Life-Giving Elixirs

 

 

“YOU really don’t need to be here for this,” Sammy said uncomfortably. He remembered this—the tilting chair, the IV in his arm, the red bag of blood hanging from the rack. “It’s boring as hell. You could go out and get some coffee—here, my treat.”

Cooper was looking around the treatment room, most of which involved cancer patients with the same setup, just no blood in the bag. “It’s not as cheery here as it could be,” he said, grimacing. “You’d think they’d do this in a solarium, right? Lots of sunshine, some plants—something to make it pleasant.”

Sammy grunted and tried to look anywhere but at the blood being dripped into his body. “I don’t even know why you’re here,” he said, trying not to whine. Cooper had been up before he had the day before, standing in the kitchen in his sweatpants and handing Sammy a travel cup of juice and a bran muffin with grim aplomb. Sammy had taken the food and smiled uncertainly, offering him a peck on the cheek in thanks.

Cooper had accepted the kiss and said, “Take care of yourself, please. I’ll see you tonight.”

And that night Tino had told Sammy about Coop’s grand orientation day. This morning had been the usual riot with the kids, only Cooper had been there to help. And, of course, make him eat. Sammy had tried to tell him he didn’t need to come along for the doctor’s visit, but Cooper had smiled dryly, his eyes guarded as usual, and told him the doctor’s visit was the whole idea.

Sammy really wished Cooper hadn’t chosen to see him here.

“It’s a terrible place,” he said, unable to contain his loathing. “This only takes about half an hour. I can go back to running you around Folsom and Granite Bay as soon as we’re done.”

“I’ll run you,” Cooper said grimly. “And you can just kick back and enjoy the ride. Now drink your juice and relax. I’m not going anywhere.”

Oh, Sammy remembered this from his last year in high school. Usually Tino came with him, but sometimes it was Channing. Either way, they’d talk about sports and music and movies, and Sammy would try hard not to cry.

He really hated this part.

He took a drink of juice and tried to calm down.

“Why do you hate it so much?” Cooper asked softly, taking the insulated cup from him and setting it in the holder.

“It’s like the hallmark of inadequacy,” Sammy told him, closing his eyes. “I’m missing something to be normal. I hate that.”

Cooper’s hand in his was warm and reassuring. “You’re totally normal, Sam,” Cooper said softly. “You just need this to be well.”

Sammy shivered and squeezed his hand. He kept his eyes closed, though, so he didn’t have to see the platelet-stained tubing snaking its way into his vein. “Thanks for coming with me.” He couldn’t grudge the words. Cooper’s hand in his—that was everything right now.

“Anytime, Sam. I mean that.”

Sammy smiled and tightened his grip again and imagined them in a meadow, without any pain or any uncertainty, making love under a clear summer sky.

 

 

WHEN they were done, he felt amazing—he always did. More blood, more iron; more iron, more oxygen; more oxygen, more energy. Simple biochemistry—but it did make him feel like dancing through the streets.

“So,” he said excitedly as they were leaving the clinic, “the Palladio is right over there.” He pointed to the open-air mall, fairly pricey but entertaining to walk through. It had rained that morning, but the sunshine searing through the clouds made the damp chill worth it. “We’ve got a couple of hours before we have to pick up kids. Do you want to go shopping? Or we could go to lunch—there’s some great places in Old Town—let me take you to lunch. Or we could see a movie. There’s a movie theater here. What’s out? We could go see something new. Or sometimes they’ve got the old ones, the black-and-white ones, on a special run. What do you feel like doing next?”

Cooper laughed, looking bemused. “Uh, Target,” he said. “Your uncles gave me my first paycheck—apparently for lying around their house eating—and I realized that all my clothes are construction clothes and my tennis shoes are falling apart. If I’m going to be shuttling kids around, it would probably be good if I didn’t look homeless.”

