Page 78 of Hilarina and the Ogre

When Trenton didn’t answer, Hilary took hold of both hands together and pulled them into his lap, an alarmingly effective tactic. “Trent—”

“I might wake up.”

Hilary didn’t laugh. Actually, he seemed to grow more serious. “Try not to.” He brought the hand up to his face and pressed it there, as if he might mold the shape to his face. “Stay with me for as long as you can.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Don’t Hate It

It wasn’t long before his life with Hilary began to feel more real than the time at the restaurant—or any of the time before. But it wasn’t perfect. Strangely, a couple of months into their new arrangement, his sleeping began to worsen again. Nothing seemed to be causing it. He was eating well, exercising, and his stress was low. He was no stranger to insomnia, so the change didn’t overly alarm him, and it could even be pleasant now that he had Hilary to look at. It felt wrong to touch when the man was unconscious, but it was nice just to be there, to feel the warmth in the bed and to listen to the sounds of Hilary’s breathing. But sometimes he only grew more and more awake as he lay there, so he’d get up and go to the living room to read. Hilary didn’t know about the nighttime awakenings, and Trenton preferred to keep it that way. He was tired in the mornings, but he could sometimes make up for it with a nap after lunch on the days Hilary was at work.

He liked the lamp in the living room and the chair Hilary had bought him as a belated birthday present. His reading chair, Hilary called it. Unlike many chairs, it was actually built for his size, and he could use the recliner without his head dangling off the top of it. But instead of picking up the copy of Wuthering Heights he was halfway through, he went to the shelf with all the poetry books. Occasionally he’d take a volume out to flip through a couple of pages, but this was his first time taking one out to sit down with. He didn’t know what to start with or how to choose, so he simply took the one most worn through and opened to the first page.

Time might have passed; he didn’t know. There was no awareness. And then Hilary was pulling him off the floor and demanding to know what had happened and that he was calling an ambulance. Even if he’d heard the words, Trenton couldn’t have answered, but he heard the voice, and he could only climb into it as he fell on him, trying to get as close and as small as he could, all while that sound came, that terrible sound spilling out of his chest, and wishing he could be wrapped up entirely so his insides would stop spilling out.

“Trenton, tell me. What is it? Show me where it hurts.”

His chest? His stomach? It was all coming out, or maybe caving in. His arm was on fire again, like someone was cracking it down the middle, pressing and pressing, a relentless agony.

“I’m here.” Hilary was on the floor with him since he couldn’t lift him or get him to move. “I’m here, Trent.”

“What’s wrong with me?” He’d always known something was broken in him, something fundamental to life that people couldn’t manage without. It was why things like jobs or apartments or even people didn’t matter to him, all just different confusing shades of the same gray. But that had just been one other strange thing about himself, one more degree of separation, but not something to cry over. How could you cry for something you didn’t even remember? But now the hurt kept pressing and pressing, and he knew that the thing he had lost was so important it was better to die than keep living without it, and here he was—finally here—and beautiful Hilary was becoming ruined over it. The reason for the obsession, the stalking, and why the man too was alone—it was all because Hilary was searching for it with him, even more desperate to find it, the thing he was missing and the source of all the man’s sadness. The cause of the ruined poetry. It was him, the black void of his heart that had made the world so— “What’s wrong with me!”

“Nothing,” Hilary said, gentle as a kiss. “It’s mine. All of it.” He had Trenton close, pressed against that chest, the mother he’d never really had. “If you’re broken, then so am I. If you have cracks, I’ll catch whatever slips through.”

“I’m hurting you. What I’m doing now. How can you—!”

Hilary squashed him there, tight, almost too tight to breathe. “Stop running. When you think you can’t bear it, when you feel you’d rather die, come to me and choose me. Because I choose you. I love you, Trenton. Don’t forget again. I love you.”

Trenton calmed down some time after that. Hilary had wiped him with a wet cloth, the bucket of warm water like a ritual of cleansing. Eventually, he put the cloth down and replaced its touch with his hands, tracing Trenton, the lines of him. Hilary found the scars on his arm from the surgeries he couldn’t remember and traced them again and again. The man didn’t ask about it—didn’t ask about anything. Hilary simply lay there with him so that the night would pass and he wouldn’t be alone.

The next morning, Hilary told him to wake him for future nights. “You can’t let it become this bad again. It’s dangerous, so wake me. I won’t forgive you if you don’t wake me.”

But it didn’t become like before. The next time Trenton woke in the night, he read safe things. He didn’t go to the poetry shelf. He didn’t try to prod at the shut-away memories. He just waited out the troublesome nights and slept when he could, and loved Hilary. It turned out he’d loved him the whole time; it was just that, again, he needed to have it shown to him first, pointed out so that he could recognize it and know it. And one day, a week or so later, when he hoped Hilary would know he wasn’t just saying it to retaliate, he told him, blurting it out as the man stepped into the house. “I love you,” and it was easy the way everything with Hilary was. “I want to be with you always.”

He didn’t know how Hilary would react. He hadn’t let himself think about that part, knowing it would only make him freeze up. Still, he expected something, not just for Hilary to keep doing what he always did, taking off his gloves, his shoes. Hanging up his coat. He thought maybe the man was pretending not to have heard it. Maybe loving was something only Hilary was allowed to do. But no, because after hanging his coat and setting his shoes on the rack, Hilary turned, and his eyes were burning, so awake with it, as he took him in his arms. “Tell me again.”

It wasn’t like starting over, no more than each day already felt like starting over, anyway, but it ached to look at Hilary after that. It had before too, but it seemed more defined knowing the name for it. He began touching him. Not like before, as if it were only an accident or rationing it out. But purposeful, greedy, like an impetuous pet or a child. He took hold of Hilary every time the man tried to leave a room without him, his arm like a bar around his waist, an inescapable turnstile. “Are you going somewhere? To someone who loves you more than I do?”

Thankfully, Hilary seemed to like that obnoxious side of him. “And who would that be? You know, I think you’ll be crazier than me soon.”

“I’m a killer. I’m already crazier than you.”

“You only say that because you don’t know how long I’ve been stalking you.”

“How long?”

But Hilary didn’t tell him. Instead, he tugged on the back of Trenton’s neck to bring his head down and kissed him right there on the mouth.

It was like a bucket of water, shocking and invigorating. Trenton reared up, and then he was laughing. He had nothing in his life to compare it to, and yet, he knew it already. Finding home in this man, that mouth. “Hold on. I wasn’t ready.”

“You should always be ready.”

“It was my first. How could I be ready?” He tried to grab hold again, but Hilary ducked out of the way. It was something he’d noticed before, but the man could move like a snake. His body just didn’t seem to have the restrictions of a normal human.

“It wasn’t your first.”

“Hmm?” Trenton made another grab and missed again. Hilary remained tauntingly close, practically forcing him to keep trying. “Did you steal one before? While I was sleeping, maybe?” He found himself enthralled by the idea, like something out of an 18th-century novel. “How scandalous.”