Entry tags:

fic, nba slash, the light in our eyes

"The Light in Our Eyes" part 2.
"The Light in Our Eyes" Part 2

For warnings, etc. See part 1.

forever begins, just because i thought about it



“He told me to take care of you,” Steve says, calm, brushing his hair back behind his ears and then digging the knuckles of his right hand into his back.

“Fuck that,” Melo says, pushing past Steve and out the door of Ra’s house, into the unforgiving sun of another Colorado summer. “Fuck that and fuck you.”

“What’s with the rage, man?” Steve asks, following him out. “It’s not like he left you on purpose.”

The punch that Melo aims at the door of Steve’s pick-up goes wild and his knuckles skid off the rusting paint and catch on the warped seam where the door doesn’t close quite right. Skin rips and pain flares.

“I know,” he says, growling. “No one ever wants to go to jail.”

“So?”

“So,” Melo shakes his hand out and then shoves Steve backwards a step. “I don’t care how often you had to suck Al’s dick to get him to like you, but I don’t need you. Or your boyfriend.”

Pinned back against the truck, Steve only looks mildly shocked, putting his hands up and then back down when Melo launches himself again. A head shorter, a few pounds lighter, Melo figures. But he’s got anger and betrayal on his side, and this hot, clawing, cramping stitch in his belly that never lets up and only gets worse when he’s around Steve or Eddie.

“Why do you care?” he asks, voice breaking -- low and then high -- desperately pushing Steve into the blistering hot metal of the truck’s fender. “You want me?”

Melo barely understands what he’s asking. Leaning now, instead of shoving; rubbing, he tries to soothe the hard ache inside, dropping the bloody hand between them. “I made out with someone at basketball camp,” he says. Random and apologetic.

“Girl?” Steve asks, sliding out from between Melo and the truck and turning back towards the house, flinching, touching his back with his fingertips.

“No,” Melo says, drained. He wants to go back inside and sit and start over and totally forget everything; especially the fucking basketball camp, but he’s always been shit at keeping secrets, except for the one, and to do that, he had to stop talking altogether.

“Okay,” Steve says, and shrugs. “And?”

“It was,” Melo starts edging for the house, “because of Chauncey.”

Behind him, Steve chokes on a laugh. “How’s that?”

The screen door slams and Melo flops onto the couch, breathing easier in the colder air. “I said I knew him. Chauncey,“ Melo clarifies. “And this kid got all -- “ and Melo wiggles a little. “Like that. Excited.”

Silence from Steve and Melo sighs, starting to feel twitchy and angry again, like, damn. Nobody fucking understands. And besides, he’s thirteen now and doesn’t need to be taken care of anymore, like he ever did.

“Whatever,” he says.

*

“Gone?” JR asks between coughs, funky-sweet smelling smoke trickling out of his nose. The weed is harsh; Melo can tell from the other side of the room.

“Yeah,” Melo says, sipping his Coors and keeping an eye on his bedroom door. His mom’s working for a change, but he’s never quite sure what Michelle’s schedule is. “Back to Boulder. Law school shit.”

“Nice,” JR says, nodding. “It is so royally fucked up that the Buffs went to The Dance this year and Chauncey got drafted all while Al sits in fucking jail, bro.”

Melo agrees, for the millionth time, that it is indeed, royally fucked up.

“Do you think the faggot is bullshitting you about giving up soccer and going to law school because of Al?” JR asks, hoarse from the bad weed. “Being all inspired and shit?”

Honestly, Melo doesn’t know. He’s never really been inspired to do anything by anybody, and if it were true, it might mean that all of his nightmare fantasies about Al and Steve are somehow real. “Could be,” he says, thinking about how Steve had said bitterly, “You aren’t the only one who loves him, you‘re just the only one he loves,” right before he left.

“Whatever,” JR says, echoing Melo’s apathy from earlier. “At least I got to touch Lala’s tits last weekend, man. Tits, man. Fucking tits.”

“Yeah,” Melo snags the Pepsi can pipe they’re using and nods. “At least.”

*

Steve doesn’t come down much after that. He sends Eddie instead. Melo pushes his boundaries with Eddie too, alternately insulting and flirting with him, and ends up with a broken nose when he’s fourteen. JR, doing a quick stint in juvie, tells him to check himself and let Eddie do his thing. “It’s what Al wants for you,” JR says, looking a little older than his years, now, but giddy at the bag of candy Melo brought him. “I mean,” he says with a mouth full of Snickers. “I know you can handle yourself and whatever, but still. You’re --” he stops and chews. He doesn’t say anything that Melo’s afraid he will, terrified he will, flashing back to that night when their friendship started to crumble from the inside out. “Difficult,” is what JR settles on. “With your breathing thing.”

Even though Melo hasn’t had an asthma attack in years, he just grins and nods, “Sure, bro.”

Better to be broken than queer.

After that, he starts to learn Spanish -- but only the good parts -- and how to drive a stick (in Steve’s truck).

