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It’s early by the time the two boys disengage from each other, bodies tacky with sweat, breathing not yet slowed, lips kiss-bitten and limbs loose with orgasm. The room is dim around them, a faint glow from city streetlights streaming in through the broken, half-closed shades and onto the motel room floor. Michael watches with interest as Ray stands, padding across the stained carpet to clean himself up in the bathroom, enjoying the view of his bare ass, the sweet S curve of his back as Ray walks away. Michael takes the opportunity to kick the comforter off the bed, letting the air cool the sweat on his skin as he lies nude in the bed, hands tucked casually behind his head.
And, god, this is everything he wants. The familiar sounds of Ray’s footsteps on the tile in the next room; a couple thousand dollars stuffed in his backpack across the room, stolen at gunpoint from an unassuming convenience store cashier; a pattern of dark red-and-purple bruises down his chest, his stomach, across his thighs, to admire in the morning; two heaping containers of Mexican take-out in the motel mini-fridge awaiting them for a late-morning breakfast tomorrow; Ray’s rifle on the kitchenette table beside Michael’s favorite pistol, both disassembled and cleaned–-jesus, the room smells like sex and gun oil, and Michael doesn’t think he could ever get tired of that. It’s paradise, here, a feeling like Ray’s shy smile when Michael compliments his eyes and makes him blush, a feeling like the glint in Ray’s eye when they’re both about to make the same joke, the chuckle and rise in Ray’s voice as he tries to get the punchline out first.
Ray emerges from the bathroom, now clad in boxers, and stops a foot or two short of the bed, admiring the image of Michael, sprawled out and naked on the sheets. Michael shoots him a brilliant grin, trying not to be too obvious as he flexes the muscles in his arms a bit.
“Mm. You look good like that,” Ray says.
“Yeah I do.” Michael untucks his arms to make grabby-hands at Ray. “Come cuddle, bed’s cold without you.”
“Bed tends to get cold when you shove all the covers onto the floor.” Ray crosses his arms, eyeing the discarded comforter.
“C'mon, Ray, haven’t you heard? Body heat’s all the rage with the kids these days.” Michael rolls towards him, reaching for his hips, willing to drag him flailing onto the bed if he has to.
Ray bats the offending hands away. “Alright, alright, Horny.” He stoops down to snatch Michael’s underwear from the floor, flinging it at him and hitting him in the chest. “Put some fuckin’ clothes on and I’ll let you be the little spoon.”
“Yes!” Michael hollers, triumphant, and shimmies into the garment, satisfied with the compromise. The grabby hands don’t relent, though, until Ray’s kneeling on the bed beside him, within reach for Michael to pull him close. Michael hums as their skin crashes together chest-to-chest, warm comfort and the familiar smell of Ray enveloping him as they clumsily readjust, Michael turning on his side so Ray is wrapped around him from behind. An arm curls around his waist, fingertips running soft, almost ticklish patterns along his tummy while they shuffle the tangles of their legs into something comfortable enough to be called cuddling.
All of the buzzing, sexual energy has burnt out between them, washed away with the relief of orgasm and replaced by a lazy affection as Michael leans into Ray’s touches. It’s intimate in its familiarity, in the way he knows Ray will start to doze off in stages, first stilling the hand across Michael’s stomach, then slowing his breathing in increments, until his whole body relaxes against Michael.
After several minutes, though, Ray’s hand is still moving, still brushing across the skin of Michael’s front, almost anxious in its adhesion to the pattern it’s making.
“Ray?” Michael breathes, a quiet test to see if the man is still awake, as if Michael isn’t already sure he is.
“Yeah?”
“You’re my best friend, you know that?” Ray’s hand stills for a second, before resuming its careful strokes, up from Michael’s navel to his sternum and back down again. The touch is lighter than before, as if Michael is something delicate.
“Yeah,” he says, low in Michael’s ear, tone unreadable. “Yeah, I know.”
Michael doesn’t think he’s hearing him, though. “No, really, I’m–” Michael rolls over in Ray’s arms to face him. Ray’s eyes flick to his, then dart away to focus on something above Michael’s forehead. They’re so close though, breath warm on each other’s faces, that it’s hard for Ray to look anywhere but right at him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Ray meets his eyes again for a brief moment, expression unreadable despite their proximity. There’s a beat, then another, while Ray goes back to staring at Michael’s hairline.
