Chapter Text
He finds, as an unexpected side effect of his body’s slow, inexorable rebellion, that evenings have become the most difficult part of the day.
Before it all started – really started, with just some occasional shortness of breath or an oddly lethargic afternoon, asleep before dinner in front of the television with his legs in Hal’s lap – he might have guessed that early mornings would be worse. When things like joint pain and chronic fatigue were still largely abstract concepts; theoretical possibilities to be dealt with by some future self, rather than a daily reality of his life.
And there is some initial stiffness, when he first gets out of bed – his back complaining in a way that still feels unfamiliar; swings his legs free of the sheets and shifts his weight forward to face the day. But once he’s up and moving, it’s all right. He’s rested then, at least. As much as he can be, as much as he ever is anymore and his muscles can hold their own for a while against the relentless downward pull of gravity.
But nighttime – especially if the day has been busy, or quick; if they’ve gone for a grocery run, or a walk through the bare shivering trees on the hill with Sunny running up ahead in her snow suit – is when all the mundane activity of daily existence takes its toll.
Life is full of trade-offs, he supposes. A colorless truth he’d internalized so long ago that it fails to make much of an impression, anymore. No use protesting the unfairness of it all, or the irony.
It just is.
This particular day has not been especially kind.
Hal had insisted on being taught how to chop firewood when they’d first moved in, but it surprises neither of them to find that he’s abysmal at it. He tries, because he’s always been immovably stubborn in his own quiet way – hauling out the ax from its habitual spot in the old tool shed, and staggering back inside an hour later with a feeble heap of lopsided wood chunks strewn over the snow in his wake – but it’s never enough to make much difference, and most of the pieces are either too small to be more than bits of kindling, or too big to fit in the stove.
Snake sits at the window, morose. Watching.
Something unspoken between them, like so many other things of late.
Hal comes inside to shower, and he goes out instead. He can have the bulk of the job finished before his partner emerges from the bathroom, blinking behind fogged-over lenses; back in the kitchen frying bacon or scrubbing countertops, with the rack by the woodstove restocked. Another few days, or a week, and the cycle repeats itself.
Truth be told, he likes the way it feels. The heft of the ax handle in his hands, still sure in their grip – thank God for that, at least – and the stretch and burn along his shoulders with every downward stroke. Snow crunching up under his boots the way it used to.
The way muscle memory takes over, and he doesn’t have to think.
The old cabin is a definite step up from anyplace they’d ever stayed for more than a week or two at a time, in the past. To be fair, this isn’t saying much – hardwood floors with the varnish worn off; a working electric range, and hot running water – but even in the old days, his standards were never all that exacting. He’d spent too many years sleeping in leaky buildings on hard canvas cots to be overly fussed about an occasional dead cockroach in the bathroom, or mouse droppings in the cereal cabinet.
Philanthropy’s housing budget was always shoestring, at best, so they’d made do. Peeling wallpaper and linoleum. Mildew in the kitchen. Long-neglected linen closets, smelling of mothballs and wet laundry left to sit. An endless succession of nights spent in motel rooms along the highway; getting in after dark, and back on the road before the sun was up. Used condoms shoved under the mattress and a stranger’s hair in the bathtub drain, so it was best not to inspect anything too closely.
Here, there are no carefully trimmed suburban hedges; no two-car garage, and no swimming pool. Just goose shit and lodgepole pines, and the bitter chill in the air that comes of living a stone’s throw from the Canadian border.
But most days, it’s enough.
The little kitchen table sits by a set of wide paneled windows, in the only part of the cabin that pushes out beyond its modest square frame. Hal frets about heat loss out into the winter air and its effect on their overall energy efficiency – which is a valid concern, especially since the windows could use a good caulking – but it’s the most panoramic vantage point they have of the wooded no-man’s-land outside, and Sunny has so far resisted all attempts to put up a practical set of heavy drapes to block out the chill.
It’s not a fucking fishbowl, Hal, he’d said, finally. Let her live a little.
That a seven-year-old girl should be so utterly entranced by the novelty of being able to peer out at rust-colored tree trunks and the occasional downy woodpecker whenever she wants to – still, even now – that she doesn’t ask for Barbie dolls or Lego sets, or whatever the hell kids her age are supposed to be interested in is perhaps a rather damning indictment of them both, as parents.
Regardless, the windows have remained bare.
Sunny isn’t the only one who sometimes gets lost in the view.
