by Amy Lane
“Oh sweet Jesus, Johnny, you’re so going to hell!” Zion was laughing too.
“You’d so hold the door for me,” John said, smiling at them both gratefully. “As long as I was holding this.”
Yes, he’d actually looked through a few tchotchke stores to find something this tasteless, but it had paid off. He might have been a little angry when he went shopping for containers for ashes, but he thought he was entitled.
The remains of his first friend and first lover and the guy who’d hurt him so badly that he’d questioned his self-worth for the past ten years were now interred in a bright green butterfly-shaped cookie jar.
“Thank you,” John said kindly to the nice woman who was only there to help. “I think we’ve got this covered.”
She nodded and went back into the cabin, leaving them to their grief. Or whatever.
Until he’d seen the cookie jar, he hadn’t known what to say. But now he did—and now he thought he could say it.
“Okay, guys, we’re here today to say good-bye to Vittorio Petrelli, the first man I ever loved and the first friend I ever had.” John paused there, felt the weight of Tory’s ashes in his hands and in his heart. “But not the last,” he said, looking Brant and Zion in the eyes respectively. “I mean, for the last ten years, I’ve been sort of stuck, sort of spinning my wheels—but I like to think that even before this, I’d broken free. I did hit rock bottom, but I was climbing my way up. And when I’m done with this, I have friends to go back to, a company to run, and a lover….” John took a deep breath and let it out. “A lover who cares for me, and you know what? After Tory, that’s something I thought I’d never have. That’s something I thought I didn’t deserve, but I was wrong. Tory was wrong. He… he thought his life was all over, and he wanted to go back to the beginning—and he hurt all of us trying to do that. Because you’re supposed to take what you have and keep going—that’s the way life works. Throwing it all away—that’s ignoring the stuff that you actually have. I have friends in this life. I have hope. I’m sorry that Tory lost his hope, but I wasn’t going to be able to give it to him. I was never going to be able to give it to him, and if he didn’t have his own hope, it was pretty fucking unfair of him to ask.”
Brant and Zion were holding hands now, smiling and crying at the same time. John stood, clutching the deck railing in one hand so he didn’t fall over, the butterfly cookie jar under his opposite arm. He raised his freckled face to the sun and, just for a moment, drank it in, salt spray and all.
“Do you hear that, Tory!” he called to the elements. “You let go your way, I’m letting go mine! I would have done anything for you, and if you didn’t want that, you should have turned me loose! But fuck you—I found my own goddamned way to move on!”
And with that he turned, opened the cookie jar, and dumped the ashes below the deck line without ceremony, watching as they disappeared beneath the waves. He turned apologetically back to Brant and Zion. Maybe they had something to say as well.
“Sorry, guys. Did you have any words….”
“John, honey,” Zion said tenderly, “get back inside. You’re already starting to turn pink. Your sunscreen was for shit.”
“Wait,” Brant said. “Before you go, give me the cookie jar.”
Brant took the lid and handed it to Zion, and then Zion gave it back and took the jar. “I can make it go farther,” he said practically.
“Fine,” Brant huffed. Both of them braved the subtle pitch of the deck and walked up to the railing.
And then Zion put the cookie jar in his left hand, and Brant took the lid in his right, and both of them cranked back and loosed the parts into the deep water.
John watched them openmouthed, not sure what to say or whether he objected. Then Zion spoke up.
“This part of our lives is over with,” he said, his voice so firm that John thought maybe he’d needed to do that as much as John had.
“We got our John back,” Brant said, sounding like he was talking to a bully at a party. “He was the only part we really wanted to keep anyway.”
The two of them turned away from the railing, the big, burly black man and the slightly built blond man, holding hands, as much in love with each other as they’d been in lust that long-ago day in Carpenter’s Park.
“Now go inside, Johnny,” Brant said, nodding soberly. “You’ll get sun poisoning if you don’t.”
John followed their advice, and they spent the trip back in the cabin, talking about their plans for the future. Tory could have his day in the sun—they were apparently done with that.
