'it's called the world' (tim/gary) continued

[cimorene]

part 1

---

It takes a monumental effort for Tim to smile and shake his head when Timothy tells him at the door that Nikki decided not to show, since Donna couldn't. "Whatever works," he says, reaching around the doorframe for the light switch for the entry.

"It's burnt out," says Timothy. "I couldn't find a light bulb."

"Oh," says Tim.

He hugs his son, awkwardly, even though Timothy seems a little distracted and stiff in his arms. He sees that Gary, behind him, has already got one arm over the shoulders of a sort of short young man, a little plump, certainly sturdy, with small hands and slender wrists, and a pretty, delicate face. Gulliver doesn't look very much like Gary; he's even shorter. You can see the resemblance, though, the way they're standing.

Gullie is eyeing Gary's canvas shirt--the cuffs are loose and turned back once, and still cover the backs of his hands--with a searching eye superficially not unlike Tim's. "Dad," he says reprovingly, "what is this, young urban camo? Aren't you a little old for that?" He twists neatly away from Gary, or twirls actually, and fiddles with the volume on Tim's stereo, which is already on. Jazz, not his own; jazz is Timothy's thing.

Gary puts his hands in his pockets and purses his lips.

A child who isn't Tim's is lounging on the couch, so it must be Charlie, although with his hair buzzed almost all off he looks hardly like either Gulliver or Gary at all. His boots are under the coffee table, his hands steepled over his stomach. "Gullie," he says with dripping facetiousness, "can't Dad even put the 'fun' back in 'functionality' in peace?"

Tim moves to lean against his bookshelf and sticks his hands in his pockets.

Gary rubs his hands together, seeming to ignore the byplay between his children without any effort at all. Tim supposes he might be used to that kind of thing. "Weren't we promised lunch? Having just gorged myself on pastry, I can't wait for some cold cuts and cheese."

There are no cold cuts and cheese. What there are are pizzas. Cormac and Jack buzz up together and Gullie answers the door this time.

Tim stands in the doorway between the kitchen and living room and watches Gullie clap his hands a little and bounce and vibrate on the balls of his feet, then throw his arms around Cormac, who looks a little startled at first. Tim can see his face melting into a smile at distance, and he looks up and meets Tim's eyes and smiles again.

Jack's still wearing a beard without a mustache. He really looks like somebody's dad now. He's wearing Birkenstocks, clean jeans and a crisp blue linen shirt. Tim can see a drool spot on his shoulder. He's intimately familiar with drool spots, in spite of not having dealt with them for a couple of decades.

"It's great to see you," says Cormac to Gullie. They're almost the same age. Cormac, not Timothy, was the one in trouble at school (although not often, and more for smoking pot than for starting fights).

But he straightened up sharply towards the end of it and is now dressed as well as Gullie, who leads him into the kitchen towards Timothy saying, "Is that Armani Ex? Like next spring--this spring line?"

"Sadly not," says Cormac. "I'm poor bourgeoisie and make do with last season's Armani." He and Gullie both laugh and vanish into the kitchen, where Gary has installed himself silently on a chair in the corner and Timothy is clinking plates.

"Does anybody want something to drink?" Says Gullie, and pauses to giggle. "I feel like the perfect hostess. Don't anybody stereotype me based on this."

"Baby," says Timothy, half-laughing, half-scolding, "You only stereotype yourself." He hooks a thumb through one of Gulliver's belt loops and Gullie lets himself be pulled over for a pucker-lipped hi-honey-I'm-home kiss.

Gary's snitched a book from Tim's shelf. It's open in his lap. He puts his head back against the wall and closes his eyes.

After Gulliver takes a round of drink orders, Tim has to enter the kitchen and point out where everything is, but Gullie backs him up towards the table and makes him sit down, and pours all the drinks himself.

Jack, like most new fathers, doesn't take much coaxing to recount what Timothy calls the Annals of Alyssa. ("Shut up, squirt," says Jack, and Timothy rolls his eyes fondly and shuts up.) They go through Alyssa's lack of desire to have her diaper changed, her penchant for smiling at and charming total strangers, and the number of people who mistake her daily for a boy just because she's dressed in primary colors. Everyone knows already about her first words. Now they're learning about her alleged first sentences, which Jack is somewhat miffed to have missed because they all occurred while he was at work. Lisa, he says, hears more English (that and Spanish) in the baby-utterances than he does.

