Chapter Text
“He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn.” — Jack London, The Call of the Wild
Curt hung up the phone. God, but he wanted a drink.
A hit. A bump. Anything.
He didn’t go get one, though. That was the thing about clean living: there wasn’t a trick. There was no trade secret you got access to after some nebulous number of years of sobriety. You just knew, down deep somewhere in the wearied lake of your aortal tissue, that foundational part of you where self-destruction warred with self-preservation, that the stuff (the good stuff) wasn’t for you. And getting there is a switch in the brain nothing can force. In the end, it’s simple. Not easy — never fuckin’ easy on the nights he hurt so bad it seemed he’d never see the sun again — but simple.
Arthur kept his chips for him in a drawer Curt never opened. He hated the damn things, hated the people who got up there and told their little sob stories about how they came to love smack so much. The whole racket was a no-brainer: smack was fantastic. A smooth-hot hug for all your frayed synapses. That was another thing that was easy: loving the thing that would kill you someday, sooner rather than later. The real question was, could you choose your own life over the false, hollow, fleeting happiness that can never love you back?
Yeah, Curt hated those people. Puffy junkies with purple veins, scars blossoming like tumors on the insides of their elbows. And they’re all junkies ’til the day they kick the bucket, no matter how long it’s been since they plumped up a vein, and they have to accept themselves. The thing was, Curt knew he was one of those sorry motherfuckers. He’d spent a long time not caring if he lived or died, in and out of rehab, using alcohol instead of smack as if that were any better, and he hated the reminder he got of what he really was every time he went to a meeting. He didn’t even smoke anymore.
He sprung out from behind his desk and slung his bomber on as he slipped out the door.
—
It was late when he got home. New Order was on the record player, pumping heavy between the walls of the loft, but Curt didn’t recognize the album. Arthur looked up from the liner notes he was engrossed in, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. All the veins in Curt’s chest decided to strangle his heart at the sight.
“Hey,” Arthur said. The tip of his tongue darted out to wet the plush bow of his lower lip. Curt shucked his jacket and strode over to push Arthur’s glasses up with the tip of one finger.
“Hey,” he said, smoothing his hand down Arthur’s neck. “Sorry to be late, was at a meeting.”
Arthur leaned into the touch, lines deepening between his brows. He set the record sleeve down in his lap.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, o’ course,” Curt said. “New album?”
“S’called Technique,” Arthur said. “I’m feeling it out.”
“Yeah? And what do you think?”
Arthur shrugged.
“Too much dance and not enough nihilism for my tastes,” he said. “But maybe it’ll grow on me.”
Curt nodded. He was meant to smile, maybe laugh a little, he knew, but he worried if he made a sound he’d break apart. Arthur tugged on his hand and Curt sat down beside him. He swallowed and drew in a slow breath instead of jittering straight out of his human suit.
“Seriously, mate,” Arthur said. “You all right?”
“Got a phone call today,” Curt said. He looked at Arthur, whose head was tilted just so, brown eyes inquisitive over the thick frames of his glasses. “From Trevor.”
Arthur’s eyebrows bounced upward.
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“And how is he?”
“Ever the Englishman,” Curt said, bumping his shoulder into Arthur’s. “You, not Trevor. He’s terrible at the whole stiff upper lip thing. Blubs at any provocation, you know him.”
Arthur shrugged in that way he had, where he withdrew and became smaller at the same time. Curt plucked the record sleeve from his lap and sent it skimming the floor toward the far wall, where all their hundreds of records lived. He turned his body enough to tangle his legs with Arthur’s and bunched his hands in the soft excess of Arthur’s shirt.
“Don’t be that way,” he said. “S’nothing bad.”
“Sent you to an NA meeting.”
