Freedom and Fear
1
CHAPTER 1: Revelations
A Get Real Fanfic
By Cassy;-)
“Thanks for listening.”
Steven finished his speech, turned around, and, walking past John, he began to make his way through the largely silent audience and on down the aisle. People began to whisper as he walked but he ignored them and held his head high. He was escaping the lie that had trapped him for so long. He couldn’t care less what they had to say.
For John, standing on the stairs, the world was suddenly darker and he felt small, lost and alone. His mind screamed things at him. Words tumbled around in his brain, mingling with his sweat and desperation, but nothing came out of his mouth. He was struggling for control. Breathing deeply he willed himself to be still. A single tear escaped from the corner of his eye, as if it too was trying to abandon him. It ran down his cheek to fall unnoticed on the wooden floor.
John clenched his eyes tightly shut, as if to lock everything out. When he opened them again, Steven was still walking away from him, getting further away with each step. John’s eyes were going fuzzy. His heart hammered in his chest like a pneumatic drill. He looked around him, searching the faces of those he saw. Surely someone else could hear that, the pounding? He felt moisture on his cheeks and reached up to touch them. God what was happening? He couldn’t feel his face. He pinched himself hard and felt nothing, he was barely there. Was he disappearing? His insides felt as though they are pulling in different directions and at any moment he would explode, surely no human being could contain what he felt?
John looked about in desperation and his eyes settled on the figure of Steven, his back turned. He was almost at the door. Steven was the one person who could help him, he knew this instinctively. God, the one person who could make this feeling of dread and grief and confusion disappear was moving steadily away from him, was leaving him alone. In desperation he made a half hearted attempt to speak, but no sound came out, and instead he collapsed onto the floor, sitting shocked on the seat of his pants on the cold wood, staring ahead of himself, yet seeing nothing.
Vaguely he could hear noise around him, as he gasped for breaths. Why wasn’t he getting enough oxygen? Through a haze he recognised faces. That was Kevin loosening his collar, and Mr Alcock was the one who was in front of his eyes, his mouth moving silently. He was saying something, but what? There were his parents, his mother looking concerned. What was wrong with her? His father was calling out to someone. Why didn’t they just all go away? He didn’t care about any of them, didn’t need any of them, he needed Steven. Where was Steve?
Steven, Steve, he called over and over. Oh god, where was he? He pushed them all away and looked desperately around him. Where was he? Again he called to Steven but there were too many faces and he couldn’t see. He pushed them all back, making a space for himself and stood up. He was unsteady on his feet, his hands were shaking and he dimly felt that he was drenched in sweat. His legs were too shaky to sustain him and he fell down again with a thud.
Then suddenly, there was Steven. His face was so close that John could touch it, and that’s exactly what he did, reaching up with his trembling fingertips to cradle the smooth flesh of Steven cheek in the palm of his hand. To his immense relief, Steven didn’t pull away, instead reaching up with his own steady hand, to hold it there. His face was worried and his eyes were concerned, darting all over John’s face, as searching for what was wrong.
“John what is it?” he whispered.
“Too many people.” Was the strained reply. “I need air”.
“Can everyone move back please”, Steven pleaded, “give him some room, he needs some air”. Then to John he said. “What is it? What can I do?”
“Nothing”, John whispered in reply. “I don’t know. I just need you here, right beside me, or I can’t breathe”.
He was calming now, breathing slower, and, at the same time, he was becoming more aware of the scene around him. Everyone was looking at the two boys curiously. What are they looking at? He thought, and then he realised that Steven was holding him, cradling him, in his arms, stroking his hair, and calming him with his voice.
His parents didn’t look worried anymore, just appalled. His mother was inching back into the crowd and away from him, and at the same time she was tugging on her husband's arm for him to do the same. All around, every eye was on them, and…he didn’t care. Holly shit, he couldn’t give a care less what they were looking at, what they thought. The panic inside him had subsided leaving in its place a new realisation that it was completely unimportant, it was irrelevant. All that mattered to him was that Steven was here, he hadn’t gone away.
John squeezed Steven’s arm more tightly now, breathing a deep sigh. Slowly he became aware that his feeling of relief was being replaced with another one, that of anger. But who was he angry at? His parents were gone, and this struck in him another cord of fear. He looked about him and his eyes settled on Steven.
“Fuck”, he said. “Fuck! What the hell did you do that for?” he rasped. “How could you do that to me? You nearly killed me. Do you see me sitting here? I though I was gonna die or something. You’re supposed to love me, yet you just say your peace and walk off, leave me here. Where were you going? You were just going to go and leave me alone? How could you do that to me?”
