Made

Someday there will be a fandom for this.



~

“Yo! Take it easy with that shit, man!”

Miguel chews his lip as he pulls his fingers away from my face. “Sorry. Shit, I. Well, it looks all healed up.”

“Yeah, but that don’t mean you can go poking me with your big meaty fingers.”

“Man, they shoulda fuckin’ left your jaw wired shut. Done the whole world a favor.” He laughs. I grimace, rubbing my jaw and reclining on Mike’s couch. It aches like a bad headache, my jaw, my cheek, my teeth. Doctor said that’ll probably never completely go away.

S’okay, I’ve dealt with worse pains.

Mike crushes his Coors can easily in a fist and sets it next to a dozen others on the table before reaching for a new one from the cooler. I guzzle my own in silence. I’m behind a few, but I’m not feeling the buzz tonight. Sometimes all the constant partying just wears a guy out, you know?

“Jay?” Fingers snap in front of my eyes. “Where the fuck are you? Quit spacing out, douchebag.”

“Man!” I grumble, swatting his hand away. “Fuck off, you fag. I ain’t in the mood.”

“Thinking about scarface?” Mike asks calmly. He is instantly sobered, and I… well, I wasn’t thinking about him, but I sure as hell am now. I rub at my jaw again.

“No. I don’t…” I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say. “Never mind. I don’t want to think about it.”

He leans in close to me. For a while we sit like that, chugging beer, the TV on mute showing replays of last week’s game. Mike grinning, slugging homers out of the park, hopping leisurely around the bases as if he was just going for a lazy jog. The boy was made for the game, that’s for damn sure. And I…

“Whatever they say, he was a good man.” Mike says at length. “Who’d have fucking thought, that maddog killer?"

He gives a weak laugh and I hum in agreement. He’s close to me, his shoulder against mine. He’s close to me but he’s probably further away than he’s ever been.

He puts his head on my shoulder. He’s practically recumbent - being nearly a fucking foot taller than me, he’d have to be to comfortably assume the position he has assumed. His hair brushes my neck, tickles my cheek, my ear. I feel hot. “Fuck’re you doing, queer?”

“Cram it. ‘M taking a nap.” He mumbles tipsily. “You make an excellent pillow, y’know.”

“Man, fuck you! This body is pure muscle and you know it!”

“Maybe, but you’ll never be no A-re-nas,” He cackles, drawing his last name out as he slurps Coors. Yeah, no shit. Like he has to fucking tell me. Like I haven’t known that since we were fifteen and he shot up a foot taller than me and no one ever looked at me again. I want to take the can away. I want to put my hand in his hair and pull him a little closer. I don’t do either.

“Go find some fucking pussy to give you a pillow, man.”

“Damn! Harsh!” He scowls. He seems to be genuinely annoyed with me this time. He’s buzzed but not yet in danger of becoming really drunk, and I snatch his drink away before he can gulp it all down. He yelps in protest.

“Yo! Cut that shit out, man! I’m drinking that!”

“No, man. Just. That’s enough.” I shut the lid on the cooler beneath our feet and Mike grabs the sleeve of my shirt.

“Jay. Don’t.” He growls. “I’ll sock you, broken jaw or not.”

“Mike.”

“You ain’t my fuckin’ mom, so quit with the fuckin’ trying to take care of me or whatever bullshit this is-”

“Yeah? If I don’t, who’s gonna?” I snip, giving a little grin and tilting the rest of the half-drunk Coors down, hating how aware I am of the fact that the rim of the can is still warm from Mike’s lips. I plant my feet firmly on top of the cooler, tossing the can I just emptied onto the floor while he splutters. He probably didn’t really think I’d do it. I’m afraid he really is going to hit me, but he only glares, settling back into the far end of the couch.

“Scarface woulda done,” He mutters mutinously.

“Quit fuckin’ talking about him,” I snarl, sweeping my leg through the pile of cans on the table and scattering them to the floor. We’ve been sitting here a while and as I eyeball the crushed beer cans strewn around us, I figure he’s had three to every one of mine, and he’s drunker than I estimated. But so am I. “Forget about that jackass.”

I’m sure he can’t. It hit him hard, when the story broke on CNN the next day, when they found his body laying in the street. I wished I could have told him myself, because it was a million times worse coming from somewhere else like that, but having your jaw wired shut doesn’t make for a whole fucking lot of conversation. But Mike liked the guy a lot, looked up to him a lot, and, thank fucking god, had the sense to keep his mouth shut about him over the next few weeks. Yeah, I’m sure it was hard, but was it as hard for him to go through as it was for me to watch?

I rub my aching jaw and Mike channelsurfs, pointedly ignoring me. Flip, flip, flip. Every other channel is airing the same repeating footage of the FBI goons who issued the statement a week or so after they found scarface’s body, or hauling in experts to ask the same fucking question over and over: Where’s the goddamn money?

Yeah, I looked in the box. I told Mike I didn’t but I did. And I’m no stranger to money, even really fucking large amounts of money, but two million dollars in the bank and two million clean, untraceable, neatly-stacked dollars in a box are so vastly different it makes me sick thinking about it. Mike wouldn’t open the box, and it’s probably better that way, but I didn’t have the strength, even though I think we both already knew what was in there before I took a peek. He locked it in his closet and we don’t talk about it.

He’s starting to see sense, my boy. He’s starting to get a grasp on what we almost got ourselves mixed right the fuck in with, and he’s rethinking his priorities. He’s starting to understand what’s at stake here, and he doesn’t want to lose it, and I don’t want him to lose it, because if he does then I lose him. He’s thinking, every day he’s thinking about the day when someone’s going to come around for that box, and he’s thinking about the moment he finally gets to unload the thing on someone else, to get rid of the mental weight that having something like that around is pushing on him.

And while he’s thinking about all that, someone’s gotta think about him, right?

I pop open the cooler and fish a can of beer out of the soupy ice water, handing it over to Mike, a peace offering. He takes it and cracks it, closing the gap that he had put between us on the couch with a subtle ease. Like everything he does, making it look easy. I open a can for myself, leaning back as his shoulder nudges mine, and he flips back to the ball game.