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If, But, Just, And, Or
by Nicola
Rating: R
Warnings: incest
Thank you: To rubykatewriting for the beta, and to everyone who helped with my canon questions.
Note: I started writing this before the finale and, as is wont to happen, canon swept in and demolished a chunk of my story. Therefore, consider this fic AH for #1.23, 'Matriarchy'.
Justin hears the bang of a door slamming shut on the top floor, and then suddenly it's all noise and motion. It's three flights of stairs down to the first floor and she takes them two at a time, her heels skimming the missed steps. She careens around the staircase's final bend. Her face is wet with tears and her hair is tangled like someone's hands have been caught in it. Three steps before the ground, she trips and falls.
He springs forward to try and catch her, but it's too late, she's a limp mess on the floor. When he holds out a hand to help her up, she waves it away, instead using the handrail to lever herself to her feet. She rubs her palms against her cheeks, quick and hard, making them flush with color as she wipes her face dry of tears. She reaches for her hair, gathering it at the nape of her neck and twisting it into a knot, which she secures with a hairband she had tied around her wrist. He notices a graze on her elbow from where she fell.
"Let's go," she says.
She strides ahead of him, making her boots sound out loud against the tile flooring. The glimpse he catches of her expression is a little bit ferocious and he sees an echo of Sarah, an echo of Kitty. When she is relaxed, happy, she is just another girl; it's when she's in pain that the Walker dramatics become apparent in her.
They walk quickly. He's surprised at how quickly, considering she is wearing 4-inch heeled boots and undoubtedly nursing a twisted ankle. He does not share this thought with her, he just increases his own speed to keep up. He offers her Starbucks as they pass, but she sniffs and says, no, it was their Starbucks; site of a hundred mornings after. He also keeps quiet about the fact that this does not make it a mythical space, it's… just Starbucks.
It soon becomes apparent that they are going back to the hotel so that she can sit and brood about all the things that have gone wrong in her life.
He found her throwing clothes into a bag on Friday afternoon. She looked up guiltily when he opened the door to her room. (It was the guest room, actually, but it was already beginning to take on the perfumed, lived-in impression of being her room.) Then she resumed packing, daring him to ask her where she was going.
"Chicago," she replied tightly.
He felt his eyes widen. "For good?"
She let out a low laugh and slowed her frantic packing pace a little so that she could meet his eyes. "Just for the weekend."
"How come?" he asked, although he could guess the reason. His medical training had not involved any psychology—the Army was more concerned with bleed-outs and collapsed lungs than the human mind. Nonetheless, he could hazard a Freudian guess that the Joe thing had stirred up some unresolved feelings in her.
"Just need to see some people," she said vaguely.
"Yeah?" He made his voice sound noncommittal.
"My ex-boyfriend." She exhaled hard. "He called me." Pause. "I don't know. He's up in my head. I can't get rid of him." Her mouth quirked with a hint of irony. "I need some closure. Or something."
She slammed shut the case. When he didn't reply, she said, "Hey, you should come with me."
"You have, like, a million friends who could go with you."
"Maybe this is the kind of situation where I need a brother," she said, pinning him with a double-strength puppy-dog stare.
They both knew this was the one statement he wouldn't be able to say no to. He gave a valiant effort anyway. "Becca, I leave for Iraq Monday morning."
"We'll be back for your goodbye dinner on Sunday. What were you planning to do between now and then anyway? You'd just end up sitting around while your family reminisce—act like you're already dead. That sound like fun?"
He grimaced. "Tell me again, what was your major in college?"
"Performance, Philosophy"—she smiled—"and Rhetoric."
Knowing that Nora would be horrified to be robbed of her last sentimental weekend, they snuck away, leaving a note to explain their absence. They caught a 7 p.m. flight out of Burbank. When they landed at O'Hare, Justin didn't bother to switch his phone back on. He felt mindlessly rebellious for the first time in months; it was a feeling he had sorely missed.
"You know what war is like, Becca?"
She lies sprawled on the hotel room bed and when he says this, her head pops up, her expression a little alarmed. (No one ever really wants to talk about war. True story.) "Like… that Jake Gyllenhaal movie?" she says after a moment.
