FIC - Motion Sickness (SerkisWood... mostly)
Title: Motion Sickness
Author: Kerry
Rating: Eh. R or light NC-17.
Pairings: Andy/Lorraine, but mostly Andy/Elijah and a small hint of Dom/Lij
Summary: A man with a secret life and the boy in love with him.
Author's Notes: Another AU, not terribly long, not terribly short. Written a bit differently from what I normally do.
By the time he knew, it was too late. He had married young - a cute enough city girl with hair the colour of his cigarette when it burned embers in the inky darkness of night. He hadn’t been given a choice once she was knocked up, the result of too many drinks and a reclining seat in his new car, two months into their university programs. Lorraine’s parents who were old fashioned and could afford to be so had demanded that they right the problem, so three months later Andy found himself with a band on his finger and a knot around his throat.
Even when the baby was born, dead before it could even take its first gasping breath in the new world, he hadn’t seen a need to get divorced now that he had dropped out of school and her parents had put a down payment on a house outside Ruislip.
Things started to change after the baby died (Lola, they put on the little marker above her grave; Andy had punched his brother when he laughed that there was no need to waste money on some little bitch that never even existed). Lorraine and Andy had never been that close, just two people living in a small house and waiting for something that was growing inside Lorraine’s belly to come out, greet them, link their lives together in a way that whatever they felt for the other hadn’t.
Andy always felt something was missing in his life and assumed it was little Lola. “I feel so fucking empty,” he’d hissed one night into a bottle of scotch, and Lorraine had looked up from the television and nodded, but they never spoke about it again.
He used to have a drinking buddy, just a mate from up the street who liked the same brand of whiskey he did and knew how to blow smoke rings even when he was drunk off his head. Craig Parker. What the hell sort of a man has two first names? Andy had asked, and Craig Parker had tried to slug him, but his aim wasn’t good even when he was sober and he had missed. Somehow, they both ended up on the floor, cackling like old crows.
“Why do you stay married, mate?” Craig asked one night after they had each knocked back one too many. “I couldn’t ever live with just one woman,” he’d sighed, but Andy could only shrug it off.
“Isn’t too bad,” he nodded, but wondered if he even meant that or if it was just something to say, something to explain why he was at the pub most nights instead of home, listening to her prattle on about all that needed to be done with the house.
One night, they’d been stumbling home from the bar, all laughter and off-key pub songs, when Craig grabbed hold of his curls and pulled him close, held him steady as he kissed him.
“Jesus,” Andy spat, pulling away and wiping his mouth as though he’d just tasted something two years past its expiration date. Though, more like, it was twenty-four years overdue and one marriage too late.
He must have caught Craig off guard when he kissed him again, but not nearly as unaware as they both felt the next morning sprawled in a hotel bed, trousers around their ankles and the faint hum of some game show flickering in the background. “I don’t want to do that again,” Craig had sworn, untangling his legs from Andy’s. “No, me either,” the other man agreed, though he knew that was a lie; he felt alive for the first time in years, his veins humming with sensations and arousal that he hadn’t even thought possible except in those back-of-the-store romance novels Lorraine always seemed to be buried in.
Craig switched the channel over to straight porn while Andy gathered his clothes and left, thankful when Lorraine didn’t say anything more to him than, “Well, I guess I don’t have to call the police to find your body.”
“No, guess not,” he answered, and they went back to being two strangers living in a house, nothing changed from their daily routines except for a gnawing feeling in the pit of Andy’s stomach that seemed to growl so loud he wondered that the neighbours couldn’t hear.
With each passing day, Lorraine grew more distant, and after three long years of marriage Andy was ready to say it was over. He had talked to some old friends, found a job in London that would pay his bills though not much else, and all he had to do was work up the courage to tell her he was leaving, had been gone for a long time already. And then she told him she was pregnant again.
“Is it mine?” he asked, eyeing her with something he couldn’t quite call amusement or suspicion, and she’d laughed and pressed a kiss to his lips - the first time she had done so willingly in months. That had been the end of his plans to go to London, as Andy was many things but he wasn’t about to leave his wife with a baby on the way.
So he had to find some other way to silence his frustration, and one night ended up somehow in a bar two cities over, the patrons all men that gave him sidelong glances and licked their lips. Three hours and a motel receipt later, he was home in bed with Lorraine, one hand resting cautiously on her swollen stomach.
She was born the next spring, a tiny wisp of a girl that had his eyes, but everything else of Lorraine’s, including her temperament. Ruby cried through the nights, never satisfied, until Andy would be driven from the house, cursing himself with each mile he put between himself and his family. “One day, you’re going to run out of places to hide from us,” Lorraine told him from the kitchen door as she watched him fumble with the baby formula, never offering to help.
