forthedog | And carve your name and hearts into the warhead

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And carve your name and hearts into the warhead

Somewhere between finding out the news and hitting the tarmac in Newark, he decides not to go to Neil immediately.

Some of it is fear, plain and simple, though he'd only come out and call it that under extreme duress. But it's not fear of Neil, not really. It's both more complex and more horrible than that. It's fear of disappointing him. Fear of what it might mean that he's afraid of that. Fear of commitment. Fear of not committing. Fear of being hurt. Fear of becoming someone who can't be hurt at all, because they don't feel anything.

At Newark he rents a car for a day and drives into Trenton; it's a sad little town in a lot of ways, that sign on the bridge somehow reproachful rather than proud--the world takes everything from us and leaves us with nothing--but something about it speaks to him all the same. It's not New York. It's not really like anywhere he's lived.

After about half an hour, it occurs to him that probably the closest it comes to is Hutchinson.

Shortly after that, leaning on the hood of the car and watching rain drip sullenly into the gray river, a cigarette burning down to a stub between his fingers, he comes to another decision. It doesn't take him very long. Really, he thinks maybe he's already made it, and the hard part was just realizing that it was made.

He picks up a local paper, finds three places that he can look at that afternoon, and jumps on the third one. It's small, old, clean. Is it all right if he pays for a few months in advance? He has to go overseas for a while and won't actually be living in it until he returns. Yes, it's fine. A modest and unspent inheritance and years and years of intensely minimal expenses mean that he has money. Really, he has more than he knows what to do with.

And now he knows.

He signs the application, agrees to come back in a day or two to sign the lease itself, hits the road. It's getting dark and raining harder. He takes a detour and stops in front of the gates of Fort Dix, looks at the lights in the early gathering twilight and thinks about what might have been. What won't be. What will.

It's late when he gets into the city itself, and though Neil's told him where the bar is he gets lost twice, the streets becoming oddly maze-like. Parking should be a nightmare but once he finds the place itself, there's a spot across the street, and he slides into it, dumping change into the meter without counting the time.

It's a hole in the wall, but it's got good atmosphere, dim and smoky, music too loud. The kind of place he likes, as a rule.

It's not too crowded but it's small, and people line the bar, and he only catches sight of Neil when he pushes his way to the front. For a moment he doesn't speak, doesn't breathe, and there's the fear again. Is he making a huge fucking mistake? Is he giving up too much for someone he still hardly fucking knows?

Is there a name for this? One he can use?

He catches Neil's eye, taps the bar and manages a thin smile. "Whiskey. Straight."

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I shrug. There's nothin' else I can do but let him wait while I go back to my shift. To my job that's actually not half bad, drunks and assholes and arrogant dicks aside. The clientele is mostly male, so queer bar or not, there's usually something to look at.

But this shift, all I really see is him, even when I'm doing a passable job of ignoring his existence. He's a distraction. Not enough for me to fuck things up, but still there. Always.

The hour passes painfully slow, or maybe too fuckin' fast, and finally, I turn over the register to the tough, middle aged woman who's been workin' here for over fifteen years and head back to the office to grab my shit.

He's finished his drink, is most of the way through another one, and he's still not close to drunk bit everything is slightly softer and more bearable around the edges. Now and then he has to think for a minute or two before he remember what he's dealing with. A very drunk and very friendly young man to his right keeps trying to talk to him about the Yankees' chances in the playoffs, and he listens amiably enough, nodding at appropriate moments and thinking about the way Neil screws up his eyes when he laughs especially hard.

That's got to be worth giving some things up for.

He sees Neil coming out of the back with mingled relief and apprehension, and he slides off the barstool. The man next to him just keeps talking, oblivious, and for a moment he envies him.

"Where we headed?" I ask, arching a brow at him, my backpack slung over one shoulder and my eyes searching his face.

He can avoid lookin' at me all he wants, that doesn't mean I'm gonna do the same.

"Wherever," he says, turning and threading his way through the crowd toward the door. All of a sudden, he just wants to get this over with, deal with Neil's reaction and then tell him the rest of it, and then he wants to curl up and sleep.

He's not even sure why he's this weary, though he could make some guesses.

He looks back over his shoulder. "I have a car. Rental. Parked across the street."

"Whatever," I shrug, following him out onto the street, a cigarette already lit and perched between my lips.

"You know rentin' a car in this fuckin' city's pretty pointless, right?"