“Well, yeah, because I’m a fuck-up and everything sends me to an NA meeting,” Curt said, and that earned him the curve of Arthur’s pretty cupid bow. Curt wanted to lick it. Instead, he sucked in a deep breath. “He wants me to come to London.” Specifically, he wanted Curt to go in with him on a studio he’d found and write a new album with a band Trevor called “simpatico with your vision, mate.” Whatever his vision was.
“Oh.”
“I’m not going, obviously,” Curt said. “I’ve got the bar and you’ve got The Herald and we’ve got this place. It was just a thought and now it’s passed.”
Arthur got up with a sigh. He walked over to the opposite side of the room and leaned over the record player to turn it off. The sudden silence muted even the sounds of the city, alive and pulsing outside. He straightened, back to Curt, before scrubbing his hands through his hair. When he turned back around, he looked like the boy he’d been almost fifteen years earlier, rosy-cheeked and bewildered. Curt let himself sag against the couch cushions.
“It hasn’t though, has it?” Arthur said. “If it had, you wouldn’t go to a meeting and you wouldn’t be in here half-buzzing like you sucked down five espressos from that shop ’round the corner.”
“Arthur, I haven’t cut a record in almost ten years,” Curt said. “I’m done with that stuff.” Too old, too sober, too tired. Writing, recording, performing — it all belonged to a different life.
Arthur smiled at him, but it hurt more than comforted.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “Music, art — it’s in you, a living, breathing thing, all the time. I see it every day. You just…push it down.”
Curt tucked his chin into his chest and looked at his hands. His nail polish was chipping. Maybe blue next time, a dark, shimmery one.
“What’s stopping you, Curt?”
Curt looked up at him, shrugging helplessly.
“You don’t love the bar that much,” Arthur went on. “Which leaves me, and fear. And I’ll not be your excuse to be miserable, love.”
“Your job—”
“Is replaceable.”
“Your family—”
“England’s big enough for all of us, I imagine.”
“Margaret Thatcher.”
“Do you really think she’s any worse than Reynolds or Bard?”
“Arthur, I can’t.”
Arthur came back to the couch and stared down at him, head cocked. Curt blinked.
“D’you wanna know what I think?” Arthur said.
“A litany of my flaws?” Curt said, lips twisting in a poor facsimile of a smile. “Always.”
“No, love,” Arthur said. He reached out and just barely touched the hank of hair that framed Curt’s face. “Just some observations. And rebuttals.”
Curt swept his hands out in invitation.
“Have at it,” he said. Arthur drew his hands back and stood up as straight as he had it in him.
“Number one,” he said, “everything’s overwhelming right now. Every little thing to be done’s crowding your brain for attention, and you think it’s impossible to move countries when we’ve got this flat with all this stuff in it and the bar and I’ll need to hustle for a new job. But the truth is we can take a long view of it all: plan to move in about a year and in the meantime get rid of nonessentials, put the flat and the bar up for sale and scout for a new place with a trip or two, take everything in good time. And my job’ll work itself out.”
“Right,” Curt said. He leaned up and hooked his fingers in Arthur’s belt loops to draw him forward. He stumbled toward him, smirking but undeterred.
“Number two, you worry that the music is incompatible with sobriety.” Curt’s heart splashed into his stomach, gaze snapping to Arthur’s face. His mouth fell open, and he earned that damnable gentle look Arthur got sometimes. “There’ll be NA meetings in London, love,” Arthur said. “I’ll be there, and Trevor’s a good bloke who won’t parade that shite in front you. You’ve got more than four years under your belt, and I’m prouder of you than I’ve any right to be. You’re going to be fine.”
Curt let his face flop into the surface of Arthur’s belly, a solid flat expanse just now going a bit soft. He felt very tender about that bit of soft. When he closed his eyes, he could pretend that all there was was the smell of Arthur, his softness, his hands stroking through his hair.
