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Lochlan doesn’t think he’s going to ever understand the obscurity of his love.
When he looks at Reggie, he sees a pureness. Not in the innocence, never-been-touched-before type of a pureness, because in that sense, Reggie is the opposite.
He’s dirty and messy. The undersides of his nails are lined with oil and dirt built up from scratching at his freckled face, maybe some coke and ketamine underneath them as well from the drugs he takes in the bathroom of The Box. He has an acne ridden cheek and forehead from the lack of face wash that he will never own, and his black curls couldn’t be more wild. Sometimes, Lochlan finds sticks and leaves in his hair from rolling around in Washington Square Park. He isn’t refined enough for Central Park, so he stays downtown, and you can see it in the thrifted clothes he wears, and the dirt at the bottom of his skateboard, the piles of Chinese takeout and stained chopsticks littered across his tiny box of a dorm room that he shares with his too-nice-for-NYC Christian roommate, Aaron. He’s Lower East Side-chic, and everyone knows it.
Instead, Reggie is innocent in the way where he lives through the world without a darkness residing inside of him. Behind all of the mess and dirt, lies a good person, a pure soul— a purity of love that Lochlan could never truly understand.
Lochlan wasn’t an idiot. He knew Reggie was in love with him.
Not infatuated, because he knew what that looked like. That’s what Jayson felt for him. Reggie looked at Lochlan differently than how Jayson looked at him.
Lochlan knows what love looks like because he can see it in Saxon’s eyes. Every second Saxon looked at him, he could see it— a melancholia behind his eyes, a longing for Lochlan, to keep him forever in his arms, to die together, to live together, and transcend their earthly bodies to entangle themselves into the dirt of the Earth for the rest of time.
Reggie looked at Lochlan in that way. He could see it everytime Reggie let his eyes wander for too long, staring deep into Lochlan’s framework, seeing that he is nothing but a Clockwork Orange, a faked life, a faked mechanical personality to hide the organic darkness inside of him, wanting nothing more than to take apart Lochlan’s thousand-yard stare to truly understand what is hiding behind the mask.
Unlike Saxon’s suspicions, Lochlan and Reggie were not having sex regularly. Only once, drunkenly. Lochlan rode Reggie to completion after a long night at some stupid Columbia AEPi party, after long pillow-talk consisting of drunken phrases from Reggie such as ‘You’re so beautiful,’ and ‘Why do you hide from me?’
Why do you hide from me?
Why do you hide from me?
Why do you hide from me?
The difference between Reggie and Saxon’s love is that Reggie is pure. There’s no darkness, no incest. No hiding behind vertical blinds or painted banisters. No shame. No concepts of failed consent. No worries of any -philia or other sick perversions.
To Lochlan, being loved by Reggie was a breath of fresh air. To be able to know that he could be loved without darkness. To be loved without the fear of shame and disgust. Without embarrassment and the fear that the truth could be out there.
Lochlan, though, could never truly love Reggie the way Reggie loves him because he lacks the capacity to be able to do so. He’s held back in chains by his trauma bond to his older brother, his lover, his brother-husband, his psuedo-fathermother, the love of his life.
Saxon has known Lochlan from the day Lochlan was born. He knows Lochlan better than anyone on the planet ever could.
In Saxon’s wallet, there’s a picture of him and Lochlan. They’re in the hospital, and a ten-year-old Saxon is holding Lochlan, who is naked and fresh with vernix caseosa from birth, for the first time.
Sometimes, when Lochlan gets a glimpse of this picture, he wonders— where did it all go dark? When did Saxon start developing twisted feelings for his baby?
Lochlan remembers the first time he had ever thought of Saxon that way. You could say that he had always had an unconventional relationship with Saxon from the moment he was born, however, he had fully realized that his feelings toward Saxon had turned from innocent childhood idolization to sexual when Saxon had left for his senior year of college, and Lochlan, being heartbroken and unable to handle the concept of Saxon leaving him again, had cried into Saxon’s bed in their childhood home. He experienced Spermarche that night.
Lochlan, ever since Thailand, had been convinced that he is meant to die young.
