Chapter Text
Lucien leaves, sometimes.
Jack has come to expect it. He has also come to expect that when he finds Lu again, three towns over, stumbling hotly into the lives of some doe-eyed star catchers --captivated by the catlike lilt of Lucien's words--he is either far too high, or far too sober.
It is the second time this year that Lucien has run away, and Jack finds him at a bar in Queens, hopped up on Benzedrine and swirling wine glasses between the dexterous cradles of his spider-like fingers. There is a congregation huddled about him as he ripples and sparks, eyes wide and cracked with the weight of a crumbling high, mouth spitting forth philosophy after philosophy. And all of the men and women in the bar are ensnared by him, caught in the tangled net of his prose-like speech, though they doubtfully understand it. He looks normal--well, far from the standard definition, but normal enough for Lucien, if ever such a word could be attached to his skin. Yet Jack is not stupid. To him, Lucien is translucent.
It could've been David, it could've been the paranoia that has long-grown in his soul, the shaking feeling of love too much as it coiled in his stomach. Whatever reason, Lucien is terrified. His hands shake imperceptibly as he makes wild gestures with them, his eyes are depthless, more-so than usual, as if the secrets they were meant to hide have burrowed so deep into him not even Jack can touch that aura of mystery anymore. Lucien's cracks are shimmering and wide open, wounds sprinkled with salt and hung out to dry on a dangling thread so that even the excitement in his eyes is feigned by drink and drug, by the blood of red wine. Weightily, Jack Kerouac sighs and saunters through the bar, pushes away the heavy craving in his heart to order himself a drink and makes his way to Lucien instead.
Lucien does not notice him, at first. He is too busy excitedly chirping about some Nietzsche-derived ideal to a young-looking man with oil slick curls, who is smoking a cigarette and just nodding, nodding, nodding. Jack feels his heart and his hands pounding with nervousness as he stalks closer but he quells it, taps Lucien gently on the shoulder, swallowing hard. Lucien feels it, seems to brim with delight at the prospect of something new to charm and love and confuse. He spins about on his heel, ignoring the smoking man, and surprisingly enough, lights up upon seeing Jack's face.
"Jack!" Lucien exclaims, grabbing Jack heartily by the shoulders and shaking a bit, leaving Jack befuddled and wide-eyed. "Just the man I'd like to sit down and have a drink with. Most of the people at this bar are incredibly dull, Wendle here sells cars for a living, I fear the world has dealt him a very narrow hand," Lucien prattles, gesturing to the sighing man flippantly. Jack opens his mouth to hedge a word in, but Lu cuts him off, exuberant, spinning him about and leading him to the bar. "Now come on, Jack my boy, I know you'd like a whiskey on me, wouldn't you? Can't pass up a free drink, especially not one that Lucien Carr offers, those are quite the rarity. God, I am so glad you stumbled your way to this place. It is startling how little these people understand--I have asked around and not a single one here has even heard of Yeats, which is a monstrosity--"
"Lu," Jack cuts in, feeling his throat converge tightly as he watches Lu's hands shake, violent and sad. "Lu, listen, I'm not--"
"Bartender, two whiskeys, on the rocks, put it on my tab," Lucien calls out, completely ignoring Jack's fruitless words, tapping his fingers against the bartop in a rough-edged staccato. Tip tip tap, tip tip tap tap. Jack feels his heart soaring up into his throat and making his tongue leaden. "Have you written anything lately, Jack?" Lu continues. "It has been a while since I've felt truly inspired. Which is quite the shame." Lucien strides over to the other side of Jack then, presumably to snatch the cigarette from the mouth of the woman nearby--sucking on it hard and letting the drag burn his lips--but Jack knows it is really just so that his back is turned and his expression hidden, the tremor of his limbs less visible. "The potential of this world has seemed to grow narrower and narrower." Lucien flicks a match to life and re-lights the thieved cigarette. "I need your words to stretch it out and run with it."
Jack is far too concerned to feel heart-warmed by Lucien's praise. Without a thought, he stands up, pushes his chair back, stalking towards Lucien once more and clapping a rough hand onto his shoulder. He twirls Lu around to face him, and Lucien looks angry at the forcefulness of the contact--startled, confused. He opens his mouth, but finally Jack edges in a word.
