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sheepsandcattle · 4 years ago

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Chapter 29

Today’s been a write-off. It’s 7pm and he’s been drifting in and out of sleep all day, curled up on the couch and feeling weepy about sod all. This time when he woke up, it was to Jordan lifting his head lightly, slipping onto the couch beneath him and placing Curly’s head back down onto his lap. Curly hums as long fingers bury themselves in his hair and Jordan leans back as he watches the muted TV.

Mad Men is playing, but Curly’s never known much about the show. Wouldn’t be able to follow it even if it wasn’t muted and he hadn’t just woken up from another nap. The picture the show paints of New York is a far cry from the one Jordan’s painted. Granted, Jordan’s never had much to say about it, but the few snippets he’s left slip haven’t been very becoming. Truthfully, whatever part of the city J comes from, sounds like a bit of a shithole. On-screen though, the camera pans over the city and Curly turns onto his back in time to watch Jordan frown at the screen, head tilted a little as he squints. He’s not sure how big it is there – how likely it is that J recognises what he sees. It’s mad to think that a show like this could be set in the same place that… Well. Made Jordan who he is. Quite a different example of New York.

“J,” his voice breaks a little, sleepy for no good reason. “What happened in New York?”

He’s got a good idea. Something about gangs. Money, maybe. OIUs. It’s always felt like a forbidden topic, even when Jordan’s been nothing but an open book. Maybe because Curly’s scared it’ll all lead back to the man’s mother, back to her addiction and how it ruined J’s childhood. How he nearly did the same to him all over again.

There’s a long hum as the man settles back in his seat, having leaned forward a little as he watched the screen, and pouts in thought as he looks up at the ceiling now. “Y’mean where’d I go to school, or why’d I have to leave?”

“Both. Everything,” Curly hums in return as Jordan’s fingers curl a little, tugging his hair just hard enough to have his chin tilting up a bit. “But mostly the leaving bit,” he admits, mouth tugging into a soft smile. “Y’got me.”

Curly closes his eyes, head aching again, but he can picture the way Jordan’s eyes trail over the room, absent in thought as his knee budges slightly under Curly’s head, about to start bouncing before the weight of him keeps it at bay. “Well,” Jordan says in an exasperated sigh like he’s about to tell the story of the origin of the Earth or sumet. “My mom’s boyfriend dropped us,” he says simply, and it’s nothing new, but he must know that Curly’s looking for more because he’s soon continuing. “He was a big name over there. Marc Coney. Gangs and shit. I guess I was too young to get it back then, and never really… Y’know. Tried to figure it out since I left. I know they were moving drugs though. A lot of ‘em. Half a dozen storage units on Staten Island.”

As the man speaks, Curly pushes himself up, twisting to sit beside him as he listens, knees drawn up under his chin as he leans sideways against the back of the couch. J tells him with an eye-roll, “he had this kid, Marco.”

“Marc and Marco?” Curly’s mouth twitches and so does Jordan’s.

“Yeah, I know,” he mutters with a chuckle. “Marco’s mom was Italian. Apparently, it made Marc feel close to her,” Jordan explains, clearly amused by the fact himself. “Anyway, Marco was a raging queer,” he re-aligns. “So, we hooked up, naturally.”

Curly huffs another laugh. “Of course.” He should feel jealous, he thinks, but the way he can hear an eye-roll in the man’s voice tells him it’s nothing to get hung up on. It’s Curly’s fingers playing with Jordan’s hair now, picking as choppy strands absently as he hums, “so, what? Did you break his heart or sumet?”

Another huff of amusement and Jordan’s shaking his head. “Neh, I could never,” he muses. “I worshipped that guy. Thought he was real hot shit. We started moving drugs together – mostly weed. Think I thought I loved him.” His face twists into a genuine grimace then, and Curly’s still not jealous. Can’t help but smile at the face he pulls. “Turned out I just wanted to be him. Or, I mean… The idea of him. This cool gang kid with tattoos and shady friends, sellin’ weed and scaring the shit outa anyone that looked at him twice.”

Curly can see where Jordan’s adopted a lot of his traits from. Wonders if he realises that a lot of what he just said is the person he is today. Or, a shittier, less approachable version of who he is today. He’s not sure saying that out loud will get the best response though. He’s also not sure it’s a fair comparison when it feels like Marco’s about to turn out to be an asshole and Jordan’s… Jordan.

“Anyway, we used to save some of the cash in his dad’s attic. He said he…” J shakes his head. “Whatever. We fooled around up there sometimes - when nobody was around. Got caught. By Marc, I mean. His dad.”

He looks like he wants to look sad. Like his eyes want to go heavy and his brows want to draw together like Curly’s seen only a handful of times. His shoulders slump, but the moment Curly’s fingers are brushing over his cheek, shaky like they always are, Jordan’s squaring up again. “So he just cut ties with you?” He knows it’s an optimistic outcome.

“He burned all the money we made,” J amends. “I didn’t know it was a secret—Or… I did, but I figured it was just… A little extra cash, y’know? For our work. Figured it wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“Well, you deserve to keep sumet, don’t you?”

“There was a couple grand up there. All the drugs we were selling were stolen -- I didn’t know. Marco made sure I kept my mouth shut, just said his old man didn’t like him getting his hands too dirty,” he mumbles. “Marco was gonna run, I think.”

Fuck, that must sting. Having that money right under his nose. Probably enough to pay off all the loans his mum seemed to be piling up back then. “Could have sorted Nick with that,” he notes as if Jordan doesn’t know as much.

The man’s shaking his head again, though. “Nah. I didn’t even know we owed Nick back then. He couldn’t touch us with Marc around. I had no idea. I didn’t care about the cash.” He pauses, eyes on the TV as he does that thing where he waits silently, tries to pull his words together before he dives in blind. His mouth opens partly, about to speak, but closes again as he goes back to frowning. Jordan’s right hand lands on his left side, and Curly finds himself reaching out too, brushing over the back of his arm, curious.

“Marco told his dad the cash was mine,” he mutters. “Then he said we were just… It was just a one-time thing. He was experimenting.” Jordan laughs then. Really laughs; harsh and sudden but short before his face is turning to Curly’s and he’s saying. “Shoulda seen him with a dick in his mouth. As gay as they fuckin’ come.”

“Yeah?” He offers a forced smile, isn’t sure if he’s meant to be laughing along. It’s not really that funny though, is it? Why would he lie about the money? Pin all the blame on Jordan unless he truly didn’t give a single shit about him. Even when Jordan worshipped him.

“So his dad told me to sit down on the ground, and he burned it all right there in the safe. We never locked it or nothin’ – nobody ever went up there. Think Marco just liked the novelty.” Funny how it went from Marc and his son to Marco and his father. How Jordan’s life in New York went from being protected by one man, to being destroyed by another. Or both. “And I did. Me, a fuckin’ idiot, just fuckin sat there like a little twerp, watched it all burn because I thought ‘fuck, if this is all the punishment I get, fine. Fuck it. I don’t need the fuckin’ cash,’ right? He didn’t wanna keep the cash because we’d betrayed them and we were a pair of fags stealing his drugs and selling them; keeping the money and fucking in his attic, right?”

He does this. His voice speeding up and his eyes welling up from the way laughter bubbles up between his words. Curly shouldn’t have asked.

“So I sat there like a bozo, and then once it was all burning, he turned to Marco and he said—” Another huff. A shake of his head and an out-of-place chuckle before he mocks the voice of his ex-lover’s dad, “he goes ‘get the bat, son,’ serious.” Like it’s a punchline.

“I shouldn’t have ask—”

“And you know what? He didn’t even have to convince him. Marco was such a fucking pussy that he climbed down from the attic and he didn’t even run – he came back with a bat and he took the first swing because his dad told him to. He didn’t run ‘til they got me pinned. ‘Til his dad had his turn and he couldn’t watch anymore and I couldn’t run myself. Then he got outa there. He.” Jordan grabs the remote from the arm of the chair, like he wants to busy himself but doesn’t commit. He points it to the TV for half a second before he shakes his head again and places it back down. “His car was still out front when I finally got out. Sometimes I just… I just wonder, y’know? What fuckin’ room he was sat in whilst his dad was beating me to a pulp in the attic.”

And the room falls silent. What had he expected? A funny story about how Marc and his mother broke up and, like his own mother, Jordan’s mum just wanted a change of scenery? Just didn’t like seeing that pesky ex-boyfriend Nick around all the time? What the fuck had Curly expected, really?

“How did you get out?” He asks in a whisper, scratching lightly at Jordan’s scalp as his other hand twitches atop the man’s arm.

“This guy, Danny. One o’the good ones. I don’t remember what he said, but he got Marc out of the house. Got me out of the attic and told me to run.” His head lulls to the side slightly in thought, no laughter left in the air now. “I don’t know how I ran,” Jordan admits. “Adrenaline, I guess -- and he met me in this park in Hell’s Kitchen. My mom was already in the car by then.”

I love you. He wishes it wasn’t sad moments like these when the words are closest to leaping off the tip of his tongue. J’s knee is bouncing again, and he lets it slide, watches it move quickly.

The sound of Jordan clearing his throat startles Curly and, when he looks up, J’s looking back at him, reaching up and carding a hand through his own hair. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’ve never… It’s never bothered me. I don’t know why…”

“It’s fine,” Curls is quick to tell him, tucked right up to the man’s side. “You can tell me anything,” he promises. “You can trust me with everything.”

“Can we go for a ride?”

---

They’re parked up in the same lot as always - in silence because Curly left his lights and music on for too long and he’s killed his battery. Again.

Jordan’s completely calm then. The minute they stepped out of the apartment, the visible tension in the man’s shoulders eased, and the fingers slotter between Curly’s loosened just slightly like, out in the open, he was surer than ever that Curly wasn’t going anywhere.

The images that fade in and out of Curly’s mind of Jordan in New York in that attic, under that bat… He knows he’s got no right to get worked up about it, having not even been there, but he can’t help it. All that shit Jordan went through and he somehow came out of it in one piece. Making an honest living and being a bloody good person n’all. Curly’s got no good reason for being the way he is, other than boredom and those silly bouts of sadness he gets over fuck all, and then there’s Jordan after years of getting stood on, still with the patience of a fucking saint where Curly is concerned.

The blond is digging through Curly’s glove compartment now as Curly says, “I’m sorry, you know.”

“Eh, why?” Jordan asks absently, still moving CD’s around as he shoots Curly a glance. “You ain’t gotta be sorry. Got every right to know shit. I’m sorry for acting like a bitch about it.”

“No, not that,” Curly stops him. “Well, yeah, that. But just. Everything. Sorry I’m such a handful. Sorry you had to be the one to sort me out. Especially after everything with your mum.” He chews on his lip for a second, gathering his thoughts. “I don’t know why I even--. It’s not fair. Doing all that shit just because I’m bored or… Or feeling sorry for myself over nowt. No bloody excuse for it.”

Jordan’s pausing then, frowning as he reaches out to place a hand on Curly’s knee. “Hey,” he soothes. “Don’t be like that. Listen – my mom never wanted to change, a’right? She loved that shit more than she ever loved me. You ain’t like her. You’re good. Right? And there’s no better reason for it than any other. Shit makes you feel a certain way, and now it’s my job to fuckin… Replace it. M’up for it.” He shrugs.

