"Thirty-eight-point-six" -- 2
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He finds himself with only his own mind to listen to, and it feels like a pool of heavy, hot water that he can’t help but sink deeper into. When the water stirs, rippled in Art’s chest, something he’d only ever thought about for seconds hits him with its full collapsing force, a beast, a leviathan with teeth to tear him apart and with enormous power to lend him in sabotage-
It’s Beth’s fault.
Beth’s fault more than anyone’s, anyone he knows, and it has his blood boiling, setting fire to his burning bones. He can almost feel them crumble inside him as he leans forward, suddenly failing to hold him completely upright. His arms tighten across his stomach.
“Art?” she says, voice cutting somehow through Art’s shell and finding its way straight to his ears, and it’s wavering, wet, it’s disgusting-he’d bash his head against the table if it meant he didn’t have to listen to it. He may just do that anyway. “Are you okay?” She sniffs, wipes the back of a bony hand across her nose.
“Just about as okay as you are.” Beth nods in understanding, slips that hand over and covering half her face, and Art is surprised he even still has a voice.
“Beth,” Jones says, “can I get you some tissues?”
And Beth says, “Yes, please,” with a small, self-deprecating grin that disappears in a second with a sob and a sigh.
Jones gets up, pads to the bathroom. Art looks at Beth; Beth stares down at the table.
After Jones comes back with a small cardboard box, and Beth manages to bring herself to some semblance of composed while Art scratches at the tear-reddened, itchy skin around his eyes, Jones sits up a bit straighter with his arms on the table, rings his hands anxiously and says, voice low, “Beth, I asked you to come over because I wanted to ask you something.”
“Anything.” Beth’s voice is muffled by the tissue pressed loosely over her nose and mouth.
“Well I’d really like it if,” Jones sighs, a small grin finding its way to his lips, “if you came on a picnic with me and Art. Would you do that?”
“Yes-yes, of course, I’d love to,” Beth says, and she’s smiling again, Art can see through the edge of the wilting tissue. He thinks he’d like to say something, anything, but his throat is too hollow and his mouth is too tired.
Before Beth leaves, she presses a kiss to Jones’ forehead, bringing out a quiet blush in his cheeks, and Art can’t tell whether it’s anger or jealousy that stirs in his stomach so he settles on both. Part of him wants to breath a sigh of relief when she’s out the door, but the relief never comes.
“Thank you so much for doing this,” Jones tells him, later. “I know you don’t like her, but you’re being great, you know.” Art gulps, lays a hand over Jones’ shoulder to look into wide, grateful eyes, and words still escape him.
In the days that follow and the days before the picnic, Jones does a fair job of keeping everything relatively normal. But always preferring to be behind the camera, Art’s never been much of an actor.
“Art.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re scared.”
“Yeah.”
“Please don’t be.” With a small grin, Jones spreads his arms out, shows Art the whole of his frame which Art swears has gotten skinnier, even as hard as it is to tell under sweaters and turtlenecks and button-ups-“I’m fine, see? Shouldn’t be any different from before.”
Art almost doesn’t say it, almost decides that it isn’t fair-but he can’t help himself, he’s never been able to, so he mutters with his chin in his hands and his back slumped over the kitchen table, “Except now you’ve got a bucket list.”
“No! No, don’t think of it like that,” Jones says as he leans over the table, closer to Art, shoulders hunched and mouth upturned like he’s telling a secret. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just… if there are things I want to do, why not try to do them as soon as I can?”
“Because-because you shouldn’t have to, you should-” Art sighs, wipes a hand across his face. “-you should have your whole life to-”
“Art.” There’s a firmness in Jones’ voice, a pull in his eyes like a magnet that Art finds his own drawn to, held in as he drops his hands from his face and stares. “Art, no.”
The day comes with light, baby blue skies, with clouds a soft, powdery white and with forest trees reaching up to touch them-so very mellow, and if mellow isn’t numb then Art’s never been born.
He and Beth stand outside his building, stalling on the steps while Jones looks for the tablecloth he’d forgotten. “Beth,” he nods, when they’re left alone.
“Art.” She nods, solemnly, lips pressed in a stark line as she looks anywhere but at Art’s eyes. He can’t stand it.
“Do you feel bad?”
“I feel terrible,” Beth says, and she gulps.
“You should.” She looks up at Art then, eyes shining and wide. “It’s your fault.” Art’s voice is clear, calm as he can keep it, and part of him is sure he should stop talking.
“Art, I didn’t know-”
“Well of course you didn’t know, no one ever really knows-” As tears begin to push at the corners of his eyes, he decides that whatever part of him that may be can go and suck it, he couldn’t care less. “-you think I knew when we was going to go out and shag some girl? That I wouldn’t have insisted on going with him? Yeah, of course I’m at fault for not being able to prevent this whole mess-so how much of your fault is it for starting it all?”
Beth’s eyes start to water, lips to stutter, and whatever mixture of feelings Art can’t possible name only boils in his stomach. “Art, it’s not your fault at all, it’s not my fault, it doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault-”
“BULLSHIT-”
And there’s a slam of a door inside, shaking Art from his hot flurry, and so he leans in close to Beth, he snarls, “We’ve got to play nice for Jones’ sake but don’t think for one second that I’ve forgiven you or that I ever will. And don’t speak a word of this to him, it’ll only upset him.”
Beth’s voice is high, strained as she speaks. “Art, please, you know I’d do anything not to hurt him-”
The door opens, a small creak before Jones’ head pops out from it-“Ready to go?”
And so, Art plays it up. He smiles at Beth and pats her on the back and she does the same, and he opens the passenger side door with a fake smile that has his mouth aching and a reluctant yet friendly utter of, “Well, there you go, Beth.”
“Oh,” Beth says, blinking, lips in the shape of just that. “Are you sure?”
Art grins. He hates it. “I insist.”
“Well, thank you, Art,” Beth mutters as she slides into the seat, pulling the door in behind her.
Even with his legs stuck and cramped and the ceiling looming only millimeters over his hair, it’s well worth it when Jones doesn’t stop grinning for a full five minutes or so. When it fades away, he makes small talk with Beth, and it comes back easily like a buoy floating back to the top of a pool. “The weather’s great today, isn’t it? Perfect for a picnic.”
“Oh it’s lovely…”
Their voices fade in and out and Art’s vision widens and wavers as he stares out the window, almost forgetting to blink, popping out of his trance only a few times to rub at his eyes.
“Art, can you pass me a juice box?”
The tablecloth is laid out across a spot of grass as the wind whips at small, thin-stemmed flowers around it. As stiff and forced as it is, Beth’s communication with Art seems to make Jones’ day, as does the vice-versa-“Yeah,” with a smile and a nod, and Art takes a juice box from the cooler to toss it across the tablecloth where Beth fumbles to catch it, smiling after nonetheless.
“Thank you,” Beth says with a small yet clearly uncomfortable grin as she meticulously stabs the box with its plastic straw.
Jones talks the most of the three of them, and so lively as he goes on about films and books and events and nothings, talks with his hands and his eyebrows and his smile-and when finally he says, “I just want to thank you both so much, for letting me spend a day with the two people I love the most,” with a gleam in his eyes and a mouth split between somber and grateful, if Art hadn’t already known the day would be worth it, it comes to be the surest fact he has in the fogged up depths of his mind.
The doctors say Jones is doing alright, they refill the pills Art’s been watching him take every morning over breakfast. They ask Art is he’d be interested in a local therapy program, and it’s probably the one Jones declined the first few visits, say he looks a bit on edge and it’s nothing to worry about, give him a pamphlet, and he tells them no, thank you, I haven’t lost anyone yet and I don’t plan to for a very, very long time. It’s not only for that, they say. On the way out he tosses the pamphlet in the trash.
It is only weeks later when Art realizes that perhaps he needs it. Not because of grief but because he’s got to be going crazy, because there’s no way he lives in the same world as Jones seems to. Because Art lives in a world where Jones has the worst of a terminal illness and Jones is acting as normal as ever in his own.
Art wonders is he’s imagining it all, if his senses have decided to screw with him until he’s driven up the walls.
He wonders if how he feels isn’t the norm, if he’s supposed to be calm and collected as Jones with the logical approach to the world that Art never could quite get his hands on, that Art finds he’d like more than anything. More than almost anything.
He knows that Jones is fine, at least for now, he knows even though he can’t make himself believe it.
But when he gets up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and finds Jones crying into his pillow, he isn’t relieved, he feels nothing short of anguished as he listens to Jones’ breathless, strangled sobs, as he goes into Jones’ room and sits on the edge of Jones’ bed, rubs Jones’ forearm with a gentle pressure and whispers, “Jones?”
With ragged breaths and futile gasps Jones nods, face half pressed into the pillow and streaking more tears across its already damp cloth as he tries to press his nose and mouth further into it.
“Jones, talk to me,” Art mumbles, pushing Jones’ sleeve up and rubbing his shoulders, swiping his thump soothingly across the trembling skin.
The door is still open, light pouring in from the hall, illuminating perfectly Jones’ face as he flits his eyes up the Art and tries to gasp in a breath that turns to a sob that shakes his chest. “What-what about?” he mumbles, the beginnings of a pout forming in his lips as his eyebrows furrow and he looks only into the pillow, at Art’s legs, not once turning his head up to look Art in the eyes and Art sighs, rubbing the back of Jones’ neck. He isn’t sure if it’s his imagination, when he feels Jones relax under his hand.
“I need to know,” Art breathes, begs, running his fingers through the back of Jones’ hair, “what’s going on, with you…”
Jones sniffs loudly, brings his hand up to press the pads of his fingers into the damp pillow, to lean into his knuckles as he squeezes his eyes shut and mutters, “What’s going on with me is I’m going to die, Art.”
Art gulps, shakes his head as he presses his fingers gently into the back of Jones’ neck, feels him tense up again. There’s a tightening in his chest, like his heart is made up of the strings of a violin that someone’s decided can’t be sharp enough. He can’t think of a thing to say, can’t seem to make his hollow bowstring throat work, and when he finds scratchy sound that will never be music he can only spout, “No, you’re not-”
“Yes, Art, I am.” Even as Jones turns onto his back, sobbing and wiping his nose, Art doesn’t let go of his shoulder, kneels on the bed so that he doesn’t have to. When Jones looks up at the ceiling and gasps a ragged breath, Art wants few things more than to properly meet his eyes. With tears leaking out from his squinting eyes and slipping off onto the pillow on either side, one ominous drip after the other, he speaks again. “I always thought I knew what I was doing, you know, with my life. I had plans, not good ones, but plans, and it’s like it’s all for nothing. I was gonna have a good-a good life, and I did, I guess, I did because sharing a flat with you has been amazing and I have an alright job and I had a great girlfriend but all those things are a bit hard to focus on when I’m-” He chokes on nothing, coughs and blinks. “-I’m dying-” With that, he lays his arms out in front of him in an emphasis that such a word’s never needed, spreads his fingers out before curling them back into his palms. “-just because I shagged someone I wasn’t supposed to!” His hands, out at his sides, fly right to his face and he sobs into them, sucks tiny breaths through the spaces between his fingers, tries to hide his face even as Art runs fingers down his plump jaw line, rubs his shoulder and his arm and his neck with a thick lump in his own throat.
