by Amy Lane
“Fairy tale?” Chance echoed blankly, and Tango started laughing so hard he had to let go of Chance’s hand and fall back onto the couch. “Fairy tale?”
“Oh my God!” Tango hooted. “God, like one of those old ones, where the grandmother gets eaten and they have to hack her out of the wolf’s belly?”
Chance looked at Tango in disgust. “Really? Ew. Just ew, Tango. Fuckin’ ew.”
Tango raised his eyebrows in a rare moment of seriousness. “Think about it, Chance,” and Chance blushed.
“Yeah, yeah… so one of the old-fashioned kind—you know, where the stepsisters cut their toes off to fit into the shoes and bleed to death. Yeah. That kind of fairy tale.”
The voice behind the camera was amused. “So, no happy ever after for you?” and both boys grew suddenly sober.
“No,” Chance contradicted immediately. “Definitely happy ever after. It’s just that shit don’t come easy. You don’t just meet, fuck, see the future. It’s harder than that.”
“But worth it,” Tango said softly, and Chance smiled at him, a private smile, old beyond his apparent years.
“Yeah. Worth it.”
DONNIE’S parents took a cruise on Thanksgiving, so they had Thanksgiving at Tommy’s house. It was going to be at Donnie and Alejandro’s, because Donnie’s sister was ’Yandro’s roommate and that made sense. But Dex and Kane and Ethan were all without family in the area, and Donnie sort of pleaded with his lover and his sister, and in the end, it was potluck at Tommy’s.
Kevin ditched his own parents around four o’clock and showed up for pie.
Considering how shitty the day had started out, it ended damned near perfect.
Chase had just gotten up to put the turkey in the oven (and thank God he’d paid attention when Mercy had done this for Christmas the year before, or they all would have been eating Chinese takeout or meat loaf) when his cell phone buzzed on the table and Mercy’s face popped up.
The text said,
Your dad just called. I gave him your forwarding
address so he didn’t show up at my folks’. I’m so
sorry.
Chase blinked, and then texted back.
As long as you don’t have to deal with him, it’s all
good. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.
Then he started the coffee, went to put a hooded sweatshirt on, and waited.
It didn’t take long. The pounding on the door startled him, even though he’d been expecting it, but Chase managed not to spill his coffee all over his front. He stood up and answered the door, hoping the cats had the sense to stay back in the room and sleep in with Tommy and the turtle.
He opened the door, but he didn’t let Victor in.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Victor snapped, no preamble, no nothing. He looked like hell, his gray hair lank at his shoulders, his features prematurely leathered by too much drink and too much smoke. Chase saw him detachedly, with as much emotional distance as he could manage. “You had a woman, and a life and a fucking future, and you’re shacked up with some guy? Get your ass back to that girl and apologize!”
Chase managed to keep his tone even. “Victor, I don’t love Mercy, not the way she deserves. I know that was a pretty picture last year, but it wasn’t real.”
“What the fuck does real have to do with it? That girl made you a man! I knew you was nothing but a pansy-assed little faggot, but for a little while you got to be a real man. How the hell am I supposed to be proud of you, living here with some other faggot? What am I supposed to tell people?”
Chase blinked. “Do you know people?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Chase thought about it, thought about his childhood and holidays spent with Victor, thought about running away as soon as he could so he could spend the rest of them with Donnie’s family. He tried to remember his dad going out to drink with friends—he could remember him coming home late from drinking, but not going out to drink. He remembered his high school graduation, because he came home from the ceremony and packed his stuff. He’d been working a part-time job and he’d gotten paid the day before, and Mrs. Donnie’s Mom had given him money and his state aid for college had come in. He’d packed his clothes up in garbage bags, grabbed an old sleeping bag from the shelf, and signed up for a crappy apartment, no deposit, about four blocks away. Chase had managed construction jobs for the next six months, and by the end of the year, he’d been living with Mercy.
Had Chase ever seen his father with another adult?
