BYGONES

I'm holding on your rope,
got me ten feet off the ground

JUSTIN’S POV

Brian and I, well, we’re standing in the shower, and it’s Friday night, and we have no plans—at least we no plans that involve the two of us doing something together—because making those plans would involve the two of us having a conversation, and we’re not having many conversations lately. To be honest, I’m not even sure why we’re both in the shower together; I think it was just a scheduling conflict or perhaps a bizarre coincidence.

Nothing has been right since I’ve come back from L.A. I mean sometimes things have been pretty good for a couple of days here and there, but it’s nothing like it’s used to be.

Nothing at all.

Except that I live with Brian, and he expects to see my face every morning and my ass every night.

Well, most every night.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
I tried to talk to him about it a couple of times, but it was like asking a fish why it swims in the water; he stared at me like my words were contributing to a big pile of stupid somewhere that was smelling up the entire world. He made me so angry; I wanted to hit him in the head with a bat.

And so we had a huge, stupid, loud fight. It was one of those fights where you realize halfway through it that neither person has one fucking clue what you’re fighting about, but neither one can stop himself either. And then halfway through I did something insane, something that made me realize how truly furious I was with him, furious and hurt, because he’s obviously never cared what happens to our relationship. Maybe he loves me, maybe I can believe that, but why am I the only one who cares about what happens to us? So, I picked up one of his million dollar vases and smashed it into a million pieces. And then he picked up the matching one and made an even bigger mess, and then he stormed out. That was the moment I realized that he knew something was wrong, too, the moment when he got pissed enough to break his own shit.

I swept up the porcelain pieces and put them into a clear glass vase he has and set it in the middle of the coffee table. In the weeks that followed, it became the grotesque yet sort of pretty reminder about the state of our relationship—a huge fucking mess contained in this beautiful, expensive thing that was dusted at least twice a week.

But not by either one of us.

Heaven forbid.

When he stormed out that night, I wanted to be like him; I wanted to want to feel some sort of real relief just by walking away, but there was nowhere else that I wanted to be or for me to go, so I just went to bed. He came home long after midnight, and I heard him come in because I couldn’t sleep, and he took his sweet time fucking around the loft before finally getting in bed.

……

……

……

He stayed on his side of the bed as I clung to mine.

……

……

“C’mere,” he said quietly piercing the silence like he had some right to do that.

I ignored him.

“I know you’re awake,” he said.

“Congratulations. Look under your pillow; maybe you won a prize.”

……

……

He laughed but he was trying not to so it came out like a snort. And then I felt his hand on my hip, on my skin, and he was still far away from me, but his hand wasn’t, and, let’s face it, I wasn’t mad at his hand.

……

And let’s face it, I didn’t have anything on but a t-shirt.

……

And let’s face it, he’s an ass, but he’s not stupid.

And when his hand that was resting on my hip, when I felt the muscles in his fingers tighten, my body stiffened underneath them, and I thought he was going to push me onto my stomach like he’s done a thousand times in the middle of the night, but he didn’t. He moved while his hand stayed still. And then he moved again. And then I shifted on top of the sheets out of uncertainty, and my heart was pounding…

want him…

hate him…

want him…

hate him…

And then I felt it; his mouth, his lips right in the curve of my lower back…

And it was so quiet.

I could hear him breathing, feel him breathing, and there was a part of me that wanted to push him away and tell him that he really had no right to be touching me at all because he’s such an asshole, but I couldn’t hold onto that part of myself, and instead the other part of me was whispering, “Lick me,” into my pillow, and I didn't think he could hear me but then he sort of laughed and then quickly parlayed it into a moan really fast, and then his mouth brushed the edge of my ass, and his hand tightened on my hip so I wouldn’t move…

……

……

……

And then something happened.

It was his fault; he waited too long, and I found that angry part of myself and I reached back and pushed his hand off of my hip and rolled away from him, making space between us, on my side and facing him, and he closed the distance between us again; he reached for me and pulled me in and his head was eye level with my chest and sinking lower and lower and I heard myself say, “Stop.” And I heard him say, “Shh.” And I said, “I’m serious.”

And he stopped.

And we lay there frozen in the dark.

And the minutes ticked by or at least it seemed like minutes.

