Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite, Deirdre C. Amthor Page B

“What?” he said again, more urgently. Tran looked away. Luke grabbed Tran’s face, forced it toward him. A small tortured sound escaped Tran’s throat, not quite a word, not yet a sob.
    â€œWhat have you
done?”
    Answer me,
Luke thought,
answer me right now and save me the suspense.
Instead came Tran’s usual long silence preceding the answer to a tough question. Then, “Nothing. Only …”
    Tran twisted his face out of Luke’s grasp, which had tightened involuntarily at the word
only.
Luke saw five white finger-shaped marks on Tran’s golden skin. As he watched, the marks deepened to rose, the color of Tran’s blood just below the surface.
    â€œLast week when you went to Baton Rouge … I was in the French Quarter one night and … there happened to be this party.”
    Luke shut his eyes tightly and willed his hands away from Tran’s smooth throat. He knew what was coming. Couldn’tTran be merciful and tell him straight out? Of course not.
    â€œEverybody was really hammered,” Tran said pleadingly.
    Luke ground his teeth, counted to five, and opened his eyes. Tran was watching but something in Luke’s eyes made him look away. “So everybody was hammered,” said Luke. “Imagine that, at a party in the French Quarter. SO FUCKING WHAT?”
    â€œThey played some kind of kissing game with this clove and this orange—”
    â€œTran. Just say it, goddamn you, please just say it.”
Don ’t say it,
Luke’s heart begged in agonizing counterpoint,
as long as you haven’t said it out loud then it didn’t happen, so just shut up, just don’t say—
    â€œWell-I-ended-up-fooling-around-with-this-guy,” Tran said all in a rush, then hitched in a deep shuddery breath as if the unspoken revelation had deprived him of air.
    A strange burning sensation had begun to spread through the muscles of Luke’s shoulders, as if corrosive acid were eating into the tissue. Luke wondered what the physiology of that particular phenomenon might be; why should the news of his lover’s betrayal make his muscles corrode? But he only said, “I thought we weren’t going to do shit like that.”
    â€œI did too! I didn’t want to! It was just …”
    â€œIt was just that you were drunk and your dick was hard, right?”
    â€œWell, yeah.”
    â€œAt least you admit it.”
    â€œBut he wouldn’t; leave me alone! He’s already fucked most of my friends …”
    â€œGreat. I’m glad you’re so selective about your sordid affairs.”
    Tran’s eyes closed in defeat, and the dark smudge of his lashes on the butter-smooth skin beneath his eyes was enough to twist a barb through Luke’s heart, even now. “I didn’t mean to, Luke. I was basically seduced into it.”
    Luke’s vision went red. He could see directly into the coreof his own rage, and that core was on the point of meltdown. He grabbed a pillow off the bed and punched it, then throttled it. He didn’t know what else he was going to do until he saw a cascade of tiny feathers swirling around the bed, drifting to the floor. He had ripped the pillow open with his fingernails. One of his expensive goose-down pillows, no less.
    â€œGO AHEAD!!!”
he heard himself screaming.
“Why don’t you just take this amazing thing we have and throw it away? Why don’t you just toss it in the gutter and piss on it because you happened to GET DRUNK AT A PARTY??? What a FUCKING BRILLIANT IDEA!!!”
    He forced himself to breathe several times, then resumed speaking in a soft, precise voice. “I mean—could you be any lamer if you
tried?
You did this—you ran home to
tell
me about it, God knows why—and now you’re saying you weren’t even
responsible?”
    Tran was staring wide eyed at the feathers on the floor. His gaze flicked back up to Luke’s, then