All the Stars in the Sky [Chapter 9]
Title: Catalyst
Originally Published: Jan. 27, 2007
Pairing: Fred/Gene, Roy/Marlow
Genre: Romance
Rating: R
Words: 4,358
Summary: Fred and Gene. It'd take a miracle, and a very persistent one at that. All the stars in the sky would fall first, right? You'd better get ready for the meteor shower.
Disclaimer: Outlaw Star characters, settings, plot devices, and references do not belong to me. Marlow and Roy are mine though. >.>
Warnings: Definitely some language, and plenty of sexual tension. Extra warning/rating for use of a slur.
A/N: God... I love this chapter so, so much. It hurts so good. I wish I got interesting and twisty ideas like this more often.
Excessive Chain
A chain reaction: a series of consequences resulting from the actions of a single catalyst. Science has learned to control the path of a reaction to garner a desired result; the same can be said even for some of humanity. But once the reaction is set into motion, who is to say how long the chain will get before the desired result is achieved?
------
A tall, shadowy figure stumbled its way down the empty sidewalk - no one ever walked here this time of night, as the streetlights had been dead for months and no one had yet bothered to do anything about it. It was a bad area, anyway.
That kind of thing didn’t bother the man wandering the streets when everyone else in their right mind had long since gone to sleep. Not much bothered him; he was big, strong, and while not exactly scary-looking, could be quite intimidating when rubbed the wrong way. Tonight, though, he was just hammered.
Normally he was quite a cheerful, hearty drunk. He was also quite difficult to even get drunk in the first place, and the fact that he almost lost his footing more than once on the same block would have made those who knew him rather worried. He was grateful that none of those people were around. Nope, not a single, solitary one of-
“Marlow? Is that you?”
‘Dammit.’ The man, discovered to be Marlow, was slow to think of what to say. Even if he hadn’t been completely trashed he wouldn’t have known what to say - which was why he had been walking alone, avoiding the very man that now stood a few feet behind him. He cleared his throat with a cough, and made a show of putting the half-empty bottle had was carrying down on the ground so he could more easily tug at the sleeves of his coat; he needed something to do with his hands.
“Of course it’s me,” he replied gruffly, words deceptively unslurred. “Who the hell else would it be?”
“Hah, I suppose that’s a good point.” He heard the new arrival laugh a little uneasily; he could even almost hear him putting his hands up in a sign of surrender, could almost hear the worry sure to be shining in the man’s eyes. It made Marlow feel bad; but, more importantly, it pissed him off.
“What are you doing out here, Roy?” Marlow asked, turning himself halfway round to lean against the wall of the building in front of which they had ended up. “Figured you’d be tearing up the town on your last night as a free man.”
“…I wasn’t really in the mood to tear things up tonight,” the other man replied quietly.
“Really,” Marlow drawled. He brought his hands up and tucked them behind his head on the wall, and stared up at the clear night sky, ignoring the slight blurring around the edges of his vision. “That’s a shame. I’ve been doin’ a number on every bar in sight all night long in your honour.”
Roy was silent. Marlow felt his saddened gaze as though it were burning holes in his face, and it made him even angrier. He glared up at the cold, distant stars above them, and for a second almost believed that they could feel the heat of his rage.
A soft, familiar sigh brought him back to the ground. “Marlow…”
“Don’t start,” he interrupted sharply. “I already know; there’s nothing either of us can do, and that’s that, right? Fine, that’s that. I’ve accepted it, I know you’ve accepted it; we’re moving on.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?” Roy said it so softly, but his voice still broke before it was over.
That small crack in his voice was all Marlow needed to snap, though. Before he even registered what he was doing, he was off the wall, spinning around to grab his last bottle of booze and hurling it like he wanted it to break orbit. Had they inhabited a less populated planet, he felt he might have succeeded; as they didn’t, it went as far as the building across the wide avenue, where it promptly exploded and showered down countless glass shards and a pungent liquid the colour of old blood.
“You want me to look at you?” Marlow said, breathing heavily from the strength of the emotions roiling within him. “How can I ever look at you again? After all this!” He slammed a fist into the wall behind him with the last word.
Roy couldn’t help himself: he jumped at the display of rage, and light from the moons above illuminated two fresh, hot trails staining his cheeks; but they remained unseen as Marlow still refused to glance his way. He struggled to stay standing, and a small, choked sob escaped his lips for his efforts.
And finally Marlow whirled around, turning his blazing black eyes onto the other man. “You- what are you trying to pull! Don’t try that shit on me, goddammit!”
But tears only continued to fall steadily down Roy’s face under the force of Marlow’s glare, and another, much stronger sob wracked through his body. He began to sink to the ground.
“Don’t pull this shit!” Marlow yelled again, lunging forward and clamping his hands around Roy’s arms to keep him in place. It must have hurt, he knew it had to, but the smaller man didn’t even wince for fear of breaking the eye contact he had wanted so desperately. Marlow shook him, wanted to break him. “Don’t fucking act like you care now!”
“I do care, you s-son of a bitch,” Roy forced out through his trembling breaths.
“Bullshit,” Marlow growled. “All these years, hell our lives together… after all this time, you still threw it all away in one afternoon. One afternoon meeting with your goddamn neighbors and suddenly it’s ‘Hey Marlow! Sorry but it’s all over!’ You can’t care if you let that happen! Those things coming out your eyes aren’t tears! You can’t be crying! You don’t get to cry! I’m the one who should be crying, dammit!”
