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Chapter 10
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He hadn't noticed it when Mike was driving him home but now the quiet streets seemed almost too quiet. During the day there was always someone mowing their lawn or taking their dog for a walk. Now, there was no one. There weren't even any lights on in any of the houses he passed, not even a blue flicker from a tv. Everything was dark and still and Jude seemed to be the only life form in miles. It was like some Hollywood set after the cameras had stopped rolling. Eerie for sure but there was also a sort of dire suspense to the dead night that he had invaded that made his heart pound faster. If the cameras had stopped, then there was very little time left before the demolition crew would come in the strike the set of picturesque family homes built just up from the beach around a baseball field with green grass under a blue sky. And although the ticking clock was unsettling, Jude realized no cameras also meant no script. There wasn't much time but there was some, and it was his to use as he pleased. While the rest of the world sat paused, after they had all had their turn on screen and behind the scenes, he and Connor could now sneak away and decide for themselves where they wanted their story to go and they would get the final say, sneak it in at the very end so there would be no time for the director or the major studio big wigs to demand a reshoot.

Getting to the beach took less than ten minutes. It never felt that close when he was walking with his surf board. The sky was clear and the stars were out and the cool dip just before the sun began to rise again had taken hold. The beach wasn't as black as it was at camp. Or maybe it would have been closer to the water, further from the street lamp lit path that bordered the sand but Jude didn't need to go that far. Connor was sitting just steps from the path, the skateboard he no longer rode propped upright in the sand next to him. He was wearing the same flannel shirt he had worn to camp. It was same one that he remembered wrapping snuggly around his shoulders and never wanting to leave its warmth. Jude couldn't help but think Connor had worn it for a reason. Because he knew he would have to wait until the night had turned cold and he was prepared to do so.

As Jude got closer he saw a guitar resting in Connor's lap and the notes ever so softly gaining the upper hand over the crashing waves. They were fummbly and fell out of time more often then they kept it. It was far from the practised performance by the campfire. But then Jude realized why. It was a different song and he smiled when he recognized what it was supposed to be, a hint of the Connor he had previously known coming back out of the shadows.

"It's a little ironic, doncha think?" he asked taking a seat beside Connor.

Connor nodded, letting his hands fall from the strings. "I guess. Not entirely appropriate. I was out of ideas though. Haven't been able to think."

"Brain a bit scattered?" Connor nodded. "Yeah, I know the feeling. And I guess it's not completely out of left field. I am afraid. Of what just happened. That this was all too good to be true." Connor didn't reply and his eyes fixed themselves down on his guitar. Jude hadn't really expected him to considering he was a little shocked himself by his own admission. He supposed the statement was an obvious one but hearing it out loud and so bluntly was hard. It hurt again and Connor's silence, his inside bottom lip trapped between his teeth, allowed the words to linger longer in the air leaving Jude to feel more and more exposed. He felt like scrambling to get his shirt back over his head like he had in his dream but he was already wearing it. The best he could do was tug at the cuffs on his sweater and pull them down over his hands and that wasn't near enough. After a few moments Jude couldn't take it any longer. "I know why you call him Shakes." Connor looked up and turned to him for the first time that night. His teeth relinquished his lip which formed into a hint of a smile. "Well his name's Will, which is very convenient, and he's a strategist. It's not just hitting the ball to him. He likes plays. He's the master of them." Connor dropped his head again, shaking it back and forth. "What? Am I wrong?"

"No. No, that's exactly it," he said, moving the guitar off his lap and setting it down on the sand in front of him. "It's just no one else's ever figured it out. I mean I don't think anyone else cared to but, you know," he shrugged. "Here you are being all smart and sweet and I've fucked this up so bad."

Jude was warry of it but that sentence seemed to carry the same tune as the earlier song. Connor had once told him that living in this heteronormative world required, at the very least, a release valve. The statement had never sat right with him. He didn't want someone to simply fuck away the resentment with. Connor just hadn't quite understood. Connor had thought it was the gay thing that he was hesitant about and he had been trying to warm Jude up to the idea by starting small, a secret, no feelings attached sort of thing. It had never been a gay thing though. It had been a men thing and the pattern of destruction that they always seemed to bring with them. The advice just hadn't fit the situation and so Jude had simply brushed it off. After the pier though, after seeing Connor parade through the carnie's happy heterosexual narrative, those words had come streaming back to him and had literally, haunted his dreams. He hadn't needed the release. Connor had. People often give advice that reflects their own situation more than that of their listener. That's just how people are. They're self-centered. It's a built in survival tool. Callie thought running was the only way to ensure her freedom so she ran, breaking to one promise they had held above everything else: We stick together no matter what. Those words though, they began to show hints that what he had felt when he was with Connor wasn't simply misplaced hope. It was real. They were real. If he had just been a release, Connor wouldn't have cared that he was smart and sweet. He wouldn't have cared that he had messed it up because there wouldn't have been anything to mess up.

