Okay, here we go...
Title: Quiet in Drowning
Fandom: Wilby Wonderful
Characters: Duck, Buddy, OMCs
Rating: NC-17
Length: 8,495 words
Author's Notes: Many thanks to zabira, ignazwisdom, secretlybronte and isiscolo for hanging tough and completing a very difficult beta. You're all troopers, and I promise to send you something warm and fluffy next time.
Warnings: This story contains graphic, violent and disturbing subject matter, including non-con. Please give the story a pass if such material upsets you.
Summary: It rained the morning Duck McDonald left home.
It rained the morning Duck McDonald left home.
It was a cold, miserable, drizzling rain that showed as white streaks under the streetlights of Wilby, and it froze against Duck’s skin and made the fresh bruises on his face ache. He stood for a long time under the red and blue neon sign of Iggy’s Diner, waiting for the ferry, shivering as the icy rain sheeted down his back and soaked through his threadbare fall jacket.
He hadn’t had money for a winter coat. The fishing had been bad that autumn, and Duck had barely managed to scrape together enough to afford the Greyhound ticket that would give him passage from the bus terminal on the mainland to Halifax. His father had still managed to afford beer, of course, and Duck had taken some small satisfaction in sneaking bottles of Molson out of the fridge when his father was too drunk to count how many were missing.
Three of the bottles bounced in his duffle bag. He planned to drink them on the bus, and he hoped they’d be enough to quiet the throb of the bruises and wash the sour taste of fear from his mouth.
Duck leaned back against the cold glass window of Iggy’s and tried for a disinterested slouch. He needed to look like he belonged here, needed to look like one of the mainland men at the Watch, calm and secure. If you looked confident enough no one would question your right to be somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. And Duck was supposed to be back in his father’s apartment, listening to the old man’s boozy snores and swallowing against the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.
Someone was coming down the sidewalk. He couldn’t quite make out the face--the guy was wearing a yellow slicker, and had drawn the hood up as protection against the freezing rain--but he recognized the set of those shoulders, the long, loping, easy strides that ate up the ground between them. Buddy French.
“Fuck,” Duck muttered, digging in his coat pocket for his cigarettes. Had only two left in the pack, and when he pulled them out he found they were both soaked and useless. Figured.
Buddy was close enough now to get caught in the flickering circle of light from the sign over Iggy’s. Buddy’s face flashed in discontinuous steps, bright-dark-bright in the flashing read and blue. His face flickered like an old movie. “Hey, Duck.”
Duck tried harder to be cool. He slouched a little deeper, and didn’t turn his head to acknowledge Buddy.
“I saw you pass by the house. Waiting for the ferry?”
“Yeah,” he allowed. The silence ticked by between them.
“You going to Halifax, or Saint John?”
Duck flushed. The question had caught him by surprise. It was probably a better idea, actually, to go to Saint John. He could take the long ferry across the Bay of Fundy, and there’d be a better chance of getting work in New Brunswick. Less chance of running into anyone he knew, too. But his ticket was for Halifax, and to Halifax he would go.
“Haven’t decided,” he said finally, wincing at how idiotic he sounded. Like he didn’t have a plan. “Just need to get away from this place.”
Buddy nodded. But then Buddy always looked so understanding. It was his eyes, Duck decided. Heavy-lidded, almost sleepy, Buddy’s eyes radiated calm. You could say anything to a guy with eyes like that, and know that he probably wouldn’t freak out. His voice was calm and sleepy, too, and the way he moved, even on the field, was slow and deliberate. Buddy wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever hit anyone.
“You got any money?” Buddy asked.
“What?”
Buddy frowned. “Money. Do you have any?”
Duck sneered. “Can’t all be Frenches.”
Buddy didn’t respond. He jerked his head a little and stuck his hands in the pockets of his slicker, hunching his shoulders against the rain. Duck felt a flush of shame. What the hell did he care if Buddy had money? It wasn’t Buddy’s fault he’d been born a French, and sniping at him like that was something Duck’s old man would do, something he’d say as he railed against the old families on the island. ‘Sucking us dry, son,’ his father had said over and over one night. ‘Damn them Frenches. Sucking us dry.’
Duck clenched his hands into hard fists, squishing the last two soggy cigarettes inside his pocket where Buddy couldn’t see. “I--sorry,” he muttered.
Buddy shrugged. “No, you’re right. Can’t all be Frenches.” He hesitated, and pulled out a wad of green bills, all twenties, from his pocket. There had to be about two hundred dollars in there.
Duck couldn’t look at the money. He could not. “I don’t want your fucking charity.”
Buddy’s face grew cold, those sleepy-lidded eyes narrowing into an expression that Duck would have said was anger if he’d seen it on another guy. But Buddy French never got angry. Puzzled, yeah, when something didn’t go his way, but never angry. “Take it,” he said, still holding out the cash. His hand trembled, slightly.
Duck shook his head. He’d be okay without taking a handout.
“How much do you have?”
“About five bucks,” Duck admitted.
“And how far did you think you’d get on five bucks?” Buddy asked mildly, like he was asking a question about a pop quiz.
Duck slouched back against the window. “Already got a bus ticket.” He’d folded it up in his knapsack next to the beer. Duck briefly considered showing the ticket to Buddy, just like he would have when they were kids. Back before they started high school, he and Buddy French had been friends. They’d hung out together in the woods behind whatever rented shithole Duck was living in and he’d shown things to Buddy: the different kinds of trees, birds and insects, ferns and types of moss. Buddy didn’t know much about that stuff, so Duck had taught him. It had been good, showing Buddy all that stuff about Wilby Island.
Of course, that had all happened a long time ago, long before high school.
“You know anyone in Halifax, Duck? Friends? Relatives?”
He felt his cheeks grow hot, and this time he had to clench his fists hard to keep from socking Buddy in the mouth. “No,” he ground out.
“So you’re going to show up with ten dollars in your pocket, no friends, nowhere to stay. What kind of stupid--”
“Don’t you call me stupid!” Duck cut him off, yelling now, finally yelling, not caring about how much it hurt his throat or pulled the skin around his bruised and damaged mouth. “Don’t you ever call me stupid!” He threw Buddy back against the plate-glass window, which trembled in its frame. He had a fist in Buddy’s shirt, holding him in place, and one arm cocked to deliver the sort of punch his old man would have been proud of. And then Buddy’s words sank in. He’d been talking the whole time, but Duck hadn’t heard any of it.
“I’m not Tommy Ellis. I’m not any of those assholes. And I’m not your old man. Don’t do this, Duck. Don’t do this.”
He wasn’t yelling, like Duck had been. Just talking softly, quietly, in his sleepy-calm way. His voice was soothing, and it washed over Duck and slid through the fog of his anger.
Suddenly he could feel the icy rain again, and Buddy, warm and almost panting where Duck held him pinned against the glass.
He let go of Buddy’s shirt, and flexed his hand and fingers. It hurt, where he’d gripped Buddy. Everything hurt.
The adrenaline drained out of his body so quickly that Duck sagged and shuffled back a couple of steps until he was leaning against the diner window. “I’m sorry. I don’t like it when people call me stupid. I’m not stupid.”
“I know,” Buddy said. He didn’t raise his voice. “I wasn’t going to say you were stupid, just that you needed a better plan. What were you going to do in Halifax?”
Duck couldn’t believe it. Jesus, didn’t Buddy realize how close he’d come to getting his head bashed in? “Buddy, drop it, okay?
When he stopped feeling like he needed to punch something, he looked to find Buddy watching him with sad eyes. Like he was memorizing the bruises on Duck’s face. Duck turned away, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. It wasn’t like he hadn’t shown up at school with worse. He just hoped Buddy wouldn’t ask where he’d gotten the black eye and cut lip.
Buddy sighed and stuffed the thick wad of cash back into the pocket of his slicker. He leaned up against the wall beside Duck, their shoulders barely touching. “Are you leaving because of all the shit Tommy’s been saying to you?”
He couldn’t talk about this. Not with Buddy. Not with anyone.
But Buddy seemed to think he wanted to talk, because he just kept going in that soft, sleepy-gentle voice. “Duck. Duck, listen to me. Tommy is a total asshole. He’s not worth it. Neither are the rest of his goons.”
“They’re your friends.”
“They’re my team.” Buddy rubbed at his eyebrow, frowning. His face was white in the dark. “They’ve treated you like shit since grade school. Just stick it out another six months. Get your diploma. Don’t drop out and ruin your whole life just because-”
He couldn’t listen to this shit. Buddy sounded like an after-school special, and it was embarrassing to listen to. Why the hell would graduating matter one way or another? Duck certainly didn’t need a high school diploma to haul nets or check crab traps or clean out storm drains.
Duck smiled, and flinched at the way it cut at his mouth. “You sound like a cop, Buddy.”
“Still. It’s true. Those assholes aren’t worth your whole future.”
He felt the rage float back into him, that red-hot anger pulsing bright where they’d hit him. He could feel it building behind the cut on his lip, the scrape on his chin and deep, deep down inside him where they’d ripped him open.
Duck MacDonald had no future. That had always been clear to everyone on the island. And now he had the marks to prove it.
******
It had started the way it ended. It had started with a word.
“Faggot.”
Instead of Tommy Ellis’s hot breath in his ear the word, sharp like a dagger, had been thrown at him by his old man over the usual Friday night noise in the Loyalist. Minnie Anderson had called him and asked him to come down to collect his father. He’d been expecting the call, but it had come late and he was tired. His eyes felt like sandpaper and he’d been scanning the crowd blearily, just wanting to get his father and get the hell home so he could sleep. And then the second word reached him.
“Cocksucker.”
His father’s loud, drunken voice had cut cleanly through the happy conversations of Friday night pubgoers, and everyone had paused in the middle of their fishing stories to see what crazy old Walter MacDonald was on about now. It was sport to them. Cheap, easy entertainment that could be repackaged as a sad story to be retold while they mended their fishing nets Did you hear how Walt MacDonald talked to his son last Friday? Shameful.
But even that was probably wishful thinking. No one had ever suggested what his father did was wrong. No one had held his father back in Johansson’s Pharmacy when Duck was nine and his father was stone drunk and started laying into him with his belt because he thought Duck had spent too long staring at the comic books. They’d stood around and watched.
Duck had long ago stopped expecting anyone to step in.