"You haven't been home in 2 weeks," Jack murmurs quietly, taking the cig from Lu's fingers and snubbing it out in the nearest ash tray. "Why?"
Lucien's jaw locks. He swallows, represses the anger, but his voice cracks thickly anyway. "Home is a relative concept," he mutters, fists balled tightly. "Wherever there is liquor and literature, there I shall find shelter.'"
Jack laughs; the sound is bright and sad. "Lu, you're making up some bullshit," he says, shaking his head. "Why did you leave? Was it something I did?"
At this Lucien seems to soften. His anger deteriorates into fizzling embers. He sets his drink down and stares, blue eyes wary but somehow gentle. "No," he whispers, very softly. That is all.
But Jack only gets louder. Suffice it to say the only reason he refused a drink earlier was because he's had enough already on his way here, his heart a mesh of broken beer bottles, ever since Lucien careened away. "Then what was it? Why the fuck did you leave?" he says, words slurring a bit, eyes stinging with messy tears. "Was it David? Did that bastard force you to stay away from me? Did he hurt you? I swear to god if he laid a finger on you I'll cut him open, I'll--"
"No, Jack, it wasn't David," Lucien grits out, his chest rising and falling heavily with the emotion he pushes back into his curled fists. He swaddles himself in anger again, though now it is halfhearted. "Could you drop it? I am safe. Everything is fine."
Jack lets out a noise that sounds as if it belongs to a wounded animal, runs his hands through his tousled hair and tugs, hard, screwing his eyes shut before they slide open again, staring at Lucien in desperation. "Fuck, Lu, I miss you," he stutters out, sounding broken and hopeless. Lucien's eyes glaze over. His fingers shake harder. He reaches for his drink again. Jack stops him. "No, Jesus, come on Lu, I don't know what's going on and if you don't love me then you don't have to come back, but at least tell me what it is. What I did. What's going on. Please."
The bar suspends. People around them laugh and murmur and sip at their drinks but it is all sluggish and unfocused. Jack sees the terror in Lucien's eyes, then, that breathless concoction of paranoia and hurt turning the irises to slates of grey. At that moment he seems young, and much too high to be healthy. With hesitation he bites his lip, before reaching for Jack's hand and tugging him immediately across the bar and out the door, the crisp night air swallowing their limbs in October bitterness.
As soon as the bar doors slam shut behind them Lucien lets go of Jack's hand and walks briskly across the street, fingers twining into the feathery locks of golden hair atop his head. Jack knows, despite his doubts, that Lucien intends for him to follow, and so he does, jogging up beside Lucien with a worried expression, always hovering.
Finally Lucien stops at the other side of the street and lets out a loud shout, stomping his foot like a five year old and curling his fingers harder into his hair, yanking and yanking. Jack shivers, reaches up to carefully pry Lu's fingers from his hair but it is no use, both of their hands tremble far too much. Eventually, Jack gives up and settles with rubbing a hand against Lu's back. Lucien shudders and shudders but does not shake the hand off, which Jack takes as a good sign, if anything. The city before them is a blur. Men and women stumble past, their heels click-clacking against the sidewalk pavement as they blend into the black of the gravel street and the night sky and the alleyways, the shadows devouring every inch in every broken-glass-shard corner of landscape. And in the center of it all, Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac, neither sober, both teeming with tears and ugly noises. Finally, Lucien brings his head up. He does not look at Jack.
"You had to return," he breathes out finally, breaking out into lilting laughter. He stumbles, struggles to keep himself upright. Jack catches him and tires to ignore the way the words shatter their way into his heart and leave it bloody and beating. "You had to find me, didn't you?"
Jack is not sure how to respond. Eventually, he settles with a solemn nod, still holding tightly to Lu. "I can't let you go without a fight," he whispers, his hand smoothing down Lucien's back with such open gentility. A sob rips from Lucien's throat, a sudden detonation. He chokes it off and suppresses. Quietly, Jack adds, "I'm sorry."
