A Lesson in Non Sequiturs

Living with Paul for any projected amount of time, you learned to recognize the signs. Singing in the kitchen was a good one and generally meant a flurry of kisses when Michael was within reach; humming and sidelong glances meant they were sending the baby and his mother to Pete’s for the day, and Michael had better not have any plans that didn’t involve supporting Paul’s weight as his husband pinned him against the shower wall. A cocked head, small frown, and “Does this make me look fat?”, no matter how innocently the question was voiced, meant Michael should steel himself, because Paul was gunning for a fight and there was no possible answer he could give that would avert the oncoming disaster. Michael didn’t know if diving for under the bed would secure his safety, but was never brave enough to try.

By the first six months of their relationship, Michael knew enough of these to write his own handbook. He had no idea if he was so easy to read and wasn’t keen on finding out, but for his own personal use, being able to sense Paul’s moods was an extremely handy skill. Despite all of this, however, Michael had nothing in his repertoire to explain why, four months after their wedding, Paul was suddenly shying away from sex.

Of the two of them, Michael was the one to withhold if something was wrong; if upset he tended to jerk away when Paul touched him, twist his head to avoid kisses, or ignore obvious cues. Paul, on the other hand, was generally so vocal about his feelings that Michael picked up on them long before it came to the bedroom. So why, when for the whole day he’d given off no warning signs, Paul was suddenly developing headaches, backaches, mysterious homework, or hearing Robbie crying, left Michael baffled.

After he’d lost track of occurrences, Michael finally couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s going on?”

“We’re washing dishes,” Paul said. He’d borrowed what he dubbed Michael’s “maddeningly calm voice” and was using it with remarkable proficiency. Michael felt his eye twitch.

“I’ve got that much, thanks.” Michael finished drying the plate and putting it in the cupboard before continuing. “But what’s with this?” He reached over, let his hand rest on the small of Paul’s back. Usually, Paul would stop and kiss him; sometimes they’d decide the dishes could wait until after the next meal. This time, like that immediately previous, Paul made an irritated noise and shied back, almost violently.

“You have soapsuds hands.”

Seeing as he remembered Paul attacking him during gardening and both of them becoming covered in mud and not caring, Michael found this excuse pathetic. Of course, pointing that out was as good as ensuring the lack of any kind of productive discussion for the next three days, so Michael pretended he didn’t notice.

He intended to continue the discussion once they finished the dishes, but then Paul decided that Robbie desperately needed a bath – despite having had one the day before, despite Miranda being capable of bathing her own child. Michael bit his tongue and tried to paint, but nothing looked right.

“And you’re still saying nothing’s wrong, huh?” Michael flopped onto his back, unable to keep irritation from his face as Paul brushed him off yet again. Paul had a rule that their issues be solved before bed and Michael agreed, but there they were and Paul was still avoiding contact and refusing to discuss why.

“Why does something have to be wrong?”

Michael froze. Paul had several tones and voices to go along with his visual signals, and this one evoked feelings that a rookie matador might get at his first match. Except Michael figured that vaulting over Paul and running out of their place might be a bad idea, so he stayed where he was and twisted the sheets into a wrinkled mess instead. Fear battled with coherence and was winning, so Michael brought out his backup – annoyance. “Are you really going to play this game with me?” He frowned. “What do you want me to do, pretend I don’t notice that you’re upset and wait until I do something horribly wrong and you explode at me before I find out?”

Paul scowled, the night-light in the corner delineating his high forehead and tip-tilted nose. “No, I think that’ll do.”

“Did I do something? Or not do something, or what?” Michael turned onto his side, resting his chin on one hand. “I don’t like playing the ‘if you don’t know I won’t tell you’ game.”

Paul blew out his breath violently enough to disturb his bangs. “Good. Now you know how bad it is when you do it to me.”

Bringing up past arguments and offences instead of dealing with the present one. Well, this was a new tactic, and not one Michael wished to repeat. “Paul.”

