Gap Year - 90. Chapter 90

April 10, 2004

Aboard the Tonto

Ostia, Italy

Will

“I didn’t think we’d get here this early,” I said to Travis. It was only 3:00pm.

“Maybe we can find a place to do some shopping,” he said. “I’m getting tired of borrowing your clothes.”

“You want to go shopping?” I asked, then started laughing.

“What’s so fucking funny?” he demanded.

“Shopping happens when Stef gets here,” I said.

“That’s fine, but can we at least track down a place where I can buy some underwear,” he grumbled.

“Just freeball,” I said, then laughed again. Grand came out and stood next to us, watching the marina come into view. “Our ship seems kind of big for this place.”

“It is perhaps not the best port for us in that regard, but there are significant advantages to being in Ostia,” Grand said.

“What’s that area behind the marina?” Travis asked.

“The marina you are seeing was once the Ostia seaplane base, and has only been recently transformed into this marina,” Grand said. “The area behind it is a nature preserve.”

“Pretty cool,” Travis said.

“You said there were advantages to being here,” I said. “Delineate these advantages.”

“First of all, there are some remarkable ancient Roman sites to see,” Grand explained. “You will find that Ostia Antica, or Ancient Ostia, is a relatively well-preserved town. I think you will especially enjoy the Thermopolium. It is the Roman equivalent of a fast-food restaurant.”

“How do you say burgers and fries in Latin?” I asked, making him chuckle. “Travis wants to go shopping.”

“Before Stef gets here?” Grand asked, which was hilarious. “I am sure we can accommodate you.”

Charles and Elise came up to us, clearly wanting to talk about something serious. “Dr. Crampton, you retained me to accompany you on your trip through April 19^th. I feel that, with Travis’s legal issues resolved, we are no longer of any use to you. It seems unfair to impose upon your hospitality, and to bill you when I am not providing a service.”

“You don’t like it here?” I asked Elise.

“I am loving it, but in addition to being a workaholic, Charles is also ethical, and it bothers him to be paid for a job he’s not doing,” she said. “I have no such issues.”

I couldn’t help laughing at her. “In the United States, once an agreement has been reached, it is appropriate for both parties to adhere to the contract,” Grand said in his grandiloquent way.

“He means that a deal is a deal,” I interpreted, causing Travis to snicker at Grand’s reaction.

“Yes,” Grand said, acting frustrated with me.

“That means that you’re supposed to enjoy this trip with us, and be on hand to solve our legal problems,” I said.

“I do not want to impose,” Charles said.

“Well, you kind of are, but Elise is a lot of fun, so you balance each other out,” I said, teasing him. He grinned, and Elise laughed. “If you make a big deal out of this, that means I have to do something wild and crazy to get arrested, just so you’ll stick around.”

“You seem to have brought young men with you who are bound and determined to get into trouble,” Charles said to Grand.

“That is my destiny,” Grand said fatalistically.

“Then we will stay,” Charles said.

“And I’m going to find out where we can go dancing,” I said to Elise. She vanished, and returned shortly, her purpose quite clear when music started playing. I laughed when I recognized they were playing The Weathergirls’ “It’s Raining Men,” and Elise and I danced together as the Tonto sailed into Ostia, getting some odd looks from people in the other boats we passed.

The ship moored at her berth, and while Skip cleared us with the authorities, Travis and I got ready to go shopping. Marta must have arranged a car for us while we were doing that, because Travis and I, along with Phillippe and Pascal, exited the boat to find a limo waiting for us. It ended up being overkill, since the shopping mall was only a five-minute drive from the dock.

The shopping center was a pretty cheesy affair, looking like it was an Italian version of a downtown American shopping mall from the 1980s, but we had a good time anyway. We wandered into various stores, mostly looking for basics like t-shirts, jeans, and underwear. Travis bought a pair of flip-flops and some tennis shoes at the shoe store. When we went into a store, Phillippe usually stood outside the store and kept an eye on us, while Pascal came in and kept us within 20 feet. “Does it bother you, having those guys with us?” Travis asked.

“Not really,” I said. “I mean, at the first couple of stores it was kind of weird, but these guys are so good at staying invisible, it’s easy to forget they’re with us.”

