Flux - 37. Chapter 37

Warning to the Will haters:  this chapter is all Will, all the time. 

August 1, 2002

Chicago, IL

Will

I woke up with a smile. Damn, Devon was fun. He was totally hot, he had a big dick, and he knew how to use it. In the bar, he acted like an asshole, but that was just his façade. Underneath that, he was a really sweet guy. He’d woken up this morning, fucked my brains out, then taken a shower and gotten all ready to go, while I lay in bed like a slug, enjoying the afterglow. I thought he was gone, but he came back half an hour later with a bunch of pastries and shit for breakfast. I’d stuffed a few croissants in my mouth, taken a few over to Cam and Matt, and crashed again.

My phone rang and I was surprised to see that it was Wade. I loved Wade, and he was really important to me, but it was hard to be in his corner on this deal with Matt. Maybe that’s because I was spending so much time with Matt, or maybe it’s because I thought he was a shithead for totally blowing Matt off in England, or maybe it was because I thought he was an asshole for leading Matt on during that whole trip, only to dump him like a rock. “Hello,” I said.

“Hey there,” Wade said pleasantly. “How are you doing?”

“Well, I had to leave Zach in Claremont, so that totally sucks, but I hooked up with this amazingly hot dude and he played my body like a flute, so I guess on average I’m alright.”

He chuckled. “Did you guys hear the results from your tests yet?” He was referring to our HIV tests.

“Not yet. I’m hoping I get something this afternoon.”

“Did Matt?” he asked, which made sense, since that was a little more relevant to him.

“I haven’t seen Matt for a couple of hours,” I said, then decided to toss a grenade at Wade’s psyche. “Cam spent the night, and I went in to take them some pastries this morning. They weren’t into talking.”

“Oh, OK,” he said. Well, if he could run off and fuck Alex, Matt could fuck Cam. “I’m wondering if you can do me a favor.”

“What do you need?”

“JJ called me and left me a pretty bitchy message.”

I chuckled. “Is there any other kind from JJ?”

“He told me that he wasn’t moving to Boston.”

“What? I thought he was looking forward to it, or at least that he was OK with it.”

“He told me that if I was going to hang out in London chasing after Lord Fauntleroy, while there wasn’t shit being done on the house in Boston; he was just going to stay in LA.” I forced myself not to laugh at that, because that was typical JJ, and Wade’s frustration level was exactly what I’d expect from him when dealing with JJ.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Can you try to calm him down?”

“I can try, but I doubt it will work,” I said. I’d already talked to JJ, and he was really pissed off at having his whole living situation in limbo.

“Why?”

“Look,” I explained, “his deal is that he’s worried about next season, and he wants to get situated in Boston before the competition in Germany. That’s at the beginning of September.”

“He’ll be in Germany for that, not Boston.”

“Yeah, but then in the beginning of October, he’s got the New England Regionals. He wants to get a feel for the environment, and the skaters he’ll be up against.”

“He doesn’t realize that I’m doing my best.”

“He doesn’t give a shit what you’re doing, as long as you’re getting the house done. He’s just into the results. So in his mind, if this is a big deal and you can’t get it done, he’ll just say ‘fuck it’ and stay in LA. There he’s in a familiar environment, and doesn’t have to deal with the move.”

He sighed. “I guess I need to ride the foreman,” he said.

“It’s your call how you handle it. It just sucks for you that Stef is getting Matt’s apartment done, along with an entire gay bar, in record time.” I knew part of that was Stef’s star power, but I couldn’t see why Wade couldn’t do the same thing. I’d heard him bitch about permits and shit, but JJ heard those excuses and rolled his eyes, because Geoffrey and Gus plowed right through those problems.

“I thought JJ was just trying to fuck up my relationship with Alex,” he said.

“Dude, he’s not trying to do that, at least not yet,” I said, joking. “Why don’t you just fly over and make sure things are getting done? You can even bring Alex with you. Show him the house. But if you don’t stay on top of this, and it doesn’t get done, nothing Matt or I can say will get JJ to move to Boston.”

