by Trisky
The longer I keep my eyes closed, the less chance I have of seeing him say no. The less I see him say no, the more I can convince myself that his mouth was saying no, but his head was nodding yes and I just couldn't see it, because my eyes were closed. It's amazing the ways you can convince yourself of things that don't actually exist by choosing to never actually see them, like, on purpose.
On the other hand, if I don't open my eyes, he'll probably make a mad dash to find his pants, maybe not even that much, and be out the door like a roach when someone switches the light on, before I have a chance to even make a total ass out of myself. Maybe this is a conversation better left for the phone where I can't see his face? But then he won't get to see my begging frown and the chances of him saying yes will decrease dramatically.
Not that I would ever do something like that. I'm just saying... the possibility exists that my face might, by accident, start to look really desperate and hurt, and oh yeah, close to tears. Not on purpose, of course, just you know, naturally.
Because I'm sure that's what I'm going to feel when I hear "no". It's going to be a big, fat, giant, being thrown off a rooftop and branding me in the head, "NOOOOO", followed by howls of laughter. If I'm lucky it'll end there, but I don't rely on luck when it comes to him. This is when the dying from humiliated horror part will come in. I'll be the cockroach wanting to make a mad dash out the door trying to escape his foot stomping Prada shoe deathtrap at that point. Not that he's a cockroach, per se, more like a blood sucking varmint. A mosquito maybe, always leaving an unbearable itch after he feasts on my blood.
Fuck it... The worst he can say is no, right?
Right.
It won't change anything.
Right. Absolutely.
So I'll just open my eyes. No harm done.
As long as you don't count the dizzy spell I get from my first glimpse of him. I'm so glad I'm already lying down. It's just... I don't know, something happens to him in the middle of the night. Whatever ugly, unpleasant way he was before he goes to bed just seems to gets washed away by the first crack of light. He always looks younger, his bedhead all over the place, a crease on his arm from the impression of the mattress, or in this case, the couch, or maybe me. I never considered that for some reason. Maybe I'm just imprinted all over him... His back slouches and his eyes adjust slowly to the new light of day. He doesn't look like he has all the answers, he looks as bendable and soft and mushy as the rest of humanity. I'd say vulnerable, but I have this nagging fear that he can read my mind and if I thought that out loud, even in the safe confines of my own brain, he'd never let me hear the end of it.
He looks... imperfect. I love that about him.
Why, he even looks like he could use, oh I don't know, a tan? Maybe if I suggest he has flaws he'll become so obsessed with trying to perfect them that he'll accidentally give in and say "yes, a million times yes Justin, lead me to the oasis so I can perfect my perfectness".
Or maybe he'll just slap my ass and find a tanning bed.
I stir about a little, moving my legs behind him, move my other bits as well, because they're what's closest to his ass, that sits in the middle of the couch, as he leans his elbows on his knees. I can almost see him square his shoulders, shake the sleep off his face and put on his other face. The one that gets a break when sleep takes over its shift. I know he'll say no, but I'd rather ask and die of embarrassment, than never ask at all.
"What time is it?" It's the only neutral question I can think of.
"Too early, go back to sleep. It's your day off."
I pause for a moment, genuinely surprised that he actually remembers that. "It's yours too. Remember?" Well Sundays generally are, or were, but sometimes he goes in for a couple of hours, which turns into half the day. He works too hard. There's another point in my favor.
"I have a couple of things I need to take care of for tomorrow."
I'm not really interested, but I ask anyway, because it's the right thing to do. "Like what?" I mean, I'm interested in his life, how his job is affecting him, but I'm just not interested in the actual ins and outs of advertising. It's not something I find fascinating. The visual stuff and the actual ads are cool, actually the whole conceptualizing process is pretty cool. He really gets into that. It's the charts and market surveys and budget planning and staff meetings that make my eyes glaze over into a bored stupor. I would have lasted 3.6 seconds at Dartmouth.
"Nothing you'd be interested in." See? It's scary the way he does that.
"Maybe I would be if you explained." That's a total lie, he knows it, I know it. Even the fucking cockroaches know it.
"Well what do you want to know about first? Budget forecasting and collections for the third and fourth quarters or the staffing issues on the Lansing account? Or maybe the interview process for a new focus group coordinator?" he asks with as much sincerity as I have actual interest.
Sherk.Sherk.Sherk.Blip.Blip.Blip.Blah.Blah.Blah. That's pretty much all I hear. It's not even 8 a.m., how am I supposed to be awake enough to pay attention?
"Why do you have to do all the scuff work? What does Vance have to do?"
