Chapter Text
September passed through in days running twice the speed I’d ever seen time flow. Of course, as before I spent much of my time doing much of the same thing, only now that reliability came in the form of a doting lover and his almost slavish willingness to please me. It got to a point where I would hardly have to speak before whatever I wished for would materialize before me. It was the sort of embarrassing display of wealth for which my disdain grew every single day, saved only by the fact that the riches passed directly from a hand I loved.
Jay’s hand, specifically, which I held happily in privacy for the next few months. Pumpkins were carved, thanks were given, and finally the looming threat of Christmas stood like a hateful shadow in the next few days. It had never been all that exciting a time of year for me, full of relatives asking how the war had been and when I’d finally settle down and marry, and this year would prove to be no different. If I went home.
As it were, I leaned on Jay’s desk on the twentieth of December and waited patiently for his seventeenth phone call that day--it was only nine in the morning--to come to an end so I might talk to him.
The wait wasn’t so unpleasant. I’d found my way to the halfway point of a fine old bottle of cognac and Jay’s hand wandered often to worry the fabric at the bottom hem of my sweater, ensuring I couldn’t pull away before he noticed. He made every attempt these days to keep me as near to him as possible.
Before the season had come and quieted my bonds office, Jay had driven me to work sixty-six shifts in a row. And sixty-six shifts in a row he was there to pick me up, too, and whisk me away to some great dining experience in a restaurant he’d rented out just for the two of us. He made it as clear as he could that he valued our privacy as much as I did. The only trouble was, he seemed to forget that my coworkers might’ve noticed the incredibly expensive cream-colored car--a new one, even more extravagant a machine than the one Daisy had all but ruined for him--that bore me to and from work each day.
Alas, he didn’t seem to understand my careful maneuvering of romance and the real, hateful world any deeper than he’d understood that Daisy was never really meant for him. For all his talk of keeping things quiet and private for the two of us he hung close to my side at every opportunity, including more than once in front of poor old Wolfsheim and all too often before Klipspringer.
I still couldn’t blame him for this. All that time spent absolutely boiling in unshared love and suddenly being given the opportunity to show it might be a bit much for any man, much less someone so incredibly driven by ambition and wonder. I only succeeded in keeping my cool around him through years of careful divides between want and need. That, of course, and the boundless liquor always flowing into Jay’s house.
The parties may have been gone but his business hadn’t changed, and since Jay mostly turned his nose up at the stuff, it was up to me to do away with whatever was gifted to him by his many ‘contacts’, and while I hadn’t been so fond of drink at the beginning of all this, it certainly helped to pull me along through Jay’s worst days and my own.
Even through the fog of aged cognac I could see that this might’ve been a bad time for him. The man hardly slept even when I did my lover’s best to wear him out and so frustration wore on him ever more every day, and today was no exception. A vein bulged in his forehead as he whispered on and on about something with agave, something on some street in Chicago, something about some police officer. That usual golden lure of his voice had been replaced with a furious hiss.
Indeed this would not be a good day for him if he was already upset before he heard what I had to tell him.
I took one last sip of my cognac and went to sit it on Jay’s desk before thinking better of it and finishing the glass off entirely. Jay looked up at me but didn’t put the receiver down. I pretended not to notice the shift from frustration to concern in his expression.
I stood behind Jay’s chair and leaned down so that my hands slipped slowly over the warm front of his sweater and my head met the cradle of his shoulder and neck. “Jay…” I whispered. My lips found their way along the tan skin of his neck, over marks I’d left there just the night previous. “I jus’...need to speak with you.”
The slur in my words made me wince, and Jay seemed to flinch away, too. He didn’t put the telephone down, though it wasn’t for lack of trying; whoever held his attention on the other end of the line must have wanted to finish their business before the holiday. And who could blame him? Even bootleggers had families, didn’t they?
Well, Jay didn’t, I reminded myself even in my foggy state. News had come that his father had passed just before Thanksgiving. My drinking and Jay’s frantic gift-smothering had taken a turn for the worse at that point.
“Jay,” I mumbled again as I nuzzled into his shoulder. “C’mon…” The steel in my spine melted away by the second. Fortunately, Jay hung up the moment my hands began to drift lower.
