Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Chapter Six
He can't remember ever feeling so devastated.
He stays for a while in the hallway with his back against the bedroom door, working consciously to make himself breathe against the dull ache that is constricting his chest. He can't do this, he thinks with crystalline certainty; and he can't go back in there, either.
He should go downstairs, he thinks. Downstairs where Nick is watching something on tv, probably with his feet propped up on the coffee table and a bowl of popcorn resting on his stomach, laughing at some popular inanity or another. Nick who loves him, Nick to whom he has promised honesty in all things - Nick from whom he has always demanded honesty. Nick who owns his heart.
No, he thinks: Nick to whom he gave his heart, freely.
Nick laughing, he thinks: a mantra to bring himself back to zero. Nick crying. Nick arching into his touch. Nick breathless from running. Nick covered in flour. Nick learning to juggle. Nick - Nick pulling Greg out of a chair to do the dishes. Nick changing a fuse in the basement. Nick in the glow of twilight. Nick holding Greg's hand. Nick yelling at a cactus. Nick throwing a football. Greg catching it. Nick wearing Greg's jacket. Greg in ridiculous pink socks. Greg in bare feet, in the grass. Nick buying sunglasses. Nick slouched in a chair. Greg dancing in the kitchen. Nick repotting a ficus. Greg with his eyes closed, on the edge of sleep. Greg waxing philosophical about the colour blue. Greg kicking a tree. Greg collecting morning snails from the patio planter. Greg yawning. Greg. Greg.
Gil lets his eyes open slowly, knows they are rimmed with tears but can't make himself wipe them away. They're his tears and he needs them, because they remind him that he is not the man he tries to be.
The man he tries to be would have a solution, he thinks, and lets his tears trace lines across his skin. The man he tries to be could make this right with a few words, a kind touch. He would know the secret to balancing, he could reach inside Greg with gentleness and undo whatever it is that he's done. Except he wouldn't have done it in the first place, this ideal man.
He closes his eyes again.
"Gil?"
It's said so softly, so tentatively - so full of concern - that he finds a smile and puts it on. He opens his eyes to find Nick standing less than a foot from him, almost touching him, almost leaning in to kiss him, to brush away his tears.
"What's wrong?" he asks. "What happened?"
He wonders how long he's been standing there, propped against the wall in the corner of the hall, mired in his own vintage of misery. It must have been a while because his legs are stiff, difficult to move.
He tries to say something but finds his voice has left him, so he pushes himself from the wall and into Nick's arms.
Nick embraces him, folds him into his arms and holds him. Gil can feel the acceleration of Nick's pulse, recognises the signs of fear. This fear doesn't wound him, doesn't shake him to his core like Greg's fear does, because he knows where this fear comes from. It's his fault, but this time it's all right.
He finds his voice again, and says softly, "Let's talk."
He can feel Nick nod against him, tighten his arms around his torso and where Gil's hands are resting on his back, he can feel the tension like electricity humming through live wires.
"It's okay," he whispers, even though it isn't. He feels a wave of love crash over him, and he kisses the skin against his mouth, and then hugs him tightly. "Let's go downstairs."
Nick makes tea. Gil sits at the table and watches him, smiles fondly at this ritual of kettle, leaves, strainer, pot.
It's not the high tea that Gil himself prefers - a touch of finery being the only slice of elegance he can afford in his life - but this is Nick's private affair. It's something he learned from his father: the Stokes proven method of slowing the world down when it starts to spiral out of control.
It isn't served in bone china cups, but in the chipped mugs that moved in with Nick over a year ago. Gil takes his from Nick's hands, holds it under his nose and inhales deeply; what it lacks in elegance, he thinks, it makes up for in potency.
"So?" Nick asks, settling into what Gil recognises as his ready-to-deal-with-it posture. He doesn't even need to know what it is, Gil thinks, he's ready to face it head-on. "What's going on?"
