Affinity: Part XII

"You think that letting him stay here is a good idea, Alex?" Dana hissed at him from her spot on the couch. Doubtful eyes glared up at him from under her bangs.
"It's the best alternative I can think of," he said lowly, not liking where their conversation was going. Had been going for the past half hour. After Alex had left Desmond alone in his room, he had a rush of thoughts that left him in severe need of someone to talk to. And in the past, that usually meant his sister. He had called Dana, telling her only enough so that she would venture over to his apartment.
"Wait, wait," she had said hurriedly over the phone. "Where's your apartment again?" Alex could only remember the vague directions. "I don't have a key," she responded slowly – Alex guessed that she had been writing the address down. He also realized that he didn't have a key, either. He didn't need one, what with the window, but he got the impression that making the apartment more hospitable than, say, a room in a sanatorium was going to take some work.
"He is being hunted, Alex," she said. Alex gave her a rigid look.
"He's going to be tracked down no matter where he goes, though. At least if he's here I'd be able to protect him."
"You can't be standing over his shoulder twenty-four seven, Alex. You know that. And what is he going to do all day? Just sit around and watch TV for the rest of his life?"
"We'd be there for him," Alex said. "You told me before – he's like your other brother."
"He needs more than two people to talk to! He needs friends, a job, a life!"
"Not much of one," Alex muttered, trying not to feel culpable as the words came out of his mouth. "I mean, it's not like he was trying to integrate himself wherever he was. It's not like he could actually keep those friends after he left."
Dana pursed her lips. "It's a bad idea. Those guys are probably reporting back to their boss or some shit and telling him that Alex Mercer carted him off; where do you think they're going to look first, huh?" she gestured to the open space. "Here! Right. Fucking. Here!"
"Shh!" Alex cast a worried glance to the bedroom door. Dana shifted on the couch, watching her brother.
"Is he in there?" she asked in a whisper.
"Yeah." He slowly turned back to face his sister. "He can probably hear us anyway – it's not like he'll be falling asleep soon." His shoulders fell. "I'm just trying to help him," he offered, at a loss for any other explanation. Dana gave him a long look.
"Help him or help you?" she said at last.
"What?"
"You like Desmond a lot, Alex. And that's fine - but you know the type of life he has. He can't stay here forever, no matter how much you want him to."
Alex wanted to argue that he was doing everything for Desmond's sake, but then, as he thought about it, there was that piece of uncertainty that hinted that he wasn't sure at all. Was letting Desmond go the better way to protect him? His mind felt foggy, and he didn't know if he could come up with an answer – especially one he would like.
Finally, he said; "I'll let him go if he wants to – it's all up to him, anyway. I won't make him stay."
"But you hope he does," she said, watching her brother cast another long look at the closed door. "You want him to stay with you."
"Yes," Alex admitted.
"Do you love him?" Alex felt a hard shock in his stomach and hesitated, casting a mildly suspicious look at his sister. What sort of question was that? Of course, being with Desmond was different than being with anybody else in the world. It was freeing; uplifting. And that morning, when Desmond had touched his hand and offered a romantic relationship, he had felt relieved that he was forgiven, and then exhilarated at the prospect of becoming even more significant in the other man's life. But he didn't know if that was love – he wasn't sure what constituted love. He couldn't even come close to a satisfactory definition, and then his sister had just asked him if that was how he felt about Desmond. Could she tell? Could anyone tell? Was there some sort of pheromone that he gave off that human beings could somehow sense?
"…I don't know." he said at length, feeling his throat tighten and his face warming; love was supposed to be a sensitive topic, if culture taught him anything about that emotion. But he never figured that he would be affected by it.
Another way Desmond made him feel human, he thought, turning back to his sister. "And you're okay with it? Liking Desmond, I mean." There were still stigmas about same sex relationships – one of those little pieces of societal norms he somehow collected. Biologically, that made sense, he supposed – but then he reminded himself that technically he wasn't human and didn't even have a gender, anyway, (But Alex Mercer was his identity more than anyone else's; aesthetic wise, at least); not being of the same species was probably more offensive than just looking male anyway. All of that seemed irrelevant to Dana, however; she was just staring at Alex as if addressing some sort of violation in the law of physics; such as a hovering coffee table, or a lack of gravity outside.
"Do you think I give a fuck?" she asked. Her voice was gentle, despite the content of her sentence. "Like whoever you want – it's just dumb luck you like the one guy who is actively wanted for… something neither of you will fucking tell me." Alex shrugged helplessly – Desmond didn't want to tell anyone, even Dana.