Curly nods, although Jordan’s back to looking through CDs, finally landing on a blank disk before he pulls out a pen. “I’ve done so much daft shit with no good reason for it,” he admits. It’s easy to compare his past to Jordan’s and wonder if it was just himself that had wanted to destroy his own life. He can’t help but worry that Jordan sometimes asks himself the same question.

“I think you could tell me every single one of the shameful fuckin’ things you’ve done, and I’d accept them like they were my own.” Jordan scoffs. “Y’got me all fucked up.”

And Curly has a lot of them, things to be ashamed of, but he’s not worried one bit by the thought of sharing his secrets with Jordan. He’s seen all of Curly’s worst angles already, and Curly’s seen him angry beyond recognition, restless and unreasonable. They’ve seen awful, disgusting, and disgraceful sides of each other, he’s glad to have been there for it where J allowed nobody else to be.

Looking over at Jordan, he watches tattooed hands scratch words into a CD with a dried-out biro. Jordan’s lashes flutter over his cheeks as he concentrates on whatever it is he’s sketching and, for the first time in ages, he looks so soft. No side of the man could scare him away when he knows this one exists just for him.

That’s sort of how he’s so sure when he says, “I love you.”

As if he’s not known for months.

Jordan lifts his head, those lashes flicking away from his eyes, all big and green, wider than Curls has ever seen them. He looks hopeful like he’s been waiting to hear it forever, brows drawn up and shoulders slumped as he asks, “yeah?” – in this soft voice Curly’s never heard before. Curly just nods and J says, “I love you, too.”

The CD’s tossed onto the dashboard and Jordan’s leaning over the centre console, one hand on Curly’s seat, one sliding into his hair, tugging his head back a little first, like he does, before he’s holding him where he wants him. He swears Jordan just wants Curly to see the grin on his face as he makes him wait before leaning over and closing the gap.

There was a moment where here, in this car, felt like the loneliest place in the world. Curly decides just then that, if the engine never turns back on and they’re stuck in here forever, he wouldn’t mind.

#defo typos in this but i rly wanted to post it because i need to get to the happy part pls #ch #ch29 #writing

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sheepsandcattle · 4 years ago

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sheepsandcattle · 4 years ago

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“I was like this amazing thing, like your special creation or something, and you don’t like who I am now.”

Beautiful Boy (2018) dir. Felix van Groeningen

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sheepsandcattle · 4 years ago

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Chapter 28

The morning after he and Brandon got the train back from that festival, Curly’s dad had decided for the first time to give him the talk. The “when I was your age…” and “I don’t mind you experimenting but…” talk.

“When me and your mum split up and I was living alone again, I used to have the lads over from work,” he’d told him as he pretended to keep busy by flicking through TV channels, like the conversation was nothing but background noise. “We’d do pills in my living room every Friday at the end of our shift.”

“What pills?” He’d been amused by the thought of it. Of course his dad had smoked a spliff or two, but pills had never even crossed Curly’s mind. He supposed it worked both ways, though – Curly had come home stinking of weed plenty of times, but he’d never dare tell his old man about the pills he’d done just a few days before that very conversation.

His dad just shrugged, instead telling him, “I’d go around the whole flat and turn every picture of you around.” He chuckled, forgetting to keep pressing the buttons on the remote then. “I felt so guilty – and then the next day I’d wake up and clean the entire flat top-to-bottom before I turned the pictures back around again.” The man chucked the remote onto the sofa behind him, letting a music channel play at a low volume through the surround sound. He didn’t look upset about it really; still chuckling as he shook his head at the thought. “It was daft really because I went to work every Monday feeling mortified, but then a few days later and I was doing it again. Ay – kept me on top of the housework though,” he pointed.

“As if you did pills,” Curly cracked up, this close to telling his own story, about how daft he and Brandon had been at that festival and how bloody mortifying but hilarious the whole thing is. But then his dad took a long breath like he was about to bring out the big guns.

“It doesn’t always lead to more, Curly – and I know you’ve got your head screwed on – but sometimes it does. You have a few drinks and smoke a bit too much and next thing you know someone’s offered you a bit of coke or whatever it is, and you’re thinking, ay, why not? Might as well try it once. And th—”

“I’m not gonna do coke,” he’d scoffed at eighteen years old. “And if I do, you’ll be the first to know. How’s that?”

***

“Fucking hell you’ve missed so much.” He slouches against the wall as he rolls his eyes. Lola is sat beside him on the mattress and she gives him a nudge and a questioning look, which he waves off.

“Yeah, well, you blocked my number for two months so…”

That’s fair. He did do that, didn’t he? But he’s making up for it now, filling Brandon in on all the shit about Jordan and Jules and his living situation – or lack of.

He’s had too much to drink and he was high on weed before he even thought about moving on to coke, but it’s 5 o’clock in the morning now and he’s sat on some bloke, Rishit’s, mattress, which is placed against the wall on the floor of his studio apartment. That’s probably why he decided it was a good idea to get talking to Brandon; because as nice as Rishit has been, sharing his drugs and his home and all that, he’s Lola’s mate, and they’re caught up in a conversation about a band Curly’s never heard of. He misses talking about music like he and Brandon used to.

“I found this dead good song,” he tells him just as some other fella whose name Curly has forgotten, crashes into the nightstand and sends the lamp flying to the floor. He catches it in time though and everyone cheers. “It—”

“Where the fuck are you?”

“Some bloke’s flat,” he says, attempting to watch the TV screen as his eyes repeatedly trail off across the room. “Let me tell y—"

Brandon says, “you’re getting high at some blokes flat after what happened.” And, alright, what’s he being so arsey about it for?

“It was two weeks ago,” he tells him. “He’s being dead funny about it. Won’t talk to me or—”

“You can’t call me after two months of silence and tell me all this shit, Curly.” He doesn’t sound quite so alarmed now. His voice is perfectly level and he speaks slowly but with a punch to each word like he’s trying to drill it into Curly’s head. Weirdly, it feels a bit like he is; Curly’s skull suddenly contracting as he tries to make sense of the sudden temperament change. “I have work at nine, I’ve got to go.”

“Wait—”

“Go home, Curly,” Bandon says over the line. “What happened to Jordan is—You should be scared.”

God, he really just doesn’t get it, does he? “He won’t let me.”

“When will enough be enough for you? You stop talking to me for months because ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about’ when I tell your dad you’re in trouble -” he levels “-and then you call me at half-past four in the morning to tell me one of your drug deals had your boyfriend in hospital, you’re homeless, and you’re doing coke on some lad’s living room floor.”

Curly’s just glad he never mentioned that he’s only doing coke to take the edge off as he avoids dipping into H again tonight.

“It’s his bedroom n’all,” he corrects, talking under his breath so as not to bring attention to the topic of their conversation. “It’s a studio – open plan kitchen and that. It’s—Hello?”

He pulls his phone away from his ear to see Brandon’s contact page glowing back at him now that the call’s over. The light burns right through his eyes and bubbles up in his brain, which aches suddenly from temple to temple.

“Was that Jordan,” Lola asks, passing a hardback book with white lines over to him, her movements disrupting the powder.

“No, it—" He blocks the book with his palm as he shakes his head. “Yeah... I’ve got to go,” Curly mumbles, pretending not to notice the confused looks he receives as he stands, wobbling a little as the blood rushes to his head, numbing that pulsating pain for a moment before it comes back as the room levels out. “I’ve got work.” Wait, no. “I mean I’ve…” Why’s he going home again? Something about his car? Oh fuck, his car. That’s where he’s going. “Jordan keeps calling, I’ve got ‘go,” he says pathetically, losing his train of thought as he walks in a curved line towards the door.

“You want me to come too?” Lola doesn’t look like she’s about to stand up when he looks back into the room from the doorway and smiles when he shakes his head and heads out.

***

“Where the fuck are you?” It’s the second time in about three hours that someone’s snapped that from the other end of a phone line. He’s on about 5% charge but he daren’t start up his car to use the cigarette lighter because he can’t afford to drain his battery. It’s the same reason he’s shivering in the back seat with one coat on and another over his lap– scared to drain his car for the sake of a bit of extra heat.

“In bed,” he gulps, mouth still dry from the long walk back to his car. He doesn’t think it’s technically lying. He’s got a pillow propped against the inside of his car door, ready to smoke another spliff to send him off to sleep. “R’you alright?”

“Fuck you.”

He watches through the windscreen as a lorry tries to turn the corner into the tight street Curly is parked in. He doesn’t usually spend the night here, but when he pulled into his usual spot earlier on, there was a group of lads there having a smoke around a few cars. At the time he’d expected to sleep through the night rather than getting high in the next town over, so he’d pulled away to find someplace else.

It takes him a second to realise what the man had said. “What?”

“I said fuck you. I’m at your apartment. No one’s answering the fucking door and your car ain’t here so where the fuck are you? It’s 8am.”

Ah, alright then, shit. Curly tries to wrack his brain for all the excuses he’s prepared for a moment exactly like this one, but he comes out blank. “Sorry,” he sputters, still searching for a valid response. “I’m sorry. I lost track.”

“Of what?”

“Just. Time. I’ve been out all night so—”

“So you lied,” Jordan scoffs through the phone. “See, I called that girl you know – Lola? She sounded high outa her mind but seemed pretty damn sure you left a house party a few hours ago with some guy I’ve never even fucking heard of.”

“What? No, no. J, no, I left alone. I—Do you really think I’d—” He’s not taken anything since he left that apartment but he’s still struggling to string a sentence together. Curly’s not so fucked up that he can’t remember walking home alone, though. He knows he did that. “I wouldn’t.”

“I fucking know you wouldn’t,” the man snaps. “So what the fuck is it? A deal? You’re hiding that shit now? I don’t fucking like being in the dark, Elliot.”

“What are you calling me Elliot for?!” That’s a new one – and it sounds like poison when Jordan says it. Bitter enough that Curly wishes he never told him his name at all. “I couldn’t drive so I stayed out, that’s it!”

“I came over last Monday and that blond kid said you hadn’t been there for weeks! You’re sneaking around!”

“I’m in my car!” He doesn’t mean to snap back – knows deep down that he’d be suspicious too. Someone in a house across the street flicks the front light on and he sinks into his seat as he whispers, “I moved out,” his words almost -almost- getting choked.

“What the fuck do you mean you moved out?” He mustn’t buy it, because there’s still a sharpness in his words.

“We had a row and I moved out, but it was stupid and I just—I don’t know why I never said, but then I was embarrassed. I’m saving for my own flat, but-“

“Idiot. Where are you?”

***

“Idiot,” Jordan says for the fourth time, sulking as he slouched beside Curly in the back seat with his knees spread and his arms crossed over his chest, jaw tense. “It’s fucking freezing in here.”

He doesn’t answer, just nods as he moves the coat from his lap, hands trembling, but Jordan shoves it back as he shakes his head before Curls can drape it over him. He opens his mouth like he’s about to bite again but then huffs instead before he fumbled his way to the middle seat and slides an arm over Curly’s shoulders. Pulls him closer just a little rougher than he needs to.

“Your lips are blue,” he tells him. Curly doesn’t respond because he refuses to bloody cry, and opening his mouth just then ought to do it. It’d only be from embarrassment anyway – this isn’t anything to cry about. “You’re such an idiot.”

“You’ve said, yeah,” he mumbles, eyes closing as the man rubs his palm over his arm in some attempt to build a bit of warmth. “Felt smart at the time,” Curly then explains before he gestures around them. “Then it didn’t anymore.”

