2008

Las Vegas, Nevada

Silver Hills Condominium

-1-

“Daddy! I want snake lady!,” Grayson shouts, hovering in front of the bedroom door. “Daddy ? DADDY ?”

“I’ll be there in a minute. Use your inside voice,” Haley reminds him.

Grayson runs back into the living room, joyously singing and Haley steps back into the en suite bathroom where Luce was sitting on the toilet with his eyes closed.

“Luce ?,” he says. “Are you okay ?”

He gets no response.

“Luce ? You should try to pee while we're in  here because I—”

“Don’t fucking talk to me like I’m one of your fucking patients—”

“I’m not,” Haley responds playfully in an attempt to diffuse the situation before it got worse. “My residents have behavior charts and  if I were to make a behavior chart for you the only one who would be getting disciplined is me.” 

He winks but Luce doesn’t open his eyes to see. It, admittedly, wasn’t his best turn of phrase. Still, he was going to file the idea away.

“Fine,” Haley sighs. “Ready to stand ?” 

He nods stiffly and Haley  puts his arms around Luce’s hips to pull him to lean against him in standing position so he could wipe away the excess water from the bidet inside the insanely fancy  toilet. Luce groans as Haley quickly pulls up his underwear and pajama pants before depositing him into the bath chair.

Haley rolls him  over to the bathroom sink and resists the urge to help as Luce struggled to get enough control of his spasming left hand to flip up the adaptive water switch and wash his paralyzed right hand. A motion censor sink would have made more sense but Haley had seen the bill for everything else in the renovated bathroom and hadn't wanted to add to it.

“I think we're doing something wrong,” Haley tells him flipping through notes he’d taken in his puppies-in-a-basket notepad. “Your body should still be on the rehab schedule. We should check for a bowel infection--”

“Let it fucking  go Haley…Alex. We are not having a fucking conversation every time I go to the fucking bathroom.”       

Twenty minutes earlier Haley had been in the kitchen when he’d heard a crash from the bedroom he now shared with Luce. He’d raced to the door and been alarmed to find Luce facedown on the hardwood floor, his nose and lip bloodied, from an ill-fated attempt to get to the bathroom unassisted.  

Haley had tried to encourage him to get up and use the walker for the two foot distance from his bed to the bathroom but it had been a nightmare. He’d ended up getting the bath chair and rolling him into the bathroom.

“I’m…tired. I’m just going to bed--”                                                                                                   

“It’s too early for bed. You have to eat dinner and take your meds. I made--”

“Don’t want it. Just the pain meds--”

“Please, Luce. Please.” he begs. “I set the sofa bed up so you can lie down and eat with us. Just eat one meal with us. Please ?”

Haley hated being reduced to begging but it seemed to be the only thing that worked. When he gets a head nod he rolls the chair into the living room where Grayson was running in circles around the folded out sofa bed, waving a plastic toy snake that made Haley jump every time he saw it lying on the floor.

“Daddy! Daddy! It’s poison! Daddy, look. Look. Look, it got me!”

He jams the snake's mouth to his neck and falls to the floor, rolling around in fake agony.

“Grayson,  you need to use your inside voice,” Haley reminds him again as he helps Luce to the sofa bed. “Ms. Sara is sleeping.”

 She’d taken an Ambien and likely couldn’t hear anything but he wanted to reinforce respecting Sara and Luce’s space. 

“What’s…wrong with Ma ?,” Luce asks.

“She’s tired,” Haley responds dryly.

Sara had been trying to keep Fallwater operational on her own but were losing clients and the company was behind in taxes. At night Haley could hear her pacing the condo and checking in on Luce every hour despite the fact he slept in the king bed next to Luce’s hospital bed.

Once Luce is propped on the sofa bed, Haley hurries to the kitchen and scoops two bowls of tomato soup and cuts the crustless grilled cheese sandwich diagonally.

He walks back into the living room to see Grayson standing on the sofa bed and staring at the blood caked gauze in Luce's nose from the fall.

“You have a boo boo,” Grayson says to Luce. He jumps on the sofa bed's creaky mattress and turns to Haley. “Daddy, you have to fix it.”

He sees Grayson reaching out his hand out to pull the bloody gauze.

“Grayson, no,” Haley reprimands him sharply, snatching his hand away. “And don’t stand on the bed. Please leave him alone.”

“He’s fine,” Luce grumbles.

“Daddy, I wanted to watch snake lady--,” Grayson reminds Haley as he  places his sandwich and soup on the coffee table.