“I have a month to get this done,” he said, almost to himself.

“When does school start for you?”

“September 9^th,” he said.

“Then it sounds to me like you better get it done,” I said, and not all that nicely. I could see why JJ was pissed at him. Wade may usually be on top of things, but with this he sounded completely disengaged. That’s what was infuriating JJ.

“Thanks a lot,” he said, annoyed with me.

“I’ve been running interference with JJ, and so has Matt, telling him that all kinds of bad things are going to happen to him if he isn’t nice to Alex. We can get him to do that,” I said, forcing my tone to be even. I really felt that Matt and I had both gotten through to JJ about that. “But if you don’t have a place for him to live, there isn’t shit I can do to stop him from losing it.”

“Fine,” he said. “Thanks for helping.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Tell Matt to give me a call, OK?” That was a simple request, one that could almost have been a casual comment to end a phone call, but it wasn’t a simple request to me.

“I can’t do that.”

“You can’t ask him to call me?” he asked, sounding totally shocked. I rarely got pissed off at Wade, but I felt all my controls snapping.

“No, I can’t,” I said abruptly.

“Why?”

And with that simple question, I lost all my restraint and I was painfully honest with him. “From our time in Claremont, to Hawaii, and to Europe, you built him up, and made him think that you still loved him. You built his hopes up and got him really excited that you two had a future. Then you crushed him. You fucking crushed him. You left him high and dry in the middle of England, and went chasing after some guy with a title.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he said, and he was really pissed now, probably because he felt guilty.

“It was exactly like that. You built him up, then you crushed him, and you really don’t seem to give a shit. That’s cruel. That’s the kind of shit I’d expect from your mother, not you.” He didn’t say anything. “All I see is you shitting on the people who care about you, and who rely on you. And if that’s your game, the very least you can do is leave Matt the fuck alone, so you don’t hurt him any more than you already have.”

“I thought you’d be happy for me,” he said in his calm and severe voice.

“Not if your happiness costs everyone else theirs,” I said. “So don’t act like you’re some wounded princess. Or countess.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said in a snippy way.

“I’m sorry you’ve turned into such an asshole,” I said. Then I ended the call. I felt bad after I did, but not as bad as I would have a year ago. The deal with Wade and my father had done that, had knocked them way down on my respect scale. It said something about where I was with Wade that I was done feeling bad about our conversation in just a few minutes.

I decided to take a shower, but before I could get to the bathroom, my phone rang again. I almost didn’t answer it, thinking that it was Wade calling me back, but when I looked at the caller-ID; it was a Chicago number I didn’t recognize, so I went ahead and took the call. “Hello.”

“Is this William Schluter?”

“It is.” A nurse introduced herself. She was from the clinic. She asked me for my identifying code, the code they’d given me yesterday to make sure they were talking to me, so I gave it to her.

“Thank you Mr. Schluter. Your HIV test came back negative.”

“Thank you,” I said, and couldn’t stop grinning. I’d been pretty careful, but there was always a chance I could have had it. Ever since we took that test, it had been like a dark cloud was hanging over me, and now that cloud was gone. I took a shower, washing all the lube off my ass, and put on some shorts and a polo shirt. That seemed to be my uniform when I was in Chicago in the summer, at least when I was going to be in a business setting, more or less.

I hadn’t talked to Zach since yesterday afternoon, so I gave him a call. “Hey,” he answered cheerfully.

“It’s good to hear your voice,” I said.

“It would be better to feel your body,” he said, being the sexy beast that he was.

“I was thinking about making that happen.”

“What? How?”

“I spent the day in Chicago, checking things out, but the plane is heading back to New York to get my dad. I was thinking of having them drop me off in Claremont.”

I had expected him to be excited, or maybe I just hoped that he would be, but I didn’t get anything but silence for a while. “Dude, no one can tell you where you can or can’t go, but I don’t know if I’ll get to see you much when you’re here.”

