Taking Back Sunday -- Chapter 13
[Title] Taking Back Sunday
[Author] dejectedmadness
[Rating] FINALLY NC-17 for boykissing/touching/sexual contact/boysecks!!!
[Chapter Listing] .:1:. .:2:. .:3:. .:4:. .:5:. .:6:. .:7:. .:8:. .:9:. .:10:. .:11:. .:12:. 13/?
[Disclaimer] I am posting fanFICTION. Neither the characters nor the ideas belong to me, just the plot specific to this story. No profit is being made off of this fiction, it is being written solely for my entertainment and for the entertainment of others as warped as I am. Don't sue.
[Band/Pairing] Brand New/Straylight Run, Jesse Lacey/Brian Lane, Jesse Lacey/John Nolan
[Summary] Jesse makes a new friend about whom John is not particularly fond for reasons as yet only speculated upon.
[X-Posted] rockinthebed, slashypunkboys, _brand_new_love, lacey_loves_jno
[Author’s Notes] This isn’t intended to be particularly AU, although it is a high school fic, and it has some anachronistic tendencies.
Jesse opened his eyes with John’s alarm the next morning feeling, once again, like he was going to die. It had as much to do with the fact that he hadn’t eaten the previous day as it had to do with the remainder of that day’s occurrences. He lay in the bed staring at the ceiling as John stumbled to his bedside table from where he had slept on the floor. John moved quietly around the room, grabbing his clothes from where they were folded neatly on the chair and stepping out into the hall, likely to claim the bathroom before his sister commandeered it for the rest of the morning.
Jesse rolled over. He was still wearing his clothes from school yesterday. He knew he should go home and get something else to wear, but he didn’t care. He’d go to his classes in rumpled trousers.
A knock at the door startled him into sitting up. Mrs. Nolan smiled in at him.
“Jesse, John stopped by your house last night to pick up another set of school clothes.” She placed a grocery bag next to the door. “What would you like me to make you for breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry,” he lied, but he tried to smile while he said it.
“Oh, Jesse, I know you better than to believe that,” she scolded, crossing the room toward the bed where she sat next to him. “Do you remember when you were younger, you used to come running to tell me all about your day whenever you came over with John after school?”
Jesse shrugged, even though he knew the answer was yes.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve talked,” she admitted, “but I was a teenager once and plenty of boys have broken my heart before, too.”
Jesse was unable to keep his surprise in check; he spun his head so fast to stare at her that his neck cracked.
She smiled. “There are plenty of girls out there, Jesse.” Jesse’s heart throbbed in his throat. “It probably feels like your world is ending right now, but trust me, everything will work out.” Jesse shifted uneasily on the bed and shrugged. She patted his hair, just like his mother would have done to soothe him. “What was so special about her?”
Jesse averted his eyes, finding his sock feet incredibly interesting all of a sudden. He didn’t answer.
“Was she beautiful and popular and devastating?” Jesse had to crack a smile at that, but he shook his head.
“I’m not much for that type,” he admitted.
“And you’re still tied in knots over her,” she observed.
Jesse shrugged noncommittally. “I guess,” he said after a length of silence that indicated she wasn’t just going to give up and leave, “I guess h- ahem- she was just… perfect.”
John’s mother shook her head. “Jesse, honey, no girl is perfect. They all just want you to think that.”
“Well, I mean, s-she’s loud and kind of obnoxious; John hated h-her for a long time. But she was hilarious, and interesting, and fun.”
“Not pretty?”
Jesse huffed what might have been a laugh had he not been so depressed. “I didn’t say that.”
She smiled down at him. “There are plenty of pretty girls out there, Jesse,” she assured him.
“But I don’t want anyone else! I just want h-her!” he blurted vehemently, hardly stumbling this time over the improper pronoun.
“Jesse, I’m sure-”
“I know you think I’m overreacting because you think I’m just a kid and because as far as you know, me and John and every other kid our age are seeing someone new every week, but it’s not like that! I’ve never felt like this before, and I’ve broken up with a lot of girls!” Mrs. Nolan was silent next to him. “And I know she doesn’t want this either! It’s just her parents caught us… kissing in her room,” he glanced quickly at her to see whether she suspected his indiscretion had been somewhat more than just a few stolen kisses. “If they hadn’t grounded her for six months, then….” He shrugged.
Mrs. Nolan sighed next to him. “Letting your daughter grow up can be hard sometimes,” she told him. “Maybe in a little while they’ll realize that she can’t be their little girl forever.”
“She still told me she doesn’t want to see me anymore…. She thinks maybe they’ll let her off easy if I’m not around.”
John’s mother touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jesse. Growing up is hard enough without heartache.”
“Yeah” was all he had to say in response to that.
Moments later, Mrs. Nolan broke the silence to usher Jesse down the stairs, intending to feed him his favourite breakfast whether he wanted it or not.
***
The school day was unpleasant. Jesse moped from class to class, dragging his feet through the halls, ignoring his teachers morosely from his desk, opting to instead write sad poetry in the margins of what they would assume to be notes but which were actually all letters to Brian that would only ever be seen by Jesse’s eyes. Upon leaving class he crumpled all but the last unfinished one and abandoned them in the trash on his way out.
He minded his own business, expecting to be left alone if only because of his expression for the entirety of the day, but clearly the blinking, neon “fuck off” sigh he wore over his head wasn’t enough for some of the schools less reputable attendees.
“You know, I never would have pegged Lacey for a faggot,” he heard a voice say loudly from across the hall, “until he came to defend his little boyfriend.” Jesse tensed. It was indicative of his priorities that the word that had put his back up had been “boyfriend” and not “faggot.” It made something sharp pang in his chest at the image of Brian that appeared behind his firmly closed eyelids and burned into his retinas like spots from the sun. Jesse, with his tight shoulders, tried to hurry down the hall to his next class, but in his rush missed the foot extended into his path. He, with his books, became so much litter on the hallway floor. His pen went skittering across the hall, his binder flipped open, and his papers from last period fluttered like wounded birds carefully to the ground. Jesse’s heart leapt into his throat, and he lunged for the pages.
“What’s this?” Jesse grasped, but his hand came up empty when another darted out to snatch his letters and poetry from the tile. “‘Dear Brian,’” the bully began. Jesse scrambled to his feet, the other papers in hand already, and grabbed for the page from which the other kid was reading, but he pulled away before he could make contact. “‘I wish this page were your heart, so my pen could etch into you and make you bleed as much as when you carved open my chest,’ aw, Lacey, this is heartbreaking.”
“Give that to me you fucking cock!” Jesse hissed and jumped at the other boy. This time, Josh didn’t pull the paper away. Instead, he pushed Jesse past him and into the locker.
“I knew you were a fucking queer,” Jesse felt the kid hiss into his ear. Rage surged through him, before Josh was finished speaking, he swung, but Jesse wasn’t a fighter- well sometimes he was, but not like Josh. He easily dodged the punch and hit Jesse in the stomach hard enough to double him over. His lungs burned as he gasped for air. Before he’d regained his breath, he was thrown back against the locker. “It makes me sick just to look at you.”
Jesse was shocked when Josh suddenly lunged forward, until the other boy turned around and found John behind him; he’d shoved him. “Get the fuck off of him!” John cursed.
“Who the fuck are you?” Jesse was overcome by déjà vu.
“Jess, are you okay?”
Jesse’s breathing was still shallow, but he nodded anyway. Almost immediately, John’s attention was back on the bully whose friends, Jesse noticed, were standing well back from the scene.
