sed unus militum lancea latus eius aperuit, et continuo exivit sanguis et aqua.
COMING to Jesus and seeing that He was already dead, they did not break His legs, but one of the soldiers opened
Jesus' side with a spear and immediately there came forth blood and water.
It's surprising how little Casey really needs.
It all fits in a duffle bag: clothes, a hairbrush, toothbrush and toothpaste, some CDs, a few of his books, his photography equipment. He thought he would feel a pang as he reformatted his hard drive, but he doesn't; it feels like remembering himself doing something long ago, something that once upon a time was desperately important. He turns away, closing out the soft, whispering spin.
Zeke is waiting for him at the door. Casey thinks about leaving a note, and decides that his empty room is note enough.
The sky to the east is beginning to pale when Zeke's elderly GTO roars onto the freeway. Casey leans his head against the window and closes his eyes, tightening his hand around a cup of execrable convenience-store coffee, and when Zeke lights a cigarette the snap of the lighter pulls Casey back from paths he wasn't entirely happy to be traveling.
"You're falling asleep, man," Zeke says quietly. "Better put that coffee down before you drop it and burn the skin off your balls."
Casey doesn't open his eyes, but the corners of his mouth tug upward in a slow smile. "So we'll sue 7-11 and make a million dollars."
Zeke's fingers brush against his, cool in the predawn chill, tugging the cup out of his grip. For just a moment, before he can stop them, Casey's own fingers move toward Zeke's hand.
There is an infinitestimal pause before Zeke confiscates the cup and stuffs it into the cupholder.
Suddenly Casey has to say something, has to say something or burst, and the only thing stopping him is that he doesn't know what to say. Hey, did you like it when we, or Um, do you think you might ever want to, and all of it feels like it would sound stupid or desperate so he keeps silent after all, and dreams of his mother instead.
She's angry with him, shouting, waving her finger in his face. Casey Connor, you ran away from home!
I didn't run away, Casey answers, hearing himself sound like a sullen little boy and hating it.
Well, what the hell do you call it, then? his father blusters, appearing next to his mother.
I'm eighteen years old. I can go wherever I damn please, Casey shouts back at them. He's never spoken to his parents like this before. Lately he's been thinking that it might have been no bad thing if he had, at some point.
I didn't raise you to be a fag, Casey, his father says angrily. It was a damn happy day when I found girlie porn under your mattress and thought I could stop worrying about you.
No note, no nothing, his mother puts in, aggrieved, as usual contriving to make it sound as if the whole thing had been a plot to inconvenience her. Did you pack your toothbrush? Do you have enough underwear?
Yes, mom, Casey says automatically.
Are you drinking enough water? she asks, and when she opens her mouth in a smile like a shark's something black and horrible spills out of it.
Casey jolts awake with his heart pounding in his throat. The car is stopped by the side of the road and there is no sign of Zeke, and Casey thinks Holy Jesus is this what a panic attack feels like because I really think I'm going to fucking die -
The door opens and Zeke folds his lanky body back into the driver's seat. He does a double-take at Casey, who is still breathing like he'd run a mile, and says, "It's okay, man. I had to take a leak, that's all."
"I," Casey says, and can't get any further. Zeke reaches over and lays a hand on the back of Casey's neck, large and warm and ridiculously soothing, and Casey can't keep himself from turning until the rapid, shallow mist of breath between his lips grows warm on the inside of Zeke's wrist.
When Zeke offers him a cigarette he takes it between trembling fingers, dragging on the warm dirty taste and trying not to cough, thinking with a strange sort of frantic detachment that this is another thing Zeke has given him his first taste of. He's barely choked down his first drag and he wants another one already.
But Casey is young and has craved freedom for as long as he can remember; and when Zeke pulls out his sunglasses and slips them on against the bright sun, Casey has already forgotten about the dream. He tilts his head back, closing his eyes against the rush of air through the open window, and spreads his arms like wings, flying.
Next to him, Zeke chuckles softly. Not a disbelieving, contemptuous look-at-the-nerdboy laugh, not an absently impatient laugh at a joke half-listened to, but something real and almost fond. Casey opens his eyes and smiles into the half-seen shadow of Zeke's beneath the dark lenses, layered through the reflection of his own blue, and there could be aliens in one big line from Toledo to Charlotte Amalie holding hands and singing "We Shall Overcome" and right at this moment Casey wouldn't care at all.
The motel isn't bad as motels go. Casey stands in the space between the beds, awkwardly clutching his duffel bag, thoughts going a hundred miles an hour.
He's thinking about freedom, about going where he wants and doing what he wants, about never again having to answer to anyone for how late he's out or what's on the walls in his bedroom or what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He's thinking about the color of that credit card that Zeke casually whipped out of his wallet, and wondering how in the world he's going to hold up his end of things financially. He's wondering how they're going to walk into a town they don't know and find the alien queen, when last time she found them.
But mostly he's thinking about the space between those two beds, measuring it over and over again with his eyes.
The toilet flushes and after a moment Zeke wanders out of the bathroom, wearing only a pair of ratty sweats, toothbrush working with absent vigor over a mouthful of froth. Casey stops thinking at all.
"Which bed do you want?" Zeke asks around his toothbrush.
Casey tears his eyes away from Zeke and back to the two beds. "Um... this one." He tosses his duffel bag down at random onto the bed furthest from the door. Zeke makes a vaguely accommodating sound and heads back into the bathroom to rinse. One eye on the bathroom door, Casey yanks his shoes and pants off quickly, pulls his House of Blues t-shirt out of his bag, and changes into it, noticing for the first time how thin it's gotten from years of the washing machine. When Zeke comes out, Casey is safely ensconced in bed, sitting up against the headboard with the covers pulled up around his waist.
