Work Text:
Healy's on his knees with a bucket and a brush, trying to lift three-day-old Yoo-hoo stains off the carpet, when he realizes this isn't home anymore.
It's not that he isn't safe here anymore, because he is; he made sure of that with his own hands. It's not the deep pockmarks in the drywall, because this place was a shithole before it got shot up and the bullet holes just add character. He feeds the fish he still has left. He peels away the skipped days on his calendar: lassitude, mollify, concatenate. He turns on the TV and then turns it off again. There's something restless in him that can't be drowned out by The Waltons or the evening news.
He lies in bed and the laughter in the comedy club surges beneath him like the tides of a deep, black sea.
The work doesn't save him like he imagined it might. But it's not as bad as March said it would be either. Better now, because Healy's conscience stops them from scamming old ladies outright and March remembers that looking deep into things and doing your due diligence is another way to run up the meter, if you've got someone patient enough to do that kind of work. Better now, if Healy doesn't have to break anybody's arm, and mostly he doesn't. Mostly, he talks to people. Mostly, he gets to hear them out.
When Healy used to daydream about becoming a PI, he never imagined anybody with him. He never imagined March beside him, filling the car with talk - so much talk, like he started talking by accident and doesn't know how to stop - and with the smell of flopsweat and stale cigarettes and cologne.
("Why do you wear that stuff anyway?" Healy asked him once.
March plucked at the front of his shirt. "What stuff?"
"The cologne. You can't smell it. Why wear it?"
March scoffed. "For people who can smell. Like, what if I meet a lady?"
"Uh huh."
"You know, that's such a selfish worldview. What's the point of smelling good if I can't smell? Well, what about everybody else that has to smell me? I smell good for the people, Healy."
"Alright," Healy said. "Sorry I asked."
And he was sorry. Not then, but a few days later when he was folding March's limp, drunken body into bed and he spotted the cologne bottle on the dresser. Big, heavy, cut glass. Half-empty. The kind of thing you get as a gift from your wife, if things are going good. Healy guesses they were.)
Healy's not sure if this is better than what he used to imagine. It's different.
He finds himself at March's place at the end of the day, more often than not. At first it was just because March can't be trusted to find his own way home, but then Holly would be in the middle of making dinner and Healy would feel compelled to step in, for all the good that'd do. If Holly's a bad cook, he's worse, but she's 13 and it shouldn't all rest on her shoulders. March usually sobers up enough to help about halfway through and by the end, the two of them start ganging up on Healy, insisting he might as well stay. So more often than not, he stays.
And now he doesn't even try to wriggle out of it anymore. After dinner, he and Holly each pick a side of the kitchen table. Holly does her homework. Healy studies up for the PI exam.
The problem is the drive home after, the dark night and the sodium glow of streetlamps and all the secret animals that run Sunset after the parties are over. The problem is the silent, sleepless hour after he climbs the stairs to his apartment and the door closes behind him and he can't remember what he used to do with himself.
That's getting worse.
March fell.
He does that so often. Healy knew that going in, but it happens so much that Healy's starting to think it's indicative of a bigger problem, a permanent hit to March's equilibrium. One of those things in March's life, his behavior, his decision-making that's totally out of joint.
Anyway. Not from that high up. Just from the flat roof of a single story ranch home. He didn't even hit his head this time. But he landed wrong, wrong enough that when he hit the ground, March made a high-pitched, keening sound that only dogs and Healy could hear. But again, not that wrong, because when Healy leveraged himself down on the drainpipe and hit the ground running and pulled March whining to his feet, he stayed up and he ran when Healy dragged him along by the collar of his jacket.
But he ran funny, in a way that Healy can only really take in now, now that they're tucked behind a closed auto shop, crouched between busted up Camaros and Mustangs. He can see the way March's right arm - the one without a cast - hangs, limp and strange.
"Did you break your other arm?" Healy whispers over the katydids and the sirens.
March sputters, "Did you break my other arm, do you mean?" The sweat on his brow is shiny in the dark.
"I'm not taking the heat for this one," Healy says. "Is it broken or not?"
March fidgets for a while in the dark, trying to flap an arm that won't move. "I don't know," he finally confesses.
"OK," Healy sighs. "Let me take a look."
"No," March hisses, curling in on himself.
"Come on, man."
"No! You'll make it worse."
"I am not gonna make it worse."
