Work Text:
MATTHEW/JONATHAN
The iron stench of Juan’s weeping chest made Teddy feel nauseous.
The sun was beating down on him, where she hid herself behind a seemingly impregnable layer of clouds. And the rolling, green hills before him were rich and gorgeous but all Teddy could think about is how uncomfortable he felt. Only the wind gave him a sense of false repose.
He dipped his fingers into the leather collar of his jacket, tearing it from his sweat-soaked skin so that the quiet breeze could touch and cool his neck and then seep into him and calm him even further from the inside out.
A hopeless effort, Teddy realised immediately.
Killing had never come easy to him, no matter how quickly Teddy’s finger might pull the trigger. Every bullet, every sin sent him further into damnation, further into darkness, further from what he had been told the Lord above thought he ought to be.
You don’t deserve this, Teddy.
A desperate, quiet, humourless huff left his mouth. What does he know anyways? Except of course everything there was to Teddy.
Still, his eyes were glued to Juan’s face, death had crept over and distorted his features. There was no doubt in his mind that Juan deserved this. But alas Teddy would not have wanted to be his judge and executioner today. If only there had been a way around this mess, if only he hadn’t been a failure.
He could feel the day closing in on him. There was the promise of a plan, a change of heart. Hope too, apparently. A flash of light? But already the agreement had fallen apart.
Juan was dead and Roxana had appeared on forsaken wings, an unexpected angel of death hellbent on taking the one man Teddy was clinging to now. And then, Teddy also dreaded whatever pit of hell his father’s paranoid mind had wandered off to.
Teddy’s wrist stung suddenly.
As though old scars could be torn open anew by thought alone.
At least Matthew Elli- Jonathan Pine, got away.
The sound of that name still felt awfully foreign to Teddy, even if it had only been spoken within the echoing silence of his mind.
Who is he?
Since the day he had caught a glimpse of him groaning and skipping across the tennis court in tight, white shorts; Teddy had been asking himself that very question.
And to Teddy it seemed there was no answer to it now; as though it perpetuated itself with every new information gained. A simple Hong Kong investor, desire, a thief, a deadbeat father, an ex-soldier, a lie, a spy, sin, a British intelligence officer. Matthew and Jonathan; Matthew or Jonathan?
Who is he?
Who is he?
Who is he?
At least Matthew/Jonathan’s safety had been the one true thing Juan had to offer him today, just one piece of hope among lies and accusations and the vile reality that everyone had known his father’s true colours except Eduardo.
At least Matthew/Jonathan was alive. At least God had given him that, delivered by the cursed tongue of a now murdered man.
Teddy kicked at the dusty gravel beneath his boots. He didn’t know what to do now. The fickle plan was set in motion, Matthew/Jonathan would arrive soon and then they would both enter the lion’s den through the throat of the animal itself.
He knew the plan, but he failed to anticipate that plan's outcome.
A car engine roared somewhere behind him and Teddy sighed. At the very least he would now no longer have to be alone in the company of Juan’s corpse.
Teddy turned around to stare at the red car that had appeared behind his jeep. He could just about make out the Englishman behind the windshield, the sight brought him endless comfort he hadn’t known to long for until it had arrived at his feet.
But then comfort turned its face and morphed into the ugly visage of shame. How would he react to Juan’s death? How would the sight of Teddy’s failure upset him and how much of that upset would dig into Teddy and make him bleed with remorse?
As Matthew/Jonathan walked towards him, Teddy dropped his head, avoiding the other man’s gaze with frightened anticipation and just as he rounded the car, just as he stopped in his tracks at the sight of Juan’s bloody, weeping chest, just as Teddy expected to start bleeding himself; Matthew/Jonathan – as he had always done – subverted expectations.
“Help me.” – he said, removing the stain of guilt on his soul and washing Teddy clean instantly; as though it was nothing to the man, as though absolving Teddy was his purpose.
As though he lov-
Teddy shook his head absentmindedly, chasing thoughts away that taunted his troubled mind.
Together they discarded the not yet decomposing mistake that was Juan’s corpse. They threw him off the clifftop like any other piece of roadside rubbish.
He deserves this; Teddy kept telling himself.
Juan deserves this.
But doubt lingered and with Juan gone there was a silence between them now that alerted Teddy. It grew into a sticky mass that made the air around them unbreathable. Teddy could feel his blue eyes on him, could feel them probe and search and he almost bolted when they got too heavy, leaving Matthew/Jonathan behind, rounding the jeep so that he could lean against the hood; out of harm’s his blue eyes way.
But of course, he followed suit. Just as Teddy had wanted him to.
