Cancer. It’s eating Drake from the inside. From the outside he’s still the same, strong, handsome young man, perfect husband, good friend and able fighter in an endless war that has been brewing under surface from the moment the first mutant was born, but you’re able to smell the stench of death wafting around him, ugly green and brown cloud sticking on to him like a leech. And you strike a deal with him.
It’s eating you, just like the disease is eating Drake, but you both know it’s for the best. Marie doesn’t know, she doesn’t know that her husband is dying, and you and Drake prefer it that way. She deserves all the happiness she can get, and being married to dying, gay man isn’t the thing to provoke happy thoughts. So you two keep up the pretence, laugh and joke with her, and you give Drake pointers of how and what to do with her in bed, because the man is after all as inexperienced and clueless as Marie, and she deserves only the best. And all the time the deal hovers upon your shoulders like a led weight, pushing you down, challenging the metal coating your bones until you’re convinced that you’re developing a serious case of bowlegs.
You keep him drugged, provide substances to keep the pain at bay, and if Marie notices how sometimes the dosage has been too big and Drake’s wondering around with glazed eyes she doesn’t say anything. And you know he’ll ask you to honor the deal soon. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week. But soon.
When it happens, it happens so quickly that you don’t have the time to argue. A bullet. Too fast. Too fast even for you. You know even when you’re charging towards Drake who’s still standing that you’re late, the deal is on, sealed, and there’s nothing you can do to change it. You collide with him, and the bullet aimed at Drake grazes your arm before it sinks to Drake’s chest.
Not lethal. It’s not lethal. There’s bloody froth rising to Drake’s lips when he struggles to breathe with punctured lung. You put your palm over the wound to prevent the lung from collapsing. Drake curses and spats blood, grabs your hand.
“It’s time… Let go.”
He uses his last reserves and freezes your hand, and instinctively you pull off from him. Drake smiles through the blood and suddenly lunges towards you, grabbing the front of your uniform and takes your lips, seals the deal with his blood and kiss.
“Take care of her… You big bastard… Or I’ll come and haunt you…”
And it’s only you and Marie. You wait. You wait even when the night is cold and you’re so lonely that you can barely breathe and you can hear her crying at the end of the corridor, you wait because that was part of the deal. You wait until she’s ready to let go. You wait until she comes looking for you.
Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not the next week or week after that.
It’s a long wait. You’re living like a monk now, because that was also part of the deal. Because that was the part you decided to include. No booze. No women. No picking up fights. No real life until she returns from the dead. There are mornings you wake up so hard and stiff that it hurts. There are moments when you fantasize of sinking your claws through random people. There are moments you’re so fucking thirsty and parched that even beer commercials make you weep. There are moments when you feel like running. Leaving everything behind and starting from the scratch.
You’re missing her like you would miss one of your limbs. She’s there every day, but you can’t go to her. And you miss Drake. Cocky Ice Prick who kept freezing your fingers as a pun, and as a reminder of what would happen to the more sensitive part of you if you strayed. The only man who could get away with his life for harassing you. The only man you ever felt fucking with. Yeah. You probably would have done that if it weren’t for Marie.
Or not. If it weren’t for Marie, you wouldn’t even have ended up in here in the first place. You’d been drinking, fighting and fucking your ass off, traveling between small cities, living in that dingy trailer of yours and only waiting for the moment they finally have a lock on you. You wouldn’t even have met Drake if it weren’t for Marie. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it? When you find yourself imagining writhing, sweaty body against yours, pliant muscles under your fingers and tight caresses stroking your cock and you realize it’s not Marie you’re fantasizing about, but Drake, and taste of his blood and saliva floods your mouth like it was just yesterday when he kissed you. And you realize you fell for him as good and hard as you did fell in love with Marie.
You keep waiting. Not so patiently, but you don’t have a choice. You won’t give yourself any other options, because what she had with Drake must die first. What you had with Drake must die first, just like Drake died on your arms that day.
Your door is not locked anymore, but she won’t come to you. Not tonight.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Epilogue may follow later.