Chapter Text
JT drives them into town that weekend. Stephen walks out of the guest room and JT is waiting for him in the kitchen, pot of coffee ready on the counter. Breakfast is a bowl of cereal, and then there’s coffee in two thermoses, and they pile into the truck.
Their first stop is the hardware store, where Stephen trails after JT like a kid being dragged on an errand they don’t understand. He stares blankly at a shelf with a truly overwhelming variety of hinges and tries to remember why exactly JT keeps him around.
From there JT drives them to a strip mall a little further into town, where a place called Needleskip Music is nestled between a diner and a dollar store. It’s got a logo of a girl jumping over the needle on a record player hand-painted on the sign, and when JT pushes the door open a bell jingles cheerfully to announce him.
Inside is crowded and chaotic, a mix of CDs and records and tapes on various shelves arranged with narrow walkways between them. There’s a wall adorned with guitars, another with posters, and a bulletin board by the door advertising guitar lessons and music festivals going back seven years. The air conditioner hums beneath the music playing through the store, something country that Stephen thinks he might vaguely recognize.
A curly-haired, ruddy-faced man a few years older than Stephen all but leaps over the counter to give JT a hug when he sees them walk in.
“As I live and breathe, JT Thomas! I thought we’d lost you!”
“Phil, man, it’s good to see ya.”
And then they’re off. JT asking Phil how he’s been, how his kids are, how business has been since he’s been gone. Phil asking after JT’s family, his farm, how things went on that game show he was going on. Stephen hovers uncertainly behind him.
Eventually Phil seems to notice that the weird lanky guy hasn’t moved past them into the store and therefore must be with JT.
“You gonna introduce me to your friend here Jet?” Phil smiles at him, face open and curious, and Stephen smiles back with a degree of suspicion that he knows is unwarranted but cannot help.
JT reaches back, gets an arm briefly around Stephen to pull him forward. “This is my buddy Stephen. We met on the show.”
“No kidding?” Phil holds out a hand for Stephen to shake, “Well it’s good to meet you Stephen. You live somewhere nearby, or you just down here visiting?”
“Uh, just visiting.”
“He’s stayin’ at my place for a while. Came down from New York a bit after the show.”
“It was weird being back in the city after all that wilderness.” Stephen justifies.
“I’ll bet.” Phil says easily, like there’s nothing strange about Stephen’s situation at all.
Stephen gets folded into the conversation. Phil is easygoing and chatty, and Stephen is good at small talk, so he quickly finds his shoulders relaxing as the conversation flows easily.
Phil asks a question about the show. Stephen glances at JT briefly, catches his eyes already flicking over to meet him. A brief half-second check in of how much do we tell this guy? that they’d all but perfected over 39 days of hoarding information. Stephen doesn’t even notice they’ve done it until he’s halfway through answering the question. It didn’t even communicate anything substantial. It was just there.
Phil eventually has to go back behind the counter, and Stephen pereuses the cds. There’s a larger country section than any music store Stephen’s been in before, which he should have anticipated, but it’s not the only genre. Stephen is able to find the R.E.M. he was looking for with little issue.
Phil rings him up. JT says he isn’t buying anything, which makes Stephen wonder what the point of coming here even was. As far as Stephen can tell JT didn’t even look for anything, just spent several minutes staring at the wall of guitars and chatting with Phil until Stephen told him he was ready to go.
“Don’t let him get you in too much trouble, you hear?” Phil says, handing over Stephen’s CDs, nodding his head towards where JT is leaning up against the counter like he’s a fixture of the store.
“I try not to,” Stephen says. He likes Phil a lot, even after such a short time of interacting with him. He’s friendly, and clearly passionate about music, and he has an irreverent way of interacting with JT that Stephen really enjoys.
“Everyone’s always acting like I’m the troublemaker.” JT protests, “For all you know Stephen’s the one gettin’ me in trouble.”
“That is absolutely not the case,” Stephen informs him, “and the good people of Samson all know it.” Phil laughs and reaches over to clap JT on the shoulder.
“I like him,” he says to JT, not bothering to lower his voice at all. “Seems like he keeps you on your toes.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” JT mutters, his smile turning a little shy. It stays on his face as they exit the store, a quiet sort of joy that Stephen doesn’t fully understand.
“He’s a good guy, Phil,” JT says once they’re in the car, “missed him in Brazil.”
“Yeah, he seems cool.” Stephen agrees. He settles into the passenger seat and tucks his CDs into the glove compartment on top of the road map, next to a small tackle box and a bulk pack of cinnamon gum.
“Taught me guitar,” JT says as he pulls out into the street, turning towards their next stop, “ages ago, when I was a kid.”
Stephen takes in the little smile on his face and realizes, maybe a little belatedly, that he might have just met someone important to JT.
It’s an odd realization. Not bad, just a little strange in a way that meeting his family wasn’t. JT talked about his family all the time in Brazil, always reminding people why he was out there, but he never mentioned Phil. Why would he? Phil is just some guy who runs a music shop.
But he clearly means something to JT. Something that Stephen is only beginning to see the edges of. It throws him, for a second, that’s all. He’s not used to being around people who know JT better than he does.
“I didn’t know you played guitar.” He says, and it comes out sounding a little accusatory for no good reason.
JT chuckles. “Well, let’s not give me too much credit. I haven’t played since I was like fourteen. And even then I was not good.”
“I’m sure you weren’t that bad.”
“No, I was pretty bad. And I’d be even worse now. Been thinkin’ about tryin’ it out again though. Mom’s always tellin’ me I need a hobby.”
“Why’d you stop?” Stephen asks. His weird moment of irritation is already passing. He shouldn’t be surprised there’s more to learn about JT.
“‘Cause I was bad at it,” JT says, “and I was busy. Besides, I didn’t have my own guitar. If I wanted to practice I’da had to use the one in the band room at school, and I wasn’t about to do all that.”
