Chapter 2: Welcome to the Family

 

 

WHATEVER HAD been going on in the front of the traffic jam, it was gone by the time Ryan and Scott got there, and the next three hours went smoothly—or as smoothly as they could go when Ryan white-knuckled it all the way.

Scott had a way of respecting his stress, though. He always had. He’d respected Ryan’s stress when he’d been working all of the long hours for the law firm a year and a half before, and that right there was exactly why Ryan had risked his job by insisting that his firm cut his business trips in half. It had hurt—he didn’t pretend it wouldn’t—and he might never make partner in his law firm, ever, but he’d decided he didn’t give a shit. He and Scotty had made do. Scotty’s quick mind had formed an e-business, and on weekends they worked together to get it off the ground. Ryan had realized that the time spent with Scotty—talking, laughing, working toward a common goal—that wasn’t anything he could get with boundless ambition. That was something he could only get with Scott. It was his second real lesson that the perfect vision a person has of life can’t compensate for the thousands of perfect moments a person has when he’s not planning it.

His first real lesson was falling in love with a man in a bathroom when he’d thought he was straight.

So Scott was good at respecting his stress inside the car, but it was freezing on the side of the road, so Ryan couldn’t exactly pull over and de-stress at the moment. He had to keep going until he found the little cabin that his parents kept for family holidays so that he and Scott could get the fuck out of this godforsaken car. Scotty knew this—he just kept a quiet conversation going, the kind that could lapse at any time, while Ryan kept the car on the road and his eyes on the snow-laden dark.

When the car finally found the snow-buried road and sailed into the driveway with a controlled fishtail, Ryan killed the engine and thumped his head against the steering wheel in relief. Scott’s hand came up and rubbed the big knot between his shoulders, and Ryan whimpered from the touch.

“We’re here,” he muttered, and Scott’s soothing hand just kept rubbing.

“You did great, baby. I didn’t fear for my life once.”

Ryan chuffed out a little breath. “You were awesome. You really were. I’m sorry I was such an intense asshole, but I probably would have skidded off the road just to break the tension if you hadn’t been so awesome.”

Scott leaned his head on Ryan’s shoulder and sighed. “Well, I guess there goes the idea about the leaving if things get shitty.” He was right; the roads were going to be blocked by morning, and Ryan looked at him unhappily. He hadn’t complained—not once, even when Ryan had tentatively broached the idea of them spending the holidays at Ryan’s parents’ cabin—but just the fact that he said it now meant that he was having doubts. Ryan had a plan, though, the sort of grand, romantic plan that would work in all of the super-sappy movies Ryan had ever seen, but he wasn’t sure would work this time in front of his family. He was hoping, though. He really wanted to make that grand gesture for Scotty, if for no other reason than to make time with Ryan’s family a little less of a pain in the ass.

Ryan looked down at his lover’s fancy hair and the artificially tanned skin and wondered if anyone but him saw how very much Scott wanted to be liked.

“If things get really shitty,” Ryan said gently, wrapping his arm around Scott’s back and abandoning all of his grand gesture plans in one offer, “then we can come out here. We’ll bring blankets, and I’ll run inside and get a space heater and run you hot food and hot toddies, and we’ll just cocoon out here for six days and stay completely shitfaced until this is over. How’s that?”

Scott’s grin was pure joy. “For a guy who’d do that for me, the least I could do is face the dragon lady.” And then Blitzkrieg woke up and started panting at them, and they both separated and sighed.

“I’ll get the bags, and you get the dog,” Ryan said, the better to spare Scott the first introduction with his mother, and Scott nodded gratefully.

“I’ll take her around back so she can take a dump and no one will step on it until it freezes, okay?”

Ryan laughed—sue him. The idea of frozen dog crap really was funny. “Have her put it next to a tree so none of the kids will pick it up in a snowball fight, okay?”

Scotty brightened. Ryan’s family chafed Scott raw on a number of levels, Yvonne and Walter included, but geez, did Scotty adore their four children. “I almost forgot they were here. I’ll make it quick!” And with that, he put on his parka and opened the door, snapping Blitzy’s lead on almost before the dog knew it was time to go out for walkies.

