thieves like us (Jon/Tom)

[jae_w]

Recipient: just-katarin
Author: jae-w
Title: thieves like us
Band: TYV/empires
Pairing: Jon/Tom
Summary: Is it really stealing if you only take what no one wants anyway?
Word Count: 4,000



Is it really stealing if you only take what no one wants anyway?

The handle snaps away from the mug, falling to the counter with a brittle crack that almost no one notices. The break isn't clean; where the handle once was there are now jagged sharp edges that catch your fingers, a quick sudden scrape against your calluses. It's not your mug. The mug was white once, though it's a little grimy now, Betty Ford Clinic written in peeling red letters. It's Carden's, or it was, a joke birthday present from Gabe. Now it's abandoned in the sink, unusable, so it's no one's, really. It's ruined. No one notices when you slide it into your bag.

In a couple of years when you're moving Sean will pull it out of a box and say, "Seriously, no wonder it takes you a hundred years to pack, if you won't throw anything out." He holds it loosely in the palm of his hand, like he's weighing it, but when you don't say anything he just looks at you and then puts it back in the box. When you're in the new place he puts a tea bag in it and pours in some of his hot water and you sweeten it with rum because you're out of whiskey. You hold it in both hands when you drink it, because the cup is warm and also because you like the way the ragged edges feel against your calluses, newer now but in the same places as before.

You don't take many things from Sean. He's a saver, a fixer and a mender - if something breaks he doesn't just leave it abandoned on a counter or in a corner of a room. More than once you've come home to find him hunched over his desk with a broken glass or a plate in two pieces, frowning as he puts it together carefully, wiping the excess glue away with a towel. "There," he says when it's dry, "good as new," though you can still see the scar from the break. He puts it back in the cabinet and when you pull it out and pour a drink into it, it always holds. If something breaks beyond repair Sean doesn't toss it aside, he throws it in the trash, tying up the bag and taking it down to the dumpster carefully so no one gets cut. Sean's always good at telling if something is really broken.

The only thing Sean is careless about is paper. He leaves a trail behind him, like one day he might get lost and have to find his way home. He carries a little notebook around and you find torn pages everywhere. Sometimes they're meant for you, a T scrawled at the top and then a list, coffee rice toilet paper, or sometimes a message. When you stop answering your phone for a while the ring bothers him and he starts answering it for you when you leave it in the living room. You tell him just to turn the ringer off but he never does and you can't be bothered. Besides, you like to know people are calling, even if you don't want to talk for a while. And secretly you like the messages Sean leaves for you, the way you can tell he's getting madder about taking them by the way his writing gets darker and bigger, the way he underlines again until the pen almost goes through the paper.

You like the messages Sean leaves for you but they're not the things you take, or keep. Sean leaves other notes behind, too, notes that aren't for you or for anyone, really. They're not even for himself, or else Sean would keep them. In addition to his collection of notebooks he has a folder where he carefully tucks loose sheets with lyrics written on them, or music, handwritten rough drafts and printed out copies.

When you leave Milk and Honey after arguing about whether or not the new song is ready Sean leaves behind a half a napkin with insistent resistant written on it, each letter topped with a small hatch mark as if he'd been counting them. After half an hour of arguing he pretended to ignore you and started doing the crossword puzzle from someone's left-behind Times. You shove the napkin in your pocket while Sean is petting someone's dog. It goes in a pile in the corner of your top dresser drawer, with a takeout menu where Sean wrote all the entrees along the sides in a loopy handwriting nothing like his own, and the back cover of an Entertainment Weekly you swiped from your mom's house. All along the back over the iphone ad Sean has written his name, and yours, and Al's and Ryan's and Max's, over and over so that the whole page is covered. When you first saw it you laughed and thought about teasing him, for the way it looked like some fifth-grade girl's notebook with her intended husband's name traced again and again, but you looked at it again and didn't say anything. He wrote it absently, without paying attention, and anyway, if you showed it to him he might have noticed when it went missing. Now you're glad you didn't say anything. You don't really look at it much but you like to know that you have it, tucked away in the corner of your dresser drawer where no one else will see it.

You never take anything from Al. He likes his things and takes care of them, keeping his magazines in his room and writing his name on the takeout cartons when he wants to eat his leftovers himself, not in a mean way but in a way you like, because it makes it so easy to tell what he doesn't mind sharing. You'd feel bad if you took something that he might still want.

