Something Eventual - The Talisman Fic
Title: Something Eventual
Pairing/Fandom: Jack Sawyer/Richard Sloat - The Talisman
Word Count: 3,555
Summary: Five things that did not happen to Jack Sawyer and Richard Sloat (and exactly how they would happen when they eventually do).
Rating: R (slash, language)
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine.
Notes: A little something I wrote for 5-nevers. So very rewritten at the request of a friend. This is pretty much AU, and I’ve totally neglected any and all future happenings that take place the sequel, Black House.
[i’ve cheated.]
1
He stood on the front doorstep with his back turned to the storm brewing over all of Newport, flashing lightning and rolling thunder with echoes like gunfire. With a clenched fist, he rested his knuckles against the smooth glass and wood of the door, but did not knock. He did not knock on his own front door, but there was no key on his key ring that would open this house.
This house that was not home, that most certainly did not carry its warmth that it had a year ago; this house that reeked of bad memories and tragic happenings and where shadows of the past did not lurk in the corners of rooms he had not seen for what seemed to be ages.
With careful precision, his eyes followed the arch of the stained iron running through the glass of the door, his door. He traced every arc and every turn of the elegantly tarnished metal. The wind pushed at his clothing and bit at his ears, and with one hand, he pushed the bill of his cap further over his eyes and debated whether or not he should know on his own front door or run back to the safety of his car and sit until it was time to pick up and fly far, far away, to the place where no one in their right mind would even consider following him to.
For the first time, the latter contemplation seemed much more appealing than facing the family, indulging in the secrets that now ran in his blood, stung his chest with the clink of metal and rubber beneath his shirt now three sizes too small, the fading memory of burn on his left shoulder, and the blackest of ink that stained his skin with the intricate curvatures of his newfound life.
He brought his hand back from the door and pulled his wool jacket around his body tighter still, biting down on his lip as the intense desire to run back to the curb and bound into his car grew at rapid pace.
Then a huge yellow beam flooded the front yard as the front door swung open with such force that a year ago, he may had jumped at the suddenness of the action, but now he looked up from under the brim of his ball cap, and coolly looked into the door with an apathetic shine in his eyes, hardly blinking against the light.
The seconds after the door opened, and the rush of warm air bathed his body in the clean scent of freshly-brewed coffee and the preparations of breakfast, were the longest seconds he had lived in a very long time.
“You’re back.”
There was so much he could have said, and there were so many words he could have used. The smile playing at his lips could have grown so much wider, and the laugh threatening to escape could have forced its way out and have actually been sincere, and he could have used to his hands to embrace his friend just as he had done so many times before. But for now, Richard took the easy way out and smiled as Jack held the door out for him.
2
Leaning up against the kitchen island, he watched as Jack poured another cup of coffee. His hands moved quickly, as if in a rush to rid his fingers of the ceramic mug, and Richard shook his head and raised a hand before Jack spooned in any sugar or cream.
Slowly, Richard had begun to edge himself off the delicacies of what made a scalding hot cup of coffee actually worth drinking. The army doctors had told him why work on a cavity if you’re already working on the to-be ulcer in your stomach tissue? To him, it made perfect sense.
He slid the cup of coffee over the granite countertop. “All grown up now, huh?” Jack smirked.
Richard winced, the words stung, and he thanked the gods that the low brim of his cap concealed the immediate look of hurt in his eyes, the look he knew had to be there. Only it wasn’t, and he could tell that Jack was taken aback by his lack of expression, by his uncommon quietness at the words purposely said to be spiteful, to be unkind.
“Look, I’m sorry.” Jack raked a haphazard, ink-spotted hand through his hair. “I’m just surprised. Not angry.”
Richard nodded, shrugging his shoulders, because that made sense as well. Smoky tendrils of steam rose from the surface of his fresh cup of coffee, and it mesmerized him, the tiny translucent lines dispersing in the warmth of the kitchen, disappearing beneath the soft light overhead.
Over the sound of his own light breath, he became only faintly aware of the waging storm outside; the violent symphony of rain pounding against the windows, the crazed dance of palms slapping the roof, the roll of thunder and the screams of wind that followed.
He hardly glanced up as Jack settled down on a barstool beside him, lacing his fingers together on top of the counter. The many colors of ink became more apparent; reds, blues, greens, blacks. Richard studied them with partial interest, wondering if Jack wore that black thousand-dollar suit for an important company, if that ink represented his many goals and achievements, if he was happier than his face let on.
