To Miles 27

“Miles is a null memory until anger strikes me.” Hince pauses for a while as we both sit next to the window, it’s very dark and the stars can be seen if I forget about the light in the room. It’s natural progression to talk of previous loves and I feel odd for having a calm love rather than something with such a strong force to either kill myself or the lover, besides the fact that I long being with him. I had given up and it’s been a while anyway since we’ve started sleeping with each other, even if love had finally explained itself to us. We share a cigarette, some odd connection so we smoke two and sometimes he blows smoke in my face before I kiss him briefly, but we need this out of our system. 

Miles later that night had caught me in the bathroom, already with a cigarette and had motioned me to follow him, for a brief second I had a feeling it would be the orlop but it wasn’t, Jamie had been waiting for me but I realized that with Miles it wasn’t the wisest idea and we had headed out and it had started to get a bit chilly, so the offer of a cigarette was hard to refuse. I hugged myself, keeping my distance as Kane watched me.

“Jamie always says it was ten. Well, for him it was ten.” He swallow and exhales, finishing the cigarette and throwing it off board. “It was eleven. I had fallen for him a year earlier. I had heard that he was bisexual, Alison knew.”

He pauses.

“I know Alison’s your sister.” I say, wanting to get the fuck out, but I still listen, not sure if I actually want to hear his side of the story. Miles doesn’t ease.

“How long have you been fucking Jamie?” He lights another cigarette and I see the same shadow which goes through Jamie’s eyes go through his, some old bitter jealousy only in Jamie’s mind it’s always intertwined with pain and something so twisted and numb from all the pain it has caused. 

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, Kane.” I mutter, playing with the cigarette in my fingers, starting to get cold, Miles notices me shaking, but doesn’t do anything. The cigarette was offered already and taken. 

“Anyway. So it was kind of the whole word that Alison had this boyfriend who was known for being a bit too queer and who was in the navy. She had fallen for him so she dragged him home, c’mon, of course Jamie would do a great impression with this literature knowledge and dunno, parents just swallowed it, who knows. They married.” He pauses. “He really hung around me, wanting to get on my good side and he’d tell me about the ships.”

Miles really keeps his pause here. 

“I asked him if he still fucked other men, he just shook his head, a bit confused and I don’t know why the confusion and the look he had for Alison, made me jealous I guess. Or...” Miles just pauses and keeps silent. “I don’t know, there was too much about him. He was really queer, I’ve never known anyone queer.” 

“Why did you tell me about “Ian” then?” I snap, a bit too cold and my teeth chattering. 

“So what I should’ve told you I was fucking Jamie and that his wife was my sister?” Miles snaps back, but holds. I quickly look down, shaking even much more, you can see through people, what makes them shine, what cuts them through and I know it’s me for Miles and that’s not something I had wanted to see or even believe in. Miles just keeps looking at me and shrugs, the stone long cut before I even headed upstairs to Hince for the first time. Miles is ahead on this one if we think of time rather than performance. 

“Why the fuck not? I told you about Matt, didn’t I?” I snap at him, still shivering and wishing I had taken anything with me, but it’s too late and both me and Miles want to get this over with to understand if we step over this holding hands or not and as I listen to him, I have some dumb hope which I really want to shrug off and I just want to go back to Jamie’s arms and lay there, maybe we’d get something to drink and eventually fall asleep as we’d discuss something which had been lingering in his mind or we’d close the chapter on Miles after I’d hear his side. I was actually excited to hear Jamie’s past, even if it had been painful and I wondered how exactly had he looked all those years ago and what queer things had he done, who he had known and who had he kissed once in a gay bar. 

“Well, you didn’t fall in love with someone who was eleven years older than you at age fifteen, did you?” I calculate Hince’s age in my head and I just hug myself tighter, not even smoking anymore.

“I had fallen in love with my sister’s fiancé. He was the one who had first taken me to gay bars.” Miles’ lips are trembling. I just keep watching. I don’t think I even want to know his story as I recall Hince’s bitterness towards Miles, while Miles just showed coldness, it wasn’t hard to figure out who had broken who. So looking at his trembling lip was something I didn’t seem interested in even if I was biased and my empathy kept rocking my cradle around as I would see him or be nulled by sleep. 

