Dreaming of You: M/M Gay Romance

by Marina Lander

  But he's nauseous and drunk and wearing grandpa clothes and Angie was able to guess his crush after talking to him for twenty minutes so surely Dr. Eames must have figured it out a long time ago. He's incredibly tempted to wuss out and run back to the house, or better yet all the way back to his car. He stands there for a minute, wrestling with his indecision, but before long the choice is taken away from him. Penelope notices him standing there and starts tugging at her leash, panting and wagging her tongue and probably hoping to get a whiff of Phil's crotch, and then Dr. Eames turns to see what the fuss is all about and Phil is still just lurking there, frozen in place.

  "Phil!" Dr. Eames says with a smile, looking genuinely happy to see him and completely unconcerned with the fact that a student just found him using illegal drugs. "You’re finally here."

  Sometimes life is like a movie. Sometimes you run into your crush on a beautiful moonlit night and you say all the right things at all the right times and everything just magically falls into place.

  It must happen like that sometimes, Phil thinks as he stumbles across the lawn towards Dr. Eames, for some people, so why not me?

  Once he gets close enough, Penelope, predictably and embarrassingly, starts nuzzling her snout between his legs, and Phil hopes he’s not drunk enough to vomit all over her.

  "Sorry about that," Dr. Eames says, tugging the dog away from Phil's groin with a task. "She's quite a fan of yours."

  Dr. Eames is wearing a snugly tailored suit with pinstripes and a black shirt which is unbuttoned almost halfway down his chest. It's the nicest, sexiest outfit Phil's ever seen him wear, and he has to wonder if Dr. Eames dresses so badly to class on purpose. Maybe it's a misguided attempt to look less hot, so his students don't get distracted.

  "I guess my crotch is pretty appetizing," Phil says, horrifyingly.

  Dr. Eames just chuckles at that. Actually, he kind of giggles, which reminds Phil about the pot.

  “Care to trade?” he asks, holding out his half smoked cigarette.

  Dr. Eames looks confused for a second, like he’s forgotten what’s in his hand, then a little bit alarmed when he remembers. He looks down at the joint like it’s done something wrong, like he has no idea how it wound up curled between his fingers. It’s a make or break moment, Phil realizes. It will tell him if Dr. Eames sees him as a trusted friend, or merely a precocious student he’s supposed to protect from things like this. Also, if Dr. Eames smokes the cigarette it will show that he’s not grossed out by the thought of tasting Phil’s saliva.

  “Ah, yes,” Dr. Eames says, his eyes flicking back up to Phil with something that looks like it could be mischief. “That would be delightfully inappropriate, wouldn’t it.”

  He takes the cigarette from Phil, hands him the joint, and Phil rolls that phrase around in his mind. Delightfully inappropriate. They’re going to be delightfully inappropriate together.

  He feels the first hit flowing through his whole body, a syrupy glaze of relaxation and well-being. Oh yeah, this is definitely the good stuff.

  He takes another drag and starts to notice the surroundings a little bit more; the brightness of the moon and the stars and the huge, amazing trees. The little hobbit house about thirty feet away from where they’re standing.

  “Who lives there?” Phil asks, pointing towards the mysterious building. He can’t tell if it’s a neighbor, or if it’s actually part of Dr. Eames’ property.

  “Nobody at present,” Dr. Eames says. “My sister, when she’s in the neighborhood.”

  Sister... Dr. Eames has a sister. Phil ponders this new information for a moment. It’s peculiar somehow to think of Dr. Eames with a family, to imagine that he was a child once.

  “Is your sister English?” Phil asks, stupidly.

  “Yes, I believe so,” Dr. Eames says with a chuckle.

  “No, I meant- I mean, is she still there? In English... England. The UK.”

  Shit, he’s definitely had enough. He starts to hand the joint back to Dr. Eames, but then realizes it’s pretty much gone.

  “She’s an American citizen,” Dr. Eames says. He takes the roach from Phil and bends down to drop it, along with his cigarette butt, into a beer bottle that’s on the ground. “She’s in New York right now. She travels quite a bit.”

  “Is she a businesswoman or something?”

  “Dancer. She’s doing the Lion King on Broadway.”

