“So… I guess I’m not getting laid tonight.” Dare said as we accompanied him to the door. Despite his forlorn tone, a mischievous grin stretched across his face. He dived headfirst into our counter-prank and helped us sort out details even John hadn’t thought of.
“Not with us. But it seems like that Texan couple might be open to a threesome,” I said with a wink.
Dare’s jaw dropped. “Oh man… You guys really did get suckered into this whole spy thing!”
“Shut up,” I grumbled as he laughed in my face.
“You’re adorable when you pout.” John kissed me lightly, and my pout was quickly replaced with a smile.
“Back to the Texans… They don’t sleep with employees. You see, they own the resort.” At Dare’s words, it all came together. Xander must have known them through his uncle or the LGBT youth center… and they’d paired with us to watch the drama unfold. “I wish they’d told us about the ruse! We’d have totally acted super sketchy around you.”
“You guys are sketchy enough, thank you very much,” I sniped. “With all that whispering and prying questions and– and–”
“And our obnoxious attempts to put our counseling credentials to work and help couples open up and connect with each other?” he asked, rolling his eyes.
“Well! If you say it like that, it just sounds silly!” I huffed, fully aware of just how ridiculous this weekend had actually been.
I woke up the next morning warm and cozy and happy. This was only the third time John and I slept the entire night together —or, in our case, the entire morning— and I had never had a more restful night’s sleep.
I’d known night shifts sucked, but we’d tried to convince ourselves that cuddling each other to sleep before starting our day was twice as good as doing so each evening and then being unconscious for hours in the same bed. There was no way to pretend any longer. I should either invert my schedule a few times a month, as I’d considered doing last fall, or switch to day shifts altogether. Regardless, I had to make a change, for the sake of our relationship. We’d lose something uniquely intimate, something essential, if we couldn’t sleep together like this.
Eventually, I opened my eyes a crack and looked around the room and grinned. As soon as we closed the door behind our co-conspirator, John and I had attacked each other like starving Tasmanian devils. And it showed. The room looked like the staging for a stereotypical sitcom’s cheesy ‘morning after’ scene — John’s briefs hung from a lampshade, someone’s dress shirt was weighing down the ceiling fan, and I wasn’t sure any tailor could salvage what we’d done to my trousers.
All the covers had found their way onto my side of the bed, but John balanced that out by hoarding pillows like he was building a fort. We’d have to get a California King sized comforter before winter, because I was pretty sure I couldn’t cure a thirty-five-year-long habit overnight, and buy lots of extra pillows so I could at least keep one underneath my poor head.
“Good morning,” I murmured when John pressed his hard length against my backside.
“Yes, it is,” he agreed, nuzzling my neck and moving his hand down my body. I gasped when he wrapped his fingers around my morning wood and stroked it lazily.
After the best morning sex ever and an additional half hour of snuggles, we reluctantly extracted ourselves from bed, took a long shower, and began to pack.
“You know… Xander probably paid for all this amazing clothing,” I told John as I carefully folded each item.
“He’s insanely wealthy, and it physically pains him to spend even his meager actuarial salary on himself,” he said with the weary sigh of a man who had argued with his friend over such things for years.
“But still…” I was thirty-five years old and prided myself on off-setting my whimsical nature and lack of M.D. by adulting responsibly. I had built a decently-sized long-term savings, paid all my bills in full and on time, and never relied on other people to ‘take care of me.’
“Hey, this was his high-handed plan. He probably figures the clothing makes up for the fact that they played us like a fiddle.”
“We still have to follow-through with our plan,” I insisted.
John looked up, startled. “Of course! They should have a little pseudo-dangerous fun, too. It’s not like it costs us anything.”
“It costs us my apartment,” I pointed out, not that I minded letting Dare stay there for the summer.
“We’re spending the next couple of months apartment-shopping, anyway.” His head was buried in the suitcase, but his voice was so naturally nonchalant that I knew he believed this was a thoroughly considered plan the two of us had apparently had for a while now.
After an hour of packing and brunching, the shock of John’s statement finally wore off. We plopped down on our therapist’s loveseat and, because I couldn’t hold my questions in a second longer, I rudely ignored her generic question about the state of our relationship.
