Jesse, part nine
Sep. 16th, 2007 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maculategiraffePart Eight
Bran followed Holden meekly to the car, Jesse tagging behind, trying to breathe, and stood waiting beside it, his head down, not touching the handle of the door. Holden put a gentle hand on his back and opened the door to the front passenger seat for him, motioning him in. Jesse climbed in the back seat as Holden shut the door on Bran, got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
“So,” he said conversationally as he drove off. “What was that about?”
“I’m sorry, master,” said Bran in a small voice. “Thank you for not punishing me in front of Lady Galenova.”
“You’re welcome. Now answer the question. You must have had a reason. You wouldn’t defy me just for the hell of it.”
“I didn’t want them to see me,” said Bran in an even quieter voice.
“I gathered. But why not? They’ve all seen you naked before. I thought at first you must have some kind of mark you didn’t want anyone to see, but you’re spotless as a virgin, so what gives?”
Bran said something inaudible.
“Speak up,” said Holden. “I can’t hear you.”
“That’s why,” Bran repeated, more clearly.
“What’s why what?” Holden asked, puzzled. “Being spotless as a virgin? Is why you didn’t want them to see you?”
Bran nodded without looking up.
“You’re not making any sense, Bran,” said Holden sharply. “You didn’t want people to see your body with no marks on it? Why the hell not?”
Bran was huddled in on himself as if trying to disappear. Holden glanced sideways at him, and when he spoke again his voice was gentler.
“Don’t look like that, kid,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you for a little backtalk. And I’m not going to do anything to you until I understand what’s going on. You’ve never been self-conscious about your body, and you’ve always been pathologically well-behaved. I hope you can see why I’m confused.”
"I'm sorry," said Bran again.
“All right,” said Holden after a pause. “Take your time. No hurry. Let’s talk about something else. Why don't you have any marks? Jesse looks like a biter to me.”
Jesse raised his eyebrows, half annoyed by the offhanded comment and half amused by its accuracy. Holden caught the expression in the rearview mirror and mirth flickered in his own eyes for a second before they returned to the road.
“His teeth,” said Bran indistinctly.
“Oh, right. What about Yves? He normally doesn’t leave you unbitten for too long at a time.”
“Hasn’t taken me for a while, master.”
“Ah. Because you’ve been spending so much time with Jesse and Quen.”
“I guess,” said Bran.
“You guess. But not very convincingly. Let’s see. I know you and Yves haven’t quarreled; Yves would have told me. Is it that you think he’s lost interest in you?”
Again Bran said nothing.
“Aha,” said Holden. “He doesn’t want you any more. Nobody wants you any more. We’re all too bored with our charity brat to keep your skin interestingly variegated. And then I order you to demonstrate your humiliatingly immaculate body in front of everyone. Is that it?”
Nearly crimson, eyes fixed firmly on his feet, Bran stayed silent.
“And punishment might mean marks. And it’ll definitely mean my attention. It’s not in you to seriously misbehave, but a little defiance, just a few quiet words, over something you– Gods, Bran, I really have been neglecting you.”
“No,” said Bran, almost angrily, to his knees.
“Yes,” said Holden firmly. “Why can’t you be honest with me, kid? Do you think I’m going to be angry at you for complaining? Is that it?”
“I’ve got nothing to complain about, master,” said Bran quietly.
“No?” said Holden dryly. “You could complain about sharing my attention with a wife and two other sex slaves and a steady stream of delinquents. Or you could complain that every time you make a friend close to your own age, they get sold a couple of months later– or leave the country altogether by dead of night. Or you could complain about these dreams where you wake up crying and then claim you can’t remember what you were dreaming about.”
“None of that’s your fault,” said Bran, barely audibly.
“So? Even if there’s nothing I can do, wouldn’t it help to talk about it?”
“But I promised,” said Bran. “When you agreed to keep me. Not to be a bother.”
“Oh,” said Holden softly. “Now we’re getting there. You promised, huh? Sure, I remember that. ‘I’ll be so good you won’t even know I’m there,’ wasn’t it?”
Bran said nothing.
“But you know by now, or you should, that I like knowing you’re there. You do know that, don’t you? You see me smile whenever I see you?”