The Annals of Alyssa consume a good forty-five minutes, by the clock. But Tim, who's always been sort of overcome by the absolute coolness of fatherhood from the moment it first happened to him back in 1984, is easily diverted. Gary is interested too, although his absent eldest has not yet presented him a grandkid. So the time passes relatively well, with pizza, beer, vodka, and Timothy occasionally stroking Gulliver's hair when he leans close and finally wrapping his hand around the back of his neck, Gullie's head on his shoulder.

Tim can't take his eyes off his son's fingertips and the crisp curls of dark hair. One of them has caught itself on the tip of Timothy's forefinger.

Gullie is a lot more puppyish than Gary, and given to giggling, and a girlish squeak and hop when the first pizza came out of the oven with the cheese slightly over-brown. Several times he has tipped his head over and nuzzled it into Timothy's shoulder, which Timothy acts like he's tolerating but clearly enjoys deeply. He's sort of glowing.

Tim feels somehow small in comparison, and a little guilty because he's still upset about the whole thing. But an anger is slowly growing underneath and, for God's sake, he thinks. Like that little curl of dark hair brushing the back of Timothy's hand when he and Gulliver are standing at Tim's liquor cabinet together is really something that was stolen from him.

Gary is quiet, sulking or brooding or a first-class imitation of one or the other, in the corner. No one knows what he thinks. He's wearing the clear glasses, but he keeps using Tim's copy of Chimera as a substitute dark pair.

His hair is really grayed in the interior light, sort of silver, sort of lupine. Tim knows his own hair has gray which only shows up in this kind of environment, but he doesn't really care. He crosses his arms and stuffs his hands in his armpits and tries to frown like a patriarch, not like a defensive child.

Because Gary likes his shirts big, the cord one seems to dwarf Tim a little, bunching above the cuffs, drooping off his shoulders. He puts the cuffs together and tucks his hands into them like a monk and says, after his last piece of pizza, "Well, here we all are. For a reason. So what's this all about?"

"It's a party," says Timothy.

"A meet-the-parents gig," says Cormac. "Except then Dad and Gary showed up together and after all, you've known them both since you were kids."

"We were filming," says Gary, "Ray Winstone's directorial debut, which is independent and therefore low-budget and therefore very tightly scheduled, but he's a close friend of mine, and Tim's too, of course, so we were both able to get away. And there we both were, both playing hooky from a very delicate schedule, both going to the same place, so we thought we'd come down together."

There's an awkward little silence. Gary's tone is perfectly pleasant, but he's shoved Chimera facedown on the tabletop next to a half-drained bottle of Corona. His posture is dangerously, villainously relaxed.

"You'd prefer to not know what's going on in my life?" Says Timothy to Tim.

"You didn't want to hear over the phone," says Gulliver sulkily to Gary.

"Of course we both did hear about it over the phone this week when last week we could have both heard about it in person, since shooting hadn't started," says Tim to Timothy.

"Oh!" Says Timothy scathingly, "I'm sorry! I neglected to schedule my life around your buddy's shooting schedule!"

"It's common courtesy," says Gary coldly, "to break big news in person, to not disrupt other people's lives if you can help it,--"

Timothy shoots back, glaring at Tim, "No, it's common courtesy to invite your parents to events when you have them, but it's up to them whether they come."

"I'm not saying you have to schedule your life around mine," says Tim, "Or even that you have to tell me about your life at all, thank you, I want to be invited, for God's sake I love you, Timmy--"

"Timothy."

"--But just half a week," Tim pleads.

Gulliver's voice is strongly reminiscent of Gary's when he says flatly, "Would the two of you just stop throwing your little hissy fit and we can stop wasting time? This isn't what it's really about."

There's a little silence. Tim's balled up in his chair like a strip of paper clenched in a sweaty fist and picking furiously at the cuffs of Gary's corduroy shirt. He looks at Gary, who's draped angrily in the back of Tim's uncomfortable kitchen chair.