He takes a deep breath, uncertain of where to start. "Greg had another panic attack," he says.
Nick arches an eyebrow. "Oh?" he says, surprised. "I thought that was over."
"It's not," Gil says, swallows with difficulty around a dry throat. "It's me."
"You?" The corner of his mouth quirks up in the beginning of a smile. "Pretty sure about that, huh?"
"Yes," he says simply, because this is not going to go away if they make a joke about it. "I am."
Nick drops his eyes to the table for a moment. "Sorry."
He sighs, sets his mug of tea down and rubs his face. "So am I," he says, "because this is something we have to deal with." He thinks for a moment then corrects himself. "Something I have to deal with."
"You?" Nick asks. "Not us?"
"It's... complicated, Nick. I wish I knew the whole story, I wish I could tell you I had an answer - but it's me. He's... terrified of me, Nick."
Nick frowns. "Why?"
"I'm not sure." He thinks for another moment. "I'm not entirely sure. I think... I think I've been unnecessarily hard on him at work for too long. I think he still doesn't believe that he belongs here. I think he's been hurt, badly, in the past."
Nick takes his hand where it's resting on the wood of the tabletop and strokes his knuckles with his thumb. "So what do we do?" he asks. His voice is calm but tight, and Gil can hear everything he isn't saying.
He swallows. "I think maybe... we slow down," he says, because he thinks they're the best words for something that he never thought he would be saying.
Nick's thumb stills on his hand. "What does that mean?" he asks, but he knows. Gil can see it in his eyes.
He swallows again, finds it harder every time. "The way it is, Nick, is going to destroy him."
"Breaking up with him is going to destroy him," Nick counters. "Shit, Gil, whatever is going on with him it'll only be a hundred times worse if we let him fall to the side."
"It's not you," Gil hears himself say, "it's only me."
"It's not only you, Gil," Nick says, pulls his hand back and wraps it tightly around his cup of tea. Gil watches the knuckles turn white, watches the line of Nick's mouth flatten and grow tight, watches Nick's eyes drift to the black depths of his cup and stay there.
"I know it's not only me," Gil says, wishes he had the right to reach across the table and pull that intense attention back to him. Knows he doesn't, not now; maybe not anymore. Because this is breaking a promise that he made. The thought hurts but he holds it inside, because to let it out into the room would be to divert the conversation from what is important, from what matters: Greg.
"No," Nick says, shaking his head. "No. No we are not 'slowing things down', Gil."
"Nick-"
"No. You don't get to make unilateral decisions here, Gil. It's three of us, remember?"
He keeps his mouth shut.
Nick wipes at his face and examines the tears he catches on his thumb. "Dammit," he says, "we knew this wasn't going to be easy. Right? We knew that. We decided to do it anyway. Now we do what we have to do to keep it together."
"Nick," Gil says, softly.
"For better or for worse, Gil. Ring any bells?"
"Nick, this is hurting Greg. Badly." He looks down at his own cup of tea. "One of the things we do is to protect the ones we love."
"By getting rid of them?" Nick asks. "Of - of us?"
"I don't-" He hasn't got words for this. "He needs you, Nick, more than he needs me. You'll always have me, but to try to hold Greg to that, to - to this... I can't do it."
"It's not your choice," Nick tells him. "Three of us, remember?"
"Nick..."
"Jesus, Gil. What happened to all for one, one for all?"
"I love you," Gil says. "I love Greg. I am not going to stop loving you, either of you."
Nick pushes his chair back, stands suddenly. "What did Jim say to you?" he asks.
Gil looks up at him. "What?"
"Whatever it was," Nick tells him, "it's bullshit."
"Nick-"
"Listen to yourself, Gil. You're going to bail on this - on us, on this whole fucking thing that we have, all of us - and, and..." He shakes his head. "You actually believe him."
"Nick..."
He shakes his head again and leaves, and Gil listens to him move through the house, and then upstairs.
