Photographs

On Christmas Eve, Pedro went looking for Danny and found him crouched in the corner of the bed where it was shoved against two walls. His knees pressed against his chest and he held a glass of whiskey in his hand. The bottle of Jack Daniels rested against a pillow beside him. Danny hadn't even bothered to place it on the nightstand. It didn't take Pedro's intelligence to figure out that Danny was drunk.

"Hey, man, want to go to

nochebuena

with my family and then midnight mass? We'll have a good dinner after." Pedro tried, knowing it would probably be futile. "You can meet my family. My cousin Margarita is really hot, and she wants to meet you." Pedro wondered if he really wanted to expose sweet Margarita to Danny when he was depressed and drunk, but he knew, deep down, that he was a good person. Troubled, sure, but he didn't seem the type to be a lifelong drunk. Danny was just going through a rough patch over his breakup with whatever whore had done this to him. That's what Pedro still told himself, but he was beginning to wonder.

"I don't think I'm in a state to meet your family right now," Danny said, echoing Pedro's thoughts.

Pedro picked up the bottle. It was half full, but he didn't know when Danny had purchased it. "Then quit drinking, get some sleep, and head home in the morning. If you left early enough, you could be there by noon. It's Christmas, man. You need your family."

Danny only wrapped his arms tighter around his knees and pressed his head into them. "She made me leave. I'm not going to go crawling back."

"What if she asked you to?"

Danny raised his head, looking off into nowhere. "Depends."

Pedro reached for the photograph that still lay face down on the nightstand. "Can I?" he asked.

His roommate stared at it for a moment. "Sure," he said with resignation. "Go ahead."

Picking it up with careful fingers, as if it were as precious to him as it obviously was to Danny, Pedro turned over the photograph to find one of the prettiest women he had ever seen. "Wow," he said. She was leaning on some kind of counter, her chin on her fist, a genuine smile on her face that expressed happiness and love. "When was this taken? She looks like she's not much older than you."

"A couple years ago. I took it myself."

"How old is she now?"

"Thirty-eight."

Pedro did mental math. "So...she was sixteen when you were born?" She didn't look like the type of woman to have a teen pregnancy, used up and cheap. Instead she seemed intelligent, like she had her shit together.

"When she was fifteen, she was raped," Danny explained.

"Ah." He stared at the photo a moment longer. She really was beautiful. "Danny, what the hell did you do to make her kick you out? You're a good guy, and I know you didn't drink this much before you came here."

Later, Pedro would reflect that Danny had probably been drunker than he seemed, because he answered, "I slept with her."

Pedro froze, then sank to the bed, the bottle still in one hand and the photo in the other. "How many times?"

"For over four years."

He stared down at the photo in his hands, trying to imagine it. "She doesn't look like the type of woman who would sleep with her son."

"She wasn't. It took me four months to seduce her."

"Shit, no wonder you drink. Man, that is fucked up." Pedro didn't know what to think of this. He had an uncle that got too friendly with the teenage girls and had to be watched whenever he visited, but somehow he suspected this was different. "You were over eighteen?"

"Yeah."

"And she never came on to you?"

"No."

"But then she let it go on for over four years?"

"We were happy," Danny said, his voice heated. "Really happy, and that's something she didn't have since the day she was raped. My dad was a sociopath. Their marriage was totally fucked up. He blackmailed her into marrying him, liked to beat her during sex, and she had no way to leave. I made her happy. We were happy," he repeated.

He looked over at his roommate. Danny was finally looking back at him. Pitiless, Pedro said, "You know you're going to hell."

"Good thing I don't believe in it."

"Why'd she kick you out? Didn't you say you could go to UCLA med?"

"She did it 'for my own good'," he said sarcastically. "'I need to have the chance to have a normal life and a family of my own'."

"She's right."

"You don't know anything about it."

Pedro stood. "Why don't you come to mass, man. You can still make confession, and if anybody needs to confess, it's you."

"No thanks."

Pedro placed the photograph back where it had been, lying face down. When he put the bottle beside it, he noticed a pale, oval pill lying on the nightstand. "You haven't taken any Xanax tonight?"

"I'm fine."

