The Art of Trying (Part 1)
This will be a multi-part story. This first part has a lot of set-up and then Ste and Brendan making a decision together at the end. Hopefully you like it, I have a good feeling about this and where it's going. :)
* * * * *
Brendan had been different when he came out of prison. So different. Not to the naked eye; to them he was mad and bad when he went in, and mad and bad when he came out. But Ste could see the difference. Even while trying to stay away from Brendan, it was obvious to him that Brendan was tortured, damaged. He was more furious with the world than ever before. He was closed off - more so. Ste often caught Cheryl with her eyes lingering hopelessly on Brendan and realised that even she wasn’t getting through to him anymore. It was like he was a wrecked soul of a man.
In many ways this made Ste’s heart sink miserably, choke inside his throat with the pain of it. He couldn’t bear to think of him like that; soulless and destroyed by whatever went on inside the prison walls where he didn’t belong. The other part of Ste pushed those feelings away. He hated Brendan, right? The fact that he didn’t kill Rae didn’t change anything; he still had to hate Brendan for all the stuff that went on before.
As for Brendan’s feelings towards Ste, well they were infuriatingly and typically unclear. He’d told Ste he loved him, only a month before going inside. But once out he barely even acknowledged him. He looked past him, brushed past him. If Ste ever DID find himself watching Brendan, it seemed Brendan only looked further away. Ste had once found himself longing for a bit of eye contact… a bit of recognition or clarity. Then he remembered he wanted the bastard out of life anyway, and decided to feel happy about it.
So it was unclear then why after his shift that night, his feet were carrying him to Brendan’s office. He used to tell Brendan that he was clocking off, a while back when in hindsight he was just looking for an excuse to talk, to get approval. Not anymore though. And yet for some reason, here he was.
He didn’t even knock, just pushed his way in. And there was Brendan. Hunched over his desk, a bottle of whisky in one hand, an empty glass in the other. His eyes bloodshot from tiredness and that unfamiliar beard looking as dirty and unkempt as when he first got out of that jail. He looked a mess, and the Brendan Brady Ste knew NEVER look a mess. It was disconcerting in a way.
“Wha?” Brendan drooled shortly, never looking up from the drink below him.
Ste blinked, feeling slightly exposed and couldn’t think of anything to say but, “A… are you sure you should be drinking all that?”
Ste was sure he could make out some sort of bitter smile under Brendan’s fierce expression as he murmured, “Are you sure that’s any of your business?”
And that was it. Over. Ste left because he didn’t want to look at that anymore, or feel that strange claustrophobic heat in that room as Brendan’s anger spread through the walls like a disease. He had to get away from that as quickly as possible. And forget all about it.
He had problems of his own anyway. Big ones at home. Ever since Lee left for New York, not wanting to take the kids away from their Dad, Amy had been treating Ste differently. He knew she resented him for it. Christ knows, she’d been devastated. Lee Hunter may have been nothing more than a plonker in Ste’s eyes, but he’d meant a lot to Amy and she seemed kind of lost without him, down. Amy was old beyond her years and already believing that she was past her sell-by date, which was ridiculous really.
But anyway, Lee’s departure from her life had led Amy to do some serious thinking: Their domestic situation wasn’t normal. In fact, she decided, it wasn’t healthy. They needed lives of their own, a place of their own, and less dependence on one another.
Ste had begged and begged her to reconsider, but Amy didn’t think they should be living together anymore.
“I love you Ste, you know I do.” She’d explained, “But … this … it’s not natural. And I think we need to start standing on our own feet a bit. Having our own lives.”
And so in that very same week Ste had packed up his bags, and checked into the cheapest B’n’B he could find. Amy said he should stay until he found a proper place of his own, but he found he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to stay somewhere where he wasn’t welcome. And he hated the new awkwardness that came with talking to Amy, once a lover, once a best friend, and now… he didn’t know what was going on. She denied it… but he was a burden to her; someone who had made her sacrifice her relationship, and now he was going to pay for it.
