Holiday Ficlet for caruso!
Title: Rebuilding Season
Fandom: MLB
Pairing: Jeff/Brian
Rating: R
Summary: Brian hasn't seen Jeff in fifteen years. He runs into him at a Super Wal-Mart on New Year's Eve, tries and fails to avoid him.
Notes: This is a holiday ficlet written for caruso, who gave me a wonderful prompt about my ultimate OTP. I always love any excuse to write about these guys, and I really hope you'll enjoy the fic! Many thanks to chlorate for beta reading.
I saw Willie Mays
at a Scottsdale Home Depot
looking at garage door springs
at the far end of the fourteenth row
His wife stood there beside him
She was quiet and both were proud
I gave them room but was close enough
that I heard him when he said out loud:
This was my country
This was my song
Somewhere in the middle there,
though it started badly
and it's ending wrong.
--Joe Henry
//
Ashley gets the girls for New Year's Eve because Brian had them for Christmas. It seems like a good trade, but he's too old and tired to go out, and even Brad is away this year, still up in Michigan with his new wife's family. So he's alone, and for some reason he doesn't feel okay about it. He's been trying this experiment where he only keeps beer in the house, but it's just making him fat, and anyway this is a special occasion, sort of, so he drives to the liquor store to get something better.
It's stupidly warm outside for December, and the young guys who work the counter at the liquor store recognize him and smile and make him feel like an asshole, so he doesn't go straight home. He ends up going to the Super Wal-Mart just because he's never seen its massive parking lot so empty. There are a few cars close to the main entrance, and some scraggly Christmas trees still propped against the front of the building. The long, bright aisles feel post-apocalyptic without the usual crowds, and the Christmas music blaring overhead makes him jumpy, like he's in some ironic murder movie scene that's about to go badly.
He walks through the clothing section with disinterest and moves on to the toys. The girls are old enough to just want spending money and he hasn't bought toys in years. He used to have the dogs to shop for, at least, but Ashley has the one arthritic survivor of the old pack at her house. He moves onto the pet section and thinks about getting a new dog, but he wouldn't be able to walk it often enough. His knees are a total bust and he never goes anywhere on foot unless he has to. He drifts into the fishing and hunting supplies, looks at bait and rods and the guns locked in their glass cases. When he was still playing, a few of his teammates tried to get him into hunting, but he never really understood the appeal.
He bypasses automotive and electronics and heads into the grocery section of the store. The produce is limp and depressing, the meat case neat and unappetizing, everything pre-packaged. He thinks about buying some hot dogs and stands for awhile trying to figure out what the hell he's doing. There's a McDonald's attached to the store and he can smell the fries, but he's not supposed to eat that stuff anymore. He's got high cholesterol and probably a bad heart, though he doesn't have the balls to get it checked out. His dad and Brad have already had four heart surgeries between them.
Ice cream sounds better than hot dogs, so he heads to the freezer section, thinking optimistically of frozen yogurt. There's a guy puttering around at the end of the aisle in sweatpants and flip-flops, and his battered polo shirt reminds Brian of something Jeff used to wear. In fact the guy sort of looks like Jeff, which makes Brian uneasy, because he stopped seeing Jeff everywhere five years back, and now is not the time to regress. Now is not the time to think of him at all, in fact, which is really unfortunate, because it is Jeff, walking toward him.
Brian ducks out of the aisle and speeds into the next one, hurrying between rows of chips and pretzels and hoping to God that Jeff didn't see him. His heart is hammering so hard that he might as well have eaten the fries. He hears footsteps behind him and pretends to be interested in some mixed nuts.
"Heap?" Jeff calls down the aisle, loud and unembarrassed like Brian is just a character in his dream. Brian turns with fake surprise and puts his hands in his back pockets. His face is bright as hell, he can feel it, and goddamn the fact that he never grew out of his tendency toward red-cheeked panic. His face was red the first time Jeff spoke to him, because Jeff was motor-mouthed and cute, and he scared the hell out of Brian from the start. They were twelve, and then suddenly they were twenty-five, and things had been going downhill for years before the end.
"Hey," Brian makes himself say, though he mostly wants to pick up where they left off and start throwing punches in self defense. Jeff is overly suntanned and his hair is going gray behind his ears. Otherwise he looks the same. Brian knows he looks nothing like he did at twenty-seven. He reaches to shake Jeff's hand but Jeff ignores this and hugs him hard. Brian pulls away quickly so Jeff won't feel his heartbeat slamming against him, everything inside Brian tipped toward him already.
"I thought you were in Texas?" Brian says, and he hates the way that came out, like he feels betrayed by Jeff's return to Georgia, like this was not part of their agreement, as if they had one.
"I'm living in St. Simons now," Jeff says, and Brian thinks of the lot Jeff bought down there, back when it was an empty wasteland of sand and weeds. They camped on it illegally after the 2005 season and busted apart Brian's sleeping bag because Jeff was determined that they could both fit inside it, or, more specifically, that he could fuck Brian while both of them were halfway contained by it.
"I'm just in town for the holidays," Jeff says. "To see my Mom."
Brian understands from this that Jeff's father is dead. Nothing else could have separated Jeff's parents; certainly they were against divorce.
"Oh," is all he can think to say, and then he feels like he should hug Jeff again.
"You still living here?" Jeff asks. He's holding a box of Creamsicles and an economy pack of double-A batteries.
"Yeah, I'm, well, you know, Ashley got the house." Brian's face burns harder. "But I stayed close. For the kids." Jeff must have heard about his divorce. It would be ridiculous to pretend that he doesn't know.
Jeff smiles as if this is a cheerful subject. "Catie's still in California," he says.
"Jesus. Really?"
"Yeah. She's on the board of some cheerleading thing. Or whatever. We don't really talk. Sometimes her mom calls me."
Brian wants to scream we don't have to talk about Catie. He has of course envisioned reunions with Jeff, and in his fantasies they discuss the current state of the Braves or UGA football or some other bullshit, but Jeff was never big on letting him off the hook.
"I did finally have a kid," Jeff says, digging into his pocket for his wallet. "Eight years back. Timmy. He's out in Texas with his mom." He shows Brian a picture of a grinning kid in a Cowboys jersey who can't be more than five or six years old. Brian smiles and nods, almost says something idiotic like So he's a Cowboys fan, eh? but stops himself.
"How old are yours?" Jeff asks.
"Fourteen and twelve."
They stare at each other for awhile, Brian coming up with inane conversation starters -- Batteries and Creamsicles, eh? -- and rejecting them.
"So what are you doing here?" Jeff finally says.
"What? In Wal-Mart?"
"I don't know. Yeah."
"I just." Brian looks around desperately. "I was going to get some ice cream."
