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Rating/Warning: cursing; crude speak; mentions of past child abuse; later sexual scenes.
Disclaimer: don't own: Fruity Pebbles, Count Chocula, Mortal Kombat, ESPN, Mileena and Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat, Dan Forden's "Toasty!" sound effect from Mortal Kombat, TVLand, The Cosby Show. Not making money off these. Don't sue.
Close Your Eyes, Ricky Depalma.
The clock is flashing green 12:00 as Ricky falls through Gene’s doorway; it’s not 12:00, but it is dark — maybe somewhere around 2:30, give or take an hour that doesn’t mean much — and the beer smell that usually gravitates in clouds around Ricky isn‘t as strong. He lopes over to Gene’s bed like he is drunk, though, drastic swings of his legs to get there, helicopter arms. But when Gene reaches his hand up to twist his light on, Ricky stops and squints, mumbling out a very coherent, “Fuck’s dark, man.”
Gene props himself up on his palms, gray bags under his eyes; he couldn‘t sleep. He can‘t sleep. “What d’ya want?” He glances over Ricky. Habit. His curly, black hair’s all over the place, as if he’s been running his hands through it too much and just tangling it more and more and more, blindly; it’s out of its usual rubber band, shadowing jerky lines along the right side of his face and making him look like he just got out of bed. But everything else about him is just like any other day. Closed-up face. Shirt. Pants.
Yeah.
Same as always. Except that his eyes are uncharacteristically alert. He can’t be drunk.
“God, can I sleep here t’night?”
“Go fucking sleep with Tom. He doesn’t mind that drunk cuddle shit.”
Ricky takes a step forward, his knees bumping into the mattress.
“Fuck off,” Gene says, more forceful. “His bed’s bigger, anyway…” And he’s dropped back against his stale, cold-warm sheets before he’s even really left the sentence to carry off on its own.
“Come on, Gene. I already woke you up,” Ricky whispers sharply. “Besides, Tom gets boners all the time. Like I want him t’ shoot a load on me when I’m asleep.”
“…Deal with it.”
Ricky slides one of his shins onto the bed, nudging Gene’s shoulder with a rude hand. “Come on.”
“Fucking get off my bed, if you want that hand back.”
“What a threat. It’s not even my right hand.”
Gene rolls onto his side, back to Ricky and the warm hand on his shoulder slipping off. Ricky had better really take it back now or he won’t get it back.
“You’re such a douche.”
“Sleep on the floor.”
He hears Ricky hiss out sacrilege under his breath, something that should have been missed and dropped and along the lines of never-did-exist, but the quiet of the room only makes it loud and abrasive.
And then Ricky’s feet are shuffling on the wood floor, pacing a step away from the bed and then one back to it, away and back, and then two away and three back, smaller than the ones before, like he’s resisting some pull toward Gene’s bed — to the floor beside it because Gene’s damn sure he’s not going to get in the bed anytime soon. Not while he’s awake and alive.
With a few more steps and some thrown-around motherfucker‘s, Ricky eventually kicks off his shoes and sits on the floor, pulling the rug under what length of him it’ll cushion, laying back on one of his sneakers as a pillow. He sighs, and it carries straight up to Gene, who only flattens himself on his stomach and rolls his eyes shut.
:\:
But he isn’t faking sleep for long before Ricky sits up and depresses the mattress as he carefully climbs onto it, elbows first, so smooth and cool and smart and—
completely caught.
Gene bites back a sudden urge to wheel a punch into his face, waiting a second for Ricky to settle into his two hundred thread count prize before he snaps up and slams his hands into Ricky’s chest.
“What’d I tell you?!”
Ricky’s so stutter shocked that he takes the hit and tumbles over the edge of the bed without a word, bones and angles rattling the floorboards, cusses broken in the air. The deodorant on the dresser whacks down flat, along with the unstable row of cologne bottles, and the mirror shakes.
But Gene doesn’t care. He shoots off a satisfied smirk and rearranges his elbows so that he has a good view for when Ricky rights himself.
