He couldn’t help but think of Hawaii Five-O. With the clean, almost white sand. Crystal clear blue water. Colorful, exotic fish. What Hawaii was known for all over the world. He wouldn’t be going with that stud Alex O’Loughlin. But he thought maybe Micah was one step better. Maybe he could get Micah to get a tattoo. Hey! Maybe he should get a tattoo! Wouldn’t Mom love that.
Yes, the beach they were going to was a few miles away from where they were living. But so what? Funny that he’d been mad that the beaches were that far away just yesterday. Now he felt different for some reason. What was four miles? He used to run that nearly every day before going in to work. Hell! The beaches were certainly closer to Pono Towers than his house in Kansas City. The thought made him laugh. There were lake beaches, sure, but those were hardly the same thing.
And he was going to the beach—Ala Moana Beach on Magic Island, and how could you go wrong when the word “magic” was part of it?—with a sweet, incredibly sexy, studly man who had rescued him (how many times did you get rescued in your life?) and been a most gracious host.
Chandler grinned.
A most gracious host.
It didn’t take long for Chandler to get ready. He didn’t have that much, after all. That army bag, big as it was, hadn’t given him room to pack much—especially considering the size of his walk-in closet (God! A quarter the size of his new apartment?).
Bathing suit, a shirt, hat, sandals. He didn’t have a single towel yet—stupid that he hadn’t gotten a few at Saver’s Hale, but he wasn’t used to buying necessities and had forgotten—but Micah was most gracious in loaning him one. And being the perfect gentleman, the big guy carried the large bag with everything they needed for a picnic at the beach. And while Chandler was used to people carrying his bags, this was much different. Good. So good!
In fact, Chandler was feeling so good, he didn’t even think about it when the two of them stepped into the elevator.
The elevator creaked—
Chandler hardly noticed.
He was too busy getting another kiss.
—and stopped with a hard jolt.
Micah pulled away and sighed angrily. “I am gonna strangle Todd Bates. That stupid idiot doesn’t listen to anybody. I’d like to see him get trapped in an elevator and see how he likes it.”
Chandler barely heard him. It was like the man was far, far away. Like Chandler was underwater and Micah was looking down from above.
Micah opened the little compartment on the elevator panel and grabbed the emergency phone. But in slow motion.
“Launa, this is Micah,” he said, but now it was as if he were a thousand miles away. “We’re stuck in the elevator. B, of course. That’s right. The same one. I think Lito has the keys. It says we’re on the second floor. Thanks, Launa.”
Micah hung up the phone and turned to Chandler. “Lito should be here in a few minutes.”
But now Micah was a million miles away.
Chandler felt as if he were falling.
And that’s just what he did.
He slipped right down onto the floor, shaking uncontrollably.
Micah gasped. “Are you okay?”
Chandler didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. He was too petrified.
Micah knelt down next to Chandler and was about to put his hand on Chandler’s shoulder, but when Chandler practically shrieked, he pulled back warily.
“What’s wrong?” Micah asked.
Chandler wanted to answer. But he simply couldn’t. And God, the shame! Coming apart like this in front of someone!
He could hear his father’s voice!
“Chandler! What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Please talk to me” came Micah’s voice—from far, far away.
But that wasn’t happening. The walls were closing in. The ceiling getting lower. The air…. “The air,” he somehow managed as he began to gasp for breath. “It’s running out!”
“Buck,” Micah looked at Chandler squarely; his eyes had a quiet calm about them.
Buck? Who?
“May I?” Micah reached out slowly, and Chandler could only cringe—
“You’re acting like a big baby!”
—and try to scootch away.
“Air!” He began to cough. Gasp. He couldn’t breathe!
“Sweetie.” Micah was almost whispering. “There is plenty of air. We’ll be out of here soon.” But the words were coming from a world away.
And Chandler found himself in a different place—a lifetime ago.
A Saturday morning.
Dad.
Taking him to the office. The Office. No one would be there, or at least only a few people, and Dad had things to do, and Chandler was getting to go (Chelsey was so mad!). He was just ten, and Dad would set him up at a desk and let him play Business Man, and fool around with a computer and look at Kansas City from high above. You could see forever on the thirty-ninth floor of One Kansas City Place. He’d been so excited.
It was only with the slightest trepidation that he’d followed his father into the elevator.
It had been fine. What could happen? His father was a zillionaire. He wouldn’t let anything happen to an elevator that he was in.
Except around the twentieth floor, the elevator gave a mighty shudder, then a second, and stopped. Chandler went cold. Zero degrees cold.
His father had gotten that irritated/angry/annoyed look to his face—one Chandler knew very well—and started stabbing at buttons. Like that would do any good! Just start pressing floor buttons and something would happen? Even as Chandler spiraled into panic, he’d wanted to shout, “You dummy! That’s not going to help!”
He didn’t say that of course. Right! Yell at his father? Call him a dummy?
And as he fell, fell, fell, Christmas music followed him….
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. Remember, Christ, our Savior was born on Christmas day….”
