Unearthly falsettos ushered Michael into the club like a choir of K-Tel angels.

Thursday was '70s night at Babylon, the one night a week Madonna and the Chemical Brothers were hustled off the dance floor by Donna Summer and the Bee Gees. Fading voices of a more innocent age, when Carter was president, Disco was king, and the worst bug lurking in a back room was a cockroach or two. A few years back it was '60s night, and Michael had it on good authority that in the mid-'80s—when he was such a pipsqueak even Brian couldn't talk him past the stone-faced bouncers—it was '50s night.

He'd heard rumors lately that Dan, the club manager, was thinking of changing it to a New Wave theme. By the time the new millennium hit they were going to be out of decades. Their only option would be to circle back to the one they just left, Gen X's insatiable appetite for nostalgia forcing it to swallow itself.

Like that guy in the Stephen King story who ate his own feet, Michael thought, feeling sick.

Not from King's story—when you cut your teeth on Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller, a little autocannibalism isn't going to faze you. He'd been shaky all day, an expected reaction when you were stuck in a freezing warehouse counting cartons of maxi-pads from eight in the morning on. He should still be at it, but Rick, the nightshift supervisor, had taken pity on him.

Go home and get some shut-eye, Novotny, he said, hitching up his Banlon pants over his beer belly. You look like you could use it. But what Michael could really use is a drink.

He made his way through the crowd, thinned by the rainstorm outside to Sunday night sparseness, and signaled to the bartender while maneuvering around a pair of six-foot stunners tricked out like Frida and Agnetha. By the time he got past the dancing queens, Luis—who along with perfect abs boasted the other bartender virtue of perfect drink recall—had a Bacardi and Diet Coke waiting on a coaster.

Michael opened his wallet and experienced one of those sinking panicked moments when all he saw were a couple of singles. He thought he'd given the guy at the front a twenty, the last bill in his wallet after paying off the cab driver. But either he'd gotten shortchanged, or he was so out of it he hadn't realized it was a ten.

Wading in the cold and wet back to the MAC across the street seemed like a journey of a thousand miles. He peered at his credit cards, trying to remember which one wasn't maxed to the limit.

Before he could figure it out, a crisp five-dollar bill was slapped on the plexiglass in front of him. Michael tensed, not in the frame of mind to get cruised by some random stranger. He relaxed when he turned and saw his friend Ted's familiar face.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll pay you back tomorrow."

"Don't worry about it," Ted said. "You're the first cute guy I've bought a drink for all night."

Michael looked down at his wrinkled jeans and t-shirt, pulled from the bottom of his locker at work. He was sure he still reeked of the cheap lemon soap in the locker room shower.

"Yeah, I feel cute right now."

Ted followed his gaze, smiling. "You're adorable. As always." He leaned against the bar, one hand in the pocket of his impeccably pressed khakis. "Where have you been, anyway? It's almost midnight."

"Quarterly inventory. We should've been done hours ago, but somebody made off with twelve cases of Beanie Babies. The assistant general manager went ballistic. She collects them—has a bunch lined up on her desk and calls 'em by name and shit."

"Breeders," Ted said, shuddering. "They call us twisted."

"Mmmm," Michael agreed, plucking the lime garnish off the rim of his glass and biting into it. He tipped the drink against his lips, grimacing at the strange metallic taste. Dan passing generic booze off as name-brand again, but he was too thirsty to complain. When he stopped, wiping his mouth and stifling a burp, he realized he'd drained the glass in one shot.

Ted gave him an odd look and seemed about to comment, but Michael cut him off. "How is it tonight?" he said, eyes scanning the half-filled dance floor.

"Pointless," Ted replied. "It's twinkie central out there, and I'm last week's prune danish."

"Come on, Teddy, that's not true," Michael said, but his heart wasn’t in it. He'd only known Ted a few months, but had already realized his new friend was a black hole into which all reassurance vanished. "It's just a bad night," he finished lamely.

Ted nodded. "Lots of people gone from the storm or that flu that's going around. The only ones left are the desperate die-hards and the ones too young to know better."

Michael wondered wearily which category he fell into. He held the cold glass against his forehead, hoping it would ease the pounding behind his eyes.

"Are you okay?" Ted said. "You look pale."

"Fine," Michael replied, rolling the glass back and forth. "Long week."

"You've had a lot of those lately."

"Oooh. Who's had a lot of what lately?" a low-pitched voice drawled from their left. It was Emmett, fabulous in pink pleather pants and a matching net shirt. His face was almost the same color as his outfit—the flushed look of someone who just spent an equally fabulous interlude in the back room.

"Don't get excited. I was telling Michael he's been putting in too many hours at Big Q."

"Honey, any hours are too many at the Q. I’ve been tellin’ him for years to ditch that discount gulag. The lighting scheme alone is enough to make you despair your own existence.” Bending his tall, lanky form like an inquisitive giraffe, he peered into Michael’s face. “You do look a mite peaked." He dug around in the front pocket of his skin-tight pants. "But never fear—Dr. Emmett's here.” He held out a glass vial.

“No thanks. Not tonight.” The thought of snorting anything up his aching sinuses set his teeth on edge.

“It’ll cure what ails you.”

"No, really, that's okay."

"You suuure?" Emmett said, waggling the vial in front of his nose. Michael caught a sicky-sweet whiff of amyl and gagged.

He knocked Emmett's hand away. "I said I don't fucking want it."

Michael saw his friends' shocked expressions and took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Em. It's been—"

"—a long week," Ted finished. "Yeah. We know."

There was an awkward silence, filled by the Trammps screeching at them to burn, baby, burn. His body appeared to be listening: he'd been inside less than ten minutes, and his t-shirt was already soaked. Dan compensating for the cold deluge outside by turning the heat up to volcanic levels. Michael ran a hand across his sweaty neck and tried to focus on his reason for braving this disco inferno in the first place.

“Where's Brian? We were supposed to meet up."

“Last time I saw him, he was headed to the back room with some Keanu Reeves clone in tow,” Ted said after a brief pause. "But that was awhile ago."

“Didn't see him when I was there," Emmett added.

Motherfuck it. Michael slumped against the bar, chewing rum-tinged ice cubes in frustration. Babylon wasn’t that big. If Brian wasn’t at the bar or on the dance floor or in the back room, he wasn’t here.

“But I wasn't exactly lookin' for him, if you know what I mean," Emmett said. "He was trying to page you earlier, but the storm's made cell reception go all funky."

Great. Now even Mother Nature was conspiring against him. Michael pinched the bridge of his nose, the pounding in his head beating in time with the heavy bass from the speakers overhead.

"Guess that means he won't get to tell you his big news," Ted said.

Michael looked up. "What news?"

"Teddy," Emmett sighed. "Didn't your mamma ever teach you not to tell everything you know?"

"What news?" Michael persisted.

“Brian had the last of his on-campus interviews today," Ted answered. "Impressed the hell out of the rep from Young & Rubicam in New York. She made him an offer right there."

"She made him an offer. . ." Michael repeated. Maybe it was the heat or the headache, but for a minute he didn't take the words in. He may as well have been standing there chanting gitchy-gitchy ya-ya da-da.

Then, with a painful rush, his head cleared. He set the glass down on the bar and rubbed his damp palms together. “He took it?"

"He's taking the weekend to consider," Ted replied. "Playing hard to get. For once."

"He's hasn't made any firm decisions,” Emmett said, giving Ted a look. “He told us he has a couple of real nice offers from Pittsburgh companies, too."

Michael sank down on the bar stool behind him. The headache seemed to be spreading—suddenly everything hurt. But the worst of the pain was centered in his chest, a hot, heavy rock sitting on his heart.

"Good for him," he managed after a minute. "Brian's always wanted to live in New York." But his head was going fuzzy again, and the words seemed slow and distorted, like they do in very bad dreams.

"Oh, sweetie, don't get upset," Emmett said. "He ain't gone yet."

"New York isn't that far. He can always come back to visit," Ted put in. He gave Michael's leg a reassuring squeeze. "And hey, if he doesn't, you still have us."

Michael stared at Ted's hand like an alien life form had attached itself to his thigh. But he was too exhausted to pry it off. He sat there letting the music swirl around him, trying not to think about it. Trying not to think about anything.

Ted leaned forward, intruding his face into Michael's line of vision. "Michael," he said softly. "If you need to talk or—or anything, you know I am—"

But Michael didn't hear what Ted was. And he didn't care. For his heart had given a familiar pulse, so sharp and sweet it was painful. He stood, shaking off Ted's hand, and looked out at the dance floor.

Brian Kinney, ladies and gentlemen. A vision all in black, his flawless skin glowing incandescent in the blue radiance of the club. Standing in the very center of the floor, loose-limbed and ruffled from his time in the back room. His long neck was bent swan-like, whispering a few parting words to an exotic-looking man. The trick stared up at him with dazed infatuation, which changed to dazed disappointment as Brian walked away without a backwards glance.

Brian was advancing across the floor towards the archway that led to the exit. A dozen inviting looks came his way, and he fielded them cleanly but never broke stride. Then, very suddenly, he stopped. Slowly, he turned around, his bright hard gaze sweeping the room like a searchlight.

Michael felt it the instant it found him. Felt the pull of it, a gentle but relentless hand grasping the very center of him. He gave a low gasp as their gazes locked. Brian's searching look relaxed into a slow smile.

"That is so spooky, how y'all do that," Emmett muttered.

But Michael was already moving away from the bar, into the smoke and lights. Like one of those trick shots in the movies, where you stay still but jerk forward at dizzying speed.

Two days since he’d talked to him. Twelve days since he’d seen him. It seemed like so much longer.

But now Brian was here, right up close. Smiling down with that smile he kept just for Michael, the one completely free of irony. Seeing Michael as no one else did, with a gaze that seemed to reach down into the bottom of his soul.

"Christ. You look like shit."

Michael blinked, then burst out laughing. Breathless giggles that were halfway to hysterical sobs. He leaned his aching head against Brian's chest. "So much for the dramatic voice-over."

Hands grasped Michael's shoulders in Brian's version of a tentative hold. "Mikey? What the hell?"

Michael straightened, wiping his streaming eyes. "Shut up and dance with me."

That piercing stare swept over him again. Brian's eyebrows drew together a fraction of an inch.

Michael shook his head. "I don't wanna talk. I wanna dance."

Like the point in a movie where the big musical number comes on, the lights brightened, smoke blue becoming sun orange. The jazzy moans of Sister Sledge quickened into a staccato synthesizer beat, accompanied by the joyful blast of a brass section.

"Shit! I love this one," Michael exclaimed. "Come on!" He grabbed Brian by the wrist to pull him further into the crowd on the dance floor. After a second's hesitation, Brian let himself be led. But when they found a spot under the lights, it was Brian who took Michael's hand and swung them into the song.

They were made for this music: the slower, steadier tempos of disco are so much kinder to a white boy's rhythms than techno. Brian, especially, excelled at this kind of dancing. (Unlike the usual stand-up-and-shimmy, where he had an unfortunate tendency to get distracted by the tempting sights surrounding him and step off the beat.) Disco gave him a chance to do what he did best—grab a partner and take control.

With Brian leading, you didn't have to think or plan or keep tempo, just hold on tight and be swept along. Just let the world go to a blur of color and noise. Just let go.

Not the 21st, but the 23rd. September 23rd, 1985. The day he first sees him. Brian, all tousled hair and leather jacket cool, slouches into English class twenty minutes late. Tosses an office pass at Mrs. Bay and surveys the room with wide amber eyes that miss nothing. Michael's heart leaps into his throat when they pass over him, falls into his shoes when they move on. More cardiac gymnastics when they come back. The strangest look crosses the new kid's face—not hostile, not friendly, but knowing. I see what you are, it says. I see you. The first time Michael realizes how devastating Brian Kinney's attention can be.

Then Brian looks away, and Michael realizes how much more devastating it is to lose it.

