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“Adam?”
“Nope, it’s the plumber,” Adam called back up the stairs, as he pulled his key from the lock and slid the deadbolt home. “I’m here to snake your pipes, sir.”
The answering groan of exasperation from upstairs made Adam grin to himself. He was halfway up the stairs when the comforting aroma of warm rice and vegetables met his nose; a few steps more, and he heard the beeping of the microwave, announcing that its task was finished. When Adam reached the landing, he saw that the floor lamp and the kitchen lights were both turned on, warding against the eerie red off-darkness of the city outside, encroaching against the windows. Mateo sat at the all-purpose table tucked into the corner of the studio. A veritable slab of a veterinary textbook lay open before him, and beside that, there was a reheated burrito and a fork sitting on a paper plate. Adam wondered at the fork, until Mateo smiled at him and raised a slow, trembling hand in greetings— some days were better than others, for both of them. This must have been a bad day for Mateo.
“H-hi, honey,” Mateo said. He managed to curl his hand into a point, to indicate the microwave over on the nicked-up kitchen counter. “I made dinner. Or… breakfast.”
“My hero,” Adam said. He came over to Mateo first, leaning down to press a kiss to his stubbled cheek. Before he headed to the microwave, Adam glanced down to the book, to see what Mateo was studying. With the help of the illustrations, Adam could pick out enough of the Spanish to gather that it was a section on the canine digestive tract, but the specifics remained beyond him.
“That looks like fun,” Adam commented. He headed over to pull his own burrito from the microwave and took a bite right away. Bad move. A glob of molten cheese got stuck to the roof of Adam’s mouth, making him whine in pain. He pulled opened the fridge with his bad arm, ignoring the warning sting he felt there, to fumble for a Red Bull. The second the can was in hand, Adam pulled the tab and raised it to his lips. Mixed with the contents of the burrito, the energy drink tasted even more like battery acid than it already did, but it was enough to cool down Adam’s mouth and dislodge the offending cheese. Adam heard Mateo snickering as he set the can back down on the countertop.
“N-not as fun as th…that was,” Mateo teased. Then he asked, “Long night?”
Adam grinned back at him and nodded, as he carefully shrugged off his camera bag and set it on the table as well. Almost immediately, his chest and shoulder relaxed, releasing tension that Adam didn’t realize he’d been holding.
“Kinda. Mostly just loud,” Adam said. When the burrito still clutched in his hand began to feel a little too warm against his palm, Adam followed in Mateo’s steps and plunked it down onto another plate. “But I think I got some sick shots of the guitarist. My editor should be happy, and that’s what matters.”
”That’s g-good.”
”Mhm.”
The rough edge of the countertop began to bite into Adam’s hip, and the chair across from Mateo looked awfully enticing. Adam took his plate and his drink over to sit at the table instead, carefully maneuvering around the piles of opened mail and magazine issues until he found suitable resting spots for both. As he released the grip his right hand had on the Red Bull, Adam‘s shoulder gave another sharp, hot twinge. He was in for a bad day of his own tomorrow. Adam felt Mateo’s gaze on him as he settled himself. When he looked up, he was met with Mateo staring expectantly at him, his blue-green eyes bright.
“What’s up?” Adam asked.
“Before you left, I-I asked if…” Mateo paused to swallow; Adam waited patiently, until Mateo was ready to continue.
“…If you’d g-get me some pan dulce.”
“Oh!”
Adam ran a quick inventory of his jacket pockets, patting them down one at a time. With each one that came up empty, Mateo’s face slowly fell— but then, cradled there in one of the inner pockets, Adam felt the telltale crinkle of plastic snack wrap.
“Sorry, it’s just from the corner store,” Adam said, as he pulled out the packaged concha and placed it atop the open pages of Mateo’s book. “I woulda got you a real one, but the bakeries aren’t open yet.”
Mateo smiled at him and gently placed his hand on top of Adam’s. Mateo’s touch was warm and soft, and Adam could feel the minuscule tremors in his fingers. Right away, Adam smiled back at him.
“It’s okay,” Mateo said. “I thought m-maybe you’d… forgotten.”
