The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Huhm, did I already post this already?

Oh, well, if I did. And I think rymenhild  has already read it, and found it a tetch too baroque, or was that the sequel to this? And if it was, why would I show someone the sequel without the original? Clearly I am losing my mind. Well, enjoy.

He wedged his elbows against the denim of his knees, and tried to sleep. There was a rattling window at his back, smudged, cold, day-streaked.Pale freezing light made it hard to close his eyes. The train was making good time, south and away to Vienna. Or maybe this was not that train. The wind beside him and the rails beneath beat out Everett, Everett and he had no idea where he was going.
            In his dream they were all still sitting at the table, riddling and talking while a poppy-red bowl piled and heaped and spilled onto the table, full of mussel shells, clam jackets and smaller spirals Rett couldn't name. Lucy was closest, her breath gusting pepper, her fingers sticky. Her smile was a little too generous, the way it had been, from wine. Under the sea-stained oilcloth she was bumping ankles with Lior, across the table; Lior turned four shades of sunset under olive, and looked down at her bread. It wasn't the two of them, not yet, not then. Rett rolled his eyes and sucked his teeth, and someone was speaking to him, so he no longer had to watch Luce being a fool.
            "What's the B for in Everett B. Connor?"
            "It's for his middle name," Lucy cut across the noise, some half-elegant movement of wrist and hand that was meant to forestall discussion, and only sloshed clam broth onto Rett's plate.
            "Is it Bernard, or Bertrand, or something similarly bad?"
            "Bad,' Rett agreed, warming even in the dream.
            "Birkenstock!'
            "Boromir!"
            Eight, ten people were calling their guesses down the table, and Lucy was overcome, broad giggles drowning Everett's right ear. But the one person who might have spoken the answer, the one wry voice he blushed expecting, never came.
 
            Heat and grease slid into his throat on the loud breath of a train at line's ending. Everett put one hand down for his pack, the other up to knock sweat-stuck hair from his forehead. This was Atlanta, not Vienna, and he was near as anything to the whole point of everything, and for the first time in months' travel, he had to call Luce.
            She answered, and below the train station clamor Rett could hear her throwing her weight across the bed, the slight gasping intake of breath as she settled to speak.
            "Luce?"
            "Rett? Where the holy fuck are you? No, don't tell me. Just come home."
            "How's Lior?"
            "What? She's fine." Lucy, a thousand miles away, was thrown and running her round fingers through the crop of her pale hair. Some things Rett knew without hearing. "We're all... pretty much fine."
            "I'm in Atlanta," Everett said, softly.
            "Please, don't do any-"
            Because he did not know if he had the nerve, even without Luce's voice in his head, he let down the phone.
 
            His name was James, though Luce had called him Jimmy. He had blue eyes, touched around the iris-rims with green; an indolent one-dimpled smile, and enough good things to make Rett stop looking at Lucy for five solid seconds, and then for a year.
            Ganymede, Lior or Paul had said of him, laughing but not unkind. Sweet Jimmy, said Lucy, to tease out one of his smiles. He came from somewhere warmer, that was all Rett knew at first: he always wore two sweaters, rusty black and gravel gray, over his plain ironed shirts. He always looked far from home.
            They had been up to Everett's room twice, and Rett already knew James liked tangerine tea over raspberry, liked having his collarbones licked, liked Everett, before he knew that James had two sisters, two parents, and a Siberian husky in a suburb outside Atlanta.
            "Atlanta's not that far," Rett had said.
            "You're right. It could be farther," said James, and not much else.
 
            The address was right, going by the thumbed-over steno pad Rett had found in James' things. Mom and Dad, small, and then the house number, with James' nines and crossed-through sevens. It was just a house, a bungalow sagging forward on columns of brick, with a dog run in the turned-clay front yard and enough wisteria to drench the air purple.
            Show me,  Everett thought, or wished; show me what about this place made you what you were. But it was a house, with a red front door and a chain-link side gate lacking a latch. Now he was here, in the syrupy sunlight, Rett had no ideas. Speeches in dreams, or books, were one thing; now all he had was the thick tightness of his heart beating too fast, blocking his mouth, and wisteria-heavy air making him sick.  I want to ask you... I want to tell you... what you did... I'm going to kill you... I'll kill you... your son.      
            It hadn't happened the first time they were in bed together, or the third, and Everett forgot who had taken who, that night. All the memories of their bedroom were shuffled now like slides. A shout in the night, and Rett woke and James was on the floor, the comforter only half keeping his naked skin from the chill in the air. After the first cry, he was not-crying, only gulping, keening in the dark. When Rett reached him, he shuddered and held on blind.
            "Hey, James. Jamie. Hey. I love you," Everett repeated, for half an hour or hours, on his knees until he couldn't feel his knees. James hunched against him, staring, silent. There was no web of scars for Everett to soothe with his fingertips in the darkness, but he could feel the web all the same, over them both. It was all the same span of memory now, the cold bedroom floor, the cold rain-edged window in Luce's bedroom. James wrapped in him, next to him, speaking; James in his sweaters, fallen so far, to pavement...
            The red door of the sun-struck house was opening, and Everett had to lean back against the rented car, fists curled, breathing harsh and wet. I came here to kill you, sorry it took about a year was not a good start, though it drew some sound from him, half laugh, half barking sob.
            It was a young woman who stood on the porch, one hand raised against the light. She didn't look like Jamie, not enough like him, and she spoke in an accent he'd trained away. "Sir? I'm really sorry, sir, can I help you?"
            "I'm looking for the Brennemans'," Rett got out, or most of it.
            She jumped down from the porch, dipping momentarily into shadow. "You... You must have known my brother."
            There were no answers sparking in her eyes; Everett was not sure exactly what was there.
            "Please go away," she said, startling him completely.
            He didn't move.
            "Go away!"
            "I need to talk to-"
            "He's not here!"
            "I'll wait."