Chapter Text
Tom’s not a drinker. Well, he drinks but he’s not a drunk. His father was a drunk (“Alcoholic,” Dr. Peyton’s voice corrects in his mind; precise language is important, Tom) and that’s what killed him, not that anyone would admit it. Or maybe he just worked himself to death. Miners aren’t exactly known for being the pinnacle of health. Maybe things would have gone differently if people would just admit the truth. Maybe things would have been better.
Anyway.
It’s been almost six years since his father’s death and Tom's got nothing else to drink to, so he may as well drink in his father's honor. In moderation. Two hundred miles away from where the old man kicked the bucket. Even if he wanted to reminisce graveside, he’s not too welcome in Harmony these days. Maybe Sarah—
No. No ‘maybe’ with Sarah. She chose Axel, that douche, and that’s that. He’s over it.
Tom’s side aches. He takes a drink.
There are probably a lot of alcoholics here. A rundown roadhouse like this, nearly midnight? Anyone with anything worth going home to is long gone by now. Budweiser’s the best thing on the tap, for Christ’s sake. Here’s to you, Dad. In between jobs at the moment, so no fancy whiskey, but I’m doing my best. I was always doing my best.
Tom’s father died six years ago, but he hadn’t spoken to him face-to-face in thirteen. He was pretty messed up at the time, but he remembers the words clear as day:
“You need help, Tom.”
Imagine, his alcoholic father telling him he needed help! Maybe all he needed was his father! If the man would just admit that everything that happened was Tom’s fault and not a freak accident, not a twist of fate, just a dumb kid with too much responsibility and his head in the clouds instead of underground where it belonged, where they were trapped, where they couldn’t breathe—
Tom’s head hurts. Another drink down the hatch. He misses his meds.
That guy over there is probably an alcoholic.
Mr. Potential Alcoholic is tall, taller even than Tom, but not big; he’s worn thin, stretched out like taffy. Got a five o’clock shadow threatening to turn into a full-blown beard. Not able to keep track of the number of fingers he’s holding up: one, three, three, two; one more, man, just one more. Sad eyes.
Tom shakes his head. Messy, that’s what’s over there. Something very messy. He doesn’t need anymore mess in his life. He’s been six years sober from mess. Dr. Peyton would be proud. So proud he might even take his calls. Get him a new prescription.
No, it’s fine. As long as he stays out of Harmony, he’s fine. Hasn’t the last six years proven that? Hasn’t slipped once.
He finishes off his Budweiser and closes out. One last glance at Mr. Probable Alcoholic (“I know when I’ve had enough—”) and walks out the door into the night where he climbs into the crappy Ford pickup he bought for two hundred cash, no questions, no problem. There’s a motel bed with his name on it (well, a name on it) and dreams that may or may not star his father, mines, or a whole lot of dead bodies.
*~*
No dreams that night, good or bad. Just hazy darkness with splashes of red. But that’s normal. It’s been his normal for sixteen years. All of this is to say he’s only a little bit pissed when he’s woken up by screaming at three in the morning.
It confuses him enough that in the split second he wakes, a nightmare abruptly starts up, the images appearing suddenly like someone sat on a remote for the TV in his brain: that asshole Red, face covered in red. Dick, but a shame what happened to him. Real shame.
Red’s bloody body fades from his mind’s eye; faster than it began, the dream’s over. Tom rubs the sleep out his eyes, rolls out of bed, and peeks through the blinds (he never claimed not to be nosy). In the interim, the screaming has turned to shouting. He has to angle himself awkwardly to the window to see, but next door, the manager (gangly, vaguely greasy, glasses so thick a Boy Scout could start a fire with ‘em) hollers at one of the guests. If the guest says anything back, Tom can’t tell—he supposes the guy’s done screaming in any case. Either way, mystery solved. He should go back to bed, see if he can’t manage another few hours. It’s none of his business anyhow.
Tom waits with baited breath to see if the guest (guests?) will get kicked out.
No one gets kicked out. The light next door turns off and the manager shuffles away. No more drama tonight. Tom tries not to be disappointed as he crawls back under the covers.
That’s the problem with living on the fringes for so long—even the smallest hint of excitement gets the blood pumping. But it’s a temptation he can’t afford. There’s a reason every other month he’s living out of his truck. Even though he hasn’t found a job yet, he’s got something good right now at this crappy little motel. He can’t go flushing it down the toilet just because he’s bored.
