by A. E. Wasp
“Okay,” Troy said, pulling away from Dmitri and sitting up. “I really have to go. Move it.” He tried to shove Dmitri away, but Dmitri didn’t budge, forcing Troy to climb over him to get out of the nook. Dmitri took advantage of Troy’s passage to grope every part he could reach.
Troy groaned, swatting his hands away. “Stop. I have to go sit in a room with fifteen straight men. I don’t want to be thinking about sex the whole time. It’s very…off-putting.”
“Vincent will be there. Vincent’s not straight,” Angel offered.
“He’s also like seventy years old,” Troy said.
“He’s sixty-four,” Dmitri and Angel answered at the same time.
“Troy,” Dmitri asked seriously. “Will you still need me? Will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?”
“I’m not feeding you now.” Troy pulled on his sheepskin-lined denim jacket and his baseball cap. Dmitri had been after to him to go for a cowboy hat for the full effect, but Troy told him that until they got horses, he would not be buying a cowboy hat. Dmitri was still considering it. He had the land. Horses were easy enough to find.
“True,” Dmitri answered. “Don’t be too late. I’ll try to save some soup for you.”
“I make no promises,” Angel said.
“I expect nothing less.” Bending down, he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before he left. He whistled for Sweetie, and she walked over to him, tail wagging.
It warmed Dmitri’s heart to see his two favorite people in the world getting along.
“Bye,” Troy said and left.
“So what will it be? Superhero shows or reality TV?” Angel asked as she pulled down the bowls from the cabinet.
“Definitely superhero. I’ve had all the reality I can take for a long time.” Dmitri stood and stretched. “Just let me change, and we can start.”
“Deal. Meet you in the living room.”
chapter two - please come home for christmas
Vincent’s bar was mostly dead when Troy walked in. A cold, snowy Tuesday night during finals didn’t bring out the crowds, but Troy had expected at least one server. Vincent was the only person there besides the cook and Danny the barback who was doubling as a busboy.
“Hey, Mr. D., need some help? You look shorthanded.” Troy pulled off his gloves and shoved them into the pockets of his coat.
Vincent slid a hamburger across the bar to a young guy drinking a beer and reading through what looked like a chemistry textbook. “No. I’m good. I’ve cut the menu down to burgers and grilled cheese for the vegetarians and the bar down to beer, wine, and soft drinks.”
As the owner, Vincent had the right to do that. After all, he didn’t really need the income from the place. His husband Kevin was a lawyer, but he had made a fortune about fifteen years ago in some tech thing and invested it well. Vincent kept the bar because he liked having something to do and somewhere to go. He claimed it kept the magic alive for him and Kevin to have something separate.
Troy wasn’t one to complain. He liked the job; Vincent paid him well, and it was as close as Red Deer had to an official gay bar. It also hadn’t been upgraded in ten years or more. Troy couldn’t help but make notes on improvements to the space and the menu while he worked there. Oh well. He was grateful Vincent didn’t need to turn a profit and was willing to accommodate a broken down vet that had panic attacks every now and then and let him keep Sweetie in the office while he worked.
“Hey, Danny, let me know if anyone needs anything. I’ll be in my office. Okay?”
Danny flipped the bar rag at him. “You got it, boss. Hey, Troy.”
Troy waved to Danny. The kid had helped him fix up the farmhouse Dmitri lived in. It had passed from Dmitri’s grandparents to his parents, and now to Dmitri. None of the Wellington family was good with home repairs. Troy was finding he was, and more importantly, he liked it.
Danny’s boyfriend Ravi liked to hang out with them, but he and Dmitri mostly helped by handing things, making store runs with very specific items (sometimes with pictures), and ordering food. Come to think of it, maybe Ravi would help Troy with algebra. He was an engineering student. Maybe it would work. He’d ask Danny after he talked to Vincent.
Vincent closed the door to his office. Pictures of Vincent and Kevin and friends and family through the years covered the walls. Troy pulled his favorite, a picture of a young Vincent in uniform with a Vietnam-era M16 around his neck and his arms around his buddy. Vincent made it out of Vietnam. His buddy hadn’t. “Was it hard for you to come out to your parents?”
