Page 68 of Oddly Fine

“Stop the car,” he ordered abruptly, as cold as the ice apparently running through Beckett’s veins.

Beckett shot him an odd look—as though trying to guess whether Hayes was about to puke or not—but immediately pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. Hayes opened the door without speaking and stepped out.

Hayes had noticed that in Quebec, every road sign was bilingual. Hell—every sign, whether a restaurant, an advertisement, or a roadblock, was in both French and English. Ever since they’d arrived in the province, Hayes had made a game out of trying to pronounce all the French words on the signs. As he stood there on the side of the road, arms crossed and staring off at a small, wooded area, he read the “keep out” sign aloud over and over.

“Entrée interdite,” he muttered under his breath, trying to calm his whirling, confusing thoughts. Repetitive actions and words were naturally soothing to him, so he just needed to get in the zone and he’d be fine. He was sure of it.

“Never seen you get carsick before—” Beckett said, as he walked up to stand next to Hayes. “Was it my mother’s cooking? Or my brother’s brain splatter?”

That was Hayes’ breaking point. So much for being in the zone.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Hayes snarled as he whirled around to glare at Beckett. A part of him was shocked by the intensity of his anger as he stared down the man he loved.

If Beckett was surprised by his outburst, he didn’t show any sign of it. That lack of reaction only added fuel to the fire.

“Don’t bother answering,” Hayes commanded harshly before Beckett could mouth off. “I expect it’ll be nothing but bullshit anyway.” Shaking his head, he turned to walk back to the SUV.

“Nice to know you’re on my side,” Beckett huffed, like Hayes had thrown him under a bus.

“What side?!” Hayes roared, whirling back around to face him. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt quite so out of control. He felt—disillusioned or lost. Like maybe he didn’t know the man he loved nearly as well as he thought he had.

Beckett just stood there, not speaking, looking at him quizzically.

“We just—I just—” Hayes stuttered to a halt, striving to collect his thoughts before trying again. “You just watched your own brother plummet to his death, and you—” he stopped, bit his bottom lip. “You felt nothing? I don’t understand, Beckett—” he declared, words tumbling out of their own accord. “Did you hate him? Or—or, is it some kind of reverse psychology thing? Are you trying not to feel? I can’t—I don’t—” he stammered and suddenly found himself unable to continue. For some reason, as he shut his eyes standing there on the side of the road, it wasn’t Franklin’s body he saw lying on the ground, but his parents—single shots to the center of their foreheads, bleeding out on an expensive rug. Different but the same. Not the sight—but the grief. It was intimate and haunting, and he could never shake free of it. And maybe, just maybe, his anger—this bright, boiling thing inside of him now, was based primarily on jealousy rather than shock. How was Beckett so still and calm? How could he live with this boiling, raging, pain inside him? It was his goddamned brother!

Beckett opened his mouth to answer—too quickly for his reply to be anything other than a thoughtless, sarcastic remark that would only add more fuel to Hayes’ angry dismay—but then he snapped his jaw shut. And just like that Beckett broke. Not just his façade, or that seemingly impenetrable shield of anger, or that armor of dark humour. All the sharp and angled sides of Beckett that made him so adept at deflecting everything abruptly shattered, like a bullet hitting a mirror.

“D’you know what he told me when I got home after serving in hell in that fucking desert?” Beckett asked, staring at Hayes, eyes shiny with tears. “He fucking told me I was a landmine. Not a timebomb—not something visible and flashing warning signs. But something buried, and hidden, that could go off at anytime, and take out as many people as I’d manage to reel in by some miracle.” His voice was filled with anger, pain, and regret. “He called me repeatedly for weeks. Yelled at me to get help. Dragged therapists to my door and forced me to see them. There were speeches and letters, and an endless fucking tirade of arguments about my mental state, and the world’s inability to deal with veterans, and the unavoidable certainty of depression and—the—the fucking suicide rates of POWs!” he yelled, and it was so goddamned refreshing to hear something other than sarcasm and humour out of his lover’s mouth that Hayes had to restrain the smile he knew would not be welcomed. “He berated me! For years! Years!” Beckett exclaimed. “And then the fucker goes off and fucking jumps off a goddamned overpass?!” Beckett yelled, even louder this time, pointing angrily at the woods like Franklin might be hiding there, watching them yell at each other. “After all of his goddamned speeches—all his goddamned preaching about all the harm I’d cause the world and our family if I harmed myself, he went off and did exactly that?” Beckett barked a rough laugh. He stomped away and grabbed at his hair, like he might be tempted to pull it out. Unsure what to do, Hayes followed him, watching him closely.

