Home. Looking around Julian’s apartment, Rafi thought it really was starting to look like a home. Julian had filled in the living room furniture—elegant minimalism with occasional splashes of brilliant color or interesting texture, a sprawling sectional couch that Rafi had cause to know was very comfortable—and bought some plants. The essentials from his former office occupied one corner of the dining area, and the kitchen actually showed signs of use. Certainly Julian’s bedroom now held happier memories than it used to.
He set the box of books down in Christian’s room, and straightened to find Julian slipping arms around his waist.
“Aaron doesn’t mind the smaller place, you know,” Julian murmured. “He hated the apartment Uncle picked out for him, just like I did.”
“You did,” Rafi said, kissing Julian’s temple. “But now it’s your place.” It could be our place, remained unspoken. Or my place could be our place. I know you like it there. Could his place be Christian’s place, though? Rafi was thrilled and relieved that Julian had gotten custody of him, but it did throw a wrench into the idea of moving in together. Christian needed stability, needed to land somewhere safe and stay there, not unpack his room just in time to pack it up again and move in with Rafi.
Plus, Julian was still learning how to build his own home, his own life. Rafi wanted to be part of that, a big part, but he didn’t want anything to smack of Julian moving from one cage to another.
“It is my place,” Julian said. “But you have a key.”
“And I never leave home without it.” He kissed Julian’s temple again, then forehead and eyebrow and cheekbone, swift ticklish kisses to make him giggle—not that Julian would ever admit it was a giggle.
“While you guys were up here being gross, I got another load of stuff,” Christian said from the doorway.
“Is that a guitar?” Rafi said, letting go of Julian as Christian pushed past him with a large, distinctive case. “I didn’t know you played.”
“I don’t,” Christian said. “I was supposed to get lessons. My former guardian wasn’t great at keeping promises.” He didn’t look up from where he was trying to balance the guitar on top of a box in a corner.
“I could teach you,” Rafi said. “I mean, guitar is kind of what I do.”
“Really?” Christian looked startled.
“Yeah, you know, kinda goes with the rock band thing—”
Christian rolled his eyes. “I mean, you’d really teach me? I’ve been trying to learn from YouTube, which, I mean, it’s something…”
“Kind of the way Brussels sprouts are food?” Rafi laughed. “Yeah, really, I’ll teach you.”
“I guess I might be able to stand you long enough for a few lessons.”
Julian hissed a word under his breath that he wouldn’t be allowed to say in his next movie. “We’ve got to go, Christian, or we’ll be late for your therapist.”
“Our therapist. Don’t pretend you’re any less screwed up than me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, but your appointment is earlier.”
“Go on ahead,” Rafi said. “I’ll get the rest of the stuff out of the truck. It’s not that much more.”
“Don’t drop anything,” Christian said. “Anything else, I mean.”
“You can bill me,” Rafi said.
They rode the elevator down together, Christian teasing Julian about going out in shorts in November.
“The paps are gonna get an eyeful, I don’t think they’ve ever seen legs that pale before, probably break their cameras—”
“Have some respect for your father,” Rafi said, giving Christian a theatrical shove.
“What? Ew! No! What?”
“Well, legal guardian anyway.”
“You are not my father,” Christian said to Julian. “Brother, maybe. I mean, I guess legally we are, like, closer than cousins now. I can deal with brother. I am never calling you dad.”
“Yeah, I can deal with brother,” Julian said.
“Anyway, changing my middle name to Julian would sound stupid. It’s too rhymey. What’s your middle name?”
Julian raised an eyebrow. “Michael.”
“Michael. That’s better,” Christian mumbled under his breath. “Christian Michael Petrie. It’s not ‘Megatron’ but it’s not too bad.”
“It’s all right.” Julian’s voice held only bland agreement, but his face glowed with one of his rarest, realest smiles as they reached the ground floor.
* * * *
December
Julian woke on Christmas morning to the brush of a warm breeze scented with plumeria and ocean.