So he lay on that creaky B’n’B bed with the startling realisation that he had NOBODY else to turn to. And that made him feel a loneliness that perhaps wasn’t so far apart from Brendan himself.
“Ste… can I have a word with you please?”
Ste blinked out of his daze, finding Cheryl standing tentatively beside him, gently brushing his arm as she addressed him with those desperate-looking eyes.
“Yeah.” He mumbled, and followed her into the empty office. “What’s up?”
“It’s Brendan.”
Ste sighed. Of course it was fucking Brendan, what else would it be? There was no chance his boss could be taking him into the office to discuss something WORK related, was there?! Oh no.
“What?” Ste grunted, in the same impatient tone he’d adopted whenever discussing that ex of his; a topic he was exhausted of.
“Please…” Cheryl spoke quietly, with intense sincerity. “Please Ste, I don’t know what else to do. He’s……”
And then to Ste’s horror, Cheryl’s eyes were filling with tears; the very same ones she’d been bravely holding back all these months and now were here for Ste to witness.
“Hey… don’t…” he tried. He put his hand on her arm but she brushed him off with typical Brady-pride.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry.” She sniffed. “It’s just…… he won’t let me speak to him Ste. I mean… I don’t know what’s wrong with him; he’s drinking all the time, and he doesn’t get out of bed and he’s… so ANGRY. At everyone. And… please don’t tell anyone, but yesterday I heard him crying, Ste, I mean really crying when he thought he was on his own and…”
Ste didn’t hear what Cheryl said after that. His eyes and ears seemed to go numb, and there was that odd aching in his chest again that he SO didn’t want to relate to Brendan, but now it was obvious. He hated the idea of… that. Brendan crying… breaking down… he didn’t do that… that wasn’t right. Brendan was tough… strong…
“Love, I’m begging you.” Cheryl continued. “If anyone can get through to him, you can.”
“Oh - no!” Ste stammered, backing away quickly as though receiving an electric shock. “I can’t.”
“Please!! Please, I’m so worried about him. He’s just not the same and I know you can help him, Ste, if you’ll just try. Please. For me.”
Ste’s head whirled. Not only were he and Brendan history, not only had Ste worked as HARD as he could to get Brendan out of his head………… but he was also admittedly fearful of Brendan’s current state. Brendan hated the world, and Ste had no doubt he himself was included in that. He seemed like a silent volcano at the moment, about to erupt any second, and Ste was sure that eruption would be aimed harder at him than it would at anybody else.
“Cheryl, he won’t want to speak to me anyway.”
“Please.” Cheryl’s voice was small, cracked, dry from tears. “I don’t know what else to do.”
It was a mad idea. The whole setup was mad. What did Cheryl expect? What was he supposed to talk about? How was he supposed to address it? What was her desired outcome from all this?! NO good could come of this at all. It would inevitably end with hurt, bitterness, anger, disappointment… the same way it always did when Ste and Brendan laid down ultimatums. It would stir emotions Ste had locked away deep inside and never wanted to see again. It would undo everything he’d worked so hard on in terms of wiping Brendan from his memory.
It was also ridiculous how heavily involved Ste seemed to still be in Brendan’s life - through no fault of his own - when technically the two had never embarked in any kind of real ‘relationship’ in the first place!! By definition, Brendan should be as much a part of Ste’s life as ex’s like Theresa were. And he wished above all else that that was the case… that he didn’t have to hear and speak and think about Brendan every day of his life the way he did. That he didn’t have to feel in some way guilty when other people flirted with him, the way he did. That it didn’t feel like some ridiculous marriage, only without the sex or love or talking.
And yet he found himself doing it. Checking out of that god forsaken empty, silent B’n’B and heading over to the closed Chez Chez at 10.30pm. Cheryl had given him the key and the promise that Brendan would be there, because “he always is these days”. And Ste promised himself that this time no amount of blood-curling tension could make him run. He’d keep his promise to Cheryl. He’d TRY and talk.
And even when he stood before Brendan at the bar, with Brendan’s fierce and cold-looking eyes fixated determinedly away from Ste’s face, and another whisky bottle in his hand, and the hard silence hammering down on them… he didn’t run. He didn’t speak either. He got himself a beer and sat beside Brendan… a few seats along, and he too drank.