For a moment, Lucien seems mute, almost thoughtful. Then, suddenly, "How long did you search for me?"
"Started the minute I realized you didn't plan on coming back."
The jeweled eyes slide shut. Hands twist back into the blonde strands but do not yank, only settle, as if needing to feel a mess between the open spaces. "What I feel for you," Lucien begins, so quiet Jack has to lean closer to catch it, "is terrifyingly volatile. Love is violent, Jack. This is--I can't." He swallows and the words seem to pain him going down, for he shivers as if he's swallowed a bloodied dagger. "I can't. This is too permanent. The cement in my heart--" His words drop.
As understanding blooms in his chest Jack sags in relief, tension draining from his limbs, letting out an airy sigh. Yet Lu's words are still far from pleasant, and Jack's frown stretches like a scar across weathered skin. "Lucien," he begins tepidly, the pound of his heart audible, bleeding into his throat. "What do you mean?"
The hands untangle from honeyed locks and Lucien throws his head back to laugh wetly, his neck littered with bruises, pale and exposed, porcelain against obsidian night. "I am not built to finish stories," he mutters scathingly--though the anger is not directed at Jack. It is toward himself. "You should know this. When I am offered a chance to mold something beyond its base properties, it shatters."
Jack bites his lip to draw blood. His tears are fresh and they splatter the pavement in pools of dark color. "You're terrified," he rasps, the pain in his chest bursting only for Lu, always for Lu.
"You're a detective," Lu retorts.
Silence. Crickets strike up a discordant chorus and seem to widen the night, widen the cold. Lucien and Jack both shiver but neither have the strength yet to reach for each other. Lucien's pink lips are cracked. The boiling high in his eyes is bubbling down to something less vibrant--now he is just unbearably silent, limbs taught and tense. Jack is scrambling at the scraps of his drunken mind to try and find the words to bring Lucien back to him. Though the sentiment is enormous there are so very few of them. But he tries. Jesus, he has to.
When he finally speaks, it is plain, it is simple.
"Lucien, I love you," he whispers, tentatively curling a hand against Lu's cheek, tilting his face towards the light of a flickering street lamp, their gazes meeting fervently. Lucien's eyes are sickly, bright with wind. "You don't have to return the sentiment. But if you do," he sucks in a shaky breath, "please let yourself feel it. Whatever you think you might do to me, I'll take it. I'll take anything, kid, Jesus, just let me be with you."
A pause. Lucien does not say anything. In compensation, Jack feels the tears in his throat spilling out into his hands, in the form of broken words, shivering voice, shattered tongue. "Love is not violent," before Lu has a chance to interject, Jack presses a finger to his lips, "I'm sorry you've learned of it that way. But what we've had so far? It's the gentlest thing I've known in my life. The most beautiful. And if you're scared of--of this being too permanent, if you don't want it that way, it doesn't have to be. We don't have to think of this as some, some endgame thing. But Jesus Christ, Lucien Carr," he mutters, the finality of his words bone-like and brilliant, "if you love me, then love me. Please."
Time seems to stutter and pulse. Jack's heart pounds. The words are all he has. Lucien Carr is all he has.
It seems like something out of a poem, the way Lucien so suddenly and finally sinks into Jack, his breath whooshing out in sweet rivulets of icy rose, his hands shakily coming up to grip onto Jack as his forehead falls against his shoulder, his tremors worryingly violent, his soft hair brushing against the bareness of Jack's warm skin. Immeidately Jack clutches onto him just as tight, burying his lips in Lucien's hair and kissing and kissing and kissing, soft and desperate, all at once. "Thank you," he murmurs, for he knows the way Lu falls into him is as much of an affirmation that he will receive. "God, thank you."
The only thing Lu manages, his fingers small and childlike, voice a pane of shattered ice, is, "Please take me home."
And Jack does. As the story goes, Lucien returns--and if he runs away again, Jack can expect one of three things: he is either far too sober or far too high, and he will always come back.
(That night is spent curled around each other. For the first time in two weeks, Lucien presses his lips against Jack's and both feel revived. Lucien apologizes. Jack shushes. They fall asleep together. Jack does not hear the "I love you." Lucien is okay with that.)