Taking In Strays (6 page)

Donny was hungry and thirsty. He would have liked to punish his body, to deny it what it needed in a perverse sense that he needed to get back at it for failing him. He couldn’t deny, though, that his mind had played a large roll in his latest string of bad decisions and, he felt, the flu was punishment enough.

“I’m awake,” Donny called back weakly, coughed, and tried again. “Something light would be good.”

“Oatmeal? Toast?” Peter suggested.

“Toast with jam,” Donny decided.

“As long as you eat something better, later,” Peter admonished.

“Okay,” Donny replied and then rubbed at the dopey smile that threatened to bloom on his lips. The man had sounded like a concerned lover, just then, or someone’s worried mother. Donny wasn’t sure that he liked the two images coming together at the same time in his mind. While he didn’t remember the mother that had passed away shortly after his birth, he could still get uncomfortable thinking about one and a sexy oversized god in the same instance.

The door opened a short time later and Peter came in holding a tray of toast slathered in jelly, steaming coffee, and a glass of orange juice. He placed it on the side table as he looked Donny over critically.

“You look pale and red around the eyes,” Peter observed. He held out a digital thermometer and placed it near Donny’s ear. After a moment it beeped and he checked the reading. “Not terrible,” he announced, “but you should still stay in bed.”

“Yes, sir,” Donny replied with some amusement.

Peter smiled as he placed the thermometer alongside the tray. “I have an afternoon shift, today. I’m not sure about leaving you alone, though. I might ask Dan to stay here, while I’m gone.”

There was a tone to his voice that told Donny that the man wasn’t just concerned about Donny’s health. When Donny thought about it, he found that he couldn’t blame the man for not trusting him. Still, the thought of being assigned a babysitter was too hard to accept.

“I’ll be sleeping,” Donny argued. “This bed and I will be inseparable for the next few days. Dan will only get to watch me snore and wipe my nose.”

“What if you need something?” Peter pointed out. “What if you get worse? I really should take you to the clinic before I go to work.”

“Leave a sandwich, some ice water, and some extra Kleenex, and I’ll be fine,” Donny replied firmly. “As for the clinic, they’ll just stick a finger up my butt, prescribe me some antibiotics, and condoms. I’d rather have that done by someone I know.” He chuckled at the dirty joke, but then stopped when he saw Peter’s frown. Recent history should have made cracks like that one off limits. “Sorry,” he muttered. “That was stupid.”

“If you realize that, then you’re ready to get help,” Peter told him and then tried for an expression that was more light hearted, “At least that’s what Dan tells me.”

“Must be nice having such a great brother,” Donny said wistfully, wondering what it would be like to have the support of siblings who might not have agreed with his father.

“The need to serve the community must be genetic,” Peter joked as he began gingerly cleaning up some used Kleenex with a fresh one and tossing them into a small wastebasket, one Donny had failed to notice. “My little brother wants to be a fireman. My older sister is a nurse.”

“And your mother is a saint, like you?” Donny chuckled.

Peter looked embarrassed and said in a muted voice, “Well, I can’t say anything about myself, but I think she deserves at least sainthood for raising us.”

“Did she take your coming out as hard as your father?” Donny asked and then tried to take the question back. “I’m sorry! That’s really none of my business.”

Peter seemed lost in memory, though, looking at the wall with troubled blue eyes as he replied, “She cried. I thought, at first, that she was rejecting me, like Dad, but then she took me aside and told me that life was going to be so hard for me. She’s always been there for me, but she still worries about me and she does wish that I’m not gay.”

“These idiot lovers of yours, that left you, must not have helped her opinion,” Donny mused and then wondered if he should invest in a machine to kick his own ass. He supposed that his illness was allowing him to say whatever came to his mind.

Peter came back to the here and now and met Donny’s eyes with a pained expression. “I wouldn’t call them idiots. They just couldn’t put up with my career… or me.”

“Idiots,” Donny re-affirmed. “You need to work on your self-esteem, Officer Parker. If you were mine, I’d know how lucky I was.”

Those blue eyes narrowed as if Donny had surprised him. “Is that an offer?”

