by J. Rosemary Moss
Genre: Slash Fan-Fiction (Bonanza)
Rating: PG-13
LINK TO PART ONE
~
David chose his words carefully as he continued to look Joe in the eye. There was a degree of privacy at the chess table, so he knew he could talk without fear.
“You don’t really know me, Joe,” he said at length, making sure to keep his voice soft. “Right now I’m just the man who’s, ah, leading your brother astray.”
“I worked with you for a month on the Ponderosa,” Joe pointed out. “I know you well enough.”
“Well enough to despise me now?” David asked. “Why didn’t you despise me earlier—when I told you that I planned to ruin Adam?”
“I did,” Joe answered, keeping his arms folded across his chest. “Or at least—at least I tried to. You make it hard to dislike you, David. I’ll give you that much.”
David smiled a little at that. “If you want to despise me because of what happened to Stephen, I won’t blame you. I think—I think your reading of that event was exactly on the mark.”
To David's surprise, Joe’s eyes seemed to soften at that. Reluctantly, but they softened.
“Adam’s right too, though,” Joe said. “You didn’t pull the trigger. But you shouldn’t have tried to blame Adam for the kid’s death.”
“You’re right,” David conceded. “That—that was not a shining moment on my part. But I was wracked with guilt and, since Miller told me that Adam had forced Stephen to confess, I felt betrayed. By blaming Adam I managed to fuel the guilt into anger.”
He paused long enough to flash Joe a self-deprecating grin. “The problem, Joe, is that I was already too much in love with Adam to carry out my revenge—and I only fell deeper the longer I worked with him.”
Joe’s eyes widened at that, but he said nothing.
“Sometime during that month on the Ponderosa, I guessed that Adam hadn’t really betrayed me,” David continued. “That’s why Abby didn’t have to work too hard to convince me to talk it all out with him. And so I, ah, ‘borrowed’ a bottle of scotch from your father’s wine cellar one night, split it with Adam and we hashed it all out.”
He sat back in his chair a little and cocked his head at Joe. Joe was still staring at him, as if taking in a brand new thought, but he was still keeping silent.
David began to talk just to fill the silence. It couldn’t hurt Joe to know more about him, he reckoned. Then perhaps he would see David more as a fellow human being and less as the demon who had seduced his brother.
He thought for a moment and then decided to fill Joe in on the most humiliating event of his life—his first marriage.
“Stop me whenever you think I’m giving you too much information,” David said quietly. “It’s just that—well, of the few people who know my tendencies, most want to ask me why I don’t reconsider a ‘normal’ relationship with a woman. My first marriage would be the answer to that.”
He went on to describe the humiliating ordeal of that marriage, which was not without its humorous side. He explained that he had loved his first wife, but he had only pretended to be attracted to her. That fact made it difficult to perform certain marital duties. They did manage to consummate the marriage—a less than exhilarating event for both of them—but David found it increasingly difficult to perform afterwards. His wife heaped frustrated scorn on him because of it, which certainly didn’t improve matters.
Joe smiled as David wryly explained the hopelessness of the whole situation. Seeing that smile, David had some cause to hope that he was making headway.
David was careful to explain that, whatever problems they had, at least his first wife had taught him the nuts and bolts of Jewish observances—something he certainly hadn’t learned from his mother. Josephine had taught him some Hebrew, but little else.
“In the end, I signed a gett and gave my wife a divorce,” he concluded. “I wished her every happiness and we went our separate ways. It will be different with Avi, of course. She doesn’t expect me to, ah, perform.”
Still Joe said nothing.
David sighed. “Joe, you can say something now—even if you want to tell me how much you still despise me.
“I didn’t know that you love him,” Joe said simply.
He cocked his head at Joe. “That I love Adam, you mean?”
Joe nodded. “I knew—I knew that one man could want another one, like a—like a rutting stag. And that one man could use another one for release, the way most men use saloon girls. But I didn’t know that one man could fall in love with another one.”
He paused and David got the sense that he was collecting his thoughts.
“I guess I realized that there could be a strong friendship between two men who wanted each other,” Joe owned. “But I didn’t know that there could be real love or affection between them.”
Joe paused again to take a deep breath. “Adam has—he has been attracted to some women. Genuinely attracted, I mean. What are you going to do if he ends things with you in order to have a wife and family?”
“I don’t know,” David answered honestly. “I think I’d want to keep the friendship—but it might be too painful. I don’t know how it would feel to lose the right to embrace him or to use his shoulder for a pillow.”
Joe managed another smile at that.
“I never want this to end, Joe,” David continued. “But I don’t know if Adam feels the same. I don’t think Adam even knows—this is all too new to him.”
“Then you’re Adam’s first?” Joe asked.
David hesitated. “I’m not sure,” he owned. “My guess is that he’s been attracted to other men before, but this is the first time he’s crossed that line.”
“I feel better about that,” Joe admitted. “At least Adam hasn’t been—hasn’t been hiding this forever.”
He paused and narrowed his eyes at David. “I still don’t approve,” Joe informed him. “And I don’t really understand why two men would—would be attracted to each other that way. But I can understand why you love my brother. He’s—he’s a decent man.”
David smiled. “Excessively decent,” he agreed. He held out his hand to Little Joe. “Can we at least declare a truce?”
Joe stared at the outstretched hand for a long moment, but at length he accepted it. “Truce,” he agreed. “I don’t despise you, I guess, but I’m still determined not to like you much.”
David’s smile deepened. “Fair enough,” he owned.
LINK TO PART FIFTY-NINE
No comments:
Post a Comment