Infected: Freefall (20 page)

Roan wondered how much of his over-intoxication was showing on his face. It must have been a lot, because this guy was staring at him like he was a ghost. “I’m fine, I just need some coffee,” he said, as the hallway seemed to pitch and yaw like a storm-tossed ship. Did he feel a little nauseous? Maybe.

But it soon became irrelevant, as he couldn’t fight the dark narcotic tide any longer and sank into the soft, warm blackness.

16

Subtle Body

R
OAN
found himself sloshing through ankle-deep water, not a hundred percent sure where he was. Looking up, he saw he was somewhere off the coast… or at least on a beach of some sort. Although it seemed like there was some hulking shape off in the water, obscured by thick fog, and the coastline was an unfamiliar blend of cement-colored sand and broken rocks as big as satellite dishes. As he waded toward shore, he saw someone sitting on one of the rocks.

“This is a dream, isn’t it?” Roan asked the figure, as snakes the color of water fled before his advancing footsteps. Drug dream? Oh yeah, big time.

“Of course it is. What d’ya expect?”

He froze hearing the voice. He had honestly expected Paris, his usual dream companion, but this voice had an Irish accent. He felt a coldness in his stomach as his gut twisted, and oily sweat prickled on his back. Oh shit. “Connor?”

“Not what you were expectin’, right?” Roan could see him now, sitting on top of a boulder with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms around his legs. He looked just like he always did, his shockingly deep-black hair mussed up and making his skin look gothically pale. His eyes were a vivid blue, Caribbean Sea blue, contrasting against the black lines of his eyebrows and the bruise-colored smudges beneath his eyes, speaking quietly of too many late nights and too many binges. He had a pleasant oval face, almost impish, which highlighted his big, startling eyes, and it made Roan’s heart hurt to recall how oddly striking he was.

Connor never knew it, though. His hair had always had the now-fashionable “bed-head” look because he very rarely combed it; he seemed to think running his hands through his hair was enough. He’d never owned any hair products or cologne, and did all his clothes shopping at thrift stores (in fact, he’d taught Roan which ones were the best ones, and how to look for a good deal); he put to rest the stereotype of the vain gay man. Although maybe he had been the living stereotype of the boho one, the artist who was deliberately shabby when he didn’t need to be. But he hadn’t been pretentious or snobby. He was just a guy who didn’t know the rules and didn’t really care about them, preferring to make them up as he went along. He was always quite fiercely himself, which was why it had been such a rush and such a pain to be with him. Heaven and hell in one pretty package.

“You just don’t like thinkin’ about me, do ya?”

“You fucking hurt me, you selfish bastard,” Roan snapped, guilt making his stomach ache. “You didn’t have to kill yourself.”

Connor shrugged, sliding off the rock and down to the beach. “Sometimes it hurts so much you just don’t know how to deal with it anymore. You gotta know what that’s like.”

Roan stared at him, aware this was his subconscious lecturing him about something, using Connor as a warning and a reminder. He really resented it. “I am not you.”

“’Course you’re not. You wouldn’t even know how to write a play.” Connor gave him a broken half grin, the kind he always used to give him after making a smart-ass remark. He knew it made him look endearing. “We had some good times, yeah?”

Roan rubbed his forehead. What had happened to him? Something had happened; he was pretty sure of that. “Yeah, we did. And some pretty miserable ones.”

“I was a miserable bastard at times,” he admitted. “But so were you. You were so fuckin’ unhappy bein’ a cop.”

“It wasn’t easy. I got a lotta shit.” Roan thought about it for the first time in a long time. He didn’t let himself think of those days too often, because his memories of Connor were inextricably tied in with it. But thinking about that, he also recalled what a relief it had been to shuck off the uniform at the end of the day (or night, depending on the shift), and how he felt free when he was with Con. He’d felt like he was truly himself, while at work he’d felt constrained. He didn’t feel that way anymore, but he did feel lost more often than not, and the only reason he could see for that was the absence of Paris. He was his polar north, and now that he was gone, Roan’s own internal compass just didn’t work anymore.

