The Spoil of Beasts, page 28
part #3 of Iron on Iron Series
“Even in profile you look like a grizzled old dick,” North told him.
Theo made a noise that could have meant anything.
“I thought I should tell you. One of those dicks that’s—have you ever seen a garden hose that’s so stretched out it’s about to burst?”
“You lead an interesting life, North,” Theo said without looking over at him. “One day, you’ll have to tell me why and where you’ve been up close and personal with so many ancient penises.”
When North glanced over his shoulder, he could see into the motel room through the window. Shaw and Auggie sat crisscross on the floor, with Shaw’s suitcase open between them. A pile of clothing suggested they were looking through outfits. At the moment, Shaw was displaying a full-body, spangled Spandex suit that he described as “Catwoman, but if she were a gay man and fabulous.” Which actually wasn’t far off, North had tried to argue, from the regular Catwoman, but apparently involved more sequins.
“He’s going to be fine,” Theo said, although he hadn’t bothered to look. “Auggie’s good at this kind of thing.”
“Great,” North said. “The most important person in my life, and you put Tiny-tot in charge of him.”
Something made him check Theo’s expression, and North could have sworn he’d seen a smile before it flickered away. When North turned his gaze back to the window, Shaw’s hair was out of its bun, and Auggie sat behind him on the bed, slowly running a comb through it. Shaw’s whole body drooped, as though he could barely hold himself up. He’s tired, North thought. He’s devastated. Even though the people he was grieving were, for the most part, pieces of shit. Because that was who Shaw was. And North knew he’d made it worse, forcing Shaw into an argument, taking them both to the breaking point. North’s eyes stung.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Theo said quietly.
The tears started to run, so North walked toward the stairs.
“North?”
His voice was thick, and it wasn’t his best delivery, and there was, overall, room for improvement. But North was still pretty proud of himself when he managed to say, “Fuck off, Pappy Van Winkle.”
It did undercut it, a bit, that he was fairly sure he heard Theo laughing.
For a while, North paced in the parking lot. The sun baked him as it rose. Sweat bunched his shirt under his arms and made the cotton ride up his back. Theo stood where North had left him, watching. He didn’t even have the decency to read on his phone or be like other old people and drift off unexpectedly and then pretend he hadn’t been napping. When North couldn’t stand it anymore, he left the motor court and walked a few blocks to the closest convenience store—a classy joint called a Kum & Go. They didn’t have American Spirits, so, because he was feeling particularly vengeful toward himself, he bought a pack of Pall Malls and walked back to the motor court. He found a patch of shade out of sight and sat and lit up. The first cigarette was absolute shit. So was the second.
The sound of a step alerted him. His head came up, and he moved to stub out the cigarette. But Theo was already standing there, and North froze. To North’s surprise, Theo lowered himself to the ground to sit next to him. Then he plucked the cigarette from North’s hand, tilted his head back, and took a deep drag. He coughed once, held the smoke, and then released it slowly. He had little tears in his eyes as he shook his head.
“Holy shit, North,” he wheezed. “You know they make cigarettes that don’t taste like you’re sucking on a decomposing ashtray, right?”
Approximately a thousand things North wanted to say—no, needed to say—swirled through his head. All that came out, though, was a startled laugh.
Theo drew hard on the cigarette again, closing his eyes, moving his head slightly to lift the flow of strawberry-blond hair from his neck. He didn’t cough this time, but when he blew out, he still made a face. Then he opened his eyes and offered the cigarette back.
“You have got to be shitting me,” North said.
Theo’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Don’t tell Auggie.”
“Don’t tell Shaw.”
The crinkles got a little bigger, and North was surprised to find himself grinning as he took the cigarette. For a while, they sat in silence, sharing the rest of the cigarette. North wasn’t sure the last time he’d shared one. High school, he guessed.
