this is a rewrite of a story i've already submitted a few years ago--i felt it needed a facelift and so i set out to do so. i didn't change much in the actual fic, just emphasized and downplayed a few things here and there as i saw fit. i wanted it to run a bit smoother than the original, and leave a less-cheesy aftertaste. :laughs:

anyway. there's a screenplay i submitted a few weeks ago that i would appreciate some feedback on, if you don't mind? i don't normally ask for reviews or anything of the sort from you guys, but it was a class project and my first screenplay. and nobody in the class seems willing to let me know what they turned in for their critiques. :sigh: if you hate it, let me know that too, i don't mind. and now i will get off the pathetic bandwagon of reviewmongering.

hope you guys enjoy this facelift! please ignore any strange tense changes, i tried to comb them out but i have this sinking feeling i may have missed some.

friday, 14 november, 2008. 3:47 am.

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I checked my voicemail just after five, that low, familiar silk igniting hopeful goose bumps down my spine even as I put together an outfit or two into a bag and head out the door. Same seedy hotel, same desk clerk who watched Spanish soap operas and pushed the registry page my direction after taking my card. Same scratched up key with a plastic tag attached to its end. I went into the room and shot a text of the room number before disrobing and sliding beneath thin blankets that smelled of over-bleaching.

I’d been asleep for over two hours by the time a low knock came at the door, and I rubbed gum from my eyes as I rolled out of bed and crossed the dirty carpet, peeking out a moment before undoing the tumblers and opening the door enough for him to come through. My voice was thick with sleep as I said, “You’re late.” He shrugged as he dropped his bag to the floor, rustling from a thin jacket; “Had trouble getting away.” There were no more wasted words between us as I returned to the bed and he efficiently stripped down to skin before joining me, his hands chilled against my flushed ribcage and waist, physically encouraging me to roll to my front.

We’ve done this so often, I know his every cue, even though I’ve only really known the man for some four months. He’ll call me, and I’ll manage to get a room at this crummy hotel with no questions asked. Sometimes he asks after my cousin, nudging me to invite him, if he’s in the mood for a threesome. I think he gets off on the whole ‘incestual fucking’ we do, Marcus and I. We don’t really mind the threesomes, since we’ve been fucking for years already--we were each other’s first, when I was thirteen and he fifteen. I like sex with Marcus because there’s nothing implied, involved, but Kyle…he’s intense. So intense.

And I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself, wanting to hold onto some glimmering hope that Kyle might love me, or come close to loving me. Marcus calls me masochistic, and sometimes, late at night when I ought to be pretending to sleep or studying for some important test, I realize just how masochistic I really am. I just love to be emotionally hurt.

Fingers up my ass are quickly followed by condom’d cock, and no matter my misgivings while we’re apart, this is what keeps me back. Leaves me panting for more, until I spend every waking moment with a semi and knowing glances directed my way. My grades have fallen since Kyle, but my sexlife with Marcus has blossomed dramatically, and while he hasn’t appeared to start complaining that I’m more likely to show up for random sex, he’s beginning to tell me ‘no’ far more than he would have before.

The man now haphazardly grinding his cock into me is one I’ve not yet met, hurried and unimpassioned, and a part of me feels much like a sock or toilet bowl for all the attention paid. He usually tells me I’m sexy, a god, gorgeous, but his mind isn’t even here this time. He’s masturbating into my ass. As distasteful the sensation, it was over within five or ten minutes, his hips stilling as he gave a few deep huffs against my damp back. His body trembled slightly before he pulled out and removed the condom to toss in the small trash between the double beds, and I lay in silence as he flopped onto his side of the bed and splayed out, his sigh content with himself.

Cold pressure built up in my lower belly the longer we lay there, and it was only his light snoring that sparked movement from me, pushing onto my hands and knees and leaving the bed, an empty void opening up within my viscera and triggering painfully hot tears to prickle my nose.

I walked, naked and barefoot, across carpet with untold horrors of filth engrained into its dull blue fibers, to the tiny enjoined bathroom. The door shut behind me before I flicked the light switch, expecting to be harshly blinded by glare, but the light was a decaying yellow, adding to the feeling of intense grime in the claustrophobic space. Lowering the cracked toilet lid down, I sat and broke into goose bumps at the sudden cold against my ass.