"I didn't rent it for this city." He pauses before they cross, breathing in the smoke Neil's exhaling and fighting an absurd urge to reach down and take his hand. He feels a little like he's on the edge of sanity, even with the rounded edges that the whiskey's given to everything. Crazy in a way that he hadn't felt before, standing outside Neil's door. But a cousin to that.

"Just didn't get around to taking it back yet. I rented it for Trenton."

"You were in Trenton?" I say, arching a brow, feeling that momentary spark of hope again and immediately crushing it down.

Christ, this is just... I can't do this to myself. It's fuckin' stupid.

"Yeah." He glances sideways at Neil as they reach the car and he pops the lock, catching Neil's expression before it vanishes and feeling a clench of emotion so impossibly complex that he could never name all its components.

"Get in. We gotta talk."

"Yeah, fine. Whatever," I mutter, sliding into the passenger seat, hoping the darkness'll hide the frown tugging at my lips.

I don't gotta whole lot of experience with it, but we gotta talk is never a good sign.

He's not even sure where they're going, not even when he pulls out into traffic and lets it carry them south and east. The city lights turn into a blur, and again he's thinking about deserts, gunfire, the bright plumes of burning oil wells.

At least this time he has the good sense to be afraid.

"So you know all the shit that's going down in Yugoslavia?" he asks at last. The towering lights of a bridge appear through the buildings ahead of them, and he realizes, vaguely, that he's taking them out of the city. "All the fighting and whatnot."

"Yeah," I murmur quietly, looking out the window, watching the lights flicker past the windows, watching him drive us right out of the city, and I think to argue, think to tell him that I don't have clothes or anything, assuming this is a overnight trip to who the fuck knows where, but all I can think is... Oh..

Oh. He doesn't have to really say anything. I think I already know. Exhaling smoke through the cracked window, I clear my throat and say, "When are they shippin' you out?"

"Right after I get back." It comes out in a sigh, half resignation and half... something else. He glances down at the ribbon of dark water under them. "They're sending a bunch of us in as peacekeepers. With the UN. It shouldn't be more than a month or two, but I..." He shakes his head and falls silent again. But it isn't what he'd thought. What he'd been sure of. What he'd been planning on. And now he's wondering if he can plan on anything anymore

And it's too late to wonder that, as far as some things go.

"But you can't know for sure," I finish the sentence for him. He can't know when he'll be back, and he can't know that they won't just turn around and send him elsewhere, right after it's done.

There's all this tension suddenly welling up in the back of my throat, heart hammering, stomach churning, and I've got this unfamiliar, really fucking weird urge to cry. It's been too fuckin' much, and I just feel... Stupid. I feel stupid for hoping... For hoping for something I'm not even real sure was ever possible.

But instead, I cough out a laugh, pinching at the bridge of my nose and flicking my cigarette butt out the window.

Peacekeepers. What a bunch of bullshit. They're sending him right into the fucking thick of it. This isn't even in the same league as those safe little military bases.

"No," he says. It's quiet, flat. True. He doesn't know. He's been told that they can't possibly be needed for longer than that, but it's one of those lies for form's sake, where neither party believes it and both parties know it's not to be believed. "I can't. Might be there for months. I'm sorry, Neil, I don't..."

They're following the highway out toward the Narrows bridge and Staten Island, and now he knows he's taking them back toward New Jersey--though toward what besides that remains a mystery. He stares out at it, hating that laugh Neil's made.

"This isn't what I wanted."

"I know. Look, man. Don't. You don't gotta fuckin' apologize. You don't owe me anything," I murmur, pushing a hand through my hair, my eyes on the faint reflection of him in my window.

"It's... whatever."

It's a lot of things. I don't even know what to say. I can't... put into words the kind of disappointment I'm feeling right now. I can't justify it. He's not my fuckin' boyfriend. He's...

I don't know what the fuck he is.

"I told you," he says. "I told you and I was really sure about it, and I was wrong." He falls silent again, frustrated, more than frustrated, glancing at the shadows moving over Neil's face in a rough, rhythmic blur, making him look simultaneously impossibly old and impossibly young. Like an angel, he thinks, but not like one of the perfect, radiant creatures of popular mythology. An angel from the old days, strange and a little frightening, and possessed of uncertain power.

The power to change a world.