No one ever really wants to talk about war, but they'll go and see endless movies about it. It's just the realness they don't like. "Yeah." He laughs. "Pretty much." He pauses, tries to hold on to his smile. "Most of it? It's a lot of sitting around thinking about what could happen, what has happened and how bad you feel about it all."
"No fighting?"
He laughs again. "Little bit of fighting. Lot of sitting around brooding."
She looks at him, screwing up her face in mock annoyance. (He hopes it's only mock annoyance, anyway.) "What are you trying to say?"
"I ship out Monday. I don't want to spend my last two days doing exactly the same thing as I'm gonna be doing my whole next tour of Iraq."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I made you come with me." She looks like she's gonna start crying again.
"Oh, don't do that. Don't get all boo-hoo on me. I'm just saying. What happened to party girl R? Where'd she go?"
"Party girl R just had sex with her ex-boyfriend on his futon. Which, by the way, smelled like some other girl." She makes a face. "Party girl R is a little tired."
They lapse into silence and then he says, "You wanna get some coffee?" He snaps his fingers. "Oh shoot, I forgot. Starbucks is off-limits. Tell me, is it just that Starbucks? Or is it every Starbucks?"
She grins. "Shut up."
"Seriously." He snickers. "It's just a Starbucks."
"I know. I know it's just a Starbucks. And he's just a guy. And it's all just—just—just." She sighs and her final statement is quieter. "Just something I should get over."
"We should go out," he says suddenly. "Do something."
He feels a surge of the same restlessness that he felt last night. They arrived in Chicago at past midnight, when the city's nightlife was beginning to pulse; tangible pleasure spilling out of the clubs and bars in the form of music, lights and laughing, drunken people. He and Rebecca walked straight to their hotel room to crash—her on the bed; him folded awkwardly into an armchair—but he felt the light itch of hedonism on the back of his neck, begging to be scratched.
"You want to?" she says—and then, without waiting for answer, "Yeah, why not, right? We should celebrate!"
"Celebrate the fact that your boyfriend's a jackass, or that I'm gonna get blown up in Iraq…?"
"Yeah!" They both start laughing. Rebecca rolls clumsily off the bed, but manages to make it look graceful. She sounds breathless as she says, "We're young and free and… and life sucks! So let's go out dancing!"
She begins spinning in circles, shaking her hair loose and dancing to imaginary music. He watches her and his heart hurts from how much he enjoys her company.
It takes Justin five minutes to get ready. He changes into a blue shirt (because Rebecca vetoed the green one), with black pants (after another veto on jeans from Becca). "You never had siblings to play dress up with, so now you're making up for lost time!" he teases her and she laughs.
It takes her significantly longer to get ready. He settles in to watch TV while he waits. He ends up spending more time watching her, though. She flits in and out of the bathroom, changing outfits and then examining her reflection in the full-length mirror with a critical head tilt. She doesn't ask his opinion on her outfits. She merely makes vague, questioning statements about fashion and designers that he guesses don't require his input. Finally, she settles on a patterned blue dress that cuts low across her chest.
"You know," she says conversationally, blinking into a mascara wand, "it's totally pointless to agonize over clothes. All men really notice is how much cleavage you're showing."
"We're just that shallow, huh?"
"Mmmhmm." She smiles. "Five bucks says no guy I meet tonight even notices the color of my dress."
He covers his face with his hands. "This conversation is officially making me uncomfortable."
"What, boobs are off the list of acceptable conversation topics?"
"Pretty much," he says. "You wouldn't wanna warp our relationship."
"I can't even imagine what a warped relationship with my family would be like," she says and they both laugh.
Rebecca calls up some friends to meet them at a club. Justin guesses they are party friends, not real friends. They don't seem to care where Rebecca has been, (why she left, why she has come back;) only that she is here now. Justin remembers that same spontaneity of friendship; the synthetic high that made everyone shine. Rebecca is greeted with screaming laughter and enthusiastic hugs from a small crowd of people outside of the club. The Wall and Grace is a nondescript café (closed up for the night) that leads down into a basement that is thrumming with life. Predatory eyes soon fall on Justin. Rebecca trips over his introduction and Justin realizes that these friends know nothing of Rebecca's brand new dead father and all the baggage that has come with. Eventually, she introduces him as, "Justin. Just… Justin." Everyone laughs.