Gary looks at him, and says, "The Advocate?"

"Oh God," Gullie mutters, and takes a swig of beer.

Timothy says, "Can we forget that for now?"

Tim says, "Can you forget it for now?"

Gary says, "Hopefully until such time as your brains catch up with the rest of you?"

Timothy puts his hand on Gullie's arm. Gullie's on his feet, glaring daggers across the table, while Tim stares in fascination and Jack, Charlie and Cormac creep gingerly out of their chairs and ooze out of the room. "We're not even famous!" Says Gullie angrily. "You're just mad because of your reputations!"

"I wonder if The Advocate would be interested in your story if we weren't," drawls Tim.

"Besides which speaking for myself I don't give a bloody fuck about it for my reputation," says Gary. "Which, Gullie, if you haven't learned in twenty-three years--"

"Oh, please," Timothy says, rolling his eyes.

"This is about you," says Tim tightly. "The only way I come into this is because I give a goddamn because you're my son."

"And the only reason you're upset about it," says Gullie to Gary, "is because you're afraid."

"As should you be!" Tim yells impatiently, although he's looking at Timothy. "Because we don't live in The Advocate! It's called the world, remember? It's large and contains six billion human beings?"

"You can't. Always. Have. What you. Want," says Gary.

Gullie slams his beer bottle onto the table almost hard enough to shatter it. "Dad," he snaps, "I knew you'd be weird." And flounces out of the room.

---

"Kids--two. Us--zero," says Gary on the way back to his house.

"Uh-huh," says Tim.

They both call Ray separately to let him know that they will be back as promised the next day. While he's watching Gary on the phone Tim realizes that the whole reason he didn't bring changes of clothes to L.A. was because he was going home, but he's left his apartment again with Gary (not as if he could have stayed there) without a change of clothes.

Gary is lounging on his kitchen counter, loitering near the coffee machine, trailing around with Tim's copy of Chimera in his hand but not really reading it. He keeps making suggestive moves towards the refrigerator and then remembering that it's empty. Tim takes a seat on a bar stool and pulls it up near the counter on the other side of the sink. He's dug out a tea kettle and made Darjeeling and is sipping it and watching Gary, trying to make sure the spine of the book (which he remembers he liked a lot) doesn't split.

"Did you ever read the Arabian Nights?" Says Gary.

"No," says Tim, "although after I read that for the first time I found a copy in a bookstore. Didn't seem like it was worth it just to get the references."

"Hum," says Gary, "They're okay. I remember thinking they weren't too bad back when I was a teenager. I guess I'd forgotten a lot, though. When I think about it I can't remember them at all."

Tim reaches out and teases the book out of Gary's hand, glances at what he's reading. Gary's fast, or he was skimming at Tim's place, because even with the several hours of reading on the couch he put in after they got back here Tim wouldn't have been halfway through.

"Wacky Scherezade keeping her little sister on the bed for it all, wasn't it?" Says Tim. "Gives it an exotic feel."

"Mm," says Gary, "Not so wacky if she had sex with the sister herself."

Tim admits this. "Maybe it's all symbolic anyway," he says.

Gary shrugs. "You can read a book how you want. They mean lots of things."

"True," says Tim. "Were we going to eat dinner or wait for our banquet on the plane tomorrow?"

"Pizza again," says Gary, "or you want to go out?"

Tim makes a face and Gary makes a face. They have Chinese delivered. Tim catches Gary casting longing looks at the book while they wait for food. "Read if you want," he says, flinging himself onto Gary's couch.

"No," says Gary, "I'm saving it for the plane."

Tim's stomach rumbles. "Fair enough," he says, shifting around a little to get comfortable. The collar of Gary's corduroy shirt, now unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up because they're inside, rides up around Tim's neck. He hasn't wanted to take it off; the fabric is thick and plush and it's all rather comfortable. And it smells like Gary.

Gary has just settled himself in an armchair facing Tim, seeming set for a long grim contemplation of Tim's face, when the doorbell rings. "I'll get it," he says. And as he pays the delivery boy, he adds over his shoulder, "Do you think it's because it makes you feel old?"

"I hardly ever feel old," Tim admits.

"Mmmmmmmmmm."

