They had been driving for well over an hour now. Brendan blinked, trying to clear the fatigue from his head as he gazed out at the dark stretch of tarmac in front of them, illuminated by the eerie orange glow of streetlamps and the dazzling white lights of other cars.
Surreptitiously, he glanced over at Stephen, his slim frame slouched in the passenger seat, head lolling to the side as he watched the passing darkness from the window. Silent since they climbed into the car. It surprised Brendan. He had expected him to be one of those restless passengers, like Cheryl or Declan, blabbering away mindlessly, fidgeting with the radio, asking how long more it would take again and again.
Then again, maybe he would have been like that, on a different day, in a different car. With a different man driving him.
How would he know what sort of passenger Stephen was anyway? He had never driven him anywhere before. They had never travelled to Belfast to visit his family, or gone on a weekend break. Nothing normal like that.
Stephen's phone began to buzz again, muted but vibrating against his pocket. It was the fifteenth time in the last hour. Neither of them acknowledged the sound, just continued to stare out their respective windows, unmoving.
Who was calling him, Brendan wondered. Amy? Nah, it couldn't Amy. Stephen would never ignore her calls like that, he'd be too afraid that something was wrong with one of the kids. It must be Doug. Brendan felt instantly guilty at the unbidden flash of triumph that shot through him at the notion of Stephen ignoring Doug's calls. That wasn't what he wanted. He wanted Stephen to be with Doug. He wanted Doug to make him happy, in the way that Brendan couldn't.
Again, Brendan tore his eyes from the road for a second to steal a glance at the boy beside him. He looked so beautiful, laying his sandy head back on the leather headrest, blue eyes half-closed under long lashes, his soft pink lips slightly apart. Beautiful, apart from the single line between his eyebrows, creasing his perfect skin into a frown. Brendan dragged his eyes back to the road, resisting the urge to reach over and brush that line away with his thumb. It couldn't be brushed away, he reminded himself sadly. Besides, it had been Brendan who put it there.
Sometimes, in the dead hours of the night, when all the world was sleeping, Brendan would lie awake in his neat, orderly room and try to remember exactly when it was that Stephen had become the reason. His reason, Brendan Brady's, the impenetrable man who had never been in love. All his life, he had struggled to keep people at arm's length. Alone, he was safe. Alone, he was in control. Alone, he was the invincible, untouchable master that he had wanted to be with every single frightened tear that had rolled down his cheek as a kid.
He recalled their first meeting with excruciating detail. The cocky threat, the mouthy swagger, the whiney disbelief when his attempt at blackmail met with Brendan's iron fist. Brendan wanted him. He was straight, apparently, but Brendan knew better. He could read him like a book, every thought and feeling worn carelessly across his face. So slowly, Brendan began to reel him in, just as he had so many times with so many others. Slowly, he began to satisfy his lust, making certain to keep his controlled thumb pressed down upon them both, just as he always did. It should have been just like every other time. But it wasn't. Somewhere, the tables had turned. Stephen had become the puppet-master and Brendan the idiotic, dancing slave.
Why, he had asked himself a thousand times. What was it about the boy? His vulnerability, perhaps. That open, readable face that Brendan had mistaken for weakness at the start. Through that face, Brendan could view a lifetime of uncensored shame and joy and heartache. He could see beautiful, unselfish gratitude and forgiveness and love, in spite of all the crimes that had been committed against him. He was witnessing everything that was lacking in himself, everything he had fought to stamp down and erase, making beautiful glorious sense in Stephen. Maybe that was why, but he didn't know.
Maybe there was no reason. Maybe he just loved him because he did.
He should have left that little village years ago, he knew that. His presence there had just created problems for Cheryl, for Lindsay, for Joel. But he couldn't tear himself away. He couldn't wake up each morning knowing that he would not see that face before he closed his eyes again that night. Even if it was only from a distance, across a great impassable gully.
There were less cars on the road now, traffic growing sparser as the night got later and they moved further from civilisation.
"We're nearly there," Brendan said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud as it broke through the silence for the first time since their drive began. He cleared his throat, uncomfortably.
"Right," said Stephen, shifting self-consciously in his seat, as though waking from a secret daydream. He turned his head towards Brendan, studying him, but Brendan kept his eyes fixed on the road. Now they were approaching their destination, he was growing unsure.
They pulled to a stop beside the crumbling white beach house, it's façade a gaping black hole, telling of the trauma it had seen.
"This is it," Brendan said, but his hands didn't drop from the steering wheel. His knuckles were white.
"Right," Stephen said again. Totally unaware of what was going on, but willing to wait, willing to do whatever Brendan asked him to, whenever he asked him to. Brendan felt an overwhelming rush of love for him, for his accepting, forgiving willingness.
Slowly, he let his vice grip on the steering wheel go and climbed out of the car, stretching his long legs after hours cramped into a sitting position. Stephen followed suit, walking around the side of the car to stand beside Brendan. He left a gap between them, a hands-width. It might as well have been a thousand miles.
"So why are we here, then?" he asked, still studying the face of the other man. Hunting for clues.