From beneath the shadow of his cap, Richard looked up at him, and the questions which he could not bring himself to ask were all conveyed in his eyes.
Jack, who did not or no longer could, read Richard’s implications, let his floodgates down, spoke, and struck gold with his words. “I’m working for the police department. It’s a steady career, and they understand when the other job beckons me back with the bayonet.” Jack nodded, as if reassuring himself of something. “I come down every Monday night and stay over to see Mom, but she’s going to be late again, I think. She usually calls.” He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.
Dragging his eyes away from his friend, Richard scanned the kitchen and noted that nothing had changed. He doubted anything in the house had changed. But he did not doubt that the couch was worn in, that the sheets of the guest bed were rumpled, and that Jack avoided the master suite as often as he could.
Nothing cosmetic had changed, but now that shadows lurked in the corners and tore at the walls, stuffed up the place with the stench of a vicious past, everything was different. Even Jack, now a man of very few words who had probably just spoken more than Richard had in two days, was different.
“Take off that fucking hat. I can’t see you.”
And Richard beamed as the hesitant beginnings of a smile etched at the corners of his lips, soon spreading into a full-blown grin. His moods forgotten, Richard became less aware of the shadows in the corners and the still, warm air of the kitchen. He drowned out the sounds of the storm with the easy rhythm of his own breath and Jack’s soft laughter.
Just like old times, a clichéd voice in the back of his mind chided right as Lily Cavanaugh trudged into the kitchen, briefcase colliding with the floor as Richard’s eyes met hers.
3
It is December 24, 1990, and Jack Sawyer and Richard Sloat are oblivious to it all. They are sitting on the stoop of Jack’s rowhouse (where he’s rented a room for two-hundred big ones while Richard’s been away somewhere in Georgia), damp cigarettes that will not be smoked clenched between their lips, teeth grinding down on the filters they both equally despise, and watching as the day of reckoning unfolds before them in the form of the worst storm New York City has seen this season.
Rain beats the asphalt and collects in the gutters, browned leaves floating atop of the muddy water as it runs down to the drain, far along the street Jack’s place is found on.
Lightning crashes like broken glass echo throughout the night, lighting up the scene around them, shock-white clouds churning above the rooftops, dark skies against the smoke of chimneys belong to those who are sane, those who are sound, those who are not sitting out on their steps, smiling as the world comes to an end to the symphony of an apocalyptic orchestra manned by Death’s hands and the Devil’s cackling screams, bones picking at the chords of a cello, flames licking at the strings of a violin.
Right now, at this moment, Richard and Jack are in this dream, this sort of parallel universe reflecting omens and revelations, dark and light, good and evil, and the schism of light that differentiates these worlds is so thin that the gorge between what is reality and what lies deep with the land of trance, a globe of swirling colour and crimson rain on earth the shade of paper.
They are stuck in the fascination of an alternate realm, nightmares that end with knocks on window panes and packs of cigarettes empty after ten minutes of comfortable silence and the lightest brush of shoulders that more than often makes up for the lack of words, emotion, feeling.
“It’s almost Christmas,” Jack says after glancing down at his watch, the scratched clock face visible in the pale light that filters out through the front windows of Mrs. McCullough’s house, long golden rays that fall onto the frosty lawn and stretch out to the street, pointing Jack’s own home out, identical to his friend’s place and directly across the way.
Jack spits his destroyed cigarette into his hand and crushes it within a clenched fist, releasing the pressure and watching as the tobacco and shredded paper wash away in the rain, falling harder, falling faster.
“What’d you get me?” Richard asks, his voice devoid of any humor that his words may have insinuated. He pushes the bill of his Yankees cap up off his forehead, and his bangs are already damp and flat against his weather-paled skin.
He stretches out on the steps, and his pose is comical, looking as he is suntanning on the beach, surrounded by the Rockettes on a lazy Sunday afternoon and not in the middle of storm wreaking havoc upon their city with all its detached strength and might.
Jack shakes his head in exaggerated disdain and pulls himself up off the stoop, the suction sound of his trousers peeling off the wet concrete not lost on Richard, who immediately begins to chuckle as Jack shoots daggers with his eyes before holding his hand out to Richard, yanking him up so quickly that Richard nearly loses balance, saved only from the fall onto asphalt and ceramic flower pots by Jack’s steadying hand on his shoulder.
