Clear Water Read online

  THE next morning they went into town together for mosquito repellent and some calamine lotion to treat the bites Patrick already had. Whiskey noticed that Patrick took off his “twink tank,” as Fly Bait called it, and put on a plain blue T-shirt, and wondered if it was that kind of subtle change that made Patrick’s father so damned sure that “gay” was a passing thing. Gods, couldn’t the man see that Patrick was like a really spastic chameleon? That he’d do anything to fit in?

  They padded through Walmart, and Patrick went from thing to thing in the aisles—Otter Pops to Pop Tarts to colanders to house paint, and suddenly—

  “What’s that doing in here?” Whiskey asked, a little confused. Ecru semi-gloss latex and painting supplies had not been on the list.

  “You said to fix up the place. The walls are crap.”

  “I meant cleaning up the deck and shit,” Whiskey said, bemused.

  Patrick shrugged. “That’ll take me two days. Do you not want to?”

  “Yeah, kid. Fine. Whatever. Here—here’s twenty bucks. Go buy us something at McD’s with lots of meat and grease. I want a shake too.”

  “For Fly Bait too?”

  “Yeah—get her a chicken sandwich, no mayo. I’ll get the paint.”

  Patrick trotted off obediently, that unconscious grace that he found when he wasn’t paying attention making him look like he should be in a boutique and not freaking Walmart. Whiskey threw in a couple more cans of paint, and then some carpet tacks and a hammer, and then, pushing that cart like he was running some sort of Horny Bastards of Walmart race, he hauled ass for the pharmacy again, where he grabbed a jumbo pack of perfectly normal, average, latex-free condoms and a big thing of the expensive lubricant. He tucked them under the extra five-packs of T-shirts, underwear, and socks he’d bought, because Patrick had been giving him shit about wearing nothing that didn’t have holes in it.

  He couldn’t explain the impulse—or didn’t want to examine the impulse—but something about Patrick puttering about the houseboat, making it into a home, had given him an enormous fucking hard-on, and even if the condoms got tucked into his one drawer and never saw the light of day, just the fact that he had them made being with Patrick feel like more of an option. Of course, the closer Patrick seemed to get, the less he tried to pick up Whiskey, but Whiskey wasn’t going to dwell on that for very long.

  He cleared checkout without even an eyebrow raise from the very conservative little man talking to the clerk across from him about Bible school, and then proceeded to push the cart (which was a lot heavier than something he’d planned to fill with Off, milk, and underwear) toward the little in-store McDonalds. What he saw froze his blood, something the scientist inside him would have said was a physical impossibility.

  “No,” Patrick said, his voice thin and reedy, like his whole body was held so tightly that it constricted his air. “I’m not coming with you. Why would I come with you? The last time I came with you, you drugged me and left me for dead?”

  Whiskey scoped out the young man standing across from Patrick as he hustled the cart across the store. Well, the man was sort of young. His skin had that sallow cast and the lesions that Whiskey associated with too much drug use, and the creases around his eyes and his mouth were really deep. And if Whiskey wasn’t mistaken, his hair was dyed vampire black. Oh God, Patrick. Please tell me you used a condom!

  “I told you, baby,” Skeezemonkey was saying. His oily voice carried across the noise of the cart, but he didn’t seem to notice he was talking really loud. “I had no idea the beer would knock you out like that—”

  “You drugged me, Cal,” Patrick said flatly as Whiskey pulled up. “I was taking Ritalin—it should have made me wired and loopy, not passing-out drunk. It was my fault—I get that. I knew you had roofies, I knew you sold to people, and I stuck with you anyway. I said, ‘Hey, at least I think he’s faithful’. So it was my bad. But I have the right to change my mind. Now go the fuck away.”

  “Look, you little prick, I’ve got your daddy half convinced—” Cal grabbed Patrick’s arm while he was talking, and Patrick tried to flail back. He caught the guy in the face with the back of his other hand, and Cal didn’t even flinch, which told Whiskey that he was probably wired on something not good, but it didn’t matter, because Whiskey was on top of them by that moment, and he decked the guy, right there in the middle of Walmart.