“Huh.” Stephen tries to picture it. Fourteen year old JT who was bad at guitar and didn’t want to practice in the band room.
“I was in band in high school,” Stephen finds himself admitting. He hasn’t thought about that in years.
“Yeah?” JT asks. Then he glances over at Stephen, gives him a quick once-over. “Never mind, of course you were.”
Stephen side-eyes him but refuses to rise to the bait. Because he’s a mature adult, unlike some.
“What did you play?” JT asks.
“Oboe.” JT’s brow furrows. “It looks like a clarinet but the reed is sticking out at the top.”
It takes another few seconds, but then the confused expression clears into one of pure delight.
“The one with the stupid lookin’ mouth piece?” Stephen’s heavy sigh is as good as an answer. “Man, were you trying to get bullied?”
Stephen closes his eyes, regretting every single one of his life choices, but especially the ones he made in his freshman year of high school.
“It’s called a reed. And I never should have told you this.”
“No, no, I think it’s awesome.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“Really, I mean it,” JT says, but his sincerity is belied by the barely concealed laughter in his voice, “I’m sure you were real good at it.”
“Oh no, I was terrible.” Stephen says, tone flat in a way he knows will get a real laugh out of JT. It does, and Stephen feels a little flash of triumph.
“What a pair we make, huh.” JT says, grinning out at the road in front of them.
“Not a single competently played instrument between us.” Stephen agrees. JT shakes his head.
“Man. I feel like we should start a band or somethin’.”
Stephen snorts. “The amateur oboe and guitar instrumental duo is an untapped market, for sure.”
“I think we might have a real opportunity here.”
“Can you sing?” Stephen asks, though he already kind of knows the answer to that one.
“Not well.” JT confirms.
“Perfect.”
They park at the general store. It takes less than a minute from when they walk in for JT to run into a couple more people he knows. A guy he went to high school with and his (apparently new) wife. He introduces Stephen as his buddy who’s staying with him for a bit. Stephen shakes hands and smiles, and then a conversation begins and Stephen thinks that running errands here takes twice as long as it does in New York. It’s going to take some getting used to.
Stephen’s most notable purchase from the whole shopping trip ends up being a notebook.
It’s a cheap leather-bound thing, the first page of which is taken up by a list of increasingly terrible band names he and JT came up with on the drive home. It’s not like they’ll ever use any of them, but Stephen likes seeing them when he opens the notebook.
He takes to carrying it with him whenever he’s following JT around the farm. When he’s not being roped into doing manual labour he’ll sit on a fence or in the grass and he’ll write.
He writes in a way he hasn’t written in years, constantly and without external pressure. It comes as a flood, once he starts, a dry riverbed seeing its first rainfall in ages. It feels good. Fulfilling. He feels like he’s starting to recognize the contours of his own mind again.
He doesn’t quite know what he’s writing towards yet, for now it’s all just snippets. Stuff he remembers from the game, mostly. Strategy summaries, move analysis, player reads. He spends an entire day making what are essentially character sheets for each player, save those few Timbira members he never got to know. He writes about Sandy and it feels like recalling an estranged aunt he knew as a kid.
Late at night, when his brain is too busy to let him sleep, the writing goes from analytical to emotional. A paragraph about hunger. A few pages that look like the scrawlings of a paranoid madman, rambling about cameras and puppet masters and how no one can be trusted. A eulogy for Taj, which is the closest thing he can manage to a decent apology. An attempt at a poem about the river. Something about JT that he immediately scribbles over so effectively no one would ever be able to parse what it was.
Most things he writes about JT end up that way, for whatever reason, he’s perpetually unhappy with everything he writes containing JT’s name. Everyone else gets a one-page character sheet. JT gets two because the first one is full of crossed-out information.
And yet somehow, infuriatingly, he keeps being there. He can’t write about him but he can’t not write about him either. Even when Stephen deliberately tries to avoid him, even without his name printed in careful black pen, he is in evidence. Every anecdote he jots down, even if it doesn’t contain JT at all, still contains him by way of his conspicuous absence.
It’s probably a result of continued proximity.
Stephen writes game analysis like he’s talking to JT, and that’s because half the time he is. He’ll yell questions over from his fence and JT will keep working for a few moments without acknowledging it, but Stephen can always tell when he’s mulling something over. And then JT will turn to him and give his input, which is always valuable, even when it’s something Stephen disagrees with.
One morning Stephen has what he thinks is a fun idea to try his hand at a pastoral poem, since that seems like the kind of thing you do when you’re a writer temporarily living on a farm. He ends up having to abandon it halfway through because he can’t figure out how to romanticise farm life without also romanticising JT. Presumably because every time he looks up at the farm while writing, JT is in the foreground doing something farm related and JT-ish and therefore difficult to ignore.
That whole idea was doomed to failure, really. It was one of his few ill-fated attempts to write something that’s not about Survivor.
He also spends an afternoon sitting in the armchair in the living room listening to Out of Time, trying to remember what he wrote about before his every thought became consumed with voting strategy and rice rations and jury votes and edits. He manages a couple sentences but they all feel flat and intangable, just words on a page with nothing to say.
Still, being able to write a lot about some things is better than not being able to write about anything at all. So he sticks to what’s working.
He sits on a fence and writes about Survivor. He watches JT work when he needs to think. He gets off the fence and follows JT more closely when he needs a break from thinking. Then he goes inside and writes some more.
He gradually learns to trust the cattle. He reaches a more or less peaceful equilibrium with the chickens. He continues to be incredibly suspicious of the horses.
JT tries to coax him into riding one, once. He tricks him into it by making it look easy and Stephen forgets, briefly, that JT is a terrible benchmark for these sorts of things.
He manages to make it most of the way into the saddle before something unfortunate happens with his foot, and then something even more unfortunate happens with his balance, and JT only half manages to catch him on his way down. Stephen ends up in a humiliated heap, feeling more than hearing JT’s laughter as he backs out of trying again in as dignified a manner as he can manage whilst still recovering on the floor.
