comes back
by LC
11/21/02Thanks to Hetre for betaing, and to everybody who had to listen to me whine. Notes are at the end.
There's a dog in the parking lot, waiting when they get out of the car. JC crouches next to it, smelling the thick wet dog-smell of its fur. "Hey boy," he says, stroking its soft head. The fur on its body glistens with water. It sits still for his petting and sweeps its tail across the gravel. JC looks up and sees Chris watching him with the dog. "He likes me," he says.
"I bet he likes everybody," Chris says. He crouches and stretches out a hand, clicks his tongue twice. "Here dog, here dog," he calls. It trots over to him and lays down with its belly exposed, waiting to be scratched. Chris obliges it for a few seconds and it writhes in delight. They're the only car in the parking lot and JC can't see a flicker of human movement anywhere.
The dog whines when Chris stands up. His knees pop loudly when they unfold and JC flinches in sympathy. He tucks the guidebook under his arm and they walk down the short path to the castle entrance. The two black iron gates are chained shut and the sign on the front announces, Closed Mondays. JC frowns and flips through the guidebook.
"It doesn't mention that here."
Chris shrugs. "Write them a letter. I'm going to look around anyway." He walks away down a worn-in path in the wet grass, towards the edge of the cliff. JC follows him down a slippery set of stone steps with pools of water sunken into the black surface where the rain has eaten away at the rock His shoes are rubber soled and no good for this; he holds on tightly to the wooden railing. The bottom of the stairs opens onto a green half-bowl in the side of the cliff.
"That's where the castle fell into the sea," JC says. Chris turns around.
"Where it what?"
JC smiles and reads from the guidebook. "'In 1639, dinner was interrupted when the kitchen fell into the sea, taking most of the servants with it.'" He waits for Chris's incredulous laughter to subside before continuing. "'That was the last straw for the lady of the house.' I can't say I blame her."
"It fell into the sea," Chris says, and breaks into fresh giggles. "The seeeeaaa." JC starts laughing too, and Chris keeps repeating that phrase, "into the sea!" and stretching out the vowels until it sounds like a cartoon.
It turns out nearly all of the castle is accessible from the outside. Leaning over a mossy wall, JC can see a tourist booth and what looks like reconstructed rooms. Nothing important. "Do you know Morse code?" Chris asks, suddenly at his side.
"Uh, no...why?"
"There's towers across from each other." He points them out. "I've got a keychain with a flashlight on it, we could send messages."
"Or we could just yell at each other," JC says, because it can't be more than fifty feet from tower to tower. Which is how he ends up stationed in a ruined tower overhanging the dark blue ocean while Chris leans much, much too far out over the wall and serenades him. "Girl I'm falling fo-o-o-r you," Chris bellows. JC almost can't look.
"Get the fuck back in there!" he yells. He's breathless with giggling and actually terrified, but the fear is at a remove, like riding a roller coaster. "Fuck, Chris, I'm not kidding, go back down!" Is it a serenade if both the singer and the sung-to are up on balconies? he wonders, and then Chris's face draws back and disappears down the stairs. JC runs down to meet him, almost turning an ankle on a patch of moss. He grabs Chris by the shoulders and all out of breath half-laughs half-shrieks, "You coulda died, you could've fallen right out, Chris, jesus!" His pulse in his neck is pounding so hard he feels it like a lump when he swallows.
"I wouldn't." He twists cleanly out of JC's grip, breathing hard and fast. "I'm good at climbing stuff." Which is true; there's not a ruin in Ireland he hasn't scaled by now. When they saw the Giant's Causeway JC had been disappointed, because the pillars were small and almost unnoticeable next to the massive cliffs that hovered above, but Chris clambered up with barely a blink and ran from hexagon to hexagon. When he'd touched every one, he slid back down to the sand.
Chris climbs on top of things, Stone Age burial mounds and fifteenth century churches, and makes JC takes pictures of him like a paper cutout held up against the sky.
They climb back up the stairs. "You could've died," JC mutters, but Chris is three steps ahead and ignores him. The wool of his sweater is wet with tiny droplets of mist, but it doesn't soak through. It's supposed to be made for fishermen, and coated with something--JC thinks something from inside of a sheep, but he didn't listen very closely to that part--to keep the water out. It's a huge sweater and it hangs off his body making him look like a kid playing dress-up. JC's pretty sure he's supposed to be wearing it over something, but the weather isn't that cold yet.