Ryan decided to schlep all of the luggage up to the porch before knocking on the door, which gave him time to stretch out his arms and legs that were cramped and sore from the drive and really gave him time to contemplate the difficult, unfortunate relationship between the family who had always loved him and the beautiful, amazing, perfect Scotty Davidovich.

 

 

RYAN AND Scott had met three years before at a party. Ryan had been dating a girl at the time, and Scott had attended the party with another man, but Ryan had dodged into a bathroom to take a leak and Scott had been there, hiding from a predatory office secretary with scary-tall high heels and something of a psychotic smile. She’d also had an amazing rack—and the fact that Ryan had neither noticed nor appreciated this should have clued him in to what happened next.

Scott had stepped out from behind the shower curtain and made one flirty comment about Ryan’s (impressive) equipment, and Ryan’s breath had caught. They’d met eyes then, and suddenly—

Just that. Suddenly. Suddenly Ryan’s life made sense. Suddenly he knew why his perfectly acceptable girlfriend wasn’t doing anything for him, and why his whole driven life in search of the perfect career hadn’t been doing anything for him either. It turned out Ryan wasn’t interested in women as a whole.

After one night with Scott, he wasn’t interested in men as a whole either. He was mostly just interested in Scott.

And Scotty—funny, irreverent, irrepressible Scotty—had returned that interest with his whole heart.

Unlike Ryan, Scott had known he was gay—and had been enjoying the hell out of his gayness and any man who flirted back—for pretty much his entire life. Ryan had been so in love with him after that first night he could hardly believe Scott wanted him back. Scott told Ryan that he had been so in love with Ryan after that first night he couldn’t even imagine a world in which Ryan wouldn’t want him. He said that when he tried, the sun went black. Ryan swore that there would never be a time when he made Scotty’s sun go black.

It was a gay fairy tale, unreal, surreal, and bizarre: a man steps into a bathroom and steps out of a closet he never knew he lived in. But it was also Ryan and Scott, their lives, so entangled by now that they hardly knew whose clothes were whose.

Ryan wouldn’t have it any other way.

And at first, his parents were thrilled for him. He’d been lucky; he still thought so. There had been no unhappiness over Ryan’s sexuality—there had mostly been happiness that he had found someone who made him happy. And then Ryan’s parents had actually met Scott, and the fairy tale had met its first dragon.

Ryan’s mother, Taylor Connors, was an interior decorator who had built her business from the ground up. In a crap economy, Taylor’s business was thriving; she’d just opened another branch in Los Angeles, and Ryan’s sister and her husband both ran it. Yvonne was winning awards and being featured in Better Homes & Gardens, and Walter had just won some sort of prestigious humanitarian thing for his landscaping, and generally?

They were just reeking with the perfection of ambition made real.

And Ryan’s father was a liberal circuit court judge.

So Ryan’s sexuality? Not such a big thing.

Scotty’s mercurial, butterfly mind?

That was what had caused the first visit from Ryan’s parents to chill to sub-frozen-tundra in a matter of three days.

“So nice to meet you, Scott. Ryan’s told us a lot about you!” Ryan’s father, Gordon, was always hearty and warm, just like his handshake. Ryan liked that about him—he always had.

“He has not, however, told us what you do,” was spoken over Taylor’s narrow-framed glasses, like a school librarian. And that was Ryan’s mother, like a snowball on a campfire.

Scotty’s open, happy smile never wavered. “Mostly, I just go to school and try to figure out what it is I want to do,” he said, and invited them both to laugh with his wicked eyes alone.

Ryan’s father had laughed.

Ryan’s mother had not.

Let the games begin.

So when he hadn’t been squinting into the dark, watching the snowflakes dart around like ice-moths, he’d been rehearsing his lines in his head, like he rehearsed a deposition with a witness or a presentation to a judge. He wanted his family to be under no illusions where his loyalties lay, and he never, ever, ever wanted Scott to see the sun turn black.

But he also didn’t want to alienate anybody forever, either.

His stomach whined, and not just because he and Scotty had eaten nothing but a bag of Chex Mix for the last eight hours. But that hunger thing also kept him from standing on the stoop too long, either—not that Ryan was ever one for hesitating. Once he had their luggage on the porch, he only paused for a moment, smiling a little when he heard Blitzkrieg barking and Scotty swearing as he ploughed through the snow in the back yard. It was okay—Scotty was here. Ryan had never felt like he needed anyone in his life until he’d turned around and looked into Scott’s eyes. But if Scotty was here, all was good.

