That night, Waylon doesn't sleep a bit.
At first, he's certain it's the cold, permeating the room, slipping under the sheets next to him. How could he sleep in the cold? It's impossible –unthinkable, even, so Waylon locates the central heating and turns it up, until the bedroom, at least is warm and friendly.
Even afterwards, he lies alert and awake.
Then, he thinks it's the light. Not that Waylon can manage the darkness, but he switches to the soft light of the bedside lamp and rolls onto his side, staring at the white-hot filament and hoping it will blind him into sleep. No such luck. The slight buzzing of the bulb just bothers him.
By process of elimination, Waylon presumes it's the silence. He turns on the television quietly, using that for soft light and background noise. For a few minutes, he thinks it's working, and that he does feel a bit sleepier, but his eyes never close. Consciousness clings to him as the smell of blood clings to a knife.
So, for a while, Waylon tries to watch television.
It takes all he has to avoid hospital dramas and horror films –they are unthinkable to him. But all that's left is nightly news and pay per view porn channels. Waylon isn't really into that sort of thing –he finds them a little too obvious for his tastes, but at this point it seems irresponsible to deny himself pleasure.
Waylon gets all of three fingers in his waistband before realising the real reason for his sleeplessness. No nurses, humming around the place. No sound of that carcrash patient whistling country songs three rooms down. Worst of all, no Lisa sleeping lightly besides him.
No, a quick rub isn't going to make him feel any better, really. He's got an overactive guilt response –that's what Lisa's always told him. Could never skip a lecture at Berkley, could never stand an evening away from home. And he can't stand to jerk off to a gaudy blonde when Lisa is all alone in bed, hours away.
Maybe it's weak, but Waylon fears he is powerless to stop himself from picking up the phone. At the time, he doesn't think about the charges incurred long distance, or the time difference. Lisa is probably sound asleep, and she probably won't answer, but in the moment, just her answerphone message would still Waylon's sleepless paranoia somewhat.
In a giddy thrill of haste, he dials for home, and lets it ring out for a while. Eventually, the line clicks, and his heart palpitates at the initial silence.
In a small, tired voice, he hears Lisa say, "Hello?"
For a second, Waylon doesn't speak –he can't. What can he say that she hasn't heard? All he has is old words, but he puts them together anyway, eventually, hoping they mean something.
"Hey," He says, softly, leaning back to ease the tension in his back. "I didn't mean to wake you."
With her characteristic certainty, Lisa says, "I couldn't sleep."
"Oh."
It's like that for a very long time. Before, when Murkoff has purloined his rights to communication, Waylon thought about all the things he was going to say to Lisa. In his head, their conversations were endless, wonderful –imagined, he knows, but they were what sustained him in that anonymous little workspace.
Now, his mouth is all dried up. His mind is blank and useless.
"The boys really want to come up and see you." At last, the silence breaks. And with it, Waylon's composure. He clamps a hand down in sheets down hard to keep his breathing level. "All James can talk about is you."
He smiles against the glow of the television and tries to a steady voice before responding. "You could come up this weekend, if you want. We could visit the Museum of Natural-"
Lisa sighs. Her voice is gentle and ethereal, more like the rustle of wind in the trees than a sound of frustration. "I'm taking the boys up to see my mother this weekend."
"Oh," Waylon hears himself repeat things, but cannot break the cycle. His desires are voiced too implicitly to get what he wants. And as a creature of habit, there's nothing he can see to do about that. "You could come up on your own –if you want, and we could go to dinner, maybe? Somewhere nice?"
Lisa sounds as if she is ruminating on it, and the hope makes Waylon feel dizzy. To see her, in person. To smell her perfume, to see her smile.
"I'm not sure I can get away for very long. You know what James is like –he really wears Mom out."
Waylon lowers the phone slightly, and hears himself utter one more, hollow, "Oh," before swallowing. "I understand, if you're busy."
The hurt in his voice is no bigger than a splinter, but it's there, and Lisa can sense it. "Waylon, honey, if I didn't have plans, you know I'd get on the first plane up there. The boys aren't the only ones who miss you."
