therapy boys iii
Aug. 3rd, 2007 12:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wouldbedorothyTitle: Therapy Boys, Part III: Exceeding The Recommended Dosage
Author: AHS
Pairing: G/R
Rating: Rish?
Series/Sequel: part 3/4.5
Summary: Set in 2006, a year post-filming. Where we left off, Randy asked Gale what he talks about in therapy. In this part... well, the conversation gets really interesting. Somewhere in the vicinity of 4000 words again. POV keeps alternating.
Part III: Exceeding The Recommended Dosage
Randy’s POV
“I’m sorry, Gale. I shouldn’t be asking you that.”
“Since when have you held anything back with me?”
Um… aside from how I want you so bad my skin aches and my teeth itch when I just think of you? And now that you’re right next to me, I don’t know how I’m managing to form sentences or breathe in and out and not jump you? Never.
“I’m not holding back,” I said, then pointed to my watch. “It’s getting late. And I just realized you’ve been traveling all day and you’ve got to be exhausted.”
“I’m not fucking tired,” Gale declared, but the words turned into a yawn.
“I saw that.”
“That was just power of suggestion.”
“Then, how about this? I suggest we go to bed.”
I heard how that sounded just too late. Or maybe it was my hand on his arm that made it seem like an invitation. My wide eyes locked with his, and for a foolish second I wondered if he was thinking the same things I was. Then I brushed off the moment, like my hand from his arm, and the awkward electric charge that came with both. I purposely didn’t fumble out a “you know what I mean,” so as to not make it a big deal.
Gale smiled softly, almost sadly. “Yeah, I guess I am tired. See you in the morning?”
“Yeah. We can do whatever you want to do.”
“Okay. G’night, Rand.” He gave my shoulder a pat and for some reason I wanted to cry.
“Goodnight, Gale.”
I watched him as he walked to his room and shut the door. I let out a long, slow breath, and followed the cats to my own room, knowing there was no way in hell I was going to fall asleep.
**********
I’d spent the last two hours lying awake and listening to Gale. Gale unzipping his duffel bag. Gale’s door opening. Gale padding across the hall to the bathroom. Light flicking on. Clothes hitting the floor. Gale turning on the water and getting into the shower.
My hand crept to my dick at the thought of Gale naked, Gale wet, Gale… so close by. But I forced it away. No jerking off with him here, I decided. Even though I’d probably never needed to jerk off more.
Thinking of jerking off made me think I hoped I’d remembered to put out a towel for him.
Then it was the sound of the water stopping and shower door opening and closing again. Gale moving around. What I believed to be the tiny hum of an electric razor, and I wondered if he was shaving. Flushing. Teeth brushing. Light flicking off. A deep sigh as he padded back to his room. Instead of the creak of weight on the bed, I heard small thumps and the rustle of pages.
I was content to listen to sounds of Gale until morning, but suddenly there was a very large thud, followed by an “OW, sonofabitch,” and I got up and hurried down the hall. His door was only pulled to, so I knocked and pushed on it slightly.
“Gale, are you okay?”
“Yeah… Fuck,” he laughed, pained. “I’m fine.”
Opening the door all the way, I saw him leaning on a bookshelf, standing on one leg, holding his right foot in his hand. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I was reaching for this one book and it fell on me.”
“You need ice or something?”
“No, no, it’s really fine.” He planted his foot and stood straight. “Sorry I woke you.”
“It’s okay. I’m just happy you’re not a burglar.” Right. Like I didn’t know exactly whose soundtrack I’d been listening to all night. I admired his, as I‘d thought, clean-shaven face. “And you didn’t wake me,” I added. “You can’t sleep either?”
“Nah. I thought one of these was bound to do the trick.” He waved his hand at the roomful of books.
“Is this the one that wounded you?” I picked a large hardback up off the floor by Gale and quirked an eyebrow. “Psychology and Buddhism: From Individual to Global Community… You weren’t seriously going to read this, were you?”
“Well, it was either that or Moonage Daydream: The Life & Times of Ziggy Stardust, and I thought I might enjoy that too much.”