He hadn’t noticed when they’d fallen to the cold cement sidewalk, but there they were, and suddenly Marlow let out a strangled grunt and pulled Roy so close and so tight the smaller man’s back cracked a few joints. Roy might have worried about not being able to breathe, but he wasn’t so sure he could do so anyway. Then he felt something hot and wet touch the back of his neck, and felt Marlow’s hard body shudder with suppressed sobs.
“M…Marlow?” Roy nearly hiccupped.
And then Marlow’s sobs became quite audible. They were loud and slovenly, and they poured out along with seemingly endless amounts of tears; Roy’s shirt was quickly developing a large dark spot of wet at the shoulder. They were the sobs of a drunk - albeit a genuinely heartbroken drunk.
“Roy… why are you doing this to me?” Marlow said after some time; his voice was thick and strained, stretched out oddly from the effort it took to make himself understandable. He had somehow managed to sink himself down Roy’s chest, almost occupying the smaller man’s lap. “Don’t leave me… what am I supposed to do if you leave me?”
Roy brought a hand to the top of Marlow’s head and began to gently smooth down his mess of long brown hair. They both lapsed into a tired silence, neither seeming to notice or mind that they were still in the middle of a public sidewalk all the while.
Just when Roy began to entertain the thought that maybe Marlow had actually fallen asleep (passed out?) right where he lay, the man in question turned his head into Roy’s chest and began nuzzling it.
“Roy…” he breathed, clutching at Roy’s now thoroughly disheveled shirt. “Roy… don’t…leave me…”
Roy struggled to push the heavier man off him enough to get a good look at his face; when he finally managed it, he realized that Marlow was, at most, about half-conscious at the moment. He let out a soft sigh.
“How am I supposed to talk to you when you’re like this?” he asked sullenly, getting a low moan and mumble for his trouble. Then, after wiping his face quickly, he set about dragging the inebriated man into the car he had hidden in the alley beside the building in front of which this had all taken place.
------
Some time later…
“Nn…”
“Ah… have you about come to yet?”
“Nn…nyuh?”
“Can I take that for a yes?”
Marlow heaved himself into a sitting position and then quickly lowered his spinning head. He pressed at his eyes with a groan.
“Here, drink this,” Roy said quietly, guiding one of Marlow’s hands to the cup in his own. Without even a glance at the cup, he downed its contents in one gulp.
He was still for a moment; then a grimace of disgust spread across his features, and he clamped a hand over his mouth. “Urgh…what… what did you just give me?” Marlow rasped out.
“Don’t worry, that’s a Luo family traditional hangover medicine - guaranteed to keep your head on and your stomach in,” Roy replied, conveniently not giving away its contents. “Also a rather potent diuretic. And the bathroom’s down that hall, first door on your right,” he added as Marlow scrambled to his feet, grabbing his crotch for dear life and rushing past the dark-haired man who was trying not to laugh.
Roy’s smile faded after the door shut, though, giving way to a sort of pensive sadness. Marlow had only been out for a couple of hours - long enough for Roy to drive them to his apartment in the hills above the city that so many of his better memories had been made in, and to get almost nowhere in thinking of how to talk to this precious man now violating his bathroom.
As if on cue, Marlow strode back into the main room of the apartment, rubbing his head and breathing with relief. “Man, do me a favour and make that last bit of information the first bit next time,” he said, sounding exhausted.
Roy smiled apologetically. “Of course; but I never imagined I’d ever have to make it for you in the first place.”
Marlow waved his hand dismissively with a grunt, plopping himself back down on the couch he’d been occupying previously, across from Roy’s chair. Then he seemed to finally realize where he was. “Hey…how come we’re at your place?”
“Mm… force of habit with me driving, I guess,” Roy replied, rubbing at the lobe of his ear.
Marlow’s eyes zeroed in on the movement. “What are you so worried about?”
“Eh?” Roy replied eloquently.
“Your ear. You always do that when you’re nervous,” Marlow said plainly.
Roy’s face tinged pink as he tore his hand away from his face and clamped it firmly in his lap, wondering exactly when Marlow had noticed the habit.
And then the awkward silence descended.
Roy knew he had to say something - he owed Marlow an explanation, after all. But could he just come out with it? Would the hot-headed man even hear him out? What could possibly make him understand? And why did the florescent lighting always sound so damn loud during these weird, tense silences?
“Roy.”
Roy’s eyes widened and he jolted back into the cushions of the chair; he hadn’t even noticed Marlow stepping right in front of him until they were eye-to-eye. “M-Marlow, don’t do that!”
“Don’t space out then! That’s my job,” Marlow replied, turning away. “Anyway, if you’ve got something to say to me you’d better say it.” The implied ‘While I’m still willing to give you the chance to talk’ was not missed by the young Luo heir.
Roy stared down at the hands he had clasped together in his lap. “Marlow, I… about the marriage, it’s not what you think…”
He paused to look up at the other man, who was still standing and facing the windows, half-expecting him to interrupt with another bout of anger. When nothing of the sort happened, Roy went on. “A… a long time ago, when we were just kids, my family and her family lived almost right next to each other. We spent a lot of our early years in those houses, and grew pretty close - as close as two toddlers of the opposite sex can. Even then, there was talk about having us marry when we were grown up.
