Never Leave, Never Lie

by Thea Verdone

Ordinarily, Alek would be waiting by the door. Ian joked that coming home to Alek was like being greeted by a 1950s housewife. Alek disagreed. He didn’t need a medicine cabinet full of barbiturates and methamphetamines to marshal the courage to suck Ian’s dick after handing him an aperitif. He was more than willing.

Gently, Ian asked, “Where were you born? What was your mother’s name? Why do you sleep talk in other languages? What are you running from?”

Falling in love with Ian had made Alek weak, and Alek would never forgive him for that. Never.

Deception is survival. People are meant to be manipulated. Hoping is foolish. And above all else, Love is a weakness.

It had been three weeks since he’d felt Alek’s mouth around his cock. Three weeks left with only his hand while Alek stuffed his dick into anyone with a hole.

The piano had come with the house. Music was the only thing he brought from his childhood, and the abandoned piano had seemed more magic than coincidence when he’d discovered it, almost as if it had been waiting for a worthy suitor, like it had existed long before the mansion was built, a lone piano surrounded by trees until walls had caged it in.

Alek excelled at nearly everything he put even the smallest effort into, but his one weakness was understanding other people. He wasn’t a sociopath. Empathy was a muscle that had atrophied under disuse.

Why wouldn’t Ian just marry him? Alek knew better than most how meaningless a legal document could be, but a marriage license meant more to him than the foreign birth certificates and passports hidden in the safe in their garage. At least if they were married, it wouldn’t be so easy for Ian to leave. Alek needed Ian to promise, to vow, to swear his fealty.

Ian hated the wisteria too, the insatiable way it grew out of control and threatened to lift the roof up and pull the house down to rubble if he turned his back on it. Alek admired its perseverance.

is a weakness,” his father had said. “Never let anyone see where they can hurt you.”

Deception is survival,”

Afternoons were for music. Uncle said Aleksandar’s hands were made for the piano, but that wasn’t what made him gifted. It was how he used them, how they moved, almost sentiently, like music had stitched itself inside his fingers.

“Nothing is ever too broken to be fixed,” his uncle had said. But he was wrong about that. People and hearts could break and never be fixed again.

Every time Aleksandar played, he gave the piano all of his loneliness, all of his confusion, every stab of pain from his uncle’s abandonment. The music that rose in the air and drifted out through the windows into the forest beyond, fluttered around like fireflies against the starless night sky inside his mind. Every note was the color blue. Lonely. Sad. Left.

Alek wrote, I could forget everything about myself and still know that I love you.

Alek spent the next hour seducing Ian between talking shop, finding any excuse to touch him, dropping a hand to his wrist under the ruse of getting his attention, leaning closer when the bar was loud to speak against his ear. His tactics were shamelessly obvious, but Alek was like a book Ian couldn’t stop reading. There was something magnetic and dangerous about him. Ian nursed a single beer until it was lukewarm and still felt drunk, his words flowing freely, as if Alek wasn’t just a book, but a drug.

Ian stopped and turned, surprised to find Alek right behind him. Without thinking, he fisted his hands in Alek’s shirt and pinned him against the wall. The faintest flicker of fear flared in Alek’s eyes and disappeared so quickly, Ian wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it. Ian brought his mouth so close to Alek’s neck that he could have bitten him if he wanted to. Alek lifted his chin, baring his neck, challenging him. Goosebumps lit up all over Ian’s body like flash bulbs exploding. He could almost smell the ozone. His mouth watered. He wanted to kiss him. But he wouldn’t lose control. As fast as it had happened, almost as if it had never happened, Ian released Alek and left him in the dim glow of a rusted lantern. Ian could find some other light fixtures for his project. That man would be his end.

Their lips were so close that every fast, jagged breath Ian exhaled went right down into Alek’s lungs. Maybe if he tried hard enough, he could pull Ian inside of him so he’d never leave. Without

He cried until he had no more tears left and then he decided he would never cry again. Aleksandar did not practice the piano that day. He hoped his uncle would understand.

Wait!” Alek begged. Can you leave something with me? Something you’ll have to come back for. Ian’s brows darted together. “What? Like collateral?” Please. “You already have it.” Alek wrote a giant question mark and held the clipboard up. “You’re the collateral, Alek. I’ll always come back for you.”

Ian thought the bible was a work of fiction, something to make man less afraid of the fact that when death came, there was nothing after, that there was only that one existence between the first breath and the last, that toiling away their meaningless lives wasn’t the best use of their time, that this purgatory was all they got.

If he distanced himself from the situation, if he looked at things objectively, the way he usually did, all signs pointed to ending things with Alek, but loving Alek was confusing, addicting, mind-fucking.

The potential was there inside Alek. Ian really believed that.

Is the potential in the room with us right now?

He turned his mind off, losing himself to the music, disappearing inside of it, disintegrating into sound waves, so he wouldn’t feel pain or love or loneliness ever again. He was music turned sentient. Senses without emotion. Sound, sight, scent, touch. He closed his eyes and let his music paint over all of his thoughts and feelings until the only thing left was a starless night sky.

“Really? You look like the type to enjoy a bit of legalized heroin.”

I know you remember, but I’m going to tell you how I remember it.”

