----------------------------------------------------- gulp Oh, er, Ok, so it's been a really long time since I last added to this story. I'm Sorry! I got my act back together now though, so the rest of the episodes will follow soon. Enjoy, and see you at Dexter 9: http://www.geocities.com/willie_hewes -----------------------------------------------------
Laine sat on his bed, still dressed. He had just been sitting there for quite a while now, in the half-dark. He felt disappointed, as if Nicholas had already left for New York again. He should not have called him Nick, now Mr. Rising was mad at him. Who cares. It was impossible anyway, they had nothing in common. To Nicholas, he was just a boy. A nobody. He couldn't dance, he knew nothing about choreography or ... or whatever. It had been foolish to think Nicholas would even notice him.
It was impossible, it was not going to happen. Nicholas would leave again next week, and none of the things Laine's overheated imagination had suggested were going to happen. He was just a boy, and Nicholas was so beautiful! A face like a Botticelli angel, he thought. He dances, even if he seems to be standing still. If only Laine would have something to offer him, something they could do together...
Wait a second, Laine jumped up. There was something he could do! His pictures! He snapped on the lights and took out the collection of his favorites. He went through them quickly. Scenery, some sunsets, a cityscape, the boulevard... A portrait of his father's second wife, dressed in a nightgown and draped out on a couch. He stared at it for a moment. More portraits, a couple of Jesse, the official school-queer. He had tried to become friends with him, but it didn't work out. Jesse was so proud to be gay he couldn't imagine why other people would want to keep it a secret. "So what if your father kicks you out?" he had said once. The pictures Laine took of him looked good, professional. From under his mattress came another envelope, with a different type of pictures. Nudes, or semi-nudes. Mostly self-portraits, a series of his cousin, who was a model. They looked professional too, esthetic, not pornographic. Except for the one cumshot he had taken of himself. He smiled at seeing it. If his father knew of these...
There was one lone picture at the bottom. He had stared at it for so long he knew it by heart. An old building in Sienna, with huge iron rings attached to the stone wall. A young man chained to these rings with two pairs of handcuffs. They glitter like silver jewelry. His arms are stretched wide, his head hangs down. His shirt is torn. Laine imagines Nicholas in that picture, chained to those massive iron rings. He wouldn't let his head hang down, Nicholas would stand upright, even if he got whipped. Maybe he would look up, turn his eyes to heaven like a saint... Yes, Laine closed his eyes, he could see the picture in his head, perfectly. It exited him.
When he went to sleep, something resembling new hope had set root in his mind.
The Leff's bathroom, or at least the one Nicholas was using, had a man-sized mirror against one of the walls. Nicholas was not used to seeing himself so completely, and so naked. Carefully he pressed the soft towel to all wet parts of his skin. Sometimes when Nicholas looked in the mirror, he saw beauty. Today he could see only the mutant he knew he was. Modern fashion was all that made his shape beautiful, in truth he was a freak, at odds with everyone. Even though the world loved him now, he still hated the world.
He had been at odds with the world since the day he was born, since the moment the nurse had stammered: "It's a boy, but..." There was no video, but he had imagined what it had been like very often.
Most of all he hated doctors, physicians. They were the ones that had insisted something was wrong, the baby had to be operated, tiny as he was. Everyone always told him he was too young to remember, but he knew that he did remember. He remembered lying on his back in a world of painfully bright white, with a flaming hot pain between his little legs. He remembered crying, screaming with pain, and screaming and screaming and on one came. No one came to pick him up and hold him against her breasts to comfort him, and when the night was finally over, he was still screaming, but his voice was gone, and the only sound he could make was a hoarse whisper, the shadow of a scream.
These doctors, the ones that had done that to him, that had mutilated him at such an early age, were the same ones that later insisted he took those damn hormones. He refused to. Their reasoning, their pleading, their threats could not change his mind. His mother: "But you will be so sorry if you don't! The doctors say your bones will not harden, and you might grow to be seven feet tall! And what about your voice, don't you want to sound and look like a normal boy?" No, he didn't. He was born a freak, so that was what he would grow up to be; a freak, and he didn't care what others thought or did.
"Don't be so stubborn Nick!" Shut up mom. I won't take them, no matter what you say. This is my life, you can't force me. They had tried, the doctors. But he hadn't given in. I know why you want me to take them. You screwed up, and you know it. And now, thirteen years later, you are trying to cover up your mistakes, you are trying to make my hide my true nature with your modern concoctions. Well, I won't! You screwed up thirteen years ago, you made me into this thing, this unman and I want all the world to know what you did!
He stepped back. His face had, for a moment, twisted into an expression of pain. That old pain... "Never mind about that now," he said aloud in the low whisper that had become his normal speaking voice. Why think of these things now? Why was he still standing here naked in this stranger's bathroom?
But before he got dressed, he took another long look at his mutilated body in the mirror. He imagined himself showing it to that boy, Laine. "Do you want to know why I am so beautiful, Laine? Do you want to know the secret behind those long and graceful limbs, that androgynous face?" He could see Laine's expression, perfect disbelief, horror, and inevitable, the shake of the head, his hands to block the view. "No, no..."