“What’s wrong?” he finally asked me.

……

……

“You know what’s wrong.” He sighed. “And don’t insult me by pretending that you don’t.”

……

……

……

There was twelve minutes of silence after that. Twelve minutes of me watching the clock and twelve minutes of him laying right where he was; twelve minutes until his hand started to move along the length of my back. His body moved until he was eye to eye with me, and there wasn’t an ounce of concession in him when he kissed me.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
That was three weeks ago, and it’s taken me that long to decode what he was trying to tell me after he came home that night. But I think I understand it now:

There’s a part of Brian that still hasn’t accepted that I actually left for L.A.

And there’s a part of Brian that still won’t accept that he missed me while I was gone.

And there’s a part of Brian that can’t stand the fact that he’s relieved—maybe even happy—that I came home.

And all three of these parts of him are in ongoing negotiations to off one another while I’m madly in love and having a scandalous foursome with all of them every single night.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
So anyway, tonight—now--we get dressed after we shower, and I still don’t know for what, and he’s in the bathroom shaving, and I’m in the bedroom pulling on a pair of pants, and when I hear him tap his razor three times, when I know he’s basically done—he’s ripping his towel off—I’m done getting dressed, so I go out to the living room and watch TV. I make sure I’m in the kitchen when he’s finally heading in that direction.

“Where are we going?” I hear myself ask him; my body braces for an answer about where he’s going, and I can come along if I want to and blah, blah, blah, whatever, bite me.

“You tell me; you’re the one who wanted to take a shower,” he counters.

I’m not prepared for this, for him to throw it back at me. “Oh—,” I stammer, “I just wanted to take a shower,” I tell him the way you tell someone that you just realized that there’s gum on the bottom of your shoe when you've been stuck to the floor for an hour.

He’s not the least bit uncomfortable confronting me. What a big surprise. “It’s Friday night; I figured you wanted to go out,” he says.

“Oh, well, I mean we can. I mean, if you want to. Where do you want to go?” I sound like a fucking idiot.

“You hungry?” he asks me, and I swear it sounds like if I say that I am it’s death by firing squad or something.

“Not really.”

“It’s too early to go to Babylon,” he informs me because I’m an idiot and have bad Babylon-etiquette.

I look at my watch; it’s a little past eight. “Yeah.”

He shrugs his shoulders, and then turns and takes a bottle of whiskey and two glasses out of the kitchen cabinet. I watch as he pours two double shots in each glass. He picks his up, tilts it in my direction, nods his head, and then drinks it down. Mine sits on the counter. Apparently, I’m also not thirsty.

I hear myself say something else, “We could see what everyone else is doing.”

He smiles that you’re-so-cute-when-you’re-stupid smile and says, “Who is ‘everyone else?’”

……

……

And then for some reason, my mind starts to catch up with the moment, and I don’t feel like I’m living in a five second delay world anymore. I find my balls; turns out they were right where I left them. “Everyone else is just me, I guess,” I tell him.

“Just you?”

“Just me.” And now I’m tired of this and tired of him.

“Wanna play checkers?” he asks me. Fucking smart ass.

“No, thanks,” I say and the distance between us has shortened, but I don’t think I moved, and then his palm is curved around the side of my face, and I close my eyes when I feel his thumb underneath my chin, and then I get a weird chill when he kisses me; his lips feel deceptively soft; his thumb slides along my jaw line and when it gets next to my ear, he presses on the hinge in my jaw, this gentle little trick he employs when he wants my mouth to open, and I want this kiss so badly that I’m physically relieved when it deepens. I want it to mean everything.

I need it to mean everything.

But it’s sweet and intense and utterly meaningless.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
I hate wanting him when I just want to hate him.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
And then the part of me that just got up to speed leaves me in the dust; it keeps running and running out in front kicking dirt up in my face so I can pretend that I don’t see what happens next…

……

My fingers reach for the last few buttons on his shirt; I watch them; I feel his hands wrap around my upper arms. He breathes out when I’ve loosened all three of them and when I push the fabric aside and touch him, he leans into my hands…

The muscles in his fingers tighten on my arms when my hands move underneath his shirt. He reaches over and kills the light over our heads, and we’re left with own shadows. His fingers twine up into my hair, “That feels good.”