“I never really had to deal with being guarded until this trip,” Travis said. “Takes some getting used to.”

“I dealt with this when we had some problems when I was fourteen and fifteen,” I said, and got a little sad, since that’s when he and I had pretty much moved in completely different directions and lost contact with each other.

“What happened?” he asked. I realized that I hadn’t told him about the trip to Paris where I’d been kidnapped.

“I’ll tell you when we get back to the ship,” I said. “Remind me.”

“I will,” he said. “So did you have to have a guard with you all the time?”

“For a while, I had to have a guard with me whenever I went out,” I said.

“That would have seriously jammed my groove,” he said, making me chuckle at his word choice.

“You had drivers,” I said. “Pretty much the same thing.”

“Dude, my drivers just had to drive,” he said. “Your guards had to watch out for kidnappers and shit.” He was so adorably cute. I started to giggle, and he gave me an annoyed look. “That would seriously suck.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” I said. My father would have choked in surprise at hearing me say that, since I’d endlessly tortured him about my guard situation back in those days. “Except for the douche they hired to guard JJ, our guards were pretty cool. I’m still friends with a couple of them.”

“You mean they didn’t end up hating you?” he joked.

“Almost,” I said, chuckling. “Now that I think about it, it was kind of nice to have someone there to drive me around 24-7.”

“I can see that,” he agreed. “Were your other guards like these guys?”

“No, these guys are way more professional,” I said. “The guards I had were kind of like glorified babysitters. These guys are serious.”

“Oh,” Travis said, and glanced at them with a newfound respect. “That’s probably a good thing.”

“Your father knows where you are now, and while it would be pretty bold of him to try something, I wouldn’t put it past him,” I said.

“Neither would I,” he agreed.

“Then it’s good that these guys know their shit,” I said, smiling. I felt my phone vibrate and looked at it, smiling even more broadly.

“Stef?” he asked, thinking that was who had texted me.

“No, Berto,” I said, and that got the expected confused look from him. “Tomorrow night you get to meet the dude I lost my cherry to.” It was cute to see him frown and get a little jealous.

“If you want to go out with him, just the two of you, I can stay on the ship,” he said.

“We’re going to meet up with him and his boyfriend and have dinner, then we’re going to go out to a club and go dancing,” I said. He frowned at that, because a club would tax his introversion to the maximum. “If you get sick of it, you can go back early.”

“I worry that you’ll think I’m a total buzz kill, and no fun to be around,” he grumbled.

“Or maybe you’ll realize that I understand you, and that I love you for who you are,” I said. He smiled at me, and seeing how happy my statement made him was a total rush.

“Are we okay?” he asked, referring to our argument earlier, about his thinking we were snaking his company away from him.

“We’re okay,” I confirmed. I had gotten pissed off, and I’d had good reasons, but he’d apologized, and it was over. Still, I kind of got why he asked that. It had been strange between us when we’d first gotten to port, but spending time with just him, shopping and hanging out, had brought back the normal rhythm of our relationship.

“I’m ready to head back if you are,” he said.

“I’m good with that,” I said. “I know we just got to Rome, but it’s been a rough couple of days. I’m thinking we should spend an easy night on the ship.”

He smiled at me. “Thanks,” he said, acknowledging that I was making that decision mostly because of him. We took the bags of shit we’d bought, piled into the limo, and drove the short distance to the ship. They seemed surprised to see us back so soon.

We got back, and I immediately felt like I needed to do something physical. I stared off at the nature preserve. “Want to go for a jog?” I asked Travis.

“I would love that,” he said. Phillippe and Pascal seemed good with it, so we all put on running clothes and jogged over to the conservation area. “One of the most fun things I did to Jacques and Giselle was to wear them out.” Travis had playfully directed that comment to Phillippe and Pascal.

“With us, you are welcome to try, but you will surely fail,” Phillippe said, making us laugh. We started running, a nice steady pace, with Pascal in front and Phillipe bringing up the rear, both of them staying just out of earshot.

“So who’s this dude you were with?” Travis asked.