“I don’t care what you tell people,” Chase said in the here and now. “I don’t care.”
“But—how am I supposed to see you? How am I supposed to have a son if you’re doing this shit?”
Chase swallowed, and about fifty hours of therapy came flooding back. “It’s okay if you never really have a son,” Chase said quietly. “I’ve never really had a father. You have a kid, you have to love them. Really love them. Tell them it’s going to be okay even if you think it’s a lie. You don’t tell them it’s their fault ’cause their mother’s dead. You don’t call them names that’re gonna make them feel like shit. You don’t hinge whether or not you can love them or not on whether or not they can make a pretty picture for you. Mercy and me are never going to work. I hurt her too much pretending we could. If you want to be a part of my life, you’re welcome to. But I warn you: you say one shitty word about Tommy, one shitty word about my friends, and I’ll call the fucking cops and have them escort you home.” It was a little less violent than the threat the year before, but that was okay. Chase didn’t feel the violence, and that was sort of a relief.
Victor turned his head and spat. “Don’t want a fucking thing to do with you and your ‘friends’,” he sneered. “You can’t be a fucking man, don’t want a fucking thing to do with you.”
Chase grunted. Hurt. Yes, yes it did. “If you think you made my life any more perfect, old man, you are remembering the wrong kid.”
Victor’s face wrinkled and hardened, disgust in every bitter line. “You fuckin’ killed her. You’d been a better kid, she would have stuck around, and we would have had a family.”
“All we needed to be a family was love,” Chase said, and a little part of him was raising a meaningful eyebrow, but Chase ignored that part for a minute. “Didn’t you ever love me, old man? It feels like… God, I almost fucked up my entire life, trying to prove I was worth you loving me. Didn’t you ever, even once, love somebody?”
Victor looked stunned for a minute. For a minute, he was sorrowful. “Loved her,” he said, his voice lost. “I loved her so much. But she never got over being sad, son. I wasn’t enough to make her better. I wasn’t enough to make you happy. And now you’re gonna go fuck up, and I’m not enough to fix it.”
Oh damn him. Just damn him. Why couldn’t he have fur and fangs and claws? Why couldn’t he have beaten Chase on a regular basis? Why couldn’t he have been a sexual predator? Why did he have to just be bitter and angry and sad?
“Why can’t you just come in and have turkey?” Chase asked, hoping Tommy would forgive him. “Why does it have to be perfect? Why do you have to fix anything?”
Victor grunted. “Can’t hang around with no faggots,” he said, his bitterness back in place. “Would rather drink all day.”
“Yeah, you have fun with that,” Chase snapped, sad to his bones. “I’ve actually got people who give a shit. Let me know if you ever want to meet them.” He couldn’t have said which happened first—Victor turning away or Chase slamming the door—but it didn’t matter. He was standing there, his hand on the doorknob, when Tommy came and draped himself over Chase’s shoulders, taking a whole lot of Chase’s weight and nuzzling the back of his neck as a bonus.
“He didn’t even meet you,” Chase muttered. “Why couldn’t he even meet you?”
Tommy grunted. “Because I would have kicked his fucking teeth in. Do you have slippers on? Let’s go put some slippers on, baby. Your feet
are colder than a brass monkey’s balls.”
Chase looked at him through iffy vision. “Do brass monkeys even have balls?” he asked bemusedly, and Tommy’s wicked smile should have warned him of the unexpected.
“A brass monkey is actually a little stand on a ship’s deck, designed to hold those little pyramids of cannon shot you see in all the movies. The deck gets too cold, the brass monkey snaps off….”
Chase grinned in spite of himself. “You got a brass monkey’s balls all over hell and fucking creation, don’t you?”
Tommy nodded vigorously. “See. You don’t have to go to college to learn shit; you just gotta have the right app on your phone!”
Chase turned around completely and fell into Tommy’s strong hug without reservations. “I love you.” He’d been saying it a lot lately. It was so sweet when it didn’t come with a corset of guilt to choke it up.