It’s sexy; Melo can admit that, sometimes, when he’s high. The way Eddie drives the old truck like he’s punishing it -- grinding the gears and slipping the clutch and revving the engine until it screams -- it turns Melo on. They drive up into the mountains, above the brown clouds that suffocate Denver and through fields of alpine wildflowers, the truck’s tires tearing wide, black furrows through bunches of geraniums, columbines, and roses.

When Melo’s fifteen, Eddie moves to LA to play for the Galaxy because he’s really that good. Caron gets out of prison and Ra dies there.






ashes and snowfalls



Late summer afternoons, after a long workout, are the only times Melo feels really comfortable sleeping naked anymore. He showers, and then lays in bed, under the window -- long without a screen because he and JR cut that bitch out years ago -- and jerks off until he dozes. Usually on his belly, hair still damp and spread out across his shoulders in knotted, tangled braids.

The old lot is cracked and covered in a patchwork of bubbling tar and clumps of crab-grass, but they don’t do a lot of dribbling, just a lot of shooting at a rim that doesn’t even have a chain net anymore. The games are usually one on one with JR, or free-for-alls with the other guys from North that Melo plays with on the varsity team (while kids, little ones, watch from the steps whispering to each other: “Dude, that’s Carmelo Anthony“). And the workouts, along with the hot showers, help ease the ferocious aches and pains in his knees and back from what he hopes is his last growth spurt. He hit 6’5” this summer and he’ll probably get taller, but he prays that it won’t happen again so fucking fast.

His body is a stranger to him; all long legs and arms, muscles where there were none a few months ago. He’s lean and hard where he was soft and round. Just walking is a challenge. He’s always tripping over his feet and banging into things like the kitchen table -- things that have been in the same place for eleven years; he’s just in a different place. A new elevation; a new fucking zip code.

To compensate, to try to make it all fit again -- to make his body his own -- he starts marking it, coloring it in where he thinks something‘s missing. The insides of his arms, his chest, across his back: Remembrance. That’s for Ra. Melo’s never been sure if he grieves for him or for something else -- something about him.

*

Whistling wakes him up -- wolf-whistling and laughing and muttering in Spanish.

“Kiss my ass, Najera,” Melo says, still more asleep than awake, forgetting who he’s talking to, and jumping out of the way when he feels warm breath on the skin of his lower back. He doesn’t cover up, though, because that would mean losing at their game of chicken.

“How’d it go?” he asks, to prove he hasn’t forgotten why Eddie’s in town to begin with.

“Good.” The bed sinks a little. “They made the deal.”

“The Rapids?”

“No, the Nuggets, shitforbrains,” Eddie pinches Melo’s waist. “Yes, the Rapids.” And he lays down next to Melo, crowding him in the tiny bed. “Tired,” he says, muffling a yawn with his arm. “Can I crash here?”

“Right here?” Melo asks, already making room, putting up with an elbow in his side as Eddie pulls his shirt off.

“Mmm,” Eddie says.

“Keep your pants on,” Melo says and shuts his eyes again.

*

A psychedelic sunset filters through slate-grey clouds and leaves Melo’s room a riot of pink, purple and blue velvet shadows. Eddie’s asleep, still and heavy on the side of the bed farthest from the wall, pinning Melo in.

Lazy, aroused, unguarded.

Acting without thinking gets Melo in trouble more of often than not. It leads to being questioned in the back of cop cars -- bubble lights flashing in his eyes -- a broken nose and bad trip after eating two sweet hearts (be mine) and (love is sweet) soaked in acid. But he can’t seem to change the pattern, and doesn’t want to; feels an impulse (lick the back of Eddie’s neck) and does it; waits for the fall out.

Salty, soapy, skin. Eddie’s skin tastes like any other skin Melo’s ever licked, boy or girl. Just clean, and a hint of deodorant the closer Melo gets to Eddie’s shoulder.

Seconds pass and there’s nothing from Eddie. Breathing slow; muscles limp. The stitch in Melo’s side starts to twist and stab and ache with every inhale; the skin between his shoulder blades crawls with tension; the muscles tighten and cramp there too, sending tingling, rushing sensations down Melo’s arms and up his neck to his jaw. This, touching Eddie inside the slowly fading (gold to grey now) twilight, is something he wants so desperately to do -- to finally (now, yes) figure it out: why girls are a mystery and boys are a fantasy.

Because it isn’t okay. Not really. He’s known that since JR flipped his shit over it five years ago, and if anyone could change Melo from one way (the wrong way) to another, it’s JR. Or Al, maybe, except in the years since Al went to jail and Melo’s gotten to know Steve better, he’s sure there was (is?) more between them than an odd sort of roommate friendship. Despite the bullshit about Al and Melo and love that Steve always feeds him.

“Mmm,” Eddie says, rolling a little so he can look over at Melo from behind his hair. “The hell are you doing?”

“Dunno,” Melo says, backing off a little, hoping Eddie will follow, tell him what he’s supposed to be doing, or maybe just do something to him. “Show me?”

