An Accidental Clarity - 1. An Accidental Clarity

An Accidental Clarity

There is a knock at the door. The buzzer has just rung - why is he knocking? Sebastian takes a deep, slow breath before opening the door; he knows who is on the other side. He is not ready to see Will’s face – familiar, beautiful, imperfect. Sebastian opens the door. They stare at one another across the threshold. They do not speak, they just watch, warily, assessing weakness, inspecting the extent of the damage they have inflicted. They are strangers. He wonders how long it has been. It has been three days. Three days since they met for coffee – in public, of course: prophylaxis against more shouting. They shouted anyway, behaving like children, until they were asked to leave. Only three days. A lifetime. A blur.

Sebastian does not sleep well. He drinks (an old vice), and cannot think clearly. There is an empty bottle of gin on the counter beside the toaster, which Will can see, and two more under the sink, which he cannot. A bottle of scotch sits on the coffee table next to two glasses of ice. Will watches tiny beads of condensation form on the glasses, dripping slowly, inexorably downward to pool on the wood. He itches to put coasters under them, but he will not. There will be rings on the table. It does not matter, he tells himself. It is his table, but he does not want to give Sebastian the satisfaction. Sebastian hates scotch, that is what Will drinks.

“Drinking the good stuff, I see.” Will forces a chuckle. It sounds false. Contrived. Sebastian has poured two generous glasses of scotch and is sitting on the La-Z-Boy. It was the first piece of furniture they bought together. It is old, it is battered - much as they are. It is an awful shade of orange and has a permanent coating of orange cat fur. Orange on orange. It no longer reclines. There is a stain on the underside of the cushion and it sags in the centre. It is their favourite chair. Will sits across the table, on the beige couch that does not look like it belongs in the same room. No, not beige, Will tells himself, ‘warm oatmeal.’ As if it matters. As if warm oatmeal is even a colour. Is it distinct from cold oatmeal? Are they rolled oats, or steel-cut? He is suddenly filled with rage that there are hundreds of names for beige. Like a litany, he begins to list them: bisque, taupe, khaki, chamois, buff. The list goes on. He is disgusted with himself for thinking of different names for beige.

The twin water rings on the table begin to set, darkening the teak, spreading slowly outward. He wonders if he will be able to get them out. It will be expensive to have them removed.

Will’s boots are by the door, not on the mat but on the white subway tiles. Sebastian does not recognize them. A jolt runs through him, twisting his stomach into knots. Will does not own any boots like those. Or maybe he does, now. Maybe he went shopping. Will hates shopping. Maybe they belong to the paramour. He is wearing the same jeans he stuffed into a duffel bag a month ago. His t-shirt is new, as well. Diesel, Sebastian notices. It is nice; he hates it. Will does not buy designer labels. A new shirt. New boots.

They sip their scotch in silence. Sebastian wants to speak – to say something, to organize his thoughts with words. But the words stick in his throat and his thoughts dissipate. Will is watching him with big, brown eyes. Sebastian peers into them, searching, probing for a crack in the facade. They remain inscrutable.

“So,” Will says after a while. His glass is half full. Sebastian’s is empty. He’s already had three. He reaches for the bottle. “Easy, Bash.” Sebastian ignores him at him and pours himself two – no, three – fingers of whisky.

“So,” Sebastian echoes.

“What now? Shall we start packing? Or shall I, if you prefer?”

“Finish your drink,” he says. Will does not approve of how much he drinks, and Sebastian knows it. But Will almost always drinks with him anyway. It has been that way for years. Will sighs, and says nothing. Sebastian wants to hit him. He wants to beat him bloody.

“For fuck’s sake!” Sebastian shouts. Will has spilled his drink on the sofa. Intentionally. The stain spreads, soaking into the fabric. Will is frozen, he cannot believe he did that. He is not rash, or impulsive. He does not know why he spilled his drink. Revenge for the water marks on the table? Or just testing limits? He does not know.

“I’m sorry,” he says dully. “Let me get the Resolve. I’ll clean it.

“Leave it,” Sebastian says. He hurls his glass at the wall. It shatters, spraying crystal and scotch over the tile. There is a dent in the wall where the glass struck it. The crystal is from Prague; Will’s mother gave it to them years ago.

