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wouldbedorothyDisclaimer: Don't know Gale or Randy... or Simon or Kim... These are my own characterizations and not based on any real life status or events... It's *fiction*, baby!
Title: Therapy Boys, Part I: One Year's Withdrawal
Author: AHS
Pairing: Gale Harold/Randy Harrison RPS
Rating: PG-13ish for part one
Series/Sequel: 1/4.5
Summary: Set in 2006, a year post-filming. In this part, both G and R are missing each other and needing some professional counsel. I think it's about 2900-3000 words.
Warnings: My only expertise re: psychiatrists lies in having spoken to a few, so I just write them how I need them!
Therapy Boys
by AHS
Part I: One Year’s Withdrawal
2006. Los Angeles, CA. Office of Dr. Thomas Aberman. Gale Harold POV.
“Everybody has a college I-was-so-drunk-I-let-this-guy-blow-me story.”
“So tell me your story, Gale.”
“I was so drunk I let this guy blow me.”
Well, that was pretty much the gist. But Dr. Aberman just sat and stared, waiting for me to spill my guts more in depth. It was only my third session with him, but I’d learned that trick. Overall, though, he didn’t pull out many of the psychiatrist clichés… the leaning forward, the steepling the fingers, the “how does that make you feel?”… I hadn’t decided yet if that made me like him more or trust him less.
“I was 20 and stupid. It was a drunk ass dare. One of my roommate’s friends. The three of us hanging out at the dorm one night. Whole bottle of tequila. Supposed to be funny, I guess.”
“Was it?”
I’d been telling the story while looking, unfocused, in the vicinity of my knees. But now I raised my head to face my doctor… late 50’s, with salt and pepper hair, a round face, and a fondness for almost Cosby-style sweaters. It was a little weird confessing some of the things I was to this man who could be my father or an uncle, but so far he hadn’t blinked.
“I was so smashed, I barely remember the blow job. But I guess I enjoyed it. My roommate decided I enjoyed it a little too much. He was the one who dared us, see, and then he couldn’t move out fast enough. Wrangled a new housing assignment in less than a week, because he didn’t want to room with a ‘fag’.”
Dr. Aberman leaned forward in his chair, touching his fingertips together under his chin. “How did that make you feel?”
I rolled my eyes slightly but also was relaxed by the comfort to be found in cliché. This was what I had come in expecting, and now I knew where I was. Yeah, I could trust him now.
“Pissed me off. But I didn’t have any kind of sexual identity crisis. I just swore to stay away from tequila from then on. Fucked a hot girl from my European Lit class and I was all good. Nothing like that ever happened again… you know, with a guy… and I honestly never gave it much thought. Until QAF came along.”
“Did that experience give you pause in accepting the role?”
“Just for a moment.” I always said I never hesitated, but that was only almost true. “For that moment, I pictured the asshole former roommate flipping channels on his TV, landing on me fucking some guy, and just saying, ‘I knew it.’ But then I thought, fuck him. Fuck what anybody thinks. It’s a job. Might even be a good job. It’s well-written, and they want you, and how often do either of those things happen? Maybe I thought it was a way to prove something to myself…”
I trailed off. I could feel Dr. Aberman staring, waiting for me to explain that statement, but it wasn’t going to happen. Not this session, anyway. Instead, I finally let my thoughts take the path it seemed they always wanted to go. To him.
“Ten, eleven years of my life went by, and I never thought that guy might have been right… until I met Randy.”
*********
New York City. Office of Dr. Jocelyn Matthews. Randy Harrison POV.
“What was the dream this time, Randy?”
“Simon and I were having a picnic in Central Park and pointing out pictures in the clouds. Not that that’s something we do, but whatever.” Seriously, what the fuck. That’s not even gay. That’s like cartoon gay. “The thing is, every cloud looked like Gale. Don’t even ask me how. I kept waiting for Simon to realize it, too, and get upset, but he just kept saying ‘a puppy,’ ‘a sombrero’… Meanwhile, I reach up to the sky and pull Gale down to be with me. Simon, everything else, disappears, and it’s just me and Gale. And he’s real. But I didn’t even get a chance to kiss him before I woke up. I just kept staring at his lips. Staring and touching. Everybody talks about my lips, you know, but Gale’s are… perfect. Really kissably full. Soft and strong. And always this deep pink, even when we’d been outside shooting for hours and it was 150 degrees below zero and my lips were blue. My lips… I like them, but sometimes I think they’re a little too… borderline The Joker…”
“Randy.” Dr. Matthews… my therapist of the past year, who was only a few years older than me, and who reminded me a little of Makyla, actually… smiled at me. Time to rein me in. “What do you think the dream means?”
I sighed and propped my feet up on the armrest. I’m sure most of her patients chose to sit in the chair, but they just didn’t know how to take advantage of therapy. I stretched out melodramatically on the couch like the queen I knew I could sometimes be.
