it never snows, and swollen, bruised lips.

Gerard will deny it all later that night with the sheets bunched up at his hips, skin loose with release; but under the dim bar lights he is only nodding his head yes, smoking his stubby cigarette, yes, yes.

They stumble through the bar’s black-lit door, Mikey bundled in his winter coat, the tip of his nose watery and puffed-up. All parts of him a different shade of red. Frank lingers close to Gerard, his arms bared to the frigid weather in his wispy t-shirt. You got a jacket? Gerard asks him as Mikey unsuccessfully tries the doors to all of the black cars in the parking lot, positive that each one is his brother’s.

Frank just shakes his head, his teeth clicking together as he kicks through the crushed layer of snow and ice extending over the gravel. Under the streetlights his eyes are a strange and lucid bronze, starred by the curtain of his spiked eyelashes. Gerard watches the strain of tendons in his lean neck and blushes.

He unlocks the door to an old black BMW, flipping up the locks to free the other doors. Gerard motions briskly to Frank and says, You take the front. Turning on the defroster as the car engine warms up, rubbing his stiff fingers together like jump-start pads. As Mikey pulls open the back door, Gerard turns around and says, Hey Mikes, Bob offered to take you home, okay?

Are you sure Bob knows where I live? Mikey asks in a small, panicked voice. Gee, are you sure?

A laugh. Take a deep breath, little brother, Gerard says. Bob’s a responsible guy.

He squeezes his brother’s hand, whether as a reassurance or a goodbye, he doesn’t pressure himself to decide. Then he says, And for God’s sake, Mikey, if you need to throw up you better fucking tell someone this time. It took me six fucking months to get that smell out of my car.

Jeez, Gee, I’m not a baby, Mikey says in a sleep-clogged voice. His glasses are crooked on his angular face, his hair matted on one side. His eyes, fluttering closed against the tops of his cheeks.

Gerard puts the car into reverse and backs out of the parking space just as the sky cracks open and snow begins to feather down around his brother’s lanky frame. I’m just saying, Gerard mutters out the window, I will make sure that Bob leaves you at that gas station if you blow chunks on his upholstery.

This time Mikey doesn’t reply, his mouth already drooping open in sleep as Bob slips an arm around his shoulder.

The road is empty, soundless as Gerard pulls his car out of the parking lot and onto the outskirts of the blistered city. Out here, where it is both dark and blinding at the same time, the contrast of night and new snow fashioning obscure angles and shapes out of the trees hunched over the side of the highway.

So where’s your place? he asks once the silence has left him too much inside of his head.

Frank stares out the window. The darkness outside is the kind that swallows the moon, leaving only a reflection of what is inside of the car. He says, Keep going this way. No further directions. His face is suddenly sobered by the cold, his skin tight and blanched. Gerard cranks up the old BMW’s heater and directs the vents toward the shivering man.

Another couple of minutes pass, the world muted by snow and time. When Gerard looks over at Frank, all he can see are the veins just under his ear. He finishes his cigarette and stubs the butt out in the lopsided metal ashtray balanced on one cup holder. How much further do I need to go? he asks. Watches the side of Frank’s face, glancing back at the hollow road every few seconds. He says, How many more miles? Asking, Where should I turn?

And Frank turns his head this time, his eyes bright and tired, eyes that know the future and its taste. He says, Come on. Says, We both know that you’re not taking me home tonight.

Gerard swallows hard, averting his eyes back to the highway as Frank’s eyes bore into the side of his head. He readjusts his hands’ position on the steering, the station of the radio; he glances at the blank ribbon of road in the rearview mirror.

Finally he opens his mouth and licks his lips, lets his eyes stray back from the flickering of the windshield wipers. The taste of salt and skin heavy in the air. His voice unsure, he says, Listen, Frank, I think you took this the wrong way. I mean, I think you made a mistake. I just didn’t think you were sober enough to drive, I didn’t mean that we should...well…

I’m pretty sure there was no mistake, Frank says.

See, that’s the thing, there definitely was a mistake. I’m just driving you home, if you’ll tell me where the hell I’m gonna need to turn off, Gerard says.

Frank smiles to himself, secret gypsy smile, pulls a knee up to his chest. The denim there is torn clear across from seam to seam. He says, Why not?

Why not what? Gerard says.

Why not fuck? Frank quips, glancing up with those shattered eyes. Saying, Why not sleep together, why not wake up that way? You’re lonely…

I’m not lonely, Gerard spits back stiffly. His grip on the wheel tightens like a spasm.

Frank chuckles. Right, he says, You were drinking club soda at that dive bar by yourself because you’re not lonely.

