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He woke to the stale smell of scotch long since drank being blown across the back of his neck in gentle exhalations.
The evidence of last night’s drunken affair lay around him in haphazard heaps of expensive suit and cheap uniform. The window was cracked, letting in the cold February air, but the heat resting against his back was all he could feel.
In the lonely nights and empty mornings he sometimes dreamt he could feel someone else with him. Feel the hum of life and the beat of another’s heart against his back, or in his arms. In those moments he almost felt loved. He almost felt the way his mother looked when she spoke of his father. Drunk and red-cheeked as she reminisced about how handsome he had been, how much her Oswald looked like him. But then, the smile would fade just as his own did when the neighbor’s dog would bark, or a car alarm would sound. The memories fading, the dream gone with the arrival of harsh reality.
But just for a second, just for a deluded moment, he hadn’t felt so alone.
He wasn’t alone now.
He smiled.
It was real.
The arm thrown around his waste pulling him closer, the nose nuzzling into the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, the chest, warm and inviting against his back, it was real.
It was all real.
He closed his eyes and let the feeling of flesh and blood, of life and love, overtake him and for a moment, it was all he’d dreamt it to be.
“Oh god, no.”
The gasp was nearly inaudible, but it may as well been screamed through a mega-phone.
“Oh,” The arm retracted slowly, carefully, avoiding him like he were filth.
“Oh god, please no.”
He couldn’t breathe. The pressure on his back, so warm and pleasant before, now made him numb as it disappeared, the bed shifting and dipping as its other occupant slowly and carefully climbed out.
Oswald didn’t open his eyes.
There was a rustle of fabric, the quiet attempt to zip up pants, and the creeping of bare feet as they rounded his bed, heading towards the only door. The only escape.
“Jim.”
I’m sorry.
What did I do wrong?
Please don’t go.
Why aren’t I good enough, why aren’t I ever good enough?
But the words died on his tongue the moment he opened his eyes. The tension of Jim’s posture, the pair of shoes in his hand, and the guilt on his face obliterating them.
Oswald stared at Jim until he could no longer look Oswald in the eyes, his own bare feet suddenly much more interesting.
His jaw clenched as he spoke, forced and bitter.
“Don’t wake mother on your way out.”
He rolled over then, but not in time to miss the sag of relief in the detective’s frame.
The sound of his door closing and the residual warmth of the only man to ever share his bed left Oswald lonelier than a lifetime of isolation ever could.