“Of course, Nick, whatever you need,” Jay said almost all at once. My hands rested in his lap now and I lay draped over his back like a cardigan. The bounce of his knee under the desk reverberated through my fingertips as they brushed over his thigh. Jay began to turn his chair around, dislodging my unsteady form only long enough for me to stumble back, catch myself, and then stand with my hands on either of his shoulders as he faced me, seated in his office chair. Silence held us both while I struggled to catch up with my own thoughts and Jay waited patiently for as long as he could.
“Is…something the matter?” He grabbed my right hand from his shoulder and drew it to his lips to place a kiss on every knuckle, giving special attention to one I’d cut upon dropping a glass last week. “Already getting bored of being around the house?”
He asked the question with all the levity of humor, but even in spite of the smile on his face and my own inebriated state I could see the boundless concern in a sort of tightness around his eyes. A haunted sort of deep-rooted fear that I too might flee from him at the slightest bit of trouble.
“No, no,” I assured him in as gentle a tone as I could manage. Sometimes I felt as though I were speaking to some flighty forest animal, as though any wrong word or tone might send this poor man into flight. “I love the house, Jay. Love it. It’s…” My mind went blank for a moment before I managed to supply, “...quiet.”
“Quiet?”
“Yes. Quiet. I like it.”
And it most certainly was, these days. With no parties and the world frosting itself to death around us, Jay’s faux chateau stood like a tomb for the American dream most days. I really didn’t mind it. All parties did these days was remind me of times now heavily tainted by relation to Daisy and her ilk.
Jay seemed to mull that over in his mind for a moment before nodding. “Yes, it’s quiet.” He slowly moved himself upright and shifted from between me and the chair. “If you get bored of that, I can fix it, too, Nick. Just say the word.” He stopped at the end of his desk, watching my face with a focus in perfect polarity to my own fuzziness. “I’ll hire a band--no, an orchestra! Strings and brass and woodwinds and singers, too, and dancers if it suits you. And they’ll fill the whole house with music and sound again. If you decide that’s what you want. Whatever you like.”
He stood at my side with the most erect carriage I believe he could’ve managed under the unbearable weight of even my mildest discontentment. That smile I had long considered to be the most beautiful recurring sight in my life had decayed into a tight-lipped wince of an expression. Jay’s hand gripped the side of his desk with white knuckles.
For a moment I considered completely brushing away the whole affair. Cast aside any idea of visiting my family for Christmas and instead remain here with Jay in our pocket of eternal summer. But then my eyes, trained still on Jay’s hand, caught sight of what I’d for months assumed was a signet ring. It was a daisy, albeit with his initials in the center. Carved in hateful black onyx and set in its mocking golden band it ruined any sort of mercy still living within me, and not even the guilt of letting the responding anger out on Jay could make it through that toxic, sludgy fog of hatred.
“I have to go home for Christmas, Jay.” A beat, then, “I don’t know if my family will have you.”
Two sentences that felt worlds apart. Even Jay’s poor forced smile died in the miasmic bitterness filling the space between Jay and I.
Bereft. He looked bereft. Just for a moment, sure, but just long enough that the guilt managed to break through any sort of spiteful buildup around my heart. And then with one deep breath he was back.
“Oh, Nick, I wouldn’t be so worried,” he told me, reaching out to place a hand on my shoulder. His thumb rubbed hard into a knotted muscle I hadn’t been aware of. “I hate to brag, dear boy, but you must know by now that I can handle first impressions.”
I didn’t say a word. Nothing good would come out now if I opened my mouth.
Jay watched me for a moment, his discerning blue gaze flashing between the desire to soothe me and the need to be comforted himself. In the end he simply pulled me in close. He kissed the top of my head the very second it fell forward far enough for him to do so.
“Besides, I’m sure they’re all clamoring to meet your friend Mr. Gatsby, aren’t they?” His fingertips danced along the ridge of my spine through my sweater. Cheer ruptured through all the cracks in his carefully crafted mask--a dozen layers or more meant to protect him from exposing whatever lay so deeply inside him. “All those letters you send back and forth…”
“I’ve never mentioned you.”
“Well, then I’ll surely surprise them, won’t I?”
We watched each other in silence, Jay making every effort to remain as light and charming as ever while I struggled to even keep my expression impassive. When did it get to be this way? I still looked upon Jay with all the love a man could offer; not a damn thing could change that. But paired with that love was an exhaustion I had never known. Something I’d been trying to remove through drink to no avail.