“I don’t know what it is with kids like you who think that just because you’re arms are as big as your balls are small you can push around everyone. You can pick us off one by one for as long as flunking math keeps you in high school, but when you’re finally out pumping gas every day, and you see the fags and the wimps and the pussies and the nerds pulling up in their Mercedes and BMWs, I think maybe you’ll regret telling your tutor he’s a fucking cock-eater. You’re not a big man for tripping helpless kids in the halls, and Jesse’s still going to have slept with more girls than will ever let you touch them when you’re fat and bald at forty, even if he is gay, which I’m sure you’re just inventing or projecting for fear that someone will look too closely at your straight credentials.” John grabbed the paper out of his hand and passed it to Jesse, who took it slowly. “Keep your fucking hands to yourself and shut your goddamn mouth. No one thinks you’re cool for being a jackass.”
Josh, probably undecided on how to respond, stood dumbly staring at John until Jesse slowly stepped over to his mass of books that were now neatly piled in the arms of a familiar-faced boy. Corey looked up, hesitantly smiling at Jesse. He accepted his books from the kid who then held out a stack of pages kept safe in his other hand. Most notable was the top one, which stated in a hundred different fonts and sizes, “Jesse Lacey + Brian Lane = <3.”
Corey spared a tentative smile. “He broke your heart?” he asked. Jesse nodded. “Mine too.”
***
Jesse had felt ill all through his next period class. He’d been unable to concentrate thanks to the ache in his gut and lungs from Josh’s violence, and the overwhelming nausea that had encompassed him upon realizing that there was no mistaking what those pages had said; any protestations Jesse might have made were rejected. How many kids might have seen what was written on the sheets still strewn across the floor before Corey had stepped in? How many of them would have believed what Josh said regardless of whether it was truth or folly? Jesse’s only answer was that he might as well accept that if even one of them believed him or if even one had seen that Josh’s recitation hadn’t been false, tomorrow the rumour of Jesse’s sexuality would be circulating through the school.
John, ever the good friend, had dragged Jesse away after their next class and insisted they take the rest of the day off. Jesse was beginning to think that sooner or later he was going to be missed; he’d certainly skipped enough this semester to warrant some modicum of punishment. But Jesse couldn’t pass up the idea of wallowing in John’s bedroom for the rest of the day, watching his friend play video games and listening to the most depressing music he could stand.
“I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.”
Jesse was surprised that John had gone for so long without trying to reassure him. It was in the other boy’s nature to help if he could, and John’s only method of consoling Jesse was with words. Really, what else could he do?
“Everyone knows Josh is full of shit, anyway.” Jesse stared across the room from his position at the head of his bed to John’s barren wall. “No one’s going to think-”
“I don’t care,” Jesse grumbled. For his first time talking in what felt like hours, Jesse’s speech was remarkably steady. He leaned back against the wall and clutched a pillow in his lap.
John sighed. “That isn’t true.”
Jesse shrugged. The more he thought about keeping his voice- if only his voice- under control, the less power he had over it. He knew before he said anything else that it would waver, but he pressed on determinedly. “It doesn’t matter either way. Either they think I’m gay or they don’t. There isn’t anything I can do about it.” Aside, he dryly muttered, “And I’m not exactly in the mood to be cruising for chicks, anyway. So I don’t care.”
John came around the end of the bed to sit next to him, which he did heavily, bouncing them both on the mattress. “I know that’s not true, Jesse.”
With a shrug he insisted, “It doesn’t matter,” more forcefully. “Fuck, if it meant Brian’s parents would stop being idiots and that Brian would change his mind,” he swallowed the ache that made his voice crack, “I’d tell everyone in school!”
Even as he spoke, Jesse knew that John doubted his conviction, probably not least of all because John had yet to come out and probably couldn’t think of any reason why he should. Jesse was sincere. He just wanted Brian. For all John knew, though, every other person-girl- with whom he’d ever been smitten, incited the same sadness within him. It was Jesse’s own fault for mistaking melodrama for melancholy, and he couldn’t fault John for not catching it.
“Would it be pathetic to say that I miss him?” Jesse whispered, half to himself, as he stared. John looked at him expectantly, like it didn’t surprise him in the least that Jesse was mooning over his ex. He was sympathetic, for sure, but that didn’t mean he believed Jesse, or that he believed Jesse wouldn’t heal as quickly as he always did. ‘Oh well,’ Jesse thought. He would learn in a few days when he still wasn’t eating and barely sleeping that his friend wasn’t just playing his role, this time. It figured, Jesse mused, that after he spent so long cultivating his image, no one would be able to see through it, even his best friend, and even when he was actually hurting.
“No,” John muttered softly. It took Jesse a moment to remember that he’d spoken.
Jesse sighed. “I miss him a lot.” It was only then that Jesse deigned it possible to avert his gaze from the wall he wished his thoughts to emulate. He looked at John’s virtually unreadable face. “I know you think I’m just being… predictable. Predictably downtrodden because that’s how I should look right now.”
“That’s not what I think.” John’s eyes tilted downward and his eyebrows knit together. “Jesse, I know you better than to think your image has anything to do with this.”
That, that right there, so unexpected a reaction, was the only thing Jesse couldn’t handle right now. John knew him well enough to actually see the sincerity. He’d been expecting a buffer of disbelief. If John thought it was a mask, then Jesse suddenly wasn’t as vulnerable being vulnerable. That his lack of lie would have been perceived as one anyway would have been enough of a mask to satisfy Jesse, but John surprised him. He might have called it a disappointment if it wasn’t such a relief that after everything, John still knew him better than he even knew himself.
He couldn’t help the way his resolve crumbled with his face, in light of tears forming in his desperate eyes. Jesse rushed to wipe them away, ashamed because all boys were taught to be ashamed of emotion.
“Fuck!” he muttered, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Just stop,” he told himself. “Stop, you fucking pussy.”
“Jess.” John grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands away. Jesse turned his head, as if by averting his own sight it would make John unsee his emotionality. “It’s okay to be hurt.”
A flare of anger coursed through him, and he pulled himself from his friend’s grasp. “Why should I?” he demanded. “Why should I, when he’s not?” He wiped a new insurgence of tears away, but those fallen troops had brothers, fellows, countless replacements that held their ground; every time Jesse gained an inch, a new onslaught of droplets surfaced to drive him back behind the line, again. “I should stop thinking about it, and I should forget about him! Why should I have to hurt?”
“Because you’re human. Because you’re capable of feeling-”
Jesse burst out, “I wish I wasn’t!” His voice trembled, despite the force of his exclamation.
John closed his mouth. Jesse threw his hands down into his lap in unbridled annoyance with himself. He couldn’t control his tears, and the inadequacy dug at him, only amplifying his frustration.
“I want to be a normal kid! I don’t want to have to worry about whether I am right or wrong for being who I am! I don’t want to suffer because of who I like! I want everything to just be like it was before! Why can’t I just stop feeling like this?”
“Because you love him.”
Jesse knew immediately that John hadn’t meant to say that. He couldn’t have, because John was a very clearheaded kid, and he usually had the right of things- look at how easily he had pegged Brian’s intentions for Jesse! Yet, somehow John’s face didn’t register the telltale flush that overcame him when he’d stepped out of line, or inadvertently blurted out a secret that no one else was meant to know.
“I don’t love him.” Jesse’s retort was quieter than he had intended. It sounded less certain than he meant it to.