He expects Ricky to curse every second it takes to get up, but he’s silent, in his head, and that strikes Gene much more. He throws his glare up at Ricky’s face to read him, looming a whole four feet over him now, and there’s laughter behind his teeth; but it doesn’t come out under Ricky’s stare, swallowed back down.
“Bitch,” Ricky growls before he staggers onto the bed again, meeting Gene’s arms — which dart out in a sudden beat of recognition — with his own, leaning a knee on Gene’s hip that concentrates rolling pain into his hipbone.
“Get o—ow—off my bed!”
“Make me!”
Gene does, gaining some unexpected second-wind leverage and heaving Ricky off, back onto the floor he’s become so acquainted with in the last fifteen minutes. Gene’s sure the sound Ricky’s ass makes has woken up Tom and Phil, maybe even Hank, too, but he sleeps like he’s dead. And it takes Ricky only half the time to scramble up again, color on his cheeks, hands coming for Gene through the blank air between them.
They meet somewhere in the middle, Ricky’s palms on Gene’s shoulders, Gene’s shins crooked up to hold Ricky back, fingers clenched in his t-shirt.
“What’re you tryin’ t’ do?!” Gene grits out spitting. “Get off my bed!” He flips Ricky over, not forceful enough to toss him off the bed, but enough to straddle him, reaching down through Ricky’s all-over-the-place fingers to land a warning cuff against his jaw; Ricky automatically throws one back into Gene’s side, and that’s enough for Gene to lose his control and get hooked back over underneath Ricky, positions changed just like that and a pillow fluffed awkwardly against the curve of his neck. Their skin‘s getting boiling, and it’s hot in the room. Too hot. The sheets are wrapped tight at parts, loose at others, clutching them to each other.
Gene makes to really punch him this time, but all in one impressive move Ricky slaps his hand off and circles fingers around his wrist, pushes it down with all the force it would take to beat Gene at arm wrestling. He quick grabs the other one, too, and Gene‘s pinned, arms pressured into the mattress and legs almost immovable under Ricky‘s thighs.
“I—what’re you tryin’ t’ do?” he asks again, breathless.
This time, there is an answer to his question when Gene looks up at Ricky’s eyes, even though there are no sounds at his mouth. Something along the lines of begging, wanting to get into it because he needed to, a ‘let me, God, just let me be angry at someone,’ but Gene isn’t sure why or even if he‘s seeing right, and he more determinedly struggles under Ricky’s hands. He’s never been good at reading Ricky’s eyes, if Ricky’s not drunk and practically open to the world, and it feels a hell of a lot like he’s not, right now.
No, Gene knows he’s not drunk.
“What’re you doing?” Gene bites again, stress seethed on the last word, and he thrashes against Ricky, but Ricky just leans into him harder, Gene pinned easily, like the last two times he threw Ricky off the bed were nothing but flukes. Because he‘s not stronger. “Seriously?”
Ricky doesn’t answer again, but his eyes start to speak in tongues, and Gene gets panicked, heart beating so loud he feels it at every pulse point, “Ricky?”
A quick bend of his spine, and Ricky’s face is abruptly familiar with Gene’s, oily, black eyes shady in lashes and intimidation, pores big, everything big, magnified. His lips part, breathe one breath against Gene before they press his mouth lightly. Everything about Gene flinches at the contact, arms and legs and chest bucking up into Ricky, the sheets and their shirts static ridging together, and Ricky‘s fingers just tighten on his wrists, patient. Gene says Ricky‘s name, the -ky coming out loud when Ricky lets his lips go, just for a second, and then he’s sinking the inch between them and licking the edge of Gene’s mouth, sliding his tongue in Gene’s mouth, no ‘please,’ just a slow perspired want that makes Gene kiss back after a second, possessed by Ricky’s eagerness, the way his fingers trace down the length of his arm in time to the kiss, sparking his skin and stopping at the crook of his elbow, holding caught there. Gene says his name again, but it doesn’t slip out between their lips, eaten in Ricky’s greedy, worshipping mouth.
They break apart with lingering lips and eyes hard-pressed to open fully, Gene mumbling out a dumbfounded, whispered, “…okay.”