“I’m so, so sorry, Jones.”
Jones threads his fingers through his hair, pushes it out of his face with both hands before crossing his arms gingerly over his chest. “I appreciate that, I do, but I don’t need it. I’ve got all the apologies I need from my own sorry self.” He tries to crack a smile but it lands as a sigh.
Art asks, heart heavy and pulsing against his ribcage as he fears the answer but craved it just as well, “So, you-you aren’t angry at anyone? For this?”
“No-” Jones sniffs. “-of course not, who with? Other than myself, of course.”
“I don’t know, me-” Art says, and Jones looks up at him with a furrowed brow and parted lips. “-me, or, or Beth-” As soon as the name hits his ears, Jones snaps his lips shut and shakes his head frantically, eyes startled, tears halted. “-definitely the-the slut who did this to you.” Art hadn’t planned to say it but when he does, he gulps, because it feels so strange on his lips, on his tongue.
“Oh no, Art, she was nice,” Jones breathes, sinking as he relaxes again into the pillow, eyes half lidded and tired as Art stares expectantly at them. “She was nice, Art. She was pretty, blonde. Like Beth.” His eyes slip shut and he shakes his head again, mutters, “I liked her.”
Art nods, blinks, whispers, “Did you?” because he doesn’t know what else he can say. When Jones nods, Art gulps for what seems like the thousandth time but is never enough for his dry, tried throat. “So you don’t… blame anyone?”
With a tiny gleam in his eyes, apologetic almost as they look finally into Art’s, for which Art could not be gladder, looking into which he wants to sink, to disappear. “No, I don’t. Why should I?”
Art offers a small shrug and with Jones looking up at him like that he can’t even find an answer for himself.
“Sometimes things just happen,” Jones sighs, rubbing at his weary eyes. “It doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault, or anything like that.”
She’s sitting at the kitchen table when Art walks in, cheeks smudged pink and far grown hair pushed behind her ears in a smooth braid, elbows on the table’s surface and mouth and nose pressed in a tissue held between slender fingers. Jones sits across from her, reaching over, a hand on her bicep, eyes on hers which stare at him, searching, twitching around the edges as if she is staring at the sun itself-filling the flat with shining light that sears her shoulders out from her sleeveless shirt and casts heat across her cheekbones to paint pale skin pink.
“I’m sorry, I should go,” Art sputters, almost like instinct as he steps back and turns through the door.
Whatever part of him that had been expecting to hear, “No, you can stay,” had not in the least expected it to come from Beth, and he almost doesn’t believe his own ears even as she drops one arm to the table at stares up at Art with tears just beginning to sprout along her eyelashes, with a pink-tipped nose and pouting lips.
“Can he really?” Jones whispers, astounded, a grin breaking out on his face when Beth smiles and nods. Art steps back across the room, cautiously pulls out a chair next to Jones’ and sits with his arms in his lap and his hands folded loosely.
“I was just apologizing,” Beth says, sniffing and worrying the tissue in her fingers as the box sits stationary next to her elbow. “To-to Jones and, perhaps I should apologize to you as well.”
As Jones presses his lips together firmly and shakes his head lightly, Art draws in a heavy breath that rockets down his throat in a gulp and lands in his stomach in a knot.7
“And I,” Jones says, a small sigh and his own apologetic grin, “was just telling Beth that she doesn’t have to apologize for a thing, that I don’t need it and that she shouldn’t worry about anything like that.”
“I, um,” Art breaths, throat tight and exhales a rush, “Jones is right,” and Beth’s eyes flicker wide. “But I do appreciate that. I really, really do.”
“Oh, no, Art-”
Water trickles down Art’s face as he bounds up the steps, drops off his bangs and along his haw-his shoulders are soaked already through his t-shirt, jeans speckled wet at his calves and uncomfortably smug against his legs. If the warm summer rain had had him lazy, he’s more than alert now as he peers over Jones’ shoulder at the key that won’t seem to budge in their building’s door, whichever way Jones tries frantically to turn it, jaw clenched and fingertips going white.
“-I took the wrong key.” Turning his back to the suddenly looming, disappointing Great Wall of a block of painted wood, Jones faces Art and offers a shrug because he can’t give anything else.
“Huh”-Art mumbles, shaking drops of water from his eyelashes and bangs-“you think I could break it down?”
“Do you still have that ax?”
Art sighs: “No…”
Jones offers a little grunt of acknowledgement, of well-there-you-have-it, shifting on his heels.
“So-what?” Art turns and leans back, top of the steps’ railing caught in his folded palms, arms holding him up like sticks would a camping tent. The rain soaks through his shirt, patters in sizeable drops and smudges against his chest. “We’re stuck out here?”
Jones sighs, grimaces. “Looks like it.”
“Eh, that’s okay.” Art finds himself staring off into the grayish night, eyes hard to move, rain wearing on his energy still. At least it’s just the end of the summer, at least the water’s warm, like a pool, like a bath, he doesn’t mind it, he doesn’t think. No, it’s fine. He’s fine.
“Is it really?” Something lies across Jones’ face, his wide eyes and parted lips, and Art’s fairly sure it’s either disbelief at Art general okayness or lack of care at least, now, or a pleasant praise and gladness that Art isn’t frustrated, or anything.
Art doesn’t really know. He doesn’t want to think about it, or anything. Doesn’t want to think about anything.
Jones’ hair is sticking up in the places where it isn’t matter down. It’s a bit amusing, really. Art finds a smile on his lips, but perhaps it was already there.
“Are we really going to sleep out here?”
“Sure,” Art sighs, happily, “Who’s there awake to let us in?”
“Alright.”
When Art sighs, legs crossed and back pressing uncomfortably into the railing’s bars, the lukewarm water that’s pooled across the concrete seeps through the seat of his jeans. The backs of his thighs feel damp, and weird, he thinks, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. Jones lowers himself gingerly to sit as well, and Art leans close because, why not?
Somehow, through the course of the next few drowsy hours, Art ends up on his back, one leg crossed over the other and arms folded behind his head-a slippery, fleshy, still-not-soft-enough pillow, with Jones spread out next to him, Jones’ arm slung across Art’s stomach and head resting on Art’s chest.
“This reminds me of something,” Art mumbles, not entirely sure if it’s aloud, not entirely sure if Jones is awake.
Jones sighs, and Art feels it. “Art.” And his voice is testing, gentle still, like all those times Art’s ended up falling asleep at work or offending or terrifying someone without realizing it, or chasing a child with an ax or saying something embarrassing for the two of them altogether. And so, Art is silent. Jones sighs again, sputters to spit rainwater out of his mouth, and Art reaches out an aching, stiff arm to rub at his shoulder.
Art hasn’t an inkling of an idea how much time is passing. He wonders if his cell phone’s gone waterlogged. It was cheap, anyway.
“Hey-Jones?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you awake?”
“Barely?”
Art’s hand is still on Jones’ shoulder; he isn’t exactly sure if he can even move. “Can I ask you something?” It’s a bit hard to speak, with his mouth facing the sky, with the sky pouring rain into it earnestly.
“Sure.” Jones’ breathing is heavy, steady, it echoes in Art’s own chest.
“Are you going to tell your family?”
Jones sighs, shuffles and shifts against Art’s side. “No-no, not just yet. I mean-I’m still okay, aren’t I? I’m fine. I’m not sick, not really. Well. It doesn’t matter, I’m okay. And I’m not going to worry. So the people I love aren’t going to worry either.”
Art finds life trickling down into his stiff fingers and he squeezes Jones’ shoulder hard, still gentle though as he feels so weak, and Jones shifts again, trying to get closer.
“Apart from you, I suppose,” Jones mutters into the scratchy cloth of Art’s shirt. “I wish you didn’t have to.”
Later, with Jones lain across him, slim fingers clenching and unclenching in sleep the wet speckles fabric at his chest, Jones’ forehead resting comfortably where the hem of Art’s shirt falls low on his neck, Art decides that if there is a heaven or anything like, this is what it must feel like. And if truly he’s right, he thinks, Jones hasn’t a thing to worry about.
Art is woken at just the first graze of the dry sun against his cheek and his stiff, awkwardly-dried clothes, at the first opening of the door from inside and its loud smack against Jones’ hip, and even as Art can see how it must hurt, Jones doesn’t seem unhappy in the least.
It’s a tiny place, just a few blocks from the cinema. Art’s fairly sure he’s been here before; the cream and white striped wallpaper strikes something familiar in him, not enough to truly remember, albeit.
He finds her sitting alone, near the back, absent-mindedly toying with a near full plate of chips. When she looks up, face narrow and eyes wide like almonds, she looks almost like a mouse caught rummaging through someone’s pantry, wary as her fingers skid across the edge of the plate’s light blue ceramic. “Art,” she says, voice blank, eyes testing.
“Hello Beth,” Art says, trying a smile as he slides into the second wooden chair across the tiny square table. “Well-how’ve you been?”
“I’ve been alright,” Beth sighs, and with a tired sigh of a grin in return. “How’s Jones?”
“He’s good, he says.” Art shrugs, leaves his shoulders hunched a bit forward still as he wrings his fingers in his lap. “But I’m still worried, of course.”
“Yeah, I am too.”
There’s a short silence that Art fills for himself by cracking his neck subtly and straightening his spine, because his tongue feels too heavy, too oafish to fill it with anything else. He sighs, swallows and blinks, and Beth looks up again from her not untouched but far uneaten plate. “Um… I just wanted to… to apologize.” He makes a small gesture with his hands on the last word like it needs it.
“What?” Beth’s eyes are wide, her upper lip twitches. “Really?”
“Yeah-yeah, definitely.” Art draws in a deep breath, blinks slowly on the intake and sighs. “Beth, I’m so, so sorry. I, um. I know you loved him just as much as me.”
“I still love him,” Beth says, a sad chuckle. “How can you not, really.”
“Yeah…” Art gulps. “I really am sorry for all those things I said.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but, really, it’s alright.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I mean,” Beth says, with a small smile and a light shrug as she drops her forearm to rest on the patterned tablecloth, “it hurt, of course, still hurts. But it all hurts, so what’s the difference?”
“It does,” Art sighs, “doesn’t it? And to think that Jones probably feels so much worse.”
Beth nods, wanders with her eyes for a moment. “You’re taking care of him?”
“As best I can.”
“Thank you, Art.”
“No,” Art mutters, and his breath hitches in his throat. He blinks, and finding air is a struggle. “Thank you. For making him so happy for so long.”
A sad smile laces with humility breaks out on Beth’s face as she rubs at her eyes lazily. “You know, all this really means a lot to hear.” Art cracks a tiny, sad grin of his own. “This may sound stupid, but I’ve always really wanted us to get along.” She shrugs, sighs-Art’s eyes flicker wider, attentive, interested. “I always felt like it would never work with, with Jones if I didn’t have the approval of the person he wad closest to. I tried not to mind it but it’s never that easy.” With a deeper sigh as she looks down, she shakes her head. “That was part of the reason I broke up with him.”
“Because… of me?”
“Oh, Art, no-”
“Oh my god.” Art barely has enough air in him to talk-he rests his elbows on the table, drops his face into the warmth of his hands. “Because of me.” His eyes itch and his lips shake, and he feels the soft brush of fingertips along his forearm. Beth runs her hand up the length of its bone, pressing gently into Art’s muscle.