With that small hint of proof, of validation, Jude pressed forth to hopefully obtain more. "You don't love her, do you? You don't actually want to date her? Or… are you bi or something?" Connor shook his head. "Why then? Is it your dad because you definitely never seemed shy about being gay?"

He nodded. "I tried to tell him once. I didn't get very far but he figured out what was coming and started yelling. And he came at me and grabbed me and I tried to get away and somewhere in the struggle, my head got slammed against the mantle." He slipped his hand over his bandana and pushed it off his forehead and tossed it into the sand by his feet. In the light from the street lamps, Jude could see the raised, jagged scar that started an inch above his left eye and ran diagonally up into his hair. "The Harry Potter comments were one thing but eventually people would ask how I actually got it. And…" Jude could see the shine of tears forming in Connor's eyes and over the waves he heard the quiver in his voice. "And I just hate it. I hate thinking about it." Jude reached out and wrapped his arm around Connor's trembling shoulders and he all but collapsed towards him, burying his face in his neck.

Jude sat quietly for a few minutes, just holding Connor, working up the courage to say something that wasn't trivial because really, there were very few things that could help. "I know what it's like to be hit. I hate thinking about it too. One of the foster dads I had, he caught me putting on his wife's nail polish," he said, subconsciously digging his newly painted fingers into the sand. "He came at me fists swinging. Callie couldn't pull him off so she took a baseball bat to his car to get him to stop."

"Jude…" Connor lifted his head a bit, resting his chin on Jude's shoulder and Jude shivered at the heavy breath on his neck.

"They carted her off to juvie for it. Destruction of property. I don't have a scar but people always ask why she was locked up. They ask her. I don't even get to be in charge of the answer." He paused. "I don't like not having a say in my life."

"I know. I'm so sorry." Jude didn't know what the apology was for exactly but the soft, press of Connor's lips to his shoulder and how the warmth spread outwards over his body had him expecting that it was for everything.

"You're the first person I've told. Lots of people know but you're the first person I've told."

He felt Connor nod against his shoulder and then tilt his cheek back to rest against it again. "I want to be that person. I really do." He said it like a question, like he didn't quite know how to go about it or if Jude would give him another chance.

Jude looked out over the beach and where in disappeared into vast ocean. Out there the answer was easy. Out there it could be just them. It was the last frontier, the last bits of Earth left unconquered and free. But the tide was low, well out of reach of their feet and the dry sand was a vastly different world. "I don't know." He took a breath. "I want you to be too. I want you to win teddy bears me. But I don't want to put you in a dangerous situation at home. Nothing is worth that."

"It won't be forever. My dad just wants me to be a jock but I want the scholarship. If I get it then I don't have to rely on him for college. It can all be done with in four years."

"And until then?"

"I asked Daria to meet me after practice tomorrow. I'm going to tell her. I have to do that for her at least. After that I don't know."

A smile spread across Jude's face. There was still no clear answer here on land and maybe there just never was in life. Maybe instead of knowing the answer, it was more important to find a person who could help you look. Connor was that person.

"What are you thinking?" Connor asked after Jude had been quiet for a while. Jude felt him pull away from his shoulder a bit and sit up straight again. He scooted closer though so Jude could keep his arm around him and he felt Connor's arm wrap around his waist. "What?" There was amusement in his voice and Jude's smile grew.

"Nothing." Connor raised an eyebrow. "I just… Well I don't know either but I'd rather try to figure it out with you than without." With his left hand, Jude took hold of Connor's where it was resting loosely on his hip. He laced their fingers, so his palm was cradling Connor's in away. He lifted Connor's arm up over his head so the other boy could see. Jude saw him pause for a moment, looking down at their joint hands and the way it wasn't just his nails that were painted blue anymore. And then he smiled that smile, that one that didn't just know happy, it defined it. It defined happy and light and free and Jude didn't know where Connor found all that but he wanted so much to spend the rest of the summer and maybe even the rest of his youth and beyond learning. Jude watched as he bowed his head and that smile turned into a faint laugh. He felt the hand in his squeeze back, warm and soft, and as sure as the Connor he knew, maybe even more so.

"There is no figuring it out without you," Connor whispered as the dawning pink rays of the sun tickled their backs after streaming through the city and the neighbourhoods behind them to the water's edge, banishing the inky black back to the depths and coaxing the blue back out over the infinite surface.

A/N: and there it is guys. i hope you liked it. thankyou reading and especially thankyou to those who left me reviews!