  “Whiskey!” Patrick clapped his hand over his mouth and backed up, looking at Whiskey in stunned amazement.

  “What in the hell?” Cal stayed on the ground, rubbing his jaw and looking up in complete surprise at the man who appeared to have assaulted him out of nowhere.

  “Don’t touch him,” Whiskey snarled. “Fucking ever. Patrick, did you still want McDonald’s?”

  Patrick blinked at him, those big blue eyes seriously wide. “Uhm, no. Jack in the Box sounds better.”

  Whiskey nodded. “Excellent. We can do that. Let’s motor, then.”

  A small crowd was trying not to form around them, and Whiskey looked solidly at the rent-a-cop who had arrived just in time to see Cal standing up to dust himself off. The rent-a-cop looked back, surprised, and Whiskey nodded and gestured toward the door.

  The guy wasn’t stupid. He stood back and gestured for Whiskey to proceed, and Whiskey pushed the cart forward, past Cal, who was still sputtering. He looked back once, saw that Patrick was following him on the side farthest from Cal, and just kept going.

  They got out to the car and started shoveling blue Walmart recyclable bags into the car as fast as they could.

  “I’m sorry,” Patrick said reflexively, and Whiskey started to mutter, mostly to himself.

  “Sorry? Don’t be sorry. Don’t let that fucker touch you again, because that’s just fucking foul, but don’t be sorry! Jesus fucking Christ—gross. He was just fucking gross. I don’t get it. I just don’t. You’re fucking beautiful, and you’re smart, and you’re fun to talk to, and you think that’s the best you can do? What in the fuck? What’s going on in your head to think that guy’s okay? Me, I know I’m not good enough, but that guy? He got into your bed? I’m at a complete fucking loss—” Whiskey punctuated this by slamming his door as they both jumped in the car.

  “You’re too good,” Patrick said, not quite loud enough to interrupt Whiskey’s diatribe. He was buckling his seatbelt, and Whiskey was checking to make sure he did, otherwise Whiskey never would have known he’d said it.

  Whiskey shuddered, pissed off and shaking with it. “I’m what?”

  “You’re way too good a guy for me,” Patrick mumbled, and Whiskey stomped on the gas, ripped the car in reverse, and then threw it into drive and peeled the fuck out of Walmart, letting loose a primal scream as he went.

  “Auuuugggghhhhhhhhh!!!!”

  Patrick crouched next to him, his arms over his head, as Whiskey drove blindly through the riverside streets of the tiny levee strip mall that catered to the houseboat and RV crowd.

  He tore into a Jack in the Box parking lot, put the damned thing in neutral, and jerked the parking brake up between them. He didn’t kill the engine, because it was fucking hot and the air conditioning was the only thing keeping him from pounding his fist through the window, but the car was stopped and Whiskey could take a few moments to pound out his supreme frustration on the steering wheel so he could talk again.

  He finished pounding and took a few deep breaths, then stopped and looked Patrick in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” Patrick muttered, practically near tears, and Whiskey’s careful composure snapped like a cheap test tube.

  He snagged that round, precious little chin in his hand and crushed his mouth against Patrick’s in sheer frustration.

  Patrick moaned a little, opened his mouth, and let Whiskey in.

  Kissing Patrick was like talking to Patrick. Everything was there, on the surface, for Whiskey to feel. Whiskey put one hand up to hold his face and Patrick groaned, so Whiskey let go of his chin and cupped his face with the other hand. Patr
ick’s entire body went boneless, limp, waiting to be touched, so Whiskey moved that first hand to the base of his throat, and Patrick rubbed up against him a little like a cat. Whiskey kept kissing him, but he held his hand there, feeling Patrick’s throat throbbing up against his palm, thinking that Patrick felt just like Whiskey had imagined—wild and unpredictable and vulnerable and strong.

  Whiskey deepened the kiss, and Patrick groaned again, leaning his head back against the rest and sucking a little on Whiskey’s tongue. Whiskey thrust in and pulled out a little with his tongue, and Patrick whimpered.

  It was that whimper—that begging for more—that brought Whiskey to his senses. He stopped the kiss but kept his hands where they were, and leaned his forehead against Patrick’s, breathing hard.