Why? Why do I do this to myself? Why do I do this over and over again, despite seeing how unhappy Marcus looks whenever I show up no longer sporting the dopey grin I carried around for days after the first rendezvous? When I just look tired and well-fucked and I skip school by crashing at Marcus’ apartment so I can sleep, and he makes me get up, wake up, watch movies or play video games and we don’t talk about Kyle even though he’s on both our minds.

The last time Kyle hinted at having Marcus join us, I gave a glib excuse and didn’t know why then, but now I do. I don’t want to see him watch me fucking Kyle only to have him lean in and press a kiss to the side of my mouth and have that mean more to me than the dick shoving into my prostrate and sending liquid waves through my body.

But I keep doing this because no one has ever looked at me the way Kyle did in the beginning. The way he looked at me as if I were the only thing worth fucking in the entire world, and that look, that feeling, I let go to my head. Kyle was a regular at the small music store I work for, and that first month I ever knew him, I grew dependant upon his blatant looks and innuendos, his smile of molten sex. When his innuendos became less hint and more carnal invitation, I couldn’t help but to indulge in my fantasies. I wanted to feel wanted, desired, needed.

Only, now that I’m here and have had it, I no longer want it.

Mind catching that thought and grabbing hold, I gulped it down and tasted bitter acid, but it finally felt clean. Cold fingers wiped tears from my face as I pushed to my feet and left the filthy bathroom, my ass cold and numb from the impersonal toilet seat.

My movements were efficiently silent as I shrugged and hopped back into my clothing before heading over to my bag, digging out a notebook and pulling a sheet of paper from within. Handwriting jerky, I was vaguely reminded of how often Marcus sits beside me when I’m doing homework and rags me for how shitty I write. Still, I sloppily penned that I was truly sorry, but that I was going home, and that I’d rather that he wouldn’t call me anymore. I scribbled something about the room being good for another night, and that if he asked, my cousin might come to share it with him if he called the number I was leaving with the note. I didn’t think to care if he could read my writing, overmuch. Leaving the note upon the table, I placed my room key on top before glancing around to see that I had everything I arrived with. Spotting his wallet, I picked it up with the intention of leaving it on the note to better ensure that he’d find it. Only, I instead found myself flipping open the worn cloth wallet to look again at the photos I knew were inside.

I’d peeked inside Kyle’s wallet just once before he’d caught me, but when I’d pressed, he’d confessed that the pictures were of his lover, Jonathon. I hadn’t been altogether interested in seeing them again after that, but right this moment, it’d become a compulsion.

The first picture was of a somber young kid, maybe twelve or thirteen, his hair cut close to his skull and eyes bright despite his non-expression in the shot. There were a few others, but they stopped when he appeared about sixteen or so, his smile easy but the warmth in his eyes no longer there.

Looking down at the last picture, I remembered that Kyle mentioned then how Jonathon is younger than him, but I’d thought the range to be more in the mid-to-late twenties. Based upon his driver’s license, Kyle is about thirty-three, eighteen years older than myself. Hell, my dad is only five years older than my lover. I knew Kyle was into younger men, but I couldn’t help being disquieted to realize that his lover isn’t much older than me, seeing as how I’m only turning seventeen in a couple of months.

Snorting in disgust, I closed the wallet and dropped it on the note. I had always sort of assumed that Kyle was a borderline pedophile, but I’d managed to overlook it for the fact that it meant he wanted me. Stupid.

Glancing once more at the sleeping form in the bed, I gave an inaudible sigh and shouldered my bag, leaving the room and quietly shutting the door behind me before sneaking out to my truck.

I’m not sure why I’m leaving, really, or where I plan to go--it’s not that I can just go home. My parents think I’m staying at Marcus’ place for a few days, and they’ve never given me a key. I’m not trusted with a key. So, me having to wake them up two in the morning to get inside isn’t too swell of an idea. Not that they don’t know I’m gay, because they do--they caught me sexually pinned beneath Marcus just a year ago--but the idea of my sleeping with a thirty-something man with a young lover at home wouldn’t go down too well with them.

