Work Text
In the aftermath of Arthur Kirkland’s meltdown in the Fleming trial, the defence had requested for a change of counsel and the trial proceeded as if Arthur hadn’t instigated an uproar in the public gallery. The journalists sitting in observation had turned into vultures, feasting on the unfolding drama. The whole trial, or at least what little of it, blew up in the media. For a solid month, Judge Fleming had been in the limelight, and Arthur was right there next to him. Everywhere he went, there were people who clapped for him, snapped photos of him, even asked for his autograph. It was pure chaos.
Eventually, Fleming was found guilty on all charges, which was a forgone conclusion really. The truth prevailed and justice was served.
Hu-fucking-rray.
And Arthur? After withdrawing from the trial, he was swiftly subjected to a disciplinary proceeding wherein the board of ethics found he had a ‘pattern of contumacious conduct’ and had ‘deviated from his professional ethics’. Arthur would’ve begged to differ, but that was what had gotten him stuck in this pile of shit in the first place. He was ultimately suspended from the practice of law for two years. It would be another month before Arthur became old news and then in the blink of an eye, he was unemployed and uninteresting.
Strangely enough, it didn’t feel world-ending. An outburst like that could've easily gotten him disbarred on another contempt of court charge. The board had been lenient, all things considered, perhaps in light of new evidence brought forth against Judge Fleming. More likely though, it would’ve been a catastrophic disgrace for the Supreme Court to have to strike off two servants of justice in one fell swoop.
Being suspended was in all likelihood still career-ending. Which maybe suited Arthur fine, after all.
Arthur had a feeling he was being watched.
Call it a sixth sense or whatever, but after 12 years of working with a bunch of dangerous clients, Arthur had learned to trust his gut for this kind of thing.
This wasn’t the first time he felt eyes on him while sitting on the park bench, paper in hand, packed lunch (pickle sandwich) by his side. But unlike the malicious eyes of a client soliciting his murder on the side (it's happened on at least three occasions) or the prying eyes of the public after his 15 minutes of fame from the Fleming trial, these eyes felt… Harmless. Curious. Interested. And because of that, Arthur had learned to ignore it.
He was a sitting duck, so what?
The past few times, he tried to catch the culprit off guard, swivelling abruptly to face the faceless figure. But each time, all he saw were regular people you'd expect to find at the park: retirees, couples, joggers, sweepers, picnic-goers, kids in the playground, et cetera.
Today was different. Today, Arthur could detect a presence from the corner of his eyes, closer than ever. And when he turned, he saw—
Retirees, couples, joggers, sweepers—
Sweeper.
The man in question was a slim-built, tallish guy dressed in beige overalls with his cap drawn low over his face. He had both hands curled around a broom, a pile of leaves by his side, and he was simply standing there. Looking in Arthur's direction. Staring at him.
When their eyes met, Arthur knew he’d gotten him because, in the next instance, the man had turned tail and fled.
“Hey, stop!” Arthur called out, leaping up. The mystery man only ran faster. Lunch and paper abandoned, he was soon on the man's tail. “STOP!”
The man sprinted across the fields, expertly overcoming any inclines. Arthur kept pace, and together, they passed by the fountain and the lake. Around him, the people barely batted an eye as Arthur haphazardly manoeuvred around them. He used to be a pretty regular jogger, running once a week or so. Maybe it was because he had cut back on his runs as of late that he was beginning to feel breathless. In front of him, the man showed no signs of slowing down.
“Wait,” Arthur croaked. “I just—I just wanna talk!”
Soon, his vision was blurring and his knees gave way. He made it as far as the playground before he was collapsing in the sand by the seesaw, panting and drenched. The kids on the seesaw looked at him judgmentally before scampering away. With a sigh, he hung his head and drew in a deep breath.
“Mr Kirkland, are you okay?”
Blinking through his sweat, Arthur lifted his head.
“...Bickle?”
Travis Bickle, the mystery sweeper, stood before him, hands extended out awkwardly towards Arthur but not exactly offering a hand. Instead, he shrugged.
“It's good to see you again, sir.”
Arthur groaned.
The first time Arthur met Travis Bickle was four years prior. The latter had been charged with committing a variety of offences, including but not limited to arms dealing, trespassing and mass murder. Although outside his jurisdiction, Arthur was admitted to the case pro hac vice and flew to New York City to partner with the local counsel, Andy Montgomery, who was acquainted with Jay Porter and had heard of Arthur's success in court.