Gerard says, Hey, I wasn’t by myself, I was there only because my brother wanted—He stops, twists his mouth up in an ugly sneer. Why, he says, am I even explaining myself to you? Why the hell were you out drinking by yourself in that shithole bar?

And Frank says, Because I’m lonely.

There is no hesitation, no fleeting flash of shame. If you look hard enough you’ll see the reflection of Frank in Gerard’s irises; you’ll catch the blunt honesty fixed to the straight lines of his jaw.

Come on, be honest, Frank presses him now, You can’t say that you don’t feel that.

Feel what? Gerard replies with a frustrated sigh, tired already of the stranger’s cryptic fragments.

Frank stops toying with the fringed hole in his jeans and gestures wildly to the interior of the car. This space! he cries softly, All this, this shit between us. I felt it as soon as you walked into that skuzzy bar.

As the snow picks up, Gerard slows the car to a low crawl, squinting his eyes at the blurred highway in between glancing back at his passenger. He says, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.

Barking out a short laugh, Frank rubs at his eyes. Smooth, hairless hands, eyes sleepy and brown. He says, You just don’t want to know what I’m talking about. There’s a difference, you know. You’re seeing things too much instead of feeling them.

What does that even mean? Gerard crows.

The radio switches over to quiet static. Gerard feels it in his head, that feeling under his skull that means he is losing himself. His knuckles on the steering wheel white, the snow outside, echoing thundershocks of lacy white.

Just…don’t freak out, okay? Frank whispers in a voice so close to Gerard’s ear.

And before he can build up the words, to make his tongue work, Frank is reaching across Gerard’s chest, his hands disappearing behind the left side of the steering wheel. With a twist of his wrist he flicks off the headlights. The car is flooded with darkness like the desert, with the most total absence of light.

Every muscle in Gerard’s body grows rigid, his eyes layered wide. He feels the car drift left, the gunshot thump of wheels passing over the center line. The metal scrape of the bottom of the low-set BMW against the edge of the asphalt, and then everything smooth. The car hits a dark patch of ice on the side of the road, and for a moment they are weightless in motion, the wheels no longer touching the ground. And in a moment of pure panic and disorientation like radio static, he cries out, Frank’s biting whiskey breath sharp against his skin; but he doesn’t turn the lights back on, paralyzed by the fear that Frank just might be right.

When they crash Gerard finds that he is unable to locate himself in time or space. Suspended in fluid twilight. The car slips down off the highway into a large bank of snow that envelops the hood like a kiss, packing against the window in thick blankets. The engine hisses and fades out.

Goddammit, Frank! Gerard cries out in a voice like an old house. He turns the key in the ignition until the engine whines. There is a violence under his skin that heats his cheeks. Where the fuck are the lights? he yells. He gropes around the ceiling of the car, trying to feel out the overhead switch, when Frank reaches up and wraps his stiff fingers around Gerard’s wrist.

Would you just sit here for a minute? Frank says calmly, his voice soft. Murmuring like they’re already in bed. His fingers are cool against Gerard’s pulse.

The slow shake of their skins at storm. Gerard settles in his seat, his hands fallen back into his lap, and watches the snow pile up around their windows. In a few minutes they will be trapped, stranded by circumstance. But for now the world is divided only in black and white, the car quiet enough for him to hear the rush of blood behind his ears.

Tell me you don’t feel the same as I do, Frank whispers, and in this moment Gerard can’t, because he can feel alcohol that isn’t there saturating his veins, the hum of chemicals beneath their flesh, and when he closes his eyes, the dark is no different, but here, he is already buried inside of Frank, swollen and alone.

He pushes his eyes open and says, in a tight voice, We can’t just stay here all night….But it’s too late. Frank’s mouth burns with the taste of liquor and flesh, pulsing hotly against his own in a meshing of teeth and spit. The scrape of stubble, the ache of noses crushed together. Thirty days from now, eighty, one-hundred-and-ten, they will gnash at each other’s lips until the blood congeals, but in the heat of the small black car, Frank moves over Gerard’s lips in delicate, alcohol-loosened strokes, his hands tight around Gerard’s wrist.

Without even knowing it, Gerard secures his static future as he braids his fingers into Frank’s thick hair.

And then he’s pulling back, pushing away, closing in on himself like a fist. He mutters, I’m not planning on freezing to death, asshole.

Bracing his shoulder against the driver’s side door, he grabs hold of the handle and shoves all of his weight into the frame. It doesn’t budge. His throat rattles out a grunt of exasperation. Gerard wheels down the old-fashioned window handle; for a brief moment the snow outside stays in a tightly-packed wall, pristine, and then in a rush, it crumbles into his lap.