“If--” Bran began, then fell silent.
“If,” Holden repeated. “This is a fascinating little semaphore you’ve invented, sweetheart. So much more invigorating than normal conversation. Silence when you agree, mumbled cryptic statements when you don’t, and now 'if.’”
“I’m sorry,” said Bran miserably, though Holden's tone had been light and not angry. “You smile when you see me if– I look happy.”
“Okay.” Holden sighed. “All right. Yes. I worry. I feel responsible for your welfare. So you think you can’t complain about things that aren’t my fault and that I can’t fix because I’ll think they are my fault and I should fix them. Maybe you worry about how I’ll decide to fix them. Maybe you worry that I’ll say, “Ah, kid, you’re so miserable here with me, I knew keeping you was a bad idea, I guess I’ll have to sell you now for your own good.’”
Silence.
“I think that’s right,” said Holden. “I also think the bigger problem here is that you don’t really understand why you’re still here, or there, in the house, so you walk around on eggshells in case you accidentally say the wrong thing and break the magic spell.”
“I know why,” said Bran, staring at his hands. “Because I begged you to let me stay.”
“What?” said Holden, and Bran looked up for the first time, alert to his master’s incredulous tone. “Bran, my job is to have sex with fucked-up teenagers while attempting to untangle their heads. If I caved every time someone decided he was in love with me and would just absolutely die if I sold him, forget a new dining room table, I’d have had to build another entire house.”
“No you wouldn’t,” said Bran, his eyes suddenly bright and defiant, frightening Jesse, “because they would all have moved on by now, right? Like you thought I would? You wanted me, and you were willing to put up with me for another month or a few more months, maybe a year, however long it took before you got tired of me or I got tired of you. You didn’t love me and you didn’t think I really loved you so it was all fine, wasn’t it? And now you’re sick of me and here I still–“
“Wait,” said Holden, squinting at Bran with a trace of a smile. “Didn’t I just fuck you yesterday?”
Bran drew back as if Holden had reached across and slapped him. Jesse clenched his jaw, hating Holden. Everything’s fucking funny to you, isn’t it?
Holden sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a defense mechanism. Like you and apologizing for everything. I try to turn everything into a joke. But you’re serious, and you’re hurt, and you’re scared. And you’re wrong. I didn’t keep you because you begged and I didn’t keep you because I wanted you– although you’re also wrong that I’m tired of you, but we can discuss that in bed tonight.”
Bran glanced up swiftly, his eyes searching Holden’s profile. “Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight. Didn’t I tell you I’d be spending the night with you?”
“Yes,” said Bran, flushed, “but that was before I– disobeyed you.”
“So? You really think I’d punish you for a cry for attention by withholding my attention? Give me a little credit, kid.”
Bran nodded, blinking away sudden tears. Holden was silent for a moment, watching him in quick glances.
“You’re wrong,” he repeated finally, slowly, as if picking up his train of thought again. “Up until you ran away, I really thought you just had a run-of-the-mill teenage crush on me. More intense than some, more honest than most, but– and even when you went missing I thought it was some kind of, I don’t know, I couldn’t figure it out. But if I found you alive I was going to– figure out what the fuck had happened, first of all, and then I was going to fix it and sell you and get on with my life and let you get on with yours. Or, if it wasn’t fixable, I was going to wake up at three o’clock every night for the rest of my life wondering what I should have done differently. But keeping you was not an option.”
“But you did,” Bran protested.
“Oh, did you notice that?”
“Why?” Bran asked, ignoring the sarcasm.
“Because.” Holden hesitated, seeming uncertain for the first time. “I– When I asked you, once I ran you down, what the hell you were thinking, why you’d run away at all, but especially if you were allegedly in love with me– do you remember what you said?”
“Sure,” said Bran, rather bitterly. “I said I’d rather die than belong to anyone but you. I remember the look on your face when I said that. Sort of a ‘wow, he’s even crazier than I thought’ look.”
Holden smiled briefly. “More of a ‘not that old line again’ look. No, I was thinking of what you said just before that.”
Surprised, Bran thought. “I– something about how– I was afraid I’d change? Get all cynical and jaded, like Jer? If I– had to live– without love. Without– hope.” He swallowed, embarrassed. “Something like that.”
