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.fic: La Familia - D/M (PG13/R) 3.4
Title: La Familia
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: D/M
Rating/Warnings: PG13/R? Mention of sensitive material (physical abuse of children in later chapters)
Disclaimer: Not mine, damn it.
Advertisements: Part of the ALTC/Distance series, taking place about one year after "Biscayne." Previous parts are: Sons; ALTC; Every Distance; Sons & Lovers; Blue River; Biscayne. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
wordclaim50 09 (find; Character Study) and philosophy_20 20 (Reflection).
Previous chapter: 01; 02
Notes: Grah, this has been a week horrible in its busyness. Apologies for the disappearance and woeful lack of updates.
More "Hours" on Monday, I hope.
CHAPTER THREE
Danny can’t remember the first time his father hit Rafi. He knows this has a lot to do with not wanting to remember, and that he probably can remember, if he’d try. His mind still shies away from anything having to do with his father and Rafi, though; even memories that start out happy, playing in the living room, a day at the beach, coming home from school with a good report card – they all have this danger, this pain buried under them, enough to make him flinch back and find something safer to remember.
The first time he does remember is when he was eight. Third grade and far too smart for his own good, more than likely, curious about anything and everything. He and Rafi had been home, Rafi charged with watching him until their parents got back from work, and he’d known he should have left the small clock on the TV stand alone.
But Rafi was in the kitchen struggling with his algebra, oblivious to everything, and Danny couldn’t help himself.
His father got home first, in time to see Rafi – who’d heard the soft, muted sounds of something being taken apart and gone out into the living room – bending over the clock, trying to put the springs and wires and everything back into place. Danny sat on the couch and watched.
Watched as his father stood silent and still for a moment and Rafi froze.
“What is this?” his father asked.
“I knocked the clock off the TV,” Rafi said.
Danny opened his mouth to explain, but Rafi’s glance – quick, firm, the older-brother look – shut him up, and Rafi said Go to our room, Danny. Go play, but Danny didn’t want to go. Another Go on, Danny, much firmer this time, and Danny slid off the couch instantly, and their father smoldered in the background.
It was when he turned to shut the door that he saw it: his father’s open palm cracking across Rafi’s cheek, Rafi staggering back but not falling, a closed-fist blow now on Rafi’s right ear.
Very quickly, Danny turned back around and sat down by the old transistor radio on the bedside table. Rafi had found it in a garbage can and fixed it up, good as new, and he was always clever like that, putting things together when all Danny seemed to be able to do was take them apart.
The dial was set to a local news station, the sober voice of the weatherman not loud enough to drown out the sound of bone and flesh, of someone stumbling against the wall, of Rafi’s voice – thick, pleading, Please, Papi, please, Rafi was saying – so Danny changed it over. Rock music now, Bob Dylan and his guitar, with drums that masked the blows still falling in the other room.
A short while later he heard the bathroom door open and shut, water running through the pipes. And not long after that Rafi came in, face swollen and red, a cut on one ear. No blood on his skin, only a Band-Aid on his cheekbone, but Danny saw a stain on the collar of his t-shirt. It looked like Rafi had tried to scrub it out, because part of the shirt was dark with water, but the attempt hadn’t worked: smear there on the fabric, a faded red.
“Mom’ll be home soon,” Rafi said. He sat carefully down on his bed and drew his legs up, winced like there was something wrong with him under his clothes. After a moment of shifting, Rafi rolled onto his left side, facing away from Danny.
“The next time I tell you to do something, Danny, do it. Okay?”
“Okay, Rafi.”
* * *
“You okay?”
Leave it to Martin to ask about him, when he could tell Martin was nervous too. Not many people would see it, but Danny could, the tightness around Martin’s eyes and jaw, the way his shoulders went back, as though the more nervous Martin was, the more determined he became.
“Fine,” Danny said. “Let’s go.”
Early summer air slid across his skin, prickling, surreal. A front had come through two days ago, and the weather had cooled into something more manageable, dry, a breeze that remained fresh even after its trip through the city. Crowds and crowds of people out to enjoy it and the holiday weekend, families clustered together around grills and kids running around, shrieking happily.
The two of them standing at the entrance to the park, Danny gripping a cooler and Martin with a covered tray of sandwiches, lost, and Danny couldn’t remember the last time he was so nervous. Not even meeting Martin’s parents as Martin’s boyfriend meeting Martin’s parents had unhinged him so much. Even Martin looked visibly anxious, shifting in place, mouth thin and with that line in his forehead that said he was thinking about something.
“We don’t have to tell them today,” Martin said at last. “We can just go, hang out.”