And unexpectedly in the end, it was Brendan who broke the silence.
“What the hell are you doing here, Stephen?”
“Dunno.” Ste decided to be honest. “Cheryl wanted me to come.”
“Right. Well. You know where the door is.”
Ste sighed. Slowly he rose from his stool. And he got a strange sense of satisfaction when Brendan’s head darted to watch him, giving away for a millisecond that that’s perhaps not what he wanted.
Ste wasn’t going anyway. Instead he moved around to the other side of the bar so that he was opposite Brendan. So that Brendan HAD to look at him, even though he didn’t.
“You need to stop drinkin’ that, you know.” Ste adopted his best tone of casualness. “’s not good for ye, you’re goin’ for an early grave.”
“Yeah, and you read that in a text book, did ye?”
Ste rolled his eyes. “Here, gis’ it here.”
He made the grab for the whisky. But Brendan was quick. He grabbed it back with surprising viciousness, like jumping out of his stupor. And for the first time in what felt like years, he laid his eyes on Stephen’s. And they were intense… furious.
“What the hell are you doing?!” He spat
“I’m sorry, I’m just tryin’ to help…”
“Help?!” Brendan laughed. “Now you wanna help, Stephen, is that what you’re sayin’ to me?!”
Ste swallowed and tried not to sound nervous as he answered a small, “Yeah…”
“You wanna help? Then get out of my fucking sight, alright?! Just do one!”
Brendan stared angrily back into his glass with his shoulders rising and falling under the pressure not to swing his fists. Ste knew that, and he knew it only too well. But he couldn’t leave. And now it was nothing to do with Cheryl, but with the inexplicable hold that Brendan had on him. The magnetic pull that forced Ste to suffer whilst Brendan was suffering too. That made him unable to let it be, and unable to bear watching Brendan in such a state, and be partly responsible for it.
He was on dangerous grounds. But he wasn’t giving up yet.
“You have no right to be angry at me, you know.” He stated bravely. “I don’t have to be here, do I?! I don’t have to have ought to do with you.”
“Oh is THAT how ye feel?!” Brendan spat, throwing his chair backwards with the speed in which he jumped out of it. “Well I’m sorry to be such a burden on ye Stephen, but the thing is, I never asked for you to come here, did I?!”
And by now he was rounding on him, forcing Ste’s body back against the wall as he cornered him, fists clenched, eyes wild.
“DID I?!?!” He screamed.
“No!”
“So - get - the - fuck - out - before I do something I regret.”
Ste took a deep breath. Brendan’s face was inches from his own, seething, hateful. It was too much - too intense. And Ste was deeply ashamed to find tears prickling in his own eyes as he shuffled past Brendan and towards the exit.
FUCK, don’t cry, he told himself, don’t let Brendan do this to you.
His insides were boiling; bubbling with emotions and things he wanted to say and things he wanted to scream. But he knew he mustn’t rise to it. He mustn’t care. If Brendan wanted to kill himself with anger and booze - fine. So be it then. Because any scrap of power Ste fleetingly had over Brendan had clearly been drowned by hate during his prison spell.
“Stephen, wait…”
“I’m SORRY!”
Ste blinked; shocked by his own admission.
And Brendan too, still standing by the bar, but now watching Ste blankly, waiting for him to go on.
Ste swallowed. “I’m sorry…” he repeated again slowly. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Okay?! But……… what was I supposed to think, Brendan?! What did you expect?!”
“I expect you to know me better, Stephen!!”
And Brendan too seemed to double-take at his own statement. He was surprised by how his own voice cracked with emotion. Surprised that he’d just spoken his first honest revelation of his hurt since stepping out of prison four weeks ago.
The whole bar seemed to be wrapped in silence.
But not fierce or intimidating silence this time. This time all those unspoken feelings seemed to hover around them intensely as they locked eyes sincerely on each other from across the bar.
“How could you think I would do that?!” Brendan croaked. “Seriously?! SERIOUSLY STEPHEN?!”