When I work on the next few buttons, and his shirt finally falls open, he presses my face against his chest. When I let my hand run across his chest, he holds it and moves it to his nipple. Every movement my fingers make elicits a response from him, and when I pinch him, he hisses at me, so I soothe him with my mouth for a long time, and when I look over during my oral apology and he’s stimulating the other one, I push his hand away and take over, biting him so I can turn around and make it all better. I feel his hand between us; I hear his zipper go down, and then his hand has found mine again, and he holds me tightly against him and makes this desperate sound as he guides my hand down his stomach to his underwear.

Time stands with us, very still.

Outside his underwear, I feel how hard he is, the heel of my hand running up and down the length of the evidence; I can feel his warm breath on the top of my head, his stomach retract when my fingertips skim the elastic of his briefs, solid warmth in my hand once it’s inside. “What do you want?” I ask his chest, and he squeezes me tighter, seems like forever until he answers me, “Turn around.”

I look up at him, and he leans down, kisses me, and then turns me around so I’m facing the counter and my still-full glass of whiskey, and I’m leaning on my elbows and pushing the glass farther out in front of me so it doesn’t spill, and his hands are wrapped around my waist, and I can feel him undoing my pants. “Pull them down,” he whispers right behind my ear, and then I’m temporarily freed of his weight, and I feel faint when I lower my pants and my underwear for him, and he tells me to stop when they’re just below my ass, and then I feel his hand between my legs, between my cheeks, his licked finger sliding up and down. I want to suck it inside me. And then my heart is pounding against the cold stainless steel counter; he’s pushing my pants down my legs; his fingers wrap around my ankle; he’s on his knees making me step out of them, and then I feel his words right where I want them, “Eat you for dinner,” and he holds me back as he kisses me, as his fingers trace an evil path on my inner thigh, as he licks where they just were and then keeps going, and then I sit on his face as he buries his tongue inside me.  My head falls heavy on the counter, supported by only one arm because I'm stroking myself; my feet start to tingle...

He bites me when he wants to fuck.

I hear him undressing, and then I hear the wrapper rip, and then I feel his hand again running up the inside of my leg. “Get down here,” he says, his voice is all scratchy. I look over my shoulder and he’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the cabinet, and when I turn around, he pulls me down fast; my body folds fast like a broken lawn chair—straddling him, and he holds me so tightly against him, and his pants are right there in a crumpled heap on the floor so I tuck them underneath my knee with my foot because the floor is so hard, and he feels me do it and grabs my pants from the other side of us and says, “Lift up,” and stuffs it under my knee for me, and then I hold onto him and he holds onto me for a deep, hard fuck that we both really need, and the longer it lasts the more it hurts, and I don’t even care, and he tries to mitigate gravity for me, but I tell him to stop, to let me go.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
BRIAN’S POV

It goes way too deep way too fast, and he won’t stop. “Don’t,” I warn him because he’s flinching when he sits down, but he’s—

The pain; the way he moans; the way he sounds—

Jesus Christ.

“You’re gonna make me come,” I protest.

“So come,” he says. “Get it the fuck over with.”

“It’s hurting you,” I tell him, “I can feel it.”

He wraps his arms around my neck, my head, like a scarf, like he’s smothering me, his mouth near my ear, “I love it like this; I want to feel you come, feel you fight it.”

“Goddamn it, Justin—"

“You know you want to.”

“Fuck.”

“It’s my pain; I want it,” he says, his words pour into my ear like hot soup.

“I don’t…want…to…fuck…cause it,” I admit, and he laughs when it’s over for me.

He gets off of his knees and wraps his legs around me, and everything closes in around in the darkness.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
JUSTIN’S POV

The loft echoes with nothing but our breathing for several minutes.

“You’re tired,” Brian finally says to me, and he means because of the fuck, he means because I’m lying against him like a sack of a potatoes, but he knows my answer is about something else, “Yeah, I am.”