"You could have one of these," Jeff says. He holds up the Creamsicles and beams. Brian wants to know why he's being so nice. He's wanted to know that since they met.
"I've got whiskey in the car," Brian says, and Jeff laughs, but there's nothing mean in it.
They go through the self checkout, passing by the messy collection of baseball cards near the registers without comment. Jeff's career ended ten years ago in Mexico. Brian followed his numbers when he could get them and fluctuated between feeling sorry for him and feeling like he got what he deserved. There were rumors that Jeff lost everything when the economy went to shit, but Brian suspects that those stories were just invented by other bitter people who'd been disappointed by him.
Outside the sky is clear but starless above the more powerful glow of the Wal-Mart. They climb into Brian's car and Brian puts the key in the ignition so they can listen to the radio. The whiskey bottle is embarrassingly heavy, but they haven't got any cups, so they drink straight from it and cough.
"You're not in a hurry to get back to your mom?" Brian asks.
"She's asleep," Jeff says.
The question Brian can't ask hangs in the air between them: So she's speaking to you again, eh? Brian isn't used to being with Jeff and not saying everything that comes into his head, especially the things that will hurt him.
"How's your brother?" Jeff asks.
"He's okay. Dad finally retired, sort of, and Brad's running the Academy."
"They haven't got you working there?" Jeff asks. Brian forces a grin. Jeff couldn't have known that he shouldn't have asked. The Academy is the one thing Brian can't take from his brother. They both know it would be ten times more profitable if he taught there, but Brad never made it out of the minors and it's Brian's turn to feel useless. He's forty-two and he doesn't even play golf anymore. It just hurts his knees, like everything else.
"I'm retired," Brian says.
"I'm selling houses down there," Jeff says. Brian snorts, because Jeff was always destined to be a salesman, but Brian thought he would be peddling something more ridiculous, like Aston Martins or vacuums. It wouldn't matter; Jeff will always be okay. Brian learned to hate him for that, and it's the reason, mostly, why they can't be friends anymore.
"You seeing anyone?" Jeff asks. It's such an unfair question that Brian considers pretending that he didn't hear it. He fools with the radio, flicks from one country station to another.
"No," Brian says. He waits to see if he has the nerve to return the question. Turns out he doesn't.
"I was living with a guy for awhile," Jeff volunteers anyway, all quiet and serious like they're old ladies in an Oprah novel, getting everything off their chests. "Everybody knows except my mom. Well, she knows, but. And Tim doesn't know, unless his mother's told him. My brother still won't talk to me."
Brian can't look at him. He stares out the window at the empty parking lot, watches the wind move a shopping cart around.
"I don't know what you thought would happen," Brian says when Jeff goes on waiting for a response of some kind.
"I guess I got tired of thinking about what would happen all the time," Jeff says. "I guess that was the whole point."
Without consulting Brian, Jeff ruined everything in 2009, something he'd already come close to doing two years earlier when he went through with his wedding. But they had recovered, slowly and tentatively, from that blow. They had hotel rooms and plane rides and late nights out with the guys, and they were broken, but not so badly that they were willing to forgo sharing a bed when they could. They got through 2008, barely, and things were better by their first wedding anniversaries. Jeff thought it would send an "appropriate message" if they celebrated together, so they took the wives out to Restaurant Eugene at the midpoint between the two anniversaries. Brian got drunk and praised the food repetitively; Jeff made polite conversation about Ashley's career. The message must have been delivered, because neither of their wives visited during spring training. Brian slept with Jeff every night for a month and started to feel halfway normal again. He would wake up in their tacky condo in Orlando and get that Saturday morning feeling he'd had back in high school, half-asleep and almost grateful for the few seconds of dread before he remembered that he didn't have to be anyplace he hated, not today.
Even after they left the dreamland of spring training, both fatter already from their Chili's and Olive Garden diet, things settled into place better than they had the year before. Brian started spending all his free time at the Academy when they were home, and Jeff was sappy when they finally got behind hotel room doors on road trips, saying he couldn't keep doing this and he was going to leave her. It was like a love song he'd written for Brian back in high school, and he sang it whenever he was desperate or repentant or in the midst of taking Brian's clothes off. Brian didn't always want to hear it, but he started believing it -- again -- by May.
Jeff might have meant it that time. At the end of the month, during a home game, with Brian's parents sitting in the family section, Jeff hit a grand slam. He'd been horrible since the end of 2007 and would never be good again, but he had these brief moments of glory that meant a lot to him and everyone else who once thought he'd be great. Brian was on first when he hit the slam, and he ran as fast as he could, not wanting Jeff to embarrass him by catching up, but Jeff took his time around the bases, grinning out at the crowd. It was like he knew it would be the last one he ever hit.
Brian didn't know, and he took the slam as a good sign, the portent they'd been waiting for. Jeff was going to turn things around. When Brian waited for him at home plate the other guys stepped back, because Brian already had his arms up, and Jeff was smiling huge, looking only at him. Brian felt it in his chest before it happened. It was an enormous pressure, not like a bullet going through but like a weight sinking into his chest, taking all of him with it. Jeff lifted him off his feet and kissed him on the mouth. It was quick but unmistakable.
Nobody knew what to do. The crowd was still going nuts; most of them weren't close enough to see the kiss, and it wasn't unusual for guys to grab each other in celebration. Jeff looked at Brian like he should say something, but Brian just turned and walked through the other guys to the dugout. Everybody seemed willing to pretend that nothing had happened for as long as they could. It would be on television, and then it would be like the only thing that had ever happened to any of them. Until then, they sat and watched the game. Brian kept his eyes away from Jeff, and Jeff hung on the railing. Brian wanted to pull him back under the cover of the dugout, was afraid someone would shoot him or at least throw a Coke at him, which would be almost as bad, a death blow. He also wanted to kill Jeff himself. He thought of their parents and their wives, who would never be able to look at them again without seeing that kiss, and it wasn't even worth it, because Brian hadn't been conscious enough to feel it as it happened, not even close.
What followed was fast and loud but too horrible to stick, so Brian bounced around, laughing it off, and started drinking vodka before he showed up to the clubhouse. He got a DUI in June and was suspended for five games. His father avoided his eyes and his mother looked at him with pity, like she wanted to check his temperature. Brad confronted him about it the night after it happened; Brian broke down crying and then had to tell him everything. His brother's unsurprised and supportive reaction to the news was the only bright spot of the whole ordeal. People stopped talking to him in a friendly, gradual way, backed away smiling with their hands held in front of them. Jeff was traded to the Padres at the All-Star break and Cox retired at the end of the season. They finished last in the division that year.
