All things considered, he could be doing a whole lot worse for himself.
“Jesus,” he grunts, waiting on the front steps with the box tilted back against his belly while Holly nudges the door open. “How many records does a kid your age need? Back in my day we had to make do with three damn stations on the kitchen radio.”
“It’s not good to limit yourself in your media consumption, Mr. Healy,” Holly says, leading him through the foyer and living room still scattered with random boxes and suitcases. The hallway is long and she flips the light on, illuminating the way to her bedroom at the far end. “I could let you borrow a few things sometime.”
Jackson snorts and turns into her room, still pristine white and not yet touched with the kitschy chaos of a teenage girl. He sets the box of vinyl down and straightens up, blowing the curl of hair off his forehead. “You looking to enlighten me? I already listen to the radio, kid.”
Holly kneels to dig around in the box, pulling out a record sleeve printed with four contorted men holding up their instruments like weapons. “Ever heard of Eddie Van Halen?”
“Eddie Van Who?”
“They’re the next big sound pioneers in music,” Holly says, leveling Jackson with a sage sort of look that makes her look closer to 31 instead of 13. “These guys are paving the way into the next decade, mark my words.”
Jackson huffs out a laugh and slowly turns back toward the hall. “Consider them marked,” he says, and then pauses in the open doorway to rap his knuckles on the frame. “How many more boxes d'you need me to bring in?”
Holly flips up the lid of the box he’d just set down to show off a little drawing done in black marker. “All the ones with the holly sprig are mine,” she says. “Dad started putting H’s on everything until he realized halfway through it wasn’t going to help us any.”
“Your name’s Holly, my name is Dad,” Holland calls from somewhere in the hallway. There’s the faint sound of rummaging followed by a muffled swear. “Has anybody seen the box we put the toilet paper in? Asking for a friend.”
Jackson trails back out into the living room to stand against the squat towers of boxes, watching Holland dump a stack of bath towels onto the floor. He lets his eyes trail over the space as it stands and doesn’t think too long on why the Marches don’t have much furniture outside a couple of lawn chairs, two mattresses, and Holly’s lumpy purple beanbag. It was easy to forget most of the time that everything in the rental had to stay there when they left, because it’d already been there waiting when they arrived.
“What’re you looking for?” Jackson asks, clearing his throat. “The tickets?”
“Tickets?” Holland says, still pawing through boxes while he turns to look over his shoulder at the older man with a muddled look on his face. “You wipe your ass with tickets? That’s some Billy Bronx shit if I ever heard it. I didn’t know the Yankees were playing that bad this season.”
Jackson tries to bite back a rumbling laugh, voice growling out low and gravelly. “You should be glad there’s a minor under this roof right now.”
“Yeah?” Holland says, arching a lewd eyebrow while he sorts through a box of different toiletries. “Don’t remember it stopping you before, unless you’re doling out rain checks tonight.”
“Rain check for what?” Holly asks, standing at the mouth of the hallway, and Holland promptly drops a plastic bottle of shampoo to the floor with a clatter.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” he quickly says, swearing and rustling around some more in the box. “Are you hungry?” his voice comes a moment later, muffled by cardboard. “It’s getting late and we won’t have a fridge until Tuesday, so tell me what you want.”
Holly shrugs and crosses her arms over herself, kicking one foot out. “I don’t know,” she says, sounding halfway petulant until Jackson hears the barest thread of something shaking in her voice. “It’s our first night home.”
Holland doesn’t seem to catch it, though, and continues his ongoing hunt for the toilet paper. “It’s your call, Hol. I can run out and pick something up here in a minute, soon as we finish bringing the rest of those boxes in.”
Jackson narrows his eyes to watch her from across the room. Holly drags the toe of her sneaker across the floor and drops her head, a curtain of blonde falling across her face. She sniffs a little bit while she hugs herself, just one time, but that’s more than enough to set him in motion.
“I’ll go out and pick up a few things,” Jackson says, raising his voice over Holland’s rummaging. “Toilet paper, something to eat, anything else?”
“See what the corner joint has on special,” Holland says, and Jackson heard him loud and clear but already has plans to argue he’s getting old and hard of hearing when he shows back up later without a lick of booze.
Instead he turns to Holly, who watches his shoes approach but doesn’t look up to meet his eyes just yet. “What’ll it be, Miss March?”
There’s a faint smile hanging around her mouth when she tilts her head up to look at him. “I don’t really care,” she sighs, and then chews along her bottom lip when she glances away again. “I just—I thought it’d be nice to make something, I guess. But that’s stupid, I know we don’t have anything here.”
“Not yet,” Jackson says with a small smile of his own. He’s sat across from Holly in enough sticky LA diner booths to feel pretty confident in the idea already coming together in his head. “But we can change that.”
The Vons three blocks over is quiet for a Friday night. Jackson hadn’t seen many people on his way through the automatic doors outside the two teenaged cashiers leaning against the counter at register two, and they hadn’t really spared him a second glance as he picked up a shopping basket and turned down the first aisle.
Elvis is playing on the overhead, a sad sort of bluesy crooning mixed in with the electric hum of the refrigerated cases lining the walls. Jackson picks up a small carton of eggs and misses the wet floor sign parked by the dairy cooler, faintly grimacing as he listens to his tennis shoes squeak on the tile for the next six aisles. There’s still nobody else in the store and he keeps glancing down at his watch in between dumping pancake mix and a few sticks of butter into his basket, trying to see if he somehow missed the closing announcement or walked in after hours.
Nope, it’s still only a quarter to ten. As good a time for breakfast as any, Jackson figures.
By the grace of God he finds what he was looking for nestled in the small appliance section. Spatula and modest frying pan into the basket, cardboard box tucked up under his arm. He squints at the price tag again from arms-length and decides it’s a decent bargain, especially if he can teach Holly to use the damn thing and get some real use out of it.
Jackson stands at the mouth of the health and beauty aisle for his last stop, lingering there like somebody might be waiting to ambush him, and then bolsters up enough to knock a familiar plastic bottle into the basket. It looks a little out of place with toilet paper and chocolate chips, but he resists the urge to shove it to the bottom and makes headway for checkout.
