Sasquatch to the Moon

16: A Little Intoxicated

Rocket drops out onto the sidewalk, beer no longer in hand, I assume he finished the few centimeters of liquid left in the bottom. 

He's staring, face turned up in the freezing wind, watching the sky. 

My ears adjust to the newfound silence of the outdoors, granted it's the sound of the city but it's quieter than inside. 

Rocket's head tips all the way back, dropping so he doesn't have to hold it up anymore, then, without much warning more than a sharp inhale, he lets out a guttural yell, straight into the sky of the city, air coming out in a rush of steam. 

He yells something deep and hard and out of nowhere in Czech, rough against his tongue and teeth, something I can't understand but can only listen to. 

"Roc- Milo," it feels weird on my tongue, the association of him with that name. 

He glances at me for a moment, the green of his eyes on mine in the low city light, then he turns his head back to the buildings, his chest back to the street. I watch his lungs fill and then his voice rips from his throat, "I wanna be fucking free!" 

The street is silent, nobody is out this late on a snowy December 23rd. 

"I want to be free and I want to love!" He shouts, voice dampening in the snow. 

"Milo, you're drunk." 

He turns to me, poking his finger into my chest, I light up at the touch, scared of the look in his eyes but drawn to the feeling of his finger on me. "I'm not drunk, I'm lacking the care I used to have." 

"You're drunk." 

"I'm tipsy enough not to give a shit what people think." 

"Can I get you in a warm car, you're going to freeze." 

"You don't get it." 

"What don't I get?" 

"You don't get it because you're allowed to be in there and trail around after girls and Steph's allowed to practically verbally fuck one right in front of me and Fen and Nico are allowed to grind on each other and laugh and have a good time. You don't get it." He curls his hand in the front of my shirt. 

"I get a fair amount." 

"No, you don't." 

"I could learn." 

"There's no fucking learning, Rex, there's no way you can teach yourself enough about me and my existence to sympathize in any way that's meaningful to me. I have lived like this since I first knew and I will live with it until I die, this, this fucking curse, this everything. I will live with it and I will live with the hate that's dealt to me and I will live with silence and I will live with a half formed idea of what I should and shouldn't be able to do as a human fucking lover because of people like you." 

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean." 

He grimaces, anger flashing behind his dark eyelashes, "I'm gay, Rex, fully and wholly queer and every second of it fucking hurts." 

I feel my heart stutter up into my throat and spill onto my tongue, sweet and rich. My body quakes with hurt and longing and somewhere, something, somehow, understanding. I feel, for once in my life, through a lens and around a corner, in a backwards way by the bite on his words, seen.

"Rocket..." I fizzle out. "Why would you tell me that?"

He reads it as hatred, as discomfort. His hand drops from my shirt and he backs away, wiping his hands off on his pants. "I trust you."