Title: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Author/pseudonym: Tinnean
Fandom: The Big Chill
Pairing: Harold/Nick
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: **sigh** They still belong to Lawrence
Kasdan, I’m still not making money on this, and there is still no justice.
Status: new/complete
Date: 8/8/02
Series/Sequel: This is part 11 of The Connection
series, and follows I Second That Emotion.
Summary: The day of Alex’s funeral. Both Nick and
Harold think of their past.
Warnings: m/m, spoilers for the movie
Notes: Charlie refers to the Viet Cong. I would like, at this time, to thank Athea, Minotaur, Tim, and my internist, Dr. McC, for the invaluable sites, insights, and information on how someone with Nick’s injuries would be able to get an erection and make love. Thanks, as always, to Gail for the encouragement and the beta. This is for her, because on August 8, 2000 she posted A Perfect Murder story, Legitimately Sublime, I sent her feedback, and as a result we became friends.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Part 1/1
There were eight of them, eight friends. Sarah, Meg, Karen,
Sam, Harold, Michael, Nick… and Alex. Alex, handsome, brilliant, driven, the
glue that held them together in college.
They graduated and went out into the real world, and still
the one who kept them connected was Alex, charismatic Alex. They were like a
magnet to his North.
They married. Sarah became a doctor, Meg a hotshot
attorney, Sam a well-known actor who appeared weekly on TV. Karen settled for
security with a man she held in mild contempt. Michael scoffed at his original
dream of teaching ghetto kids in Harlem and went to work for People Magazine.
Harold got an idea for making sneakers more elitist, founded a company that
produced running shoes, and now had almost as much money as Donald Trump. Nick
returned home from Viet Nam a changed man, as he liked to put it, with mental as
well as physical scars.
And Alex… Alex went from one random job to another. Due
to Michael's pugnacious article in the school paper, he'd lost his physics
fellowship. Due to Harold's streak of honor, he'd lost his lover when the woman
they'd both had became pregnant and couldn't tell who the father was.
The eight friends kept in touch through sporadic phone
calls and even more sporadic visits. Everyone thought everyone’s life was
going fine, until Alex Marshall committed suicide in the bathroom of his best
friend’s house.
****
Nick didn’t think to ask how they knew how to get in
touch with him when Alex Marshall was found dead. The running joke among the
tight-knit group of college friends was to just copy down his license plate.
He was late to the service. It had been an associate of the
funeral director who had given him the lush white carnation that he fixed in his
lapel, signifying that he was a pallbearer. He took a seat in the back of the
little church, and listened to the fundamentalist minister as he harangued the
deceased for his senseless act of self-destruction.
“I didn’t know Alex Marshall. But speaking to his
friends and family, I feel as if I did.” His words could almost be recited by
rote, and mercifully he kept them short. He finished by demanding, “Where did
Alex’s hope go?" He gazed sternly at the mourners. "Maybe that is
the small resolution we can take from here today. Try to regain that hope; it
must have eluded Alex.” The minister turned to the man who sat waiting.
“Harold.”
The most responsible of the group, the one referred to as
the perfect man, Harold walked haltingly to the pulpit. He gazed out at the
small group of mourners, his eyes lighting briefly as he spotted Nick.
“I did know Alex.” Nick watched from the sidelines as
Harold spoke achingly of the man who had been his friend, had been more than his
friend. “And I loved him," he said softly, almost to himself. "Alex
drew us together from the beginning. Now he brings us together again. I only
hope that wherever he is now…”
Nick’s lower lip quivered, his face twisted in grief, and
he closed his eyes, unable to bear seeing the devastation on his one-time
lover’s face.
Harold broke down in the midst of his eulogy, and the
minister gently led him away, pausing only to mention the reception that would
be held at the home of Harold and Sarah Cooper. As the coffin was rolled back
down the aisle, the strains of Alex’s favorite Rolling Stones’ song, You
Can’t Always Get What You Want, followed.
The service completed, Nick went to greet the others in the
group, gingerly hugging Karen, the woman who had been his girlfriend for a time
during their years at the University of Michigan, and shaking hands with her
husband, Richard. He was about to join Meg when Sam Webber approached.