"He has to make sure I know just how junior my partnership is at every turn." Sounds vaguely familiar.
"It's not what you expected is it?" He actually turns to regard me with some interest and I look around as if I'm not the one who asked. Which I'm not sure I am, it just sort of came out. "The partnership I mean. You actually have to work harder at things that you don't actually want to do, but they're kind of just part of the package. Instead of just getting to create the ads you want."
"It has its tradeoffs," is all he'll allow. Heaven forbid he actually admits it doesn't all come naturally to him, but overall it works, on whatever strange level, it just takes a little elbow grease. I mean, really, heaven forbid. "Money's good. Perks are good. I'm doing what I want to do. Getting out of it, what I put into it."
"Just takes a little effort, huh?" Of course, he says nothing. He just sits back against the couch, leaning his head on the edge, his back hovering over my sheet covered dick. This doesn't seem at all uncomfortable to either of us, even though I'm trapped and he's about to have something poking his back if he keeps sitting there naked as the day he was born. In fact, I quite like this position. I pick myself up slowly and carefully, so that I'm in a half sitting position, but I'm not disturbing his lazy rest. I just lean my face against the couch and stare at his profile. Dizzy doesn't cover it. I could float on nothing more than the picture in front of me for weeks on end. "Money's always good. Perks are even better. As long as you're satisfied. Just don't forget to enjoy the rest of your life once in a while."
And I move in for the kill.
"Did you forget who you were talking to?" he snickers.
"Not at all." He lifts a faint eye and stares at me from the corner of it. "You work too much and you play too hard. You need to just relax every once in a while. Don't try so hard to always be 'on'. Just, you know, be still and enjoy yourself..." I drop my voice to barely above a whisper. I won't even think it, no won't think "with me" at all. Not for a second. He's too close to me and I know he'll hear it. The closer he is, the more attuned his brainwaves seem to get.
Withmewithmewithmewithmewithmewithme, my brain just starts to churn out in a never ending chorus, inexplicably. Shut the fuck up!
I have a point, I know I do, because he looks away from me and stares straight ahead. He can't look at me and try to deny me at the same time. I want to reach my hand out and stroke something. No, not that. I want to stroke his unkempt hair, smooth it down, calm the strands. But if I lay a finger on that head, I'm pretty certain he won't give it back. I want to calm him down, because I know everything in him is running at full speed and readying his arsenal of "no's", without moving an inch. I'm sure he's already shut down entirely and now I really have nothing left at stake. It's just a perfunctory question at this point. I will be dying of embarrassment before I even take my first piss of the day. What the hell have I got to lose? I reach over and watch my fingers work their way into the strands of his hair at the back of his neck. I'm not sure when I discovered it, but that makes him a little weak.
"Do you want to go away with me?" At worst he'll bolt, at best he'll just ignore me entirely. But at least I asked. "I know we haven't exactly had the best track record with vacations, or anything, but it can't get any worse, right?" I keep talking, just to fill up the room with something more than the sound of his breathing. "You could use a tan you know. Some color would do you good. All those hours in the office and then wandering around Babylon are making you one pale boy." I let out a nervous laugh, like I have room to talk. I keep talking, because if I stop, the oxygen might actually hit my brain and I'll suddenly realize how incredibly foolish I sound. Right now, I can just be a moron without any fear of recourse, because I'm too dizzy to pay it any attention.
He laughs quietly and my fingers freeze. "If I need a tan, then what the fuck would you call what you need? A staining? Besides, how much sun would we wind up actually getting?"
I stare quizzically, and laugh along with him. I'm pretty sure that wasn't one of the reactions I conjured up. "Okay forget the tan, just think of the water and sand and sun, better yet think of relaxing without a care in the world. Doesn't that sound nice?" My fingers nearly dig through his scalp.
"A vacation might be nice. I've got some time owed to me since I missed the last one," he remarks with as much regret as he can muster. Which isn't very much, but it's good enough.
It takes all my self-restraint to not start bouncing up and down. Play this calm, play this cool, because this is going way better than I could have imagined.
"Maybe we can go away for the 4th of July," I suggest, helpfully.
"Seems like you already have this entire trip planned and I'm just footing the bill."
I choose to ignore that and accidentally pinch the skin behind his ear instead. "It won't cost you a thing, other than train fare." His face is skeptical. I don't want to be hopeful, I won't be hopeful, I. Will. Not. My stomach begins a slow climb towards the back of my throat. "I have to go away for a few days. I was thinking you could go with me." If I don't die of embarrassment, I'll die from chewing on my own intestines, at this rate.
