Happy Ever After

Gale/Randy RPS

NC-17 


I’d start at the beginning but I don’t really know where that is. This isn’t a story of we met and fell in love or any of that shit. It’s a story about two guys who exist in the world and actually get each other. Shit, I don’t know…

Randy and I were friends pretty fast. We had a lot in common immediately. Besides being a little strange and a lot morose, we had the same sense of humor and taste in music. Which is pretty much all either of us needed to know. I guess you could say we had chemistry on screen and off.

We never had a lull in conversation, never had a dull moment, never had an uncomfortable silence. For the first few years of filming we played nice with the rest of the cast, going to group dinners and parties and all that very PC bullshit. Then we started to get tired of it all. The more private we became the more inquiring they became. It amused us to no end, so we became secretive to the point of absurdity. Our little club of two worked for us, we didn’t really offend anyone else by excluding them, I don’t think anyone else really liked us much, but we sure did make them wonder.

Things went along well like that for a long time. We were rarely seen apart and even during hiatus we were vague about where we would be or what we would be doing. We made our fans and our employers think we were sleeping together, we laughed about the implausibility of us being a couple.

Last summer Randy came to LA for a weekend and ended up staying for two months. I taught him to play soccer (he’s pretty bad at it), he read me some really crap poetry that he claimed he didn’t write, we got drunk a lot and fucked a few times. But really it was all just us being us, being friends, having a good time together. He was my best friend and really the only person I could be myself around. I liked the way things were between us.

Then Vince showed up in Toronto a few months ago, and well…things got sort of fucked up.

**

Vince is, well Vince is Vince. He’s my brother. He’s a great guy, a free spirit. It’s just that most people don’t understand him. I do though, most of the time.

He called one day out of the blue to tell me he’d finally seen an episode of the show. The conversation went something like this:

“Hey, G! Finally saw your porn. You’re hot naked. And that blond’s got quite an ass. You fucking him?”

“No, we’re friends. We work together. You’ve seen me naked. I’m straight. Where the fuck have you been? Mom said you’re building huts on the Congo or some shit. I told her you probably got high in Malaysia and forgot what year it was.”

“Sure you’re straight. And yeah, I’ve been doing something like that. Listen, bro…” It was never good when he called me ‘bro’, “I’m gonna need a place to crash stateside for a while. How about I come up there to little movie star land and visit for a while.”

“Uh, I’m on television, Canada is not the states and how long is a while?”

And then Vince was suddenly here. Sleeping on my couch, eating all my cereal, charming all of my coworkers and fucking my best friend. It was the fucking part that got to me.

**

The thing is, I didn’t believe Vince when he told me. He actually came home one morning while I was making coffee and said, “Randy has one sweet ass.” I laughed and shook my head. Vince was psychotic, Randy would never sleep with him.

Then I got to work a few mornings later and Randy was in my trailer. He looked…strange. His eyes were tired and he wasn’t smiling like he always was when I hadn’t seen him in a few days. “I’ve been sleeping with Vince,” he announced. He sounded resigned.

I left my trailer and went over to Thea’s. She didn’t ask me what was wrong and didn’t question it when she found me sleeping on her couch that night either. She’d given me a key to her place a long time ago for some reason that I don’t even remember. I’d never used it, nor did I ever think I would. Yet, I was never happier to have a key to someone’s house in my life.

I stayed at Thea’s for a week and called in sick to work. I claimed to have Montezuma’s Revenge and no one really ever questions things that involve intestinal malfunction. Vince called me a few times, leaving really bizarre messages. Randy, however, did not.

As it is with actors, Randy and I had a scene together as soon as I was back on the set. We had to have rough, simulated sex on camera. It wasn’t really ironic, it was just…shitty.

Luckily the cameras turned my anger and frustration into desperation and passion and his fear and neediness into…well desperation and passion. Lighting is tricky that way.

If we clawed at each other’s skin with little more force and sucked each other’s tongues with a little more voracity it only made the directors giddy.

Randy chased me off the set but I dodged into Hal’s trailer before he caught up to me.

So that brings me to this place, standing in front of Hal who is in some wackass floating lotus meditation position in the middle of his floor…and he’s chanting…in some unidentifiable language.

“Knock much, Gale?” He gets out of his sitting lotus bullshit and joins me at his kitchen table. I lay my head down.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Something like that.”

“What did you do?”

