Lost fic: Fortunate Son (2/4) (Jack/James; AU)

[cynthia_arrow]

Title: Fortunate Son (2/4)
Pairing: Jack/James…eventually
Rating: R
Summary: AU. It's the early spring of 1968. At a university in the deep south, the president of a liberal student group comes to give a speech about the problems in this country, and he meets a clever but bitter janitor who thinks he's the damndest sort of hippie. And, yeah, he'd tell him just how much they resent his kind down here…if he didn't want so badly himself to escape the south. This part: 8700 words. Total thus far: 13,700 words.
Notes on series: See part one
Also note: 1) This is still pretty political, and it's still gonna seem preachy. But I'm just trying to let them say what's in their heads (not mine). And it's all in service of building the conflict between them. 2) The epigraph is from CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"


Fortunate Son

II.

Someone told me long ago there's a calm before the storm,
I know; its been comin' for some time.
When its over, so they say, it'll rain a sunny day,
I know; shinin' down like water.

Jack Shephard loosened his tie, but something made him leave it around his neck rather than pull it off and shove it into his pocket.

He often looked at his life and wondered how he'd gotten where he was-literally and otherwise-and this day, this night, was no exception. Walking down a small, strange, almost quaint street, nothing like the scenery he was used to, it occurred to him that this was probably the best the town had to offer in the way of night life. People hung out of doorways, tripping out into the evening from bars and restaurants. It was just plain surreal. This crowded, dirty little town was no place his life in California had prepared him for, yet here he was, walking through the heavy night air like he was cutting it with his body and feeling something like electricity-in the breeze, in the productive static in his head-crackling through him. It was entirely possible that at some point, he'd developed the habit of courting the bizarre, if only because it made him feel alive.

The campus itself was gorgeous, and Jack was glad that for a while James had simply let him soak up the scenery. There were venerable colleges everywhere, and he'd spoken at a lot of them, but there was something tangibly different about being down here. It was easy to think of the region as some backward third world country, except there were people in it who looked like him and spoke about some of the same things if not in the same accents. This was still America, wasn't it? Surely there were hippies and patriots and oblivious masses here as well as there were anywhere. The south probably wasn't as terribly different as he needed to believe it was.

Yet it was plenty different. No region anywhere else had campuses that seemed to press in on a person with so many ghosts and so much history. Maybe the Ivies, but they had a different vibe altogether. Here, it was almost the same feeling as he'd had when he took that trip to England: a weight of years, struggles. He knew he was romanticizing things, and, to be sure, this school wasn't as thick with it as Ole Miss, but when he'd stared across that Quad, he had felt something.

As they had walked down the boulevard, away from the academic heart of the university, they'd passed rows of fraternity houses, reminding him of the tenuous but necessary ties he still kept to his brothers, at least the ones who hadn't written him off entirely. The monolithic football stadium towered appropriately behind those houses. Football wasn't Jack's favorite sport, but he wasn't unaware of where he was and the kind of hold the game had on the region. He recalled hearing his student handlers that day talking about how the university's program had stumbled for the first time in years. His own Bruins, however, had produced a Heisman winner the previous season. He hadn't said a word, but when James saw him eyeing the landscape, he snorted a laugh and lit up a cigarette, deigning to comment. Jack wondered if he did so because he liked football or didn't give a damn about it. There was no telling.

James had held out the pack, and Jack shook his head. He was keyed up enough without a cigarette. That was why he'd taken the chance on pulling out that joint; he needed something to take the edge off. Speaking to students was his most important job, but it was the one he liked the least, perhaps because a part of him craved it. He was good at it, he knew. He was clever, and he had a touch of preacher in him-a cadence to his speech, when he chose to keep it, that lulled people in and kept them. These speaking engagements were where he felt like his position meant something. Sure, he'd lobbied in front of congress, but they didn't take him very seriously. To them, he was just one in a long line of anti-establishment punks trying to tell them they were blind; they didn't tend to appreciate that. On the other hand, when he spoke to students, he knew he was sometimes the only voice of opposition they'd ever been allowed to hear, and they were often willing to listen. He took that seriously. Apparently, that didn't mean he had to feel all that calm about doing it.

This speaking trip was like a lot of others, but then again it wasn't. This evening was looking to be a far cry from casual lunches with state representatives and afternoons spent on the telephone with mayors and deans. They had weaved out of the center of campus and into the off-campus strip, then down into the real life of this southern town, as the sidewalks overrun with undergraduates turned to open spaces again, not the granite and green of the campus but concrete, cool and bright in the street lights, with only a few doors falling open, music drifting out.

It was in front of one such place that they stopped. An old black man sat in the doorway, smoking.

"Jimmy Lowe," James said with a nod and a wide smile, tossing the butt of his cigarette in the gutter. "Ain't it past your bedtime?"

"Aw, hell," Jimmy said, rolling his eyes for effect.

"What you doing up here at Bobby's?"

Jimmy looked as if he'd answer, but he was also casting a wary eye on the stranger in the suit. He said, "Who you got there?"

