TO THOSE WHO DWELL IN REALMS OF DAY
Title: To Those Who Dwell in Realms of Day
Written By: etharei
Timeline: post-513 (future)
Rating:. hard R
Summary: “Justin, Gus, fuck,” the words come out like prayers, both arms wrapping around the curled figure on the asphalt as you try not to choke on your own saliva and fervent panting. “Justin? Gus?”
Author's Notes: The title and all the quoted verses are from ‘Auguries of Innocence’ by William Blake. There’s also a small reference to J. M. Barrie’s ’Peter Pan’. Not beta’d, please forgive all the typographical and grammatical mistakes.
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove house fill'd with doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.
- ‘Auguries of Innocence’ by William Blake
TO THOSE WHO DWELL IN REALMS OF DAY
The first time, it had happened in a flash.
He had moved the moment he’d registered that something was happening; had obeyed without hesitation instincts that had arisen out of that shining briar’s patch of emotions labeled by everyone as a teenager’s youthful infatuation.
The second time around, he’s far quicker; twice as fast and twice as aware of everything. He knows that they’re on a busy sidewalk next to an even busier street; he can feel the wandering attention of the faceless, moving masses riveting, focusing on the tiny area that contains them. But most of all he can see the branching tracks of moisture on the man’s red face, can’t avoid breathing in the stench of inebriated anger (alcohol and sweat and cheap aftershave), can literally feel the breath’s egress from the bulky body when his solid fist makes contact with it.
He almost laughs at the startled expression he receives, but the pain in the other’s face stops him; pain is something he’s never become good at giving, thank God. That doesn’t mean his second fist isn’t up and ready to fly, though, because now he’s defending more than just himself and the man lying on the ground.
The first time, there’d been a scared kid shouting down a cold grimy alleyway, shocked and terrified and hurt in ways he wouldn’t feel until later.
The second time also features a scared kid, but not the same one, because time travels despite its circular path and the original had long evolved into a man. This new little boy screams and flings himself at the groaning body behind Justin’s feet. If there’d been any mercy left in Justin’s soul up to that point, all traces of it evaporates at the first frantic cries of, “Dad! Daddy!”
The man standing, half-staggering in front of them, looks in confusion at the little boy, as if he can’t understand what he’s looking at, as if he’s seeing something else entirely. His sagging body pauses, going still for a second, during which Justin’s muscles remember nights of training long ago (it’s both gift and curse, this thing he has that enables him to absorb and remember everything, head trauma-related amnesia aside) and recognizes the world’s anticipatory silence right before a lightning strike.
Sure enough, the man lunges- a mass of uncontrolled limbs, unruly clothes and unwashed odors. Justin’s punch is absorbed by the fat-lined beer belly, or maybe the man’s forward momentum is too much; Justin stumbles backwards, his remaining hand automatically trying to push Gus back while his feet work to avoid stepping on Brian. Hands, arms everywhere, because Brian’s trying to push Gus away, too, except that Gus wants to hold on to him. (That’s one thing Brian still has yet to figure out, a random thought reconstructs itself out of the big pile-up in Justin’s head, Gus loving and worshiping and needing his father no matter what Brian may think about the matter.) Justin catches sight of a short, slender leg aiming a kick at Craig’s knee.
What happens next is coated by a surreal, other-worldly blur. He and Brian are both trying to push Gus back,back away from the scuffle, but the little boy had just recently gotten into the soccer team at his school, so he’s pretty much a human-shaped unit of focused energy. Justin is mostly trying to shove Craig away from Brian and Gus, while Craig is equally intent on getting to Brian, delivering a hard kick when he gets within range. Justin sees Craig making a grab for Brian, but instead gaining a fistful of Gus’ sweater.
In such a tangle of opposing forces, something inevitably has to give. His grip solid, Craig forcefully pulls Gus off of his father, ignoring the small fists battering his arm, pulls him off and shoves him away hard.
Right into the street.
Justin, standing up and looking in the right direction, sees the car long before either Craig or Brian. Something inside him freezes and snaps, and he’s off, he’s flying. Not really a choice, can’t call something a choice when it’s never an option not to do it. He’s flying, he might have shoved the man he once called his father to the ground and leaped over him, but it doesn’t matter, because he bounds off the curve and he’s soaring, reaching, stretching for that last falling grain in the hourglass.
His hand closes around it, around warm cotton and soft hair and a warm, solid body quivering with sheer terror. He closes his eyes, knowing that he’s fallen with that last gritty second, acknowledging the miracle in him getting even that. He curls himself around the little boy in his arms, wishing there’s a way to tuck Gus inside himself, where everything is still and safe and quiet.
The last thing he hears is Brian.
“JUSTIN!”.
It is right it should be so,
It’s impossible to have heard the dull punch of metal inflicting blunt force trauma on a human body, especially above the screech of tires, the blaring of horns, the screams of watching strangers. Impossible, but you hear it anyway, feel it resounding through your entire being, echoed by the sound of wood crushing bone, of horsetail screaming over brass cords, of blackened ceiling beams crashing onto rubble. You may have screamed, yourself, because your lungs are empty, you’re cold and numb in the extremities; the blood in your capillaries seem to skid to a halt, then sped towards your thundering heart.
The pain in your chest, planted there by cheap heavy retail shoes, jumps, relocates. Fiery, jutting pain transforming into a knife of burning ice extending from the back of your throat to your gut. You jump up and half-stagger, half-run into the street, hip banging against the side of the car because your legs aren’t obeying you very well. As you move you’re fighting two urges- to just fall over, and to keep on running, first star to the left and straight on ‘till morning.
All you know, remember, is the expanding eternity of empty space, a blank coldness you can feel on both sides of skin. Stationary static, casting the world into black and white. On your knees, calm blue sky overhead, and you remember trying to be calm like that while kneeling at the pew and feeling the press of bruises down your back. You think you’ll gladly hoist yourself up on that fucking crucifix, if the world would just give you mass- hah, not that kind of mass, never again, but the kind that tells a person he exists, matters, every action affecting an equal and opposite reaction.
Then your arms encircle the only solid object in the nothingness, and heat seeps back into all the spaces, fills in the blanks, bringing back the blue and yellow and red (even the fucking orange, God). Your heart slows down enough for you to make out discrete beats, you rediscover the mechanics of breath, but you don’t know if you’ll ever stop shaking, ever be still again. (But that’s okay, because silence and stillness are clearly overrated.)
“Justin, Gus, fuck,” the words come out like prayers, both arms wrapping around the curled figure on the asphalt as you try not to choke on your own saliva and fervent panting. “Justin? Gus?”
“Daddy!” Gus is in your arms; little limbs like a vice around your body, and you can’t remember it ever feeling so fucking easy to breathe.
You take a deep inhale, relishing the distinctive smell of your son along with the exhaust fumes and fast-food grease and charcoal smoke. “Gus. Gus, are you all right?”
Gus nods, chin rubbing your shoulder. You move one hand to Gus’ back, holding the quivering body to yours, and use your remaining arm to grasp at the prone figure of Justin. The touch of ice returns. “Justin? Justin, answer me!”
