Page 20 of Shades of Henry
“They looked at me, and their faces grew shock white, I swear to God, even my mother, who’s Filipino. And they looked at Teddy’s hand on my arm, and then at me. And my father says, ‘We’ll discuss this at home tonight.’ I was living on the other side of town in a dorm, so I knew that was bad.” He let out a sigh. “Gotta hand it to Teddy, though. I mean, we were broken up—that was over. But he followed me to my folks’ house and helped me get all my stuff after the throw down.”
“How bad was the throw down?” Henry was dying to know. He’d carried his bruises for weeks.
Lance caught his eyes directly. “Not nearly as bad as yours. They yelled, they cried, and I just stood there. I wasn’t even surprised. I….” He swallowed and looked away, some of his composure slipping. “I didn’t think so anyway. I… me and Teddy moved all my shit out to our cars, so we could get it to the dorms, anyway, and I cried all the way back.”
“Have you talked to them since?” Henry asked, and Lance shook his head, killing a hope Henry hadn’t known he’d had.
“My sister—she’s in law school. We still talk, have lunch sometimes, text once a week. She says….” He shrugged. “They don’t say my name.”
There was a silence, and Henry couldn’t seem to swallow past the lump in his throat. “Were they paying for the dorm?” he asked finally, because he needed the end of the story.
“Well, not after that.” Lance’s mouth twisted. “I had about a month to find new digs, find a job that would work around my hours. I’d been watching Johnnies porn for years, thought it was great that they were in my hometown. I’d even met some of the guys for non-penis-related injuries, and they seemed… fine. Nice. A little cocky, you know, because obviously they can fuck on camera and good for them, but not awful. And I’d just broken up with a guy who wanted me to be a dirty little secret. I was my class valedictorian, in med school for Christ’s sake, and my parents wanted to forget they’d ever had me. I… it was veryfulfilling,if you know what I mean. To wave my gay penis around and say, ‘Hide this, motherfuckers! Hidethis!’”
Henry smirked, because sweet revenge was something he got. “Well done,” he said gruffly, meaning it. “You’re braver than I ever was.”
Lance’s hand on his ankle wasn’t sexual, exactly, but it was tender. Kind, gentle—things Henry had never asked for, had never been given. That kindness was like a solvent, dissolving the last of the shell that held Henry’s words back in his throat.
“How’d your coming out go?” Lance said softly.
“It’s still going.” And wasn’t that the truth. “I’m not even sure how you know.”
“Because I looked at your eyes when you looked away.”
“Do the other guys?”
Lance considered. “They’re pretty comfortable with you—maybe. But that’s what this is about.”
So much for putting things off. “I… my best friend married my sister, right out of high school.”
“So?” Lance cocked an eyebrow.
“So, his bachelor party was me and him with a fifth of jack, an open field where nobody could see us, and his dick in my ass, no lube, because that was the one thing we hadn’t done yet and he wanted to do it before he got married and we’d have less time to hook up.”
Lance sucked in a breath of what sounded like horror. “Fucking. Ouch.”
Henry let out a little laugh. “Yeah. We were going into the Army in two months anyway. I figured….” He shrugged. “Figured it was the last hurrah for Mal and me. Some people give up their virginity on prom, so what was the big deal?”
“Was it? The last hurrah?”
Henry swallowed, and the bitterness didn’t go away. “No. I mean, next time I made him use lube, believe you me, because it took me a week to stop bleeding—but there was always a next time. After basic training, there was still a next time. Every time we got leave, there was a next time. And… and every time I’d get like, ‘Mal, dude, you’re married. This is wrong,’ he’d be like, ‘Just guys fooling around, right? I mean, it can’t be sex if there ain’t a girl involved.’” He left out parts, parts with Mal’s lightning-quick hands and bruises Henry had brushed off as being part of training or sparring, but that wasn’t important, was it?
Lance blinked slowly. “Well,that’ssome fucked-up logic right there.”
And he still couldn’t swallow the bile in his throat. In fact, it rose up and threatened to choke him. “You think? And… and I listened to him. I fucking listened to him, because the alternative was to… to just stop. And he may have thought that I was like… like a human Fleshlight he could use when my sister wasn’t there, but….” This was the worst part.
“You loved him,” Lance said, and that made it easier.
“I did.” Henry had to breathe then. His chest was tight, his throat was swollen, his head ached. If he could only breathe, breathe, breathe… maybe that ache could go away.
“But being gay isn’t illegal in the military anymore,” Lance said, starting to stroke along Henry’s leg under his jeans. It helped to ease the ache a little.
“It is not,” Henry said. “But… coercing men you’re promoted over is.”
Lance frowned. “Did he—”
Henry shook his head. “I got a promotion. For nine years we managed to get promoted at the same time.” Some bitterness slipped out, and it tasted like old come. “He told me I should fake my test scores because otherwise, I would have been about three ranks ahead. And we wanted to stay together, right?”
“Of course,” Lance muttered. His eyes were shiny in the lamplight, but Henry couldn’t think about that right now. If he could get this out, tell the story, maybe he could keep the ache, the bitter, bilious ache inside.
