fic: The Dangling Conversation

It’s the first day we moved into our room, and I know as soon as it happens that it’s one of those tiny, insignificant moments that I’ll remember in perfect, unflinching detail until I know why it matters. I won’t remember the conversation that came before it, or the way you pushed yourself hips-first off the mattress and shook the words off your shoulders afterwards. I’ll remember your voice in that small moment, and I’ll compare every inflection to every other sound from your mouth, every little dip and cadence and the spaces where your breathe. I’ll remember that your fingers were pulling at a loose thread on the cuff of your flannel shirt, that your weight shifted in slow, warm waves on the edge of my bed, that your eyes went distant and your hand moved in quick, nervous strokes on the back of your neck when you said it.

 “I really think you should just…”

 Just a fragment of a sentence. It’s the thought that you never finish that gets me.

And then it’s like I’m sixteen again, still learning myself, unsure and tentative but burning, burning, burning, a slow, private smolder. I can’t act on this. I know I can’t. So I channel it all into my performances, and they tell me I’m “too theatrical”—which I know is family-television for “you’re just too fucking gay”—and of course I am, I know I’m too fucking gay, because I am gay, and I’m not getting any fucking, so what the hell do they expect? But still I know I have to rein it in, if for no other reason than to prolong the amount of time I get to be here with you, and that’s at least good enough for me. For now.

But as the weeks go by, I feel like I’m living not inside my own body anymore but in the space between it and you and always, always, always trying to bridge the gap. I don’t know you as well as I’d like to, so I don’t know where your boundaries are or what a safe distance is. A hand on the back is okay, and a thumb on the back of your neck is alright, but I’m always just testing the waters, always waiting for you to turn around and finally finish that sentence from the first day with “maybe give me some space” or “get the fuck away from me, you giant queen.” So when you come shouting backstage after a performance and give me a good-old-Southern-boy slap on the ass, I think Okay, we’re getting somewhere.

It goes on like that for a while, just small advances like you're some strange new creature, but it’s so very difficult. I’m not used to this. I’m used to seeing what I want and making it mine, immediately. So one day—Motown Week?—it’s just you and me, sitting across from each other at the dinner table, and I don’t want to scare you, I don’t want to scare you, but suddenly my glass shatters against the kitchen floor and I don’t even register the sound because I’m lunging across the table and grabbing you—poor, tiny, unsuspecting Kris, with your eyes wide and full of alarm because a giant queen has just launched through the air at you and stuck his knee in your eggplant parmesan and seized you by the shirt collar—and crushing my mouth into yours. And I know there are going to be bruises, and not just on your lips, because I can sense your arms moving and I brace myself, waiting for the punch to come. But when your hand finally finds my face, it’s not a fist but one clammy palm that molds itself to the side of my jaw and just stays there, heavy and clumsy and so very, very perfect that I lose my balance and fall forward and knock us both to the floor.

And you just laugh, so I laugh, and you put your hand on my chest, and I know I’ve won.

We don’t make love for quite a while, which is not really my preference or my experience, but I know this is new and I know I can only urge you on in tiny increments and I know you’re so far in the closet that you're having adventures in Narnia, so I’m patient with you. It’s nice, for once, to just breathe in this life and take things slow, to put off the fireworks and instead celebrate all the little sparks along the way. There’s the first time you let me put my arm around you when the others are around, even though nobody even cares about that because we’ve all just become extensions of each others’ bodies by now, but still, it’s something. There’s the first time you kiss me instead of the other way around, and you cough a little and apologize in that low, sheepish drawl, and I can’t stop smiling long enough to kiss you properly. And there’s the night you take off your wedding ring and set it down on the bedside table with a resounding click, your face expressionless. The next day, you put your Bible over it to hide it from view, and I decide not to point out the irony.

When you finally let me bend you backwards and introduce my teeth to the buttons of your shirt, it's the night before I sing "Born to Be Wild," and I ask you a thousand times if you're sure, are you sure, are you sure, because I'm still waiting on the tips of my toes for the last part of that sentence ("never touch me again" or "get your hand out of my pants, you filthy sodomite" seem like likely endings) before you put both hands on my shoulders and say, "Yes, I'm fucking sure, pants off now." I can't help but laugh, because I've never heard you talk like that, never even heard you swear before, but then your hands are grasping too hard at my hips and I don't remember much else beyond sweat and tangled sheets and the way your bottom lip pouts and trembles just a little whenever the rhythm changes. 

The next morning, I wake up to an empty bed and the sound of the shower running. Washing me off. I swear under my breath. You don't talk to me for the rest of the day, and it feels like the worst ending, just an ellipses that you'll never finish for me.

But then you sing that night. I watch from the wings, watch as the lights make you into strange new shapes, watch your face as you sing, breathless and overcome, and I think myself foolish for thinking, hoping, that maybe you're singing about me. When you come backstage, you find me and pull me by the back of my jacket into a darkened corner and you don't even ask, you just look me straight in the eyes and say, "yeah, it was for you." And we both know exactly what you mean, and I kiss you so hard I get mascara on your cheek.

We fumble back to our room that night, hands full of each others clothes, chests full of laughter and want and the kind of boyish giddiness I haven't felt since I was seventeen and making out with my first boyfriend during 6th period calculus behind the football stadium, and this time we end up in your bed. I wake up the next morning with my leg slung over your hips (“Morning wood,” I tease. “Cute, honey.”), and you kiss my forehead, my nose, my neck, before you roll out from under me and pad off to the bathroom. I frown a little, even though your naked ass disappearing through the doorway is adorable as hell, but you come back seconds later with a toothbrush in your mouth and your tiny frame wrapped up in a shirt that I can tell is mine by the way you have to roll up the sleeves three times to use your hands. You look at my face, look at the slight offset of my chin, and immediately lean down to press a wet, minty kiss onto my lips.

"Calm down," you say around your toothbrush, drooling a little in a way I can only describe as endearing. "This is what I want, love."

And finally, finally, you've finished the sentence.

 
x-posted to 

idolslash