He pushed his way through the crowd to his father, shouldering past Michael McGinty and Jake Sewell and that fucking asshole Pete Masterson, who had stiffed his father for a propeller repair job last fall and left them with no income for a whole month. The men parted reluctantly, too fixated on the ugly things coming out of his father’s mouth to step aside easily for Duck. As he passed he heard murmured bits of conversation, his name sometimes, but Duck kept moving and avoided everyone’s eyes.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he turned, expecting to see Minnie Anderson there, ready to tell him that his father wasn’t welcome at the Loyalist anymore. Instead it was Tommy Ellis, team quarterback and, except for Buddy French, the most popular guy at school. He had a bottle of beer in one hand--good stuff, not the cheap Molson shit Duck’s father drank--and he was looking at Duck with...well, it probably wasn’t sympathy, but Duck thought it might have been something close to it.
“You need help getting him out of here?”
Duck shook his head. It would only rile his father up if anyone else stepped in. “No thanks. I can handle it.”
“Bet you can,” Tommy said, and winked at Duck. He tilted the throat of the beer bottle toward him. “Want a sip?”
Duck eyed Tommy. He’d seen the way Tommy looked at him sometimes in the locker room, thought there was something there, maybe, in the half-second before
Tommy looked away or made a stupid joke about going to watch the girls’ class play basketball in their tight gym shorts. Why the hell was Tommy talking to him now?
“Okay,” Duck said slowly, taking the bottle from Tommy. Their fingers brushed and Duck felt it like an electric shock that traveled up his arm and make his hand shake as he gripped the bottle. He took a shallow sip of the bitter hops, and it made his mouth water. He wanted more. He wanted another beer, and another and another until all of the ugly faces and half-whispered comments were drowned out in a sea of that good, bitter brew. But he handed the bottle back to Tommy, licked his lips, and mumbled, “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Tommy said. “Get him out of here, okay? He’s a fucking embarrassment.”
One of the guys--Pete Masterson, it figured--laughed, and clapped Tommy on the back. But he hadn’t said it in a mean way, Duck told himself. Tommy had just stated a fact. His father was a fucking embarrassment.
Walter MacDonald sat alone at a scarred, sticky table near the back. Scattered peanut shells and eleven empty mugs testified that he’d been there for hours before Minnie had thought to call Duck.
“Dad, it’s time to go,” Duck said in a low voice, spine prickling with the knowledge that every eye in the Loyalist was trained on him, including Tommy’s. He refused to give them a show, or to make them think less of him than they already did.
“Pervert,” his father muttered, and belched. He scratched at his unshaven jaw and stared blearily up at Duck. “You stay away from me, faggot.”
Duck could feel the crowd tense behind them. It had been quiet as soon as Duck had entered the bar, but now it was so still and so silent he could hear the urinals flush in the bathroom behind the bar. Duck’s neck felt hot, and he knew his ears were probably fire-engine red. But he kept his voice cool and controlled.
“Let’s go home,” he told his father. He moved around the table to help his father up. But Walter MacDonald waved him off and then lurched unsteadily to his feet. He swayed there for a moment, resting a hand on the table, and when he held up his hand, Duck saw a few red peanut husks were stuck to his palm.
“Not going with you,” his father said, loudly. “Don’t want to be seen with you, you little queer!”
A shift in the crowd at his back, a few whispered murmurings. Duck closed his eyes.
“Dad, come home. You know you can’t stay here. You’re out of money.”
He’d waited to see what effect his words might have had. Bringing up money was tricky; it could always go either way, and if he’d judged this wrong his father would drop back down into his chair and begin his litany against the government and the fishing quotas and the new French cannery opening on the mainland. His father blinked at him, swaying in place. “Got money at home, right? All that money you been putting away?”
“Yeah,” Duck agreed, letting out a silent breath of relief. “Yeah, there’s more money at home. Come with me, and we’ll get it.”
His father stumbled forward and settled a heavy arm across Duck’s shoulders. His breath was stale and hot. He reeked of cigarettes and the beers he’d consumed. Duck turned his face away and breathed out of his mouth.
They moved slowly through the crowd. By this time it was obvious that there wouldn’t be a fight, and so most of the pubgoers had turned back to their own drinks and idle gossip. Duck looked for Tommy but didn’t see him now among the crowd, and the rest didn’t spare Duck and his father a second glance as they weaved and wobbled their way out of the Loyalist.
As they had left the pub and headed through the quiet, respectable streets of Wilby toward their apartment over the Woolworth’s, Duck’s father continued to mumble about “queer” and “disgrace.” His voice was loud, his breaths coming thick and laboured. Duck couldn’t hear much else, and so they were nearly at the door before Duck heard the footsteps behind them. When he’d looked up Tommy Ellis was several feet behind, watching. He’d jerked his head in some kind of signal, and Duck had nodded back, shy, unsure.
After he’d gotten his father settled in bed he’d glanced out a window. Tommy was still there on the street below, looking up at the dark windows of Duck’s apartment.
He’d gone down to Tommy. Of course he’d gone down.
Tommy smelled good--Old Spice aftershave, some kind of rich commercial deodorant, the musky scent of his arousal overlaying everything else. The sound of his zipper was loud and Duck’s heart was pounding, but he’d gone down to his knees in the dark shelter of an alley and taken Tommy into his mouth, and then he’d sucked him off, slow and sweet. He’d done this at the Watch, but only with mainland strangers. He’d never done this with someone he knew, someone he’d sat next to in third grade, someone who’d offered him a sip of beer when he’d needed it. Tommy had gasped and dug his fingers into Duck’s hair, the pain a little sharp but nothing Duck couldn’t handle. Tommy’s cock was hot and heavy against Duck’s tongue, and he tasted faintly salty. Duck’s own erection was pressing painfully against his jeans, but when he’d reached down to pull himself out Tommy had batted his hands away.
“Do me,” he said roughly, dragging Duck’s hands up to wrap around his cock. His thrusts became frantic, mindless, and Duck worked him with his mouth and his hands until Tommy was shaking, quivering, thrusting raggedly and finally spilling into his mouth with a long, low moan. Duck had pulled away and spat onto the sidewalk, wishing he’d thought to bring down one of the old man’s Molsons to rinse with. Next time, he’d thought, anticipation making his spine tingle. Next time he’d be more prepared.
Tommy had zipped up and left, gone so quickly his passing barely registered. That was familiar, at least--grade school acquaintance or Watch stranger, guys never seemed to say much afterward. Duck had struggled to his feet. He was still hard and his knees ached, so he leaned up against the wall, unzipped, and finished himself off there in the alley, his ragged breathing filling the still and silent night.
He and Tommy had a standing appointment that spring and summer. Duck sucked him off in alleys and deserted root cellars and in the woods behind the Watch. He memorized the pattern of hair low on Tommy’s belly, the whirls and swirls forming tiny question marks that floated in front of him, blurring and sharpening as Tommy pumped into his mouth. He never let Duck touch any part of him other than his dick, and he never let Duck jerk off. Duck hoped Tommy would come around. Eventually.
There was something in Tommy’s voice when he cried out and came, some small sound of awe, that made Duck keep going down to meet him. It was something about the way his big quarterback hands would tighten in Duck’s hair and then, once orgasm hit, his hands would soften, almost gentle, and Tommy would stroke Duck’s scalp for a few seconds until he’d recovered. Sometimes, when Duck’s knees hurt or his mouth got sore, he would squeeze his eyes shut tight and look forward to those few seconds afterwards, when Tommy would touch him like a lover. Those few seconds mattered.
When school started up again in the fall, Duck discovered that he and Tommy hadn’t done all of those things in the alleys and fields and woods of Wilby. Tommy didn’t know him, and Duck didn’t know Tommy. On the first day of school Duck passed him in the hall and smiled at him, just a little. Tommy had whirled and slammed Duck up against a row of lockers.
“What the fuck are you smiling at me for, faggot?” he’d demanded, his breath rushing over Duck’s face, hot and angry. Duck couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Whenever he saw Tommy lingering in the street outside his apartment late at night, Duck just closed the curtains and went to bed. He lay awake a long time on those nights, wanting to go down to Tommy so badly he could feel it in his bones. But it wasn’t any good. No good at all, to want something like that. To want someone who wouldn’t even smile at him in the hallway.
Winter came, and Tommy stopped haunting Grove Street. He started to get his kicks in other ways. Whistling, catcalling at Duck in the hallways, crowding him up against doors or cornering him in the boy’s bathroom, breathing hot anger into his face. “You’re a fucking faggot,” Tommy would point out.
Duck tried to ignore it. He still lay awake at night, and instead of thinking about Tommy’s soft fingers in his hair or the sounds he made when he came, Duck thought about Tommy’s voice shot through with ugliness, his face twisted up in rage. It would all blend together in Duck’s head with his father’s voice, “queer” and “fag” and “worthless” sounding like a drumbeat until he either stole enough beer to drown it out completely, or waited it out until dawn.
As the months passed Tommy’s threats and catcalls got worse. He started to bring his friends along with him. Duck would press himself back against the wall or the row of lockers, trying to make himself as small as possible. It didn’t work with his father and it didn’t work with Tommy, but he didn’t know what else to do except wish to be invisible.
“I saw you checking out my dick, fag. You want that up your ass? You want me to fuck you?” Tommy said, loud enough so his friends could hear. They snickered in the background like a group of hyenas. Duck never looked at any of their faces.
“Some day I’m going to give you your wish,” Tommy promised. “I’m going to fuck you just like you want. And you’ll like it, you pathetic homo. You’ll like it.”
When Tommy and his friends pulled away and left it usually took a long time before Duck stopped shaking.
For a while nothing happened. The winter term started and Duck went to class and stared at books he couldn’t read. The words swam before him, flipping and twisting on the page like Olympic divers. Math class was a wash, and he hated science. They finally put him into Applied Skills. He took stuff like Shop and Auto Mechanics, and when he wasn’t making birdhouses or rebuilding car engines, he was taking academic classes with the kids who had Down’s Syndrome and the ones who cried and threw tantrums and wet themselves.
