Homebird

by Amy Lane

  “Don’t feel bad for me.” God, after all they’d just shared. Anything but pity. “My foster parents were… well, the greatest. See, they put in to be foster parents when they thought they couldn’t get pregnant, and about a week before I showed up on their doorstep, they found out my foster mother was pregnant with Millie. And… you know. They didn’t send me back or make me feel bad. They just moved to a bigger house and said, ‘We hope you don’t mind a little sister.’ And… and that was it. They adopted me and loved me and took me to T-ball, which I was horrible at, and proofread my papers and celebrated my birthday. I mean, Millie was the baby, and she was a girl and she was sweet—but I was… I was loved. So it was okay.”

  His eyes burned. Maybe it was because he was tired—the time change, the long day, the things they’d just been doing—but he didn’t think so.

  It had been a long time since he’d been emotionally raw, but he recognized the symptoms.

  “Was?” Luka asked quietly.

  “They died in a car wreck when I was in college. I had a boyfriend at the time, and he tried to be supportive….”

  “But you were both very young, and it wasn’t meant to be forever.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Mm… so you came home from university?” Luka’s perceptiveness would be the death of them both.

  “Yeah. My sister needed me for her last few years of school. I finished college in Sacramento and got a job at Klosky Accounting, and she went away to Portland and moved back. I just… you know. They bought the house for us as a family. I… I couldn’t let it go.”

  “Mm….” Luka’s restless hand paused in Crispin’s hair. “See, my parents—they liked to travel. They took me with them, temples, museums, national monuments. I felt like I had two educations, yes? One in school and one on the road. I even read different books.”

  “That’s… that’s amazing.” But Crispin could hear a note of loneliness in his voice.

  “And we found the house in New Zealand, and it was small and charming. We’d lived there for five or so years, and they would take me with them for some of their adventures, and leave me home for others. The last time, they left me there for two days, yes? I had school, and they wanted to go see a bird migration nearby. And then they never came home. I was of age—there was money. But while I finished school in that house, I kept imagining my parents’ souls, migrating overhead like the birds. They were urging me out into the world, away from that house. Every fall I am in Germany, geese, herons, swallows—they all migrate overhead, and I dream of my parents.” Luka took one of those breaths that said a man was not okay. “They’re always in that house.”

  “I love my house,” Crispin told him, not knowing if it would make it better or worse.

  “Tell me about it.”

  While Crispin was talking, the cat leapt onto the bed, and Crispin would forever remember falling asleep, his head on Luka’s chest, his hand buried in Ludwig’s fur, as he talked about the floors and the garden outside, and about the tree he could see from his window and the family of birds that made its home there every year.

  Sometime near dawn he woke up to Luka spooning him from behind and the dreamy invasion of Luka’s cock in his stretched entrance. They enjoyed a small climax, and he fell back asleep, content in his bones.

  THREE HOURS after that, he awoke to his phone ringing madly while somebody pounded at the front door.

  “Oh my God,” he muttered, flopping gracelessly out of bed to fetch his phone and his glasses from the living room. He was naked, and someone was pounding on the door and—he checked his phone.

  Crispin, answer the door or we’re calling the police!

  Oh hell.

  “Luka!” he cried, gathering his clothes to him. “They’re right outside and I smell like sex and—oh my God I have to shower and—”

  Luka sat up in bed and chuckled sleepily. “Why not just put your underwear on and—”

  “I can’t,” Crispin told him, panicked. “I… I smell like sex. Oh my God—please, go answer the door. I’ll take a quick shower and we’ll be out of your hair—”

  “For the day,” Luka corrected, not looking quite so sleepy. “You’ll be coming back here tonight?”

  For a moment the world slowed to the speed of Crispin’s shy smile. “Of course,” he said, his voice throaty and rough and even sexy. “I… I wouldn’t turn that down for the world.”

  “Good. Then go jump in the shower and I’ll try not to flash all your friends, okay?”