Ever since the beginning, I’ve known my lover had someone else, and yet, I still fucked him, still drew him away from home more often than I should. I feel like such an ass. How can someone condone such a thing, even to themselves? Except, I used to, used to excuse my own behavior for those brief moments of Kyle kissing me, touching me.

Perhaps for this reason, I found myself driving to their home. I know where it is, of course I do--I’d fancied myself in love with the man. I know I’m in love with the man. I’ve driven past and imagined that it was me living there with him, me who got to spend my life with him.

I used to imagine that I was worth more than a good fuck.

Imagine that I was worth more to him than a good fuck.

I couldn’t say what I expected to see as I drove past, but I was surprised that there were still lights going in the middle-income home. And even more surprising was that I pulled up in front and shut down the engine to my truck, staring out the window a moment before getting out, leaning against the metal door as I stared at the home of my…ex lover.

A dot of red light briefly flared on the dark porch, a tiny pinprick in the shadows, and a voice soon accompanied it.

“Whatever it is you’re looking for, I doubt you’re gonna find it out on the street.”

It was then that I realized that the red pinprick was the lit end of a cigarette, and that the very male voice had come from the shadows of that front porch, and cold sweat cropped out along my spine, my body frozen into place. A muffled set of sounds alerted me that he was standing from his perch, and I was unable to do much more than helplessly stare as a form broke away from the shadows and approached the street, a cigarette still between his fingers.

He seemed young, only about nineteen, but I could tell he was the same boy from the photos, because even though the light was dim--the streetlight down at the corner some houses away--I could see how he looked tired and worn…unhappy.

Tears that hadn’t ever really dried sprang anew, coursing down my face as intense shame kicked me in the groin, in the chest, that I’d knowingly hurt this man.

“I’m so sorry.”

“You on pills, kid?” he asked, disinterested, and smoke from his cigarette washed over me as a light breeze picked up on his exhalation.

“No, I’m…oh god.” My mumble was thick with stupidity and tears, and I wiped my cheeks and turned away from him, anything so as not to look him in the face.

“Whoa, hey, you’re…what’shisname…Terry, aren’t you?” His back straightened as his voice colored with interest, his eyes finding and piercing mine.

My mouth refused to respond, my expression one of stricken terror, and he flashed a bitter smile; “Kyle loves to think I’m blindly naïve.”

The bitterness in him, in his voice, caused me to find the strength to state, “It’s over, I don’t want…I just…I’m so sorry.”

“You came here at two something in the fucking morning just to apologize?” His words were hard but his tone was one of exhaustion and returned disinterest.

“I don’t know what I came for…I mean, I can’t go home, and I can’t go back…I just don’t know.” My words were helpless--I was floating adrift, feeling lost and confused.

He paused, sizing me up a moment before he finally said, “Come inside then, kid, I could use someone to talk to.”

And without waiting for my reply, he crushed the cigarette beneath his shoe and turned to walk back up the lawn. I couldn’t help but to numbly follow him into the house I’ve been driving past for three months, always wondering what could be inside.

Thus, my emotions were surreal as I stepped through the screen door into a dimly lit hallway, seeing him step out of untied, plain sneakers, the black of them mostly faded to gray.

“Leave your shoes by the door, I mopped in here a couple hours ago,” he directed, and so I did, toeing my designer athletic shoes from my feet and wincing at the vague chill of the tile beneath my socks.

While I did so, he disappeared through a doorway on the left, bright light cheerfully spilling into the hallway. When I followed a moment afterwards, I saw that the room was a kitchen done in warm yellows and oranges, the tiles and countertops a rich cream color.

It was beyond tidy, everything in its place. There was a solid wood table off to the side, the rich yellowish color keeping in the warm trend of the place. Despite all of it, the figure standing before the coffee machine reminded me of those solemn black and white shots of trees stuck in the middle of immense fields or hills--so lonely. His form is solid in a healthy well-fed sense, but I get the feeling that he’d blow away at the slightest breeze.

“You drink coffee, kid?” he queried to the coffee pot, but I swallowed and found my voice to respond.