“Art, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, don’t be.” Art’s voice is thick and stuffy as he runs both his hands through his bangs, drops his arms to the table and squeezes his eyes shut in trying to find composition.
“I shouldn’t have told you that, huh?” Beth’s lips are set in an apologetic grimace.
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Art gulps, drops his hands to his lap. “Everything’s fine.”
The next time Art cries himself to sleep, he sheds tears not entirely for Jones or for himself, but for Beth, for Jones’ family who may not even know until it’s too late, for all the people Jones used to know who may someday wonder whatever happened to that funny, awkward kid and then abandon the thought within hours, never finding out what did happen and living on blissfully. Art can’t decide whether he wants to keep it a secret, so to say, a private bit of truth for only himself and Jones, and even Beth, he doesn’t mind, or he’d rather scream it out from the rooftops and let people know, because they should know Jones, they should know that sometimes good people suffer and that Jones is just so, so strong.
He doesn’t dream but he imagines that if he did, his dreams would be filled with wayward splotches of blues and grays, like those that spread across the insides of his eyelids whenever he presses his face just a bit harder into his pillow, clutches the rumpled sheets just a bit harder in his restless fingers, clenches his teeth just a bit harder so that they slide and scrape together with the most horrid grinding, squeaking sound and all he can do is sob and sigh and gasp little, strangled sounds as invisible, inconceivable forces squeeze the air painfully out from his chest.
The next morning, he grips his toothbrush just a bit harder, and it snaps in two in his fingers.
An odd occurrence turns to just every few days, and some full clusters of days, night after night after which Art just can’t seem to get up in the morning or even peel his face off of the soaked pillow that’s melded to his skin.
The next time Art manages to scrape himself out of bed and slump around the flat in the middle of the night for no reason other than that his limbs are strung out from lying limp across the sheets, he can hear a faint whimpering and wailing through the too-thin walls, and he’s drawn to Jones’ room by the same force that won’t seem to let him go, the force that pushes in on him from the outside until he has no room in his body left to breath.
He doesn’t need the lights on, knows Jones’ room well enough; when he climbs into Jones’ bed he does it gently, but forcefully enough to let Jones know he’s there. To let Jones that he wants him to know he’s there. Jones looks up, face red and shining, and he drops his head back onto the pillow when Art lies down with him and hugs him close, neither saying a word.
In the morning, Jones wakes up. Of course he wakes up.
Every morning Jones wakes up, every day he drives Art to work and the two of them come back home later and all that ever changes is where and how they get dinner. Each repeat of the most mundane schedule is a shot of anesthesia straight into Art’s spine, though sometimes it’s shot in the meat of his calf, and sometimes in the back of his neck to leave it with an ugly crick and a dull ache that doesn’t seem to go away. The numbness never seems to last long before he’s left in its tingling, aching aftershocks.
And perhaps there’s metal in this hideous shot as well because every time he sees Jones, the magnet, the signal and the lighthouse and the lovely black hole, Art can feel it pressing out, tingling under his skin, rising to the surface and ringing ceaselessly whenever Jones touches him, brushes into him. Rattling in his head whenever Jones speaks to him.
“I just-I can’t take it anymore, you know?”
“Art, calm down, alright? He’s fine, isn’t he? He’s okay, now?”
“Well, yeah, of course he is, I wouldn’t be standing around on the phone if he wasn’t, but-who knows for how much longer? I mean, I sure as hell don’t, so what if I wake up one morning, and-I could wake up one morning and he could just be gone, or-or he could be sick, or-”
“It’s not that quick, Art. It’s not. Nothing’s ever that quick.”
“No, everything’s far too quick. You can’t keep up with it-I can’t keep up with it all. I’m so scared, Beth. I’m so, so scared.”
“Oh, of course, I know, and I am too-how could you not be scared?”
“I almost wish I knew-oh! He’s home. I have to go.”
“I’ll talk to you later?”
“Definitely.”
It’s metal, metallic. It’s like blood. Blood, rattling about in Art’s head, like those metal beads, or those things they put on cakes. Those things. He can’t stop thinking about them. Maybe they’ve sprung up from his stomach into his brain. Has he ever had those?
He sits on the edge of Jones’ bed and ever since he decided, just hours ago when he was at work with Jones and had all those hours to think, he can’t stop thinking. About everything, nothing. He sits still because he’s snuck into Jones’ room, and none of this is going to work if Jones wakes up.
He’s treading water but even that is far too thick, too red, too deep to be that at all. It’ll fill his lungs if he stops moving, he knows. It’ll choke him up if he messes up, if he breathes wrong or moves too much and if Jones wakes up and he finds out, it’ll drown him.
He wants to reach out for a raft but it’s too late, it’s been popped by a needle’s shiny point in the heat of the sun that reflects off Art’s private pool, his hot tub, too hot, cold enough for him to feel shivers trailing along under his skin.
It’s dark in Jones’ room, and Art has no raft, but he does have a needle which he rolls between his thumb and forefinger. It’s shiny in a dull way, knobby on the end, looks used and worn and is hot from all the time it’s spend between those two sheltering, sweltering fingers. It’s slicked with sweat from Art’s hand. He’s terrified beyond belief that it will slip from his grasp. He’s terrified of what will happen if it doesn’t.
He wishes he could close his eyes, but he’ll miss if he doesn’t see. He wishes it could be like a shot, he could clench his jaw and close his eyes and not pay attention and it would all be over in a second. But it’s not like that at all, so he squints in the near-darkness, in the dim light that filters in from the crack in the door where Art had feared closing it fully would make too loud a sound. He squints and blinks and tries not to blink as he raises his non-needle-wielding forefinger in front of his eyes, and then down where he can bend his elbow against his side because his arm begins to ache. And his other arm aches too, because it’s shaking so hard and he’s trying to keep it so steady, and the space between that thumb and forefinger because he’s gripping the needle so hard. He’d relax his hand if the thought of letting go of that tiny metal weapon was anywhere near bearable. His whole body would relax if any of this was even in the same universe as the concept of bearable.
He swallows and tries not to exhale too loudly after, but part of him craves it as it’s too quiet, he can’t hear a thing but his occasional sputter of badly timed breath where the length and depth of his windpipe is horribly estimated-not hard at all to do when he has to remind himself every few moments how to breathe.
He can’t take it anymore, dammit, and in a rush of confusion and pain and anger and the ceaseless running of the engine inside him and the conveyor belt muscles of his arms he stabs himself, right in the pad of his finger, right in the fleshiest part, and goddammit, it’s hurts, it hurts so much. He can take it, he can take a lot, he’s been bludgeoned with a camera and lived to tell the tale (though he often did refrain from explaining how that came to happen), but it’s different when it’s by his own hand. By his own hand and his own faithful, scary needle, both of which relax visibly as it’s done, as blood sprouts in a tiny metallic scarlet bead in the pinhole prick and trickles down into the creases that line his joints. The hot, sharp pain’s turned lackluster by now, and his finger feels more tired than anything.
His panic spikes again when he realizes that that was the easy part. That Jones can’t possibly sleep through that. He wipes the sweaty needle off on his shirt and hopes for the best.
He stands from his place at the foot of Jones’ bed, steps around to the side where Jones, fast asleep, faces him so very peacefully. He doesn’t sit again-he doesn’t think he can. From its place lain across the sheets he takes Jones’ arm, so limp and so warm, so unattended and helpless, almost. Art finds himself heavy with the overwhelming need to protect this boy who is far too old to be called that, this person who is so unbelievably weak and who means everything to Art and more, who draws out all the feelings in Art that completely contradict everything he is about to do.
Believe him if he believes himself, he can’t possibly not.
Jones’ slack arm almost slips from his sweaty, nervous grip-he’s terrified to grip too tightly, horrified to accidentally let go.
So he lets Jones’ arm fall away, slip just a few centimeters at a time, until it is only Jones’ hand that he holds in his own, fingertips propping up Jones’ palm, Jones’ fingers like a waterfall cascading through his own in the dark.
Art wants to say something, anything, but even if he could let himself his throat feels empty-only wind he breathes in through his mouth, stuck like glue when he breathes out.
So he doesn’t say a word, not even silently to himself-thinking would ruin everything, thinking he’s sure is what will ruin him.
He presses the needle between his fingers, again so impossibly hard, and his fingertips are white, his knuckles ache. He’d close his eyes but slipping would be catastrophic, as he pricks Jones’ finger, too shallow but even too deep, soft skin giving too easily but not easily enough-and when warm blood drips from a rough fingerprint, Art quickly but gently presses his own dripping finger to Jones’-and he’s home, he’s safe.
He’s free and he can feel but so can Jones-Jones is stirring, waking, “Mmm,”-and his eyes blink open ever so slowly-“Art?”-and Art wants to disappear, wants to melt away-“Art? Art? OH MY GOD-WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
He’s tossing the blanket off him to sit up, staring at Art with his eyes wide and his bottom teeth showing, and Art can only stand there, blood dripping from his finger ad oto the floor, Joes cradling his own hand, trying to stop his own flow of blood.
“ART!”
Art says nothing, stares, presses his fingers into the sides of his thighs and shifts on his feet. Can he run? Would it be still like treading water?
“What the hell?”
And Jones is leaning forward, he’s panting heavily and on his knees, and he swings a loose fist at Art’s face, it’s like a rubber bag bouncing off of iron; Art can only stand there still when Joes brings his hand back, groans and cradles it in the bleeding one-can he be so frail? Art stands and breathes and feels his ribcage caving in on him.
With eyes red, bloodshot, with his hands in each other and his cheeks flushed dark, Jones looks Art in the terrified eyes, his own eyes like lasers, and mutters-“Get out.”
So Art does, closes the door behind him, falls with his back to it and sinks down to sob into his hands and between his knees, curls in on himself, stays that way until morning is discernible.
“We’re getting you tested, you know,” Jones says the next morning when he’s sat Art down on his own bed, voice steady but wavering over its breaking point. “I made an appointment for you later today. I’m sure you’ll-” He gulps, “-you’ll be fine.”
When I’m sure means I hope, Art can only sit, shamed, like a dog being scolded, with his head down and craving both to look Jones in the eyes and to avoid his gaze forever.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Jones asks, and his eyes now are like canyons, deep set filled with nothing and everything. He’s trying to be calm, Art can tell, but he’s panicking, pained, just like Art. Jones is panicking and angry and sad and disappointed and Art hates it, he hates himself.
“I can’t live without you,” Art says, and it’s so simple but it’s so not, and he’s crying again, already, tears slipping down his cheeks, the creases by his mouth, dripping off his jaw, and echoing a hundredfold in his quiet voice.
“Art, please don’t be like that.” There’s a solitary tear slipping from Jones’ eye, the one little defiance of the keep-calm-for-Art’s-sake demeanor he emanates like a light bulb, that makes Art sick but not well enough, that makes Art fall in love and fall apart and fall into and away from himself.,
Art looks at Jones and he doesn’t say a thing. He can’t.
“Please don’t,” Jones mutters, begs. “You can’t.”
“But it’s true,” Art says, and he could break down on the floor, shed tears like blood.
