Summer of Jonnor

No Place to Hide

When Connor came to he winced at the pain in the back of his head, felt the matted blood there sticking to his hair. He tried to reach up and couldn't. Dread rose inside him as realized the reason why he couldn't was that he was tied to a chair. He tested the bonds with all his strength. They didn't give. It was dark except for the dim light of a streetlight coming into a window high above his head on the right. He had no idea of how much time had passed or where he was. Oh Jude, he thought to himself, what have I done now?

His mind raced. Who were these guys, what were they doing with Miguel, why were they tying him up here? "Miguel?"

There was no answer. It was difficult to see anything in the dim light. Connor could feel that his phone was no longer in his pocket. I was supposed to FaceTime Jude. JUDE! His eyes filled with tears. He tried pulling on his bonds again. Tears ran down his face and he hung his head.

I need you, Jude, he thought, his mind racing. Jude was expecting him to FaceTime. He would be worried and call Connor's dad. He would figure out that Connor never came home. Or Stef would get his text. They would come looking for him. He just needed to hold on until they found where he was....

He thought about Jude. He could feel the pinky ring on his finger. Thinking of Jude seemed to make the metal hot around his finger, like it was burning marks into his skin. He thought of Jude. His soft lips. The hotness of his mouth when they kissed. How it felt to make him pancakes...he was sobbing, shaking. So defeated....

***

After crying for what seemed like hours and heavy with suffocating sadness, Connor felt himself drifting to sleep, worn out from the physical and emotional exhaustion of what had happened. He dreamed that Jude was angry at him and yelling in his face. His head rolled to the side and he jerked awake. It was still dark outside. The images of the dream were hammering in his head. Jude was probably going to be upset with him. But what was he supposed to do? Those men had beat Miguel in the face! He had only wanted to get Miguel out of there, get him somewhere safe and then get back to his father and to Jude...Jude...JUDE!

"Please don't be angry with me, Jude," he whispered, as if he could talk to his dream. So many things were running through his head. There was so much that he had never told Jude...so many things to say...he was rarely good with words, never as eloquent as Jude and he didn't have Jude's ability to describe something a dozen different ways. Right now all the things to say seemed so clear in his mind...the one time when he couldn't say any of them...he needed to figure out a way to remember them all so that when he saw Jude again he could tell him everything...but some pieces of it already felt like they were slipping away...it was just too much to hold in his tired mind. Why hadn't he said all of these things already? Why did he think there would always be time later, tomorrow, someday? What if something truly bad was going to happen to him and he'd already lost all of his chances to say those things?

He felt like crying again, but he was so cried out his body could only shake a little. He thought about what it was like to have Jude comforting him. I need you now, cakes. I need you. He closed his eyes and remembered what it was like to spoon Jude, the incredible warmth and safety of having Jude tucked into his side. How his body felt like a huge sensor of heat and touch. How he would breathe in the scent of Jude's hair. His eyes struggled to make tears when they had already cried so much there were no more to give....

He had screwed up everything with Jude so many times, he didn't deserve to even have him...but like a moon captive in the orbit of its planet, Jude was always there. Always so quick to forgive him, even when he was mad with it and at his saturation point like the day he kicked Connor in the stomach. How Jude never spoke ill of anyone. How Jude accepted his clumsy attempts to be romantic like making pancakes and pinky rings. And the pheromone thing...it was so mind-blowing to think that Jude was so into him that there was some primal place deep within his brain, some marvelous atavism of synapsid prehistory—that allowed Jude to find him by scent alone.