Al takes care, and he's also observant. You never take anything from him, and once when you're in a bar with him and he sees you reach for the torn-off beer label that Sean doodled some Muse lyrics on, you put it down and pretend you were just pushing it out of your way. It's not that you think he'd care if you took it, or even that he'd ask you about it. But he's observant, and so you never take anything when he's with you. He wouldn't want to make you feel bad, probably, but you would anyway.

The only things you take that make you feel bad are Jon's. It's not the old stuff of his, you don't feel bad about that, the ripped t-shirt he left on the bus after he left the tour, before he joined panic, or the postcards he bought and never sent but just stuffed in a pocket of his bag until they got crushed and dingy at the edges. You don't feel bad about the old stuff, but these days the only things you can take from Jon are expensive, because those are the only things he has. Or not expensive, exactly - it's not like you're pocketing his ipod - but you're not taking things that have no value, not scraps of paper no one wants, or things that have been ruined or cast aside. You can't. Jon doesn't have anything like that anymore.

You pick up a box of matches from a hotel in LA you've never stayed at from his kitchen table and Jon asks you about it later, not like he thinks you took it, but in a slightly anxious way. "I wrote something on the back," he says, "Ryan and I were out and we had an idea for a band name, but we never remember that shit so I wrote it down, a genius idea on my part, I have to say. Though maybe it would have been slightly more genius if I'd written it down on something a little more, I don't know, stable than a matchbox." He grins, his mouth twisting up the way it does since he's been back. You don't remember his smile looking like that before.

He goes to check on the dog and you take the matchbox out of your pocket and put it in the drawer where he keeps the silverware, out in front where he'll be sure to find it. You don't read whatever's written on the back.

You take a bike lock that someone kicked into a corner on Jon's deck, and a scarf that falls out of his coat sleeve onto the floor of your apartment. The bike lock goes into your dresser drawer but the scarf doesn't. You don't have a scarf. Well, you do, but it's scratchy and you threw it in your closet before it was really dry when you came home in the snow the other day and now it smells weird. Jon's scarf is red and warm and really soft against your neck. You wear it all the time, even in front of Jon, but he doesn't notice. His new scarf is green and has snowmen on it. It looks really stupid. Even if he leaves it, you wouldn't bother taking it, but he doesn't leave it.

You take a book that bounces around in the back of Jon's car for two weeks, a paperback with Ryan Ross's name penciled inside the front cover and four words repeated from the front in the same handwriting: deadly, holy, rough, immediate. After the book is safe in your drawer you say the words out loud one time in Jon's car. He doesn't look over at you, but he's making a tricky left turn onto Division. "Talking to yourself, Tommy?" he says. "They say that's the first sign."

"Of what?" you say, but someone pulls out of a parking lot right then and Jon swears.

Jon is careless with his things. He's always been careless, but he has a lot of things now and so you don't feel like you're taking advantage. Besides, if he doesn't notice when things go missing, he must not care. You get careless too, or if not careless then bold. You wonder if you could manage to take his driver's license right out of his wallet. He'd have to notice that eventually.

You're sitting at the bottom of the stairs in his house in your coat and his scarf, waiting for him to come down, when you see a pile of silver CDs in clear cases. There's no writing or anything on them, they look like a pile of blank CDs, and you ease one out from the middle and stuff it into your coat pocket. You can see the shape of it but you bet Jon won't notice. He doesn't.

It's three days before you try to play it. You do it idly, not really expecting that there's anything on it. Or is that really true? Would you have even tried to play it if you really thought it was blank? Either way, you do try. And there's something on it.

Jon counts in. He does it in a whisper, but you know his voice. He counts in and then the band joins him and it's not what you expected, and not just because you hadn't been expecting anything at all. It's not what you expected his new band to sound like, him and Ryan to sound like, and then you stop thinking about it and listen. You listen all the way through, twice.

It's good.

It's good, and that should be a relief, because there's nothing worse than hearing a friend's work that's bad, or mediocre, nothing worse than trying to find something to say that's honest and helpful and still kind, or kind enough. It's harder when it's a good friend. It would be even harder, for Jon. But you don't need to worry about that. It's good.

