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It starts too fast, and Charlie can hardly see anything before it’s over. Chet is yelling at him, something along the lines of “Never touch my girlfriend again!” and “Fags like you shouldn’t even be around here! Go back to Welton where you belong!” Charlie’s anger starts soaring.
It takes him a moment to pull away from the group of girls that’s surrounded him. They’ve been saying things about prep school and how it must be nice having such rich parents all night. How he’s handsome. How he’s smart. Charlie thinks that maybe in another world, he could get used to this. He can’t see Knox clearly until he breaks free, and as soon as he sees him, his heart has erupted, the pieces making his chest ache. He thinks that he wants to go to him, to pull him from the ground, to brush the bangs out of his eyes and kiss him right there in front of everybody. But if Chet had hit him for merely speaking to Chris and giving her a hug, and if he thought they were queer, kissing Knox could get them both killed. There was a group of boys laughing that Knox had disappeared with earlier in the corner, and Charlie felt his blood burn. There was a girl from Neil’s play that was hanging on him, and he shrugged her off, watching the scene unfold. Everybody seemed to have forgotten that Charlie was even there.
Knox was looking around desperately, the pain in his head and back and gut excruciating. He knew he was bleeding, could feel his bones rearranging and shifting with every slight turn of the head. Charlie watched him, still trying to figure out of touching him was going to get him killed. But that all left the reaches of his mind as he saw that Knox was looking around for him. He was trying to find him in the crowd. A lone Elvis Presley record wailed on from the corner, and Charlie finally caught perfect sight of his face in the low lighting. He was drunk, that much was obvious. There was a mark on his neck and his nose was streaming blood. He looked like he was trying not to cry.
Chet was still looming over him, but Chris had come up behind him, telling him to stop hitting people or something to that effect. Everybody was on edge. Breaking the silence, Charlie marched forward, leaning down to Knox.
“Charlie,” His mangled voice began, “Charlie…” It faded as Charlie put his arms around him, hoisting him from the ground. His breath smelled like tequila, and his eyes were glazed over.
“If he thinks about showing his fucking face here again, there’ll be more where that came from.” Chet says to them both, and Charlie wants to set Knox down and punch Chet’s teeth in. Charlie’s always run warm, and he knows that right now, he must be boiling over.
He all but drags Knox through the house, past the girls who wave goodbye to him and the little group that mutter things Charlie can’t really hear. With a name like Bubba, Charlie didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
“Charlie,” Knox says again. It’s slurred, but Charlie can tell that he’s sobering up. “Charlie,” He whispers again as they get off of the porch and into the brisk night air. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“Knox,” Charlie finally says his name as he rounds them away from the house and by a tree. They’re in a sort of cul-de-sac, although Chet’s house seems to be farther away from everything. The end of it all. “Here, here.” They’re traipsing through yards and over sidewalks when a house comes up. It says for sale, and Charlie drags him around to the back porch. It’s sprawling, like one of those porches in Gone With The Wind .
Charlie can’t tell Knox that he was dragging him around so quickly because he doesn’t want company, but because he hasn’t decided if he wants to cry or not and he certainly doesn’t want anybody to see them.
As soon as they get to the area, a secluded little place with a nice fence, Charlie finally relaxes. They’re out of everybody’s watchful eye.
That’s when Knox starts to puke. He’s retching, making quite inhuman sounds. Charlie wants to take everything that happened to him away and just do it for him. He’d gladly stand in his shoes. That feeling burns.
Once Knox finishes up, he wipes his mouth on his Welton issued jacket. His hair is no longer so meticulously done. The gel must have worn off. He looks pale, and a bit sickly, He’s still got dried blood on his face, and Charlie thinks about that line Todd wrote. Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. He hadn’t understood it then, that deep, complex feeling Todd always had. How tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us meant more to him now than he’d ever known. But now, with Knox looking at him with those eyes, Charlie wanted nothing more than to take him in his arms.
“Can we go home?” He asks instead, and Charlie nods.
“Stay here,” He adds. He parked the car by the house and he doesn’t want Knox to walk back by it. He never wants Knox to see any of those people again.
“Don’t leave me here.” Comes Knox’s reply, and his voice sounds like it hurts. Surely from all the puking and how he’s sobbing. He’s sobbing, Charlie blankly realizes. Charlie gives him his arm and then realizes he doesn’t care how queer they may look. He’s guiding Knox to the Welton car that they’ve stolen, and he’s being so careful with him it feels like he may break. Charlie wants to kiss him. It’s in the back of his mind, and now is not the time to be giving any big confessions, but he wants to all the same. They move quickly once Knox gets settled, and Charlie all put careens out from the area.
