bper
in
time_told_me
Chapter 12: You Go To My Head
You go to my head, with a smile that makes my temperature rise
Like a summer with a thousand Julys
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes
Though I'm certain that this heart of mine
Hasn't a ghost of a chance in this crazy romance
You go to my head.
Lights out. My new favorite time of day.
I laid in bed reading while Greg was in the shower. Beneath my mattress was a bottle of bourbon I came across by way of a long time friend, always a reliable guy. I tried not to think of him; it would only make useless the little buzz I'd gotten swigging liberally from the bottle while Greg was gone. Something in me relished the possibilities should he come back and find I was far ahead of him in terms of drunkenness. Inhibitions long gone, I tossed my book to the side and kept an eye peeled on the bathroom door, awaiting his arrival.
He came out in a bathrobe, limping painfully.
I grinned. "You're attractive when you hobble."
He snorted. "A secret attraction to cripples?" He rounded the end of his bed and approached mine. "Not that I'm complaining," he assured me as he sat down heavily beside me on mine.
I looked into his eyes. Intoxicating blue. "It's a not-so-secret attraction to geniuses. You just happen to be a cripple. And I just happen to find that attractive."
"Lucky me, he grinned, meeting my stare. "I'm still finding it hard to adjust to the fact that I'm sleeping with a cop. Voluntarily."
I laughed. "Detective," I corrected him. As if I cared. "Guess what?"
"What, Detective Goren?" I enjoyed his surprisingly seductive inflection.
I bit my lip before I continued. "I was gifted something that you might find interesting," I slurred. I snickered. "As you may have noticed."
He made a show of looking around on the bed. "No handcuffs," he announced. He leaned towards me to examine my face more closely. "Eyes a little unfocused, slurred speech." He sniffed and grinned. "From the smell of whiskey on your breath, I'd say you've got a bottle of booze somewhere about your person. Do I get to search you for it?"
"I hadn't thought of that." I slipped the bottle from under the mattress and placed it in his hand. "How about you search me later?"
He snickered as he opened the bottle. "You can count on it." He raised the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow. Eyes closed, he whispered appreciatively, "I knew I wanted to be your roommate."
I sat up and moved to the edge of the bed to slide my arm behind his back. "The best roommates know all the depraved drug dealers."
"Occupational hazard or employee benefit?" He took another swallow and then eyed how much was left. "Looks like I've got some catching-up to do."
"Employee benefit," I volunteered, ignoring his statement of the obvious. "Loads of benefits, actually, knowing this guy. He was one of my informants when I was working narcotics. We're close."
He raised an eyebrow. "Define close."
I hated having to admit to the limitations between myself and Miguel as much as I loved knowing that Greg knew the truth about them. "If we both had different careers, we'd probably live together," I admitted.
"You get more interesting all the time," House admitted, taking another swallow and handing the bottle back to me. "Seeing as you don't both have different careers, there must be even more to the secret life of Bobby Goren than I guessed. I want to hear all about it," he wheedled.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Miguel Carrosquillo. He's 33 now. Started dealing at about 16. We met a few weeks after he got out of Juvi; he was 18 at the time. I was seeing a woman then and I've seen women since then, but Miguel..." I trailed off and smiled thinking of how much I missed him. "We got...involved, I guess...when he was 22. I was still working Narcotics. My partner and I called him in for questioning and I took him out for drinks after. He...came on strong." I waited, preferring Greg asked specific questions. I wanted to know what, precisely, he wanted to know.
"Eleven years is a long time. It sounds serious."
"It...is what it is," I replied. I kept thinking of how Miguel talked that first night over drinks, how unwilling he was to take no for an answer.
"Well, what is it then?" The irritation surprised me given how frequently House deflected uncomfortable questions.
I took a sip of the bourbon, capped it and laid it on the bed between us. "Infatuation. Frustration." I smiled. "Dangerous for both of us."
"But you can't stop? Or you've never wanted to?" He was appraising me as he reached for the bourbon.
I raised an eyebrow as I shrugged. "I'm crazy about him. Like I said. I'd live with him if I could."
House nodded. "So how often do you indulge this dangerous infatuation?"
"Not much since my suspension. Not as frequently as I would've liked in the weeks leading up to my mother's death. He was a godsend after that. Especially when I found out who my father was."
I took pause as I recalled calling him from my mother's hospital room a few hours after she died. He urged me to come to his place instead of mine. He didn't want me to be alone. We drank tequila until we could laugh at the absurdity of our own names and then we laid in silence for several hours before he finally asked me what I was thinking. 'That the world is no different with or without me,' I replied. He told me he was thinking about how much he would miss me when I was gone. 'So don't go anywhere,' he said.