Richard’s mouth tightened into an angry line, and he refused to meet Sam’s
intent gaze. Sam seemed determined to be acknowledged by the other man. Nick
caught the subtle interaction between the actor and Karen’s husband, but Karen
was looking toward Sarah and didn’t see it.
The cortege of limousines and cars drove to West Glade
Memorial Park. Final words were spoken over the coffin, shovelfuls of the sandy
Carolina soil were tossed down onto the bronze box by each of the friends, and
then everyone returned to the vehicles. The convoy reversed itself, and the
gaping hole with the mortal remains of Alex Marshall was left behind. Soon the
cemetery workers would arrive to fill it in.
Nick barely acknowledged the occasional comments from Meg,
who rode with him. He was lost in that time when they had been so certain that
everything they wanted would fall to them, simply because they held out their
hands.
Alex had taken Sarah from Harold, for whatever reason he
might have had. Nick didn't really care; he had finally been able to get Harold
Cooper into his bed.
At first it had just been to show that he could. Nick had
had Harold on his knees, blowing him. He'd had Harold on his belly, accepting
Nick's cock up his ass, begging for more. Nick had relished it, loved it. And
then he had loved him.
Their idyll ended when Nick received that letter from Uncle
Sam, the one that in effect said, ‘You have won an all-expenses paid trip to
exotic Southeast Asia.’
He’d had a bad feeling about being drafted, but then, so
had thousands of other young men. Nick had let Harold think he no longer wanted
him. In reality, he had set him free. If he didn’t come home, or worse, came
home less than a whole man… And he’d been right to do that, hadn’t he?
That gung ho fuck of a platoon leader had gone and stepped on a land mine.
Fragments of bone had ripped through Nick’s groin and abdomen, tearing up his
body. They’d sent him to Japan, and when he didn’t die, back to the States,
to the Naval Hospital at St. Albans in New York.
Karen had postponed her wedding to Richard Bowens to fly in
from Chicago to see him in the hospital. Nick had been soaring on painkillers,
but he had still been surprised Karen had been willing to do that, the more so
considering the news she brought.
“Alex didn’t waste any time in putting the moves on
Harold, you know,” she said, trying not to stare at his bandages. “He was
there to pick up the pieces as soon as Harold received the news that you had
been injured! Alex screwed him right on the floor of his dorm room!” She
licked her lips. “And don’t think the fact that you survived will matter a
single solitary bit! Harold will never take you back!”
Her mouth took on a sudden, downward curve. “He married Sarah!”
It had taken months for Nick to heal, and he’d managed to
stay high for a good portion of that time. When he had finally been discharged,
from both the hospital and the army, Nick had gone back to the University of
Michigan and entered the doctoral program, but he never completed it. “I’m
not hung up on that completion thing,” he would sneer at anyone who questioned
him about his unfinished thesis.
Like Alex, Nick drifted from one meaningless job to
another. "Now?" he liked to say, "I'm in sales. I supply a need.
You want to get high? You want to feel invulnerable?” You want to hide from
the pain? “I'm the man to see."
The only problem was, there was no way for Nick to escape
from his own pain. He was sure if he just ran far enough and fast enough, one
day he would succeed, but then Alex shocked him, shocked all of them into facing
reality when he’d sliced his wrists in Harold’s guest bath.
****
Nick couldn't make himself enter the room, so he stood in
the doorway and observed.
People ate and drank, formed groups to touch lightly on the
bleakness of Alex’s passing, then speak of other things. The groups dissolved,
and they moved on to form others and repeat the process again.
Michael had it right: “They throw a great party for you
on the one day they know you can’t come!”
All those people mourning Alex Marshall…
The atmosphere was oppressive, like an enormous hand that
was threatening to strangle the oxygen from his lungs. "I can't stay
here!" he muttered as he poured himself a drink. "I have to get
outside!"
Nick sat on the stoop of the stately old home, staring
across the lawn to the wooded area on the other side of the drive. He took a
bottle of pills from his jacket pocket, poured out a handful and swallowed them,
then picked up the plastic cup he had filled with Johnny Walker Black and washed
them down with a healthy swig.