The club's atmosphere is laid-back. It's not overcrowded and the lighting is subtle rather than pulsing. The music is a hip, eclectic blend of bluesy rock, motown and modern indie with a beat. Nonetheless, Rebecca's friends are dancing to Mates Of State like it's electro-house and this is Spring Break in Mexico. Their recklessness is infectious and Justin finds himself joining in. They don't dance in couples—it's more of an impromptu mosh pit of everyone happily colliding with everyone else. Nonetheless, Rebecca seems to make an effort to dance near to Justin. Their fingers brush occasionally, hands reaching out for each other. Once, he spins her around, as if they were ballroom dancing. She laughs and it is rendered strangely soundless against the noise of the music.
Rebecca disappears to the bathroom and comes back peppier, full of life. In the half-dark, he can't see her eyes, but if he could, he guesses she would be pinned out, her pupils shrunk to tiny specks. He can't bring himself to begrudge her this relief, this instant happiness. His mom would be horrified, superstitiously worried that Rebecca could pass on her buzz through the brush of their hands. It's really not that contagious, although he still feels an echo of a junkie rattle; his chest constricting as he realizes how easy it would be to score. He feels a slight prick of guilt—as if he should be sober in all senses of the word; prohibited from having fun. It's insane. He peels off from the group, feeling overwhelmed and out of place—irrationally angry. He leaves Rebecca and her friends to the crazed circle pit they have created.
He leans gratefully on the bar and orders a drink.
The bartender gives him a look, meaningful but unreadable in this light. "You must be the only kid in here drinking orange juice," he says, sloshing the drink into a glass.
Justin nods slowly, unwilling to make conversation. He accepts his change and gulps down the sweetened orange juice with a vague sense of disgust.
The bartender prompts, "You in the program?"
"Yeah," Justin says as he lays a dollar on the bar. "You too?"
"Used to be," the bartender says without elaboration.
Justin is distracted by a soft collision. One of Rebecca friends—the petite brunette—leans on him for support, panting slightly. "Hi," she says dizzily. "You're Justin, right? Rebecca's… friend."
Justin nods. She looks unsteady on her feet and she has locked her fingers around his arm, using him to keep her propped up.
"I bet you don't remember my name!" she half-shouts. She seems jubilant at his wordless response. "Mara! Don't worry, if I decide I want you to remember it, you will!"
Mara turns to the bartender and orders a Perfect Manhattan, extracting a twenty from between her breasts.
"You know you're in the wrong city, sweetheart," the bartender tells her, but she ignores him.
Mara picks up her drink, still holding Justin's arm with her left hand. "You and Becca, huh?" she says, refocusing on him.
"It's… not really like that."
"I don't know"—Mara sips coquettishly from her drink—"kinda looks like you're into her."
Justin tries to say something, but the words feel dry on his lips. He reaches for his orange juice, finishing it in three gulps.
"Just between you and me, Bex is… she's…" Mara snaps her fingers, searching for the word. "She's high-maintenance! Likes older guys. Anyone off-limits. You're pro'ly not her type. Now me"—Mara gives a winning smile—"I'm easy!"
Without waiting for a response, Mara gives a final squeeze of his arm and glides away into the crowd, like an ice-skater pushing off into the centre of the rink. Her final words are, "Think about it…"
Justin leans his back against the bar and watches Mara resume her place with her friends, dancing wildly. Her simple proposition has made him horny, even though he only finds her attractive in an abstract, Victoria's Secret kind of way. He ships out Monday. The unspoken second-half of this statement is: he should get laid. More than that, though, he wants to get laid with someone he cares about; someone who will miss him when he's gone. He wants an experience to file away like a photograph; to recall over and over until it becomes soft at the edges.