“Can it wait until morning? We always have our serious talks at night and it messes up our schedules.”

Michael clenched the blankets hard enough that his fingers spasmed. Patience, he reminded himself; patience was a good thing. Several sentences began themselves in his mind, but he rejected each one as being too snarky and nowhere near helpful enough. He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. “I tried to talk about it earlier but there were…” again Michael paused and finally came up with, “Things to do. Tomorrow will probably be the same.”

Paul just shrugged. Michael had to admire his new technique; usually it didn’t take long to get him to talk (Paul generally favoured the out of nowhere approach; “Michael can you pass me the salt and how come you never…” et cetera), but Michael was powerless in the face of this bullheadedness. “Then we’ll talk about it when it’s not.”

He actually growled, rolled himself on top of Paul and braced himself, hands on either side of his head. Paul glared up at him, clearly displeased by the show of aggression. “Now,” Michael said firmly. “Please? Did I hurt you last time? Is that why you won’t let me touch you?” Paul’s expression offered no solution, no hints, and Michael’s stomach clenched. “Is there someone else, do you not – not want me, what?” His arms shook and he almost fell. “I want to fix it, whatever happened. Please tell me?”

The hard lines of Paul’s face softened. “No, you idiot,” he said softly. “It’s none of that.”

Michael pretended he wasn’t relieved, but couldn’t stop the sigh. “Then what? What did I do?”

Paul slid a hand over his face and into his hair, fingers fisting in his bangs. “It’s – it wasn’t you. It was us, something we – me. It was me. Not you, it’s … it’s my fault.”

Michael blinked. “Was I supposed to figure it out from that?”

“Can’t we just leave it?” Paul’s eyes flitted. “It’s not your fault and you can’t fix it so never mind.”

“No, I don’t think so.” He’d never been on this side of the proverbial fence before, and Michael made a mental note to apologize to Paul the next time he was too stubborn to discuss something. “Please?”

“We did this all wrong.” Paul’s tone was almost a whine; plaintive and tinged with desperation. “And we can’t go back and fix it.”

Michael’s default impulse was to kiss him, but he didn’t want to make things worse. He brushed Paul’s bangs from his eyes instead, stroked a thumb across his cheekbone. “I’m still not with you.”

“Sex,” Paul finally blurted out. Michael chewed his lip and had to forcibly restrain himself from saying he thought they did sex just fine, because clearly that wasn’t what he meant. “I wish we’d waited.”

Ah. The light came on in the part of Michael’s brain reserved for things Paul said or believed that Michael didn’t really get. He’d heard this mentioned before. “We waited four months. I know that’s not forever, but most people don’t make it past the third date.”

“It’s not a time thing.” Michael didn’t really think so, but it had been worth a shot. “I mean until we were married.”

Michael rolled off him. The blood was collecting in his fingers and his hands were tingling; also, he needed to put some distance between them. This was one of Paul’s religion issues, and Michael was still new to that. “Don’t get mad,” he said hastily, “But isn’t it a little late to worry about that?”

He wasn’t sure what to expect, since this whole mood was so not-Paul, but Paul didn’t explode or even cry. One shoulder moved upward a little in what Michael assumed was a shrug. “I know. I just, I wish we had. It’s important to me, not just the sex but the whole thing, and it feels weird that I threw that away for us.”

The previous Christmas, Michael’s best friend Pete and his girlfriend split temporarily over the issue of sex. Michael swallowed hard and shot out pleas to Whoever might be listening that that wasn’t going to happen here. “That’s not how I looked at it,” he said, carefully. “You throwing away your beliefs for our relationship, I mean.”

“I guess not.” Paul’s lower lip started to quiver, and he chewed a knuckle to hide it. Michael didn’t think that manoeuvre had ever fooled him, but he wasn’t about to tell. “That’s just melodrama. In fact this entire thing is just melodrama, why don’t we just go to bed okay? – Ohhh –“ This time Michael didn’t even have to say anything. “Except we can’t, we have to talk about it.”