Danny let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Just go, hang out, the simpler thing to do. A complicated thing in and of itself, simply going, walking through the park to find his brother, his free and on parole brother, his niece and nephew – strange thinking about himself in that context, an uncle to a boy he’d only seen a few times in his life and a girl he’d seen maybe twice.
“Yeah,” he agreed. Cowardly, but maybe it was for the best, to get Rafi and Sylvia used to Martin, an old work colleague who’d kept in touch (never mind that they really hadn’t for several years), and then maybe, eventually, the truth.
“Okay then,” Martin said decisively. “Let’s go.”
And trust Martin to take the first step.
The path wound through open space, most of it cleared for pickup ball games, but tree-dotted with benches and tables, and Danny realized they should have arranged some place to meet; the park was huge and crowded, and he couldn’t pack this cooler around forever and he could feel his resolution fading by the second, and –
“Danny!” His brother’s voice, unmistakable, carrying effortlessly over the general noise of the crowd. Danny turned and saw him there, standing next to a table under an oak tree, waving. “Danny, over here!”
“Here we go,” Danny muttered, adjusting his grip on the cooler. Heard Martin’s soft laugh next to him, and that helped.
Rafi came up to meet them, managing to take Danny’s cooler away and pull him into a hug in one large, effortless motion. And Danny, who was not used to being smaller or shorter than the other person, found himself engulfed. Like he was six again, and still scared of the dark, and it occurred to him – bizarrely, and he wondered why it was a surprised considering he’d had thirty-seven years to get used to the idea – that he was Rafi’s little brother.
He pulled back, was relieved and guilty when Rafi let him go. Rafi looked at him a moment more, smile fading into something absent, the cataloguing older-brother expression, searching out changes, and Danny tried to work out what it was Rafi was seeing, other than an old t-shirt and blue jeans. Most of the time, for the past twenty years he’d been in a suit and tie, on the other side of a glass panel or steel bars, and Rafi had been in institutional green.
“You look good,” Rafi said finally, and smiled again. Firm squeeze on Danny’s shoulder, just short of crushing his collar bone, and Rafi’s gaze slid over to Martin, who looked back steadily.
“Rafi,” steady, steady, it’s an introduction, “this is Martin. He was at your hearing?”
“Oh, yeah,” Rafi said, turning to face Martin more fully. “You were there at... at the garage too. I remember.”
He held out one hand, capable, heavily ridged with tendons and veins, old scars Danny had never seen.
Martin shifted the tray to rest on his left forearm and took Rafi’s right hand in his. Rafi’s expression was unreadable for a moment, face prison-craggy and Danny thought oh God as the moment dragged out interminably, but then – then Rafi grinned and released Martin’s hand, and Martin smiled back.
“Never thought I’d do that,” Rafi observed. “But... Yeah.”
“I, um, brought this, in case.” Martin nodded down at the sandwiches. Typical, dry smile now, like he knew what Rafi was thinking. “Peace offering.”
“You shouldn’t have brought anything,” Rafi protested, “Sylvia’s got enough for an army.” He took the tray anyway, set it down at the edge of the table where platters and bowls threatened to crowd it off altogether, and like that the moment was broken. “Can I get you guys something to drink? Mostly soft drinks and juice for the kids, but I brought some beer.”
“Coke’s fine,” Martin said, glancing at Danny.
“Danny? Coke? Beer?”
“Coke,” Danny said quickly. Caught Martin really looking at him – Doesn’t Rafi know? – and of course Rafi didn’t know. Ten times since juvie wasn’t enough to tell a brother he’d been an alcoholic struggling not to drink for the past ten years. Something else on the towering list of Things To Tell My Brother.
“Okay, Coke then.” If Rafi had caught onto that silent exchange, he didn’t say, only bent over a battered red cooler and dug through it. Half-melted ice sloshed around, half up Rafi’s forearms – the sleeve of his shirt rode up a thick bicep, and Danny saw a tattoo there, crudely inked, and wondered if that was new or old.
Rafi straightened a moment later and the sleeve slid down, covering the tattoo and prison-pale skin. His brother had always been dark, skin brown from the sun on Florida streets, hair a rusty black that would refuse to shine, and now... Hair cropped short and grey, skin washed out, only a little color creeping back into Rafi’s forearms and hands.
Martin cracked open his can of Coke, took a long drink, and made some comment about the weather. Rafi answered and Danny searched for something to say but couldn’t find anything – Danny Taylor, who could talk to anyone in the world except his own brother – and finally, finally Sylvia walked into the silence, carrying Rafaela, and Nickie trailed along beside her.