John’s mouth was closed, but he pressed it shut more tightly, and Jesse could see his lips turn whiter from the pressure. “Jess-”
“I don’t love him!” Jesse repeated more forcefully.
John didn’t miss a beat. “You’re crazy about him!” he insisted.
“It doesn’t matter.” Jesse’s voice sounded dejected, he knew, and lost. “Obviously it just doesn’t matter.”
“Jesse, I think you should go talk to him again.”
“What’s the point?”
“To tell him how you feel! To get him back! I know if you just tried to talk to him you could make him see-”
“See what?” Jesse demanded. “That I’m obviously obsessed and desperate? That I can’t let go?” Jesse shook his head. “No. Clearly… clearly I just… I didn’t matter to him. I didn’t matter as much as he mattered to me, so….”
“That’s a lie, Jess, and you know it.”
“I don’t know it, John! He said he didn’t want to see me again! In what other way could I possibly take that?”
John fell silent. He didn’t know, just as Jesse expected. He didn’t know because there was nothing to know. Brian didn’t love Jesse, and that was that. It didn’t matter whether or not Jesse reciprocated that lack of feeling.
Jesse wiped his leaking eyes angrily as John inched closer, arm around his shoulders, hand on his knee, muttering, “It’ll be alright.” It was easy to go from there, from a comforting embrace, to a nudge, Jesse pushing John’s cheek with his forehead and offering a wilting smile when John looked confused. He nudged, and then he shifted, and then he touched, tentatively, innocently, John’s thigh. John noticed, Jesse knew, because he was being overt. Jesse knew that his friend would ignore the hint until it bit him in the ass, so with one last nudge, another glance, Jesse pressed his lips into his friend’s gently, almost chastely.
John dropped his arm from around Jesse’s shoulder. He hovered there, sitting irregularly straight, with his stiff shoulders locked in place. Jesse advanced once again, and melted some of John’s resolve with another choice kiss. The spectacled, somewhat nerdy boy couldn’t deny Jesse that, and he knew it. He let Jesse’s tongue prod at his lips until he could pry them open. Jesse knew that he’d won when John sighed and touched Jesse’s shoulder gently.
John kissed hesitantly, uncertainly, like he wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Jesse wondered if he was the only one to have experienced his friend’s kisses. John caught Jesse’s lower lip between his teeth. He traced it with the tip of his tongue and sucked gently so that Jesse could feel arousal pull at his stomach. Perhaps John was not as inexperienced as Jesse had thought.
In moments both boys were gasping, Jesse clutching his friend’s hip with tense, excited fingers. He could feel John’s restraint in the tight grip around Jesse’s shoulder; his friend wanted to do so much more than just kiss, and it was killing him to keep his hands to himself. He took it upon himself to act in the way upright and proper John wouldn’t. His finger’s stumbled, uncertainly, but Jesse pressed on as he fumbled with the button on John’s trousers. A grunt alerted Jesse to John’s renewed coherence, and he struggled to keep their lips connected, despite his friend’s attempts to back off from the kiss. Finally, when John turned his head, Jesse stopped trying to force the embrace upon him and let John’s reason overcame them both.
“Jesse, what do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like?” he retorted. He flicked open the button and worked on sliding the zipper down. John grabbed his wrist.
“Jesse, we shouldn’t-”
“John, please. Please, don’t-”
“Jesse, you don’t love me. You’re going to regret-”
“The guy I love isn’t here, John. He told me to fuck off indefinitely.”
John shook his head. “Jesse, we’ll work it out. We can go talk to him-”
“No, John. It’s not going to work. Just… please… let me have something. Let me get my mind off….” Jesse glanced away. “I just want to feel good for a little while. Please….”
John looked sceptical. Jesse wondered if John was as clearheaded as he always pretended to be. Maybe that was why he seemed to be having a hard time taking the high road. Jesse slid the palm of his hand from his friend’s knee up the inside of his thigh and ended with it resting on the bulge in the front of John’s jeans. John’s eyes drifted shut. He gasped for air. When those brown orbs opened, after they could centre on Jesse’s own eyes, John opened his mouth, but apparently his focus was still limited because no sound escaped. Jesse took the opportunity to ensure his friend’s silent acquiescence. He zeroed in on the other boy’s mouth with his own and in seconds had John responding to desperate kisses yet again.
Encouraged by John’s lack of refusal, Jesse resumed stroking the front of his best friend’s jeans until enthusiastic little sounds directed him further. Jesse managed to push John backwards until he was lying face up, staring at him as he hovered over his body with his hand getting somewhat lost inside obstructive clothing. Jesse wrapped his fingers around his prize in no time. John’s grip on Jesse tightened as he eased himself, letting the other boy stroke him into acquiescence.
“Fuck,” he whispered, “Jesse.”
Jesse couldn’t help himself. When he heard his friend’s desperate moan, he shifted his hips, pressing himself down against John for a little relief from the pressure and strain of his pants against his own hard crotch. “John,” he moaned, kissing the other man.
As John’s fingers strove to show Jesse the same pleasure as he offered, Jesse found his thoughts straying from the actions at hand. John slid a thumb over the head of his dick and Jesse remembered the way Brian grinned eagerly and surprised him with tricks Jesse would never have guessed he would know, making him throw his head back and need to school his breathing so a stray moan wouldn’t ring through doors and down hallways to be overheard by parents. Brian’s moans were deep, and they shook, on the verge of breaking into a whimper. Jesse remembered the way the other boy always would gasp his name into Jesse’s lips when he had a hard time thinking of anything else to say. That was how Jesse knew he was doing a good job.
“Oh, God!” John whispered softly. He moaned, and the contrast between John’s high-pitched cry and Brian’s low groan was so sharp that Jesse’s eyes shot open.
In a desperate attempt to chase his thoughts back to the sensation of fingers on his erection and away from imagined visions of another boy, one whose eyes were a soft, light brown and lit up when he was happy or amused or aroused and darkened only when he was angry or upset, Jesse pressed his lips sloppily against John’s. John turned his head, though, because he was breathing too hard, and kissing was too difficult. Jesse caught his eyes: brown, and dark as pitch. John whispered for Jesse, but Jesse had to look away.
Jesse’s best friend, although pleasant to touch, just wasn’t doing the trick. Jesse closed his eyes again and arched into his hand, encouraging him faster. He succumbed to the image of Brian painted on the backs of his eyelids, head cast back in throes of passion, gasping Jesse’s name.
“Jess…” John groaned, and it just wasn’t right. His voice was too different, his hands too callused. Jesse clenched his eyelids tightly together and willed John away. This wasn’t working.
“Jesse?”
He clenched his eyes together more tightly, but he was vaguely aware that John’s hand had stopped moving against him, and that his cheeks were damp. He could feel a droplet slide down to his nose.
“Jesse,” John whispered. He brushed the tears from Jesse’s face. “Hey, come on, it’s okay, Jesse.” He pressed his hands to his eyes as John embraced him. “It’s going to be okay, Jesse.”
Jesse wouldn’t know until later, but John cradled him and held him while he wept for the better part of an hour, at which point he fell asleep with tears drying on his cheeks.
***
When Jesse woke up it was in a dark and empty room with his body half-covered by John’s navy comforter. He blinked and glanced at the clock on the desk. It got dark so early these days; it was only 7:30. Still, Jesse hadn’t intended to fall asleep, so the shock of returning to a world where he was surrounded by nothing but darkness and memories of what he had been trying to do with John before his little episode made him sit straight up in the bed.