Ricky clears his throat, doesn’t say anything; he hasn’t said anything for the past ten minutes, and he doesn’t say anything when he disentangles himself from Gene’s bed and stands up. He hunches over to rearrange his shoes so that they’re right next to each other. Doesn’t bother another look at Gene, who’s sitting up in his bed now, staring at him as he slips his shoes on, one at a time, and saunters out of the bedroom. Nothing said.
:\:
The next morning, Phil and Hank are playing paper football at the kitchen table when Gene shuffles in, wordlessly grabbing a bowl from the cabinet and chucking it on the counter.
“What up, Gene?” Hank mutters, setting up for a field goal.
“Not much…” he offers, snagging a box of whatever cereal’s closest to fill his bowl. Fruity Pebbles. Decent.
Phil flicks the football, and the only commentary on the play is an “ah, fuck!” from Hank. Score for Phil.
Clipping the box top shut, Gene picks his breakfast up and wanders over to the table, sitting down at one of the sides Phil and Hank aren’t playing on, the fifty yard line. Best seat in the house. He scoops a handful of pebbles out into his palm, tossing them all in his mouth in one go. “Who’s winning?” is asked through the crunching.
“Hank,” they both answer offhandedly, Phil a little before Hank, fingertips sweeping back and forth over the tabletop.
“I got next game.” Gene shovels in another mouthful. “Where’s Ricky?” (Though it sounds more like “Whoars Re-ee?” through the cereal.)
“Sleeping on the couch.”
“Not his room?”
Phil shrugs, shoving the football farther onto Hank’s side of the table. “I turned off the TV this morning. He probably fell asleep watching it. Drunk or something…”
Hank forces a point on Phil and crows loud, “Eat that!”
“Lucky shot.”
“Watch me make it again, then.”
Waving his hand dismissively, Phil scowls, repositioning the football on his side of the table and flipping it up into play. He scratches a patch of his t-shirt, just below his armpit.
Gene numbly watches them score and backtalk and smile at each other in evil, promising ways, emptying his bowl except for the crumbs and glancing up at the doorway ten too many times, wondering if he should go see if Ricky’s awake or just let it go. He doesn’t know what he’d say, if Ricky were awake, if he‘d even be able to look at him without laughing in disbelief, a ‘let‘s just forget about it’ demand on his face or a ‘wasn’t it just a weird dream?’ through his lips. A blush, too, because he blushes as bad and quick as any pure Irishblood can.
“Hah! See, did it two times!”
Gene throws his eyes to the doorway again, ears pricked on footsteps in the hallway, and Ricky makes an appearance a second later, hair all over the place, no shirt on and his jeans unbuttoned, inch of boxers showing. He’s barefoot, skin sticking and unsticking noise on the floor tiles. He trails over to the counter, shuffling out a box of cereal from the stack.
“Son of a bitch, that didn’t count!” Hank barks, shocking Gene out of his stare. He drops his attention to the game, stupid. He’s never looked at Ricky like that before.
Phil smacks Gene‘s shoulder, wagging his pointer finger at the table, “Gene, you saw, right? It counted, right?”
“Shit no.” But he didn’t see. He’s always liked Hank better; that‘s valid reason enough in paper football.
“Ah, fuck you.”
Hank just grins, “We been friends longer than you. It was bound to catch up sooner or later.”
“Shut up and play.”
Ricky walks over to the table with his box of cereal, spoon hanging out of his mouth to free up his hands. Gene tries not to look at him, tries and fails because he’s been a sucker for screwing himself over ever since he realized pleasing people took the attention off himself, and Ricky’s eyes are normal, face normal, voice normal, bored, sleep gruff, blank. Maybe he was just drunk last night.
“Give me your bowl,” he mumbles around the spoon. But he doesn’t wait for Gene to do as he says, give him permission or tell him ‘no.’ He just grabs the bowl and clacks his spoon down in it, putting his cereal box - Count Chocula ecstatic - next to it and popping the top open.
And where Gene expects Ricky to get his food and leave, he just pours an overflowing amount of chocolate ghosts out, slumping down in the chair next to Gene as he does. Oblivious to the world. He picks the few scattered cereal puffs up off the table—
“Hey, we’re playing, Ricky! Get your shit off the field!”