“Why did you leave him if you loved him so much?” I snap and I actually want to make my way back. 

“Because I didn’t want to be second.” I feel both of us pause. “He would never leave Alison.” 

I blink.

Was that it?

I actually don’t hold and turn around, Miles puts his hand on my shoulder. 

“I don’t know when I had fallen with him, he’d pretty much start dating Alison. And once I had just stopped and said hi to him. He had been twenty five, supposedly quite good and he had been on shore for a while, so everyone kept giggling how determined he had been to win Alison’s attention.

On their date, once she had agreed, she had taken her deck of cards and she had fortune told him. Jamie always said that she had hidden a card from him, but Alison showed up on his cards along with a few he couldn’t identify and soon enough he had even forgotten the card. She had done a few things and they had been in the park, Alison had told me how he kept smoking and watching her. 

She always said that no one had ever been so tender with her and once she had asked him of his past, Alison said he had struggled for a brief while before Alison put out her cards and said that they had been fated, so he had nothing to fear. He had struggled, but still muttered how he had dated a few men and Alison just shrugged, saying that it was no big deal to her, as long as he had been faithful to her. 

Jamie had just blinked and said why the hell would he double-time her if he loved her. Alison said that it had been some small slip, but it’s odd, you know...” He pauses. I just listen, but I stare ahead. “That something is written in the cards. Was it all that bonded them?”

I just remain silent. 

“And they had started dating, Alison always receiving long letters from Jamie when he wasn’t on shore and once I had caught her reading it and I never really realized that Jamie wrote poems. He would always attach a poem to her. I got sad that I was sure that a woman would never write me them and I always asked Alison to let me read the poems, the letters were kept safe, but I’d always read the poems, she would read them out and then she’d start laughing recalling some daft memory of both of them together.” Miles darkens. “I really didn’t realize I had fallen in love with him until once Alison was getting ready and I had been sitting there with him and he had started asking me if I’ve ever read Kafka and I had said that I hadn’t.

He had just bought The Trial and he had given it to me instead. I really thought he wanted to get on my good side and looking back it’s an odd choice that it was kind of the first thing we had ever exchanged.” 

“Miles, I’m not interested.” I interrupt him finally, some odd jealousy burning within me as I have wished that it had been me who was given The Trial, I feel as if all of us have been blended and mixed up that I don’t know who had been where who is the lover and who is the traitor. I hold my breath for a while as I look at his lost eyes. I’ve never realized that there had been something he had lost which he had regretted and managed to fight with. If he had turned at the right time Hince would’ve forgiven him, but it was all long lost and Hince had no interest maybe besides doing another punch across the face.

“If you really had loved him it would be you instead of me in his arms, wouldn’t it?” I snap at him and Miles drops his arm from my shoulder. That’s when the veil of the bride is lifted up, Miles hectically starts lighting a new cigarette and the thought in his head is how come I was chosen instead of him and some bitter twisted envy starts growing in him as he keeps looking at me.

“You?” He snarls. I just stand for a while and I realize that I should leave for my own benefit and I am not interested in how he had lost Hince, I’m only interested in what the fuck had he done to Jamie. 

“Well, I don’t see you two fucking, do I?” And I turn around and I’m sure he’ll yell something and maybe I shouldn’t have said too much and I could see us all three on trial for obscenity, for homosexuality and being gay in the navy. I could see Hince just standing there, not looking at anyone, just aching for a cigarette and I could see Miles just standing there and I don’t feel sorry for him, I just wait for the trial to be over so that me and Jamie could exchange looks as we have a final cigarette before being separated. 

I get scared. 

I get scared of Miles’ words and I just storm into Hince’s room as he is reading Fathers and Sons again and he looks up at me with a smile, before he notices my concerned look on my face and he quickly stands up, locks the door and hesitates before hugging me.

“Hold on.” And he opens the closet to get out some bottle of wine. He gets glasses, all silent and just quickly glancing at me before he pours the liquid. Jamie waits for me to talk, but I don’t, before he opens his mouth I actually ask him.

“Do you still love Miles?” 