The Chinese comes in several large brown paper bags which squat in the center of the coffee table. It's wood with thick, short spindle legs, the top surface protected with a sheet of glass. The couch is comfortable, the chair zebra-striped and generally silly. The room looks expensive but not decorated. There are wooden bookcases on the walls, and quite a few floor lamps scattered around, which between Gary and Tim are all now turned on. The overhead light fixture is still dark.

There's an area rug of thick, soft maroon shag under the coffee table. Tim removes his boots and socks just for the pleasure of digging his toes into it, leans over and pokes through the paper bags. Chopsticks, plastic packets of soy and duck sauce, egg rolls in wax paper, shrink-wrapped fortune cookies, cardboard cartons of white rice.

Gary comes back with thick, heavy stoneware plates and a handful of knives and forks.

They're both hungry, and they dig in in relative silence although Gary keeps making a face like he's going to say something. Tim's mouth is full of Mongolian beef when his phone rings. Since it's lying on the floor by the leg of the table, Gary picks it up for him.

Tim makes a face and swallows a big bite, but by then Gary has answered. "Hello, Tim Roth's phone. Hi! He's swallowing Mongolian beef. He's right here. ... Really. ... All right. Tim," he says, handing the phone back.

"Hello?"

"Hi, babe. I hear it didn't go very well," says Nikki.

Her tone is sort of sympathetic, but Tim remembers her asking him to be nice and feels even guiltier. "I tried," he says. "If you'd been there, it couldn't possibly have been as bad."

She laughs a little. "Tim, it's not my job to interpret between the two of you. I can't tell either one of you what either one of you wants."

Tim stirs his rice with his fork and glances up. Gary's drinking water from a tall glass. "Was he really upset?"

Nikki's silent for a minute. Uh-oh. "Not really," she says.

"Not really, yes, or not really, no?"

"No, not really," she says. "I think you're going to have to apologize. And he's frustrated, but he's not hurt. I don't think he's even very angry. You know Timmy, Tim."

Finally Tim gets around to asking the question that's bothering him. "So you didn't come because you think we deserve to have fights out of our own cluelessness if we're too stupid to figure it out?"

Nikki just laughs and ignores the question, which is really typical for her. "I hear it was hard to tell who was more upset, you or Gary."

"Well, we're in a pretty similar situation," says Tim. Not to say identical.

But Nikki seems to be leading somewhere with this. "I talked to Gulliver. He seems to think his dad is jealous."

"Of me?"

"Of him."

If he is, Tim thinks, I can't blame him. But he feels like a total sleaze for his own jealousy and he is sickeningly aware, now, inescapably, that that's what it is.

"It was good Gary picked up the phone," says Nikki. "I wanted to talk to him. You know, Tim, you can just have what you want. It's not as hard as you two want to make it, and it's really not very nice to try to force your--viewpoint on Timothy."

"There's a big difference between--" Tim doesn't know what he's saying. "It's not the same," he says lamely. "There's a big difference between... ."

But after he gets off the phone with her, and he's eating lo mein with chopsticks, Tim realizes what he was going to say. There's a big difference, for instance, between wanting to have sex and having sex.

Well, sure, the difference is having it, but that's not such a difference. Almost everything else about it is the same--the wanting and the having, that is. Tim is the same. Gary is the same.

"She calls you a lot," says Gary. Tim looks up, startled, when he says it. He's propping his elbows on the coffee table, prepared to really have a conversation. But he's surprised to see that instead of looking studiously down, Gary is looking studiously up. He gropes at his nose, then in his breast pocket. "Where are my glasses," he mutters.

"I was wondering when you were going to notice," says Tim. "You took them off at my place." He has them in the breast pocket of Gary's corduroy shirt. He takes them out and passes them over the still-fragrant brown paper bags and the pile of cutlery in the middle of the table.

Gary puts them on, carefully.

"She doesn't really," says Tim. "Wanted to chew me out on Timothy's behalf. But gently."

"Chew you out gently?"

"You sound skeptical, my friend," says Tim wryly. "Let me assure you that it can be done. Nikki has the Gift." He makes a little face. He wishes she would just out with it, in point of fact. Always has.