Pupa
JOHN TOOK Galen’s advice and went to Chili’s. He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed to be the right choice. While they sat at their corner table, John took a lame selfie of the three of them against the window, so their faces were thrown in shadow, and sent it to Galen. One of those ninjas looks like you.
John grimaced and turned so the light was in his face, and took another picture.
And you got sunburnt. Don’t forget to hydrate and use aloe.
John grimaced. Your capacity for romance astounds me.
Some of us show our affection by nagging.
That stopped him for a second. He stared at the camera while the waitress took their drink order. Diet soda all around, because they were grown-ups now and not only not drinking ever again but trying to watch their weight.
“What’s up?” Brant asked, nudging him with his shoulder.
“He’s nagging me.”
Brant peered at the screen and grinned. “He loves you!” he chirped happily. “Hey, Zi—look, it really is love!”
Zion loomed over John’s other shoulder and let loose with a grunt that almost blew the napkins off the table. “Tell him thank-you.”
“What?” Because who thanked somebody for nagging?
“That’s the kind of relationship you should’ve had from the start. If he can do that from rehab, you might possibly have found your match.”
John rolled his eyes. Brant and Zion think you’re too good for me.
I may forgive them for being there. You okay?
No. No, he wasn’t. He wanted to hold Galen so badly his stomach hurt with it. Yeah, I’m great. I’ll see you tomorrow.
You need to do paperwork.
I’ll bring the motherfucking laptop.
Good, because I need to get lawyerly with you. Bring your big boy panties too.
John’s eyes burned. Fine. But that’s not really what I need.
I’ll hold you first.
NOW you understand.
THAT NIGHT he had, of all things, a face-to-face with Dex. He wasn’t expecting it, but after he got back to Cypress Point and spent about an hour in the pool (oh, blessed, blessed pool, and blessed Nana for having one) during twilight, John received a rather frantic text.
Can we talk? G-Chat, now!
His trunks were still wet when he sat down to his laptop in the kitchen.
Dex looked good—worried now, but good. His blond hair was awry, and he had shadows under his eyes. He was pale enough that John could see the remnants of his childhood freckles.
“John?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“It’s… you gave all that stuff to Galen, which is fine, I guess, but he says he needs to see the tape we made with Scott.”
It took John a couple of muddled seconds to remember that this was a thing he had, however inadvertently, done. After telling Dex he could leave porn—and after upping his salary to what he’d probably been earning for the previous two years anyway—John had let Scott blackmail him into forcing Dex to do another scene with Scott. His ex-boyfriend. The guy who’d been stalking him.
“Oh God,” John said, paling. “God. Dex. I’m so sorry. I mean… Jesus….”
Dex looked back, almost in tears, and John was suddenly face-to-face with the friend he’d betrayed—not the guy who mothered everybody or the guy who’d been trying to take care of him long-distance, but the kid he’d taken under
his wing, had shown the business, had worked side by side with and professed to love.
And John had betrayed him for a key of coke and a chance to spew venom with the kid’s worst enemy.
Amends. You were supposed to make amends. How do you fix that? Oh God.
Atonement was just a word here, wasn’t it?
“What can I do?” he asked, hoping Dex could smell the remorse rolling off his body. “I will do anything to make this right, Dex. But you gotta let me know what will do it.”
Dex shook his head. “It’s… I mean, I let it go, okay? You… you weren’t right in your own head, John. You were hurting, and I didn’t see it, and I’m going to live with what happened too. But… but I don’t want you to see that video, okay? I mean….” Dex grimaced. “I don’t know Galen. I might know him in the future, and that’ll be awesome, but right now he’s a stranger. If I send him the video and he sees it, that’ll be like a stranger saw it, and that’ll be okay. But….” Dex’s eyes watered, and John wondered if he could hate himself any more. “You… I mean, I really want you to like Kane. And this isn’t the nice part of him, you know?”