When Jeff was gone, everyone seemed relieved, as if they could now forget the whole thing. Brian was belatedly devastated; he'd avoided Jeff since the kiss, and for awhile after Jeff moved to California the distance still felt like a choice. Then they played the Padres a couple of months into the 2010 season and everything landed on Brian like it had all happened just a few days before. He drove all the way to Chula Vista to meet up with Jeff, lest anyone in town catch sight of them, and they fucked and fought bitterly until sunrise. Jeff told him he was finally leaving Catie. Brian broke a mirror, but that was mostly an accident.
They had a few other disastrous meet-ups in cities where no one knew them, and then Jeff got demoted to the minors. He never came back up, and Brian started having dreams that Jeff was murdered and he had to hear about it on the news.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he would go around screaming at his teammates in the dreams. "Why didn't anyone tell me he died?"
Eventually it just felt like he'd never known anyone by that name, but sometimes things would strike him from out of nowhere: a kid with cherry-stained lips from a slushie, snowfalls that started after midnight, bad movies on airplanes, and he'll remember: Jeff always ordered cherry, Jeff stayed up with him when they were fourteen, waiting for snow that would cancel school, Jeff liked almost every movie he'd ever seen. Remembering always feels like a diagnosis, like he's found the source of the trouble at last.
They don't get very far with the whiskey, and Jeff breaks open the Creamsicles after they've been sitting in Brian's car for almost an hour, mostly just listening to the radio, where the tyranny of Christmas music has ended and the top 40 country songs they both know by heart have returned. Brian shakes his head when Jeff offers him a Creamsicle, then regrets it when Jeff's smells good.
"We should drive up to Stone Mountain," Jeff says at midnight. "Watch the sun rise. Like that one time."
When they were fifteen Jeff was forced by his parents to go on a youth group retreat, and he came back claiming to be saved. He was pretty obnoxious about Jesus for awhile, but apparently he was sold on forgiveness more than anything else, because his newfound faith didn't stop him from parking his truck behind the CVS at two in the morning and pulling Brian into the backseat with him. At the end of the year, the youth group had a New Year's Eve lock-in and Brian agreed to join him because he could never turn down spending the night with Jeff, even if it involved twenty other people he hated ferociously. The evening of wacky Christian fun culminated in a drive up to Stone Mountain to watch the sun rise, and a spontaneous rendition of "Amazing Grace" broke out. Brian had never been so humiliated in his life, and he stood off to the side, miserably sucking on one of the Lifesavers Jeff had won during a Bible trivia game. Jeff made the rounds with all the other dorks and then came to stand beside Brian. He was afraid Jeff would try to tell him he ought to get saved, too, but he hadn't tried yet. It made Brian wonder what he really got out of all of this, if he didn't think that dunking Brian in water would save him from hell. He was fairly sure at that point that Jeff wouldn't want him to be damned, and that he cared enough to worry about it.
"What a lame sunrise," Brian muttered, his freezing hands stuffed into his coat pockets. "I thought it would be like in The Lion King, you know? Like this huge red thing that takes up the whole sky."
Jeff smiled at him. "That's the dumbest thing you've ever said."
"Yeah, well." Brian was miserable, wished those fuckers would stop singing. He considered walking back down to the cars by himself, maybe kicking some rocks. It wasn't like he didn't love Jesus. He just didn't want to talk about it all the goddamn time, or ever, really.
"Here," Jeff said, and he pulled Brian's hands out of his pockets. He took one of his gloves off and put it on Brian's right hand, then wrapped his naked hand around Brian's. His was still warm from the glove, and he closed his fingers around Brian's so deliberately that Brian's face went red. He glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the group.
"They'll see," Brian whispered.
"I can hold your hand," Jeff whispered back. He stared at Brian until he got nervous about what Jeff might try next. "It ain't a sin."
Brian had almost given up on him so many times, and so many times the memory of that morning on the mountain had stopped him. Jeff gave him reason after reason to stop trying, and Brian made a resolution every time, but the day Jeff had held his hand with his youth group lurking nearby would dissolve any ending Brian tried to set in motion like a corrosive that was sloshing around inside him, something he couldn't get rid of. The only thing that could keep them apart was a trade, and Jeff made sure that happened by kissing him at home plate. It was stupidly ironic. His public display of affection had held them together for so long, until another one ripped them in half just as easily. Brian figures the only reason the first one didn't do the job was because the youth group kids were too wrapped up in their singing to notice what Jeff had done.
They drive to Stone Mountain in Jeff's truck, because he's closer to sober. The radio plays Neal McCoy, and Brian mouths the words while Jeff sings along shamelessly: Kiss me each morning for a million years, hold me each evening by your side, tell me you love me for a million years, then if it don't work out, if it don't work out, then you can tell me goodbye.
"He rhymes 'a million years' with 'a million years,'" Brian says, disgusted with himself for never realizing this before. He hates that he can't listen to anything but old country songs, sentimental bullshit that used to make his eyes water when Jeff was still around. Nothing else sounds right.
"I love this song," Jeff says.
"You say that about everything," Brian mutters. This song, this movie, this show, this restaurant, this town, this girl and that girl and Brian, too. Christ, he's got a kid somewhere. Brian wants to meet him and commiserate about how things didn't turn out the way they wanted.
They get to Stone Mountain at half past one in the morning, and Jeff seems to know where he's going. He parks the truck in a gravel lot at the base of the mountain, but they don't get out, because the sun won't rise for five hours and it's starting to get cold out there.
"Where's your ring?" Jeff asks. He leans onto the steering wheel and looks at Brian with his head resting on his arms, like a kid who's bored in class.
"I take it off when I'm around Brad," Brian says, though actually he never wears it anymore. The Braves won the Series two years after Jeff was traded. Yost put Huddy in at the end of the clincher, game six, and Brian caught the final strike. "And then I forget to put it back on."
"You're so overprotective of him," Jeff says. "Brad's not -"
"Don't talk to me about my brother," Brian says, almost shouting, and he holds back the rest. Yours isn't even speaking to you.
Jeff shakes his head and sits up straight. Brian hates that he still looks like a fucking catalog model. Jeff never seemed to understand that about himself. He always thought people liked him because he was a good person.
"So what was it like?" Jeff asks, because they'd stopped speaking by the time Brian won the Series with the Braves. There were fifty-two messages on Brian's voicemail the morning after, and he's pretty sure the seventh was from Jeff, one exasperated breath and then the click.
"It was great," Brian says. Jeff rolls his eyes.
"What?" Brian hits him, catches himself thinking he still can, that this is still what they do when they make each other mad. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know, Heap. I'm not mad at you."
"No shit you're not. Why would you be?"