It’s late, tonight, and he’s careful to keep the pain off his face as he stands – his legs, his lower back; joints grating bone on bone like rusted hinges in the cold – but he feels Hal’s eyes on him, anyway. The slow stiffness of the movement, the way he has to hold his breath until it’s over. Gripping the edge of the table, bent at the waist to steady himself for just a moment too long.
One slow step, and then another.
Empty coffee cup in the sink.
“Going to turn in.” Better once he’s up and moving, but he can hear the roughness in his own voice. Hates himself for this, as much as anything – the little tells he can’t control. “Grab a shower first, maybe.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Hal turns back to the laptop screen in front of him, carefully impassive apart from the tiny crease between his eyebrows. The ease of long practice. Trawling the internet from the sofa these days instead of a squeaking office chair, which is the only real concession he’s made to retirement; socked feet tucked under a thrift store throw blanket for warmth, pretending he hasn’t noticed anything amiss.
Snake rinses the mug. Turns it upside down on a paper towel.
“Running low in here, looks like. Down to that lemon ginger shit.”
From the living room, there is no response.
Hal went through an herbal tea phase, shortly after they’d moved in. This was because he’d read that things like licorice root and cinnamon might help ease a chronic cough, and hoped that the sheer proximity and abundance of choices sitting front and center on the kitchen counter might induce his partner to take up the habit.
Snake had found hot chamomile with honey to be a piss poor substitute for the heady nicotine rush of a cigarette, but kept his thoughts on the matter to himself. Mostly. He drinks coffee instead – nearly always, now; black – for the familiar burnt bitterness of the taste. Even at night. Even when he tosses and turns, and gets up at 2 am to stare out at the snow.
Sunny, however, had been captivated by the little paper packets with their drawings of exotic bushes and flowers, and loved the polished wooden sleeve they came in. She also discovered that peppermint tea could be made to taste like drinking candy canes with enough sugar and a splash of heavy cream, and so the little wooden box remains a permanent fixture in the kitchen.
Nearly empty, after almost a month.
He picks it up, carelessly. Holds it out past the countertop for Hal to see in his peripheral vision, and he looks up from the computer at last – nods, like it doesn’t make much difference.
Says, finally, by way of explanation:
“She was asking for hot chocolate mix, today. Read about it in one of her books.”
“Kid’s got a sweet tooth.” Fair enough, he supposes. “But, hell – she’s got seven years to make up for. There’s more to the world than fried eggs and MREs.”
“Oh, I’m not opposed. Might be better to keep around, anyhow.” The quiet tapping sound of fingertips on a scissor-switch keyboard – unusually imprecise, like his heart isn’t in it. He stops. “Even decaf isn’t really decaf, you know.”
Snake wants to point out the breathtaking hypocrisy in this stance, given that in their pre-Nomad days it was nothing for Hal to exist for 48 hours at a stretch on nothing but canned grocery store espresso and Red Bull, until his hands shook so much it became inefficient to try and type.
Would have made a sardonic comment, once. Tonight, he doesn’t have the energy.
He rests his forearms on the kitchen counter, watching the side of his partner’s face over the back of the couch – one breath, then two. Waits for the muscles along his lumbar spine to ease up enough for him to walk. Christ, it’s bad tonight.
“I sleep just fine.”
“I know,” says Hal. Head down. The tapping sound resumes.
Snake can see what it costs him, what it’s always cost him, to look away.
“Listen,” his partner adds, off-handed. Careful. As if it were a thought that had just occurred to him, rather than something he’d been mulling over since they first moved in. “We, ah… have a perfectly good, non-moldy bathtub here, for once. And a hot water tank that works.”
Snake grunts, not liking where this is going.
“I just thought… “ Hal’s voice trails off. Wilting, visibly, under Snake’s hard stare. “Well, I don’t know. You could have a soak before bed, if you want? It might help, a little.”
Help with what, he almost snaps. Frustrated, irrationally angry. Say it. If standing upright is something he needs help with, now, they might as well throw in the towel and be done with it. Maybe he needs some BenGay and a fucking shower chair, too, so he doesn’t fall and hurt himself.
He hears the bitter edge, before he speaks.
Enough.
Hal deserves better than that, from him.
Hal – his Hal – who drapes a blanket over his chest when he falls asleep on the couch. Leaves a glass of water on the coffee table in case he wakes up coughing in the dark, and goes off to bed alone.
Who would stand in front of a bullet for him, even now, if he thought it might change anything at all.
Snake is absolutely certain he’s never deserved that kind of loyalty.
