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They- They’re kicking me out. There’s this eight foot tall troglodyte pissed I hustled him out of one-fifty. That money’s mine, y’know. I-I earned it. Should’ve seen my trickshot, dude. Almost as pretty as my cumshot, but you’ve seen that plenty, haven’t ya?
…
This is the part where you laugh, Cameron. C’mon, you gonna pick me up in your souped-up Kook-mobile or what? ‘Cause I’d rather not have to blow one of these old guys for a ride. What’s the worst that could happen? Stupid things have good outcomes all the time.
JJ’s sitting on the curb when Rafe pulls up, hunched over like he doesn’t know whether to puke or pass out. Rafe knew the kid was drunk the second he picked up the phone, but it’s different to witness. Stoned seems to be JJ’s default state, but plastered has a strange effect on him, like he’s twice his age and half all at once. Even from the car, Rafe can barely look at him and his bedraggled state. Hair a swishy mess and sticking to his forehead, clothes damp from the rain that’s been pissing down off and on since the early morning, JJ looks lost. It’s got Rafe’s stomach knotted up and he’s not sure why. He’s not sure why he’s even here. Leaning across the seats, Rafe grabs the handle and shoves open the passenger door. “You coming?” He barks out, making JJ’s head snap to attention a second too slow.
JJ runs a hand through his hair before holding out his arms for balance and carefully rising to his full height. He’s unsteady and one step has him slipping on the greasy curbside and falling right on his ass like a puppet with cut strings. Rafe winces, but JJ’s back on his feet before he can get out of the car to help him. JJ’s laughing, but Rafe can spot the force of it, the sharp edge that hits the ear all wrong.
“‘M okay,” JJ mumbles as he flounders into the passenger seat. The second he’s got the door shut, Rafe’s skidding down the street, eager to get away from the less-than-reputable bar JJ just stumbled out of. “Woah, Speed Racer. Give a guy a second to adjust,” JJ groans as he starts wrestling with the seat belt. He ends up tangled up in it, but manages to click it into place after a few harsh tugs.
Thanks to his astigmatism, the rain-dappled windshield looks like a goddamn kaleidoscope and Rafe has to squint just to make out the street signs. His vision’s been taken over by red and yellow smears, but whatever happens he’ll just blame on the drunken puppy next to him. JJ keeps fidgeting, pulling Rafe’s attention from the road. He’s fucking with the sunviser, the window button, the air conditioning. It’s making Rafe contact-anxious, JJ’s energy infectious as always.
“Remind me again how a seventeen year old got served at a bar?” Rafe asks, his brow quirked with suspicion. He’d bet money on JJ having a fake ID, but there’s no way that would work on home turf. Rafe realizes with a jolt that he’s driving in the direction of the Chateau, unsure when exactly he memorized the way.
His gaze flicks to the glovebox, thinking of the heap of string he stashed there. He’s unsure about that too.
“My money’s as green as the next guy’s,” JJ shrugs, slurring like his tongue’s loose in his mouth. Every syllable’s another marble he chokes on. Rafe tightens his hold on the wheel, the impulse to shake JJ until he sobers up is a constant hum behind his ears that he’s forced to ignore unless he wants to risk driving into a pole. “‘Sides, my dad’s taken me there since I was in, like, Pampers. Everybody knows Papa Jay.”
Ignoring the eye-rolling nickname, Rafe makes a sharp turn and scowls at the thought of JJ sucking on a pacifier as he crawls around a dirty bar floor, cigarette butts sticking to his skin. It’s hard to shake, leaving his stomach cramping like someone’s got a knife in his guts, twisting it all around like spaghetti.
“Aren’t you afraid to run into him?”
JJ scoffs and lifts his feet onto the seat, knees to his chest. He’s scratching at his ribs, one hand hidden beneath the threadbare muscle tee he’s got on. It’s monsoon season, but naturally the idiot’s not wearing a jacket. “Wrong question.”
Rafe sighs heavily and rubs his brow. He turns up the hand he’s driving with in a “whatever” motion before gripping the wheel again and widens his eyes pointedly. “Aren’t you afraid of him?”
