![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[...if you're already surrounded by dreams...]
To give you an idea of how long I’ve been working on-again-off-again on this thing, here’s a link to the challenge that initially inspired it. I think I actually fulfilled it, except for the time limit. I divided the fic into two parts because it's long. Major big props to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anjali_organna because not only did she keep it cool when she found 17 pages in her inbox, but she did an awesome beta too. Thanks very much, Anjali.
So yeah, you better read it.
Big Sky Country (1/2)
Boondock Saints. Connor/Murphy. R. Warning: incest.
Post-movie. En route to California.
ETA: Read the drabbleremix by greenapple here.
part one: blood ties
eyes on the horizon
don't sleep at the wheel
elbow, ‘any day now’
It’s just that sometimes Connor wakes up in the middle night and sometimes Murphy doesn’t wake up with him. Even when Connor’s escaped out of his head and away from the nightmare, he would still be alone. He stares into the dark, unmoving, watching, waiting for equilibrium. No what the fuck, no you’re taking up all the space you cunt, no hand on his face, well-intentioned but careless with sleep, telling him I promise you there’s nothing out there, now shut the fuck up and sleep.
Connor knows there’s nothing out there. It’s what’s inside that scares him.
It’s just that sometimes after these dreams, Connor finds himself rubbing his hands as if he’s washing them, as if whatever he’s washing off isn’t going away because it’s more than skin-deep, more than flesh, more than blood.
Which is strange, really, because blood is precisely what this is about.
***
The first thing you notice in a desert is that there is nothing. Dust and dehydration for miles in any direction, punctuated by the odd cactus or handful of hardy shrubs. In the cartoons, the roadrunner can make it from here to the horizon in a second flat. In real life you can never reach the horizon. Connor knows this, but he's only just realizing it, driving through the desert under a sun that coats everything with oppressive yellow light.
Surviving: that's all anything in the desert is trying to do. In all this emptiness, there is no room for anything else.
“In America they call it big sky country,” says their father. He’s behind the wheel, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Between the oceans, you have lots of this,” and he gestures out the window at the landscape rolling by.
They’re on their way to California because their father knows someone there, or knows someone who knows someone, who will help them deal with the shitstorm tailing them from back east. Help them get back on their feet. Murphy replied he didn’t even realize they were off their feet, which made their father laugh a cracked and hearty laugh, slapping Murphy’s back and saying aye, aye.
“Who is this man?” Connor had asked.
“A friend.”
“How'd you meet him?”
A grin appeared on Il Duce’s face, revealing yellowed teeth. “It's not a proper story to tell little boys like yourself.”
Connor almost said fuck you then, but he held his tongue. You don't say fuck you to your father. Even after years of absence, after reappearing in your life as a stranger, blood will still hold you to certain obligations. You’re born with it running through your veins and you grow up learning it’s the one thing that doesn’t need to be questioned.
The saints avoid main roads because their pictures are still in the papers, on the television, everywhere. Just the artist's renderings at first, until someone did their homework went to the meatpacking plant to ask for the photo IDs of some former employees.
“Fuckin' horrible picture of me,” Murphy had said when he saw himself in the papers. Murphy continued, “I never look any fuckin’ good in photos.”
“You look like a drowned rat,” Connor observed, looking over Murphy’s shoulder, and Murphy smacked him with the paper.
“Photographs aren't going to do the likes of you and me any good,” Il Duce said. “I suggest you shut up, take your piss, buy your cigarettes, and we'll go. We have to go.”
1400 miles (approx.), three states, and a disconcerting number of roadkills later, here they are.
Il Duce says to them, “California’s but a few days away.”
If the heat doesn't get them, the endlessness will.
***
That first night they drove out of Boston, Murphy took up the entire backseat sleeping and Connor sat up front with his father.
“Saint George slew dragons,” said Il Duce.
Both of them had been seemingly content with their silence, and his father’s non sequitur took him unaware. Connor said, “What?”
“Even the Garden of Eden wielded a flaming sword.”
“‘A flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life’,” Connor recited. “Genesis, 3:24.”
“You know your Scripture.”
“What has this got to do with anything?”
“It’s got to do with you.”
“Me?”
“Your face,” said Il Duce. “Your eyes, mostly.”
“What’s wrong with my fucking eyes?”
“You heard eyes are windows to the soul, boy?”
The ‘boy’ sent Connor off-balance for a moment. Boy. Suddenly Connor had a father again. Suddenly, after years of nothing, he was his father’s son.
“I’m going to ask you again,” said Il Duce. “Don’t give me an answer. Just listen.”