"You'll make it worse," March mutters darkly through his clenched teeth.
"I'm not gonna do anything. Just…let me check if we need to go to a hospital about this. Alright?"
March groans, mutters, swears, kicks the tires of a dented Ford Pinto, gives Healy the tiniest of nods.
They sit down together on the still-warm asphalt while Healy takes March by the frayed, open seam of his jacket sleeve and delicately peels it away, broken arm first so it'll come away neat from the really fucked up arm.
("Be careful."
"I'm being careful."
"You are not being careful. You'd know that if you could feel what I feel."
"Shut up.")
The shirt has to come off too, but it's loose, short-sleeved, so it's not so bad. March can't do the buttons one-handed so Healy has to help. Healy's attention snags itself on the chain around March's neck, the wedding band glinting in the moonlight.
He really does try to be gentle with March's arm as he feels his way along in the dark, the bones and the sinews and the impotent, frantic flex of his muscles. Healy tries not to shush him like a scared horse.
"You can't even see anything." March's voice quavers, buckles a little.
"Don't have to. It's not broken," Healy says at last.
"You don't know that. You're not a fuckin'…bone doctor."
"Yeah, but I know bones." Healy feels out the shapes beneath March's wiry muscles, refers back to the diagram in his head. Radius. Ulna. Humerus. Scapula. That's more or less where the problem is. "It's just dislocated. Doctor'll pop that right back into place."
"Really? That easy?"
"Yeah. I mean, it'll hurt. Hey March," Healy says, "think nice thoughts for me, huh?"
"What?" March starts to ask, and that's when Healy gives his arm an expert, surgical twist.
The scream that rips out of him is unreal, unearthly, like the squeal of a thousand bottle rockets taking flight all at once, but it's all secondary next to the way March's body jumps under his hands and snaps perfectly into place, to the way March pants and heaves and falls quiet beneath him.
Through clenched teeth, he says, "You fucker."
"Doing better?"
"Yeah." March says meekly. Experimentally, he opens and closes his fist a few times, pulls the shirt back up over his bare shoulder. Healy picks him up off the asphalt, dusts him off, and they walk back to the car in the dark once they're sure the coast is clear, and as long as nobody looks too closely at anyone else, everything's fine.
And it'd just be one night out of many, many nights, except it's the first night Healy stays over. Because it's too late when they get back to March's and because March is too rattled to hurl himself into bed right away and because Holly wakes up and wants to know what happened and because the drive back to his apartment is too terrible to bear and he never gets a choice anyway, because just when he's about to make his excuses, Holly asks him to help her get something down from the high shelf in the closet.
And the closet is a linen closet. And the something is sheets and a pillow.
Healy beds down on the couch in the living room. He listens to the hum of the air conditioner and March's thick, heavy snores from the bedroom. Every time a car rolls past in the night, Healy watches the way the glow of the headlights oozes under the cardboard hastily pinned up over the front windows.
He sleeps a little. He wakes up early.
He comes back an hour later, armed with a hammer and nails and a big sheet of plywood.
He was never good at school. He could've been, maybe, if he hadn't been concerned with bigger things. Hard to apply yourself in class when your mind is on the death match you got waiting for you back home.
The background check won't turn up anything. The terrible things Healy does won't show up on any court record. And there are cops who'll vouch for him, because of the Amelia thing and because March still has friends on the force and because the detective who showed up after that thing in the diner gave Healy his business card and said if he was ever in trouble, he should call, and Healy called.
The exam's the only thing that's not a sure thing.
He felt sure in the moment, when he went into a dingy room in a government building and took the test shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of other schlubs. He felt like he knew most of the answers. But now he's back at March's place and his hand is black on one side from rubbing against the paper and he isn't so sure anymore.
But he doesn't say that, he just sits on the couch cracking his knuckles and he turns down March's offer of a drink for the third time and he stares hard at the plywood nailed over the front windows.
("I was getting around to it," March said defensively when he emerged, hung over and sopping wet for some reason, to find Healy in his shirtsleeves, hammer in hand. "Plywood's not that much better than cardboard anyway."
"It's your house, where your daughter sleeps," he says around the nails between his lips. "Plywood's a hell of a lot better than cardboard. Anyway, what if it rains?"
"Or, like, what if a unicorn jumps through the window? Be realistic, Healy.")