“What?” Eddie asks, following Melo over, like Melo thought he would, until he’s on top and Melo’s trying not to catch on fire. “This?” his asks, and grabs Melo’s hand, putting it to the front of his shorts.

Melo nods and reaches for the waistband, tugging at the elastic, getting them down over Eddie’s hips, before Eddie sits up and slides them off. He doesn’t kneel back down, though. He stays propped up over Melo on hands and knees, looking down at Melo’s dick, hard and sticky already against his belly.

“Shit,” he says, quiet, under his breath, and Melo reaches between them -- reaches for Eddie, and Eddie doesn’t stop him, but just keeps looking.

“Is this enough?” Eddie asks, finally sinking back down, pressing onto Melo and touching him for the first time, rubbing him softly. “What you want?”

Pushing up into Eddie’s hand, Melo sighs and grunts. “Yeah -- goddamn,” coming suddenly, embarrassingly, all over his chest and Eddie’s hand.

“Huh,” Eddie says, and sits back, almost painful weight on Melo’s knees. He licks at his palm, and then shrugs, wiping his hand on the t-shirt he yanked off earlier.

“What?” Melo asks, uncomfortable and self-conscious. “Taste weird?”

“Young,” Eddie says, smiling almost gently.

Melo waits but Eddie stays where he is, half-hard still, letting the breeze from the open window blow his hair around his face. He doesn‘t look like he wants to go.

So, anxious now, “That wasn’t it,” Melo says. “Not what I wanted to see.” He breathes deep and touches himself softly, fingertips on the long vein, down to his balls, waiting until Eddie’s watching. He has no idea what he’s doing, and Eddie shakes his head at him.

“No?”
“I’ve seen myself come.” Butterflies. Something’s telling him it’s time to quit, but he doesn’t want to listen. The adrenalin’s too loud.

“And?” Eddie shifts over until they’re side by side and Melo reaches for him, touches him, and watches his dick twitch and swell.

“I don’t know,” Melo’s getting hard again and he thinks Eddie can tell. “What happens next?”
Eddie laughs, short and sharp. “I fuck you.”

It’s a dare and not a very good one. The bottom just dropped out of Melo’s world because he didn’t know (how the hell could he have known?) that he was waiting for someone to say something like that to him?

“Okay,” he says, and his voice cracks just a little bit.

Eddie shuts his eyes and says something to himself in Spanish; it sounds like a prayer, that ends with: “Sorry, sorry. Shouldn’t’ve said that --” he presses a quick, oddly sweet kiss on Melo’s forehead, “about fucking.”

“You’re such a bitch sometimes, Najera,” Melo says, fear (of doing it; of not doing it) making him mean.

Nothing, for a long minute. Just tension.

Then, “Roll over. And keep your head down,” as Eddie leans over the side of the bed to dig in his bag.

Melo rolls and bends, letting his braids curtain his face, but looking toward the window. The mixed scents of hot asphalt, crushed weeds, and car exhaust are slowly being replaced with the heady, spicy smell of the early-blooming Russian olive trees and the burning hickory and meat smell from someone‘s barbeque..

“This new?” Eddie asks, a second later, fingers on the small of Melo’s back and trailing lower. “Done this part?”

“Uh,” Melo rubs his face into his blanket and focuses. “Kind of.”

Eddie doesn’t ask for details, just slides a finger in. Melo spreads his knees a little bit farther apart and breathes slowly. No pain; stretching, pulling, stinging, tingling. Weird, Melo decides. Uncomfortable.

He thinks that he should tell Eddie to stop, and hey, thanks for trying but maybe --

“You,” Eddie mumbles into the side of Melo’s neck, moving up Melo’s body, sliding skin on skin, as he slips another finger in. “You are a real dick. All up on me since you were fucking fourteen years old, and what the fuck?” He twists his wrist and Melo bites down on whatever is closest -- Eddie’s forearm.

Hissing, Eddie bites back, at the slope of Melo’s neck and shoulder, digging into the muscle, sucking hard, making it ache and bruise. “And now,” he says around Melo’s skin. “You -- what is this, even?” biting into the Remembrance. “Who are you?”

His free hand roams Melo’s side, like he’s trying to find a beginning or an end. “So much of you,” he says, whispering, hot and soft, meant to be sexy, finally.

Empty suddenly, Melo bucks backward in frustration, arching and then slumping, panting and trying not to come just from Eddie’s hands on his sides and back and legs. He wants to say “fuck me,” but he’s not sure if guys say that, or if that makes him a slut, or if that’s okay. So he has to wait, wanting it, so bad that he hurts in the strangest places, like the very center of his back and joints of his hips.

“Ed,” he says, trying for grown-up, but his voice fails him. “Are you --”

“Yeah, yeah -- listen, when you feel me push, if it hurts? Push back.”

