fic: "never once gave thought to landing"
Mar. 3rd, 2026 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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inthewildwoodTitle: never once gave thought to landing
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: At sixteen, Gwen thought she knew everything there was to know about her brother. She wasn't quite right.
Additional Tags: Coming Out, Siblings, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized Homophobia
Rating: M
The killer truck movie is extremely stupid.
It seems like everyone else in town has come to the same conclusion - or else they've just plain got better things to do - because Finn and Jay are pretty well the only people at the drive-in. There's two cars parked further back, almost at the fence, but Finn's pretty sure that nobody in either of them is actually watching the movie. In fairness, he and Jay are barely watching the movie, either: they dissolved into laughter about fifteen minutes in, and have been too busy cackling to actually keep track of what's happening onscreen. They haven't even smoked more than half a joint between them, and they're still giddy. Finn doesn't think he's laughed this much in the past five years combined.
It helps that there's barely any light - just the flickering from the drive-in screen, plus the occasional slash of headlights across their view as someone pulls in or out of the lot. He can't see Jay, and Jay can't see him, so he's not that worried about how stupid he probably looks, red-faced and teary-eyed with laughter. Just when one of them starts to calm down, something will happen on the screen, or one of them will say something, and they'll both be off again, giggling like little kids. His stomach hurts. It feels good.
"His name's fuckin' -" Jay wheezes as a character re-appears onscreen, "fuckin' Bubba -" and that's Finn done for again, curled up on his side with his face pressed against the rough weave of the car mat as he fights to get control of himself. Jay's car is the kind with seats that collapse to make a sort of little bed, so that's what they've done. They're both sprawled with their legs stretched out towards the back end of the car, heads propped up on their folded arms so that they can see the movie, side by side - close enough that they can brush against each other, but not so close as to be pressed hip to hip. He was a little freaked out about that at first, to be honest, but then the movie and the laughing started, and it was hard to be worried after that. Nothing bad is happening here. And if it does, he can always pop open the car door and roll out. It's not locked; he checked.
(He does still have to check, always. He hasn't been comfortable behind a locked door in years, and this is not going to be the time he starts.)
The laughter dies, finally, He winds up on his back, one leg bent at the knee, the other one still extended. The extended one's the closest to Jay, close enough that he can reach out and tap his calf with his toes. On impulse, he does it. He can't see the face Jay makes in response, but he can feel the answering poke of Jay's foot against his. So he pokes back, and Jay retaliates by poking him again, and they're off, back and forth, kicking at each other until the laughter takes over again. Was there something extra in that half-a-joint they smoked? Shit, it feels that way.
When the kicking's over, they're face-to-face. It's still to dark to see, but Finn can feel Jay's breath on his face; it's rapid, but not from laughter. From nerves, he thinks. Which is fair. He did have a full fucking meltdown the last time they were like this, so he can't blame Jay for not wanting to prompt another one. The old murky feeling tugs at him, then, threatening to pull him under. He's so used to it, it's almost comfortable. But he promised, he promised himself that he wouldn't do that tonight. That he'd at least try. So instead, he lifts his head and says, "hey."
"Hey," Jay says back. The screen lights up, then - in the movie, someone is running around with a rocket launcher - and it's bright enough that he can see the whites of Jay's eyes, moon-wide and damp. Nervous, he thinks again. It's a bad thing, maybe, that the thought settles him; it feels a little like when he and Gwen were kids, when they were first figuring out that they were on their own. Back then, he'd known he couldn't afford to lose it: his sister needed him, he had to be the strong one. That feeling, of being the adult in the room, does more to calm him down than any amount of coddling or shhh, you're okay ever could. They're both adults here, in this car, but it's the same principle. If Jay's nervous, then he can't be. Simple as.
He shuffles forward a bit - which is awkward, balancing on his elbow, but whatever - until their mouths are touching. Jay's so, so tentative about it, one hand kind of fluttering around Finn's side. Probably he's guessed that the disaster of last time wasn't just a bad reaction to the weed. Finn's okay with it. He spent the whole day psyching himself up to be okay with it. Back in middle school, the counsellor he'd been briefly forced to see after the basement had been big on making lists. Stuff like Things That Are Not In My Control and Feelings That Are Not Helpful and Thoughts That Are True Vs. Thoughts That Are Not. Finn had found the whole exercise fairly useless, but he does like having a plan. It clears his head, makes it easier to focus. So he'd mapped out what would happen tonight, like wriggling a little closer to Jay so that their hips bump together and their ankles tangle, and keeping one hand pressed hard against the back of the car seat to remind him of where he is - that this isn't the basement, isn't Camp Alpine, isn't any place he's been before, can't be. It's new, and that makes it safe. So he lets the kiss deepen, licks across Jay's mouth and then sticks his tongue in. He still tastes sweet, although it's a different kind of sweet this time - they'd been eating caramel popcorn, before. It's nice. It's slow and it's easy. The movie soundtrack in the background helps, keeps the back of his brain occupied so he can focus on the task at hand.
The heat feels nice. Jay must run hot, because Finn knows he sure doesn't, and it's a good feeling. Heat soaking through both of their jeans, running up his legs and concentrating in his groin, which is - as always - uninterested in any reservations he might have, stupid and horny like a dog humping the couch. Desperate to be touched. Jay doesn't try to touch him there just yet, which is good, he's not ready for it. But he does nuzzle down Finn's neck, kiss across his collarbones. He definitely shaved this morning, but there's a bit of peach fuzz on his skin, soft enough that it doesn't scrape. Finn tangles a hand in his hair - that's soft too - and lets out a quiet noise, not quite a groan. They're still side to side, so there isn't any weight resting on him, but he can still feel the solid bulk of Jay's body pressed to his. A part of his brain is sending up panic flares, simultaneously this is dangerous and this is wrong, but he ignores it. Stick to the list. Stay calm.
There's a tapping sound at the window, and they scramble apart like they got caught stealing. "Movie's over," someone outside announces - a drive-in worker, from the sounds of it, young and bored. "Pack it in. Gates close in ten." They don't wait for a response, just stump away, swinging their flashlight as they go. The beam cuts back and forth across the car, bright enough to make Finn blink. The screen is, in fact, playing the movie's end credits; he hadn't even noticed.
He looks at Jay. Jay looks at him. He doesn't know what he looks like right now, but Jay's hair is a mess and his mouth is red, and his eyes are wide, like he still hasn't recovered from the shock of that tap on the window. Finn can't help it; he starts giggling. Jay's mouth splits in a grin, and he starts laughing, too. "Shit," he says. "Guess we'll never know how it ends."
"Guess not." Finn stretches his arms over his head, as far as they can go before they hit the roof of the car. His right side is numb from the position he'd been laying in. "Car killed everybody, maybe."
"Probably." Jay shrugs, rolls his shoulders. "Should I - I mean, you want me to drive you back to the dorms?"
Finn considers this. He could say yes and call it a night. But he'd made plans. "Yeah," he says. "And you can, uh, come up? See the room?" Lame excuse, sure, but not any lamer than going up to get weed.
Jay's squinting at him; the credits have ended, so now the moonlight is all that's left to see by. "Oh," he says. "Yeah. I - yeah." And he climbs over the console into the front seat, where the keys are still dangling from the ignition. Finn stays where he is. Now that the immediate buzz of arousal is fading, he can feel panic nibbling at the edges of his consciousness like fish at a corpse. It's fine. He's fine. He killed a fucking serial killer, he can survive giving a handjob. Assuming that's what Jay wants, anyways. If he wants more than that, Finn can - well, he's survived that before, too.
The dorm is pretty deserted when they make it back, but Finn still gets Jay to linger in the stairwell while he scopes out the hall to make sure no one sees him bringing a guy back to his room. Once he's sure the coast is clear, he unlocks the door and waves him over, and they both dive into the room at the same time, a little breathless, a little giggly because it's so stupid. It's important, but it's also so stupid. Crawling around the floor like they're fucking spies or some shit. Finn picks himself up first, remembering last time - probably this shouldn't happen on the floor - and dusts his jeans off before kicking his shoes into a corner. Jay gets up, too, examining the posters Finn's tacked to the wall. "Pink Floyd, huh?"
Finn shrugs. "They're all right." Really he just likes The Wall.
"Cool." Jay moves away from the poster, towards Finn, then stops halfway and sticks his hands in his pockets. "So. Uh."
"You want - ?" Finn starts then changes gears when he decides he doesn't want to ask that question, actually. "C'mere?"
He sits on the bed. Jay comes over, and Finn thinks he's going to sit down next to him, but what he actually does is sit on his lap, a leg tucked in on either side. That's - not bad, actually. He has to put an arm around Jay's back to keep him from falling backwards, so if he doesn't like this, he can always just let go and end it. Yeah. This is good.
Jay kisses him again, and it's a lot more this time, locked together like this. Hotter, in a very literal sense, but also - the other way. Jay gets a hand under his shirt, runs it up and okay, yeah, turns out having your nipples petted does feel pretty nice. He'd be embarrassed at how absolutely rock hard he is right away, except Jay is too, so it's not like he can judge. "Yeah," he says, grinding his hips up against Jay. "Yeah, like - yeah."
Jay makes a noise sort of like "unh," and keeps going. Finn thinks for a second that they might just keep doing this until one or both of them comes, which is an idea he doesn't hate. He splays a hand out across Jay's lower back, holding him in place so he can grind. Yeah, he can come like this. It's not that different from jerking off. Honestly, it's barely gay at all, right? It's just humping. You can hump anybody. But then Jay pulls back chest heaving, and says, "can I blow you?"
"What," Finn says. Of all the questions he was anticipating, that wasn't one of them. He didn't think anyone ever actually asked to do that.
"I wanna," Jay says, and licks his lips, of all fucking things. Jesus. "We don't - if you're not - but I wanna."
". . . yeah," Finn says, both because Jay's being so fucking nice about it and also because the more he thinks about it, the more he wants it. He loosens his hold on Jay's back so that he can get up but instead he just slides down so that he's kneeling on the floor. Finn can feel his eyes go wide. "You want - like this?"
Jay doesn't answer, but he's going for the button on Finn's jeans, so that answers that question. Finn goes to unbutton his jeans himself, because he still doesn't like the idea of someone else undressing him, and shimmies them down his thighs along with his boxers. Jay makes a noise in the back of his throat at the sight - what the fuck - then swoops in almost before Finn can blink, and then Finn's in his mouth and he's - he's -
"Fucking hell," Finn hisses, and gets a hand in Jay's hair again, so he can guide the way he's moving his head. This is not going to last long. He knows what it feels like to have his dick touched, obviously, but this is - it's heat and it's movement and it's wet, and Jay keeps looking up at him like he - like he's trying to make sure Finn likes it, that he's doing it right. Finn does not have any kind of frame of reference for what doing it right would even look like, but it sure feels right.
"I'm," he says after what can't be more than a couple minutes, tugging at Jay's hair. "I'm gonna, you -" Jay pulls back so he's just licking at him, kind of, jacking him off with his hand, and his mouth is so red. Finn's hand tightens in Jay's hair, the other hand fisted in the bedspread, and he comes in a hot rush. It's like his brain whites out for a second, and that might be the best feeling of the whole night, that nothingness. No thoughts just feeling. Jay kind of rubs him through it, and when Finn comes back to himself, he sees that his hand is covered with - Jesus, he thinks again. Aloud, he says, "there's a box of Kleenex under the bed."