Jordan just mutters, “yeah,” against the top of his head before they both fall silent. Cats are fighting somewhere nearby, hissing and screaming, but it’s the only noise surrounding them. Jordan bites when he speaks and glares when they make eye contact, but he holds him like he’s just scared of letting go. What a bloody mess.

The silence stretches on until J says, “I’ll drive us home.”

“J, listen—”

“No, you listen,” the man interrupts as he pulls his arm from around Curly, then moves to climb into the front seat. “You ain’t living in your fuckin’ car anymore, Curls. I can’t believe you--.” He huffs, shakes his head as he twists the key. “I’m sorry, a’ight? Sorry you’ve been doing this alone. Sorry I’m fuckin… Pissed off at you right now. You ain’t got a say in the matter anymore, though. You’re staying with me.”

Curly just sniffs in the back of the car, buried under two coats as he nods. “Okay.”

***

“No more bullshit,” Jordan says the next evening, rummaging through Curly’s stuff, fresh out of the boot of his car and piled up in the living room now. He’s picked up this box. A wooden box with brass hinges and a clip to keep it shut. Jordan flicks it open, looking inside the thing, and nods like he’s seeing exactly what he’d expected. It isn’t the poncy cologne that came inside it originally when Curly received the box a few Christmases ago. “You owe money?”

“Ey?” Curls frowns, legs crossed underneath himself on the couch.

“I gotta know where you’re at. Do you own money to anyone? Drugs? You in debt?”

“No,” he tells him, shaking his head hurriedly. He’s daft, but he in’t that daft. “Course not. No, I—”

“A’right,” J cuts him off. Doesn’t need to hear any explanations, Curly supposes. “So we’re done with this,” he concludes, before flipping the box shut again and leaving it on the table. “Heroin, yeah?”

“W—”

“How serious is it?”

Jesus, Curly feels like he’s having that chat with his dad again, about how things can get out of hand. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you, mate?”

He just nods, though. Lying doesn’t feel like an option. Explaining or justifying anything don't feel like options either as Jordan looms over him, empty arms crossed over his arms now. He doesn’t look angry at him. Doesn’t look... Anything, really. Just looks at him, waiting.

“I don’t know,” he tells him honestly. “I don’t always do it. Sometimes I can do other stuff instead. Take the edge off. It’s not… I’m alright without it. It’s just better…” Curly doesn’t finish speaking because, suddenly, Jordan’s not listening anymore. He’s making his way towards the stereo in the corner, where he loads it up with a new CD and hits play. Six Different Ways is playing as Jordan heads back to the table and lowers himself to the ground, opening the box yet again.

Neither of them speaks whilst the instrumental plays through. Jordan sniffs like he does as he pulls things from the box. Curly sees a syringe. Sees powder. Brown and white. Sees a thin rubber tube…

When Curly was thirteen, he tried his first fag. Only one that day. It was horrible at the time – just a rollie from one of the older lads on his block. When he got in his dad brought out a packet of proper cigarettes. He’s asked, “what are you doing?” - as his dad handed them over. Told him he’d seen him smoking with his mates, said: “have them if you want them.” Curly had cried and shook his head and told him he was sorry. His dad smoked one right in front of him and he didn’t know why it was so horrible, seeing his dad do that, but it was.

He later found out that it was their neighbour that had seen him, and that the cigarettes were his dad’s all along, who had been smoking in secret every time he took the bins out. He apologised to Curly a few years later. Said he was out of order.

“What are you doing?” His voice is small as Jordan stands and leaves for the kitchen. “Jord.”

He hears the tap running and the hob clicking. He doesn’t move though, just stays put until Jordan’s re-emerging from the kitchen with a spoon in hand. “There’s a place on Clifton Avenue that hands out sterile cookers for free,” Jordan tells him as he places the spoon on the coffee table. “You ain’t gonna need that, though. This is your last one. A’right?”

His last one. His. Okay… Because for a second he thought that Jordan might... Just to teach him a lesson... “Okay…”

“And the rest goes,” Jordan adds. “I’ll take care of it all tomorrow… Or you can leave it and start right now,” the man then suggests, sniffing again as he goes back to linger near the kitchen door, likely watching the water boil. Curls feels his fingers twitch, the harder he tries to keep still, the harder it becomes. If he’d have known it’d be his last, he’d have savoured the hit he had yesterday.

“It’s not really that easy, J.”

Jordan just scoffs. “Like fuck it ain’t,” he mutters and leaves the room again. From the kitchen he calls though, “you’ll be clean by your birthday. I’ll get you a job at the bar, ‘right?”

"It was never quite like this before. Not one of you is the same," is the line Robert Smith is on by then and Curly fidgets in his seat.

The thing is that he isn’t hooked on the stuff. No, swear to God. It feels good like weed and coke feels good. He feels its absence like he feels the absence of nicotine. Can go without it but feels better when he doesn’t. There isn’t much that makes him feel nothing but bliss. Nothing else in the whole world that completely erases every bad thing around him and leaves him lying in a hum of euphoria.

When he was thirteen and his dad had handed him that box of Sterling, Curly hadn’t wanted them. It was easy enough to say no to something he’d only tried once and gotten unlucky enough to get caught. His dad handed him the pack so Curly would realise just how little he wanted to smoke them. Then he smoked one right there on the spot and had Curly feeling just as gutted at the man had felt an hour or so earlier when Steven from next door told him what he’d seen.

He thinks about washing Oscar’s blood and vomit off his hands; in the bathroom with Dean as the man told him, “He won’t tell you, Curls, but that shit— You don’t want him to see you like that. It’s not fair, alright?”

He wishes he could say no now, even when the options J is giving him don’t really feel like options at all. Even as the man places a syringe full of sterile water on the coffee table beside a spoon, a rubber pipe, a bag of powder… Jordan digs into his pocket then. Pulls out a lighter, then a pack of filters. Tosses them onto Curly’s lap then walks away.

“This is the last one,” Curly tells him, leaning forward to finish the job. He’s glad for it if it means he doesn’t have to see Jordan’s face as he picks his path.

In the corner of his eye, though, he sees Jordan take a seat in the armchair placed in the corner of the room. Sees him prop an elbow on the arm and press his mouth to a closed fist as he watches, wordless.

He’s not sure why he’s shaking, but he is as he holds the lighter beneath the spoon, heating the liquid back up again and waiting for the powder to dissolve. It’s embarrassing. That’s what it is. It’s bloody embarrassing to feel Jordan’s eyes on him as he does it. But for fuck’s sake he’s not doing it because he can’t help himself, alright? He’s doing it because he’ll never, ever do it again. “I promise,” he says.

Soon the needle’s in the filter, drawing up the liquid. He leaves it on the table whilst he finds a good spot and ties off. It’s not until he’s picking it back up again that Curly looks at Jordan. Properly looks at him.

“Shall I go to the other room?”

“No.” The answer’s out so quick that he swears Jordan must have prepared for it. The man sniffs again, shifting slightly only to return to the same position.

“I-I’m sorry. After this, that’s it. Yeah?” Curly promises him. “I just. I might as well just do it, ‘adn’t I? One more time and we can bin the rest.”

Jordan mumbles into his fist, “you asking?”

A shake of his head and Curly’s attention is returning to the task at hand. He wants Jordan to tell him it’s alright. Wants him to say it’s fine, just do it this once and never, ever again. I don’t mind… But he does mind. Curls knows that he’s not getting the okay from Jordan really. Just getting a blind eye this once.

It’s just as he’s pushing the needle into his skin that Jordan stands. Just as he’s settling back into the couch, slowly nodding, that Jordan stands over him, looks down with his eyes glossed over, jaw quivering just slightly as he tells him, “you ever put me through this shit again, we’re through.” A droplet falls from his eye to... Somewhere. Curly doesn’t know. Can’t feel it. J’s hand grips Curly’s chin as he tells him, “can’t fucking do this again.”

He’s not sure, but he thinks Jordan returns to his seat. The music gets louder and, for the first time, the pleasure he feels from the drug is tainted.

#writing #ch #ch28 #who tf writes this shit #drug prep in this chapter and less detailed drug taking

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sheepsandcattle · 4 years ago

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Chapter 27

It only takes a day or two for Jordan to get over what happened. It’s not even a week later, all of them sat around a table on the roof of Hoax, that Jeff tries to get him talking about it. It goes the same as just about every time Curly’s tried to do the same thing:

“You’re weirdly chill about the whole thing,” he’s saying now.

Jordan shrugs. “It’s done.”

“Like… Weirdly chill,” Dean seconds, but he’s shrugged off too.

Jeff huffs, dissatisfied. “It’s been less than a week and you’re back at work, are you dumb?”

Nothing.

“I can see the thing weeping from here.”

“Jeff,” Curly groans, but Jordan doesn’t even react, just begins to stand. “That’s fucking minging.”

“Break’s up,” Jordan grunts and, just like that, he grabs his beer and leaves the scene; back towards the bar where he’s scheduled to keep pouring drinks ‘til two.

It started with him laughing it off. Curls had driven him home, decided to stay a night or two in case he bled out or plotted to kill the bloke who stabbed him or summet equally stupid. Jordan had said “you’re mothering me,” as Curly ran about making coffee and moving pillows and replacing gauze. “I ain’t dying, Curls. Give it a fuckin’ rest,” he’d told him, and laughed as he said it. He’d winced right after, loud enough for Curly to hear it with his back to him (still working on that coffee) even after he tried to cover it with a sniff and a cough. “We’ve got bigger shit to worry about, like if I should cover it with a tattoo of your face, or Joe Strummer’s.”

Curls had snorted, shaking his head. “You aren’t funny,” he’d said. “Sit down, will you? And stop taking before you hurt yourself.”

“Nobody’s ever told me I talk too much before,” Jordan mused.

“I’m serious, Jordan. Stop acting like you’ve scraped your bloody knee and sit down.”

“Stop acting like I’m a fucking bitch,” Jordan has snapped, shutting him up.

“How’s he been?” Dean’s whispering, like Jordan could somehow hear them from all the way over there. He leans over the table, engaged, and it gives Curly a better view of the man in question, working way over Dean’s shoulder. “Normal?”

“Arsey,” Curls tells him in a grunt. “Just wanted to laugh it off at first, then he started playing it down. Now he’s always in a mood and rips my head off every time I mention it. I just feel so fucking guilty, and I know I should. The bloke was trying to buy from me, but. God, I wish he’d make it a bit easier on me.”

Jeff shrugs to Curly’s right and leans over the small circular table in a similar way to Dean. “He’s not mad at you. Probably embarrassed,” he suggests. “You know what he’s like: stubborn as fuck. Probably plotting how to fuck the guy up.”

“That’s not funny,” Dean scolds.

“I’m not kidding.” The man lifts his drink to take a short sip. “He’s as prideful as he is angry, you’ve seen it yourself.”

This has Curly’s attention returning from Jordan at the bar, to Jeff at the table. “What do you mean?”

“Well done,” Dean huffs. “Get him freaked out about one more thing, why don’t you, Jeff?”

Truthfully, he could have guessed that Jordan has a taste for revenge. He remembers how Jordan had told him in a round-about way that some of his past rivals were still in the picture. Curly has never dared ask any more about it. All he knows is that Jordan’s a product of his past and he’s not the type to let shit slide because of it. Just a week ago they spotted Jules in the bottom bar and Curly had to talk J down for forty minutes before they could get on with their night – and that only worked out because Jules had left by then. All that over a slur – go knows how far he’d go to get back at the asshole that sent him to the ER.