“No, no it isn’t, Art.” Jones’ eyes plead, perhaps even to himself, even as Art finds himself lost in them and drowning. “You’re so much more than just us. You’re so much bigger than that.”
Art’s shaking his head, barely registers he’s doing it, with his lips parted wide and his eyes watering earnestly.
“No, Art, you really are something, you know? You really are special, and I’m not just saying that. Please, don’t throw your whole life away, just because of me.”
Art’s throat tightens, makes a choked little noise, and he can only gasp in little, panicked breaths as Jones goes on.
“I mean-you have dreams, don’t you?” Jones’ voice is soft even as it echoes in Art’s mind, reverberates until it’s left Art limp and exhausted, the loudest beg and so desperate, so tremendously wanting. And Art wants nothing but to give. “Aspirations? You’re a talented filmmaker, Art, you’re gonna be big someday, I swear it. And-and you’ll fall in love, you’ll get married. You’ll find someone else, yeah? You’ll be happy, you’ll be successful. You’ll be great.” Jones nods, lips pressed together tight, tears smearing across his eyelids and cheekbones. “Don’t throw it all away, don’t do that, please Art, not for me.”
Art feels like he’s going to fall forward, doesn’t even realize he’s doing it until one of Jones’ hands comes around to cup the back of his head, steadying him, the other had on his cheek and his face is only centimeters from Jones’ as they breath the same delicious, defiant air-there’s that magnet, again, that force telling him to both push into and pull away from. “You have to live, Art,” Jones says, pleads. “You have to go on. Can you do that? Do you think you can do that?
“No,” Art sighs, gulps in the air and energy that escapes him. “But I’m willing to try.”
“For me?”
“Of course.” And Jones presses their foreheads together, breathes and Art can feel his whole body shake with it. “Al-always.” And he can only mumble and stare, caught and held in Jones’ watery, pleading gaze, his head down, his lips wavering, so impossibly fragile.
And before Art can register it or register anything Jones is tipping his mouth forward and kissing him, long, smooth strokes of perfect, pink lips against Art’s while he holds Art close, both hands on Art’s temples. As Art kisses Jones back, hungrily, desperately, he can do nothing but surrender to the heat of Jones’ mouth, to the warmth of Jones’ that’s always been Jones-he puts his hands on Jones’ waist and he never wants to get up.
It echoes across the flat, a panicked call only amplified by the acoustics in the bathroom from which it comes, “Art!” And he’s running, tripping over furniture as that strangled, choked cry echoes in his mind and echoes again as he’s called again. He can’t burst open that door quick enough-he does, arms pulsing and restless, mind racing and heart feeling thick with blood and fear; and there is Jones, looking up at Art with wide eyes, leant over the sink and panicked. Art sees first the blood spotted across Jones’ mouth-open almost perpetually in surprise though now it’s so impossibly different-collecting and pooling in the dip in his bottom lip and then, more blood, splattered in the sink, dark and scarlet against the white porcelain.
Jones looks like a deer in headlights-frail and shaking, eyes like planets as he stares between his blood and Art, the blood with horror, Art with panicked confusion and quiet desperation. Like a baby deer, and Art needs to protect him. Needs to save him.
Bambi, your mother’s been killed.
Jones gulps, looking solely now at Art, reaching up to touch his mouth where blood slips in tiny drops down his chin, before changing his mind, fingers hovering like a cage around it, not daring to touch but terrified to leave be.
Art wants the same, wants to touch Jones, wants to cradle Jones against him-but can Jones break? Snap like a twig, because he’s already as thin as one?
Jones, you’re dying.
Jones stays put, reaching a hand behind him to steady himself against the sink and Art doesn’t move, he’s scared to but scared not to, scared to do anything but terrified to do nothing.
Art. A hand on Jones’ shoulder, another on Jones’ cheek, trapping Jones’ wayward hand between their faces as Jones melts into the touch, quivering on weak legs. Jones is dying. “We’re going to the hospital, yeah?” Jones nods fervently, leaning on Art, too scared and too weak to properly walk so Art helps him.
Art can feel everything and he can’t feel a thing.
It’s like spices, he realizes. Like spices, in a dish, because when you have one of a few, you can taste them all, it’s okay. You can understand. But when you dump a cloud of everything on this steak which suddenly to you is like a raging bull, it’s too much and you can’t tell one from another or all from nothing, you just want to rip your tongue out. Art just wants to rip his heart out.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever let go of Jones’ hand, not for one second that he’s in this uncomfortable plastic chair and Jones is supine in the hospital bed with its perfect white sheets and its perfect metal machinery that Art just wants to watch fold away, like in a play, the whole scene to fold and fall away and morph into something just a bit closer to home.
“You had a cold?” Art says, and it’s more of a growl but a soft one at that.
Jones only nods, head limp against his complementary pillow.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought I’d be fine, I-I didn’t feel much worse than usual, anyway, I took the antibiotics and everything.”
“Dammit, Jones.”
“I didn’t want you to worry-”
“Well, I am. I do, Jones. I worry.”
“I thought it was nothing-”
“Nothing is ever nothing, Jones.”
“Art, I’m so sorry,” and Jones is crying now, and Art tries-and fails-not to.
“Dammit, Jones.
Jones’ relatives come and go like the seasons, and sitting constant all the time is Art, like that big old oak tree in every neighborhood, that big old tree who braves it through the seasons, who stands tall even as he sears in the heat and is piled with snow. So, so very old, Art feels, and Jones is far too young.
There comes a seemingly-perpetually-cheery(-i.e.,-optimistic-as-one-can-be-in-a-situation-like-this) aunt with a spring in her step despite the horrendous looking weight above her soles; a grouchy, frail old uncle with hair white as snow with whom Jones was never close yet comes with connection, absolution in mind nevertheless, because he knows his late wife, loved Jones, would have.
Jones’ mother and sister stay for a few days both, overlapping, overwhelming especially for Art because it kills him to share. It’s nice, it’s loving, of course nothing short of-but dammit he doesn’t want to share.
Beth stays for some days as well, and Art finds that he doesn’t quite mind it.
But Jones is his-Jones is all his when all the family leaves at night, when Art stays because he can’t stomach the thought of leaving, not that he’d even for a second considered it.
Fluorescent lights above two tired heads never willing to sleep-bright just enough to make everything look dull, light just enough to strip any shadows of any shadow in themselves and absolve all that is anything but crystal-bubble and thicken up in hideous fake white light across Jones’ skin, across the hairless undersides of Jones’ arms which look pale enough already, like paper, thin and frail and tiny enough sticking out from creased paper sleeves.
Art asks, “Got any nines?”
“Eugh”-Jones mutters, cards in meticulous fingers near his stomach, arms laid out in front of him, exhausted-“go fish.” His head is propped up by the standard-issue pillows of which he’d kept asking for more, his neck creases awkwardly whenever he looks down.
“You’re shameless,” Art jokes, leaning back in the plastic chair that’s as of late become like his very unfortunate, uncomfortable home. Comfortable enough with Jones, though. He has no complaints.
“Mm,” Jones mumbles, a nod and a tiny chuckle as he thumbs through the plastic pieces in his lap. “Any threes?”
The tiny beeps of a heart monitor become soon like the ticks of a clock.
“Art?” Jones whispers one night, surrendered almost to the thresholds of sleep but awake still, alert almost but exhausted more than anything.
“Yeah?” Art leans forward in his chair, the chair he thinks he’s come to count on almost as much as Jones if such a thing can even be.
“Will you come into bed with me?” A soft voice like a mouse or a cricket or a child, eyes like the three all hopeful and shining.
Art asks, because he wouldn’t do a thing to jeopardize his stay: “Will the doctors be okay with it?” As if he’d ever cared much about authority-some things are just too precious to risk.
Quiet and tiny and precious and priceless, “I’m sure they won’t mind.”
Art could never argue further, because crawling into that plain old bed with Jones is just about the only thing he’s wanted to do all this time, wrapping his arms around Jones and holding him close, protecting him like a weak, tiny body should be protected.
And as he does just that, as he climbs up onto the mattress and feels it dip under his knee, the extra weight it might not even be able to hold, all that and the doctors are forgotten; nothing else matters as Jones settles into him, head on his chest, arms folded in between both of their stomachs.
When Art wraps his arms around Jones, pulls him in and holds him there in a hold tired but cement-firm, Jones curls into Art, like trying to disappear into Art’s shirt or his skin, or into his breath and his heartbeat, and Art finds himself doing the same.
Hours pass or unmarked time, time that Art couldn’t care for, because numbers are nothing, all is nothing but Jones’ breath which lulls Art tired like a lullaby, which wisps, steady, through and past parted pink lips, as Jones’ eyes themselves are half shut, drooping, drowsy like Art is.
And perhaps Art is dreaming, when these breaths lose the drumbeat rhythm they make with Jones’ heartbeat, the steadfast song lovelier than can be made by any musical instrument, when these breaths turn erratic, some deep and savored and some strangled and gasped, random almost as they pulse in Jones’ body and echo against Art’s chest.
Perhaps he is dreaming, perhaps it’s all in his mind even as it just barely pierces the veil of his consciousness, when Jones’ tiny breaths get shorter and shorter, quicker and more desperate. He pulls Jones closer, closer still, never close enough.
Art’s sure he’s dreaming because he can’t feel a thing, not the awkward stutter of Jones’ breath-even as it plays out in front of him like a film-not when the breaths, the precious breaths like jewels, popped like bubbles, slow and choke, and then stop, stop and are gone, and with his jaw clenched and his voice thick and his eyes clouded with tears he can’t feel either, he can only mumble, “Jones”-and the doctors have come, they’ve heard the stark beep of the heart monitor that hadn’t even registered in Art’s clouded head-“Dammit, Jones,” and it’s a grumble and a groan and a plea, and the nurses have to forcibly pull him from the empty bed.
“Art”-Beth asks, voice soft and eyes pointed low-“Can you pass me a juice box?”
The spring wind is warm and light as is wisps about the two, through the grass and all the thick-stemmed dandelions, makes their picnic blanket flutter lightly under their seats-the blanket Art had found in the attic, the one he’s fairly sure belonged to Jones. “Yeah”-and he opens the cooler, hands Beth a juice box, would toss it, but-what’s the need?
“Thank you.”
And it’s quiet save for the chirps of birds, the empty noise of the wind whistling through leaves and trees. Art’s never liked quiet, but this feels different, somehow, it feels alright.
“I’m working on a new script,” he says quietly, plucking from the cooler a cherry juice box of his own and toying with it in his hands.
“Oh yeah?”
Art nods. “Yeah. It’s about a man, who has a friend, who leaves one day, but it’s alright because-because he has no choice… don’t know why yet, but there’s got to be a reason. And so, the man has to find footing again, has to make his life mean something again. And he’s alone, but… he isn’t. Not really.”
Beth is silent, staring at Art with wide, sympathetic eyes. Art worries his plastic straw between his fingers before slipping it gently into its hole in its tiny cardboard box.
“I’ll use a lot of blur, I think.”
Beth nods, cracks a smile, holds up her mixed berry juice box in initiation of a toast. “To Jones,” she says.
Art holds up his juice box and red meets purple, painted cardboard clunks against the same, and for the first time in days he feels a smile crawling up onto his lips. “Our Jones.”
