why'd you even marry dominick?
He asked.
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@keith---caputo
why'd you even marry dominick?
He asked.
Who was the first guy you can remember being attracted to?
Sean Connery as James Bond. Everyone makes this big fuss about Ursula Andress in that little bikini, coming out of the water, but Connery in Thunderball? That short swimsuit? Those arms?
Christ. I was, like, eight when I saw that movie, and I still knew I wanted to kiss him on the mouth.
my remote concern || keith & maia || event
For three nights, Keith didn't sleep.
The minute you say insomnia, people start offering up advice. Try moving to another room and reading a book. Try drinking more water. Try making yourself really, really warm. Back in life, when it all started to go wrong, he'd nod and bite his tongue, bite back the counter-arguments. Thanks, but no thanks--I think I know better than you. And when it got even worse, he tried them all. Desperately. Please.
He'd tried them all again these last three nights. After Dominick showed up bearing a cross, after Mikhail kicked Keith back into the snow, he pulled the list back out and went through them bullet by bullet. He turned off the lights, he piled on the blankets, he climbed into bed with pajamas on and then with nothing on at all. He jerked off. He counted sheep and bones and body hairs. Futile. Futile. Futile.
Tonight, he tried wine. Never could take the taste of anything redder than Chardonnay, but it always made him tired--he'd take it, if it could do him good. Anything that would do him good. Dom and Mikhail like caffeine drips. Somewhere along the way, Keith had picked up a couple wine glasses; he up-ended the last of a Merlot bottle into one of them now. It was a dizzying thing, wine and sleeplessness together. It had him yawning against his doorframe, sitting down to tie his shoes, and shuffling down the sidewalk before he knew where he was going.
And then he was at Maia's door. Keith knocked, yawned again, and pulled his jacket even tighter to his chest.
I like long walks and sci-fi movies; you're six foot tall and East Coast bred. Some lonely night, we can get together and I'm gonna tie your wrists with leather and drill a tiny hole into your head.
such sterile hands || mikhail & keith
-
He didn’t know. “I asked, you said he was gone,” he argued, his voice rising and strained at he attempted to place the blame on him. How was it his fault that Keith had cheated and abandoned his husband? How was it all his blame for something this stupid? The Russian’s eyes narrowed, voice caught in his throat as he kept talking. He saw, he knew, supposedly. “You said you did not care—”
He had given him permission; anybody would have taken it. He certainly wasn’t telepathic, how was he supposed to know he actually meant ‘oh, you can’t fuck me’? “I am not judging you, I am trying to help you, but if I am not allowed to do that—” And then he kept cutting him off, continuing, even as Mikhail felt the cracks dig through the rock. The only way to build it back up would be to absolutely ruin him the way he did Gunther.
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t, and he didn’t know why. And that was the most painful part of all. As he turned away from him, he kept his gaze locked, swallowing over and over to prevent anything further spilling from his heart. He certainly wasn’t weak-willed, and he absolutely did not feel guilty—but what he did feel was an awful pit in his stomach, raw, exposed. Keith had an uncanny ability to tear people down, but he had no desire to build them back up.
Then he dropped it. He had one purpose, apparently: to be fun, which he had failed at, and instead, he’d merely become a whore. A boytoy. Which, by the number of partners he had, could be arguable. But it was consented, it was necessary for every party involved, and everyone enjoyed it. Everyone except Keith, who was the only one to use Mikhail as a flat out mistress to replace his dead husband. But now apparently he wasn’t fun or easy, which made him now worthless.
He had to turn away from him, inhale sharply, bite his lower lip. Wiping at his eyes, he finally turned to face him. His knuckles weren’t clenched so tightly that they bordered a ghost-like white. His face, for once, was borderline of a breakdown.
"Do you feel better?" He asked, "Does it please you, to do this to people?"
