Games Boys Play (22 page)

“Bri.”

He bounced the back of his head lightly, looking up at the ceiling. “Yep, I can totally use the safe word. I fucked up, didn’t I?” He closed his eyes. Swallowed.

“Bri.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Nothing further came.

He opened his eyes.

Dylan, looking at him, raised his hands, fingers splayed. Puffing out his cheeks, he made a sound like a bomb detonating as he brought his hands up and apart. The whole thing blowing up in their faces.

Brian closed his eyes again. “Shit. I just wasn’t thinking.”

“We just needed to be more careful,” Dylan said. “I was fucking with your head tonight.
I
needed to be more careful, man.
I
fucked up.”

“No. I was just… I was just at that point where if putting my arm in a meat grinder had sounded like fun, I’d have gone looking for one. No fucking rational thought at all.”

“I’ll try not to take that comparison to heart.”

He tried to calm his breathing, his heart. He peeled open his eyes again. The room seemed even brighter than before. The room seemed like his actual
room
around them, reality. Five minutes ago, he’d been bogged down in a dream. A crazy, amazing,
crazy
fucked-up dream. “What the fuck did happen to your eye?” he asked.

Dylan licked the heel of his hand and rubbed his eye, making it redder but also less black. “Newsprint,” he said. “You just sprinkle some water on a piece of newspaper and rub it where you want it to look like you have a black eye. I saw it on YouTube.” He rubbed it again. “Did it really work? It was tough to tell in the mirror in the car.”

“Freaked me out. I couldn’t decide if you’d walked into a door and worked it into the plan, or came up with the plan and then hit yourself in the eye to make it look real. Which I wouldn’t put past you.”

“I’m crazy but not that crazy.”

Brian let out a frustrated growl, dragging his fingernails through his hair, ending it with another “
Fuck
.”
Fuck.
“I have beer. You want a beer?”

“I really, really want a fucking beer,” Dylan said.

“I’ll meet you outside with it.”

When Brian got out there, his bladder empty and a third of his beer already dumped down his throat, Dylan was halfway through a cigarette. Brian handed him the other bottle. “Don’t suppose you want a Fudgsicle with that?”

“Uh, I think I’ll pass.”

“I seem to have most of a boxful in the freezer.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Brian leaned over the railing. “Do you think we fucked it all up? Or is it salvageable somehow?”

“I don’t know,” Dylan said. “I really don’t know.”

“Are
we
okay? I mean, whether we continue this or not, are
we
okay?”

“I think we can be okay. I mean, it was just a…”

“A weird thing.”

“A weird thing.”

Brian nodded. Took another pull off his beer. Looked down at the courtyard just to be looking somewhere other than at Dylan.

“So,” Dylan said. “Man, you know, I kind of have to ask.”

“What?”

He didn’t speak right away.

Brian turned his face toward Dylan.

“Well. I mean, have you. Ever…? You know.”

A laugh jumped out of Brian. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No. Fuck no. Haven’t even thought about it.” Not technically, depending on how you interpreted the things he thought about. It wasn’t like he thought about going to
bed
with a guy…but being forced to do things against his will—not that in reality he
wanted
that—but, yeah, he’d gone there in his head.

“Yeah, I didn’t really think so.”

Brian bumped his knee against the railing. Bumped it again. “What about you?”

“Nah. No.” Dylan shook his head. He took a last hit off his smoke and went to grind it out against the balcony railing. It slipped from his fingers. He bent to retrieve it and stuffed it in the butt can.

It was just a fucked-up night overall.

Brian turned and sank down, his back against the railing. Jesus. Not fifteen minutes ago, he was… He bounced his head against the bars, bouncing the memory out of his thoughts.

“So, next I have to ask if it’s something…you know, you
want
to do,” Dylan said.

“Oh, man. Are you serious? There are about a million reasons why that would be a disastrous idea. Family, band, friendship…fucking
everything
. Aunt Patty would fucking have our livers for breakfast.” He looked over. “Right?”

“It would cause problems, that’s for sure.” Dylan took a pull off his beer. Stared at the night sky. Took another pull, then fished out a fresh cigarette.