Meg walked down the steps with Chloe, Alex’s teenybopper
girlfriend. “Hey, Nick,” Meg murmured. “How’s it going?” But she
didn’t linger to hear his response.
He stared after the two women as they disappeared around
the side of the house. “It’s… going,” he said although there was no one
to hear him. Maybe Alex had the right idea, he thought. You don’t have a good
time at a party, you go home. You don’t enjoy life, you just check out.
****
Harold Cooper stood before a window, staring hungrily at
the lone figure that sat on the front steps of his house. Behind him the crowd
ate and drank, and told stories of Alex.
The cloying scent of the flowers that had filled the little
church lingered in his nostrils, reminding him of the day he had married Sarah.
Alex had stood up with him as his best man.
What not many people knew was that Alex had also been his
lover. But when Sarah had turned up pregnant, Harold had done the right thing
and married her, even though the baby might just as well have been Alex's.
What even fewer people knew was that Nick had been his
first male lover. Harold thought back to the first time he had sex with Nick.
Nick had pushed Harold down onto his knees and teased his lips with his swollen
cock. Harold's mouth had dropped open in surprise, and then he found himself
with a mouthful of cock. "Come on, baby! Do me!" He'd been
inexperienced but willing, and had licked and sucked and nibbled.
It wasn’t until much later that Harold realized the care
Nick had taken with his virgin mouth. He’d kept his thrusts shallow, and
he’d tried not to come in Harold’s mouth. Nick had barely been able to cry a
warning before he came, spilling himself down Harold's throat, and Harold had to
swallow or choke.
Nick had a reputation as emotionally shallow, a love ‘em
and leave ‘em kind of guy. Harold was certain he was going to leave him
unsatisfied, his dick hard and leaking pre come, but to his surprise, Nick had
no intention of letting him swing in the wind. “Okay, baby, now it’s your
turn!” And Nick had gone down on him. The taller man had dropped to his knees,
unzipped Harold's jeans, and dragged them down over his hips, along with the
plain white briefs he had always worn.
“Oh, baby, we’re going to have to get you something
special! Maybe something in black or deep blue silk!" Nick caressed the
other man’s hips, trailed his fingertips through the thatch of dark hair that
curled over Harold’s groin, and smiled up into his eyes. “Something low
slung, Ha.” Nick licked his lips, licked the flared head of the dick before
him, and swallowed the quivering length. For the first time, Harold felt another
man nurse his cock. He liked it. He liked when Nick fucked him too, slamming
into his back passage, battering his prostate, rocking him forward, and driving
him wild with lust. Harold knew that they would reach a point soon when his
lover would allow him to return the favor, and he was looking forward to burying
himself in Nick’s heat.
Harold shook himself out of his reverie. Nick had bought
him the sexiest briefs he had ever seen, but before he could wear them for his
lover, Nick was out of his life. It wasn't until later that Harold realized
Uncle Sam had interfered, and Nick had been drafted.
Harold watched as his wife spoke with Mr. and Mrs.
Marshall, who were about to leave, signaling that the exodus could begin. Sarah
didn't look well, and something Alex's mother said must have disturbed her even
more. Karen took control, waved the older couple off, her eyes chill as they
made their way out the door. Dressed in a little black dress that was entirely
too sexy for a funeral, the woman standing beside his wife glanced around,
frowning, until she spotted him.
“Ha, I’m going to take Sarah to her room.” Karen
slipped her arm around his wife’s waist and began leading her toward the
stairs. “This has taken so much out of her, and I think she should lie
down.”
“Hmmm?” Harold barely spared the two women a glance. He
was snared by the expression on Nick’s face. It was so bleak. “Oh, that
sounds like a good idea, Karen. Thanks.” Deep in his chest he felt as if there
was a fucking huge crater. He wanted to go out onto the porch and pull Nick up
onto his feet. He wanted to wind his hands in that thick blond hair and plunder
that soft, lush mouth.
But Harold couldn’t just leave the reception. He was the
host, after all.
He turned away from the window, and was startled to realize
that while he had been lost in thought almost everyone had left. The rooms were
a shambles, used paper plates and napkins littering every available flat space.
He looked back at Nick, who was now fumbling in his jacket, no doubt searching
for a joint.
