by Cole McCade
Wally’s vision blurred, and he gripped hard at the edge of the table. Every molecule in his body had turned into air, rushing and spinning and catching him up in a whirlwind, and he thought he might never come down and touch feet to earth again. “I…y-yes, I simply…this is all so sudden…”
Joseph laughed, quick and breathless and relieved. “Yeah? Okay. Okay. I’m not talking about going down to Social Services tomorrow. Or the courthouse. I just…” He shook his head. That hand against Wally’s back pressed, coaxing him closer, sliding Wally toward the edge of his seat. “I just want to know if we’re on the same page about where this could go. If we’re both open to the idea, why shouldn’t we at least agree we’ll think about it and decide together when we’re ready?”
“A-all right…” Wally stammered, then grinned; it took everything in him not to giggle, to shout, to scream and float away into the brightness of the soft blue sky. “All right.”
“Caught you off guard, huh?”
“Quite a bit, in fact.” Wally took a deep breath and told himself to settle, but all he wanted was to tumble out of his chair and into Joseph’s lap. “You do seem to enjoy doing that.”
“Only a little. The thing with kids…it’s been on my mind for a while. Miriam and I weren’t ready. We didn’t plan anything. I’d like to be ready, this time. Make it a choice.”
If Wally’s joy was a stained glass window shining with every facet of light in the world, then her name on Joseph’s lips was a carelessly thrown baseball, smashing through the pane to shatter its beauty. He stared at Joseph. He’d said it so casually, rolling off his tongue, and he wasn’t even looking at Wally right now, his eyes on his hands as he reached for his iced tea—and how could he not know, how could he not look and see when Wally was gutted and spread open right in front of him…
“It…it won’t be like that,” he said faintly. “If we…”
“Well, of course it won’t be like that,” Joseph rattled on. “I mean…Miriam and I never went shopping for baby clothes together, or did anything together. The most she did was choose Willow’s first name. The whole experience of being parents wasn’t something for us.” He shrugged and set the glass down again, ice cubes rattling like the shards of Wally’s heart. “It was just another toy she put down when she got bored with it.”
Stop it, Wally wanted to say—no. He wanted to say so much more than that. Wanted to say everything. But his lips wouldn’t move, frozen numb and doing nothing more than drawing tight every time he tried to shape them around words. While Joseph kept on so glibly, all these small ordinary motions and carelessnesses, pushing his plate away and wiping his mouth with a napkin…inside, Wally screamed look at me, look at me, see me, see me and not her. He forced his lips apart, tried to say it. Look at me.
But all that came out was a muted, strangled “No.”
Joseph blinked. His head came around, and he stared at Wally. “What?”
“No,” he said more firmly, strangling on the word, but it was the key, unlocking his frozen tongue. “No, no, no. I—you—even when you say we’re not talking about her anymore, every time I pour my heart out to you, even when I told you it upset me and I didn’t like it, you find a way to make it about her.”
“Wally—”
“No!” He slammed his palms down against the table; the dishes jumped. He pushed to his feet. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t live this way, never saying no, and so he said it now—again and again and again, for all the nos he’d never said before. “I said no. No, no, and no again! I say yes to everything. I apologize for everything. I forgive everything, but I will not stand here and think of one day having a child with you simply so you can fit me into her place in this portrait of parenthood in your mind!” He stared into Joseph’s wide, confused eyes. “Don’t you understand? I want everything with you. Everything. A life, a forever, children, a home here or a home there or shuttling in between every other night, I don’t care as long as I have you. All I’ve ever wanted is you. But if all I am to you is a substitute for Miriam and a chance to live out whatever unfulfilled fantasies you had with her, don’t. No, Joseph. Quite simply, no.”
Silence fell. Slow, dawning horror washed the color from Joseph’s face; his lips parted, but nothing came out. And in that silence, the brief strength anger had given Wally bled away, leaving him crumpling into his chair, catching himself on his hands and curling forward. That swirling air inside him became a drowning sea, choking him and dragging him deeper and deeper the longer Joseph went without saying a word.
