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back to "Something to look foward to."

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Fraser looked puzzled. "Yes, Ray, I appreciate the care you take with personal hygiene," he tried.

I snickered. "No, Benny, I mean I'm clean. I'm not gonna give you chlamydia or anything. I got tested after we started going together."

Fraser's mouth made a little O. Then his whole face shut down tight. "We should use a prophylactic."

My heart started going about a mile a minute. "Victoria."

"She said she was taking oral contraceptives."

Oh, God. If she had anything, she woulda damn well wanted to make sure he got it. And hell, even if he'd known she had something, he probably would have just let her give it to him. Okay, I told myself. Okay. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I put an arm around him anyway. "I'm taking you to the doctor on Monday, okay, Benny?"

He nodded.

"C'mon, let's go the pharmacy."

He gave me a startled look, but he didn't suggest we wait. "Don't you carry a condom in your wallet?" he asked instead, with an unconvincing expression of innocent puzzlement.

I flushed. "Oh, you noticed that, huh?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Come on, Fraser, then you gotta have also remarked that it's been the same condom the whole time I've known you."

He blinked, looking--looking pleased.

I grinned at him. "Louise brought her own."

He narrowed his eyes at me.

"Nah, I'm just kidding. Come on, let's go."

"You wouldn't rather I wait here?"

And okay, I was planning to go to the pharmacy a few neighborhoods over where they wouldn't recognize us, and I didn't plan to come out to Ma anytime soon, but--"What, so I can be embarrassed by the pharmacy lady all by myself?" It was like they practiced. I'd always thought it would get easier when I was older, but so far, no dice. Probably part of the pharmacy job training: How To Make Guys Feel Like Teenage Virgin Perverts. "Look, you wanna stay here, that's fine, but don't put it on me."

Fraser nodded, took a deep breath, and straightened. "I'll go."

I relaxed, smiled at him kinda stupidly. "Great."

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"Not Trojans, Fraser!" I hissed. "Trojans are unlucky."

"Unlucky?"

"Come on, Fraser! Trojans! What do you think of first? The Trojan Horse, right? A lotta little guys sneaking in somewhere inside a bigger thing and then breaking out? That remind you of anything? Worst name for a condom ever."

"The Trojan Horse wasn't actually Trojan, Ray. The Greeks used it at the Siege of Troy."

"Well, the Trojans lost, right?"

"Yes, but--"

"There you go. Durex it is." I grabbed some KY-Jelly and we were good to go.

I was planning to play it cool, not shove it in anyone's face or anything. But the cashier was this Italian girl, real young, real pretty, and she smiled big at Fraser. About three sentences into their polite conversation she was saying, "I've got a break in five minutes, maybe we could--"

I slapped the condoms and the lube down in front of her. "Then you better ring us up quick," I snapped. "We're kind of in a hurry."

Fraser scratched his eyebrow and gave her an apologetic smile.

She looked down at our purchases in slowly dawning horror. She rang us up, her mouth a tight line. I grabbed the bag out of her hand, and then she looked at Fraser and said, "What's the biggest mystery about AIDS?"

Oh, fuck. I hadn't heard this one but I could tell it was going nowhere good. "Come on, Fraser, let's get out of here," I said.

"I give up," Fraser said politely, but there was an edge in his voice I didn't like.

"It can turn a fruit into a vegetable." She gave him a spiteful smile.

His polite expression turned hard.

For a second I just gaped at her. I mean, she was a kid, it wasn't like I was gonna hit her, but fuck, that anybody would say something like that to Fraser, that somebody would think that the idea of Fraser dying slowly, Fraser, was funny, it made me--I reached for my badge so I could do some exaggerating of the legal ramifications of hate speech, but Fraser just leaned on the counter and said gently, "You know, I'm always amazed by how effectively prejudice allows us to ignore the humanity in others."

She glared at him.

He gave her a rueful smile. "And then my first impulse was to be cruel in return. Hatred is a strange thing, isn't it? For a few seconds I couldn't see that you're a child. I could only see that you had tried to hurt someone important to me. And it would be easy to hurt you back, Lori, wouldn't it? You had some bad news today."

Her eyes widened. "How did you know that?"

"That's not important," he said. "What is important is that you're scared, and unhappy. You wanted to make someone else unhappy too, and when you saw us, you saw people whom it was all right to make unhappy. Encouraged, even. After all, we're 'faggots,' right?" He did air quotes and everything.

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, Benny," I said. "When you're done with the impromptu lesson in tolerance, I'll be waiting in the car for you to take me home and deflower me."

He blinked. Then he gave me one of those little smiles, his eyes alight, and nodded.

I grabbed the bag off the counter and headed out to the car. For a couple minutes I just sat in the front seat, turning the box of condoms over in my hands and wondering if it was gonna hurt and if I could get Benny to let me take a shower first. By the time I looked back into the store to see what the hold-up was, Lori was crying and Fraser was offering her his enormous handkerchief.

Before I met Fraser, life had kinda just seemed like a succession of assholes. Fraser--Fraser changed that, you know? Fraser was the best person in possibly the entire world and he was coming home with me. He wanted to fuck me, which up to that point I'd mostly thought about in terms of possible ickiness, but for Fraser--he wanted it enough to ask for it. So it had to mean something else, right?

Finally he came out and climbed into the passenger's seat. "Buckle up tight, Benny," I said. "I'm gonna break some speed limits getting you home."

I waited for the expected protests, but all I got was a distracted smile.

"What is it?"

He looked back at the store. "She's pregnant."

I sagged. "Ah, shit." She was Catholic, and probably still in high school. "Can she tell her parents?"

"No," Fraser said simply.

I looked into the store. Lori was ringing up some old guy who was staring at her breasts. She was trying to smile at him. "You gave her my number, right?"

Fraser's smile went warm and focused. "Of course, Ray."

"Good," I said, ignoring that this meant she could now out me at the precinct. "I know the judge who does waivers of parental notice since they passed that stupid pro-life act."

Fraser gave me a curious look. "But Ray, you're Catholic."

"Yeah," I said. "So I know exactly how rough it is telling your Catholic parents you got a not-so-virgin birth in your future. Or not telling them, as the case might be." I'd taken Frannie for an abortion when she was fifteen. One of the scariest things I ever did, but if Pop had found out she was pregnant, well--let's just say that woulda been a lot scarier.

Fraser gave me one of those looks that said he understood a lot more than he was telling and fastened his seatbelt.

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back to "Something to look foward to."