“His name is Roberto, but he goes by ‘Berto’,” I answered, then realized that I needed to tell him the whole story. “We had gone to Paris, and I had a really bad experience there.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice full of concern.

“Some guys who were after my father abducted both of us,” I said. “One of the guys who did it made it his mission to try to fuck me. He was the first guy I fucked. I remember he had me in a room, my pants were off, and he was probing my ass with his fingers. I wanted him to fuck me so bad, and at the same time, I felt even guiltier for letting him turn me on.”

“But he didn’t fuck you?” he asked and was confused because I’d told him Berto was the dude who fucked me first.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Right when he was about to do it, the French police burst into the room and stopped him.”

“That must have been pretty freaky,” he said.

“Yeah, but I think of that part of it, and it was really sweet,” I said.

“Sweet?” he asked, in disbelief.

“I was all but splayed across this bed, totally ready to get a dick up my ass, and the cop who ended up with me in the room was really gentle and caring. He helped me get dressed, and the dude who was assaulting me had ripped my shirt off me, so this cop took off his own t-shirt and gave it to me to wear,” I said.

“In the middle of a total shit scene, it was an act of kindness,” he said, getting it.

“Yeah,” I agreed, confirming he was right. “We decided to leave Paris and come here, to Rome. I was here with Grand, Stef, Darius, and Ella.”

“Ella was that chick Darius was totally into, right?” Travis asked. I wasn’t surprised that the gossip chain had filled in that piece of information for him.

“Yeah, the one who finally got his heart, then ripped it to shreds,” I said, the animosity apparent in my voice.

“Bitch,” Travis said, more as a sign of solidarity with Darius.

“Totally,” I agreed. “Anyway, after what happened in Paris, each of us was assigned a guard.”

“So that’s when this guard thing started,” he said.

“Actually it was before that,” I said. I interrupted my current story to briefly tell him about Carson approaching me on the beach, and how my father had lost his mind, and how that’s when I had a permanent guard. I looked up and saw this guy walking toward us, and chuckled. “See that dude coming our way?” I asked, using this encounter to bring us back to the original topic.

“Yeah?”

“When we got to Rome, my guard looked like him,” I said.

“Dude looks like a mobster,” Travis said, then we said nothing as we jogged by him.

“No shit,” I said, then chuckled. “I bitched and told Stef that I wanted a guard who didn’t remind me of Tony Soprano.”

Travis laughed at that. “So did they find you a new guard?”

“I found my own guard,” I said. “Berto was a bellboy at the hotel we were staying at, and I asked if he could guard me. That required a decent sales pitch on my part, but it helped that he’s smoking hot.”

“So that’s how you got to know him,” Travis concluded.

“After what happened in Paris, I needed someone to help me move beyond that,” I said. “Berto was there for me, and he helped me recover from that nightmare. That’s why he and I will probably always be friends.”

“It almost sounds like the way Zach helped you out after 9-11,” Travis said.

I blinked at him in a bit of shock. “I’ve never put those two incidents together like that,” I said. “I guess if I have a major trauma, I need a hot guy to fuck me out of it.”

He laughed. “I’m glad you found someone to help you out.”

“Me too,” I said. “We had a lot of fun. There’s a beach not too far from here where the surfing was adequate, and he took me there one day. He had all these friends that I got to know, and one dude was totally fucked up. I got pulled into this whole gay soap opera.”

“As the Cockring Turns,” Travis joked, referencing ‘As the World Turns’ and making me laugh so hard I had to slow to a walk.

“I ended up going with Berto to this gay bar, and they were having a charity stripping contest,” I said.

“How the fuck does a charity stripping contest work?” he asked, laughing.

“You strip and do a pole dance, and whoever raises the most money wins,” I said.

“Did you win?”

“I did,” I said, and got a surprised look from him. “I, uh, got pretty excited during the dance, because I was doing it side by side with Berto, and I got a little too fired up and shot my load.”

“You blew your wad onstage?” he asked, and we had to stop, because he was laughing so hard.

“Yeah, and when I looked up after I did, I saw Stef staring at me,” I said, chuckling now as I remembered it. “I didn’t even know he was at the bar.”

“Was he pissed?”

