A creature in N/A
I'm young and rich and stupid
Easy prey for Cupid
-- Younger Hunger, Fangs
His mind whirred on the way to Laith’s place, putting together a list of apologies that would hopefully salvage this situation. There was no way Laith would forget the three forbidden words and act like Theodore had never said anything, so he had to be prepared. It’d probably be best if he attacked the subject head on, before Laith could; that way, he’d be in control of it. Okay, listen. How aggressive should he be? He supposed it’d depend on Laith’s mood, how angry or upset he was about it. If he was angry, then Theodore would be angrier; if he was upset, then Theodore would be even more so. He’d just have to match Laith’s energy and one-up it. Then again, for that to work, he’d have to let Laith approach the topic first. Hm. It came down to which one was more important then, or rather, which one gave him a wider margin of success.
Being in control of this conversation, surely. In that case, he should probably be neutral about it, so Laith would have room to express the emotion that Theodore would later latch onto and make his own. Yeah, that’d work.
So, I know what I said was out of place, but I meant it. Eh, he should probably not start with that. I know you probably wanna talk about what I said yesterday, and for the record, I don’t expect you to say anything back. Okay, that was better; it wouldn’t immediately freak Laith out. He could then follow it with the fact that he’d meant it. He’d only said it because he’d wanted Laith to know. No, he knew Laith already knew about it. That point was good; it’d pander to Laith’s ego, showing how smart Theodore thought he was. I know you know, but I just wanted to say it. I needed to put it out there. Hm, less emotional, maybe. I wanted to put it out there. Ugh, he’d have to come up with a way not to say the word want twice in a row. Want, need, desire, wish, have to. I had to put it out there? No. Fuck it; it didn’t matter. He’d think of something on the fly. That usually worked better.
He knocked on Laith’s door with his heart in his mouth. The queens were out tonight, working; it was only the two of them this time. He heard a muffled noise that he couldn’t make out, but since it’d come from the general direction of the circular table with the two chairs, it was probably one of them scraping the carpet. Then, footsteps approached. He held his breath.
His eyes met Laith’s as soon as the door opened. He couldn’t immediately find anything there, so his instinctive reaction was to smile. That forced a smile onto Laith’s face too, feet taking a step back to let him through. A forced smile—why? He’d never seen Laith fake anything before. This situation must be worse than he’d thought.
“You probably wanna talk about yesterday,” he began, speaking on his way in, arms moving to swing his backpack down his own shoulders. Laith had told him to bring it, so he did.
The way he’d turned put him directly in front of the table and chairs, where the low-hanging light fixture illuminated a pile of books pushed to the corner and an open one near the rightmost chair. He’d been right, then; Laith had been reading here. His backpack fell by the wardrobe.
“What I said, I mean,” he continued.
On this meanwhile, Laith had shut the door. When their eyes met again, he noticed something on Laith’s upper arm, a beige Band-Aid about two inches tall. The sight alone—how big it was—stopped him in his tracks, eyes wide; the speech he’d rehearsed had suddenly evaporated from his tongue. Had Laith hurt himself again? He could barely breathe.
“Yeah.” Laith’s tone was awkward, as if he spoke around a lump. He held himself very stiffly, shoulders tense. Oh god, Theodore couldn’t let him lead this conversation; he had to start it first! What was it that he’d rehearsed? He blinked a couple of times, eyebrows furrowing in thought. Focus, focus—he’d ask about the Band-Aid later. It might not even be anything.
“Yeah, so I know you already knew that about me; I was just stating the obvious. I don’t expect you to say anything, because that’s not why I said it in the first place. I just wanted to put it out there. It was—Holding it in was killing me.” He took a step closer to Laith, eyes holding the stare. “I meant it, though. If you didn’t already know that too.” He stopped himself from saying it again. How much damage would that cause? Instead, he touched Laith’s arm. “I don’t want anything to change between us.”
“Nothing’s going to change,” Laith reassured him. “I just… can’t say it back to you.”
An invisible noose fell around his throat and choked him. That wasn’t news—he’d expected it—but my god, did it hurt anyway. A hand stabbed his heart with a knife and twisted it. If he opened his mouth right now, blood would surely pour out.
“It’s okay.” He practically had to choke that out. He even tried to smile, but it didn’t work.
“That’s not to say I don’t feel the same, by the way. I—” Laith cut himself off, gesturing vaguely with a hand. Wait, what? Suddenly, the noose around Theodore’s throat loosened and the blood in his mouth was sucked back in, like a movie in reverse.