“There you are,” she said, giving Danny a quick one-armed hug, unexpectedly warm; they’d never been easy together, the woman trying to keep her family together and the younger brother staying away. Rafaela squealed, a deafening raptor-shriek in Danny’s ear. “Agent Fitzgerald,” Sylvia said, and she actually sounded a little happy, though uncertain all the same.
“It’s Martin,” Martin said. Warm smile, one of Martin’s real smiles, one that meant something “Thanks for having me.”
“You must be starving,” Sylvia said by way of reply, eyeing the two of them critically.
Danny gestured to Martin. “Count on it.”
* * *
“So, how’s things?” Rafi set aside an empty paper plate and sighed. “I mean, I know I talked to you a couple weeks ago, but... I mean, I know you were busy, so we really didn’t get to talk.”
“No... Everything’s good. Busy.” Danny was sitting on the tabletop, feet resting on the bench near Rafi’s hip. Odd, looking down at his brother for the first time in forever – though ever since he’d graduated from high school he had looked down on his brother, his brother the dropout and drug addict, and had been so busy looking down at him that he’d forgotten to look at himself. He shifted, uncomfortable with the thought and how true it was. “I just changed jobs... I’m not working for that big firm anymore.”
“Really? Where are you now?” This asked around a cigarette, slightly distracted as Rafi searched his pockets for a lighter.
“The Hope Center; it’s a nonprofit for exploited kids.”
Rafi looked up at him, eyes half-shut against the afternoon sun. Cigarette smoke sighed into the breeze and was gone.
“Sounds like you,” Rafi said.
Had to look away, hearing the pride in Rafi’s voice, because he’d never felt proud of Rafi before, even when Rafi had been trying – and managing – to straighten out his life.
Martin was downfield, tossing a football to Nickie. Nickie was taller, already looked a bit like Rafi, maybe softer at the edges, and Rafi was smiling, watching him. Go long, go long, Martin shouted, and Nickie was running, looking over his shoulder to track the ball – high spiral, perfected in years of pickup football games – and smack right into Nickie’s outstretched hands.
“Touchdown!” Rafi put his cigarette back in his mouth and clapped. “Kinda wish he was more into baseball, like we were. Remember?”
There had been this ratty, abandoned lot behind a garage, mostly sand and clay with a few determined tufts of grass here and there and the smell of old oil everywhere. It had been just big enough for a halfway decent game, so long as no one tried to hit the ball so hard it went over the garage roof or into the parking lot on the other side of the fence. Even on the most miserable days of summer they’d be out there, and all the kids had wanted Rafi on their team.
Danny said he did remember.
“Good times.” Rafi tapped his cigarette on the corner of his paper plate. Ash mixed with the ketchup. “So, you too busy for a girlfriend these days?”
And the one thing Danny hadn’t counted on was Rafi bringing the subject up. He’d imagined trying to introduce the topic in a variety of ways, from direct statement – Rafi, I’m gay, and the guy who arrested you four years ago is my boyfriend – to oblique hints, a trail of clues for Rafi to decipher on his own.
“So?” Rafi was grinning now. “Girlfriend?”
“Not exactly,” Danny muttered. In the distance, Martin was jumping to reach a high pass, shirt riding up, and the sunlight slid along his skin.
“So you’re seeing someone?”
“What do you care?” It came out more belligerently than Danny intended, but he could feel his defenses going up, like the shields they used on Star Trek.
“What the hell’s wrong?” Rafi wasn’t smiling anymore. “It was a goddamn question, Danny.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Danny sighed, too tired suddenly to be angry or defensive, because he’d been doing this with Rafi for ages: avoiding. “I’m not seeing someone, Rafi. I’m... I’m in a relationship.”
“So you do have a girlfriend.” Rafi looked up at him. Lines in his forehead, thought-lines and age-lines.
“Not exactly.” Going in circles here, he thought dismally.
“So you’re married.”
Danny shook his head, couldn’t look at Rafi, had to watch Martin throwing the football, lucky Martin who had no idea what the two of them were talking about.
“Danny, I’m not a fucking detective.” Rafi took a deep drag on his cigarette, held the breath a moment, expelled the smoke in a cloud of frustration. “Just tell – ” He stopped mid-word, mid-breath, and the sudden halt made Danny look down involuntarily, look down into eyes dark like his, wide with shock.
They’d come to it, and the sun was bright, the two of them sitting on a park bench under it with the rest of the world swirling around them. And Rafi was sitting there, silent, a mountain of silence, and for the first time Danny understood what it must have been like for Rafi, listening to the dangerous quiet of their father. Rafi’s jaw muscles tensed, as though against a thought, against saying something, and Danny had to wait.