"Before mom got really sick, we were together three or four times a week," I told Greg.
"Have you always been a switchhitter?" He quickly took a swig from the bottle preferring not to look me in the eye. I couldn't tell whether he was trying to avoid his own discomfort with the question or if he anticipated mine.
I took the bottle from him and took another sip. "I try to think of love in terms of love and not sex," I replied. "Miguel is Miguel. I want his soul. His body is an added bonus."
"Would Miguel be unhappy if he were to hear about ..." he waved his hand back and forth between us, "this?"
I thought about it as I capped the bottle and laid it on the bed between us. "When I think about..." I mimicked him, "...this...in terms of Miguel, even I'm a little unhappy." I swallowed hard and thought about how grateful I was that he'd brought me the bourbon. Then I wondered whether he would've rather not brought it if he knew the conversation that would emerge as a result of imbibing. "He's been telling me for five years that it'd end sooner or later."
"It's times like these I miss my piano. The narc and the sexy young Latino drug dealer--there's a tale that could inspire the blues."
I chuckled and slipped my hand onto his thigh. "You don't know that he's sexy."
"Really? I'm pretty sure you said he was young and hot." Greg's smile, slightly out of focus, encouraged me.
I squinted. "Did I say that?" I asked, sliding closer to him. I bit my lip before I went on. "What about you? Are you switchhitting?"
"I've been with a lot more women than men in my life but you're not the first guy by any means."
"Tell me about the men," I asked. "It'd be nice to know whether I'm your type or just some easy guy you met in an asylum." I laughed and took another sip from the bottle.
"Says the man with a thing for hot young criminals who speak Spanish. I'm clearly not your type at all." It was too obvious a deflection to get past me even in my inebriated state.
I chuckled and shrugged. "Puerto Ricans are all that's right with the world," I replied. My lips were dry. "So. The men...?"
"There've been a handful. A friend when I was a teenager. A couple of guys I met in college. A couple of guys I met at medical conventions. The doctors were just -- an experiment." He had the look I saw in suspects when against their better judgment they felt moved to confess something to me.
"An experiment?" I asked. I took another swig of the bourbon and glanced over at the note Miguel sent with it on the nightstand. I wished I could call him. "Mind explaining?"
"I guess to see how I felt about meaningless sex with men. I do it with women all the time. I hadn't really tried it with men. I figured it said something about where I'd fit on the Kinsey scale."
I nodded, though I never put much stock in the Kinsey Scale. "And how do you feel about it? Meaningless sex with men," I clarified.
He shrugged. "I can do it. Not really what I'm into it."
"What are you into?"
"Someone worth engaging in more than one dimension. Someone who makes life less boring." He took the bottle back from me but didn't immediately open it. He sat staring down at it, rotating it in his hands.
Something in his story was missing. I cocked my head to the side and squinted, preparing to interrogate. "Are you a homosexual?" I asked, suddenly considering that a distinct possibility. Perhaps even he hadn't considered it.
He did a double-take. "Detective, you disappoint me. How do you hear, 'he fucks all women and some men' and get homosexual from that? Isn't that the definition of bisexual?"
Drunkenly, I let my eyes look over his face, observe his eyes. "How often do you find women worth engaging in more than one dimension?"
"It's rare I find anyone worth engaging in more than one dimension actually." He rubbed at his thigh and grimaced. "The most serious relationship of my life was with a woman. We lived together for years until..." he gestured towards his leg. "She betrayed me and then she left me." He looked angry, bitter.
"Any serious relationships since she left?"
"No." I waited for him to elaborate but he didn't.
I pursed my lips and studied him. "It's difficult," I offered.
"So, your turn. You've mentioned Miguel. Are you gay? How does that go over in the department?"
I chuckled and allowed the deflection. "It wouldn't go over well if they knew. But as of about seven years ago, yeah." I nodded. "I am."
"So does Eames know all your secrets -- that you're gay and in love with a soulful young drug dealer? And whatever other secrets you haven't told me yet?" Disappointment might have been written all over his face when he mentioned Miguel -- or it might have been wishful thinking on my part.
I shook my head. "We don't really talk about those things. Here and there things come up, but she'd never be able to understand the thing with Miguel. But only because of the drugs."
"And do you and Miguel sample the merchandise when you're together?" He couldn't seem to stay away from the subject of Miguel.