“All right.”
“Do you possess the constitution, and depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?”
Connor stared ahead at the road, though there was nothing much to stare at. The passing headlights were as disconnected entities; not part of a car or a truck, but independent creatures of light rushing for some a vague and indefinable destination. Here was the sound of Il Duce clearing his throat, and there was the sound of Murphy’s breathing from the backseat like a comforting familiar presence, and all this soothed Connor for reasons he wouldn’t be able to articulate. Eventually, just outside of the Massachusetts border, he fell asleep.
***
Connor never remembered his dreams anymore. Back in Ireland, he remembered his dreams at least most of the time. Ever since he arrived in America, the dreams have been harder to catch.
“That’s because America’s the land of dreams,” Murphy said when Connor told him about it. Back in their decrepit little box of a home in Southie, Murphy said, “If you’re already surrounded by dreams when you’re awake, why would you need them when you sleep?”
Connor sucked contemplatively on a cigarette. “I’d not have taken you to have a poet’s soul, Murph,” he said, “but nevertheless, you’re wrong.”
“I’m right.”
“No, that’s Paris you’re talking about. America’s not the land of dreams.”
“Paris is lights, Mister Einstein, and it’s not a land. It’s a city.”
“What’s America, then?”
Murphy shrugged. “Land of the free. But that doesn’t mean it cannot be the land of dreams as well.”
“Land of the free what?” Connor asked. He saw Murphy smile, and Connor mistook the smile to mean they were in on the same joke. Connor scoffed and said, “Free fuckin’ nothing that we’re living in a shite apartment and food’s--”
Murphy reached over and plucked the cigarette out of Connor’s mouth, letting his fingers brush against Connor’s lips. Connor thought nothing of it. They had been trading things back and forth between them since they were children. A cigarette was nothing and Connor just smiled idly.
Murphy looked as if he would take a drag from the cigarette, but then extinguished it against the wall. “Of course we’re free, Con,” said Murphy and there was a light, or an absence of light, in Murphy’s eyes that Connor hadn’t noticed before. Murphy closed the distance between them and still Connor thought nothing of it. By the time Murphy’s mouth was on his and his hands were on Murphy’s body, by the time Murphy pushed him down to the mattress and pulled off his shirt, it was too late to think anything at all.
***
Connor wakes in the middle of the night with adrenalin in his veins and his heart threatening to sledgehammer its way out of his chest. He can hear his father’s unrelenting snores from the front seat. He can’t hear Murphy but doesn’t need to. There is a warm, insistent weight leaning against Connor and that’s all he needs to know. Murphy has always been a quiet sleeper.
Desert. Night. Trouble chasing them like bloodhounds from the east.
Right.
The details of the dream are fading fast and he lets them go. Connor catches a few glimpses of it, a handful of flashing images as the nightmare made its exit. There were feet running on concrete. A gray sky and the shadow of brick buildings. He thinks maybe he also sees smoke in empty rooms, hears men’s voices and gunshots, but these are memories, not dreams.
Murphy shifts in his sleep. Connor looks at his brother as if registering his presence for the first time. He idly brushes the hair away from Murphy’s forehead. He does it again, but lets his fingers linger this time, lets his thumb trace the ridge of Murphy’s nose until it comes to rest on his lips.
Murphy bites it. Connor jumps.
“Fuck you!”
“Ah, fuck, Con, where’s your sense of--”
“Fuckin’ fuck you, you bastard, what the--”
“--humor, I was fucking around!”
“You’re a fuckin’… you’re a--”
Murphy kisses Connor, and it’s unpleasant and disgusting because they’ve both been smoking like chimneys and they haven’t brushed their teeth in god knows how long. It’s disgusting and warm and familiar and soft. Connor kisses back, because this has never been about how things taste or smell.
“Jesus Christ,” Connor murmurs into Murphy’s mouth.
Connor shoves Murphy away and grapples with the car door. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he says again and the door swings open. He’s out under the stars and he’s going and gone. He walks fast in no particular direction, walking just to walk, and fuck, you’d never think it, but the desert gets cold. Out here when the sun goes down and it’s night and you can barely see fuck-all, it gets cold. Connor pulls his coat tighter around him.
Connor’s not surprised to hear the car door slam and Murphy running to catch up.
“What the fuck was that about?” Murphy asks.
“Fucking fuck ‘what the fuck was that about’, Jesus Christ, Murph. Our father was in the same car. Have you no scruples?”
“He was asleep.”
“And it appears you have none. He was in the same fucking car.”