He hadn’t ask to be helped. He didn’t know Dom was here—he didn’t know, he really hadn’t known until tonight, until he came to him and jumped down his throat. Smelling like his winter cologne. Wrapped up in a sweater, stubbled and short-haired, wearing his ring.
Didn’t that count for anything? Didn’t it matter that it had all happened tonight, that he’d been here fifty-two days and that on the fifty-third, all the wallpaper stripped down? And he’d tried to say hello, he’d tried, except he’d been drawn and quartered for finding solace in someone else—didn’t that matter? Dominick should have to carry his scars on his arms. He ought to be made to keep them with him like Keith’s constant anxieties, like the way sometimes touching Mikhail felt like cheating death, because there had been a lake and Keith had cried. Instead, it was you chose. It was your fault and you did and you chose.
No, he’d asked to be helped. Came here half a wreck and begging—yes, okay, yes, Mikhail had been right, he’d won from the start—begging like a dog for anything he could get. This other man with bare feet and tawny hair on his legs, on his arms, his apartment cold, the thick taste of his mouth, he was table scraps, Communion in Keith’s cupped hands—he’d held out his cupped hands and Mikhail had rapped his knuckles with a ruler. Didn’t that count for anything?
He was standing by Mikhail’s front door with all of his clothes back on. Rewind. Start the scene again. He didn’t feel better. Mikhail was supposed to help Keith, to make him feel better, damn it,so why didn’t he feel better? He always did, after. He’d thought—he’d thought that went both ways. The ice broke open and they got warm; was the sex a way to help each other deal, or was it just to help themselves?
He’d thought they both felt better, after. Falling asleep. And then the word prostitute, and Keith was like a job.
There were apologies, somewhere. He could feel them pricking at his ears like the flies in the Hudson—and, like the flies, he swatted them away. First Dominick, then Mikhail, but he didn’t have to feel bad. He could will himself to stop feeling bad. Any minute now, he’d be able to breathe again. Keith’s jaw stretched to keep the tingling in his nose—no crying, no crying, no saying you’re sorry. “No more than you,” he said, finally. His voice was stuck in the back of his throat. He cleared it and looked at his hands. “I think—I think we’re done, here.”
such sterile hands || mikhail & keith
I could find five other people.
He exhaled the smoke, let it linger in his lungs with no obvious marks of a response. Now that they were such good friends—no, it was just being keen, to listen to what he had to say. He had to know, or tried to know. Staring back at him, he crushed the cigarette into the ashtray, the bottle and glass left untouched for now as he watched him. It was time to become a rock and allow water to roll off. His father always said that, for the few times people would attempt to provoke him. Allow it to roll off.
"I do not know you," he muttered, and that was exactly the problem and the solution. Not knowing was perfect for anonymous, unattached sex. But it’d become more than that. He watched him slide his shirt back on, struggle with the smoke and the cigarette. "You do not," he concluded, watching him wreck the cigarette with an alarming amount of fervor, "but you stay. You have not left. You are still here."
And Mikhail had to stand, allow his fists to uncurl. Let him be the fool, let Keith have his first strike. He could finish him if he really wanted to, and he would, if Keith kept going. “You say you can find five others. Find five others. The door is not locked, I am not keeping you here.”
His mouth tasted like ashes now that the cigarette was out. Too light-headed with a too-dry tongue, and he knew there wouldn't be a stick of Spearmint in sight. Keith licked his lips and tried to swallow it down.
Mikhail was right, of course. There was no reason to be standing here scowling at the floor. But he was staying, anyway. Gesturing. Buttoning, now, to cover the white of his undershirt--to cover back up. There was something stuck in his stomach and it was making him sick, and when Mikhail stood up, Keith remembered how evenly matched they were. Muscles aside. "That's right," he said. "I can." He wasn't bluffing.
Okay, it was possible he'd been bluffing.