Jeff shakes his head and looks out the driver's side window. Brian wants to hit him again, but he doesn't. He wants to apologize, and he hates it more than anything, how Jeff makes him feel guilty. It's so easy to convince himself that he did nothing wrong when Jeff's not around to remind him that he was the one who finally just gave up.
"I was," Jeff says. "Mad at you. Before."
"Well, I guess we can call it even, then." Brian huffs in old-man annoyance and turns to his own window. Jeff changes the radio station, finds a Tim McGraw song: I told you that I was happy for you, and if I had the chance I'd lie again.
"Do you still believe in God?" Brian asks. He's wondered about a lot of things over the years, all the possibilities and everything he's missed, but this more than anything, and he never would have guessed.
"Of course I do," Jeff says. "What the hell kind of question is that? Do you?"
"Yeah. I just. You always seemed like the kind of guy who needed to believe in God because his life was so easy. Like you wanted someone else to blame, so you wouldn't have to feel guilty for everything you had. And I don't know how easy your life is anymore."
He can feel Jeff looking at him, and he turns, finds Jeff doing that unblinking thing. Suddenly he misses him so much that he can't believe he doesn't have his arms around him, face against his neck.
"That's the worst thing you've ever said to me," Jeff says.
"Which part?" Brian's eyes sting, and he feels so trapped inside his new body with his shredded knees and disappearing hair. It's not right that he can be with Jeff and not go back in time, not become somebody he'd recognize.
"God," Jeff says. He picks at the steering wheel; the leather is peeling away at the bottom. "I thought you'd be happy to see me."
"I am," Brian says, though it hadn't occurred to him until he said so. He wants to drive away from Georgia with Jeff and never come back, to leave his family scattered all over the country like Jeff did. But no, that's not really what he wants. The problem is that he's always wanted Jeff and other things, too. If he'd only wanted Jeff, he would have been happy. He could have had him.
They listen to the radio, new songs they don't know and stations they've never tried before, part of the news and a call-in show about relationships. A woman calls in and cries because her father is getting of prison and she's not sure if she wants to see him or not. Brian thinks of his own father, who cheated on his mother like a reflex throughout their entire marriage. He was seventeen when he had his first suspicion and twenty-two when he knew for sure. He and Jeff were living with Brad in a two-bedroom apartment in the city, and both of them sat up with Brian all night while he tried to decide if he still loved his dad. Brad told him he'd already been through the same thing - alone, he'd protected Brian from it, and he was smarter, so he'd figured it out when he was much younger - and that he'd sincerely wanted to kill their father for a few days. He made a big pot of macaroni and cheese for the three of them and fell asleep at four in the morning. Jeff reached over and held Brian's cheek when Brad was asleep, his hand shaking like he'd been wanting to all night.
After four hours of sitting in the car, they make their way up the mountain. Brian is slow and embarrassed, but Jeff matches his pace, stays close. Brian fantasizes about dying here on the side of the mountain, letting his heart give out and haunting Jeff for the rest of his life, finally making him face his guilt. It's got to be in there somewhere. But then he'd be stuck with his own guilt for all eternity, or however it works with ghosts. At least they would be together, and well past deciding who was to blame. Brian is so tired of trying to figure it out. Jeff got married without Brian's permission and kissed him like they were both bulletproof, but it was Brian who turned and walked away.
It's still dark when they reach the top of the mountain, clouds gathering and thunder arriving with them. Jeff walks to the exact spot where they watched the sunrise when they were fifteen. Or it looks like the same spot, anyway.
"Kyle died last year," Brian says, because Jeff is staring at the horizon and he's afraid he's found a way to ruin this again, as if there's anything left to destroy.
"I know," Jeff says. The thunder moves in closer, and Brian can smell the rain.
"I wasn't sure. 'Cause you weren't at his funeral."
"Nobody wanted me there."
"That ain't true." Brian meant to say I did, but the wind is coming in hard now, cold and wet, and he's losing his nerve. He feels like they're gearing up to do something crazy, like jump off the mountain or kiss each other, something they won't survive. When it starts raining, loud and hard and suddenly everywhere, Brian takes it as a sign from God. He should have shuffled away faster, he shouldn't have gone to the Wal-Mart at all, he should have stayed home with his beers and let them put him to sleep in front of the TV.
"This is so fucking us," Brian screams over the rain. He takes off his jacket and slings it over both their heads, lets Jeff hold it there. He's grinning at Brian, because he doesn't understand that he's actually upset, that this is the soggy, pointless ending they deserve.
"A goddamn downpour!" Brian shouts. "No sunrise. This is everything we fucking do."
"Heap," Jeff says. "Are you ever gonna forgive me?"
"What? I'm not -"
"I didn't mean to do it. I just wanted to kiss you. You know I forget where I am when I'm happy. I don't think I'd take it back, though. I don't think I could have kept going the way we were. I think something horrible would have happened."
Brian stares at him in disbelief. "Jeff. Something horrible did happen." Everything horrible, everything they'd feared.
"No, it didn't. Kyle's dead, Brian. I saw you in Wal-Mart. I got you back here because I wanted to do this twenty-seven years ago, and I never thought not doing it would be something I'd regret."
Brian doesn't have time to ask him what he's talking about, but it would perfunctory anyway, because he knows. He swallows Jeff up when he leans down to kiss him, remembers how his lips feel when they're wet like he never stopped taking hotel room showers with him, complaining when Jeff's hair dripped in his eyes. Jeff lets the jacket flop onto their heads, the rain beating it into place, and he breathes whiskey and orange slush into Brian's mouth, closes his hand over his cheek.
"I'm the one who should hate you," Jeff says.
Brian is going to protest, but he's right. "I know."
"But I don't, Heap, I just don't." Jeff kisses him again, and Brian breaks it off when lightening flickers overhead, because who are they to keep tempting fate.
They drive back to the Wal-Mart with the heat blasting. Brian gets into his car and Jeff follows him in his truck, the streets completely empty as they head toward Brian's house. There are melted Creamsicles everywhere in Brian's car: on the passenger seat, on the floor mats, half of one melting onto the dash. The whole car smells like Jeff did when he kissed him, twenty-seven years after his youth group descended the mountain, nobody around to see and be shocked and avoid the questions they should have asked. Brian checks his rearview obsessively, making sure that Jeff hasn't changed his mind, that he's still following him, like he did when they were high school seniors. Jeff followed him into baseball and wrecked his life on it, but he's not the one who's bitter. He kissed Brian on camera when he'd had enough, didn't even mean to but couldn't wait any longer for his payoff, the kind of devotion he'd earned. Brian left him standing there at home plate, but they can get back there, too, somehow, and he can do what he should have the first time. He'll walk straight into the flames and know, this time, not to look back.