That pop of connection stays with him. It stays even as he hears the rumors that swirl around the new kid like Pigpen's haze. Brian Kinney was expelled from Immaculate Heart for beating up his soccer coach—no, he pulled a knife—no, a gun. He spent last summer on the streets—at a loony bin—in Juvie. He's on five kinds of meds and that's why he never talks—no, it's smack, Steve Nguyen saw the track marks. On and on, each story worse than the one before. But however insistent the whispers, nobody gets what's so glaringly obvious: under all Brian's don’t-give-a-damn is pain and rage that makes Michael's stomach clench.

And beneath that, something worse—desperate, screaming loneliness.

It takes days to scrape up the courage to talk to him. Days of watching from a distance, days of daydreams and nightsweats. Michael finally decides screw it, better to get smacked down than go crazy. The journey across the cafeteria is ten years long, damp palms clutching his lunch tray while his heart hammers in his chest. Those cold eyes look up, look through him, not happy to see him at all. Michael wonders what the hell he's let himself in for. What follows is a sweaty blur, Michael not even sure he's making sense for the greater part of the conversation.

But by the time it's over he catches it—that same spark of recognition in Brian's face, but brighter now.

It still isn't easy, of course. Nothing about Brian ever is. He's all frozen attitude in those days—sometimes it’s like hanging out with Han Solo while he's still in the fucking carbonite. It takes weeks to thaw him for real. Weeks of one-sided conversations and casual desertions. Weeks of cool indifference spliced with hostile flirtation. Michael holds on with the dogged persistence of a prospector panning for gold in the barren wilderness. Then one day he hits the motherlode. It takes a fairly serious groping and a fifth of Jack Daniels, but Brian smiles at him—really smiles.

Debbie's histrionics, his grinding hangover, and the month-long grounding that follow are so worth it.

He loved him from the moment Brian stared him down in first period English. But it isn't until he sees his new friend smile, the way he does not and will not ever smile at anybody else, that Michael knows it. Brian must know something too, because from then on things are different. The difference between someone letting you tag behind, and someone stopping, putting his arm around you, and bringing you along.

A dull snowy afternoon, Uncle Vic visiting from New York. Bored enough to try teaching them the Hustle, Brian and Michael bored enough to try learning it. Michael getting tripped up on his own feet and clinging to Brian for balance, both of them tumbling to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, giggling like idiots.

Michael's 17^th birthday, he and Brian strutting into Babylon with their shiny new fake ID's. Putting on bad Australian accents and convincing the chicken hawk buying them drinks that they're foreign exchange students. Spending the rest of the night on the dance floor, flushed with triumph and Long Island ice teas.

The two of them in Brian's freshman dorm room, stoned and sleepy from a lid of truly excellent Chronic. Curled up on the single bed, Brian's head in Michael's lap. Brian reaching up and touching Michael's face, fingers warm and trembling, as he tells his best friend for the first time what they've both known for years.

Tripping on 'shrooms in the balcony of the Rialto, hitchhiking to see Depeche Mode in NYC, strumming along to Disintegration on Q-Mart guitars, skinny-dipping with Lindsay Peterson and Rebecca Tucci, road-tripping to Florida in Brian's Mustang;

Finishing each others' lunches, finishing each others' sentences; conversations about nothing, touches that say everything; a hundred in-jokes, a thousand shared looks, the million moments that mean nothing by themselves, but together make up the mosaic of Brian and Michael.

Nobody gets it—not Michael's mom and not his other friends. Not the friends Brian makes after he shrugs off the bad rep like a jacket that's out of style. Ego-trip, hero-worship, manipulation, obsession, sadism, low self-esteem. Nobody understands the truth is so much simpler:

I see what you are. I see you.

The song reached its crescendo, vocals swelling, horns blaring like Gabriel's trumpet. Michael was half-dizzy from heat and migraine, but Brian had him safe. The pain fell away, the way everything fell away when Brian was there.

The line between Brian's brows smoothed out. He leaned in, voice a low purr. "Miss me?"

"Nope," Michael gasped. "Not a bit."

Earth, Wind and Fire faded and the lights changed once more, darkening to smoldering red. Brian pulled him close for the deceptively slow intro of the next number, his hands dangerously low on Michael's hips. He nuzzled against him, lips to his ear.

"Well, I missed you."

Pulling back, he tilted Michael's chin up with one finger, trapping his gaze. Michael went breathless, Brian's concentrated interest hitting him, as always, like a ball peen hammer right between the eyes. They stayed that way an endless moment, Thelma Houston's plaintive vocals pouring out of Babylon's sound system in a disco dirge:

He knew it the instant Brian's focus faltered. Nothing serious—no more than a split-second flicker of his eyes over Michael's head. Just an instinctive reaction, like a well-fed cat pricking up its ears at a squirrel running by. Nobody else would have caught it. Any other time, Michael would have laughed at it. But tonight he felt the loss like an amputation. He closed his eyes and clutched Brian tighter, breathing in his familiar scent of sex and cigarettes and expensive soap. But it didn't help.

Long arms wrapped around Michael. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he lied into the soft fabric of Brian's shirt. Everything was wrong. In this moment of agonizing awareness, he felt how closely they were being watched. The gazes were acid on his skin, burning with curiosity and vague hostility. Sometimes it seemed like the world was full of eyes, and all of them were looking at Brian. And he looked right back.

The song sped up, Houston's plea becoming a frantic demand:

Baby, my heart is full of love and desire for you
So come on now and do what you've gotta do
You started this fire down in my soul
Now can't you see it's burning, out of control

Michael stayed stock-still as the tempo increased, clinging to Brian like he was the only fixed point on a swiftly tilting planet. Other memories were returning, the ones they never talked about over take-out and old yearbooks. The kisses that went a second too long, the hands that went an inch too high, all their sorta-kinda-almost moments. Needy, sudden advances and subtle, guilty retreats, jealousy and mindgames and frustration. Brian going out the door with stranger after stranger, Michael going home alone. The faces of all those men blurring together until they became a single nameless fear in human form: that one day Brian would walk out the door and not come back.

Michael felt Brian's regard pulling at him like impatient hands. He looked up into that cruelly beautiful face, unable to resist. For this was the wonder and the horror of Brian Kinney. Once he saw you, really saw you, you were finished. Caught inside his gaze like a fly in amber, you couldn't look away. Even when he hurt you, even when he left you, even if it killed you, you could never, ever look away.

Houston drew the final word out, a piercing shriek of loss that built and built in Michael's ears, increasing the pressure on the swollen balloon of his brain. Until he felt something shatter inside, the fragile scrim of denial he’d erected. Pain flooded through him in a hot sick wave. The world tilted and darkened, Brian fading in the grey haze that swirled in front of Michael's vision. His thoughts melted together in the heat, one phrase echoing like the stutter of a scratched LP:

"Mikey!"

Hands caught him by the waist, but Michael tore away and stumbled into the mist. Not sure where he was going, just knowing he needed to get out, get away, before he suffocated in the dark. He ran into sweaty solid objects that cursed at him, and he pushed past them frantically. Running across the floor to the archway he made out by the lights strung around it, sparkling like the hope of escape. But then something huge and solid rushed up to him, blocking his exit. He smashed into it with a thud, realizing at the same instant it was the floor. He lay there stunned, greyness bursting before his eyes like somber fireworks.

The hands were back, turning him over and lifting him up. His head was pillowed against something soft but rough-textured.

Denim, he thought hazily. Lap.

He heard a voice calling him. At first he couldn't make out the words but slowly they grew clearer, like someone was turning the volume dial up.

—oddamn it, can you hear me?"

The greyness ebbed away. For a moment everything seemed achingly sharp, like seeing in more than three dimensions. He stared up, mesmerized, at the sight of Brian, his dark head ringed by a brilliant blue-white halo. The glow burst from his skin like captured starlight, fading everything around him.

"The light comes from you," Michael whispered. "I knew it."

Now Brian looked really worried. "Talk to me, Michael. Tell me what the fuck you're on."

With a bending of his vision, like that helpful someone just twisted the focus knob, the world returned to a blurry version of the normal spectrum. Brian was Brian again, stunning as ever but no more than that.

Ted and Emmett came racing over.

"Ohmigod, is he all right?" Emmett asked.

Brian's head jerked up. "What the fuck did he take? I swear to God, Em, if you've been scoring favors from that piece of shit Mario again—"

"He didn't take anything," Ted snapped. "Can't you tell he's sick?"

Brian blinked and looked down at Michael. "Sick?"

"He's probably got that bad flu that's going around. I knew as soon as he came in he wasn't feeling well. Any idiot could see it."

A soft, assessing hand on Michael's cheek. Then Emmett, sounding anxious. "Lord, he's burning up."

His shoulders were seized in a firm grip. "I'll take him home," Ted said briskly. "I was headed out anyway."

“No.” A steely arm clamped around Michael's waist. "I'll do it."

"It's okay," Ted said with another tug. "Michael's on my way. I don't mind giving him a hand."

Brian didn't budge an inch. "I bet you don't."

"What the hell does that mean?"

“You really want me to explain? He’s not that out of it." Cool fingers smoothed the damp hair from Michael's forehead. "He's coming with me."

"Oh, so now you get territorial. That's rich coming from someone who ditches Michael for every skank with six-pack abs. Would you be so fucking attentive if he'd passed out before you got your dick sucked?"

"Spoken like someone who never does. And guess what? Tonight's not your big chance."

"What did you say?"

"You heard me. I didn't stutter."

"Would you two quit it?" Emmett broke in. "Michael's gonna expire here among the cigarette butts while y'all lock horns."

A long tense pause, the syncopated bass of the Commodores machine gunning in their ears.

"Take your hands off him, Theodore." Brian's voice was so lifelessly calm, Michael knew he was seething. His clear brown eyes had darkened to jet, staring at Ted with the dilated focus of a leopard about to spring.

Michael sat up with a jerk, disengaging himself from Ted. The world swam dizzily for a second, then righted itself. "I'm fine," he said, firmly as he could. "Not dying." Then, as his head gave another painful throb: "Not yet."

It was enough to break Brian's dangerous concentration. He looked away from Ted and towards Michael. Emmett finished diffusing the situation by taking abnormal advantage of the four inches and forty pounds he had on Ted and pulling him away. Michael's last glimpse of them was Em leading his friend back to the bar. His arm was around him in a death grip, his mouth against Ted's ear, whispering urgently.

Before he or Brian could move, a tall blond man came bounding up. One of the club’s bouncers, so new Michael didn’t know his name. "Everything okay here?" he said, nodding at Michael but addressing Brian.

"Fine," Brian said. "A touch of boogie fever."

"It's going around," the bouncer said, flashing a blinding white smile that had to be caps. "I can call your friend a cab, if you want."

"Thanks. I've got my car."

"Need help getting him home?" the bouncer pressed. "I'm off in a few minutes."

Brian paused for a critical couple of seconds, his gaze roving over the man's Atlas-like build. With an insight brighter than bouncer boy's fake teeth, Michael knew this was the same guy he'd been checking out on the dance floor not five minutes ago.

Michael struggled to his feet, scowling into the bouncer's chiseled features. "Call me a cab.” His knees buckled and he reached out for a nearby support column, but Brian caught him by the shoulders.

"Yeah, that's a good idea."

"I can take care of myself," Michael hissed.

"Uh-huh," Brian said, clamping down and steering him towards the door. He spared the bouncer one last glance over his shoulder. "Not tonight."

"Oh. Well, I'm here tomorrow if—" But Brian was already moving them away.

"Don't worry about me," Michael said as they headed to the coat check. "I'm fine."

"You said that after Brad Pearsall cracked two of your ribs junior year," Brian said. "Keep walking."

Michael began to protest, but just then another wave of dizziness hit him. Brian's hands tightened. "Hang on." With the same swift efficiency that he handled most things, he dug the claim ticket out of Michael's front pocket, found his own, tossed both at the clerk, gathered their jackets, wrapped Michael's around him, threw his own over one arm, and herded them outside.