Melo nods and then it’s there: pressure, pain. He lunges forward, opposite of what Eddie said to, but Eddie’s got him, holding him around the shoulders, forearm pressed against Melo’s chin. Not quite a choke-hold. Not quite. He lunges again and Eddie pushes again and tells him to, “Settle the fuck down.”

“How?” Melo snaps, because, oh, Jesus Christ, he’s getting fucked and if anyone ever found out then -- just, no -- and he shouldn’t want it and he shouldn’t like it and it might change him somehow, right? Like, people will be able to look at him and see Eddie’s handprints on him -- the bruises, the bites, what’s happening inside.

A slap. Hard. Eddie’s hand landing flat between Melo’s shoulder blades, knocking him off balance, knocking the wind out of him.

Coughing. The room is airless, now. He falls into an old, comfortable, familiar fear.

“Stop.” There’s movement, adjustment, a hand in Melo’s braids. “Stop panicking.”

Sudden stillness and pain, and then Eddie’s talking to him, low and fast, sexy and reassuring. “Won’t feel like this next time,” Eddie says, promises.

And Melo pushes back, because that’s it. He has the assurance he needs that this isn’t just for now, that there will be a later.

Motherfucker.

“ ‘k,” he tells Eddie, open now (he thinks that’s what he means: open) and getting fucked, not hard, but steady.

Eddie knows. He eases Melo off the edge a little, talks him around it, a lot of Spanish and nonsense and stream of consciousness about what feels nice where. He shifts back and leans over Melo at a different angle and pushes at Melo’s legs, wanting them wider. Melo stalls, playing, and Eddie tells him, “Be good,” and Melo inches his knees a little farther apart and then comes.

Rolling Melo onto his back again, Eddie slips out and takes the condom off so that he can jack off over Melo while he grits his teeth and keeps his eyes fixed on Melo’s chest.

It has the odd, half-satisfied, half-ashamed and slightly awkward feeling of a fantasy fulfilled, Melo thinks -- having only experienced that once when Kirk Hinrich (one of North’s theater queers) blew him in the back of Allen’s Caddy after the Homecoming bonfire last fall.

*

Eddie’s a warm presence next to him and then he’s gone, packing up his gym bag again and finger-combing his chin-length hair (which is new, and blue streaked. It was longer last time Melo saw him.)

“Gotta go, kid,” Eddie says. “Find my hotel and then tomorrow I’m gonna look for someplace to live down here. Steve might show up for lunch or something. Y’know?” Which pisses Melo off because Steve is always in the middle of everything and yet never close enough to Melo.

“But you should come with me -- to look at apartments?” Eddie finds a clean shirt and pulls it on. “If you want.”

Melo nods and flops onto his belly, sulky at being left.

Eddie fools around with his hair again, finally settling on a messy half-pony tail, and then kisses the back of Melo’s head. “You’re alright.“ A statement. Melo almost believes it.

And then he’s alone and the apartment is quiet again.

Melo pulls on a pair of thin, ratty plaid boxers and heads for the fridge. He cracks open the last Coors Light and calls JR (out of juvie, but on probation for another minor assault charge) to come and smoke a bowl with him.

*

After Eddie and before JR, Melo’s mom walks (staggers) in. She should be too drunk to know but there’s some vestige of her sixth sense left. She knocks a chair over rather than walk around it on her way toward Melo.

She doesn’t say anything at first, just breathes hard and looks at his neck and chest, squinting a little and chewing on her lower lip.

The slap catches him off guard.

“You think I don’t know?” she asks, and it sounds the same as it did ten years ago when she asked it about Allen and his drugs. “Carmelo,” she says, raising her hand again, “do you honestly think I haven’t heard?”

He catches her wrist and looks down at her. At some point he got taller than her, but it must have been recently. “Heard?” he asks.

“About you,” she says. “Why you never have girlfriends.” She’s not raising her voice but she doesn’t have to.

“And?” he asks.

She touches the crucifix around her neck and shakes her head. “Your father --”

“Isn’t here,” Michelle says from the kitchen doorway, back from work to grab a sandwich. “Leave it, mama.”

Melo’s mom gives him one last, long look before grabbing a bottle out of the freezer and slamming the door to her bedroom.

*

JR brings a surprise -- no, not acid-coated sweet hearts -- but not just nasty, bottom of the bag swag either. He’s got hash, and the smell of it (as it curls through Melo brain, untying certain images and cobbling others back together) scours away the lingering scent of sex from Melo’s skin and hair.

“And?” JR asks, when they’re high and the answers to serious questions matter less.

“I hope it gets better,” Melo says.

*

It’s not really something that comes up with Michelle again, not even when Melo gets kicked out of school. She just quits talking to him -- cuts him out of her life -- but he’s almost positive that’s because of the coke he starting to sell and to need more and more and not because of the other thing.

It’s also not something that comes up the next time Melo is facing Allen through a warped, Plexiglas barrier. Allen wants to know about basketball and school and Melo has to lie to him about both, and the lies come surprisingly easy.