“Do you think it’s possible to go back to what we were doing, though?” Brian scratched at a spot of dried chocolate on his jeans. “Or did this fuck everything up? I can’t believe I did that. It’s not like I was thinking ‘I’m going to’ or ‘I’d really like to.’ I swear to God, I gave it no thought at all before I did it. It was just there. It was just
happening
.” He rubbed his hands together.

Dylan watched him for a bit, one eye squinting against the smoke from his cigarette.

There were a few tiny pebbles on the balcony. Brian swept them over the edge with the side of his hand, wondering how pebbles got up there in the first place.

“It was my fault,” Dylan said.

“You keep saying that.” He looked up.

“Who brought the Fudgsicles?”

He watched Dylan. There was that.

“I was just playing off what we talked about, about why someone would buy you. But it was other things too,” Dylan said with a motion of his hand. “I told you I felt like I’d crossed lines. I crossed more tonight. That’s all.” He regarded the bottle hanging from his fingers, then poured a few swallows down his throat.

“So,” Brian said eventually, prompting.

“If we were going to keep doing this, we’d have to go back to the way it was the first time. Strictly, you know, hands off.” He put the bottom of his boot against the wall behind him, tapping the bottle against his thigh.

“Keep my mouth to myself, right?”

“That’d help.” Dylan gave him a smirk before looking back up to the sky.

“Well, if anyone knows how to keep me from using my mouth…”

“Yeah, we can make sure you can’t use your mouth.”

Brian pulled his knees toward him. Crazy how a single sentence could have an immediate effect. He circled his arms around his shins, rested his chin on a knee. Was it wrong to get hard over the threat of being gagged? Or could he still have that, so long as he just kept it to himself?

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“What do I
want
to do? Or what do I think, if we had any sense between us, we
should
do?”

“I’m pretty sure I know what you think we
should
do. Or what we should stop doing. What do you
want
to do?”

Dylan knocked the ash off the end of his cigarette. Then he took another drag. He closed his eyes, and the smoke came curling slowly from between his lips.

“I want to keep going with it,” Brian said.

“I know.”

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Was there more footage? On the phone. Of you, I mean.”

He dropped the butt on the balcony and ground it out with his toe. “A little.”

“Can I see?”

“Nope.”

Brian furrowed his brow.

“That’d be wasting it. I might get a chance to use it later.”

That was probably for the best, given his reaction to the footage he
did
see. Apparently seeing his friends hurt was a major trigger, and not too surprising given the stories he made up in his head. “You weren’t recording that stuff in there on your webcam, were you?”

“Oh fuck no. You can check if you want. I’ll get it out of the trunk.”

Brian shook his head. Ran his thumb around the neck of the bottle. They could do this.

They could really do it, now that this was out in the open. Now that they—
he
—knew what to avoid. He just needed to guard against himself from now on. Draw a clear line between having fun with Dylan and getting off afterward. Alone. “So…what’s in store next?”

Dylan raised an eyebrow. One side of his mouth cocked into a smile. “Why would I tell you?” Still smiling to himself, he swigged the last of his beer.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“I’ll get that,” Brian said as Dylan started scooping wads of tape from the floor. He dumped their empty beer bottles in the trash and headed back to the living room to take over the cleanup, but Dylan said, “I got it,” as he stuck the last of the wads to the lumps of tape he had in the crook of his arm and headed into the kitchen to toss them.

Right here. It happened right here.

Brian moved the chair back to where it belonged.

“Are you good?” Brian asked as Dylan stood patting his pockets.

“Yeah.” His car keys jingled in his hand.

“Okay.” Brian scrubbed a hand back through his hair. “Well. I’ll see ya, then.”

“Yeah. I’ll give you a call.”

They stood there for a long stretch of seconds until Brian said, “Okay. Cool.”

He watched the door close behind Dylan. After locking it, he took one of the last two beers from the fridge into the bathroom, where he started the water running and stripped out of his sweaty clothes.

So—

What’d it mean that he’d kissed his cousin?

By marriage by marriage by marriage
, said a voice in his head.

