Homecoming

*27*

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Justin

We call Dan before we leave … just to give him some time to get his “game face” on.  I mean, this has to be a really horrible time for him - walking away from a place he’d been so happy, experienced so much love.  Knowing it’s all gone now, but still kind of just … wanting, I guess.  Wanting it to come back; wanting it so much that you can’t breathe, and all the time knowing, absolutely knowing, that it can never happen, that you can never have those feelings again.  So you have to leave, because staying is just too hard.  But leaving means leaving all those memories.

I mean, I know you take the memories with you, in your heart, always, but still…

That’s how I’d feel if I were him, anyway.  I know I would.  I know how I felt when I thought I’d completely blown it with Brian.  And I know how I felt when we were back together, and it was so fucking good between us, but it looked like he was going to sell the loft.  It was just an awful feeling, even when I knew Brian and I were okay and we’d be together somewhere; it still meant losing .. something.  Something fundamental to us, as a couple, and as individuals.  The place where we’d been through so much … good things, and bad things.  The place where I learned what it was to be a gay man; the place where I learned to live again after the bashing, and to hope again after Hollywood; the place where Brian battled loneliness and my betrayal and his cancer; and the place where we helped each other through all those things.  The place where we learned to love each other, really love each other, not just romance or lust or any of those things, but real, honest to God, Princess Bride true love. (Brian would kill me if I said that to him, but it’s still true.)  To lose it, to walk away from it … especially alone …

So I know Dan must be feeling all of that but like a thousand times worse.  That’s why I’m glad he’s going to have us with him.  I mean, I’m sure that he’d like to get through all that on his own … like Brian would.  But, just like Brian, he’ll be glad we’re there when it gets to the time.  Even if, like Brian, he’ll probably never admit it.

 

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Brian

The old buzzard’s all ready to go when we get there, and he’s out the door almost as soon as we pull up.  Justin jumps out of the car and runs up the steps to help him with his bags.  Not that he’s got much.  Most of his luggage has already been couriered to New York and will be waiting for him on board the ship.  I tell little Sunshine to just get Dan into the car and take his stuff and put it in the trunk myself.  Justin manages to get the old fossil settled into the front seat, and then climbs into the back, chatting away, asking him where he’d like to go to dinner.

The fuck!  Dan looks like he’s going to puke just at the thought of food, and Sunshine is looking kind of non-plussed at his lack of response.

I start the car and announce my decision.  “We’ll go to the diner,” I say.  “Give our guest a look at how the other half live……”

Dan perks up a little at that.  I’ll bet in all his years in Pittsburgh, he’s never experienced anything like the Liberty Diner.  And something new is probably just what he needs.  No more fucking memories.  Not tonight, anyway.

The shock value alone should help get us all through the next couple of hours.

At the very least, we can watch the show - all the usual soap-drama that goes on there - fucking couples arguing, breaking up, making up and queening out all over the place, and there’s always Kiki and her friends to add to the entertainment.

I guess in a way it’s a pity Deb’s not working tonight; although I have to admit that factored into me suggesting this place.  If I hadn’t been sure that we weren’t going to have her all over us about the custody shit and other things that are none of her fucking business, I would probably have gone anywhere but the diner.  But according to Mikey, Deb’s at home cooking up a storm because she’s convinced that Mel and her grandkid have been on the verge of fucking starvation.  As if!  Mel’s been shacked up with a lawyer, for fuck’s sake.  But come to think of it, I’m not sure that Mikey knows that little tidbit. 

Anyway, for now, Dan is spared the experience of Deb in full flight, out-performing all the other drama queens at the news that her grandkid’s on the way home; but with the place full of the usual crowd, it’s still pretty much like a fucking circus.  Justin and I shepherd Dan to a seat, and he slides in looking around like he’s never seen anything like this place before.  He probably hasn’t.  He might despise the “A-gays”, but you can bet your sweet life that he hasn’t been anywhere as blue collar as this since before I was born.  So I doubt he’s ever seen out and proud working class Pittsburgh in action; back when he might have gone to places like this it would have all been on the downlow, nods and winks and meeting up out back somewhere.  Not anymore.  Now there are couples, trios, a few hustlers having a meal before they hit the streets, a couple of drag queens on their way home from some tea dance, and, of fucking course, Ted and Emmett.

They walk in right after us, and before either of us even gets to sit down, Emmett slides himself in next to Dan and is in full flirt mode before his ass has even warmed up the seat.

What the fuck is it with him and old geezers?

 

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Justin

It’s pretty obvious as soon as we walk in that Deb’s not working.  For one thing, orders are backed up the wazoo, and for another, the people creating the most noise are the customers.

I feel a sense of relief about that.  If she’d been here, she would have been full of JR coming home, and discussing everything about the whole situation with Linds and Mel and the kids at the top of her voice, making sure that the whole of Pittsburgh knows how she feels about it.  Which would be okay, but some of that stuff, like the situation with Brian and Gus … and me … I’m part of it now, legally, even.  So all of that stuff which is our private business … and really intense personal stuff at that, she would have been laying out for the whole of Pittsburgh to know about.