Vincent settled into the worn loveseat pressed against one wall. A laptop computer and loose papers covered the desk. He may not have to turn a profit, but Vincent kept meticulous records. Troy suspected he was feeding a lot more people free meals than anyone who didn’t work there knew.
“Well, I can’t actually say the coming out was hard. It was the repercussions that were tough,” he said. “My mom was old school New York Italian, y’know? Mass three times a week capital-C Catholic. She thought I was going to burn in hell. I screamed, she cried. My dad yelled. It was a massive battle. I think the neighbors heard.”
“How old were you when you told them?”
“Oh, I was pretty young. Not too long after I got back from the war, so I was barely twenty-one?”
“Why did you do it?” Troy paced around the room, looking at the pictures, touching various knickknacks.
Vincent spread his hands and shrugs. “What else was I gonna do? I didn’t get killed in the war like I’d thought I would, like so many of my buddies did. Half the kids in my neighborhood didn’t come back. And it wasn’t that long after Stonewall, y’know?”
Troy stopped at turned to Vincent. “Really? I thought that was like –” He did the mental math. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. I was nineteen in 1969. This isn’t ancient history. You don’t know much about gay and lesbian history, do you? Not much about us old guys and girls who made it possible for me and Kevin to get married and for you to not have to worry about being kicked out of the Army for alleged homosexual activity?”
Troy shook his head, looked down. “No, sir.”
Vincent stood up and walked over to Troy. “Don’t feel bad. It’s not like they teach it in schools. You just barely admitted you were gay before Dmitri, right?” He dropped a hand on Troy’s shoulder.
Troy shifted under the weight and looked away.
“Still feels a little weird, right? Not quite sure it fits?”
Troy nodded.
“Part of you wants to be all out, and proud like Dmitri and part of you wants to just…stay in your bubble, surrounded by the friends here who know and don’t care. Why do we have to put labels on everything, etcetera, etcetera? Why tell the parents?”
“Yeah.”
Vincent pulled his coat off the hook on the back of the door. “Come on. I’ll drive.” He walked into the bar and yelled into the kitchen. “Cesar, I’m leaving for an hour. You and Danny are in charge. You good with that?”
“No problem boss.” Cesar, a short, middle-aged man who had been with Vincent for ten years, could, and had, run the kitchen solo during busier nights that this.
“Good. Danny, tell the customers no alcohol until I get back. You’re underage. If they don’t like it, send them to that hippie place down the street.”
Outside, the temperature had dropped, and the snow fell harder. Troy settled into the passenger’s seat of Vincent’s Pathfinder.
“So what brought this all up?” Vincent asked, starting the engine.
“My family wants me to come home for Christmas.” Troy held on as Vincent sped backward out of the parking lot.
“Oh yeah, that will do it. You gonna go?”
“I don’t know. I should. I kind of told my sister I would.”
Troy’s sister had called him a week ago. She’d been adamant on the phone.
“You’d better come home, Detroit. Or Mom is going to disown you.” Mary sounded like she would d
isown him, too, if you could disown a sibling.
“I know, Mare. It’s just hard.”
Her snort buzzed in his ear through the phone. “What’s hard? It’s been six months, Troy. I checked the calendar. Your finals will be over. School’s closed. If it’s work, I’ll talk to your boss. Do you need money? I’ll buy you a plane ticket.”
“No. It’s not that.” He wracked his brain for some excuse she would buy. “I, uh, I have a dog now. I can’t leave her.”
“You haven’t made any friends there yet?” Mary’s tone went from mad big sister to protective big sister instantly.
“No! I have friends. Really. I’m not lying.”
“So ask them to watch her.”
The awful thing was he really wanted to go home. He missed his family desperately. He hadn’t been home for Christmas in years, and he had fantasized about this first Christmas home for the last two years. Christmas Eve church service, the food, the way his mom went all out decorating. He’d see his sister and remember it this time.