That didn’t change the fact that his stepcousin was a guy. He’d stuck his tongue in another guy’s mouth. Willingly. And it hadn’t been gross…so much as mortifying.

He brought the beer into the shower with him and put a hand against the wall, hot water sluicing down his back.

Mortifying that he’d done it. Mortifying that Dylan was relatively nice about the whole thing. Mortifying that he’d more or less ambushed Dylan with it.

And himself.

He’d managed to ambush his own fucking self.

So, what do you want now?
a voice asked. Dylan voice’s.
What do you want?

He took a pull off his beer.
Don’t ask me that.

In bed later, as the sheet settled slowly over his naked body, it was like it was tasting him, quietly seducing his skin. He rolled onto his side, looking at his room in the darkness, the last beer empty on his nightstand.

He knew what he didn’t want: he didn’t want to stop the other stuff they’d been doing. If that meant—and he was pretty fucking sure it did—if that meant keeping himself in check, then so fucking be it. There’d be no repeats of tonight’s bullshit. He’d keep hold of himself until Dylan was out the door, and then he’d take care of it on his own—
not
thinking about Dylan while he did.

It was for the best. What if they started getting involved, and then a girl came along? If they stuck to cowboys and Indians, there was no reason they couldn’t still do this shit occasionally.

He tried to picture having a girlfriend, saying to her,
I’m gonna hang out with Dyl this evening
. Coming back to her with his cock hard and aching. It could be good for everyone involved.

But if he and Dyl were…

He couldn’t in good conscience tell a woman he was dating that he was going to hang out with Dyl, and then go over there and…

It wouldn’t be right. Nor would he be able to explain the deal up front, that this is going to sound kind of nuts, but sometimes he… Fuck, imagine the fucking Pandora’s box that opened up. Break up with her, and next thing you know you’re all over the Internet. “Attack from Space Practices Cousinly Homo Love.”

No.

Fuck no.

Though if ever there
was
a guy he’d actually go there with…

All the beer was gone, and it hadn’t been enough to knock him out. He padded to the bathroom, took a pill, came back to bed, and waited for the vacancy of sleep to come put an end to the goddamned night, give him the relief of waking up and starting fresh in the light of morning.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Late the following evening, he got an e-mail from Dylan:

Weren’t we just talking about this the other day? Crazy. Lock your doors. —D

Cut and pasted below that was a news item:

PATRICK CARTER THIRD CELEB TO GO MISSING

Patrick Carter
(The Vikings, Chase 2)
was reported missing by his girlfriend after the actor failed to return home from a trip to the convenience store Tuesday evening. Security camera footage places Carter at the 7-Eleven on South Broadway at roughly 8:23 p.m. He purchased half a gallon of milk and a bag of Fritos before leaving the store. He was alone and spoke to no one but the cashier. He has not been seen since.

Carter is the third celebrity to go missing in the past three months. Actor Joseph Donovan disappeared from his hotel room in early July, during filming of Peter Dreckle’s
The Maddest Man.
Musician Brandon Fryes of neopunk band Irratic Pulse disappeared from his home on the North Shore in August.

Anyone who has seen Patrick Carter since 8:23 Tuesday evening or has information on his whereabouts should contact…

Brian sat back. That
was
crazy. Crazy enough to feel like a cold finger had been dragged down his spine, making him shudder a little. Switching to a web browser, he typed in Patrick’s name.

Nothing on the front page of Google. He went to Google News. Lots of articles about an upcoming horror film starring Patrick Carter but nothing about his disappearance.

He typed “Joseph Donovan” in the search bar, then “Brandon Fryes.” Nothing about the disappearances of either.

He laughed and shook his head.
Gotcha.

An hour later, he had another e-mail:

Holy shit. —D

PUBLICITIES’ DRUMMER DISAPPEARS AFTER WEST HOLLYWOOD SHOW

Evan Thomas, drummer for post-hard-core Vancouver band Publicities, took off alone after a show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood Wednesday night and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. His cell phone was discovered in a trash can on Melrose Avenue, just a few blocks from the club. A text message from an acquaintance asked Thomas to meet him at an address in the city. Upon investigation, the phone the message was sent from was found to have been reported stolen earlier that same day.