Wish #21 for scissorknot
By mandysbitch for scissorknot
Wish #21
Pairing/Character(s): Beecher/Keller
Keyword/Prompt Phrase: You poor sweet innocent thing
Dry your eyes and testify
You know you live to break me don't deny
Sweet sacrifice
One day I'm gonna forget your name
And one sweet day
You're gonna drown in my lost pain
Evanescence, Sweet Sacrifice
Canon/AU/Either: AU
Special Requests: None
Story/Art/Either: Either
Drown
One sweet day you're gonna drown in my lost pain - Evanescence
A bar in the basement. Might have been a cellar once. Or a bomb shelter. Windowless. One door in, one door out. Thick with smoke by eight. Toby imagines sheltering here through a nuclear winter. Hidden. Sheltered. Safe. The dark helps. It makes you forget.
Toby likes to look like he’s drinking when he’s not so he orders soda water with a twist of lemon. Looks like vodka. Or white rum. He drinks it fast and orders another. Maybe look like he's getting drunk.
If his information is good he'll see him here. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow night. He waits. He's been waiting for ten years.
He looks around at the patrons, recognises the expressions if not the faces. The guy sitting in the booth against the wall works too hard and can't catch a break. He’s watching the TV above the bar. Can’t take his eyes off of it. Later he won’t remember what he saw.
The guy near the cash register looks desperate. Drinking to keep up. He's got no answers and he can’t remember the questions. Toby used to be him.
A woman at the table behind him reads a book. She comes to avoid being alone. Maybe she likes the atmosphere. Maybe she lives upstairs. She's not looking for company, just noise. Toby's been her too.
The game on the TV above the bar finishes. Toby checks his watch. Nearly eleven. Too late now. He gets up from his seat. A dollar bill on the bar under his glass. He leaves.
He'll be back tomorrow.
*
On the second night there’s a crowd. One seat available at the bar. Toby takes it, sits next to a guy reading a newspaper.
He looks up when Toby sits down. “You were here last night,” he says.
Toby doesn’t recognise him. “Yeah.” He catches the bartender’s attention and orders soda water.
“You waiting for someone?”
“Yes.”
“Not here yet?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t here last night either?”
“No.”
“A girl?”
“No.”
“Some guy owe you money?”
“No.”
“Some guy fuck you over?”
Weird how easy it is to figure him out. He thinks his pain is unique. Turns out, he’s just like everyone else. Fucked over. Fucked up.
“What do you care?”
The guy whistles. “Must have been bad.”
It’s always bad. Toby drinks his water. He’s not here for conversation. He has nothing but cynicism and lies to impart. He’s depressing and generally annoying. He doesn’t fucking care.
*
I met Chris Keller in jail. What was I in for? Manslaughter. I got a reduced sentence on appeal. Two years. Felt like ten.
He was cool at first. Humble. Not like at him at all. He’s good though. Oscar material. Sean Penn’s got nothing on him. He made out like he was on my side, like he really cared.
Want to know his secret? He really does. See, he believes. He really did love me in his own sociopathic way. Maybe he switches on and off. Maybe this time he didn’t want to. I’m different. He likes that.
So, yeah, it was love. And yes, it was sexual. Completely. You want to know how it happened, right? How does a straight, married guy like me turn homo? You think it’s prison. You think I changed once I got out. Bullshit. It’s Keller. He’s irresistible. No one is safe. Not even you.
I can spare you the details. We kissed in the laundry. Might have gone further if the hacks hadn’t broken it up. Not a lot of privacy in jail, you see, and they really don’t like us fucking each other. Never understood why. Keeps us out of trouble. Keep us happy. Provided it’s consensual, that is, and most of the time it’s not. That shouldn’t surprise you. Isn’t that what you hope happens to us criminals? You’ll be glad to hear I got it good. Hurt like a bitch too. Happy now?