If there's one thing that's always been true about you, no matter how many other ways you're fucked up or fucked something up, it's that you're always happy when your friends do good work. You're not the jealous type, at least not about things like that. There's always been nothing but joy for you in the talent of the people you love. In so many ways you're not a generous person, not open-handed like Pete or Jon but locked up inside yourself, but in this one way, for this one thing, your heart has always been open.

And there's joy now, the familiar tingle in your fingers and at the top of your head like it might fly right out of you, it's true, there's joy, and relief too. But there's something else, a kind of restlessness, hot and sharp, and anger, hot and thick. It's been a couple of years but you recognize the feelings like old friends, like old drinking buddies you thought you'd left behind but who come right back in the door when you pick up a glass. It's been a couple of years but they settle back into your mind like it's only been a day. You put on your coat and Jon's scarf and go to his house.

He's home. It seems like Jon is always home now, when he's not with you or in LA or New York with someone else. He's home, and when you come in he makes you a drink and shows you a Christmas present he bought and tells you he just got the last season of Lost, do you want to watch. On the coffee table he's left a key chain with no key on it, a souvenir one, a big plastic pair of dice that says Atlantic City. You pocket it and follow him out to the kitchen.

"You want ice?" he says without turning around. You take the key chain out of your pocket and throw it onto the counter, hard. It bounces once and then splits in half with a crack, the metal ring where the key is meant to hang coming loose and spinning until Jon turns around and puts his hand down flat over it.

"So," he says with a smile. It's one you remember. "How did you like the new songs?"

"Why did you do it like that?" you say.

"Well, I knew you'd fucking take it, didn't I?" he says. "Don't look so fucking surprised, Tommy, you think I don't know you? I used to worry one day I'd have to go bail you out, but you only steal from your friends, right?"

"Why?" you say again, because that isn't an answer. Jon knows it, too, because he stops smiling.

"I just get tired, sometimes, of always having to ask somebody's opinion - " His mouth twists up. "Shit, I think that was half the reason I quit the band, always having to ask - "

"Why?" you ask again, because you want to know. You'll ask again, if you have to. Probably there's a limit to the number of times you'll ask but you don't know what it is. Jon must be thinking the same thing because he leans against the counter and pushes his hair back.

"That's not true," he says. "Or - I guess it is, really, I said half and it's half true. The other half - I just got tired, you know, I got tired of watching while someone tried to figure out a nice kind way to tell me his opinion." You're ready to ask again and Jon must know. "I just wanted - don't you want, sometimes, don't you want something without having to ask? Don't you ever just want what you want - hell, you must, you just go ahead and take it."

"It's good," you say. Jon looks at you like he's weighing something and then sinks back against the counter on a small sweet breath of relief. "It's good. Fuck you."

You storm out into the living room and grab your coat, then head for the door. Jon calls after you, "Hey, you forgot my scarf," and you turn back around and push him hard against the wall.

It's been a long time since you fought anyone, although you haven't forgotten what it feels like, and how much you like it. It's been even longer since you've scrapped with Jon, though with you two it was always play. Jon's forgotten what it feels like, you can tell, the feel of your arm against his throat, your mouth breathing close to his face. You push your arm up harder so he gasps, then drop it and let him go.

"What's wrong with you?" he says, and you don't answer him. "Why are you so weird - I mean, weirder than usual. You were never - why are you so weird with me?"

You start to tell you're not weird but instead you say, "I'm not different."

"You are," he says, stubbornly, almost like a child, and he's right.

"I'm just tired," Jon says, pulling his wrinkled sweater down from where you pushed it up, "I'm just tired of everything changing, I'm tired of people changing."

For some reason you think of what your mom used to say to you when you complained about being bored, "It'll be a long old life if you're tired of it already." Instead you say,

"You changed too."

He has. He's always known, you guess, that you take things sometimes, and maybe you've always known he's known. But you've never taken advantage of anyone. You've never taken anything you thought someone still wanted, anything you thought they might miss, and right now you feel like Jon's taken advantage of you, and you don't know why, or what he wants. That's a change.

"You used to be different," he says. "I remember, back, it was back a long time ago but I remember, you used to be - it was like, if you wanted something, you'd just take it, you didn't care, you'd just go after it, and fuck - fuck anybody if they didn't like it. I used to - sometimes I didn't know why you were like that, but now - now I do. Now I want - now I know why you were like that."