Lorraine’s sister Jayne came from Somerset to help with the baby, said someone should be there for Lorraine. One night he heard them talking about some almost-forgotten brother, a man Andy had only met at his wedding. “He’s moved to London, with someone else. Left his wife and went to live with some man,” Jayne said with such bitterness in her voice that it made Andy think of overripe lemons.
“Jesus,” Lorraine sighed, and he could see from his position behind the door that her grip tightened momentarily on her glass of wine, upper lip forming a scowl. “I’d never have pegged him for being a fag. Should just take them all outside and have them hanged.” They looked up as they heard the back door slam, the sound of a car engine revving to life, but then they returned to their drink.
He was halfway through his bottle of whiskey, glad when the bartender knew better than to bother him on nights when his hands shook so bad he could barely pick up the glass. A boy came and sat beside him, shaking like a leaf but for different reasons. He showed Andy his new shoes, sent to him by some family back home in America that he had left and missed, especially his sister whose eighteenth birthday was just a few days away. His mouth moved as though independent of his body, the boy never noticing if the other man was listening to him at all, just needing to form the words that clogged his throat before he lost his nerve, returned to the back booth and his unfinished cloves.
“You look sad,” he whispered at last, and Andy was suddenly aware of his presence. He dragged him to his usual motel and refused to kiss him until the door was closed and locked, the bed sheets pulled down and belts tossed carelessly on the faded carpeting.
The boy said his name was Elijah, had pushed at Andy when he’d laughed that he was about to shag a prophet. But then their clothes were off and if either of them were mad, they forgot it. Teeth scraped, drawing blood - just like when they finished the rest of it, with Elijah staring down at the stained sheets and apologising for being that inexperienced. “Stop,” Andy said, feeling bad enough to drape an arm over the boy, something he rarely did even with his wife. Closeness was something to be tolerated, not sought after, but something in his pale blue eyes made Andy forget that for a night.
Next morning came, smeared sunlight poking in through the gaps in the blinds and painting the scene with a certain haze that made Andy feel bleary-eyed as though he were looking at the world through an empty bottle. “Can I see you again?” came a sleepy voice from the bed, small hands reaching to grasp at his own and reminding Andy just how young Elijah was, how unmarred his skin was in comparison.
“No,” he answered gruffly, voice worn thick from drowsiness and a pounding head. “I’m married. I’ve a little girl at home, and I’m not going to lose her over some fuck. I only do this once with people, and I don’t ever want to see you again. Understand me? My wife would skin me alive if she knew I did this. Complicated enough without the likes of you.” Without waiting for a response, Andy walked out, wondered if there would ever be a time when he could stop running.
He waited a month before he went back out. Things were getting too rough at home, Lorraine threatening to take Ruby and move in with Jayne if he didn’t stop drinking and being a useless bastard. Although it was his wife’s voice raising through the house, he could hear the snake in the grass whispering in her ear, knew he had to get her sister out of the house before he lost his daughter and the house.
A boy in faded jeans that shuffled his feet came trembling over to Andy, and it took him only a moment to remember him as Elijah. “Fuck off, I told you that I didn’t want to do this again with you,” he tried, but a breathy laugh whispered in his ear that he could sit wherever he goddamn wanted. In the end, he must have chosen to sit in some other bar. After an hour of silence, Elijah gave up trying to crack jokes and make conversation with a stone wall that seemed more interested in his bottle of whiskey.
“Who was he?” Andy found himself asking the bartender later that night, had seen him giving them a strange look earlier in the night when he hadn’t been trying to avoid Elijah’s sharp gaze.
“Some little runt,” the bartender said, pouring Andy one last drink. “Been here almost every night. He doesn’t order anything, doesn’t talk, just sits. We’ve tried to throw him out a few times, but he just keeps coming back like some fucking rash. You’re the first person he’s even looked at.” He stepped back to give Andy a once over, shaking his head in disgust. “Can’t see why.”
Andy couldn’t wrap his head around the idea. He’d never known anyone to show him the least bit of interest, not like that. Even Lorraine had told him that he wasn’t a very attractive man, hardly worth looking at; he was just some rough boy from nowhere and headed for the same place.
Something kept him up all night, restless to the point where Lorraine finally told him if he couldn’t even fucking sleep right, he might as well move downstairs. The next night, he went back to the bar, ignoring Lorraine’s protests all the way to the end of the driveway where she stood, clutching at the coat she’d wrestled away from him. But Elijah wasn’t there, and Andy felt it safest not to question why he started coming out every night after that. Lorraine eventually stopped fussing, knowing he returned just as quickly as he fled, though never knowing why. Andy had decided long before that there was no point in giving answers to someone who wouldn’t listen, who had already decided you were wrong about everything.
Then one night he found him, sitting at the bar and nursing a beer. He’d moved straight to his side, but not known what to do next because his plans had never extended past finding him. Elijah turned his head to look at him, surprised. “I didn’t think you’d be back,” Andy said, hoarse. “Had damn near given up.”