  “You taste good,” Whiskey muttered. “You’ve been using my toothbrush.”

  Patrick’s eyes were just a glorious blue from this close, and when he smiled, Whiskey saw that his teeth overlapped just the tiniest bit. They were probably a little too perfect for braces, or maybe his wisdom teeth had pushed them forward. Maybe Patrick had forgotten his retainer—but it didn’t matter. It was charming. Delicate and imperfect, like Patrick himself.

  “Just your toothpaste. I bought a new toothbrush last time I came to town.”

  Whiskey took another breath, deep and shuddery, and tried to get his raging hormones under control. “Don’t worry about being good enough, Patrick. Just worry about being happy. Whoever makes you happy, that’s who’s good enough for you.”

  Patrick nodded. “Cal’s a real douchebag.”

  “Then don’t let him touch you. Ever again.” God. The thought of that sallow hand on Patrick’s pink skin made Whiskey physically ill. Of course, that could be just because he was hungry, but either way, he didn’t care.

  Patrick’s hand came up and cupped Whiskey’s cheek, and Whiskey closed his eyes and leaned into it. “I’m sor—”

  “Don’t say it.” Whiskey kept his eyes closed. “Anything that starts or ends with ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t something that you need to say.”

  He jerked away then and backed the car out of the parking spot and pulled up to the drive-through. “What do you want?” he asked, thinking that Fly Bait was going to love the chicken sandwiches here.

  “I want not to be so confused,” Patrick muttered.

  “Yeah, well, they don’t serve that at Jack in the Box.”

  “Then I want something with lots of red meat. And mushrooms.”

  “That we can do.”

  “And an Oreo shake.”

  “That too.”

  It was, somehow, all they managed to say to each other for much of the rest of the day.

  THAT night, though, as Patrick was lying in his arms, he spoke—but it wasn’t what Whiskey wanted to hear.

  “I think I have to call my dad again.”

  “Why?”

  “Something Cal was saying before you decked him—about having my dad half-convinced. I don’t know what he was trying to convince him of, but it was probably total bullshit. Like, I don’t know, I need an operation or I was a drug dealer or something. I need to leave a message on his machine or something. Let him know I’m fine and that Cal’s a douchebag. Just so he knows who to trust.”

  Whiskey sighed and risked a stroke on the outside of Patrick’s arm. “You think your dad won’t be able to spot a douchebag?”

  Patrick made one of those sinuous movements, the kind that ensured Whiskey would be waking up with another hard on, this one even harder to get down than the last four.

  “I think he’d rather listen to Cal than believe I’m not a fuckup.”

  Whiskey sighed and caressed Patrick’s arm again. Patrick pushed up against his hand like a bunny bumping a carefully extended finger with his nose. “You’re not a fuckup.”

  “Maybe someday I’ll believe it.”

  Whiskey wrapped his hand around Patrick’s middle and nuzzled his neck. Neither of them was wearing a shirt, and the feel of skin against skin was giddying. But the kiss to his neck was just a little too intimate, though—it must have been. Patrick pulled away ever so subtly, and Whiskey sighed.

  “You take your time believing it, kid. But just know this. When I wake up with a hard on tomorrow—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s not personal.”

  Whiskey leaned forward and whispered into the tickle zone of his ear. “Bullshit. If I wake up with you in my arms and a stiff cock, it’s very fucking personal, and it has everything to do with who I have in my bed and how badly I want him there.”

  Whiskey moved back then, before Patrick decided to risk the dusty couch/table/bed thingie in the front quarters, and resigned himself to a long night.

  THE next morning, he stood by Patrick after his yoga and listened to half of another conversation that went to shit.

  “Dad, he’s a douchebag. Yeah, sure, that’s a technical term. Whatever. He’s the one that crashed the car and spent the money, and I haven’t seen him since he drugged me and left me for dead. He said what?” Patrick looked up at Whiskey in complete outrage. “Cal told him I was being held hostage. By drug dealers of all things. What a fucking douchebag!”

  Patrick’s voice rose shrilly at that last word, and they were at the public dock. Whiskey grimaced as he saw the nice, older rich people out for a weekend recreational houseboat cruise glare at them, and then he forgot about them and turned his attention back to Patrick.