”Fuck!” I raise my head up to glare at him, “I didn’t do anything, Randy’s fucking my brother.”

“Randy’s fucking Vince?” His voice gets all high in the Michael-can’t-believe-Brian-fucked-up-again way and I almost laugh.

“No Hal, my other brother.”

“You have another brother?” Hal’s a smart guy, just selectively so.

“No idiot, Vince is my only brother, he’s fucking Vince.”

“I didn’t know Vince was gay.”

“Well, he’s not really.”

“Oh,” Hal nods knowingly, “He’s not gay like you’re not gay.”

We stare at each other for a long time until I nod, “Yeah, like that.”

Hal smiles a shit eating, I-fucking-knew-it grin.

“Have you and Randy always been sleeping together?”

“No,” I shake my head quickly, “God, no. It’s not like that. I…fuck…I love the kid and Vince is bad news.”

“So you don’t want him sleeping with Vince because Vince is bad news or because you love him?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Both?”

“Don’t look at me. Figure it out. Talk to Randy. Hell, talk to Vince, he’s your fucking brother. The guy loves you, I don’t think he wants to hurt you.”

I nod and leave. I take a beef jerky stick on my way out, Hal always has those things lying around.

**

Randy’s waiting for me when I get home.

“Listen,” he starts.

“Listen?” I mock him and unlock my front door.

He follows me inside. Of course I let him.

We sit on my couch and stare at each other in a 6th grade biology dissection lecture kind of way. As if we’re new and strange to each other and a little afraid of what we’re going to have to cut open.

“Listen,” he starts again, “I totally admit it was not a good thing to do. I can make you a million excuses, but the more I think about it. I just don’t owe you one. We’re friends, you and I. That’s the way you’ve always wanted it. Vince is, Vince is totally separate from all of that.” He looks down at his feet as they shift back and forth on my carpet.

“The way I’ve always wanted it?”

His eyes dart up to mine, “You wanted something else?”

I stand up, “Jesus, Randy, we have more than that. I mean just because we don’t fucking talk about it and analyze it and…fuck this way too Brian/Justin for me.”

“Maybe I should go.” He stands up too.

I move toward him a little, catch his elbow with my hand, “No, don’t.”

He waits.

I sigh and sit back down, “Did you do it because you like Vince or because you wanted to get to me?”

He bites his lip, he has to think about the answer.

He’s about to say something when Vince walks down the stairs (where the fuck that joker was hiding is anyone’s guess), “He did it because he loves you retard.”

Vince is wearing a wifebeater and my underwear and eating Flintstone’s vitamins out of the jar.

Randy stutters at Vince, totally thrown off his game by my insane brother (just like everyone else in the free world), “Who the fuck, what the hell, sh-shit.”

Vince looks at me and shrugs as he walks out of the room and into the kitchen, he says, “Get over your little girl pansy-asses and fuck like men. You’re retarded over each other. It’s fucking obvious to everyone but you. Shack up and get it over with.”

And then he’s gone.

“So do you?” I ask Randy.

“You first,” he’s half smiling.

“Of course,” I answer easily.

“Yeah, me too.”

“So what the fuck are we doing?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re busy being straight.”

I cross the room and stand in front of him, “Fuck you.”

“I wish you would,” he smiles and leans up to kiss me.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I say against his lips.

“But maybe you’ll finally mean it,” he answers quietly into my neck as he marks me with his teeth.

I grab his hair and yank his head back, loving the way his eyes get wide with surprise, “I always meant it.”

We fuck on the living room floor getting rug burns on our knees and aches in our backs. It’s fast and furious the first time, like we’ve never done it before. We come seconds apart both howling from the near pain of it. I have a fleeting thought about when Vince is going to walk back through the house. But, he never resurfaces.

**

For that matter Vince didn’t appear again for nearly six months. I took Randy to bed that night and the only thing we got up for was the occasional piss and one midnight shower. In the morning, my guest room was completely empty.

When Vince did float back into our lives it was only a postcard from Greece, “Hope you boys are playing nice. You can thank me with cash for your happy ever after. Love – V.”

By then Randy and I were living together and he was the one who picked up the mail that day. I found the postcard on the refrigerator with a note that said, “If this happy ever after, I’d fucking hate to spend any time in hell. Love – R.”

I saved the note and the postcard and now I laugh about the time my boyfriend slept with my brother.

End

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