Yes, I can write things (here, have some fic)

[lady_ganesh]

I wrote this a bit back for the kinkmeme. 5/8, pretty fluffy, prompt was for an age gap between the men. So of course, I threw Hakkai in prison for 25 years. Thanks to emungere for helping me clean it up to post, I'll put the sequel up later when hopefully I've finished something else, gdi.



I confess that when I met Jeff I was in something of a bind. I had only a week remaining at the halfway house, my job prospects remained dismal, and my only friend was the chaplain at my former prison. I spent most of my time at the library, playing Bejeweled when I should have been looking for work. (But who would hire me? I certainly couldn't teach again, and what other skills did I have? The jobs counselor insisted I could 'do a lot' with an English degree, but proved more evasive when pressed for details.)

The librarian had glanced disapprovingly in my direction, so I switched tabs and went back to my fruitless search for employment. There were no replies in my Yahoo! mail account, and Monster showed nothing suitable. There were a few new postings on Craigslist, but none of them looked particularly promising until I reached:

Tutor needed. Must have experience with learning disabilities. Can't pay much but will trade.

A child, or an adult, I wondered? And what on earth would I trade for? It was unlikely they could give me an apartment. Though perhaps they had a rooftop garden....

It was a foolish dream, but I had few options. I composed my most professional email (carefully leaving dates off my teaching history), and hoped for the best.

To my surprise, I received a reply within a few minutes; it was poorly spelled, but charming, and the address (in Chinatown, not far from the library I was in) easy enough to get to. Can u come in 1 hr?

Yes, I could. I was already wearing my only suit in case an 'apply in person' opportunity presented itself; I was as presentable as I was going to be.

One subway stop, a few side streets, and I was standing in front of a lovely old building. My potential client was on the second floor, in the kind of apartment that was usually carefully maintained and likely rent-controlled.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the underfed young man who opened the door.

He was tall, and lanky, with dark auburn hair that hid his face as much as it framed it. I couldn't place his race, though there was certainly some Asian heritage; his skeptical eyes were a deep, arresting brown. "You're the tutor?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"Cho, right?"

I nodded and extended my hand. He shook it, and when he smiled, his face changed entirely, opening up, revealing how attractive he truly was.

I swallowed.

"Come on in," he said. "Sorry about the apartment."

The apartment looked like the ruins of an older, better apartment. It was spacious (at least, the parts that weren't cluttered with mail, magazines, and pizza boxes), and the decorations on the wall were tasteful. The dishes in the sink looked attractive enough, under the caked-on food. My host (Jeff, he'd said in the email) cleared a stack of mail from the kitchen table and gestured for me to sit.

"I've started college," he said. "They tested me, and I'm dyslexic. No big surprise, but I guess I'm pretty bad."

I found out later that his school had likely passed and graduated him out of pure inertia; a not uncommon tale, though more common, I think, in my era than in his. His community college offered academic assistance, but it was limited; his professor had suggested a dedicated tutor. "He says I could be a good writer," he continued, a bit sheepishly. "I just don't want to screw this up, ya know?"

I had already realized that tutoring this man would likely be a mistake. While I did, technically, have experience with students with learning disabilities, it was with children, and I'd been in prison for a quarter century; my skills were rusty and no doubt outdated. More importantly, the way he smiled wrenched my heart; he was handsome, and charming, and young enough to be my son.

"I can't pay much," he said. "But I could trade. What do you need?"

I tried not to laugh. "Food, shelter, clothing ... almost everything."

"I got an extra room here," he said, brightening a little. "Maybe you could, I dunno, clean up or something. We could split food."

God help me, I said yes.


I scrubbed grout with a toothbrush and separated the white laundry from the dark. The dishes were of a very high quality and survived being washed with very hot water and antibacterial soap (though I had read in the newspaper not to buy the products unless absolutely necessary, it seemed appropriate). I couldn't buy too many other expensive cleaning products, so I used baking soda and vinegar. When Jeff complained it smelled like I should be cooking something, I bought a roast cheap at the market and put it in the slow cooker he didn't even know he had.

In addition to his classes at the community college, Jeff worked part-time at one of the local bars; I suspected he hustled cards on the side, but what was the good of chiding him about that? I certainly couldn't make any claims to morality.

In time, he revealed that he'd inherited the apartment from a 'friend,' a Mrs. Huang, who also gave him enough money to go back to college with. He was careful with it in a way he was careful of little else. "She thought I could make something of myself," he explained. "I wanna prove her right."

My own past, of course, was considerably darker, but I did eventually reveal the truth. My sister's kidnapping, her pregnancy, and my vengeance when I found the men responsible. "They called it a 'crime of passion,'" I told him. "I suppose otherwise I'd still be in jail."

"My older brother." Jeff looked at the table. "He always took care of me. Looked out for me. Even when things were ... pretty bad. What ... where's she at, now? She okay?"

"She killed herself," I said.

"Shit," he said. "I'm sorry--"

"You didn't know," I said, and I smiled at him to reassure him. "You probably weren't even alive."