"Maybe that's what she was doing to me," says Gary.

"I think so," Tim nods. "She doesn't approve of your trying to impose your worldview on Gullie either."

Gary takes a moody bite of eggroll. He bites down too hard and bits of cabbage drop onto the plate and the tabletop and ooze over his hand. Instead of reaching for a napkin, Gary neatly licks them off.

Tim watches his tongue.

"She said 'You can just have what you want,'" says Gary.

"She said it to me too."

"What does that mean?" Gary is looking at him sharply. Gary's eyes are very dark brown. The room is dark and lamplit; the silver shows up in bits and pieces, but his hair is very dark.

"I don't think I took it quite the way she meant," says Tim. "But I was thinking about it."

"So was I," grumps Gary.

"Let's finish dinner," says Tim.

"I'm done."

Tim puts down his fork. He's lost interest too. At least for a while. He sits back on his heels and flattens his hands on the tabletop; he looks at Gary thoughtfully.

He's not that old.

Then he crawls around the coffee table on his hands and knees and stops next to where Gary's sitting, cross-legged. He reaches out and his hand hovers over Gary's arm, not sure where to hold on. In the end he doesn't. He just leans forward and kisses him.

Gary's mouth is warm and oily from the eggroll, but he doesn't seem particularly surprised, and he moves immediately into the kiss, turning his face. His lips soften at once, press and tease, fall open under Tim's mouth. Tim licks at his teeth, presses his mouth more firmly under Gary's, leans forward.

Somehow he has got one hand in Gary's hair. Somehow Gary's twisted uncomfortably and his hip is digging into Tim, and he can't lean over him right without knocking over the coffee table. Gary's left knee also seems to be in the way.

Gary seizes Tim's head in both hands and tilts his face and really kisses him, hard, and long, and sort of dirty, and Tim lets himself shelve that stuff temporarily, and sit still leaning forward, with his weight on one arm, motionless and kissing, the only point of contact the mobile seal of his and Gary's slick sticky Chinese-tasting lips.

They stand up.

Gary's aggressively bottomy, grabbing Tim's hips and jerking him between his thighs, going boneless and heavy in Tim's arms so Tim has to wrap them around Gary and squeeze him tightly, dragging Tim back with him, not letting go for an instant.

Walking is awkward and Gary's going backwards, but he doesn't let go all the way to his bedroom, down the narrow darkened hall, even though they keep bumping into the walls. Tim heaves an internal sigh. Maybe it's of relief.

He unbuttons the striped canvas shirt and peels it off of Gary, who watches him with heavy eyelids. He's still wearing his glasses.

Tim takes care of that.

Gary struggles with the buttons of Tim's pants. "We'll have to get you some pajamas," he says.

"Mm," says Tim, standing with one hand on each of Gary's hips.

"That is, if you want them."

"Mm," says Tim, and darts forward to catch his mouth again, and Gary lets him, Gary's eyes close and he steps forward and presses the length of their bodies together and gives a happy, tiny little shake, like a dog coming in from the rain.

Tim strokes with his fingers and especially his thumb up and down Gary's ribs, the tendons of his armpits, the flat pucker of nipple, the curving musculature of his skinny arms, the soft, loose skin at his collarbone and the hollow of his throat.

He smells like Gary all over.

They finally have to stop and lose their clothes because they're not as young as they once were, and have learned some small amount of practicality, at least. Then, naked, they sit on the edge of Gary's bed, then crawl to the middle, and face each other kneeling, Gary's palms up on his thighs, Tim's palms down on his knees.

Gary grins a little, crookedly, first one side of his mouth and then the other, and Tim moves and pushes him down in a messy tangle, flattens him on the bed and plasters himself on top of him.

Gary's thighs open wide, and close around Tim's hips. His body arches beautifully, in one long, smooth movement, up off the bed, up into Tim.

Then they probably both stop keeping track. There are long periods of kissing, and Tim nuzzles under Gary's ears and in his throat and belly, finding wrinkles, finding places where the skin is soft or loose with age, where the curls are gray instead of dark. Gary licks him. They both have disagreements with each other's knees.

