The Families in Rossford

SEVEN

COMPANIONS

Logan Banford decided that it was time to become more professional. Casey had offered to help him for years, but as long as he’d lived with Sheridan, he had half assed his career, and regardless if people approved of it or not, it was now a career, plain and simple.

He’d found Devon Hunter’s page the other night, and now he went back to it thinking of what he would do.

How to be a Male Escort….

He had never considered credit cards. He had never considered anything beyond little bitty ads and whispers to people, and he wasn’t getting any younger. He would be a thirty-one year old escort very soon. He wondered how long he could keep the video blog thing up, it was so inconsistent. Well, he could start today. He could go to Casey’s.

He was doing this to keep his mind off Meredith. No, he was doing this to keep his mind off of Brendan and Sheridan.

He had been separated from Sheridan a while now, but for fuck’s sake, Sheridan hadn’t had anyone. How dare he show up with Brendan! Logan wanted to laugh at himself for that. Sheridan wasn’t unfair at all. The deal that Sheridan stay with him while he had sex with other people, now that was unfair, it tested the bounds of patience.

“Billy,” Logan remembered.

He had been an escort since he was sixteen. He had started dancing at sixteen and let some guy feel him up and then suck him off for money. He had become slightly more professional about it after that, and then by the time he was eighteen, he was at Casey’s studio after a couple of videos for Guy McClintock. He had known some decent people. He had fucked and been fucked by absolute gods. But this gentle man had driven him to Evanston and taken Meredith to the hospital. He had waited until Logan told him he could go, and Logan had promised to return to him.

“He probably doesn’t expect me to ever come back,” Logan realized.

He didn’t have to check his appointment book, though he did because any appointment forgotten was money lost. There was a photo shoot at the end of the week, and then he would be flying out with Chay and Casey for some promo work in LA. The end of the month was all a hustle, driving and flying to get to New York, chasing something that might not happen. But tonight there were two reliable clients, one the next day. Today he was free.

Logan smiled to himself, thinking, This is my version of being a Good Samaritan.

“He won’t even be expecting me.”

“Thanks for taking me,” Dylan said.

“Technically, you took me,” Fenn pointed out as Dylan drove back into town.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“What kind of question is that?” Fenn said. “Of course you’re not stupid.”

“Lance’s parents were there to see him off. I didn’t have to go with him like some bride.”

“You would have been so sad if you didn’t,” Fenn told him.

“Do you know that Lance said he wouldn’t be my boyfriend?”

“Oh?” Fenn said, because that seemed to be the safest thing to say.

“He said that when we were together we were too crazy. It made him too crazy. He said we were volatile.”

“I do remembering you totaling someone’s car.”

“Ah, yeah… I didn’t know that got back to you.”

“It’s a lot that gets back to me.”

“I’m beginning to see that now. Well, the guy was Laurel’s ex, he’d screwed her over. And he called us faggots, so…” Dylan shrugged it off as if that said it all, and for him it did.

“And I almost thought you would kill each other sometimes,” Fenn said. “It was intense. I’ll admit that. But, I just thought that now with the both of you older…”

“I thought the same thing too,” Dylan said. “But Lance says we should just stay as we are.”

“And you?”

“I love him so much. It’s like I was too stupid to understand it before.”

“You were a little boy.”

“Now, I’m a man.”

“You’re still a boy,” Fenn corrected. “But not as much of one.”

“Well, I’m a boy who has school tomorrow. I don’t want to go back.”

“Laurel gets home tonight.”

“That’s the good thing. And Maia. I did miss them. When do Layla and Will get back?”

“End of the week, I think. Lots of fun stories to tell, I assume.”

“I really did want Lance to say yes.”

“Dylan, what’s the difference if he does or doesn’t? He’s two states away and… not to pry, but don’t you do everything you would do if he was your boyfriend?”

Dylan’s face turned red, and he paid attention to the road while his father put his hand on his hair.

“I wasn’t trying to embarrass you,” said Fenn.

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“No?”

“Well, yes. But… I don’t know, Dad, there is just a difference. I want us to be together, just me and him, tight, closed relationship, nothing up in the air.”

“Like it was when the both of you nearly went crazy.”

“Are you saying Lance was right? I mean—”

“Dylan, the road.”

“I’m paying attention.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Alrighhht.

“I mean, if Todd told you that things would be open for now, and you all couldn’t be an official couple right now, how would you feel?”

“I told Todd that. A long time ago, when we were first together and he went to Germany. He didn’t like it, but I thought it was best. And, by the way, if you’ll remember—”

“That’s when you took up with Dad again, and if you hadn’t—”

“You wouldn’t be here lamenting Lance.”

“Right,” Dylan said. “So are you telling me I should sleep with other people?”

“No,” Fenn sat up straight. “I am not!”

“I’m just joking!”

“Dylan, the road!”

“God!”