It was an opportunity Arthur took with a lot of hesitance. In a way, it was a clear-cut case: Three people were dead. Travis Bickle killed them. Period.
Arthur would have flat-out rejected the invite, tried to at first, if Montgomery hadn't appealed to his humanity over the phone.
“Come meet him first before you turn him down, Kirkland. Give Bickle a chance. Then you can make up your mind once and for all.”
He did that and Jesus Christ, Bickle was some character. Meeting him for the first time, Arthur couldn't believe that a guy with such a mellow personality was capable of anything as brutal as murder. Then Arthur got down to the plain hard facts and was not any less disconcerted. Bickle’s motive was that he had a warped sense of vigilantism that spurred him to ‘save’ the young girl and kill the men who were extorting her. He shared this, beaming with quiet pride, as if he considered himself too humble to be taking credit for a deed so good. Yet taking into account Bickle’s delusions, it was plain to see he was not fully of sound mind.
Bickle had already undergone a psychiatric evaluation and while he was suspected to have a mental condition, it was deemed not sufficiently serious that it would prevent Bickle from defending himself.
“I was banking on throwing out this case, let the judge find Bickle unfit for trial and put him away in some psych ward. But damnit, of course that didn't work out,” Montgomery lamented. The two men were in an empty conference room, pacing as they discussed their action plan.
“The way I see it, we have two approaches now,” Arthur said. “Either we plead NGRI, which will be a long road to acquittal and an even longer road to rehabilitation. Or, we enter a plea bargain.”
“Plead guilty? Are we sure? I feel like we still got a case for him being insane.”
“I doubt Bickle would be game enough to plead not guilty. So far, he's taken full ownership of his crimes,” Arthur explained frankly. “Plead guilty and Bickle gets a sentencing discount, plus we remove the jury from the picture. It's a sensationalised case, I think the odds would be 50-50 with a jury. Too risky. Plead guilty and we throw in all the mitigating factors—his mental condition, his military service, he's a first-time offender—”
“His victims were pimps and paedophiles,” Montgomery piped in.
“—which he was provoked by! Plead guilty and we should bag this case with a lighter sentence,” Arthur finished, slapping a hand on the table. “All Bickle needs to prove is that he's remorseful.”
And,
Arthur had thought to himself then, we get to spare a young girl from going through a trial and reliving all that bad shit.
Soon, he would come to find that it had been a pipe dream to expect Bickle to show remorse.
“You didn't have to run from me, you know,” Arthur said, in between scoffing down his food.
After the not-so-grand chase, Arthur felt wobbly and hungry. He didn't feel like retrieving his sorry lunch left on the bench and he also didn't want Bickle out of his sight. So instead, the two men headed to a nearby diner where Arthur ordered a steak sandwich and a coffee, while Bickle ordered a respectable strawberry milkshake with extra whip, topped with a bright red cherry.
There was a jukebox somewhere, in the middle of playing some funky blues song with a lot of guitar and saxophone.
Restless feeling, really got a hold
I started searching for a better way—
“And you could’ve run away from me if ya wanted. So why did you come back?”
Bickle shrugged again, looking down at the table as he stirred his shake. He hadn’t been forthcoming about anything since they got here but then again, Bickle had always been hard to read. At least he looked like he was doing alright. Not as lanky and gaunt as the last time they met, which Arthur couldn't say the same of himself. The wild look in Bickle’s eyes had dimmed down as well, though a smidge remained in his flitting gaze.
He was nervous, Arthur realised.
“How have you been?” Arthur asked, trying for a smile. It came off strained.
Bickle glanced up at him with a quick flick of his eyes and back down at his shake. Another shrug. “I'm alright.”
New York City took me with the tide
And I nearly died from hospitality—
They were occupying a table in the corner of the diner. Since it was a little past lunch hour, the diner was sparsely filled. In a way, he and Bickle were in their own little bubble. Though as more time passed with Bickle keeping mum, Arthur worried their safe bubble would soon pop if he couldn't reel in his irritation.
“How long have you been in Baltimore? I know you've been watchin’ me at least a month.” Bickle snapped his head up, eyes wide and defensive.
Got you.
Raising a placating hand, Arthur continued, “It's cool, I'm not going to do anything about it. Not sure if you heard the news but I'm not quite the person I was when you last saw me. And I think you're not who you once were, either. To new beginnings, capiche?”