While he can admit that the whole falling thing was mostly his fault, Stephen maintains that the horse had malicious intent. If he’d managed to actually ride the thing it probably would have done something even worse. He swears it was laughing at him when he fell.
The cows, at least, do not laugh at him. He can coexist peacefully with the cows. They mostly just wander around the fields and eat, which are two of Stephen’s primary activities these days as well, so he likes to think they understand one another.
Food continues to feel a bit like a novelty every time it happens, like he’s being taken on reward.
He eats until he throws up more often than he’d like. At first he thought things were getting better in that regard, when he made it the first few days in Alabama managing to keep his food down. Day three crushed all his hopes, when he ate too much dinner on too anxious a stomach and ended up becoming very familiar very quickly with the tile of JT’s bathroom floor.
Stephen knows people who can throw up and just keep moving, like it’s nothing. He saw it all the time in college, kids getting absolutely wasted, throwing up, immediately downing more vodka. Meanwhile when Stephen throws up it’s genuinely a little debilitating. It’s a whole body affair, heaving and trembling and tears on his face and a sort of out-of-body headspace that always takes a few minutes to come back from.
He initially tried to keep it secret from JT. That lasted all of three minutes before JT heard him retching and followed him into the bathroom with a furrowed brow and a glass of water. He didn't even notice JT opening the door, just suddenly became aware of his presence between heaves, sitting steadily beside him.
He’d probably count it as one of the lowest moments of his life, when he realized JT was sitting on the tile floor next to him, watching him shiver and cry and gag into the toilet bowl, knowing there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop any of it from happening. Once he was capable of speech he’d tried to shoo JT away, but he’d just said “yeah right,” and refused to leave.
Eventually Stephen stops fighting him on it. It’s easier to just let himself be comforted. To let himself fall, still trembling, back into JT’s hold once he’s all hollowed out, to let JT cradle him and run his hand through his hair like he’s something precious and fragile.
Sometimes on particularly bad nights Stephen imagines JT picking him up and carrying him back to his room - JT’s room, not the guest room - laying him down there and curling his soft, warm body around him until Stephen shivers himself to sleep. He almost asks for it, once or twice, but the words never quite make it past his teeth.
Stephen would feel stupid being carried anyways. His limbs are too long and gangly. It’d be like JT was carrying around a bunch of sticks.
It’s not every day, mercifully, but it’s frequent enough that they develop a sort of system around it. JT’s learned to tell when Stephen’s leaving the room for normal reasons and when Stephen’s leaving with the urgency that indicates he’s about to hurl, and by the time he’s kneeling on the floor in front of the toilet JT’s setting a glass of water beside him and the hand is on his back rubbing gentle circles between his shoulderblades. Sometimes Stephen hears JT muttering things to him, little circular phrases that don’t mean anything except that Stephen can listen to the soothing cadence of JT’s voice.
He knows that the main problem is that he’s eating too much at once, not giving his stomach time to acclimate. He feels like he should be able to stop himself. But even when he knows there will be food guaranteed for him in the morning he can’t seem to stop his nervous system from insisting he keep stuffing himself with as much dinner as he can, because it’s here in front of him and you just never know what might happen.
At some point he notices that JT can’t seem to stop putting food on Stephen’s plate either. Every time Stephen’s already almost painfully full but reaches for seconds anyways JT will nudge it towards him.
He doesn’t even think JT knows he’s doing it half the time. It’s clearly a thoughtless gesture, something JT does because that’s just what JT does. But sometimes after Stephen throws up he thinks he sees him looking a little guilty, and he wonders if JT knows but can’t help himself any more than Stephen can.
He can’t find it in himself to get mad at him for it, even as he thinks that this is just typical. Both of them get novel survivor trauma responses or whatever, but Stephen’s the only one who really suffers for it. A bizarre Oroborus where Stephen is both the head eating the tail and the tail getting eaten, while JT is all the middle of it, part of the cycle but untouched and blameless.
But it’s not like Stephen would be better off on his own. He’d still be eating too much and throwing it all back up, the way he was doing in New York. He just wouldn’t get to have JT taking care of him afterwards. He knows where he’d rather be.
The night they finish Pearl is a medium-bad night for Stephen, and he’s able to leverage it into convincing JT to read out loud this time. JT insists he’s going to be bad at it, but Stephen just has to say “please, Jet” with his voice still a little hoarse from the vomiting and JT folds instantly.
He’s a slower reader than Stephen, pauses sometimes in odd spots and then speeds through lines where Stephen would have relished in the alliteration. But his drawl does something to the flow of the poem that Stephen’s never heard before, pulls out the words and changes the rhythm into something new that makes the poem feel like it belongs to him. It’s mesmerizing. Stephen wonders if he can get JT to record audiobooks for all his other classic literature. He wants to hear what JT does with Shakespeare and Beowulf and Keats.
Eventually Stephen runs out of clean shirts, so he learns where the laundry detergent is. Then he learns that the laundry detergent gives him hives, so JT buys new laundry detergent. Now he knows where that laundry detergent is, and he uses it to wash both his clothes and JT’s, because if he’s doing one load of laundry he might as well do two.
As well as, sometimes, he kind of feels like he needs to be doing things for JT.
JT, who actually works outside all day while Stephen mostly just sits on his fence, who then comes back home and cooks dinner for them half the time because Stephen’s not very good at it, who is letting Stephen stay in his house rent-free. JT, who is never not useful.
It makes Stephen feel guilty, sometimes, and a little bad about himself. It also makes him feel taken care of in a way that is embarrassing if he thinks about it a little bit, comforting if he thinks about it a little more, and suffocating if he thinks about it too much.
So Stephen does the laundry, and he cleans, and it feels like he’s contributing something tangible to the household, which is nice. He does his best to ignore it when he nags at JT to stop walking through the living room in muddy boots and JT rolls his eyes and says it’s like having a housewife. At least he does stop walking through the living room in his boots, so Stephen doesn’t have to bring it up anymore.