The blast of cold wet air revived Michael like a slap in the face. Brian lowered him onto one of the semi-dry steps leading up to the club's entrance. "Stay here. I'll get the car."

"I can walk."

"It's four blocks, Michael." Brian shrugged into his jacket and pulled a folding umbrella out of the front pocket.

"I can walk." He stood, pacing back and forth on the wet concrete. "See? Been doing it for years."

Brian sighed. "Why are you being a jerk about this?"

After a moment Brian sighed again. "Whatever. You're explaining to Debbie when you wind up in an oxygen tent."

The rain had turned to sleet in the rapidly plummeting late-night temperatures. Brian's umbrella proved useless, heavy gusts of wind driving the ice-cold needles of water almost horizontally. Michael didn't pass out, but a couple of times it was a near thing, the slick sidewalk wavering snake-like in front of him. The third time he slipped Brian, swearing under his breath, folded the umbrella and put a bracing arm around his shoulders. Michael was too exhausted to do anything but lean into him.

By the time they made it to the parking garage, they were both soaked to the bone. Brian dropped him on a bench by the entrance and pointed a dripping finger. "You. Stay,” he commanded. He headed for the garage elevator, jamming the button three times in rapid succession. As if responding to his impatience the doors opened immediately, and he disappeared inside. Michael leaned against the concrete pillion next to the bench, shivering.

He must have fallen into a light doze, because it seemed like Brian was back instantly, picking him up and half-walking, half-carrying him through the open passenger door of his silver Mustang hatchback. He slammed the door and walked around to other side, getting behind the wheel.

Michael straightened, shaking himself further awake. "Can you drive?"

"Been doing it for years," Brian said, not looking at him.

"‘Cause this is usually the point in the program where I ask for your keys."

"Watching your best friend pull a River Phoenix has a wonderful sobering effect." Brian flicked the lights and wipers on with his left hand and shifted into first gear with his right, the movements tense, jerky.

"It wasn't a River Phoenix," Michael said as Brian braked the car, slotting a ticket into the automated gate. Even if it was, it’s not like I don’t owe you one.

Brian didn't reply until they reached the traffic light past the garage. "I didn't know."

"I have the flu," Michael said, insulted. "Jesus, Ted knew I was sick. Why didn't you?"

"Why didn't you?" Brian shot back. He shifted into second gear sharp enough to make the engine grind. "You shouldn't even have been out on a night like this. What the fuck were you thinking?"

I was thinking how much I wanted to see you, you clueless prick. But Michael just rested his head against the seat, too tired and miserable to keep arguing.

Brian had turned the heater up full blast, but rivulets of water continued to run down Michael's neck like tiny cold fingers. The chills were coming regularly as contractions, and he clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

"There's a blanket in the back seat," Brian said, his tone a little softer.

It took a good two minutes of poking around before Michael came across the smoke-colored corner of a blanket. Brian was normally more organized than this, but it looked like Michael had caught him in the middle of his mid-term shuffle. Most of the stuff covering the back was shopping bags, a testament to how frantic Brian's schedule had been lately. He shopped when he was stressed out. He also shopped when he was happy, sad, bored, and, well, breathing, but this kind of spree indicated Brian had been nervous enough to indulge in the only kind of therapy he believed in: retail.

Michael smiled a little at the chink in Batman’s armor, one nobody but his faithful sidekick would spot. Then he recalled the other reason Brian might have been shopping, and stopped.

Interviews, he thought. Have to look sharp to show those New York types you're not just another green kid from the Pitts, right?

He snatched the blanket from under two fat Saks Fifth Avenue bags, toppling them over. He caught Brian's questioning glance but ignored it, wrapping himself burrito-like in the soft flannel. Silence stretched out, the only sounds in the car the whoosh of the windshield wipers and Glenn Frey's reedy whine.

Michael cut the music off with a vicious click. Brian shot him a look that was part surprise, part irritation. Thou Shalt Not Touch Thy Best Friend's Radio had been the number one commandment since he bought his first clunker at seventeen. Without deigning to comment, he flicked the radio back on.

Michael went for the button again but Brian blocked his hand. "Are you trying to piss me off?"

"Yeah, it's all about you," Michael seethed. "I have a headache. That electric guitar is going through my skull like a goddamn drill but I guess I'll just suffer like a mute ‘cause you can't go five minutes without a soundtrack. God forbid once, just once, you think about what somebody else needs—"

"Christ, would you calm down?" Brian didn't turn the radio off, but he did turn the volume down several notches. "If something's bugging you, fucking say so. I get enough of the martyr act from my mother."

The reality of the New York offer hovered in the back of Michael’s mind like a dark presence. But he couldn’t turn and face it, not yet. He pulled the blanket closer, stifling another shiver.

The strident squawk of the Eagles became the mournful drone of Fleetwood Mac, barely audible over the rain.

"It's always a fucking shock," Brian said quietly.

"What?"

"You're never sick. Not since your asthma cleared up in ninth grade. Which is pretty goddamn amazing—with your mom, you should be a total hypochondriac. But you're not. You're always okay." Brian's voice dropped, like he was making a damaging admission. "That's what I tell myself. Whatever happens to me, you'll be okay. So it's a shock when you're . . . not." In his eyes Michael caught something he hadn't seen in forever, a strained look of guilt and anger. And he knew Brian was no longer talking about random viruses.

Weird, for him to refer twice in one night to something neither of them had mentioned in years. The first time Michael had seen this look was after Brad Pearsall's attack. Propped up on the sofa at his mom's, Brian stalking in like the Wrath of God in sweaty gym clothes. The two of them didn’t say much—Debbie was in high mother-hen mode, doing enough screeching for three people. But even hazy on painkillers, Michael took one look at Brian and got the message clear as if he was screaming it: THIS IS NOT OVER.

The second time neither of them mentioned, ever. If Michael had his way, they never would.

"I never understood why he did it,” Michael said, more to himself than to Brian. “He barely knew my name, then one day, wham! It didn't make sense."

"It made perfect sense. If you were paying attention."

"Huh?" Michael said, startled out of his thoughts.

"Brad was watching you for weeks. Coming out of the shower every day after gym, all shiny and wet in your Batman towel. You were driving him nuts."

"What? No."

"Yes. He wanted to fuck your tight little ass till you screamed. But he couldn't. So he made you scream another way."

"But—but—" Michael stuttered. "He was dating Jenn Wachalski, the lead majorette."

"And I was dating Alyson Livingston, the head cheerleader. What's your fucking point?"

The thought of anybody driven nuts over his scrawny seventeen-year-old self, much less North Allegheny High's All-American Adonis, was so bizarre it was a joke. But Brian's expression was dead serious.

Michael shook his head in amazement. "I never saw it."

"No," Brian said. "You never do."

He ignored Brian's jab, focusing instead on his revelation. Junior year of high school. Brian had hit his final growth spurt the summer before, attaining his enviable adult height of 6'3. He hadn't quite filled out—Debbie used to joke that if he turned sideways going over a sewer grate they'd lose him forever. But he was still a heart-stopping sight, smooth golden skin stretched taut over a long, strong frame, all streamlined grace and swiftness of motion.

Michael flashed on a memory, so intense it still tugged at him. Brian standing under one of the shower heads in the boys' locker room, light streaming on him from the rectangular frosted windows set near the ceiling. His eyes closed, his hands slathered with white softsoap from the dispensers, spreading the iridescent liquid across his chest, over the tight tan circles of his nipples. Bright bubbles and sparkling water spilling down the rippling muscles of his stomach, catching in the thatch of dark hair just below—

Who the hell noticed anything when that was standing next to you? It had taken every shred of Michael's shaky teenage concentration not to walk out of the showers every day with a raging hard-on.

But Brian noticed, like he always noticed everything. Probably thought it was funny, Brad the Golden Boy lusting after his runt of a best friend. Just freaking hilarious, until the day Brad slammed Michael into the slimy tiles, giving him the business end of the right foot that had made the varsity soccer team district champions and state finalists. Brian might even have noticed enough to prevent it, if he'd been there. The worst of bad timing, that he was stuck running laps that day for mouthing off to Coach Dale again. Brad was in the principal's office and Michael was on his way home before Brian even knew what had happened.

Another image, fuzzy at the edges, something Michael saw more than once. Brian standing very still, head cocked to one side, watching Brad Pearsall. Across the cafeteria, in the halls between classes, but especially on the soccer field, his dark eyes tracking the other boy with unblinking focus. He watched and he waited, until Brad had served his suspension, until Michael's bruises faded and he could walk without wincing. Until the day before district finals. A practice scrimmage, a slide tackle gone wrong, a sound (according to gossip) like an icy branch snapping, and Brad was on the ground, clutching his golden right leg and screaming in agony.

Anterior cruciate ligament tear, that was the official pronouncement. Seriously fucked up, that was the unofficial one. A career-ending injury—all the surgery and physical therapy on the planet wouldn't put that crucial bit of flesh back like it was. But nobody blamed Brian. Coach Dale insisted on serious competition even in practice, and it's not like anyone would do anything like that on purpose. But Michael's powers of observation, so slack when it came to himself, never faltered over his best friend. He saw it, that satisfied sparkle in Brian’s eyes whenever he watched Brad limping across the quad on his awkward aluminum crutches.

Michael came back to Roger Daltrey, low and defiant in his ear:

"What he did was insane," Michael whispered. He wasn't sure who he was talking about—Brad or Brian.

At first he didn't think Brian had heard him, too occupied scanning the streets near Michael's building for open parking spaces. He should have known better. Brian no sooner slid the Mustang between two parked cars than he turned to face him. The glare of an arc sodium lamp at the corner had rendered his face savage and strange, stark shadows bringing out the cruel curve of his nose, the feline arch of his eyebrows, the harsh, sensual lines of his mouth. Like one of those hybrid anti-heroes in the graphic novels—John Constantine, maybe, or Wolverine. Passionate and powerful and sometimes well-intentioned, but never quite human.

He reached out and cupped Michael's neck in the old possessive way, one thumb tracing slowly over the vulnerable hollow at the base of his throat. Pinpoints of light sparked in Brian's eyes when he felt the pulse there race at the contact.

"You want to touch someone badly enough, sooner or later you find a way."

Michael gave a shiver that had nothing to do with sickness.

Brian took his hand away and shut off the ignition. "Come on. Let's get you inside."

A dash through the wet to the building entrance, a less energetic slog (on Michael's part) up one flight of stairs, and they were at the battered door of #2-B. Thirty seconds of fumbling with the sticky deadbolt and another thirty of argument— "I'm sick, not retarded, Brian. I can open my own damn door"—then the lock clicked and they were in.

Michael scrabbled for the foyer light, and with a gasp began peeling off his waterlogged outer layer. Though equally soggy, Brian made no move to do the same.

"I love what you've done with the place."

Michael looked up from stowing his jacket on one of the hooks by the door, surprised at the distaste in Brian's voice. In the three months since moving in, he hadn't been home enough to worry about his place much. But he always thought he'd done pretty well for his first foray into the Pittsburgh housing market.

The twelve hundred square feet he called home were mostly taken up by a big square living room, featuring ten-foot ceilings and built-in bookshelves. On its left side, double doors with glass insets opened into a nice-sized bedroom. On its right a small hallway led to the fabulously kitschy pink-tiled bath and a space that could work as a home office or a second bedroom. A sixties vintage dayglo orange kitchen with equally antique appliances was tucked away in an alcove just off the front door. There were wood floors throughout, and in the daytime lots of natural light came flooding in through the triple window that faced the street. Not exactly a townhouse at the Pennsylvanian, but nothing to hang your head over, either.

