Hewligan Fest: Joe's Big Fat Gay Wedding (RPF/Joe's Wedding) by trinityofone
Title: Joe’s Big Fat Gay Wedding
Fandoms: RPF/Joe’s Wedding
Author: trinityofone
Recipient: libitina
Pairing: Joe Flanigan/Rob Fitzgerald
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Los Angeles, 1996. A young actor named Joe is about to tie the knot when his old friend Rob blows into town for one last crazy night…
A/N: Many thanks to siriaeve for her thoughtful and helpful comments, and to isiscolo for running this awesome fest.
Disclaimer: The Joe and Rob in this story are equally real, which is to say, not.
Joe’s Big Fat Gay Wedding
Joe almost didn’t invite Rob to his wedding at all. They hadn’t seen each other in at least ten years-they had drifted apart. Still, when Kathy had stacked the invitations into ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ piles, ‘Hers’ so vastly outnumbered ‘His’ that Joe was too embarrassed to argue when she gently suggested that he do something to fill the pews on his side of the aisle.
He’d had the same address book for years: leather bound and musty-smelling, held together with a blue rubber band. The page with Rob’s name and address was appropriately beer stained. Joe dutifully copied it out and handed the fresh piece of paper to Kathy, so that she could do more of her beautiful calligraphy. A waste, but the gesture was important. No matter what he did, his side of the church was still going to be emptier, but at least now he had tried.
Then two days before the wedding, Rob showed up at his door holding a guitar and a six pack, and Joe’s life went completely to hell.
Their first conversation in ten years went something like this:
“Joe! Wow, man! Congratulations!”
Joe is pulled into an awkward, tight and beer-sloshing hug.
“Rob? Um. What are you doing here?”
“I have it all planned out! The best bachelor party ever! Just wait till you see the swans!”
“Swans?”
“Yeah! They’re for- No, wait; that should be a surprise. This is so exciting! The rest of the guys in the band can’t wait to see you.” Pause. “Hey, what’s up with your hair?”
“The rest of the-”
“Check it out!” The guitar is thrust forward. “Remember Sally? I thought you might want to have her, in case you want to do a solo at the reception. That is...” A leer. “...Unless you’re gonna be too busy with the missus.”
“It’s not really that kind of wedding...”
“So! Where can I crash?”
Joe made up the couch.
Dreamlike, Rob sat across from Joe the next morning, eating a bowl of fruit loops. Joe contemplated hiding behind his Wall Street Journal until Rob went away, but the chewing sounds and milk slurping were too distracting. “So, uh,” he said. “What have you been up to?”
Rob shrugged. It was a very expressive shrug, implying that even Rob, to whom the last ten years of his life had occurred, was not sure what exactly they had entailed. Mouth full, “What about you?” he asked.
“Well, some journalism,” Joe said, managing fairly well to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “And lately, acting.”
“Oh yeah!” Rob made a dynamic gesture with his spoon. “I saw you in that thing!”
“Which thing?” He didn’t have too many credits yet, and Joe couldn’t help being curious.
“That chick flick thing! You were gay,” Rob took a large bite of fruit loops and resumed gesturing before the spoon was even fully out of his mouth, “I remember that. You were very convincing. Actually, I thought you were gay, until I got the invitation to the wedding and all.”
“...Thanks,” Joe said.
“You gonna play a rock star soon?” Rob got up and went to the fridge, displaying his vibrantly blue boxers. Joe tried to think of a polite way to ask him to put on a shirt. “You know. Utilize your skillz.”
Joe scratched his head. He had to say it. “Don’t you remember? We broke up because we were terrible.”
Rob turned around; Joe hadn’t even seen him reach for it, but he was suddenly holding an open Molson. “No way! We broke up because you left!”
And I left because we were terrible, Joe wanted to say. But he couldn’t quite tell the lie.
He changed the subject. “So this bachelor party...”
“Now, don’t you worry about a thing,” Rob interrupted, offering what he must have thought was a reassuring smile. “Like I said, I’ve got it all planned out. All you have to do is sit back, relax, and enjoy the party!”