Why—why did he always love people who saw him only as an object to fit into their preset idea of what life should be?
“Wally,” Joseph rasped weakly. “That’s…that’s not what I meant…”
“Then tell me what you did mean.” He stared miserably down at the limp fold of his hands. “Because I cannot do this. I cannot love you, I cannot think about this in years instead of days, knowing I am but her stand-in.”
Joseph’s chair rattled back with a gunshot’s sharp report, making Wally’s heart jump, his head snapping up as Joseph dropped to his knees before him. Those large, tanned hands caught his, clasped them, held them against Joseph’s chest as Joseph looked up at him, brown eyes locked on him as if Wally were the sun and Joseph was reaching up from the dark.
No one had ever looked at him that way. Not even Vincent.
No one.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Joseph tumbled out in a rush. “I’m still doing it. I’m still comparing even after you told me how much it hurts you, because I can’t help it.” He bowed his head, pressing his lips to Wally’s knuckles, his breaths washing in ragged bursts over Wally’s skin. “Like I told you…I can’t help comparing you to her, because I can’t believe I thought I knew what happiness was before. I was wrong. And you show me how wrong I was every day, by showing me what it’s like to really be with someone. Someone where there’s give and take, where you’re there for each other instead of that…parasitic symbiosis Miriam called love. Every time I compare, it’s because I can’t believe I ever accepted less than this. It’s because I can’t believe I’ve earned something as wonderful as this. It’s because every time I think of you and her together, she falls short, and I think of all the ways I fucked up with her and I can’t stand the idea of fucking up that way with you.”
Drawing on Wally’s hands as though pulling on a lifeline, Joseph drew himself to his feet—and Wally as well, urging him upright, pulling him close, reaching up to curl one hand against Wally’s cheek and brushing his thumb over Wally’s trembling lips.
“Miriam and I were doomed from the start,” Joseph said. “I don’t want us to go down that same path, Walford. So I keep comparing. I keep comparing so I don’t make mistakes, so I don’t fall into bad patterns, so I don’t take you for granted…so I don’t lose you.”
Say you love me, Wally begged. Wet heat flooded his eyes until he could hardly see, Joseph nothing but shades of tan and brown and the damp gleam of deep chocolate eyes. Say you love me and mean it, because no one else ever has.
“I’m sorry,” Joseph whispered again. “I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for making you feel like you were less.”
Wally choked on a hurting laugh, ripped from his throat. “You idiot.” He leaned into that touch, closing his eyes, breathing in deep, rough gasps. This…this was horrible and wonderful all at once, when Joseph gave him so much and yet still Wally was so very greedy for more, for that one thing no one would ever give. But he had this. He had this, and he slipped his arms around Joseph’s neck, fell against him, buried his face in his shoulder. “You fucking idiot.”
Joseph’s arms came around him, one hand cupping the back of his head, and the pressure of warm lips fell over Wally’s hair again and again, Joseph’s voice thick and rough with emotion. “You really have no idea how amazing you are, do you? How can you not see that you deserve someone who isn’t ruined like me?”
“You aren’t ruine
d,” Wally mumbled into Joseph’s shoulder. “You’re everything I ever wanted. You’re perfect for me.”
“Walford.”
The tenderness, the longing in Joseph’s voice, on his name, broke him. He squeezed his eyes shut and throttled back a sob that felt too big for him, as if it would split him apart from inside if he held it in too long. But if he let it out, he would beg. He would shatter his pride and he would beg love me, love me, love only me.
And he couldn’t.
Joseph drew back, looking up at him, and brushed a coarse knuckle to Wally’s cheek; a tear gathered against his skin, glistening between them, and Joseph smiled faintly and brought it to his lips, kissing it away to nothing before brushing his fingertips to Wally’s lips.
“I have something for you,” he said. “If…if you’ll come with me…”
Joseph had that uncertainty about him again—in the cant of his head, in the way his gaze darted over Wally’s face. Wally dashed at his cheeks, wiping them dry, and sniffled.
