Written for JM for the 2009 xmas_rocks exchange
| This story is a work of fiction and therefore completely untrue. No harm or libel is meant or implied about any of the individuals named within this work and it was written without their involvement or permission. No profit is being made. |
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It was that same dream again.
Dave pressed his eyes against the inside of his arm, holding on to the darkness--maybe sleep hadn't left him entirely and he'd tumble through the darkness back into that dream, for better or worse-- --but he was awake, wide awake, fully awake, no hope for rescue. Fuck. He rolled onto his back, his arm above his head, his knuckles brushing the headboard. The room was a dim gray bit of gloom, licked at the edges with shadow. The blackout drapes were not pulled tight. Gauzy white fabric beneath filtered the sunlight that came through. Dust motes hung motionless in that muted light. Wide. Awake. He could lie in the gloom, the dream festering in his brain as minutes ticked into hours, until the clock he didn't even want to look at right now told him it was time to get up and get on with the business of being on tour. Already he felt a psychological headache threatening, the weight of the moroseness that would settle on him if he did, indeed, lie there chewing his lip and worrying over his dream. With a grunt he sat up. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, put his palms down on the mattress on either side of him. Wide. Fucking. Awake. Shit. He walked barefoot and naked toward the window, his body scattering the dust motes. He drew the drapes open and lifted the gauzy curtain away from the glass. The sun touched him, warm and bright. He blinked, half squinting, trying to adjust. Sun glinted off windows opposite. Behind the windows, surely, people worked--filing, phoning, typing, gossipping. Far below, cars did a stop-and-go dance. People streamed along the sidwalks. All to a soundtrack of the hotel room's air conditioning gentle murmur. It was so nice to have their own rooms, their own spaces. So nice to have privacy. So nice to feel like an individually wrapped Penguin stuffed in a box of them, so close to so many others, just on this one floor of the hotel never mind the whole building, the whole block, the whole city, yet all wrapped up and entirely alone. With yourself. Was it too early for a drink? Glowing red numbers by the bed told him it was all of 9 a.m. Too fucking early for anything. But the gloom was improved by the daylight at least. He forced the flimsy white curtain out of the way so the sunlight could directly shine in, then he dropped back on the bed again, arms and legs outstretched, face pointing at the ceiling. Right. He could order in breakfast, take a shower, meditate--would that help? He hadn't tried it, but he could use a sense of calm. This particular morning he had no idea who was in the connecting room. It could be a stranger, if anyone at all. Mart was across the hall, two doors down, which meant he wasn't even able to wrap himself up in the duvet and sit on the floor at the door, his head against it, imagining that the murmur of his air conditioning was actually the soft sound of Mart breathing deeply in the next room. Success was a prison. He rang for over-priced orange juice, coffee and fruit, then heaved himself off the bed once more, this time to relieve himself and submit to a shower. As hot water flattened his hair and streamed down his face and back, the vague tension he'd awoke with built like a crescendo, tightening his chest and expanding it at the same time, giving him a feeling as if he would burst apart, not into flesh and bodily fluids but into shrapnel that lodges itself in the walls and piles like rubble on the floor. If he stepped out of the shower, leaving the water running, and just stood there, water soaking into the matt on the floor, stood there and SCREAMED--would that help? He felt too boxed in even to scream. He found himself standing outside the shower with his face pressed into a thick, white towel, the tension in his chest turning molten. An ache came into his throat suddenly, and he felt wet heat swell behind his eyelids. He was losing. His fucking. Mind. Don't know what you've got... God what a bloody horrible song, and stuck in his head. Don't know what you've got, till it's gone. He didn't even know the fucking words beyond the one line, and it played over and over in his head--Don't know what you've got--as he roughed up his hair with the towel, as he bent and ran it past his calves--till it's--and over the tops of his feet gonnnne. Fuck this. Fuck this all to hell. A knock at the door saved him. He fastened the towel around his waist and went to open it. The woman was pleasant and friendly as she brought in his breakfast and made sure he had everything he needed. He signed the slip, and she left him alone with his towel and his orange juice, his carafe of coffee and his single cup, his sunny bowl of melon chunks and strawberries. Everything was so pleasant and nice. Neat and organized. Sterile and sanitized. Boll. Ocks. A quick search turned up serviceable trousers, a belt and a button-up shirt--he didn't bother with the buttons, wasn't going far. His room card went into a pocket. The tray of breakfast went into his arms, and he somehow managed to let himself out, carry the tray across the hall and two doors down, and knock without