Jesse crept to the door, having scrambled from the bed, opening it to the hall and glancing left and right before sneaking to the edge of the stairway. He listened for signs of his friend, but unless he’d gone to the basement for whatever reason, ten minutes of eavesdropping on the Nolans’ chat about work and paying for John and Michelle’s private schooling, and Michelle’s telephone conversation with, apparently, Angie, while hearing no evidence of his friend proved to Jesse that he had mysteriously vanished.
Jesse closed John’s bedroom door behind himself and turned on the light. He sat at the desk to wait because he didn’t want to go home, and it would feel incredibly weird for Jesse to trek downstairs to say hello to his surrogate parents when their biological son was missing. For all Jesse knew, Mr. And Mrs. Nolan didn’t even have the first idea that he was there! After a solid fifteen minutes of staring at the closet door, wondering if John had abandoned Jesse to go work through what they’d just done in his head, Jesse cracked open his math textbook and started on some of the problems they’d been assigned in class.
Jesse had barely reached the end of the second question, after considerable effort given the lack of attention he’d paid in class in the recent past, when the door opened and his missing counterpart strode through.
John declared, “Hey, you’re up.”
“You’re back,” Jesse responded just as obviously. “Where did you go?”
John shrugged and tossed his jacket onto the bed. “You were out cold, and I didn’t want to wake you up, so I went out for some air.”
“Some air?”
John glanced at Jesse’s obviously concerned face and stopped with his hand hovering over his jacket, clutching a wire hanger. “Yeah, you know, the cold stuff outside. Sometimes you breathe it.”
“You’ve been gone a while,” Jesse commented. John shrugged. “Are you okay?”
His expression grew puzzled. “Of course.”
“You’re not… upset?”
He was taken aback. “Upset? Over what?”
Jesse shrugged. “What I… I mean… before, when we….”
“Oh. No, Jesse. I’m fine, don’t worry about me!”
“I just thought… it was a shitty thing for me to do, you know, and-”
“Jess, forget it. I just… if you’re okay, then that’s all that matters. I get that it was just… a thing that happened, so don’t worry about me being upset or anything, Jesse.”
He eyed his friend warily, but in the end, John’s bad lying skills and straight face convinced him that he wasn’t being facetious.
John sat down on his bed beside where Jesse was in the desk chair with his books and pencil. “Are you okay?”
Jesse shrugged and doodled a little spiral on his page. “Yeah, I mean… I guess… I just,” he sighed. “I don’t know. It was a shitty thing to do, like I said, and I’m sorry-”
“Jesse, please don’t apologize anymore. It’s hard for me to be offended that you’re upset over your lover leaving you. We’re friends, Jesse, and as much as I have wished in the past for us to be more than that, far be it for me to take the place of the man you love.”
Jesse nodded, but still had a hard time meeting his friend’s eyes. Finally, John sat up and clapped Jesse on the arm. “Come on, you’ve got to be too hungry to work on math right now.”
***
The next day, Jesse hovered under the radar at school, going so far as to give his normal route to classes a wide berth to remain as far from Josh as he possibly could. He hid at the back of the room in every lecture and did an abhorred job of paying attention and taking notes. For the classes he had with John, it wasn’t too bad of a setup because he could just get what he missed later, but for those classes he had by himself, it was all Jesse could do not to just take off running out the door. By the time three-o’clock rolled around, he was happy to escape those monotonous corridors by the side of the only person in front of whom he didn’t have to worry about wearing a mask.
“What do you think about ordering pizza tonight?” John tossed back at Jesse. He kicked his shoes in a careless heap by the door, which he would come back to fix in ten minutes, Jesse was sure, and threw his bag on the sofa.
“What about your mom and dad? Won’t they be annoyed?”
“Hmm? Oh, no. Michelle’s got this thing tonight, some recital or something, so they won’t be home until a lot later.”
“Alright, then,” Jesse assented.
“You want to go get some coke from downstairs and I’ll make the call? Pepperoni and bacon?”
“Sure.” Jesse descended into John’s cold basement. He flicked the light switch by the wall and glanced around, like he always did, to make sure there weren’t any ghastly surprises waiting for him around the dark corners or in the closets hidden in the shadows. The doorbell made him jump, but as soon as he heard John’s footsteps cross the floor, he conceded to himself that there was nothing waiting down there to jump out and grab him. He rummaged through the cases of soda in the corner to grab a couple of drinks for he and his friend, disregarding the hum of John’s voice, muffled by too many corners and doors for Jesse to hear anything substantial.
Jesse was equally careful crossing the floor to the stairs again, but as he approached, as John’s voice grew clearer, Jesse found his feet rooted to the floor. His friend’s voice wasn’t the only one that penetrated the cold, dark, stillness that was the Nolans’ basement, and now, Jesse could identify exactly whose voice it was that he heard.
“Well? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“What was me?” Jesse heard John ask.
“What do you take me for? I know it was you, who came to my house yesterday! You fucking told my mom your name, and I don’t know any other Johns!”
“Yeah, it was me!” John snapped back. “Sorry that I didn’t realize it was a fucking punishable offence to-”
“Are you fucking thick? Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you caused?”
“I caused trouble? I was just-”
“Well don’t!” Brian yelled. “You know, they’ve been talking about sending me to fucking boarding school! The second you fucking left they were in my room fucking yelling at me about ‘who else knows?’ and ‘don’t send anymore of your little friends to attack us about our decisions’ and fuck, John! You can’t just come into my parents’ house and tell them that being gay isn’t a fucking phase and that it’s just something they’ll have to get used to and that I’m not going to change because they lock me up and take away all my shit! I don’t know what kind of fucking touchy-feely sensitive household you live in, but my parents aren’t going to be swayed by your idealistic reasoning, okay! And now they’re convinced that I have all these fucking hidden friends who know all about this and are in on it! They won’t let me see anyone! They hang up on my friends and they turn people away at my door!” Brian stopped with a growl. Jesse sat down on the bottom step of the stairwell. “I don’t… I don’t fucking want your help, okay? This isn’t helping-”
“I’m sorry, Brian, okay? I really am, but you can’t just let them-”
“I’m not letting them do anything! They’re just doing it, John!”
“So fight it!” he yelled back. “I know it’s tough to go against your family, okay? I get that. But you’re not going to be cured by boarding school or suspension of privileges! You are gay, Brian. You can’t just change that!”
“Shut up! Just shut up, John! You don’t know anything! You don’t know what you’re talking about-”
“Don’t pull that with me-”
“Stop it!”
“You love Jesse! You can’t turn your back on that!”
“No-”
“I’ve seen the way you look at him, Brian. Them fucking brainwashing you isn’t going to kill something like that. Don’t let them take this away from you!”
“Fucking shut up, John!” Brian shrieked. For a full minute- Jesse counted the seconds- it was eerily silent on the main floor. “A fairy tale fucking ending isn’t in my future, John, okay?” his voice broke, and Jesse could hear the same waver in his that he had heard so many times in his own these past weeks. “I live in real life, and here the prince gets a fucking damsel and he doesn’t get to be a queen.”
“Brian….”
“Stay out of my life, John. I’ve got to get through this, and you messing shit up isn’t going to solve anything.”
“What about Jesse?”
Silence for a heartbeat. Silence for two. “I’ll see you, John.”
Jesse heard the door close seconds before John’s footsteps thudded down the stairs. By the time his friend had reached his side, though, Jesse was already sobbing.