“I know he has history,” Curly confirms. “He told me about the gang shit-" Sort of. “-but he left it all in New York. Isn’t that proof that he knows how to leave shit in the past? That was ages ago – before you pair even knew him.” His friends exchange a look. “What?”

“You’ve only seen his best side, buddy,” Dean says.

“I’ve seen him stab a bloke.”

“Protecting you,” Jeff corrects. “He’s done the same thing for less.”

He gets a hard shove from Dean then. “Alright, that’s enough, Jeff,” he says with a glance towards Curly. “Ignore him. J’s not half as pissy as he used to be. He’s probably just trying to move on.”

Curly’s scowling though, looking between the pair as he asks, “what do you mean ‘same for less?’ In Brockton, you mean?” Maybe it was naive to think his boyfriend stabbing a bloke was a one-off.

Just as Dean exclaims, “no!” Jeff insists, “Of course,” before he adds, “stop sheltering him, Dean, he’s not a kid and he’s fuckin’ dating the guy,” with a roll of his eyes before he turns slightly to give Curly his full focus.

Dean seems to back down, slouching back in his chair and Jeff continues; “Listen, I don’t need to tell you that Jord’s a damn fucking good guy. He’s one of my best friends and if I thought there was a secret of his worth keeping, I’d do it – even from you. But it’s no secret that he acts on anger. He was protecting you when he hurt that guy and you know he’d do it again to any motherfucker that laid a bad hand on you.” He doesn’t continue until Curly nods and he’s confident that he’s being understood. “-But he was also settling a score. They didn’t come out of nowhere. There’s this guy--”

“Nick,” Curly recalls. Tell Nick that if I see any of you again, I’ll fuckin’ kill you. He remembers how Jordan’s face had changed into something terrifying when he spat that out. How he wiped the knife clean on his pants like it was nothing. “I knew that already.”

“Did you know he’s dead?”

He forgets to respond. Curly’s stomach suddenly feels heavy; his head light, as the implications in Dean’s question ring clear. He didn’t know that. He attempts to remain passive, leaning back into his seat again and reaching with a shaky hand for his drink. Curly takes a long sip whilst he waits for Jeff to go on, but he doesn’t. He’s glancing at Dean now like he’s only just realising that maybe it wasn’t his place after all.

“Well done,” Dean says again, quieter than he had last time. “I asked him about it, Curly,” he tells him, now that their friend’s gone quiet. Jeff doesn’t look remorseful – he looks satisfied if anything, as he sits back and watches Dean speak. “He damn near ripped my head off. It killed him to hear that we thought even for a second that he could kill somebody. I believe him.”

“Dead since when?” He forgets to sound passive this time.

Dean shrugs. “Since... Brandon was here – that’s when he told us, anyway.”

“Look,” Jeff cuts in. “I’m not saying it was him. I’m just saying that he knew how and when it happened.”

“Fucking hell, Jeff, you’re not very bloody convincing,” Curly points.

“Fucking right he isn’t,” Dean confirms. “Curly, listen. Jordan knows a lot of people. That’s all. He doesn’t know how to let shit go. He gets the wrong people involved with his shit. You think we’d have sat there with him just now, thinking he’d m—” he drops to a hissed whisper. “—Thinking he’d murdered someone? We’re fucking clean. You know we’re not like that. And I know you know he isn’t either.”

“All I was tryna say is that he acts before he thinks,” Dean reason. “He’s got beef with a dead guy in a gang – do you get that? That shit follows you.”

“Bit of feedback mate,” Curly begins, hissing back. “Maybe next time, open with summet like ‘Jordan’s never killed anyone but..’ yeah? Put me at ease a bit.”

By this point, all three of them are leant in, talking snappily – not that any of them notice until Jordan’s voice is pulling them out of the tight triangle.

“Fuck’s up with you guys?”

They all jump back, reaching for their drinks at the same time as they mumble “nothing” and “nowt” like it isn’t too late to act casual. His neck feels hot, worked up from the conversation and anxious from having been caught.

“… Right,” Jordan nods slowly, rounding the table to stand at Curly’s side, where he leans a hand on the back of his chair. “These assholes grillin’ you?”

Curly scoffs, neck arched to look up towards the man. “You’ve got no idea,” he tells him, trying his best to stay loose as he smiles up at the man.

J mustn’t notice, because he gives a small smile in return. “Well you’re in luck; I’m here to save you.” Curly frowns. “Apparently I’ve gotta go home,” he then tells him, rolling his eyes, and Curly’s on his feet so quick that the blood heating his neck shoots right to his brain.

“Why, what happened?” his eyes dart to the bandage on the side of J’s neck, and it’s funny how quickly your mind can just drift from your boyfriend’s possible murderous past when his own welfare is in question. It looks clean though, despite Jeff’s earlier joke.

“Nothing.” Jordan huffs, taking a second to glance between the other two men as he confirms, “I’m fucking fine. We’re quiet. We have four managers in. They don’t need me.”

“Hey, Charlie,” Jeff calls to a woman clearing glasses off the table beside their own. “Is he ‘fine’ or is he talkin’ shit?”

“He’s talking shit,” she responds without a second thought, then points towards Curly. “Get the boy home,” she demands.

Curly gives Jordan a look, raising a brow as the man continues to look irritated. “I’m knackered anyway,” he lies. “And these pair are doing my head in. Let’s go.”

“Asshole,” Dean mutters, but Curly’s already ushering Jordan away from the table.

***

“Are you alright?”

Curly must have been doing a good job of faking sleep because Jordan jolts a little when he speaks, eyes leaving the ceiling. He’s been like that since they got into bed; just lying there on his back, breathing heavily as he stares up at the ceiling. Curly wonders what’s got his breath so erratic and his brows furrowing like he’s having a row in his head.

The man opens his mouth to respond, but Curly cuts him off before he can. “I know you are,” he amends. “I know you don’t need me to take care of you, but. Are you alright?” He reaches out to touch the man’s face, fingers sliding over his cheek when Jordan finally turns his head to look at him.

“You always seem so… Angry,” he explains, his voice dropping to a whisper as he asks, “are you angry?”

Jordan takes a deep breath before he rolls onto his side, a hand landing on Curly’s waist to pull him a little closer. Curly ends up on the edge of his pillow, but he doesn’t mind. Jordan just nods.

“At me?” Curly doesn’t mean to sound so woe. He almost hopes he says yes – better to be angry at Curly than the guy who hurt him, if his conversation with Jeff and Dean is anything to go by. “Because he thought I was dealing?” He’s almost coaxing.

“No,” Jordan mumbles. “Not you.”

He slides in a little closer, from the edge of his pillow to the edge of Jordan’s, who tickles his back with the tips of his fingers beneath the covers. It’s the most tender moment they’ve had in a week. “At that bloke? Rory?”

The man shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know.” His brows furrow like they had been as he stared up at the ceiling. “I keep replaying it in my head. I get so—” He shrugs again, his eyes cast somewhere over Curly’s shoulder, distracted by the thought.

“Tell me,” he whispers – wants to say help me understand, but he’s not sure Jordan even understands it himself.

“It was a cheap shot,” he says. “A dumb fight at a house party. He didn’t have to…” He shakes his head as he trails off.

It feels harsh, but Curly thinks maybe he might put things into perspective by saying, “isn’t it just the same as when you did it? To that guy in the street?” He gets no response. “Do you regret it?”

“No,” Jordan says quickly, the volume of his voice rising just a little with the speed of his reply. “That was different.”

“Because of Nick?” He hadn’t planned to bring him up – really, and when Jordan’s eyes return to him, it’s Curly’s turn to look off into the darkness beyond the bed. “Because of revenge?”

Jordan goes quiet again and rolls back onto his back where his breaths pick up again, just slightly. Curly’s not sure he’d have even noticed if he wasn’t listening out for it.

“I’m not trying to quiz you,” he tells him honestly, his knuckles sliding over the man’s jaw in an attempt to soothe him. “I want to understand.”

“So do I,” Jordan agrees, then goes back to gritting his teeth at the ceiling.

“Don’t try to get back at Rory.” The words tumble right out. “Please. He’s not worth it.”

Slowly, Jordan reaches up and takes Curly’s wrist in his hand. He brings his hand a little further up, to his lips where Curly thinks he will kiss him, but he instead just holds his hand there against his mouth, before he guides it away from him completely. Jordan drags his own palms over his face then, taking two long, deep before he crosses his arms over his stomach and asks point-blank, “when did you find out about Nick?”

He hadn’t realised that his request about Rory would hold such a clear connection to Nick’s death, but the fact that it quite clearly does for Jordan has his chest tightening up and his stomach hollowing right out.

He’s done the same thing for less.

“Tonight.” There’s no sense in lying to him. In fact, the second he responds, Curly feels lighter. He hadn’t realised how wrong it felt to have made so many assumptions about his own boyfriend behind his back.

“Dean?” Jordan asks, and Curly nods. “I didn’t kill him.”

“I know,” he tells him, taking himself off-guard because, although he means it, Curly’s not sure even he realised it until just then. “I know you didn’t.”

“Th—” Jordan’s breath hitches. It’s a sight Curly’s never seen before – imagined, even – Jordan bringing a hand back up to his face to press his hand to his mouth.

“J.” He feels pathetic as he searches for something to say, because Jordan’s—He’s crying, pulling in jagged breaths beneath his palm. Curly pushes himself up, reaches out to pull the man’s hand from his face. Jordan lets him but is following his lead and sitting up, hanging his head between his shoulders before Curly can try to catch his eye. “It’s alright, whatever it—"

“They weren’t meant to fucking kill him,” he says between heaving breaths. “F-fuck, they—Nobody—” Jordan’s holding his head in his hands, shoulders shaking but he must be holding the sobs back because he barely makes a noise. Curly doesn’t either as he tries to make sense of his words – or rather find an explanation that isn’t Jordan knowing about it all.

The tendons in the man’s neck are straining and Curly dreads to think about the state of the other side, under the bandage, or the pain it must be causing him.

“Okay.” He nods as he slides a hand up to the back of his neck and into his hair. “Do you know who it was?” It’s so fucking stupid to ask – knowing that kind of information is dangerous, Curly knows that, but, as he looks at Jordan like this, doubled over and gasping for breath as he cries into his hands, it’s hard to believe there’s no explanation that excuses his involvement and makes it all make sense. He’s left in suspense though, feeling more and more desperate as he cards his fingers through the man’s hair and waits for him to catch his breath and calm himself.

“Some guys from New York,” Jordan finally says. “I paid them to… Beat him up a little. Get him off my back – the guy’s been on me since I left the city. Seven fucking years, Curly. And if I— Boyd would have killed me that night, I swear he would have. You too.”

Curly can only assume Boyd’s the guy who got stabbed – remembers what Dean had said about how Jordan was protecting him that night, but he was also settling a score. Jordan’s words are suddenly so rushed that Curly’s taking guesses at the gaps he leaves – like exactly who Boyd even is. A connection to Nick, he’d guess.

“Why?” He feels so daft and naive by asking it, but, “what’s worth going after you for that long? What is it that’s so bad but could be fixed by killing you?”