Pedro wanted to open the nightstand drawer to see if he could find the bottle and remove it, but Danny chose that moment to actually pay attention to what was going on around him. He hoped -- prayed in a short, silent prayer -- that there wasn't more, and surreptitiously palmed the pill as he drew his hand away.

"We're having dinner after mass. I was gonna sleep at the house of

mi tía

, but I think I'll come home. See you in a few hours."

"Have fun."

"Go to sleep,

hombre

. Don't drink anymore."

Danny took a sip and raised his glass to his friend. "Sure thing,

hombre

."

#####

Margarita pouted a little when she found that the "handsome med student" wouldn't be attending their

nochebuena

. Danny was smart and headed for a lucrative career, which made his absence disappointing for his aunt, as well. His uncle just grunted and poured Pedro a glass of wine that he had little intention of drinking. Seeing Danny as he was had spoiled his appetite for alcohol.

Margarita grabbed his upper arm. "You said you would bring him." Then the younger cousins crowded around and rescued him from her.

The

nochebuena

celebration was cheerful and noisy, colored lights twinkled everywhere and the house smelled delicious, but Pedro found it difficult to relax and enjoy himself. Every few minutes he would see someone with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer, and think of Danny, hurt and lonely and drinking alone. He also could not stop himself from fingering the Xanax pill in his pocket, his worry increasing every hour.

Three hours after leaving Danny, Pedro said goodbye to his aunt and uncle and his cousins, much to their dismay. He had refrained from drinking, thinking of the hour-long drive back to his apartment.

"You will miss mass," his aunt complained.

"I'll try to go in Sunnyvale," he said. "Maybe get Danny to attended."

It was still early, just ten o'clock, when he returned to the apartment. A light shone from Danny's room, and he called out to him the moment he entered. An ominous silence greeted him, no movement. He hurried to the doorway. Danny lay on his back, apparently sleeping. Pedro scanned the room, taking in the glass that had slipped to spill whiskey beside him on the bed, the bottle now only a quarter full. What really caught his attention was the bottle of Xanax on the nightstand. Alarmed, Pedro went to it. The bottle lay on its side, a small number of pills spilled over the surface. There weren't many remaining, but there was no way of knowing if Danny took only one from a mostly empty bottle, or had tried to overdose with a handful. Turning to the bed, he lifted Danny's wrist and found a faint, slow pulse. His breaths came not nearly fast enough.

"Damn!" Pedro swore as he reached for his cell phone to call 911. "Damn damn damn!" He kept the line open with the emergency services, so he could remain by Danny's side until the last moment before he had to let the paramedics in. They soon arrived, worked efficiently, and quickly bundled Danny onto a stretcher and rolled him to a waiting ambulance. After asking where they were taking him, Pedro returned to search Danny's room. He had a phone number to find. He was going to call Danny's mother.

#####

Danny woke to a raging headache, fire in his throat, and no knowledge of where he was or how he got there. He wiped a crust from his bleary eyes and looked around.

"Mr. MacAwley?" a woman's voice said. A gentle hand settled on his shoulder. "Mr. MacAwley?"

He concentrated and a woman came into focus, standing by the bed he was lying in.

"Where am I?" he rasped through his burning throat.

"Hospital." A tray on wheels was at the bedside, holding a pink plastic pitcher and matching cups. The nurse poured a cup of water, placed a straw in it, and held it to his lips. She wore fuchsia scrubs, incongruously bright in the dim room. With his aching eyes and head, the color disoriented him, swimming in and out of focus.

The water helped his throat enough for him to ask, "What happened?"

"You tried to commit suicide," she said with a touch of asperity.

He frowned. "I did?"

"That's what it looks like. Xanax and alcohol. We had to pump your stomach. That's why your throat hurts so bad."

"I don't think I meant to."

He barely whispered, but she seemed to hear him as she 'hmmphed'.

"When can I go home?"

"That's for the doctor to decide." Her expression softened, and she helped him drink some more water to swallow a pain killer. "You could get out a little sooner if we had someone to take custody of you. Do you have family we could call?"

Did he have family? Uncle Mike? Uncle Sean? How could he ever explain to them what brought him down this road?

Mom. He wanted his mother so badly right then he could forgive her for anything. Whatever opinions she held, this trumped them. "Mom. I want my mom."

