as he spoke, getting his hands under the tee shirt, pushing it up. “This body, my God. Your mouth. The way you taste.” Andy was backing him toward the bed. The tee shirt was off. Andy’s hands were under the warm-ups. He started pushing them down as soon as Victor stopped moving. His mouth followed.
After a while, when they were lying in each other’s arms, Andy said,
“And then there’s this. I never had this. Never in my life wanted to cuddle.”
“Me either. I was all, wham bam thank you ma’am.” They both laughed.
“Of course, the way I was, that makes sense. But I’m surprised about you.
You’re affectionate. You cuddle the girls all the time.”
“Girls are different.”
“Well, yeah.” Victor’s voice was dry.
“I mean there’s no expectation with girls. They know my limitations. A guy wouldn’t have known. If I cuddled with someone who was more involved than I was, that would be cruel. If I cuddled someone who didn’t care, that would be masochistic.”
“Well, I care. And I like it. If we could be skin to skin all the time, I’d be a happy man. Even happier,” Victor amended, because he was happy. “Not even Alonzo?”
Andy lifted his head a moment, so he could make eye contact and check in. Victor’s expression was untroubled. Andy put his head back down. “No, not even Al. Well, you know, we never lived together. Never had this kind of time. We both worked insane hours. After a date, we’d go straight to sleep, and then somebody would be gone before the other person woke up. That was the way it was. I might have missed it, once or twice. Might have thought, gee it would be nice to lie here in bed with him. But not enough to change my life for it.”
“You changed a lot for me.”
“I would have changed everything for you. You changed a hell of a lot for me.”
“Yeah, I did. I’m glad I did.” Victor was quiet for a moment. “Did you remember to invite Rowena to see us at Chrome?”
“Oh yes I did. He’ll dig it the most.”
The photo shoot for Red and Mary was in the evening, because Andy
needed their neighbors’ son Theo to play the Macduff child, and could only get him after school was out. He was mostly bored by the process and was happy to go back home when they finished. “That is the only minor involved in any of these photos,” Andy remarked, after returning to the home studio from walking the boy next door. “Please congratulate me for completely avoiding profanity while he was here. Can you stay for dinner? We’d love to hear all about London. You were there for so long!”
“Well, Niall and Geoffrey found us a flat in their own neighborhood. By the time they flew off with Janis we knew everyone in it. Yes, we’d love to stay, wouldn’t we darling?” Red seemed to agree. Andy had downloaded the camera while he was out with Theo. Now he started the backup, turned off his monitors, and they all headed for the main house. There was the usual chitchat while dinner got staged. Then Mary returned to the topic of London.
“I spent so much time with my parents, it reminded me why I stayed away so long. Oh, you laugh. They can’t be in the same bloody room. It was Mum one week and Dad the next, and each time all they mostly wanted to talk about was the other, and how vile they were. I’d have throttled both of them if Red hadn’t been there.”
Red was snickering. “She told me what they were like, and I didn’t believe it.”
“Because your parents actually like each other!” She shook her head impatiently. “Pair of knobs. So you’re enjoying being gentlemen of leisure?”
“Well,” Victor said with a glance at Andy, “that isn’t entirely accurate.
There’s been this Shakespeare project, and two dances with the Cabaret.
We’re starting work next month on arrangements and choreography for a concert. I wrote a screenplay, with Jonathan and Loretta. And we bought the house next door.”
Mary and Red were both staring at their hosts as if they’d shape-shifted.
“You’ve done what?”
“We want a pool,” Victor said, and started telling them how it happened.
Andy was still inclined to laugh about it later, when they were sitting in the sunroom, looking out at the nighttime city, with mugs of decaf in hand and their dog at their feet. “Those were two epic what-the-fuck faces.”
“Red jumped through some hoops to get their house. You know he’s been in there for going on twenty years.”
“How long did it take him to get the place?”
“More than two years. The person they rented from liked having that income. Red had to get his finance person to do this thing pointing out the benefits of having the cash in hand. How they could invest it, and generate almost the same income. Not a sophisticated seller.”
“Kind of like our people next door.” They’d heard that the former owners had finally decided to go with a condo after all. They were going to be out of their rental in less than a year. “If they’d thought it through a little better, we might have been able to get in there with only one year’s rent tacked on.”
“It’s no big deal,” Victor said, smiling. “It was better to get things worked out fast. Look how long it’s taking to get the underground stuff done.”
“Oh, ‘how long.’ It’s been a month.” The backyard next door was kind of a disaster area at the moment. The engineers had said ‘do that stuff first.’
Paige was reporting in regularly. “I can’t believe the permits got issued so fast. And Paige lined up the work so fast. I thought the place would still be sitting there untouched, with its pants down like a wrinkly old exhibitionist.”
Victor cracked up. “You’re going to be
