Tomas buries his face in Marcus’ hand, his lips to Marcus’ palm.
Marcus feels the words against his hand more than he hears them. “It’s all I see. When I look at you,” Tomas says. He brings his hand, the one that isn’t clasping Marcus’ thigh, too high, too close, and cups Marcus’ hand with it. Marcus doesn’t breathe. Tomas kisses Marcus’ palm. “I can’t forget. I am sorry. I’ve tried so hard.”
Marcus doesn’t know what to say. There’s nothing to say. Everything that was hot before is cold, not iced, not frozen, just lukewarm, just numb. His blood is not blood but water. Tomas opens his eyes, and they are wet with tears. “If there were—maybe—a different memory. Something else that I could see. That I knew was you.”
Did you really think he’d ever want you?
“Is that what you want?” Marcus asks through numbed lips.
“No,” Tomas says. “But I’ll take what I can get.”
Tomas is drunk. Marcus is drunk. They’re both drunk, and this is Marcus' fault.
When Marcus takes his hand back, Tomas doesn’t let him go. So Marcus shakes Tomas off. “Get up,” Marcus says. And Tomas gets up, and Marcus walks past him, out of the booth, into the bar where suddenly the music is as loud as it was before, and the people on the other side of the building are a dozen chaperones, and Marcus is a piece of shit old man who deserves God’s indifference. “I’m going to take a piss,” he says. “When I get back, we should head back to the house.”
He doesn’t look at Tomas. He doesn’t wait for an answer.
When he gets back, the booth is empty, and Tomas is waiting by the door with his coat on, and his hat is pulled down low, and they don’t look at each other, and they don’t speak, and they don’t touch, not once, as they stagger down the street, far enough apart that they may as well have been alone.
ТВОЮ МАТЬ.
Обнять и плакать. Этот фик из меня всю душу вынет.