“‘The best things about me, master, they’re all for you,’” Holden quoted gently.
Bran nodded. “And– yeah. That.”
“And then the ‘I’d rather die’ line, right,” said Holden, reconstructing, “and then the look on my face, and then the look on yours, kid. And that’s when you got me.”
“What?” said Bran, sitting up straight. “No it’s not! You fought me for ages after that!”
“Yeah,” said Holden. “I fought. I fought like a cat in a sack. You had me, but I still refused to believe it. I thought– maybe– I could talk my way out of it. Figure out a way I didn’t have to keep you.”
“I thought you wanted to,” said Bran, staring as if trying to bore through Holden’s skull with his eyes. “I thought you wanted me.”
“I did– and do– want you, Bran,” said Holden softly. “But I told you then, I can’t afford to just take whatever I want. I don’t have the time and I don’t have the right.”
“Then why did you keep me?” Bran cried, and there was such raw desperation in his voice that tears sprang to Jesse’s own eyes.
“Because–“ Holden took a deep breath, and his voice, when he spoke again, was as raw as Bran’s, painfully tender. “I don’t pray much, kid, but I’d been thanking the gods for letting me be the one who-- helped you-- watched you-- come alive again. Watched you forget to be afraid, remember how to laugh, come out with all that intelligence and humor and fire. For a kid who'd been through what you'd been through-- you are an extraordinary person, Bran. And the more I understood that, the more I kept remembering how you looked when– do you remember the day we bought you from Dunaev, how you sucked my cock in the back seat?”
“Of course,” said Bran, flushed from the praise, and smiling faintly. “Anything to postpone the torture.”
“Yes, well, you were very good, despite being scared half out of your mind. But afterwards, you pulled back and just sat there with your head down, and I said something, I don’t remember what, something inane to try and get a smile out of you, and you glanced up at me and you had this– look on your face. Like you’d done your absolute best and now you were waiting to be punished for not having done better. Like you thought you deserved to be punished, for not having a better best to give.”
“I remember,” said Bran very quietly. “You looked at me– you looked– strange.”
“I felt strange. I've seen some fucked-up shit in my line of work, but that look, I-- and once I'd started to understand what kind of person you were, it was even worse. But at least I could tell myself I’d see to it that look was never on your face again. And then– at Karl’s, after you’d said your piece, after you looked into my face and saw that I still wasn’t buying it– there it was. The same fucking look. Only a thousand times worse, because by then I knew you, and I’d seen such light on your face, and you hadn’t just offered me your mouth, you’d offered me– everything. The best things about you. And there you were sitting in front of me, believing all over again that you were nothing, that you couldn’t ever be good enough. For me, for fuck’s sake. It was like a nightmare. I–”
He broke off, swallowing. Bran’s eyes were glued to his master. Holden’s were on the road.
“I thought, this isn’t happening, he can’t really still– I was furious. With myself, with Dunaev, with your fucking grandfather. I was ranting, I was explaining to the universe how fucking impossible this all was, and you closed your eyes and–”
“You slapped my face,” said Bran, with an odd note of shocked reproach, as if it had just happened.
“Yes," said Holden. "I slapped your face. Because you closed your eyes and your face went slack and you looked dead. Gone. You’d just... left. And that was– not– bearable. And I slapped you and you opened your eyes and you were still there and even a little angry– but I knew that I hadn’t–“ He swallowed again. “I hadn’t failed you altogether, but I hadn’t succeeded, either. You were alive, you were you, but if I pushed you away, if I let you go, you’d just– go under.”
“I’m sorry,” Bran whispered.
“No,” said Holden fiercely. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. You’re the bravest kid I’ve ever seen. I’ll never know the strength it took to keep hold of all your– best– your sweetness and trust and hope– after how hurt you’d been, and for how long. The Ravens know I didn’t manage it. But you were so tired, sweetheart. And my eyes were maybe the first place you’d seen– what you really were. It’s still hard for me to believe, but it must be true– that no one had ever told you how fucking beautiful you were.”
Bran looked down, tears spilling over. Holden still wasn’t looking at him; his gaze was steady on the road ahead.