“I’m sorry!” He repeated hurriedly, willing Brendan not to lash out as he slowly moved back towards him.
“You didn’t even give me a fucking chance.” Brendan breathed. “You didn’t come see me, did ye?! You didn’t let me explain. I had to sit in that FUCKING cell for three FUCKING months not knowing what the HELL you were doing or thinking. Do you KNOW how that FEELS?!”
“No.” Stephen confessed weakly. He was feeling weak. Light-headed. And he had to blink back the tears because he didn’t want Brendan to know he still had that power to create them. He took a deep breath. “But… I’m not with you anymore Brendan… you can’t… I didn’t have to visi…”
“You didn’t visit cos you thought I was a murder.”
“Yeah - BECAUSE I DO KNOW YOU!!” Ste suddenly shouted; emotions abruptly surfacing in the shape of rage. “I DO KNOW! I thought you were gonna kill me once, you know! The way you looked at me! Like I was dirt…like you HATED me and yeah, that’s what I thought!!”
Ste rounded on him, bubbling with long-suppressed rage, with the urge to tell Brendan EXACTLY how he tortured Ste all those times. To make Brendan understand just HOW MUCH he hurt him; how he took Ste’s adoration for him and exploited it and used it. How he broke Ste’s heart over and over. How he destroyed his trust, not just of Brendan, but of EVERYONE. How he came so close to RUINING him, before Ste found that power to walk away.
“Because you can get so angry!!” he continued, “An’ you HURT ANYONE who gets in your way, LIKE RAE, cos you can’t STAND the thought of anyone knowin’ about you! Cos you don’t want ANYONE to know about you, or… or US. Even though you’re supposed to be PROUD of who you love, you’re NOT!”
“Okay…” Brendan coaxed; breathless, surprised… even a little wary of Stephen’s outburst.
“And I’m… EXHAUSTED.” Ste moaned, and the tears really were showing now but he made no attempt to get rid of them. “And I don’t want this anymore! I don’t want to keep… to keep gettin’… like THIS!”
And his fist swung furiously and caught Brendan off-guard on the shoulder, sending him stumbling backwards in surprise.
And everything seemed to slow down. Ste panted hard, trying to catch his breath and trying to avoid the heavy scrutiny that Brendan was holding him under right now. Brendan stood shock-still. Just staring. His own heart beating fast with the adrenaline; the aching feelings.
And Ste winced in shock as Brendan moved fast towards him. As though he was expecting a beating… all the way until Brendan had his hands wrapped around his neck, and lips clasped against Ste’s. His tongue reaching out needily, meeting the inside of Ste’s mouth, his teeth meeting Ste’s bottom lip and toughing down tenderly… despairingly.
To Ste, it was the first human moment Brendan had demonstrated since his return.
But Ste couldn’t let it happen.
He pulled away.
And through tears and numb lips, he mumbled his small plea:
“Brendan… can we just try… try just bein’ friends?”
Brendan’s face was unreadable, his eyes blank.
Ste swallowed and continued, “Cos… I could really do with a friend right now.”
For a moment it was like the Earth standing still around them. Every piece of love and hate and touch and feel they ever shared hovering in limbo in the atmosphere.
Brendan cleared his throat. He sounded almost - nervous. “I er…” he murmured, “I’ve never been very good at the whole… ‘friend’ thing. People don’t really warm to me, you know?”
Brendan watched intently for Ste’s reaction… as Ste’s green watery eyes lifted from the floor to find Brendan’s face. As his lips formed the shape of a shaky smile. And his shoulders shrugged limply.
“I like ya.”
It was like the wind being knocked from Brendan’s chest. More so than any of the other mad sentiments Stephen had thrown his way… this for some reason was the most flooring. The one that sparked multiple feelings of gratitude and thankfulness for having somebody like Stephen in his life.
“O…okay.” Brendan coughed, covering his own emotions.
He reached out a hand… and Stephen shook it. And Stephen let out a small laugh, wiping away his tears with the sleeve of his hoody.
“Okay.” He repeated back.