"You know, you can just take that test again." March is pacing the kitchen behind him. What March has to pace about, Healy doesn't know. Healy's sitting at the bar, not drinking, for all the good that'll do him. He's the one who should be pacing. "If you don't pass, I mean."
Healy half-turns, squints at him. "Who said I'm not gonna pass?"
"I don't know. Nobody. I'm just saying." March runs a hand through his hair, lights up a cigarette. "You can take it again. Nothing will change if you fail."
"You're not worried about going into business with an unlicensed PI?"
March snorts. "No. I don't give a fuck."
"Right, but somebody does." Light plays across the wall and Healy turns to watch the pinprick of headlights slide beneath the edge of the plywood. It's quieter now than that night on the couch. "On some licensing board. Could make trouble for you."
"Who gives a fuck?" March asks around his cigarette
"I give a fuck," Healy says. "I don't want to mess with your money, March." And I don't want to fail. I want to be right for something, for once.
"You're not," March says somewhere behind him. "Things are going a lot better with you than without you. Believe me."
He does. He actually does. Not just in the obvious ways, like making sure March shows up for appointments and taking on half of the caseload. He believes he's actually good at this. He just can't quite let himself believe that anyone else will see it.
"Anyway, you probably did fine," March says, from closer behind him than Healy expects.
His fingertips graze the back of Healy's neck and it sends a shockwave through him, a rolling heat that makes him twist around and seize March by the wrist and twist 'til he goes to his knees.
"Fuck!" March yelps.
"I…shit." Healy releases him. Healy feels himself go cold. "Shit. Sorry. You OK?"
"Yeeees." March's voice comes limp and thready. He clutches his hand to his chest. The one that's not in a cast.
Healy's heart sinks. "I didn't break it, did I?"
"Noooo." To prove it, March shakes it out, flexes his fingers. "Jesus. Sorry for being comforting."
Healy's brow furrows. "Is that what you were doing?"
"Yes, actually, I was being very reassuring and supportive. My wife used to…"
"Yeah?"
"…Anyway." March delicately picks his still-lit cigarette out of the shag carpeting, stamps on the small, bright embers. "I do actually think you'll pass. I mean, I passed, and I'm…"
"What?"
"You know. I'm better in person than on paper."
Healy's not sure if that's exactly it. "You're a smart guy, March," he says. "In your way."
"OK," March says, massaging his wrist. "You too, I guess."
When the results come by mail, he can't open them. He folds the sealed envelope into thirds and keeps it in his jacket pocket all day, where it glows red hot and weighs a thousand pounds.
They're in March's car down the block from a client's house, waiting for her philandering husband to go out and do some philandering, when he can't fucking bear it anymore so he thrusts the envelope back between the front seats and into Holly's hands. "Read this for me, kid," he says. "I don't have my glasses on me."
"Your results?" she asks, ripping into the envelope.
"Oh shit, they're here?" March shifts in his seat, puts his long-lens camera aside.
"Came today." Healy tries to sound light.
March moves slow and makes sure Healy's looking as he rests a hand on his shoulder and grips him tight.
Healy shoots a glance at the way March's fingertips warp his jacket. "You being comforting again?"
"Yeah, actually. I'm doing a great job and you feel really supported."
Healy presses the heels of his hands over his eyes until he sees bright pops of light.
In the back seat, Holly rustles paper.
"Sweetheart," March pleads. "You're killing Mr. Healy. Can you tell us what it says?"
"Yeah, it's just written in legalese and stuff, so I'm reading the whole thing so I know how to break the news."
"Fuck," Healy groans.
"Yeah. OK," Holly says. A businesslike crinkle of pages. "Yeah, you passed."
The uproar is so loud that they blow their cover and they have to use Healy's car for the rest of the case.
Holly says, "You should just move in," and Healy almost drops a gob of mortar on the carpet.
It's early on a Friday morning and March has claimed that he'll seal up the bullet holes in the living room "soon" one two many times, so now Healy's here in an undershirt and Holly's sitting at the table with a glass of orange juice, watching him work.
"Hilarious, kid."
"I'm serious," she says, and begins counting off on her fingers. "You're here all the time. You'd save money on rent. You'd save money on gas. You wouldn't have to drive home after you drop my dad off. You could just…stay."
His heart pounds sickly in his chest. He smears the mortar on the wall, smooths it down. "That's nice of you, Holly. But I like where I live."