“Knox,” He finally says once they’re on the road. They’re farther from the school than he’d like. He needs to get Knox into bed. “Knox…”
That’s all they’ve seemed to be able to say to each other. Knox isn’t sobbing anymore, but Charlie can see from a quick glance that he’s crying. “Don’t wanna talk about it just yet.” Knox says, turning his head to the window. It’s freezing in the car, and Knox’s hands are shaking.
Charlie doesn’t think twice before offering his own over. He can’t find his hand immediately, because he’s driving, and so his hand finds Knox’s thigh. He feels him tense under the touch and Charlie thinks he may have overstepped his boundaries, because he pulls away. But as he pulls away, Knox grabs his hand, intertwining their fingers.
They don’t say anything more, and finally, they arrive at Welton. Charlie turns the headlights off as soon as he parks into the little area. He doesn’t want attention from anybody just now. He figures the poets are all still out at the cave. It’s not yet midnight.
They shuffle into Welton silently as possible. “My room,” Charlie says. Cameron would be gone at the meeting, and he didn’t quite know how they’re were going to explain any of this to Stick.
“‘M freezing.” Knox whispered, his teeth a chattering mess.
It was only here, in the comfort and silence of his room, that Charlie felt like he could really ask him. There were too many gaps in the night from Charlie’s side. He hadn’t had one beer, as he’d been talking his head off to the girls who were clearly attracted to him. He’d danced with some and flirted a bit with others. Nothing too crazy. Just a little fun, as he had planned on doing. He wasn’t too interested in any of them anyways.
“We gotta get some warm clothes for you. And we gotta get you cleaned up.” Charlie found himself carefully tearing off the Welton issued jacket from him, his hands warm against Knox’s cold skin.
Charlie grabbed some of his own school issued pajamas and an extra set for Knox, helping him as they walked to the bathroom. Not caring about anything in that moment other than Knox, Charlie immediately turned one of the showers on, hopeful that they wouldn’t be attracting any attention and that no one came in.
“Knox,” The hard spray of the showers was enough noise that allowed him to speak at more of a normal tone. “What the hell happened?”
Knox’s eyes were on the ground. “Chet hit me. You saw.”
“But…” He stopped himself, “Look, you need to change, okay? You need to shower.”
“Are you going to shower too?”
“I was planning on it. I gotta get that grease you lent me out of my hair.”
“I’ll wait.”
“What?” In a school where there were no personal boundaries, Charlie had seen Knox in the shower plenty of times. This was no different.
“I’m gonna be sick again.” Charlie was glad he’d nixed Knox’s blazer, because a moment later, Knox was retching into the toilet.
“Knox, shit. How much did you drink?” Charlie loomed over him at the entrance to the stall, his eyes catching what looked like a bruise on the back of Knox’s neck. Knox wasn’t puking anything up, as he’d gotten it all out of his system earlier. He was just making these terrible, awful retching noises.
“Not enough,” His voice was choked, and he sounded like he was going to start crying.
“Did you hit the back of your head on the coffee table when Chet hit you?”
Charlie bent down then, sitting on the other side of the stall from Knox as he picked his head up from the toilet, a sigh escaping his lips and something like a sob followed after.
“I-” Knox put his head in his hands, “Can you shower? I’ll wait for you to finish.”
“Knox, we always shower together. Everybody here does.”
“I don’t want you to see me.”
“Knox,” Charlie hadn’t meant for his voice to come out so raw. “What did I miss tonight?”
“I told you. Chet hit me.”
“I heard Bubba ask if you were somebody named Mutt’s brother. Then I didn’t see you for awhile.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you talk to Chris?”
Knox’s head was still in his hands, so Charlie had no idea how to accurately tell how he was doing. His slumped position was more than enough, though. “Yeah. She hugged me. Then Chet punched my guts out.”
“Wait a sec,” Charlie realized he still hadn’t cleaned the dried blood from Knox’s lip. Quickly grabbing a towel from the school stock, he waited for some warm water. It didn’t take long. He came back quickly, and held the towel to him. “Your nose.”
“Thanks,” Knox reached up to grab the little towel, and quickly brought it to his face. In this lighting, Charlie could see all the mangled parts of his face. He had a cut on the top of his eyebrow, a bruised cheek. His nose looked painful. At least his eyes were okay.
“How about I shower on the other side of the wall, okay? You can shower out here where we normally do. Save time.”