And he was smiling. And somehow - Brendan was smiling too, for the first time in months. Friends. Friends. Now this would be interesting.
* * * * *
Brendan had been different when he came out of prison. So different. Not to the naked eye; to them he was mad and bad when he went in, and mad and bad when he came out. But Ste could see the difference. Even while trying to stay away from Brendan, it was obvious to him that Brendan was tortured, damaged. He was more furious with the world than ever before. He was closed off - more so. Ste often caught Cheryl with her eyes lingering hopelessly on Brendan and realised that even she wasn’t getting through to him anymore. It was like he was a wrecked soul of a man.
In many ways this made Ste’s heart sink miserably, choke inside his throat with the pain of it. He couldn’t bear to think of him like that; soulless and destroyed by whatever went on inside the prison walls where he didn’t belong. The other part of Ste pushed those feelings away. He hated Brendan, right? The fact that he didn’t kill Rae didn’t change anything; he still had to hate Brendan for all the stuff that went on before.
As for Brendan’s feelings towards Ste, well they were infuriatingly and typically unclear. He’d told Ste he loved him, only a month before going inside. But once out he barely even acknowledged him. He looked past him, brushed past him. If Ste ever DID find himself watching Brendan, it seemed Brendan only looked further away. Ste had once found himself longing for a bit of eye contact… a bit of recognition or clarity. Then he remembered he wanted the bastard out of life anyway, and decided to feel happy about it.
So it was unclear then why after his shift that night, his feet were carrying him to Brendan’s office. He used to tell Brendan that he was clocking off, a while back when in hindsight he was just looking for an excuse to talk, to get approval. Not anymore though. And yet for some reason, here he was.
He didn’t even knock, just pushed his way in. And there was Brendan. Hunched over his desk, a bottle of whisky in one hand, an empty glass in the other. His eyes bloodshot from tiredness and that unfamiliar beard looking as dirty and unkempt as when he first got out of that jail. He looked a mess, and the Brendan Brady Ste knew NEVER look a mess. It was disconcerting in a way.
“Wha?” Brendan drooled shortly, never looking up from the drink below him.
Ste blinked, feeling slightly exposed and couldn’t think of anything to say but, “A… are you sure you should be drinking all that?”
Ste was sure he could make out some sort of bitter smile under Brendan’s fierce expression as he murmured, “Are you sure that’s any of your business?”
And that was it. Over. Ste left because he didn’t want to look at that anymore, or feel that strange claustrophobic heat in that room as Brendan’s anger spread through the walls like a disease. He had to get away from that as quickly as possible. And forget all about it.
He had problems of his own anyway. Big ones at home. Ever since Lee left for New York, not wanting to take the kids away from their Dad, Amy had been treating Ste differently. He knew she resented him for it. Christ knows, she’d been devastated. Lee Hunter may have been nothing more than a plonker in Ste’s eyes, but he’d meant a lot to Amy and she seemed kind of lost without him, down. Amy was old beyond her years and already believing that she was past her sell-by date, which was ridiculous really.
But anyway, Lee’s departure from her life had led Amy to do some serious thinking: Their domestic situation wasn’t normal. In fact, she decided, it wasn’t healthy. They needed lives of their own, a place of their own, and less dependence on one another.
Ste had begged and begged her to reconsider, but Amy didn’t think they should be living together anymore.
“I love you Ste, you know I do.” She’d explained, “But … this … it’s not natural. And I think we need to start standing on our own feet a bit. Having our own lives.”
And so in that very same week Ste had packed up his bags, and checked into the cheapest B’n’B he could find. Amy said he should stay until he found a proper place of his own, but he found he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to stay somewhere where he wasn’t welcome. And he hated the new awkwardness that came with talking to Amy, once a lover, once a best friend, and now… he didn’t know what was going on. She denied it… but he was a burden to her; someone who had made her sacrifice her relationship, and now he was going to pay for it.
So he lay on that creaky B’n’B bed with the startling realisation that he had NOBODY else to turn to. And that made him feel a loneliness that perhaps wasn’t so far apart from Brendan himself.
