Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tim stares at his reflection in the grimy mirror on the back of the door. Time seems to slip beneath him, the clock ticking down faster now he’s not watching. He needs to leave but he can’t seem to move his feet. Cold seeps into his fingers, his breath fogging his slightly warped reflection.

He’s worn a collar -- on and off -- for the past six years, is used to the starched feel of it against his throat. It’s nearly a comfort at this point -- the layering of clothing across his collarbone, the twine and chain of scapular and cross, the sharp cut of his shirt collar, the thick chunk of material that settles across his Adam’s apple.

It looks like nothing when he slips it out from under the worn loops of his collarino, the linen limp when he throws it into the bag. His skin looks washed out when he glances at the mirror again, the collar of his shirt gaping slightly, neck bared. Tim swallows, watches the way his throat moves. A different man entirely.

“Laughlin,” O’Neill says from the doorway, his foot jammed between the door and the jamb. He’s got this wide-eyed look on his face, as if he’s not quite sure what he’s seeing before him either. “We need to go.”

He catches O’Neill glancing down the corridor -- checking if the coast is clear -- and Tim’s reminded of what’s at stake here. They can’t know he was here, most of the seminary hierarchy already critical of his political outreach activities. O’Neill’s taking a risk having snuck him back into the dorm for his things, brief shelter from the prying eyes that are after him. He’d already pulled a few things from their ancient wardrobe, shirts folded roughly into his gym bag.

“Tim --”

For fuck’s sake. Finally, finally, Tim forces himself away from the mirror. Revolted in himself.

O’Neill gives him a long look when he bundles him into the back of the car and Tim finds himself staring back at him, cataloguing the way his collar looks a little limp, the crumpled corner of his shirt. His hair is a mess, wild-eyed, young. Like looking in a mirror again, a negative image of himself.

“O’Neill,” Tim croaks, mouth dry. Thinks of all the things that have passed between them. “Paul --”

“Go!” O’Neill urges him -- one last look -- and Tim settles back into the car, knowing in his gut that it’s the last time he’ll ever see him.

*

“This is nearly romantic,” Marcus says when Tim meets him at Columbus Circle. He presses a thin envelope into his palm, looking furtively over his shoulder at the gathering commuter traffic swarming out of Union Station. “Always thought you must get off on the danger.”

It’s maybe reckless but Tim had thought they’d blend in more easily, that it was better to get the bus from D.C. rather than out of Baltimore.

“He wants me to see you on to the bus,” Marcus says, hesitantly, when Tim doesn’t respond.

Tim snorts. Of course he fucking does. Tim’s spent the last ten years trying to get out under the weight of Hawk’s gaze only to find he’s been keeping tabs on him all this time. Of course, Hawk thinks he has the authority to dictate what happens here.

“Where else am I going to go?” Tim asks, his voice betraying how resigned he actually is by this fact.

Marcus gives him a thin smile, Tim can see the weight on his shoulders. He claps his palm against Marcus’s arm in thanks, gives him a wave as he sinks back into the crowds heading towards the bus depot and hopes it isn’t the last time he sees him for a while.

And then it’s two and a half hours on the cramped back of a bus to leafy and golden Pennsylvania countryside. And it’s Hawk driving up to him on the side of the road as if it hadn’t been over a decade since they’d seen each other. And it’s his nose pressed to the leather of the back seat, Hawk’s voice floating over his shoulder, the hum of the radio turned down low -- Robin Gibb’s pitched warble asking them to hold on, the opening chords of the Doors’ latest offering, something that sounds like Glen Campbell -- Hawk snaps the radio off half way through the tinkling crescendo of Dedicated to the One I Love, Michelle Phillips just audible under Hawk’s heaving sigh.

He looks good. Tim allows himself to think that as he follows him into the cabin, the crackle of early morning frost under his feet. Hardly aged, growing into this softer hair cut, the knit of his jumper rather than a sharp suit collar, the way his chinos cut around the curve of his ass better than slacks.

Tim busies himself with unpacking, of settling in, of setting up boundaries. And Hawk manages to barge right through them as usual. Sets his hooks into Tim’s soft flesh and tugs, has Tim scrambling up the hill to the main house to catch sight of this other side of him -- bathed in warm lamp light, loose with a good drink, the laughter of his family.

It was nearly too much after so long of nothing at all. Having him within walking distance, the smell of him in this cabin, the haphazard way the bed is made -- neat and respectable but clearly Hawk’s own doing and not his wife’s, blankets and sheets unironed and worn in. The shaving kit in the bathroom, Tim’s thumb to the sharp edge of the razor, all evidence of Hawk’s continued existence beyond the shadow of Tim’s life.

And his fucking kid. On the other side of a brass shot gun, so lacking in use that Tim’s sure it will backfire and get them both.

A tour in the Army and Tim only has a few dozen issues of the Stars and Stripes under his belt. Hawk’s string-pulling got him a good gig, something he still half-hates him for. But he saw France, visited Paris, put Hawk out of his head as best as he could. And it worked for a while -- head cleared by learning how to ride a motorbike through the French countryside, by the strict routine of the Army even a world away from combat, by plain food and fasting.

He thankfully never had to face a belligerent enemy in foreign territory but he suddenly feels the panic of it, the way his stomach goes liquid and hot. He thinks of those poor boys being drafted out into the far east and what’s got him in this mess to begin with.

And he looks like him. Jackson. If Tim could close his eyes and think of Hawk as a child, hair too long over his forehead, bright eyes glinting under a cheeky smile. He hasn’t seen him since that rainy night all those years ago, when Jackson didn’t even have a name yet, but had burrowed deep under Tim’s skin and made him feel sick.

Those handful of days, the few that were allocated to them in Extra Time. Tim’s skin goosepimpled on the side of the bed farthest from the space heater, the splinters in his fingers when Tim caught the doorframe to get the key, those makeshift lunches Hawk would bring -- milk, bread, cheese -- eaten in the unwashed bedsheets of the living room.

Brought to a swift and righteous end. Tim half-mad in a hospital hallway. It’s nearly too much.

And here he is, giving Hawk’s awful advice back to his kid -- everyone lies -- the inevitability of it is nearly preordained.

He feels sick about it afterwards. He was never meant to see these children as anything more than half-formed corporal beings. They were supposed to be just names in the Birth Announcement section, an ill-advised five minutes in front of an obstetrics nursery, the silent understanding to Make it Easy.

So. Lie.

As history tipped into 1960, Tim filled his days with reading, clerking on Madison Avenue for the money since his name was tarnished in D.C. He slept in the box room in Grandma Gaffney’s apartment, the thin walls deterring him from partaking in the pleasures of the flesh. Listened to her lament the loss of Father Coughlin from the airwaves twenty years after the fact, listened to her criticisms of her Jesuit brother out in St Paul, her hacking cough as she made Easter dinner for a dwindling depressed group of diners.

Tim had wondered if this was his punishment, if he had already made it to purgatory. The days running into one another without any bright spots, days and weeks and months melding together in dry monotony.

He shouldered her coffin under the threshold of Holy Cross on a damp April morning and it felt like freedom and a death knell in one fell swoop.

That long summer spent in Staten Island in his sister’s guest room, all those hours babysitting and learning how to eat a proper meal again. He listened to his mother every Sunday as she tried to set him up with some nice girl from Margaret’s parish, avoided his sister’s increasingly lingering and weighted glances over the dinner table. And here, it was somehow harder to resist the temptation. Long afternoons on the beach surrounded by young fathers, watching the stretch of muscles during ad hoc volleyball games, every lick of an ice cream turned erotic.

Lie to yourself.

In the swampy heat of the Indian summer, he’d taken the bus to Baltimore and entered formation at St Mary’s. His sister had written -- flabbergasted -- offered her spare bedroom for as long as he had needed it. (“The baby is fine in our room for a while,” she had said when he made his weekly trip to the library to use the payphone without being overheard. “Don’t do this to yourself.”) He turned it all inward, found solace on his knees. Funnelled all that pent up energy into finding that middle ground, the gripping point where his love for Hawk would be subsumed by the love God had for him. And once that happened, he’d be proven right. Vindicated for his decision to leave D.C. that early summer morning, for turning on his heel in that hospital corridor, for shutting down that part of him, for turning his passion to helping others. He’d be on track again and that part of him -- the old Tim, the wrong Tim -- would melt away and he’d be finally wrought clean, soul purified for his higher calling, no longer a victim of his own sinful temptations.

He had gripped to that thought, that sweet anticipation of being proved right. Held it tight in his chest for the past six years and now he’s suddenly here, pushed out of the safe conclave of the seminary and into this wild winter’s night.

And so. He lies.

*

“Stay.”

Hawk’s voice is an echo, on constant replay over and over as he tries to sleep. Tim likes to imagine the scenario if Tim had refused, if he had scoffed and said no, if he had gathered the courage to do the right thing and hand himself in.

He imagines he’s the one that had said it, that Hawk was lying beside him right now and not a quarter mile away lying beside his wife. Or, when it’s very late and he’s half mad with tiredness, he imagines that he had said it to Hawk, whispered with urgency one of the afternoons at the abandoned apartment and then he wonders where they’d be then, if he’d still be on the sidelines, held at arms length, hidden in the cabin on the edge of Hawk’s life.

It’s tortuous, the smell of Hawk on the pillows, on the sheets. If Tim pressed his face into the soft creases of the sheets, he could imagine he was still there. Every towel in the bathroom has been roughened by his skin before him, the mattress dipped on one side. The blankets smell of them together, familiar and faded, all at once.

He hasn’t been so physically close to a man in over a year. The seminary is a strange place, hard to navigate. In some respects, he’s never been more intimate with his friends and colleagues -- living together, praying together, sharing their confession -- and other times, it’s hollow, perfunctory. O’Neill and Tim had come to a silent understanding when they were paired up to share a dormitory, both of them pretending that they don’t hear each other when their resolve breaks. Tim watched as others slipped out of the grounds and returned in the morning, half the men in seminary living a parallel life before they took their final vows. O’Neill never left, his soft and coy face revealing how young he was, still green in the city.

Tim knew every sound he made, what each hitched breath meant in the dark of their shared bedroom. Had grown used to the anticipation in his gut when he heard O’Neill grow restless, the rustle of sheets when he gave in, the slick sound of his hand when he pushed the covers away. He grew hot, Tim could always tell when a blush crept over his skin, but it was an invitation too, an unspoken allowance they could both share in.

The stone hearth is cold on his bare back, cool air slipping down the chimney. It smells of wood and coal, the chalky smell of firelighters. They had stood here earlier today, Hawk whispering him to stay, his mouth moving against Tim’s jaw and it had been too difficult to resist him, Tim unable to stop himself falling into the broad expanse of his chest.

When he left Baltimore, he did not see himself here -- the semi luxury of Hawk’s private space, the softness of the sheets. And yet, there’s a traitourous part of him that could have mapped this out perfectly, that soft and malleable part of him that was never going to escape this weekend unscathed.

And so he had found himself stripping slowly in the centre of the room, watching as Hawk did the same on the other side of the bed -- two layers of shirts, his undershirt, pants, underwear. Tim was already half naked, left his socks on as they climbed onto the bed.

He strips again, more hurried this time now he’s alone. He forgoes the bed -- doesn’t deserve it -- and lies prone in front of the fire, the slate digging into the soft space between his shoulder blades.

And Tim knows this as well. This strange little routine he and O’Neill would fall into when they felt they had to be closer to God. They’d lie on the cold floor, both of them bare arms and legs to the chilled floorboards between their beds. Sometimes their elbows would knock together and Tim liked it, the thrill of it, the intimacy of their silent prayer.

They never tossed off like this, even though they were close enough to touch, but sometimes knowing that he and O’Neill were in the same mindset made him hard. It would be a test of patience, his own penance in the darkness to resist touching himself. He’d be wracked with guilt afterwards, would spend extra time in the chapel, forgo breakfast and maybe lunch.

“Fasting isn’t meant to make you ill,” O’Neill would always say, watching as Tim sustained himself on thin broth. “Neither is praying.”

“I feel closer to God,” Tim would always reply. “And that’s what matters.”

“I feel closer to God, too,” O’Neill, a little petulant. A reminder of his youth, a reminder of what Tim had once been, naive cheeks stained red. “I feel closer when I’m with you.”

And if Tim felt lightheaded, he blamed it on the soup.

*

“Skip?” Hawk calls from the end of the drive. Jackson is loitering behind him, his face turned down into a frown at the name. They’re both tucked into their coats, white plumes of air from their heavy breathing from walking up the hill.

Tim feels caught. This was meant to be easy -- head up to the house and catch him in the lingering quiet from the party, Hawk wouldn’t argue in the hush to hide from Lucy, and he could use the phone.

“Go on up to the house, bud,” Hawk says, shoving Jackson in front of him and onto the path. He looks so ready to refuse, to start to squabble that Tim finds himself smiling.