JJ laughs, some high-pitched squeal that rattles like out of tune bells. “Wrong-er question. Turn here,” He says between fits, pointing with his finger where he wants Rafe to go.
It’s not the right way, Rafe’s sure, and his suspicions are only confirmed when they’re stuck in the middle of a dead-end street. There’s nothing around except a couple of abandoned shops with boarded up windows and dead, muddy grass. As soon as he’s got the car in park, JJ’s on him. All hands and teeth, he claws at Rafe’s hair and devours his mouth like he wants to climb inside him.
It doesn’t matter that JJ tastes like cheap beer and smells like a gutter, Rafe sighs against his tongue anyway. It’s too easy and JJ’s too pliable, all limb-heavy and syrupy with that wildness that Rafe’s become fond of. Skin buzzing, his annoyance drifts out like a tide as JJ runs his nails along Rafe’s scalp. If JJ wants a distraction, Rafe’s happy to provide one.
JJ’s got one hand around Rafe’s throat, a steady pressure that Rafe trembles against. His heart’s gone haywire, leaving him a panting mess beneath frenzied kisses. He likes it best when JJ’s not careful, when he throws Rafe around like he’s unafraid of breaking him.
Pulling back, JJ presses his forehead to Rafe’s as his free hand goes to Rafe’s shorts. He’s got the fly popped open in seconds and Rafe must have sucked the Pabst Blue Ribbon off JJ’s tongue because he feels drunk too, dizzy and helpless and flung out to sea. The rain’s kicked up, pouring down on them in fat drops that leave the car muffled and humid. The windshield’s a blur of inky blue, fogged at the edges like a shitty watercolor. It’s like a curtain’s been draped over them, hiding them from the rest of the world.
“I’d let you fuck me,” JJ rasps as he takes Rafe in his hand, bouncing with a jagged rhythm Rafe can’t follow. It’s like getting sucked in by an undertow, and all Rafe can do is hold onto JJ for dear life. His hand’s under JJ’s shirt, feeling the contours of his broad chest and the bumps of his scars. There’s a smattering of cigarette burns along his sternum that Rafe’s never forgotten. He doesn’t need to ask how they got there, he just knows. “Ever do that before?”
Rafe squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t picture it, doesn’t want to, and it’s hard to think with how JJ’s still gripping his throat, pressing against his pulse until everything spins. He’s whining now, fully at JJ’s mercy like a feeble kitten.
“Luke doesn’t fuck me, but Ward fucks you. Do you think that means my dad loves me less than yours loves you?”
It’s an unfamiliar voice coming out of JJ’s mouth and Rafe jerks back, his stomach flipping as something ugly and terrible seeps into his pleasure-drenched senses like tar into milk. His spine is snapping, his chest is bursting, something constricts and he can’t breathe. JJ’s staring at him with that wretched expression, his eyes searing into Rafe through a tangled mop of blond hair. Rafe can’t stop it, the push and pull of his mind and body, but he doesn’t even want it to stop. He needs more, needs to reach out and grasp the knife that JJ’s got in his belly. JJ’s touch is too much and not enough all at once and Rafe could swear there are tears on the kid’s cheeks, but maybe that’s just the rain fucking with his vision again.
JJ’s still stroking him with that punishing motion, but Rafe’s thinking about how his bedroom’s the only one in the house without a lock. He’s thinking of the anemic yellow of his father’s office lamp and the burn of plush carpeting under bare knees. The bite of stubble against his cheek. A meticulous hand fluttering across his ribs, slow as torture and twice as agonizing. Quiet, Rafe, don’t wake up your sisters. Rafe would tear apart the world if Ward asked him to; wishes his father would.
Is that love? He used to be sure that it was, back when it was simple. Back when he only knew affection in the form of his father’s tender brutality, his precious fury. But that was before JJ, before the savage boy tripped and fell into his life and got his sticky fingers all over everything.
It has to be love. It has to be love or Rafe won’t have anything left.