“You think you love me,” he said. “You were drowning, and I was there, and you reached out with the last of your strength and got a death grip and hung on for dear life– and you’re still hanging on. It’s sweet that you think it’s love, Bran, sweet like you’re sweet, and young and innocent and idealistic.”
“I don’t care what you think,” said Bran defiantly, tears still streaking his face.
“Good,” said Holden calmly. “You shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter. You’ll realize someday, you know, that you don’t need me any more, that you know what a goddamn treasure you are, without me having to tell you. Just time will do it, maybe, or the sheer number of people you hear saying how lucky I am, or– I don’t know. But something will click, and you’ll move on. And I’ll be glad, because it will mean I did all right by you. But– Bran? I honestly don’t care how long it takes. Another month, another year, twenty more years– for as long as you still need me to hold you and look at you and state the fucking obvious, I’m here. I’ve got you. And if you even think about closing your eyes and disappearing on me again, I’ll smack you cross-eyed. You’re not getting lost again. Not someone like you. Not on my watch. Not if it takes the rest of my life.”
Bran buried his face in his hands and wept.
Jesse sat stunned, staring from Bran to the back of Holden’s head. Bran cried in long, hard, racking sobs, Holden drove quietly, and Jesse was fairly sure neither man remembered Jesse existed at all.
The car stopped. Startled, Jesse realized they were at the house. Holden shut off the engine, got out, came around and opened the door.
“Come here,” he said, and Bran, still sobbing, let his master help him up and out of the car. He would have dropped to his knees on the ground, but Holden held him upright, kissed him softly on the forehead and drew his head down on his shoulder.
As Jesse emerged from the car, blinking, Holden said his name, and Jesse looked up, startled, into the dark brown eyes.
“Thank you,” said Holden.
Jesse stared, speechless.
“For whatever you said to him earlier,” said Holden, as Bran sobbed quietly against him. “You didn’t make him feel this way. You just brought it to the surface. And that’s where it needed to be, for an idiot like me to notice it. So thank you.”
He turned his attention from Jesse to Bran, stroking the weeping boy’s hair gently. Jesse stood still for a moment, staring at them, before he slammed the door of the car and made for the house, thank you still echoing in his head.
Part Ten
Bran followed Holden meekly to the car, Jesse tagging behind, trying to breathe, and stood waiting beside it, his head down, not touching the handle of the door. Holden put a gentle hand on his back and opened the door to the front passenger seat for him, motioning him in. Jesse climbed in the back seat as Holden shut the door on Bran, got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
“So,” he said conversationally as he drove off. “What was that about?”
“I’m sorry, master,” said Bran in a small voice. “Thank you for not punishing me in front of Lady Galenova.”
“You’re welcome. Now answer the question. You must have had a reason. You wouldn’t defy me just for the hell of it.”
“I didn’t want them to see me,” said Bran in an even quieter voice.
“I gathered. But why not? They’ve all seen you naked before. I thought at first you must have some kind of mark you didn’t want anyone to see, but you’re spotless as a virgin, so what gives?”
Bran said something inaudible.
“Speak up,” said Holden. “I can’t hear you.”
“That’s why,” Bran repeated, more clearly.
“What’s why what?” Holden asked, puzzled. “Being spotless as a virgin? Is why you didn’t want them to see you?”
Bran nodded without looking up.
“You’re not making any sense, Bran,” said Holden sharply. “You didn’t want people to see your body with no marks on it? Why the hell not?”
Bran was huddled in on himself as if trying to disappear. Holden glanced sideways at him, and when he spoke again his voice was gentler.
“Don’t look like that, kid,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you for a little backtalk. And I’m not going to do anything to you until I understand what’s going on. You’ve never been self-conscious about your body, and you’ve always been pathologically well-behaved. I hope you can see why I’m confused.”
"I'm sorry," said Bran again.
“All right,” said Holden after a pause. “Take your time. No hurry. Let’s talk about something else. Why don't you have any marks? Jesse looks like a biter to me.”
Jesse raised his eyebrows, half annoyed by the offhanded comment and half amused by its accuracy. Holden caught the expression in the rearview mirror and mirth flickered in his own eyes for a second before they returned to the road.
“His teeth,” said Bran indistinctly.