They let him stay in art class, though, which made all the rest bearable. In art class he could paint or sculpt and tune out the rest of the world. Even if his stuff looked like shit most of the time, it meant escape for an hour or an afternoon. Mr. Jenkins, Wilby High’s art teacher, would usually let him stay late to finish a painting. He seemed to think Duck had “potential” and kept giving him new brushes and books on stuff like Impressionism and the Renaissance. Duck used the brushes, looked at the pictures in the books, and tried to believe that Mr. Jenkins actually liked his stuff and he wasn’t being nice just because he wanted to fuck him. But he’d seen Mr. Jenkins at the Watch one time, staring out into the water, and Duck guessed that, yeah, Mr. Jenkins probably would ask him for a blowjob or something, someday soon.
But it wasn’t Mr. Jenkins he should have been worried about.
It happened late, well after the last bell. Duck was alone in the art room--Mr. Jenkins had said he should take his time, finish up, and let the janitor know when he was ready to leave. There was a football game that night, and every so often Duck could hear the big crowd of Islanders cheering or stamping their feet when Wilby High scored a point. He heard when it was over, too: the sounds of people moving toward the parking lot drifted in through the open window in the art room, and he heard people run their cars for a few minutes before they pulled out of the school’s parking lot. It had been a cold night for a game.
He’d almost finished his painting, and when he heard the knock at the door he thought it was Debbie, the school’s janitor. “Almost done,” he said over his shoulder. No answer, and he figured Debbie had moved on to clean the men’s room now that the game was over. Instead the door creaked open, and there was Tommy. He was so tall and wide he almost filled the doorway.
“Hi,” he said. Duck turned and kept painting, keeping the strokes of his brush steady and even. The picture wouldn’t be much good, but he liked the deep blue background and the stripes of red criss-crossing the canvas. If he squinted he could almost see it the way it was in his mind, the red crosses floating bright above that dark blue sea. His fingers were clumsy and the strokes of the brush weren’t perfect, but maybe someday, if he practiced, his pictures might start to look the way they did in his head.
“I said, ‘hi’.”
Duck still didn’t turn. “I heard you.”
He expected Tommy to call him a faggot, to threaten to fuck him, to do something, but Tommy stayed quiet. His silence made Duck nervous, and finally Duck turned.
“You want something?”
Tommy crossed the room in a flash, pressing Duck up against the painting. He felt the wet paint seep into his thin t-shirt, and he knew the picture was ruined. But it didn’t matter because Tommy was kissing him, finally kissing him, practically devouring him. His tongue was pushing inside Duck’s mouth, hard and fast like his cock when Duck blew him, but his hands...God, his hands were so gentle in Duck’s hair.
Duck finally broke away, gasping. His lips tingled and his dick throbbed. Tommy smelled great--Old Spice again, and he’d clearly just come from a post-game shower. His hair was wet and soft-looking.
“I’m sorry I said all of that shit to you. About you being a fag and a pervert. I’m sorry.”
Tommy’s apology was as unexpected as his kiss. Duck shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to think. Oh Christ, he wanted Tommy. Wanted him so much. It had been so long since the summer, so long since those cool evenings in the woods.
But he couldn’t ask if Tommy meant it. He’d just have to wait and see.
Something flickered over Tommy’s face, and he shifted from side to side. He was nervous, Duck guessed. Nervous about earning himself one of those nametags, the ones everyone could read. He didn’t want Tommy to be nervous about this.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Duck said softly, cupping Tommy’s cheek. He felt a muscle twitch there. “You don’t have to worry. No one has to know. It’ll be just us, okay?”
Tommy nodded, but he still looked tense. He almost seemed to be working himself up to something. Duck figured it was another kiss.
“Come with me,” Tommy said at last, and Duck blinked.
“Where?”
“Just come. I want...I want you, okay? I want you to suck me again, like before.”
Duck smiled. “We can do that here.”
Tommy glanced around pointedly. He was right: the school’s architect had designed the art room to maximize natural light. It was all windows on every side. Even with the lights turned off, even if they were quiet, someone would probably see. And Debbie, wherever she was, knew he was in here. She’d come get him sooner or later.
“The locker room. Everyone’s gone, and we can lock the door.”
He frowned. Something wasn’t right. The locker room was Tommy’s territory, and it would be harder to get control of the situation if things went bad or Tommy freaked out. But...but it was just Tommy. The guy had said some shitty things, sure, but Duck had known him since grade school. He could handle it.
Duck peeled away from the painting--ruined, just like he thought--and tossed it onto the pile of scrap canvases. He threw his brushes in the sink, shut off the lights, and followed Tommy down the hall to the locker room. Tommy paused at the door, one hand on the handle, and smiled at him.
“Thanks for giving me a second chance,” he said, and Duck grinned back.
“Sure.”
Tommy opened the door and ushered him in. The room was pitch-black, and when Tommy shut the door behind them Duck laughed, feeling his way in the dark, hoping to find either Tommy or a light switch.
The bright fluorescents flickered on with a loud hum, and Duck blinked in the sudden light. Oh, fuck.
They weren’t alone. Three guys from the football team--Danny Anderson, Michael Higgins, Paul Trelawny--stood before him, a solid wall of red-and-yellow Wilby High t-shirts. Behind him he heard the final, terrible sound of a lock clicking home.
“Duck agreed to come down and suck us off,” Tommy announced. “Wanted to do something special for the team. Nice of him, don’t you think?”
A couple of the guys nodded and leered at him. Duck felt like he wanted to throw up.
“Duck here has been real sweet to me, and he’s going to be real sweet to you. Might even let you fuck him if you ask him right. Duck’s easy to talk into things, aren’t you, Duck?”
Tommy punched him in the shoulder, which forced Duck to take a few stumbling steps forward. The linebackers in front of him moved like they did on the field, closing in around him to form a circle. Circle-jerk, Duck thought, his mind spinning. They actually expected him to-
“C’mon, let’s get started,” Paul said. He was a fat, sweaty guy Duck recognized from his Applied Skills classes--useless, mean as a snake, and he liked to shoot birds with his BB gun. He reached for his zipper, but Tommy stopped him.
“Me first. I’m the one Duck likes best, right Duck?”
That was what finally broke him out of his stupor. This was real. These guys were really going to make him do this if he didn’t get out. He turned slowly, around and around, the others pressing closer. But he’d learned a thing or two from his old man.
He whirled and busted Michael Higgins in the nose, and he felt the bones crunch under his hand. Michael cried out and collapsed, and Duck shouldered past. The others were still in shock and if he could just get to the door--
Hands grabbed at his shoulders and his knees. Too many hands. The other three, even scared-looking Danny Anderson, pawed at him, tearing his t-shirt as he kicked and struggled back against them. He managed to get one of his legs free and kicked out. He heard a startled “ooof!” and one of the pairs of hands fell away, but the others were angry now. Punches rained down on his head, his face, his back. His father had done more damage half-drunk and blind with rage, but Duck couldn’t get his hands free, couldn’t get to the door.
Debbie, he thought wildly. Debbie would hear him if he screamed loud enough. He opened his mouth and sucked in a breath but a hand clamped down over his face, jerking him back. Duck tripped and almost fell--don’t go down don’t go down you’ll never get up--but whoever was holding him caught him just in time and dragged him over to the bench.
He heard Tommy say something, and one of the guys laughed, but he couldn’t make out the words over the pounding of his heart. His hands were dragged behind him roughly, and he felt the slick abrasion of a plastic rope circle his wrists. A skipping rope, he guessed. From the gym.
The hands left him and he tilted to one side, dragging in great lungfuls of air. Adrenaline was still pumping through his system but he felt light-headed and his face throbbed where the punches had landed. One eye was swelling shut. If he were at home, if this was just something his father had done, he could put some ice on the eye and dry-swallow some aspirin and chase the pills down with a couple of beers. He’d be fine.
But he wasn’t at home.
Duck kept his eyes squeezed shut. He struggled when they shifted him from the bench to the floor, fighting them as they balanced him on his knees. The bench dug into his back, cutting into his wrists where they’d tied him.
“Open your eyes, you fucking homo. You kicked Paul in the balls. That wasn’t very nice of you, was it?”
He heard footsteps behind him, cheap Keds on the tile floor, each footstep timed to the pounding of his heartbeat.
“Now,” Tommy continued, his voice getting louder, stronger, more confident. “You’re going to suck us, and then I’m going to fuck you. And you’re not going to fight us anymore. Got it?”
He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, praying for calm. It hurt so much to breathe, to think. And then I’m going to fuck you. He shivered. His old man had busted nearly every bone in his body at one time or another. But that, being ripped open like that, having Tommy push his way in…Christ, he would die. It would hurt too much and he would die of the pain, die right here in the locker room.
Duck opened his eyes. He looked up at them, at Tommy and Paul and Michael and Danny Anderson, and tried to think of something to say. His head hurt and he was shaking; the stench of his own fear was so thick that he could hardly breathe. He’d heard the cruelty in Tommy’s voice, the raw hatred he’d never really let himself see. Tommy was staring down at him like he was nothing, like he wasn’t even human anymore.
It was the way his father had looked always looked at him.
But the others weren’t as cool as Tommy. Danny Anderson was practically crying, and Michael and Paul looked like they were reconsidering about whether or not they should go through with it. Michael was cupping his busted nose. Blood had stained the front of his Wilby Athletics t-shirt a dull, dark red. And Paul simply looked disgusted. He sneered down at Duck’s bruised, swollen face, and shook his head. You’re not worth the trouble. Duck recognized that look, too.
They hadn’t expected him to fight them, he realized. Tommy had probably told them Duck would do it willingly. That it would be easy. Tommy was good at talking people into things.
Except you, that voice inside him whispered. He didn’t even have to ask you, that first time. Not one word. You volunteered.
“Please, just walk away,” he said, hardly recognizing his own voice. He sounded so weak, like a little old man. “Don’t do this.”
Tommy stepped forward and backhanded him, sending Duck’s head snapping to one side like a rag doll’s.
“Shut up, you fucking faggot! No one is walking away from this!” He was angry now. Duck had never seen anyone so angry, not even his father. “This faggot is going to blow us. We’re doing this thing. Paul, Michael, Danny, let’s go.”
Paul and Michael’s faces cleared. Pack rules, and they’d chosen their alpha over any kind of logical appeal. Duck knew if he said anything more he’d be wasting his breath. There was no reasoning with animals.
He squeezed his eyes shut again, and wished to be invisible.