Tom sinks back into black and red. It’s more red this time around.
*~*
The screaming rouses him the next two nights. On the third, the manager is finally fed up and Tom’s next door neighbor is left sitting on the curb with his backpack staring out into the night. It’s Mr. Definitely an Alcoholic. Under the flickering streetlamp he looks like a ghost, fading in and out with every blink.
Tom’s blood races.
“Can’t sleep?” Tom asks dryly. He doesn’t remember grabbing the ancient bottle of water from the room’s mini fridge or going outside but he’s there now, standing over Mr. Alcoholic who blinks up at him with blood-shot eyes.
“What was your first clue?” the guy croaks. He takes the water, which Tom thinks is a bad sign. Who takes a drink from a stranger in the middle of the night?
Tom takes a seat and watches him chug. “You howling bloody murder every night, for one.” Mr. Alcoholic snorts, chokes for a second, coughs, then sets the bottle aside. Up close, Tom realizes the guy’s not actually that old, maybe even the same age as him. The baggy eyes and baggier clothes age him by a decade, though.
“Yeah, I guess that would do it,” Mr. Alcoholic admits. He wipes his mouth and looks up at the sky. “What do you want?”
“Just making conversation.”
“Well, I’m not so great at making conversation these days.”
“Awesome, neither am I. We already have a ton in common.”
That earns Tom... Well, not a laugh, but some kind of sound. At least he’s not being told to fuck off.
“Listen, man, you don’t want to get to know me,” Mr. Alcoholic says with a half-smile. “I’m kind of fucked up.”
“Isn’t everybody?” Tom offers.
The guy shakes his head. “Not like me.”
Tom remembers feeling like this once. He was sixteen, and instead of letting him go to baseball practice after school, his dad started him up in the mines so he could learn “real work from real men.” He started dating Sarah six months later and his dad lightened up a little; every other day in the mines and one weekend free a month.
He licks his lips nervously and says, “Try me.”
Mr. Alcoholic looks at him sideways. “Okay. Okay, then.” He exhales slowly. “Went looking for my missing sister. Ended up finding some psycho instead who went on a killing spree and took out seven kids and a cop. But then I found my sister, who it turns out had been kidnapped by the psycho, and together we killed the asshole. Except I guess not, because then he killed my sister. Right in front of me. And I’ve been seeing it over and over again in my dreams every night for six years.”
His smile turns razor sharp. “Fucked up enough for you?”
Not like me. Maybe. Maybe not. This is better than when he was sixteen.
Tom wipes his palms on his jeans and sticks a hand out. “I’m Tom,” he says, remembering too late that’s not what he put on the sign-in sheet at the front desk. Decides he doesn’t really care.
Mr. Alcoholic blinks at him. Once, twice. Together, they flicker under the streetlight, disappearing and reappearing. He takes Tom’s hand.
“Clay.”
Clay. Salt of the earth. It has a nice ring to it. Better than Mr. Alcoholic in any case, even if it still is an apt descriptor. Clay smells like night sweats.
Six years. Maybe it can be a new beginning for both of them.
*~*
It’s a bad idea. Tom still invites Clay to stay in his room for a while. Just ‘til he finds another place.
Clay stares at him, pointing out not that it’s weird (though it is) but that he just got kicked out of his room. Tom counters that until tonight, he hadn’t seen the manager at all since checking in. The old fart won’t notice, I promise.
They come to an agreement: they go halfsies on the room and Clay takes the floor. No, we’ll switch, every other night. No, I insist. It’s only fair.
Clay lays out on the floor next to the bed in his sleeping bag. Tom throws the extra pillow at him in revenge for losing the argument.
He doesn’t sleep the rest of the night, listening to Clay breathe. It reminds him of having a roommate again, like at the hospital. His roommate, Paul, thought the government planted a chip in his head. Like Paul, Clay absolutely believes every word of his story. Unlike with Paul, Tom wants to believe him. Since he can’t sleep, he pretends he’s keeping an eye out for Tom’s psycho killer as he tosses and turns. He thinks it might be happiness keeping him up.
The next morning Clay takes off early because, despite all appearances, he has a job. Tom’s sure he’ll never see his face again and spends all day in his room, fighting off a massive headache and swearing futilely at the ceiling. But then against all odds, Clay reappears around five o’clock, drenched in sweat, and asking to use the shower. Tom doesn’t show how relieved he is, and after Clay cleans himself up they go to the roadhouse and split a basket of shitty chicken fingers and fries.