Fandom: MLB
Pairing: Jeff/Brian
Rating: R
Summary: Brian hasn't seen Jeff in fifteen years. He runs into him at a Super Wal-Mart on New Year's Eve, tries and fails to avoid him.
Notes: This is a holiday ficlet written for caruso, who gave me a wonderful prompt about my ultimate OTP. I always love any excuse to write about these guys, and I really hope you'll enjoy the fic! Many thanks to chlorate for beta reading.
I saw Willie Mays
at a Scottsdale Home Depot
looking at garage door springs
at the far end of the fourteenth row
His wife stood there beside him
She was quiet and both were proud
I gave them room but was close enough
that I heard him when he said out loud:
This was my country
This was my song
Somewhere in the middle there,
though it started badly
and it's ending wrong.
--Joe Henry
//
Ashley gets the girls for New Year's Eve because Brian had them for Christmas. It seems like a good trade, but he's too old and tired to go out, and even Brad is away this year, still up in Michigan with his new wife's family. So he's alone, and for some reason he doesn't feel okay about it. He's been trying this experiment where he only keeps beer in the house, but it's just making him fat, and anyway this is a special occasion, sort of, so he drives to the liquor store to get something better.
It's stupidly warm outside for December, and the young guys who work the counter at the liquor store recognize him and smile and make him feel like an asshole, so he doesn't go straight home. He ends up going to the Super Wal-Mart just because he's never seen its massive parking lot so empty. There are a few cars close to the main entrance, and some scraggly Christmas trees still propped against the front of the building. The long, bright aisles feel post-apocalyptic without the usual crowds, and the Christmas music blaring overhead makes him jumpy, like he's in some ironic murder movie scene that's about to go badly.
He walks through the clothing section with disinterest and moves on to the toys. The girls are old enough to just want spending money and he hasn't bought toys in years. He used to have the dogs to shop for, at least, but Ashley has the one arthritic survivor of the old pack at her house. He moves onto the pet section and thinks about getting a new dog, but he wouldn't be able to walk it often enough. His knees are a total bust and he never goes anywhere on foot unless he has to. He drifts into the fishing and hunting supplies, looks at bait and rods and the guns locked in their glass cases. When he was still playing, a few of his teammates tried to get him into hunting, but he never really understood the appeal.
He bypasses automotive and electronics and heads into the grocery section of the store. The produce is limp and depressing, the meat case neat and unappetizing, everything pre-packaged. He thinks about buying some hot dogs and stands for awhile trying to figure out what the hell he's doing. There's a McDonald's attached to the store and he can smell the fries, but he's not supposed to eat that stuff anymore. He's got high cholesterol and probably a bad heart, though he doesn't have the balls to get it checked out. His dad and Brad have already had four heart surgeries between them.
Ice cream sounds better than hot dogs, so he heads to the freezer section, thinking optimistically of frozen yogurt. There's a guy puttering around at the end of the aisle in sweatpants and flip-flops, and his battered polo shirt reminds Brian of something Jeff used to wear. In fact the guy sort of looks like Jeff, which makes Brian uneasy, because he stopped seeing Jeff everywhere five years back, and now is not the time to regress. Now is not the time to think of him at all, in fact, which is really unfortunate, because it is Jeff, walking toward him.
Brian ducks out of the aisle and speeds into the next one, hurrying between rows of chips and pretzels and hoping to God that Jeff didn't see him. His heart is hammering so hard that he might as well have eaten the fries. He hears footsteps behind him and pretends to be interested in some mixed nuts.
"Heap?" Jeff calls down the aisle, loud and unembarrassed like Brian is just a character in his dream. Brian turns with fake surprise and puts his hands in his back pockets. His face is bright as hell, he can feel it, and goddamn the fact that he never grew out of his tendency toward red-cheeked panic. His face was red the first time Jeff spoke to him, because Jeff was motor-mouthed and cute, and he scared the hell out of Brian from the start. They were twelve, and then suddenly they were twenty-five, and things had been going downhill for years before the end.
"Hey," Brian makes himself say, though he mostly wants to pick up where they left off and start throwing punches in self defense. Jeff is overly suntanned and his hair is going gray behind his ears. Otherwise he looks the same. Brian knows he looks nothing like he did at twenty-seven. He reaches to shake Jeff's hand but Jeff ignores this and hugs him hard. Brian pulls away quickly so Jeff won't feel his heartbeat slamming against him, everything inside Brian tipped toward him already.
"I thought you were in Texas?" Brian says, and he hates the way that came out, like he feels betrayed by Jeff's return to Georgia, like this was not part of their agreement, as if they had one.
"I'm living in St. Simons now," Jeff says, and Brian thinks of the lot Jeff bought down there, back when it was an empty wasteland of sand and weeds. They camped on it illegally after the 2005 season and busted apart Brian's sleeping bag because Jeff was determined that they could both fit inside it, or, more specifically, that he could fuck Brian while both of them were halfway contained by it.
"I'm just in town for the holidays," Jeff says. "To see my Mom."
Brian understands from this that Jeff's father is dead. Nothing else could have separated Jeff's parents; certainly they were against divorce.
"Oh," is all he can think to say, and then he feels like he should hug Jeff again.
"You still living here?" Jeff asks. He's holding a box of Creamsicles and an economy pack of double-A batteries.
"Yeah, I'm, well, you know, Ashley got the house." Brian's face burns harder. "But I stayed close. For the kids." Jeff must have heard about his divorce. It would be ridiculous to pretend that he doesn't know.
Jeff smiles as if this is a cheerful subject. "Catie's still in California," he says.
"Jesus. Really?"
"Yeah. She's on the board of some cheerleading thing. Or whatever. We don't really talk. Sometimes her mom calls me."
Brian wants to scream we don't have to talk about Catie. He has of course envisioned reunions with Jeff, and in his fantasies they discuss the current state of the Braves or UGA football or some other bullshit, but Jeff was never big on letting him off the hook.
"I did finally have a kid," Jeff says, digging into his pocket for his wallet. "Eight years back. Timmy. He's out in Texas with his mom." He shows Brian a picture of a grinning kid in a Cowboys jersey who can't be more than five or six years old. Brian smiles and nods, almost says something idiotic like So he's a Cowboys fan, eh? but stops himself.
"How old are yours?" Jeff asks.
"Fourteen and twelve."
They stare at each other for awhile, Brian coming up with inane conversation starters -- Batteries and Creamsicles, eh? -- and rejecting them.
"So what are you doing here?" Jeff finally says.
"What? In Wal-Mart?"
"I don't know. Yeah."
"I just." Brian looks around desperately. "I was going to get some ice cream."