“Both of our families grew in wealth rapidly. But… but the Luo family fell behind. My father worked day and night, was almost never home… and when he was home he was angry that his company wasn’t doing as well as he had hoped. Things only got worse when she and her family moved to another planet to expand their medical business. It was around then that we moved here… when I met you.”
Roy looked up at Marlow again to try and find any sort of reaction he might be having to his words; for all his trouble, he may as well have been watching a statue. He swallowed hard and continued, praying Marlow wouldn’t leave or shut him out before he was through.
“Th-things got better for us, slowly… financially and even otherwise. Obviously after all these years my father did better business. Things were really looking up… and then, recently… they came back.
“It seems that while their business had boomed for a long time, they placed their books in the wrong hands. They were almost ruined, even as one of the top three suppliers in this sector of the galaxy. S-so they came back… with a proposal for my father.
“At first… at first he had planned to give them audience so he could take the time to savour denying them anything of the sort. But it wasn’t just a marriage proposition… they had a business plan that went with it. They have the reputation that we lack to gain a real foothold in the market, and we have the means to get their products around without the fees they can no longer afford - not to mention a strong link to the underground and black markets that always need off-record medical care. The perfect match for them, a matter of convenience.
“But… so you see, it’s not that this was planned, or even what I wanted. Marlow… I never wanted this to happen…”
Finally Marlow turned around, his gaze cold and full of loathing - though at who or what it was aimed exactly even he didn’t really know. “But it did happen,” he said lowly. “You let it happen even though you didn’t want it.”
Roy was taken aback and replied somewhat angrily. “What choice was I given, Marlow? I didn’t even have any say in the matter! It was decided while I was out with you, as a matter of fact!”
“You could have said something when they told you about their plans!” Marlow fired back, gritting his teeth.
Roy got to his feet. “And what could I have said? ‘Sorry, father, but actually I’m a flaming fag and I’d rather run off with my gay lover, leaving you with no one to inherit the business that you built with your own two hands and Lorie and her family destitute and in ruins’?”
“Why the hell not! It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s the truth!” Roy practically screamed. He shot out one of his legs, kicking over the low table that stood between his chair and the couch. “Don’t you know I’d rather lose all these things, everything tied to my family name -even my family itself!- if it meant I could be with you? None of this shit means anything to me!” He grabbed a vase that had fallen off the table without breaking and threw it with all his might against the wall behind him. “None of it!”
Marlow lowered the hand he had thrown in front of his face against the shards of glass and ceramic. “Then why don’t you give it up? Why can’t you be with me!” he asked, trying to hide the fact that he was shaken by the almost never seen outburst of violence from Roy.
“Because you would never let me! And - and I can’t do that to you! I can’t do that to my family either, or to Lorie. But… you’d n-never let me…” Roy fell to the floor suddenly, clenching his fists over the fine rug that lay there. “Every day we’d be together, and every day you’d hate yourself for making me lose everything, for making me ruin my family. Even if I were to tell you a hundred times each day how happy I was, you would never stop feeling guilty. And then… and then one day, you’d leave me saying it was for the best, I know you would. I know you would!”
Tears dripped from Roy’s eyes for the second time that night, and Marlow was rendered silent. He had been so angry when he heard the news of Roy’s engagement, he’d never given a thought to how their future might have gone if Roy had agreed to leave with him. But Roy was right; and even now, a tight ball of guilt was twisting in his gut at the thought of ruining the man he loved, and he hated himself all the more for it.
Roy sniffed and went on thickly. “E-even if you didn’t… my family would n-never let us go. We’d be chased, hunted down until my father’s men finally caught us. We wouldn’t be safe anywhere - my father has too many ties around here, too many dangerous connections, and too many favors owed him… He might even give the order to have you k-killed, if that was what it took to get to me. If… if you died…” he trailed off, hugging himself against the chill the thought brought to him.
Marlow padded over to Roy and squatted down before him. Roy made no move to either say or do anything, so Marlow gently took him into his strong and shaking arms. Instead of fighting him off like he had feared, Roy instantly melded himself to Marlow’s body and couldn’t hold him tightly enough.
They remained like that for long, arduous minutes. Though neither of the men spoke of it, they both had the same bubbling of unease, frustration, and sorrow in their stomachs. Thoughts of escape even now formed in their minds, and all were flawed and ultimately pointless. All they could do was take hold of each other silently, sharing in each other’s presence and praying that tomorrow would never come - even as the sky, so open through the large windows of the apartment, lightened to the familiar purple dawn all too quickly.
As the sun’s first weak rays crept brokenly along the debris scattered across the floor, both men stirred, as if woken from a deep dream.
“Roy,” Marlow’s voice came softly.
“Hm,” Roy responded just as fragilely.
“…I love you.”
“I know,” Roy whispered, running cold fingers through long brown locks. “I’ve always loved you, Marlow.”
Marlow brought his head up off of Roy’s shoulder and touched their foreheads together. “I know you have.” Letting out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding, Marlow suddenly grinned.
“What?” Roy asked with a minor pout in his voice, though he couldn’t help the relief that flooded through him to see the familiar smile of the other man once again.
“Nothing,” Marlow said, hoisting one of Roy’s hands from out of his lap. “I’ve just…been meaning to tell you that for a while now.”