Chris pulls the sweater off of him in the backseat of the rental car. His skin feels clammy and cold in the sudden air. He presses Chris's hand right below his collarbone, where the skin is a little sore and red from the rough fabric. "You're supposed to layer that," Chris says. "Like, a turtleneck and long underwear and three different sweaters." The car is still off and there's no heat and it's too cold for JC to take off his t-shirt but he does anyway, and he only shivers for a second before Chris is up against him, warm except for the chilly line of his zipper down JC's chest because he hasn't even taken his jacket off yet.
They have cold-weather sex, Chris wrapped tight around him, pushing him back into the seat. He unzips Chris's jacket but doesn't take it off, just opens it and pushes his shirt up and rubs his hands up and down Chris's back until they're warm. Chris moves his hips up and down in a slow steady rhythm that JC thinks will drive him crazy, because each time Chris rubs up against his cock he shudders a little and looks right at JC, right into his eyes.
JC fumbles between them, trying to undo zippers. It's hard because Chris refuses to pull back or stop moving at all, just keeps rocking back and forth across JC's knuckles, making them clumsy. When JC looks down to see what he's doing, Chris swoops forward like a hawk and kisses him. JC is pretty sure Chris in Ireland kisses differently from Chris at home, but up until ten days ago he'd never kissed Chris at all, so he can't compare. He could ask Justin, but that's the kind of bad idea he only gets when he's in the middle of sex, or really cold, or both.
JC finally gets the zipper down and wraps his hand around Chris, who bites the corner of JC's mouth before breaking away, his head dipping to JC's naked shoulder He breathes in hot wet gasps that evaporate and leave the skin chilled and prickling. JC says, "oh, oh," his voice weirdly flat, trapped by the steel walls of the car. Chris grinds down against him and JC's hand is trapped, pinned, with his knuckles rubbing up against the seam of his jeans just to the left of where he wants them. He can barely move his fingers because of the angle. Chris's cock slides up and down his palm, hot and hard, and he wants to wrap his fingers around it and, and, everything, bend over and bring it to his mouth, crawl up the seat and sit and squirm until Chris is inside him filling him all the way, suck up the heat through his fingertips because he's cold, cold, cold.
JC can see the castle through the windshield over Chris's shoulder. He keeps his eyes locked on it, on one particular wall, the one that hides the green gash in the side of the cliff where there isn't any castle anymore. Chris pants and mutters in his ear but nothing important.
Chris comes in JC's hand, then sits back, unzips JC, and wraps JC's own wet hand around his cock. JC tears his eyes away from the castle and looks at Chris, his mouth open helplessly. "Please," Chris says. He licks JC's neck from collarbone to ear, one long thick stripe. "It's really hot."
"I'm cold," JC says sulkily, but his hand is already moving. Then Chris wraps around him again and he can't complain.
They go out to bars every night, for the music--trad sessions, JC reads, is what people here call it. The first three nights JC orders Guinness, because everybody at the bar is cradling tall pint glasses full of dark brown and if his voice is going to mark him a tourist he should at least try to fit in. He orders two pints and takes them back to the table where he learns that he can't stand Guinness. It's too thick and heavy and not so much a beverage as an assault.
JC stares miserably at his full glass. He closes his eyes and gets down half of it, telling himself there must be something here for a whole island to be so sprung on it. He's just not paying enough attention. He can see Chris watching him, and it's not so dark in the bar that he can't pick out the amusement in his eyes, but Chris is drinking down his pint like it was water and JC chooses to ignore him. It takes two more nights for Chris to lose patience and huff over to the bar, coming back with a rum and coke and slapping it in front of him. "You hate Guinness, okay? I figured it out for you."
JC picks up the slender glass. The rum is flavored; he can smell the coconut oil from a foot away. "Rum isn't Irish."
"Neither are you," Chris says. JC drinks it and chews on the ice while a man with a face like knotted wood alternates between reels and sad ballads.
A skinny dark boy is sitting on a stool behind the man, playing the flute. While there's breath in my body, the man sings, she's the one I love still, the flute whistling counterpoint. JC pushes his glass full of ice at Chris. "Get me another, please?"
"You scared of the bartender?"
"You're closer," JC points out. "And I don't think I have any money."
"You just don't want to lose your cred." Chris gets up, glass in hand. "Everybody already knows we're tourists, they don't care what you're drinking."
"I don't care if they care."
"They don't."
JC stands up, banging the edge of the table with his hip. "I'll go do it myself, okay?"
"No, man, sit down. Sit down." Chris pats his shoulder and JC sinks back into the booth. He rubs at the sore spot on his hip, teasing out sharp bolts of pain. When Chris comes back with a full glass, he sets it in front of JC and says, "You need to relax. You're on vacation."