I smiled. He’d sent me that book, though with no accompanying phone call, and only a brief note, for my last birthday. “Yes, you would. You could have knocked on my door, you know.”
“Nah, I didn’t want to disturb you.”
I blinked, and stared, and waited for my ears to clear out. “You didn‘t…? Gale, what the fucking hell.”
“What?”
“Do you hear yourself? You didn’t want to disturb me? Since when have we ever been this goddamned polite?”
Gale opened his mouth but didn’t seem to have an answer.
“Well, I don’t like it!” I shouted. “Now, come here.” I climbed up on the foot of the bed and waited for him to join me. After a minute, he did, sitting up by the pillows.
Of course, around then I realized that I was both a bossy boots and an idiot. I had gotten myself into bed with Gale. And we were in nightclothes. He looked so good. Top half, he wore a Brian-esque black wifebeater that showed off the muscle that defined his lean body. Bottom half was all Gale, these plaid flannel pajama pants, frayed around the ankles, that he still managed to make hot. I concentrated on not getting a hard-on and hoped I knew what I was doing.
“We can‘t sleep, so let‘s talk. Even if you don’t want to, now I’m pretty sure we need to. So… where did we leave off?”
“Therapy,” Gale said quietly.
“Right. Joking aside… are you okay? I mean, I have a hard time picturing you baring your soul to a therapist.”
“Yeah, Dr. Aberman has a hard time sometimes getting shit out of me, but I’m getting better at it.”
“Dr. Aberman?”
“Yeah. What?”
I narrowed my eyes, smirking. “First one in the phone book?”
He smiled at how well I knew him. “Yeah. Hell, A’s as good a letter as any.”
“What’s he… she… like?”
“He’s all right. Older guy. Think he’s married. He dresses like Dr. Huxtable, but he seems pretty serious. I’ve only seen him a few times. He’s good, though. He doesn’t shock easy.”
“You’ve been saying shocking things?”
“Maybe,” he hedged, eyes darting, then dancing with a secret. “What’s Dr. Matthews like?”
“She’s young, unique… bi.” Gale did a little double take, probably at the thought that she’d volunteered this information. “Yeah, she’s very proud of that. Encouraging… sometimes too much so. She talks all casual and friendly to you, and then she’ll try to make up for it by using big, doctorly words. She’s a fangirl, but she’s fun.”
“You are telling all your deepest, darkest secrets to a fangirl? You must really like her.”
“Yeah, she‘s cool. I couldn’t leave her now, anyway. She knows too much,” I laughed. “So… what made you look up head shrinkers in the yellow pages?”
“I, uh… did it right after I broke up with Kim.”
“That must have hit you harder than you let on,” I surmised.
Gale played with a loose string on the hem of his pants, really concentrating on it. “It wasn’t as much the breakup itself as… the why it happened.”
“You said there was just something missing.”
“Yeah.” Now he was pulling at the string, and his teeth tugged at his bottom lip. He looked like something was weighing heavy on his mind.
I waited.
“The something missing was you, Rand.”
I couldn’t even have understood what he was really saying in that first instant. But the importance must have registered, because everything got sort of slow motion and hazy like I was underwater. My only thought was that, in all the hundreds of Gale dreams I’d had over the years, this was actually a new one. But then I looked around, and I pinched myself on the wrist, and I knew this was somehow reality.
“W-what?”
He finally looked up, looked into my eyes… and I think I died and came to life again in that same second.
“It’s been you.”
**********
Gale’s POV
I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Apparently, neither could he. Randy’s face gave almost nothing away, but I could feel his eyes trying to bore through mine and see what was inside my head.
“What are you talking about, Gale?”
“You. I’ve been talking about you to my doctor non-stop because I can’t fucking stop thinking about you.” Or, can’t stop thinking about fucking you. That, too.
“Oh.” Now he looked terrified. He was quiet for a full minute, but then he actually said, “Makes sense,” like I’d just told him smoking’s bad for your health. His voice was shaking, but he tried to pretend he understood what was going on and that everything was normal. “It’s just because we haven’t seen each other for so long, after five years of spending so much time together.”