Connor hugged him, and for a moment Roan panicked. He didn’t know what to do. The smell of Connor brought back so many memories, half bad and half good: the small tattoo on the back of his neck (a heart—Con said his mother always told him he wore his heart on his sleeve, so he decided to put it somewhere else) that Roan used to kiss to wake him up on Sunday mornings; the ugly drunken fights; the incredibly hot make-up sex; the low points of finding Con passed out at his computer or on the couch, a mostly empty bottle of Glenfiddich dribbling on the floor next to him; going to the opening of one of his plays and seeing the pure, giddy joy on Con’s face; coming back from the gym to find Con burning one of his manuscripts in a garbage can, setting off the fire alarm. So many ups and downs, so many good times and bad. There were few middle times. With Con, it had always been great or horrid, almost never something in between. Connor may have had an abbreviated life, but while he lived it, he lived it full throttle; Roan had to give him that.

Roan hugged him back, inhaling the memories along with his scent, and told him, “You were such a son of a bitch. I miss you.”

“You know I loved it when ya talked dirty to me,” he replied, and Roan laughed. Con pulled back and gave him that heartbreaking crooked grin, the one that always looked slightly lopsided, like he was imperfectly mimicking someone else’s smile.

Shortly after his death, Roan had been contacted by a journalist who wanted to interview him about Con and the “secret pain that killed him.” Roan declined to talk to anyone about Con, ever, under any circumstances. Everyone assumed it was his childhood sexual abuse—often acknowledged in some form or another in his plays—that was the biggest trauma in his life, but during a drunken ramble one night, Con had told him that hurt, but it wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him. No, the worst thing, as far as he was concerned, was that his parents chose to believe his abuser over him, for years and years. Only when others started coming forward, accusing the priest of similar abuse, and a reporter discovered that the church had moved him around Ireland in advance of other sex scandals at the various parishes he had worked for, did they decide to believe him. But by then it was too late; he was gone, emotionally, mentally, physically. As far as he was concerned, they had chosen the Church over him. His anger toward them was unabated by time. In Connor’s will, he had a special message for his parents: “Not one cent. You don’t get my body, my ashes, a single scrap of paper. You abandoned me, and now I abandon you.” He left it all to his ex-wife and Roan: everything he owned, rights to his work, money, his ashes.

Maybe the Monaghans knew—they didn’t show up for his memorial service, but they did show up for his will reading. Roan knew if Con had left everything to him, they’d have taken it to court—no queer boy was getting anything else from their son—but since his ex-wife was made the executrix of his estate, they didn’t. No matter that it was a sexless sham marriage, a last-ditch attempt to earn acceptance from his parents. They still felt she was his wife, divorce or no divorce. It probably helped that, at the time of his death, he was barely scraping by. Only after his death was he suddenly considered a “genius,” and the money started coming in. Roan had thought that was a cliché, but apparently it was still true in some cases.

It occurred to him that Con’s ex-wife had left a message on his machine a week or two ago. He’d never returned it, but only because he’d got busy and forgot. Was this his subconscious’s way of reminding him? No, probably not. There was probably more to it than that. As if to send that point home, Con told him, “If numbing yourself is all you can think about, something’s wrong.”

He sighed wearily. “You are so not the person to tell me that.”

Connor grimaced slightly before cupping Roan’s face in his hand. “No, love, there’s no one better to tell you that.”

And then he suddenly remembered what had happened.

Roan woke up with a head full of cotton wool and a mouth full of sourness, his throat and stomach aching, a tube under his nose pumping air that was scented vaguely like plastic. It felt like his stomach and throat lining had been scrubbed away with a wire brush. Stomach pumped? Probably. He gave himself a moment to acclimate, then took the tube off and let it fall on the floor. He knew there was another patient in the room, separated by a curtain, but judging from the sounds of a monitor that wasn’t his, that guy wasn’t going to be bothered by anything he did.

How stupid—he had taken too many pills. The worst part was he had several more aches on top of the old one. What a fucking pain in the ass. (Actually the only part of him that didn’t hurt at the moment.) As he sat up, he saw movement in the dark near the doorway, and a familiar voice asked, “I just can’t leave you alone for one second tonight, can I?”

Holden. Oh Jesus. “How long have I been here?”