“I know, love,” he says taking the VHS tape off the top shelf and gesturing to Garyson's dinner on the coffee table. “But I want to show Luce something on TV first. Start eating.”

Snake Lady was what Grayson called Haley’s recording of Britney Spears’ 2001 VMAs performance with a live snake. Grayson had found the tape during the move and had become obsessed with it. Haley considered convincing his 4-year-old the lyrics of the song were Made 4 U and not Slave 4 U his best parenting achievement to date.

They’d spent nearly every evening dancing around the living room along to it. It tickled him when Grayson rolled his shirt up and put a sticker on his belly button to mimic Britney Spears.

When he’d found out he was having a son, Haley had imagined what it would be like to enter the world  of cisgender straight boys. But he strongly suspected that wasn’t who Grayson would be.  He wondered if he’d been so obvious at that age. 

“Now, Daddy ?,” Grayson begs.

Ignoring him, Haley lies next to Luce in the sofa bed and unpauses the TiVo. “Luce, did you see this ?”

Luce stares at the TV as it played  a recorded CNN piece about Proposition 8. As soon as the story ends Haley gives Grayson the VMA tape and the 4-year-old eagerly puts it into the VCR, fast forwarding it to  the Britney performance.

 Haley takes a spoonful of thickened soup and sets a pill into it before strapping the adaptive spoon to Luce’s left hand.

“I read online if we got married now it won’t be nullified if they pass Prop 8--,” Haley starts, guiding Luce’s trembling hand to his mouth.

“It won’t pass,” Luce grunts. “…Those religious nuts just want atten-”

He stops midsentence to choke over the spoonful of soup, Haley tries to take the pill from his mouth but he spits it out on the floor along with the soup.

“Luce, that was a $50 pill. Why did you do that--”

“ I can't swallow, next time crush the fucking pill--”

“I can’t do that. It’s time release,” he explains. “You need to eat--”

“What about you ? You don’t even have a plate--”

“Feed me,” Haley challenges with an eyebrow raise.

Luce takes the challenge and shakily lifts his spoon to Haley’s lips. When it looks like it’s going to spill he quickly dips his head to eat off the spoon. He’d put thickener in the soup to assist Luce in learning to swallow again. It made the soup taste off but he pretends to like it.

“I  just think…,” Haley says carefully around the mouthful of congealed soup. “….We should get married before Grayson goes to school--”

“What…the fuck…is wrong with you, Alex ? I just got out of that damn…place,” he snaps. “Do I look like I want to get in a fucking…car and drive to fucking California right now ? You just wiped my ass, do you think I can sign  my fucking name on a--”

“Okay, calm, down Luce,” he says quietly. “I just don’t want to miss our chance. It's just...It was always the plan--”

“Before. Things have…clearly changed--”

“I know. But I still want--”

“--Why is it…it all about what you fucking want ?”

“What exactly  is all about what I want, Luce ?,” Haley frowns. “I’m asking for one thing, baby—”

“Don’t fucking baby me—”

 “—The thing we both wanted. I sacrificed a lot--”

“Daddy, shhhhhh! ,” Grayson shushes, crawling across the bed to put his hand over Haley’s mouth.

“Don’t you fucking go there, Alex,” Luce spits. “You don’t have to do shit. I told you to fucking leave me. I don’t care. I didn’t fucking ask  you to move in and play housewife.”

Grayson climbs into Haley’s lap, wrapping his arm around him and laying his head on his chest.

“It’s almost bed time isn’t it ?,” Haley says softly, bending down to kiss his neatly cropped blonde hair and hold him closer.

“No it's not!,” Grayson protests.

“I’m not playing housewife. I’m keeping you out of a nursing home,” Haley retorts calmly. “Literally everyone is bending over backwards to take care of you except for you--”

“Oh, I’m not doing enough ? I had a god damn fucking stroke on my already fucked up brain...It feels fucking…” Luce shouts, his thoughts scattering. “I flew through a god damn windshield--”

“I know, Luce. And I know it’s hard. But....you could have tried more. Your brother and Jean spent over two million dollars to get you  the best healthcare money could buy and you wasted it--”

“Don’t fucking go there, stay out of--”

 “--you could have been recovered from this, Luce. People  twice your age recover from strokes all the time. But you wasted months in that expensive rehab--”

“One minute I’m getting dressed to meet your co-dependent ass at the gym and then the next thing I know it's 4 months later, I'm drugged out of my fucking mind, being told I can’t do shit and I was supposed to feel grateful ? You ruined my fucking life, Haley and you’re only here because you know this is all your fucking fault!"

