Ourselves : A BL Horror Novel

Chapter 15 : Spin The Bottle

The love motel room looked the same as it had a year and forty nine days later. The beige walls and the long rectangle windows with their dark red wooden shades were unchanged by time.  The king size bed lay made with a condom in a pink foil wrapper on the pillow. A few steps away from the bed was the open doorway to the bathroom with the large bathtub built for two. The bloodstains were long since cleaned away.  To the tall, lean man with long bangs that fell on either side of his handsome face which had a sparse beard grown from his sideburns down around his thin pink lips and under his curved nose. It was a version of purgatory on Earth. 

It has been a month since Keaton had kissed Zhao. A month since he had ignored every message. Every apology read but not replied to, they acted like weights on his wounded heart.  People around him noticed his heavy silence and slower walk.  His flat "I'm fine" response to any voiced concern was not believed.  It had been Tomo's idea to throw a party for his birthday and it had somehow got through to him. Maybe it was the fact that he had never known when his birthday was.  When he had been a child living in a room with his parents there had never been money for one, not that his parents had loved him enough to throw one. They had been the ones to sell him to the Syndicate man who would one day rape him. It had been in this very room.

One year and he could still feel it. The rough calloused hands on his skin. Those wet thin lips on the side of his neck. Keaton felt his body convulse as bile burned his tongue and he felt nauseous. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. No one who came to this party would know he had lain in that bed face down, his legs forced apart as Yoshitaka had done what he wanted. Before he could think anymore on it there was a loud knock on the door. He let out a breath and pinched his cheeks hard as he turned to walk the short distance to the door.

Swinging it open he was surprised by the eight people standing there with beer, a karaoke machine, a few pizza boxes and smiles.  Keaton hadn't expected so many people to come. He recognized a couple of couples from the college soccer team they played for. Tall, broad and lanky with a devil may care smile was Tomo. His uneven brown hair fit his happy go lucky attitude as he wagged his eye brows.

"Are you ready to have a fucking great birthday man? How old are you anyway?" Tomo shouted as he came in and the rest followed him into the motel room.

"I turn twenty today," Keaton declared smiling back. It was hard not smiling when Tomo was around. The tall, lanky man was a ball of joy and energy.

"Well fuck my life we brought booze as a gift, but you're too young for it team captain." Ricky, the goalee for their University soccer team bellowed as he showed to large pacls of beer and his girlfriend Gina showed a bottle of rum in a pale white bottle.

"I can drink!" Keaton said laughing along with everyone. Someone had brought a old cd playing radio and plugged it in and soon the room was filled with loud bass driving club songs and the smell of pizza. The girls and guys danced to the music while Keaton ate a slice of cheese pizza still fresh. A tall, golden skinned man dressed all in black sat on the bed beside him with a slice of pepperoni pizza in one hand and a cup of booze in the other. He looked out of place among the college students and Keaton had no memory of ever seeing him, Together in companionable silence they watched the rest of the party goers dance.

"Your friend is a horrible dancer,:" The man said as he chewed on the remaining crust of his pizza.

"Tomo? Oh yeah he's the worst." Keaton agreed as they watched Tomo and his girlfriend dry hump each other in time to the beat of the EDM song. Keaton wasn't sure he could even call that dancing honestly. He looked at the man next to him and the man looked at the dancers as if he wanted to join them but stayed seated on the bed's edge. Keaton saw that his gray eyes were Thai eyes he smiled to himself as the man turned to look at him.