“I’m getting you breakfast and a dry pack of smokes. Follow me, okay?” He grins and pats Richard on the back, then bounding off the steps and into the empty streets, taking off into the dark.
And the loud slap of sneaker-clad feet are faint for a short while, drowned out by the harsh pant of his own breath and the perpetual rolls of thunder sounding out above Brooklyn, the endless noises of Manhattan and the subways beneath him on the wind.
There is a heat on the back of Jack’s neck, the rasp of words he cannot make out over the synchrony of everything around him, and then there is cold ground beneath his back, the feel of grass in his wet hands as his fingers scrape at the dark earth of Mr. and Mrs. Johnston’s front lawn, four blocks down and as still as the grave, yard lit by only the candle in the front diningroom window and the pale flicker of the streetlamp.
Suddenly, Jack feels so much like a child, scrambling for his right to pin is friend down in the mud, laughing without restraint, eyes burning as the tears come and the sides ache, because he remembers the days when a shared bottle of Coke outside the U.N. gates was enough, when baseball cards after school sated him for days, when girlfriends and two-month flings with the prep school ladies down the street did not keep them apart.
His mind is racing, thoughts scrabbling to piece together the memories of their childhood, slipping through the cracks of this nightmare, of this storm, Judgment Day.
“You should work something out with the army. Then you should come with me to the coast to stay with Mom,” Jack shouts over the pound of rain into dirt, roars of thunder and the jagged tear that is left in the sky as the light fades.
“Like I’m ever going to let you go alone…” Richard replies, his voice trailing off as words, possibly meaningless or the most pertinent sentence Jack may have ever heard, die in the storm and are lost forever. And Jack has defeated him, hands pinning his wrists to his sides, knees digging into chest and sitting on his thighs.
What people assume when they look upon them is not something that has crossed their minds before, for they are still young, oblivious to it all, and the world is ending so nothing matters anyway.
4
They lay in bed, sheets tangled around cool limbs and relaxed muscles, fading wounds and shallow scars. Their breath was measured, both having fallen into deep sleep only hours ago, and they lay draped over each other’s bodies, oblivious to the chill lingering in their bedroom.
The bitter air bit at sculpted expanses of bare skin, bronzed after months overseas, color slowly fading as days passed in country, the shroud of white winter clouds hanging over Los Angeles paling their desert tans.
Richard woke to the feel of his lover’s hands on his body, thumbs sleepily tracing the ridges of muscle on his back. Foggily, Richard smiled and turned his face into Jack Sawyer’s neck, lips brushing up against the warm flesh where shoulder jointed with collar.
Eyes closed, he blindingly ran his hands up Jack’s side, slowly breathing in the scent of him, the remnants of gentle aftershave from the previous night out, the unoffending smell of a light sweat courtesy of certain activities following said night out, and the dizzying scent of a mind-numbingly perfect afterglow not yet stale.
“Good morning,” Richard murmured into Jack’s neck, nuzzling at the comfortable heat he found in that position. He pressed a knee between Jack’s legs, hoping to draw more warmth from the man currently pulling him even closer still.
“Mornin.’” Jack’s voice was raspy, content with their head to toe embrace atop of soft, twisted sheets and coverlets pushed to the foot of the bed. His hand traveled further up Richard’s back, and into the man’s mussed hair, ranking his fingers slowly through soft dark strands and brushing lengthening bangs away from Richard’s forehead.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked, the beginnings of a lazy smile spreading across his face as Richard kissed a tender spot on his neck.
“For the few hours I actually did sleep?” Richard’s laugh was soft and sincere, vibrated through his body. Jack felt the sound of his lover’s laugh tug at the strings of his heart, making his smile widen as Richard went on to say, “I slept wonderfully. You?”
“Marvelous.”
Jack’s hand slid from Richard’s messy hair, to the man’s cheek, and he cupped his chin, index finger tipping Richard’s face up to his. He bent down and pressed a sweet kiss to Richard’s already kiss-bruised lips. Richard sighed against his mouth and his arms came up to wrap around his middle, hands clutching lightly at his muscled sides.
