backdrifter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
backdrifter) wrote2009-07-02 11:18 pm
backdrifter) wrote2009-07-02 11:18 pm
Entry tags:
75399
When Respa awoke the next morning, there was a commotion coming from Horace’s bedroom. By the time he’d wiped the sleep out of his eyes, Shaun was striding into the living room, trailing Horace behind him.
“At least tell me why!” Horace was shouting, grasping at Shaun’s shirt. “You can’t just be with someone for two years and then pick the hell up and leave without explanation!”
“Watch me,” Shaun said coldly, going into the kitchen. “I think I left some cooking stuff in here.”
“Shaun!”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Shaun said, the cupboard doors clacking open and shut as he retrieved his things.
“Did I do something wrong? Say something wrong? I thought we were good, Shaun!” Horace was hanging off the kitchen doorframe, trying to get Shaun’s attention to no avail.
“Nope,” was all Shaun said.
“Nope what? Nope, I didn’t do anything wrong? No, I did? What?”
“Nope,” Shaun repeated, and Horace threw up his arms as he fumed.
“Is it—“
“Listen,” Shaun said, popping his head out into the living room, “whatever questions you have for me, I’m not going to answer them. Whatever explanations you want, I’m not going to give them to you. I’m sorry things are ending so abruptly, and it was good while it lasted. That’s what you get.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Life’s not fair,” Shaun said, and he reappeared with a Duane Reade bag with a couple frying pans and an assortment of tupperware in it.
“Oh, now you’re throwing clichés at me? That’s real clever of you, Shaun!” Horace said bitterly, crossing his arms. “You know what, fine! Fuck you, take your pans and go, you asshole! You dumb queer!”
“Good luck in whatever,” Shaun said, yanking Horace’s apartment and building keys off his keyring and dropping them unceremoniously onto the coffee table near Respa. One of them bounced off the glass surface and fell to the floor, instead. “Bye, Horace. It was nice knowing you.” Shaun headed out the door, rather calmly given the situation.
“Yeah, well, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out! There’s a cliché for you!” Horace flung the door shut with all his strength, and then he gripped his head in both hands and screamed, a primal sound having nothing to do with language.
He stalked into his bedroom, and he stayed there for a good hour before re-emerging looking visibly calmer. Well, his hands still shook, but it no longer taxed him to keep his face from screwing up. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” Horace said, crossing and uncrossing his arms. “Some spectacle, huh?”
Respa nodded slowly, still watching Horace with some trepidation. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Horace’s feelings, but he’d always been a terrible shoulder to cry on, and he didn’t know what he’d do if Horace broke down again. Probably tense up and pat him somewhere weird, like the shin.
“Asshole,” Horace spat, clearly referring to Shaun, and he held his own face for a moment, taking a deep breath. “I can’t believe him. Two years, and one morning he just stomps out.” He looked sharply at Respa. “He didn’t say anything to you, did he?”
“Can you see Shaun confiding in me?” Respa said, standing to pull the sheets off the couch, and neatly avoiding lying.
“You’re right,” Horace sighed. “Here, let me help you fold those.”
Shaun’s words stuck with Respa, though, and Respa found himself always watching Horace out of the corner of his eye. Most of the time, Shaun’s theory barely held water. Sometimes, though, Respa would catch a look full of—was it longing?—before Horace met his eyes and looked away, as though they were strangers on the subway.
Longing? Ryan aside, the concept was foreign to him. There was the lust of a man desperate enough to pay money for sex, but that had more to do with hormones than real attraction, as any prostitute with a ruined body and busted face could attest to. The idea of someone wanting him was incomprehensible; he didn’t have enough fingers to count his personality flaws, never mind his crippled hand and myriad of scarring. Temperamental, volatile, semi-illiterate, uneducated—the list felt endless.
He spent another week on Horace’s couch post-breakup, before Horace approached him one night. Respa was setting up the sheets on the couch as usual, tucking corners under cushions rather haphazardly and flinging cushions around. Horace walked up in pajama bottoms printed with tiny poodles, and Respa had to stifle a laugh.