“When we first got there, the sky was the most striking pink and we stayed until it turned purple, then black. I laid down and put my head in your lap and watched the stars blink awake overhead, but you weren’t looking up. You were looking down at me. You kissed me and when I closed my eyes I could still see the stars behind my eyelids, like you gave them to me, so I’d never be alone, so it would never be dark inside my mind again. That’s when I knew I loved you.” That was the night Ian had admitted to himself that he was in love too.

Whatever Alek had done, whatever lies he had told, Ian would always love him.

Demented

The only consent Alek would accept was enthusiastic,

Alek clenched and unclenched his left hand, his body coiling with unreleased sexual tension as he fought the urge to grab the back of Ian’s head and show him where he belonged.

Ian could say what he wanted, but people were most honest when they were angry. In a moment of pure, uncontrolled rage, Ian said Alek was a burden. If Alek was a burden then, he was much heavier now.

His mother was supposed to smell of honey and roses, not blood and broken hearts.

Ian had not prepared for, or even expected, the wave of post-nut clarity that knocked him over the head in the fleeting seconds between their shared climax and Alek throwing up.

“I really thought I had you with the door.” Ian paused in the middle of taking off his shirt. “What?” “The door,” Alek was on his back with his hand behind his head. “You have a thing for door sex.” “I don’t have a thing for door se⁠—” “My apartment, the Victorian, your truck⁠—” “I don’t think a car door counts.” “The theater, the building permit office staff restroom… Shall I go on?”

“Come now, love,” Ian said. “Make my dick jealous of my fingers.”

It’s not your fault that no one taught you what love is supposed to feel like.”

He was too thin, his ribs poking ridges beneath his skin. Ian would fix that. He would feed him. He would make him well. He would love Alek enough for the both of them until Alek learned to love himself.

They made love like they were fighting, but not against each other. The past had tried to destroy them and the future loomed with uncertainty, but maybe if they pulled each other closer, they could fuse together completely, so nothing could ever separate them again.

There were faint, feathered crow feet around his eyes—eyes that weren’t just brown, but the color of the forest floor after it rained—and his beard had more gray than when they first met. Each fresh strand of silver stabbed Alek in the heart with grief that they wouldn’t grow old together.

Alek wanted to call it all off then, but that was exactly why he wouldn’t. He was greedy. If given the chance, he would steal the rest of Ian’s remaining years, poisoning them with misery, and even that wouldn’t be enough. They could both live until they were one hundred and it wouldn't be enough. Alek would take no less than forever no matter the cost.

Ian fucked him rough and angry and sad and resigned as tears fell from his eyes for Alek to catch with his tongue, but it wasn’t enough so Alek arched up to taste them from his cheeks, and it still wasn’t enough, so Alek opened his mouth and tangled their tongues in a kiss that tasted like salt and the end of everything and it still wasn’t enough. Ian could paint Alek’s insides with come and drown him in an ocean of tears and slit their palms in a blood bond, and none of it would ever be enough.

“I know you hate me and I know what that’s like. But you know what you taught me? You can hate someone and love them too. You can hate someone so much you think you’ll never be able to look at them without your heart breaking, only to fall in love with them all over again. Whether it’s a month, or a year, or the rest of my life, I’m not giving up on you. I won’t ever leave you. I won’t let you go without a fight. I’ll wait for you. Leave me if you want. Never come back if that’s what you decide. But there will never be anyone else for me. Only you. Only fucking you.”

Alek would give anything to feel the tight embrace of a knot tied around his neck and here she was flaunting a business casual noose in front of his face.

“Once there was a boy—maybe he was lonely, but he was resilient too. He watched his uncle die, and he blamed himself. The boy thought he should have done more, that it was his fault, but he was a child, and the only person guilty was the one who killed his uncle. “Once there was a boy who lost so much and was hurt so badly that he had to turn off his emotions to survive. He saw his mother kill herself—” her eyes lifted. “Did I interpret that part correctly?” He nodded once. “You did.” “He saw his mother commit suicide, and he blamed himself, but he was a child, and it wasn’t his job to save her. The boy didn’t do anything wrong.” She paused as if to emphasize the point. “Once there was a boy who finally made it, who escaped, but he couldn’t escape his past, and everywhere he went, he brought with him that trauma of being left behind, of not being loved, of the violence he’d seen. And maybe the boy hurt people, but he was hurting too, and he would have done better if he could. Maybe he made mistakes, but everyone does. Maybe the boy could forgive himself. Maybe he could be loved and feel like he deserved it. Maybe he could learn how to cope without music. Maybe he could live.”

You will always be my light in the darkness. With unending love, Krasimir Velishikov, your father.

“I’ll never leave you,” Ian said. “I’m yours forever and after that too. I won’t let you get hurt. I’ll keep you safe.”

Maybe marriage really was nothing more than a legal document, because as far as Ian was concerned, he was saying his vows right now and what joined them was so much more than mere matrimony and the label of husband was woefully inadequate to describe the way their souls were chained together.

Hot come exploded between them as Alek’s body tightened, and then Ian was coming too, and when the dust settled, Ian was afraid to look around because they’d fucked like two gods warring, the love between them so magic he worried that maybe the world really had ended, and the paradise of them reunited again was the closest he would get to heaven, that he’d forsaken the entire world, forfeited eternity, so long as he could be with Alek and he would. He fucking would.