“Oh, right. What about Yves? He normally doesn’t leave you unbitten for too long at a time.”
“Hasn’t taken me for a while, master.”
“Ah. Because you’ve been spending so much time with Jesse and Quen.”
“I guess,” said Bran.
“You guess. But not very convincingly. Let’s see. I know you and Yves haven’t quarreled; Yves would have told me. Is it that you think he’s lost interest in you?”
Again Bran said nothing.
“Aha,” said Holden. “He doesn’t want you any more. Nobody wants you any more. We’re all too bored with our charity brat to keep your skin interestingly variegated. And then I order you to demonstrate your humiliatingly immaculate body in front of everyone. Is that it?”
Nearly crimson, eyes fixed firmly on his feet, Bran stayed silent.
“And punishment might mean marks. And it’ll definitely mean my attention. It’s not in you to seriously misbehave, but a little defiance, just a few quiet words, over something you– Gods, Bran, I really have been neglecting you.”
“No,” said Bran, almost angrily, to his knees.
“Yes,” said Holden firmly. “Why can’t you be honest with me, kid? Do you think I’m going to be angry at you for complaining? Is that it?”
“I’ve got nothing to complain about, master,” said Bran quietly.
“No?” said Holden dryly. “You could complain about sharing my attention with a wife and two other sex slaves and a steady stream of delinquents. Or you could complain that every time you make a friend close to your own age, they get sold a couple of months later– or leave the country altogether by dead of night. Or you could complain about these dreams where you wake up crying and then claim you can’t remember what you were dreaming about.”
“None of that’s your fault,” said Bran, barely audibly.
“So? Even if there’s nothing I can do, wouldn’t it help to talk about it?”
“But I promised,” said Bran. “When you agreed to keep me. Not to be a bother.”
“Oh,” said Holden softly. “Now we’re getting there. You promised, huh? Sure, I remember that. ‘I’ll be so good you won’t even know I’m there,’ wasn’t it?”
Bran said nothing.
“But you know by now, or you should, that I like knowing you’re there. You do know that, don’t you? You see me smile whenever I see you?”
“If--” Bran began, then fell silent.
“If,” Holden repeated. “This is a fascinating little semaphore you’ve invented, sweetheart. So much more invigorating than normal conversation. Silence when you agree, mumbled cryptic statements when you don’t, and now 'if.’”
“I’m sorry,” said Bran miserably, though Holden's tone had been light and not angry. “You smile when you see me if– I look happy.”
“Okay.” Holden sighed. “All right. Yes. I worry. I feel responsible for your welfare. So you think you can’t complain about things that aren’t my fault and that I can’t fix because I’ll think they are my fault and I should fix them. Maybe you worry about how I’ll decide to fix them. Maybe you worry that I’ll say, “Ah, kid, you’re so miserable here with me, I knew keeping you was a bad idea, I guess I’ll have to sell you now for your own good.’”
Silence.
“I think that’s right,” said Holden. “I also think the bigger problem here is that you don’t really understand why you’re still here, or there, in the house, so you walk around on eggshells in case you accidentally say the wrong thing and break the magic spell.”
“I know why,” said Bran, staring at his hands. “Because I begged you to let me stay.”
“What?” said Holden, and Bran looked up for the first time, alert to his master’s incredulous tone. “Bran, my job is to have sex with fucked-up teenagers while attempting to untangle their heads. If I caved every time someone decided he was in love with me and would just absolutely die if I sold him, forget a new dining room table, I’d have had to build another entire house.”
“No you wouldn’t,” said Bran, his eyes suddenly bright and defiant, frightening Jesse, “because they would all have moved on by now, right? Like you thought I would? You wanted me, and you were willing to put up with me for another month or a few more months, maybe a year, however long it took before you got tired of me or I got tired of you. You didn’t love me and you didn’t think I really loved you so it was all fine, wasn’t it? And now you’re sick of me and here I still–“
“Wait,” said Holden, squinting at Bran with a trace of a smile. “Didn’t I just fuck you yesterday?”
Bran drew back as if Holden had reached across and slapped him. Jesse clenched his jaw, hating Holden. Everything’s fucking funny to you, isn’t it?