"I've done it before. Do you have any idea how many men like playing one-night-stand to a guy with a ring?" Young, usually. Young men who thought he had a wife. "Or maybe you do. You saw it and you still did me. You saw it. You knew." Like clockwork, like laps around a high school track, he was back at blame again. Causes and effects were running circles in his head: if A, then B, so C, and it's all on you. Not me. Not me. Don't you fucking dare try to pin this on me, he'd told Dominick. A bathtub full of blood. "Every time I took my shirt off, you knew. And now you're going to judge me? Are these the Gates, now? Are you St. Peter?"
He was losing it. Keith rubbed his eyelids to relieve the tension building up, threatening a migraine. He wasn't making any sense. Purposefully, he turned his back on Mikhail to gather his jacket. "You were complicit in every crime," he said, to the door as he bent down. "And now you're feeling weak-willed and guilty, and like hell that's my fault." But even that wasn't enough. If he was going to win this one, he was going to have to cut him down. So he tried again, tugging at the zipper: "I'll tell you one thing--you sure as shit weren't worth all this. You were supposed to be fun. Instead, you're just... easy." Bingo. He felt that drop like a stone in a pond. "And you're not even that anymore."
such sterile hands || mikhail & keith
-
The coughing. He couldn’t smoke a cigarette to save his life. Mikhail just watched, knowing it would be funny at any other moment as he took a shot and pushed the bottle away. It kept the cold at bay, still flowing in from the empty window depositing the smoke from Keith’s cigarette. “This is why I do not fuck anyone who is married or taken,” he mumbled, finally tugging the bottle back over to pour a third and finish it. It was only then that he laid in bed, eyes fluttering closed as he rubbed his temple with a hand.
"He does not appear to have done anything to you," he explained, "yet you cheated on him, married. That is important, that union, you cannot just—ignore it!" He leaned up, finally snapping at him. "I am jealous, yes, not of you and Dominick, but of what you had. There was no opportunity for me like that, and you have it, and you throw it away, like it is worth nothing," he had to look away from him, inhaling slowly and exhaling with clenched fists. Every muscle was drawn taut.
Finally he watched as he reached back for the chain, and there it went, the tiny piece of jewelry, tossed like trash onto his mattress. Dead-divorced. What an ugly term. “Return the ring to him,” he lit another cigarette in the dim room, “and it will be fine. I am not ‘over’ you treating people like they are things. But if you would like to fuck, I am here.”
The dark gaze he gave him as he blew the smoke was not one of love or even attraction, not even close. Now he may as well have been a prostitute.
"You're giving me an ultimatum?"
That was supposed to work, damn it. That was as much vitriol as it was desperation, grabbing at the last of the rope with wet hands. Instead, there was the waterfall.
This is the barrel. These are the rocks at the bottom of the pool.
When Keith broke, he broke hard. He splintered shrapnel. That was the only way to break. "I could find five other people who could do what you do to me. Who would be glad to." The cigarette cut into his credibility, all that coughing, but it was airing out his head. He needed the dizziness. He needed and needed and needed. "An ultimatum," he repeated to himself. And then, looking back again at Mikhail's silhouette on the bed and the dim orange glow of a new smoke: "You can give it to him, yourself. Now that you two are such good friends."
His strewn layers formed a two-point line from the doorway. Keith switched the cigarette to his right hand so he could run his left through his hair, then stooped to pick his shirt up off the ground. "I mean," he said, spinning around again. He couldn't stop talking. He couldn't stop spouting off. "You talk to him for all of five minutes, and now you know me? Now you have your outside view?" Guilt like fingers at his throat. It wasn't fair. He didn't ask to be privileged; he shouldn't be held to a higher standard for it. It wasn't his fault Mikhail couldn't go to some steeple with whatever sweetheart he wanted. Neither could Keith, until 2004.
The cigarette stuck in his mouth again so he could try to button up his shirt--but he couldn't breathe around it, and the smoke got in his eyes. God fucking damn. It stung and drew water. "I don't have to justify myself to you." Fuck the buttons. Fuck the cigarette. Keith wanted--oh, he wanted to stub it out on the floor, but he walked to the edge of the mattress instead and threw it half-finished in the tray. He didn't look at Mikhail. He wasn't sure he could. "I don't have to put up with any of this shit."