Y’know, Melo used to hear -- used to know -- that the only way out (up) was drugs, music or basketball. But that isn’t true; Melo’s found a new way, (his story doesn‘t fit into the movies JR started religiously watching when they were in junior high -- Menace II Society, Boyz in the Hood, when Cuba Gooding Junior was only ever cool when he was staggering and spitting blood all over the streets of Compton). Melo’s found his own way, without Allen and without his real family, either. And it only hurts a little.



i wonder when the roll call for heaven’s going to come




No one misses Melo after he moves in with Eddie except for Tuwanna because he’s the only reliable babysitter she has. Tia’s ten now, and unhappy. Her dad’s in prison and her mom fixes hair and gets high, so Melo relates, in a way.

“You’re the only person she talks to,” Tuwanna says, tired, ten extra years in the bruises under her eyes and the lines around her mouth. Life with -- and without Allen -- will do that to you. “You’re big,” she pats his shoulder, chest-high to her while he‘s sitting at the kitchen table and she‘s pacing. “Safe, I guess.”

Eddie’s on a road trip with the team, gone six days, and Melo’s alone except for Tia most of the time, JR sometimes, and Tuwanna now.

Tuwanna moves off in a clatter of bracelets and high heels, clicking a cheap, plastic lighter, over and over until it catches and she can smoke. Leaning one hip on the edge of the table she exhales up and away from Melo, considerate in the only way she knows how to be.

“Something new?” she asks, lifting up and then dropping two, then three different braids. “Shorter?” she wonders, mostly to herself, pulling one straight so that she can see that it’s past Melo’s shoulder. “Loose?”

Laughing, Melo shakes his head. “Just fix them.” Same as always; six years of it. “But hey, hey, Tia. Flip on the stereo, baby girl,” he says, yelling into the living room. The clicking and jangling is grating on his hangover.

“Mmm,” Tuwanna moves off of the table and around behind him, kicking off her shoes and taking up handfuls of his braids.

It’s hours before she’s got them all undone and Melo’s neck is stiff and achy.

“Sink,” she says, and he obediently gets up and then bends low over the counter, humming along with the music as she digs her fingers into his scalp and scrubs at his head. Eddie’s penthouse may have a lot of things going for it, but a giant sink isn’t one of them and Melo and Tuwanna both end up soaking wet. Since he isn’t wearing a shirt to begin with, Melo just lets himself air-dry, but Tuwanna’s t-shirt is wet and clingy and transparent and Melo catches himself looking, out of curiosity.

“What?” She touches herself, unselfconsciously, and then reaches for her pack of cigarettes.

“Dunno,” Melo says, pulling her to him, swaying with the music, letting his hair drip on her, beading on the skin of her neck. She smells like smoke and pink body spray and home. Like his sister, JR’s girlfriends, and the girl who sat next to Melo in freshmen algebra.

“Have to do your hair before it dries,” she says, soft. Small hands on Melo’s hips, long-nails pricking his skin.

*

Getting used to living downtown -- in the Golden fucking Triangle, man -- takes longer than Melo wants to admit. He was so out of it when he moved in that he let Eddie blow him in front of the big, front windows where anyone could see, if they were looking up.

No one IDs him at the clubs, and Eddie’s friends all seem to like him -- fast, angry, sunburned kids with bruises and scarred, bumpy legs. They all try to talk to him in Spanish and then laugh at his mistakes.

He thinks, sometimes, sitting out in the concrete Greek-looking thing in Civic Park with the homeless guys, that maybe he can shed his skin -- like his starter jackets and torn jeans and old Reeboks -- and put on something else, like the soft, pullover hoodies and shiny white Nikes that Eddie gives him (he’s sponsored -- they’re free), and be someone else.

Taking off people is harder than taking off clothes, though. He can’t just shake off Tuwanna and Tia and JR and DerMarr. Especially not when JR is always telling him to remember where he came from and DerMarr is always handing him a little something to sell to Eddie’s friends, or at the clubs they go to.

Steve is the worst part, though.

“Still here?” he says, letting himself in and not bothering to be subtle about the way he looks Melo up and down -- lingering on the chains around his neck (or just his chest?) and rolling his eyes at the glittering blue bottles of Sapphire Gin littering the living room. He kicks over a wine glass on purpose as he’s walking toward the couch. Melo tries to make a metal note so that he doesn’t step in the spreading stain.

“Where should he be, hermano?” Eddie asks, rubbing his eyes and adjusting himself in his boxers while he stands in the door to the bedroom.

“School?” Steve says, sitting in a semi-clean chair. “Or no. Wait. You decided to quit going to night school, right? So,” he unbuttons the top button of his white shirt, “on the court?”

Flinching, Melo finally looks away.

“No, no,” Steve goes on. “Could’ve gone to college like Allen or like Chauncey --” he draws out Chauncey’s name, “but you and JR fucked that up too.”