“He’ll only be a minute,” Tim reassures, pasting a smile on for his benefit.

Hawk looks relieved, his face curling into a frown as he takes the two or three strides to meet him.

“I have to go,” Tim tells him. “I have to turn myself in. It’s the right thing to do and that’s more important.”

“No,” Hawk murmurs, his hand coming up to brace against Tim’s shoulders. “No, you need to stay. Skippy, you cannot go to prison. Twelve years is so long.”

Tim shakes out of his grip but doesn’t step back. “I know quite well how long twelve years is.”

Hawk’s face softens, his hands coming up again to cup around Tim’s jaw. They’re too exposed to do this and Tim has a flare of panic about where Jackson is, spying on them no doubt, but Hawk’s face takes up the entirety of his vision, his palms reassuringly warm despite the cold morning.

“Please.” Hawk’s voice dips down, his thumb against Tim’s bottom lip. It’s as much as they can do in public like this, each sweep of it over Tim’s mouth feels like a proxy kiss. “A few weeks, let me see if we can fix this. I need to fix this. Stay.”

Stay, stay, stay. And who is Tim to resist?

*

Hawk rolls over in the bed, stares at him like he’s trying to see deep down into his soul. They haven’t seen each other in so long and it’s just like before, like no time has passed.

It’s natural. There’s no sin in it. That’s all Hawk keeps saying. Whispers it to him as he pulls on Tim’s shirt, says it again when he tugs down his zipper, scrapes it across his jaw on the end of a kiss.

There's no sin in taking what is gratefully given, no sin in the purest of heart. Not when you're praying at the altar of Hawkins Fuller.

But Tim still feels the tendrils of guilt, so tightly wound around them both that Tim isn’t sure who is the more guilty now.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Hawk whispers, deep into the night when they should both be asleep. “I’ve missed you.”

“Don’t --” Tim murmurs, rolls over so he can’t see the dip in his forehead, the way he’s starting to frown.

“I have,” Hawk keeps going, his arm curling over Tim’s waist, his body pressed so close to Tim’s back that Tim can feel each breath, the soft expansion of his belly with every intake.

“Silly things, all the small things that I didn’t even know reminded me of you until it was gone.”

“Hawk,” Tim starts, trying to move away from him but finding that he’s burrowing closer. He rolls onto his front, Hawk following still pressed up against his back and they’ve tucked their faces together into the same crevice of the pillow. Hawk’s a heavy weight but Tim likes it, being weighed down into the mattress.

“And I had no one to tell them to,” Hawk keeps going, his voice muffled by the pillow but Tim can feel the timbre of it, the vibration through the cotton, his voice banking up against his cheek as if it was a real and tangible thing. “Like a secret --”

“It is a secret,” Tim says, turning quickly so he can see Hawk’s face. They’re too close, Tim’s nose glancing off Hawk’s cheekbone and for a moment, his whole face lights in a numbing pain and all he can think is -- he deserves this, deserves this sickened feeling in his stomach, the taste of copper against his teeth.

“It is,” Hawk says and there’s something hard in his voice, something that wouldn’t have been there if they talked like this last time.

“Do you ever wish it wasn’t?” Tim can’t help but ask, quiet, voice gone. And he listens, nose stinging, as Hawk’s laugh echoes hollowly through the cabin.

*

When Hawk finally leaves -- driving through the night, some cocked up excuse ready for Lucy about why he’s so late -- Tim is left dangerously to his own devices. There’s no phone in the cabin, something that Tim understands is for Hawk’s privacy but is frustrating, setting Tim on edge as he tries to imagine what is being plastered over the news out there.

Is there a manhunt after him? Has anyone else turned themselves in? Has hiding away made it better or worse? Has O’Neill succumbed to the guilt of it all?

He makes it to Wednesday before he has to walk further than the Fuller farm. He waits until lunchtime when the frost has disappeared and his footsteps can’t be followed, skirts down the country lane and through a thicket of trees until he gets to the main road.

It takes just over an hour to reach town proper and Tim keeps his head down, pulls the collar of his coat up around his jaw to hide his face if he needs to. He scans a copy of the Inquirier too quickly under the watchful eye of the newsagent and then buys it, feeling silly for drawing more attention to himself. He flips through it on the street corner and then tucks it into his pocket, preparing to parse out the rest of the news for the rest of the week when he’s alone.

The church is nestled between two larger buildings, the stone brickwork reminding Tim of Holy Cross and all the old churches swallowed up by expanding New York, except these are beige broadsides with expansive flat carparks, the main street stretching three lanes wide in a dusty tarmac. The trees are bare but Tim imagines it would be just as desolate come spring.

The doors to the church are open, Tim is thankful of small town mentality sometimes, and it’s empty, Tim sinking to his knees in a pew about three rows from the back. There’s a draught here but it’s shadowed enough from the hanging gallery that he could slip out if anyone emerged from the sacristy.

It settles something inside him, grounding himself down through his knees. The hard press of the wooden bench on his elbows, the way his spine feels after so long prone without the reassurance of resting his weight against the seat.

He prays for as long as he can, watching as the light shifts across the altar. The cross is imposing, the marbled feet of Jesus glinting in the twilight and Tim wonders who paid for this, how big their congregation is to celebrate like this.

In the seminary chapel, the crucifix was carved from marble and surrounded by dark grey slate. The pale stone had glimmered stark against the gloam of early morning mass. Tim used to stare at it until it blurred behind his eyelids. The slight curve of a hip, the turned knee, the scant ripple of a shroud. Would it be cool to the touch? Would it feel smooth against his tongue? If he could reach for a delicate ankle, could he draw those marble knees apart? Could he fit himself into the stone bracket of those hips?

Tim moans at his own traitorous thought, hears it echo around the back of the chapel.

It’s wintery cold when he leaves and Tim feels the creeping faintness of hunger. He counts the street lights, their orangey glow dipping as they become further spaced the further from town. Tim feels like a different person, in and out of the light, a ghost in the shadow before he’s brought back to reality under a flickering bulb. His hands shake and he pushes on disorientated, until Tim recognises the turn off to the Fuller property.

Back in the cabin, Tim runs his palm over his knees, marvels at how red they are even after the hour it took him to walk back. His muscles feel stiff but there’s a stretch there too, a tension in how well they work after strain and exercise, the cyclical nature of it. It feels like energy well spent -- tender and cathartic.

It’s a feeling he tries to hold on to, kneeling the next morning in the shower to feel the dull bloom of discomfort there. The water feels better on his back, the drum of it stinging off his shoulder blades as he presses his forehead to the slick tile.

He dresses slowly, barely bright yet and stinging cold. In an impulse, he digs out a thick chain from the bottom of his bag. O’Neill had helped him make the cilice one winter, their fingers working together on the fine metal, twisting twines together until they had two matching bands of wire, turned into blunt points.

Tim could always tell when O’Neill was wearing his, his breath shuddery when he knelt beside him at morning mass. It would make Tim’s heart pound when he caught him shivering, his cheeks flushed and wild. It’s not meant to feel good but O’Neill would masturbate as soon as they clicked the lamps off, not even waiting to pretend that Tim couldn’t hear.

It hooks around his upper thigh easily, the beads pressing into his skin. It skims the edge of his underwear and when he walks into town, he can feel the press of it against the weight of his balls with every step.

He gets there earlier today, parsing out his prayers during daylight so he doesn’t have to tramp back to the cabin in the pitch dark. Every time his body jerks out of its rigid kneel, he feels the belt dig into his skin and it sends a shock through him, his spine straightening as if he’s being pulled up by an invisible string at the nape of his neck.

He doesn’t slump, the muscle memory of a thousand nips off his Granny as a child. “You don’t have to listen,” she’d tell him when she shuffled him out onto the street. Maggie would be as sweet as pie in front of him, holding daddy’s hand, Tim scolded and jealous. “Just look like you’re listening, for God’s sake. I won’t have you making a fool of me in front of that righteous --”

“What part of laying low don’t you understand?” Hawk asks. Tim blinks, finds himself staring at the car idling at the end of the road late in the afternoon. Tim’s head feels soft and drifting after a day in the dark chapel, his knees aching as he walks the path out of town and towards the country. “I thought you’d made a run for it.”

The weather is wilder today, cold air whipping around Tim’s chin as he stoops to peer through the window. Hawk’s face swims, all in shadow.

“I went to pray --”

Hawk scoffs. “And mass won’t be the first place they’d look for a runaway priest?”

Tim rolls his eyes and climbs into Hawk’s car. “I’m not a priest.” and before Hawk can interrupt. “You didn’t look for me there.”

Hawk grunts, sets the car into gear and roars up the lane. It hardly makes them inconspicuous to the neighbours but Tim slumps down in the seat and it’s dark enough that no one will be able to make him out. It brings him closer to Hawk’s hand and Tim watches the tendon in his wrist flex as he shifts gear, the confident and sure way he’s balancing the steering wheel, the line of his thigh before it disappears into the dark of the footwell.

It’s that smell again, worn leather and whatever cologne he’s wearing these days, the crisp lingering of frost. But also coffee, the woodsy scent of scotch maybe, shoe polish.

“You’re early,” Tim finally speaks, breaking the silence between them.

Hawk huffs out a laugh. “Surprise!” he throws a careless smile down at Tim, his eyes glinting in the passing street lights when he sees Tim slumped down beside him. “We’ve the whole weekend.”

Tim’s stomach turns over, hates how much he likes the sound of that. He realises that the feeling sinking down inside him is relief. He’d spent most of the week tense and in the clutches of a strung out panic attack that Hawk wouldn’t come back, that he had made yet another stupid decision to please him and been burned.

“There a reason you’re down there?” Hawk asks, his tone betraying something darker underneath.

Tim breathes out slowly, feels like his next step is an important one, gathering courage as if he’s about to step off a cliff. “Better safe than sorry,” he murmurs and then presses his forehead to Hawk’s hip. It’s permission and surrender all at once, acquiescing to Hawk’s unspoken question of what this weekend might hold and a felling of Tim’s own last stand against the inevitable.

The relief, he realises, is anticipation as well. How his hope for Hawk to come back wasn’t just for reassurance, wasn’t just for his legal support. It was so he would see him again, so he would get to touch him again, hear the actual tone of his voice and not the one he’s been imagining for the past decade.

He listens to Hawk’s sharp inhale, feels the way his hand lifts off the stick shift to curve over the back of his skull. His thumb is a gentle pressure, guiding his head further into Hawk’s lap. Tim can feel the strength of Hawk’s legs like this, the smooth way they shift on the pedals as he turns the car up the lane to the cabin.

Hawk smells better here, faintly like washing powder and cigarette smoke, the musk of between Hawk’s legs, the layers of wool and his underwear. Tim breathes out carefully, his mouth open, aware that he’s probably drooling over the front of Hawk’s trousers. He can feel him filling out under his cheek but neither of them push for more, Hawk’s hand combing absently through his hair as he manoeuvres the car with one hand, Tim’s hearing zeroing in on the roar of his own heartbeat.

Hawk’s fingers skim over his cheek, drop down to run along the edge of his jaw and on impulse, Tim turns his head so they run over his lips, sucks them in under the roof of his mouth. Tastes leather and salt in the ridges of his knuckles.

“Skippy, fuck,” Hawk’s voice, an echo above the low sound of the tires on gravel. It’s a promise -- from both of them -- and Tim feels all of his final resolve melt away as Hawk presses the pads of his fingers against his tongue.

Hawk has to help him out of the car, both of them climbing out of the driver’s side. Tim’s legs feel heavy, the belt around his thigh nipping at his skin. The cabin is cold with Tim being away all day but they fall together onto the sofa and in the dark, they work their hands into each other’s clothes without even taking their coats off.

“I’ve been thinking of you all week,” Hawk admits into the side of Tim’s face, his hands tugging at the fly of Tim’s jeans. It’s rough, spit in the palm of their hands, and quick. “Wondering what you were doing here all the time.”

Tim groans, bites at Hawk’s ear and he comes nearly too quickly, the shock of it reverberating through his pelvis and thighs, his knees burning. He feels lightheaded with it, a sinking embarrassment at having come already but Hawk’s still easing him through it, his free hand petting through his hair.

“Thinking about you in my bed,” Hawk whispers, a tightness in his voice betraying how turned on he is, the echo of a smile. “Thinking about having you back.”

“Me too,” Tim pants, realises it’s true. With a swoop of guilt he realises he’s been praying for Hawk when he was at church, his mind drifting until all he was thinking was Hawk’s face, the smell of his collar, the warmth of his neck, his hands, his thighs. Praying for his safety, for his family, for guidance, for forgiveness.

Hawk kisses him then and Tim sinks into it, always loving these moments afterwards when they are softened against each other, only their lips and tongue and teeth between them. They kiss until the heat melts out of Tim’s spine, until he feels boneless and heavy, and his hands starts to shake with the cold.