"You tired or you wanna watch TV?" Zeke asks, climbing into the other bed.
"I'm kind of tired," Casey answers. It isn't quite a lie; he is tired, but mostly he's afraid that the TV is going to inflict some sort of made-for-motels skinflick on him, and then he will explode right then and there and leave a small pile of ashes and a Casey-shaped scorch mark for the maid service to clean up in the morning.
"Yeah, me too," Zeke says around a yawn, settling into bed. He reaches over to turn out the lamp, and before the darkness blinds him Casey watches the muscles in Zeke's arm flex smoothly.
"Good night," Casey says in a small voice.
"'Night," Zeke says affably, and then is silent.
Casey squirms back onto the pillows and closes his eyes.
After a few minutes it occurs to him that he's never actually tried counting sheep. Ten minutes and 104 sheep later he decides irritably that whoever came up with the sheep-counting thing was fucked in the head in some manner beyond the understanding of the Caseys of this world, and tries counting backward from 100 instead. He reaches -64 before he gives up on that too and turns restlessly, curling around his pillow to try to get more comfortable and trying desperately to ignore the persistent, maddening ache in his groin.
If he were by himself, or even if he were sure Zeke was asleep and wouldn't wake, he could have taken care of that ache. He's had plenty of practice at doing it quickly and quietly - a few slow, teasing strokes, curving down over his balls, working himself up until he's squirming with need and and his hips are moving in small restive thrusts against his hand, and by the time he gets around to the part that might actually be heard all it takes is a few quick pulls to bring himself off. He used to think about Delilah when he did that - his favorite fantasy was the one where she cornered him in the darkroom and straddled him right there on the table - but after the Thing With Marybeth it became increasingly hard to get off to that fantasy, or to any others involving Delilah, and he gave up on them after he found his fantasy self getting annoyed with her because his pictures were going to wind up overdeveloped. In desperation he tried fantasizing about Angelina Jolie, Stokely, and his sophomore-year English teacher, occasionally all at the same time, and wound up with a sore wrist and orgasms for which the best that could be said was that they kept him from getting blue balls.
Finally, a couple of months ago, he gave up and thought about Zeke, and for days he kept his left hand out of sight to hide the mark where he'd bitten it to keep from screaming.
And now he is desperately hard, so wound up that even the soft friction of his boxers against his skin is a kind of torture, and Zeke is so very close, which is giving Casey ideas that he definitely should not have. Possibly, he thinks a bit wildly, they should make a pre-alien ritual out of fucking each other's brains out, in which case he should definitely go and wake Zeke up and remind him that they will be in Bethan Township tomorrow and shouldn't they be naked right now? He wonders if Zeke brought any lube. He wonders if toothpaste can be pressed into service. He wonders if he might possibly be losing his mind.
But there's one thing he's not losing, right enough, and it's throbbing painfully now. If this were a movie, the mattress behind him would dip suddenly and Zeke's mouth would be at his ear, soft warm breath and slow whispers: Shh. Stay where you are, gonna fuck you just like this -
Casey buries his face in his pillow, trying not to scream in sheer frustration.
Finally he dreams; and in his dreams he and Zeke come together easily, slow lazy lovemaking as comfortable and intimate as the touch of his own hand. A world without fear, he thinks, and wonders painfully why the good guys can't win without losing something forever; wonders if Marybeth could have taught her children to fly.
In my world there were limitless oceans, he hears her say, and the taste of salt air lies lightly against Zeke's skin. Outside, the waves surge against rocks in a white spray, not limitless; and Casey and Zeke are only themselves after all.
When he wakes Zeke is already dressed, leaning against the window in the grey light before dawn, dragging on a cigarette and holding a cup of tasteless motel coffee. Casey watches him for a moment, not speaking. Then he rolls over and pulls his camera out of his bag, sets the flash, adjusts the exposure, and catches Zeke in the frame. After the flash has faded from the room Zeke turns to him and gives him a sleepy, puzzled half-smile. Casey takes another picture, and another.
When he lowers the camera Zeke comes to sit on the bed, bringing a mist of cigarette smoke and coffee steam with him. "You still okay with this?" he asks quietly, taking a sip of coffee.
Casey reaches out and plucks the cigarette from between Zeke's fingers, lifting it to his own lips. "Yeah," he says, and smoke drifts out of his mouth to fill the space between them. "I think so."
This is how it is: aliens like to divide and conquer. One cop goes into the principal's office. One student at a time goes in for an "ear examination". One person goes outside the gym. Casey has grown a couple of inches and filled out a little since the last bout with aliens, but he's still small and fragile-looking, easy to overpower. Zeke can move as silently as a cat when he wants to, and once took the blade of a paper cutter to a teacher without a single moment of hesitation or remorse.
(I would've cut his fucking head off, too, Casey remembers hearing once, a low whisper against his hair as he drifted in and out of sleep, shielded from some nightmare or other by the solid warmth of Zeke sitting next to him on the couch. So help me God, Casey, I would've. )
It isn't much of a plan, but it's a plan, and it makes Casey feel better to have at least some illusion that he knows what the hell he's doing. Zeke's fingers brush his as he takes the cigarette back.
"You ready?" Zeke asks, glancing up at Casey. His eyes are so dark that they look like silence, and Casey says "Yes," to a different question than Zeke meant to ask.