He thinks, I should have stopped him. He thinks, I should have been able to make him understand, to make him see -
I should have been able to tell him he was wrong, about Jim.
There's a bitter taste in his mouth now, and it's not the tea. He looks down at his cup, then over at the pot steeping on the counter. Thinks, so this is the world unfolding according to its own agenda. This is me not having a say in my own life anymore.
This is what it means to spiral out of control.
He stays downstairs for a long time, dragging one cooling pot of tea over almost two hours. He sits in the kitchen, he moves through the living room, he stands on the balcony in the early afternoon heat. He watches two kids chase a persecuted dog down the sidewalk, he watches a bird in the tree across the street, he watches someone try and fail to parallel park behind Greg's car.
When he runs out of tea, and can't talk himself into making another pot, he locks up again and leaves the tea paraphernalia in the sink, and makes his way upstairs. He tells himself he's moving slowly on the stairs because he doesn't want to wake them up; it has nothing (he insists) to do with his reluctance to be up there with them.
On the one hand, he knows that Nick is right. That they're in this together, all of them, and he has no right to make unilateral decisions about the collective them.
On the other hand, though, Gil knows that he's right, too: that the way things are is not good for Greg, and that any attempt on their part to keep it together, to keep it status quo, will only do more damage than good.
He hesitates when he reaches the top of the stairs, then takes silent footsteps towards the bedroom. The door is open and the bedside lamp is on low, and he stands for a moment in the doorway, soaking in the scene.
Nick is wrapped around Greg in the centre of the mattress. The covers have been pulled down on Gil's side of the bed, and the invitation is obvious. No, more than an invitation. An expectation.
An expectation of what, though? He looks at the exposed triangle of sheet, analyzes how his body is gravitating towards it on some base level. It's an expectation of continuation. Of sameness. An expectation that in the morning, we'll all pretend this never happened. And the next time it does happen - the next time that Gil slides his hand along the line of Greg's leg while Nick is elsewhere - Greg will grit his teeth through his terror and endure it because he'll think he has to.
There's a thought that makes Gil flinch: it's not such a long stretch from endure to coerce to rape, is it?
Gil knows precisely where the lines are that he won't cross, but he's not sure where they are from Greg's perspective. Greg, who was willing a few hours ago to submit to something that terrified him. Greg, who clearly doesn't think he has the right to say no.
Feeling nauseated with himself and with the thousand acts of cruelty he's capable of, Gil tiptoes into the room and pulls the covers up from where they're folded down. He smoothes them tight around Nick's back and around Greg's shoulders, stands for a moment looking at them in the dim light, then turns the lamp off and tiptoes back out into the hall.
The bed in the guest room feels foreign under him.
He sleeps poorly, and his internal clock wakes him up a few hours later. It takes him a moment to remember where he is, why there's no tangle of arms and legs around him, why the far side of the bed is so cold.
When he does remember, he sits up and looks out the window. Night has fallen, and he illuminates the bedside clock to read that it is nine-thirty.
He sighs, flops back onto the mattress and stares up at the ceiling. He could try to get another hour, but he knows it's not worth it. He resigns himself to looking exhausted for the next few days, and hauls himself to his feet.
Nobody else is awake yet, and he makes his way down to the kitchen quietly. He cleans up from earlier, from his drinks with Jim, and Nick's snack while Gil was upstairs with Greg, and the tea pot and the mugs from his fallout with Nick... He finds himself almost laughing. All that's missing, he thinks, are the two bowls I washed earlier from dinner, and every meal of catastrophe is accounted for.
He makes coffee, and sets the table for breakfast, and finds the newspaper in the living room. He doesn't want to read about the economic crisis, he doesn't want to read about the latest threat to world peace. He doesn't want to read about anything, but he's got to do something until Nick comes down, and he's run out of dishes that need washing.
