by Trisky
"Shut up! I'm getting there. I have to work myself up to it."
"Just turn the fucking ignition!"
"I've never driven this with you in the passenger seat."
"Where would you like me to sit? In the backseat?" His smile suggests that's not such a bad idea. "I'm NOT sitting in the backseat like a two year old. You're going to start the car and then turn the big wheel and the tires will go round and round, they might even make some forward motion."
I'm getting impatient, though I'm trying not to, but we've been sitting here for a good three minutes and Debbie will fry my ass on the diner grill if we show up late for this shindig. Melanie, Lindsay and Jennifer will each take turns flipping me over with a spatula. Maybe I can convince him to wrinkle his sweater or undo the button on his pants, to at least give the tiniest of impressions that we had a reason for being late. Explaining that he was terrified to drive just doesn't have quite the same naughty factor. I like to imagine what they think we do behind closed doors. I'm sure they'd be surprised either way.
"Promise me you're not going to tell me how to shift the gears or brake or turn or whatever else I'm sure you have a comment for."
"I don't make promises I can't keep. Now turn the damn key and let's go." He gives me a dirty look and I give him a self-satisfied grin, but he finally relents and starts the car, taking such pained breaths that I think he's about to fall into some asphyxiated state. So I slap him on the back, like you're supposed to when someone's choking. For that I get icicles where his irises used to be. So there's nothing stuck in his lungs, what's the difference?
"Here goes nothing." He glides out of the parking space with caution, checking every mirror over and over, though there's no traffic. He steals a few looks in my direction trying to discern some deeply imbedded terror he imagines is on my face. I betray nothing to him, just watch him with curiosity. "I can't believe you forked over your jeep. What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking I was tired of hauling your ass around town every time you needed to go somewhere, and tired of listening to you beg me to use it when I didn't need it."
"I seem to recall you getting some interesting favors out of me every time you made me beg." He watches me for my reaction, and I stare right at him.
"Keep your eyes on the road, not on me."
"Brian!" He just loves to say that word, loves to trap me by tossing it out there, because he knows he'll get my full, undivided attention every time I hear it. "No backseat driving."
I close my eyes and lean my head into the cushioned material, mostly because I don't want to see the road from this vantage point, but also because it's actually kind of relaxing not having to be alert at all times. I can just let my mind wander freely. Yes, I certainly could get used to being chauffeured around. I wonder what he would think if I brought home a chauffeur's cap, put a nice black tie and a white shirt on him, no pants though. Driving Mr. Kinney. It's been a long time since we've fucked in the jeep, a month or two I think. Wait until he sees the leg room in the Lexus. Ass to seat, ceiling to feet, it should be pretty interesting.
"Hey... Brian?" He says it so quietly I think I'm imagining his voice.
"Hmmm?" I open my eyes, because I can feel his stare, and I know he's spent the entire red light looking me over. I guess I surprise him, because he leans his head away abruptly and focuses on the road ahead of him, stalled in progression.
"Nothing, I just wanted to say," he considers carefully and I can almost see the scales in his brain weighing the pros and cons of revealing his original thought, "you look great, I mean really unbelievable." Looks like the cons won out.
"Don't I always?" His head nods almost imperceptibly because he hates feeding my ego but he can't deny that I'm wrong. It certainly took me long enough to realize that that's what truly bothers him. I could be the world's most insensitive shit, which I usually am, and he would continue on happily. It's not having anything to respond with, or more likely, to top me with, that gets to him each and every time. Once I realized that, everything else became so much more clear, like someone pulled the filter off the lid and let me sift right through him. "You heard the guy in the store, he said burnt sienna is my color, and I happen to think he was right." I run my fingers down the buttons of the shirt, pressing the smooth material to my skin. It's almost as soft as his ass, almost.
"Yeah, the guy in the store also said he didn't know what was more attractive, the thought of you matching the fire in a fireplace or you out of the shirt in front of a fireplace. You could have been wearing zebra stripes and plaid pants, and he would have told you they were all your colors. Could he have been anymore obvious?" He shakes his head disapprovingly, a slight frown on his face as he watches the gravel stretch out in front of him before he squeezes his eyes for a long second and inhales a long, slow breath. There's not a single person in the world that could beat him when it comes to being obvious. His face, his voice, his body language, even his breathing have always given away his every thought, no matter how hard he tries to let me mold him to my liking like a raw piece of clay, tries to hide himself and steel his resolve for my hands to shift and shape about. He will always be out and proud in ways he can't even imagine, ways that I will never be. There's a fire in him that stings my touch when I get too deep. It's like his body reflexes defensively and rejects my attempts. I can't contain him, I don't even want to, but mostly I don't want him to try and hold himself back for my sake. Sometimes, I just want him to let loose, burn out of control and never apologize for leaving nothing but ashes behind.
But he's not me, and never will be. To start with, he's not a fucking coward. But more importantly, his embers are of the slow, lasting variety, like fuel he siphons out in measured amounts, enough for survival, but not enough for complete destruction.