“Then why was it the same back when we were still doing the show?”
“Because… we were together so much,” he scrambled. “How could you help but…”
“Rand, shut the fuck up.”
“Well, what do you want me to say?”
“Nothing! I want you to hear what I’m trying to say!”
“Which is?”
“….I love you.”
I’d said the words to him before, more than once, but they meant something completely different now. Even the street noise fell silent when I said it. I listened to the catch of breath in his throat, caught the flutter of his eyelids, but then they were gone. I waited for him to hear my pounding heart, but he drowned it out with a head full of logic, as I‘d expected he would.
“I… I know… I love you, too.”
“No, Rand. More than that. I mean, I want you.”
“No, you don’t. Please stop saying it.” He was starting to get angry, but I wasn’t going to let up.
“Don’t fucking tell me I don’t. Why do you think I would lie to you? Especially about this?”
“I don’t know!” He moved almost imperceptibly away from me, like half an inch. Pissed me off. “I don’t even know why you would lie to yourself about it.”
“I’m not,” I said… soft as steel, no room for debate.
“You’re saying you broke up with Kim… for me?”
“I did it because it was right for me, and it was better for her. I couldn’t love her like I should have because, damn it, you already took up all the space in my heart.”
God, that was corny. But it seemed to affect Randy. His face grew thoughtful, almost remorseful. Then he shifted to playful in an instant.
“You calling me fat?” We both laughed, like a shudder… small… uneasy. But a tiny bit of the tension broken.
Yeah, right. There wasn’t an ounce of fat to be found on the man. I had looked, many times. And looking at him then… in his snug white T-shirt and black silk pajama pants… I wanted to look again… closer.
“That’s sweet, Gale,” he continued. “But… you don’t love me like that.”
“Why do you think I don’t?”
His eyes pleaded with me to end this now, to save us both. But I was saving us both… the only way I knew how.
“Do I even have to say it?”
“Yes, Randy. You have to say it.”
“You’re straight! Okay? There’s no getting around that!”
I shrugged, and I could feel how much it annoyed him. “Sure there is. You already have.”
Randy stood up, and I worried he was going to storm out, but he started pacing… holding his head in that way that makes me want to find him some aspirin, but usually just means he doesn’t know what to do with the information he has coming in.
“You can’t do this to me. You can’t do this to me, Gale. I gave up. I can‘t hope again and then we don‘t talk anymore and you won‘t put your arm around me and I lose you. I can‘t go through that again.”
The rush of his words carried a familiar sting. “Are you talking about when you stopped speaking to me second year, I still don’t know why? Why bring that up now?”
“You told me about that guy blowing you in college, remember?”
“Yeah. What does that…?”
He stilled, speaking regretfully. “It was false hope I couldn’t afford. It made me want to think there was a chance when there wasn’t, and I got mad. Because you still weren’t gay and you still didn’t want me. I had to avoid you for a while.”
Fuck. That time had nearly killed me, missing him and not even knowing what I had done wrong. Now to find out I had almost lost Randy because of that stupid story? But… I’d almost lost him because he’d had feelings for me. He’d wanted me to want him. And I did, then and now. So why was this less than two feet of space between us filled with so damn many brick walls?
“I’m sorry I’m slow, Rand. I didn‘t…”
“Don’t force yourself to catch up, Gale. Look… I’m sorry for getting mad. You’ve got a lot going on, and everyone’s entitled to a little breakdown or a midlife crisis or whatever this is. But you knew yourself better than anybody I’ve ever known in my life. Don’t give that up now, especially based on anything as lame as a blow job from a hundred years ago, or the fact that when you had to kiss and pretend to fuck me all those times your balls didn’t automatically jump up into your body in disgust. Okay?”
I should have silenced his beautiful mouth with my own at some point during that nonsensical rant. But by the end I was trying too hard not to laugh.
“First of all, fuck you. I’m only 36, thank you, and that’s too young for a midlife crisis. Second, I know the most important stuff about myself. I know what I stand for and what pisses me off. I know how to tell good weed from bad by the smell and just how much it takes to get me as lightly or darkly toasted as I want. I know that on the days I look my worst there will always be a fan there with a camera. And I know that there’s no one I’d rather spend time with, talk to, look at, touch, or just fucking know exists in the world, than you.”