These people and their fear of strangers, he thought.

"Jackson Shephard," James replied. "From out of town."

Jimmy just nodded, and finally and thankfully took his eyes off Jack, redirecting his attention to James. "You keep your eye on Glinda, now. She'll take your damn head off tonight."

"Well, what's new."

Jimmy gave them both a vague smile, then his face darkened again and he muttered, "Out of the frying pan into the fire." Then jerking his head up to look at James, he said, "Got a smoke you wanna share?"

James handed one over, and Jack had a feeling this was a common enough occurrence. Jack was both content to absorb the scene but also uncomfortable with observing; he clearly didn't belong there. Thankfully, James nodded at Jimmy again and stepped through the doorway, and Jack just followed behind him.

As they settled in at a bar that looked a lot like every other bar he'd ever been in, from Seattle to Boston to Miami to L.A., he asked James, "What was that about? The frying pan thing?"

James gave a small smile, his head dipped forward. "Jimmy only hangs around up here if he gets into shit with his buddies down at the Cloakroom. Apparently, he also pissed off Glinda somehow. Not that that's hard to do."

"Glinda?" he asked.

James motioned toward the back, behind the pool tables, where a small negro woman with eyes threatening enough to make up for her size sat in a chair, leaned back against the wall, smoking and talking to a tipsy-seeming white man leaning over the table in front of her.

"You'd think she owned the place. Tommy gets enough whiskey in him, she can damn near convince him she does."

Jack wanted to ask about how a place like this could even exist down here, with whites and negroes sharing the same space, but he didn't want to offend him. He was also relatively certain James wouldn't have a good answer for him.

"So, you hang out here a lot," Jack said. James shrugged his shoulders.

Jack was already becoming rather enthralled by the man's defensive mechanisms, how in lieu of being able to keep his reactions and thoughts to himself, he found ways to gloss something over them to distract or confuse a person. Or at least he tried. After that bit of weed and after the long, mostly silent walk, James was a lot more subdued than he'd even been when they met. There seemed to be so much more to cover over in his expression now, but less desire to do so.

Not that that stopped these mechanisms of his entirely. When the bartender ambled toward them, sticking out his hand to shake with James, he watched him put on as gregarious a face as he'd ever seen out of him.

Jack ordered what James ordered, some cheap beer that thankfully had a little kick to it. After James took a long swallow from his bottle, he said, "I'll be back," and disappeared toward the back of the bar. He watched his progress long enough to see Glinda frown at James as her eyes cut to the front. Whatever James said to her, she gave him a half-exasperated but ultimately indulgent face and went back to listening to the ramblings of the strange drunk white man in front of her.

He didn't know whether to try small talk with the bartender, a white man named Frank, but the man apparently decided that for him. As the bar was mostly empty, he stayed right where he was and commenced to straightening and cleaning.

After a respectable silence, Frank said, "So, you enjoying our weather?"

"I don't know yet. I- I don't think I'm used to it. Not that it isn't beautiful down here."

The man nodded. It seemed like an acceptable enough mixture of truth and lie. In reality, nothing about that part of the state was beautiful, nothing he'd seen, anyway.

"Where do you hail from?"

"California," he said. That usually earned him either stares or frowns.

This man, however, simply nodded again. "Huh. Weather different out there?"

"It's warmer this time of year. And it's not as humid."

At that, he chuckled. "You should be here in July, then. You'd swear you were in a jungle or something."

It was funny, Jack thought, how he could go give a long talk about activism and politics without his thoughts going where they started to go at just that mention of a jungle. Something, maybe their earlier conversation, made him glance toward the back of the bar, his eyes searching for James's now familiar silhouette. Suddenly, some of the tension in his brain made sense, although just as quickly, he put it out of his mind-or at least on a commonly-used back burner-because he saw that James was standing huddled over a telephone, his eyebrows creased and his fingers drumming against the wall.

He was profoundly curious to know who James was talking to, but not curious enough to ask. However, he glanced past James to the narrow back hallway, noting the men's room at the end, and his bladder took that opportunity to remind him that he'd drunk half a pitcher of water sitting beside the podium earlier, waiting to speak.

It wasn't prying if he legitimately had to go to the bathroom, was it? Of course it was. He sighed to himself, but he got up anyway.

"Restroom in the back?" he said. Frank just nodded.

He launched himself through the smoky air, running the gauntlet of a pool tables and Glinda's cool gaze, then he passed James without much more than a glance and let himself into the bathroom.

He was shocked to realize how well he could hear the conversation through the thin walls.

"…you'll-- Yes, I know. It's not that big a deal. You'll-- Momma, you have got to calm down, okay? Call uncle Richard. You can-- No. No, no. I realize that. …then you wouldn't have to… Momma. Momma, you listen to me. You're not listening. You're not-" There was a long pause, and Jack almost thought the conversation had somehow ended, but then James's voice came back. "Late. Yes. …pot roast enough for…in the…"

Jack finally began to feel like he was intruding on a private family matter, which he was, so he relieved himself, washed his hands, and strode back out into the bar. James was already back in his place, chatting with Frank, downing his beer.