— and pops each one into his mouth, quick but accurate.
“Rough night last night, huh, Rickety?” Hank snickers, edging the football toward Phil.
Ricky spoons some cereal in his mouth, hand fisted around the metal. “Guess who came back.”
For some reason, Gene wants to be the first to ask ‘who?’ the first to ask or make a curious, interested sound, but he stops himself from being so unlike himself. He doesn’t give a shit. Ricky’s an asshole who fucks up his sleep and takes his shit.
“Who?” Phil manages between biting his lip in concentration and seething.
Hank scores another point, and Phil slams a fist on the table.
“Hah! Suck my dick!”
Ricky waits until Phil’s stopped cussing Hank out, and then, “my dad,” he says, like it’s a better thing than the lines on his face imply. He runs a hand through his hair, “He showed up at the bar last night.” It’s been eleven years since Mr. Depalma‘s seen his son; they all know that. Only Gene knows why he left.
Gene tenses despite his attempt to not care. Tenses more because Ricky doesn’t seem mad about it.
He guesses he should be glad that Ricky’s not wearing a shirt. He can see for himself that there are no bruises.
:\:
The five of them don’t talk about anything out of the ordinary for the next few days, sports and television shows, some hot girl’s birthday party on Friday, the sudden lack of food in the house outside milk and old broccoli (who the fuck bought this shit? Gene?!), Ricky’s stories about his dad; he looks good when he tells them, Hank, Phil and Tom grinning infected and happy for him. But Gene, in all his half-assed, oh yeah, that’ll work optimism, doesn’t believe him. He keeps it to himself, though. He’s the only one who knows about the other thing.
It’s just a thing.
That was how Ricky‘d referred to it when Gene found out. A thing, a thing, just a thing, it’s nothing, why does it have to be anything when it‘s nothing? He’d said the word ’thing’ about twenty times in the three seconds after Gene had even barely just grazed over the concept of abuse; but that was only because no one else had ever found out, and cool, calm, introverted, selfish Ricky had suddenly been de-boned. And even though there was no pain in his palm, Gene had still felt like, that day after their stupid tenth grade Latin final, he’d slapped Ricky across the face as hard as his skin would allow.
Now.
There’s nothing to do but watch, now. It makes Gene disturbed thinking what might happen at the bottom because he‘d only known about Ricky‘s dad after it had happened and was long done, not during, and this feels like ‘during’ over again. He’s a little off-kilter with the shadow on his back. Maybe he should call someone about it.
But Ricky’s twenty-four. He can take care of himself. It’s not elementary school, not middle school anymore.
During those stories, the nights Ricky goes out to meet his dad, even Gene’s own lag time at work lately, he has to regularly convince himself that he shouldn‘t do anything about it. Not because it wouldn’t be right to interfer, not because maybe it‘s different now, but because Ricky’s a bastard and deserves to either sink or swim on his own. He’s never done anything for Gene. Gene‘s tired of doing things for him. Going out to pick him up, getting him food, taking care of him when he’s hung over, no thank yous, no gas money, no favors returned, no ‘sorry about your favorite shoes,’ no nothing.
He’s gotten to the point, eight or some years dragged through the wringer, where he’d rather see Ricky die than give a shit about him anymore, and he‘s too stubborn to go back on himself now.
Even if he really doesn’t believe it.
:\:
A night after hot girl — Ginger‘s — party, Tom and Phil are on the porch playing a drinking game with whiskey, Hank’s out scoring with Ginger (he wishes), and Ricky’s upstairs sleeping off the day. Gene has leftover’s stacked in front of him at the kitchen table; he missed lunch when he got called in to work that afternoon, an unexpected screw-up with his neck of the filing system, and even a plate full of old beans and pizza looks a step above just ‘good enough’ right now. He jerks his tie loose, unbuttoning three buttons on his dress shirt, his suit jacket folded stiff and as un-relaxed as he feels over the back of his chair. It’s still the weekend, though.
“Ricky!” He listens to Tom yell through the open front door, bold enough to carry up the stairs to Ricky’s room. “Ricky! Come and drink with us!”