I smiled. "It's been known to happen," I admitted. "There's an overarching theme in your questioning. Is there something you're trying to get to on the subject of Miguel?"
His focus was clouded by bourbon so what might have been intended as a penetrating stare came off as a dreamy gaze. It was an appealing look. The blue of his eyes distracted me, made me think of Miguel's dark eyes, led me to compare the ways in which these two were polar opposites of each other, diverted my attention from his answer when it finally came. I had to repeat the words in my head to make sense of them. "He's a piece of the puzzle. I'm trying to figure out how he fits into the picture."
Miguel was meant to be a cloud of smoke. He was meant to be the gray area between the black and white. He was a passage to sustainable identity. What a bittersweet day it would be when I finally discovered myself. But what if I already had?
I smiled sadly and shook my head. "I can fit a puzzle piece for you, but I'm not sure it's the big picture," I admitted. "I'm not sure he fits in at all. But." I yielded to a temporarily absent mind.
'Oh, yes,' I thought.
"But. He smuggled this bourbon in here for my birthday." I chuckled. "He was in the previous piece. But he's not in this one at all."
House paused. "Anything else you'd like for your birthday?" His voice was raspy and sent a shiver up my spine. His hand snaked over and rested on the small of my back. "You get a birthday wish if it's something I can grant," he slurred, "so make the most ot it."
I glanced around a room manufactured to support life in the most depressing of ways, ironically intended to sustain life. I looked back at Greg. His eyes betrayed his intoxication. "My wish..." I began slowly, "...is for you to enjoy every moment to come. I'll do whatever it takes to make that happen."
He chuckled nervously. "Wasting a wish aren't you?" he mumbled, not meeting my eyes.
I tilted my head so that I could see them. "Not really," I replied. "I'm coming along for the ride, after all."
He shrugged and then reached over to cup my face. "You going to let me drive?" he asked, breathing the words inches from my mouth.
I nodded and kissed him, imagining for a moment that he was someone other than he was, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that was any possibility. I was insane to believe that there would be less pain with Greg than with Miguel. That pain was the reason that I obsessed over the impracticality of our circumstances and longed to understand why I continued to push away suitable, logical emotional entanglements. Miguel and Greg were soon to be painful, beautiful pages in my history.
There was no point in contemplating that then. What mattered was savoring the moment and enjoying whatever time we had left.
Like a summer with a thousand Julys
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes
Though I'm certain that this heart of mine
Hasn't a ghost of a chance in this crazy romance
You go to my head.
Lights out. My new favorite time of day.
I laid in bed reading while Greg was in the shower. Beneath my mattress was a bottle of bourbon I came across by way of a long time friend, always a reliable guy. I tried not to think of him; it would only make useless the little buzz I'd gotten swigging liberally from the bottle while Greg was gone. Something in me relished the possibilities should he come back and find I was far ahead of him in terms of drunkenness. Inhibitions long gone, I tossed my book to the side and kept an eye peeled on the bathroom door, awaiting his arrival.
He came out in a bathrobe, limping painfully.
I grinned. "You're attractive when you hobble."
He snorted. "A secret attraction to cripples?" He rounded the end of his bed and approached mine. "Not that I'm complaining," he assured me as he sat down heavily beside me on mine.
I looked into his eyes. Intoxicating blue. "It's a not-so-secret attraction to geniuses. You just happen to be a cripple. And I just happen to find that attractive."
"Lucky me, he grinned, meeting my stare. "I'm still finding it hard to adjust to the fact that I'm sleeping with a cop. Voluntarily."
I laughed. "Detective," I corrected him. As if I cared. "Guess what?"
"What, Detective Goren?" I enjoyed his surprisingly seductive inflection.
I bit my lip before I continued. "I was gifted something that you might find interesting," I slurred. I snickered. "As you may have noticed."
He made a show of looking around on the bed. "No handcuffs," he announced. He leaned towards me to examine my face more closely. "Eyes a little unfocused, slurred speech." He sniffed and grinned. "From the smell of whiskey on your breath, I'd say you've got a bottle of booze somewhere about your person. Do I get to search you for it?"
"I hadn't thought of that." I slipped the bottle from under the mattress and placed it in his hand. "How about you search me later?"
He snickered as he opened the bottle. "You can count on it." He raised the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow. Eyes closed, he whispered appreciatively, "I knew I wanted to be your roommate."
I sat up and moved to the edge of the bed to slide my arm behind his back. "The best roommates know all the depraved drug dealers."