“An idiot, as always,” Roy replied. “You always did have a thing for being fashionably late.”
“And it always did get on your nerves,” Marlow retorted. He brought the palm of Roy’s hand to his lips and placed a warm kiss in its center. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Roy said, barely audible as he watched his hand in that of the man he loved.
“Roy…” Marlow suddenly clasped Roy’s hand in both of his own and stared the other man straight in the eyes. “I’m not gonna leave you, Roy, so don’t you go leaving me.”
“I- w-what? But we just-”
Marlow shook his head, not letting go of Roy’s hand. “I know, but not like that. Okay, so maybe we can’t be together the way we want, and sure, maybe there ain’t anything we can do about it. But I’m not going anywhere, except wherever you are. It took me fifteen years to catch a hold of this hand, you’d have a hell of a time taking it away from me.”
“W-what are you saying?” Roy asked, trepidation shaking his voice.
“I’m saying that you’re not going to be alone in…all of this,” Marlow said, turning his eyes around the room before resting them once again on Roy.. “I’m saying that you’re gonna go get married, and you’ll kiss your bride, and you’ll have yourself a family. And you’ll keep up the family business, and you’ll fit a better family into it. And - and you’ll be happy,” he finished firmly.
Roy blinked at first, letting the words sink in. Then, slowly, a small smile tugged at his lips. “A better family, huh? A loving father, a sweet mother - and a child that will have the freedom to choose his path in life, is that it?”
“You always were the smart one,” Marlow said with a half-smile.
Roy was quiet for a few moments, seemingly mulling over the idea. “…Okay.”
“Okay?” Marlow echoed.
Roy nodded. “Yes. It’s a good idea, and I’ll do it… but on one condition.”
Marlow’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh? And what would that be?”
“You have to do it too,” Roy answered seriously.
“Me…? Do what, get married and make babies?”
“Yes.” Marlow looked utterly confused, and Roy found it annoyingly adorable.
“But…why? I’m not the one with the psycho-papa.”
“Exactly,” Roy replied, shifting his gaze down to their still-joined hands. “You don’t have any family left…surely you don’t expect any offspring of mine to get anywhere in life without a Starwind in it.”
Marlow blinked a few times, and then smiled as he squeezed Roy’s skin-warmed hand. “I can’t argue with such flawless logic. So be it! You’ll marry your woman and I’ll find myself one - shouldn’t be too hard, they seem to like me well enough.”
Roy half-heartedly smacked Marlow’s head with his free hand. “You really are an idiot,” he said affectionately.
“But I’m your idiot, aren’t I?” the other man said with another grin.
“Always,” Roy replied, grasping the smiling face he loved and sealing their decided fate with their last kiss - made sweet from their smiles, and bitter from the salt.
------
“Hmm…”
“What are you ‘hmm’-ing at, Fred?” Gene asked somewhat sourly from his position crouched by one of the many control consoles that surrounded his pilot’s seat, where he was attempting to make some adjustments while ignoring the protests of Gilliam.
“Nothing,” Fred replied absently. “Just this picture…”
Eager to have even a small break from his ship’s griping, Gene set down his tools and walked to where Fred was seated on the floor to one side, a cracked frame beside him. “Picture?” Gene inquired, peering over Fred’s shoulder. “Hey, aren’t these…”
“Our fathers,” Fred finished for him. The picture was old, but well preserved. The colours had faded very little in the two decades and then some since it had been taken, and in it the two men smiled, arms swung around each other’s shoulders companionably.
“I swear my old man had that same picture somewhere in his garage,” Gene said almost reverently, referring to his father’s old workplace.
“Mine had it in his office for as long as I could remember,” Fred answered in a similar tone.
“You brought it with you on this…”
“I couldn’t seem to leave it behind.”
“…So what was the ‘hmm’ for?” Gene asked after a silent pause.
“Well… I was taking the picture out, since I need to fix the frame.” Fred fingered the edges of the snapshot gently as he spoke. “In all my life, I’ve never seen it out of this frame, so I guess it makes sense that I’d never noticed it before, but…” He flipped it to the other side, holding it close to his face.
“It’s a… promise, you… idiot.” Gene read aloud into Fred’s ear, squinting at what remained of the rubbed-away ink from right over the dark-haired man’s shoulder. Then he blinked. “Huh? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either,” Fred said, shaking his head slowly and turning back to the image of their smiling forebears. “I remember asking about this picture when I was a child, and my father told me it was taken the morning of the day he married my mother. He took me to visit your father for the first time shortly after that… Hey, that wasn’t too long before we were finally… introduced….”
The words died on his lips, as he had turned his head to face Gene and found just how close they had inadvertently gotten to each other to share in this discovery. They stared at each other, eyes wide, noses almost bumping, breath hitching.
Suddenly Gene caught himself, coughing a bit and standing upright again. “The… the stuff you need to fix the frame’s in the smaller compartment in that box,” he said gruffly, pointing to the tool kit that rested where he had been working previously. Fred nodded quickly, and with that Gene turned and walked out, a faint tint of red on his face.
Fred looked after him until the cockpit door slid shut behind him. He turned a strange, questioning gaze back to the photo in his nervous fingers, unsure of where his thoughts were trying to go. He stared at the image of his late father, and for a fleeting moment he thought he saw a glimmer of sadness in those eyes so very like his own.
