Millennium - 25. Chapter 25

December 1, 1999

 

“We need to talk,” Robbie said firmly. I was just about to invite him in when Dan showed up. Robbie saw Dan and seemed to go from intense to furious with alacrity. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I came up here to see Brad, asshole,” Dan said, not backing down.

“Well you saw him, so you can fuck off,” Robbie said belligerently.

“You can kiss my ass,” Dan said, standing his ground.

“Shut the fuck up, both of you,” I said. I turned to Robbie. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up like this, unannounced, and giving Dan shit.”

“We need to talk. And we need to do it now,” he said. He gave me a really pissed off look, but there was the slightest twinkle in his eye. He was acting.

“The only thing we need to talk about is how quickly you’re moving your shit out,” I said, trying to see if he was being dramatic or serious.

“How fucking ironic. That’s exactly what I came here to talk about,” Robbie snapped.

I looked at Dan sadly, as if I was desperate for his time and his attention. “Can you give me a rain check so I can argue with this asshole,” I said, pointing my thumb at Robbie. “Once I’m done with him, we won’t have to deal with this again.”

“Sure Brad. If you’re done in an hour or less, call me. Maybe we can still fuck.” He glared at Robbie and stormed off, while I glared at Robbie too and motioned him in. I stopped to lock the door, and he looked through the peephole and then motioned for me to look as well. Dan was still standing there.

“So you were going to fuck him? Just like in high school, you run off and fuck him,” Robbie yelled.

“Who I fuck is none of your goddamn business,” I yelled at him. He walked over to a large vase, picked it up, and threw it at the door. It made a huge noise and shattered into a bunch of pieces.

“And just like this vase, that’s what’s become of us!” he screamed.

“Oh that’s wonderful, that’s great. Come up here and trash my room. Throw shit around like a kid!” I yelled back. I stormed toward the door and started to unlock it. “You can get your fucking ass out of my room now!” I peeked through the peephole and saw Dan scrambling to get into an elevator so he didn’t get busted eavesdropping.

I calmed down and turned to Robbie. I couldn’t help smiling. “He’s gone now.”

“Good,” Robbie said, grinning back. “Nice room. So you were going to fuck him?”

“Thanks, it is a nice room, or at least it was until someone started breaking my accessories.” He snaughed. I ignored his other question. I walked over to the couch and collapsed on it. “You want to tell me why you’re here?”

“There are a whole bunch of reasons,” he said. He sat on the couch close to me.

“Well why don’t you tell me all of them,” I said. “Start with the most important and work your way down.”

“I missed you so fucking much I can’t stand it,” he said, and leaned in and gave me a kiss. He tried to force the passion, but I wasn’t ready for that yet.

“Slow down there, Speed Racer,” I teased. “There’s a good chance you’ll get laid, but I want to hear the story first.”

“The last few days since you left, yesterday and today, I’ve been a fucking energy dynamo. What you said to me, about getting off my ass and taking control of my life, was like a virus in my brain that just ate at my psyche.”

“Wow. You telling me you listened to me? You really are trying to get laid.” He laughed with me.

“I spent the last couple of days working with Evelyn, getting caught up, and getting a handle on things. I’m really lucky that I have a great staff. I found out that I’m close to losing a few of them though. They hate Carson.”

“I lost Grace, temporarily, because of Brandon,” I told him. “Do you think other companies face these problems, where they have these insidious little shits that come in and fuck things up?”

“I don’t know,” Robbie said. He wanted to talk, and he didn’t want me railroading the conversation. I shut up and let him continue. “I talked to all of them and told them I’d meet with them on Friday. I begged them not to do anything, like leave, until then, and they all agreed.”

“That’s fantastic,” I told him.

“It is. And we got into looking at our new projects and I’m fucking stoked. We’ve got some great movies in the pipeline. These last two bombs are history. I was hanging out with Claire and Marie yesterday, and Marie was reading this book called Harry Potter and some bullshit. She was completely into it, and she says all her friends are too. Seems like it’s this sensation or something. They’re turning them into movies, so I made a few calls, and it looks like we have a chance to be part of the production group.”

“You did all this in two days? Imagine if you actually worked full time,” I said, smiling at him.

“Whatever,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I had other stuff to do so I couldn’t work full time.”

“What else?” I asked, like he seemed to want me to do.

“I went to see Carson,” he said. And our whole mood changed: from fun and playful to tense. We sat there, staring at each other.

“I thought the plan was that you weren’t going to see him until after Friday,” I said.