"Where are you going?"
If I puked on him, would he clean me up, or throw me off him? I think I'm about to find out. "I have to go Cape Cod for a few days. It's really nice there, I've been there a bunch of times, especially for the 4th of July."
If I look up I know I'll see an image of him precariously dangling the "NO" that he's about to let fall on my head. I look anywhere, but at him.
"Do I even want to know what's in Cape Cod?"
"My grandmother. I used to go every year, before..." Fill in the blanks, before someone used my head for batting practice, before my entire family fell apart, before I was just too old and mature and worldly to do such a thing... before you. "She basically guilt tripped me into coming with the 'I'm not getting any younger and all I have are my children and grandchildren' routine."
I've never seen Brian Kinney dumbfounded. I'm pretty sure this is as close as I'm going to get to ever seeing it again.
"You're actually serious?" He at least tries not to spit out the laughter right in my face as he leans off the back of the couch. "Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf visiting granny and sitting down for some tea with her quilting circle. Even Emmett is not that fucking nelly Justin and that's saying a lot!"
"She's not like that! That's not what we'd be doing," I sputter and feel the embarrassment start to choke the life out of me. "It's my mother's mother. She's actually pretty cool. Well... cool in that I've lived so long, seen so much, I won't waste my time caring what the fuck you're doing as long as you're not embarrassing me, kind of way. She knows about you. How could she not? She said I could bring whoever I wanted, just as long as I come." I add, as if that's going to bolster my case. "Listen she's not going to judge you because of where you put your dick, just how much of one you are."
"I don't give a fuck what she thinks about me, or my dick or what holes in your body I'm sticking it in. I'm not going to play housebroken domesticated puppy with you and Grandma for a week! That's not my idea of relaxing!"
The veins in his neck actually pop back and forth the longer he balks. I'm not dead yet, and I guess I won't even have the relief of that to save me. But hey, at least I had the nerve to ask, which is more than I can say for him. He doesn't even have the nerve to try.
I just shrug my shoulders and make a mental note to inform Daphne that her vacation plans with me are back on. "Fine, I'll just go alone and be miserable. You can stay here and work yourself into a heart attack."
Sometimes it feels like just tossing pebbles at a wall of indestructible waves. But surely I have to pierce him at least a little bit, for the sake of my own dignity.
"Oh, no. I'm going on vacation. Now that you've put it in my mind. You can go rub Ben Gay on Grandma all day. I intend to rub something else all day."
"Where are you going?" I feel my stomach start to slide back down the track it came up, right to my toes and my face start to follow suit. And I'm not even trying. I'm seriously not trying. "I could put my trip off for a few days." Oh God, I'm half a step away from begging. Must not beg.
"And ruin all that fun? No, go, have a gay old time. And I do mean gay," he smirks. "I'm thinking some place sunny, with a beach and a pool. Maybe Puerto Vallarta. There's some resort down there that Michael has been trying to get me to go to for years. Stacked wall to wall with men. Ben's away at that conference and it's probably the first year that Michael can actually afford to go. Yes I think I could definitely learn to enjoy myself more!" I can see the wheels spinning in his head. He's already halfway across the country. "Celebrate our independence..."
I feel a tingling sensation in the pit of my stomach, like someone might have just kicked me there.
"You're gonna go with Michael?" I pull my body into a fully sitting position, pull my legs from behind him and into my chest. "On vacation?" I ask, with more incredulity than I expected.
Withoutmewithoutmewithoutmewithoutmewithoutme, my brain just starts to churn out in a never ending chorus, inexplicably. Shut the fuck up!
He doesn't seem to pick up on it, he's too consumed with dreaming about sun and sand, and men, many many men, that are not me and that I don't care about. It's one man. The one he's thinking about harassing out of bed at this godawful hour and telling to get his ass in gear, they're going away in a couple of days. The one who will gladly do as told. The one who's actually going with him.
Maybe if I opened my eyes more often, I would have seen it before?
Maybe I can't see past the disappointment at the moment. Maybe I don't want to. Maybe I just want to sulk, and pout, and be hurt. Maybe I should have asked him on the phone, after all.
Quite possibly, I'm making a bigger deal out of this than need be. It's just a vacation. It's not like he's in love with him. I mean I'm taking my best friend with me, and that's no big deal, I'm not in love with her either. No, that's not the problem.
It's that sometimes I think he might, sort of, possibly be a little in love with me.
"This is the best idea you've had in ages," he remarks.
And then I think, does it even matter? After all, what do I have to show for it?
Nothing but stray fingers, a sore foot, long face, pale skin and a broken heart