“I’m not good at saying stuff like that,” Laith continued. His body language was very awkward, hands closed into tight fists, back perfectly straight. “It—it’s never been smart to do it, so I stopped doing it, but I really like you. I like you a lot; I just—I can’t give this a name. I can’t define it, because the moment I do, you’ll start expecting stuff from me and I know I’m going to disappoint you. If I tell you we’re dating, then it’s a responsibility. I like you and I like hanging out with you, but I don’t want this to be something I can fail at.”
Wait, so were they dating? Oh my god, were they dating?
Laith took a big, shaky breath. “Theo, I can’t afford to fail somebody else. I can’t afford to fail myself again.” His voice was so strained that, if Theodore weren’t staring him in the face, he’d think Laith was on the verge of tears. Stunned into silence, all he could do was watch Laith squirm, essentially trapped inside himself. “I saw Fred today. It was between sessions, so we didn’t talk long, but you asked me to see him, so I did. Um, I’m still fucked up, obviously, but I’m improving. I have to warn you it’s at a snail’s pace, though. Anyway, I still suck and don’t trust anyone, so I can’t give you what you want. It’s not you; I just—I can’t let people in. I haven’t been able to do that in a very long time.”
Theodore stared at him. How could someone he’d never met have ruined his life so thoroughly? Well, the Serpent had ruined Laith’s life, but what he’d done had ricocheted and hit Theodore too.
“If you want to call me your boyfriend…” Laith’s shoulders bounced. “Do it. What you feel for me, I mean, you might as well; it’d be cruel not to let you do that. I just can’t uphold it. You already know what I can give you and now you know what I can’t, so.”
Oh my god. His legs threatened to give, lungs unable to function. Holy shit, what? What? “Would it change anything?” he asked breathlessly. “If I did that. If I called you that.”
“Not on my part. I wouldn’t be able to do anything differently.”
Laith grew wobbly, eyes filling up with tears—not now. God, not now. He couldn’t make out a single expression on Laith’s face, if there even was one.
“Are we cool?” Laith asked. His tone was tentative, almost shy.
“Yes.”
He reached over and grabbed Laith’s arm—his boyfriend’s arm. He was going to fucking throw up. His hand squeezed once, then let go; he wasn’t even sure what to do right now. This felt like the biggest step they’d ever taken, even if, realistically, nothing between them would change—except it would. Except it totally would! Laith was his fucking boyfriend. Laith was his boyfriend. Was this an open relationship? Yes, of course; they could both still see other people, but that didn’t negate the fact that Laith was—once again, for his own sake—his boyfriend. Now, how many people could say that? No one. That was right; no one else could say that. Laith was his boyfriend.
Before completely losing his cool, he decided to point at the Band-Aid on Laith’s arm and change the subject. “What’s that?”
Laith briefly glanced at it. “Oh, it’s a nicotine patch. Fred said it helps. It itched like hell when I first put it on, but it’s okay now. He said to only wear it if I feel like having a cigarette, which was the first thing I did after our non-session. Buy the patch, I mean; not smoke. I don’t have a single pack lying around. He, uh—he wants to meet you.”
His eyes widened. “Who, Fred?”
“Yeah. If you want to, of course; no one’s gonna make you do it.”
“Why would he wanna meet me?”
“’Cause we talked about you. There’s this, um… cautionary thing, uh—preemptive measure that uh…” Laith’s hands moved as he talked, vague and erratic. Theodore had never seen his face so red, practically sweating under the collar—why was he so nervous? What preemptive measure was he talking about? “He knows Emily. He has her number and stuff, but since you kept coming up, he now wants to speak with you and maybe get your number too. It’s just that, if he can’t reach me for some reason, he’ll try to reach you instead. That’s it.”
When Emily’s name came up, the first thing that came to mind was her bending over to zip up her platform boots. He barely heard what Laith followed up with, suddenly hit in the head with a baseball bat. Even though she wasn’t in the room, his eyes still glanced away, moving before he could even think about it. He still had no idea what that preemptive measure related to, but as his heart skipped and shame flared up his cheeks, he decided not to press Laith on it. His brain barely worked right now. “Yeah, sure. I mean… is he hot? I only wanna meet him if he’s hot.”