“I didn’t think you wanted me to come back. You told me to fuck off,” Elijah admitted, voice just as soft as Andy’s. He pushed a stool out, wincing as it scraped across the dirty floor but pleased when Andy took the offered seat without a complaint. They sat silent for a few minutes, each trying to find their voices or to explain emotions they didn’t even understand. Then, as though a heavy fog was lifted from the bar, Elijah began to rattle on and the tension eased. Andy didn’t speak much because he didn’t feel a need to, was content just to listen to the sound of the other man’s voice rise and fall as he went on about growing up in America and what he had done after that last night with Andy.
The only time Elijah stopped talking was when they went back to that motel, rattled the headboard and Andy made sure that there was no need for words, only a grunted please from the boy once, and then lights out, heads down, drowsy strangers watching headlines dance across the wall.
Despite Andy’s insistence about being unwilling to leave his wife, especially now that she had finally thrown her sister out of the house for him, they somehow found themselves at the same bar every few weeks, as often as Andy could get away. The man who ran their usual motel, a short portly man with oversize glasses and frazzled hair and no shoes, came to know them by name and which room they preferred. After about their fifth visit, they had been given an overnight key to a room that had a little painting of some dancer tacked to the wall, a swirl of pink moving across the paper. Even though Andy nearly pissed himself laughing when Elijah said he thought it was cute, he made certain the room became their regular.
“At least I know you’re only doing this with me,” Elijah had said one night, after they were both spent and lying in their sweat, too exhausted to fully separate one body from the other. They were a jumble of hands and legs and hearts, too interconnected in that moment to be divided. He’d kept quiet as Andy reminded him this wasn’t true, that he still slept with his wife, though those infrequent couplings were few and far between and growing shorter with each passing day. Andy saw pain flash in Elijah’s eyes at the mention of Lorraine’s name, and took painstaking efforts never to say it again to him.
Andy didn’t stay the whole night often, usually tried to usher them in and out of places. It was usually two drinks in their system from the bar before they were in bed. “Why are we doing this?” Elijah asked one night, small hand resting protectively over Andy’s arm which was draped across his chest, holding him steady. “There’s no need to spend this much money every few weeks, and you’re taking a risk going into that bar anyway. Could get away more often and it’s easier if we went to my apartment. At least that’s free, and we could even eat some fucking food once in awhile.”
Unlike Andy, Elijah had little to tie him down. His family was across an ocean, and he had no roommate, just a shite flat one town over, going the wrong direction from Andy’s place. Even Elijah’s job, being an unemployed actor who waited tables at a restaurant two miles away, didn’t take up much of his time.
“I don’t know,” Andy frowned, wondering if he was objecting more to the fact that Elijah was trying to change their dynamic. He’d found it against his better judgment to mess with something that wasn’t in need of repair. “That’s even further for me to drive.” It took another good four months before Andy finally agreed to drive to his place, and they shared a meal for the first time, a pizza from some place up the street.
Lorraine started to suspect something around October. Despite his frequent nights out to bars, he never seemed to return home with the smell of alcohol on his breath or a stagger in his step. “You have some little whore?” she asked him point blank one morning over toast, never having been one to mince words. “Andy, if you have some other girl I’ll leave you so fast you won’t see more of me than the door shutting behind me. I don’t give a damn if my parents don’t believe in divorce. You’ll just never see me again. And I’ll take your daughter with me.” He could feel her gaze boring into him, didn’t even bother to lift his eyes from the Saturday paper when he told her that no, he didn’t have some little whore. She’d slapped him when he asked if she’d like him to, and that had been the end of that discussion.
To be safe, though, Andy waited a few months before going back out. Things were getting too busy to find the time to go drinking, anyway. Lorraine had to quit her job when she got pregnant again, and Ruby was starting to become a handful. He had to take double shifts at his job at the factory, and when he was home he was trying to quiet his daughter so Lorraine could get an hour or two of much needed sleep.
He showed up at Elijah’s flat some two months later, half expecting to find him there with someone else, but the small rooms were just as bare and void of anyone else’s presence as they had been before. “I wanted to call you,” Elijah said around a mouthful of Chinese food, nudging at Andy’s head which was buried in his neck, kissing and trying to end conversation there. “I got a part in this play. Shakespeare. It’s my first real play here, Andy. And it’s almost over now. The closing night is next week. I wanted you to come, but I guess it’s too late. Or is it? Didn’t see you for ages, and knew you wouldn’t like me tracking you down. Could you come, Andy?”
“I can’t. Lorraine is already fucking suspicious, if I go out one night to a play she’s going to think I’m mad. I’m not cultured and she knows it.” He saw the look of disappoint and kissed him, wanting to make him happy again, in a way that he only felt around his daughter.