“So, um, listen,” Horace said, clearing his throat, “you’ve been on this couch for awhile.”
Respa paused in his bedmaking, mouth tightening. “What’re you trying to say?”
Horace colored and stared at his toes. “No, um, nothing! Just, I figured you might be getting sick of it, and maybe… Maybe you wanted to sleep on a real bed from now on?”
Respa craned his neck to look down the short hallway that led to Horace’s bedroom. “I thought this was a one-bedroom apartment.”
“Uhh, it is,” Horace said, his face no less pink. “I just thought you might like to take one side of my bed. It’s a queen size,” he added quickly, “so it’d be like sleeping in two separate beds, really. We won’t even notice each other.”
Respa looked at him, chewing over the idea in his head. “A queen size?”
“And no funny business,” Horace said, “from either of us. Each of us have a side and we stick to it.”
“Well, if I refuse, you’ll probably do something horrible like buy me a shirt,” Respa said with mock dismay, holding up a hand. The hand turned on its side, offering a handshake, and he said, “Deal. Two sides.” Horace smiled, and shook the proffered hand.
Respa was assigned the left side of the bed, and he was officially given a drawer in Horace’s dresser. If Horace wanted him to find his own place and live independently, then he was certainly showing no sign of it. He didn’t even mention employment. Respa thought he was at least capable of performing retail grunt work. When it seemed to him, though, that Horace wanted to ask him about getting a job, Horace would suck in his lips between his teeth and look at Respa’s half-dead hand, and then go do something in the kitchen.
“What is it you do for work, anyway?” Respa asked one night. Horace had again spent the day at work, and again Respa had spent the day trying and mostly failing to make himself useful around the apartment. After he’d dropped a plate trying to wash it, he’d given himself over to loafing on the couch for pretty much the rest of the day.
“Oh, nothing exciting,” Horace murmured, hoisting a pair of grocery bags onto the counter. He flipped open the cabinet door next to his head. “Respa, where’s my green plate?”
Respa tried to be nonchalant as he shrugged, but he lied like a kid, and Horace found the green plate in pieces in the trash seconds later. He tried to apologize; Horace shook his head no, giving him a brief Oh, you kind of smile. “I’ve got other plates,” Horace said.
“Tell me what your job is,” Respa said, trying to take the focus off of himself as he reached to help put away the groceries.
“Administrative bullshit,” Horace sighed. “I work at a high school office, but I’m not someone the kids ever see. Thank god,” he added, shivering. “High school kids are a nightmare.”
“Can you get me a job there?” Respa asked, trying to sound bright. When he saw Horace glancing at his hand, he said, “So I don’t feel so useless.” A cheap shot, maybe, but it seemed to work.
“Well, I can try. You can’t exactly type, so…” He couldn’t help looking at Respa’s left hand again.
“I can, um, be a gopher. A gofer, that thing.”
“I’ll ask, then,” Horace said, closing the fridge door. “You’ve got a clean record, right?”
“What do you mean, clean record?” Respa plucked an apple from the newly-filled fruit basket, taking a big bite.
“Like, no run-ins with the cops, right? I wouldn’t ask,” Horace said, “if I didn’t know what you used to do, so, you know.” Horace blushed slightly, and pulled the plastic bags off their paper counterparts.
“Um, when I was fourteen,” Respa said, moving out of the kitchen to take the conversation out to the living room. “That’s no big deal, right?”
“When you were—Respa, what were you doing at that age that the cops would notice?” He looked confused, as if nobody under the age of eighteen had the capacity for crime. In his personal experience, that was probably the truth.
“Um, just some small stuff. They only gave me a couple months, and I still graduated eighth grade.” Another bite. “Just barely, but still.”
“Small stuff? What kind of small stuff puts you in Juvie?” Horace asked, frowning as he sat on the couch.