“That was your plan, I changed it,” he said. This was a hell of a time for him to decide to go off on me and start changing things around. I felt the anger surge, but I held it in. Fuck Luke and Stef; sometimes I was really good at hiding my feelings.

I got up and walked over to the bar, grabbed a couple of beers, handed him one, and sat back down on the couch “Alright, you’re a bright guy, you know the plan, so explain your modification and how it fits in.”

It was funny to see the shock on his face, the shock from me accepting his decision and not throwing a tantrum. “I’m tired of being a pawn. I want to take back my life.”

“I understand completely, and I think that’s terrific, but you know what the deal is here, the stakes we’re playing for. How does you getting your freedom a day and a half early fit into that?”

“I’m not going to just sit around while you and everyone else fights my battles for me. I’m not going to sit on the sidelines and take orders like some flunky. I’m not going to fucking do that,” he declared.

“Robbie, don’t be melodramatic. I agree with you and what you need to do, and I think that you love me and my family, our family, enough to think this through. So I’m trying to figure that out, while at the same time I’m trying to figure out why you’re trying to piss me off.”

“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly. “It’s hard to separate you from me being a drone.”

“Really? You think this is all my fault?” I asked. Now I really was getting pissed off.

“No, no Brad, I’m sorry. Look, just be patient with me, OK? I’ve got all these emotional currents flowing through me, and it may come out wrong when I don’t mean it to. OK?”

“More like emotional rapids,” I teased. “OK. Go on.”

“I got a message from Carson yesterday and he was whining about how he was giving up on me, how he didn’t think I loved him anymore, and how he was just going to go back to LA and try to forget about me.”

“Good,” I said.

“That’s what I want, too” he said emphatically. “But not until Friday. I figured that if it was important enough for you to make all these plans, it was important for him to stay focused on me until Friday afternoon.”

“So you arranged a meeting with him? Which hotel?” I asked, sounding bitter.

“Yes, Brad, I fucked him. I had to wait until today so I’d be horny enough to do it. So now you know, and you can lay off all the snippy little innuendos.”

That actually made me smile. “I guess that does save me a lot of work. Snippy little innuendos require some thought. What did he say?”

“It was really twisted. He told me how much he loved me and all that bullshit, then we fucked, and then he told me how I was making all these mistakes with movies, and he told me I should create an advisory council to make all the movie decisions, and he wanted to be on it.”

“So he basically went for it,” I said. “He laid out everything he wants. He wants you, and he wants your job.”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“I gave him a whole bunch of bullshit, about how I still need to think things through, but that I loved him and that I wanted him to be a big part of the company. Then I told him if I did that, formed that council, he’d be a key player on it. Of course, there’s no fucking way I’d form that council, so it was an easy promise. Anyway, that seemed to make him happy. He damn near bounced out of the hotel room.”

I smiled at him. “Big fucking deal. I usually bounce out of a hotel room when I’m in it with you too.”

“Listen to you, trying to get into my pants,” he said playfully. Then he got back on track. “So after that, I kind of thought about things, and I decided to modify your plan.”

“Pretty bold of you.” Amazingly enough, I was having fun with him, even as he told me he fucked Carson. I couldn’t decide if it was because I missed him as much as he missed me or not.

“I figured I’d soothe any issues you had with my plan by using my big dick.” He grabbed his crotch suggestively.

“That will probably work.”

“So anyway, I’d spent all this time getting my projects and the company back in order, or at least I started to do that. I went to see Carson and strung him along a little while longer. And after all that, the emotion that kept overwhelming me was loneliness. I really needed to be with you.” He leaned in and kissed me, and this time he got the response he wanted. “So I figured that I’d come up here and make a scene, then you could be so devastated tomorrow that you’d refuse to be involved in the convention, and then I could hide in here and we could make love all day long.”

“And what happens when I leave the room and I’m so happy everyone can tell?” I asked. That got a big grin.

“Not a problem. You’re not leaving,” he said.

“Come on,” I said as I stood up.

“What?”

“We’re going to start right now,” I told him. “You’ve been telling me how it is; giving me all these orders, so I think it’s my turn to make love to you. You in the mood to handle me?” I grabbed my crotch.

“Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah!” he said, and ran to the bedroom, ripping off his clothes. He was so funny, and so cute. We lay in bed, making out. I loved the way it felt, our bodies touching, our lips meshing, but it was one of those times when we needed to couple. It wasn’t hormonal, it was emotional. He came up here to show me that he was better and to show me that he loved me. Now it was my turn to show him physically that l loved him too.