“Go warm up,” Hawk murmurs against his mouth, lips slow and smearing. “I’ll get the stuff out of the car.”

And there’s relief in that too, in following an instruction and finally knowing what to do. His hands are still shaking in the shower as he unclips the cilice. There’s a mottled red and pink band the entire way around his thigh, a web of blue veins shining under his pale skin. He rubs soapy fingers over the dents carefully on his way to cleaning himself properly. He’s left it on too long today, so his leg is on the edge of too tender, the pain easing out under the thrum of hot water. It hasn’t broken skin but Tim can feel the dull ache of the bruise deep, deep down, the roughened edges in the line of his groin if he was to prod too deep.

Hawk’s heating stew by the time he emerges and his eyes drag over Tim, just in one of Hawk’s bathrobes. “Dressed for dinner,” he says approvingly and Tim settles into how familiar this feels, how any lingering awkwardness of last weekend has disappeared.

The food is good and Tim realises how badly he’s been eating lately. “Thank Lucy for me,” he says lightly and Hawk huffs a laugh, settling back in the chair to regard him through the cigarette smoke.

“I can cook,” he says, shakily. Tim doesn’t believe him.

They leave the dishes, Hawk walking him backwards across the room and pressing him onto the bed. It’s warm in the cabin now, the fire crackling and snapping. Tim crawls backwards, watching as Hawk strips at the end of the bed. It’s a touch slower than usual and Tim gets the feeling that he’s being treated to a show, that Hawk doesn’t luxuriate in this side of foreplay anymore, rarely gets anything out of it for himself.

With each layer that comes off, Tim feels heat in his face, the way he wants to tell Hawk to slow down, to take it off slower, to direct him. But he keeps his mouth shut, sinks his teeth into the soft skin on the inside of his bottom lip.

Hawk’s eyes rove over him, groans as he finally, finally pushes his underwear down over his hips. Tim watches back, lets his gaze drop obviously to his dick.

“Fuck,” Hawk shakes his head, laughs up at the ceiling. “I can’t believe you’re real.”

He leans over, pulls at the tie of Tim’s robe. It’s slow and teasing, Hawk’s liquid smile. Tim didn’t think they’d have this again and it’s only that thought that keeps the guilt at bay as he shrugs out of the robe, the material caught below his back. Hawk kneels up onto the bed, bends to press his lips to the hot cup of his knee.

“Skippy,” Hawk’s voice, quiet, as he trails his fingers up the indents on his thigh. It’s ticklish, Hawk’s fingers barely any pressure against his skin.

Tim feels a hot flush of worry that he’s been caught out doing something weird. Everything they do in seminary seems weird in the bright light of day. “It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like it,” Hawk says, looking conflicted whether he should be concerned or not.

Tim shakes his head, hair mussing against the robe lodged below his neck. “It’s mortification -- discomfort, it’s not for pain. It’s to focus our prayer --” Tim feels strangely breathless. --“to concentrate the mind.”

“Mortification,” Hawk repeats slowly, his face twisting for just a second before his expression goes blank. Tim’s grown to know this face as the one he puts on when he’s trying to gather a moment to think, to mask his panic maybe, to think of a way to squirm out of a situation he doesn’t want to be in.

Tim sweeps his hand down to press at the mark, eyes caught on the dip in Hawk’s brow. “It doesn’t break skin, see? It’s just to help me focus.”

Tim runs his thumb over the crease of his thigh, then with a sudden urge to distract, fists himself, hips twitching up into his own grip.

“But --” Hawk starts, his fingertip still hovering over the soft bruised skin of his thigh. He seems to think better of what he was going to say and Tim watches as he swallows, then blinks, eyes trained on Tim’s shoulder rather than looking at either his face or his leg or his cock. “Do you like it?”

“No,” Tim says quickly but it comes out gasping, revealing everything that Tim’s been denying to himself. “It’s a sin to take pleasure from it.”

Hawk’s eyes flash and then he’s pushing up, his mouth wet against Tim’s thigh as he kisses over the marks.

“Don’t --” Tim says, twisting away from him but his other leg is still caught under Hawk’s chest, his legs splayed out and Hawk has the space to kiss his skin and lick across the inside of his leg. Hawk presses his teeth to where the skin is already hot, nips at the soft inside of his thigh. It throbs, sharp and seering, the dull roar of the bruise layering underneath.

It feels too good. Tim’s been denying himself this. Even as he listened to O’Neill sometimes, Tim rarely took pleasure from this exercise. It brought a strange intimacy to their friendship, to recognise the uneven keel of O’Neill’s gait as he walked to breakfast in front of him, the shivery knowledge that O’Neill knew what secret he was holding under his cassock too. But all feeling of restraint is gone now, he’s been stretched out with waiting all week, with already having Hawk bring him off so quickly.

Hawk laps over the tender groove, his tongue wide and wet. Tim can feel the fan of his breath as he takes his time, his body rolling away in a shiver before he cants back up into his mouth.

“Fuck,” Tim groans. He has the urge to clamp his thighs around Hawk’s head, just to feel the scrape of his stubble in the crease of his groin, to know that he can pull a real life person against him with the power of his own muscles. “Hawk, come on.”

“No,” Hawk breathes against his skin, air drying against the wet smear of where his mouth had been. “I want to do it all.”

“Hawk --”

But Hawk doesn’t listen to him. He’s already licking across his skin again, his hand gentle at Tim’s knee. They move slowly, Hawk’s mouth tracing across the bruised skin, chasing the bloom of colour from the soft inside of his thigh to the more hardy skin of the outside. It blurs where his muscle fills out, the meat of it stretching his skin. Hawk manoeuvres his leg for him, bends his knee back, twists him so Hawk can lick and bite over the tense muscle of his thigh.

Tim gasps up at the ceiling, powerless, just knowing the slow migration of Hawk’s mouth by touch alone. His dick is thick and heavy, snubbed up under his leg with the way he’s twisted. Hawk’s other hand falls to the back of his left leg, a thumb pressed to the curve of his ass.

“Come on,” Hawk murmurs, his voice tucked into the damp space between his legs. “Up and over.”

Hawk’s hands land again on the backs of his knees and Tim rolls over easily, unable to stop himself from grinding into the mattress. A fingernail digging into the tender skin of the bruise makes Tim keen, rolling up onto his knees in the drum of pleasure that zaps through him.

“Shit,” Hawk finally speaks, another hand spreading soothing circles across the muscle of his backside. “Skippy. Look at you.”

Tim knows what he’s going to do before he does it but the wet pass of his tongue still startles him. He groans into the sheets bunched below his chin, rocks back against where Hawk’s hands are holding him up and open.

Tim’s not sure if he can come from this alone. They’ve not done this before, Tim unsure where it falls in the balance of what they do in bed. Hawk’s has had his mouth on every inch of Tim’s body but never like this, never so concentrated, never the sole purpose.

It’s electrifying but Tim feels vulnerable in it too, Hawk’s thumb still pressed to the hot bruise, his other hand holding him open so he can get at his rim. Spit is rolling wet down his perineum, the dampness of sweat behind his balls. Hawk keeps budging him up the bed, his mouth hot as he sucks at his skin, licks into him deeper. It rolls him up, Tim’s face pressed into the hot space between the pillow at his chest, his arms curled under his forehead. His breath smells sour to himself, huffed into the sweaty space under his armpit.

Hawk slips his thumb past the pucker of muscle, pulls him open so every lick is deeper, looser, more slick. His hand moves wetly away, the ghost of it down over his leg, before it digs into the bruise again and Tim’s coming, twisted in on himself, his cock kicking against his heaving stomach. It rocks through him so suddenly that it hurts, the muscles in his legs cramping, his breath all caught in his throat.

“Skippy,” Hawk is cooing fondly, his hands gentle again as he helps Tim stretch out. “That was impressive, even for you.”

“Two minutes,” Tim pants but Hawk is grinning at him, rolling him over onto his back so he can kiss his way up his jaw. His mouth looks very red, teeth gleaming behind his smile and Tim watches as he licks his lips, slowly, so slow.

Hawk hesitates for a brief moment, looking down at him but Tim surges up, meets the challenge in Hawk’s gaze and licks into his mouth. Wants to taste himself on the sorry excuse of Hawk’s beard. Hawk laughs into the kiss, settles against his chest, body weight pressing Tim back into the pillows.

“Do you like that?” Hawk asks quietly and Tim’s struck silent by how curious he sounds, how vulnerable. He rolls over again, Hawk’s gaze too much, pushes up onto his hands and knees.

Hawk laughs, his hand coming down to smooth across Tim’s hip. “Good boy,” he murmurs, his thumb tugging at his rim again. Hawk eases in carefully but it’s still just on the edge of uncomfortable without enough lube. Tim hasn’t had this for so long, stopped himself since he’s been in seminary but he rolls his hips back into it easily, like muscle memory.

“Can you go for another one?” Hawk’s asking, his mouth running off. The lamp in the far corner of the cabin sets Hawk’s face in shadow but Tim can see the bright of his eyes, the way his mouth is wet.

“Hawk,” and then he’s begging, his voice high on the end of a whine. Hawk feels too good inside him, the pressure building in his chest, Hawk slamming into him to meet it. He lifts a hand to brace himself on the headboard, realises with a rush that the cabin is full of noise -- the thudding of the headboard, the springs, Hawk grunting out on every pass -- they don’t need to be quiet here, not a soul around to hear them.

“Fuck,” Tim cries out, feels himself finally grow hard again, hanging heavy between his legs. He should have a pillow -- a wild moment of clarity -- and then Hawk changes the angle, his hand sliding down to prod at the bruise again. “Fuck, Hawk. Fuck me.”

“Come on, Skip, nearly there. That’s a good boy.”

Tim squirms, works a hand between his legs to slide over the sensitive head of his cock. It nearly hurts. “I don’t think I can.”

“Yes, you can,” Hawk’s chanting. His chest presses against Tim’s back as he grinds in and it’s too hard, too desperate. Tim can’t catch his breath, his face too hot against the inside of his bicep. Hawk ruts up against him, knocks his hand out of the way so he can press his thumb to the sore slit of his cock.

Hawk’s face looms over his shoulder and Tim can hear his name caught in the back of Hawk’s throat, the way he’s fighting for breath, the slide of his mouth as he pants against Tim’s jaw.

His palm comes down only the once, a stinging slap over the tender skin of where the cilice has been against his thigh all day. Tim lets go, the hot burn of it unfurling through him. All white pressure and the grind behind his gums. He loses himself in it, disappears into the heat of Hawk’s gaze, the burn of his hip extended out over Hawk’s thigh, the limitless stretch of Hawk inside him, familiar and new all at once.

*

The sun wakes him in the morning, Tim’s wrapped up in Hawk’s arms and he takes a moment to drink it in. The bright sun slanting across the ceiling of the cabin, the heat of Hawk’s bare chest against his back, the slow and steady way he’s breathing into his hair behind his ear.

There is beauty in the simplicity of this moment. Tim doesn’t want to take it for granted. Back when they first met, Tim rarely got the chance to sleep longer than an hour or two, Hawk waking him up roughly or his body shaken out of slumber when Hawk slipped out of those dingy rooms he rented on the Hill.

And Tim had been too naive to savour them then, thinking he’d get more and more of it after they had sequestered themselves in the privacy of the inherited apartment. And after such a long stretch of time without him, Tim is reluctant to not make most of the opportunity.

Hawk wakes up slowly -- a flutter of eyelashes, the faint tension in his muscles, the smack of his lips like he’s realising he’s slept with his mouth open.

Tim has imagined and re-imagined this in moments of weakness, of getting to have this happiness again. Hawk has always been a God-like image in his mind’s eye, the same pull and curiosity, the same comfort and satisfaction. But he looks strangely human here, sleep crusted in his eye and his breath sour. There are wrinkles in his slack face, the weathered colour of his skin. Hair flecked with grey, aging right in front of him.

He is just a normal man with the same base desires as Tim etched on his face. The crinkled frown of the unfulfilled, the shadows of dissatisfaction under his eyes. Quick, spot the difference.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Hawk murmurs to him like it’s a secret, his face still soft with sleep. “You’re meant to be here.”

And with a growing stone in his stomach, Tim agrees, Tim continues the secret, Tim lies, it’s all one and the same.

“I think maybe I am,” Tim says, pressing his face into the crook of his neck so he no longer has to see his face and he can breathe, for just a moment, as if they’re back in 1954. “What does that look like? What does that feel like?”

Hawk snorts softly, the pads of his fingers massaging into the back of his skull. “Like this, Skip,” Hawk says, the curve of his smile against Tim’s temple. Tim isn’t smiling back, can’t make his mouth move with the way his stomach is twisting. “It looks just like this.”

*

O’Neill only ever broached the subject with him directly once.