Grayson’s grip on Haley’s shirt tightens when Luce’s voice raises. Haley pulls Grayson’s head back to look him in the eye and let him know it was okay. He kisses his cheeks, smiling and  rocking him back and forth.

“---you're so god damn vain, you always have been. Couldn’t survive a fucking  week without working out,” Luce’s rant continues. “I shouldn’t have ever been at your apartment that night. I wouldn't have been in the car.”

Haley had promised himself he’d ignore Luce when he had an outburst. It was all a symptom of his injury. But he can’t help himself.

“No, Luce. You shouldn’t have been taking illegal steroids,” Haley reminds him. “You should have been wearing a seatbelt and driving the speed limit. And I know you don’t remember anything from that night but I asked you to stay the night with us--”

“Kicking your  kid out of the bed for a man? That would have been good for the kid to witness--”

“Oh, and witnessing you yell and curse me out every single night is--”

“If you don’t want to hear it you can get the fuck out of my house. I would have rather died in my sleep from that stroke then be putting up with any of this bullshit--”

“No, you don’t--”

“Don’t you fucking tell me how I feel. You just couldn't let me go. I didn't want to live like this--”

“Fine,” Haley says calmly. “Since this is my fault  I’ll leave you alone.  Your mom can't handle it on her own and since Rias is your guardian you’ll have to move in with his family with a 24 hour nurse. Is that what you want ? A stranger putting you on a schedule  everyday and then  reporting to your baby brother ? Because that’s your only other option--”

Luce’s arm shoots out clumsily, tossing the soup bowl to the floor. Globs of it fly up and land in Haley’s face. Grayson flinches in his arms but laughs when he sees the mess.

“Real fucking mature, Luce—”

“Fucking cunt—”

“Luce. Apologize to me--”

“Fuck you, Alex. Fucking little bitch.”

Haley sighs and lets out a frustrated laugh.

He turns to Grayson, kissing him again. “Time for a bath and story, sweetheart.”

Leaving Luce alone in the living room he gives Grayson a quick bath and puts him to bed in his new twin bed in the redecorated bedroom that was once Twyla’s.

Once he’s settled in bed, Haley tip toes back to his own bedroom.

He showers and exchanges his pajamas for black skinny jeans and an off the shoulder black mesh half shirt. He lets his wet hair tumble down his shoulders and he smears black in the corner of his eyes. In an box in the closet he finds his  lace up leather ankle boots with thick spike-covered block heels.

“Where are you going ?,” Luce asks when Haley purposefully sashays past the sofa bed to get his iPod.  “Are you going out ? It’s Tuesday.”

Without looking back, he walks out the door.

 

***

-2-

Haley doesn’t even know what point he was trying to prove by walking out dressed like he was going out this but he keeps moving.

He walks until their mostly abandoned neighborhood gives way to the Vegas Arts District with it’s bohemian coffee shops,  mural covered buildings, art galleries and eclectic restaurants bustling with dinner service. He almost never walked in the city, it was freeing and it should have been enough for him to catch his breath.

But he wanted more.

A city bus rolls past and he runs to the end of the block to catch it.  He remembered how, when he first met Luce, how odd he thought it was that Luce didn’t gamble all the time.  Now, he was  the one living a 20 minute bus ride from the famous Las Vegas Strip and he’d never even taken Grayson.

He puts in his earbuds and rides the bus to all the way the Strip, getting off in the middle of it all. He starts walking, letting himself get lost in the crowd of tourists and drunken revelers.

“Dayum, I like blondes! You got a pussy ?” a drunken young man catcalls after him.

Haley turns on his heels. He runs his hands through his hair and walks up to the group of three guffawing drunk frat boys.

“I don’t have a pussy,” Haley smiles at the catcaller, who looked mortified at having actually gotten Haley’s attention. “But I give great head.”

“I-I’m good,” the boy says nervously and walks away with his friends teasing him.

Haley didn’t normally call assholes on their bluffs. It was a dangerous thing to do but he suddenly wanted to do something reckless.

He walks a few more blocks, putting the Strip behind him, and  finds a  bar he’d come to once when he was working a party for Virtue.

Inside, the weekday crowd is sparse.  

Haley takes out his phone and sends a text before sitting at the bar.

He orders a light beer and drains it quickly as he observes the room. A few heads turned when he walked in but no one approaches him. He wonders if he could just  pick someone up. Or if that was even a thing people still did? Or had ever done? Most of his bar and party experience was from Virtue events where he knew his role clearly.