  “Dad, no. I’m not a part of it. Then why don’t I come home? I don’t know. Maybe because you don’t give a fuck if I’m there. Maybe I just need some time to get my shit together. Yeah, Dad, in a paper sack. Maybe I’m just spending some time making a goddamned paper sack. What’s it to you? You don’t give a fuck, and this way I’m not sponging off you anymore. The hell you didn’t think I was sponging off you—you fucking said it. Well if you didn’t mean it, you shouldn’t have fucking said it! I’m ending this conversation, okay? I’m safe. I’m happy. That’s all you should fucking care about. And no, I’m not getting assfucked by a drug dealer, goddammit! Fucking goodbye!”

  Whiskey saved the phone just in time.

  Patrick shook his head then and turned his back, but Whiskey couldn’t just let that go. He wrapped his arms around Patrick’s waist, pulled that tight and quivering body against his own, and made murmuring sounds until Patrick stopped shaking.

  “You did real good,” he said after a few moments of sun-soaked silence.

  “Thanks. I don’t think your neighbors are going to like me. I’m sor—”

  “Fuck the neighbors. I like you.”

  Patrick shuddered then, and sagged warmly into Whiskey’s arms, and Whiskey thought, Finally. Finally, this relationship is going to go somewhere. Finally, he’ll trust me enough to lean on me. It sucks that his dad’s an asshole or that I’m a weak old pervert who can’t leave a sweet young thing alone, but finally, we can do something about this… this thing that’s between us, and maybe we can get it resolved before I’m on a Greenpeace boat in the middle of bumfuck Alaska!

  So for a moment, Whiskey had peace and a yielding Patrick in his arms, and for a moment, he had some hope that Patrick might turn to him in their small bed one night all on his own and kiss him and ask for his attention.

  Two weeks later, he was climbing the fucking walls.

  They’d lapsed into a routine, and Patrick’s presence became easily indispensible to Whiskey and Fly Bait, who had been working together for nearly eighteen years. Of course it was easy—he was bright, he worked hard to please, and he enjoyed feeling useful. On the days when Whiskey and Fly Bait were analyzing data, Patrick was up on the deck, cleaning, stacking, throwing shit away, and painting. Within a week, the deck of the ship was not only not an eyesore but he’d managed to talk them into another awning to protect the frogs, and had started to bring in ice and fresh river water.

  He stacked the ice chests in front of the sun that snuck in under the awning. The tadpoles’ survival rate increase
d exponentially after he did that, and Whiskey was ashamed that he hadn’t thought about doing something to keep more of them alive. But it figured that Patrick would identify with the frogs—Cal and Catherine had become his pet project. If something happened to annoy Patrick, or if his meds wore off early, or sometimes even if he was bored and his yoga hadn’t seemed to work that morning, he could be found watching the frogs. He’d put them into a bigger container and added some of the other surviving two-headed frogs as they grew out of their tails. After two weeks, there were three frogs (or was it six?) sitting there, and Patrick would not only talk to them, he’d named them. Cal and Catherine were joined by Chastity and Conrad and Courtney and Christopher. (He didn’t actually know if they were all male/female pairs—and neither did Whiskey and Fly Bait. He figured they wouldn’t care, and, as he said, it was better than calling them Greenie and Warty or some shit like that.)

  Whiskey didn’t question the new additions—not even when he was given very serious instructions as to which two-headed frog was which. They made Patrick happy, and Whiskey was discovering that there was really very little he wouldn’t do to make Patrick happy.

  On the days when Patrick was needed for the “science shit,” as he called it, he eagerly jumped in and helped—and those days were the worst.

  Whiskey wanted him so badly just having the guy stand behind him as he planted probes was a little slice of hell. Whiskey wanted to stroke Patrick’s hand as he took the probe from him or wrap an arm around his waist when he was concentrating on the figures he was taking from Fly Bait. He wanted to hold Patrick back against his chest when they were watching movies or even when they were in the water for their evening swim.

  Whiskey, who had managed to put off undergrads for months at a time, was having one helluva time not pursuing one semi-oblivious frog-whispering yoga instructor, and it was pissing him off.