Jordan scoffs. “Nick—” He pauses to straighten up, wiping his hands over his face and glancing briefly at Curly before he looks down at his lap. He doesn’t hide his face now though, just casts his eyes to his lap. “He used to… He and my mom were together for a while, I think.”

Curly had expected drugs or gang crimes or something of the like – not an old stepdad. “You think?”

“He—” Jordan shakes his head, sniffs. His hysterics are fading, and it’s almost like Jordan’s accepted the rest of the story. Has disconnected himself from all the emotion attached it his past. It’s just the present that he’s having a hard time with. “It’s complicated. Nick was an asshole. I barely even remember him, ‘cause my mom’s next… Guy, Marc – he pretty much chased him off the scene. But we owed him money,” he explains, and that makes a little more sense. Curls wonders what kind of boyfriend would give a mother and her kid so much grief over money. “Nick had a lot of enemies anyway. He was a joke but Marc was the real deal and he took it personally, so we were covered. But then, when things got fucked up with Marc… Well, we didn’t have any protection anymore.”

“So you left New York to get away from Nick,” he tries to follow.

“No,” he finally looks Curly’s way, seemingly forgetting the root of the conversation as he gets lost in the story. “Marc chased us out, he—” He looks genuinely remorseful now. “It was my fault, but that’s… Somethin’ else. Difference is, Marc only wanted us gone, but Nick still wanted his money, so we left, and he didn’t bother us for a while. And then I saw these two guys at the club one night; Boyd and Rick.”

“Was that them? In the street?”

The man nods. “I paid ‘em off as much as a could, but we still owed Nick… Fuck, thousands.”

Curly wants so badly to tell Jordan that there’s no ‘we’ – that he’s got no doubt that it’s Jordan’s mother that owes the money, and that Jordan just got dragged into it all, but then the man adds, “he’d have killed me for the sake of getting my mom’s fucking attention. She don’t even know he was around – I barely know where she is half of the time, never mind them.”

“So, you paid somebody to beat him up, like a warning? Where did you get that kind of money? How much would—”

“Just—” J shakes his head again. “The point is, I didn’t fuckin’ pay to get him killed. I just—fuck.” The realisation must dawn on him again, and something tells Curly that this is the first time Jordan’s really let himself take it all in. “I haven’t heard from them since – any of them. The guys I paid, Boyd or Rick.”

“Okay, so that’s good—”

“No Curly, it’s not fucking good because they killed Nick and I paid them! I—” He stops, snaps his mouth shut and arches into himself again. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I just. This shit can come back to me. So fucking easily. If they figured out who did it, they’d ask questions, it’d come right back—”

“But he has a lot of enemies,” Curls reads back. “You said that. Seven years is a long fucking time, J. I bet he’s got a lot of new enemies in New York by now.” Fuck knows if what he’s saying holds any weight, but Curly just talks and talks and hopes something sticks. “If anyone is questioning anything, I’ll bet they’re running ‘round in bloody circles. If it was them who killed him, it’s on them.” He knows rightly that Jordan has played a large part in it but— “he sounds like a fucking arsehole. He’d have killed you if you didn’t do it first. And me and your mum. You didn’t want him dead; I believe that, but he is and, love, it’s probably bloody good that he is.”

Jordan remains quiet as he lays back down. He lies on his side and Curly spots the orange-red liquid weeping through his bandage but says nothing, for now, instead lowering himself to lay beside him, pulling the sheets over them and hooking an ankle over the man’s leg.

The man nods, no longer looking away but instead directly at Curly as his fingers play with his hair. “I fucking hated him,” he tells him. “When I was a kid, he was...” Jordan huffs. “And now he’s dead, and it’s my fault, and I feel sick. I keep thinking of all the different ways I coulda fixed it instead.”

“Did he hurt you? And your mum?”

Jordan just huffs again, shifting until they’re sharing Curly’s pillow this time. “Stop tryna make me a martyr,” he tells him, hushed. “Don’t look for reasons to hate him. Let me be sorry.” Their noses touch as he closes his eyes, just a little too tight. “I am sorry.”

“I believe you,” Curly tells him.

It’s done. Jordan didn’t mean to do it. It was probably some freak accident where they guys went too hard -- if it was even them at all. J’s got a totally different life in Brockton. No visible ties at all. He pushes himself up again, eyes on the man’s neck again, too unsettled to start lying around doing nothing.

“Please let me change your bandage.”

Jordan hums as he gives a small nod. “Okay, once.”

One bloody problem at a time, he thinks.

#writing #ch #ch27

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sheepsandcattle · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 26

This chapter is a bit gory so beware!

“Hey, what the fuck do you want for Christmas?”

“Hm?” A spider is climbing up the side of the shed of whoever’s garden they’re in - one of those spindly ones that are so skinny you can see their dotty little knee joints. He can’t seem to take his eyes off the thing as it loses its grip every thirty seconds or so, dropping a few inches but catching itself with a web that’s too thin for Curly to see under the dim light that barely reaches them from the kitchen window.

They’ve claimed a garden chair each, somehow managing to sneak out to share a smoke while the garden is empty.

“Christmas. I’ve never bought for anyone before. Except for my mom, I mean, but…” He shrugs, dismissing the digression. “Ain’t got a clue what to get for you.”

For fuck sake, Christmas is coming up again. How the fuck did that happen? This year is lost on him. He’s not even sure if it’s November or December, honestly, but he’s not about to ask.

“Nowt,” he says with a shrug, taking a drag of their zoot and finally pulling his eyes away from the struggling spider as he leans over to hand the smoke to Jordan. “Never even thought about it. I don’t really want anything.”

“Well that sounds like bullshit,” He laughs lightly, pausing to take a drag and extending a leg to nudge Curly’s foot with his own. “C’mon,” he insists, smoke escaping him as he speaks. “If you don’t give me any ideas, you’ll still get a gift. It’ll just be a fuckin’ shitty one. Don’t make it hard for me.”

Curls mulls on this. He’s going to really fucking struggle this year; completely skint and no idea how much time he even has to make a bit more cash before Christmas comes around. As if on cue, The Darkness plays inside the house, the people inside all singing “feigning joy and surprise...” It’s bloody good tune as far as Christmas songs go but, given the timing, he can’t help but pull a face before the first line's even over.

“Maybe you could just do me a tattoo or summet,” he suggests on his exhale. “And I’ll find summet to do for you. Unless you’ve got your mind on—"

“No, yeah. I like that - it’s a good idea.” He looks genuinely pleased as he lifts a leg to prop his foot up on the arm of Curly’s chair. “You want another?”

Jordan’s nodding towards his hand, throwing Curls for a moment until he follows his eye line to the spliff between his fingers that's more or less bunt down to the filter now. “Yeah, go on then.”

***

Spliff 2.0 probably wasn’t necessary, especially since they smoked before they set out tonight but, now back in the kitchen and watching Jordan playfight with some guy called Scott that Curly’s not met before (but is pretty sure lives here), he’s still feeling clearer than he has at the last dozen house parties he’s been to.

They’d come back inside just as a small group of lads flooded into the garden and now, back in the kitchen, it reminds him of that night he spoke to Jordan for the first proper time, scissors in hand and t-shirt in bits and Jordan laughing at him and never even trying to hide it.

J’s laughing dopily as his mate gives him a decent shove and Curly's expression is probably similar as he looks on.

“Hey, you carrying?”

A bloke that looks vaguely familiar has slid up to lean against the counter beside him, but Curly couldn’t say where he knows him from. He’s looking straight ahead as if they’re gonna get nabbed for talking about drugs in a place like this, even after Jordan had said he’d spotted a bloke doing coke in the lounge earlier, before getting a spliff out for the two of them to share.

He shakes his head. “Sorry, mate.”

“Nothing? Weed, coke? Pills?”

“Not carrying tonight, mate,” Curls shrugs, still watching the man’s profile but with no better idea of where he’s sold to this guy before. “There’s a bloke here somewhere – orange top. I think he’s dealing, but—”

“Nah, nah,” the stranger interrupts him. “Your stuff's good. Yours is good.”

Somehow, he only then realises the man’s already on something, but his response remains the same as he shrugs. “Sorry,” and his eyes find Jordan again, who’s not playfighting anymore, but sending a frown his way.

He gives him the nod, which Curls returns, but this bloke to his left is bloody persistent, going on about Curly’s gear and J’s crowding his space within seconds, asking, “you good, pal?”

The stranger doesn’t even get to reply though, because Jordan’s mate’s followed him over and he’s shoving the guy as if a fight's started and Curly hadn’t even noticed. “The fuck are you doing here, Rory?”

He exchanges a look with Jordan, who doesn’t look any more in-the-know than himself as he nudges Curls with his elbow; a gesture for them to make moves – in record time too, as suddenly the two bickering men becomes a crowd of four as a couple more of the homeowner’s friends join the row.

He vaguely hears the bloke -Rory- say, “I’m just buying, relax,” and another bloke tells him, “you won’t find that shit here.”

“You know him?” Jordan asks now they stand at the opposite end of the room, Curly shaking his head as he watches the argument become a fight. “Oh shit,” J mutters when some of the lads from the garden re-join them, joining the fight as if they'd been waiting for it, and the herd of now-six guys go from shoving to throwing fists.

“Don’t,” Curly warns, a hand around Jordan’s arm before he can even think about jumping in. “It's not your fight. Keep out.”

Curly’s not sure who’s on what side, but that Rory fella manages to break loose for long enough to point in his direction as he shouts, “he’s got it!” - and Curls feels Jordan’s arm twitch in his hand.

“I fucking ‘aven’t,” he defends, although he's not sure exactly what he's being accused of, taken aback by how fuming the man looks now, glaring at Curly like he’s completely mugged him off. Even if he was dealing, he definitely wouldn’t be selling whatever shit this bloke is after.

“I’ve bought from you!” He’s red in the face now, and nobody’s throwing punches but holding him back – holding him away from Curly as if he weren’t talking like they were best mates a minute ago. “You and that redhead. I’ve fucking brought from you, you lying fucking junkie!”

“What the fuck,” Curly mumbles, shooting Jordan a confused look, but the man’s already snatching his arm from Curly’s hand and- “J, don’t—” he’s already drawing a fist back before punching the guy about four steps back. By the time Curly’s caught up enough to jump in after him, the growing group has closed up around Jordan and Rory, everyone starting up a fight of their own and leaving Curls to fight his way through the masses.

Someone grabs him, pulls him off to one side, and when he gets a look at the face, Scott’s raging as he asks him, “what the fuck are you dealing?”

“Nothing! Nothing, honest, all’s I’ve got on me is weed and I’m not—”

He still looks at Curly like he’s disgusting though as he warns, “don’t bring that other shit here.”

“Mate, I swear, I—” A glass breaks and it only distracts him for a second before he continues; “I don’t deal that shit – I swear I never have,” but then the rest of the room falls silent and Scott’s attention darts from Curly to something happening over his shoulder.

Someone shoves him from behind, sending him stumbling into Scott, and Curls almost apologises but realises the man’s too busy watching half of the crowd flood from the kitchen, rushing out of the house in near-silence and stumbling as they go.

“Dickheads,” he grumbles before he turns to pick Jordan out of the remaining crowd. All’s he can see is backs of heads though and everyone in the kitchen has gone quiet too except—

“Fuck, call an ambulance.”

