by Trisky
If I could remember what that thing is supposed to be.
I can feel restless movements on my left side but I refuse to open my eyes. I know the game he's playing, he's mastered his technique. First he flops around like a fish sprung from water, sighing the deep sighs of expectant death, then he stabs the pillow with his fists as if to beat it into a comfortable position, or to blame it for being uncomfortable to start with. He'll lay still for a minute or two before he starts the cycle again, until finally he sits up in defeat, with his back facing me, and he'll wait until I ask what's the problem. I'll get innocent cow eyes and a miserable "nothing, go back to sleep". Usually at that point, that's what I would do, turn a full 180 degrees on my side and just wait for him to settle himself down. I guess that one night that I didn't turn around, but instead waited and stared at his back just to see what he would do, irrevocably changed the game. He turned around and looked right through me, as if he was hallucinating the sight. He didn't say anything, I didn't say anything. He just laid back down and settled his head right next to my shoulder, barely even grazing my skin. I didn't make any kind of movement. I don't think my bones could have moved at that moment, even if I tried to will them to through telekinesis. I laid still and felt his head tentatively slip towards my collarbone and his ankle trap my foot to the bed. He shifted until he was practically laying on his stomach and my entire arm was caught under him. He was asleep within two minutes. He can fall asleep standing up. If he's not sleeping, there's a reason for it.
I don't think I turned my back or closed my eyes on him again after that. In bed, at least.
I guess that's the thing with Justin. He's honest to a fault even when he's lying. He's not a game player even when he's playing games. He doesn't look at the world... doesn't look at me... and try to figure out how to deceive it, how best to take advantage. That's what informs lying and game playing, the intent, not the actual lie or the game. His intent doesn't waver. He wants what he wants and he makes no bones about it. He doesn't question it, he doesn't beat himself up for it, he just gets it by whatever means necessary. He never really intends to lie or play games, or hurt anyone. If you happen to be in his way, you just happen to be in the way, no harm intended, you either go along with him or you get out of the way.
And people wonder about the two of us? Sometimes, I have no idea why it's not plainly obvious to anyone with two eyes.
If jealousy was something I was allowed to feel, I'd be disgustingly jealous of him. To be young and untouched by the reality of your own actions. To be totally oblivious, unapologetic and innocent about who you are. That's just him, it's just who he is, take it or leave it. At least he has a him, a thing, his own thing, that thing that he answers to, in that him that actually exists. Not a him he intends to deceive anyone with, just in case they get close to the real him.
He's more me than I am.
Because that's the other thing that informs the lying and game playing, the consequences. They aren't always pretty.
But I'm not playing this game he doesn't know he's playing. Not tonight. He's already sucked the marrow out of me with this ridiculous "date" and sleepover. On these fucking sheets! I have an urge to scream or pound my head on a wall.
I feel him sit up and I refuse to open my eyes. He makes big, unfamiliar movements and I spy on him through webbed eyelashes. It's a trick I learned when I would pretend to be asleep if Jack came to check on me in bed. I'd watch and wait until he was gone to open my eyes and he never once noticed I wasn't asleep. He swings his legs off the bed and gets up. He just gets up and leaves the bed! What the fuck is this?
"What are you doing?" Shutup! Shit!
"I'm still hungry. You can go back to not sleeping." He grabs the first open carton of food he can find and sticks the first fork he sees right in. He doesn't care what it is, whose fork it was, he just shovels it right in.
"I'm a light sleeper, you woke me up."
"Okay, whatever you say," he mumbles around his mouthful of food. "Then go back to that."
"I am and I was!" I argue as if we're deciding the fate of the universe as we know it. He shrugs his shoulders and sticks another forkful of cold noodles in his mouth. "This bed is too small. I can feel you every time you inhale. Did you think I wouldn't notice you get out of the bed? That it wouldn't wake me up?"
"Just go home," he sighs. "I'm too tired to argue with you."
"You'd be asleep if you were too tired to argue with me." He really shouldn't leave himself that wide open.
"I'm giving you your opportunity to get out of this, the one you've been searching for all night so don't blow it. Or I really might barricade you in the bed and make you stay," he offers with a bit of numb glee.
"Are you throwing me out?" I think he might actually be doing that and for the briefest of seconds this irritates me. I'll decide when I leave for myself.