Stephen cleans, and he writes, and he eats, and he sleeps. That’s the other big thing. Long nights of profound, restful sleep.
He sleeps so, so well, until suddenly he stops sleeping well at all. It changes around the same time he stops throwing up as much, like his body can only resolve one issue at a time. He lies awake with his mind running and his legs restless. Sometimes he can write until he expels whatever ghost is haunting him into wakefulness but usually he just thinks himself in circles until a fragile sleep manages to settle over him for a few hours.
It’s worse when it rains. When that happens he always feels like he needs to be checking things, the tarp, the rice, the people. But there’s nothing to check. So he just lays there running a faulty inventory until the rain stops or morning comes.
He thinks JT has noticed this too. When Stephen walks out to join him with a mug of coffee and heavy bags under his eyes JT gets that same furrow in his brow and asks him how he slept, and Stephen says fine and JT hums all skeptical but doesn’t push.
Stephen appreciates it, but part of him wishes JT would ask him to sleep in his room again. If it was for JT’s sake and not his own Stephen would be willing to move over. As it stands though JT seems to be sleeping normally, at least as far as Stephen can tell.
So Stephen deals with it. He tosses and turns and sleeps very little at night and occasionally ends up dozing on the couch in the living room while he waits for JT to get back at the end of the day. And JT comes in and looks at him a little worried and asks again if he’s sleeping alright, and Stephen continues to insist that it’s fine. He insists so much that he almost starts to believe it himself. Maybe this is just what’s normal for him now. He had trouble with sleep even before the game, it makes sense that it would only get worse after. It’s fine. He can function like this well enough.
In between all of this, Stephen fields messages from people he knows. Friends in New York asking where he is, friends from college asking what he’s doing, family members asking how he’s been, Nick with the car making sure he’s still alive. He’s always evasive, measures out honestly in sparing ounces the way he’s gotten so good at doing.
He’s marginally less evasive with the people from the game, a few of whom he’s actually kept in touch with. Some text messages with Tyson, an email chain with Coach, he even follows Erinn on Facebook. They talk a little more candidly about how the game’s affected them. Tyson apparently got over most of his food stuff in Ponderosa, but Erinn struggled those first few weeks the same way Stephen did, and Coach is still skinnier than he’s ever been. It’s nice, knowing he’s not uniquely fucked up. That there are other people out there dealing with the same aftermath, shedding their own desert-burned skins. People he likes, even. People he misses.
Taj calls one evening after dinner and Stephen picks up with a lump already in his throat.
It’s not the easiest conversation in the world, but that’s mostly his fault. Taj herself seems to have come to terms with the betrayal after getting her lick back at final tribal. She says she forgives him, and then she tells him to tell JT she forgives him too.
Stephen barely has to think about it before he says he can just pass JT the phone and she can tell him herself. He still hasn’t told anyone else where he is, but it feels right that Taj should know. He knows she’ll get it, at least enough to not push, because Taj is good like that. And she knows him, and she knows JT, and she knows them together - has only ever known them together - so she gets how this situation works, better than Stephen’s family would.
Taj pauses for a second before she says “that would be perfect, Stephen,” with her voice warm the way it gets when she’s feeling particularly fond.
JT takes the phone and he and Taj chat for a while. He apologizes at least three times and Stephen can tell Taj is losing her patience with it by the third one. Eventually JT seems to get it through his head that Taj isn’t mad at him anymore, and Stephen watches as some unseen tension he’s been carrying with him the past few weeks falls off his shoulders.
They end up putting her on speakerphone, he and JT sat at the kitchen table with the phone between them, Taj’s voice coming through a little staticky but still wonderfully Taj. It fills up some part of him that he didn’t know was empty. He missed Taj so much.
JT has this smile on his face the whole call, and Stephen knows that the two of them are going to end up visiting Nashville sometime soon.
As they’re saying their goodbyes Taj says “I’m glad you two are out there together. I don’t know the whole deal, but that feels right, that the two of you are still close.”
Stephen doesn’t know what to say to that. He looks up to see JT has turned the smile on him. He feels the lump in his throat return.
“Yeah, we got a good thing goin’,” JT says.
By the time Taj hangs up the lump has gone away again, and Stephen is left feeling soft, if not a little antsy the way he gets after a long phone call. JT leans back in his chair, the smile still on his face.
“Missed her,” is all he says, and that’s pretty much all there is to it anyways.
“Yeah,” Stephen agrees.
They sit there at the table for a minute, not saying anything, just sitting together in the post-call peace for a moment. Then JT swings himself up onto his feet.
“Well, now I’m feelin’ nostalgic,” he announces, “wanna do a fire?”
They set up in the backyard, something closer to a bonfire than a campfire rising up in front of them, orange and cheerful. JT brings out a jar from deep in his fridge and asks Stephen if he’s ever had moonshine before.
Stephen has had moonshine exactly once, in college, and it was some boogie shit that tasted like blueberries that his girlfriend's roommate brought back from a family trip. He remembers they drank it out of wine glasses and he somehow ended the night reading a newspaper in a bathtub while smoking a cigarette. He cannot remember the source of the newspaper, or the cigarette, or, come to think of it, the bathtub.
JT is quick to inform him that he has not, in fact, had moonshine before. “If it tastes like blueberries that ain’t real moonshine,” he says, unscrewing the lid, “it’s supposed to taste like gasoline and bad decisions,” he holds out the jar like this is meant to be enticing. Stephen takes it because, coming from JT, it is.
He takes a sip straight from the jar at JT’s urging. It hits him in the nose and the back of the throat, burning all the way down. He knows his face is doing something scrunched and silly, JT laughs at it as he takes the jar back.
He takes a sip and then whoops and shakes his head like a dog, grinning. “See, now that’s the stuff.”
“The stuff is terrible,” Stephen says, but he’s already reaching for the jar again.