Frank backed off, floated down the bar to the other end as Jack took up his place on his stool again.

James said, "Sorry 'bout that. Had to check in."

"Girlfriend?"

James gave him an eyeroll to rival all others. "Mother."

Jack couldn't help but grin. "It's fine."

"I guess I take care of her," James added. Tapping out another cigarette from the pack, he said, "Hope this is the sort of thing you wanted." He gestured to the room around them.

"What?"

"You didn't say where you wanted to drink."

"Oh. This is fine. There's a bar near campus that I go to sometimes that's a lot like this, just more crowded."

"I hate crowded bars. That's why I come here. Sure as hell ain't for the scenery."

"Well, it's certainly nice to be in a place where I don't have to shout over the noise."

"If you start to miss the noise, they got a decent jukebox over there."

He'd seen it when he came in, and he had to admit he was curious to know what was on it and what James would play. He assumed James was just as curious about him, especially when he just nodded at it like his mentioning it was something of a request. Jack found himself walking over with a fistful of change.

When he came back, James made a valiant effort at not acknowledging his choices except with an initial comment that he'd given them background music. They made slow and surprisingly strained small talk for a while, through what he hoped were relatively safe choices: a Jimi Hendrix song he liked, some not old but not too new Beatles. Then Otis Redding came on and James trailed off mid-sentence.

His eyes sparkled when he said, "You feeling contemplative tonight, Jack?"

"It's sort of my default position," he said with a shrug and a sheepish grin.

James just snorted. Then he said with a smirk, "You ever even been on a dock?"

"I have." He paused, considering, then he said, "And I've probably caught more fish in a season than you've caught in your whole life."

That did the trick. James's face lit into a smile, and inexplicably, this quiet song drove them up out of whatever funk they'd gotten themselves into on their walk.

Propelled into animated conversation, they talked fishing, the differences between ocean and lake, and about why they didn't care for hunting. James wasn't particularly bothered by his next choices from the jukebox, some comparatively innocuous Dylan then a random Stones B-side, which James acknowledged mid-sentence with only a wave of his hand and a grin, saying, "Whatever points you earned with Glinda before, I think you're burning them now."

"I'll survive."

After Jack found himself educated as to country music-"at least the shit worth listening to"-and James programmed some of what he liked best into the jukebox, they meandered over a lot of topics, and he found that he didn't so much care what James was saying as long as he could listen to his drawl and watch his face while he spoke. The man was somehow even more blunt with a little alcohol in his system, but he was also less confrontational. It rather shocked Jack because they'd known each other only a couple of hours, yet the man was now treating him like a friend. It made Jack wonder if this wasn't another façade. Yet something about the man's demeanor seemed as honest as anything Jack was used to dealing with.

Whatever this was, he tried not to worry over it. This was just drinks with a guy he would never see again in his life, who he had no need to impress.

Of course, he'd thought the same thing about Marc, and that turned out a lot different than he'd imagined. He felt a flush come over his cheeks for no reason, because the very comparison between the two was bizarre; but looking at James, he really could see it. Same rough demeanor that gave way to easiness. Same apparent problem cutting the apron strings. What hit him in the gut was the way James could laugh the same way Marc had: calmly, like amusement was costly, even if his eyes sparkled and flashed.

James said, "You play pool?"

"Not very well."

"You wanna get better?"

"Sure."

"Well, then, come on. Get you some practice. You're lucky I'd rather take it easy tonight than hustle you."

So Jack smiled, but only to bite back his apprehension. He downed the rest of his beer and ordered another and followed James to the back. He had finished that third beer before James could get the balls racked.

James insisted on watching him clear the table on his own first, just to see the way he shot. He sat perched on a bar stool, smoking and watching Jack circle the table more nervously than he'd care to admit. It didn't help that he'd gotten himself half tipsy to combat the waning of a buzz that hadn't really been much of a buzz anyway. He tried and tried to make this pool game loose and fun, enjoy the bewilderment of being in this place and time. All he had to do was be Jackson Shephard. But nothing in the world about having the alternately brooding and charming James Ford staring down his back was doing anything for his nerves or his concentration, much less his ability to put on an easy persona.

He'd had James rack for nine ball-less balls to deal with, better for one person to play. He pocketed the first three without much fuss, but then the four simply refused to fall into any of the pockets on the table. Jack knew; he'd tried them all and was still futilely bouncing the ball off rails, and the longer he did, the less possible it seemed to put it in.

He stood directly in front of James, with his back to him and his head bowed low, poised to take yet another go at it, when James broke the steady silence. He drawled, "You're too impatient."

He made a snorting sound. Such an idea had been ludicrous only a few years ago. But lately he kept getting hit with the realization that the man he'd grown up to be wasn't the person he thought he would be, who he was when he still lived in his father's house, unhappily but compliantly in his shadow but somehow beyond the man's notice until he stepped out of it.