“Alright. Fine. Fine, he was asleep and I’m a fucking idiot. There, you happy?”
“What kind of a fucking question is that.”
“Christ. We need some fucking alcohol.”
“Requiring alcohol to regain your clarity of mind,” Connor mutters. “Isn’t it nice to know that even in the middle of the American desert, you’re still propagating our national stereotype? A right patriot you are.” Connor glances over at the car. “Is he still asleep?”
“Maybe. Who cares? We’re not in the same fucking car anymore, are we?”
Connor tenses and picks up his pace just in case that was an advance. They walk with silence and speed, hands in their pockets as they make their way through the underbrush. Every minute or so, Connor would look behind him and he can always see the car. He always expects it to be obscured by some small hill or an overgrown mesquite tree, but no. It’s always there with his father inside, sleeping, snoring, or, perhaps, watching.
If you can see them, they can see you.
“Connor, are there rattlesnakes here?”
“What?”
“Rattlesnakes. Are there--”
“Rattlesnakes? Here?”
“Aye.”
Connor stops. He faces Murphy. “We’re out in the middle of fucking nowhere with no light and no nothing and the nearest hospital is fuck-knows how far, and you’re talking to me about rattlesnakes?”
“…Aye.”
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
“Now I’m twice as fuckin’ nervous.”
“About the rattlesnakes?”
“Aye!”
“Hey, don’t blame me for the fuckin’ rattlers, MacManus.”
“I wasn’t blaming you. Brilliant suggestion, though. Alright, Murph, I blame you.”
“For the rattlesnakes?”
“Aye, for the rattlesnakes. I blame you for the fuckin’ rattlesnakes.”
Their voices have diminished to whispers, the better to listen for the hiss of venomous reptiles, and Connor says, “Let’s go back to the car.”
“Let’s.”
Il Duce isn’t snoring when they reach the car. Connor doesn’t know if this means their father has found a more suitable sleeping position, or whether he’s only pretending to be sleeping, or whether it matters at all. In the back, both Connor and Murphy lean against opposite car doors, leaving half a foot of space of car seat between them. The only parts of them touching are their shoes, on the floor, incidentally. Incidentally is the keyword, so Connor doesn’t know why the touch feels as conspicuous as it does. He expends too much energy trying not to move his foot and wonders if he should.
This continues until Murphy pulls his foot away and Connor--out of reflex or propriety, who can say--does the same.
***
part two: devil's red carpet
anjali_organna because not only did she keep it cool when she found 17 pages in her inbox, but she did an awesome beta too. Thanks very much, Anjali.So yeah, you better read it.
Big Sky Country (1/2)
Boondock Saints. Connor/Murphy. R. Warning: incest.
Post-movie. En route to California.
ETA: Read the drabbleremix by greenapple here.
eyes on the horizon
don't sleep at the wheel
elbow, ‘any day now’
It’s just that sometimes Connor wakes up in the middle night and sometimes Murphy doesn’t wake up with him. Even when Connor’s escaped out of his head and away from the nightmare, he would still be alone. He stares into the dark, unmoving, watching, waiting for equilibrium. No what the fuck, no you’re taking up all the space you cunt, no hand on his face, well-intentioned but careless with sleep, telling him I promise you there’s nothing out there, now shut the fuck up and sleep.
Connor knows there’s nothing out there. It’s what’s inside that scares him.
It’s just that sometimes after these dreams, Connor finds himself rubbing his hands as if he’s washing them, as if whatever he’s washing off isn’t going away because it’s more than skin-deep, more than flesh, more than blood.
Which is strange, really, because blood is precisely what this is about.
***
The first thing you notice in a desert is that there is nothing. Dust and dehydration for miles in any direction, punctuated by the odd cactus or handful of hardy shrubs. In the cartoons, the roadrunner can make it from here to the horizon in a second flat. In real life you can never reach the horizon. Connor knows this, but he's only just realizing it, driving through the desert under a sun that coats everything with oppressive yellow light.
Surviving: that's all anything in the desert is trying to do. In all this emptiness, there is no room for anything else.
“In America they call it big sky country,” says their father. He’s behind the wheel, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Between the oceans, you have lots of this,” and he gestures out the window at the landscape rolling by.
They’re on their way to California because their father knows someone there, or knows someone who knows someone, who will help them deal with the shitstorm tailing them from back east. Help them get back on their feet. Murphy replied he didn’t even realize they were off their feet, which made their father laugh a cracked and hearty laugh, slapping Murphy’s back and saying aye, aye.
“Who is this man?” Connor had asked.
“A friend.”
“How'd you meet him?”
