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Beneath the gauze, Cliff's mutilated hand throbs mercilessly. It doesn't just hurt, it's taken on a whole life of its own in the days since the injury. The skin is tight and every movement feels like being raked across hot embers. He sits at his desk with his hand on his thigh and stares into the distance as if in a trance, willing his arm to be motionless, not a single twitch from the shoulder down. The pain almost disappears, too, until Noah walks in and ruins it all.
"We're finished," he says as he crosses the threshold and shuts the door with a gentle click behind him. "All packed up and ready to go."
Cliff is silent, still in his trance. A finger twitch will ruin it all.
"Ready to head back home…" Noah says, drawing Cliff from his trance entirely. Cliff blinks and turns his eyes up at the other man, staying otherwise motionless.
"Great," Cliff replies, careful still not to move. "Thanks for coming and saving my ass."
"You know you wouldn't need to be trying to access another plane of existence if you just went to the doctor and had your hand checked out."
"What if I want to sit on the astral plane?"
"Do so at your own peril," is Noah's glib reply. There is still enough distance between them that the interaction is void of any intimacy, and Noah prides himself on the fact that he could have made a joke about Cliff's ass just then but he didn't take the bait and he deserves some praise for that…but he's too overwhelmed with the simple knowledge that Cliff needs him. He's spent enough time in the other man's orbit to feel it in his bones. "Can I give you a ride home?"
"You'd better not."
"Does Shelley know I'm in town?"
"Of course she does."
"You know, I'm okay with us not being us. We never were any good at it anyway. I'm okay with all of it, if your marriage is salvageable and your kid is happy, it's fine. But I can't stop caring about you. And I won't be bullied into it."
"You've never been bullied into anything."
That isn't true, Noah thinks, but he's more than earned the reputation anyway. And to that end, he decides he won't take no for an answer.
They end up two sad middle-aged men sitting at a diner two towns away, watching the tide roll in, kissing the rocks and sand goodnight. Cliff's hand has been cleaned up and re-dressed, but Noah still isn't happy with it. He'll stop nagging though. He's seen the wound, he's been allowed that much, it has to stop there whether he thinks it needs stitches or not. Cliff is a grown man who can make his own bad choices. Their time is too short to spend harping at each other, at least over something as inconsequential as this. He's taking care of it which means it probably won't get infected and it will eventually heal.
That's good enough.
"How's your stomach?" Noah asks as Cliff peruses the menu with a general look of disgust. Cliff makes a grunting sound without looking up.
"A lot worse than my hand."
"Have you seen a doctor?"
Cliff smiles sadly and lays the menu down, ready to lay down the same schpiel as always - everyone asks and this is the answer. It rolls off of his tongue almost effortlessly it's so well rehearsed. "Plenty. The answers vary in how unhelpful they are. Lactose intolerance, stress, an ulcer, irritable bowels. Apparently, no matter what it is, the consensus is just that I should stop eating foods that make it hurt. That leaves me with…well, nothing so far."
"Cliff…" Noah starts, and Cliff shakes his head. He knows exactly where this is headed, they've had the same conversation for the better part of a decade. Noah asks him how he's doing and uses it as a segue into The Talk.
"Don't lecture me."
"I'm concerned, that's all. People are dying all around us, people we've known for decades. Dear friends, Cliff. We've been to more funerals in the last few years than anyone should ever have to. And you've lost at least ten pounds since the last time I saw you."
"Because I can't eat fucking food, Noah. Christ. I don't have AIDS."
"How do you know? Have you been tested?"
"Of course not! How do you suggest I go about that discreetly, huh?"
Noah backs off quickly when the waitress comes, he knows better than to continue a conversation like this in mixed company. They're just as liable to be victims of a violent crime as they are to find someone sympathetic to their bedroom preferences. He clears his throat and smiles and orders himself a breakfast platter, greasy potatoes and eggs and bacon all in a heap to be doused in Tobasco and pepper. Cliff's jealousy is almost palpable as he orders a plate of plain toast. "No butter," he says miserably. "Please. Just toast."
There is butter on his toast when it arrives and he almost loses it, almost rages at the waitress. After the week he's had it would feel so good just to let it rip but it's not her fault that his hand hurts and his stomach hurts and his job is currently sucking the life out of him. She wrote no butter on the ticket, he saw her do it. She tried.
So he eats it and he pays the price almost immediately. His stomach churns angrily. Some foods are worse than others and dairy is the worst of them all. It hits him hard and fast, and he squirms in his seat against the gnawing pain that grows low in his belly. One doctor calls them spasms, another called them cramps, he just calls them bullshit as he chews through a sleeve of Rolaids and hopes for the best.
"Why didn't you send it back?" Noah asks as he shovels his food in like he hasn't eaten in weeks. Cliff narrows his eyes in disgust.
"I don't know, Noah. I've got no self respect. It tastes good and I'm weak. I'm weak." He pauses, and then sighs in the most pathetic way possible. "I'm hungry."
"You are not weak. Don't say that type of thing about yourself. Come on."
