Taking In Strays (11 page)

He was a weirdo, he decided, when he opened drawers and looked in the man’s closet. Everything smelled like Peter. Everything had the aura of the man’s steady and caring personality clinging to it. His wardrobe consisted of soft jeans, dress slacks, button down shirts, polos, and a few ties that looked like gifts. The ties were in colors and patterns that Donny couldn’t imagine Peter wearing.  His suspicions were confirmed when he found dust on them.

A stack of awards were in a bottom drawer, as if Peter were too modest to display them. He had been given a Medal of Distinguished Service, Award of Excellence, Combat Cross, and two Medals of Valor.

“You are a super hero, Peter Parker,” Donny muttered in amazement as he carefully closed the drawer again.

A picture of Peter’s family was on the dresser. In the picture there was an older sister, his younger brother, Dan, and a frowning woman who must be their mother, looking as if she had decided to straighten disheveled hair at the last moment. They were standing in front of a lake with cabins in the distance. Peter was smiling and waving at the camera. This was the man away from work. Normal. Just like anyone else; nothing special. So why was he feeling compelled to study every detail of Peter’s photo?

The old Donny would have sneered, if he had even taken notice of Peter. He would have called him boring, stupid, and lamented that he even had to share the same air as the
little people
. His so called friends would have snickered and maybe added a few insults to please him.

“I was a complete asshole,” Donny sighed.

He would still give a lot to return to his old life, Donny knew, as he left Peter’s room to go to his own. Who wouldn’t want to be the son of an important man; rich, living in luxury, every whim catered to, and everyone his friend? He had to admit, as he closed his door, dropped his shorts, and crawled into bed, that he wanted back his father’s love as well. The man was a bastard, but that didn’t stop Donny from wanting his approval or from wanting to be a family again.

If he did get a second chance, things would be different, Donny promised himself. He’d had a rude awakening; an epiphany. He wouldn’t go back to being the old Donny, the one who used and then tossed aside people when they stopped being useful. He would also romance Peter as he deserved, picking him up in limos and taking him to all the best places.

And what would the papers make of that? Donny thought about the scandal it would cause with a chill.
The Mayor’s son, in gay relationship with city cop: news at ten.
The problem with being in the spotlight was that everyone was ready to trumpet every fault and display it to the world in an ugly, newsworthy fashion. Problem one: the mayor’s son is gay. Problem two: he has a lover. Problem three: his lover is
just
a city cop. It didn’t seem like much of a scandal, but the news would take it and run with it. They would find every nuance to make it sensational, shocking, and perverted. The story might end up being,
Mayor’s son uses Mayor’s mansion for illicit sex acts.

Donny would have to brave the news storm, stand by his relationship with Peter, and unflinchingly refuse to hide being gay. He tried to imagine his father giving a news conference announcing his support for his son and his son’s lover. The image wouldn’t come, because his father had made his decision. His father had been willing to do anything to keep his position of power, including getting rid of a disappointing son.

Maybe that was the test of Donny’s true feelings towards Peter? If there was a knock on the door, an offer of reconciliation from his father and a limo waiting to take him back home under one condition; Dump Peter and pretend not to be gay, would he do it? The answer was no.

The photo of Peter smiling and waving to the camera, looking average and happy, came to Donny’s mind. He felt a strong urge to go back to Peter’s room and look at it again, so that he could understand why he was starting work tomorrow gutting fish, why he was soon going to be rental sharing with strangers, and why the appeal of being the son of the Mayor wasn’t enough to make him reject Peter, to call his father and beg for that limo ride home.

Troubled by his decision, Donny tried to sleep.

When morning came, Peter had already gone to work. A breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs was waiting for Donny on the dining room table along with a note that read:
Thanks for dinner. I made breakfast for you. Hope you like it. I’ll pick up some more groceries on the way home. I should be home early. Hope you’re feeling better. Congrats on the new job.

Peter had written in a hurried scrawl. Donny pictured him with toast stuck between his teeth and his police uniform jacket half on as he tried to write and get into it at the same time. Donny found himself sitting and smiling inanely as he placed the note beside his plate and read it over a few times more while he ate.