Ted and Emmett arrive just behind us, and we all wind up sitting together.  I guess that’s okay.  Although I was kind of looking forward to having the chance to talk to Dan, get to know him better, hear about what life was like for him, how he met Billy, everything.

But before I can even sit down next to him to shield him a bit from … well, everything … ‘cos I don’t think he’s used to all this … Emmett has already slid in alongside him and is introducing himself.  In fact, he’s seriously all but fluttering his eyelashes at Dan.  What the fuck? 

But Dan gets this look … it’s not exactly a smile, it’s just that his face kind of relaxes the way Brian’s does when someone is amusing him in a good way.  So I figure it’s like Fate or something, and just introduce Dan to them, and let things go from there.

Ted gives Brian a glance when he hears Dan’s name; I guess he recognizes it from the legal stuff on the house.  But he doesn’t say anything.  Just sits next to Emmett, who has squeezed up next to Dan, supposedly to make room for him.  But Dan doesn’t seem to mind, and the good thing about having Emmett here is that there are no awkward silences or anything and Dan doesn’t get any chance to brood.

In fact, we all wind up having a kind of a good time.  Brian sits back the way he always used to when “the guys” got together, not saying much, just making the occasional snarky comment; but his body feels relaxed against mine, so I know he’s okay with just hanging for a while.  He’s kind of sprawled out, with his arm spread along the back of the seat, but his fingers are continually brushing my arm, or my shoulder, or playing with my hair, and the remarks he makes are pungent, but kind of lazy, and not hurtful.

Emmett is full of stories about parties he’s planning or has just done; some of them sound okay, but some sound totally ridiculous.  But the stories make Dan smile, and his comments are so much like Brian’s that it makes me smile too.  In fact, once they come out with just about the same thing at the same time, and that makes me laugh.  Brian’s fingers pull my hair sharply in punishment, but I can feel rather than hear his own laugh, and across the table, Dan chuckles.

Then Dan starts telling us about a party he and Billy went to which was supposed to be a “men in uniform” theme, which they weren’t keen on - he gets this quiet look for a moment and says they’d had more than enough of living the real thing and even in fun didn’t want to step back into that history.  He says they decided it would be more fun to put their own spin on it so they dressed up as Edwardian gents, and added a couple of round hats with stiff little brims and tacked tea towels on the back and said they were running off to join the French Foreign Legion.  He pulls out his wallet, and shows us an old black and white photo of the two of them.

Dan’s younger in the photo, although still a lot older than we are.  But they look … I don’t know.  They’re not all over each other, they’re not even smiling, but there’s a feeling about the photo that tells you they are totally there for each other; that they are so much a part of each other’s lives that it would be unthinkable for either of them to have to doubt that.  There’s something about that image, something about the promise that it represents that Brian and I can have that, can have what they had - a whole life together, that gets me a bit choked up.
 

But Emmett is already talking about how the Foreign Legion thing has given him an idea for a theme for a party that he wants to throw at the Rainbow Room as a kind of “thank you” to his staff and all the people who’ve helped make his business such a success.  He’s all fired up about making it a “Desert” theme - with Arabs and Legionaries, and having the servers all dressed as Harem girls.

“You could go as Lawrence of Arabia”, Dan tells him.  “You’re tall and slender like him.”

Of course, that gets Emmett all flirty again, but Dan seems to be enjoying that in a weird kind of way, and somehow talking about the party leads on to some old movie or something called The Desert Song, and that winds up with Ted and Dan talking about opera for a while.

Brian’s still quiet and relaxed, Dan seems happy, and my fingers are itching for a pencil.

 

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Brian

It’s probably only around nine when I finally call a halt to all this fucking chat, although it feels later.  The old buzzard is becoming more corpse-like by the minute, and I’m afraid if we don’t get him out of here, he’ll croak, and we’ll have a corpse on our hands for real.

So I yawn and stretch and Ted, who’s become much better at getting a clue since he’s been spending so much time working with me every day, immediately starts making noises about needing to be somewhere to meet Blake, and it’s only fucking fifteen minutes instead of an hour before I manage to get us out of there.  Of course before that we have to endure Emmett’s fucking epics ‘goodbye, it’s all so sad that you have to go, let’s keep in touch’ fucking scene; but finally he kisses Dan on both cheeks, eyes me like he’s actually thinking of giving me the same treatment and, when he gets the death-glare, hugs Justin instead.  Then just when I think I’m safe, he manages to somehow get his fucking arms around me, and I have to grab him before he pulls us both off balance.  I feel his lips brush my cheek, and he breathes some bullshit into my ear about what a swell guy I am or some shit. 

Fuck!

I seriously need to work on rebuilding my image.

Anyway, we get Dan to his hotel and although Justin insists on going upstairs with him to make sure that he’s fucking settled (like he’s some kind of retard who’s never stayed in a hotel in his life and might not know where the bathroom is), it’s not all that long before we’re heading home.

On the way home I’m thinking all sorts of nasty thoughts about what I’ll be doing to him once we get there, but when it comes to it, we both just fall asleep.