Sammy looked at him like he was brand-new, for the first time taking in his beat-up jeans and steel-toed work boots. Oh. Yes. Real people problems. He felt foolish.

“Target it is,” he said, happy to help. “But let’s go somewhere else for shoes. Someplace you can get real leather.” He nodded, remembering Channing telling him this same thing. “Your feet are everything. You really want them to be comfy.”

Cooper had this expression—one where his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth went up in conjunction. The expression that indicated Sammy had said something showing he had no idea what it was like to want for anything in his life.

“Sometimes we just want them to be covered.”

Sammy huffed in irritation. “Yes, and sometimes people want more for you than that. Now get in the car and I’ll take you to Target.”

Cooper smirked and held up the keys. He’d driven that morning, following Sammy’s navigation, and he now had a comfortable knowledge of the neighborhoods, including the rules of pickup and drop-off. Sammy told him he was a natural. It had taken Sammy months to stop going in the wrong entrance for the morning drop-off.

But now, it appeared, Cooper was in charge.

“Target,” Cooper said, looking smug.

“Famous Footwear is right next door,” Sammy told him, feeling smug himself. “And consider it fair return for my morning juice yesterday.”

Cooper’s smirk twisted, and what emerged was the grim, faintly diabolical expression of a very determined man. “I like how you think it was just yesterday,” he said. “How very… naïve.” They approached the Odyssey, a pretty green color instead of silver like three-quarters of the ones on the road. “Now get in. I can see Target from here.”

“Wait,” Sammy said, getting into the car. “Why would you need to get up that early?”

Cooper rolled his eyes and started the car. “God, you’re dense. It’s your stupid family legend. You figure it out.”

Sammy gaped at him, only remembering to get in the car after Cooper hit the ignition.

 

 

THEY went out to lunch after Target—Sammy’s treat. He picked a pub in Old Town Folsom, a place with outstanding german fries and bratwurst cooked in beer.

“My treat,” he begged and was surprised when Cooper agreed.

“But you have to eat everything,” he said firmly. “I’m not going to let you pay for your whole meal when you just push it around and look cute. You do need to eat.”

Sammy nodded happily. If treating Cooper was his carrot on a stick, he could climb any mountain, even one made of food.

They chatted animatedly during lunch, and Sammy mined Cooper’s endless cave of old movie knowledge. Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine—Cooper had seen every movie known to man.

“Basic cable was my only entertainment once I got out on my own,” he said apologetically. “What do you like to do?”

Sammy winked. “Play music, watch music, attend musicals—but the attending-musicals thing might be up your alley.”

“I’ve never seen a musical live, but I know all the words to Oklahoma!”

Sammy grinned, happy. “Oh! I will have to take you to Sac State! In three weeks they’re doing Pirates of Penzance—it’s classic Gilbert and Sullivan. You’ll love it. I can take you to the Saturday night showing—you can see the campus. It’ll be great!”

“Why the Saturday night one specifically?” Cooper asked, and Sammy could have cursed himself. Try to keep one damned secret….

“I’ve got a study group on Friday night starting next week. It’s sort of late, because, uh, we all have jobs. Anyway, Saturday will work best.” Sammy nodded, hoping Cooper couldn’t see his bullshit.

Cooper’s bullshit detector seemed to be as highly honed as Channing and Tino’s, but the boy was new. He might be able to smell the pile, but he could not yet spot the pile.

“Study group?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s sort of a performance critique thing,” Sammy embellished. He cut into his bratwurst and took a bite, because that seemed to distract Cooper. “Anyway, I want you to see the campus.”

“Why?” Cooper asked suspiciously. “What’s so great about a college campus?”

Sammy gaped at him, surprised. “Because… because learning goes on there. And because you could go someday. Don’t you want Felicity to see you graduate from college? Won’t that make her feel like she can go?”