In his pannic John had begun to ramble. Steven’s face, which had assumed a look of wonder and burgening happiness when John had first started to hold on to him, had begun to look more and more angry as John’s tirade had continued. He moved slightly away and made a small sound of protest, but the force of John’s anger erupted again before he could say anything.
“Why did you do it? Why couldn’t you have just left things how they were? We were happy weren’t we? But no, you had to force my hand, to make me tell the truth. Why couldn’t you just leave things be?”
Here Steven interrupted. “Leave things be Johnny? Leave everything as it was, with you beating me up in bathrooms so no one would suspect we were lovers? You think I could have gone on living like that? Waiting for the odd weekend when your parents were out of town and we could be together, however briefly. Hiding behind doors, whispering down phone lines, running through the park at the slightest noise. That’s how you wanted things to stay?"
At this Steven let out an extended sigh, as though he were releasing all the pressure which had borne down no him for so long. Inching closer to John he reached for his hair and curled a strand around his finger.
“I love you Johnny, with all my heart. You know that, I’ve never given you any reason to doubt my feelings. But I can’t be that person anymore. I can’t hide myself any longer. I’ve done it my whole life and it’s aging me fast. I understand that you didn’t want this, but think about the alternative. You were still planning to have a family, children, as though you could just go to Oxford and continue denying who you are for the rest of your life. Is that any way to live? You could have died at 80, no one the wiser, grandchildren at the foot of your bed and a wife, who you'd never loved, at your side. No Johnny as much as you want to blame me, it wasn’t me who just ruined that vision of domestic bliss. You did that all by yourself”, Steven finished.
John was looking at down at his hand, which was clenching one of Steven’s, and to Steven he appeared more lost than anyone he had ever seen before.
“Johnny”, he questioned, “you must see that things had to change. Where was there room for me in that future, the one your parents had planned out for you? Would I have visited you at Oxford on weekends, been a guest at your wedding, outer table, near the bar? Maybe you could have put me up in a London apartment like an expensive whore? Is that how you pictured our future?”
“No! I don’t know”, John whispered.
“No!” Steven said resolutely. “I don’t think you ever pictured me in your plans at all. I never had any place in the life you saw for yourself. Well, I have my own plans, my own life and though I saw you in my future, it was never as we were before I made that little speech. Never like that! Hell, I don’t know, maybe I’m naive, but in the life I saw us leading we were holding hands in public, talking to each other in the school halls. At the very least we weren’t in a stall at the public bog and we weren’t in the park in the dark.”
John looked up into Steven’s eyes.
“I get it Steve, I do, you did the right thing. I wish I were half as brave”.
“You don’t call discussing our private life in front of the entire school and several assembled dignitaries brave?” Steven smirked.
“That wasn’t bravery that did that Steven, that was terror. That was the realisation that you were going and my life would end up exactly how you just described it. That was a kind of death. I’ve never been so scared in my live, not when we were running through the dark of the park, not when I thought my parents suspected, not at the athletics carnival, or when I found you drunk and angry about Christina and I didn’t know if you’d ever forgive me in my life time. Never as scared as that just then.”
Reaching down and drawing Steven’s hand to his lips, John tenderly kissed his fingertips. Looking up into Steven’s eyes, John spoke with as much courage as he could muster.
“I never want to feel like that again Steven, which is why you and me are leaving here together, and wherever you go from now on until the day one of us dies, I’m going too. Because, Steven, I just can’t bare to be away from you for another minute of another day. Whatever you want from me, I’ll give it to you. Whatever you ask of me, I’ll do it. Except for one thing, I won’t ever leave you again. So if you have a problem with that, tough!”
Steven smiled a smile that reached his eyes and shone on John like the ray from a lighthouse in a storm. It gave him hope.
“I ain’t got no problem with that Johnny, none at all. Now get up. You’ve made quite a scene.”
“Me?” John balked. “You started it.”
“Yeah well I have the feeling the reaction to your revelation is a lot stronger than it was to mine. We really hit them with a double whammy, didn’t we?” Steven whispered.
Steven snickered as he lifted John to his feet and they made their way to the edge of the crowd, which had fallen back as their conversation had become more private.
“Now lets go and leave them to think about it”, John said, as he leant on Steven’s arm.
“Where?” Steven asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” John breathed. And for the first time, he meant it.
THE END
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