“Ste… can I have a word with you please?”
Ste blinked out of his daze, finding Cheryl standing tentatively beside him, gently brushing his arm as she addressed him with those desperate-looking eyes.
“Yeah.” He mumbled, and followed her into the empty office. “What’s up?”
“It’s Brendan.”
Ste sighed. Of course it was fucking Brendan, what else would it be? There was no chance his boss could be taking him into the office to discuss something WORK related, was there?! Oh no.
“What?” Ste grunted, in the same impatient tone he’d adopted whenever discussing that ex of his; a topic he was exhausted of.
“Please…” Cheryl spoke quietly, with intense sincerity. “Please Ste, I don’t know what else to do. He’s……”
And then to Ste’s horror, Cheryl’s eyes were filling with tears; the very same ones she’d been bravely holding back all these months and now were here for Ste to witness.
“Hey… don’t…” he tried. He put his hand on her arm but she brushed him off with typical Brady-pride.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry.” She sniffed. “It’s just…… he won’t let me speak to him Ste. I mean… I don’t know what’s wrong with him; he’s drinking all the time, and he doesn’t get out of bed and he’s… so ANGRY. At everyone. And… please don’t tell anyone, but yesterday I heard him crying, Ste, I mean really crying when he thought he was on his own and…”
Ste didn’t hear what Cheryl said after that. His eyes and ears seemed to go numb, and there was that odd aching in his chest again that he SO didn’t want to relate to Brendan, but now it was obvious. He hated the idea of… that. Brendan crying… breaking down… he didn’t do that… that wasn’t right. Brendan was tough… strong…
“Love, I’m begging you.” Cheryl continued. “If anyone can get through to him, you can.”
“Oh - no!” Ste stammered, backing away quickly as though receiving an electric shock. “I can’t.”
“Please!! Please, I’m so worried about him. He’s just not the same and I know you can help him, Ste, if you’ll just try. Please. For me.”
Ste’s head whirled. Not only were he and Brendan history, not only had Ste worked as HARD as he could to get Brendan out of his head………… but he was also admittedly fearful of Brendan’s current state. Brendan hated the world, and Ste had no doubt he himself was included in that. He seemed like a silent volcano at the moment, about to erupt any second, and Ste was sure that eruption would be aimed harder at him than it would at anybody else.
“Cheryl, he won’t want to speak to me anyway.”
“Please.” Cheryl’s voice was small, cracked, dry from tears. “I don’t know what else to do.”
It was a mad idea. The whole setup was mad. What did Cheryl expect? What was he supposed to talk about? How was he supposed to address it? What was her desired outcome from all this?! NO good could come of this at all. It would inevitably end with hurt, bitterness, anger, disappointment… the same way it always did when Ste and Brendan laid down ultimatums. It would stir emotions Ste had locked away deep inside and never wanted to see again. It would undo everything he’d worked so hard on in terms of wiping Brendan from his memory.
It was also ridiculous how heavily involved Ste seemed to still be in Brendan’s life - through no fault of his own - when technically the two had never embarked in any kind of real ‘relationship’ in the first place!! By definition, Brendan should be as much a part of Ste’s life as ex’s like Theresa were. And he wished above all else that that was the case… that he didn’t have to hear and speak and think about Brendan every day of his life the way he did. That he didn’t have to feel in some way guilty when other people flirted with him, the way he did. That it didn’t feel like some ridiculous marriage, only without the sex or love or talking.
And yet he found himself doing it. Checking out of that god forsaken empty, silent B’n’B and heading over to the closed Chez Chez at 10.30pm. Cheryl had given him the key and the promise that Brendan would be there, because “he always is these days”. And Ste promised himself that this time no amount of blood-curling tension could make him run. He’d keep his promise to Cheryl. He’d TRY and talk.
And even when he stood before Brendan at the bar, with Brendan’s fierce and cold-looking eyes fixated determinedly away from Ste’s face, and another whisky bottle in his hand, and the hard silence hammering down on them… he didn’t run. He didn’t speak either. He got himself a beer and sat beside Brendan… a few seats along, and he too drank.