“It hurts,” you just about make out on top of the din being created by every vehicle stuck behind the stopped car. No longer having Gus to wrap himself around, Justin uncurls himself, wincing several times and digging his nails into your arm. “Fuck! I can’t feel my fingers.” It brings you an absurd sense of relief that Justin is glaring at his left arm, left hand, left fingers for a change, left left left, his right arm fastened like a claw on your person.
“Hey, are you all right?” A woman coming out of her car, pale as death. Yeah, try having nearly been run over, lady. “I’m sorry, I stopped as soon as I could, but I didn’t see the little boy, he came out of nowhere-“
“Sir?” This voice comes from the sidewalk. Your body, having rediscovered mass, the worship of the earth, seems to have found gravity as well, and it takes a colossal effort to move your head. Finally you see a policeman, one hand gripping a slumped Craig Taylor by the shoulder. “I’ve got him now, sir, if you want to press assault charges. I’ll submit a report as a witness, myself.”
“He’s a child molester!” Craig Taylor shouts, spittle flying, finger pointing straight at you. Glowing red like some self-righteous, inebriated deity. “Kidnapper! Pervert! He stole my son!”
You’re sure that Justin’s hands are blessing you with a bruise now, too, but there’s strangely no pain from it, from him. But the nice policeman, mistaking the words, suddenly narrows his eyes and points his baton at you. “Sir, I’d like you to step away from the child, please.” There’s a glint in his eyes, and it’s only now that you notice how his gaze seems to skirt around the points of contact between you and Justin. Shit. You think that you’d seen the guy watching the fight. Of course. It’s all right for the homos to get attacked in broad daylight. At least the world’s still sane enough that little boys nearly getting killed brings out the hero in everyone.
In any case, you’re not letting go of your son any fucking time soon. Luckily Justin sighs wearily and says, “He’s talking about me, officer.” You give him a reassuring squeeze on the arm. He nods and lets go of you, and ironically it’s only in the absence of his hand that you feel the pain from his death-grip on your shoulder. “Hey, dad.” His voicing of the appellation makes you think of Jack, and the thought flits by that a part of you would die if Gus ever talked to you in that way.
“Justin.” Craig gazes at Justin. At least, tries to, but you can practically hear the alcohol sloshing around in his system as he wobbles while trying to stand still. “You were a good kid. A genius. You could have been something. But he came along.” Back to the finger-pointing. At the slurred voice, Gus lifts up his head and glares at Craig.
It makes you both proud and terrified that you have a brave son. Two sons.
“Dad. Dad!” Craig’s attention wavers back onto Justin. “Do you see that?” Justin points at a building a couple of blocks down the street, where the three of you had been headed. “That’s the gallery showing my work this month. My art. Art I’ve always loved doing, which you’d only tolerated because Mom begged you to. You wouldn’t even pay for my college, remember?”
“I would have.” Craig takes a step forward, belated pulled back in check by the policeman.
“Oh, right, you wouldn’t pay for art school, only Dartmouth and a business major. Well, let it be a balm to your businessman’s soul that my cheapest painting now costs $500,000. I’m a fucking success, and I live in New York City. All thanks to Brian.”
Craig’s bloodshot eyes swivel to you, and you can’t help it, you give a smarmy smile and a little wave. “I thought you weren’t with him anymore.”
A small smile momentarily visits Justin’s lips. “Apparently my seventeen-year-old self had known the truth all along.” He sways, but before you can say anything he gathers himself up and looks his father straight in the eye. “You’ve lost a son, Craig, but Brian is still the only man I ever wanted.” Justin takes a deep breath, and you see the marks of pain on his face. “Besides, I don’t see how you could get off calling names when you’re drunk and you’ve just attacked us out in broad daylight and you nearly fucking killed a little boy!”
“Justin.” He glares at you, but you saying his name like that has always made him subside. Back then and now still.
He stands, clutching his left arm, and you’re a little worried that he’s going to punch Craig, but you suppose that a man who’d been able to walk away from having a gun in the mouth of the guy who’d bashed his head open and damaged his hand would be able to keep his anger in check here. “This nice officer is going to take you away now and put you in a cell before you continue to pose a danger to society-“ he says the last with a meaningful glare at said officer, in case the man had been thinking about being sympathetic to a fellow homophobe. “-and when you sober up, expect one hell of an assault charge because Gus’ mother- that’s Brian’s son and the little boy you nearly got run over- is a kick-ass lawyer who’s already cranky from having to resettle in Pittsburgh after a failed move to Canada!”
Gus’s body had relaxed at the start of Justin’s tirade; he’d even stuck a thumb into his mouth as he watched the scene with an expression of awe, having never before seen Justin that pissed off. In fact, you haven’t seen the man you call your partner in such a state very often, either, not for a while, and damn it if the flushed features and disheveled hair and heaving chest doesn’t make you feel very inappropriately hot, make you want to push your tongue into his mouth and fuck him right then.
“Who’s that?” Gus asks, in that voice that kids have that is both clearly intended for the person being addressed yet loud enough for people in the vicinity to hear. He points at Craig.
You’re not sure how to answer that, so you look at Justin. Justin throws a last glare at his father before saying, “That’s the man who used to be married to Grandma Jennifer.”
“Oh.” More thoughtful sucking of the thumb; you wonder if he’s not a tad too old for that, but dismiss the thought as something that the munchers can worry about rather than you. “But Grandma Jen’s married to Tucker.”
“She is, now,” you reply, and you think that Craig’s face, still visible out of the corner of your eye as the nice cop is trying to pull him away, grows a notch redder. “But she used to be married to that guy. Things like this were what made her leave.”
He nods, settling on your shoulder. You check that he isn’t injured- he isn’t, at least not physically- and find your balance in order to hoist him up. The adrenaline rush is subsiding, and pain shoots through your chest in sharp, fiery splinters as you slowly stand up. Especially with your son in your arms, but you only tighten your hold on him, not caring that you have to breathe through your mouth.
“Please take him away now, officer,” Justin was saying. “We’ll go down to the station in a couple of hours.”
You notice that Justin’s looking real pale- hard to tell with his skin tone, but after so many years his body is one of the things you’ll always know better than anyone else, even his mother- and realize that he must be in pain.
“Justin.” You step unsteadily to his side. “We need to get you checked out at the hospital.”
“It’s all-“
“Justin.” You say firmly, lightly touching your forehead to his as he loosely wraps his right arm around you, Gus safe and warm between your bodies. “That has to be looked at. And I want to make sure Gus is all right, too.”
A sigh. “You should get yourself checked out, too. Maybe they can take pictures and use it against my- against Craig.”
No. You think of the welcome darkness of Mikey’s room, of wordless embraces and red hair sticking on tears, of extracted promises and prayers he hadn’t believed in but nevertheless pushed out of his lips in the dawn’s despair. Then Gus stirs, looks at you in worry. “Am I hurting you, Daddy?”
“No. It’s okay.” Your voice is tight, clearly strained, but you smile reassuringly at him. “We’re going to the hospital now, make sure we’re all okay.” Gus nods, resting his head back on your shoulder, little fingers playing with the hair at the back of your neck.
“I’m really, really sorry,” a voice in the background eventually catches your attention. You and Justin look at its source, a young woman in an expensive Gucci coat. The one who’d come out of the car. She looks flustered and at the edge of tears. “I really didn’t see him. Are you all right? Is the little boy okay?”