Jay fishes it out with his clean hand and cleans himself off, then climbs back up into Finn's lap. He's still dressed, Finn notes, and still hard. Finn plucks at his waistband. "You," he starts, then swallows past the lump in his throat. He's not going to be one of those guys who cry after sex, is he? He can't deal with that. "You want me to - you know. The same?"
Jay shakes his head, putting a hand over Finn's. "Just -" He gets himself out of his jeans, then wraps a hand around himself. He's so wet already, he doesn't even need anything else. Wet just from that, Finn thinks. His head is spinning. He's jacking himself, fast, jolting up into his own hand, and - "Wait," Finn says, and wraps one of his own hands around Jay's. Not quite touching his dick, but close to. He wants to touch it, feels his stomach jump at the thought, but maybe not. Not yet. Jay lets him do it, kind of clunks their foreheads together, keeps making those "unh" noises, fucking up into their shared grasp until he makes a low noise and comes. Some of it gets on Finn's fingers, and part of him recoils at it, at having another guy's cum on his hand - on purpose - but also it's not that bad. It feels the same as if he'd done it himself. Jay kind of slumps forward, putting more of his weight on Finn, and that's too much, so he rolls them over until they're both lying on top of the bedspread. The Kleenex box got tossed up by the pillows when Jay was done with it, so he reaches for it to clean them both off, then lobs the used tissue in the general direction of the wastebasket. He doesn't bother to look and see if it actually made it in. He'll deal with it tomorrow.
"Mph," Jay says, and wriggles his boxers back up his thighs, kicking his jeans off in the process. Finn does the same. He could get up and look for actual pajamas, but this isn't that far off from what he usually wears to bed, so whatever. Jay's face is smushed against the pillow, eyelids drooping, and Finn can't blame him; he feels like he's just been hit by a truck. He didn't know it would feel like this. Normally, he only jerks off when he's either high or half-asleep, so passing out afterwards is easy. He feels sleepy now, but it's a different kind of sleepy. Satisfied, he guesses. He doesn't feel satisfied very often. For that matter, he doesn't tend to sleep well. But he thinks he might, tonight.
He wakes up to the sound of someone pounding on the door, and a familiar voice saying, "I will kick this fucking door open if you don't answer it, Finney, I swear to Christ."
Behind him, the springs of his shitty dorm room bed creak, and Gwen's eyes go wide. Ernie looks like he would rather be anywhere else right now. Finn can't blame him. "Is there someone in there?"
He's winding up to say "no," when there's another sound behind him, this time of someone bumping into the bedside table, followed by a muttered, "shit." It's quiet, but loud enough for all three of them to hear it, and - presumably - for both Gwen and Ernie to clock that it is very much not a girl's voice. Gwen looks at him, sucking her cheeks in like she's about to explode. "Finn -"
He gives up. Not like there was much left to give up at this point, but still. He takes a shuffling half-step backwards, letting the door swing a bit wider, and looks back over his shoulder. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Shit, sorry." Jay looks up from where he's crouched next to the bed, presumably hunting for wherever he threw his shirt off last night. "Just stubbed my toe. Ah -" He retrieves the shirt, a dusty, balled-up wad of fabric, and yanks it on over his head before rising to his feet and coming to stand next to Finn in the doorway. He keeps shooting looks at Finn like he's trying to gauge whether or not this is okay, which is pretty well beside the point by now, but at least he's trying. "Um. Hi."
Gwen is still staring. Her mouth isn't actually hanging open, but that's about the only thing Finn can say for her expression: she looks like she just watched him sprout a pair of wings. Ernie - who is apparently the only person out of the three of them who has his head screwed on remotely straight - sticks his hand out for Jay to shake. "Hi. I'm Ernesto, I'm a friend of Finn's from home." He glances at Gwen, apparently waiting for her to introduce herself. If that's the case, Finn thinks he's going to have a long wait. He doesn't remember ever seeing his sister at a loss for words before, and it would be almost funny, if it wasn't a harbinger of his life crashing down around his ears. He feels very, very cold.
"This is Jay," he says, because he has to say something. "Jay, this is my sister, Gwen. And Ernie introduced himself already." Ernie, who's shaken Jay's hand and withdrawn by now, gives a little half-wave. Gwen still says nothing. The silence stretches, warps. It's so thick, it's hard to breathe through.
"I'll come down to breakfast with you guys in a second," Finn says to Gwen and Ernie, "we can eat in the cafeteria. Just, gimme a sec -" And he shuts the door in their faces, which would feel ruder if he hadn't done it a dozen times before when he and Gwen were kids. When she was bugging him about something and he needed a minute's peace and quiet. Back when she was speaking to him, which she might now never do ever again, because he's fucked this up beyond any hope of repair. Because now she looks at him and sees - he can't even make himself think it. Fuck.
He can feel Jay looking at him, concerned, but that's not something he can deal with right now, so he stalks over to the chair where his laundry's piled up and grabs the first shirt he sees. He doesn't even bother to check if it's clean or not. Doesn't matter. He pulls it on, buttons it up, then - because he's run out of distractions - looks back up at Jay. "Do you, um. Wanna get breakfast with us?"
Jay shakes his head. "I've got work. Besides, you should hang with your sister." He sticks a hand in his back pocket. Hesitates. "Are you - okay?"
And he should say yes to that, should at least try to salvage something out of this morning. But he can't. His list of plans ran out last night, and he can't come up with anything on the fly that would let him pretend that anything is remotely okay. "I - no, I -" He buries his face in his hands, grips his hair. "Shit. Shit."
He can hear Jay's footsteps shuffling towards him, and thinks wildly, don't touch me, you can't touch me right now, I'm going to fucking lose it. He doesn't, thank God. He stops a foot away from him and says, carefully, "I'm done work at four if you wanna come over. Like, if you - need somewhere to be. I haven't got anything else tonight."
Finn makes a choking noise into his hands. What he wants to say is, why are you so nice to me, I'm too fucked up for this, it can't possibly be worth your time. But that's a whole other breakdown that he really doesn't have time for, so instead he says, "yeah. Yeah." He scrubs his hands over his face, then lifts his head. "I'll come by. Yeah."
They leave it at that. Jay sidles past Gwen and Ernie on his way out the door, offers a nod - Ernie returns it, Gwen doesn't - and Finn lingers in the doorway, fiddling with a belt loop on his jeans that's come loose. "Breakfast?" he asks, and it doesn't break his sister out of her trance exactly, but she at least nods and lets him lead them downstairs.
Breakfast is, predictably, agonizing. He has no idea what to say, and so doesn't say anything at all. Gwen doesn't speak either, staring alternately at him and at her bowl of Cheerios like there might be an answer floating in the milk. Ernie (why did Finn ever hate this kid, honestly) is doing his best to keep a conversation going, with questions about the campus and Finn's classes but Finn can't scrape together any answers that are more than five words apiece, so it's a losing battle. Eventually, Gwen announces that she's going to get some toast and vanishes with her tray, leaving Finn and Ernie sitting in silence. Ernie's pushing the same limp piece of bacon around his plate that he's been toying with for the past fifteen minutes. It's covered in ketchup and looks like the least edible thing Finn's ever seen, so he's kind of glad Ernie doesn't try: the sight might make him puke.
"So, uh," Ernie says, finally setting the bacon down. "You . . . making friends here?"
The subtext is obvious, and it makes Finn bristle, even though he absolutely deserves it. He clenches his fingers around his fork, then forces himself to let go. "Just the one. So far."
Ernie nods. "Well that's. Good." He starts shredding the bacon with his fingers. "Gwen was kind of worried. About you and - meeting people, I guess. Since you didn't, back in high school."
Finn stares down at the Formica tabletop. "No, I didn't," he says. "Not since - middle school." Since your brother hangs in the air.
"Right." Ernie nods again. He takes a deep breath, then, and the sound makes Finn look up sharply: it sounds like a prelude to something, and he's not at all sure he'll like whatever it is. "Robin used to talk about you a lot. When we were kids."
Well it would have to be when they were kids, wouldn't it. "Yeah?" Finn says.
"Yeah." The bacon is now a forlorn pile of slivers. "Stuff like, Finn said this, Finn did that. Just stories about the stuff you guys did, when you were hanging out. I always thought you sounded cool."
Finn snorts in spite of himself. "I wasn't."
"Yeah, well." Ernie blinks owlishly behind his glasses. "Robin thought you were."
There's not a fucking thing Finn can say in response to that. He just stares at Ernie, thinking simultaneously, where do you get off - ? and, you're lying, you have to be. Robin did not think he was cool. He couldn't have. He'd been his friend, his best and only friend, but cool? Him? Absolutely not. Not in general, and especially not next to Robin, who he's always suspected must have seen him as at least a little bit of a nuisance. A useful one, maybe even one he liked, but still. A pain in the ass sissy who needed defending all the time. There's no way in the world he was talking Finn up to his kid brother. What could he even have said? Yeah Finn got his ass kicked at school again today. Yeah, Finn won't shut up about fucking constellations. Yeah, Finn's got a giant book bag full of nerdy shit he got out of the library, and he can't even carry it home by himself because he can't do anything except memorize bullshit that makes teachers like him. Shit, if anything, he would have wanted to warn Ernie off being like Finn: Ernie's always been on the softer side, though not as much as Finn was. Is. Finn was not the kind of role model he needed, not the kind Robin would've wanted for him.
"And, um." Ernie seems to be coming to some kind of decision, his hands flattening on the table. "I think he'd think it's a good thing. You making friends. I think he'd be happy for you."
Finn's whole body jerks like someone yanked a string in his back. He'd been avoiding Ernie's eyes this whole conversation, because it feels like having his teeth drilled, but he looks at him now because he cannot possibly have heard that right. Have understood what he's getting at. He's waiting for Ernie to say something like, just kidding, can you imagine, but he doesn't. He stares right back at Finn. And maybe that means there's something in him that's braver than Finn ever was, because he's not backing down, even though Finn can see from the way he's blinking rapidly that he's nervous. A little shocked at his own daring, maybe. How could he not be?
"Yeah, well," Finn echoes. "I don't think Gwen would agree with him."
Ernie glances over at the breakfast counter, where Gwen's made it up to the front of the line and is now piling toast on her plate. "I don't know," he says, mild. "You'd have to ask her."
Finn exhales harshly through his nose and doesn't reply. He is not going to ask her that. He's not going to ask her anything. He's going to let her come back to the table and finish her meal in as much silence as she likes, and then he's going to walk them back to the car and wish them a safe trip home, and he is never bringing this morning up to Gwen again as long as either of them live. He's not stupid enough to imagine she'll forget, but maybe if they both pretend it didn't happen, they can get back to something like where they were before. God knows they've both had enough practice pretending.
Ernie doesn't say anything for the first leg of the drive home. Neither does Gwen. He glances over at her from time to time, trying to suss out if he should say something - normally he doesn't have to, normally she's not shy about expressing herself when she's angry or frustrated or just generally upset - but now she's just staring out the window, drumming her fingers against the car door. It's more than a little unnerving. He's trying to think of something to break the porridge-thick silence in the car, but he can't come up with anything that isn't "So . . ." or "Well . . ." so he leaves it. She'll talk when she wants to.