This is a lie, but it wasn't always. You meet a lot of interesting people at The Comedy Store. Healy picks up extra money working security for the bigger acts sometimes. Sometimes Richard Pryor comes by to test out new material.
"But you like it here too," Holly says.
"Yeah," he admits. "Yeah, I like it here. You don't, though," he points out.
"I mean, yeah, I hate this house. But I don't hate it here." She makes a broad, ephemeral gesture that encompasses the neighborhood. "I'd like it better if you moved in."
"So, what's your plan? I move in and, what, sleep on the couch forever?"
"You could have my room. I'll sleep on the couch."
"Holly…"
"Anyway, it's not forever. You'd just have to hold out until we rebuild our old house."
"Did your old house have a guest room?"
"No," she admits. "But the new one could."
"Holly," he says, sinking into a crouch so they're kind of at eye level. "What's this about?"
"I want you to move in."
"OK." He exhales deep. "Do you think your dad should have a say in that?"
Holly scoots forward in her chair, leans in confidentially. "Mr. Healy, my dad is different since you showed up."
"What do you mean, different? Different how?"
She screws up her face, tries to lay it out plain. "Like, I don't have to remind him to eat anymore. Or, other stuff too, like he remembers my friends' names and I had a parent-teacher conference last Wednesday and I didn't have to say anything. He just showed up."
"OK," Healy allows. "That's a step in the right direction."
"It's not just that," she says. "It's other stuff too."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. He's just different." She blinks rapid and hard, until her eyes get a little less shiny. At last, she says, "I think you make him happy."
"Well. That's good." Healy heart quivers and dips. He rises to his feet. "I don't think that means I'm moving in, though."
"I'll work on him," Holly says.
"I don't want you to do that."
"I don't care," she says. "I'll work on him anyway."
He makes the wall smooth again, and when March comes out in boxers and a faded shirt he complains that Healy's making him look bad in front of his kid, and Healy realizes March isn't even annoyed. Not even about being woken up.
March's cast is finally ready to come off and they have a meeting with a client after that, so Healy goes with him to the appointment. The skin underneath is flushed and clammy and soft, like a hermit crab without a shell, marred only by the white pucker of the scar across his wrist. His arm is whole and all of Healy's sins are undone. March scratches all the places he hasn't been able to scratch for the past six weeks. Healy's palms itch.
After, they're in the car, windows down, radio up loud and March says, "You should move in," and Healy almost crashes the fucking car.
"Jesus Christ," he says, white-knuckled on the steering wheel. "She got to you already."
March scoffs. "No!" And then, "Yeah." And then, "You really don't wanna move in? What's wrong with my house?"
"Roof's caving in, for one."
"That's not on me!" March protests. "The landlord has to fix that one. That's not my fault."
"I know." Healy breathes deep, weaves neatly in and out of traffic, plans his next move. "I like my place."
"No, you don't."
"I do."
"Liar." March can speak with more confidence than Holly here because he's actually seen the inside of Healy's studio apartment. "No, you don't."
"My fish are there."
March frowns, leans in all concerned. "You think you can't have a fishtank at my place? You can have a fishtank."
Healy imagines the blue glow of the tank in the dark living room, the fish drifting inside, and his throat goes tight.
He manages to stonewall until they're leaving the client meeting, name and address in March's pocket. "Where to?" Healy asks, car keys twirling on his index finger.
"The nearest bar. We're not on the clock until tomorrow afternoon and I need to celebrate getting my hand back. Why don't you want to move in with us?"
Healy pinches the bridge of his nose. "March. You have a two bedroom house. It doesn't make sense. Where are you going to put me?"
"We'll come up with something."
"Oh. Well. Clearly you've got it handled."
"Thank you."
The bar is a favorite of March's, a total dive. He likes it because they know him there, because they don't even ask him what he wants anymore, they just give him the Scotch. It's efficient, he says.
He doesn't give up on the thing about Healy moving in.
"March. I've seen you every day for the past six weeks. We are about to open a detective agency together. Don't you want some time at home with your daughter? So you don't get sick of me?"
"No. Why?" He frowns, just slightly. "Are you getting sick of me?"
"I'm sick of you right now. Why do you want me to move in so bad?"
"You and Holly talked it over?"
"Yeah, I talked it over with your thirteen year old daughter. I know why Holly wants me to move in. I'm asking you."