Oh. Oh. Ohhh….
“Oh!” John said, so flooded with relief he almost couldn’t breathe.
“What?” Dex ran his fingers through his hair again. John remembered those long platonic hugs he’d gotten from Brant and Zion. He wanted to give one to Dex. To his friend Dex.
“All you really need is for me to not be a dick!”
Dex gaped at him, sitting still for so long, for a minute John thought G-chat had shut down and frozen the image: Dex, his mouth open, angel-blue eyes wide, stuck there forever.
“What?”
“You need me to… to not think about him like a gorilla with a soul patch, and to not watch the porn, and to not comment, and… and basically to try a lot harder to like him than he’s going to try to like me. You know. Not be a dick.”
Dex scrubbed his face with his hand. “Yeah, John. Not be a dick. But you know, you’re not usually a dick—at least not when I’ve known you. That’s why….” He looked away. Maybe it was the fear that John would have to look at the video and see Kane at not his best, and maybe it was just all the fear catching up with him, but suddenly Dex didn’t look in control anymore.
John remembered how hard it had been to see Dex in rehab—all his shit together, all his ducks in a row, taking care of John like John was one of the guys they worried about. Like Chase, who had scared them all so badly, or Tommy, who’d been a walking broken heart.
Dex didn’t have it all together. Nobody had it all together. John had hated himself for not being enough for Tory, but he’d missed the point. The point was nobody was enough all the time. That was what being partners was about. One person got to spaz the fuck out, and the other person got to hold the other guy’s hand, and then they switched places.
Oh damn.
Right now, Dex needed John to reassure him.
“It’s why it hurt so bad when I lost my shit,” John said quietly. “I hear you. Look, David? I’m going to make you some solemn promises, okay?”
Dex looked at him, as young, as vulnerable, as he’d been nearly ten years before, trying to escape a thing he’d never told John and John had never asked about. “What?”
“Okay, I can’t promise you I’ll never do blow again, but I promise I’ve got all the reasons in the world not to.” He nodded and hoped that would be enough.
Dex nodded back, and John thanked God.
“And I can’t promise you Kane and I will ever be friends, because I was in love with you, and Kane’s not stupid. But I can promise you that I’m not in love with you anymore and that you’re my friend and I’ll try my hardest, okay?”
Dex nodded again, some of the stress easing from his cheekbones, from his usually full pink mouth. Okay. Good. John was being not-a-dick, and this was working.
“And I can promise you that I will have things in place to keep the company afloat. I gave you a percentage, which is good, but we’ve got Galen now, and he’s sort of a shark, you know? At the very least, we can figure out a way for neither of us to have enough power to sink the place. Like you said, we’ve got people counting on us, right?”
Dex nodded one more time, and helpless tears of relief flooded his eyes. He wiped them with the back of his hand. John wished Kane were there to hold him and tell him it was going to be okay. John could wish that for him—truly wish that for him—and that felt really good.
“Okay,” Dex whispered, quiet, like a child.
John sighed. “And I can promise you that if there’s any way possible that doesn’t involve sinking the company, the only person who will see that tape is Galen. I don’t want to watch your porn, Davy—you’re my friend.”
Dex let out a shaky laugh and wiped his face again. “Thanks, John,” he rasped.
Okay. Atonement begun. “You’re welcome, kid. Look, I’m going to let you sign off and go find your significant other, and I’m going to settle in with a long batch of paperwork. I’ll try to have as much of it done by tomorrow as possible, okay?”
Dex nodded again and wiped his face on his sleeve. “Thanks,” he said again.
“No, kid. Seriously. Thank you. I’ll try not to ever let you down again—especially not like that.”
Dex’s smile had always been so pure. It was one of the things that had made him such an outstanding model. When he smiled at someone after sex, you could believe that you’d captured a private piece of his soul right there on film. He turned that smile on John now, and John gave many thanks to a merciful God. He’d rather have Dex as a friend than Tory as a lover any day.