Fuck, he hisses as the ice sinks into his pants. With a grimace, Gerard unbuckles his seatbelt and digs his hands into the snow.

When he’s managed to crawl free from the old BMW, he stands back to assess the damage. For now the snow has stopped its descent. The night sky is clear and positively blackened with ink. The BMW’s almost entirely buried in snow like powdered sugar, and he’s got an erection the size of a flashlight.

Perfect, he grumbles, cramming his numbed hands into his armpits. Up the bank a ways, twin headlights sweep across the darkness and are eaten by the night. The passing car is just a crunch of tires on gravel.

And then silence, immaculate and full.

Gerard struggles to climb up the bank. His hands claw for anything of substance, the soles of his shoes trying to grip the dirt buried deep beneath the snow. How the muscles in his back strain in a way that isn’t altogether unpleasant. He manages to throw the top half of his body back up onto the side of the highway, followed by his legs. After a few minutes he finds himself belly-down on the edge of the road. His breath swirls around his face in a haze of warm mist.

Around him, the highway is still and black, and nothing moves.

Still face-down, Gerard buries his forehead into his arm and screams out “fuck” as loud as he can until his throat is like the gravel pressed to his chin. The word “fuck” as a form of prayer. He can’t tell if the swelling in his chest is secret gratitude or blistering anger. Then he stands up, pushes his hair back from his face, and slides down the tracks that the car made down the bank.

Back below the highway, Frank has dug his way out of the car and is now standing by the tunnel that Gerard dug himself, staring blankly into the back window. As Gerard approaches, his footsteps softened and muffled by snow, he can only see the reflection of the half-moon in the window’s liquid black. Six feet away, then two. And now, proximity and angle changes everything. Blurs become skin become light. Reflected in the window is Frank’s face, pooled there as if in a mirror. The contrast of cheekbones and lips, hooded eyes and straight, slender nose. His irises two crystal balls.

Gerard can hardly speak, for fear of hearing his own voice.

His hands fidget inside of his coat pockets. There’s nobody out there, he croaks. Can hardly even see the car from the road.

In the window, Frank’s face cracks with a smile. He says, Are we far out from town?

About three miles, Gerard replies.

The puckering of his lips, all Frank says is just, Oh. His small body quivering like a leaf in the wind.

The panic hits Gerard like a brick in his chest. He says, Goddammit, Frank, what the hell were you thinking, not wearing a jacket out in weather like this? It’s the middle of fucking winter!

His brain flashing with images of blue lips, clotting blood, pale, frozen skin. In under an hour the hypothermia will settle in.

He leans in through the driver’s side window and tries the ignition again. The metal bites at his fingers like ripped skin. He could turn on the heat until the red returned to Frank’s so-paled cheeks in blossom formation, until the gas ran out, until someone discovered them out here in the middle of nowhere, caught out between cities. The engine surges with a growl, but refuses to catch.

The chatter of Frank’s white teeth is like pearls scattering on a hardwood floor.

Fuck, he says. Come here.

Gerard beckons Frank over with a nervous shake of his hand as he unfastens the buttons on his coat. Frank’s gypsy-smiling face like chalk. He wraps his arms around the shivering man, closing the coat tight around the both of them. He’s so small, Gerard can very nearly button the coat back up around their tangled bodies.

Frank tightens his arms around Gerard’s waist, presses his cheek into his cigarette-scented chest.

For a minute the world is silent with snow, flawless and breathless and still. Gerard leans his body back into the car for support, lets Frank fall into him too. The way they’re fitting together like an ancient planet. Gerard wanting a drink, just one right then, just one whiskey sip to take the edge off, to soften his mind.

Frank saying, Just be honest.

It starts against this shadow-tint BMW, the slow rocking, the ocean-spray mist of breath. Gerard’s arms aching with tightened muscles. Merciless cold, ice-shattered bones. Lips. Bruised around the mouth. What Gerard hates about kissing are the closed eyes, so he opens his up a crack, and Frank’s eyelashes are a spiked tattoo of black against the pallor of his cheeks. Those shivers rolling up inside of Frank, past scattered-pearl teeth, past lips opened, lips closed. Into the lips opened, lips closed of Gerard, into his arms, his racing heart.

Gerard leans his face away, turns his head to the side so that Frank is just breath on his ear. He twists the ribbons of his arms open, straightens his quivering hips. Step back, he says.

