Secrets 7

Author’s Note: Sorry it took so long. I just got really lazy. 

9/9/04

It’s amazing the things we can forget…when we try hard enough…

Chapter Seven: Underneath

Together we washed all the blood off the floor. When we were finished, I looked at my hands and they were red and slippery. “This is really never gonna come off, is it?” I asked.

Danny looked up at me, his green eyes flashing. Those eyes. So green, like 7up bottles. Pretty eyes, vibrant, alive…He smiled. I don’t remember the last time he smiled at me, an honest smile -- a smile without hidden intentions. It made me feel warm. It made me feel like maybe for a little while, things didn’t have to be complicated. Things didn’t have to be scary. Maybe for once, things could just be simple. 

The gun Danny shot himself in the head with was on the floor, right beside his naked foot. I looked at it, he didn’t. I was tense and Danny wasn’t. He wasn’t afraid of the small, black metal thing that grazed up against his big toe. But he didn’t need to be afraid. He already knew what it was capable of. He had already felt the pain of that gun – I hadn’t. And I hoped I never would. “It’s just a little blood,” Danny said simply. “Just go over to the sink and wash it off.”

I looked behind Danny, at the bathtub. There were several bloody handprints on the white porcelain, handprints that made me shudder. I felt like I was on fire in the inside.

“How does it feel like?” I asked, still looking not at Danny and his bright green eyes, but at the bathtub, and its bright red stains. 

“How does what feel like?” Danny asked back, smiling. His smile was so innocent, beautiful, and realistic. 

“Being dead,” I said. Those words sounded so gruesome coming out of my mouth. But they felt so much worse in my head – or at least I thought it was my head…

Instead of answering my question directly, Danny stood and walked over to the toilet. He lifted up the lid and unbuckled his shorts. He pulled his dick out, which was more than a little hard, and started to piss. Danny looked at me. From a distance, his eyes didn’t look green; they looked brown. “You won’t know until you’re there,” he told me. “It’s not somethin’ I can just tell you about. It’s somethin’ you gotta experience for yourself.”

“Why did you do it?” I questioned.

Danny smiled, zipped his shorts up, and flushed the toilet. “Why did I do what?”

“You know what I’m talkin’ about, Danny. Why did you shoot yourself?”

The air around me suddenly got real cold, as though a ghost ran his fingers down the length of my back. Danny took a step toward me. And then another. As he came closer to me, I realized how good-looking he was. I had known before, but I had never really paid attention to him. I didn’t really notice how smooth and perfect his skin was; how black his hair was; how attractive the shape of his mouth was; how simple and well proportioned his body was. I hadn’t noticed before, because I was so busy being obsessed with Patrick. I was so busy staring in front of me, than looking right next to me. And now it was too late. Now everything that used to be Danny was gone, and this person I saw in front of me was just a pretty illusion, a reminder of what used to be. 

Danny bent down and picked up the gun. I froze. Danny laughed. “What are you so worried about, Sean? Nothin’s gonna happen that hasn’t already happened.” He twirled the gun in his hand like an expert gunslinger. 

“You never answered my question,” I told him.

“Look in the mirror,” Danny said, his attention more on the gun than on me.

I turned to my left and saw my reflection in the mirror. What I saw looked like me, but it didn’t feel like me. It was like seeing a stranger with my face. “What do you see?” Danny asked.

“Me,” I said, staring at my reflection, intimidated by my own reflection.

“You sure about that?” Danny asked.

I looked at the mirror again, and I saw someone standing behind me, someone who wasn’t standing there before. At first I thought it was Patrick. This man was the same height as Patrick, the same hazel-colored eyes, the same square-shaped jaw…but this man was slightly older. I remembered him. It wasn’t Patrick I was seeing. I was seeing his father. As soon as I recognized him, he disappeared. I turned back to look at Danny, but it was Danny that I was looking at anymore – it was Patrick. He wore Danny’s shorts and he was barefoot. Patrick held Danny’s gun in hand – but maybe it was never Danny’s gun to begin with. Patrick played with the gun like it was made especially for him. He looked me in the eyes after a few moments.

