#anyway this new revised au is living in my head rent free and that's very sexy cash money of me to write asbout

[partyinthemysterymachine]

Harry + betrayed (looks at a&s au stuff like :3c)

looks at you like 🔪

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Every time the mug came out of the steaming hot dishwasher, Harry clasped it in both hands. The ceramic was always scalding, and his palms always threatened to blister. Clouds reeking of dishwasher detergent lifted and swept over his forearm, humid as a summer’s stifling rain, its pungency sickening his heart. 

He hated to wash this mug. 

Bright and early at six o’clock every morning, Harry made coffee. It steeped dark and bitter, just how they liked it. The first pour went into his mug; the second filled his own. Then both were taken to the small, round table in the corner of their kitchen. Harry set the mug down on the wood itself to the right of the round, rattan woven placemats they’d found in a bargain bin at Williams-Sonoma. Harry’s coffee went on the placemat itself, edging the rim, at his left.

How charming it was to have their mugs across from each other like that. He always liked how they seemed to be having a conversation through the coffee’s dissipating flames of white steam. As they drained their caffeine and burned their throats, the heat shocking their stomachs, they’d talk. 

Talking didn’t necessarily mean words were used. No, words weren’t his forte, though he relished every sound that rolled off his tongue. He spoke with his face and through his hands, and if Harry ever had his way, he’d spend the hours morn to midnight simply gazing at his face.

Two hours later, Harry stood and took the cold, untouched mugs to the sink. Down the drain went the wasted coffee, dumped out at the same time. A swish of water from the faucet did a quick and fine job of cleaning them out, and Harry’s went, dripping, onto the counter. Then he ran the water again to piping hot, abusing skin rough and chapped from this daily ritual of cleaning, cleaning out his ice cold coffee, cleaning, cleaning out the dots of mold he’d let grow for two weeks because he couldn’t let that go, cleaning, cleaning out that damn spot, that damn spot, that damn spot.

The mug was as hot as it was when it came out of the dishwasher, and Harry clasped it in both hands. His teeth tried to send their roots into his skull with his jaw clamped like that, and he wished his tongue, sucked hard to the roof of his mouth and tastebuds rough as sandpaper, would swell and choke him. Every time it didn’t, which was every morning, every single morning for the past three years, Harry called it betrayal.

His kiss held tender on the warm rim. It was the last place his lips had laid where Harry could kiss him, for he couldn’t kiss his own cheek. Like every morning, his eyes slipped closed and he thought of their daily coffee date at their kitchen table. Autumn was in full golden, fiery bloom. People swarmed to Vermont to lose their breath to the vast garden of nature’s heavenly, untamed wildfire that never burned. 

Every single fucking morning it was autumn again, the mug had been scorching hot, then chilly, the phantom pressure of his kiss lingered on his cheek, and Harry tried to kiss him back too on ceramic that had been the last tangible thing to experience his lips.

Today, he set the mug down on the counter alongside the one in its puddle. The water brimmed its mismatched mate immediately and would leave an incomplete circle in its wake after Harry would take it up and wrap it in a soft towel. That puddle would dry on its lonesome over the course of as many minutes; Harry wrapped up his personal mug, too.

Remaining coffee got poured and locked in a thermos. They were placed in the coveted seat beside the driver’s - shotgun! one’s supposed to yell to reserve it for themselves - tucked safely behind a plain old box. 

The ignition chittered on. Rancid boomed and rattled the Jeep’s speakers. Harry absently wiggled the shiny, custom-made Magic Eight Ball fortune teller stick shift knob. He glanced down. ‘It is decidedly so,’ promised the triangular face washed behind blue, its text pressed on the circular window. 

A draw; and exhale. The YJ Wrangler shifted into gear, easing back out of the driveway, Harry’s arm slung around the shotgun seat and head turned to watch over his shoulder as he safely maneuvered to their personal gravel road leading to and from their remote, comfortable Vermont hideaway.

It’d probably take five, six hours, give or take, to get to Maine. He was looking forward to their coffee date. Five out of the seven days of the week Harry drove to Maine to hang out on the shore of Toluca Lake. Coffee was served into their mugs; he kept his at his side, and his tucked into the sand and mud at the water’s breach. 

Sometimes he’d talk, update his husband on his books, their daughter, the latest news that did and didn’t matter. Other times he’d sit in silence, listening and watching the new face of a man he loved. Harry was there in rain, sleet, and snow. He’d all but frozen his ass off before out there and sweated buckets in the heat. But they had their spot, and that’s where he’d always sit.

Silent Hill rested to the south. They took a vacation there once. Harry hates how it looks out across Toluca. Take your fucking eyes somewhere else, he regularly thinks. Don’t fucking look at him.

It oversees. One day, Harry’s promised five days out of the seven in the week, he’s going to tear that town asunder by his own bare hands. 