Anyway, I don’t know where he is. I don’t care. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him to see me. , And he’d have to be an idiot to come after me with you guys on my tail.
You want him, you find him yourselves. The old fashioned way: good, hard detective work.
Good luck with that.
*
Night four. The faces change, the faces stay the same. Night five and the bartender asks Toby if he’s new in town, suggests a bar where he could meet someone if that’s what he’s looking for. “I’m waiting for someone,” Toby says. The bartender refills his glass and leaves him alone.
He watches the news on the TV above the bar. There’s a train crash somewhere. Europe maybe. He doesn’t recognise the rail company. He watches the couple in the corner having an argument. She's got a look that says you never listen and he's got a look that says you never shut up.
He was married once. It wasn’t perfect but at times it came close. His parents were more like the couple in the corner. That’s what they did then: married for duty. Does it make any difference? He doesn’t know. Why do people get together? How do they stay together? The death do us part stuff though, that’s for real.
He’s tired of soda water. He wonders if the bar serves coffee. He goes to the bathroom, comes back and there he is. Leather jacket, stubble, black jeans and that look in his eye. He looks around like he knows everyone here and what they’re after.
That’s Chris Keller. Always knows how to make an entrance.
*
It’s been raining all day. The puppy needs a walk and they’re both looking out the window forlornly, like hoping can make the rain stop.
The puppy whimpers and she scoops him into her arms and says, “Oh, baby, poor baby.” He licks her face and she screws up her nose and laughs. She read somewhere that dogs and cats really can live together so, despite the presence of two cats, she’s got a dog for the first time and it’s the best idea yet. Even if the cats boss him around a little. “They’ll work it out,” the vet said. She knows now that by “they” the vet means, “the cats.”
There’s a car pulling up two doors down at number 9. She gets a prickle at the back of her neck, hairs standing on end or something. She’s been jumpy since they told her about Chris. She doesn’t want to see him, but she really wants to see him. Each time she hears a car on the street outside, she doesn’t know what to hope for. The police say they want to question him about a murder upstate and she knows, oh god, she knows what Chris is capable of. She also knows she’d never tell. Not if it meant she could keep him.
No one needs to live like this. She really hopes it isn’t him.
It’s not him. He’s blonde, shorter maybe. He’s checking the numbers on the houses, getting wet in the still pouring rain. He stops at her gate and somehow, inevitably, she knows he’s found the right place.
She can hear his footsteps on the porch. One, two, three and he’s ringing the bell.
She knows who he is before he opens the door. She’s never seen a picture but she recognises the look on his face, the loss, the despair, the hunger.
“Toby?” she says, when they are face to face.
“Bonnie,” he says. He looks surprised. “How did you --?”
“Who else?” she says. “Come on in.”
*
Chris isn’t here for him. Toby asked around, told a few people he was in Oz, laid down some cash and used those brains that got him into Harvard law (but couldn’t keep him out of jail) to find him.
Chris has been out for a year now. The self defence angle worked better on appeal. God knows where he got that lawyer, but that guy was on a mission. Maybe he wanted to get into Chris’s pants. Doesn’t everyone?
He skipped parole. Showed up a few times but then word got out the FBI were looking for him and he wasn’t seen since. Rumour has it, he’s a handy-man. Handy to have around if you want something (or someone) done. He meets his contacts in a bar. This bar. He’s an irregular regular but Toby’s contact said he’ll be there if he needs work. Ask around. Drop some hints. Maybe you’ll get lucky?
Chris isn’t bothered with the clientele. He goes straight to the bar and motions the bartender over. The bartender gets him a beer and they talk for a while, seeming friendly. Chris leans in, whispers in the bartender’s ear and they laugh, all cosy and cute. The bartender goes back to serving and Chris eyes the TV above the bar, smiling to himself. No money changes hands.
