This story contains male-to-male consensual sexual relationships, so if this is illegal for you to read, please adhere to whatever laws you abide by.
This story follows a previous story of mine called Wade & Christian, which you can find in the high school section of this fine archive. I suggest you read it first. BUT, if teen angst and ultradrama romance is not your thing, this story does stand alone.
For my fans, this story is mighty different from Wade & Chris and The Prick, it is about a conflicting relationship and the power of true love. So, if you are looking for any of my previous stories regurgitated, you will be sorely disappointed. This story will run about 10-15 installments. It will also feature the characters of Wade & Christian quite prominently, so let's enjoy the ride, shall we?
Don't forget to e-mail me and let me know that you think!
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http://virtualinsanity.jeanessa.com **********************************************************************
Mannie used his long almond-colored fingers to peel back the skin on an orange, ignoring the silence of the breakfast table. It was the uncomfortable kind that he'd always had to deal with anytime he ate with his parents. With them, it had always been irksome that he didn't fit the mold they wanted him in and that had been the cause for the silence. It was either that or vicious arguments, none of which he could ever win.
This morning, though, it wasn't that cut-and-dried. He could tell by the set of Wade's jaw that he wasn't wanted there. Wade may have given in to Christian's desire to shelter him, but he didn't want him there and the uneasy way Wade kept shooting looks at him was making that very obvious.
Jon looked about ten years old with his hair rumpled from sleep and eating a bowl of cereal in the slack-jawed way that people who were still half-asleep tended to do. Just the sight of him, with that fresh-from-the-bed glow had Mannie rock hard.
Mannie wished that he could do the right thing and just pack his bags and get the hell out of there, but he couldn't. It just wasn't possible. Something that he couldn't quite put his finger on was telling him that he was right where he was supposed to be.
Jon looked up from his bowl and stopped chewing. His eyes locked on Mannie.
"You were in my Algebra class junior year," Jon said suddenly, swallowing the cereal in a quick gulp.
"You were a junior, I was a senior," Mannie said automatically, his heart pounded harder in his chest. He'd been horny as hell as a senior in high school, possibly even hornier than he was now. He'd spent half of his class time eyeing Jon and making up stupid seduction scenarios in his head. Had Jon noticed?
"I thought you two didn't know each other?" Christian asked.
"I said we never met," Mannie corrected him.
"You shoulda played basketball, man, you're so fucking tall," Jon said with a smile and Mannie wanted to roll his eyes. The typical straight jock attitude.
"I'm not exactly the basketball type," Mannie said, deadpan.
"You could be," Jon told him. "You're taller than everybody I know and you move so smooth, like you're walking to a beat or something. I always wanted to move like that."
Mannie was in the middle of a warm grin when Wade cut in. "Pay no attention to him, he shot out half of his brain," Wade said and when Mannie looked at Wade, his eyes were ice cold.
"Wade," Christian warned and sent him a quick look. Wade's mouth clamped shut and he went back to shoveling his food around on his plate.
Mannie stopped eating.
"You shot out half of your brain?" he asked and his eyes swung back to Jon, who was looking at Wade as if he'd grown two heads.
"What the fuck, Wade, you wanna tell me what's crawled up your ass?" Jon asked, angry. "I think you oughtta fucking apologize to me for acting like a shithead."
Wade shifted in his seat, his eyes still on Mannie. "I'm just stating fact," he said.
"How are you helping me saying shit like that, huh, Wade?" Jon asked, very agitated, he looked over at Mannie. "I shot myself in the head. I tried to kill myself over a year ago when my girlfriend died. Sh-Shannon meant everything to me and I made a big, fucking mistake, but I...I'm getting over that."
Mannie sat back in his chair.
"Since we're stating facts, let's put everything out in the open," Wade said, his voice hard. "Mannie here will fuck anything that walks, okay, Jon, and he's sending you some nice, pretty looks. You know what that means, right, Jon? If he tries to touch you, you have my permission to kick his ass."
"Come on, Wade, stop acting like a complete asshole," Christian finally interjected. "I expected more of you than this."