“No.” He says without flinching and then he lets his brain absorb the question and he sighs, giving a soft smile for the lack of emotions towards his other long lost lover. Hince takes a sip as we both each take a chair. I think I let him destroy me far too much as he keeps lingering in my thoughts like a parasite and the fact that I had never found out what the fuck had happened between them seems to torture me and I wonder what the fuck could’ve happened and I keep watching Hince, letting doubts crawl within me but somehow I don’t think he hurt Miles and the fact that the thing which Miles thought necessary to say was the fact that he had chosen Alison instead. But I still keep looking at Jamie, feeling a bit uneasy between two truths and Matt comes back to mind, before Jamie pours himself a glass and I realize that I had dazed away with Jamie waiting for me to say anything else.

“You just want to stop...” He flicks on the glass so that it makes a piercing sound, but he doesn’t flinch. “Because well, you just want it out of your system really.”

He pauses.

“It was odd, he kept lingering in my mind until recently.” He pauses on me. “I dunno, he was just always there, making me angry and for some odd reason I just...”

I keep looking at him and he finds the courage to look at me.

“Threw it on you with no reason.” He says, trying to keep the pauses as short and I keep looking at his green eyes. “That wasn’t personal... ever. That was... I guess when you’re angry you take it out on someone and you seemed to resemble Miles.”

“Thanks.” I chuckle darkly.

“You’re not. That’s the thing. It’s just the age. It was like a very bad metaphor. Getting back at someone, it’s as if you were the parallel to Miles.” He still comes back to talk in pauses and taking big gulps of wine and I wonder if he has anything stronger or if he’s stretching our soberness and just giving a small amount of placebo to believe that we are drunk when we are not. “But you’re not. Neither does Miles define me. Even if I’ve loved him for over ten years.”

Jamie gives a dark chuckle.

“One day you just wake up and it’s gone, not all of it, but most of it, the love, at least the bitter precipitation is the only thing left which pretty much should be dissolved by something else or you just throw it out eventually I guess.” He pours me some wine and I don’t even realize I had drank it.

“I just woke up one day and it had been after the first naval battle. Brian kept musing on it all night and even came to mine’s saying what if we would get caught up with this and I just sat there, saying that well we’ll have to fight back...” He smirks. “I had the idea of getting drunk for a brief moment, we both did, but we took the booze away and just stopped to go back to sleep, in the morning I puked out everything and the weird thing was...”

He starts drumming on the desk, as I watch his hands. I get distracted by too many things and I catch his eyes. 

“The only thought I had was that I want Miles out of my system.

And he was gone.

I was fed up. I forced everyone to mop the floors that day.” He smirks and I just roll my eyes and he feels lighter. I wonder if I should ask him about Miles, but instead he takes a swing from the bottle before pouring more and I just get my chair closer to his and Jamie smirks, grinning slightly before pulling me by the shoulder, stroking my cheek with his thumb and I still feel tense. He sees it and gives me a brief nourishing kiss which blinds me for a while. 

But then maybe it’s still not enough time to be given to throw away the remains of a long loved ill lasting relationship. 

We both get a cigarette lit by Jamie himself as he puts two and lights them each in his mouth, still watching and I look away, feeling a bit uneasy and he just passes me the cigarette. He slowly breathes out the smoke.

“Anything on your mind, Turner?” He says and for some reason that gives me a small smile, something oddly nostalgic as it has been a few months since we know each other and ease, wondering as we both still have our hats on and I take off mine, ruffling my hair as Jamie watches me inhale the cigarette, not removing it from my lips and I exhale. 

“It’s... odd. I don’t think he’s out of my system.” I mutter lightly, but enough for him to hear and understand. Jamie eases in his chair. 

“Well, he doesn’t have to y’know. Your puking will come, if you want it to.” He smirks as he holds the cigarette in his hand, now him removing his hat and we’re still in attire, looking far too official and I want to see him in something less formal, hair not too neatly done and just a tint of grumpiness even if I had managed to get attracted to him when he’d just lift his eyes off his book and call me m’boy again. He smirks, before adding. “Turner.”

I take his hat off the table and I put it on, smirking.

“Captain Hince.” I say, Jamie pats me on the head. 

“You look terrible in it.” We both laugh, grinning at this obscure staircase of nostalgia, as he leans to take it off and I pull him by the collar and he stops and looks down on me, not moving, before I lean in to kiss him, feeling myself dissolve entirely and Jamie as well. 