Fifteen minutes is apparently Gwen's time limit for stewing in silence, because she turns to him just as they're leaving Boulder and says, "Why didn't he tell me? He used to tell me everything."
Ernie's white-knuckling the steering wheel at this point - it's been raining all morning, the roads are slick, and he doesn't trust the S-bend curves up ahead - but he looks over at her anyway, because he can't not. She's gnawing on her bottom lip, eyes shiny, and she doesn't look pissed, she looks sad. That's - not a new one, for Gwen, but close to. Gwen gets mad a lot more often than she gets sad. Or at least, she lets people see she's mad more often than she lets on being sad. She and her brother are a lot alike, that way. She's also not prone to asking questions like this, or any questions at all; she's always confident that she knows what she's doing. It's one of the many things Ernie likes about her. So, he's a little at sea, here.
Ernie squeezes the steering wheel a little bit tighter, in lieu of reaching across the console to hold Gwen's hand. He wants to make her feel better, but not at the risk of sending them both flying off the road. "I . . . don't know," he says, which is the truth, but doesn't feel especially helpful. "Maybe he didn't know."
Gwen makes a sound somewhere between a sniffle and a scoff. "How could you not know something like that?"
He'd been planning to ask her if she was referring to the guy in Finn's room or to Finn having guys in his room more broadly, but that seems to settle that question. Which is unfortunate, because the question she's asking, he has no idea how to answer. Is it possible, to not know? He doesn't know any . . . any guys like Finn is (he guesses) so it's hard to say. He knows he has an uncle in Santa Fe who's lived with the same roommate for longer than Ernie's been alive, and every Christmas the two of them send him a card with twenty dollars in it from them both, and on the occasions they do come to family get-togethers, his mom and aunts all comment on how nice it is for Primo Jaime and his compañero to bring their homemade sopaipillas, even if they're not as good as Tía Cecilia's were. But since they've been . . . together . . . for so long, Ernie doesn't remember a time when his uncle wasn't who he was. A time he might not have known. And he's not really the kind of uncle you can call up and ask about stuff like that.
(Although, he guesses, he knows Finn. And Finn's like that. So he does know someone like that, after all. Is there a word for it besides like that? All the ones he can think of are - not ones he would use.)
"I can't believe he didn't tell me," Gwen's saying, and her voice is tilting towards anger. "I can't believe I didn't know. I should have known. I'm his sister." And Ernie doesn't say anything to that, but for a different reason, this time.
He thinks a lot about the things he'll never know about Robin. Things Robin didn't have a chance to teach him, sure - how to drive, how to shave, how to talk to girls. But he had his uncle and his cousins and later his stepdad to teach him that. No, he thinks about the things about Robin, about what Robin thought and felt and dreamed of that he doesn't know and never can. Sometimes he looks at Finn and Gwen and feels so jealous, he wants to scream, because he'll never know anyone like that, no matter how much he loves them. There's something about being a sibling, about having slept in the same tiny bedroom and eaten at the same breakfast table and played with the same hand-me-down toys that confer a type of shared consciousness that nothing can replace. He doesn't much like examining that feeling, so he doesn't. But other times, he looks at them - looks at how Gwen worries about her brother and rages at him and sometimes even cries because he's scared her so badly, because he did something stupid or won't listen to her advice or just moved away to Boulder for college, where she can't follow yet - and he thinks maybe he's lucky. Because Robin not being here means he can never really be angry at his brother, never feel anything more complicated than grief, never butt heads or confront the realization that they're more different than they are the same. The Robin who exists in his head is going to be thirteen forever, just like a part of Ernie will always be eleven and convinced that his big brother is the coolest person in the world. It's a simple picture, probably too simple. But it's one that Robin can never change or destroy, because he's not here anymore. He's going to be that kid until the end of time.
Ernie's pretty sure these thoughts make him a terrible person. But they are what they are. So he thinks them, and he keeps his mouth shut about it.
(Sometimes he wonders, though. Sometimes he thinks about the Robin in his memories and wonders if he was on the cusp of something that Ernie, as a stupid kid, wasn't ready or able to understand. He hadn't been lying with what he'd said to Finn earlier, although he'd said it less because it was true and more because he figured Finn needed to hear it. But if there'd been something there, if Robin had known it or suspected it, what could have happened? In a world where Robin was here, flesh and blood instead of a ghost, would they even be having this conversation? Probably not.)
He chances a look at Gwen again. Her eyes are even shinier than before. More than anything, he wants to pull the car over to the side of the road so he can reach over and hug her. He really, really shouldn't do that, because the edge of the road drops off sharply after the verge, and just looking at that edge makes him queasy. But he still wants to.
"I dunno," he says carefully, and it feels useless, but he keeps going even as Gwen's eyebrows squish together. "I mean, he's got . . . there's a lot of stuff that's going on, with him. More than most people. Maybe that makes it - harder?" He doesn't know what he's saying. He's fumbling in the dark. He's probably making it worse.
Gwen chews on her lower lip again. When she speaks, her voice is low. "You think what the Grabber did - made him - ?" The question hangs in the air, dark and ugly.
"I don't think so," Ernie says, because the alternative is too horrible to be believed. Besides, there's lots of guys like that (he has got to think of a better word) out there, and they didn't all get kidnapped and held in a pervert basement, so it doesn't add up as a theory. "Besides, even if it did, would it make a difference?" Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gwen give a tiny shake of her head.
There's an exit up ahead, thank God: the sign advertises a rest stop a few miles up the road. He flips on the turn signal and eases onto the break, cruising until they're parked crossways in a Wendy's parking lot. He turns to Gwen, not entirely sure what he's going to say next, but Gwen, being Gwen, bullrushes past all that by unbuckling her seatbelt as soon as the car is in park and climbing over the console so that she's sitting half on the seat, half on his lap. His arms go around her automatically, and she presses her face against his shoulder with a sound that's definitely more of a sniffle than anything else.
He holds on tight, letting his cheek rest against the top of her head. He loves holding Gwen like this, he really does. He's pretty sure it's not normal; it's not the way guys he knows talk about wanting to touch their girlfriends, that's for sure. And it's not like he doesn't want to do other stuff, too. But he loves curling up with her like this, close enough that he can feel her heartbeat through both of their jackets, and he's pretty sure she can feel his, too. Like this, he can be sure that Gwen isn't frozen under sheet ice, or buried in a basement, or any other place he can't follow her. She's here, and she's alive. They both are.
Gwen shoves her face against his neck, almost angry. He puts a hand on the back of her head and lets it rest there and doesn't comment when he feels tears dripping down the front of his sweater. She sniffs and hiccups, and he lets her until she raises her red, tear-stained face, and says, "why do you think he didn't tell me? Really."
Robin told him, once, about how their dad died in Vietnam: about how he was walking through a field and stepped on a land mine, and that was it, boom. Blood and body parts flying everywhere. That's kind of how Ernie feels now: that if he puts a foot wrong, one or both of them is going to explode. Because what can he even say? Finn isn't his brother, he doesn't know him like that. He knows Gwen better, but that doesn't mean he has any idea how to say what will make her feel better. If there even is something he can say to make her feel better. But he knows she won't accept silence as an answer, so he sets his chin on the crown of her head and says, "Maybe . . . maybe he didn't know what you'd say. Not, like - like scared of you, but just . . . he didn't know. You've had stuff like that, right? Where you didn't tell anyone because you just -" He doesn't know how to finish that sentence, so he doesn't. He especially doesn't add that, given how this morning has gone, maybe Finn was right to be worried.
It's not like he thinks Gwen would be mean about it. Gwen's not like that, and she doesn't put up with people who are. A couple weeks ago, the girls sitting the next table over in the library had been whispering about some guy they thought was a fag, and Gwen had turned around and asked the ringleader if she needed any Ex-Lax, because she was so backed up, there was shit coming out of her mouth. But there's mean and there's - well, this. His mother has never once said a harsh word to Tío Jaime, but he does remember hearing her remark to his stepfather once what a shame it was, that he was like that. That it would've broken their grandmother's heart, if she'd lived to see it. He knows his mother loves her brother, just like he knows Gwen loves Finn, but loving someone doesn't always mean liking them. It doesn't mean never being disappointed in them. And he thinks that, if Robin were still here, and he was disappointed in him - disappointed about something like this, that he can't even fix - it would break him. So he understands Finn, maybe a little better than he thought he did.
"Yeah," Gwen says against his collar. Her voice is very small. "Yeah, but -" Her breath hitches. "I don't want - we aren't -" She puts her face back down to his neck, and he holds her until it passes. When she speaks up again, her voice is ragged. "He and I were always - we were the only things we weren't afraid of. If it was Dad, I'd get it, but I thought he trusted me."
Ernie doesn't say anything to that, because he can't, he really can't. He just kind of rubs a hand between her shoulder blades while a few straggling tears slide down her cheeks. One of her arms is wrapped tight around his shoulders; the other is across his chest, her fingers clenched tight around the fabric of his jacket. Her fingers look stiff, painful. He puts a hand up to gently untangle them, squeezing her hand in his instead. "You should probably tell him," he says. "That you . . . wanted to know. I mean, maybe he thought you'd be upset, so that's why. I think you should tell him you're not -" he thinks anyway, "- because I'm not sure he knows." His voice goes up on the last few words, a question he didn't actually mean to ask out loud. Are you mad at him for being like this is a question he has absolutely no business asking her at all, and he's not even sure he wants to know the answer. Finn isn't his brother. He has no idea how he'd react if he was.
Gwen, who doesn't miss much picks up on it. "I'm not upset," she says, and the tremble in her voice belies her words a little, but Ernie gets what she means. "Not about that. I mean, he can be whatever he wants. Date whoever he wants. But -" Her whole face quivers. "I didn't dream about this. So do you think - maybe - that means he won't . . . get sick? Or if he does, I'll know before it happens?"
Ernie feels that question land in the bottom of his stomach like a rock. He hadn't even thought of that as a reason Gwen might be upset right now, but of course she is. It's all over the news, the hallways at school, the conversations their parents have when they think the kids aren't listening. That kid who the girls in the library had been gossiping about - he's a few grades under Gwen and Ernie, reed-thin and high-voiced in a way that's earned him more than a few beatings from the usual suspects - had gotten a bottle of hand sanitizer flung at the back of his head in the cafeteria the other day, the thrower jeering, get your fucking AIDS germs off the table! His mother's voiced the fear to his stepfather, more than once, about the friends Tío Jaime visits in the hospital, about whether or not it's safe to let him in the house at Christmas. He hasn't paid that much attention to it, on the whole, but it's impossible to ignore entirely. And Gwen's question raises an even more horrifying possibility: that this is something she can't foresee, can't protect him from. They could fight a ghost, but how do you fight a virus? Is that even the kind of thing that would come with a warning, or would it just sneak up on them unawares, and Finn would just come home for spring break one year, twenty pounds lighter with spots on his face? It seems unbelievably cruel that that could happen, after everything. But probably there are other men who've gotten sick who also went through hell, one way or another, and it didn't matter. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. He's sixteen years old, how can he know? How can he know anything?
