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In in the days after he loses his arm, Brad lives in bursts. He awakens upright to the rhythm of footsteps, the sun-baked wasteland dust thick in his nose, a voice, probably Nern’s, noise without meaning. Someone is looking at him. Later, the taste of bile on his tongue, hunched over and vaguely off-balance, Terry speaking a soft sound in a space just out of Brad’s line of sight. After that, the cool dark of a cave, the blear of a distant light, conscious enough to confirm that, yes, he’s alive, he’s there, but not enough to hold onto for more than a moment before he falls into another breath, hot and viscous and tasting of iron. It’d be a surprise to Brad when he takes another sickly inhale only to find himself awake once again, but he’s still not conscious enough to feel much of anything. Still, in that numb first light, he tries to take inventory of the scene.
The first thing he feels is color, a bright red-orange the only thing cutting through the dark and casting a halo that skirts politely behind where he sits on something firm. A rock. Brad traces the perimeter of the halo to find Olan, Nern, and Terry sitting in a triangle on the other side of the fire, sipping from bottles, making muted conversation. For a moment, Terry’s eyes, round and coal-dark, catch his own, and they share a look that Brad tries his best to interpret. He even makes an attempt at a smile, but, as he breathes out, in again, his other senses settle upon him, the tension in his back, his arm, swollen and throbbing. The weight is too much, forces him down at the shoulders. He tries to hold himself up, but he can feel his stomach lurch as he realizes his arm is no longer there to hold up his bald head. Putting all his weight into his remaining hand, Brad closes his eyes and tries to remember the deep pranayama-breaths he used to teach his students, six seconds in, six seconds out, and, when that doesn’t work, he tries to remember why he’s here. He finds Buddy in his mind’s eye and breathes. It feels as if he’s slipped under once again until he hears a voice.
“Hey, dude.” Brad squints his eyes open to see Terry, staring at him with a smile like he is trying to pacify an angry dog. Their pack is slung over his shoulder.
“Hey,” he says. His voice comes out rougher than he intends, and he can see something shift in Terry’s face before he speaks again.
“Can I sit down?” he asks. Brad nods, but he can only look up at him for a moment before he must settle his head back into his hand. He watches out of his peripheral as Terry sits, cross-legged, on the ground beside him. “Nern and Olan are asleep, so I thought I’d check in on you. You didn’t eat much, but I saved you some soup just in case you get hungry later. You shouldn’t ever skip a meal. Gotta keep your energy up, you dig?” He pulls the pack into his lap and digs through it for a moment before pulling out a bottle and placing it beside Brad’s foot with a grin. Brad forces a smile and thanks him. “How’re you doing?” The question lingers in the air, warm and stagnant, and Terry’s smile fades. “I guess that’s a dumb question, huh?” He chuckles humorlessly. “I’m sorry,” he says, the ghost of a smile still lingering as his brow furrows. Brad turns his head against his palm to get a better look at Terry, the sheen of sweat on his face, the way the warm light of the fire deepens the lines on his face. In that moment, Terry looks impossibly old.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine though. You--” And there is a whine in his throat as he trails off, but he doesn’t turn from Brad’s gaze as he sucks in his lips, swallows. “I’ve never had a friend who would do that for me before. You’re… You’re something else, Brad,” he says at last, the specter of something heavy and reverent in his voice. Brad cannot shake the feeling that Terry wants to say something else, but, before he can figure out what it might be, Terry’s normal voice has returned, and he has moved on to the next issue at hand. “We should probably change your bandages.” Brad nods and forces himself upright, fumbling with his poncho. “Let me help you, dude.” Terry gently pushes Brad’s hand out of the way. His hands are thin, bony, rough as they brush against the exposed skin of Brad’s neck. But, as the poncho pulls over his head and slips down his arm, Brad’s focus shifts from the touch to the red-yellow stains on the bandages. He has to look away, hide his face in his hand.
“Yeah,” Terry says, more a sound than a word. The bandages cling to skin as Terry peels them away, revealing the gore-sticky flesh beneath.
The arm didn’t come off clean. It took three attempts to get through the bone, another to cut through the remaining flesh. The blade left a ragged stump, red and vivid, bit of bone jutting from exposed muscle. It was no longer bleeding, Terry and Olan had made sure of that, forced him to lie in the dirt as they worked, tourniquet-tense, Nern doing his best to keep him talking or at least listening. But, now, as he sees it in the firelight, it’s too much, blood and noise and the ache of going too long without a fix. He can feel his stomach clench, and, again, he tries desperately to lose himself in the breath. His therapist had told him that meditating on the breath was one of the greatest skills someone could master, something he had repeated hundreds of times before everything went to shit, but it was never as good as he needed it to be, never enough to dull the ache, never enough to make him not scared when a man raised his voice, never enough to loosen the pressure around his throat when he thought of Lisa and how-
Terry’s hand is on his chest.
Brad looks over to Terry with wet eyes, pulls his face tight until he is sure that he won’t give in to the need to cry. He moves from the breath to Terry’s hand, his face, his voice. “We should probably clean this guy up. Don’t want it to get infected.” Brad hums affirmation. Terry begins to dig through the pack for supplies: potato liquor, the scraps of a ruined poncho, fresh bandages they had dropped 50 mags on in town. “When I was a kid, I used to have to go to the doctor’s a lot. Like, a lot a lot, and I remember that, pretty much every time I was over there, I’d have to get my blood drawn. It wasn’t a lot of blood, you feel, and I guess, in retrospect, it didn’t hurt so bad, but I was, like, eight, and I hated it so much. The nurses used to have to hold me down, I’d fight so hard. But my mom told me that, if you just closed your eyes, it wouldn’t hurt so bad, and, you know what? It kind of worked.”