“Uh, yah. Black.”

Seemingly surprised, he looked over and flicked his eyes down my form before they came back up, his mouth twisted into something vaguely sardonic.

“Hmm,” was his only comment before he poured two mugs of coffee. He carried them over to the table, and I noted that he was barefoot against the chilled tiles, and I surreally noted that he’d worn his shoes without socks outside.

At his wordless glance, I came over and sat at the table, taking the seat across from him. My fingers automatically reached for the hot mug, instinctively curling around so that my middle and ring fingers could slide through the loop of the handle, the cup ultimately cradled against my palm. The stinging heat seeped through the flesh of my long fingers, settling deep against the bones.

Our silence was strangely comfortable, broken only by the discreet ticking of a clock up on the wall, and the distant white noise of a television going in another room. I could feel the literal weight of his gaze on me, as if he were looking for whatever I might posses to steal his lover away from him for those brief periods of time.

“You look young, maybe seventeen? Eighteen?” he finally commented, sipping his coffee.

“I’ll be seventeen in May,” I replied, quiet because I know how terrible it is.

“Well, shit…sixteen,” he mused before snorting, “that young? Should have known.”

Words failed me yet again, and I nursed my bitter coffee before he startled me with his sudden outburst, “Fuck, kid, what do your parents thing you’re doing?!”

Shrugging past my unease, I admitted, “I usually tell them I’m at a friend’s or something. Some boyfriend, I guess, but they don’t care much, either way.”

“Don’t feed me bullshit, kid. Look at you, the way you’re dressed, and that truck? You’re stock bond baby, trust fund brat extraordinaire. So I seriously doubt they don’t care about you,” he sneered, contempt eating acid into his voice and dropping his words into my lower gut.

My eyes locked with his a few moments, and I didn’t try to hide any of the deep-rooted emptiness I’ve got roiling ‘round inside as I said, “They. Don’t. Care. They’ve got Michael to be perfect for them, my half-brother. Dad fucked around too much and got me dumped on his lap, and as long as I haven’t landed in jail, they couldn’t give a shit what or I do.”

I can’t bring myself to be bitter about the fact that my Dad tells me to my face that I’m damn lucky I’m not on welfare because of the slutty cumdump I’ve got for a mother, that I’m not shunted off into social services as an unwanted orphan. I’m done feeling sorry for myself--all they do is put endless tons of pressure upon my brother to be perfect, and I’ve seen the scars he keeps hidden on his inner thighs, seen him look at me and know I know he’s a cutter and he gets this thousand-degree-terror in his eyes that I’ll expose him. So I don’t, and he doesn’t expose that he’s seen me snort coke in our shared bathroom more than a few times.

When Jonathon finally broke the long silence, he was voice was so soft I nearly couldn’t hear him, “We must flock to him, I think…wanting so desperately for someone to love, for someone to love us.”

My surprise was palpable as I looked at him, wondering just how he could know what I mean, but I found that he was staring blankly at the wall.

Then his gaze flicked back to me, interested once more as he asked, “How’d you meet him?”

“I work at a music store, that one on Tenth and Abbey Rd. He comes in all the time, you know? Buys something--a lot of blues and jazz. And the way he looked at me, it just…no one’s ever looked at me that way, you know? That I was important, worth having. And…it made me so stupid.”

“You, and countless others,” he commented dryly, and I leaned back in my chair, looking at him. I just couldn’t fathom how he obviously knew about me enough to know my fucking name, how he knew about others before me, the others who are sure to come after.

“Why do you stay here, knowing he fucks around?” I asked finally, bluntly curious.

His eyes clouded over with something I couldn’t identify--fear, rage, pain?--as he dropped them down to the table, a light frown marring his features. But then he was looking back up at me, a visible resolve now plain on his face, and I got a feeling that whatever he was going to tell me was something so important that maybe I was one of the few to ever hear it.

“My mom ran out on me when I was ten, left me alone in our crummy apartment one time and just never came back. I waited a long time, a real dummy, but then the rent came due and I had to bail out.”