“Father…”
-End-
Originally Published: Jan. 27, 2007
Pairing: Fred/Gene, Roy/Marlow
Genre: Romance
Rating: R
Words: 4,358
Summary: Fred and Gene. It'd take a miracle, and a very persistent one at that. All the stars in the sky would fall first, right? You'd better get ready for the meteor shower.
Disclaimer: Outlaw Star characters, settings, plot devices, and references do not belong to me. Marlow and Roy are mine though. >.>
Warnings: Definitely some language, and plenty of sexual tension. Extra warning/rating for use of a slur.
A/N: God... I love this chapter so, so much. It hurts so good. I wish I got interesting and twisty ideas like this more often.
Excessive Chain
A chain reaction: a series of consequences resulting from the actions of a single catalyst. Science has learned to control the path of a reaction to garner a desired result; the same can be said even for some of humanity. But once the reaction is set into motion, who is to say how long the chain will get before the desired result is achieved?
------
A tall, shadowy figure stumbled its way down the empty sidewalk - no one ever walked here this time of night, as the streetlights had been dead for months and no one had yet bothered to do anything about it. It was a bad area, anyway.
That kind of thing didn’t bother the man wandering the streets when everyone else in their right mind had long since gone to sleep. Not much bothered him; he was big, strong, and while not exactly scary-looking, could be quite intimidating when rubbed the wrong way. Tonight, though, he was just hammered.
Normally he was quite a cheerful, hearty drunk. He was also quite difficult to even get drunk in the first place, and the fact that he almost lost his footing more than once on the same block would have made those who knew him rather worried. He was grateful that none of those people were around. Nope, not a single, solitary one of-
“Marlow? Is that you?”
‘Dammit.’ The man, discovered to be Marlow, was slow to think of what to say. Even if he hadn’t been completely trashed he wouldn’t have known what to say - which was why he had been walking alone, avoiding the very man that now stood a few feet behind him. He cleared his throat with a cough, and made a show of putting the half-empty bottle had was carrying down on the ground so he could more easily tug at the sleeves of his coat; he needed something to do with his hands.
“Of course it’s me,” he replied gruffly, words deceptively unslurred. “Who the hell else would it be?”
“Hah, I suppose that’s a good point.” He heard the new arrival laugh a little uneasily; he could even almost hear him putting his hands up in a sign of surrender, could almost hear the worry sure to be shining in the man’s eyes. It made Marlow feel bad; but, more importantly, it pissed him off.
“What are you doing out here, Roy?” Marlow asked, turning himself halfway round to lean against the wall of the building in front of which they had ended up. “Figured you’d be tearing up the town on your last night as a free man.”
“…I wasn’t really in the mood to tear things up tonight,” the other man replied quietly.
“Really,” Marlow drawled. He brought his hands up and tucked them behind his head on the wall, and stared up at the clear night sky, ignoring the slight blurring around the edges of his vision. “That’s a shame. I’ve been doin’ a number on every bar in sight all night long in your honour.”
Roy was silent. Marlow felt his saddened gaze as though it were burning holes in his face, and it made him even angrier. He glared up at the cold, distant stars above them, and for a second almost believed that they could feel the heat of his rage.
A soft, familiar sigh brought him back to the ground. “Marlow…”
“Don’t start,” he interrupted sharply. “I already know; there’s nothing either of us can do, and that’s that, right? Fine, that’s that. I’ve accepted it, I know you’ve accepted it; we’re moving on.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?” Roy said it so softly, but his voice still broke before it was over.
That small crack in his voice was all Marlow needed to snap, though. Before he even registered what he was doing, he was off the wall, spinning around to grab his last bottle of booze and hurling it like he wanted it to break orbit. Had they inhabited a less populated planet, he felt he might have succeeded; as they didn’t, it went as far as the building across the wide avenue, where it promptly exploded and showered down countless glass shards and a pungent liquid the colour of old blood.
“You want me to look at you?” Marlow said, breathing heavily from the strength of the emotions roiling within him. “How can I ever look at you again? After all this!” He slammed a fist into the wall behind him with the last word.
Roy couldn’t help himself: he jumped at the display of rage, and light from the moons above illuminated two fresh, hot trails staining his cheeks; but they remained unseen as Marlow still refused to glance his way. He struggled to stay standing, and a small, choked sob escaped his lips for his efforts.
And finally Marlow whirled around, turning his blazing black eyes onto the other man. “You- what are you trying to pull! Don’t try that shit on me, goddammit!”
But tears only continued to fall steadily down Roy’s face under the force of Marlow’s glare, and another, much stronger sob wracked through his body. He began to sink to the ground.
“Don’t pull this shit!” Marlow yelled again, lunging forward and clamping his hands around Roy’s arms to keep him in place. It must have hurt, he knew it had to, but the smaller man didn’t even wince for fear of breaking the eye contact he had wanted so desperately. Marlow shook him, wanted to break him. “Don’t fucking act like you care now!”
“I do care, you s-son of a bitch,” Roy forced out through his trembling breaths.
“Bullshit,” Marlow growled. “All these years, hell our lives together… after all this time, you still threw it all away in one afternoon. One afternoon meeting with your goddamn neighbors and suddenly it’s ‘Hey Marlow! Sorry but it’s all over!’ You can’t care if you let that happen! Those things coming out your eyes aren’t tears! You can’t be crying! You don’t get to cry! I’m the one who should be crying, dammit!”