“There’s a priest,” he had said, very quietly, as they holed themselves up in the garden with their lunch. It was spring, the sun finally coming out and the sky a crisp blue but still cold enough that Tim’s fingers were shoved deep in his pockets, feeling leaching out of them. A magnolia tree was in full blossom, a shower of pink petals falling around their shoulders.

Tim had looked up, waiting on the rest of his sentence. “I’d like to hope so, O’Neill. We’re in a seminary.”

O’Neill blushed furiously, his cheeks bright like sunburn. He was lovely, Tim remembers thinking, lovely when you caught him in a joke or off guard. He blushed a lot in Tim’s presence, Tim could nearly tell each flush of his skin apart.

“A sympathetic priest,” O’Neill kept on. He was quiet at the best of times but he was speaking into his collar, the apples of cheeks hardly visible. Tim leaned forward, could feel the heat of them against his nose. “Who will take confession. Your-- Our confession.”

Tim felt a shiver of recognition, the acute feeling of being flayed open. A live wire. Like all his nerve endings were rubbed raw. He pressed his fingers into the corner of his pocket, pushed the rough seam into the line of his ballsack.

O’Neill’s gaze felt heavy and it was the first time that Tim realised he knew much more than he let on. Probably understood exactly what Tim was doing, how Tim had been toeing a line with enough plausible deniability between them, how it was pointless. It’s hungry, the way O’Neill seems to be appraising him.

“And what does this priest say?”

O’Neill looked anguished for a moment. “He forgives us. Says we’re closer to God. How can this be wrong -- He thinks there will be an encyclical one day.”

Tim lets out a breath. Absolution. Too good to be true. It takes years for an encyclical to be enacted, the priests in every parish resistant to any type of change. Aren’t they proof of that? The scorn the elder priests have when mass is in English, the resistance he’s met with when he goes into the community and sees too many mouths to feed, the stigma and shame that he sees encouraged every single day. And that’s not even the parishioners, the normal people, the people who judge him without even the justification of the church.

O’Neill is watching him carefully, looking for his reaction. “All we have to do is wait.”

Yes, fucking wait. Waiting will only encourage how this will filter into his daydreams now. The what ifs. The flitting thoughts of a different future. There’s still a thin edge of panic in that, something that grounds him. He twists his fingers, lets out another gasp. O’Neill’s gaze drops to Tim’s lap and even in the seering sunlight, Tim feels under a spotlight. He could probably get hard from this, just from the conversation, the honesty, the hope of it.

“Christ,” O’Neill swears but it comes out reverent like a prayer. It startles him and he seems to realise where they are. “Finish your lunch,” O’Neill snaps, gesturing to where Tim’s not touched his sandwich, the sun making him feel sick.

That night, they kept the lone bulb in their room burning, Tim turned on his side, his eyes glued to O’Neill in the other bed. And watched. Their secret shared. Their secret expanded. Both of them offering confession to each other and this, the repenting of their sins.

*

“Come up to the big house,” Hawk says easily. “I have to check in with Lucy.”

It’s the next weekend, Hawk arriving just after dawn that morning. Tim had woken to him kneeling by the bed, his fingers freezing.

“It’s only me,” he had murmured, kneeing onto the mattress. Tim had rolled over, heart hammering in his throat. “I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t wait.”

The ease that he mentions her is nearly a comfort. In some other world, Tim could imagine that Hawk speaks of him like that. Oh, Tim? Yes, he’s down at the cabin this weekend. Maybe she’d up at the house now, delicate fingers curled around a cigarette as she read this month’s Vogue or wrote a shopping list for tonight’s dinner party, phone crooked under her ear as she invited the neighbours last minute.

Spontaneous. That’s the privilege of a wife, the ability to create spontaneous plans. To never be counting down the moments when her time with Hawk is cut short, the knowledge that if it doesn’t happen this weekend, there’s always next week. And the week after that.

“Is she there?” Tim can’t help but ask, feeling foolish as soon as he does.

Hawk gives him a long look, nearly on the edge of suspicious. “Why do you want her to be there?”

“I don’t,” Tim says, too sharp. And they’re falling into that long-forgotten dynamic again where Tim’s always on the backfoot.

It’s a novelty to get out of the cabin for a few moments and Tim tells himself that’s the only reason he agrees. It isn’t because it’s an opportunity to snoop around Hawk’s house. He knows that he’s getting the real Hawk down at the cabin, with all the things that make him really Hawk -- the curl of his fingers, the way his mouth turns up when Tim tells him some silly story.

It’s decorated to perfection and when Tim steps over the threshold, he imagines this is what their home looks like too. They must spend enough time here to have properly settled in, it’s not like the holiday rental his father used to share with a cousin when Tim and Maggie were kids, both of them shoved in the same, bland and shabby room for a week with a squad of similarly aged Laughlins. It had taken Tim until he was nine to realise they’d only travelled as far as Rockaway but they hardly spent anytime there anyway, too many people crowded into a small set of three rooms.

This is expansive, though. Tim listens to his footsteps echo down the hallway and ducks his head into a cosy looking room, wood panelled and smelling of lavender floor polish. As if on cue, the telephone rings, sharp and shrill. Hawk raises an eyebrow at him, unhooking the phone and Tim drifts away, Hawk’s reassuring voice in the distance. He doesn’t need to hear this, doesn’t want to really, knows he’ll be thinking of the way Hawk’s voice softens when he speaks to his daughter for the rest of his life.

The rest of the house is as ornate as the office. Tim imagines how Hawk commands the living room, how he hosts the neighbours. They’ve made a group of friends out here, a world away from the people Hawk associated with in the city.

He wonders if they know, if they suspect.

Wonders if Hawk has a little situation rustled up here away from normality back home. Is there a neighbour that holds his lingering gaze? The two of them parting ways at the end of each season but finding themselves back again come spring. Maybe Hawk can last that long, a few months in winter until he can resume whatever half-relationship he’s allowing himself up in the country. Or maybe a local? A brawny young gardener to fulfill a flitting fancy before he disappears to settle his own house and family and is replaced by someone new, younger, a new model.

It’s a world away from what Tim knows back in the seminary. So much opportunity. And maybe that’s why the thought of it devastates him so much. What is Tim missing out in by remaining tucked up there? Why does he have to toe the line of what the church allows them to speak about? What is he really denying himself in this pursuit of faith?

He thinks of O’Neill suddenly: the uncreased smoothness of his chin, the ripe smell of him before he takes a bath, how he sometimes speaks softly in his sleep. How young he is, already so sure that he wants to devote his life to the priesthood.

And the punishments they dish out to each other. The way Tim sometimes takes longer to dress in the morning when he knows O’Neill is watching, the way O’Neill jostles in beside him in class, the hopeful way his mouth twists when Tim suggests they kneel together after dinner. Light paling but not dark so they can stare at each other without obstruction, both of them down to their socks, knees together, close enough to nearly taste each other.

Tim uses that time to think of the human body, the tense bulge of muscle across a man’s thighs, the flat strength of a chest, the hollow of a throat. If they’re all made in His image, then what’s the problem in desiring it, coveting it, being greedy for it.

“What are you thinking about?” Hawk asks him suddenly. Tim looks up, realises that Hawk’s been leant against the door jamb and watching him. Tim didn’t hear him hang up the phone.

“God,” he answers, only half factitiously. He’s got a hand gripped around an ornate vase on the windowsill and Tim blinks, the front garden and copse of trees that keep the cabin hidden unblur through the gauze of the net curtain. It looks like rain, he thinks, clouds hanging heavy and damp on the horizon.

Hawk’s eyes drag over him. “Well if God makes you look like that, then I think we should go to church --”

“Don’t,” Tim cuts him off, stepping away. He doesn’t know what expression he has on his face, feels like he’s too weak to keep that barrier up between them. “Don’t make fun.”

Hawk holds a hand up. “Just teasing.” And then when Tim doesn’t answer. “Are you okay? You haven’t got that thing on again, have you?”

The way he asks, his breath catching, has both of them looking down at the front of Tim’s trousers. As if they’d be able to see the cilice through the woollen material. Hawk’s expression is half ravenous, half disgusted and Tim feels his own wave of revulsion that Hawk knows more of his secrets now, that something new has been offered up to him so easily.

Strangely he feels protective over it, over what he and O’Neill do together. The guilt that he got off on it still burns in his gut, makes him feel nauseous. But layered underneath is the sharp desire for Hawk to press down on the bruises again, where they’ve purpled and gone green, shaped like tiny thumb prints across his skin.

On Monday, when Hawk had slipped out of his life again, Tim had put it on again. He had sat naked on the bathroom floor, the mirror balanced between his knees as he lined it up perfectly to the bruises. It had dug in, sunk into his tender flesh. Bruise upon bruise.

Tim had lain back on the bathroom tiles, pressed his shoulders into the hard floor until his flank and back were off the floor. He’d catch a glimpse of his contorted body in the mirror, headless, just expansive skin, the sweep of hair that’s grown in across his thighs, the dark shadow of his scrotum. It could be anyone, anyone at all.

His muscles felt shivery and used by the time he was done, a series of crunches that made the blood race around his body until his fingers tingled with it.

“Skippy?” Hawk pulls him back to the present.

“Do you have someone up here?” Tim asks instead, words swimming to the front of his mind and out of his mouth slurred. His blood is hot with panic but it feels like one of those things that he has the urgent need to talk about.

Hawk pulls that expression again, his head tipping to the side as he watches him. Tim realises he’s using the time to decide whether he should tell the truth or not.

“You looking for a change of pace?” Hawk asks, half suggestive, nearly fond.

Blood flares at the flush of his neck. Tim contemplated it once, hadn’t he? Eager to catch a glimpse of Hawk’s other life, the desperate need to have any little bit of Hawk that he’d spare him, even if that meant going cruising with him. He’d be able to stand it because it was better than nothing, anything, anything was better than nothing.

Hawk steps across the room, his hands coming up to cup around Tim’s jaw. The touch is reassuring, the warm presence of his palms, the way he runs a thumb under the bud of Tim’s mouth. Tim can already feel his weight sinking into the hold.

“No one serious,” Hawk whispers, pressing close. Tim’s breath rebounds off his neck, he listens to how quick it is. “Not since --” Hawk’s eyes rove over Tim’s face for a long moment and all the air in the room has been sucked away, Tim’s chest aching for him to kiss him, for Hawk to put him out of his misery, to be folded into his arms properly before the light-headed feeling lets him float away. “Anyway,” Hawk murmurs, nose brushing over Tim’s cheekbone. It’s cold. “I don’t think I could share you.”

Tim whines, the uncontrollable need to make noise, to be heard. He uses the leverage in his neck to twist in Hawk’s grip and kiss him. It’s sloppy, the room spinning around him but Hawk keeps him the right way up, his tongue sinking into Tim’s mouth over and over again.

“Because you’re mine,” Hawk whispers when he pulls back, one hand going to his side to steady Tim properly, shouldering all of Tim’s weight against his chest where Tim’s feeling faint now. “You’re all mine. All mine. Mine, mine, mine.”

*

It turns out, Hawk can cook. Or at least rustle up something decent enough to serve to Tim on the proper dining table.

“There’s stuff to use up,” Hawk cajoles him into staying at the house, moving about the kitchen with a strange ease. Tim watches him from the kitchen table, the slope of his shoulders as he stoops over a saucepan, the way he’s even put on a fucking apron.

Domesticated. Finally. Lucy must be delighted. Or maybe, maybe this is another way he’s transgressing all-american manhood and it actually makes her miserable.

Outside the sky dips into a deep mauve, like something Tim only imagines when he’s reading fiction. There is a tiny sliver of a moon, half hidden in the twilight and when the starlings start to swoop, Hawk slings an arm around him and they stand at the back door watching them, Hawk’s palm steady against his chest, his chin hooked on his shoulder.

“You know they’re an invasive species?” Hawk asks him. “Kimberly did a project. Came over from Europe and now they won’t leave.”

“The pretty ones do that, don’t they?” Tim murmurs, hooking his fingers around Hawk’s thumb.

“Are you feeling better?” Hawk asks, all the bravado slipping out of his voice. Tim’s glad he can’t see his face, can only feel the brush of his lips against the tender spot behind his ear.

“I’m fine,” Tim tells him, wills his heart to stop beating so fast. Hawk hums, pulls him back into his chest until Tim can lean into him, his head rolling on his shoulder.

At some point, Hawk slides a record on -- jazz, Lucy must’ve acquiesced at some point to have them in the house -- and hands him a glass of wine (“You can’t have beer with dinner.”) and they end up on the floor, ankles pressed together as Hawk fiddles with the record player.

“What am I going to do?” Tim asks the ceiling, feeling the warmth of the wine settle deep in his belly as saxophone fills the room. They’re curled on the carpet, something about being on the floor helps Tim feel grounded with the solid floor below them.