“When are we moving? And where?” I blurted. John looked thoroughly confused by my question, and I smiled softly, taking his hand and lacing my fingers through his. I usually appreciated John’s thoughtfulness, but there were moments like today when I had to voice my exasperation. “Yes, John. You forgot to discuss living arrangements aloud.”
This happened occasionally with John, probably the result of growing up with a twin who could practically read his mind. His close friends eventually got the dubious pleasure of receiving his unintentional stealth-planning, and had learned to go with the flow of ‘The Tripping Current.’ John just showed up when needed, always assuming that had been the plan all along.
“I know you thought everything out in detail, but I’d like to actually talk about this so we know we’re on the same page. Yes, I would love to move in together, I just wasn’t sure when to bring it up. You’re right, my building doesn’t allow pets and your place would be a little cramped for the four of us. So now’s as good a time as any to tell me what the plan is.”
“I think you might want to discuss how his assumptions make you feel and how you could handle this in the future,” our therapist said, trying to take control of the session.
“I feel very loved and happy and relieved… and a little exasperated. But I also know that he takes my needs and opinions into account,” I told her. Because I was not going to let her make him feel more guilty than he already did.
“We should talk in generalities instead,” John agreed, squeezing my hand. “You should always feel comfortable discussing things with me. Even big steps like moving in together and setting a date for our wedding and how and when we’ll adopt. I didn’t start planning anything until you found out about my sight and handled it so spectacularly well, so I haven’t implemented anything. That’s something we should do together.”
“I love you. So much.” My eyes got a little misty. I would never get tired of telling him that, of reassuring him that we were a team. “So let me guess… we’re getting married in April. Something simple and informal.”
John nodded in agreement. It was exactly one year from the day we decided to co-parent Izzy, which was essentially when we got back together, and the cherry blossoms would be in bloom. Unlike the Moore brothers, we’d actually take our time planning the wedding, and John’s sister would have her requisite at-least-six-months’ notice.
“And we’ll adopt human children once I convince you of my brilliant plan.”
A soft smile curved his lips. “You want us to train service dogs, buy a house we can modify, and adopt children with vision impairment. Maybe a family of children, one of whom is disabled, so the kids aren’t separated.”
I sighed. He knew me so well. “Yes. You’re okay with that? All of it?”
“I think it’s perfect, and I’m glad you thought of it,” he said, as though he wasn’t the one who’d put the plan into words. “We can do that on any timeline you’d like. Maybe the summer after our wedding? I figure the wedding and our new home will be this summer’s project.”
Every year after spring semester ended, John enjoyed his summer break for approximately ten days before going stir crazy and starting a new hobby. According to his friends, these projects always started small but spiraled out of control. But John was self-aware enough to recognize the pattern —he’d been on an academic schedule since preschool— and always mapped out a course for his wild summer projects. Last year, he took up crocheting and began making hats for everyone’s pets, including Logan’s cats. Previous hobbies included 3D rendering and animation, writing a travel guidebook for the area, and learning Sanskrit.
I got misty-eyed when I realized that, whatever his original plans had been for this year’s project, he set them aside to start building a life with me. I knew that was just the tip of the iceberg, but if purchasing and furnishing a house wasn’t enough to keep him thoroughly busy… “Are you helping Greg and Dani find a house, too?”
“Your best friend’s stubborn, so I’m not going to hold my breath,” he admitted. “But Julian’s programmer friend is moving back to New York, so he’ll need my help settling in too.”
“What? Quinn’s moving back?” I Skyped weekly with Quinn now, and he hadn’t mentioned anything to me!
“Of course he’s moving back! His job is making him miserable, he’s so desperate to find someone normal to date that he’s seeing Buzzard, and his best friend is here. He’ll realize that within the month, and he’ll be home before the leaves start to turn.”
“Oh. I thought he’d already decided and you had an inside scoop.” I tried not to pout, but wasn’t successful. “But you’re totally right. Quinn should stay in my apartment until the lease is up. You know Julian’s going to pressure him to stay in their home, but the lack of privacy would drive him batty.”
The therapist cleared her throat and we focused back on her. Whoops. “From what I am hearing, this weekend was a success. What tools will you be using in the near future?”