[Author] dejectedmadness
[Rating] FINALLY NC-17 for boykissing/touching/sexual contact/boysecks!!!
[Chapter Listing] .:1:. .:2:. .:3:. .:4:. .:5:. .:6:. .:7:. .:8:. .:9:. .:10:. .:11:. .:12:. 13/?
[Disclaimer] I am posting fanFICTION. Neither the characters nor the ideas belong to me, just the plot specific to this story. No profit is being made off of this fiction, it is being written solely for my entertainment and for the entertainment of others as warped as I am. Don't sue.
[Band/Pairing] Brand New/Straylight Run, Jesse Lacey/Brian Lane, Jesse Lacey/John Nolan
[Summary] Jesse makes a new friend about whom John is not particularly fond for reasons as yet only speculated upon.
[X-Posted] rockinthebed, slashypunkboys, _brand_new_love, lacey_loves_jno
[Author’s Notes] This isn’t intended to be particularly AU, although it is a high school fic, and it has some anachronistic tendencies.
Jesse opened his eyes with John’s alarm the next morning feeling, once again, like he was going to die. It had as much to do with the fact that he hadn’t eaten the previous day as it had to do with the remainder of that day’s occurrences. He lay in the bed staring at the ceiling as John stumbled to his bedside table from where he had slept on the floor. John moved quietly around the room, grabbing his clothes from where they were folded neatly on the chair and stepping out into the hall, likely to claim the bathroom before his sister commandeered it for the rest of the morning.
Jesse rolled over. He was still wearing his clothes from school yesterday. He knew he should go home and get something else to wear, but he didn’t care. He’d go to his classes in rumpled trousers.
A knock at the door startled him into sitting up. Mrs. Nolan smiled in at him.
“Jesse, John stopped by your house last night to pick up another set of school clothes.” She placed a grocery bag next to the door. “What would you like me to make you for breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry,” he lied, but he tried to smile while he said it.
“Oh, Jesse, I know you better than to believe that,” she scolded, crossing the room toward the bed where she sat next to him. “Do you remember when you were younger, you used to come running to tell me all about your day whenever you came over with John after school?”
Jesse shrugged, even though he knew the answer was yes.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve talked,” she admitted, “but I was a teenager once and plenty of boys have broken my heart before, too.”
Jesse was unable to keep his surprise in check; he spun his head so fast to stare at her that his neck cracked.
She smiled. “There are plenty of girls out there, Jesse.” Jesse’s heart throbbed in his throat. “It probably feels like your world is ending right now, but trust me, everything will work out.” Jesse shifted uneasily on the bed and shrugged. She patted his hair, just like his mother would have done to soothe him. “What was so special about her?”
Jesse averted his eyes, finding his sock feet incredibly interesting all of a sudden. He didn’t answer.
“Was she beautiful and popular and devastating?” Jesse had to crack a smile at that, but he shook his head.
“I’m not much for that type,” he admitted.
“And you’re still tied in knots over her,” she observed.
Jesse shrugged noncommittally. “I guess,” he said after a length of silence that indicated she wasn’t just going to give up and leave, “I guess h- ahem- she was just… perfect.”
John’s mother shook her head. “Jesse, honey, no girl is perfect. They all just want you to think that.”
“Well, I mean, s-she’s loud and kind of obnoxious; John hated h-her for a long time. But she was hilarious, and interesting, and fun.”
“Not pretty?”
Jesse huffed what might have been a laugh had he not been so depressed. “I didn’t say that.”
She smiled down at him. “There are plenty of pretty girls out there, Jesse,” she assured him.
“But I don’t want anyone else! I just want h-her!” he blurted vehemently, hardly stumbling this time over the improper pronoun.
“Jesse, I’m sure-”
“I know you think I’m overreacting because you think I’m just a kid and because as far as you know, me and John and every other kid our age are seeing someone new every week, but it’s not like that! I’ve never felt like this before, and I’ve broken up with a lot of girls!” Mrs. Nolan was silent next to him. “And I know she doesn’t want this either! It’s just her parents caught us… kissing in her room,” he glanced quickly at her to see whether she suspected his indiscretion had been somewhat more than just a few stolen kisses. “If they hadn’t grounded her for six months, then….” He shrugged.
Mrs. Nolan sighed next to him. “Letting your daughter grow up can be hard sometimes,” she told him. “Maybe in a little while they’ll realize that she can’t be their little girl forever.”
“She still told me she doesn’t want to see me anymore…. She thinks maybe they’ll let her off easy if I’m not around.”
John’s mother touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jesse. Growing up is hard enough without heartache.”
“Yeah” was all he had to say in response to that.
Moments later, Mrs. Nolan broke the silence to usher Jesse down the stairs, intending to feed him his favourite breakfast whether he wanted it or not.
***
The school day was unpleasant. Jesse moped from class to class, dragging his feet through the halls, ignoring his teachers morosely from his desk, opting to instead write sad poetry in the margins of what they would assume to be notes but which were actually all letters to Brian that would only ever be seen by Jesse’s eyes. Upon leaving class he crumpled all but the last unfinished one and abandoned them in the trash on his way out.
He minded his own business, expecting to be left alone if only because of his expression for the entirety of the day, but clearly the blinking, neon “fuck off” sigh he wore over his head wasn’t enough for some of the schools less reputable attendees.
“You know, I never would have pegged Lacey for a faggot,” he heard a voice say loudly from across the hall, “until he came to defend his little boyfriend.” Jesse tensed. It was indicative of his priorities that the word that had put his back up had been “boyfriend” and not “faggot.” It made something sharp pang in his chest at the image of Brian that appeared behind his firmly closed eyelids and burned into his retinas like spots from the sun. Jesse, with his tight shoulders, tried to hurry down the hall to his next class, but in his rush missed the foot extended into his path. He, with his books, became so much litter on the hallway floor. His pen went skittering across the hall, his binder flipped open, and his papers from last period fluttered like wounded birds carefully to the ground. Jesse’s heart leapt into his throat, and he lunged for the pages.
“What’s this?” Jesse grasped, but his hand came up empty when another darted out to snatch his letters and poetry from the tile. “‘Dear Brian,’” the bully began. Jesse scrambled to his feet, the other papers in hand already, and grabbed for the page from which the other kid was reading, but he pulled away before he could make contact. “‘I wish this page were your heart, so my pen could etch into you and make you bleed as much as when you carved open my chest,’ aw, Lacey, this is heartbreaking.”
“Give that to me you fucking cock!” Jesse hissed and jumped at the other boy. This time, Josh didn’t pull the paper away. Instead, he pushed Jesse past him and into the locker.
“I knew you were a fucking queer,” Jesse felt the kid hiss into his ear. Rage surged through him, before Josh was finished speaking, he swung, but Jesse wasn’t a fighter- well sometimes he was, but not like Josh. He easily dodged the punch and hit Jesse in the stomach hard enough to double him over. His lungs burned as he gasped for air. Before he’d regained his breath, he was thrown back against the locker. “It makes me sick just to look at you.”
Jesse was shocked when Josh suddenly lunged forward, until the other boy turned around and found John behind him; he’d shoved him. “Get the fuck off of him!” John cursed.
“Who the fuck are you?” Jesse was overcome by déjà vu.
“Jess, are you okay?”
Jesse’s breathing was still shallow, but he nodded anyway. Almost immediately, John’s attention was back on the bully whose friends, Jesse noticed, were standing well back from the scene.