Making up his mind, Harold ran up to his bedroom to change
into something more comfortable. When he came back down, he scooped up the keys
to his jeep and went out onto the stoop. “Nick, I’m going to take a ride out
to the old house. Want to …come?”
Nick got to his feet, a little unsteady from the effects of
the pills and alcohol. “Sure, Ha.” He caught his breath at the warm
expression in Harold’s dark eyes. Was there a possibility his old friend still
cared for him? Nick had never dared hope… “I don’t do anything, you
know.” But, oh god, he wished he could. After he’d returned from Nam and had
gone back to the Michigan campus, Nick had needed to know he was still desired,
was still the macho stud he’d been before Charlie had shown him what a chimera
that was. He’d tried, but he’d been unable to sustain an erection, and had
wound up taking it up the ass a few times. It hadn’t been awful, but those
experiences had left him feeling more alone and unconnected than ever. Would it
be different with Harold? They had already had a connection.
He chewed on his lip, then gestured vaguely below his waist. “It
doesn’t work, you know.”
Harold smiled at him, took his hand, and squeezed it
gently. He urged Nick down the stairs and led the way to the jeep.
****
Harold had put a cassette into the tape deck, and the
driving beat of the Rascals' Good Lovin' pounded out of the speakers. Nick was
grateful for the loud music. It made conversation impossible.
After all, what could he say? ‘Why didn’t you wait for
me? I know I said I didn’t want you any more, but I lied. Why didn’t you
read between the lines?’
The car pulled up in front of an old house. “This really
is a handy man’s special,” Harold murmured ruefully. He got out of the jeep
and stepped up onto the dilapidated porch. “I don’t know why Alex wanted
it.”
“You don’t think the fact that you live right down the
road might have had anything to do with it?”
Harold paused in the doorway, waiting for Nick to catch up
with him. “Watch your step. Some of the planking in the floor has rotted
out.” Nick realized his question was going to go unanswered. The two men went
into the house. “Alex just finished wiring it for electricity.” He gestured
toward a book that was on a small, rustic table, The I Never Wired a House
Before Handy Dandy Instruction Guide. Nick picked it up and flipped through the
pages. Notes that Alex made in pencil were written neatly in the margin, much
the way he had made notations in his books in college. On the fly leaf, under
the title, he had scrawled, ‘so easy even an idiot who tossed away a
fellowship in physics can follow it.”
Nick slammed the book shut and looked up. In the late
afternoon sunlight that filtered through the dusty windowpanes, he could see the
sheen of tears in Harold’s eyes. “Yeah.”
“Goddamn Michael!” Nick spat, his anger so great
it overcame the effects of the drugs in his system. It tore him inside to see
his… to see Harold so broken up by this. “If he had just minded his own
goddamned business… If Alex had accepted that fellowship…”
“We all would still have him? Maybe. But not me,
Nick.” Harold shook his head. “It wouldn’t have mattered; I realized that
a long time ago.” He gave the other man a crooked smile. “Everyone thinks
I’m the perfect man, but you know something, buddy? If Alex had asked me to go
away with him the day I married Sarah, I would have left her at the altar
without a backward glance. I would have done it in a snap! He didn’t... he
didn’t ask.”
“What are you telling me, Harold?”
“I’m telling you that the only thing Alex ever loved
was physics. When he blew that fellowship…”
“Are you saying… What are you saying, Harold?”
“I’m saying that for me, Alex was gone long before he cut his wrists in my guest bath! I loved him, Nick.”
“You said that during the eulogy.”
“But I’ll tell you the truth, I stopped liking him a
long time ago.”
Nick had promised himself when he knew he’d be seeing his
former lover again that he would keep his distance. He never had been good at
keeping promises. He went to Harold and pulled him into his arms, and then
Nick’s mouth was on his and he was kissing him in a manner reminiscent of a
man dying of thirst.
Harold began to shake. It had been forever since anyone had
kissed him like he was their last hope of heaven. No one knew it, but he and
Sarah seldom shared a bed any more. Even when they did, it was obvious that she
no longer enjoyed his touch.