I mentally rolled my eyes and helped myself to some tea and cookies as she brought our session back on track. There was no individual counselling today, just this extra-long session discussing our future, post- Relationship Rehab. So we ought to behave. It was easier than filling out a questionnaire, and we didn’t want her to guess that our minds were filled with insane prankish plans. She might have been in on the spy games, after all.
John assured me that he wouldn’t be afraid to share, even if he thought he was ‘unfairly’ burdening me. I wouldn’t be afraid to ask questions, even if I didn’t want to push him too hard. And we’d both feel comfortable saying we needed time to think or process or whatever before having a discussion.
With the remainder of our time, we picked her brain about therapeutic activities for couples, claiming our newlywed friends would definitely enjoy benefitting from our experience. We were both looking forward to setting up our own parlor games and obstacle course when we returned, but therapy be damned. We were going to compete with the Moore brothers and their mates for Best Couple Ever. There would be a trophy and rematches, of course, but John and I were totally going to kick their butts at coupling.
The rest of the afternoon was filled with a few indoor games and a late farewell lunch. John and I amused ourselves by scanning things with the dildometer in a very obvious way and acting as though we were incredibly suspicious of Dare.
“He packed to go awfully quickly,” I muttered to the Texan woman during lunch, tossing a sidelong look Dare’s way. “I thought he’s been here for years.”
“From what he’s said in the past, when I’ve been able to get him alone,” she confessed with a wink, “the staff here all have fully furnished rooms and they share a large kitchen, so he probably doesn’t have much to pack. How’d you get him to agree to travel with you to New York?”
“He just asked. We were surprised, but I guess we have trustworthy faces,” I said with a shrug.
“It’s the dimples. Everyone falls for your dimples,” John interjected. “We don’t mind. It’ll be fun to have company on the trek back. In fact, we even offered to put him up.”
“Our friend Xander has tons of room in his house and Tommy never uses his apartment,” I said quickly and forced a slightly-crazed, awkward laugh. Since we were pretty sure the Texans were reporting back to Xander, we had to ham things up. “We’re not locking him up in our basement or anything like that.”
After a moment of silence, the woman winked. “I’d probably lock Dare in the bedroom instead.”
“There are too many weaponizable objects in our bedroom.” They blinked at John’s response. It was so matter-of-fact that he’d clearly given the concept significant thought. Being sketchy was so much fun!
And so our lunch went. There were more farewell games and optional activities, but we wanted to hit Salem again before going home, so we said our goodbyes and packed up the car. I even looked around us dramatically before roughly pushing Dare into the back seat.
A mile or so down the road, John pulled to a stop so we could all laugh our asses off. Then we skipped away to Salem. Well, if a luxury sedan could skip. Dare wasn’t as excited over the witch-oriented tourist town as he should have been, but that changed as soon as we entered the movie-wizard themed shop. When he set hungry eyes on the magic wands we’d special-ordered, we insisted he point out the premade wand that most called to him, and bought it for him. Dare protested accepting the gift, but spent a good hour hexing rude drivers along the highway.
At 7:00, we pulled into the rest stop an hour and a half from home to set our counter-prank into motion. First, I sent a series of texts to Julian Moore:
The eagle will land at 8.
We had to act quickly and we couldn’t reach you last night, but we caught the bastard.
Send kids to Chance and Logan’s and pull your SUV out of the garage.
Get Buzzard over there and be ready with the necessary supplies.
We weren’t sure how deep the corruption among our friends went, but that business with the dildometer had Greg Moore written all over it. Sure, Julian wanted to make a device, but it was his uber-mature older brother that always went for the hardcore ridiculous jokes. Plus, Greg was the only one who knew about that particular dildo. John hadn’t felt comfortable telling his friends about it, and I had gone on and on about that giant monster cock for a full week after finding it. So John sent a couple of his own to Greg Moore:
Help! Can’t explain, but please be at Julian’s at 8 when we arrive back and bring a med kit.
Tommy says he’s got this covered, but we can’t go to the hospital and I’d feel safer if you were there.
We then called Max and filled him in on our little plan, and his role in it.
Whoever else was in on planning our little mission, they’d have to frantically wait by their phones even longer than everyone else, helpless to do anything but wait.
We pulled into a parking lot a half-mile from our destination at 8:45 and I texted Julian: Meet us in your garage and pull out your SUV so there’s plenty of room.