"I'm here."

In the dim room, her figure was just a silhouette against the lighted doorway. Then she stepped forward and his heart turned over.

"Christie."

"Could we be alone?" his mother asked.

"Certainly."

Christie remained where she stood by the door, watching as the nurse left and then closing the door behind her. First dropping her purse in a chair, she came to stand by the bed, her hands at her sides. She watched him but didn't speak, a lovely shadow at his side.

"Christie?" He ached to reach out to her, but she stood out of reach. She didn't move forward or speak, and he realized that tears were rolling down her cheeks. "Christie?" he repeated.

"Did you try to kill yourself?" He hands flexed a little. "Did you?"

"No. Of course not. It was an accident."

"You're a med student, Danny. You had to have known what taking Xanax would do with that much alcohol." Her tone was light but held an unforgiving note that made him hurt even more than he already did.

"I really don't remember, I don't. I don't remember actually trying to take too much."

She stared at the floor for a moment, then looked back at his face. "While I was waiting for my flight, I had a long talk with Pedro. It's seems you've been trying to kill yourself for a long time."

"Fucking traitor," he muttered. The pain-killer started working and the throbbing in his head abated. "Do you blame me? Do you?"

She stepped forward into the light. It shocked him to see how thin she was. The hollows of her cheeks had deepened, her blouse hung loosely at her stomach. His mother had lost at least fifteen pounds she didn't need to lose. He wondered if their separation had been as hard on her as it had on him.

She wrapped her hands around the rail at the edge of the bed. She looked tired, and more defeated than he had ever seen her, even in the worst of her marriage. "I don't blame you, Danny. I blame me."

Danny knew that all through her marriage, adversity had made her strong. She would take a beating that would break many women and come out the other side more determined than ever to save herself. She fought for him, she fought for her family, clients, friends, and she fought for herself. But today... never had she seemed so lost to him. He raised his hand to cover hers. She quickly gripped it painfully tight.

"All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. And because I had been so miserable for so long, I thought that what would make you happy was the things I never had for myself. A happy marriage to someone who loved you desperately, a house that was a real home not just a building to live in, the freedom to have as many children of your own as your heart desired."

"Mom, I never wanted the fucking picket fence," he said. His words were harsh, but his tone was more exasperation. "With you I was more than happy. I was content."

"I know that now." The tears started falling harder, her voice breaking. "We have a love that I just failed to understand. It was enough for you, and me. For both of us, and I nearly destroyed us both because of my idiocy."

He reached up to put his arms around her. She leaned forward, sobbing softly now, to rest her forehead against his. Slowly, her arms edged under his torso to encircle him. She whispered, "

Please come home

."

Something unclenched in his chest and a weight slid off of him that he hadn't realized he was carrying. He smiled and for a moment he reveled in it, a strange sensation of lightness. He realized he hadn't smiled for a very long time. Still, she had hurt him too badly for complete trust.

"For how long?" he asked.

She pressed her lips against his, salty and wet with tears, for a quick, fierce kiss. "Forever."

He pulled her to him, tighter, closer, and said, "I'd like to see you try and stop me."

######

It took until the next morning for the doctor to release Danny into Christie's custody. Physically, he was recovered, but alcohol called to him. Christie wondered how far he had fallen into alcoholism, but Danny seemed determined to fight it.

"I'm with you again," he told her as they drove away from the hospital, having already admitted the need for a drink. "I want to enjoy that sober."

She reached out and patted his knee and squeezed his hand before turning her attention back to traffic. "I packed some things at your place," she said. "I'd rather not camp out at your apartment, and I thought you would want to be with me."

"Hotel?"

"Yes. For today, at least. We'll make plans later."

"Sounds good."

She had already searched for a hotel and made reservations on her phone, so the trip was short and full of anticipation for both of them. They had kissed a little in the hospital, but Danny hadn't felt fully recovered until just before his release and neither wanted to risk discovery. Both of them exchanged small smiles as she retrieved the key for a two-room suite they only intended to use half of. No embarrassment or shame. This would be their life now, and both were willing to embrace it.