“We’re fine,” Justin answers, but you see a tense muscle in his jaw and beads of sweat on his hairline. “We’ll get out of the street. You should move your car before someone tries to do it for you, you’re blocking the traffic.”
“D’you need a lift to the hospital? Or somewhere else?”
“No, thank you, we’ll be fine.” You’re letting Justin do all the talking while you slowly step towards pavement, ignoring the jarring pain from your ribs. Nausea slides through your system, your vision blurring from the growing agony. Justin is close behind you, not looking much better. The three of you settle down on a convenient public bench as cars start passing by again; for once you really don’t care about getting your designer clothes dirty. Sitting down lets you rearrange Gus, lets you breathe, though every movement in your upper body hurts like a fucking knife to the lungs. If you haven’t had to live through radiation therapy, it might have been debilitating.
“How are you holding up?” you finally ask, voice still breathless.
“It hurts so much I can’t even feel the pain, just nausea,” Justin answers, grimacing, clutching his arm to himself. “At least in my arm; my side hurts like a motherfucker.”
“I’ll get us a cab.” But the very thought of getting up again makes him tremble a little. Gus is warm in your arms, not asleep but quiet in way that says he’s getting there, and Justin is leaning his head on your other shoulder, pressed as close as he could be without clambering onto your lap. You catch the tail of a sweet scent, and turning your head see that you’ve accidentally crushed a cluster of tiny white flowers. It’s cold, you’re being stared at by passers-by, and you can barely breathe.
You want to stay like this forever.
“I’ll get us a cab,” you repeat, sliding your arm over Justin’s shoulders. “In a moment.”
Man was made for joy and woe;
“Craig Taylor?”
He opens his eyes, and gets a prick of panic when he sees white. But then his field of vision widens, and he sees that it’s the white of a cloth sling and bandages. His gaze moves skywards, stopping at serious blue eyes gazing at him like cold steel.
He’d already begun to sober up at the sidewalk, fear and shock burning up the fog of alcohol. By the time he was introduced to his cell at the station, his head was throbbing like he had people mining in his cranium. Since then he’d tried to figure out what had impelled him to act as he had.
He’d never thought of himself as a violent person, though he’d had his moments during drunken frat parties at college. Neither was he an alcoholic, especially on workdays. But the past week had been a miniature hell of stubborn investors, corrupt accountants and incompetent employees. Kids screaming at home, the house itself a mess. Then he finds out that Lori has been cheating on him with his business partner for the last two years.
He’d grabbed some stuff and driven to New York. Drank. Scheduled visits with old acquaintances from various escort services. Drank. Slept. Drank. Ate a bag of chips. Drank. Drove around. In the spur of a moment, picked up a girl standing under a lamppost. Turns out she’s a virgin, still intact, it would cost nearly five times more than the usual to ‘initiate’ her. The feeling of wrongness diluted by alcohol and strong citrus cologne. Took her back to the hotel, half-wishing that she was a serial killer in disguise, but it turned out that she’d been telling the truth, hooray, he got his money’s worth of blood on the sheets.
A day later, a week, he’d been walking and looked across the street at the exact right time and, boom, there he was. Kinney, tall and well-groomed and rich, advertising it all with his luxurious jet-black coat and fitted jeans and designer sunglasses Craig knew cost over $200 because his stepdaughter had wanted a pair. Next to him, a shock of blond hair. They’d been talking, laughing about something; Justin had paused to look at something inside a store and Kinney had wrapped an arm around his waist and turned him around and kissed him. Fucking kissed him, in broad daylight, in front of regular God-fearing people. It’d been bad enough in a dingy alleyway outside a gay dance club, but right out there, in the street?
He hadn’t seen the kid, though. Or maybe he thought he was imagining him, despite the brown hair instead of blond, because for some reason the idea of the two of them with a kid just… didn’t fit. But the kid had come at him, shouting and kicking even though Craig had taken his bigger, stronger father down. Kind of like Justin, actually.
He hadn’t meant to hurt him.
”I wasn’t thinking.”
Maybe Jen had seen it, had seen the right of it, that night a lifetime ago. Had seen the danger, had bailed out when she could. He’ll never forget, now, never forget the feeling of empty space where Justin had been, been the last to realize what was happening when Kinney’s shout made him turn around. Justin, diving for the kid who’d fallen down right on the busy lane. A glimpse of death when it lay up to fate whether his stopped heart would take another beat, and him losing the will to care.
Because if either of them had died… he would given Kinney the pistol.
“Justin,” he croaks, not realizing until now how parched his throat is. Justin signals to a guard, and a paper cup of water is passed to him. The taste of water makes him want to abstain from alcohol for the remainder of his life. “Are you… and the boy?”
“Gus, Brian and I are all right,” he says, his remaining hand tucked into his pocket. “It’s a good thing us fags are indestructible.” A tense silence. “Are you sober yet?”
“Pretty much.” He finds that he can’t meet the blue gaze anymore, it makes him feel insignificant, pitiful, weak. “I… I’m sorry.”
“Sorry’s bullshit,” Justin says, firm but without anger. “What the fuck’s happened to you? You look like shit.”
Something in Craig feels annoyed to be talked to like this by his own son, but he remembers that he’d given up the right to that a long time ago. “I’ve been having a bad month.”
A disbelieving snort. “A bad month? That’s all you have to say- that you’ve been having a bad month?”
Craig waits for the rant, expects it, but clearly the Justin in his head is several years behind the one staring at him through the bars. “Mom said that Lori called her, she’s frantic, scared that you’re dead or did something stupid. No one knew where you were.” A pause. “I heard about your accountant swindling you.”
He nods numbly. “I guess that’s something I should be glad you never became a businessman for.”
Justin shrugs. “When you’re starting out, maybe, but these days I need an accountant to keep track of all the money I get from my paintings.” He grins, more to himself than at Craig. “Luckily Brian and I have an excellent accountant. He’s a family friend.”
“The guy who swindled me is Molly’s godfather,” Craig couldn’t help but point out.
“Really? I was wondering why the name sounded familiar.” Another shrug. “Brian saved our accountant from going to jail- long story- and later gave him the job to save him from a career of butchering classic Italian opera while serving overpriced pasta.” He pauses, then adds as an afterthought, “I’m also pretty sure that Ted still has Brian as his legal medical proxy. So I have a feeling that we can trust him with our lives.”
Not really following, Craig shakes his head and immediately regrets the action when it feels like his brain’s trying to do a somersault. “You’re doing good, then?”
Justin tilts his head to one side, considering. “Yes, Craig. I am.”
“That’s… good.” Awful, and nowhere near enough recompense for… well, everything, really, and for once Craig desperately wishes he were better with words. “For what it’s worth… I wish we could have those lost years again.”
He knows right away that those were the wrong words to say, can see the tide of anger swell in a red flush just beneath Justin’s fair skin. He suddenly wonders where Kinney is, suddenly wants him there because he seems to be the only one capable of calming Justin down, and how twisted is that? Especially considering he probably got his dose of rage from Craig; Jen could never reach that level of anger. But, again, Justin demonstrates himself to be a man, shutting the gates to his own tides of wrath, and it occurs to Craig that maybe, maybe his son is a better man than he is.
He feels an odd sense of pride, though he has no right to that, either.