Gary forgets how to talk at one point and opens his mouth, saying nothing but "uhh" and then he growls again and this time it makes Tim's blood roar, and Gary bites Tim's neck hard and Tim presses his hard cock in the sweaty hollow of Gary's hip and rubs himself there.

As far as Tim can tell Gary keeps his eyes closed the whole time.

Suddenly Tim, though aroused almost past the point of reason, finds this incredibly touching. And the touched spot somewhere behind his ribs goes soft, and it keeps touching, it's spreading, melting, helplessly, deliciously panicky and sticky until all inside of him is confusion, aggression and tenderness, rising hackles and gentle hands.

Tim puts his face next to Gary's and closes his eyes and presses their gritty cheeks together, feeling the scrape of stubble, nuzzling at Gary's cheekbone, the hollow of his eye, the line of his brow.

He reaches Gary's mouth and finds out that it's open, his lips are dry. Tim opens his eyes and drops dry little kisses, bunches of them, in the corners of Gary's mouth, the center of the bottom, the curve and the dip of the top, all along, until Gary catches Tim's lower lip in his teeth.

He holds on tightly to Gary and Gary writhes slowly against him, wraps his legs around Tim's hips and commences slowly grinding them together until they both come, which doesn't take long.

Sweaty and stinky, sticky, dirty, tired, they roll on their sides and clutch each other hard, muscles rigid until they ache, teeth clenched, fingers going white, ribs crunching and breath coming short.

"I can't breathe," says Gary.

"I can't either," says Tim and squeezes harder for a second.

But they have to partly let go, smiling breathlessly. Gary flops onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Tim reaches blindly for bedclothes, pulls a puffy comforter up over them and collapses back against Gary with a little grunt.

Gary rubs his thumb idly back and forth against Tim's ribs. He says, "I kind of feel like I should apologize to the kids, but I'm not man enough to do it."

"If they catch you in a good mood," Tim suggests.

Gary laughs. "Like now?"

Tim just smiles. He doesn't ask for pajamas.

The next morning they don't sleep late, but they stay in bed late, taking turns making fun of each other ("How are your hips, geezer? Can they take the exercise?" "Is that come in your hair?"). They don't have quite enough time to clean the living room before they have to get to the airport. Gary has to go for a run, and Tim shovels the Chinese back into bags and takes the shortest shower in the history of fifty-nine year olds who have just had their introductions to gay sex and are consequently experiencing beard burn in surprising places.

They throw the Chinese into a garbage bag. Gary calls a cab and they sit on the front step with the bakery box and the garbage bag and two of Gary's coffee mugs filled with coffee. When they finish eating, they stuff the box and the crumbs in the garbage bag. Gary sets it by the curb and comes back to face Tim down solemnly.

"Crumbs?"

"Crumbs," says Tim. He brushes Gary's lapel just for fun--there aren't really any crumbs. Gary brushes down Tim's shirt (actually another of Gary's), which really is sprinkled with bits of sugar. Then Tim uses his thumb to wipe around Gary's mouth and Gary, smiling but with his eyes wide and riveting and serious, touches the corner of Tim's lips with his forefinger.

Gary is wearing a suit coat and dress pants that actually match. Tim finds out why when he tips off his tinted glasses and puts them on the ticket counter.

"It's Sirius Black," says the young woman in the white blouse and the little Southwest airlines tie.

Gary smiles, and looks at her nametag. "Maria," he says, and smiles again. "Nice to meet you. Mr. Roth and I are flying to Toronto today. We're working on a project of some delicacy and it's very important that we be able to discuss it. Now, unfortunately I know we've had to buy our tickets very late. I hate doing things at the last minute, and I'm sure your people hate it too, but I was wondering if it was just possible for you to put in a request for ticket upgrades--or--really," he looks at Tim with an air of realization. "Anywhere, if we could just get close seats. Maybe not adjoining, maybe we could just ask someone to switch?" He smiles a third time.

The third time is, apparently, the charm.

"I hate doing that," Gary confides as they emerge from the security checkpoint. He's carrying the tinted glasses folded in his hand.

Tim snatches them away and perches them on his own nose. The prescription makes things noticeably magnified but it's not too bad--not giving him a headache yet. "I wouldn't know," he says, "I've never tried--Mister Oldman."

