How Long Has It Been?

Luke

wasn’t sure if any of this was real.

Charlie was talking, but there was no sound. Luke stared into his face. He wondered when he’d fallen asleep, and immediately started to panic because he shouldn’t be asleep. His eyes flickered around the room. What could wake him up?

There was something sharp and heavy on the coffee table. Before he could question why, what, before he could stop to consider, a hand attached to his body reached for it. It pushed forward as soon as his fingers had purchase and swung. The sharp, heavy thing lodged into something soft and yielding.

“Luke?”

He woke up. Charlie was kneeling in front of him. The end of the TV remote was pressed to his eye.

Charlie’s hand gripped Luke’s, gently pulling it away from his face. “What are you doing?” He opened his fist. Charlie put the remote aside. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You weren’t in your bed, I was just… Have you been out here all night?” Luke reached past Charlie. He pressed a finger against his phone’s screen. A beam of light sliced into the dark and vaguely person-shaped shadow, standing next to the table, disappeared. It was four in the morning.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“I think you should go lay down.”

Luke stared. His light snuffed out, and the shadow didn’t return.

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Charlie worked most of the day, and he went to bed early. “I’m sad we can’t spend more time together,” he’d said to Luke on his first night, “but I’m glad you’re here.” He hadn’t slept since arriving. Luke didn’t have the heart to admit it, or the spine. Nothing Charlie could do would change anything, and it was Luke’s own fault for agreeing to come up here in the first place.

The week had been unseasonably cold. Luke’s breath gathered in a pool of vapor in front of his face. Charlie sat beside him, one leg tucked under his body, both shoulders tucked under Luke’s arms. His hands curled around a mug that was belching steam. They sported skullcaps and shared a blanket. Charlie’s leg rocked the chair lightly; the gentle swings nearly lulled Luke into slumber.

“So you like Connecticut?”

“Definitely. It’s so gorgeous up here.” Charlie sipped his tea. “I love that I don’t hear any cars at night. Maybe like, one or two. Really different from New York.”

“I’m not used to the quiet.”

“It’s strange, but I learned to love it really fast.” Luke felt an elbow nudge at his ribcage. “You ever think about leaving the city?”

A moth kept pounding into the light above them. An erratic thump thumpthump thump thump, like it was bashing its head in. Luke shivered. A breeze cut through his thin sweatshirt. “I never considered it.” He watched as Charlie considered this, then stared out to the small forest at the edge of the property.

“Well, I’d love it if you were closer, obviously,” Charlie said after another moment. “I miss you a lot. Like, all the time. And I think a change of scenery will be really good for you. It did wonders for me.”

“Are you asking me to move in?”

Charlie smiled sheepishly. “I’m not not asking you.” He stared for a moment longer, then returned to his tea. “It’d be nice to live with someone again. And I always thought we’d be good roommates. I mean, no pressure, of course. Let’s see how this goes first.”

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In the mornings, once the sun started to peek into view, Luke would retreat into the guest room and pretend to still be sleeping. He practiced holding his breath. He counted from one thousand backwards. He kept as still as he possibly could.

His curtains would rustle. Or footsteps would creak under the foor. Or the sheets on his bed would slowly bunch into a spiral around him. Charlie, elsewhere, never noticed, and Luke destroyed all evidence before it could be found.

He tried to earn his keep by cleaning, doing laundry, assisting Charlie in the kitchen during mealtimes. It didn’t take long for them to find the same ease of being. Two years folded in on themselves. In a matter of days Luke warmed to constant hugs, to interlaced fingers, to a palm placed tentatively against the small of his back. Thinking about it too much made his skin crawl.

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The TV was hissing. Luke was sitting upright, curled up against the back of the couch, gaze glued to static. The room around the screen felt impossibly, completely still. A face was less than an inch from his own, just barely in the corner of his vision. One eye wide, unblinking. And here he was, incapable of breaking the curse. Still as stone and staring at vibrating dots.

“It’ll hurt him more if I say anything,” he murmured. The face did not move away. The TV stopped hissing. Luke held his breath as a finger pressed into his eye. Cold spiked into his skull, followed by a searing, explosive heat.

The only thing he could think was I have to do this again and again and again and again. He was never going to sleep again.

————————————————

While Charlie made breakfast, Luke held an ice pack to his face.

His excuse, when he’d been found on the floor ten minutes earlier, was sleepwalking. It was as good a lie as any other.

He felt the stare, still, burning against his back.

“Has this ever happened before?” Charlie set a plate of eggs in front of Luke.

Depends, he almost answered. Instead Luke just shook his head. He was nauseous with exhaustion and black hole of a migraine. His eye throbbed.