The moment the door closed behind them, a "do not disturb" sign hung on the knob, the bags were dropped carelessly to the floor, and Danny pushed Christie against the wall. His hands were everywhere, wanting to feel her again. He yanked at the zipper of her jeans and pushed them roughly down off her hips. She detached her lips from his only long enough to shimmy out of them, kicking them away from her feet.

"Bed," she said when he took a breath. "Bed would be good." But her legs wrapped around his hips and he had her pinned to the wall.

Danny responded by lowering his jeans to free his cock and then thrusting it into her. He growled low in his throat and pistoned his cock into and out of her fast. Frantic. He had to claim her before she was gone again, no matter what promises she made.

"Promise me," he growled.

"I promise," she said.

"Forever."

"Forever."

He didn't want to hold back; he didn't even try. He came quickly and climaxed with a soft cry. Christie kept her legs wrapped around him, breathed hard, and relished the feel of his weight pressing against her, but Danny seemed to be struggling, his breathing far to ragged for such a young man, sweat on his brow. He had ruined his health. She lowered her legs and took his hand. "Come on," she said, leading him to the nearest bed. Cum dripped between her thighs. There was so much of it, as if he had been saving up. She helped him remove his clothing and removed the rest of her own, then had him wait while she cleaned up.

She returned to find him smiling at her, curled up on the bed like a smug, lazy cat. He started to stiffen again while she wiped the cum from his cock with a warm wet wash cloth. He reached for her, but she said, "Not yet. There is something I would like to talk about."

She sat cross-legged at his side, giving him a lovely view of her pussy, which he couldn't resist trying to fondle. "Not yet," she said again with a smile, pushing his hand away.

"What?"

She took a deep breath. "I would like you to stay at Stanford."

"Christie, no!" He turned his body away from hers and threw a forearm over his eyes. "No! You promised!" He shouted loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

"Would you listen? I'm not done. I want to move here with you."

The arm lowered a fraction. "You do?"

"I've thought about this a lot, for a long time. What we would have to do if we could stay together forever." She smiled. "I always dreamed of it, even if I never thought we should."

This time when he reached for her, she didn't resist, coming to lie alongside him.

"Most of the family is in LA," she said. "They are in and out of our home, and we would be under a lot of scrutiny. I think we should use this as an opportunity. Say that I want you to stay in school, but you need me near you. We'll rent a house. Be together."

"Houses are even more expensive up here than down there." He wondered why he was arguing, but he wanted to be certain she wouldn't back away when she saw the obstacles they faced. She had hurt him.

"Steve left me loaded."

"You would have to close your practice."

She agreed. "That and selling the house will keep me in LA for a few months. Can you handle that?"

"You would return every weekend," he said sternly.

"I'll try to stay even longer than that."

"Christie." He sighed. "I never wanted to be like Steve. I don't want to be obsessed with you or try to own you, but I want you to know that I won't go easily ever again."

"Honey, you're the one who has to worry. If you ever leave me, I will stalk you. You'll bring dates home and find me hiding in your bathtub."

"Would you have a camera?" he asked.

"Nope. Two dozen chocolate chip cookies."

"You're not my mother anymore," he said, but he laughed. Whatever she was, she was his, and that was all that had ever mattered.

The End

AUTHOR'S NOTE: First of all, thank you for sticking with this to the end. Truthfully, I was unsure of the reception this story would get. Everything I write is, at heart, a romance, and this story is no different. At a stretch, it could be called romantic erotica, but it is by no means the pure porn that predominates on this site. Hence the warning at the beginning of each chapter. I suppose it weeded out the people who were expecting tons of sex, because I've had no complaints on that score. I posted Photographs here because the incest theme made it impossible to post on any other forum.

I've had enough comments about why Danny doesn't man-up and defend his mom that I wanted to talk about him a little. Danny is the sweetest, gentlest character I've ever created. He isn't even capable of putting a dying bird out of its misery. I included the birds to drive this point home. He might fantasize about killing Steve, he might want to, but there is no way he could ever go through with it. I knew Steve had to die, if not just for karma but because he knew too many secrets, but his death was one of the last things I wrote. I simply could not figure out who would do it. The closest I came with Danny was his trying to kill Steve but backing out. (It finally came to me that, duh, Christie had to do it. She was the victim. It was her right.)