Wait and wait and wait, until Rafi finally relaxed and shook his head.
“I don’t know what to say,” Rafi muttered. “You’re...” A frustrated breath instead of gay.
“Yeah.” Danny adjusted his position on the bench, fought the urge to get up and run over to Martin, grab him, and get away from the park, Rafi, this conversation.
“I don’t know what to say,” Rafi said again. “Does... does Sylvia know?”
“No. I really haven’t told anyone. Just a couple people from my old team at the Bureau, some of the lawyers I work with.”
“Martin’s the one you’re with.” It wasn’t a question, and Danny supposed that once Rafi knew about him, that he was with Martin would be the logical deduction.
“Yeah. For a year now.”
“A year?” Danny couldn’t tell if the disbelief was for the length of the relationship, or the fact of the relationship’s mere existence. Rafi sighed. “It’s not like you’ve ever told me about yourself, so I guess...Fuck. I don’t even think I should be surprised, you know? I mean, remember when I was getting out on parole the first time? I didn’t even know you’d changed your name.”
That had been something else he’d never explained to Rafi, why he was Danny Taylor and not Danny Alvarez anymore.
“Dad would have killed you by now, you know, for saying that,” Rafi said pensively. And he was right; Danny never would have lived thirty seconds after such an announcement. “Does – you still go to church?”
“Every now and then, Christmas and Easter mostly.” Danny tried a tentative smile, seeing Rafi looking at him. “Still can’t stand Good Friday.”
“Good.”
“So you’re not going to kill me?” Danny asked, willing to try teasing now. They’d shifted somehow, away from fear, toward something that wasn’t acceptance, but Rafi was thinking at least, and willing to be reasonable.
“I don’t know you well enough to tell you what to do, Danny.” Unexpectedly sad. The cigarette rested, ashy and forgotten, in the cradle of Rafi’s fingers. “But... Listen, I don’t – you know we weren’t raised that way, Danny. I don’t know if I can raise Nickie like that.”
“Like what? Being gay?”
“No... I don’t know what I mean. Like it’s okay. It’s a sin, Danny.”
“Is this the part where you’re going to tell me I’m going to burn in hell? Because if it is, I’m leaving.” Danny began to slide off the bench, because brother or no brother he was not going to listen to this, not when he’d spent so many nights of his own working around the same problem, so many years coming to the conclusion that he would never lie about who he was anymore.
“No! Just... Dammit, Danny, sit down.” A formidable hand on his knee, fingers tight across the bone and almost painful, the expression in Rafi’s eyes worse. “I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Then what are you going to tell me, Rafi?”
“Just... I owe you, Danny, and I owe Martin. He’s a good guy, but I don’t... It’s Nickie. Just don’t be – don’t be open about what you are, you know? Until he’s older, until I can tell him, or you can.”
“So you want me to lie?”
“Just don’t say anything. Do anything,” Rafi said, like Danny and Martin were going to make out right in front of him. Danny laughed, but it was bitter in his throat. “I’m sorry, Danny.”
“Me, too.” And he was, Danny realized. Sorry, angry a little, guilty at feeling relieved at finding a new excuse to stay away from Rafi.
Rafi released Danny’s knee and stood, began to collect the used plates and plastic forks. Danny slid off the bench and began to help, relieved at the chance to do something other than sit and watch his brother.
“Hey, need some help?” Martin, damn him, walking right into something very much like a minefield, Nickie flushed and grinning, tossing the football up and down following behind.
“We got it,” Rafi grunted. “Nickie, go find your mother.”
Nickie vanished. Smart kid.
Martin wordlessly began tucking leftovers back into the cooler, and he obviously knew something had happened, that Danny had talked after all, and being Martin he’d most likely figured out that it hadn’t gone well. It hadn’t gone badly, but Danny had never had the right to expect Rafi to abandon more than forty years of church and sixteen years of their father’s beatings. And God he wanted to talk to Martin, tell him it’s okay, that this uncertainty wasn’t really killing him because at least Rafi knew, and what Rafi did with that own knowledge was his own business.
The silence built, and Rafi lit another cigarette. Danny took a bag of soda cans over to the recycling box, came back to the same silence and stayed in it for five more minutes until Nickie came back with Sylvia and Rafaela behind him.
“Where’d you go off to?” Rafi grunted.
“Visiting Consuela and her kids.” Sylvia kissed him on the cheek. “You boys have a good talk?”
“Something like that,” Danny said. She glanced at him curiously, then at Martin, but didn’t say anything.
“Ice cream!” Rafaela shrieked from Sylvia’s arms, like nothing was wrong at all.