“What was that for?” Will asks. He’s annoyed. “I said I would clean it.”

“That?” Sebastian laughs. “I thought it might be fun. I’ve always wanted to do that. It feels good, actually.” He smiles broadly. “I’m not mad. It doesn’t matter, Will. Not even a little bit.”

Will eyes him warily, as though he might suddenly leap from the chair and start smashing things. It is possible. Anything is possible. “Are you okay?” Will asks. Sebastian laughs mockingly. “Okay? No, I am not okay. Not at all. Are you?” Will shakes his head.

“I’m gonna stay with Sara and Keith for a while,” Will says. They are sharing one glass of scotch. It is strangely, inappropriately, romantic: them sitting side by side drinking from the same glass, smoking the same cigarette. Will flicks the cigarette onto the table, just inches from the ashtray. There is a childish glee in his eyes at making a mess, at being bad and not caring. He seems nervous, and he should be. Sara is Sebastian’s friend. Well, she is their friend, now, but she was Sebastian’s friend first. What is he telling her about me, Sebastian wonders. He thinks he has been a good partner, but what does he know? If he had been a better partner, maybe this would not be happening. Sara and Will hit it off instantly when he introduced them. That was so long ago that he wonders idly if she isn’t more Will’s friend now, than his. Perhaps this is just part of the division of assets, like this evening. Will gets Sara and Keith, the teak table and the Christmas lights. Sebastian gets the ugly recliner, Johann and the silverware. Is this what it will come down to? Divvying up their lives, fighting like children who each want the bigger piece of pie?

“What about...him? Having a lovers’ quarrel?” Sebastian wonders if there have been other affairs. Probably. Will sighs, but says nothing. Sara is fucking her son’s teacher, Sebastian knows, and he is sure that Keith does not work nearly so late as he claims. Maybe that is why Will is staying with her. Maybe they will bond over shared crimes, confessing their sins, purging their guilt. Sebastian is surprised that he has not gone to stay with his mother. Something occurs to him. “You haven’t told your mother.” It is not a question.

“No.” Will tells his mother everything. They have lunch every week. She constantly drops by their apartment, always with bags of food or housewares, as if they cannot care for themselves. Oh, it was on sale, she will say. Or, I saw it and I instantly thought of you, Sebastian. Why does she think of Sebastian when she sees a collapsible laundry rack at Home Hardware? He does not know, does not ask. He hates her – hates her veneer of false positivity, hates that she is always in his home, hates that she does not hate him – but he loves her son, and so says nothing when she cleans their apartment, folds their laundry, cooks them a meal and, by extension, invites herself to dinner.

The cigarette is almost out, burning brightly in the dim light. Smoke wreathes their heads, tendrils wafting outward in every direction: ethereal fingers seeking, grasping, clawing at nothing. They do not smoke inside, they smoke on the balcony. Artemis – the cat – hates smoke. She is nowhere to be seen. Sebastian wonders if Will wants Artemis too. He cannot have her. Anything else, but not the cat.

“You want more?” Will asks, proffering the squished, stained remnant of a cigarette.

“Butt it.” He looks longingly at the scotch on the table, but he will not have any more. He has had too much already; he is afraid of getting too drunk around Will.

They are close, very close. Will can feel Sebastian’s body pressed up against his own. He does not remember sitting this close together. It is nice. Comforting. He reaches a tentative arm out and puts it around Sebastian’s shoulders. For one, ephemeral moment, everything is as it was. It does not last.

~*~

“Do you remember this?” Sebastian asks. He’s standing at the door to the bedroom holding up a chipped, ceramic angelfish. It is ugly – hideous, really – and lives on the bottom shelf of the cabinet in the bathroom. He does not like it, and never did.

“Of course. Why do you ask? Do you want me to take it?”

“You gave it to me. Why would you take it?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Good.”

“Right.”

They pack in silence. Only the small things, tonight. The rest will go later. Sebastian wonders how much he will part with, if he will make it easy or hard for Will. He loves Will; he wants him to be all right. He hates Will; he wants him to suffer.