Hah. That shut him up.
“Third, my body’s reaction to yours was always more along the lines of me getting so hard that, no matter how loose-fitting the robe, the crew could tell by the way I was walking funny to my trailer. You know that… Randy?”
**********
Randy’s POV
Trust me, I remembered. But, by two years in, I had worked so hard to detach from my crush, I made myself dismiss and not explore such things. I could blame anything on friction. His erections, my own, global warming. Besides, despite my conscious detachment, towards the end of the show… by which point I really should have been fucking immune… I was generally near hard before the director even yelled “Action!” So Gale got wood after he’d been rubbing up against me for an hour. Big deal.
“It still doesn’t mean anything,” I insisted.
“What doesn’t? On-set erections or college experimentation or my fucking feelings for you? ‘Cause I think you add them up and…”
I chose the easiest of those topics to deal with. “So you got blown once. Lots of straight guys do. They close their eyes and figure a mouth’s a mouth. They’re wrong, but they think it. It’s not like you sucked the guy off or anything.”
“Uh, yeah… about that…”
“What?”
“If I tell you I did, are you gonna stop talking to me again?”
“You…?” What was he trying to do to me? I watched him speak, watched his lips move and couldn’t help but imagine them wrapped tightly around some guy’s cock… Okay, mine.
“He did it to me,” he shrugged. “It only seemed right.”
Straight, gay, or all of the above, Gale was a Southern gentleman.
My face was hot. With anger, embarrassment, or pure lust… I‘m not sure. “Why didn’t you tell me that part of the story years ago?”
“I guess I was testing out your reaction?”
Which had been to shut him out for months. “Oh.”
“I didn’t even tell Dr. Aberman.”
“Because you didn’t want him to think you might actually be gay. You couldn’t even tell your doctor, Gale. So how can you expect me to accept you coming out if you can’t?”
Gale’s face kind of twisted up, like he knew what he said would be the wrong answer. “I don’t. I mean, that’s not really what I’m saying.”
“What isn’t?”
“I wouldn’t say I was gay.”
I’d only had one glass of wine, right? Had I maybe had more than the two tiny pulls I remembered taking off that joint, hours before? Had I hallucinated this conversation? He was in love with me and wanted me so much, but he wasn’t gay. In Gale’s twisted head, that meant what? He wanted us to be together forever, maybe be roomies, but never fuck? That’s just great. Who did he think we were? Bert and Ernie?
“What would you say?” I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. I halved the distance between us, grabbing his hand and holding it firmly against my silk-draped cock, half hard inside my pants. “No interest in that at all?”
Gale made this little sound that I keep playing on a continuous loop in my head. Deep and strangled with want. His fingers squeezed me gently, caressed with intent, as he looked openly into my eyes. I felt myself go beyond half hard. And fuck if I wasn’t the one to back down in my own game of chicken.
“Okay, you’re interested,” I said shakily, removing his hand and scooting back again. Leaving Gale looking bereft and me definitely feeling it. I crossed my arms over my chest. “How are you not gay?”
“I enjoy fucking women more than I’m pretty sure gay men are supposed to.”
I think the flicker of pain that crossed my face at that reminder was intended, to get me back for my little, uh, stunt. “Good for you. So… what? You’re bi?” I was attempting to look bored at this point, for some stupid, self-preserving reason.
Gale ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Why do we have to fucking label everything? It’s so limiting. Some people just defy categories.”
I was about to tell him to quit trying to be Bowie when I realized I’d heard that before… Some people just defy categories. Dr. Matthews had said it, speaking primarily about herself… (She hadn’t actually called herself ‘bisexual,’ but something like ‘an open-minded connoisseur of people’)… But, before long, she had applied it towards Gale as well. I got a sudden urge to call her.
“I’m generally attracted to women. I can be attracted to men, but nothing you‘d write home about… I am overwhelmingly attracted to you, Rand,” Gale clarified.