“Just stuff! Jesus, does it matter?” He waved the apple as he shrugged defensively.
“Well yeah, it matters, if you want me getting you a job!” Horace snapped. “You know what happens if I recommend you and there’s a problem with you? I look bad, and looking bad could cost me my job, Respa! No job, no Chelsea apartment! No more fucking Commes de Garçon, Thomas!”
“No more what?” Respa took one more bite and then tossed the apple into the sink. “Forget it!” With that, he stormed off to the living room, Horace on his heels.
Horace pulled him around by the shoulder, still the stronger of the two men. “Listen, is it that much of a big deal? You said it was small stuff, so just tell me! Maybe it won’t matter after all.” He squeezed Respa’s shoulder, and Respa rolled his eyes, crossing his arms.
“Fine,” Respa acquiesced, and Horace gave him a small smile that he didn’t return. “I was fourteen, and just…” He hid his face in one hand, the other cradling his elbow as he sighed. “My parents hadn’t bought me any new clothes since I’d hit puberty, so I was still wearing kids’ clothes—Ninja Turtle shirts, that kind of thing. Nothing fit, obviously, way too short and too tight, and it gave off the wrong impression to a lot of kids.” The hand on his face came down, and he shook his head once, as if trying to shake off the memory of what he was about to retell.
“So I got a lot of shit from other kids, and most of them I either ignored, or I’d curse them out and we wouldn’t really take it any further than that. But this one kid, well…” Respa let go of his elbows, and they both took a seat on the couch. “He kept going. And going. He was like the goddamn Energizer bunny of trash talk, you know?”
“Trash talk like what?”
“Oh, you know, the usual stupid shit. ‘Hey, faggot, how many cocks does it take for you to—‘”
“Yeah, I get it,” Horace interrupted, putting a comforting hand on Respa’s arm. “You don’t have to go into detail.”
“Yeah,” Respa said, his face bitter. “Yeah.” He crossed his arms again, leaning back into the couch. “So this kid started following me around just to say this shit, right? Like, I’d be heading for the 6, and there he’d be, too, talking trash about my clothes, about his ideas about my sexual preferences, and then he starts telling me to ‘walk like an Egyptian,’ and this little shit thinks he’s so clever.” Respa snorted. “Finally I couldn’t take his nonsense anymore, and one day I turned around and I punched him.”
“They put you in Juvenile Hall just for punching one dumb kid?” Horace’s brows shot up. “I don’t believe that.”
“Well, see,” Respa said with a grimace, “that’s the thing. He never stopped insulting me when he followed me around, so I didn’t stop punching him, either. I pinned him to the platform and kept going, running on adrenaline, you know. Most of the people on the platform looked tense, like they wanted to help the guy I was hitting, but they didn’t wanna get hurt, either. And of course there were the tough guys who tried to pull me off, and eventually they did, but not until I’d done some real damage.”
“How much damage could you have done? You just punched him a couple times.” Horace still looked skeptical, eyebrows practically kissing his hairline.
Respa leaned forward now. “I broke his cheekbone. The zy—zyma—“
“Zygomatic arch,” Horace supplied.
“Yeah, that,” Respa said with a little wave of his hand, not wanting to try repeating it. “Under his eye. Later it turned out he would be pretty much fine, he didn’t lose sight in that eye or anything, but at the time it looked pretty bad.”
“Oh.” The brows came back down. “I guess it makes sense, then.” He pursed his lips. “Still, I don’t know if the school will overlook it. You’ll just have to make a good impression.”
“You mean you’ll—?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask for you,” Horace said with a little smirk that transformed quickly into a grin. “I’ll have to get you a suit.”
“A suit!” Respa protested, but Horace pressed a finger against his lips, shushing him. It was another moment before the finger came away, Horace having realized how intimate the gesture had been. Both men looked away, Horace significantly redder than Respa.
“Y-yeah, okay, I’ll put on a monkey suit for you,” Respa said, scratching the back of his neck. “For the job, I mean.”