He hadn’t noticed when they’d fallen to the cold cement sidewalk, but there they were, and suddenly Marlow let out a strangled grunt and pulled Roy so close and so tight the smaller man’s back cracked a few joints. Roy might have worried about not being able to breathe, but he wasn’t so sure he could do so anyway. Then he felt something hot and wet touch the back of his neck, and felt Marlow’s hard body shudder with suppressed sobs.
“M…Marlow?” Roy nearly hiccupped.
And then Marlow’s sobs became quite audible. They were loud and slovenly, and they poured out along with seemingly endless amounts of tears; Roy’s shirt was quickly developing a large dark spot of wet at the shoulder. They were the sobs of a drunk - albeit a genuinely heartbroken drunk.
“Roy… why are you doing this to me?” Marlow said after some time; his voice was thick and strained, stretched out oddly from the effort it took to make himself understandable. He had somehow managed to sink himself down Roy’s chest, almost occupying the smaller man’s lap. “Don’t leave me… what am I supposed to do if you leave me?”
Roy brought a hand to the top of Marlow’s head and began to gently smooth down his mess of long brown hair. They both lapsed into a tired silence, neither seeming to notice or mind that they were still in the middle of a public sidewalk all the while.
Just when Roy began to entertain the thought that maybe Marlow had actually fallen asleep (passed out?) right where he lay, the man in question turned his head into Roy’s chest and began nuzzling it.
“Roy…” he breathed, clutching at Roy’s now thoroughly disheveled shirt. “Roy… don’t…leave me…”
Roy struggled to push the heavier man off him enough to get a good look at his face; when he finally managed it, he realized that Marlow was, at most, about half-conscious at the moment. He let out a soft sigh.
“How am I supposed to talk to you when you’re like this?” he asked sullenly, getting a low moan and mumble for his trouble. Then, after wiping his face quickly, he set about dragging the inebriated man into the car he had hidden in the alley beside the building in front of which this had all taken place.
------
Some time later…
“Nn…”
“Ah… have you about come to yet?”
“Nn…nyuh?”
“Can I take that for a yes?”
Marlow heaved himself into a sitting position and then quickly lowered his spinning head. He pressed at his eyes with a groan.
“Here, drink this,” Roy said quietly, guiding one of Marlow’s hands to the cup in his own. Without even a glance at the cup, he downed its contents in one gulp.
He was still for a moment; then a grimace of disgust spread across his features, and he clamped a hand over his mouth. “Urgh…what… what did you just give me?” Marlow rasped out.
“Don’t worry, that’s a Luo family traditional hangover medicine - guaranteed to keep your head on and your stomach in,” Roy replied, conveniently not giving away its contents. “Also a rather potent diuretic. And the bathroom’s down that hall, first door on your right,” he added as Marlow scrambled to his feet, grabbing his crotch for dear life and rushing past the dark-haired man who was trying not to laugh.
Roy’s smile faded after the door shut, though, giving way to a sort of pensive sadness. Marlow had only been out for a couple of hours - long enough for Roy to drive them to his apartment in the hills above the city that so many of his better memories had been made in, and to get almost nowhere in thinking of how to talk to this precious man now violating his bathroom.
As if on cue, Marlow strode back into the main room of the apartment, rubbing his head and breathing with relief. “Man, do me a favour and make that last bit of information the first bit next time,” he said, sounding exhausted.
Roy smiled apologetically. “Of course; but I never imagined I’d ever have to make it for you in the first place.”
Marlow waved his hand dismissively with a grunt, plopping himself back down on the couch he’d been occupying previously, across from Roy’s chair. Then he seemed to finally realize where he was. “Hey…how come we’re at your place?”
“Mm… force of habit with me driving, I guess,” Roy replied, rubbing at the lobe of his ear.
Marlow’s eyes zeroed in on the movement. “What are you so worried about?”
“Eh?” Roy replied eloquently.
“Your ear. You always do that when you’re nervous,” Marlow said plainly.
Roy’s face tinged pink as he tore his hand away from his face and clamped it firmly in his lap, wondering exactly when Marlow had noticed the habit.
And then the awkward silence descended.
Roy knew he had to say something - he owed Marlow an explanation, after all. But could he just come out with it? Would the hot-headed man even hear him out? What could possibly make him understand? And why did the florescent lighting always sound so damn loud during these weird, tense silences?
“Roy.”
Roy’s eyes widened and he jolted back into the cushions of the chair; he hadn’t even noticed Marlow stepping right in front of him until they were eye-to-eye. “M-Marlow, don’t do that!”
“Don’t space out then! That’s my job,” Marlow replied, turning away. “Anyway, if you’ve got something to say to me you’d better say it.” The implied ‘While I’m still willing to give you the chance to talk’ was not missed by the young Luo heir.
Roy stared down at the hands he had clasped together in his lap. “Marlow, I… about the marriage, it’s not what you think…”
He paused to look up at the other man, who was still standing and facing the windows, half-expecting him to interrupt with another bout of anger. When nothing of the sort happened, Roy went on. “A… a long time ago, when we were just kids, my family and her family lived almost right next to each other. We spent a lot of our early years in those houses, and grew pretty close - as close as two toddlers of the opposite sex can. Even then, there was talk about having us marry when we were grown up.