“Is that a hint?” Brad asks.
“Yeah.” He looks away from Brad, wets a bit of cloth with clear potato liquor. “Doctor Hintz, PhD.” With a nod, Brad closes his eyes and turns his head.
He has no gauge whether or not it hurts less than it would if his eyes were still open, but Brad still hisses through his teeth when the cloth touches his flesh. It stings, reignites the white-hot pain of when the man in the mask first cut into him. He chokes, gags on nothing. “I know,” Terry whispers. “I know.” The cloth drags around the ragged edges of the stump, and Brad feels like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the liquor was at least cold, a sensation to distract from the pain, but it’s the same summer-wet as the night air as it works its way over the raw, uneven flesh towards the center of the wound. Then, Brad can feel Terry’s hands again, the bandages tighten around his stump, more a discomfort than a pain. He tries to focus on the snug feeling on his skin until he hears a voice.
“There we go,” Terry says. The way he says it, Brad feels like everything should be better, but he can still feel the sting of alcohol.
“We done?” He tries to sound pleasant or at least grateful.
“Yep! Thank you, Mr. Armstrong. You’ve been an excellent patient,” Terry says, giggling at his own joke. Brad takes a breath, eases his eyes open, squints as they readjust to the light and the heat. Terry has already turned away from him. He stares out past the fire, past Olan and Nern, and into the dark of the wasteland. His face is polite and thoughtful. Brad scans the velvety dark beyond the fire, but he sees nothing beyond where the four of them rest save the stars, a vague and distant border line. Terry takes a swig of the potato liquor, and even Brad manages a chuckle as the shiver travels up Terry’s spine.
“That bad?” Brad asks. Terry just laughs and leans his head against Brad’s thigh, settles his weight against him, heavy and real. From this angle, above and behind, Brad can see Terry’s long eyelashes, his bulbous nose, the full curve of his lips. Terry’s hair is dark, seems soft, but, when he moves to touch it, there is no hand. He can only admire the view, the something stirring within him like a blossoming plant through acidic soil. The only thing Brad can think of to say that echoes how he feels is, “It’s a nice night.”
“Super nice,” he replies, but it’s clear his mind is somewhere else. Brad only has to wait for a moment before he figures out what. “Can I kiss you?” Terry asks.
“Yeah.” The answer comes from something tangled and soft in Brad’s chest.
“Really?” Brad can feel him jolt upright against his leg, their bodies losing contact for a moment before Terry’s hand moves to hold the place where his foot and his ankle meet, his grip loose but definitely there. “Wait, really? Like, right now?” Brad pauses, proofreads his instinct before speaking again.
“Yeah.” Terry laughs softly, says something Brad can’t quite understand before he turns back to Brad, again sitting up on his knees. In this position, he’s slightly shorter than Brad, and his face is trying to decide on an expression. It takes a moment to realize Terry is waiting for him, but, when he does, Brad leans forward to accommodate the distance between them.
It’s been years since Brad has kissed anyone. It isn’t like he remembers it, his first girlfriend in high school, brown-out nights in his twenties with community college girls. Then, it was all force and motion. It was a race to a downward spiral, fucked up and out. Now is different. Terry takes either side of Brad’s face in his hands and kisses him like he's sending him to bed. His lips are closed, and he pulls away after each contact, pauses, kisses Brad again. It’s only when Brad presses his hand to the place where Terry’s head meets his neck that the kiss deepens. Terry turns his head to accommodate Brad, and pulls lightly at Brad’s lower lip with his teeth. His hand leaves Brad’s cheek to hook beneath his good arm and touch his back, fingers digging for purchase on his bare skin. Terry’s tongue slips into his mouth, cooler than he expects and alcohol-acrid, and he’s trying not to think about anything but the present moment, the warmth rising inside him, but he can’t hold back. It’s a lot. It’s too much. Brad can feel his shoulders shudder, the sting of tears in his eyes. But, if Terry sees anything when he pulls away from the kiss, he doesn’t say anything. He just smiles.
“Do you want to go to bed?” Terry asks. Brad nods against Terry’s hand, not wanting the crackle of tears to show through in his voice. But, then, something occurs to Terry, and he releases Brad to hold his hands, open, in front of him. His head shakes frantically. “Not like that! Like, just sleeping. I don’t want to, like, push you into anything you don’t want to do, and, like-“
“No, no, I know,” Brad reassures him.
“Okay, good,” Terry says, and, after a moment’s recovery, he laughs before scooting back to allow Brad space on the ground beside him. Brad eases himself off the stone and lies down so that his good arm is supporting his neck on his side. Terry curls up beside him, resting his head on his hands. There is less than a foot between them, a polite distance. His dark eyes are trained on Brad, who stares back for a long while before nodding.
“Come here.” Terry smiles, creeps closer until the top of his head is snugly beneath Brad’s chin and his hands are braced against Brad’s bare chest. They’re close, closer than Brad can recall ever being with another person. Brad tries to reach around to hold him but again feels only a phantom where his arm once was. It takes everything to hold back a sob, a tremor that rocks through his body and catches in his throat. He feels Terry’s face change expressions against his skin, but, in this position, he cannot see. He can only accept it as Terry’s fingers tangle in his chest hair, their legs intertwine, and he feels the other man sigh against him. In the morning, there will be clarity. There will be the road. But, for now, there is feeling, the fire, Terry’s breath against his collarbone, the liminal moment. Brad presses his mouth to the top of Terry’s head and finds his breath.