  “Thank you!” And with that Crispin dashed into the bathroom and jumped into a cold shower, borrowing a wash cloth and the bar of soap there to try to scrub off the night before.

  There was a travel toothbrush on the side of the sink, and Crispin used that, hoping it was Luka’s and not some random person who didn’t know he was even in their home. He emerged eight minutes after he’d gone in, hair sopping, underwear clinging wetly to his legs under his jeans, and tried to look casual.

  His friends were gathered in the living room, watching Luka make coffee at the kitchenette counter, and the look they turned toward him was unamused.

  “You couldn’t set an alarm?” Link said, every inch the stern big brother.

  “I thought we were meeting at the train station,” Crispin said, floundering.

  “Yeah, but we thought we’d leave a little early, and Cam texted you and got nothing, and then we all texted you, and then we thought you might have been chopped up and eaten as barbecue, so forgive us, we got worried.”

  “No worries.” He said it, feeling wretched, and then, almost like magic, some of the dignity and grace of the night before seeped into his posture. He strode past them to the kitchen and into Luka’s space. Luka smiled back, as smug as the cat had been the night before.

  “I will see all my boys tonight, then?” he asked, rubbing noses with Crispin.

  “Yes,” Crispin said, not caring if he was being presumptuous. Anything—he’d do anything for another night, another moment, with Luka.

  “Good.” A brief kiss, a taste, and Crispin was being hustled away by the gang.

  “Later!” he called as Cam thrust his phone into his hand and Link shoved his wallet in his back pocket.

  “Tonight! Bye, boys—good to see you!”

  And then Nick closed the door and they clattered away, Crispin in their midst.

  They didn’t stop for eight blocks, when they got to the train station, and Crispin was panting with exertion and a little dizzy from no breakfast. “The… fuck….”

  “Breakfast,” Link told him, because duh! “There’s a breakfast place on the way to the castle—it’s supposed to be phenomenal. All traditional German food—it’s amazing.”

  “Breakfast.”

  The train came to a stop, and they waited for commuters to disembark before getting on.

  “Breakfast,” Crispin reiterated once they were settled. “I have my first date for a decade and you have to get breakfast!”

  “Are you okay?” Cam asked, voice hard. “Are you dead? Have you joined a death metal cult? We let our very shy friend wander into the night with a stranger, and these are things we would very much like to know before you go wandering back out tonight.”

  Crispin scrubbed his face tiredly and stifled a yawn. “I could use another hour of sleep,” he told them with candor. “And breakfast sounds good, I won’t lie. And….” He shifted in his seat, aware that maybe that thing they’d done around dawn had perhaps been a bit of overkill. “I may need some time in the bathroom,” he said with as much composure as he could muster. “But otherwise, I’m fine.”

  They were all regarding him intently, and he was reminded in a hard and beautiful way that for the last six years, these guys—these friends—had been his home as much as his house had been.

  “It was a really nice night,” he said simply. “Thanks, guys, for, you know, saying it was okay that I left.”

  Cam broke the uneasy quiet first. “Thanks for not getting
dead,” he said, yawning. “And seriously, Link, he wouldn’t have been any less dead if we’d maybe spent an extra hour in bed!”

  Link yawned too and checked his phone. “See what I’m doing here, Crispin? I’m setting an alarm. We should get there in forty-five minutes, so I’m waking up in forty. Isn’t that interesting, how using this little computer in my hand can save us so much worry.”

  Crispin would have rolled his eyes, but Ray was slouched next to him, already snoring softly, and Crispin leaned his head on top of Ray’s instead. “Yeah. Phone. Magic. Wake us up when we’re there.”

  Cam leaned against Crispin, and Nick leaned on Link. Forty minutes on the train was a godsend—none of them were going to pass up the opportunity for sleep.

  Vaulted Ceilings, Vaulted Dreams

  PER USUAL, Link’s taste in restaurants was superb—which meant they were all full of potatoes and breakfast schnitzel and even sleepier by the time they got to the castle.

  The castle itself was amazing—the Marble Hall alone was designed to awe and humble. Crispin read facts about the place as they wandered the open rooms.

