Luke sighs and tries to rub some of the feeling back into his face with both hands, the tablet propped up on Hal’s kitchen counter. “I ran into Hal’s ex-girlfriend in the lobby just now.”
“Ooh.” Her eyes light up. “And now you’re a quivering pile of jealousy.”
“Linda. Just don’t.”
“Oh no. You can’t tell me that and then ‘just don’t’ me. Try again, Romeo. What happened? Was it terrible? Did you fight her?”
“She was nice, it was fine, she was…whatever. Not important.”
Linda makes a game show buzzer sound in the back of her throat. “And these are the descriptive skills of a poet? No. Try again. Explain your heartbreak to me, Lucas. Poetically.”
“I hate you,” he mutters.
“What was that? Best editor ever?”
“We sort of had a collision in the lobby,” he concedes, making a face at her that earns a beaming smile in return. “I helped her pick up her recipes, and I knew Hal dated a chef, and I just sort of word-vomited that I knew Hal and asked if they used to go out.”
“Theatrical prose there, bud.”
“Do you want to hear, or not?”
“Yes, please.”
He gives her a brief but detailed recap of what was a rather brief, but detailed, encounter.
“What do you mean she made ‘this face?’”
Luke shrugs. “It was kinda spooky. Kinda like one of your faces.” Before she can snark him back, he says, “Like you know all the secrets, and I’m an idiot because I don’t.”
“Ah.” A slow, sly smile crosses her face, very much like the one Kate gave him before the elevator doors shut.
“See.” He gestures to the webcam. “That look. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Hmm. Not telling. It’ll be more fun if you figure it out yourself.”
“Fu – yeah. Thanks for that.”
Linda gives him one last sharp, wicked grin, and then her expression grows serious. “Okay. The story, though, Luke.” This can’t be good. “I know it’s slow going, and that the old man isn’t cooperating. But this isn’t an indefinite assignment,” she says like she’s a doctor giving someone bad news. “I’m going to need a hundred words by six tonight. Time to get a move on, kiddo.”
His stomach clenches. “Yeah. I’ll have it to you.”
“Good luck.” The call disconnects.
Luke slumps back onto his stool. Does everyone in the world know how he feels about Hal?
~*~
To a writer, one-hundred words is nothing. A hiccup. It’s a paragraph. A small one, at that. And yet it takes Luke an hour to compose.
I arrive to the Maddox home in Georgetown – just as picturesque and historic as you’d anticipate – expecting to find a family out of step with the rest of the American public, and an elderly gentleman with high prejudices, and many moments of confusion. Instead I find a kind, realistic group of Southerners. And Mr. Maddox, while elderly, yes, is certainly no gentleman, and there’s not a hint of dementia in sight. I’ve come to DC to hear the story of the news-making protestor assault (if indeed we can call it an assault – Mr. Maddox is eighty-six) and find myself realizing that, like with so many stories, what we see on the surface isn’t the root of the issue at all. But a symptom of something deeper.
One-hundred-twenty-six words. All of them absolute shit. Partly because he’s tired, and frustrated, and nowhere near ready to put any of this into words. But also because…he gets the distinct feeling he’s missing the point of all this somehow.
Mired in the frustration of his own professional failings, Luke doesn’t hear the key in the door, and jumps out of his skin when the door swings open and Hal steps in.
“Did I spook you?” Hal asks with a knowing grin as Luke rights his glasses.
Luke tells his heart to calm the hell down. “I was working. In the zone, you know.” Yeah, the shit zone.
“Sorry. I texted you I was on the way.”
Luke checks his phone and yeah, sure enough, there’s a text. “Didn’t hear it, I guess.”
The text also says Hal was bringing stuff for dinner, which is revealed in the shape of a paper grocery bag, once he hangs his coat up.
Luke closes his laptop, the hundred-twenty-six words unsent. “What’ve you got?”
Hal snorts as he moves through to the kitchen and sets the bag down, begins unloading it. “You’re gonna laugh.”
“Well yeah, that’s a given.” Luke stands beside him and knocks their shoulders together. Watches two heads of romaine, chicken breasts, a wedge of stilton, onions, and peppers land on the counter. “Salad?”