He finds himself with only his own mind to listen to, and it feels like a pool of heavy, hot water that he can’t help but sink deeper into. When the water stirs, rippled in Art’s chest, something he’d only ever thought about for seconds hits him with its full collapsing force, a beast, a leviathan with teeth to tear him apart and with enormous power to lend him in sabotage-
It’s Beth’s fault.
Beth’s fault more than anyone’s, anyone he knows, and it has his blood boiling, setting fire to his burning bones. He can almost feel them crumble inside him as he leans forward, suddenly failing to hold him completely upright. His arms tighten across his stomach.
“Art?” she says, voice cutting somehow through Art’s shell and finding its way straight to his ears, and it’s wavering, wet, it’s disgusting-he’d bash his head against the table if it meant he didn’t have to listen to it. He may just do that anyway. “Are you okay?” She sniffs, wipes the back of a bony hand across her nose.
“Just about as okay as you are.” Beth nods in understanding, slips that hand over and covering half her face, and Art is surprised he even still has a voice.
“Beth,” Jones says, “can I get you some tissues?”
And Beth says, “Yes, please,” with a small, self-deprecating grin that disappears in a second with a sob and a sigh.
Jones gets up, pads to the bathroom. Art looks at Beth; Beth stares down at the table.
After Jones comes back with a small cardboard box, and Beth manages to bring herself to some semblance of composed while Art scratches at the tear-reddened, itchy skin around his eyes, Jones sits up a bit straighter with his arms on the table, rings his hands anxiously and says, voice low, “Beth, I asked you to come over because I wanted to ask you something.”
“Anything.” Beth’s voice is muffled by the tissue pressed loosely over her nose and mouth.
“Well I’d really like it if,” Jones sighs, a small grin finding its way to his lips, “if you came on a picnic with me and Art. Would you do that?”
“Yes-yes, of course, I’d love to,” Beth says, and she’s smiling again, Art can see through the edge of the wilting tissue. He thinks he’d like to say something, anything, but his throat is too hollow and his mouth is too tired.
Before Beth leaves, she presses a kiss to Jones’ forehead, bringing out a quiet blush in his cheeks, and Art can’t tell whether it’s anger or jealousy that stirs in his stomach so he settles on both. Part of him wants to breath a sigh of relief when she’s out the door, but the relief never comes.
“Thank you so much for doing this,” Jones tells him, later. “I know you don’t like her, but you’re being great, you know.” Art gulps, lays a hand over Jones’ shoulder to look into wide, grateful eyes, and words still escape him.
In the days that follow and the days before the picnic, Jones does a fair job of keeping everything relatively normal. But always preferring to be behind the camera, Art’s never been much of an actor.
“Art.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re scared.”
“Yeah.”
“Please don’t be.” With a small grin, Jones spreads his arms out, shows Art the whole of his frame which Art swears has gotten skinnier, even as hard as it is to tell under sweaters and turtlenecks and button-ups-“I’m fine, see? Shouldn’t be any different from before.”
Art almost doesn’t say it, almost decides that it isn’t fair-but he can’t help himself, he’s never been able to, so he mutters with his chin in his hands and his back slumped over the kitchen table, “Except now you’ve got a bucket list.”
“No! No, don’t think of it like that,” Jones says as he leans over the table, closer to Art, shoulders hunched and mouth upturned like he’s telling a secret. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just… if there are things I want to do, why not try to do them as soon as I can?”
“Because-because you shouldn’t have to, you should-” Art sighs, wipes a hand across his face. “-you should have your whole life to-”
“Art.” There’s a firmness in Jones’ voice, a pull in his eyes like a magnet that Art finds his own drawn to, held in as he drops his hands from his face and stares. “Art, no.”
The day comes with light, baby blue skies, with clouds a soft, powdery white and with forest trees reaching up to touch them-so very mellow, and if mellow isn’t numb then Art’s never been born.
He and Beth stand outside his building, stalling on the steps while Jones looks for the tablecloth he’d forgotten. “Beth,” he nods, when they’re left alone.
“Art.” She nods, solemnly, lips pressed in a stark line as she looks anywhere but at Art’s eyes. He can’t stand it.
“Do you feel bad?”
“I feel terrible,” Beth says, and she gulps.
“You should.” She looks up at Art then, eyes shining and wide. “It’s your fault.” Art’s voice is clear, calm as he can keep it, and part of him is sure he should stop talking.
“Art, I didn’t know-”
“Well of course you didn’t know, no one ever really knows-” As tears begin to push at the corners of his eyes, he decides that whatever part of him that may be can go and suck it, he couldn’t care less. “-you think I knew when we was going to go out and shag some girl? That I wouldn’t have insisted on going with him? Yeah, of course I’m at fault for not being able to prevent this whole mess-so how much of your fault is it for starting it all?”
Beth’s eyes start to water, lips to stutter, and whatever mixture of feelings Art can’t possible name only boils in his stomach. “Art, it’s not your fault at all, it’s not my fault, it doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault-”
“BULLSHIT-”
And there’s a slam of a door inside, shaking Art from his hot flurry, and so he leans in close to Beth, he snarls, “We’ve got to play nice for Jones’ sake but don’t think for one second that I’ve forgiven you or that I ever will. And don’t speak a word of this to him, it’ll only upset him.”
Beth’s voice is high, strained as she speaks. “Art, please, you know I’d do anything not to hurt him-”
The door opens, a small creak before Jones’ head pops out from it-“Ready to go?”
And so, Art plays it up. He smiles at Beth and pats her on the back and she does the same, and he opens the passenger side door with a fake smile that has his mouth aching and a reluctant yet friendly utter of, “Well, there you go, Beth.”
“Oh,” Beth says, blinking, lips in the shape of just that. “Are you sure?”
Art grins. He hates it. “I insist.”
“Well, thank you, Art,” Beth mutters as she slides into the seat, pulling the door in behind her.
Even with his legs stuck and cramped and the ceiling looming only millimeters over his hair, it’s well worth it when Jones doesn’t stop grinning for a full five minutes or so. When it fades away, he makes small talk with Beth, and it comes back easily like a buoy floating back to the top of a pool. “The weather’s great today, isn’t it? Perfect for a picnic.”
“Oh it’s lovely…”
Their voices fade in and out and Art’s vision widens and wavers as he stares out the window, almost forgetting to blink, popping out of his trance only a few times to rub at his eyes.
“Art, can you pass me a juice box?”
The tablecloth is laid out across a spot of grass as the wind whips at small, thin-stemmed flowers around it. As stiff and forced as it is, Beth’s communication with Art seems to make Jones’ day, as does the vice-versa-“Yeah,” with a smile and a nod, and Art takes a juice box from the cooler to toss it across the tablecloth where Beth fumbles to catch it, smiling after nonetheless.
“Thank you,” Beth says with a small yet clearly uncomfortable grin as she meticulously stabs the box with its plastic straw.
Jones talks the most of the three of them, and so lively as he goes on about films and books and events and nothings, talks with his hands and his eyebrows and his smile-and when finally he says, “I just want to thank you both so much, for letting me spend a day with the two people I love the most,” with a gleam in his eyes and a mouth split between somber and grateful, if Art hadn’t already known the day would be worth it, it comes to be the surest fact he has in the fogged up depths of his mind.
The doctors say Jones is doing alright, they refill the pills Art’s been watching him take every morning over breakfast. They ask Art is he’d be interested in a local therapy program, and it’s probably the one Jones declined the first few visits, say he looks a bit on edge and it’s nothing to worry about, give him a pamphlet, and he tells them no, thank you, I haven’t lost anyone yet and I don’t plan to for a very, very long time. It’s not only for that, they say. On the way out he tosses the pamphlet in the trash.
It is only weeks later when Art realizes that perhaps he needs it. Not because of grief but because he’s got to be going crazy, because there’s no way he lives in the same world as Jones seems to. Because Art lives in a world where Jones has the worst of a terminal illness and Jones is acting as normal as ever in his own.
Art wonders is he’s imagining it all, if his senses have decided to screw with him until he’s driven up the walls.
He wonders if how he feels isn’t the norm, if he’s supposed to be calm and collected as Jones with the logical approach to the world that Art never could quite get his hands on, that Art finds he’d like more than anything. More than almost anything.
He knows that Jones is fine, at least for now, he knows even though he can’t make himself believe it.
But when he gets up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and finds Jones crying into his pillow, he isn’t relieved, he feels nothing short of anguished as he listens to Jones’ breathless, strangled sobs, as he goes into Jones’ room and sits on the edge of Jones’ bed, rubs Jones’ forearm with a gentle pressure and whispers, “Jones?”
With ragged breaths and futile gasps Jones nods, face half pressed into the pillow and streaking more tears across its already damp cloth as he tries to press his nose and mouth further into it.
“Jones, talk to me,” Art mumbles, pushing Jones’ sleeve up and rubbing his shoulders, swiping his thump soothingly across the trembling skin.
The door is still open, light pouring in from the hall, illuminating perfectly Jones’ face as he flits his eyes up the Art and tries to gasp in a breath that turns to a sob that shakes his chest. “What-what about?” he mumbles, the beginnings of a pout forming in his lips as his eyebrows furrow and he looks only into the pillow, at Art’s legs, not once turning his head up to look Art in the eyes and Art sighs, rubbing the back of Jones’ neck. He isn’t sure if it’s his imagination, when he feels Jones relax under his hand.
“I need to know,” Art breathes, begs, running his fingers through the back of Jones’ hair, “what’s going on, with you…”
Jones sniffs loudly, brings his hand up to press the pads of his fingers into the damp pillow, to lean into his knuckles as he squeezes his eyes shut and mutters, “What’s going on with me is I’m going to die, Art.”
Art gulps, shakes his head as he presses his fingers gently into the back of Jones’ neck, feels him tense up again. There’s a tightening in his chest, like his heart is made up of the strings of a violin that someone’s decided can’t be sharp enough. He can’t think of a thing to say, can’t seem to make his hollow bowstring throat work, and when he finds scratchy sound that will never be music he can only spout, “No, you’re not-”
“Yes, Art, I am.” Even as Jones turns onto his back, sobbing and wiping his nose, Art doesn’t let go of his shoulder, kneels on the bed so that he doesn’t have to. When Jones looks up at the ceiling and gasps a ragged breath, Art wants few things more than to properly meet his eyes. With tears leaking out from his squinting eyes and slipping off onto the pillow on either side, one ominous drip after the other, he speaks again. “I always thought I knew what I was doing, you know, with my life. I had plans, not good ones, but plans, and it’s like it’s all for nothing. I was gonna have a good-a good life, and I did, I guess, I did because sharing a flat with you has been amazing and I have an alright job and I had a great girlfriend but all those things are a bit hard to focus on when I’m-” He chokes on nothing, coughs and blinks. “-I’m dying-” With that, he lays his arms out in front of him in an emphasis that such a word’s never needed, spreads his fingers out before curling them back into his palms. “-just because I shagged someone I wasn’t supposed to!” His hands, out at his sides, fly right to his face and he sobs into them, sucks tiny breaths through the spaces between his fingers, tries to hide his face even as Art runs fingers down his plump jaw line, rubs his shoulder and his arm and his neck with a thick lump in his own throat.