But looking at it now through Brian's critical eyes, Michael realized just how sad his surroundings were. The spacious living room was occupied only by a thrift store sofa and his 13" TV/VCR combo machine, balanced on a rickety wooden table left behind by the previous tenant. Empty soda cans, crumpled papers, and plates crusted with the petrified remains of meals littered the floor. The walls were blank except for a six-foot cardboard Captain Astro, rescued by Michael from the dumpster of Buzzy's Comics. Harsh street light glowering through curtainless windows made the Captain's heroic smile look a little desperate, as if months of observing the squalor below had begun to wear even on his fabled nerves of steel. The kitchen was a greasy disaster, its counters piled high with pizza boxes and take-out cartons, its sink brimming with Big Gulp cups and dishes snagged from the Q-Mart discount bins. The doors to the bedroom gaped open, revealing the faded corners of an old mattress and box-springs, hemmed in by a mountain range of laundry.

"Should I be checking your arms for track marks?"

"Oh shut up. I've been busy."

"Any busier and the EPA is going to declare this place a biohazard."

"It's not that bad."

A cockroach longer than a thumb scurried across the floor in front of them. Its antennae waved merrily, as if in greeting.

Brian returned the salutation with a stomp of his Doc Martens. "Jesus Christ, Michael."

He felt his already burning face grow hotter. "Go then. You think my home is so scary, just go. I bet you can still catch up with what's-his-name at Babylon."

Brian didn’t dignify that with a response. "Why is it so fucking cold in here?"

"Because the living room radiator's busted, okay? And yeah, I've tried to get the super in to fix it but he's never around when I'm home and he's blowing off my phone messages. I'm not even sure there is a super—just an answering machine with some guy named Rocky on it." Weary of disapproval, he started walking towards the bedroom. "I'm gonna change."

"Hurry up."

"Why? No place I gotta be," Michael muttered, tugging at the water-stiffened button fly of his 501's.

"Oh yes, there is. I'm taking you to your mother's."

He stopped short in the doorway of his room, whirling. "Huh-uh. No way."

"Mikey—"

"I'd sooner stay here and freeze to death in my own filth."

"Look, I'd take you to the dorm but it's across town and the animals are lining up two-by-two out there. We can be at Debbie's in five minutes. You know she won't give you shit when she sees you're sick."

"Not tonight, maybe. But tomorrow it'll be 'you're too skinny' and 'you're working too hard' and 'look what you've done to yourself, you little asshole. I knew you weren't ready to move out.' I don't wanna hear it."

Brian raised an eyebrow at him. "Why? Because it's true?"

Michael clenched his hands and stalked into the bedroom. He flipped on the overhead light as he went, to be met by a flash and a pop as the bulb burned out. Yeah, that's about par for tonight, he thought, shaking his head. He hit the switch of the oversized lava lamp sitting on the milk crates serving as his nightstand. By its eerie blue glow he began pawing through the piles of laundry on the floor.

He could feel Brian looming in the doorway behind him, but he didn't turn around.

"You're killing yourself at Queer Mart to keep this dump. It's fucking stupid."

"I can handle it,” Michael said, picking up his favorite Superman t-shirt and giving it the sniff test.

"The evidence on the bottom of my shoe suggests otherwise."

He tossed the shirt down. “You know what? The last thing I need is a reality check from you, Mr. Full Soccer Scholarship. We don't all get free rides handed to us."

Wood creaked as Brian's fingers tightened on the door frame. "Nobody handed me a goddamn thing."

Michael just kept poking through the laundry piles, now roughly identified as 'clean', 'semi-clean', 'dirty', and 'do not approach without hazmat suit'.

"Fuck you, Michael. You think I liked dealing with Gaudioso and his Vince Lombardi bullshit? Sweating on the field every day with retards whose whole mental process was limited to stats and pussy? Spending every summer mentoring fucked-up prep school brats? Newsflash: I hate soccer. I've hated it since I was fourteen years old. But I stuck with it because I knew it was my best chance of getting off the shitheap. I have earned this degree. And I've earned every single perk that goes with it."

"Just what the world needs. Another selfish yuppie asshole."

He regretted the words the second he said them. He regretted them even more when he looked up and saw the hurt on his best friend’s face.

Shit. "Brian, I'm—" But he was already headed for the front door.

"Brian! Wait—"

He caught him with his hand on the doorknob. Brian didn’t look hurt now, his features set in the mask of chilly blankness he defaulted to in painful or threatening situations. Michael thought of it as his Jack Kinney face, not because it made him look like his father—no amount of conflict could do that—but because it was the face he wore for his father. Knowing he'd been the one to bring it out this time made Michael feel sicker than he already was.

"I'm sorry," he said, clutching onto Brian to keep him from bolting. The tension Brian wouldn't show in his face was in his body, the muscles of his arm hard and coiled as steel springs. "What I said was awful. You're not an asshole. I'm the asshole. It's just . . ."

You're getting courted by Madison Avenue while I'm crawling around a warehouse looking for Beanie Babies. In three months you'll have a corner office, a West Village condo, and more nameless tricks than even you will know what to do with. If I'm lucky, I'll be off the night shift. We make even less sense now than we did five years ago. How long before you realize that? How long before you forget my name, Brian?

"Just nothing. You're right, you deserve your success." He sighed. "I want you to be happy."

Brian's guarded expression grew puzzled. Hallmark sentiments had never exactly been their lingua franca.

"Whatever it takes for you to be happy," Michael said in a low voice, looking at him steadily.

He watched as understanding filled his eyes. Saw them widen a little with the realization of what Michael knew, and what he was offering. The perfect opening, the chance to say what he had to say. Because Michael meant what he said. He'd meant it since he first saw Brian across a crowded classroom, and sensed the pain reverberating under that still exterior like a silent scream. His guiding instinct for nearly a decade, to help Brian, to be what he needed when he needed it. Michael couldn't deny him now.

So say it, Brian. Say you're leaving me. And respect me enough not to come out with any crap about how we'll always be best friends. Break my heart if you have to, but make it a clean break.

Michael could feel himself growing faint. The blood was roaring in his ears, the dimness of the apartment growing even dimmer, cold sweat running down his neck into the damp cotton of his t-shirt. He dug his nails into his palms, desperate to stay upright. If nothing else, Brian wouldn't remember him as a pussy.

Brian put a firm hand on Michael's shoulder. It was unclear whether the gesture was supposed to be comforting, apologetic, or just an attempt to keep him from falling down. Hours seemed to pass before he spoke. His face had resumed its cool emptiness, and for once Michael couldn't guess what he was feeling. Then, finally, he opened his mouth. Michael's entire body went numb with dread, waiting for the axe to fall.

"Get out of those wet things before you catch pneumonia."

Michael stood rooted to the spot, staring at him blankly.

Brian took his shoulders and turned him around with a little push. "Go on, march."

Michael was undressing in the middle of the bedroom before his brain recovered from the shock.

All right, what the hell just happened? He'd totally put himself on the line, and Brian had ignored his generous offer like it was a two-inch dick.

Michael tossed his wet clothes in the corner, grabbed a t-shirt and a pair of boxers off the clean pile, and put them on. He sat down on the bed, concentrating.

Okay, you're Brian. You've just had the biggest success of your goddamn life. Even you couldn't stay cool under those circumstances. You'd have to tell somebody. But it's not exactly like you can call Jack and Joanie up for a pat on the back, is it? Your best friend is stuck in a warehouse somewhere, and you know he's not gonna take this shit well, anyway. Ted and Emmett are the first semi-interested listeners you come across. You ask them not to say anything, not till you're sure of your plans. Only that little twat Theodore—and you know it was him—had to open his big fat mouth. Now Mikey's heard everything, and you don't know what the fuck to tell him because you don't know yourself what the fuck it is you want.

Interesting theory. Except for one thing: Brian always knew what he wanted. And Manhattan was at the top of the list. He'd been talking about it forever; to him, it was Shangri-La, Oz, and Disneyland rolled into one. No way he wouldn't jump at the chance to go there, leaving Pittsburgh and its bad memories behind.

No, the much likelier explanation was Brian didn't want to have this discussion when Michael was all sick and pitiful. He'd see it as adding insult to injury, like kicking a puppy you were planning to leave at the pound.

Sighing, Michael stretched over and turned up the gauge on the radiator under the window. He tucked the fitted sheet around the corners of the bed and lay down, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. He was worn out and wide awake at the same time, with that grainy alertness which sometimes accompanies fever.

Brian came in, sans jacket and shoes. That, and the resigned air, signaled he was staying despite his better judgment. In one hand he held a Big Gulp cup full of water, in the other a couple of small plastic bottles. One was the Anacin which along with some packets of Alka-Seltzer made up the total contents of Michael's medicine cabinet. The other was an unfamiliar prescription cylinder.

He grabbed a towel, sniffed it, spread it on the bed and sat down. Motioning Michael to sit up, he handed him the water. While Michael arranged himself, Brian shook pills from each bottle into his palm. Four round aspirin and two smaller oblong ones it took a second to identify.

When Michael did, he looked at Brian skeptically. "Xanax?"

"You need something to make you sleep. It's these or the half-bottle of Kahlua I found under the sink." Then, when he didn't respond: "Give me a break, Mikey. The drugstores are closed and this is what I've got." An edge of fatigue had come into his voice, and Michael remembered it had been a long week for Brian, too.

He swallowed the pills, washing them down with a gulp of flat-tasting tap water. Brian took the cup from his hand and raised it to his own mouth, but Michael grabbed his wrist. "Wait, you don't want my germs."

"I had my flu shot months ago,” Brian said, shaking him off. “Gaudioso practically frogmarches his first string to the infirmary." He took a sip, grimaced, and set the cup on the nightstand. "Why didn't you go when the free clinic was giving them out?"

Michael shrugged. "I've been busy."

Brian shook out three more Xanax for himself, chewing them like baby aspirin to speed up the effect. Michael read the printed label on the bottle and frowned.

"Since when do you have a prescription for this stuff?"

"Since Anita told me she'd swap these for X whenever. She's got a guy in Toronto with a standing order."

"Glad that NAFTA thing's working for you." Michael gave Brian a considering look. "Where’d you get the scrip?"

"Are you kidding? The infirmary hands these out like lollipops."

To everybody, or just you? Michael thought. He wondered if the doctors at the infirmary had seen Brian's juvenile medical records. If so, they probably would've given him a Ketamine drip, if he asked for it.

Brian stood, undoing the top buttons of his shirt. "What do you have that will fit me and hasn't developed the ability to walk on its own?"

Michael ignored that. "The sweats on top are yours," he said, nodding at the clean laundry pile.

"I've been looking for these," Brian said, holding up the grey CMU track pants.

"I wore them home when I stayed over Christmas week. I kept meaning to tell you about them, but—"

"You've been busy," Brian cut in. He glanced around the dingy room. "It's okay. I haven't been around much to remind you." A shadow crossed his calm features, like a cloud moving over a still lake.

"You're earning an MBA in three semesters. Between class and soccer, I’m amazed you ever set foot off campus," Michael said quickly. He told himself it was because he felt bad about his earlier outburst. "I don't know how you deal with all that. I'd be in a bell tower with a sniper rifle."

"It's crossed my mind." Brian snapped the caps on both bottles and set them on the crate. He turned back, giving Michael a strange little smile. "That's what I told the nice lady at the infirmary, anyway."

With a twinge, Michael realized Brian knew exactly what he'd been thinking about that prescription.

"Would you shut the doors? We're letting the heat out," he said, after a beat of silence.

Still smirking, Brian got up and drew the doors closed. With one bare foot, he pushed some stray laundry in front of the gap at the bottom to block stray drafts.

Michael rolled to the other side of the bed, reaching for the stereo sitting on cinderblock shelves braced against the back wall. He hit a button and the CD changer slid out. After a minute of lingering over the discs on the shelves, he filled the tray and pressed shuffle. Michael could take or leave the bedtime soundtrack, but even on three Xanax Brian wouldn't sleep without it.