-

I think I've pretty much told everyone how much team Hincey I am, haha xD But that in no way means that I've forgotten about the plot and what is going on, but yeah Jamie pretty much has fought his way in and changed a bit of the course of the story dramatically kind of? XD

Somehow both of these fuckers, Hince and Miles keep delaying the back story even if I have a rough draft in my head of what is going on, but either way a lot is actually explained in this chapter :3 

And dun dun dun, there was no Ian all along :\ which is odd because when I was writing about "Ian" I was like ooooh, I like how I even stuck Ian Curtis here xD 

I dunno, like Miles fucked up real badly and pretty much all characters went through massive development which I wash;t even aware of. I mean, Matt was supposed to be just Alex's one kiss time friend, Julian was actually supposed to be sent away instead of Cookie XD, Jamie was supposed to be the annoying incompetent captain obsessed with Russian literature, Miles was supposed to be the hero of the story and in general everyone had changed and also there's more characters to come which will become regulars in part two or even characters who will keep showing up :)

Using Kafka was something which for some odd reason when I was a teenager was something no one around me had managed to for some fucking reason read and it was always like, wow, she reads Kafka and etc, so for some reason it was always an awe that Kafka is/was my favourite writer. The Trial is one of my favourite works and I even felt a bit like cheating by pretty much without a lot of thinking just giving Jamie Kafka xD 

I dunno, this whole chapter and in general it's funny how the title To Miles seems to have an ironic ring to it since both Hince and Al have suffered from Miles and have seem to have bonded. 

The more the story goes deeper the more I feel like I identify with Hince and his bitterness towards Miles, sometimes you just lose faith in people, it just dies off, as if nothing had ever happened and they're crossed out that's it. There's not even something left at the bottom, so it was a bit odd to try and write Alex who still has feelings for Miles when I'm more of a Hince, puke it out an you're good xD 

I was talking to Callie about what Hince had done to Alex and pretty much the word metaphor sprouted in my head and in general I always have this debate about Hince in my head and I guess that's what makes him complex and beautiful in my eyes, we have all hurt those who we love in a way or another, just some ways are more forgivable than others I guess and some end up being metaphors, but I am cruel sometimes so yeah. 

It's really odd, I guess I always use a lot of things from my life in stories or particular events and yeah, I recall how I had been so anxious and my only damn thought was that I want it out of my system, that I was tired and that well, I'm worthy of more and I had wanted to write this scene because it was odd how much I had thought of it, repeating it and it was gone. Of course you're still bitter, but you actually reach the point where like Hince you just have that Freudian slip where you say no before thinking and weighing whatever the fuck is in your head, that thing is you don't, you don't care anymore and you just go on, really. 

So it's odd that I identify more with Hince than Alex XD and I keep asking myself what to do with Miles, because I still love them together and frankly Miles didn't fuck up Alex as much as he did Hince, so yeah. But in the end every story is different just coz me and Hince puked our feelings out, doesn't mean that other people should.

I guess I just really love Hince and Alex a lot. I dunno, they started from this twisted relationship and I was looking back and there's actually a lot of small things I haven't noticed about Jamie being caring towards Al, so yeah. I dunno, I love how they took the piss of each other and I really really love them together and dunno, I guess I am calm for Al because I was quite concerned of the ending because I knew that Alex would be miserable and well, the tables have turned and there's a lot ahead and there's still too much ahead and too much plot twists and I'm sure Miles should try to redeem himself at least, so not all is lost, I know because well, I know :P

Also on the note, since I'm quite open, I'd like to say that I'm genderfluid, I know you discover many things about yourself every fucking day and I dunno, I feel liberated and go on, find it ironic, but I still go by my birth name, but I've been shifting to Jamie because I've always liked how gender neutral that name was always and it was kind of my favourite male name for years and now it's like oh Hince too, but really it's because I just like it a lot, so yeah, ask anything really and it's still me as always :) I was always here and always fluid as fuck xD just now you know why the interest in gay men haha :P 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and don't mind me being team Hincey xD *puts on random merch with an inflatable Hince* I even started drawing fan art of Hincey. Just don't think I'm crazy and tell me if you enjoyed the chapter and feel free to request the next one :3

I love you all :3 ALL OF YOU :3

<3

Jamie

To Miles 28