Holden sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a defense mechanism. Like you and apologizing for everything. I try to turn everything into a joke. But you’re serious, and you’re hurt, and you’re scared. And you’re wrong. I didn’t keep you because you begged and I didn’t keep you because I wanted you– although you’re also wrong that I’m tired of you, but we can discuss that in bed tonight.”
Bran glanced up swiftly, his eyes searching Holden’s profile. “Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight. Didn’t I tell you I’d be spending the night with you?”
“Yes,” said Bran, flushed, “but that was before I– disobeyed you.”
“So? You really think I’d punish you for a cry for attention by withholding my attention? Give me a little credit, kid.”
Bran nodded, blinking away sudden tears. Holden was silent for a moment, watching him in quick glances.
“You’re wrong,” he repeated finally, slowly, as if picking up his train of thought again. “Up until you ran away, I really thought you just had a run-of-the-mill teenage crush on me. More intense than some, more honest than most, but– and even when you went missing I thought it was some kind of, I don’t know, I couldn’t figure it out. But if I found you alive I was going to– figure out what the fuck had happened, first of all, and then I was going to fix it and sell you and get on with my life and let you get on with yours. Or, if it wasn’t fixable, I was going to wake up at three o’clock every night for the rest of my life wondering what I should have done differently. But keeping you was not an option.”
“But you did,” Bran protested.
“Oh, did you notice that?”
“Why?” Bran asked, ignoring the sarcasm.
“Because.” Holden hesitated, seeming uncertain for the first time. “I– When I asked you, once I ran you down, what the hell you were thinking, why you’d run away at all, but especially if you were allegedly in love with me– do you remember what you said?”
“Sure,” said Bran, rather bitterly. “I said I’d rather die than belong to anyone but you. I remember the look on your face when I said that. Sort of a ‘wow, he’s even crazier than I thought’ look.”
Holden smiled briefly. “More of a ‘not that old line again’ look. No, I was thinking of what you said just before that.”
Surprised, Bran thought. “I– something about how– I was afraid I’d change? Get all cynical and jaded, like Jer? If I– had to live– without love. Without– hope.” He swallowed, embarrassed. “Something like that.”
“‘The best things about me, master, they’re all for you,’” Holden quoted gently.
Bran nodded. “And– yeah. That.”
“And then the ‘I’d rather die’ line, right,” said Holden, reconstructing, “and then the look on my face, and then the look on yours, kid. And that’s when you got me.”
“What?” said Bran, sitting up straight. “No it’s not! You fought me for ages after that!”
“Yeah,” said Holden. “I fought. I fought like a cat in a sack. You had me, but I still refused to believe it. I thought– maybe– I could talk my way out of it. Figure out a way I didn’t have to keep you.”
“I thought you wanted to,” said Bran, staring as if trying to bore through Holden’s skull with his eyes. “I thought you wanted me.”
“I did– and do– want you, Bran,” said Holden softly. “But I told you then, I can’t afford to just take whatever I want. I don’t have the time and I don’t have the right.”
“Then why did you keep me?” Bran cried, and there was such raw desperation in his voice that tears sprang to Jesse’s own eyes.
“Because–“ Holden took a deep breath, and his voice, when he spoke again, was as raw as Bran’s, painfully tender. “I don’t pray much, kid, but I’d been thanking the gods for letting me be the one who-- helped you-- watched you-- come alive again. Watched you forget to be afraid, remember how to laugh, come out with all that intelligence and humor and fire. For a kid who'd been through what you'd been through-- you are an extraordinary person, Bran. And the more I understood that, the more I kept remembering how you looked when– do you remember the day we bought you from Dunaev, how you sucked my cock in the back seat?”
“Of course,” said Bran, flushed from the praise, and smiling faintly. “Anything to postpone the torture.”
“Yes, well, you were very good, despite being scared half out of your mind. But afterwards, you pulled back and just sat there with your head down, and I said something, I don’t remember what, something inane to try and get a smile out of you, and you glanced up at me and you had this– look on your face. Like you’d done your absolute best and now you were waiting to be punished for not having done better. Like you thought you deserved to be punished, for not having a better best to give.”
“I remember,” said Bran very quietly. “You looked at me– you looked– strange.”