“Another one?” the bartender asks, taking his empty beer bottle.

“No,” A deep voice behind Haley answers for him.

He turns in his barstool to see the owner of the voice; a bearded auburn haired man in a raggedy Las Vegas hoodie. The man  tips Haley’s chin  and kisses his lips. Haley pulls back and the man pulls him forward again, delivering a possessive kiss. The man throws a twenty on the bar before jerking  Haley out of the bar by his wrist.

Haley attempts to pull out of the man’s grip but the man flicks open a pocket knife and holds the tip to the back of his neck.

“Don’t fight me.”

The man directs him into an alley. Haley’s breath catches when he is slammed against the disgusting alley wall and boxed in by the man’s body grinding up against him. After a beat he unzips Haley’s pants. He attempts to kick at the man and gets backhanded, his head bouncing against the wall with a crack.

“That all ?,” the man sneers putting his hand into Haley’s pants and feeling around. “You always looked bigger in your videos, Angel.”

With one hand around Haley’s neck the man kneels and pulls Haley completely out of his pants.

“You try anything you get a knife in your testicle,” the man warns. “Enjoy this.”

He barely has time to process  the threat before the warm sensation of the man’s mouth on him gives him a full body tremor. It had been so long since he'd been with a live person and  he ejaculates into the man’s mouth within seconds.

With a disgusted look the man stands and spits semen on to the alley wall next to Haley’s head.

“I didn’t ask for your diseased cum in my mouth,” he growls, tightening his grip on his neck, cutting off his air. “Thought you were supposed to have more control than that.

“Stop--” Haley breathes, grasping for something to hold on to if he passes out.

“Make me--,” the man says nicking his neck with the tip of the pocket knife. The prick of pain is sharp and a small rivulet of blood races down his neck. Haley feels it traveling under his shirt.

“Red,” Haley whispers.

The man’s hand falls from Haley’s throat. He pulls a black bandana from his pocket and wipes the stream of blood at Haley’s neck. They stand in silence while Haley catches his breath.

“Are you good, darling ?,” the man asks.

The man makes an attempt rub Haley’s back but he brushes him off.

Haley wished he knew this man’s name. He’d put him in his phone under SexyAuburnDom.

He was an escort and pro-Dom who traveled in the same social circle as the Virtue performers and was willing to do things off the book. He’d always flirted with Haley at parties and liked to brag about having a condo near the Vegas Strip.

“Haley ? You have to talk to me. Was the knifeplay too much because in your text you said-”

“No, I just--I’m---I—I’m still coming down,” Haley starts. The fantasy had ended and the guilt had settled in. He notices a city bus pass the alley and considers if he should get on it or buy SexyAuburnDom a drink. It had all ended sooner than he thought but it was the most he’d felt in months.

“Your man is okay with us playing, right ?”

“Hm ?”

“That dark haired muscle head you were always with. Are you guys still together ?,” SexyAuburnDom says.  “Dude was intense. I’d hate for him to come after me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Haley says. “He had a stroke—”

“Holy shit, man. My Pap Pap had a stroke. Had another one the exact same day a year later and died in his sleep--”

“I’ll send your money tonight,” Haley says, speed walking out the alley. “I need to catch this bus. Thanks—”

“Anytime.”

He goes into a full run to catch the moving bus, banging on the doors until it stops. When he boards he gets reamed out by the driver but he needed to get home now. Grabbing on the rail he flips open his phone with shaky fingers.

He’d only been gone for 3 hours.

There were no urgent texts or missed calls.

 It was fine.

Unless it wasn’t and Luce couldn’t contact him. 3 hours.  So much could happen in 3 hours. 

When the bus stops in his neighborhood Haley sprints down the street to the condo and races upstairs to their unit. The door opens at his touch. He’d either forgotten to lock the door or someone had broken in. There were homeless people who wandered the neighborhood but they all seemed to know the Graces and not to fuck with them.

He  steps inside to everything almost exactly as he left it.

 -3-

Luce is still  propped up on the living room sofa bed but his eyes are closed. On the television Alicia Keys is being presented with her VMA for Best New Artist. Grayson is curled up on the end of the sofa bed with his Strawberry Shortcake plushie.

Luce stirs at the sound of Haley’s boots on the hardwood. His body is shaking and he winces, the pained facial expressions made subtle by the facial paralysis.

“He woke up looking for you,” Luce explains. “Told him you went to the store. He fell asleep watching that…fucking tape.”