“Of course, love.”
“Yeah?” Joseph heaved a deep breath, then nodded and pulled back, taking Wally’s hand in his own, tugging him toward the front door. “Okay. Come on, then.”
Brows knitting, Wally followed Joseph outside, along the walk, to the workshop shed. The inside was a mess of schematic drawings plastered up on the walls, and the workbench was scattered with halogen bulbs and coils of copper wiring, but without looking Joseph moved right past them to his drafting desk. Tubes of paper and smaller graph pads had been stuck into an organizer basket; conspicuous among them was a stack of pages with that grainy look of faxed printouts, ink dappled and smudged.
Joseph tugged the papers out, their printed letters hidden as he fiddled with the edges of the pages, looked down, clutched them against his chest, looked at Wally nervously, looked away—and Wally was struck by déjà vu, only last time it had been him standing there, uneasy and trembling and wondering if the papers in his hands would become the blades that cut them both to pieces.
“I just…” Joseph gripped Wally’s hand tighter. “I feel fucking weird about this, now. But. Uh. I mean…um, in a lot of ways…you gave me back a piece of myself. Made it easier for me to cut Miriam’s strings. So I wanted to do that for you. Erm. Not cutting strings. Give you back a piece of yourself, I mean. And make up for being a dick. So, um…here.”
He thrust the pages at Wally, face-down. Wally eyed them like they would bite him. What did he mean, a piece of himself?
“What is this?”
Joseph winced. “Don’t be angry with me.”
“That you feel the need to say that does not bode well for those papers.”
“I’m serious.”
“Have I ever been angry with you, Joseph?”
“I seem to recall you snarling ‘fuck,’ at me, once. And about two and a half minutes ago, you ripped me a new asshole for being an asshole.”
“Joseph.” Wally huffed and tugged the papers from his hand. “Don’t remind me of my indecencies.” He flipped the pages over.
And his entire world turned on its end, for the second time in less than ten minutes.
“I…oh.”
He simply…dropped. Dropped where he stood, knees thudding against the floor with dull pain, because he couldn’t even think about finding a chair when he could hardly feel his legs, could hardly feel anything but a strange buzzing that started at the top of his head and swelled to fill his ears.
CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH
Three of them. The real ones, not the altered copies. Birth certificates, names, and Miriam had been eight-point-two robust, healthy pounds at birth while Wally had been a smaller seven-point-eight, but there were their names—and their parents’ names, right there in the fields for mother and father.
Yvette. Yvette and Martin Wilson. And the third birth certificate, dated years after Miriam’s, Andreas Theodore Wilson, he couldn’t be, it wasn’t possible—
Sucking in ragged, painful breaths, Wally scrambled through the pages, searching. Legal documents making them wards of the state, reports from social workers, grayed photographs of hollow-eyed children, and then…
There. The police report.
“Oh my God,” he whispered, pressing a shaking hand to his mouth. He didn’t know when he’d started crying, but burning drops carved channels in his cheeks and plopped down in wet splatters on the printouts, smearing the ink of a photocopied picture, newspaper clippings, tersely described police accident report from the Las Cruces, New Mexico police department.
FATAL CAR CRASH CLAIMS PARENTS, INFANT, TWO CHILDREN SURVIVE
Photos in the article, too. His mother, with Wally’s black eyes and a crown of bright hair that even in grayscale blazed with the same fire as Miriam’s crown of red, and a wide, generous mouth made for smiling. His father, eyes pale gray in the copy but he just knew they were green, green as the sea, green as bottle glass, his hair parted to one side in a dark swoop and his brow high and smooth and pale with eyebrows dashed in curls of ink and a particular quirk to his nose that Wally saw in the mirror every day. He touched the page, his fingertips trembling.
This was him.
This was everything he’d ever been, everywhere he’d come from, his earth and his sky.
