black coffee, a Romance fanfic

hot coffee.
july twenty-first.

Rhian's car starts with a gasp and a rumble and a chitty-chitty-bang-bang. It smells like burning oil and mildew and hamburgers and my anger. I step on the gas and drive.

I'm a fucking idiot.

What can I do? Doe hates me for interfering in his insanely fucked-up sex life, and now I expect to get him back? To be a little more precise, I expect him to start loving me for no fucking reason. What is wrong with me? Rhian told me to do it. Who the fuck is Rhian but some kid I fuck in kayaks? Why am I listening to a boy I barely know? The only think I know about Rhian is what I have to do to get him to make that pretty sound in the back of his throat. I know shit about Rhian.

Doe is going to hate me even more. He is going to murder me. He is going to wrap his skinny little bony fingers around my neck and I'm not going to care because who the fuck cares if it's fucking strangulation, he's touching me anyway. Loving people is so hard. It's hard for me to love my parents seeing as they're in the violent ward of some mental hospital somewhere, I don't even know where. It's hard for anyone to love anyone.

It's fucking impossible to love Doe. I do it, and it kills me every day.

I pull up in front of Bailey at the truck stop and roll down the window. Before he can rattle off his prices I ask him curtly, "Where's Doe?"

"Yo, Hart. Man. What's happening?"

"Where's Doe."

"What? Man, I don't -"

"Where the fuck is Doe, Bailey? I don't know how much fucking clearer I could make that sentence."

"Calm down, bro," says Bailey. That fucking bitch with his dudebro and his yo and his man. He's from fucking Idaho. "I haven't seen Doe in two hours."

"You WHAT?"

"Yeah, man. Some guy in a fuckin' milk truck. Lisence plate with palm trees on it. You stay away from Doe, you've caused enough grief for him."

"I've caused enough grief for him?"

"All I ever hear is Hart did this and Hart did that and Hart's fucking whoever in a fucking canoe. He called me Hart once when I was sucking him off. You stay the fuck away from - "

I step on the gas. Bailey yells at me unintelligibly.

I saw a milk truck in town, parked in front of the bar, with a Florida lisence plate.

It's still there and I let myself breathe. I park in a tremendously illegal fashion. It's starting to snow, a sprinkle on the road like confectionary sugar. I used to eat that when I was a kid and breathe it down my throat. I'd end up coughing hysterically. I have a poorly functioning epiglottis. The smell of beer and light the color of spilled alcohol pour from the inside of the bar.

In the front of the truck there is a large man, asleep. I check the back, the passenger's seat. No one.

My fingers shake on the hood of Rhian's car. A million scenarios, each one possible: dead in a ditch. Driving north on 76 two who-the-fuck-knows-where. Lying on the side of the highway in the snow. Passed out in some phone booth, in a bathroom, in a fucking train station.

I go inside. It's warm. No one asks for ID and nobody cares. The bartender is cleaning mugs behind the counter. A few men are leaning over mugs of fucking pale ale or whatever the fuck people drink these days. I go into the bathroom and I lean over the sink and I cry.

I haven't cried in so fucking long. The mirror reflects me pitifully, the skinny little loser I am, my fucking freckles and my annoying hair and my wind-red face and tear-red eyes. I shut my eyes tightly and I see Doe dead, I see him sobbing in my bathtub and I see him on the first day I met him, holding out his skinny hand and shaking with his whole arm and smiling with his whole face.

I've lost him.

He's gone.

He's probably alive somewhere, probably in some fucking hot-sheets motel room pinned against the wall by a man in a trucker hat with a hairy back. I'll never have him, ever. Everything I hoped and everything I wanted is gone and none of it will ever happen.

I dream arms around me. What I need right now is arms around me and I imagine them there. I dream a kiss on my cheek. I dream a voice in my ear, his voice. "Hart, don't cry. Please don't cry, Hart."

When I open my eyes, Dorian Smithstone is standing next to me, his sweater ripped and half his face swollen, eyelid and split, fat lip and bruises on his cheekbones.

"Where the fuck did you come from, Doe."

He smiles sadly. "The floor. The fucking bathroom floor. See?" He holds up his hands to me, disgusting and smeared with a layer of dirt and shit and probably piss too. "It's on my knees too. Shit."

"I thought you were dead."

"I wish," he said. He kisses my cheek again. His lips are smooth and leave a little bloody mark like lipstick. "I didn't mean what I said to you. I thought I was going to die on the fucking bathroom floor without you."

I look at us in the mirror. I'm crying and my face is red and there are little tear lines on it, Doe is a mess next to me, holding me with his disgusting hands. I put my arm around his shoulders. "That's it," he says.

"On the floor."

"On the fucking floor. I fucked up this time, Hart. I always fuck up. Jesus Christ. I need a life."

His eyes are so sad. He's so beautiful even now, this dirty and bruised Doe with eyes like a fucking deer.

"Bailey said something about me causing you too much grief. I'm sorry."

Doe smiles at me again, with the half of his face that looks normal. "Bailey's jealous. He's jealous, um, because, um, I -"

I shut him up. With my mouth. On his face. On his swollen lips. He makes a little muffled noise, a little gasp, and then he sucks my tongue into his mouth. We fit together like puzzle pieces, standing in a bathroom holding each other and clutching with dirty, skinny hands.

We drive back to the dorm and we shut the door and we lock the door. I kiss every bruise on his chest. He is all purple and yellow and swollen. I almost cry when I see him, stretched out on my bed, the soft perfection of his body ruined by strangers. He says, "Hart," and he takes my hand and I kiss him again on the forehead and on his neck and the side of his chin and his collarbone.

He says little soft things. "I'm sorry about what I did, I really - I just really wanted you to be having sex with me in a kayak instead of some fucktard from calculus - Hart - please - keep doing that."

"I really do love you, Hart," he says into my neck. "I really do. I'm sorry you don't get to hear that until you're on top of me." His fingers wrap around the tops of my arms, assuredly. I kiss his black eye and he winces. I do little things to him that make him gasp softly and sigh little sighs.

"Does this hurt?"

"No," he says.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Just do it, Hart. Just fucking -"

I make him scream until people bang on our walls, and then I make him scream louder.

I'm sure they'll hate us in the morning.

I dream, that night, next to him. He sleeps on his side, curled next to me in my tiny bed, and I sleep too, and I dream.

"LOST IN A WILDERNESS OF PAIN,
WHERE ALL THE CHILDREN ARE INSANE,
ALL THE CHILDREN ARE INSANE,
WAITING FOR THE SUMMER RAIN."
- the doors, "the end."

fact: the first person in new york city to die of aids died of toxoplasmolosis, which is a disease usually found in cats. so YES, you can die of cat diseases. please don't get aids. i couldn't even bear the thought of characters i made up dying of cat diseases.
blood canticle won herself a one-shot because "mellow, sweet, short-haired boy" is from REM's "seven chinese brothers." if you are blood canticle please email me (found in my profile) with your plot outlines...
i've started green tea about rhian... it won't be up for a while because of camp.

thank you for enjoying and reviewing and adding it to your favorite stories. that really means a lottttt to me.
THANK YOU SO MUCH.