"I'm serious," James said. "You don't set up right. Hell, you don't even steady yourself before you let the cue fly."

He slid off the stool, depositing his bottle on the bar as he did. He moved to the head of the table, not even laying his hands on it, just standing there. He said, "You're gonna try a couple things. One, actually get down there and see your shot, don't just take a stab at it. Two, count to three before you shoot."

Jack bent over the table, making a good show at trying to line the shot up properly, which wasn't particularly easy to do with a fourth beer in his system. Still leaned over, forearms on the railing, he turned his head and looked up at him. "We could just play darts. I'm good at darts."

"So am I."

Jack smiled and reluctantly lined up his shot again, then he counted out loud, "One, two, three."

He tapped the cue ball decisively, and it felt like a good shot, but the four didn't fall into the corner. It did, however, clatter through most of the rest of the balls on the table before dribbling into the side pocket-which was not at all that one at which he'd been aiming.

James rubbed his hand over the stubble on his chin, the rasping sound like a part of his appraisal of Jack's demeanor. Then he pulled the ball back out of the pocket and put it on the spot in the center of the table. "Three, don't try to smart ass any of it or the balls will know."

"They will?" he said with a skeptical grin.

"They're like dogs," he groused. "Or kids." James regarded him rather seriously for a moment, then he grinned, the kind of smile that could warm a person from the inside out. "You just don't have the right amount of control."

Like a hand reached in and squeezed at his chest, Jack felt something tighten his heart then let go, leaving it thumping hard against the inside of his ribs once, twice; and he knew all at once that he was in more trouble than he'd even bothered to realize he could be in, not down here. Surely not down here, away from everything familiar, where he should have even more power over his crazy emotions and hormones.

He mumbled, "You have no idea."

James just raised one eyebrow and picked up the other cue. "You mind if I knock a few around?"

Jack nodded. Playing him couldn't be as bad as him scrutinizing his every move.

They played several games of eight ball for the next hour or so-slowly. James was apparently either not as good a player as teacher or purposefully not taking things very seriously. He did, however, seem to take time to set up his shots, perhaps out of habit, and consequently he beat Jack in every game, eventually.

Not that the score mattered. At least they were playing as though it didn't. After that initial lesson, they talked about everything but pool, except when Jack would stand back from the table and look at James, silently asking his advice, and James would cock his head to the side, studying things before he spit out a number.

Jack was a competitive person, and he knew, somehow, that James was too. Perhaps that's why they very pointedly didn't talk about the games or put much effort into them. That way it wouldn't mean anything. Every so often, James would get this gleam in his eye, and when Jack sunk a shot, he felt a momentary surge of pride, but he knew that they were really just walking around the table, doing something with their hands while they drank beer and got to know each other.

Jack was used to intense discussions about politics in corner booths or lazy, lolling conversations about nothing as he lay on the floor, high. He was not at all used to a dialogue that seemed to wind tighter and tighter into itself, that brought the two of them steadily closer, like two cats circling each other, even when the things they talked about were casual, their tones mostly quiet, except for the occasional outburst.

Like when Jack mentioned something about his car off hand, and James nearly choked on his beer.

"You drive a Chevelle?"

"Yeah. I mean, I didn't drive it here. But I have one. It's not new or anything." James was looking at him like he was an alien, so he added, "And it's kind of a…mess."

"Still," James said. "Have you seen what they've done with them now?"

"Haven't had the chance to look inside one yet, but-"

"You work on cars?"

"I don't know very much, but yeah. I helped my friend Marc rebuild the engine on mine, which is the only reason I've got that car, by the way. A friend of my father's gave it up for dead. Turns out it just needed someone to treat it properly, work out some kinks."

"You like fixing cars?"

He shrugged. "I like fixing anything I can."

"That's funny. Me, I was always one to take stuff apart. Still do sometimes. Toasters. Telephones. The reason I ask about the car… I work at an auto shop part time."

"Yeah?"

"Change oil, mostly. Brake pads, that kind of thing."

"Sounds nice."

"It's messy work. But, yeah, I've played around with some impressive machinery."

"What else do you do?"

"Clean the school," he mumbled. "Used to do some roofing."

"I bet that's fun," he said with a grimace.

"Only if you can't take the weather. Otherwise, it's kinda nice being on top of a house. Peaceful. It's not so bad working with your hands. Gives a man's mind time to do what it needs to."

"Yeah," he said with a nod. "What made you stop?"

"Long story."

James frowned to himself, then he smiled enigmatically and went back to the game. Jack watched his lanky frame drape over the table as he sunk the fifteen, then he walked around the table and methodically put in the last two stripes. Serious playing, finally. It was impressive to watch.

James took aim at the eight, to win the game, with the ball poised just off the rail halfway between the corner pockets. He called the nearer of the two. It was a scratch shot, just as likely to send the cue ball into the opposite pocket as it was to sink the eight, and if Jack saw it, there was no way James couldn't have. But he took the shot anyway, and the black ball slammed neatly into the pocket he'd called. However, the cue ball also whipped into the other pocket-a scratch; James had lost the game.