“I’m just so glad to have you back, you know?”
“You and me both. Now go. We both have shit to do.”
Dex signed off. Without thinking about it—without even going to change—John started opening e-mails and windows and spreadsheets and all of the stuff that he had been avoiding in a big way.
It had been a nice vacation and all, but he was needed, and he didn’t want to piss that away.
THAT NEWFOUND industry didn’t stop him from the long, necessary hug with Galen the next day.
No words, no explanation, just a full-body stand-up hug until Galen’s bad knee gave a little and John set him gently down in a waiting chair.
“Fuck, but I’m tired of that happening,” Galen groused.
John sat next to him and grabbed his hand. Galen’s body might have been thin and damaged, but that did not make it any less life sustaining, oh no it did not. “Well, physical therapy is the next thing on the list, right?”
“What list?” Galen stretched his legs in front of him and stared moodily through the bay window into the ocean. John really had picked out a nice rehab for him—it had a beach to walk on and everything.
“The John and Galen’s Happy Life Improvement list. Rehab’s the first thing on it. I got mine done already, because I am that much of an ass-kisser.”
Galen sent him a distracted lip curl, and John congratulated himself on a good bit. If that could make Galen smile, he needed to keep it—the man needed good things right now. “I knew it” was the mild reply. He sat up straighter and opened his laptop, no nonsense to get in the way. “You look like an ass-kisser. That could be a valuable skill. I shall have to make you practice. But alas, before then….”
He tapped a few buttons and John saw a pre-edited QuickTime video pop up.
“I can’t watch that,” he said seriously. “I told Dex I wouldn’t.”
Galen grimaced. “Well, that’s a shame, because I actually do need your professional opinion on something.”
John sighed. “Lay it out for me and we’ll see if I can keep my promise.”
Galen nodded, and they sat at the table in the common room again.
John had a sudden thought. “Wait, you don’t really watch the porn out here, do you?”
Galen smirked. “Yes, yes, John, I do. I tell you, it keeps the crazies away in this place
like nothing else.”
John regarded him with level surprise. “You are one sick bastard, and I am very turned-on right now.”
Galen met his gaze hotly, and they both flushed and adjusted their seat, and then…
Sighed and got back to business like grown-ups.
“Okay,” Galen said, shoving his hair back from his face. It was clean, at least, and he’d shaved recently. (John could never tell if he left it at stubble on purpose or just let it grow out that way a lot. Either way? Sexy.) He was wearing a pair of the cargo shorts along with one of the Hawaiian shirts John had brought, and he looked flushed, as though he’d taken advantage of the beach. John found himself breathless for a moment, caught up with how amazing—how beautiful Galen would be with his feet under him, with his wits about him.
“What?” Galen asked, suddenly jerking his attention away from where he was pulling things up on the laptop.
John shook his head, knowing the hated flush was probably blotching his neck, his jaw, and even his ears.
“What?” Galen asked again, but this time he was smiling.
“Just… never mind.” Like a slug to the solar plexus—that was what this wanting was like. More. More. “Tell me what the problem is.”
Galen pursed his lips. “The problem is, the contract was that Kane and Scott would have sex on film and that Scott would forgive a $40,000 debt.”
“Yes,” John said, trying not to flinch.
“Well, there’s two things wrong with that. The first one is that you can’t count for shit, you goofy bastard. I checked your accounts and the correspondence, and I figure the most you actually bought from Scott was $10,000, and that’s if all of your cash went his way. I’m thinking you’re just a pussy lightweight who got so stoned on what you did buy, you bought his bullshit and assumed you were in a hole you couldn’t climb out of.”
John’s mouth had gone dry. Dry as a desert. Dry as outer space. Dry as bone. “Well. That’s humiliating.” All that pain for Dex and he could have sold his fucking car to get out of that debt? Jesus. But then he never would have gone to rehab, would he? He would probably be high right now, and he and Galen would be rolling around in a big ol’ bed of sex and filth and drugs.