"I think she recognized you too."

Tim laughs. "I could see that. She was one of those big fans of Reservoir Dogs and Harry Potter. At least she was happy. She didn't hate anything about it."

Gary's mouth can do really, really extraordinary things, thinks Tim. Right now it looks like he's bitten into a lime and someone's just told him they're out of salt and tequila.

"You were just asking."

Gary shakes his shoulders a little, settling the jacket on them, and tugs the cuffs down over his hands. There's something really attractive about his hands half-covered in too-long sleeves. "Well," he says, "I do like first class."

The fact they've told the desk worker they need to have a serious conversation must work subconsciously on them, because they spend a good bit of the ride making vague and not-very-sound connections between Timothy and Gullie's characters, their behavior as children.

"How do you feel about it now?" Says Tim.

Gary thinks about it. "I'm still scared."

"Likewise."

"We're not living in The Advocate."

"Nope. But do you still feel betrayed?"

Gary shakes his head no. "You?"

"No. Or jealous. I kept looking at them and thinking."

"They didn't care."

"I don't think they were afraid," says Tim, and reaches up slowly, carefully, to wrap his hand around the back of Gary's neck. Gary relaxes a little, tendons going supple as spaghetti cooked somewhat past the point of al dente. The shaggy bits of hair at the back of his neck brush the back of Tim's hand. Gary rolls his head back and forth a little and Tim smiles, amused, and massages his neck.

"Will you do that again?" Gary opens one eye and looks up at him.

"Sure." Tim flexes his hand demonstratively and watches a lock of Gary's hair curl around his thumb. There are some definite benefits to being in first class, to sitting in the relative dark.

"Tomorrow?"

Tim says, "I hope so."

Gary looks amused. "And if I fall and crack my head on the bloody pavement will you call the ambulance?"

Tim squeezes for a second, probably hard enough to hurt, but Gary doesn't protest.

"Will you?"

Tim clears his throat. "Anytime. Also, I may take you up on that offer of pajamas."

End

notes: Chimera is a very meta-ish book by John Barth which I, personally, enjoyed a lot. Ray Winstone was the star of both Nil by Mouth, Gary Oldman's directorial debut, and The War Zone, Tim Roth's directorial debut. "Docker's Kiss" is a head-butt. Tim Horton's is really a lot cooler than Starbucks, but their sugary beverages are pretty awful. Those are the real names and birth years of their kids, but everything is totally made up, and it's made as fictional and, well, literaturey as possible; I know nothing about them whatsoever.

Comments

[wolfsage.livejournal.com]

THAT. FUCKING. RULES.

how can i even compare? this is absolutely brilliant. like. whoa.


Suddenly Tim, though aroused almost past the point of reason, finds this incredibly touching. And the touched spot somewhere behind his ribs goes soft, and it keeps touching, it's spreading, melting, helplessly, deliciously panicky and sticky until all inside of him is confusion, aggression and tenderness, rising hackles and gentle hands.

you actually described the feeling of love beyond lust. it was like... an epiphany in words.

and just... all the.... shivery things like the smelling, holy hell, and the growl (YES. i knew it would be wonderful.), and the villainous looks. the scruffiness of gary! with the shirt cuffs and the stubble! and the little quirks... i love that. oh, and the fact that the first bit is set in canada makes my canadian heart smile. especially the first sentence mentioning shooting costs.... it's in the other post so i can't quote but you know what i mean. ^_^

oh. yes. my fic is shadowed...! but i shall not stop, even if i can't compete. :D

all in all: <33333 this is brilliant.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i *had* an epiphany with the love passage you're talking about. i was still back up above, when they're getting home and gary says 'kids--two. us--zero.' and it came to me. i put it down--and a couple other sentences--and wrote them in when i came to them.

oh and DON'T stop. your fic isn't shadowed for *me.* your fic melted me into a little *puddle* with all the pushing of buttons and it wasn't even very long.

mmmmtheGROWL. those bits, all of them, were some of the best to write. congratulate yourself, darling, you were the impetus behind the story. it wasn't until i went 'o.0... OMG MAYBE HE DOES' that i got really serious about writing the idea.

and um, thanks ::blush:: :).