So he makes himself sit down with the Arts section and a strong cup of coffee, and less than an hour later he hears signs of life from upstairs.
He feels a strange kind of tension take up residence between his shoulders, and he doesn't like it. He doesn't like to think that this house, that this family, is suddenly riddled with trip wires; but he knows that it is. He knows that there are a thousand things he can say or do that will spark an eruption, and that all of these land mines - all of them, without exception - are his fault.
So suck it up, he thinks when he hears footfalls on the stairs, because you have to deal with whatever this entails.
Nick appears in the doorway and they stare at each other for a few seconds. Gil wishes he could read the look that Nick is wearing, wishes he'd had more personal experience with less-than-happy-Nick before this because he has no idea what to expect.
"You didn't come to bed," he says eventually.
Gil folds the paper and lets it fall to the floor. "I slept in the other room," he says.
"Why?"
"I didn't think I had the right to share your bed."
Nick makes a sound in the back of his throat and goes to the coffee maker. "You're not getting away with that," he tells Gil while his back is turned.
"Getting away with what?"
"That holier-than-thou crap." Armed with caffeine, Nick turns back, keeps his back against the counter and that grim look on his face.
"It's not-" Gil starts, then takes a huff of air. "This is my fault, Nick," he says, "I made this mess and I'm the one who has to pay for it."
Nick narrows his eyes. "Very noble of you," he says coldly, "but total bullshit."
"Nick-"
"No." Nick looks down at his coffee then sets it on the counter next to him, untouched. "We made this mess, and we have to pay for it. All of us. That includes you, and you don't get to play the coward or the martyr or whatever you think you are, and hide out in the guest room until it all goes away."
"You didn't see the fear in his eyes, Nick. You don't have to live with the fact that you put it there. I do."
"So you're going to bear that cross alone?" Nick asks. "And I notice that Greg's not here to defend himself," he adds. "Shouldn't he have a say in this?"
"He's in self-preservation mode, Nick," Gil says. "He's not going to look me in the eye and tell me to leave him alone. He doesn't think he's allowed to."
"Maybe," Nick says, "maybe he's not going to do that because it's not what he wants to do. You ever think of that?"
Gil sighs, lets his eyes close for a blissful moment of darkness. "You didn't see his fear-"
"I saw it the first time," Nick reminds him flatly, "remember? On the couch in there, too much wine and all that good stuff and he almost passed out from panic?"
"Yes-"
"He pushed through it," Nick says. "Remember? We waited for him-"
"Maybe he shouldn't have pushed through at all," Gil says, "or maybe he shouldn't have pushed through so quickly. Maybe all of this is really uncomfortable for him and he's only going through with it because of us, Nick."
There's a stretch of silence.
"At some point," Nick says after a while, "we have to assume he's doing this because he wants to."
"I know he wants you, Nick," Gil says, "that's what brought him into this relationship in the first place. He went after you, he dogged you and he kept at your heels until you gave in. Remember?"
"Of course."
"That's the last thing he pursued, Nick. He's not going after anything here anymore. He's curled around himself, trying to stay sane. Trying to stay safe. We pushed too hard, and we hurt him."
Another stretch of silence, and Nick shakes his head slowly. "I think," he says, "that you're assuming too much here. You're projecting all of this crap onto Greg, and taking it as the gospel truth. I say we need to sit down, all of us, and talk about it."
Gil rubs his face. "You should talk to him first, Nicky," he says. "Just you, somewhere that he feels safe. Somewhere that he can be honest with you."
"You think he won't be honest with you?"
"I think he can't be honest with me," Gil says softly, aware that his eyes are starting to sting.
"Why?" Nick asks, but the fight is gone from his words. He looks exhausted, Gil thinks; he looks older than he is, older than he should be.
"We see it every day, Nick," he says plainly. "Someone takes advantage, abuses their position, crosses a line. From that point in, it's not about equals, and you're into a survival situation."
