Fic: Long Distance Call Rated PG-13 pt. 2 of 2
all info in part 1.
But because they both deserve another mention!
Thanks to caersmane for the beta and danceswithgary for the art!
You're fantastic ladies! Lots of love to you both!
“You look like shit.” Ronon said when John climbed into his truck.
“Yeah, but I feel better than I have in ten years.” John said as he pulled the door closed and fastened his belt snugly around himself.
“There a reason?” Ronon asked as he resettled his thermos of coffee between them.
“Just got a call from an old friend last night. It has me feeling good about life.”
“Yeah? Well that’s good, cause the way your life is going right now, you’ll be out of a job in a month, tops.”
“Doesn’t matter, Ronon. None of that matters anymore; I’m going to change my life.”
Ronon looked at John suspiciously. “You sure you’re alright man? You’re acting weird this morning.”
“I’m fine, Ronon, let’s just go.”
Ronon shrugged and pulled out of the lot.
After Rodney died, John had done everything short of killing himself to join him. That ‘immortal sin’ the Catholic church had drummed into him kept flashing in his mind and he could never bring himself to take his own life and risk not going where ever Rodney had gone. But his driving had turned reckless and he’d had accident after accident, although none of them too serious. But two years ago his license had been revoked, forcing him to depend on public transportation and rides with friends.
His dad had left him enough money when he died so that John didn’t have to work, but he did simply to keep from going crazy, from sitting in the apartment and letting his brain rot away. Going to work every day had become a habit. But his performance had never been more than satisfactory, and lately it hadn’t even been that.
Ronon dropped John off in front of the building he worked in and told him he’d pick him up at three.
John went into the building and took the elevator up to the fourteenth floor, for the first time since he had started working here he didn’t wish the cable would snap and the brakes would fail. He slid into his cubical, rubbed his finger over the frame that held a picture of him and Rodney, and turned on the computer. He put on his headset, and pulled up the file with the day’s numbers, and called the first.
“Hello, Mrs. Sherman,” he said dryly, “My name is John and I have an amazing deal to offer you…”
She hung up on him and he dialed the next number.
“Hello, Mr. Weston, my name is John and I have an amazing deal to offer you this morning…”
After the fourth hang up John found himself staring at the picture of him and Rodney. He put his hands on the phone and dialed the number. “We’re sorry, the number you have reached has been disconnected…”
John felt the strength drain out of his body and his head fell back against the chair. His mouth had started watering and his stomach was churning.
“Sheppard,” John’s boss said from the opening in his cubical. “You gonna work today or-”
John threw himself out of the chair and hit the floor, leaning over the trash can just as he began throwing up.
“Go home, Sheppard. Come back tomorrow if you’re feeling better.” Johnson said.
John paid the cab driver and went up to his apartment, back to wishing for broken cables and failed brakes; he got a beer out of the refrigerator and flopped down on the couch, and picked up the phone to call Ronon. He gave him the barest explanation he could, saying he didn’t need a ride home that afternoon.
He dropped the phone on his chest and felt his eyes slipping closed, and he didn’t fight it.
The phone rang three times before John’s eyes fluttered open. He didn’t want to pick up the phone, but if it was Ronon and John didn’t answer he’d just come over. He picked up the phone and turned it on.
“Yeah?” he said.
“John, Jack… John…”
“Rodney?” John sat up, his heart thudding painfully in his chest.
“Yeah, your uh- your number was on the caller ID so I thought I’d return your call. You know, from having to cut it short last night?”
John was quiet for a moment as the realization that he was talking to Rodney again sank in. “Right,” he said quickly, making up for the seconds he’d just wasted. “Well that’s okay; I understood why you had to go. Thanks for calling me back.”
“No problem. Did I wake you up? You sounded like you were sleeping.”
“Oh uh- no, well, I had kind of dozed on the couch but I had to get up anyway.”
“Oh, you busy?”