I make up for it the next morning by waking him up with a rimming that has him begging for it.  So, as it’s clearly my duty to keep my partner satisfied, I give it to him - twice.  And then I blow him in the shower for good measure. I tell Justin to take the Jeep to pick Dan up, and head off to work in a remarkably good mood.

That, of course, lasts about as long as it takes to assess what the latest fuck up is, but that’s alright.  Work shit I can deal with.  Everything else, for once, looks as if it’s going okay.

Of course, as soon as I think that, the fucking idiot I pay to shield me from this shit during the day, puts through a call from Lindsay.  Seems Mel is at the hotel going ballistic, and demanding to see Gus.  Hotel security has taken her down to the manager’s office, but they have also indicated to Lindsay that they expect her to get things sorted.

I tell her to stop moaning to me and call her fucking lawyer, which of course sets her off crying and wailing about how she can’t do that, Mel will never forgive her. 

In other words, she wants me to be the bad guy.

I tell her I’ll get there as soon as I can, and hang up.

Then I call Ms. Hershell and fill her in on the latest. 

She somehow manages to convey over the phone the prissy pursed lip thing that I know she’s doing, and says that she’ll try to rush through a court order that will prevent Melanie coming anywhere near Gus except for the supervised visits we’ve agreed.  She tells me not to confront Melanie myself, to leave it to her; that she’s prepared to go herself to the hotel and read Mel the riot act.  Something in her voice makes me think that she’s looking forward to that, and it’s one piece of girl on girl action I’m fucked if I’m going to miss, so I tell her I think I should make sure Gus is okay and she agrees to meet me there.  Meanwhile, she says she will call the hotel manager and fill him in on the legal situation.

I tell the staff I have something I need to deal with, letting my idiot PA know that I’m pissed that she put the call through, forcing me to deal with all this shit.  That’s not entirely true, in fact as it turns out it’s just as well she did, but she doesn’t need to know that.  On my way down to the car, I call Jenn, hoping like Hell she’s found somewhere they can move to - preferably today.

Guess little Sunshine gets his brains and his talent from her, because she’s already found a place that someone is trying to offload for a short term rental.  They’ve got a temporary transfer out West somewhere, which would leave them paying the mortgage on their place here plus rental in their new city, so they’re looking to lease their house for a few months to cover the mortgage.  It’s fully furnished, and actually not that far from our new place.  There’s a school right across the road, so we can try to get Gus enrolled there as soon as we get all his records and shit from Canada.

Before I can get to the hotel, however, I get a call from my attorney telling me that when she’d called the hotel, they’d let her speak to Melanie and she’d done the lawyer thing on her and told her that if she didn’t back off, we’d petition to remove any access to Gus at all on the grounds that she couldn’t be trusted to keep the agreements that had been made.  Apparently she wasn’t fucking happy, but she at least had enough sense to head off to see her own lawyer and get advice on how she can legally cut off my balls, I guess.  Ms. Hershell informed me that she was still going ahead with the restraining order, because “Ms. Markus seems dangerously overwrought, and a court order will mean that if she becomes violent or abusive, Ms. Peterson or yourself will at least be able to call on the police to enforce it.”

In other words, if Mel shows up spitting and swearing and threatening to hack out my blackened heart with a toothpick, I can call on Pittsburgh’s finest to clear the rubbish from my doorstep.  Sounds reasonable to me.

I tell Ms. H. that I’ve found somewhere for Linds and Gus to live, and she advises me very strongly not to tell anyone else the address.  I hear the sub-text of that - she means Mikey. 

I’d hate to think that he’d give it to Mel, but … he might.  If it looked like it would make things between them go more smoothly over Jenny, he almost certainly would.  Which … it hurts.  It fucking hurts that he’d stab me in the back like that and see nothing wrong with it, but it’s the way things are.  So if I do manage to catch up with Mikey today … I guess I won’t be telling him fucking everything that’s going on.  It’s not like I usually tell him more than I want him to know, anyway.  But before I always could have … if I’d wanted to.  Now … now is different.

Of course, there’s nothing I can do to stop Linds telling everybody and his fucking dog - or bitch.  But that’s Lindsay’s call.

All I can do is get her and Gus packed up and out of there and try to persuade her that, right now at least, it’s not a good idea for her to let Mel know where they’ve moved to.

I suppose that means that the cunt will turn up at the loft once she realizes they’ve bailed from the hotel.

Fuck!

One more thing for Justin and me to be dealing with when we’re supposed to be fucking.

As I’m pulling into the hotel car park, I’m already on the phone to him to let him know what’s going on, and warn him about what’s coming.

Practical lad that he is, he says we should just grab some stuff and come stay at the house for a few days.  We won’t be able to move in permanently till the place has had some work done - we want to open the guest bathroom up from Gus’ room for a start to make it easier for him if he needs to go in the night, and we’ll need to be in the loft on Wednesday for my fucking birthday party, but we can definitely camp out there tonight at least.

I love that the boy’s a fucking genius.
 

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