It took some doing to extricate himself from the bed without waking Rafi, but he preferred to have his teeth brushed and hair untangled before anyone saw him in the morning, even—perhaps especially—his boyfriend. He slipped free of the sinfully comfortable bed and stole into the suite’s bathroom.
Perhaps he needn’t have worried, Julian thought when he emerged to find Rafi just as he’d left him. The man slept like a stone. Like some Greek or Roman statue, a wonder of rigid marble carved into draped sheets and tumbled curls and delicate eyelashes. Julian felt a peculiar squeeze in his chest. I could look at him forever.
The illusion of marble broke; Rafi stirred, smiled sleepily without opening his eyes, and wallowed deeper into his pillow. One arm cast about for Julian, and came up empty.
If anything squeezed his heart harder than Rafi sleeping, it was Rafi waking, his brow crinkling as he slurred a raspy, “Jules?”
“Merry Christmas,” Julian said, and watched Rafi’s eyes wander over gleaming wood, golden lamps, and open window before finding him in the bathroom doorway, wearing nothing but his bracelet and briefs.
“Yes, it is,” Rafi said, grinning, and stretched out a beckoning arm.
Julian came to him eagerly, crawling into the bed and into Rafi’s arms in one gliding motion. Rafi hugged him close, their arms and legs wrapping around each other.
“Mm, no more ribs,” Rafi murmured with great satisfaction, trailing fingertips along Julian’s torso. Freed from Eddie’s diet restrictions, Julian’s frame was a little softer to the touch now; Julian struggled not to panic about that if he thought about it for too long. Rafi, though, felt it an unquestionably healthy change, and his constant lusty staring helped ease Julian’s worries.
Right now, for instance, Rafi was sprinkling kisses all over Julian’s face and throat and collarbones, and Julian didn’t even have to force himself to relax. A breeze wandered in through the window, and the open balcony off the sitting room, bringing the sounds of surf and birds and tossing leaves.
“They got another three inches of snow back in New York last night,” Rafi said against Julian’s skin. “I think Hawaii was an excellent idea.”
“You don’t mind being so far from home?” So far from your family, he meant, but that was a touchy subject at present—mostly because Rafi wouldn’t have seen them for Christmas anyway. His father and stepmother had traveled to Los Angeles to be with their first grandchild, baby Mercury, and Carlos…well, Carlos was in jail. Minnie was no longer speaking to Rafi, somehow blaming him for everything, and as usual Ted wasn’t going to contradict her. He had sent presents for them, though, as had Helen Rhodes.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to spend every Christmas without snow,” Rafi said. “But it’s not like we get no holiday trappings here.”
“That’s for sure,” Julian chuckled. The resort was decorated from top to bottom. There’d already been a Christmas tree in their suite when they arrived, and there was even supposed to be a visit from Santa later in the day.
“So yeah, Hawaii was a great idea. Somewhere warm and beautiful with no demands…” Rafi’s hands were getting adventurous now; Julian squirmed a little to encourage them.
“I thought you liked it when I made demands,” he said lazily.
“Oh, I do,” Rafi said. “You’ve taught me a lot, though, about…how nice it can be. Like this.” Soft, slow, taking their t
ime instead of racing to the finish line. It was a bit new for Rafi and he was still learning how to rein himself in, but it was an education they were both enjoying.
Julian pulled back, brushing gentle fingertips over Rafi’s lips to delay another kiss. “Santa came last night.”
“He wasn’t the only one.” That earned him a smack on the shoulder, which did nothing to dim Rafi’s grin. “What else could he bring? There’s already a huge pile of stuff under the tree.” He waved toward the doorway to the sitting room, where they could see just the edge of the Christmas tree with its twinkling lights.
“I can take it back, if you don’t want it.”
“Hey, I didn’t say that! Lay it on me.”
Julian left the bed in order to pull a box out from under it, wrapped in shiny red and large enough to take up most of his lap. Grinning like a child, Rafi tore it open.
Inside was a new cell phone, replacement for the one he’d dropped at the airport two days ago and shattered. And with it, a crash helmet.