His eyes drift from Mara to Rebecca, who appears lost inside the music. Rebecca doesn't dance dirty; she's not preoccupied with being sexy. Somehow this makes her sexier still. Her aura is projecting outward, pulsing around her in waves. She tips her head back, her body shimmying to the beat. She fidgets restlessly with her dress and he imagines it as a skin she wishes to shed; something she can wriggle free from and appear new, replenished, different altogether.
Justin leaves the club and walks slowly down the street. The night air feels brisk and fresh after the overheated club. He fishes his cell phone out of his pocket and switches it on. There are twenty missed calls. He grins, feeling stupidly grateful to have been missed. He checks his voicemail and finds three messages: a clipped message from Sarah; a more lackadaisical one from Kevin; and a ten-minute tirade from his mother. He listens to the entirety of the last message with a smile on his face. Nora appears to work through her anger and disappointment in the space of the message, because by the end he can almost hear her smiling. Finally, she tells him, still resentful, to have fun.
He arrives back at the hotel and lets himself into their room. He feels tired. It's a precise, sudden feeling. The idea of switching off his brain is incredibly appealing. Without bothering to undress, he kicks off his shoes, lies down on the bed and goes to sleep.
Light floods the room and Justin feels disoriented. Hours may have passed or no time at all. It could be Monday morning. It could be Tuesday. He could be waking up in barracks. The momentary flare of panic fades to a light buzz as he glances at his surroundings. It's almost 3 a.m. and he is still in Chicago. Rebecca stands at the doorway, her hand on the light switch. They blink at each other for a moment and then she switches the light off again.
It takes a while for Justin's eyes to readjust to the darkness. In this lapse he hears Rebecca stumble across the room. He feels the mattress move and he becomes aware of the warm sensation of her body near to his. After another minute, the shifting half-light resolves itself and he is able to make out her shape next to him on the bed.
"You just left," she says hoarsely (and he guesses by her tone that her high is beginning to wear down into a woozy, seasick feeling). "Not cool." She pauses and then adds, less critically, "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah. Fine." He hears the lie as he says it. He realizes that it is officially Sunday: his last day as a civilian and a day that is destined to be filled with lies. Yes, I'm fine. No, I'm not scared. Of course everything will be alright.
She curls close to him and they rearrange their bodies automatically: his arm around her shoulder, her head resting against his chest. It's comfortable, familiar. Their relationship is filled with these moments that feel natural, even though they've never done them before; déjà vu to an imaginary past. "I'm sorry this has been a shitty weekend for you," she says with a sigh.
"What? No. It's been… interesting." He laughs softly. He can honestly say that every experience he's had with Rebecca has been interesting. "And you… you figured some stuff out, right? So I got to…" He can't bring himself to finish the sentence with, be a good brother.
She makes a non-committal noise. They lapse into silence and then she blurts, "I'm glad you came." She twists her neck and kisses him. In the darkness it's impossible to know which part of his face she intended to kiss. It lands at the corner of his mouth. She laughs and reaches up to wipe it away with her thumb—as if they are eight and he might be worried about girl cooties.
All of a sudden it becomes a joke—a stupid, nonsensical game. He retaliates and lands a kiss on her ear. She squirms away, laughing, but he kisses her eyebrow, then the soft, curved bone of her eye socket. Her squirming has landed them closer together and it's become less of an innocent embrace. She climbs on top of him and presses her hands to his shoulders, her thumbs resting at his collarbones, as if she might be getting ready to pretend-strangle him. He tries to throw her off, but doesn't put much effort into it. He likes the sight of her rising above him: hair hanging down, tangled and loose; her breasts rising and falling from exertion; the pressure of her thumbs; eyes flashing dark in the dim light.
He is suddenly aware of his body and everything it might be implying. He licks his lips and then feels guilty. The much guiltier part of him is also beginning to show interest in a girl on top of him. He tells himself it's just reflex that's causing his pants to strain. She kisses his nose and laughs.
There's a lull of what feels like a lifetime. Then she puts her hands to his face. She leans down to kiss the corner of his mouth again. Without thinking, he reaches up and grasps her shoulders, holding her in place. He moves his head slightly and they kiss again, clumsily, before they realign and melt into a longer kiss.
