Hurricane
Hurricane
Fucked-up feeling like a hurricane in his head, wrenching everything two twists to the left, and oh, he's awake again. No dream this time; cotton stuffed in his ears and mouth, the ground slanting perpetually away from him. He flounders into the good fortune of a half-full bottle of warm beer, the first sip almost gagging but unlocking his dry tongue, so that by the time the bottle is empty the world has steadied and lays flat again.
He hasn't been sober in three days.
*
Smoke tickled and curled his lungs, long hot kiss of sea breeze and weed, then an only slightly cooler one as he breathed out and Jason breathed in. He laughed through the coughed outrage, what the fuck, how could you?; there was something so sweetly alluring about a man who'd suck your cock in the middle of traffic but wouldn't smoke a joint. He kissed Jason's flushed cheek and felt the raspy-fine burn of stubble on his lips, warm hands and the fire at his back, everything searing, getting inside. No coming down now.
*
It isn't as if it's been very successful, the thing where everyone pretends that nothing much happened, but he's low on options and damned if he'll say it first, anyway. Excessively polite when Marty offers him a drink; sweet smile, sharp teeth, hands which meet nowhere. He thinks of a soap bubble, thin translucent wall that keeps their atoms from mixing. Thinks I'm not the same as you. Thinks that's probably the tequila talking, and swallows the cure in another sip.
*
Like he hadn't know exactly how this would end when he came here. Like he couldn't have predicted Petr's hand on his dick, foreign shape to his kiss, and he realized he really hadn't kissed many people in 23 years. Not as many as Petr, by the way he was deconstructing him with tongue and teeth, fast and messy and demanding. And if he'd seen this coming, if somewhere, way back in those dark parts of his head where it didn't do to poke around too much, if somewhere he'd added it all up and come out even, then logic followed that he should have figured out the rest. God knew he'd been waiting for it long enough.
And yet. He shook it off, closed his eyes and took another hit while Petr did something fantastic with his tongue.
*
The ceiling fan sweeps its lazy orbit and casts a moving shadow through the sheet, so that Jason's face ducks in and out of the thin morning light. He cycles into darkness, and when the light finds him again his eyes are open. Blurred with pain, exhaustion, impossible to read. Antoine tries a smile and it feels all right.
The minutes stretch; he keeps meaning to say something and doesn't, teeth restless on each other, until too much time has elapsed for anything to sound natural. He closes his eyes, and feels the bed shift; opens them cautiously again to the hard familiar curve of Jason's spine.
*
Paranoia or not, the son of a bitch was laughing at him.
Chin down and eyes narrowed, teeth flashing in that too-white smile; even the firelight was for him. He looked so natural getting his dick sucked that it was difficult now for Antoine to picture him any other way, though he groped desperately for some other memory. Everything had become his eyes and his smile and his hand on the back of Jason's head, pushing harder than Antoine would have, though his own hand was fisted tight in Petr's hair. He untangled his fingers and smiled an apology that was not understood, and he looked away when he came; briefly unhinged from time and space, far above the moment, flung like a late star out on the horizon.
*
Antoine wakes up in the drowsy midday heat to an almost-empty house, faint scrapings and shuffling in the distance and a note on the bed that says Jason and Petr are crazy enough to attempt golfing at noon--emergency margaritas in the fridge in case they don't come back. He follows the sounds and the smell of coffee and finds Marty in the kitchen, halfway through the first glass, hands steady and eyes like wax. They're both falling-down drunk, touching on soberness no more often than necessary as the days roll by, and it is a given that this is going to happen; strange spark to the air like lightning hitting the water, Marty's hand up under his shirt and the oven door at the small of his back.
And maybe this is really what he came here for, if he wants to be honest with himself, which is not advisable when one is three days drunk and getting fucked into the kitchen floor. Maybe this is what he needed to see, because it sure as hell isn't what he'd imagined all those nights he tried not to imagine anything. It's not a struggle for control; Antoine gives it freely and Marty takes what's offered, holding him down, but not too rough, biting kisses that don't leave a bruise. There will be nothing to search for in the morning, no reminders left behind; and yet he will never get quite drunk enough to forget.
*
This isn't a conversation they're going to have. He knows that already, but Jason doesn't, so he lets him fumble his way through. Follows his path that veers wide of anything too unnerving and makes reassuring noises where appropriate. Tells him he loves him, and that's maybe the only time Antoine can look him in the eye, but that's when it matters, anyway. It's just so good to talk about it and make sure everything's okay, and he knows for Jason it really is that simple. His kiss still tastes like them, familiar in a way that shakes him, and tonight they will undo everything they put back together here; but he loves him, yes, just him, he swears, and that's enough.