“What am I doin’ here?” Patrick asked.

“I was thinking the same thing,” I responded, moving toward the bathroom doorway.

Patrick took a step toward me. My heart started to race. I wanted him to come close to me, but at the same time I was afraid of what would happen if he did – especially while he was holding that gun. “You afraid of me?” Patrick asked.

It was an honest question, and I didn’t know if I had an honest answer. “Should I be?”

Behind Patrick, I saw Danny’s dead body floating in the bathtub. His skin was rotted and purple, and one of his eyes was missing. Patrick turned around to see what I was looking at. He turned back to me. “What are you lookin’ at?” he asked. Patrick didn’t see what I saw when I looked into that bathtub. Maybe because he wasn’t there to see what I saw. 

“Nothin’,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I worry about a lotta shit,” Patrick admitted. His brown eyes looked too serious when he said that. There was a lot of pain behind those eyes, pain I rarely ever saw in him. “I worry about you, Sean,” he said. “I worry about what I might do to you.”

My heart nearly froze when he said that. Patrick’s grip on that gun hadn’t loosened at all. In fact, it had gotten tighter. He knew I was looking at him as he toyed around with that gun. He knew that I was afraid. I think he liked that I was afraid.

“Is there somethin’ I did to you, Patrick?” I asked. “Is there somethin’ I did that would make you hate me?” 

Patrick leaned against the white wall. His muscular arms were flexed, and for a moment, only a moment, the gun almost looked beautiful in his hand. It almost looked natural.

“You know what you did,” Patrick said. “I shouldn’t have to tell you.” He looked so menacing when he said that. 

“What I did?” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Patrick pointed the gun at me. “You will.” He pulled the trigger –

And I woke up.

A white ceiling was the first thing I saw. For some reason, I thought I was in a hospital. But there was too much sunlight in the room for me to be in a hospital. I was naked beneath thin sheets. And these sheets didn’t belong to me. This wasn’t my bed. This wasn’t my room. The memories of the previous night came back to me slowly. It was only yesterday that Danny shot himself…wasn’t it? Somehow I had woken up at Patrick’s house, in his bed, with him right next to me. I remember leaving his room and going into the bedroom at the very end of the hallway. And then I remembered other things too. I remembered the darkness. I remembered hearing Patrick’s voice in the darkness. “He was supposed to be the first person to go…” It could only mean what I feared it meant. Maybe there was some other explanation, some other possible thing Patrick could’ve been talking about. But it seemed real clear to me. He wanted me dead.

“It’s almost eleven o’ clock.” That voice belonged to Patrick. I sat upright in bed, alarmed. He was leaning against the door, mostly naked, except for a pair of very small, tight white underwear that looked like they were made for a ten year old, not a man with as big of a dick like Patrick’s. He looked so beautiful, so godlike, but also very threatening. His muscular arms were crossed over his chest, and he stared at me with cold eyes. Although Patrick didn’t have the gun in hand, as he did in my dream, I still felt the same danger as though he were holding the gun. I didn’t know what to say. We just looked at each for a minute or two. I felt cold. 

Patrick finally made a move and came closer to the bed. I just sat there, unable to think of what to do. He lay on the bed, beside me, on his stomach. The curve of his ass in those his tight underwear was so round and perfect. I wanted to touch him, but a big part of me was afraid to. I didn’t know how he would react. “What are you thinkin’ about?” Patrick asked me.

I looked him deep in his light brown eyes. He still looked like the boy I had fallen in love with when I was six-years-old. But that was only in the outside. I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said softly. Patrick knew that something was wrong with me. He knew that most of problems were directly related to him. He knew that I was more than a little afraid of him. He knew that I couldn’t resist him. 

“What did you hear me say on the phone?” Patrick asked with a blank face.

My heart doubled in speed. “Nothing,” I said. My voice squeaked a little. 

“Be honest,” Patrick said to me, that same expressionless expression on his face.

“…Not a whole lot. I just heard you say ‘I love you,’ and then you hung up the phone. That’s all.”