Just like that, Laith breathed out all the nervousness that had plagued him a moment ago. “He’s not my type, but maybe he’s yours. He’s thirty-something, has short red hair, a long beard, glasses and likes to wear grandma sweaters.”
“Hm. I’m into bad boys, so I think I’ll pass.”
“Bad boys, huh. Is that what I am?”
“No, you just look like one, but since you’re perfect, I’m willing to make an exception.”
Laith laughed.
“You think I’m kidding,” Theodore prodded.
Their eyes met. Still grinning, Laith shoved him on the arm. “Shut up.”
“No, you can’t stop me from being mushy and embarrassing anymore; I’ve freed myself from your shackles. I’ve already said the forbidden words; I have nothing else to lose. If the most handsome man in the world—who happens to be mine, by the way—is also perfect, then why shouldn’t I tell him? He has the right to know.”
“You sound fucking stupid right now.”
“And you sound like a dream come true. Pinch me.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Laith spoke while picking up Theodore’s backpack and offering it back to him. “Why don’t you stop wasting your time and do some homework, huh? I bet it’s piling up.”
“You’re too pretty to know anything about that. Plus, I didn’t come here to do homework with you.” Theodore let his backpack fall back on the floor.
“Am I wrong, though? Have you done any school work this week?”
“It’s Wednesday, babe. I’ll do it over the weekend.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He couldn’t possibly take that threat seriously when it was spoken with a grin. “Sorry, I meant to call you sugar tits. Is that better?”
“Much better.” Laith took a seat at the table, in front of the open book he must’ve been reading before Theodore’s visit.
Theodore pulled the other chair over, so they’d be in neighboring seats rather than across from each other. “What does it say about me that I’ve called Justin a lot more nicknames than you?” he asked, sitting down.
“Probably that you want him to have your children, not me.”
“How do you know I’d top both of you?”
“Have you met Justin?”
“Fair enough. I guess the argument isn’t whether I’m a top, but that you’re both bottoms. Well, he would be, I mean. He’s sleeping with Jessie now.”
“Really?” A surprised smile tugged on Laith’s lips. “So he really did call her. Good on him for keeping his word. Ladies love that.”
“How do you know what ladies love?”
“I know a lot about women, actually.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“They like ugly men and doing their nails. I also know they prefer ordering a caramel macchiato with extra cream rather than a milkshake.”
“Aren’t those completely different things?”
“Because one has a shot of coffee in it and the other doesn’t?”
Theodore pondered this. Since he’d never really had coffee or known anyone who’d ordered a caramel macchiato before, he supposed he didn’t know enough about the topic to object to it. “You know, I thought Justin had told you about that.”
“I guess he forgot.”
He squinted, casually leaning closer to Laith. “You think he told Emily?”
“There’s no way. She would’ve told me if he had; she’s super possessive over him.”
“She’s possessive over you too, you know.”
“Nah, we’ve just known each other for a long time.”
“No, she is. Have you already forgotten about last week?”
“I can’t forget about it soon enough.” A hand pushed the open book in front of Laith toward Theodore. “I read something interesting today, when I came back from Fred’s office. This guy Harris—the philosopher who wrote this book—believes the shadows we see are created by the human heart, which we both already know. So far, we’re on the same page. What interested me is that he said once the shadows are expelled from us, they take up a life of their own, meaning anyone who’s haunted can see them. Like, we don’t need to be related to the creator of the shadow to see it. It’d explain the ones whose names we don’t know, that just roam the dark endlessly. Have you seen the one on the edge of N/A? It’s in a part of the tunnels where no one lives in, pretty forgotten, near the abandoned gas station where we met your dad.”
“I’ve never been under that gas station.”
“I’ll show you sometime. It’s massive and doesn’t have a name, but the vibes are rancid. When your skin starts to crawl, you know you’re close to it. Anyway, Fred and I talked about what each one of us puts out into the world, good or bad, which made me wonder if the shadows even have a morality of their own. Like, maybe some of them don’t wanna hurt us. Ethel didn’t seem to wanna hurt you or your mom, and the others who used to live with you had never tried to attack you, so maybe they’re not all bad. Probably not good per se, but not bad either.”
“You think there are any good shadows?”
“I mean, why not? If they come from intense feelings, why shouldn’t there be a couple’s love child?”
If that was truly possible, then he’d definitely created one. “Why have I never seen a good one? All the ones I’ve seen were either bad or neutral.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re just haunted by the bad ones.”