Time seemed to stop. Donny seemed to have an eternity to wonder if Peter was angry about the insinuation that Donny would be happy to be his lover, or intrigued and willing to consider it. Donny only had to re-run his last string of bad decisions in his head to realize which one it had to be.

“Not that you’d want someone like me,” Donny added quickly and time restarted as he gave the sentence a tone of,
of course, not in a million years will that happen
. “I just meant… you know… hypothetically.”

Peter sighed and scrubbed fingers in his crew cut as if punishing himself. “Let’s just concentrate on you getting better and getting some help.”

“Sounds good,” Donny replied in a small voice, though he was thinking just the opposite.

Donny ate his breakfast and felt better, afterward, but he could feel sleep trying to claim him again. He didn’t remember falling asleep until Peter was giving his shoulder a small shake. He opened his eyes to see worry in Peter’s expression. The man was in his uniform and clearly having second thoughts about leaving Donny alone.

Donny yawned, reached for the box of Kleenex, pulled one out, and blew his nose loudly, before he gave Peter a firm look. “Go to work,” he told Peter. “I’ll be fine.”

“I called Dan,” Peter told him as he straightened and zipped up his jacket. “He said that he can’t come and sit with you, so I either leave you here or take you to the clinic.”

“Where someone might ask questions and wonder about your involvement,” Donny replied. “Now that I think about it, this really can’t be good for your career. I’m a stray person, not a cat you took in. Someone’s probably wondering what happened to me at the station.”

Peter didn’t deny it as he straightened his tie and fiddled with his badge. “You haven’t had charges filed against you.”

“Just a report about the mayor’s son selling a BJ from the officers that arrested me,” Donny said bitterly. He felt a wave of embarrassment couple with his illness, making him feel vulnerable and miserable. “If I were you, I’d take me back in and let them process me before something happens to you.”

“I won’t do that,” Peter replied with a determination that surprised Donny.

“Why not?” Donny wondered bluntly.

Peter was the one to look embarrassed now. “You remind me of myself. You need help.”

“I am so far from being you, that I might as well be from another planet,” Donny retorted and couldn’t help the weary derision in his voice.

Donny could tell that his words stung Peter. It made Donny feel even more like shit, but he simply couldn’t understand why Peter, or Dan, wanted to risk their careers for him. His life had been filled with people who had wanted to profit from being a friend of the Mayor’s only son. Peter and Dan were probably aware that taking care of him wasn’t going to get them anything. Dear old dad had cut the cord.

Or had he? Could Donny hope that the man might have second thoughts, like Peter’s father? Was it possible, that, having had time to cool off, he was regretting his earlier harsher words? It didn’t seem probable. The conviction in his father’s eyes had been absolute.

“Donny,” Peter said, breaking into Donny’s conflicted thoughts, “Maybe you can’t see it in yourself, but Dan and I both saw that you were reaching out, that you wanted help to turn this around. You can’t know how many times that hasn’t been true, how many times we’ve seen the inevitable spiral down into destruction that some of these people take. You know what’s gone wrong. You want to fix it, to make your life better. Other people can’t see that, or don’t want it. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want help.”

“You might be wrong about me,” Donny retorted petulantly, but it lacked heat. He did want Peter to help him, even if he couldn’t admit it.

“Small steps,” Peter said and surprised Donny with a wink. “That’s what Dan always says. He also talks a lot about trust, so I’ll see you in nine hours?”

A question; it was a matter of trust that Donny would tell him the truth.

“I’ll be here,” Donny promised and meant it.

Peter nodded, smiled, and then he was leaving for work. The apartment became eerily quiet after that.

Donny slept for what seemed like a long time, the deep lethargy caused by his sickness made it easy to let go, to forget all of his troubles and find peace in dreams. Eventually, though, bodily concerns forced him to toss back the covers, wrap himself in the robe, and make his unhappy way, first to the bathroom and then to the kitchen.

A can of chicken soup was on the counter with a small scrap of paper tucked underneath it. Donny picked up the can and read the note:
good for flu
. Donny blinked at the directions, opened the pop top, and then dug out a spoon from a drawer. Screw heating it up, he thought. He’d never ventured into his own kitchen at home. Hired help had made sure that everything had been prepared, cleaned, and made easy for the son of the mayor since the day he was born.

