Memento Amare Read online

  And both times, when he found himself physically unharmed, he'd felt ... disappointed.

  "Phelan."

  Unlike the previous missions, Nate is here to see him off at the hangar. Nate stands regally in front of a GATF jet - smaller than the Ark but just as functional - that will take him and a team of agents to Croenia (where the Clyde he knew and loved died). Nate's head is held high, his shoulders squared, his hands at his sides. Cole walks up to Nate and stands facing Nate with five feet of space between them.

  "I expect you back for the debriefing. Do you understand?"

  Nate's voice is edged with steel and yet rounded with softness, a fascinating dichotomy just like its possessor, one of the best and oldest friends he's ever had. It brooks no argument and no defiance. It summons honesty and loyalty.

  Cole stares Nate in the eye. Nate's expression is stone-cold and soulless, but he knows Nate is anything but those things. He knows Nate is worried about him. He knows Nate is just another man, just another flawed human being in this vast, unfair, unpredictable, senseless world who wants some reassurance from one of the best and oldest friends he's ever had.

  But he can't lie to Nate. He just can't, won't.

  For the first time (and the last), he doesn't say yes, boss or okay, Nate or you got it, sir. He tears his gaze away from Nate's face. He doesn't look at Nate again as he moves past Nate who's gone statue-still and walks up the jet's lowered ramp. He misses the sight of Nate slowly turning around to watch him disappear into the jet with evident concern in his heavy-lidded, brown eyes.

  It feels like another final farewell.

  It's what Nate will be thinking about, when word gets back to HQ that he's vanished without a trace, that none of the agents who'd been with him can find him or even guess where he's been taken.

  XVIII.

  WHEN THE SADISTIC FUCKERS bring out the electric-shock gloves, soak him in icy water and punch him over and over with those gloves until he's biting his lips bloody to rein in his screams, Cole really does wish that he'd told Clyde how much he still loves him, one more time. Just one more time.

  XIX.

  "I WANT TO KNOW MORE," Clyde says, "about us."

  Cole and Clyde are sitting on opposite ends of the black, leather-bound couch in their living room, the covers from their (their) bed folded neatly on the low, glass coffee table in front of the couch. (They still have Clyde's scent, but it's fading, fading with each night that Cole sleeps on the couch alone.) It's an improvement from Clyde pressing himself up against a wall so hard that he wants to merge with it, but still.

  Clyde can only look at him for seconds at a time before looking away again. He can only stare at Clyde for ages at a time, his eyes roaming the familiar yet always exquisite features of Clyde's face, wondering if he's still sleeping and this is just some screwed up nightmare from which the Clyde he knows and loves will awaken him soon. He isn't quite ready to accept the situation as a reality yet, not even after their visit to Medical for Clyde's MRI and CAT scanning today.

  Perhaps he never will be.

  "All right. What do you want to know?"

  Clyde's callused fingers (whose touch he knows so well) are perpetually moving, rubbing against each other, coiling around each other as if Clyde is itching to retrieve a weapon. Cole doesn't want to think about what it means that Clyde feels the need to be armed in his presence.

  "You said we were ... lovers for six years."

  As much as he tries, Cole can't ignore Clyde's use of past tense. Nothing on his impassive face nor his deliberately relaxed body language reveal his feelings about that.

  "Yes."

  "And the only people who know about it are Fabry and your parents."

  "Yes."

  Clyde lets out a heavy, audible breath at that.

  "Oh man. I'm still trying to process the fact that Nathan fucking Fabry was the witness at our ... wedding."

  Cole gazes at Clyde's face, at Clyde's fingers now drumming on his thighs. He gazes at the outline of Clyde's wedding ring under Clyde's white t-shirt, still dangling from its necklace around Clyde's neck. Clyde's still wearing it. Clyde can't remember him but Clyde's still wearing his wedding ring.

  "So. We're married. For ... two years." Clyde's fingers stop drumming for a few seconds, then start again. "And the ceremony was in Fabry's office."

  "Yes. It was a secret ceremony. Only you, me, Nate and the officiant were present."