At this, Jack broke, lips parting slightly as the knee between his legs moved up the insides of his thighs, and he dragged his tongue slowly across Richard’s bottom lip, savoring the coppery flavor he found. Richard grasped at his shoulders and arched up into Jack as the alarm clock jarred them both into laughter and the thermostat kicked on.
5
He felt nothing but numbness. The numbness and the cold accompanied the lack of any sort of feeling stilled his tears, silenced the heartbreak, and eased him into his proper place. He stood at attention and the brim of his cap blocked his vision of yellow flowers, and the brightly exuberant petals that defined the very meaning of irony as the plants swayed gently in the unpleasantly warm wind in their place by a coffin draped in the flag.
His thumbs brushed up against the side hem of his stiff trousers, and he stood so straight, but felt nothing. His shoes were bindingly tight across the tops of his feet, his ring burned the skin of his hand below a taut white glove, two sets of tags dug into the hardened flesh of his chest. But he felt nothing.
Oak leaves, millions in count and drying in recent heat, fluttered in the uncomfortable wind, bobbed up and down to the gentle patter of small raindrops sliding off their rough, waxy skin. Gnarled branches reached for the clouds, and courageous birds perched upon them, singing their melancholy tone only to be drown out by a bugler’s tune and frightened away by rifle shots that rang throughout the cemetery, echoed off pillars of white, crosses of stone, tombs of the ancient.
In the distance, a veteran stooped and crippled by age, short in stature but made up for by the size of his heart, placed a rose on his brother’s grave, dead since June of 1969, a single bullet from the gun of a Viet Cong in a rice patty far out in the delta did the young soldier in.
To the west, a young girl sat in front of a simple headstone, surrounded by crayon drawings on thin construction paper and newspaper cut outs in which she tried so hard to cut straight, told her father about her first day in big-kid summer school, told him about the new pup Momma promised.
The young girl’s mother sat as well, many feet away, and kept her gaze trained on the screen of her cell phone and scolded herself for forgetting to pick up her new suit from the cleaners, pretended her eyes were clouding due to allergy season. It would be three years that fall.
Where the little girl sat, the grass was lush and thick, felt like long soft carpet to the touch. Beyond that, the rolling hills of green began to fade into a dusty brown, where hordes of bored students trampled on their way to the next stop, uninterested by the historic meaning of their trip.
They spoke boldly of their previous weekend, of the movies they saw and the rumors that surfaced in the theater bathrooms, and a boy no more that fifteen years old, knocked into the woman staring down at her cell, and crushed a delicate rose beneath the rubber sole of his sneakers without so much as looking back. The aged veteran looked to him not in anger, but in weariness and fatigue, and slowly walked to the gates to buy another rose.
Across the cemetery, amid the successions of gunshots, the thud of clattering hooves on cobblestone could be heard, the distinct sound of cart wheels rolling against the uneven roads cut through the fired blanks. But Jack Sawyer felt nothing but cold, unrelenting numbness from the tips of his fingers to the heels of his feet as Lily Cavanaugh sobbed for the departed boy behind a pair of tightly clasped hands.
And Jack then walked away, nodding to his mother as he went. Light footsteps behind him, the call of his name, the light rain that ran down his cheeks, cooler than tears. A delicate hand wrapped around his left wrist and spun him around. Lily. There were tears of confusion and pain in her eyes as she opened her mouth to speak, and uttered nothing but a flat, toneless cry as she pulled Jack into her arms.
Over her head, which came to his shoulder, and over the wisps of her silver hair, he saw some people he didn’t know, arms crossed and face emotionless. Jack raised his arms around the woman, rested his chin on the top of the woman’s head, and smelled the light scent of shampoo lingering on her elegant ponytail.
“Nobody knows-not the family, not the friends-no one knows why this is harder for you than for any one of them,” his mother murmured against his shoulder. Her breath was warm through the heavy wool of his uniform. Her words were muffled by the thick fabric.
Jack didn’t know how long they stood there, arms wrapped around each other. He didn’t know how long it took for him to feel the wet of Lily’s silent tears through his uniform. Maybe a minute, maybe an hour. He didn’t know how long the numbness remained. Maybe a second, maybe a moment.
All he knew was that it came crashing down; the numbness, the cold, the inability to feel at all, as Lily spoke, “I would have loved having him as a son-in-law, Jack. I want you to know that.”