Every small sound of his boots hitting the dry gravel, blew the promise of suspense wide open and then he was next to him and Teddy didn’t look, he just felt his upper arm brush against his own where he now leaned on the hood of the car right next to him.
Matthew/Jonathan was a warm, elusive, terrible entity and the leather collar of his jacket stuck to his sweating neck once more.
“Thank you.” – the entity said and confusion arose, pulling Teddy’s head up with it and he looked at the other man again, right into wet blue eyes and the image was so striking he almost couldn’t bear it.
“What for?” – Teddy asked hesitantly in return; suddenly so awfully frightened of the other man’s inexplicable gratitude.
Teddy hated this. When they were still on their perfectly constructed stage, when the spotlight of their very own theatre was still burning through them both; Teddy had been at ease. It had all felt so natural.
Flirting with him, luring him in, stealing his money, using Roxana as pretty bait for a simple-minded but interesting British banker.
He could wring himself around the other man as though he were a snake sizing up its prey.
He could smile and touch him and push him away and draw him back in and leave him wanting so much more than he’d ever get. He could drug him; he could desire him and grind his crotch on his arse on the dancefloor.
He could even murder him.
Everything about him had been Teddy’s for the taking.
And now? Now he can’t even look at the man without wishing to offer his own throat to him as tribute.
“Warning me about Roxana.”
Matthew/Jonathan’s voice was thick with vulnerability, and his gratitude caught Teddy at a point where he should’ve received it with anger, but he was too raw now, too wounded.
Teddy just felt exposed.
And so, he nodded, tersely but not disapprovingly and Matthew/Jonathan returned to the sticky silence they had been dipping in and out of all this time.
Teddy finally looked away again, eyes fixed on nothing but the blurry, unfocused green that lay before them. Jonathan moved beside him and then he nudged his elbow against Teddy’s carefully to regain his attention.
It worked and Teddy found himself staring at a picture that Matthew/Jonathan was holding out to him.
His father and Andrew Birch.
Another name for another face but the same eyes, always the same eyes. Seeing them together like this, exposed Teddy even further. How stupid had he been, to have been played by everyone around him.
Teddy took the picture from Matthew/Jonathan and removed himself from him again, just two steps of distance between them to make his brain lighter.
Seeing Andrew Birch meant seeing the man who had already killed his father once. And feeling Matthew/Jonathan right beside him made Andrew appear on this very clifftop, too, gun in hand; a trigger that led towards frightening finality.
Teddy didn’t know why but it was the first time he had considered his father’s fate. If the man behind him had taken his father’s life once then, surely, he would not grant him mercy today. Did he want that trigger pulled? And will he ever know the man who is aiming the gun in the first place?
“What is gonna happen to him, when all of this works?”
He knew the answer before Matthew/Jonathan could raise his voice.
“You know what.”
His tone was sincere and Teddy felt there was a safety to it that did not answer all his questions but rather made him believe that a complete answer would not be needed either way.
He knew. It terrified him that knowing did not make him want to push Matthew/Jonathan away now but draw him even closer.
And as if he had heard his mind’s silent wish, he moved, walking up behind Teddy, making the hair stand up at the back of his neck but he stopped before they collided. The space between them filled with a growing electrical charge, one that Teddy had known intimately by now.
“I was there…in the office that night in Cartagena.”
Teddy looked at him, his words had pulled at him. He hoped to not have understood but the shape of those eyes and the pitying frown that sat on his brows all but stole the breath from Teddy’s lungs.
Of course.
“I saw you, when you were alone-”
Of course, he had been there. Of course he had absolved him of his very last secret. His mother, his sister, his lying father, the godforsaken monastery that had been his home, the scars on his arms. Every layer stripped back, every inch of Teddy laid bare before him against his will and Matthew-, no Jonathan, it was Jonathan who twisted the knife.
“-hurting yourself.”
Teddy couldn’t bear it, the sting of the cut reappeared, and his naked body was freezing over under this strange man’s knowing gaze. He turned away from Jonathan, a desperate attempt to regain his composure and maybe even the dignity he had lost on a clifftop just yesterday, breathless and open in the other man’s arms.
“You shouldn’t have seen that.”
He hated how much his voice trembled; how incapable he was at hiding from the man who could peek behind every one of his many walls.
And if Jonathan had given him truth, then truth was the only thing Teddy could offer him in return.
He shouldn’t have and he did.
He saw.
Everything.
And yet there he was, alive and beautiful and horrifying and the most gorgeous thing Teddy had ever laid eyes on.
Why does he care?