“Yeah,” Ray whispers finally, and it’s about as articulate a response Michael would expect from him. Ray leans in, kisses his forehead softly, and pulls away before Michael can kiss him back. “Goodnight, Michael.”
Ray turns his back to him, and Michael takes the invitation to wrap his arms around Ray this time, his talkative mood stifled and soothed by the affection.
“Night,” he says, and it’s somehow the I love you that had been on the tip of his tongue.
–
When Michael wakes, it’s to the pleasant ache and sated bonelessness that he only gets the morning after incredible sex. He hums with grogginess, not ready to open his eyes yet, and as he stretches, the dull soreness in his limbs sends a wave of arousal through him, inviting the memories of the night before. His mind supplies the ghosts of sensations–-Ray’s teasing fingertips brushing the insides of his thighs, the shock of rough stubble on his skin as Ray licks wetly down the column of his throat, the firm insistence of Ray’s hands gripping behind his knees, splaying his legs wide. It’s enough to stir him from the pull of sleep, to have him groping for the warmth of Ray’s body to tempt him into a second go before they get out of bed and face their responsibilities for the day.
But, Ray’s side of the bed is cold, and that startles Michael into full consciousness, opening his eyes to find that the bed is, indeed, empty. Jesus, Michael’s not sure he’s ever once woken up later than the lazy sonofabitch. The room isn’t even light yet, the not-quite-sunrise of way too fucking early peeking through the dusty windows into the run-down motel room. There’s no clock on the bedside table, but Michael could guess it’s barely even 5 AM. Which means they haven’t even been asleep for, what? Three hours?
The sharp sound of a zipper cuts through the quiet of the room, and Michael blinks as he sits up and realizes what woke him. Ray is squatting on the floor next to the bed, rolling up last night’s clothes to stuff into his backpack. He’s dressed in a clean t-shirt and jeans, his hair tame and bedhead-free, and hell, he’s even got his damn shoes on.
Michael’s heart sinks, and something feels very, very wrong.
“Going somewhere in a hurry, Narvaez?” he asks a bit hoarsely, the sound of his own voice ugly and jarring in the never-quite-silence of a room in Liberty City.
Ray freezes for a second, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t, but exactly like someone who makes a living by doing things he shouldn’t, Ray recovers quickly. He offers Michael a half-smile, shoving a balled-up hoodie into the backpack. “I’m a busy man, Michael. Places to be, petty crime to commit.”
Michael peels his eyes away from Ray, risking a quick glance around the motel room, afraid to take his eyes off the man for too long, lest Ray dissappear like the shadowy dream he is. Michael’s posessions are still peppered around the room–his phone charger hanging from the wall outlet, his watch on the nightstand, his jacket hanging on the back of the dining chair. All of Ray’s stuff, however, is absent.
“Come back to bed,” Michael says, like that will convince him. Like Ray will smile, and kick of his shoes, and say okay. Like everything will be alright.
“Michael…” Ray’s face has gone stony, features like a statue that would be cool to the touch. He’s not looking at Michael again, instead staring at his hands while he fastens the zippers on his backpack, and that makes Michael’s skin itch. Makes him desperate for Ray’s attention, for a passing glance, for an acknowledgement, anything.
“Please,” he says, too loud for whatever unspoken silence is hanging between them, and Ray stands.
“I’m going,” Ray explains, as if that’s an explanation. As if Michael couldn’t see that, couldn’t understand that Ray slipping out of bed and packing up everything he owns in the middle of the night didn’t mean he was making a run for donuts. “You weren’t supposed to wake up.”
“Well, I did,” Michael retorts dumbly, and his temper is rising without his consent, hands balling into fists in the sheets as he stares daggers into what he can see of Ray’s profile. Ray goes quiet, slinging the backpack onto his shoulder, gazing around the room to see if he’s forgotten anything, careful to avoid looking at Michael. Michael swings his legs off the bed, standing in an attempt to force himself into Ray’s field of vision. He feels small, and exposed, standing there half-naked and desperate in the face of Ray’s frigidity. “Are you going to say anything?”