“May I?” Will asks, holding up a large, misshapen t-shirt with a wolf-head on it. Neither of them knows where it came from, but they always remember having it. It is Sebastian’s favourite shirt. He only wore it when they were alone together. It was black and white originally, but the white has turned pink after Will washed it with a red shirt. He ruined a whole load of laundry. It was one of their first fights. Sebastian is incensed: how dare he ask for it? They are here, in this hell, because of Will. Echoing Sebastian’s thoughts, Will says, “I know I have no right to ask…but…can I? To remember you?”

“To remember me,” Sebastian repeats slowly. He twists the words in his mouth, as if they are unfamiliar, unpleasant. His voice is cold, flat, toneless.

Will sighs. “Be like that if you want, Bash. I can’t have this fight again – I have no more energy to fight.”

“Come here,” Sebastian says.

Will obeys. He is hesitant, unsure. Sebastian is not. He pushes Will onto the pile of clothes on the bed. Will raises his arms, as if to fend him off, but does not protest when Sebastian pins his hands behind his head. Sebastian is on top of him now, their faces inches apart. He covers Will’s mouth roughly with his own, biting at his lower lip until the metallic taste of blood seeps onto his tongue. Will is passive, motionless; his eyes are open, staring past Sebastian into nothing.

“You can have the shirt.” He rips the shirt Will is wearing – new, unfamiliar, antagonistic – from navel to neck.

They fuck. It is primal; it is passionate; it is ungentle. Sebastian is angry, and he makes sure that Will knows it. It is the best sex they have had in years. Will writhes on the bed, struggling against Sebastian’s smaller frame. He grabs Sebastian’s hair, pulling his head down beside Will's own. Their breath is laboured, their bodies slick with sweat. With an animal scream, Sebastian finishes, collapsing on top of Will, breathing heavily onto his neck.

The bedroom is hot, uncomfortably so. The bedside light flickers. It goes out, and they are plunged into darkness. Thump. Thump. Thump. Sebastian does not know whose heartbeat he is hearing. It is comforting, familiar. They lie in silence, their bodies intertwined and contorted.

Slowly Sebastian pushes himself off of Will. He says nothing as he gets to his feet, switching on the overhead light. He reties his pyjamas; he looks almost comic in the soft pink cotton. “For you,” he says, tossing the wolf shirt to Will. “Feel better?”

“I forgot that it could be like that.”

Sebastian arches an eyebrow. Will glares back defiantly. Nothing has changed.

~*~

It is morning. The room is a mess. Empty glasses sit on the bedside table. The scotch is gone. An overturned bottle of Coke lies in a pool of the syrupy liquid. Sebastian’s eyes open. He looks over at Will’s sleeping form. He’s snoring softly. In the harsh, sober light of the morning he looks...ordinary. They are not twenty-something anymore. This scene does not fit them.

Will stirs. “Gross,” he says.

“Yeah. It’s been a long time. A very long time.” It is not clear to what he is referring.

“We should clean up.”

“I’m putting on a pot of coffee,” Sebastian says. “Do you want some?” The kitchen is small, and dated. The coffee maker sits on the small section of countertop between the fridge and the sink, crowded next to the toaster and grinder. They always have freshly ground coffee. In the cupboard is a can of Folgers, for when Will’s mother is there. None of that fancy stuff for me, she will say. She thinks Sebastian is pretentious for grinding his own coffee.

“Sure. Do we have any more bleach?”

There is a pause. We. What we? This is Sebastian’s home now, even though things feel almost normal. Like nothing has happened. Will wishes it could stay like this. He wants things to go back to the way they were before. He knows that cannot be.

“I don’t think so. It’s where it always is if I do.”

“You’d better put it on the list, then,” Will says. He is trying to force normalcy where there is none. None of this is normal. This is not how it was supposed to be.

“Right. Do you want breakfast? We can pack after.”

Sebastian makes French toast while Will cleans up the mess from last night. The table comes clean with some Pledge, but the sofa cushion will need to be dry-cleaned. He pulls the cover off the cushion and tosses it beside the door. The wall is dented where the glass struck it. There is nothing to be done about that now. He sweeps up the shards of crystal, swearing loudly as he cuts his foot.