"Is this making you happy?" He tosses my question back at me, right between my eyes. "I'm not really used to sleeping next to someone in that bed and you're making me uncomfortable, laying there like you're waiting for rigor mortis to set in. I don't like being uncomfortable in my own bed. And you, you're just miserable... no real explanation necessary there. So go, no guilt, you have my blessing. I won't hold it against you."
"Well thank you Oh Wise One. I must have missed your canonization to sainthood. Now fuck off and stop chewing so loudly, so I can sleep." I don't merely roll over, I slap my body onto the mattress and take over his side of the bed, until I'm laying diagonally with bent knees, finally fitting on the bed. I grab an armful of sheets and tuck them under my ribs for good measure. To let him know I'm serious about not going anywhere. I'm not about to be thrown out.
He tosses his fork into the sink and it clangs loudly, first against the faucet and then the basin. "Will you just get out? Why would you want to stay here and make yourself miserable? I get it, I got it four hours ago. Point taken." The louder he talks, the closer his voice gets to my back, the more I feel my bones tense and seize the mattress. "You got what you came for. Go home!"
I hear this cracking sound in my brain. It's my patience, and it's just snapped. I turn in a fit, to a puddle of Justin on the floor and the actual sound I heard begins to register. It's him on the floor, on his ass, his foot caught between the air conditioner that threatens to topple over and the floor. I can see the strain on his face as his ankle twists at an awkward angle trying to prevent it from happening.
"FUCK! Get this fucking thing off me!" He yells and I'm sure there are going to be curious neighbors at his door within minutes. Then I remember he lives in a tenement and people probably get shot here everyday and no one lifts an eyebrow. My feet hit the floor and I lean over to lift the unit off of him before I even realize that I'm laughing. And he's... well... he's not. He's not even smiling a tiny bit. He's scowling.
It's funny. His naked ass spread eagle on the floor after tripping over the air conditioner and taking it down with him. That's comedy!
"I hate that fucking machine," he growls. "Do you have any idea how many times I've stubbed my toe on it, or almost knocked it over? You can take it with you when you get the fuck out of my house!"
"Testy, testy... Need a hand?" I shove my arm at him as obnoxiously as possible.
"I don't need your help." He gathers himself up on the good foot and winces when he steps down with the other. "Shit, I hope I didn't break anything."
"The floor looks okay to me, the weight of your ass didn't crack it!" I expect him to slap me in the head when he leans forward, instead he grabs my shoulder and steadies his balance. This concerns me. "Hey you are okay, aren't you?"
"I'm fine. I don't think I broke any bones. It's just that stabbing kind of pain. I can move it around." He demonstrates by wiggling all of his toes and swinging his foot back and forth very gingerly. "It'll probably just be sore in the morning."
"Well then you need me to stay and make sure you can walk around and there's really nothing broken. How would you get to the phone to call me to ask for help?" I smirk with a casualness I don't necessarily feel.
"Who says I would call you?" He shoves off of me and limps to the couch. "It's your fault I got hurt to begin with. You'd only make it worse."
"It's my fault you don't know how to look where you're going?"
"You're the one who forced that stupid machine on me. To make you comfortable if you'll recall."
"But you're certainly taking advantage of it. You haven't exactly thrown it out, have you?" Now I'm sleepless, irritated and concerned and he's just brazen and it's irritating me more that he could be that blase about it all.
"I'm trying to, but you won't leave."
"We're not talking about me." He looks right at me, looks me up and down from head to toe and looks away. Oh but we are, we always are. The little fuckhead actually rolls his eyes. "Who else would you call? And what do you mean I got what I came for?" I'm not exactly sure why, but I really, really want to know.
"What, you thought we'd be playing Uno after dinner? No expectations right, dating is a waste of time, doing anything to remotely acknowledge you might be within a five thousand mile radius of a sort of sometimes relationship is a waste of time. So I say we just fuck. That way we both know what we're getting. You sleeping over when we're done just complicates things that don't need to be complicated."
He's way more me than I will ever be.
My voice coming out of him is like the screeching sound of metal and glass crunching together and when I look at him, all I see is the leftover remains of the wreckage. "You know what? Enough with the wounded animal routine! You're not some delicate fucking bird whose wing was broken and needs to be fixed and nurtured before it can fly again. So it got all fucked up, so what? All you have to do is take your two perfectly healthy legs, you don't crawl, you don't keep one foot in and one foot out, you don't stumble around, you just walk away and save us all the aggravation."
