Saddled, chapter 37 of 38 (Patreon)

Dee had pointed out that we really need to see John's reaction to Clive's involvement, to see how they navigate their mutual dominance.  She's right, so here is the chapter I hadn't planned to write, but I couldn't stop thinking about once I started it.

John watched Clive cross the cracked and broken parking lot. Even by cheap motel standards, this place was a dump, and this was the only home his little brother had. Hell, he probably spent more of his time on the streets, so this place would be a step up from the gutter he lived in.

That reality was a pain that stuck under John’s rib and wouldn’t leave. Worse, he knew their mother felt the same—how could she not? Clive got in, and before he had even closed the door, John asked, “Is he going to take the help?” The second question was out, John felt like an idiot. Of course Kevin was taken the help because he was getting in the SUV. But that hard, cold pit in his stomach needed to hear Clive say that, for once, Kevin was going to make the smart move.

“I think he's too shocked to argue.” The slightest edge of humor colored Clive’s voice. “But if he backs out later, we’ll deal with it then. My lawyer can get him involuntarily committed in need be.”

“Yeah, but if we do that, will the treatment work? I thought addicts had to want to change.” John hated that he sounded so insecure, even to his own ears, but hope had reared its head, and now he couldn’t control his instinct to scramble after hope even as desperate fear gnawed at him. He hated the feeling. Hated it. It dragged him back to relive every moment where he’d stood by helpless while Kevin had ruined his life.

John didn't like to think back to those years when Kevin had started sliding into depression and drugs. He hated remembering their father’s anger. At the time, it had all seemed so normal. All his friends had fathers that would whip out the belts. Some parents would make kids cut their own switches, and everyone's mother use the line, “Wait until your father gets home.” It was just normal. Common. Today, he could see that normal didn’t mean right or good.

Clive’s voice had a gentleness that normally would have annoyed John. “If it's damn good treatment, doctors can break through a lot of that outer shell. It’s true some part of them has to want to get better, but if Kevin didn’t, he never would have gotten in that SUV.”

“I don't know. We've tried so many times, and he just walks out every time.” Sometimes John wondered if it would have been different if their parents had the money to pay top dollar for rehab that first time when Kevin had been a teenager. Instead he came home from every treatment center worse, and he gave up on each more quickly.

“How long ago was the last time you tried an intervention?” Clive started the car. The first SUV with Kevin in it pulled away from the curb, but the second SUV waited in the parking lot for the transporter still in Kevin’s room. 

John answered absent-mindedly. “Must've been five or six years ago, not long after Dad died. That was the last of a whole series of treatment centers and tearful interventions.” After their father had died, John figured a piece of the family had cracked, and suddenly letting Kevin slide off into his addictions was easier. Fawn just had her third kid, and as she liked to say, when the children outnumbered the parents, the job got more difficult. Logan’s career started to demand more of his attention, and John had felt out of step. And then his knee surgery had left him so broken he hadn’t wanted to deal with any of his siblings. All of them had left Kevin by the wayside.

“Five or six years of addiction and struggling to find the next meal will do a lot to age a person. He’s  older and more tired, and hopefully wiser, so there's a better chance this will take. Are you the same man you were five years ago?”

John wasn't. He didn't know whether the change was for good or for bad, but he definitely was not the same man who'd gone to his father's funeral. He was quieter, more tired. And five years ago, he would've cut off his own dick before entertaining the idea of gay sex. He was pretty sure that made him a homophobic asshole. Financial need had gotten him over that bit of stubbornness.

Clive chuckled and started the engine. “I can tell from your face what you’re thinking. You practically have thought bubbles forming over your head.”

“Fuck off,” John said without putting any heat behind the words. The transporter put Kevin’s duffle bag into the back of the second SUV and then it pulled away.  Clive put the car into gear and followed. 

“I know I was a lot different. Five years ago. I was lost in my work and, quite frankly, I'm not sure I understood what was really important.” His voice had an edge to it that caught John’s attention. He searched Clive’s profile for the cause of the strain he had caught in Clive’s voice.

“And what's that?” John asked when the silence had gone on too long.

Clive’s mouth drew up into a moue before he asked, “Did you ever want kids?”

John had no idea where that came from. Sometimes he suspected that Clive had taken one too many hits to the head because his logic occasionally failed. “I guess I get hadn't given it much thought. I assumed I would have kids, but then I also assumed I would have a wife and a house with a white picket fence. I assumed wrong.” Looking back, John couldn’t imagine staying with any of his old girlfriends long term. They were all too nice.

“Do you regret missing out on that?” Clive glanced over before turning his attention back to the traffic.

“Not really. I'm pretty sure that any of the women I ever dated would've eventually murdered me in my sleep. And I might not have blamed them.”

Clive nodded. “Sharon and I always talked about having kids.”

John frowned as he wondered whether this was some strange transition into the topic of adoption. John wasn't against it, but he was fairly sure their relationship was not in a good place for that right now. While this thing between them appeared to be working, and John was happier with Clive than he had ever been in his life, he wasn't sure they were ready for the stress of diapers and screaming children. In fact, John was looking forward to more quiet Sundays and getting to know Clive outside the stable. Equestrian dominant Clive was not the same man as hanging out in the kitchen in his pajama bottoms eating toast Clive.

“Did you ever regret not having any?” John asked carefully. He felt like he was aiming his boat into a storm, and he wasn’t sure which direction the wind might take him. John wasn’t so worried about getting his own feelings hurt, but the longer he knew Clive, the more he worried about Clive’s insane desire to fix the world. That sort of mother henning always led to heartbreak.