You've got too much to wear on your sleeve. It has too much to do with me.
such sterile hands || mikhail & keith
-
"I go to your place to fuck, but you are making me feel guilty about it. I now have to worry about you and your dead husband,” his words were short as he stared back out the window, frowning at the cold, dark world outside. It was even becoming cold for him, which was saying something. Goosebumps had long since risen on his skin, but he didn’t give a single shiver as he turned to face Keith.
Hookers don’t like it, he was a demon now, for fucking him because he’d asked for it. He’d asked. He’d tilted his damned hip, and even as he stared, pointed out the ring, Keith had dismissed it as nothing at all. “You asked me to fuck you,” he muttered, his eyes dark, “you practically asked. I saw the ring, I should not have even bothered, but you insisted, you needed it.” And I fell for it, like an idiot, he thought.
Watching him fiddle around with the lighter, he reached over, taking his hand over his and finally flicking it on. At that point, he moved past him, walking to the tiny kitchen and digging in the cupboard. Yanking the vodka down, he dragged a shot glass and bottle back to the mattress as he sat. Pouring one, he downed it, raising an eyebrow toward the man. “Your husband, he made me realize why you may have not gotten along. You need an outside view, sometimes, to realize how someone truly is.”
Finally, a flame. Keith held the end of the cigarette over until the paper turned black, then he met the filter with his mouth and sucked in. Smoke in his throat. Matt Benítez used to pass him a pack of Newports over their AP textbooks. They'd sneak out to the fire escape so his mother wouldn't see. He was bad at it even then, holding it in his mouth instead of in his lungs, and now as Keith inhaled, he coughed. He coughed and stubbornly took another drag.
He recognized this tone. He'd heard it in himself, pulling Dom out of clubs by the wrist and turning to yell: can't we go out just once, just once without me having to worry about you and some other guy? And now it was Mikhail. Keith shook his head, coughed up another puff of smoke, and crossed his arms. "Jesus Christ," he said. "You really are jealous." It would be cute, if it wasn't so infuriating. "The ring bothers you, but he bothers you more, because--because you can't ignore it now that there's a face and a name. Now that he's more than jewelry."
Oh, but it had been cute, a little, hadn't it? Just for these last five seconds, while Mikhail sat taking a shot and Keith waved the cigarette around? "You can't stand that he's here and he's had me."
Whatever Dominick had told him, it had evidently been some of the really good stuff--the real character-knocking shit about other men. As if Dom hadn't bent over for some of the guys who flirted with him at the bar, or on the subway, or in the mailroom of their apartment building. As if he--but he hadn't. Keith knew he hadn't. He knew.
"You know what?" Keith stuck the cigarette between his teeth and clamped down, biting to hold it and free his hands. He reached behind his neck and not-so-deftly undid the clasp on the chain. Small fasteners. A gift from Maia. When the ring pulled free from beneath his shirt, it and the silver pooled hot in his hand. "There," he said, and tossed it on the bed. "Is that better? Is that good enough? Or do I have to get dead-divorced for you to get over... whatever the hell you can't get over?"
such sterile hands || mikhail & keith
-
"You are much sexier when you do not bring your marriage into our relationship," he breathed, tapping the ash away into the tiny tray next to his bed. Watching his every movement, it seemed forced, removing his clothes, walking around. For a moment, Keith seemed utterly dead and nothing more, like one of the undead that thrived on sex rather than blood.
Glancing up at him, another cloud left his lips, slow, purposeful, blown toward the other man like a fog. “I am not a drug,” he said, standing up to his full height and calmly smashing the cigarette into the tray. He was close enough to easily taking him into the mattress, repeat the previous nights they’d spent together with ease. “I am not the cure for your problems. You do not want me to be your counselor, so I will not help you,” he said, leaning in close until his lips hardly brushed his ear. “I am here to fuck you, that was our agreement. But you are not the same like this. You say I should not make you beg, but you are begging now.”