The question appeared suddenly, reframing the other one, replacing it with urgency or maybe furthering it. If Teddy knew why he cared, then maybe he could then learn who he was.
“You don’t have to be that person, Teddy. You can disappear into those hills, back to your sister. Be Eduardo Vidal again.”
Jonathan’s voice sounded as though it came from a dream Teddy had once had.
And the huffing left his stern mouth involuntarily, but it was forced out of him. That name, Eduardo Vidal, sounded as foreign on Jonathan’s tongue as it did in Teddy’s own mind. An apparition of confirmation so strange, that it had almost become laughable.
Confirmation that no, Teddy could not be Eduardo Vidal again. He knew those green hills, there was no home there, and the man who could’ve made himself a home in them had never lived. The man who had a sister to come home to never lived.
“No one will ever know. You can be free.”
It wasn’t that he did not want to believe; Teddy craved the content of Jonathan’s words with a hunger that could deplete the earth and the heaven that was above it. But there were blood stains on his hands and in his mind, stains that had drenched his soul with them and he knew he could not face his God and beg him for another life.
His father had made sure of it.
Teddy’s eyes dropped back down to the image of Roper and Andrew/Matthew/Jonathan.
Teddy himself did not believe that he would survive this day. Then why does the man opposite to his father?
“But not with him alive.”
Jonathan was now the one aiming that gun at Roper, not Andrew Birch. There was relief bubbling in Teddy’s throat suddenly and he only recognised it because it tasted like rage.
Teddy’s lips were twisted into a smile, which the rest of his face did not mirror.
“Why do you care?”
His brown eyes were fixed on Jonathan with quiet aggression.
Teddy needed to know. If he was the only one standing in-between Jonathan’s gun and his father’s head, then he needed to know why he should make the effort of getting out of the way.
But Jonathan remained soft under his sharp gaze, and Teddy did not yet know whether that softness would provoke him further into anger.
“About what, Teddy?”
Not just his face but his voice too, overflowing with gentleness, acceptance, solitude. It was unbearable.
He used you, Teddy. Your love and your devotion.
“Me.”
Teddy turned his body towards him, feeling taller than he had done all day, as though he conjured up a version of himself that once had been a threat to those gentle blue eyes and all the inexhaustible morality that lay within them.
“Why do you care about what happens to me?”
You know what I’ve done, you saw what I am – is what Teddy wanted to say but couldn’t.
He took a step forward and Jonathan a smaller step backwards, clearly aiming to release the sudden tension but unable to kill the charge that grew and grew and grew in the space between them.
“You already know I’ll help you, no? Why would you care about me tomorrow, Matthew?”
The provocation found his target, but Joanathan remained quiet.
And so, Teddy took another step towards him and Jonathan another back until he found himself leaning against the hood of Teddy’s jeep again, bracing himself by holding on to it while he endured Teddy’s approach.
“You know why.” - Jonathan finally replied and Teddy stopped dead in his tracks.
“Sí? Do I?”
No, he didn’t. He couldn’t! Matthew/Jonathan would never mean what Teddy feared he had meant.
“You said it yourself at the airport, remember? I know too much, you had every reason to kill Matthew Ellis. Why didn’t you?”
Teddy’s eyes narrowed as he considered his words. He remembered Matthew, the man he had met on a tennis court, who had kissed his cheek after Teddy had saved his life. He looked nothing like the man who stood before him now, but they shared the same scent.
The scent of sin.
And salvation.
Teddy took another step towards Jonathan.
“Why didn’t you kill me, Teddy?”
You know why.
He was so close, then, the charge touched his skin where he did not yet touch Jonathan, but he wanted to. If today was the only day there ever would be in his life, then perhaps he even needed to.
And that very need swallowed him whole.
“Doesn’t matter.” – Teddy shook his head with absolution.
He said it to convince himself most of all.
It doesn’t matter why Teddy didn’t kill Matthew and so it surely doesn’t matter why Jonathan cared about resurrecting Eduardo.
“Of course it matters, Eduardo.” – Jonathan mumbled and then his fingers brushed against Teddy’s, as gently as his eyes had brushed up against Teddy’s rage. Barely there, deniable if need be but too real for Teddy, too present for him to mistake it for anything but the truth.
Eduardo.
Feeling the other man’s skin on his own left his brain in an immediate state of abandoned chaos.
He needed this, he told himself he needed this.
The charge fired and Teddy bridged the final gap.
He grabbed at Jonathan with open palms, watching the other man gasp, blue eyes torn open. Teddy cradled Jonathan’s face as he had done with the cold muzzle of his gun not even a day ago. There was no muzzle now, there was no gun, just Teddy’s fingertips dipping into warm skin, feeling the sharp cheekbones underneath.