The next Wednesday night, he got dressed in his finest suit and even hired a babysitter to take Lorraine out to the play, something he told Lorraine he’d been given free tickets to. It couldn’t have lasted long enough, Andy staring silently at the man who didn’t even know he was in the audience. Afterward, he took Lorraine out for a nice dinner and tried to pretend he didn’t wish he were somewhere else, didn’t wish Lorraine’s hair were a hazelnut colour or her eyes blue, brighter. Wished he’d just had the courage to tell Elijah that he saw the play and thought it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen. Andy was doing a lot of wishing these days.
“I met someone,” Elijah said the next time they were together, some six weeks later that revealed a paler, thinner Elijah. His eyes were blank as Andy grabbed his chin and tilted his head sharply, stared him in the eye. “He’s older than me and I met him in the play. Remember that play, Andy? Fucking bastard, aren’t you? Couldn’t even come to see me in a play. I’ve been hanging around with you hoping you’ll be what I want, but God, you can’t be. You’re not going to leave her and you’re not in love with me. I’d do anything for you, but I’m tired of it, Andy. I’m worn down.” Andy raised a hand as if to hit Elijah, but when he saw the cold eyes boring into him, daring, he stilled. “His name is Dom, and he’s another actor.” His voice didn’t quiver, though Andy felt tremors running through the boy as his grip tightened on his small form. “He’s going to move in.” When Andy stormed out, hands throbbing as much as his heart, Elijah finally allowed himself to cry as he put ice on the bruise forming.
Sonny was born a short time after that, but Andy didn’t know for two weeks. Lorraine had moved in momentarily with her parents after Andy came home so drunk he fell down the stairs and put his already swollen hand through a wall. He sobered up before he went to the hospital, saw that tiny head of black curls and broke down for the first time in his life. “I love you,” he whispered to the little bundle, cradling it in his arm. Lorraine and Andy tried to make things work for a few days, but in the end Lorraine left Andy. What should have been the news he’d been waiting for only broke him down more, stripped him of any hope he had remaining.
Lorraine moved in permanently with her parents and started to date an attorney, same one that eventually tracked Andy down to the hotel he had moved into and pressed divorce papers into his hand. He didn’t ask for anything in the settlement but visiting rights, was glad when for once she didn’t put up much of a fight, just wanted the child support on time.
“You can’t drink anymore, Andy,” Lorraine said the night they signed the settlement agreement. “Not if you want to see the kids. I need you to start being sober, because I’m not putting their lives in danger.” She looked away, said softer like she wasn’t certain she could admit her feelings if she looked him in the eye, “I don’t want to come find you dead in your house one day. Please just try, for your kids if not for me.”
So he gave up drinking and moved to North London like he’d always wanted to, even found a job at a gallery that he liked. He saw his kids every few weeks, either when Lorraine would bring them or when he would take the train over to Oxford where she was living now with a new husband.
After one trip, instead of taking the train back to London, he went to Elijah’s old flat and watched from his position on the ground as shadows moved across the blinds. He wanted to knock, but wasn’t certain what he would do if Elijah sent him away this time. When it started to rain, he finally removed his mobile from a thinning jacket pocket and dialed the number he had been given but never used. “Hello,” answered a strange voice, and in the background he could hear Elijah calling out to find out who was on the line, but Andy hung up the phone as fast as his shaking hands would let him.
Andy was ready to give up on finding any part of his old life that was salvageable and instead tried to make do with what little he had now. He wrote letters to his children when they weren’t around, and to Elijah, but he never sent them. They sat untouched in a drawer, one of his daughter’s red hair ties keeping the contents of his heart held together.
Until one day there was a knock on the front door of his new house, and when he opened the door there was Elijah, looking as though he’d just been to hell and back.
“Hi,” Elijah whispered, shaking on the front porch. Andy watched through squinting eyes as Elijah entered his house once he opened the door wider, too shocked to do anything else. He watched as scuffed shoes paced the length of his floor. “I… I found you. God help me, I found you,” he whispered, American accent now mostly disappeared from his voice, which had also grown deeper with age.
He turned to stare at Andy, wiping his eyes so he could better see the man leaning heavily against the door. Their few meetings over the years seemed punctuated by a fragile feeling, like any word out of place would find their hearts in pieces on the ground, too broken to be put back together. Now, Andy was afraid to move or speak at all. “I heard you were divorced. Jesus, Andy, I… I’ve missed you. I don’t know why it took me this fucking long. Wish you’d looked for me, but that’s not like you.”
“I did look for you,” Andy whispered, hoarse, before he lost his voice again. He wanted to say something more, but words had never been his strong suit. When he did talk, his speech was littered with obscenities and snide remarks that seemed to kill the atmosphere or any compliment he tried to make. He was afraid of what would happen if he said something real, so he simply grasped at Elijah’s shirt so tightly that some of the buttons flew off and he held on, squeezing his eyes closed in desperation. “You bastard, I fucking love you,” he gasped out at last as he felt a soft hand close over his cheek, his thumb stroking.
“I love you too,” Elijah said before pressing his lips to Andy’s, wrapping his arms around the other man to hold him steady, still.