“Love you too. Let’s go shower—we’ve got shit to do.”
SO THEY cooked. They cooked, they cooked, and then they cooked some more. There was turkey and stuffing and gravy and mashed potatoes and salad and green bean casserole and sweet potato pie and chocolate-covered peanut butter balls and shortbread cookies and steamed spinach and everything but waffles and fried chicken. There was so much stuff it didn’t fit on the table and people had to take their plates to the counters and then eat in the living room, but it was okay. Tommy had been looking at recipes for the entire week Chase had been home, and when he wasn’t at the PetSmart (which he’d turned into a real job, managing now), he was asking Chase what he thought of things like tarragon and anise. Chase had needed to go out and buy some of that shit just to see what he did think about it, since some of it he’d never heard about in his life.
And it was wonderful. Maybe not the stuffing so much (too much tarragon), but the people, coming in and giving each other shit and talking excitedly. At first Chase was going to be afraid things would be awkward—he was back from a month and a half in a mental institution, and he’d sort of bugged out of his own welcome-home party—but they were lucky. Kane and Dex got there first. Things could never be stiff and awkward with Kane there.
“We brought pie!” Kane said without preamble, pushing his way in from the front porch without waiting for an invitation. “And don’t worry, Chase. No bugs in the fucking pie, because they’re just too cool to eat.”
Chase took the pies, plural, and looked at Dex, who was grimacing in embarrassment and mouthing “Needs. A. Keeper!” where Kane couldn’t see him.
“You brought pie early,” he said in some bemusement. “We haven’t vacuumed yet!”
“Awesome!” Kane bounced. “Where’s the kitten! C’mere, ya little fuzzball! Unka Kane’s got a new toy for you!”
“Jesus, you psycho!” Tommy hollered, coming out of the bedroom from his second shower wearing only a pair of jeans. “Don’t chase my cat!” (He’d spilled broth all over himself when they’d been making stuffing. Chase had finished up while he’d showered and done laundry.)
“Go get dressed, Tango—this ain’t the set! I don’t want to see your shit flapping around unless you got tits!”
“You say that, Kane, but I see you check out my package!” Tommy returned, and Kane chortled.
“Just making sure mine’s bigger!”
Chase caught his breath then, because he thought Kane sounded way too defensive. Was it possible he wasn’t as straight as he claimed? But Dex grimaced and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Straight men,” he sighed. “Whattya gonna do?”
Chase laughed, and Kane went chasing after Paulie the kitten, who ended up climbing the drapes and jumping on his head. Kane was still nursing a scratch on his temple (and cooing at the now-purring kitten) when Donnie and his people got there, with Ethan at their heels. ’Chelle spent five minutes patching him up with ointment and a Snoopy Band-Aid while Kane ogled her breasts and made cute innuendos about the cat. For a second Chase was in fear for Kane’s life, and then he looked at the kitten with genuine love, and then the fear was all for ’Chelle’s heart, and he had no business interfering there.
They never did get the floor vacuumed, and there were dust bunnies in the corners when they sat down to eat, but that was okay. Paulie the kitten chased the dust bunnies and Donnie’s sister cooed over him and over Kane and everybody was entertained.
“So, Kane?” ’Chelle asked Chase after dinner when they were putting away leftovers and making care packages for all of the single people to take home.
“Yeah?” Chase grinned at her. ’Chelle had been a good big sister to Donnie: she was kind and nice to his friends, and she only teased him when she thought he could take it.
“He works with you?”
“Yeah,” Chase said, stringing her along. “When I worked there, yeah. We worked together.”
“So, he, uhm, all ac/ac, or a little ac/dc?” she asked, blushing, and Chase’s grin about swallowed his face.
“He claims to be ac/dc,” he said, watching her face light up completely. Then he brought in the kicker. “But he’s only nineteen.”
“Ugghhh!” For a moment, Donnie’s older sister looked truly chagrined. Then she started a slow, evil grin. “On the other hand, bringing home a barely legal, sort of straight, gay porn star may be the last act of rebellion my parents have left open to me. I may have to take it!” And Chase was not offended when she disappeared into the living room to coo over the kitten and flirt with Kane some more.