They end up getting inadvisably drunk, between the six pack of beer JT brought out and sips of moonshine. Stephen feels light and relaxed, everything gone fuzzy around the edges. It’s like nothing exists beyond the flickering light of the fire, like he and JT are the only people alive and the whole world drops off into nothing in the dark of the Alabama night.
It reminds him of the night JT chose him over Erinn, when it was just the two of them with their fire in the dark of the desert, the only two left standing, the only two people in the entire world. He remembers thinking he needed to savour it then, that it was the last night he was going to get like this.
It’s different now. Different country, different fire, different stars overhead, a different shade of darkness from the deep impassable night of Tocantins. But it’s the same in all the ways that matter. It’s still him and JT and the fire and the dark, it’s still an island of warmth in the cold.
Stephen has been told that he’s a contemplative drunk. This usually just means that he can’t be left alone or he ends up getting really in his head and morose. In this instance it means that he spends a lot of time contemplating JT. The way his face shifts in the firelight, the shape of him illuminated, gilded like a manuscript. The way his voice slowly changes as he drinks, drawl thickening like syrup on a stove. The way he moves through the world, the same way he always moves, like he’s exactly where he’s meant to be and knows exactly where he’s going. Like the world offers him no resistance, because who could resist that kind of certainty?
The contemplation does not lead to any meaningful conclusion, but Stephen enjoys it nonetheless.
Visual observation gets increasingly difficult as the night goes on. If Stephen is a contemplative drunk then JT is an affectionate one, which means that after a certain threshold he starts latching onto Stephen like a barnacle and refuses to be more than arms length away from him at any given point in time. He leaves Stephen’s side once, briefly, to add more wood to the fire, and then turns and basically launches himself back at him as if he might literally die if he goes another second without physical contact.
Stephen’s hardly complaining. The night is chilly, and the fire is warm but JT is warmer. His arm around Stephen’s shoulder is the best kind of weighted blanket. He smells like wood smoke and fresh earth and himself, and Stephen has never been like, a fragrance guy or anything, but he’d bottle it if he could. Keep it tucked away in the bottom of a drawer along with the flannel JT keeps lending him on particularly sunny days, and the dirt from under JT’s fingernails, and the chipped off bit of tooth, if he can manage to get his hands on it. He kind of resents the fact that Probst still has it. He’s probably not appreciating it the way Stephen would. He might even have thrown it out, which is an option Stephen hadn’t considered until right now, and even the possibility of it strikes him as a genuine tragedy.
Somewhere in the middle of quietly developing an elaborate heist plot against Jeff Probst, balance starts to become a real struggle. The world is spinning unhelpfully and the ground feels like it’s undulating a bit under his feet, and JT has decided that it’s a great idea to lean half of his not inconsiderable weight on Stephen while he talks at length about baseball. At least, that’s what Stephen thinks he’s talking about. It’s hard to tell because Stephen knows absolutely nothing about sports, and JT is speaking passionately and drunkenly enough that he would be half incomprehensible even if Stephen did understand the subject matter. So Stephen’s just been enjoying the sound of his voice as a sort of white noise while he imagines what the layout of Jeff Probst’s house might look like, and where he would keep the misplaced body parts of former Survivor contestants.
Determining that he is currently in no shape to be breaking and entering, Stephen abandons his plot for the moment. He slips out gracelessly from under JT’s arm, causing JT to cut himself off with a noise of what seems like genuine offence, and collapses down into the grass. The ground feels nice. He stretches out long enough that his back cracks loudly and his shirt rides up.
JT plops down next to him and splays his hand out across the bottom of Stephen’s ribcage. He pushes the hem of his shirt up a little further to do it, which Stephen thinks he would normally react to, but the thought of reacting arrives late and is summarily ignored. Stephen can feel the rough calluses on JT’s fingers as he presses down slightly against the bones.
“Finally startin’ to fatten up a bit,” JT says, something in his voice that Stephen can’t identify because JT’s hand is broad and warm against his skin and Stephen really just wants to focus on that, so he does.
“What am I, one of your cows?” Stephen asks, head lolling over to look up at him. He watches JT study his face.
“Got the eyes for it,” JT says. Stephen’s not sure if that’s a compliment or not, but JT sounds nice when he says it.
JT lays down then, tucking himself up against Stephen’s side and throwing an arm over his midsection. Stephen’s own arm ends up curled under JT’s neck, so he can reach up and tug at the ends of his hair. It’s soft, softer than it ever was in Brazil. Not that Stephen spent a whole lot of time touching JT’s hair in Brazil. The optics would be terrible. But they were close enough often enough that Stephen took some notice of it. JT makes a contended sound low in his throat when Stephen plays with it now, and presses his face into Stephen’s shoulder.
They lay there for a while. Stephen looks up at the sky, sparks drifting up into stars as the fire burns on in his periphery, the cracking of the wood and the ambient high-pitched hum of insects, JT’s breathing next to his ear, steady and deep enough Stephen would think he was asleep if not for the way his hand is moving against his side, an occasional press or sweep of his thumb against his skin.
Stephen can feel himself teetering on the edge of sleep, eyes slipping shut for longer periods of time, the heat of alcohol in his belly and the fire and JT’s body against his melting him down into molasses.
JT mumbles into his shoulder, quiet and slurred enough that Stephen’s not sure if he heard correctly, “You should sleep with me,”
“What?” Stephen asks, feeling very slow.
“You should sleep in my bed,” JT clarifies. He lifts himself up a little and Stephen opens his eyes again to see his face, the orange shadows painted across his cheeks, reflecting in his eyes. JT’s got great eyes. “I miss you, at night. When you’re not there. I always miss you.”
Then JT swallows and looks away, like he’s regretting admitting that. Stephen doesn’t regret it at all, except that it means JT isn’t looking at him anymore.