Because Jay deserved better, didn’t he? After all Daisy had put him through? After all he’d done for her--all he did for me shouldn’t go to waste, no matter how often it felt as though it was unwarranted. I didn’t deserve all the doting, all the tender care--not when Jay expressed his adoration with every word, every single motion, and I locked him out day by day.
Was I already leaving him behind?
Jay sighed and pulled me back in, almost cradling me to his chest in spite of the liquor no-doubtedly wafting up to him. “If not an orchestra, Nick, then a radio?” He spoke so softly, and not just in volume; his voice drifted tenderly down to me like feathers from a young bird, coming to rest somewhere in my mind and softening all the harsh thoughts beginning to ricochet in my skull. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t argue, thank god. It might’ve broken us both if I had.
He withdrew to cup my cheeks in his warm, callused hands, and even the pressure of his Daisy ring couldn’t pull me away from the serenity that found me when he next smiled--serenity that soured as he asked, “Or more cognac?”
I knew he meant nothing by it. He never did. Jay had never once spoken to me with any sort of malicious undercurrent and I couldn’t imagine he would begin now of all times. Still, my initial reaction was to push him away as I pushed away all good things in my life.
My hands made it as far as his chest before there was a knock at the door, and it was my turn instead to stumble backward from Jay. He caught my hand before I could get too far and kissed it before heading to the door.
“Mr. Wolfsheim’s here, sir,” came the voice of his butler from behind the door.
“Oh, well--” Jay glanced over his shoulder at me, some little flash of discomfort in his eyes, before speaking to the butler once more. “I’ll come down and see him. No use dragging him up all these steps. He’s getting older, you know…”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him I’ll be down in just a minute, won’t you, old sport?”
Jay gave the butler that blinding grin of his and proceeded to shut the door directly in his face. “Alright, well, Nick, I hope you’re willing to inform me of what’s required at family Christmas. We’ll discuss it when I get back, won’t we?
He’d never had a genuine family Christmas. Of course he hadn’t. He’d told me once, late one night, that he’d only ever received one gift from his real father and that was a backhand on Easter for taking the Lord’s name in vain. Any other Christmas must’ve been spent at war, at sea, or…here, alone.
All the shame I’d felt at the idea of trying to explain Jay to my family disappeared, only to return tenfold at the idea that I’d almost denied him something he’d likely been looking forward to his whole life. And who was I to abandon him at this time of year? A monster?
“Of course, Jay,” I told him, leaning over his desk as nausea overtook me. “Of course.”
He hovered in the doorway, gaze lingering on me for a good while before he asked, “And you’ll be here when I return, won’t you?”
I nodded before I could even hope to speak, and when I did, my voice was thick. “Where else would I go, Jay?”
I could’ve sworn his eyes darted for the window behind me, the same one from which he’d waved me off to work for the whole summer. But his gaze returned to me almost immediately and he offered me the sweetest little smile, as if we’d never even come close to a rift in our relationship. “But you…will be here.”
“Yes.” I collapsed in his chair hard, as if anchoring myself down as a permanent fixture of his office.
Jay watched me for a moment, wide-eyed with his smile just a few watts too bright, before nodding. “Of course.” His voice was more distant now. “And I’ll be right back.”
“Good.”
“Yes. Right.”
“That’s good, Jay, that you’ll be right back. I’d hate to have to miss you.”
Jay jerked slightly. “Oh. Right. Just--” He glanced down the hall, and though I knew he couldn’t see Wolfsheim waiting in the atrium, the apprehension worming its way into his expression implied the man hovered just beyond the doorway, ready to harvest some part of Jay with which to form another grisly accessory. Jay looked back at me, halfway out the door. “It’s just that I love you.”
“I love you, too, Jay.” I reached for the bottle of cognac with a sigh I didn’t particularly mean to heave with such gusto.
With that affirmation Jay seemed to feel safe in leaving me to my own devices for the next five minutes or so. Of course, this meant throwing back one burning draw of cognac and spinning sluggishly around in his utterly too comfortable chair. I supposed idly that I might discover some great secret of the supposed ‘pharmaceutical’ industry if I poked around on his desk but it wasn’t entirely worth it to risk jeopardizing whatever remained of the wonder I felt for this man.