“I wish you could have been a better father,” Justin finally says, voice restrained and eyes shining. “I wish you weren’t so set in your ways that your own family didn’t matter. And I wish that Molly could’ve grown up with her mother and father, even if I couldn’t stay at home.” A tight swallow. Craig had always thought that tears were for sissies, that Justin’s crying when he was younger was only another sign of his weakness as a man, the weakness that had led him astray; but seeing him hold the pain in, hold the anger, everything in, reminds Craig that all his beliefs and views had led him to this, his son staring at him through bars.
“But those ‘lost years’, to you, were the years I found myself in,” Justin continues. “The years I learned to be the best homosexual I could be.” He says the last with a clear, shining pride. “And, from where I’m standing, I think it’s all been for the best, really.”
And when this we rightly know,
Gus is sound asleep by the time you hear the door open. Silently you stand and carry your son to his bed, into his room, in the little luxury apartment you’ve been renting since the opening of a Kinnetik branch in New York. One day Justin will return to Pittsburgh, but until then there’s no reason why the both of you can’t be comfortable. You’re postponing phoning Lindsay until all of you have had a night’s sleep, at least, especially now that she and Melanie are in the middle of their annual pseudo-breakup phase.
Once Gus is tucked in, thumb still in his mouth, you return to the living room and see him in the adjoining kitchen, at the bar, pouring you both a shot of Beam. You don’t ask where he went, it’s not as if you couldn’t guess, but his face looks calmer than it ever has after an encounter with his father. You wonder if, finally, he’s growing out of that final shadow of his eventful teenage years.
“You’re right,” he says after you’ve both knocked back your drinks. “I don’t need him. He’s only the man who donated half of my alleles.” But there’s pain in his face as he says it, and you reach over and grasp his hand.
“I don’t want to be right,” you finally say. You want to tell him that, despite everything, Craig is still far kinder than Jack ever was.
He looks at you, nods. He probably knows. “All right. A part of me will always want his approval, will always wish he had-“ He bites his lip. “But, the way he looked in that cell, the way he looked at me.” He meets your eyes, blue irises blazing. “It’s like he realized that he needs me, too.”
You slide your arm around him, and it’s kind of funny how gingerly the two of you have to move, both in bandages, him with a sling, when you’d normally be all over each other by now. He tucks his head under your chin, breathing deeply, and speaks into your collarbone, “I’m sorry.”
You frown. “What for?”
“Getting you hurt. Again.” Long, slender fingers play with the hem of your white shirt. “It’s bad enough that you’ve fractured a rib, but getting Gus involved… If I hadn’t gotten to him-“
“Shut up.” You tighten your hold on him, pressing him to your body, wanting it to hurt. “Don’t. It’s not your fault. I didn’t blame you back then and I sure as hell don’t blame you now. It was Craig who pushed Gus into the street. If you hadn’t jumped after him…” You shut your eyes tight, but it’ll be a long time before you can stop replaying the vision of a car heading straight for your son even as he struggled to pick himself up off the asphalt, the jutting metallic bumper at a perfect height to crush a little boy’s skull. “Brave little fuckers, the both of you.” Too brave, it’s just your luck that the two people in the world who matter to you most are too brave for their own fucking good.
“He was hurting you.” Justin murmurs, taking you both back in time. Not exactly the beginning, but in a way maybe it was, maybe it had begun there, the long road down to here. “And Gus. I don’t know if I could live with myself if something happened to Gus.” It amazes you, still, that you could care for someone this much, so much it both frees you and makes you afraid like nothing else ever could.
Justin buries his face in your neck, and the two of you just stand there, breathing. He smells like something flowery, maybe those flowers from the bench had gotten into his hair. It makes you think of soldiers after a battle, how you’re so fucking glad to be alive and in one piece. So painfully aware of how easy it could’ve been to lose, to die, maybe not in body but in everything that matters, mass. “You know,” Justin says after a long while. “Traditionally, this is when you tell me that you love me.”
You laugh, but it comes out sounding gasping and sob-like. You blame your rib. “I love you,” you push out, breathe out.
A full smile, hello sunshine. “I love you, too,” he mouths against your skin, playing it safe in case you can’t handle that sort of exchange right now. Then Justin’s mouth is on yours, sucking in your tongue and your breath and maybe your very life; it’s like the perfect act of vampirism, this thing people call love, because you’re perfectly willing to give it all to him.
You want to bury yourself inside him, want it so badly, but neither of you are up to anything like that, plus you have a feeling that Gus will have a nightmare at some point in the long stretch of night. You kiss for hours, for an age, and he ends up on your lap, straddling you on the couch. Artist’s fingers twisting in your hair as your hand dips between his soft butt-cheeks, pulling his cargo pants down. His practiced right hand has no problem undoing the button and zipper of your jeans.
The both of you grunt and moan when your uncovered erections rub against one another, your somewhat clumsy and semi-pained but desperately horny movements staining each other’s stomachs with mingled precum. Your right hand links with his between your bodies, forming a tight ring which you both move up and down your glistening, throbbing dicks, while your free hand teasingly traces circles around his puckered hole. The whole time your mouths never separate, breath seeming to pass from one pair of lungs to the other; your lower faces are wet with your saliva as your tongues engage in your never-ending dance of conquest and surrender. The edge of pain from your protesting injuries only increases the high, though you’re taking it as slowly as your lust will let you.
He comes first, back arching and groans pouring into your mouth, your finger having just pushed into his tight channel with very little lubrication. (You wanted it to be a little rough, wanted him to feel it for hours, to remind him of you through the night.) His teeth close down on your lower lip, warm white liquid spurting onto your stomach and cock and getting caught in the wiry strands of your pubes. His right hand grips your dick, jerking it off fast and hard. A swipe of his thumb over the dripping tip and suddenly you’re shooting, your vocal chords producing incoherent noises as you eat at his mouth. Finally he pulls away, lips red and raw and gleaming, closing around his cum-covered fingers while his dark eyes remain fastened onto yours. You would have grown hard again if the pain in your chest hasn’t become too much to ignore, indicating that the painkillers are wearing off.
The two of you relocate to the bedroom; but you leave the light on outside and the door slightly ajar and pull some pants on the both of you. Lying down is tricky because you both have a side that you can’t put weight on, but eventually you find a way, propping all the pillows up together so you’re not flat on your backs, your legs tangled. The big window by the bed shows the night sky, devoid of stars thanks to the bright city lights, and you feel reality shifting back, the slow return of normalcy. Because this isn’t exactly the most harrowing day you’ve ever had, not by a long shot, which is a fucking scary thought. So, yeah, in the morning the three of you will go out again and get on with the day and maybe, eventually, you’ll stop gripping Gus’ hand when you’re just strolling down the sidewalk.
After a few hours a Gus-shaped silhouette appears at the door, and Justin doesn’t even wake up, just moves enough to allow a little boy and his teddy bear to nestle in between your bodies. You turn, watching them in the safe darkness, only taking your eyes away for a brief second when the cheap, painted clock in the corner of the bed (Justin had bought it from a ‘specialty store’ during his early days in the City and adamantly refuses to part with it) flips over its miniature hourglass to acknowledge the turning of the hour.
He has one hand resting on either body, and in the unmoving quiet he falls asleep to a gentle, regular pulsing under his palms.