“I miss you too,” Stephen says, and he means that he misses JT at night, but he also kind of means that he misses him all the time. He misses him right now. He wants JT to be looking at him again, or to be lying next to him properly instead of half sitting up and staring at the fire.
“I should sleep in your bed,” Stephen says, and it comes out sounding like he’s the one suggesting it. JT looks back at him, wide dark eyes staring right into him and not trying to hide it at all. The same open, candid observation that is the only scrutiny Stephen doesn’t feel the need to wriggle out of, because it’s so entirely JT that it never feels dangerous, even when it probably is.
“I’ve been sleeping so bad,” Stephen says, the truth tumbling out clumsily the way it does when he’s very drunk or very nervous, “so, so bad.”
“I know,” JT says, “I been worried.”
“I know,” Stephen reaches up one of his heavy arms and clumsily grips onto the front of JT’s flannel, some sort of drunken half-concocted apology. JT gets his hand around Stephen’s wrist. JT’s got big hands. Strong hands. He can wrap his fingers all the way around even with his grip a little loose. Stephen’s wrist feels thin and fragile in his hand. Like a fawn’s leg. Or a calf’s.
Suddenly Stephen is giggling, uncontrollable and stupid. JT grins down at him, confused. He tilts his head a little like Mabel does when she’s trying to understand something, and that just makes Stephen laugh harder until JT inevitably starts laughing as well.
Stephen tugs the front of his shirt and JT collapses down mostly on top of him, and then they’re just a drunk pile of limbs and laughter and Stephen feels happier than he has in years. Maybe in his entire life. But that could just be the alcohol driving him to hyperbole.
They eventually settle down to just heavy breathing and intermittent chuckles, and something occurs to Stephen.
“Wait, this is perfect! I’ll only have to wash one set of bedsheets now. This is so efficient!” That sets JT off again, his big laugh joining the chorus of bugs and fire and rustling wind.
“Man, I love you,” JT says, and he gets both arms around Stephen in a sort of horizontal hug. Stephen gets a grip on the back of his flannel and settles into the warm weight of JT pressing down on him.
“Love you too.” Stephen says, and it’s the truest thing he’s said since he landed in Brazil.
Stephen starts sleeping in JT’s bed that night. He might have reconsidered the decision once he was sober, except the next morning he wakes up and JT is still pressed up against his side, alcohol keeping him under longer than he would normally allow. Stephen has a splitting headache, and he’s about one wrong turn from throwing up, and the room is honestly still kind of spinning. It’s got to be one of the worst hangovers he’s had since college. But the bed is almost unbelievably comfortable, and he watches JT shift a little, press his face into the pillow with a rumbling sound in his chest that might be a snore, or some sort of reaction to JT’s own hangover, and he suddenly cannot imagine waking up in the bed in the guest room ever again.
So he moves into JT’s room without further discussion.
He starts sleeping better. Go figure.
Time passes and Stephen forgets to account for it in conventional ways. He keeps track with dinners with JT’s family, with trips into town, with mornings waking up next to an empty spot still slightly warm, with bright, blistering sunsets watched from the porch steps, JT’s shoulder pressed up against his.
He doesn’t think about New York very much at all. He doesn’t miss it nearly as much as he thought he would. He doesn’t miss anything nearly as much as he thought he would. He doesn’t think about that very much either.
It’s late afternoon now. Yesterday it stormed and today the sun is out trying to make up for lost time. Stephen wandered back inside when the sun started to feel dangerously hot on the back of his neck and JT still wanted to be out for another couple hours. But he was feeling productive, so he’s in the middle of vacuuming the living room when his brother calls.
He doesn’t think anything of it when he picks up. He’s in a good mood, and it’s been too long since he talked to his brother.
Stephen ends up on the couch as they talk. David asks how he is and Stephen is able to tell him he’s doing better and actually mean it in a way that feels tangible.
David says he really does sound better, and he was honestly worried for a second there.
“When I saw you out there, I don't know man. I won’t lie, it kinda scared me” David says.
Stephen pictures how he must have looked by then. Skinny limbs and sunken eyes, stinking to high heaven, half out of his mind with paranoia, emotional in ways that can only be chalked up to chronic starvation and sleep deprivation.
“Well I’m definitely doing better than I was at that point. You wouldn’t believe what consistent access to a shower and regular meals can do for a guy.”
David laughs, “I bet. You must be having the time of your life with New York food. You can finally have some variety again.”
Stephen feels his stomach drop. He makes a vague sound of agreement.
“We should go somewhere good next time I’m in town,” David continues, “I have a business thing in New York in a couple weeks actually, and a free afternoon if you want to do something.”
Stephen stares at the mug sitting on the coffee table. It’s a soothing burnt orange colour and it’s got a handle that fits comfortably in Stephen’s hand, which he knows because it’s his mug. He always chooses it for himself and JT always gives it to him and he doesn’t remember which happened first.
He’s been silent for too long.
“Stephen, are you still there?” David asks.
Stephen swallows. Well, time to see how this goes.
“Okay, so, don’t freak out-“ Stephen winces as soon as those words are out of his mouth. Possibly the single most concerning way he could have started.
“I mean- I had a very bad first week back,” Stephen starts again, figuring he’s just going to have to be straightforward. “It was honestly very dramatic. Like, panic attacks in the bathroom stall at work kinda bad. Just a comically bad week, right?”
“Shit man, that sounds awful.”
“It was. Really awful. So I had to make some adjustments, y’know, to make things less bad. Um. One sort of major adjustment being that I am not exactly, technically, living in New York. Right now.”
Stephen holds his breath through the silence on the other line. There’s a distant high pitched ringing in his ears.
“Where are you?” David asks, sounding fairly level, if not a little confused.
“Alabama,” Stephen says. He rolls the word around in his mouth, tests how it feels on his tongue. It requires an entirely different set of vocalizations than New York does. None of the same letters. It still doesn’t sound entirely natural, coming from his mouth.
“Alabama.” David repeats, like he doesn’t think he heard him right.