  He lets himself clench his hands into fists for a moment before loosening them on his thighs again, leaving stinging marks of his fingernails on his palms. Their wedding day was one of the happiest days of his life, one of Clyde's happiest days and Clyde, the very man he married, doesn't remember it anymore.

  "Huh. We really ... hid it from people? Our relationship? From everyone else?"

  Cole has to force himself to hold Clyde's gaze with his, to not glance away and shut his eyes. Yes, they really had, and it had been their mutual decision to do so. He can still remember how warm Clyde had felt pressed up against him in their bed, how Clyde had pressed their foreheads together in the hush of midnight.

  I'm not ashamed of you, babe, Clyde had said undoubtedly, cupping his lower jaw with one hand, rubbing their foreheads together. I'm not ashamed of us. No. Never. I would gladly tell the whole fucking world how proud I am to be yours, but not if it means putting you in any danger.

  The Clyde who sits on the couch with this unfathomable gulf between them appears to be ... relieved that scarcely anyone knows they're lovers and married. He doesn't want to think about what that means for their future, if Clyde's memories of him really never return.

  "Yes, for our protection, and to minimize the possibility of exploitation. We mutually agreed on it."

  Clyde ponders on that for a minute. Then Clyde nods and says, "Yeah. That makes sense."

  Cole gazes on at Clyde's face, even after Clyde glances away yet again. He doesn't know what's going on in Clyde's head right now. It's a strange thing to him, after eight years of being Clyde's handler, Clyde's partner and working together so well that they can communicate a wealth of information to each other just with their eyes and the slightest gestures. It feels like half of him has gone missing, hacked away from him, and all that's left behind are ragged edges that bleed and bleed and won't stop.

  He's only got so much blood in him, before he runs dry and dead.

  "You got my GATF serial number memorized. You even have my medical history memorized."

  The ragged edges in Cole ache so bad when he sees Clyde's lips curve up in that amused, familiar smile.

  "I also know that your favorite color is red. I know that you love dogs and have a particular fondness for French bulldogs and, as you always put it, their squishy, funny faces. I know you like your coffee black and caffeinated as hell on work days but with sugar and cream when we get to stay in. I know that you're ambidextrous although everyone still assumes you're left-handed, that you can shoot with deadly accuracy with either hand. I know that you still have that ticklish spot behind your left knee, that you always laugh when I scratch or kiss it. I know that you still and always will have a soft spot for romantic songs from the '60s and '70s. You especially love Ella Fitzgerald's live rendition of -" And here, Cole has to pause for a moment, to swallow past the jagged rock in his throat. "'Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye'."

  Now Clyde has that stricken expression again, as if all his walls have been abruptly obliterated, leaving him exposed to the mercy of the elements.

  "That's ..." Clyde's throat works in a long, visible swallow. "Yeah. Okay."

  Cole says nothing more. Clyde looks down at his own lap, at his wringing hands on it.

  "Cole, I ... I know you're telling the truth about us being - being lovers. Being married. There's the marriage cert and the rings and the apartment and ..." Clyde gesticulates at the many framed photographs of them on the wall facing the couch, surrounding a switched off flat screen television set on a rectangular, freestanding wooden stand. "And - an
d, what you said just now. It's all ... they're ..." Clyde goes quiet for a minute. "It's just ... I don't feel like I'm ... you know."

  Something in the left side of Cole's chest clinches hard at Clyde calling him by his surname again (when Clyde would tell him how much he loves his first name, how bold and yet gracious it is). He's pushing the figurative knife into Clyde and twisting it before he even knows it.

  "Gay? Homosexual? Queer as a three dollar bill?" he says monotonously. "Bent?"

  He doesn't feel as guilty as he thinks he should when Clyde winces.

  "I just mean, you're supposed to just know if you're ... that way. Right? So, how come I don't feel that way?"

  Because you were abused for most of your life with homophobic slurs, Cole wants to yell. Because the world taught you to hate yourself and anyone like you. Because nobody made you believe that it's okay to be who and what you really are, to love yourself as you are until me, me.

