Whatever the Cost (35 page)

Valery sighs with her anguish at witnessing Liam’s torment. She grabs a tissue and sets it in his hand, then draws his hand from his face and grips it tightly.

Pushing on, pushing him past the horror of it all and into action, she says steadily, with steel behind the words, along with an unspoken promise not to abandon him until this is figured out, “Do you feel safe being alone with him? Be honest with me.”

“Yeah, I do. It just...” he takes a deep breath and slowly lets it back out, confessing in a small voice, “It hurt.”

“I know,” she tells him, proud of him for being able to admit to that. Closing up their joined hands with her other, she kisses his knuckles and waits.

“Thanks. For staying with me. If I’d woken up with him it might have freaked me out. But don’t tell him that, okay?”

“Okay.” Taking a cool cloth from the bowl on the floor by her side, she presses it gingerly to his bruised eye, dabs at his bleeding lip. “What happened here? Why’d Clay want to hit you?”

“Long story. I provoked him.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Yeah, it is,” he disagrees.

“So, what? You deserved it? Just like you deserved Jacen forcing himself on you? Come on, Liam. Tell me it’s not the same. I dare you. Let’s see how good a liar you really are.”

The sting from that catches Liam by surprise. It hits far too close to home, too close to the truth, and he chokes on fresh sobs. She winds an arm around him, hugging him tenderly. He holds on to her and cries into her soft curls.

“I just...” he hisses, not able to let go of her, murmuring against the warmth of her skin. “I couldn’t leave. But I couldn’t come back, either. I couldn’t be who I was and I don’t know how to be the person I’m supposed to be now.”

“You need to learn how to speak up for what you want. That’s my advice to you in a nutshell. Say it with me, even if it seems stupid. Come on.
No
.”

“...No,” Liam repeats. The word feels foreign on his tongue, a new weapon that he’s never had the use of before.

Valery smiles.

“Do you want me and Yasha to take off so that you two can talk?”

Liam stands by the room’s closed door, one hand flat on the wood, thinking over Valery’s offer. Then he admits, “I don’t know. Before yesterday I would have said yes.”

Valery walks up to him, gripping his shoulder supportively. “You can’t hide in here all day. You need to eat, get some fresh ice on that eye.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “You know, I really don’t want to talk about it at all, but I guess I have to. I’m afraid to see him. There’s just so much shit between us right now.” He shakes his head with annoyance, as if to clear it. “Fuck it.”

Liam opens the door. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and sweatpants, he shuffles out of the bedroom, glancing around as he goes, looking out for Yasha or Jacen. Valery stays with him, a step behind. It doesn’t take long to find the others. Jacen is seated cross-legged at the end of the hallway, blocking the way with furniture parts strewn all around—wood, screws, screwdrivers, and a lot of other things Liam can’t identify on first glance. Yasha is standing over Jacen, sipping coffee and pretending to supervise. They’re both wearing the same clothes as they were the day before.

Jacen senses Liam there before he hears or sees him, like a bloodhound, his head snapping up as his attention is piqued. He jumps to his feet and pauses, frozen, momentarily incapable of movement, stunned by the battered state of his lover.

Yasha’s impassive expression shifts, instead becoming quickly one of alarm at something subtle he sees in Valery’s eyes and the quirk of her mouth. “Shit,” he hisses, as much from the angriness of Liam’s wounds as from the tension in the air.

Looking from Liam’s angry black eye to his split, swollen lip, to Valery, Jacen feels how she exudes a surprising and fiercely protective air as she lightly touches Liam’s arm. He twitches forward, wanting with all of his being to hug Liam, but he doesn’t dare. Not yet.

Gathering his courage, his pride, Liam can’t find the words, at first.

“I’m so sorry, Lee,” Jacen urges softly.

Yasha glances from his wife to his best friend to Liam, trying to put it together, trying to figure out why Valery is just barely managing to not strike out bodily at Jacen.