  “Oh,” Phil says. “Wow.”

  “That little guest house was a big selling point for me,” Dr. Eames tells him. “I wanted to have a place for her that was... separate.”

  Phil wonders if the location was a selling point, too. If Dr. Eames wanted to live out here in the boonies, like the Unabomber. He must've. Nobody winds up in a place like this by accident.

  There’s so much more Phil would like to know. He wonders when Dr. Eames first moved to America- did he come here as a child, with his whole family, or was it later? Did he and his sister come here together as adults? Did he move here for the job, or for some other reason? Does he ever get homesick? Or lonely?

  “Can you dance, too?” he asks, and Dr. Eames laughs.

  “Hardly,” he says. “She calls me a lumbering oaf.”

  Phil smiles. He’s actually a pretty good dancer himself and it’s kind of nice, kind of comforting to know that there’s something in the world he’s better at than Dr. Eames.

  Penelope starts tugging at her leash again, moving towards the wilderness.

  “I think she’d like to take a stroll,” Dr. Eames says. “Would you care to join us?”

  “In the woods?”

  “Yes, I thought you enjoyed hiking.”

  Damn, that lie is never gonna go away.

  “Um, yeah, okay.” He hopes the path isn’t too treacherous, or muddy. If he ruins his shoes he’s going to be pissed. Christ, he hopes there is a path.

  “I think I saw this re-enacted on Murder Most Foul,” Phil says, as they start trekking through the trees in the dark. There is a trail, but it’s a rough one, possibly cleared by Dr. Eames himself, and it’s hard to see. It takes most of his concentration just to walk in a straight line and keep from falling down in a drunken heap.

  “Don’t worry,” Dr. Eames says. “I only murder the students with poor attendance records.”

  They walk in silence for a bit, and Phil finds himself surprisingly enjoying the hike- the foliage and the quiet and even the slightly creepy mood of it. And, of course, Dr. Eames’ company.

  Then he decides to blurt out, “I’m wearing the same clothes as Dr. Howe,” for no apparent reason. He’s not sure why he feels the need to keep pointing it out to people, except that maybe sometimes it’s better to announce these things yourself, rather than have everyone else snickering about them behind your back.

  “You what?” Dr. Eames says. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Oh yes,” Phil says. “I almost went home.”

  “Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

  “I’m wearing the same outfit as a senior citizen,” Phil says, woefully, laughing at himself a bit.

  “Well, so what?” Dr. Eames asks. “He’s very well dressed, typically.”

  Dr. Eames seems genuinely baffled about why this whole situation might be mortifying for someone, and it makes Phil feel more foolish about being upset than he felt about the stupid clothes in the first place. Maybe it’s not as terrible as he thought. Who really cares anyway?

  “So am I dressed too old, or is he dressed too young?” he asks, philosophically.

  “Neither,” Dr. Eames answers. “Unless, well... were his trousers tight as yours?”

  Oh God. Oh God, Dr. Eames is talking about his trousers. Dr. Eames noticed his trousers. Phil feels a flush over his entire body. He’s not sure if Dr. Eames is teasing him, making fun of his tight pants or if it's some awkward attempt at flirting or what, but whatever it is, he noticed. That has to mean something. Men don’t notice things like that on other men unless it means something.
<
br />   “I, uh... didn’t really look,” Phil says, which is true. He noticed the color, not the cut. He doesn’t go around looking at how tight 60 year old men are wearing their pants.

  “Hm. Well,” Dr. Eames says. He scratches the back of his neck and, for once, looks noticeably uncomfortable. It’s kind of amazing.

  Eventually he leads them to a small metal bench, which seems pretty randomly placed in the middle of nowhere, and Phil wonders if Dr. Eames put it here himself. He wonders how often Dr. Eames comes out here and if he’s ever brought anyone else to this spot.

  Dr. Eames lifts the bench a little to loop the end of Penelope’s leash around the leg, and then they sit. Phil can hear crickets, owls, other unknown creatures rustling around in the trees. He can hear Penelope sniffing at the dirt and grass and Dr. Eames breathing next to him, really close. Their thighs are almost touching. The party seems about a million miles away.

  Phil has no idea how long they've been out here. He's lost all track of time.