“Why not?”

“That’s the deal with my parents, that I hang out here with them. So it’s almost like I’m on lockdown. It totally sucks.”

“You mean they won’t let you leave the house?”

“It’s more like they have things planned out, so I don’t have any spare time to go do anything.”

“And you’re OK with that?” I didn’t get why he wouldn’t completely rebel at that.

“I’ve got one more week of this, and then I get to go back to California. Once I’m in California, they won’t be able to bother me, at least not that much. And by the time this school year is over, I’ll be close enough to eighteen that they can’t do shit to me. I can make it this week and put up with their bullshit, knowing that I’m done. I’m out of here on the 8^th.”

“That makes total sense,” I grudgingly agreed. “But it sucks.”

“It does. But I’ll be there on the 8^th, and we can hang out in Paly on the 9^th, then I have to drive back to Concord on the 10^th,” he said.

“Alright,” I said, caving reluctantly, then changed the subject. “I got tested for HIV. I’m negative.”

“That’s awesome news,” he said. “We’ll have to celebrate when I get to Paly.”

“I can’t wait,” I said, in my sultriest voice.

“What are you doing in Chicago?”

“Hanging out with Matt. Mostly eating and going to the bars.” I knew how jealous that made him, but if he wanted me to be in Claremont instead, all he had to do was fight for me. “I had a blast last night. Dude, I’m actually dancing better.”

“Cool,” he said, and it was pretty insincere. “You going back tonight?”

“Probably,” I said. “Matt hooked up with this hot dude he used to be with in Cleveland, so he may bail on me.”

“So then you’re stuck at the condo.”

“No,” I said. “I met a few guys that I trust to go out with.”

“Oh. Well have fun.”

“You too,” I said cheerfully. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll be in Claremont so fast your head will spin.”

“I’ll do that,” he said, and then we ended our call.

Only that had put me in a pretty bad mood, so I called my father. I figured I might as well get all the unpleasant shit out of the way in the morning. He didn’t answer, which was probably smart, so I left him a message. “Dad, Matt and I got tested for HIV yesterday. I got my results back. Give me a call and I’ll tell you how it went.” I made sure my voice was even, not happy and not sad. That would freak him out. Good. Maybe it would focus his mind on how it was important to be open about HIV testing.

I went over to the guest room and knocked on the door, and went in when Matt said I could. He was lying on his back, and Cam was next to him in the same pose. I went over and sat on the bed next to Cam and traced his pectoral muscles with my fingers. “Hot.” Cam smiled at me. He was really cute.

“What do you want?” Matt asked, pretending to be annoyed.

“This room reeks of sex,” I said, to embarrass them.

“Kind of like the cologne you usually wear,” he said, teasing me.

“Did you hear from the clinic?”

“Not yet. Did you?”

“About half an hour ago. I’m negative.”

“That’s awesome news!” Matt said, reaching over Cam to high-five me. “I’ll give them a call later if I don’t hear from them.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “I’m going to go get some food. I’ll catch up with you guys later.” He gave me a thumbs-up sign, and I left his room, and the condo.

My phone rang, and I saw that it was my father, so I hit ‘end’ and sent his call to voicemail. He called back and I did the same thing. He was playing bullshit games, so we’d see how he liked it. Payback’s a bitch. I went to Giordano’s and got a big pizza, and amazingly enough, I managed to eat most of it. I got another one to go, and took it back to the condo.

Matt and Cam were sitting in the great room, on the couch. Matt looked really upset, and Cam was sitting in a chair, looking pretty freaked out too. “Dude, cheer up!” I said. “I brought pizza.”

“Cool,” he said, but even though the word was cheerful, his tone was morose. I got some plates and napkins and shit and brought it out for them.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I got my test result back,” he said. “It was positive.”

I stared at him, stunned, saying nothing for the longest time. “What did they say?”

“They said it came back positive. They’re going to do some extra tests to confirm it.”