“You’re a butthole,” Rafi said, laughing and flicking Julian’s ear.
“You’re welcome.”
“This is exactly the model I was gonna get!”
“I know.”
“Well, now you have to open one too.” Rafi darted into the sitting room and pulled a gift out from under the tree, green and white striped, and brought it back to bed.
Julian tried to remember the last time he’d been excited to open a gift, the last time he’d received something that wasn’t manipulation from his uncle or some empty gesture from an industry brown-noser. It had been…a while. He lingered over tearing off the wrapping paper, savoring the sensation.
Inside the box was a plush toy peacock—white with red eyes—and a framed photo of a white peacock in full display, with a “certificate of adoption” from the Staten Island Zoo.
“His name is Starlight,” Julian said, running his fingers over the words on the certificate.
“That seemed appropriate.” Rafi’s gaze was excited, uncertain, waiting for his reaction.
Julian felt a laugh, pure surprised happiness, bubble out of his mouth. “Will he be delivered to my apartment, then, or…?”
Rafi snorted. “The zoo, stuffy old fun-haters that they are, insisted he continue to live there. But those tickets in the box are to a behind-the-scenes event where we’ll get to meet him.”
“That sounds amazing.” Julian picked up the plush toy Starlight and hugged him. “He’s beautiful, Rafi.”
“Not as beautiful as you, when you smile like that.”
“Not as beautiful as you,” Julian said, shuffling forward into Rafi’s lap, “when you actually know what I like.”
Rafi’s smile grew smug, the adorable bastard. “Yeah? And what do you like?”
Julian pushed him backward onto the bed, then pulled Rafi’s hands up over his head and pinned them there, kissing hard and deep. Rafi made a pleased sound deep in his throat and kissed back pliantly. Like he’d said earlier, he seemed to like it when Julian got assertive. They both did. It had taken a while for Julian to get to that place, where he felt safe enough to make demands, where he knew he could trust Rafael to stay pinned if he asked—and even trust Rafi to do the pinning, knowing he’d let him up at the first hint of a request. They’d both enjoyed that a lot. They both enjoyed everything a lot, because if either of them wasn’t, they both stopped.
That was still a novel concept to Julian.
Zoo pamphlets were sliding off the edge of the bed and Julian was pulling off Rafi’s underwear while Rafi searched one-handed through the nightstand for the lube—when Christian’s footsteps came thundering down the hallway between their rooms.
“It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas, wake up you lazy slobs!”
Christian catapulted through the door onto the bed, a lei around his neck flashing with battery-powered Christmas lights over his Rudolph pajamas.
“Wake up! Stop being gross and get out of bed, I’ve got presents to open!” He bounced a couple times and then took off into the sitting room, whooping.
Rafi groaned, petting Julian’s head where he was collapsed on Rafi’s stomach in despair, but they were both laughing, too. Christian was in Happy Toddler Mode, it seemed; he’d been doing that a lot recently, switching between the goofy child he never got to be and the angry abused teenager who would lash out at friend and foe alike. He wasn’t an easy kid and probably never would be. The therapist had said he was doing well under the circumstances, though—that being with adults he trusted was allowing him to process his trauma, and that playing a role in Eddie’s downfall had given him a sense of control over his fate that many kids like him didn’t have. That Julian hadn’t had.
But Julian was doing well now, too. Better. He caught himself smiling a lot these days.
He smiled now, as he and Rafi threw on bathrobes and crossed their suite to the Christmas tree. He smiled as he pulled Rafi pulled over to the mistletoe hanging from the balcony doorway, and kissed him, both of them laughing while Christian made retching noises in the background.
* * * *
January
Distant Kingdom: “No More Drama! We’re All About the Music.”
I meet the band at Rafi Reyes’s condo, a glass-and-metal construction with an astounding view of the Hudson River. Rafi and his bandmates are sprawled over white leather couches, noodling around with their instruments, but they all stand to greet me.