[still cheating.]
Pairing/Fandom: Jack Sawyer/Richard Sloat - The Talisman
Word Count: 3,555
Summary: Five things that did not happen to Jack Sawyer and Richard Sloat (and exactly how they would happen when they eventually do).
Rating: R (slash, language)
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine.
Notes: A little something I wrote for 5-nevers. So very rewritten at the request of a friend. This is pretty much AU, and I’ve totally neglected any and all future happenings that take place the sequel, Black House.
[i’ve cheated.]
1
He stood on the front doorstep with his back turned to the storm brewing over all of Newport, flashing lightning and rolling thunder with echoes like gunfire. With a clenched fist, he rested his knuckles against the smooth glass and wood of the door, but did not knock. He did not knock on his own front door, but there was no key on his key ring that would open this house.
This house that was not home, that most certainly did not carry its warmth that it had a year ago; this house that reeked of bad memories and tragic happenings and where shadows of the past did not lurk in the corners of rooms he had not seen for what seemed to be ages.
With careful precision, his eyes followed the arch of the stained iron running through the glass of the door, his door. He traced every arc and every turn of the elegantly tarnished metal. The wind pushed at his clothing and bit at his ears, and with one hand, he pushed the bill of his cap further over his eyes and debated whether or not he should know on his own front door or run back to the safety of his car and sit until it was time to pick up and fly far, far away, to the place where no one in their right mind would even consider following him to.
For the first time, the latter contemplation seemed much more appealing than facing the family, indulging in the secrets that now ran in his blood, stung his chest with the clink of metal and rubber beneath his shirt now three sizes too small, the fading memory of burn on his left shoulder, and the blackest of ink that stained his skin with the intricate curvatures of his newfound life.
He brought his hand back from the door and pulled his wool jacket around his body tighter still, biting down on his lip as the intense desire to run back to the curb and bound into his car grew at rapid pace.
Then a huge yellow beam flooded the front yard as the front door swung open with such force that a year ago, he may had jumped at the suddenness of the action, but now he looked up from under the brim of his ball cap, and coolly looked into the door with an apathetic shine in his eyes, hardly blinking against the light.
The seconds after the door opened, and the rush of warm air bathed his body in the clean scent of freshly-brewed coffee and the preparations of breakfast, were the longest seconds he had lived in a very long time.
“You’re back.”
There was so much he could have said, and there were so many words he could have used. The smile playing at his lips could have grown so much wider, and the laugh threatening to escape could have forced its way out and have actually been sincere, and he could have used to his hands to embrace his friend just as he had done so many times before. But for now, Richard took the easy way out and smiled as Jack held the door out for him.
2
Leaning up against the kitchen island, he watched as Jack poured another cup of coffee. His hands moved quickly, as if in a rush to rid his fingers of the ceramic mug, and Richard shook his head and raised a hand before Jack spooned in any sugar or cream.
Slowly, Richard had begun to edge himself off the delicacies of what made a scalding hot cup of coffee actually worth drinking. The army doctors had told him why work on a cavity if you’re already working on the to-be ulcer in your stomach tissue? To him, it made perfect sense.
He slid the cup of coffee over the granite countertop. “All grown up now, huh?” Jack smirked.
Richard winced, the words stung, and he thanked the gods that the low brim of his cap concealed the immediate look of hurt in his eyes, the look he knew had to be there. Only it wasn’t, and he could tell that Jack was taken aback by his lack of expression, by his uncommon quietness at the words purposely said to be spiteful, to be unkind.
“Look, I’m sorry.” Jack raked a haphazard, ink-spotted hand through his hair. “I’m just surprised. Not angry.”
Richard nodded, shrugging his shoulders, because that made sense as well. Smoky tendrils of steam rose from the surface of his fresh cup of coffee, and it mesmerized him, the tiny translucent lines dispersing in the warmth of the kitchen, disappearing beneath the soft light overhead.
Over the sound of his own light breath, he became only faintly aware of the waging storm outside; the violent symphony of rain pounding against the windows, the crazed dance of palms slapping the roof, the roll of thunder and the screams of wind that followed.
He hardly glanced up as Jack settled down on a barstool beside him, lacing his fingers together on top of the counter. The many colors of ink became more apparent; reds, blues, greens, blacks. Richard studied them with partial interest, wondering if Jack wore that black thousand-dollar suit for an important company, if that ink represented his many goals and achievements, if he was happier than his face let on.
