bamboo doesn't grow in dark spaces. [80K Words / Complete]

chapter nineteen.

Realization dawned on Case. His nerves spiked with excitement, his breath jolting with the eagerness to speak.

Careful, the voice warned. Don't run your mouth. Choose your words carefully.

Right. Be smart. He put down the scrubbing brush, settling himself to sit proper and devote all his attention to Sir. "Is orthopedics the hardest type of surgery?"

Sir scrunched his face, shaking his head. "Child's play. I wasn't being challenged enough, so I specialized in Trauma Surgery when I was about 30." He leaned forward now, bracing himself with his elbows on the wooden frame, leaning into Case's space. "The difference is Ortho is the broad umbrella term for the musculoskeletal system: broken bones, ligaments, tendons, remedial stuff. Trauma Surgery deals with the patients in critical condition: car wrecks, chemical burns, severed limbs or assault victims. In fact, one case during my fellowship, I worked on a girl who came in missing her right arm and breast—that's called avulsion."

Case's imagination defaulted to something out of a Saw movie, limbs hanging by tendons and spurting blood, and his stomach turned. "What . . . what happened to the girl?"

"Bah, I think she'd been caught cheating by the boyfriend, so he took to her with a machete from his hunting shed. But everyone said replantation wasn't amenable, too high a risk for infection or necrosis of the tissue." Sir moved into the shower cubicle, so enraptured by his own gospel that his words had to be spoken in a low voice, and he had to be intimately close to Case for him to hear their significance. "But I trimmed the shattered bone, and stitched together all the severed arteries, veins, nerves, muscles, like it was fine silk and I was weaving an intricate web. I was the only one with the right skill and mental stamina to make that surgery a success, and I did."

Case took in Sir's near-manic aura, and wondered if he'd opened a Pandora's Box of unstable psyches. This side of Sir scared Case but, deep down, it also captivated him. "And you've done that kind of stuff for 25 years?"

Sir chuckled. And then, as if he'd woken from a dream or snapped from a spell, Sir slipped back into his affable, charming Southern persona. "Oh, no, why I'm not quite that old." Through his smile, visible through sharp white canines, was a slice of pink tongue; the sight of it struck Case in his core like a bolt of lightning, charging him with arousal.

Case inhaled, steadying himself. "How old are you?" he asked, scarcely above a whisper.

"I'll be 48 come November."

That's older than my dad. "What date?" he asked, not because he had a calendar or any real interest; he asked because it was an unconscious reflex, and being this close to Sir, the real Sir, he'd lost his senses. So when Sir answered the 22nd, it caught him further by surprise. "Huh," he said, allowing himself the pause for quick math. Realization came with a sickening drop in his stomach. Sir's birthday was 11-22-71.

"When's yours?" Sir asked, apparently oblivious to the changing gears in Case's mind.

Case was an October baby. Hannah called him a Libra-Scorpio cusp (whatever the hell that meant): 10.22.01—not only was Sir almost exactly 30 years older than him, but there was an eeriness in the similarity of their birthdays. Two digits of separation. A closeness like that seemed kismet, as if they shared some great connection and were meant to meet.

Don't spiral down this hole, he told himself. Reasonably, he knew he was reading into meaningless details. He knew this was the unrealistic, idealistic side of him.

You don't believe that, the voice told him. You believe what you feel. And this feels like fate. You were always meant to be in this basement.

Anger prickled at his tear ducts. Frustration and confusion bubbled inside him, and he didn't know why. Suddenly, Case felt incredibly overwhelmed and powerless—like he was a plaything to a cruel, divine entity. He turned away, resuming to clean the shower floor.

"Why? Do I get a birthday cake even though candles are a fire hazard?"

Sir didn't say anything, but Case could sense him watching. He continued to scrub, the bristles flicking grimy soap suds up his bare arms.

"Ask me something." Sir scooted closer, sitting cross-legged and bopping his shoulder against Case's. "I know you haven't finished high school. You like that trashy skate-punk racket and horror movies. You're a middle child, probably overlooked at home and lacking the love and attention you deserved. You had a girlfriend, some pretty little thing, but I'd wager it ended ugly. You look down when you smile and chew your bottom lip when you're thinking. You wanted to get to know each other, right? So, even the playing field. Ask me something."

Case's grip tightened around the brush. The cleaner chemicals burned his skin, and his heart panged with the gratitude of being seen. Sir wanted them to bond; he wanted them to have a more meaningful connection. Finally, Case had found someone who wanted to form a real connection with him.

Maybe this was meant to be, the voice conceded. I told you, he does care. He does like you.

Do I want him to like me? Case quietly questioned the voice. Then, to himself, Do I like him?

Case didn't want to ask something too big or personal, not something that would get him hurt or killed. But he didn't want to ask something small either.

"Do you like me?"

Sir's presence beside Case stiffened; but when he answered it was with an audible smirk. "More than I should."

"That's a strange way of saying yes."

"Yes. I like you, Casey." Sir brought his hand to the nape of Case's neck, toying with a lone curl. "Do you like me, too?"

Something low in Case's abdomen ached. Desire or discomfort, he couldn't tell. Instinct told him to lean into the touch, to indulge in this pleasure. But he collected himself, reigning his smile into a barely constrained smirk, and he resumed scrubbing the shower floor. "I'll tell you when the playing field is even."