Brendan's eyes were on the ground. Could he do this? It had seemed like the only option, the only way to let Stephen be happy. He had thought it would be easier, out here. But now they had arrived, he felt himself drowning in ghosts, the ghosts of twenty years ago and the ghosts of ten days ago. Stephen, he thought, closing his eyes briefly. This was about Stephen. He had lived with his ghosts long enough, they were nothing new to him.
"I need to… show you," Brendan said, haltingly. Then he started walking, leading the younger man down the winding path through the coarse sand to the exploded entrance.
"Is this where you…?" Stephen trailed off, indicating Brendan's limping gait with a nod of his head.
"Yeah," Brendan answered, dully. Stephen looked upset, drinking in the scarred landscape. Frightened. Brendan paused a moment, wondering if he was doing the right thing.
"It's upstairs," he told Stephen, eyes locked on his face. His open, trusting face. "The thing that I need to show you."
Stephen looked into the charred remains of the building at the stairs, visible from outside now that the house had been torn in half.
"Are you sure it's safe?" he asked, dubiously.
Brendan couldn't suppress a mirthless laugh. Safe? What was safe? There was nothing that could happen to him in this house worse than what had already happened to him here.
"No, I'm not," he answered, before walking inside.
Cautiously, he climbed the blackened stone steps, keeping himself close to the wall to avoid the sheer drop on the open side. He felt the ghosts swirl around him as he climbed, pressing in on top of him, prising open his jaw and pouring themselves down his throat. Walker, his panicked eyes realising he'd revealed himself. Cheryl, her broken sobs bent over Nana's lifeless body. Nana, her frail and frantic struggles against his powerful grip. His father…
Half the room had been blasted away, the wooden floorboards crumbling into nothingness three metres out from the wall. He had thought he would feel glad. But he didn't. It wasn't the room's fault. It had suffered, just as he had, because of what had happened here. It had been destroyed, left as an empty wasted shell, just as he had. Weak, he collapsed to the ground and positioned himself sitting, back against the wall, staring out at the black expanse of the sky, blind to the stars that decorated it.
Stephen appeared at the doorway.
"Brendan, this looks really dangerous," he said, surveying the vanished wooden floor a few metres away. "This floor, it could give way any minute, this."
Brendan said nothing and Stephen, chewing nervously on his lip, took a tentative step forward. The tired planks creaked beneath his feet, but he continued on to Brendan and lowered himself gingerly to the ground beside him. Shoulders touching, knees grazing. Protecting each other.
Brendan wanted to speak now, to tell the boy the reason he had dragged him all this way in the middle of the night, to explain why he was making him sit on this rotting wood in this broken house. But he couldn't say goodbye yet. He needed him too much, pressed up against him, warming him as the ghosts covered him in their icy caresses. Not yet.
"Why do you love me Stephen?" he asked, suddenly.
"What?" Stephen said, too quickly. "I never said that I… I just want to know why… I mean, Doug…"
The sentences died in his throat, one after the other. Brendan stayed quiet.
"I dunno," Stephen answered, his eyes fixed on the starry sky as well. "I just do."
It was staggering. Even with his open, readable face, he could still stagger Brendan with his truthfulness. Of course he didn't know why, this was Stephen. He didn't lie awake in bed at night trying to rationalise his emotions, trying to quash his desires. He was alive, beautifully alive. Brendan needed to set him free.
"Stephen," Brendan whispered, dropping his gaze from the invisible stars to his own wringing hands. He could feel the boy's face turn towards him, could sense the concern written across it though he didn't look up.
"Stephen, when I was a kid, we used to come here. On holiday. Every summer, y'know. It was our nana's place, our dad's mam. It was the only time I used to see my dad, after he left my mam."
He felt the pressure of Stephen's hand on his knee and had to reign in his instinct to hit it away. Let it lie there, what did it matter? It would be gone forever, soon enough.
"This was my room," he went on, lifting his eyes to the burnt out shell. "Every year, from when I was six to when I was thirteen, this was my room."
He paused for a minute, remembering. Sitting in the living room in Dublin, bags packed, waiting for the car to come and bring him back to this place. Every year, back to this place.
When he spoke again, his voice was dead, uncaring, drained of all emotion.
"This was where my dad abused me," he said. "Every year. From when I was six to when I was thirteen. He would come up with reasons to send the girls away, out of the house, and he'd take me by the hand and bring me up the stairs. We'd come in here, he'd shut the door. And then he'd take his trousers off. And then he'd take my trousers off. Every year."
He couldn't utter another word for that moment. All of his energy was focussed on that overwhelming vat of memory, teetering dangerously on the brink of spillage. Suddenly, he became aware of Stephen's hand, moved from his knee, touching his cheek. Confused, he looked at the boy's face, wet with tears, contorted in anguish. And pity.
He was on his feet in a second, Stephen's hand pushed roughly away from his cheek, floorboards groaning dangerously beneath him.
"So anyway, now you see," he rushed, struggling to keep his voice even. Control, he needed to control it. "Now you see why you can't be happy with me, why I can't have that. I can't be normal."
With a final glance at the sobbing boy on the floor, he stepped over him and strode across the room to the stairs, escaping. Away from that room, away from the ghosts, away from Stephen. Alone.