“Maybe the other tests will show that you’re negative,” I said hopefully.

“Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t believe that. They sat there, eating pizza, and things were really depressing: tense and sober.

“I need to get home,” Cam said. We both looked at him, and I could tell that he was freaked out about being with Matt when he was positive. I didn’t know if Matt got that. “I’ll call you later,” he said, to try and cover up how he felt.

“Sounds good,” Matt lied. He stood up and Cam gave him a nice kiss, but one that wasn’t overly passionate. I was going to let myself get totally pissed off at Cam, but I calmed myself down. This was a big deal, and maybe Cam just needed some time to work it out.

Matt walked him to the door, then came back to the couch and sat down, looking totally dejected. Before I could try to cheer him up, my phone rang. It was my father calling again.

“It’s Dad,” I told him. “Can I tell him?”

“Sure. But let him know that I don’t want him telling anyone else.” I looked at him, wondering why, while my phone kept ringing. “I want to be able to tell Wade myself.”

“No problem,” I said, then answered the phone. “Hello.”

“You cannot just leave me a message like that and not return my calls,” he shouted. I pulled the phone away from my ear, looked at it in annoyance, and ended the call.

“That was short,” Matt said.

“He was yelling at me.” He called back again, and I winked at Matt as I answered it. “Hello.”

“Do not hang up on me,” he commanded, but in a softer voice.

“You yell at me, it’s going to be a real short conversation,” I said.

“How did your test turn out?”

“How did yours turn out?” I asked.

“This is not a game,” he said, sounding all self-righteous.

“I agree, but that’s exactly what you were trying to do to me yesterday. I talked to Darius, JJ, Stef, and Grand, and set up a family meeting when we get back to talk about how we handle this stuff.” Matt was giggling, which was cool to see.

“How we handle what?”

“HIV testing, and sharing results,” I said. “My basic stance on this is that you have to be open with us, with none of your bullshit, power-tripping games.”

“I was not power-tripping!” he yelled, so I hung up on him again. Matt looked at me, confused. “He yelled again.”

“Dude, you are a pain in the ass,” Matt said, chuckling.

“You’d really think so if you bottomed for me,” I said, winking at him.

My phone rang again, and I just smiled at Matt. “Dad.”

He started laughing. “You going to answer it?”

“Next time he calls.”

“What makes you think he’ll call back?” Matt asked. I held my phone up just as it stopped ringing. Then it started ringing again, and he laughed. I decided that it was worth pissing my father off to cheer Matt up.

“Hello.”

“My test was negative,” he growled.

“So was mine,” I said. “I think I’m happier about it than you are.”

“Very funny. What about Matt?” And with that, my mood changed again.

“Matt’s test came back positive.”

“So he has it?” he was really upset.

I covered the phone up and looked at Matt. “He’s freaking out because he loves you.” Then I talked to my dad again. “They’re going to do some more tests to make sure.”

“Did he talk to Wade yet?”

“No, but he told me I could tell you, but he wants to tell Wade himself.” I waited for his response, to make sure he got that point.

“I won’t talk to Wade about it until Matt tells him,” he said.

“I had a relatively unpleasant conversation with Wade earlier.” Matt looked at me, freaked out about that, but I focused on my phone call.

“It’s your day to piss people off.”

“When people are assholes, I think it’s a good thing to piss them off,” I said. “Were you mad?”

“Yes I was mad!”

“Then according to my theory, you’re an asshole,” I said, but in a joking way.

“Can I talk to Matt?”

“If you call him,” I said. “I’ll see you in a few days. You may want to work on your attitude before you get here.” He ended the call after that, and I just sat there, laughing.

“Dude, you totally push his buttons.”

“You have to hit him pretty hard to get through to him sometimes. This is important. He’s hitting the dating scene again, and we can’t have any secrets about his HIV status, your HIV status, or any of our statuses.”

“Isn’t that pretty private information?” he asked.