Dare splashed some water on his face to make himself look sweaty and I wrapped his head with piece of torn undershirt we’d soaked with ketchup-water solution. As we wrapped his wrists and ankles, he argued, “C'mon, it's so much more believable if you hogtie me. You made them think you've been driving all over New England with me in the trunk! If you left me like this…”
We were tired of arguing the merits of more extreme measures, so I covered Dare's mouth with a piece of duct tape and John shut the trunk with a satisfying slam.
As we’d hoped, three SUVs sat outside the Victorian house and we pulled directly into their garage, where Greg, Xander, Julian, and Buzzard stood waiting impatiently. We were practically dragged out of the car, searched for injuries, and pelted with a dozen questions at once, before someone noticed the noises coming from the back of the car. Xander rushed to the front seat and popped the trunk.
The range of expressions that played over their faces was priceless as they took in the sight of the bound, injured, frightened man. I cursed the fact that this was the kind of joke you can only pull off once. The first to act was Buzzard. The former special ops soldier pulled a giant military knife out of his ass —or from a sheath somewhere in that general area— and advanced on Dare with grim determination.
Dare began to scream in earnest and I panicked and shrieked, “Don’t slit his throat! H- he has, um, valuable information! Y- y- you can torture it out of him or something!”
Buzzard, unfazed by my outburst, lifted the shaking man out of the trunk, placed him on the ground, and used the knife to slice the duct tape binding Dare's feet. Then Dare kicked Buzzard's knife out of his hand, impressively leapt into the air without using his hands, and tried to run out of the garage. Buzzard swore and caught up to him in two steps, grabbing him around the waist. Dare struggled valiantly but the twink was ultimately no match for the giant wall of man meat. After a bit of a struggle, Buzzard practically body-slammed him onto the ground and he went limp.
My best friend, who'd been watching in horror from the sidelines until that moment, raced over to Dare's side. Greg tried to push Buzzard out of the way so he could check Dare for injuries. Buzzard ignored him and straddled Dare, who screamed again and tried to head-butt him.
"Goddammit, hold still!" He shouted, grabbing Dare's arms in one meaty paw. "Jesus fucking Christ, why didn't they hogtie you?"
"It seemed a little extreme," I said.
"You were driving around for hours and must have stopped for gas or something. You're lucky he didn't kick out the tail light or pull the child safety latch. Then where'd you be?"
Dare muttered angrily behind the tape, because that was exactly the point he'd argued all afternoon. It seemed as though Buzzard interpreted his mutterings as anger at being called an incompetent hostage, because Buzzard just sighed and shook his head. The psychopath must have been exhausted, dealing with amateurs like us. He cut the tape around Dare's wrists and brought his knife hand toward Dare's throat.
"What the hell is going on here?!" Buzzard’s boss bellowed as he emerged out of the darkness, into the garage. What a dramatic and perfectly-timed entrance!
“We couldn’t reach Julian or Buzzard, but we knew we had to act fast!” I explained. “When this asshole tried to convince us to have a threesome, we knew we’d found our blackmailer!”
“Blackmailer?” Max asked, raising a brow.
"It was just a little practical joke that got out of hand," Julian said, his eyes still fixed on our ‘hostage.’ "It was for their own good, I swear!"
“A JOKE?!” John shouted at Julian with just the right amount of surprise in his voice.
“We just wanted you to work things out,” Xander explained.
“We thought it’d be fun! We told you not to act on your suspicions! I can’t believe you’d do this!” his husband wailed.
“We kidnapped a child!” John shouted back and Dare stopped squirming long enough to shout a few unintelligible curses at him through the tape. No, calling him a child had not been in the script, especially considering he was roughly the same age as Julian.
"Buzzard, you know better than to get involved in one of Sparky's schemes! Especially if it involves these two lunatics." Max gestured at me and my fiancé and added, "No offense."
I scoffed and shot him a dirty look and crossed my arms. Even though I knew he was acting, of course I took offense. Anything that ended with ‘no offense’ was automatically offensive.
"You're right, boss," Buzzard said. I repeated my angry scoff and he gave me a dirty look. "Oh come on, you decided to co-parent a newborn kitten with your secretive ex-boyfriend and his creepy staring dog. And then you suddenly agreed to marry the guy while you were on a date with a millionaire retired SEAL."