His fingers ran along the rim of his cup, silence heavy as I waited for him to continue. Instead, he stretched over and grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the countertop, fumbling a lighter from his pocket. His actions were deeply engrained, and I was reminded of the way I could edge a line of coke in my sleep, even though I’ve only been using for about six or seven months.

Exhaling smoke into my face and mumbling a genuine apology, he cleared his throat; “I bailed out and took to the streets, managed to steal a bit at first to survive. …Got my first john a few months later, couple bucks for a bad blowjob out behind some super center dumpster. A b-grade whore at only ten, can you imagine.”

His question was more a tired statement, but I found myself numbly shaking my head, and he sniffed at the response, a slender hand coming up to scratch the tip of his nose, cigarette bobbing in the air.

“Met Kyle when I was twelve, and by then, I did everything. Needles were no problem for me back then, I popped them in and everything was superfly, you know? It made it okay for the men to hurt me, I didn’t care, I was running through stars and sunlight and nothing else mattered. Sometimes I kinda wish I’d overdosed, you know? Meeting Kyle, I was in between fixes, and he was one of the few men I’d fucked I didn’t mind doing sober, especially not when he took me home, cleaned me up.

“It was like for the first time, someone willingly put up with me, cared enough that he spent thousands getting me through my detox. You have no idea what cutting cold turkey off heroin and acid is really like--whatever you take, it’s crumbs in comparison, I promise.”

A flush started up in my cheeks, and his smile was somewhat kind and knowing, his shrug seeming to say, ‘don’t worry ‘bout it, kid.’

His voice turned wistful, “He used to talk about how much he loved me, and it made things easier in the beginning, because I’d believe it, every word. But I was only fifteen when he began to come home later, taking extra ‘business trips’ and coming home smelling of another guy. As if I were too stupid to notice, to know in an instant what was going on. …I got boring for him, you see.”

His tone had become flat, but god, the pain…his eyes were embodied pain, and it made me uncomfortable to have them directed at me. “He keeps me around now because I’ve proven myself to be useful…I deliberately set out to ingratiate myself here, to make my presence an absolute necessity. There’s always a hot meal ready to go for when he decides to come home, the house is spotless, every minute of every day, and I’m the warm body in his bed for when he chooses.

“And I never complain when he leaves me alone…always alone.”

As if he’d forgotten he was talking to me, he talked more to himself, and it was painful to witness that internalization, to know that I could have spared him pain because I knew he existed and yet…and yet I never gave a shit.

“I’d hate me, if I were you,” I murmured, but his smile was empty.

“We’re alike, you and I. To hate you would be hating myself, kid.”

I swallowed, stunned that this man accepted me for who I was, the kid who became what his lover sought over him…the kid stupid enough to believe that a man who fucks you should love you. He understands that we’re both being broken by the same person, our hurts different in nature but ending the same.

He knows this all and accepts me anyway, if only for the reason that he’s so alone, he needs me. He needs to reach out and touch me--only, I know he won’t, so I leaned in and did it for him, my hand touching his in the lightest of contact, and his smile was a little less empty.

---

I’m not too sure how long we sat in that kitchen and talked about things, but the sun was brightening the morning sky by the time I decided I should leave. Sometime between four and five, I’d told him about Marcus, my cousin and only person who ever really looked out for me in my family.

And he’d looked at me and queried in that dead serious way of his if I love Marcus, and I was so puzzled--of course I love him, he’s family. Flesh and blood and best friend, all in one.

But Jonathon’s gaze was steady the way it was when he saw my usage written on my face, his voice calm as he repeated his question, mouth twisting into a slyly knowing smile when I found myself without a ready answer.

It’s Marcus, just Marcus, my everything and nothing. He sometimes steals my coke and snorts my share of a line, but sometimes he just watches over me while I take more than I should and lay in a slump on the bedroom floor. His fingers in my hair, and he’ll move down to the floor and cuddle up if I ask him to, and move away if I ask him to. He does just about anything if I ask it of him.

And Jonathon, as if reading my thoughts, quipped that Marcus was never going to ménage à troi unless it was me asking him to, and when I asked what exactly he meant to imply by that, he gave me that same sly smile in response.

