#inspired by the above picture + the getting wasted with lee story + the cbgb story

[egipci]

use a photo on your phone camera roll and write a quick scene/hc for it

Dubuque, 2004

In the space of three hours that no-good son of a bitch Lee Webb had Dean swaying on his feet. John opened the door and stepped slow over the threshold and there they were with their startled faces, sitting on the couch and their feet up on the table, more than a dozen cans around them and John’s Jack empty, a half-empty bottle of clear liquor and some bills next to it. In slow motion they turned towards the door and saw him and when they saw him the TV flickered between channels and the volume went up too loud before it went down and they sprang up and one of them knocked a can over that tipped and rolled and poured what was inside out on the carpet with a fizzing sound.

He toed his shoes off and took his belt off with the holster and the sidearm. A news channel on the TV now. It was the one week anyone ever gave a shit about Iowa. Everywhere outside college kids and slow-walking retirees trudged through snow and knocked on doors with clipboards in hand, having come down from god knows where to hound the good people of this state. It made his job easier. It made people more willing to talk. Not at first, but when they knew he wasn’t looking to talk politics they looked at him with wide grateful eyes. He knew something about wars, justified and un-, but that was no bar talk and he wasn’t one to bring it up. Got served free doubles by a generous, big-breasted woman for respecting the sanctity of the barroom. She poured all the way up to the lip of the glass, like she could turn water into liquor, like there was a surplus in the back room to be rid of. There was this sense she was making advances and it left him warm and his mind briefly empty and that was when Webb said something about divide and conquer and pulled Dean out, off to interview coeds for the school paper.

Now the kid stood in front of him with the TV remote in his hand and his arm around Webb’s shoulder, and Webb’s arm was around his like one or the both of them could just tip over. He said Dad like he did, his voice dipping, a smile on his face that turned into a grin that turned into a laugh, and he reached out and grabbed hold of John’s forearm like he was about to yank him closer. Then he did. He tugged at John’s arm, hard, looked down at his hand, let go, swallowed, laughed again shocked and sloppy, sloppier than John had seen him since— and looked over grinning at Webb to his left, and that was when Webb opened his mouth or maybe that was only when his voice broke through and John heard him finally, obnoxiously loud, running his mouth, saying something like John, man, we’re just about to call some— and John looked at him then for the first time and Webb’s smile fell. His face was so pink and pathetic-looking that John felt something vicious under his skin, ringing in his ear. He was shaking and his hand was shaking with the gun in it and it was like the pinkness had bled out of Webb’s face and into the room and had stained everything, and before John could say anything cruel or make some degrading thing happen to that asshole he was saying, Sir, are you okay? High-pitched and shaky, and John said, Let’s call it a night, Lee.

Yes, sir.

We’re on a fucking job, he said.

Yes, sir, Lee said again, that’s right. He turned to Dean and looked at him like everyone had looked at the kid since he was fifteen years old. He cleared his throat and said solemnly with furrowed brow, We’re on a fucking job, dude, and put his hand to Dean’s chest and Dean nodded, wrapped his fingers around Lee’s wrist and said, We’re on fucking job, I fucking told you, and for a second the two of them were kids laughing like they were alone in the room. It made John feel old and friendless. Dean’s ears were red. He was grinning and a flush was creeping up his neck. He let go of Lee’s wrist then and Lee pulled him closer with the arm across his shoulders, a half-hug all friendly and jovial, and clapped his hand once to Dean’s chest and said, See you tomorrow, brother, before parting in slow-time. And then, Good night, sir, his eyes at John’s feet as he made his way out. Dean watched him go. Then he looked at John with that earnest drunk grin on his face.

John’s blood thumped inside his head. He closed his eyes, rubbed at them with the flat of his palm and in the time it took him to unclench his jaw Dean had put one arm around his neck, the other under his suit jacket. When he sighed his chest pushed against John’s chest. He said hey. Then he said, You okay, Dad? with that sweet alcohol smell coming off him, his voice trailing at the end of it like it hurt to speak.

John knew all about that too. He pushed the kid back. Dean tripped backwards and sank down to the couch and reached out again for John’s arm and pulled him closer. He pushed his face at John’s hip. His hair was wet at the roots when John ran his fingers through it and he looked up with his dazed eyes red and his mouth red and his cheeks flushed. What the fuck happened here?

We burned the bones.

What did you take?

Gotta ask Lee.

Gotta kick you out.

Okay.

He tugged meanly at the kid’s hair. It was grown out and it made him look like his brother and so much younger John’s heart swelled up and pressed behind his ribs, threatening to jump out. He said, Clean this shit and get the fuck out.

Again Dean said okay but when he hadn’t moved John slapped him. Not hard, more like a tap. It made a low, muted sound. Just the four of his fingers across the kid’s cheek, thumb tracing down from his eyebrow to his cheekbone. Dean leaned into it, his breath at the inside of John’s wrist, the scratch of his stubble, his hot red ear. John touched his thumb to Dean’s mouth. If he weren’t drunk already just looking at the kid would get him there.