The redheaded girl stationed at the only open till has cherry-colored lip gloss on and smacks a wide pink bubble between her teeth as she starts putting Jackson’s purchases across the scanner. “You need anything else?” she asks, pointedly looking at the candy display behind him. “We’ve got some stuff on special.”
He blinks at her and then twists around to stare at the candy, plucking the first pack of bubblegum he sees off the shelf. It’s wrapped in pink and green paper, and the watermelon wedge on the front looks like something Holly would like. “Pack of Embassy Regal longs if you got ‘em,” he adds, thinking of Holland, and then spots the flowers a few paces behind the cashier.
“About how much does one of those bouquets run?”
The girl turns to look like she forgot they were there. “Depends on what you want,” she says. “Roses run higher, daisies are probably the cheapest. We usually toss them at the end of the night.”
Jackson considers the plastic-wrapped flowers and drums two fingers on the counter. The redhead runs his bottle of lube across the scanner and he doesn’t even flinch. “Let me have the pink ones,” he says, mostly because there’s only one bouquet of pale pink in the mess but also because he doesn’t know what the hell kind of flowers they were to start.
“Pink carnations,” the cashier says when she brings them back, and she’s too young to have been around when the hippies were out peddling their barefoot peace and love flower power bullshit in full force, but her voice takes on a certain mystic air to it like she might’ve been there in spirit. “They represent devotion and gratitude, you know, and sometimes a mother’s undying love.”
“That’s nice,” Jackson says, and all but runs out the sliding doors on his way—he thinks, with no real jolting start—home.
Holly is sitting on a lone three-legged barstool back at the house, idly kicking her right foot back and forth while she flips the pages on a chapter book. Her record player has been plugged into the kitchen outlet and she has a large pair of headphones covering her ears, listening to something spinning that only she can hear the words to.
Holland is flat on his back in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by a variety of boxes still opened and sealed. His knees are bent and he lays there puffing on the filter of a cigarette in nothing but his white undershirt, letting pale curls of smoke unfurl toward the ceiling. When he hears the front door open he doesn’t move except to turn his head toward the kitchen, watching Jackson dump an armful of bags on the empty counter.
“What’s in the box?”
Jackson sets the box in question upright and uses his keys to cut the seal on the top, turning it so Holland can see the picture on the front. “A waffle iron.”
“Huh,” Holland says with a grunt, sitting up to slowly draw his feet back up underneath him. He stands and stretches until his back pops, snuffing out his cigarette in an ashtray balanced on one of the nearest boxes. Holly’s been watching Jackson with a finger caught between the pages of her book and finally pulls the headphones down around her neck, unfazed as Holland shuffles up from behind and presses a whiskery kiss to the top of her head.
He braces his hands on her shoulders and happens to glance down at her feet before narrowing his eyes. There’s an embroidered number 6 on the heel of each one, both shoes toned blue and red suede. “Are you wearing bowling shoes?”
Holly’s eyes widen as she smiles, small laugh touched with something faintly nervous. Jackson looks up from behind his reading glasses, still rustling tissue-thin waffle iron instructions in his hands. “Uhm, yeah.”
“Did you steal them?” Holland asks, with more genuine curiosity than anything stern.
“Not…technically,” Holly says, shifting some on the bar stool. “The guy at the bowling alley got my old Keds out of the deal.”
Holland nods and pats her shoulder before moseying around into the kitchen proper, hips swinging a little along the way. “Like your style, kid, but next time let me buy you a real pair of shoes.” He eases up behind Jackson this time to peer over his shoulder at the new kitchen appliance currently sitting on the counter. “I can’t believe you bought a waffle maker.”
“It was on sale,” Jackson bluffs, even though it wasn’t really. He tips his head toward Holly. “Your kid likes waffles.”
“That she does,” Holland says, and then starts rummaging through the paper sacks slumped next to the sink. He pulls out the bouquet still wrapped in plastic and gives the carnations an experimental sniff before realizing what he just tried to do. “I appreciate the gesture, man, but you know I’m not a big fan of pink.”
Says the man who flushes sweet and rosy if you so much as tickle him the right way. Jackson doesn’t look up from where he’s busy wiping out the inside of the waffle iron with a damp cloth, though. “They’re for Holly.”
“For me?” Holly asks, reaching out to take the pink flowers from her father. She brings them up to her nose and breathes the sweet smell in, and this time Jackson is thankful he looked up long enough to catch the smile that spreads like sunlight across her face. “I love them, Mr. Healy. Thank you.”
Holland lifts the needle on the record player and makes a vague gesture toward the rest of the house. “Go see if you can find something to put them in,” he says, scratching through the stubble along his jaw. “We might have to improvise.”
When Holly disappears down the hall and into the bathroom, Holland resumes digging around in the grocery bags. He pulls out the pack of Embassy Regals but doesn’t saying anything until he finishes laying out everything on the counter and surveys the lot, eyes lingering on a six-ring of A&W. “Guess we’re drinking root beer tonight.”
Jackson finishes rolling his sleeves up and moves behind Holland, turning to start washing his hands at the sink. “Looks like it.”
“That’s just peachy.” Holland sucks on his teeth, clearly holding something else back that he doesn’t want to say. “I see you didn’t forget the lube and toilet paper, though. Quality fucking essentials.”
“You’ll thank me later,” Jackson says, and then starts opening and closing cupboards to only come up empty-handed. “You got a mixing bowl around here?”
Holland blinks at that, brow furrowed in momentary thought. “I don’t think so.”
“You serious?”
“Hey man,” Holland says, holding his palms up in mock surrender. “Cut me a break, here. I’ll put it on my long list of shit to buy for when you have to refurbish a whole house from the ground up.”
Jackson feels himself grimace a little at that, eyes tightening at the corners. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Holland says with a tired wave of his hand, shuffling back over into the living room to dig around in another box. He comes back a few seconds later with a large plastic freezer bag. “Think we can mix all that together in this? Like a marinade, or something. Shit if I know.”
When all’s said and done, the pink carnations wind up in a tall Coca-Cola glass filled with tap water and the waffles come together by the grace of a plastic baggie sealed with a twist tie. It works better than Jackson would’ve thought, especially when all he has to do is cut a corner on the bag to fill the iron with batter, but he still makes a mental note to pick up some damn kitchen utensils the next possible chance he gets.