“I don’t know what it is with kids like you who think that just because you’re arms are as big as your balls are small you can push around everyone. You can pick us off one by one for as long as flunking math keeps you in high school, but when you’re finally out pumping gas every day, and you see the fags and the wimps and the pussies and the nerds pulling up in their Mercedes and BMWs, I think maybe you’ll regret telling your tutor he’s a fucking cock-eater. You’re not a big man for tripping helpless kids in the halls, and Jesse’s still going to have slept with more girls than will ever let you touch them when you’re fat and bald at forty, even if he is gay, which I’m sure you’re just inventing or projecting for fear that someone will look too closely at your straight credentials.” John grabbed the paper out of his hand and passed it to Jesse, who took it slowly. “Keep your fucking hands to yourself and shut your goddamn mouth. No one thinks you’re cool for being a jackass.”
Josh, probably undecided on how to respond, stood dumbly staring at John until Jesse slowly stepped over to his mass of books that were now neatly piled in the arms of a familiar-faced boy. Corey looked up, hesitantly smiling at Jesse. He accepted his books from the kid who then held out a stack of pages kept safe in his other hand. Most notable was the top one, which stated in a hundred different fonts and sizes, “Jesse Lacey + Brian Lane = <3.”
Corey spared a tentative smile. “He broke your heart?” he asked. Jesse nodded. “Mine too.”
***
Jesse had felt ill all through his next period class. He’d been unable to concentrate thanks to the ache in his gut and lungs from Josh’s violence, and the overwhelming nausea that had encompassed him upon realizing that there was no mistaking what those pages had said; any protestations Jesse might have made were rejected. How many kids might have seen what was written on the sheets still strewn across the floor before Corey had stepped in? How many of them would have believed what Josh said regardless of whether it was truth or folly? Jesse’s only answer was that he might as well accept that if even one of them believed him or if even one had seen that Josh’s recitation hadn’t been false, tomorrow the rumour of Jesse’s sexuality would be circulating through the school.
John, ever the good friend, had dragged Jesse away after their next class and insisted they take the rest of the day off. Jesse was beginning to think that sooner or later he was going to be missed; he’d certainly skipped enough this semester to warrant some modicum of punishment. But Jesse couldn’t pass up the idea of wallowing in John’s bedroom for the rest of the day, watching his friend play video games and listening to the most depressing music he could stand.
“I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.”
Jesse was surprised that John had gone for so long without trying to reassure him. It was in the other boy’s nature to help if he could, and John’s only method of consoling Jesse was with words. Really, what else could he do?
“Everyone knows Josh is full of shit, anyway.” Jesse stared across the room from his position at the head of his bed to John’s barren wall. “No one’s going to think-”
“I don’t care,” Jesse grumbled. For his first time talking in what felt like hours, Jesse’s speech was remarkably steady. He leaned back against the wall and clutched a pillow in his lap.
John sighed. “That isn’t true.”
Jesse shrugged. The more he thought about keeping his voice- if only his voice- under control, the less power he had over it. He knew before he said anything else that it would waver, but he pressed on determinedly. “It doesn’t matter either way. Either they think I’m gay or they don’t. There isn’t anything I can do about it.” Aside, he dryly muttered, “And I’m not exactly in the mood to be cruising for chicks, anyway. So I don’t care.”
John came around the end of the bed to sit next to him, which he did heavily, bouncing them both on the mattress. “I know that’s not true, Jesse.”
With a shrug he insisted, “It doesn’t matter,” more forcefully. “Fuck, if it meant Brian’s parents would stop being idiots and that Brian would change his mind,” he swallowed the ache that made his voice crack, “I’d tell everyone in school!”
Even as he spoke, Jesse knew that John doubted his conviction, probably not least of all because John had yet to come out and probably couldn’t think of any reason why he should. Jesse was sincere. He just wanted Brian. For all John knew, though, every other person-girl- with whom he’d ever been smitten, incited the same sadness within him. It was Jesse’s own fault for mistaking melodrama for melancholy, and he couldn’t fault John for not catching it.
“Would it be pathetic to say that I miss him?” Jesse whispered, half to himself, as he stared. John looked at him expectantly, like it didn’t surprise him in the least that Jesse was mooning over his ex. He was sympathetic, for sure, but that didn’t mean he believed Jesse, or that he believed Jesse wouldn’t heal as quickly as he always did. ‘Oh well,’ Jesse thought. He would learn in a few days when he still wasn’t eating and barely sleeping that his friend wasn’t just playing his role, this time. It figured, Jesse mused, that after he spent so long cultivating his image, no one would be able to see through it, even his best friend, and even when he was actually hurting.
“No,” John muttered softly. It took Jesse a moment to remember that he’d spoken.
Jesse sighed. “I miss him a lot.” It was only then that Jesse deigned it possible to avert his gaze from the wall he wished his thoughts to emulate. He looked at John’s virtually unreadable face. “I know you think I’m just being… predictable. Predictably downtrodden because that’s how I should look right now.”
“That’s not what I think.” John’s eyes tilted downward and his eyebrows knit together. “Jesse, I know you better than to think your image has anything to do with this.”
That, that right there, so unexpected a reaction, was the only thing Jesse couldn’t handle right now. John knew him well enough to actually see the sincerity. He’d been expecting a buffer of disbelief. If John thought it was a mask, then Jesse suddenly wasn’t as vulnerable being vulnerable. That his lack of lie would have been perceived as one anyway would have been enough of a mask to satisfy Jesse, but John surprised him. He might have called it a disappointment if it wasn’t such a relief that after everything, John still knew him better than he even knew himself.
He couldn’t help the way his resolve crumbled with his face, in light of tears forming in his desperate eyes. Jesse rushed to wipe them away, ashamed because all boys were taught to be ashamed of emotion.
“Fuck!” he muttered, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Just stop,” he told himself. “Stop, you fucking pussy.”
“Jess.” John grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands away. Jesse turned his head, as if by averting his own sight it would make John unsee his emotionality. “It’s okay to be hurt.”
A flare of anger coursed through him, and he pulled himself from his friend’s grasp. “Why should I?” he demanded. “Why should I, when he’s not?” He wiped a new insurgence of tears away, but those fallen troops had brothers, fellows, countless replacements that held their ground; every time Jesse gained an inch, a new onslaught of droplets surfaced to drive him back behind the line, again. “I should stop thinking about it, and I should forget about him! Why should I have to hurt?”
“Because you’re human. Because you’re capable of feeling-”
Jesse burst out, “I wish I wasn’t!” His voice trembled, despite the force of his exclamation.
John closed his mouth. Jesse threw his hands down into his lap in unbridled annoyance with himself. He couldn’t control his tears, and the inadequacy dug at him, only amplifying his frustration.
“I want to be a normal kid! I don’t want to have to worry about whether I am right or wrong for being who I am! I don’t want to suffer because of who I like! I want everything to just be like it was before! Why can’t I just stop feeling like this?”
“Because you love him.”
Jesse knew immediately that John hadn’t meant to say that. He couldn’t have, because John was a very clearheaded kid, and he usually had the right of things- look at how easily he had pegged Brian’s intentions for Jesse! Yet, somehow John’s face didn’t register the telltale flush that overcame him when he’d stepped out of line, or inadvertently blurted out a secret that no one else was meant to know.
“I don’t love him.” Jesse’s retort was quieter than he had intended. It sounded less certain than he meant it to.