Toby motions the bartender over, orders a Jack Daniels on the rocks, and instructs the bartender to send it to Chris. Chris has a smile on his face when he gets it, like people buy him drinks all the time. Just a matter of time, right? The grin falls when he sees Toby. He looks confused, frowns at the smoke and dark, but it’s a fleeting and then he’s back to his smiling swaggering self, all puffed up and assured. He comes over to Toby’s end of the bar and he drops into the seat next to him, lights a cigarette.
“Come here often?” Chris says.
“Every night,” Toby says.
“For me?” Chris says. “I’m flattered.”
“Really?” Toby says. “Because if some guy whose legs I broke wanted to meet me for a drink, I’d be a little on edge.”
“Why?” Chris says, blowing smoke across the bar. “You got a little revenge in mind, Toby? Trust me, you’re not the type. “
Fifteen years ago, Toby was fresh out of law school, wide eyed and beautiful, a great job in a big firm and about to marry the perfect girl. Definitely not the type.
Except it wasn’t like that at all. Memory is a gloss, a sheen. The truth is he got drunk two weeks after his engagement and slept with a waitress. He lied to a partner to win a spot on a big case, took amphetamines one night to keep himself awake and, one day, took them just to see what it was like to be high at the office.
He thought about revenge. There was that boy in elementary school who pushed him down into the mud, his father who made him join the debate club instead of a baseball team, Adalita Simons who beat him for class valedictorian, that guy in college who called him a fag.
This is his type. The broken bones were just the catalyst.
*
Bones knit. They form collagen fibers that crystallise and become a cross-hatched not-bone. Miraculous really. All that work going on inside while you sit and think about what a dick you’ve been. Shhh. Can you hear them? They’re moving all the time, a construction team, building with non-union labour. They’re at it day and night.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones. Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones.
Hear the word of the fucking lord.
Your high as a kite, of course. Drugs are the best part about being in pain. Or they are for 80 percent of the time. The other 20 percent of the time they’re wearing off, and the pain is returning and the fear, oh god because the pain is one thing but the anticipating it is another.
“Mr Beecher?”
You don’t get many visitors. But then you’re in prison and it’s not like anyone is about to bring you flowers.
“Mr Beecher, I’m from Whittington and Wright.”
They let your lawyer in. Well, that’s not too crazy. Accept you’re not expecting a lawyer so either someone has died or you’re in more shit. You suspect the latter. Those fucking Aryans probably have you up for the Reagan shooting,
“Who sent you?”
“Your father, Mr Beecher.” This guy is younger than your previous lawyer. Looks like your father isn’t paying for senior counsel anymore. “Mr Beecher, I should probably tell you, your appeal has been allowed.”
“What appeal?”
“New evidence. The laboratory where they analysed your blood has been discredited.”
“My father put you up to this?”
“Yes, Mr Beecher. “ He smiles. “I think I can get you out of here with time served.”
You wish you had a cigarette. You wish you smoked. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” He says. “And I want you in Court soon. The wheelchair will work for you.”
Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones.
*
“How did you find me?” Chris says.
“I know someone who knows someone.”
“Private detective?”
“Please,” Toby says. “You’re not that good. I found you myself.”
“Tenacious,” Chris says. “I like that.”
A guy is playing guitar in the corner. Not a paid performer, just some guy with a guitar. He’s singing “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” shouting the chorus like it’s a battle-cry. Drunk. High. Mentally disturbed maybe. No one seems to care.
“You don’t want to know why I came after you?”
Chris laughs. “I know why you came after me.” He puts the cigarette out in an ashtray on the bar. “You can’t let go. You’re holding on like a fucking pitbull. I had a woman like you once,” he says. “Couldn’t get rid of her.”
“What happened to her?” Toby says.
“I fucking married her.”
“Which one was she?” Toby says. “Angelique, Bonnie, Kitty? I like Bonnie, by the way. You could say we had a meeting of minds.”
“You talked to Bonnie?” He looks surprised.