"You could have one of these," Jeff says. He holds up the Creamsicles and beams. Brian wants to know why he's being so nice. He's wanted to know that since they met.
"I've got whiskey in the car," Brian says, and Jeff laughs, but there's nothing mean in it.
They go through the self checkout, passing by the messy collection of baseball cards near the registers without comment. Jeff's career ended ten years ago in Mexico. Brian followed his numbers when he could get them and fluctuated between feeling sorry for him and feeling like he got what he deserved. There were rumors that Jeff lost everything when the economy went to shit, but Brian suspects that those stories were just invented by other bitter people who'd been disappointed by him.
Outside the sky is clear but starless above the more powerful glow of the Wal-Mart. They climb into Brian's car and Brian puts the key in the ignition so they can listen to the radio. The whiskey bottle is embarrassingly heavy, but they haven't got any cups, so they drink straight from it and cough.
"You're not in a hurry to get back to your mom?" Brian asks.
"She's asleep," Jeff says.
The question Brian can't ask hangs in the air between them: So she's speaking to you again, eh? Brian isn't used to being with Jeff and not saying everything that comes into his head, especially the things that will hurt him.
"How's your brother?" Jeff asks.
"He's okay. Dad finally retired, sort of, and Brad's running the Academy."
"They haven't got you working there?" Jeff asks. Brian forces a grin. Jeff couldn't have known that he shouldn't have asked. The Academy is the one thing Brian can't take from his brother. They both know it would be ten times more profitable if he taught there, but Brad never made it out of the minors and it's Brian's turn to feel useless. He's forty-two and he doesn't even play golf anymore. It just hurts his knees, like everything else.
"I'm retired," Brian says.
"I'm selling houses down there," Jeff says. Brian snorts, because Jeff was always destined to be a salesman, but Brian thought he would be peddling something more ridiculous, like Aston Martins or vacuums. It wouldn't matter; Jeff will always be okay. Brian learned to hate him for that, and it's the reason, mostly, why they can't be friends anymore.
"You seeing anyone?" Jeff asks. It's such an unfair question that Brian considers pretending that he didn't hear it. He fools with the radio, flicks from one country station to another.
"No," Brian says. He waits to see if he has the nerve to return the question. Turns out he doesn't.
"I was living with a guy for awhile," Jeff volunteers anyway, all quiet and serious like they're old ladies in an Oprah novel, getting everything off their chests. "Everybody knows except my mom. Well, she knows, but. And Tim doesn't know, unless his mother's told him. My brother still won't talk to me."
Brian can't look at him. He stares out the window at the empty parking lot, watches the wind move a shopping cart around.
"I don't know what you thought would happen," Brian says when Jeff goes on waiting for a response of some kind.
"I guess I got tired of thinking about what would happen all the time," Jeff says. "I guess that was the whole point."
Without consulting Brian, Jeff ruined everything in 2009, something he'd already come close to doing two years earlier when he went through with his wedding. But they had recovered, slowly and tentatively, from that blow. They had hotel rooms and plane rides and late nights out with the guys, and they were broken, but not so badly that they were willing to forgo sharing a bed when they could. They got through 2008, barely, and things were better by their first wedding anniversaries. Jeff thought it would send an "appropriate message" if they celebrated together, so they took the wives out to Restaurant Eugene at the midpoint between the two anniversaries. Brian got drunk and praised the food repetitively; Jeff made polite conversation about Ashley's career. The message must have been delivered, because neither of their wives visited during spring training. Brian slept with Jeff every night for a month and started to feel halfway normal again. He would wake up in their tacky condo in Orlando and get that Saturday morning feeling he'd had back in high school, half-asleep and almost grateful for the few seconds of dread before he remembered that he didn't have to be anyplace he hated, not today.
Even after they left the dreamland of spring training, both fatter already from their Chili's and Olive Garden diet, things settled into place better than they had the year before. Brian started spending all his free time at the Academy when they were home, and Jeff was sappy when they finally got behind hotel room doors on road trips, saying he couldn't keep doing this and he was going to leave her. It was like a love song he'd written for Brian back in high school, and he sang it whenever he was desperate or repentant or in the midst of taking Brian's clothes off. Brian didn't always want to hear it, but he started believing it -- again -- by May.
Jeff might have meant it that time. At the end of the month, during a home game, with Brian's parents sitting in the family section, Jeff hit a grand slam. He'd been horrible since the end of 2007 and would never be good again, but he had these brief moments of glory that meant a lot to him and everyone else who once thought he'd be great. Brian was on first when he hit the slam, and he ran as fast as he could, not wanting Jeff to embarrass him by catching up, but Jeff took his time around the bases, grinning out at the crowd. It was like he knew it would be the last one he ever hit.
Brian didn't know, and he took the slam as a good sign, the portent they'd been waiting for. Jeff was going to turn things around. When Brian waited for him at home plate the other guys stepped back, because Brian already had his arms up, and Jeff was smiling huge, looking only at him. Brian felt it in his chest before it happened. It was an enormous pressure, not like a bullet going through but like a weight sinking into his chest, taking all of him with it. Jeff lifted him off his feet and kissed him on the mouth. It was quick but unmistakable.
Nobody knew what to do. The crowd was still going nuts; most of them weren't close enough to see the kiss, and it wasn't unusual for guys to grab each other in celebration. Jeff looked at Brian like he should say something, but Brian just turned and walked through the other guys to the dugout. Everybody seemed willing to pretend that nothing had happened for as long as they could. It would be on television, and then it would be like the only thing that had ever happened to any of them. Until then, they sat and watched the game. Brian kept his eyes away from Jeff, and Jeff hung on the railing. Brian wanted to pull him back under the cover of the dugout, was afraid someone would shoot him or at least throw a Coke at him, which would be almost as bad, a death blow. He also wanted to kill Jeff himself. He thought of their parents and their wives, who would never be able to look at them again without seeing that kiss, and it wasn't even worth it, because Brian hadn't been conscious enough to feel it as it happened, not even close.
What followed was fast and loud but too horrible to stick, so Brian bounced around, laughing it off, and started drinking vodka before he showed up to the clubhouse. He got a DUI in June and was suspended for five games. His father avoided his eyes and his mother looked at him with pity, like she wanted to check his temperature. Brad confronted him about it the night after it happened; Brian broke down crying and then had to tell him everything. His brother's unsurprised and supportive reaction to the news was the only bright spot of the whole ordeal. People stopped talking to him in a friendly, gradual way, backed away smiling with their hands held in front of them. Jeff was traded to the Padres at the All-Star break and Cox retired at the end of the season. They finished last in the division that year.