“I’m telling you,” Fenn said, as they went up Dorr, “I know how you feel, but I understand how he feels. I know you’re upset, and I know tonight will be hard. It would be hard for you no matter what. You all have been together since he got back here. I know what it is to ache for someone and to wish for that bond, to have it be official and not up in the air. And you know what?”

“Hum?”

“I love Lance. I would love for you all to be together. But I think you already are together.’

“That’s what he said.”

“And he loves you too, and I think he was right.”

They drove on in silence until they reached Versailles and then, after Dylan turned in, he said, “You know what?”

“Hum?”

“I think he was right, too.”

 

When Brendan woke up in the basement apartment, Sheridan lay on his side, looking down on him, tracing circles up and down his chest.

“How long have you been staring at me.”

“I’ve only been up a few seconds,” Sheridan said, lying back down, and pressing his cheek to Brendan’s chest, feeling the soft hair that covered his breast.

“Do you know you look like a sentinel when you sleep?”

“No one has ever used the word sentinel around me before,” Brendan said. His hand came to rest on Sheridan’s head, touching his hair.

“In fact, I haven’t heard the word sentinel since a spelling test in the sixth grade.”

Sheridan looked at him now.

“You are. You’re like… this coolness. You just kind of stand guard and protect. You even sleep like that. You never rattle.”

“I always thought that was my problem.”

“Not being a mess?”

“Yes, actually,” Brendan said.

They shifted so that they lay in bed looking at each other.

“Kenny always—um, that was inappropriate.”

“What was inappropriate?”

“To lay here in bed with you, and talk about someone else.”

Sheridan shrugged.

“If I talk about other people, then will that make it better?”

“It’ll make it fair,” Brendan said. “I don’t know if it’ll make it better.”

“But you were saying… About Kenny?”

“He thought I was too cold. I was too into my work. Maybe too into myself. I really tried to be different.”

Brendan looked at the pillow between them, trying to figure out what he wanted to say.

“As long as we’re being honest?” he looked up at Sheridan.

“I want you to be.”

“Every man I’ve been with—and there haven’t been a lot, but there were a few—has always thought that I was cold. Or too rigid, or too bossy.”

“Maybe too smart?”

“I don’t know about that,” Brendan said. “I think that this is why it was a surprise when you told me how you felt.”

“But we’d… already been together. A few times.”

“I was sleeping with Kenny for eighteen years! I’d been to bed a few times with a few people.”

“Chad North.”

“Him too.”

“I was never into him.”

Brendan shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. But… This is how I am, and most men don’t fall in love with it.”

“I’ve been in love with it since I was about twelve,” Sheridan said simply, lying on his back.

“What?  Even when I would rag on you and nag?”

“Do you remember,” Sheridan rose up again, “that guy me and Logan—”

“Yeah.”

“You and Fenn and Lee were so cool. You’ve always been so cool while I’ve always been so… not. You are always so level. And so… upright. So calm. You’re deep.”

“You don’t think I’m cold?”

“Cool isn’t cold. I think… I think you let anyone in who wants to be let in, but there’s a lot to you, and there isn’t a lot to most men, and so men are afraid of you. I’m not afraid of you.”

Brendan sat up, pulling his knees to his chest.

“There is so much in me,” he said. “I want to do so much. I feel so much. And I don’t know if any man I was with ever understood that.”

He looked at Sheridan.

“I felt so much for you for so long I covered it up. Why do I go on about how other men fear my feelings when I was afraid of my feelings too?”

“Afraid of what Will would say?”

“Yes. Even though he’ll have to deal with it when he gets back. But you’re so… shit, how do I say it?”

“Nuts?”

“Well, yeah. But… wild. You’re wild, but at the same time you’re like me. All of these things swirl around inside of you, but you’re private. You’ve got your own calm.”

“Last night—having sex with you—after all the time I told you not to be afraid, I was afraid,” Sheridan confessed.

Brendan looked at him and stroked his hair.

“You are the most beautiful man in the world to me,” Sheridan went on. “And probably the most intense. There was a part of me that thought that we might not come back from it, like we might go to the other side and not make it back alive.”

Then Sheridan said: “You’re not saying anything.”

“I was trying to think of something witty to say,” Brendan confessed. “I felt the same. When it was done, I was surprised we could be gentle with each other. I know what you mean, about being able to come back from it.”

Sheridan stretched and then with a groan rolled out of bed and stood up.

“Don’t move,” Brendan said, lying on his side. “Let me look at you.”

Sheridan stood there, a time, with the dim January light that made it past the curtains outlining him, and then he said, “I’m going to make the coffee.”

Brendan climbed out of bed, and followed him, wrapping his arms about him, and then turning Sheridan around to kiss him. They did it deeply and then went back to bed, tangling with each other, Sheridan’s legs wrapping around Brendan’s waist, his hands, reaching up to stroke Brendan’s hair, to run up and down his back. On their sides, they twisted, kissing, and Sheridan said, “The coffee can wait?”

Brendan kissed his chin and then his nose, and then pulled him closer while their legs encircled each other.

“I think it better,” he said.