“I’m so, so sorry, Jones.”
Jones threads his fingers through his hair, pushes it out of his face with both hands before crossing his arms gingerly over his chest. “I appreciate that, I do, but I don’t need it. I’ve got all the apologies I need from my own sorry self.” He tries to crack a smile but it lands as a sigh.
Art asks, heart heavy and pulsing against his ribcage as he fears the answer but craved it just as well, “So, you-you aren’t angry at anyone? For this?”
“No-” Jones sniffs. “-of course not, who with? Other than myself, of course.”
“I don’t know, me-” Art says, and Jones looks up at him with a furrowed brow and parted lips. “-me, or, or Beth-” As soon as the name hits his ears, Jones snaps his lips shut and shakes his head frantically, eyes startled, tears halted. “-definitely the-the slut who did this to you.” Art hadn’t planned to say it but when he does, he gulps, because it feels so strange on his lips, on his tongue.
“Oh no, Art, she was nice,” Jones breathes, sinking as he relaxes again into the pillow, eyes half lidded and tired as Art stares expectantly at them. “She was nice, Art. She was pretty, blonde. Like Beth.” His eyes slip shut and he shakes his head again, mutters, “I liked her.”
Art nods, blinks, whispers, “Did you?” because he doesn’t know what else he can say. When Jones nods, Art gulps for what seems like the thousandth time but is never enough for his dry, tried throat. “So you don’t… blame anyone?”
With a tiny gleam in his eyes, apologetic almost as they look finally into Art’s, for which Art could not be gladder, looking into which he wants to sink, to disappear. “No, I don’t. Why should I?”
Art offers a small shrug and with Jones looking up at him like that he can’t even find an answer for himself.
“Sometimes things just happen,” Jones sighs, rubbing at his weary eyes. “It doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault, or anything like that.”
She’s sitting at the kitchen table when Art walks in, cheeks smudged pink and far grown hair pushed behind her ears in a smooth braid, elbows on the table’s surface and mouth and nose pressed in a tissue held between slender fingers. Jones sits across from her, reaching over, a hand on her bicep, eyes on hers which stare at him, searching, twitching around the edges as if she is staring at the sun itself-filling the flat with shining light that sears her shoulders out from her sleeveless shirt and casts heat across her cheekbones to paint pale skin pink.
“I’m sorry, I should go,” Art sputters, almost like instinct as he steps back and turns through the door.
Whatever part of him that had been expecting to hear, “No, you can stay,” had not in the least expected it to come from Beth, and he almost doesn’t believe his own ears even as she drops one arm to the table at stares up at Art with tears just beginning to sprout along her eyelashes, with a pink-tipped nose and pouting lips.
“Can he really?” Jones whispers, astounded, a grin breaking out on his face when Beth smiles and nods. Art steps back across the room, cautiously pulls out a chair next to Jones’ and sits with his arms in his lap and his hands folded loosely.
“I was just apologizing,” Beth says, sniffing and worrying the tissue in her fingers as the box sits stationary next to her elbow. “To-to Jones and, perhaps I should apologize to you as well.”
As Jones presses his lips together firmly and shakes his head lightly, Art draws in a heavy breath that rockets down his throat in a gulp and lands in his stomach in a knot.7
“And I,” Jones says, a small sigh and his own apologetic grin, “was just telling Beth that she doesn’t have to apologize for a thing, that I don’t need it and that she shouldn’t worry about anything like that.”
“I, um,” Art breaths, throat tight and exhales a rush, “Jones is right,” and Beth’s eyes flicker wide. “But I do appreciate that. I really, really do.”
“Oh, no, Art-”
Water trickles down Art’s face as he bounds up the steps, drops off his bangs and along his haw-his shoulders are soaked already through his t-shirt, jeans speckled wet at his calves and uncomfortably smug against his legs. If the warm summer rain had had him lazy, he’s more than alert now as he peers over Jones’ shoulder at the key that won’t seem to budge in their building’s door, whichever way Jones tries frantically to turn it, jaw clenched and fingertips going white.
“-I took the wrong key.” Turning his back to the suddenly looming, disappointing Great Wall of a block of painted wood, Jones faces Art and offers a shrug because he can’t give anything else.
“Huh”-Art mumbles, shaking drops of water from his eyelashes and bangs-“you think I could break it down?”
“Do you still have that ax?”
Art sighs: “No…”
Jones offers a little grunt of acknowledgement, of well-there-you-have-it, shifting on his heels.
“So-what?” Art turns and leans back, top of the steps’ railing caught in his folded palms, arms holding him up like sticks would a camping tent. The rain soaks through his shirt, patters in sizeable drops and smudges against his chest. “We’re stuck out here?”
Jones sighs, grimaces. “Looks like it.”
“Eh, that’s okay.” Art finds himself staring off into the grayish night, eyes hard to move, rain wearing on his energy still. At least it’s just the end of the summer, at least the water’s warm, like a pool, like a bath, he doesn’t mind it, he doesn’t think. No, it’s fine. He’s fine.
“Is it really?” Something lies across Jones’ face, his wide eyes and parted lips, and Art’s fairly sure it’s either disbelief at Art general okayness or lack of care at least, now, or a pleasant praise and gladness that Art isn’t frustrated, or anything.
Art doesn’t really know. He doesn’t want to think about it, or anything. Doesn’t want to think about anything.
Jones’ hair is sticking up in the places where it isn’t matter down. It’s a bit amusing, really. Art finds a smile on his lips, but perhaps it was already there.
“Are we really going to sleep out here?”
“Sure,” Art sighs, happily, “Who’s there awake to let us in?”
“Alright.”
When Art sighs, legs crossed and back pressing uncomfortably into the railing’s bars, the lukewarm water that’s pooled across the concrete seeps through the seat of his jeans. The backs of his thighs feel damp, and weird, he thinks, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. Jones lowers himself gingerly to sit as well, and Art leans close because, why not?
Somehow, through the course of the next few drowsy hours, Art ends up on his back, one leg crossed over the other and arms folded behind his head-a slippery, fleshy, still-not-soft-enough pillow, with Jones spread out next to him, Jones’ arm slung across Art’s stomach and head resting on Art’s chest.
“This reminds me of something,” Art mumbles, not entirely sure if it’s aloud, not entirely sure if Jones is awake.
Jones sighs, and Art feels it. “Art.” And his voice is testing, gentle still, like all those times Art’s ended up falling asleep at work or offending or terrifying someone without realizing it, or chasing a child with an ax or saying something embarrassing for the two of them altogether. And so, Art is silent. Jones sighs again, sputters to spit rainwater out of his mouth, and Art reaches out an aching, stiff arm to rub at his shoulder.
Art hasn’t an inkling of an idea how much time is passing. He wonders if his cell phone’s gone waterlogged. It was cheap, anyway.
“Hey-Jones?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you awake?”
“Barely?”
Art’s hand is still on Jones’ shoulder; he isn’t exactly sure if he can even move. “Can I ask you something?” It’s a bit hard to speak, with his mouth facing the sky, with the sky pouring rain into it earnestly.
“Sure.” Jones’ breathing is heavy, steady, it echoes in Art’s own chest.
“Are you going to tell your family?”
Jones sighs, shuffles and shifts against Art’s side. “No-no, not just yet. I mean-I’m still okay, aren’t I? I’m fine. I’m not sick, not really. Well. It doesn’t matter, I’m okay. And I’m not going to worry. So the people I love aren’t going to worry either.”
Art finds life trickling down into his stiff fingers and he squeezes Jones’ shoulder hard, still gentle though as he feels so weak, and Jones shifts again, trying to get closer.
“Apart from you, I suppose,” Jones mutters into the scratchy cloth of Art’s shirt. “I wish you didn’t have to.”
Later, with Jones lain across him, slim fingers clenching and unclenching in sleep the wet speckles fabric at his chest, Jones’ forehead resting comfortably where the hem of Art’s shirt falls low on his neck, Art decides that if there is a heaven or anything like, this is what it must feel like. And if truly he’s right, he thinks, Jones hasn’t a thing to worry about.
Art is woken at just the first graze of the dry sun against his cheek and his stiff, awkwardly-dried clothes, at the first opening of the door from inside and its loud smack against Jones’ hip, and even as Art can see how it must hurt, Jones doesn’t seem unhappy in the least.
It’s a tiny place, just a few blocks from the cinema. Art’s fairly sure he’s been here before; the cream and white striped wallpaper strikes something familiar in him, not enough to truly remember, albeit.
He finds her sitting alone, near the back, absent-mindedly toying with a near full plate of chips. When she looks up, face narrow and eyes wide like almonds, she looks almost like a mouse caught rummaging through someone’s pantry, wary as her fingers skid across the edge of the plate’s light blue ceramic. “Art,” she says, voice blank, eyes testing.
“Hello Beth,” Art says, trying a smile as he slides into the second wooden chair across the tiny square table. “Well-how’ve you been?”
“I’ve been alright,” Beth sighs, and with a tired sigh of a grin in return. “How’s Jones?”
“He’s good, he says.” Art shrugs, leaves his shoulders hunched a bit forward still as he wrings his fingers in his lap. “But I’m still worried, of course.”
“Yeah, I am too.”
There’s a short silence that Art fills for himself by cracking his neck subtly and straightening his spine, because his tongue feels too heavy, too oafish to fill it with anything else. He sighs, swallows and blinks, and Beth looks up again from her not untouched but far uneaten plate. “Um… I just wanted to… to apologize.” He makes a small gesture with his hands on the last word like it needs it.
“What?” Beth’s eyes are wide, her upper lip twitches. “Really?”
“Yeah-yeah, definitely.” Art draws in a deep breath, blinks slowly on the intake and sighs. “Beth, I’m so, so sorry. I, um. I know you loved him just as much as me.”
“I still love him,” Beth says, a sad chuckle. “How can you not, really.”
“Yeah…” Art gulps. “I really am sorry for all those things I said.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but, really, it’s alright.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I mean,” Beth says, with a small smile and a light shrug as she drops her forearm to rest on the patterned tablecloth, “it hurt, of course, still hurts. But it all hurts, so what’s the difference?”
“It does,” Art sighs, “doesn’t it? And to think that Jones probably feels so much worse.”
Beth nods, wanders with her eyes for a moment. “You’re taking care of him?”
“As best I can.”
“Thank you, Art.”
“No,” Art mutters, and his breath hitches in his throat. He blinks, and finding air is a struggle. “Thank you. For making him so happy for so long.”
A sad smile laces with humility breaks out on Beth’s face as she rubs at her eyes lazily. “You know, all this really means a lot to hear.” Art cracks a tiny, sad grin of his own. “This may sound stupid, but I’ve always really wanted us to get along.” She shrugs, sighs-Art’s eyes flicker wider, attentive, interested. “I always felt like it would never work with, with Jones if I didn’t have the approval of the person he wad closest to. I tried not to mind it but it’s never that easy.” With a deeper sigh as she looks down, she shakes her head. “That was part of the reason I broke up with him.”
“Because… of me?”
“Oh, Art, no-”
“Oh my god.” Art barely has enough air in him to talk-he rests his elbows on the table, drops his face into the warmth of his hands. “Because of me.” His eyes itch and his lips shake, and he feels the soft brush of fingertips along his forearm. Beth runs her hand up the length of its bone, pressing gently into Art’s muscle.