“He wanted to be pissed, but Stef has always pretty much done what he wants, and he has a reputation for being pretty slutty, so it was hard for him to be mad at me,” I said.

“The pot calling the kettle black?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” I said. “Anyway, we left Italy the next day, and I was completely fucked up.”

“Why?”

“Because I fell pretty hard for Berto, and leaving him behind was hard on me,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Travis said, and put his hand on my shoulder briefly, in a neat gesture of support.

“It turned out to be a good thing, because it taught me how vacation relationships work,” I said. “Scott Slater actually laid it out for me.”

“OK, this I have to hear,” he said.

“He said that a vacation relationship is really good, really intense, and as soon as the wheels of the plane leave the runway, it’s really over,” I said. “It’s pretty much worked that way for me since then.”

“I can see that,” Travis said. “So when’s the last time you saw Berto?”

“I came over here when Tony was visiting his family, and hung out with him in Rome,” I said.

“Another vacation fling?” he asked.

“Well, Tony and I had a history before that, so it wasn’t quite like that, but it did amplify everything,” I said. He looked at me funny, trying to figure out what I meant. “The romance of being in Rome maybe made our feelings seem stronger than they were.”

“So you had this massive conflict between Tony and Berto?” he asked.

“No,” I said, and chuckled. “First of all, it would never have been a contest, because I would pick Tony over Berto any time, probably to my own detriment.”

“Really?” he asked a bit nervously.

“The sex is better with Tony than with Berto,” I said, making him chuckle. “We went over to dinner at Tony’s aunt’s house, and her son, Vinnie, brought his boyfriend to the dinner as well. Turns out his boyfriend was Berto.”

“How the fuck does that happen in a city of millions?” Travis asked, wondering at that chance encounter.

“Luck of the draw, I guess,” I said. “So that was the last time I saw them. They’re still together. It will be good to see them again.”

“I can kind of understand now what you were saying when you were talking about having a more open relationship,” he said.

“Really?” I asked, confused as to why he would think that.

“It sounds like sex is a way for you to deal with shit that happens in your life,” he said. “When you talk about it, it’s like that physical connection is a psychological ointment.”

“I never thought about it like that,” I said, pondering his words. “You know how many guys I’ve had sex with since we went to Hawaii?”

“How many?” he asked, and it was cute to see him try to keep the dread out of his voice.

“One,” I said.

“Who was he?” he demanded.

“You,” I answered. That got a smile, along with the slightest of blushes, which was just so fucking cute. “Let’s go back,” I announced, and said it loudly enough that Pascal heard me and adjusted our course.

“You aren’t having fun?” he asked.

“I’m thinking I need some sexual healing,” I said, and leered at him.

“You could have slept with someone,” he said. “I mean, I pretty much figured that’s how things were.”

“I know I could have, but I didn’t want to,” I said. We got back to the ship, took a long shower, one where we started having sex but stopped and took it back to the bed. I did what Travis really liked, and made it last for about an hour before I finally brought him off.

April 11, 2004

Aboard the Tonto

Ostia, Italy

Will

“That was really cool,” Travis said, as we reboarded the ship. We’d spent the morning touring the Roman ruins at Ostia Antica with Grand, and it had been pretty awesome.

“I am glad you enjoyed yourself,” Grand said. “I have been in touch with Brentwood School, and sent them an email describing our itinerary and curriculum.”

“Shit,” Travis said, with dread that wasn’t entirely faked.

“They have agreed that you can write up reports on our trek, and those will count for some of your assignments. They’re going to email me the rest of what you have to do,” Grand said. “My plan was to use our mornings for touring and then take a break, and then set aside a couple of hours in the evening for you to finish the rest of it up. That will leave our afternoons free.”

“Alright,” Travis agreed grudgingly.

“I’ll help you out,” I offered. He rolled his eyes at me for being a dork.

“Dr. Crampton,” Marta said, approaching us as soon as we entered the dining room. “Stefan has landed and should arrive here shortly.”

“That is excellent news,” Grand said, and it was so cute to see how excited he was. He vanished, while Travis and I sat down and began to gorge ourselves on lunch.

“Dude, I do not want to spend all my time doing fucking schoolwork,” Travis objected.