When Jeff was gone, everyone seemed relieved, as if they could now forget the whole thing. Brian was belatedly devastated; he'd avoided Jeff since the kiss, and for awhile after Jeff moved to California the distance still felt like a choice. Then they played the Padres a couple of months into the 2010 season and everything landed on Brian like it had all happened just a few days before. He drove all the way to Chula Vista to meet up with Jeff, lest anyone in town catch sight of them, and they fucked and fought bitterly until sunrise. Jeff told him he was finally leaving Catie. Brian broke a mirror, but that was mostly an accident.
They had a few other disastrous meet-ups in cities where no one knew them, and then Jeff got demoted to the minors. He never came back up, and Brian started having dreams that Jeff was murdered and he had to hear about it on the news.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he would go around screaming at his teammates in the dreams. "Why didn't anyone tell me he died?"
Eventually it just felt like he'd never known anyone by that name, but sometimes things would strike him from out of nowhere: a kid with cherry-stained lips from a slushie, snowfalls that started after midnight, bad movies on airplanes, and he'll remember: Jeff always ordered cherry, Jeff stayed up with him when they were fourteen, waiting for snow that would cancel school, Jeff liked almost every movie he'd ever seen. Remembering always feels like a diagnosis, like he's found the source of the trouble at last.
They don't get very far with the whiskey, and Jeff breaks open the Creamsicles after they've been sitting in Brian's car for almost an hour, mostly just listening to the radio, where the tyranny of Christmas music has ended and the top 40 country songs they both know by heart have returned. Brian shakes his head when Jeff offers him a Creamsicle, then regrets it when Jeff's smells good.
"We should drive up to Stone Mountain," Jeff says at midnight. "Watch the sun rise. Like that one time."
When they were fifteen Jeff was forced by his parents to go on a youth group retreat, and he came back claiming to be saved. He was pretty obnoxious about Jesus for awhile, but apparently he was sold on forgiveness more than anything else, because his newfound faith didn't stop him from parking his truck behind the CVS at two in the morning and pulling Brian into the backseat with him. At the end of the year, the youth group had a New Year's Eve lock-in and Brian agreed to join him because he could never turn down spending the night with Jeff, even if it involved twenty other people he hated ferociously. The evening of wacky Christian fun culminated in a drive up to Stone Mountain to watch the sun rise, and a spontaneous rendition of "Amazing Grace" broke out. Brian had never been so humiliated in his life, and he stood off to the side, miserably sucking on one of the Lifesavers Jeff had won during a Bible trivia game. Jeff made the rounds with all the other dorks and then came to stand beside Brian. He was afraid Jeff would try to tell him he ought to get saved, too, but he hadn't tried yet. It made Brian wonder what he really got out of all of this, if he didn't think that dunking Brian in water would save him from hell. He was fairly sure at that point that Jeff wouldn't want him to be damned, and that he cared enough to worry about it.
"What a lame sunrise," Brian muttered, his freezing hands stuffed into his coat pockets. "I thought it would be like in The Lion King, you know? Like this huge red thing that takes up the whole sky."
Jeff smiled at him. "That's the dumbest thing you've ever said."
"Yeah, well." Brian was miserable, wished those fuckers would stop singing. He considered walking back down to the cars by himself, maybe kicking some rocks. It wasn't like he didn't love Jesus. He just didn't want to talk about it all the goddamn time, or ever, really.
"Here," Jeff said, and he pulled Brian's hands out of his pockets. He took one of his gloves off and put it on Brian's right hand, then wrapped his naked hand around Brian's. His was still warm from the glove, and he closed his fingers around Brian's so deliberately that Brian's face went red. He glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the group.
"They'll see," Brian whispered.
"I can hold your hand," Jeff whispered back. He stared at Brian until he got nervous about what Jeff might try next. "It ain't a sin."
Brian had almost given up on him so many times, and so many times the memory of that morning on the mountain had stopped him. Jeff gave him reason after reason to stop trying, and Brian made a resolution every time, but the day Jeff had held his hand with his youth group lurking nearby would dissolve any ending Brian tried to set in motion like a corrosive that was sloshing around inside him, something he couldn't get rid of. The only thing that could keep them apart was a trade, and Jeff made sure that happened by kissing him at home plate. It was stupidly ironic. His public display of affection had held them together for so long, until another one ripped them in half just as easily. Brian figures the only reason the first one didn't do the job was because the youth group kids were too wrapped up in their singing to notice what Jeff had done.
They drive to Stone Mountain in Jeff's truck, because he's closer to sober. The radio plays Neal McCoy, and Brian mouths the words while Jeff sings along shamelessly: Kiss me each morning for a million years, hold me each evening by your side, tell me you love me for a million years, then if it don't work out, if it don't work out, then you can tell me goodbye.
"He rhymes 'a million years' with 'a million years,'" Brian says, disgusted with himself for never realizing this before. He hates that he can't listen to anything but old country songs, sentimental bullshit that used to make his eyes water when Jeff was still around. Nothing else sounds right.
"I love this song," Jeff says.
"You say that about everything," Brian mutters. This song, this movie, this show, this restaurant, this town, this girl and that girl and Brian, too. Christ, he's got a kid somewhere. Brian wants to meet him and commiserate about how things didn't turn out the way they wanted.
They get to Stone Mountain at half past one in the morning, and Jeff seems to know where he's going. He parks the truck in a gravel lot at the base of the mountain, but they don't get out, because the sun won't rise for five hours and it's starting to get cold out there.
"Where's your ring?" Jeff asks. He leans onto the steering wheel and looks at Brian with his head resting on his arms, like a kid who's bored in class.
"I take it off when I'm around Brad," Brian says, though actually he never wears it anymore. The Braves won the Series two years after Jeff was traded. Yost put Huddy in at the end of the clincher, game six, and Brian caught the final strike. "And then I forget to put it back on."
"You're so overprotective of him," Jeff says. "Brad's not -"
"Don't talk to me about my brother," Brian says, almost shouting, and he holds back the rest. Yours isn't even speaking to you.
Jeff shakes his head and sits up straight. Brian hates that he still looks like a fucking catalog model. Jeff never seemed to understand that about himself. He always thought people liked him because he was a good person.
"So what was it like?" Jeff asks, because they'd stopped speaking by the time Brian won the Series with the Braves. There were fifty-two messages on Brian's voicemail the morning after, and he's pretty sure the seventh was from Jeff, one exasperated breath and then the click.
"It was great," Brian says. Jeff rolls his eyes.
"What?" Brian hits him, catches himself thinking he still can, that this is still what they do when they make each other mad. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know, Heap. I'm not mad at you."
"No shit you're not. Why would you be?"
