[cw: self harm]
“...You ever fuck Lori on a piano?”
It escaped Julian’s mouth before he could think the better of it.
He wasn’t surprised when he heard Greg sigh heavily. “She doesn’t dig everything you do, but why even go there, man? --You just DO this kind of shit, now! Can’t just have a good time, can’t have a normal fuckin’ relationship with anybody, always have to stir shit up. What, are you just bored?”
Jules winced at the accusation. “Just-- forget about it, Greg. It was stupid, okay? I get it. It was stupid, I’m stupid, I get it.”, The words rushed out of his mouth.
Greg sighed again. He had no idea what to do when Jules was like this, and he was like this increasingly often. Hostile, but brittle: the awful inverse of the flirtateous, but shy of the early days.
The hostility made Greg want to pull away, the fragility made him worried, concerned, but also frustrated in a different sense. Like, the guy could dish it, but he couldn’t take it? And that wasn’t the only way he slid back and forth between the lines of some sort of plausible deniability. Jules seemed to disallow himself from getting truly upset around anyone (never mind expressing what truly bothered him to begin with), and as a consequence, that upset simply festered and rotted behind an increasingly tight smile. He would sometimes be instantly apologetic for whatever shockingly cutting thing he said that day, but it never translated to any sort of change. Things were fine, then they were “fine”, then they were “FINE.”. Greg wasn’t an angry person, and he wondered, at times, if Jules was intentionally trying to figure out what his exact limit was. He hated how plausible that sounded.
He hated how impossible it was to know how he felt about Jules just generally, how Jules made it so impossible to know. There were sides of him Greg still truly liked. That feistiness of his could be turned in positive directions; he really did admire how much Jules stood up for that assistant engineer their prick of a producer constantly mistreated, without asking for or expecting anything in return. Even in worse moods he could be very creative. He could be almost as mischievous as Nate in the right mood, and his own type of audacious. It was obvious he got the nose ring (a little gold hoop in the right nostril) just to piss Walt off-- and that was stupid, but Greg had to admit, it really did suit him.
Once Greg started dating Lori, though, sex with Jules would still be as amazing as usual-- and he seemed less and less concerned with some tour-home demarcation-- but the aftermath of that sex was increasingly uncomfortable. Sometimes Jules would roll off the bed immediately or practically shove Greg away, begin hastily yet methodically washing up without a word. Other times, like the most recent time, he’d poke at something obviously uncomfortable without fully committing to it. His passive aggression spread to further and further areas of their work, was starting to enter their friendship, and now only truly stopped short of the immediacies of the bedroom. Jules said himself once that he thought monogamy was “SO antiquated”-- then again, maybe that was also why he just let it all stew inside of him. Saying things was a lot easier than believing them.
Either way, whenever Jules leaned and nuzzled his cheek into his neck, looked up into his eyes with a mixture of apologetic sweetness and quietly intense wanting, Greg would cave every goddamn time. Jules always made the sex itself incredible, and he was still that same addictive, strange beautiful as ever. It was extremely different from what he was starting to have with Lori. What he had with her wasn't nearly so intense, but somehow, he didn't find himself missing that intensity nearly as much as he expected he would. It wasn't intense, but it was consistent. It was honest. He could TALK to Lori. He could talk to her and she didn’t try to find things to get snappy about, or take the wrong way, or use as ammo later. He could relax around her. Jules didn’t know how to relax.
But in the heat of the moment-- with Jules leaned back on his practice room piano, arms reclined across it, shirt rolled up over his stomach, legs spread, jeans undone, smiling up at him, biting his lip, telling him with a little laugh how long he’d dreamed of Greg fucking him as hard as he could against it-- there was barely any thought before Greg’s face was in Jules’s ass; and then, eventually, just as little thought before pressing the side of Jules’s head lightly down against the piano while he fucked him as hard and deep as Jules begged for. "Every position you can fucking THINK of, Greg, across every square inch of this piano we can REACH", Jules had moaned out weakly, nearly in a whimper, and there was no reason whatsoever for Greg to not oblige. They fucked, and Jules scraped and dug his nails desperately across his back and shoulders, Greg more and more lost in it, more and more enveloped in it the way he'd always end up, the way Jules just always knew how to do, somehow--
And Jules came loud and hard, and Greg came inside (a condom inside) him, and Greg rolled off him, they leaned next to each other panting, in apparent bliss, until Jules dropped that damn “question”.
