1He hasn't seen him for a year maybe, perhaps more. Joel looks the same as he once did, kind and soft and polite, and Lewis feels almost self-conscious again in his presence. Lewis wears a suit now, to the formal party Joel holds annually to celebrate the defeat of Diva and her Chevaliar. The worries about the children are pushed away to another day, and they give themselves one night to smile and laugh and pretend nothing ever happened again.
David is pushing Joel in his wheelchair, and Joel is laughing softly into his hand and trying to remind David that the chair is electric and his pushing it is entirely unnecessary. David is still burdened by his guilt, as always. 'He was one of the only ones out of all of us who would never change.' Lewis thinks, and lets his smile grow wider on his face.
"Lewis," Joel greets, all his niceties ripe in his face, and Lewis thinks that perhaps they are not a lie. "I'm glad you came."
Lewis can stretch his smile all the way across his cheeks at Joel's sincerity. "Well your events are notoriously too good to miss." he exclaims, and then laughs with his head tilted back until he can see the ceiling lights darkened through his sunglasses (it would be polite of him to take them off, to perhaps tuck them into his suit coat pocket, but he keeps them on because he feels more contented that way, more covered in a room full of people who can usually see right through him).
David stands stiff in his own suit behind Joel, his hands curled around the bars of the wheelchair. Joel seems to notice him again, for he says "David is getting married– have you heard yet?"
Lewis smiles. "To Julia, I presume." And David gives a barely audible cough into his fist as Joel proceeds with a close-eyed smile.
"That's right." He raises his glass in his hand and motions for Lewis to do the same. "To your engagement."
David gives his awkward thanks and when Joel tells him to go enjoy the rest of the party, he walks off stiffly and almost eagerly. Joel sighs before he brightens again. "I don't think David quite knows what to with himself, now, since Diva has been defeated. We all have to move on with our lives, and while most of us had our own separate ways before we joined together in Red Shield, David was born into a lifetime of where his efforts here were his only necessary workings."
Lewis nods his head agreeingly and takes a sip of his drink which slides down bitter in his throat and burns a bit in the back of his mouth– 'too strong', he thinks. "His engagement should kick-start him into his new priorities. David will figure it out– like he always does, I'm sure."
Joel nods and smiles again. "And you, what have you been up to, Lewis?"
"I've moved from job to job. After everything, I can't say I can find myself able to adjust to anything else."
"You can always work at my company, Lewis." Joel says, all seriousness and perhaps the slightest hint of concern. Lewis laughs it off and it rumbles in his chest. He feels self-conscious for the second time that night, now that David is gone and the formalities are taken care of and Joel is still smiling away like there isn't anything wrong or awkward with the situation.
For the first time in two years, Lewis wishes there would be something. A Chiropteran attack, a Chevaliar, a handful of the Schiff suddenly bursting through the neat, clear windows that don't have an inch of grime or dust on them.
Maybe he hadn't had enough of that to last him a lifetime, just a life period. Now he's started a new time line on his own clock– not on Diva's, not on Saya's, not on Kai's or David's or Joel's or Haji's.
Joel suddenly tilts his head back and closes his eyes in a sort of daze that looks harmonious and slides into his facial features perfectly, as if meant to be there, or as if it had been there multiple times before. Lewis takes a step forward tentatively before Joel's lips tilt upwards at the edges and he says, "Since this," here Joel takes a short glance down at his legs, before the tilt of his lips curls a bit more, albeit perhaps a little wryly, "happened, I've learned to appreciate listening rather than simply dancing. I've told someone that before, a long time ago. Or perhaps not so long ago."
Lewis watches Joel gaze almost longingly down at the moving legs and feet and twirling skirts of the dancing couples out on the middle of the floor, and he thinks that one of the couples might be David with Julia's arms wrapped around his neck, and another might be Mao grinding the heel of her shoe into Okamura's shoe as he says something particularly unpleasant. Maybe everything will work out in the end, and maybe it won't– just like how maybe Okamura will grab Mao's wrist before she can stomp off the dance floor mumbling angrily to herself, or maybe David will find out how to build another life before he collapses in on himself like he's done before.
Because maybe Lewis has shot enough Chiropterans to last a lifetime, and maybe David has drank enough alcohol, and maybe Mao has searched too long and too painfully for Kai, but in the end they will never have had enough. Whether or not they come back to it is their own choice most of the time.
Some people do not have choices.
Lewis realizes this as he observes Joel's fingers tapping on the sides of his glass– the soft smile, the neat and pressed and tucked exterior, the uselessness of his legs.
- - - -
Lewis forgets how many drinks he's had after the fourth or fifth, and his legs go numb so he ends up pulling up a chair to sit next to Joel in, who is equally as Not Sober, equally as confused and depressed.
"I forgive him," Joel says, quietly, softly, sorrowful. "He wasn't to blame for any of this. But sometimes I think that if we had just moved a little faster– if he hadn't wanted to fire that last shot and had instead moved, that if he did that, I would be dancing right next to everyone and not sitting here."