“Yep.”
Another pause. Stephen is unbearably aware of his own limbs.
“So, what, are you living on a farm now or something?”
Stephen laughs. David says it like it’s stupid.
“Yes, actually.”
“Wait, really?” David sounds so genuinely baffled that Stephen feels suddenly very defensive over the entire concept of farms. “Why?”
Stephen breathes out. That’s the question, isn’t it? The one he doesn’t want people asking. He gets up and starts doing slow but frantic laps around the living room.
“Because I couldn’t stay in New York,” he says, which might not be the whole truth, but it’s true enough, “and I needed a place to be where I could recuperate.”
“And you landed on Alabama because…”
“Well, I was talking to JT about it- you remember JT? From the game?”
“Yeah, I think so. The southern one you were working with.”
That almost makes Stephen laugh again. The southern one you were working with. Like JT could have been anyone.
“Well I was telling him about how I was, y’know, struggling. And he told me I could come stay with him for a while, just to kind of have a place to recuperate.”
Stephen makes a mental note to stop talking about recuperating. It’s just the only half decent word he can come up with right now. He doesn’t want to walk around saying he came to Alabama to “heal,” like he’s on a culty yoga retreat or something.
“That’s nice of him,” David says, sounding diplomatic the same way he did when they were kids and he was trying to play the mature older brother card. “How long is he letting you stay there?”
You can stay forever if you want. “Uh, he hasn’t given a strict deadline, per se. Just, like, until I get sick of it.”
“Okay. So how long are you planning on staying there?”
Stephen likes this question even less than the why. At least he has some kind of answer for why.
“Until I get sick of it, I guess,” He says, which is a soft way of saying he’s got no idea.
“And you’re just out there. On this guy’s farm.”
“I’m doing stuff,” Stephen knows he sounds defensive. He tries to rein it in. “I’ve been writing a lot. Some of it’s even good. And I help JT out on the farm, and I’m, y’know… Recuperating.”
“Right, sure. And it’s good, there, for you. You’re not going crazy or anything.”
“I’m not going crazy,” Stephen says, which is something he has admittedly been a bit unsure about recently, but by now he’s pretty sure he’s fine. “And yeah, it’s good. New York was just a lot, I think. Alabama is better. It’s quiet.”
“And with JT,” Stephen’s stomach lurches. No real reason. There’s just something unexpected about hearing his brother say JT’s name.“You two are still tight? After the game and everything?”
Stephen remembers talking to David about JT during the family visit. The first time in a month that he’d been able to speak candidly to someone without worrying it would come back to bite him.
He remembers saying he was unsure about the endgame with him, that he knew JT would beat him in final two if they were there together. He remembers trying to explain why it was still a tough decision.
David had reminded him to watch out for himself, first and foremost. If you don’t think you can beat him, you’ll have to cut him. It’s not worth it to lose a million dollars over a guy you’ll probably never see again once the show is over.
JT should be getting home soon. He said he didn’t feel like cooking tonight and he’s craving good barbecue, so he’s taking Stephen to his favourite spot. Stephen hopes he won’t be so nauseous from this conversation that he can’t enjoy it properly.
“Yeah, we’re still tight. The way things ended up - well you’ll see,” Stephen shies away from the thought even as he says it. The premier is only a couple weeks away at this point, pre-season promo already rolling out in earnest, and he’s been trying not to dwell on the inevitability of the show airing. He doesn’t want to think about his family seeing him as he was by the end. “But yeah, we - we’re good. He’s a good friend.”
“Okay. Well, that’s good.”
Another pause. Stephen picks at the wood of the doorframe into the hallway. There’s an odd dent about halfway up where JT must have knocked something against it and now the wood comes off in little slivers under his fingers.
“Sorry, this has just thrown me for a bit of a loop,” David says, “How long did you say you’ve been in Alabama?” David says Alabama like he’s chewing on it.
“Well. Like I said. It was a rough first week back.”
A beat of complete silence. Stephen sets his forehead heavily against the doorframe, feeling the cool wood pressing between his eyebrows.
“You’ve been out there for over a month?” For the first time David sounds like he’s veering towards something like anger. “Dude, why didn’t you tell me?”
Stephen abandons the doorframe. “Well if it makes you feel any better you’re kind of the first person to know.”
“That does not, actually, make me feel better! What the hell Steve? No one knows where you are? For a month?”
David keeps emphasizing that word. Stephen personally thinks it’s unnecessary. He walks to the kitchen. He sits down at the table in his usual chair.
“I - Yeah I know, David. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-” he tries to come up with something to say that will make sense. Some excuse or valid reason for dropping off the face of the earth without telling anyone. “I was in a really weird headspace,” he says, “and I didn’t tell anyone at the time because I didn’t want to freak anyone out, and then it just - I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
David starts to say something just as Stephen hears the door open. He looks up and JT steps in, sweaty and loose the way he gets when he’s pleased with the work he’s done. JT spots him at the kitchen table, Stephen watches him register the phone in his hand and the hunched way he’s sitting.
Brother Stephen mouths to him. JT nods in recognition.
“-just seems really short-sighted, not to tell anybody. You’re usually smarter than that,” David is saying on the phone.
“I know.” Stephen says, “Look, I wasn’t really firing on all cylinders, okay? I’m aware it was a poor decision.”
JT looks up from where he’s leaned against the doorframe to take off his boots. Stephen waves a hand at him, not this decision. JT smiles a little.
“I mean what if one of us needed to reach you? What if something happened to you and you needed help and none of us knew about it because you’re in Alabama for some insane reason-”
JT drifts over from the doorway and sets a hand on the back of Stephen's neck, squeezing it a little as he passes by on his way to the sink. The gesture is brief and thoughtless, the kind of thing JT does a million times a day, but it dislodges something in Stephen’s throat this time and it feels like he can breathe a little easier.