It's not about the toast. Cliff shifts topics quickly - the butter might be eating him up but it didn't' start the misery, it only added on. "They're going to fire me."
"You'll land on your feet. You always do."
"My family depends on me, Noah."
"You just solved a huge case and made NIS look good, there's no way they're going to fire you. The optics would be too bad."
"No," Cliff says, agreeing. "They won't fire me. But they will humiliate me. They will put me in a situation where my best option is to resign."
"Cliffy," Noah says, chancing something soft and sweet. "Don't be so…"
"Dramatic? Oh, honey."
"Don't you honey me. Come on, lets go get our regular room down at the Bayside Inn and spend the night. You can piss and moan about your job all you want in bed." He whispers the last part, knowing that even if they're the only people around, someone will still manage to pick up on them. "You get the check, I'll get the car."
Cliff frowns as he pulls out the cash. "I had four bites of toast and you ate an entire farm. I think this is a little lopsided." Noah just smiles sweetly and slides out of the booth, headed for the door, headed for the lot. He'll pull the car right up front, he won't even make Cliff walk because he's a damn gentleman and Cliff is his damsel in distress, at least for the night. Paying the bill is the least Cliff can do at this point.
At the Bayside Inn, Noah waits in the car while Cliff rents the room. It's always Cliff that rents the room. They're in California and it's the 90s, but people still look at black men differently than white men and Noah figures they don't need to add more visibility to the fact that they're both men sharing a room for the night. Cliff will get a key and they'll forget about it. Noah might be put on surveillance to make sure he isn't selling drugs or running guns. It doesn't even bother him anymore, it's just reality and he'd accepted that a long time ago.
While Cliff gets the room key, Noah walks to the gas station up the road for a bottle of shitty wine and some extras for the night. Normally they would get drunk on cheap wine and fuck until the sun came up but he suspects tonight might go a little different. That's okay, too. Noah doesn't mind the quiet nights, the nights spent really pretending that this is something more than sex.
Noah sneaks in ten minutes later with a paper bag in his arms.
He finds Cliff lying on the bed in his underwear looking miserable. His stomach is bloated and swollen and Noah sighs, emptying the bag on the bed. Antacids, a bottle of ginger ale, a sleeve of Saltine crackers in a single serve box and a Twinkie. Cliff smiles at Noah's thoughtfulness.
"Shelley just tells me to suck it up," Cliff whispers sadly. Noah nods and sets the bottle of wine still in his hand on top of the junky old television set.
"If I had the pleasure of living with you, I might say the same thing…but I don't."
"You wouldn't want to live with me."
"You're damn right. But sometimes I fantasize about it. Waking up next to you, not having to sneak in and out…"
"We only have six hours, Noah. Are you planning on wasting them all on this?" Cliff asks, rubbing his angry stomach as if it will help. All he wants is for the pain to stop so he can get on his knees and make the best of their six hours the only way he really knows how. He hasn't had sex in years with his wife, and he only sees Noah every few months, he needs this like he needs fucking oxygen. Mike calls him uptight, and this is how he cures that and right now he's struggling just to sit up. Damn that toast.
"I don't believe any time spent with you is wasted."
Noah can't help himself. Cliff isn't his, never has been and never will be, but damn is he jealous that Shelley gets to have him all to herself. Well, not all, but mostly. He gets the sex, and she gets all the rest. She gets the better and worse, she gets the sickness and health, there are no vows for fucking and leaving with the sunrise but if there were that belongs to him. But he wants more so bad it hurts. She doesn't love him the way that Noah does, she can't and she won't. And there isn't a damn thing he can do about that.
Because Cliff made his choice a long time ago. He chose Shelley, he chose to pretend he was straight so the world would accept him. Noah never did bother with that kind of play acting. The world could take him or leave him exactly the way he was. "I'm 5'8" and funny looking, I need a beautiful wife just to be taken seriously. You're practically a god, I think you'll be fine." Cliff's words, not his, and they rattled around in his head every day.
Now Cliff has chronic stomach problems that are probably (hopefully) stress-related and his kid is a mess and his marriage is on the rocks while Noah spends time at the gym and at the beach and goes on quiet dates that end up in nondescript motel rooms. Noah, according to many of their friends, is living the dream. He leads a life where last names don't matter and he gets laid with alarming regularity and is somehow jealous of a damn woman anyway. Because she's got what he wants, has always wanted, and no matter how okay with it he says he is, it'll never be okay.
"Are we gonna fuck or what?" Cliff asks when he finally forces himself upright in spite of the burning in his stomach. His sheer determination is sexy if not a little ridiculous. Noah lets out a quiet laugh and reaches for the bottle of wine, twisting the cap off and taking a pull. Cliff snatches the bottle from him, eagerly sucking at the bitter red liquid that will send him straight to hell for the next week. If he's got to be miserable, he's going to make the best of it. Regretting this is a hell of a lot more fun than regretting toast.
Noah unzips his pants and smiles. "And they say romance is dead."