"Occupational hazard or employee benefit?" He took another swallow and then eyed how much was left. "Looks like I've got some catching-up to do."
"Employee benefit," I volunteered, ignoring his statement of the obvious. "Loads of benefits, actually, knowing this guy. He was one of my informants when I was working narcotics. We're close."
He raised an eyebrow. "Define close."
I hated having to admit to the limitations between myself and Miguel as much as I loved knowing that Greg knew the truth about them. "If we both had different careers, we'd probably live together," I admitted.
"You get more interesting all the time," House admitted, taking another swallow and handing the bottle back to me. "Seeing as you don't both have different careers, there must be even more to the secret life of Bobby Goren than I guessed. I want to hear all about it," he wheedled.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Miguel Carrosquillo. He's 33 now. Started dealing at about 16. We met a few weeks after he got out of Juvi; he was 18 at the time. I was seeing a woman then and I've seen women since then, but Miguel..." I trailed off and smiled thinking of how much I missed him. "We got...involved, I guess...when he was 22. I was still working Narcotics. My partner and I called him in for questioning and I took him out for drinks after. He...came on strong." I waited, preferring Greg asked specific questions. I wanted to know what, precisely, he wanted to know.
"Eleven years is a long time. It sounds serious."
"It...is what it is," I replied. I kept thinking of how Miguel talked that first night over drinks, how unwilling he was to take no for an answer.
"Well, what is it then?" The irritation surprised me given how frequently House deflected uncomfortable questions.
I took a sip of the bourbon, capped it and laid it on the bed between us. "Infatuation. Frustration." I smiled. "Dangerous for both of us."
"But you can't stop? Or you've never wanted to?" He was appraising me as he reached for the bourbon.
I raised an eyebrow as I shrugged. "I'm crazy about him. Like I said. I'd live with him if I could."
House nodded. "So how often do you indulge this dangerous infatuation?"
"Not much since my suspension. Not as frequently as I would've liked in the weeks leading up to my mother's death. He was a godsend after that. Especially when I found out who my father was."
I took pause as I recalled calling him from my mother's hospital room a few hours after she died. He urged me to come to his place instead of mine. He didn't want me to be alone. We drank tequila until we could laugh at the absurdity of our own names and then we laid in silence for several hours before he finally asked me what I was thinking. 'That the world is no different with or without me,' I replied. He told me he was thinking about how much he would miss me when I was gone. 'So don't go anywhere,' he said.
"Before mom got really sick, we were together three or four times a week," I told Greg.
"Have you always been a switchhitter?" He quickly took a swig from the bottle preferring not to look me in the eye. I couldn't tell whether he was trying to avoid his own discomfort with the question or if he anticipated mine.
I took the bottle from him and took another sip. "I try to think of love in terms of love and not sex," I replied. "Miguel is Miguel. I want his soul. His body is an added bonus."
"Would Miguel be unhappy if he were to hear about ..." he waved his hand back and forth between us, "this?"
I thought about it as I capped the bottle and laid it on the bed between us. "When I think about..." I mimicked him, "...this...in terms of Miguel, even I'm a little unhappy." I swallowed hard and thought about how grateful I was that he'd brought me the bourbon. Then I wondered whether he would've rather not brought it if he knew the conversation that would emerge as a result of imbibing. "He's been telling me for five years that it'd end sooner or later."
"It's times like these I miss my piano. The narc and the sexy young Latino drug dealer--there's a tale that could inspire the blues."
I chuckled and slipped my hand onto his thigh. "You don't know that he's sexy."
"Really? I'm pretty sure you said he was young and hot." Greg's smile, slightly out of focus, encouraged me.
I squinted. "Did I say that?" I asked, sliding closer to him. I bit my lip before I went on. "What about you? Are you switchhitting?"
"I've been with a lot more women than men in my life but you're not the first guy by any means."
"Tell me about the men," I asked. "It'd be nice to know whether I'm your type or just some easy guy you met in an asylum." I laughed and took another sip from the bottle.
"Says the man with a thing for hot young criminals who speak Spanish. I'm clearly not your type at all." It was too obvious a deflection to get past me even in my inebriated state.
I chuckled and shrugged. "Puerto Ricans are all that's right with the world," I replied. My lips were dry. "So. The men...?"
"There've been a handful. A friend when I was a teenager. A couple of guys I met in college. A couple of guys I met at medical conventions. The doctors were just -- an experiment." He had the look I saw in suspects when against their better judgment they felt moved to confess something to me.
"An experiment?" I asked. I took another swig of the bourbon and glanced over at the note Miguel sent with it on the nightstand. I wished I could call him. "Mind explaining?"