"You should talk to him," he says again, because if he says, "I don't know" again, he thinks Gwen might slap him and he knows he'd deserve it. "In person, probably. I can drive you up again." Although he hopes she doesn't take him up on that right this second: two drives along that mountain road in a single day is more than enough.
She hauls herself up and backwards, giving his hand another squeeze before settling herself back in her seat. "Yeah," she says. "I - yeah. I'll go." She scrubs at her face with her hands. Ernie silently pulls a pack of tissues out of the glove compartment and hands them to her. "Thanks." She blows her nose. "You wanna get lunch before we drive the rest of the way back?"
It's a button on the conversation, Ernie knows. She's packing her feelings away until later, when she can take them out and examine them in more detail. He's okay with that. He's learned not to push, with Gwen. She's got her shit, and he's got his, and sometimes they both have to deal with it by themselves. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, sure."
Gwen drives herself back up to Boulder, in the end.
Part of it's just practical - Ernie's got a tutoring job, and exams are coming up, so he's busy - but it's also a personal thing. She needs the time to think. Ernie would probably be horrified if she said as much to him, because the road to and from Boulder terrifies him, so the thought of her letting her mind drift while she drives it would give him a stroke. But she's not worried; she knows she's a good driver, good enough that she hasn't crashed a car yet. And the thinking is more important, anyway.
The look on Finn's face when he opened that door is burned into her brain, onto the backs of her eyelids. She sees it when she's trying to fall asleep. Shock, yeah, sure. Guilt - well, she's seen that from him before, when Dad was going in on her and he didn't jump in the middle, or later, after the basement, when the police told them they'd found the other boys. She's felt it herself, when she lost her temper and yelled at him, then watched his face shutter and knew she'd landed a blow on a really tender spot. They took care of each other their whole lives. It made them really good at hurting each other. But this time feels different.
The way Ernie had said, I'm not sure he knows - that's burned into her too. Because she wants to say, of course he knows, we know each other, he knows I wouldn't hurt him like that. Like Dad did, like the kids at school did, like the Grabber did. Except she's pretty sure she did hurt him, and it makes her hate herself.
She doesn't remember her mom ever hitting them, not like Dad did. Barely even remembers her raising her voice. But there was one time. Gwen had been four, maybe. They'd been at the park, which was next to the old cemetery, because apparently the city planners had a sick sense of humour. She'd lifted her head from the sandbox and spotted another kid just across the road, one wearing old-fashioned clothes, looking really skinny and pale. The kid had lifted a hand to wave at her, like, come over! And she'd gotten up from the sandbox and started to cross the street, only to be yanked back suddenly as a car swerved by, laying on the horn. Mom had been hanging onto her arm tight enough to bruise, shaking her and hissing, don't ever do that again! You could've gotten hurt, do you understand? And Gwen had been crying, saying she was sorry, she just wanted to play with the other kid. She remembered how Mom's face had shuttered, how she'd turned to Dad - who'd come running when he noticed what was going on - and said, it's fine, she was chasing a ball, don't worry about it. And then she'd sat Gwen down later that night and told her that sometimes she'd see other people who wanted to talk to her, but they weren't regular people, they didn't understand about things like cars, so it was dangerous for Gwen to listen to them like that. She hadn't really understood, at the time. It was only looking back, years later, that she'd been able to put the pieces together. And she hadn't understood the fear Mom must have felt, seeing her go trotting into the street. Not until Finn opened that door. Feeling like he's in danger, and she can't yank him back fast enough. Can't reach him in time.
It's not the same, she knows that. Being gay isn't like running into the road. At least, it doesn't have to be - shouldn't have to be. She does believe that. It's fucking stupid, the way her classmates and some of her teachers talk about gay people. It's none of their fucking business. But she also knows that terrible things can happen, and she's been trying to keep her brother safe for so long, and how is she supposed to do that now? When he's out of her orbit, past the limits of her reach, and anything could happen to him? She'd always thought things would be better when she got older, because then she'd have that much more control over her life, but it's not like that at all. People don't listen to her any more than she did when she was eleven, and now she doesn't even know anymore if she's right or not. At least she could always be reasonably sure that her dreams were real, and that gave her something to do. Now, with this, she's just flailing.
She'd called ahead to remind Finn she was coming - she's not making that mistake again - and so he's waiting for her when she pulls into the parking lot, leaning against the wall of the dorm. He comes forward as she parks the car and hops out, arm extended like he expects to take a bag from her. He seems taken entirely aback when she throws her arms around him instead, hesitating for a second before he hugs her back. He doesn't smell nearly as much like weed as he did back home, she notes. He'd cut back on it after Camp Alpine, but he'd still been smoking three times a day at least. The scent's still on him, but faint: mostly he smells like laundry detergent. Maybe he just washed his clothes. At the very least, it's not oozing out of his pores anymore.
"What was that for?" he asks, pulling back. His eyebrows are raised. Gwen feels her heart twist, and covers for it by smacking him lightly on the arm.
"Because I missed you, dickface," she says, just to see him smile. "Are you gonna show me around? You promised you would."
He doesn't lose that surprised look - not entirely, anyway - but he says, "yeah, sure," and puts an arm around her shoulders, steering her. She chatters at him about her classes, her teachers - her math teacher is a hardass, but he likes her, and her English teacher keeps marking her essays up for comma splices - and her plans for the spring, when the SATs are going to happen. She really isn't looking forward to them - she's never tested well - but she does desperately want to get out of the house, and college is the fastest track to do it. She doesn't know what she'd do with a degree, or even what kind of degree she'd get, but she's tilting a little towards psychology. Finn tells her about his classes, about his professors, about maybe changing his major to Education, because he's liking his mandatory humanities courses a lot more than he thought he would. She tells him he should: he spent so much time helping her with homework when they were kids, he might as well turn it into a job.
Neither one of them brings up her last visit until the end. They've walked the whole of the campus and wound up in Finn's room, which she didn't really get to see, last time. It's tidy, which doesn't really surprise her - Finn's always been neat - and there's no sign of anyone else staying over. She flops on the floor beside the bed, and Finn lowers himself to sit next to her. It feels like when they were kids, perched together in front of the tv. Only then the world was just the two of them, and now it's so much bigger. It feels like something pushing in between them. But Gwen never met anything pushing her that she didn't want to push back, so she says, "is your friend around? Jay?"
She feels her brother go tense all over, and hates herself a little for it. No, more than a little. She bumps against his shoulder, trying to communicate, it's fine, but it doesn't seem to help much. "He's busy," Finn says through his teeth. "He's got class."
Gwen hums. "What's he studying?"
"Gwen." Finn turns his head to look at her. "Why do you care?"
Gwen hugs her knees. She deserved that, probably. "Just wondering." Then, because she's not going to give up that easily, she changes tacks. "Are you gonna invite him home for Thanksgiving?"
Finn splutters, and she's perversely pleased that she at least got a reaction out of him. "For Thanksgiving? To meet Dad? Are you crazy?"
"It wouldn't be that bad," she says, with more confidence than she feels. "Dad's trying. And you wouldn't have to . . ." How can she put this? "Ernie came last year. So it's not like we can't bring friends, if we want."
Her brother's face hardens. "That's not the same."
"No?"
"Jesus, Gwen." He leans backwards, staring at the ceiling. "You know it's not." It's the closest either of them have come to acknowledging what's hanging in the air between them. She could leave it there. But she's not going to.
"It could be," she says. "You don't have to tell Dad - you could just say he's a friend. Dad won't ask any questions." Their dad's approach to parenting, in the years since he's gotten sober, consists alternately of riding their asses about chores and grades and jobs, and backing off whenever he gets spooked that they'll turn on him. Back when Finn lived at home, Dad had bugged him all the time about bringing friends home. He'd be so happy Finn actually has a friend, he won't pry any further. Probably won't want to know.
He'd bugged Finn a lot about girls, too. About whether or not there were any cute ones in his classes, about how a boy his age ought to be playing the field a little. Finn had always brushed him off. Back then, she'd just assumed he didn't just want to talk to Dad about anything, and that was why. In hindsight, she might have missed some obvious signs.
"No," Finn says. "No, I'm - I wouldn't do that to him."
He means to Jay, she assumes, since he has no compunction about telling Dad where to shove it. And yeah, bringing someone - anyone - around their family dinner table is the kind of thing you really shouldn't do unless they've been thoroughly prepared. Ernie was fine with it because he'd already been through Camp Alpine with them; an uncomfortable dinner was nothing, after that. But someone who doesn't know the whole ugly history? That's probably a quicker trip into the deep end than anybody wants.
She's struck, too, by the way he says it. I wouldn't do that to him, like this guy is someone he wants to protect. She doesn't remember Finn ever wanting to protect anyone, besides her. Probably taking care of her took up so much of his time, he couldn't. He'd been such a shell, after the basement. He'd gone through the motions with her, but that was about it. The idea of him actually caring about someone enough to care whether or not they'd have a shitty Thanksgiving at the house with them - it's new. She doesn't know how to feel about it. She should feel good, and part of her does, but she also feels like a kid who just lost their parents' attention to a new baby. Which is definitely a feeling she needs to get over, because she's sixteen fucking years old, and Finn doesn't need to spend all of his time and attention on her anyways.
"Well," she says, arms still around her knees. "Maybe Christmas, then."
Finn splutters again, but it's a laugh this time. She laughs too. The air feels lighter. She nudges against his shoulder again. "Is he nice?"
When she glances sidelong at him, his face is doing a complicated series of things - first surprise, then something softer. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, he's really nice. He -" He cuts himself off, and Gwen waits, but he doesn't say anything else. That's fine. That, at least, she can let lie. She can't stop looking at his face: the corners of his mouth, which she's so used to seeing drawn tight and unhappy, are turned up. He looks almost like the Finn she remembers from when they were young, really young - not just before the basement, but before Mom. She didn't think she'd ever see him like this again. Like this part of him had been chopped off, instead of just in hiding. But there it is.
"Good," she says, then pauses and adds, "because if he's ever mean to you, I'll kick his ass."
Finn stares at her for a second. His eyes have gone very soft, maybe a little damp. "Well," he says, and there's a definite tremor in his voice. "You don't need to."
"Good," she says again, and takes her arm from around her knees so that she can wrap it around her brother instead. He puts his own arm around her, and hugs her close. She sets her head down on his shoulder, and it really is just like when they were kids, except not. Because they're not little anymore, and they're not fighting all the time to keep each other safe, and maybe that's okay. Maybe they can still make it.
"Love you," she says. It's not something they say to each other a whole lot - they don't need to. But she wants to say it now.
He draws in a sharp little breath, like she's surprised him. Then he hugs her closer, and she catches his smile out of the corner of her eye. "Yeah," he says. "Love you, too."
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: At sixteen, Gwen thought she knew everything there was to know about her brother. She wasn't quite right.
Additional Tags: Coming Out, Siblings, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized Homophobia
Rating: M
The killer truck movie is extremely stupid.