Holly seems happy enough, though, eating chocolate chip waffles with her fingers off a wad of paper towels. She gets maple syrup on her shirt but laughs when Jackson holds out his bottle of root beer, clinking the necks together in a lopsided toast.
Holland eats two or three bites of the tester waffle (“I can’t taste the plastic smell—give it to me, Healy, it’s fine”) and then sits on the floor with his back against the kitchen cupboard, another burning cigarette in hand. He smiles while he watches the two of them and draws a few pulls off his honorary bottle of root beer.
And if he tries not to think too much—he’ll be alright. If he just focuses on Holly and Healy, and nothing but their quiet laughter and the chocolate chips scattered on the counter, he can pull and drag himself through this one just like everything else.
It isn’t what he expected to wind down with on a Friday night, but then again, it really isn’t half bad.
The clock is nearing on midnight when Holly finally lets out a long yawn and hits the kill switch on the turntable. She rubs her eyes as she sits there, pulling her knees up to her chest where she’d resettled with a stack of vinyl on the floor. “I’m so tired,” she mumbles, letting her eyes fall shut. “Don’t wanna go to bed.”
“Go brush your teeth before it gets too late,” Holland says, swallowing a tiny hiccup at the end of his sentence. He’d finally located the last-standing bottle of whiskey nestled in a box with his sock collection and a single paisley necktie, and he isn’t drunk but he’s buzzed enough that the room looks a little blurry at the edges. “I think your sheets are with the towels and shit.”
Holly slowly pulls herself up to her feet, looking a bit paler and mussy-haired than earlier in the night. “Don’t say ‘and shit,’ Dad,” she says, and then turns to disappear down the hall without another word.
“Did I say something?” Holland asks, blinking when he turns to look at Jackson, who is lying on his back a foot or two away with both hands folded behind his head. His eyes are closed and his reading glasses are sticking sideways out of his shirt pocket, though he doesn’t move beyond a single shake of his head.
“You know how kids her age can be,” he says. “I wouldn’t hold it against her.”
“Yeah,” Holland sighs, dragging a hand over his face until it falls into his lap. He stares at the half-empty bottle sitting next to him and then leans over to dig around in a box he’d opened earlier. “She didn’t take her sheets with her.”
Jackson cracks open an eye and watches as Holland pulls the folded stack of yellow linens out. “Maybe you should go see her off to bed,” he says after a moment, maneuvering around to refold his hands across his belly. “Make sure she gets settled in alright.”
“Maybe,” Holland says, voice trailing off as he smoothes his fingers over the soft yellow. If there’s one smell in the world he misses, it’s clean linen mixed with Emma’s old Yardley lavender soap. “Seemed like she didn’t want to talk to me.”
“Mmm,” Jackson hums in his chest, eyes drifting shut again. “I think she does.”
Holland mulls that over for a minute, eyes casting over to look toward the shadowed hallway. His knees pop and the room vibrates a little when he stands, sheets still folded and pressed like a grounding weight against his stomach. “Are you heading out?”
“Not yet,” Jackson says. “Go on, I’ll clean up the kitchen.”
None of this should feel as normal as it does, but that’s what Holland turns over in his mind as he steps out of his shoes and makes his way toward the room at the end of the hall. The door is cracked just enough to see a seam of faint orange light shining through. He reaches up and drums two knuckles against the wood, ear pressed close to listen. “Hey Hol,” he says. “Can I come in for a minute?”
A string of quiet stretches between them for a few long beats, and then he hears her wavering voice. “What do you want?”
“I brought your sheets,” Holland says, resting his forehead against the doorjamb. “I don’t want you sleeping on a bare mattress like we’re in a crack house. And not one of the nice ones in Beverly Hills where they snort coke off mirrored tables and girls wearing bikinis, I’m talking about the ones where—”
“You can come in,” Holly says as she eases the door open, letting a wedge of lamplight fall across Holland’s shoulder and into the hall. Her eyes are rimmed pink but she looks behind him, like she might’ve been expecting somebody else. “Is Mr. Healy still here?”
“Yeah,” Holland says, stepping inside. “He’s out in the kitchen cleaning up the waffle aftermath.” He stands there in the middle of all her belongings, looking at the twin mattress and a purple lava lamp still sitting on the floor, and swallows against something tight in the back of his throat.
“Are you okay?” he asks, watching Holly move behind him. Why had it always been so easy to talk until he needed to say the right fucking thing? “You seem—upset, about something.”
Holly reaches up to take the sheets from his hands and drops them at the foot of her mattress before sinking down to sit near the head of the bed. She holds her chin in her hands and won’t look up to meet his eye, staring at a vacant spot somewhere on the wall. “I miss mom,” she says, and then her voice breaks in two. “She should be here with us.”
Holland feels his own face crumple as she starts to cry, not with tears but with the hurt he usually tries to drown out by chasing the bottom of a bottle. And he doesn’t know what to say, not at first, so he just walks over and drops down next to his daughter on the mattress her grandparents bought her after the fire.
“I miss her too,” he says, wrapping an arm around Holly’s shoulders and pulling her into his side. Every little hitch and sob she makes is something he can feel in his own chest like broken glass. “I—I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
They don’t talk for a while after that, and Holland eases around until his back is against the wall, pulling Holly up with him. She’s pliant and too-warm in his arms, and he hasn’t held her like this since she was smaller, but she presses her face into his shirtfront and cries until there’s a damp spot there. Holland only pushes his fingers through her hair, biting into his lip while he tries to keep himself in check. The room is still blurred at the corners but it isn’t so much the alcohol’s doing anymore.
When Holly’s breathing starts to even back out and quiet, he clears his throat and squeezes her shoulder. “Do you want me to stay?”
Holly sniffles against him and sits up some, scrubbing a hand across her eyes. “I want you to change the batteries in the smoke sensor every month,” she says. “Promise me.”
Holland drops his mouth to the top of her head, mumbling out his answer there to punctuate a kiss. “I promise.”
“Pinky promise?”
Holland wordlessly holds out a pinky and wraps it around Holly’s smaller one. They’ve been doing this for so many years now, he can still remember when her whole hand would wrap around his little finger.
