reflections of us, a gale/randy oneshot

[wouldbedorothy]

Title: Reflections of us 
Author: wouldbedorothy  (AHS) 
Fandom: Gale Harold/Randy Harrison
Rating: PG-13
Series/Sequel: just this
Summary: Um... I don't know, lol.  Just kind of what the title says.  1800 words.
Author's Notes: Thanks rromantic  and bbmaniac  for love!  And freakykat , even if you won't read this, thanks for the book!  (The poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar actually has three stanzas, but I only used the first two.)  This one was odd, how I wrote it... stops and starts... deciding after the fact what the heck it was about... but here I go anyway.  Starts with Randy's pov... switches a few times.
Disclaimer: I don't know Gale or Randy or much of anything, lol. 

Reflections of us
by AHS

I probably wouldn’t have been surprised… would have still had some doubt… if he hadn’t let me fuck him the first time.

I saw him as more of a top, despite that less than hidden vulnerability of his… but I took the unexpected gift as both a show of trust and a declaration… “We are not them.”

We weren’t, and we aren’t, because their chemistry was ours first.

It was hot and sweet, needy and oddly innocent… maybe a little awkward… not in a way that made me think either of us didn’t know what we were doing, but just… fumbling slightly with the weight of so much want built up, even in such a short time… unsure, not quite recognizing the bliss of letting it go.

It never occurred to me that sex with another man might be something he was unfamiliar with. Not before, and certainly not after. It’s not the kind of thing a guy just dabbling tends to allow, and for sure never volunteers. And he didn’t waver, didn’t pull away once… just gave himself to me… and I loved him for it.

Positions changed, traded back and forth over many times together, but he… didn’t. He didn’t change. He was always… there. There were others, of course there were… for both of us. But when he was with me, he was absolutely with me. And I felt like I’d never been closer to anyone. I knew him. I didn’t question.

So, when the official line was printed… drawn in the sand…

Yeah, I was surprised. I didn’t expect it. But I wasn’t crushed. I wasn’t confused, or even angry. Didn’t fool myself into thinking I was the exception, though my heart knew, in a way, I was.

I was just… sad. Sad for him, mostly, but also for me. He was too beautiful to hide. And I couldn’t do it with him…

*****

No one person… or even gender… had ever been enough for me. How could I think I would ever be enough for someone else? Especially someone as amazing as…

We couldn’t wait… I couldn’t wait. It took less than three weeks from the start of everything for all the flirting and simulated fucking to be too much… or not enough, maybe is more like it… and us to take it home.

My place. But I gave the control to him.

I knew he did the fucking, usually, and I didn’t want to give him even a moment to rethink what we were about to do. Maybe I wanted to make it clear how different it was from the pretending we got paid for… that Brian was not in the room. Maybe I was just scared I couldn’t hold on and I’d end up embarrassing myself.

Or maybe I just really fucking wanted to lie under him… feel him on me and inside me… That’s possible.

Then I got greedy and addicted and wanted the other side… to be inside his body… surrounding and surrounded… and I got that, too. He let me, and I loved him for it.

We were too much of each other’s lives for what we were doing to be as casual as we tried to make it. That’s why I started to assume nights… and couldn’t keep it from hurting if he didn’t show up. That’s why I started letting him see me with others, and it h-… well, I think it hurt him. But we kept on, with whatever we could hold onto of what we had.

Touched when we should have talked. Or talked about nothing, about everything, when one something would have meant so much more. Kept smiling. Kept up the guise of the world’s worst kept secret. Kept to what everybody expected.

I wondered when the fuck I started doing what everybody expected.

But they got me. It was nothing as simple as a “yes” or “no,” but I answered, and I let it sound like truth instead of what it was… a lack of balls I liked to pass off as complexity.

I knew I wasn’t enough and never would be, so I guess I didn’t really try to be what he needed. I opened the door and let him go find it with someone else.

I had never wanted him to doubt me, but he did. I had made sure of it…

*****

Our last day before we both left Toronto… separately, of course… I gave him a gift.

It was a book of poetry. A dangerously and inappropriately romantic gift, to be sure, but I shrugged off such concerns and quickly pointed out the dog-eared page. There was only one poem I truly intended for him. No sugary sentiments… “How do I love thee?” or anything like that. One I had read many times before and always loved, but which I had… rediscovered at some point during the last five years… and had come to mean more to me because it meant Gale to me.