Author: Kerry
Rating: Eh. R or light NC-17.
Pairings: Andy/Lorraine, but mostly Andy/Elijah and a small hint of Dom/Lij
Summary: A man with a secret life and the boy in love with him.
Author's Notes: Another AU, not terribly long, not terribly short. Written a bit differently from what I normally do.
By the time he knew, it was too late. He had married young - a cute enough city girl with hair the colour of his cigarette when it burned embers in the inky darkness of night. He hadn’t been given a choice once she was knocked up, the result of too many drinks and a reclining seat in his new car, two months into their university programs. Lorraine’s parents who were old fashioned and could afford to be so had demanded that they right the problem, so three months later Andy found himself with a band on his finger and a knot around his throat.
Even when the baby was born, dead before it could even take its first gasping breath in the new world, he hadn’t seen a need to get divorced now that he had dropped out of school and her parents had put a down payment on a house outside Ruislip.
Things started to change after the baby died (Lola, they put on the little marker above her grave; Andy had punched his brother when he laughed that there was no need to waste money on some little bitch that never even existed). Lorraine and Andy had never been that close, just two people living in a small house and waiting for something that was growing inside Lorraine’s belly to come out, greet them, link their lives together in a way that whatever they felt for the other hadn’t.
Andy always felt something was missing in his life and assumed it was little Lola. “I feel so fucking empty,” he’d hissed one night into a bottle of scotch, and Lorraine had looked up from the television and nodded, but they never spoke about it again.
He used to have a drinking buddy, just a mate from up the street who liked the same brand of whiskey he did and knew how to blow smoke rings even when he was drunk off his head. Craig Parker. What the hell sort of a man has two first names? Andy had asked, and Craig Parker had tried to slug him, but his aim wasn’t good even when he was sober and he had missed. Somehow, they both ended up on the floor, cackling like old crows.
“Why do you stay married, mate?” Craig asked one night after they had each knocked back one too many. “I couldn’t ever live with just one woman,” he’d sighed, but Andy could only shrug it off.
“Isn’t too bad,” he nodded, but wondered if he even meant that or if it was just something to say, something to explain why he was at the pub most nights instead of home, listening to her prattle on about all that needed to be done with the house.
One night, they’d been stumbling home from the bar, all laughter and off-key pub songs, when Craig grabbed hold of his curls and pulled him close, held him steady as he kissed him.
“Jesus,” Andy spat, pulling away and wiping his mouth as though he’d just tasted something two years past its expiration date. Though, more like, it was twenty-four years overdue and one marriage too late.
He must have caught Craig off guard when he kissed him again, but not nearly as unaware as they both felt the next morning sprawled in a hotel bed, trousers around their ankles and the faint hum of some game show flickering in the background. “I don’t want to do that again,” Craig had sworn, untangling his legs from Andy’s. “No, me either,” the other man agreed, though he knew that was a lie; he felt alive for the first time in years, his veins humming with sensations and arousal that he hadn’t even thought possible except in those back-of-the-store romance novels Lorraine always seemed to be buried in.
Craig switched the channel over to straight porn while Andy gathered his clothes and left, thankful when Lorraine didn’t say anything more to him than, “Well, I guess I don’t have to call the police to find your body.”
“No, guess not,” he answered, and they went back to being two strangers living in a house, nothing changed from their daily routines except for a gnawing feeling in the pit of Andy’s stomach that seemed to growl so loud he wondered that the neighbours couldn’t hear.
With each passing day, Lorraine grew more distant, and after three long years of marriage Andy was ready to say it was over. He had talked to some old friends, found a job in London that would pay his bills though not much else, and all he had to do was work up the courage to tell her he was leaving, had been gone for a long time already. And then she told him she was pregnant again.
“Is it mine?” he asked, eyeing her with something he couldn’t quite call amusement or suspicion, and she’d laughed and pressed a kiss to his lips - the first time she had done so willingly in months. That had been the end of his plans to go to London, as Andy was many things but he wasn’t about to leave his wife with a baby on the way.
So he had to find some other way to silence his frustration, and one night ended up somehow in a bar two cities over, the patrons all men that gave him sidelong glances and licked their lips. Three hours and a motel receipt later, he was home in bed with Lorraine, one hand resting cautiously on her swollen stomach.
She was born the next spring, a tiny wisp of a girl that had his eyes, but everything else of Lorraine’s, including her temperament. Ruby cried through the nights, never satisfied, until Andy would be driven from the house, cursing himself with each mile he put between himself and his family. “One day, you’re going to run out of places to hide from us,” Lorraine told him from the kitchen door as she watched him fumble with the baby formula, never offering to help.
Lorraine’s sister Jayne came from Somerset to help with the baby, said someone should be there for Lorraine. One night he heard them talking about some almost-forgotten brother, a man Andy had only met at his wedding. “He’s moved to London, with someone else. Left his wife and went to live with some man,” Jayne said with such bitterness in her voice that it made Andy think of overripe lemons.
