Masquerade

He closes his eyes, thick lashes a dark shadow on porcelain cheeks as a long, thin pencil runs its smooth tip over soft skin, leaving a thick, dark streak of ebony in its wake. His hands are steady, weeks-old black nail polish chipping away to reveal the bare fingernails beneath. He makes a thick ring of dark shadows around each alert, deep green eye before dropping the eye pencil into a small cup on the counter beside him and turning to leave the cramped bathroom without a second glance into the dirty mirror behind him.

Hip shaker, dream maker
Heart breaker, earth quaker
I can be anything that you want me to.

The city streets are cold and dark, the faint breeze unforgiving in its frigid gusts against his uncovered skin. His hands slip up absentmindedly to rub his bare arms as expensive leather combat boots tromp against the dirty concrete sidewalk, but the chill that has him clinging to himself in the darkness every Saturday night isn’t really something he minds too much. He knows why it has to happen, why he can’t even think of bringing along something like a jacket or even those cheap, imitation leather gloves Samie got him as a budget gift last Christmas. He can’t carry too much with him – every extra accessory creates another possibility for absentminded forgetfulness, another chance to be discovered.

Coin spender, mind bender
Jet setter, go getter
Changing my getup for anything you choose.

The club is warm and dark as usual, the air - infused with the never-fading scent of sweat and alcohol and shuddering just slightly along with the pounding of melody and stumbling feet - surrounding him, lifting him upwards and in through the outwardly classy, glass-and-steel double doors masking the rainbow debauchery inside. The lights are bright and blinding as they pulse alongside the beat of a song whose lyrics he can hardly make out over the tremendous force of the bass and the off-key singing of a crowd of drunk college girls a few tables away, but that’s alright. He’s not here for the music, anyways.

I won't mind trying on someone else
I won't mind seeing just how it felt.

It doesn’t take them long to find each other – he doesn’t know who reaches out first, only that all of a sudden there are strong, heavily inked hands clasped firmly in his, tugging him into a warm, hard chest and wrapping muscled arms around his waist.

“You look different tonight.” A rough voice calls over the throbbing beat, hands grasping his hips and pulling him in, their bodies colliding in the usual mess of leather and chains and sweat and secrets.

He grins, something flashing through his eyes that neither of them recognize as he replies, “Don’t I always?”

I might like changing my disguise
To make you happy.

“How long?” The older man asks, eyes fixated on his smaller body as he grinds it against firm hips.

He doesn’t need to ask what that means – he never does, with Ronnie.

“Four hours. Samie said she’d be back by midnight.”

Ronnie nods, hands grasping tattooed wrists and tugging him out of the crowd, off of the dance floor. It’s obvious the taller man doesn’t really want to be here – it’s not his ‘scene’ anymore, as he calls it. Still, he looks down into deep green eyes with a halfhearted grin and says, “Want a drink, beautiful?”

His only response is a short, energetic nod, accompanied by a smile that is three parts excited and one part apologetic.

As they approach the bartender, Ronnie doesn’t ask what he wants to drink. He already knows – he always does, just like the younger man knows that he hates ordering it almost as much as he hates cigarettes and flashy cars and the lingering scent of his mother drifting around his father’s house whenever he visits on days off from touring.

“You two together?” The bulky man asks uninterestedly as he grabs a few bottles off of one of the shelves behind him.

Ronnie looks down at him then, mocha-brown eyes full of mischief and something the other man just can’t place before he replies, “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

Here's my formal invitation
You and me go masquerading
Lose ourselves in this charading,
Is this love we're imitating?

He doesn’t know how much he drinks or how long they dance, only that when they leave he’s stumbling and Ronnie’s hands are places they really shouldn’t be outside of the cover provided by ratty sheets and barely-insulated, water-stained walls. He doesn’t know where they’re going, either, and he doesn’t really care – all he anticipates is the coming release, wrapped up in warmth and frayed bedding and the faintest hints of love.

Do we want what we've got?
If not I say so what?

The run-down motel’s dirty beige corridors blur together (or is that just his vision?) in a mess of blank, twisting irrelevance before they reach a door, splintering and creaking and identical to all the rest, that Ronnie kicks open hastily, dropping the younger man down onto the lazily laundered bedspread as the taller man’s decorated hands close the thin wooden door behind them, plunging the room into a sort of half-dusk, just barely lit by the weak strands of moonlight streaming in through the dusty window beside the bed.

Neither of them move to turn on the light.

School teacher, mind reader
Dream weaver, just be the
One I can count on to play it up with me.

He looks up, then, at the older man, his features darkened and deepened by the shadows flowing lazily about the room, cocooning them together behind an impenetrable cloud of the most welcoming sort of darkness. Ronnie looks different, too, not just different but different, like a real shifting, twisting, permanent sort of different that created and transformed and destroyed.

“You look different, too.” He murmurs past clumsy lips, and his fingers tighten on the bedspread as a thousand other half-formed thoughts he’d never be able to collect or arrange coherently enough to say come with it.

Ronnie just smiles.

Hot waiter, cool skater
Trail blazer, pose major
Naughty and nice
What I know you want to be.

The older man’s footsteps are slow and gentle on frayed, threadbare carpeting as he closes the distance between them to perch on the edge of the bed next to the other, body warm and comforting beside his own.

