In-between
*
Pete sighed, as Kitty stamped out angrily. Now their hotel room, the home he had, wasn't even a sanctuary, because it held the woman he loved, pissed off as hell and looking to 'talk'.
He stumbled out, but instead of following her back, he started walking in the opposite direction. One foot in front of another. It was dark, and cold, and dismal. He was overjoyed.
*Go find a bar, Wisdom. Drown out everything. Make sure you can't hear anyone who's yellin' at you for a hundred mile radius, and drink until you pass out on the side of the road.*
He snorted. *Perfect solution. I feel better already.*
There *had* to be a bar open somewhere near.
Looking in both directions speculatively, he chose north, it being the direction which would take him further away from the hotel. Right, then.
He would drink, and he would stop thinking, or he would get very drunk and very unhappy trying. He would forget about Angelo being there, about Jubilee even existing, about how him and Kitty kept looking like they weren't working out,when all was said and done.
He wouldn't think about how it sometimes looked like, in the middle of all the fighting, like their shouts were really there to cover the deeper, far more painful, unconnecting things --
No.
Alcohol was the key.
***nother paragraph or something, to tie in him feeling depressed and ange.***
"Hombre... you gettin' lost again?"
Of course. Of bloody, fecking, course.
He turned around, slowly, to face the boy -- the man? No, he could still afford to think of him as boy, if only just -- standing behind him.
Espinosa was leaning against the wall, in a gesture that did not try to make itself look casual, or mask in any way what it really was: a man knowing that, if he let go, he was just as likely to fall down as stay up. His face was neutral, not hostile, but tense in the small hidden muscles it's easy to ignore.
Pete looked at him, looked him over, looked him through. Looked away.
Wondered if Espinosa could see how terribly, terribly weary he suddenly felt.
"I can try, mate," He said. his voice, he thought, should have probably been just as neutral. Relationship graveyard rules.
If only he could stop that weariness from seeping through.
"Yeah, well." The kid looked away. "I'm sure you'll give it your best shot, huh? Natural talent, and all that."
It was before he could turn away again, before he could decide it wasn't worth it getting into this again -- not even for a few words, not if it hurt like talking to Jubilee hurt, not if it hurt so much more -- that a hand was raised, just a little, as though fending off an oncoming attack. Espinosa was shaking his head. "No. Forget that. That was... forget that."
"You have the right," he said, carefully, and didn't look at him.
"I know I do." The eyes before him, dark made all the more intense by the gray surrounding. "Forget it."
"Forgotten," he said carefully... but the words would stay. Of course they would.
They hurt.
* * *
***needs more here. Even just a weird little tie together.***
* * *
.slowly, carried on waves made by his own nerve endings, he started to turn around.
"No," Pete said.
There was no room for doubts and possibilities in Angelo's mind right now; in the state he was in, well beyond half-drunk, drugged on the haze of pleasure and want, there wasn't any place for anything but the obvious, the secretly expected. Denial and rejection hit him hard and fast.
He froze.
Pete's arms tightened for a moment around him, the hands spreading to catch and give more warmth, more contact. "Not like this." And Ange could feel him, skin on exposed burning sensitized skin, turning his back to him. He almost froze again, in shock this time.
But I don't know how to do this, his mind babbled at him. Not with him.
He'd never been the one doing the fucking in their --whatever the hell it was; he'd never initiated it, or considered it seriously, and Pete never asked. He'd always assumed Pete prefered it this way. It only now occurred to him, with the distance of the years and the pressure of right now, that maybe Pete didn't think he could handle it.
Well hell, he was obviously right. Grown-up Angelo, known to himself at least as adaptable to anything that felt good and didn't trigger his long-unCatholicized morals, was barely able to handle it. But he embraced it as something to separate himself; a change to remind himself that this was not the past, nor was it a memory. This time he'd left the lights on, and neither one of them objected. This time his knowledge in this familiar body was backed up by the sense-memory of other bodies momentarily forgotten.
This time he wasn't allowed to mark Pete, who would be strip-searched later.
That thought stirred something inside him so cross that he bit Pete's shoulder, sending a hand to stroke down his stomach and just barely reach his pubic hair. Pete grunted in something that could be pleasure or pain, but was probably both. Didn't recover his breath to tell him to keep his teeth and claws in, his possessive urges to himself.
He let his hand slide deeper down and stretched his other arm to the drawer beside his bed. Recalling old tricks he hadn't used in a long long while, he centered himself on the crude technical view of what he was doing, what was happening to him; you're rubbing a guy's dick, which is no special occasion, which is in turn the reason you have condoms and lube by your bed. Which must also be why you're getting deja vu, here. No big deal. Just Pete Wisdom's dick in your hand, and your own dick very very near to his ass.
The old tricks weren't really working, he reflected vaguely. He hadn't practiced them in a long time. Nobody he fucked was in any danger of hurting him as deeply as Pete ever had, which was probably a far sadder thing than it sounded.