Joel looks over at him, all wide eyes and pettiness. "Lewis...Lewis, tell me. Have you ever done anything that you regret?"
'Yes,' Lewis thinks, 'Maybe. Maybe. Maybe I'm regretting all those times that I– maybe.'
"Maybe." Lewis replies, and finishes off the last of the alcohol in his cup. "I need to get home. It's a long drive, back to where I live." Joel hasn't stopped looking at him hopelessly since he first asked Lewis if he regretted anything.
"Lewis, I...I know it may sound strange– however, would you mind...Would you mind taking me home? It's just a short walk from here– the building next to this one." Lewis blinks.
Aah, that was right. Joel had the one house here for formal events and business, and the other for leisure and living in. Lewis wondered if he lived alone all the time, if these once-a-year events were some of the only times he truly got to socialize without work or papers or rushedness.
"I'm sorry," Lewis murmurs. "I really don't think I should do that."
- - - -
He ends up taking him home anyway, after he glances at David who doesn't look like he wants to leave and all the others he knows who look the same way. He doesn't have any reason to stay, not exactly– so he finds himself trying to avoid stepping in the flowerbeds lined up on the sides of the cement walking path, and he tightens his hands extra hard around the bars of Joel's wheelchair because he feels like he just might fall over if he's not careful.
When they get into the house Joel reaches up a hand to flip on the light switch on the wall and the entrance room becomes illuminated, as well as the staircase in the center of it that curls and twists and Lewis wonders how he's going to get himself and Joel up it. He manages somehow and when they're halfway up it and Lewis is trying to pull up Joel's wheelchair onto a particularly sharp curve in the stairs, that it finally occurs to Joel to tell Lewis that there was an elevator in the next room.
Joel points Lewis to his room, and when Lewis steps in the light blinds him even with his sunglasses on.
Joel manages to twist his abdomen around enough to face Lewis. He stares unashamedly and reaches up like he saw him for the first time, except he didn't.
- - - -
"You–" Lewis mumbles as he feels Joel's hands on the waist band of his pants, slowly gliding downwards to fumble for the zipper through their trembles, "You're not thinking straight."
His sunglasses are slipping down his nose, but he's not paying attention to them, not really– all he's seeing is Joel's eyes, sky blue and just as cloudy. "Yes I am." He says back, his voice not half as unsteady as his movements but it's the least that Lewis ever expected from him.
Lewis can't wrap his mind around the situation until his glasses finally slide down the rest of his nose and bounce off of Joel's wrists where they clatter on the floor. Besides this the room is silent– they are not even breathing hard or fast enough to make much of a difference, and it bothers Lewis in a way that he can't describe. He would like to know that Joel is aware of him standing there, and maybe it's impossible to be unaware of a person who's pants your shoving your hand into, but maybe it's not.
"Joel," Lewis says.
Joel's hands are cold.
- - - -
Joel fumbles awkwardly with his cock, shimmying down Lewis's pants enough to be able to wrap his hands around it, and when he takes it in his mouth it's not there for long. Then he's creating awkward circles and squares on the head with his thumbs, and Lewis wonders what in the world he's doing until Joel says, "I can't feel, you know. Not until my waist."
"O-oh." Lewis replies, and he half-wishes Joel would just look at him and he half-wishes Joel would keep his head down, just like this. Lewis can't really think of anything else to say but 'Oh', not with Joel's hands on his dick and his pants somewhere lined up along his thighs and the heavy gloom-disappointment-disgust (or whatever the fuck it is, really– because all Lewis knows at this point is that it's not something he wants to know, not by choice) of Joel's words.
"So...So, I'm going to...to do this. I want to." Joel removes one hand from where it was still wrapped around Lewis and he reaches down onto the floor to grab Lewis's sunglasses with shaking fingers. He hands them back to Lewis, and Lewis tucks them back into his suit pocket because it's the polite thing to do, after all.
"You'd regret it by tomorrow." Lewis replies, and Joel smiles, says:
"I know."
- - - -
Joel places his mouth back down onto Lewis's dick, his neck craned at an angle to accomplish the position and as soon as he lines up his tongue with the base and gives a long sweep of the tongue that leaves Lewis breathless, Lewis immediately stops trying to think even though he ends up doing so anyway. He thinks of how soft Joel's hair he's clutching in his hands is, and how pretty Joel looks with his lips pink and wet and sliding up his cock.
He thinks of how long he denied wanting this, and how much he maybe doesn't deserve it, but this time he doesn't feel self-conscious as he thrusts deeper into Joel's mouth and Joel just barely gags around him. It's with another long suck that he goes off.
Lewis tries to not feel it when he comes, and he's not half as successful as he hoped.
By the time Joel's wiped his mouth with his sleeve and Lewis has tugged up his pants, Lewis is already walking out of the house and stumbling down the stairs and then finding himself trying not to trample on the flowerbeds aligned with the sidewalk again.
He thinks he should've stayed.