Cooper’s hazel eyes couldn’t get any narrower. “What makes you think I can graduate? I told you before, my grades weren’t anything special, Sam—”

“But that was high school! You didn’t think you had a chance, so you never aimed. Folsom Junior College is right down the way from here, Cooper. It’s, like, five miles at the most. Think about it. You could drop the kids off, go to school, pick them up, do homework with them. You could do something completely different with your life—”

“But… but money!” he said, honestly surprised.

“Well, you’ve got room and board at my house, and you don’t have to spend all your money on Felicity anymore—she’s Channing and Tino’s. Why not spend some money on your education so when Letty outgrows a nanny, you can go do anything you want?”

Cooper sat there, his eyes enormous, a giant piece of bratwurst on the end of his fork.

“Cooper? Coop? Are you okay? We have to be at the school in half an hour. We need to get the check and motor.”

“College?” Cooper asked numbly. “College? What could I be?”

And Sammy saw it then—the vast sky that so dazzled Cooper he could hardly form the words. “Anything you want, Cooper.” Sammy smiled and brushed his knee gently under the table. “But you may want to think about it a little. Wait until you can brain words, okay?”

“What?”

Sammy loved saying this—oh, he really did. “Eat, Cooper. Just eat.”

Cooper rolled his eyes then and popped the sausage in his mouth, proving to Sammy that he really would recover. They concentrated on their food for a couple of minutes before they paid the check and took off to finish their day, but Sammy felt sort of a glow in his chest, the opposite of what he’d felt when Coop had been mad and he couldn’t breathe.

It was pride. If nothing else came of this moment, this relationship, he’d given Cooper something to dream about. The idea staggered him. It felt like the most important thing he’d ever done.

 

 

THAT night, after dinner and cleanup, Sammy slid outside to the pool patio to look at the sky. The full moon against those quick-scudding rainclouds promised to be beautiful, and he could stare up at the play of light and shadow, the playful peep of the brightest stars, for hours.

Cooper found him standing there just as he started to shiver.

“What are you doing out here? Keenan wants you to come in and play a song for everyone before TV.”

Sammy smiled but didn’t look away. “Come here,” he whispered, reaching out and catching Cooper by the hand.

Cooper came willingly, and this made Sammy happy too. He pulled Coop in front of him, aligning his back to Sammy’s front, then wrapped his arms around Cooper’s shoulders so he could tilt his face up to gaze at the moon.

“See that?” he whispered in Cooper’s ear.

Cooper nodded. “’S pretty.”

“See how big it is?”

Another nod. “Yeah.”

“I want that for you,” Sammy told him, breathing in the warmth and the kitchen smell and the vague remnant of sawdust Cooper always seemed to bring with him. “I want all of that in the cup of your hands.”

Cooper turned toward him then, warm and pliant, and cupped his hands, putting them on Sammy’s cheeks.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. So do I.”

And then he pulled Sammy down for a kiss.

Oh, his mouth felt good. Cooper took the lead, exploring, opening, thrusting his tongue inside. Sammy let him, held his hips just so, arched against him, pressing their groins together, then wrapping his arms around Cooper’s waist and pulling him closer everywhere.

This kiss deepened, grew urgent, Sammy’s breath coming fast in a way that had nothing to do with being sick and everything to do with feeling amazing. Oh! He was in Sammy’s arms, and he wanted Sammy, all of him, glitches and all. Sammy kissed him back, took his eager response as a plea for more, and continued to grind against him until they both pulled away and panted, shaking, foreheads resting together under the sky.

“We have to go in,” Cooper breathed.

“Sure.” And Sammy kissed him again.

Cooper shoved up against him, body taut like a piano wire, and Sammy wanted more. He yanked at Cooper’s shirt, the better to palm the smooth skin of his back, and Cooper’s response rocked them both. As Sammy roamed his hands from Cooper’s hips to his neck, Cooper groaned and pressed harder, grinding his obvious erection over Sammy’s thigh. Sammy felt his urgency and pushed up with his thigh, his body thrumming with undiscovered possibilities. Blood rushed under his skin, and his body tingled with health and desire.