“Nah, never,” Adam said. He gave Mateo an easy grin and turned his hand over, to interlace their fingers together and give Mateo’s hand a squeeze. “I promised you, didn’t I, Teo?”
Adam watched as the look in Mateo’s eyes softened, as his smile took on a more tentative, uneven tilt. Mateo slowly nodded back.
“Right,” Mateo murmured. He gave Adam’s hand a barely-there squeeze of his own, before he withdrew to set the concha aside and pick up his fork again. Adam watched Mateo quietly, picking up his own burrito to take another bite of it now that it had cooled to an acceptable temperature.
For a few minutes, the two of them coexisted in the quiet of their studio; outside, the city moved on as always, the dull roar of traffic punctuated only by the occasional wail of sirens. But inside, the only sounds were Adam and Mateo chewing, the occasional flip of a page from Mateo, and the soft snoring of Mapplethorpe, curled up and sleeping blissfully in the pile of laundry on the floor that Adam and Mateo had both been meaning to fold and put away for the past week. It was a beautiful, perfect end to Adam’s work night, or the start of another peaceful morning… Or, it would have been, except for the fact that Mateo didn’t normally stay up this late or wake up this early if he didn’t have to. Not even for Adam’s sake. Not of his own free will, anyway. As he watched Mateo study, taking in the bruised shadows under Mateo’s eyes and his tousled bedhead, Adam weighed the decision to ask Mateo about it or to just let it go. After all, it wasn’t hard to guess what might have shaken Mateo out of his sleep.
If it hadn’t happened to Adam himself, if he’d just read about it from a pharmacy gossip rag headline, he wouldn’t believe it. Two vet students started dating… then learned they were both Jigsaw victims! And yet, it was the truth. When the two of them first met two semesters ago, taking evening classes at one of the Metro’s many community colleges, Mateo had been nothing more to Adam than a pretty face, and the only other student who was actively nice to him. Adam needed a class buddy who wasn’t a total square and who kept the same irregular hours as he did; Mateo needed someone willing to share their notes with him, since he couldn’t write very quickly, and someone who could help him with some of the English medical terms that went over his head. Their classroom partnership blossomed into a friendship, and then, when Adam learned that Mateo was living in an even worse shithole than his old apartment had been, their shared lease on this studio. Then, one night as the two of them hunched over their respective textbooks, so delirious from lack of sleep that neither of them could stop laughing at the term “flocculonodular lobe,” Mateo had surprised Adam by leaning in to kiss him, softly, on the corner of his mouth. The two of them had been quietly, but happily dating ever since, and the studio got just a bit more spacious when they ditched Mateo’s old twin bed and moved him into Adam’s.
Even then, it took another three months before Adam woke up screaming in a cold sweat, to Mateo staring at him in total bewilderment. Mateo had never asked before— about Adam’s weak arm and the exit wound on his shoulder blade, about how Adam was able to secure a job with a fairly prestigious regional music publication without any sort of degree, about Adam’s unlikely friendship with possibly the most famous medical professional in the entire Metro. Adam was so used to being locally notorious that, when Mateo didn’t seem to know or care who he was, Adam took that dose of anonymity like it was morphine. Giving it up in such a weak moment, explaining exactly who he was and what had happened to him before Mateo moved up north, felt like— well, not torture. Adam knew what torture felt like. But it did feel like having another vital piece of him torn away by Jigsaw’s cold, cruel hand. Adam still remembered the tight squeeze of fear in his chest, the fear that Mateo would see him differently or brand him as a liar for hiding his past from him.
The last thing Adam had expected that night was for Mateo’s eyes to glaze over with tears, for him to crush Adam to his chest in the tightest hug he could manage and to hiss out the words, “Adam… M-me too. P-please promise… not to tell.”
And, after Mateo had told him the entire twisted story, Adam promised. He understood only too well the list of reasons why Mateo wanted to keep his ordeal a secret: he wanted to stay anonymous, especially here in the US where nobody knew him. The story of what happened to Mateo and his coworkers had made local news when it happened, but it seemed the case never got enough attention to go international, and nobody with the power to do anything about it had connected the dots between Mateo’s case and Adam’s. If Interpol was going to intervene, Mateo said, surely it would have happened already; if Mateo risked speaking up about his experiences, he might be dragged into a limelight he didn’t want, or even forced to go back to Mexico to testify his case. And, if Mateo spoke up, he feared there might be retribution. From Jigsaw himself… or from Cecilia.