When Theo scrubbed the butt under one heel, he said, “I haven’t smoked since—jeez, since before I met Ian, I guess. I wasn’t ever really serious about it, but just about everyone around me smoked, and it was hard not to pick it up as a social habit.”
“A social habit,” North said. “Must have been fucking nice.”
Theo smiled. Neither of them spoke, and cars ran back and forth on the road, the sound of tires rising and falling. Kind of like water, North thought after a while. Kind of like waves.
“Maybe you ought to go up there,” Theo finally said.
North thought about that. Then he nodded. His face heated as he said, “It’s not—I was worried about him.”
“I know.”
“It’s not like—” He stopped. “I know I shouldn’t have let things get out of hand like that.”
Theo laughed and scratched his beard. “You’re talking to the master of letting things get out of hand. It’s not ideal, but it happens. You’ve both had some time to cool off. That tends to happen too.”
A white lady with a Great Dane jogged past. The Great Dane didn’t look like he was particularly enjoying the experience—the white lady kept having to tug on the leash and say, “Yadi, hurry up!”
“Good fucking Lord,” North muttered.
Theo shook his head, but he was grinning.
Maybe it was simply the fact that Theo was there, and North needed to talk to somebody. Maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was the annoyingly unescapable reality that, in spite of North’s best efforts, Theo was pretty much unflappable—always calm, always kind. North had grown up with a very different kind of father, but it was hard to ignore the fact that Theo had some seriously good dad energy. Which was, North considered in a moment of clarity, probably why North’s knee-jerk reaction was to see what it would take to get Theo to lose control.
Whatever the reason, North heard himself talking before he realized he was going to say anything.
“We did this before.” He stared at the Pall Malls, rattled them in their pack. “In college.”
Theo tucked his hair behind his ears and watched him.
“Does Auggie ever want to punch you in the face?”
A tiny smile creased the corner of Theo’s mouth. “What happened in college?”
“He…Shaw got attacked. By this psycho with a knife. And things just got worse. Every day was worse. Until finally he wasn’t leaving the apartment anymore, and then he wasn’t leaving his room anymore, and—and I knew where he was going. Knew what was happening.” His thumb pressed down hard enough to dimple the pack. “So, I kicked down the door and took him out of there. I took him home. His parents hadn’t known how bad it had gotten. And I stayed there with him.” North almost said, Until he was better. But that wasn’t right, was it?
“Then Shaw’s lucky to know you.” Theo straightened his leg and massaged his knee, which deserved some sort of crack about arthritis and old joints, but North didn’t have it in him. “Of course, I think anyone who watches the two of you for more than a minute knows that.”
North looked up. The sun was so bright he had to squint, which was a good cover for blinking his eyes. “Yeah, well.” He had to count to ten. “It doesn’t feel like that.”
Theo was silent, and the passing cars dwindled until the only sound was the rustle of fabric as Theo massaged his knee through his jeans. When he spoke, his voice had an unfamiliar note, and North was surprised, when he recognized it, to realize it was pain.
“Did you know Auggie was eighteen when we met?” Theo’s smile was more of a grimace. “And my student.”
“I saw this episode of To Catch a Predator.”
That startled a laugh out of Theo. “That’s what it felt like, honestly. I was in a bad place, and Auggie was…Auggie.”
Alive, North thought. It was the first word for Auggie; maybe not the best word, but the first. Vibrantly alive. And happy. Funny and fun. “A hot little pocket rocket.”
The smile seemed wry this time. “That too, which didn’t help my situation. We ended up becoming entangled in each other’s lives. And then, after a couple of years, we started dating.”
“Did he have one of those terminal diseases and then, against all odds, he was cured, and by then it was too late for him to back out?”
“And it was easy, actually. Surprisingly easy. Because I loved him. And because I wanted him. And it was easy right up until it wasn’t. We don’t fight much, but when we do… We were in the middle of one of those awful fights, and he said something to me like ‘It’s never going to change, is it?’ I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something like that. ‘We’re never going to be equals.’ And, of course, that was throwing oil on the fire because he was right. As usual. It had been easy because we hadn’t been equals, and because I hadn’t been interested in changing that. So, after I cooled down, I realized that we’d both changed from where we’d been when we met, and if we were going to stay together, if we were going to make it work, our relationship had to change with us.”