*****
They all took turns. Tommy, Paul, Michael, Tommy again. Danny couldn’t do it. He was shaking too hard, and he could only get up to about half-mast. Tommy made him guide his soft dick into Duck’s mouth anyway. He listened to the sound of Danny crying and wondered if there was any way they’d let Duck live after this was over. He’d already seen too much.
He’d felt Paul’s fat, flabby belly pushing against his nose, thick head thrown back, sweaty hands gripping his head. And he’d seen Michael’s short stubby brown dick, the old acne scars that pitted his face, the ugly way his mouth twisted when he came. They all fucked Duck’s mouth, and they all came, all except Danny. It seemed like each of them would want to protect their secrets--sweat, pimples, acne scars, that they enjoyed this, the way it made them repulsive, savage, violent. And they knew he'd seen it, seen all their secrets. They weren't going to let him just walk away.
Tommy was the worst. Tommy was angry, his rage obvious in every thrust into Duck’s mouth. He banged into Duck roughly, slapping him if Duck tried to jerk away, and when he finally came he forced Duck to swallow it down, sealing off his nose and mouth with his hand. The others, at least, had let him spit.
He’d thought about biting down, about tasting their blood in his mouth, about hurting them the way they’d hurt him. Tommy’s slaps and low-voiced warnings to “play nice” had tempted him further, but he’d ignored the urge. Be small, he thought. Be invisible. It was what he’d done with his father, and if they got through it quickly maybe they’d leave him alone.
And at last it was over. His face felt like one big bruise, most of the pain centered where they’d punched him in the eye, and in his sore jaw and mouth. He wasn’t going to be able to talk. He couldn’t even imagine forming the words. And that, at least, was a blessing. At least he wouldn’t be tempted to beg.
“You guys can head out,” Tommy said coolly. “I’ll meet you in the woods. We can have some beer.”
“Want another round, huh?” Paul asked, chortling. He’d forgotten his fear. Duck was no threat, after all. He wasn’t even human, not to Paul Trelawny. He couldn’t be.
“This faggot has been admiring my dick for a whole year,” Tommy said, looking down at Duck. “Think I’ll finally give him what he wants.”
Paul and Michael cackled. Soon they were zipped up and on their way out, Danny trailing behind them, not looking up. Duck watched them go, hoping they weren’t the last three people he’d ever see.
“You should have come down,” Tommy said, hauling Duck around so that he was facing the bench. The hard edge of it cut into his belly. He wobbled on his knees, unsteady with his arms tied behind his back. “I waited for you. All night, sometimes. You should have come down.”
Duck moaned, the low sound lost in his bruised throat.
“You brought this on yourself, you know. You deserve exactly what you get.”
He pushed between Duck’s shoulder blades, his hand settling unerringly right on a bruise where they’d kicked him. Duck jerked against the pain and then let himself be pushed down until he was lying half-on the bench, hips in the air. Tommy was able to move him as though Duck weighed nothing. As though he had finally disappeared.
Blood rushed to his head as he hung upside down, and the bruises on his face and shoulder sang with renewed pain. Tommy fumbled around at his waist until he found Duck’s buckle. He undid Duck’s jeans and pushed them down until they pooled around his knees.
Duck braced himself for the pain. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was swimming with those red crosses in that deep, dark sea.
*********
He must have passed out at some point, because when he woke he was alone in the locker room. He was still sprawled over the bench but his hands were free, and he struggled to stand up, every muscle screaming. His legs and fingers tingled as the blood flowed back into them, and he rubbed at his wrists. They’d been rubbed raw from the skipping rope.
The locker room was silent and empty, and it echoed with the small grunts he made as he worked to get his jeans back up over his hips. There was blood. He felt it trickle down his legs and soak into the dark denim. He could go to Johansson’s Pharmacy on the way home, get some of those pads girls used for their periods. The thought made him tired, and he knew he couldn’t face Mr. Johansson’s cold suspicion. He didn’t want anyone to look at him.
He just wanted to fade away.
As he dressed and ran some water in the sink to wash his face, he thought of the twenty-two dollars he’d saved up for a winter coat. It was in an old coffee can hidden in the crawl space in his closet, and it would be just enough to cover a bus ticket to Halifax. The first ferry left at five in the morning. He could go home, pack, and catch the ferry with plenty of time to spare.
Duck washed his face and rinsed out his mouth. When he left the deserted school it was just beginning to rain.
*********
“Duck? Duck?”
Buddy snapped his fingers in front of Duck’s face, and Duck snarled at him in a way that made Buddy snatch his hand back, like Duck was a rabid dog. Here, at last, was some emotion other than that well-fed complacency on Buddy French’s face. Duck slid back against the wall.
Buddy was staring at him. He could feel his gaze like a gentle fingertip tracing his face as Buddy cataloged the black eye, the cut on his cheek, his bruised and swollen mouth. “Your dad really unloaded on you tonight, huh?”
Duck fought back a hysterical laugh. Jesus fucking Christ. Buddy thought...Buddy thought his dad had done this to him?
But it made sense, at least from Buddy’s perspective. Everyone knew Walter MacDonald was a mean drunk, knew that he’d beaten Duck black and blue for years. It was only natural to think he’d beat the shit out of Duck and finally thrown him out. But his dad hadn’t woken when Duck slipped into the apartment at midnight and turned on the shower. Hadn’t even twitched.
Buddy was still waiting for an answer, and something in the way he stood, still and silent, made Duck look at him. He was watching him so closely, waiting for his answer.
Buddy didn’t believe for a second that his dad had made those bruises on his face.
“Do you have a cigarette?” Duck asked, his voice rough.
Buddy nodded, and rifled through his pocket until he found a pack of Players and a lighter. He handed Duck the cig and cupped his hand against the rain to help Duck light it, and for that Duck was grateful. His trembling hands wouldn’t have been able to hold the lighter long enough for the flame to take.
Buddy lit his own cigarette and slouched next to him. They smoked quietly and stared out at the rain. It was 4:30am. Another twenty minutes and they’d be able to see the ferry’s running lights.
“You going to miss it?”
Dangerous hysterical laughter welled in his throat but Duck bit back on it hard, reining himself in. He was not going to fall apart. Not now, not when he was so close to getting out.
“Once I hit the mainland I’m going to do my best to forget Wilby ever existed.” He breathed in deep, tobacco overriding the scent of Old Spice. “I’m not going to miss it. This place has been hell for me.”
Buddy drew deep on his cigarette. “What if it’s hell out there, too?”
For an instant he couldn’t breathe. Duck stared out at the dark sea, and squeezed his eyes shut. Glass. It felt like he had crushed glass in his eyes. He rubbed at them, and half-expected to pull his hands away and see blood coating his palms. But there wasn’t any. No blood where there should be, and blood where there shouldn’t.
Suddenly he was crying and shaking and unable to stop. He tried to hold it in, pressing his raw lips together until they felt like hamburger and his blood throbbed hot and thick in his mouth. But he couldn’t stop the sounds. He let out one low sob, and then another, and another, steady and insistent like the rain.
A warm weight settled on his shoulders. Buddy. He’d pulled off his own warm winter coat and the slicker and draped it over Duck. The cold wasn’t so bad now. The coat was warm from Buddy’s body, and it smelled clean, like the rain.
He was so glad Buddy hadn’t tried to put his arm around him.
Duck’s sobs faded and finally stopped. His chest hurt and his throat burned, but at least he didn’t feel like crying any more.
“I’ve got a cousin in Halifax,” Buddy was saying. He was acting like Duck hadn’t fallen apart right in front of him, just talking quietly in his slow, sleepy voice. “Her name is Maggie Dorrit. She’s in the book. Look her up when you get in, and she’ll give you a place to stay, hot food, you name it. And she won’t...” Buddy hesitated. “She’s gay. She won’t give you a hard time about anything. I’ll call her and let her know you’re coming.”
This last almost sounded like a threat, but it was so different from anything he’d ever heard from Tommy and his goons, or his father, that Duck didn’t quite recognize it at first. But he was starting to think Buddy was probably pretty good at talking people into stuff. Sort of like Tommy. Except Buddy didn’t do it for himself.
“I’ll call her,” Duck promised, because he had to say something. He tried to picture Maggie Dorrit’s place in Halifax. A safe place to sleep, hot food, no questions. Paradise.
A bright point of light appeared on the ocean. It was hard to make out but Duck had watched the ferries come in and out of dock his entire life, and he recognized the light for what it was. That was the 5am Fundy Queen out of Port Dover. She was on schedule, for once, and the sight of her made Duck’s heart beat faster. He could do this. He could be free of it all.
He turned to Buddy, who was watching the running lights of the ferry steam closer.
“Thank you.”
Buddy shrugged. “You’d have done the same for me. Or anyone. Someday you will.”
Duck almost laughed. That was really funny. As if that was ever going to happen, him being in a position to help someone else. He wasn’t like Buddy, rich and confident, at ease in the world. He was nobody. Invisible.
“Maybe,” Duck said. “Anyway, I mean it. Thanks.” He started to struggle out of Buddy’s coat and slicker, but Buddy held up his hand.
Buddy shook his head, and smiled. His smile was gentle, as gentle as Buddy himself. “I hope you--”
Duck would never know how Buddy’s sentence would have ended. The ferry blasted its horn as it docked, cutting off their conversation, and after all the endless waiting in the cold rain Duck found there was nothing to do but shoulder his duffle and say goodbye. But what could he say to the only person in the world who gave a shit whether he was alive or dead?
Buddy didn’t seem to know what to say, either. So he moved. He grabbed Duck’s forearm gently and leaned in close to press a warm, soft kiss against the corner of his mouth. Duck jerked back, panic racing through him, but Buddy just met his eyes evenly. He was calm, so calm, still and steady like the ocean on a tranquil day. He was radiating that calm out to Duck, holding him with his eyes until Duck felt it settle deep within him.
Buddy brushed his hand against Duck’s cheek, and kissed him again on the corner of his mouth, the touch so light and sweet Duck hardly felt it against his bruises.
“Send me letters, okay? And Maggie’s great. She’ll love you. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”
He patted his shoulder as a signal, and Duck turned, walking down the street toward the dock. The ferry was waiting. He stepped onboard and faced the mainland, but when the engine revved up, rumbling through the deck under his feet, he turned to look back at the hill, back toward the sign over Iggy’s flashing blue and red and blue.
Buddy was still there, clad only in jeans and a t-shirt. He was waving.
Duck waved back, as long as the island was in sight.