Ryan knocked on the door and smiled broadly when his father opened it.

“Dad!” The embrace that followed put paid to a lot of family anxiety, and in a moment, Gordon Connors had helped Ryan grab all of the luggage—and the big bags of presents for the kids—and haul them in.

“Where’s Scotty?” Gordon asked, and Ryan grinned.

“Out back with Blitzkrieg. She was going totally nuts in the car.”

Gordon grinned and looked a little bit like an excited kid himself. Ryan’s dad had the same all-American-boy looks that Ryan did, except older. His freckles had mostly faded into tanned skin, and his auburn-brown hair was gray at the sides, but his brown eyes could still crinkle with joy when something made him happy.

Dogs definitely made Ryan’s dad happy. Ryan and Scotty had been scrambling to find a place to take Blitzkrieg during the holidays, and it had been Gordon (against Taylor’s objections, Ryan was willing to wager) who had suggested bringing the dog with them. Scotty—sensing another ally in an uncertain house—would have wagged his tail if he’d had one.

“I’ll go say hi!” Gordon said now. “Your bedroom is the upstairs one in the corner!”

With that, Ryan’s dad turned around and trotted outside, leaving Ryan to schlep his bags up the stairs by himself. He didn’t mind, really. The upstairs bedroom in the corner of the “cabin” (the house Ryan and Scott were looking to buy had half the square footage and none of the luxury) had a nice view—and no bedroom on either side. Which meant that Ryan and Scott didn’t have to be celibate, and that was always a plus.

The living room was dominated by a twelve-foot Christmas tree set back against the window, twinkling with red, silver, and gold lights, ornaments, and tinsel garlands. The television was off, which made Ryan assume the kids had already been put to bed, but Ryan’s mother, sister, and brother-in-law were sitting at a card table in the living room, playing dice. Taylor looked up and gave her son a genuine smile.

“Ryan—we were so worried. We’re so glad you got here safely, especially after we saw you on the news.”

Ryan flushed. “Oh crap! Was that really on the news?”

Walter shot him a disgusted look. “Yeah it was on the news. You looked like you’d been kissing a walrus. Is that all you did for five hours?”

The cabin was snug and cozy, thanks to a propane heater and a gigantic propane tank that Ryan’s parents had filled before every winter visit. Taylor’s glare at Yvonne’s stocky, balding husband lowered the air temperature at least ten degrees. Which was fine, because Ryan was suddenly sweating under his collar.

“We were bored,” he said cavalierly, figuring what the hell? That blow-job had been the best part of the trip! “We all have our diversions.”

Walter’s mouth was open, but Taylor cut him off.

“Walter, could you help Ryan up to the bedroom? It looks like he bought out Toys ’R’ Us for your kids—it’s the least you could do.”

Ryan smiled gratefully at his mom. “Scotty did, actually. I just nodded and said ‘sure!’”

Walter stood up heavily and came to grab the biggest bag right out of Ryan’s hand. “Wouldn’t want you to strain your delicate little wrist,” he muttered, and Ryan rolled his eyes and took the bag back.

“Wouldn’t want you to strain that stick in your ass,” he retorted. “How about getting the bags of presents? They’re awkward but not too heavy.”

Ryan started up the stairs, happy for the help even if it was Walter, only to be brought short by his mother’s voice.

“I hope he didn’t spend too much money, Ryan. Since you’re not really going anywhere in your company, you can’t afford to get too badly into debt.”

Walter snorted behind him, and Ryan said, “I just got a raise, Mother, and Scotty’s business is booming. Don’t worry; we’ll spoil who we want to!” and then he took off up the carpeted stairs, taking them two at a time in an effort to get to his room before his mother could reply.

They got up to the room, which had been aired out and had a thick comforter on the freshly made queen-sized bed, and Ryan set the luggage down and took the packages from Walter.

“Thanks for the help,” he muttered, and Walter rolled his eyes.

“I’m not a complete douchebag,” he snapped, and Ryan sighed.

“Only sometimes.”

“Yeah, well, my family wouldn’t be all sweet about the whole fag thing, you know?”