March presses the cool glass into his cheek, thinks it over. It's maybe the most thought he's ever watched March give anything. "I can't…" he begins, and then rejects whatever that sentence was going to be. He takes a deep pull on his cigarette, a gulp of Scotch, tries again.
"I promised Holly that I would rebuild our house," March says around the cigarette hanging from his lip. "Our real house, the one she grew up in. The one that…"
"Yeah," Healy says, remembering the empty lot. "I know the one."
"Yeah. I promised her that a really long time ago, and I haven't…"
"Gotten to it," Healy finishes.
"Yeah. And, um. And I won't." He turns the glass on his coaster, makes a perfect wet ring. "I won't ever get to it."
Healy nudges his shoulder hard. "Come on."
"I won't," March says. "I don't have the follow-through to build a whole house. That's not a power I have."
"You got powers now?"
"Yeah, actually." He counts on his fingers. "I can always tell when somebody's lying to me, I'm preternaturally charming and I can't be killed. I just can't build a house." He presses one fingertip into Healy's bicep, dimples his leather jacket. "Not without you."
Healy swats his hand away. "March, I've never built anything in my life."
"Doesn't matter. If you lived at our place, you'd drive past that empty lot every day and it'd piss you off so bad and make you so crazy that you'd actually do something about it."
"As opposed to?
"Drink." The word comes out like a hiccup, thick and phlegmy. "And feel sorry for yourself."
"You want your house built? Hire a contractor."
March's foot knocks against Healy's ankle under the bar. "You're a lot cheaper than a contractor, Jack."
Healy slides a hand against the back of March's neck and tugs him by the collar of his jacket. "Cutting you off. Let's get you home."
March acquieses with a boneless whine.
The drive home is a series of brief illuminations by the orange streetlights: March lolling in the passenger seat, wet-eyed, his stare fixed immovable on Healy. When they pass by the empty lot with its shimmering chain link fence, he sees the small warm glow of Holly, reading by flashlight alone on the dark and windswept hill.
"You're sure?" March asks as they weave their way across the lawn to the front door, arm slung across Healy's shoulder.
"Yeah. I'm sure."
March laughs hot and wheezing against Healy's ear. "Liar."
Healy grips him a little tighter by the collar of his shirt as he digs through March's pockets for house keys.
"You're a fucking liar, Jack." Healy can feel March's grin against the side of his head. Nothing in jacket pockets but lint and a squashed pack of smokes. Healy moves on to searching his trousers, patting his pockets in turn. "You want everybody to think you're this big tough guy who doesn't need anything and eugh, marriage ruined my life, my ex took my balls in the divorce."
March's voice goes scratchy and whiny. Healy thinks it's supposed to be an impression of him. Not a good one. "Did you lose your keys?" he asks after frisking March's back pockets and coming up empty.
"But actually, actually -" and March is jabbing him in the chest now with a finger and the urge to break it is overwhelming. " - you want what I got. Yeah. You wish you had the happy marriage and the kid and the house with a fucking…fish in the yard, but you're too scared to go for it because you're a junkyard dog and you ruin everything you touch and now I'm handing it to you and you won't take it even though it's the closest you're ever gonna g-"
Healy lifts him by his stupid fucking lapels and slams him hard against the door to show him he's being serious. Except March isn't being serious, March has a big wide smile on his face and a lunatic sparkle in his eyes and when March balls his fists up in the collar of Healy's shirt and yanks, Healy's a little bit curious about what he's trying to do.
March's face crashes into his, mouth and teeth first.
Healy goes real still for a second. Let's see where he's going with this.
March's lips move against his, violent and then almost gentle, his breath boozy and hot in Healy's mouth. He throws one arm around Healy's head to hold him in place. One leg linked around Healy's, March's heel digging into his calf.
Healy twists his head to the side, breaks the kiss. "March," he gasps against his cheek. "March. What are you doing?"
March adjusts his lock on Healy's head, mustache tickling against the corner of Healy's mouth. "'M seducing you. Keep up, man."
"What about your wife?"
"What about your wife? Just because we used to be married to other people, we're supposed to be nuns forever? Stop trying to kill the mood."
Healy eases March back, feet on the ground, shoulders braced against the door. "You're drunk."
March blinks at him. "Nnnhmm?"