Those first few weeks out of the army were a blur. He barely remembered moving to Colorado, let alone the homecoming in West Virginia. But going home would raise so many questions, there’s so much he’d have to answer for and explain. Starting with Sweetie. Might as well get that out of the way.
“I can’t leave Sweetie –”
“Oh, what a cute name!” Mary interrupted.
Troy took a deep breath. “I can’t leave Sweetie because she’s not just a pet. She’s my service dog.”
“What? Oh. Oh!” There was the sound of breathing and shuffling as Mary moved to a quieter place. “Troy, are you okay?”
He laughed harshly. How do you answer that? It was a minute-by-minute thing. “Sometimes. Yeah. I will be. I am. Sometimes I’m not so much.”
“Oh.” They listened to each other breathe for a minute. “You know, you can always talk to me. I won’t know the right things to say, but I’ll always listen. I’m always here for you.”
“I know you are, Sis.” And she would be. She always had been. Mary was ten years older than Troy and had raised him as much as their mom had. God, he missed her.
“Come home, Troy. Please? I miss you. I’ve missed you so much.”
The catch in her voice was all it took to make the tears fall from Troy’s eyes. “I miss you, too, Mare.” His voice cracked, and he could hear her sob once. “Okay. I’ll come home. I’ll drive; don’t worry about the plane ticket.”
“Yeah?” she sniffled. “You still driving Rusty?”
“Yeah. She’s still going strong. We’ll see how she does in the Colorado winters.”
They talked a little more on less emotional subjects and the conversation wound down with a promise that Troy would be there for Christmas.
It was a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.
Vincent pulled into the parking lot of the church where the Veterans’ support groups met. Snow swirled and flashed in the headlight, sticking to the dead grass and gathering in powdery swirls against the curbs. “Are you going to bring Dmitri home to meet your family?”
Troy sighed, breath fogging up the windshield. “I don’t know. That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.”
Troy braced for the cold and opened the door for Sweetie to jump out. It was the last meeting until after the New Year and Troy needed it. The holidays were a hard time for a lot of people.
chapter three - i’ll be home for christmas
“So, my mom wants to know what our plans are for Christmas.” Dmitri filled up his insulated travel mug with coffee, his back to Troy. Sure, there was coffee in the lab, but it was god-awful. Twelve people with PhDs and no one could make a pot of coffee to save their lives.
One of the perks of being a lab within a State University was that the lab was, for all intents and purposes, closed the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s. He had taken the time off, looking forward to having someone special to spend the holidays with for the first time in a long, long time.
He’d been planning his present for Troy for a month. Was still planning, actually, because he wasn’t a hundred percent sure what to get him. Everything he’d thought of seemed either too personal or too impersonal. He wanted to strike that perfect balance between ‘I know you well’ and ‘I’m a clingy, needy bastard, please stay with me forever.’ Though part of him really wanted to say that to Troy. Not yet. It was too early, too soon.
“Is that okay?” he heard Troy ask.
Whoops. Lost in thought again. “I’m sorry, is what okay?”
Troy leaned against the doorframe, his hands gripped around a coffee mug. “I said, my mom wants me to come home for Christmas, is that okay?”
Huh. Dmitri had never been away from his family over Christmas. He was almost thirty. It was actually a little embarrassing how much his life still revolved around his parents. This could be good for all of them. Christmas in West Virginia. Could be interesting. Probably not the best time to meet the family, over the holidays, but maybe not the worst either. Spirit of Christmas and all that. “Yeah, that will work,” he said. “What’s the weather like there at Christmas?” He turned, leaning against the counter.
Troy stared at the coffee in his mug, shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Um. It’s not too bad. Sometimes it snows. But, ah, I was thinking of going alone. By myself.”
Dmitri blinked at him. “Oh. Well. Okay, then. I’ll tell my mom.” He put his mug down on the counter and grabbed his coat. “Are you working late tonight?” He never knew about Thursdays. Sometimes Troy worked late; sometimes he didn’t.
Troy walked over to stand next to Dmitri. “Look, I just think it’d be easier if you go alone.”
“Yeah I get that, I totally get it. Fine. Do what you have to do.”