It seems like everyone else in town has come to the same conclusion - or else they've just plain got better things to do - because Finn and Jay are pretty well the only people at the drive-in. There's two cars parked further back, almost at the fence, but Finn's pretty sure that nobody in either of them is actually watching the movie. In fairness, he and Jay are barely watching the movie, either: they dissolved into laughter about fifteen minutes in, and have been too busy cackling to actually keep track of what's happening onscreen. They haven't even smoked more than half a joint between them, and they're still giddy. Finn doesn't think he's laughed this much in the past five years combined.
It helps that there's barely any light - just the flickering from the drive-in screen, plus the occasional slash of headlights across their view as someone pulls in or out of the lot. He can't see Jay, and Jay can't see him, so he's not that worried about how stupid he probably looks, red-faced and teary-eyed with laughter. Just when one of them starts to calm down, something will happen on the screen, or one of them will say something, and they'll both be off again, giggling like little kids. His stomach hurts. It feels good.
"His name's fuckin' -" Jay wheezes as a character re-appears onscreen, "fuckin' Bubba -" and that's Finn done for again, curled up on his side with his face pressed against the rough weave of the car mat as he fights to get control of himself. Jay's car is the kind with seats that collapse to make a sort of little bed, so that's what they've done. They're both sprawled with their legs stretched out towards the back end of the car, heads propped up on their folded arms so that they can see the movie, side by side - close enough that they can brush against each other, but not so close as to be pressed hip to hip. He was a little freaked out about that at first, to be honest, but then the movie and the laughing started, and it was hard to be worried after that. Nothing bad is happening here. And if it does, he can always pop open the car door and roll out. It's not locked; he checked.
(He does still have to check, always. He hasn't been comfortable behind a locked door in years, and this is not going to be the time he starts.)
The laughter dies, finally, He winds up on his back, one leg bent at the knee, the other one still extended. The extended one's the closest to Jay, close enough that he can reach out and tap his calf with his toes. On impulse, he does it. He can't see the face Jay makes in response, but he can feel the answering poke of Jay's foot against his. So he pokes back, and Jay retaliates by poking him again, and they're off, back and forth, kicking at each other until the laughter takes over again. Was there something extra in that half-a-joint they smoked? Shit, it feels that way.
When the kicking's over, they're face-to-face. It's still to dark to see, but Finn can feel Jay's breath on his face; it's rapid, but not from laughter. From nerves, he thinks. Which is fair. He did have a full fucking meltdown the last time they were like this, so he can't blame Jay for not wanting to prompt another one. The old murky feeling tugs at him, then, threatening to pull him under. He's so used to it, it's almost comfortable. But he promised, he promised himself that he wouldn't do that tonight. That he'd at least try. So instead, he lifts his head and says, "hey."
"Hey," Jay says back. The screen lights up, then - in the movie, someone is running around with a rocket launcher - and it's bright enough that he can see the whites of Jay's eyes, moon-wide and damp. Nervous, he thinks again. It's a bad thing, maybe, that the thought settles him; it feels a little like when he and Gwen were kids, when they were first figuring out that they were on their own. Back then, he'd known he couldn't afford to lose it: his sister needed him, he had to be the strong one. That feeling, of being the adult in the room, does more to calm him down than any amount of coddling or shhh, you're okay ever could. They're both adults here, in this car, but it's the same principle. If Jay's nervous, then he can't be. Simple as.
He shuffles forward a bit - which is awkward, balancing on his elbow, but whatever - until their mouths are touching. Jay's so, so tentative about it, one hand kind of fluttering around Finn's side. Probably he's guessed that the disaster of last time wasn't just a bad reaction to the weed. Finn's okay with it. He spent the whole day psyching himself up to be okay with it. Back in middle school, the counsellor he'd been briefly forced to see after the basement had been big on making lists. Stuff like Things That Are Not In My Control and Feelings That Are Not Helpful and Thoughts That Are True Vs. Thoughts That Are Not. Finn had found the whole exercise fairly useless, but he does like having a plan. It clears his head, makes it easier to focus. So he'd mapped out what would happen tonight, like wriggling a little closer to Jay so that their hips bump together and their ankles tangle, and keeping one hand pressed hard against the back of the car seat to remind him of where he is - that this isn't the basement, isn't Camp Alpine, isn't any place he's been before, can't be. It's new, and that makes it safe. So he lets the kiss deepen, licks across Jay's mouth and then sticks his tongue in. He still tastes sweet, although it's a different kind of sweet this time - they'd been eating caramel popcorn, before. It's nice. It's slow and it's easy. The movie soundtrack in the background helps, keeps the back of his brain occupied so he can focus on the task at hand.
The heat feels nice. Jay must run hot, because Finn knows he sure doesn't, and it's a good feeling. Heat soaking through both of their jeans, running up his legs and concentrating in his groin, which is - as always - uninterested in any reservations he might have, stupid and horny like a dog humping the couch. Desperate to be touched. Jay doesn't try to touch him there just yet, which is good, he's not ready for it. But he does nuzzle down Finn's neck, kiss across his collarbones. He definitely shaved this morning, but there's a bit of peach fuzz on his skin, soft enough that it doesn't scrape. Finn tangles a hand in his hair - that's soft too - and lets out a quiet noise, not quite a groan. They're still side to side, so there isn't any weight resting on him, but he can still feel the solid bulk of Jay's body pressed to his. A part of his brain is sending up panic flares, simultaneously this is dangerous and this is wrong, but he ignores it. Stick to the list. Stay calm.
There's a tapping sound at the window, and they scramble apart like they got caught stealing. "Movie's over," someone outside announces - a drive-in worker, from the sounds of it, young and bored. "Pack it in. Gates close in ten." They don't wait for a response, just stump away, swinging their flashlight as they go. The beam cuts back and forth across the car, bright enough to make Finn blink. The screen is, in fact, playing the movie's end credits; he hadn't even noticed.
He looks at Jay. Jay looks at him. He doesn't know what he looks like right now, but Jay's hair is a mess and his mouth is red, and his eyes are wide, like he still hasn't recovered from the shock of that tap on the window. Finn can't help it; he starts giggling. Jay's mouth splits in a grin, and he starts laughing, too. "Shit," he says. "Guess we'll never know how it ends."
"Guess not." Finn stretches his arms over his head, as far as they can go before they hit the roof of the car. His right side is numb from the position he'd been laying in. "Car killed everybody, maybe."
"Probably." Jay shrugs, rolls his shoulders. "Should I - I mean, you want me to drive you back to the dorms?"
Finn considers this. He could say yes and call it a night. But he'd made plans. "Yeah," he says. "And you can, uh, come up? See the room?" Lame excuse, sure, but not any lamer than going up to get weed.
Jay's squinting at him; the credits have ended, so now the moonlight is all that's left to see by. "Oh," he says. "Yeah. I - yeah." And he climbs over the console into the front seat, where the keys are still dangling from the ignition. Finn stays where he is. Now that the immediate buzz of arousal is fading, he can feel panic nibbling at the edges of his consciousness like fish at a corpse. It's fine. He's fine. He killed a fucking serial killer, he can survive giving a handjob. Assuming that's what Jay wants, anyways. If he wants more than that, Finn can - well, he's survived that before, too.
The dorm is pretty deserted when they make it back, but Finn still gets Jay to linger in the stairwell while he scopes out the hall to make sure no one sees him bringing a guy back to his room. Once he's sure the coast is clear, he unlocks the door and waves him over, and they both dive into the room at the same time, a little breathless, a little giggly because it's so stupid. It's important, but it's also so stupid. Crawling around the floor like they're fucking spies or some shit. Finn picks himself up first, remembering last time - probably this shouldn't happen on the floor - and dusts his jeans off before kicking his shoes into a corner. Jay gets up, too, examining the posters Finn's tacked to the wall. "Pink Floyd, huh?"
Finn shrugs. "They're all right." Really he just likes The Wall.
"Cool." Jay moves away from the poster, towards Finn, then stops halfway and sticks his hands in his pockets. "So. Uh."
"You want - ?" Finn starts then changes gears when he decides he doesn't want to ask that question, actually. "C'mere?"
He sits on the bed. Jay comes over, and Finn thinks he's going to sit down next to him, but what he actually does is sit on his lap, a leg tucked in on either side. That's - not bad, actually. He has to put an arm around Jay's back to keep him from falling backwards, so if he doesn't like this, he can always just let go and end it. Yeah. This is good.
Jay kisses him again, and it's a lot more this time, locked together like this. Hotter, in a very literal sense, but also - the other way. Jay gets a hand under his shirt, runs it up and okay, yeah, turns out having your nipples petted does feel pretty nice. He'd be embarrassed at how absolutely rock hard he is right away, except Jay is too, so it's not like he can judge. "Yeah," he says, grinding his hips up against Jay. "Yeah, like - yeah."
Jay makes a noise sort of like "unh," and keeps going. Finn thinks for a second that they might just keep doing this until one or both of them comes, which is an idea he doesn't hate. He splays a hand out across Jay's lower back, holding him in place so he can grind. Yeah, he can come like this. It's not that different from jerking off. Honestly, it's barely gay at all, right? It's just humping. You can hump anybody. But then Jay pulls back chest heaving, and says, "can I blow you?"
"What," Finn says. Of all the questions he was anticipating, that wasn't one of them. He didn't think anyone ever actually asked to do that.
"I wanna," Jay says, and licks his lips, of all fucking things. Jesus. "We don't - if you're not - but I wanna."
". . . yeah," Finn says, both because Jay's being so fucking nice about it and also because the more he thinks about it, the more he wants it. He loosens his hold on Jay's back so that he can get up but instead he just slides down so that he's kneeling on the floor. Finn can feel his eyes go wide. "You want - like this?"
Jay doesn't answer, but he's going for the button on Finn's jeans, so that answers that question. Finn goes to unbutton his jeans himself, because he still doesn't like the idea of someone else undressing him, and shimmies them down his thighs along with his boxers. Jay makes a noise in the back of his throat at the sight - what the fuck - then swoops in almost before Finn can blink, and then Finn's in his mouth and he's - he's -
"Fucking hell," Finn hisses, and gets a hand in Jay's hair again, so he can guide the way he's moving his head. This is not going to last long. He knows what it feels like to have his dick touched, obviously, but this is - it's heat and it's movement and it's wet, and Jay keeps looking up at him like he - like he's trying to make sure Finn likes it, that he's doing it right. Finn does not have any kind of frame of reference for what doing it right would even look like, but it sure feels right.
"I'm," he says after what can't be more than a couple minutes, tugging at Jay's hair. "I'm gonna, you -" Jay pulls back so he's just licking at him, kind of, jacking him off with his hand, and his mouth is so red. Finn's hand tightens in Jay's hair, the other hand fisted in the bedspread, and he comes in a hot rush. It's like his brain whites out for a second, and that might be the best feeling of the whole night, that nothingness. No thoughts just feeling. Jay kind of rubs him through it, and when Finn comes back to himself, he sees that his hand is covered with - Jesus, he thinks again. Aloud, he says, "there's a box of Kleenex under the bed."
Jay fishes it out with his clean hand and cleans himself off, then climbs back up into Finn's lap. He's still dressed, Finn notes, and still hard. Finn plucks at his waistband. "You," he starts, then swallows past the lump in his throat. He's not going to be one of those guys who cry after sex, is he? He can't deal with that. "You want me to - you know. The same?"