"I guess to see how I felt about meaningless sex with men. I do it with women all the time. I hadn't really tried it with men. I figured it said something about where I'd fit on the Kinsey scale."
I nodded, though I never put much stock in the Kinsey Scale. "And how do you feel about it? Meaningless sex with men," I clarified.
He shrugged. "I can do it. Not really what I'm into it."
"What are you into?"
"Someone worth engaging in more than one dimension. Someone who makes life less boring." He took the bottle back from me but didn't immediately open it. He sat staring down at it, rotating it in his hands.
Something in his story was missing. I cocked my head to the side and squinted, preparing to interrogate. "Are you a homosexual?" I asked, suddenly considering that a distinct possibility. Perhaps even he hadn't considered it.
He did a double-take. "Detective, you disappoint me. How do you hear, 'he fucks all women and some men' and get homosexual from that? Isn't that the definition of bisexual?"
Drunkenly, I let my eyes look over his face, observe his eyes. "How often do you find women worth engaging in more than one dimension?"
"It's rare I find anyone worth engaging in more than one dimension actually." He rubbed at his thigh and grimaced. "The most serious relationship of my life was with a woman. We lived together for years until..." he gestured towards his leg. "She betrayed me and then she left me." He looked angry, bitter.
"Any serious relationships since she left?"
"No." I waited for him to elaborate but he didn't.
I pursed my lips and studied him. "It's difficult," I offered.
"So, your turn. You've mentioned Miguel. Are you gay? How does that go over in the department?"
I chuckled and allowed the deflection. "It wouldn't go over well if they knew. But as of about seven years ago, yeah." I nodded. "I am."
"So does Eames know all your secrets -- that you're gay and in love with a soulful young drug dealer? And whatever other secrets you haven't told me yet?" Disappointment might have been written all over his face when he mentioned Miguel -- or it might have been wishful thinking on my part.
I shook my head. "We don't really talk about those things. Here and there things come up, but she'd never be able to understand the thing with Miguel. But only because of the drugs."
"And do you and Miguel sample the merchandise when you're together?" He couldn't seem to stay away from the subject of Miguel.
I smiled. "It's been known to happen," I admitted. "There's an overarching theme in your questioning. Is there something you're trying to get to on the subject of Miguel?"
His focus was clouded by bourbon so what might have been intended as a penetrating stare came off as a dreamy gaze. It was an appealing look. The blue of his eyes distracted me, made me think of Miguel's dark eyes, led me to compare the ways in which these two were polar opposites of each other, diverted my attention from his answer when it finally came. I had to repeat the words in my head to make sense of them. "He's a piece of the puzzle. I'm trying to figure out how he fits into the picture."
Miguel was meant to be a cloud of smoke. He was meant to be the gray area between the black and white. He was a passage to sustainable identity. What a bittersweet day it would be when I finally discovered myself. But what if I already had?
I smiled sadly and shook my head. "I can fit a puzzle piece for you, but I'm not sure it's the big picture," I admitted. "I'm not sure he fits in at all. But." I yielded to a temporarily absent mind.
'Oh, yes,' I thought.
"But. He smuggled this bourbon in here for my birthday." I chuckled. "He was in the previous piece. But he's not in this one at all."
House paused. "Anything else you'd like for your birthday?" His voice was raspy and sent a shiver up my spine. His hand snaked over and rested on the small of my back. "You get a birthday wish if it's something I can grant," he slurred, "so make the most ot it."
I glanced around a room manufactured to support life in the most depressing of ways, ironically intended to sustain life. I looked back at Greg. His eyes betrayed his intoxication. "My wish..." I began slowly, "...is for you to enjoy every moment to come. I'll do whatever it takes to make that happen."
He chuckled nervously. "Wasting a wish aren't you?" he mumbled, not meeting my eyes.
I tilted my head so that I could see them. "Not really," I replied. "I'm coming along for the ride, after all."
He shrugged and then reached over to cup my face. "You going to let me drive?" he asked, breathing the words inches from my mouth.
I nodded and kissed him, imagining for a moment that he was someone other than he was, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that was any possibility. I was insane to believe that there would be less pain with Greg than with Miguel. That pain was the reason that I obsessed over the impracticality of our circumstances and longed to understand why I continued to push away suitable, logical emotional entanglements. Miguel and Greg were soon to be painful, beautiful pages in my history.
There was no point in contemplating that then. What mattered was savoring the moment and enjoying whatever time we had left.