“And Angelique and Kitty,” Toby says. “I just liked Bonnie better.”
“Are you stalking me?” He’s more amused than concerned.
“Of course, I’m stalking you, you asshole. You broke my fucking legs.”
“That was ten years ago.”
“Well, maybe you made me crazy as well.”
Chris laughs. He raises his glass to you and drinks. “So,” he says, still smiling. “How’s life on the outside?”
“My wife is dead, my father hates me and I frighten my children.” Toby says. “Otherwise it’s great, how’s life treating you?”
“Can’t complain,” Chris says.
“The police are looking for you,” Toby says. “They thought I might know where you are. Can you believe that?”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I hoped you were rotting in hell,” Toby says. “I don’t know whether they believed me. But it was kind of interesting. Turns out, you’re wanted for questioning in relation to a series of murders in upstate New York.”
“Huh,” Chris says. He contemplates his drink for a moment. “I wonder why they want me?”
“You’re a suspect,” Toby says. “But you already knew that. You must have known they’d come after you eventually. I mean - you did kill them after all.”
Chris isn’t fazed. “Oh yeah?” he says. “What makes you so sure?”
“I have proof.”
The guy in the corner has stopped playing guitar and there’s a lull in the conversation, a pause. A beat. Then a group of guys in the corner breaks into raucous laughter and everything goes back to normal.
Chris puts his empty glass on the bar. “Let’s go outside.”
“No, thanks,” Toby says.
“I have a gun,” Chris says.
“No you don’t.”
“You want to try me?”
“You’re not going to pull out a gun in a crowded bar.”
“You’re sure of that?”
Toby isn’t sure of anything. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s go outside. You can show me your gun.”
“Act natural,” Chris says, as he gets up off his bar stool.
Toby laughs and he follows Chris outside.
*
Itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed poor itsy out.
The girl on the couch is sprawled out ragdoll-like across the cushions. She’s listening to an Ipod, singing random phrases like no one is listening. She’s got a magazine in hand and she’s idly flipping pages, not caring what she sees. She looks relaxed, like she doesn’t have a care in the world beyond which American Idol she likes better.
Toby’s making a cake. Harry has a birthday in two days and Toby swears he’s going to make a cake. He can’t cook. He gets takeout most nights. Supposedly, it’s never too late to learn and there’s a first time for everything. He doesn’t believe that shit but he’s making a cake anyway. It’s a practice run. If it fails miserably, he can still buy.
Up came the sun and dried out all the rain
The singing seems to be coming from outside. He thinks it’s Holly’s voice at first, but she’s singing a pop tune: you and me could write a bad romance... And the voice is so much younger. A child, not a teenager. It’s strange. It seems far away and yet very close.
The cake batter has a pancake consistency. He’s not sure how it’s supposed to look. “Holly?” he says. No one in the family would know what cake batter is supposed to look, besides his mother, of course, but maybe Holly’s seen it done before? Didn’t one of her friends’ parents own a bakery? “Holly, honey, can you come here a minute?”
She can’t hear him through her head phones. He goes over to the couch, waves at her and she takes the headphones off. “Dad?”
The singing gets louder.
And itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.
He sees her now. The girl. The child singing. She’s got blonde hair and blue-eyes. No. She’s got brown hair. And she’s riding a bike, not singing. She’s so close, too close, she’s going to -
“Stop!” he screams, holding out his hands. “STOP!”
She crashes. They crash. He can see her eyes. Her eyes! The moment before they hit she is wide-eyed and terrified. He can’t look, he won’t look. Close your eyes, don’t look, stop, STOP.
When he opens his eyes, he’s on the floor, crouched down, his hands covering his face. He looks up and Holly is standing above him.
“Dad?” she says. “Dad, are you all right?”
*
Outside the bar the street is quiet. A couple of guys are smoking, leaning against a pickup and laughing loud. Toby and Chris walk in the opposite direction, turn the corner into a side street. It’s darker here. Quieter. Chris opens his jacket, shows off the gun tucked into his jeans.