He talked about dropping out of high school in the tenth grade due to his depression and need to make sure he was as useful as possible for Kyle to keep. It had been gradual, his obsession with being kept, but it had grown until it took over his life. Even as we talked, his ashes went into an ashtray that was routinely dumped into the trash on the hour, almost like a nervous tic. He did it even when he’d not been smoking, and flushed when he caught me watching him do it.

But some of the strain of his life fell away as we talked, his body becoming more animated, sloughing away the shit he put up with. It was good for me too, having someone to whom I could relate, if only because we’re tied together through one man. One mistake.

His jokes caught me by surprise, his eyes flashing with banked humor until he was grinning and chuckling, his laughter earthy from cigarettes and as dark as the coffee we went through by the pot. He decimated his pack of cigarettes, but we both felt cleansed by the time rays of pink shone through the windows, his eyes skittering their direction and we knew it was getting time for me to go.

“Jon, this is my cell,” my penmanship was slow and steady, carefully inking out the number so he would be able to read it, “I want you to call me whenever you need to, no matter when. And if…if he leaves you alone at night, I’ll come over to keep you company,” I said softly, eyes focused on my writing and not on him, lest I burn in embarrassment.

He was shocked at the offer, and when I finally tried to give it to him, I had to physically place the scrap paper into his hand and close his fingers over it for him.

“…Why?” he asked, finally, staring at me in disbelief.

“Because I get lonely too,” I admitted, and a myriad of emotions swirled through his eyes, making me look away lest I collapse.

When I stood, he did as well, following me back into the hallway. I stooped as I shoved my feet into my shoes, and ended up standing awkwardly once done, tugging at the hem of my shirt in my nerves. Until I looked up and into his face, seeing the question being asked within his eyes, the question he could never bring himself to ask, not out loud, and so I made it so he wouldn’t have to.

I stepped close and wrapped arms around his frame, hugging him to me as tight as I possibly could. His gasp was small and almost a sob, but I didn’t question it, just let him hug me so tight I nearly lost the air from my lungs. I didn’t care, because he needs this.

I need this.

As he pulled back, he placed a warm kiss to my cheek, his breath smelling of coffee and cigarettes as it wafted across my face, but I didn’t care, didn’t care. I just leaned into that tender kiss, because he cares. He cares, and that’s how I know he’ll call me after I leave--maybe tomorrow, the next day, within an hour--and I’ll come over again to keep him company as he needs it.

And stupid me, I love him, I love him wholeheartedly, and I’ll rupture Kyle’s scrotum should I happen to see him again, because I refuse for someone to hurt the people I love.

Maybe someday, I’ll be able to kiss Jonathon as a lover, but not today, not tomorrow, not for a long time. Because maybe he’s right about Marcus--maybe I know he’s right--and if so, then I have too much to think about. But it all feels right, and I have him to thank for that too.

I pulled away completely, walking backwards until I was out the front door, watching him follow me onto the porch, and I stated again that he can call me anytime, stressing it until I’m sure he believes me enough that he will.

And when I finally get back into my truck, I stare once more at the lone figure on the porch, but he’s changed, because I realize that he doesn’t look as if he’ll blow away anymore. He’s a black and white tree on a hill, but the sun is coming up and he’s illuminated, and that’s how I know he’ll be just fine.

So I drive home.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Someone once told me that to love a person who’s wronged you, you have to forgive them, understand them, and simply have hope. And that is all that anyone can ever really ask from a person.

As stated in Twin Falls Idaho, a story doesn’t end just because the author stops telling it. It still goes on, it’s just untold.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

A/N: END. twin falls idaho is an actual movie, i suggest you watch it because it's severe greatness.

oh! and if you guys could help me in a maddening search for a fic? all i remember about it is that there's a major football player who comes out during superbowl, and he agrees to do an interview for this one newspaper. so the newspaper forces their only gay reporter to do the interview, and sparks fly. i cannot remember the title or who wrote it, and the search option is a big fat dick and refuses to help. but it's been a few years, i think. i just remembered it about a month ago and really wanted to read it again, but have since been unable to conjure it up from the rugged armpits of the fp archives.