He’s not sure who says it or why, but then he hears someone repeat Jordan's name and he can’t see him and suddenly he feels sick and his brain remembers how much weed he’s smoked and as he shoves through the bodies, the room begins to pulse around him and he doesn’t know why he’s got such a fucking bad feeling until his fears are confirmed.

“J,” he chokes when he sees him, lying on his back with a broken bottle by his head and his hands on his throat, blood pouring between his fingers. “Fuck, fuck. Jordan, you—Fuck has someone—” He looks to his left and the man there is on the phone, frantically repeating the word “ambulance, ambulance.”

He must look as useless as he feels when Scott appears beside Jordan with a dishtowel. Scott says, “move your hands, c’mon,” and he’s not sure if he even realised Jordan was still awake at that point, but the sight of his eyes half-opening as he nods, oddly calm as he moves his hands from his neck is a relief and suddenly he snaps out of it.

Curly drops to his knees and takes over, pushing the cloth to Jordan’s neck, unsure of where all of the blood is even coming from. “You’re alright,” he says, quiet now as he watches Jordan’s eyes close again. “J,” he says uselessly. “Oi, Jordan. J, open your eyes. Fuck, I’ve— Can someone—”

“I got it, I got it,” Scott tells him, taking over again as Curly pulls his hands back, holding them shakily and uselessly in mid-air before him. They’re already covered in liquid red as he sways back to sit on the cold tile as bile rises in his throat and his vision goes blotchy. “Get everyone out,” the man tells someone, and Curly screws his eyes shut and forces himself to get over it, shaking his head when Scott adds, “take Curly out back.”

“I’m alright, I’m fine,” he mumbles, opening his eyes again but training them down to where Jordan’s chest is still rising and falling even as he remains unresponsive.

***

In the ambulance, the paramedic had tried to give Curly one of those silly shock blankets. He’d snapped at the guy in return because his boyfriend was bleeding out between them, but then spent the rest of the journey apologising as a second paramedic tended to Jordan as best he could in the back of the van.

Jordan was passed out which meant Curly had to answer all of their questions; has he been drinking? Is he on drugs? What kind? And somehow the seven-minute drive felt closer to thirty and every bump in the road felt as lethal as a Staffordshire pothole.

“Curly.”

He doesn’t even look up from his hands. There are brown and red specks stuck under his nails, chipped black polish failing to cover the mess as he pecks it away silently. He’s shivering all over, his high long gone and leaving him painfully sober in the harsh plastic chair of the waiting room.

“Curls, I’m getting coffee. You want one?” Dean is standing over him, but he doesn’t dare lift his gaze from his lap. His shirt still feels wet against his chest from wiping his hands clean in a panic. He knows logically that it’ll be dry by now, but.

“I feel sick,” he whispers, shaking his head ever so slightly.

Dean’s shoe squeaks as he shifts, lowering himself before Curly until he’s kneeling in front of him. His friend places a hand on his knee and his convulsing shivers only worsen. The man says, “Curls, he’ll be alright. Doctor says it’s big, but it isn’t too deep. He’ll be alright,” he repeats.

“I feel like—” He swallows, shakes his head, shuts his eyes, but then darts them open when that image creeps up on him again. “Feel like I watched him die. I don’t even—”

“He didn’t die,” Dean reminds him, his hand leaving Curly’s knee. “He’s a lucky bastard,” he tries to joke.

Miraculously, he’s not cried yet. Too stressed to cry, probably. He dry-heaved in the ambulance, sure, but he put it down to travel sickness at the time, said, “It’s ‘cause there’s no windows – will you get that daft bloody blanket away from me.” He still feels about as close to vomiting now, but it’s beside the point.

He takes a deep breath, dragging his hands over his face and daring to raise his head to meet his friend's eyes now. “You don’t get it, we—” He swallows down the nausea that creeps over him. “He’s—We’re not,” he scoffs, almost pissed off at himself for making such a fuss of this when Jordan’s getting his neck stitched up down the corridor. “Jordan and I aren't just-“

“I know,” Dean interrupts, putting him out of his misery. “Jeff too. We know,” he tells him, and Curly’s not sure what to say now – almost says sorry until the man adds, “like I said; lucky bastard,” and ruffles Curly’s hair as he stands.

***

“I ought to bloody kill you,” he growls, shaking just as much now as he had been all those hours ago. The blood has washed from his hands, but it’s still stained on his top and the backs of his eyelids. When all’s he gets is a hum in response, Curly adds, “I’m so bloody angry at you,” but it gets all choked up in his throat and loses its fury.

The ER’s full of eery noises and harsh lights – all clinical and no comfort, which he supposes was effective in saving his boyfriend's life, but it didn’t bloody help with the panic attack he had when Jordan was taken into surgery. Dean just barely caught the end of it and, by the time they got a hold of Jeff, who arrived a couple of hours later, Curly was managing to string sentences together again.

He promised to ring them when Jordan was up, but they can wait for a while.

“Sorry,” Jordan mumbles, followed by a dry gulp as he shuts his eyes for a moment and suddenly Curly feels bad for coaxing a word out of him. J looks a little confused, eyes moving about the room before they return to Curly, where they dart to his stained shirt and back again. “That bad?”

He nods. “You better start thinking of tattoo ideas because you’re gonna have a fat scar.”

Jordan goes back to humming in response, closing his eyes as he takes a few long breaths. “You look sick,” he tells Curly, who scoffs as he tucks his chair closer to the man’s bedside.

“Worried sick,” Curls sulks as he rests his arms on the bed, the fingers of one hand slipping around Jordan’s wrist when he spies the man moving his arm as if planning to touch his neck. “Eight stitches,” he tells him. “You don’t need to touch ‘em.”

All Jordan has to say is, “shit.”

“Yeah, shit,” Curls huffs, and the room falls silent as J stares up at the ceiling like he’s still recalling the events of last night. “It’s not that deep,” Curly decides to tell him. “It’s big, but it’s not deep enough to…” What’s a nice way of saying instantly kill you? What was it the doctor said? “If it was a knife, you’d be dead.”

“It didn’t hurt,” Jordan tells him. “I didn’t even realise, ‘til some guy said.” The image of Jordan on the floor flashes in his mind; how calm he’d looked as he nodded and pulled his hands away, revealing nothing but thick, dark red. The man frowns, but a chuckle follows. “Fucking hurts now.”

Nodding, Curly forgets to respond as his eyes dart over Jordan’s face, who looks back at him, looking guilty now as he pulls his wrist from Curly’s grasp to instead tangle his fingers in the back of his hair. He mumbles, “c’mere,” tugging Curls to rest his head on his hip. “I’m fine.”

“I never sold him gear, J,” he finds himself saying, his neck feeling hot at the memory of Scott looking at him like he was dirty – a memory he’s only just now recalling, now that Jordan’s awake and telling him he’s okay. “Jules sells that, I don’t—”

“I know,” Jordan says before he repeats, “I’m sorry. That kid was fuckin’ tweaking or some shit. Wasn’t our fight.” He swallows again, eyes shut and Curly can tell it hurts.

Turning his head to press a kiss to wherever his lips happen to land, Curly mutters, “we’ll talk about it more later.”

Jordan’s already shutting his eyes and Curly bites the I love you off the tip of his tongue.

#ch #ch26 #writing #'wtf do u want for christmas' 'nowt' 'do u want another spliff' 'yh go on then' ROMANCE

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sheepsandcattle · 5 years ago

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Chapter 25

His fucking keys have gone missing and Curly feels like an absolute twat as he darts around the lounge in search of them - ten minutes after he set himself up to storm out of the building. Jules has probably nicked them, the fucker; stole his car again to meet with his bird who Curly’s not sure is even real.

As if he wasn’t pissed off already, and now this. Now he can’t even get into his own pissing car and drive off.

“I really don’t see the fuckin’ issue,” Jules grunts, flicking through his mail as if he gives a toss about brochures and overdue dentist appointments.

“You can’t just rent out my room when I’m not here, Julian,” he snaps. “It’s my bloody room!”

“Don’t Julian me. What’s the problem if you’re never in it? I need the cash, Curly, I—”

“I need the cash! We all fucking do!”

He digs around between the couch cushions, then lifts one to check beneath it. Curls bats Oscar off the other side of the seat, who’s been sitting silently throughout the entire duration of the argument - not to keep his nose out, but because he’s been trying for the past forty-five minutes to rewire Curly’s speaker - the one Jules’ fucking tenant broke. Yeah, tenant: the bloke who’s been paying to kip in Curly’s bed when he’s been at Jordan’s. Oscar’s hands are shaking though, barely even a day and a half into ‘sobriety’ and already showing signs of failure. The speaker’s not getting mended any time soon.

“I’ll give you a cut of the money, then,” Jules barters, opening the next envelope as his dirty boots scuff the coffee table. “Not a huge deal— oh, this is yours,” he mumbles and holds out the opened mail.

He snatches the papers from Jules, swatting him over the head with them until the man gets the memo and moves off the armchair where Curly proceeds with the search for his keys.

“Fuck the money, I want my room to myself, ta.” No keys under that cushion either and he’s becoming increasingly impatient. “You know Jules, you can be such a selfish prick sometimes.”

“Me?” He finally gets a rise out of the guy, who chucks what’s left of the pile off to one side as he straightens up. “All you fuckin’ do is take my drugs and clients and I don’t get shit for it! And now I’m making honest money and you can’t even let me have that? You’re the selfish one, Curly. Not me.”

“Funny that, because you’re charging me more for your drugs this week than you ever have. So how does that work, mate? Doesn’t sounds that honest to me.” He could make a jab about Oscar, is this close to supposing the inflammation has something to do with nearly killing off their flatmate last month, but Jules’ response beats him to the punch.

“If you weren’t off with that fucking psycho all the time, maybe we’d hang out like we used to and maybe you’d get my shit for free,” Jules argues, but he doesn’t get a response because Curly’s too busy gutting the storage unit in the corner of the room to respond. He pulls the drawer off the track to get a better look inside. Jules must be dissatisfied with this, because he adds, “how does that even work? You just woke up a fag one day? What the fuck is—”

Curly lobs the drawer at his head.

He hears Oscar go “woah, woah, woah,” but it’s Jules that he’s pointing accusingly at, who’s got a hand pressed to his temple, red in the face and fuming. He points at Curly next though, calls him a fucking idiot and tells him to sit down.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Jules is paying Oscar just as much mind as Curly is: none at all.

“D’you wanna call me a fag again?” He abandons his search momentarily, in favour of pacing across the room, palms shoving Jules’ chest and having him stumble back a few steps. “‘ey?”

Jules shoves him back. Oscar says, “come on, guys. Fuck. Let’s not—”

“Fag.”

He sees red; remembers for a split second how the same word had left Jules’ mouth in that alleyway, before Curly woke up with Jordan who had blood on his shirt, on Jeff and Dean’s couch. His vision’s blurred around the edges, pulsing in time to the pressure in his fingertips as they curl around the redhead's collar, and then he’s on his back and Curly’s above him, fist drawing back from a punch he didn’t realise he’d thrown, and Oscar is pulling him back so hard that he stumbles to find his feet again.

“I put them in the fucking kitchen, Curly,” Oscar shouts as he pulls Jules up next. “Your keys. They’re under the sink.”

Oscar must know that Curls won’t go for him again; he’s got it out of his system. Jules wouldn’t bloody dare throw a punch either. They’re all just stood there, panting, like the fight had gone on for longer than it had.

