Pretending

 

 

A WEEK passes. Then two.

We develop a routine of sorts. We sleep in my shell in the day and hunt sharks at night. I know I’m not hunting them for the same reason anymore, but the people working the streets still get hurt. Knowing the truth of what happened to Dashiel doesn’t stop me wanting to protect them. The only problem is I’m not sure what to do about that yet, so all we end up doing is taking notes, and if we see anyone who looks afraid and lonely, we talk to them and tell them where the nearest shelter is, or the nearest café where they might be able to get a free hot drink, or where they can just sit out of the cold for a while. Neither of us can stand to see people scared and alone.

I look for Dollman everywhere. In my mind he becomes this mythical figure, a nemesis—my nemesis—but I’m not sure what superpowers I’d need to defeat him. In the end it doesn’t matter because however hard I look I don’t find him.

We don’t see Donna or Vinny or Dieter either. We don’t talk about it, but we both avoid the areas where they might be as though we’re pretending none of it ever happened. No accidents, no fainting, no arguments. We cut it all away. We’re good at it. Micky doesn’t talk about Jack, and I pretend he doesn’t even think about him. Though I do. Sometimes.

I think about everyone, even the people I don’t want to think about—mostly sharks. I think about Dashiel and hate that I’m getting used to his not being here. I hate that I can suddenly bear the thoughts that once made me want to curl up and not move. Knowing what happened isn’t what takes the pain away, but it is what makes everything easier to sort out in my head.

When I can, I fix stuff. I give Micky any money I earn so that he can go to the supermarket and buy what we need instead of having to buy whatever unlabeled items have fallen out of the lorry this week for the guy in the underpass to sell.

We help out Flower Lady in her shop too. One day Micky whispers to me that she and Milo have a thing going on. I’ve hardly noticed that Milo has been at the swimming pool less and less; I’ve hardly given myself a chance to miss him. I feel bad about that, but Micky tells me to be happy that Milo’s found someone to love. “Everybody needs somebody to love,” he says, smiling.

Even though Micky makes trips to the supermarket to buy food, he still doesn’t eat much. Sometimes he goes outside after we’ve had a meal and throws up. I don’t think he knows I can hear him. He’ll make an excuse like he needs to go for a quick walk or needs a bit of fresh air—even though the shower room is full of fresh air—and he’ll stand by the bushes and retch until he’s empty.

When he ran out of money, we brought all his belongings to my shell. He didn’t have many, but we made a big deal of it like we were moving in together. And I guess we sort of have.

Sometimes he complains of pains down his arm and across his chest, and I tell him I’ll go to the doctor with him or the hospital, but he’s worried about not having a visa and being here illegally. If they find him, he’s scared they’ll deport him back home to America. He told me he’s more scared of having to go somewhere without me than returning to the family he no longer feels a part of.

Most of the time, though, we pretend none of that matters.

Half-asleep one night, Micky tells me he misses Benjamin so much he feels sick. I get up and find the card that Benjamin gave me with his phone numbers on, but Micky doesn’t want to call him. Later I realise Micky probably knows those numbers anyway. But the thought of him missing someone so much, someone so close to him that I don’t even know, makes me ache in all the wrong ways. Because Benjamin is not dead like Dashiel, and I’m not sure missing someone you’re still tied to can ever go away completely.

 

 

TONIGHT IT’S raining heavily outside. We lie tangled together in my nest, listening to the rain drip steadily through the leak in the swimming pool’s roof.

“Let’s stay here tonight,” Micky whispers.

He’s looked pale and not quite himself all day. I place my hand on his forehead to check he’s not hot. In the home, when someone was sick, that was always the first thing the nurse would do.

Micky’s not hot. I can’t explain, but I have a feeling we shouldn’t go anywhere tonight.

I nod. Okay.

We have a bath. Of all the things I do with Micky, I like baths the best of all. We pretend we never have to get out of the tub and do anything other than kiss one another. We pretend this is the whole world.

The game lasts until Micky slathers my fingers with lube and pushes them inside him. He’s done this before, so I know what to do to make him feel good—where to rub my fingers, where to stroke. I’m still scared about fucking him. Sometimes he seems so fragile, and I don’t want to break him or anything. There are other times when I think he’s stronger than me, but tonight is not one of those times.

He squeezes his thighs tight around my dick as he lies on top of me—his back to my front—and I rock my hips. It feels really good. Too good. “Stop,” I murmur. “Want to make it last.”

Taking a deep breath, he pulls my fingers out, and with a shudder he presses my dick between his buttocks and pushes it against his hole.

We both groan. It makes me laugh a little that we do it at the same time.

“You’re perfect,” Micky whispers, bringing my hand to his mouth and running his teeth over my thumb. “So perfect for me.”

The sensation of his teeth on my skin brings me so close to the edge.

“Want to feel you come inside me,” he says. “I want to feel you fill me up.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say softly.

“You won’t, I promise.”

Micky rubs so much lube on my dick, and it feels so good, I don’t even think about condoms until he turns around to face me. And then, even when I think about their little packets, they seem abstract. This is too real. Micky rubs the head of my dick against his hole over and over as he sits on my stomach. I grip his thighs, pushing my fingers so hard against his skin I’m scared it’s going to leave bruises. I think about his teeth, I think about being inside him, about my dick pressing through the tight band of muscle that feels so slick, and yet still impossible to breach, deep into the heat of him. But when Micky throws his head back and grunts long and loud, and the head of my dick really does pop inside him, I stop thinking entirely. Micky gasps and gasps as if it hurts, but it’s the sound he makes when he really, really likes something. I wonder if we need to take it slower or if Micky likes it this way better.

