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The sight of Hawk in the kitchen was almost sweet, invoking the kind of nostalgia in Tim that he hadn’t anticipated. So much time had passed and yet he could so easily find himself lost in that feeling just by being near Hawk. It was, in itself, a time far more complicated but that time made more sense to him than this now. They’d both been young and trying to figure out how to make their way in a world that didn’t want them. Tim wanted to fly in the face of it, love who he loved, while Hawk wanted nothing more than to be left alone. He thought he could earn that freedom, Tim would just take it. Maybe they’d both been wrong.
“Do you know,” Tim mused from where he sat perched beside a low table, glass of wine in hand. Hawk wasn’t drinking yet, and he looked all the worse for it. His hands were shaking so badly that it gave him trouble holding utensils, but he was trying to prove something to Tim or perhaps to himself. “I used to lie in bed and dream of places we could go to be together. Thinking you would be stationed overseas and would take me with you. The dreams of a young man.”
Hawk shuffled around in the kitchen, moving from stove to counter and back, never giving Tim so much as a glance. “I would have.”
“You say that now, but I know better. It was something you said to keep me happy, to keep me near, but if it ever became a real possibility it would have scared you to make that kind of a commitment. Taking me with you overseas? Really Hawk?”
“Sure, Skippy,” Hawk muttered barely listening. Tim laughed at the absurdity of the conversation, of Hawk trying to convince him that he would in fact have taken him. His memory was selective, perhaps after being pickled in so much vodka for the better part of a year.
“You can’t fool me anymore. I know you love me, I know you always have, and I know that nothing scares you more than how vulnerable that makes you. It’s okay Hawk. I don’t need it anymore.”
Hawk’s heart sank and he chopped the onion with a little more ferocity than strictly necessary to compensate. “Where did we go? In your dreams?”
Tim smiled happily and sipped his wine, allowing his mind to wander back to those beautiful waking dreams soaked in all of his innocence. “Sometimes France or Italy, but Greece, mostly. I always thought we could be free in Greece.”
“Have you ever been?”
That made Tim laugh and he shook his head incredulously. “Are you kidding? On my salary? I’m lucky to be able to find picture books on Greece at the public library. I’ll bet you’ve been...you took Lucy, didn’t you?”
“A couple of times, yes. It’s nice. It would have been more fun with you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Tim sighed. “It isn’t a competition. I know where I stand. Let’s just not lie anymore about it, alright?”
“You don’t know…” Hawk started, but cut himself off in a clang and a clatter of pans, growling in pain. Tim scrambled to his feet and bolted for the kitchen to find Hawk fumbling for the sink, one trembling hand turning beet red. Most of the injury seemed concentrated on his fingers, bent and stiff and painful. Without any real forethought or consideration, Tim grabbed Hawk’s injured hand and took his fingers into his mouth, tongue working over the burned skin, soothing it, cooling it to body temperature while he fumbled at the sink. Hawk froze completely stunned, staring at Tim, locking eyes.
“What are you…”
Tim shook his head and continued sucking the heat from Hawk’s burned fingers like it was the most natural thing in the world, and though Hawk couldn’t think of less sexy things in his life than spilling boiling water on his fingers, he found his pants growing tighter. His pointer and middle finger took the brunt of it, the rest of the hand only pink, and once Tim felt the skin cool, he pulled the fingers slowly from his mouth and held them beneath the water to cool them further. “My grandmother taught me that.”
“How to fellate a man’s fingers?” Hawk grappled with humor through the blistering pain. Tim only smiled a little sheepishly, considering the context and the situation. He wouldn’t have minded one bit if Craig had walked in just then.
“Well, when I was a child I burned my finger on the wood stove and she told me to suck on it to take the heat out slowly. If you put it under cold water too fast it’ll blister...it’s probably not true, but it’s what I’ve always done.” Twenty years ago he might have apologized, but tonight he had no apology in him. Hawk didn’t seem to want it anyway. They were so far beyond that.
“Thank you,” was what Hawk said as his fingers cooled beneath the running water. His hands were shaking worse than ever, the combination of withdrawal and pain doing a number on his nervous system. Tim made a move to pour him a drink, even setting it to his lips and watching as he lapped at it slowly. “I wanted to…” he started and Tim nodded.
“I know. But you can’t. It has to be done slowly or you’ll hurt yourself.”