"You're nobody's idea of relaxing, Chris." The coconut scent slicks over all the surfaces of his mouth.
"I can think of a few people."
JC can think of several things to say, and they all mean, Justin doesn't count. He doesn't say anything.
It's past one when they leave and the music is still going, no ballads now but only dances and songs with dirty lyrics about unfaithful maidens. Standing on the sidewalk outside, JC can still hear the music and the clapping and foot-stomping of the crowd. He cups his face in his hands, feeling suddenly drunk. His fingers smell like cigarette smoke. Next to him, Chris dances and sings softly to himself. The way he moves, JC watches him and thinks how strange it is, like he might tangle his feet and fall at any moment but at the same time more graceful than he's ever seen Chris dance. He's never seen Chris dance to Irish music, though. Maybe this is just another thing that's different and JC had no idea.
"Are you," he says, then starts again. "Your name. Did you come by it honestly?"
"What?" Chris pauses in his dancing.
"Do you have a--a bloodline. Going back to Ireland."
"There was too much rum in those, wasn't there? I don't think the bartender'd ever even made one before. She looked at me funny."
"It's not the drink to get here," JC says. "It's too tropical." He's getting sidetracked, he realizes. "Chris."
"I don't know, I guess I do. With the name and all." He starts down the sidewalk, moving quickly through the cold air. JC catches up with him in two long strides.
"I was just wondering," he says, "because you seem like you're from here."
"Yeah?" Chris glances at him, looking interested. "How's that?"
"Ireland reminds me of you," JC says slowly. He's not sure how to explain this. "In Derry, the chalk on the signs? And the shape of where, they had the Catholic projects up on the hill and everybody was gathered looking down at the parade."
"I'm Northern Ireland?" Chris snorts. "Great. That's really nice, C."
"No, everything," JC insists. "Like Clonmacnoise and Knowth and Dunluce--"
"The castle with the kitchen broken off?"
JC nods. "Everything made of old rocks, really old, and people used to live there or sleep there or do religious stuff and then they die and nobody knows what the rocks are for but they're still important. You can feel that, I mean, you can feel it now. How sad it is for them."
Chris stops walking. JC's legs, still happily drunk, keep going for several seconds before turning around. "You think just because Justin cheated on me and dumped me, you think I'm a pile of rocks? No, sorry--a sad pile of rocks?"
JC stares, speechless. Finally he says, "That's not what I meant."
"You're supposed to be--" Chris jabs a finger into his chest. JC shoves it away.
"Ow, jesus--"
"You're supposed to be the one who won't give me shit about him. That's why I brought you."
"That's not what I was talking about," JC says loudly. He's briefly thankful that it's the middle of the night and nobody's around to stop and stare and listen in. "I wasn't even thinking about Justin."
"Yeah, well," Chris says, "I am."
JC doesn't say anything, because that's supposed to make him react and if he doesn't, Chris will settle down into a sulk, and he'll slough that off by the time they get back to the hotel. If JC's learned anything from the last two years--and sometimes that's an open question--it's that you can't fight with Chris about Justin, no matter how wrong he is.
Anyway, he's not exactly surprised to hear it.
"I just want you to know," JC says, dusting his fingertips up and down Chris's chest. "I wasn't against the two of you because I was jealous. I didn't mean for this, us, to happen, that's not why I came with you."
Chris catches his wrist and pushes his palm flat. "What if I don't believe you?"
And JC actually smiles at that. "You wouldn't ask unless you did," he says, and thinks, I know you.
When Chris pulls his hand up and wet-kisses his fingertips, one by one, the tenderness surprises JC. It's easy to let himself forget that Chris loves him like he always has, entirely separate from whatever he's working out of his system right now, across the ocean from any scenery he'll have to look at again in his life. It's easy to forget that JC agreed to go to Ireland with Chris on his post-dumped getaway because he wanted to make him feel better.
Afterwards, they write the postcards. Chris insisted right from the first day that they send daily postcards. He grabs them seemingly at random, sometimes from tourist offices at the bottom of a cliff, sometimes from the wire rack out front of the stationery store. He's always got four at the end of the day, and when he lays them out on the bed they're already addressed, Chris assigning images to personalities as he sees fit. JC takes Justin and Lance's cards. Tonight it's an old-fashioned cartoon dog lapping Guinness from a saucer, for Lance, and a panoramic shot of Castle Dunluce, for Justin. The photo's clearly taken from somewhere out on the water. It's a straight-on view of the concave dent where the kitchen crumbled away.