“Sh…,” he whispered to Cooper, taking one of his flailing hands and thrusting it under his own sweatshirt. He shuddered as Cooper kneaded his chest, his stomach, his shoulders, the brand-new thrill of bare bringing little gasps of pleasure from his throat.

Cooper pulled back from the kiss, still grinding, and buried his face in Sammy’s throat, his body spasming, damp heat spreading from his contact against Sammy’s thigh.

“No…,” he whimpered, still bucking, shaking hard in climax.

“Wow.” Sammy regarded him with wonder, holding him tightly to calm the shivering. “A kiss? A kiss did that?”

“I’m so embarrassed.”

Sammy kept touching him, rocking with his own tamped-down arousal. “I don’t know why,” he rasped. “That was amazing.”

“Please tell me you’ve done that before,” Cooper begged, voice muffled against Sammy’s skin.

“Coop, this is as far as I’ve ever gotten. I touched your back—that’s the be-all of my experience.”

Cooper pulled back abruptly. “You’re kidding. You said… you’ve kissed other people….”

“I touched my junior prom date’s breast,” Sammy recalled matter-of-factly. “It was a big deal. I was planning to do more of it, but….” He looked away. The first nosebleed had been the next week. “I got sick. Or sicker.” He turned back to Cooper and smiled gamely, trying to eliminate the look of panic on his face. “I… I’ve kissed a little.” He shrugged. “Bare skin—that’s a big deal.”

Cooper scrubbed at his face. “Just being touched felt so good,” he confessed, and Sammy held out his arms.

“Well, come here. It doesn’t have to end there.”

Oh! Cooper felt so good, rushing back into his arms. Warm and strong. Sammy could hug him forever.

“You get hugged a lot,” Cooper mumbled. “I….”

Sammy held him tighter. “I’ll hug you for all the times,” he whispered in Cooper’s ear. “I’ll make up for all the hugs you never got.”

Cooper squeezed him so hard he couldn’t breathe and then released him. “You’ve got to go play piano,” he said, like he was remembering his own name. “And I’ve got to….” He grimaced.

“Cold and sticky?” Sammy asked, because yes, he was a virgin, but he’d also washed his own sheets a few times.

“Ugh.”

Sammy laughed and reached out, feathering his fingertips over Cooper’s cheekbone. “We, uh… we can, you know. Go slow. Really slow.”

Cooper’s smile had none of the usual guards on it. Blinding and hopeful, Sammy held his hand to his chest to guard his heart. “Okay,” he whispered. “Slow.”

Sammy grinned back, feeling awkward, then ducked his head and walked back inside. He paused in the kitchen to wipe off the faint stain on the outside of his jeans and then made it to the music room, where Keenan was waiting impatiently.

“Sammy! You’ve got to play my song for Felicity! And then Letty’s song! And then….” He looked at Sammy beseechingly, and Sammy knew where this was going.

“And then ‘Felicity’s World Things’?” he asked.

“I….” Felicity frowned, looking sad. “I don’t know where I come from.” She glanced unhappily at Keenan and Letty. “I don’t have any world things.”

“Well, I can think of something,” Sammy said, winking. “Give me a week or two and we’ll have ‘Felicity’s World Things,’ okay?”

She sent a gaze of pure worship at him, and the tiny corner of his conscience spoke up about him being a good example. He smacked it on the nose and began to play, camping up and performing for his family to make them laugh. About midway through “Letty’s World Things,” Cooper walked in wearing a clean, if worn, pair of sweats. Sammy kept his focus on his music and kept playing, the back of his neck burning.

Someday, he thought. Someday Cooper would walk in the room and squeeze his shoulder and sit next to him on the bench and watch him play. Someday they would be a part of the family like Brandon and Taylor.

Someday Cooper would be ready to be more than a kiss in the dark.