He waits for them to call his name, too, but he’s not much of a drinker. Even if he were, he’d ruin the game cheating; he likes to cheat.
“Ricky!” Phil adds.
“Ricky!”
“Shut th’ fuck up,” all three of them hear from Ricky’s room, filtered through a solid door and air and Phil and Tom’s drunkenness, Gene’s rush of anxiety.
“Pussy!” Tom shouts back, and then he and Phil laugh ridiculously, the sound of a bottle clunking down and rolling around on the porch echoing back to the kitchen.
Gene grabs the pizza off his plate and jams half of it in his mouth. There is nothing to this, his churned stomach and the anger making his face all angles, the curiosity overrunning him, out his eyes and heels, urging him up. He stays still.
:\:
When Gene finally ends up on the second floor, six reruns of TheCosbyShowunder his belt and wishing he’d gotten more sleep the night before, he stops and just stands in the instrumental trip hop leaking electronic out of Ricky’s room, quiet enough that it’ll go unnoticed by the two drunks on the porch, Hank when he stumbles in — if he does; but it’s clear enough that Gene feels a little otherworldly listening to it, outside Ricky’s door, his shadow leaning into it through the crack.
He doesn’t knock on the door before he shoulders in. None of them have ever been gentlemanly enough to humor politeness when girls aren’t around, least of all if Ricky’s involved. That ‘treat others as you want to be treated’ bull.
Ricky is laying on his bed, back to the door, feet crooked together and arms disappeared somewhere on the other side of him. Gene can’t see his face, but he knows Ricky’s awake; it’s in the air, the thickness of someone thinking hard, and everywhere is unsettled in the room. Like a burglar came in and trashed the place, except that everything’s neat, put away, unimposing.
Scratching the side of his neck, Gene comes up to Ricky’s bed, not sure he‘s welcome. “So…you good, Ricky?”
“I’m trying t’ sleep,” Ricky answers lowly.
“Turn your music off for you?”
Ricky rolls over to face him, flaying his elbow across his forehead. He takes a deep breath, exhales it out. “Don’t touch my stereo…”
Gene shrugs and scans the room one last time, “whatever,” before he nods at everything and anything, making his way back out into the hallway, Ricky’s music clinging to his skin. He doesn’t move for a second, a second longer than he ever would have in the past, and then he’s in his own room, pretending like he has nothing better to do than nothing, right now. Ricky’s gotten over it before. Whatever’s wrong, he can get over it again. That was Gene’s best attempt at giving a damn. His last attempt.
He toes out of his shoes and plants his watch on the dresser, next to his cologne. Tie still free around the collar of his shirt, cuffs still buttoned, he lays back on his bed, not bothering to turn on the lamp, resting his arms behind his head. He doesn’t shut his eyes, though, staring up at the blades of his fan, dragging his heels against his comforter to bunch his socks off; they roll up far enough that they hang onto his toes loosely, but he doesn’t go to do anything about them. It’s nice and dark, and finally, for once in the past two weeks, he goes to sleep without a trip over his own conscious.
:\:
Four hours later, Gene half wakes up, only cracks his eyes open enough to chase out the warped dream he was having. A raspy “huh?” on his lips, he moves to readjust his position because the one he’s in is stilted, but he feels a hand next to his arm and a knee stopping his left leg in its sweeping track across the bed. He jerks back, sliding up onto his pillow and comforter rippled out around his heels. He can’t tell anything from anything for a second because he’s just woken up, and the light from the hallway only illuminates the person on top of him from behind, making his front sunken and gray shapes, and Gene takes a second with the holey, shone-through, yellow-haloed silhouette of curly hair to realize it’s Ricky. Ricky on top of him. Shirt off. Ricky staring at him.
Gene drops his attention to the fact that Ricky’s got his shirt off, but more the darker patch of black on gray skin, fireworked over his ribcage; he’s so thrown by it that he reaches out to touch it, disregards Ricky being in his bed, what it might feel like — his skin — and goes for it.
“Sh-” Ricky means to say ‘shit,’ but all that spills after it is a hustled, “don’t touch it, don’t touch it.” He spiders his hand over Gene’s wrist, pushing it back into his chest.