From beneath the shadow of his cap, Richard looked up at him, and the questions which he could not bring himself to ask were all conveyed in his eyes.
Jack, who did not or no longer could, read Richard’s implications, let his floodgates down, spoke, and struck gold with his words. “I’m working for the police department. It’s a steady career, and they understand when the other job beckons me back with the bayonet.” Jack nodded, as if reassuring himself of something. “I come down every Monday night and stay over to see Mom, but she’s going to be late again, I think. She usually calls.” He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.
Dragging his eyes away from his friend, Richard scanned the kitchen and noted that nothing had changed. He doubted anything in the house had changed. But he did not doubt that the couch was worn in, that the sheets of the guest bed were rumpled, and that Jack avoided the master suite as often as he could.
Nothing cosmetic had changed, but now that shadows lurked in the corners and tore at the walls, stuffed up the place with the stench of a vicious past, everything was different. Even Jack, now a man of very few words who had probably just spoken more than Richard had in two days, was different.
“Take off that fucking hat. I can’t see you.”
And Richard beamed as the hesitant beginnings of a smile etched at the corners of his lips, soon spreading into a full-blown grin. His moods forgotten, Richard became less aware of the shadows in the corners and the still, warm air of the kitchen. He drowned out the sounds of the storm with the easy rhythm of his own breath and Jack’s soft laughter.
Just like old times, a clichéd voice in the back of his mind chided right as Lily Cavanaugh trudged into the kitchen, briefcase colliding with the floor as Richard’s eyes met hers.
3
It is December 24, 1990, and Jack Sawyer and Richard Sloat are oblivious to it all. They are sitting on the stoop of Jack’s rowhouse (where he’s rented a room for two-hundred big ones while Richard’s been away somewhere in Georgia), damp cigarettes that will not be smoked clenched between their lips, teeth grinding down on the filters they both equally despise, and watching as the day of reckoning unfolds before them in the form of the worst storm New York City has seen this season.
Rain beats the asphalt and collects in the gutters, browned leaves floating atop of the muddy water as it runs down to the drain, far along the street Jack’s place is found on.
Lightning crashes like broken glass echo throughout the night, lighting up the scene around them, shock-white clouds churning above the rooftops, dark skies against the smoke of chimneys belong to those who are sane, those who are sound, those who are not sitting out on their steps, smiling as the world comes to an end to the symphony of an apocalyptic orchestra manned by Death’s hands and the Devil’s cackling screams, bones picking at the chords of a cello, flames licking at the strings of a violin.
Right now, at this moment, Richard and Jack are in this dream, this sort of parallel universe reflecting omens and revelations, dark and light, good and evil, and the schism of light that differentiates these worlds is so thin that the gorge between what is reality and what lies deep with the land of trance, a globe of swirling colour and crimson rain on earth the shade of paper.
They are stuck in the fascination of an alternate realm, nightmares that end with knocks on window panes and packs of cigarettes empty after ten minutes of comfortable silence and the lightest brush of shoulders that more than often makes up for the lack of words, emotion, feeling.
“It’s almost Christmas,” Jack says after glancing down at his watch, the scratched clock face visible in the pale light that filters out through the front windows of Mrs. McCullough’s house, long golden rays that fall onto the frosty lawn and stretch out to the street, pointing Jack’s own home out, identical to his friend’s place and directly across the way.
Jack spits his destroyed cigarette into his hand and crushes it within a clenched fist, releasing the pressure and watching as the tobacco and shredded paper wash away in the rain, falling harder, falling faster.
“What’d you get me?” Richard asks, his voice devoid of any humor that his words may have insinuated. He pushes the bill of his Yankees cap up off his forehead, and his bangs are already damp and flat against his weather-paled skin.
He stretches out on the steps, and his pose is comical, looking as he is suntanning on the beach, surrounded by the Rockettes on a lazy Sunday afternoon and not in the middle of storm wreaking havoc upon their city with all its detached strength and might.
Jack shakes his head in exaggerated disdain and pulls himself up off the stoop, the suction sound of his trousers peeling off the wet concrete not lost on Richard, who immediately begins to chuckle as Jack shoots daggers with his eyes before holding his hand out to Richard, yanking him up so quickly that Richard nearly loses balance, saved only from the fall onto asphalt and ceramic flower pots by Jack’s steadying hand on his shoulder.