"You don't want to do this, it's just a stupid idea you had while you were drunk."
March frowns. "No, excuse me, I had this idea sober. I'm executing it drunk." Almost fussily, March adjusts the lapels of Healy's jacket. "I'm sorry I said you ruin everything you touch. I didn't mean it; I just wanted to piss you off. You're actually pretty good at most things. Except finding clues. And kissing, apparently."
"Oh, excuse me. I didn't realize that's what that was. I kinda thought I was being attacked."
"Okay, fine, make your excuses." March produces the keys from seemingly nowhere. "Do you wanna come in with me or what?"
They slam hard against the concrete wall of the foyer, so hard that something somewhere else in the house rattles.
"Door," March manages, giving it a frantic kick so it slams shut, so the whole neighborhood can't watch. Healy grabs him tight, shucks the jacket down over his shoulders and onto the hallway floor. In a moment, March's hands are on his face, cradling his jaw. "D'you want a drink?" he rasps.
"No, March," he says as they push each other toward March's bedroom. "I don't want a drink."
"Or I could put a record on," he pants. "If you want."
March is sloppy, stumbling. Healy holds him up by his belt. "Weren't you the one in such a hurry?"
"Well, yeah, but I just realized this isn't very romantic."
"Do you want to stop long enough to put on a record?"
March lunges for him.
The next few minutes are a hot, frantic, blind stumble of grasping hands and kicked off shoes and Healy only knows that he's half-terrified, that he kinda wants to climb inside March, that he kinda wants to let March do whatever he wants with him, just to see if that's even something he can stand. Then the backs of his knees blunder against a mattress and he falls backward into March's unmade bed, hits the loud, patterned sheets with a grunt.
And then March is on top of him, straddling Healy's hips, pinning his wrists over his head, kissing him hard and deep and Healy's head overfull with the scent of secondhand smoke and secondhand Scotch and the cologne March wears for the world. Or maybe for him. He's got no choice but to take it, no choice but to lie still and to kiss back. Or, there are always choices. There just aren't any others he's willing to make.
March lets go of his wrists after a little bit, starts laboriously and clumsily unbuttoning Healy's shirt.
("You rip my shirt, we're gonna have problems," Healy gasps.
"Ugh."
"How many shirts do you think I have?"
"However many it is, you should have one less because this one's ugly.")
March crowds him up against the headboard, pins him by the shoulders to the rattling, metal bars. He unbuckles Healy's belt, pulls it out of the loops so fast and hard that it cracks. He takes Healy's wrists, one in each hand, and guides them behind him, against one of the bars.
"What're you doing?" Healy pants as he feels his own warm belt slide firm around his wrists.
March's face is jammed up against Healy's throat, trying to peer down at his handiwork, and the buzz of his voice makes Healy hard. "I'm gonna suck your cock and I don't want you to accidentally break my neck if you get too worked up. Hold still."
Healy takes a deep breath, holds real still.
As March swears against his ear and fumbles with the long ends of the belt, Healy's realizing that a self-improvement kick can kinda be a distraction from deeper problems, stones unturned.
As March tears at the button on his jeans and bites a line down Healy's chest, Healy's realizing that he trusts March, actually trusts him. Trusts him in a stupid, earnest way in the face of overwhelming evidence. He knows from experience that March will stumble, blunder, fuck up, take the easy way out and fall from a great height, but he also knows he won't ever betray.
As Healy lifts his hips to help March yank his pants down around his knees, he realizes that March can't tie someone up for shit. Experimentally, Healy eases his hand out of the belt loop, slides it back in. Oh well, he thinks as March runs his hands up and down his bare thighs, as he settles the wet, perfect heat of his mouth over Healy's cock. Honor system.
His head falls back against the gilt headboard with a muted clang. Healy shuts his eyes, breathes deep through his nose, tries to just let it happen.
This isn't exactly new. Not the blowjob (he's had a few, although admittedly not many) and not the guy (what's a handjob here and there between friends?) but the bed underneath him and the importance of the guy on top of him and the looming threat-promise of domesticity and the fact that it's March: that's all new, and it makes Healy feel strange and uncertain and shaky.
His nerves have him ungrateful, so when March lifts his head, releases him with a soft pop, the strangled growl that comes out of Healy startles them both. "Everything good?"
Healy nods, breath coming hard.
