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Somewhere in the distance, on the other side of the trailer park, there’s a dog barking incessantly, the sound tinged more with boredom and confusion than outright aggression. Closer by, someone in one of the adjoining lots is blaring rock music that was new when Fred was a kid and, every so often, the music is interrupted by a rough, deep voice cursing at what Fred suspects is a vehicle that won’t do what it’s told. Other sounds are more intermittent; backfiring trucks, more yelling voices, doors slamming.
The whole auditory landscape truly sums up the South Side, and it’s so wholly different from Fred’s comfortable house on the other side of town, from the street where the loudest sounds are usually the thrumming of a lawnmower early in the morning, that he thinks he should feel more out of place, like he's an intruder.
But even with the near-chaos so close by, in FP’s trailer, Fred feels like he belongs.
The tiny television in the living room is turned down low, re-broadcasting a football game that aired a few hours ago. While FP had the windows and door hanging open when Fred first arrived, the air is still thick with the smell of cleaning products, although hopefully the pizza that is in the oven will soon overpower that. The freshly-mopped floor is still damp underneath Fred’s feet, and it’s slowly soaking through his socks. Normally, that would seem like something to be concerned about, an issue that should be addressed, but for the meantime, it can wait, because Fred has far more important things to focus his attention on.
Namely, FP, and all the spots they’re pressed together.
The lip of the counter is digging in hard against Fred’s lower back, while the engraved metal of FP’s belt buckle is digging in just as hard against his stomach. His hands are planted on either side of Fred’s face, rough palms warm against Fred’s cheeks, calloused fingertips reaching towards his temples and hair. They’ve been planted there since the moment they fell together for the first time in years, like FP is afraid that his grip is the only thing keeping Fred from running away.
But Fred has no plans on running. He did that once, so many years ago, and while he doesn’t regret what he gained from that decision (namely, his son), he doesn’t plan on doing it again anytime soon.
When his lung capacity eventually dwindles, he pulls back as far as FP will let him, takes a deep breath that smells of glass cleaner and soap. With a mirroring breath, FP’s hands slide away from Fred’s face, although Fred doesn’t let them go far; before FP can drop his hands to the sparkling clean counter, Fred wraps his fingers around FP’s wrists and pulls them back up until they’re at chest level, until he can simply lower his eyes to look at them.
FP’s hands have been scarred for as long as Fred can remember. He was never a clumsy guy, not even when they were teenagers still surging through growth spurts, but it used to seem like hardly a month could go by without him managing to add yet another scar to his already impressive collection. As they accumulated over time, Fred had started to notice them more and more; as his attraction to the rest of FP, the entirety of him as a person, grew, so did his fixation on the scars, no matter how hard he tried to talk himself out of it, how he tried to shame himself by saying that there was something desperately wrong with being attracted to a feature borne out of injury and pain.
But no matter how hard he tried, the attraction to both FP and his scars never went away.
He’s all too familiar with many of the marks that mar FP’s knuckles and palms and wrists. On the first knuckle of his right index finger, there’s a roughly star shaped scar that's the result of FP accidentally putting a fishhook through his skin on a summer day at Sweetwater River when they were seventeen, tanned and muscled from construction work without any of the aches and pains of too much hard work over too many years.
When he turns FP’s wrist a little, he’s able to smooth his thumb over a circular scar dotting the meat of his right palm. Fred wasn’t there for that incident, but he knows the story; the day of FP’s first date with Gladys, he’d gone trawling around the north side of town, stopped by some of the swankiest houses that had expansive flower gardens that he could steal a rose (or six) from. At his last stop, he’d been caught by the owner, and when he tried to simply rip the last rose away rather than cut it, he ended up puncturing his palm with a thorn so massive that it nearly went clean through the other side of his hand.
On his other hand, his knuckles are littered with dozens of other marks acquired from various sources over the years. That palm is also scarred, by a nail that had gone wayward when FP’s fingers had slipped. Below it, a fresher scar, raised from the skin around it, crosses FP’s wrist like a railroad track. Fred had been the one to dress that one, a few years ago, while they were working on putting up a house. Somehow, a jagged piece of metal had sliced its way through FP’s flesh, and when Fred had leaned in to press a bandage to the profusely bleeding wound, the reek of alcohol on FP’s breath had been too pungent to ignore.
Two weeks after that, two weeks of near-sleepless nights spent at the living room table with his head in his hands, he’d told FP to leave their latest job site and not come back.
Fred doesn’t linger on that scar; merely looking at it makes his mouth sour slightly, makes guilt that he thought he’d conquered come creeping back. Instead, he turns to FP’s right hand once more. There’s a long gash that looks only very recently healed extending down the back of it, from the knuckle of his middle finger to the knob of his wrist.
“What’s this from?” he asks, rubbing his thumb along the length of it. FP laughs, but the sound doesn’t have any joy to it.
“You sure you wanna know?” he asks. He takes a single step back; in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a lot, but after being pressed together for so long, it feels like an abyss has opened up between them. It’s a fair question and, truthfully, Fred isn’t quite sure if he does want to know, but hiding from the truth isn’t going to do anything for either of them.
If this thing they have is going to have any chance of getting off the ground, if they want to have a shot at actually making a life of things, Fred thinks they have to start with being honest.
“Yeah,” he replies. “I do.” FP huffs out a sigh and drops his eyes to the scar.
“Bar fight,” he says. “One of the guys brought a buddy down to the Wyrm one night, and he got rowdy. Started sayin’ some shit about some of the girls. I threw him out on his ass, but not before he smashed a bottle on my head and gave me this. He was a real piece of work.”
“Sure sounds like it,” Fred replies. On a whim, he tugs FP’s hand to his mouth and presses his lips to the mark, firmly but briefly. Afterwards, he lets FP’s hand slip away from his, and when he looks back up, FP’s eyes are huge and wide, staring down at him.
That’s the only warning Fred gets before FP swoops down and presses him right back against the counter. His marred fingers go to the buttons of Fred’s flannel and start yanking, popping them open from top to bottom.
“Pizza’s going to burn,” Fred gasps when they take a pause to breathe. With a shrug of his broad shoulders, FP simply reaches over and flicks the oven off.
“Bed’s not much,” he says by way of an answer, grasping Fred’s undone shirt in his fingers. “But it’s still comfier than this. If you’re interested.” Fred nods and reaches down to take one of FP’s hands. When he smooths his thumb over his knuckles, his nail catches on half a dozen scars, and he wonders how many more FP has stashed under his clothes, wonders how many of them he’s unfamiliar with.
He’s sure some of them have stories even more unseemly than a simple bar fight, but Fred wants to hear all of the stories, good or bad.
They have a lot of years to make up for, and Fred wants to make up for that lost time as quickly as possible.
So, stepping away from the counter, he says, “Lead the way.”