Stephen watches JT pull a glass down from the cupboard and fill it from the tap as David keeps going, well on his way to a full-on rant now, which Stephen knows from experience is not worth engaging with until it’s over. JT glances at him and holds up the glass of water. Stephen nods and JT pulls down another glass, filling that one too.
“And if you think I’m bad then you’re not ready at all for when mom finds out. She’s going to be apoplectic,” David continues, as though Stephen needs to be reminded. JT comes back over and sets the water on the table before sitting down in the chair next to him.
JT downs half his water in one go while Stephen takes more reasonable sips of his, only realizing how dry his mouth had gotten when the cool water hits his tongue. He watches the faint sheen of sweat on the length of JT’s throat as he tilts his head back again to finish his glass. David is still going in his ear.
JT sets his empty glass back on the table and raises an eyebrow at Stephen’s continued silence. Stephen rolls his eyes at him, which is probably unfair because it’s not like David’s wrong about anything he’s saying, but it makes JT smile into his hand, so Stephen can’t feel too bad about it.
Eventually David runs out of steam and Stephen is able to start talking him down. JT doesn’t stay put, getting up and puttering around. He never leaves Stephen’s general vicinity for too long, always circling back to the kitchen table for a few seconds before drifting away again. Stephen watches his progress, the aimless productivity and constant motion of him. There’s something meditative about it.
Stephen promises to call his mother tomorrow, which is fine because it has to happen, and he knows it has to happen, and it’s honestly good there’s someone putting pressure on him to do it because otherwise he probably wouldn’t.
“You’re really happy out there?” David asks, once he feels he’s properly conveyed to Stephen how stupid he is.
JT takes Stephen’s now empty cup off the table and brings it over to the sink. Stephen watches him roll up the sleeves of his flannel and doesn’t even have to think about the answer. “Yeah, I’m really happy.”
“Okay. Good. That’s what matters, you know? We all just want you to be happy.”
Stephen appreciates the sentiment, but there’s something in the way David says it, like he’s not just talking about Alabama, that makes Stephen’s heart rate kick up. He looks at the table and ignores it until it goes away.
When Stephen hangs up he still isn’t entirely sure how he feels about the whole conversation. He looks up and JT is leaning against the counter, watching him with that same easy, open face he’s always had.
“Sounds like a hell of a chat,” JT says, and suddenly it all hits Stephen at once. The stress of the conversation. The relief that it’s been had. The guilt over the fact that he spent a little more than a month not having it and he barely even noticed. Oh god, he has to call his mother tomorrow.
Stephen slumps into his chair, leaning his head back and pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. He lets out a groan that comes straight from his chest.
“Uh oh,” JT says, and then a shuffle of movement. “Y’alright down there bud?” Stephen slides his hands off his eyes and opens them to find JT standing behind his chair, looking down at him with an expression so warm and just openly fond that Stephen almost covers his eyes again to hide from it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Stephen says. JT’s face does something skeptical, which is kind of funny to watch upside down.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” Stephen says, and it’s more or less true. The conversation sucked, and the conversation tomorrow is going to suck even harder, but it feels manageable now in a way it really didn’t a month ago. “But ask me again after I talk to my mother tomorrow.”
JT smiles. “Alright then. You still good to go out tonight? We can stay in if you’re-”
“No,” Stephen interrupts, “no we should still go out. I was promised barbeque.”
JT’s smile widens, eyes crinkling in that familiar way. At this rate he’s going to have permanent crow’s feet by the time he’s thirty. The thought makes Stephen feel warm in a way he doesn’t examine. He wants to reach up and feel the lines under his fingers. He doesn’t examine that either.
“I’ll shower then we’ll go?” JT asks, clapping Stephen on both shoulders as he starts to move in that direction.
“I should probably take one too.” Stephen says.
JT turns briefly in the doorway, playful, “Well you’re welcome to join me. Save some time.”
Stephen laughs. “I think the barbeque can wait the extra ten minutes.”
“I just know you like bein’ efficient,” JT calls over his shoulder as he disappears down the hall.
Stephen sits there at the kitchen table for a moment, looking at where the two glasses are sitting next to each other upside-down on the drying rack.
Tomorrow he’ll call his mother and he’ll tell her where he is, and she’ll have a conniption that will put David’s to shame. And Stephen will listen to it, and he’ll feel appropriately contrite, and he’ll apologize to her, and it’s going to be awful, but it’s going to be fine.
Because tonight JT is taking him to his favorite barbeque place, And they’re probably going to drink a little too much, and eat a lot too much, and Stephen probably won’t throw up from it at this point but if he does then that’ll be fine too. That’ll be more than worth it.
Stephen gets up from the table. He walks into the living room, where he can hear the shower starting up down the hall. His mug is still on the coffee table. He picks it up by its very comfortable handle and brings it to the sink. The late afternoon light pours in golden through the window. Stephen turns on the tap, and the water runs cool and then warm and then burning hot over his hands. He washes his mug while looking out the window at the fields all verdant and aglow.
Somewhere out there David is sitting in his apartment, having opinions.
Somewhere out there his mother doesn’t yet know enough to have opinions, but she will very soon, and then she will have a truly unfathomable number of opinions.
Somewhere out there an editor is hunched over a computer splicing together a televisable version of Stephen, and a televisable version of JT, and someday soon a great many people are going to have opinions about them as well.
Stephen feels it creeping up the back of his neck, like their eyes are on him even now.
He sets his mug on the drying rack beside the two mismatched glasses. He wanders back into the living room. Faintly, he hears JT’s voice echoing down the hall, singing loud and off-key and unworried.
He sits on the couch and Mabel comes up to him with her tail thumping. He scratches her behind the ears the way he’s learned is her favourite.
Outside the window the world keeps going. But Stephen is not outside the window right now. No one is editing him right now. No one is watching him right now. He tells himself that no one is watching him. And the couch in the living room, and Mabel’s big brown eyes, and JT’s voice coming down the hall are all familiar and soothing enough that he can almost, almost, believe it.