And then, in a surreal twist of slipping reality, twisted away by the haze of alcohol and memory and purring nerve endings and this incredible, incredible rush, he found himself whispering, "Hey, hombre. You sure you want this?"
And Pete chuckled, and shuddered all over when slippery fingers touched his ass unhurried, and murmured, "You really are an ironic fuck, you know that?"
But he didn't answer the question.
* * * * *
***there has to be a way to tie in this, and the other two scenes based on the sex of the wake. Somehow, we can do it, and then it's one post. :) ***
* * *
Pounding.
They were pounding together.
He put his back into it, moreso than he'd done in a while.
Pound, pound, pound.
It's not like he could hurt Pete, right? He'd never managed to do so before. There were times, he wanted to, and had tried. Face it Espinosa -- be honest --you *wanted* to hurt Wisdom, and badly, just to prove whatever it would prove.
But you couldn't.
Shame on you.
He clenched his fists in the blanket, wrapped around them and knotted, to keep from leaving scratchmarks. He couldn't leave those kinds of marks tonight. He wasn't allowed to mark his lover--
How unreasonable, to want to mark his lover.
He forced himself in harder, and harder still. And harder still.
He wanted to leave scars where Pete would never find them.
He felt the jailor, looking over his shoulder at the man, bent before him, and the feeling this was not normal seeped into the mix.
Those invisible eyes followed him, in and out and in again, and he felt the bars, the cage, and that this was a night time thing. A quiet thing. They were not allowed out of this room, this smell, or this feeling. Nothing was to get out, because the others might know.
And he wanted to cry, and he wanted to howl, and he wanted to posess Pete down to the core, because --dios help you, Ange -- he didn't have a key.
* * *
Pete felt the pain inside of him more as a burn. Angelo was planning on making this count, and all the stars and wobbly knees didn't make up for that slow ache that started. He wouldn't stop this, though; couldn't.
Ange needed to get this out.
Pete needed to take it in.
He grunted, and tried to keep it sounding like a noise of pleasure. It made the slapping sounds increase their frantic rhythm, and he knew; it would never be like this again, he would never do this again.
And whimpered when he realized how much that depressed him.
This just wasn't *fair*... he was about to ask Kitty to marry him, and only something this desperately stupid could mess it up, and he knew this, so why was he here, looking for a way to fuck it all up on her again...
***"Hombre, it's just about--"***
And Pete nodded, and grunted his understanding to the young man who was currently ruining his life, and he whispered, 'Please', oh so quietly. And the 'please' was a plea, a whispered want, a prayer to the god that Pete knew of, that pounding, and cresting, and shaking from the inside out.
And Angelo came.
And Pete bit his lip.
***The temptation to hold onto Ange, where was it coming from? ***
Pete looked at the man, laying on his back with his eyes closed and a sad expression, and he traced his chin with a fingernail, then turned over himself.
And Ange thought, *This isn't closure.*
And Pete didn't think, because if he did, Kitty's face would swim up, and that engagement ring he had on layaway. And he had plenty of reasons to give it to her, and so thinking about them was pointless, and the fact that he was currently cheating on her for -- again, no reason -- didn't really matter.
He forgot those reasons, good, bad, and named Angelo, and closed his eyes too. He thought instead about excuses, and whispers, hidden under all the fighting and the anger and the shouts and the bone deep fear of losing her...
But he was with Ange tonight.
And for the first time in his life, the thought of a smoke just depressed them both.
* * *
He woke up, and muttered quietly, "Man, what a dream."
He shut his mouth again, when he realized that Pete was still mostly asleep. Groggy as hell, Angelo sat up slowly, trying not to disturb the body beside him. They'd done more than enough last night, and the evidence was piled up and curled around them, hardening his smile.
*I'd better get outta here.*
As soon as he thought it, his chest clutched, and gazed fondly down at the person curled up around a pillow, blissfully quiet face. He didn't have the effort to be angry anymore --
He pushed down those thoughts, and looked around for all his stuff. As he untangled his body from Pete's legs, he made sure to keep his insides blank and grey. There was his shoe. There was the other one. He put them on.
Ange found the rest of his clothing, and looked at Pete once more. Those eyes didn't open, and his heart was heavy with wishing things he was too afraid to say out loud. He wanted to say goodbye out loud, but couldn't open his mouth.
Only half awake, the fuzz still mulling his head was telling him to be silent, keep this quiet, because it would be easier in the end. All those things he never said five years ago wouldn't be any easier now, and looking into that dark face, those eyes--
He opened the door, and stepped out of Pete's life without a word, no matter how shitty it made him feel, or whether Pete deserved it. This would ruin him and Kit, and he felt guilty as hell--
***But he wouldn't stay any longer. The door was shut already.***
When Pete woke up, half an hour later, with a pounding head and a dry mouth and a cold empty bed, there were an infinite number of things that could be going through his head.
But all he could think about was, absurdly, that he had betrayed Jubilee's trust yet again.
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