Teddy had drawn so close; there was scorching hot breath on his skin and lips, he could see how Jonathan’s pupils expanded, how black swallowed the vastness of blue. He could feel the stubble on his cheeks and he could feel how his jeans-clad thighs and crotch involuntarily rubbed up against his own.
He had seen Matthew this close before and he had been beautiful, yes, but Jonathan?
Jonathan Pine stood atop a pillar; an icon of a saint and Teddy was cradling raw marble in his hands. He had never desired God’s grace as much as he desired this man.
Teddy’s thumb stroked across Jonathan’s jaw until it reached his lips.
They stared at each other for what must’ve been a second that had been stretched and twisted into a lifetime and Teddy’s eyes dropped to where his thumb trailed along the shape of Jonathan’s pretty mouth.
Teddy had dreamed about that mouth before, had touched himself to the thought of Jonathan’s lips wrapped around his cock. And once he had finished, when his hands and clothes had been stained with the white liquor of sin, he had sought penance that never came.
If he’d choose the cowards way now, only his thumb would ever feel the touch of those lips. The horror of that possibility was enough for Teddy to take what he thought he needed.
Teddy pressed his lips to Jonathan’s mouth and came undone.
His thumb was still caught in-between, their lips met around it, until he whined quietly or Jonathan whined, he couldn’t be certain and he pulled his thumb away and then he kissed him again and again and again.
Teddy drank him in, devoured him and Jonathan received him.
He was pliant and willing and devout, his spine arched across the metal hood, his hands digging into Teddy’s waist, inviting Teddy to almost lean, to lay on him until his feet barely touched the gravelled road any longer.
Jonathan felt like satin that had been wrapped around Teddy’s naked skin. Just like Matthew had felt when he had lain in his arms in the pool, a few fateful nights ago.
I need this - he told himself as he opened his mouth and let his tongue touch Jonathan’s shyly.
I need him.
Teddy couldn’t tell how long they had been kissing. He couldn’t tell where the sun sat above the clouds, whether time had moved it, whether days had passed or whether the clocks had stopped working.
But alas what he did know was that this was an echo. Jonathan was a remnant of another lifetime. One that remained untainted by his father, where Teddy’s soul was as pure as any sinner’s. They would share a life there, a bed, a heartbeat. There would be no murder, no violence. There would be no blood but theirs.
The string of fate that tied them together was split but here, for this fraction of a moment, here it was tied, here they were together, as they should’ve been.
And Teddy could see that string becoming two once more very soon.
He could see one of them reaching beyond the sky and the other one he saw as ash.
Teddy bit Jonathan’s lip gently, drawing a moan from his mouth that he swallowed, making him want to roll his eyes back into his skull and then he kissed him again, just one last time.
One more reminiscent touch of their lips, one more window into an alternative life and then he shut the blinds and then he broke the kiss.
Teddy didn’t open his eyes at first, forcing himself to linger in what had transpired. He would need to remember this well, he felt like this is how he would manage to repent, clutching the memory of Jonathan’s lips in his mind like his hands would clutch a rosary at the altar.
This is how he could face his father.
In Jonathan’s truth there had been salvation. In his moral there had been a cause and in his kiss there had been redemption.
Fingers were on his forehead suddenly, sweeping Teddy’s hair back ever so gently and Teddy opened his eyes as Jonathan cupped his face with a soft and kind palm.
There was that look on his face again, the fond smile, the wet eyes. No one had ever looked at Teddy this way before, and he felt comforted by the fact that no one ever would again.
He knew now, as he had known long before Matthew/Jonathan had arrived a while ago, that once he will have aimed his gun at Roper, Teddy will not interfere. Teddy will help Jonathan deliver that bullet and it shall be his final act.
God had made it so.
“We need to go.” – Jonathan said, his commanding tone had returned. It had been a constant companion ever since he had stripped Matthew Ellis’ skin off his bones.
But his face,
his face was still gentle.
And Teddy nodded and then Jonathan’s hand dropped from where he had cradled Teddy’s cheek.
He could feel the string of fate unravelling now.
“Help me tie my hands.” – Jonathan ordered sweetly.
“It’s best if I travel as your prisoner from here on out.” - and Teddy nodded again as he took a step back, leaving the man behind where he was still sprawled all over the hood of Teddy’s jeep.
Teddy saw how his t-shirt had ridden up. Dark hair peaked out above the waistband of Jonathan’s jeans and Teddy averted his gaze.
The charge had disappeared and the hot Colombian air around them had become reality again. Jonathan moved finally, pulling his shirt down as he rounded the jeep.