“I’ll take you to the Men’s Wearhouse or something, yeah,” Horace agreed, talking to the wall. “You’ll, uh, you’ll look good.”
“At least tell me why!” Horace was shouting, grasping at Shaun’s shirt. “You can’t just be with someone for two years and then pick the hell up and leave without explanation!”
“Watch me,” Shaun said coldly, going into the kitchen. “I think I left some cooking stuff in here.”
“Shaun!”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Shaun said, the cupboard doors clacking open and shut as he retrieved his things.
“Did I do something wrong? Say something wrong? I thought we were good, Shaun!” Horace was hanging off the kitchen doorframe, trying to get Shaun’s attention to no avail.
“Nope,” was all Shaun said.
“Nope what? Nope, I didn’t do anything wrong? No, I did? What?”
“Nope,” Shaun repeated, and Horace threw up his arms as he fumed.
“Is it—“
“Listen,” Shaun said, popping his head out into the living room, “whatever questions you have for me, I’m not going to answer them. Whatever explanations you want, I’m not going to give them to you. I’m sorry things are ending so abruptly, and it was good while it lasted. That’s what you get.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Life’s not fair,” Shaun said, and he reappeared with a Duane Reade bag with a couple frying pans and an assortment of tupperware in it.
“Oh, now you’re throwing clichés at me? That’s real clever of you, Shaun!” Horace said bitterly, crossing his arms. “You know what, fine! Fuck you, take your pans and go, you asshole! You dumb queer!”
“Good luck in whatever,” Shaun said, yanking Horace’s apartment and building keys off his keyring and dropping them unceremoniously onto the coffee table near Respa. One of them bounced off the glass surface and fell to the floor, instead. “Bye, Horace. It was nice knowing you.” Shaun headed out the door, rather calmly given the situation.
“Yeah, well, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out! There’s a cliché for you!” Horace flung the door shut with all his strength, and then he gripped his head in both hands and screamed, a primal sound having nothing to do with language.
He stalked into his bedroom, and he stayed there for a good hour before re-emerging looking visibly calmer. Well, his hands still shook, but it no longer taxed him to keep his face from screwing up. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” Horace said, crossing and uncrossing his arms. “Some spectacle, huh?”
Respa nodded slowly, still watching Horace with some trepidation. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Horace’s feelings, but he’d always been a terrible shoulder to cry on, and he didn’t know what he’d do if Horace broke down again. Probably tense up and pat him somewhere weird, like the shin.
“Asshole,” Horace spat, clearly referring to Shaun, and he held his own face for a moment, taking a deep breath. “I can’t believe him. Two years, and one morning he just stomps out.” He looked sharply at Respa. “He didn’t say anything to you, did he?”
“Can you see Shaun confiding in me?” Respa said, standing to pull the sheets off the couch, and neatly avoiding lying.
“You’re right,” Horace sighed. “Here, let me help you fold those.”
Shaun’s words stuck with Respa, though, and Respa found himself always watching Horace out of the corner of his eye. Most of the time, Shaun’s theory barely held water. Sometimes, though, Respa would catch a look full of—was it longing?—before Horace met his eyes and looked away, as though they were strangers on the subway.
Longing? Ryan aside, the concept was foreign to him. There was the lust of a man desperate enough to pay money for sex, but that had more to do with hormones than real attraction, as any prostitute with a ruined body and busted face could attest to. The idea of someone wanting him was incomprehensible; he didn’t have enough fingers to count his personality flaws, never mind his crippled hand and myriad of scarring. Temperamental, volatile, semi-illiterate, uneducated—the list felt endless.
He spent another week on Horace’s couch post-breakup, before Horace approached him one night. Respa was setting up the sheets on the couch as usual, tucking corners under cushions rather haphazardly and flinging cushions around. Horace walked up in pajama bottoms printed with tiny poodles, and Respa had to stifle a laugh.