“No,” John said nonchalantly.
“Good. You know, it’s strange.”
“What is?”
“I don’t usually talk to people. It’s weird that I even thought about calling you back.”
John swallowed the rocks that had formed in his throat. “It’s cool, you know. So uh- what are you majoring in?”
“I’m going for my second doctorate. Theoretical astrophysics.”
“Yeah? That sounds cool.”
“You’re the first person to think so.”
“No, there’s someone else out there who would think so.”
“Oh yeah? What, do you have a crystal ball?” John could hear the disdain on Rodney’s voice, but also a touch of wistfulness.
“No, just really good intuition.” He couldn’t keep the smile off his face as the conversation continued, as each word brought him closer to telling Rodney the one thing he wanted to say.
“And when will I meet this person?” There was humor in his voice now, warmth that John had missed so much.
“April 1, 1993.” John answered without thinking, but mentally kicked himself after the words were out.
“Really? Three months from now?”
John felt his stomach flip. Three months, there were only three months until they met. He’d have to work fast… and cover up the mistake he’d just made.
“Yeah well, you know, that’s just an estimated date.”
The conversation went on for a couple of hours before John heard someone calling to Rodney in the background.
“Someday soon I’ll be done with school and able to get out of my parents’ house,” Rodney groaned.
“Yeah, me too.” John said, keeping with his cover. “I’ll uh- call you tomorrow?”
“Sure, I don’t have class until afternoon on Tuesdays so call early or I’ll call you or… something.”
John laughed. “Take it easy, Rodney.”
“Yeah you too, John.”
He waited for the click, “I love you,” he said again.
~*~
John called out of work for the next two days, and when he called in on the third day he quit. He asked Ronon if he wouldn’t mind picking up the picture of him and Rodney, and Ronon had delivered it that afternoon.
When John realized that the phone worked both ways, and that it was only his phone that could call Rodney and receive calls from him, he knew he had to be by it all the time. He ordered take out, taking the cordless phone with him to the door when it was delivered.
There were a few days when Rodney hadn’t called, and when John called him, that his mother had said he was busy, or at school, or out. John’s stomach ached on those days, and as this was before he and Rodney had met, there was no telling what was going on. What had Rodney left out of his life story over the years that he and John had spent together?
John kept picturing Rodney with the beaten face Kevin had given him, and the distorted face the accident had given him. He tried to keep the image of Rodney’s lifeless body out of his mind, but on those days when Rodney didn’t call, that seemed to be the only image of him John could recall.
Jeanie had continued to call him once or twice a month, just to see how he was holding up, but he cut the conversations short each time telling her that he was waiting for an important phone call.
More often than not over the month that he and Rodney had been talking he found himself fingering the two gold bands that still hung around his neck.
He’d stopped sleeping except when exhaustion made it impossible to stay awake any longer, but every time he closed his eyes he saw Rodney lying in an empty bed alone, and he’d wish that he was there to wrap him in his arms and kiss him and make love to him through the night.
Sometimes, usually when he was in the shower, he’d see Rodney’s face in the steam fogged mirror, and he’d jerk off to the memories of them making love.
~*~
“So, Rodney,” John asked, “What’s going on tonight?”
John had no idea how it could be June where he was and April where Rodney was, but then in what reality could it be possible for he and Rodney to talk at all? And it was drawing near the date he and Rodney would meet setting his nerves on edge.
“Oh, I’ve got this blind date tonight,” Rodney said almost dismissively. “Jeanie set it up, because she thinks I need to get out of the house. Laura, you know, the girl I was seeing…”
“Yeah…” John said as he sat straighter on the couch, gripping the phone a little tighter in his hand.
“Well, it seems that after I introduced her to sex she wanted to do it with every guy on the football team.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, well, I’m better off without a girl like that.”
“You most certainly are. Where is this blind date?” It was difficult for him not to tell Rodney to just leave now, show up early, but he kept himself under control.
