Homebird

by Amy Lane

  Crispin bit his lip. “He… he has some things to do after Oktoberfest, but, you know, he might visit for Christmas.”

  Ray nodded. “Okay. I get it. So we stock up for January. Good to know. The Kings’ll be losing anyway—binge drinking for the win.”

  “Aw, that’s sweet, Ray—my love life ranks up there with basketball! I’m honored!”

  Ray rolled his eyes. “Just… God. I don’t know if we want you to be careful or to get your heart broken so you can learn it’s not fatal. Either one, I guess. Just… know we’re here.”

  With that he stumped off, and Crispin was left both heartened and saddened. Then Luka rounded the corner and something in his chest firmed up. He smiled, even though he was shaking his head no, they couldn’t get the birds wrapped well enough to pack.

  Crispin was strong enough to be sad when this was over. He was strong enough to think it was all worth it.

  THEY WENT back to the apartment and dressed nicely, then met at the gourmet four-star place Link had picked out. Luka looked as at home there, in his simple black button-down shirt and slacks, as he had running around the beer tents, wearing lederhosen, and Crispin blushed as Luka leaned over and brushed some of Captain Steve off his sleeve.

  “Your Captain looking out for you,” Luka laughed, sounding fond.

  “Well, not very well, because I’ve gone and gotten myself debauched.” Crispin winked, and Luka laughed again.

  Good food, good wine—no beer at this place with the crisp white tablecloths and the subdued service—and good company. It was an almost ethereally perfect evening, really.

  It was Cam who raised his glass to the guy responsible.

  “And here’s to Link, because this trip has been a helluva lotta fun, and because the restaurant pretty much makes up for the hill at Andechs Abbey, and because the lot of us would be bored tuna fish at home if you didn’t grab us all by the scruff of the neck and say, ‘You know what would be great? Let’s go to the moon and dig ditches! That would be awesome!’ and then we all go to the moon and dig ditches and it’s awesome. So here’s to Linkletter Lincoln Linksberg Linkelshmep—you’re a beautiful beer-drinking bastard and we love you.”

  “To Link!”

  They raised their glasses and drank, and then Luka leaned over very quietly. “And here’s to Crispin, with big eyes, who made me a part of his boys.”

  “And to Luka,” Crispin said, just as quiet, “who took me to places I’ve never been.”

  Luka’s generous smile promised more—so much more—than one more night. But Crispin would take their last night and count it as a blessing.

  “SO MEET at the gate or meet in front of the TSA line?” Crispin asked, double-checking.

  “We’ll wait for you at TSA,” Link said, not letting anyone else answer. “Two hours ahead of time, though, okay?”

  Crispin nodded. “I hear you. I’ll text when I leave—cabs go to your building, right?” he asked, looking worried.

  “I’ll get you there,” Luka said soberly. “Do not worry. We don’t wish to strand Crispin here in Munich when he needs to get home.”

  “No,” Cam said, sounding avuncular. “We do not. So thank you, Luka, for promising to take care of our boy.”

  The guys boarded the train then, because it let out close to the hotel, and Luka took Crispin’s hand for another evening walk through the city.

  “Man,” Luka said, about a block from the train station.

  “Man what?” Crispin had been trying really hard not to think, actually, because every thought led to goodbye.

  “You’re not a boy. Why would he call you a boy?”

  Crispin sort of shrugged. “Because… you know. I’m….” He flailed. “I’m me!”

  “You are you,” Luka told him, sounding almost upset. “You’re perfectly capable of traveling by yourself. Your friends enjoy you as much as you enjoy them!”

  Crispin smiled slightly. “That’s sweet—”

  “I am not sweet, Crispin! I am serious!” Luka pulled his fingers through his loose hair, and it fell about his face in a swath. “You… you do not need your friends to be brave!”

  “Maybe not,” Crispin retorted, “but I know they’ll be there for me next week, and you will still be here. Or in Aurangabad. Or in Bali or Auckland or any place but my plain, average little house on my shitty street. Why do you care?”