Roxy Music warbled out of the stereo speakers as Michael returned to the right side of the bed. He pulled the covers up, shivering. The radiator was groaning like the audience at a Pauly Shore movie, but the room remained chilly. He silently cursed himself for not liberating an electric blanket from the stacks he'd seen at the warehouse. Or a pillow, he thought, trying to fluff his sad flat one. Though Louise might think the Beanie Bandit was escalating to other poly-filled inventory. Smiling ruefully, he glanced up.

It was one of the sadder facts of Michael's existence that, even after all these years, there were still times his best friend could make him feel like that scrawny kid reciting multiplication tables in the boys’ shower.

Times like now.

Brian was standing naked at the foot of the bed. Indifferent to the chill, he folded his wet clothes, carefully draping each piece on the comic-filled crates by the doors. He was breathtaking in the glow of neon blue, cool light caressing his skin lovingly, violet shadows tracing every muscle in his long, lean form.

Maybe it was the flu or the emotional rollercoaster he'd been on tonight eroding Michael's usual defenses. He could feel his throat closing up, that half-pleasurable choked sensation he got when all the right buttons were being pushed. He wasn't cold anymore, the blood in his veins going south in a hot rush.

Twelve times twelve is 132—no wait, 142—Jesus, Novotny, get a grip. Michael tore his gaze away, reminding himself of the rules.

When you're into men, and all your friends are also men, you develop a certain selective blindness. You stop seeing them as men, at least in the let's-stumble-gleefully-into-the-back-room-together kind of way. Otherwise, you end up with a personal life straight out of Aaron Spelling. (Or the personal life a gay man would have on a Spelling show, if ol' Aaron ever acknowledged gay men possess working genitalia.)

This is most important when it’s your best friend, and it is most important when your best friend is really hot. And we're talking really hot—the kind of insane hotness that makes total strangers stop and stare at him in the street. You have to look past the walking wet dream and focus on what's underneath. As with Matt on Melrose Place, though your best friend may possess a penis, its existence is purely theoretical.

Problem is, Michael thought with a guilty glance, nobody who isn't legally blind ever mistook Brian for a Ken Doll.

It wasn't just the inches nature had graced him with, though he did smash that Irish curse myth to smithereens. It wasn't even the perfect face and body. Any Friday night at Babylon you could find a dozen guys just as perfect, and as blessed below the belt. But put those guys next to Brian, and suddenly they had all the mojo of a cardboard Captain Astro. Call it charisma, pheromones, that certain I don't know what: something set Brian apart, a quality you couldn’t quantify or copy, though lots of people tried.

Brian didn't just have sex, Brian was sex. Ignoring that part of him meant ignoring him, which kind of put the kibosh on the best friends thing. It was an impossible situation, that nine years of flirtation, frustration, and intermittent groping hadn't resolved. Brian seduced the way other people breathed, and he couldn't—or wouldn't—turn the function off just for Michael.

Take right now, for instance. Though all his attention seemed focused on shaking the creases out of his Calvin Kleins, he knew he was being watched. You could see it in the tilt of his head, arrogant and sort of sly at the same time. Brian liked being watched—plenty of eyewitnesses to testify to that. But what he really liked was being watched by Michael, a fact Michael hoped wasn't as evident to Pittsburgh at large.

This was not a two-way mirror. Brian did not like watching Michael. Wait, let's be clear: Brian did not like watching Michael with anyone else. Never mind that period a few years back, when he did it whether anyone liked it or not.

Man, it’s like your fucking master is over there, one back-room trick complained after Brian’s unblinking stare intimidated him out of his hard-on. You two need to take this shit to the Meathook. Michael couldn't explain that the surveillance had nothing to do with getting anyone off.

But that had been a long time and a lot of hard-ons ago. Nowadays, Brian dealt with his best friend's sex life by mostly pretending he didn't have one. Since mostly this was true, everything sort of worked out.

Michael's eyes again strayed to Brian, stripped and spectacular not six feet away.

Sort of.

He sagged back against the cold wall, temples and other parts throbbing while he tried to look anywhere but straight ahead. Bryan Ferry's vocals slithered around his aching brain, arrogant and sly.

I´ll find some, way of connection
Hiding my intention
Then I´ll move up close to you

I´ll use you, and I´ll confuse you
And then I´ll lose you
Still you won’t suspect me

Michael sat forward, snatched the CMU sweats from the pile, and chucked them at Brian's head.

With the lightning reflexes that had paid for his MBA, Brian grabbed them out of the air one-handed. Before he could react further Michael hit the light, turning away and burrowing under the covers.

Brian made no comment. But Michael could feel his gaze run over him like cold rain.

The Roxy Music song was ending in a flurry of synthesizers by the time Brian climbed into bed. Michael kept facing the window, trying to get his breathing back to normal. Instead of assuming the usual sleepover position, sprawled over two-thirds of the mattress and clutching Michael teddy-bear style, Brian stayed silently on his own half. A move that could have been an apology, or a demand for one.

The silence stretched out as Michael's stereo began playing the intro to the next song, human heartbeats that quickened into a confusion of cash register bells, ticking clocks, insane laughter, and women's screams. The chaos opening Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon matched Michael's mood: his own heart was still beating too fast, the blood fizzing in his veins like something carbonated. There was nobody he could more comfortably share a silence with than Brian. But not this kind of silence.

Brian felt the tension, too. Over the music Michael heard the catch in his breathing from his deviated septum, legacy of a long-ago broken nose. The slight wheeze was Brian’s only tell when he was uneasy.

Chaos faded into a dreamy tapestry of electric piano and steel guitars, but the atmosphere stayed awkward. Michael was almost glad when Brian made the annoyed noise which signaled further criticism was coming.

"I'm sensing a theme to tonight's entertainment."

"Thursday is '70s night."

"Fuck the eight track flashback. Where's that copy of In Utero I gave you for your birthday?"

Michael's hand tightened on the edge of the mattress. "Propping up the wobbly table in the living room. Where it's staying."

"You call yourself a Gen Xer. After all that Radiohead shit you've made me listen to—"

"For. Get. It."

Last Christmas weekend Brian, stoned scary on supergrass, had subjected Michael to a Nirvana marathon. He explained—between lapses into what sounded like backwards Martian—that blasting the Seattle rockers was the only thing keeping them safe from the demons lurking outside his dorm. Michael, feeling the wild energy crackling off his best friend like ozone, did not argue. Instead he stayed. And endured. For thirty-one hours. It probably said something about them both that Nirvana remained one of Brian's favorite bands, while Michael hadn't been able to stand the sound of Kurt Cobain's voice since.

"Maybe it's just as well. No point staying too attached—Cobain's not long for this world."

"Don't say that. The thing in Rome was an accident."

"A bottle of Dom on top of fifty painkillers? Some accident," Brian scoffed. "You were with me in those fifth-row seats last fall. You saw him do 'All Apologies.' That was the face of a man who wants to die."

"I guess I can see how marriage to Courtney Love might spark that reaction."

"Pathetic. The guy spends ten years clawing to the top. He gets there and all he wants to do is jump."

"Maybe the view wasn't what he expected."

"So? His kind of money, you change it to what you want. You don't cry in the corner like a little bitch."

"Maybe he doesn't know what he wants. That's our Gen X thing, isn't it? Despair in the face of a soulless corporate culture that reduces us to marketing stats?"

"Depressed slacker is your Gen X thing. I'm the asshole with the marketing degree. Remember?"

"Never mind," Michael sighed.

Brian tossed restively on the lumpy mattress. "These are the sheets I gave you when you moved in.”

Michael gave an affirmative grunt.

The bed moved again, more violently. "Four-hundred count Egyptian cotton deserves better than this."

"All right, I get it. You hate my depressed slacker's apartment. Can we drop it?"

"I don't hate your apartment. I hate what you're doing to your apartment. I hate what your apartment is doing to you. You and this rental property are in a dysfunctional relationship.”

“I have a knack for those."

"It's too big and it's too fucking expensive," Brian said, undistracted. "Especially for a building with an imaginary maintenance man."

Michael made an exasperated sound. He should have known Brian wasn't going to give up on the living conditions commentary. It was standard operating procedure when something really pissed him off—hang back and size up the situation, then attack when his opponent's guard was down. But ignoring him wasn't the answer. If anything was guaranteed to piss Brian off more, that was it.

"It's near everything. Anyway, it was the best I could do on short notice."

"What short notice? Your ass wasn't in the street. You were paying Debbie, what? Four hundred dollars a month? The only thing cheaper is a cardboard box on Liberty Avenue."

"Not when you factor in the cost of my soul."

"Don't be a drama queen."

"I'm not being a drama queen. You know I used to have a recurring dream when I lived there? Ever since I can remember, a couple of times a month. I'm stuck in the house and can't get out, while a huge red hen chases me around pecking off body parts. My eyes, my hands, my dick."

"How David Lynch,” Brian said unsympathetically. “But you lived with that giant chicken for twenty-three years." Long fingers snaked around Michael's hip. "Everything seems to be intact."

"Hey! Cut it out!"

Brian dropped his hand but not the point. "Before Christmas you mentioned maybe looking for your own place at the end of this year. Maybe. A few days later you were throwing your worldly belongings into Hefty bags. I . . . wasn't really with it that week, then school started and things got nuts. We never discussed it."

When Michael didn't say anything, Brian rephrased his statement in the form of a question.

"What the fuck happened, Michael?"

He stops at the bottom of the stairs to his room. "Can we talk about this later?" he says tiredly.

"No, we fucking well can't. You run out on Christmas dinner, disappear for two days, and drag in looking like death warmed over. You'd better have a pretty fucking good explanation, young man."

"I didn't disappear. I called you."

"Once. For twenty seconds. From the middle of a goddamn rave."

"They don't play Nirvana at raves." Or in my presence ever again. "The music was for Brian. See, he—"

"I should've guessed. Brian." Debbie says the name like it's contagious. "What did he do this time?"

"He didn't do anything. Something was done to him." Michael has decided to just give her the story—as much as he can stand to give, anyway. He's too wiped to think up a decent lie.

"Brian went to Christmas dinner at his folks', and that went like it usually does. He headed back to his dorm to smoke some weed—don't start, I've seen you and Uncle Vic and your Led Zeppelin LP's—anyway, the weed was laced. With PCP, we're thinking now. When Brian started feeling weird, he called me."

Debbie has paled beneath her Maybelline. "Why the fuck didn't you take him to the emergency room?"

"They'd have stuck him in the psycho ward, Ma. Restraints, needles, God knows what."

"GOOD. Do you know what can happen when someone’s flying on that shit? The sick, crazy things he can do?"

"Brian isn’t . . . I mean, he didn’t—I wasn’t—” Michael stops, swallows hard. “He would never hurt me.”

Debbie makes a disgusted sound.

"He didn't know the stuff Mario sold him was spiked. What happened wasn't his fault!"

"Nothing ever is, is it?"

Michael starts upstairs. "I am not doing this right now."

"Yes, you fucking ARE." Debbie grabs his arm so hard he'll have marks the next day from her Lee Press-Ons. "For years, I've watched you take his scraps, take his shit. I’ve kept my mouth shut because I know what he means to you. But now you tell me he's put your fucking life at risk. I can't shut up this time." She pulls him closer, so close he can see grey hairs poking out beneath the bright frizz of her wig.

"Brian is bad for you."

Michael pulls away. "He's my best friend."

"Sure, that's what he says. It's how he operates. Always feeding you those extra bits of his attention, keeping you pining away while he goes out and does whatever the fuck he wants. Let me tell you something: That is not friendship. That's ownership."

"Brian loves me." His voice shakes as he says this. He blames the exhaustion.

Her face softens a little. "Sweetheart, Brian doesn't love anybody. Not like you love him. And no matter how much shit you take, that's not gonna change."

Michael turns away, clutching the banister until his knuckles turn white.

"I'm sorry. I know how much that hurts. If I had it to do over, I'd have put you in Catholic school so you two never got started. I don't care how many jobs I had to—"

He whirls back. "You are not serious." Then, seeing from her expression she is: "Do you know what high school would have been like for me alone? What it would have been like for Brian?"