He lay his cue on the table with a controlled snap and scowled. Jack could almost feel James shutting down into himself, the charged but easy flow of words and expressions between them all but stopped. James strode back over to the bar and picked up his beer, downing the rest of it in one long gulp.

"I hate to win that way," Jack said finally.

"Well, I hate to lose that way," he replied, his voice almost a bark. "You mind if we get out of here?"

"Okay," Jack said.

Then his stomach dropped for no reason he could make sense of. If he was honest with himself, it was because he would have rather been there, engaged in this push and pull, even dealing with James's sudden turn to a bad mood, than reentering the world of bullshit and stoners. But he wasn't quite honest with himself; he told himself he'd simply had too much beer on an empty stomach. There had to be a reason for this vague feeling of dis-ease and disorientation.

Jack nodded, as if to himself. He said, "Yeah. I've got…a lot of meetings and things tomorrow. Early. Placate the student government and all. Should probably go back."

James's cool blue gaze dug into him, flipped up along his jawline and settled in his eyes. "Oh," he said quietly.

"What?"

"I don't know. I didn't mean-- I just thought maybe it would be nice to get some air, do some more walking. I'm feeling restless tonight."

James's eyes weren't imploring him at all-in fact, they were working so hard not to that Jack could see something dark and wild in his expression-and that's probably why Jack just nodded his head and followed him out the door, pausing just outside the threshold to take off his tie and put it into his pocket.

The negro man was gone, and there was a feeling in the air that he was sure meant rain, even though the stars were still twinkling far above the streetlights.

*****

Jack was drunk.

He wasn't sure how it happened, but the more he walked, the drunker he felt. Not rip-roaring drunk, not even the sort where he said things he didn't meant to. (He'd always been able to think quite clearly, even when he was quite intoxicated.) He was just physically a little off balance, and it didn't at all help matters that he could no longer avoid the realization that he wanted to latch onto James and not let go.

He wasn't sure what he wanted out of him, although whatever it was would be impossible. At first he thought he wanted to lean into him just to steady himself, but he knew he really longed to hold James down and taste him, lick his tongue up over the stubble on his jaw or suck at the soft skin on his strong, tanned wrists. Or maybe it was about wanting James to steady him, because some part of him wanted James to hold him down, too, and do with him what he would.

But that part was never allowed to be in control of Dr. Christian Shephard's son, wayward as he might be. Actually, he was not, in reality, as wayward as his parents or any of their friends suspected. If he'd fooled around with guys before-and he had, once or twice-it was never about actually wanting them much as it was proving he could, proving he wasn't backward or afraid.

It didn't mean he didn't freak himself out in the aftermath, as something like self-loathing mixed with confusion went coursing through him, when he let himself think about the implications of what he'd done. The actuality of it, though, left him more curiously bewildered than ashamed. And being able to kiss those guys didn't mean he didn't wonder if the only reason he might be attracted to the same sex was because it would be the only thing that could make his father more angry than him being the NSA president, supposedly in cahoots with people who might very well be communists. Certainly not good democrats.

But one thing he knew: he wasn't speaking out against the war because of his fucking father.

Christian Shephard, he felt sure, would not appreciate drunkenly walking down this empty residential street, watching the night sky rise up in front of him as he and James skirted the campus and all its noise and headed down toward the river. (Christian Shephard preferred to get drunk in the privacy of his own home, and he never saw much he liked to look at when he was.) Christian Shephard would look at James and dismiss him as a small-town hick. Jack could feel a part of his father inside of him insisting the same thing, asking him serious questions about sanity and safety and why? and how? and what are you searching for down there, out there? That was the perpetual question in his father's eyes, every time he let himself go out to the house anymore. But tonight it might have been, what do you want out of this strange, reticent man?

Truth was, he didn't really know, but he wouldn't have stopped walking for the world.

They couldn't see the river. Even if they'd been able to walk close enough to it to look down its banks, everything would be merely darkly brown, subtle glints of light flashing with the slip and rush of the water. He knew it wasn't a pretty river (he'd passed it coming in), so he was rather glad to simply hear it; it comforted him in some odd way to know it was there. It made the pinching in his feet from the dress shoes he wore bearable. It wasn't like they were walking very fast, anyway, not that Jack could tell-he was in a bit of a haze, and the cool, heavy breeze over his skin was the only thing that penetrated. He watched a strange gloom of obtuse clouds edge in on the stars, but it felt like an empty threat, somehow, as if it couldn't possibly rain on a night like this. And then there were James's piercing eyes when he turned and commented about some aspect of the campus or the town that was actually worth knowing, and Jack found it hard to turn away and stop looking at him.

He felt happily unstable, something so internal it didn't show in the way he moved. He wondered if he'd been flirting with James all night. He didn't know. He wasn't sure he knew what flirting was, not with men; he did know that if it was good it required both people to do it. That settled it. That more than settled it, actually, because Jack held his breath, stomach tight against his diaphragm as he walked; he knew exactly where he stood: even so much as laying his eyes over the man's body the way he wanted to would be…

Not down here. Not anywhere, really, but certainly not with this man.