  “Because I do!” Luka cried. “I do—you know that, right? And I don’t want to send you home on that plane thinking you can never leave your home again!”

  “Of course I can! Of course I can leave my home again! Nobody said I couldn’t. I just need to know it’ll be there when I get back. Is that so hard for you to understand? That I need to know there’s a home for me somewhere in the world? And I get it—I’m not stupid. I read Percy Shelley and Lord Byron as a kid—the world changes. Shit is mutable. There’s no guarantee my house isn’t going to be dust when I come back from Germany, or even back from a Kings game or the store or work. But there’s hope that things will last. And I need that hope that there will be a home for me to breathe, do you get that? I need to hope that there is home for me to function. Because you got it ripped away once—and look at you. You’re broken. I got it ripped away twice, and I’m ruined—”

  “You are not!” Luka shouted. “You’re perfect! You’re perfect, and your adorable home is probably perfect, and I would imagine your gray cat is perfect. You are brave because you hope—and I’m a coward because all I can think of when I think of a little house and a little yard is that there will be birds overhead and they won’t see me because they’ll be expecting me to be flying too!”

  Crispin sucked in a breath and stared at him, and Luka stared back.

  “Luka….”

  He shook his head and shook off Crispin’s comforting hand. “Forget I said that,” he muttered. “It was stupid and childish. Forget I said anything. Let’s just go….” He trailed off, his voice agonized.

  “Home?” Crispin asked bitterly.

  “Oh hell.” Luka sighed, and Crispin fumbled for his hand. “It’s just,” he said into the quiet of their footfalls on the walkway, “that I’m not ready for you to leave.”

  “Neither am I,” Crispin said softly. They were silent for a few steps. “You’ll have to text me from Aurangabad.”

  “Yes.”

  Another silence, and Luka broke it.

  “I will… I will abstain, if you wish. Until I see you again.”

  Crispin gave a sensual shudder. “And get tested?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then so will I.” It took a moment for Crispin to feel foolish about that. “Not that, you know, I’ll have a lot of offers between now and whenever you can come.”

  “You really think you’ve been celibate because you’ve had no offers?” Luka asked, sounding incredulous.

  “Pretty sure,” Crispin said, ignoring what his friends said about bisexual refrigerators hitting on him. That wasn’t what Luka needed to hear right now.

  Luka shook his head. “I don’t want to be your last resort,” he said.

  “Maybe you’re just the only guy I wanted to see, you think of that?” Luka grunted dubiously, and Crispin racked his brain to decide if it was true, even as he said it. God. Luka was making plans to fly from India to California to see him—the least Crispin could do was be honest.

  “The thing is,” he admitted after a moment of uncomfortable silence, “is that you’re right. I do cling to my home. And it wasn’t that I was afraid I’d have to leave it, I think. I just didn’t want to let anybody else in. It was mine, and it was safe, and somebody sleeping in my bed with me wasn’t going to be that safe. And me, sleeping with someone else… well, I might not have gotten back home, you understand?” He used Luka’s syntax and felt foolish, but Luka squeezed his hand.

  “The world is an uncertain place,” he said softly, his voice as hurt as Crispin had ever heard it.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “So it had to be someone I trusted en
ough to have in my bed. And I don’t know why that was you. Maybe it was the thought that I’d never have to take you home—but that’s stupid.”

  “Why? Why would it be stupid? People have vacation affairs all the time, and don’t expect them to last beyond the moment.”

  Crispin wondered if anyone else could hear the bitterness there, or only Crispin, who perhaps knew that story when nobody else did.

  “Because the first place I imagined you was in my home,” Crispin told him, as raw an admission as he’d ever made. “In my bed. God, I want you to see my little window, and my little tree, and the birds who nest there every spring. I don’t know why—I just… I want you to see my tiny corner of the world and to find it good. So that’s the stupid thing about me. Because Munich is beautiful—it’s perfect. And I don’t want to stay here in beautiful and perfect. I want the beautiful and perfect guy I met here to come back to my stupid corner of the world and find it good.”