It's just—it's nothing. It's part of the game. It's a lapse. A mistake. A result of late nights and misplaced desires; bodies that can't tell right from wrong; minds that don't want to.
He kisses her harder, willing her to stop him, but knowing that she won't. He is barely aware of where this could be going; he only knows that he wants to touch her, fit his hands inside her clothes, feel warm blood pulsing beneath her skin. He wants this. He wants it more than a nameless girl at a bar. More than a platonic hug from a sister who shouldn't exist. His life over the last year has been so much about resisting, staying strong. But this is too much temptation, too much denial.
His hands stroke her arms, finding the contours of her body in the darkness. He feels the breath at her neck, finds with his thumbs the soft curve of her breasts. She presses herself into his touch and he feels her fingers working at the buttons of his pants.
Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, FUCK— The feeling explodes through him and he wrenches his body away from her. Within seconds, he is off the bed, half-falling to the floor and stumbling backward.
"We can't do this," he says desperately, inanely. He reaches clumsily for the bedside lamp, hoping light will make sense of the situation. He sees hurt in her expression, but it is already fading to blankness. She sits up and pulls at her dress, pushing her hair out of her face. (His stomach drops. He is reminded suddenly of her earlier reaction to seeing her ex-boyfriend. He doesn't want to be able to hurt her in that way.)
The silence is heavy between them. It is she who breaks it.
"Yeah, I mean"—she pauses to cough, but when she continues, her voice still sounds dry—"we should probably use a condom. Don't wanna get pregnant with my brother's baby."
There's another beat of silence and then they both start to laugh—loudly and maniacally. At that moment, they can either laugh or scream.
Their laughter subsides and Rebecca leans forward, resting her forehead on her knees. "Oh god, I feel sick."
"Is that because the coke you took was cut with Drano, or because you just made out with your brother?"
She looks up. "God. Don't say stuff like that." She laughs briefly and then gulps it back down. "Both, probably. You wiseass."
He moves back toward her, treading slowly on worn carpet. He takes a seat on the bed and turns to her. He feels awkward all of a sudden. He doesn't know where he's allowed to touch her; he doesn't know where the line is. Seeing his hesitation, she reaches out and takes his hands, linking their fingers together loosely. It's the connection that he needs and he finds he's able to say what he's thinking.
"I get that from my dad. My mom has no sense of humor—beyond laughing at America's Funniest Home Videos, I mean. My dad was the wiseass." He feels the frustration mounting in his voice. He continues, speaking rapidly, "You know, if we had met—just met. It would be cool that we had things in common, that we could find things to talk about for hours on end. It would be cool—it would be, like, a connection. A real cheesy chick flick connection."
"Yeah," she says in a small voice, not meeting his eyes.
"What if we had just met, though?" He can't get past this thought; he can't get past the unfairness of life. "If I… If I saw you in a club and thought… wow, she looks sexy when she dances."
She smiles painfully at the compliment. "If"—she clears her throat—"if you were just this guy I knew. This smart and sweet and funny—" Her voice dies and she looks away.
"You're the only person who doesn't treat me like I'm broken," he says. "And you deserve better than some guy who'll jerk you around."
"Yeah," she says slowly, "there are a whole lot of reasons why—why Hypothetical Justin should date Hypothetical Rebecca."
He lets out a laugh. "Who is this Hypothetical Rebecca? She sounds hot."
She grins and rolls her eyes. He recognizes it as a my-dumb-brother-just-teased-me reaction. The mood has shifted; the demons in his brain have quieted.
"I'm tired," she says and her face seems to wilt with the statement. "I'm really fucking tired. Can we just chalk this up to… sleep-deprived insanity or something?"
He nods vaguely. "Yeah, we should go to sleep." He pulls away from her hands. "I'll take the chair.
"No." She frowns. "Sleep with me. We can sleep together. Just sleep. We can do that. That's allowed, right?" Her laugh is brittle, a little desperate.
They don't undress. That seems too complicated a manoeuvre; too fraught with possibilities. They just lie down and sleep.