Within the concept that there is a God, Lochlan knows that he was sent to Earth with a purpose, a reason, being apart of some larger plan that is to bring Saxon into an emotional fruition. From a young age, Lochlan was able to identify three truths: Saxon belongs to their mother, Piper belongs to their father, and Lochlan belongs to Saxon. It was as clear as a looking glass to see.
Lochlan believes that if he dies, it would be the only way for Saxon to escape his darkness, and to become the man he was always meant to be. Lochlan has seen himself as this transcendent vessel for Saxon to hold onto, bringing him on this twistedly beautiful ride that is their love, before dropping him off at the tipping point, and saying goodbye forever— two wise monkeys, separated by the bounds of life and death.
Maybe, in that way, Saxon could be free.
It’s a hot summer night in New York City. They- Lochlan and Reggie- are sitting on a rooftop, sitting across a fire so hot that it has turned blue. Moments like these are ones that Lochlan wishes could last forever.
Lochlan’s sipping on a cherry coke, and Reggie is staring at him with an intenseness that Lochlan has never quite identified before. A look of knowing. Seeing through Lochlan’s velvet soul, in the matching velvet night, a velvet thickness in the air. The intensity of the flames rise to match Reggie’s black, noir-like eyes, watching Lochlan’s movements with careful detail. He hesitates for a moment, biting his lip, looking down at the concrete below them. It’s a high rooftop. If they fell, they’d die instantly. Painlessly. In a blink of an eye, falling acorns from willow trees.
“Can I ask you something, Lochy?”
Lochlan’s breath pauses when Reggie says it. Reggie never calls him that, but he’s gentle with it, like he always is. His stomach churns as he looks over at Reggie, wordlessly. Deer in the headlights. Thousand-yard stare.
“I know.”
Lochlan stares at Reggie’s teary eyes, sitting himself upright, placing the cherry coke beside him. “I know what’s going on between you and your brother.”
Lochlan quietly sucks in a breath, staring at Reggie with an intenseness that Reggie had never seen before. A true darkness. A soul, broken, shattered, unable to be repaired.
He doesn’t even wonder how Reggie could know. He doesn’t even ask, because Lochlan knows, deep down, it has been obvious. The enormity of his secret of the brother is one of which couldn’t be hidden. It had inflated so large that it had snapped in his little hands, spilling from his fingers, landing in the palms of his dearest friend, who held the leftovers of the darkness tight to his heart, transforming it into his own, holding it within himself until it exploded.
However, Lochlan wonders how long he’s known, or if he’s always known.
Lochlan always knew, deep down, that Saxon had dark feelings toward him. It was a deepset, hidden feeling that had only emerged from the ecstasy that they had taken in that hot Thai night. Saxon’s darkness was the one thing that Lochlan could not stop pondering about, and always will ponder about until the day he dies.
He once saw, deep in Saxon’s bottom drawer of his side of the bed, a copy of Lolita.
Lochlan read the entire copy in one week.
He studied every single note Saxon wrote in it, every bookmark, every highlight. Lochlan had used it to try and understand Saxon’s devotion toward him, understand the level of his perversion. Understand how he was perceived in Saxon’s eyes.
However, only one passage that Saxon very aggressively circled really stood out to Lochlan.
I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! And there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one.
Saxon had circled it over a hundred times. There were rips from the deep inked indents of the abused paper.
I knew how you felt
and it was hell to know it
Lochlan had a blank stare when he read the passage. Then he cried. He cried, and cried, and cried until there were no tears left to cry, drying himself out, his tired doe eyes unable to yearn for comfort anymore.
I knew how you felt
I knew how you felt
I knew how you felt
(why would you take advantage of me?)
(i was so young)
“I know he’s a lot older than you, and, um,” There’s a strained pain in Reggie’s voice. This is hard for him to say. Hard for Lochlan to know. “I don’t know when this all started but..”
There’s tears falling down Reggie’s cheeks.
“He’s 31, Lochlan.”
His voice is cracking. He’s crying, for real.
He whispers,
“I could get you out of this.”