A terrible kind of understanding comes across Nick's face, and most of the colour drains out of it. "Jesus, Gil," he says, his eyes wide, his voice shaky. "You've got it all wrong, it's not like that-"
"I'm having a hard time believing you," Gil says, shrugs with one shoulder, "much though I would like to. I have to look at the evidence, Nick."
"And - this? - this is what the evidence is telling you?"
"I don't know," Gil says, "but I can't pretend that it's not a possibility. I will not become the thing I hate."
"God, Gil..."
He takes a deep breath, wipes at his face, isn't surprised that there are tears there. "Just talk to him, Nicky. Please."
Nick nods. "I will," he promises.
"Make sure he's honest."
"I will," Nick promises again, "and then you can stop this stupid bullshit and we can get back to normal. Okay?"
He allows himself a small smile. "Okay," he says, although he knows in his heart that it's not that simple. That it never is.
He pushes himself up from the table. "I've got to hit the shower," he says. "It's going to be a long night." He knows that Nick is watching him as he moves through the kitchen, out of sight and then he's sure that Nick is listening as he climbs up the stairs. He wonders idly what it's going to be like after everything falls apart.
When he comes out of the bathroom in a towel a few minutes later, followed by a whirl of steam and a lingering scent of shampoo, he finds Greg standing in the hallway watching him.
He makes himself smile cautiously. "Good morning," he says.
Greg angles himself away from the wall and puts his arms around Gil's neck. "Morning, yourself," he says into his damp shoulder.
Gil allows his arms to come up around him. "Sleep okay?" he asks, because he can't bring himself to push away just yet, can't bring himself to do what he knows is right. He has exactly two weaknesses, he knows; and one of them is hugging him tightly.
"One side of the bed was cold," Greg says, but he manages to inflect it without accusation.
"Yeah," Gil says, feels a hitch forming in the back of his throat. What's he supposed to say to that, to the carefully neutral way in which it was said?
He feels Greg kiss the side of his neck. "Tonight," he says, "come to bed with us. Please?"
He closes his eyes. "I love you, Greg," he says, squeezes him hard once and then lets go. He takes a step back, grabs the band of towel around his waist and tries to smile.
Greg's eyes are full of hurt and frustration.
Gil forces another smile onto his face. "You're all wet," he says.
"I've been wet before," Greg says, "I haven't melted yet."
"That's good."
They stare at each other for a bit.
"I should get-"
"Can I stay-"
They manage to grin at each other then, when their awkward words trip over each other and grind to a halt; it's a hollow grin, the grin that strangers give each other in elevators when their elbows bump in front of the buttons. It's not a grin that lovers share before they start their respective days.
Gil nods at Greg. "Go ahead," he says, hates the courtesy in his voice, knows it doesn't belong in this conversation but he can't get rid of it, either. All of a sudden this feels like acquaintances. Not family.
"Can I stay here today?" Greg asks.
Gil blinks. "Of course you can, Greg," he says. "This is your home, too."
Greg flushes. "Okay," he says, "I just wasn't sure anymore-"
Fuck. Gil pulls him in for another embrace, and kisses the side of his jaw. "This is home, Greg," he tells him. "This will always be home, as long as you want it to be."
This time, Greg pushes away, forces a smile on his lips and nods. "Okay," he says, and hooks a thumb back towards the master bedroom. "Gonna go back to bed."
Gil nods. "I've got to get dressed. Go to work. You know."
"Cool."
Gil waits a few minutes, shivering in the cool air of the hallway and the lingering wetness from the shower, before he follows Greg into the bedroom, where all of his clothes are. He glances over at the bed, where Greg has flopped onto his stomach with the blankets up around his ears, and turns back to his wardrobe.
Maybe, he thinks, it's time he moved some of his shirts into the other room. He pulls out a black button-up and looks at it, then sighs and takes down a pair of slacks to go with it.
He'll deal with it later. After work.
Tomorrow.