Frost
Frost.
It covers everything, a faint late-November patina in the early morning. Dino shivers. The iron railing of his apartment's balcony is numbingly cold under his hands. Inside, in the warm bed, Terry is snoring softly. It's been six months since the bullshit in Tecala with that Alice lady, since he had to convince Terry to stop moping like a dumped schoolgirl and get on with his life, with his job. Hands burning to ice on the railing, he feels like comfort sex, even six months later. Even though he was the one fucked first, even though he's known Terry for a fair portion of his adult life...God, why can't he compare to some fucking chick? Vicious woman though she was, iron under all that frailty and makeup and Barbie-blonde hair. Made of fucking iron.
He shivers hard. So why, then? Why isn't he the same, or is he? Ter's never been one to get involved with the clients; it seems to violate his ethics, something Dino's never really bothered with but does, in fact, understand. What the hell does Ter feel for him, anyhow? Not something that feels as mass-produced, cheap and ineffective as the kind of romance their type usually goes for. Not love, because he personally doubts anyone in their line of work is even remotely capable of that.
Barring anything else, he knows he isn't. This isn't what he bargained for, not from the time he was thirteen and adjuncated to reform school. He's had so much of his life gnawed on, swallowed and puked or shit out by institutions that he isn't sure what feeling is anymore, and he sure as hell can't feel something as stupid and superficial as love. He remembers his own kidnapping with a sour taste in his mouth, the salty metallic swill of semen dripping down his face, the copper razor wire of fear that cuts into his heart.
He bleeds too much to feel. Shivering still, he understands the physical. Put him in the cold, he'll freeze his balls off. Put him in the desert and he'll sweat until he can't think from dehydration. Put him in a room with Ter and they'll fuck like weasels. What's the problem?
Christ, he needs a fucking cigarette.
It's just past midnight. Him and Tello are up on the roof, smoking stolen cigarettes and drinking cheap, contraband beer. When they kiss it's wet and clumsy and full of empty promise.
He can hear Ter snoring in the bedroom behind him, blissfully ignorant.
"I love you."
"Don't say that."
"How come?"
"'Cause it ain't true."
"How you know?"
"Ain't no one here knows what love is."
"You crazy, Dino."
The skyline is cold and metallic, like the taste in his mouth.
Crazy Dino is what he is, since he took off a kid's ear in carpentry. Crazy Dino is what he is since they enrolled him in riflery and he was the best shot of anyone there. Crazy Dino. That's what he is.