You were like that. A long time ago you were like that, if you wanted something you would go after it and it wasn't like you wanted to piss anybody off or fuck anybody over, it was just that you wanted things so badly, you didn't see how you could stop yourself. You're different now, it's true. You're different on purpose. Now you ask for what you want and you wait and listen to the answer and the only things you take without permission are the things nobody else wants anyway. You're glad you're different, now. You think you're a better person, a nicer one. Or maybe you're not, maybe you only changed because you stopped getting the things you wanted the old way, maybe you only changed because it was the only way you could get what you wanted. Maybe you're not a better person, or a nicer one, but at least now you get some of the things you want, and you're happier. You're happier, and you have a dresser drawer filled with things you look at when you think maybe you're not, when you're tired of waiting, and wanting.

"I had to change," you say, and Jon looks up at you. You already let go of him but you're still standing where you were before, close to him, so close he's backed up against the wall. "It's just - you have to change, because you can't do it on your own - or I couldn't, at least. The things you want - the things I wanted, they weren't - they weren't things I could want on my own, not and get them. Other people had to want them too, I had to make them want them with me."

You don't know if Jon understands. "It's really hard," he says after a minute, and you think maybe he does.

"It's really hard," he says after another minute, "because when you want things with other people, they can always stop wanting the same things. They can always stop wanting them with you," he says, and you know he understands. That's one thing that hasn't changed.

"The worst thing," he says, "is when you're the one who stops wanting it first. The worst thing is when you're the one who stops."

"I wouldn't know," you say.

"Liar," he says, and he kisses you.

It's not the first time he's kissed you. Back in the beginning, right before the first band broke up, there was a time when it seemed like you and he couldn't be apart, not like you wouldn't but like you couldn't, like something terrible and unspeakable would happen if you had a thought and couldn't turn to Jon and say it right away, or just turn to Jon and know he understood before you even said it. In the front seat of your car or in his mom's basement you talked and talked and then you didn't say anything and then one night, one night after you'd stopped talking Jon leaned in and kissed you. It wasn't a shock that he kissed you, and it wasn't a surprise that you liked it. The only thing that surprised you was the way Jon looked at you afterwards, his eyes serious and searching like he was trying to figure out what you thought of it, like he'd been rehearsing this in his head and now he was waiting to see if he'd been right. The only thing that shocked you was that he could have been thinking about it for so long without your knowing, that he didn't already know how much you wanted it.

You didn't say anything then. It was the first time Jon failed to understand your lack of words, the first time you failed him with it. He got out of your car and slammed the door and you didn't see him for two days and when you did see him everything was the same as it had been before and he never talked about it and you didn't have the words. That night he left a flyer in your car for a show that neither of you would see, a band that never amounted to anything. You folded it carefully and put it in your pocket. Now it's at the bottom of your dresser drawer, beneath a pile of torn paper and broken mugs, all the things you had to teach yourself how to want.

"I'm not a liar," you say when Jon stops kissing you. He's looking at you the same way he did that first time, like there's something he doesn't know yet, something he wants to. It doesn't shock you this time. "I'm not a liar," you say, because this time you won't fail him, at least not by staying quiet.

"I never stopped," you say, and Jon kisses you again.

You will never stop taking things. People may change but not as much as they might think, not as much as they might want to. You will never stop taking things but from now on the things you take will only be Jon's. You will take a crumpled napkin from a bar in Wilmette that Jon keeps score on while you beat him at pool, a crumpled napkin that Jon watches you eyeing and slides over towards you, looking away with a smile as you tuck it into your pocket, kissing the corner of your jaw once the napkin is safely hidden away.

You will take a Polaroid Jon snaps of you with a camera Ryan gives him for his birthday, your hair in your eyes, your naked hip, your arm moving towards the camera just a little too slowly. It's a good picture. Even drunk, even one-handed Jon always takes a good picture, almost as good as yours, though in fairness Jon never puts in the effort you do. He doesn't have to.

You will take another CD, an ashtray that cracked against a studio wall, a scrawled notebook page full of lyrics you will only read once. You will take a hotel key card, a scribbled address in LA, a plane ticket with your name on it.

You will never stop taking things from Jon.

You will never stop.