And unexpectedly in the end, it was Brendan who broke the silence.
“What the hell are you doing here, Stephen?”
“Dunno.” Ste decided to be honest. “Cheryl wanted me to come.”
“Right. Well. You know where the door is.”
Ste sighed. Slowly he rose from his stool. And he got a strange sense of satisfaction when Brendan’s head darted to watch him, giving away for a millisecond that that’s perhaps not what he wanted.
Ste wasn’t going anyway. Instead he moved around to the other side of the bar so that he was opposite Brendan. So that Brendan HAD to look at him, even though he didn’t.
“You need to stop drinkin’ that, you know.” Ste adopted his best tone of casualness. “’s not good for ye, you’re goin’ for an early grave.”
“Yeah, and you read that in a text book, did ye?”
Ste rolled his eyes. “Here, gis’ it here.”
He made the grab for the whisky. But Brendan was quick. He grabbed it back with surprising viciousness, like jumping out of his stupor. And for the first time in what felt like years, he laid his eyes on Stephen’s. And they were intense… furious.
“What the hell are you doing?!” He spat
“I’m sorry, I’m just tryin’ to help…”
“Help?!” Brendan laughed. “Now you wanna help, Stephen, is that what you’re sayin’ to me?!”
Ste swallowed and tried not to sound nervous as he answered a small, “Yeah…”
“You wanna help? Then get out of my fucking sight, alright?! Just do one!”
Brendan stared angrily back into his glass with his shoulders rising and falling under the pressure not to swing his fists. Ste knew that, and he knew it only too well. But he couldn’t leave. And now it was nothing to do with Cheryl, but with the inexplicable hold that Brendan had on him. The magnetic pull that forced Ste to suffer whilst Brendan was suffering too. That made him unable to let it be, and unable to bear watching Brendan in such a state, and be partly responsible for it.
He was on dangerous grounds. But he wasn’t giving up yet.
“You have no right to be angry at me, you know.” He stated bravely. “I don’t have to be here, do I?! I don’t have to have ought to do with you.”
“Oh is THAT how ye feel?!” Brendan spat, throwing his chair backwards with the speed in which he jumped out of it. “Well I’m sorry to be such a burden on ye Stephen, but the thing is, I never asked for you to come here, did I?!”
And by now he was rounding on him, forcing Ste’s body back against the wall as he cornered him, fists clenched, eyes wild.
“DID I?!?!” He screamed.
“No!”
“So - get - the - fuck - out - before I do something I regret.”
Ste took a deep breath. Brendan’s face was inches from his own, seething, hateful. It was too much - too intense. And Ste was deeply ashamed to find tears prickling in his own eyes as he shuffled past Brendan and towards the exit.
FUCK, don’t cry, he told himself, don’t let Brendan do this to you.
His insides were boiling; bubbling with emotions and things he wanted to say and things he wanted to scream. But he knew he mustn’t rise to it. He mustn’t care. If Brendan wanted to kill himself with anger and booze - fine. So be it then. Because any scrap of power Ste fleetingly had over Brendan had clearly been drowned by hate during his prison spell.
“Stephen, wait…”
“I’m SORRY!”
Ste blinked; shocked by his own admission.
And Brendan too, still standing by the bar, but now watching Ste blankly, waiting for him to go on.
Ste swallowed. “I’m sorry…” he repeated again slowly. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Okay?! But……… what was I supposed to think, Brendan?! What did you expect?!”
“I expect you to know me better, Stephen!!”
And Brendan too seemed to double-take at his own statement. He was surprised by how his own voice cracked with emotion. Surprised that he’d just spoken his first honest revelation of his hurt since stepping out of prison four weeks ago.
The whole bar seemed to be wrapped in silence.
But not fierce or intimidating silence this time. This time all those unspoken feelings seemed to hover around them intensely as they locked eyes sincerely on each other from across the bar.
“How could you think I would do that?!” Brendan croaked. “Seriously?! SERIOUSLY STEPHEN?!”
“I’m sorry!” He repeated hurriedly, willing Brendan not to lash out as he slowly moved back towards him.