“Okay.”
Charlie pulled him to his feet, but the sinking feeling in his own gut was taking over. Knox had been forgiving with the hand earlier, but he’d been a little skittish to his touch all night. Like he didn’t want Charlie to find something.
“Take your time, okay?”
“Yeah.”
Charlie sent him one last look, and then quickly got to work on the other side. He was moving at lighting speed to lather his hair and wash the night down the drain. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be watching Knox, because he knew that Knox needed it. To Charlie’s surprise, the water was already off on the other side as he dried off and threw on his flannel pajamas.
When he rounded the corner, he found Knox clean and changed, sitting on the windowsill that Todd had sat on a few weeks ago, the one with the wandering eyes and the panic at seeing Neil Perry naked. Charlie had remembered that look upon Todd’s face all too well. But this look of Knox’s, he had never seen in his life.
“Knox?”
“‘M gonna brush my teeth.” He said, hopping off of the windowsill and trudging past Charlie to the sink area. The bathroom always had lights on, no matter the time; which is how Charlie noticed that the mark he thought was a bruise looked more like a handprint than a table corner.
Knox doled out the toothpaste to them both, keeping his head down. He had his pajamas buttoned up all the way, something he never normally did. Knox liked to sleep in the school issued t-shirt. He wasn’t a fan of the flannels. Always kept them open.
“Knox,” Charlie’s voice felt like it was stuck in his throat. “What happened to you at the party?”
“Chet hit me. I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“What’s that bruise from on the back of your neck?”
Knox was silent.
“Dammit, Knox. What happened?”
Knox looked back at him through the mirror of the bathroom, swirling his toothbrush around. It took him awhile, but he eventually spat, seeming to wait for Charlie to do the same. He was quick to follow.
“Do you think everybody’s back yet?”
“No. It’s only twelve thirty. We’re out there until three most nights.”
“It may take me till three to tell you.” Knox said, in something that felt like the first confession of the night.
“Let’s get back to my room.” They tip-toed back to the place, silence following them.
“Okay,” Charlie turned his lamp on, locking his door behind him. Cameron always had his key, so he wasn’t worried about him. “You gotta start talking, Knox. I’m really fucking worried about you.”
“I just… it’s…” Then he was sobbing, large, big, awakening of the whole hall sobs. Nobody was going to question that. Welton was a place for tears. He was sitting on Charlie’s bed, and Charlie was quick to sit next to him, offering his arms.
Knox, however, didn’t take them.
“Knox?”
“‘M sorry,” He whispered. “Charlie,” His voice was wrecked.
“You’re scaring me.”
“Chris only hugged me because I was too drunk to understand anything she was saying.”
“If you think I’m going to believe that bullshit…”
“I went to get a drink. That’s when it all started.” Knox drew a breath, and he could tell it was meant to be calming. Charlie wanted to touch him. Badly.
“Take your time.”
“I was getting like a beer, but Bubba and some other guys from the football team came up to me and told me I was Mutt’s brother. I’m not, obviously. They coerced me into a shot of tequila, and then I had had two. They said there was some stuff they wanted to show me upstairs, so I followed because I hadn’t seen Chris, and you were off dancing, and you looked so happy. I didn’t want to ruin that. And besides, they were just going to show me around the place.”
Charlie felt like he was going to be sick.
“But, uh,” Knox looked down at his hands. “They didn’t. And then I was trying to find you downstairs and Chris started hugging me and I guess they told Chet, cause all of a sudden I was getting the shit beat out of me.”
“They…” Charlie was at a loss for words.
“Just a little, yeah. But then they just started kicking me around. I liked that part better.”
“Jesus Christ, Knox.” Charlie felt like the world was falling apart around him. This boy. This boy he loved. He was only seventeen. They were only seventeen. That’s why Knox had been retching. Why he hadn’t wanted Charlie to see him naked.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“I shouldn’t have wanted to go to this party in the first place. I don’t even like Chris all that much.”
“Don’t apologize. Seriously.” It had come out a little more grave than Charlie wanted it to.
They sat in silence for a moment, looking at each other. The hand in the car had meant something, didn’t it?
“Charlie I-” Something stopped Knox from speaking then, and it was silent all over again.
The hair on the back of Charlie’s neck felt raised.
“Do you think I’m a fag?”
“Why would ask me that?”
“Cause they all thought I was.”
"So?"
"I guess..."
“It wouldn’t matter to me, you hear? It wouldn’t matter to me.”
“Okay.”
It was silent for a little bit longer, and then Charlie found what he’d been trying to say.
