“I was trying to stop you falling.”
“And I’m grateful, and you’re getting laid like crazy once you’re out of the hospital. Hell, I might even suck you off sloppy style in your hospital bed, but don’t you dare go into shock, got it?”
“Not sure I have control over that,” I admitted, but tried to focus all the same. I didn’t know if you could overcome shock through sheer force of will, but I had to at least try, if only to keep Reggie from panicking. “Sloppy style, huh?”
“The sloppiest,” he said, touching my face gently. “I’ll even wait on you hand and foot.”
“Just the foot; the hands are fine,” I told him.
His eyes widened. “Stop being funny!”
“I hate that being funny means I must be going into shock in your mind.”
“Because it does! You’re funny at most, twice a day, and that’s once in a great while. Now is not the time to find a real sense of humor!”
“You tell people I’m funny all the time.”
“Yeah, I lied,” he muttered and then turned his head up. “Jude, get thefuckaway from that ledge, and someone look at that forehead; I see blood.”
I remembered watching first Jude, and then Reggie fall, and I could remember it with a clarity that was worse than the pain. “You like…body slammed him into the wall when you saved him. I’m not surprised he’s bleeding.”
“Better a concussion than being down here by himself,” Reggie muttered, but I thought he was thinking the same thing. It was pure chance we had ended up here. Because of the angle of the fall and the position of the shelf, there was no guarantee Jude would have landed here too instead of falling dozens more feet to the hard, rocky ground below. “Plus, maybe it will scar; boys love scars as much as girls do.”
I blinked up at him. “Boys? He…he’s gay?”
“At least partly,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Surprise?”
“You knew,” I said with a frown. “Why didn’t you…is that what you were keeping from me?”
“No,” he said curtly, then sighed. “I don’t know why he kept it from you, Marc, not when he knows you didn’t give a flaming shit about Malcolm, and then me. Kids are fucking weird sometimes, alright? They get weird thoughts and fears in their head and then they do weird shit; that’s just how it goes. It’s not because of you or anything you did, okay?”
“You don’t know that,” I said with a sigh. “Jesus, he and I need to talk. Even if I wasn’t bi, I wouldn’t care.”
“I know, that’s why I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Then…what?”
Reggie frowned and looked up. “Guys?”
“Here!” Davis called, and I saw he had what looked like one of the sleeping bags tied to a rope and was lowering it down. There was enough rope that Reggie could take hold of the bag, untie it and set it down onto the shelf beside him, and shoot a thumbs up toward the men above. “The others are going back.”
“Jude?” I called up.
“Here!” Jude cried, scrambling to the edge and peering down. “Dad, Jesus, I’m so?—”
“Stop!” I yelled at him. “It’s okay, we’re okay. And it’s all going to be okay. Now get back and take a breath.”
I thought I heard Davis talking softly to him, but thankfully Jude listened and backed off as Reggie unraveled the sleeping bag where the first aid kit and some bottles of water were waiting. “There’s not a lot I can do for this with the bone…sticking out, but I’m going to slap some antiseptic on it and a cover to keep it clean. It’s going to hurt.”
“Can’t be any worse than what I have going on right now.”
“Marc, you should know better than to tempt fate like that.”
“You’re right, but still. Can we talk while you work? I don’t think I can just…lie here in silence while you do this.”
“Heh,” he said, glancing at me with a snort. “Never thought I’d hear you prefer talking over silence.”
“I’ve always liked hearing you talk rather than be silent,” I said, and when he blinked at me, I found a little more courage. “I slept with Malcolm…several times.”