“You didn’t even give me a fucking chance.” Brendan breathed. “You didn’t come see me, did ye?! You didn’t let me explain. I had to sit in that FUCKING cell for three FUCKING months not knowing what the HELL you were doing or thinking. Do you KNOW how that FEELS?!”
“No.” Stephen confessed weakly. He was feeling weak. Light-headed. And he had to blink back the tears because he didn’t want Brendan to know he still had that power to create them. He took a deep breath. “But… I’m not with you anymore Brendan… you can’t… I didn’t have to visi…”
“You didn’t visit cos you thought I was a murder.”
“Yeah - BECAUSE I DO KNOW YOU!!” Ste suddenly shouted; emotions abruptly surfacing in the shape of rage. “I DO KNOW! I thought you were gonna kill me once, you know! The way you looked at me! Like I was dirt…like you HATED me and yeah, that’s what I thought!!”
Ste rounded on him, bubbling with long-suppressed rage, with the urge to tell Brendan EXACTLY how he tortured Ste all those times. To make Brendan understand just HOW MUCH he hurt him; how he took Ste’s adoration for him and exploited it and used it. How he broke Ste’s heart over and over. How he destroyed his trust, not just of Brendan, but of EVERYONE. How he came so close to RUINING him, before Ste found that power to walk away.
“Because you can get so angry!!” he continued, “An’ you HURT ANYONE who gets in your way, LIKE RAE, cos you can’t STAND the thought of anyone knowin’ about you! Cos you don’t want ANYONE to know about you, or… or US. Even though you’re supposed to be PROUD of who you love, you’re NOT!”
“Okay…” Brendan coaxed; breathless, surprised… even a little wary of Stephen’s outburst.
“And I’m… EXHAUSTED.” Ste moaned, and the tears really were showing now but he made no attempt to get rid of them. “And I don’t want this anymore! I don’t want to keep… to keep gettin’… like THIS!”
And his fist swung furiously and caught Brendan off-guard on the shoulder, sending him stumbling backwards in surprise.
And everything seemed to slow down. Ste panted hard, trying to catch his breath and trying to avoid the heavy scrutiny that Brendan was holding him under right now. Brendan stood shock-still. Just staring. His own heart beating fast with the adrenaline; the aching feelings.
And Ste winced in shock as Brendan moved fast towards him. As though he was expecting a beating… all the way until Brendan had his hands wrapped around his neck, and lips clasped against Ste’s. His tongue reaching out needily, meeting the inside of Ste’s mouth, his teeth meeting Ste’s bottom lip and toughing down tenderly… despairingly.
To Ste, it was the first human moment Brendan had demonstrated since his return.
But Ste couldn’t let it happen.
He pulled away.
And through tears and numb lips, he mumbled his small plea:
“Brendan… can we just try… try just bein’ friends?”
Brendan’s face was unreadable, his eyes blank.
Ste swallowed and continued, “Cos… I could really do with a friend right now.”
For a moment it was like the Earth standing still around them. Every piece of love and hate and touch and feel they ever shared hovering in limbo in the atmosphere.
Brendan cleared his throat. He sounded almost - nervous. “I er…” he murmured, “I’ve never been very good at the whole… ‘friend’ thing. People don’t really warm to me, you know?”
Brendan watched intently for Ste’s reaction… as Ste’s green watery eyes lifted from the floor to find Brendan’s face. As his lips formed the shape of a shaky smile. And his shoulders shrugged limply.
“I like ya.”
It was like the wind being knocked from Brendan’s chest. More so than any of the other mad sentiments Stephen had thrown his way… this for some reason was the most flooring. The one that sparked multiple feelings of gratitude and thankfulness for having somebody like Stephen in his life.
“O…okay.” Brendan coughed, covering his own emotions.
He reached out a hand… and Stephen shook it. And Stephen let out a small laugh, wiping away his tears with the sleeve of his hoody.
“Okay.” He repeated back.
And he was smiling. And somehow - Brendan was smiling too, for the first time in months. Friends. Friends. Now this would be interesting.