“I’m getting you breakfast and a dry pack of smokes. Follow me, okay?” He grins and pats Richard on the back, then bounding off the steps and into the empty streets, taking off into the dark.
And the loud slap of sneaker-clad feet are faint for a short while, drowned out by the harsh pant of his own breath and the perpetual rolls of thunder sounding out above Brooklyn, the endless noises of Manhattan and the subways beneath him on the wind.
There is a heat on the back of Jack’s neck, the rasp of words he cannot make out over the synchrony of everything around him, and then there is cold ground beneath his back, the feel of grass in his wet hands as his fingers scrape at the dark earth of Mr. and Mrs. Johnston’s front lawn, four blocks down and as still as the grave, yard lit by only the candle in the front diningroom window and the pale flicker of the streetlamp.
Suddenly, Jack feels so much like a child, scrambling for his right to pin is friend down in the mud, laughing without restraint, eyes burning as the tears come and the sides ache, because he remembers the days when a shared bottle of Coke outside the U.N. gates was enough, when baseball cards after school sated him for days, when girlfriends and two-month flings with the prep school ladies down the street did not keep them apart.
His mind is racing, thoughts scrabbling to piece together the memories of their childhood, slipping through the cracks of this nightmare, of this storm, Judgment Day.
“You should work something out with the army. Then you should come with me to the coast to stay with Mom,” Jack shouts over the pound of rain into dirt, roars of thunder and the jagged tear that is left in the sky as the light fades.
“Like I’m ever going to let you go alone…” Richard replies, his voice trailing off as words, possibly meaningless or the most pertinent sentence Jack may have ever heard, die in the storm and are lost forever. And Jack has defeated him, hands pinning his wrists to his sides, knees digging into chest and sitting on his thighs.
What people assume when they look upon them is not something that has crossed their minds before, for they are still young, oblivious to it all, and the world is ending so nothing matters anyway.
4
They lay in bed, sheets tangled around cool limbs and relaxed muscles, fading wounds and shallow scars. Their breath was measured, both having fallen into deep sleep only hours ago, and they lay draped over each other’s bodies, oblivious to the chill lingering in their bedroom.
The bitter air bit at sculpted expanses of bare skin, bronzed after months overseas, color slowly fading as days passed in country, the shroud of white winter clouds hanging over Los Angeles paling their desert tans.
Richard woke to the feel of his lover’s hands on his body, thumbs sleepily tracing the ridges of muscle on his back. Foggily, Richard smiled and turned his face into Jack Sawyer’s neck, lips brushing up against the warm flesh where shoulder jointed with collar.
Eyes closed, he blindingly ran his hands up Jack’s side, slowly breathing in the scent of him, the remnants of gentle aftershave from the previous night out, the unoffending smell of a light sweat courtesy of certain activities following said night out, and the dizzying scent of a mind-numbingly perfect afterglow not yet stale.
“Good morning,” Richard murmured into Jack’s neck, nuzzling at the comfortable heat he found in that position. He pressed a knee between Jack’s legs, hoping to draw more warmth from the man currently pulling him even closer still.
“Mornin.’” Jack’s voice was raspy, content with their head to toe embrace atop of soft, twisted sheets and coverlets pushed to the foot of the bed. His hand traveled further up Richard’s back, and into the man’s mussed hair, ranking his fingers slowly through soft dark strands and brushing lengthening bangs away from Richard’s forehead.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked, the beginnings of a lazy smile spreading across his face as Richard kissed a tender spot on his neck.
“For the few hours I actually did sleep?” Richard’s laugh was soft and sincere, vibrated through his body. Jack felt the sound of his lover’s laugh tug at the strings of his heart, making his smile widen as Richard went on to say, “I slept wonderfully. You?”
“Marvelous.”
Jack’s hand slid from Richard’s messy hair, to the man’s cheek, and he cupped his chin, index finger tipping Richard’s face up to his. He bent down and pressed a sweet kiss to Richard’s already kiss-bruised lips. Richard sighed against his mouth and his arms came up to wrap around his middle, hands clutching lightly at his muscled sides.