A grin appeared on Il Duce’s face, revealing yellowed teeth. “It's not a proper story to tell little boys like yourself.”
Connor almost said fuck you then, but he held his tongue. You don't say fuck you to your father. Even after years of absence, after reappearing in your life as a stranger, blood will still hold you to certain obligations. You’re born with it running through your veins and you grow up learning it’s the one thing that doesn’t need to be questioned.
The saints avoid main roads because their pictures are still in the papers, on the television, everywhere. Just the artist's renderings at first, until someone did their homework went to the meatpacking plant to ask for the photo IDs of some former employees.
“Fuckin' horrible picture of me,” Murphy had said when he saw himself in the papers. Murphy continued, “I never look any fuckin’ good in photos.”
“You look like a drowned rat,” Connor observed, looking over Murphy’s shoulder, and Murphy smacked him with the paper.
“Photographs aren't going to do the likes of you and me any good,” Il Duce said. “I suggest you shut up, take your piss, buy your cigarettes, and we'll go. We have to go.”
1400 miles (approx.), three states, and a disconcerting number of roadkills later, here they are.
Il Duce says to them, “California’s but a few days away.”
If the heat doesn't get them, the endlessness will.
***
That first night they drove out of Boston, Murphy took up the entire backseat sleeping and Connor sat up front with his father.
“Saint George slew dragons,” said Il Duce.
Both of them had been seemingly content with their silence, and his father’s non sequitur took him unaware. Connor said, “What?”
“Even the Garden of Eden wielded a flaming sword.”
“‘A flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life’,” Connor recited. “Genesis, 3:24.”
“You know your Scripture.”
“What has this got to do with anything?”
“It’s got to do with you.”
“Me?”
“Your face,” said Il Duce. “Your eyes, mostly.”
“What’s wrong with my fucking eyes?”
“You heard eyes are windows to the soul, boy?”
The ‘boy’ sent Connor off-balance for a moment. Boy. Suddenly Connor had a father again. Suddenly, after years of nothing, he was his father’s son.
“I’m going to ask you again,” said Il Duce. “Don’t give me an answer. Just listen.”
“All right.”
“Do you possess the constitution, and depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?”
Connor stared ahead at the road, though there was nothing much to stare at. The passing headlights were as disconnected entities; not part of a car or a truck, but independent creatures of light rushing for some a vague and indefinable destination. Here was the sound of Il Duce clearing his throat, and there was the sound of Murphy’s breathing from the backseat like a comforting familiar presence, and all this soothed Connor for reasons he wouldn’t be able to articulate. Eventually, just outside of the Massachusetts border, he fell asleep.
***
Connor never remembered his dreams anymore. Back in Ireland, he remembered his dreams at least most of the time. Ever since he arrived in America, the dreams have been harder to catch.
“That’s because America’s the land of dreams,” Murphy said when Connor told him about it. Back in their decrepit little box of a home in Southie, Murphy said, “If you’re already surrounded by dreams when you’re awake, why would you need them when you sleep?”
Connor sucked contemplatively on a cigarette. “I’d not have taken you to have a poet’s soul, Murph,” he said, “but nevertheless, you’re wrong.”
“I’m right.”
“No, that’s Paris you’re talking about. America’s not the land of dreams.”
“Paris is lights, Mister Einstein, and it’s not a land. It’s a city.”
“What’s America, then?”
Murphy shrugged. “Land of the free. But that doesn’t mean it cannot be the land of dreams as well.”
“Land of the free what?” Connor asked. He saw Murphy smile, and Connor mistook the smile to mean they were in on the same joke. Connor scoffed and said, “Free fuckin’ nothing that we’re living in a shite apartment and food’s--”
Murphy reached over and plucked the cigarette out of Connor’s mouth, letting his fingers brush against Connor’s lips. Connor thought nothing of it. They had been trading things back and forth between them since they were children. A cigarette was nothing and Connor just smiled idly.
Murphy looked as if he would take a drag from the cigarette, but then extinguished it against the wall. “Of course we’re free, Con,” said Murphy and there was a light, or an absence of light, in Murphy’s eyes that Connor hadn’t noticed before. Murphy closed the distance between them and still Connor thought nothing of it. By the time Murphy’s mouth was on his and his hands were on Murphy’s body, by the time Murphy pushed him down to the mattress and pulled off his shirt, it was too late to think anything at all.
***
Connor wakes in the middle of the night with adrenalin in his veins and his heart threatening to sledgehammer its way out of his chest. He can hear his father’s unrelenting snores from the front seat. He can’t hear Murphy but doesn’t need to. There is a warm, insistent weight leaning against Connor and that’s all he needs to know. Murphy has always been a quiet sleeper.
