Chapter Text
“I think I have to move.”
“What?” Tommy stops with the steaming latte midway to his lips, eyes narrowing. John drops his gaze down to his own coffee; he can’t help it, no one should be expected to hold eye contact with Tommy Jopson, it’s like staring back at some drowned soul that’s pulled itself out of the sea just to accuse you of crimes you thought no one could ever have known you committed. “Why would you move? You like it there.”
John swallows, fingers adjusting on the suddenly too-warm cup of coffee. This had seemed so much easier curled up in bed with all of the possibilities of the day shimmering out in front of him. He was always doing this, wasn’t he? Tidying the future in his mind as easily and efficiently as you might organize a bookcase, then the present had the audacity to simply arrive, bringing with it emotions that caught under his feet like the corner of a rug and before he knew it he was toppling head-first into that bookcase and upending everything all over again.
“I just… think it’s best,” John manages weakly, “that’s all.”
“But you love that apartment, John. You wouldn’t shut up about its proximity to the stationary store. What’s wrong - rent go up? You make enough these days don’t you?”
“No, it’s — the rent is fine. More than fine—” He can feel the blush already burning up his cheeks. Not that such a thing was at all remarkable - John Irving blushed easily and often, Tommy had once asked him if he had a condition.
“That pigeon you think looks at you ‘like it has ideas’ isn't back at the window again?” Tommy asks.
“No.” John shudders. “Thank god.”
“Well, I know it’s not your flatmates so—”
John’s cheek twitches before he can stop himself. Dammit. He’s never been much good at masking his feelings, and now, with three years of living sans the specter of eternal damnation, he feels as though he’s developed the expressional range of a silent film clown.
“Ah,” Tommy notes.
John swallows. Under the table he’s crumpling up a brown paper napkin over and over. He should try to drink his coffee, might be a more effective distraction from Tommy’s tractor beam of a stare.
“What’s going on?” Tommy asks frankly. “You treasure that little nerd nest.”
“It is not—” Irving tries, falters. “I do wish you’d stop calling it that.”
Tommy gives him a truly emptied expression. “The three of you went on a 17th century candle making boys' weekend together, John.”
“That’s-- it’s a very popular workshop,” John mutters into his coffee, raising it again. “Informative and practical.”
“Well I can’t imagine what could break the bonds of menial labour tourism. You didn’t fuck one of them, did you?”
John chokes on the coffee. Tommy’s eyes go wide. “A-ha !”
“Christ, no!” John hisses. “I did not —!”
“Oh I’m sure you didn’t. If you fucked anything John I think you might actually transcend this earth. At the very least I’d expect some panicked text involving self-flagellation and chaotic punctuation.”
“That’s—” John reaches, finds nothing. “No that’s, uh, that’s very fair. Probably exactly what would happen actually.”
“I’m close though, yeah?” Tommy presses, and all at once his voice has shifted to hold an edge of sincere kindness. Utterly baffling how easily that happens, and what’s even more inexplicable is how well it works, untangling all his knotted anxieties like noodles in hot water every time.
John Irving knows he is desperately lucky to have found a friend like Tommy Jopson.
It’s been three years since he experienced what some might call a bad breakup and what John might call his psyche doing its best to recreate whatever unfathomable alchemy was taking place within the elephant’s foot at Chernobyl.
It was an odd night to remember. Some parts were so sharp and clear that he could only handle them as carefully as broken glass. Some were missing entirely in a way that was honestly even more terrifying. He remembers the exact sound of Cornelius’ laugh when he’d left him by the bar ( “look it’s been a lark John, don’t be a brat about it” ). He remembers the brutal pity on the bartender’s face. He does not remember how he got to the bathroom. He does not remember hitting the ground.
He does remember, quite clearly, thinking he might actually die.