Jay shakes his head, putting a hand over Finn's. "Just -" He gets himself out of his jeans, then wraps a hand around himself. He's so wet already, he doesn't even need anything else. Wet just from that, Finn thinks. His head is spinning. He's jacking himself, fast, jolting up into his own hand, and - "Wait," Finn says, and wraps one of his own hands around Jay's. Not quite touching his dick, but close to. He wants to touch it, feels his stomach jump at the thought, but maybe not. Not yet. Jay lets him do it, kind of clunks their foreheads together, keeps making those "unh" noises, fucking up into their shared grasp until he makes a low noise and comes. Some of it gets on Finn's fingers, and part of him recoils at it, at having another guy's cum on his hand - on purpose - but also it's not that bad. It feels the same as if he'd done it himself. Jay kind of slumps forward, putting more of his weight on Finn, and that's too much, so he rolls them over until they're both lying on top of the bedspread. The Kleenex box got tossed up by the pillows when Jay was done with it, so he reaches for it to clean them both off, then lobs the used tissue in the general direction of the wastebasket. He doesn't bother to look and see if it actually made it in. He'll deal with it tomorrow.
"Mph," Jay says, and wriggles his boxers back up his thighs, kicking his jeans off in the process. Finn does the same. He could get up and look for actual pajamas, but this isn't that far off from what he usually wears to bed, so whatever. Jay's face is smushed against the pillow, eyelids drooping, and Finn can't blame him; he feels like he's just been hit by a truck. He didn't know it would feel like this. Normally, he only jerks off when he's either high or half-asleep, so passing out afterwards is easy. He feels sleepy now, but it's a different kind of sleepy. Satisfied, he guesses. He doesn't feel satisfied very often. For that matter, he doesn't tend to sleep well. But he thinks he might, tonight.
He wakes up to the sound of someone pounding on the door, and a familiar voice saying, "I will kick this fucking door open if you don't answer it, Finney, I swear to Christ."
A bucket of cold water couldn't have woken him up faster. He jackknifes up in bed, casting around frantically for his jeans - they can't have gone that far - and silently berating himself for forgetting what day it was. Gwen had told him on Monday that she'd drive up to see him this weekend, and like a fucking idiot, he'd forgotten last night was Friday. Christ. Jay's still facedown in the pillows, fast asleep and drooling a little. There is no way in the world Finn can sneak him out, so he just hops into his jeans and goes for the door. "All right, all right." He angles himself so his body's blocking the room from view, and cracks the door open. "What time is it? You're going to piss off the whole floor."
His sister is standing out in the hallway, arms crossed, a familiar scowl on her face. Ernie - of course Ernie's here too, he drove her, why did Finn not remember any of this last night when it actually mattered - is standing a little ways behind her, impassive. Ernie takes a lot of things in stride. Probably this is a good thing, since he's dating Gwen. Finn offers him a little half-wave, then turns back to his sister, who purses her lips. "It's almost ten, and you were supposed to meet us at quarter past nine. Also, what happened to your neck?"
Behind him, the springs of his shitty dorm room bed creak, and Gwen's eyes go wide. Ernie looks like he would rather be anywhere else right now. Finn can't blame him. "Is there someone in there?"
He's winding up to say "no," when there's another sound behind him, this time of someone bumping into the bedside table, followed by a muttered, "shit." It's quiet, but loud enough for all three of them to hear it, and - presumably - for both Gwen and Ernie to clock that it is very much not a girl's voice. Gwen looks at him, sucking her cheeks in like she's about to explode. "Finn -"
He gives up. Not like there was much left to give up at this point, but still. He takes a shuffling half-step backwards, letting the door swing a bit wider, and looks back over his shoulder. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Shit, sorry." Jay looks up from where he's crouched next to the bed, presumably hunting for wherever he threw his shirt off last night. "Just stubbed my toe. Ah -" He retrieves the shirt, a dusty, balled-up wad of fabric, and yanks it on over his head before rising to his feet and coming to stand next to Finn in the doorway. He keeps shooting looks at Finn like he's trying to gauge whether or not this is okay, which is pretty well beside the point by now, but at least he's trying. "Um. Hi."
Gwen is still staring. Her mouth isn't actually hanging open, but that's about the only thing Finn can say for her expression: she looks like she just watched him sprout a pair of wings. Ernie - who is apparently the only person out of the three of them who has his head screwed on remotely straight - sticks his hand out for Jay to shake. "Hi. I'm Ernesto, I'm a friend of Finn's from home." He glances at Gwen, apparently waiting for her to introduce herself. If that's the case, Finn thinks he's going to have a long wait. He doesn't remember ever seeing his sister at a loss for words before, and it would be almost funny, if it wasn't a harbinger of his life crashing down around his ears. He feels very, very cold.
"This is Jay," he says, because he has to say something. "Jay, this is my sister, Gwen. And Ernie introduced himself already." Ernie, who's shaken Jay's hand and withdrawn by now, gives a little half-wave. Gwen still says nothing. The silence stretches, warps. It's so thick, it's hard to breathe through.
"I'll come down to breakfast with you guys in a second," Finn says to Gwen and Ernie, "we can eat in the cafeteria. Just, gimme a sec -" And he shuts the door in their faces, which would feel ruder if he hadn't done it a dozen times before when he and Gwen were kids. When she was bugging him about something and he needed a minute's peace and quiet. Back when she was speaking to him, which she might now never do ever again, because he's fucked this up beyond any hope of repair. Because now she looks at him and sees - he can't even make himself think it. Fuck.
He can feel Jay looking at him, concerned, but that's not something he can deal with right now, so he stalks over to the chair where his laundry's piled up and grabs the first shirt he sees. He doesn't even bother to check if it's clean or not. Doesn't matter. He pulls it on, buttons it up, then - because he's run out of distractions - looks back up at Jay. "Do you, um. Wanna get breakfast with us?"
Jay shakes his head. "I've got work. Besides, you should hang with your sister." He sticks a hand in his back pocket. Hesitates. "Are you - okay?"
And he should say yes to that, should at least try to salvage something out of this morning. But he can't. His list of plans ran out last night, and he can't come up with anything on the fly that would let him pretend that anything is remotely okay. "I - no, I -" He buries his face in his hands, grips his hair. "Shit. Shit."
He can hear Jay's footsteps shuffling towards him, and thinks wildly, don't touch me, you can't touch me right now, I'm going to fucking lose it. He doesn't, thank God. He stops a foot away from him and says, carefully, "I'm done work at four if you wanna come over. Like, if you - need somewhere to be. I haven't got anything else tonight."
Finn makes a choking noise into his hands. What he wants to say is, why are you so nice to me, I'm too fucked up for this, it can't possibly be worth your time. But that's a whole other breakdown that he really doesn't have time for, so instead he says, "yeah. Yeah." He scrubs his hands over his face, then lifts his head. "I'll come by. Yeah."
They leave it at that. Jay sidles past Gwen and Ernie on his way out the door, offers a nod - Ernie returns it, Gwen doesn't - and Finn lingers in the doorway, fiddling with a belt loop on his jeans that's come loose. "Breakfast?" he asks, and it doesn't break his sister out of her trance exactly, but she at least nods and lets him lead them downstairs.
Breakfast is, predictably, agonizing. He has no idea what to say, and so doesn't say anything at all. Gwen doesn't speak either, staring alternately at him and at her bowl of Cheerios like there might be an answer floating in the milk. Ernie (why did Finn ever hate this kid, honestly) is doing his best to keep a conversation going, with questions about the campus and Finn's classes but Finn can't scrape together any answers that are more than five words apiece, so it's a losing battle. Eventually, Gwen announces that she's going to get some toast and vanishes with her tray, leaving Finn and Ernie sitting in silence. Ernie's pushing the same limp piece of bacon around his plate that he's been toying with for the past fifteen minutes. It's covered in ketchup and looks like the least edible thing Finn's ever seen, so he's kind of glad Ernie doesn't try: the sight might make him puke.
"So, uh," Ernie says, finally setting the bacon down. "You . . . making friends here?"
The subtext is obvious, and it makes Finn bristle, even though he absolutely deserves it. He clenches his fingers around his fork, then forces himself to let go. "Just the one. So far."
Ernie nods. "Well that's. Good." He starts shredding the bacon with his fingers. "Gwen was kind of worried. About you and - meeting people, I guess. Since you didn't, back in high school."
Finn stares down at the Formica tabletop. "No, I didn't," he says. "Not since - middle school." Since your brother hangs in the air.
"Right." Ernie nods again. He takes a deep breath, then, and the sound makes Finn look up sharply: it sounds like a prelude to something, and he's not at all sure he'll like whatever it is. "Robin used to talk about you a lot. When we were kids."
Well it would have to be when they were kids, wouldn't it. "Yeah?" Finn says.
"Yeah." The bacon is now a forlorn pile of slivers. "Stuff like, Finn said this, Finn did that. Just stories about the stuff you guys did, when you were hanging out. I always thought you sounded cool."
Finn snorts in spite of himself. "I wasn't."
"Yeah, well." Ernie blinks owlishly behind his glasses. "Robin thought you were."
There's not a fucking thing Finn can say in response to that. He just stares at Ernie, thinking simultaneously, where do you get off - ? and, you're lying, you have to be. Robin did not think he was cool. He couldn't have. He'd been his friend, his best and only friend, but cool? Him? Absolutely not. Not in general, and especially not next to Robin, who he's always suspected must have seen him as at least a little bit of a nuisance. A useful one, maybe even one he liked, but still. A pain in the ass sissy who needed defending all the time. There's no way in the world he was talking Finn up to his kid brother. What could he even have said? Yeah Finn got his ass kicked at school again today. Yeah, Finn won't shut up about fucking constellations. Yeah, Finn's got a giant book bag full of nerdy shit he got out of the library, and he can't even carry it home by himself because he can't do anything except memorize bullshit that makes teachers like him. Shit, if anything, he would have wanted to warn Ernie off being like Finn: Ernie's always been on the softer side, though not as much as Finn was. Is. Finn was not the kind of role model he needed, not the kind Robin would've wanted for him.
"And, um." Ernie seems to be coming to some kind of decision, his hands flattening on the table. "I think he'd think it's a good thing. You making friends. I think he'd be happy for you."
Finn's whole body jerks like someone yanked a string in his back. He'd been avoiding Ernie's eyes this whole conversation, because it feels like having his teeth drilled, but he looks at him now because he cannot possibly have heard that right. Have understood what he's getting at. He's waiting for Ernie to say something like, just kidding, can you imagine, but he doesn't. He stares right back at Finn. And maybe that means there's something in him that's braver than Finn ever was, because he's not backing down, even though Finn can see from the way he's blinking rapidly that he's nervous. A little shocked at his own daring, maybe. How could he not be?
"Yeah, well," Finn echoes. "I don't think Gwen would agree with him."
Ernie glances over at the breakfast counter, where Gwen's made it up to the front of the line and is now piling toast on her plate. "I don't know," he says, mild. "You'd have to ask her."
Finn exhales harshly through his nose and doesn't reply. He is not going to ask her that. He's not going to ask her anything. He's going to let her come back to the table and finish her meal in as much silence as she likes, and then he's going to walk them back to the car and wish them a safe trip home, and he is never bringing this morning up to Gwen again as long as either of them live. He's not stupid enough to imagine she'll forget, but maybe if they both pretend it didn't happen, they can get back to something like where they were before. God knows they've both had enough practice pretending.