The memory of JJ, choking in a headlock with his hand in Luke’s lap, that golden cherub face of his contorted in shame as tears ran down his face, hangs in the periphery. JJ’s wearing that same face now and hate bursts behind Rafe’s eyes, bleeding out of him like he’s dying of a thousand cuts and he can’t stop the flow. He can barely manage to think, everything racing and blurring together, but he takes JJ by the nape of his neck and tugs him close, needing all of him before he bursts like overripe fruit. JJ’s mouth is on the underside of his jaw as his hand tightens around Rafe’s neck, making him see stars. Rafe’s back arches as slow, steady ecstasy builds from his solar plexus and blooms through him, his very nerves shaking from the intensity.
It has to be love.
“Harder,” Rafe spits, his voice a dry wheeze from the grip JJ’s got on his throat. He feels brittle. He feels fucking ruined and it’s all JJ’s fault. When did it stop being easy? When did he stop being able to lie still beneath his father without thinking of JJ touching him like this, undoing him little by little?
JJ releases Rafe’s neck and bites into the soft skin there. The sudden rush of blood to his brain and air in his lungs sends him over the edge until he’s falling, he’s dying, his synapses are exploding because JJ keeps stroking him, milking him through his climax until Rafe can’t suffer the oversensitivity anymore.
Ward’s face fades from his vision as JJ pushes off him, leaving behind an emptiness that makes Rafe twitch. Struggling to get his breath back, Rafe leans back against the seat and motions vaguely towards the glovebox. “Napkins,” He says, needing to clean up. Quickly. He can’t stand feeling unclean, like there’s pondscum stuck to his skin. He remembers the shower inspections from childhood, how Rafe would stand at attention while his father looked him over, making sure every inch of him was sparkling clean.
Appearance matters, son. It matters more than anything.
Rafe watches JJ bring his hand to his mouth and suck a dollop of come off his thumb before opening the glovebox with his other hand. He grabs a handful of napkins and tosses half of them to Rafe, who captures them with unsteady fingers. They both clean off and Rafe’s checking his clothes for stains when he realizes JJ’s gone still.
JJ’s staring into the glovebox, the small light inside illuminating its contents. A couple straws, the car’s registration, and JJ’s bracelet.
Rafe’s blood stops. He can’t hear JJ’s breathing, just the confused melody of raindrops hitting the car as JJ reaches out his hand. He picks up the heap of string Rafe had stolen off his wrist, runs his thumb along the woven pattern as his silence stretches, thickening until the walls sweat. Rafe didn’t want it in his room where his father might have found it, but this is worse. This is so much worse.
“My dad wants me to come back. He left a note,” JJ says, his voice so quiet that Rafe has to strain to hear him. “You’d know that if you had asked the right question.”
Rafe just stares at him, paralyzed like a stag staring down the barrel of a rifle.
“He says he’s clean,” JJ continues, still studying the bracelet like it holds some holy secret. Rafe’s seconds away from snatching it from him or painting the interior of his car with vomit, one of the two. He can already taste the bile, the back of his throat coated in acid. “He does that sometimes. Starts going to church again, cries all the time. It doesn’t change anything.”
Rafe’s jaw is clenched tight, his hands on the wheel just so he can grip the leather until his knuckles threaten to pop. “If you go back there, I’ll kill you.”
Carefully, JJ places the bracelet back inside the glovebox and shuts it with a soft click. Rafe feels like he’s been flayed open, like JJ’s discovery has unmade him, but he can’t ask about it, can’t form the words despite how desperately he wants to know what JJ’s thinking.
Ask me the question I’d rather die than answer.
“You keep saying that,” JJ sighs as he kicks his feet up on the dash. His head’s turned away, staring out the window almost like he’s sleeping. “Take me home, Rafe. The rain’s let up.”
It takes effort to move, each of his muscles working against the other, but eventually Rafe manages to put the car in drive. He switches on the wipers, and all it takes is a single pass to clear the windshield.
JJ’s right, the rain’s stopped.