Thro’ the world we safely go.
Written By: etharei
Timeline: post-513 (future)
Rating:. hard R
Summary: “Justin, Gus, fuck,” the words come out like prayers, both arms wrapping around the curled figure on the asphalt as you try not to choke on your own saliva and fervent panting. “Justin? Gus?”
Author's Notes: The title and all the quoted verses are from ‘Auguries of Innocence’ by William Blake. There’s also a small reference to J. M. Barrie’s ’Peter Pan’. Not beta’d, please forgive all the typographical and grammatical mistakes.
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove house fill'd with doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.
- ‘Auguries of Innocence’ by William Blake
TO THOSE WHO DWELL IN REALMS OF DAY
The first time, it had happened in a flash.
He had moved the moment he’d registered that something was happening; had obeyed without hesitation instincts that had arisen out of that shining briar’s patch of emotions labeled by everyone as a teenager’s youthful infatuation.
The second time around, he’s far quicker; twice as fast and twice as aware of everything. He knows that they’re on a busy sidewalk next to an even busier street; he can feel the wandering attention of the faceless, moving masses riveting, focusing on the tiny area that contains them. But most of all he can see the branching tracks of moisture on the man’s red face, can’t avoid breathing in the stench of inebriated anger (alcohol and sweat and cheap aftershave), can literally feel the breath’s egress from the bulky body when his solid fist makes contact with it.
He almost laughs at the startled expression he receives, but the pain in the other’s face stops him; pain is something he’s never become good at giving, thank God. That doesn’t mean his second fist isn’t up and ready to fly, though, because now he’s defending more than just himself and the man lying on the ground.
The first time, there’d been a scared kid shouting down a cold grimy alleyway, shocked and terrified and hurt in ways he wouldn’t feel until later.
The second time also features a scared kid, but not the same one, because time travels despite its circular path and the original had long evolved into a man. This new little boy screams and flings himself at the groaning body behind Justin’s feet. If there’d been any mercy left in Justin’s soul up to that point, all traces of it evaporates at the first frantic cries of, “Dad! Daddy!”
The man standing, half-staggering in front of them, looks in confusion at the little boy, as if he can’t understand what he’s looking at, as if he’s seeing something else entirely. His sagging body pauses, going still for a second, during which Justin’s muscles remember nights of training long ago (it’s both gift and curse, this thing he has that enables him to absorb and remember everything, head trauma-related amnesia aside) and recognizes the world’s anticipatory silence right before a lightning strike.
Sure enough, the man lunges- a mass of uncontrolled limbs, unruly clothes and unwashed odors. Justin’s punch is absorbed by the fat-lined beer belly, or maybe the man’s forward momentum is too much; Justin stumbles backwards, his remaining hand automatically trying to push Gus back while his feet work to avoid stepping on Brian. Hands, arms everywhere, because Brian’s trying to push Gus away, too, except that Gus wants to hold on to him. (That’s one thing Brian still has yet to figure out, a random thought reconstructs itself out of the big pile-up in Justin’s head, Gus loving and worshiping and needing his father no matter what Brian may think about the matter.) Justin catches sight of a short, slender leg aiming a kick at Craig’s knee.
What happens next is coated by a surreal, other-worldly blur. He and Brian are both trying to push Gus back,back away from the scuffle, but the little boy had just recently gotten into the soccer team at his school, so he’s pretty much a human-shaped unit of focused energy. Justin is mostly trying to shove Craig away from Brian and Gus, while Craig is equally intent on getting to Brian, delivering a hard kick when he gets within range. Justin sees Craig making a grab for Brian, but instead gaining a fistful of Gus’ sweater.
In such a tangle of opposing forces, something inevitably has to give. His grip solid, Craig forcefully pulls Gus off of his father, ignoring the small fists battering his arm, pulls him off and shoves him away hard.
Right into the street.
Justin, standing up and looking in the right direction, sees the car long before either Craig or Brian. Something inside him freezes and snaps, and he’s off, he’s flying. Not really a choice, can’t call something a choice when it’s never an option not to do it. He’s flying, he might have shoved the man he once called his father to the ground and leaped over him, but it doesn’t matter, because he bounds off the curve and he’s soaring, reaching, stretching for that last falling grain in the hourglass.
His hand closes around it, around warm cotton and soft hair and a warm, solid body quivering with sheer terror. He closes his eyes, knowing that he’s fallen with that last gritty second, acknowledging the miracle in him getting even that. He curls himself around the little boy in his arms, wishing there’s a way to tuck Gus inside himself, where everything is still and safe and quiet.
The last thing he hears is Brian.
“JUSTIN!”.
It is right it should be so,
It’s impossible to have heard the dull punch of metal inflicting blunt force trauma on a human body, especially above the screech of tires, the blaring of horns, the screams of watching strangers. Impossible, but you hear it anyway, feel it resounding through your entire being, echoed by the sound of wood crushing bone, of horsetail screaming over brass cords, of blackened ceiling beams crashing onto rubble. You may have screamed, yourself, because your lungs are empty, you’re cold and numb in the extremities; the blood in your capillaries seem to skid to a halt, then sped towards your thundering heart.
The pain in your chest, planted there by cheap heavy retail shoes, jumps, relocates. Fiery, jutting pain transforming into a knife of burning ice extending from the back of your throat to your gut. You jump up and half-stagger, half-run into the street, hip banging against the side of the car because your legs aren’t obeying you very well. As you move you’re fighting two urges- to just fall over, and to keep on running, first star to the left and straight on ‘till morning.
All you know, remember, is the expanding eternity of empty space, a blank coldness you can feel on both sides of skin. Stationary static, casting the world into black and white. On your knees, calm blue sky overhead, and you remember trying to be calm like that while kneeling at the pew and feeling the press of bruises down your back. You think you’ll gladly hoist yourself up on that fucking crucifix, if the world would just give you mass- hah, not that kind of mass, never again, but the kind that tells a person he exists, matters, every action affecting an equal and opposite reaction.
Then your arms encircle the only solid object in the nothingness, and heat seeps back into all the spaces, fills in the blanks, bringing back the blue and yellow and red (even the fucking orange, God). Your heart slows down enough for you to make out discrete beats, you rediscover the mechanics of breath, but you don’t know if you’ll ever stop shaking, ever be still again. (But that’s okay, because silence and stillness are clearly overrated.)
“Justin, Gus, fuck,” the words come out like prayers, both arms wrapping around the curled figure on the asphalt as you try not to choke on your own saliva and fervent panting. “Justin? Gus?”
“Daddy!” Gus is in your arms; little limbs like a vice around your body, and you can’t remember it ever feeling so fucking easy to breathe.
You take a deep inhale, relishing the distinctive smell of your son along with the exhaust fumes and fast-food grease and charcoal smoke. “Gus. Gus, are you all right?”
Gus nods, chin rubbing your shoulder. You move one hand to Gus’ back, holding the quivering body to yours, and use your remaining arm to grasp at the prone figure of Justin. The touch of ice returns. “Justin? Justin, answer me!”
“It hurts,” you just about make out on top of the din being created by every vehicle stuck behind the stopped car. No longer having Gus to wrap himself around, Justin uncurls himself, wincing several times and digging his nails into your arm. “Fuck! I can’t feel my fingers.” It brings you an absurd sense of relief that Justin is glaring at his left arm, left hand, left fingers for a change, left left left, his right arm fastened like a claw on your person.