Bickle worried his lower lip for a moment and yielded with a pensive nod.
“Call me Travis.”
“Alright, Travis,” Arthur smiled, more genuinely this time.
“Can I call you Arthur?”
“I don't see why not.”
“Arthur,” Travis murmured carefully. Something in the way he said it made Arthur shiver.
“Right,” Arthur cleared his throat, “so you've been in Baltimore long? Moved out of NYC?”
Travis took a long slurp of his drink. “Moved here two months ago.”
“Rent gettin’ too high?”
“Yeah,” Travis said with a nod, “also came here to find you.”
“Find me?” Arthur asked, failing to keep the surprise out of his voice. He put his sandwich down. “Wow, okay. And now you've found me. Why were you finding me?”
Travis chose that moment to chew on his cherry, expression neutral as he studied Arthur, holding eye contact in that preternatural way of his; either too much of it or none at all. The music in the background had died down, making the silence hang awkwardly between them. To Arthur's credit, he managed to tamper down the errant urge to lash out at the other man. After a beat, he prompted, “Well?”
As Travis swallowed, Arthur’s eyes trailed the bob of his throat unconsciously. Finally, Travis said, “I get the feeling that you weren't happy with me the last time we spoke, a few years back. And I don't like that. I want us to get along, Arthur.”
“I don't understand,” said Arthur. Although he thought he did.
“Do you think I'm crazy, Arthur?”
“You know I don't.”
“But you think I'm something else?”
Arthur’s hands clenched tightly on his knees.
“Do you think I'm crazy, Mr Kirkland?”
Arthur pulled down his glasses to give Bickle a considering look. They were alone in an unmonitored room in the prison where Bickle was detained. The other man was sitting opposite Arthur, posture ramrod straight, handcuffed to the table.
“You're not crazy Bickle, crazy is not a medical diagnosis. You’re—” Arthur paused. Bickle was looking at him with tired, imploring eyes. His five o'clock shadow was fast approaching midnight, looking incongruous with his young face.
At some point, Arthur had come to realise that Bickle was beginning to… Well, he wouldn't go as far as to say worship him. But the man had started to seek constant validation from Arthur, always looking to him eagerly and perking up when he got an affirmative reply. Montgomery had noticed it, too. Thought it was fucking hilarious, sniggered at him about it all the time. Asshole.
(Offhand, Arthur had mentioned it to Gail over the phone when they had still been in an ambiguous relationship. Didn't specify the client but, well, he had only been in NYC for one client so take a guess.)
(“You've always liked puppies,” she had replied, like it made sense.)
(It didn't.)
This time, Bickle’s question felt less like he was trying to get Arthur's approval. This time, his question was delivered with no affect, as if he was finally starting to get worn down by the case.
“You're not crazy,” Arthur repeated, more firmly. It was important that he made his point clear. “You followed your moral compass and did what you thought you had to. But you have to understand that what you did was not right, legally and morally. You took lives, Bickle. Sometimes, you gotta trust the law to take care of the bad guys. That's what it's there for. To punish bad people and keep the good people safe. We don't play God on earth, is my personal belief. We play by His rules, insofar as we can. And getting rid of those bad guys does not sanctify our souls, doesn't make us heroes. It makes us culpable.”
Arthur heaved and shut down his rambling. Bickle stared at him, cocking his head to one side. Far too casually, he remarked, “I was in the Marines. I've taken lives before. Many.” His mouth pulled into a horrific grin. “It was straight to hell from there. So I think to myself, why not go off with a bang? Take the trash out while I'm at it.”
Arthur flinched. There was no trace of remorse on Bickle’s mein. The man had acted on his value judgments, killed other men and reaped the rewards of—of what? A good deed done? Glory?
“You're messed up,” Arthur gritted out with a glare.
He turned back to his notes, failing to notice the crestfallen expression Bickle wore. The room plunged into silence.
After that, he refrained from engaging with Bickle more than was necessary. In any event, Montgomery was meant to be the primary contact for any communication with Bickle.
As they approached the day of the hearing, Montgomery had coaxed Bickle on what to say during his allocution. No script was prepared, a deliberate choice to demonstrate Bickle’s genuineness, but the man had his lines more or less memorised. Bickle spoke of understanding the ramifications of his actions, the regret he felt for the victims and the effort he was putting into working through his post-war PTSD through regular counselling and therapy. All stellar answers for the judge, and they were all delivered like a robot.