Hawk looks over, his face half shadowed by the low lamp light. It makes him look severe, the bridge of his nose, the sharp edge of his jaw. He has a record balanced between two slim fingers. “You’re here,” he says simply, like now that he’s said it, it can only be true. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“I can’t stay here forever,” Tim murmurs, looking up at the chandelier again because if he looks at Hawk’s face, he thinks he might feel sick. “It’s no good --” It’s nearly worse. To have had these few weekends alone with him, such concentrated time after so long without. It’s dangerous. “We can’t keep pretending that this is okay.”

Hawk makes a noise but doesn’t say anything. Tim can feel the heat of his gaze and he suddenly doesn’t want to be lying here, sprawled across the persian carpet.

“I can’t hide here, disappeared from the world. I can’t just be kept here --” Tim takes a breath. --“waiting on you to come back to me.”

“You’re on the run from the FBI,” Hawk says, as if Tim isn’t fucking aware of that. “I’m hardly keeping you here like some mistress --”

The record scratches, eases into a Chet Baker record that Tim doesn’t really care for. Time seems to slow, the stoop of Hawk’s shoulder as he slides the other record into its sleeve, the careful way he puts it back in the rack. Tim watches his fingers, the delicate twist of them around the vinyl.

“Hawk, I --” Tim starts, unsure really what he wants to say. The music swells, slow and mournful. This isn’t the jazz he likes, not used to the unwavering emotion in a dirge. He has the sudden urge to clear his throat. It’s constricting, the thought of staying here, of not getting to do what he wants with his life, of hiding. The casual way that Hawk suggests it, the twist of his mouth as if he’s planned this all along.

“Come on now,” Hawk hushes him, blinking away. Tim feels a rush of adrenaline like he’s done something wrong but he doesn’t move, stays sprawled across the rug by his side. Hawk seems to take a moment and then his smile is back, limbs languid as he crawls over him. “I’ve only just got you back.”

He tastes of wine, the warmth of it on his tongue. Tim kisses him gently, half shy. He’s right -- he has just got him back. And it works both ways. He lets the rebuke in his chest fetter away, he can come back to it. This is more important.

Tim rolls them over, fitting a leg between Hawk’s knees. They kiss, Tim pressing him down into the rug. It makes his knees ache but it’s all heat in the end, roiling red kneecaps, the burn of it up back of his thighs with every press of Hawk’s hand, a fire at the bottom of his spine.

He could lie here in the warm light and kiss him forever. It’s so bright, Hawk’s face golden when Tim pulls away from his mouth, his skin warm under his tongue.

“C’mon,” Hawk cajoles him up onto his knees. Tim chases his mouth, “I’m too old to be doing this on the floor.”

They’re crossing a line here, Tim knows it and Hawk seems to know it too. Tim skims his palm over Hawk’s forehead. “It won’t take us long to get back --”

“No,” Hawk says, pulling him into a long kiss. Tim can feel his resolve dissolving, fizzing out with every sweep of Hawk’s tongue into his mouth. His neck aches from the angle, Hawk already on his feet and stooping over, Tim stretched up to meet him. “Stay, come on. Stay. I’ll let you --” Hawk breaks off, breathless. “I want you to --”

Tim should really have more resolve but he finds himself on his feet, Hawk’s hand a sweaty grip as he leads him up the stairs. He moves his hands to Tim’s cheeks, keeps him blinkered as they stagger into the plush bed. “Come on, fuck me, Skippy.”

Tim watches his mouth move, a swooping sensation in his stomach. Without hearing, Hawk forms the words: I missed you. Like the swallows at dusk -- nothing much to look at alone -- but twisting together in a roiling mass there’s beauty in their synchronised breaths, each heartbeat in time, wingtip to wingtip.

Tim bites at his mouth, wants to devour him. The hunger he has for him is barely satiated despite having him all weekend, only growing more ravenous with every press of hands, of lips, of teeth. It’s greedy. Glutinous. Tim wants more.

Hawk is carelessly impatient, urging him on and on and on until Tim’s moving spit-slick fingers inside him, panic edging each breath as Hawk groans below him. “Harder,” Hawk, voice broken. “Move, Tim, move.”

Tim.

Hearing him beg, hearing him use his proper name after all this time sends Tim’s head spinning. He scrambles for the side table, turns on the lamp so he can see the sweaty sheen to Hawk’s usually collected face, the way his hair is wild from the pillow, the red flush that’s creeping down his chest.

Tim sinks into him like he’s sliding home, Hawk pushing back into the cradle of his hips. They rock together, time sliding to a stop. Tim looks down at him, the blank expanse of his back, the tapering of his waist, the knobs of his spine. The bulk of him slopes away, Hawk’s face buried in the frilled pillowcases.

And there’s the disconnect, Hawk’s fingers clenching in the rumpled sheets, Tim’s dick engulfed in the deep heat of him. Has he done this with his arrangement up here? Has anyone else been inside him like Tim has? The thought burns at the back of his mind, large enough to snag there. It won’t melt away.

Tim’s saved this too, only wanting to be fucking into the hot clench of Hawk’s body. Can only hold Hawk between his fingers like this, can only let him shatter apart in his arms because the pain of it nearly feels cathartic. To press against his body, to grind himself inside, to meet the cant of Hawk’s hips with the same fierce edge of desperation.

Hawk’s nearly silent when he comes, his body rolling up so he’s braced against the headboard and Tim can gather him up into his chest, can press them spine to collarbone, can lick the salt from his nape.

Tim can hear the faint hum of the record player downstairs through the open door and it’s silent for a moment, both of them breathing raggedly in the dark.

“Shit,” Hawk gasps, laughing breathlessly. “I came over the fucking pillow.”

“Messy,” Tim murmurs faintly, a palm pressed to Hawk’s heaving belly, the other still clamped around his hip. His voice feels like it’s untethered, not really coming from his own set of lungs. It takes all of his resolve not to grind forward, unmoored at the fact that he hasn’t come first.

Hawk takes a moment, a beat of breath and then he tips his head onto Tim’s shoulder, mouths at his jaw. His other hand reaches back, a sweating palm to Tim’s hip to urge him into movement again. Tim groans, folds himself into Hawk’s spine. It takes no time at all before he’s coming too, Hawk’s body rolling stiltedly under him, giving him this when he usually is the one to take, take, take everything that Tim has to give.

“Skippy,” Hawk murmurs as they fall onto the same pillow, both of them pressed together on the edge of the bed, words slurred and sleepy. “Fuck, Skippy. I’ve missed you so much.”

Tim’s too buzzed, his blood singing under his skin. Usually he falls asleep soon after, lulled by the grounding feel of Hawk inside him, the way he’s been making him come over and over all weekend but Tim can’t feel the sinking weight of sleep yet, his ears ringing, the skin over his knuckles too tight.

He pushes his nose into the sweaty crook of Hawk’s shoulder, tries to find that comfort in the rhythmic rise of his shoulders but on every inhale he catches the scent of women’s perfume, the unfamiliar smell of the sheets, the settled floral of the bedroom carpet.

The framed photograph on the bedside table, the dish with some of her jewellery. This isn’t a holiday house at all, it’s only an extension of their home and Tim is quite literally fucking her over in it.

Tim’s breath catches, a low rattling wheeze making its way up the back of his throat as he takes in the ornaments in the room, the low velvet stool with a pair of respectable heels tucked below it, a jacket thrown over the hanger by the door.

In the dim, the unfamiliar shadows of the room loom large, a heavy weight of blackness that makes his vision blur and narrow. Lucy is never far from the periphery of his thoughts -- even now, after all this time -- but he’s never felt the ominous shadow of her like this before.

Hawk’s a dead weight and for a heart wrenching moment, Tim thinks he’s trapped under his heavy arm. The bathroom is a shadowy door to the right of the bed and Tim knows he’s there when the sickening lavender changes to the crisp, clear smell of bleach and bath salts.

“Oh God,” Tim murmurs, tears already gathering. “Oh God, please, forgive me. Please, what have I done.”

He sinks to his knees on the cold tiles, his spine lengthening. Presses cool slate back into his kneecaps until he’s up straight, his back rigid. The muscles of his stomach clench, his core contracting and aching. The unfamiliar room can be felt by touch alone, the cool porcelain of the toilet somewhere to the left of his elbow, the damp smell of the bath drain.

Tim raises his hands, searching the air above him. “Please,” he murmurs, clenches his eyes closed. Please, he begs, please, unsure what he’s begging for. The room spins, his vision all static and fuzz.

By the time Tim gathers his awareness, his head is already cradled in Hawk’s grip. “Tim?”

It’s so gentle that Tim thinks he’s still dreaming, the swimmy feeling behind his eyes giving way to how grey the room is. Dawn light filters through the mottled frosted windows and it takes Tim a few tries to blink Hawk’s face into focus, the blurry edges of his face sharpening each time he forces his eyes open wide.

“Hawk?”

He’s an apparition. He hasn’t thought of him in months. He’s a dream. It’s disorientating for a moment but the hands in his hair are too gently confident to be O’Neill, the palms too wide and sure where O’Neill is narrow and sleight.

“What are you doing? You’re freezing.”

“Praying,” Tim answers carelessly and listens to Hawk’s sound of distress. And it is Hawk, Tim realises slowly, the past few days filtering slowly back into his consciousness.

“Tim,” Hawk says hesitantly, his thumbs pulling at his cheeks now and Tim’s eyes flutter open again, hadn’t realised he had closed them. The bathroom swims around him again, grey-blue-the warm expanse of Hawk’s tanned forehead-blue-grey. “This is going to make you ill.”

Tim shakes his head, feels like everything jostles inside. His neck is aching, every muscle in his abdomen burning. “Can’t make me ill. This is right for me.”

“Even things that are right for you can make you ill,” Hawk is saying, sounding unlike himself. He tips them sideways so he can reach the bath without letting go of Tim and Tim lets him, lets himself be manhandled and moved around until he’s sitting with his shoulder against the toilet, his legs twisted under him.

Feeling comes back to them slowly, the sharp warmth of pins and needles, the uncomfortable static within his bones. He must make a noise, his tongue feels too heavy to move, but Hawk looks over at him sharply.

“Are you going to be sick?”

Tim goes to say no but suddenly feels the wave of nausea, the churning of his stomach. He shakes his head, feels each bend of his neck down to the base of his spine. Blood roars in his own ears, the rush of water loud in the small enclosed room.

“Here,” Hawk’s moving him again, a palm smoothing down over Tim’s shoulder blade as he hefts him up. There isn’t enough feeling in his feet yet but Hawk shoulders the weight, inches him over to the edge of the bath.

It feels mountainous, the effort it would take to climb in but Hawk is steadying him, his hands gentle again as he moves him. One numb foot and then another has Tim sinking into the heat of the water.

“I --” Tim starts to say, words feeling too big to chew through.

Hawk’s face swims again, the edges of his hair blurring into something fairer. “Just to warm you up,” Hawk says, his thumb sweeping up to catch a tear as it escapes the corner of Tim’s eye.

“I’m not sick,” Tim finds himself saying, voice a little slurred still.

Hawk’s eyes drop. “Of course not.”

It feels nice, the pads of Hawk’s fingers pressing against his skull. His hands work their way down and Tim has to lean his forehead against his knees, Hawk’s thumbs pressing into the tense muscle at the base of his neck. He keeps one hand on the top of Tim’s spine as the other works its way down, Tim trying to force his breathing long and slow as Hawk’s fingers dip below the water.

They skim up over his back again and Tim waits for him to do another full sweep of his spine, the tension in his muscles loosening bit by bit. The hand at his neck is gentle, Hawk’s thumb sweeping back and forth. Tim focuses on it, tries to time his breathing to it.

“Here,” Hawk murmurs, tipping his head back gently. Water sluices down his back, the soap running out of his hair.

Hawk’s hands keep moving, a sure palm running down over his hip and up over his ribs. It’s getting lighter, sunlight creeping through the tiny bathroom window. Hawk soaps up a cloth, dips down to run it between Tim’s legs, the gentle sweep of it over his abdomen.

“This isn’t what we do.”

Hawk’s quiet for a long time. “It isn’t? We’re doing it.”

“Hawk --” Tim stretches his fingers under the water, bumps into where Hawk’s hand is paused by his thigh. Maybe he was reaching for Tim and stopped, maybe Tim’s words caused him to retract. Tim can’t remember if he was touching him before he spoke. “I don’t need looking after like this. This isn’t what you do.”

Hawk lets out a humourless laugh, his body retreating from where he’s been lent over the bath. His face disappears into the shadows again. “Tim, I’m always looking out for you.”

This fine line between them is brittle and Tim realises how close it is to snapping. He feels a jolt of adrenaline, the water lapping around his knees as he gets his feet under him.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Tim tries. Hawk shifts back, tips his chin up so he can still meet Tim’s eyes when he stands in the tub. “I’m letting you go. You don’t have to. You promised me.”