“Okay…” Luke wasn’t looking, but he imagined there was a little wrinkle in the center of Charlie’s brow. It always appeared when they were together.

“I’m okay. Promise.”

“Luke…” Charlie sighed. “Is it… you know, your version of okay, or mine?” Luke laughed humorlessly. He ignored the knife in front of him and cut up his eggs with his fork so he could keep holding the ice pack. Metal scraped against porcelain. The cold had numbed the entire left side of his face. “Probably not yours.”

It was always going to be like this. Charlie, stable, and Luke, on the verge. Unspooling, in need of someone to hold him together. It was always going to be like this, no matter how many restarts he had.

“I figured.” Charlie was quiet for a few moments. Luke looked up to confirm: the wrinkle in his brow was there, and his mouth was screwed up with concern. “Is there anything I can do?” Charlie’s phone rattled as an alarm blared. The picture on the screen was still him with his dead boyfriend. There was a smile on Charlie’s face that Luke hadn’t seen in a long time. Charlie turned the alarm off.

He felt breath against his skin. He’d cut up the eggs into increasingly smaller pieces but still hadn’t taken a bite. Luke put the fork aside. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

“That’s okay,” Charlie said in a voice that almost made Luke believe him. “I have a few ideas. We’ll figure it out. And we’ll keep an eye on the sleepwalking.” He paused, then wrinkled his nose. The tiniest of smiles twitched along his mouth. “Sorry. No pun intended.”

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Charlie brought home liquid melatonin. Sleepy-time teas. A little bottle of pills. He downloaded apps on Luke’s phone, wrote down research on sticky notes, told Luke he was welcome to join him in the master bedroom, if that was what it took.

Luke brewed the tea but let it go cold. He threw out the pills one at a time. He dumped the melatonin. He played the apps just long enough to describe the sounds: rain on tin roofs, rolling thunder, crackling fireplaces.

Every night, a face hovered too-close. He stayed in the living room. During the day, he came to in different places. He would start hovering over a coffee, and then he’d wind up in the garden with no memory of walking outside. He caught himself scrubbing an invisible stain on his shirt, his arms aching with the effort. He realized he was standing in the bathroom, staring at his refection.

One eye was still swollen, nearly shut. The other starting rolling and rolling. The entire room tilted and pitched sharply. In the next second, his head cracked into the wall, and he was on his knees.

And then he was in the attic, digging through a box of memories. Old clothes, pictures that were faded and waxy. Charlie smiling that smile, arms around Fletcher’s waist. Luke stared at the dead man. A shadow blocked out half of his features; his left eye was shrouded in darkness. A hand reached from beneath him, brushed his face. Twitching, feather light touches with cold, cold fingers. Down his brow, pulling at his lip, sliding over his chin.

And then he was in the kitchen, cups tumbling onto his shoulders. And then the front porch, a sweaty glass of water pressed to his forehead.

He found the term on one of the sticky notes. With so little rest, he had started to microsleep. He was losing pockets of time, his brain shutting down while he stayed up and blinking.

Charlie found him there, later, and sat beside him. Grocery bags were left at their feet. A hand against his cheek, warm this time. Calloused, real, alive. A soft, gentle circle against his spine as he shuddered out tiny, gasping sobs.

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He didn’t ask questions. Not that night or the next, when Luke gave in for a while and crawled into bed, held onto him, then crawled back out. Charlie already knew what was happening, he understood the rhythm of Luke better than anyone. He’d pulled him out of the pit over and over and over. That was the worst part, Luke thought miserably while he pushed his fingers into his eyes. He would keep collapsing, and once he was built back up, he’d rip up the foundation and collapse again. And Charlie would pull him out every time, every time, every time. He was a trap and a time bomb, and he hated it, but not enough to let Charlie go. He was certain there was no one in the world more selfish than him.

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The last time he had a full night’s sleep, he’d woken up, slipped into his shoes, unplugged all the appliances, and walked to the bridge.

On his way, it had started to snow. Luke had been hyperventilating; he hadn’t managed a deep breath the whole way there, and he was growing lightheaded. The whole night was soft around the edges, but the streetlights threw the cold, white-dusted railing into sharp relief. His hands were wrapped around the metal, shaking. His skin looked almost gray. His shirt was soaked to his skin.

Despite the temperature, the river wasn’t frozen. But it should be cold enough. If he didn’t shatter on impact, he might freeze to death before he drowned.

He threw his leg over the side, shifted his weight slowly until he found purchase on the tiny ledge that precipitated the water. His tremors nearly made him fall, right then. He still gripped the rail, his arms now twisted behind him. His toes dipped into open air. Fletcher stood to his left, watching intently.