“I know there’s nothing I can say to defend myself. All I can do is hope that you are able to forgive me but you have to believe that—”

Liam holds up a hand, silencing him. “I shouldn’t have called Ryan without talking to you first. That was wrong. And I shouldn’t have run away like I did. It was cruel of me to make you worry like that. And I should’ve said no, instead of just hoping you would stop. I’m not used to having the option of standing up for myself in bed, so I can’t bring myself to see what happened as your fault. But I didn’t deserve that. I know that now.”

Valery gives his arm a firmer squeeze, bursting with pride in him. Yasha’s mouth falls open. He stares at Jacen, astonished. Jacen hangs his head, covering his face with a hand, turning red and blinking away shameful tears.

Yasha’s lip curls in distaste, but before he gets a word out, his wife says sharply to him, “Don’t. He feels bad enough, can’t you see that?”

Jacen wipes a hand over his face and looks at Liam. “This isn’t your fault. You trusted me, and I knew how to play you so you’d go along with it.
I’m
the bad guy here.”

“Stop,” Liam says, tiredly. “You wanna know why Clay hit me? Why he did this to me?”

Jacen looks up at him sharply.

“He was being so nice to me, trying to bring me home to you because he cares about us. But I didn’t deserve his kindness, and I couldn’t face you after how I’d acted, how I’d endangered you and the things I’d said to you. I wanted to leave, to just run away and let you go for good, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t go. I tried, though. I went to a bar. Had too much to drink, let a guy pick me up.”

Jacen’s face crumples. Every ounce of strength leaves him.

“I followed him out to the alley. He started touching me. I tried to focus on the wad of bills he’d flashed, to get me through, but it made me nauseous. I felt disgusting. I’d rather die than let anyone else but you touch me like that again, to give you up for
that
.” Liam lets it hang there, before he continues. “But I let Clay think I went through with it, so that he’d want to hit me. And he did. And the pain felt really good. So I told him being with that guy made me remember back when I’d been out fucking men for cash while Timothy was home, suffering, and how I’d pretend to be someone else, someone better, how I’d pretend Tim didn’t even exist, just for a couple of minutes, to get through it, and how that made me happy. That’s why he hit me, okay? I begged him to keep going. But he wouldn’t. He
wouldn’t
. Clay’s a good friend. You should know that.”

He takes a step away from Valery, toward Jacen; then another. “You could never be as cruel to me as I am to myself. But I’m sick and tired of hating who I am. And yeah, I’m scared. I’m really scared that I can never be the man you think you fell in love with. All I want is to make you proud of me, and to find a way to be proud of myself. I’m deeply sorry, Jacen.”

Liam hangs his head, having confessed and given everything he has to give, waiting for Jacen to tell him to get out, to rail on him the way Clay did, maybe, or to rip him to shreds the way that Timothy did in the nightmare, calling him a good-for-nothing dirty whore. He waits for it, expecting it.

So when Jacen instead wraps Liam in an oh-so-careful hug, breathing in the scent of his skin and hair, infusing the embrace with pure, powerful love, Liam moans and returns the gesture, hugging his husband back. “Let me prove that I deserve you,” Liam whispers against Jacen’s blanketing warmth.

Jacen holds on to him like he’s never going to let go. Liam feels Jacen’s tears trickling down his neck, collecting in the hollow of his collarbone.

“Please, just give me the chance,” Liam asks.

The desperation and despondency in Liam’s words destroy Jacen and his ability to respond coherently. He wants to find a way to convince Liam that he deserves every good thing the world has to offer, to let Liam see himself the way that Jacen sees him, as a beautiful, magnificent man, whom Jacen is humbled and honored to know and love. But he can’t. He has to let Liam get to that place on his own, somehow. He has to love him through it, with patience and devotion.

“Love you,” Jacen whispers. “I’ll always love you. Whatever you need, okay?”