“Jesus,” Lorraine sighed, and he could see from his position behind the door that her grip tightened momentarily on her glass of wine, upper lip forming a scowl. “I’d never have pegged him for being a fag. Should just take them all outside and have them hanged.” They looked up as they heard the back door slam, the sound of a car engine revving to life, but then they returned to their drink.
He was halfway through his bottle of whiskey, glad when the bartender knew better than to bother him on nights when his hands shook so bad he could barely pick up the glass. A boy came and sat beside him, shaking like a leaf but for different reasons. He showed Andy his new shoes, sent to him by some family back home in America that he had left and missed, especially his sister whose eighteenth birthday was just a few days away. His mouth moved as though independent of his body, the boy never noticing if the other man was listening to him at all, just needing to form the words that clogged his throat before he lost his nerve, returned to the back booth and his unfinished cloves.
“You look sad,” he whispered at last, and Andy was suddenly aware of his presence. He dragged him to his usual motel and refused to kiss him until the door was closed and locked, the bed sheets pulled down and belts tossed carelessly on the faded carpeting.
The boy said his name was Elijah, had pushed at Andy when he’d laughed that he was about to shag a prophet. But then their clothes were off and if either of them were mad, they forgot it. Teeth scraped, drawing blood - just like when they finished the rest of it, with Elijah staring down at the stained sheets and apologising for being that inexperienced. “Stop,” Andy said, feeling bad enough to drape an arm over the boy, something he rarely did even with his wife. Closeness was something to be tolerated, not sought after, but something in his pale blue eyes made Andy forget that for a night.
Next morning came, smeared sunlight poking in through the gaps in the blinds and painting the scene with a certain haze that made Andy feel bleary-eyed as though he were looking at the world through an empty bottle. “Can I see you again?” came a sleepy voice from the bed, small hands reaching to grasp at his own and reminding Andy just how young Elijah was, how unmarred his skin was in comparison.
“No,” he answered gruffly, voice worn thick from drowsiness and a pounding head. “I’m married. I’ve a little girl at home, and I’m not going to lose her over some fuck. I only do this once with people, and I don’t ever want to see you again. Understand me? My wife would skin me alive if she knew I did this. Complicated enough without the likes of you.” Without waiting for a response, Andy walked out, wondered if there would ever be a time when he could stop running.
He waited a month before he went back out. Things were getting too rough at home, Lorraine threatening to take Ruby and move in with Jayne if he didn’t stop drinking and being a useless bastard. Although it was his wife’s voice raising through the house, he could hear the snake in the grass whispering in her ear, knew he had to get her sister out of the house before he lost his daughter and the house.
A boy in faded jeans that shuffled his feet came trembling over to Andy, and it took him only a moment to remember him as Elijah. “Fuck off, I told you that I didn’t want to do this again with you,” he tried, but a breathy laugh whispered in his ear that he could sit wherever he goddamn wanted. In the end, he must have chosen to sit in some other bar. After an hour of silence, Elijah gave up trying to crack jokes and make conversation with a stone wall that seemed more interested in his bottle of whiskey.
“Who was he?” Andy found himself asking the bartender later that night, had seen him giving them a strange look earlier in the night when he hadn’t been trying to avoid Elijah’s sharp gaze.
“Some little runt,” the bartender said, pouring Andy one last drink. “Been here almost every night. He doesn’t order anything, doesn’t talk, just sits. We’ve tried to throw him out a few times, but he just keeps coming back like some fucking rash. You’re the first person he’s even looked at.” He stepped back to give Andy a once over, shaking his head in disgust. “Can’t see why.”
Andy couldn’t wrap his head around the idea. He’d never known anyone to show him the least bit of interest, not like that. Even Lorraine had told him that he wasn’t a very attractive man, hardly worth looking at; he was just some rough boy from nowhere and headed for the same place.
Something kept him up all night, restless to the point where Lorraine finally told him if he couldn’t even fucking sleep right, he might as well move downstairs. The next night, he went back to the bar, ignoring Lorraine’s protests all the way to the end of the driveway where she stood, clutching at the coat she’d wrestled away from him. But Elijah wasn’t there, and Andy felt it safest not to question why he started coming out every night after that. Lorraine eventually stopped fussing, knowing he returned just as quickly as he fled, though never knowing why. Andy had decided long before that there was no point in giving answers to someone who wouldn’t listen, who had already decided you were wrong about everything.
Then one night he found him, sitting at the bar and nursing a beer. He’d moved straight to his side, but not known what to do next because his plans had never extended past finding him. Elijah turned his head to look at him, surprised. “I didn’t think you’d be back,” Andy said, hoarse. “Had damn near given up.”