“Chandler! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Chandler!” The voice was so loud that Chandler jumped. And found himself in a different time. It wasn’t his father looming over him. No. This was Micah. Thank God. And he wasn’t looming. He was only sitting there next to him.
“Mea aloha?” Micah said. “Please say something. Anything.”
“Air?” he asked.
“We have plenty of air in here,” said Micah and stretched his arms out as if wanting to hug. “May I?”
Chandler flinched and then…
…remembered last night.
This morning.
Making love.
That’s what they’d done, wasn’t it? They hadn’t fucked. They’d made love. He didn’t know you could make love with an almost stranger. Yet that was what they’d done.
But shadows of decades ago hung close. And shouts.
“Stop it! Stop it right now. Get up off the floor. You’ve got your good jeans on!”
And music….
“To save us all from Satan’s power, when we were gone astray….”
“Room,” Chandler managed to say. “The room is getting smaller.”
Micah moved in close, very slowly and ever so carefully. It was the only reason Chandler didn’t scramble away.
“I’ll get you through this, Buck.”
Buck? There was that name. Who the fuck was…? “Who is Buck?” he asked before remembering.
Me! I’m supposed to be Buck!
“You’re Buck,” Micah said. “You’re just a little confused right now.”
Confused? Confused?
He was terrified.
But then he looked at those big dark eyes and suddenly….
“Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.”
He flung himself into Micah’s arms. Buried his face against his chest. Closed his eyes. And to his horror, began to sob.
Micah held him tight, stroking his back gently. Micah took deep breaths. “Feel my breath, mea aloha. Breathe with me.”<
br />
Chandler figured that was impossible.
But….
But he tried.
And slowly, slowly, with Micah’s guidance, he found he could breathe again.
“That’s it,” Micah said soothingly. “You’re doing great. Just keep breathing and we’ll get out of this very soon.”
Chandler found he was breathing. The world was coming back. The room getting a little larger.
But then the full impact of what he’d done hit him—hit him hard.
And the shame!
Chandler pulled free, wrapped his arms around himself, and looked away. He didn’t want Micah to see him like this.
“What’s wrong?” Micah’s voice full of concern.
“Dear Christ, what if someone sees you!”
“Buck?”
Chandler buried his face in his arms. And surprised himself when he didn’t move away again as Micah scooted next to him and put an arm around his shoulder. After a moment Micah began to hum a song. Soft and slow, yet bouncy and cheering. Chandler didn’t recognize the tune. So lighthearted. Micah hummed it so sweetly. So soothingly.
Finally, somehow, he asked it. “What song is that?”
“‘Mele Kalikimaka.’ My dad used to sing it a lot this time of year. It just popped into my head. It always reminds me of family.”
Huh? “Meli-what-what?”
Micah chuckled. “‘Mele Kalikimaka.’ It means Merry Christmas.”
It was a Christmas song?
Oh, the irony. Enough so that he laughed. Or at least approximated something like a laugh.
“There we go,” said Micah and tugged him so that he rested half against Micah’s huge chest, half in his lap. “That’s a good sign. Laughing. Want me to tell you a joke?”
A joke? Really?
Micah smiled. “Two Hawaiian bruddahs decided to go ice fishing for the first time. And as they chipped through the ice, this loud voice rang out, ‘No! No fishing here!’
“Kimo, the first brother, said, ‘Wow. Did you hear that, Moki?’
“Moki shakes his head. Because he didn’t want to admit it, you know? That he heard this voice.”
Chandler didn’t know. Kimo? Moki? Ice fishing? In Hawaii?
“So they keep chipping at the ice and again the voice rings out, ‘I said no fishing here!’ And Moki says, ‘Ho, Kimo! I heard dat one.’
“Then Kimo, he looks up to the heavens and say, ‘Is that you, our fish god Aumakua?’ And, ‘No!’ comes the answer. ‘This is the manager of Ice Palace!’”
It took Chandler a minute. Then he got it. Ice Palace. Of course. Where else would there be ice in Hawaii? He laughed. He actually laughed.
And then he was in the elevator, the Pono Towers elevator, and he didn’t like it one bit. But he was with Micah.
For some reason that made it all right.
He snuggled closer and heard the whispered voice. “You’re claustrophobic? Is that why you hate your apartment?”
Chandler shook his head. “No,” he said when he finally could. “Just elevators.”
“And, God. You were trapped in this one twice in two days.”
“Tell me about it,” he said and fought back the Panic Beast that was waiting and watching right there in the corner. And then to his surprise, he was telling Micah the whole story. Going with his father to his office, the elevator, his premonition, how he’d ignored it because, come on, what was going to happen to an elevator going to the offices of Buckingham Industries? Why, the fates wouldn’t dare.
But they had.
Then a lifetime’s worth of fears all came true—and who cared that a lifetime wasn’t all that long; to a ten-year-old, ten years seemed like a long time—and all he could think of was that they were trapped—trapped—in a tiny box hanging by a thin wire hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of feet above the ground….