-tbc.-
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: D/M
Rating/Warnings: PG13/R? Mention of sensitive material (physical abuse of children in later chapters)
Disclaimer: Not mine, damn it.
Advertisements: Part of the ALTC/Distance series, taking place about one year after "Biscayne." Previous parts are: Sons; ALTC; Every Distance; Sons & Lovers; Blue River; Biscayne. For
wordclaim50 09 (find; Character Study) and philosophy_20 20 (Reflection).Previous chapter: 01; 02
Notes: Grah, this has been a week horrible in its busyness. Apologies for the disappearance and woeful lack of updates.
More "Hours" on Monday, I hope.
CHAPTER THREE
Danny can’t remember the first time his father hit Rafi. He knows this has a lot to do with not wanting to remember, and that he probably can remember, if he’d try. His mind still shies away from anything having to do with his father and Rafi, though; even memories that start out happy, playing in the living room, a day at the beach, coming home from school with a good report card – they all have this danger, this pain buried under them, enough to make him flinch back and find something safer to remember.
The first time he does remember is when he was eight. Third grade and far too smart for his own good, more than likely, curious about anything and everything. He and Rafi had been home, Rafi charged with watching him until their parents got back from work, and he’d known he should have left the small clock on the TV stand alone.
But Rafi was in the kitchen struggling with his algebra, oblivious to everything, and Danny couldn’t help himself.
His father got home first, in time to see Rafi – who’d heard the soft, muted sounds of something being taken apart and gone out into the living room – bending over the clock, trying to put the springs and wires and everything back into place. Danny sat on the couch and watched.
Watched as his father stood silent and still for a moment and Rafi froze.
“What is this?” his father asked.
“I knocked the clock off the TV,” Rafi said.
Danny opened his mouth to explain, but Rafi’s glance – quick, firm, the older-brother look – shut him up, and Rafi said Go to our room, Danny. Go play, but Danny didn’t want to go. Another Go on, Danny, much firmer this time, and Danny slid off the couch instantly, and their father smoldered in the background.
It was when he turned to shut the door that he saw it: his father’s open palm cracking across Rafi’s cheek, Rafi staggering back but not falling, a closed-fist blow now on Rafi’s right ear.
Very quickly, Danny turned back around and sat down by the old transistor radio on the bedside table. Rafi had found it in a garbage can and fixed it up, good as new, and he was always clever like that, putting things together when all Danny seemed to be able to do was take them apart.
The dial was set to a local news station, the sober voice of the weatherman not loud enough to drown out the sound of bone and flesh, of someone stumbling against the wall, of Rafi’s voice – thick, pleading, Please, Papi, please, Rafi was saying – so Danny changed it over. Rock music now, Bob Dylan and his guitar, with drums that masked the blows still falling in the other room.
A short while later he heard the bathroom door open and shut, water running through the pipes. And not long after that Rafi came in, face swollen and red, a cut on one ear. No blood on his skin, only a Band-Aid on his cheekbone, but Danny saw a stain on the collar of his t-shirt. It looked like Rafi had tried to scrub it out, because part of the shirt was dark with water, but the attempt hadn’t worked: smear there on the fabric, a faded red.
“Mom’ll be home soon,” Rafi said. He sat carefully down on his bed and drew his legs up, winced like there was something wrong with him under his clothes. After a moment of shifting, Rafi rolled onto his left side, facing away from Danny.
“The next time I tell you to do something, Danny, do it. Okay?”
“Okay, Rafi.”
“You okay?”
Leave it to Martin to ask about him, when he could tell Martin was nervous too. Not many people would see it, but Danny could, the tightness around Martin’s eyes and jaw, the way his shoulders went back, as though the more nervous Martin was, the more determined he became.
“Fine,” Danny said. “Let’s go.”
Early summer air slid across his skin, prickling, surreal. A front had come through two days ago, and the weather had cooled into something more manageable, dry, a breeze that remained fresh even after its trip through the city. Crowds and crowds of people out to enjoy it and the holiday weekend, families clustered together around grills and kids running around, shrieking happily.
The two of them standing at the entrance to the park, Danny gripping a cooler and Martin with a covered tray of sandwiches, lost, and Danny couldn’t remember the last time he was so nervous. Not even meeting Martin’s parents as Martin’s boyfriend meeting Martin’s parents had unhinged him so much. Even Martin looked visibly anxious, shifting in place, mouth thin and with that line in his forehead that said he was thinking about something.
“We don’t have to tell them today,” Martin said at last. “We can just go, hang out.”