“Good,” Holly says when they shake on it, and then sits up enough that she can lean back against the wall next to her father. They both sit in silence, looking at their long shadows cast along the floor, and then Holland can feel her eyes somewhere on the side of his face.
“Dad.”
“What?”
Holly folds her hands in her lap, suddenly busy with picking at hot pink glitter nail polish already starting to flake off. “Are you going to…date girls, anytime soon?”
If Holland’s stomach wasn’t already twisting on itself, it definitely is now. He tries to pull anything suspicious out of his voice and still winds up speaking in an octave pitched higher than normal in the end. “Why do you ask?”
“Because,” Holly says, shifting around on the mattress again to pull her knees up. “I kind of like how things are right now—with Mr. Healy.”
Holland squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, wondering if this is the start of a nightmare, if there’s any way possible to put this thing delicately. “How much do you know?”
“Enough,” Holly says, and sounds sleepier than anything, voice still a little bit raw from crying. “It wasn’t too hard to figure out, Mr. Healy sleeping in your room and all.”
“Oh,” Holland says, at a loss for much of anything else. He scratches through day-old whiskers along his cheek, poised halfway thoughtful and partway frantic. “What if I told you he had a sleeping bag? Or bunk beds.”
“Dad,” Holly says, trying to be serious even though he hears a whisper of laughter ghost through her voice. She stammers out the next part, gone a little bit flushed in the face. “It’s alright, I mean—you don’t have to say.”
“Okay,” Holland says in something akin to relief, blowing out a strained sigh. “Alright, well. That’s that, I guess. You should write all this down for your therapist in ten years.”
“You didn’t answer me about the girls,” Holly reminds him, sighing pointedly.
“Jesus,” Holland sputters, trying to laugh even though nothing but a slight wheeze comes out. “Not while—uh. Not while things are going like they are.”
“That’s good,” Holly says, and then stands up to retrieve her linens still sitting by Holland’s socked feet at the foot of the bed. “Because Mr. Healy would probably kick your ass.”
Holland finally lets out a giggle of a laugh, reaching up to pinch between his eyes. “Yep,” he says, tipping his head to one side until his neck cracks. “Yeah, he probably would.”
Holly nudges his leg with her toes as she shakes open her fitted sheet. “I gotta make up my bed before I pass out.”
In the end, Holland helps her tuck the corners of the top sheet under the mattress and instructs Holly to climb into bed before throwing the comforter over her legs. He bends at the waist to press another kiss to her temple and feels himself sagging like deadweight on his own two feet. “You need anything, I’m right down the hall. I don’t care what it is—if I have to go see a man about a dog in Chinatown at three in the morning, I’ll do it.”
He earns a tiny smile for that one, and then Holly snuggles down lower under her blankets. “I don’t think I’m going to move again until lunch tomorrow,” she says, and then reaches over to click off her light so only the lava lamp remains glowing. “Goodnight, Dad.”
“Night sweetheart,” Holland says, and gently shuts her door behind him. He turns and pads down the empty hall until he’s standing in the middle of the cardboard box maze in the darkened living room. The kitchen counters have been wiped down and the waffle iron has been put away somewhere, maybe in the pantry or one of their empty cabinets. Jackson is nowhere to be found and the few fingers of booze Holland had left are still there, though the bottle has resettled on the kitchen bar with its cap screwed back on.
Holland has the whiskey in his hand before he even really knows it, gets one searing swallow necked down and then finds himself standing at the kitchen sink. He’s got something wet and burning on his face now, could be tears or shame or maybe even both, and the whole rest of the bottle goes bottoms-up in the drain before he decides that was probably the second-worst decision he’s ever fucking made in his life.
But he doesn’t know where his keys are right now, and Jackson’s probably gone for the night, and he’s so fucking tired that there’s no use in doing anything at all. So he sits back down on the living room floor of a new house he had to build without his wife, puts his head in his hands, and cries through a thin veil of something that feels like panic.
It burns him out quicker than he thought it would. The pain is real but it’s all old hat now, too fucking familiar, and his heartbeat eventually eases back down off the edge of hysteria until he can suck in a deep breath. The tears dry up and leave the taste of salt in his mustache, sticky lines still streaking down his cheeks. His nose is running and he looks around for one of the bath towels to wipe across his face, and when he finds one it’s only because somebody else pressed it into his hand.
“Here,” Jackson says, and then takes a knee to give Holland a cursory onceover through the dim light shadowing the house. “You’re not hurt or anything, are you?”
“I’m fine,” Holland rasps, burying his face in the soft terrycloth without even bothering to pull it from Jackson’s hands. The other man only holds his head there, awkwardly but steadily. “Fuck, man. Fuck.”
Jackson seems a little stiff but tries to offer another open hand to him anyway. “You wanna talk about it?”
“No, I—not right now,” Holland says, still muffled in the towel. “Maybe later. Maybe never.”
When he looks up again, he can see that Jackson is only wearing his undershirt and boxer shorts. His hair’s damp and combed into place, and if Holland could smell worth a damn he knows he’d be all freshly-washed soap and green mint. “Did you take a shower?”
“Yeah,” Jackson says, a tad modestly. He smiles that softly reassuring smile of his, and Holland’s chest maybe doesn’t feel so sore and tight anymore. “I put the sheets on your mattress for you. Just about threw out my damn back doing it, worked up a sweat.” He rolls his shoulders a bit and twists the edge of the used towel between both hands. “You look like you could use a good rinse yourself.”
“Not a bad alternative to walking out in traffic,” Holland says, sniffing hard. He quickly wishes he hadn’t said that aloud and reaches out to take Jackson’s forearm, rocking forward a little bit to get some momentum going. No words need to pass between them for Jackson to carefully hoist him back to his feet with ease.
“C’mon,” the older man says, putting a guiding hand at the small of Holland’s back to start steering him toward the master bedroom. Neither one of them bothers to pull the upturned liquor bottle from the kitchen sink. “I’ll stay up until you get settled in for bed.”
“You’re doing it again,” Holland mumbles, trying not to trip on the carpet as they turn into the doorway.
“Doing what?”
“Caring too much.”
Jackson laughs with a low huff. “Somebody has to make sure you make it out of the shower without snapping your neck.”