John’s mouth was closed, but he pressed it shut more tightly, and Jesse could see his lips turn whiter from the pressure. “Jess-”
“I don’t love him!” Jesse repeated more forcefully.
John didn’t miss a beat. “You’re crazy about him!” he insisted.
“It doesn’t matter.” Jesse’s voice sounded dejected, he knew, and lost. “Obviously it just doesn’t matter.”
“Jesse, I think you should go talk to him again.”
“What’s the point?”
“To tell him how you feel! To get him back! I know if you just tried to talk to him you could make him see-”
“See what?” Jesse demanded. “That I’m obviously obsessed and desperate? That I can’t let go?” Jesse shook his head. “No. Clearly… clearly I just… I didn’t matter to him. I didn’t matter as much as he mattered to me, so….”
“That’s a lie, Jess, and you know it.”
“I don’t know it, John! He said he didn’t want to see me again! In what other way could I possibly take that?”
John fell silent. He didn’t know, just as Jesse expected. He didn’t know because there was nothing to know. Brian didn’t love Jesse, and that was that. It didn’t matter whether or not Jesse reciprocated that lack of feeling.
Jesse wiped his leaking eyes angrily as John inched closer, arm around his shoulders, hand on his knee, muttering, “It’ll be alright.” It was easy to go from there, from a comforting embrace, to a nudge, Jesse pushing John’s cheek with his forehead and offering a wilting smile when John looked confused. He nudged, and then he shifted, and then he touched, tentatively, innocently, John’s thigh. John noticed, Jesse knew, because he was being overt. Jesse knew that his friend would ignore the hint until it bit him in the ass, so with one last nudge, another glance, Jesse pressed his lips into his friend’s gently, almost chastely.
John dropped his arm from around Jesse’s shoulder. He hovered there, sitting irregularly straight, with his stiff shoulders locked in place. Jesse advanced once again, and melted some of John’s resolve with another choice kiss. The spectacled, somewhat nerdy boy couldn’t deny Jesse that, and he knew it. He let Jesse’s tongue prod at his lips until he could pry them open. Jesse knew that he’d won when John sighed and touched Jesse’s shoulder gently.
John kissed hesitantly, uncertainly, like he wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Jesse wondered if he was the only one to have experienced his friend’s kisses. John caught Jesse’s lower lip between his teeth. He traced it with the tip of his tongue and sucked gently so that Jesse could feel arousal pull at his stomach. Perhaps John was not as inexperienced as Jesse had thought.
In moments both boys were gasping, Jesse clutching his friend’s hip with tense, excited fingers. He could feel John’s restraint in the tight grip around Jesse’s shoulder; his friend wanted to do so much more than just kiss, and it was killing him to keep his hands to himself. He took it upon himself to act in the way upright and proper John wouldn’t. His finger’s stumbled, uncertainly, but Jesse pressed on as he fumbled with the button on John’s trousers. A grunt alerted Jesse to John’s renewed coherence, and he struggled to keep their lips connected, despite his friend’s attempts to back off from the kiss. Finally, when John turned his head, Jesse stopped trying to force the embrace upon him and let John’s reason overcame them both.
“Jesse, what do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like?” he retorted. He flicked open the button and worked on sliding the zipper down. John grabbed his wrist.
“Jesse, we shouldn’t-”
“John, please. Please, don’t-”
“Jesse, you don’t love me. You’re going to regret-”
“The guy I love isn’t here, John. He told me to fuck off indefinitely.”
John shook his head. “Jesse, we’ll work it out. We can go talk to him-”
“No, John. It’s not going to work. Just… please… let me have something. Let me get my mind off….” Jesse glanced away. “I just want to feel good for a little while. Please….”
John looked sceptical. Jesse wondered if John was as clearheaded as he always pretended to be. Maybe that was why he seemed to be having a hard time taking the high road. Jesse slid the palm of his hand from his friend’s knee up the inside of his thigh and ended with it resting on the bulge in the front of John’s jeans. John’s eyes drifted shut. He gasped for air. When those brown orbs opened, after they could centre on Jesse’s own eyes, John opened his mouth, but apparently his focus was still limited because no sound escaped. Jesse took the opportunity to ensure his friend’s silent acquiescence. He zeroed in on the other boy’s mouth with his own and in seconds had John responding to desperate kisses yet again.
Encouraged by John’s lack of refusal, Jesse resumed stroking the front of his best friend’s jeans until enthusiastic little sounds directed him further. Jesse managed to push John backwards until he was lying face up, staring at him as he hovered over his body with his hand getting somewhat lost inside obstructive clothing. Jesse wrapped his fingers around his prize in no time. John’s grip on Jesse tightened as he eased himself, letting the other boy stroke him into acquiescence.
“Fuck,” he whispered, “Jesse.”
Jesse couldn’t help himself. When he heard his friend’s desperate moan, he shifted his hips, pressing himself down against John for a little relief from the pressure and strain of his pants against his own hard crotch. “John,” he moaned, kissing the other man.
As John’s fingers strove to show Jesse the same pleasure as he offered, Jesse found his thoughts straying from the actions at hand. John slid a thumb over the head of his dick and Jesse remembered the way Brian grinned eagerly and surprised him with tricks Jesse would never have guessed he would know, making him throw his head back and need to school his breathing so a stray moan wouldn’t ring through doors and down hallways to be overheard by parents. Brian’s moans were deep, and they shook, on the verge of breaking into a whimper. Jesse remembered the way the other boy always would gasp his name into Jesse’s lips when he had a hard time thinking of anything else to say. That was how Jesse knew he was doing a good job.
“Oh, God!” John whispered softly. He moaned, and the contrast between John’s high-pitched cry and Brian’s low groan was so sharp that Jesse’s eyes shot open.
In a desperate attempt to chase his thoughts back to the sensation of fingers on his erection and away from imagined visions of another boy, one whose eyes were a soft, light brown and lit up when he was happy or amused or aroused and darkened only when he was angry or upset, Jesse pressed his lips sloppily against John’s. John turned his head, though, because he was breathing too hard, and kissing was too difficult. Jesse caught his eyes: brown, and dark as pitch. John whispered for Jesse, but Jesse had to look away.
Jesse’s best friend, although pleasant to touch, just wasn’t doing the trick. Jesse closed his eyes again and arched into his hand, encouraging him faster. He succumbed to the image of Brian painted on the backs of his eyelids, head cast back in throes of passion, gasping Jesse’s name.
“Jess…” John groaned, and it just wasn’t right. His voice was too different, his hands too callused. Jesse clenched his eyelids tightly together and willed John away. This wasn’t working.
“Jesse?”
He clenched his eyes together more tightly, but he was vaguely aware that John’s hand had stopped moving against him, and that his cheeks were damp. He could feel a droplet slide down to his nose.
“Jesse,” John whispered. He brushed the tears from Jesse’s face. “Hey, come on, it’s okay, Jesse.” He pressed his hands to his eyes as John embraced him. “It’s going to be okay, Jesse.”
Jesse wouldn’t know until later, but John cradled him and held him while he wept for the better part of an hour, at which point he fell asleep with tears drying on his cheeks.
***
When Jesse woke up it was in a dark and empty room with his body half-covered by John’s navy comforter. He blinked and glanced at the clock on the desk. It got dark so early these days; it was only 7:30. Still, Jesse hadn’t intended to fall asleep, so the shock of returning to a world where he was surrounded by nothing but darkness and memories of what he had been trying to do with John before his little episode made him sit straight up in the bed.