“I didn’t think you wanted me to come back. You told me to fuck off,” Elijah admitted, voice just as soft as Andy’s. He pushed a stool out, wincing as it scraped across the dirty floor but pleased when Andy took the offered seat without a complaint. They sat silent for a few minutes, each trying to find their voices or to explain emotions they didn’t even understand. Then, as though a heavy fog was lifted from the bar, Elijah began to rattle on and the tension eased. Andy didn’t speak much because he didn’t feel a need to, was content just to listen to the sound of the other man’s voice rise and fall as he went on about growing up in America and what he had done after that last night with Andy.
The only time Elijah stopped talking was when they went back to that motel, rattled the headboard and Andy made sure that there was no need for words, only a grunted please from the boy once, and then lights out, heads down, drowsy strangers watching headlines dance across the wall.
Despite Andy’s insistence about being unwilling to leave his wife, especially now that she had finally thrown her sister out of the house for him, they somehow found themselves at the same bar every few weeks, as often as Andy could get away. The man who ran their usual motel, a short portly man with oversize glasses and frazzled hair and no shoes, came to know them by name and which room they preferred. After about their fifth visit, they had been given an overnight key to a room that had a little painting of some dancer tacked to the wall, a swirl of pink moving across the paper. Even though Andy nearly pissed himself laughing when Elijah said he thought it was cute, he made certain the room became their regular.
“At least I know you’re only doing this with me,” Elijah had said one night, after they were both spent and lying in their sweat, too exhausted to fully separate one body from the other. They were a jumble of hands and legs and hearts, too interconnected in that moment to be divided. He’d kept quiet as Andy reminded him this wasn’t true, that he still slept with his wife, though those infrequent couplings were few and far between and growing shorter with each passing day. Andy saw pain flash in Elijah’s eyes at the mention of Lorraine’s name, and took painstaking efforts never to say it again to him.
Andy didn’t stay the whole night often, usually tried to usher them in and out of places. It was usually two drinks in their system from the bar before they were in bed. “Why are we doing this?” Elijah asked one night, small hand resting protectively over Andy’s arm which was draped across his chest, holding him steady. “There’s no need to spend this much money every few weeks, and you’re taking a risk going into that bar anyway. Could get away more often and it’s easier if we went to my apartment. At least that’s free, and we could even eat some fucking food once in awhile.”
Unlike Andy, Elijah had little to tie him down. His family was across an ocean, and he had no roommate, just a shite flat one town over, going the wrong direction from Andy’s place. Even Elijah’s job, being an unemployed actor who waited tables at a restaurant two miles away, didn’t take up much of his time.
“I don’t know,” Andy frowned, wondering if he was objecting more to the fact that Elijah was trying to change their dynamic. He’d found it against his better judgment to mess with something that wasn’t in need of repair. “That’s even further for me to drive.” It took another good four months before Andy finally agreed to drive to his place, and they shared a meal for the first time, a pizza from some place up the street.
Lorraine started to suspect something around October. Despite his frequent nights out to bars, he never seemed to return home with the smell of alcohol on his breath or a stagger in his step. “You have some little whore?” she asked him point blank one morning over toast, never having been one to mince words. “Andy, if you have some other girl I’ll leave you so fast you won’t see more of me than the door shutting behind me. I don’t give a damn if my parents don’t believe in divorce. You’ll just never see me again. And I’ll take your daughter with me.” He could feel her gaze boring into him, didn’t even bother to lift his eyes from the Saturday paper when he told her that no, he didn’t have some little whore. She’d slapped him when he asked if she’d like him to, and that had been the end of that discussion.
To be safe, though, Andy waited a few months before going back out. Things were getting too busy to find the time to go drinking, anyway. Lorraine had to quit her job when she got pregnant again, and Ruby was starting to become a handful. He had to take double shifts at his job at the factory, and when he was home he was trying to quiet his daughter so Lorraine could get an hour or two of much needed sleep.
He showed up at Elijah’s flat some two months later, half expecting to find him there with someone else, but the small rooms were just as bare and void of anyone else’s presence as they had been before. “I wanted to call you,” Elijah said around a mouthful of Chinese food, nudging at Andy’s head which was buried in his neck, kissing and trying to end conversation there. “I got a part in this play. Shakespeare. It’s my first real play here, Andy. And it’s almost over now. The closing night is next week. I wanted you to come, but I guess it’s too late. Or is it? Didn’t see you for ages, and knew you wouldn’t like me tracking you down. Could you come, Andy?”
“I can’t. Lorraine is already fucking suspicious, if I go out one night to a play she’s going to think I’m mad. I’m not cultured and she knows it.” He saw the look of disappoint and kissed him, wanting to make him happy again, in a way that he only felt around his daughter.