He carries Grayson back to his own bedroom and goes back to the living room to wipe up the thrown soup from the floor—thankful he’d convinced Sara to pull up all the carpet up during the renovations. He puts the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and takes a bottle of feeding tube formula off the shelf above the oven.

“I’m taking you to bed,” he tells Luce after he’d disposed of the urinal. “Ready ?”

“No. Pain is bad. Everything. I’ll sleep out here.”

“You can’t, it's not good for your back. I’ll give you your pain meds after you eat--”

“Remember…remember when I gave you this tape ?,” Luce asks, his sleepy eyes on the nearly decade old awards show playing on the television.

It was before they’d started officially dating. Haley had been in L.A. doing work for Virtue the weekend the show originally aired and had whined about how he would miss it. He came home from his trip to find a tape recording of the show on his bed. At the time, he thought Luce just wanted him to shut up about missing the show and missed the gesture it had been.

When Luce is back in his hospital bed Haley undresses him, quickly wipes his body with a warm washcloth,  and tosses the dirty clothes into the overflowing laundry hamper. Sara had her laundry done by a service but Haley had never felt comfortable adding things to it and used the laundry room in the basement when he had time.

He redresses him and adjusts the angle of the hospital bed before sitting next to Luce on the bed.

“Where…did you go ?,” Luce asks, rucking up his pajama shirt with his stiff hand to expose the feeding tube surgically placed in his side.

“For a walk,” Haley says, measuring the feeding tube formula in  a large syringe and inserting it into the feeding tube’s  catheter. While it drains he reaches over and takes three bottles of liquid medication off the nightstand and carefully measures them into syringes.

“I walked to a bar,” Haley admits quietly, flushing the feeding tube with water and then inserting the liquid medication. “I texted an escort to meet me there and play a rape fantasy--”

“You let him fuck you—” 

“No—”

“You sucked his—”

“No,” he says pushing the final syringe of medicine into the tube and flushing the tube with more water . “He gave me head. I came so quickly I barely remember it. It was humiliating.”

“I…Can’t ask you to wait for me. My sex drive was mostly from the...”

“Steroids ?”

He nods, his eyes rolling back into his head.

In all honesty Haley missed their sex life; it had been fun and he liked playing. But Luce hadn’t shown any interest in sex or intimacy.

“When am I going to have time to fuck other people ?  I didn’t even  really want to do it,” Haley admits.  “I just wanted to do something reckless. To make you mad.”

“I was mad,” Luce groans. “I was scared when you left.”

“I won’t do that again...Just leave like that.”

Luce groans again and his body goes rigid.

“Fuck. Baby,” he whimpers. “Fuck…Lex…I need something for the pain—”

“I just gave it to you--”

“Something is fucked up,” Luce says, his eyes going damp and his body contorting. “It’s never felt like this before.”

It makes Haley's heart ache to see him in pain.

“...We’re just a little off schedule. It’ll take a second, just try to relax,” he says, standing up.

The clock on the nightstand blinked midnight. He’d have to be up in  4 hours to get Luce ready for the bus that took him to outpatient physical therapy, drop Grayson off at preschool and be at work himself by 6:30.

He makes sure the little silver bike bell they’d found at a sports supply store is  tucked in Luce’s bed.

“I’m going to sleep with Grayson,” Haley says. “Ring your bell if you need me.”

“Don’t have to do that…,” Luce says. “I’m not mad—”

“I don't care. I’m mad.” Haley says. “You called me a name tonight. You  know that hurts me. It's why you did it.”

“I’m…sorry.”

“I know,” he says. “And I know you’re struggling. And I know it's fucking hard. But you can’t say whatever you want to me and not have consequences. Good night.”

He kisses him on the forehead and walks out the room.

----
☆☆ A/N ☆☆

- The way Lucely relate to each other is pretty much my interpretation of Tomfia at the beginning-ish of TGOSM. I mean I totally stole the orphan-cinnamon-roll-nurse-and-brooding-brunette-partner-raising-unrelated-baby thing.

- This is the second unintentional Tiger King reference---Doc Antle is in that 2001 Britney Spears VMA performance. I had this scene of Haley and Grayson dancing to that perfoemance in my head from the beginning of this serial, before the show even premiered. 

- The trip Haley goes on to LA after the HP signing in an earlier chapter is also the same week he misses the award show. I was going to include a reference but I couldn’t fit it all in. Also, I'm being petty and have taken all the HP references I had in this serial out. In chapter 11, Sky was originally reading Deathly Hallows not Percy Jackson.

Muse: You do know a touchless fauccet is only like $300, right ?