 

 

THREE weeks later, Sammy was sort of hoping for a kiss out the door, but Cooper was not cooperating.

“Finish your juice,” Cooper said, scowling.

Sammy grimaced. “Coop, I’m feeling really awesome, and I took the supplements this morning. Can’t I just—”

“Skip breakfast, run around school all day, go teach, and then go to your ‘study session’?” Cooper scowled at him some more, indicating what appeared to be a festering suspicion of Sammy’s Friday night commitment. Well, he had a right to be suspicious, but Sammy felt bad enough asking him to keep the doctor appointment a secret.

“I….” What? Wasn’t going to skip breakfast? That was a lie, and Sammy knew it. He already had one big lie between them when he really hadn’t meant to have it there at all. “Fine,” he said gracelessly. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry—here, I’ll drink it and have—”

“A bagel with lox and cream cheese,” Cooper said, like that was a logical end to the sentence.

“I can’t eat that before I run!” He laughed. Because he usually got to school early, ran a few laps around the track, and then showered, dressed, and went to the practice rooms with his ensemble partners to work up their performance pieces for their next class.

“It will keep for afterward.” Cooper held up the little foil-lined lunch box, which also contained a protein bar and two apples. “And sure, you can throw it away—just remember, you’re likely to forget to do that, and it’s lox, Sammy. It’ll smell up your car.”

Sammy regarded him with reluctant admiration. “That’s sneaky. That’s really sneaky—well done, Cooper. I approve!”

Cooper’s scowl lightened up fractionally. “You are a stubborn handful, Sam Lowell. I will eventually figure out how to keep you and keep you healthy.”

Sam kissed him, hard and quick, pleased at his dazed expression. “I’m not that hard to figure out, Coop. Save your brain power for your own education.”

He’d been hinting at this for the past weeks, and more and more Coop got a thoughtful look on his face instead of a blank, panicked one. Cooper was thinking about it. Slowly and surely, he was coming to accept that this could be his dream.

Just like slowly and surely he was coming to need more touching whenever they kissed. In this case, Cooper backed him up against the counter and kissed him, except it was a slow, teasing kiss, and when Sammy chased him forward for more, Cooper grabbed the neglected juice glass from the counter and put it in his hand.

“Nice try. Now drink this before you go running, and don’t forget to call me after your class and then after your… commitment.”

He scowled, and Sammy’s “innocent” expression, which had been working on his uncles, felt like a betrayal here.

Sammy decided to trust him—just a little. “How do you know?” he asked soberly after taking a swig. It really did sort of grow on him. “How are you so sure it’s not a study group?”

Cooper looked surprised. “You’re admitting it’s not?”

Sammy looked around, as though Tino or Channing were prone to just popping up fully dressed in the kitchen. “I was stupid,” he said softly, keeping eye contact. “I told you not to tell them about the doctor appointments, and I never thought about what a shitty position that might put you in. I didn’t want to put you in that same position. I still don’t. So let’s call it a study group for now—and all you really need to know is that it’s not a date, okay?”

Cooper blushed. “Believe it or not, Sam, I always trusted that you wouldn’t be doing that to me.”

Oh, that felt nice. Sammy would wear that grin for the whole rest of the day. “Good. Because—” He lowered the juice glass and stole another life-giving kiss. “—I really enjoy kissing you. It’s sort of amazing.”

Cooper made a reluctant “Mmm-mmm” sound, and Sammy lingered for one more tongue tangle before pushing out from the counter and draining his juice.

“Sammy!” Cooper said in exasperation, and Sammy turned to him, taking him seriously.

“Just think about whether you want to know something I don’t want my uncles to know. Secrets suck, Coop. I’d rather you not have this one on your conscience, okay?”

One more kiss—oh God, there would never be enough—and he trotted out the door to start his day.