Tommy watched them from the doorway to the living room and came over to him as ’Chelle disappeared.
“That wasn’t nice,” he murmured, wrapping his arms securely around Chase’s waist as Chase put together a care package for Dex. Dex and Ethan were currently playing something violent and bloody on the Xbox, and Donnie, Kevin, and Kane were rooting them on. ’Chelle came up behind Kane and murmured something quiet into his ear, and Chase wished he had a closer view, because it looked like everybody’s favorite extrovert blushed.
“What—siccing ’Chelle on Kane or Kane on ’Chelle?”
Tommy laughed. “Either. They’re gonna make each other miserable and then they’re gonna make us miserable and then—”
“And then they’re either gonna break up and survive, or get married and make really pretty babies,” Chase said with some satisfaction. “Because it doesn’t all have to be about the drama, right?”
Tommy’s bright-black eyes were suddenly softer on his face. “Well said, oh mighty kitchen god. When did you get so wise?”
Chase rolled his eyes and surveyed the damage. A sink full of dishes ready to go, check! Lots of little packages ready to roll when people walked out, check! Pies ready to go when dinner had settled, check! Leftovers neatly put away in the fridge and ready to be pillaged whenever, check!
“It must be the tryptophan,” Chase mumbled, making sure he had everything as it should be.
“Tryptophan my ass!” Tommy grabbed his hand and hauled him into the living room. “Get your ass in here and celebrate, oh suicide king—you’ve got next!”
“But I’m not sure if it’s all set—I had this plan, so everyone had enough—”
“Revise your plan!” Tommy snapped, still playful. “You get your best results when you change shit in midstream.”
Chase did a double take at that and saw Tommy raising his eyebrows meaningfully, and he spent the next several hours playing video games and Trivial Pursuit and Scene It? with his friends.
There was no alcohol—two recovering mental patients really didn’t need anything else to worry about—but that didn’t mean there weren’t lots of sloppy hugs at the end.
Ethan was one of the last people to leave. Unlike Kane and Dex, he’d arrived alone, and he looked rather wistfully at Tommy’s trashed, warm little house as he left. He was a tactile man; Dex had remarked once that the reason he did so good in porn was that he just adored being touched. Any touch, any touch at all, made him happy, and one of the things Chase had learned as they’d worked together was to be care
ful what kind of touches you gave him. It was like being that sensitive gave the person touching him too much power for the average person. It had to be someone who would treat it with reverence.
When Chase went in for the hug, Ethan clung to him, almost shivering in his hug. “Thanks so much,” he murmured. “My folks… they found out what I was doing and told me not to come home. When Dex told me I could tag along….” He shook his head and gave Chase a big kiss on the cheek, Italian style, and then turned around and did the same thing to Tommy. He pulled away and wiped his eyes. “You guys,” he said, shaking his head. “You guys, I know the last few months have been rough on you, and, you know, the whole studio knows the gossip. But your house here, your home. It’s a good place. You guys believe that. Believe that it’s a good place, okay? And….” He swallowed. “Invite me back, okay? Christmas, Easter, Friday nights? I just really loved being here tonight.”
They both went in for another hug, and he finally had to turn around and trot out of the house like he was catching a bus.
When he was gone, Chase met Tommy’s eyes, and Tommy was looking at him meaningfully. Chase sighed and shook his head.
“I’m thinking about it!” he said, and Tommy grinned.
“We’re gonna be daddies!”
“I said I’m thinking about it!”
“Stop wasting my time with useless protests and come fuck me stupid.”
“Too late!”
“Damned straight! Get in here or I’m gonna lube myself!”
“Promises, promises—you’ll just lie there and groan while I do it.”
Tommy burst into cackles. “Well, if I knew that other thing was your perv….”
“Try me.” Chase could hardly talk, he was laughing so hard.