Danny let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Just go, hang out, the simpler thing to do. A complicated thing in and of itself, simply going, walking through the park to find his brother, his free and on parole brother, his niece and nephew – strange thinking about himself in that context, an uncle to a boy he’d only seen a few times in his life and a girl he’d seen maybe twice.
“Yeah,” he agreed. Cowardly, but maybe it was for the best, to get Rafi and Sylvia used to Martin, an old work colleague who’d kept in touch (never mind that they really hadn’t for several years), and then maybe, eventually, the truth.
“Okay then,” Martin said decisively. “Let’s go.”
And trust Martin to take the first step.
The path wound through open space, most of it cleared for pickup ball games, but tree-dotted with benches and tables, and Danny realized they should have arranged some place to meet; the park was huge and crowded, and he couldn’t pack this cooler around forever and he could feel his resolution fading by the second, and –
“Danny!” His brother’s voice, unmistakable, carrying effortlessly over the general noise of the crowd. Danny turned and saw him there, standing next to a table under an oak tree, waving. “Danny, over here!”
“Here we go,” Danny muttered, adjusting his grip on the cooler. Heard Martin’s soft laugh next to him, and that helped.
Rafi came up to meet them, managing to take Danny’s cooler away and pull him into a hug in one large, effortless motion. And Danny, who was not used to being smaller or shorter than the other person, found himself engulfed. Like he was six again, and still scared of the dark, and it occurred to him – bizarrely, and he wondered why it was a surprised considering he’d had thirty-seven years to get used to the idea – that he was Rafi’s little brother.
He pulled back, was relieved and guilty when Rafi let him go. Rafi looked at him a moment more, smile fading into something absent, the cataloguing older-brother expression, searching out changes, and Danny tried to work out what it was Rafi was seeing, other than an old t-shirt and blue jeans. Most of the time, for the past twenty years he’d been in a suit and tie, on the other side of a glass panel or steel bars, and Rafi had been in institutional green.
“You look good,” Rafi said finally, and smiled again. Firm squeeze on Danny’s shoulder, just short of crushing his collar bone, and Rafi’s gaze slid over to Martin, who looked back steadily.
“Rafi,” steady, steady, it’s an introduction, “this is Martin. He was at your hearing?”
“Oh, yeah,” Rafi said, turning to face Martin more fully. “You were there at... at the garage too. I remember.”
He held out one hand, capable, heavily ridged with tendons and veins, old scars Danny had never seen.
Martin shifted the tray to rest on his left forearm and took Rafi’s right hand in his. Rafi’s expression was unreadable for a moment, face prison-craggy and Danny thought oh God as the moment dragged out interminably, but then – then Rafi grinned and released Martin’s hand, and Martin smiled back.
“Never thought I’d do that,” Rafi observed. “But... Yeah.”
“I, um, brought this, in case.” Martin nodded down at the sandwiches. Typical, dry smile now, like he knew what Rafi was thinking. “Peace offering.”
“You shouldn’t have brought anything,” Rafi protested, “Sylvia’s got enough for an army.” He took the tray anyway, set it down at the edge of the table where platters and bowls threatened to crowd it off altogether, and like that the moment was broken. “Can I get you guys something to drink? Mostly soft drinks and juice for the kids, but I brought some beer.”
“Coke’s fine,” Martin said, glancing at Danny.
“Danny? Coke? Beer?”
“Coke,” Danny said quickly. Caught Martin really looking at him – Doesn’t Rafi know? – and of course Rafi didn’t know. Ten times since juvie wasn’t enough to tell a brother he’d been an alcoholic struggling not to drink for the past ten years. Something else on the towering list of Things To Tell My Brother.
“Okay, Coke then.” If Rafi had caught onto that silent exchange, he didn’t say, only bent over a battered red cooler and dug through it. Half-melted ice sloshed around, half up Rafi’s forearms – the sleeve of his shirt rode up a thick bicep, and Danny saw a tattoo there, crudely inked, and wondered if that was new or old.
Rafi straightened a moment later and the sleeve slid down, covering the tattoo and prison-pale skin. His brother had always been dark, skin brown from the sun on Florida streets, hair a rusty black that would refuse to shine, and now... Hair cropped short and grey, skin washed out, only a little color creeping back into Rafi’s forearms and hands.
Martin cracked open his can of Coke, took a long drink, and made some comment about the weather. Rafi answered and Danny searched for something to say but couldn’t find anything – Danny Taylor, who could talk to anyone in the world except his own brother – and finally, finally Sylvia walked into the silence, carrying Rafaela, and Nickie trailed along beside her.