“Paul? Honey.” Michael sat up, grabbed his pillow and jammed it against the headboard. “Is this a no-touch conversation, or can we cuddle while we do this?”

Paul sniffled. Michael knew Paul hated sniffling; said it made him look even younger than his four-foot-eight, ninety-pound frame already did. But sometimes he couldn’t help it. “I think in principle it should be no-touchy,” he said, and Michael was nodding in reluctant acquiescence when suddenly his arms were full of shivering brunet.

“Okay,” Michael said, holding Paul and tucking the other’s head under his chin. “It’s okay. Just talk to me. I promise I’ll listen and I won’t think it’s stupid. I might not get it right away and you might think I’m stupid –“ (Paul chuckled, his breath warm against Michael’s collarbone) “– but I’ll do the open-mind thing. Really.”

He felt Paul’s mouth do that thing it did when he was upset – the lower lip twitched to the side and he tried to smile to make himself feel better but never quite made it. “You’re going to think it’s silly. You’re going to think it’s stupid and – and pointless and you know what Michael it is silly and stupid and pointless and you’re going to laugh but I just wanted it all.”

Michael stroked Paul’s back and waited. Paul wrapped his arms around Michael and toyed with the back of his sleep shirt. After a moment of breathing to get himself under control, Paul continued. “You were – are – amazing. You’re… Michael I didn’t think anyone would ever want me and I didn’t think I’d ever want anyone else because my family was everything to me. But then you did and I did but I didn’t think, I thought you would leave because I thought you could do so much better and I just… I loved – love – you and I wanted…”

Michael thought of the night he’d asked Pete if he could kiss him, not because he thought they could ever have a relationship but because he couldn’t bear the thought of not having that. Because he’d thought, in his seventeen-year-old angst-ridden mind, that he’d never have the chance with anyone else. He kissed Paul’s hair. “It’s not silly at all.”

“But it is!” Michael’s neck felt wet and slimy now, and for a moment he wondered if it would be rude to find a Kleenex before his mind scolded him for being so insensitive. Paul hadn’t noticed. “It’s silly because you didn’t leave, and now we’re married and we could have waited, we could have and I could have done it right and I didn’t have to panic like that –“

“Hey, now.” Michael frowned, stung in spite of telling himself to be open. “What do you mean, ‘done it right’ and ‘didn’t have to panic’?”

Paul’s movements stilled completely. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I’m sorry it was so terrible for you,” Michael’s tone sharpened. “I thought it was beautiful, and it meant a lot to me –“

“And me too!” It wasn’t until Paul’s legs came up to meet his chest that Michael realized how angry he must sound. Paul only curled into his defensive ball when Michael was cross with him. “It was beautiful, it was. And I – I told you it didn’t make sense, but I just feel like we rushed things and it’s not even about the sex before marriage thing even though it kind of is because that’s something we can’t ever take back no matter how much I want to.”

He didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Michael told himself. Still, his voice had the same quality of a violin string tuned too tightly. “I don’t want to take it back.”

“I don’t –“

“No. I mean it.” Michael exhaled slowly and tried to let the hurt fade with his breath. “I’m sorry, I really am, that you regret it. That I didn’t somehow know this would happen so I could have said something and given you the perfect first time you wanted. I didn’t, and I wish I did, but pulling away from me now, I just… I don’t see how it helps.”

Paul’s lip was all-out trembling now. It was rare for him to make it through an argument without crying, whether Michael actually ever hurt his feelings or not. “It’s not regret,” he said. His voice was small.

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know!” The panic-voice. Akin to how Michael felt in elementary school when the teacher asked him a question he couldn’t answer and Pete wasn’t in his eye line to mouth it to him.

“Sex wasn’t the reason we got together,” Michael said, as something came to him. “I know in your religion it’s important, and it was, but it didn’t make our relationship. I didn’t love you because we slept together. I wanted to make love to you because I love you.”