THE END
Fandom: Wilby Wonderful
Characters: Duck, Buddy, OMCs
Rating: NC-17
Length: 8,495 words
Author's Notes: Many thanks to zabira, ignazwisdom, secretlybronte and isiscolo for hanging tough and completing a very difficult beta. You're all troopers, and I promise to send you something warm and fluffy next time.
Warnings: This story contains graphic, violent and disturbing subject matter, including non-con. Please give the story a pass if such material upsets you.
Summary: It rained the morning Duck McDonald left home.
It rained the morning Duck McDonald left home.
It was a cold, miserable, drizzling rain that showed as white streaks under the streetlights of Wilby, and it froze against Duck’s skin and made the fresh bruises on his face ache. He stood for a long time under the red and blue neon sign of Iggy’s Diner, waiting for the ferry, shivering as the icy rain sheeted down his back and soaked through his threadbare fall jacket.
He hadn’t had money for a winter coat. The fishing had been bad that autumn, and Duck had barely managed to scrape together enough to afford the Greyhound ticket that would give him passage from the bus terminal on the mainland to Halifax. His father had still managed to afford beer, of course, and Duck had taken some small satisfaction in sneaking bottles of Molson out of the fridge when his father was too drunk to count how many were missing.
Three of the bottles bounced in his duffle bag. He planned to drink them on the bus, and he hoped they’d be enough to quiet the throb of the bruises and wash the sour taste of fear from his mouth.
Duck leaned back against the cold glass window of Iggy’s and tried for a disinterested slouch. He needed to look like he belonged here, needed to look like one of the mainland men at the Watch, calm and secure. If you looked confident enough no one would question your right to be somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. And Duck was supposed to be back in his father’s apartment, listening to the old man’s boozy snores and swallowing against the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.
Someone was coming down the sidewalk. He couldn’t quite make out the face--the guy was wearing a yellow slicker, and had drawn the hood up as protection against the freezing rain--but he recognized the set of those shoulders, the long, loping, easy strides that ate up the ground between them. Buddy French.
“Fuck,” Duck muttered, digging in his coat pocket for his cigarettes. Had only two left in the pack, and when he pulled them out he found they were both soaked and useless. Figured.
Buddy was close enough now to get caught in the flickering circle of light from the sign over Iggy’s. Buddy’s face flashed in discontinuous steps, bright-dark-bright in the flashing read and blue. His face flickered like an old movie. “Hey, Duck.”
Duck tried harder to be cool. He slouched a little deeper, and didn’t turn his head to acknowledge Buddy.
“I saw you pass by the house. Waiting for the ferry?”
“Yeah,” he allowed. The silence ticked by between them.
“You going to Halifax, or Saint John?”
Duck flushed. The question had caught him by surprise. It was probably a better idea, actually, to go to Saint John. He could take the long ferry across the Bay of Fundy, and there’d be a better chance of getting work in New Brunswick. Less chance of running into anyone he knew, too. But his ticket was for Halifax, and to Halifax he would go.
“Haven’t decided,” he said finally, wincing at how idiotic he sounded. Like he didn’t have a plan. “Just need to get away from this place.”
Buddy nodded. But then Buddy always looked so understanding. It was his eyes, Duck decided. Heavy-lidded, almost sleepy, Buddy’s eyes radiated calm. You could say anything to a guy with eyes like that, and know that he probably wouldn’t freak out. His voice was calm and sleepy, too, and the way he moved, even on the field, was slow and deliberate. Buddy wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever hit anyone.
“You got any money?” Buddy asked.
“What?”
Buddy frowned. “Money. Do you have any?”
Duck sneered. “Can’t all be Frenches.”
Buddy didn’t respond. He jerked his head a little and stuck his hands in the pockets of his slicker, hunching his shoulders against the rain. Duck felt a flush of shame. What the hell did he care if Buddy had money? It wasn’t Buddy’s fault he’d been born a French, and sniping at him like that was something Duck’s old man would do, something he’d say as he railed against the old families on the island. ‘Sucking us dry, son,’ his father had said over and over one night. ‘Damn them Frenches. Sucking us dry.’
Duck clenched his hands into hard fists, squishing the last two soggy cigarettes inside his pocket where Buddy couldn’t see. “I--sorry,” he muttered.
Buddy shrugged. “No, you’re right. Can’t all be Frenches.” He hesitated, and pulled out a wad of green bills, all twenties, from his pocket. There had to be about two hundred dollars in there.
Duck couldn’t look at the money. He could not. “I don’t want your fucking charity.”
Buddy’s face grew cold, those sleepy-lidded eyes narrowing into an expression that Duck would have said was anger if he’d seen it on another guy. But Buddy French never got angry. Puzzled, yeah, when something didn’t go his way, but never angry. “Take it,” he said, still holding out the cash. His hand trembled, slightly.
Duck shook his head. He’d be okay without taking a handout.
“How much do you have?”
“About five bucks,” Duck admitted.
“And how far did you think you’d get on five bucks?” Buddy asked mildly, like he was asking a question about a pop quiz.
Duck slouched back against the window. “Already got a bus ticket.” He’d folded it up in his knapsack next to the beer. Duck briefly considered showing the ticket to Buddy, just like he would have when they were kids. Back before they started high school, he and Buddy French had been friends. They’d hung out together in the woods behind whatever rented shithole Duck was living in and he’d shown things to Buddy: the different kinds of trees, birds and insects, ferns and types of moss. Buddy didn’t know much about that stuff, so Duck had taught him. It had been good, showing Buddy all that stuff about Wilby Island.
Of course, that had all happened a long time ago, long before high school.
“You know anyone in Halifax, Duck? Friends? Relatives?”
He felt his cheeks grow hot, and this time he had to clench his fists hard to keep from socking Buddy in the mouth. “No,” he ground out.
“So you’re going to show up with ten dollars in your pocket, no friends, nowhere to stay. What kind of stupid--”
“Don’t you call me stupid!” Duck cut him off, yelling now, finally yelling, not caring about how much it hurt his throat or pulled the skin around his bruised and damaged mouth. “Don’t you ever call me stupid!” He threw Buddy back against the plate-glass window, which trembled in its frame. He had a fist in Buddy’s shirt, holding him in place, and one arm cocked to deliver the sort of punch his old man would have been proud of. And then Buddy’s words sank in. He’d been talking the whole time, but Duck hadn’t heard any of it.
“I’m not Tommy Ellis. I’m not any of those assholes. And I’m not your old man. Don’t do this, Duck. Don’t do this.”
He wasn’t yelling, like Duck had been. Just talking softly, quietly, in his sleepy-calm way. His voice was soothing, and it washed over Duck and slid through the fog of his anger.
Suddenly he could feel the icy rain again, and Buddy, warm and almost panting where Duck held him pinned against the glass.
He let go of Buddy’s shirt, and flexed his hand and fingers. It hurt, where he’d gripped Buddy. Everything hurt.
The adrenaline drained out of his body so quickly that Duck sagged and shuffled back a couple of steps until he was leaning against the diner window. “I’m sorry. I don’t like it when people call me stupid. I’m not stupid.”
“I know,” Buddy said. He didn’t raise his voice. “I wasn’t going to say you were stupid, just that you needed a better plan. What were you going to do in Halifax?”
Duck couldn’t believe it. Jesus, didn’t Buddy realize how close he’d come to getting his head bashed in? “Buddy, drop it, okay?
When he stopped feeling like he needed to punch something, he looked to find Buddy watching him with sad eyes. Like he was memorizing the bruises on Duck’s face. Duck turned away, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. It wasn’t like he hadn’t shown up at school with worse. He just hoped Buddy wouldn’t ask where he’d gotten the black eye and cut lip.
Buddy sighed and stuffed the thick wad of cash back into the pocket of his slicker. He leaned up against the wall beside Duck, their shoulders barely touching. “Are you leaving because of all the shit Tommy’s been saying to you?”
He couldn’t talk about this. Not with Buddy. Not with anyone.
But Buddy seemed to think he wanted to talk, because he just kept going in that soft, sleepy-gentle voice. “Duck. Duck, listen to me. Tommy is a total asshole. He’s not worth it. Neither are the rest of his goons.”
“They’re your friends.”
“They’re my team.” Buddy rubbed at his eyebrow, frowning. His face was white in the dark. “They’ve treated you like shit since grade school. Just stick it out another six months. Get your diploma. Don’t drop out and ruin your whole life just because-”
He couldn’t listen to this shit. Buddy sounded like an after-school special, and it was embarrassing to listen to. Why the hell would graduating matter one way or another? Duck certainly didn’t need a high school diploma to haul nets or check crab traps or clean out storm drains.
Duck smiled, and flinched at the way it cut at his mouth. “You sound like a cop, Buddy.”
“Still. It’s true. Those assholes aren’t worth your whole future.”
He felt the rage float back into him, that red-hot anger pulsing bright where they’d hit him. He could feel it building behind the cut on his lip, the scrape on his chin and deep, deep down inside him where they’d ripped him open.
Duck MacDonald had no future. That had always been clear to everyone on the island. And now he had the marks to prove it.
******
It had started the way it ended. It had started with a word.
“Faggot.”
Instead of Tommy Ellis’s hot breath in his ear the word, sharp like a dagger, had been thrown at him by his old man over the usual Friday night noise in the Loyalist. Minnie Anderson had called him and asked him to come down to collect his father. He’d been expecting the call, but it had come late and he was tired. His eyes felt like sandpaper and he’d been scanning the crowd blearily, just wanting to get his father and get the hell home so he could sleep. And then the second word reached him.
“Cocksucker.”
His father’s loud, drunken voice had cut cleanly through the happy conversations of Friday night pubgoers, and everyone had paused in the middle of their fishing stories to see what crazy old Walter MacDonald was on about now. It was sport to them. Cheap, easy entertainment that could be repackaged as a sad story to be retold while they mended their fishing nets Did you hear how Walt MacDonald talked to his son last Friday? Shameful.
But even that was probably wishful thinking. No one had ever suggested what his father did was wrong. No one had held his father back in Johansson’s Pharmacy when Duck was nine and his father was stone drunk and started laying into him with his belt because he thought Duck had spent too long staring at the comic books. They’d stood around and watched.
Duck had long ago stopped expecting anyone to step in.