Mostly by the shadow of his posture alone, Roan could tell Holden was at once amused and appalled by the whole situation. He couldn’t blame him. “At the hospital? No idea. But it’s been almost two hours since they pumped your stomach.”

“Fuck.” It was bad enough to feel totally humiliated—it was worse to be so in front of Holden for the second (or possibly third) time tonight. He sat on the side of the hard hospital bed, the cool air on his legs letting him know he was in a paper hospital gown. Great, another humiliation. “I have your clothes,” Holden said and stepped forward to put them on the end of the bed. It was dark enough that Roan couldn’t see his face, for which he was glad. “This has been a remarkably shitty night for you, hasn’t it?”

“I think that’s an understatement.” Roan grabbed the clothes and slipped on his jeans under his gown. He felt unsteady on his feet, hollow in the gut, but he didn’t know what was physical and what was emotional. Yeah, you knew when you were self-destructive, but you thought you had it under control… until you didn’t. Connor must have gone through something similar, thinking his alcoholism and depression and self-loathing was nothing he couldn’t handle, until it killed him. He never wanted to become Con, but at some point he had.

After he ripped off the gown and pulled his shirt on, Roan asked, “How’s the Harvey situation?”

Holden leaned back beside the doorway, so Roan could see him as a solid shape in the dark, with a casually cocked hip and his arms folded over his chest, like he was trying to hold in everything he actually wanted to say. “You’ll never see him again.”

“Do I get details with that?”

“Be happy without them.” He paused briefly, signaling a topic shift. “There was some speculation over whether it was a suicide attempt, but I was able to convince them it was accidental, that this is your transformation week, and you were so desperate to check up on Dylan that you came here straight from home. Apparently a lot of infecteds accidentally OD on pain meds around transformation time, because you guys are in so much pain, and things are so wacky what with being a cat and being a person and whatnot.”

“And you knew that how?”

“PBS had a report about it.” In spite of the darkness, he must have known that Roan was staring at him, because he added defensively, “Hey, I sometimes have some time to kill in client’s hotel rooms, and there’s shit on, okay?”

Dressed and standing as straight as he could at the moment, he had to ask, “How’s Dylan?”

“Asleep, as far as I know. But there’s no way you’re getting back in his room. Not only is Nurse Ratched on guard, but the intern you passed out in front of is still pushing for a psych consult.”

Shit. Roan considered his options and wasn’t too surprised that he had few. He absolutely didn’t want to stay here if he didn’t have the option to leave. He needed to stay with Dylan… but he really didn’t like the sound of a psych consult. That was a one way ticket to Crazyville for good. “Can you get me out of here?”

Holden’s silhouette cocked his head like that was the stupidest question he’d heard all night (quite possibly). “Did you forget who you were talking to? Honey, I can get you out of almost anything.”

There was a joke there, but he decided not to make it. He was going to owe Holden a lot for this, so he supposed he should simply be grateful for his generosity and his easy gift of gab.

Holden snuck him out of the hospital through a way he didn’t know existed, but was apparently for the janitorial staff. Roan almost asked him how he knew about it but decided that this was just the type of thing Holden would go out of his way to know. Roan never entered a place without being aware of the immediate exits, and Holden never went anywhere without taking note of the more obscure ways out. He had the spirit of a sneak thief in him.

Holden led him toward his car, and Roan was going to object but then realized he probably was in no shape to drive right now. He was lucky to have gotten away with it earlier. The drugs may have been theoretically out of his system, but his head was still swimming, and he felt unconscionably hollow, like he was just the husk of a human being. “Where am I taking you?” Holden asked.

That was a good question. If he went home, the cops could find him easily, as could Dee, whom he was more concerned about. Dee was just going to kill him once Shep told him what had happened. He wanted to put this off as long as possible. Also, there were a whole bunch of nice, comforting pills waiting for him at home, and he didn’t know if he was strong enough to fight the need for them right now. “Not home. I can’t deal with that right now. How about a motel or something?”

Holden shrugged and got in the car, and Roan got in the passenger side, figuring that was okay. “You know, you caught a break,” Holden told him, once Roan had collapsed into the passenger seat. “The guy whose arm you snapped like a swizzle stick? He couldn’t give a description to the police, and seemed to think you were wearing a prosthesis on your face. “