Page 64 of Paint Eater
She arranged them so that he was curled up in bed, his head on her lap as she scratched her nails gently against his scalp.
He closed his eyes and willed the numbness back.
**********
Logan felt like he’d broken the seal on something he couldn’t control. The hot fumes of it boiled up inside him, filling his gut, choking him.
All he wanted to do was sleep. Or run, and run, and never stop running.
He paced his room, feeling crazy with an energy that left him trembling. His phone was clutched sweatily in his hand.
It would be a bad idea. It would be such a fucking bad idea.
He unlocked his phone. His fingers worked on their own.
I’m sorry. Can you come over? Please.
The message sent, slipping through his fingers.
He closed his eyes, pressing the phone against his forehead. What the fuck was he doing? Jay couldn’t help him. Jay couldn’t fix him, couldn’t fix his life.
But. But, Logan wanted to see him so terribly. Just one piece of comfort, as cruel as it was to ask it of Jay. Just one touch or look or word.
A needle pierced through time, bunching it together, warping it so that the doorman was calling about a visitor downstairs in the next minute.
Logan told him to send Jay up. He stood at his open door, trying to carve himself out of something sturdier than the soft clay he’d been left as. But then, there he was, unchanged, eyes bright and sad, worried.
“Logan?”
Logan looked away, but before he could say anything stupid or truthful or pleading, Jay had his arms around him, the pressure and smell of him such a relief that Logan felt his eyes ache.
“Sorry,” Logan said wetly.
“Don’t. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
It wasn’t fair of Logan to put this on Jay, to have him be the valve that released all his tension, but the comfort of it was too big for Logan to turn down.
Jay was warm and safe, and Logan let himself, for the first time in weeks, relax.
“I just wanted to,” Logan confessed. “I just needed to…fuck. I miss you.”
Jay tightened his arms around him. “Me too.”
And then, a voice, like the crack of a whip. “What’s going on here?”
Logan flinched, lifting his head to see his mom standing there, right outside the closing doors of the elevator.
“I—” Logan choked on the rest of the words.
Jay let go of Logan, turning around to face her, keeping Logan back with one hand as if his mom would lunge at him. “Hi, Mrs. Williams.”
“Hello. I wasn’t aware that you were still seeing my son.”
“I wasn’t. This time is the first time since, uh, the charity event.”
“I see.”
The silence that fell was cold and hard, but Logan had no idea how to escape it. Jay, though, apparently did.