“That’s some quality irony at its finest,” Holland says, already busy stripping out of his clothes and leaving them in a pile on the bathroom floor. It’s still empty enough in here that their voices echo against the ceiling but the room still feels damp and warm from Jackson’s shower, and that’s better than something cold and unlived in. Holland steps out of his underwear and stands there flush naked without a lick of shame, turning to start warming the water back up. “You sticking around for the dime show or what?”
Jackson’s eyes make a casual sweep over the other man’s body, not at all unfamiliar with the lines and angles that make it up. Holland has freckles on his shoulders and little divots in his lower back that fit the pads of Jackson’s thumbs like they were made for it. He could stay and join in if he wanted, and there’s a small thrill in knowing Holland would let him have that and more—but he’s got other things on his mind tonight, and the softness of a fresh bed sounds like something practically heaven-sent.
“Nah, I’ll give you some space,” Jackson says, eyes briefly drawn to the gold band hanging around his partner’s neck, and that’s as much a part of Holland as anything else. “I’ll be out here when you’re done.”
Back in the bedroom, Jackson listens to the shower run and walks over to the side of the mattress furthest from the door. There are a few boxes of Holland’s clothes spread out on the carpet and a little leather pouch that normally holds his comb and shaving kit. A single bedside lamp stands like a lone soldier at one corner and casts the walls over with burnt gold, and the whole of the room is caught like a picture in the reflective window of Holland’s dresser mirror.
The mirror in question is tilted over on its side, leaning against the wall without king or country, its dresser mate still sitting somewhere in the garage. When Jackson drops down onto the bed where it sits on the floor he takes a moment to consider his own image there, mostly for lack of anything else to look at.
He’s getting older—he knows it, has known it for a while now. The evidence is silver threaded through his whiskers and at his temples, a beer gut even though he goes easy-or-nothing on the drink most days. He knows he’s still strong, probably stronger than most, but the vigor to fight and keep fighting doesn’t last quite as long as it used to. More than that, the contour of muscle he remembers seeing ten years ago is slowly receding—softened out, mellowing into the sad sack of a person he is now that he’s peaked the hill of middle age.
What’s left when you can’t punch and knuckle your way through life anymore? That’s a good fucking question. And listening to Holland drop something with a loud clatter and swear from the shower now, maybe the answer is closer to the surface than Jackson originally thought.
His future spelled out where the sidewalk ends.
But Holland’s young and wily and the handsomer between the two of them, and who’s to say or think he’d want to settle down and play house with an old washed-up crook? Work partners aside, Holland could probably do better for himself and his daughter—in a lot of ways, Jackson thinks, even though he’s gotta be one of them. Thing is, that still doesn’t make him want to give up any of this, fucked as they all might be. Holland, and Holly, and three H’s drawn into the wet cement.
“I can hear you thinking from over here,” Holland says, silhouetted by light in the bathroom doorway. He’s still naked as a jail bird save for the gold around his neck, busy rubbing a towel through his damp hair. “That’s usually my job.”
Jackson snaps out of wherever he’d been and realizes he’s still perched on the side of the mattress where it rests on the floor, facing the wide framed mirror. “Huh,” he says. “Maybe you should go easy on yourself for once—and shut the door, before your kid sees you standing there with your bare ass shining.”
Holland lets out a tiny yelp and drops the towel to his front, creeping over to peer into the dark hall before pushing the door shut. “Christ man, don’t scare me like that,” he says with a snort, turning to throw the towel over the closet door. “She’s already been through enough for one night.”
He ambles over to the mattress and flops down onto the empty side, stretched out flat on his back with one arm tucked behind his head. Jackson turns to look at him, and it takes Holland a few seconds to bother with reaching down to pull the sheet up around his waist in an afterthought.
“This is all surreal,” he says at last, staring straight up at the ceiling. “Like Barbie Malibu Dream House levels of fucking surreal.”
Jackson shifts around on the mattress to settle on his side facing Holland. There’s still something like a foot of space between them and he doesn’t try to bridge it just yet, wonders if it’s worth prodding words out of Holland tonight. “What happened with Holly?”
Holland makes a vague gesture in the open air, fingers come back down to rest against his mouth. “I don’t know,” he says, and then immediately amends himself. “She misses Emma—misses her mom, not being here. I know how much she misses her because I miss her every day whether I’m dumbfuck wasted or not.”
“Know it must be hard for you both,” Jackson says, quiet. He still doesn’t really know how to talk about this when it comes out, can’t quite figure where he belongs in the equation.
“I think what I’ve put Holly through is worse than anything I’ve done to myself,” Holland blurts out, blinking faster at the ceiling. His eyes look wet in a painful way but he isn’t crying, at least not yet. “Because you can live without a wife, right? You can live without a wife but how is a kid that age supposed to live without her mom? It’s fucked up, man—and I don’t think I can ever fix it.”
Jackson weighs out his words like they might be stones held in his hands. “Holly’s been living without her mother for more than two years,” he says. “Had been living without her for a while when I first met her, even.”
Holland lets out a low groan and passes a hand over his eyes. “Thanks for validating my point, Jack. I really appreciate the reminder.”
“That’s not what I’m getting at, if you’d just listen for a second,” Jackson says, tone still held quiet and even. He levels Holland with a look and watches the other man blink and go still. “When I met Holly I knew right from the start that she was a bright kid—a good kid, and that still holds up. Fact is, whether her mom was in the picture or not, one thing’s still been the same.”
“What’s that?” Holland asks, more subdued than before.
“She’s still got her Dad,” Jackson says, mouth twitching in earnest. “She’s got you.”
Holland seems to sag back further in the bed, every line of his body slack and resigned. “Everything good in Holly is from her mother,” he says. “Her looks, her brains, the fact that she puts up with all my bullshit like a true saint—even when she shouldn’t, even when she deserves better.”
Jackson shakes his head. “Now you’re just feeling sorry for yourself and not listening to a damn word I’m saying.”
“I am,” Holland insists. “We’re having a conversation.”
“You’re not,” Jackson says. “You’re having a piss party, population one: Holland March.”
Holland narrows his eyes but his lips upturn and waver a little, betraying him on the spot. “You showed up to the party, though.”