“Those are three very different things,” Hawk mutters. He finds a towel, drapes it over Tim’s shoulders and wraps him tight. Even though he can feel the bristling embarrassment at the back of his throat, Tim lets out a soft sound at the feeling. Hawk pulls the towel tighter, cocooning him in. It feels good after so long without touch, the tight restrictive feeling of being held tight. “We are different people. Whatever we are doing now is what we’re meant to be doing.”

Hawk stares at him for a long time, his face a strange expression that Tim’s never seen before. And that’s what makes the anger wither away from him, the fact that Hawk is a different person, with different expressions and different ways of comforting him now.

“I don’t --” Tim feels his chest ache while trying to formulate the words. “I don’t think I can sleep in her bed.”

Slow realisation seeps through Hawk’s expression and Tim watches all of it, half thrilled he’s being trusted enough to see it.

“Of course,” Hawk murmurs and he rubs his hands over the towel again, tightening it against Tim’s skin. “I’m sorry, I get it.”

Hawk gathers up their clothes quietly. Tim watches from the doorway as he shakes out the blankets on the bed, the haphazard way they fold in on themselves no matter how careful he is. The walk to the cabin is short but long enough for Tim to feel the bite of the pre-morning air in his damp hair, their footfalls on the frozen ground loud in the dawn silence.

Hawk strips them out of their clothes despite the chill in the air and pulls him naked into the cool sheets. It’s already familiar, the smell of Hawk on the pillow, the press of his warm skin against Tim’s chattering teeth. They should light the fire but Tim already feels the heavy curtain of sleep.

*

There’s a layer of tension the next morning. Tim wakes, it’s already afternoon but it’s gloomy, threatening rain. Hawk presses his mouth to Tim’s shoulder, drags his tongue over the line of Tim’s collarbone, rubs his thumb over the hair that’s grown in over Tim’s pec.

Tim loses himself in the laziness of it, the way Hawk’s hands can trace an invisible familiar path. He comes into Hawk’s mouth, still half-asleep, the heat of the blankets caught around his hips.

“Do you want --” Tim asks, fingers feeling numb. He brushes them over his own lips -- they haven’t even kissed good morning yet.

Hawk grins at him, licks at where Tim’s softening against the crease of his thigh and rolls out of bed. “Later.”

Hawk lights the fire but it’s still chilly, Tim dressing in a t-shirt and one of the jumpers that Hawk’s brought with him this week. They head back to bed, a picnic of bread and butter and good cheese spread out between them.

“What am I going to do?” Tim asks when they’ve rolled into the middle of the bed together. Tim wants Hawk out of his jeans but the denim feels nice where he’s got his leg hooked up over his knee.

Hawk hums, sounds annoyed that Tim’s maybe spoiling the afternoon. “We’ll ring the lawyer again tomorrow.”

“Are you disappointed in me?”

Tim’s been thinking about it for a while now, the downturn of Hawk’s mouth, the way something is weighing on his shoulders. It lodges uncomfortably in his throat to think of Hawk thinking about him in this way again. Like he has a right to be impacted by Tim’s actions, like Tim should be more considerate of him.

“No,” Hawk says but it must take effort. His hand sweeps up into Tim’s hair and it’s a reminder of last night, of how gentle he was with him.

Tim flushes, half embarrassed still as the memories of them on the bathroom floor trickles back into his memory.

It takes a long time for Hawk to speak again. “How can I be disappointed? It’s brought you back to me. Even if it was a stupid thing for you to do.”

“It’s not stupid. This government needs to realise what they’re doing. It’s a different war to what you signed up for,” Tim argues. “Hell, even a different thing now than I signed up for.”

“The army is the army,” Hawk mutters, his hand stilling in Tim’s hair. Tim feels very aware of each breath they’re taking, each point where they’re pressed together.

Hawk hardly speaks of his time in the army, Tim remembers how he used to be so desperate for any scraps of information that he would savour the stories of the mysterious tryst in Italy. It would burn through him two-fold: Hawk sharing these morsels of his past and Tim, famished for it.

This list of men that Tim yearned to meet. He used to want to know them so intensely that his head would feel light. It got him through the longest days in France, the thought sustained him that he might run into one someday. At first it was to compare, to see if they were like Tim, if they felt how Tim felt without him. Learn how to get over him and move on.

But then it felt like an consuming obsession, dreams devoted to the faceless men, these men who had had Hawk inside themselves too. Maybe if Tim took them inside himself then it would be like having a small part of Hawk back. They’d know. Tim wouldn’t need to hide himself anymore with them. They’d feel as raw as he did.

It makes his skin tingle, a wave of feverish heat working its way up his spine. He’s sweating now, the fire crackling loudly beside the bed and it makes cabin take on a dream-like quality, the hazy liminal space between solid and not.

Hawk seems to feel the way Tim’s mind is wandering and pulls him closer into his side. But Tim feels untethered. He hasn’t thought about his time in France in a long time because France leads to Hungary, leads to D.C. and Hawk and Lucy and Jackson and that oasis of an apartment tucked away in the shadows.

“Skip?”

“All I did was carry a General’s briefcase and learn how to ride au pillion,” Tim says self-deprecatingly, changes the subject, his voice strained.

There’s a beat of silence before Hawk lets out a loud bark of laughter.

It jostles Tim’s head but then he’s laughing along with him. “Stop,” Tim begs. “You’re imagining it, aren’t you?”

“I’m imagining you doing something au pillion, anyway.”

Tim twists away from him so he can hide his smile at the double entendre. It doesn’t even make sense, Tim’s rudimentary French already rusty with disuse.

“Tim Laughlin, using any excuse to ride au pillion around the barracks. Getting fucked in some lavender field in the south of France. I can see it now. Actually,” Hawk laughs, rolling across the bed after him so he can nuzzle into Tim’s neck. “I thought about it often. I was nearly sad you transferred to Fort Polk. Fuck, that was nearly worse. My boy in Louisiana with all the good Southern boys. I nearly wrote to see if I could get you up to Monmouth.”

The words hang there for a moment and then Tim is twisting away from him so he can look at Hawk’s stricken expression. He’s said too much, revealed something that Tim was never meant to know. It ungrounds him, the knowledge deep down somewhere that is singing you were right.

“I think I always knew you were pulling strings,” Tim starts, finding his feet under him so he’s not so close to Hawk. “But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t let me go and want me from a distance. You can’t manage my life to still suit you. You don’t have the right to be jealous when you have this whole other life away from me.”

“I’m not jealous,” Hawk huffs a laugh but he’s pushing himself up on one arm so he’s not sprawled across the bed. He looks a little wild, finally ruffled. Tim can see where he has aged, the way his mouth pulls down where he once would have attempted a smarmy grin.

“Is that what you thought I was doing all that time?” Tim asks. He’s not sure why this part of it all has snagged at his gut the most. Missed opportunity? Misplaced loyalty? “Fucking my way through Europe, like you did? We’re not all like you.”

Hawk scoffs but there’s a glint of something darker in his eyes. “All?”

“Why were you keeping tabs on me?” Tim barrels on, the anger flaring at the base of his skull seems to radiate out until his hands are shaking with it. “Now. Why are you still doing it after everything in D.C? I thought you made yourself pretty clear that there was no space in your life for me. You can’t keep me under your thumb”

“My thumb? I’m not keeping tabs --” Hawk goes to say something, seems to think better of it. “You were all over the fucking paper, Skip. You’ve gone too far. You are on the run for fuck’s sake --”

“Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I weighed that up?” Tim’s speaking so fast that his chest feels tight, he can’t draw breath. The defence comes quickly, he’s written it in letter after letter to his mother already. “What we’re doing is important --”

“Burning a few hundred draft cards?” Hawk interrupts. “Yeah, hit ‘em where it hurts.”

“That draft is an abomination. Those men are going out to be slaughtered --”

“Skippy --”

“All those young boys. We’re doing it again. It is hopeless and cruel-- It is not our place-- God wants us to--”

“Take a breath,” Hawk says sharply and Tim clamps his mouth shut, feels his teeth grind together. He inhales through his clenched teeth, feels the whistling suck of it cold on his gums. There’s sweat on the back of his neck, his legs are shaking.

“We are called to live non-violently,” Tim’s head feels light, like when he fasts on a holy day. The swoop of his stomach working its way up through his chest to his head. He doesn’t realise he’s pressing against his thigh until he feels the zing of pain cut through the fuzziness in his head. When he opens his eyes, Hawk is watching him, his eyes trained to the spot where the cilice has imprinted into his skin. It peeks out from below the hem of the boxer shorts he’s wearing. “Burning the draft cards, a non-violent protest, going to jail is doing good. It’s --”

“It’s that fucking rebel priest filling your head with bullshit. Where’s he? He’s not going to jail. Are you a fucking martyr now, Tim? Is that all your life is reduced to?”

Tim feels a ripple of anger, Hawk is always so critical of Tim’s religion, scoffing at the way Tim can find solace in going to mass, the way religion can help him find his purpo--“What about Jackson?”

The words come from nowhere and land hard. Tim is breathing like he’s run a race. He feels wild with it, blood singing at finally getting let. He clenches his hands, his fingers feel like they could burst.

“What if he gets drafted?”

It’s a low blow but Tim feels cored out, like there’s nothing but water inside his skin. He presses his thumbnail against his thigh again, the panic nearly subsuming. He doesn’t care if Hawk can see him, if Hawk will know how much he likes it, how much he needs the grounding of a cilice or an afternoon prostrate in prayer. Tim feels the phantom press of Hawk’s fingers to his back last night in the bath and only feels the shame of it.

Hawk pales, his eyes darting away from Tim’s leg to scour over his face. “This isn’t about Jackson. Don’t bring him up.”

“That’s the bullshit, Hawk.” Tim shakes his head. “You’d probably think it would toughen him up, right? Make him more like you? Make a man out of him--”

“You are not the father here,” Hawk roars. Tim hasn’t seen him this angry in a while, the tense line of his brow, the way his mouth has turned itself into a scowl. For once he looks like he’s thinking hard about what to say next. “You don’t get to tell me how to parent my own son--”

“Why can you never see when you’re ruining things until afterwards?”

Hawk rears back, like the words had physically landed against his chest. “Skip --”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know?” Tim says, a dam breaking and it’s all tumbling out, Tim can’t stop it. Years of hurt that he’s tamped down, that he’s prayed over, that he’s carried like a penance. “You don’t get to make these decisions about other people’s lives like you’re the one who knows best, like you’re the only one who matters.”

“What did you say?”

Tim looks away, can’t take the gutted expression on Hawk’s face. They seem to be having two different conversations and Tim isn’t sure which part has made Hawk look like that, that roiling mess of anger and hurt and dangerous outrage.

“You can’t solve anything by pushing everyone away,” Tim urges, steering back to the point.

“I’m not pushing --”

“Yes,” Tim cuts him off, risking a glance up again. Hawk looks like he’s fighting hard to keep his defiant posture. “You do. When it gets too real and too scary for you, you find somewhere else to put that person. No matter what they want or need. No matter what’s best for them. You just magic them away and then it’s all fixed and not your problem anymore.”

“I don’t know what soul searching you’ve been doing down the seminary but --”

“I’ve had plenty of time to think,” Tim cuts him off again, takes a shaky breath. “You made sure of that. You reported me to the fucking M Unit and ruined my name --”

--“Skippy. Tim.”

Tim isn’t sure how they’ve moved from the draft to Jackson and back to him but Tim can’t stop himself now, words tumbling out faster than he can swallow them. “You ruined my career, Hawk. And okay, maybe it’s for the better. Maybe I wouldn’t have found my passion there and needed the push out of D.C. but that wasn’t my choice --”

“It wasn’t mine either --”

“You’re fucking doing it right now,” Tim snaps. “You do it to make it easier for yourself and then you pretend it was beyond your control. You get someone else to do your dirty work and then you pretend that it wasn’t you doing it. And then you have the audacity to tell me that you spent all that time thinking of me? As if I made that choice to leave?”

“Fuck you,” Hawk says, standing up. Tim can see the shake of his fingers as he runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t need to listen to this shit from you both --”

Tim swallows. Knows that he’s being lumped in with Lucy. It burns through him, nearly cathartically. They are the same. All those people that Hawk has been inside, rotting them from the inside out. All of them just as ruined as he is.

--“I work my ass off to provide all this. When is that enough?”

The laugh rips out of him unexpectedly, drags up the back of Tim’s throat so sharply that it nearly hurts. Hawk stares at him, half in shock.

“And that’s all it boils down to isn’t it?” Tim asks, still half laughing. “That’s what makes you a man? That gives you a right to trample over everyone else close to you?”

“I do what I have to. I play within the rules.”

“You have no rules. You just do whatever the fuck you want knowing it’ll bounce off you, won’t it? Always bulletproof.”