 

 

MUCH later, as he sat on a piano bench in a cafeteria with cracked tile and chipped stucco walls, he pinged at the out-of-tune piano on the stage and tried to engage the hostile eighth grader next to him. It was more difficult than it should have been, because in spite of the fact that he had eaten the bagel, it was not quite enough to get him through until now.

“Look, Nolan,” he said, trying to hold it together, “I don’t want to overemphasize this, but you chose music. You didn’t have to. You could have been playing with the Legos in that corner, or you could have been outside playing baseball. You signed up for this class—you might as well get something out of it.”

“Yeah, but I thought, you know, music.” The boy next to him scowled. Nolan Clark wore his tightly kinked blond hair almost flat against his head, with intricate designs shaved into the curls that showed off the pale brown of his scalp. His eyes were a surprisingly light green in his dark skin, but his teenage snarl was no surprise at all.

Sammy had seen Nolan twice in the past three weeks, and both times, he’d had the feeling there was nothing he could do that would impress the boy.

So far, he’d loved teaching. Eighth grade was a miserable time for most kids; he knew it. Everything from pimples to periods to runaway peen—eighth grade had it. But the kids who’d come up to his piano to learn simple scales—and then simple songs—had been excited. Some of them painfully shy and some of them filled with painful bravado to cover the shyness, but most of them had been more than willing. The piano had loomed, large and unfathomable, in their school cafeteria for years. But here—here was a chance to unlock its mysteries and, Sammy had learned from watching them play on it when he was walking in, to impress their friends.

He did his best to give them the best stuff with which to impress their friends.

But even a talented kid couldn’t learn “Bumble Boogie” in two lessons a week for three weeks, and Nolan was too pissed off to be talented.

“So,” Sammy said, grimly holding on to his patience. “You tell me what you call music, and I’ll see if I can’t make this more enjoyable for you.”

“Kodak Black,” Nolan said defiantly. “Migos. You ever heard of them?”

Sammy tried not to grimace. He wasn’t a fan of Auto-Tune, no matter how artfully used… but…. “Rihanna?” he said hopefully. “Marian Hill?”

Nolan’s eyes narrowed. “Can you do that one from the commercial?”

Oh thank God, common ground! “Absolutely.” Because who wouldn’t practice that song?

Sammy positioned his fingers on the keys, aware that a kid on his second lesson wasn’t going to be able to do the complex jazz riffs involved. “Can you sing it?” he asked, hoping this kid had some play in him.

“Try me.”

They muddled through. Nolan liked to overdo the R & B riffs, but then a lot of kids did, mistaking swing for style. Sammy sang the “trumpet” part and let Nolan play with the theme of “Down.” Together they played with music, with piano, and with words, until the song came to its whimsical halt, and Nolan clapped, standing up from his bench and bowing, clearly delighted.

A girl from across the cafeteria—one who had taken her fifteen minutes and worked her ass off—called out, “You want to impress me? Learn how to do a damned scale.”

Nolan sat down, chastised, and looked at Sammy from underneath dark lashes. “Uh, so, a scale?”

God bless hormones. Sammy started him on a C scale with a basic chord, and they worked on that until the end of his session.

When Nolan was done, Sammy packed up his various pieces of sheet music and glanced around the nearly empty cafeteria. “Your folks coming, Nolan?” he asked with a smile.

Nolan shrugged. “Guess they have to—it’s the only way I get to leave.”

“Well, I’ll wait with you.” It was a hard offer to make, even though it was the responsible one. Sammy’s hands were shaking. He wondered if he could get a protein bar out of his car while they were waiting.

“Nope,” Nolan muttered. “Sorry, Mr. Lowell—Mom’s here!” Nolan hopped off the stage, leaving Sammy to follow using the stairs and feeling about fifty instead of twenty-one. The boy and his mother were gone by the time Sammy got outside.

Which meant he was the only one to get a good look at his car as it sat alone in the far corner of the parking lot.

“Oh fuck!” He didn’t care who heard him. “My uncle Channing’s gonna kill me!”