It would be a perfect end for him, wouldn’t it? Gasping on some piss-sticky bathroom floor in a basement club a mere month after looking at himself in the mirror and, for the first time in his life, realizing that he might not actually be going to hell after all. And now here he was: dying of what felt like a heart attack after being dumped by a man who stole batteries like a reflex and thought dogs were “pompous” and he hadn’t even been dumped, had he? You had to be in a Relationship to be dumped. You had to be Something to Someone to be dumped. More than a fascination, more than some puzzle that once pried open and sucked dry could be cracked against a wall as easily as an emptied bottle. And now here he was, discarded in pieces. And alone. So very, utterly, alone. He wanted to pray, but when his mind reached for a presence that had once been as familiar to him as breathing there was simply nothing, and nothing, and nothing .
That was around when he started gasping for air. It was also when Tommy Jopson had opened the bathroom door.
For one absurd moment, John actually thought he might be an angel. Looking back, that was probably the lack of oxygen. Well, that and the copious amounts of glitter.
John had tried to apologize but only a wretched choked noise came out instead. Probably because he still couldn’t breath, probably because if he could he would be doing the sort of crying that genuinely felt like being disemboweled. But miraculously, impossibly, this calm, collected, beautiful man was suddenly on his knees on the awful sticky floor, helping him sit up, rubbing his back, telling him to breathe (“ One… two… three. Alright - that’s good. That’s good… You’re alright. You’re alright” ), and then he was getting him into a cab and holding his hand all the way to A&E and lying to the receptionist when John wouldn’t let go ( “Just engaged - didn’t get a ring. One of those spur of the moment vacation things - have you ever been to Greece? Glorious in April.” ) He sat patiently next to him as John spoke to a doctor with long dark hair and kind but tired eyes while she explained just what a “panic attack” was. He got him home and put him to bed with a glass of water and John woke up the next morning to find glitter in his hair and a text from a “Tommy” on his phone asking him what sort of coffee he'd like.
That was the most extraordinary part in the end. His savior didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke and the smell of cedar and ylang-ylang. He appeared a few hours later with coffee and sausage rolls and listened and scolded him with teasing warmth and told him with a grounding confidence, that he would, in fact, Be Alright. And so over the next month, in perhaps the strangest, luckiest turn of his life, Tommy Jopson became John Irving’s friend.
John had once seen a nature documentary about albatrosses. The parents were staggeringly beautiful creatures: powerful, poised, painted by nature alone like precise porcelain dolls. They carried themselves with an easy grace, a natural confidence, and then… then there was their Child. It sat on a little pile of dung and mud, weak body covered in a pathetic shaggy molt, plaintive eyes peering up as these magnificent creatures deigned to return, day after day, to sustain it by gracefully vomiting fish into its mouth. Oftentimes, John felt as though he were a baby albatross, and Tommy - perfect, fashionable, clever Tommy - was his overburdened single-parent.
He asked him often what on earth Tommy got out of helping a pedantic, achingly sheltered, thirty-four year old navigate the labyrinthine complexities of being a newly “out” gay man, but all it ever got him was one of those cold-edged smiles and some jibe about enjoying the way he shone brighter for the contrast ( “and if I ever hear you calling me your Elder-Queer, John Irving I will cuff you - I’m not your fucking Gandalf” ).
“Look.” Tommy puts down his coffee, which is never a good sign. “You might as well just tell me John. If you don’t your liable to have an ulcer and that would be a terrible hassle for all of us—”
“I’m attracted to him,” John blurts. “Sexu-- physically. I mean.”
Tommy stops. “Seriously?”
John abandons the ruin of his napkin on the table between them. “Yes. Alright?”
“I mean,” Tommy shrugs, taking another sip of his latte. “I honestly can’t say I blame you. He’s actually quite good looking.”
John can’t help the surprise that flashes over him at that. He’d once watched Tommy look a literal supermodel up and down, land his eyes dead on his, and say, in an exceptionally clear voice: “Garden variety.”
“You-- good looking? You really think so?” John asks.
“Mm,” Tommy hums into his coffee. “He’s got that sort of, I don’t know, broken but defiantly sticking around sort of thing. Like he’s been hanging on his whole life just in case someone tells him ‘good boy, well done’.”
“I— um, well, I suppose...” John frowns.