“It is. That’s why it stays in the family.” I focused on Matt. “When are they going to know more info on your test?”

“It will be a couple of days,” he said. “Why did you piss Wade off?”

“He was whining.”

“Wade was whining?”

“In his own way,” I said. “JJ called him and told him he wasn’t moving to Boston.”

I described that part of my conversation with Wade, and both of us sat there laughing our asses off at how out of his league Wade was when dealing with JJ. “Is that what pissed him off?”

“No,” I said. “He asked me to have you call him. I told him I wouldn’t do that.”

“Why?” he asked me, and now he was upset again.

“Because I think he treated you like shit, and because I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to talk to him.”

His eyes flashed fire as he got mad at me. “What I do in my relationships is none of your business, and you have no right to butt in!” His voice was loud enough that I raised an eyebrow to calm his ass down.

“I wasn’t butting into your business,” I said.

“You told Wade that he treated me like shit. What else did you tell him?” I replayed our conversation, and saw him get angry all over again. “You had no right to say that to him!”

“Why not? I meant it.” He was getting really pissed off, and I knew I had to chill his ass out. “I didn’t get involved in your relationship. He asked me if I’d ask you to call him, and I told him I wouldn’t. When he asked me why, I explained it to him.”

“Fuck!” he said, and stood up. “I’m going to go call him. I’ll do it in my room so you can’t listen in and throw shit back in my face.”

That pissed me off enough to stand up and look him in the eye. “I didn’t pass any info on that you shared with me. I just told him how I felt. And it’s not all about you. He bailed on the rest of us too.”

He sighed. “He seems so happy with Alex. I just don’t want anything to fuck that up.”

“Your call on that,” I said. “What was Cam’s deal?”

“I’d say he was pretty freaked out about me testing positive,” he said. That somber topic prompted him to sit back down on the sofa, so I sat down in my chair.

“Dude, that’s raw,” I said.

He nodded, and then shrugged. There really weren’t many people who were more fun to be around than Matt, when he was in a playful mood. But now he was depressed, and it was really sad. I wondered if that was because of the contrast, and thought about how Wade had dumped him. When you were on top of the world, the fall was just that much harder. “I don’t blame him.”

“If you were into a dude, and he was positive, would you still fuck him?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What if it was Wade, or Cam, who was positive? Would you still have sex with them?”

He looked at me, and gave me a wry grin. “I would.”

“Why?”

“Because I love Wade, and I really care about Cam, and I wouldn’t want to do that to either one of them, to cut them off when they needed me the most,” he said.

“There are guys who would do the same thing for you,” I said.

“Not Cam,” he said sadly. Then he sighed. “Maybe he just needs some time to work through it.”

“Were you safe with him last night?”

“Of course. I know the drill on safe sex!” he said, all outraged. Then he sighed again. “I guess that’s not true. I guess if I did, I wouldn’t be positive.”

“Did you bareback anyone?”

“Only Wade,” he said. Then he got really upset. “What if he has it?” It was such a shame that Matt and Wade had totally fucked up their relationship. It was obvious that Matt loved Wade more than anything. I kind of got what my father was saying about his deal with Robbie. This must be what it was like, where you loved someone completely, you’d do anything for him, but you just seemed to get the relationship wrong.

“Did he get tested?”

“He did. Maybe that’s why he wanted me to call him.” He said that, and got pissed at me all over again, but I ignored him. If it was important, like that, Wade would have called his phone without asking me to be the messenger. “I guess I need to call him.”

“In a minute,” I said, and got up and walked over and sat next to him on the couch. I ran my hand up his thigh, moving closer and closer to his groin, when he stopped me.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Take me for a ride,” I said, and leaned in to kiss him. He responded, getting into it, and he was one good kisser. Then he pushed me away.

“Dude, I cannot do that.”

“I want you,” I said, and my hand reached his groin, and was massaging his hardening cock.

He got really pissed off, then got what I was doing and smiled. He gently took my hand off his groin, held it up to his mouth, and kissed it. “You’re trying to make me feel better.”