  It didn’t sound any better when he said it, and for a terrible, terrible moment he wondered if Luka was going to send him back to the hotel, because it should be over. That kind of stupidity, of blind selfishness shouldn’t be allowed by law, much less tolerated by someone who was studying comparative religions around the world after renouncing all his goddamned possessions, right?

  But Luka paused in a shop doorway and pulled Crispin into the alcove, staring at him in the light from the streetlamp as though their relationship and what to do with it would be revealed in the faint light.

  His eyes were shiny, red-rimmed, and, oh God, hopeful.

  “I shall come see your tiny house,” he promised. “I can’t tell you when—but I shall. I’ll see your big gray cat and your dog-in-law, and your window and your tree. I can’t promise I’ll stay—” His breath hitched, and Crispin’s did too. “—but I’ve seen so much of the world. It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t see your little corner of it, not after the last few days.”

  Crispin nodded, and his eyes burned and overflowed. “Good,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It would be a shame if you missed my tree.”

  Luka wiped the tears away with his thumb, his palms cupping Crispin’s cheeks. “Especially the tree,” he promised. Then he and Crispin were sharing a briny kiss, his mouth hard and uncompromising, and Crispin matched him. So much of Crispin’s life was small, contained, average—but not what he felt for this man.

  What he felt for Luka was so much bigger than his tiny house—or even Munich, or Bavaria, or the Pacific Ocean.

  Luka said Crispin was stronger than he thought.

  Here, within Luka’s arms, Crispin thought he might be right.

  They barely finished the kiss before Luka grabbed his hand and hauled him back to the apartment, stopping in every alcove, every corner to kiss, to fumble under each other’s clothing, to kiss some more.

  By the time they got to the apartment, Crispin was panting and hard, shameless and unafraid. He beat Luka to the bedroom, shedding clothes as they went.

  Luka took him on his back, staring hungrily at his face as Luka’s fine body thrust into Crispin’s, their breath mingling, their hoarse demands raspy in each other’s ears.

  They rested, kissing, Luka still swelling in Crispin’s body, and were in the middle of round two before it even occurred to Crispin that they were going one more time.

  They crested painfully, both of them wrung dry over the past few days, and Crispin fell asleep naked in Luka’s arms.

  He woke up halfway through the night in the middle of making love again, and they fell asleep hard, after setting an alarm neither of them wanted to hear.

  Breakfast was a quiet affair.

  Luka made toast and coffee, insisting that Crispin eat, although eating was the last thing he wanted. “I’ll eat on the plane,” he said listlessly.

  “You don’t digest on the plane,” Luka said, sounding wise and in charge for the first time since their argument the night before. “You should eat about two hours before you board and then eat when you get off—but any food in your stomach after 10,000 feet won’t go anywhere. Your digestion stops.”

  Crispin stared at him. “How is it I didn’t know that perfectly useless piece of information?”

  Luka’s grin at him, in view of their dismal morning, was the light of the world. “You need me to tell you these things. You can’t be expected to know all the important things, no?”

  “No,” Crispin whispered. “I may need you to keep me all up on the good stuff.”

  Luka nodded and took the hand not holding toast. “May I text you?”

  “Anytime,” Crispin told him. “May I text you back?”

  “Please.” Luka bit his lip. “I… I will wait very impatiently for the first one, telling me you are in your tiny perfect home.”

  Crispin gave up on his toast then and turned in his chair, burying his face in Luka’s neck and sobbing like his heart would break.

  He managed to pull himself together for the trip to the airport—something about being in the back of the cab, even with Luka, served as the best kind of social inhibitor to grief, and he was grateful.

  They pulled up to the airport, and Crispin pulled out his euros to pay the cab fare and take care of the return trip when Luka grabbed his hand.

  “I have money,” he said. “I don’t have a person I can text when I am lonely and not sure if the next place I am going, the next thing I learn, is worth it. Let me pay for your ride back to your little house, okay?”