Why the hell did he even bother? The longer he was with Lori, the uglier Jules got with him, and the longer things went on without Jules even being interested in getting to know her on even a cordial level ("That's none of my business, really, is it?", Jules would say flatly), the more he found himself asking that question. --Of course, if he told that to Jules, things would probably explode immediately. How long would they burn for on their own? Who would be the first one to light the match this time? They both had to work with each other, too-- it wasn’t just about personal feelings. Greg had to make sure things didn’t explode in ways Walt would have to clean up later.
So, Jules wanted to drop what he brought up to begin with? Again? Fine. It had to be fine. So it was.
“Okay, Jules.”
Greg got up off of the piano first, started to walk away. Jules quickly pushed off after him. “I said I was stupid, okay?? I KNOW I fucked up. Y-y-you can just forget about it. --We can forget about it. You know? It’s fine—”
“—I know.”, Greg interrupted loudly, at first, but mostly calmly, “That’s why I’m dropping it and washing up.”
Jules sighed, rolled his eyes in a huff, and stormed ahead of him. “I’D rather wash up first, actually.”, He snapped as he went by, “—If that’s okay with you.”, He added, almost reflexively, with a small, panicked little laugh.
Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.
The word rang in Jules’s skull no matter how deeply he dug his nails into the skin of his back in Greg’s bathtub.
Stupid fucking faggot whore.
The water was as hot as it could go, and as nice as Greg’s house was, his fucking water heater was clearly an old piece of garbage. At least in his mother’s house, he could REALLY make the scrapes sting. Here, he felt as disgusting as always, but apparently there was no adequate release available. He really did have to get the hell out of here. He had to dry off get dressed know the quickest route out of Greg’s house to his car back to his apartment. There was a chance he’d feel at least clean-ER there. And if he didn’t, at least no one would have to see him the way he truly was, the way nothing could really scrub off.
He knew Greg saw it. Why else would he have dumped him so easily? Good for sex, that’s it. He should’ve been used to it by now. He kept trying to be satisfied with it. It was clearly just his lot in life. --It made him feel sick anyway. And then angry. And then the anger just made him feel even more sick.
Jules executed his exit plan to a tee. Greg let him leave, which made it easy. Part of him was relieved, part of him hated Greg for not putting up even the facade of a fight. That’s right, the rentboy’s leaving, you and Lori have the house and your happy little lives to yourselves now, the COMPLICATION is out the door again. Jules took out the argumentative frustrations he was anticipating on his car instead. Slammed his door behind him, reversed with an impulsive swerve out of the driveway, sped off with as much of a “fuck you” flourish as he could muster without getting into an accident.
He didn’t know why the fuck he EVER bothered.
Neither of them knew what to do about each other anymore-- or, perhaps more accurately, neither of them knew what to do with Julian. It was as though he’d locked himself in a hell of his own making. Maybe there was no extricating people from that. At least, not until they were ready. And who the hell knew when Jules would be ready?
Maybe if they met when Greg was younger, less experienced, less road weary-- maybe then he’d have the energy to want to put up with him, to want to really set the time aside to figure him out. But none of those things were true, and Lori was there, and a day with Lori made him happier and a day with Julian left him feeling so bizarrely exhausted he needed a shot of whiskey just to unwind from it.
Jules would have to figure it the fuck out himself-- or, someone else, someone a lot more patient or a lot more stupid, would have to figure him out. It couldn't be Greg’s job, anymore.