Yes. Ryan was well aware that had he been born to Walter’s family, he would have had, in Walter’s words, “The straight beaten back into him.” But Ryan had to spend six days in a cabin with this guy, and calling him a homophobic bigot to his face was not going to make that go any easier—not on the first day at least. Ryan would sort of hold that in reserve as a reward in case things got really bad.

“Walter, every family has its little problems, okay? Now did you want us to put the presents under the tree or wait until Christmas morning?”

“Put ’em under now,” Walter told him. “The kids have been going on all day about you and Scott. This way, when they wake up in the morning, they’ll know you guys were here. How bad was the trip?”

Ryan grunted, feeling the ache of being in the cramped car and the cold in every muscle down to his very marrow. “Let’s just say that kissing a walrus was the only bright spot.”

That managed to make Walter laugh. “Well, I’m glad someone’s got one. Excuse me while I go downstairs and get my ass kicked in dice by your mother.”

Ryan managed a smile as they called a Christmas truce. “Don’t get too devoted to that. When Scotty brings the dog in, Mom is going to have a better target.”

Walter nodded with a little bit of relief. “Not just in dice, either, thank God. I’ll admit, I don’t get the whole fag thing, but she really does have it in for poor Scotty.”

With that he turned and trotted down the stairs with the bags of gifts, and Ryan took his time opening the suitcases and putting their stuff into drawers. They hadn’t had to pack too heavily—there was a washer and a dryer down in the mudroom—but Ryan’s mom liked them to dress nicely for Christmas Eve dinner, so they had suits and good shoes and everything. They shared a size, so their casual and sleep clothes all got shoved into one drawer, but Scott’s jeans and T-shirts tended to be tighter and brighter than Ryan’s. He got two drawers all to himself.

Their toiletries went into the small adjoining bathroom—Ryan’s on the left and Scott’s on the right—and when everything was done, Ryan took off his boots and put on his fleece-lined moccasins and went downstairs just in time for Scott and the dog to emerge from the mudroom.

Blitzkrieg bounded up, putting her paws on Ryan’s shoulders, and Ryan was grateful that Scott had toweled her off or he’d be covered with snow. Scott came in for a brief kiss, and his familiar smell, sharpened by the cold, was enough to make Ryan pull him a little closer and make the kiss a little longer. Scotty was simple: he was all about loving Ryan. The rest of the family was complicated, and Ryan had always been a bigger fan of simple.

They pulled back, and Scotty smiled into Ryan’s eyes before giving a grimace. “Hey, is there any food? I’m starving!”

“Wish I had your metabolism,” Gordon said cheerfully, coming in and closing the mudroom door (which, in turn, led to the unheated garage). “There’s leftovers in the refrigerator and some frozen stuff you can microwave if you like. The pantry and the outside refrigerator are stocked to feed an army. Make yourself at home!”

“Thanks, Dad.” Ryan moved to the kitchen with alacrity; he was damned hungry himself. “And he works for that metabolism. I keep trying to get him to buy a car, but he rides his bike, rain or shine. Scares the hell out of me!”

Scotty grinned. “Hey, it’s environmentally sound. Besides,” Scotty preened a little, showing off his narrow, fit body, “it’s good for me!”

“Shoot, Ryan—feed this kid! That’s no way to treat the guy who walks your dog!”

Ryan nodded, pulling out sourdough bread and spaghetti sauce and noodles and went about throwing everything into a pan to heat and buttering the sourdough. “Doing my best! Want some?”

Gordon shook his head. “No thanks. I don’t get nearly that much exercise. So, Scotty, how’s the business going?”

Of all of Ryan’s family, Ryan’s dad was the only one who seemed genuinely interested in Scotty’s Internet business and the only one who thought it was a good idea. Scott loved him for it, and Ryan loved watching him talk about it.

“It’s going wicked awesome!” Scott gushed. “We tracked down some Neil Gaiman copies that a guy wanted to give his girlfriend as a birthday present, and she loved it so much she proposed! The guy wrote me a letter and everything—and Neil Gaiman was so sweet when I e-mailed him. That one was a real rush!”

Scotty specialized in tracking down signed copies of books or artist prints for fans. It had started when he’d tried to get a signed Dan Skinner print for Ryan for his birthday two years before, and he’d had so much fun doing it that he’d done the same thing for a few friends. He’d gone back to school around the same time and had encountered an instructor in a business class who specialized in e-businesses and who believed that the start of every successful business had its roots in a really fun idea. His professor had given him pointers, and Signa-Story had been born.