“Hey, are you all right?” A woman coming out of her car, pale as death. Yeah, try having nearly been run over, lady. “I’m sorry, I stopped as soon as I could, but I didn’t see the little boy, he came out of nowhere-“
“Sir?” This voice comes from the sidewalk. Your body, having rediscovered mass, the worship of the earth, seems to have found gravity as well, and it takes a colossal effort to move your head. Finally you see a policeman, one hand gripping a slumped Craig Taylor by the shoulder. “I’ve got him now, sir, if you want to press assault charges. I’ll submit a report as a witness, myself.”
“He’s a child molester!” Craig Taylor shouts, spittle flying, finger pointing straight at you. Glowing red like some self-righteous, inebriated deity. “Kidnapper! Pervert! He stole my son!”
You’re sure that Justin’s hands are blessing you with a bruise now, too, but there’s strangely no pain from it, from him. But the nice policeman, mistaking the words, suddenly narrows his eyes and points his baton at you. “Sir, I’d like you to step away from the child, please.” There’s a glint in his eyes, and it’s only now that you notice how his gaze seems to skirt around the points of contact between you and Justin. Shit. You think that you’d seen the guy watching the fight. Of course. It’s all right for the homos to get attacked in broad daylight. At least the world’s still sane enough that little boys nearly getting killed brings out the hero in everyone.
In any case, you’re not letting go of your son any fucking time soon. Luckily Justin sighs wearily and says, “He’s talking about me, officer.” You give him a reassuring squeeze on the arm. He nods and lets go of you, and ironically it’s only in the absence of his hand that you feel the pain from his death-grip on your shoulder. “Hey, dad.” His voicing of the appellation makes you think of Jack, and the thought flits by that a part of you would die if Gus ever talked to you in that way.
“Justin.” Craig gazes at Justin. At least, tries to, but you can practically hear the alcohol sloshing around in his system as he wobbles while trying to stand still. “You were a good kid. A genius. You could have been something. But he came along.” Back to the finger-pointing. At the slurred voice, Gus lifts up his head and glares at Craig.
It makes you both proud and terrified that you have a brave son. Two sons.
“Dad. Dad!” Craig’s attention wavers back onto Justin. “Do you see that?” Justin points at a building a couple of blocks down the street, where the three of you had been headed. “That’s the gallery showing my work this month. My art. Art I’ve always loved doing, which you’d only tolerated because Mom begged you to. You wouldn’t even pay for my college, remember?”
“I would have.” Craig takes a step forward, belated pulled back in check by the policeman.
“Oh, right, you wouldn’t pay for art school, only Dartmouth and a business major. Well, let it be a balm to your businessman’s soul that my cheapest painting now costs $500,000. I’m a fucking success, and I live in New York City. All thanks to Brian.”
Craig’s bloodshot eyes swivel to you, and you can’t help it, you give a smarmy smile and a little wave. “I thought you weren’t with him anymore.”
A small smile momentarily visits Justin’s lips. “Apparently my seventeen-year-old self had known the truth all along.” He sways, but before you can say anything he gathers himself up and looks his father straight in the eye. “You’ve lost a son, Craig, but Brian is still the only man I ever wanted.” Justin takes a deep breath, and you see the marks of pain on his face. “Besides, I don’t see how you could get off calling names when you’re drunk and you’ve just attacked us out in broad daylight and you nearly fucking killed a little boy!”
“Justin.” He glares at you, but you saying his name like that has always made him subside. Back then and now still.
He stands, clutching his left arm, and you’re a little worried that he’s going to punch Craig, but you suppose that a man who’d been able to walk away from having a gun in the mouth of the guy who’d bashed his head open and damaged his hand would be able to keep his anger in check here. “This nice officer is going to take you away now and put you in a cell before you continue to pose a danger to society-“ he says the last with a meaningful glare at said officer, in case the man had been thinking about being sympathetic to a fellow homophobe. “-and when you sober up, expect one hell of an assault charge because Gus’ mother- that’s Brian’s son and the little boy you nearly got run over- is a kick-ass lawyer who’s already cranky from having to resettle in Pittsburgh after a failed move to Canada!”
Gus’s body had relaxed at the start of Justin’s tirade; he’d even stuck a thumb into his mouth as he watched the scene with an expression of awe, having never before seen Justin that pissed off. In fact, you haven’t seen the man you call your partner in such a state very often, either, not for a while, and damn it if the flushed features and disheveled hair and heaving chest doesn’t make you feel very inappropriately hot, make you want to push your tongue into his mouth and fuck him right then.
“Who’s that?” Gus asks, in that voice that kids have that is both clearly intended for the person being addressed yet loud enough for people in the vicinity to hear. He points at Craig.
You’re not sure how to answer that, so you look at Justin. Justin throws a last glare at his father before saying, “That’s the man who used to be married to Grandma Jennifer.”
“Oh.” More thoughtful sucking of the thumb; you wonder if he’s not a tad too old for that, but dismiss the thought as something that the munchers can worry about rather than you. “But Grandma Jen’s married to Tucker.”
“She is, now,” you reply, and you think that Craig’s face, still visible out of the corner of your eye as the nice cop is trying to pull him away, grows a notch redder. “But she used to be married to that guy. Things like this were what made her leave.”
He nods, settling on your shoulder. You check that he isn’t injured- he isn’t, at least not physically- and find your balance in order to hoist him up. The adrenaline rush is subsiding, and pain shoots through your chest in sharp, fiery splinters as you slowly stand up. Especially with your son in your arms, but you only tighten your hold on him, not caring that you have to breathe through your mouth.
“Please take him away now, officer,” Justin was saying. “We’ll go down to the station in a couple of hours.”
You notice that Justin’s looking real pale- hard to tell with his skin tone, but after so many years his body is one of the things you’ll always know better than anyone else, even his mother- and realize that he must be in pain.
“Justin.” You step unsteadily to his side. “We need to get you checked out at the hospital.”
“It’s all-“
“Justin.” You say firmly, lightly touching your forehead to his as he loosely wraps his right arm around you, Gus safe and warm between your bodies. “That has to be looked at. And I want to make sure Gus is all right, too.”
A sigh. “You should get yourself checked out, too. Maybe they can take pictures and use it against my- against Craig.”
No. You think of the welcome darkness of Mikey’s room, of wordless embraces and red hair sticking on tears, of extracted promises and prayers he hadn’t believed in but nevertheless pushed out of his lips in the dawn’s despair. Then Gus stirs, looks at you in worry. “Am I hurting you, Daddy?”
“No. It’s okay.” Your voice is tight, clearly strained, but you smile reassuringly at him. “We’re going to the hospital now, make sure we’re all okay.” Gus nods, resting his head back on your shoulder, little fingers playing with the hair at the back of your neck.
“I’m really, really sorry,” a voice in the background eventually catches your attention. You and Justin look at its source, a young woman in an expensive Gucci coat. The one who’d come out of the car. She looks flustered and at the edge of tears. “I really didn’t see him. Are you all right? Is the little boy okay?”