James strode beside him, those long legs falling in step with his own, and Jack felt like maybe his father would be right; this was foolish, a little dangerous. Things were too possible. Since they'd stepped into that alleyway earlier, James had smiled a sort of smile at him that didn’t come from humoring a person. It came from evaluating and appraising, accepting. Sometimes, guys like this didn't even know what they felt. Jack hadn't known it about himself for years, only recognized it looking back. Still, it boiled down to this: if James had a fucking clue how possible it was for Jack to stop right now and kiss him like he meant it-even if the more true and possible it was, the less likely it became-it could mean nothing but something really, really ugly. These were violent people, especially when you spat on their certainties about the universe, when you tried to push them into doing something their guts told them was wrong.

Jack kept walking, watching his feet, counting his steps. He had seen his father look condescendingly on a negro doctor at the hospital once, and it had made him sick, even as he knew his father would never do anything more than coldly frown. Faced with something as aberrant as homosexuality, even his son's, he'd manage himself similarly, keep himself so under control that no one in the world would fault him. They should, but they wouldn't.

They might not even fault a man like James, either, for reacting the way he'd been taught to. This man he walked beside would probably break his jaw if he knew the sorts of things Jack was thinking. Jack would find himself falling here, on the cold shoulder of this dark road, the river dark below him, swirling silent and sinister, speaking out how Jack was really, after all, pretty fucked up.

Jack shivered as the wind cut into him, as the last patch of stars were finally obscured by the clouds. This was crazy, and he wasn't sure what worried him more: that James could be capable of that sort of quick and thoughtless violence, or that he himself even believed it possible, here where the silence threaded between them and weaved itself around them so comfortably and James seemed much more stable than any of his friends at home. Complex; maybe a little difficult. But real.

Startling him out of his thoughts, James suddenly motioned to a road that cut up through campus. "We should head back that way before it rains on us."

"You think it will?"

"Uh huh."

James followed the curve of the sidewalk, and Jack followed him. Just hearing James's smooth voice started to work at loosening the knot of fear in Jack's gut, and he was halfway ashamed of himself for being paranoid.

He found, as they walked, that he began to see the campus through James's eyes-the eyes of a person who saw this place as from the outside, which apparently made for an odd combination of cynicism and romanticism. James spoke derisively of the students but never for a moment lost this particular look on his face, like he was passing through these grounds without his feet actually coming in contact with the concrete, as though he knew he didn't belong and didn't begrudge it. It was funny, but Jack felt the same way just then, the alcohol muffling him up into himself, so that he floated outside the scene, like he could watch the two of them walking, and they looked like they belonged to each other but not to the world they walked in.

What impressed Jack the most was how James might've been clearly out of place on the campus, but he was still so comfortable in his own skin. Jack loved the way he moved, and it was only partially about the tenuously held lust he had for him. James's movements were circumscribed, reigned in, even as they were smooth and sure. He gave off the impression of a person doing that kids' party game, balancing an egg on a spoon in front of him, trying to keep it from falling and cracking open. Except this person pinched a cigarette in the other hand and swayed in a way that made that continuing balance, restraint, seem exceptional.

Jack had always been a watcher. It was the easiest way to be when your life was built up with fitting in-into your family, your lifestyle, your group of friends, your small bubble of the world. Even when Jack began to travel after his graduation, he still spent most of his time watching. Jack had been the master at absorbing and adapting, but when it came time for him to step up and direct his own life, finally, he didn’t really know how to do it.

Somewhere along the way, he stopped watching, and he wondered now, as he followed James down these concrete paths through short, neat grass, if that was such a good thing. Maybe he should be watching more. Or maybe he just yearned for it now because it was easier than being himself sometimes. Tonight, he felt like he could forever watch James walk and listen to him rattle on, loose and snide, about this complicated world that stacked up in brick buildings all around the both of them now, pressing them out, drawing them in.

James stopped suddenly, to cup his hand around a match and get it to stay lit.

As he moved on, he said, "I'd've never believed you were this quiet."

"Quiet?"

"Ain't said a word since"-he spun and pointed at the courtyard between the buildings they'd passed through a couple blocks back-"way back yonder." James's accent thickened and his vocabulary seemed to fall into entropy as the night progressed. Jack was beginning to find it rather charming.

"Maybe I haven't been able to get a word in edgewise," he said with what he hoped was the right sort of smile. It was.

After a moment, James said, "Maple Court, yeah?"

"Where I'm staying?"

"Yeah." After a pause, he said, "You know, it still don't make any damn sense to me."

"What?"

"How come your daddy hates what you're doing so much, but your rich friends on Maple Court don't seem to mind you being the champion of the long-hairs?"

"I'm not the 'champion of the long-hairs.' A lot of them just happen to agree with me is all. And you've gotta stop assuming how much money a person makes has anything to do with what he believes."