Why was Peter working so early when he had come in so late the night before? Donny finally left off his appreciation of Peter’s note to worry about the man himself. Peter had to be exhausted. Donny felt guilty for having slept through breakfast, when the man had gone to the trouble of making it for him. He worried what Peter thought of him, and then remembered that Dan was probably reporting back to him about every detail of Donny’s day. Peter knew that he had been given a new job. He knew that Donny had been out almost all the previous day. Donny didn’t have to worry about Peter thinking that he was lazy. Still, he found himself pulling out paper and pencil and making his own note to leave on the table.

Sorry I won’t be seeing you until late, if at all,
Donny wrote, thinking carefully about each word.
Probably won’t want to see me anyway, since I’ll be stinking of fish. Miss you.

Donny crumpled the paper, tossed it into a waste basket, and tried again. Not so needy, this time, he thought, or clingy, or stupid, or…

I worry that they’re making you work so late and then….
Donny crumpled that paper up as well and sent it flying into the waste basket after the first one. It wasn’t his place to talk as if they were in a relationship.

Hey, thanks for breakfast. I’m working late.

Donny put that note in the middle of the table and sighed. He felt like a coward, but he knew that it was the right thing. He needed to get his life together before he complicated it trying to start a relationship with Peter. It was probably best that their schedules kept them apart for the next few weeks.

Chapter Six

You can do it
, became Donny’s mantra as he worked his grueling schedule. By the fifth hour, that mantra had turned into a white noise that he was finding it hard to believe that he could do it. Bins of seafood were piled near the tables. His task, along with his other fellow workers in hell, was to shell, gut, and filet, properly, everything in those bins. Periodically, the buckets they filled with refuse, had to be taken to the dumpsters to be emptied, and work tables and their tools had to be scrubbed down. Endless, back breaking, filthy, and mindless, Donny couldn’t imagine himself doing the job day after day for any lengthy period of time. That, of course, was the problem. No one stayed long. One man quit an hour into their shift, throwing up his hands in disgust.

He was supposed to wear a protective glove on one hand in case his knife slipped, but Donny found himself discarding it as quickly as the others. Sweat and a constant rubbing irritation from the plastic and metal mesh made it one more irritation that none of them could stand for long. He sliced more than one finger, but the increased speed made it worth it.

His temple throbbed and Donny’s vision blurred off and on. When he was given very short breaks he used them to go outside for air and to drink water as fast as he could gulp it. Of course he couldn’t escape the smell of fish or the pungent reek of the garbage bins outside, but the closed atmosphere of the prep room made any form of escape worth the smell.

He couldn’t hide that he was ill, but he avoided wiping his nose near the tables and kept washing his hands after sneezing or coughing. His coworkers weren’t inclined to rat him out and he appreciated that, even though he soon came to understand that it was born of work weary apathy than in any sort of solidarity between them. They didn’t speak to one another. They kept their heads down and worked, ipod ear buds firmly in ears or deep scowls indicating a definite reluctance to socialize. At the end of the day, Donny knew only one name,
Guermo
, the sous chef, who was constantly barking for him to bring more product into the kitchen.

Scrub down at the end of the night was back breaking, but every bit of refuse needed to be picked up and every surface washed before any of them could leave. When the sous chef did his walk to check on their work, he was thorough. He found spots that needed rescrubbing and infinitesimal shell pieces deep in shadows under tables. When their work was finally approved, Donny felt like collapsing to his knees. Completely exhausted, he didn’t even remember the ride home.

Peter was waiting when Donny dragged himself through the door of his apartment. He was getting up from the couch, looking concerned, a late night sitcom meaningless noise as he stepped forward and said, “You look awful, Don!”

A nickname? Donny forgot about his grueling day, his splitting headache, and the fact that he smelled like a tuna boat in high summer, as he tried not to close the two steps left between them and simply fall into Peter’s strong arms.