Patrick stared at me for a while. “I was talking to my cousin, Kevin. We were talkin’ about somethin’,” Patrick said. “It didn’t have anything to do with you, Sean.”

“I never knew you had a cousin named, Kevin,” I said. 

A flashed of anger raced across Patrick’s eyes, but disappeared as soon as it appeared. “I just haven’t talked that much about him. He lives in L.A. He just came down here for a while.”

Patrick knew that I didn’t believe a single word he said. This story that he was making up was more for his benefit than it was mine. “Okay,” I said. I think I sounded more distrusting than I meant to. Patrick touched my leg. That same spark I felt every time he touched me was still there – but there was something else there too, a cold chill. “I’m serious, Sean. Forget about that whole phone call last night.”

I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said. “I want to believe you, Patrick. But I can’t. I don’t know who you are.”

Patrick laughed as though I had just said the funniest joke in the world. He took his hand away from my leg. Part of me was glad that he did, but part of me felt bad that he did. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Patrick asked. “I’m the same person you knew yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that…it’s me. Who the fuck else would I be?” He sounded so defensive, so angry…so vulnerable. It was scary to see him that way, because I had never seen it before.

“There’s something different about you now,” I told him. 

“Like what?” Patrick asked, creases appearing in his smooth forehead. “What’s so different about me now, Sean? Tell me, I wanna know.”

The back of my throat hurt a little. “I know that you’re keeping secrets from me. There’s something you’re not telling me. Something that has to deal with me.”

Patrick smiled again and grabbed my hand, not gently, but not entirely too tight either. I couldn’t resist his touch; no matter how hard I try. And that was the danger of it all. If I couldn’t resist him, if I allowed him to have so much power over me, I wouldn’t be able to see him for who he really was, underneath, and what he was really capable of. “Everybody’s got secrets, Sean. Even you. There’s a lot of stuff that you don’t tell me.”

“What do you wanna know?” I asked.

Patrick hadn’t expected me to say that. He looked perplexed. “What?”

“What is it you wanna know about me? I’ll tell you my secrets if you tell me yours.”

Laughing, Patrick said, “Sean, let’s drop the stupid shit.” He raised my hand to his mouth and inserted one of my fingers into his soft, moist mouth. I felt wave after wave of warmth run through my muscles. I closed my eyes for a quick second and my dick started to get harder. “I’d rather be doin’ somethin’ else,” Patrick said. He started to make his way up my arm with his tongue. My skin tingled all over and I was pitching a large tent underneath the sheet. Patrick brought his face to mine. I could smell his breath, and it was cool, and fresh, while I knew that my own was stale and too warm. I could feel the heat coming from his body, and I wanted him to touch me all over. I wanted to feel his tongue. I wanted to lick and kiss and touch every piece of my body. 

Patrick bit my upper lip gently and my whole body lost control. He pushed me down on the bed, so that I was lying flat, and he got on top of me. I instantly felt the hardness of his dick straining through his tight underwear, mashing up against my own hard dick. Before he kissed me, Patrick licked the side of my neck, the edges of my jaw, and he moved upward to my ear, nibbling at my earlobe, softly sticking his tongue into my ear. Once again a convulsion sizzled through my body. He whispered, very softly into my ear, “Do you love me?”

All the warmth I felt in my body vanished and was replaced with a deep chill. Patrick kissed the side of my face. “Yeah, I do,” I whispered, almost so softly that I didn’t know if he heard me.

“So do I,” Patrick said. And saying that, he started to kiss me. Every time Patrick kissed me, I always wondered if I was really dreaming or if I was awake. It was still unbelievable to me that someone I had loved and wanted to kiss for so long, someone I had been completely obsessed with for so many years, the person who was more important to me than most people I knew, was finally showing me the affection that I always wanted from him. As Patrick slid his tongue against mine, as our lips matched, I asked myself, “Why is this happening? Why am I getting what I want from him?” Patrick had always been the perfect representation of everything I had ever wanted in a male, and now I was able to be with him. Now he was touching me.