“Alberto’s, it’s a fancy Italian restaurant. Hope the girl’s a babe.”
“Yeah, just, you know… go into it with an open mind. You never know what you might find.” John pushed up off the couch and began pacing the length of it. The fingers of the hand that weren’t holding the phone were drumming against his thigh.
“Yeah, well I should probably start getting ready.”
“Yeah. Hey, call me tonight after the date. I’ve got loads of work to do so I’ll be up. Just… give me a call.”
“Okay, John. Later.”
“Later, Rodney.” Again John waited for the click, then he professed his love to a silent line.
John watched the clock, reliving the date in his head. Some of the details were a little fuzzy, but he remembered that while the conversation had been casual, it hadn’t been comfortable, not at first. But it hadn’t taken either of them long to loosen up and John had stopped thinking of their time at that table as a failed April fool’s day joke. One detail he remembered with absolute clarity was the sounds Rodney had made when he ate his chocolate pie. He remembered how the air had chilled by the time they got out of the restaurant, and how they’d walked close together as they headed for the coffee shop, the backs of their hands brushing from time to time. He remembered every taste of the coffee, every song that lightly played on the radio in the background; he hadn’t even registered the radio then but his memory had.
Twenty minutes after they separated in John’s mind, the phone rang.
“Hello?” John asked as if he didn’t know who was on the line.
“Ready for that break?” Rodney asked, he sounded happy.
“You bet. So, how’d it go?”
“It was unusual.”
“Bad?” John hoped that Rodney hadn’t thought so, that he hadn’t needed convincing all those years ago.
“No, no not bad at all. It just wasn’t what I expected.”
“Was the girl a dog?” John asked, playing along.
“No, gorgeous. Um… I mean, it wasn’t a girl. Turned out Jeanie’s boyfriend and some of his friends decided to play a double April fool’s joke on me and some other poor guy.”
“Oh… no.” John became aware that he was chewing on his lower lip only when he bit a little too hard.
“No, he was cool. I was going to leave but he suggested we just have dinner; you know… make the joke backfire. We weren’t calling it a date. Just two people who had never met, having dinner.”
John smiled; hearing those words from Rodney made his heart flutter. They had become a constant thing in their relationship, some words were exchanged for others, but the meaning remained the same. “So how was it?”
“It was nice. I didn’t expect it to be, but it was really nice. He’s got a brother, his dad owns a ranch and has horses, he’s majoring in mathematics, and he’s a really good guy. We went for coffee after.”
“Sounds like that guy really made an impression on you.” He closed his eyes and imagined the look on Rodney’s face at that moment, something he didn’t have a memory for.
“Yeah, he did. And I’m only going to say this because you’ve already told me you were bi-curious, but… for the first time in my life, I could see myself with a guy. I think he felt the same thing. He almost called it a date at the end.”
Even though Rodney still wasn’t with him in his time, John’s heart was warmed at the fact that Rodney had picked up on his feelings at the end of their date. “Really? Wow, sounds like a match made in heaven.”
“I thought about you once tonight.”
“You did?” John’s eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed as he sat forward on the couch. He hoped that talking to Rodney hadn’t messed up what they had.
“Yeah, I told him I was majoring in theoretical astrophysics, and he thought it was interesting.”
“And that made you think of me?” John closed his eyes and said a silent prayer.
“Yeah, when we first started talking on the phone, you said someone would find it interesting. I asked when I’d meet them and you said April 1, 1993.”
“Holy shit, I did!” John feigned shock.
Rodney laughed. “You were in and out of my head in a heartbeat, no offence; he had my attention the rest of the night.”
“No offence taken. This great guy have a name?”
“Sheppard. John Sheppard.”
John’s heart skipped a beat.
“Look, John, I’m pretty tired so I’m going to let you get back to work. I’ll call you later.”
“Okay,”
“We can figure out if you’re psychic or something.”