Well, that’d certainly fall in line with everything else about him.
“Do you think we could see it tonight?” he asked. “The monster in N/A.”
“If you want to, yeah, we could. It’s pretty massive, like the size of a subway car.”
“So almost as big as my cock.”
Laith burst out laughing, deep and hearty. “Yeah, almost!”
***
As expected, the closer they got to N/A, the more desolate the tunnels became. It was very interesting to see how densely packed some stations were, while others had been left pretty much abandoned. Construction workers had put up floodlights and scaffolding in certain sections of N/A, which were still being worked on, but aside from them, no one else was around. Even the guts that connected N/A to its neighboring stations were empty. While Laith led Theodore along the edges of the construction site, he explained that the guts were usually the last places to get filled up; people only opened their businesses there if two connecting stations pulled enough foot traffic between them. Otherwise, the guts turned into small apartments or little gardens. N/A wasn’t the only station being worked on; dozens of others were under construction too, but drilling holes underground took a long time. They’d run out of pre-built tunnels a while ago.
Away from the construction workers, they jumped into the gap where the rails were supposed to be and followed it. Since the boardwalk hadn’t been built yet, they walked on dirt and debris. The only light source here came from their phones, flashlights that illuminated a few feet ahead of them. The further they went, the quieter it became, distant from the workers and their drills. There was no clear change in temperature or in the air around them, but Theodore could feel his skin begin to crawl anyway—they must be getting close.
“Do you feel that?” Laith quietly asked. “The chills.”
“Yeah, I do.”
The walls began to move. Theodore couldn’t see them move, though; it was a feeling, an intrinsic knowledge that had emerged from the depths of his mind telling him that yes, the walls were, in fact, alive. They pulsed around him, gooey and warm. He didn’t have to touch them to know. They were in a giant mouth, one of many that sometimes followed him and sometimes hid in the corner, deep in the dark. Its bulbous surface writhed, transporting blood back and forth, a closed loop.
Neither one of them said a word. Their footsteps fell silent in the dirt path, crunching debris quietly. When the air grew humid and close, something touched the back of Theodore’s hand. Before he could properly freak out, Laith grabbed his hand, squeezing it tight. Of course—they’d held hands toward the bottom of the lake, and they’d hold hands now, toward the giant mouth. What would it look like? Just as that question crossed Theodore’s mind, Laith shone his flashlight onto a silver creature mounted on the side of the wall, partially hanging from the ceiling. Blood and slime dripped from its many holes, limbs and organs swaying delicately. Theodore’s entire body trembled.
“I found it when I was looking for a place to hide,” Laith commented. “To get away from everyone. I wanted the dark to take me and it did. I never actually touched it, but I sat right there—” The flashlight moved to show a spot in the corner, wet with mucus. “—for three and a half hours. It almost spoke to me. It won’t tell me its name.”
Theodore drew in a shaky breath. “Were you trying to hurt yourself?” His question was small, almost too quiet to be heard.
“Yeah. That was two days before the hospital.”
He nodded.
The creature quivered, not used to visitors stepping on its organs. The part that jutted out from the wall seemed to have an opening on it, the entrance to the rest of the living mass that blocked the end of the tunnel. Carefully, Theodore took a step closer and reached for it. As soon as his hand phased through the pulsating organ, the rest of him was sucked in.
A small brown girl cried over a corpse. It was cold now, but it hadn’t always been that way; it used to be warm and have a name. Its arms used to hold her at night, shielding her from the wind and snow. Now, her father was gone. He was only forty, a faceless statistic, one less homeless hiding under the bridge. Had the world no sympathy? No one had even cared to learn his name. He wouldn’t make it on the news and he wouldn’t be buried next to his loved ones either. If he were lucky, he wouldn’t end up in a mass grave. The little girl would never know what happened to him from that point forward, and while she hoped it was a dignified service, she knew the chances of that were none. Her bitterness, grief and anger had lives of their own, growing stronger every time she thought of her father. She didn’t go a day without thinking of him.
Theodore’s feet shuffled, legs moving. The center of his chest hurt so badly that he couldn’t even stand straight, doubled over with pain, muscles tense and strained. He walked without sight, pulled by Laith’s guidance, the hand that squeezed his arm and forced him out of the living organ. Laith spoke, but he couldn’t hear him; ears muffled and distant, pierced by a loud ringing. One of his hands found the wall and leaned on it, while the other one clutched at his own stomach. It bubbled and churned, like he’d swallowed expired blood, black and thick. It shot up his throat searing hot, burning the inside of his mouth, corroding the dirt below him. Three violent retches splattered vomit all over the ground, painfully acidic. He spat and groaned, holding onto the wall for his dear life, trembling from head to toe.