The warm spread of alcohol reminded me then that I had not lost any of the wonder I felt for Jay Gatsby. I had merely numbed it. I’d wanted fast times and excitement upon coming out east, yes, but I could only take so much of Jay’s undivided, unceasing attention before it became all too much.
The phone on his desk began to ring.
I stared at it, watching the little bell vibrate in its holding for a while before reaching out and lifting the handle up just enough to answer the call before letting it drop again. Anything to get that ringing to stop. All I could think of was that supper at the Buchanan’s and Myrtle’s incessant calling. God, how could she not have seen Tom for what he was? How could anyone look upon him or Daisy and consider that something to look forward to? Something to emulate, to crave--even for how I understood Jay I could and would never come to terms with her being the particular centerpiece of his obsession. What hideous stroke of rotten luck had grabbed ahold of him that night in Louisville?
The phone began to ring again. Again, I silenced it.
What had Jay done to deserve five wasted years, five years of sleepless nights, for a permanently damaged image of himself and his own worth? And it poisoned me, too, since I remained in the aftermath. She’d almost gotten him killed! Wilson had been here for Jay--looking for the man who’d driven with Daisy that night, the owner of the car that had taken his wife from him.
And yes, Jay had lived. But now we both stood in the sooty aftermath, piecing together a life Jay had worked so hard for like pieces of a priceless treasure someone had so carelessly smashed. No, not somebody. Daisy.
For the third time, the telephone began to ring, its malicious shriek echoing all around me like a crowd of hecklers sent to push me off the edge. This time, I stood up from Jay’s chair and leaned heavily over his desk, knocking a photograph of the two of us on the dock to the ground so I could yank the receiver out of its holdings to snap, “Gatsby residence. What do you want? It’s almost Christmas, for Christ’s sake!”
“Nicky?”
The whole world ceased to turn. All the fire that had raged within me snuffed itself out almost instantly, replaced with the chill of absolute shock as I stood there in silence, deaf to whatever nonsense Daisy had to say next.
I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move for a long moment, hearing without listening as that glimmer of a voice assaulted my ears, detestable even without a single word reaching whatever remained to function in my mind. She sounded frantic. Desparate. Was she--she was crying. Pleading. Daisy Buchanan, my cousin, the near ruination of the only man I’d allowed myself to love, had the audacity to hang on to the other end of the phone line and beg me for--for--
“I just need to speak with him, please, Nicky. Surely he’s right there, isn’t he? He never really leaves that old house, does he? I’ve asked all about him since we got back and--”
I laid the receiver down on Jay’s desk. Evidently Daisy didn’t hear the faint thud because I could still hear her prattling on, unceasing with her mindless reassurances that she knew better now and understood what a rotten thing she’d done and that Tom had been caught with another girl in Paris and--
Of course. Of course, she only ran to Jay because she needed to get even with Tom. All the cognac in my stomach threatened to rise up and it struck me as a miracle that I managed to keep it all down, even for my whole stumble to where the telephone cord met the wall. Without a second thought I yanked it right out.
I waited there for a moment, waiting for Daisy’s voice to continue through the call. Half of me could’ve been convinced I’d imagined the whole thing, that she’d continue speaking even after the wire had been pulled. That she’d torment me and Jay both until we’d both gone mad. Or closer to it, anyway.
But no, silence rested its gentle touch on the room once more. I allowed my shoulders to drop from where they had been raised. All was well, wasn’t it? Jay would return and we’d talk. Or he’d plug the telephone back up and answer more calls. The calls would continue all through the night and he wouldn’t sleep. He’d leave me behind in that cold bed and I’d merely hold down the sheets until I couldn’t stand to be alone any longer.
He might even pick up a call from Daisy.
The window to Jay’s office overlooked my yard in a way I almost considered too good to be true, giving him a perfect view of my front yard and porch to watch over me even when his mind wouldn’t quite let Daisy go yet. He’d loved me then, hadn’t he? Standing here after what I now knew to be endless nights without sleep. He could’ve been comfortable in his chair but he chose instead to stand here and watch me leave, with no practical view of that sickly green light across the Sound.
Even in those moments where Daisy was so entirely removed from view, however, Jay’d still been working himself to death to provide for her one day, just as he worked himself to nothing in order to provide me with things I’d never asked for in the first place. Things I supposed I ought to want but never did.