[wolfsage.livejournal.com]

it was a really good part... it seemed to fit perfectly. and i thought about how sometimes that "touched" feeling can be missing... or maybe just hidden, in sex scenes.

anyway, i thought the whole thing was just great. you rule.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

rah.

[insert scruffy, middle-aged gary]

(and it starts all over again?...)

i don't suppose people always *do* feel overwhelmingly tender when they're having sex. although i do think sex brings it out, even if you're not all in love with your partner.

[wolfsage.livejournal.com]

mmm... scruffy gary.... aah don't get me started now! i have a term paper due soon. ;_;

they definetely don't always feel tender... but that totally worked for this story. two middle-aged guys, in love with eachother for so long, first time they have sex.... it's GOT to be tender. and fuckin' hott. yep.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

...

...

>two middle-aged guys, in love with eachother for so long, first time they have sex.... it's GOT to be tender. and fuckin' hott. yep.


::melts into a little puddle::

even though i *wrote* it, and i *know* what it's about... oh, man, there's just something about late-in-life fic that *gets* me right *there.* (i've gotta stop with the asterisks.) i mean. i mean. GUH. it's SO SWEET. it's ridiculously romantic if you think about it. ahhh! they're in love for so long! *so* long!

tim thought it was a missed opportunity... and gary... gary was much more aware of the attraction--well, tim was aware of it too, but gary, gary was aware of being in *love*, and all that time he was willing, and just like *waiting,* not necessarily expecting--just--in case.

::burble::

usually writing a story gets it out of my system. maybe i'm not giving this one enough time. ::wry look::

[wolfsage.livejournal.com]

maybe that means a sequel of some sort is in order.

ahem.

oooh, you're so right about gary *waiting*. aaaah so sweet. and tim thought it was gone, but it really wasn't!

yeah, i love stuff like this too....

[cimness.livejournal.com]

oh man. but i already have another different plot bunny.

i mostly only write first-time fic.

hum. we'll see what develops, eh?

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Oh. I read this at work, which was probably a mistake. I a bit flushed now.

That was very, very wonderful. All the physical decriptions were so sensuous and evocative- the sensations of smell and touch, the descriptions of their clothes.

I liked how you managed their realisation of what they *really* felt about their sons being together, ie, jealous, with Nikki being the catalyst. The progression from that conversation to them then having sex felt very natural.

I think you made this work well - and it's a difficult plot to make work, partly because people might think it far-fetched. Which is ironic, because sitations like this happen all too easily in real life, but in fiction, for reasons it would take a psychologist, or possibly a sociologist, years to explain, we tend to think, '*no way* - these two guys have wanted each other for decades, then their sons fall in love? I can't believe it'

I never thought that for one moment, which I think says something good about your narrative skill:-)

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

you actually described the feeling of love beyond lust. it was like... an epiphany in words.

And also, what she said:-)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

thank you profusely. i love comments like this that might give me a chance to think about what i've written in a new sort of perspective.

you know, the unlikeliness of the idea was sort of what drew me to it, after it first occurred to me (not very seriously) and wolfsage and i were chatting about it. it makes for more fun with the dialogue if the situation is somewhat absurd. plus, i was really stuck in gary growling (that was wolfsage's image) and his kid saying to him 'i KNEW you'd be weird.'

i sort of feel like i'm impuning the kids' future honor, though. i think they're like--eight or something right now. ::cough::

[dancingrain.livejournal.com]

My, but that's good. Also the best RPS about characters I know nothing about I've ever read. I just fucking adore this kind of love story. *mwah*

[cimness.livejournal.com]

thank you. ::blush::

so do i adore it (this type of story): i wish i could read it more... .

er, if you don't mind my asking... how did someone i don't know stumble upon it when she knows nothing of the characters? 0.0

[dancingrain.livejournal.com]

linked by phineasjones :D

just to make you blush more, all day this story's been in the back of my head, making me smile.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

oh, right, i saw that phin had linked it.

::blushes more::

thinking about it (not my story, but the story behind it--the one that was in my head, that i had to put on paper, you know) keeps making ME smile too. the idea is unbearably sweet. i don't seem to have gotten the squee all out of my system yet.