“I do it so I can preserve what I’ve carved out for myself, so I can provide for my family, so I won’t get caught again --” Hawk looks desperate, like each word is painful to say.

“Again?”

Hawk stares at him for a long moment and then his face slips back to that infuriating blank smirk, the narrowing of his eyes. It’s a slow drag of his gaze up Tim’s body, as if he’s cataloguing him for the very last time and Tim’s heart jumps into his throat, the hammering of it against his windpipe painful. For all he needs to get this off his chest, the base thought of losing him again only ignites panic inside him.

“Fuck this.”

And then he’s gone, stamping out the door and down the log steps, leaving Tim gobsmacked in the middle of the overheated little cabin.

*

Hawk’s absence in the ensuing days only makes Tim worse. They’ve been in limbo for longer -- those heady days of ‘53 -- when Tim would find his voice and get Hawk’s silence in return. He knows how to play this part, like he’s twenty four again and nervous in his own skin. Always, always deferring to Hawk, always playing to his rules, to his timeline. Tim’s life dictated by the rhythms of Hawk’s.

In the silence, the days meld together much faster than the week before.

Their fight replays over and over. Hawk caught again. When was the first time? Why doesn’t Tim know about it? Does he mean all that time ago by his father? By Lucy? For an entire afternoon, Tim imagines what Hawk would look like hooked up to a polygraph but then dismisses it as wallowing, the idea preposterous.

It rains on Wednesday, breaking the monotony of the crisp, fall mornings. It comes in grey and damp, drums on the roof of the cabin until all Tim can hear is the rattle of raindrops. It’s not like in New York, where the rain comes on like it’s on a switch, the swift bucketing that makes every street slick and shiny. It washes in wet and dank, the cabin stinking of it within hours.

Tim stands in the driveway, toes curled in the mulch and it takes longer to soak through his shirt this way, drops slowed by the canopy of trees but he’s wet and shivering by the time he’s done, trousers stuck to his thighs.

It’s nearly like a trance, Tim staring at the slope of the driveway in the dim evening, the sky heavy above. Sometimes this makes him feel closer to God, weathering the elements and embracing the wildness of the wind. O’Neill used to tell him he was mad at St Mary’s when he snuck back in, would help him out of his sopping jumper and ruffle a towel in his hair. He liked the feel of his warm breath on Tim’s cool skin. Made him feel grounded again. Prioritised his wants and needs in the back of his mind and he could go another little while without the touch of another person again.

Because O’Neill didn’t count, they were mere shadows of each other, a mirror of himself in the symmetry of their dormitory. Both of them caught in their own secret shared between them.

But there’s no one here to help him out of his sodden clothes this time. Tim showers, tries to warm up. He doesn’t know how long he stood out there -- a decade or two of the rosary -- enough that his fingers have shrivelled in the wet, his skin translucent with cold. Takes to bed without dinner, his body shivering in the middle of the empty mattress.

By Friday he’s sniffly and miserable, already in a mood when the day drags in and Hawk doesn’t appear. He hasn’t heard from him. But then again, Tim hasn’t left the cabin all week so he’s not sure how he would’ve. The keys to the house hang by the door, a strange taunt in them but Tim’s not prepared to take the risk of heading back up there.

Is that where Hawk went? For a blissful moment, Tim entertains himself with the image of the two of them having fallen out, Tim banished to the cabin from the main house until they both calm down. Maybe a day or two before he’s allowed back up. In the daydream, it’s his house, his paintings that adorn the walls, his shoes under the velvet chair in the bedroom.

But then it panics him, the bedroom -- the used sheets, Hawk’s come crusted over Lucy’s fancy cushion. He contemplates going up and cleaning, clearing away Hawk’s mess but thinks against it, petrified of running into her. Or him.

Tim spares himself twenty minutes to think the worst -- a family emergency, Lucy’s found out, Hawk’s lying in a ditch somewhere -- and then goes back to wallowing. Hawk stubborn, planning to ignore Tim until he just goes away like every other inconvenience in his life.

Tim’s not sure how that works when he’s reliant on Hawk’s lawyer, reliant on the roof over his head, the groceries in the fridge paid for on Hawk’s account.

What is he doing? He takes to sleeping in front of the cold fire again, his skin raised in gooseflesh in the cold. One morning he wakes up in bed and doesn’t remember how he got there, his body shutting down to preserve itself, burrowing under the covers in his sleep.

It can’t go on. Tim locked up in the cabin like this. Is this the rest of his life? Has he given up his faith altogether? Doesn’t he have more purpose in his life than the four walls of wherever Hawk will put him.

Lucy must really have blown a gasket, Tim thinks on Saturday afternoon. If he closes his eyes, Tim can imagine them arguing, Hawk’s bewildered voice as Lucy lays into him. It’s cathartic, borne out of Tim’s own irritation at Hawk’s beguiling charisma. He’s not even angry at him anymore about what happened last weekend. Or what happened in D.C. all those years ago for that matter. As much as he wants to be, he can’t find that well of anger in his stomach anymore.

He’s angry that he’s no longer angry. Frustrated because he always lets him off the hook so fucking easily. Something inherent in the fact that it’s Hawk that just makes the emotion bend around him like water. Tim is powerless to resist him. Always finds himself weakening his own resolve to spend another moment, a scant second in his good graces.

Tim slips into a feverish sleep, Saturday seeping into Sunday morning. When he wakes, it’s nearly noon and Tim’s too weak to walk into town for mass but he feels better, fever breaking finally as he showers and eats the last of the cereal, dry because he’s out of milk.

He grounds himself by setting up a rudimentary mass on the coffee table and takes time to dress properly. His collar unfamiliar where it’s sticking out of Hawk’s plaid shirt that he’s taken to wearing all week. He goes through the motions, fighting to pay proper attention to what he’s doing but it’s all muscle memory, prayers recited from memory. Daily mass at the seminary was a comfort, the routine of it all. An hour of his day that he knew that he could let his mind empty, where he could forget about everything else: Hawk, his mother’s disappointment, O’Neill.

He kneels during the homily, finds himself a comfortable spot to slump against in front of the coffee table altar and thinks it over. The adrenaline of the draft burnings, the camaraderie with Berrigan and the rest of the activists, the infectious passion exalted at meetings and speeches.

It meant something. Tim brought something of value to those meetings. He shared in that determination. It made him too excited to sleep, the worthwhile thing that was happening at his hands.

“Oh, fuck, Skippy,” Hawk’s voice from the doorway shakes him out of his reverie. He’s gaping at him, his jaw soft and mouth hanging open as he shuts the door behind him.

Tim takes a moment to compose himself, glances up at him. “I didn’t think you were coming --”

“Kimberley,” he says vaguely, like he’s unsure if he wants to be discussing his domestic chores like this. Tim can already see the outline of his erection in his trousers. “She wasn’t feeling well. Lucy had a thing --”

He pauses, arm slightly stretched out in the middle of the room. Tim watches as his eyes track downwards towards his throat and then wrench upwards again.

“I was saying Mass,” Tim fills in, pushing up off his knees. His head swims slightly, blood rushing through his body.

Hawk’s hand is heavy on his shoulder. “No.”

Tim slumps down onto his knees again, a hand resting against the coffee table to steady himself. They’re caught in each other’s gaze for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Tim says, nearly automatic. Hawk’s eyes flutter shut. “I shouldn’t have said all those things. I was angry. I know it’s not all your fault --”

“I’m sorry too,” Hawk breathes, takes a step forward. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I -- I just had to see you. I was so worried that I’d get here and you wouldn’t be here.”

Tim pitches forward, presses his forehead to Hawk’s thigh. His hand sinks into Tim’s hair nearly immediately, cradling his head to his hip. He smells mouth wateringly good. Musky and heady. Tim turns his head, presses his face into Hawk’s groin, mouths out the shape of his dick under the soft material of his trousers.

“Been hard since Wilmington,” Hawk tells him, voice giving way. Tim likes to hear how much it affects him too. “Fuck, just needed to see you. I’m sorry --”

And it’s the image of it, Hawk flexed and tense in his car, one hand on the steering wheel as he headed in through Philadelphia traffic and back out into the country again that sends Tim’s head spinning.

He has his belt unbuckled in a matter of moments, the buttons of his jeans eased out without breaking eye contact. Hawk’s staring at him, his eyes drifting down to his throat and then back up again. Tim feels every second of it, his gaze prickling over his skin. A ripple of pins and needles shimmers up his cheek and he has to bite his lip to counter it, his teeth digging into flesh.

Hawk is hot and heavy in his hand, the familiarity of it overwhelming. Tim watches as his eyes flutter shut, his face sliding slowly into an expression of divine ecstasy. He forces himself to go slow, to take everything that Hawk is giving him. He works his hand over Hawk, a damp thumb sure and sound down the underside, watching as Hawk’s face twitches, the twist of his mouth.

Tim dips forward, laps at the first pearl of precome, works it down over the head of Hawk’s cock until it’s slippery. Hawk’s hands come up then, one to his cheek and the other to the back of his skull. It makes Tim feel more steady, sinking down on his cock gratefully.

“Fuck,” Hawk murmurs, reverent. “Skippy. So good.”

The praise zings up Tim’s spine, settles somewhere at the back of his throat big and heavy. It makes his chest feel tight but every inhale through his nose feels sharp and bright, making his head feel light.

He pulls off, mouth wet and looks up to meet Hawk’s hooded gaze. His hands scrabble at the laces of Hawk’s shoes until Hawk gets the idea and kicks them off. Tim holds him through it, one hand cupping around where his dick is wet and bobbing as Hawk shimmies out of his trousers and underwear.

“What are you --?” Hawk starts but Tim leans back in before he can distract him, before he can detract Tim from what he wants to do to him. He noses into the space at the base of his dick, runs his mouth over the hot inside of his thigh, feels where his legs are starting to tremble.

Hawk’s hand plunges back into his hair, fingers pressing against his skull and urging him back to his cock.

“Okay, okay,” Tim finds himself murmuring, his voice already wrecked as he swallows him back down, the taut smoothness of skin across his tongue. When he chances another glance up, the stretch behind his eyes nearly too much, Hawk is still watching, his eyes big and black.

The hand at Tim’s cheek moves, fingertips glancing over where Hawk’s pressing at the inside of his mouth. He cradles Tim’s jaw in his hand, thumb tracing over his stretched bottom lip. Tim’s drooling, knows that he’s getting the front of his shirt messy but Hawk just breathes raggedly at him, fits his thumb into the corner of his lips.

It’s nearly too much, the press of Hawk’s thumb against one of his molars. The knuckle drags over the side of Hawk’s cock and he groans, his hips flexing forward into the heat of Tim’s mouth. Spit drips down over his chin, Hawk’s thumb pulling his mouth open wider. He does his best to suck it up, his tongue pressing up against the underside of Hawk’s cock, swallowing convulsively.

“Fucking, fuck --” Hawk shouts, his other hand going to the back of Tim’s skull to keep him there. Tim lets his head be rolled under his grip, enjoys the loose feeling radiating out from the back of his neck. He closes his eyes, sees Hawk’s open mouth on the back of his eyelids.

Hawk’s fingers grope lower, nails scratching at his hairline, push into the tight neck of the shirt. “Fuck, Skippy,” he swears again. “I don’t think I can --”

Hawk fits a thumb under the collar and Tim’s eyes flash open, realising what he’s doing. The back of the dog collar is tied there and when he looks up, Hawk’s gaze is transfixed on where it cuts into his Adam’s apple.

“Skip --” Hawk murmurs and then tugs on it, his grip strong on the back of it. It makes Tim choke, swallowing roughly around the head of Hawk’s dick at the back of his throat.

Hawk drops down onto the coffee table, his bare ass to the cloth that Tim had laid out. His hand sweeps away the plate, the cup that Tim was using during consecration clattering onto the floor and splashing across the rug. It helps the strain in Tim’s neck but it means he has to lean over to take him as deep, Tim’s hands pressing to his thighs to keep him close. Hawk flexes his hips, reclines back as far as he can on one arm, allowing Tim to kneel at the altar.

He gets lost in it, the feel of Hawk nudging the back of his throat, the weight in his mouth. Hawk’s hand lands on his neck, presses that spot at the top of his spine that makes Tim’s bones go liquid.

“Don’t swallow --” Hawk edges out through gritted teeth and then he’s coming, his hips jerking forward into the heat of Tim’s mouth. He breathes through it, forces himself to calm down as Hawk floods his mouth, the urge to swallow nearly overwhelming.

He finds his footing clumsily as Hawk hawls him closer, his fingers wrenching at Tim’s shirt and then he’s nosing at his cheek, his hand cupping around his chin where Tim’s all slippery with spit.

“Here,” Tim mumbles, opening his mouth to show him and Hawk’s answering groan at the sight of his come on Tim’s tongue lights up inside him.