Dean sighed and got up and John took his jacket off and took his place on the couch and as he sat down he felt the liquor sloshing warm inside him. For a minute he watched the kid move slow around the room, careful, sobering up. He put the empty cans into the box and left a new one on the table. John flipped through the channels until he found little Boris Grushenko asking about girls in heaven. He laughed then he yawned and closed his eyes and saw again the woman behind the bar with the big breasts and the snow outside melting. He thought of all of the snow in Iowa and the rest of the world melting and flooding everything and the woman behind the bar turning the water into liquor. There was the sound of the toilet flushing. Then there was only darkness, no telling for how long, until Dean touched his shoulder. He said, Dad. It’s late.

Sure is.

It’s snowing outside, Dean said. And I already took my pants off.

John looked at him. His pants were off. He’d turned the lights off and now he stood in his boxers and his socks and his black t-shirt in the TV glow.

That’s too bad, John said, then he closed his eyes and leaned back and heard Dean’s feet shuffling and the breath he took and his knees sinking into the sorry bounceless couch. He straddled John and dug his fingers into his shoulders. He said, I’m not going anywhere, his body bearing down heavy and warm on John’s thighs and his mouth skidding wet along John’s jaw— I’m not leaving— and this— this boldness, this back-and-forth— the kid was more gone than he’d thought and now thoughtless John put his hands around his ribs in that trembling way he’d held him at four months old. Overwhelmed then by his goodness, overwhelmed by how much he’d loved him and terrified of how much Dean had loved him back and of what it would mean if he ever stopped, and again at sixteen when he had. On his knees throwing up Dean had said it and John had known then that he meant it, that he couldn’t hold it against him. Eight, nine years since then. But it was the room, dark and hot like it had been then. What did that fucker give you? He asked, bile rising inside him, his voice something unrecognizable. It wasn’t pot, or anything else he could smell. Under his hands Dean’s shirt was damp with sweat, soaked through with it and warm and even through the alcohol John could smell him.

Dunno, Dean said. He took ‘em too, and John felt heat flare white all through him first in anger, then in need for Dean’s thighs flexing tight gripping him, Dean’s knees digging in around his hips, Dean’s fingers twisting in his shirt. Lee’s a good guy, the kid said.

I know.

Dean said, He wasn’t —slurred. He sighed. We were just hanging out.

Okay. John thought again about finding that motherfucker and scrambling his brains with a tire iron. His fingers clutched tight at Dean’s hair, at the back of his neck, too hard, maybe. The kid’s hands splayed wide leaning on his chest, pressing him into the couch. He’s a good guy, Dean said. You like Lee. John put his hands to his hips and tugged, pulled him closer so that Dean made a soft shocked sound and had to rise to his knees, straddling John’s chest almost with how close. His crotch right there where John could bury his face. He rucked the kid’s shirt up, pressed a kiss to his belly, pressed his cheek to Dean’s skin and felt his heat.

After a long minute Dean pushed him away. He said hey Dad in that way he did. The TV glowed blue but John could hardly see with his kid solid and broad blocking out everything. No seeing his eyes either except through shadow, but now his shirt was rucked up and John had his hands on him, his body the most familiar thing. His skin, his smell. The shape of his nose against John’s cheek when he leaned down to fit their mouths together. The way he kissed, which was the way John had taught him. He’d know this kid with his eyes gouged out. His hands moved over Dean’s arms, his thighs, his ass, his back, fingertips over strong muscle loving him and loving the weight of him. Loving his danger. His masculinity. Dean’s mouth moved slow and sure on his for a long time, his hips grinding in tight, a constant keen in his chest and his dick swelled up between them and he reached for it and broke away and said right against John’s mouth in a small wrecked voice fuck me I want it why don’t you fuck me anymore you never— and John took his face in his two hands and knocked his mouth open and swallowed the rest of it, whatever else the kid could say, and thought that would have to be enough.

Too long since John had had him. But here in the dark with the TV on he could. He could. For the first time in years, Dean loose-limbed under him on the bed with his legs held back and the air pushed out his lungs, making those sweet suffering sounds. Blooming wherever John touched him. Sweating through the sheets. He’d open up so easy.

Dad, Dean said again, small and wanting, but John only shook his head. All the while his hands were on the kid, soothing up and down his back. He swallowed and smiled and said, You’re about to pass out, man. You pass out on me, then what? and Dean said you keep going, just—I don’t care, I want it, eager, mindless, and John said what, sick-feeling inside him and thoughts of striking the kid or shoving him away or cracking his head open on the edge of the table, of hunting that fucker down— wait, Dean said, I won’t pass out, I won’t, shaking his head, but already John’s hands were around his hips, pushing. Dean’s hands clenched vise-tight around John’s wrists, sent pain sparking up his arms. John made an old-hound noise. Even drunk as he was the kid was strong. He wrenched John’s hands off him and held them in the space between them and sat there with his head bent down and his chest heaving loud, shaking his head. His whole body shaking. Used to be John could grab both this kid’s hands in one of his. Now look at him. Just about all he could bear these days. Earnest, terrifying things coming out his mouth that John could never stand but even then he couldn’t look away. He searched for the kid’s eyes. But it was dark, and Dean had turned away from him.