Luke choked. His cheeks were stiff with frozen tears. “This is what you want, right?” All he had to do was tilt forward. “It’s gonna kill Charlie.”

His grip slackened. Luke released a long, guttural scream. Then he climbed back over, gulping in lungful after lungful of bitter, icy air.

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That stunt had landed him in the hospital with a bad case of pneumonia and around the clock surveillance. Charlie returned to the city he swore he’d never come back to, for Luke. Luke made a lot of promises that they both knew he couldn’t be trusted to keep. “Come stay with me.”

“Charlie—”

“Please. I’m so tired of only seeing you in a hospital bed. Please.”

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So, he was here.

Too bad it wouldn’t make a difference. Luke wondered if he should disappear for a few days, first, or if he should just get it over with.

The road was empty. Spring finally had arrived, though sluggishly, dragging its feet. Luke listened to the quiet, louder than any city hum.

Only one or two cars a night, Charlie had said. He sat on the gravel, waiting for the flash of headlights.

The first car rushed right past him; he was frozen in place. The next one crawled by. A window rolled down, a stranger asked if he needed help. Luke laughed, then pushed himself to his feet. He walked back through the woods.

Low branches scraped the top of his head. He stumbled over exposed roots. Luke wasn’t sure if any of this was real. Fletcher was everywhere, a silent reminder. An accusation. Not just here but in the house. Charlie’s broken heart was scattered in every room, hung up in every doorway.

Luke was a coward for trying to die before he told Charlie the truth. He was lost. He didn’t remember which way he’d just turned. When he blinked, he was a different part of the forest entirely. He came to leaning against a huge bark, the shadows retreating with the approaching dawn.

“I wish you would just kill me,” he said.

Silence answered.

“If I tell him it’ll make everything worse. I’ll ruin his life.”

It was so quiet out here.

“You always wanted me out of the picture. Just do it. Bash my head in. Throw me in the river. You can gloat the whole time. Just get it over with.”

A pressure built around his eye.

Charlie was going to find him out here later that morning. He’ll already be worried sick, fearing the worst, when he’d stumble upon the scene. Luke was so wretched. All he did was hurt the person who cared about him the most. Charlie bringing him here was the worst thing that could have happened.

Luke fell asleep on the ground. He dreamed about the day he watched Fletcher die. He could still see it all so clearly. The way those final seconds dragged. The way limbs twitched, the way his good eye rolled and rolled and rolled, looking for a path that didn’t end in death. He dreamed about the hand on his face, as if Fletcher would cling to life, somehow, if he could only grab some of Luke’s flesh.

He woke up in the master bedroom, the morning so bright it bleached away all the colors. Charlie was laying beside him, arm deadweight on Luke’s chest. There was a bloody crater where his eye used to be. The other was wide, wide open, a thousand miles away. He woke up falling, with just enough to time to feel his body smash to bits against the churning river.

He woke up with his fingers inside his eyes. They mangled through his corneas, caving everything inward. Nerves lodged under his nails. Fluid leaked down to his knuckles. He woke up on the walkway toward the house. Charlie cried and ran to him. He crushed Luke into a tight hug.

“Where did you go?” he wept. “Don’t do that again. Please don’t ever do that again.”

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It felt like a violation to be breathing. Every inhale was a stolen one, taken from someone who deserved it more. There were so many other people who shouldn’t be dead and here he was, wasting away. Stretching this out to its most painful conclusion.

“The melatonin doesn’t help? The pills?”

Luke opened his eyes. He was curled up on the couch, his head propped up against throw pillows. Charlie sat on the floor beside him, clutching his hand. He was still crying. Luke wanted to cry, too, but he was afraid of what might come out of him if he did.

“I haven’t been taking any.”

“Luke… why?”

Because your dead boyfriend is trying to kill me in my sleep. Because I killed him, and I didn’t mean to, but that hardly matters because he’s still dead, and he’s still angry, and I still did it. Because I’m a terrible person. Because I’ve been running and I’m so tired of running all the time. Because the guilt is eating me alive. Because I love you but in the most selfish, evil way.

Charlie cried some more. “If you need me to take you back to the hospital, I can do that. I’ll do anything. I just don’t want to lose you, too.”

Luke could feel his heartbeat in his eyes. “Going back won’t help me.”

“You don’t know that, Luke. They can help you better than I can. You have to sleep eventually.”

Luke thought about the first time he saw them together. Young, in love, everything so perfect. For the first time, someone stable, reliable, not about to unravel at the seams. Something in Luke just knew, he was finished. The end was fast approaching. Fletcher was going to take him away.

The sun was so bright. It hurt to keep staring at the ceiling. Luke rolled onto his side, gave Charlie both of his hands.