“Skippy,” Hawk moans, pulling him closer. He catches just the hint of Hawk’s smile before they’re kissing, Tim feeding him the mouthful of come. An offering up. Tim clutches at Hawk’s skull, sucks on his tongue, licks over his mouth until it’s as messy and wet as his.

“Please,” Tim begs, can’t help it. He’s pulling him up, fingertips scrabbling across Hawk’s scalp, down his jaw, thumbs against the rough edge of stubble on his throat. Hawk’s eyes are blown wide but he follows, lifts his body off the makeshift altar and they stagger together towards the bed.

Hawk’s teeth scrape at his throat, nipping at his skin. It’s torturous, Tim bucking up into Hawk’s big hands and trying to find any friction. Both of them nearly choking with the need to devour each other.

“Skippy, Skippy,” Hawk keeps murmuring into his skin, a constant mantra of his name, his own prayer to Tim. His hand skims up Tim’s belly, fingers sliding into the space between the buttons.

Hawk’s teeth drag along his pulse point, his mouth wet across his skin and when he pulls back, the clergy collar is clamped between his teeth.

“Shit,” Tim swears, has the sudden urge to look away from him. He looks so debauched, his hair wrecked from Tim’s hands. The collar will be ruined, the linen finish indented from Hawk’s bite, Tim can see where it’s wet from his saliva.

Tim wants to keep it, wonders if it’ll smell like Hawk. Wonders if he could wear it back in the seminary without anyone knowing. Something of Hawk pressed against his skin and out in the open like that, something so close to his pulse point, to his mouth. Would it dry with the scent of his breath, sour but strangely satisfying? Would it taste of them if he was to put his own tongue to it.

“You have to fuck me,” Tim decides, mind swimming at the image of him back at the chapel in St Mary’s, the looming figure of Christ watching over him. The shame and approval of it setting Tim’s heart on fire. Here he is, that statue looming over him at the end of the bed. Like he’s been carved of marble and should be hung up for the world to see.

Hawk spits the collar out, throws his leg over Tim’s waist so he’s towering over him. “I don’t know if --”

“You have to,” Tim says desperately, suddenly sure that he has to have him inside him now.

Hawk breaks into a smile and Tim’s glad he doesn’t laugh. There’s something knowing in it though, the tension between them ratcheting up even though Hawk’s already come.

“I’m not as young as I used to be --”

Tim ignores him, fits a hand around where Hawk’s cock is softening, wet and sticky. It makes him moan, just on the edge of pained.

“Alright,” he says, bats Tim’s hand away from him. “Gimme me a minute.”

They lose the rest of their clothes, Tim’s limbs useless as Hawk strips him out of his trousers and the shirt. Hawk seems to understand that Tim doesn’t want to come until he’s inside him so he only mouths around the base of his dick, sucks on one of his balls until Tim’s gasping into his elbow, the feel of it nearly overwhelming.

He opens Tim up on his tongue first, the press of his lips wet and hot. Tim finds the headspace to listen to him, to catalogue the breathy moans and each wet gasp that Hawk makes as he licks and sucks at him. It’s the only thing he can focus on, his eyes catching on the log sloped ceiling, the fading sunlight across the far wall.

He bears down on a thumb, thinks it’s the same one that had just been in his mouth and his mind swims at the thought of Hawk fitting his fingers inside him as he fucks him, how stretched out he could be, the pain of it radiating up the back of his spine until it was all liquid heat. If he could fit his whole hand there alongside his dick, fingers prying him open.

He has to press his face into the blankets, flushed with shame at even the thought of it. Wet and sloppy, messy and delicious irrefutable proof of how fucked up he is. Of how it isn’t fucked up. The heady contradiction of it. That something like could feel so fucking good to be considered bad in the first place. It is miraculous, Tim decides, his nose sore from how hard he’s biting the blanket. He is making his own miracle here. Hawk is doing this for him, in him, with him.

Hawk helps him onto his front and it’s easier to parse it out, to press his face into the dark and just let it happen to himself. He feels the press of fingers at his hole and doesn’t come back to himself until Hawk has a palm flat on the sweaty small of his back and three fingers of his other hand twisted deep inside. He’s up on his knees, his fingers clenched in the pillowcase. With every pass of his prostate, Tim jerks forward, the sheets below him damp with sweat and precome.

It’s nearly too much, Tim feeling like his entire skin is on fire, stretched too thin over his shaking bones. His teeth are sharp against his mouth and he’s bitten nearly through the sheet.

“Front or back?” Hawk finally, finally asks and when Tim twists to look at him, the breath is knocked out of him. Hawk’s kneeling behind him, his dick red and hard and angry looking in front of him. He’s got a hand clenched around himself, the one that’s just been inside Tim and it looks like he’s been careful when slicking himself up, pulling himself off until he’s hard enough.

Tim rolls onto his back, belly up and grateful. He doesn’t think he could last much longer, cresting so close to the edge of his orgasm. He spreads his legs and Hawk breathes out shakily. Tim hugs his leg to his chest, enjoys the stretch of his hamstring. It seems to temper the rabbit race of his heart, the thump of it pressed into his kneecap. And Hawk eases in quickly, the head of his dick popping in on the steady push of Hawk’s hips. Tim tips his head back to adjust to the sensation after all this time being stretched out on fingers alone.

“Slow, slow,” Tim murmurs, a hand to Hawk’s jaw.

Hawk nods, slows the roll of his hips, the drag of his cock torturous. Tim arches his back, presses his sweaty chest up into Hawk’s embrace. His dick is trapped this way but Hawk’s face is close enough to kiss, their mouths meeting in open presses, both too distracted to kiss properly.

“Who --” Hawk starts breathlessly, nearly hesitantly. Tim feels all the air in his lungs leave him because he knows what he’s going to say, what final questions he’s yet to ask. --“do you belong to?”

Tim moans, just turning on the edge of a gasp. Heat flares up the column of his spine and he can’t help but arch into it, pressing greedily into Hawk’s chest.

It’s what he’s been yearning for all week. The solid press of Hawk against him, his damp breath fanning over his cheek, fingers pressed too tight into the globes of his ass. He’ll feel him for days, Tim thinks, feel the way that Hawk is solid and hot inside him, the head of his dick nudged up against his prostate and Tim stretched, stretched, stretched around him.

But it’s this that he really wanted, Hawk so close to him that he can smell him, can feel the heat off his neck. Nearly taste his pulse on the flat of his tongue. He can hear every noise that Hawk fights to keep in, the gurgle of his breath at the back of his throat, the low whine that is working its way up, each pant of his breath. To have him so close it feels like they could never be apart.

Hawk smoothes a hand over his forehead, grips at his hair to steady Tim’s gaze on his face. He feels boneless, his mind slippery and molten, thoughts snagging and then slipping away before he can properly form them.

“You’re mine,” Hawk tells him, voice broken. He thrusts in again but Tim is caught in the cage of his arms, his shoulders bumping into Hawk’s elbows and he’s so folded in on himself that it feels like the bed could swallow him up, Hawk a grounding weight above him. He can feel his orgasm building and he knows this time he’s going to come, the thrill of it ripping through him enough to make him cry out.

Tim sucks in a breath, feels it scrape over his sore throat, mindless. “Yours, yours, always yours.”

*

Hawk seems to realise it before Tim even makes the conscious decision.

In the morning, he’s careful with him, his hands on either side of his face as he kisses him slowly, savouring it. They stay pressed together, sharing the same heartbeat, for as long as they can stretch it out but it all has to come to an end somehow.

Tim finds himself cataloguing where he’s left his stuff, what he’ll need to pack, what he can and can’t take with him and it dawns on him so slowly what he’s going to do today that it’s nearly a surprise to even himself. That he’s already unconsciously making that separation between him and Hawk, drawing away even as he lies in the cradle on his arms.

They don’t speak, Hawk untangling from him to take the first shower and admit that the day has started. Tim half-heartedly puts a few things back into the bag he came with but he knows he won’t need much. He pretends not to notice that it’s been repacked when he comes out of the shower himself, Hawk sitting with his back to him on the sofa.

Tim can’t find it in him to worry about what he’s taken, dresses quickly in the worn trousers he came in and one of the shirts from Hawk’s barren drawers. Hawk doesn’t comment on it either, his eyes flitting across his chest and back up to his jaw when Tim comes to stand in front of him.

“You shaved,” Hawk murmurs, his hand abortively coming up to touch him. Tim’s glad he doesn’t. He had considered leaving it but wanted to take the time to do it now rather that in some grotty jail bathroom. He’d used Hawk’s fancy razor, the weight of it heavy with each smooth drag across his skin.

“Don’t look like an outlaw anymore, do I?” Tim jokes, the first time he’s spoken all morning.

Hawk seems to scrutinise him for a long moment before he decides to go with jovial too. “Like an altar boy.”

Ever the flirt, they grin at each other and it eases something between them, settles Tim’s nerves that Hawk can move on from this.

“There’s a diner,” Hawk says vaguely, and then they’re shuffling out of the cabin for the first time together, coats on, Hawk locking up with a resounding finality.

It’s colder and Tim realises that it’s November already, they’ve spent five weekends together cocooned in this cabin. Half the trees on the way into town have already lost their leaves, everything golden and crimson hued giving way to bare branches and the stark winter sunshine.

Neither of them eat much but it’s such a startling twist of irony to see Hawk in this environment. To get him out in a restaurant, for them to be eating breakfast together amongst half the town.

Tim watches as Hawk orders, the grin he gives the waitress, the way he walks straight to a booth by the window so he can watch the carpark. Tim drinks enough coffee to feel jittery and Hawk orders half the menu, orange juice and pancakes, breakfast potatoes and soft yellowy eggs that make Tim’s stomach roll. Tim wonders if he comes here with his family, if this amount of food is just automatic by now, if it’s really Jackson who drinks the sugary sweet juice, if it’s Lucy who likes the window seat.

“Can I have a glass of milk?” Tim asks the waitress when she comes to refill their coffee. Hawk’s knife scrapes across his plate and he apologises quietly, not lifting his head up. Tim manages a sip but it curdles with the amount of coffee he’s already consumed, makes him feel more ill.

“I don’t want you to go like this,” Hawk finally says, looking sick with every word. “I don’t want to lose you like this.”

“You have to.”

It makes Tim feel calmer, voicing the words into existence. That’s the sacrifice, Tim decides. That’s what makes this worth it. Hawk sighs, tips his head back. For the first time, he realises how difficult this actually is for Hawk, how honest he was being when he said he wanted Tim to stay in the cabin forever.

He bites his tongue on making some other promise. Of saying that they’ll see each other again, that it’ll be alright, that they’ll always find each other because of how base that bond they share.

Hawk seems to gather himself slowly, slides the card for his lawyer across the formica tabletop. Tim watches from the payphone on the other side of the diner as Hawk pays, chats easily to the familiar waitress, waves off offers of leftover boxes.

The drive back out of town is quiet. Hawk keeps the radio low, a Gibb brother on about love again.

“You shouldn’t be seen with me,” Tim finds himself saying as they approach the bus stop. The police aren’t here yet and for a wild moment, Tim thinks about what would happen if they just kept driving. If they could go somewhere, together, and start someplace new. Maybe the west coast. Maybe somewhere up north where no one knew them.

But Hawk pulls in at the side of the road just beyond the bus stop, his expression stony. Tim watches him flex his fingers on the steering wheel and knows he’s fighting the urge to reach for him. Tim can’t let him, doesn’t know how his resolve will fair if Hawk touched him now, if he tried for a final kiss.

“Promise you won’t watch?”

Hawk lets out an upset breath but nods, his eyes fluttering closed. Tim takes a final look. Drinks in the sight of his jaw line, the brush of his eyelashes against his cheek, the way his hair catches the light. His coat is pulled close around him, as if he’s cold, and Tim cocks his head just to see the swallow of his Adam’s apple, the hint of a mark on the hinge of his jaw.

“Tim --” Hawk says, quiet and resigned, eyes fluttering open to catch him looking. It seems like there’s no air between them, the magnitude of what Tim’s doing slowly suffocating them.

“I know.” And then because it doesn’t feel enough. “I know.”

Even though this is his decision, it still takes Tim an effort to open the door. Cool air washes through the car when he pulls the latch and then it’s easier to climb out, to not look at Hawk again, to propel himself forward.

Over his shoulder, he can feel the weight of Hawk’s gaze, feel the yearning in it. But he can’t look around. Can’t see him one more time because that will break him even more than he is already broken.

He hears the ignition of the car turn over, -- Hawk’s final promise fulfilled -- and it’s a weight lifting, absolution, Tim’s confidence in his decision settling deep down inside him.

Because he still belongs to him. Tim knows that. No matter how much time has passed or how much anger Tim has worked through, how much soul searching and maturing he has done, his heart still belongs to Hawk. It always, always will.