“I can wait.”
“Hawk,” Tim said, stepping forward. “I’ll never understand some of the things you’ve done, but I don’t have to live with them. I know you never meant me any real harm, that beneath it all you were not only protecting yourself but me too. I would have given everything up to be with you.”
“I know.”
“But you wouldn’t. You had more to lose than I did, and you…” Tim stopped, pulling Hawk’s hand out from beneath the flow of the water. He might have left it there all night if Tim hadn’t stopped it. “You had already lost more than I could comprehend. I um, I looked up the reports from the battles you were in. The reports…”
“Skippy stop.”
“Between the war and Kenny, and Senator Smith...I understand why you had to do what you did. I’m not sure I can ever not be hurt by it...but I…”
Before he could finish what he was saying, Hawk turned around and began trying to salvage what was left of the meal he’d been cooking. He couldn’t look at Tim while he spoke. The boiled water was all over the stove, all over every part of the meal. Noodles, still mostly dried, were burnt on the stove and the sauce was splattered and washed all over everything. Dropping the box of noodles as he tried to empty them into the boiling water had ruined the entire meal in one fell swoop. That damn tremor, he should have known better.
“Why did you come?” Hawk asked in a shaky, sick voice. Tim was worried about him – how long had he been without a drink? How much longer did he think he could hold out?
“Because you asked. Because Lucy said…”
“You spoke with Lucy?”
“She said you were in trouble.”
“Do I look like I’m in trouble? I live in paradise.”
Tim wasn’t going to glorify that with a response. He watched Hawk work in silence for a few more minutes before the man stopped and hunched over the counter, head hanging in utter defeat. “Dinner is ruined.”
“We can salvage it.”
Hawk shook his head sadly and turned to look at Tim finally and he could see that the years had been unkind to him. He was still beautiful, but there was so much pain in his eyes Tim could hardly stand it. Jackson’s death might be the worst of it, but it wasn’t all there was. Hawk was a man burdened by life, a man who had more in common with a haunted house than he did with Tim. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“I know.”
“But you did anyway.”
“Of course I did.”
Tim began rummaging around in the cabinets until he found some cereal and milk, a devilish smile softening his too serious features. Hawk watched him with something akin to awe.
“You still drink your milk like a good boy?” Hawk asked and Tim glanced at him over his shoulder with a coy little smirk.
“Every day.” He popped open the lid to the bottle and poured some into a glass before turning toward Hawk and leaning against the counter. “You?”
“Never did have much of a taste for the stuff…” he said, stepping closer. Tim sipped his milk, droplets clinging to his lips, coating his mustache, and waited. He thought briefly about Arthur, but hadn’t he said this was fine? Do what you have to do. Hawk closed the distance when he sipped again and soon he was lapping up the milk from Tim’s mustache, from the corners of his lips, tasting its sweetness on his sweaty skin. It wasn’t exactly a kiss, not as such, but it was electrifying contact. Tim felt his lungs empty and his head spun.
“Have a sip of wine,” Tim whispered against Hawk’s lips. Hawk shook his head no. “Hawk...you can’t just stop cold turkey. Not when you’ve been...like you have been.”
“I can wait longer. I want to remember this.”
“I don’t want you to die to have a bowl of cereal with me.”
Hawk let out a mirthless chuckle and sighed, resting his forehead against Tim’s. “Cut me some slack, Skippy. I’m not that far gone.”
It wasn’t untrue. The people Tim saw and helped, they were usually a lot worse off, and he found it hard to draw a line anymore. Everyone worried him. Everyone was fighting demons. But Tim knew Hawk’s demons, the loss of his child and PTSD, his father and Kenny, Tim knew that Hawk’s demons often got the better of him. They ruled his world and not the other way around. It had taken him years to understand that – and understand his role in it. There was meaningless sex, and Hawk didn’t have to be Hawk with those men. But with Tim he couldn’t help it, and that opened him up to all of the pain. He couldn’t seem to leave Tim alone, but being with him caused so much pain.
Tim only wanted to be happy with him. He only wanted to make Hawk smile.
“Please stop worrying about me.”
“How can I? You said you needed me. You’ve never needed me a day in your life.”
Hawk cocked his head to the side and gave Tim the most earnest look he thought he’d ever seen. There he was, the real Hawk.