Rob was apparently starting the party a little early; it was only 10:15, and he was already drinking. “So,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Do you have…like, wedding stuff you have to get done?”
Joe considered lying, could almost see himself nodding and saying yes. But Rob’s face was wide and open, his eyes eager. “No,” Joe said, “Kathy’s mom thought it would be simpler if I let them handle it,” because Kathy’s mom thinks I’m a moron, Joe didn’t add. “And Kathy thought it would be more romantic if we didn’t see each other for a few days before the wedding.”
Rob nodded thoughtfully, finishing off with a philosophic belch. “Okay. Okay, that’s cool. Then you can come with me while I pick up some stuff.”
No thanks, Joe thought. “Stuff?” he said.
“For tonight,” said Rob, vaguely, and chugged his beer like a champ.
Stepping into Rob’s van was like breaking his nose on a wall of memory: it smelled exactly the same as it had ten years ago. Joe hadn’t realized that he remembered that smell-some magical combination of beer and pot and damp sheepskin and fake cheese product and five guys’ sweat-but as it wrapped around him, he found it to be as familiar to his nostrils as the light floral scent of the air fresheners in his bathroom, as Kathy’s perfume. He thought he could almost pick out the ghost of his own smell there, and of course, Rob, suddenly vivid and present beside him.
Joe hastily unrolled the window. “So,” he said, staring back at the door of his house (carefully shut and locked). “Where are we going?”
Whatever Rob said was lost in the sound of the engine turning over. “What?” said Joe.
“The freeway’s this way, right?” Rob asked, tilting his head and pulling abruptly out into traffic.
Joe gripped the strap above the door and bit his lip to keep from yelping.
They started heading east on the 10. Rob popped in a tape-no, not a tape, an eight-track. Who still had eight-tracks? The song was familiar, and Joe felt the slow creep of aural nostalgia to compliment the strange déjà vu he was already experiencing. He shot Rob a look. “Have you been living in a bunker?”
Rob shook his head. “No, I’ve got a waterbed!”
“No, no-a bunker. A fallout shelter? Have you experienced the world since 1986?”
Rob chewed on his lip for a moment, then cut in front of a bus and into the left lane without signaling. “Do you remember Fred? He still lives in his parents’ basement!”
Joe found that he did remember Fred-quite vividly, though he hadn’t thought about him in years. “Huh.”
“Whoops, that’s our exit.” Rob yanked on the wheel to sent them squeaking past the orange barrels in front of the traffic divider and onto the ramp. Joe’s knuckles were white by the time Rob pulled into the parking lot of a bank and shut off the gas.
He peeked outside. “Chinatown? Why are we in Chinatown?”
“Because-ooh, dumplings!” Rob said, throwing open the van door and leaping outside. Joe caught up to him inside the first of a long row of shops selling all kinds of strange and bizarre things, from food to jewelry to odd plant life to petite Chinese silk dresses to coarse western-style sweatshirts. Rob was emerging with what looked like two little balls of dough wrapped in paper; he was enthusiastically licking his fingers like he’d already consumed one and was eager to move on to another. But he pushed one of the dumplings at Joe before darting back into the crowd. Joe watched it wiggle in his hand, like a blob of flavorless JELL-O, and contemplated a discreet nip over to the trashcan. Instead he clutched hand and dumpling close to his chest and started forward, trying to follow the bobbing shape of Rob’s hat or latch onto the bright band of color that was his shirt collar.
They went through a wide arch with columns carved like dragons, turning their backs on the main road and venturing into a section that looked like someone had actually put some effort, poor as it might've been, into making this small square with its concrete paving look like an ancient Chinese village. The roofs were done in a faux pagoda style, and there was a small well in the center that looked like it had never seen a drop of water but was quite familiar with cigarette butts. Rob swerved around it, heading purposefully toward one of the shops, but Joe paused just outside, blinking. He tried to remember if he had ever been here. He didn’t think so. He’d been living in Los Angeles for more than five years.