“Probably the same as all the other dreams. The dreams I’ve been having, at least twice a week, since the show ended a year ago. Different settings, different little details, doesn’t matter. I can’t get Gale out of my head. Which is hardly new, but it’s finally starting to drive me crazy. I just want to know what I’m expecting… Shit, I’m not expecting anything. I never have from him.”
Dr. Matthews did that staring thing, her face silently asking me, “Are you sure?” She never had to wait very long for me to start talking, and this was no exception.
“Well, that would be foolish, wouldn’t it? He’s straight… basically. Although, second year of the show, when we got really baked and he told me about that guy in college sucking him off…”
Dr. Matthews nodded. She’d heard that story before.
“I almost went wild with hope. Then I got pissed at myself, and him. Stopped talking to him, any more than I had to for work, for… a couple of months. God, I hated that time. I hated that I made him feel he couldn’t just put an arm around me anymore. Hated not hanging out in each other’s dressing rooms, doing nothing. Hated the silences in the makeup chairs, that the hair and makeup people tried too hard to fill for us. It was so… sad.”
“What made you put an end to the silent treatment?”
“I missed him too much. And I knew it wasn’t fair, what I was doing. I just decided, okay, if you want Gale in your life, you have to give up. Give up hoping he’s secretly gay. Certainly give up hoping, yes he’s straight, but you’re the one man he could want to be with. Christ, I know it doesn’t work like that.”
“You can’t say a person would never feel a certain way. Especially someone as… unusual as Gale?”
This was the frustrating thing about Dr. Matthews… or Jocelyn, as she actually liked patients to call her. She was young and cool, with her own style of therapy. Not that she wasn’t professional, but sometimes it was more like talking to a girlfriend (the universe wearing an annoyingly ironic smile at her resemblance to Daphne). Why was she encouraging my delusions?
“People are unpredictable,” she continued, “and feelings don’t always follow set patterns or psychiatric guidelines. For instance, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that one day you might find yourself attracted to a woman.”
If I hadn’t been used to her nutty theories after a year, I would have left at that. Instead, I just scoffed. “Yes, Jocelyn, it is out of the realm. It can’t get any more out.”
“Relax, Randy. I’m not trying to suggest that you’re not gay. I’d be a piss poor judge of people if I did. I’m just saying, sexuality is a fluid construct, and if we’re drawn first to the heart and soul and mind, we can end up attracted to people we never would have thought.”
“Except that I could never be attracted to a woman.”
“Need I bring up J.T. LeRoy?”
Ouch. I was still recovering from the recent reveal that my favorite author/idol/mystery crush… and possibly the one man, based only on the brilliance of his books and the gorgeous tragedy of his supposed gay hustling life, who I would be tempted to leave both Gale and Simon for… was in fact… some woman.
“That doesn’t count,” I said bitterly. “I was always imagining LeRoy as a man, wasn’t I?”
“And how did you imagine him?”
I could see the slight smile she tried to hide at the predictability of my mind. I’ll admit, my description sounded a little like Gale.
*********
“What is it that’s truly troubling you, Gale?”
My first session with Dr. Aberman, two weeks before, had ostensibly been about my breakup with Kim. I mean, it had been difficult, and I did miss her. But it didn’t compare to the way I’d missed Randy for the past year, and that made me more sure I’d done the right thing in ending the relationship. Anyway, halfway through, it became clear who I was really there to talk about. I remembered describing to the doctor my last conversation with him. When, about two months after QAF wrapped, my phone rang way too early one morning…
*~*
“*cough*… Hello?”
“Is America’s Funniest Home Videos still on the air?”
“Randy? What the-?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Hi, Gale… So is it?”
“Uh, I think so? Maybe? Feels like one of those shows that just won’t die… Why the hell are you calling me at six a.m. to ask me that?”
“Because I got this new digital camera that takes video and I was taping the cats, and Aggie did the funniest thing… Sorry, did I wake you? I forgot it’s three hours earlier where you are.”
“S’okay, *yawn*… What did Aggie do?”
“I can’t even describe it. It was like she… Maybe I should just email you the clip. Then you can tell me if I should send it in. Do you think I’m famous enough that they wouldn’t want to enter me with the regular people?”
“Hmm. That could be a problem, Superstar. But you could always just submit under Simon’s name.”
*Silence*… “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Listen, I’ve got to go. Sorry again. Tell Kim hi. Hope I didn’t wake her, too.”
“Wait, Rand!”
“Yeah?”
“We… We should talk more often.”
“Yeah. We should.”
*~*
“That was the first time you’d spoken in the two months since you’d ceased working together?”
“Yep.”
“And you haven’t spoken again since? How long ago was this?”
“Almost ten months.”
“My only question now is, why?”
I sighed almost violently. “I don’t know. For my part, it’s easier not to call him, not to talk to him. As much as it kills me, missing him like this, somehow it still seems easier. And I guess I kept expecting him to call me. I mean, especially after that. Calling me to tell me his cat did something cute and ask me if some dumb show I’ve never even seen is still on the air? That’s so random. And so… Randy. And it was so something he would have done before, back in Toronto. We called each other for stupider things than that all the time back then. But this time… he got kind of distant before he hung up. No, I lied. I didn’t expect him to call me. When we said we should talk more often, I pretty much knew we wouldn’t.”