“You should argue with Grand about it,” I said casually, like that was no big deal. He gave me a dirty look, then sighed.

“I guess it’s important that I graduate,” he said, in essence agreeing to Grand’s course of study.

“I’ll bet that you actually get your homework done on this trip,” I said, giving him shit. He was the kid in middle school who rarely turned in assignments, although he claimed he’d gotten better in high school.

“I’m starting to wonder if I wasn’t better off when I was in hiding,” he grumbled.

“I wasn’t with you then. So what are you saying?” I challenged, acting like I was serious.

“I’m saying I hate doing homework,” he said.

“You don’t hate it when it’s something that interests you, or if it’s important,” I said. “Look at all the work you did, planning your escape to Europe and figuring out how you were going to become the next mogul of Buck Industries.”

“That’s not homework,” he objected.

“It’s the same concept,” I said. Our conversation was interrupted when there was a huge commotion on deck. “Stef is here,” I said, even as I stood up.

Travis followed me out onto the deck where we saw Grand hugging Stef. Tom stood there, holding a box, smiling at them. They broke off their hug, and Stef turned his attention to me. “It is so good to see you! And look how tanned you are!”

“I’m really glad to see you too, Stef,” I said, and gave him a big hug, one that we held for a while to accentuate our bond. We separated, and Stef focused on Travis.

“You have escaped from the evil clutches of your captors and your father,” he said to Travis. “Yet you look no worse for the wear.”

“I’m doing fine,” Travis said, and gave Stef a nice hug.

“He’s not doing well at all,” I told Stef. “He had to leave all of his clothes behind in London. We spent yesterday afternoon at the mall here in town, buying some basics, but Travis desperately needs to go shopping.”

“We will leave in an hour,” Stef announced. “It is a good thing I slept on the plane.”

“It’s a good thing,” I agreed. “We’re supposed to have dinner with Berto and Vinnie tonight, then we’re supposed to go out dancing.”

“We will see what we can accomplish today, and we can continue our efforts on Travis’s wardrobe tomorrow,” Stef said. “Why do you not ask Berto and Vinnie to dinner here on the ship? That way, if I am too tired to go out, I will still have a chance to see them.”

“I’ll work on setting that up while you take your hour,” I said, using air quotes for the word ‘hour’.

“Excellent,” Stef said. He grabbed Grand’s hand and dragged him off to their cabin.

“They’re so cute,” Travis said, and we smiled, then I realized I hadn’t paid any attention to Tom.

“Good to see you too!” I said to Tom. “I’d give you a hug, but you’re carrying that box like it’s the crown jewels.”

“Good to see you too, mate,” he said. He put the box on the table and gave me a hug, then picked the box back up and handed it to me. “This is the stuff you called and asked for.”

“Thanks!” I said. “We’re going to go get cleaned up. I’ll see you in an hour. You should grab some food.”

“I might just do that,” Tom said, but I didn’t really pay attention to him, I was too busy dragging Travis back to our cabin.

“What’s in the box?” Travis asked.

“I’ll show you as soon as we get done showering,” I said to him with a leer. He made to object, so I stopped him. “You don’t want to be all sweaty from walking around ruins to try on clothes.”

“Fine,” he agreed. We took a quick shower, had a fast fuck, and still had fifteen minutes left to open my box. “So what’s in here?”

“Stuff for you,” I said. I opened it up and found two boxes inside. “This is a new laptop, to replace the one you left in London.”

His eyes bulged as he looked at the box, then opened it up. “Dude, this is an awesome computer! Thank you so much!”

“You’ll need it for school,” I said in a snarky way.

“Fuck you,” he said, cracking me up. “What’s in that box?”

“It’s a cell phone,” I said. “This one is tied to our network. I told you how our tracking works. I wanted you to have a choice, so you can ditch the burner phones you have and the one your father made you use, if you want to.”

He actually started laughing, which confused me, because that was not the reaction I was expecting. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, then laughed some more.

“What?”

“I was just thinking that you giving me a phone tied to your family’s private cell network is the 2004 high school equivalent of getting married,” he said, making me laugh even harder than he did.

“You don’t have to use it,” I said.