Spirits are high in the group; there’s a lot of chatter and good-natured ribbing as we get down to business, Rafi trying to get them all pointed in the same direction. It’s clear they all get along well, which is a nice change for Distant Kingdom.
The band has had a huge transition in the last year, losing two of its original three members, and gaining three replacements. Ex-members Bo Thomas and Carlos Reyes are both trying to establish solo careers (with very different levels of success, considering Carlos’s legal troubles). Meanwhile, the new DK, steered by long-time front man Rafi Reyes, has already had one hit with “Footsteps,” currently shooting up the charts. That single will be included on their upcoming album, tentatively titled Book of Fables.
“It’s a new sound, to an extent,” says Rafi, which seems inevitable given the amount of new blood. This album will be “gentler in some ways,” he says, “but more intense—it goes deeper, and sometimes it goes harder, but with more purpose than before. I went through the wringer this last year or so, and came out the other side, and all four of us have had those experiences. All of that went into the album. It’s about the storm, and then the calm after the storm.”
“I feel like the old albums, they got your blood moving, but this one gets your heart beating, if that makes sense.” This interjection is from new member Oliver Peters, a lanky giant of a man with an impressive beard. Sitting on the floor in a striped henley and hipster glasses, he informs me that he and Rafi are old friends who reconnected at an opportune time, and that his unusual instrumental skills are part of what makes the sound of Book of Fables new and different—he plays the lute, guitar, ocarina and hurdy-gurdy.
Another new member, Shizuko Ito, calls herself “the token girl” of the group, and Rafi smiles sheepishly.
“The other two were shoo-ins, and happened to be guys, so we did look specifically for a female drummer,” he says. “Didn’t want the band to be a total sausage party. My boyfriend actually brought Shizuko to our attention, they’d worked together before. I knew she was it during the first audition. Fantastic drummer, this lady.”
Said ‘boyfriend’ being, of course, actor Julian Gault, whose romance with Rafi made headlines during the band’s reorganization. What work Gault might have done with a black-leather-clad drummer with a lavender undercut remains unanswered.
Shizuko is, surprisingly, not the group’s soprano singer—she’s an alto. The highest register belongs to their youngest member, Cory Goldenbloom, a bashful boy in a pink crop-top who blushes when the others make dirty jokes. He
seems to be everyone’s new baby brother, subject to hair-tousles and affectionate teasing. He plays keyboard and violin, and even gives me a demonstration of the latter—a tune that goes from sweet to shredding at the flick of a wrist. Clearly Cory didn’t get in on connections alone, but he does have a history with Rafi. Does Julian Gault have a problem with Rafi working with his ex?
“No, I don’t,” says the man himself—Julian Gault, passing through the room with a basket of laundry. “Rafi’s earned my trust many times over.”
“Not to mention Cory is terrified of Julian’s wrath,” jokes Oliver. Cory, blushing again, does not contradict.
“There is to be no more drama in the band,” Rafi declares in fatherly tones. “No cheating, no love triangles, none of that. DK has had enough drama. Now we’re all about the music.”
“This feels like the perfect time to mention that I’m sleeping with our manager,” says Shizuko. Distant Kingdom’s manager, Amber Hernandez, has been with the band from the start.
Rafi puts his head in his hands. “Please don’t print that,” he says to me.
I smile and make no promises.
Book of Fables is slated for released in early March.
—Rolling Stone Magazine, January 10th, 2020
* * * *
February
Julian Gault Gets ‘Lovey-Dovey’ with Real-Life Boyfriend in Distant Kingdom Music Video
By Jill Rothman, 2/20/2020
After a tumultuous year wherein the band had more drama than music, Distant Kingdom released a new single, “Star Crossed,” just last week—and has already seen it become a chart-topper. Today, after weeks of teasing, the “Star Crossed” music video hits the public eye.
Shot at the Aiden Planetarium and Shasta Beach, featuring imagery of constellations, waves, and horses, the video centers on front man Rafael Reyes and Freaks star Julian Gault, in what appears to be a celebration of their real-life romance.
Star Bright Page 26