Gene bends his right leg up, not for any reason in particular — maybe he’ll bolt in a second or he just needs something to move, if not his hand. “What’re you doing? …Fuck, why don‘t you have a shirt on?”
“Can’t sleep. Come watch television with me.” Ricky lets go of his wrist and resituates his hand on Gene’s knee. Like he owns it and would never have to ask to touch. “Come on.”
“What’s your problem, fuckhead? You woke me up for that?” Gene flattens his leg back out — Ricky’s hand left hanging lonely in the air — and spreads his palm on Ricky’s face, shoving him off the bed. “Get out.”
“Come on,” Ricky orders softly, when his mouth isn‘t smashed under fingers, disregarding the setback.
“Come on nothing. Get out.” Gene falls back into his pillow and slivers his eyes against the hallway light to watch Ricky saunter over to his dresser and look at the stuff on it, move some of it around, pick some of it up, pop the cap on his cologne and smell it, muttering “people actually like this shit?” Anything to do so that he doesn’t have to leave, it feels like, it feels like to Gene‘s tired eyes and the lead fatigue in his bones.
“Hey, asshole, get the fuck out. And shut the door behind you.”
Ricky picks up Gene‘s watch, “I like this…” mumbling off his tongue.
“Put that down and get out,” Gene warns. But it’s useless because Ricky only hears the positive and his own voice.
He puts the watch on, snaps the back clasp and holds it at an admiring distance, “Looks better on me.” Gene doesn’t know if he’s talking to anyone but himself.
Ricky steps away from the dresser, watch slipping a little down his wrist to rest close on the edge of his hand; it‘ll probably leave an imprint. He doesn‘t bother taking it off. “Night, Gene.”
“Night…” Gene surrenders what he was going to say to the bags under his eyes. But only for a second. “—Hey, wait!” And he’s suddenly awake and aware and angry and off the bed just as Ricky takes a running start toward the stairs, longer legs, faster than him.
“Motherfucker! My great gram gave me that watch!”
Ricky hits the first story wood floor with a solid thud, Gene not even halfway over the steps yet. He looks down to see Ricky slipping out of eyesight, and then his foot stumbles over the fourth step; he falls down the rest of them, barely missing the open front door and the entranceway table, phone on it, notepad, phonebook. The world flips upside-down. His head’s spinning.
“Toasty!” Phil sings on the porch, Tom laughing and dropping the whiskey bottle again; it‘s got to be empty by now. Maybe they started a new one. The place’ll smell like alcohol in the morning.
Gene groans, feeling Ricky‘s bulky steps re-tracking across the floor with his ears and the ringing in his brain. “God…” he groans a second time, turning onto his back. He isn’t a teenager anymore; he can’t just spring up like he’s all baby fat. “Fuck.”
“Mortal Kombat is so sick, man…”
“Johnny Cage was such an…ass clown,” Phil adds through Ricky’s half-serious “that looked fun,” standing over Gene with no hands hung down to help out.
The conversation continues outside. Real intellectual talk.
“Man, that Mileena chick was a fucking piece and a half.”
“No, no, she’s a, uh, yanno, man-eater. She’d eat you and spit out the, uh, the bones, if you made a move.”
“I wish she’d eat my bone…” There’s some layover of drunken awe in Tom’s voice; he‘ll probably have a fantasy about her later, if he’s not already now.
Gene staggers up gracelessly, swiping his arms out to grab for Ricky before he can move away fast enough, pushing into him with all his strength and tripping him backward into the living room. But surprisingly, Ricky doesn’t resist much. In fact, not at all, if the way he turns rubber is any gauge, letting Gene shove him to the point that he gets confident he might win this one time.
Ricky snorts, just barely keeping his balance and somehow managing to backpedal the both of them toward the sofa, Gene shoving him and re-shoving him in threats. He misses the edge of the carpet, but the arm of the sofa looms behind him, punching into the back of his thigh and sending him sprawling into the couch. Gene can help but follow with a bend at the waist, hands still digging for his watch.