"I'm sick of this," he says, more quiet. "I'm sick of moving around all the fucking time. I'm sick of missing you all the fucking time. I'm sick of... of having to lie to everyone about who the fuck I am."

I've never heard him say anything like that. Never really heard him mention the fact that he'd be kicked out on his ass if they knew the kind of shit he was into. If they knew he'd let a teenage hooker from Kansas fuck him up the ass more than once.

But that's more about what he does, not who he is, and for a second, I'm too surprised to say anything.

"This is what you do, man. You said it yourself. You... It's important, right?"

"Yeah, it's important." For just a moment, before he fights it back, he feels an ache behind his eyes, a prickling sting. Because his men--some of them just boys, all of them friends and brothers, and it's hard to even think of leaving them. In Iraq, in Kuwait, he had led a fireteam and he had led them as well as he could, and he had taken care of them when they needed taking care of and had screamed at them when they had needed that too, and when three of them had died he had wept over them, and he had written three of the hardest letters he's ever had to write.

The other hard letters he's written, he's decided that no one will ever see.

He blinks hard, shakes his head. "But it's not all I do."

I nod silently, watching the road stretch out ahead of us, my eyes flickering over toward him in the darkening shadows, the city getting further and further away at our backs.

"I been thinkin' 'bout it. 'Bout you bein' here, nearby. The last few days, I mean," I admit quietly, clearing my throat and letting my body tilt a little toward him, even though we're not touching and there's a fucking console between us. "I know you weren't doin' it for me or whatever, but I... I really wanted it."

It's honest, unguarded, unusually so for Neil--though given how things had gone the last time they were together, maybe he should be more used to it now. But it hits through to the core of him, makes his eyes ache again, and though he doesn't immediately reply, he reaches out between them, finds Neil's hand in the dimness and takes it, holding on for a moment or two as the road unspools under them.

Finally he takes an exit, turning them back south. "I wanna show you something."

Pressed palm to palm, our fingers tangled together, and it feels like it might be the most intimate thing we've ever done. It feels heavy, weighted, like it's the beginning of something I don't fully understand.

"You're drivin' me a long fuckin' way, it better be worth it," I whisper, offering him a crooked, almost embarrassed smile.

"I hope it is," he says quietly. Because he's not sure, and he's not sure what he'll do if it's not. But it's a risk, like any other risk he's ever taken... even if it isn't, not really.

On paper, if it doesn't work out, right now he's only out a few hundred dollars. Maybe not even that; he hasn't signed a lease.

But this isn't about paper.

For the next hour he doesn't speak, doesn't push Neil to speak, just looks at the road ahead of them and tries not to overthink anything. When he speaks again they're past the Trenton city limits, and as he turns down a sidestreet, trying to make sure he remembers the way, he clears his throat and glances at Neil again.

"I actually got here earlier today. Had some shit to take care off. Also had some thinking to do."

In the quiet, I start to doze, back against the door, one leg pulled up onto the seat and my shoes kicked off onto the floor. When he clears his throat, my eyes flutter open and I'm reminded, briefly, of that night in Brighton Beach, opening my eyes and seeing that asshole's face peering back at me. Those cold, fucking angry eyes.

But instead, there's Mike, nervous behind the wheel, and I clear my throat, rubbing sleepily at my eyes and blinking down the unfamiliar street.

"You're bein' all mysterious and shit, man. Just spit it out," I say with a rusty cough of laughter.

Edited 2011-05-24 03:33 (UTC)

It's really very good timing. Almost like it's planned. "Okay," he says, turning down another street--they're in a middling part of town, not great but not too sketchy, and he brings them to a stop in front of a midrise building, nondescript, brownish brick.

He cuts the engine, leans over and points up to a set of windows close to the corner of the building, third floor. And he just... spits it out.

"I filled out a rental application for that place today." He pauses, takes a breath. "When I get back... from Yugoslavia... I'm getting out. Of the Army. Completely."

My mouth drops open, just hanging there stupidly, and I just stare, up at the window he's pointing to. I just stare, 'cause everything feels like it's frozen, like somebody pushed the fuckin' pause button and I can't get myself going again.

"Why... Mike, why are you showin' me this?" I say, and it's not an accusation. I honestly need him to fuckin' spell it out to me, why he's driven me all the way out to an apartment he doesn't even have yet. He's gotta explain to me why this feels so major, and why I feel like I've got some part in it, even though I've never felt so fuckin' lost in my whole life.

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