At this, Jack broke, lips parting slightly as the knee between his legs moved up the insides of his thighs, and he dragged his tongue slowly across Richard’s bottom lip, savoring the coppery flavor he found. Richard grasped at his shoulders and arched up into Jack as the alarm clock jarred them both into laughter and the thermostat kicked on.
5
He felt nothing but numbness. The numbness and the cold accompanied the lack of any sort of feeling stilled his tears, silenced the heartbreak, and eased him into his proper place. He stood at attention and the brim of his cap blocked his vision of yellow flowers, and the brightly exuberant petals that defined the very meaning of irony as the plants swayed gently in the unpleasantly warm wind in their place by a coffin draped in the flag.
His thumbs brushed up against the side hem of his stiff trousers, and he stood so straight, but felt nothing. His shoes were bindingly tight across the tops of his feet, his ring burned the skin of his hand below a taut white glove, two sets of tags dug into the hardened flesh of his chest. But he felt nothing.
Oak leaves, millions in count and drying in recent heat, fluttered in the uncomfortable wind, bobbed up and down to the gentle patter of small raindrops sliding off their rough, waxy skin. Gnarled branches reached for the clouds, and courageous birds perched upon them, singing their melancholy tone only to be drown out by a bugler’s tune and frightened away by rifle shots that rang throughout the cemetery, echoed off pillars of white, crosses of stone, tombs of the ancient.
In the distance, a veteran stooped and crippled by age, short in stature but made up for by the size of his heart, placed a rose on his brother’s grave, dead since June of 1969, a single bullet from the gun of a Viet Cong in a rice patty far out in the delta did the young soldier in.
To the west, a young girl sat in front of a simple headstone, surrounded by crayon drawings on thin construction paper and newspaper cut outs in which she tried so hard to cut straight, told her father about her first day in big-kid summer school, told him about the new pup Momma promised.
The young girl’s mother sat as well, many feet away, and kept her gaze trained on the screen of her cell phone and scolded herself for forgetting to pick up her new suit from the cleaners, pretended her eyes were clouding due to allergy season. It would be three years that fall.
Where the little girl sat, the grass was lush and thick, felt like long soft carpet to the touch. Beyond that, the rolling hills of green began to fade into a dusty brown, where hordes of bored students trampled on their way to the next stop, uninterested by the historic meaning of their trip.
They spoke boldly of their previous weekend, of the movies they saw and the rumors that surfaced in the theater bathrooms, and a boy no more that fifteen years old, knocked into the woman staring down at her cell, and crushed a delicate rose beneath the rubber sole of his sneakers without so much as looking back. The aged veteran looked to him not in anger, but in weariness and fatigue, and slowly walked to the gates to buy another rose.
Across the cemetery, amid the successions of gunshots, the thud of clattering hooves on cobblestone could be heard, the distinct sound of cart wheels rolling against the uneven roads cut through the fired blanks. But Jack Sawyer felt nothing but cold, unrelenting numbness from the tips of his fingers to the heels of his feet as Lily Cavanaugh sobbed for the departed boy behind a pair of tightly clasped hands.
And Jack then walked away, nodding to his mother as he went. Light footsteps behind him, the call of his name, the light rain that ran down his cheeks, cooler than tears. A delicate hand wrapped around his left wrist and spun him around. Lily. There were tears of confusion and pain in her eyes as she opened her mouth to speak, and uttered nothing but a flat, toneless cry as she pulled Jack into her arms.
Over her head, which came to his shoulder, and over the wisps of her silver hair, he saw some people he didn’t know, arms crossed and face emotionless. Jack raised his arms around the woman, rested his chin on the top of the woman’s head, and smelled the light scent of shampoo lingering on her elegant ponytail.
“Nobody knows-not the family, not the friends-no one knows why this is harder for you than for any one of them,” his mother murmured against his shoulder. Her breath was warm through the heavy wool of his uniform. Her words were muffled by the thick fabric.
Jack didn’t know how long they stood there, arms wrapped around each other. He didn’t know how long it took for him to feel the wet of Lily’s silent tears through his uniform. Maybe a minute, maybe an hour. He didn’t know how long the numbness remained. Maybe a second, maybe a moment.
All he knew was that it came crashing down; the numbness, the cold, the inability to feel at all, as Lily spoke, “I would have loved having him as a son-in-law, Jack. I want you to know that.”
[still cheating.]