Waylon swallows again. Tries to sound less hurt, and pathetic. It isn't his intention to be cruel. "I miss you too, Lisa. I –I love you."
She pauses on the line, and he hears her breathe out very slowly. "I know." She says. "I love you, too." And then, softer, "Next weekend. I can come up then. I'll bring the boys."
It is everything Waylon has needed to still his heart. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes, breathing in, needing his utter relief to be met with the warm oxygen of the room. "Thank you."
Waylon doesn't remember if he hangs up, or Lisa hangs up, or if they just lay there and listen to eachother breathe for hours, but when he wakes, the phone is dead, in his sheets and daylight is streaming through the window.
Maybe the batteries on his phone died, or they lost signal, but the way Waylon imagines it, they just laid there and listened to eachother forever.
-
"Are you listening to me, Mister Upshur?"
It would be easy to lose Miles in these busy streets. If it were not for the gaudy red parasol of the hot dog stand he's standing under, the man would blend almost entirely into the greys and blacks of the tourists and pedestrians.
Miles makes a perfect contrast to Mister Park –Waylon had been quiet and submissive -and even obedient. Like all the defiance a man can possess bled out of him in the few days he spent in darkness; captive. Miles went by his own free will, and therein lies the key difference: without anybody to blame, where can a man bury his anger? What does he put on it's headstone?
Even so, they're instructed to be patient to any insolence. They are asked to understand –even if they don't want to. Truthfully, they don't want to see what Miles has seen –never. But they're really like him to co-operate some more.
Pushing through the crowd, Miles' presumed caretaker calls after the man.
"Mister Upshur, please!"
Miles half-turns. "You want a hot dog, too?" In a show of mockery and pseudo-sympathy, he pats down his pockets and shrugs. "No spare change. That's too bad."
Miles turns around again, just as his pursuer reaches him. He makes no move to interrupt the transaction –lord knows the travel has been long and arduous, and it's not within his rights or desires to deny the man some pleasure.
The selection of food is poor .When Miles finally does decide on what he wants –taking his time as if it's his to take, he takes his time in getting the dollar out.
The vendor has one of those accents typical to this part of New York. He say, "You want mustard?"
Miles shakes his head, biting into the food, and starts to, at long last, walk away. The vendor sees him off with just seven words, spoken in a pleasant, innocuous way. But those seven words change everything.
"You made the right choice there, buddy."
All of a sudden Miles' fingers go slack.
The corndog drops to the ground, forgotten. One of Miles' hands flies up to his chest as if he's undergoing some awful cardiac trauma. He doesn't breathe. Nor move. The hand on his chest moves desperately up to clamp on his neck.
The agent doesn't know what's happening. Not until Miles staggers forward, with blue lips, gasping, "No."
Miles is putting all of his weight on the other man, convulsing too violently to stand. His breathing comes in staccato, knifelike sobs, and when Miles looks up, his eyes are shut tighter than black holes and his nose is bleeding.
Not even four seconds after, and Miles' face is blue. The man is cold with sweat.
The agent has no clue what to do. He tries to shake Miles' back to some semblance of consciousness. "Mister Upshur?"
Miles is non-responsive. He throws one arm over his face, smearing the blood from his nose all over him.
"Mister Upshur? Can you hear me?"
Miles seems to fall further into the grip of some unknown terror. His body grows heavy with tension. Half-lifting him, the agent takes Miles' wrist in a hard grasp and attempts to stand the man up. It makes Miles furious.
With some superhuman inhumanity he throws the agents off of him and sways, dangerously. He manages to get three fingers up to trace the perspiration on his brow before his hyperventilation finally gets the better of him.
And thusly, with a whimper, he hits the concrete.
-
"Are you going to be alright?"
The porter looks to Waylon sympathetically –the worst kind of stare. "I mean, are you going to be able to manage, sir?"
Waylon doesn't speak. The day to cast comes off, he's going to seriously consider kicking everyone who has condescended to him in the shins, and Waylon isn't a particularly violent person. He takes the tray from the porter –a boy of about seventeen, thereabouts, and nods.
"I'll be alright." Waylon says, very quietly. "Thankyou."