He doesn’t need to worry about the time, or how slow they both move now, wasting precious minutes away – there’s no reason to, really. Out there - beyond those walls, past dirty glass and stains of years gone by – life goes on at its usual recklessly breakneck pace, speeding by so fast it seems to stand still for everyone moving with it.

That’s not the case here – everything is slow and smooth and gentle, like smoke spiraling into still, lifeless, open air, and maybe that’s why he loves it so much.

It’s simple.

Easy.

You wanna try on someone else?
You might like seeing how it felt.

“Max…”

The word is soft and gentle, and he looks up in response, lips spreading into a real, full smile, the first one he’s given the other man all night.

Ronnie says no more, only raises one hand to stroke a soft, pale cheek with calloused fingers that send jolts of warmth up and down Max’s spine.

“I’ve got all night.” He murmurs softly, and Max isn’t sure what it means, really, since they both know he doesn’t have all night, he only has two hours left, maybe even less.

But that doesn’t really matter, he realizes.

“No.” Max replies softly, his own hand reaching up to cover Ronnie’s on his cheek, and he fleetingly wonders why it fits so well underneath his own, “We don’t have all night.”

Ronnie opens his mouth to say something, then, something empty and meaningless but the (wrong wrong wrong) right thing to say, before Max cuts him off with a finger to his lips.

“We’ve got forever.”

Do you mind changing your disguise
If it makes me happy?

And then there are teeth and lips and tongues and Max isn’t sure where one of them ends and the other begins, but it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter, because they’re in here, not out there, and in here, nothing has to have an end. In here, everything is infinite.

In here, he’s not Max Green, jobless druggie wreck, lonely and confused, loyal boyfriend of Samie Jayden. In here, Ronnie’s not a singer about to leave the state for the first time in five months to tour the country with his band, not a loving boyfriend and soon-to-be father, not taken and leaving and oh, so distant from the boy who once held his hand while he cried over his mother so many May Sundays ago. In here, he was Ronnie, and Max was Max, and there was no more difference between them. They weren’t Ronnie, weren’t Max, weren’t even Ronnie and Max, because there was no more space, no more words between them. They were RonnieandMax, or maybe even more than that, a nameless, boundless entity that no lines could come between and no mercilessly cruel hands of fate could pull apart. They were one. They were all.

And then there was hands on skin and legs pushing his own apart and Max had nearly forgotten how fucking fantastic this all felt – filling and loosening him until he came apart and pulled together all at once, both molding them together and breaking them apart farther than they’d ever been, more so than the time they’d kissed on Ronnie’s couch in high school, all shaking and spit and fumbling fingers, more so than in the backseat of Ronnie’s car when he’d cried into Max’s shoulder because they were taking him away, they were taking him away and he was so, so scared, and Max had made love to him because he didn’t know what else to do.

This was everything and nothing at all.

This was them.

Here's my formal invitation
You and me go masquerading
Lose ourselves in this charade and
Is this love we're imitating?

Then, soon enough, it’s over – Max is warm all over, inside and outside, screaming and moaning and nearly crying from the beauty and pathetic sort of perfection in it all, and for a split second, they’re truly gone, dead and alive and Max feels almost as though he’s at the end of a long, winding road, looking out over a shifting, shuddering landscape that never pauses long enough for him to remember what or where or why, and then it’s gone and they’re two men in a bed, shaking and sweating and dirty and almost a little bit ashamed.

Then Ronnie is gone, body rolling off of Max’s own and that warm completeness sliding out of him as fast as it had come, and he was staring into nothing but darkness, feeling slowly cooling cum dripping down between his legs and a crackling stain on the fabric below his left thigh that may or may not have been coffee.

And then the light is on and the shadows slink away and he knows it’s over.

Do we want what we've got?
If not I say so what?

He doesn’t complain – as much as he wants to, as much as he wishes for nothing more than a chance to take Ronnie by the hand, to drag him down that road just a little farther and explore Avalon together, something inside of him, crooning and convincing and more powerful than any desire, knows he has no more purpose here. He sits up, naked back facing Ronnie, and yanks on his shed boots with shaky fingers, allowing the thin fabrics of that midnight club-whore clothing Ronnie likes so much to slide over his skin and cling to thin trails of sweat on slick fluids and what may have been lingering kisses. He stands, then, making his way over to the door on unsteady legs. Goodbyes aren’t needed here. They both know what must and what can never again be said.

“You look different.” The words come just when his hand grasps the door handle, and he turns to see the older man sitting up on the bed, naked body shamelessly exposed to the cool night air as he crosses his legs and watches Max go with eyes so soft and warm and vulnerable that it hurts.

“I know.” Max replies softly, with a voice that isn’t his own, small and soft and sad and happy all at once.

He turns, then, opening the door and feeling the careless speed of the world outside tugging at him again, dragging him along for the ride, and he doesn’t fight it as he steps into the slipstream.

But just before he’s swept away, he hears the words, just barely audible from behind the thin wood and chipping paint and heartbreak of years gone by, so sincere and full of nostalgic truth that it tears his heart apart at the seams and carefully, lovingly stitches it back together all at once with the same hands that once held him so close in the backseat of Ronnie’s cheap, shitty car while they made love in the parking lot of a foreclosed Denny’s.

“But you feel the same.”

Here's my formal invitation
Let's go, let's go masquerading.