If you count selling coke to the assistant coach fucking up, then yeah. Melo may have misjudged that situation, and he’s grateful to Steve for making it better, making it so that he just got expelled and had to go to night school, but shit. He’d already been living with Eddie and driving back and forth to night school wasn’t high on his list, honestly. Not even in his new Range Rover -- “Happy 18.” Love, Eddie.

“Why’re you here?” Eddie asks, and Melo knows he’s tired of hearing this.

“He’s eighteen and you’re twenty-five, man,” Steve says, dead serious, refusing to let it go. Melo knows it’s the lawyer in him. The brand new public defender, Eddie says. Out to save the world, one gay black kid at a time.

Eddie coughs into the crook of his arm and tips his head back to rest against the wall. “And I’ve been fucking him since he was seventeen. So?”

Steve stands and shakes his head. “Allen’s coming up for parole.”

*

They celebrate by getting high; Eddie cuts jagged lines down Melo’s back with a credit card and then fucks him on his elbows and knees, one hand caught and tangled in the chains around Melo’s neck, looping them tighter and tighter around his wrist. It’s weirdly possessive and painful, but Melo’s reassured by it. He doesn’t need to be petted and kissed and played with; he doesn’t need affection (he’s survived this long without it.) He just needs to know where he stands, and where he belongs.

*

Next time Steve shows up, Melo’s alone.

The place doesn’t look much better, probably smells worse, and Melo’s toasting PopTarts in a pair of blue and white striped track pants. He’s planning on cleaning; Tia’s coming by later to stay for a few days and he doesn’t want her getting into whatever kind of shit they have laying around -- booze, pills, white powder on the counters.

“It’s tomorrow,” Steve says, not commenting on the house. “The parole hearing.”

“He’ll live with Tuwanna?” Melo wants to know, ignoring the bubbly feeling in his stomach, the old aching stitch, the tickle in his lungs.

“Maybe,” Steve shrugs and waits for Melo to eat about half of his strawberry PopTart. “DerMarr still lives there and I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

It clicks. Melo finishes the PopTart and slides around the table so he can look down at Steve. “You want him to live here.” And that pisses Melo off.

Nothing. Steve doesn’t even blink, he just pushes his hair back out of his eyes and waits.

“You think,” Melo says, backing Steve down and out of the kitchen. “You think if he comes here, that he’ll take care of me, don’t you?” Steve’s knees hit the back of the couch and he sits, still not scared. “He’ll make Eddie stop sleeping with me? Get me back in school? Tell me to just say no to drugs?”

“Something,” Steve says.

Leaning and then climbing over Steve, Melo suppresses the urge to hit him. He’s still a little high and more than a little tired and scared about Allen coming back into his life because, oh god, he wants that bad -- wants to be safe and loved but not. Not exactly anymore. Now -- shit, now? Maybe he just wants Allen. Which is inappropriate, Eddie says. “As inappropriate as us?” Melo asks, and Eddie just laughs.

Because he doesn’t know what else to do, or say, he picks up in the middle of his own conversation, laying on Steve, wanting to explain everything suddenly (it’s the coke talking, he knows).

“Not as bad as you think,” he says, earnest, in Steve’s face, feeling his body twitch. “Haven’t been with anyone but Eddie. So I’m not, like, a --”

“I don’t care. No --” Steve shifts under him but doesn’t move. “That’s worse. Somehow, that’s worse.”

Which doesn’t make sense, so Melo kisses Steve instead, hard and open and wet. “Eddie likes it.” Quiet, in Steve’s ear. Melo’s moving on him now, sliding a leg between Steve’s, pressing down. “How old I am. Or not.”

Steve groans, a little frantic, and tries to roll out from under Melo, but not very hard. “Lemme up,” he says. “This is stupid.”

“Nuh uh,” Melo says, pushing his tongue against Steve’s teeth. “This is nice.”

Lean, knotted muscles shift under Melo’s hands, below the thin material of Steve’s Men’s Wearhouse button up. He seems small for a minute (he is, kind of), and Melo remembers looking up at him and hating it.

When he works his hand between them (clean this time, not bloody), he squeezes hard, making Steve yelp and jerk away from him. Melo grins and takes Steve’s collar in his teeth. “Take if off, or I’ll tear it,” he says, reading a new script, improvising, making shit up as he goes, because this is new: a new body (more hair, lighter skin, thinner bones) and a new position.

With his shirt unbuttoned all the way, Steve looks more familiar. It’s the same Steve after all, under the suits and the fake smile. And with his armor gone, he lets go.

“Melo,” he says, a hard whisper, when Melo sits up to pull down his pants and unbutton Steve’s grey slacks. “Just -- okay, yeah.” He looks at Melo and then shakes his head. “I mean, goddamn.”

Melo laughs, and, head spinning, slides down Steve’s body. Cock, Melo figures, tastes like cock, and he’s into it, which should make this good whether he’s got the technique down yet or not. Steve seems to like it, burying his hands in Melo’s hair and letting out little grunting sighs from between clenched teeth.