Jesse crept to the door, having scrambled from the bed, opening it to the hall and glancing left and right before sneaking to the edge of the stairway. He listened for signs of his friend, but unless he’d gone to the basement for whatever reason, ten minutes of eavesdropping on the Nolans’ chat about work and paying for John and Michelle’s private schooling, and Michelle’s telephone conversation with, apparently, Angie, while hearing no evidence of his friend proved to Jesse that he had mysteriously vanished.
Jesse closed John’s bedroom door behind himself and turned on the light. He sat at the desk to wait because he didn’t want to go home, and it would feel incredibly weird for Jesse to trek downstairs to say hello to his surrogate parents when their biological son was missing. For all Jesse knew, Mr. And Mrs. Nolan didn’t even have the first idea that he was there! After a solid fifteen minutes of staring at the closet door, wondering if John had abandoned Jesse to go work through what they’d just done in his head, Jesse cracked open his math textbook and started on some of the problems they’d been assigned in class.
Jesse had barely reached the end of the second question, after considerable effort given the lack of attention he’d paid in class in the recent past, when the door opened and his missing counterpart strode through.
John declared, “Hey, you’re up.”
“You’re back,” Jesse responded just as obviously. “Where did you go?”
John shrugged and tossed his jacket onto the bed. “You were out cold, and I didn’t want to wake you up, so I went out for some air.”
“Some air?”
John glanced at Jesse’s obviously concerned face and stopped with his hand hovering over his jacket, clutching a wire hanger. “Yeah, you know, the cold stuff outside. Sometimes you breathe it.”
“You’ve been gone a while,” Jesse commented. John shrugged. “Are you okay?”
His expression grew puzzled. “Of course.”
“You’re not… upset?”
He was taken aback. “Upset? Over what?”
Jesse shrugged. “What I… I mean… before, when we….”
“Oh. No, Jesse. I’m fine, don’t worry about me!”
“I just thought… it was a shitty thing for me to do, you know, and-”
“Jess, forget it. I just… if you’re okay, then that’s all that matters. I get that it was just… a thing that happened, so don’t worry about me being upset or anything, Jesse.”
He eyed his friend warily, but in the end, John’s bad lying skills and straight face convinced him that he wasn’t being facetious.
John sat down on his bed beside where Jesse was in the desk chair with his books and pencil. “Are you okay?”
Jesse shrugged and doodled a little spiral on his page. “Yeah, I mean… I guess… I just,” he sighed. “I don’t know. It was a shitty thing to do, like I said, and I’m sorry-”
“Jesse, please don’t apologize anymore. It’s hard for me to be offended that you’re upset over your lover leaving you. We’re friends, Jesse, and as much as I have wished in the past for us to be more than that, far be it for me to take the place of the man you love.”
Jesse nodded, but still had a hard time meeting his friend’s eyes. Finally, John sat up and clapped Jesse on the arm. “Come on, you’ve got to be too hungry to work on math right now.”
***
The next day, Jesse hovered under the radar at school, going so far as to give his normal route to classes a wide berth to remain as far from Josh as he possibly could. He hid at the back of the room in every lecture and did an abhorred job of paying attention and taking notes. For the classes he had with John, it wasn’t too bad of a setup because he could just get what he missed later, but for those classes he had by himself, it was all Jesse could do not to just take off running out the door. By the time three-o’clock rolled around, he was happy to escape those monotonous corridors by the side of the only person in front of whom he didn’t have to worry about wearing a mask.
“What do you think about ordering pizza tonight?” John tossed back at Jesse. He kicked his shoes in a careless heap by the door, which he would come back to fix in ten minutes, Jesse was sure, and threw his bag on the sofa.
“What about your mom and dad? Won’t they be annoyed?”
“Hmm? Oh, no. Michelle’s got this thing tonight, some recital or something, so they won’t be home until a lot later.”
“Alright, then,” Jesse assented.
“You want to go get some coke from downstairs and I’ll make the call? Pepperoni and bacon?”
“Sure.” Jesse descended into John’s cold basement. He flicked the light switch by the wall and glanced around, like he always did, to make sure there weren’t any ghastly surprises waiting for him around the dark corners or in the closets hidden in the shadows. The doorbell made him jump, but as soon as he heard John’s footsteps cross the floor, he conceded to himself that there was nothing waiting down there to jump out and grab him. He rummaged through the cases of soda in the corner to grab a couple of drinks for he and his friend, disregarding the hum of John’s voice, muffled by too many corners and doors for Jesse to hear anything substantial.
Jesse was equally careful crossing the floor to the stairs again, but as he approached, as John’s voice grew clearer, Jesse found his feet rooted to the floor. His friend’s voice wasn’t the only one that penetrated the cold, dark, stillness that was the Nolans’ basement, and now, Jesse could identify exactly whose voice it was that he heard.
“Well? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“What was me?” Jesse heard John ask.
“What do you take me for? I know it was you, who came to my house yesterday! You fucking told my mom your name, and I don’t know any other Johns!”
“Yeah, it was me!” John snapped back. “Sorry that I didn’t realize it was a fucking punishable offence to-”
“Are you fucking thick? Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you caused?”
“I caused trouble? I was just-”
“Well don’t!” Brian yelled. “You know, they’ve been talking about sending me to fucking boarding school! The second you fucking left they were in my room fucking yelling at me about ‘who else knows?’ and ‘don’t send anymore of your little friends to attack us about our decisions’ and fuck, John! You can’t just come into my parents’ house and tell them that being gay isn’t a fucking phase and that it’s just something they’ll have to get used to and that I’m not going to change because they lock me up and take away all my shit! I don’t know what kind of fucking touchy-feely sensitive household you live in, but my parents aren’t going to be swayed by your idealistic reasoning, okay! And now they’re convinced that I have all these fucking hidden friends who know all about this and are in on it! They won’t let me see anyone! They hang up on my friends and they turn people away at my door!” Brian stopped with a growl. Jesse sat down on the bottom step of the stairwell. “I don’t… I don’t fucking want your help, okay? This isn’t helping-”
“I’m sorry, Brian, okay? I really am, but you can’t just let them-”
“I’m not letting them do anything! They’re just doing it, John!”
“So fight it!” he yelled back. “I know it’s tough to go against your family, okay? I get that. But you’re not going to be cured by boarding school or suspension of privileges! You are gay, Brian. You can’t just change that!”
“Shut up! Just shut up, John! You don’t know anything! You don’t know what you’re talking about-”
“Don’t pull that with me-”
“Stop it!”
“You love Jesse! You can’t turn your back on that!”
“No-”
“I’ve seen the way you look at him, Brian. Them fucking brainwashing you isn’t going to kill something like that. Don’t let them take this away from you!”
“Fucking shut up, John!” Brian shrieked. For a full minute- Jesse counted the seconds- it was eerily silent on the main floor. “A fairy tale fucking ending isn’t in my future, John, okay?” his voice broke, and Jesse could hear the same waver in his that he had heard so many times in his own these past weeks. “I live in real life, and here the prince gets a fucking damsel and he doesn’t get to be a queen.”
“Brian….”
“Stay out of my life, John. I’ve got to get through this, and you messing shit up isn’t going to solve anything.”
“What about Jesse?”
Silence for a heartbeat. Silence for two. “I’ll see you, John.”
Jesse heard the door close seconds before John’s footsteps thudded down the stairs. By the time his friend had reached his side, though, Jesse was already sobbing.