Donny ate from the can, wrapped in his robe, as he slowly investigated Peter’s apartment. It wasn’t a challenge, being so plain and small. When he came to Peter’s bedroom, he passed by it, deciding that Peter’s trust in him included not going into Peter’s bedroom and violating his privacy. Besides, there was enough in the living room to give him some idea what the private Peter was like.

Peter liked romance novels. Donny snorted in amusement as he read the titles lined up on a bookshelf. They were all dog eared from constant reading and obviously the man’s favorites. Tropical scenes with lovers embracing in the foreground adorned every cover. Reading a few blurbs, Donny decided that
man meets perfect man on a tropical vacation,
was a plot dear to Parker’s heart.

Family pictures were in photo albums, not hung on any wall. Donny flipped through them briefly, noting where later pages were missing photos. Peter’s ex lovers? If that were true, then Peter might be the kind of man to cut ties permanently.
Let’s stay friends
might not be a part of his vocabulary. Or, Donny thought darkly, these ex-lovers of Peter’s might have been abusive enough for the man to want to forget them.

Peter might like romances, but not when it came to his movies. They were all thrillers. Donny liked most of them. He took down one, scanned the blurb, and then moved to pop it into Peter’s DVD player. Settling on the couch, still eating his cold soup, he made himself comfortable and decided that staying in that spot was preferable to being alone in his bedroom. Thinking about his decision, Donny couldn’t decide which was more pathetic, the fact that a DVD was better company than being alone with his own thoughts or that he had mentally labeled the spare bedroom as
his
.

Somewhere between the hero of the thriller movie finding out who the bad guys were, and his unbelievable rescue of the heroine from those self same bad guys, Donny fell asleep again. He drifted half in and half out of consciousness in a weird state where the movie tried to lace itself with other dreams. At one point he was getting a blow job from the hero while bullets and bad guys swarmed towards him out of the back alley door of a Chinese restaurant.

Someone pulled the empty soup can and spoon out of Donny’s hands with a muttered comment that didn’t sound complimentary. A blanket was draped over Donny’s body and a hand gently caressed his forehead, maybe checking for fever. That hand was big and firm.

“Peter?” Donny slurred and tried to open blurry eyes.

The television turned off as Peter said, “Yeah, it’s me.”

A weight settled on the couch.

“Home early?” Donny wondered as he wiped at his face with both hands and tried to pull himself back to full consciousness.

“Late,” Peter replied. “Did you spend all day on the couch?”

Donny nodded and then felt sick at the motion. “Seemed like a good spot.”

“You look worse,” Peter commented. “This wasn’t a good idea. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“Take me to bed and I’ll be fine,” Donny replied around a sniffle. He managed to focus on Peter’s worried blue eyes. “A couple of days more and this will be over with. Nothing to get worried about. Just need to rest.”

“You need to eat and drink something besides cold soup out of a can,” Peter admonished him as he stood up and headed for the kitchen, shedding his uniform coat onto the back of a chair as he went. “I’ll make something.”

“Okay,” Donny replied, unable to find the strength to argue. “You do that… and thanks…” he added, remembering how much he owed this man.

Donny closed his eyes and relaxed back into the couch, the blanket tucked close and making him feel safe and disconnected from any worries.

“You know what I meant, right?” Donny asked loudly, so that Peter could hear him in the kitchen. He’d suddenly had a thought that some of his words might have been taken the wrong way. He didn’t want Peter getting angry with him.

“Meant about what?” Peter called back, mystified.

“About…. About taking me to bed,” Donny replied, feeling stupid and embarrassed. “I meant, you helping me get to my bed where I can sleep…alone…and get better. Not together. I wasn’t asking for sex.”

There was a pause that seemed to last an eternity and then Peter said, “I didn’t think that.”

“Oh.” Donny felt even more embarrassed. “Well….Good.” Another embarrassing thought came fast on the heels of that one. “I didn’t mean
my
room, either….I know I don’t live here. I don’t want you to think that I plan to stay.”

“I didn’t think that either,” Peter replied and sounded exasperated with him.