“What’s up with you, man?” Clay asks after two hours of shooting the shit. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” Tom asks. He’s preoccupied with whether or not he should go for more fries or try the onion rings. They can’t be much worse.
“This man, this—” Clay pulls the basket away as Tom reaches for the last shriveled fry. “Did you not hear what I told you last night? I’m bad news.”
“Sounds more like you have bad luck,” Tom says, pulling the basket back. The last fry is burned and salty. Onion rings for sure.
“So you believe me.”
“Weird thing to lie about.”
Clay watches silently as Tom leaves to get the onion rings. When he returns, Clay is sitting back in his chair, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. Tom sighs. “Look, I’ve had a rough time at it too, you know? I don’t judge.”
“Really.”
Tom swallows. This was so fucking stupid. “You, uh, ever hear of a town called Harmony, Pennsylvania?”
Clay frowns. “No. Wait, a bunch of murders, maybe? I was in high school, didn’t pay much attention.”
High school? Then Clay doesn’t know about the later deaths. He has no idea.
A new beginning.
Something inside Tom thrills. “Yeah, back in ‘99. A local named Harry Warden killed twenty-two people.”
“What about it?”
“I, uh, I was there,” Tom confesses. He takes a drink to stop his hands from shaking. Moderation. Clay’s eyebrows shoot up. “Knew some of the people who died. Saw Warden get shot, too. It was... a lot.”
“A lot.”
“Yeah, a lot.”
Tom doesn’t know what to say and takes another drink. Clay mirrors him, blinks, then starts to laugh, and it might be a real one this time. It’s an odd sound, breathy and off-beat, and there’s tears in the corners of his eyes, but Tom’s pretty sure that’s a good thing. It’s probably a good thing.
He extends his glass and they clink them together. “To a lot,” he says, which Clay echoes with a funny hiccup. To a lot. To a new beginning.
Clay drinks too much, as alcoholics are wont to do, but he’s smiling while he does it, so Tom leaves him to it, even tops him up once or twice. The onion rings aren’t bad. Even the Budweiser tastes better than usual. When they finally leave, Clay slumps against Tom all the way back to the truck, Tom making sure he doesn’t kiss dirt. Clay’s nodding head touches Tom’s shoulder a couple of times on the drive back. Tom even has to zip up his sleeping bag.
“I’m so fucked up,” Clay slurs into his pillow. Tom pats his cheek before climbing into bed himself. “But, I, uh, guess I’m not the only one, right?”
He’s not. And it’s the best feeling in the world.
It’s not until the first shout wakes him that Tom figures out Clay probably wasn’t asleep the night before either.
“No! No! Whitney!”
Tom shoots upright, groping blindly for a weapon he doesn’t have (the truck, it’s in the truck). He looks over the side of the bed and Clay’s thrashing in his sleeping bag like a bug wrapped in a spider’s cocoon. For a moment he just watches, letting his eyes adjust until he can make out the terror on Clay’s sleeping face—the beads of sweat and the tension in his neck. Scared to death. Tom gnaws on his lip, just watching, until Clay cries out again. Then he’s on the ground shaking Clay awake.
“Clay, Clay! You’ll get us both kicked out. Hey!”
Clay’s eyes fly open, but he doesn’t look at Tom. He’s looking beyond him, past him, and is still fighting whatever he sees. One arm gets loose from the sleeping bag and he clips Tom’s ear, which hurts like a mother fucker; another flail clocks him on the chin and he looses his temper.
Tom grabs the rogue limb, pinning it to the ground. His other hand goes to Clay’s neck. He squeezes. “Shut up,” he hisses. “You’re using up all the air. Shut the hell up!”
Clay stills so Tom lets go. He struggles his way upright and Tom gives him some space so they can both breathe. They can both breathe.
Clay blinks. “Tom?” he asks, sounding unsure. Tom nods and Clay drops his head into his hands. “Shit. Shit. I’m sorry. Fuck.”
“You did warn me,” Tom points out.
“Still. I’m sorry. Dammit.” Clay scrubs his hands over his face. “I get if you wanna kick me out.”
“I’ll live,” Tom says. “You gonna be okay the rest of the night?” Clay shoots him a look that tells him everything he needs to know. “Ah. TV?”