How hard would we have to fight to escape who we thought we were meant to be? How long until I could look at Jay and feel my heart soften without reservation? Could I ever hold his hand without glancing over my shoulder? Could he ever watch me leave without Daisy’s abandonment haunting his every thought? Would we ever really belong to each other?
I didn’t have the answers. Especially not as drunk as I still remained. And to think I’d started this summer with only one night of heavy drinking in my life; if the Nick of five years ago could see me now, I think it would break him. For all the progress I’d made toward the sake of my own self-fulfillment I’d also slipped into much of the pitfalls I’d looked at with a socially acceptable sort of scorn my whole life.
Five years could change a man. One phone call could, too.
Jay’s telephone crashed through the polished glass of his office window with all the dramatics of any crescendo in any party he’d ever held in this god-forsaken palace. Shards of glass like ice flew into the air in one brilliant, sparkling starburst, and the cold rushed in to cut right through my sweater vest.
I stared out the gaping hole in the window and out at my little cottage--that which Jay now affectionately referred to as my closet--wondering just how long I would’ve lived alone next to this man if it weren’t for Myrtle’s death. How long would Jay have lasted, coasting by on the idea that Daisy might one day stumble in and love him as he’d always dreamed of being loved? How long would I have watched him crumble from a distance, too self-centered and afraid of myself to risk reaching out to him?
It didn’t really matter, did it?
I stared down at the crushed remains of Jay’s white telephone, scattered about the patio beneath this window like the bones of some miserable creature. I wanted to feel bad about destroying Jay’s property but how could I? Even as the chill rushed around me and cleared away much of the fog in my brain I could only feel relief. That damned ringing had almost been the end of me after mere months of living with it; I couldn’t even begin to imagine what hell it put Jay through all throughout the day and night.
I must have watched the unmoving pile of debris for a good while. Longer than I’d had the sense to keep track of, because Jay’s touch drew me from my almost hypnotic reverie before I ever became aware of his reentry to the office or Wolfsheim’s car rumbling back down the drive.
His hand met the small of my back and stayed there while we stood in silence. The morning light began to shift toward a blinding white noontime before Jay moved again.
He turned and pulled me into his embrace, taking special care to reach up and shift my chin so that I could no longer stare out the window. I don’t think I’d ever held on to him as tightly as I did in that moment. I really clung to him then, having not realized just how cold I’d become until his all-encompassing warmth enveloped my body and I began to shake as though I would fall if not for his support.
And for a while he simply held me in this manner, his broad hand roaming from the small of my back to the back of my head, where he would stroke my unmaintained hair for a moment before returning to the same slow circuit.
“...’m sorry about your ‘phone,” I mumbled into his shoulder after a while of allowing myself to stay put in Jay’s arms. His cologne washed down into my lungs and chased out all the remaining anxiety crawling around where it shouldn’t be.
I felt Jay sigh. “No, no, Nick. Don’t apologize. You never have to apologize to me, not for anything.” His lips met my forehead and stayed there for a moment. “I only hope it’s quiet enough for you now.”
I actually managed a laugh at that. “Yes. I suppose this’ll do.”
Jay’s lips curled against my forehead and he drew back enough to be able to look down at me. “Well, it’s not going to last for long, is it?” And before dread could sink in, he began leading me toward the door. “As we’ve got a family Christmas to discuss. Why don’t we go sit by the fire? Pile up every pillow we own. Bother the kitchen for hot cocoa…”
I nodded along and stuck close to his side as he led me past his desk. “Sounds wonderful, Jay.”
The grin that he gave then reassured me as it had the night we met, only now it bore infinitely more significance as I understood all the pressure constantly pushing Jay around through his life. How could I ever suffer when I was with him and he smiled at me in that way? Everything would be fine. Our summer would end, yes, but winter didn’t have to signal the end of our time together.
Nor did the prospect of bringing him home to meet my family. Jay would meet my father. My father, the most hard-faced man I had ever met in my life, would meet this absolute fairytale prince of a man beside me and I would have to explain away our relationship by lying to my entire family.
“Hold on.”
I returned to Jay’s desk and grabbed the remainder of the cognac. We had family Christmas to discuss indeed.