Ernie doesn't say anything for the first leg of the drive home. Neither does Gwen. He glances over at her from time to time, trying to suss out if he should say something - normally he doesn't have to, normally she's not shy about expressing herself when she's angry or frustrated or just generally upset - but now she's just staring out the window, drumming her fingers against the car door. It's more than a little unnerving. He's trying to think of something to break the porridge-thick silence in the car, but he can't come up with anything that isn't "So . . ." or "Well . . ." so he leaves it. She'll talk when she wants to.
Fifteen minutes is apparently Gwen's time limit for stewing in silence, because she turns to him just as they're leaving Boulder and says, "Why didn't he tell me? He used to tell me everything."
Ernie's white-knuckling the steering wheel at this point - it's been raining all morning, the roads are slick, and he doesn't trust the S-bend curves up ahead - but he looks over at her anyway, because he can't not. She's gnawing on her bottom lip, eyes shiny, and she doesn't look pissed, she looks sad. That's - not a new one, for Gwen, but close to. Gwen gets mad a lot more often than she gets sad. Or at least, she lets people see she's mad more often than she lets on being sad. She and her brother are a lot alike, that way. She's also not prone to asking questions like this, or any questions at all; she's always confident that she knows what she's doing. It's one of the many things Ernie likes about her. So, he's a little at sea, here.
Ernie squeezes the steering wheel a little bit tighter, in lieu of reaching across the console to hold Gwen's hand. He wants to make her feel better, but not at the risk of sending them both flying off the road. "I . . . don't know," he says, which is the truth, but doesn't feel especially helpful. "Maybe he didn't know."
Gwen makes a sound somewhere between a sniffle and a scoff. "How could you not know something like that?"
He'd been planning to ask her if she was referring to the guy in Finn's room or to Finn having guys in his room more broadly, but that seems to settle that question. Which is unfortunate, because the question she's asking, he has no idea how to answer. Is it possible, to not know? He doesn't know any . . . any guys like Finn is (he guesses) so it's hard to say. He knows he has an uncle in Santa Fe who's lived with the same roommate for longer than Ernie's been alive, and every Christmas the two of them send him a card with twenty dollars in it from them both, and on the occasions they do come to family get-togethers, his mom and aunts all comment on how nice it is for Primo Jaime and his compañero to bring their homemade sopaipillas, even if they're not as good as Tía Cecilia's were. But since they've been . . . together . . . for so long, Ernie doesn't remember a time when his uncle wasn't who he was. A time he might not have known. And he's not really the kind of uncle you can call up and ask about stuff like that.
(Although, he guesses, he knows Finn. And Finn's like that. So he does know someone like that, after all. Is there a word for it besides like that? All the ones he can think of are - not ones he would use.)
"I can't believe he didn't tell me," Gwen's saying, and her voice is tilting towards anger. "I can't believe I didn't know. I should have known. I'm his sister." And Ernie doesn't say anything to that, but for a different reason, this time.
He thinks a lot about the things he'll never know about Robin. Things Robin didn't have a chance to teach him, sure - how to drive, how to shave, how to talk to girls. But he had his uncle and his cousins and later his stepdad to teach him that. No, he thinks about the things about Robin, about what Robin thought and felt and dreamed of that he doesn't know and never can. Sometimes he looks at Finn and Gwen and feels so jealous, he wants to scream, because he'll never know anyone like that, no matter how much he loves them. There's something about being a sibling, about having slept in the same tiny bedroom and eaten at the same breakfast table and played with the same hand-me-down toys that confer a type of shared consciousness that nothing can replace. He doesn't much like examining that feeling, so he doesn't. But other times, he looks at them - looks at how Gwen worries about her brother and rages at him and sometimes even cries because he's scared her so badly, because he did something stupid or won't listen to her advice or just moved away to Boulder for college, where she can't follow yet - and he thinks maybe he's lucky. Because Robin not being here means he can never really be angry at his brother, never feel anything more complicated than grief, never butt heads or confront the realization that they're more different than they are the same. The Robin who exists in his head is going to be thirteen forever, just like a part of Ernie will always be eleven and convinced that his big brother is the coolest person in the world. It's a simple picture, probably too simple. But it's one that Robin can never change or destroy, because he's not here anymore. He's going to be that kid until the end of time.
Ernie's pretty sure these thoughts make him a terrible person. But they are what they are. So he thinks them, and he keeps his mouth shut about it.
(Sometimes he wonders, though. Sometimes he thinks about the Robin in his memories and wonders if he was on the cusp of something that Ernie, as a stupid kid, wasn't ready or able to understand. He hadn't been lying with what he'd said to Finn earlier, although he'd said it less because it was true and more because he figured Finn needed to hear it. But if there'd been something there, if Robin had known it or suspected it, what could have happened? In a world where Robin was here, flesh and blood instead of a ghost, would they even be having this conversation? Probably not.)
He chances a look at Gwen again. Her eyes are even shinier than before. More than anything, he wants to pull the car over to the side of the road so he can reach over and hug her. He really, really shouldn't do that, because the edge of the road drops off sharply after the verge, and just looking at that edge makes him queasy. But he still wants to.
"I dunno," he says carefully, and it feels useless, but he keeps going even as Gwen's eyebrows squish together. "I mean, he's got . . . there's a lot of stuff that's going on, with him. More than most people. Maybe that makes it - harder?" He doesn't know what he's saying. He's fumbling in the dark. He's probably making it worse.
Gwen chews on her lower lip again. When she speaks, her voice is low. "You think what the Grabber did - made him - ?" The question hangs in the air, dark and ugly.
"I don't think so," Ernie says, because the alternative is too horrible to be believed. Besides, there's lots of guys like that (he has got to think of a better word) out there, and they didn't all get kidnapped and held in a pervert basement, so it doesn't add up as a theory. "Besides, even if it did, would it make a difference?" Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gwen give a tiny shake of her head.
There's an exit up ahead, thank God: the sign advertises a rest stop a few miles up the road. He flips on the turn signal and eases onto the break, cruising until they're parked crossways in a Wendy's parking lot. He turns to Gwen, not entirely sure what he's going to say next, but Gwen, being Gwen, bullrushes past all that by unbuckling her seatbelt as soon as the car is in park and climbing over the console so that she's sitting half on the seat, half on his lap. His arms go around her automatically, and she presses her face against his shoulder with a sound that's definitely more of a sniffle than anything else.
He holds on tight, letting his cheek rest against the top of her head. He loves holding Gwen like this, he really does. He's pretty sure it's not normal; it's not the way guys he knows talk about wanting to touch their girlfriends, that's for sure. And it's not like he doesn't want to do other stuff, too. But he loves curling up with her like this, close enough that he can feel her heartbeat through both of their jackets, and he's pretty sure she can feel his, too. Like this, he can be sure that Gwen isn't frozen under sheet ice, or buried in a basement, or any other place he can't follow her. She's here, and she's alive. They both are.
Gwen shoves her face against his neck, almost angry. He puts a hand on the back of her head and lets it rest there and doesn't comment when he feels tears dripping down the front of his sweater. She sniffs and hiccups, and he lets her until she raises her red, tear-stained face, and says, "why do you think he didn't tell me? Really."
Robin told him, once, about how their dad died in Vietnam: about how he was walking through a field and stepped on a land mine, and that was it, boom. Blood and body parts flying everywhere. That's kind of how Ernie feels now: that if he puts a foot wrong, one or both of them is going to explode. Because what can he even say? Finn isn't his brother, he doesn't know him like that. He knows Gwen better, but that doesn't mean he has any idea how to say what will make her feel better. If there even is something he can say to make her feel better. But he knows she won't accept silence as an answer, so he sets his chin on the crown of her head and says, "Maybe . . . maybe he didn't know what you'd say. Not, like - like scared of you, but just . . . he didn't know. You've had stuff like that, right? Where you didn't tell anyone because you just -" He doesn't know how to finish that sentence, so he doesn't. He especially doesn't add that, given how this morning has gone, maybe Finn was right to be worried.
It's not like he thinks Gwen would be mean about it. Gwen's not like that, and she doesn't put up with people who are. A couple weeks ago, the girls sitting the next table over in the library had been whispering about some guy they thought was a fag, and Gwen had turned around and asked the ringleader if she needed any Ex-Lax, because she was so backed up, there was shit coming out of her mouth. But there's mean and there's - well, this. His mother has never once said a harsh word to Tío Jaime, but he does remember hearing her remark to his stepfather once what a shame it was, that he was like that. That it would've broken their grandmother's heart, if she'd lived to see it. He knows his mother loves her brother, just like he knows Gwen loves Finn, but loving someone doesn't always mean liking them. It doesn't mean never being disappointed in them. And he thinks that, if Robin were still here, and he was disappointed in him - disappointed about something like this, that he can't even fix - it would break him. So he understands Finn, maybe a little better than he thought he did.
"Yeah," Gwen says against his collar. Her voice is very small. "Yeah, but -" Her breath hitches. "I don't want - we aren't -" She puts her face back down to his neck, and he holds her until it passes. When she speaks up again, her voice is ragged. "He and I were always - we were the only things we weren't afraid of. If it was Dad, I'd get it, but I thought he trusted me."
Ernie doesn't say anything to that, because he can't, he really can't. He just kind of rubs a hand between her shoulder blades while a few straggling tears slide down her cheeks. One of her arms is wrapped tight around his shoulders; the other is across his chest, her fingers clenched tight around the fabric of his jacket. Her fingers look stiff, painful. He puts a hand up to gently untangle them, squeezing her hand in his instead. "You should probably tell him," he says. "That you . . . wanted to know. I mean, maybe he thought you'd be upset, so that's why. I think you should tell him you're not -" he thinks anyway, "- because I'm not sure he knows." His voice goes up on the last few words, a question he didn't actually mean to ask out loud. Are you mad at him for being like this is a question he has absolutely no business asking her at all, and he's not even sure he wants to know the answer. Finn isn't his brother. He has no idea how he'd react if he was.
Gwen, who doesn't miss much picks up on it. "I'm not upset," she says, and the tremble in her voice belies her words a little, but Ernie gets what she means. "Not about that. I mean, he can be whatever he wants. Date whoever he wants. But -" Her whole face quivers. "I didn't dream about this. So do you think - maybe - that means he won't . . . get sick? Or if he does, I'll know before it happens?"
Ernie feels that question land in the bottom of his stomach like a rock. He hadn't even thought of that as a reason Gwen might be upset right now, but of course she is. It's all over the news, the hallways at school, the conversations their parents have when they think the kids aren't listening. That kid who the girls in the library had been gossiping about - he's a few grades under Gwen and Ernie, reed-thin and high-voiced in a way that's earned him more than a few beatings from the usual suspects - had gotten a bottle of hand sanitizer flung at the back of his head in the cafeteria the other day, the thrower jeering, get your fucking AIDS germs off the table! His mother's voiced the fear to his stepfather, more than once, about the friends Tío Jaime visits in the hospital, about whether or not it's safe to let him in the house at Christmas. He hasn't paid that much attention to it, on the whole, but it's impossible to ignore entirely. And Gwen's question raises an even more horrifying possibility: that this is something she can't foresee, can't protect him from. They could fight a ghost, but how do you fight a virus? Is that even the kind of thing that would come with a warning, or would it just sneak up on them unawares, and Finn would just come home for spring break one year, twenty pounds lighter with spots on his face? It seems unbelievably cruel that that could happen, after everything. But probably there are other men who've gotten sick who also went through hell, one way or another, and it didn't matter. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. He's sixteen years old, how can he know? How can he know anything?