“Fuck,” he seethes, fighting off Ricky’s clammy finger grips as he goes to undo the watch’s clasp, “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Goddamn, Ricky!” every ‘fuck’ ending with Ricky’s palms sliding into him and fending him off, pulling him closer.
“God, y’ make me sick, always doing things like you’re the only one who matters. Take, take, take, you fuckin’ son of a bitch! I don‘t wanna watch TV! I wanna sleep!” Gene makes another grab for his watch and gets a finger looped in it to the first joint, lurching it up; but Ricky throws his leg into Gene’s thigh, kicking him over onto the other side of the couch. His feet, naked, dry skin, dirt under the corners of his nails, plant on Gene’s hips, keep him fake pinned.
Gene moves to stand up, but Ricky’s heels weigh down strong. He could pick them off if he wanted, if he were more sleep-stored and alert for the effort, but instead he just tolerates them. He wants his watch back.
“Just watch TV with me.”
“What?” Gene barely mouths, lungs pulsing.
“An hour or two. And then I’ll give you back your watch.”
“Get Tom and Phil t’ watch TV with you. They’re drunk. They’ll say funny shit.”
Ricky gives Gene a blank stare, sliding his feet off him and standing up lazily. He stretches before shuffling to the television and turning it on. “You’re already here. Might as well.”
Gene lets it all sink in for a minute. A minute of the first floor smell and Phil and Tom howling about Mortal Kombat, the dark doorway to the kitchen. “Fuck. You think you’re so damn good, don’t you?” He’d get up and leave, but then he wouldn’t get his watch back. Ricky’s stolen things from him before, and he’s never seen them again. “I shoulda known you were fucking me over.”
Ricky ignores him, picking up the remote and sitting back down on his side, elbow puncturing the arm of the sofa. He flips around all the channels, a word or a face or a scene blipped by as he clicks past them too fast.
“Wait, wait, how can you tell what’s on?”
Ricky keeps going.
“Hey,” Gene reaches across the couch for the control, pulling it so hard the battery cover slides off in Ricky’s hand and the batteries angle loose. “Gimme the control,” he mutters after he’s already got it, snapping the batteries back against their springs. “What d’ya wanna watch?”
“What do you?”
“No way. This is all you. It’s your choice. Fuck if you aren‘t happy, here.”
Shrugging, Ricky looks at Gene’s hands on the control. Looks a little too long as he thinks. “ESPN.”
Gene flips over to ESPN, highlights of the day’s games on, announcers recapping winning and losing points, the last five seconds of every tie game, overtimes and double overtimes. He sets the remote down on his end of the sofa and reclines his legs up on the cushion between them.
Twenty minutes later, he’s asleep. And somewhere in there, he distantly feels Ricky slide his watch back on, slide his watch back on and kiss the web of skin between his middle and ring finger; but he doesn‘t ever remember that part afterward, and Ricky never reminds him.
:\:
Ricky makes him stay up and watch television for the next eight nights. He resists the first two, rolls over in bed and digs his head into the sheets, the pillow, the comforter, drowns his eyes and nose and mouth to cotton that breathes for him. But Ricky takes things from him. He hears it more than sees it, and after they come back upstairs — when Ricky finally says he’s tired, two, three, four hours after he’s woken Gene up — he puts whatever he took back while Gene falls into his bed to salvage the few hours he can get before work starts. And Gene never really knows what is taken because he goes to sleep with everything in the right place, and he wakes up with it all in the right place. Too dumb and tired in between to pay enough attention to wide-eyed Ricky, who doesn’t seem to sleep at all anymore. He’s awake when Gene goes to sleep, awake when he wakes Gene up, awake through all the television they suck in, awake when Gene goes to bed again, awake when Gene gets up for work, awake all day at his own job.
Around day six, Ricky doesn’t have to take anything to get Gene to come with him. Gene zombies up and follows him downstairs because he does care, as much as he doesn’t own up to it, and none of the other boys seem to satisfy Ricky enough to make him do it to them. Or maybe Gene’s the only one weak enough to let Ricky take over him like he always does. But he treats it like a charity case to make himself feel more justified than he would, telling himself the truth.