But we both pretend that he doesn’t. “Let’s go to bed then, okay?” I don’t even answer him; he lifts me up, his lips lodged at the base of my neck as he slides out of me; he moans, and then I lean to pick up my clothes, and he says, “Fuck that,” and takes my hand. In silence, in the heavy black of our bedroom, my cotton shirt slips over my head—his effort, not mine—and I lie down on the bed on my stomach, my arms crossed in front of me, a headrest. He undresses—undoing the last few buttons on his shirt, and then he lies down next to me in the exact same position.

And again, time stops.

Waiting for one of us to restart it.

……

His ankle crosses over mine.

And stays there.

The space between us feels like Elmer’s glue; it’ll dry clear, but in the meantime, it’s thick, sticky and childish.

And the angst inside me, he feels it, he knows it’s there, and he wants it to go away. I want it to go away. But I won’t realize until after that night that our reasons for wanting that are miles apart

“C’mere,” he says as he shifts to lay on his side, but I can’t bring myself to move for some reason, so he cheats and pulls my pillow which brings me with it, and his arm slithers around my waist, and I have these very potent feelings of betrayal that I should express to him, but they quickly fade away when he closes his eyes and kisses my face and his mouth is open—just a little bit—and his lips are barely touching my skin but they’re moving, and when he skims right past my mouth, and I feel them just under my chin…I know who I’m betraying.

His hands never feel like an empty promise.

His fingertips never lie, and when I feel them on my face, I forget about everything else and convince myself that this is enough, that this will prove it to him—for once, for all and forever.

Again.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
But something’s up.

The vibe coming off of him is different and because we’ve been arguing non-stop, it doesn’t register with me at first, and he knows; he knows we’re out of sync. This is the side of the Brian that I wish existed outside of our bedroom.

And he’s kissing me and kissing me and kissing me, but he’s not going anywhere with it, using them to pull me toward him, leaving each one unfinished, and I’m about to get aggravated with him, about to say something, and then I open my eyes all the way and look at his face and I see…

He responds to the confusion on my face, wrapping my arm around his neck before he slides his hand around my waist, before he lets it fall even lower. “You stole that orgasm from me,” he reminds me referring to the carnage that took place on the kitchen floor; he says it the way he always talks to me in bed, with a little bit of tenderness in his voice, his permanent forgiveness of this learning curve he likes to pretend I still have. “I know,” I respond, and when there’s no apology in my voice, I feel a visceral pride ooze through his skin and coat me--generously. ”You took what you wanted,” he says quietly. “Yeah,” I say, and his hand curls, tightens around the back of my thigh before he finishes his thought, ”I liked it.”

He’s not kissing me anymore; he’s lying still on his pillow staring at me, waiting for me, and I feel my hand slide from his neck to his face, watch my fingers push his hair behind his ear. There’s no promise of anything when I kiss him, and he knows it, but when I end it, he doesn’t push me. He just lays there again and waits, and my hand is still on his face...

"I feel like we're in a bubble," I tell him as my thumb traces the outline of his nose, his cheekbone, his eyebrow.  He reaches out and holds onto my wrist like he doesn't want me to stop touching him.  "We're in it together," he says but it's barely a declaration, almost a question.  I close the space between us to try to change that, and that's when he takes my hand off of his face and pushes it down underneath the sheet, presses it against his stomach and lower still…and then he closes his eyes and his head falls forward and his lips rests on my forehead. I feel him mouth the word please as he’s pressing his cock in my hand.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
The only time Brian and I don’t betray one another is in the bedroom.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
And if he wants me—however he wants me—it’s as good as done as he knows it—except that I’m not exactly sure what he wants and the air in the room feels like crystallized sugar all of a sudden—sweet and impossible to hold onto once we’ve let it spill in the sheets. I don’t want to feel anxious and uncertain so I let it go and when I do I feel him relax, too, and I figure we’ll get where we’re supposed to go, and his hand lets go of mine and curls in between us, flattening against my chest. He moans when I stroke him, almost like it’s an afterthought, so I stop and put my hand on his face again and his eyes open when my thumb passes over his lips, but they close right away when I kiss him and stay closed when I tell him to, "Roll over."

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
I haven’t fucked him in a year. He keeps his hands where I can see them (feel them) while I rim him; he stops me because he'll come.  He starts holding his breath when he hears the wrapper rip.

