Summary: Guilt, reflection, and a name in the obituaries.
Rating: R for language and adult theme I guess, Ben/Michael, angst, (very) minor character death
Archived; 12/28/05
Disclaimers: I don't own them. Please don't sue. Takes place a few years into the future.
I love Sunday mornings.
Michael only goes to the store for a few hours in the afternoon, Hunter sleeps in, and I don't have to go to campus, so we get to spend time just as not-so-newly weds. Michael makes some kind of actual breakfast that's traditional enough for him but healthy enough for me, we read the paper...it's usually pretty quiet but it's my favourite time of the week.
I flip through the paper, reading stories here and there almost lazily, as Michael hums some song that I know I know but can't pick out - he does that a lot. Blame it on the fact that he really can't sing and that, living with Emmett for as long as he did, he picked up on all the Streisand and Cher and showtunes that I don't exactly know by heart.
I find a page missing and sigh - Michael's taken out the page containing the obituaries again. I don't know when he started doing that, but any time there's a name in there he knows I know, he's made it a point to remove the page before I can see it. It's sweet. A little irritating, maybe, but sweet that he wants to try to protect me, even if it is unnecessary. Though it does make me wonder what else he doesn't realize is just a part of my life.
I shouldn't say it like that, Michael has...accepted me, and my life, and everything in it far better than I thought he could. Given how scared he was in the beginning I thought for sure he'd never come to terms with things, but he has and he deserves credit for sticking around long enough to figure it out. But there are still things he doesn't like to think about, or deal with, or likes to try to protect us from.
And, to be fair, watching your lover shoot himself full of steroids after he found out someone he loved had died...
I can understand why he does it. Which is why it's mostly sweet rather than just annoying.
"Michael?"
He looks back at me innocently, but he knows that tone - and the look I give him. He hangs his head just a little and brings me the page of the paper he had kept in the kitchen. I put the page back in its place and finish reading the story I was on, then turn and glance through to see just who he was trying to protect me from.
Anthony Flynn, age 25.
I do my best not to react in case Michael's watching, so that he doesn't pounce and take the whole paper away or something. But my heart sinks, in the traditional clich sense.
What a fucking waste. That someone so..beautiful and vibrant who could have made his mark with his writing had to be so blinded that he couldn't see the other side of it. That he couldn't see the dark, terrifying parts of HIV, the fear that the drugs will stop working and the regret and the concern for anyone you'll leave behind. He couldn't see that this thing he romanticized the hell out of is the same thing that keeps me up nights, watching Michael sleep and allowing myself to wish for just a moment here or there...
He couldn't see me as I actually am. He saw what all the students see - or at least what I hope they see. Someone confident, accepting, thoughtful, well-educated...who tries to inspire them even when they barely want to turn up for class sometimes. Someone who's at peace with himself and all that's happened, who doesn't regret the past or fear the future.
But no person in the world can possibly be as centered as they all think I am.
He couldn't see that I have my moments of anger and rage for what the circumstances are or how worried I am for Michael and Hunter when I die or how every morning, before I open my eyes, I take mental stock of my health as though I'll be able to tell when the tide starts turning. As though if I think hard enough, I can figure out my precise viral load and T-cell count and do something accordingly. He had no idea about the steroids I took to try to desperately stave off some imagined wasting because I was scared out of my fucking mind that as Paul died, I would be next. That I was so desperately hanging on to "health" that I was willing to destroy myself in the hopes of not letting it claim me.
No. He just saw the fact that "I don't have to worry about it anymore." He could never see that I do still have to worry about it - only now I have to worry about making sure Michael stays healthy and that I don't infect the man I love more than anything because if-
...Because if I did...If I ever-
I know Michael wouldn't blame me. I know he wouldn't hate me, and that he's knowingly accepted that risk every day for the last seven years - so far without consequence, thank God. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't blame and hate myself for it.
Maybe if I could have told him. If I hadn't been so busy being shocked by the revelation that night he tried to get me to infect him. If I could have pulled myself together enough to tell him then and there, in his apartment, and told him everything...all the fear and worry and how fucking long it took me to be even remotely "at peace" with it...If I could have done all that maybe he wouldn't have gone to the fucking party. Maybe I could have convinced him-
At what point does a failure to act become as bad as action? I know according to Mel there's a legal answer to that, but there has to be a moral answer to it as well. At what point does the fact that I couldn't stop him from wanting to infect himself become as regrettable as if I had let him let me infect him?
I know it's irrational. I know he had is mind made up, and that just as much as no book can paint a true picture of it, no gruesome stories could convince someone who was that determined, that...
...He was already sick. Just in a very, very different sense.
Michael sets the plates on the table and stands behind me, hands on my shoulders as he rubs them gently. I think he knows more of what went on than I said in the story - he's more perceptive than people give him credit for. Actually, he realized one of the things Anthony was after before I did. I was blinded by his praise for the novel Michael couldn't stand...so that I couldn't see the darker side of what Anthony wanted. I thought at most it might've been a tiny crush, the kind that never goes anywhere - the kind I had on a couple of my professors. It never crossed my mind that someone who seemed so...curious in a writer kind of way, like he wanted to soak up all the information he could. It never occurred to me that he could want this thing that no one in their right mind would really want.
That night I was almost as disturbed as when Michael sat in the living room with that fucking syringe - but that was his purpose. To scare me. He didn't really want to-
At least I hope not. I really fucking hope not.
Instead of snarking about the 'young lover', Michael just hugs me gently from behind as I slowly begin to read what the newspaper has to say about this young man. A paragraph or two could never possibly sum it up - and even if the writer were talented enough to capture who he was as a person, they could never pin down or sort out what was the real cause of his death.
Here is a land full of power and glory,
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Glory shall rest on us all
Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor
Only a free as a padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand.-Phil Ochs, "Power and Glory"
End of "Flip Side" by Kasey (Admiralkasey@aol.com)