Laith’s voice eventually moved to the forefront of his mind, not completely incomprehensible anymore. “—man’s childhood. I knew she’d come from a very poor family, but I didn’t know they were literally homeless. That’s fucking crazy. Where was her cousin in all of this?”
Theodore spat again, finally able to straighten up. A breath filled his lungs, eyes dripping with tears. His free hand wiped his cheek.
“You know, with everything she’s done for the homeless community, I’m sure her dad would be proud of her.”
“Burman?” Theodore asked. “That was about her?”
“Yeah. She literally built an empire out of nothing. The way she speaks about her dad—you’d think the man was a martyr. Well, I guess he was.”
His feet turned away from the wall so he could see how unaffected Laith seemed by what had just happened. Had they not gone through the same rollercoaster? Laith must be a lot more used to this stuff than he was, able to maintain a level head and normal thinking patterns even in the depths of human misery. Theodore never wanted to touch this creature again.
“I wanna go home,” he mumbled.
That softened Laith’s features, shoulders drooping with sympathy. A hand touched him very lightly on the back, Laith’s posture leaning close for emotional support. “Okay.” His voice was very, very soft. “I’ll take you home.”
***
Laith understood that Theodore had meant his apartment underground and not where he lived with the girls. They took their shoes off, hung their jackets behind the door and got into bed, not for any particular reason, just to hold each other for a while. It seemed to be their go-to procedure when one of them was freaked out, to lie in bed and be close. At this point, it’d become instinctive, simply another part of their lives.
The TV screen cast a blue glow over their bodies, partially lit in the low light. Some silly show was on, full of dumb jokes and wholesome moments, best friends who did stupid things and lived incredible lives. Theodore breathed in deeply, safe in the warmth of Laith’s embrace, nose buried into the crook of his neck. His palm stretched over Laith’s chest and felt his heartbeat, soothing. He counted them, finger tapping along—one… two… three… four. Under the weight of Laith’s arm, he almost fell asleep.
“I’m hungry,” he blurted out.
“You’re always hungry.”
“Can we go somewhere nice and fancy? I wanna take you out. A sit-down place with wine glasses and overpriced food, preferably Italian. Do you have that down here?”
“Yeah, we have fancy restaurants, but they’re all pretty affordable. There’s a certain limit to how expensive they can be.”
“How expensive can they be?”
“The most expensive dish I’ve seen down here was sixty bucks. I didn’t have it, obviously, but that’s probably near the limit.”
Wow, that was really cheap. When his parents went out for Christmas, they usually spent over three hundred bucks only on the three of them. Sixty dollars for a meal was not what he’d expected to hear.
“Do you guys earn peanuts or what? Are there any rich people around?” As soon as that question left his lips, he regretted it. Of course rich people didn’t live here, my god; that was the entire point of the tunnels.
“Minimum wage is twenty bucks an hour, just so you know. No one’s super rich ‘cause everyone makes a lot of money.”
Wait, what? “How much do you make?”
“That’s fucked up to ask.”
Goddammit, he’d done it again; Justin had already told him not to ask those kinds of questions. “Sorry.”
“I don’t get paid by the hour,” Laith explained. “Burman gives me a cut out of what I bring her, so some days I make more than others. The cool thing about working for her is that almost everything is free for me. I don’t pay rent, utilities or any entrance fees. I don’t pay a single cent for anything in the DP.”
“That’s wild. What do you spend your money on, then?”
“Food and alcohol, mostly. I used to spend it all on Justin, but not anymore.”
“Right.” The cogs in his brain turned. “So all those times you let me pay for your drinks and stuff, you could very well afford them yourself.”
“Of course. I mean, it was never about the money, was it?”
Theodore stared at him.
“I paid for your food yesterday,” Laith commented. “And the day before too. I promise I’m not stingy; you just like paying for stuff sometimes, so I let you. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I thought you liked when I took care of you.”
“I do. It’s nice.”
“So can I take you out?”
“Sure. There’s an Italian restaurant near the Blaze-Angel Guts that’s kind of how you described, but I don’t think it’s very expensive. It’s nice, though. I think you’ll like it.”
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