“Thank you,” Liam sighs.

Valery wipes her eyes dry and Yasha goes to her, kissing her cheek with understanding and appreciation.

A sense of normalcy begins to return. Valery and Yasha take their leave. Liam gives Valery a grateful hug at the door. She gives him a soft peck on the lips and whispers words of encouragement, asking him to call her whenever he wants to talk. Still quite unable to get past the realization of what Jacen did to Liam, it speaks volumes that Yasha says farewell to Jacen with a firm handshake and nothing more. Jacen endures Yasha’s coldness, welcoming the punishment that it is, knowing he can affect it no more than he can affect Liam’s turmoil.

Once they are left alone with each other, Liam goes to the kitchen for breakfast, waving Jacen off when he offers to make something for him. Jacen returns to the half-built cabinet in pieces on the floor, using the distraction to keep his mind busy. Wondering why Jacen decided to build it in the particular spot he selected, right at the end of the hall rather than in the more open space of the living room, Liam realizes that Jacen must have wanted to be as close to his husband as possible, to overhear any calls or trouble, or maybe just drawn there, unwilling to be even a few more feet apart than they had to be.

Liam takes his food into the bedroom, eating while he begins sorting the mess of boxes there.

It’s the beginning of a long period of quiet between the two men. They each work at their own tasks, establishing their new home one possession at a time. All that day they work in separate rooms. Jacen cooks lunch, leaving Liam’s share ready for him when he wants it. He gives Liam his space, and Liam indulges in the procured privacy.

Darkness quickly descends on them as the sun sets. Pizza is ordered for dinner. Lamps are lit and placed strategically around the rooms so that they can keep working, keep unpacking. Bedtime approaches, and Jacen doesn’t know what to do. More than anything he wants to sleep next to Liam, to enjoy the comfort of his nearness in order to get some much-needed rest. Jacen had slept barely an hour or two the previous night and tiredness creeps deeply into his bones. But he makes up the air mattress again with fresh sheets and a blanket. Liam works late into the night, unpacking their clothes and putting them either into the closet or in neat piles until they can buy some bedroom furniture.

Peeking his head into the bedroom, Jacen says, “’Night, Lee. You should head to bed soon, too. Get some rest.”

“Yeah. I will,” Liam agrees, nodding, folding a shirt over in his hands. “’Night.”

Liam watches him walk into the second bedroom where the air mattress is laid out, as a cold fist tightens around his heart in his chest, wanting to call Jacen back. Not a word is spoken. He selfishly lets Jacen go.

The next day, Jacen leaves the house at ten in the morning to be at work for the lunch rush. He gets showered and dressed, and, with dark circles under his eyes, says goodbye to Liam from across the room.

Liam thrives in the distance Jacen provides him with. He stops being afraid that Jacen will ask something of him he’s not ready to give. He stops worrying about much of anything besides getting their lives in order, starting with the few hundred square feet that is now their home. That much Liam can handle. He turns on some music and smiles as the list of chores to be done unfolds in his mind.

The next day Liam goes out to buy more furniture and, when he finds some that he likes after a few hours’ search, arranges to have it delivered. That he does this on his own, without Jacen’s input, is a triumph for him. It feels like he’s finally able to contribute to their lives, instead of standing helpless as Jacen does all of the work for them both. Each day, when Jacen comes home after work, their space feels a little more “theirs” for all of Liam’s work, and a little more real. It makes him happy deep down in his heart to see Liam taking on the task of unpacking, without any prompting. The kitchen cabinets fill up, as do the closets. New artwork is hung on the walls, selected by Liam, a mix of both of their tastes. But most of all it’s the small things, like the old magnets that Liam displays proudly on the fridge, that bring the warmth back to Jacen’s heart. Each time he goes to the kitchen, he gently touches the ones that mean the most, like the one from the Vancouver Aquarium that, for him, symbolizes the period of time when they were first becoming friends.