Toby is only mildly surprised. “What are you going to do with that?”
“It depends,” Chris says. “Why are you here?”
“I think you know why I’m here.”
Chris is obtuse sometimes but he can spot innuendo a mile away. He grins. And then he grabs Toby by the shoulders and pushes him against the wall. “Guess you really did miss me,” he says, and he kisses Toby. All hard and rough.
It’s not how Toby remembers, but it stirs something inside him. He slumps into Chris, falls against him. Everything aches. His chest, his throat, his groin. He moans and he can feel it in his knees.
Chris’s hand is on Toby’s thigh. He snakes it around to his crotch. “Spread ‘em,” he says, and Toby plants his feet firmly apart, ever obedient.
Belt buckles, zippers, boxers. Something tears. Too fast and fumbled. His dick is in Chris’s hand, freed of his underwear and jeans. He leans back against the wall and breathes deep, lets everything else fall away.
Chris spits on his hand. “Is this what you wanted?” he says. Moving faster now. More ragged. “Is this what you’ve been thinking about all these years?”
Maybe it is. It feels right. It feels real, like finally coming to life.
Chris leans into Toby’s neck. “Come on,” he says, voice low, breath on Toby’s ear. “Fuck my hand.”
Toby thrusts once and he’s gone, coming all over Chris’s hand. Chris finishes him off with a couple of jerks and uses the edge of Toby’s shirt to wipe his hands.
“So tell me about this proof?” he says, when he’s done.
“Witnesses saw you at the bar,” Toby says, still leaning against the wall. His knees are unsteady. He has a vague sense of vertigo. He pulls his jeans up around his thighs, fixes the belt. “You were intimate with one of the victims.”
“Big deal,” Chris says. “I met a lot of boys in bars.” He says “a lot” like it’s too many to count. Chris gets around. Toby knows that. It’s still confronting.
“A couple of guys saw you park near the forest where the bodies were found. They saw you carrying something from your car. The first guy, his eyesight wasn’t so great and he couldn’t make out your face. The second guy said he didn’t see a thing.”
“And?”
“Turns out, he saw everything. The police freaked him out. Put the fear of god into him. He’s much more compliant when he’s given the right incentive. Like a few thousand dollars.”
“You bribed a witness?”
“I just helped him to remember,” Toby says.
Chris goes quiet, and then he scratches his jaw, working things out while he looks nonchalant. A ruse. He’s stewing underneath. And then he takes the gun out of his pants, aims it at Toby’s chest. “I guess that makes me a murderer,” he says.
Toby presses back against the wall again, the bricks hard against his shoulder blades. The gun is terrifying and ridiculous at the same time. Chris threatening to kill him. It’s a fucking farce. Kiss me, fuck me, kill you, and we’ll do it all again tomorrow. Chris Keller. No one like him. Toby starts to laugh.
Chris frowns. “What are you laughing at?”
“You,” Toby says. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.” He really is.
“Christ,” Chris says, still holding the gun at Toby’s chest. “You’re fucking crazy.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Toby says.
Chris pauses for a moment, slides his finger along the trigger, back and forth, back and forth. He licks his lips. And then he lowers the gun. “Tell the cops,” Chris says, tucking the gun back into his jeans. “Don’t tell the cops. See if I care.” He pulls Toby’s head toward him roughly, kisses his forehead, and pushes him back against the wall. Toby’s knees give way and he slides to the ground.
Chris leaves him there. Doesn’t turn around.
Toby brings his knees up to his chin. He’s not dead. Still not dead. He’s the guy Chris won’t kill. He’s the one. It’s so much worse than he imagined.
*
A prayer his mother taught him repeats in his head:
I hear no voice, I feel no touch, I see no glory bright, yet I know that God is near...
He doesn’t remember the rest.