John couldn’t stop the laugh that came out, it may have been a little too big for the situation but his relief was bubbling over. “Yeah, there’s a game coming up right? Maybe I can predict the winner, we could get rich.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to try it out on something a little less risky though.”
“Right.”
“Night, John.”
“Night, Rodney.”
John had always wondered what had been going through Rodney’s head that night, and now he knew.
John had gone home, drank a beer and went to bed thinking of Rodney. Rodney had been right when he assumed that John felt the same thing. John had never pictured himself with a guy before, but that night he had seen himself living happily ever after with Rodney McKay at his side.
The next day John had hounded Kevin to find out who Jeanie’s boyfriend was. He told Kevin that he and Rodney had had a good time, laughing at the joke and getting along as friends. He found the guy, had gotten Rodney’s number and a week later had the nerve to call him.
They were just friends at first, then they were pretending to be just friends to everyone else, but when they were alone, they were expanding the boundaries of their friendship finding out the differences in regards to making out with a man as opposed to a woman. They both knew what it felt like to get a blow job, and three months after they were together, they both knew what it felt like to give a blow job as well. The first time had been sloppy and inexperienced; John had gagged himself when he got a little too eager to please. Rodney ordered gay porn over the internet and had it shipped to John. Most of it was awful and they laughed through it more than learned from it, but there were a few that were decent and they did pick up a few pointers. They eventually realized that gay porn wasn’t where they needed to learn how to be gay, and decided to just go with it; they’d get better with time. And they had.
~*~
John knew that their time was never guaranteed and that the line could stop working at any moment. He never expected to get a warning that it would happen, so when the line crackled one day, John took it as the sign that he needed to get the show on the road.
John had been blessed with a year of phone conversations with his former lover, and whether or not his plan worked, he was going to cherish them.
“Guess what.” Rodney said.
“What?” John asked.
“John and I are moving in together.”
“Yeah? That’s fantastic.” John was really enjoying getting a glimpse at their early years through Rodney’s perspective. He’d known when he asked Rodney to move in with him that Rodney was excited, but hearing Rodney tell him, as Jack Winston Harris, about it made him realize just how excited Rodney had been.
“Yeah, we looked at this really nice place today.”
“I’m really happy for you, Rodney.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, you remember how I told you that you’d meet John on the first of April in ’93?”
“Yeah.”
“I was right.”
“Yeah,” Rodney said tentatively.
“Well, then we went through those exercises, and sometimes I got them and sometimes I didn’t.”
“Yeah, John what are you going on about.”
John swallowed audibly and pressed on. He knew that Rodney could think he’d lost his mind at any moment and hang up on him, but this was something he had to do. He couldn’t afford to put it off any longer. “Remember that I said I got flashes, that something would just pop into my head, and it was after that happened that I got the answer right.”
“Yeah.” Rodney was getting aggravated at the cryptic conversation and John could hear it in his voice.
John took a deep breath and decided to just go for it. “Well I got one last night, Rodney; it’s awhile from now though so you’ll have to remember it.”
“Okay,” Rodney said impatiently.
“No Rodney, promise me that no matter what happens you’ll remember.” His fist was clenched and he slammed it against his knee to emphasize the urgency.
“I promise.” Rodney’s voice had softened a bit.
“On April first 1999, you’re going to forget some papers you’re supposed to grade.”
“I’m going to be a teacher?” Rodney asked amused.
“Dammit, Rodney listen to me!” John snapped.
“Sorry.”
“It’s important, Rodney please.”
“Okay, John, I’m sorry.” Rodney’s voice had gone flat.
“You’re going to want to go back to get the papers but, Rodney you have to promise me that you won’t. Either don’t forget the papers or don’t go back for them. You’ll be in a bad accident on Bluff Road and on the 5th, you’ll die. Rodney…”
“John, that’s really creepy.”