"You don't say," he mock marvels at my revelation. "Only I can't walk at the moment and even when I can, I just bang into things anyway. You can walk and you never falter, so there's the door. Use it. No locks remember?"
I look around and I realize I hate this apartment. I hate everything about this place. I hate the bone white walls. I hate the sheets. I hate the thin walls. I hate the size. I hate the garish neon colors that comes in through the window. I hate the repugnant smell that comes from god only knows where. I hate that air conditioner with white hot intensity at the moment. I hate that every time I come here, I leave more aggravated than I was before I came, but I never leave unsatisfied. Mostly I fucking hate that I feel like I have absolutely no place here, even though it's technically mine, that I don't fit any of the furniture and when I do it's only because he's not on it which is just backwards and wrong. I don't fit any of the surroundings, and yet I can't lift one fucking foot to leave, to go back to my own bed, my own life. I just keep trying to squeeze into his and he can't even be bothered to meet me halfway. Thankfully.
"Who would you call?"
He goes to respond with some patented Brian Kinney answer but comes up empty handed. Because he is who he is and his scary imitation of me isn't a comfortable fit for him. "I don't know and I don't want to find out."
"What *do* you want?"
There I fucking said it. I asked the million dollar question. He finally dragged it out of me. I sit back down on the bed that I seem to dwarf with my size because I feel like I've been raked over dirt, gravel, chunks of metal and glass for the five thousand miles it took to get here. All that's left of me is a skeleton with chips of bone scattered all over the road.
"You. That never changed. Unless you're willing to try and give me that then I don't see the point in going around in circles."
That's just so simple, three letters. One small little word. There's really not much to it, not much at all. Other than everything. Other than that, no not much at all.
"Can I at least finish giving you this idiotic 'sleepover' first and then we can work the rest out as we go along?"
Work me out, whatever the hell I am. Over time, not right now, not all at once, somewhere down the road. I might not be much, but it's all I've got.
It's an offer that tides him over for the moment, because he concedes by just laying back on the couch, resting his foot on the arm, letting my negligible answer just be enough. He's good for that sometimes. "You can have the bed. I know you need more room than I do. Just throw me my pillow and a sheet."
I bundle up his request and think about tossing it at him, but I don't want any sudden reaction that could potentially cause him to bang his foot and injure it any more than it may already be. Instead I just walk it over to him and he does that same thing he always does to me. He looks at me and he sees right past me and he doesn't run screaming in the other direction, he just keeps barreling forward. I wait until he stuffs the pillow under his head, the sheet over his body and closes his eyes before I turn and walk back to the bed, switching off the lamp on the end table as I go.
I lay in the bed, spread all over it and stare at the ceiling imagining that I can actually see the fissures in the dark that threaten to crack wide open and rain plaster all over me and bury me alive while I sleep. I don't know if any actually exist, but it's not a great leap to presume they do.
Who would I call if I needed help? If the sky cracked open and fell on my head? Who do I have?
Who does he have if he doesn't have me? He has himself, which is more than I can say.
I guess the best game players are the ones that can run a game on you, without you ever realizing it until it's too late and you've lost. I've been totally beaten at my own game by someone who never intends to play, much less win, but always does anyway. But I don't feel like I've lost, everything just feels empty and hollow.
I slip my arm under the pillow, but the pressure from my head just doesn't match up. There's nothing more to lose at this point.
I grab my pillow and move gracefully in the dark. Even without sight, I don't walk into anything. I lean over the couch and that's enough for him to open his eyes. I can't see them, but I know they're open.
"What's up?"
"The couch is longer, I can stretch my legs out."
"You want me to take the bed instead?"
"No, just move over." I hear a grunt of a question about how we intend to fit on this couch together and I can't answer it. Instead I just nudge his back with my ass as I sit down and throw my pillow near his head. "Just do it."
He pushes himself as far as he can into the back of the couch and I slide behind him, fit what I can, where I can under his sheet. It's a precarious position and if either of us moves, one of us, namely me, is going to end up on the floor. Either way I know we're both going to wake up feeling like all of our bones are about to split in half. I slip my arm under his ribcage, my head above his, and stretch my feet to the arm of the couch. He leans his sore foot on my ankle and reaches around for my other arm. He'll hold me in place all night by his own will if he has to.
That's when I know. I'm willing to give it a try. He wants me. That's what I'll give him. Everything of nothing.