The shop was long and narrow. In the center was a long table covered in baskets filled with a complete miscellany of odd little trinkets; the two walls were lined with row after row of the same. Joe reached into one basket and absently removed a small tin figure-two people on a seesaw, it looked like. Pushing on one made them both rock back and forth, and Joe fiddled with them as he gazed distractedly across the store, finding Rob deep in animated, but from where Joe was standing, near-silent conversation with the clerk. It felt surreal that he should be here. Joe wasn’t sure what he had imagined doing on the day before his wedding, but it certainly wasn’t this.
“Joe!”
Rob’s voice startled him out of his fugue (it would be overly generous to call it a reverie) and Joe blinked, becoming newly aware of the objects in his hands. The dumpling was leaking and the people on the seesaw…were fucking. Oh. Oh! Joe dropped them with an embarrassed, almost spastic movement. He walked over to Rob with red cheeks and his left hand sticky from the dumpling’s juices.
“Are you going to eat that?” Rob asked. Joe shook his head and gratefully passed it over. Rob set to with a flourish, unmindful of the dripping. “Joe, this is my friend Zhou,” he said, mouth full. “Zhou, this is my friend Joe.”
“What’s up?” said Zhou. Joe shrugged.
Rob finished off his dumpling, crumpled up the wrapping, and handed it to Zhou, who threw the damp ball of paper in the trash. “Okay, we’re all set,” Rob said, turning to grin up at Joe. “See you around, Zhou.”
Zhou waved. “Peace!”
“What was that about?” Joe asked once they were back out in the faux village square.
“That was my friend Zhou.” Sensing that this explanation was not thorough enough for Joe’s tastes, Rob elaborated. He pulled a scrap of colorful cloth out of his breast pocket. “I lent him a handkerchief a couple years ago. He gave it back.” Rob rearranged the handkerchief in the pocket of his coat, fluffing it and almost running smack into a woman with a stroller.
“You came all the way here to get your handkerchief?” Joe couldn’t help sounding incredulous.
“Well, I was in the neighborhood.” They had reached the van, and Rob pulled himself up into the driver’s seat. “Come on, let’s go!”
Warily, Joe got into the car. “Where are we going now? On a mission to retrieve a lost sock?”
Rob shook his head. “No. You can’t get those back. They go into the dryer and they’re gone forever.”
Rob’s tone was serious, but his eyes were full of humor. Still, Joe frowned. Maybe it was the beer-pot-sheepskin smell, but something about being in this car again was making him nervous.
Then Rob backed sharply out of his parking space and careened onto the street. Oh, right, Joe thought. Rob's driving.
Joe’s life had flashed dully before his eyes a few times over when Rob pulled a sharp right off Venice Boulevard and parked outside a plain grey shop front, windowless and featureless save for a jutting terra cotta fountain that didn’t work. A brass plate on the door said THE MUSEUM OF JURASSIC TECHNOLOGY. “What?” said Joe, but Rob had already rung the bell. Joe could hear the lock being undone, and then the door was swinging open. “Hello,” said a blonde woman, pleasantly. She stepped aside and ushered them in.
They were in what looked like a small museum bookshop, but the items on sale didn’t make any sense. Books about lightning and Freemasonry stood next to a Russian translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Joe looked around, then realized that Rob wasn’t beside him: he was talking in low tones to the blonde woman, who then nodded and gestured toward the inner doorway. “I have to go in the back, but Amy says you can wander around,” Rob told him. Then he turned and went through the door, into the area marked EXHIBITS.
Amy was smiling at him, impressively bright in the dimly-lit room. Joe glanced down at the object that had made its way into his hand, suddenly afraid that it would be another pornographic tin toy. It was an eraser with a picture of a bee on it. Joe put it back in its dish, flashed Amy an awkward but indubitably charming smile, and stepped through into the inner room.