"You don't have to protect me, Wade, if I want to fuck somebody, I don't need your permission," Jon said, standing up, confused and angry.
"Fine," Wade said, standing too and shoving himself away from the table. "Fuck him. I don't care." With that, Wade slammed out of the room and Jon began to follow him, then kind of paced near the door leading to the living room. He bit his thumbnail nervously and then whirled back to look at Mannie. His dark eyes locked onto Mannie's.
"I'm not gay," he said, almost apologetically. "I gotta get ready for work." He left the room.
Mannie sat in the sudden, muted silence across the table from Christian.
Christian cleared his throat, then lifted his fork.
"Wade's still kinda dealing with having you live here," Christian said.
"If you want me to leave, I'll go," Mannie told him quietly and Christian shook his head quickly.
"This is my house, too, and I want you here," Christian told him.
"I don't want to cause trouble," Mannie said.
"You won't," Christian assured him. "Wade will get over it. I don't know why, but you're supposed to be here. I know that."
They sat in silence for a few moments when there was a knock on the kitchen door. Mannie looked up a the door and froze in place. Kiesha. His eyes swung back to Christian's in panic.
"You didn't tell me that she was coming over," Mannie hissed and Christian shrugged.
"She comes over every morning," Christian told him. "You'll have to get used to it." Christian stood and went to answer the door while Mannie sat there staring straight ahead, counting his heart beats and praying fervently that he kept it together.
He could smell her when she walked in. She still wore the same kind of perfume. He closed his eyes for a moment.
"Hey, Chris," she said and her voice poured over him like warm water. He struggled to breathe evenly, afraid to look at her.
"Hey, Mannie," she said and Mannie looked over to see that she had walked over to him and was standing just a few feet away about to sit in the chair adjacent to him. Her face was round, fuller than it had been before and her skin glowed. As his eyes travelled down the length of her, his heart stopped in his chest.
She was pregnant.
Somehow, he managed to nod at her, to appear normal as she sat down. Her stomach protruded ever so slightly and she huffed as she sat. His insides clenched as he was made aware of everything that he'd lost. She was going to have a baby. It could have been his baby.
"Are you okay?" he heard her say and he looked away from her.
"Sorry, what did you say?" he managed to ask in a voice that was almost normal.
"How are you doing?" she asked. "I heard you were injured. I read some reports about you in the newspaper." She reached over and touched his forearm and Mannie pulled away as if he had been scalded.
"F-fine," he said, feeling himself begin to tremble. "I'm alright."
Lakiesha pulled back and watched him quietly, then looked at Christian, her eyes beseeching him for help.
"Kiesh and I are taking classes at State," he informed Mannie. "We ride to campus together every morning."
"That will stop when I have the baby," Kiesha said. "I can't be a full-time moma and student. I'm just gonna focus on the baby for the first year or so, I guess."
"How far along are you?" Mannie asked and she turned to him, a beaming smile on her face.
"Twenty-six weeks," she said and Mannie quietly did the math.
"Can you afford this?" he asked quietly and she met his gaze.
"Mannie works for his father's construction company," she said. "We've been looking at houses for over eight months. I got pregnant not long after we got engaged. When I lose the baby fat, we'll get married in Jamaica." She showed him the ring. Mannie caught sight of it, some king of glittery diamond. No, she wasn't lacking money.
Mannie pushed back his chair and stood up. He was shaking visibly. He was nowhere near prepared for this kind of confrontation with his past. He ran a quivery hand through his hair.
"Um...yeah," he said uncertainly and headed towards the stairwell that led up the stairs and to the bedroom he'd been given. "I'll see you guys later." He didn't wait for a response, just launched himself up the stairs two at a time and stalked down the hall, past the sound of Jon brushing his teeth in the bathroom and to the small room where he had unloaded his things.
He closed the door behind him, breathing heavily and pacing back and forth in the small room, his long legs making a mockery of the limited space. He couldn't catch up with his thoughts, they were so swift and despondent that they took his breath away. He hadn't allowed himself to the way he felt in a long time, he'd avoided the feeling of a complete loss of control. In the Marines, he'd learnt how to control his emotions. He had never spiralled as bad as he could feel himself doing now.