Desert. Night. Trouble chasing them like bloodhounds from the east.
Right.
The details of the dream are fading fast and he lets them go. Connor catches a few glimpses of it, a handful of flashing images as the nightmare made its exit. There were feet running on concrete. A gray sky and the shadow of brick buildings. He thinks maybe he also sees smoke in empty rooms, hears men’s voices and gunshots, but these are memories, not dreams.
Murphy shifts in his sleep. Connor looks at his brother as if registering his presence for the first time. He idly brushes the hair away from Murphy’s forehead. He does it again, but lets his fingers linger this time, lets his thumb trace the ridge of Murphy’s nose until it comes to rest on his lips.
Murphy bites it. Connor jumps.
“Fuck you!”
“Ah, fuck, Con, where’s your sense of--”
“Fuckin’ fuck you, you bastard, what the--”
“--humor, I was fucking around!”
“You’re a fuckin’… you’re a--”
Murphy kisses Connor, and it’s unpleasant and disgusting because they’ve both been smoking like chimneys and they haven’t brushed their teeth in god knows how long. It’s disgusting and warm and familiar and soft. Connor kisses back, because this has never been about how things taste or smell.
“Jesus Christ,” Connor murmurs into Murphy’s mouth.
Connor shoves Murphy away and grapples with the car door. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he says again and the door swings open. He’s out under the stars and he’s going and gone. He walks fast in no particular direction, walking just to walk, and fuck, you’d never think it, but the desert gets cold. Out here when the sun goes down and it’s night and you can barely see fuck-all, it gets cold. Connor pulls his coat tighter around him.
Connor’s not surprised to hear the car door slam and Murphy running to catch up.
“What the fuck was that about?” Murphy asks.
“Fucking fuck ‘what the fuck was that about’, Jesus Christ, Murph. Our father was in the same car. Have you no scruples?”
“He was asleep.”
“And it appears you have none. He was in the same fucking car.”
“Alright. Fine. Fine, he was asleep and I’m a fucking idiot. There, you happy?”
“What kind of a fucking question is that.”
“Christ. We need some fucking alcohol.”
“Requiring alcohol to regain your clarity of mind,” Connor mutters. “Isn’t it nice to know that even in the middle of the American desert, you’re still propagating our national stereotype? A right patriot you are.” Connor glances over at the car. “Is he still asleep?”
“Maybe. Who cares? We’re not in the same fucking car anymore, are we?”
Connor tenses and picks up his pace just in case that was an advance. They walk with silence and speed, hands in their pockets as they make their way through the underbrush. Every minute or so, Connor would look behind him and he can always see the car. He always expects it to be obscured by some small hill or an overgrown mesquite tree, but no. It’s always there with his father inside, sleeping, snoring, or, perhaps, watching.
If you can see them, they can see you.
“Connor, are there rattlesnakes here?”
“What?”
“Rattlesnakes. Are there--”
“Rattlesnakes? Here?”
“Aye.”
Connor stops. He faces Murphy. “We’re out in the middle of fucking nowhere with no light and no nothing and the nearest hospital is fuck-knows how far, and you’re talking to me about rattlesnakes?”
“…Aye.”
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
“Now I’m twice as fuckin’ nervous.”
“About the rattlesnakes?”
“Aye!”
“Hey, don’t blame me for the fuckin’ rattlers, MacManus.”
“I wasn’t blaming you. Brilliant suggestion, though. Alright, Murph, I blame you.”
“For the rattlesnakes?”
“Aye, for the rattlesnakes. I blame you for the fuckin’ rattlesnakes.”
Their voices have diminished to whispers, the better to listen for the hiss of venomous reptiles, and Connor says, “Let’s go back to the car.”
“Let’s.”
Il Duce isn’t snoring when they reach the car. Connor doesn’t know if this means their father has found a more suitable sleeping position, or whether he’s only pretending to be sleeping, or whether it matters at all. In the back, both Connor and Murphy lean against opposite car doors, leaving half a foot of space of car seat between them. The only parts of them touching are their shoes, on the floor, incidentally. Incidentally is the keyword, so Connor doesn’t know why the touch feels as conspicuous as it does. He expends too much energy trying not to move his foot and wonders if he should.
This continues until Murphy pulls his foot away and Connor--out of reflex or propriety, who can say--does the same.
***
part two: devil's red carpet
no subject
I'm glad you enjoyed the fic, man. Thanks.