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The moment John set foot in the room, he wanted to turn around and walk out again.
Even after the mad dash through reception, the twitchy foot-tapping panic of the elevator ride, the frantic skipping almost-run down the corridors, glancing at the rooms. Even after the pounding in his chest and the bile in this throat. None of it mattered all of a sudden. He did not want to be there.
There was nothing about the room itself he could actually focus on. His gaze was fixated on the bed in the centre, the figure sitting up in it, picking at the sheets. Roger was staring out the window but he soon turned wearily to look at where John stood in the doorway. John had tried his best to remember that he should brace himself for his old flame in a hospital gown with a great big white patch over his left eyebrow, but in the moment he could feel his heart dropping, and dropping, and dropping.
It was too late to turn around. John forced himself to move forward, one step at a time, towards the bed. When he spoke it sounded far too loud.
“Hello.”
“Hi,” said Roger, his voice croaking.
John circled the bed, reaching out one shaky hand to pull over the chair closest to the window. When he sat down he found that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t meet Roger’s eyes. Instead he studied a magazine that had been abandoned at Roger’s side, desperately constructing sentences in his mind and tearing them down again. It seemed that a whole minute might have passed in silence, and John glanced up in surprise at Roger’s voice.
“Been a while.”
John nodded quickly and glanced away, heart throbbing. In horrid, desperate fear of the new impending silence, he spoke too.
“How are you?”
He was pretty sure he heard Roger snort. “I’ve been better.” He was also vaguely aware that there was a ‘you?’ tacked onto the end of the sentence but he didn’t know how to answer that sort of question and all of a sudden his mouth was opening without his permission.
“Were you drunk?”
It was the wrong thing to say and John knew it the second it passed through his lips. He forced himself to look up at Roger but Roger was looking away, perhaps pointedly, and John felt some dull ache deep inside him.
“No,” said Roger finally, but quietly, and he still didn’t look at John. “Some fuckwit swerved. Right into my lane.”
John shut his eyes because suddenly the sight of Roger was too much, the sight of the hospital room was too much, the sight of his own hands trembling in his lap was too much. They didn’t even feel like his hands at this point.
He wondered when it was exactly that he had lost himself. God, if he had lost Roger too.
The afternoon light through the window was yellowing and John could hear the rustle of Roger picking up the magazine and placing it on the bedside table. He tried to listen intently to the ticking of the clock on the other side of the room, to ground himself in reality, because behind his eyes all he could see was an endless reel of traffic collisions. Every single way Roger could have come out with worse than a few stitches.
And when it wasn’t car crashes it was Roger’s face bronze with flame, the flicker of it, the cool of the night on John’s cheeks as he left the heat behind. He took a shaky breath.
“Was there fire?” he asked.
With his eyes still shut, John could only imagine Roger’s face. There was silence. “What?” Roger finally said, voice weak.
“Was there a fire?” this was no longer a question but a demand. John forced himself to open his eyes and he and Roger looked at each other, looked at each other proper, for what felt like the first time in their lives.
“There was no fire, John.” Roger whispered. His eyes glimmered gold in the light.
John nodded mutely, glancing away. His stomach clenched but his shoulders loosened with relief. There had been no lick of flame, no burning stench. No sick on the grass, no fists or words of anger. There was a difference. Roger hadn’t again gone through what John had chosen to put him through.
Yet there was horror growing in John’s chest; it was palpable, and sticky. The need to leave the room became so immense, so heavy, that John’s legs began to twitch and his hands shook and he leaned forward to stand up—
All of a sudden there was an ugly sound—a wounded, heavy sob. John looked up, startled. Roger had a hand clapped over his mouth and eyes squeezed tightly shut. In the slow silence that crept between them, an amber tear pooled against the lashes of his left eye. They sat there for long enough for it to fall.
The feeling of it hitting Roger’s hand must have changed something in him because he instantly tore it away, gasping, and then more tears were coming, and coming, and coming. Everything suddenly hurt so much and John, watching Roger’s face contort sickeningly, felt the heated insistence of his own tears pressing in his throat, in his eyes.
“Rog—” he said, but his voice cracked and he couldn’t stop his own break down, the heaving, the spluttering and weeping. He leaned forward, braced his elbows on the bed. Covered his face with his hands.
When he felt Roger touching his fingers gently, attempting to pry them away, he shuddered but did nothing to stop him. And when Roger held John’s hand tentatively in his, John felt something so warm and terrible wash over him that he found himself standing on trembling legs, settling himself on the edge of the bed.
He forced himself to look up at Roger, though Roger was not looking at John. After a few moments Roger licked his lips, absently swiping his hand across the tear tracks down his cheeks. “You—you’re staying with your sister, right?”
Roger glanced up at him and John nodded, cursing at the tears that were still pooling. He blinked and they came tumbling out, warm down his cheeks. He sniffed wetly.
Taking a deep and juddering breath, Roger continued. “Why… haven’t you found a permanent place yet, John?”
John pressed his lips together hard, his whole body quivering. He couldn’t say anything. Roger continued.
“I—It’s been… it’s been four months now.” Since the fall out. Since the arson and heartbreak.
The pressure in his throat was overwhelming and John let out a jerky sob, lowering his head. The tremors in his shoulders made him feel like he might split in two. Why was he here? Why was he here?
Roger was crying again too and between sobs he asked once more, “John?”
John could feel the heat from the flames and he could feel his heart breaking and he could feel Roger’s hand intertwined with his most of all. He couldn’t answer the question. Not outright.
“If… if anything, anything w-worse had happened to you…” said John.
Because it was all he could bring himself to say. But he knew Roger understood, as he coaxed John towards him and wrapped his arms around him and John let out some embarrassing, hiccough-y sobs into the hospital gown.
“I’m sorry,” said Roger, quietly, and then kept saying it, this apologetic litany that John could feel through the vibrations in Roger’s chest long after it had become a barely-audible whisper. He wondered, for the first time, what the fuck they had done to each other. He wondered, after all the wounds they had inflicted, whether they could love anything ever again. Shaky with despair, John lifted his head and placed a hand on Roger’s jawline.
The first kiss reminded John of the very first time, cramped together in that dark van after a show, back when Roger was a foreign object that had been pulled into John’s orbit. The second felt like he might have been coming home. The third was salty because Roger was crying again, tears trickling between their slightly parted mouths. John pulled away and swiped his thumb underneath Roger’s left eye, which only made him sob harder.
“I don’t deserve you, but…” he whispered when he had stopped. But come home, John supplied.
Roger was right. John didn’t know what to say, though, so he just leaned forward to bring their lips together again, very softly. This fourth kiss took him back to 1976, that hotel room in New York City where Roger had pushed him away, overwhelmed because he’d never before experienced such tenderness. Shudders ran through Roger’s body as John gently slid his hands between the pillow and the small of his back. When their mouths parted they didn’t go far, noses bumping.
“Okay,” said John quietly, and Roger’s forehead came to rest on his shoulder.
Maybe they would continue destroying each other till their final days, John thought. Or maybe this was the moment they would learn to love again.
…