"I'm not that young," he said wryly.

I lifted my eyebrows.

"Well, okay. I'm twenty-five. But that's not that young."

"I used to think that too."


I tried not to look at him too much. Fortunately for us both, his hours at work and the college kept him out much of the time, and he didn't always come back at night to sleep. I knew better than to try to pry into his affairs, though I confess I never slept well when he was gone.

He would always be back in the morning. He would lean over the bathroom sink, shirtless and shoeless, brushing his teeth, a towel over that long auburn hair, and I would try not to stare at his bared neck. "Would you like breakfast?"

He turned and grinned. "Yeah, great."

That smile was going to destroy me. I fled to the kitchen and cracked some eggs into the frying pan (good cast iron, a dream to cook on). Cooking kept me focused; planning meals let me budget and keep busy, even as I went through another humiliating round of job applications and interviews that went nowhere.


I'd been at the apartment for a few weeks when Gen stopped by.

"Nice place," he said, scanning the foyer with his eyes, skeptical, suspicious.

"It's rent-controlled," I explained, and let him in.

"How are you doing?"

"I'm all right," I said. It was generally true. I certainly felt as sane as I had in prison, and I'd done fine there, aside from that one incident early on. Isolation generally seemed to suit me.

"I've got some work for you," he said. "At the temple."

"That would be nice. What kind of work?"

He shrugged. Gen was the kind of man who made cynical shrugs look elegant. "The woman who's been keeping the books is retiring. Won't be full-time but should keep you busy. Build up your resume."

I nodded. All the adult education and correspondence courses I had taken should count for something.

Jeff wasn't supposed to be back from class until four, but the key rattled in the lock. I wasn't sure I wanted my only friends to meet. (A voice in my head asked if Jeff was indeed a friend, if that was all I wanted, but I ignored it.) "Ed," he said as the door swung open, his voice pitched high with excitement, "Ed, you won't believe what I got--" His eyes widened when he saw Gen. "Oh, hey," he said. "Uh."

Gen was a decade or so younger than I was, thinner than Jeff, with narrow, clever eyes and a near-constant frown. I'm not quite sure if it was a reward or punishment that sent him as a chaplain to my prison -- a bit of both, perhaps -- but I was grateful for his companionship, and I suspect he appreciated someone who made no issue of his tremendous beauty. He was an excellent chess player. He'd started shaving his head a few years ago, when his blond hair really started disappearing, and I have to confess it suited him. "You're Jeff?" Gen asked. He looked unimpressed.

Jeff was wearing his usual clothes; jeans, a battered old t-shirt, filthy sneakers without socks. He looked like a college student, and impossibly young. "Yeah," he said. "Gen?"

"I'd said he might be stopping by," I said, hoping this wouldn't end as badly as I feared it might.

"Yeah," Jeff said, taking stock of Gen. "Forgot you were a, um, man of the cloth." He took the paper he'd been carrying and put it on the table, in front of me. Great work, the professor had scrawled in the corner. Tremendous improvement. B+ "Nice, huh?"

"Wonderful," I said, smiling. He'd been working very hard, I shouldn't have been surprised.

"Either of you guys want a beer?" He leaned over to search in the refrigerator; his shirt rid up his back.

Gen cleared his throat, and I stopped staring, returning my attention to Jeff's paper. "Is this the professor who recommended you get tutoring?"

"Yeah," he grinned, turning around with a beer in his hand. "You guys--" He twisted the bottle in his hand as an offer. I shook my head; Gen must have done the same. "I gotta take him out for a drink or something once the semester's over. He saved my ass for sure."

"Perhaps dinner here would be more appropriate." Perhaps there was more edge in my voice than I'd intended; I saw Gen's eyebrow raise.

"Sure, whatever," Jeff said, opening his beer and taking a long swallow.

"Isn't it a bit early--"

"Hey, look at that grade!" Jeff said happily. "Plus my last class got cancelled, so I got the rest of the day off."

"Your homework's finished?"

"Yeah, mom," he said, heavily. He rolled his eyes at Gen, who snorted. "I'm gonna go out on the fire escape, let you guys catch up."

"Thank you," I said, as he retreated.

Gen wasn't exactly smiling, but he seemed amused.

"What?" I asked.

He just shook his head. "So much for the Monk."

That had been my nickname in prison; by the time Gen arrived I had earned it by forcibly resisting others' advances. (I would never make parole, but I was fine with that.) "We're not--"

"Hn," he said.

I shook my head and told myself it didn't bother me that he didn't believe me.


We had Gen over for dinner a few times in the following weeks; he and Jeff didn't quite get along, but there was a certain genial camaraderie in our little group, nonetheless. They both agreed on my cooking, at any rate.

Jeff's grades were good; he never stopped thanking me, and I grew more and more comfortable with his easy familiarity, the way he touched my hand, his weight against mine as I helped him study.