“I’ve always needed you. Didn’t you ever wonder why I kept coming back? I’m sure Marcus told you I avoided emotional entanglements...that was always his favorite way to put it. Made it sound a lot nicer than it was, but I…”
“Stop.”
“Oh, now it’s you who doesn’t want the truth? You want to admonish me for always lying but when I try to tell you the truth...”
“I can’t bear it, Hawk. I’ve spent the last twenty years making it okay because I needed you and not the other way ‘round.”
“Well you’ve got it all wrong. I needed you and it scared the daylights out of me.”
“Don’t. Don’t...you don’t get to…” But he was cut off by the look on Hawk’s face, that sick look that told Tim he was going to be dry heaving into the sink momentarily. And he was. It was painful to watch, and Tim found himself placing one hand on Hawk’s back, rubbing between his shoulders. “It’s alright,” he whispered, knowing it was a lie. Nothing was alright. He wasn’t here because anything in the whole upside down world was alright. “It’s okay.”
Hawk all but collapsed to the floor afterward, a trembling gasping mess with blood on his lips and fear in his eyes. “I’m sorry Skippy.”
“I know. I know you are. Come on, let’s get you to bed.” Their romantic cereal dinner would have to wait.
Hawk didn’t argue, just let Tim help him up and leaned on him all the way to the stairs and up. The burning in his stomach didn’t stop, he just had nothing else to lose, nothing left to throw up. The stairs seemed to stretch forever, each multiplying and winding and dipping beneath his feet. The night was an abysmal failure. The whole time Tim had been there, he kept looking at Hawk like he was pathetic, like he was something to be pitied, and all he’d wanted was to prove that he wasn’t. That yes, he was sad and he was living a little too wild perhaps, but he wasn’t some piteous creature.
Except perhaps he was.
Tim helped him into bed and made his way to the bathroom for a rag and some water to clean him up. Not the romantic night he’d been promised, perhaps, but it was real. All he wanted anymore was real. He didn’t want a fantasy, he’d outgrown that.
“Here we go,” Tim whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed and wiping at the blood on Hawk’s lips and the sick on his bare chest. “Nothing hurt.”
“Except my pride.”
“Well, you could do with a little wounding in that department. Put you down here with the rest of us.”
“Lay with me?” Hawk asked when he was all cleaned up. Tim put one hand on his hip and shook his head.
“No, I don’t think so. This is Craig’s bed.” It wasn’t his proudest moment, perhaps, but he wanted no part of being in a bed that Craig had fucked the love of his life in the night prior. He was willing to cross plenty of lines for a good time but this was not one of them.
“This is my bed, Skippy. I say who lays in it.”
“If you want me to lay with you, why don’t we move to my room?”
Hawk wasn’t expecting that, but he wasn’t opposed to it. Moving was hard, his bones had grown so heavy. Everything felt poured with concrete, but he managed to get himself upright and stagger toward Tim’s room while he drew back the blankets and opened up his bed to a partner he never thought he’d share a bed with again. Each time felt like the last time.
“Are you sure?” Hawk asked before sitting down. Tim nodded without hesitation.
“I don’t think I could live with myself if anything happened to you. Your family has lost enough.”
“Don’t make this about them.”
“Someone has to,” Tim muttered, and he regretted it instantly. Hawk made quick work of standing back up and storming out of the room without a word, leaving Tim’s bed empty and rumpled. Each time was the last time.
He heard the man stumble down the stairs angrily and with haste on his heels followed by the telltale pop of the cork in the Scotch. He waited on bated breath, listening to the pour, the gulp that would steady his trembling hands, the instant regret at his immediate failure. Remembering was no longer his top priority, in fact he wanted nothing more than to forget right now. Forget everything, even how to breathe if he could manage it. Not long after the bottle hit the table, the soft sounds of sad jazz wafted up the stairs and Tim lay on his bed listening and wondering what it was that Hawk was doing. There wasn’t any sound of dishes being washed, he wasn’t cleaning up the kitchen, but he was alone. And that worried Tim. Hawk needed many things right now but being alone wasn’t one of them.
Still, it had been Hawk that stormed out on him. He wouldn’t follow.
Instead, he called Marcus. He needed that steady hand, that dose of reality to bring him back down to solid ground. When he told the story, explained it all in as much detail as he could stomach, Marcus couldn’t help laughing, though the laughter wasn’t happy sounding at all. It was sad.