Trying to change the subject, he glanced up from where he was standing, gazing at the east wall. There was a window there, expectantly, though there was also an opening about the size of a door to the right, aligned with the couch in the middle of the room. It had glass in it, once. Alex quickly replaced the pane with heavy curtains to keep out the elements, and he took out most of the steel bars that had offered protection for those dumb enough to smash themselves into the glass – from the twentieth floor. There wasn't much risk of burglary via a window, at least. And it was as good an entrance as any, by Alex's standards, at least; and he had tumbled through it with Desmond on his back only a little while ago.
The tawny colored fabric of curtains lay next to the window, pushed aside from their hasty entrance. That's where Alex focused his attention when he supplied; "If they do think that I'm protecting Desmond, then what makes you so sure that they'll come after him?"
"Care to elaborate?"
"Well," he looked down at his hands, which were resting against his sides for the time being. He squeezed them a few times in an absent minded way; flexing the fingers and feeling the taut skin of his knuckles and the rougher bits of his palm as he talked: "I have a reputation. One that says I can kill anybody who comes in here and tries to take him away. So, maybe they won't want to come here. Maybe they'll just decide to cut their losses and look for someone else they want; maybe they'll think that he's already out of the city by now."
Dana bobbed her head once, meaning that she was taking that thought into consideration. "It's possible, I guess. Desmond's been pretty good at staying under the radar… well, till now, at least."
"You could always forge some identity papers for him, too." Alex offered.
"That's a good point: A passport, a birth certificate, hell, even a Visa or MasterCard or something…" her eyes lit up. "Or a Visa,"
Alex gave her a look, wondering why she was repeating herself.
"A travelling visa," she explained, slowly letting her movements get more involved and her face become more expressed as she began to think aloud. "We could say that he's come here from another country – Romania or Nigeria or somewhere that doesn't make a big deal of paper work…" she paused, furrowing her brows. "And we can give him a disguise, too; we can dye his hair and give him glasses or contacts and some new clothes and a hat and Bam! He's fucking unrecognizable and safe." She smiled, leaning back into the squeaky cushions of the couch, practically glowing as she reflected on her idea.
"Do you think that'll work?" Alex asked, still awed by how quickly her sister had just thought up a scheme like that from his one suggestion; she was a lot smarter than he realized, sometimes.
"As well as any idea can work," she said. "Short of putting him in a Witness Protection Program in the middle of the fucking Sierra, I'd say this is about as good as we can do right now." She gave him a pointed look. "If and only if he actually agrees with it."
"So it's okay with you?" He watched hopefully as Dana stood up.
"I want to help Desmond as much as you do," she said, mildly wishing that Alex had just found a gang of beer buddies that would just take him out to a game once in a while, versus a man on the run who he would try to spend as much time as possible with. But she watched her brother become so happy whenever he was talking to Desmond – even back in the winter, when she had found him occupied in watching the younger man move about the bar. And everyone, even Alex, deserved a great happiness like that at least once in their lives. "I just have different ideas than you about what's a good way to help him. But you're my brother, and I said I would help you - and I stick to my priorities; whether or not there's a better choice."
If Alex wanted to stay with Desmond, all she could do was attempt to keep the both of them out of harm's way.
She headed for the door. "Jill and Theresa aren't going to wait all goddamn day for me. If you need me, just give me a call." She turned back. "Let me know what Desmond thinks about this later, alright?"
He offered up a flimsy smile, deluded and bogged down with overflowing thoughts. "Alright. Thank - you, Dana." He didn't move until the door closed softly in front of him – now of all times his sister attempts to be discreet?
He was still holding on to the feeling of uncertainty he had – about Desmond and how his feelings went regarding him. He thought, as he made a few circles around the room, inspecting this or that out of a need to expend some energy, that love was a very physical thing. Like, red cheeks and jittery thoughts and not being able to concentrate about anything except the target of one's affection. But Alex hadn't really felt like that. He hadn't nearly fallen off a rooftop thinking about what Desmond's hair smelt like, he hadn't ever accidentally brushed against the man's hand and was left a stuttering wreck, either.
For all he knew, Desmond held himself together just as well.
But there was still this borderline dependent nature he felt when he was around the younger man; an innocent addiction, maybe. A drug with no known ill side affects; or something along those lines. Desmond was a good distraction and a great friend – so much so that he wished to see him more, and be with him more, until it got to the point where he could feel metaphorically naked in front of him and probably not fear for himself or acknowledge any type of shame. With Desmond he just was, and could only hope to be.