Frank’s eyelashes like tattoos, drenched in brown like frosted tree bark. He sucks in a sharp breath as the winter wraps its fingers around his lean biceps. Snow blurring all the lines of him. The blue-tinted lips bleeding over sugar skin. With a quick twist of his shoulders, Gerard is holding the long coat away from his body, its warmth only momentarily measured beneath the long sleeves of his t-shirt before the cold steals it away. He gasps under his breath and shakes the coat.

Take it, he says between gritted teeth. When Frank doesn’t extend his arms, Gerard tosses the coat at him and folds his arms. Just trust me, he says, Just put the coat on and come stand where I’m standing.

Snow on his shoulders, Frank slides his slender arms into the too-long sleeves. His knuckles peek out like raw barbs, the coat tumbling down to the backs of his knobby knees. The skin at the denim scars a purple-tinged grin. Snow on his hair, snow on his lashes as his clean shoes step into the indents of Gerard’s footprints. His face shatters into a smile.

This is the nicest thing anybody’s ever done for me, he says, whiskey sloshing around his glossy eyes, and Gerard isn’t sure if he means the coat or the footprints, or even if he’s talking to the sky, and not even Gerard at all.

Gerard hooks his fingers around Frank’s basket-hips, presses him into the car. Steals his lips, steals his warmth. Gerard a sly winter knife. He snakes his fingers up the back of Frank’s shirt, smoothes over the hollow dips above his ass. Breathes in Frank’s gasp greedily as the ice of his hands slip below the puckered waistline of jeans. Frank’s long, feminine fingers are tight like claws around Gerard’s shoulder blades. His lips a red, parted shell.

Trust me, trust me, Gerard breathes as his hands find Frank’s fly.

Frank is arched back over the trunk of the BMW, head tilted on his shoulders like a broken doll. The bare column of his throat a gooseflesh map. Gerard circles his lips around the hollows beneath Frank’s jaw, the shadows hiding between his collar bones. His tongue probing the blood-flushed skin there in Frank’s softest parts. Something about Frank’s crooked teeth like tiny marbles flashing between his lips.

When Gerard kneels down in the snow, his knees are instantly numbed and the wind lifts his thin shirt up in the back. He grimaces and says, If you can, try to keep the openings of the coat somewhat closed around me, alright?

He eases Frank’s cock out of his pants, only semi-hard from the whiskey, hot and pulsing against the inside of Gerard’s hand. Each heartbeat makes Frank whimper. That separate pulse of him. Gerard squeezes gently, pushes hard into hot, musty base of Frank’s secret parts. His cheek pressed into the hard bump of Frank’s belly to keep away from the snow.

I don’t even know your name, Frank whispers through his thickening tongue. His skin is flushed from the contact and the brittle veil of snow. He clenches his fingers around the coat flaps, folding them around Gerard’s shoulders. That deep, furtive heat locked between their bodies that feels like hot sand.

Gerard forgets to pretend that he didn’t want this from the moment Frank fell onto the barstool by his side, radiating hope and the bitterness of aloneness. Forgets that he was drinking soda with the aloneness that night as well, even if Bob and Mikey were breathing down his neck. Forgets that the sting of want for a drink is only because he misses the sting of touch. What he wants is just the forgetting of it all.

He wants that fog.

What he misses most about the drinking is the midnight sheets. The sunrise tension. The morning skin.

What blooms as missing in Gerard seeps into Frank like a bitter incense.

When Frank comes, his ragged voice echoes against the trees and hangs in the air for several minutes like spidery tendrils of Spanish moss. His body stiffens and curls in on itself, surrendering to another kind of fatal pulse. Gerard’s hands ache with cramps. He buries them in the snow to wash them off of Frank’s clean, white semen and then rests his face against Frank’s solid thigh.

Are you sober? he asks, and Frank shakily breathes, No.

And Gerard pretends that it doesn’t matter.

It starts with a shadow against the cloak of snow, a deep voice shouting down the highway embankment, Is everyone okay down there?

Gerard scrambles to his feet, breaking away from the curtain of warmth that Frank had wrapped around him. His lack of breath cripples him. He searches for his voice and just barely manages to call back, We’re not hurt, but my car is wrecked.

Sitting pressed together in the passenger seat of a truck carrying lemons to Washington State, Gerard and Frank are humble and chapel-silent like road-trip children, listening to the static snap of the radio. Frank’s hooded brown eyes trembling with sleep. When he collapses against Gerard’s shoulder, Gerard pretends to grimace and snort, but his fingers creep around Frank’s delicate wrist like an imaginary afterthought.

You boys got an address or a place to go? the trucker grumbles curtly as he catches the sly connection of skins.