"You'd have been all right. I'd have damn well made sure of that."

"And Brian?” he demands. “You know how it was for him at home. Maybe you don't know everything, but—Christ, if he hadn't been able to come here sometimes, get away from that shit, what he might have—" Michael breaks off, shaking his head.

"That would have been sad," Debbie says without emotion. "But he's not my son, Michael."

He looks at her a long second. "Jesus. You really hate him, don't you?" he whispers.

"Wait a minute, I never said that."

"Can't believe I didn't see it before," he says slowly. "And it’s not because he owns me. It’s because me being with him means you don't."

"What the fuck are you talking about? I don't want to—"

"All those dinners and hugs, the fuss you used to make over him, that was just your way of keeping the competition close, wasn't it? God, no wonder he never really warmed up to you. I thought he didn't trust parent types in general, but he knew. You can't stand him, like you can't stand anything that loosens your death grip on me. Sports, sleepaway camp, Uncle Vic the summer he invited me to New York." He laughs bitterly. "Thank God Dad's dead, right? No competition there."

Her face goes remote, like it does whenever John Novotny is mentioned. "Now you're being stupid."

"No. I'm finally being smart." He starts walking towards the front door.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?"

"Brian's. He'll let me crash there till I can figure things out."

"You are not going back and let that lunatic strangle you in your sleep." Arms flapping, she runs to block his exit. For one surreal moment, Michael swears he sees feathers.

He closes his eyes, counts five, and opens them. "Brian is fine now. But I don't care if he's Charles Manson. I won't stay here. Not one more night." He pushes past her, trying to get to the door.

"All these years I've sacrificed to put a roof over your head and clothes on your back, and you're gonna leave me like this? Over Brian?"

"No, over me." He reaches for the doorknob.

She grabs his wrist. "You're just a kid. You're not ready. You don't know what it's like on your—"

"I'll handle it."

"Sweetheart—" she says, squeezing.

"NO!" he yells, pushing away. 'I won't let you peck pieces off me anymore." Then, when she looks at him like she's wondering what he's been smoking: "I'm a grown man. This is my life, Mother."

Even as it's happening, he wonders how the hell they got here so fast. Then he realizes, with the edgy clarity you get after too many hours of grunge, several gallons of coffee, and zero sleep, that this choice has been coming forever. Maybe since his mother walked in on two ninth graders drunk on whiskey and hormones. Sad thing is, for all the yelling and guilt over time, she never stood a chance.

“Brian is your life. But you are not his. If you think different, you are in for one rude fucking awakening.”

Michael's hand tightens on the door's splintered edge. "I'll get my stuff later."

"You take only what you bought and paid for. Walk out of here, and you stand on your own two feet. I'm not carting towels and ziti to some bachelor shithole like the fucking Welcome Wagon."

"I'm a little hazy on that week," Brian said when Michael still didn't answer. "But I recall you babbling something about your mom putting The Incredible Hulk #181 in with her library donations."

"The first ever appearance of Wolverine. Very fine plus condition, only minor stress marks and slight discoloration on the staples," Michael said wistfully.

"Shame. You loved that comic like my mother loves Jesus."

Michael sighed.

"You sold it to pay the deposits on this place. Didn't you?"

Another slight intake of breath was all the confirmation Brian needed. "I repeat, what the fuck happened?"

"Does it matter? I'm here now," Michael said. "Wolverine is gone, either way."

"Fine. Whatever. Work things out with your mom. She doesn't deserve the silent treatment."

"You shouldn't defend her." Michael couldn't keep a slight emphasis off the first word of that sentence.

Brian must have heard it, because it took him a minute to answer. "She has your best interests at heart."

"Do I need to elaborate on the deeper meanings of the chicken dream?"

"So Debbie is Queen of the S'mothers. She means well. She'd never hurt you on purpose." Brian paused again, and when he spoke his voice was quiet. "That's more than you can say for a lot of parents."

There was no argument Michael could make to that. Which no doubt had been the point of Brian saying it.

The silence spun out once more. Michael could feel the first effects of the meds in his bloodstream, that numb floatiness which is nothing like natural sleep. The fugue went along with the Pink Floyd on the stereo, David Gilmour crooning on about insanity and loneliness and killing yourself with blind obsession. Or maybe he was talking about rabbits and surfing, Michael wasn't sure. But it was a relief when the track shifted to Bowie's "Moss Garden," a dreamy instrumental. When you put psychedelic art rock on top of tranquilizers, you could hear all kinds of things you’d rather not.

That was the problem with drugs like Xanax: they didn't just loosen up your body, they loosened up your brain. Michael's most vivid hallucinations and violent nightmares had been when he was on tranks, a fact he unfortunately forgot earlier, since it had been forever since he'd taken any. He didn't just hear things, he saw things, too. Flashes of the past, pictures exhumed from the dusty deep storage of his subconscious.

Michael's dry, tired eyes drifted to the window. He watched the rain run down the glass, water drops seeming to move along with the Oriental plinkings on the stereo. They threw weird twisty shapes on the blank wall opposite, pale shadows writhing like fierce creatures in terrible pain.

Brian is soaked through and shivering as he climbs awkwardly through Michael's bedroom window. So awkward he catches and tears the hem of his sweater on an exposed nail. This stutter in his catlike coordination is Michael's first clue something is really wrong. His second, the welts he sees on Brian's back before he can pull his sweater down.

St. Patrick's Day, 1986. Just before midnight on a rainy Monday—Michael could recall the date and circumstances exactly. You don't forget the first time you see the results of a really serious beating.

He doesn’t forget the cold nausea that roils in his gut. Or his frantic need to call someone—his mom, the cops, anyone—who might help him put a stop to this. He definitely doesn't forget when Brian grabs his wrist and says hoarsely that if he does, it's over between them. He looks into those dark eyes, glazed as they are from heavy downers, and knows Brian means it. So Michael takes his hand off the doorknob. Because he also knows, though he can’t say how he knows, that the help Brian needs isn't available through Social Services.

But later, as they lay tangled together in the dark, he works up the courage to ask the question that's been torturing him for months.

It takes him so long to reply, at first Michael thinks he's not going to.

“If I ever start in on him, I won't stop." The words are slow, slurred with pain and Quaaludes. "He's not gonna fuck my future like he fucked his own. It's what he's after, y'know. Suicide by psycho."

"You are not psycho."

Brian doesn't reply to that, just holds Michael tighter.

They never talked about it again. Not on the days—rarer after ninth grade but still occurring—that Brian showed up at school glazed and silent. Definitely not on the days things were so bad he didn’t show up at all. They never talked about what had happened to him the summer before they met. Michael worked out most of that story by cutting rumor with common sense. The rest of the blanks were filled in from several remarks made in front of him by Joan Kinney, who in her own sanctimonious way could inflict injuries as painful as her husband's. Those weren't a topic for discussion, either.

They never talked about any of it, not to each other or—despite the court-ordered therapy Brian suffered through freshman year—to anyone else. Which wasn't always easy, because even once Brian reinvented himself as Big Man on Campus, other people still talked. If Michael had a nickel for every time he'd been asked "What is his problem?" he wouldn't be in his current mess.

Yeah, Brian was a real question mark to the masses. But Michael never had any trouble seeing what lay under those menacing defenses. Which was why after their first exchange in the cafeteria, he was never scared of him. Scared for him, often. Nervous as hell from his mood swings and mind games, sometimes. But that was as far as it went. Brian might stare through other people like they weren't even the same species, but he never, ever turned that look on Michael.

It's a real rush, when you are the one he sees that way. The rush a big cat trainer must feel when his favorite tiger comes up and nuzzles his neck. You deal with the occasional nip, because you know anyone else would have gotten his head chewed off by now. Soothing that savage instinct is such an ego trip it makes you conceited, it makes you careless. You forget your sexy beast isn't the only predator around.

Brian’s fingers shake as they trace over the cuts and bruises on Michael's arm. One of the cuts has opened, a single drop of red welling up like a tear. "Is this the only place you're still bleeding?" he says softly. Of course he knows the answer, knew it before he asked the question. But there's some inflection left in his voice, which means he hasn't let himself believe it yet. This is the time to speak, to sell him on a comforting lie. But Michael can't push words past the icy lump in his throat. By the time he finds a way, it's too late.

October 26, 1988. Another rainy day, another disaster: Michael was beginning to see a pattern. The date stuck in his head because, well, you never forget your first time. Or your first partner.

"Brian, please, he didn't mean to, he was drinking—"

"Yeah. We all know how crazy the Irish get when they drink." His mouth twists in a mirthless grin, but that’s not what terrifies Michael. It’s the look in his eyes that does that.

"I was drinking too, I flirted with him, I asked him to—"

Brian grabs his arm again. "You asked for this?"

His voice is mechanically empty now, his face just as blank. But beneath that camouflaging calm things are lurking in the dark. Guilt and grief and a cold, relentless rage Michael has glimpsed only once before.

He tries to answer, speaking fast and desperate, straining for something that will get through to Brian. But suddenly it all stops making sense, the words breaking apart, sliced to bits on the broken mess inside his head. He feels everything go to pieces, the numbness of the last twelve hours shattering in a bright sick burst and he must have totally lost it because Brian is drawing him close whispering soothing nonsense but it doesn't matter because he hears the real message clear as if Brian was screaming it

THIS IS NOT OVER.

No, you never forget your first time. Or your first partner. Even when you really wish you could.

Kevin Dougherty. Michael hadn't said the name in years, even to himself. Long and lithe, with dark hair falling model-messy into his big dark eyes, and a mocking smile playing around his full red lips. Through some Celtic coincidence of genes practically Brian's mirror image, plus ten years. In the best Star Trek tradition, the doppelgangers had hated each other on sight. And Michael knew this, even as he stumbled out of BoyToy with Kevin's arm around him in a hold that was both terribly familiar and terribly wrong.

He should have known better. Brian warned him weeks before at Babylon. Hand on Michael's neck, voice casual but face serious: "That motherfucker plays rough, and you’re still in the sandbox. Do not engage, Mikey." Michael raising an eyebrow and saying it wasn't a problem, since Kevin totally wasn't his type. Brian looking at him hard a second, then relaxing. "Right. My mistake." The two of them smiling, seeing the joke that wasn't one—Kevin was as appealing to Michael as a Q-Mart designer knock-off was to Brian.

Until one blurry night, Michael's 18th birthday. Six kinds of bad luck intersecting: too much tequila on top of too much testosterone, the wrong thing said the wrong way, someone doing the big ditch once too often, someone else swooping in at a shaky psychological moment.

What Kevin did was wrong. What Michael did was stupid. That's what he told himself hours later, during the long cold walk home. He was wrong and I was stupid he was wrong and i was stupid hewaswrongandiwasstupid Saying it over and over to block out the pictures in his head, till the words lost all meaning and his brain went as numb as his feet.

He had no intention of telling Brian. He wasn't that out of it. But his reactions must have been more off than he realized, because Brian sized the situation up about sixty seconds after laying eyes on him. Michael's shaken state was his only excuse for not seeing what would happen next. He knew some response was coming. He knew when it came it would be dramatic. But he didn't count on it coming so fucking fast. The best clue, maybe, to how shaken Brian was.

"—chained to the bed with fucking duct tape on his mouth. Been there a day or two, beaten half to death and with this thing shoved up . . . you know Kyle Murray—real hottie, looks like Jason Patric with a better hairline—he's an ER nurse at Mercy, and he said it was the biggest metal one he'd seen, and he used to bartend at the Mineshaft back in college so I guess he’d . . . huh-uh, not permanent, but unless you wanna invest in a set of rubber sheets I wouldn't invite ol’ Kev for a sleepover any time . . . not a clue, he got roofied up good, but whoever it was must've had a mad hate on to leave him like that. If his roomie hadn't come back early from Fantasy Fest—"

Early November, 1988. Michael couldn't pinpoint the date any better: that period's details still fuzzed in and out. He did remember there was no rain, which might or might not fit the pattern. Calling what went down a disaster was a matter of judgment, something else of Michael's that wasn't too sharp just then.