He curled forward with a keening sob, clutching the pages to his chest. Joseph made a panicked sound and dropped down next to him—and then those arms wrapped him up tight, holding him together, pulling him into one piece and reminding him who he was now in Joseph’s embrace. Wally sagged against him, spending himself in gutting sobs, papers crumpling between his clutching fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Joseph whispered, crushing him in his hold. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you more, I’d hoped you’d want to know—”
“No—no—” Wally could barely manage words, but he forced those out, gulping and gasping and burrowing into Joseph. “I’m happy, I’m happy, it hurts so bloody much but I’m happy, I don’t…how? H-how did you…?”
“You don’t work for a city-owned company for half your life without earning a few favors in a few bureaus. I called them in, they called a few in other cities, starting in Albuquerque and following a trail of juvenile records back through the system. Technically fostering and adoption records were supposed to stay sealed, but Maxi helped.” A brittle chuckle. “Well. Bullied. I don’t know how she made it happen so fast, but she’s been on the phone all morning while I worked, texting me with updates and shouting at people to…I think the last I heard was ‘shift your asses.’ She and that old guy at The Track have connections I don’t even want to think about. And I’m babbling.” Joseph exhaled a chuckle and nuzzled into Wally, kissing his neck, his shoulder, heated breaths easing against Wally’s skin. “I just…you know. I mean. It was hard, but not impossible. Even if probably technically illegal. Miriam’s sealed juvenile arrest records made it easier.”
“Of course they did.”
Joseph might have been babbling—but that steady flow of words, that warm rumble against Wally’s body, had been everything he needed, smoothing over the jagged, sharp edges inside him and letting him calm himself, breathe, focus on Joseph’s voice rather than the wild tectonic shifts that rearranged the pieces of him and left both new ground and devastation in their wake.
“My real name isn’t even Gallifrey,” he whispered, and couldn’t help a laugh that was half sob. “We must have picked that up from one of our longer fosters. It’s Wilson. Walford Caesar Wilson from Las Cruces, New Mexico. How dull.”
“It’s Gallifrey,” Joseph breathed. “Walford Caesar Gallifrey, from everywhere and nowhere. And you are never dull.”
Wally pried his grip free from those crumpled pages, one at a time, and looked down at them—the creases across Yvette’s face, the white seam now marked in the ink down Martin’s shirt. “These are my parents. A music teacher and an appliance salesman, oh how gloriously ordinary.” His eyes filled again. “But…Andreas…” He didn’t know if he could tak
e this. Grieving someone he’d never even known existed; at least he’d known his parents were gone, but that third birth certificate was a knife to the heart. “We had another brother. Only…only a baby…and he didn’t survive. I don’t even remember the accident at all, but he…”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No, I…” He swallowed and rubbed at his nose. “It’s simply quite a lot to take in. To find one’s family and then lose them immediately…even if they’ve been lost for decades.” He smoothed the wrinkled pages with his thumb, but he rather liked the crumpled bits. They made his parents look as though they were smiling, just for him. “I’m simply overwhelmed. And I…I have to figure out how to tell Mirry. If I ever do.”
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Joseph asked gently. “To know who you are. I’m sorry it’s not better news.”
I already know who I am, Wally thought. This merely tells me where I began.
But aloud, all he said was, “At least I know they didn’t choose to leave us. That is something, indeed.” To know that he hadn’t been abandoned just because his parents were the first in a long line of people who thought he wasn’t worth staying for. Yvette and Martin smiled at him still, and he smiled back, then lifted his head, offering that smile to Joseph, as if he was offering not his lips but his heart with both outstretched hands. “Thank you, dearest one. Thank you.”
Joseph was quiet, gaze dark and lost; he curled a hand against Wally’s throat. “I can’t see how anyone could choose to leave you.”
“And yet they do, again and again.”
Joseph leaned closer. “I won’t.”
Struggling to calm his breaths, his spinning thoughts, the hard jolt of fear, Wally clutched his fingers in the front of Joseph’s shirt. “Won’t you?”