"Why are you sending them postcards?" JC asks. Chris looks up from the card he's writing to his mother and sisters.
"It's Ireland," he says. "They deserve postcards."
JC persists, because he's been wondering this for eight days now. "You're too pissed off at them to even do it yourself," he says, "but you think they deserve postcards?"
Chris shrugs and goes back to writing. He finishes the card, signs it, and peels off a stamp from the roll. "In a couple of months I won't be," he says, and presses the stamp into place. "They'll deserve them then."
JC writes the postcards, quoting the guidebook to Justin about the castle. Chris found that very amusing, he writes, which is rather insensitive of him, don't you agree? He signs them, then hands them over to Chris so he can look them over, make sure they fit his standards for posterity. He signs his name, too, at the bottom of each card where JC's left room.
"You should be aware," JC says as Chris sets the cards neatly on the bedside table, "that's a pretty screwy metaphor to send an ex."
"That's not why I picked it for him."
"Why, then?" JC asks, because he's really curious now, but Chris just smirks and says,
"Trade secret."
"What trade is that, professional pain in the ass?" JC glares--he hates when Chris plays keep-away, it drives him crazy--but to no avail. Chris flips off the lamp and curls up close to JC in the darkness. Chris likes to sleep braided tightly to anybody handy; JC's seen him do it with Justin hundreds of times.
It's raining when they go to Inishmoor, and cold. JC wears two t-shirts and his fisherman-sweater and a dark blue windbreaker. None of it keeps his legs warm, though. They spend twenty minutes crushed into a flimsy tourist office with thirty other tourists waiting for the ferry. The tourist office, for some reason, is missing a wall, as if it were a newsstand, so JC huddles in the furthest corner, near a rack of postcards. Eventually Chris makes his way around to check them out, see if any suit him. JC leans forward and tilts his head onto Chris's jacketed shoulder. He sighs softly at the warmth and burrows further, until his forehead rests against Chris's neck, and then he closes his eyes and blisses out on body heat.
When Chris settles his hand on JC's hip, JC doesn't jump in surprise, which is good because if he did he'd knock Chris's teeth out. He is surprised, though. He wasn't expecting anything back. Chris's fingers rub back and forth, gently, absently, while he picks up and examines and rejects card after card. If they had more time, JC would lift his head and smile at Chris and say, hey, you. Can't be more than five minutes, though, until the boat pulls in, so he keeps his eyes closed and presses himself a little tighter. Chris won't misunderstand. They share heat, the five of them, it's what they do.
They ride in the bottom of the ferry. JC leans against the window and watches the black water foam up white. He doesn't mean to fall asleep--doesn't even remember closing his eyes, but then Chris is shaking his arm and grinning.
"Come on, come on." He hops from foot to foot while JC unfolds himself. "You know you could just drink coffee like a normal person."
"You keep me up too late." JC slithers past him into the aisle and smiles minutely to himself as he strides up the stairs.
After what's seemed like the high-cliffs-and-staircases tour of Ireland, Dun Aengus is surprisingly easy to get to. A tour bus takes them to the starting point, and the path up to the top curls back and forth and it's well-worn and flat. Chris walks next to him all the way up, but JC's wrapped up tight in his layers and can't even see Chris unless he turns his head, much less talk to him. The rain is still dripping down. The cuffs of his jeans are soaked and his legs, even the parts that aren't drenched, are half-numb.
The distance is short, but the winding path stretches it out to a half hour walk. Pale grey rocks, darkened from the rain, jut out of the grassy fields in greater and greater numbers as they make their way uphill, until finally the fields have turned into planes of grey slate with weeds sprouting through the cracks. It's an alien landscape, especially with JC's view narrowed by the windbreaker. If he times it right he can look straight to the edge of the island and see no sign of humanity except the blue nylon at the edges of his vision. He could be on another planet.
JC stops abruptly as a rough-hewn staircase looms up in front of him. 'Hewn' is too generous; the thing is a pile of rocks. A loose pile of rocks, it looks like, and dripping wet.
"This is fucking treacherous," Chris declares, and JC nods. Surely this can't be the path, he thinks. Surely this is not what they're supposed to climb. But, no, another bundle of tourists, Scandinavian-looking and bursting at the edges with little children, bounces past him and Chris and hops onto the rocks, scampering up them like mountain goats.
"It must be more stable then it looks," JC says hopefully. "They wouldn't let people use it otherwise."