The porter closes the door for him, and leaves Waylon to stagger, scraping his cast along the floor as he heaves over to a countertop, putting the tray down with a clatter. It's only a few feet, but it leaves him breathless anyway, gasping out little breaths.
The big idea, so to speak, is that Waylon wants t get a plan together. A strategy. Now that Lisa is coming over –as if on a breath, steaming over the atlantic to see him, he wants to get better for her. He's acutely aware that he can't speed the healing process of his ankle, or his trauma. For those, Waylon decides to relax, and take his medications just like they told him.
He has to do something –to get ready for her, to keep himself busy. Focusing on his hopes and his future, just like the old therapist said.
After his breathing is restored, Waylon gets the tray over to the coffee table, and attempts to try whatever they have served him as 'lunch'. It's nothing like Lisa's cooking: hers was simple and comforting, even when it inevitably burned on one side as a result of the old oven. No, it's vaguer flavours that weave in and out of one another.
But Waylon isn't interested in haute cuisine. He continues to chew and swallow, more as a ritual than anything else, until the plate is clear and he feels less lightheaded.
When he puts the plate back on the table, he catches his reflection in the glass and sighs. Of course, he never expected a miraculous change, where he suddenly gained back all of his weight and the colour in his face returned. No –Waylon is trying to be realistic, but that one meal was arduous enough, and he knows it will take so many more on the road back to normalcy.
Exhausted, he falls asleep for a few minutes, waking this time with a horrifying start –unsure of where he is for just a second. When he realises, finding some comfort in the sleek, expensive furnishings, he stills his heart and sighs. There's nothing to be done –so he takes a bath.
Before, at home, the shower had been the only place he could have a moment alone with Lisa. Just before the boys woke up, when they were both in a rush to get to work on time; where the hiss of the faucet drowned out the cries and washed away the evidence. It was where they enjoyed most of their intimacy, and the last place they made love.
It's all Waylon thinks about as he slips, backwards into the hot water, carefully to leave his still-cast leg out of the water, hooked over the ceramic.
He thinks about her long dark hair falling straight, thick and heavy water. Her legs hooked around his waist, his back against the cold tile, legs trembling –her pleas for more. The memory is one of his most real –and life-giving. Every detail has been savoured –the smell of her apple shampoo, the hot gasps into his neck, and the waning crescent-moons she would leave him a little gift from her nails on his skin.
Waylon is human –and alone. He can barely control or resist slipping his eyes shut, listening to the sway of the hot water bring the memory to the surface of his skin. It feels sultry and sheer –takes him over all at once, and Waylon is powerless not to give himself a gentle, slow squeeze.
The pleasure spreads through him like a fire in the Santa Cruz redwoods, causing his thighs to tense absently and his back arch like a bow, hissing out in asinine pleasure. A difficult gasp makes its way out of his throat as he brings himself to full arousal, teeth clamping down instinctively on the inside of his cheeks –so as not to wake the boys. When he realises they are far, far away, he chokes out a little whimper and feels something tighten in the pit of his stomach.
He hisses out, "F-fuck," but keeps going, feeling the momentum build in his body, and his movements. Feels himself growing more desperate and more frantic, thinking desperately of Lisa, and only of her. His consciousness feels as if it's slipping, hanging by his fingernails on this side of paradise, trembling all over, gasping out and his hips rise and he gives himself a few sloppy last tugs before he falls.
His consciousness turns to gold, and for just a second his body freezes, the hands of his clock fall into stasis, and all he can thinks about is Lisa –Lisa, oh-...
By the time he has recovered, walking on a higher path, head in the clouds, still breathing the oxygenless air up high, the water is tepid and dirty.
Mustering his strength, Miles uses the showerhead to clean himself up once more while draining the tub, leaving to towel himself off. He limps back into the main sitting area in a terrycloth robe and finds his small desert –a brulée of some sort, still sitting, untouched on the tray.
Whether it's the combination of peace or sleepiness –Waylon doesn't know, but he manages to finish off the entire thing. He thinks, all the while, how much Lisa would like it.
-
How did Miles end up unconscious in the back of a limousine?