“That’s because I couldn’t shake you off even if I tried,” Jackson says, and then makes good on leaning over and pulling Holland into a kiss. It starts out lopsided and then their mouths slot together, whiskers rasping as it deepens, and when Jackson pulls away Holland already looks dazed and glassy-eyed with his lips still parted. “Wouldn’t want to, anyhow.”
Maybe that’s one of the most intimate things to have passed between them this far in the game, or maybe it’s just one spoken truth in a sea of unspoken things that mean the same thing. Jackson doesn’t know, but whatever it is, it sure feels like something.
“You’re doing better than you think,” Jackson says, still close enough that he can feel the warmth coming off Holland’s skin. “And you got a lot to be proud of—you got Holly, for one, and nice new place to watch her grow up in. You’re a pretty bang-up detective, we’re raking in honest work these days and the bills are getting paid. Whichever way you spin it, you’re sitting prettier than you give yourself credit for.”
Holland’s throat works for a moment, eyes cast somewhere in the sheets between them. “That was a pretty good speech, coming out of you.” He croaks out the next part, not quite able to make it into a joke. “Maybe you should run for mayor next year.”
“That’s the hot scandal the rag papers need,” Jackson says, and then reaches out to put a broad hand around Holland’s side, thumb tracing over the line of his last rib. “You feeling any better after earlier?”
“Define ‘better’,” Holland says, sounding sullen even though his lashes dip and lower. “My head feels like a fucking bowling ball and I’m pretty sure my left arm might be broken again from hauling boxes all day, but other than that I’m nothing short of swell.”
“Does it hurt?” Jackson asks, feeling a frown pull around his mouth. The reminder of how they met isn’t the most pleasant one, but Holland moved past holding anything about it against him a long time ago now. “Let me see.”
Holland still cuts his eyes over and doesn’t make any effort to move. “What for?”
“Some light tissue massage to relax the muscle,” Jackson says, looking back at him. “Unless you were expecting something else.”
Holland passes his left arm over without another word, letting Jackson gently take it with both hands, and winces when the older man applies some experimental pressure.
“You didn’t keep up with your exercises like the doctor advised,” Jackson says, lightly working his fingertips into the muscle, and that much isn’t a question. “Your left arm’s still weaker than it was before, even.”
“Thanks, Nurse Healy,” Holland murmurs, letting his eyes slip shut. “I’m waiting on pins and needles for my sponge bath.”
“You’d be so lucky,” Jackson says. They’re both content to spend the next few minutes in silence, Holland breathing easy while Jackson works his way further up his arm. There’s a knot in his shoulder and Holland makes a tight little sound and leans in closer when Jackson presses his finger into it, trying to ease the tension out.
“You’re too good at that,” Holland mumbles after a while, gone loose and practically limp where he’s slumped against Jackson now. “Good at a lot of things.”
“You think so?” Jackson murmurs, feeling Holland shift under the sheet, warm and blissfully naked. “I’m flattered.”
Holland’s face presses somewhere up in the crook of Jackson’s neck, mustache tickling there as he stretches and arches his back. “Kissing. You’re really good at kissing, too.”
Jackson feels himself grin out and out, then. “I am?”
“That was a hint.”
“I know it was.”
And when Jackson finally takes Holland’s face the other man opens up and all but blooms underneath him, humming with every new kiss and touch. It unravels slow and easy from there, lazy necking and the rasping chafe of whiskers, roaming hands and all the sweet little noises Holland makes that Jackson could drink in until he drowned.
“Got too many fucking clothes on,” Holland mumbles after a while, tugging unsuccessfully at Jackson’s undershirt. “I feel naked over here.”
Jackson’s answering laugh rumbles low in his throat as he reaches down to hitch a thumb in the waistband of his boxers. “Did it ever cross your mind that you are?”
“No,” Holland says, stilling himself long enough to watch Jackson’s cock pull free from the plaid cotton, eyes already filled with something rapt and enthralled. “Shit—maybe.”
It’s amusing at times, how Holland always wants him as naked as he can get him. Jackson remembers nights from a long while ago, what seems like a lifetime ago now, where the best he could get from Marie was five minutes in the dark with his boxers around his knees and her nightgown barely hiked up long enough to finish the deed before she was rolling off and going to clean up in the bathroom. Things these days are a whole lot different, and it’s a foreign sort of feeling, maybe, to be so desired for what he is when he’s stripped down to nothing. Holland certainly doesn’t have any reservations about how close they can fit together, or how their bodies look in the light, and Jackson can’t help but notice how he always seems to hold on just a little too tightly.
Jackson’s shirt follows his boxers to land somewhere on the floor, and as far as Holland’s seems to be concerned they’re still not moving fast enough. He’s on the older man in an instant, gently rutting up against his hip while he kisses him long and hard, and that’s real good for a minute but Jackson has other ideas weighing on his mind tonight.
“Relax for a minute,” he says, soft and low, smoothing a palm down Holland’s back that seems to calm the feverish air sparking up around them. “Don’t think too much about things, I’m right here.”
Holland heaves out an impatient sort of breath but still presses a feathered kiss against Jackson’s jaw that’s mostly mustache, reigned back in to something a little more mild. “I know you are,” he says, and then slumps forward to lay his head on Jackson’s shoulder, jelly-limbed but still burning so hot. “I feel like I’m fucking losing it here, man.”
“You’re not,” Jackson tells him, and swallows before he can rasp out the next few words. “Even if you were, I’m not going anywhere.”
He guides Holland’s face up to kiss him again, and oh, they’re so fucked. They’re fucked six ways to Sunday but hell if he can find it in himself to give a damn anymore.
It’s a wordless thing, when Jackson turns and coaxes Holland over onto his back. This isn’t a new spread for either of them but it’s still one that hasn’t had the mint penny shine rubbed off just yet, and Holland’s lips part when he thuds back against the pillows, looking up at Jackson like he’s had some small sort of divine revelation.
“You’re a real romantic, Jackson Healy,” Holland says, though his voice splinters and cracks in the middle. He’s heavy-lidded and a little pink in the face from kissing, as irresistible and pretty as anything, and reaches up to pull Jackson closer without another word.