"OK, 'cause…" March takes Healy in hand, smears his spit down the length of Healy's cock in a couple of long, lazy strokes. "I dunno, you seemed quiet."
"What? Did you want me to complain the whole time?"
"That'd be kinda fun," March says almost to himself as he nuzzles against the base of Healy's cock.
"Just…" Healy's voice, his thoughts become distant as he watches. "Just keep doing what you're doing."
March takes him in his mouth again and Healy falls back against the headboard again. He grips the bars tight, rolls his hips gently and insistantly against March's mouth. March chokes a little, adjusts, accepts.
And Healy's adjusting too, rethinking a few things. Mostly the way March looks at him sometimes, that fond, wet-eyed stare. The way he's looking up at him now. And about how it feels to do a patch job on March's fucked up life and how it feels so easy and natural and necessary and how there's nobody on the planet whose life he wants to fix more, including himself.
March sucks gently, insistantly, and Healy has to fight not to buck sharp up into March's face and snap his nose. Instead he lifts his hips a quivering inch off the bed and March takes full advantage and slides his palms up the backs of Healy's thighs to grab his ass in big, possessive handfuls, to guide his thrusts. And now Healy's job is to take direction, to be pliable, when all he wants to do is grab March by his stupid, floppy hair and fuck his face hard.
Still. Honor system.
That's what's making it work. It's not that March tied his hands, it's that he wants Healy to be still and Healy's doing it, even though he doesn't really have to. It feels good to be good. It feels good to be brought in from the cold.
March takes him deep, so deep Healy feels March's throat flex around him and he feels March's fingertips brush against the cleft of his ass and he feels himself tipping, cresting, falling, wrenching at the bars of the headboard as he comes.
March props himself up on his elbows, swipes the back of his hand across his mouth, looks up at Healy, gasping and limp. "You wanna move in now?" he asks.
Healy slips the belt, seizes March by the collar of his shirt and drags him into his lap. March goes along unresisting, straddles Healy's thigh and kisses him deep, hands roaming over Healy's bare chest and toying optimistically with his spent cock until Healy jams his hand down the front of March's pants and palms his hard, leaking cock, barehanded. March whines, jerks into Healy's hand, feverish and desperate.
Healy throws his arm around March's waist to keep him close and strokes him punishingly, mercilessly until March comes with a strangled yelp and slumps boneless in Healy's arms.
"Jesus," March wheezes boozily against Healy's mouth. "Ever heard of foreplay?"
"Did you want foreplay?" Healy asks, wiping his hand off on March's shirt.
"No." March nips at him. "Fuck."
They seperate weakly, stickily, peeling away and discarding remaining articles of clothing until they're both bare together under the sheets.
"You didn't answer my question," March says, giving Healy a gentle kick under the sheets.
"We can talk about it tomorrow," he says. "When you're sober."
March considers, frowning. "But not no?"
Healy sighs. "Not no."
March kicks him under the sheets again. Out of enthusiasm this time. He runs his hand up and down Healy's arm, brushes his thumb against the pale, waxen splash of the scar on his bicep. "What's this from?" he asks, sleepily.
"I got shot," Healy says. "In that diner, you know."
March's head shoots up from the pillow. "What? When did this happen?"
"Unbelievable." Healy tries to roll over, turn his back on March, but March reaches out and stops him and Healy can't really tell from the sleepy, swimmy look in March's eye if he's joking or not.
They stay like that, eye to eye, until March begins to drift off and the room fills with his deep, drunken snores.
Healy follows the hands on his watch for a few revolutions before he begins to extricate himself from the bed, as he hunts down his underwear from the floor, as he considers his next move. He could go home, of course. He could creep away in the dark, head back to his apartment over The Comedy Store, fall asleep TV static and never speak to Holland March again.
Abject cowardice. Abject was one of the words of the day back in August and he kinda liked it. No, he'd stay the night and in the morning, while March battled his hangover, they'd hash it all out. And then he'd either leave forever anyway, or they'd pretend this never happened, or…
…Or everything would be different.
Healy pulls on his briefs and undershirt, folds up the rest of his stuff and leaves it in a neat little pile on what he guesses is his side of the bed for the forseeable future. He steps out into the foyer. He hangs up their jackets and lines up their shoes by the wall. He goes to the kitchen sink, pours himself a big glass of water, and almost fucking drops it when he spots Holly, sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.