A nickname. Donny’s brain repeated inanely. He was warm, happy, and frightened at the same time. He was too exhausted to figure out which emotion was a good thing. He needed defenses and he was completely out of them. His only saving grace was that he was also too exhausted to react physically.

Peter’s nose wrinkled as he took charge of his mute house guest. “Take a shower first, all right? I’ll warm up dinner for you and have it ready by the time you get out. Do you want me to get clean clothes from your room?”

Donny pulled at his fish smelling clothes in distaste. He found the power to nod as he turned and almost staggered towards the bathroom. Yes, to a shower. Yes, to food. Yes, to blissfully clean clothes. A nod was good enough for all of them, he hoped. He’d, hopefully, manage
thanks
, after he felt human again.

Once in the shower, Donny stood in the hot spray, scrubbing at every part of his body with a bar of soap and a scrub brush he wasn’t certain was for skin or the tub itself. Not that it mattered. He wanted that fish and sweat stink off. Even weariness didn’t detour him from being thorough. As if he were going to be inspected by the sous chef, he even scrubbed at his hair hard. Bits of hair, shells, and dirty suds circled the drain.

“Don?”

That nickname again. Donny wondered if he should respond to Peter with his own nickname for the man. Pete? Gorgeous? Lovely? Baby? Sexy? Stud? It degenerated after that and Donny had to stop and remind himself to reply to Peter, “Almost done!”

“Food’s ready!”

“Leave it and go to bed!” Donny admonished him. “You need the rest just as much as I do.”

There was silence and then Peter said, sounding as tired as Donny felt, “Okay. I’m going. Take it easier tomorrow, though. You won’t do yourself any good if you make yourself too sick to work.”

“I’m just shelling seafood,” Donny retorted, “Not saving the city, like you. Don’t worry about me. It’s dead easy work. See you when I see you.”

A fucking lie of the highest caliber, but maybe Peter was too tired to argue about it. He said, “I have the day after tomorrow off. We’ll see each other then.”

And have an entire morning to try and keep his hands off of Peter and his mouth from saying what he shouldn’t? Donny wondered if he could volunteer for more work at the restaurant and go in earlier.

“Okay,” Donny said. Another lie. “Thanks for everything, Pete.”

Donny put his hand over his mouth, but it was too late. He had unknowingly used a nickname for Peter. At least it hadn’t been
stud
.

There was a long pause and then Peter said, “You’re welcome. I put your clothes right outside the door. Goodnight.”

“Good night!” Donny called back and then sighed in frustration.

Finally leaving the bathroom, Donny looked down the hall and saw Peter’s bedroom door closed, the space under the door, showing him that the room was dark.
Screw dinner and crawl into bed with the man,
wasn’t his libido talking, Donny realized as he forced himself to turn away and find his dinner. The voice was a deeper, emotional need. He wanted comfort and he wanted it from Peter.

His fingers were stiff, Donny realized as he tried to eat the spaghetti and garlic toast that Peter had left him on the dining room table. The one hand that he had used to shuck oysters was especially unwilling to close on a fork. His fingers were also sporting blisters, some of them severe and raw. He supposed that his hands would toughen up in time, but that was hardly reassuring when they were acting as if they belonged to an old man.

Donny tried to imagine days of that back breaking work, weeks, months, and even years. No, he thought determinedly, he wouldn’t stay at that job long. It was just a
springboard
, as his father liked to call difficult work, a jumping off point to better things. On his next day off, he would apply for other jobs, he promised himself. Until then, getting a paycheck and getting his ass out of Peter’s apartment was his goal.

Donny jerked awake, realizing that he had fallen asleep over his dinner, slumped in his chair, and fork lax in one hand. He felt cold and stiff as he levered himself up and moved to put his plate and fork in the sink. The clock on the stove told him that he had nodded off for a few hours. It didn’t feel as if he had slept at all.

Donny slowly made his way to his bedroom, pausing only a moment to look down the hallway and imagine Peter in his room. Was he a side sleeper? Did he tuck up tight, big body curled around itself? Maybe he was a man who sprawled out, taking up all the real estate of the bed?