“Hey.” Hal’s cheeks start to pink. “I’ve got to keep in shape. Salad’s good.”
“Mmhm. Real good.”
“Shut up. Grab us some beers.”
Luke does, and helps put away the cold groceries while Hal gets ready to sauté the chicken.
“So,” he says, sliding Hal his beer and taking a sip of his own. “I met Kate today.”
Hal drops the skillet. On his foot.
“Fuck,” Luke says, choking on a sudden laugh, even as his own foot flares with sympathetic pain.
Hal bites his lip, hard, and braces both hands on the edge of the counter. He’s always been a stoic one, silently swallowing pain with screwed-shut eyes and careful breaths through flared nostrils. This appears to be no exception, though Luke can see the pulse pounding along the side of his throat.
“Jesus, ouch,” Luke says, snatching the skillet up off the floor and replacing it. “You alright?” He rubs soothing little circles between Hal’s should blades, the sculpted muscle beneath tense.
Hal exhales in a long, unsteady stream. “I’m fine,” and he sounds mostly so.
“Here, sit down. Let’s take a look at it,” Luke urges, hand pressing at Hal’s spine. “I’ll get you some ice.”
“I’m fine,” Hal repeats, stronger this time. He flexes his foot inside its pristine white sock. “Really, it’s okay.”
Luke gives him an unimpressed look that Hal glances away from. “You always say that, right up until something starts to bleed.”
“Dude, whatever,” Hal says, but hobbles over to one of the kitchen stools and props his foot up onto Luke’s thigh when he crouches down in front of him.
Luke tries not to think about the warmth and weight of Hal’s foot against his leg, how vulnerable Hal looks crouched awkwardly up on the stool, arm braced on the counter. It’s a short athletic sock, and Luke hooks a thumb in the back, at the firm line of Hal’s Achilles tendon, and draws it slowly down, watching the flicker of nerves and tiny ligaments as the foot is revealed.
“Skin’s not broken.” But a large red welt is forming right along the top of the bone, where the skin is thinnest. “I’ll get some ice.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You gonna limp over here and get it?” Luke throws a smirk over his shoulder as he raids the freezer.
“Don’t temp me,” Hal says, a little lift at the corner of his mouth that leaves Luke fumbling at the handle before he gets a good grip on it. What the hell kind of look is that? What…
Nevermind. Ice.
He finds a bag of peas, smiling a little when he remembers all those post-practice afternoons in their teen years, playing video games with a bowl of Cheetos between them and a knobby bag of vegetables cling-wrapped around one of Hal’s joints.
When he turns back, Hal’s watching him, expression unreadable.
“What?”
“What?” Hal echoes, and accepts the peas and dish towel Luke hands him. “Thanks.”
“You want me to take over?” Luke gestures to the chicken packages abandoned on the counter.
“Uh…”
“I can turn on the burner. And I have opposable thumbs. Look.” He waggles them for proof.
Hal rolls his eyes. “Sure. Let’s live dangerously.”
“Walk me through it, o’ ye of little faith.”
“Step one.” Hal settles into a more
comfortable position on the stool, peas balanced on his foot. “Wash out the pan I dropped all over the floor like a dipshit.”
“Roger that, dipshit.”
Hal laughs, that low quiet laugh that was just for the two of them, and never meant to attract undue attention. One of many things Luke remembers from high school, and still can’t quite believe: the way Hal always made time for just them, best friend time, when he kept his other friends at arm’s length.
Luke washes the skillet and wipes it out with a clean towel, sets it on the burner. This part he knows: crank the heat, open the chicken.
“Salt and pepper,” Hal tells him. “And a little bit of chili powder and cumin.”
Luke waits until he has the chicken seasoned and hissing in the pan before he says, “What about Kate makes you drop kitchenware on your feet?”
Amazingly, Luke hears the soft plop and rattle of the peas sliding off and hitting the floor. Hal’s gone twitchy again.
“Seriously?”