“We’re fine,” Justin answers, but you see a tense muscle in his jaw and beads of sweat on his hairline. “We’ll get out of the street. You should move your car before someone tries to do it for you, you’re blocking the traffic.”
“D’you need a lift to the hospital? Or somewhere else?”
“No, thank you, we’ll be fine.” You’re letting Justin do all the talking while you slowly step towards pavement, ignoring the jarring pain from your ribs. Nausea slides through your system, your vision blurring from the growing agony. Justin is close behind you, not looking much better. The three of you settle down on a convenient public bench as cars start passing by again; for once you really don’t care about getting your designer clothes dirty. Sitting down lets you rearrange Gus, lets you breathe, though every movement in your upper body hurts like a fucking knife to the lungs. If you haven’t had to live through radiation therapy, it might have been debilitating.
“How are you holding up?” you finally ask, voice still breathless.
“It hurts so much I can’t even feel the pain, just nausea,” Justin answers, grimacing, clutching his arm to himself. “At least in my arm; my side hurts like a motherfucker.”
“I’ll get us a cab.” But the very thought of getting up again makes him tremble a little. Gus is warm in your arms, not asleep but quiet in way that says he’s getting there, and Justin is leaning his head on your other shoulder, pressed as close as he could be without clambering onto your lap. You catch the tail of a sweet scent, and turning your head see that you’ve accidentally crushed a cluster of tiny white flowers. It’s cold, you’re being stared at by passers-by, and you can barely breathe.
You want to stay like this forever.
“I’ll get us a cab,” you repeat, sliding your arm over Justin’s shoulders. “In a moment.”
Man was made for joy and woe;
“Craig Taylor?”
He opens his eyes, and gets a prick of panic when he sees white. But then his field of vision widens, and he sees that it’s the white of a cloth sling and bandages. His gaze moves skywards, stopping at serious blue eyes gazing at him like cold steel.
He’d already begun to sober up at the sidewalk, fear and shock burning up the fog of alcohol. By the time he was introduced to his cell at the station, his head was throbbing like he had people mining in his cranium. Since then he’d tried to figure out what had impelled him to act as he had.
He’d never thought of himself as a violent person, though he’d had his moments during drunken frat parties at college. Neither was he an alcoholic, especially on workdays. But the past week had been a miniature hell of stubborn investors, corrupt accountants and incompetent employees. Kids screaming at home, the house itself a mess. Then he finds out that Lori has been cheating on him with his business partner for the last two years.
He’d grabbed some stuff and driven to New York. Drank. Scheduled visits with old acquaintances from various escort services. Drank. Slept. Drank. Ate a bag of chips. Drank. Drove around. In the spur of a moment, picked up a girl standing under a lamppost. Turns out she’s a virgin, still intact, it would cost nearly five times more than the usual to ‘initiate’ her. The feeling of wrongness diluted by alcohol and strong citrus cologne. Took her back to the hotel, half-wishing that she was a serial killer in disguise, but it turned out that she’d been telling the truth, hooray, he got his money’s worth of blood on the sheets.
A day later, a week, he’d been walking and looked across the street at the exact right time and, boom, there he was. Kinney, tall and well-groomed and rich, advertising it all with his luxurious jet-black coat and fitted jeans and designer sunglasses Craig knew cost over $200 because his stepdaughter had wanted a pair. Next to him, a shock of blond hair. They’d been talking, laughing about something; Justin had paused to look at something inside a store and Kinney had wrapped an arm around his waist and turned him around and kissed him. Fucking kissed him, in broad daylight, in front of regular God-fearing people. It’d been bad enough in a dingy alleyway outside a gay dance club, but right out there, in the street?
He hadn’t seen the kid, though. Or maybe he thought he was imagining him, despite the brown hair instead of blond, because for some reason the idea of the two of them with a kid just… didn’t fit. But the kid had come at him, shouting and kicking even though Craig had taken his bigger, stronger father down. Kind of like Justin, actually.
He hadn’t meant to hurt him.
”I wasn’t thinking.”
Maybe Jen had seen it, had seen the right of it, that night a lifetime ago. Had seen the danger, had bailed out when she could. He’ll never forget, now, never forget the feeling of empty space where Justin had been, been the last to realize what was happening when Kinney’s shout made him turn around. Justin, diving for the kid who’d fallen down right on the busy lane. A glimpse of death when it lay up to fate whether his stopped heart would take another beat, and him losing the will to care.
Because if either of them had died… he would given Kinney the pistol.
“Justin,” he croaks, not realizing until now how parched his throat is. Justin signals to a guard, and a paper cup of water is passed to him. The taste of water makes him want to abstain from alcohol for the remainder of his life. “Are you… and the boy?”
“Gus, Brian and I are all right,” he says, his remaining hand tucked into his pocket. “It’s a good thing us fags are indestructible.” A tense silence. “Are you sober yet?”
“Pretty much.” He finds that he can’t meet the blue gaze anymore, it makes him feel insignificant, pitiful, weak. “I… I’m sorry.”
“Sorry’s bullshit,” Justin says, firm but without anger. “What the fuck’s happened to you? You look like shit.”
Something in Craig feels annoyed to be talked to like this by his own son, but he remembers that he’d given up the right to that a long time ago. “I’ve been having a bad month.”
A disbelieving snort. “A bad month? That’s all you have to say- that you’ve been having a bad month?”
Craig waits for the rant, expects it, but clearly the Justin in his head is several years behind the one staring at him through the bars. “Mom said that Lori called her, she’s frantic, scared that you’re dead or did something stupid. No one knew where you were.” A pause. “I heard about your accountant swindling you.”
He nods numbly. “I guess that’s something I should be glad you never became a businessman for.”
Justin shrugs. “When you’re starting out, maybe, but these days I need an accountant to keep track of all the money I get from my paintings.” He grins, more to himself than at Craig. “Luckily Brian and I have an excellent accountant. He’s a family friend.”
“The guy who swindled me is Molly’s godfather,” Craig couldn’t help but point out.
“Really? I was wondering why the name sounded familiar.” Another shrug. “Brian saved our accountant from going to jail- long story- and later gave him the job to save him from a career of butchering classic Italian opera while serving overpriced pasta.” He pauses, then adds as an afterthought, “I’m also pretty sure that Ted still has Brian as his legal medical proxy. So I have a feeling that we can trust him with our lives.”
Not really following, Craig shakes his head and immediately regrets the action when it feels like his brain’s trying to do a somersault. “You’re doing good, then?”
Justin tilts his head to one side, considering. “Yes, Craig. I am.”
“That’s… good.” Awful, and nowhere near enough recompense for… well, everything, really, and for once Craig desperately wishes he were better with words. “For what it’s worth… I wish we could have those lost years again.”
He knows right away that those were the wrong words to say, can see the tide of anger swell in a red flush just beneath Justin’s fair skin. He suddenly wonders where Kinney is, suddenly wants him there because he seems to be the only one capable of calming Justin down, and how twisted is that? Especially considering he probably got his dose of rage from Craig; Jen could never reach that level of anger. But, again, Justin demonstrates himself to be a man, shutting the gates to his own tides of wrath, and it occurs to Craig that maybe, maybe his son is a better man than he is.
He feels an odd sense of pride, though he has no right to that, either.