He’s also perfectly capable of turning on the tap and running his own damn bath water, but he knows that isn’t the point. There are so few things Hal can do, now. No more tests or doctor’s visits, no more miracle cures to research. He doesn’t hover, even though he wants to.
So Snake allows him this.
“Twenty minutes,” he says, grudgingly. Looks down again, staring resolutely at the ring of black rubber around the drain at the bottom of the sink, scrubbed and smelling of disinfectant. Cleaner than anyplace else they’ve ever lived.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” It’s a compromise of sorts, because fuck. What could it hurt? “We’re homeowners, now. There damn well better be some perks.”
Breathes in, and out again.
Listens to the creak and pop of his partner’s knees as he puts the laptop aside and levers himself up off the sofa without another word. There’s an earnestness in it, somehow – a chance to feel useful, for as long as they can both pretend it matters. It’s an impulse he’s uncomfortably familiar with.
Turtleneck sweater, blue. Soft in the living room lamplight.
Touch me like you used to.
A hand up under his shirt, to rub his back; soft circles between the shoulder blades. Playful fingers along the inseam of his jeans. A bony hip, nudging him sideways for more room.
His partner does not approach.
Hal’s footsteps move away from him, down the hall, and he tries hard to believe it isn’t relief that he feels.
******
“I don’t think it’s too hot,” Hal says, anxious. Fidgeting now, pushing up his glasses in the endearing way he has that’s always been able to cut straight through any irritation Snake might feel. Leaning over the tub, shaking water off his fingertips. “I mean… if something isn’t right, let me know.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” he says.
Tired.
Standing in the bathroom doorway, averting his eyes from the mirror; left side of his face turned away. Force of habit, now. Awkward, in a way things never used to be.
Hal watches him with something in his expression he can’t quite place.
He doesn’t sleep nude, anymore. At least not routinely, and doesn’t like to undress in the bedroom with his partner awake. His body has changed; a creeping, merciless decline, and he’s changed with it. Become something gnarled and stiff.
Closed off.
They still make love, on occasion. Hal had called it that once, a long time ago – stammering over the words with the tips of his ears flushed red, and he’s thought of it that way in his head ever since with an affectionate sort of irony. But always in the dark, now. A heated crush of bodies. A hard fuck and a quick release; exhausted, unseen by God or anyone else.
Tonight, Snake avoids his eyes under the unforgiving overhead light – oddly intimate, too close, even though it’s barely midnight and they’re both fully clothed. Hal sets out towels, as if he can’t find them on his own. Like he’s a guest, here; bleached white and sterile, folded in a neat rectangular stack on top of the toilet.
“No mints on the pillow?”
God help him, he’s trying.
“No room service, either. I know my limits.” Hal straightens up, finally. Looks for a moment like he wants to say something else – a lighthearted snort, a joke about his cooking. Wants to reach out, maybe; steady hands on either side of his waist. Help tug the jeans down over his hips, to step out without leaning over. Easier on his back.
His partner knows him too well.
He steps deliberately to one side – avoiding the question that isn’t, not really – and Hal takes his cue to leave. Pauses in the doorway, their positions reversed. Like dancing.
“Light’s out, when you’re ready to come to bed.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m beat, anyway. Take your time.”
The door clicks shut behind him.
******
Alone in the bathroom, he eases down into the steaming tub as slowly as his reluctant joints allow. Stiff. Distasteful – like something antiseptic. One more exercise in futility, as useless as everything else they’ve ever tried.
It burns, a little. At first.
The trouble with water, the trouble with heat – the way it creeps in everywhere, up inside like ten-dollar bourbon; insidious. Numb. Until he can’t feel where his own body stops, and the rest of the world begins. Blurred edges in an impressionist painting.
He’s never minded the cold, the way Hal does.
Ten minutes in, or fifteen.
Maybe more.
Enough for the air in the humid little room to begin to cool; for the sparse foamy sheen on the surface to dissipate, which leaves him feeling exposed all over again even though there’s no one there to see. Touching his own leg; thinner than he’d remembered. The dull, expressionless sensation of scar tissue over bone.
Cheerful 60-watt light, refracted by its passage through the water.
His forearms ache, as if he’s been climbing. Fingertips wrinkled like raisin skin; tired nerves thrumming along his back, exhausted – but, God. He could stay here, maybe. It feels like something safe.
Until the hallway outside goes dark.
Until it’s cold again, and he feels more like himself.
He rests his head against the smooth back-wall enamel; eggshell white. Tension bleeding out of his muscles like ink in the rain, and lets his eyes drift shut.