“You shouldn’t push him so hard,” Marcus said in that tone he had. He knew Hawk too well, much too well. “He’s a lot more fragile than you think. You’ve been open for a while, he can’t even imagine what that’s like.”
“I know I shouldn’t have said what I did. It just came out.”
“And you aren’t wrong, but he wasn’t ready to hear that.”
“He’s never going to be ready.”
“Maybe not. Do you want me to fly out?”
“Not yet.”
“What is he doing right now?”
“Don’t know. He’s downstairs drinking and listening to sad jazz. He didn’t have a drink all day.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It is. I don’t want him to drink but he needed to, his body needed it. He was doing it for me.”
Tim could hear him now as he came up the stairs as quietly as he could manage, almost tiptoeing bare foot, and he held his breath a moment. Hawk reached the landing without saying a word or calling out, but Tim could hear him breathing heavily, loudly, almost painfully.
“I’ve got to go,” Tim whispered to Marcus. “I’ll call you later.”
“Don’t let him hurt himself,” Marcus said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “And don’t let him hurt you either.”
“Too late for that.”
Tim stepped out of his room to meet Hawk on the landing, watching him from the shadows as he stood with one hand wrapped around a highball glass and the other hovering just over his roiling stomach.
“Are you alright?” Tim asked cautiously, remaining in the safety of the shadows. Hawk didn’t look at him.
“No.”
“What can I do?”
“I need to lay down. And I don’t…” Hawk whispered, shaking his head. Tim nodded and stepped free of the comfort of the shadows, holding out his arm for the other man to take hold of before guiding him back to his bedroom. Without overthinking it, he returned Hawk to the rumpled bed. This time his breath smelled of peaty scotch and the trembling in his hands had nearly abated. Tim took the glass, still with a finger of the amber liquid, and set it on the dresser.
“You can sleep here tonight. I’ll watch over you.”
Hawk fell into the bed, curling around the ache in his belly and closed his eyes. He breathed in the scent of Tim on the pillow with a weary smile. “Craig hates you.”
“I know.”
“He’s not a bad guy.”
“He’s not a great guy either, Hawk. You deserve better.” Tim had plenty of reasons for saying this, none of them he knew were exactly well founded. Just intuition based on a day of observation. He knew plenty of Craigs and none of them were good for people like Hawk who were walking open wounds desperately seeking anything to take them away from the hurt.
Hawk only sighed. “I’ve had better and I don’t deserve it. Look at me, Skippy. I have you and I have Lucy and here I am…”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true enough.”
“You weren’t supposed to agree with me,” Hawk said with a quiet, halfhearted laugh.
Tim shrugged, pouring a glass of water from the pitcher on his nightstand. He never went to bed without water at his side if he could help it. “What can I say? You make a compelling argument.”
Hawk went silent for a moment, and Tim almost thought he was sleeping until he started making a whimpering sound that frightened him. It wasn’t crying, it was just...sad.
“Hawk?”
“It’s nothing. Just hurts.”
“You need to see a doctor.”
“I know what they’ll tell me. Why bother?”
“Alright, skip the doctor. I know of a couple of programs you can get into.”
“I’m not...ready yet. Skippy. I’m not there.”
“I know.”
“Will you lay with me? Please?”
The answer to that question shouldn’t have been so easy. He should have said no, that he would watch over Hawk to make sure he slept alright but he wouldn’t lay beside him...but he simply couldn’t resist. He’d been honest with Arthur when he said how easy it was to slip right back in. He was powerless to the pounding of his heart and the overwhelming need for his skin to touch Hawk’s. Without a second thought, Tim slipped out of his clothes and into the bed, pushing up against the warmth of Hawk. And just like that they were twenty years younger, flesh on flesh, the smell of Hawk’s hair intoxicating and sweet.
“You can stay all night,” Hawk whispered before dropping off. “We can wake up together.”
“You’re in my bed,” Tim whispered but Hawk was already gone, fast asleep. He kissed Hawk on the forehead, holding him close, relishing the weight of him. Tim, scared as he was of letting himself get too close, too hopeful, couldn’t imagine anything nicer than falling asleep beside Hawk and waking up still tangled with him.
Hope was going to be the death of him yet.