The next Wednesday night, he got dressed in his finest suit and even hired a babysitter to take Lorraine out to the play, something he told Lorraine he’d been given free tickets to. It couldn’t have lasted long enough, Andy staring silently at the man who didn’t even know he was in the audience. Afterward, he took Lorraine out for a nice dinner and tried to pretend he didn’t wish he were somewhere else, didn’t wish Lorraine’s hair were a hazelnut colour or her eyes blue, brighter. Wished he’d just had the courage to tell Elijah that he saw the play and thought it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen. Andy was doing a lot of wishing these days.
“I met someone,” Elijah said the next time they were together, some six weeks later that revealed a paler, thinner Elijah. His eyes were blank as Andy grabbed his chin and tilted his head sharply, stared him in the eye. “He’s older than me and I met him in the play. Remember that play, Andy? Fucking bastard, aren’t you? Couldn’t even come to see me in a play. I’ve been hanging around with you hoping you’ll be what I want, but God, you can’t be. You’re not going to leave her and you’re not in love with me. I’d do anything for you, but I’m tired of it, Andy. I’m worn down.” Andy raised a hand as if to hit Elijah, but when he saw the cold eyes boring into him, daring, he stilled. “His name is Dom, and he’s another actor.” His voice didn’t quiver, though Andy felt tremors running through the boy as his grip tightened on his small form. “He’s going to move in.” When Andy stormed out, hands throbbing as much as his heart, Elijah finally allowed himself to cry as he put ice on the bruise forming.
Sonny was born a short time after that, but Andy didn’t know for two weeks. Lorraine had moved in momentarily with her parents after Andy came home so drunk he fell down the stairs and put his already swollen hand through a wall. He sobered up before he went to the hospital, saw that tiny head of black curls and broke down for the first time in his life. “I love you,” he whispered to the little bundle, cradling it in his arm. Lorraine and Andy tried to make things work for a few days, but in the end Lorraine left Andy. What should have been the news he’d been waiting for only broke him down more, stripped him of any hope he had remaining.
Lorraine moved in permanently with her parents and started to date an attorney, same one that eventually tracked Andy down to the hotel he had moved into and pressed divorce papers into his hand. He didn’t ask for anything in the settlement but visiting rights, was glad when for once she didn’t put up much of a fight, just wanted the child support on time.
“You can’t drink anymore, Andy,” Lorraine said the night they signed the settlement agreement. “Not if you want to see the kids. I need you to start being sober, because I’m not putting their lives in danger.” She looked away, said softer like she wasn’t certain she could admit her feelings if she looked him in the eye, “I don’t want to come find you dead in your house one day. Please just try, for your kids if not for me.”
So he gave up drinking and moved to North London like he’d always wanted to, even found a job at a gallery that he liked. He saw his kids every few weeks, either when Lorraine would bring them or when he would take the train over to Oxford where she was living now with a new husband.
After one trip, instead of taking the train back to London, he went to Elijah’s old flat and watched from his position on the ground as shadows moved across the blinds. He wanted to knock, but wasn’t certain what he would do if Elijah sent him away this time. When it started to rain, he finally removed his mobile from a thinning jacket pocket and dialed the number he had been given but never used. “Hello,” answered a strange voice, and in the background he could hear Elijah calling out to find out who was on the line, but Andy hung up the phone as fast as his shaking hands would let him.
Andy was ready to give up on finding any part of his old life that was salvageable and instead tried to make do with what little he had now. He wrote letters to his children when they weren’t around, and to Elijah, but he never sent them. They sat untouched in a drawer, one of his daughter’s red hair ties keeping the contents of his heart held together.
Until one day there was a knock on the front door of his new house, and when he opened the door there was Elijah, looking as though he’d just been to hell and back.
“Hi,” Elijah whispered, shaking on the front porch. Andy watched through squinting eyes as Elijah entered his house once he opened the door wider, too shocked to do anything else. He watched as scuffed shoes paced the length of his floor. “I… I found you. God help me, I found you,” he whispered, American accent now mostly disappeared from his voice, which had also grown deeper with age.
He turned to stare at Andy, wiping his eyes so he could better see the man leaning heavily against the door. Their few meetings over the years seemed punctuated by a fragile feeling, like any word out of place would find their hearts in pieces on the ground, too broken to be put back together. Now, Andy was afraid to move or speak at all. “I heard you were divorced. Jesus, Andy, I… I’ve missed you. I don’t know why it took me this fucking long. Wish you’d looked for me, but that’s not like you.”
“I did look for you,” Andy whispered, hoarse, before he lost his voice again. He wanted to say something more, but words had never been his strong suit. When he did talk, his speech was littered with obscenities and snide remarks that seemed to kill the atmosphere or any compliment he tried to make. He was afraid of what would happen if he said something real, so he simply grasped at Elijah’s shirt so tightly that some of the buttons flew off and he held on, squeezing his eyes closed in desperation. “You bastard, I fucking love you,” he gasped out at last as he felt a soft hand close over his cheek, his thumb stroking.
“I love you too,” Elijah said before pressing his lips to Andy’s, wrapping his arms around the other man to hold him steady, still.