  Crispin felt all cried out—but that almost did it to him. He kissed Luka then, not caring about the cab driver’s disapproving scowl or his friends texting him impatiently because he was on time for once and not ten minutes early.

  “Text me when you’re lonely,” he ordered. “Even if that means you’re texting me all day.”

  “I’ll come to you,” Luka vowed, and Crispin shut his eyes.

  “You’d better. Even if it’s just to visit. This can’t be the end.”

  “I promise very little, Crispin, but I promise that.”

  One more kiss and Crispin was out the door with his suitcase, waving goodbye to the cab, watching as Luka’s silhouette grew smaller and smaller as it pulled away. He trudged through the airport, towing his bag to the TSA line, managing a ghost of a smile when Cam literally snagged him as he passed and inserted Crispin in front of him so they could all be in line together.

  “How’s it going?” Nick asked softly.

  “Been better.” Crispin gave a watery smile. “But, you know, he said he’d come visit.”

  “No,” Cam said behind him. “Goddammit—”

  “What?” Crispin asked, voice cracking a little. “A nice, handsome guy promised to come visit me sometime in the future—what’s the downside—?”

  “You’re going to wait for him!” The complaint in Cam’s voice was unmistakable.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So it’s going to break you! He’s going to be off kiting around the world and you’re going to be home waiting for him? Crispin, that’s no kind of fair—”

  “No, it’s not,” Crispin retorted. “Because I’ll have the home, and the friends, and the place to put my head at night. And he’ll just have….” But he couldn’t tell them that. It felt too personal to just spew out in the middle of the airport.

  “What? What will he have?” Link demanded.

  “The memory of us,” Crispin said, voice cracking.

  Everybody was silent then, almost hungover, until they got to the part where they had to pull their toiletries from their suitcases. Crispin zipped his open and—besides seeing his own unopened stash of condoms, which would hit him as hysterical sometime in the future—he saw an unfamiliar object.

  A small wooden box, stamped with the name of the store they’d been shopping at the day before.

  Crispin shoved his suitcase through blindly, going through the X-ray machines on autopilot.

  “What?” Cam asked quietly as they were getting ready to haul ass through the airpo
rt. “What’s got you so quiet?”

  Crispin shook his head. “After coffee,” he said. Something big and iced and sweet.

  Cam shrugged, and the matter was dropped.

  Crispin didn’t even need to look in the box to know what he’d find when he got home.

  Two porcelain birds who looked too fragile for the trip in a carry-on, but who survived just fine. They looked lovely on his mantle—he took them out the minute he got home.

  And then he took a picture of them, nestled together, hopeful of spring, and texted them to Luka.

  Home, he said.

  Waiting, Sweetheart. Waiting.

  CRISPIN’S PHONE buzzed next to his computer, and he checked the text, inhaling sharply when he saw the picture.

  “Hey, Crisp,” Cam stage-whispered from across the aisle, “was it him?”

  Crispin quirked his mouth. “Yes—same time, every day.”

  “What was it this time?”

  “An elephant.” There it was, standing in the middle of the road in Aurangabad, thudding a trunk full of grass against its flank, looking for all the world like being there in the middle of the road wasn’t an imposition or anything.

  “What’d he say?”

  Crispin grinned at the text. “He said, ‘I know you think this is exotic, but that’s only because she’s not making you late.’”

  Cam chuckled, and they both shared a look before Crispin returned the text.

  Yeah, sure, there’s a truck on my commute that looks just like that every morning.

  He usually got back a smiley face when he returned a text, but this time he got a selfie—Luka in front of the elephant, in the predawn winter darkness, wearing a tatty knitted sweater and a hand-woven earflap hat.

  But does it have a hat?

  No—the truck is not nearly as appealing. Cold?

  Yes! Am missing warm winter fires and hot chocolate.

  Am missing you.

  Crispin bit his lip, wondering if that was okay to say. They had very carefully not spoken of missing each other, or of wanting more than the casual back-and-forth banter of sharing their everyday.