op (maldito) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-08-16 18:47:00 |
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The water was the kind of blue you’d want to stare at forever, the kind perfect for bananafish if you read J.D. Salinger, the blue you meant when you imagined the color pure in your mind’s eye, and the same blue you imagined colored melancholy, bright, vivid, clear, but sad. Jan wondered at the lake. It spread out from his doorstep magnificently. Having lived in Vegas for the entirety of his life, with only two trips past its borders, the simple fact of a body of water that spanned city blocks was enough to boggle his mind. Add in the food-color blue and he was dazzled. Mountains pricked at granite along the edges of his vision. Behind the window of the cabin he’d rented, he stood with a man named Charles. Charles had a beard, finely combed and darker near the mouth. He was tall, broad-chested, and had those kind, soft sort of eyes Jan liked so much. In fact, the eyes were the reason he agreed to come along. Those eyes were nice. Blunt fingers hooked into the splintering, dry wood of the window sill. It was too bad the thing was glued shut. The one-room cabin could have used some fresh air, Jan thought. Tailored shorts grazed his calves and his black hair was shining and flat. The man was saying something and Jan was nodding quietly with fear evident in his gaze, pointed as it was at the outdoor wonderland beyond the aged pane of glass. He hadn’t told March or Toby where he’d gone, that his was going, or for how long, and the guilt laid close to his quick-beating heart. He was a bad brother, but he’d wanted to get away, and after everything with Toby, he didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. It hurt him, but he figured he had to do it. The trip up was nice enough. Alone in his car, listening to music with the windows down, Jan had been proud of himself for making it out of the city and for letting the wind ruin the hold gel had on his curls. Now he was here—Lake Tahoe—and Charles told him they’d be staying together in the cabin, that that was part of the experience. That night was when Jan grew worried. Under the quilt on the old bed, with the world snuffed out around them, with no lights to speak of, he felt an arm circle his torso with a possessiveness unfamiliar to his limited world. It was uncomfortable. It made it hard to breathe. Jan had been with people in the past. He had kissed them. Touched them. But it wasn’t the acts he liked. He enjoyed connection. He didn’t mind kissing, but anything more made him uncomfortable, and he didn’t think he felt the things other people felt. He wasn’t repulsed, but there was nothing magnetic about it. —Jan made himself remember Charles’ eyes—blue, like the lake— and it calmed him some. He remained frozen under the blanket’s patchwork, but his heart finally slowed. Eventually, he fell asleep, feeling safe in the arm’s embrace. Two nights later, he awoke again in the suffocating black to the firmness of a hand over his mouth and the unbearable weight of a man crushing his lungs. There was rough fumbling, fingers not gentle, elastic stretched open, but Jan didn’t fight back. Charles told him he was pretty, nice, such a good boy. As scared as he was, with whispers of debt falling hot on his face and catching in eyelashes with tears, as hollow as it made him feel, he didn’t fight back. He told the man he liked it. He mentioned his eyes, their kindness. It was only once he was back in Vegas that the lightness—the hollowness—revealed itself as more extensive than an emotional gutting. Hook was gone and Jan was alone. |