“Art, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, don’t be.” Art’s voice is thick and stuffy as he runs both his hands through his bangs, drops his arms to the table and squeezes his eyes shut in trying to find composition.
“I shouldn’t have told you that, huh?” Beth’s lips are set in an apologetic grimace.
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Art gulps, drops his hands to his lap. “Everything’s fine.”
The next time Art cries himself to sleep, he sheds tears not entirely for Jones or for himself, but for Beth, for Jones’ family who may not even know until it’s too late, for all the people Jones used to know who may someday wonder whatever happened to that funny, awkward kid and then abandon the thought within hours, never finding out what did happen and living on blissfully. Art can’t decide whether he wants to keep it a secret, so to say, a private bit of truth for only himself and Jones, and even Beth, he doesn’t mind, or he’d rather scream it out from the rooftops and let people know, because they should know Jones, they should know that sometimes good people suffer and that Jones is just so, so strong.
He doesn’t dream but he imagines that if he did, his dreams would be filled with wayward splotches of blues and grays, like those that spread across the insides of his eyelids whenever he presses his face just a bit harder into his pillow, clutches the rumpled sheets just a bit harder in his restless fingers, clenches his teeth just a bit harder so that they slide and scrape together with the most horrid grinding, squeaking sound and all he can do is sob and sigh and gasp little, strangled sounds as invisible, inconceivable forces squeeze the air painfully out from his chest.
The next morning, he grips his toothbrush just a bit harder, and it snaps in two in his fingers.
An odd occurrence turns to just every few days, and some full clusters of days, night after night after which Art just can’t seem to get up in the morning or even peel his face off of the soaked pillow that’s melded to his skin.
The next time Art manages to scrape himself out of bed and slump around the flat in the middle of the night for no reason other than that his limbs are strung out from lying limp across the sheets, he can hear a faint whimpering and wailing through the too-thin walls, and he’s drawn to Jones’ room by the same force that won’t seem to let him go, the force that pushes in on him from the outside until he has no room in his body left to breath.
He doesn’t need the lights on, knows Jones’ room well enough; when he climbs into Jones’ bed he does it gently, but forcefully enough to let Jones know he’s there. To let Jones that he wants him to know he’s there. Jones looks up, face red and shining, and he drops his head back onto the pillow when Art lies down with him and hugs him close, neither saying a word.
In the morning, Jones wakes up. Of course he wakes up.
Every morning Jones wakes up, every day he drives Art to work and the two of them come back home later and all that ever changes is where and how they get dinner. Each repeat of the most mundane schedule is a shot of anesthesia straight into Art’s spine, though sometimes it’s shot in the meat of his calf, and sometimes in the back of his neck to leave it with an ugly crick and a dull ache that doesn’t seem to go away. The numbness never seems to last long before he’s left in its tingling, aching aftershocks.
And perhaps there’s metal in this hideous shot as well because every time he sees Jones, the magnet, the signal and the lighthouse and the lovely black hole, Art can feel it pressing out, tingling under his skin, rising to the surface and ringing ceaselessly whenever Jones touches him, brushes into him. Rattling in his head whenever Jones speaks to him.
“I just-I can’t take it anymore, you know?”
“Art, calm down, alright? He’s fine, isn’t he? He’s okay, now?”
“Well, yeah, of course he is, I wouldn’t be standing around on the phone if he wasn’t, but-who knows for how much longer? I mean, I sure as hell don’t, so what if I wake up one morning, and-I could wake up one morning and he could just be gone, or-or he could be sick, or-”
“It’s not that quick, Art. It’s not. Nothing’s ever that quick.”
“No, everything’s far too quick. You can’t keep up with it-I can’t keep up with it all. I’m so scared, Beth. I’m so, so scared.”
“Oh, of course, I know, and I am too-how could you not be scared?”
“I almost wish I knew-oh! He’s home. I have to go.”
“I’ll talk to you later?”
“Definitely.”
It’s metal, metallic. It’s like blood. Blood, rattling about in Art’s head, like those metal beads, or those things they put on cakes. Those things. He can’t stop thinking about them. Maybe they’ve sprung up from his stomach into his brain. Has he ever had those?
He sits on the edge of Jones’ bed and ever since he decided, just hours ago when he was at work with Jones and had all those hours to think, he can’t stop thinking. About everything, nothing. He sits still because he’s snuck into Jones’ room, and none of this is going to work if Jones wakes up.
He’s treading water but even that is far too thick, too red, too deep to be that at all. It’ll fill his lungs if he stops moving, he knows. It’ll choke him up if he messes up, if he breathes wrong or moves too much and if Jones wakes up and he finds out, it’ll drown him.
He wants to reach out for a raft but it’s too late, it’s been popped by a needle’s shiny point in the heat of the sun that reflects off Art’s private pool, his hot tub, too hot, cold enough for him to feel shivers trailing along under his skin.
It’s dark in Jones’ room, and Art has no raft, but he does have a needle which he rolls between his thumb and forefinger. It’s shiny in a dull way, knobby on the end, looks used and worn and is hot from all the time it’s spend between those two sheltering, sweltering fingers. It’s slicked with sweat from Art’s hand. He’s terrified beyond belief that it will slip from his grasp. He’s terrified of what will happen if it doesn’t.
He wishes he could close his eyes, but he’ll miss if he doesn’t see. He wishes it could be like a shot, he could clench his jaw and close his eyes and not pay attention and it would all be over in a second. But it’s not like that at all, so he squints in the near-darkness, in the dim light that filters in from the crack in the door where Art had feared closing it fully would make too loud a sound. He squints and blinks and tries not to blink as he raises his non-needle-wielding forefinger in front of his eyes, and then down where he can bend his elbow against his side because his arm begins to ache. And his other arm aches too, because it’s shaking so hard and he’s trying to keep it so steady, and the space between that thumb and forefinger because he’s gripping the needle so hard. He’d relax his hand if the thought of letting go of that tiny metal weapon was anywhere near bearable. His whole body would relax if any of this was even in the same universe as the concept of bearable.
He swallows and tries not to exhale too loudly after, but part of him craves it as it’s too quiet, he can’t hear a thing but his occasional sputter of badly timed breath where the length and depth of his windpipe is horribly estimated-not hard at all to do when he has to remind himself every few moments how to breathe.
He can’t take it anymore, dammit, and in a rush of confusion and pain and anger and the ceaseless running of the engine inside him and the conveyor belt muscles of his arms he stabs himself, right in the pad of his finger, right in the fleshiest part, and goddammit, it’s hurts, it hurts so much. He can take it, he can take a lot, he’s been bludgeoned with a camera and lived to tell the tale (though he often did refrain from explaining how that came to happen), but it’s different when it’s by his own hand. By his own hand and his own faithful, scary needle, both of which relax visibly as it’s done, as blood sprouts in a tiny metallic scarlet bead in the pinhole prick and trickles down into the creases that line his joints. The hot, sharp pain’s turned lackluster by now, and his finger feels more tired than anything.
His panic spikes again when he realizes that that was the easy part. That Jones can’t possibly sleep through that. He wipes the sweaty needle off on his shirt and hopes for the best.
He stands from his place at the foot of Jones’ bed, steps around to the side where Jones, fast asleep, faces him so very peacefully. He doesn’t sit again-he doesn’t think he can. From its place lain across the sheets he takes Jones’ arm, so limp and so warm, so unattended and helpless, almost. Art finds himself heavy with the overwhelming need to protect this boy who is far too old to be called that, this person who is so unbelievably weak and who means everything to Art and more, who draws out all the feelings in Art that completely contradict everything he is about to do.
Believe him if he believes himself, he can’t possibly not.
Jones’ slack arm almost slips from his sweaty, nervous grip-he’s terrified to grip too tightly, horrified to accidentally let go.
So he lets Jones’ arm fall away, slip just a few centimeters at a time, until it is only Jones’ hand that he holds in his own, fingertips propping up Jones’ palm, Jones’ fingers like a waterfall cascading through his own in the dark.
Art wants to say something, anything, but even if he could let himself his throat feels empty-only wind he breathes in through his mouth, stuck like glue when he breathes out.
So he doesn’t say a word, not even silently to himself-thinking would ruin everything, thinking he’s sure is what will ruin him.
He presses the needle between his fingers, again so impossibly hard, and his fingertips are white, his knuckles ache. He’d close his eyes but slipping would be catastrophic, as he pricks Jones’ finger, too shallow but even too deep, soft skin giving too easily but not easily enough-and when warm blood drips from a rough fingerprint, Art quickly but gently presses his own dripping finger to Jones’-and he’s home, he’s safe.
He’s free and he can feel but so can Jones-Jones is stirring, waking, “Mmm,”-and his eyes blink open ever so slowly-“Art?”-and Art wants to disappear, wants to melt away-“Art? Art? OH MY GOD-WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
He’s tossing the blanket off him to sit up, staring at Art with his eyes wide and his bottom teeth showing, and Art can only stand there, blood dripping from his finger ad oto the floor, Joes cradling his own hand, trying to stop his own flow of blood.
“ART!”
Art says nothing, stares, presses his fingers into the sides of his thighs and shifts on his feet. Can he run? Would it be still like treading water?
“What the hell?”
And Jones is leaning forward, he’s panting heavily and on his knees, and he swings a loose fist at Art’s face, it’s like a rubber bag bouncing off of iron; Art can only stand there still when Joes brings his hand back, groans and cradles it in the bleeding one-can he be so frail? Art stands and breathes and feels his ribcage caving in on him.
With eyes red, bloodshot, with his hands in each other and his cheeks flushed dark, Jones looks Art in the terrified eyes, his own eyes like lasers, and mutters-“Get out.”
So Art does, closes the door behind him, falls with his back to it and sinks down to sob into his hands and between his knees, curls in on himself, stays that way until morning is discernible.
“We’re getting you tested, you know,” Jones says the next morning when he’s sat Art down on his own bed, voice steady but wavering over its breaking point. “I made an appointment for you later today. I’m sure you’ll-” He gulps, “-you’ll be fine.”
When I’m sure means I hope, Art can only sit, shamed, like a dog being scolded, with his head down and craving both to look Jones in the eyes and to avoid his gaze forever.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Jones asks, and his eyes now are like canyons, deep set filled with nothing and everything. He’s trying to be calm, Art can tell, but he’s panicking, pained, just like Art. Jones is panicking and angry and sad and disappointed and Art hates it, he hates himself.
“I can’t live without you,” Art says, and it’s so simple but it’s so not, and he’s crying again, already, tears slipping down his cheeks, the creases by his mouth, dripping off his jaw, and echoing a hundredfold in his quiet voice.
“Art, please don’t be like that.” There’s a solitary tear slipping from Jones’ eye, the one little defiance of the keep-calm-for-Art’s-sake demeanor he emanates like a light bulb, that makes Art sick but not well enough, that makes Art fall in love and fall apart and fall into and away from himself.,
Art looks at Jones and he doesn’t say a thing. He can’t.
“Please don’t,” Jones mutters, begs. “You can’t.”
“But it’s true,” Art says, and he could break down on the floor, shed tears like blood.