  "I don't know," Cole mutters instead, suddenly wrung out and frayed to the bone. "All I know is, being bisexual or gay is nothing to be ashamed of. There's nothing shameful about loving someone just because they have the same genitals as you. What does it say about this world that men are rewarded for killing another man, and punished for loving another?"

  Once upon a time, he'd said the same words to Clyde on a burgundy couch in his office at HQ. That Clyde had stared down at his own lap too. But that Clyde had also contemplated on the question, and then said bluntly, it's a fucked up place full of fucked up people, like me.

  The Clyde he's gazing at now has his shoulders hunched. This Clyde is still staring down at his hands on his lap, wringing them. This Clyde is so afraid that he's trying to not even think about the question.

  "Did I ... did I enjoy it?" Clyde whispers, after a millennium of stagnant silence.

  Cole doesn't think twice about replying, "Having sex with me? Yes. Every time. We've had sex for six years, Clyde. We know each other's preferences and dislikes and kinks. We know each other."

  We still do. We do. You just have to return to me, sweetheart. Please return to me and be mine forever, again.

  "And, how do we ... I mean, who ..."

  "We switch sometimes. But you prefer me to be the top, and I have no complaints whatsoever about that."

  He digs his fingers into his knees when Clyde, still staring down at his lap, covers his mouth with one hand.

  "Oh my god," he hears Clyde mumble with sheer mortification behind that hand.

  That's when Cole rips his gaze away from Clyde, when he stares instead at the framed photographs of them. He stares at Clyde - his Clyde - smiling back at him from those photographs, at his own contented face in them.

  He feels like he's staring at people who are already dead, who now exist only in his mind. He feels like burying all the photos, the memories six feet underground, when he should still be clinging to the hope that Clyde's memories will come back, that Clyde will come back and make everything all right again.

  "We can talk more later," he says, staring ahead, expressionless. "Maybe we should ... grab something to eat now."

  It's as lame and transparent as an excuse gets to end this horrid conversation, but Clyde dives for it like a drowning man for a life float.

  "Yeah. Yeah, okay." A shaky inhalation, and then Clyde says, "Cole?"

  Cole gazes at Clyde who glances at him and stammers, "I ... I know this isn't easy for you, and it's not easy for me either and ... just, thanks. For being ... understanding. For giving me space while I ... figure things out."

  "Whatever you need," Cole says quietly after a long minute. "Just let me know."

  "Thanks, Cole. Really."

  The relief, the distance in Clyde's voice makes him want to charge at the wall and dash every framed photograph to broken pieces beyond repair on the floor.

  XX.

  NOW, COLE IS IN A WHOLE new world of pain.

  "Cole? Cole? Don't you fucking dare die on us, Cole. You know how many of us are here right now on the Ark because we came to save your ass from those Croenian fuckwads?"

  Pain, so much of it, is radiating from his lower back and throughout his entire body in spiraling shock waves. It renders him mute and stiff and barely able to breathe, crushing his trachea. He fucking hurts everywhere and he can't remember why, he can't -

  "C'mon, man, try and keep those baby blues open. You're safe now. We found you. You're safe."

  He's on his side on something soft yet firm. His head is on a pillow but he doesn't remember a pillow under his head before he fell asleep. He doesn't remember waking up either. It was just darkness and now it's just pain. He's trying to open his eyes, he really is, but he can't. His eyelids are so heavy, like they're glued together and weighted down by colossal rocks. There's something rigid and plastic over his face. There's something sitting on his chest, heavy as a damn elephant and he can't breathe, why can't he breathe, what's happening to him, what's happened to him -

  "Hey. Hey, Cole. Listen to me. Focus on my voice, okay? Stay with us."

  He's hurt bad. He's hurt damn bad. Somebody ... somebody hurt him really bad with electricity and later somebody hurt him really bad with a knife and it - it hurt so fucking bad when it pierced his skin and his flesh and it just kept cutting through him, even worse than the kukri in that alley in Rio Rancho -

  "Christ, who let Barnett in here?! He's dripping blood all over the place! Get him out of here!"