“There you are,” she said, giving Danny a quick one-armed hug, unexpectedly warm; they’d never been easy together, the woman trying to keep her family together and the younger brother staying away. Rafaela squealed, a deafening raptor-shriek in Danny’s ear. “Agent Fitzgerald,” Sylvia said, and she actually sounded a little happy, though uncertain all the same.
“It’s Martin,” Martin said. Warm smile, one of Martin’s real smiles, one that meant something “Thanks for having me.”
“You must be starving,” Sylvia said by way of reply, eyeing the two of them critically.
Danny gestured to Martin. “Count on it.”
“So, how’s things?” Rafi set aside an empty paper plate and sighed. “I mean, I know I talked to you a couple weeks ago, but... I mean, I know you were busy, so we really didn’t get to talk.”
“No... Everything’s good. Busy.” Danny was sitting on the tabletop, feet resting on the bench near Rafi’s hip. Odd, looking down at his brother for the first time in forever – though ever since he’d graduated from high school he had looked down on his brother, his brother the dropout and drug addict, and had been so busy looking down at him that he’d forgotten to look at himself. He shifted, uncomfortable with the thought and how true it was. “I just changed jobs... I’m not working for that big firm anymore.”
“Really? Where are you now?” This asked around a cigarette, slightly distracted as Rafi searched his pockets for a lighter.
“The Hope Center; it’s a nonprofit for exploited kids.”
Rafi looked up at him, eyes half-shut against the afternoon sun. Cigarette smoke sighed into the breeze and was gone.
“Sounds like you,” Rafi said.
Had to look away, hearing the pride in Rafi’s voice, because he’d never felt proud of Rafi before, even when Rafi had been trying – and managing – to straighten out his life.
Martin was downfield, tossing a football to Nickie. Nickie was taller, already looked a bit like Rafi, maybe softer at the edges, and Rafi was smiling, watching him. Go long, go long, Martin shouted, and Nickie was running, looking over his shoulder to track the ball – high spiral, perfected in years of pickup football games – and smack right into Nickie’s outstretched hands.
“Touchdown!” Rafi put his cigarette back in his mouth and clapped. “Kinda wish he was more into baseball, like we were. Remember?”
There had been this ratty, abandoned lot behind a garage, mostly sand and clay with a few determined tufts of grass here and there and the smell of old oil everywhere. It had been just big enough for a halfway decent game, so long as no one tried to hit the ball so hard it went over the garage roof or into the parking lot on the other side of the fence. Even on the most miserable days of summer they’d be out there, and all the kids had wanted Rafi on their team.
Danny said he did remember.
“Good times.” Rafi tapped his cigarette on the corner of his paper plate. Ash mixed with the ketchup. “So, you too busy for a girlfriend these days?”
And the one thing Danny hadn’t counted on was Rafi bringing the subject up. He’d imagined trying to introduce the topic in a variety of ways, from direct statement – Rafi, I’m gay, and the guy who arrested you four years ago is my boyfriend – to oblique hints, a trail of clues for Rafi to decipher on his own.
“So?” Rafi was grinning now. “Girlfriend?”
“Not exactly,” Danny muttered. In the distance, Martin was jumping to reach a high pass, shirt riding up, and the sunlight slid along his skin.
“So you’re seeing someone?”
“What do you care?” It came out more belligerently than Danny intended, but he could feel his defenses going up, like the shields they used on Star Trek.
“What the hell’s wrong?” Rafi wasn’t smiling anymore. “It was a goddamn question, Danny.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Danny sighed, too tired suddenly to be angry or defensive, because he’d been doing this with Rafi for ages: avoiding. “I’m not seeing someone, Rafi. I’m... I’m in a relationship.”
“So you do have a girlfriend.” Rafi looked up at him. Lines in his forehead, thought-lines and age-lines.
“Not exactly.” Going in circles here, he thought dismally.
“So you’re married.”
Danny shook his head, couldn’t look at Rafi, had to watch Martin throwing the football, lucky Martin who had no idea what the two of them were talking about.
“Danny, I’m not a fucking detective.” Rafi took a deep drag on his cigarette, held the breath a moment, expelled the smoke in a cloud of frustration. “Just tell – ” He stopped mid-word, mid-breath, and the sudden halt made Danny look down involuntarily, look down into eyes dark like his, wide with shock.
They’d come to it, and the sun was bright, the two of them sitting on a park bench under it with the rest of the world swirling around them. And Rafi was sitting there, silent, a mountain of silence, and for the first time Danny understood what it must have been like for Rafi, listening to the dangerous quiet of their father. Rafi’s jaw muscles tensed, as though against a thought, against saying something, and Danny had to wait.
Wait and wait and wait, until Rafi finally relaxed and shook his head.