Ray doesn’t, instead retrieving his–-now assembled–-rifle from the kitchenette, packing it into his bulky duffel bag of weapons and ammo and dirty cash. The duffel goes over his shoulder as well, rattling noisily and dwarfing the backpack that holds all of his other belongings.
Michael wants to scream at him, maybe wants to hit him until Ray punches him back, just to get some sort of reaction from his friend. Because, what the fuck? What the fuck?
Ray is his best friend.
Ray is the love of his life.
Ray might be the only person Michael has ever truly known.
Because, god, Michael knows him. He knows the soft sound of his exhale before he pulls the trigger from a rooftop, the lazy, touchy version of him that hangs off Michael when he’s high, knows the loud, giggly, elated Ray as they sprint away from bigger, meaner guys that Michael stupidly decides to pick a fight with. He knows the way his voice breaks when he talks about his family, the way he sounds when he laughs so hard his face turns red and he grips at the ache in his belly, the way he goes quiet and shakes and gasps when he’s about to cum.
But it’s for this very reason that Michael can’t find the words that will convince Ray to stay. Because Michael knows Ray–-knows he’s stubborn to a goddamn fault, that he’ll twist any situation to screw someone who’s wronged him, even if it means screwing himself, knows that the kid has a mean streak in him, that he’ll say anything, cut anyone as deep as he needs to if it means it’ll hurt. Michael knows that there are parts of Ray he’ll never get to know, that Ray will never let him see because Ray’s scared to show him or maybe because Michael would be scared to discover them. He knows, he knows, he fucking knows there’s no convincing him, there’s nothing he could possibly say that will change Ray’s mind because Ray’s already got a foot out the door.
Instead, Michael finds himself babbling, hot, angry tears welling in his eyes as he takes one step, then a second, towards Ray. “Ray, I don’t–- why are you-– Iknow you Ray, I know you, why are you going, why are you doing this?”
He sounds pathetic, and he knows it, and he feels even more so when Ray turns to face him, meets his eyes with cool indifference. “I don’t think anybody ever really knows anybody.”
“What the fuck, what the fuck, Ray-–”
Ray’s granite mask cracks for a second, just the pinch of his eyebrows together as he chokes out a bitter, pained laugh. “You’re going to get me fucking killed, Michael. Or I’m going to get you killed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could live with that.”
“Is that what this is? Fuck, Ray, what happened to going out in a blaze of glory?”
“Grow up, Michael. I want you to live to see thirty. Hell, twenty-five, even.”
“Stay,” Michael says, soft, pleading. The tears are brimming over now, running hot and humiliating down his cheeks, and he’s all out of moves, has nothing left but the shaky breath in his lungs and the plea on his lips. “Please, Ray, please. Please don’t go.”
Stay with me, he begs.
But they both know it means, inevitably, Die with me.
“Hey, man. I love you,” Ray says, and it’s wrong, it’s all wrong. It’s everything they never said to each other, everything they hid in jokes and insults and kisses and vengeance, but Ray’s saying it like something overly casual, something you chirp out without meaning when a friend brings you a coffee or admits he shares your taste in shitty reality television. It’s not something you say after two years of not saying it, of dancing around the phrase like it’ll make everything a thousand times more dangerous.
It feels a lot more like a fuck you than a goodbye.
“Ray–”
“But no. No fucking way.”
I won’t die for you.
I won’t let you die for me.
I won’t let this kill us, no matter how beautiful that would be.
Ray opens the motel room door, knuckles white as he grips the doorknob and stares at the floor. The enormous duffel bag engulfs his frame and distorts his silhouette into something unfamiliar, and the person behind Ray’s eyes is someone Michael knows too well.
Ray opens his mouth to speak, and Michael doesn’t let him. “Seriously, dude, if you say ‘goodbye’ right now, I’m going to punch you in the fucking teeth.”
And so Ray doesn’t say anything at all, and the flimsy wooden door is swinging shut behind him, and Michael is suddenly, jarringly alone.