They watch trash on the Sci-Fi Channel until five AM when Clay nods off. Tom leaves the TV on with the sound down low just in case, watching the light play on Clay’s face. He looks good in greens and blues and reds—especially reds.Then, he falls asleep too.
Sleep is especially red that night, and Clay might be there too. It’s good.
The next several days are much the same, except Clay wakes up immediately after one or two shakes of his shoulder. A few nights after that, Tom’s awake and staring at the ceiling without any accompanying cries. He rolls over, sees Clay twitching on the ground, and pokes him awake before he can even get a sound off. They get back to sleep pretty quick after that. The next day when Clay asks how he knew, Tom can only shrug. What can he say? I know your breathing now and it was wrong, wrong like how Paul sounded before his fits? Clay seemingly accepts the non-answer and all is well. The nightmares don’t stop coming but they no longer make it through the door. Under Tom’s watch, they never will.
One morning, Clay says casually, “I can get you a job if you want,” and that’s how Tom ends up on a road crew by that afternoon. It’s hard, backbreaking work, but Tom was raised on hard, backbreaking work (real work for real men) so the foreman doesn’t complain about his work. He’d take laboring under the sun over suffocating in a mine any day of the week. Clay’s arms look good raking asphalt over the ground. Tom’s sixteen all over again.
He may be in trouble.
*~*
Tom has a problem.
Tom decided Sarah was the girl he was going to marry after about three weeks of dating. It seemed so simple back then, and it was more anxiety than common sense that stopped him from so much as hinting at it until after graduation. Luckily for him, Sarah seemed amicable to the idea. But she was also the type always looking toward the future, so they never got past the “What do you think of marriage?” stage. She didn’t want to be stuck in a boring old town like Harmony, PA. She wanted to at least make it to Philly before taking the plunge. How she ended up with a loser like Axel Palmer he’ll never understand.
The point of this being, he falls hard and fast. Always has. Dr. Peyton called him fixated. After a year or two, they upgraded to obsessive. He knows this about himself. Dealt with it too, for the most part.
But now there’s Clay.
Clay opens up a bit at a time, like an exotic flower—rare and stubborn, needing precise conditions to bloom. Every day they work and then go to the bar to drink and Tom learns a little bit more about his new roommate. Sure, there’s the trivial crap like his birthday (July 19th) and favorite color (green), but the more important things too, how much he hates his hometown and loves the open road; how he grew up a car guy but fell in love with motorcycles after, ironically, nearly killed himself trying out a friend’s bike; how much he misses his mother, and he’s not sure if watching her waste away after weeks was worse than his sister getting ripped away so suddenly.
“Dead mom, dead dad,” Tom had said, pointing between the two. “Within months of each other. What are the odds?”
“Never really knew my dad,” Clay had replied, wiping off his fingers. They’d upgraded to fried pickles that night and it was a wise decision. “He wasn’t around a lot to begin with and took off for good right after Whitney was born.”
“Same, kind of. Mom died when I was real little. Think that’s why the old man was so obsessed with ‘raising me right,’ whatever that means.” That was more Dr. Peyton’s theory than Tom’s, but no point in bringing that up. “Timing’s weird, right? Maybe my dad is secretly your dad.”
“What, like we’re half brothers?”
“Sure.”
Clay had actually pretended to consider it for a moment, but then said, “Not unless your dad was also a good-for-nothing trucker in his spare time. Besides, I can’t see it. We don’t look anything alike.”
Tom had laughed. Blood would be good, but destiny? Destiny was better. Everything happened for a reason. Their meeting happened for a reason.
Over time, Clay tells him more and more about that night, too. The death. The terror. How the psycho picked off the kids one at a time, half of them gone before they’d even realized. Less like rampage and more like a hunter protecting its territory.
“Jason.”
“Hmm?”
“Jason Voorhees. The bastard that killed my sister. His name is Jason Voorhees.”
The same sounds mythical, like Harry Warden. It’s Clay’s talisman, Tom eventually realizes—something he can hold on to when everyone and everything doubts or disappears. The name itself holds power. Not just the name of a man but an idea. Evil incarnate. Something unspeakably horrible but easily contained in two little words. Jason Voorhees.
Tom can sympathize. Hell, he can empathize. He’s been there. He knows how easy it is to latch on to a name, how much control it gives.