“And his hair’s got a very good sulky curl to it.”
“I don’t know about ‘sulky’, exactly.”
“Broody eyes too. But not in that obnoxiously needy way, you know? I like a man who looks like he’s used to toting his own miseries around. Builds character.”
“'Broody eyes'? What? No, no that’s not—”
Tommy meets his eye. John’s stomach plummets as the realization hits but it’s no use - there’s no hiding it now, he’s pinned by the lighthouse of that stare and with no escape.
Dawning horror bleeds through Tommy’s visage. “John... you’re not talking about-- Are you talking about… George?”
When he was a child, John had suffered from the wretched fancy that if he did something bad, or wrong, or even just mildly obnoxious, the devil might simply pop open a trapdoor under his feet and drop him straight into hell. At this moment he’s starting to think he underestimated the utility of such a punishment.
“George?” Tommy continues in the face of John’s incriminating silence “George Hodgson ?”
“I--” Irving stares firmly into his coffee. “Let’s just stop talking about it.”
“Your flatmate, George Hodgson?”
“Tom, please—”
“The George Hodgson who looks like some sort of twink incarnation of the Quaker Oats man?”
John’s cheeks are so hot he’s genuinely concerned his beard might catch fire. “I don’t think that’s very fair—”
“The one who runs an NTS station that’s jazz fusion meets baroque choral music? That George Hodgson?”
“I thought you said you found that rather cool…” John tries pathetically.
“Alright, yeah I suppose it is a bit cool. What’s the show called again?”
John looks away. “I— don’t remember.”
Tommy squints at him. He reaches into his pocket for his phone.
“Oh no please don’t—” John grabs for it.
Tommy easily leans out of his range. His eyes narrow as he starts to scroll, then empty with all the sudden violence of a kicked bucket. “Oh… oh, John… oh no.”
John gives up, letting his head drop into his hands. He is being punished. He’s not sure what for exactly, but it must be something terribly wicked or unforgivably ordinary or maybe this is just who he is: John Irving, a man destined to get trapped in the sweater of life only to emerge wearing it backwards.
He looks up into Tommy’s big pretty eyes that stare back at him as though he’s just told him he’d like to give it all up for a serious shot at a career as a mime. “What do I do?”
Tommy’s expression shifts into a mean edged sort of pity. He shrugs. “Pray?”
John lets his head drop onto the table.
After a moment, Tommy’s hand lands on his shoulder. It’s warm, and more comforting than it ought to be. “Come on, let’s go for a walk,” he says. “I’m desperate for a smoke after this barrage of mental images anyways.”
It’s an unusually warm spring day and the rest of the week is supposed to be even warmer. He’ll have to buy some shorts. John doesn’t want to buy shorts. They make him look like he is either nine or seventy-four. The park smells of apple blossom and pretzels. Tommy strolls across the grass to take his cigarette off the main path where it might bother people. He takes a long inhale then lets it out again like some stylish dragon. John pads along behind him, hands dug into his pockets staring at the ground.
“I just don’t understand,” Tommy says eventually. “He looks like the type of man who’s solicited by those women who post ads about wanting someone to feed soup.”
“I do not believe that’s something that exists.”
“Is that what this is about? Do you want to feed him soup? There are volunteer programs at hospitals for that sort of thing you know.”
“No, stop, it’s—” John tries to settle the whirl in his head into something simpler as he stares at the grass. He remembers what his therapist has been telling him, about not worrying over Shoulds, or Coulds, or Ought Tos. “He’s,” John manages, “he’s kind. And he’s fascinated by the world. And — I find him very... nice, to look at I mean.”
Tommy sighs. “There’s kind and then there’s Precious, John. I’d put good money on him kissing like a fucking knight grazes his lips over a token offered by some fair maiden.”
The image is so arresting that John actually stops walking. Tommy looks over his shoulder, rolls his eyes, keeps walking.
“Well alright then!” John jogs to catch up. “And how exactly would you like to be kissed, Tommy?”
“I don’t know,” Tommy exhales another puff to the spring sky. “That Little rather looks like he’d kiss as though he’s about to be lined up against a wall and shot.”