“No, no it isn’t, Art.” Jones’ eyes plead, perhaps even to himself, even as Art finds himself lost in them and drowning. “You’re so much more than just us. You’re so much bigger than that.”
Art’s shaking his head, barely registers he’s doing it, with his lips parted wide and his eyes watering earnestly.
“No, Art, you really are something, you know? You really are special, and I’m not just saying that. Please, don’t throw your whole life away, just because of me.”
Art’s throat tightens, makes a choked little noise, and he can only gasp in little, panicked breaths as Jones goes on.
“I mean-you have dreams, don’t you?” Jones’ voice is soft even as it echoes in Art’s mind, reverberates until it’s left Art limp and exhausted, the loudest beg and so desperate, so tremendously wanting. And Art wants nothing but to give. “Aspirations? You’re a talented filmmaker, Art, you’re gonna be big someday, I swear it. And-and you’ll fall in love, you’ll get married. You’ll find someone else, yeah? You’ll be happy, you’ll be successful. You’ll be great.” Jones nods, lips pressed together tight, tears smearing across his eyelids and cheekbones. “Don’t throw it all away, don’t do that, please Art, not for me.”
Art feels like he’s going to fall forward, doesn’t even realize he’s doing it until one of Jones’ hands comes around to cup the back of his head, steadying him, the other had on his cheek and his face is only centimeters from Jones’ as they breath the same delicious, defiant air-there’s that magnet, again, that force telling him to both push into and pull away from. “You have to live, Art,” Jones says, pleads. “You have to go on. Can you do that? Do you think you can do that?
“No,” Art sighs, gulps in the air and energy that escapes him. “But I’m willing to try.”
“For me?”
“Of course.” And Jones presses their foreheads together, breathes and Art can feel his whole body shake with it. “Al-always.” And he can only mumble and stare, caught and held in Jones’ watery, pleading gaze, his head down, his lips wavering, so impossibly fragile.
And before Art can register it or register anything Jones is tipping his mouth forward and kissing him, long, smooth strokes of perfect, pink lips against Art’s while he holds Art close, both hands on Art’s temples. As Art kisses Jones back, hungrily, desperately, he can do nothing but surrender to the heat of Jones’ mouth, to the warmth of Jones’ that’s always been Jones-he puts his hands on Jones’ waist and he never wants to get up.
It echoes across the flat, a panicked call only amplified by the acoustics in the bathroom from which it comes, “Art!” And he’s running, tripping over furniture as that strangled, choked cry echoes in his mind and echoes again as he’s called again. He can’t burst open that door quick enough-he does, arms pulsing and restless, mind racing and heart feeling thick with blood and fear; and there is Jones, looking up at Art with wide eyes, leant over the sink and panicked. Art sees first the blood spotted across Jones’ mouth-open almost perpetually in surprise though now it’s so impossibly different-collecting and pooling in the dip in his bottom lip and then, more blood, splattered in the sink, dark and scarlet against the white porcelain.
Jones looks like a deer in headlights-frail and shaking, eyes like planets as he stares between his blood and Art, the blood with horror, Art with panicked confusion and quiet desperation. Like a baby deer, and Art needs to protect him. Needs to save him.
Bambi, your mother’s been killed.
Jones gulps, looking solely now at Art, reaching up to touch his mouth where blood slips in tiny drops down his chin, before changing his mind, fingers hovering like a cage around it, not daring to touch but terrified to leave be.
Art wants the same, wants to touch Jones, wants to cradle Jones against him-but can Jones break? Snap like a twig, because he’s already as thin as one?
Jones, you’re dying.
Jones stays put, reaching a hand behind him to steady himself against the sink and Art doesn’t move, he’s scared to but scared not to, scared to do anything but terrified to do nothing.
Art. A hand on Jones’ shoulder, another on Jones’ cheek, trapping Jones’ wayward hand between their faces as Jones melts into the touch, quivering on weak legs. Jones is dying. “We’re going to the hospital, yeah?” Jones nods fervently, leaning on Art, too scared and too weak to properly walk so Art helps him.
Art can feel everything and he can’t feel a thing.
It’s like spices, he realizes. Like spices, in a dish, because when you have one of a few, you can taste them all, it’s okay. You can understand. But when you dump a cloud of everything on this steak which suddenly to you is like a raging bull, it’s too much and you can’t tell one from another or all from nothing, you just want to rip your tongue out. Art just wants to rip his heart out.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever let go of Jones’ hand, not for one second that he’s in this uncomfortable plastic chair and Jones is supine in the hospital bed with its perfect white sheets and its perfect metal machinery that Art just wants to watch fold away, like in a play, the whole scene to fold and fall away and morph into something just a bit closer to home.
“You had a cold?” Art says, and it’s more of a growl but a soft one at that.
Jones only nods, head limp against his complementary pillow.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought I’d be fine, I-I didn’t feel much worse than usual, anyway, I took the antibiotics and everything.”
“Dammit, Jones.”
“I didn’t want you to worry-”
“Well, I am. I do, Jones. I worry.”
“I thought it was nothing-”
“Nothing is ever nothing, Jones.”
“Art, I’m so sorry,” and Jones is crying now, and Art tries-and fails-not to.
“Dammit, Jones.
Jones’ relatives come and go like the seasons, and sitting constant all the time is Art, like that big old oak tree in every neighborhood, that big old tree who braves it through the seasons, who stands tall even as he sears in the heat and is piled with snow. So, so very old, Art feels, and Jones is far too young.
There comes a seemingly-perpetually-cheery(-i.e.,-optimistic-as-one-can-be-in-a-situation-like-this) aunt with a spring in her step despite the horrendous looking weight above her soles; a grouchy, frail old uncle with hair white as snow with whom Jones was never close yet comes with connection, absolution in mind nevertheless, because he knows his late wife, loved Jones, would have.
Jones’ mother and sister stay for a few days both, overlapping, overwhelming especially for Art because it kills him to share. It’s nice, it’s loving, of course nothing short of-but dammit he doesn’t want to share.
Beth stays for some days as well, and Art finds that he doesn’t quite mind it.
But Jones is his-Jones is all his when all the family leaves at night, when Art stays because he can’t stomach the thought of leaving, not that he’d even for a second considered it.
Fluorescent lights above two tired heads never willing to sleep-bright just enough to make everything look dull, light just enough to strip any shadows of any shadow in themselves and absolve all that is anything but crystal-bubble and thicken up in hideous fake white light across Jones’ skin, across the hairless undersides of Jones’ arms which look pale enough already, like paper, thin and frail and tiny enough sticking out from creased paper sleeves.
Art asks, “Got any nines?”
“Eugh”-Jones mutters, cards in meticulous fingers near his stomach, arms laid out in front of him, exhausted-“go fish.” His head is propped up by the standard-issue pillows of which he’d kept asking for more, his neck creases awkwardly whenever he looks down.
“You’re shameless,” Art jokes, leaning back in the plastic chair that’s as of late become like his very unfortunate, uncomfortable home. Comfortable enough with Jones, though. He has no complaints.
“Mm,” Jones mumbles, a nod and a tiny chuckle as he thumbs through the plastic pieces in his lap. “Any threes?”
The tiny beeps of a heart monitor become soon like the ticks of a clock.
“Art?” Jones whispers one night, surrendered almost to the thresholds of sleep but awake still, alert almost but exhausted more than anything.
“Yeah?” Art leans forward in his chair, the chair he thinks he’s come to count on almost as much as Jones if such a thing can even be.
“Will you come into bed with me?” A soft voice like a mouse or a cricket or a child, eyes like the three all hopeful and shining.
Art asks, because he wouldn’t do a thing to jeopardize his stay: “Will the doctors be okay with it?” As if he’d ever cared much about authority-some things are just too precious to risk.
Quiet and tiny and precious and priceless, “I’m sure they won’t mind.”
Art could never argue further, because crawling into that plain old bed with Jones is just about the only thing he’s wanted to do all this time, wrapping his arms around Jones and holding him close, protecting him like a weak, tiny body should be protected.
And as he does just that, as he climbs up onto the mattress and feels it dip under his knee, the extra weight it might not even be able to hold, all that and the doctors are forgotten; nothing else matters as Jones settles into him, head on his chest, arms folded in between both of their stomachs.
When Art wraps his arms around Jones, pulls him in and holds him there in a hold tired but cement-firm, Jones curls into Art, like trying to disappear into Art’s shirt or his skin, or into his breath and his heartbeat, and Art finds himself doing the same.
Hours pass or unmarked time, time that Art couldn’t care for, because numbers are nothing, all is nothing but Jones’ breath which lulls Art tired like a lullaby, which wisps, steady, through and past parted pink lips, as Jones’ eyes themselves are half shut, drooping, drowsy like Art is.
And perhaps Art is dreaming, when these breaths lose the drumbeat rhythm they make with Jones’ heartbeat, the steadfast song lovelier than can be made by any musical instrument, when these breaths turn erratic, some deep and savored and some strangled and gasped, random almost as they pulse in Jones’ body and echo against Art’s chest.
Perhaps he is dreaming, perhaps it’s all in his mind even as it just barely pierces the veil of his consciousness, when Jones’ tiny breaths get shorter and shorter, quicker and more desperate. He pulls Jones closer, closer still, never close enough.
Art’s sure he’s dreaming because he can’t feel a thing, not the awkward stutter of Jones’ breath-even as it plays out in front of him like a film-not when the breaths, the precious breaths like jewels, popped like bubbles, slow and choke, and then stop, stop and are gone, and with his jaw clenched and his voice thick and his eyes clouded with tears he can’t feel either, he can only mumble, “Jones”-and the doctors have come, they’ve heard the stark beep of the heart monitor that hadn’t even registered in Art’s clouded head-“Dammit, Jones,” and it’s a grumble and a groan and a plea, and the nurses have to forcibly pull him from the empty bed.
“Art”-Beth asks, voice soft and eyes pointed low-“Can you pass me a juice box?”
The spring wind is warm and light as is wisps about the two, through the grass and all the thick-stemmed dandelions, makes their picnic blanket flutter lightly under their seats-the blanket Art had found in the attic, the one he’s fairly sure belonged to Jones. “Yeah”-and he opens the cooler, hands Beth a juice box, would toss it, but-what’s the need?
“Thank you.”
And it’s quiet save for the chirps of birds, the empty noise of the wind whistling through leaves and trees. Art’s never liked quiet, but this feels different, somehow, it feels alright.
“I’m working on a new script,” he says quietly, plucking from the cooler a cherry juice box of his own and toying with it in his hands.
“Oh yeah?”
Art nods. “Yeah. It’s about a man, who has a friend, who leaves one day, but it’s alright because-because he has no choice… don’t know why yet, but there’s got to be a reason. And so, the man has to find footing again, has to make his life mean something again. And he’s alone, but… he isn’t. Not really.”
Beth is silent, staring at Art with wide, sympathetic eyes. Art worries his plastic straw between his fingers before slipping it gently into its hole in its tiny cardboard box.
“I’ll use a lot of blur, I think.”
Beth nods, cracks a smile, holds up her mixed berry juice box in initiation of a toast. “To Jones,” she says.
Art holds up his juice box and red meets purple, painted cardboard clunks against the same, and for the first time in days he feels a smile crawling up onto his lips. “Our Jones.”