I moved in and out of him, slowly and deliberately, refusing to pick up the pace, making him focus on every inch, every millimeter of movement. I went so slow it was maddening, but it keyed us up so much that when I picked up the pace just a little bit, it sent us both over the edge. We came together in an orgasm that wasn’t one of our more powerful ones, but was definitely one of our more loving ones. “That was beautiful,” he told me as soon as he caught his breath. “That was fucking amazing.”

“It was,” I said. I knew I was blushing, and I couldn’t help it.

“Did you sleep with Dan?” he asked.

“Yeah. I feel like shit about it too.”

“Why? He’s a bum lay?” Robbie teased to hide how much that bothered him.

“The thing about him is that he’s really unattractive to me except one feature: his ass. So I had to really make that my focus, and it was kind of tough to do. How did you fuck Carson? I mean, you still hate him don’t you?”

“I’m not sure if I hate him, I just don’t want him in my life anymore. Hate makes it seem like I have to do something more to mess him up. I’m firing him on Friday and he’s out of my life forever. I’m not going to chase him down and try to ruin him. I just don’t want to think about him again.”

“I guess with Dan, I wanted revenge, I wanted to hurt him as bad as he hurt me, and as bad as he hurt you. Only I don’t like the person I’m becoming to make that happen. I hate all this sneaking around shit. Business isn’t supposed to be like this.” I froze when I said that.

“What?” He looked at me with concern.

“Stef’s been saying this, I just didn’t get it. He’s been saying it’s not about winning; it’s about working with people for mutual benefit. Luke and I were so torn up about losing, we’d forgotten that. Now, as we deal with this nightmare, it’s even worse than ever. And he makes so much more sense now.”

“It’s going to all be over on Friday,” he told me soothingly.

“I hope I still have a soul left by then,” I said morosely. “I overheard Dan and Cary Chase talking. Dan’s planning to bring Lark to the farewell gala on Friday. He thinks I’ll be devastated when I discover I lost him, and that I lost my chance to be with Lark too.”

“You’ve been with Lark before. You want to be with him again?” Robbie asked, concerned. Of all the guys out there, my hooking up with Lark would bother him the most or at least it would be in the top five.

“No. I don’t want to be with him at all. But I think Lark’s got Dan convinced that we never fucked, so Dan has it built up as this big deal. He gets to fuck Lark, something I never got to do.”

He shook his head. “These guys are seriously fucked up.”

“And they’ve seriously fucked us up,” I said sadly.

“Yeah, but we can get over this. I know we can. Don’t you think so?” he asked, letting his insecurities out.

“I think so,” I told him affectionately. “There’s always been a lot of love in our relationship. It’s the other shit that we’ve had problems with.”

“My problems,” he said despondently. “My problems and it’s all my fault.” The change in his mood as he took on that burden, as he dealt with the carnage he’d wrought on our relationship and understood it was his doing, was really sad.

“Well yeah,” I said, joking. “Look, you have to take responsibility and accept the consequences for your actions. I’m not perfect either. Almost, but not quite.” He smacked my back playfully.

“So does this mean I can stay with you for the next few days?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I said, getting a big grin and returning it.

“What will Stef and Luke say?” he asked.

“We’ll talk to them in the morning,” I told him. “But it’s not their decision, it’s ours.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about this power and control thing in our relationship. And that crock of shit idea about you being the author and me being the editor.”

He was giving me crap now, so I gave it right back. “I know, it does seem ironic that you’d be the editor when you can’t spell worth a shit.”

“I think that I was feeling like I didn’t even get that, I didn’t even get to edit. I need to be part of the process. I can’t have you just making decisions and then tell me how it’s going to be.”

“I don’t do that,” I said defensively.

“You don’t do it very much,” he said. “But I’m so sensitive about it, that when you do, it really fucks me up.”

I thought about that, and about this whole thing with Amphion. I’d pretty much dictated how we were going to handle that. His reaction today was pretty reasonable. I’d cut off his balls. “I’ll try to do better. You can let me know when I’m not, and I’ll yell at you for reminding me.”

He laughed, really laughed at that. “It’s funny, because that’s exactly what you’d do. Then you’d go off and think about it, and you have that fussy sense of justice that will assert itself. You’d do all this introspective thought, and then you’d come apologize.”

“Probably,” I agreed grudgingly. He knew me almost as well as I knew him.