He’s been in Clay’s shoes. That’s why Tom’s the only person in the world who can understand why it’s so sad that Clay, the poor sonova bitch, thinks that Jason Voorhees is real.
Tom keeps his revelation to himself. Clay’s not ready to hear it, and even if he was, Tom doesn’t want to ruin the little peace they have going here. It’s selfish, but he’s extending a kindness, too. Clay’s a little rough around the edges, but he’s a good person. Yes, he’s stubborn, but in a way that always pushes him to do the right thing no matter what. It’s not going to be easy once he finds out his memory’s not as reliable as he thought.
But Tom will be there for him. This is why he made it out of that mine alive. So he could find and help Clay Miller.
The idea had been forming in his head for days. But then comes the night where they bring a few drinks back to the room and Clay gets a little weepier than usual, and confesses:
“We stabbed him. Blade long as my forearm sticking out of his chest. A-And we dumped him in the lake. Whitney was right beside me and then she just wasn’t. He was dead and then he wasn’t. Came out of the water. He’s not human, he-he can’t be. He’s not human.”
Tom lets him cry on his shoulder and knows—this is why I’m here. I’m here for you. I’m here for you.
Hard and fast. It’s always been a problem. The bigger problem is that it never feels like a problem in the moment.
*~*
Suddenly, it’s almost February. Tom gets nervous.
There haven’t been any problems these past few years, but it’s always iffy the closer he gets to Valentine’s Day. He usually doesn’t even let himself breathe normally until March. So Clay approaches him after their shift ends on the road crew with a little tin in his hand, Tom knows he should say no. Dr. Peyton told him again and again that when he got out, recreational drugs were strictly off the table and any drinking, if done at all, should be in moderation. No ifs, ands, or buts.
But, of course, he’s been off his pills for years and has handled his drinking just fine. It’s just a little weed. It’s fine.
Tom’s smoked before (everyone in school did it, usually in the abandoned mines, which was pretty stupid thinking about it), but when they get back to room, Clay pulls out gummies, which he’s never tried. Decides quickly he’s not a fan of the taste, or being told to take it easy, just one to start with, man. Turns out, he should have listened.
“My face hurts,” Tom complains, not for the first time, he thinks. This is not the kind of high he’s used to. It took forever to come on and now that it’s here, it’s like he’s moving through Jell-o. Like trying to run in a dream.
“It’s ‘cuz you won’t stop smiling,” Clay says, and touches his cheek. He’s right. Tom’s face pulls a little wider and his jaw aches. “You smile good.”
“I smile well,” Tom corrects. He doesn’t actually know if that’s correct grammar or not. Doesn’t matter. “Why aren’t you smiling?”
“I am,” Clay argues. It’s true, but only technically; his smile is no bigger than normal, which seems supremely unfair. “I haven’t smiled this much in forever. I thought I’d die before I smiled again.” Then he frowns. His mind has gone back to the camp and the lake. “It was bad then.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, in jail.”
Tom nods. Clay’s mentioned jail once or twice. It surprised him at first—Clay didn’t and still doesn’t read jailbird to him—but makes sense in retrospect. Way Clay tells it, the cops needed someone to pin their man’s death on and Clay was the only one who walked away from the camp alive. They had him locked up within days. A surprisingly hard working public defender got Clay out on appeal, though, citing lacking and contradictory evidence. Makes all the sense in the world. Tom wonders if Clay realizes how much sense it makes.
“Not a lot of smiling in jail. People didn’t really mess with me because I’m so, you know.” He holds his hand up high above his head, measuring. “But it wasn’t good. But the messed up thing? I kind of miss it, you know? The routine? Not having to think?”
Again, Tom nods. He couldn’t imagine getting used to white walls, a strict schedule, and no shoelaces when he was first committed. But after he left, he wished someone else would plan his day for him more than once. Somewhere, Dr. Peyton is laughing at him.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Tom suggests, but Clay’s on a roll.
“You know, I got out and I tried and tried but no one would help me?” Clay continues. “I told people but no one helped, not even my lawyer. So I tracked down the girl, um, lady, who killed Jason’s mom? Back in the, uh, in the eighties. Alice, Ms. Alice? But, um, she’d been murdered. Yeah, like a few month after she offed Mrs. Voorhees. In her house. I think it’s the only time he’s ever left the lake. Everyone else who disappeared disappeared within a three mile radius of the campsite. But he went after her.”