Jeff shakes his head and looks out the driver's side window. Brian wants to hit him again, but he doesn't. He wants to apologize, and he hates it more than anything, how Jeff makes him feel guilty. It's so easy to convince himself that he did nothing wrong when Jeff's not around to remind him that he was the one who finally just gave up.
"I was," Jeff says. "Mad at you. Before."
"Well, I guess we can call it even, then." Brian huffs in old-man annoyance and turns to his own window. Jeff changes the radio station, finds a Tim McGraw song: I told you that I was happy for you, and if I had the chance I'd lie again.
"Do you still believe in God?" Brian asks. He's wondered about a lot of things over the years, all the possibilities and everything he's missed, but this more than anything, and he never would have guessed.
"Of course I do," Jeff says. "What the hell kind of question is that? Do you?"
"Yeah. I just. You always seemed like the kind of guy who needed to believe in God because his life was so easy. Like you wanted someone else to blame, so you wouldn't have to feel guilty for everything you had. And I don't know how easy your life is anymore."
He can feel Jeff looking at him, and he turns, finds Jeff doing that unblinking thing. Suddenly he misses him so much that he can't believe he doesn't have his arms around him, face against his neck.
"That's the worst thing you've ever said to me," Jeff says.
"Which part?" Brian's eyes sting, and he feels so trapped inside his new body with his shredded knees and disappearing hair. It's not right that he can be with Jeff and not go back in time, not become somebody he'd recognize.
"God," Jeff says. He picks at the steering wheel; the leather is peeling away at the bottom. "I thought you'd be happy to see me."
"I am," Brian says, though it hadn't occurred to him until he said so. He wants to drive away from Georgia with Jeff and never come back, to leave his family scattered all over the country like Jeff did. But no, that's not really what he wants. The problem is that he's always wanted Jeff and other things, too. If he'd only wanted Jeff, he would have been happy. He could have had him.
They listen to the radio, new songs they don't know and stations they've never tried before, part of the news and a call-in show about relationships. A woman calls in and cries because her father is getting of prison and she's not sure if she wants to see him or not. Brian thinks of his own father, who cheated on his mother like a reflex throughout their entire marriage. He was seventeen when he had his first suspicion and twenty-two when he knew for sure. He and Jeff were living with Brad in a two-bedroom apartment in the city, and both of them sat up with Brian all night while he tried to decide if he still loved his dad. Brad told him he'd already been through the same thing - alone, he'd protected Brian from it, and he was smarter, so he'd figured it out when he was much younger - and that he'd sincerely wanted to kill their father for a few days. He made a big pot of macaroni and cheese for the three of them and fell asleep at four in the morning. Jeff reached over and held Brian's cheek when Brad was asleep, his hand shaking like he'd been wanting to all night.
After four hours of sitting in the car, they make their way up the mountain. Brian is slow and embarrassed, but Jeff matches his pace, stays close. Brian fantasizes about dying here on the side of the mountain, letting his heart give out and haunting Jeff for the rest of his life, finally making him face his guilt. It's got to be in there somewhere. But then he'd be stuck with his own guilt for all eternity, or however it works with ghosts. At least they would be together, and well past deciding who was to blame. Brian is so tired of trying to figure it out. Jeff got married without Brian's permission and kissed him like they were both bulletproof, but it was Brian who turned and walked away.
It's still dark when they reach the top of the mountain, clouds gathering and thunder arriving with them. Jeff walks to the exact spot where they watched the sunrise when they were fifteen. Or it looks like the same spot, anyway.
"Kyle died last year," Brian says, because Jeff is staring at the horizon and he's afraid he's found a way to ruin this again, as if there's anything left to destroy.
"I know," Jeff says. The thunder moves in closer, and Brian can smell the rain.
"I wasn't sure. 'Cause you weren't at his funeral."
"Nobody wanted me there."
"That ain't true." Brian meant to say I did, but the wind is coming in hard now, cold and wet, and he's losing his nerve. He feels like they're gearing up to do something crazy, like jump off the mountain or kiss each other, something they won't survive. When it starts raining, loud and hard and suddenly everywhere, Brian takes it as a sign from God. He should have shuffled away faster, he shouldn't have gone to the Wal-Mart at all, he should have stayed home with his beers and let them put him to sleep in front of the TV.
"This is so fucking us," Brian screams over the rain. He takes off his jacket and slings it over both their heads, lets Jeff hold it there. He's grinning at Brian, because he doesn't understand that he's actually upset, that this is the soggy, pointless ending they deserve.
"A goddamn downpour!" Brian shouts. "No sunrise. This is everything we fucking do."
"Heap," Jeff says. "Are you ever gonna forgive me?"
"What? I'm not -"
"I didn't mean to do it. I just wanted to kiss you. You know I forget where I am when I'm happy. I don't think I'd take it back, though. I don't think I could have kept going the way we were. I think something horrible would have happened."
Brian stares at him in disbelief. "Jeff. Something horrible did happen." Everything horrible, everything they'd feared.
"No, it didn't. Kyle's dead, Brian. I saw you in Wal-Mart. I got you back here because I wanted to do this twenty-seven years ago, and I never thought not doing it would be something I'd regret."
Brian doesn't have time to ask him what he's talking about, but it would perfunctory anyway, because he knows. He swallows Jeff up when he leans down to kiss him, remembers how his lips feel when they're wet like he never stopped taking hotel room showers with him, complaining when Jeff's hair dripped in his eyes. Jeff lets the jacket flop onto their heads, the rain beating it into place, and he breathes whiskey and orange slush into Brian's mouth, closes his hand over his cheek.
"I'm the one who should hate you," Jeff says.
Brian is going to protest, but he's right. "I know."
"But I don't, Heap, I just don't." Jeff kisses him again, and Brian breaks it off when lightening flickers overhead, because who are they to keep tempting fate.
They drive back to the Wal-Mart with the heat blasting. Brian gets into his car and Jeff follows him in his truck, the streets completely empty as they head toward Brian's house. There are melted Creamsicles everywhere in Brian's car: on the passenger seat, on the floor mats, half of one melting onto the dash. The whole car smells like Jeff did when he kissed him, twenty-seven years after his youth group descended the mountain, nobody around to see and be shocked and avoid the questions they should have asked. Brian checks his rearview obsessively, making sure that Jeff hasn't changed his mind, that he's still following him, like he did when they were high school seniors. Jeff followed him into baseball and wrecked his life on it, but he's not the one who's bitter. He kissed Brian on camera when he'd had enough, didn't even mean to but couldn't wait any longer for his payoff, the kind of devotion he'd earned. Brian left him standing there at home plate, but they can get back there, too, somehow, and he can do what he should have the first time. He'll walk straight into the flames and know, this time, not to look back.