“Number three,” Arthur said, voice an electric echo shivering down Curt’s spine from this vantage. The pause went on too long, and Curt closed his arms around Arthur’s hips to hug him close. Arthur cleared his throat like a clap of thunder through Curt’s innards. “Number three. You worry that you still love Brian.” Curt squeezed his eyes shut harder, breath gone stagnant and still. “That somehow, if you’re where he is, you’ll get sucked into his orbit again and get torn apart, because he can’t help it. You worry you won’t be able to help yourself either, because you think he’s one of your addictions too, and maybe you even worry that I won’t be able to help myself, but Curt—”
Curt reared back and yanked Arthur onto the couch. Arthur landed heavily on top of him and struggled to right himself, but Curt wrapped his legs around his hips and locked him up tight.
“He’d love taking you from me,” he said. The ragged quality of his voice surprised him. “He’d love to see us both destroyed after the stunt we pulled, and just for the fuck of it, just because he’s Brian. And you can’t deny he was who you really wanted, once upon a time.”
“Jesus, Curt,” Arthur said, propping himself up with hands planted on either side of Curt’s head. “I was a bloody child lusting after a pop star, hardly the stuff of true love.”
“I was a pop star.”
“How long have you been thinking this rubbish?” Arthur said. “Five years? Fifteen?”
“It’s not like that,” Curt said. “It’s just — I couldn’t blame you if you wanted a taste of the thing you always wanted, could I?”
“Curt, Jesus.” Arthur’s huff of breath passed over Curt’s face, smelling faintly of tea and shortbread. “Brian’s gossamer and smoke. He’s not even Brian anymore, if he ever was. I wouldn’t go near if I was promised a million dollars and this year’s Pulitzer. You and me — that’s real, yeah?” He pressed his pelvis into Curt’s. They were neither of them hard, but it wouldn’t take much. That aspect of their relationship had never been their problem. Fits of addiction, self-loathing, silence, and unfounded paranoia and jealousies — those had been their problems. They were getting better at the feelings thing, but at the end of the day, they were still a pair of emotional cripples raised by people who hated everything they were. It made sex the easy way out, especially when it could be such great sex, when they weren’t playing so hard at being old marrieds. But Curt never said he was too good for the easy way out.
Curt let his hands creep over the fabric of Arthur’s sensible journalist khakis, the ones that did nothing for his ass. He gave said ass a rough squeeze before sliding his hands down into his briefs and pulling his cheeks apart. Arthur grunted, and Curt felt Arthur’s cock harden against his own.
“Tell me it’s real before you fuck me,” Arthur panted. “Tell me it’s real before I let you inside.”
Curt tucked his fingers into the slit of Arthur’s ass and rubbed firmly over his hole. It contracted against his fingertips and Arthur choked on a gasp.
“You’re the only real thing I’ve ever had,” Curt said.
“This isn’t about Brian,” Arthur said. “It’s never been about Brian.”
Sometimes, at his lowest points, when the needle felt as good as the heroin, Curt wondered if his entire life had been about Brian. What a waste, he’d think, tearing himself up. But Arthur — letting himself have Arthur had never been about Brian, and he wasn’t a consolation prize. Not that first night on the roof, and not even when they met again five years ago. He’d always felt like an exception. A bright star that shone for Curt alone. His own personal taste of freedom. And in that way, he felt temporary, even when he whispered quiet devotionals in the swallowing shadows of their bedroom, even when he opened up around him and let Curt try to make them into a single beast replete with sensation and emotion. Maybe it wasn’t that Arthur and Brian were inextricably tangled in the pathetic map of Curt’s battered heart, but that some days, despite the Technicolor domesticity of strewn laundry, rough feet, petty squabbles, clogged drains and farts in bed, Arthur felt as unreal to him as Brian ever had.
He hoped it was enough to kiss Arthur instead of telling him all the things he couldn’t form the words for, things like I’m sorry I’m such a fuck-up and you were always going to leave me someday and let me keep you a little longer. Let me feel how you beat in my heart and always have. Let me feel like I have one person who knows me and stays, just a little longer.
He hoped it was enough.