Tom pats Clay’s arms. He’s heard this all before. It’s a little frustrating, but he gets it. Fixated. Obsessive. Words he knows well. “I know.”
“He hasn’t come after me, though,” Clay says mournfully. “I don’t... I don’t know why. Maybe because they kicked me out. Crystal Lake. Said they’d arrest me again if I came back. I miss it but I don’t want to go back jail. Who will take care of my mom and Whitney if I’m in jail?”
“It’s okay,” Tom soothes, patting Clay’s face. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to worry about that right now, remember? It’s okay. We’re supposed to be having fun right now. It’s fine.”
Clay relaxes, leaning back in against the pillows. Much better.
This is the first time Tom’s had Clay in his bed. Tom thinks this and then slaps his leg to banish the thought. He loved Sarah, he did, but he was also sixteen once and on the baseball team. Sometimes, he looked at the other boys on the baseball team. And then his father sent him to the mines. It wasn’t just about the family business. He knew. He knew something.
Clay rubs Tom’s sore knee. “What’d you do that for?”
“I’m not queer,” Tom snaps viciously.
Clay blinks at him languid and slow, like a cat. Doesn’t move his hand. “I know. Neither am I.”
“I’m not,” Tom insists. In the nineties, everyone called everything gay. Not just the kids, the men did it too, but with harder, meaner words. No one is crooked in god-fearing Harmony, PA, murder capital of the world. Certainly not Tom Hanniger, who’s going to run these mines one day, son. It’s your legacy. You know what legacy means?
“I know my job, Harry!”
“I would have married her,” Tom says as Clay rubs his leg. “I was working up the nerve, you know, before everything happened. We were forever.”
“Who?”
Tom can’t believe he hasn’t told him. “Sarah! Sarah Mercer—Palmer. She married the sheriff, can you believe it? Even had a kid with him! That asshole—”
“We’re supposed to be relaxing, remember? That’s what you said.”
Tom remembers, so he lays back on the pillows too and now they’re side by side. Tom and Clay. Clay and Tom. He was always meant to be here. All those people died so he could be here. Sick but true. Sorry, Sarah, I’m really sorry.
Clay puts his hand on Tom’s junk, so Tom reminds him he’s not queer. With that confirmed, Clay unzips Tom’s pants and pulls his cock out, which is hard already. “I’m gonna suck your dick now, if that’s okay,” Clay says while he strokes him. Tom tells him sure and Clay fumbles around on the bedspread until his face is in his crotch. Then his mouth is sliding up and down his length. Slowly. Languid, like his blinking. Little kitten licks. Tom’s dick goes in and out of Clay again and again, a perfect impalement. Like a machete. Like a pickax.
Tom’s face hurts, and so does his side. But it doesn’t matter because he thinks he’s gonna blow his load soon. He thinks about brushing Clay’s hair back and because he can’t think of a reason not to, does. Watches the impaling. Whispers, “Aw, fuck,” and Clay finds his hand and they entwine their fingers together like girls. Real jobs, real men. A man, sucking him off. Clay, sucking him off. Tom wants to be with him forever and ever. Hard and fast.
There’s a warning but it comes a little late, so Clay kind of chokes on it a little. Tom moans through jizzing, squeezing out a few tears. Clay pretends not to notice when he comes up and spits in a tissue. Gross. Then he rolls over and opens his pants.
“I can—”
“That’s okay. You’re not queer.”
Neither are you, Tom means to say, but he’s annoyed and hot all over. He presses against Clay’s side (Clay jumps when he does) and breathes on his neck as Clay begins jerking himself off. Tom rubs his belly, his real man with a real job abs, even dares to brush over a nipple. Licks up some of his night sweats. Clay makes funny, high-pitched noises when he gets close, which Tom finds very funny, so he laughs about it with his mouth on that jumping pulse point. Asks why he sounds like that when his cock’s so big and Clay comes, head turned so his open mouth is against Tom’s forehead. Breathing. Tom never fears they’ll run out of breaths here.
They lie there with their pants open on the motel bed where only one of them has ever slept. Clay asks if he can have the bed tonight and Tom says sure because tomorrow’s their day off. He means to get in the sleeping bag, maybe touch himself to Clay’s smell (which has surely sunk permanently into the fabric) but forgets to move. They both do. Eventually, they drift off.
For the first time since they met, Clay sleeps through the night. It’s a new beginning.