When he feels the cold wet preview of my hand between his legs, he flattens onto his stomach, pushing the pillow forward and wrapping his arms around it. I lie on top of him, brushing the hair off the back of his neck, letting my lips take its place; they trail down his neck and over his shoulders; my knee pushes his legs apart. He makes a sound I haven’t heard in forever, and it’s a dangerous sound; it makes me want to believe things that I know just aren’t true. His biceps pop out when I push inside him; his body becomes stiff like scaffolding and then I’m down by his ear—begging because if he resists me for ten more seconds, they’ll be nothing left to resist, “Please, Brian.”

“Take it.”

So I do, and I’m ready for it to be over before it starts, but he dissolves underneath me, my protest a waste of time, “Don’t worry; I won’t last; god….”

”Just… Justin, fuck me," he moans, his fingernails digging canyons in the sheets. So I begin to lift up, to get some leverage, and he immediately corrects me, “No, stay on me, on top of me.” So I fall back down and force his legs apart and his knuckles hover on the edge of the mattress, and my mouth’s right behind his ear, and that’s when I can feel what’s happening inside him…

Or what isn’t.

He’s not breathing.

On purpose…

’You took what you wanted.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I liked it.’

Something switches off in my brain; I forget all about me; I feel him, the fear building inside him, the clock ticking, and I fuck him like he’s some worthless piece of ass in the backroom, and my finger’s stroking his Adam’s apple when I tell him, pressing on it, “I can’t wait ‘til you come…” and my hand tightens around his throat and that does it--

He bucks underneath me and it scares me, and his hand slides back from the end of the mattress and holds mine against his throat while he comes, and when it’s over, when he lets go, it finds a new job, calming him down, my fingers in his hair, and I rest the other firmly on his hip. He pants underneath me as I close my eyes and replay that image of him surrendering beneath me over and over until I can feel my surrender, my part in all of this pour out of me.

The back of his neck is salty with sweat; that's what it tastes like when it's over, when his hair is damp, and then he's falling asleep.  I'm still inside him.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^
He sleeps for over an hour, and when he wakes up, he thinks I’m gone because I’m not in bed with him. He sits up and calls my name; his hair is sticking straight up.

“I’m out here,” I tell him, meaning the sofa.

“Come back,” he says, and then he flops back down.

“Your hair’s fucked up,” I tell him when I walk up the steps to the bedroom and sit down next to him on the bed.

“Who’s fault is that?” he asks me as he lifts up the covers. I admit that it’s mine as I lose the afghan I was wearing. “You’re very warm,” he says as his arms close around me.

“That’s the afghan’s fault.”

He laughs, “It could’ve been my fault if you’d stayed in bed.”

“I couldn’t. I was in shock. You fell asleep with a dick in your ass.”

He laughs again but in a different way and then he strokes my hair and holds me tighter, “I was satiated.” (Apparently, we’re having a vocabulary quiz.)

“Now I’m really in shock,” I tell him.

“You think my desire for you isn’t as strong as your desire for me?” he asks me, the playful tone in his voice receding.

……

……

“I never really thought about it, I guess,” I admit.

“You should,” he tells me.

(Brian is the only person I know who can lecture you in two words or less.)

……

…...

…...

The bedroom has gotten extremely quiet again, but not in a peaceful way. We're outside the bubble again; I don't like it.

“I think it’s something that I’ll think about tomorrow,” I tell him.

“Tomorrow?”

“What I mean is…I don’t really feel like thinking right now.”

His weight has urged me onto my back. “You don’t?”  And now the bubble returns, tightening around us again; I feel an inner cave-like warmth brewing inside me because he's on top of me, feeling him hard between my legs, it's familiar, comforting.  Not to feel it is like wondering where the cat is while you're washing dishes when you're used to feeling her wind between your feet.  I'm beyond addicted to the buzz I get when he wants me, and he always wants me.

And so my knees are pointing to the ceiling; my eyes are closing; the scent of his sandalwood shampoo is filling my nose as he fills me; his hand has a very specific agenda on the back on my thigh…

”Don’t fall asleep,” he whispers as he sinks deep where I wish all the answers were.

”I won’t,” I promise him. “I won’t."

THE END.


Lyrics taken from One Republic’s Apologize.