And at some point perhaps this had made him fall in love with him. Unless he really wasn't yet. But now, if he made himself think on it, lovers and friends – at least the type of friend he was – didn't seem to overlap much except in the physical department. He briefly wondered about that, about how it would be like to kiss Desmond, and be kissed by Desmond, and have that sort of thing happen all the time - and then he could feel an almost instant wind of private embarrassment: The man could be gone in the hour, and then he'd be kicking himself for daydreaming.
At that resignation, Alex forgot the whimsical musings of relationships and let his spine get cold. He cast a frightful look at the oven's clock as if it was a countdown timer, but all he saw was a series of glowing green numbers reading 1:43 – how long had he been pacing?
He decided that he could be allowed to intrude on Desmond now, if only because he felt impatient and privately thought that it wasn't like a person like Desmond was going to be relaxing anyway. He strode up to the room and promptly decided to forgo the whole knocking process – because that would leave the ability for Desmond to not answer or claim that he wanted to be alone, and Alex knew that his selfish attitude couldn't bear that.
Walking inside he found Desmond on his stomach – a hand experimentally touching the exposed skin of his back.
"Umm…" Any words Alex Mercer had tried to form had apparently retreated back into his vocal cords. "Desmond?"
The man raised his head to look at the figure at the doorway. "One of those guys kind of… fucked up my back. I think he left a mark," his hand continued shifting up in down his spinal column. "Well, actually, maybe a few marks. I thought I broke something, but I'm pretty sure I was just over reacting."
Alex walked forward and wished there was an actual lamp plugged in somewhere – there were no windows in the bedroom, only a few strips of light flowing in from the main room, resting on the mattress right by Desmond's head. He saw that at some point Desmond had taken the spare sheets and laid them under himself, for warmth or comfort or just a lack of things to do. He sat himself on the edge and looked at the dark skin of Desmond's back, trying to see the abrasions. There were five pock marks that looked like tiny, swollen hills; all in a cluster above the kidney on the right of his spine. Five purpling, raised bumps from the butt of a very large gun, plus a faint red line; looking more like a stray stretch of a correcting pen than an injury. Nothing looked explicitly serious, but he pressed lightly on one of the swollen spots, anyway. "Does that hurt?"
"Yes," Desmond said with mild impatience. "They hurt – is there a mark?"
"Five of them. Bruises I think. The skin didn't break though. Is there anything else that hurts?"
"The lingering feeling of exhaustion combined with the loss of dignity from being manhandled?" he asked aloud, unwilling to move to pull his shirt back down. "I feel like I can sleep for a solid week."
"That wouldn't be such a bad idea," Alex said evenly.
"Dana was here," he said, abruptly changing the topic. "What were you talking about?"
"You couldn't hear her?"
"Only a bit. Enough to know it was about me, and that she left a while ago." From where he smooshed his face into the pillow, he gave Alex a worried glance. "You guys didn't have an argument, did you?"
"Only a little one – it's resolved now. And we're related; we've probably had worse things to say to one another when it came to who was going to the laundry." Desmond managed to smile a little bit, and Alex decided to answer his question. "We both agreed that we'd like it if you stayed here – and that if you do, Dana will be able to give you fake papers and set you up as a long term visitor from another country that isn't good at bookkeeping; it'll be harder for them to trace you. And you can get a good disguise, too; dye your hair, a different eye color…" Desmond didn't react to what Alex had said, so he finished up quickly, "- And we could both live here – I'll do my best to protect you… unless you do think it's better to leave."
"And then?"
"And then I won't stop you." He supplied, his shoulder's sagging a bit at that.
"You'd miss me, though,"
"Of course I would."
Desmond turned himself around – now his stomach was on display. Alex idly watched the dark skin and slight muscle protruding there, since it made him less anxious than Desmond's rather sad and puffy looking face. The shirt was smoothed down and he spoke up again. "I guess you should know that I already decided what I wanted to do; even before you came in here to explain it to me."
"…Really?" there wasn't much tension in Alex's voice; he knew what the answer was going to be now; he could just hope the words wouldn't be too painful when they sunk in –
"I decided that if I would do anything for you, you would probably feel the same way, and so you would already have a plan to keep me in Manhattan. And, I mean, it's better to have a friend in enemy territory than none in a new place, right?" he looked up and met Alex's gaze. "I'll stay with you for as long as I can."