Gerard reaches around and deftly slips his free hand into the sleeping Frank’s pocket, retrieving his ratty brown leather wallet and riffling through it for identification. He reads off the address listed there and tries his best not to jolt the resting man awake.

His body full of stolen pulses.

The sky is streaked with gray and blue and purple-rose by the time they stumble onto Frank’s street. The trucker is long-gone against the black ribbon of highway, and Gerard is anesthetized with cold and a bone-deep fatigue. Which one is yours? he whispers against the shell of Frank’s chilled ear.

Frank drowsily leads them to the snow-brushed steps of a chipped brownstone. He folds himself into Gerard’s chest as he fumbles around his pockets for his keys, pushing them into Gerard’s hands as he kisses Frank’s neck. Their breaths scrape the flaky brick walls.

Which floor is yours? Gerard asks as he shoves open the door.

Both, Frank says. He flips on the lights, saying, Nobody lives here but me.

The front room is warm, polished wood the color of honey, drenched in a soft, buttery light from a large lamp on the floor in the middle. Colored carpets lay haphazardly sprawled over the tarnished wood, fraying and worn. As Gerard crosses to the middle of the room, his footsteps echo in steady whispers against the walls.

Frank moves against the shadows, climbing the stairs slowly and methodically as the alcohol throbs under his skin. He pauses on the tenth step, turning to look down at Gerard. When Gerard looks up, Frank says nothing, his face a cool, dusky mask. He continues up the stairs and disappears down a darkened hallway. The hazy presence of him trailing like a thin light.

All the shadows of him gathering in the folds of his clothing, Gerard watches the barely noticeable flickering of the lamp and considers himself. He can hear Frank’s motions upstairs, sleepy and heavy-footed. A tenderness spreads underneath his cheekbones and spreads, seeping down the length of his arms, his fingers, his thighs, flooding into his cock like a gust of wind. He watches himself moving, first to the light switch by the door, where he flips off the lamp like a terminal blink, then up the stairs, leaving the darkness behind.

Now he is engulfed by a choppy dimness pacified by the moon spilling through windows scattered down the hall. Gerard stretches out his hands to feel along the walls until he reaches the room where Frank’s shadow sluggishly fumbles around, opening drawers, closing them, removing articles of clothing and leaving them deflated over the hardwood floor. Frank hardly glances up as Gerard crosses the room to the bay window at the opposite side. His pale face an interrupted painting. They don’t speak.

Gerard watches as Frank removes his underpants and balls them up before dropping them near the closet. Watches the lean muscle of him climb into the feathery pillows of sheets and duvet piled on top of the bed. Frank’s face becomes placid as he sits on his heels, fluffing out the pillows and rolling his neck to get the kinks out. His lithe back a map of his life.

Gerard watching, gravity falling. How fucking lonely he is.

He stands in one position by the liquid window pane, seeing Frank’s smooth-sleeping face, not knowing yet that tomorrow night he will do the same thing, and the next night, and every night up until the night that he simply can’t anymore. Standing in one position until his muscles start to shake.

When he finally motions to leave, Frank’s somber eyes flicker open wide. Please, he says. He says, If you’re not here with me in the morning, I won’t ever remember that this happened. I won’t remember you, and I won’t know your name. This night will be erased.

Gerard can’t tell if Frank is asking him to stay or to leave.

Please, Frank says.

Please don’t make me forget.

And Gerard, his body numb and his lips bruised, he says, My name is Gerard.

Frank, his face peaceful and drunkenly euphoric, whispering, Gerard. Your name is Gerard.

Frank smiling, smiling, smiling.

Gerard removes his shirt, his pants, his thin black socks. Tucks himself into the anesthetic warmness of Frank’s thin and snake-like limbs. And finally breathes out. He curls around Frank’s slow-breathing body like a second skin and rests his chin on the hollow bones of Frank’s shoulder blades. His body an urgent avalanche. His arms a gaping yawn around Frank’s boyish hips.

Gerard, please be here when I wake up, okay? Frank is saying, his speech slurred and listless.

God, I want to know your face, he mumbles into the pillow.

Ten thousand hours from now, more, Gerard’s mind will suddenly render itself blank and chilled, sterilized by rage and irreparable wounds. He will look into Frank’s eyes and remember this night, remember this same skin, but it will be foreign to him, like looking at a photograph taken of himself without notice. He will see but not feel.

But for now Gerard smiles, his heart a timid warrior as he rests his face against Frank’s. And he lets himself forge this lucid connection with a haunted stranger in the drafty brownstone across town. He closes his eyes, tells himself, Remember.

And when Frank pleads, Be here, Gerard—Gerard says, Yes.