He pointed back toward the door before staring into the other pair of eyes. “You came to my home, and the second you stepped at my door, you wanted to fuck. You are begging, like a dog,” Mikhail shook his head, his eyes scanning down the other’s body, how he was half-dressed, expectant.
"I fuck for me,” he added quietly, “not to please you. And not for you to pretend I am your husband, because you are stupid enough to make this mistake, to lose something many would kill for. I am a friend with benefits, not a prostitute,” He turned from him, walking over to the window and shifting it open to get some fresh air into the room and allow the mix of chemicals and nicotine to escape rather than cling to the furniture. “You do not realize how good you are living, have lived. You ask me to fuck you, but you do not want me to help you. That is a prostitute.”
He was almost shaking, he needed this so much. Keith wasn't in college anymore. Mikhail wasn't the grad student who brushed his fingers across the bar and smiled like he had a secret. This wasn't about the way Mikhail's shoulders sloped in that shirt, or about how the room smelled like his pillow always did the morning after, or about wanting him at all, really. Shit, Keith wasn't even hard.
It was about need.
He didn't understand why he was being punished. That's what Dominick's presence was right now--a punishment, and if he'd thought for a second that this was Purgatory, he knew now it was Hell. Dom as the Ghost of Christmas Nevers come to kick him in the gut, and Mikhail with this... what the fuck was this? Jealousy? Smoking like a moody noir detective. Whispering hot in his ear. Calling him--calling him out, calling him names. It was cold in the apartment, and Keith was frozen to the spot. His ribs felt heavy around his lungs. "And you--what? You come to my place just to use my shower?"
He didn't understand why he was being punished, but he was, like he was the only one who wasn't allowed to make excuses for taking the things he wanted. Dominick bled out in a bathtub. Mikhail fucked for him. And here Keith was just trying to knock the sleep back into his eyes--fuck, let's put all the cards out on the table: to feel someone, to feel something--and he was the demon. The dog. He turned to follow Mikhail's movements across the room, smoke slowly pulling to the open window. "Hookers don't like it," he said. Steady. Scared. "You come to my house, too. You step through my door. You fuck me like a jackhammer, and now you think you're being used?"
Nevermind that he wanted it that way. Nevermind that's how he asked for it the first night, lakewater and Vaseline. He didn't know half the things he was saying--just panic and cold anger, icing over, following him as he bent down to pick up the pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. "If I wanted to replace Dom, I'd be topping," he said. He hadn't used a lighter in years. It sparked futile under his thumb.
Oh, Keith. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
-
You’re seriously mad, right now? Not one bit happy to see me? Just mad? Fuck you.
I will pin this on you, asshole. You chose to die. You chose to pick the euthanasia route. Don’t you think that’s a bit more big or dramatic?! You— god, Keith. You fucking killed yourself and had me do it. Don’t you ever consider how could that be for me? Did you even ever fucking love me?
Ch-chose? I chose to--Oh, no. No. No, no, no, you, you fucking--
Do not. Do not, do not ever hold me responsible for your piece of shit choices. You faked me out and lied and now--now, what, I'm the guy holding the gun? No. I don't think so.
Oh, Keith. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
-
Oh, c’mon, Keith. You really think I would be okay living after having gave you the pill that killed you? I killed the love of my life. So, I killed myself. Nothing big or dramatic. Just slit my wrists from palm to elbow. The way we saw all of the depressed teens do during our internships. How could I have been okay knowing you were dead and I was alone?
You’re a real fucking piece of work, you know that? I could never live without you and you knew that.
You--you slit your--are you fucking--you did this to yourself?
Are you fucking kidding me? You son of a bitch. You--I can't even... Nothing big or dramatic? You Romeo'd my Juliet--that's not big or dramatic?!
Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare try to pin this on me.