"Hey, Mr. Healy," she says, hands folded businesslike in front of her. "Sorry if I scared you."
Healy braces himself on the counter, exhales deeply. "Why are you sitting there in the dark? Don't be eerie, honey."
"Sorry," she says again. "I just got back from the old house and I kinda wanted a snack and now I'm just sitting here thinking about stuff." She inclines her head toward the bedroom door. "What happened in there?"
Healy sighs, opens up the fridge and takes out two Yoohoos, passing one to Holly. "You don't wanna know, kid."
"Gross," she says, but there's no real disgust in her voice. She pops the top, takes a swig. "Does this mean you're moving in?"
Healy sends the cap of his Yoo-hoo spinning, taps hers with a clink. "We're negotiating. Do you guys have like an extra toothbrush here or something?"
Holly considers. "I think the dentist gave me a freebie at my last appointment," she says at last.
Healy's new toothbrush is pink and glittery, and it sits next to March's in the bathroom.
Healy comes out to make coffee and finds Holly in her pajamas, watching the new fishtank like it's television.
"Do they have names?" she asks, cereal spoon suspended between the bowl and her mouth, face bathed in shimmering blue light.
"Not yet," Healy says. "You want to name 'em?"
She leans in so her nose is almost touching the glass, points out one fish. "Johnny." Another one. "Sid." She realizes that's all of them. "We gotta get more fish," Holly concludes.
"If you say so," he says as March slides in behind him, arms snaked around Healy's middle, and Healy doesn't even jump. Something he's been working on, for the sake of household peace and an end to bloodshed.
"This is nice," March says, his hair wet and freshly washed against Healy's shoulder. "Holly always wanted a pet."
"I wanted a dog," she clarifies, eyes on the tank. "But this is cool too."
"We have to check up on that soap opera guy," Healy reminds March as he pushes a warm mug into his hands. "And there's the new client in Los Feliz, you know."
"Mmph." March sips meditatively at his coffee, blinks a little bit of his hangover away. Sotto voice, he adds, "So, right now, do you think?"
"Gotta be."
"Alright." Louder, he says to Holly, "Hey, sweetheart? Put some real clothes on. We're going for a walk."
Holly turns, frowns suspiciously. "A walk?"
"Yeah. Around the neighborhood. As a family-slash-detective agency."
"We don't do that. I go for walks. You maybe walk, like, for work. What is this? Mr. Healy?"
"It's fine," he assures her. "It's not far. Just go get ready. And you don't have to call me mister."
"Well, I'm not calling you by your first name. That's weird." Still, she sets her bowl aside on the kitchen counter and goes off in search of a pair of overalls.
Everything is different now, but mostly in good ways. He said goodbye to the old studio apartment over The Comedy Store. Moving out only took the three of them a single trip: Healy with his one suitcase, March wrestling with the empty fishtank, Holly protecting the plastic bag of fish with her life. Now Healy sleeps with no strange tides of laughter beneath him, only March's snores and the gurgles and hums of this stupid house.
Healy got a little rough with the landlord on his first week and now there's real glass in the front windows and a flapping tarp stapled to the roof to keep the animals out. Band-Aids, but it's good enough for now.
They walk out into the thin, smoggy sunlight, stroll down the cracked sidewalks as the palm trees sway and the 9-to-5ers roll groggily out of their driveways to go die in traffic. Healy doesn't like this neighborhood all that much, really. He just likes the people he's with.
March bumps his shoulder nervously, excitedly, and Healy squeezes him back. Because the other thing that's different is that they're saving on gas and rent now, like Holly said. And maybe if that happened a few months ago, that money would get pissed away on booze and cigars and terrible ideas. But they're together now, and Healy knows exactly how much March makes, and when somebody gives him a job to do, he fucking does it.
Holly's walking ahead of them, but she freezes when she sees the lot with its chain link fence open, with the excavator chewing up the earth, with the men in hard hats swarming the hill like ants. She doesn't jump for joy. She's just still, stricken.
After a few seconds, she turns back to her father, her face pale. "You didn't sell it?" she says.
March scoffs. "What? No. No, it's still ours. It's just the foundation for now, but-"
Holly buries her face in her father's side and he holds her for a long while.
After a long minute, she reaches without looking and grabs tight to Healy's wrist. He lets her pull him in.
The plan for the new house still has only two bedrooms.