“D’you know—” he began, turning to speak to Hayes, apparently unsurprised to find him standing a few feet away. “D’you know how many goddamned times it crossed my mind?” he asked, voice suddenly reduced to a whisper.

A confession—Hayes realised. A secret buried beneath years of always claiming he was perfectly fine. His jade green eyes, usually so full of life and sparkling, now bright with distress and pain. “D’you know how many times I imagined putting my fucking Glock to my head and getting it over with? Just to get the goddamned bugs out of my head—the fucking monsters from under my skin!” He was shouting again towards the end, like he’d been riding a roller coaster of thoughts and emotions that he couldn’t navigate properly. He laughed maniacally. “You know what I saw on that tape?” he asked Hayes, though it was clear he wasn’t expecting any kind of answer. “Relief. The kind I fought tooth and fucking nail not to want or expect because my sonofabitch brother wouldn’t let me ruin everyone else’s life simply because I’d enlisted and chosen to fuck up my own!”

Hayes was certain that those were not Beckett’s own words. He was sure that they were Franklin’s. Buried deep and then re-surfacing, not unlike a worshiper saying his rosary.

“So fucking pardon me if I can’t forget or forgive the asshole for being a goddamned selfish, narcissistic coward!”

If he wanted to, Hayes could have countered all of it with logic. He could have told Beckett about statistics. About mental illness. About how depression ate at your brain until you were more “other” than you were “self,” and those decisions were not your own, but rather the result of a chemical imbalance. He could have stood there and yelled right back at him. Told Beckett that pain was not a contest. That he shouldn’t resent Franklin for the choice he’d made—not when he’d obviously been suffering so damned much, for so fucking long.

He could’ve, and perhaps, he should’ve—but he didn’t. He did none of those things. Instead, he wrapped his arms around Beckett, pressing his lover’s face against his chest, not because it would fix anything, but because the mere idea of Beckett wanting to kill himself was—God. Hayes felt like he’d forgotten not only how to breathe—but also how to think.

“Never,” Hayes insisted, his face buried in Beckett’s hair. “There isn’t a single monster worth your life,” he whispered, because he knew all too well exactly how it felt to have something that wasn’t you work its way under your skin—and lodge itself there permanently. “Franklin was right. Never—ever. No matter the nightmare, or the—” his voice broke on a sob. “I’d chase you all the way to hell, you bastard. I’d follow you and drag you back just so I could kick your ass myself.” The words tumbled out of his mouth without any kind of filter. Yet another example of how Beckett had changed him.

“It was a long time ago,” Beckett said, shrugging as if it was inconsequential. He looked infinitely smaller with his head down, leaning against Hayes’ chest. It would have been amusing if Hayes hadn’t found it all so goddamned terrifying.

“Don’t,” Hayes said, shaking his head. “I love you,” he declared, in case Beckett needed to be reminded. “You. The asshole. The hothead. The psycho. I love all of you—but this,” he said, waving towards the car. “This front—this act of dismissal, like we’re strangers again—like you’re alone, and the monsters are winning—I—we don’t deserve this.”

And it was perhaps the most serious conversation they’d had since acknowledging how they felt about one another. As a general rule, they were both pretty casual about the emotional aspects of their relationships. They went with the flow. Rolled with the punches. Found their footing in shit storms and weathered them. This was different.

Beckett struggled to regain his composure. For a brief moment, he looked slightly guilty or ashamed of his behavior, but then signs of those emotions disappeared, not hidden, more like—dismissed.

“Grief feels like a bad prom date. No action, lots of regret. It’s easier to be angry,” he admitted, and while Hayes already knew that, he nodded in approval. “I know anger so fucking well.” Hiding his face against Hayes’ chest, he gave a tired sigh. “I can keep going with anger—grief feels like I’m drowning in that hellhole again,” he confessed, his voice muffled by Hayes’ jacket.

Hayes tightened his arms around Beckett and kissed the top of his head.

“I know,” Hayes said, because he did. “I’m sorry.”

And for the first time, perhaps, it seemed like the words—a gesture of peace—sank in completely and Beckett seemed to fully understood the sentiment behind them. I’m sorry—not an inane social platitude or an echo of cultural politeness, but an expression of genuine sentiment. I’m sorry that your skins feels like it’s on fire and that your thoughts are nailed to the bottom of your boots.