“Wait, can’t you buy that stuff off the Internet?” Walter asked from the dice game.

“One would think,” Taylor said dryly, but Scotty either didn’t see their contempt or just chose to ignore it.

“Well yeah, you can—and sometimes people will e-mail me and I’ll tell them how to do that. For people who do that a lot, I’ve got a list with all sorts of companies who have directions to get signed copies. They pay me a subscription fee, and I update it monthly. It’s all public information, but I organize it by artist and keep it in the same place—for some people, that’s worth the fee, you know?”

Ryan’s dad nodded, and Ryan put a bowl of spaghetti in front of Scott while listening avidly. Of course Ryan knew how the business worked—he’d drawn up the paperwork, and applied for Scott’s business license, and made sure they had the copyright on the name and everything. At least one weekend a month was spent helping to organize incoming merchandise and ship it off to Scotty’s clients, and he always had so much fun sharing the origin of each signature with Scott that it felt like time well spent.

“Well, that will hardly pay the rent,” Taylor said with a shrug, and Ryan glared at her.

“That’s not all there is to it,” Ryan said quietly. “Tell her, Scott.”

Scott’s look at Ryan’s mother was searching, hoping for approval but afraid of being smacked down. It was a little like Blitzkrieg’s look at them after she’d broken something or chewed up something or crapped in the house, and that pissed Ryan off. If his mother shot Scotty down on this, Ryan swore he’d smack her in the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Well, in a way, it’s sort of like being a detective. I try to contact the author, go through used bookstores, put out ads in the paper, do a lot of research on the computer, talk to publishing houses. It’s like when I was doing it for friends, I started this list of contacts, and then it just built. It all depends on the year the thing was published or painted, and that means looking through the Library of Congress or talking to art specialists—it gets really complicated sometimes, but it’s a lot of fun!”

Taylor’s look was skeptical. “Does it pay well?”

Scott grinned. “Well enough. Ryan and I are going to buy a house this month!”

Oh fuck. Ryan had been going to talk about that quietly in the kitchen with his mother, so she could keep her nasty remarks and sarcasm to herself.

“In this market?” Her voice dripped incredulity, and Ryan threw himself into the fray.

“We could do it even without the second job, Mom. That just makes it a hell of a lot easier. Besides, we need more room. Between Blitzkrieg and the office space Scotty needs, the apartment feels like the size of a walnut!”

Taylor raised her eyebrows, and Ryan cringed. There would be words later—but not now, not in front of Scott. Ryan was grateful. Let his mother work on him all she wanted as long as she kept her negativity the hell away from Scotty.

“I’m sure we’ll discuss this in time,” she said now, her voice so pleasant it knotted Ryan’s guts like fishing net. He looked at her helplessly. She was the epitome of the stylish, understatedly beautiful, fifty-ish matron with ash-blonde hair parted in the middle and a svelte, cream-colored, casual pantsuit. Was Ryan the only one who saw the steel frame underneath that sweet exterior?

“I can’t wait,” Ryan said with a bold smile. “How’s the dinner, Scott?”

Scotty took a sloppy bite, wiped his mouth, and beamed at him. “Amazing. Why aren’t you eating yours?”

Ryan sighed and looked at the plate of spaghetti he’d dished up for himself while Scott had been talking. He took a bite and tried not to show that the conversation with his mother had pretty much shriveled his stomach like a prune. He swallowed anyway and smiled. “Awesome,” he said, and looked down. Six days. Well, he needed to lose weight anyway.

They went to bed shortly after cleanup. Walter helped them schlep more packages down the stairs again, and Scotty spent some time organizing them under the tree. Ryan had his gifts for Scott upstairs still, and was planning to add them—one box in particular—later. While he did that, he fielded Walter’s shit about how much fun he’d had shopping for their two girls. Of course, he’d had just as much fun shopping for the two boys, but that wasn’t what Walter wanted to talk about.

“You bought them a what?” Walter was looking at the big package like there was canister of nerve gas inside.