“I know but… please, Rodney. Remember, write it down or something, put it somewhere you won’t forget it. April 1, 1999 do not leave the house. Please.”
“Alright, John. I promise.”
~*~
~September 29, 2010 ~
John sat straight up out of the first sound sleep he’d gotten in a long time. The difference between his time and Rodney’s had hit him like a ton of bricks as he’d slept. He grabbed the phone and dialed the number.
“Hello?”
“Rodney! Lock the door!”
“John?”
“Lock the goddamn door, Rodney!”
John heard the dead bolt turn over and a moment later he heard pounding on the door.
“It’s Kevin.” Rodney whispered into the phone.
“Don’t open the door, Rodney.”
“John what’s going on?”
“He’s pissed. He’ll beat the hell out of you if you open that door. John will be home in awhile and he’ll handle Kevin, you stay inside.”
“Is this another of your premonitions?”
“Yes, it came to me almost too late.”
“The door’s going to break, John.”
“Then hang up with me and call the police. Tell them that a man is trying to break in and has threatened to kill you. They’ll be there in no time. Call me back when he’s gone. Don’t forget, Rodney, I’ll go crazy if you don’t call me back.”
“Okay, John.” The phone clicked. John chewed on his lips.
John opened his eyes and looked at the phone clutched in his hand. Having the phone was no surprise since he’d been waiting for Rodney to call, but he wondered why he’d been holding it so tightly. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a fresh beer, the phone rang and John smiled and lifted it to his ear. “Hello?”
“John.” Rodney’s voice was urgent and John searched his memory for what had happened.
“What’s going on?” he asked, Rodney’s urgency spilling through the line and infecting John.
“He’s gone.”
“Who is?” John asked, worried that something he had done had forced the John of the past to leave Rodney for some reason.
“Kevin. John you told me to call you back when he was gone.”
The situation suddenly clicked and John remembered coming home from the meeting he went to for his father and seeing half a dozen flashing red and blue lights; the police were putting Kevin in the back of one of the cars. Kevin had shouted at him, called him queer. Then he’d run upstairs to find the door standing open, Rodney was sitting on the couch with two officers standing in front of him. He rushed over and sat beside him. “What happened?” He had asked.
Rodney had told him about Kevin pounding on the door and John was thankful that Rodney had followed his advice to keep the door locked. He told the officers about his conversation with Kevin a few days before and how Kevin had reacted to the news.
“Right,” John said “the cops got him.” He wondered how he could have forgotten that, how had he not realized that this was the day that Kevin had tried to hurt Rodney.
“Yeah. He’s gone now.” John heard knocking on Rodney’s end of the line and then heard muffled voices.
“You okay?” he asked worried. Everything that had happened in the past had the potential to change now that John had contact with Rodney. Their phone calls hadn’t happened the first time around, everything John did could have an effect on the past. That was what he was counting on, he wanted to change the bad things, but he knew he was also running the risk of changing the good things too.
“The police want me to let them in.” John heard Rodney open the door and heard the officers speaking to him. “I’m a little shaken up, John, but I’m fine. I’m going to remember what you said, I promised before but that was just because… well… anyway, I’ll remember.”
“Good,” John said and every muscle in his body loosened just a bit.
“Mr. McKay.” John heard a voice and assumed that it was the officer.
“Yeah,” Rodney said to whoever had spoken. “John I have to go. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Rodney.” The line clicked.
John knew that Rodney was safe now. The police were with him, and he’d be home in a minute. They’d order dinner and then make love until the sun came up.
~*~
John had tried again and again to call Rodney and each time the annoying tones and the recorded voice told him the number had been disconnected.
John was plunged head first right back into mourning Rodney, only now it felt fresh again. The hurt had always been there, it had never faded, not in the least, but he knew that Rodney had died twelve years ago. But after having talked to him on the phone for almost two years, getting to experience their first years together from Rodney’s point of view, it felt like he’d just lost Rodney again. It seemed like he could go to the cemetery and see a mound of dirt rather than freshly mown grass.