Hal bends down to reapply the makeshift ice pack, and when he straightens, his cheeks are stained rose-petal pink.
Luke imagines his stomach settling, a soothing oil balm to quiet the roiling and clenching. It doesn’t work, but he manages to look unaffected, he thinks, prodding at the chicken with a fork. “So you must have really had it bad for her, huh?”
“Nah.”
Luke steals a look across the bar; Hal’s head bent, lashes dark fans against his high, pretty cheekbones.
“It was just kinda weird the way things ended with her. Good weird, I guess. Neither of us got hurt, and she…helped me maybe figure some stuff out.”
“Cooking stuff?”
“No. Other stuff.” Hal’s gaze flicks to the skillet. “That’s ready to turn.”
~*~
The salad is, no surprise at this point, excellent. They drown it with homemade citrus dressing and eat (carefully) on the couch in front of SportsCenter.
When the greasy plates are resting on the coffee table, Hal says, “How’s the face?”
“Better than your foot.”
“No, seriously, lemme see.”
With a sigh, Luke twists toward his friend so Hal can check his bandaged eyebrow.
In the blue glow of the TV, Hal’s face scrunches up with concern and he reaches to probe at Luke’s temple and forehead with tentative fingers. “It’s starting to bruise.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna look fantastic in the morning.”
Hal ruffles his hair before he pulls back, grinning. “It looks kinda badass.”
“Oh my God,” Luke groans, rolling his eyes.
“I’m serious. All dangerous and mysterious and shit.”
“You’re the worst,” Luke tells him, and leans sideways so his head rests against Hal’s substantial shoulder.
Hal’s laughing, jostling his head in a gentle way, and so it takes Luke a moment to realize what he’s doing: Leaning on Hal, pressing together, like three years ago they hadn’t almost…like Hal hadn’t…
He straightens, too quick and stiff, shoving off of Hal’s shoulder with a shaking hand.
Hal’s laugh cuts off with a sharp intake of breath. His head snaps around, gaze searching for Luke’s, eyes full of hurt and question.
Luke can’t look at him. It’s too painful, the way Hal projects such sadness, and betrayal, like something as simple as a touch could ever mean as much to him as it does to Luke. Like he ever cried himself senseless over his best friend’s rejection. Like he wrestles with his ugly, unappeasable, unreciprocated love for a man who doesn’t want him back every day of his damn life. Like he isn’t the straightest, most straight-laced, perfect all-American boy with the world lying at his feet.
And Luke hates himself for that sharp stab of jealousy. Because he isn’t jealous of Hal; he’s destroyed by the knowledge that he can’t have Hal. He’s jealous of Kate, and all the girls who’ve come before and who will come after. Because he’s a petty, heartbroken idiot, still stuck in the past, still as fixated as always.
“Hey,” Hal says, quietly, and runs his fingertips down the vulnerable curve of Luke’s back. “It’s okay, you don’t–”
Luke surges to his feet, knees knocking into the coffee table. “I should get these in the dishwasher.” He snatches up their plates and forks in a desperate hurry. He still can’t look at Hal, can only miss the brief warmth of his fingers against his back.
Somehow his legs carry him the short distance to the kitchen. His elbow catches the tap and he runs water over the dishes, watching it try to combat the olive oil on their slick white surfaces. Oil and water. Is that what he and Hal are now? Always out of step by one stride? Similar, but incompatible?
He doesn’t expect Hal to follow him, but he probably should, after that morning at the gym. He’s still stuck in the mindset of three years ago, that closed door between them, when he shuts off the tap, looks up, and sees Hal standing across the bar from him.
He almost drops the plates.
“Shit,” he swears, heart leaping, and manages to set the china in the sink. He braces his hands on the edge of the counter, and forces himself to maintain eye contact.
Hal stares at him with unexpected intensity, green eyes beautiful and serious. “You don’t have to keep running away.”
Luke knows he should deflect. Duck his head, shrug the moment away, let the tension between them drop back to its constant simmer.
But he says, “Running away like you?”