I think it was finally starting to hit me… how beautiful everything he was saying was and how amazing that he was saying it to me. That he really did want me that much. But I still had to try and break it down, force some sense out of it. Shit, what was wrong with me?
“So… you’re bi,” I stated this time.
“Maybe. Just sounds like a cop-out, though, doesn’t it? Or else, like I’m just a slut.”
That got me to smile again. “I don’t think you’re a slut… despite the rumors.”
He eased and laughed, then sobered. “Truth is, I guess I’ve always been more comfortable in situations with other men than a straight guy should be… even before the show, but… nothing ever went beyond comfortable before. You know what I mean? I never really wanted, needed, to be with a man until you.”
“Oh… But does that mean… you never…?”
“In the world of men on men, it’s fuck or be fucked, and I’ve done neither,” Gale said, grinning… Goofball.
I found myself beyond relieved. I still didn’t know what was happening, but I knew the thought of him fucking another man hurt me too much to even be hot. Him with a woman had always been… distasteful… But a man? Like a dagger to my heart. One man was created to introduce Gale Harold to the joys of gay sex (real or faked), and his name was Randy Harrison.
**********
Gale’s POV
“Is this why you came here? I mean, did you know you were going to tell me all this?” Randy asked.
He’d shifted a little closer to me by then, which made me happy. My hand reached between us, resting on his ankle, and he let it stay.
“I knew I needed to see you, wanted to talk to you. I didn’t have it planned out, no. I thought you were still with Simon, for one thing. I don’t know if that would have kept me quiet or not… What about you? Why did you invite me?”
Randy’s mouth scrunched up in amusement at what he was going to say before he said it. “I missed you and wanted to see you and Jocelyn told me to.”
“Your therapist told you to see me?” After I said it, I started laughing. I started laughing loud and full, for several minutes, because it was too damn funny. I think Randy was torn between being mad that I seemed to be making fun of him and pleased that the awkwardness in the air completely evaporated.
“What’s so funny about that?”
I leaned over to the floor beside the bed, reaching into my bag. I pulled out a folded slip of paper and handed it to him, wiping at my eyes, still grinning. “Mine wrote me a fucking prescription!”
He had those sexy little glasses he sometimes wears hanging on the neck of his shirt, and he looked so intelligently adorable and fuckable when he put them on and focused on the paper in his hand. I watched his lips move as he read and his eyes sparkle at the simple destined ridiculousness of it all.
“We should call them,” he said, looking up at me. “Get them on some kind of conference call and ask them what the fuck we do now.”
The humor finally exhausted, I leaned back heavily into the pillows, searching his eyes. “Do we really need them, Rand?”
My hand lightly brushed the top of his head, then slid into his hair. My fingers gripped, massaging his scalp. As I guided his head to my chest, he hesitated for just a moment before giving in and letting his body follow. He molded himself to my side, our legs overlapping as we stretched them out. I continued to play with his hair, examining it up close for the first time since seeing him again. I could tell that while it was not Justin blond anymore, it wasn’t Randy’s natural light brownish shade either. It was some combination… a grown up golden.
“You gave in to how good you look blond, eh?” I murmured against the softness.
“Shut up,” he said, followed by, “You like it?”
“You’re beautiful. Even more than you always were.”
“And I’m not even naked.” He grinned with teasing, but I saw something more than teasing in his eyes.
I took his glasses in my thumb and forefinger and pulled them slowly off his face, taking an unobstructed view. I saw acceptance and desire and need, and I finished our mutual thought.
“…. Yet.”
Randy responded by raising up and placing one hand on my chest, thumb stroking my sternum. His other hand cradled my cheek and chin, rubbing the smooth skin appreciatively, before finding my lips. The tip of his index finger outlined them slowly, then lightly dragged over the sensitive skin of my bottom lip, making my breath hitch and my dick jump, as he mumbled something about this not being a dream. I scored the pad of his fingertip with my teeth and slipped my hand under his shirt, along the heat of his back, to reassure us both of that.
I don’t know which one of us closed the distance. Maybe him, maybe me. I just know Randy’s mouth was on mine for the first time in a year, and fuck it, I was home.