spilling anything. He knocked again, then once more before he heard soft shuffling on the other side of the door. The handle snicked and turned, and the door yawned open to reveal a disheveled Mart in his underwear and a t-shirt, rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand and squinting at the tray with the other. "What's this?" Mart asked. "Thought we might share a bite." The room behind Martin was deep with darkness. He said, "Sure. Yeah. All right," and Dave followed him into the room, the door swishing quietly shut behind him, cutting off the light from the hall. The bed was a lumpy mound, the centerpiece of the room. Dave managed to set the tray on it without tripping over anything, and his eyes began to adjust. Lumps on the mound became pillows, every which where. The duvet was piled off to the side, the sheets beneath creased and crumpled. Martin was just coming out of the bathroom, the sound of a flush making its way out the open door. "Rough night?" Dave set a pillow aside so he could sit next to the tray. "Looks like a comfortable bed, doesn't it? It's all a deception. Haven't been able to get comfortable for the life of me. Thinking about sleeping in the tub instead." "It's breakfast for one," Dave said. "I got it and then...." "It looked so lonely." "Juice or coffee?" "Bed," Mart said, crawling past him, sliding his legs beneath the sheets, his arm beneath a pillow. He laid his cheek on it. The bed was enormous--like the one in his own room. So large that a person alone on it looked like they were lost at sea. Dave picked up a chunk of melon between his fingers and placed it in his mouth. Sweet, with a welcomed smoothness of taste--and cold, just a little. "Dave?" "Yeah, Mart." Nothing came. Dave tried another piece of melon. He licked the juice off his fingertips. Finally Martin said, "Finish your fruit and come have a lie-down. It's bloody hours before we need to be up." Dave tried a strawberry. It made the insides of his cheeks buckle, and then the sweetness hit. He moved the tray a bit and brought his feet up on the bed, sat cross-legged, facing the tray. Facing Mart, who lay with one hand under a pillow and the other flat on the sheet, by his chest, watching him eat another piece of melon. Sweet and juicy. That song was rattling around his head again: Don't know what you've got.... He sighed at it, shook out the crisp white napkin. Wiped his fingers. The dream was always about Martin being gone. Can't find him anywhere. No one else cares, all acting like he's making a big todo over nothing--of course, they didn't understand. Of course, he hadn't understood the first time either--why was he in such a panic? Mart would be back, surely. But it was a panic every time, until the panic started to seep outside the dream. And maybe it wasn't just Mart... It was all of this. And if he could just fall back to sleep, or stay asleep long enough... But he never stayed asleep long enough. And when he would fall back to sleep, it would be without dreams. Or it would be stupid dreams that had nothing to do with where Mart had gone and when, if ever, he might turn up again. He lifted the tray and stood. Looked for someplace to set it down. Settled on the floor. If he'd had shoes on, he'd have kicked them off. If he'd had underwear on, he'd have dropped his trousers. Instead, he unceremoniously lifted a sheet and climbed underneath it, trousers, open shirt and all. He settled on his side, Mart handing him a pillow. Till they were facing each other, enough space between them for a whole third person. "Comfy cozy?" Mart asked. Dave watched him for a second. Then: "Not quite yet." He shifted forward, touched his lips hastily to Mart's forehead, and then turned over, putting his back toward Mart, with a "'Night-night, Mart. Sleep tight"--his heart pounding loud enough that surely Martin, if he listened, could hear it. It was a silly thing to do--and hopefully would be taken as such, no matter how unsilly it felt to his thudding heart. God it was torture. Say something, Mart. Do something, Mart. Something needs to change. This fucking cycle of sleepless mornings needs to break. "You smell like cantaloupe." Thud-thud-thud. "Do I?" A few seconds passed. Then: "Were they any good?" "The cantaloupe? They were all right." Another pass of seconds. "Any left?" "I think so." "Do us a favor and pass them over?" The tray was within reach, if he stretched for it. He pulled it closer with his fingertips, then finally reached the bowl. When he pulled himself back onto the bed with it, Mart was propped on his elbow. Choices, choices--and that horrible Cinderella song. Dave plucked a piece of melon from the bowl between his fingers and offered it not to Martin but to Martin's mouth. Martin's eyes caught his before his mouth opened. Dave placed the melon in his mouth. And felt, so briefly, Martin's tongue brush the side of his finger. He licked his own fingers clean, watching Martin--his eyes swept shut, his head tipped back a little, and there was no mistake this time the bit of a smile on his mouth. "That is really good," he said. Dave offered him a strawberry. Martin seemed to move toward him as his fingers neared Martin's mouth. This time it was the feel of his lower lip against his finger that stayed with him as Mart closed his eyes and smiled and chewed. "Yeah, really good." He shifted closer to Dave, shoulder touching his, as he looked into the bowl. Dave fed him a