“Both of our families grew in wealth rapidly. But… but the Luo family fell behind. My father worked day and night, was almost never home… and when he was home he was angry that his company wasn’t doing as well as he had hoped. Things only got worse when she and her family moved to another planet to expand their medical business. It was around then that we moved here… when I met you.”
Roy looked up at Marlow again to try and find any sort of reaction he might be having to his words; for all his trouble, he may as well have been watching a statue. He swallowed hard and continued, praying Marlow wouldn’t leave or shut him out before he was through.
“Th-things got better for us, slowly… financially and even otherwise. Obviously after all these years my father did better business. Things were really looking up… and then, recently… they came back.
“It seems that while their business had boomed for a long time, they placed their books in the wrong hands. They were almost ruined, even as one of the top three suppliers in this sector of the galaxy. S-so they came back… with a proposal for my father.
“At first… at first he had planned to give them audience so he could take the time to savour denying them anything of the sort. But it wasn’t just a marriage proposition… they had a business plan that went with it. They have the reputation that we lack to gain a real foothold in the market, and we have the means to get their products around without the fees they can no longer afford - not to mention a strong link to the underground and black markets that always need off-record medical care. The perfect match for them, a matter of convenience.
“But… so you see, it’s not that this was planned, or even what I wanted. Marlow… I never wanted this to happen…”
Finally Marlow turned around, his gaze cold and full of loathing - though at who or what it was aimed exactly even he didn’t really know. “But it did happen,” he said lowly. “You let it happen even though you didn’t want it.”
Roy was taken aback and replied somewhat angrily. “What choice was I given, Marlow? I didn’t even have any say in the matter! It was decided while I was out with you, as a matter of fact!”
“You could have said something when they told you about their plans!” Marlow fired back, gritting his teeth.
Roy got to his feet. “And what could I have said? ‘Sorry, father, but actually I’m a flaming fag and I’d rather run off with my gay lover, leaving you with no one to inherit the business that you built with your own two hands and Lorie and her family destitute and in ruins’?”
“Why the hell not! It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s the truth!” Roy practically screamed. He shot out one of his legs, kicking over the low table that stood between his chair and the couch. “Don’t you know I’d rather lose all these things, everything tied to my family name -even my family itself!- if it meant I could be with you? None of this shit means anything to me!” He grabbed a vase that had fallen off the table without breaking and threw it with all his might against the wall behind him. “None of it!”
Marlow lowered the hand he had thrown in front of his face against the shards of glass and ceramic. “Then why don’t you give it up? Why can’t you be with me!” he asked, trying to hide the fact that he was shaken by the almost never seen outburst of violence from Roy.
“Because you would never let me! And - and I can’t do that to you! I can’t do that to my family either, or to Lorie. But… you’d n-never let me…” Roy fell to the floor suddenly, clenching his fists over the fine rug that lay there. “Every day we’d be together, and every day you’d hate yourself for making me lose everything, for making me ruin my family. Even if I were to tell you a hundred times each day how happy I was, you would never stop feeling guilty. And then… and then one day, you’d leave me saying it was for the best, I know you would. I know you would!”
Tears dripped from Roy’s eyes for the second time that night, and Marlow was rendered silent. He had been so angry when he heard the news of Roy’s engagement, he’d never given a thought to how their future might have gone if Roy had agreed to leave with him. But Roy was right; and even now, a tight ball of guilt was twisting in his gut at the thought of ruining the man he loved, and he hated himself all the more for it.
Roy sniffed and went on thickly. “E-even if you didn’t… my family would n-never let us go. We’d be chased, hunted down until my father’s men finally caught us. We wouldn’t be safe anywhere - my father has too many ties around here, too many dangerous connections, and too many favors owed him… He might even give the order to have you k-killed, if that was what it took to get to me. If… if you died…” he trailed off, hugging himself against the chill the thought brought to him.
Marlow padded over to Roy and squatted down before him. Roy made no move to either say or do anything, so Marlow gently took him into his strong and shaking arms. Instead of fighting him off like he had feared, Roy instantly melded himself to Marlow’s body and couldn’t hold him tightly enough.
They remained like that for long, arduous minutes. Though neither of the men spoke of it, they both had the same bubbling of unease, frustration, and sorrow in their stomachs. Thoughts of escape even now formed in their minds, and all were flawed and ultimately pointless. All they could do was take hold of each other silently, sharing in each other’s presence and praying that tomorrow would never come - even as the sky, so open through the large windows of the apartment, lightened to the familiar purple dawn all too quickly.
As the sun’s first weak rays crept brokenly along the debris scattered across the floor, both men stirred, as if woken from a deep dream.
“Roy,” Marlow’s voice came softly.
“Hm,” Roy responded just as fragilely.
“…I love you.”
“I know,” Roy whispered, running cold fingers through long brown locks. “I’ve always loved you, Marlow.”
Marlow brought his head up off of Roy’s shoulder and touched their foreheads together. “I know you have.” Letting out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding, Marlow suddenly grinned.
“What?” Roy asked with a minor pout in his voice, though he couldn’t help the relief that flooded through him to see the familiar smile of the other man once again.
“Nothing,” Marlow said, hoisting one of Roy’s hands from out of his lap. “I’ve just…been meaning to tell you that for a while now.”