“I felt strange. I've seen some fucked-up shit in my line of work, but that look, I-- and once I'd started to understand what kind of person you were, it was even worse. But at least I could tell myself I’d see to it that look was never on your face again. And then– at Karl’s, after you’d said your piece, after you looked into my face and saw that I still wasn’t buying it– there it was. The same fucking look. Only a thousand times worse, because by then I knew you, and I’d seen such light on your face, and you hadn’t just offered me your mouth, you’d offered me– everything. The best things about you. And there you were sitting in front of me, believing all over again that you were nothing, that you couldn’t ever be good enough. For me, for fuck’s sake. It was like a nightmare. I–”
He broke off, swallowing. Bran’s eyes were glued to his master. Holden’s were on the road.
“I thought, this isn’t happening, he can’t really still– I was furious. With myself, with Dunaev, with your fucking grandfather. I was ranting, I was explaining to the universe how fucking impossible this all was, and you closed your eyes and–”
“You slapped my face,” said Bran, with an odd note of shocked reproach, as if it had just happened.
“Yes," said Holden. "I slapped your face. Because you closed your eyes and your face went slack and you looked dead. Gone. You’d just... left. And that was– not– bearable. And I slapped you and you opened your eyes and you were still there and even a little angry– but I knew that I hadn’t–“ He swallowed again. “I hadn’t failed you altogether, but I hadn’t succeeded, either. You were alive, you were you, but if I pushed you away, if I let you go, you’d just– go under.”
“I’m sorry,” Bran whispered.
“No,” said Holden fiercely. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. You’re the bravest kid I’ve ever seen. I’ll never know the strength it took to keep hold of all your– best– your sweetness and trust and hope– after how hurt you’d been, and for how long. The Ravens know I didn’t manage it. But you were so tired, sweetheart. And my eyes were maybe the first place you’d seen– what you really were. It’s still hard for me to believe, but it must be true– that no one had ever told you how fucking beautiful you were.”
Bran looked down, tears spilling over. Holden still wasn’t looking at him; his gaze was steady on the road ahead.
“You think you love me,” he said. “You were drowning, and I was there, and you reached out with the last of your strength and got a death grip and hung on for dear life– and you’re still hanging on. It’s sweet that you think it’s love, Bran, sweet like you’re sweet, and young and innocent and idealistic.”
“I don’t care what you think,” said Bran defiantly, tears still streaking his face.
“Good,” said Holden calmly. “You shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter. You’ll realize someday, you know, that you don’t need me any more, that you know what a goddamn treasure you are, without me having to tell you. Just time will do it, maybe, or the sheer number of people you hear saying how lucky I am, or– I don’t know. But something will click, and you’ll move on. And I’ll be glad, because it will mean I did all right by you. But– Bran? I honestly don’t care how long it takes. Another month, another year, twenty more years– for as long as you still need me to hold you and look at you and state the fucking obvious, I’m here. I’ve got you. And if you even think about closing your eyes and disappearing on me again, I’ll smack you cross-eyed. You’re not getting lost again. Not someone like you. Not on my watch. Not if it takes the rest of my life.”
Bran buried his face in his hands and wept.
Jesse sat stunned, staring from Bran to the back of Holden’s head. Bran cried in long, hard, racking sobs, Holden drove quietly, and Jesse was fairly sure neither man remembered Jesse existed at all.
The car stopped. Startled, Jesse realized they were at the house. Holden shut off the engine, got out, came around and opened the door.
“Come here,” he said, and Bran, still sobbing, let his master help him up and out of the car. He would have dropped to his knees on the ground, but Holden held him upright, kissed him softly on the forehead and drew his head down on his shoulder.
As Jesse emerged from the car, blinking, Holden said his name, and Jesse looked up, startled, into the dark brown eyes.
“Thank you,” said Holden.
Jesse stared, speechless.
“For whatever you said to him earlier,” said Holden, as Bran sobbed quietly against him. “You didn’t make him feel this way. You just brought it to the surface. And that’s where it needed to be, for an idiot like me to notice it. So thank you.”
He turned his attention from Jesse to Bran, stroking the weeping boy’s hair gently. Jesse stood still for a moment, staring at them, before he slammed the door of the car and made for the house, thank you still echoing in his head.
Part Ten