Impatience gets the better of Melo and he pulls off before his jaw even starts to hurt (which is a sign you’re doing it right, he‘s been told),and leaves Steve on the couch so he can find condoms and lube. His head aches and his heart is still beating a little too fast, but he’s coming down hard and he wants to get this done before he crashes.

Steve’s stroking himself when Melo gets back, arched back off of the couch a little, eyes closed and mouth open. Quiet.

As he slides his fingers between Steve’s legs, Melo watches the tension drain from Steve’s muscles, starting with his neck and working down. It’s sexy: Steve naked except for his unbuttoned shirt, laid back and laid open for Melo.

Steve’s tight around Melo’s fingers and he gets tighter for a second before he relaxes and Melo can see, from above him looking down, how close he is.

“Hold on,” he says, and hopes it sounds reassuring. This is all new, from here on out, and he needs to take a little time.

“Can you?” he asks, looking down at his condom-covered cock. “D’you think?”

Steve blinks and then looks down.

“Nice,” he says, just on the edge of being mean, echoing Melo from earlier. “But I can take it.”

“Had bigger?” Melo asks, curious about Steve and sex and cocks, and surprised suddenly by the lack of variety in his life.

“Mmm,” Steve says, working himself harder now, waiting on Melo, who’s already climbing on top, rearranging Steve’s legs until it works and he can start to push in, which is awesome. Hot and too tight and slick, and there’s something crazy about the way Steve wraps his legs around Melo and grabs at his hips, wanting more.

And all Melo wants is to give it to him. More cock, harder sex. Higher brain function is shutting down and the primitive part -- the wild part -- takes over. He leans, and then falls halfway onto Steve, putting one leg on the floor for leverage.

Words refuse to form; thoughts race and spin. Melo can make noise -- hard, cut-off grunts from the back of his throat -- but he can’t speak; can’t say how he feels turned around and inside out and on top of something he should be below.

Control slips -- he’s eighteen, too big, and too high. Eddie’s his height, his weight, in charge. Steve’s smaller and trusting Melo not to tear him up.

When Steve gets a handful of Melo’s tangled braids and gets Melo close enough to kiss his cheeks and his chin -- dry, fast touches of cracked lips on wet skin -- Melo gives up, his body fucking on fire, and comes in little, awkward thrusts that push them almost off of the couch.

And even with the dizziness and the dry, fuzzy mouth, Melo manages to hold onto Steve as they roll.

“Can you --” Melo breathes and pulls at Steve. “Like, stand up, upupup,” sitting back on his knees. “Want to,” Melo says, waiting for Steve to get up and get within reach. “Like this,” and he takes him in his mouth, more serious this time, a better angle.

Steve stands, unsteady, with his hands on Melo’s shoulders, kneading at the muscles there. And when he‘s on the edge -- swelling hard and twitching against Melo‘s tongue -- Melo thinks he hears his name (or Allen’s? Something with an “L”) under Steve’s harsh breaths.

*

Honesty has never been Melo’s policy, but there’s a shaky part of him that wants to know what Eddie will do, what he’ll say, if he’ll even care.

So he blurts it out before Eddie’s even in the door. “Steve and me -- “ he starts. “While you were gone? We fucked.”

Eddie puts his stuff down and then sits down with it. “You what?”

Waving his hands (like, no big deal, bro. It’s not like he’s your ex or anything) and sneaking toward Eddie, Melo just says, “Me and Steve,” again.

“Why?” Eddie cracks open a water bottle he was carrying and drinks, little ribbons of water dripping from the corners of his mouth down his chin. “Tired of me? Mad at me?”

“Not really about you,” Melo says, irritated. “Just happened,” and “You never told me I couldn’t.” Which is childish, but Melo feels young.

Shit,” Eddie stands and brushes past Melo, cold and hard. “Did you forget who pays your bills, Carmelo?”

*

It ends with Eddie passed out in the bedroom and Melo at Club Valentine, which is not nearly as kitschy as it sounds. There’s nothing pink and frilly and gay about it unless you consider concrete and iron and industrial chic to be gay.

Melo’s not out to prove anything. He’s just gonna dance a little, let the music take control, and make a little money too, maybe.

Or not, since this kid -- like, really a kid -- has attached himself to Melo and is scaring everyone else off because he’s one of those. Thin and sad and desperate and trying to hide behind too much makeup and bared teeth.

“I can get you back, like, tomorrow,” he says, hoarse and congested, right in Melo’s ear. He’s plastered to Melo’s side, digging all his sharp edges in, playing a role, because the nearness isn’t natural. “I’ve got something lined up in the morning. Like, whatever --” he jumps and follows Melo on the dance floor and away from the bar, eyeing Melo’s Coors. “ -- an acting thing, right?” The words are slow, tortured, drawn out of him, like the half-smile, half-snarl.

“Porn?” Melo asks (snaps), loud enough for people to look and then look away and for Smiles (as Melo thinks of him) to flinch.