"Can I help it if the man had taste?"
He ignores me. Good for him. "Brian..." There goes that hesitation again. I know he doesn't want to come right out and say whatever is on his mind, but it's obviously bothering him. It's moments like this where I wish I had his hands, artist's hands, that know just what to do with a big lump of clay. My hands are totally useless, unless they're wrapped around a cock. "Why did you really give me this car?"
He's inching closer, testing how far he can put his hands to the flame, before he singes himself. "I told you already." He purses his lips in frustration, tired of playing my game. I know when I see that withered look that he's about three seconds away from total silence. More than anything, I cannot take his self-imposed solitude. I don't care what he's talking about, as long as he keeps speaking. He knows that, and he *uses* that, time and again, and I let him. "You really want to know why?" He perks up, suddenly interested again. "Because every time I go to a meeting at all of these big companies we represent and I pull into a lot filled with Mercedes and BMW's, I look at the Jeep and I feel like some 16 year old messenger delivering coffee to the big boys. This thing is already paid for, why waste it?"
"*You* feel out of place?" I can see his view of the world shift ever so slightly at that revelation. "Since when do you care what anyone thinks about anything you do, including the car you drive?"
I don't know... since I woke up and looked in the mirror one day and realized I'm 33 years old and no matter how hard I try to stop it, or how many times we fuck, time moves forward and not backwards. You either keep up, or you get left behind, and I don't intend to ever be left behind. "I don't care. I just wanted a car I could respect in the morning." I give him the devil's grin.
"I see. So essentially you give your dirty little secret to your other dirty little secret for safekeeping."
FUCK! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Motherfucking fuck! If I had a fireplace poker handy, I'd melt the iron and then shove it up his ass for that comment.
"That's totally fucked Justin! You know that. I put my ass on the line for you, more than once. Don't fucking act like you're someone I try to hide." I'm so incensed right now a firehose at full throttle wouldn't put me out.
"I'm not saying you *do* hide me. I'm just saying, maybe you should."
I've gone and done it again, without even trying. I've found his total weakness and preyed all over it. "What the *fuck* does that mean?"
"It just means that I'm sure the Jeep's not the only thing you've wanted to trade in when you started feeling awkward. Let's face it, I'm not exactly a shining example of the powerful, respectable image you want to portray. Hell, I can't even pick out my own clothes. Maybe it would just be easier to get it over with sooner rather than later." He pauses, lost inside his own head, pondering how to get himself out of the wildfire that's spun completely out of his hands. "All I ask is that, if you should get the urge to do it, you'll let me know in advance, so I can be prepared before you just cast me aside for some better model."
His whole body is deflated, hands vaguely steering the wheel and shifting the gear, eyes watching the road, but traveling on some stretch of highway only he can see. This is when I should step up to the plate, act like the man I'm supposed to be and tell him what he wants to..., no what he *needs* to hear. That I wouldn't change a damn thing about him, and that I need him to stay exactly as he is because if he keeps molding himself into something I don't recognize, then how the hell can he expect me to keep trying to contort my own framework to follow along with him? Why would I even bother?
"Like you said, since when do I care what anyone else thinks of me? Why would I start now?" I am the coward after all.
"For the same reason you thought getting a Lexus would somehow make you seem more important. You can't stand when people look down on you." He rolls to the red light and gives me the most sincere, open look I've ever seen. "Promise me you won't let me turn into something that embarrasses you down the line. Make sure that I keep trying to make you proud... Please?"
I'm dumbfounded and mortified that things have gotten so twisted around that *he* is the one saying this to *me*. How did we get here? His eyes stare earnestly, waiting for my final judgment before he finds a cool, damp place to roll around in and douse the remaining sparks. Please, once, just once, let the right thing come out of my mouth. "I promise." He breathes a little easier. "But only on one condition."
His shoulders tense up immediately, waiting to feel how I'm going to squeeze them until they're sloped in reverence at my visage, when all my fingers want to do is to ease the knots forming in his muscles. "What's that?"
"That after this party is over and you get your birthday gift tonight, not only do we never have this conversation again, we forget we ever had this conversation to begin with."
I know, I *know* the only gift he wants is for me to be like him, but he'll have to settle for some pale imitation. Even his gifted hands can't bring an old dead horse to life.
"Okay..." He agrees reluctantly, clearly confused by my reaction and expectation of him. But if it gets him back to relative peace, then so be it, he can live with it for a little while.
I watch the streets pass outside my window, afraid that if I look at him too long, it'll all come pouring out of me, and I don't know how to pull back the way he does, once he starts. I just let myself get wholly consumed.
"You handle this thing like a pro, Justin," I compliment him. I know he's smiling, even if I'm not looking. "I think this will all work out really well for both of us, more than I expected it to. Best decision I've made in a while."
"Brian." My head automatically shifts in his direction. "Thanks."
I nod and make mincemeat of my inner lip. He has no idea. None at all.
I just watch him steer us through a steep curve, grateful that I'm not the one doing the driving.
I'm just a passenger along for the ride.