“Get to the part where you kept him tied up in your basement, Grampsie.”
Theo gave him a look. “Am I making my point clear?”
“Yeah, yeah,” North muttered.
“I couldn’t hear that.”
“For the love of fuck, yes,” North snapped.
“You are not the same person you were in college. Shaw isn’t the same person.”
“Jesus Christ, is this what you’re like in a classroom? I said I get it.”
Theo pushed his hair back again, studying North with that look that seemed to demand an answer.
“And for the record, I think I’m starting to get it.”
“Get what?” Theo asked.
“This whole daddy thing. It’s working for me.”
“Ok,” Theo said with a sigh. “We’re done here.”
“What’s the runt’s policy on loaning you out?”
“Goodbye, North.”
“Like, are the spankings mandatory? Those aren’t a hard no for me, but I want to know in advance.”
Theo moved like he might get up, but North caught his arm. He let go almost immediately, but Theo sank back down. They sat there again. A breeze washed them in the hot, syrupy air, and Theo moved the hair off his neck again. North fanned himself with his shirt.
Then he let his head thunk back against the bricks. “Growing up fucking sucks.”
“Is it any consolation if I tell you that you aren’t particularly grown-up?”
North flipped him the middle finger. But he couldn’t quite meet Theo’s eye when he asked, “Do I have to apologize or something?”
“Now why,” Theo said with a giant smile, “would you go and ruin everything by doing that?”
North opened his mouth—he had something in mind about Theo fucking himself on his own cane—but before he could, an urgent whisper came from around the corner of the building.
“Now hug!”
Theo let out a tiny groan.
North’s hand tightened around the Pall Malls, panic needling his gut at the sound of Shaw’s voice. Theo must have spotted the reaction; he made a gimme gesture, palmed the pack from North, and stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans.
“Yeah,” Auggie whisper-called, “you should definitely hug.”
“He didn’t know he was supposed to hug Emery,” Shaw explained, now at full volume. “Sometimes you have to tell him even the most basic things.”
“Scram, dumbasses,” North called.
“Don’t get me started,” Auggie said. “Do you realize one time I showed up on Theo’s porch, nips out, and he still didn’t realize what he was supposed to do?”
“The adults are talking,” Theo said mildly.
“Hug! Hug! Hug!”
After a few seconds of listening to them chant, Theo said, “They’re not going to give up.”
“Give up?” North said. “Shaw’s going to escalate.”
“Kiss!” Shaw shouted.
“Uh,” Auggie said.
It was, perhaps, the most awkward hug on record. But only at first. And then North could feel how tense his own body was, and how long it had been since someone who wasn’t Shaw had shown him affection, and how some of the tightness in his muscles relaxed. When Theo patted him on the back, they separated, and both of them cleared their throats and stared at the ground. Theo even kicked a rock.
“That was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen,” Shaw announced as he emerged from around the corner of the building. He was wearing the gay Catwoman suit and, of course, no shoes, and Auggie had done something with Shaw’s hair so that it hung down his back. “Now you’re best friends.”
“I’m not sure—” Theo said.
“No,” North said. “We’re not.”
“Also, point of clarification,” Auggie said, “I didn’t actually have eyes on the hug, so—not that I care—but, like, was there a kiss?”
When Theo looked at him, Auggie grinned, but there was also a hint of a blush.
“I think we’re going to take off,” Theo said. He made the end of it a question, and when he looked at North, North nodded. To North’s surprise, Shaw hugged Auggie and whispered something in his ear. When he let the smaller man go, Auggie was smirking and, unless North was imagining it, avoiding eye contact with North.
“What?” North said.