"I-I don't know!"
He fell, of course.
"I told you, he just –just lost it!" The agent is half-crouched in the back, holding a wad of serviettes to the gash on the back of Miles' head. They were the only thing to hand at the time and now bloom poppies in the wake of the bleeding. "No –of course not. He was in my sight the entire –yes, I'm aware of that."
Miles' is entirely non-responsive. The fall had been so terrible and sudden that all the agent could think to do, first, was check the man's pulse. Even now, Miles is breathing, and very much alive, but his lips are still blue, and his eyes are not opening.
The voice on the other line makes a demand, and the agent squeamishly folds back the strident, wet tissues to inspect the gash in the man's lustrous hair. Truth be told, it isn't nearly as bad as the blood indicates, but is still cause for reasonable alarm.
"The hospital is ten minutes away, I'd guess...-well, I don't know, I'm not a physician!" Leaning forward, the man barks into the cell and leans back, a man going to his brow in utter desperation. "I don't know how it happened." He babbles, "He just went mad..."
The car turns and a pothole shakes it slightly. It's enough to shake some consciousness back into Miles. His eyes do not open, but a tiny sigh escapes his mouth, a one arm slides up the leather upholstery, very slowly, to turn him on his side.
The interior is dark and for a second he thinks that he is in some kind of limbo, able to perceive the sounds of consciousness but not able to view them. Something warm and black is sticking his collar to his neck and pooling on the seat behind him. It doesn't take a guess to know that it's blood.
Miles doesn't quite remember why his head hurts right away. All he is aware of is how terrible cold it is. There's a terrible racket near him –and he recognises the man's voice, but pays no mind to individual words or phrases, thinking he is irrelevant from them –separate.
For a second, he thinks this is how JFK must have felt –barely conscious, bloody and lying on the backseat.
But the thought escapes him when the squawking comes closer to him and the pressure on the back of his head resumes.
"Ah, fuck-" He makes a noise of slight pain, and turns away from the pressure, fighting it with a wave of his hand. "That hurts."
"Christ," The voice draws a quick breath in. And then Miles feels himself being propped up slightly. He grunts through the pain, his eyes opening very slightly, looking around in confusion. "Are you alright, Mister Upshur?"
He groans. "My head is bleeding?"
"Yes," The voice says. The pressure on the wound has resumed. It hurts like hell, but Miles breathes through it. "Do you think you can walk, Mister Upshur?"
Miles breathes out very slowly. "Why is my head bleeding?" He turns his face to where he perceives the voice to be coming from and tries to look as stoic as possible.
It seems to stifle the voice somewhat, but it comes out, even a little unwillingly. "You...you fell. After buying your lunch."
Miles' eyes blink lazily and he frowns. "I fell? The hell did I fall on?"
The voice sighs, as if impatient. Miles is in no rush –he lacks the capacity at that given moment. "We're taking you to the hospital to get you head looked at now, Mister Upshur. Will you be alright to wa-"
Miles pulls away sharply, but the movement take it out of him and he slumps against the door, uselessly, with a terrible groan. When he feels a pair of hands go to his shoulders, he hisses, "No –no more hospitals. You said –you s-said..."
"Mister Upshur, your head is bleeding!"
Miles shakes his head. "It's fine." And then, shivering, "Please. Let's just –just get where we're going."
It leaves the other man between the devil and the deep blue sea, certainly. It would be against protocol to ferry him to the hotel, still bleeding and out of it. Yet, at the same time, he can sense the utter desperation and bitterness that Miles had spoken with before, on staying in hospital. He had been so glad to leave –it seems almost cruel to send him back now.
"You could have concussion."
"I've had worse." Miles scrubs his face and tries to shake away the inertia and dizziness. The blood flow has been stemmed, somewhat but just feeling the viscosity of it on his skin outs him on edge. "No more hospitals, alright?"
It takes an eternity to get his answer. A small, weak, "Alright, Mister Upshur."
The man leans across the partition and gives the driver a new set of directions. This time, when the car turns, it is peaceful, slumping Miles the other way. He feels the heat radiate from the other man's thigh which his cheek is currently pressed again –but Miles can't care. He's exhausted.