Clive shrugged. “Sometimes. For a while, I buried myself in my work and made my shows into my children.” A frown deepened the wrinkles around his eyes. “Maybe that's what made me a good producer. I didn't have a wife or kids to go home to, so I bent every instinct for creation toward my movies and my shows.”

John definitely needed a cheat sheet for this conversation. So he came right out and asked, “Is something different now?”

“Talking to your brother, I realized that what I really want is to leave some part of me in the world. I thought those were my shows, but even the greatest art gets left behind.” They were at a red light; the SUV had already disappeared into traffic, and Clive turned toward John. “Have you ever seen The Days of Wine and Roses?”

“No.” John hadn’t heard of it.

Clive nodded as if John had just made his point for him. “It's a magnificent movie. Groundbreaking. That movie deserves to be remembered forever, and yet it's largely fading away. People don't want to see old art, and the legacy I'm creating for myself will age and vanish just like that.”

John hated the certainty in Clive’s voice. “The way Logan talks, your work is going to be around a long time. Logan is a judgmental ass, the trait sort of runs in the family. So for him to have a gay man-crush on your producing skills means something.” 

“Thank you,” Clive said, his voice sincere. “But in a hundred years will my work still be around? Can it change the world?”

That seemed like a high bar to set for a Broadway show. John could only shrug. “No one can know.”

“True, but did you hear that Susan Evans child last year?”

Now John was totally confused. “Who?”

“The actress. She had a little girl. When I was producing a film she was in, she was so strung out that we had to do an intervention. I blackmailed and bribed and threatened her into treatment.” Clive huffed, the exasperation and nostalgia both evidence in his face. “I sent her to the same center I’m sending your brother too, and it worked. In a hundred years, her child or her grandchildren will still be here. They will be making a difference long after I'm gone.”

Now John got it. To hell with fixing John or his family, Clive wanted to fix the world. The man should buy himself therapy because one of these days he wasn’t going to be able to fix something. John knew that feeling intimately, and he hated the idea of watching Clive hurt that way.

“You can’t fix everything,” he warned.

“I know that.” Despite his words, Clive had a stubborn expression. Idiot. John had fallen for a well-intentioned moron. Clive continued, “But if I can get your brother on the straight and narrow, if I can help Susan Evans get clean, then I've made a difference.”

“So, saving the world one addict at a time is filling your need to create goodness and light?” John figured it was best to poke a hole in this theory now before Kevin fucked up treatment and set off all Clive’s protective instincts.

Clive gave him a quick shit-look. “I'm not saying that getting your brother out of the gutter is the same as having children. I know it's not. But it’s creation of a sort. It’s creating a new path and new opportunities for someone. I’m allowed to be proud of that.”

“Of course you are.” John frowned as he tried to figure out what to say.

“What?” Clive asked after a second.

Throwing caution to the wind, John went with honesty. It had never worked with any of his previous relationships, but he had Clive had already broken that mold. “I feel like encouraging this is selfish of me because I’m getting treatment for my brother out of your need to, I don’t know, fix the whole fucking world. By the way, good luck with that because the world is far too fucked up for anyone to fix it. And on the other side, I’m feeling like I’m going to have to gut Kevin if he leaves treatment and makes you feel like you’ve failed.”

“No, you won’t. I’ve failed plenty,” Clive said softly. “I couldn’t save Sharon, and I would have given my life for hers.” The pain in his voice cut John. He rested his hand on Clive’s thigh, silently offering support. Grief twisted Clive’s features. “We didn’t even like each other by the end, but I would have.”

“I know,” John said. He didn’t doubt it for a second, and that’s why he would gut Kevin if the asshole kicked Clive in the teeth after Clive went to all the effort to get him into treatment. “You couldn’t have saved Sharon and whether Kevin sticks with therapy or not, at least you gave him a chance to fix his life.” John squeezed Clive’s thigh, and Clive put his own hand over John’s, holding it in place.

“And you have given him more chances than anyone could ever ask,” Clive said.

“I'm his big brother. I thought that was the job description.” After years of pretending he didn’t care, John found himself caught between wanting to save Kevin and hating him for all the harm he’d caused. But in the end, Kevin was still family. John understood why his mother kept forgiving him and Fawn still took Kevin’s calls. “I think I stopped trying to save him because I didn’t know how to keep failing.” John turned his hand so it was palm up, and Clive entwined their fingers.

“If we fail, it won’t be because we didn’t try. Kevin has to come at least part of the way,” Clive said in the world’s biggest reversal.

John chuckled. That was so like Clive. He would take all the responsibility for Kevin’s recovery on his own shoulders, but let John try to take some of that obligation, and suddenly Kevin had to carry his own weight. Maybe people in Hollywood thought Clive was some hard-nosed producer, but John was pretty sure the man was a fluffy bunny.

“What?” Clive asked.

“Nothing.” John wasn’t about to get in an argument about which of them had the most momma-bear issues. Between the two of them, they could keep a team of therapists busy for a decade.

Clive smiled. “Thank you for letting me be part of this. Sharon… she never let me help.” Clive stopped and took a sudden interest in staring at the car ahead of them even though they were driving five miles an hour.

John got it. John absolutely understood how much it hurt when people he cared about shut him out. Nothing hurt worse, and John wouldn’t inflict that sort of damage on Clive. He squeezed Clive’s hand, and they drove toward the airport in silence. 

Chapter 38 (Epilogue): https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-epilogue-22779789 

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