Even now, Adam wasn’t sure he had the full picture of who this Cecilia person was. Mateo was afraid to say too much about her, even after all the time and distance he’d put between himself and that night. Adam had managed to learn over the past few months that she had once been Mateo’s employer, she’d also survived the ordeal that Mateo had been put through, and she’d manipulated and lied to Mateo, both before and during their shared game. A quick, furtive Internet search on Adam’s part one night revealed that she was the daughter of a famous Swedish oncologist, but he’d stopped there, awash in the guilt of trying to peer into Mateo’s unspoken past when Mateo had always been so accepting of Adam’s privacy.
Mateo paused in his reading to yawn loudly, and Adam blinked from his reverie. The sky outside was beginning to turn from red-purple over to a vaguely pinkish tone, the first hint that the sun was on its way. Mapplethorpe woke up and stretched, offering a yawn of his own, before he turned his gaze to the kitchen and then approached the table with a chirp.
“Good morning, mister,” Adam greeted. Mapplethorpe hopped onto the tabletop and sat down on top of the latest water bill, his stumpy amputee-tail wagging back and forth as he looked between Adam and Mateo. Mateo tsked and shook his head.
“Y-you know you don’t belong up he-here, Thorpe,” he admonished. But Mateo’s smile betrayed him, as he slowly reached out his hand to bury it in the cat’s thick blue fur. Adam watched the two of them fondly, saw the way that Mateo’s entire body seemed to relax in a combination of relief and fatigue. He decided to speak up.
“Teo… it’s late,” Adam started softly. Mateo hummed in his throat and looked back to him, squinting at Adam like he was suspicious of him.
“Early,” he retorted. Adam just raised an eyebrow, fixing him with a no-nonsense look.
“Both,” Adam said, to defuse the point of contention. “Class isn’t until six tomorrow night, and you’re already two weeks ahead on studying.”
“S-so?”
“So…”
Adam leaned in across the table, placing his hand on Mateo’s open book with his palm upturned.
“So… What are you doing awake?”
Mateo sighed and drew back his hand from Mapplethorpe, to instead run it back through his own hair. It calmed his bedhead somewhat, save for a shock of silver-shot hair that always had its own agenda.
“I-I had… a nightmare,” Mateo admitted. He looked down at Adam’s hand, but didn’t take it.
“Yeah,” Adam gently murmured. “D’you wanna talk about it…?”
For a long moment, Mateo was quiet. Mapplethorpe knocked Mateo’s highlighter off the table, then jumped down after it. Adam ignored the sounds of Thorpe batting the pen across the floor, keeping his eyes trained on Mateo. Finally, he spoke.
“Ce-cilia, she… She always promised that w-we would… Stay together. A-all of us, like a f… a family.”
Adam went still, afraid that any movement or word on his part would shake Mateo from this line of conversation. It was the first time he’d even said Cecilia’s name in months.
“B-but she… that night, with Jigsaw, she… she was so c-cold, Adam. She used us. Sh-she was always using us.”
Mateo placed his hand in Adam’s then. Adam held it like it was porcelain, slowly rubbing his thumb over Mateo’s knuckles.
“I’m sorry,” Adam murmured. “I know how it feels to be used and thrown away for someone else’s gain… What she did was fucked up, Mateo. And you didn’t deserve it.”
Mateo sniffed and nodded. He slowly raised his eyes to look at Adam.
“I-I had… a nightmare that… She f-found me. Us. Here. B-but… she didn’t hurt us. A-all she said was that…”
Mateo hesitated, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. Adam could tell that it was a pause of emotion, not need.
“That you’d… l-leave me too. That I-I’m too cheap and d-dirty and… broken. That I’m st-stupid for… trusting your promises.”
Mateo’s voice broke on the word ”trusting,” and teardrops rolled down his cheeks as he gripped Adam’s hand, as hard as he could manage. Adam squeezed back right away, fiercely, and he felt his jaw clenching with anger and pain as he darted his other hand across the table to wipe Mateo’s tears.