Jackson goes willingly until he’s caught between the spread of Holland’s thighs, his weight heavy and welcome where their bellies press together. They both groan at the contact, Holland bringing one foot up to hook somewhere behind Jackson’s knee. His cock is hot and thick somewhere against the paler skin of Holland’s inner thigh, and the younger man moans up into Jackson’s mouth with his pulse thumping faster when he feels it.
“God,” Holland says, “I need you to fuck me.”
Jackson pulls back to watch him, their eyes finding one another in the faint light, and for all his eagerness Holland seems like he’s already shaking in anticipation of what he just asked for. Jackson’s elbows are still braced on either side and he leans back in, brushing another kiss against Holland’s lips that makes the younger man shiver. “You want it like this?”
“Yeah,” Holland says, flushing even darker than he was before, eyes squeezing shut. “I—yeah, Jack.”
“Good,” Jackson says, reaching down between them with one hand to give Holland’s cock a light stroke from base to tip, reveling in how the body underneath him arches up into his grasp. “Been meaning to fuck you like this for a while.”
He reaches over to fumble in the small space between the mattress and the wall, coming back a moment later with the same bottle he’d brought home from the grocery store. Holland sees it but doesn’t say anything about how or why it got there, simply locks eyes with Jackson and spreads his legs open wider in clear invitation.
The sight is downright whorish, and on any other night Jackson thinks he might’ve made a comment about just how Holland looks when he gets like this, rosy-flushed and eager for cock, but he can’t bring himself to take any feeble stabs at dirty talk tonight. He still revels in the image, though—even indulges himself for a moment to glance at how all this looks in the mirror a few paces away from the bed, the two of them silhouetted in a bare-bones bedroom by nothing but yellowed lamplight.
Jackson’s cock twitches while he gets his right hand slicked and hunkers down between Holland’s legs, leaning in to press a kiss against the pale skin there before sliding the flat of his tongue up to the soft crease of the other man’s thigh. Holland hisses out a swear and nearly jumps off the bed, hands fisting in the sheets while he tries to keep from locking his legs around Jackson’s head.
“Come on,” he chants, peering down between his knees before flopping back against the pillows. “Come on, c’mon, c’mon—”
“Be patient,” Jackson says, and then wastes no time in diving in to lick a hot stripe from Holland’s tailbone up to his taint before pressing the first finger in.
Holland bites against his own fist and lets out a long whine, cock bobbing at half-mast while Jackson starts slowly working him open. The corners of his eyes are wet by the time Jackson’s up to the second knuckle, and it’s so much but then it’s not nearly enough.
“Almost there,” Jackson says eventually, mouthing around the tip of Holland’s cock. He crooks his fingers once and again, feeling his own stomach flip when Holland cries out and clenches around his hand, and then he knows he’s found what he was looking for.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” Jackson says, and then presses one last kiss there before pulling his hand free. The poor clean sheets aren’t faring well their first night home, but Jackson’s never been one to begrudge an honest trip to the laundromat. He wipes his fingers off and draws himself up, moving up between Holland’s legs to kiss him again. “You ready?” he asks, and Holland makes a pained noise low in his throat.
“Fuck yes,” he says, glassy-eyed and halfway panting. “I’m asking nicely, Jack—for you to please, hurry up and fuck me.”
There’s the pop of a cap again and then Jackson reaches down to take his cock in hand, biting into his bottom lip while he guides himself to where Holland’s stretched and waiting. A familiar hand ghosts across his belly, urging him forward almost shyly, and Jackson makes sure to keep his eyes on Holland’s face while he lines up and finally pushes into him.
The sound of their breathing fills the room, nothing but that and the muffled noise one of Holland’s heels makes when he pushes it through the sheets. Jackson moves slowly, the barest inch at a time, and it might kill him but then again he’d probably sooner die than do anything to hurt Holland March ever again.
“Move, Jackson,” Holland finally says in a hoarse half-whisper. “I’m alright, I’m—I can take it.”
Jackson can’t do anything but nod, but he rolls his hips for the first time and fucks into Holland proper, and it’s so hot and tight that he feels his forearms faintly buckle where he’s got his weight braced. “Holland,” he groans, head dropping into the space between them. “Oh Christ.”
“That’s it,” Holland says, threading his fingers around the back of Jackson’s neck to hold on. They move together again and his mouth drops open in a wordless sound, forehead creasing tight. “That’s right.”
His cock is caught between their bellies, the sweet and easy friction of it good enough to make his eyes stream. Holland knows he’s never been fucked before, at least not like this, and opens his eyes against the pale light spreading across the ceiling. His memory of the mirror standing in the room comes to him like an afterthought, and then the temptation to give in to his own curious voyeurism wins out over everything else in the end.
He turns his head against the pillow without any rush or hurry, gazing heavy-eyed at the reflection their joined bodies make in the wide mirror propped against the wall. His legs are hitched up high around Jackson’s waist and he can almost see where the older man is fucking into him, as rock steady and certain as anything else Jackson Healy does, and it’s enough to make a wave of chills skitter up his calves while heat unfurls slow and balmy deep in his pelvis.
And Holland can’t look away for a moment, captivated by the sight and sound and feeling of Jackson moving inside him all at once. He’s not sloppy drunk tonight but he almost wishes he was, if only it meant watering down the feeling of every part of him being aflame with something he hasn’t felt in long time—and never like this, oh, never anything like this. It’s overwhelming, it’s everything and nothing he’d ever expected to find again, and his throat tightens up while he closes his eyes, sucking in a deep lungful of air.
“Jack,” he whines, finding that’s all he really can say, filled to the brim and trembling. “Oh—fuck.”
Jackson’s thrusts falter and stumble for a moment, forehead pressed against Holland’s shoulder with his breath coming fast. “You okay?” he asks, making to push himself up, draw back and find Holland’s face. “I can—”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” is all Holland says, locking his ankles around Jackson’s hips to draw him in tighter, and they’re so impossibly close and Jackson’s so deep that it’d be a sin to pull out and ruin something so whole and beautiful now.
“I won’t,” Jackson says, barely able to get the words out, but they both know what he means. “Just—hold on for me, baby.”