“Nothing,” Shaw said.
“What did you say to him? Short Round, what did he say to you?”
“Get some rest,” Theo said as he steered a now laughing Auggie toward their car. “You need it.”
Auggie whispered something to Theo, and Theo belted out a laugh.
North gave Shaw the crook eye.
Shaw smiled uncertainly. Then, with a backward glance over his shoulder, he padded across the hot asphalt and took the stairs up to their room.
When North stepped out of the sun, the room smelled like weed, which certainly explained some of the Shaw and Auggie Happy Hour, with a hint of soap and the cool, damp air of the mini-split. He shut the door. His eyes were adjusting to the relative darkness of the room as he sat on the bed, so he couldn’t make out the expression on Shaw’s face, all the way across the room where Shaw sat on a chair.
Voices rose in the motor court’s parking lot, the sound of a man and woman calling, “Anthony! Anthony!” and a little boy’s laughter. The lines of Shaw’s face emerged from the gloom. The uncertainty there.
So, North went with tried and true. “What are you doing over there?”
Shaw shrugged.
“Get over here.”
A long moment passed, and North wondered if this, too, was one of those things that had changed without him realizing it. But then Shaw slunk over to the bed.
North made a dissatisfied noise.
Shaw wriggled across the mattress toward him. He lay there, stretched out in that ridiculous goddamn Catwoman suit, face pressed against North’s thigh. North ran his hand across Shaw’s head.
“What the fuck did he do to your hair?”
“It’s called a braid.”
“I know what it is. Does he think you’re twelve years old?”
Shaw pulled away. “I like it. Plus Auggie said he only knows how to do one braid and hair clips, and we didn’t have any hair clips.”
“So much for wundertwink,” North muttered. But now Shaw was looking at him, and North’s hand was less steady as he ran it over Shaw’s hair again. “It looks good, I guess.”
Shaw’s eyes were half-closed, and even in the indirect light that made its way through the window, tears glimmered there.
“I’m sorry,” North said.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Well, perfect, look at that. We’re as good at making up as we are at everything else.”
Shaw smiled and dashed tears away. He pressed his face into North’s thigh again.
North let his hand slide down to follow the familiar contours of Shaw’s body: the ridge of shoulder, the ripple of spine. “Theo said—” He wrestled with the question, and then it got free of him. “Are we different?”
“What?” Shaw raised his head. “Different how?”
“Did we change? Did you grow up and I didn’t realize it, and now we’re not a good fit anymore? I don’t know. Something has been different. And I know part of it is me. I get it, I promise. The college shit, that doesn’t fly anymore—being an asshole and expecting people to shrug it off, keeping everybody at arm’s length. But us—” He tried and failed to lock down his voice. “I thought we were solid.”
“We are.” Shaw sat up and gathered North’s hand in his. “We are solid. I love you.”
“I love you.” North pinched tears away. “So, what the fuck happened today?”
“North,” Shaw whispered.
“I was such a fucking asshole, I know, but Shaw, you were scaring me.”
He let himself be drawn down by Shaw until his head rested against Shaw’s chest. They stayed like that for a while, Shaw’s chest rising and falling slowly as North mastered himself. Then, somehow, they ended up lying on the bed, North’s arm pulling Shaw against his side. His eyes itched, and his cheeks had the sticky tightness of drying tears.
“I think Theo’s right,” Shaw said, his voice soft in the stillness of the motel room. “I think maybe things are different. We’re different. And we can’t—we can’t pretend things are the same. We’re not kids anymore, North. You saved me. And I will always love you for saving me. But—but we’re older now, and we both know life is never that simple.”
“Not as simple as kicking down a door, huh?”
In profile, a smile curved Shaw’s lips. He rubbed North’s belly. “My white knight.”
“Jesus.”
“I mean it. I’m so grateful for you, for everything about you. For the fact that you want to save me. But you can’t, North. Not from this. You can’t kick down a door and make me better.”