“I’m the one that’s sorry. That I didn’t look for you. That I wasn’t there to protect you.”
“You shouldn’t be apologizing either. Besides, it wouldn’t have looked good for me. If you’d come and tried to rescue me.”
“What? Why?”
Knox seemed to find what he needed to say too. “Because they said that nobody should look at other boys the way I was looking at you.”
Charlie was silent. “Knox…”
“I guess I thought I was better at hiding it. I mean, I’ve been doing it since the seventh grade.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.” Charlie shook his head, a hand rolling through his hair. “I’m just trying to…”
“I know. That’s a lot.”
“Did you mean it? Since the seventh grade?”
“Oh. Uh, yeah.”
“Me too. Sixth, though. Knox… if I’d been there, this wouldn’t have…” Charlie had begun to cry.
“There’s nothing you could have done. Seriously.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am too.”
“Knox,” Charlie looked at him, with those gorgeous brown eyes and his sweet little nose. It looked like it hurt. “I wanna see what they did to you.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Knox, you’re killing me.”
“Okay, okay.” Knox took his time unbuttoning his shirt, pulling the flannel off carefully and then pulled his shirt over his head. “There.”
Charlie let out a mangled sound, wanting to touch but afraid that if he did, Knox would melt away. He had a hickey on his collarbone that didn’t look like it had been any fun. The same bruised handprints over his body, a cut on his stomach. He had a bruise on his ribs. He was all black and blue.
“Knox,” Charlie didn’t know if their confessions earlier had meant much, but he wasn’t sure what else to say.
Knox pulled his shirt back over his head, looking at his hands.
“I think it could have been worse. One of the three said they wanted to get back to his girlfriend downstairs.”
All Charlie could feel was rage. They’d touched him. They’d done unspeakable things to him and he was so young. He was seventeen! He was just a kid. They were all just kids.
“I’m tired. We can talk more tomorrow. But I just…” Knox hung his head. “I feel like shit.”
“You can stay here. Don’t want you to have to explain anything to Stick. Everybody won’t be back for awhile yet.”
“Want me to take the floor?”
“You’re taking my bed.”
“I don’t want you on the floor.” Knox snuck a little closer to him. “Can you stay here with me? I just… I need you. And I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“Okay, yeah. Sure.” Charlie agreed, and then they began the awkward journey into lying down. Charlie carefully wrapped his arms around him, wondering if it was all okay. He grunted as he’d lied down, and Charlie felt his heart sink.
“Todd says there’s places for people like me.” Knox whispered, the entanglement of their bodies too much for Charlie to bear.
“I can go to Greenwich Village. San Francisco. Anywhere but here.”
“Todd told you that?”
“Yeah. He’s like me.”
“Like us,” Charlie whispered.
They were quiet for a while longer. Knox’s breathing had begun to even out. Charlie wanted to reach inside of him and take away everything that was hurting him.
“Since the sixth grade?” Knox whispered, “You’ve… since the sixth grade?”
“I’ve had half a mind recently to tell you I’m in love with you.”
He felt Knox melt against him. “I love you too.”
“I’m so sorry, Knox.” Charlie leaned forward against his own accord, pressing a kiss to Knox’s forehead.
Knox’s hand wrapped around Charlie’s waist, threading underneath his shirt and resting on his back. Knox’s hands were soft.
“Can you kiss me?”
“Are you sure?” Charlie’s heart was in his throat.
“Yes.”
So Charlie leaned in, a bit awkwardly from their positions, and cupped Knox’s cheek carefully. He pressed a kiss to his lips, hoping that Knox could feel the love that Charlie had for him through it. It was soft, and tender. They both tasted like mint.
“What should we say to Cameron?” Knox asked, pulling away breathless.
“We can figure it out tomorrow.” Charlie agreed, pulling him impossibly closer. He didn’t want to let him go.
“I love you, Charlie. I’m sorry I told you like this. I wanted fanfares and balloons and roses.”
“I want you any way I can get you. I love you, Knox.”
Knox hummed in response, falling into Charlie’s chest, listening to his heart beat. They sat like that awhile before either drifted off, peacefully holding the other.
When Cameron came in a few hours later, no one seemed to stir. Confused, but mostly just exhausted, he went about his way. And the next morning, when they were still curled into each other, he didn’t say anything either. Knox’s face was bruised, and he didn’t know why, but it wasn’t his place. Besides, the meeting last night had been amazing. He was still riding on the high from it. Maybe the two could too. But later. Later seemed much better than now.