#but instead i'm drawing this white cracker boy

[morteamore]

Friend of mine asked me to write a Zach Bosch and Trevor McGee from the novel Drawing Blood fanfic for them. I've had some writer's block lately, but I'm gradually returning to it.

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It was late afternoon, sun streaming through the grime of the windows, the kudzu choking the old panes and turning the light green. Trevor was in the studio, hunched over the drawing desk etching dark lines on the pages of his sketchbook. Zach had gone in there earlier to ask him if he was hungry, finding him ensnared in his work and deaf to the question until Zach gently touched his bare shoulder. Instead of flinching, Trevor had froze like a soldier poised for an assault. Then he turned his head, the long ginger strands of his hair sliding against his skin like a curtain.

“No, not yet,” he had murmured, barely meeting Zach’s gaze before going back to his drawings.

Zach decided not to bother him again. Not until he was hungry enough that his stomach felt like it was clinging to his spine. By then, it was evening, the light having faded to let a white cheese moon rise in its place. Zach checked the cabinets. There was a can of beans that wouldn’t do them any good without any compliment like rice, a box of stale crackers, peas and carrots. Sighing, Zach shuffled to the studio once more, cracking the door open as to not to disturb Trevor if he was still drawing. He was, but there was a lack of tension from earlier, as if the air of creativity around the other man had dissipated. Trevor sat up straight and blinked at him as Zach entered.

“Yeah, I could go for something now,” Trevor said when Zach told him the kitchen was bare.

“Off to the Yew, then? Kinsey probably has a dinner special going. Or maybe the diner?”

“Not the diner again. We ate there the last two nights.”

“It’s a little better than Kinsey’s.”

“Kinsey’s food is alright.” Trevor thought back to the fare of his childhood, the grayish gruel the boy’s home had served on metal trays. Nobody was much in the habit of asking for seconds there. “Better than a cold can of beans.”

They agreed on that. The walk down Violin road wasn’t too treacherous, with the light of the full moon shining down to guide them. Conversation flowed between them. Trevor was talking about the latest comic he was working on. It was a short piece, about ghosts and grief, hauntings of a deep and personal caliber. Zach understood why Trevor drew about such things. He understood too well, having been told Trevor’s whole sordid history a few days ago. The pain that Trevor was bleeding on to his pages, bold in lead, seemed to resonate in Zach, thrumming in his own beating heart with shocks of discomfort. They were two souls that might as well have been one, this inner agony they seemed to share.

The Sacred Yew rose up under the moonlight. As they approached, the door opened and a drip of bodies dressed in dark clothing spilled out. So did a cacophony of guitars and drums. Whoever was playing the Yew tonight had already started the show. It sounded like Gumbo, Terry Bucket, owner of the Whirling Disc’s, band.