“Are you ok?” Sebastian asks, looking up.

“It’s nothing. I just cut myself.”

“Sit, I’ll get the peroxide and a plaster.” He flips two pieces of French toast out of the pan and onto a plate. It goes in the oven to stay warm.

“Really, it’s fine, Bash,” Will protests. He knows it’s futile. He wants to see Sebastian care.

“I said ‘sit,’” Sebastian says, not ungently. “You should put on slippers if you’re going to clean it up.”

The moment of tenderness has passed. Sebastian is kneeling in front Will, his foot in hand. It is awkward. He looks up at Will. Stiff and proud, neither is willing to bend.

They eat French toast with blueberry sauce. There is no maple syrup left. They talk about work, about friends, about the weather. The conversation is relaxed, and comes easily.

“More coffee?” Will asks. He starts refilling Sebastian’s cup without waiting for an answer. Sebastian always wants more coffee. More coffee, one more drink, another cigarette. That is Sebastian. If my vices don’t kill me, I’ve done something wrong, he likes to say, only half joking.

“Why?” The word slips out during a lull in the conversation. Sebastian looks expectantly at Will. It is time. It has to be now.

“I don’t know that there is any one reason, Bash. It's complicated.”

“So explain it to me.” Their eyes are fixed on one another, the tension palpable.

“I have tried to explain,” Will says carefully. “You didn’t want to listen.” A dangerous light flashes in Sebastian’s eyes.

“I’m listening now.” His voice is quiet, barely audible across the table. “I miss you, Will. The apartment hasn’t been home since you left. Since I asked you to leave.”

“Do you never just want out, Bash?” Will takes a deep breath. “To run away and do something different? To be someone else entirely? To wear a different mask, play a different part?”

“I think everyone wants that, sometimes. That’s part of life. Part of what it is to be human.”

“It has been so long, Bash.” Will’s voice aches. His face crumples, the anguish in it — shattering. “The same routine, the same job, the same friends, the same sex. We are free, and yet I am trapped. No, not by you. By life. By circumstance. By the good, so much as the bad. By a shared history. By a banality that I never foresaw. Maybe we are all trapped. And there are certainly worst places to be than here, in this life. But...do you not see? Do you not understand the need for something different? Something extraordinary. Something singular. An escape from the monotony, from the same stupid fights, from dealing with mum, from vet bills for Artemis. From the duty that so tightly binds us.”

“I understand. It is a selfish answer.”

“Yes,” Will agrees. “It is selfish. And I need to be selfish sometimes.”

“We all do, William. We all need to be selfish at times. But selfish does not mean hurtful. Why didn’t you climb Everest, or take up guitar, or buy an Audi, or...something. Anything. Why him? Why an affair?”

“I don’t know, Sebastian. I’m sorry.”

“Not good enough. Try harder.” Sebastian fixes Will with a cold stare. Will matches it, unblinking.

“Because it was easy. Because I met him and we connected and I remembered the spark, the fire, the rush.” The dam has cracked; the words pour out. “Because Everest was far, and he was here. Because I would have dreamt of going, and never gone. Because it was fun. Because he knew only what I chose to share. Because there was no history, no debt, no common experience. There was only the now. Because I didn’t have to be Will. Because I could be whomever I wanted. I could be Tom, Dick, or Harry. I could be Jean-Jacques who went to the Sorbonne, traveled the world, had a villa on Corfu. Because we must separate reality from fantasy and this was fantasy. It wasn’t real. It was a footnote to someone else’s story. I can be no more honest than that.”

Will is out of breath, his eyes alight. He has never said any of that aloud. He cannot tell what Sebastian thinks. There is silence in the kitchen. The clock ticking on the wall is deafening. The coffee is getting cold. He starts to sweat. The silence is surreal.

At last Sebastian speaks. It is a whisper. “You are painfully — breathtakingly — human.” Will blinks in surprise. He lets out a breath he did not know he was holding. He leans across the table to kiss Sebastian softly on the lips. There is a warmth, a closeness to their embrace; a certain vulnerability; an accidental clarity.