"Here's hoping," Chris says, and starts to climb. He doesn't move nimbly, by any stretch of the imagination, but he catches himself when he slips, and after half a dozen steps JC admits to himself that the stairs are not as dangerous as they look, and starts to make his way up. Each time his rubber sneakers squeal and slip on the wet rocks, he falls an inch or two before his reaction time kicks in, and every single time, his heart claws up into his throat. He should've bought better shoes, he thinks, because this keeps happening to him.
Chris helps him up when he reaches the top. For a long minute JC leans on him, panting, vaguely worried because he shouldn't be this worn out from climbing up a wall, even if it is cold and wet and terrifyingly slippery. Still. He finally catches his breath, looks up to find Chris grinning at him.
"Little more time at the gym?"
"Fuck you, you got a head start." JC finds his hand and squeezes it tight through two pairs of gloves.
"Excuses, man, it's tragic. Burned out so early, too." Chris takes a step back. "I'm going up top to the fort."
JC shoves his hands back in his pockets, wishing they were fur-lined. Or fleece-lined. Or electric. He nods at Chris. "I'll see you up there in a minute. I want to go look over the edge." Chris shudders full-body at that and JC laughs. "I promise not to jump."
"Don't even fuck around about that, man, don't even. You're gonna end up beach pizza."
"I think it just goes straight down to the sea, actually," JC offers, then giggles as Chris takes off at a run for the inner fortification, his hands clapped over his ears. He walks slowly towards the edge, pausing every time he shifts his gaze from the ground in front of him to the view. The sky's grey of course, and the details aren't as clear as postcard-quality, but JC is sort of glad the weather turned out how it did. This is a more honest experience of the place, after all, to see it wet and shivering and wrapped in wool. When he gets within five feet of the edge he drops to a crouch and moves slowly forward that way, because the ground is slippery and being okay with heights doesn't mean being stupid.
He's right--the drop-off falls straight into the water. Deep midnight-blue churns restlessly against the edge of the cliff, and it looks, from this height, it looks soft. If he didn't know better he'd jump. But all he does is sit at the edge, his hands planted flat on the ground to keep him stable, and stare off the edge of Inishmoor. After a minute he pushes the hood on his jacket back so he can see better. The skin on his face and neck prickles at the sudden rush of cold air. It makes him feel clean. Rainwater soaks his hair, runs down his face, curls up cozy at the base of his neck.
He notices the beach at the base of the cliff, suddenly, because there's suddenly movement there. When he focuses his eyes he sees a sprinkling of people running back and forth to a dock with what look like black canoes tied to it with thick knotted ropes. They're the traditional boats, he remembers from the guidebook, but he can't remember the Gaelic word. It's not the dock where the ferry came in, but a smaller, uglier one on the opposite side of the island. The one people actually use, he supposes.
Chris's quiet "Hey" startles JC enough to make him twitch. Thank God Chris didn't try and tap him on the shoulder, or he'd be plummeting right now. He pushes himself up to standing. His legs tingle as blood rushes back into them. "You've been there half an hour, man," Chris says, "you're gonna get pneumonia."
JC shakes his hair out and pulls his hood back up. "I didn't think it'd been that long. Was the fort cool?"
"So cool. Come on and I'll show you." Chris starts toward the stone wall, but JC shakes his head.
"I'm freezing, man, I'm done for the day." A sudden sneeze makes his point for him. Chris wrinkles his eyebrows and grabs JC's wrist, leading him back towards the path.
"You are gonna get pneumonia. What were you looking at so long, anyway?"
"I don't know." JC shrugs. "It's beautiful. The rain makes it feel like--like I could really be there, you know?"
"You are there. You're right here."
You know what I mean, JC thinks. "I'll explain it on the postcards," he says. "I'm too cold to make sense."
Chris grins. "You never make sense, C, that's why I love you so." He walks to the haphazard ladder and starts to pick his way down, caution stringing his knees tight. JC follows him, looking back one last time before the water drops out of view completely.
Down on the beach, the ropes are stretched taut. The small black boats rise up on the water, leaning hard into the sea.
end.
Notes:
Written for Never After, a challenge about castles.Castle Dunluce and Dun Aengus are both as described, and the coolest places I saw in Ireland. Dunluce is in Northern Ireland, County Antrim; Dun Aengus is an ancient fort, built up over successive centuries, on Inishmoor(that's the Anglicized spelling, but I can't figure out how to do diacritics on a computer), the largest of the three Aran Islands off the western coast.
The song in the bar is the traditional song, "If I Was a Blackbird." I heard it performed by Silly Wizard.
The Giant's Causeway is ridiculously small. Worth seeing, but puny.