Tomorrow might be that day. Harry rises to his feet. It is decidedly so. He fetches the Jeep’s constant tenant for the last three years. It is decidedly so. 

“I hope you liked your coffee, honey,” he says to the lake lapping at his boots as he wades into snapping cold. “So, I asked the eight ball if I’d see you today,” Harry Mason offhandedly tells his husband residing in the lake. “Guess what it said? ‘It is decidedly so.’ Take that as you will. I know you know what I’ve planned to do, honeylove. Don’t get up in my tits about it,” warns the older man, now appropriately submerged mid-chest. “I’m not gonna do it today. Doesn’t feel right. But I thought it’d be nice to see you, anyway.”

“So you’re wondering why I brought the box in with me? Well, I’m glad you asked! For one, I fixed it up and made it waterproof,” he smirks, cradling it in his arm and popping it open. “And two.. c’mon, now. You know I’d lose these if I didn’t keep ‘em in here.”

Two pendants, no bigger than his thumbnail, each on their own thin chain, dangled just skimming the water’s surface. Two pendants, amber and glinting, somehow even in the thick grey mist rolling in from Silent Hill. “Check these out. I got ‘em made a few months ago and I’ve just now had the balls to bring ‘em out. It’s because the eight ball said I’d see you today. So.. here. One of them’s for you. I figure you can make yours glow in there, firefly. You have a knack for lightin’ up the dark.”

Harry chuckles, wagging his head back and forth, mocking himself. “Yeah, yeah, mushy, whatever, I’m a dork. Thbhtghbh. What’re you gonna do, divorce me? Shoulda thought about that before you went fishing, babe.” He collects the chains and their sculpted fireflies into his fist. One kiss is enough for both. Then he smiled, looked into the lake, and felt comforted by the thought that that sweet, pale man with yellow wheat field hair was watching him.

Projection is a very real, very psychedelic thing, for sometimes, Harry thinks he can see his face.

The water sways around his wrist. He gazes into Toluca Lake and waits, and hopes that the magic of the eight ball is true.

Will I get to see James today?

It is decidedly so.

If he were to do it all over again from the top, do you think he’d still do it this way?

It is decidedly so.

Does he know I love him?

It is decidedly so.

Does he know I’ll never forgive him?

It is decidedly so.

When the day comes, I’ll kill that motherfucker myself. I dunno how it’s gonna happen, but it’s gonna happen. Fucking asshole. He knows that, right?

….

.. right?

“I gotta go soon, babe,” Harry murmurs to his husband, James Mason (formerly Sunderland). “I’m gonna leave one with you. I’ll be back tomorrow. If you wanna trade, we can. Fuck, I don’t wanna get a fuckin’ yeast infection out here,” he gripes, turning to wade out of the lake. “Seriously, James. Not like a yeast infection wouldn’t stop me from comin’ out here but you bet your ass you’re gonna hear all fucking about it, because it will be your fault, and I fucking hate you, so goddamn fucking much, honeylove.”

Harry makes it out to the shore. He takes the box to its honored seat in shotgun! James’s coffee gets thrown into Toluca; he pours his out where he’d sat. Then the mason with rusted tools scans his exhausted, old, heavily lined eyes across the scenic lake where an orange (rare, so rare, extremely rare and mean everything) firefly swims. He’ll never get over the betrayal. It doesn’t matter if he understands it. It doesn’t matter that he’s (and he’s) been waiting for it long before they’d met. 

After all those thousands of years of looking for each other, this is how he chooses to betray him: like Judas, with a kiss.

A kiss on a ceramic mug that is going to be washed again today, and tomorrow morning, and will scald his hands.

A kiss, a kiss, a kiss from a man whose lips promised I love you with a simple brush. Lips Harry hasn’t felt in three years; his heart can break even more.

Will I ever get to kiss him again? Harry asks his stick shift as he drives towards his six (give or take) hour journey home to Vermont.

It is decidedly so, replies the eight ball.

Will it be soon? inquires a widowed man, widowed for the second time.

It is decidedly so, soothes the inky window.

When?

Turn right off this street, guides the knob too small to say so. Fifty miles out. It won’t take long.

Huh? I can barely see with all this fog. Where am I going?

To see James. 

James? What’s he doing all the way out here?

Waiting for you.

.. waiting for me? I’ll get to see him again?! Jeez.. damn, I’ve got a splitting headache all of a sudden .. fifty miles to Silent Hill.. hrm, seems farther than I remember, but.. 

He’s waiting for you.

.. forgot to clean up the coffee at home.. m’sure it’ll be fine.. Cheryl’ll be over at some point.. heh.. can’t believe he wants to spend our anniversary in Silent Hill.. fuckin’ weirdo.. a vow renewal? And he calls me disgusting..

He’s waiting.

I’m comin’. I’ll be there soon, James. It’s gonna be alright. I can’t wait to see you. We’re gonna have a great vacation, just the two of us, aren’t we, sweetheart?  

It is decidedly so.