Hal’s cheeks darken to a gratifying shade, but he doesn’t look away. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No. You shouldn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
It sounds and looks sincere – Hal doesn’t do fake. But Luke is suddenly furious, bottled-up emotion boiling over. “You’re about three years late with that one, bro.”
Hal takes a deep breath. “Yeah, I am. I’m sorry for that too.”
Luke snorts.
“I didn’t have any idea what to say, after…”
“I told you I was in love with you, and you started grinding all over me, and then just bolted? Yeah. Guess not.”
Hal gasps like he’s been punched in the stomach. His mouth hangs open, and his eyes glimmer at the corners, like he could cry. “Th-th-that’s not fair,” he stammers, but there’s no heat in his voice.
“You’re right,” Luke says, and he can’t believe he’s so calm in this moment. “Nothing about that night was fair. But I guess that’s just the way the world works, isn’t it?” He moves to leave the kitchen, and Hal steps into his path. “What? You want to keep talking about this?”
Hal looks wild-eyed and terrified. “You can’t just leave.”
“Don’t want me stealing your move?”
Hal grinds his teeth, jaw flexing. “You aren’t done with the story yet.”
“Oh!” Luke feels a laugh bubbling up his throat, and he lets it out. It sounds harsh, more like a cough. “That’s what this is about, right? It’s got nothing to do with you and me. It’s all about the story. The good senator and his dear old dad, huh? You’d just hate for your asshole bestie to make you look bad in front of the boss man.”
“Luke!” Hal snaps. But he sounds helpless, like he has no idea how to fix this. Which…obviously he doesn’t.
Luke opens his mouth to retort again.
But Hal sighs. Deep, long, sad, defeated. “Luke,” he repeats, quiet this time, his gaze dropping away. “I’m sorry. So goddamn sorry.” His gaze flickers, a quick slice of green beneath his lashes.
“Yeah, well…thanks for that,” Luke mutters, and ducks through the little space between Hal’s shoulder and the kitchen wall. Tries to. Hal catches him around the waist with one strong arm.
It’s like iron, but the skin is warm under his sleeve, and his hand curls firm and familiar against Luke’s ribs, like last night.
Luke shivers; the touch seems to press against every nerve ending, stirring sensation in every inch of skin. He stares into the empty living roo
m and says, “What the fuck are you trying to do to me?”
“Please don’t leave. Stay. I’ll…” As if he suddenly realizes how intimate the placement of his arm is, he withdraws it on a shaky exhale. “Finish the story. Don’t waste your money on a hotel. I won’t bother you anymore, I promise.”
His body feels cold in the absence of Hal’s brief hold. He shakes his head, bites his lip hard. “Don’t worry about the story.” His voice comes out a croak. “I always finish what I start.”
The unlike you is thought, but not spoken.
10
February 1951
The sky and the sea were gray, and where they converged lay the dark jagged shape of South Korea, vivid and blackened as a scorch mark against the storm clouds. The air stank of salt, and fish, and something heavy Will couldn’t identify, but there was no mistaking the sensation cycling among the men on board the LST: excitement. Will felt it just below his last rib, a sensation of breathlessness and champagne bubbles. For all that they’d all complained about deployment, they’d awakened this morning with hearts in throats and pulses throbbing in their fingertips, ready for action. All their preparation, and it was happening now. They’d trained as Marines, been told they were Marines, but this morning, watching the peninsula grow nearer and nearer, they were Marines for the first time.
Will stood at the rail, and beside him Finn faced into the wind with a nose red from the cold, smile wide and a little chapped. “Heroes’ welcome, you think?”
Will snorted. “Doubtful.”
It wasn’t until MacArthur had called in the Marines that the tide began to turn in favor of South Korea. But Will knew the war was far from over, and the country’s people far from celebrating if more Marines were about to make landfall.
“What kinda bullshit you sayin’ now, Murdoch?” Hertz asked behind them, and Finn turned his grin toward the man.
“Don’t worry, it don’t apply to you, Jake.”
“Aw, fuck you.”
“I bet there’ll be some thankful mamasans waiting for us,” Harcourt said, dreamily. To say he’d enjoyed the Japanese hospitality would have been a significant understatement.
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