Scott smiled at him—that same big, eager smile he’d used when he was telling Ryan’s mom about his job—and said, “A doll house. You remember, Yvonne? We were talking that one day about Julia Child and following her recipes, and someone came to the door, and you handed the phone to Ella-Jaye?”

Ryan’s sister was a tiny, younger version of his mother, right down to high-cheek-boned face and pale blue eyes. Yvonne ran the market on “quietly competent,” and she actually looked surprised when Scott singled her out and spoke to her.

“Oh my God—Scotty! You remembered from that? I’d just taken them shopping, and the girls couldn’t stop talking about it! The big dollhouse with the little… oh no—you didn’t!”

Scott grinned, truly pleased with himself. “Yeah. Yeah we did. Ryan helped me pick out the furniture—it didn’t all come with the house—and we got two dolls so they can play while they’re here. I’m sure they’ll steal their brother’s action figures and make do—kids do that.”

He set the large package toward the back of the tree and a bunch of smaller ones around it, and Ryan put the swag for the boys on the other side of the tree so it would be easier at passing out time.

“Yeah, you probably played with your little sister’s dollhouse yourself!” Walter crowed, and Scotty waggled his eyebrows.

“Absolutely—with my big brother’s action figures. You don’t even want to know the things that G.I. Joe did.”

Walter gaped at him, apparently stunned that G.I. Joe had homosexual leanings, and Yvonne clapped a hand over her delighted smirk.

“You did that too?” she giggled when she could speak, and her mother said, “Yvonne!” with so much shock that Ryan and Gordon had to laugh too.

“So Yvonne wasn’t always perfect?” Ryan asked, winking at his big sister, and she stuck her tongue out back. He remembered a time when she would have given a disgusted sniff and not played with him at all, but time and children—and Scott—apparently had brought out some little kid in her as well.

“Don’t give her shit, Ry,” Scott said with his own wink. “We all know what you played with.”

Ryan didn’t rise to his bait at all. “Yup. Cars!”

You would have thought Ryan’s mother would have laughed at that, but she didn’t. Everyone else did, though, including Walter and, most importantly, Scott.

Shortly after that they made their way up to their bedroom after Blitzkrieg, who ran up the stairs and curled up on the big area rug on the hardwood, happy as a big furry clam. (Ryan said that out loud, actually, and Scott shuddered. “Not in my bed!”) They put on soft-knit pajama pants and T-shirts and crawled into bed, where Ryan lay for more than half an hour, stranded between awake and asleep like a dying codfish on the shore.

“Close your eyes, Ry—I can hear your eyeballs drying out.”

Ryan blinked in the foreign darkness. “That’s both gross and impossible,” he mumbled, and Scott sighed, shifting in bed and scrambling up on his knees.

“Roll over.”

“Scotty—”

“Don’t give me the ‘Scotty-I-don’t-want-sex’ whine. It’s not sex; it’s a backrub, you perv. You need to do something. You can’t sleep. You can’t sleep, I can’t sleep, so roll over like a good little corporate lawyer… there you go.”

Ryan rolled onto his stomach and mumbled, “I’m not a corporate lawyer anymore, remember? I’m a grinder. I like being a grinder.”

“You’re still a corporate lawyer,” Scott told him, putting both hands on the muscle of his shoulders and pushing unmercifully. “You’re just a human being too.”

“Mmmmm….” Scotty’s hands were long-fingered with big knuckles, hard, capable, and strong. He could have been a masseur or a physical therapist or anything really, but he’d chosen to be Ryan’s everything, and that was his best talent of all. “I’d rather be a signature tracker, a detective. That’s unbelievably”—oh God… right there… the twinge in his neck… Scott had found it and was rubbing it just… so—“sexy,” Ryan finished, warm and fuzzy and babbling into the pillow. Against his backside, Scott’s cock was growing steadily harder, and Ryan made an effort to come out of his stupor.

“You’re unbelievably sexy.”

Scott leaned over and kissed the back of his neck with an open, warm, mouth and then nibbled down Ryan’s neck and whispered in his ear.

“So are you. You’re also almost asleep. Tomorrow, baby. I promise, okay?”

“Better.”

A minute later, Scott’s weight shifted and he slid in bed again, pulling the comforter up over their shoulders and backing into Ryan’s body space. Ryan had just enough presence of mind to wrap his arm securely over Scotty’s waist before drifting off to sleep.