“Why the fuck would you put them in there?”

“You’re high.” He’s not sure which one of them says it, but Oscar’s hand’s not on Jules anymore, but are both on Curly’s face, holding his attention until he tears himself away. He’s marching into the kitchen and they both sound the fucking same anyway.

It’s just coke. He’s off heroin – has been for as long as Oscar has. “We’ll do it together.” It was his own idea. Saturday, in Oscar’s room right before they took their last hit. This is nothing – he’s driven like this before; could do it with his eyes shut; probably has.

He finds the keys in the cupboard drawer and slams it before leaving the kitchen. Jules and Oscar are stood side-by-side, one still catching his breath and the other with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m fine.” He sniffs, chews his lip - can’t feel it. “Wind you’re fucking neck in and stay out of my room—”

“You’re aware that you’re still a junkie, right?” Oscar says. Jules has learnt his lesson now, staying quiet at his side. “Just because you’re not doing dope, doesn’t mean you’re suddenly fixed.”

He eyes his bag, dumped by the door and waiting to be swung into his passenger seat for the two nights he’s planned to spend with Jordan. He thinks about how much space is left in there and how much he needs.

“Don’t get all high and mighty because you’ve switched to painkillers, mate. You’re just as bad. You know what?” No response. “I’ve got a better idea, yeah?” He nods erratically. “I’ll stay out. You can have the shithole – tell your foreign mate he can stay. I’m going.”

“Yo, hey—” Oscar starts as Jules calls, “Curly, c’mon. I’m just worried—”

Curly grabs the bag, heads for his bedroom and slams the door behind him and neither of them follows him.

As he darts around the room, packing, Curly quickly realises that only a fraction of his belongings will fit in the bag. He rubs his face, scrunches his eyes and shuffles on his feet as he thinks.

He pulls the sheets off his bed. That'll do – if he can just wrap all of his shit—

“Curls.” He hadn’t even heard his door open – or shut, for that matter, Oscar stood with his back to it.

“Fuck off.” He can’t be arsed. Doesn’t wanna hear it – can barely hear it anyway over that pounding in his hears.

“I take a couple aspirin a day,” Oz tells him, and Curly gives up on filling his duvet with his shit, his audience making him realise just how daft of an idea it is. Oscar leans against the door stubbornly. “It’s hardly the same as the amount you’ve been snorting, you—God, can you look at me a sec?”

No, he can’t. Can barely fucking see; his vision red and black and blurred, furious. “Please, Oscar. I’m telling you.”

“You were doing well for a second – better than me. You wouldn’t be this pissed off if you thought I was wrong.”

“Don’t even—”

“Or if you were sober. You not even acting like yourse—”

Curly doesn’t know what he throws -just grabs it and chucks- until the ashtray hits the wall beside Oscar’s head; barely even breaks; chips the paint on the wall more than it does the glass. “Fucking get out!”

Oscar’s so quiet -so still- that Curly almost says he’s sorry, but then the man is opening the door again and slipping out of the room. He turns back to the job at hand, shaking as he picks out the best of everything he has -clothes, mostly; everything else at his mum’s house or in his duffel bag already- then stuffs what he can in a second bag and swings it over his shoulder. He grabs his duffel bag on his way to the door and, as he lumbers it through the living room, Jules and Oscar sit back and watch.

It’d probably be a funny sight if he hadn’t just chucked a drawer at one of them and an ashtray at the other in a semi-coked-out craze.

He tosses his key at them and slams the door behind him.

Bet they think I’m bluffing. He shakes his head at the fact as he crams everything into the boot of his car. I don’t fucking need them, you know. He doesn’t. They’ve been dragging me down this whole time. Everyone’s said it; Jeff, Dean and Jordan - even his mum said it and she only met him once in the supermarket frozen food section.

God, he doesn’t need them.

Curly’s only made it about four blocks away when he pulls over. Not to go back -absolutely fucking not- but he’s so pissed off that his hands are shaking and he’s getting one of those headaches between his eyes that usually warn him that his nose is about to bleed. That and the fact that, for a moment, he’d let himself think about what it was like back in England, illegally driving his mate’s cars on quiet nights on roads they knew would be empty. Next thing he knew, he was on the left side like he was right there in Brentwood again.

He flicks his engine off for a while and just sits.

Jordan can’t know, he’s decided. Jordan can’t know because then he’ll ask him to move in and not only will Curly have to bring his stupid bloody habits into his home, but he’ll feel daft and pathetic and like a burden when Jordan’s paying all their bills and Curly’s not even got a real job on the go. No, he’ll sort it out himself. Get some money in and get his own flat.

He’ll sort it.

Maybe Brandon will move out and live with him. Yeah, that’d be mint, actually. He—

He hasn’t heard from Brandon in ages.

Fuck it, he’ll sort it all out himself.

By the time he gets to Jordan’s, his mind is cleared up from its previous fog and his headache has eased, having narrowly escaped the nosebleed he’d been sure was coming.

“You look fucking rough, sweetheart,” Jordan observes as he grinds a fag out on the windowsill. New Order are playing from the telly, and Curly’s not sure if Jordan’s left the CD in since Curly was here last, or if he’s put the album back on just for him. The man wafts the smokey air a little before he pulls the window shut. “You on a come down or somethin’?”

Curly’s still shrugging off his jacket as he says, “or summet, yeah.” He’s not sure he’ll ever get used to how honest and aloof J can be. “Had a row with the boys,” Curly then adds, deciding the Jordan can know at least the foundations of it all. “They do my head in.”

J just hums, crossing the room now and swerving around the couch to place a hand on the back of Curly’s neck. His fingers tangle in his hair as he plants a kiss on his lips before he takes Curly’s bag from his shoulder.

“Made coffee,” he tells him as he steps away and heads for the small bedroom. The catch on the door hasn’t worked properly for as long as Curly’s been coming here so Jordan just has to nudge it with his foot to open it before he chucks the bag onto his bed, all visible from where Curls stands in the doorway.

“You know you can just leave your shit here, right,” Jordan says as he heads back towards Curly again, who’s forgotten to move away from the door thus far. “I mean, you’re here enough. I’ll clear some space for it, save you cluttering my room all the fuckin’ time.”

“No,” he’s quick to say, shaking his head. Jordan looks taken aback by his haste, so he adds, “I mean, I don’t have loads of stuff - always losing shit, so.” He shrugs. No point leaving shit here when it doesn’t have anywhere of permanence anymore. Might as well keep hold of it.

Jordan hums. “Noted.”

He’s not sure where all that anger has gone. Still in his back seat with the rest of his shit, probably. He should probably apologise. Should he? To Oscar, not Jules. The ashtray was probably a step too far, now he thinks about it. Oz has been insufferably high more times than Curly can count, and never once has he had an ashtray breeze his head.

“Listen,” J grumbles, looking sorry for himself as he crowds Curly up behind the sofa. “I really wanna get out today.” The man’s lips press just below his ear as he mumbles, “can we go to iHop?”

Curly must be going soft because he feels so warm; loves that no one else sees Jordan like this. He doesn’t know why he’s suddenly feeling all overwhelmed, but he is, as he takes Jordan’s wrists and mauls the blond’s arms to wind around his own shoulders before he presses his face to his neck.

“Sounds good,” he says against him with a small nod. “Can you drive?”

“Sure. You alright?”

He just hums in reply. He doesn’t want to say that, despite getting here in one piece, he’s got a feeling it’ll only take all of thirty seconds of him behind the wheel for Jordan to realise he’s in no state to drive. Instead, he just mumbles, “head’s banging.”

“We don’t have to—”

“No, I could murder a milkshake.”

He calls Oscar on the way to say sorry, but he doesn’t answer.

#ch #ch25 #writing #In which Curly finds out Jules has been renting his room out to strangers when he's been gone #Not a fan of this one but it's been keeping me from posting for so long I need to get rid of it

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sheepsandcattle · 5 years ago

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Love you Curly x

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sheepsandcattle · 5 years ago

Video

youtube

Dom & Colson are Jordan and Curly’s last 2 (shared) braincells

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sheepsandcattle · 5 years ago

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This is Jordan

#i cant sleep #j

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sheepsandcattle · 5 years ago

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Chapter 24

“Curly. What the fuck?” Oscar chucks his cards onto the coffee table and crosses his arms over his chest, sulking. “You’re cheating, man. How are you winning every fucking time? Shit’s rigged.”

“Mate, spend a fortnight in the countryside with my dad and you’ll be sick at Blackjack too. Dead serious.”

Jules shoves his money over the table with force, but he’s laughing. Oscar hands over half as much money but tops it off with an eight-ball. Curly takes his winnings with a smug grin and crams the lot into the pocket of his hoodie as Jules re-packs the deck.

“No wonder you’re both skint if you play like this all the time,” Curly remarks as he pulls his phone from his pocket, buzzing for the dozenth time in the past hour.

He feels Oscar scowl at his words and raises his head again, cracking a smile at the older man. It’s good to see him having a laugh again - although the face he’s currently pulling shows otherwise. Oscar was clean for nearly four days last week, says he’s going to try again starting Monday, “probably.”

He pulls himself from his thoughts as he flips open his phone. His chest and neck burn up as he reads the message.

18:07 - got you alone yet?

So that’s a thing they do now. It seems so daft - like it could mean nothing, really - but Curly knows; can tell, ‘cause it always stars off so vague - so innocent until it isn’t.

It doesn’t usually start until later into the night (when he’s pretty sure Jordan’s in bed already and letting his mind wander) and they don’t talk about it – God they don’t acknowledge it at all when they’re actually together. He’s pretty sure J’s trying not to embarrass him -protecting his honour or something- and for a short while he was glad for it but, just recently, all’s he wants is for the guy to make the move that he’s too nervous to initiate. Heavy make-outs are mint, don’t get him wrong - but sometimes they go on for so bloody long; the banter between kisses becoming hushed conversations before sleep, whilst he wishes he had the guts to make the next move and Jordan stays well behaved.

All because Curly was daft enough to have said, “I don’t think I’m up for more than this,” on the night of their first kiss when Jordan’s hand slipped beneath his top.

Realistically, he knows Jordan is just waiting for the ‘okay’. Shame he’s too bloody awkward to give it.

“Curly!”

“Hm?” His head shoots up and he snaps his phone shut, leaving a half-written response waiting to be sent.

“We’re going out,” Jules repeats as he sets the deck of cards on the table, now packed back up in their battered box. “To Rooney’s. Coming?”

They must be having a laugh. Listening to some bloke kiss Morrissey’s arse until he’s too high to hear him? As if.

“Actually, I’m off out n’all,” he announces as he stands, phone already open again as he makes his swift exit to his bedroom.

18:09 - you will in 20. see you then.

***

The pizza box on the table only holds one slice now, cold and half-eaten as they lay across the couch; Curly on his back with his head turned towards the TV and Jordan stretched along his side. He’s propped up on one elbow as the fingertips of his other hand trace over Curls’ stomach, who tries to keep his eyes on the screen, but J doesn’t half make it difficult for him. He can’t help but glance down every so often at the shapes the man draws.