“So, um, listen,” Horace said, clearing his throat, “you’ve been on this couch for awhile.”
Respa paused in his bedmaking, mouth tightening. “What’re you trying to say?”
Horace colored and stared at his toes. “No, um, nothing! Just, I figured you might be getting sick of it, and maybe… Maybe you wanted to sleep on a real bed from now on?”
Respa craned his neck to look down the short hallway that led to Horace’s bedroom. “I thought this was a one-bedroom apartment.”
“Uhh, it is,” Horace said, his face no less pink. “I just thought you might like to take one side of my bed. It’s a queen size,” he added quickly, “so it’d be like sleeping in two separate beds, really. We won’t even notice each other.”
Respa looked at him, chewing over the idea in his head. “A queen size?”
“And no funny business,” Horace said, “from either of us. Each of us have a side and we stick to it.”
“Well, if I refuse, you’ll probably do something horrible like buy me a shirt,” Respa said with mock dismay, holding up a hand. The hand turned on its side, offering a handshake, and he said, “Deal. Two sides.” Horace smiled, and shook the proffered hand.
Respa was assigned the left side of the bed, and he was officially given a drawer in Horace’s dresser. If Horace wanted him to find his own place and live independently, then he was certainly showing no sign of it. He didn’t even mention employment. Respa thought he was at least capable of performing retail grunt work. When it seemed to him, though, that Horace wanted to ask him about getting a job, Horace would suck in his lips between his teeth and look at Respa’s half-dead hand, and then go do something in the kitchen.
“What is it you do for work, anyway?” Respa asked one night. Horace had again spent the day at work, and again Respa had spent the day trying and mostly failing to make himself useful around the apartment. After he’d dropped a plate trying to wash it, he’d given himself over to loafing on the couch for pretty much the rest of the day.
“Oh, nothing exciting,” Horace murmured, hoisting a pair of grocery bags onto the counter. He flipped open the cabinet door next to his head. “Respa, where’s my green plate?”
Respa tried to be nonchalant as he shrugged, but he lied like a kid, and Horace found the green plate in pieces in the trash seconds later. He tried to apologize; Horace shook his head no, giving him a brief Oh, you kind of smile. “I’ve got other plates,” Horace said.
“Tell me what your job is,” Respa said, trying to take the focus off of himself as he reached to help put away the groceries.
“Administrative bullshit,” Horace sighed. “I work at a high school office, but I’m not someone the kids ever see. Thank god,” he added, shivering. “High school kids are a nightmare.”
“Can you get me a job there?” Respa asked, trying to sound bright. When he saw Horace glancing at his hand, he said, “So I don’t feel so useless.” A cheap shot, maybe, but it seemed to work.
“Well, I can try. You can’t exactly type, so…” He couldn’t help looking at Respa’s left hand again.
“I can, um, be a gopher. A gofer, that thing.”
“I’ll ask, then,” Horace said, closing the fridge door. “You’ve got a clean record, right?”
“What do you mean, clean record?” Respa plucked an apple from the newly-filled fruit basket, taking a big bite.
“Like, no run-ins with the cops, right? I wouldn’t ask,” Horace said, “if I didn’t know what you used to do, so, you know.” Horace blushed slightly, and pulled the plastic bags off their paper counterparts.
“Um, when I was fourteen,” Respa said, moving out of the kitchen to take the conversation out to the living room. “That’s no big deal, right?”
“When you were—Respa, what were you doing at that age that the cops would notice?” He looked confused, as if nobody under the age of eighteen had the capacity for crime. In his personal experience, that was probably the truth.
“Um, just some small stuff. They only gave me a couple months, and I still graduated eighth grade.” Another bite. “Just barely, but still.”
“Small stuff? What kind of small stuff puts you in Juvie?” Horace asked, frowning as he sat on the couch.
“Just stuff! Jesus, does it matter?” He waved the apple as he shrugged defensively.