  “Did you know the ruler of Bavaria still lives here? And he’s got a claim through the—” He flipped the pamphlet over. “—the Jacobites to Scotland and Ireland and… damn. He doesn’t pursue it, though, because, you know. Why would he? But anyway—it was built in the 1600s to celebrate….”

  “Some kid named Max—yeah, Crispin, we have the same pamphlet.” Cam was busy looking up to the vaulted ceiling and the intricate filigree in the ballroom. “This is so cool. Are you looking at this?”

  Crispin put down his pamphlet and looked up, letting the grandness of the vision fill him.

  It occurred to him that he could fit his entire house into this room alone.

  “It’s gorgeous,” he said quietly. “Can you imagine growing up with this sort of dream?”

  Cam grunted. “Yeah. My parents wanted me to go to Yale. I mean, I did okay—Northwestern, right, on a track scholarship, but I still hear it every year I go back in the summer. Not Yale. I coulda gone to Yale. I liked Northwestern. They’re, like, ‘You could have been an accountant in Washington!’ I’m, like, ‘Who wants part of that mess?’ They’re, like, ‘Dinner with celebrities!’ I’m, like, ‘Dinner with people I like!’ So, yeah. It’s a great ceiling, but I’m really okay with the one at home.”

  Crispin laughed, but the conversation stuck with him.

  They wandered the gardens—not all of them, because they were nearly five hundred acres—but they did get to see the Grand Cascade. They found a bench in the shade, and Crispin and Nick leaned against each other because the forty-minute nap didn’t cut it.

  Crispin heard the honk of geese overhead, and he looked up.

  For the first time in forever, he allowed himself the luxury of remembering Carmen and James Henry.

  “Whatcha thinkin’?” Nick asked, and a crisp fall breeze took that moment to slice through their sweaters. They both shivered, and Crispin wondered if he could find words.

  “I’m thinking about birds who leave their homes and then come back,” he said after a moment. “Like, what would happen if they didn’t have a home anymore? Would they just wander around, from new thing to new thing, lost? Would they dream about a nest and think they don’t need one because they always have a new place to go?”

  Nick was silent for a moment, and Crispin shook his head, embarrassed. “Never mind. Didn’t mean to get all—”

  “I think maybe they’re looking for a nest,” Nick said thoughtfully. “They just might not recognize it when they see it, you know? Like, that kids’ book Are You My Mother? That baby bird knew he needed a mother, but he didn’t know what she looked like. Maybe that’s what happens when their homes get destroyed. They know they need another home, but they don’t know what it looks like.”

  Crispin thought about that and tried to fight off the well of melancholy in his chest.

  “Yeah. Maybe they just need to see what it looks like.”

  But Luka wasn’t going to swoop into Crispin’s little corner of America, was he, to see what Crispin’s home looked like, to maybe think it was his own.

  “What are you really thinking, Crispin?” Nick asked him softly.

  “I’m thinking I dream too high.”

  “Yeah, but you shouldn’t be afraid to even dream of flying. Luka was okay?”

  “He was amazing.”

  “Keep dreaming, my man. I used to dream I was going to be a veterinarian.”

  Crispin gasped. He hadn’t known this. “Really? Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I couldn’t put an animal down.”

  Crispin thought about Captain Steve and made a little whimpering sound. “Me neither.”

  “Yeah—would totally suck. But dreaming about it let me know I always wanted to live in a place that allowed pets. I mean, when you guys made me project Apartment Rescue, it was the thought of cats that got my ass in gear. Your cat, actually. Remember, you’d just gotten him?”

  Crispin smiled. “He was really cute.”

  “How big is he now?”

  “Twenty-six pounds and still eating,” Crispin muttered.

  “Isn’t he full-grown?” Nick laughed.

  “He’s five years old—I should think so! But God, his face is constantly in the food bowl. He’s big enough to take down a small deer.”

  “That cat had better at least be keeping the opossum population down—mice are too small for him!”