John left his apartment for the first time in two years. He stopped at the flower stand at the end of the corner and bought a bouquet of calla lilies. He carried them carefully, keeping them close to his chest as he made his way through the crowded streets.
He stepped through the heavy iron gate and wove his way through the head stones. He laid the flowers at the base of the headstone and sat beside Rodney’s grave.
“I miss you so much buddy,” he whispered and wiped away a tear as it fell. “It’s a cruel game life plays. It took you away from me after six years, and ten years later it gave you back via long distance phone calls, only to take you away again two years after that.”
John sniffled and looked up at the grey November sky. Twelve years, Rodney had been gone for twelve years and the pain was still as sharp as it had been on the day he got the news.
He lay down on Rodney’s grave with his head near the head stone. He ran his hand over the name.
Meredith Rodney McKay
Devoted son, brother and lover
June 18, 1968 - April 5, 1999
“Sorry about that Rodney,” John said as he ran his hand back over Meredith. “Jeanie insisted that your full name was on there, just like she insisted we stuff you in a box and put you in the cold dark ground. The only reason ‘lover’ is on there is because I bribed the carver.”
John felt his eyes getting heavy as the clouds grew darker and rolled by over head.
“Mr. Sheppard?”
John opened his eyes when he heard the familiar Scottish accent. “Carson?” He asked, as he sat up.
“John, I haven’t seen you in a couple of years. Have you been out of town?”
“No, I guess I just turned into a recluse for awhile.”
“Well, come on inside, it’s about to storm. I’ve got some hot tea. You can have a cup and then I’ll give you a lift home.”
“Alright. Thanks.” John accepted
“Aye, lad.”
“Could I uh- could I have a moment?”
“Of course, John, just come inside when you’re ready.” Carson walked away.
John knelt beside Rodney’s headstone. He kissed his fingers and put them over the name. “I hope that other you remembers what I told him,” he said. “Either way I have a feeling I’ll be joining you very soon. I can’t live without you here, Rodney, not anymore. I love you more than I had thought I could love anyone and I miss you so much.” John patted the head stone lovingly and walked toward the caretakers’ small house.
~*~
Not a day went by when John didn’t try to call Rodney, but the number never worked again. He never got another job. Ronon came by once week just to make sure John was still alive and Jeanie called twice a month just to see how he was holding up. It wasn’t good.
He spent every waking moment in the past, reliving his life with Rodney over and over again. He felt each kiss, every embrace, he took a small comfort in the fact that in the past, with the Rodney he’d talked to for two years, he was living with him, loving him.
He never left the apartment except to go to the cemetery. He kept only the bare minimum of groceries delivered. Every night he’d go out on the balcony, sit on the banister and drink a beer and twist one of the two rings between his fingers and thumb. He knew he’d never jump so he stopped leaning forward, but the fresh air took the sharpest edge off his depression.
He never forgot the difference in time between him and the Rodney of the past. For some reason there was a three month gap between months in his time and Rodney’s. He silently celebrated Rodney’s birthday in both June and September.
~*~
~July 1, 2015~
Jeanie had told John that one of the witnesses to the crash had told the police that she had just gotten off the phone when it happened, and since her habit was to look at the clock at the beginning and the end of every phone conversation, she knew that the accident had occurred at exactly 7:03 pm on April 1.
In John’s time, it was 7:00 exactly on July 1, 2015 which meant that for the Rodney in the past, it was 7:00 exactly on April 1, 1999.
John hadn’t got out of bed all day; he knew that this was the day. Either he’d wake up with Rodney tomorrow, or he wouldn’t wake up at all.
At 7:01 he turned onto his side and clutched a pillow to his aching stomach with the two gold bands wrapped tightly in his fist.
At 7:02 he professed his love to Rodney and squeezed his eyes closed, his grip on the pillow tightened and a moment later it loosened.