“I don’t know what to say,” Rafi muttered. “You’re...” A frustrated breath instead of gay.
“Yeah.” Danny adjusted his position on the bench, fought the urge to get up and run over to Martin, grab him, and get away from the park, Rafi, this conversation.
“I don’t know what to say,” Rafi said again. “Does... does Sylvia know?”
“No. I really haven’t told anyone. Just a couple people from my old team at the Bureau, some of the lawyers I work with.”
“Martin’s the one you’re with.” It wasn’t a question, and Danny supposed that once Rafi knew about him, that he was with Martin would be the logical deduction.
“Yeah. For a year now.”
“A year?” Danny couldn’t tell if the disbelief was for the length of the relationship, or the fact of the relationship’s mere existence. Rafi sighed. “It’s not like you’ve ever told me about yourself, so I guess...Fuck. I don’t even think I should be surprised, you know? I mean, remember when I was getting out on parole the first time? I didn’t even know you’d changed your name.”
That had been something else he’d never explained to Rafi, why he was Danny Taylor and not Danny Alvarez anymore.
“Dad would have killed you by now, you know, for saying that,” Rafi said pensively. And he was right; Danny never would have lived thirty seconds after such an announcement. “Does – you still go to church?”
“Every now and then, Christmas and Easter mostly.” Danny tried a tentative smile, seeing Rafi looking at him. “Still can’t stand Good Friday.”
“Good.”
“So you’re not going to kill me?” Danny asked, willing to try teasing now. They’d shifted somehow, away from fear, toward something that wasn’t acceptance, but Rafi was thinking at least, and willing to be reasonable.
“I don’t know you well enough to tell you what to do, Danny.” Unexpectedly sad. The cigarette rested, ashy and forgotten, in the cradle of Rafi’s fingers. “But... Listen, I don’t – you know we weren’t raised that way, Danny. I don’t know if I can raise Nickie like that.”
“Like what? Being gay?”
“No... I don’t know what I mean. Like it’s okay. It’s a sin, Danny.”
“Is this the part where you’re going to tell me I’m going to burn in hell? Because if it is, I’m leaving.” Danny began to slide off the bench, because brother or no brother he was not going to listen to this, not when he’d spent so many nights of his own working around the same problem, so many years coming to the conclusion that he would never lie about who he was anymore.
“No! Just... Dammit, Danny, sit down.” A formidable hand on his knee, fingers tight across the bone and almost painful, the expression in Rafi’s eyes worse. “I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Then what are you going to tell me, Rafi?”
“Just... I owe you, Danny, and I owe Martin. He’s a good guy, but I don’t... It’s Nickie. Just don’t be – don’t be open about what you are, you know? Until he’s older, until I can tell him, or you can.”
“So you want me to lie?”
“Just don’t say anything. Do anything,” Rafi said, like Danny and Martin were going to make out right in front of him. Danny laughed, but it was bitter in his throat. “I’m sorry, Danny.”
“Me, too.” And he was, Danny realized. Sorry, angry a little, guilty at feeling relieved at finding a new excuse to stay away from Rafi.
Rafi released Danny’s knee and stood, began to collect the used plates and plastic forks. Danny slid off the bench and began to help, relieved at the chance to do something other than sit and watch his brother.
“Hey, need some help?” Martin, damn him, walking right into something very much like a minefield, Nickie flushed and grinning, tossing the football up and down following behind.
“We got it,” Rafi grunted. “Nickie, go find your mother.”
Nickie vanished. Smart kid.
Martin wordlessly began tucking leftovers back into the cooler, and he obviously knew something had happened, that Danny had talked after all, and being Martin he’d most likely figured out that it hadn’t gone well. It hadn’t gone badly, but Danny had never had the right to expect Rafi to abandon more than forty years of church and sixteen years of their father’s beatings. And God he wanted to talk to Martin, tell him it’s okay, that this uncertainty wasn’t really killing him because at least Rafi knew, and what Rafi did with that own knowledge was his own business.
The silence built, and Rafi lit another cigarette. Danny took a bag of soda cans over to the recycling box, came back to the same silence and stayed in it for five more minutes until Nickie came back with Sylvia and Rafaela behind him.
“Where’d you go off to?” Rafi grunted.
“Visiting Consuela and her kids.” Sylvia kissed him on the cheek. “You boys have a good talk?”
“Something like that,” Danny said. She glanced at him curiously, then at Martin, but didn’t say anything.
“Ice cream!” Rafaela shrieked from Sylvia’s arms, like nothing was wrong at all.
-tbc.-
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Oh, if only episodes were like this XD