Paul stopped mid-sniff, which couldn’t be very comfortable. “Yeah... But almost every other couple in the world has sex before they’re married. I wish we could have been different.”

Michael let go with one hand so he could massage his forehead, attempting to chase away the headache lurking behind his eyes. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

Paul sighed. “I don’t know either.”

Michael rubbed Paul’s back, slow circles just below his shoulder blades. “For the record? If things had been different and you’d said something then, I would have waited.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” The pillow was bunched funnily behind Michael’s back but he didn’t dare move to adjust it. Not when the tautness in Paul’s muscles was starting to feel like anticipation, rather than tension. In his head he deleted several sentences before they even reached his mouth because Michael wasn’t really sure what he was trying to say. “I love you. And if you want to, you know, wait and slow down for a while until this sorts itself out, that’s okay.”

Paul sat up. He fingered the ends of his hair, tugging lightly. “You’d be okay with that? You really would? ‘Cause I know it makes no sense but right now I just can’t, I have to just let this sit and I think that one day I’ll wake up and realize it doesn’t matter but for now –“

Michael bent and kissed him between the eyes. “That’s fine. Just let me know.”

This time, the smile stayed and held, albeit a little wobbly at the edges. “You really are too good to me.”

Michael grinned, even though he felt exhausted. These kinds of conversations always came out of nowhere, made very little sense, and ended still slightly unresolved. But then, they were still together, weren’t they? “Nonsense. No more than you deserve.”

“Sap.” Paul shoved him.

“Am I still allowed to kiss you?” Michael thumbed Paul’s lip. “If not I won’t, but that’ll be a little more difficult.”

The rest of the shakiness disappeared, and once again Michael couldn’t help thinking how, well, radiant Paul looked when he smiled for real. “Kissing is fine.”

“Oh thank god.” And so he did.

“Ack!” Paul back-pedalled, eyes wide. “Not right now, I’ve been crying and I taste like boogers!”

It had been a little gooey, but Michael just winked. “Maybe I like the taste.”

Paul made the face he did if something he ate had banana in it and he didn’t realize beforehand. “I don’t know how I feel about being married to someone who likes the taste of boogers.”

Michael leaned over and snatched the box of tissues from the bedside table. “Here,” he said, offering them. “Get cleaned up so I can kiss you for real.”

Paul snorted. He stopped in the middle of wiping his nose and looked at Michael over the handful of crumpled Kleenexes. “I’m sorry I made you upset. I didn’t mean it wasn’t special. It was.”

“Hey,” Michael squeezed Paul’s knee. “We’ll work it out. That’s what we do, right?”

“Yeah.” Paul tossed the box on the floor and the used tissues in the garbage, after Michael glared when he was going to sweep them onto the carpet. “Just until the morning,” Paul grumbled, “I’m not a total slob. Just for that you’re not allowed to kiss me anymore and since you’re such a loyal husband and promised to do as I say you’ll obey me.”

“Guess what,” Michael said, tackling Paul and pinning him, “Catering to your huffiness isn’t part of that loyal husband deal.”

Paul grinned up at him, eyes and nose still red and swollen, but that didn’t seem to matter. “I didn’t think so.” He threaded his fingers into Michael’s hair.

“You know,” Michael said, a little while later, “Those people who are in love all the way until they’re old and wrinkled and cranky? It’s not because they didn’t have problems. Everybody has problems. They’re the ones who were too stubborn to give up on the best thing that happened to them just because of a few issues, that’s all.”

“Very inspirational,” Paul slurred into Michael’s shoulder. “Be philosophical in the morning. All this conflict-fixing stuff made me sleepy.”

Michael chuckled. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s ‘yes, your majesty’, to you,” Paul corrected him haughtily, but by the time Michael could think up a retort, Paul’s breathing was slow and heavy. Michael tried to stay awake because he liked watching Paul sleep, but he joined him soon after.