The only time Arthur detected any actual emotion was when Bickle stuttered to say, “I'm very sorry to Iris, the girl I tried to rescue but couldn't. The girl who I allowed to witness the savage murder of a man.”
It was not any of the lines he had rehearsed. It left Arthur wondering.
In the end, because Bickle had entered a plea bargain, the charge was dropped from first-degree murder to voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service. For the first 12 months, he would be placed in a halfway house where he would receive psychiatric support as a condition to his probation. The judge had banged his gavel twice and that was all. Bickle got a mere slap on the wrist.
Arthur returned to Baltimore and tried to put Bickle behind him.
“You were my client, Travis. That was the extent of our relationship. My personal thoughts about you didn't matter.”
“But what about now? Now that I'm not your client. What do you think about me now?”
“I—” Arthur shut his eyes and rubbed his temples. “I don't know, okay? You spring up on me suddenly and ask how I feel about you like we're old friends? What do you expect me to say?”
Apparently that was not the correct answer because Travis turned quiet, gripping his glass so hard Arthur was afraid it was going to break. He was tempted to put his hand over Travis’s, get him to loosen his fingers and calm down. But he wasn't confident that that wouldn't set the guy off. Goddamnit, Arthur realised he didn't even make sure that Travis wasn't fucking armed—
Travis sighed, fingers uncurling. Arthur took a gulp of his cold coffee, wished it was hot enough to scald his tongue so he could escape this conversation.
“I told you I wasn't sorry that I shot ‘em shitstains,” Travis said.
“Something along those lines,” Arthur agreed. He wondered if it was too late to frisk the guy once over.
“I'm still not sorry, alright? Ever since Vietnam, I've forgotten how it feels like to be sorry for shooting down some good-for-nothing sonuvabitch. I get it's wrong to do it outside the battlefield, I get it, but I don't feel nothin’.”
“Okay.”
“But it's not that I can't feel anything. I feel worser for Iris. I thought I saved her that night, I thought I did. But I remember her crying, right before I black out. If only you could hear it too, Arthur. Her crying was so fucking scared. I wanted to be a hero, I wanted to be her hero. But I think I just hurt her.”
Arthur worked his jaw. Unbidden memories of past clients began to surface. McCullaugh, young and frightened, whose unfair death still haunted him to that day; Agee, in his pretty wig and dress, so comfortable in his skin, so terrified of being put in the slammer indefinitely that he took his own life; Fleming, a wolf among sheep. Travis. Arthur himself. All testament to a fucking dysfunctional justice system.
“I used to think in terms of right and wrong, felt like I built a whole electric fence to divide the two,” Arthur laughed humourlessly. “Now? All that's muddled. We live in a society that punishes the good and rewards the bad. Spits on those who need help and puts bad men in power.
“I still don't think what you did was right, Travis. You didn't have the authority to clean the scum off the street and nobody's gonna knight you for it. To be honest? I don't know who we can trust to do it for us.”
Arthur slumped back in his seat and rubbed his face. God, this wasn't what he had set out to do when he began the day. He didn't ask to meet his former client and dig up all his freshly buried issues.
On the other end of the table, Travis was quiet. Arthur still had his face buried in his hands so he couldn't tell how the other man was reacting to all of this. He wondered if Travis was in a similarly messy state, having just unloaded his trauma. Maybe they could grant each other permission to cry and promise never to speak about the past again.
“I saw you on TV, y’know?” Travis said as a non sequitur.
“Did I look pretty on screen?” Arthur asked, grateful for the change in topic.
“Sure. Cuter in real life though.”
“Very funny, Bickle. Your milkshake’s already on me so you don't gotta sweeten me up…” Arthur’s chuckle trailed off when he looked up to find Travis watching him, looking through him. His skin prickled at the scrutiny.
“I didn't have my own TV, couldn't afford one,” Travis said. “I was in the Lower East Side, Avenue A, wasting away on dirt-cheap booze. It wasn't even happy hour, but there I was, a degenerate. The bar was shit, the beer was skunked, but boy did they have a good fucking TV behind the counter. They usually play a porno, ‘cause it’s that kind of place. But for some reason, they were showing breaking news and there's a photo of you on screen. I was excited, hadn't seen you in a long while, and you looked good, pretty, like you said. Heard the courtroom was a riot ‘cause of what you did, wish I'd been there to see you with my own eyes. Did you know they had a camera on you when you got kicked out?”