~*~
John opened his eyes to a bright room and was confronted with a pair of blue eyes staring back at him.
“Morning sleepy head.”
“Rodney?” John had no idea why waking up to Rodney’s beautiful eyes felt so strange this morning, as if he hadn’t been doing it for the past 21 years.
“I thought you were going to sleep all day.”
“What time is it?” John asked as he sat up. He furrowed his brow and looked down at his clenched fist. He opened it; there was nothing there except the gold band he’d worn for the last ten years, wrapped around his third finger.
“Three in the afternoon,” Rodney said. “It’s almost time for our annual ‘two people who love each other having dinner’ dinner. So, get your lazy ass up, get it in the shower and get clean. I have plans for you later.”
“What about you?” John asked as he got off the bed. He slid over to Rodney, the strangeness of the morning wearing off; wrapped his husband in his arms and kissed him firmly on the lips.
“I’ve already taken a shower today.”
“Okay then, off to the shower I go.”
After dinner and dessert, John and Rodney had gone into the bedroom and were now lying naked, sweaty and sated as the moonlight shined softly through the curtains. John pulled Rodney close and held him tightly against him, for some reason his arms ached to have Rodney wrapped in them.
He wasn’t sure why, maybe it was all the dirty foreplay, or the anniversary or maybe just some mood but John felt like he hadn’t had sex in years and when he had come inside of Rodney, it had seemed like he was never going to stop.
“Damn,” Rodney said and pressed himself closer to John, “been saving that for a special occasion?”
“Apparently,” John replied with a smile and a light kiss. It had been one of the weirdest days he could ever remember.
He ran his thumb across the tattoo on Rodney’s arm; he remembered it, but it felt like he didn’t. “Tell me again,” he said and continued passing his thumb over the numbers.
“Jack Winston Harris was a guy I met at Jackson Creek in 1990, and a few years later he called me up. We talked a lot, every day just about. He told me that I’d meet the man of my dreams on April 1, 1993. On June 29, 1994, he called me and told me to lock the front door.”
“Which I had told you to keep locked,” John interrupted.
“You wanna hear this or not?”
“Sorry, please continue.”
“If he hadn’t called with another of his strange premonitions who knows what Kevin would have done. But he told me before the Kevin thing that I shouldn’t leave the house on April 1, 1999. He said I’d forget papers and that I shouldn’t go back for them. He said I’d be killed if I did.”
“Guess he was wrong,” John said and planted a kiss on Rodney’s temple.
“He was either wrong and I wouldn’t have died, or he was right and I would have. I didn’t take the chance.”
“Guess I owe Jack a debt.”
~*~
Life stayed kind of strange for John from that morning on. Sometimes when Rodney was visiting Jeanie or at the store, John would get this deep ache in his heart, as if he were mourning Rodney. Every April first he’d wake up sweating and crying from a nightmare swearing that Rodney had been in a horrible car accident, put on life support, and had a piece of his skull missing. Whenever they’d walk past the cemetery the caretaker would wave and say hello, John thought he recognized the caretaker with the Scottish accent from somewhere, but he’d never been able to place him.
Every now and again, they’d walk past the telemarketing building and John would think he knew exactly what the layout of the fourteenth floor was, even though he’d never been there.
And every year on April 5, even though it was five days after their anniversary, John would buy Rodney a dozen Calla lilies; he didn’t know why, but it was an urge he couldn’t resist.
One night, when Rodney was taking one of his bubble baths, the phone rang.
“Hello?” John said after picking up the phone.
“John?”
“Rodney?”
“Uh- no, my name is… Jack, Jack Winston Harris.”
“Hey, you sound a lot like Rodney. I owe you a lot of thanks buddy,” John said with all the sincerity he could voice.
“Yeah, I guess you do. What you can do to thank me is not leave the house on November 17, 2023.”
The End