"But doesn't it?"

"Sometimes. For my parents' generation. But ours is-"

"Ours?"

"Yeah." James looked at him skeptically, so he added, "You're only what? Four, five years younger than me? Don't act like you live on another planet or something. We're both young Americans living in a problematic era, dealing with the same shit."

"Shit?" he said with a giggle. "You sound so damn funny spitting out curses, you know."

"Why?"

"Because you say 'shit' in the same breath as 'problematic era.'"

"Sorry."

"Not a problem. You just forget you're not on stage sometimes, don't you?"

He shrugged, trying to keep the blood from rising to his face.

James added, "I'm not saying that's horrible. But sometimes it seems like you've got more idealism than you do sense."

"Wait a minute. Earlier, you were accusing me of trying to destroy this country. Now I'm idealistic?"

"I didn't say your ideas were right, did I?"

"Whatever."

"Yeah, whatever. You've got eyes that sort of look around wide as saucers, you know? Funny thing is, you see just what you want to see, and you think you can fix things with big phrases like 'Our Generation' and 'America' and other things you just don’t…"

"What?" Jack said.

"Nevermind."

Jack let it go. He didn't want to, but he did. This thing between them, this odd camaraderie, wasn't all that easy, certainly not easy enough to risk fracturing it suddenly. The evening had sprung from honesty, back when it wasn't a threat, when they didn't know each other, but things had changed. He didn't know when, precisely, but he knew he wouldn't go back. He liked knowing him. He'd learned to like having someone to bounce ideas off of, who forced him to have ideas of his own.

In Marc's garage or on the patio at his parents' house, they had talked for hours about politics and baseball and God only remembers what else, and they spent so much time arguing about the world that they could do it by shorthand, in waves of their hands or slaps of their palms against a fender or a glass table, rattling the umbrella in the center. They could argue so loudly they kept his parents awake, or so quietly because they were almost dead on their feet. Sometimes, they argued with smiles on their faces and until they either collapsed with laughter or the discussion just dissipated, leaving them behind, looking at each other and probably making more sense of each other than anyone else in their lives could.

It could be good, knowing a person like that, but when Jack thought about the possibility of knowing James that way, it almost made him laugh out loud. It shouldn't have; it was actually far less crazy than thinking about wanting to touch him. James wasn't Marc-not by a long shot-but there was something about the way Jack was around him, how his brain just settled, all the cogs sliding into place so they could turn and fly, that he felt had to be about the man himself and not the kind of ghosts his laughter brought forth. Surely it couldn't be that Jack was simply seeing what he wanted to see.

Whatever it was, he was more than a little crazy to be overanalyzing things so much when he would get on a plane the next evening and never, ever dream of coming back.

He was almost back to his friends' house, then, and it suddenly felt like there were too many things to say.

"What you were saying before…" Jack started. "You still think I'm full of shit. Empty words."

"You don't mean to be."

"But you think I am?"

"I didn't take you out drinking to get in your business."

"I know that. But I wanna hear what you think."

James sighed, then he said, "I think life is a hell of a lot more complicated than you make it out to be. Like…well, in your speech. You can't just tell students to start protesting when they don't like something. They don't like anything."

"They hate the war."

"Some of them. But protesting the war ain't gonna do nothing, either."

"But you do think it's a bad war?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"What I said."

"See, I think you do know. And that's what I don't get. I don't understand why some people don't like what we're doing over there, but they won't say the war's bad."

"It's not that simple."

"It is for me."

"Well, I'd love to be you, then, inside your head where things are black and white. I really would."

"That's what's crazy, you know. I thought you people-"

"Lord, here's the 'you people' again."

Jack huffed out a breath, rubbing his hands over his face. "I really thought that people down here divided the world into black and white. I mean metaphorically, not…racially, although that works, too. The way the south always look in the national news… I though you put everything into neat categories so you could understand them, and you do, and that's why you're just a little nuts." James started a little at that word, but he was still rather stoically listening. "Everything in this world is shades of gray anymore, but it's like you turn a blind eye to that."

"I don't."

"Then, fine, I'm talking about some southerners, then. Like that." He gestured to one of the many Confederate flags he'd seen hanging over front doors, in windows, in the next second hoping to God had hadn't just committed some incredible blasphemy without even thinking about it.

"Confederate flag," James said, apparently unfazed.

"I know what it is. What I don't know is why you all still hang them. You lost."

James's forehead creased, but he stuttered out a sardonic laugh. "We do realize that."

"Do you?"

"You think we're sitting down here waiting for the south to rise again?"

"Are you?"

"I'm not."

"Then why keep this thing around?"

James was quiet for a moment, and Jack listened to the sounds of their shoes slapping the sidewalk. James said, "It's not about winners or losers. It's about people. My great-great-grandfather died in that war."

"So?"

James's eyes went a little darker, but he sighed, gathering his thoughts before he stopped and stared into Jack's eyes, pausing so long it made Jack nervous. He could hear the beat of his heart pounding in his ears.

