#oneshot1

Bodies pressed in on him from every side, clapping his back and clutching onto his race suit. Pure adrenaline coarsed through him, his heart still jackhammering with the thrum of the engine. Amongst the throng of people, Jax was vaguely aware of the team principal ruffling his hair, his eyes clapping on his Mum, beaming with pride. His Dad was crying, fat tears of pride spilling down his cheeks, his baby niece propped up on his shoulders. Little Paige, who Jax remembered holding in the delivery room, wearing a bright smile for him, a number four painted in glitter on her cheek. Jax wished he could say it didn’t all pale in comparison to seeing Ash.

Because when Ash hurtled toward him in the crowd, God, his heart clenched in his chest. It felt as though he was moving in slow motion to get to him, the end goal to be eveloped in his arms. Pride beamed out from Ash’s features, eyes glittering from beneath his dark brow. Those full, pretty lips Jax had fantasised about kissing one too many times were pulled into a bright smile. And then suddenly, Ash’s arms were around him, pulling him into a hug so tight the rest of the world fell away.

“I’m so fuckin’ proud of you, Jaxxy.” he breathed, the words hot against Jax’s ear, his honeycoated Boston accent curling around the praise. It made Jax's stomach twist every time.

For just a second, Jax can live in this daydream. That Ash is his, and that he's allowed to want him. That he’s allowed to celebrate his win with the man he loves, in front of his team, at his home race. Breathing in in the slick smell of sweat against Ash’s skin, Jax knocked his Haas cap clean off his head. It fell to the ground, forgotten and probably crushed, as Jax pushed his fingers into Ash’s dark locks.

He forgot himself. In hindsight, he can admit that. When Ash pulled back, bright and blazing and beautiful, Jax moved to press his lips to the other man’s cheek.

Cameras everywhere flashed as Jax missed by half an inch, catching Ash full on the mouth. A closed mouth press of lips that leaves his trainer startled, Ash whipping his head back with wide eyes, no regard for Jax’s hurt feelings as he plastered a scowl on his face. What should’ve been the best day of his life took a sudden, steep drop off the edge of a cliff.

When Jax disentangled from his friend, his Ash, the first thing he saw was Kelly. Her blonde hair had been swept off her shoulders and fastened in a tight top knot, a precaution against the stuffy Melbourne heat. She'd pressed herself against Jax in a bright hug and a flurry of nerves moments before he stepped in the car, looking so proud she might burst. Now, when Jax's eyes met hers, they found her blue eyes brimming with rage and unshed tears. From where she was standing, Jax was sure it looked pretty bad. After all, wasn't he supposed to be her friend?

Sorry, Kelly, he remembered thinking, but I did love him first.

In the the end, Jax found himself on the doorstep to his family home. A week spent in Sydney, crying bitterly in the arms of his Mum. Jax was all too certain that his racing career was over, a sting not even Mila Otto could soothe. This horrible, hyper-masculine sport he loved so fiercely had turned its back on him for the final time. The photo was splashed over every major news outlet, and Jax was called every hateful name under the sun by every sports commentator, journalist and motor sports fan. The few times Jax dared to log into Twitter, there’s a few sweet girls with the Australian flag in their display name who tweet him a string of hearts, a reminder that he is loved and even supported. Each night involves Jax trying and failing to read a few thinkpieces on the importance of queer athletes in male dominated sports, but they just hurt his head.

There was talk about dropping him from Haas. The consolation is a stern telling off for his behaviour and a string of press conferences. Jax sitting shoulder to shoulder with other drivers as he made jokes, denied everything, no homo’d his way through it all.

If you were to ask about Jax Otto's racing season in 2014, most people would tell you about his wins. How he was consistently at pole position, how he finished P1, P2, P3 most races. How the crowd would light up with him, chanting his name as he stepped out of the car, bright, vibrant and alive.

Now, all he was looking forward to for the rest of the day was scribbling in the margins of his copy of Young Mungo and having his heart ripped out of his chest in a controlled environment. Maybe he'd swing by his local bar at the end of his night and get a drink, chat amicably with a handsome stranger in the smoking area. The world was his fucking oyster. He'd always wanted to live in California.

Uncapping his biro between his teeth, Louis clumsily underlined a particularly poignant sentence in his novel. He tucked the pen back behind his ear after doing so, absently thinking that perhaps his hair was getting a little too long. Last time he'd facetimed his Maman she'd despaired at the way it was curling just under his chin, tutting with a small smile on her face.

As Louis found himself thinking fondly of his family, he was suddenly ripped out of his reverie by the sound of his phone ringing. Planting the paperback face down atop his chest, uncaring about the already-cracking spine, Louis fished his phone from the pocket of his jeans, squinting at the string of unknown numbers suddenly lighting up his phone.

As a rule, Louis generally didn’t answer unknown numbers. He did, however, recognise the area code. Lowell, Massachusetts.

A lump as hard as a rock gathered uncomfortably in his throat as he merely stared at the phone, waiting for the number to ring through. Whoever was on the other line, he didn’t want them to know he’d hung up on them. There were only two people in his hometown that knew his number, and they’d both been sworn to secrecy. And Louis had his number blocked.