I touch the place where we’re joined, my eyes wide. Micky’s fingers follow mine.

“Want to feel that again,” he whispers.

I nod and he lifts up so my dick slips out, and then he guides my fingers to trace the space it left inside him, the stretch of his muscles.

“I’m going to come,” I moan.

He grips my dick and pushes it in once more. I’m hardly inside him at all, but I am inside him, and that thought and his hand gripping me tight as he guides himself down is enough and I start to come and Micky goes “Oh fuck!” and his eyes roll back in his head and he jerks his dick and sinks all the way down, pulling me so deep inside I can feel the furnace of his belly and I think I might see stars, just some small constellation that’s broken and remade over and over and over….

 

 

“WE JUST had full sex without a condom,” I say when the bath has just about gone cold and my jellylike limbs have come back under my control. I’ve been thinking about the condoms in their little alien packets.

“I know. It was a bad idea. Really bad.” He quickly rolls over, sloshing water on the floor, so he can face me. “My dick is a dick is a dick. Are you worried?”

I shake my head. I didn’t say it because I was worried. I said it because I’m happy I just had penetrative sex.

“I swear I’ve always been careful. I was never unsafe when I was… when I let… I’m sorry.” He bites his lip.

I think he’s worried I’m going to blame him, but of course I’m not. I didn’t go get the condoms either.

“We’ll make sure we play safe until we know I’m not going to give you anything horrible, yeah?”

“Did I hurt you? It felt like I might have.” I don’t meet his eyes, but I am a bit worried about how tight it all was.

“I like it to hurt a bit,” he says, his gaze flicking over mine, cheeks flushing pink. “Turns me on. You know that, right?” He swallows and looks away.

“I like it when you bite me,” I reply, grinning. But—“What if I made you bleed?” That would be bad. Really bad.

Micky kisses me, but he’s sleepy, I think.

I carry him out of the bath and cover him with towels. My shoulder is much better, but it still twinges when I lift anything heavy. Not that Micky is heavy. I think maybe he’s lighter than ever. It worries me, but I’m not sure what to do. Maybe I should go talk to Diana.

“Do you want something to eat?” I ask.

Micky shakes his head and murmurs, “Sleep now.”

 

 

BEFORE I even open my eyes, I know something is wrong.

I blink in the blue dawn light that fills the shower room. Micky’s hand is cold against my chest and his bony hip is not pressed against me as it normally is when I wake. I push myself up and see, with a flicker of anxiety, that he’s on the floor, uncovered, a few feet away, his arms stretched out towards me. His skin has a blue tinge. I hope it’s the light.

“Micky?”

I sit up. The tiles are cold against my bare feet, against Micky’s bare skin. I put my hand on his shoulder to gently shake him. His head lolls towards me, but he doesn’t stir.

“Micky,” I say again. You’re scaring me, I think, my chest tightening so much I’m not sure if I can breathe.

I can’t panic. If I panic, the world falls apart.

Check him. I start to talk myself through what I need to do. I put my trembling hand against his chest. There is no steady thump beneath my palm—more of a light, erratic one—but at least there is something. His breathing is shallow and there is a small puddle of vomit around his mouth. It’s mostly bile because I know there is nothing inside him. Dragging a blanket over him, I wipe his mouth clean, and he murmurs faintly.

“Micky?”

“Don’t feel good… chest hurts.”

I have to lean in close to hear him. He sounds breathless, and he winces as he tries to move. He doesn’t open his eyes.

With a mounting sense of dread, I take his hand. I’m so scared. All I can hear is my own heart beating.

I make my voice strong. No wavering, no panic. “I’m going to call an ambulance. It’s going to be okay.”

I stroke his hair as I speak into the phone, answering questions I’m not sure I know the correct answer to, but I try so hard. I tell them Micky isn’t breathing enough, that his heartbeat is really weak. These are the most important things. I want to whisper that I’m afraid he’s going to die and please, please, please don’t let him, but I can’t do that without Micky hearing, so I don’t. They tell me the ambulance will be with me in ten minutes.

The adrenaline that flooded my bloodstream when I woke and found him like this is beginning to make me tremble uncontrollably, and I sit on my hand so if Micky opens his eyes, he won’t see it. But Micky doesn’t open his eyes, and his breathing sounds raspier and raspier, and I don’t know if I should keep talking or trying to get him to talk to me, to stay with me, please.

“Milo!” I shout. But I don’t think Milo is here. I’m on my own. But then I tell myself I always have been… apart from these last few weeks.

It seems as though hours have passed when I hear the distant wail of a siren and hope beyond hope it’s an ambulance coming for Micky.

When I described where we were to the woman on the phone, telling her you have to enter the building via a plywood panel, she asked me if it was a squat and if there were other people there because they have to think of the safety of their staff entering places like that and the police would have to be called. That’s when I know that as soon as the ambulance arrives, it’s over. Living here is over. I’m sorry, Milo, I think.

I don’t care what I lose as long as Micky is okay. But Milo doesn’t deserve that.