Arthur didn’t, actually, but he was too speechless to say this.
Travis continued, “You're on the steps and you're looking at nothing. You looked like a fallen angel to me.
“I’m not sure if it was the booze talkin’, but at the moment, I didn’t feel so alone. I felt like I had you. You were so real to me, even behind the screen, that if I had just reached out, I could've—”
Calloused fingers took Arthur gently by the chin. A fingernail stroked lightly at his jaw.
Oh, heck.
In the distance, the jukebox was playing a poppy, disco beat. Somebody must have put another coin in.
I wanna be your lover
I wanna turn you on, turn you out—
Arthur was suddenly aware of where they were and felt his cheeks heat up.
“Let's continue this conversation elsewhere, huh?” he blurted.
Travis smiled.
Gail had cheered during his opening statement at the Fleming trial. Arthur had seen her, recognised her as the woman he thought he had been falling in love with, even felt emboldened by her in the moment.
If he was being honest with himself, his relationship with Gail was doomed from the start. Sure, they got along like a house on fire when they were fucking. But after the post-coital clarity had set in, neither could deny that at the heart of it all, Gail and Arthur were two puzzle pieces that didn't fit.
Sometime later, the media circulated a photo of her beaming face from the Fleming trial. Arthur thought she had looked stunning in the photo, standing proud and confident. To be the cause of her smile, Arthur had almost gushed.
Lo and behold, the board of ethics viewed her as an accessory to Arthur's transgression and removed her from the committee. Arthur reckoned she’d hit the glass ceiling; he knew for a fact some of the men on the committee had antiquated opinions about a lady in law. So naturally, they took the opportunity to take Gail off. And Gail—
She didn't need to say it, but Gail had always blamed him. She blamed him for a lot of things, really. It came down to the fact that Arthur was too honest, too soft, too reckless for his own good. He could ruin his career all he liked but that didn't mean he had to drag her down with him. Arthur couldn't blame her for that.
If Gail and him became perfect strangers afterwards, that was the normal course of events.
They hailed a taxi, of course they did, and got into the backseat. Travis rattled off an address and it occurred to Arthur again that there was still a chance he was being lured to his demise.
Common sense took a backseat when, not so subtly, Travis traced a finger along Arthur's inner thigh, following the inseams of his sweatpants. A taste of what was to come. Arthur shivered, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror, expecting to catch their driver looking back in revulsion. But he never did. All the while, Travis looked out of the window, barely paying him any attention. In the reflection of the window, Arthur caught him smirking.
The car turned into a dilapidated neighbourhood, prowling with crackheads and junkies. The exact kind of people Travis detested. Once they alighted, Travis immediately marched Arthur up several flights of steps and led him to his apartment. It was a shoebox of a place, cramped and dusty, not that Arthur had any time to notice then.
They were hardly in before Arthur was crowded against the front door, Travis’s hands all over him, sliding from his waist down to his ass. Their mouths met desperately and Arthur moaned and raked his fingers through Travis’s short hair, messing it up as he hissed, “Bed.”
Travis obeyed, managing to lead them there without removing his hands or his mouth. The back of Arthur’s knees hit the bedside and he was pushed onto his back.
“Clothes off,” Travis ordered with a cheeky smirk that made Arthur melt. He shucked off his sweatsuit while Travis fiddled with his overalls. It was only when Arthur was stripped down to his briefs did it hit him where all this was heading. He would freak out more if he weren't aching so much from his hard-on. Goddamnit, how long had it been since he’d had any kind of physical contact?
Beside him, Travis had divested himself of all his clothes and was standing unabashedly with his stiff, wet cock on full display. Arthur shuddered, eyeing the glistening head as Travis tugged once on his member.
“Need a hand?” Travis asked, jutting his chin towards Arthur's tented briefs. Unthinkingly, Arthur nodded. He did not expect Travis to pull him down by the waist and lift him by the thighs. Fingers hooked onto Arthur's briefs before roughly sliding them off his legs. Arthur couldn't help but moan at the friction as his cock was freed.
Travis dropped his hold on Arthur and crawled atop him, mouthing his way down Arthur’s neck and clavicles, then going lower. Arthur writhed at the sensations, letting out a cry when Travis bit into the soft meat of his inner thigh. He bit a few more marks into Arthur's thighs, sure to leave bruises, before rising to peck him once on the lips.