He forced himself to stop pacing and held himself firmly still, but he couldn't stop the shaking. He had to do something.
He pulled his shoulder bag out from under his bed and unzipped it. He lay it on the bed and began to rifle through it until he found a small metal box inside. He lifted the lid on the box and shuffled through its contents. Two letters from Kiesha dated almost two years before. A photograph of himself, Kiesha and his parents and four nail files, razor sharp. He reached for one of the files and held it in his hand.
For a long moment, he breathed, trying to calm himself, trying to tell himself that it wasn't necessary, but he knew that it was. He knew that he couldn't calm himself down without it. He finally put out his forearm and pressed the sharp edge of the file into the tender, pale skin there until he felt the sting of blood and saw the crimson drops bubble to the surface. He pricked himself in another spot and watched for the flow of blood. He knew right when to stop the pressure, to ward off serious harm, but this time he pressed and pressed the file against himself, ten, twelve, seventeen times.
He was hissing and sobbing when his door flung open and Jon stood there on the other side, toothbrush in his mouth and the ridiculous bright orange Taco Fiesta uniform on.
"What are you doing, man?" Jon asked and Mannie shoved the file back into the box, trailing blood along the way as he went. "You're bleeding, man." Jon came into the room and grabbed Mannie's arm, smearing the blood against his shirt as he did.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Jon asked him, running his fingers over Mannie's forearm trying to find the source of the wound, but finding mutiple litle holes, seeping crimson tears.
"Cutting myself," Mannie said and tried to pull his hand away, but Jon was stronger and he held Mannie firm.
"Cutting yourself?" Jon asked, looking at Mannie. "What for?"
"For fun," Mannie said, looking away. "Don't you have to be at work or something?" He felt stupid because he was caught and even worse because he wasn't even strong enough to snatch his arm back and hide. His face was red and the wetness from his tears still soaked his cheeks. He tried to hide his face in his one free arm before he sat there blubbering like an idiot.
"You wanna talk to me about self-destruction?" Jon asked quietly.
"I don't open up to people I've known all of one day," Mannie told him. "I just don't."
"Fine, I get to open up to you," Jon said and sat on Mannie's bed, still holding his arm. "I had a girl. The most beautiful girl you could ever meet. You don't know the kind I'm talking about 'cause they aren't made everyday." Jon swallowed hard and looked Mannie right in the eye.
"I did everything for her," Jon went on. "From the time I was seven years old, I lived to make this girl happy...and she loved me. You don't know what its like to have a person love you the way Shannon loved me. To just look at somebody and know that they would never give up on you, that they'd give you their soul if they could...you don't know what that feels like. And I lost it all. I lost every piece of who I thought I was because some guy decides he's going to get liquored up and go for a joy ride.
"And I watched them scoop her up, broken and crushed onto a gurney like a fucking piece of meat on a spatula. I have to live with that image in my head...of my girl like that. I get to hear the sound of her screaming in my head and then the silence. The kind of silence you can't recover from 'cause you know what, its eternal. I will never get to hear her voice again. That scream, that was it, that was the last time I got to hear her.
"Now, you wanna talk to me about self-destruction? Self-destruction is putting a nine-millimeter to your head to get rid of that scream. Self-destruction is pulling the fucking trigger."
Mannie stared at Jon's face, so serious that it was like flint or steel. Mannie could not control the tears that rolled down his cheeks.
"So, put your fucking toy away," Jon told him and finally let his arm go. The bleeding had stopped and the blood that had seeped out was drying and clumping on Mannie's forearm. When Jon released it, it fell limply to Mannie's side.
"I never want to see you with it again," Jon told him, forceful and strong in a way he hadn't been in well over a year. "I've gotta go to work."
Mannie watched as Jon walked out of the room, completely silenced. He looked down at the file in his hand. He dropped it back into the metal box and slammed it shut.