If Desmond had any other solemn words to offer up, they were quickly drowned out by some surprised gasps when Alex leaned down and wrapped his arms around the other man; at least as much as he could, what with Desmond still lying down. It left the both of them with faces very close to one another's. Alex had on the typical neutral expression, which was altered a bit with a smile and a small upturn at the bottom of his eyelids. Desmond did a good job of looking shocked, before letting out a small laugh and trying to hug the other man back – only to find his arms pretty much pinned, and only able to grab reassuringly at Alex's coat sleeves.
"At least I have your support," he said, letting Alex pull away a bit. Desmond moved to the right and pushed on Alex's side; enough to persuade him to lie down next to him, so they could continue their conversation at the same eye level.
"You're my friend," Alex said at length. "That's what you do, right? Help one another out."
"Oh. Right. Friends. We were talking about that. Before, at least." Desmond shifted his eyes towards the ceiling, still content to curl up on his side; his arms pressing against Alex's, who was currently wondering if Desmond had heard that particular topic when Dana brought it up.
Probably.
Shit, he thought in the back of his head – there was that feeling of embarrassment resurfacing again. It made him feel vulnerable; definitely not a feeling that he was accustomed to. Or liked, for that matter. If it was anyone else, he might have suspected that this was being purposefully done – he glanced back at Desmond, wondering if he was going to say something.
Against his exposed arms, Alex felt very much like a sheet of paper. Most of the natural light was now hitting the back of his head, but he could still see Desmond: His entire body was dark; Mediterranean, almost. He knew that the other man didn't exactly frequent beaches or tanning beds. He wanted to ask if he came from some tropical place of origin – in case Desmond had an idea of his heritage, his ethnicity – and see if his guess was right. He stayed quiet, though, observing the look of concentration on the other man's face. He'd let him think. The ninety minutes or so of privacy Desmond was granted seemed to have improved his mood a bit. He was looking less like a worried, caged animal, and more like he usually did: Content; sarcastic; jokingly playful; the source of this internal warmth Alex had found himself craving so recently. As he looked into his face he felt the back of his throat tighten again, as if he couldn't get in enough air.
"What?" Desmond whispered, brown eyes widening as he once again took in the world around him.
"Just waiting for you to talk again," Alex offered, trying to shrug from his position on the bed. The result was adequate. "You looked like you were thinking about something."
"I was," he said absently; quietly. He reached to tug the hood down off of Alex's head. "Its summer – you should at least pretend that you can get hot."
"Old habits die hard," he muttered, as Desmond shifted upwards a little bit, moving his hand down to Alex's face; his thumb on the bottom of his chin, his fingers stretching over the edge of his cheek. "What are you doing?"
Desmond had that same concentrated look in his eyes again – Alex felt impressed that he could still manage to keep his face helpfully disinterested. Desmond's hand felt warm, he thought for a moment; it felt good. Actually, he could go out on a limb and say that it felt great, but then again he didn't have a large point of reference to draw from.
"Making up my mind," Desmond finally admitted, and then he was leaning in and kissing Alex Mercer for the second time that week.
As far as he had been concerned, Alex had the whole 'physical dominance' thing locked up. If you could use a tank as your own personal battering ram, you weren't getting a lot of competition. But here Desmond was, and he had pretty much reduced the Blacklight Virus into a degenerate mess of confused emotions and an unsure stream of consciousness.
And the only muscle he had been using so far was his tongue.
Huh, He let the stutter wrap around his mind since his mouth was certainly too busy to be forming words at the moment. Sometime between Desmond kissing him and Alex realizing exactly what he was doing, he had managed to get one hand pressing gently on the back of Desmond's neck, threading through the dark hair. His other arm laid uselessly under him, his finger tips resting heavily on Desmond's clothed stomach. There were two hands, now, on his face, wrapping around the back and side of his neck as if Desmond was attempting the impossible and trying to pull the both of them closer.
It was worth a try.
The both of them stayed like that for the most oblivious and possibly best moments of Alex's life. It wasn't until Desmond pulled away did he realize how deprived of oxygen they were – the sudden deep breaths making small burns in his vision.
He saw Desmond rub at his swollen lips with the back of his hand as he slowly sat up. He looked about as content as Alex felt; like he was in perfect harmony with the universe. "Well?" he said at length, as if expecting some sort of feedback. Was that normal? Alex wondered, listening to the flurrying heartbeats of the other, quietly transported to his hands by way of the bed sheets.
"Great choice," he said, still out of breath in a way that no amount of extreme sprinting could ever really make him feel. "I am really, really happy with your decision making tactics right now." Desmond laughed and straightened himself out – patting his hair down and righting his shirt and shorts. He offered a hand to Alex – one that he didn't need, but took anyway.
"Come on, Romeo," Desmond said lightly, "Let's get this place straightened out."