It was something like happiness, this new life, the freedom I had, the companionship. But then I would remember: my mistakes, my losses. That Jeff had been born the year I entered prison.

I knew it couldn't last.

I hadn't been sleeping well, so I suppose it wasn't too much of a surprise when I fell asleep one night on the couch waiting for Jeff to come home. I woke to pleasure, warmth, the smell of cigarettes and stale alcohol; wiry arms around me, long, thick hair between my fingers....

I started. "Jeff?"

"Shit," Jeff said, pulling away from me as quickly as I had parted from him. "Shit, you smiled at me -- I thought you were awake--"

"I--" My hand was on his thigh. When had I....

"I'm sorry," he said. "Shit. I--"

"No, no," I said. "I should apologize. I didn't--"

We stuttered more excuses and tried to pretend we weren't both aroused. I swallowed hard and tried to find a neutral place to rest my eyes. My heart was hammering in my chest; it felt like my skin was on fire where he'd touched me.

"I should go to bed," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "Sure."

He had tasted like beer, but not in a bad way. My hands were shaking as I got up; I hid it by thrusting them into my pockets. "Goodnight."

"You too," he said. "Sorry."


Jeff was already gone by the time I woke. He had an early class, but usually he lingered in the kitchen, so we could at least have a bowl of cereal together. Had it really happened so quickly? I'd been in the apartment little more than a month, and there we were, accustomed to one another. Felix and Oscar. Bert and Ernie, I corrected wryly. Or perhaps Nick and Nora. Nick and Nick?

I dropped my teacup when I was cleaning up from my own breakfast, one of the delicate ones Mrs. Huang had left behind, with a Western pattern of pink roses.

There was a choice to be made, I knew. I'd put it off long enough.

I swept the remains of the cup into the dustpan and went to work.

The monks were generally well-meaning, but not good with money, and terrible at keeping orderly receipts. Two weeks of work had kept me very much on my toes, and I suspected I'd made an enemy of the older, embittered gentleman who thought he should be running the temple instead of Gen. But when Gen handed me my first paycheck in a quarter of a century, I felt tremendously satisfied. It almost put my other thoughts out of my mind.

I knew my hourly wage, but there was something exciting, slightly frightening, about the full quantity of the check. We'd promised to pool our resources, but Jeff certainly wouldn't begrudge me a new pair of eyeglasses; the prison standard was uncomfortable and unattractive.

Or it could go toward a security deposit on an apartment of my own.

I walked out of the temple, the check in my hand, and wondered what I should do.


Jeff didn't come back to the apartment until the next morning. I had cooked lasagna, just in case, but it would be fine until the next day.

I waited until he had returned to the apartment to start breakfast; I'd had to have a snack, but it was nice to have eggs cooking again in the pan. "Hey," he said.

"Good morning," I said, though it was closer to noon.

"You're makin' breakfast? Thanks," he said. "Look, I'm still sorry about the other night--"

"It's all right," I said, and turned to face him.

Lenscrafters had cost a bit more than I'd anticipated, but I thought the investment worth it. The way his eyes widened when he saw me certainly made me think so. "Wow," he said.

"I know you tire of me saying it," I said, "but you are significantly younger than me. I certainly don't expect anything like a lifetime investment--"

"Shut up," he said, crossing the room faster than I'd realized he could. One hand switched the burner off and another brushed against my face, and oh, it had been so long, and oh, his mouth was sweet against mine, poorly-covered morning breath and all. "Shit," he muttered, and I could feel his stubble scraping against my chin. "You're so fucking pretty--"

"I'm not," I protested. I'd looked at myself in the mirror in the morning; the wrinkles around my eyes, faint lines at the corners of my mouth, black hair greying to silver at my temples, stubble growing in white and silver patches. If I'd ever been pretty, I'd left it behind me years ago.

Not like Jeff, the thin, cruel lines of his mouth, the spirit in his eyes, his face still fresh, still free of the tiny, telling signs of age. But he still wanted me, wanted me, his hands rough and needy on my body, and I had needed this, needed him. "Shut up," he said. "Let me. God, I've never seen anybody like you." His fingers snaked down to my fly and unzipped it, taking me in hand, moving fast and rough, and I felt like a teenager again, like my life had started over when I moved outside the prison door.

He was remarkably skilled, and I found myself panting for breath, urging him on, helpless to do anything but moan and murmur encouragement. He brought me to a climax so intense that I felt lights flash behind my eyes. I pulled my glasses off and wiped my brow; he was close enough I could still see his satisfied grin. He chuckled, and I vowed to wipe the smirk off his face.

I dropped to my knees.

"You don't haveta," he said, and then he didn't talk for quite some time.

When I put my glasses back on, I saw the sodden mess that had been the eggs. "Oh dear," I said. "I do hate to waste food--"

"We'll buy more," Jeff said, and pushed me against the counter again to kiss me.

Comments

[threewalls]

*g* If you could see the size of my grin. This is gorgeous Saiyuki AU.

[lady_ganesh]

Thank you! I had such a wonderful time putting it together.