If He Ever Cries (manxman / boyxboy)

Chapter 15

-Chapter 15-

I know you don't wanna hear me cryin'

An I know you don't wanna hear me deny

That your satisfaction lies in your illusions

But your delusions are yours and not mine

We take for granted we know the whole story

We judge a book by its cover

And read what we want

Between selected lines

—Don't Damn Me, Guns n' Roses

He shouldn't have come. What or who instigated this in him, had a sick sense of humor. Why he didn't back out and closed the door behind himself? How could he explain it to anyone who saw him? He couldn't answer that. If someone asked him directly, his tongue would fold on itself until he started to sweat stones.

Blame his feet, for moving on their own. Condemn his weakened willpower to resist the pull and cross the space from the door to beside the bed, to take the uncomfortable seat, slowly. Or curse this beautiful one right here.

For all that he had fidgeted when he stood at the door—sweaty hand in a tight fist inside his jacket pocket as he deliberated to open it or not—he wasn't feeling half as out of place as he should. He knew it. And that pissed him off.

What was he doing there was a mystery even to himself. Sure, he quickly found a purpose—to deliver awful news—drop them on the hooker's lap with disdain, turn around, and walk away. Never to take a glance back. But he was still there. And the news remained lodged behind his teeth. Back home it was easy to think of the young man as what he really was. It was easy to plot actions and plan the most hurtful way to say things.

Just a brief glance...not even a glance yet...just knowing the young man was there, behind the curtain, when he opened the door, and his brain burst in flames. Plots and plans, fluttering ashes in the air. Why everything else disappeared was something Adam tried to ignore.

An hour and a half...

Four visits to the bathroom...

Ten nails bit off on the floor...

...later—he sat in dead silence, and his mind hadn't moved him, though he knew how stalker-ish this was.

He stared at the form that tossed, turned, and mumbled—and he clutched at the armrests with increasing strength at the whimpers that hinted the growing torture that was only visible behind Kaiden's closed eyelids.

“What is it about you that I can't look away from?”

Kaiden's body relaxed when it seemed like the dream was over. He sunk deeper in the bed, as if God himself had taken him from the grips of torment and laid him carefully and lovingly on the bed.

If only Adam had found enough will to stand up right then. Walk away. Really never look back. He wouldn't be feeling this way now. The tears behind the glare his face was reflected on would have remained invisible to him. He wouldn't want to kiss the fear away from the lips that were pressed so tight, or shoo that something that gurgled under the glaze. A something that looked like pain, but Adam couldn't tell.

The rejection shot at him with the sharpness of an obsidian arrowhead. The cold air became colder. He knew the one Kaiden rejected was the treatment, but couldn't stop the feeling as if it was directed toward him. Or was it for him? The tightness in his chest made his heartbeats a little louder. And—he didn't know why—made it all a little bit painful.