He pushed his way through the crowd to his father, shouldering past Michael McGinty and Jake Sewell and that fucking asshole Pete Masterson, who had stiffed his father for a propeller repair job last fall and left them with no income for a whole month. The men parted reluctantly, too fixated on the ugly things coming out of his father’s mouth to step aside easily for Duck. As he passed he heard murmured bits of conversation, his name sometimes, but Duck kept moving and avoided everyone’s eyes.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he turned, expecting to see Minnie Anderson there, ready to tell him that his father wasn’t welcome at the Loyalist anymore. Instead it was Tommy Ellis, team quarterback and, except for Buddy French, the most popular guy at school. He had a bottle of beer in one hand--good stuff, not the cheap Molson shit Duck’s father drank--and he was looking at Duck with...well, it probably wasn’t sympathy, but Duck thought it might have been something close to it.
“You need help getting him out of here?”
Duck shook his head. It would only rile his father up if anyone else stepped in. “No thanks. I can handle it.”
“Bet you can,” Tommy said, and winked at Duck. He tilted the throat of the beer bottle toward him. “Want a sip?”
Duck eyed Tommy. He’d seen the way Tommy looked at him sometimes in the locker room, thought there was something there, maybe, in the half-second before
Tommy looked away or made a stupid joke about going to watch the girls’ class play basketball in their tight gym shorts. Why the hell was Tommy talking to him now?
“Okay,” Duck said slowly, taking the bottle from Tommy. Their fingers brushed and Duck felt it like an electric shock that traveled up his arm and make his hand shake as he gripped the bottle. He took a shallow sip of the bitter hops, and it made his mouth water. He wanted more. He wanted another beer, and another and another until all of the ugly faces and half-whispered comments were drowned out in a sea of that good, bitter brew. But he handed the bottle back to Tommy, licked his lips, and mumbled, “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Tommy said. “Get him out of here, okay? He’s a fucking embarrassment.”
One of the guys--Pete Masterson, it figured--laughed, and clapped Tommy on the back. But he hadn’t said it in a mean way, Duck told himself. Tommy had just stated a fact. His father was a fucking embarrassment.
Walter MacDonald sat alone at a scarred, sticky table near the back. Scattered peanut shells and eleven empty mugs testified that he’d been there for hours before Minnie had thought to call Duck.
“Dad, it’s time to go,” Duck said in a low voice, spine prickling with the knowledge that every eye in the Loyalist was trained on him, including Tommy’s. He refused to give them a show, or to make them think less of him than they already did.
“Pervert,” his father muttered, and belched. He scratched at his unshaven jaw and stared blearily up at Duck. “You stay away from me, faggot.”
Duck could feel the crowd tense behind them. It had been quiet as soon as Duck had entered the bar, but now it was so still and so silent he could hear the urinals flush in the bathroom behind the bar. Duck’s neck felt hot, and he knew his ears were probably fire-engine red. But he kept his voice cool and controlled.
“Let’s go home,” he told his father. He moved around the table to help his father up. But Walter MacDonald waved him off and then lurched unsteadily to his feet. He swayed there for a moment, resting a hand on the table, and when he held up his hand, Duck saw a few red peanut husks were stuck to his palm.
“Not going with you,” his father said, loudly. “Don’t want to be seen with you, you little queer!”
A shift in the crowd at his back, a few whispered murmurings. Duck closed his eyes.
“Dad, come home. You know you can’t stay here. You’re out of money.”
He’d waited to see what effect his words might have had. Bringing up money was tricky; it could always go either way, and if he’d judged this wrong his father would drop back down into his chair and begin his litany against the government and the fishing quotas and the new French cannery opening on the mainland. His father blinked at him, swaying in place. “Got money at home, right? All that money you been putting away?”
“Yeah,” Duck agreed, letting out a silent breath of relief. “Yeah, there’s more money at home. Come with me, and we’ll get it.”
His father stumbled forward and settled a heavy arm across Duck’s shoulders. His breath was stale and hot. He reeked of cigarettes and the beers he’d consumed. Duck turned his face away and breathed out of his mouth.
They moved slowly through the crowd. By this time it was obvious that there wouldn’t be a fight, and so most of the pubgoers had turned back to their own drinks and idle gossip. Duck looked for Tommy but didn’t see him now among the crowd, and the rest didn’t spare Duck and his father a second glance as they weaved and wobbled their way out of the Loyalist.
As they had left the pub and headed through the quiet, respectable streets of Wilby toward their apartment over the Woolworth’s, Duck’s father continued to mumble about “queer” and “disgrace.” His voice was loud, his breaths coming thick and laboured. Duck couldn’t hear much else, and so they were nearly at the door before Duck heard the footsteps behind them. When he’d looked up Tommy Ellis was several feet behind, watching. He’d jerked his head in some kind of signal, and Duck had nodded back, shy, unsure.
After he’d gotten his father settled in bed he’d glanced out a window. Tommy was still there on the street below, looking up at the dark windows of Duck’s apartment.
He’d gone down to Tommy. Of course he’d gone down.
Tommy smelled good--Old Spice aftershave, some kind of rich commercial deodorant, the musky scent of his arousal overlaying everything else. The sound of his zipper was loud and Duck’s heart was pounding, but he’d gone down to his knees in the dark shelter of an alley and taken Tommy into his mouth, and then he’d sucked him off, slow and sweet. He’d done this at the Watch, but only with mainland strangers. He’d never done this with someone he knew, someone he’d sat next to in third grade, someone who’d offered him a sip of beer when he’d needed it. Tommy had gasped and dug his fingers into Duck’s hair, the pain a little sharp but nothing Duck couldn’t handle. Tommy’s cock was hot and heavy against Duck’s tongue, and he tasted faintly salty. Duck’s own erection was pressing painfully against his jeans, but when he’d reached down to pull himself out Tommy had batted his hands away.
“Do me,” he said roughly, dragging Duck’s hands up to wrap around his cock. His thrusts became frantic, mindless, and Duck worked him with his mouth and his hands until Tommy was shaking, quivering, thrusting raggedly and finally spilling into his mouth with a long, low moan. Duck had pulled away and spat onto the sidewalk, wishing he’d thought to bring down one of the old man’s Molsons to rinse with. Next time, he’d thought, anticipation making his spine tingle. Next time he’d be more prepared.
Tommy had zipped up and left, gone so quickly his passing barely registered. That was familiar, at least--grade school acquaintance or Watch stranger, guys never seemed to say much afterward. Duck had struggled to his feet. He was still hard and his knees ached, so he leaned up against the wall, unzipped, and finished himself off there in the alley, his ragged breathing filling the still and silent night.
He and Tommy had a standing appointment that spring and summer. Duck sucked him off in alleys and deserted root cellars and in the woods behind the Watch. He memorized the pattern of hair low on Tommy’s belly, the whirls and swirls forming tiny question marks that floated in front of him, blurring and sharpening as Tommy pumped into his mouth. He never let Duck touch any part of him other than his dick, and he never let Duck jerk off. Duck hoped Tommy would come around. Eventually.
There was something in Tommy’s voice when he cried out and came, some small sound of awe, that made Duck keep going down to meet him. It was something about the way his big quarterback hands would tighten in Duck’s hair and then, once orgasm hit, his hands would soften, almost gentle, and Tommy would stroke Duck’s scalp for a few seconds until he’d recovered. Sometimes, when Duck’s knees hurt or his mouth got sore, he would squeeze his eyes shut tight and look forward to those few seconds afterwards, when Tommy would touch him like a lover. Those few seconds mattered.
When school started up again in the fall, Duck discovered that he and Tommy hadn’t done all of those things in the alleys and fields and woods of Wilby. Tommy didn’t know him, and Duck didn’t know Tommy. On the first day of school Duck passed him in the hall and smiled at him, just a little. Tommy had whirled and slammed Duck up against a row of lockers.
“What the fuck are you smiling at me for, faggot?” he’d demanded, his breath rushing over Duck’s face, hot and angry. Duck couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Whenever he saw Tommy lingering in the street outside his apartment late at night, Duck just closed the curtains and went to bed. He lay awake a long time on those nights, wanting to go down to Tommy so badly he could feel it in his bones. But it wasn’t any good. No good at all, to want something like that. To want someone who wouldn’t even smile at him in the hallway.
Winter came, and Tommy stopped haunting Grove Street. He started to get his kicks in other ways. Whistling, catcalling at Duck in the hallways, crowding him up against doors or cornering him in the boy’s bathroom, breathing hot anger into his face. “You’re a fucking faggot,” Tommy would point out.
Duck tried to ignore it. He still lay awake at night, and instead of thinking about Tommy’s soft fingers in his hair or the sounds he made when he came, Duck thought about Tommy’s voice shot through with ugliness, his face twisted up in rage. It would all blend together in Duck’s head with his father’s voice, “queer” and “fag” and “worthless” sounding like a drumbeat until he either stole enough beer to drown it out completely, or waited it out until dawn.
As the months passed Tommy’s threats and catcalls got worse. He started to bring his friends along with him. Duck would press himself back against the wall or the row of lockers, trying to make himself as small as possible. It didn’t work with his father and it didn’t work with Tommy, but he didn’t know what else to do except wish to be invisible.
“I saw you checking out my dick, fag. You want that up your ass? You want me to fuck you?” Tommy said, loud enough so his friends could hear. They snickered in the background like a group of hyenas. Duck never looked at any of their faces.
“Some day I’m going to give you your wish,” Tommy promised. “I’m going to fuck you just like you want. And you’ll like it, you pathetic homo. You’ll like it.”
When Tommy and his friends pulled away and left it usually took a long time before Duck stopped shaking.
For a while nothing happened. The winter term started and Duck went to class and stared at books he couldn’t read. The words swam before him, flipping and twisting on the page like Olympic divers. Math class was a wash, and he hated science. They finally put him into Applied Skills. He took stuff like Shop and Auto Mechanics, and when he wasn’t making birdhouses or rebuilding car engines, he was taking academic classes with the kids who had Down’s Syndrome and the ones who cried and threw tantrums and wet themselves.