“If that were true, I would back off now,” I said, and leaned in to kiss him again, and let my hand drop back to his cock. He was wearing sweat shorts, so I reached up through the baggy leg and actually touched him, making him moan. I felt him slowly starting to give in, and then suddenly he seemed to get resolved, and he gently pushed me away.

“You’d really go through with this?”

I gestured down to my tenting shorts. “Fuck yeah.”

He pulled me in and gave me a gentle kiss, as if to cool down the more heated ones we had exchanged. “You must really care about me to do that.”

“I love you that much,” I said sincerely. He nodded, and a tear fell out of his eye, then he gave me a big hug. He just held on to me for a long time, and I could almost feel him drawing strength from me. “You are not alone,” I said seriously.

“No, I’m not,” he said. “Thanks.”

I smiled and stood up, and blushed as he grinned at my tenting shorts. “You better go call Wade before Dad does.”

“He said he wouldn’t tell Wade about me,” Matt objected.

“So if he talks to Wade, and tells Wade that he and I are both negative, and then refuses to answer when Wade asks about you, that won’t give it away?”

He got a dour look on his face, as he digested how Machiavellian my father could be. “No wonder your fights with him are so scary. You have him figured out.”

“Yep,” I said.

“You were busting his balls pretty hard about sharing his HIV results.”

“I was,” I agreed. “I really think that he’s finally moved on, beyond his grief. I wasn’t sure before, but I think that he has. That means he’s going to be out there, dating and sleeping around.”

“He hasn’t been with many guys yet,” he said.

“Yet,” I said. “He’s been with Sean, and with Kevin, and I’m betting that he’s in New York and Chris Mendoza is fucking his brains out.”

“So why does that give you the right to pry?”

“Because if he’s doing that, he needs to get tested regularly. I need to do a better job of that too. But what he’s shown me is that he isn’t planning to be candid about it.” He looked at me, confused. “I don’t want to be in a situation where I have to fucking worry about him all the time and I have to quiz him all the time about it so I can sleep at night. And I need to know that when he does tell me, that he’s giving me the straight dope on it, and not some bullshit.”

“Alright, I can see that, but isn’t that really his choice?”

I smiled. “It totally is. But choices have consequences. If he won’t agree to work with us on this, he’s going to have to pay the price with some pretty nasty bitchiness.” He chuckled. “And it’s not just from me. He hadn’t even talked to Stef when we had our conversation.”

“You called in the cavalry.”

“It was important,” I said with a smile.

“I’m going to go call Wade.” He wandered back to his room, looking pretty depressed and despondent. I went out onto the balcony and called my father.

“Hello,” he said. His voice was frosty to let me know he was still annoyed with me.

“I just wanted to know what your plan was.”

“Well, I talked to the pilots, and they’ve finally gotten my fucking plane fixed. I think they’re planning to leave in a couple of hours to head here and get me.”

“Can you hold off until tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“Matt is pretty upset about this. I’d like to see what he’s like tomorrow. Maybe he’ll want to go ahead and just leave here.”

“I’ll probably be back there in the afternoon anyway,” he said.

“Dad, I get that, but with Matt the way he is, I think it would be pretty useful to have the plane here if Matt needs to go somewhere.” He paused as he thought about what I was saying.

“I’ll call them and have them fly out tomorrow, and I’ll make sure they call you before they leave,” he said, getting it.

“Thanks.”

“What are you planning to do?” he asked me.

“I was going to go to Claremont, but Zach talked me out of it,” I grumbled.

“Smart move,” he said. I didn’t agree, but I didn’t argue about it.

“JJ told me that he and Tiffany were in Malibu, so I thought I might go back there.”

“I have to go to Maui. You want to go with me?”

I was smiling, and he probably knew that. “Fuck yeah!”

He chuckled. “I’ll have the pilots call you, and we can finalize things tomorrow on the plane.”

“Sounds good,” I said.