Page 65 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
“Open.”
Crane opens his mouth.
Stagger brushes Crane’s teeth. His lopsided face scrunches with concentration, a worm in the crook of his neck moving as the muscles tense. That thumb pushes aside Crane’s lips, tilts Crane’s head to getthe best angle for each tooth. Stagger hums as he works. When he’s done, he steps aside to let Crane spit and rinse his mouth in the sink, and then he walks over to the stained tub and turns on the water.
Stagger attempts to help Crane take off his clothes, but Crane pulls away, so Stagger turns off the bathroom lights and suddenly it’s okay.
Dim sun trickles in through the tiny window high over the tub. Everything comes off. Levi’s shirt, the sports bra with the leak-stains on the inside, pants, boxers, and all of it goes into the dirty clothes pile. Crane has no idea when he last managed to change his underwear. The water in the tub roars. Stagger puts a hand under the stream to check the temperature, lets Crane do the same to double-check, and when it’s half-full, he helps Crane in.
The water is warm and perfect, and Crane wants to cry but doesn’t. He’s felt disgusting for so long. Fighting to get himself into the shower or wipe himself down whenever he could but never managing it. Stagger washes Crane’s hair, twice since it doesn’t feel clean after the first go. A soft cloth rubs down his face and neck, where funnily enough, some amount of facial hair has managed to survive the scalding water and lack of testosterone; moves across the shoulders and back, maneuvers gently around aching breasts. He lingers on the tattoos, but never for too long.
Eventually, Stagger washes the suds from Crane’s shoulders, reaches into the water to wipe down Crane’s thighs, and signs,Good?
Good, Crane signs back, and the sign is close enough tothank youthat he decides it means that too.
Stagger pulls the drain.
And then doesn’t move. As if doing this has taken all the energy out of him—or as if he’d thrown himself into caring for Crane to distract himself from something. When Stagger breathes, lungs operated like billows by all the worms crawling around inside him, he shudders.
“Hurts.”
Crane nods gently. Yes, it hurts. It’s going to hurt until it’s over. It’s going to hurt them both.
That doesn’t seem to be the response Stagger wanted, though. He groans. Gives a jerky shake of the head. Fumbles for a bit, tries to find words, can’t. He keeps starting sounds but finding himself unable to finish them or form them into anything with real meaning.
Crane signs,Okay?
“Want,”he says, then frustrated,“No.”
Crane shows Stagger a big breath, motioning for him to repeat it.Bigbreath. Start over.
Stagger tries again, concentrating so so hard.“Worms—inside.”
That is also correct, that is in fact where the worms are, but apparently that isn’t right either. With a sound bordering on a whimper, Stagger gets up and leaves the bathroom.
The tub finishes draining. It makes that awful sucking sound it does at the end of every bath. Crane hesitates; is he supposed to follow? Stagger didn’t tell him to follow. The bathroom is freezing in the winter and he’s cold. He slicks his wet hair back from his face and sits up, shivering.
Stagger returns with—what the fuck?
One of Levi’s knives. One of the knives he uses to take apart roadkill and/or people, theniceone he takes on hunts only half the time because he likes it too much. Crane has always, admittedly, been smitten with it; the slight curve to the black blade, the drab paracord handle distinctly military in a porn-parody sort of way. The fact that Levi keeps his knives perfectly sharp.
Levi also has managed to keep themin the apartment.Stagger did not go outside to fetch this. They’ve been here the whole time. Crane swears he’d searched the place up and down in a fit months ago,looking for a workable blade. Even inside the couch cushions, and the loose slab of drywall under the sink where the cockroaches come in.
Stagger strips his clothing. All of it.
Crane is too tired to pretend he’s not staring.
Stagger is heavier than Levi, fatter around the belly. Less hairy, though. All the hair is concentrated below the navel, his flaccid cock resting limply against his thigh, and in the dim light it’s just possible to make out the things that don’t line up. The pubic hair pattern bisected and rejoined half an inch from where it should be, a puckering scar from the groin to the belly. He is made of skin sitting wrong on the muscle, muscle packed wrong on the bone, worms visible in the forearms and hips and thighs.
What had Irene said?All that cuttin’ up and sewin’ together.
Then Stagger is getting into the tub. Crane snorts, tries to gesture something along the lines ofhey, a little cramped in here, but that doesn’t stop him. Crane has to settle between Stagger’s knees, belly resting on his thighs while Stagger lies back. It’s weird to be up here, looking down at him. Usually Crane is under someone else.
Stagger pulls the skin of his lower stomach taut.
Crane’s attention snaps to the tip of the knife.
Just as it sinks into the soft skin just above the groin.