"What's a good way of saying someone's totally batshit?"

Brian looks up from his AP Anatomy homework. "Come again?"

"This essay Mrs. O'Steen has us doing on one of the characters in Jane Eyre. I got Bertha Rochester, and I've already used up 'crazy,' 'mad, and 'insane.'"

"'Schizo.’”

"'Formal academic prose,' remember?'"

"'Deluded.'"

"She torched the house of a guy who kept her chained in an attic for twenty years. Seems pretty in-touch to me."

Brian thinks a second, tapping his highlighter on the Formica diner table. "'Bipolar.'"

"Hmm. Don't think the Victorians recognized the DSM-III."

"I don't know," Brian says impatiently. "Do I have 'Roget' stamped on my fucking forehead?"

"You're the one who talked me into this Honors English crap. I'm guessing you already did it?"

"Yup, St. John Rivers. Lots of synonyms for 'closet case.'" Brian shuts the thick textbook in front of him, rubbing his temples. "That's it, I'm taking a break. I can't tell glutes from gonads anymore."

"Gotta be the first time that's happened."

Brian rolls his eyes, reaching for the groaning snack tray Debbie dropped off before her shift ended. He goes for his usual choice, a big, shiny red apple.

Michael struggles a second longer, then throws down his pencil. "Forget this. I'll finish it later."

"We’re going to Babylon later."

"Nah. Think I'm gonna bail on the thumpa-thumpa tonight."

Brian pauses with his hand in the zippered pocket of his bookbag. "Again?"

"Sorry. Stuff to do." Michael nods at the scribbled-over notebook in front of him.

Brian sighs as he takes a folding knife out of the bag. He opens it and begins skinning the apple, fingers moving with practiced precision. The peel comes off in one curling strip, a skill he's been perfecting since his father gave him the knife on his last birthday. The Spyderco is a thing of evil beauty, its blade curved like a scimitar and sharp enough to slice a sheet of paper dropped on its edge. Michael can't even begin to work out the freaky motivations that must have gone into the giving and the accepting of such a gift.

Silence falls over them as he watches Brian carefully follow the fruit's rough globe shape. There's been a lot of that lately, filling the spaces between their usual banter like noxious gas fumes. All the things they haven't said since Jeff Cramer, the biggest gossip on Liberty Avenue, entertained them with his latest juicy story here at this very table.

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
But what’s confusing you
Is the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners, saints
As heads is tails just call me Lucifer
Cause I’m in need of some restraint

So if you meet me have some courtesy
Have some sympathy and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste

"It's not gonna work," Michael says, tired of dead air. "You always lose patience around the equator."

"I'll bet you," Brian says, not glancing up. "I get it off in one piece, you go to Babylon tonight."

"And if you don't?"

"I'll do your Jane Eyre essay."

It takes Michael a minute to get it. "Clever," he says flatly. “No wonder Steve Nguyen’s so worried over the Valedictorian spot."

Tell me baby!
What’s my name?

Tell me honey!
Care to guess my name?

Tell me baby!
What’s my name?

I’ll tell you one time,
You’re to blame . . .

Brian releases Michael and sits back in the booth. Though the sun hasn’t changed, the light in his gaze has gone out like a total eclipse of vision.

Kevin Dougherty. A lot skinnier and paler than the last time Michael saw him, his look of bad health underlined by the yellowing bruises on his face. But his body signals anger as much as sickness: hands clenched, spine stiff, mouth tightened to a hard line. It’s a surreal moment, he and Brian staring at each other like Captain Kirk's light and dark sides, ready to rip each other to shreds.

Except both are dark, Michael can't help thinking.

"You hear me? I know you did it, you fucking freak."

"Relax, Kevin. Have Dolores bring you something. The lemon bars are yummy today." Brian's mouth stretches in a smile that gets nowhere near his eyes.

"Keep right on smirking, Kinney. It'll look nice for the mugshots after they've cuffed and shackled you."

Brian picks up the apple again. From the easy boredom of his body language, they might have been discussing Jane Eyre. "Why would they do that?"

"It was you at the Meathook last Tuesday."

"I was home watching TV on Tuesday. That Roseanne is a trip, isn't she?"

"You think you're so fucking cute, with the Rohypnol and the latex gloves. I don't need your face or your fingerprints. That little toy you left behind is plenty of proof. Real unusual item, they tell me. I ask around at the sex shops off Liberty, I bet I'll find out which one sold it. I show the clerks your picture, I bet one of them will remember selling it to you."

Brian’s knife pauses briefly.

"Didn't think of that, did you?" Kevin sneers. "My mom goes to St. Tim's with your mom. She's told me some really interesting stories about you. But there won't be any cushy teen trauma center this time around. Not when the charge is kidnapping and aggravated fucking assault. We'll see how cute you are after a couple of years at Fairview. You know they still do shock treatments there?"

"I've heard those make you shit yourself uncontrollably. Wow, how humiliating that must be."

Spots of dangerous color appear on Kevin's high cheekbones. He turns to Michael.

"Hold your buddy's hand while you can, Mikey. Soon his straightjacket's gonna make that tough."

“Don't you fucking call him that." Every trace of humor has vanished from Brian's face.

"What, Mikey? Wait, that's your pet name for him, isn't it? Sweet. But he's sweet, isn't he?" Kevin moves closer to Michael's side of the booth, eyes on him like he's remembering what he tasted like. Michael barely suppresses a shudder.

"Get away from him." The emotion is bleeding from Brian’s voice like he’s been stabbed somewhere vital. "Now."

"Oooh, territorial. But that's what this freakshow was about, wasn't it? You can't stand anybody touching your pet." A nasty grin spreads over Kevin's face. "Not even you. Tell me Bri, one top to another, how do you keep your hands off him? He's so . . . touchable." He reaches out, brushing the curve of Michael's neck.

"No," Michael replies. "He's not going anywhere."

Something in the way he says this makes Kevin break focus on Brian and look at him. Michael meets his gaze calmly. He has never felt so calm. A cold, clear-eyed anger is washing over him, seeming to flow up from the fingers gripping Brian's wrist. Brian, whose eyes are still blank with shock, who is still incapable of forming sentences. Michael is having no such problem with articulation. This amazing chill is freezing all the fear and confusion that's been burning inside him for days.

"You start talking about Brian, I start talking about you. I'll tell the cops all about October 26^th. The shots you bought me at BoyToy. The lines you did off the dashboard of your BMW. The other lines you did off your granite kitchen countertops. I'll tell them how scary you got after that, how rough. So rough even smashed senseless on Cuervo, I begged you to stop. I'll tell them how you didn't stop."

"That is NOT how it—"

"No? Two of us there in the wee hours that Wednesday, Kev. I was the one getting stitches at the free clinic Thursday. Somehow, I think the cops will believe me. They'll believe me when I tell them you were stalking me for weeks before the 26^th. And since the 26^th, you've developed a scary fixation on my best friend. My seventeen-year-old best friend."

Kevin stares at Michael like he’s never seen him before. "Y-you're as crazy as he is.”

Michael smiles. "Ever hear what happens to pretty boys in prison, Kev? It's not like the porno flicks. Next time you get laid, you'll be wearing pigtails and calling some Aryan Brotherhood member 'Daddy.'"

He sees the sudden, terrified glitter in Kevin's eyes. And everything gets even more clear. The beautiful cold clarity you experience when you put your hands on a combination lock, feel a click, and know just where to press to bust it wide open.

"You know they pimp their bitches out? Have 'em on their knees in a closet somewhere, hour after hour. Can't talk, can't move, can't fucking breathe. You know that feeling? That helpless, suffocated feeling?" He looks at him a second, and nods. "Oh yeah, you do. And way before last Tuesday. That's why you have to be on top. That's why you like it so rough. Just how Daddy used to do it, right?"

"Shut up! You j-just shut your mouth!" Kevin sounds about twelve years old. He's trembling head to toe, face gone the yellowish-grey of someone ready to faint or vomit or both.

Michael’s voice remains calm. He has never felt so calm. "Rape is a first-degree felony. Figure in the time they’ll tack on for 'deviate sexual intercourse.' That's what the nice officer who visited our health class called it. You're looking at ten years, minimum. Ten years in that closet sucking cock. How cute do you think you’ll be?”

—and you're back in that room, staring down at that bed, an iron monster draped in dark, expensive linen. On it is a long, lean figure, naked and gagged, bound hand and foot to the frame. Its blank helpless body flashes in the blade of your knife as you pass the weapon back and forth between your gloved hands. A desire that's the dark twin of what you feel in all those bedrooms and backrooms courses through you like cold electricity. But you know if you give into it there won't be any turning back, not this time. So you stay very still, poised on the crumbling edge of the abyss, loving the dizzy feeling of almost jumping—

HE STOOD LIKE THAT FOR AN HOUR A FUCKING HOUR

Michael bolts for the back of the diner. His protective coldness is going going gone, melted by a scalding flood of sick horror. He bursts through the door of the bathroom, reaching the stall just in time. He retches again and again, insides twisting like they're being ripped out, wrung out, and shoved back in strange shapes. It goes on and on, until all he's bringing up is pale brown water.

"You are not crazy."

Brian gives a choked laugh and starts to turn away. Michael catches his hand, not considering the consequences. But the touch is just a touch, Brian's fingers warm and a little damp.

“The ugliness you've been through, it doesn't matter. What you've done, what's been done to you . . . none of it matters. I see what you are, even if you can’t."

"What do you see?" Brian says this like he really, really needs to know.

And Brian is pulling him close, arms wrapping around Michael. He clutches him like he's trying to absorb him into his own skin. Kisses the top of Michael’s head, whispering into his hair.

"You just answered your own question."

Michael rolled over on the mattress, resting his head on Brian's chest. Let the tingling warmth of his best friend flow over him, a feeling like nothing and no one else he’d known. But the sounds of Brian's breathing and heartbeat were not enough to drown out Pink Floyd's mournful meditations.

The lunatic is in my head
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You rearrange me 'til I'm sane

You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head
But it's not me

Just lyrics, he thought. They’re like dreams. They don’t have to mean anything real.

"I love you," he said. Because that’s what was real. No matter what he had done, or what had been done to him. That was the truth that mattered.

Long arms twined around his waist, pulling him closer. "I know."

He was quiet so long, Michael thought he’d gone to sleep. He was about to drift off himself when he heard Brian's last words, soft and sad as the whisper of his own conscience.

"Everything would be so much simpler if you didn't."

“Fucking dinosaur rock.”

“Thursday is ‘70s night at Babylon.”

“This isn’t Thursday.” Brian’s eyebrows draw together as he surveys the dance floor. “And this isn’t Babylon.”

Even from the distance of the bar, the crowd looks wrong. The crush of beautiful faces and bodies is too beautiful, too uniform: features molded into empty perfection, muscles sculpted with plastic precision. The same face and form repeated dozens of times, an army of mannequin men doing one mechanical dance. As Michael watches, they turn from their robotic grindings and fixate on Brian. The savage hunger of those gazes is a burning contradiction to their blank doll faces.

Brian gazes coolly back.

“Stop encouraging them.”

“It doesn’t matter. They’re not going anywhere.”

“They’re not real. Not like you are.”

“Not like you are,” Brian says with a smirk.

Michael ducks his head, embarrassed.

Marc Bolan’s mellow drone fills the awkward pause which follows.

“That’s a really great look for you,” Michael says finally, by way of distraction.

Brian is shining like a fallen star under the neon constellation of disco lights. His flawless skin glows blue-white; the darkness of his hair and eyes, the muscles of his throat and torso, all shade to indigo in contrast. The effect is so dazzling it almost hurts to look at him, brightness bursting from his body like its source lies beneath flesh and bone. As if a pilot light, blue and blazing, glows where his heart should be.