“And my father kept screaming at me. Kept telling me to get up. He kept saying, ‘What if someone sees you?’ and all I could think was—well, when I could think at all—who was going to see me? We were trapped in an elevator! Then he starts yelling about a camera, and he grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet, and he almost pulled it out of the socket. I mean that. He really did. I had to wear a sling. Later that night I heard Mom and Dad screaming at each other and her telling him he could have broken my arm, and after that I didn’t want to go to his office ever again. Not in the elevator. Not with a dad who would break my arm if I displeased him again.
“But of course we did go back to his office. The next Saturday. We were supposed to go to the zoo, I’d been looking forward to it all week, but instead we went to the office, and he made me go into the elevator first. Made me press the button. And I wanted to cry, to scream, and all I could think of was that he might break my arm if I did that.”
He turned to Micah, who looked at him with mysterious eyes.
“And on the way up there was this Christmas song playing. I can still remember it as if it were happening right now. It was the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas,’ and I had always liked that song. But I hated it after that. Hated them all. All those fucking happy, joy-to-the-world holiday songs.”
Micah nodded. “I’m so sorry, Buck.”
Chandler trembled and tried not to cry again, hating himself for being so weak. But that was when Micah kissed him gently and told him that everything would be all right, and damned if he wasn’t right because suddenly the doors opened, and thank God, it was only a foot or so from the floor. No climbing down (although he wouldn’t mind the way Micah had helped him the last time) or wiggling or worrying about dropping down the abyss of the elevator shaft.
Then Micah held him close and thanked Lito for helping them out.
And when Chandler had calmed down a little bit more, Micah told him that they should go have some words with Todd Bates. “Let him fucking know what happened! Let him see the way you look!”
But Chandler didn’t want anyone to see the way he looked.
“Could we go to the beach instead?” he asked. “The magic beach?”
Micah’s eyes went wide, and then he nodded slowly and reached out and took his hand—had anyone ever done that to him before? Someone not his mother? A man?—and walked him out to the Pono Tower truck. And he didn’t ask anyone if he could take it.
He told a few guys who were smoking cigarettes, and they said, “No mattah to us, boss,” and suddenly Chandler felt so much better.
The sun. The breeze. The looks from the men who glanced without much surprise or care at their joined hands. Micah opened the door for him (it cried out like a banshee when he did so), and Chandler laughed and remembered that Madonna video where Keith Carradine takes her for a date.
It was magic.
Imagine! Him, Chandler Buckingham, going to the beach with a maintenance man in a brown beat-up truck!
His mother would have a stroke.
His dad—fuck him—would be rolling in his grave.
And his sister?
Why, somehow he thought she might smile.
SEVENTEEN
“MAY I ask you a question?” Micah asked him later, while they sat on a big blanket and looked at the waves coming in. It really was magic. Unearthly. How could anything be so beautiful?
Chandler looked at Micah, who was beautiful as well. Unearthly.
“Sure,” he said, wiping his hands on his trunks. He had just finished rubbing suntan lotion all over Micah’s sexy, muscular back and been slathered himself before that. He who was the rare redhead who could tan but still needed to be careful.
It had been fun.
In fact both of them were sporting (and trying to be casual about) hard-ons.
Micah cleared his voice. “Um… I don’t want to bring up something bad. But. Ah, something you said back in the elevator.”
Chandler shivered. Got one of those premonitions.
Despite that, he nodded.
“Ah…. You said… Buckingham offices.”
Oh shit, thought Chandler
.
Fuck.
He sighed. Nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’m confused.”
Of course he was.
Chandler sighed again. God. Oh what tangled webs we weave, he thought.
Tell him.
“I want to go somewhere where I am not a Buckingham. I want to vanish.”
Even if it would ruin everything?
Tell him. You haven’t woven this too complicated. Tell him while you still can.
“My last name isn’t Chandler. It’s Buckingham. My name isn’t fucking Buck.” He chanced a glance at Micah, who was looking back with more than a little confusion. “My first name is Chandler.”
Micah gave a slow nod. “I thought something was a little off. I mean, when you first introduced yourself, it didn’t seem like you knew what your name was. And even just a little while ago, I was saying Buck, but you weren’t responding. I mean, I chalked that up to the fact that you were panicking but still….”
Chandler chanced a second look. “Do you hate me?”
A smile slowly crept to Micah’s face. “Of course not. Although I wouldn’t mind you telling me why you made up a name. You running from the mob or something?”
Chandler burst into laughter. Wasn’t that just the scenario he’d make up? “No. No mobsters. But can’t you guess?” Surely Micah could.
“I have no clue,” Micah said.
“Buckingham!” Chandler said, exasperated.
Micah only looked at him blankly.
“I’m a Buckingham!”
Micah simply shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”
Chandler’s jaw dropped open. Someone who didn’t know who he was? Not at all? He remembered a cop just days ago who had refused to give him a ticket and didn’t know what to say.
It was a weird feeling.
Totally new.
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