“An idiot, as always,” Roy replied. “You always did have a thing for being fashionably late.”
“And it always did get on your nerves,” Marlow retorted. He brought the palm of Roy’s hand to his lips and placed a warm kiss in its center. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Roy said, barely audible as he watched his hand in that of the man he loved.
“Roy…” Marlow suddenly clasped Roy’s hand in both of his own and stared the other man straight in the eyes. “I’m not gonna leave you, Roy, so don’t you go leaving me.”
“I- w-what? But we just-”
Marlow shook his head, not letting go of Roy’s hand. “I know, but not like that. Okay, so maybe we can’t be together the way we want, and sure, maybe there ain’t anything we can do about it. But I’m not going anywhere, except wherever you are. It took me fifteen years to catch a hold of this hand, you’d have a hell of a time taking it away from me.”
“W-what are you saying?” Roy asked, trepidation shaking his voice.
“I’m saying that you’re not going to be alone in…all of this,” Marlow said, turning his eyes around the room before resting them once again on Roy.. “I’m saying that you’re gonna go get married, and you’ll kiss your bride, and you’ll have yourself a family. And you’ll keep up the family business, and you’ll fit a better family into it. And - and you’ll be happy,” he finished firmly.
Roy blinked at first, letting the words sink in. Then, slowly, a small smile tugged at his lips. “A better family, huh? A loving father, a sweet mother - and a child that will have the freedom to choose his path in life, is that it?”
“You always were the smart one,” Marlow said with a half-smile.
Roy was quiet for a few moments, seemingly mulling over the idea. “…Okay.”
“Okay?” Marlow echoed.
Roy nodded. “Yes. It’s a good idea, and I’ll do it… but on one condition.”
Marlow’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh? And what would that be?”
“You have to do it too,” Roy answered seriously.
“Me…? Do what, get married and make babies?”
“Yes.” Marlow looked utterly confused, and Roy found it annoyingly adorable.
“But…why? I’m not the one with the psycho-papa.”
“Exactly,” Roy replied, shifting his gaze down to their still-joined hands. “You don’t have any family left…surely you don’t expect any offspring of mine to get anywhere in life without a Starwind in it.”
Marlow blinked a few times, and then smiled as he squeezed Roy’s skin-warmed hand. “I can’t argue with such flawless logic. So be it! You’ll marry your woman and I’ll find myself one - shouldn’t be too hard, they seem to like me well enough.”
Roy half-heartedly smacked Marlow’s head with his free hand. “You really are an idiot,” he said affectionately.
“But I’m your idiot, aren’t I?” the other man said with another grin.
“Always,” Roy replied, grasping the smiling face he loved and sealing their decided fate with their last kiss - made sweet from their smiles, and bitter from the salt.
------
“Hmm…”
“What are you ‘hmm’-ing at, Fred?” Gene asked somewhat sourly from his position crouched by one of the many control consoles that surrounded his pilot’s seat, where he was attempting to make some adjustments while ignoring the protests of Gilliam.
“Nothing,” Fred replied absently. “Just this picture…”
Eager to have even a small break from his ship’s griping, Gene set down his tools and walked to where Fred was seated on the floor to one side, a cracked frame beside him. “Picture?” Gene inquired, peering over Fred’s shoulder. “Hey, aren’t these…”
“Our fathers,” Fred finished for him. The picture was old, but well preserved. The colours had faded very little in the two decades and then some since it had been taken, and in it the two men smiled, arms swung around each other’s shoulders companionably.
“I swear my old man had that same picture somewhere in his garage,” Gene said almost reverently, referring to his father’s old workplace.
“Mine had it in his office for as long as I could remember,” Fred answered in a similar tone.
“You brought it with you on this…”
“I couldn’t seem to leave it behind.”
“…So what was the ‘hmm’ for?” Gene asked after a silent pause.
“Well… I was taking the picture out, since I need to fix the frame.” Fred fingered the edges of the snapshot gently as he spoke. “In all my life, I’ve never seen it out of this frame, so I guess it makes sense that I’d never noticed it before, but…” He flipped it to the other side, holding it close to his face.
“It’s a… promise, you… idiot.” Gene read aloud into Fred’s ear, squinting at what remained of the rubbed-away ink from right over the dark-haired man’s shoulder. Then he blinked. “Huh? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either,” Fred said, shaking his head slowly and turning back to the image of their smiling forebears. “I remember asking about this picture when I was a child, and my father told me it was taken the morning of the day he married my mother. He took me to visit your father for the first time shortly after that… Hey, that wasn’t too long before we were finally… introduced….”
The words died on his lips, as he had turned his head to face Gene and found just how close they had inadvertently gotten to each other to share in this discovery. They stared at each other, eyes wide, noses almost bumping, breath hitching.
Suddenly Gene caught himself, coughing a bit and standing upright again. “The… the stuff you need to fix the frame’s in the smaller compartment in that box,” he said gruffly, pointing to the tool kit that rested where he had been working previously. Fred nodded quickly, and with that Gene turned and walked out, a faint tint of red on his face.
Fred looked after him until the cockpit door slid shut behind him. He turned a strange, questioning gaze back to the photo in his nervous fingers, unsure of where his thoughts were trying to go. He stared at the image of his late father, and for a fleeting moment he thought he saw a glimmer of sadness in those eyes so very like his own.
“Father…”
-End-