“You’ve seen it before.” Brian turns, giving one of his hard bright glances. “Dig yourself, Mikey.”

Michael holds up a hand. The flesh gleams like he just took a bath in iridescent body paint. But the color goes more than skin deep, a pale silver radiance like pearls or moonlight.

“Or a mirror,” Brian suggests, his voice soft. “A really fragile, expensive one.”

Michael wiggles his fingers, frowning. “I don’t think it’s me.”

Brian raises an eyebrow at him. “What are you?”

Michael wipes his hand on his leg. “I don’t wanna talk. I wanna dance.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” Brian sighs.

Over their heads, the soothing sounds of T. Rex fade to the exotic twang of an electric guitar.

“Shit,” Michael mutters.

The lyrics come in seconds later, David Bowie’s vocals straining seductively over a samba beat:

Michael shifts nervously. “Come on. Dance with me.”

“You hate this song.”

“I don’t hate it. I—I just don’t get it, that’s all.”

Brian gives him the stare of superior impatience he used to get in Honors English when Michael failed to grasp the deeper meanings of whatever awful old book Ms. O’Steen was torturing them with that week.

Oh no, not me
I never lost control
You’re face to face
With the man who sold the world

“You want something badly enough, sooner or later you try to take it. No matter what the price.” Brian’s brilliance darkens like someone flicked his dimmer switch. “You get that, right? After our hands-on demo last Christmas.”

“I don’t care about Christmas. How many ways can I tell you?”

Brian gives a choked laugh and tries to turn away, but Michael grabs his wrist. The energies between them spark and dance, blue and silver swirling together like heavy metals. Like cobalt and mercury, beautiful but deadly if you don’t know what you’re doing.

“That’s not the solution. That’s the fucking problem,” Brian says, pulling back. He faces the floor again, features as cold and blank as the dancers’.

“What you did . . . what you wanted to do . . . it doesn’t matter,” Michael says quietly. “You didn’t mean—”

Brian’s whips around. “I always meant it. For nine fucking years.”

It takes Michael a moment to answer. “I didn’t see it.”

“No.” Brian’s voice is so calm Michael knows he’s seething. “You never do.”

Then his shoulders slump, the anger leaving as soon as it came.

“It’s just as well. You never would have stayed.”

“Hey—I’m not the one who keeps walking out the door.”

Brian flinches a little but says nothing.

Michael leans wearily against a nearby support column. “Just dance with me. Please?”

“I’m tired of dancing.” Brian is already moving away, his attention fixed on the dark archway looming on the other side of the dance floor.

Brian only gets more distant. His bright form is tracked by a thousand eyes, glowering like wolves on the edge of a bonfire.

But Michael can’t seem to move or speak. Paralyzed by everything he can’t do, speechless with everything it’s too late to say.

Brian has reached the depression leading to the floor. He stops, giving Michael one last, long look. For all the brilliance around him, his face is very pale.

“Nine years, Mikey. Sooner or later, the song has got to end.” He steps over the edge.

“Stop!” Michael cries, finding his voice at last.

But Brian has already plunged into the crowd. Bodies close around him like a living shroud.

Michael begins screaming

“BRIAN, PLEASE!”

Screaming, the words he couldn’t whisper before

“DON’T LEAVE ME!”

But Brian is gone.

Panicking, Michael darts forward, trying to push his way into the crowd. But it’s like trying to force through a blank metal wall.

As if some invisible signal has been given, the men turn as one and begin to close in. Their faces are smooth and horrible as they stare at him with empty doll eyes. Michael tries to back away but there’s nowhere to go: behind him, in front of him, on top of him, is a pale crush of hostile bodies. And suddenly it’s all he can see, hard flesh that reeks of a hundred expensive colognes and the false tang of plastic and underneath that, a hot metallic stench he knows is the smell of their rage. Slick stiffness pushes against him, into him, in his mouth and eyes. Hands like steel hooks tear at him in a hundred places. He can’t speak, can’t move, can’t breathe.

Dark flowers begin to bloom before his vision as his tortured lungs gasp for air. He tries to scream and struggle, hysteria completely taking over, but it’s no good

Michael feels a cold steely grip close round his wrist. With a tendon-tearing tug it frees him from beneath the bodies. Before he has time to take a breath or clear his vision the grip is pulling him forward, across the floor and through the archway that’s the only exit, moving at a speed that almost jerks him off his feet.

The mannequin men scream as one, a piercing robotic shriek like Ultraman going down in flames. They give chase but his rescuer is superhumanly fast. Before a minute passes the sound of pursuing feet fades.

They are running through a series of dark corridors, way branching onto way like the tangle of some mythic maze. Michael is too dazed to have any idea where they are or where they’re going, but it seems to be in the general direction of down. As they go he sees flashes of things out of the corner of his eye, faces and voices emerging from alcoves hidden in the dark. Some seem familiar, bright scenes that catch at the back of his mind like eager hands. But they go by too quickly for him to make connections. His rescuer keeps them moving faster and faster, till the blood thunders in Michael’s ears and the air turns to fire in his lungs.

At the point he’s about to collapse from sheer exhaustion, the pace slows, then stops altogether. He falls to the ground, heart hammering, colored sparkles dancing before his eyes.

After an indeterminate amount of time has passed, his heartbeat slows and he sits up on his elbows.

He is lying in the middle of a dim, chilly space. The overpowering odor of mildew suggests somewhere that hasn’t seen sunshine or fresh air in years, if ever. He can hear the drip of distant water, and the floor beneath him is cold and slimy. It’s hard to make out more details: only two of the dozen or so recessed lamps in the ceiling are working, their glass faces bruised by what looks like the dust of decades. The walls just visible in the sickly light are of crumbling brick that might have once been grey but has darkened in the gloom to a dingy black. There’s no way of telling for sure, but the place gives the impression of being far underground—the deepest of deep sub-basements, excavated for who knows what sinister purpose.

Michael wipes a hand across his sweaty forehead and looks around for exits, but though there must be at least one he can’t see it. Fighting off creeping claustrophobia, he takes a shaky breath and tries to think.

“Cardio—forty-five minutes, three times a week. Consider it.”

The voice sounds amused, but also somehow wrong: like a radio station that won’t tune right, or words that have been passed through a vocoder. It’s vaguely masculine in pitch and timber, but that’s as recognizable as it gets. Michael blinks and looks up, squinting into the dimness for its source.

His eyes make out a—a figure is the best way to describe it. Not overly large, but as with the voice, there is something vaguely masculine about it, in the stance and in the outline of the shoulders. But it’s more like a very detailed shadow of a person than an actual person. Hints of features seem to swim just below the surface darkness, like a fabulous monster waiting to emerge any minute.

“Wha—who are you?”

“I’m nobody!” the figure says cheerfully. “Who are you?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot Honors English already,” the figure sighs. It makes a movement that resembles a shrug. “Oh well, it’ll come back to you.”

“You know me?” Michael says as he struggles to his feet.

“Not as well as I should. Guess you could say that’s my tragic flaw. Remember those? Tragic flaws?

“Like Constantine’s temper, or Superman’s lying,” the figure explains when Michael just looks at him. “Tom Welling’s Superman, anyway.”

“Who?”

“Oops. You can’t exactly Google him, can you?” The figure laughs, a low brittle sound like fingernails scraping over rusted metal. The hair on the back of Michael’s neck stands up.

“Uh, no. I sure wouldn’t want to do that,” he says, edging a step back.

“Oh, cool it. If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have left you up there to get groped to death by the Cylons.”

“Cylons aren’t humanoid,” Michael mutters automatically.

This sets off another burst of corroded chuckles. “Not yet.”

“Suuure. Okay. Well, thanks for the, uh, saving my life and all, but it’s getting late and—”

“It’s later than you think, Michael.”

“Right, exactly,” he agrees, moving faster. “Good luck with the goggles and everything, but I’ve really gotta—” he whirls around to make a blind run for it.

The figure catches his arm and jerks him back sharply. Michael winces, though not from the pull. Without panic and suffocation as distractions he finds the creature’s touch awful, a cold crawly ants feeling that breaks him out in full-body goosebumps. He tries to twist away, but its grip is iron.

“Yeah, it’s not exactly a happy ending massage for me, either. But I don’t feel like running another hundred-yard dash just now.” Michael can feel the figure’s gaze on him, from eyes lost somewhere in the darkness of its face. “If I let go, will you chill the fuck out and listen?”

When he doesn’t untense, it sighs. “Relax, Donnie Darko. Mars isn’t Heaven, and this ain’t the Matrix.”

Michael only got about a third of that, but something in the matter-of-factness of the figure’s tone is convincing. That, and if it doesn’t stop touching him right this second Michael will have to start chewing his own arm off to get away. He gives a jerky nod.

The figure lets go and Michael takes a step back, rubbing his bicep. “What do you want?”

“Not important. This is about what you want.”

“I want to get the hell out of here.”

“That’s it?” The figure’s dim voice has brightened with impatience.

Michael blinks at it.

“BRIAN, PLEASE!” The words are trembly, girlish. “DON’T LEAVE ME!”

Michael scowls. “I don’t care if you saved my life. You’re an asshole.”

“Never mind what I am. Was that the heat of the moment talking? Do you really want him back?”

“Of course I do.”

“So sincere,” the figure muses. “You’d almost think you meant it.”

“Do you know where Brian is?” Michael says, refusing to rise to the bait.

“I can help you find him. But I warn you, it’s a long trip.” The figure turns, surveying the emptiness around them. “We didn’t get here overnight.”

It makes a small gesture with its right hand, and one of the lights brightens a few degrees. From the gloom of the darkest corner a door emerges, no more inviting than the rest of the place: painted dull grey, with pock marks at the bottom and a heavy steel bolt for a handle. Like one of those dim doors you see at industrial parks, the ones that are always, always locked, mutely guarding whatever stale secrets lie behind them.

“Where’s that go?”

“You know where.”

Like the words were a signal, ghostly letters light up on the painted metal:

“I—I don’t wanna go in there.”

“No one does,” the figure replies. “But it’s the only way.” It starts moving towards the door.

“Wait—wait. What should I call you?”

The figure pauses. Michael still can’t make out an expression, but he sees impatience in the set of its shoulders. “My name doesn’t make any—”

“Screw that. No way I’m walking into Mordor with the Shadowman and not even know what to yell when I get strangled.”

“‘I will never harm the one under whose bed I live,’” it quotes with a smile in its voice.

Michael stands there with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Fine,” it sighs. “Call me Charlie.”

“Is that your name?”

“It’s a name.” He starts moving away again.

With a sigh of his own, Michael follows.

They both come to a stop just outside the door.

“Go on. Open it.”

Michael hesitates. “It won’t be locked?”

“Not to you.”

He reaches for the bolt and finds it opens at a touch, the door moving noiselessly on heavy hinges. Michael glances at the dents at the bottom again. They look like someone—something, maybe—was desperately trying to get in. Then he takes a closer look at the direction of the dimpling.

No, he thinks, a small worm of fear uncoiling in his gut. Someone—something—was trying to get out.

Charlie pushes past him and steps through, his shadowy form moving as quickly and noiselessly as the door. After another second of hesitating on the threshold, Michael does the same.

He makes a mostly successful effort not to scream when the door slams shut behind him.

Deep Storage looks exactly like Deep Storage should: A long, stale-smelling corridor with more of those dingy brick walls and dim lights, floored with scuffed checkerboard tiles that seem to stretch on and on. Closed doors much like the one they just entered line it on each side. A small card in a metal frame is centered at eye-level on every door, but the light and a few feet of distance make deciphering impossible.

After passing the first few doors without slowing, Charlie stops abruptly in front of one. Michael draws as close to his guide as he can while avoiding actual contact and reads the yellowing piece of cardboard: