i. lundi: matin
ii. lundi: après-midi
iii. lundi: soirée (à la belle étoile)
iv. lundi: nuit
chansons
merci
Gus Knickel/Johnny Jóhannsson (Buried on Sunday/My Life as a Dog)
This is a sequel to Chansons de marin. Adult themes and slash: you’ve been warned. And, um, if you don’t know Gus or Johnny, don’t read this. It won’t make any sense, and there’s not enough sex to make it worth your while.
©2005 AuKestrel
Morning comes too soon for Gus: morning and Monday. He hits the alarm just as it goes off, before it can wake Johnny, stares at the ceiling for a long moment, sighs, and rolls out of bed to make coffee. He knows, from years of experience, that if he doesn’t get up immediately he won’t get up at all, much as he’d like to just roll over and bury his face (etc.) in Johnny and pretend morning is still far, far away.
Mondays, he concludes, staring grimly at the coffeepot as it begins to sputter and drip, were invented by people with no lives.
He has to quell his impatience, get a grip, and it would be easier if he were a patient man to begin with. But suddenly the prospect of more two- and three-hour meetings with politicians, with the people who killed Dexter, with people as unlike Johnny as it’s possible to be, fills him with distaste.
No, he decides, getting out the cream and sugar: revulsion is an even better word.
There’s a soft padding of feet and he looks up in time to see Johnny beside him, sliding his arms around Gus’ waist and kissing the back of his neck. “Mmm.”
Gus turns, feeling the beginning of a (reluctant) smile as this particular Monday begins to redeem itself. “Coffee?” he says, his turn this time to say it against Johnny’s mouth.
“Mmm,” Johnny says agreeably, threading his fingers into Gus’ hair and stroking it gently. The kiss that follows is just as gentle, slow and unhurried as Johnny, Gus is learning, and it’s with a sense of renewed wonder that he follows Johnny’s lead, lets Johnny set the pace.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says against Johnny’s hair when Johnny pushes his robe aside to nuzzle his neck, then his shoulder, and, really, he didn’t.
“Bed was cold.” Johnny’s voice starts out muffled as he raises his head, ending at Gus’ mouth again.
If he hadn’t known, he’d have guessed at this point that Johnny had been married from the assurance of his touch. Of course, the way he pulls Gus into his mood is, Gus assumes, something unique between them or Johnny’s dead wife wouldn’t actually be dead.
He wonders what her name was.
The mood-pulling isn’t, apparently, entirely foolproof, despite Johnny’s seemingly effortless good humour.
Johnny breaks the kiss, lingering at the corner of Gus’ mouth for a delicious moment. “What’s the schedule today?”
Gus frowns reflexively. “Meetings,” he says, his voice not much more than a growl. “Ours, then theirs. Going over drafts.”
He’s startled when Johnny grins big, clearly suppressing laughter.
“What?”
“You’re not a morning person,” Johnny says, cupping a hand along Gus’ jaw, smoothing his thumb over Gus’ chin. “Why don’t you go back to bed? I’ll bring coffee.”
Gus stares at him a moment, emotions chaotic, thoughts jumbled: but uppermost is that same sense of wonder he’s been feeling so regularly since he met Johnny that the real wonder is he’s not already used to it.
“Cream, no sugar,” he says at last: it’s not that he craves novelty, exactly, but it’s never something to be passed up.
Johnny kisses him again, lightly, and turns him by the shoulders, giving him a little push.
Gus doesn’t mean to doze off, he really doesn’t: while the first meeting isn’t until 10:30, he and Noelle made cursory plans to meet beforehand, and at the time he assumed it would be for breakfast.
But the next thing he knows is the scent of coffee and toasted bread: Johnny found the bagels. He looks at the clock in alarm but it’s only been twenty minutes.
He could get used to this.
He stretches; Johnny sets the mug and plate down on the nightstand and sits, one leg tucked under him, at the foot of the bed, holding his own mug and making no attempt to drink from it yet.
He takes his black: Gus wonders if sugar’s involved.
He stretches again, then pulls himself up, sitting cross-legged and balancing the plate in his lap.
For a morning person – which Johnny appears to be – he’s a considerate one, making no attempt at conversation, staring into his own coffee for long moments, looking at Gus occasionally with a smile Gus isn’t even sure Johnny’s aware is on his face. By the time Gus is halfway through his own mug, his outlook on life has improved considerably, and not just because Johnny, sleep-tousled and bundled askew in his robe, is a wonderful sight.
Gus drains his mug decisively and puts the plate with the half eaten bagel on the nightstand, along with the mug. Johnny starts to smile, the smile growing broader as Gus takes his mug too. His eyes widen in alarm and he puts up a hand as Gus puts it to his lips.
“Jesus!” Gus sputters, the warning too late, and Johnny begins to laugh.
“Amma always said it’s not coffee unless the spoon stands up,” he says apologetically, taking the mug back from Gus and leaning in to kiss him gently, as if to take away the taste.
“Are you sure the spoon didn’t just dissolve?” Gus asks, but at least his question is answered. He’s not sure, however, that he could ever brew coffee that strong: Johnny’ll have to take over the coffee making.
And doesn’t that have a nice ring to it.
He takes the mug a second time, holding it gingerly just to hear Johnny snort again, and by the time he’s turned back, Johnny’s leaning over him, pushing him back and loosening the tie on his robe.
The coffee tastes a lot better on Johnny.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Despite the coffee, and despite Gus’ near-miss – Johnny wonders what Gus would say to kúmenkaffi – Johnny’s cock has been getting heavier and heavier just imagining the feel of Gus up against him.
One track mind?
Yeah.
By the time Gus is turning back to Johnny, Johnny’s already over him, untying his robe, pushing it aside. He’s been catching glimpses of Gus’ cock, hanging soft against the dark hair between his legs, and he wants to see more, see it begin to fill, see (and hear) Gus moan, yeah, just like that when Johnny draws a finger down his breastbone to his belly, Gus arching beneath him, supple and lithe.
He knows he’s not much for figuring things out, months in the caboose notwithstanding, but while he was making coffee (and boiling coffee and finding bagels and trying to keep his mind off Gus, naked, for just a few minutes) it had occurred to him to wonder why it was so natural for him to lean in and kiss another man, why the prospect of going down on Gus was at least as hot, if not more so, than going down on Zoë, and maybe even why he was contemplating taking any of it (all of it?) further (maybe even all the way).
He wondered, too, watching the coffee boil in the microwave (Zoë, being from Winnipeg, had never acquired a tolerance for the Icelandic-style brew that was the norm in Gimli, so Johnny’d learned some adaptations early on – regular coffee, boiled, was pretty good, but a microwave would do in a pinch, and if he was staying more than a few more hours in Ottawa he was going to have to find some real coffee), what it would feel like to be inside another guy, what it would feel like to have Gus inside him, and when, exactly, he’d gone crazy.
And would Gus really feel like going cross-Canada with him after a few days, or weeks?
And if he did, could he?
Johnny was (finally) getting the idea that Gus was pretty important, or was, at least, involved in things more important than fishing rights or mayoring.
So assuming Gus didn’t follow in Zoë’s footsteps, and assuming he still wanted to go, and assuming he could actually go, what then?
The microwave had beeped again, steam condensing in the window; he’d pushed the questions aside and put the bagel halves in the toaster.
Which brought him to here and now with Gus under him and Johnny with questions and no answers except the feel of Gus’ cock sliding alongside his and the rich scent and taste of Gus and coffee and bagels surrounding Johnny every time he breathes.
Gus, lower lip caught (again) in his teeth, has his eyes closed, concentrating, or so it seems to Johnny, on the sensation. Johnny imitates him, closing his eyes and thinking of the heat between his legs, the strength of Gus’ cock, pushing back against his, the graze of hair at the base of his cock, his balls…
Oh, yeah…
There’s a hitch in Gus’ breathing: he opens his eyes and Gus is looking at him the way he looked in the Thai restaurant. Johnny closes his eyes again, overwhelmed, his stomach flipping the way it does when he hits a big wave with the boat.
“Sit up,” Gus whispers, hands on Johnny’s shoulders, pushing the robe off and him backwards at the same time.
Johnny takes a breath, settles back on his haunches, opens his eyes again.
Gus is still looking at him, his hands rubbing Johnny’s arms, gentle enough to raise goose bumps, and Johnny feels the hair prickle all the way up his spine to the base of his scalp. He swallows, riding the warm rush that follows, rubbing both hands on Gus’ chest, then down his belly to where Gus’ cock is pulsing…
Gus groans, straining under him, when Johnny rubs the wet spot on his belly into his skin, and when Johnny lifts his fingers to his mouth to taste that, too, Gus moans, a deep sound that vibrates through both of them. “Touch us,” he whispers, “touch me, God, Johnny –“
Johnny just nods, licking the last of the salt from his fingers, then reaching down to gather first Gus, then himself, into the loose circle of his hand. Gus bucks hard but Johnny settles further, onto his heels, and begins to move, exploring them, feeling the two of them together, the way first Gus’ foreskin slips back, then his, twisting his wrist to see if he can make them go the other way.
Gus is strong, so strong under his hand, so alive that Johnny thinks he can feel Gus’ heartbeat, or maybe he’s just hearing his own, thudding in his ears. Gus’ cock is straining against his and Gus is trying to move them both faster, his hips jerking, one hand grasping Johnny’s hip.
His stomach flips again: he’s doing this to Gus, him, and there’s no pretending there, nothing to hide, no way to hide it. Unconsciously he grinds down, then realizes that’s good, that’s it, his balls hitting the root of Gus’ cock and making Gus shudder, jerking against him. He does it again, letting go of himself and still working Gus, slick-shiny and wet; and Johnny licks his lips, swallowing hard.
But it’s too late: Gus shudders again, fingers digging into Johnny’s thighs, back arched, and Johnny can’t tear his eyes away but doesn’t know where to look: Gus’ cock, thick and proud and wet, jerking in his hand and spurting rich cream, gold and ivory in the lamplight; Gus’ face, eyes shut tight, mouth held tight in ecstasy.
Johnny’s never felt this power before, never held someone’s… ecstasy in his hand, never seen what he was doing, what he could do…
The idea of fucking Gus, fucking Gus and holding Gus’ cock again while he comes, with Johnny inside him, is suddenly so real Johnny can almost feel it, wishes he could feel it, feel all of it, and when Gus’ hand, warm and wet, closes over Johnny’s cock, it’s like Gus read his mind. One stroke, two, and Johnny’s spurting too, all over Gus’ belly and chest, Gus’ strong fingers pulling it out of him, Gus’ voice a dark murmuring heartbeat in the back of Johnny’s head: “That’s it, come for me, come on me, God, Johnny…”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Johnny’s nuzzling Gus’ neck, hardly moving from where he’d slumped on Gus afterwards, chest to chest; and Gus can feel their heartbeats synching. He’s murmuring too, nonsense noises, Gus thinks, and he finds the energy somewhere to raise a hand, cup the back of Johnny’s head, stroke his hair, rub his thumb through the soft bristles behind Johnny’s ear where the hair’s trimmed close to the scalp.
He feels Johnny’s tongue on his neck, licking gently, then sucking, as if Johnny can’t get enough of the taste of him.
Gus understands.
“Been thinking,” Johnny whispers after a while, his breath warm and cool in turns. His hand, spread flat on Gus’ chest, is rubbing softly, almost as if Johnny doesn’t know he’s doing it.
Gus has always thought of himself as a loner, an introvert, and in support of that theory, there were many times he felt crowded by Noelle – and she wasn’t the first of his lovers to engender that feeling.
How is it that with nothing at all between them he feels nothing but peace with Johnny?
He waits, almost daring his brain to come to its senses, conjure the discomfort, the near-panic he’d feel sometimes when Noelle would collapse on him afterwards and he would have to think of an excuse to move, to roll over, anything, just so he could breathe air that was free of her.
His brain doesn’t cooperate; his body, entwined with Johnny’s, is too comfortable, and Johnny…
Maybe the difference is the lack of expectation, or the relaxation Johnny seems to feel, or maybe it’s the fact that Johnny’s so transparent, so awed, so delighted, and so unable to hide anything that Gus is… secure – perhaps for the first time he can remember – and as certain as he can be that there is in fact nothing to hide, that Johnny wouldn’t know a hidden agenda from a lobster pot.
He puts his other arm around Johnny and turns his head to kiss Johnny’s temple and feels Johnny’s mouth stretch into a smile against his neck.
“Thinking’s good,” Gus whispers finally, because he hasn’t acknowledged Johnny’s words, too busy luxuriating in Johnny’s presence.
“Mmmm,” Johnny says agreeably, and burrows down further against Gus’ neck.
“Thinking?” Gus says, smoothing Johnny’s shoulder with his thumb, idly wondering about the significance (if there is one) of the tattoo there.
Johnny laughs, a sharp uncomfortable gust, and shakes his head. “Nothing,” he murmurs. “Never mind.”
Gus kicks himself, hard – didn’t he say he had to stop comparing them? – and twists to kiss Johnny’s cheek, running his hands down the long muscles in Johnny’s back. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I was wool-gathering. I feel so good I can’t think straight.”
There’s a quiet chuckle against his neck and then Johnny nods. “I get that,” he whispers, and then Gus feels tongue again.
No real reason, he thinks hazily, that they couldn’t just stay in bed all day.
He wonders if Noelle would buy a sudden cold. The flu. Malaria.
Johnny sighs, startling Gus; when he rolls to one side, Gus grabs his elbow. “Where’re you going?”
Johnny looks surprised but not guilty: “Thought I might be making you late,” he says, one side of his mouth lifting, adding an extra dimension to the husky cadence of his voice. His eyes move down Gus’ chest and his hand lifts, again unconsciously, Gus suspects, touching the remnants of the semen that smeared between them.
“I’d tell you,” Gus says quietly, covering Johnny’s hand with his own. He wants to tell Johnny he won’t – wouldn’t – play games with him, either, and he thinks he means it, but he can’t put the words together.
Johnny raises his eyes to Gus’ again and he turns his hand in Gus’, clasping it, while he leans in. Gus leans up, meeting him halfway, and he has to admit that Johnny’s tactile nature is more appealing to him than he’d have ever thought.
Just as Gus is about to suggest a shower, the phone chooses that inopportune moment to ring. He grimaces at Johnny, who begins to move away, and Gus captures his wrist with one hand, pushing his thumb up to Johnny’s palm, while he answers with the other.
He doesn’t know why he wants Johnny to stay; he doesn’t know what he thinks will happen if Johnny, say, goes into the bathroom without him – turn into a cat and leap out the window, seven storeys down?
But, again, Johnny doesn’t seem to mind, covering Gus’ hand with his own and raising it to his mouth, brushing across Gus’ knuckles with his lips.
It takes Gus a few seconds to remember he’s holding the phone.
“Mon cher amour!” Noelle’s cheerfulness has a forced quality: yesterday could he have discerned that? Would he have cared? “Are we meeting for petit dejeuner?”
“No,” Gus says lazily, smiling at Johnny. “I’ll meet you at your office.”
“Very well,” and he can almost hear the clicking as she rearranges her schedule. “About dinner tonight –”
“No can do,” Gus says firmly. “I already told you –”
“Auguste, you cannot behave in this way, I have told you already –”
“I ran into a friend who’s staying with me for a few days,” Gus interrupts. There’s a long silence while Noelle digests that. He adds the detail she’s waiting for next, feeling benevolent: “He’s heading to Montréal and I thought I’d go up with him.” When they first began discussing the possibility of confederation, Noelle had an attractive assistant who was gone the next time Gus came to Ottawa.
Since then Gus has been careful not to notice Noelle’s assistants.
“But what about the referendum?” Her voice is lifting, a sure sign he’s caught her off guard and she’s now feeling her way: she was expecting the friend to be a ‘she’ and hasn’t regained her footing.
“We need to get through the negotiations first,” Gus says, finally taking pity on her. “How about if I meet you at nine-thirty?” He can’t blame her for not trusting anyone, even him, although he’s wondered more than once exactly whom she thinks he could find to do what she does, especially at this late date.
“And dinner?”
“Not tonight,” Gus says again. “If they want semi-formal, the negotiations should be over, and preferably the referendum. If they want casual, we can do tomorrow night.”
“I will have Sylvie arrange it,” Noelle says, conceding without any particular animosity in her voice; and that’s another advantage, that they were together long enough that she understands what ‘no’ means to Gus. “Half past nine, then, and all of us after lunch, do not forget.”
“No,” Gus says wryly, more to himself than to her, and he cuts off her cheerful “’voir!” by hanging up.
“You were right,” Johnny says, before Gus can speak. “She doesn’t sound like it’s over.”
“It’s been over for years,” and Gus pulls Johnny back against him, wrapping both arms around him. “She’s just the… possessive type. At least when I’m around.” He wills Johnny to understand, and if there is a God he’d thank him (or her) that he at least paved the way for Noelle’s incursion. “Believe me, before all this, I was on the Christmas card list and that was the end of it.”
Johnny reaches up for Gus’ arms, but not to push them away: instead his fingers curl, holding onto Gus like Gus is the safety bar in an amusement park. He doesn’t laugh, or even grin, as far as Gus can see, but he’s relaxed against Gus. “Are you possessive?” Gus says, more to lighten the mood than anything, that and searching for a clue to what Johnny’s thinking: for someone so transparent, Johnny’s startlingly opaque this morning… or perhaps it’s the subject.
There’s a long silence, but Johnny’s not tense under him, and he’s rubbing Gus’ arm with his thumb. “I don’t think so,” he says finally, sounding thoughtful. “I mean, not… probably not afterwards. I don’t really… I don’t know.” He laughs, a small sound in the silence that’s suddenly too big, and says, “During, uh… yeah. I think so.”
Johnny’s dead wife is rapidly becoming a fixation with him, Gus realizes, and not an entirely healthy one. He wishes to hell he knew what her name was, and that’s pre-Biblical, isn’t it: knowing your enemy’s name gives you power.
“I don’t think we’d be human if we weren’t possessive during,” Gus says quietly, and Johnny, who’d tensed up after all, at the end, relaxes again after a few seconds.
Gus is now certain that Johnny’s dead wife was probably the first, the only serious relationship in Johnny’s life, which would explain a lot; and the other thing that’s not fucking fair is that he has to drag out the pastoral marriage counseling for a fucking ghost.
“Are you?” Johnny asks after a few more moments, and it takes Gus a few seconds to realize what Johnny’s asking.
“Very,” he says, somewhat thickly, pressing his mouth against Johnny’s cheekbone, licking just a little. Johnny’s cheek lifts beneath his lips, the now-familiar grin, and Johnny twists around in his arms, pushing Gus back against the pillows.
“Okay, yeah,” Johnny whispers against Gus’ mouth, “me too.”
And there, again, is the diffidence Gus wishes he could banish even while he’s trying to tell himself that the Johnny in his arms is the sum, the product, of his life, and that, if that dead woman wasn’t between them, he might not feel this way about Johnny, and that Johnny damn well wouldn’t be the Johnny rolling over with him, the Johnny spreading his legs (again!) beneath him, the Johnny moaning, so fucking eager, into his mouth. That Johnny wouldn’t, couldn’t be this Johnny, a Johnny, Gus is willing to bet, who’s never had a decent blowjob in his life, a Johnny who probably had safe, normal, sane sex, once or twice a month, with a safe, normal, sane woman who didn’t have the sense to appreciate this Johnny, writhing beneath him now and gasping for breath, hands in Gus’ hair and hips moving urgently under the ministrations of Gus’ tongue, and lips, and hands, and mouth.
Just the way Johnny gets off, so fast, so surprised, tells Gus more than Johnny will ever know, and this time he draws it out as much as he can, deliberately loosing Johnny’s cock at the penultimate second, deliberately licking the crease at Johnny’s hip, deliberately tickling him just enough to back him down.
Johnny’s breath is coming in gasps now, and Gus has to breathe, himself, because truth to tell it’s been a long time (if ever) since he got off like this, almost coming, himself, just from watching/feeling Johnny come, especially when Johnny comes without even being touched…
Johnny’s skin is moist, a fresh clean sweat breaking out all over him, and Gus recognizes the signs of irrevocability. He reacts fast, grabbing Johnny’s cock with one hand, pushing Johnny’s pelvis up with the other, his tongue and his thumb hitting Johnny’s hole simultaneously, and Johnny seizes up, choking Gus’ name and thrashing, hands pulling at the sheets, while Gus thrusts his tongue as far in as he can, in time with Johnny’s cock, pulsing in his hand.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It’s not that Johnny didn’t believe Gus, because it’s clear, even from the way Gus wouldn’t let him leave, the way Gus didn’t want privacy for a phone call, that it’s over. And if she can’t quite let go, well, it’s also pretty clear that Johnny can just fucking get in line, because he understands that only too well, still wanting to hang onto Gus with both hands.
So he does, leaning back against Gus, warm and strong behind him, warm and strong around him, his arms as tough as Johnny’s, still a fisherman’s arms for all the dinners (“not tonight” in a tone that sent a thrill up Johnny’s spine) and confederations and important meetings.
But when Gus asks if he’s possessive, he has to think, and think hard: it’s the kind of question that’s a test, and chances are good, even if it’s multiple choice, the answer will not be, never is, D, all of the above. If it’s an essay question, just forget it and start with the make-up credit right away.
Or it could be that Gus was just making conversation, because a few seconds after Johnny’s less-than-quick response and more-than-lame question, Gus doesn’t mince words: “Very.”
Yeah, okay, if he came ho – if he came back to the hotel room and Gus was writhing on the bed with someone, say, tonight, no, he would not be all open-minded and he would not shrug it off, because he’s the one Gus should be writhing on the bed with if that’s what he wants to do, because Johnny was here… okay, not first, but now, and possession is nine-tenths of the law, which was why Zoë left in the first, or second, place.
He pushes her out of his head, pushing himself around at the same time he feels Gus’ lips on his cheek, leaning up and in, pushing Gus down and over, because if it’s okay to be possessive with Gus, he might as well be possessive and enjoy the hell out of it.
And it’s okay to use lips and tongue and teeth on Gus where he never would have thought to, or dared, before, and it’s okay to let Gus take control, too, roll him over and push his legs apart; in fact, it’s so much better than okay that Johnny has to try hard not to come already.
Maybe, he thinks hazily, maybe it’s just that it’s been so long since he had sex that he forgot how good it was; or maybe – he has to find that thought again after Gus licks his way down Johnny’s chest, like an arrow, straight to his cock – or maybe it’s just that he never had sex with a guy or maybe – maybe Gus is sucking his cock, tongue and lips and hands and a throaty moan around him that Johnny’s never heard before, a moan that says Gus gets off on giving Johnny head as much, okay, almost as much as Johnny’s about to –
Gus’ mouth is gone, gone gone gone, and Johnny pounds the mattress, tossing his head back, and then Gus is back, his breath warm on Johnny’s thigh, his tongue moving there just enough to tickle but not so much Johnny loses it.
He tries not to laugh, chokes on it anyway when he feels Gus’ breath on the base of his cock, warm on his balls, and he’s drawn up so fucking tight he can’t breathe–
And then Gus’ hand is on his cock and his tongue –
Christ almighty, his tongue is up Johnny’s ass again, and about the only thing better than the second time is knowing that there’s obviously going to be a third, and a fourth, and a fifth time, and he’s coming so hard his toes hurt, Gus’ tongue pushing, Gus’ hand pulling and there’s nothing but stars in the darkness.
The other best part about sex with Gus, Johnny thinks hazily, when he can think, is that Gus understands the point: even while Johnny’s blissed out, Gus is on top of him (again), rocking against him, ass flexing under Johnny’s hands, voice rough and broken and hot – ‘fuck you’ and ‘so good’ and ‘God, take it, take it, Johnny…’ – and it’s almost as good as coming again when Gus braces himself, hands digging into Johnny’s hips, and then flings his head back, baring his throat in a way that begs for Johnny’s mouth, collapsing on Johnny a few seconds later, his words a warm velvet whisper against Johnny’s neck.
And maybe they just saved time not saving time, because Gus showers with him, casual and naked, shaves, naked and casual, and when he catches Johnny watching him, in the mirror, he winks and leans in to rinse.
And he’s just as casual, just as accepting, when Johnny crosses the bathroom in two strides and pulls Gus back against him, nipping his shoulder and enjoying the hell out of the way Gus fits against him, the way Gus’ ass feels against his cock, the way Gus feels against him, skin to skin.
“It’s good,” he whispers, and his voice sounds ragged even to himself, but when Gus turns in his arms, whispering back that, yeah, it’s all good, it’s so good, his voice sounds ragged too.
“It’s going to be a long damn day,” Gus says, his voice warm, intimate, his lips finding that spot behind Johnny’s ear again. “Hope I don’t give away our fishing rights all over again because all I can think about is you.”
And when Johnny pulls away, unsure, Gus grins and pulls him back. “And it’d be worth it, Johnny, I promise you.”
Johnny tries to match Gus’ grin, but every once in a while that panic comes back, what’s he doing, what’s he doing here, and what’s he gotten himself – and maybe Gus – into?
“Worth it,” Gus says again, voice deepening, sliding a leg between Johnny’s. “Worth it, Johnny, just to think about your face when you –“
Johnny feels his skin heating and stops Gus’ words with his finger, then his lips, and Gus probably gets a kick out of Johnny’s… lack of experience, and, fair’s fair, Johnny gets a kick out of the idea of Gus watching him –
“Shit,” he says, pushing Gus away, “I am making you late, and –“
“I’m choosing to be late,” Gus says, and he’s got a sparkle in his eye that nearly kills Johnny. “Look, truce?” He holds his hands up, palms towards Johnny. “I’ll get dressed, you’ll get dressed, maybe I’ll make it out the door without undressing you all over again, and maybe I won’t, but either way I’m happy.” His grin is so… infectious that Johnny can’t resist grinning back, letting himself relax too. He’s not used to it being so… well, uncomplicated; and how much of that is Gus and how much of that is because they just met?
Gus, apparently deciding that Johnny’s also happy either way, is rummaging in a drawer.
Johnny’s never met anyone who actually unpacked in an hotel room before.
His own bag’s still by the door, and he’s not too surprised when Gus says, after he dumps it on the luggage rack, “Plenty of drawers, Johnny.”
He shrugs, finding his underwear and a clean pair of jeans, and says, “Nothing fancy in here.” Gus, who’s pulling on a tank top kind of undershirt that Johnny thought only old guys wore, shrugs back, and Johnny has to remember “late” and “meeting” so he can tear his eyes away and pull his pants up the rest of the way.
When he turns again, anything he’d thought of saying dies on his lips: Gus is putting on a clerical collar, reaching up to fasten it in the back with an ease that Johnny can tell is not just instinctive but practiced.
He stares, and stares more – Gus is pulling on an open-necked shirt over it, then shrugging into a suit jacket, and the collar – wider, thank God, than a Catholic collar, although Johnny’s not sure just now what difference it makes, because…
…a priest is a priest, representative of God, and what is a priest doing – doing here, in bed with – in bed with him, with a guy and what the hell was Gus thinking, what the hell is Gus thinking, and why –
When he was ten, his Sunday school teacher had been the simple type, getting them ready for confirmation probably needed the simple approach, so she’d been all about following the rules even if you didn’t understand them because they were there for reasons human beings couldn’t know but God did and –
Playing by the rules all his life and he thought for the past few days, maybe even months, that maybe he didn’t always have to, but damn it all to hell, damn him to hell, he did because this – this – is what happens when he doesn’t, there’s a reason for marriage and sex outside marriage is…
Johnny sinks to the bed, his fingers digging into the sheets, and then he realizes where he is, where they were, what they did, and jumps up as if the sheets were on fire. He looks around, anywhere but at Gus – the bathroom, the tiny kitchen, the couch – and there’s nothing, nowhere that they haven’t, that he hasn’t –
“Johnny,” Gus says, and his smile fading, like he’s been smiling for longer than Johnny knows, and he’s been saying Johnny’s name more than once. Then Gus’ hand is reaching for him, fingers spread, and Johnny jerks back, shaking his head, because it was bad enough before but now –
“Johnny,” Gus says again, insistent. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was an –”
“You’re a priest,” Johnny says, trying not to choke on the word, trying to stay calm. “You’re a – a – oh, my God, Pastor would – ”
Faded blue eyes, kind enough in a lined, sunworn face but there was never, never any question where Pastor stood on the question of Heaven or Hell, and there was never any question of faith, or the Bible, or…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Gus has to think fast, fast and hard: it’s not that Johnny’s opposed to sex between men, clearly, but…
“I’m Anglican,” he says quietly. “Not Lutheran, Johnny.”
“Does that even make a difference?” Johnny asks, and he sounds so incredulous that Gus has to stop himself from smiling.
“Yes,” he says, as quietly as before. “Yes, it does, Johnny.”
“How? It’s the same God, isn’t it? It’s the same rules, the same, uh –”
“Possibly,” Gus says. “Possibly not. It rather depends on one’s point of view; otherwise there wouldn’t be Anglicans, or Lutherans, or Baptists. Or Catholics, for that matter.”
“But you – but we – you’re –”
There are different kinds of sins, different degrees of sin, he wants to say, and, really, the concept of sin is pointless unless someone actually buys into it.
But… Johnny’s spent his whole life not questioning that life, at least until three years ago; and not questioning himself, not until two nights ago, anyway, or maybe a little before that, maybe when he decided to go on this – this adventure; and certainly it’s never occurred to Johnny, as uncomplicated, even… innocent as he is, to question the tenets of his faith, whether he believes them or not. And belief, while it can follow hard on the heels of questioning, is better left to, and practiced by, those who don’t question.
Gus has often thought he’d make a better Jesuit than almost anything else, but then there’d be that vow of chastity…
And he’s twenty-one, suddenly, and it’s late at night in a smoke-filled pub and they’d filled hours playing darts and discussing nothing more than original sin and what it really meant, with forays into Sumerian mythology and the Gnostic gospels, and while Gus sometimes misses the simple faith he’d had then, he doesn’t miss the man – the boy, really – he was.
“What we did, it’s – don’t you think it’s wrong?” Johnny is saying, more earnest, Gus believes, than Gus himself ever was.
There’s a pain in Gus’ heart; and he wishes – “No,” he says quietly, decisively, gathering Johnny’s hands in his; and Johnny (thankfully) doesn’t resist, not physically.
“But–”
“I believe it’s sacred,” Gus says, more firmly still, tightening his fingers around Johnny’s.
“Sex? Sex is – is sacred? That’s –” Johnny breaks off, shaking his head.
Probably not the time, Gus thinks, to bring up the Great Marriage; and he shakes his head too. “What we do, what we’ve done, is sacred,” Gus says, whispers rather. “We’re not hurting anyone, and the reason – the reasons we do it, those reasons are here –” he touches Johnny’s head, “and here,” and he touches Johnny’s chest, where his heart is beating fast enough, hard enough that Gus can see the pulse in Johnny’s throat. “If you believe God gave you free will, if you believe you have the ability to know the difference between right and wrong, what is wrong here? What between us is wrong, Johnny?”
Johnny’s eyes are overbright: Gus smoothes his thumb across an eyebrow, feeling moisture there and wiping it away.
“I don’t… I don’t know,” Johnny says, and although he’s confused, he’s also pulling Gus’ hand towards his mouth. “I don’t… between us, no, but – anyone can say that, anyone can believe that, it’s got to – that’s why there are –”
“I’m not talking about adultery,” Gus says firmly, choosing the word deliberately, and Johnny’s quick intake of breath tells him he hit home; and he turns his hand so his palm is resting against Johnny’s cheek, so he can hold Johnny in even this small way. “Or murder, or coveting what is my neighbour’s, Johnny. Between us, you and me, what sin have we committed? What commandment have we broken, you and I? If you believe in absolute moral laws, that is.”
“Don’t – don’t you?” Johnny’s voice is so quiet Gus has to strain to hear him.
“Yes,” Gus says, trying not to remember echoes of a conversation with Noelle, too similar and yet so different – “and no.”
“You – you’re not like- you’re not like anyone I’ve ever met,” Johnny whispers. “Any minister, or, um, priest, or – or anyone…”
“Neither are you,” Gus murmurs, but Johnny’s not listening.
“But doesn’t it – doesn’t it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” and Gus gives up and pulls Johnny close, holding him tight, giving him what he wishes he could have given – “of course it matters: what we do, how we treat each other. ‘And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.’”
Johnny turns his head, holding Gus almost as tightly – “But… spiritual righteousness and…” and he seems to give up too, or perhaps give in, suddenly lowering his head to rest in the curve of Gus’ neck. “And – salvation only through the grace of, uh, God, so…”
“What do you believe, Johnny?” Gus spreads one hand wide on the other side of Johnny’s head, holding him close; and the close-cropped hair above Johnny’s ear is prickly-soft against Gus’ lips. He closes his eyes, holding Johnny… for dear life; and he whispers, “What do you believe? That’s what matters here… not me, or my collar, or whether sex is a sacrament.”
Johnny chokes, and it takes Gus one terrified moment to realize that he’s actually laughing. He leans back, pulling Johnny’s face up to his with a hand under his chin. Johnny’s still grinning, and Gus feels an answering grin on his own face, the tension suddenly shattered, gone as if it had never been there. “It might have made Christianity more popular,” he says, and Johnny starts laughing again.
“Definitely would have made church more popular. And, uh, catechism.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Catechism aside, and, yeah, it would be funny to add Grade 7 sex ed in, but Johnny’s never really had to think about what he believes, aside from the usual, where God’s in heaven and the Devil’s in hell and good and faithful people go to one and bad and unrighteous people go to the other.
What makes good good? It’s a question he’s never thought of before now. And as for what he believes…
Well, two days ago he’d probably have had more answers than he has now. Three years ago, more than that, even.
Right now…
“Why?” he asks Gus, finally looking at him, looking past the collar for the first time. “Seriously, I mean –”
“Johnny,” and Gus isn’t smiling either, “always. I will always take you seriously.” And despite the fact he’s still wearing that collar, Johnny closes his eyes and leans into the kiss that follows, trying to ignore the fact that he’s – that they’re – men, that Gus is, uh, Christ’s representative on earth, that – that if you don’t have faith it’s a sin to brush your teeth–
God forgive him, he can’t ignore how Gus makes him feel, all over, inside and out – even inside out.
Gus pulls back, looking at him, then holding Johnny’s face in his hands the way he did before, when Johnny came back to the hotel. “It’s a lot to digest,” Gus is saying, his voice gentle and warm.
Yeah.
“Yeah,” he says slowly, his hand curving around Gus’ wrist even though he’s not sure he should, or that he should want to touch him.
But really, seriously, if it’s wrong it’s wrong, whether Gus is a – a priest, or whatever Anglicans are or – or not, and if it’s not wrong –
“I’m not sure,” he says finally, looking at Gus again. “Not right now.”
“I know,” Gus says quickly, nodding in case Johnny didn’t get it, and Johnny feels his heart swelling again, and if someone walked in and told him they’d just proven the earth was flat it would probably be a good time for him to buy even that. “I didn’t mean tell me right now what you believe, Johnny, or even tell me at all, ever. I meant, I mean, that the important thing, really, is what you believe. The rest is immaterial.”
From the other room, where it’s been sitting on the kitchen counter, Johnny’s cell phone buzzes, and there’s so little noise, just the two of them looking at each other, breathing, that it sounds unnaturally loud.
Gus squeezes his hand and lets him go, and Johnny makes it to the counter in time to see Lars’ name flashing.
He has stop and remember who Lars is.
The phone call is short, thank God – no one got lost or even in trouble at the Hockey Hall of Fame, and only Chase threw up on the bus. They’re leaving Toronto in about a half hour and he just wanted to touch base, make sure Johnny was okay, and is he in Montreal yet?
“No,” Johnny says, trying not to stutter, “still here, stuff – stuff I had to do, I mean, things I had to see,” and, no, this isn’t going well at all. There’s some yelling in the background, however, so with any luck Lars doesn’t notice. He asks if Johnny’s heard from Eric, which he hasn’t, come to think of it, and then says he has to go, sorry, he’ll call later.
Gus leaves a few minutes after nine, after a few words between them, one quick kiss that’s too much and still not enough, and apparently not in the least worried about being late. Johnny’s willing to bet he’ll walk, too, and not bother with a taxi.
He spends a few minutes looking at the tourist brochures on the desk, trying to keep his head in the here and now, trying not to think about what he believes, because he knows the harder he thinks about it, the longer he thinks about it, the less he’ll figure out.
Of course, he never did think much about the future until Zoë… and even then not enough.
He decides to strike out for the part of downtown he hasn’t seen: he’d done Parliament the day he ended up at the canal, ended up meeting Gus, ended up…
Ottawa’s nothing like Winnipeg, with its old streets, narrow, some still cobbled, and cars parked wherever they can seem to nose in. The further he gets from the hotel and the canal, the less touristy it seems to be, and he wonders if this is what cities in Europe are like.
He’ll see those one day too. After he sees Canada.
He remembers Eric hasn’t called yet and then wonders what Eric will make of Gus, and vice versa, then remembers ‘today’ and ‘now.’ He’s repeating it to himself, under his breath, when the smell of coffee hits him. It’s real coffee, so it’s like someone broke a stick over his head, and it doesn’t take him more than a half a minute to track it to its source: a Scandinavian shop, big warm sweaters hanging in the windows, small painted horses displayed on shelves, probably for the tourists but definitely one of those ‘off the beaten path’ deals.
When the plump blonde woman behind the counter looks up and sees Johnny, her eyes narrow briefly and then she smiles big.
“Coffee?” Johnny says, but she is already moving from behind the counter. “How’d you know –”
“You look like you haven’t had a decent cup in weeks,” she says warmly, pressing a cup into his hands, pushing him into a chair by the table with the pot. “Hvaðan ertu? Ísland?”
“No,” Johnny says, confused and happy, taking a sip and burning his tongue, but he doesn’t care because he hasn’t had a coffee like this since the last time Auntie Auntie made breakfast for him and Eric, the week before they both left. “Gimli.”
“Ah, Western Iceland,” she says, nodding. “I live here half the year and Ísland half the year. But no one here makes good coffee.”
Johnny’s breathing in the steam and the scent. “You don’t sell it then,” he says disjointedly, remembering his quest only after her words sink in.
“I make it,” she says, winking at him. “I buy it from a place I will tell you and I roast it some more.”
“I need to make it too,” Johnny says eagerly. “I’m – I’ll be camping and I can roast the beans too, but –”
She laughs, her eyes sparkling. “You can boil it, the way our ancestors did, or the place I will tell you, it has these for the stove,” and she holds up the small pot, which Johnny suddenly sees is electric.
He ends up buying a sweater, in greys with black and white, from her – he has five or six at home but then it occurs to him that Gus might like one, or at least find it useful, because there’s not much to choose, as far as he’s ever heard, between the climate in Canada and the climate in Iceland, and the ones he has at home like this are warm enough even for the prairie winters – and two mugs, with blue horses on them, because he likes the colours and he wants to remember her, this shop, and the – the normalcy it gave him for a few minutes when he needed normalcy, and, maybe, some perspective or… something.
And he ends up buying (too much) coffee at the place she sends him, a careful note on the back of one of her cards that the woman in the coffee shop smiles at. Johnny’s afraid for a few minutes he’s going to end up with stuff he can’t or doesn’t need to carry, but in the end it’s nothing but a little brass hand grinder, tall and thin, and a small stainless steel pot with two compartments, and an airtight plastic container for the beans. The woman shows him how everything works, even sets the grind on the hand grinder – mill, she calls it a mill – and runs a batch through the little pot just to show him, let him taste the coffee and see if it’s what he likes.
It’s a hell of a lot closer than microwaved filter coffee, but he doesn’t say that, just thanks her (too much, probably) and to prove, he guesses, that she knows her market, or maybe to seal the deal, she even gives him a package of caraway seeds.
He was always bigger on cardamom, himself, and Auntie Auntie used to tease him, when he was a kid, that he must have more Viking or Swede in his blood than the rest of them, but he takes the caraway anyway because – echoes in his head from this morning – it’s all good, isn’t it?
And why did he spend all those years making coffee for Zoë when he could have had this, his own coffee, all along, and she could have had hers? Maybe he wasn’t as much into win/win as he thinks he is, or thought he was, anyway, and maybe the lose/lose thing wasn’t all Zoë’s fault.
And why did none of this occur to him ten years ago? What is it about Gus that – that sends his mind spiraling in directions he never knew existed because he never thought they might?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It takes everything Gus has, and then some, to concentrate on Noelle and the lawyers, and when they take a break, it takes all his willpower not to phone Johnny, make sure he’s… make sure he’s okay, and, maybe, make sure he’s… coming back.
Which is ridiculous, on and off the face of it, because he knows Johnny, in some indefinable way, and he knows that, really, it’s he who wants (needs) Johnny’s presence, perhaps to assuage his own guilt – not that he set out deceive Johnny but he did, whether meant or not, and while last rites might conceivably be needed at a hockey game, he’d thought he was going to a curling match – and perhaps to reassure himself. And neither of these things is fair to Johnny, who needs time to sort things out.
He’s not sure if he’ll ever be to the point he was, once upon a time, when he believed in a benevolent, beneficent God interested in the affairs of men, but even so it’s hard to see Lars’ phone call as anything but fortunate: Johnny needed space and Gus, too close to the situation, wasn’t seeing it; and hearing about (he guessed) the mischief a bunch of boys could get up to had been enough to ground Johnny, enough that they could share a (very chaste) kiss, enough that they could speak of dinner, later, with nothing more than a betraying flush on Johnny’s part.
He’d ended up walking to Noelle’s office, an upscale job near Parliament: she’d obviously parlayed her own experience in Solomon Gundy to some political advantage, and while he waited for the lift – the stairs in the building, a new “architect-designed” job, were very inconveniently placed – it occurred to him, for the first time, really, to wonder how she’d gone from nothing to this and how much Dexter, or perhaps Nelson, had had to do with it.
It’d been clear that she and Dexter were close, friends if not mentor/protégé, and equally clear, if he’d cared, which at the time he hadn’t, that her studied surprise at the Belgian deal revelation had been somewhat… rehearsed. He knew, now, from looking back that Dexter had known, and had done his best, without betraying confidences, to rectify a situation he’d clearly seen as wrong; but Gus had also been sure, even then, that Dexter had told Noelle things he couldn’t, wouldn’t tell the islanders, not even Gus.
However, he was now starting to wonder why Noelle hadn’t told him about the Belgian deal: she was bound by no promises, and clearly no ethical concerns; and Dexter, who had a way of seeing all possible solutions to all possible situations very quickly, might have – probably did – tell Noelle for more than one reason.
He reminds himself that no, life’s not fair; but his inner irrationality retorts that Dexter should have had more time, and Gus, too, to get to know Dexter, to go beyond that instinctive and nearly instant bond they’d forged, to examine it and see what lay beneath it, and, hell, to just fucking enjoy it…
Water under the bridge, and Dexter would be dead either way (but not that way, that inner voice growls) and Gus… well, suffice it to say Gus is feeling less than conciliatory when he finally makes it to Noelle’s office; and they don’t accomplish much of anything in the way of strategy.
However, when the lawyers show up, people Gus can talk to without the baggage, the history, the new (and old) questions, he feels energized, and they seem to pick up on it. They hash out quite a few terribly dull clauses and come up with what Gus, at least, thinks are reasonable suggestions for the financing of the subsidies to absorb the costs of (re-)entering the Confederation.
Still, he’s relieved when the break – a real coffee break, with silver(plate) service and china cups brought in by Noelle’s definitely-not-attractive assistant whose name he pretends not to remember – is over and the temptation to call Johnny is definitively removed; and he takes his coffee black, on a whim, even though there’s no way it could approach the brew Johnny’d come up with… was that just this morning?
Lunch passes automatically, Gus only needing a quarter of his brain to get through it, part of the rest wondering what Johnny’s finding to do and whether Nelson will have the balls to show up this afternoon. In some ways he hopes so: Nelson’s always good for a distraction, if nothing else; and Gus thinks he’s probably gotten a concession or two just from the internecine warfare rife in the Cabinet that is, apparently, centred on (surprise!) Nelson. That Nelson survived the Solomon Gundy “debacle” is a testament, however, to how deeply he’s entrenched or, possibly, how deeply the bodies he knows about are buried.
After lunch, and at a loss for twenty minutes to fill, Gus finds a remote bathroom and jerks off, starting out savage but taking it easy on himself at the end, letting his brain fill with images, sensations even, of Johnny, Johnny and him; and when he comes, he feels only a little like crying and a lot (again) like finding a phone, seeing where Johnny is, how he is…
He’s washing his hands when the door opens and, of course, it’s Nelson, who smiles sardonically and raises an eyebrow. Gus breathes in deep, the smell of sex insensibly cheering him up – bringing to mind Johnny, he supposes, or perhaps the sea – and he grins back, winks, and leaves without giving Nelson a chance to voice any of the numerous sarcastic and condescending clichés that are invariably at his command.
The feeling of being (finally) back on his game, caring about what he’s doing and simultaneously being able to hide it from the Government, carries him well through the afternoon, and afterwards the lawyers seem cautiously optimistic: true, they’d made concessions but, again, the Government made more, some without seeming to realize it. Gus is too cognizant of how these things work to think for a moment that they didn’t in fact realize it but as long as the end result is as much autonomy for Solomon Gundy as he can manage, he doesn’t actually care why they conceded.
During the conversation with the lawyers – he supposes, for lack of a better word, that it’s a debriefing – Noelle interrupts to bring up dinner again, the next night, and Gus waves a hand at her: “Call me, Noelle; and nothing earlier than seven.” The head lawyer wrangles a commitment to a meeting the next day, but Gus is successful, at least, in arranging it for the early afternoon instead of the morning.
Because if Johnny has decided, or does decide, that all of it is good (or even any of it), Gus is going to give Johnny no chance to regret that decision any time soon.
He slings his coat over his shoulder and walks back to the hotel, too, trying to move back into the real world, preparing himself to give Johnny the time, the space, whatever it is that he needs; trying to remember, himself, the price of his own hard-gained wisdom and the care he has, needs to have, for Johnny, not just his heart, or his head, but his… soul.
With that said, however, he can’t deny the relief he feels when he hears the sound of the television as he’s pulling out his keycard: the sound of television, and then the sight of Johnny, lounging on the couch, and (oddly enough) the smell of coffee.
Nor can he deny the relief he feels at the smile that lights up Johnny’s face, even his eyes, when he sees Gus; and the more-than-relief he feels at the sight of Johnny untangling those legs, yes, just as long as Gus had imagined, to come to his feet (bare!), hitting the “off” button on the remote and still managing to meet Gus halfway across the room; and relief is simply not the right word to describe the feel of Johnny in his arms again, the taste of Johnny in his mouth again, the smell of Johnny-and-coffee around him again, like a blanket.
“Just in time,” Johnny’s saying, and the grin on his face is absolutely boyishly enchanting as he takes Gus by the hands, leading him to the couch.
“For what?” Gus says, laughing despite himself and turning with Johnny.
It’s not a real coffee table, but it’s close: the woman in the coffee shop’d sent him to what she called a “real” bakery, and it was, a hole in the wall with a guy bringing sacks of flour in the back, and up front plain pound cake (none with cardamom, unfortunately, but this wasn’t Gimli, after all, or even Winnipeg), sweet braids, and even brown butter cookies. They called them something else, something beurre, but Johnny knew what they were.
He realized, in the shopping for cookies and cake, that he was having fun; and that he was looking forward to Gus’ return, even though he’d kind of lost it that morning, and things might need some explaining, or smoothing over, or something; and he still didn’t really know which way was up.
But he was also pretty sure Gus wasn’t going to hold it against him: he’d been amazingly, remarkably, incredibly nice about it all, not to mention understanding, and (almost more remarkably) hadn’t tried to push Johnny one way or the other, or tried guilt trips, or, really, done anything but make sure Johnny knew, or at least could start to figure out, which way was up.
Which, yeah, the not-thinking had proceeded apace, but when he heard the door open, the first, almost the only thing that had occurred to him was that Gus was back; and that probably said a lot right there about the conclusions his brain was reaching.
Well, that and the second thing that had occurred to him, or his body, which was to greet Gus more than halfway, arms, lips, and some tongue just to top it off.
But he already knows how easily he can be distracted by Gus so he breaks the kiss, taking Gus by the hand instead, telling him that he’s just in time, not that there is a time, but he has to say something, and it’s four o’clock somewhere, isn’t it? Heck, it’s four o’clock in Winnipeg.
Gus is turning with him, a smile on his face Johnny’s never seen before, a laugh Johnny’s never heard before, and how wrong can it be to want to get to know all the expressions Gus has, all the sounds he makes? – and it takes all his willpower to push Gus onto the couch and not follow him.
“Coffee time,” Johnny says triumphantly and he’s back at the coffee table, hands full: the little coffee pot, on a plate; cream, too, on the same plate, because Gus takes it; the mugs with the horses on them, their handles looped through his middle finger; and the drip coffee pot that came with the room, with regular coffee.
Gus is still watching him with that smile on his face and Johnny feels the heat rising in his own face, not sure why, really, except that being the focus of Gus’ attention like this, not in bed, is a pretty cool thing that leaves him just a little off-balance. He goes back to the kitchen and slices the cake briskly, trying not to think about the man behind him on the couch and how he… looks.
When he turns, Gus is still looking, and even the plate of cake and cookies doesn’t distract him. He waits until Johnny puts it down, then pulls Johnny down beside him on the couch, pushing him into the cushions and leaning over him, into him, kissing Johnny in a way that reminds Johnny of the amazed smile Gus had just now.
Okay, so he’s been hard, off and on, all afternoon, even though he’s been trying to not-think about what he’s supposed to be not-thinking about, but it’s all coming together now that Gus is back, both the physical feelings and the feelings inside, and it doesn’t feel bad, or wicked, or sinful, and… it hasn’t, which might be one of the things that’s really (when all’s said and done) been bothering him.
“You found coffee,” Gus says, and it’s like the words mean nothing: Gus is looking at him, still with that smile at the corner of his mouth and in his eyes, Gus is looking at him like a man would look at land after weeks at sea, Gus is touching his face and holding him like there’s never been anything but the two of them.
Johnny can’t even gather his wits enough to try to apologise for the morning, or to explain (or try to), and he doesn’t get a chance: Gus leans in to kiss him once more and then sits up, pulling Johnny up too, and turns to the table, not letting go of Johnny’s hand. “Are the spoons safe?”
Johnny’s brain is so not firing on all cylinders that he just gives up and laughs: he has no idea what Gus is talking about. Gus laughs too, Johnny guesses just because he is, and then the penny drops: “Oh! Uh… no, see, I made your coffee too,” and now he’s laughing because Gus is.
But Gus catches his hand when he reaches for the glass-and-plastic pot; and his voice is that thick warm melted honey and butter voice when he says, “No, I want to try your coffee,” and Johnny’s glad he wasn’t holding the pot because he’d have dropped it.
And what does it say that the sound of that voice nearly has him sliding to his knees, sliding Gus’ pants down his hips, sliding his mouth down onto Gus’ warm, smooth, strong cock? What’s happened to him, who is he, and why does going down on Gus right this second sound better than ten thousand cups of coffee or slices of cake?
“Your voice,” he’s saying, like the idiot he is, “you don’t know what–” but Gus doesn’t laugh, not now, just looks at him again, his eyes liquid and dark, nodding too.
“Yeah,” and he’s got Johnny in close, “I know, believe me, I know. Yours too, Johnny–” and the rest of his words are lost in Johnny’s mouth, Johnny swallowing the words like he can take them inside, let them stay there, grow there, warm and sweet and full of Gus.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The afternoons are stretching out in a bright glorious haze as far as Gus can see, sun burning off a fog bank, and sunset and the horizon so far off as to be immaterial, coffee and cake and Johnny today, tomorrow, and for how long after that?
Johnny’s stretched across him, on top of him, and they’ve found a rhythm, their rhythm, as unconscious and as natural as the first time he kissed Johnny in that alley near the café. But this time it’s Johnny lifting Gus’ shirt, his hand warm on Gus’ skin, his fingers brushing a nipple, already tight, and he’s not sure, really, which of them moans.
And it’s not that he’d press, he’s not, and he wouldn’t, but it hasn’t escaped his notice that he’s still got the collar on and Johnny hasn’t looked at it, hasn’t seemed any more aware of it than he was yesterday when Gus wasn’t wearing it. Truth to tell, Gus is drawing conclusions from that and he can’t help thinking (at this point) they might be plausible.
“ …more,” Johnny’s saying, husky and urgent against the skin stretched across Gus’ ribs, hands pushing Gus’ shirts up, baring Gus’ nipples to the sudden coolness of the air, then the welcome warmth of Johnny’s mouth, sucking and licking with the same urgency that was in his voice, his other hand unbuckling Gus’ belt.
And, God, it’s hard not to just let go, let Johnny have his way, have Gus’ way, have Gus all the way, but –
“Coffee–” he says at the same moment Johnny’s whispering his name, asking, begging Gus to let him in, fingers now fumbling and finding Gus’ zipper, and Gus chokes, trying to remember what he’s supposed to be doing – “coffee, and–” and, God, they should, they have to talk and this – this is unfair, this is taking advantage and –
But the advantage seems to be Johnny’s, and that’s fair, he argues with himself, because Johnny’s not stupid, he’s not running blind, Gus is still half dressed with that goddamn collar still around his fucking neck and Johnny – Johnny’s hand is inside his pants, slipping into the fly of his boxers, Johnny’s – oh God – found his cock and now Johnny’s sliding down Gus’ body, sliding to his knees, oh fuck, on the floor between Gus’ legs and…
Gus tries once more, or he thinks he does, but Johnny’s mouth is so warm, so warm and wet and willing, so eager, that maybe he doesn’t quite get out what he meant to: all he hears is a choked exclamation, and then his hands are in Johnny’s hair, smoothing across Johnny’s face, feeling – oh, fuck yeah, feeling, touching, Johnny’s mouth where it’s stretched around his cock; and he pushes in, just a little more, just a little more, and Johnny’s sucking just a little harder where Gus is smoothing his fingers; and Gus lets his head fall back, lets out the sound he wants to make, a low soft moan and Johnny’s name.
Faster than thought, Johnny’s loosened his grip on Gus’ cock and is kissing Gus’ wrist almost feverishly, words tumbling out so fast they’re mixed up and falling over each other – “Sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t – can’t not, Gus, God –” and he doesn’t sound confused or upset, just incredibly… hot; and when his mouth closes over Gus’ cock again, when his hand goes around the base to hold Gus still, to pump, down and up and then to move, abbreviatedly, while Johnny moans around him –
Gus is only human, after all, and man simply wasn’t meant to resist this much temptation; and so he shuts his eyes and lets Johnny pull it out of him, lets Johnny have it all, and if he could come twice, or harder, he would, just from the sounds Johnny’s making as he swallows, and moans, and swallows again.
And it was so fast, and unexpected, that it takes longer than it should for him to catch his breath, retrieve his brains, or at least his sense, and by that time Johnny, still kneeling between his legs, hand working at his crotch – by that time Johnny’s past hearing, or caring; when Gus reaches for him, trying to help, or maybe trying to give back some of what Johnny just gave him, Johnny’s gasping for breath and trying to smile – “Sorry, I – oh God – ’m okay, I–” but Gus ignores him, hauling Johnny’s zipper down by main force, sliding fingers under the waistband of Johnny’s briefs and closing them around Johnny’s cock just in time. Johnny’s hand is moving with his while Gus steadies them both with an arm around Johnny’s shoulders; and he watches Johnny’s face, leaning in to capture the last gasp Johnny makes before he freezes and moans, deep in Gus’ mouth, shaking in Gus’ arms, his cock leaping in their joint grip, rhythmic and strong, so strong there’s no question, if there ever was, that Johnny’s getting off on more than just his own (and Gus’) hand.
And Gus is so touched, and not a little shaken, that he milks Johnny for every last shudder, every last gasp, every last drop, warm and thick and flowing over their hands and fingers; and while Johnny’s still trying to catch his breath, he keeps Johnny’s eyes locked on his while he raises their hands to his mouth and slowly, deliberately licks every drop he can. Johnny’s eyes close for a long moment, and when he opens them they’re bright, wet at the corners, and his breathing is uneven. Gus hopes he won’t pull away, pull back and try to – try to apologise again, but he doesn’t: he just closes his eyes again and sighs, a long shuddering sound, and the shoulders under Gus’ arm finally relax.
Gus leans in closer and kisses Johnny’s eyelids, the corners where the moisture has gathered, then the middle, each in turn, and Johnny sighs again and turns his face into Gus’ chest, holding onto Gus’ shirt with both hands. Gus wants to tell Johnny it’s okay but it might not be, so he just holds on, resisting every impulse he has to rock back and forth, to pull Johnny up off his knees, to slide down to the floor with Johnny: this is Johnny’s call, and he can’t, or shouldn’t, try to shape his reactions, or forestall them, or do any of a dozen other things he wants to and can’t, not… not until he knows.
It seems to be for ever but it’s really only a few moments before Johnny sighs again and his hands relax, smoothing down the fabric of Gus’ shirt where he’d grasped it. He lifts his head and it seems only natural to lean in; and before Gus can stop himself, draw back, mindful, Johnny’s reached up further, meeting him halfway, and Johnny’s whispering against his lips that it is good, it’s so good.
Close enough, Gus decides, and he slides to the floor with Johnny, pushing the table back and pulling Johnny into a warm, tight hug, burying his face in Johnny’s neck and breathing in deep. “You’re amazing,” he mouths, and although there’s no way Johnny can hear him, his arms tighten around Gus.
They end up having the coffee on the floor, leaning back against the couch, after the necessary zipping and tucking. It’s still warm; and Gus didn’t expect to like Johnny’s coffee as much as he does, strong, for certain, but much better than the… well, he wouldn’t say it to Johnny, but sludge would be a good word to describe it, the stuff this morning. Along with the cake, not too sweet, and the cookies ditto, there’s an odd harmony that appeals to Gus on more than just a gustatory level.
“I like this,” he says without thinking, but Johnny doesn’t seem surprised to hear it: he just nods, then – well, the actual term would be ‘snuggle,’ Gus is pretty sure – leans his head on Gus’ shoulder, eyes closed, his arm around Gus’ waist.
“Nothing not to like about a coffee table,” Johnny says, and he sounds not quite… drowsy, but certainly very content, and there’s a smile on his face that looks so intimate that Gus has to lean down, brush Johnny’s lips with his own, see if it feels the way it looks. Johnny’s arm tightens, his eyes flickering open, then closing again, and he grins more broadly even while he leans up further, supple, pliant and, yes, damn it, sweet.
He doesn’t want to bring it up and understands – has always understood – the perils of taking the easy way out; and, in the end, taking the hard way out is even more costly in some ways. Still, he puts it off, hesitates, a hand on Johnny’s chin, his thumb feeling the sharp bone under the skin there.
Johnny reaches up, mirroring him; and then, surprising Gus yet again, he says, “I… I didn’t really mean to do that, jump you –”
“If you’re apologizing,” and Gus can’t keep the grin off his face, “I’m going to be so disappointed.”
“No! – God, no, just that I–” Even in the fading light he can see Johnny’s blush.
“Actually, I was going to say we should go out and find dinner, and be awkward, and talk seriously, but this was much more fun. Of course, now we’re back to room service for dinner, because I’m damned if I’m letting you out of this room tonight.”
“Order in pizza,” Johnny says, voice husky, a smile Gus can feel against his arm. “I don’t think I can – I can do serious, Gus, not–”
“Johnny–”
“I don’t – didn’t know,” Johnny says, sitting up suddenly and turning to look at Gus, clear-eyed, clear-voiced. “Not – not with you, not – not like that. I… this morning, I didn’t–”
Gus listens, incredulity growing: Johnny’s not, he is not going to fucking apologise – “Johnny, no–”
“Look, Gus,” and Gus is so surprised that Johnny’s raising his voice, that Johnny’s interrupting him that he actually closes his mouth, for a second, but it’s long enough – “I… I freaked this morning, okay? And it wasn’t because of you – I mean, it wasn’t your fault that I–” He breaks off and swallows hard, but Gus can’t think, suddenly, of a single solitary fucking thing to say.
“Thing is,” and Johnny’s voice is softer now, “it didn’t – I wasn’t thinking is what it was, about me, I mean. And I wasn’t – I didn’t think today, either. But what you said, about free will, about right and wrong, I did a lot of not thinking about that today, and the thing is that I just – I wanted… ” He stops and takes a breath, and then raises his eyes to Gus. “I wanted to see you again. And I’m not sure what – I’m not sure about the right/wrong thing yet, but it’s true, we’re – we’re not hurting anyone.” He stops and laughs, if you can call it that: it’s nothing at all like the delighted, delightful sound he usually makes, but a short, sharp thin sound, like wind heralding a storm; and his mouth is pulling into a self-deprecating twist that Gus never, ever wants to see again. “So this morning, I’m… sorry, because I think the, uh, the real problem is that I just wasn’t thinking. About anything that… that I should have thought about… before.”
And Gus is, suddenly, sharply, furiously angry all over again. “You mean the minor, inconsequential, detail that you’ve missed for the past, what, thirty years of your life – that you’re not entirely straight? Or that people who claim to have all the answers don’t? Or that bad things happen to good people, and far too many good things happen to bad people? And that the point of so much of what passes for Christianity in this world today is to reconcile those good, poor people to their lot in life while the bad garner riches, and power, on this earth; well, at least we know, don’t we, that they’re going to hell, or that they’re not living righteously, and that’s a comforting thought to take with you to your cold and lonely bed at night, isn’t it, old son?”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Gus’ voice is shaking… Gus is shaking. Johnny stares at him for a few seconds, then moves, quick as a blink, to straddle Gus, to take Gus’ face between his hands, to kiss Gus, to offer him the only comfort he can, the only comfort he knows how to give. And in the back of his head he wonders what he, what any of them would have done if Pastor had ever said anything, ever, like that, or even a tenth of it: he thinks the roof of the church might have blown off.
And… it’s very true that most of the time, when people are doing things “for your own good, Johnny,” it never seems particularly good from the other side, Johnny’s side, that is.
It depends, he supposes, pulling Gus in close, feeling Gus’ arms go around him, slowly, not quite sure, on why those people are so convinced they know what’s for your own good.
“It’s not,” he says after a while; and when Gus lifts his head to look, Johnny shakes his head. “It’s not a comfort, not really. It’s just a cold and lonely bed.”
Gus’ face changes, and he opens his mouth, but Johnny silences him with a kiss. “You,” he says against Gus’ mouth, “are a good man,” and he turns his head just enough that he can cradle Gus’ head against his.
“No,” Gus whispers, but he doesn’t try to move. “I try to be, Johnny, and that’s all that I can say.”
“Tell me again what you said this morning. About… free will, and how we know the difference between right and wrong. About how what we do matters, and… and why we do it,” Johnny whispers back. “People… people do a lot of… a lot of things for your own good and it never really feels good, at least on my side of it. Why you do things matters too, right? It has to matter, why, not just that you do it, but not the way they said, not the ‘we’re saved and you’re not’ way–”
“‘And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?’”
“Yeah,” Johnny says, pulling back to rest on Gus’ thighs, “exactly, but you said before that–”
Gus tries to smile, but his face is twisting again in a way that’s just wrong, in a way that twists Johnny’s heart, so Johnny reaches out to touch his mouth, trying to… touch Gus, touch his heart, something. “In some ways,” Gus says, his voice unsteady, “I’m the moral relativist you think I am, and in some ways, Johnny, I am not. There are absolutes I believe in and I believe in them even when–”
He breaks off and Johnny’s got both his hands back on Gus’ face now, because Gus looks like he’s being torn apart from the inside and Johnny has no freaking idea why.
“…even when I shouldn’t,” and Gus is looking through Johnny, far away.
“Why?” and suddenly Johnny’s shaking too. “If – if you don’t believe, why even bother?”
“I don’t know,” Gus says hoarsely; and then a tear slides down his cheek. “Sometimes I don’t even know.”
“But you do bother,” Johnny whispers, tracing the path with his tongue. “So you do believe.”
“In something,” Gus says, the left side of his mouth lifting, twisting again, breaking Johnny’s heart. “Myself, I suppose.”
“I – I can’t think of a better thing to believe in,” Johnny says, trying, himself, to hold back tears, watching another one slip down Gus’ cheek.
“Depends on who’s talking,” Gus says, his voice flat, his eyes still looking at something far away, “politicians, lawyers, liars… because sometimes the people who believe in me end up dead, Johnny, and it should have been me, or – or Nelson, or, God forgive me, Noelle – but, especially, me, because – because it was my belief, is my belief, and it is, should be, should have been my sacrifice. I wasn’t… I wasn’t prepared, Johnny, for someone else to die for my beliefs.”
“Just you,” Johnny whispers, and he doesn’t try to hold back any more: he feels warm salt at the corner of his mouth, and a blood-warm drop on his arm, and he wonders why tears taste like blood and blood tastes like tears; and suddenly he remember Gus telling him that life began in the ocean.
Not ashes to ashes, or dust to dust, but water to life; and he doesn’t even know he said it out loud until Gus’ thumb is on his face, smoothing, blending the paths of the tears falling until his face is wet all over; and Gus’ voice is as soft as dusk: “Johnny, don’t…”
There’s a sharp rap at the door, loud enough to make them both jump, and Johnny reflexively slides off Gus, trying to straighten his knees. Gus sighs, a heavy sound, squares his shoulders, and wipes his face on his sleeve before getting to his feet.
And Johnny can’t say why, any more than he can say why it happened with Zoë – the sniff? the sleeve dragged across his wet face? – but it’s happened, and the realization leaves him shaky and breathless, Gus’ brief conversation with the man at the door nothing but a dim murmur, a distant waterfall compared to the roaring in his ears, rapids foaming and swirling and taking Johnny down into the currents to be tossed any which way.
Gus comes back over to the couch, tossing an express service box on the armchair, then reaching down to help Johnny to his feet. “Lawyers,” he says, answering Johnny’s look. “Second draft. Maybe the third by now.” He braces and pulls: strong arms, strong back.
Johnny looks again: the box is big enough to hold a binder. “You have to – tonight?”
“No,” Gus says shortly. “Not tonight, and I told them, but we’re meeting tomorrow afternoon and I guess they thought–”
“Wait a minute,” Johnny says, holding up one hand, bending to rub his knee with the other. “You – you’re doing all this yourself?”
“Of course not,” and that impatience is still in Gus’ voice: impatience and something else. “I’ll go over it, of course, and when I – we – get back to Solomon Gundy, Zeda’ll go over it; and, of course, the lawyers here are working for me – for Solomon Gundy.”
“Don’t you have help?” Johnny says, probably sounding almost as impatient as Gus. “Even a junior A coach from Manitoba gets assistant coaches, Gus.”
“There’s no one else, damn it–”
“This is – this is one of those, uh, absolutes?” Johnny’s not trying to irritate Gus, just trying to understand, but it’s spiraling downhill, water down a drain: Gus is frowning intently and Johnny shakes his head, trying to clear it, trying to understand.
He feels ten times worse when Gus sinks to the couch, dropping his head into his hands; and Johnny puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “It’s not – not my business,” he says awkwardly, trying to remember that they just met, and that Gus sure as hell knows what he’s doing. “Sorry… just… uh, just wondering what’s going on, what you’re doing–”
“Hell if I know,” Gus says wearily, rubbing his hands over his face, pressing above his eyes with his fingertips, and oh yes Johnny knows that pain. “I’m not one of those people with all the answers, Johnny, and I’m just trying to put things right but I don’t really know what right is, not here, and I don’t know if things can be put right. I don’t even know if this is what Dexter would have wanted, or if he would have cared, or if he would have just told me to do what I thought was best. You see, I… I didn’t really know him long enough. Well enough.”
“Dexter is the – the guy who died?” Johnny asks cautiously, shifting his weight: foot’s still asleep. “Instead of… you.”
“Yes, Dexter was the sacrificial lamb,” Gus says, voice so close to breaking that Johnny’s hand tightens on his shoulder to stop him from coming apart. “Damn it, Johnny, will you sit down?”
In a flash he’s up, and gone into the bedroom; he’s back with the bottle from the nightstand almost before Johnny can blink; and Johnny does blink, more than once. He doesn’t say anything but ‘thanks’ and swallows three pills dry, which makes Gus, on his way back from the fridge with more water, laugh.
It’s a short, dry laugh, not anything he’d look forward to ordinarily, but it beats all hell out of broken.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This was not how Gus had intended the evening to go, although it – well, certainly it had started out better than he’d thought so they were probably ahead.
But not by much.
Johnny’s swallowed the ibuprofen dry, something he must be accustomed to doing, and Gus hoots in disbelief, but twists the top off the water bottle anyway and hands it to him. Johnny takes it with another murmured “thanks” and drains half the bottle, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and offers it to Gus, as natural as breathing.
Gus feels tears, still near the surface, pricking his eyelids.
He drains the rest of the bottle and tosses it at the sink. It misses by a few inches and ends up on the counter, and he shrugs at it, turning back to Johnny, who’s looking up at him, eyes larger than usual, almost… apprehensive.
“This isn’t what I’d planned for this evening,” Gus says, holding his gaze: it’s almost like a confession: he feels lighter, at least, for having said it.
“I’m–”
“Johnny, if you say you’re sorry again I’ll–”
“– sorry but – what?”
Gus makes a wordless sound, frustration and impatience with himself combined, and Johnny quiets immediately. Gus pushes aside both curiosity and further anger, aimed this time and perhaps unfairly at the dead woman haunting him: if he had to have a ghost, why couldn’t it be Dexter?
“Let me start again: this isn’t what either of us, in all probability, had planned for the evening.” Almost without thinking, he reaches for Johnny’s chin, holding his face in one hand; Johnny’s eyes are still huge. “It’s not good or bad, Johnny. It just is. I probably… forgiveness has never been one of my strong suits and… I should have remembered that a while ago.”
Johnny’s hand has crept up, holding Gus’; it takes effort for Gus to remember what he’s saying. “You… you were just caught in the…” Crossfire, he starts to say, and can’t finish; and then Johnny’s lips are on his palm and he’s being pulled down to the couch, flat on his back, and Johnny’s moved a pillow and his legs so Gus’ head is in his lap, resting on Johnny’s thigh with a pillow under his shoulder.
“Just take it easy,” Johnny says, his voice low. “Catch up on the playoff standings, yeah? Unwind, think about dinner,” and he’s palming the remote with his other hand. But when Gus squints at the sudden light in the room, Johnny switches it off almost immediately, shaking his head.
“Turn it back on,” Gus says quietly. “I’d love to check the standings.” Not that he cares, since Montreal hasn’t had decent goaltending in eight years, but the giving’s all coming from Johnny’s side and it’s wrong, it’s all so wrong that the only way he can think to right it is to go along, and that’s wrong too but he’s too fraught to figure out an exorcism just now.
“You have a headache?” Johnny asks, voice still low; and since he’s put two and two together very competently, Gus doubles it.
“Do you get migraines?”
Johnny blinks, and his hand freezes in the act of raising the remote. “Uh. No, not – not for a while, once in a while… you too?”
Gus doesn’t remember much about his grandmother but he does remember the darkened rooms, the whispering and tiptoeing, the strain on her face that even a child could see. “My grandmother.”
“Yeah? It’s funny, I ended up with them, not my sister, and they said usually it’s girls – women–”
“You have a sister?” Gus raises his head, only to have it pushed back down; and Johnny leaves his fingers on Gus’ temple.
Yes, it’s suddenly quite clear that Johnny’s had experience with pain.
“Had,” Johnny says, clicking on the mute. “Eric’s mom… it’s why he lives with me.”
Gus feels very, very foolish: why had he assumed Eric was Johnny’s wife’s nephew? And hadn’t Johnny said– “I thought you said he was with his father.”
“He is,” Johnny says, just a trace of wistfulness in his voice. “Summer adventure before university, you know? Max is… Max is kind of a wanderer; we wanted to keep Eric and he wanted to stay, mostly: I think he felt more like he belonged in Gimli than anywhere else.”
Gus doesn’t know what else to say, so he falls back on years of funeral experience. “Were you close?”
“Uh… twins,” Johnny says, not looking at Gus, or at the television. “Yeah.”
It’s one of the things Gus likes best about life, really: never knowing what’s around the next corner, that and the life lessons the universe doles out on a more than regular basis. The single piece of useful advice he got upon ordination that he strives to remember is that everyone has a tragedy. It might be Dexter or it might be burnt toast but since you have no way of knowing which, the only thing to do is remember, period.
And Johnny must be older than Gus thought he was, if Eric’s about to start university.
Because, really, such revelations are always better with a healthy dose of irrelevancy added in.
“It’s a good thing Eric has you,” he says.
“And me him,” Johnny says, quickly, almost thankfully: he was probably waiting for insincere platitudes, or, maybe, since he’s spent this much time with Gus, he’d give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were more or less meant.
It’s just as well the death of his wife has already been broached: Gus would be even harder put to it today than he was yesterday to sound sincere about that.
He hadn’t noticed a ridge or even a tan line on Johnny’s finger.
He probably took the ring off as soon – well, think about it… as soon as he could, probably after moving to Winnipeg.
“It’s like we got switched,” Johnny’s saying, his voice distant but not sad. “The men and women in our family… I was happy in Gimli, she never was; and Eric’s been… Eric was happy there too. She ran away when she was sixteen, and she only came back after she was dead. She wouldn’t have wanted that but… it – there was a mix up and… I don’t think she would really have cared, she would have wanted us to have that. She was… the real Viking. We should have done a boat for her. Eric…” His voice trails off; and Gus pulls Johnny’s fingers down to his lips. Johnny presses his fingers lightly against Gus’ mouth and then slips his hand down to cradle Gus’ jaw, his thumb stroking Gus’ cheek. “Good, the Kings lost. One more and we won’t have them in the finals.”
The juxtaposition is so unexpected that Gus turns on his back to look at Johnny and then laughs out loud, a real laugh this time. Johnny looks down at him, a answering smile on his face, and pats him. “Who’s ‘we?’” Gus asks, putting his head down obediently. “Edmonton?”
Johnny snorts. “Uh, no. Calgary. WHL. I’m… I’m, uh, not heartless. I…”
“I understand,” Gus says. “‘Heartless’ is the last word that could be applied to you, I think, so don’t worry.”
“You a Habs fan?” Johnny asks after a few moments; his fingers are still warm, relaxed, against Gus’ cheek. Gus just nods: his five o’clock “shadow” is more of an oddment, really, but it still feels… nice against Johnny’s fingers. “Figured.”
“And a card-carrying member of the White Rose Society?”
“Nah, that’s only if you’re a Leafs fan.”
“They’re doing okay this year,” Gus says mildly. Johnny snorts again and Gus rolls onto his back again to look up at him: and he’s somewhat surprised to feel the absence of stress in his shoulders.
“They’ll cave in the semi-finals. Buffalo’s going to surprise everyone.”
“Buffalo?”
And suddenly he’s laughing, and so’s Johnny, and when Gus leans up on an elbow, Johnny leans down, meeting him halfway. A long, breathless kiss, and the weight’s entirely gone from Gus’ shoulders and he sighs, taking a deep breath, leaning up to kiss Johnny lightly one more time before rolling off the couch and coming up on his feet.
Johnny’s watching him, still a shadow in his eyes: but Gus has regained his equilibrium, and some perspective. Yes, they need to talk, but Gus also needs to act, and Johnny – well, Johnny needs a very gentle hand, and some honesty – a lot of that; and to learn, or be taught, that Gus is not Johnny’s dead wife.
And the best thing about finding his feet again is understanding why he’s been so unusually impatient: the guilt over Dexter will always be there, and he knows that, has even talked about it once, or twice, with his bishop; but the anger… that was something he clearly hadn’t wanted to admit, especially to himself. He knows from (bitter) experience that it needs to be channeled safely; and, right now, it needs to be channeled deep underground and away from Johnny, who reminds Gus of a seedling, leaning towards the sun, roots none too sure of their welcome in the earth yet.
He turns his hands outward, palms up: “I could use some fresh air. Come with me.”
He tries to make it a request but Johnny doesn’t seem to care how he said it, or, perhaps, why: a smile lights his face as he comes to his feet; but then he stops, looking down; and begins to gather the remains of the coffee table.
“Leave it,” Gus says. “We’ll get it later.” He wants to be outside, in the fresh (for a city) air; he wants to see the setting sun gild Johnny’s hair, dance in his eyes, warm his skin. But Johnny, already with plates and mugs in his hand, shrugs; and Gus gives in, taking both pots. But when Johnny tries to go back for more, Gus spins him around, pushing him against the counter, leaning in and breathing deep before his lips find Johnny’s. “Enough,” he whispers. “Let’s go.”
And Johnny tastes so good, feels so good, that Gus contradicts himself and kisses him again, longer this time, slower too.
“I want to see the sun in your hair,” Gus says, his breath ghosting across Johnny’s lips, “taste the sun on your lips; and when we get to Solomon Gundy –”
“In public?” Johnny tries to say, but the words are lost in Gus’ mouth; and it’s hard for him to believe… any of it.
He’s maybe said such things, in the past, to Zoë, and even to Gus, without thinking, but now he’s not sure if he can. Twenty five hundred kilometers seems like more than a lifetime, and the caboose would be twice as far away–
“When we get to Solomon Gundy, there’s a cove,” Gus is saying, his lips on Johnny’s cheek, then just in front of his ear, his tongue darting in, out; and Johnny’s breath catches. “It’s one of my favourite places in the world; and I want to take you there, strip you naked, taste the sun and the sea on your skin; and I want to hear you say my name, Johnny, when you come, I want to hear your voice and the waves together when I come.”
And Johnny’s pretty sure that Gus’ eyes, right now, are the colour of the sea after a storm; and he’s pretty sure he’s about to come in his pants; and he’s damn sure that nothing else has ever felt so good, so right, as Gus’ mouth closing over his. He breathes in deep, already sure he could tell Gus from a million others by his smell alone, even if the tang of the salt air he’s never smelled is nothing but his imagination.
He’s groaning; or they both are; and the counter is the only thing holding him up, the counter and the weight of Gus’ body against him, and Gus’ arms around him; and he’s holding onto Gus, too, so he doesn’t fall, and it’s too late, and why doesn’t he remember it being like this, like a wildfire in his belly? And when Gus pulls back and looks at him, the fire’s in his eyes too, burning steadily, leaving more than cold grey ash that crumbles at a touch.
“Fresh air,” Gus says, sounding drugged, his voice slow, a finger touching the side of Johnny’s mouth; and the fire leaps higher: he did this, he, Johnny, and when Gus looks at him he’s seeing nothing but Johnny, stripped naked, maybe even to his soul; and he’s not looking away. He probably ought to be embarrassed about before, that he was beating off on his knees after sucking Gus off, but Gus hadn’t seemed upset or even surprised by that: he’d gone after Johnny’s cock almost the way Johnny’d gone after his, his callused palm warm and rough in just the right places.
He lifts his hand too, running his thumb along Gus’ lower lip; and Gus catches it in his teeth, a gentle nibble, a quick flicker of his tongue. The way his eyes close, like Johnny’s ice cream, or chocolate mousse, just pushes Johnny higher, makes him push harder against Gus, feeling Gus’ hard length against his own.
Johnny’s pretty sure he didn’t have this much sex on his honeymoon.
Not that kissing is sex.
At least he never thought it was; but when Gus sucks two of Johnny’s fingers into his mouth, his tongue warm and soft and curling around those fingers, Johnny knows Gus has just redefined ‘sex’ for Johnny, not to mention just about everything else Johnny thought he knew about himself, and the world, two days ago.
And then Gus’ hand is at his waist, the button never done up from before, strong clever fingers making short work of the zipper, burrowing under the elastic of his underwear, cupping him just… just right, and Johnny’s getting the tongue on his fingers and the hand on his cock mixed up, oh God, so fucking mixed up so good –
“God,” Gus breathes against the side of Johnny’s face, pulling him close, working his cock harder, “I love to watch you come, you’re so fucking gorgeous…”
Johnny grabs for Gus’ arms, ends up with Gus’ shoulders, then his hands find Gus’ head almost by instinct: Gus, on his knees, is swallowing Johnny whole and Johnny can’t stop his hips from snapping forward, can’t stop himself from pouring it all out, into Gus’ mouth, down Gus’ throat, feeling Gus’ jaw working under his fingers, feeling the hum in Gus’ throat that wrings another spurt from him before he goes boneless, his knees beginning to go weak. But Gus slides back up his body, hands and mouth pulling his pants up, then dragging Johnny’s shirt up and licking Johnny’s chest, then pulling Johnny into another kiss, holding him up and kissing him deep. And it was bad enough he wanted, needed to taste Gus earlier; but now he wants to taste himself on Gus. It’s probably no more fucked up than anything else he’s done in the past two days, or two hours, so he goes with it, leaning in; and Gus lets him explore his mouth, rubbing Johnny’s arms gently.
But when Johnny reaches for Gus’ belt, Gus slides his hands down Johnny’s arms, catching him by the wrists. “No,” he says against Johnny’s lips. “Later. Right now I want to see the sun in your hair.”
Johnny flushes, the heat breaking over him like a wave, and he can’t help grinning: “Isn’t that how we – this–”
And then Gus is laughing and kissing Johnny, all over his face, like a dog, and Johnny’s laughing too. “Yeah,” he says against Johnny’s face, “yeah, that’s exactly how.”
“You sure?” Johnny says softly, combing his fingers through Gus’ hair.
“Yeah,” Gus says again, no longer laughing, pulling back enough to look at Johnny. “It feels so good to be feeling so good.” He runs his fingers down the length of his cock, eyes closing and teeth catching in his bottom lip; and Johnny’s sudden intake of breath is echoed by Gus’.
“You feel good,” he whispers, following Gus’ fingers with his own. “You feel so good.”
“Ah –” Gus pushes into Johnny’s hand and Johnny cups him, rubbing with his palm, natural as breathing. “Johnny, please – I want–”
“Me too, Gus, I want–”
“This. You,” and Gus has both hands on Johnny’s ass, grinding them together, his cock hard against Johnny’s softness; and Johnny moans. No way he can get hard again, not so soon, and then he understands what Gus means: it doesn’t really matter what, where, even how – it just feels good, so good, to feel this good.
By the time Johnny’s found socks and run a wet hand through his hair Gus’ erection has gone down enough that he can only see it if he looks hard; and that thought makes him grin. Gus, watching, grins back, even though he can’t know why Johnny’s smiling; and after Johnny’s boots are on, he offers Johnny a hand up.
They find a wall near the end of the canal by the river; the locks are closed for the evening. The sun’s setting over their shoulders and the reflection makes the river beyond look like it’s on fire, or at least glowing. Gus, breathing in deep a few times, isn’t in a talkative mood; but every time Johnny sees Gus glance at him, he feels warm inside.
“Never been one for cameras,” Gus says after a while, pulling one leg up on the wall and clasping his hands around his knee. “Seeing you in this light’s making me rethink that.” He rests his chin on his knee and just smiles at Johnny. Without thinking, Johnny reaches to touch his clasped hands. Gus turns one hand over and takes Johnny’s hand, resting the other hand on the top of his knee, under his chin. Another smile and then he looks out over the water, still holding onto Johnny’s hand.
And… they’re holding hands.
… and Gus has his collar on; and Johnny wonders if lightning struck him if it would miss Gus, being ordained and all; and if Gus realizes he has the collar on still, and what he’d think if someone came by, noticed them.
Gus tugs at his hand, murmurs something that sounds like “c’mere,” and Johnny slides over so they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, and Gus puts a hand on Johnny’s thigh, and the warmth spreads out and up, up through his gut and into his throat.
He swallows hard and puts his hand on top of Gus’.
Not too much later Gus turns and pulls Johnny back against him, and they watch the sun set reflected in the river. The street lights flicker on; and Johnny can feel Gus’ heart thudding against the back of his head. It feels like the two of them alone in the world; even the occasional dog walker doesn’t really register with him. Nothing does except the feel of Gus’ chest up against his back; and Gus’ hands, crossed over his chest, holding onto Johnny’s forearms; and Gus’ chin on the top of his head, his soft breathing stirring Johnny’s hair every so often, gentle and warm.
“You miss home,” he says after a while, and Gus’ hands tighten fractionally on his arms before relaxing again.
“Yeah,” and Johnny feels Gus’ lips pressing against his hair for a moment. “The smell of the sea, the waves… it’s quiet here. My home’s right on the water… you can hear the waves all night, even when the sea is calm.”
Johnny closes his eyes, letting Gus’ voice wash over him: he can almost hear the waves, imagine the scent of fishing boats (which he knows) overlaid by the tang of salt air (which he doesn’t). He sighs; and Gus pulls him closer, his embrace turning into a hug, dropping his head down to the side of Johnny’s neck; and Johnny feels him press a kiss there too.
“You’re so… restful.”
“Mæli þarft eða þegi,” and Johnny’s whispering, for no particular reason.
Gus snorts, turning his head just enough to catch Johnny’s ear with the tip of his nose, his lips warm and soft.
“It’s a saying we have – ‘speak needful words or none.’”
“Needful… oh, I like that,” and the next thing Johnny knows Gus has caught his chin and is pulling Johnny’s face toward his own. “I’m needful,” and Gus’ voice has dropped into the same register as before, when he wanted some of Johnny’s coffee. “Nice old-fashioned word.” His tongue is flicking in and out, barely touching Johnny’s lips, first the top, then the bottom; and Johnny can’t move, can’t think, can’t remember there are – joggers and… dog walkers and… “Old-fashioned need.” The position’s awkward but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters but the softness of Gus’ lips, the gentle slide of his tongue, the shakiness with which Gus inhales: Johnny feels shaky too.
It’s a long kiss. Breathless too, and when Gus pulls back it’s only to find the corner of Johnny’s mouth with his tongue, taste Johnny’s chin, run his hand and then his lips down the column of Johnny’s neck, his fingers barely brushing Johnny’s collarbone. And Johnny arches up into his touch, still (or again) breathless, and is only saved from moaning out loud by the far-off hoot of a boat horn.
“Yeah,” Gus breathes against the skin of Johnny’s neck, taut because Johnny’s trying not to make any noise. “I want to see you naked in the moonlight; and I want to hear you come, I want to hear my name traveling across the water on your voice. I can’t – I really can’t – wait to get you to my island, Johnny. I’m… so needful.”
“Gus!” Johnny says, and his voice sounds husky and desperate even to his own ears, and if it wasn’t impossible he’d be teetering on the edge already.
“Just like that,” Gus growls, “only louder,” and he reaches up to take Johnny’s ear in his teeth, sharp edges and a wicked tongue tickling. More desperate still, Johnny drags in a breath through his nose and tangles his fingers in Gus’ hair, his turn to pull Gus toward him; and Gus surges, like a tidal wave, bearing Johnny backwards, onto the grass; and when he tries to move away, a surprised intake of breath, maybe even shocked, Johnny growls – growls! – and pulls him down, ignoring the damp grass between his shoulder blades, ignoring the stone poking in his back. None of it matters, not with the breeze freshening on the night and Gus warm and solid on him, under his hands, and Gus’ mouth…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Gus isn’t sure which of them would have come to their senses first; he’s relatively certain if it hadn’t been for the pair of Airedales gamboling down the walkway, pursued by a (thankfully) far-off owner, he might have taken Johnny right there on the grass. He’s damn sure Johnny would have taken him, too: disheveled, the rivet on his jeans undone, his eyes are glazed and he blinks several times when Gus pulls back to sit up, bringing Johnny with him one-handed, the other tugging at Johnny’s shirt.
The last time Gus felt like this, it was because it was the first time he’d ever felt like this.
This time it’s because it’s Johnny.
Johnny, still dazed, even around the mouth – and it takes much of Gus’ self control not to lean in and kiss him yet again – is blushing: Gus can feel the heat from his skin. “I’m – I never–”
“Wait,” Gus whispers, leaning his forehead against Johnny’s. “Wait; I want to give you always, Johnny, but some of it will have to wait until we get home – until we get to my island.”
And suddenly he can see Johnny, tangled in blankets on his couch, waking up and blinking, that soft amazed smile on his mouth, one bare foot on the floor. The vision is so real, and perfect, he has to close his eyes for a few seconds; when he opens them, Johnny’s still blushing, his eyes closed too. Gus kisses him on the forehead, smoothing his thumb across Johnny’s cheekbone, across his lips, stopping in the middle where Johnny’s lower lip dips down and smoothing the curve of it.
The dog owner races by. Gus’ care was for nothing, after all: they don’t even merit a glance.
But it’s really just as well, because the bed at the hotel is much more comfortable.
Johnny takes a breath, not quite a sigh. “Guess we should, uh…”
“Dinner? I was thinking we could pick up a pizza, grab some beer.”
“Yeah,” Johnny says, but there’s a hesitation in his voice.
“Or…?” Gus prompts softly, as if it’s completely unimportant, but hoping (the eternal failure to accept the human condition) Johnny’ll gift him with this too, the honesty that comes from trust.
“Or… really?” When Gus nods, rubbing Johnny’s knuckles with his thumb, Johnny’s mouth relaxes. “That – the, uh, Thai place? If – if you want, I just–”
Gus honestly hadn’t thought of it at all, but realizes almost immediately (accompanied by a warm heady rush) that Johnny’s associations with pad thai and drunken noodles are all good, and he can’t do anything but be glad, glad and grateful; and he laughs out loud, not able to keep, not wanting to keep, the happiness inside. “That sounds wonderful.”
Johnny’s answering smile is shy, so shy that Gus wants to push the ghost haunting him –them – into the canal, but it’s not that easy, never that easy; nothing worthwhile ever is. And it wasn’t only his grandfather teaching him that lesson, but Zeda too, and Dexter.
The smile’s fading: Johnny notices everything about him, and he’s got to remember that. “Are you going to try drunken noodles tonight?”
“Maybe,” Johnny says, and the smile’s back. “Will they do a one on the spicy?”
“Anything,” Gus says, and he’s not talking about noodles, but it doesn’t really matter. He brushes some grass off Johnny’s back, reaching at the last to cup his ass, a quick caress. Johnny’s reaction almost lands them in the grass again: a soft groan, a thrust of his hips, and his eyes closed by the time Gus looks at his face.
Self-control, and he hasn’t had to exercise this much since he was twenty-one: he takes Johnny by the face, because he loves to touch him, and because he knows it’s safer, and kisses him, too long and not long enough… but as long as he keeps his hands above Johnny’s shoulders, he can keep his head, and Johnny’s, above water.
The walk to the Thai place is, strangely, unhurried, although every time Johnny’s fingers brush Gus’ hand Gus has to count to five, sometimes ten, to keep from turning, finding an alley, sinking to his knees and tasting Johnny all over again. The Thai place is barely enough of a distraction: Johnny’s nostrils flare with the scents, and he closes his eyes and breathes in deep; and when the woman behind the counter takes his order, the shy smile is back. It takes Gus a few seconds to remember his own order – he can’t take his eyes off Johnny.
A couple of blocks up he sees a dep and motions to it with his head. “Let’s get some beer.”
“Cheaper,” Johnny agrees, following his lead across the street without a moment’s hesitation.
Gus tries to remember when, if, anyone has ever been this in tune with him.
He can’t.
“Labatt’s? Molsons?” Johnny says, obviously guessing: they’d had draft, the first night, a sort-of local cream ale.
“I’m not picky,” Gus says. “I even drink Moosehead.”
Johnny wrinkles his nose, as Gus had known he would, and he smiles at Johnny, letting all his delight out.
Johnny blinks once, twice, and sways towards him: and Gus is moving too.
Fortunately someone goes by them to the register; Johnny takes a deep breath and turns to the coolers lining the far wall.
Gus is in line when Johnny returns, a half rack under his arm; and Gus mentally applauds his foresight. It’s a red box, though, and he cocks an eyebrow. Ahead of them, the clerk is chatting with the customer, something about the third prescription this month.
“I think this is the stuff we had the other night,” Johnny says, shrugging. “Better than Moosehead.”
Gus grins. “Better than Molson’s.”
“I thought you weren’t picky.”
“I am about the important things.”
“What kind of Canadian are you?” Johnny says, mock outrage. “Beer and hockey, eh.”
The unexpectedness and exaggeratedness of the syllable make Gus laugh out loud; fortunately the clerk is looking at them indulgently.
“Yes, that was an argument for confederation,” Gus says, putting his purchases on the counter. “‘Solomon Gundian’ lacked panache.”
Johnny’s already opened his mouth to respond when his eyes fall on the boxes on the counter: two tubes of KY and a box of Durex Maximums. He looks from the counter to Gus; and then his eyes fall to Gus’ throat and he turns bright red.
Gus often forgets he’s wearing it: it’s second nature. And aside from the curling, the only reason he hadn’t put it on, the other night, was because he’d just had a shower and more or less forgotten since he’d hung it up when he changed. Although given Johnny’s reaction, it was fortuitous: he’s quite sure they wouldn’t be standing here right now if he’d been wearing it to begin with.
And it’s not that he enjoys discomfiting Johnny; he suspects that there will be many more instances in the future, in fact, what with Johnny’s newly discovered status as bisexual and not quite the straight guy he’d apparently thought he was all these years. But Johnny’s innocence is something he prizes, and something he hopes, fiercely, will never be tarnished or lost, no more than it already has been. “This is Ottawa,” he says quietly. “Not Gimli.” He’s starting to think that Gimli must be even smaller than Solomon Gundy, and he sympathises: certainly it would be all over town, and was, the first time Gus bought a box of condoms. Fortunately, however, Gus had never much cared what anyone else thought of him.
Johnny, however, left his birthplace for the city partly, Gus suspects, because he couldn’t take the well-meaning sympathy and attention following his wife’s unexpected, and largely unexplained, death.
Johnny’s blush goes darker, then begins to fade; and he pushes the box onto the counter. The clerk’s already scanned the condoms and is waiting patiently for the beer. Gus pulls out his wallet, waving Johnny’s hand away; and out of the corner of his eye he catches a glimpse of the front of Johnny’s jeans.
He doesn’t smile; he wouldn’t. But all the same it’s a relief: there’s upset and then there’s upset and turned on, and of the two, the latter is infinitely preferable.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Gimli a small town?” Gus asks once they’re outside; and the dark’s as welcome as the cool breeze on his cheeks, still flaming; and he wishes he could drop his pants, too, let the breeze take care of his hard-on.
He’s never been so embarrassed and so turned on in his life. For a minute, okay, for a few seconds, he seriously thought he was going to come if he so much as blinked; and he still can’t believe a – a priest, a man of God… and the clerk didn’t even look at them, or look surprised, or anything else.
In Gimli, everyone knew everything: when the pregnancy tests were bought, what brand of condoms you used, and if anyone’d ever bought KY jelly for anything Johnny’s pretty sure it would have been in the paper the next day.
Summer people didn’t count, of course, and lots of kids bargained with them: condoms or porn for beer and liquour. It all worked out; but Johnny hadn’t been one of those to need to bargain, and he could have gotten anything he needed from Sigrid or one of her friends (or, later, boyfriends) anyway.
“Yeah,” he says belatedly, realizing Gus is still waiting for a response. “Very. Uh, most of the – most of us have lived there all our lives, and our parents and grandparents. My – we lived in my parents’ house and it – it wasn’t their parents’ house only because my dad wasn’t the oldest and didn’t want to farm anyway, but my cousins still live there, outside town…”
He’s babbling, and he can’t shut up, but Gus is only nodding. “Solomon Gundy’s like that too. It was all over town the first time I bought condoms, and since I wasn’t ‘seeing’ anyone, it was an even bigger scandal. I was fifteen.”
Johnny’s surprised into looking at him, but Gus isn’t smiling.
No way Johnny could have bought condoms when he was fifteen. He’d had enough trouble at twenty-three, before they started trying, and that had been a relief on so many levels…
“They were for a friend, actually,” Gus goes on, sounding thoughtful. “Odd how no one thought of that; and of course I knew better than to offer it as an explanation. But it was true.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
At that, Gus laughs, finally, almost uproariously. “Good God, no. My grandfather never worried about such things, and I doubt anyone who was brave enough to mention it to him would have, since they wouldn’t have cared either. Now if my grandmother had been alive, I might have gotten an admonition to be careful, but she wasn’t by then.”
Careful?
Johnny’s head is spinning again.
He got the ‘talk,’ such as it was, from Sigrid when they were eleven; and again when she lost her virginity, at fourteen; and aside from that, and knowing that there were a few days a month that neither Sigrid nor, later, Zoë was at all sane, and sex ed tapes at school, everything else was learned from the summer porn magazines and the things other boys talked about. Johnny listened, he was always good at that; but looking back, now, he’s starting to think he wasn’t backward as much as… uninterested.
Sigrid loved sex, and he knows that’s partly why she ran away: she couldn’t stand the limits Gimli placed on her freedom, on her need to be unfettered, untrammeled, ships in her eyes since she was old enough to know; and Johnny knows there are still some in Gimli who’d call her a tramp, although not to his, or his fifty-seven cousins’, face; but it had never been like that. Sigrid was a law unto herself; and sometimes Johnny wondered – in the days after she left, trying not to cry into his pillow at night because the loss was so much bigger than he’d imagined, even though she’d told him, tried to prepare him – he wondered what had happened to girls – women – like Sigrid in the olden times, if they ever found adventure or if they were bound by duty and tradition to a role they’d never been born to.
Even their names defined them: she was always Sigrid and he was always Johnny, never Johannes, except to his family; but some of them hadn’t spoken much English, even though they were third-generation Canadian by that time, so no one ever raised an eyebrow at it. But no one else ever called him Johannes, except Sigrid, once in a while, if something was blood-oath serious.
“I’m… uh, glad you didn’t get into trouble,” he says lamely: Gus is watching him, eyes shadowed by the street light.
“Where did you go?” Gus asks. “I want to follow you, Johnny, and I can’t.”
“No, you don’t,” Johnny says, startled into honesty. “And it was – it was just Gimli.”
“Yes,” Gus says steadily, moving a step closer. “I do. Did someone buy condoms for you?”
“No!” Johnny says, feeling the heat rushing into his face again. “No, I – not then. And when – in Hartford, all the guys had them, it wasn’t… I just – in Gimli I could never have bought them at fifteen, that’s all.”
“What if you’d needed them?”
Johnny’s not sure what Gus is asking, really, or why he’s pressing: his back is to the wall, literally: he feels the rough brick catching his jacket and he pulls the beer in close, holding it in both his arms. “I – I didn’t. Not then.”
“What if you had?”
“I – oh. Oh. Uh, Sigrid – my sister – she’d have gotten them, or something. She could do anything.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Gus isn’t sure if Johnny knows the pride is shining through his voice; and he’s almost more relieved than he can say that Johnny’s thinking about fifteen, and his sister – Sigrid – and Gimli, and not… her.
“I’m glad,” he says, up close to Johnny’s mouth. “I’m glad you had someone to do that for you.”
“She could do anything,” Johnny says again, and Gus isn’t jealous, this time, that Johnny’s eyes are looking through him.
“Does Eric take after her?”
Johnny stops and looks at him, then, puzzled, as if no one’s ever asked him that before. “Yeah. In… well, in some ways, yeah. He’s… he’s brave, and a little crazy; and he feels everything. And he knows… he knows things he shouldn’t, or couldn’t. He’s… Auntie Auntie says he’s an old soul.”
“He sounds like he takes after you too,” Gus says, his voice too soft: it’s breaking, and he doesn’t want it to, doesn’t want Johnny to hear it.
Johnny laughs, genuine mirth in his tone. “No, I’m pretty ordinary. Uh, dinner? It’s getting cold.”
“There’s a microwave,” and Gus closes the distance between them, retaining only enough sense to protect Johnny’s head from the brick with his hand before losing his mind and any claim to common sense. It’s Johnny who brings them back to reality this time, Johnny who (gently) pushes his other hand away from his jeans, rescuing the bags from the restaurant and the drugstore, Johnny who reminds him the hotel is just across the bridge.
When a police car drives by a few moments later, Gus is doubly relieved: insanity may run in his family but there’s no need for Ottawa, and Nelson, to know it, at least not now, and public indecency would certainly undermine his credibility, such as it is.
They have to talk; he has to know everything, everything about Johnny: when he did (finally) lose his virginity; to whom; what the hell his wife’s name was; who Johnny needed, who Johnny loved, who Johnny had, besides his sister.
Eric, that much is certain; the dead wife, for a while; the woman he calls “Auntie Auntie,” which may or may not be some Icelandic thing; but who else?
The friend…
The friend, best, Johnny’d started to say, the one who ran off with his wife.
There’s been no mention of parents, or of Eric’s grandparents. Johnny may have been orphaned, same as Gus; but someone raised him. Later than Gus, then: he must have been independent, or self-sufficient, at least, when it happened. And it wasn’t as if Gus didn’t miss them; but he’d grown up with his parents and grandparents in the same (huge) house and the rest of the town around him, so their loss was an ache (still) but not a hole.
He suspects, now, that he probably got on much better with his grandfather, at least as a teenager, and a very cocky young twenty-something, than he would have with his father, whom he remembers, dimly, as not being one to laugh much. Zeda, always cryptic, said something about the Hanoverians the last time he brought his father up, several years ago; and since Gus had been half-drunk at the time, he hadn’t felt up to cracking her code: mad King George, he’d supposed, and poured himself another whiskey. Zeda, disapproving, was easier on his head than Zeda, cryptic, even when he wasn’t drunk.
Johnny’s been dead silent, he realizes as they approach the hotel, the doorman springing into action with a murmured “Good evening, sirs.” But then, so has he; and he doesn’t dare, at the moment, look at him; and Johnny’s looking at the floor, even at the lift, in the lift.
A woman joins them; she says something to Gus that makes no sense, and he stares at her for a long moment before his brain kicks in enough to allow him to say meaninglessly, “No, not at all.”
As soon as the doors close behind her, he’s got Johnny in the corner, kissing him too desperately, only the sharp bulk of the beer between them keeping him from more; and Johnny’s kissing him back just as hard, saying things that make even less sense than the woman before: he’s apologizing, something, and Gus can’t, won’t make sense of that either, not now. Now all that matters is the soft ‘ping’ announcing their floor; and the seemingly endless length of the corridor stretching ahead of them; and his hand, fumbling with, and dropping, the keycard, rescued by Johnny. He feels lightheaded, watching Johnny’s long fingers push the card in and pull it out, and he stares at the card when Johnny holds it out to him, holding the door open too.
“I’m sorry,” Johnny says again, whispers, really; and the words sound like they’re at the end of a tunnel, echoing in Gus’ head.
I am too, he wants to say, but doesn’t: it would only make things worse; and he goes in, setting the bags down on the counter/table that separates the kitchen from the entrance; and he runs his hands through his hair, watching Johnny go past him, taking the beer to the kitchen counter, ripping the box open and leaning down to put bottles in the refrigerator.
Gus takes off his jacket, mindlessly, and then the collar, equally so. His shoes he puts under the table, where he’s been leaving them, and he strips off his socks too: all automatic motions, his Ottawa hotel ritual. The feel of the carpet under his bare feet is almost enough to ground him, but he still feels the inexplicable desperation, the sadness, the need he can’t articulate. He thought he’d found his feet but he’s off balance again and he’d welcome the swell of the waves, the creak of wood, beneath his feet right now: he’s been on dry land too long, he’s lost, he’s losing his sea legs.
Johnny’s folding the box flat, as if from long habit, and carefully putting it in the cabinet under the sink, next to the small garbage bin. When he turns around, it’s slowly, and, Gus imagines, reluctantly; but his eyes are clear. He says something about the bathroom, a question. Gus stares at him: again, the words aren’t making sense; but then he realizes what the question is, must be, and he shakes his head, and Johnny disappears into the other room.
He can’t think: he feels drugged, and not in the way he’d come to enjoy in Amsterdam; his brain feels like the synapses are firing through mud, getting lost halfway there, hopelessly mired and struggling.
There’s a buzzing and he’s about to laugh at himself: now the hallucinations are auditory? But it’s Johnny’s phone, still on the counter, insistent. He picks it up without thinking, moving swiftly into the bedroom, calling Johnny’s name –
“Who is it?” Johnny says from the other side of the door. “No, never mind, just answer it – it might be Eric.”
He finds the release mechanically: he remembers the last time he answered it. He starts to say something polite, something about ‘Johnny’s phone,’ but doesn’t get a chance: a woman’s voice interrupts at the first sound of his: “Johannes?”
Oh, he should have known.
“No,” he says, voice steady: the caller ID’d said ‘Auntie,’ and it doesn’t take him that long to add two and two, even in his current state of fugue. “Sorry, this is a friend of his; he asked me to answer. He’ll be right out.”
“And who are you?” the voice enquires, sharp but not unkind.
“Gus,” Gus says, and suddenly he’s back, the mud gone, the confusion washed away. “Gus Knickel.”
“I didn’t know Johannes knew anyone in Ottawa,” she says after a pause.
Gus sorts through all the possible responses and goes with simple: “He does.”
“Has he heard from Eric?” she asks then, and he likes that: she doesn’t ask for explanations from him (although Johnny probably won’t get off so lightly).
“Not that I’m aware of,” he says with perfect truth, and Johnny’s coming out of the bathroom, drying his hands on his jeans. “Here’s Johnny now.”
“Eric?” Johnny’s saying and Gus shakes his head; Johnny’s face falls as he takes the phone, then brightens again. “Oh, hi. Sæl. Nei. Nei, ekkert mikið–”
Gus can only imagine, hearing her voice, indistinct but the tone clear; and Johnny closes his eyes briefly. “Yeah. Well, Max said when they got to Singapore, probably not before then. Yeah. Of course, but–”
“No. No. Eric would kill us.”
“Of course I will. Yes, I am, honestly, but he’s not alone…”
Johnny’s patience is astounding, Gus reflects: in his place, Gus would have already hung up. He rubs a hand on one of Johnny’s shoulders, whether for comfort or just to touch him he can’t say, and goes back into the other room to make a stab at dinner.
“I will,” Johnny’s saying, following Gus. “I promise. Yes, even then. I’m sure he’ll call soon. Já, allt í lagi. Sofðu vel – sjáumst.”
He closes the phone and looks around distractedly. “I’d better, uh, charge it…”
Gus grins, nodding at the outlet just above the table: “I think that’s meant for laptops and cell phones and such.”
“She’s worried we haven’t heard,” Johnny says, going into the other room. “My, uh, my aunt. She’s not sure he’s safe with Max.” He comes back in with the charger and plugs it in. “Max has spent his life there, and I’m pretty sure they’re fine, more or less… that was the point, kind of…”
He’s nervous, Gus realizes; and realizes, too, that Johnny doesn’t know he’s back: last he saw, Gus couldn’t string two words together and Johnny probably thought the world was imploding.
“If he’s spent his life there, they’re probably fine,” he says, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms.
“Yeah, that’s – probably,” Johnny says, looking at him sideways, a little cautiously, and maybe a little surprised.
The microwave beeps; by the time he’s got the noodles in bowls, Johnny’s gotten out two beers. Gus pulls the other chair up to the table in the kitchen and Johnny takes it around the other side and sits down across from him.
Then again, low blood sugar could be part of it.
He can’t think of anything to say until he’s finished a heaping bowl of noodles and they’ve each cracked a second bottle of beer.
Johnny’s equally silent, although for (Gus is sure) reasons that have nothing to do with low blood sugar and everything to do with uncertainty. He’s playing with a bottle cap, idly, rolling it between those long fingers, tapping it on the table, turning it over with a flick of a fingernail and catching it on the back of his hand.
Since Johnny hasn’t been the fidgeting type up until now…
Gus sighs and Johnny looks up quickly, his fingers stilling.
“Johannes,” Gus says, quietly, and Johnny’s eyes widen.
“How – oh.”
“Yeah.” Gus reaches for the bottle cap, covering Johnny’s hand with his own. The words aren’t coming, but he has to trust that they will, or that Johnny will understand anyway. “I like it. It suits you. You’re caught between two worlds: old and new, past and future, even straight and… gay.”
Johnny’s mouth has gone slack in surprise: after a moment, he closes it suddenly.
“I’m not caught between anything except my head and my heart,” Gus continues, “but I’m afraid I’ve caught you there too.”
“No,” Johnny says, his hand clenching under Gus’. “I’m not… caught. I just am.”
Gus holds the fist in his hand, rubbing Johnny’s thumb with his own. “My real name’s Augustus.”
Johnny’s hand relaxes suddenly. “It suits you,” he says after a moment. “Render unto Caesar…” His grin is as unexpected as it is welcome, and Gus blinks, simply too shocked to respond for a few seconds. A joke, and about that–
He doesn’t remember getting to his feet, or getting around the table; and he’s not surprised Johnny’s already there, on his feet and moving into Gus’ arms as naturally as a candle takes a flame, flaring hot and settling to a slow, steady burn; and for the first time it’s not only real to Gus but it’s taken on something… permanent, a life of its own.
Johnny’s just (just!) kissing him, but not with the care he’s come to associate: this time Johnny’s embrace is urgent, even desperate; and Gus has to back them both down because he’s not doing this again, not until–
“Please,” Johnny’s saying against his mouth, his cheek, his ear; and Gus holds him tight, one hand spread in the small of Johnny’s back, the other stroking up into Johnny’s hair.
“Wait,” Gus says, the second time they’ve been here today, and it would be funny, if he felt at all humourous, that he’s the one saying ‘wait,’ urging caution, trying to resolve anything; but at the same time he knows that he probably – no, actually – never cared (enough) before.
And that’s a revelation too: he sinned with Noelle, and it took now, this, Johnny, for him to understand, to know; and again he’s grateful for forgiveness and for judging not, lest ye yourselves...
“Why?” Johnny’s saying, and his voice is as worried as his eyes, drawing back to look at Gus.
Gus loves that he can look Johnny in the eye; and that Johnny looks back.
“No, it’s not that, Johnny. Not at all. Not ever, I think.” He puts his hands on Johnny’s shoulders, and Johnny reaches up to hold Gus’ wrists, still looking at him, still… trusting.
It’s not the first time, and won’t be the last time, that Gus has felt unworthy, but, thank God, he’s rarely felt unequal to the task: once, only, and never again, if he’s learned anything at all from Dexter.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Johnny doesn’t know what to think, or what to do, so he just waits, hoping Gus does, trusting Gus, and it’s hard to believe he is, or can: part of his soul’s opened up again, the part that Eric didn’t, couldn’t know about; but Gus seems to know it from the inside out, even to Johnny being caught in between so many things.
His denial had been automatic: he still wasn’t sure why he couldn’t let anyone feel sorry for him, not even Auntie Auntie, not even Eric, why he tried to pretend, even with Eric, that the move to Winnipeg was anything but running away.
But Eric, and Auntie Auntie, had supported him more than he’d thought, and in gratitude he’d made sure to keep Eric in Gimli as much as possible, to keep in touch with AJ and, yes, Sam, as much as he could so Eric didn’t lose any more because Johnny… because Johnny couldn’t do what he ought to have done, ought to have been able to do.
Sigrid had really been the only one who’d ever not taken pity on Johnny, but she hadn’t needed to. They knew each other, in the way twins do, and there was no way, or need, to explain it.
But Zoë’d never gotten it, and she had, must have, taken pity on Johnny, more than once, he thinks now: what had she seen in him? Why had she married him? There was no question the knees were permanent; did she love him, once upon a time?
Did he love her?
Because this… this thing with Gus, so different, so full, so real… is it just that it’s been so long and he can’t remember any more? Or is it that it is different, different because it’s real?
Or, says Pastor, his sinful nature is fooling him into wishing–
hoping–
Johnny was never meant to be alone, and neither was Sigrid. When you’re born a twin, that’s a given. Sigrid had Max, and Eric; and she gave Johnny Eric, when she couldn’t have him any more, so Johnny wasn’t alone either.
Johnny’d had Sigrid, then Eric… but not Zoë, probably never Zoë. Even when the telescope was new, she’d never bothered to come up after the first time.
Eric treated the telescope like theirs, not his, as Sigrid would have; and that was something Johnny’d been grateful for even though he didn’t know what it was he was being grateful for.
Gus is still looking at him, searchingly; and then he says, “I only mean ‘wait’ because this is too… too important, Johnny, to fuck up. I don’t mean that I’m having second thoughts or that you’ve done anything wrong. I just mean…”
Johnny can feel his heart beginning to pound: he’s hearing what he wants to hear, or Gus is saying…
“…you’re too important to fuck up, or fuck over; and I think I’m a lot harder to live with than you ever thought of being. Johannes…” Gus’ voice is very quiet, and his eyes are sad; and Johnny’s almost more startled by this than by Gus’ use of his real name. “I’m not… used to someone… caring about me, what I’m thinking; I’m not used to someone paying this kind of attention to me. Outside the bedroom, anyway.”
How could anyone not, Johnny wants to say; instead he just rubs his hand over Gus’ forearm.
“And I already am fucking you up,” Gus whispers. “It’s not meant, but I am.”
“Unless you’re running away with my best friend, I don’t think you could,” Johnny says, and it comes out louder, harsher than he intended.
“You don’t have a best friend,” Gus says quietly. “You’re very alone, Johnny. That also makes you… vulnerable, and it makes it imperative for me to be… responsible for you.”
“Don’t pity me,” Johnny says through his teeth. “Don’t.”
“Where do you see pity?” Gus shakes him slightly. “Where on earth – what on earth are you talking about? I feel sorry for your wife, that she didn’t fucking appreciate you; I feel sorry for Gimli, for losing you; I feel sorry for Eric that you’re not his father. Feel sorry for you? I may want to not strew your path with polar bears or I may want to find that ‘best’ friend of yours, punch his face into a brick wall, but I don’t feel sorry for you.”
“Don’t,” Johnny chokes, and to his chagrin tears are overflowing; and they feel cool on his hot, hot face.
“See?” Gus says, his thumbs on Johnny’s cheeks. “You’re a little crazy, very brave… and you feel everything. But… you don’t show anything, or you try not to. I see it, what you try to hide: I see how you worry, I see how you react, I see how you feel when I kiss you, when I touch you… and when I get lost in the past and you think it’s something you’ve done.”
“You see everything,” Johnny gets out, and then his face is buried in Gus’ shoulder and Gus’ hands are on his back and he’s home, for the first time in years.
And Gus goes on, just like Johnny’s not snotting up his shirt, “and I’m not used to that. I’m not used to feeling like this.”
That’s so surprising Johnny’s breath catches and he pulls back to look at Gus. “But…”
“Yeah,” Gus says, holding his eyes, holding Johnny by the shoulders again, steadily. “I’m not used to feeling like this.”
He waits a minute, Johnny guesses for it to sink in, which, God, how can it? – then says, “So I’m still working on this… issue. And I do have issues, Johnny. But for starters, I’m a moody bastard, and I’m a prick sometimes, and I’ve always been that way. It’s nothing to do with you: I’ve spent a lot of my life alone. I’m trying to be aware of your feelings. I want you to try to be aware of mine: when I’m upset, it’s not because you’ve done something wrong. I don’t like games played with me and I don’t play games with people I care about. Do you think you can trust me enough to believe that and to… relax?”
Johnny thinks he’s already down two kidneys; what else is there? Liver? Corneas? …heart?
“I can… uh, yeah, I can try.” He swallows hard, noisily; Gus strokes Johnny’s throat with his thumb, then leans in to kiss the path he traced. His lips are warm and gentle, and Johnny’s hands find their way to Gus’ hair, his fingers tangling there, his heart pounding so hard he can’t hear, can only feel Gus’ tongue, on his pulse, then in the hollow of his neck.
“I’m not quite finished,” Gus says unsteadily, finding Johnny’s mouth by touch alone. “Not… quite…”
“Okay,” Johnny breathes, opening his mouth, letting Gus in.
“I’m really not,” Gus says against Johnny’s cheek, breathing almost as hard as Johnny; and Johnny can feel Gus’ heart thudding against his chest. “And I’m a jealous bastard, Johnny: I’m jealous of your wife, and I know she’s dead, but she had you, and you loved her, and she didn’t deserve you. That’s how I feel about her and I can’t pretend it’s not.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Yeah, that was more or less what he was expecting: Johnny’s pulled back, staring at Gus as if he’s sprouted two heads. “She’s gone,” he says, clearly bewildered.
“Were you never jealous of someone who’s gone?” Gus says, but Johnny’s expression doesn’t change. “Was she?”
What the fuck was her name?
“I don’t think so,” Johnny’s saying slowly. “She never… we never talked about Sigrid, but… I don’t think so.”
“Okay, I am,” Gus says, his voice hard. “Not of Sigrid, or of Eric, just so we’re clear. But she left you.”
He can see Johnny’s confusion, his eyes falling to the floor; and then he pulls away from Gus and reaches for his beer, warm now, and drains it.
Gus watches him drink for a moment, then gets another beer from the fridge and hands it to Johnny when he sets the empty bottle down. Johnny takes it and drinks down half of it; and it occurs to Gus that he’ll fit in just fine at home.
If they can get through this, that is.
And Johnny’s shifting his weight: Gus has spent his own life watching everyone, everything, almost as carefully as Johnny watches him, and perhaps that’s one reason it’s so endearing: he’s never seen anyone else expend that kind of attention. It’s one reason he thinks, even now, that his calling was genuine.
“You’ve been standing too long,” he says. “Let’s sit.”
Johnny shrugs; but when Gus moves to the couch, Johnny points into the bedroom with two fingers of his left hand, holding the neck of the bottle loosely in his fingers: “I ought to put it up.”
“Let me get you some ice,” Gus says, and ignores Johnny’s protest. By the time he’s back, Johnny’s boots are off and he’s on the bed with one knee up on a pillow from the armchair. Gus hands him the ibuprofen and a glass of water and puts the bag of ice on his knee. The exhalation that forces out of Johnny is more telling than the celerity with which Johnny swallows the ibuprofen.
“And while we’re on the subject,” Gus says, settling next to Johnny on the bed and stretching his own legs out, “I know your knees are fucked up. You don’t have to pretend they’re okay.”
“I’m not,” Johnny says, eyes flying open. “I just forget. They’re usually fine; I wrenched one in practice last week and it’s been acting up since.”
Gus takes a drink of his own beer, then slides down to lay next to Johnny, finding his hand. Johnny’s eyes are closed again: it’s been a long damn day; and it’s not looking to get any shorter, actually.
“I never knew a minister – priest?” Johnny says, “who said ‘fuck.’”
Gus turns his head to find Johnny looking at him – smiling at him.
“Priest,” Gus says, trying to keep a straight face.
“So if sex is a sacrament, ‘fuck’ is, uh, part of the liturgy?”
“The best part,” Gus says before he can’t stop the laughter; and Johnny laughs too.
After a while, after the beers are both gone, again, Johnny says in a careful voice, “I think she left me because she… thought she had to. I don’t know what it was... I don’t think she knew, really; if she’d known, I don’t think she’d have left.”
His hand is gripping Gus’ tight, of a sudden: it’s the only place they’re touching.
Known? “Known what?”
“We’d… stopped trying,” Johnny says. “I mean, we had some tests, what we could afford, and everything was, you know, normal; but she never, uh, got pregnant. After a while we just didn’t think about it; then Eric came and we still didn’t think about it. But they told me…”
“She was pregnant,” Gus says, after the silence stretches too thin.
Johnny looks at him again, amazed: “How – how do you know?”
Gus can’t say: it’ll sound mystical, treacly, or full of shit. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Johnny says. “I don’t… if she’d known, I don’t think she’d have left, that’s all.”
“That still hasn’t got much to do with the price of eggs, old son,” Gus says quietly. “She still left, whether or no, and I’m still angry about that. I think you deserved better.”
“I think she thought so too,” Johnny says, his voice distant. “She was… she was saddled with a nephew she didn’t sign on for, and – we had enough, but never much more than that, and she tried to go into business – aromatherapy, once, only it kept putting me to sleep, and other things. I think, in the end, I just – I wasn’t what she signed on for.”
Gus’ brain is racing, but all he says is, “And your friend? She signed on for that? What was he?”
Johnny pulls his hand away; Gus rolls over, propping his head up on that hand and finding Johnny’s again with his other hand. “I think some of your thoughts are very… Christian, Johnny, and maybe valid; and I think they speak to the… generosity of your soul. But I think you’re denying some of your own feelings about this too. And denial works for a while. It can work for a long time. But facing your feelings isn’t wrong, and it isn’t going to bring her back. It’s not going to change a damn thing, in fact, except to make you feel more, or less, guilty about the whole mess.”
Johnny stares at the ceiling for a long time without blinking; his eyes are bright.
“A mechanic,” he says at last, in a voice barely audible. “We… we used to rebuild car engines, in high school…”
When he closes his eyes, a tear runs out of the corner, straight down the side of his face and into his ear.
An echo, long-dead, Gus had thought, of the daily prayers during Embers, surfaces in his head: …give thy grace and heavenly benediction; that both by their life and doctrine they may show forth thy glory, and set forward the salvation of all men.
This man, at least; even back in the day, Gus had thought ‘all men’ was probably overreaching.
Mindful of Johnny’s knee, he moves closer, sliding an arm under Johnny’s neck and pulling Johnny against him; and Johnny, clearly not caring about his knee, rolls over onto his side, his back to Gus, both of his arms holding Gus’ other arm against his chest.
Gus presses his lips to the back of Johnny’s neck: he’s out of his depth, but what else is new? He’s committed… and probably has been, he begins to understand, since the moment he released Johnny, realizing he was straight, and Johnny… Johnny took a leap of, yes, faith, that in retrospect is mindboggling and terrifying and utterly remarkable; and he took it for, and with, Gus.
Well, Gus isn’t planning to run off with anyone but Johnny any time soon, so he’s safe enough there.
And a mechanic… cars… he’d thought the tattoo was hockey-related, a rookie taking a dare; but now he wonders (what with spark plugs and all) if it was something else.
“I take it you never talked to him about it,” Gus says after a few minutes of silence; Johnny’s tension hasn’t lessened and his own muscles are starting to ache just thinking about it.
Johnny’s head jerks; Gus cracks his neck in startled sympathy. “I’m not saying you should have,” he says mildly. “I was just wondering.”
“I left,” Johnny says, and that dry dead laugh follows, the one Gus would banish forever if he could. “It was… easier. Eric would have – would have figured out something, eventually; I even – I even let them, Eric and Auntie Auntie, I let them think it was more, and when the Winnipeg offer came in again, they wanted me to take it. You see, one of Eric’s best friends was his son. I didn’t really… I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You were a sacrificial lamb too,” Gus says, and he doesn’t want to go there but can’t help it: Johnny’s voice, so soft, so broken, sounds so much like Dexter’s, at the end, that Gus is fighting tears as well.
“No,” Johnny’s saying, “I didn’t want to be there any more. It… wasn’t a sacrifice. I was… I was really lucky that the doctor on duty was on a rotation from Winnipeg; I was lucky the coroner’s my third cousin once removed; I was lucky Auntie Auntie’s the mayor, you know? It’s weird… it’s so weird even there that things worked out for me; it used to drive Zoë crazy, that I didn’t worry about things, they just worked out; it would have made her crazy after, too, to know it worked out like that, but… she loved Eric too, so really I don’t think she’d have minded that much.”
Zoë.
Life.
Well, fuck that shit.
And she loved Eric so much, did she, that she was running off with his best friend’s father? In a town like that, did she think any of them would ever be able to live there again, live through it, live it down?
No, she didn’t care, no matter how much Johnny defends her; but if Johnny admits the truth, then he has to admit that he married a lie, or was living a lie, and that’s something that’s never easy to understand, or admit.
He wonders, too, why she married him; it’s easy for him to see, cynic that he is, why Johnny must have fallen in love with her: sexually inexperienced, shy, easy-going; and, possibly, she was the first or even the only woman he’d experienced sexual feelings for, or at least with, and given his nature (and his religion), it was inevitable he’d fall in love, or believe himself in love.
Of course, she was also carrying a child Johnny believed to be his, which can’t help influencing how Johnny sees the situation. Gus, again cynically, would bet the baby wasn’t his; to him, outside looking in, it seems much more likely that she left because she discovered she was pregnant. And perhaps it was ethical, at least, that she didn’t deceive Johnny by having him raise a child not his own, but neither does it makes sense, to his overactive mind, that she and Johnny didn’t, for so long – seven years? Ten years? – and she and the ‘best friend’ did.
If he was his great-grandmother, a notable and feared Victorian with the robust disregard for human goodness that characterised many of her generation, he’d even go so far as to say she didn’t want Johnny’s baby. He wishes suddenly that Zeda were handy: she’d know, and in the back of his head is the idea that aromatherapy involves essential oils.
Zoë.
The irony just might kill him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Johnny feels Gus’ lips on the back of his neck; if he wasn’t trying so hard to get hold of himself he’d turn over, feel them against his own lips, where they ought to be; but Gus has had (or should have had) enough of this shit.
“I’m sorry,” Gus says quietly, behind his ear; and the pause is long enough that Johnny’s jaw starts to tense again. “I… am sorry you didn’t get the chance to have a child, raise a child.”
“Not a child,” Johnny says raggedly. Zoë didn’t understand, had never understood. “Ours, our child. But Eric’s the same – he’s Sigrid’s, so he’s mine too. I didn’t ever just want a kid for the – just to have a kid.”
All Gus says is “Ah,” and then his lips are pressing against the skin behind Johnny’s ear.
Johnny closes his eyes and presses back against Gus. They’re already so close it’s just about useless but he tries, anyway: it’s the thought that counts.
“Eric’s part of you,” Gus whispers after a while. “Is that it?”
“Yeah. Exactly.” He doesn’t feel so much relieved as drained: how would he have felt if Zoë’d ever gotten it? Relieved, he thinks. Re-leaved, like you can turn the pages back in a book and try again, explain it better, if you had another chance, use the right words this time.
“I’ve never subscribed to the theory that everything happens for a reason,” Gus says, his breath whispering across the short hair behind Johnny’s ear, sending a shiver up his spine: goose walking over his grave, Auntie Auntie would say. “I think it’s the Anglican in me: ‘He hath not dealt with us according to our sins: neither rewarded us according to our iniquities.’”
Johnny’s never paid much attention to words in church, prayers and litanies: they’re words you say, in order, and sometimes you stop and think about them, but most of the time they’re just words, syllables.
When Gus says them, Johnny hears them; he doesn’t know if it’s that they’re different or if it’s the old-fashioned language that sounds… so right in Gus’ voice; but when Gus stops, he waits a few seconds and then says, “And… is there more?”
“A lot more,” Gus says, and his chuckle is a warm vibration against the back of Johnny’s neck. “I didn’t mean to… preach at you, Johnny.”
“I like it,” Johnny whispers, pulling Gus’ hand to his mouth and pressing a kiss on Gus’ palm, then holding it between his own. “I like it.”
Gus is silent for a moment; then he pulls Johnny back against him, his mouth close to Johnny’s ear, and his voice a warm burr.
“‘But as the heaven is high above the earth: so great hath been his mercy towards us.
We found trouble and heaviness: we were even at death’s door.
The waters of the sea had well-nigh covered us: the proud waters had well-nigh gone over our soul.
The sea roared: and the stormy wind lifted up the waves thereof.
We were carried up as it were to heaven, and then down again into the deep: our soul melted within us, because of trouble;
Then cried we unto thee, O Lord: and thou didst deliver us out of our distress.’”
Johnny’s amazed; and a little frightened. He’d stopped looking for the lightning bolt but wonders now if it’s still there, hovering. When he says it out loud, Gus doesn’t laugh, but says, “Well, you know, Yahweh was probably a storm god, or a thunder god.”
“Really? Like… Thor?”
And he doesn’t mind, at all, that Gus is laughing now; or that Gus is nuzzling him behind his ear, saying ridiculous things, nonsense all of it, but making Johnny smile too.
“I’m not sure about that,” he says after a while. “Sometimes it seems like it’s just… things happening. I’m sure a lot of people call out to God and he doesn’t deliver them.”
Did Zoë call out? Did she know?
Sometimes he can’t sleep at night, wondering.
“Why do you think that is?” Gus says, but he sounds interested, not like a priest at all; and his finger’s tracing a lazy circle on Johnny’s palm.
“I don’t know,” and he wants to add that he’s not the expert here, but he doesn’t: “Maybe they’re not good enough. Except…”
“Yeah,” and he feels Gus nodding. “Slow to anger, and of great mercy…”
Johnny wrestles with that for a few moments and then shakes his head. “I… God can’t be too busy… and… he does… he has to care.”
“Mmmm.”
“Or he doesn’t exist at all,” Johnny says, trying not to laugh but too nervous to hold it back. “Gus, what kind of religion is this?”
“The kind that believes God created us with intelligence and the ability to reason,” Gus says quietly. “I don’t pretend to be the poster boy for Anglican religious theory, Johnny; I believe you have to find your own path, not be… given it, that’s all.”
“Is it the same God then?”
“Are you asking the Anglican priest or Gus Knickel?”
“I… they’re not the same?”
“Not always,” Gus says, and his sigh is so deep Johnny feels it in his bones. But he can’t stop now, he’s trying to get this. “Okay, if there’s a God,” he says carefully. “A God like the one in your prayer… if that God exists, is he the same God as the other churches have?”
Gus is quiet for a long moment, then nods. “Yes.”
“And if there’s not,” Johnny says, closing his eyes and trying to think, “if there’s not, then… that’s – that’s why it matters, what we do, how – how we treat each other.”
“It matters either way,” Gus says, “but essentially… yes. Animals are sometimes kinder to one another than humans are. It’s… an interesting paradox.”
Johnny nods: his brain’s too full to take in much more. “And this God… this God doesn’t care if you and I are – if we’re – if you –”
“An exemplary priest should be married, or chaste,” Gus says. “I’ve never managed to attain either, but I try. I don’t – I really don’t – pick up incredibly hot men by canals every day, or every week, even. I try to reserve that for the feasts of the saints.”
Johnny can’t help it: he giggles, and he hasn’t felt this carefree, this light, in years; and maybe Gus was right, the only thing it would really do, talking, was make him feel more, or less, guilty.
There’s a lot of blame, and guilt, to go around, he thinks immediately, suddenly ashamed: Zoë’s dead, and a baby with her, and they – it – never had a chance; and there’s nothing funny in that, nothing funny in Zoë not being able to just tell him, not giving him a chance to be an adult, or not… not giving him – really – a chance at all.
None of this is ending up where he thought it would, or should; and he still can’t figure how Gus does it, makes his mind go in directions it never has, probably never would.
The ‘shoulds’ he should – ha – leave for another time, because right now he’s more mixed up than he was before.
But that wasn’t the point, anyway; the point was getting stuff clear between them. And he hopes to hell it’s clear enough for now, because he’s had (way) too much Zoë for one night, and Gus sure as hell has a lot more important things on his plate than Zoë-and-Johnny.
He tries not to remember the package on the chair, still there: but it’s too late.
“I don’t think I want to talk about her any more,” he says to Gus’ hand.
“Okay,” Gus says, nodding again; and he pulls Johnny back once more. The warm and cool air he’s breathing on the back of Johnny’s neck is an odd hypnotic rhythm. He counts the breaths for a while, then counts by twos; then wonders how Noah kept all the animals from fighting.
Gus probably knows that too, or at least has some theories, but he’s too comfortable to ask.
“Johnny. Johannes.”
“Gus,” he says back, smiling. “Augustus.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It’s too late: Johnny’s out, crashed, like he’s been out to sea for a week in a storm.
And, really, he has; but it’s probably more like years.
It’s not what Gus intended, and he can’t honestly say he wouldn’t rather the evening had ended up somewhere quite different, but he feels… right about it: they talked, and he knows (finally), and he told Johnny, in words even Johnny’s innocence couldn’t mistake, what Johnny was getting into with him; and Johnny told him…
So much.
He hugs Johnny tight, “Augustus” still echoing in his ears; and Johnny makes a small contented noise, his fingers still intertwined with Gus’. It’s tempting, so tempting, to just drift off here; but he really can’t, or at least shouldn’t. He checks the clock and gives himself five minutes. The idea appeals to him: five minutes, five senses. He closes his eyes, starting with smell.
Spicy, some kind of spice… coffee, yeah, underneath the warm yeasty smell of the beer; fish and oyster sauce, red chilli paste, lime and cilantro… He breathes deeper, and there’s a tang underneath it: the salt on Johnny’s skin?
He breathes in again and touches his tongue gently to Johnny’s neck, letting the flavour roll onto his tongue, into the back of his mouth: garlic and more salt; a husky dark note beneath that that Gus allows himself to fancy is coffee. He licks, slow and quiet, and this time tastes the soap from this morning and beneath that, finally, Johnny’s skin, naked to his tongue; and he leans in to inhale deeply.
He still smells the tang of the sea; and the wind of the prairie; and a blue sky chased with clouds; and a meadow warmed by the summer sun.
He closes his mouth and listens: can he hear the hum of bees, looking for flowers? Or is that the gentle wash of the surf on the sandy beach, overlaid by the rasp of the waves on the rocks at the point?
He becomes aware that he’s still holding Johnny’s hand, or Johnny’s holding his. Without opening his eyes, he laces his fingers through Johnny’s, feeling the sides of Johnny’s fingers with his own, the skin more sensitive there than on his fingertips, or Johnny’s: their calluses aren’t in the same places, but they’re similar. Johnny’s got a callus on the outside of his index finger, in the middle, rough and horizontal: a tool he uses? Tying, tightening skate laces? His fingernails are short, cut almost to the quick but lacking jagged edges: bites, then trims? Whatever he does, he trusts his fingers to do what he needs, not his nails. There’s another callus on the outside of his palm: skate laces, then. His fingers are long, so long, almost as long as his legs; and they’re flexible, and relaxed, and they curve over his hand, entwining with his fingers as naturally as breathing.
Reminded, he takes another breath, trying to memorise how Johnny smells, luxuriating in how Johnny feels, pressed against him in more places than he can count and completely relaxed in his arms.
He opens his eyes then, finally, to a blur; they uncross after a moment as he shifts back, rubbing his nose in the soft, bristly short hair behind Johnny’s ear. It’s glistening in the light from the lamp and it fades to a golden down on Johnny’s neck, above his collar. There are faint lines crisscrossing Johnny’s neck, a testament to years of farmer’s tans and an outdoor life. If Gus’ neck lacks the same it’s only because Solomon Gundy gets a lot less sun – that, and Gus has always worn his hair longer than Zeda thinks he should.
It takes more resolution than he thought he possessed to extricate himself from Johnny, withdraw his arm, settle Johnny on the pillow; and he remembers, when he gets up, to go look for the bag of ice. It’s melted, of course: “Your sacrifice wasn’t in vain,” he tells it, picking it up; and Johnny stirs at the sound of his voice, then rolls onto his stomach, resting his face on his arm.
Gus turns away before he can succumb to temptation again. He tidies the kitchen, putting the mugs and bowls to soak and rinsing out the beer bottles. He ponders coffee for a moment, or tea, even, but it’s too much trouble and he goes with another beer instead.
He sits down with the package from the lawyers, and, really, he has good intentions. But he can’t settle down: he doesn’t want to think about confederation right now.
He finally decides a shower might wake him up enough to concentrate; and he’s careful to pull the door all the way closed so he doesn’t wake Johnny. And as it happens the water does wash away a lot of his stress, tension he didn’t know he was carrying.
When he emerges, wrapped in one of the robes, Johnny’s still on his stomach on the bed, still dead to the world. Gus watches him for a moment and makes a quick decision: he puts the beer down on the nightstand and fetches the package from the lawyer along with another pillow from the couch. He settles carefully onto the bed but the mattress is a good one and Johnny doesn’t do more than stir again, moving closer to Gus, as if he senses Gus is there, somehow, even in his sleep.
It feels good to have him there, even asleep; and Gus opens the package quietly, feeling more relaxed than he’s felt in several hours.
The paralegal or secretary is organized: this time Gus finds a pen, a highlighter, and a pad of small post-it notes in the package along with the draft. He starts at the back, knowing how much legalese (not to say bullshit) is contained in the first two-thirds; and knowing, too, that if they’ve managed to incorporate today’s changes, that’s where he’ll find them.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
- TS Eliot, “Preludes”
Two beers, or three, he thinks hazily: the pressure on his bladder’s getting uncomfortable but he doesn’t want to move. He can feel Gus’ warmth along his side and he closes his eyes again, trying to ignore his body’s protests.
Then he wakes up enough to remember – with a surge of embarrassment – that he fell asleep on Gus, and God only knows –
The light’s on, still, the way it was the first night, so he gives up all at once, getting out of bed as carefully as he can, even more dismayed to realize he was asleep on top of the covers, still in all his clothes, like some kid after his first six-pack or something.
He stops in his tracks when he sees Gus, wrapped in a robe, asleep against pillows piled at the headboard, papers all over his chest and stomach, a pen under his hand on top of the papers; and on the nightstand a beer, and a highlighter, and some little coloured notes.
He feels even guiltier, if that’s possible: for sure Gus has more on his mind than Johnny Jóhannsson. But he’s not sure how to stay out of the way, or how to help, or…
Well, he thinks, making his way to the bathroom, he’s not sure about anything, and he already knew that, so he needs to get with the program: if you’re down two at the beginning of the third there’s no point in trying to figure out what went wrong in the first.
He strips off his clothes after he finishes: he needs to find a laundromat tomorrow. Maybe he can stop by the shop, see if Hafdís knows a place, thank her (again) for the coffee shop’s address.
And a shower’s not the worst idea either, even though he has no idea what time it is. Hopefully the walls are thick enough he won’t wake Gus up or get Gus thrown out.
That thought amuses him through the shower, which is really a lick and a promise more than anything else: he bets even a hotel manager, taking on Gus, would end up like a rookie dropping the gloves with Probie.
He’s relieved to see Gus is still asleep when he comes out, and he risks a rescue, moving the papers to the table by the window. Gus doesn’t wake, just stretches and turns partly on his side. Johnny turns the lamp down to the lowest setting and goes into the kitchen for a bottle of water.
Gus put the dishes in to soak; that warms Johnny’s heart, for some reason – well, hell, what about Gus doesn’t? – so he pays it back, washes them up quick and leaves them to drip dry. For a few seconds he looks for a towel, then remembers that it’s different now, and that Gus went to… went to a lot of trouble, tonight (or last night now), to make sure Johnny knows that.
His mind shies away from the subject and he follows it, finding the box with the cookies instead and getting a bottle of water. He sits at the little table in the kitchen and eats the cookies and tries not to think about much of anything, just how good the cookies taste and how much better Auntie Auntie’s taste; and he remembers the piparkökur Langamma Sigrún used to make. He wonders if Auntie Auntie ever got the recipe, or if there even was one.
The bag with the condoms is still on the table: he feels the heat rising in his face (again!) when he realizes that’s what the bag is. He finishes the water quickly, closes the box of cookies, then drops his head down into his arms, stretching his shoulders and digging his fingers into his still-damp hair.
Gay, straight… those were really just words a few days ago.
And a few days ago there was no question in his mind that being gay was a sin, let alone any questions at all about the existence of God. And a few days ago, were those just words too?
And there’s no question that a few days ago he’d never have thought he’d ever be on his knees sucking – yeah, sucking cock; or that just seeing Gus naked would make his mouth water; or that a guy’s cock in his mouth would taste better, feel better than… than a woman’s… than Zoë.
He rubs his neck and then pulls, cracking it. He should close the doors, turn the TV on or dig the book out of his bag, read until he’s sleepy: thinking about all this isn’t getting him anywhere. And the back of his brain is trying to remember the catechism, and thinking that there wasn’t anything in there more than the Ten Commandments, the way Gus said.
The hotel is starting to close in on him: the nice thing about tournaments and away games is having things to do. He wishes half-seriously he’d let Sigrid and Auntie Auntie teach him to knit: it’d be something, anyway. He’s not used to not riding herd on twenty boys, more or less, and he hopes Lars is coping okay.
It’s pretty… fucked, is what it is, and he shouldn’t be up this time of night, or morning… if he was home, he could go up, look at the stars, but there’d be nothing to see in Ottawa, with the lights and all. He’d left the telescope in Gimli: he wasn’t in Winnipeg enough to use it, and even though Winnipeg wasn’t a big city, there was still enough ambient light to make stargazing as useless as…
Well, she’d never said ‘useless,’ and he’s unbalanced about that too: he’s not sure it’s right to feel angry with Zoë. She’s dead, can’t defend herself, and (depending on what you believe, which he really doesn’t know any more) could either be glad to have shuffled off this mortal coil – and he can hear Gus saying that, and it sends a thrill up his spine – or she could be suffering torments of the damned in Hell. Either way, he says to himself, sternly, either way she’s dead and you’re not so just get the hell over it already. She paid; what does he expect?
He’s always thought that if he knew he could maybe deal, handle it, move on... For the first time he’s wondering if he might be better off the way he is, or is he just scared to think about it any more than he already has? But would he be happier, or at least less guilty, if he knew why, if there was a way to know?
He’d thought he’d been able to let it go; he thought he’d moved on.
But it’s pretty clear now, what with Gus and all, he hasn’t been moving: he’s in the same place he was three years ago.
There’s a soft padding sound; when he opens his eyes, he sees Gus’ bare feet on the floor. Gus is standing next to him. “Hey,” hey says quietly. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” Gus says, moving behind him and pressing his thumbs into the muscles at the base of Johnny’s neck. “I was thirsty.”
Johnny’s suddenly in paradise: Gus knows exactly where, how, to touch, how to smooth the tension away, kneading and pulling; and he can’t keep back a low moan.
“Feel good?” Gus says, moving his hands further down, smoothing the muscles at the top of Johnny’s shoulders, at the top of his spine.
“…yes,” Johnny says, or tries to, but it comes out more like a(nother) moan.
Gus works steadily for a few minutes; by the time he’s moved to the outside of Johnny’s shoulders, pressing in and rotating gently, Johnny’s a puddle. “Thanks,” he whispers. “Thanks.”
He senses rather than sees Gus bend down, warm lips on the back of Johnny’s neck: “My pleasure,” and the low voice, with the laugh inside, the low voice, and the soft lips, go straight to Johnny’s cock.
He gets a grip, takes a breath: they both should go back to bed, to sleep.
Another kiss, and Gus is moving to the fridge. He hears the snap when Gus twists the cap off a bottle of water and then he hears the gurgle of water and Gus swallowing.
The idea that he’s missing Gus, head tilted back, eyes closed, throat moving, is enough to get him to sit up and turn; and he finds himself with his face in Gus’ belly: the robe tie’s too loose and Gus’ robe is hanging open.
But it’s a good place to be and he rests his face there, above Gus’ navel, careful not to rub because he needs to shave.
Gus continues to drink but one hand comes down to cup Johnny’s face, holding him there, a thumb stroking the side of Johnny’s head. He closes his eyes, listening to Gus’ stomach: he can hear the liquid gurgling there, which is pretty cool. He tries not to look down, and he’s trying to think if he ever looked in the dressing room, or in high school, but he can’t help it now.
Gus’ cock is soft: he can see the curve at the base, pale against the dark shadow of hair.
Johnny licks his lips. He doesn’t think he makes a sound but Gus’ hand tightens on his face, then strokes down his neck. Johnny breathes in deep and turns his head, kisses Gus just above the navel, then dips his tongue into it. Gus shudders, and suddenly both his hands are on Johnny’s shoulders, one cold from the bottle of water.
Johnny looks down again: Gus’ cock is swelling, just a little, the foreskin still loose at the end. He’s seen this before, on himself, but never from… outside; and he swallows hard, wondering how it tastes, how it would feel for Gus to get hard in his mouth.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says again, looking up at Gus.
“You didn’t,” Gus says; and his grin is wicked.
Johnny swallows again.
“I… Can I…”
“Yeah,” Gus whispers, rubbing his thumb, rough and callused, across Johnny’s lower lip again. “Please.”
It’s enough, too much: his hands find Gus’ ass by instinct; Gus angles his hips; and Johnny breathes in deep, then licks Gus’ belly just where the fuzz of hair starts. “God,” Gus breathes, and Johnny feels that astonishing sense of power again, that he can do this to Gus, that Gus wants this, wants his mouth, wants… him.
He presses a kiss at the base of Gus’ cock and feels Gus quiver. He licks, tasting the soft skin, curling his tongue around to taste underneath too. He’s taking too long: Gus’ cock is filling rapidly now. Johnny leans in, down, and sucks Gus’ foreskin into his mouth. He hears Gus draw in a breath through his teeth, and his hands tighten on Johnny’s shoulders.
It feels so good: he opens wider, sucking the head in, letting it rest on his tongue, feeling the pulse underneath, feeling – oh, yeah, better than he imagined – feeling Gus’ cock growing in his mouth, feeling the foreskin stretch out; and he runs his tongue around it again, not able to just hold still and feel, not able to keep from sucking. Gus moans, and there’s salt on Johnny’s tongue; Gus’ hands are in his hair, now, and Gus’ hips are moving, oh so slowly, guiding Johnny’s mouth up and down his cock.
A few more breaths and Gus is big, big and thick and hard, and Johnny has to move a hand from Gus’ ass to his cock to hold it, help Gus move, slide in and out, slide up and down his tongue.
He can feel Gus’ control: Gus’ legs are trembling but he’s still moving slowly, slow as he can, and Johnny slows down his sucking to match Gus’ rhythm. The brush of hair against his hand reminds him: he moves his other hand down between Gus’ legs, rubbing Gus’ balls; and Gus jerks, a gasp escaping. His legs spread wider and Johnny groans too, leaning down to lick there, at the base, under Gus’ cock, just above his balls.
He smells good and Johnny wonders if all guys smell like this, taste like this, or if it’s just Gus; and he licks again, first one, then the other, enjoying the soft texture of hair and skin on his tongue. He remembers before, the place Gus found on him, and he burrows deeper, lifting Gus’ balls and licking under them.
The next thing he knows Gus is gasping his name, pulling at him, tipping his head back and leaning down to kiss him. “Too close,” he says against Johnny’s cheek. “Sorry. Jesus, I want –”
Johnny feels a warm glow starting inside him: he’s figuring it out, Gus is liking it, liking it too much, and he wants to taste Gus again, feel Gus’ cock jerk in his mouth, feel the warm bitter spurts on the back of his tongue, hear Gus’ voice go broken and breathless.
“Please,” Gus says, at the same time Johnny says it, trying to lean down again. “Please…”
“I want–”
“I want–”
They both break off and Gus laughs, a breathless sound: “God, I want – I want you. But right now I want you to fuck me, Johnny. I don’t want to come until you’re deep inside me…”
Johnny sits back, harder than he meant to, staring at Gus, his mouth suddenly dry.
He’d thought about it but he hadn’t… he hadn’t thought Gus was thinking about it, not– not that way.
Gus misunderstands: he takes a quick breath and sinks to his knees, putting his hands’ on Johnny’s thighs, up under the robe. “God, Johnny, I’m – I keep forgetting, you’re so… you’re so fucking hot, you’re so goddamn sexy and everywhere I touch you you shudder, you moan, and I want to spend the rest of my life seeing if I can make you sound like that every fucking day. But don’t – anything you want, Johnny, anything you’re comfortable with, I won’t push you.
“No,” Johnny says, shaking his head, the words overwhelming him more than anything Gus could think of doing, “no, God – Gus, I – I didn’t – I don’t know, I didn’t – do you know? Have… have you…”
Gus stares at him for a minute, then swallows and says thickly, “Yeah. Not for a while, but it’s – it’s so good, it’s so damn good.”
And suddenly Johnny feels that surge of jealousy, jealousy over the past, the guy who had that, did that with Gus, what he wants; and he understands, a little, about Gus and Zoë. “I wish it’d been me,” he says without thinking.
“Oh, Christ, Johnny, if I’d met you at Cambridge I’d never have graduated, I’d never have left my fucking bed for the past fifteen years,” and the words are tumbling from Gus just like Gus has changed places with Johnny; and the warm glow starts up again, burning hotter now. He leans in and Gus leans up: where their lips meet it feels almost like fire leaping between them. He buries his hands in Gus’ hair and tilts Gus’ head back, and Gus moans into his mouth, arms going round Johnny’s waist, pulling him even closer.
Johnny’s so hard already he could pound nails: he’s trying not to think about Gus, spread before him, about Gus’ ass, about Gus’ cock in his hand, thick and warm and hard…
Gus reads his mind again: one hand’s on Johnny’s cock, swift and sure, and it only takes a few strokes before Johnny’s on the verge of coming (already!). “Stop,” he says against Gus’ mouth. “Please… I…”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“God,” Gus says fiercely, “I want… everything, I don’t even know where to start.” Johnny’s cock leaps in his grip: without thinking, he squeezes, and Johnny gasps, startled.
“Christ, Johnny, I’m sorry,” Gus breathes, leaning up again to kiss him. “Christ…”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Johnny says jerkily, his eyes wide.
“I didn’t mean–”
“No, no, it’s okay, it’s good,” Johnny says breathlessly. “I’m not usually so – I can usually go longer than, uh, five seconds, honest.”
As the import sinks in, Gus feels his own rush begin; and when did he ever come just from thinking? He grabs himself, wincing; then he starts to laugh, deep down and helpless: “This is fucking unbelievable. We are in so much trouble, Johnny…”
Johnny, still trying to catch his breath, can’t manage a laugh, but he grins.
Gus wonders what Johnny looked like at twenty-three: bigger eyes, maybe, or thinner face, not so many lines… or maybe just pretty much what he looks like now. And if he’d met Johnny then, he knows, certain as he’s kneeling here, he knows that they’d still be together, that he’d still be coming home to Johnny every day, and vice versa; if he’d lucked into that, he’d have had the sense, even then, not to fuck it up. He knows this.
He gets to his feet, pulling Johnny up with him, into a hug, pulling their cocks together with his other hand, stroking just enough to add Johnny’s moan to the kiss, the cherry on top.
And if Johnny’s cherry, Gus might as well be; and he knows – he can tell by the way Johnny reacts to everything they do – he knows that Johnny won’t be cherry for long, certain sure; but something about Johnny’s face this morning, or yesterday morning, now, something about the… wonder on Johnny’s face, jerking Gus off on the bed, something about the way he looked at Gus, into Gus, had Gus wanting to spread his own legs, see Johnny above him, feel Johnny deep inside him, touching the deepest, most secret parts of him.
“Really, honestly, let’s start with the bed this time,” he whispers, and Johnny moans again, thrusting into his hand, capturing Gus’ mouth with his own; and Gus thinks dimly that maybe they could just settle for the kitchen floor, or counter, or chair, after all.
Willpower… he has some, somewhere.
He breaks the kiss, finally, and Johnny leans in to nuzzle his neck. Gus’ hands tighten involuntarily on Johnny’s hips when he feels the warm squirm of Johnny’s tongue at the base of his throat: for a man who’s probably slept with two or three women in his life (tops), Johnny’s a fucking natural.
“You taste so good,” Johnny’s saying against his skin, a quick soft mutter that Gus almost feels more than hears. “You feel so good. I can’t…”
A few more seconds and it’s going to be too late, too late for both of them: Gus grabs Johnny’s chin, pulls it up, kisses Johnny’s nose, avoids the temptation of Johnny’s mouth, lips parted, swollen and moist…
All right, one kiss, quick… or slow, and gentle, and no tongue… or just a little…
The next thing he knows is the edge of the counter against his ass and Johnny full up against him, touching everywhere they can, his cock trapped between them, Gus’ cock between Johnny’s legs, pushing against Johnny’s balls every time he thrusts in.
“I can’t get enough of you,” and for a moment Gus thinks it’s him talking, but it’s Johnny, hoarse and earnest, his mouth moving from Gus’ cheekbone to Gus’ ear. “This is all – it’s so different, it feels so good, so right and, God, I want you, all of you…”
The words do more than warm Gus’ heart: they send a thrill, an honest to God frisson through him. Johnny’s opening up, a morning glory in the new day, a grey dim pre-dawn turning pale gold. The sun’s still below the horizon but he can see it now, see where it’s rising.
“You’ve got me,” he says harshly, because his voice is breaking again; and he catches Johnny to him in a hard breathless hug, repeating the words against the skin of Johnny’s face, against the stubble brisk under his lips, against the softness of Johnny’s neck where it joins his shoulder.
Johnny’s hand is in Gus’ hair, stroking through it, and Gus wishes he could stand outside himself, see that hand, those beautiful fingers caught there, tangled like seaweed floating in the tide, and if he could he’d never let Johnny go. It’s a kaleidoscope: the feel, the taste, the scent of Johnny, the vision of the two of them in his mind, all moving together, and he’s at peace, inside, at the centre, the world shifting around him but not able to touch him, it’s just Johnny, just Johnny and him.
“Feeling like this can’t be wrong,” Johnny’s whispering, his hands still moving through Gus’ hair. “There’s no bad anywhere… how can it be a sin, feeling like this?”
“It’s not,” Gus says into Johnny’s ear. “It’s not. We have feelings, sensations, for a reason: the universe wasn’t created in black and white, it was created in colour, even colours we can’t see. There’s music, and the howl of the wind, and the crash of waves, even the sound of snow falling; and there’s taste, and smell: there’s an infinite variety of life here, on this one small planet. How much more is there we don’t know? How can it be wrong to enjoy this life, enjoy it here, with so much to enjoy?”
“Then why can’t it all be like this? Why can’t everyone feel like this? Why does everyone… why’s everyone so scared?”
“They’re looking,” Gus says quietly. “They might not know it; it’s different for everyone, the search… the quest. Some of them don’t know they’re looking.”
“And…” Johnny pulls back and looks at Gus, “and that’s why… that’s what you do. Help people look, if they’re looking? If they’re not, just… just help them anyway?”
“Yeah,” Gus says after a few seconds: the world’s stopped spinning and he’s not even dizzy. “Yeah,” he repeats, calmly, with a certainty he hasn’t felt in…years. “That’s what I do.” The sun may be rising for Johnny, but it’s blazing full across the ocean for Gus, burning off a fog he’d hardly noticed, the path across the water suddenly so bright he can’t look at it, but he knows it’s there.
Men of God (and he’s never actually liked the self-importance that phrase accrues to itself) toss words like “revelation” and “epiphany” around very casually, he realizes suddenly. Maybe it’s hard not to: half the liturgical year, or at least a quarter of it, is centred round Epiphany, and there’s an entire book of Revelation in the Holy Writ.
But this… this feeling isn’t power so much as certainty, as understanding, as recognition: that man and time converge, here and now, in the infinite; and that the free will granted to mankind was, is, the freedom to choose here, in this moment; and that the universe is, and always will be, perfect, and man will be full of grace in this, this infinite moment, where past and present are Einstein’s dreams.
This is the universal awareness of mystics and solitaries, and even saints, and it’s all of a piece that there’s no burning bush for Gus, just his own self, naked, in a kitchen, in an hotel, in Ottawa…
…with Johnny: and it wasn’t that a child would lead, necessarily, but someone innocent, yes, someone able to live in the present as well as the past and future, someone with faith; or perhaps a better word is ‘trust,’ an instinctive trust in the basic structure of the universe, the commonality of man, not a self-conscious, self-aware “faith” in “God.”
Johnny’s still looking at him, he realizes: fortunately it wasn’t one of those apocryphal three-hour epiphanies. “Things work out,” he says quietly, echoing words he remembers Johnny saying yesterday – two days ago – two hours ago? He’s lost all sense of time, and the best part is that now it doesn’t really matter.
Johnny’s eyes, already warm, blaze to life, sparked by a soft, enchanting smile: “Yeah.”
“There’s a school of thought,” Gus says, taking Johnny’s hand and snagging the drug store bag with his free hand, “that God doesn’t exist as a theological concept, or as a separate being, that God just… is. That asking if someone believes in God is as ridiculous as asking if someone believes in a boulder in a meadow, or a bird, or a leaf; or wind, or clouds, or tides, or even stars.”
Johnny, who’d been looking at the bag with some trepidation, looks at Gus now, his eyes huge again; but his hand is warm and relaxed in Gus’. “Wow.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He has to think about that, all the way into the bedroom; and maybe Gus did it on purpose, so Johnny wouldn’t be thinking so hard about… them, or maybe it’s just – Gus, who told him life began in the ocean (also a very strange thing, in Johnny’s experience, for a minister to say). But whether or no, his brain’s grabbed the idea and won’t let go: “All at once? All at the same time?”
“Mostly, yes,” Gus says, sitting on the bed and dumping the bag out on the nightstand.
“That’s… that’s kind of… it’s like infinity,” Johnny says cautiously, perching on the edge of the bed, pulling his robe around him again. “Only not the universe kind… it’s more of a real kind. That God is everything, and everything’s God, all the time, even when it’s not alive or it’s dead or dying or… not born yet.”
“I thought you’d like the idea,” Gus says simply, shaking a tube out of one of the boxes. “It appeals to me too. It’s an accessible concept of infinity.”
Johnny’s brain is disconnecting from his body: he feels like laughing and crying and screaming all at once, that he can sit here and talk about God with Gus when – while – Gus is…
“Don’t worry,” and Gus’ voice is gentle, confident: at least he knows, or can fake it pretty well, and since Johnny’s got some of that himself, he relaxes a little, finds a smile.
“I’m not,” he says, not quite truthfully, but Gus just accepts it: is it that Gus is a guy and does the same thing or just that Gus understands?
Or both; when did he get so black and white about everything?
“I mean it,” Gus says, twisting the top off and squeezing what seems like a lot of clear jelly stuff into his palm. “This isn’t just for – this isn’t just for intercourse, Johnny. There’s a lot we can do with it, with each other, without… worrying.”
“I’m not worried,” Johnny says again, louder this time, and is it just the idea or is it the sight of the stuff, shiny and wet-looking in Gus’ palm, that’s making him get hard all over again?
Gus pulls Johnny toward him, spreading his legs wide; Johnny lets go the edges of his robe, shrugging it off, and slides between. Gus rubs his hands together and then takes Johnny’s hand, moistening it too, then guiding it to Johnny’s cock.
Warm wet fingers, slippery and strong; and Johnny gasps, because he didn’t think it would make that much of a difference. He swallows and looks up: Gus is watching him, his teeth in his lower lip, his eyes narrowed. “Yeah?” he says, not quite a question, and Johnny can only nod, nod and thrust again into those warm wet fingers. “Try it,” Gus whispers, pulling back, letting Johnny’s hand take over; and, God, it is different, no friction, warmth and no heat – and when he pulls hard, his hand slips off the end by accident.
“Yeah,” Gus says again, hardly above a whisper; and when Johnny looks up, Gus’ hand is closing over his own cock, hard (again) too, and Gus’ eyes are closing, and his mouth is opening, tongue flicking over his lips.
It seems as natural as breathing to lean in, to brace his not-wet hand on Gus’ shoulder, to lick Gus’ lips where Gus’ tongue just was; and as natural as breathing to feel his cock, unbelievably slick, suddenly touch Gus’ cock, just as slick, just as hard, just as strong.
He doesn’t remember what he says, what he does: just that when he releases Gus’ mouth to catch his breath, he’s on top of Gus and they’re… they’re fucking, their cocks sliding alongside each other as free and easy as breathing, and if anything could feel better than Gus’ mouth, or Gus’ hand, it would have to be this.
Until Gus pulls Johnny’s legs apart, so Johnny’s straddling him, and that’s even better, he’s got… traction or something, and he’s not going to be able to stop, doesn’t want to stop –
“Wait,” Gus is whispering again, even while he’s got Johnny up against him, holding him close, a hand on Johnny’s head. “Wait…”
“God,” Johnny says, gasping for breath and… control. “Gus, I can’t –”
“We can,” Gus whispers, running his hands down Johnny’s back, down, down… down to Johnny’s ass, fingers dipping for just a moment into the crevice there. Johnny gasps again, his body too heavy to support all at once, and he drops onto Gus’ chest, feeling his legs spread wide, moaning without meaning to, like Gus can just pull anything and everything he wants to out of Johnny.
“That’s it,” Gus whispers. “It’s so good…”
Johnny can only nod, trying to catch his breath, trying not to come; and Gus is kneading his ass, which feels damn good and isn’t really helping with the whole not-coming-yet thing. He braces a knee, shifts his weight, and rolls them, first onto their sides, then onto his back, Gus helping when he realizes what Johnny’s doing; and before Johnny can think about it, he does the same to Gus, rubbing Gus’ back, then his ass, then, yeah, touching Gus there.
It’s… soft, which he didn’t really expect; and Gus pushes back against his hand, which he didn’t really expect either; but Gus’ moan, yeah, he was expecting that, ‘cause he knows how it feels.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Gus doesn’t know whether to come already or roll Johnny over and fuck him into the mattress: of all the things he expected, this – Johnny paying attention, Johnny doing what Gus is doing, Johnny giving back what he’s getting – this is a shock, and…
And why didn’t he expect that, from Johnny anyway?
Maybe Noelle needs to join Zoë in that canal, damn it: Johnny’s as sensual and unselfish as anyone Gus has ever met, ever.
And if Johnny keeps doing that Gus isn’t going to make it to fucking either way.
He distracts Johnny through the simple expedient of leaning in further and licking the base of Johnny’s neck, sucking too; and Johnny’s throat goes taut under his lips, his head arching back, the moan rumbling through his skin to Gus’ lips. Gus hums back, just to feel the vibration again, feel Johnny writhe under him.
He really can’t remember anything, anyone like this: even his first time he didn’t feel this breathless balance, this unwonted sensuality, this… joyful timelessness. Nothing matters but right now, and the second beyond that, yeah, that one.
He lifts his head to look at Johnny, because he can’t get enough of that either: and the sight of Johnny is headier even than whisky, skin flushed, eyes shut tight, lips parting, on the verge of another moan; chest heaving, nipples hard, drawn up tight, almost as tight as Gus’ balls.
He leans in to flick a nipple with his tongue, reaching for the tube he left on the edge of the nightstand. Johnny’s moan is even more satisfying than the last, and Johnny’s hands are suddenly in his hair, pulling him closer, the wiry strength in Johnny’s long back arching his whole body up against Gus. “Oh, God, oh God, oh God,” Johnny’s saying, not even whispering any more, like he’s forgotten everything else but this, and that, that is exactly what Gus wants.
It’s hard to squeeze the tube one-handed but he manages, then licks Johnny’s other nipple and sits up on his haunches.
He doesn’t dare do more than wipe the lube onto Johnny’s cock, wipe and then shift forward enough that the head of Johnny’s cock is right there, at his hole; and then he pushes, holding Johnny still, pushes just enough that he can feel Johnny start to slide in.
The sound Johnny makes is indescribable: not a gasp or a moan or a scream, not Gus’ name, or any intelligible word at all, but all of them together; and his hips buck, out of control, and if Gus wasn’t concentrating so hard on remembering how to do this he’d have come already and the hell with all of it.
He could swear he feels it when the head is all the way in, the gentle pop after the flared edge pushes past the muscle. Johnny, a natural, has his hands on Gus’ hips and is moving his own, those same minute, seductive, engaging thrusts from yesterday. Gus takes another deep breath and lets Johnny push up, push him open, and this time the moan, the rumble, the vibration is his own.
Another slow thrust and Gus sinks down in time, and they’re almost there. This was what he wanted, and it’s worth the wait, and the transient pain, to be joined like this, flesh inside flesh.
Johnny’s stilled, his fingers digging into Gus’ hips; and he’s trembling.
Gus shifts, once more, and Johnny slides home; and Gus leans down, trapping his own cock between them, to soothe Johnny, to kiss him, to feel his mouth open under Gus’ own. And Johnny does, opening for Gus, pushing up into him at the same time; and their moans meet, swallowed by each other.
“God,” Johnny says into his mouth, “Gus… I…”
“Good,” Gus manages, trying to control himself, trying not to take Johnny as hard as he wants, as he needs, his traitorous hips shifting and pushing despite his resolve: he knows Johnny’s feeling overwhelmed. “It’s good.”
“I know,” Johnny whispers, turning his head, thrusting back up against Gus, his body responding.
It’s really good, Gus wants to say, but he can’t: Johnny’s caught the rhythm now and Gus’ cock has found the smooth muscles of Johnny’s belly, not a back-and-forth so much as a circle, up, in, in in in, then down, out…
Johnny’s moving faster now, pushing harder, and at the top of the crest is a spark, over and over. With sudden certainty Gus knows he’s about to catch fire, and he pulls back, sitting up, breathing hard: it’s inevitable, but when did he ever give in to inevitability?
“Gus,” Johnny says, a choked plea, hands pulling at him; and Gus rocks back and forth, once, twice, a reassurance.
“I want it all,” he says, his voice thick around a tongue that doesn’t want to work, doesn’t want to do anything but lean back down and taste Johnny, lose himself in Johnny’s body, Johnny’s body lost in his.
“How – how can there be more?” Johnny gasps, and he sounds so incredulous, so impatient, so fucking hot that Gus has to laugh, his head thrown back, laughing from his belly; and that just makes Johnny gasp again, shaken, shaking in the tight grip of Gus’ ass.
“There’s so much more,” Gus whispers. “It’s all here.”
“I can’t,” and Johnny’s hands are tight on his hips again: Gus hopes like hell he’s leaving bruises, marking him, because he wants something permanent, or at least tangible. He leans in again, biting Johnny’s chin, feeling Johnny jerk in response, under him, in him; and he folds Johnny’s arms in, shifts his weight to one side and rolls them.
There’s a long breathless moment when Johnny slips out; and a tangle of legs before he feels Johnny’s hands on his thighs, pushing him back and up; and the next moment he feels Johnny pushing into him again, steadying himself with one hand.
It’s a long, gentle slide this time, a nudge or two, but then Johnny’s all the way in. Gus feels him pressing, trying to get impossibly closer; and then Johnny’s knees are nudging under him, and he feels the crisp hair of Johnny’s thighs under his ass, Johnny tilting him up, up and open, like he was born to this.
Gus’ thighs are spread wide, wide open, wanton, wanting, and this is so right, so perfect he can’t think any more, can just feel: Johnny’s hands, strong fingers holding up Gus’ thighs; Johnny’s belly pressing against Gus’ balls, the rhythm almost too slow; Johnny’s balls, high and tight against the crack of Gus’ ass; the hitch in Johnny’s breathing that he can feel, now, inside himself…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“God,” he whispers, and Johnny echoes it, moving slow as he can, afraid if he thinks too much it’ll all be over then and there. The other way was good, so good, he never thought about doing it that way, being able to touch, and see – but this way…
It’s just the way he imagined, only better: Gus splayed out under him and connected to him, Gus’ teeth in his lower lip, his jaw taut; Gus’ cock, long and hard and pulsing on his belly, no question, never any question what Gus wants. And Gus takes and Johnny can take, too, and want, and it’s beyond good, the softness and the strength of him, the solid muscle under him, his solid (God!) muscle in Gus, Gus trusting him, wanting him–
“It’s good,” he says out loud, pressing closer to Gus, sliding his knees further up under Gus’ ass so he can balance with one hand and touch Gus with the other. “You’re so fucking good, you’re so fucking hot, I can’t believe you, can’t believe this…”
“You’re… better… at that… than I am,” Gus says jerkily, his ass moving like he has no control over it, trying to speed Johnny up; but Johnny can’t, not yet. “Belief…” Another thrust and Gus’ face contracts, and he makes a guttural noise, almost a grunt, surprising Johnny into stillness.
“God, no,” Gus gasps, “please don’t stop –”
Johnny knows fuck all about any of this but Gus’ cock is laying in a fucking puddle of pre-come, shining on his belly, and he reaches cautiously for Gus’ cock, pushing in again the way he did just now. Gus’ cock leaps in his hand and Johnny pulls at it, the lube a little sticky but still moist.
He licks his thumb and rubs the head of Gus’ cock, then licks his thumb again and swallows hard: his mouth is watering.
When he raises his eyes, Gus is staring at him, jaw clenched tight: “Do that again,” he says through his teeth, in a rush, like he’s afraid to let go.
Johnny reaches down with his thumb again but watches Gus this time, watches Gus and feels Gus tighten around him when he touches the smooth, wet tip, feeling it quiver under him; watches Gus, helplessly, as Gus watches him tasting Gus; watches and then feels Gus growling words he can’t hear through the roaring in his ears, vibrations he can feel right down to the root of his cock.
He pulls out, spreading his own knees wide, leaning in to taste Gus, just a lick, just one more, salt and bittersweet. And Gus is trembling, trembling in his hand, under his hand – he straightens and drives in again, hard and fast, harder and faster than before. He didn’t know – how could he? And he tells Gus this, that he didn’t know, that he couldn’t know, that Gus would feel this, that Johnny could do this to him…
Gus is choking on Johnny’s name, his hands clutching at Johnny’s arms; and then Gus is shaking, his head back, eyes closed, and his cock is jumping, jerking, shooting in Johnny’s grip, shooting all the way up Gus’ chest. Johnny watches, his thrusts slowing, watches in a daze, it’s like slow motion: a third spasm, and Gus splashes his own chin. A fourth, then another, spattering Gus’ chest and stomach; still more, ending with a jerk and another spurt, then a dribble in the dark soft hair that feels like rough silk, just above Gus’ cock, right where Johnny licked him earlier.
Oh, God…
It’s so real, the sight and the smell, and even the sound of Gus, trying not to be too loud, and he wants to see that cove too, he wants to hear Gus, unrestrained and loud, he wants – he wants to do this again, he could do this forever, because just seeing, feeling what he’s doing to Gus, just knowing that Gus wants it, wants him…
“Oh God,” he says, not sure if he’s saying it out loud or not, not caring: he’s lost his balance and is falling forward onto Gus, onto that broad chest painted with Gus’ come, the smell of Gus and sex making him dizzy and breathless; and Gus is moving up to meet him, still into this, still into him even though he came already… Gus is pulling Johnny’s head down to his.
Johnny licks the splash from Gus’ chin, letting the taste roll back across his tongue, pulls almost all the way out and shoves in again one more time, lets Gus’ tongue search and find his own, lets himself shoot into Gus’ ass, over and over, not making any sense and not really caring what he’s moaning into Gus’ mouth, over and over.
It’s wet between them, wet and warm, and it feels almost as good as his cock, still held in the grip of Gus’ body, Gus’ legs still wide apart, Gus’ hands still on his ass, his back, holding him… holding him close.
Johnny feels like he’s made of rubber, but Gus doesn’t seem to mind: he can feel one thumb, stroking him gently; and Gus’ lips, next to his ear, are soft and warm. His voice, when it comes, is soft and warm, too, and he sounds half asleep, or maybe half drunk: “Amazing.”
“You are,” Johnny wants to say, but he can’t even get his tongue to move, let alone his mouth, so he just hugs Gus closer.
His cock is getting softer, and he pushes up in vain: he doesn’t want to leave this, lose this. Gus makes a soft sound in his ear, pushing with him: “Stay,” he whispers, and Johnny wants to, oh God, he wants to.
He holds still, hardly breathing, but it’s inevitable, gravity and the angle… when he finally slips out he buries his face in Gus’ neck and rocks with him, back and forth: “I’m sorry,” he says against Gus’ skin, tasting salt, the bare whisper of bristles.
“S’okay,” Gus whispers. “You’re … part of me.”
Johnny puzzles that one out for a while, and incredibly he feels himself heating up, and he doesn’t know why, what the… hell is wrong with him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Gus has to pull his brains back, pin them down: his thoughts have taken wing, sometimes fluttering, like a butterfly in a meadow, sometimes soaring, riding the currents of air high above the earth, unseen and magical. Johnny’s skin is heating, like a wave rising between them, and it takes him more than a moment to realize Johnny’s blushing.
He can’t really remember what he just said… ‘amazing,’ he’s pretty sure, and that Johnny’s part of him now, yeah… his body absorbing Johnny’s life, inside and out.
Not that he can remember much of what Johnny said, either, just that Johnny had (finally) let go, Johnny’d talked to him, called him by name, told him how much he wanted him, how hot he was, how unbelievable…
Yeah, and there it is, reality hitting, probably; but Gus is still so high, still soaring on those damned air currents, that he can’t think of anything reassuring to say. What he wants to say, all he can think of to say, is that he can’t believe how hot Johnny is, how right this is, how amazing they are, together; and how the sex has been incredible from, yes, the kiss in the alley, but when Johnny lets go, when Johnny’s not surrounded by ghosts or thinking of anything but how it feels… well, for a few moments Gus thought he wouldn’t be able to keep up (a frankly and compellingly novel idea); and he knew, and knows now, despite Johnny’s easygoing (not to say sweet) nature, despite Johnny’s seeming pliancy, that he’s met his equal.
He’s met, and lost, his equal twice before, once before he really even knew it, or had a chance to know it.
Now he knows it, and Johnny… Johnny must know it, will know it, has to know it… somehow.
And he has to stay.
“You’re part of me,” he says again, regaining control of his voice. “Part of me now; I have part of you inside me, part of your life… it’s in me, in my body, it’s in my soul.”
He feels another flush race up Johnny’s chest and face, where Johnny’s burrowed into Gus’ neck; but he just holds Johnny closer, harder than before. “Sacred,” he says quietly, resisting the urge to taste the skin just in front of Johnny’s ear. “I told you.”
“Like God?” And Gus has to hug Johnny close, because he can hear the smile in Johnny’s voice, he can feel the smile on Johnny’s mouth against his skin.
“I… I just can’t believe…” Johnny whispers, and he stops; and Gus finally succumbs to temptation and kisses the soft skin right in front of Johnny’s ear.
“You don’t have to believe anything,” he says softly, shaping his hand to Johnny’s skull, guiding Johnny’s mouth to his. Johnny’s lips are moist and soft; and Johnny’s kiss is as gentle, as sweet, as the first time; and passionate, too, and the kiss is almost better than the sex, a really really close second, anyway, because he knows Johnny’s kissing him, now, and not thinking of anything else.
“Not about this, uh, the… the sex,” Johnny whispers, pulling back for a second. “I mean I can’t believe… it’s hard to believe… this.” His eyes close for a second, lashes impossibly long in the low shadow of the lamp’s light; and Gus reaches up to kiss his eyelids, one at a time, then pulls Johnny in for another kiss on his mouth, words deserting him again. He hopes, can only hope right now, that Johnny will understand without words that it’s real, that belief isn’t actually necessary for ‘this,’ and never will be, not if Gus has anything to say about it.
The kiss turns passionate, somewhat to Gus’ surprise: Johnny’s moaning into his mouth (again) and kissing his chin, his cheek, his jaw, his neck; and Gus is rolling them onto their sides so he can touch Johnny’s nipples, one, then the other, so he can move up enough to bite Johnny’s shoulder, feel Johnny shudder, so he can hear Johnny moan again when he tastes the skin there, tracing his tongue over the black and red outline.
He wonders if Zoë ever heard that moan. He’s willing to bet, or at least hoping like hell, that she didn’t.
He’s hoping, too, that Johnny never said things in Icelandic to Zoë, things Gus has no frame of reference to translate but that delight his soul, the way Johnny says them against his skin, the warm husk of his voice making even unfamiliar syllables sound like home: “kærasti” and “elska þig” and other things he can’t begin to remember. “Fucking,” yeah, Johnny’d said that too, and he’d almost come on the strength of that alone: the worst thing he’s heard out of Johnny’s mouth in two days together has been, he’s pretty sure, the occasional “shit.”
“I want to be part of you,” Johnny’s whispering against one corner of his mouth; and Gus moves his head enough to complete the kiss.
“You are,” and he can’t really think of anything else to say, but it doesn’t seem to matter: Johnny’s rolling them again, Gus on top this time, and… he can’t fucking believe it, but Johnny’s cock is hardening between them.
His own cock responds to that, the thought or the feel or something, and suddenly Gus is starting not to believe it either, whatever “it” is.
Of course, his advantage is that he’s never actually had to believe anything he didn’t want to, so he gives himself up to Johnny, licking and teasing his nipples, pressing a wet thumb into Johnny’s navel, writhing between Johnny’s legs when Johnny retaliates with teeth in Gus’ biceps, in the muscle above Gus’ nipple, then (oh so gently) closing over Gus’ nipple itself.
The KY catches his eye again; and, again, he squeezes some out one-handed, arching his back enough to slick it onto both their cocks, wiping his hand on Johnny’s (already wet) belly. Johnny gasps at the sudden slide and Gus takes over, takes Johnny all the way over, and over and over, until Johnny’s gasping his name and spilling between them, strong rhythmic pulses; and then he goes too, amazed and dazed and even bemused that he has anything left to give; and wanting to give Johnny all of it, no matter what.
He’s rubbing their semen into Johnny’s belly and chest when Johnny catches his hand and pulls it up to his mouth: “I want you in me too,” he says softly, and this time he seems to expect, or at least tolerate, the blush that follows.
“I am,” and Gus’ voice is thick again, and he doesn’t want to think about why: he just watches Johnny lick his fingers, and he swallows hard and thinks wistfully that the idea of meeting Johnny at Cambridge, when his recovery time was measured in seconds sometimes, has distinct merit after all, even if he’d never have been graduated or even gotten out of bed.
“You are,” Johnny echoes, rubbing his thumb up Gus’ breastbone, slick and hypnotic. “You have been.”
His words are slurring; his eyelids are heavy. Gus captures Johnny’s hand, pulls it to his mouth for a kiss, and Johnny tips his head back to look up at Gus. Gus can’t help smiling: Johnny, half asleep, is almost as hot as Johnny… well, any other way, and he’s ridiculously, besottedly infatuated.
If it was anyone but Johnny he’d be disgusted with himself, but since it’s Johnny, all he can do is… well, smile.
“Feel like a shower?” he asks quietly, just as Johnny yawns, his jaw cracking.
They both laugh; then Johnny moves closer to him, closing his eyes all the way. “Later,” he says, and there’s so much warmth, so much relaxation in his voice that Gus relaxes too, even more.
Until Johnny opens his eyes, a shadow behind them, a hand reaching out to Gus’ chest: “Uh, do you – should we –”
He’s not really sure why Zoë felt it necessary to… try to control Johnny. He seems easygoing enough; and Gus might just be extrapolating wrongly, too. But if he’s capable of hating anything right now, which he doubts, he hates the… diffidence in Johnny’s voice, in Johnny’s face, even in Johnny’s body.
“Later’s fine,” he says, forcing a smile; and, too late, remembers Johnny’ll notice that – and he does, his eyes opening wider, his body rolling, a hand under him –
“Later,” Gus says firmly. “I’m wiped out… and you did all the work.” He grins, purposely wicked, and is rewarded with Johnny’s face lightening, his eyes and body relaxing. “C’mon, just roll over.” He climbs out of the bed, pulling the duvet back so Johnny can roll over, then roll back, under the covers now; and his eyes are already closing again when Gus straightens the cover.
“C’mon,” Johnny murmurs, stretching out a hand. Gus leans in to kiss his palm again.
“Be right back.”
He uses the bathroom, then wets a washcloth. He can feel Johnny’s semen drying, sticky, on his thighs, and that’s exactly what he wants, but Johnny’s not necessarily thinking along the same lines.
Johnny’s almost completely out when Gus returns, and he’s not surprised. He cleans Johnny as gently as he can, too gently at one point, making Johnny squirm, evoking a sleepy grin, and a sound too close to a giggle to be called anything else; and he hopes, suddenly and fiercely, that Johnny knows it’s he who’s doing this, Gus, Augustus, not…
Well, she wouldn’t have done this, anyway, wouldn’t have had to; but all the same Gus leans in again when he’s done, leans in to kiss Johnny, whisper Johnny’s name into his mouth, and other things, words he shouldn’t be saying, not now, because it’s not fair: it’s almost post-hypnotic suggestion.
But Johnny kisses him back, sleepy and warm; and he murmurs Gus’ name, smiling under Gus’ mouth; and there’s more Icelandic, Gus thinks; and when he straightens, he feels a hundred times better than he did just five minutes ago, which seems almost… impossible.
He tosses the washcloth into the sink on his way to the kitchen to get another bottle of water, and he drinks half of it on the way back. Johnny’ll wake up thirsty, so he puts the bottle on Johnny’s side – and that particular thought thrills him – of the bed, then turns the light out all the way and climbs in.
Johnny’s warm and, yes, cuddly; and the scent of their bodies, their sex, rises to Gus’ nose with the warmth; and he goes to sleep with his head on Johnny’s chest, and he can smell the sea and hear the waves in between Johnny’s heartbeats.
Life Less Ordinary, Carbon Leaf; God, Sean MacDonald; Afternoons And Coffeespoons, Crash Test Dummies; Something About You, Five For Fighting; Gates Of The Country (Acoustic Demo), Black Lab; Fall At Your Feet, Neil Finn; God in my bed (live), K's Choice; Birds & Ships (demo), Billy Bragg & Wilco; Believe, K's Choice; Keep Myself Awake, Black Lab; Innocent, Our Lady Peace; Aunt Martha's Sheep, Dick Nolan; One Prairie Outpost, Carbon Leaf; Ten Million Years, Black Lab; &c.
Thanks to, as always!, TheAmusedOne and Kalena, who suffer through the writing of this with inimitable style. Also, of course, to MissPamela, who requested Gus/Johnny and who is therefore responsible for both Chansons de marin and this sequel. Blame her! And Canada!
Part Three (mercredi et jeudi)