On the back of his hand is an inked image of a coiled snake that Curly recalls being Jordan’s own work. Yesterday, Jordan had told him, “I’m thinking about taking some classes. Maybe an internship,” over the phone; one of the last things he’d said before they hung up to ‘sleep,’ only for Jordan to text him around fifteen minutes later about how he couldn’t sleep because he was too busy thinking about…

Curly wonders if Jordan can feel his stomach twist before he gets the chance to push the thought to the back of his head. He feels the man’s eyes on the same strip of skin that he touches, but Curly doesn’t dare follow them now. He turns his head back toward the screen, willing away the images Jordan had engrained into his head the night before and replacing them with images of O-Ren Ishii instead as she says, “you didn’t think it was gonna be that easy, did you?”

But Jordan’s left hand is still moving, and every so often, his pinky finger skims along the waistline of his trousers -the plaid ones that he liked so much before- and Curly find himself turning to meet his eyes, his chin jutting up as if to say, ‘go on then.’

Jordan’s lips are on his without the need for clarification, leg between Curly’s thighs and tongue between his teeth. This they’re familiar with; kissing and nothing more. Jordan was quick to accept the line Curly had drawn, too bloody patient for their own good.

Tonight though, he’s still wired from last night’s conversation, still trying and failing to shake the mental images, and now Jordan’s hand is feeling over his chest, and the outside of his thigh is pressed to the inside of Curly’s. He doesn’t even think about it before he’s lifting his hips, fingers tangled in the man’s hair to keep his tongue pressed alongside Jordan’s as he presses himself against him.

Something happens in his throat, forcing him to swallow at the feeling he didn’t realise would be so pivotal in this, and when he abandons the kiss, Jordan nips his lower lip, dragging it out a little before he releases it and draws back to catch his eyes.

He wants to say ‘okay,’ or, ‘please,’ or, ‘yes, I realise what I did and yes I want to do it some more,’ but he can’t for the life of him find the nerve to articulate it, so he just pulls him back in again, drags his tongue over Jordan’s lips and moves his hips up against him again.

Jordan must understand, because he’s groaning then, in a way that could be half-exaggerated before he mumbles, “you have no idea,” into his mouth and is grinding back, angling and pressing against him in a way that’s even better than before.

One of his hands has wondered over the man’s spine and he feels his lower back flex as he rolls against him. Curly’s not sure if it’s the sensation or the concept of it all, but the same arousal that’s got his breath catching in his throat also has his lips falling part-open, Jordan licking into his mouth until he trails over Curly’s jaw instead.

He whispers something against his neck, but Curly can’t hear it so much as he feels it, too distracted as Jordan curls a hand behind his knee and pulls his leg up to hook over his hip as heavy breaths fall between the mystery words.

Their groins are pressed together still, but only for a moment before Jordan pulls back once again, and Curly nearly chases his lips, but then his eyes follow where Jordan’s gaze has landed. His top is bunched up above his chest and Jordan’s hand is dragging over his trousers now, over that plaid pattern that he’s taken such a liking to.

He watches Jordan’s hand as his fingers wander over the front, where the zipper breaks the pattern that’s already stretched tightly over—

He’s not used to seeing himself like this; not in comparison to his bedroom; pitch black save from the light from his shit Toshiba, headphones in as the presence of his flatmates at the other side of his door loom over him, and covered by his sheets from the waist, down, because it’s all just a bit embarrassing, ain’t it?

Jordan’s fingers splay over him and he looks up for the ‘okay,’ which Curly gives him in the form of a nod, followed by a shuddered breath when the palm presses against him and Jordan moves to return his mouth to Curly’s, who gasps at the feeling of the man rubbing him through the fabric, just for a short while before his fingers catch his fly and he pulls.

They fall back into it again, the kissing, and Curly forgets to be embarrassed, just for a few seconds and only every so often, just long enough to push himself up into Jordan’s hand. The man manages to pull the article away and suddenly Curly’s stuttered breaths are becoming muffled wines as a hand slides into his underwear, where a warm palm is wrapping around his length and stroking.

“F--” is just about all he manages as Jordan touches him. He lets his head fall back, panting up at the ceiling as the man’s mouth trails over his body, moving from one tattoo to the next like he’s just now piecing it all together; what he’s been missing.

He’s not sure at which point Jordan gets rid of his boxers, but by the time Curly’s screwed his head back on, they’re gone too and there’s that laugh - that short puff of breath he lets out whenever he catches himself being vulnerable; when he can’t quite bring himself back from it. Jordan drags a hand over his face, mouth parted loosely and leaving Curly with uneven breaths as the other hand lingers just close enough to have his hips fighting to twitch against his better judgment. Jordan mutters, “Jesus,” as he shakes his head. Shakes himself out of it.

“What?” Curly’s not concerned really, not with that faint smile that Jordan’s still wearing when Curly’s braves a glance between them.

Jordan shifts backwards on his knees, nudging Curly’s leg until he’s forced to lower his foot to the ground. He leans over his lower half now, one arm hooked beneath the leg still bent at his side. He attaches his mouth to Curly’s hip, follows the bone to where his thigh ends and the pale skin fades into a hollow.

It’s daft to feel this kind of suspense, he reckons, trying to calm himself as he lets his head rest back again, eyes shutting and breath shuddering at the first hint of Jordan’s mouth on him. His hand winds around the forearm that Jordan has rested over his waist as the man wraps his fingers around the base and slides his lips over the head.

“Jesus,” he whispers before he can catch himself, Jordan’s mouth vibrating so slightly as he hums around him –‘I told you so’- but enough to pull a gasp from Curly. He’s shuddering again as Jordan sucks the head, licking over him before he’s sliding down, mouth hot and tongue smooth over his length and he holds it – stays there as his free hand slips between his legs, a little further back where he cups, rubs, has Curly moaning, no idea when he even opened his mouth again.

He’s usually quiet when he’s alone but, as his fingers grip Jordan’s hair, feels his head move in his lap, the groans that fall from him make it even better somehow.

Curly hears Jordan catch his breath every so often when he draws back to suck on the head and the erratic intakes are just about the best sounds he’s ever heard – that is until Jordan pulls off entirely, hisses, “fuck, Curly,” against him, the words chased by what he swears is a moan. His mouth trails down, over the base of his cock, replacing the hand that moves from his balls to stroke his length instead.

He feels a little helpless, fumbling for words but only breathing instead, only a whispered, “yeah, shit,” escaping him this time.

Jordan breathes heavily now, only sucking when he isn’t blowing hot puffs of air against his skin. It’s like Curly’s brain finally retunes itself as he uses one elbow to push himself up, losing his own breath as he sees the scene that’s been playing out right under his fucking nose this whole time.

He thinks ‘what a waste,’ as he takes in what he’s been missing out on; Jordan’s mouth working over him, one hand stroking Curly as the other disappears somewhere underneath himself. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put the pieces together: Jordan’s gaze, fixed on him now, along with the rough breaths -near-moans- that escape him.

He’s groaning as he touches himself, mouth pressed to wherever it can reach, warm breaths chasing his tongue. Curly would pipe up, but ‘fit’ is the only word that comes to mind and he’s not sure it holds enough weight.

As he pulls away, his eyes leave Curly’s in favour of watching his hand work, pumping his dick a little faster now and Curly fails to swallow his moan again this time. He tugs his hair a little because he really fucking wants to kiss him. Jordan defies the gesture though, eyes sliding shut as his mouth returns to the head of his cock and he hollows his cheeks as he sucks the tip.

Curly’s insides feel hot and twisted, an ache swelling over his spine.

“J,” he whines - doesn’t mean to whine; means to whisper. “Shit J, so close.” He can’t bring himself to lay back again now, watching the muscles of Jordan’s shoulder shift as the hand hidden beneath him strokes over his own dick.

Curly’s in the process of pulling his lower lip into his mouth to silence himself, but a gasp of “keep going,” halts the action before he even has the sense to stop himself.

J must pulls his hand from himself, because it slides over his stomach then, over his chest and neck until Jordan’s thumb’s pressed to his lips, palm splayed over his cheek.

Yeah, Jordan’s definitely done this before.

As Curly’s lips part, the man pulls away from his dick, pumping with his other hand just to get another glimpse of him, eyes half-lidded and chest heaving as he sucks Jordan’s thumb into his mouth. He’s just about conscious enough to find himself closing his eyes under the man’s gaze.

“You’re so fucking gorgeous. Fuck,” Jordan rasps, presumably still watching him because Curly’s squirming from his hand alone now. “Wanna see you come.” Of course, he’s not shy of dirty talk. Curls should have fucking known that but it takes him off guard and his neck grows hotter.

Jordan’s mouth is back on him then, smoother than ever as he sinks straight to the base, holds the length of Curly’s cock in his throat, then pulls back up again to get a steady rhythm. And Curly can fucking hear it. It’s wet and messy and fucking hot as the man swallows around him, using his hand to squeeze the base below the heat of his lips.

Curly’s meant to warn him, he thinks, but Jordan hums like he’s trying to say something before pressing his tongue to the head, rubbing over it just fucking right, lips still tight around him. It aches along the pit of his stomach and between his legs until Curly’s coming in waves as his hips stutter and his fingers tighten on the back of Jordan’s head, mouth slack as the man’s thumb smears over his chin.

Jordan stays there, sucking lightly now as Curly swallows down wines, hips twitching until his lips slide away. As he eases off, Jordan’s hand remains, just barely moving as Curly’s hips settle back down onto the couch and his breaths begin to even out.

J crawls back over him and his lips are prying Curly’s apart in a messy kiss, dominated by tongues as he moans into his mouth.

“Curls,” he shudders, his hand taking Curly’s and guiding.

Fuck knows why he’s taken aback by the feel of Jordan hard under his palm, but he feels his stomach twist pleasantly at the thought of it as he pushes himself to straighten up. He slips his hands beneath Jordan’s boxers and wraps his fingers around his length, pulling a long groan from the man.

J’s big on watching, he finds, as the man withdraws from the half-kiss in favour of watching Curly’s face, then his hand and then back again. He doesn’t know how long Jordan was touching himself for, but he’s worked up already, low moans escaping him as Curly’s thumb rolls over the slit of his cock.

He says, “that’s it,” within another groan and his hand’s in Curly’s hair now, tugging his head back a little like, even with the roles reversed, he’s guiding where this goes. He comes over Curly’s wrist with his mouth on his jaw.

When they break, Jordan’s hand remains in the curls at the back of his head, arm resting on Curly’s shoulder as he tugs his fingers through the strands.

They watch on-screen Uma Thurman staggering and wheezing in the snow, but he can’t hear her breaths over his own or Jordan’s. He doesn’t realise that he’s watching the screen to avoid eye contact, doesn’t realise that he’s suddenly self-conscious until both of J’s hands are on his jaw and turning his head back to face him.

He doesn’t say anything, eyes lingering on Curly’s for a long while, darting but never leaving until they drift over his face. His lower lip’s already wet when he darts his tongue over it before dragging it between his teeth.

“You’ve definitely done that before.” He doesn’t know what else to say.

Jordan chuckles, nods. “You haven’t.” His voice rasps in its half-whisper.

And that’s not a secret - hence how patient J’s been. Hence how content he always is to lead - guide. Still though, Curly wants to know, “is it that obvious?”

“Only by the look on your face.”

Curly’s baffled. Not two minutes ago he got his first blowy and now he’s creasing at Jordan while Uma Thurman gets her head kicked in on the telly.

#writing #ch #ch24 #Sorry this isn't very sexy lol it's Curly's first time and he has a lot of thoughts please give him (me) a break

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