Lochlan stares into Reggie’s eyes, speaking silently with his soul. Love’s telepathy.
It’s the same look that Daphne Sullivan gave Ethan Spiller on that Italian beach when he had informed her of her husband’s infidelity with his wife. It’s the same look that Saxon had when he stared on at the love that was shared between Chelsea and Rick before they lost their tragically beautiful lives.
Lochlan bites his lip for a second, breaking eye contact to stare into the distance, take in the sounds of the bustling city. He knows it’s the last time.
“I don’t think we can be friends anymore.”
There’s a silence as they stare at one another for the last time, taking each other in. The final look. They both know that they will never see each other again. It’s in the air. Tragedy.
Lochlan looks at Reggie with tired, red eyes, soulful yet dark in nature, before leaning in, kissing him. Reggie pauses, and kisses back only to receive Lochlan pulling away from him, caressing his rough cheek, tears flowing from each of their dark eyes, one filled with purity and safety, the other filled with despair and secrecy.
Lochlan stands, leaving his cherry coke behind as he passes by the blue fire, once raging, now quiet, slowly turning into nothing but smoke. He opens the rooftop access door, shooting Reggie a parting look as Reggie stares on, helpless, before Lochlan slips away from his hands forever.
Lochlan walks home. It’s a 25 minute walk, and it’s not like he could have taken the train. There’s no trains that run between the Lower East Side and Alphabet City.
But it’s a nice night. It’s 85 degrees, and Lochlan wants to take in his last night of New York City to the fullest.
He puts in his wired earbuds, listening to Visions of Gideon and other various songs he had arranged that had reminded him of his grim situation.
He cries. That’s what he liked about New York. You can cry in public, and no one will question you, or even shoot you a look.
He thinks of Saxon. He thinks about every single passage he circled in Lolita. He thinks about every single sweet moment that has ever been shared between them as brothers. The dark ones, too. He remembers every second that Saxon has touched him, filled him up, whispered sweet nothings into his ear, completing him, making him feel whole again.
Lochlan feels empty without him. That’s how he knows he loves Saxon. The completeness. He’s nothing but a broken soul with missing parts without his older brother.
Lochlan wishes that he could say that he wished it wasn’t that way, but for every single day of his life, he’s never wanted anything more than to lay in his brother’s arms forever, die within the hands he was born in, and be ever so completely his for the rest of foreseeable eternity.
He wishes that he has the energy to be disgusted with himself, but this is all he has ever known.
A life without Saxon wouldn’t be a life. It would be the upmost of emotional, psychological torture, similar of tearing a baby away from its mother at birth. He needs Saxon to survive, and as long as he has him, he will.
But he needs Saxon in order to let himself die, as well. His permission.
Sometimes Lochlan wishes that Saxon could just kill him. He wonders what it would feel like to have his larynx crushed by the hands of his older brother, the very person who had brought him to life, taking it away from him. To be silenced forever at the hands of his beloved brother whom he had idolized his entire life. To be sure that no one will know their secret ever again, burying Little Lochy’s limbs deep inside the Hudson River— never to be found again.
And oddly, that ending to their love sounds easier than going on how they are now, running from their past, sneaking around behind closed doors.
But what would Saxon and Lochlan be without the fear?
That’s the only thing their love is founded on.
When Lochlan comes home, Saxon’s standing against the kitchen island, waiting. The tears in Lochlan’s red eyes, his silence, his trembling, tells Saxon everything he needs to know.
They stand there, holding each other by the door of their apartment as Lochlan sobs loudly into Saxon’s chest, wailing and nearly screaming, muffled by the fabric of Saxon’s pajamas. They both know it’s over.
They have to leave.
“Sax-y, Sax-y! Look at the shells!”
It’s Little Lochy’s sixth birthday, and the whole family went down to Hilton Head for the weekend to celebrate.
Lochlan’s in kindergarten, and Saxon’s in the tenth grade. A sophomore in high school. Big brother has taken it upon himself to raise Lochy up, turn him into a better man than Saxon thinks he could ever become. (Even though he could never admit that out loud.)