They let him stay in art class, though, which made all the rest bearable. In art class he could paint or sculpt and tune out the rest of the world. Even if his stuff looked like shit most of the time, it meant escape for an hour or an afternoon. Mr. Jenkins, Wilby High’s art teacher, would usually let him stay late to finish a painting. He seemed to think Duck had “potential” and kept giving him new brushes and books on stuff like Impressionism and the Renaissance. Duck used the brushes, looked at the pictures in the books, and tried to believe that Mr. Jenkins actually liked his stuff and he wasn’t being nice just because he wanted to fuck him. But he’d seen Mr. Jenkins at the Watch one time, staring out into the water, and Duck guessed that, yeah, Mr. Jenkins probably would ask him for a blowjob or something, someday soon.
But it wasn’t Mr. Jenkins he should have been worried about.
It happened late, well after the last bell. Duck was alone in the art room--Mr. Jenkins had said he should take his time, finish up, and let the janitor know when he was ready to leave. There was a football game that night, and every so often Duck could hear the big crowd of Islanders cheering or stamping their feet when Wilby High scored a point. He heard when it was over, too: the sounds of people moving toward the parking lot drifted in through the open window in the art room, and he heard people run their cars for a few minutes before they pulled out of the school’s parking lot. It had been a cold night for a game.
He’d almost finished his painting, and when he heard the knock at the door he thought it was Debbie, the school’s janitor. “Almost done,” he said over his shoulder. No answer, and he figured Debbie had moved on to clean the men’s room now that the game was over. Instead the door creaked open, and there was Tommy. He was so tall and wide he almost filled the doorway.
“Hi,” he said. Duck turned and kept painting, keeping the strokes of his brush steady and even. The picture wouldn’t be much good, but he liked the deep blue background and the stripes of red criss-crossing the canvas. If he squinted he could almost see it the way it was in his mind, the red crosses floating bright above that dark blue sea. His fingers were clumsy and the strokes of the brush weren’t perfect, but maybe someday, if he practiced, his pictures might start to look the way they did in his head.
“I said, ‘hi’.”
Duck still didn’t turn. “I heard you.”
He expected Tommy to call him a faggot, to threaten to fuck him, to do something, but Tommy stayed quiet. His silence made Duck nervous, and finally Duck turned.
“You want something?”
Tommy crossed the room in a flash, pressing Duck up against the painting. He felt the wet paint seep into his thin t-shirt, and he knew the picture was ruined. But it didn’t matter because Tommy was kissing him, finally kissing him, practically devouring him. His tongue was pushing inside Duck’s mouth, hard and fast like his cock when Duck blew him, but his hands...God, his hands were so gentle in Duck’s hair.
Duck finally broke away, gasping. His lips tingled and his dick throbbed. Tommy smelled great--Old Spice again, and he’d clearly just come from a post-game shower. His hair was wet and soft-looking.
“I’m sorry I said all of that shit to you. About you being a fag and a pervert. I’m sorry.”
Tommy’s apology was as unexpected as his kiss. Duck shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to think. Oh Christ, he wanted Tommy. Wanted him so much. It had been so long since the summer, so long since those cool evenings in the woods.
But he couldn’t ask if Tommy meant it. He’d just have to wait and see.
Something flickered over Tommy’s face, and he shifted from side to side. He was nervous, Duck guessed. Nervous about earning himself one of those nametags, the ones everyone could read. He didn’t want Tommy to be nervous about this.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Duck said softly, cupping Tommy’s cheek. He felt a muscle twitch there. “You don’t have to worry. No one has to know. It’ll be just us, okay?”
Tommy nodded, but he still looked tense. He almost seemed to be working himself up to something. Duck figured it was another kiss.
“Come with me,” Tommy said at last, and Duck blinked.
“Where?”
“Just come. I want...I want you, okay? I want you to suck me again, like before.”
Duck smiled. “We can do that here.”
Tommy glanced around pointedly. He was right: the school’s architect had designed the art room to maximize natural light. It was all windows on every side. Even with the lights turned off, even if they were quiet, someone would probably see. And Debbie, wherever she was, knew he was in here. She’d come get him sooner or later.
“The locker room. Everyone’s gone, and we can lock the door.”
He frowned. Something wasn’t right. The locker room was Tommy’s territory, and it would be harder to get control of the situation if things went bad or Tommy freaked out. But...but it was just Tommy. The guy had said some shitty things, sure, but Duck had known him since grade school. He could handle it.
Duck peeled away from the painting--ruined, just like he thought--and tossed it onto the pile of scrap canvases. He threw his brushes in the sink, shut off the lights, and followed Tommy down the hall to the locker room. Tommy paused at the door, one hand on the handle, and smiled at him.
“Thanks for giving me a second chance,” he said, and Duck grinned back.
“Sure.”
Tommy opened the door and ushered him in. The room was pitch-black, and when Tommy shut the door behind them Duck laughed, feeling his way in the dark, hoping to find either Tommy or a light switch.
The bright fluorescents flickered on with a loud hum, and Duck blinked in the sudden light. Oh, fuck.
They weren’t alone. Three guys from the football team--Danny Anderson, Michael Higgins, Paul Trelawny--stood before him, a solid wall of red-and-yellow Wilby High t-shirts. Behind him he heard the final, terrible sound of a lock clicking home.
“Duck agreed to come down and suck us off,” Tommy announced. “Wanted to do something special for the team. Nice of him, don’t you think?”
A couple of the guys nodded and leered at him. Duck felt like he wanted to throw up.
“Duck here has been real sweet to me, and he’s going to be real sweet to you. Might even let you fuck him if you ask him right. Duck’s easy to talk into things, aren’t you, Duck?”
Tommy punched him in the shoulder, which forced Duck to take a few stumbling steps forward. The linebackers in front of him moved like they did on the field, closing in around him to form a circle. Circle-jerk, Duck thought, his mind spinning. They actually expected him to-
“C’mon, let’s get started,” Paul said. He was a fat, sweaty guy Duck recognized from his Applied Skills classes--useless, mean as a snake, and he liked to shoot birds with his BB gun. He reached for his zipper, but Tommy stopped him.
“Me first. I’m the one Duck likes best, right Duck?”
That was what finally broke him out of his stupor. This was real. These guys were really going to make him do this if he didn’t get out. He turned slowly, around and around, the others pressing closer. But he’d learned a thing or two from his old man.
He whirled and busted Michael Higgins in the nose, and he felt the bones crunch under his hand. Michael cried out and collapsed, and Duck shouldered past. The others were still in shock and if he could just get to the door--
Hands grabbed at his shoulders and his knees. Too many hands. The other three, even scared-looking Danny Anderson, pawed at him, tearing his t-shirt as he kicked and struggled back against them. He managed to get one of his legs free and kicked out. He heard a startled “ooof!” and one of the pairs of hands fell away, but the others were angry now. Punches rained down on his head, his face, his back. His father had done more damage half-drunk and blind with rage, but Duck couldn’t get his hands free, couldn’t get to the door.
Debbie, he thought wildly. Debbie would hear him if he screamed loud enough. He opened his mouth and sucked in a breath but a hand clamped down over his face, jerking him back. Duck tripped and almost fell--don’t go down don’t go down you’ll never get up--but whoever was holding him caught him just in time and dragged him over to the bench.
He heard Tommy say something, and one of the guys laughed, but he couldn’t make out the words over the pounding of his heart. His hands were dragged behind him roughly, and he felt the slick abrasion of a plastic rope circle his wrists. A skipping rope, he guessed. From the gym.
The hands left him and he tilted to one side, dragging in great lungfuls of air. Adrenaline was still pumping through his system but he felt light-headed and his face throbbed where the punches had landed. One eye was swelling shut. If he were at home, if this was just something his father had done, he could put some ice on the eye and dry-swallow some aspirin and chase the pills down with a couple of beers. He’d be fine.
But he wasn’t at home.
Duck kept his eyes squeezed shut. He struggled when they shifted him from the bench to the floor, fighting them as they balanced him on his knees. The bench dug into his back, cutting into his wrists where they’d tied him.
“Open your eyes, you fucking homo. You kicked Paul in the balls. That wasn’t very nice of you, was it?”
He heard footsteps behind him, cheap Keds on the tile floor, each footstep timed to the pounding of his heartbeat.
“Now,” Tommy continued, his voice getting louder, stronger, more confident. “You’re going to suck us, and then I’m going to fuck you. And you’re not going to fight us anymore. Got it?”
He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, praying for calm. It hurt so much to breathe, to think. And then I’m going to fuck you. He shivered. His old man had busted nearly every bone in his body at one time or another. But that, being ripped open like that, having Tommy push his way in…Christ, he would die. It would hurt too much and he would die of the pain, die right here in the locker room.
Duck opened his eyes. He looked up at them, at Tommy and Paul and Michael and Danny Anderson, and tried to think of something to say. His head hurt and he was shaking; the stench of his own fear was so thick that he could hardly breathe. He’d heard the cruelty in Tommy’s voice, the raw hatred he’d never really let himself see. Tommy was staring down at him like he was nothing, like he wasn’t even human anymore.
It was the way his father had looked always looked at him.
But the others weren’t as cool as Tommy. Danny Anderson was practically crying, and Michael and Paul looked like they were reconsidering about whether or not they should go through with it. Michael was cupping his busted nose. Blood had stained the front of his Wilby Athletics t-shirt a dull, dark red. And Paul simply looked disgusted. He sneered down at Duck’s bruised, swollen face, and shook his head. You’re not worth the trouble. Duck recognized that look, too.
They hadn’t expected him to fight them, he realized. Tommy had probably told them Duck would do it willingly. That it would be easy. Tommy was good at talking people into things.
Except you, that voice inside him whispered. He didn’t even have to ask you, that first time. Not one word. You volunteered.
“Please, just walk away,” he said, hardly recognizing his own voice. He sounded so weak, like a little old man. “Don’t do this.”
Tommy stepped forward and backhanded him, sending Duck’s head snapping to one side like a rag doll’s.
“Shut up, you fucking faggot! No one is walking away from this!” He was angry now. Duck had never seen anyone so angry, not even his father. “This faggot is going to blow us. We’re doing this thing. Paul, Michael, Danny, let’s go.”
Paul and Michael’s faces cleared. Pack rules, and they’d chosen their alpha over any kind of logical appeal. Duck knew if he said anything more he’d be wasting his breath. There was no reasoning with animals.
He squeezed his eyes shut again, and wished to be invisible.
*****
They all took turns. Tommy, Paul, Michael, Tommy again. Danny couldn’t do it. He was shaking too hard, and he could only get up to about half-mast. Tommy made him guide his soft dick into Duck’s mouth anyway. He listened to the sound of Danny crying and wondered if there was any way they’d let Duck live after this was over. He’d already seen too much.