Dmitri zipped up his coat. “I’ll see you at work. I’ll probably stop by Vincent’s after work for some dinner.” He left before Troy could say anything else.
Dmitri didn’t often come to the waiting room area of the University Veterinarian clinic. He stayed mostly back in the lab, entering and exiting through a staff entrance in the back. It always caught him off-guard that there were people with their pets sitting in the room, waiting, as the name implied, to be seen by the vet students and their supervisors.
With Sweetie sitting at his feet, Troy blended in with the rest of them. Dmitri observed him, unseen, from behind a pillar.
Clutching Dmitri’s travel mug between both hands, Troy looked a little lost and uncertain. His forehead was wrinkled between drawn-together brows, and his leg jittered so hard, Dmitri was surprised the woman sitting next to him hadn’t moved or asked him to stop yet.
He was also gorgeous even in the stark hospital lighting. When he leaped up to grab the door for a woman struggling with a small kid in a stroller, a somewhat larger kid who clung to her hand, and what sounded like a very unhappy cat in a bulky pet-carrier, Dmitri sighed.
Troy was just so thoughtful, and kind, and dealing with crap Dmitri was just beginning to comprehend the depths of. Ron, the dog trainer and friend that had been responsible for introducing Sweetie into their lives had cautioned Dmitri that the holidays would add an extra level of stress and that Dmitri was going to have to be extra-patient.
Dmitri watched as Troy gave the woman his seat and introduced the free-range kid to Sweetie, letting the kid pet the endlessly-patient dog. Troy’s smile at the sight was blindingly pure, and Dmitri felt as if a band had squeezed his heart.
How had he gotten so lucky? He didn’t deserve it. He was nowhere as nice and kind as Troy. But he could try to be the partner Troy deserved. Summoning his nerve with a deep breath, he walked into the room. He cringed as every eye turned to him as they saw his white lab coat and assumed he was one of the doctors that actually treated the animals. Sorry to disappoint you, Dmitri thought to himself. I wish I could help you.
“Hey,” he said, coming up behind Troy, touching him gently on the shoulder.
> “Oh, hi.” Troy straightened up from the crouch that had brought him to the kid’s level. He held out Dmitri’s coffee mug. “You forgot your coffee. I know you hate the coffee here, and, well…”
Dmitri took the cup. “Thanks. Sorry, I was -”
“Sorry, I -” Troy spoke over his attempted apology.
Troy wrapped Sweetie’s leash over his hand and unwrapped it, over and over. “Can we talk?”
The woman looked between their faces, watching as if they were the best show she’d seen all day. He gave her a tight smile and led Troy away with a hand on his elbow. “Follow me.”
He ignored the glares from people thinking that Troy had jumped the line and guided Troy down the hall. He tried a few doors until he found an empty consultation room. He flipped the occupied indicator flag out and closed the door behind them.
“I’m sorry,” Troy was saying even as Dmitri turned around.
“No. Really. It’s fine. I totally get why you haven’t told your parents yet. You’re right. I did have it easy. Pretty much as easy as you can be without having gay parents.” He reached out and pulled Troy in for a hug. “So, you do what you have to do, okay?”
Troy nodded against his shoulder. Dmitri kissed the side of his head. “You are going to have to tell them about us eventually someday. Unless you’re planning on dumping me?”
“No! Don’t even joke. Besides, you’re going to dump me one day when you get tired of my crap.”
“Never.” Oops. He hadn’t meant to say that so seriously. They hadn’t talked about the future yet. Not really. Even the moving in had been framed as more of a way to save money than as a recognition that Troy slept over six nights out of seven and both of them liked it that way.
Troy’s arms tightened around Dmitri, and he could feel Troy’s heart beating against his chest. If only they could just stay here like this for an hour, a day. A lifetime.
Troy exhaled heavily and pulled away. “I know I have to come out to my parents. I know, and I will. That’s why I’m here. I’m scared; I’m just scared. You don’t know what it’s like; your parents were open to it from the beginning. From what I understand, they knew you were gay before you did.”