John gapes “How is that better?! ”
“Why do you think you have to move out?” Tommy asks suddenly, turning to face him.
“I’m—” John drops his voice, “I’m attracted to my flatmate! That’s not exactly conducive to an amenable cohabitation.”
“You might say it’s exceptionally conducive to an amenable cohabitation.”
John thinks of running into George as he stumbles out of his room to get a glass of water in the middle of the night, hair just mussed and brilliant smile gone loose and sleepy. He thinks of George always making sure there’s a box of the cereal John likes when he comes back from the shops. He thinks of George arguing that he should be the one who finishes the washing up, scooting in next to John at the sink, knocking his hip against his playfully, sliding his hands into the warm water and the slip of dish soap beside his own as he quietly but firmly insists that John let him take it from there.
“I would actually not say that. Not at all,” John says, slightly hoarse.
Tommy shrugs. “Look John, it’s just a crush. At least I sincerely hope it is just a crush. He ‘chatted’ with me at the urinals the last time we all went out you know? It was like being trapped in a stuck elevator with Herman Melville.”
John ignores him, walking firmly across the grass. “How long exactly does a... ‘crush’ have to go on for before it stops being, well... that. Exactly?”
“This been going on a while then?”
John shrugs.
Tommy narrows his eyes. “How long?”
John pretends to consider. “A month? Or two? … Or ten.”
“John.”
“I thought it would go away! Like you said!” He can feel the desperation bleeding into his voice. “I thought that if I started letting you take me to clubs and to go ‘kiki-ing’ and whatnot--”
“Oh my god, do NOT say that --”
“-- Partying then - Living It Up!”
“You’re definitely not doing that either.”
“--I thought that if I just ignored it, I--” John takes a long breath. “I thought it would go away.”
Tommy raises the cigarette to his lips again. The sky is full of bloated mounds of cloud that seem all the brighter for the deep blue of the sky. “And let me guess,” Tommy sighs, “it’s only gotten worse?”
John swallows. He nods into his chest.
“Yeah… You’re quite good at that aren’t you.”
John blinks up at him. “Good at what?”
“Denial.”
John frowns down at his sneakers as they move over the park. “I’d rather I wasn’t.”
“Alright, well,” Tommy starts again, that kind underbelly rolling out of his tone again, “I’m afraid there’s really only two options.”
John exhales. “And those are?”
Tommy turns to look at him with those brilliant, beautiful eyes. “You can tell him. Or, you can let it go.”
John gawks. “Those aren’t exactly helpful options, Tommy!”
“Alright, well let’s break it down then.” He stamps out his cigarette on a nearby bench. “I’m guessing you think you need to move out because your lease is coming up, yeah? Chance to make a clean break. So when’s it up?”
John stares at his hands. “Two weeks.”
“Alright, well that’s not so bad. Glad you told me now and I didn’t have to watch you collapse in on yourself like the galaxy’s most drab star over the course of a fortnight. That’s progress John. Well done.”
John gives him a rather nasty expression. Tommy looks almost proud.
“What do I do?” John asks.
Tommy leans back, taking in the park. “I’m willing to provide an opinion, but I’m going to need more data for a proper assessment.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t try to seduce him Tom—”
“What? God no, Christ — he probably gasps bits of sonnets when he comes.”
John feels his knees go weak. He sits on the bench. “So what then?’
Tommy sits down beside him. “I can pop over, see the two of you together, take a beat on things. Then, I can let you know if I think you’re well and truly fucked or not.”
“It is movie night tomorrow...” John remembers.
“Bloody nerds,” Tommy mutters under his breath. “Alright, that's as good as any other excuse. I’ll come to movie night.”
“You weren’t exactly invited...”
Tom levels him with A Look.
John smiles weakly. “Joking”
“Ha, ha.”
“Would you like to come to movie night, Tom?”
Tommy cants his head to one side, tossing the butt of his cigarette into the bin with a rakish slice of a smile. “Oh cheers John, why yes thank you, I think I just might.”