  "Should you be getting back?" Phil asks. "I mean, won't they miss you?"

  "Probably," Dr. Eames says. He doesn't sound terribly concerned. "Would you like to go back?" he asks.

  Never, Phil thinks.

  "Um, not particularly," he says. "Don't you like parties?"

  "Not particularly," Dr. Eames says with a smirk. "I did this my first term to introduce myself to everyone. Now it's become a tradition and something of an obligation. Perhaps I'll stop if I'm given tenure this year."

  Phil is a little bit shocked to hear that Dr. Eames feels obliged to do anything. Which is stupid, he realizes. Everybody has obligations. It's just such a human thing. Such a normal thing.

  "I always think I'll like them," Phil says. "But then when it comes to actually being there, I wind up having all kinds of anxieties."

  "Oh, I think that's true for most people," Dr. Eames says. "That's why we drink, isn't it?"

  It's true, that's why Phil drinks. It's just as true as Angie's anti-social diagnosis, but it's not the whole truth and sometimes, when Phil's stoned, he thinks about the whole truth. Sometimes he talks about it.

  "My anxiety goes all the way back to childhood," he says, before he can convince himself not to. "Never knowing if my mother was going to remain my mother through the course of the party."

  "Ah, was she a drinker?" Dr. Eames asks.

  Phil thinks maybe he should just say yes and leave it at that. It would be easier to lie. An alcoholic parent garners a brief moment of sympathy, possibly some understanding, and then you move on. It's a horrible thing, but people know how to react to it. They're used to hearing it. This is... well, this is it, Phil realizes. This is the moment he dreads, the reason he doesn't like to get close. This is why he doesn't want to talk about his life. To anyone. But if he lies now, there'll be no going back.

  "Part of her is," he says. Just spit it out, he thinks. Say it like it's normal. "She has dissociative identity disorder."

  He swallows the lump in his throat, starts scratching Penelope's head in an attempt to appear nonchalant, and waits to be disappointed. He waits for the onslaught of questions, the treatment of his life as a freak show or psychological curiosity. The skepticism and cross-examination. You would think people with a background in psychology would be better with this sort of thing, but in Phil's experience they're actually the worst. He'd rather deal with ignorant morons who think that Sybil and One Life to Live are accurate representations. Half of the psychologists in the world don't even believe his mother's condition exists.

  It would probably serve him right if Dr. Eames didn't believe him, after all the obnoxious comments he's made about dreams and dream research.

  He waits for an awkward silence to unfold before all of that horrible stuff happens, but Dr. Eames surprises him by speaking almost right away.

  "Is that why you're studying psychology?" he asks, and Phil almost can't believe what he's hearing. Nobody's ever asked him anything like this before. Not even his stupid freaking therapist back home. Nobody's first question is ever about him.

  "I- Uh, yeah, I guess," he says. "I mean, I can't really remember a time when I wasn't studying psychology. As soon as I was cognizant I was reading Psychology Today."

  "It must've been very difficult, growing up with that," Dr. Eames says.

  Phil doesn't even know how to begin explaining what it felt like. He's been trying to describe it for years. Like the rug could get pulled out from under you at any moment. Like you can't trust anything.

  "I'm afraid I might wind up having to take care of her someday," he says. He's never told that to anyone before, and it sounds just as selfish and awful as he feared it would. But it's true and it scares the shit out of him and once he gets it out, he just keeps talking.

  "I got accepted to Princeton," he says. "I had to defer for a year because my brother joined the Army and she freaked out when he left. Then my parents got divorced and it was another crisis... by the time I was ready to go to school Princeton didn't want me anymore. I'm afraid this is gonna keep happening for the rest of my life."

  God, he sounds like an asshole. And another thing about pot that he'd kind of forgotten- it makes him really stupidly emotional, and with dawning horror he realizes he's actually crying.

  Fuck, he should've just stuck to the booze.

  He rubs furiously at his eyes with one hand, and curls the other into a tight fist on his thigh. He hopes Dr. Eames is too drunk and stoned himself to notice this pathetic display. No such luck, though.

  It starts as a tentative, comforting pat, but then Dr. Eames closes his hand over Phil's- the one that's on his leg- and just sort of leaves it there.