"Frankie isn't creepy, he just likes to observe people from a distance." It was really the only point I could argue against. My life and choices were a bit unorthodox… but so was I.
"Buzzard, I expect you to take care of this!" Max ordered and stormed inside the house, dragging Xander with him.
The poor man we'd roped into our little counter-prank screamed behind the duct tape covering his mouth. That was when I realized that 1) Buzzard still held a big-ass knife just inches away from Dare's face, and 2) Max's order had been frighteningly vague.
"Twinkle-toes, if I take the tape off your mouth, do you promise not to scream?" Buzzard asked.
Dare rolled his eyes but nodded, still shaking violently. Buzzard ripped off the duct tape and Dare grunted at the pain. We told him it would hurt without anything to destick-ify the tape, but nooooooo. The stubborn kid refused all the treasures in our gift baskets. The massage oils were all scented too strongly, which might give us away before we were ready to end the prank, and he insisted we keep the gallons of various lubes for ourselves.
Without hesitating, Dare lifted his head and kissed Buzzard hard and fast, and then dissolved into laughter. Between belly-laughs, he gasped, "Oh my god! Your faces!"
John began to chuckle. Then I started laughing. Then Max came back out and snapped pictures of our gape-mouthed friends, who'd all evilly conspired to send us to a beautiful resort to play a fun, harmless spy game in order to force us to work out all our issues.
I skipped over to Greg, who still squatted next to Buzzard, waiting to check Dare for injuries. I gave him a big hug, then kissed Buzzard's cheek and ran to give Julian and Xander hugs.
We thanked them thoroughly for doing this for us, and they all agreed that our prank was a million times funnier.
No, no, just kidding.
Buzzard took one look around the garage, shoved his knife in his pocket, and stormed out into the darkness.
“No obvious signs of concussion,” Greg said as he shined a light in Dare’s eyes. “But I want you to get a CT scan anyway, because you obviously have brain damage, getting mixed up in this nonsense.” Greg pushed him back onto the ground and checked him for injuries from Buzzard’s rough take-down. Based on Dare’s unrestrained laughter, I was pretty sure he didn’t have a collapsed lung or broken rib.
“That was… diabolical!” Julian said with hushed reverence.
“I told you that you didn’t want to rope Tommy into a prank war!” Greg called to his brother.
“Oh no, this was totally worth it,” he whispered. “I wish…”
“Don’t worry, Brat. The security camera recorded the whole thing. Everyone will get to see it later, after we unveil all the photos documenting Operation Butt Bandits,” Xander assured him. Because of course they had their friends keeping tabs on us. Seeing me wrapped up in my fiancé’s arms, his chin resting on my head despite his usual aversion to PDA, Xander asked, “So you got your shit all sorted out? We can come up with another spy mission if we have to.”
“It was just what we needed,” I said and discreetly reached behind me to pinch John’s butt. Or it would have been discreet if Greg hadn’t been standing behind me. I ignored my best friend’s snicker and Dare’s comment about how disgustingly adorable we were. “Thank you.”
“As a gift of our appreciation, we brought him home with us. He’ll be the new counselor for Safe Harbor. He has all the requisite degrees and certifications, and I believe he’ll connect with the children much as Julian does. Oh, and he can shoot an arrow while riding bareback, just in case you find a need for that sort of thing,” John informed them, gesturing toward Dare. Xander had said he needed someone full-time at the LGBT youth center, and now he didn’t have to do the interview himself. And you never knew when you needed someone last-minute to do a little horseback archery. John thought of everything. “Now let’s get Frankie and Izzy and take them home. I hope Frankie didn’t hear Buzzard's comments. He’s always so hurt when people comment on his staring…”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s been in his own little world ever since Roger left with the kids,” Julian said airily. I wilted. Poor Frankie! His unrequited crush on the greyhound was so hard to watch. “No no no! He’s just caught up in his own love life! We think fatherhood must look good on him, because she’s fallen head-over-paws in love with him. They’ve been sickeningly adorable all weekend.”
“Frankie’s got a girlfriend!” I sang.
Delighted at the news, John clapped his hands and strode inside calling out to our fur-babies, “Frankie! Izzy! Your daddies are here!”
I followed just far enough behind to ogle his bottom, happy and content and excited to bring my family home and truly start living our Happily Ever After.