“I wish you could have been a better father,” Justin finally says, voice restrained and eyes shining. “I wish you weren’t so set in your ways that your own family didn’t matter. And I wish that Molly could’ve grown up with her mother and father, even if I couldn’t stay at home.” A tight swallow. Craig had always thought that tears were for sissies, that Justin’s crying when he was younger was only another sign of his weakness as a man, the weakness that had led him astray; but seeing him hold the pain in, hold the anger, everything in, reminds Craig that all his beliefs and views had led him to this, his son staring at him through bars.
“But those ‘lost years’, to you, were the years I found myself in,” Justin continues. “The years I learned to be the best homosexual I could be.” He says the last with a clear, shining pride. “And, from where I’m standing, I think it’s all been for the best, really.”
And when this we rightly know,
Gus is sound asleep by the time you hear the door open. Silently you stand and carry your son to his bed, into his room, in the little luxury apartment you’ve been renting since the opening of a Kinnetik branch in New York. One day Justin will return to Pittsburgh, but until then there’s no reason why the both of you can’t be comfortable. You’re postponing phoning Lindsay until all of you have had a night’s sleep, at least, especially now that she and Melanie are in the middle of their annual pseudo-breakup phase.
Once Gus is tucked in, thumb still in his mouth, you return to the living room and see him in the adjoining kitchen, at the bar, pouring you both a shot of Beam. You don’t ask where he went, it’s not as if you couldn’t guess, but his face looks calmer than it ever has after an encounter with his father. You wonder if, finally, he’s growing out of that final shadow of his eventful teenage years.
“You’re right,” he says after you’ve both knocked back your drinks. “I don’t need him. He’s only the man who donated half of my alleles.” But there’s pain in his face as he says it, and you reach over and grasp his hand.
“I don’t want to be right,” you finally say. You want to tell him that, despite everything, Craig is still far kinder than Jack ever was.
He looks at you, nods. He probably knows. “All right. A part of me will always want his approval, will always wish he had-“ He bites his lip. “But, the way he looked in that cell, the way he looked at me.” He meets your eyes, blue irises blazing. “It’s like he realized that he needs me, too.”
You slide your arm around him, and it’s kind of funny how gingerly the two of you have to move, both in bandages, him with a sling, when you’d normally be all over each other by now. He tucks his head under your chin, breathing deeply, and speaks into your collarbone, “I’m sorry.”
You frown. “What for?”
“Getting you hurt. Again.” Long, slender fingers play with the hem of your white shirt. “It’s bad enough that you’ve fractured a rib, but getting Gus involved… If I hadn’t gotten to him-“
“Shut up.” You tighten your hold on him, pressing him to your body, wanting it to hurt. “Don’t. It’s not your fault. I didn’t blame you back then and I sure as hell don’t blame you now. It was Craig who pushed Gus into the street. If you hadn’t jumped after him…” You shut your eyes tight, but it’ll be a long time before you can stop replaying the vision of a car heading straight for your son even as he struggled to pick himself up off the asphalt, the jutting metallic bumper at a perfect height to crush a little boy’s skull. “Brave little fuckers, the both of you.” Too brave, it’s just your luck that the two people in the world who matter to you most are too brave for their own fucking good.
“He was hurting you.” Justin murmurs, taking you both back in time. Not exactly the beginning, but in a way maybe it was, maybe it had begun there, the long road down to here. “And Gus. I don’t know if I could live with myself if something happened to Gus.” It amazes you, still, that you could care for someone this much, so much it both frees you and makes you afraid like nothing else ever could.
Justin buries his face in your neck, and the two of you just stand there, breathing. He smells like something flowery, maybe those flowers from the bench had gotten into his hair. It makes you think of soldiers after a battle, how you’re so fucking glad to be alive and in one piece. So painfully aware of how easy it could’ve been to lose, to die, maybe not in body but in everything that matters, mass. “You know,” Justin says after a long while. “Traditionally, this is when you tell me that you love me.”
You laugh, but it comes out sounding gasping and sob-like. You blame your rib. “I love you,” you push out, breathe out.
A full smile, hello sunshine. “I love you, too,” he mouths against your skin, playing it safe in case you can’t handle that sort of exchange right now. Then Justin’s mouth is on yours, sucking in your tongue and your breath and maybe your very life; it’s like the perfect act of vampirism, this thing people call love, because you’re perfectly willing to give it all to him.
You want to bury yourself inside him, want it so badly, but neither of you are up to anything like that, plus you have a feeling that Gus will have a nightmare at some point in the long stretch of night. You kiss for hours, for an age, and he ends up on your lap, straddling you on the couch. Artist’s fingers twisting in your hair as your hand dips between his soft butt-cheeks, pulling his cargo pants down. His practiced right hand has no problem undoing the button and zipper of your jeans.
The both of you grunt and moan when your uncovered erections rub against one another, your somewhat clumsy and semi-pained but desperately horny movements staining each other’s stomachs with mingled precum. Your right hand links with his between your bodies, forming a tight ring which you both move up and down your glistening, throbbing dicks, while your free hand teasingly traces circles around his puckered hole. The whole time your mouths never separate, breath seeming to pass from one pair of lungs to the other; your lower faces are wet with your saliva as your tongues engage in your never-ending dance of conquest and surrender. The edge of pain from your protesting injuries only increases the high, though you’re taking it as slowly as your lust will let you.
He comes first, back arching and groans pouring into your mouth, your finger having just pushed into his tight channel with very little lubrication. (You wanted it to be a little rough, wanted him to feel it for hours, to remind him of you through the night.) His teeth close down on your lower lip, warm white liquid spurting onto your stomach and cock and getting caught in the wiry strands of your pubes. His right hand grips your dick, jerking it off fast and hard. A swipe of his thumb over the dripping tip and suddenly you’re shooting, your vocal chords producing incoherent noises as you eat at his mouth. Finally he pulls away, lips red and raw and gleaming, closing around his cum-covered fingers while his dark eyes remain fastened onto yours. You would have grown hard again if the pain in your chest hasn’t become too much to ignore, indicating that the painkillers are wearing off.
The two of you relocate to the bedroom; but you leave the light on outside and the door slightly ajar and pull some pants on the both of you. Lying down is tricky because you both have a side that you can’t put weight on, but eventually you find a way, propping all the pillows up together so you’re not flat on your backs, your legs tangled. The big window by the bed shows the night sky, devoid of stars thanks to the bright city lights, and you feel reality shifting back, the slow return of normalcy. Because this isn’t exactly the most harrowing day you’ve ever had, not by a long shot, which is a fucking scary thought. So, yeah, in the morning the three of you will go out again and get on with the day and maybe, eventually, you’ll stop gripping Gus’ hand when you’re just strolling down the sidewalk.
After a few hours a Gus-shaped silhouette appears at the door, and Justin doesn’t even wake up, just moves enough to allow a little boy and his teddy bear to nestle in between your bodies. You turn, watching them in the safe darkness, only taking your eyes away for a brief second when the cheap, painted clock in the corner of the bed (Justin had bought it from a ‘specialty store’ during his early days in the City and adamantly refuses to part with it) flips over its miniature hourglass to acknowledge the turning of the hour.
He has one hand resting on either body, and in the unmoving quiet he falls asleep to a gentle, regular pulsing under his palms.
Thro’ the world we safely go.