  "I'm so sorry, Phil," he says, but Phil's not sorry or sad anymore. Dr. Eames' hand is warm and big and callused and one of his fingers is touching the inside of Phil's thigh and honestly, he can't even remember why he was crying.

  He lifts his head to look at Dr. Eames and Dr. Eames is looking back at him and the mood has suddenly shifted to something completely different.

  Phil thinks he could be misreading this. He's seriously inebriated and he's not very good at these things under the best of circumstances, but Dr. Eames was looking at his pants- he noticed Phil's pants- and as Phil watches him, his eyes dart down to Phil's lips, so maybe... maybe.

  It feels like his heart is practically in his throat, and if he's wrong about this he's going to have to quit school and become a recluse or something, but maybe...

  Phil leans forward just a fraction of an inch, and when Dr. Eames doesn't recoil he moves a little bit more, and then some more until finally (finally!) their mouths are just a few inches apart. He closes his eyes and waits, half expecting Dr. Eames to pull back at the last minute, but he doesn't. He closes the distance himself and then it's happening. They're actually kissing.

  Chapter 6

  Once, when Phil was fifteen, he hot wired his father's car.

  His brother Alex was sixteen and, according to almost everyone, heading for all kinds of serious trouble. He was already getting bad grades, fighting, doing drugs, the whole teenage delinquent package. Phil's rebellions were mostly silent and entirely secret, taking place in his own mind and imagination (or occasionally with random boys in the locker room after hockey practice), but everything Alex did was loud and large and impossible to ignore.

  Their parents had gone to a party and taken his mother's car. Phil and Alex were in the basement, Phil playing video games and Alex complaining about their father, "the Nazi", who'd not only refused to buy Alex a car (he'd recently acquired his driver's license after failing the test three times), but had also taken the keys to his own car to the party with him, denying Alex the privilege of driving it while they were gone. The BMW was just sitting in the driveway, mocking him. It was, apparently, the most heinously unfair thing in the history of America.

  Phil was trying to tune him out and concentrate on advancing to the next level of Morrowind or Vampire: The Masquerade or whatever horrifically g
eeky RPG he'd been obsessed with that month, but when Alex got like that, incensed about some perceived injustice committed against his personhood, he would not shut the hell up.

  Finally Phil had said, "Why don't you just hotwire it if you wanna drive it so bad?"

  It was at least partially a joke, but he'd also said it because he knew Alex's criminal activities hadn't yet escalated to the point where he'd know how to hotwire a car, and Phil did know. He'd been researching such things in his ongoing quest to be fully prepared for a zombie apocalypse. A small, sad part of him had wanted Alex to ask him about it, to be impressed.

  Alex did ask him about it, and Alex was impressed, and somehow, after a series of dares and taunts, he managed to talk Phil into actually doing it.

  Phil still remembers what that was like, flying down the New Jersey Turnpike in the middle of the night with the stereo blasting horrible Bruce Springsteen songs, knowing the kind of trouble they'd get into if they got caught, but feeling so good that it didn't matter. He remembers his brother saying that they should just keep going, drive down the coast, run away and never come back and for just a couple of hours, Phil thought that they might really do that. He remembers feeling totally free, totally unburdened, like he could go anywhere and do anything in that moment. Like he could be anyone he wanted to be. Like he was careening towards something unknown and dangerous, but that he was protected and safe; his trust in his brother had been infinite and absolute, in spite of his numerous fuckups. He'd basked in Alex's approval, in the fact that he'd finally been included in one of his insane adventures.

  Phil had never experienced anything like that before, and he hasn’t really since, but now, kissing Dr. Eames in the woods at night with the same kind of giddy sensation building in his chest and throat, he thinks he’s gotten pretty damn close to it. Close, but so much better.

  Dr. Eames is, it turns out, the best kisser in the entire universe. At least as far as Phil's, admittedly somewhat limited, universe is concerned. His mouth is made for it, first of all, but that’s not the only reason. The truth is, in Phil’s experience, most guys are terrible kissers. They’re either too rough, poking and prodding clumsily with tongues and teeth right off the bat, or they’re too passive and wait for Phil to do all the work.