Holland’s flushed red in the face, sweaty and breathless, but he gets his hands around Jackson’s shoulders and does just that. “I am,” he gasps, rolling his hips to meet the measured tide of Jackson fucking into him. “I am, I will—”
Jackson brushes against his prostate again and Holland cries out, trying to angle his pelvis up into it. His whole body feels like a fuse, nerves buzzing from the tips of his fingers to the soles of his feet. His thighs are cramping and shaking but he’s too close, so close, and when Jackson’s hand finally wraps around him it only takes three sharp tugs before Holland feels himself ignite while everything around him blinks into one big whiteout.
When he comes back to himself he’s breathing ragged through his nose, mostly because Jackson has crammed their mouths together while he fucks Holland fast and hard toward his own end. And when it comes the final snap and release of his hips is something they feel in tandem, Holland digging his heels into Jackson’s ass to pull him ever deeper while he spills again and again.
It slows from there, their movements unwound into slowed rocking against one another, one of Jackson’s hands come up to cradle the side of Holland’s face. He’s still breathing raggedly, oversensitive and wrung out twice over, and when he finally opens his eyes they look sore and damp enough that Jackson feels an ache hitch somewhere behind his ribs.
“I’m sorry,” Holland says, trying to laugh even when it sounds more like a sob. He turns his head to the side again, gold ring slipping down lower into the hollow of his throat. When he sees them pressed together in the mirror he makes a tight noise and closes his eyes again, Adam’s apple bobbing in place.
Jackson gently shushes him, not moving save for the shared thrum of their bodies still wrapped together and coming down slowly. It isn’t an uncomfortable or shameful moment by any means, and Jackson has to wonder about the unspoken lengths they’ve wandered to with each other since that afternoon in the kitchen more than a year ago.
“Hey, hey now,” he says, turning to press a kiss into Holland’s damp hair. “You’re alright, just breathe.”
Holland gathers his breath while he seems to gather himself back up, nodding like he’s trying to make himself believe what Jackson told him. The other man is heavy on top of him but he doesn’t want him to move, at least not just yet, and when Jackson leans in to kiss him Holland feels his mouth curve up into a tiny, tired smile.
And maybe everything will be alright after all. Maybe not tonight, or the next day—but eventually. That much seems real enough right now.
“Who would’ve fucking thought,” Holland says with a hoarse little laugh, “that I’d be able to pull through and deliver on that mirror request.”
Jackson’s answering chuckle rumbles through them both, and the intimacy of that seems to drape over them like a light shroud, something too tender to talk about aloud with any words. Their eyes meet and they slowly pull apart, the separation feeling strange despite the mess they’ve made of the bed and themselves, and Jackson moves across the room to grab Holland’s still-damp towel from earlier before he comes right back and does his best to clean things up.
They pull one another close again on one side of the mattress, a single shadow cast faint across the white wall. The smell of clean sweat and sex lingers but it isn’t anything sour or unwelcome, and truth be told Holland’s glad to have christened the room with something other than spilled booze and paint fumes.
“Jackson,” he says after a while, nestled somewhere in the crook of the other man’s elbow.
“Hmm?” Jackson hums, eyes slowly lulling shut.
“I want you to stick around.”
A single blue eye cracks open, blinking amusedly at Holland. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere tonight.”
Holland squirms a little, reaching up to cover half his face. “No, I mean—bring your fish tank kind of stay,” he says, words muffled a little behind the heel of his hand. “Move in, let me cook and clean for you, the whole fucking nine.”
And in that moment Holland looks painfully, horribly young—beautifully young, really, hiding behind his own hand, and so Jackson reaches between them and takes the palm covering his face. His heart's thudding like a jackhammer in his chest, and oh fuck, he hopes fifty years of greasy diner food doesn’t do him in now.
“You mean that?” he says, starkly quiet. “Here, with you and Holly.”
“No,” Holland snorts, “I mean in the lawn shed out back—of course with me and Holly, Jesus.” He clears his throat some and gently squeezes the hand Jack still has in his grip. “You don’t have to, I mean, I know you value your privacy and prefer keeping quarters like some kind of hitman monk in that place at the comedy club, but I just thought—”
“I think…” Jackson says, gently speaking over him, “…that it’d probably wind up being the other way around with me doing all the damn housework, but all right.”
Holland looks at him, eyes bright and glassy. “All right?”
Jackson smiles crooked, shifting one shoulder as best he can from where he’s lying on his side. “It’ll take a couple trips, and the fish might get stressed in the move, but they’ll get used to it.” He tries for a joke, hoping he doesn’t sound as relieved as he fucking feels. “I don’t think they ever appreciated the standup, anyway.”
Holland laughs, body seeming to go slack against the mattress. The gold chain around his neck catches some in the light, somehow looking finer and less like a yoke than before. “We should definitely keep the mirror where it is,” he says.
“Whatever you want,” Jackson says, and hell if he doesn’t mean it. That thought bleeds into the next one, and then he thinks of the bedroom further down the hall. “What are you going to tell Holly?”
“Well, since we have to hustle these supposedly clean sheets to the laundromat in the morning, I’m going to remind her that midnight snacks aren’t allowed in bed.”
Jackson narrows his eyes, trying not to smile. “And then?”
“Hell if I know,” Holland snorts. “Sit her down and tell her to be welcoming to her new step-fishes, probably.”
“Oh boy,” Jackson groans, pressing a hand into his eyes. “I was hoping you’d have a better plan than that.”
“No plan needed,” Holland says, grinning while he snuggles in closer to Jackson. “Holly’s already chill with the whole thing, so I think we’re good to go.” Holland thinks of his daughter, bright and blonde and beautiful, and feels his heart swell between thoughts of them both. “She told me earlier, uh—that she would rather you be here all the time. She likes…how things are, when you’re around.”
Jackson wonders how much more he could love this kid that isn’t even his own, trying to speak around whatever godawful thing it is raising up like a hot welt in his throat. "That's good,” he says. “I—I try to be useful, you know.”
“If by useful you mean the only other thing outside a 13-year-old certified brainiac keeping me upright, then yeah,” Holland says, sounding a little more humble than before. “We gotta break out the thesaurus and find a better word than that.”
Jackson tries to stifle a yawn, too tired and sated and god damn happy to get up and turn off the lamp. “Nah,” he says, running a hand down Holland’s side to pull him even closer. “Think I’m good for now.”