Then Travis withdrew to bend over the side to scrounge for something under the bed. All Arthur could do was stare at the cracked ceiling, his mind hazy with want. Travis emerged again with a big tub of Vaseline, already half-used. Arthur would’ve said something immature if he had enough clarity to.
Travis situated himself on his knees in the vee of Arthur’s legs, so that Arthur’s ass was in his lap. Arthur watched as Travis dipped three fingers into the tub to retrieve a generous dollop of the stuff. A smile spread across Travis's face as he tugged on Arthur’s balls for a bit, before breaching him with one finger. Arthur had been holding his breath and couldn't suppress a sharp exhale. He'd never gotten this far with any other man before. At most, he'd given a handy in his heyday but it never went further than that. He hadn't even trusted a woman to do this to him.
Arthur might be going crazy.
Travis fucked Arthur with his fingers, down to the knuckles, using all three oily digits. He wasn't particularly gentle with Arthur, but somehow that added to the experience. Arthur threw his head back, squirming and letting out constant breathless ‘ahs’, thighs flexing as his toes curled with pleasure. Travis pulled out and smacked him lightly on the left ass cheek.
“Flip over,” Travis said.
“Wha—?” Arthur asked, brows furrowing.
“Flip over man, I wanna fuck you.”
“Weren't you going to already,” Arthur muttered, turning to lie on his front. Travis grabbed a pillow and stuffed it between Arthur's hips and the bed.
Arthur felt vulnerable in this position, back facing Travis, unable to see what the other man was going to do. He could feel Travis lining his cock, thumbing at Arthur’s hole with some more Vaseline. Then Travis thrusted in and Arthur gasped.
What proceeded was the hardest fuck of Arthur's life.
Arthur was ass up in the air as Travis fucked into him relentlessly. Travis rested his weight on one knee while gyrating his hips. The other leg was bent for greater purchase, one foot by Arthur's face, which was being pushed into the sheets by Travis’s hand around his neck. Arthur grabbed onto the ankle next to him for lack of anything to hold, his fingernails digging into skin as his body was pounded into over and over.
The bedframe squealed beneath them as the headboard banged against the plaster wall, sure to leave dents. Their bodies smacked noisily whenever skin collided. Arthur felt the last vestiges of self-control leave him as he began to come untouched, all over the pillow tucked underneath him, letting out an embarrassingly shrill wail.
Behind him, Travis was chasing his own climax. He had a bruising grip on Arthur's hips as he began to speed up his thrusts with an animalistic drive. His sweat was dripping all over Arthur's back.
“Take it you whore. Take it you damn whore!” Travis shouted. Arthur's eyes glazed over.
With one last slam of his hips, Travis shot his load deep into Arthur and collapsed onto his back with a grunt. They didn't move for a while. Arthur slipped in and out of consciousness, enjoying the comfortable weight of Travis on top of him.
They must have drifted to sleep because when Arthur blinked awake, the sky outside had dimmed considerably. Travis was snoring softly, dick still inside Arthur. Slowly, Arthur extracted himself from the other man, felt something wet trickle out of him and shivered.
God, what had he done?
He moved to the edge of the bed, retrieved his discarded pants from the floor and slipped his hand into his pocket.
“Got another?” Travis arose, voice scratchy from sleep, as Arthur lit up a cigarette.
“Just this one,” Arthur replied, after taking a long drag. He passed it over to Travis, who took an equally satisfying puff.
They smoked quietly, passing the cigarette back and forth. When the filter was mostly gone, Travis put the cigarette out on an empty beer can.
“You regret this?” asked Travis, flicking the butt into the can.
Arthur raised his eyebrows, surprised at the insight. “Not really,” he said honestly. “Never done it before though, not like that.”
“Good?” Travis looked uncertain.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course it was good. Where did you learn to fuck like that?”
A shrug. “Movies.”
“Movies?”
“Yeah, from back in New York. They screen them at night.”
Realisation dawned on Arthur. “You mean pornography?”
“Sure.” Another shrug.
“Jesus, you're a helluva learner,” Arthur commented, first shocked, then awed. It… did explain the way Travis fucked. And the dirty talk. He couldn't help but think about introducing Travis to tender sex, something gentler and more loving than good old rough fucking. Not that Arthur was complaining.
But that was opening another can of worms. He didn't know if they were ever gonna do this again. What Arthur would do for a smoke right then.