“So what happens to us on Friday?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I knew damn well what he meant, but I didn’t want to go there. I was stalling, hoping we could save that argument for later. It was not to be.

“On December 3, our one month deal of free love is over.” He was joking about this to try and hide how upset this made him, and to keep it light to avoid upsetting me. “We’re supposed to talk about it, and if either one of us wants to discontinue it, then that’s it. We’re monogamous again.”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“That was the deal,” he said.

“Robbie, the deal was broken when you had a relationship with Carson and he wasn’t just a twink fuck-buddy. It’s a good try to win this one on a legal technicality, but it’s not working.” The good, cheerful mood evaporated.

“So you want to keep fucking other people?”

“My normal way is to figure out everything, and then let you know so you can just agree with me,” I joked. “Seriously, I’m trying to figure out what I think. I haven’t done that yet. You want me to think out loud, I will, but it’s all just rambling. You can’t hold me to any of it.”

“Deal.”

“I’m not ready to go back to being just with you. I’ve told you this, probably too often, that I have to feel confident and comfortable that I can trust you this time. I have to know this isn’t happening again. I don’t want pain like this; I don’t want this kind of damage to my psyche. And I’m not there yet.”

“There’s someone else,” he said, and my heart went out to him, he was so sad.

“I know that feeling. I felt it,” I said, reminding him that he didn’t have the right to feel sorry for himself. “There isn’t one person.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are several guys that I’ve been seeing, and I like them. They all do different things for me, physically and emotionally.”

“So one guy couldn’t replace me?” he asked, smiling again. “You had to build a whole team to take care of your needs?”

“That’s right,” I said, smiling back. “So here’s what I was thinking about doing. I want to delineate the guys that mean enough to me for me to fuck them. I want to lay it out in the open, so you’ll know. I’m thinking along the lines of those being the guys we can fuck, and anyone else we can’t. Assuming of course, they want to fuck you.” He rolled his eyes. “We meet a guy we like; a blow job is as far as it goes.”

“Kind of like we tried in high school.”

“Yep, but as you pointed out, we were a lot younger then, and we should have the maturity to do it now. That may actually work out to be a good test for us, to see how far we’ve come.”

“Didn’t Stef and Greg try this once?”

“Yeah. Right after they got together, they had a list of people they were allowed to fuck around with. They thought it would work, but the system blew up,” I told him.

“How did it blow up?” he asked.

“Greg fucked someone else. Stef went out of town, came back early and found Greg hosting an orgy, and found him with his dick buried in some young guy. The young guy wasn’t on their list.”

“Wow. Did Stef dump him?”

“Obviously not,” I said. “Greg told Stef that since he broke the rules, he’d live with monogamy. Stef could function the old way, and just fuck the people they’d agreed on.”

“So this was what you were thinking about when you proposed that you be allowed to do the world while I only get to do you?” he asked, being funny.

“Not exactly, but I think it has some relevance. You didn’t cheat on me like Greg did, but you did lie to me to get me to open up our relationship. I’m not sure that’s all that different.”

“I didn’t exactly lie to you,” he said.

I gave him a severe look. “Let’s review. You said you wanted to fuck other people when you really wanted to start a relationship with Carson. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt in assuming that you weren’t in love with him yet. You’re on pretty shaky ground here.”

I could tell he wanted to argue, because he’d tried to convince himself that he’d handled this whole thing in an aboveboard manner. It was the last link in his defenses, but until he finally got it, we’d be stuck in limbo. I wasn’t sure if I’d made it through even this time. “So that’s what you want?”

“I’m not sure. I told you I was thinking out loud. Why don’t you think out loud? I’ll try not to skin you alive.”

He snaughed, then got serious. “I want to be with you and only you. And I want you to be with me and only me. We did that for 14 years and it was awesome. I know I fucked up, but I think if you love me, you’ll forgive me. So basically, anything I agree to will just be a stopover place to getting back there.”

“What if I don’t want to get back to that place?” I asked him. “They were great years, but this past month shows me how vulnerable I am to you if I go there.”

“I think you should give me some credit for being able to learn from my mistakes.”

“I should,” I told him. “That’s why we’re still together and working on things. But I want to know if this is an all-or-nothing thing, if you’re not going to be happy unless you have all of me.”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. I nodded to show that I appreciated that; his honesty. “I think if it works and it’s good for us, it won’t be as big of an issue. I wish I could give you answers, but I can’t. I just don’t know.”

I felt the same way.