He mutters a small, "Thanks." Into the guy's dress pants, and feels himself drift a little closer to something like sleep.
The moment only lasts about three minutes –maybe less. But it is the first Miles ever said a thankyou to any of them.
-
When they bring two suitcases by that are entirely alien to Waylon, he isn't sure what to say.
"Thank you." He says, very quietly, to one of the porters. "But these aren't mine."
The porter –a girl of about eighteen, looks no more tourbled by that information than if it were some traffic report or other conversational banality. She finishes placing the last suitcase and nods to him.
"That's correct, sir. These are for Mister Upshur, when he arrives."
Waylon doesn't clock the name at first. He doesn't give it a second thought, because it isn't his name. And he is very much alone in his residence. Powerless to stop the proceedings, he shuffles over to the girl and makes to get her attention.
"I think there has been a mistake." He says, softly. "I'm the only one staying here."
The girl turns on her heel and looks at him. It is entirely of consequence to Waylon –but she struggles even to meet his gaze. "All I know," She says, boredly. "S'that I was supposed to bring this up to room 103. Is this room 103?"
Waylon's mind is empty for all of three seconds. He closes his eyes and shakes his head, snapping himself out of the inertia. "This is 103, but there's nobody else coming to stay here."
She ignores those words. It would be easy to assume that they went unheard at the volume Waylon is speaking. He doesn't repeat himself for fear of being seen as intrusive or rude, but remains leant on one side, staring at the suitcases in his door.
He is helpless to do anything about it, and so comes up with complacency as his only answer.
When the door closes, he leaves the suitcases be, and tries to think of something to occupy his mind. He makes himself a pot of coffee after a while and sits at the small dining setup, using the hotel stationery to make a list of all the things he wants to do with his family in New York.
The museum is one of the first. Lisa has always wanted to see the statue of liberty –not enthusiastically, but in so much that everyone else already seems to have. Coney island is much the same. Waylon finds it difficult to care much for the tourist attractions, though. The very prospect of being in their company is enough for him, though, he'd like to take Lisa. To see her. And be with her, after so long apart.
In the midst of his reverie he is startled by the knock on the door. "Mister Waylon Park?"
His stomach feels heavy and cold at the idea of the unknown. But he masters it –unwanting to submit to the most basic of fears. Cumbersomely, he rises, and shuffles to the door, opening it.
Standing there is one of those officials, with blood on his white sleeves, looking positively pained.
"I'm afraid there's been a change of plans, Mister Park."
He isn't the only one who is afraid. Nervous as hell, Waylon backs away as gracefully as he can to give the man room. He leads in, and that's the first time Waylon notices the man slouched behind him. The one holding slander-red, sodden napkins to the back of his head, stumbling in pathetically before practically collapsing onto a seat.
Waylon stares at him for a very long time before turning to the other man, demanding some kind of explanation for what he is seeing.
"I'm sorry." The man says. "I know the situation is complicated, but Mister Upshur will have to room with you until vacancies are available."
That's when he clocks it. Upshur. Upshur.
That old expression, 'miles upshore without a paddle'.
In the grip of a sudden realisation Waylon turns, and then turns again, shame burning his face, unable to look at the man who he condemned to Murkoff and in doing so condemned himself. He feels a mixture of things in that brief moment –relief, horror, guilt.
Most of all, he feels cold.
He replays the scenario in his head, the details escaping him. The whole ordeal becomes werely a blur of vague consciousness. His workspace –the email –lines and lines of code –someone's been telling stories outside of class...
By the time he has turned around, cold with horror, a deep panic settling in his stomach, the man has lifted his head from the counter, a smear of blood running up his nose, face hard and derisive. Worse, of all things, the man has the audacity to laugh.
"You're Waylon Park?" He coughs out. "You're the bastard that stole my jeep." The man hold out a hand for Waylon to shake, and he is almost relieved by the man's breezy, almost pleasant tone. He thinks that Miles must have made it out unscathed, somewhat, and begins to feel the warmth of relief until he sees it. The man's hand.
He only has four fingers.