She sleeps, anyway. He stares at the ceiling, feels the darkness grow lighter, listens to the dawn chorus of street cleaning trucks. He feels the time drag by as if it is a physical sensation. He watches Rebecca as she sleeps. He thinks. He thinks for a long time.
The rest of Sunday is unavoidably awful. It's raining in Chicago, despite the dry heat of the previous day. Rebecca mutters darkly about climate change, but Justin appreciates the rain. Sunshine would feel all wrong today. When they land in Los Angeles, he almost laughs, because it's overcast there, too. It's furnace-hot, but the clouds stubbornly remain. He and Rebecca fall back into their routine, albeit clumsily. An awkwardness lingers and Justin is struck again by a strange inability to touch her, for fear he won't be able to stop touching her.
His goodbye dinner is painful and wonderful in equal measure. He is grabbed and hugged so many times and with such ferocity that he feels rag-doll soft by the end of it. Rebecca chooses a place at the other end of the table, far away from him. She picks at her food and barely looks at him. She has been cultivating a distance ever since she awoke in his arms. She's good at it, too; the cool wistfulness makes her even more beautiful. He realizes that she's a pro at this: her whole life has been spent packing her rib cage full of polystyrene in order that her heart might remain intact.
The evening is beginning to devolve into maudlin anecdotes about when Justin was a kid. Everyone else is getting progressively drunker—although they pour surreptitiously from the bottle, as if hoping Justin won't notice. Nora glares disapprovingly at Kevin, who is pouring himself an extra-large measure of whiskey, but then steals a sip from his glass. Rebecca, who is drinking water, excuses herself quietly. Justin watches her leave the room. He hesitates and then follows her.
The front door is ajar. He opens it to find her standing just outside. The twilight is thickening into real darkness. The porch light above her head is like an umbrella, keeping the night at bay.
"Hey," he says softly, hoping not to startle her.
She jumps anyway, looking round at him with big eyes. "Oh, hi," she mumbles. He doesn't fill the silence, so she continues, fractionally louder, "I'm sorry, I don't know what to say." He thinks she's referring to last night until she says, "All I can think is, don't die. Please don't die."
Oh. That. He laughs suddenly; when incest is the preferable subject, it's a pretty fucked up world.
She makes a face, assuming that he's laughing at her. She reaches out to smack him lightly across the chest, but he sees a slight smile appear on her lips. "I'm not kidding," she says. "You're not allowed to die. You're just not."
"Well, if I'm not allowed…"
Her face is still a mess of contradictory emotions. Before he can examine it further, she throws her arms around his neck. It's a fiercely nonsexual hug and he thinks he understands the term bear hug more fully. The force of the embrace literally unbalances him and they teeter backwards. "Whoa!" he says.
She releases him and he tries to smile. She does the same and they both produce smiles that are forced and awkward.
He thinks about kissing her. He's been thinking about it all day. The number of moments where he could have reached out and kissed her has surpassed a hundred already. He thinks about touching her, kissing her neck, trailing his tongue in circles around her nipples, across the taut skin of her stomach, finding the most sensitive parts of her inner thighs. His thoughts of sex are growing muddy with spliced-in fantasy, spiralling out of control in his mind. He is realizing slowly that it is all unimaginable.
Rebecca turns away, folding her arms across her chest and looking out across the darkening front yard. She's off and away again; far away, tunnelling into her own private world. He is not invited, he is not allowed; his biology is just another thing that has hurt her. She is better off without him.
He has a picture of his family that he intends to take to Iraq. It's an inanely wholesome shot of his parents, plus the five kids grinning madly—only five kids, because it's only version 1.0 of his family. Justin looks at Rebecca. He examines the way that her hair curls around her face, not as tidy as usual. Her thin arms are curled around her abdomen, hugging herself. She looks cold, despite the warm night air. (He imagines that wherever she is, wherever her mind has taken her, it is cold.) This is the picture he will hold in his mind when he is away; he will slide it over the real (real, but less true, somehow) photograph of his family.
"Bye, Becca," he says softly.
She doesn't answer him—doesn't even look at him, and he is perversely glad. She is already receding into an image that burns in a dim place in his mind; perfect, distant and untouchable.
He goes inside, back to version 1.0.
June 2007
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