I would read it sometimes after we’d fought about some little thing… or I’d been introduced to his latest girlfriend… or he’d looked at me like we really were just costars who got along well. When I needed a safe way to get the connection back… to understand him the way I hadn’t quite managed to forget I always had.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes --
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

- Paul Lawrence Dunbar

I watched him read, then pressed my hand into his and told him I loved him… and all his “myriad subtleties.” That I understood that the world didn’t need to know everything about his life. Understood why he would shade his eyes sometimes, even from me. Understood that it wasn’t a lack of honesty that made him hide… more of a do-not-disturb soul. It was that soul that had pulled me in from the beginning, and I would not fault it.

I told him not to lose me. That I knew I was only in his peripheral vision now, and the mask would make it hard to see, but not to ever lose me. He promised.

And then we said goodbye…

*****

Sometimes I wondered if all the reasons we couldn’t be together were what made the need so strong.

Well, not for me. I wanted Randy, still do, and that’s that. But maybe all the angst shit was part of what made me so attractive to him.

We never let the “no fucking costars” (or however the fuck it was officially phrased) stipulation in the contracts worry us much, obviously. But there was always something in the way of us. Usually, it was us. But there were also relationships with other people, and there was distance, and… mostly fear.

What if we made our way past all that and he realized… with Simon out of the picture, and me just “out” (at least to whatever extent being with him brought)… that something had cooled? What if finally we were together and he decided I wasn’t what he wanted after all?

Sometimes I still…

 

“You better not be about to say you still wonder that, because I will have to kick your ass, Gale.”

“No fair! Eyes on your own paper.”

“You know, when I suggested this little writing exercise, I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

“I’ll remember that for the ‘Ways My Lover Doesn’t Understand Me’ writing exercise.”

“Ha, that’s very funny. But, see what you get? Now we’re really going to do it.”

“Oh, fuck that.”

Gale tossed his pen and notebook over the side of the bed and rolled himself halfway on top of Randy, tickling his stomach and kissing his neck. Randy dropped what he was writing as well, smiling, even making a happy sort of gurgling noise in his throat.

“Okay, so I was kidding. This… could be… a better use of time.”

Randy was always writing something, but when Gale had asked earlier that night what he was working on, the answer hadn’t been a new play, or the beginnings of what could conceivably become the next great American novel, or even “none of your business.” He’d said, “Reflections of us.” Refusing to indulge Gale’s curiosity by letting him read, Randy had basically dared Gale to reflect as well. And he had, with such productive intensity that Randy hadn’t been able to resist sneaking a small peek. But now he was troubled.

“Gale…” He waited until the touching calmed and hazel eyes were visible before him, then continued. “You don’t really think that, do you?”

Gale sighed. “How much did you read?”

“Just the last few sentences… Do you?”

“I did, sometimes. Not because I doubted you or us, but just… ‘cause after all that time, it was hard to believe it was real… or that it would last.”

“And what about now?”

Gale dropped his eyes to his hand on Randy’s chest, watching his fingers play over the pale skin, and shrugged. “We’re not a tortured secret romance anymore. Maybe you’ll get bored with me…”

Randy blinked slowly… hypnotizing with the flashes of blue, in that way he was so good at… then put a finger under Gale’s chin. “Babe… we’ve been together for ten years. If I’d been bored and wanting to leave you all this time, don’t you think I’d have noticed by now?”

The corners of Gale’s mouth twitched upwards. “You’re probably right. You usually are.”

“Oh, good! You haven’t forgotten that all-important fact. I was about to say I thought that hair dye you use was seeping into your brain and making you stupid.”

“Shut up, Rand. I think I see a hint of gray in your hair…”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t… Fucker.”

Randy laughed. “Better safe than sorry, though. I think you should quit using that stuff, just in case. Let the little salt and pepper bits peek out. I told you, it’s hot.” A long, deep kiss helped to make his point.

Gale grumbled around a smile. “Fine. As long as you don’t expect me to read you what I wrote.”

“I don’t need that, if you don’t want.”

“I just don’t want you to think I’m hiding.”

“I don’t. What would be the point?” Randy placed his hands to gently cover Gale’s face. “I can still see you.”

Gale kissed the base of the palm that rested against his lips and grasped it as it fell away. “You always could.”