But Brett knew. Brett had seen too much, and his heart broke for John at that moment, as it had before when his mother had walked out of his life, and then, as soon as John was old enough, his father had been gone, too. They had been so young, John’s parents, too young for the responsibility, but that didn’t mean that Brett would ever forgive them.
“Anyway, I’m gonna have to try to find someplace else,” John spoke as if it would be no big deal, though of course, finding a place that he could afford on his pension would be no simple thing, and he would probably have to move someplace even worse than the broken down, crappy building where he already lived. A place where someone had broken the window and the landlord had done nothing so that John had had to board it up himself. There was no point, Brett knew and the landlord doubtless knew, in fixing the glass, when it would soon be broken again.
“I’m sorry,” Brett told him, and he was sincere, but he knew that it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, but he couldn’t think of anything else. Woefully inadequate, and he knew it.
“I was wondering if you’d help me move,” John asked, and Brett knew how much it cost him to ask that question. John was the sort of man who had always done things on his own, and before he had gotten hurt, Brett knew that he wouldn’t have asked at all. If Brett wanted to help, he would pretty much have to show up and just do it.
It was a sign that John, for all his attempts to control it, was still in a lot of pain, and that his injury may have healed enough that he could walk, which had, at one point, been in doubt, but that he was far from fully okay. Just one more sacrifice that John had made, and he never spoke about it, never said a word.
But then, that was John. He would drink the pain away as best he could, in whatever cheap bar he could find, and he would complain about the headache he got the next day, about the women who came through his bed and sometimes stole what little he had. But he wouldn’t complain about the big things.
“Of course I’ll help you,” Brett told him, but that didn’t answer the question about just where Brett would be helping John to move. Finding a place that John could afford was going to be much harder than the actual move itself would be.
But Brett would help, as much as John let him. Just like he always did. Because, like it or not, Brett loved this man, had loved him since before he had even really known what romantic love was.
He would always help, as much as he possibly could.