  Someone's hoarsely bellowing his name, his first name and ... there's only one person who says his name like that. Only one person with that voice that's low and raspy and so familiar and so ... so beloved. Who is that? Why does this person sound just like ... Clyde?

  Clyde?

  It can't be.

  "Hey, Cole, Cole, stay with us now, all right? Bertillon and his team are already waiting for you in the good old U.S. of A. so you stay with us, you hear me?"

  He tries to answer. He tries to peel open his eyes. He tries to just breathe but his chest is now hurting almost as much as his back. Fuck, he hurts. They hurt him so fucking bad and he ... he let them and he was tired, just so tired of everything. They were going to end it all for him and that was ... that was good, right? That meant he could finally sleep, finally stop feeling anything and ... oh, there's something weird going on in the left side of his chest, like something in it is desperately trying to crumple in on itself like a star dying under the force of its own gravity, like it's going to burst if it can't and ... oh, who's that making those frightful gasps of agony?

  The poor bastard sounds just like him.

  "Goddamnit, he's going into VF -"

  Someone is bellowing his name.

  "No, no, Barnett! You need to leave! You are not helping here - hey, get him to the showers! Get him out of here! NOW!"

  Someone is bellowing his name again. They sound in so much agony themselves, as if something in their chest is threatening to implode and burst too. Something metallic and hollow strikes an unyielding floor.

  "Barnett, cut it out!"

  More metallic objects clang as they strike the floor. There's enraged, incoherent yelling. There's a pained grunt, and another.

  "Shit, just - stop fighting us!"

  "Let them do their jobs, man! Let them help him -"

  A vehement snarl of wrath. Rapid sounds of flesh striking flesh. More pained grunts.

  "Barnett! For fuck's sakes -"

  Shoe soles squeak and scuff the floor, as if there's a brawl going on and someone's being forcibly dragged away and -

  "We're losing him- where's the goddamn de-fib?!"

  He's dying, isn't he? He's dying. Finally.

  "Clear!"

  I'm tired, he tries to say.

  "Clear!"

  Please let me go, he does say, except the words are throttled dead in his throat, drowned out by the rattling of his lungs as they try to inhale air one last time.

  "Clear!"

  Please, please let -

  XXI.

  COLE'
S FAMILY HAS ALWAYS been a private one. Cole suspects it has a lot to do with Pa and his introverted personality, with Ma being just as reserved. Being their son and only child, though, has permitted him to see sides of them that many people do not.

  Although Ma is reticent in public, especially in a large crowd of people be it strangers or family, she speaks her mind when it's just him and Pa. She breaks into a smile more often, smacks Pa on the arm whenever he cracks a joke with that legendary deadpan face that Cole's inherited and put to good use himself. As composed as Pa usually is, Pa does get animated about certain things in life, like Baby, the family's still very cherry red 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle LS6 and Ma's six-layer chocolate cake with toasted marshmallow filling and malted chocolate frosting. (Clyde once mentioned that the cake should be immortalized as one of the wonders of the world, along with Betty's ground beef meatloaf.)

  But Pa animated into genuine fury? Well, Cole can count on a single hand the number of times that's occurred throughout his life, with fingers to spare. The last time had been the most ... memorable one, back in May of 2002 when he'd come home for a week-long visit after his third successful mission as a GATF agent.

  It had been a luminous spring day with a fair temperature of 68°F. He and Pa were in the living room watching television while Ma was in the kitchen preparing a lunch of fried chicken steak battered with Tabasco sauce and garlic. He'd wanted to help but she shooed him out and told him to go sit with Pa so Pa wouldn't sneak in and nibble on the cheesecake in the fridge.

  One minute, Pa was saying something to him about maybe heading to the beach later for a stroll, the three of them. The next minute, a car roared onto their paver driveway in front of the garage and its driver was banging on its horn. Cole was on instant alert, instinctively reaching for the gun that would be holstered at his left side if he was on active duty and not at home, springing off the couch to the nearest window facing the front yard and driveway. Pa followed him at a more sedate pace, which told him that whoever it was, it was someone Pa knew.