  Crispin nodded and looked around at the trees, which were just starting to change colors.

  “It’s really nice here,” he said. “Way better than Vegas.”

  “Yeah. You missing home?”

  “My cat at least.”

  “You got Luka tonight,” Nick reminded him.

  “And tomorrow night. Best part of Germany so far.”

  Nick chuckled. “I don’t think any castle is going to change that. Let’s go get everyone else and head back for the hotel. I need a nap, and you need a change of clothes before we go back to the beer tent. Besides, I think Link has a surprise for us when we get back. He brought two suitcases, and that’s never a good thing.”

  Link had dragged them all to Comic-Con the year before—probably Crispin’s favorite trip to date. The hotel in San Diego had been great, and they’d all managed to get into at least one panel they really, really loved—but the day before it opened, Link had produced one of those magic suitcases, and they’d spent the next four days dressed up as the Avengers.

  Link had been Thor, Cam had been Captain America, Ray had been Iron Man, and Nick had been the Hulk.

  Crispin had been Hawkeye. The version with tights.

  For Vegas he’d had cheap polyester tuxedos for everybody.

  “Oh dear God,” Crispin said with horror. “I’m going to see Luka tonight.”

  Nick grimaced. “Sorry, man. Whatever he’s got in store for you, I’m sure it’s going to be humiliating in the extreme.”

  “OH MY God!” Luka said as they all walked into the beer tents that night. “My boys! You look….”

  Crispin narrowed his eyes, daring him to say it.

  “Adorable!” Luka laughed, holding his hand over his mouth. “Very traditional—I… I am so impressed.”

  Lederhosen.

  Link had brought lederhosen for them all.

  And he’d made them buy hats on their way back from Nymphenburg because dammit, Link just had that weird sort of hypnotic sway over the lot of them and Crispin was done with trying to figure it out.

  “Link insisted,” Crispin said, looking down at the leather overalls and crisp blue checked shirt. They were all wearing different colors of checks. Blue, yellow, red, green, purple.

  Thank God Link had volunteered to wear purple.

  “You’re… very handsome,” Luka said, still chuckling. He sobered and looked around. “But you’re also late! I’m going to have to work hard to find you a table!”

  “We can
go to the main tent—” Link began, and Luka shook his head.

  “Not good enough for my boys—I want them right here where I can see them!”

  What he did next was sort of magic.

  He walked over to a long table, where a party sat ranged around it, spread out with lots of space between members—and at least four extra chairs between them.

  “Hold up, gentleman,” he said jovially, and grabbed the table from one end and pulled.

  A lot of hands went out to rescue beers, and then people got up and started shifting to the end of the table, and then Luka stopped, and suddenly the party was at the far end, grouped a little tighter and looking very surprised, and four chairs were sitting at the near end, looking very vacant.

  “Sit!” Luka commanded. “I’ll be right back.”

  He arrived just in time to set a chair for Crispin at the end.

  The guys looked at Luka with respect.

  “Man,” Link said, shaking his head, “I have no idea how you just did that, but that was very impressive.”

  “People will do anything to keep their beer,” Luka said with a modest little shrug. “I’ll be back with yours, yes? And there are things at the food tents you haven’t tried yet. Seriously, boys, tonight is going to be amazing!”

  Luka returned with beers for the guys and—of all things—an energy drink for Crispin. “Don’t pay me for that,” he said for Crispin’s ears alone. “I brought them for the staff refrigerator. I figured you would need something after last night.”

  Crispin grinned shyly at him. “We left Nymphenburg early enough to get a nap,” he said, “but this is appreciated.”

  “You liked the castle, yes?”

  Crispin nodded, but he couldn’t smile. “It was magnificent. But….” He couldn’t explain how all that grandeur had made him melancholy.

  “What?”

  “Nothing to talk about here,” he said after a moment. “You got some sleep after we left?”

  Luka nodded, a twinkle in his eye. “I am very much like Ludwig—I can sleep through the day if there is nobody there to talk to. I got up at three so I could come eat lunch with the staff.”