He’d felt Paul’s fat, flabby belly pushing against his nose, thick head thrown back, sweaty hands gripping his head. And he’d seen Michael’s short stubby brown dick, the old acne scars that pitted his face, the ugly way his mouth twisted when he came. They all fucked Duck’s mouth, and they all came, all except Danny. It seemed like each of them would want to protect their secrets--sweat, pimples, acne scars, that they enjoyed this, the way it made them repulsive, savage, violent. And they knew he'd seen it, seen all their secrets. They weren't going to let him just walk away.
Tommy was the worst. Tommy was angry, his rage obvious in every thrust into Duck’s mouth. He banged into Duck roughly, slapping him if Duck tried to jerk away, and when he finally came he forced Duck to swallow it down, sealing off his nose and mouth with his hand. The others, at least, had let him spit.
He’d thought about biting down, about tasting their blood in his mouth, about hurting them the way they’d hurt him. Tommy’s slaps and low-voiced warnings to “play nice” had tempted him further, but he’d ignored the urge. Be small, he thought. Be invisible. It was what he’d done with his father, and if they got through it quickly maybe they’d leave him alone.
And at last it was over. His face felt like one big bruise, most of the pain centered where they’d punched him in the eye, and in his sore jaw and mouth. He wasn’t going to be able to talk. He couldn’t even imagine forming the words. And that, at least, was a blessing. At least he wouldn’t be tempted to beg.
“You guys can head out,” Tommy said coolly. “I’ll meet you in the woods. We can have some beer.”
“Want another round, huh?” Paul asked, chortling. He’d forgotten his fear. Duck was no threat, after all. He wasn’t even human, not to Paul Trelawny. He couldn’t be.
“This faggot has been admiring my dick for a whole year,” Tommy said, looking down at Duck. “Think I’ll finally give him what he wants.”
Paul and Michael cackled. Soon they were zipped up and on their way out, Danny trailing behind them, not looking up. Duck watched them go, hoping they weren’t the last three people he’d ever see.
“You should have come down,” Tommy said, hauling Duck around so that he was facing the bench. The hard edge of it cut into his belly. He wobbled on his knees, unsteady with his arms tied behind his back. “I waited for you. All night, sometimes. You should have come down.”
Duck moaned, the low sound lost in his bruised throat.
“You brought this on yourself, you know. You deserve exactly what you get.”
He pushed between Duck’s shoulder blades, his hand settling unerringly right on a bruise where they’d kicked him. Duck jerked against the pain and then let himself be pushed down until he was lying half-on the bench, hips in the air. Tommy was able to move him as though Duck weighed nothing. As though he had finally disappeared.
Blood rushed to his head as he hung upside down, and the bruises on his face and shoulder sang with renewed pain. Tommy fumbled around at his waist until he found Duck’s buckle. He undid Duck’s jeans and pushed them down until they pooled around his knees.
Duck braced himself for the pain. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was swimming with those red crosses in that deep, dark sea.
*********
He must have passed out at some point, because when he woke he was alone in the locker room. He was still sprawled over the bench but his hands were free, and he struggled to stand up, every muscle screaming. His legs and fingers tingled as the blood flowed back into them, and he rubbed at his wrists. They’d been rubbed raw from the skipping rope.
The locker room was silent and empty, and it echoed with the small grunts he made as he worked to get his jeans back up over his hips. There was blood. He felt it trickle down his legs and soak into the dark denim. He could go to Johansson’s Pharmacy on the way home, get some of those pads girls used for their periods. The thought made him tired, and he knew he couldn’t face Mr. Johansson’s cold suspicion. He didn’t want anyone to look at him.
He just wanted to fade away.
As he dressed and ran some water in the sink to wash his face, he thought of the twenty-two dollars he’d saved up for a winter coat. It was in an old coffee can hidden in the crawl space in his closet, and it would be just enough to cover a bus ticket to Halifax. The first ferry left at five in the morning. He could go home, pack, and catch the ferry with plenty of time to spare.
Duck washed his face and rinsed out his mouth. When he left the deserted school it was just beginning to rain.
*********
“Duck? Duck?”
Buddy snapped his fingers in front of Duck’s face, and Duck snarled at him in a way that made Buddy snatch his hand back, like Duck was a rabid dog. Here, at last, was some emotion other than that well-fed complacency on Buddy French’s face. Duck slid back against the wall.
Buddy was staring at him. He could feel his gaze like a gentle fingertip tracing his face as Buddy cataloged the black eye, the cut on his cheek, his bruised and swollen mouth. “Your dad really unloaded on you tonight, huh?”
Duck fought back a hysterical laugh. Jesus fucking Christ. Buddy thought...Buddy thought his dad had done this to him?
But it made sense, at least from Buddy’s perspective. Everyone knew Walter MacDonald was a mean drunk, knew that he’d beaten Duck black and blue for years. It was only natural to think he’d beat the shit out of Duck and finally thrown him out. But his dad hadn’t woken when Duck slipped into the apartment at midnight and turned on the shower. Hadn’t even twitched.
Buddy was still waiting for an answer, and something in the way he stood, still and silent, made Duck look at him. He was watching him so closely, waiting for his answer.
Buddy didn’t believe for a second that his dad had made those bruises on his face.
“Do you have a cigarette?” Duck asked, his voice rough.
Buddy nodded, and rifled through his pocket until he found a pack of Players and a lighter. He handed Duck the cig and cupped his hand against the rain to help Duck light it, and for that Duck was grateful. His trembling hands wouldn’t have been able to hold the lighter long enough for the flame to take.
Buddy lit his own cigarette and slouched next to him. They smoked quietly and stared out at the rain. It was 4:30am. Another twenty minutes and they’d be able to see the ferry’s running lights.
“You going to miss it?”
Dangerous hysterical laughter welled in his throat but Duck bit back on it hard, reining himself in. He was not going to fall apart. Not now, not when he was so close to getting out.
“Once I hit the mainland I’m going to do my best to forget Wilby ever existed.” He breathed in deep, tobacco overriding the scent of Old Spice. “I’m not going to miss it. This place has been hell for me.”
Buddy drew deep on his cigarette. “What if it’s hell out there, too?”
For an instant he couldn’t breathe. Duck stared out at the dark sea, and squeezed his eyes shut. Glass. It felt like he had crushed glass in his eyes. He rubbed at them, and half-expected to pull his hands away and see blood coating his palms. But there wasn’t any. No blood where there should be, and blood where there shouldn’t.
Suddenly he was crying and shaking and unable to stop. He tried to hold it in, pressing his raw lips together until they felt like hamburger and his blood throbbed hot and thick in his mouth. But he couldn’t stop the sounds. He let out one low sob, and then another, and another, steady and insistent like the rain.
A warm weight settled on his shoulders. Buddy. He’d pulled off his own warm winter coat and the slicker and draped it over Duck. The cold wasn’t so bad now. The coat was warm from Buddy’s body, and it smelled clean, like the rain.
He was so glad Buddy hadn’t tried to put his arm around him.
Duck’s sobs faded and finally stopped. His chest hurt and his throat burned, but at least he didn’t feel like crying any more.
“I’ve got a cousin in Halifax,” Buddy was saying. He was acting like Duck hadn’t fallen apart right in front of him, just talking quietly in his slow, sleepy voice. “Her name is Maggie Dorrit. She’s in the book. Look her up when you get in, and she’ll give you a place to stay, hot food, you name it. And she won’t...” Buddy hesitated. “She’s gay. She won’t give you a hard time about anything. I’ll call her and let her know you’re coming.”
This last almost sounded like a threat, but it was so different from anything he’d ever heard from Tommy and his goons, or his father, that Duck didn’t quite recognize it at first. But he was starting to think Buddy was probably pretty good at talking people into stuff. Sort of like Tommy. Except Buddy didn’t do it for himself.
“I’ll call her,” Duck promised, because he had to say something. He tried to picture Maggie Dorrit’s place in Halifax. A safe place to sleep, hot food, no questions. Paradise.
A bright point of light appeared on the ocean. It was hard to make out but Duck had watched the ferries come in and out of dock his entire life, and he recognized the light for what it was. That was the 5am Fundy Queen out of Port Dover. She was on schedule, for once, and the sight of her made Duck’s heart beat faster. He could do this. He could be free of it all.
He turned to Buddy, who was watching the running lights of the ferry steam closer.
“Thank you.”
Buddy shrugged. “You’d have done the same for me. Or anyone. Someday you will.”
Duck almost laughed. That was really funny. As if that was ever going to happen, him being in a position to help someone else. He wasn’t like Buddy, rich and confident, at ease in the world. He was nobody. Invisible.
“Maybe,” Duck said. “Anyway, I mean it. Thanks.” He started to struggle out of Buddy’s coat and slicker, but Buddy held up his hand.
Buddy shook his head, and smiled. His smile was gentle, as gentle as Buddy himself. “I hope you--”
Duck would never know how Buddy’s sentence would have ended. The ferry blasted its horn as it docked, cutting off their conversation, and after all the endless waiting in the cold rain Duck found there was nothing to do but shoulder his duffle and say goodbye. But what could he say to the only person in the world who gave a shit whether he was alive or dead?
Buddy didn’t seem to know what to say, either. So he moved. He grabbed Duck’s forearm gently and leaned in close to press a warm, soft kiss against the corner of his mouth. Duck jerked back, panic racing through him, but Buddy just met his eyes evenly. He was calm, so calm, still and steady like the ocean on a tranquil day. He was radiating that calm out to Duck, holding him with his eyes until Duck felt it settle deep within him.
Buddy brushed his hand against Duck’s cheek, and kissed him again on the corner of his mouth, the touch so light and sweet Duck hardly felt it against his bruises.
“Send me letters, okay? And Maggie’s great. She’ll love you. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”
He patted his shoulder as a signal, and Duck turned, walking down the street toward the dock. The ferry was waiting. He stepped onboard and faced the mainland, but when the engine revved up, rumbling through the deck under his feet, he turned to look back at the hill, back toward the sign over Iggy’s flashing blue and red and blue.
Buddy was still there, clad only in jeans and a t-shirt. He was waving.
Duck waved back, as long as the island was in sight.
THE END