Now, here was someone who was actively encouraging him to
become physical. Harold was suddenly, achingly hard, and he rubbed himself
against Nick’s thigh. “Oh, jesus, I want you, Nick!”
“And I want you, too, Harold.” His embrace grew
tighter, and he enjoyed the feel of his lover hard against him. He loosened his
hold and stepped back. “Do you have anything to use?”
Harold’s eyes widened, and he licked his lips. “Nick,
you’d let me…”
“Yeah. But not dry, Ha.”
A broad smile curled Harold’s lips, the first real smile
that Nick had seen on him since the church. “There should be some lube around
here someplace!” He went into another room, and Nick could hear things being
tossed around.
“Huh?”
“Chloe came up to the house to see Sarah once,” Harold
called. “She said that one night after Alex had made love her, and he thought
she’d gone to sleep, Chloe’d
gotten scared because she heard this moaning coming from the bathroom. She
bolted in and saw Alex kneeling on the bathmat, fucking his ass with this dildo.
I think what pissed her off was the fact that he’d said he bought the
dildo for her! Where there’s a dildo, there’s got to be lube!”
Nick grinned and began to search as well. A feeling ghosted
down to his groin, one he never expected to feel again, and his hands trembled
in anticipation.
“Got it!” Harold stood in the doorway, waving the
battered tube triumphantly. “Are you… are you sure you want to do this,
Nick?” He studied his friend carefully.
“Oh, yeah, baby. I promised you a shot at my ass,
didn’t I, back when we were in college?” Nick took off his sports jacket and
dropped it on the table. “Doesn’t look like I’ll ever have yours again,
so… ” As he walked toward the man who had once been his lover, and soon
would be again, if there was a god, he began to yank off his clothes.
“Nick. I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel
good.” Harold backed into the other room, quickly stripping off his own
clothes. He got down to his briefs, low slung, black silk. They lovingly cupped
his cock and balls, and the stunned expression
on Nick’s face made him glad he had taken the time to change into them. “I
saved them, Nick.” Harold stroked his hand down over the front of his body.
“I guess deep down I always hoped you’d come back to me and give me a reason
to wear them.”
****
Nick lay sprawled on the cot that with a hand crafted pine
chest was the only piece of furniture in the room, his breathing slowly coming
under control. “You’re fucking amazing, Ha! I don’t understand what you
did to me, but you realize I’m your slave for life? The doctor at the VA
hospital told me… And when I tried, I couldn’t even get it up! But with
you…”
“Nick, I love you. I think you love me too. I think you
were able to relax enough for it to happen.”
“Ha, I do love you.”
Harold sighed quietly. //Thank god.// “Took you long
enough to realize it, baby.”
The taller man licked a path from his lover’s adam’s
apple to the hinge of his jaw. “I’m sorry I left you.”
“Nick. You were fucking drafted!”
He tipped up Harold’s chin and their eyes met. “If…
if I had asked you to wait for me, would you have?”
“Nick, I kept the shorts you bought for me, didn’t
I?” Harold smiled at him, looking so like the young man Nick had known in
college that Nick felt his heart constrict. “Yeah, Nick. I’d have waited.”
****
Michael was the only person on the first floor of the big
house. Twilight had fallen. He had switched on a lamp and was sitting on the
floor in the family room, the manual for the video camera set to one side while
he attempted to figure out its workings.
The words of Alex’s favorite song kept going around and around in his head. It had been like that since Karen sat down at the organ in the little church and began to play it.
You can’t always get what you want…
“That selfish prick, Alex! Always thinking of himself. If it hadn’t been for his suicide, I’d be in Texas now, interviewing that blind, fourteen year old baton twirler!” he grumbled under his breath. What a feather in his journalistic cap that would be! Michael frowned. And if ever there was a rationalization, that was one! He sighed, thinking he could never get through the week without one or two juicy rationalizations.
You can’t always get what you want…
Like a hunting dog, his head suddenly jerked up, whipping from side to side, and he almost sniffed the air. There was sex going on in this house! He was certain of it!
But if you try sometime…
Michael’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed again. He was
just as certain he wasn't going to get any this weekend.
…you just might find…
Maybe he should go home to his girlfriend, Annie.
You get what you need.
~End~