James finally said, "Do you think there's anything worthwhile about Alabama?"

"Sure."

"Don’t just say it if you don't mean it."

"No, no. This…" He gestured all around him, the old homes with their carefully manicured gardens. "This is beautiful. I'm sure you've got an interesting culture down here."

James snorted. "Interesting. Yeah. You don't have a fucking clue what it's like to be down here. Maybe I don't love everything we do, but we're good people. We have traditions that mean a hell of a lot to us. What's wrong with wanting to remember that my state of our beautiful country doesn't just boil down to a bunch of stubborn, violent people-probably even my sainted great-great-grandfather-who thought women should be seen and not heard and negroes were like cattle? Is it just possible that there's more to this place than all that?"

"Yeah. It's obviously not that easy to disentangle."

"Damn right it’s not."

Jack half spun and gestured back toward the house with the flag again. "But that's why you can't support…crazy things just because you want to support the people doing them." He sighed, exasperated. "I'm not even sure you can support those people if you don't respect the things they stand for."

James opened his mouth, then he closed it. "Why are we talking politics?" he said through gritted teeth.

"You started it."

"Well, I'll finish it, then, because I really don't feel like doing this right now with you."

"Why?"

"You crazy?" he said. But his own eyes looked more crazy than Jack's possibly could. "Either you don't know where you are or you don't know me."

"I don't know you."

James gave him a hard look and walked on ahead of him, and all at once Jack felt pure driving adrenaline turn to shakiness and nerves. He watched James take a couple of drags, blowing the smoke toward his feet. Then he threw his cigarette on the ground and whirled around, apparently shocked to find Jack still standing where he'd left him.

James said: "You're gonna stand there and tell me you don't care what's happening to our boys in Vietnam?"

Vietnam? Jack thought. His mind had all but left that topic. The implications began to claw their way into his chest. "That's not what I said." His heart made an insistent throb of panic.

"Sounded like."

"I said I don’t like what they're doing and I don't like the war. I never said I don't care about people dying."

"You can't just separate them out." He gestured with his hand toward the house with the flag again. "Didn't you just say that not two minutes ago? It doesn't make any damn sense. What do you want? For them to stop fighting? The minute they do, they die."

"I know that."

"You obviously don't. You can't just sit here and hope they'll all lay down their arms. They won't. And you can't say, 'Gee whiz, I want our soldiers to be happy and healthy, but I don't want them to raise a gun and defend themselves.'"

"But it's not defense. We're the ones bombing the hell out of the country."

"Maybe we should be."

"Jesus Christ," Jack muttered.

James stepped toward him again. "I just don't know, Jack. I don't. But I know you can't make it harder for our country to fight this war-"

"I'm not-"

"-with your protests and-"

"But I'm not-"

"-and then get up on some high horse about giving a damn about the soldiers over there."

"That's why I do protest. To make things better for them."

"Well, all I see you accomplishing is making their lives more difficult. They're sitting over there thinking about people like you back home with the luxury of dodging the draft who think people like them, who are trying to do what's best for the world, are crazy or just plain evil."

"No…" he said, his voice croaking out a desperate note of warning.

James's eyes went wide, and he shook his head as he said, "You are the dumb son of a bitch that's getting them killed."

Jack's breath caught in his throat and his voice was a rasp he didn't even recognize: "Shut the fuck up," he said, then his feet were moving and his hands flew out ahead of him, catching James's shoulders. But James caught one of Jack's wrists in his hand, and their combined weight threw them off balance. They landed with a dull thud in somebody's neat front yard, Jack half on top of him with his hands still clutching at James's shoulders and neck, feeling the heat rising off him.

"Shit," Jack said with a huff of breath, already in a confusion of anger and apology.

At nearly the same time, James looked up at him and murmured, "Fuck."

For that split second, Jack looked down into James's eyes, now a deep stormy green, but that was all he got before James jerked under him and he felt a flash of pain through his nose. He was almost simultaneously shoved off onto cool grass, his dress shoes dragging against the sidewalk as he rolled onto his back and clutched at his face.

He finally felt it-a mist of rain that fell over his face and hands as he watched James push himself to his feet and go back in the direction he'd come, shaking his hand at his side. Jack had a hard head. He would have laughed if he could breathe.

His face felt like something was broken. He was unwilling to get up, even though he was embarrassed at the thought that somebody might have seen that and might still be watching. Hell, somebody might call the cops. But more than anything, though, he was disoriented, physically and in some deep down place he couldn't identify yet.

Jack turned his head the other direction, away from James's retreating form, and saw his pack of cigarettes lying on the ground. The first full drop of rain hit him in the temple and coursed down into his eye. He sat up slowly, the pounding in his face unbearably hot.

"Jesus," he muttered, lowering his head to his knees and groping out with his hands. The matches were with the pack, but they had fallen open, too damp to strike. So he got up and walked down to the corner, trying to figure out how just far he was from where he was supposed to be.

on to part three-->

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