piece of honeydew, their faces close enough for Dave to smell the fruit on his breath. "I forget how good fruit tastes," Martin said, "till I have some again." "I'm never going to be able to sleep now." It just popped out. It was true, but it just popped out. This was torture. All those times he and Martin could have...if he'd thought to try...maybe...plenty of opportunities there had been, plenty of alcohol for courage, cramped vans and buses and sleeping two to a bed...and he just hadn't...hadn't even thought of it. Till the opportunities were gone. Here, you get this room, you get that room, you get the other room, and we'll see you out in public, all right? "Me neither," Mart said. "Yeah. Well. What'll we do about it--that's the question, isn't it?" Martin dipped two fingers into the bowl and came up with a canteloupe. Dave watched it rise between them, Martin so close his knee bumped him. He felt the fruit touch his bottom lip. Dutifully he let his mouth open. Felt the coolness, the sweetness, tasted it with his tongue, took it in his mouth and swallowed it, barely, before Martin's mouth was on his--melon and strawberry, warm and sweet, and soft. And then pulling away, a little bashful grin before it was obscured with the back of Mart's hand. "Sorry. Got carried away." "No, it's all right," Dave said. "Yeah?" "Why not? It's just us blokes." "I don't know what's gotten into me." Mart dropped onto his back, his fingers interlaced on his stomach. "Withdrawal," Dave said. "You're used to sleeping with my knee dug into your back--" "And your snoring." "Now you're making things up." Mart was looking at the ceiling. "You should at the very least not sleep in your clothes. If you were any sort of gentleman...." "Gentlemen don't sleep in their clothes?" Martin sighed. "I don't know what I'm saying." Dave reassembled himself so that he was lying on his back, too, a hand on his chest, where he could feel his thudding heart, and the other on the cool bowl on his stomach. "I've been having this dream. Over and over. It's not worth explaining, because it doesn't seem nearly as horrible in the telling, but it's...it just won't go away." "Is that why you have bigger bags under your eyes than I have in my luggage?" "God, is it that bad?" "Only in the light." "Thanks." "Well, you must wear it well, because look at me, eating out of your hands and throwing myself at you." "You hussy." "Let's stop kidding around for a moment," Mart said, lying still, his fingers still laced over his stomach. His face probably still pointing toward the ceiling. Dave was not looking. In fact, his mouth was dry, and he longed for a gulp of that orange juice, but he didn't want to move and fracture this moment before he found out what it was leading to. He said, "I wasn't aware I was kidding." "Half kidding, then." "I'd like to kiss you again. There's no kidding there, by the way." His chest rose and fell under his hand. He felt a pulse in his neck throbbing under the tip of his forefinger, just alongside the hollow in his throat. The bowl was growing warm against his hand. "Well, we'll have to," Mart said, not moving. "It's the only way to get from here to there, I think." "Where is there?" "A good night's--well, at this point, a good morning's sleep." "I've been feeling like I'm losing my mind. I nearly yelled to wake the whole hotel, just to hear something besides the thoughts running in senseless circles in my head." "Most people just turn on the telly." "I decided to come wake you up instead." "Saved me from having to turn on the telly, I guess." He looked toward Dave, who felt it and looked back. Mart said, "I owe you thanks for that at least." He turned his face back toward the ceiling. "And the fruit." "This should be the time of our lives, you know. Living it up. Posh hotel rooms, limos, and a lot of the time it is...." He rolled toward the edge of the bed to set the bowl down, and then rolled back. "Everything we could ever want," Mart said. Dave turned onto his side, facing Mart, and said quickly, before his brain could mull it over and toss it out, "Would it be all right if I crash in your room sometimes, just to get some fucking sleep?" Mart shrugged. "Don't see why not." He looked at Dave. "So, are you going to kiss me again?" "I haven't decided." "Well. Let me know." He turned away and settled himself in. "Will do." Mart shifted, making himself more comfortable. Dave watched a moment longer before moving closer, close enough for Mart's hair to tickle his nose. Close enough to hang an arm loosely over Mart's side. "Sleep tight," Mart said, slipping his arm out from under and resettling it over Dave's. He gave Dave's hand a quick squeeze, then his grip loosened. After a moment, his fingers slipped away entirely, and Dave could feel his gentle, steady breathing under his arm. He didn't sleep. He just lay there, feeling a bit less like he was losing his mind, which, he thought, was a start. And...no need to rush things. Because if this little bit he had to hold onto came crashing down.... He closed his eyes and pressed closer to Mart's hair. Held him a little more tightly. It felt nice. Warm. They wouldn't come crashing down. Even if it was all pulled out from under them tomorrow, there'd still be them. They could start from scratch. Bollocks everyone else. When the wake-up call finally came, he hadn't slept, but he finally felt...rested.
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