“Um,” there’s a lot of blinking; he’s shocked. “Maybe? Do you think so?” His hair flops into his face, a little like Eddie’s when he was younger, and he bites at a thumbnail. “I’ll do it anyway,” he says, under his breath, but Melo can read his lips. “So?”

“No,” Melo says. Putting an arm around him, curious. He weighs maybe 130 pounds. “Don’t work that way ---” he trails off, a question.

“Brendon,” he says, no louder than before.

The music drives them together and Melo tips his beer to Brendon’s lips, and he drinks without touching the bottle, curling his lips like it burns him when it drips on his skin.

Leaning, sliding, slithering forward, he says, “I’ll suck you for it.” Lips cold and wet on Melo’s neck.

“Um,” Melo says, breaking out in goose bumps.

*

There’s something impressive and intimidating about a limo that’s just waiting for you, and Melo hasn’t gotten used to it, even after a year.

Brendon looks at it like he’s hungry.

“Someday,” Melo thinks he hears as they get in the back.

Black leather seats and pale, bruised skin -- Brendon watches out of one eye while Melo cuts a line along the middle of the seat, in the foot of space that separates them. The white coke looks almost blue against the black and in the light from the halogen security lamps in the parking lot.

Brendon bends down and his hair brushes Melo’s thigh; Melo suppresses the urge to rub frantically at his arms to make the shivers go away. There’s nothing sexy about runaway, jailbait, white kids willing to suck dick for coke. Seriously. It’s a bad cliché. And Melo keeps telling himself that as Brendon’s shaky hands fight with the fly of his jeans, and as Brendon’s cold lips slide over his skin.

“Come home with me,” Melo says. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t really have to. He’s twice Brendon’s size and he has a gun. But Brendon just nods and touches his tongue to the corner of his mouth, catching a bit he missed.

*

They’re both high at sunrise, sitting on the couch in the penthouse, and Brendon’s nursing a nosebleed -- it’s the altitude and not the coke, he says. “Came up from Vegas fast,” he says, stuffier than earlier, harder to understand. He’s hunched over with his head in his hands along with a wad of red and white-splotched Kleenexes. “Had to get out, like, yesterday.” The conversation jerks along in stutters and stops. “North sounded good. Epic, or something. Empty, the farther you go.”

Melo’s never been farther north than Cheyenne, and that was just to get fireworks one year with Allen and JR, but it was pretty lonely. And dusty.

“ -- to write music,” Brendon says, “Music in high places where there’s nothing getting in front of the sound, right?” He turns and then crawls over Melo to make his point, ending up straddling Melo’s lap. “Right?”

“Mmm,” Melo says, watching the ugly, grey light of dawn start to wash the room in old-movie colors and textures -- grainy and blurry in spots.

“I just -- I don’t know,” Brendon says, rocking his hips. “I thought I did? About music and friends and bands?”

“Yeah,” Melo says, drifting. “So, yeah -- like this” and he puts his hands on Brendon’s hips, rolling him over and around, and, “if you want to stay.”

Brendon stops moving and tosses the Kleenexes, running his wrist under his nose. It comes away streaked in brown-red. “Can I stay if I don’t?”

Melo smiles. Genuine, and it stings. “Yeah.”

“ ‘k,” Brendon says and slips back off, already closing his eyes as he rolls onto the big couch.

*

It’s almost like a tourist attraction: Boy Asleep On Couch! Except, not really. Just Eddie and JR and Steve have anything to say about it, and it’s all the same thing: “One of those?” And Eddie looks uncomfortable about it and doesn’t say why and it makes Melo wonder (wish?).

“Have you ever, like, been in love?” he asks Brendon over coffee and cigarettes on the balcony, watching Brendon’s hair curl a little as it dries in the wind.

“Mmmyeah,” he says, mumbling and shrugging. “Aches.” He sits back and props a bare foot on Melo’s chair. “Makes me grind my teeth. Get all frustrated and shit.” He exhales up and grinds out his Parliament in his coffee mug. “There was,” the ceramic of the mug scritches over the glass top of the table. “This girl. Always got really tense around her. Tense and jumpy and all -- “ he rubs at his temple, “trapped half-way inside myself most of the time.”

Melo tries and fails to imagine that, wondering if Brendon needs a Xanax.

“But, like,” Brendon shakes his head. “When we were together, talking, for hours, I could see the future.”

There’s no point in asking what happened because there’s no girl, not now -- and maybe there never was; Brendon wants to tell lies to people for money -- but it makes a kind of sense. Enough that Melo knows that if he loves Eddie, it’s not like that. Not like walking a thin line or holding broken glass.

That -- the feeling of being gutted -- he’s only ever felt for Allen. Like, dying slowly. For the past thirteen years.

*

Melo lends Brendon five thousand dollars and buys him a crappy Ibanez Roadstar in funky, glittery green.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells Brendon, standing at the Greyhound station. “Pay me back later. When you’re famous or something.”

He’s glad to see him go, and Brendon’s glad to leave.




The Golden Triangle.

continued in part 3.