“Well, I don't want to overstay my welcome,” he said, rushing to stand. Or at least he tried. His legs buckled once he was on his feet and he yelped as Travis hooked a steadying arm around his waist.
“You can stay if you want,” Travis told Arthur, caressing his hip bone.
Wordlessly, Arthur nodded and climbed back into the single bed where Travis wrapped his arms around him, bringing him close so that Arthur was snuggled into his chest. It was pleasant. More than pleasant, probably. Arthur was pushing forty but he felt like a schoolgirl.
“So what ya been up to?” Travis murmured, running his fingers along Arthur's spine. “Keepin’ busy these days?”
“I’m keepin’ busy, yeah. Doing work for a non-profit.”
“What’s that?”
“It's an organisation for the public good,” explained Arthur, rubbing his cheek against Travis’s chest. It was a nice chest, could do with a little fattening. “I'm doing community-based mediation. I try to help troubled folk resolve their issues with each other, y’know? Noisy neighbours, tyrant landlords, that kinda thing. Pays peanuts but it's good work.”
“You like helpin’ people?”
“Well, I can't stop doing it somehow.”
“You wanna go back?”
“To being a lawyer? Hell, I don't know. I thought it was my calling, it was my first real job since graduating. It was meant to be my career. Now? The jury is out, as they say. Anyway, I‘m still suspended from the bar for another year and I doubt they'll reinstate me so easily. I may never practice again."
Travis hummed, resting his chin on top of Arthur's head. “I think it suits you.”
“Being a lawyer?”
“Helping folks,” Travis corrected. “Society’s a cesspool, filled with shitty human waste.”
He paused. “I wanted to be part of the solution, to fix the world. I thought it was missin’ a saviour.”
“Travis…”
“I know I was part of the problem, okay? I saw a shrink to get fixed as part of my sentence. I ain't smart like you and Betsy, I don't know how to change the world without a gun. But you give people like me that chance, Arthur. You help people, that's what you do. You helped me.”
Arthur felt choked up. “Some people deserve a second chance. Some people don't get it. You gotta make the best of life hereon, pal.”
“We pals now?” Travis raised a brow.
“Think we did a lot more than just ‘pals’, dear,” murmured Arthur, combing his fingernails through Travis’s chest hair. They shared a conspiratorial grin, basking in their proximity.
“What about you?” Arthur asked, a while later. “You find work in Baltimor–”
He sat up abruptly, knocking Travis in the chin, who in turn cursed out.
“Shit, weren't you supposed to be working at the park? You never went back! You're gonna get fired!”
“It's fine, I only worked that job ‘cause I wanted to see you,” Travis looked unbothered as he settled on his back, folding his arms behind his head.
“How did you know where to find me?” Arthur only went to the park on his days off and during the weekend.
“Happened to see you one day, sitting on the bench,” Travis said. “Then I kept seeing you again and again. Told myself it must be fate.”
“Why didn'tcha say hi?”
“Didn't think ya’d say it back.”
Arthur pressed his lips together, gave Travis a long look. Pondered.
He had an ex-wife who spit in his face when they divorced and two estranged kids who stopped picking up his calls because he managed to lose the job that he had been more in love with than their mother. Sam—rest his soul—Gail, Jay, Judge Rayford—these were people who were once part of Arthur’s life. Might as well have been another life, for all that he was concerned. Travis once was too, long ago. The same Travis who had almost died. His eyes were drawn to the jagged scarring on Travis’s arm, an aged reminder of the gunshot wound the man had sustained not long before they had first met.
I can't let go of him.
“Move in with me.”
“Huh?”
“Move in with me,” Arthur repeated, overwhelmed with a giddy rush. He might regret this; it might be the best decision of his life. “Stay with me, live with me, move in with me.”
“...you sure man?” Travis asked, voice faint and uncertain. “I'm all kinds of fucked up in the head, got a track record to prove it. You don't want me that near, man.”
“I want to keep you where I can see you. So you don't fuck up. So I don't fuck up. I don't wanna let you go just like that,” Arthur was practically begging, knelt over Travis, one hand by his head, the other above the man's beating heart, caging him in. “What do you say, Travis? Say you'll come?”
Travis gawked at him, dumbstruck. Maybe Arthur should've just shut up. Unfortunately for him, he couldn't unring the bell.
He was on his way to bolting out of the room when Travis spoke. There was a smile on his face. Arthur exhaled a sigh of relief.
“Alright, Arthur.”