When the phone mercifully stopped ringing, Louis navigated with shaky hands to his list of contacts, scrolling for only a second or two before he reached the C’s. After Louis had left home, he’d quickly dumped his phone and replaced it with the oldest, still-working model of iPhone. There were few people whose numbers it was important for him to save, now.

Pressing his phone to his ear, it rang for mere moments before the woman on the other end picked up.

“Caro? Did you give Ger my number?” Louis launched into the conversation, not pausing to wait for the chirpy, ‘Lou!’ his big sister usually picked up the phone with. Instead of a response, however, he only heard ragged, shallow breaths on the other end of the phone, the unmistakeable sound of his only sister sniffing.

“Carolina? Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas?” Louis asked, his voice wobbling with concern in his rusty French. He white-knuckled his phone as Carolina’s sobs increased in volume.

“I - I, oh, Lou. I didn’t want you to hear it like this.” she sniffed. 

Louis sat up, his book tumbling into the grass. 

“What’s so important that you needed Gerard to call me? That you or Mom couldn’t?” he asked, his fingers anxiously tugging at the loose threads in his jeans. It wasn’t often in his phone calls with his big sister or his Mom that they brought up his older brother. After the first few attempts, they’d noticed the visible change in Louis’ tone and simply stopped trying.

“It’s Dad, Lou. He’s - oh God, he’s gone.”

Whatever Carolina said next dulled to static sound. It was so goddamn cliche, but everything - the kids running circles around each other, the bible basher he could hear faintly across the way, the busker playing Fix You by Coldplay - was muted as Louis contemplated that his Father was gone.

It was a hard fact to reckon with. Leonard Denver, the man who cheered at his football games, the man he was named for, was lying dead somewhere, in a hospital morgue or a funeral home, Louis wasn't sure. At the same time, Leonard Denver, the man who told him he'd rather Louis never marry at all if he was going to marry a man, who spent most of his childhood calling him a 'priss' as well as some of the more creative slurs, was dead.

Vaguely, Louis was aware of the fact Carolina was still talking. Between choked sobs and muffled words, he thought he made out the word 'home'.

"What's that, Caro? I can't understand you."

"You've got to come home. To Lowell. We have to plan the funeral, we have to - we're gonna have to get you on a flight, hon. Are you working right now? Hold on, Ger's texting me now, he says he'll pay for your flight."

Louis' blood ran cold.

"I ain't coming home. I'm not coming back to Lowell ever again." Louis said, so quietly it was possible Carolina might miss it. When she didn't respond, he thought for a second she had. A tinny scoff could be heard through the speakers of Louis' phone.

"For Chrissakes, he's our Dad. Of course you have to come home. We should all be together right now. All Denvers together. Maman is sick over this, and she's always liked you best, anyway."

Running a hand through his too-long dark locks, Louis winced. Of course Louis loved his sister, but if there was anyone Louis loved irrevocably, without conditions, it was his Maman. Aurelie Denver has always shielded and protected him to the best of her ability, smuggled him tawdry paperbacks and put his poetry up on the refrigerator with pride. It killed him to think of her suffering alone, lamenting the death of the husband she'd loved for over forty years. And yet, if she knew, Louis knew without a doubt she'd tell him to run and ever look back.

"I can't, sis. I'll call Mom, I'll explain everything - but I'm not going to that man's funeral."

Carolina's tears had made way for exasperation.

"He can't hurt you. Didn't you hear, he's dead! He's gone! My Dad is dead, Louis!"

"Yeah, Caro. My Dad is dead, too. My Dad, who hated his strange, queer kid and never came to a single one of my open mics. He never wanted to meet my boyfriend but loved Edie, and Stella, and Joan. Never the one fuckin' person I was serious about. I'm not going. I'm not standing in a room with that man, dead or alive, and I sure as hell don't want to see my dear big brother."

Louis held the phone away from his ear for a mere moment, gathering his courage back up after his little outburst. He realised in that moment he'd been shouting, and that multiple people were now staring at him, screaming down the phone at his grieving sister.

"Jesus, what is it with you and Gerard? What the fuck kind of argument did you guys have that you won't even be in the same room as him? He loves you. He talks about how much he wishes you'd call, all the time. Why are you doing this?"

Louis' pinched the bridge of his nose, his sunny day suddenly turned sour. Times like this he found it hard to reckon with the sneaking suspicion that he was the fuck up, he was the one tearing his family apart because of his inability to stand in the same room as Gerard Denver. No, not Gerard Denver. His abuser. It had taken him so long and years of therapy to even think of the man as such. Louis had tried anything and everything to cope. Drinking, leaving his whole life in New York behind. Just last year, Louis had been on a date with an older man and ended the night in a full-fledged panic attack. He would not undo years of progress just to placate his sister, even if it stopped his Mom's heart from breaking.

"Ask him." Louis spat down the phone, the words bitter-tasting in his mouth. "I'm sorry, I love you and I love Mom, but I fuckin' can't. I'm sorry he's gone, but I'm not gonna stand around and cry and pretend he was a good Dad. Goodbye, Carolina."