Dr. Aberman looked like he was debating something in his head. Whether or not to say something that was fighting to leap its way off the tip of his tongue.
“Gale, I’m going to do something I don’t often do. I don’t find it my place to give advice, especially when I haven’t been working with a patient for very long. I prefer to simply listen, guide with gentle questioning, and allow the patient to reach their own conclusions about what course of action to take, if any, in their life. But there is something I feel I must suggest, in your case, if I hope to see you make any progress at all.”
I was curious, and fucking terrified. “Okay. What’s that?”
“Go find Randy Harrison. See him. Talk to him, in person. I think it might do you both a lot of good.”
*********
“You know, I’ve seen Queer As Folk. Quite a few episodes.”
I knew. I suspected there was a fangirl inside Dr. Matthews dying to get out, yet I gave her credit for keeping it covered with (mostly) detached, doctorly manner.
“Do you remember,” she went on, “something Justin said to the Michael character once? About how Michael was living his life in limbo waiting for Brian to finish jerking him off? Maybe that’s kind of the case with you and Gale.”
“Trust me, I would remember if Gale had ever started jerking me off. He never did.” Sadly.
“Maybe not. But you simulated such acts, and others much more intimate, countless times, over years. You became very familiar with each other’s bodies, yet were never able to truly share the sexual experience your characters did. You had orgasms together, basically, but without really getting each other there. Acted or not, that’s a highly personal thing. Add to that the close bond you formed outside of work and the lack of contact you’ve had since the show ended, and you’re bound to feel there’s something… unfinished between you.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, hoping she didn’t notice. Damn it. Why did she have to be so accurate in her description? “Yeah, you could say that,” I agreed, my voice strained. “But what can I do about it?”
“I think you should see him,” she grinned. “I think you should tell Gale some of what you’ve told me.”
*********
“See Randy? Are you serious? Is this, like, a prescription?”
“If that makes you feel better.” Dr. Aberman pulled out his prescription pad and started scribbling. Then he pulled off the top sheet and handed it to me.
I read it out loud. “Take one… plum?”
“Plane,” he calmly corrected.
Wow, doctors’ handwriting really did suck. “Take one plane to go see Randy Harrison as soon as passably… oh, possible. Do not talk on an antsy… empty stomach. Call me in the… morning.” This guy was not only instructing me to go see Randy, but apparently also to have dinner with him. What a weirdo. “I guess I have to do what this says, huh?”
The doc smiled. “If that makes you feel better.”
I had a feeling it just might.
*********
“See Gale? Tell him the stuff I tell you? You’re the doctor. You’re not supposed to be the crazy one.”
“It’s not crazy. Look, break it down to this… He’s your friend. He was your best friend, and you haven’t seen him or talked to him properly in a year. Don’t you want to see him?”
“Of course I do.” My heart felt so full in my chest I could hardly breathe at the prospect.
“Well then?”
Simon was going to be out of town again this weekend. That made me feel guiltier, but it just made sense to not invite a Simon-Gale showdown. They’d never quite taken to each other. But I could… I could have Gale standing in front of me in a few days. Maybe even touch him, just a little, outside of a dream. That’s if he even wanted to come.
“Okay. I’ll call him.”
*********
(That night… before they could change their minds…)
“Hello?”
“Randy. It’s me, Gale.”
“No shit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Can’t believe…”
“Randy?”
“I was just about to call you.”
“Sure you were. One of your cats finally do something funny again?”
“No, I’m serious, Gale. My hand was literally reaching for the phone, I swear.”
“Wow… But, uh, I won. I called first, so I get to say what I called for first.”
“What if we both called for the same reason?”
“Fine, we’ll say our reasons at the same time.”
“Go.”
“I’m thinking of coming up…”
“… to New York City…”
“… and I wanted to see you…”
“… and talk to you…”
“… because it’s been too…”
“… damn long… Exactly.”
“Okay, that was impressive. But don’t sound so smug, asshole. What would you have done if I’d invited you to L.A.?”
“I’d think that was sweet but kind of stupid, since I hate L.A. and you like New York. But if it was the only way to see you, I’d have gone.”
“Lucky for you, I’m in a mood for the Carnegie Deli.”
“Good. And don’t book a hotel, okay? You’re staying here.”
“You don’t even know when I’m coming.”
“Whenever, you’re staying here. But I’m hoping this weekend. Simon’s going out of town, so it’ll just be us and a lot of uninterrupted catching up.”
“Simon. Right… Sorry I‘ll miss him.”
“Uh huh. What about Kim? Will she be, uh, coming with you?”
“No, we broke up.”
“What? You…?”
“Hey, Randy, I’ve got to go. I’ll call back with my flight times and all that, okay? So… bye.”
“Wait, Gale!”
“Yeah?”
“I’m… I’m really excited about seeing you.”
“Yeah. Me too, Rand.”