“It’s now my official cell phone,” he announced.

“I guess that’s the equivalent of saying ‘I do’,” I joked, and we laughed some more.

“Pose,” he said, and aimed the camera on his phone at me. I made a stupid face, and he clicked the picture. “That makes it official.” He was too funny.

Our hour ended, and Stef was ready to go. It was interesting to see him as this man on a mission. We went to the Via Condotti, Rome’s equivalent of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and had a blast shopping. This was a designer world, and Stef was one of the key players in the fashion scene. We had but to walk into a store and the staff was all over us. I actually picked up a few cool things, but as was planned, the major effort was for Travis.

We shopped until I could tell it was straining Travis to his maximum, and I was getting pretty tired too. “You know, I’m seventeen and in pretty good shape, but you managed to wear me out,” I said to Stef, my cue to him that we were pretty much done.

“I suspect that when you are doing something you love, like surfing, you have additional stamina,” Stef said. “It is the same thing for me.”

“I understand, and I appreciate your effort, but I think we need to head back,” I said gently, because I didn't want him to think I didn’t appreciate what he was doing.

He smiled at me and put his hand on my arm in a loving way. “We will go back.” We managed to escape from Hermes, the store we were in, and found our car waiting for us.

“Thanks,” Travis whispered gratefully in my ear. I just smiled back at him.

“We will have to come back here tomorrow,” Stef said, as we slid into the limousine.

“We bought an awful lot of stuff,” Travis said, and was clearly overwhelmed.

“A lot, but not enough,” Stef insisted. Now that he’d stopped shopping, he looked exhausted, which wasn’t surprising considering the energy he’d put into getting Travis outfitted with a new wardrobe. Travis wasn’t as easy to shop for as some guys. I thought back to when Stef and I had taken Ryan Grafton out to look at clothes. Everything seemed to fit Ryan perfectly, while Travis was the kind of guy where things either fit him really well or looked like shit. I pondered that most of the clothes seemed to be designed to fit men who looked like JJ or Kevin Carmichael. Travis was definitely not a twink, so maybe that was the reason. Stef, rather than finding it frustrating, seemed to thrive on it.

“It’s not as easy to shop as it used to be,” Travis said, reading my mind.

“That is because you have a bigger body frame,” Stef said, stroking his ego.

“Like I’m fat?” Travis asked, confused. I rolled my eyes at him.

“You are most definitely not fat, and you have an amazing physique,” Stef said, stroking his ego. “Contrast yourself to JJ, who is quite muscular and fit, but that has a slimming effect on his frame. He does not have muscles that bulge out, whereas you do.”

I looked at Travis and could see that. “You’re more like Zach in that regard,” I noted.

“That is an apt observation,” Stef said.

“I was thinking that it was easy to shop for Ryan Grafton,” I said, sharing my previous thoughts with Stef. “Why would Travis be harder?”

“Because when we took Ryan shopping, he was only fourteen, and his body had not developed to the point where we had to worry about muscle bulges,” Stef said, making us chuckle. “If we went now, we would find the same issue with him that Travis is experiencing.”

“It kind of sucks, though,” Travis said. “This used to be easy, where my mom would go out and buy me shit and it would fit great. Now I have to try everything on.”

“That means that finding the right clothes is more of a challenge, but once we do, the rewards are more meaningful,” Stef said. “You will never have the look of a model, but instead you will look relaxed and confident in your clothes, and they will amplify the features that make you so handsome.”

“Thanks,” Travis said.

“That suit that you got, the blue one, looks amazing on you,” I said to Travis.

“And that is a perfect example,” Stef said. “We can pick that up tomorrow when the alterations are done, and that will give you something dressier to wear.”

“You can wear the hot club clothes tonight,” I said with a leer.

“I’m not sure about that,” Travis said. “I’m going to be tapping out by then.” I ignored them both for a second and started texting, getting annoyed looks from Stef. I finally finished and put my phone away.

“And are you done ignoring us?” Stef demanded acidly. He hated it when people, especially me and my brothers, focused on our phones and not on him.

“I am,” I said. “I postponed clubbing until tomorrow.” The grateful look I got from Travis was worth all the money we’d spent on shopping today.