"You should talk to him," he says again, because if he says, "I don't know" again, he thinks Gwen might slap him and he knows he'd deserve it. "In person, probably. I can drive you up again." Although he hopes she doesn't take him up on that right this second: two drives along that mountain road in a single day is more than enough.
She hauls herself up and backwards, giving his hand another squeeze before settling herself back in her seat. "Yeah," she says. "I - yeah. I'll go." She scrubs at her face with her hands. Ernie silently pulls a pack of tissues out of the glove compartment and hands them to her. "Thanks." She blows her nose. "You wanna get lunch before we drive the rest of the way back?"
It's a button on the conversation, Ernie knows. She's packing her feelings away until later, when she can take them out and examine them in more detail. He's okay with that. He's learned not to push, with Gwen. She's got her shit, and he's got his, and sometimes they both have to deal with it by themselves. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, sure."
Gwen drives herself back up to Boulder, in the end.
Part of it's just practical - Ernie's got a tutoring job, and exams are coming up, so he's busy - but it's also a personal thing. She needs the time to think. Ernie would probably be horrified if she said as much to him, because the road to and from Boulder terrifies him, so the thought of her letting her mind drift while she drives it would give him a stroke. But she's not worried; she knows she's a good driver, good enough that she hasn't crashed a car yet. And the thinking is more important, anyway.
The look on Finn's face when he opened that door is burned into her brain, onto the backs of her eyelids. She sees it when she's trying to fall asleep. Shock, yeah, sure. Guilt - well, she's seen that from him before, when Dad was going in on her and he didn't jump in the middle, or later, after the basement, when the police told them they'd found the other boys. She's felt it herself, when she lost her temper and yelled at him, then watched his face shutter and knew she'd landed a blow on a really tender spot. They took care of each other their whole lives. It made them really good at hurting each other. But this time feels different.
The way Ernie had said, I'm not sure he knows - that's burned into her too. Because she wants to say, of course he knows, we know each other, he knows I wouldn't hurt him like that. Like Dad did, like the kids at school did, like the Grabber did. Except she's pretty sure she did hurt him, and it makes her hate herself.
She doesn't remember her mom ever hitting them, not like Dad did. Barely even remembers her raising her voice. But there was one time. Gwen had been four, maybe. They'd been at the park, which was next to the old cemetery, because apparently the city planners had a sick sense of humour. She'd lifted her head from the sandbox and spotted another kid just across the road, one wearing old-fashioned clothes, looking really skinny and pale. The kid had lifted a hand to wave at her, like, come over! And she'd gotten up from the sandbox and started to cross the street, only to be yanked back suddenly as a car swerved by, laying on the horn. Mom had been hanging onto her arm tight enough to bruise, shaking her and hissing, don't ever do that again! You could've gotten hurt, do you understand? And Gwen had been crying, saying she was sorry, she just wanted to play with the other kid. She remembered how Mom's face had shuttered, how she'd turned to Dad - who'd come running when he noticed what was going on - and said, it's fine, she was chasing a ball, don't worry about it. And then she'd sat Gwen down later that night and told her that sometimes she'd see other people who wanted to talk to her, but they weren't regular people, they didn't understand about things like cars, so it was dangerous for Gwen to listen to them like that. She hadn't really understood, at the time. It was only looking back, years later, that she'd been able to put the pieces together. And she hadn't understood the fear Mom must have felt, seeing her go trotting into the street. Not until Finn opened that door. Feeling like he's in danger, and she can't yank him back fast enough. Can't reach him in time.
It's not the same, she knows that. Being gay isn't like running into the road. At least, it doesn't have to be - shouldn't have to be. She does believe that. It's fucking stupid, the way her classmates and some of her teachers talk about gay people. It's none of their fucking business. But she also knows that terrible things can happen, and she's been trying to keep her brother safe for so long, and how is she supposed to do that now? When he's out of her orbit, past the limits of her reach, and anything could happen to him? She'd always thought things would be better when she got older, because then she'd have that much more control over her life, but it's not like that at all. People don't listen to her any more than she did when she was eleven, and now she doesn't even know anymore if she's right or not. At least she could always be reasonably sure that her dreams were real, and that gave her something to do. Now, with this, she's just flailing.
She'd called ahead to remind Finn she was coming - she's not making that mistake again - and so he's waiting for her when she pulls into the parking lot, leaning against the wall of the dorm. He comes forward as she parks the car and hops out, arm extended like he expects to take a bag from her. He seems taken entirely aback when she throws her arms around him instead, hesitating for a second before he hugs her back. He doesn't smell nearly as much like weed as he did back home, she notes. He'd cut back on it after Camp Alpine, but he'd still been smoking three times a day at least. The scent's still on him, but faint: mostly he smells like laundry detergent. Maybe he just washed his clothes. At the very least, it's not oozing out of his pores anymore.
"What was that for?" he asks, pulling back. His eyebrows are raised. Gwen feels her heart twist, and covers for it by smacking him lightly on the arm.
"Because I missed you, dickface," she says, just to see him smile. "Are you gonna show me around? You promised you would."
He doesn't lose that surprised look - not entirely, anyway - but he says, "yeah, sure," and puts an arm around her shoulders, steering her. She chatters at him about her classes, her teachers - her math teacher is a hardass, but he likes her, and her English teacher keeps marking her essays up for comma splices - and her plans for the spring, when the SATs are going to happen. She really isn't looking forward to them - she's never tested well - but she does desperately want to get out of the house, and college is the fastest track to do it. She doesn't know what she'd do with a degree, or even what kind of degree she'd get, but she's tilting a little towards psychology. Finn tells her about his classes, about his professors, about maybe changing his major to Education, because he's liking his mandatory humanities courses a lot more than he thought he would. She tells him he should: he spent so much time helping her with homework when they were kids, he might as well turn it into a job.
Neither one of them brings up her last visit until the end. They've walked the whole of the campus and wound up in Finn's room, which she didn't really get to see, last time. It's tidy, which doesn't really surprise her - Finn's always been neat - and there's no sign of anyone else staying over. She flops on the floor beside the bed, and Finn lowers himself to sit next to her. It feels like when they were kids, perched together in front of the tv. Only then the world was just the two of them, and now it's so much bigger. It feels like something pushing in between them. But Gwen never met anything pushing her that she didn't want to push back, so she says, "is your friend around? Jay?"
She feels her brother go tense all over, and hates herself a little for it. No, more than a little. She bumps against his shoulder, trying to communicate, it's fine, but it doesn't seem to help much. "He's busy," Finn says through his teeth. "He's got class."
Gwen hums. "What's he studying?"
"Gwen." Finn turns his head to look at her. "Why do you care?"
Gwen hugs her knees. She deserved that, probably. "Just wondering." Then, because she's not going to give up that easily, she changes tacks. "Are you gonna invite him home for Thanksgiving?"
Finn splutters, and she's perversely pleased that she at least got a reaction out of him. "For Thanksgiving? To meet Dad? Are you crazy?"
"It wouldn't be that bad," she says, with more confidence than she feels. "Dad's trying. And you wouldn't have to . . ." How can she put this? "Ernie came last year. So it's not like we can't bring friends, if we want."
Her brother's face hardens. "That's not the same."
"No?"
"Jesus, Gwen." He leans backwards, staring at the ceiling. "You know it's not." It's the closest either of them have come to acknowledging what's hanging in the air between them. She could leave it there. But she's not going to.
"It could be," she says. "You don't have to tell Dad - you could just say he's a friend. Dad won't ask any questions." Their dad's approach to parenting, in the years since he's gotten sober, consists alternately of riding their asses about chores and grades and jobs, and backing off whenever he gets spooked that they'll turn on him. Back when Finn lived at home, Dad had bugged him all the time about bringing friends home. He'd be so happy Finn actually has a friend, he won't pry any further. Probably won't want to know.
He'd bugged Finn a lot about girls, too. About whether or not there were any cute ones in his classes, about how a boy his age ought to be playing the field a little. Finn had always brushed him off. Back then, she'd just assumed he didn't just want to talk to Dad about anything, and that was why. In hindsight, she might have missed some obvious signs.
"No," Finn says. "No, I'm - I wouldn't do that to him."
He means to Jay, she assumes, since he has no compunction about telling Dad where to shove it. And yeah, bringing someone - anyone - around their family dinner table is the kind of thing you really shouldn't do unless they've been thoroughly prepared. Ernie was fine with it because he'd already been through Camp Alpine with them; an uncomfortable dinner was nothing, after that. But someone who doesn't know the whole ugly history? That's probably a quicker trip into the deep end than anybody wants.
She's struck, too, by the way he says it. I wouldn't do that to him, like this guy is someone he wants to protect. She doesn't remember Finn ever wanting to protect anyone, besides her. Probably taking care of her took up so much of his time, he couldn't. He'd been such a shell, after the basement. He'd gone through the motions with her, but that was about it. The idea of him actually caring about someone enough to care whether or not they'd have a shitty Thanksgiving at the house with them - it's new. She doesn't know how to feel about it. She should feel good, and part of her does, but she also feels like a kid who just lost their parents' attention to a new baby. Which is definitely a feeling she needs to get over, because she's sixteen fucking years old, and Finn doesn't need to spend all of his time and attention on her anyways.
"Well," she says, arms still around her knees. "Maybe Christmas, then."
Finn splutters again, but it's a laugh this time. She laughs too. The air feels lighter. She nudges against his shoulder again. "Is he nice?"
When she glances sidelong at him, his face is doing a complicated series of things - first surprise, then something softer. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, he's really nice. He -" He cuts himself off, and Gwen waits, but he doesn't say anything else. That's fine. That, at least, she can let lie. She can't stop looking at his face: the corners of his mouth, which she's so used to seeing drawn tight and unhappy, are turned up. He looks almost like the Finn she remembers from when they were young, really young - not just before the basement, but before Mom. She didn't think she'd ever see him like this again. Like this part of him had been chopped off, instead of just in hiding. But there it is.
"Good," she says, then pauses and adds, "because if he's ever mean to you, I'll kick his ass."
Finn stares at her for a second. His eyes have gone very soft, maybe a little damp. "Well," he says, and there's a definite tremor in his voice. "You don't need to."
"Good," she says again, and takes her arm from around her knees so that she can wrap it around her brother instead. He puts his own arm around her, and hugs her close. She sets her head down on his shoulder, and it really is just like when they were kids, except not. Because they're not little anymore, and they're not fighting all the time to keep each other safe, and maybe that's okay. Maybe they can still make it.
"Love you," she says. It's not something they say to each other a whole lot - they don't need to. But she wants to say it now.
He draws in a sharp little breath, like she's surprised him. Then he hugs her closer, and she catches his smile out of the corner of her eye. "Yeah," he says. "Love you, too."