“Oh, Teo,” Adam murmured. “That sounds so awful… I would be shaken up too after a nightmare like that. It’s okay now, baby, I’m here…”
Mateo sniffed and nodded, leaning into Adam’s touch as Adam moved to cradle his jaw, but Adam could see that he wasn’t convinced. He continued to cry quietly under his breath, his face tilted down towards his book; perhaps sensing his upset, Mapplethorpe returned to the kitchen and rubbed up against Mateo’s legs, before flopping down to lay across his feet.
“Hey… I always thought promises were bullshit, you know,” Adam said, after a second. Mateo’s shiny eyes returned to him, and he tilted his head.
“I did,” Adam repeated. “All my life, people loved to make promises to me. My parents, my friends, my teachers… None of it mattered. Nobody kept their promises. My parents promised they’d always love me, but once I started hormones, it was a different story. Friends promised they’d never leave me, until I was too sad to leave my apartment for weeks on end, and then they lost my number. It was all just… lies. I figured, nobody who makes a promise really means it, and nobody who really matters would ever do something as stupid as making a promise.”
Mateo frowned through his tears, and he gave Adam’s hand another squeeze.
“Wh-what… changed?” he asked softly. “D-do you still… feel th-that way…?”
“No,” Adam quietly answered. “I don’t. And I’ll tell you what changed. Somebody made me a promise and kept it, right when it mattered most.”
A sparkle of intrigue came into Mateo’s eye then, and Adam slowly took a breath. He’d never shared this part of his story with Mateo before. Unless Mateo had also gone behind Adam’s back to do some Internet sleuthing, this would be a new revelation for him.
”My friend Lawrence,” Adam went on. “This… pretentious, privileged, stuck-up, stuffy, yuppie, WASP queen doctor. When we were trapped together that night, right before he left, he… He promised me he’d find a way to get help. That he wouldn’t just leave me behind. A-and at the time, I figured, great, a promise from a guy like that is worth less than shit on your shoe. And that’s on a good day— he made this promise when he was bleeding to death, and he thought his family was dead. I was…”
Adam swallowed, as his memories caught up with him; for just a moment, filthy white tile swam before his eyes.
“…I was so sure I was going to die,” Adam mumbled. “A-and for nearly two days, I was. Dying. But then… I heard voices, and I saw light, and… the EMTs found me. Lawrence… Actually kept his promise.”
Adam had to pull his hand back from Mateo’s jaw, so he could wipe a few rogue tears of his own. He breathed out a laugh despite himself and gave Mateo a crooked little smile.
“A-after that, I thought… If a guy like Lawrence could make a promise like that, and actually keep it, then maybe… promises weren’t all bullshit after all.”
The two of them were quiet again. Adam could see Mateo’s mind working, could see the crease in his brow slowly smooth out as he studied Adam’s face.
“I-I’m… glad Lawrence kept his promise,” Mateo murmured. Adam gave another chuckle, this one mixed with an ambushing sob.
“Me too,” Adam said. “And, hey…”
He tilted his head, to indicate the packaged concha that still sat by Mateo’s textbook.
“I kept my promise to bring you that pan dulce,” he finished. “So… When I make you a promise, Teo, maybe you can trust me. Yeah?”
Finally, Mateo smiled again. He nodded and leaned across the table; Adam met him halfway in a soft, stubbly kiss.
“Y-yeah,” Mateo mumbled against Adam’s lips. “Thank you, Adam.”
When the two of them pulled apart, Adam realized that the sun had fully risen outside. It seemed Mapplethorpe had realized the same, because he stood up and marched over to the pantry door, then turned to give Adam and Mateo a plaintive meow.
“Alright, buddy, yeah,” Adam said as he stood. “Let’s get you your breakfast.”
“After that, I-I’m ready… to go back to sleep,” Mateo mumbled. Adam hummed and nodded his agreement.
“Me, too,” he agreed. “We can sleep in late today. I don’t have anything scheduled before class.”
“Promise?”
Adam turned around from the open pantry door, Thorpe’s food bowl in his hand, and looked at Mateo. He was overjoyed to see Mateo grinning back at him, his eyes sparkling with mirth.
“Promise,” Adam answered. Mateo’s grin only widened.