Teddy wasn’t sad, when he stared at Jonathan’s broad shoulders, watching the man walk away from him. He did not begrudge the day ahead, if anything, there was a gratitude that lay within that numbed his heart.
Maybe it had all suddenly become so simple because deep down Teddy had been dead for a long time. He really wasn’t sure for how long that had been the case, and he could not pinpoint the day his blood must have stopped flowing; but he knew it lay behind him. That he knew with utmost clarity.
What mattered most now was protecting Jonathan.
And so, he did not hesitate tying Jonathan’s wrists behind his back, helping him climb into the trunk of his jeep, putting tape over his mouth to make the performance as authentic as it could be.
He did not grieve how his fingers lingered on Jonathan’s face for a moment before he pulled himself together and let go of him; closing the trunk after they shared a reassured nod of their heads.
He didn’t reject the serene car ride that lay before them. The view of the rolling, green hills of the Colombian jungle soothed his quiet mind.
What Teddy did hate though was beating Jonathan. Once José Cabrera had swallowed their bait as planned, it was on Teddy to protect his skin by bruising it.
He hated that they had not talked about how far they should take this, only that Teddy must commit to the act for as long as Jonathan thought he needed to sell his ruse to José as the truth.
But there had come a point where Teddy had feared to have been lied to, that the man would never speak and that his torture would be unending.
Alas, even this horror passed, Jonathan finally confessed to his lie and once José had deemed the torture enough, once the noise had settled and once Teddy had found an opportunity to carve out just one more sunken bubble of time for the two of them, there was a resolution that hung above them as the moon was hung upon the sky.
What Teddy needed from Jonathan now was bravery. But the blood on Jonathan’s temple frightened him, as he knelt before him.
It was his blood; it was Teddy’s red that bled from Jonathan’s skull.
And the words spilling from his eyes and mouth were a quiet terror.
So, Teddy swatted Jonathan’s hand away, the intimacy too striking for a man who had already accepted that their one kiss will be their last. But then he endured when Jonathan cradled his face with even more resolute intimacy in return.
Teddy listened to his words, allowed them to move through him but did not let them waver what had been set in stone.
“Just have faith.” – Jonathan said to him and Teddy couldn’t bear it. He did not need his faith, he needed Jonathan to have faith in himself, to pull through, to survive and most of all he needed him to stop believing that Teddy could be saved.
How could he be saved, when he had already been set free from his father?
But Teddy didn’t have the heart, he could not break him, he could not be so selfish as to lead a bleeding man into damnation. Not now, not here.
And so, he stared into his wet, blue eyes, into what was his and never would be his and he touched his cheek and caressed it and he held him and he tried to convey what he couldn’t say.
Teddy loved him. Matthew/Jonathan; Matthew or Jonathan or both or neither. It didn’t matter.
He loved him
And he could never tell him, it would be crueller than killing the man.
Though Teddy did have one selfish act to commit, one that he had to take with him, that he could no go without.
“Goodbye, Matthew.”
Teddy had to say goodbye.
Calling him Jonathan would’ve been a commitment to a future they would never have, and Matthew is what they were. A blissful lie that shone true.
Jonathan was not Teddy’s, Matthew was and Matthew/Jonathan was the man who set him free. He was the ferryman who had pulled him from the tides of his rotten father, who had graced his eyes with coins and who has brought him ashore at last.
Jonathan’s fingers weighed heavy where they touched his cheek and Teddy had mirrored his loving act. He wasn’t sure whether he had understood his farewell for what it was and the silence rang loud and for a second there was hesitation.
They were worlds apart but the charge connected them.
Jonathan was bathed in the warm rays of a sun that would set for him tomorrow morning and Teddy was bathed in moonlight.
Jonathan felt the charge too and he craned his neck for a second and Teddy almost gave in; almost did he take what he had promised himself to never take again. But then they both surrendered.
The charge disappeared as their foreheads – not their lips - collided painfully.
“Just have faith.”
Teddy had faith. Faith had given him this gift.
Letting go wasn’t hard, then, tying Jonathan’s wrists again wasn’t hard. Walking away from him wasn’t hard.
And the last time he looked back at Matthew/Jonathan, at the twin of his string of fate, at how they once had been connected, his eyes were covered by Jonathan’s golden coins.
And Teddy, at last, stared at blue eyes and closed his own as he left the man behind.
He was clutching the memory of Jonathan’s kiss in his palms and the absolution of his farewell, and he would use both to drown his father before the ferryman would reach his haven.
The waves were licking at the shoreline; their boat would soon meet land.
Teddy was at peace.