“Well yeah, it matters, if you want me getting you a job!” Horace snapped. “You know what happens if I recommend you and there’s a problem with you? I look bad, and looking bad could cost me my job, Respa! No job, no Chelsea apartment! No more fucking Commes de Garçon, Thomas!”
“No more what?” Respa took one more bite and then tossed the apple into the sink. “Forget it!” With that, he stormed off to the living room, Horace on his heels.
Horace pulled him around by the shoulder, still the stronger of the two men. “Listen, is it that much of a big deal? You said it was small stuff, so just tell me! Maybe it won’t matter after all.” He squeezed Respa’s shoulder, and Respa rolled his eyes, crossing his arms.
“Fine,” Respa acquiesced, and Horace gave him a small smile that he didn’t return. “I was fourteen, and just…” He hid his face in one hand, the other cradling his elbow as he sighed. “My parents hadn’t bought me any new clothes since I’d hit puberty, so I was still wearing kids’ clothes—Ninja Turtle shirts, that kind of thing. Nothing fit, obviously, way too short and too tight, and it gave off the wrong impression to a lot of kids.” The hand on his face came down, and he shook his head once, as if trying to shake off the memory of what he was about to retell.
“So I got a lot of shit from other kids, and most of them I either ignored, or I’d curse them out and we wouldn’t really take it any further than that. But this one kid, well…” Respa let go of his elbows, and they both took a seat on the couch. “He kept going. And going. He was like the goddamn Energizer bunny of trash talk, you know?”
“Trash talk like what?”
“Oh, you know, the usual stupid shit. ‘Hey, faggot, how many cocks does it take for you to—‘”
“Yeah, I get it,” Horace interrupted, putting a comforting hand on Respa’s arm. “You don’t have to go into detail.”
“Yeah,” Respa said, his face bitter. “Yeah.” He crossed his arms again, leaning back into the couch. “So this kid started following me around just to say this shit, right? Like, I’d be heading for the 6, and there he’d be, too, talking trash about my clothes, about his ideas about my sexual preferences, and then he starts telling me to ‘walk like an Egyptian,’ and this little shit thinks he’s so clever.” Respa snorted. “Finally I couldn’t take his nonsense anymore, and one day I turned around and I punched him.”
“They put you in Juvenile Hall just for punching one dumb kid?” Horace’s brows shot up. “I don’t believe that.”
“Well, see,” Respa said with a grimace, “that’s the thing. He never stopped insulting me when he followed me around, so I didn’t stop punching him, either. I pinned him to the platform and kept going, running on adrenaline, you know. Most of the people on the platform looked tense, like they wanted to help the guy I was hitting, but they didn’t wanna get hurt, either. And of course there were the tough guys who tried to pull me off, and eventually they did, but not until I’d done some real damage.”
“How much damage could you have done? You just punched him a couple times.” Horace still looked skeptical, eyebrows practically kissing his hairline.
Respa leaned forward now. “I broke his cheekbone. The zy—zyma—“
“Zygomatic arch,” Horace supplied.
“Yeah, that,” Respa said with a little wave of his hand, not wanting to try repeating it. “Under his eye. Later it turned out he would be pretty much fine, he didn’t lose sight in that eye or anything, but at the time it looked pretty bad.”
“Oh.” The brows came back down. “I guess it makes sense, then.” He pursed his lips. “Still, I don’t know if the school will overlook it. You’ll just have to make a good impression.”
“You mean you’ll—?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask for you,” Horace said with a little smirk that transformed quickly into a grin. “I’ll have to get you a suit.”
“A suit!” Respa protested, but Horace pressed a finger against his lips, shushing him. It was another moment before the finger came away, Horace having realized how intimate the gesture had been. Both men looked away, Horace significantly redder than Respa.
“Y-yeah, okay, I’ll put on a monkey suit for you,” Respa said, scratching the back of his neck. “For the job, I mean.”
“I’ll take you to the Men’s Wearhouse or something, yeah,” Horace agreed, talking to the wall. “You’ll, uh, you’ll look good.”