It really did look like a museum. There were exhibits, and small type-written cards with explanations. There was also the recorded sound of a dog barking, and ridiculous things like a ghostly sliver of membrane in a velvet box with a label that proclaimed it to be a caul, and a bunch of what looked like nail clippings artfully arranged on top of an open Bible. It was freaky, and bizarre, and really, incredibly cool. Joe was grinning to himself when he felt the air shift behind him: Rob was standing there, holding a small, framed picture of a dog wearing a space helmet, done in oils. Joe’s lips twitched, the grin growing wider. “What is this place?” he asked, his voice switching naturally to a hushed and respectful whisper. “How did you know about it?”
Rob shrugged. “Wanna see the mobiles?”
There was a whole hall of them, hanging from the ceiling, some dangling down low enough to brush the top of Joe’s head like spiderwebs. There was room full of dioramas of trailer parks, and another with nothing in it but four tiny paintings, each done on the head of a pin. Upstairs there was a small theater, the picture flickering and silent and ghostly as the caul, but there was also a table set up with tea and cookies. Rob helped himself to several.
Joe took a Madeleine and nibbled thoughtfully, glancing over at Rob. He felt like there was something he needed to ask him. “Is that…” he decided finally, gesturing toward the painting. “Is that for the bachelor party?”
It was actually a pretty dumb question-why would you need a painting of a space dog for a bachelor party? (Then again, why would you need a painting of a space dog at all?) Yet Rob gave the query a reasonable amount of consideration before admitting, “No. But it can be a wedding present? If you want?”
Joe looked at the painting again. The dog’s ears were sticking up inside its helmet and there was a hammer and sickle patch on the sleeve of one paw. “No thanks,” Joe said. Here, in this museum, it was kind of funny and cool, but on his own wall it would look terrible. Besides, Kathy would hate it.
“That’s cool,” said Rob. “I can still get you something else.” He grabbed another handful of cookies and headed for the door. “Errands,” he said, mysteriously.
These errands apparently took them back east to the Miracle Mile. “You’re zig-zagging all over town,” Joe complained, hating how whiny he sounded.
Rob shrugged. “I don’t know the city all that well.”
“Yeah, but…” Joe trailed off. Halfway through, he’d lost the point of what he was saying.
They pulled up behind one of the old grey Art Deco buildings that lined Museum Row, just east of LACMA and the La Brea tarpits. Joe supposed himself lucky that the tarpits themselves weren’t their destination-Rob seemed like just the type to fall in, and then Joe would have to stage a heroic rescue, and it would be potentially deadly if undeniably fun.
But the tar would get all over everything.
Instead they entered the lobby of a building topped with a large sign that read DESMOND’S. It was a tall building, for L.A., and though it looked somewhat seedy and ill-used-the windows facing the street were all empty, save for the one on the end, which held a Kinko’s sign and a small fan of multicolored copypaper-the lobby was decorated with an intricate tile floor. The elevator was one of those old wrought-iron jobs with gates, but Rob walked right past it. Joe personally liked taking the stairs-when he’d lived in New York he used to go running in his building’s stairwell in the winter, tearing up flight after flight-but Rob wasn’t exactly the posterboy for physical exertion. Joe quirked an eyebrow at him. “My friend Adam says it sticks,” Rob explained, inclining his head in the elevator's direction, and started determinedly up the steps.
He was panting before they'd made it even two flights, and though Joe had no idea why they were there, why they were climbing this staircase at all; and though he was still kind of annoyed at this fact, it was suddenly funny, it was suddenly fun. He waited until Rob caught up to him on the third floor landing before he turned and started jogging up the steps backward, ahead of him, then sinking back down so they were side by side, and spinning around at Rob's heels and darting back up ahead of him again. "You are such a bastard, you know that?" Rob wheezed.
Joe grinned and started humming the Rocky theme.
He kept that up till they reached the sixth floor when a memory suddenly hit him: him and Rob escaping out the back window of, of-what was that guy's name? Yes, Trevor! Trevor's apartment! Escaping out the back window when the cops were busting up that party. Rob had had a little bit of weed on him, but that wouldn't have mattered much: it was Joe's scholarships that were the vital thing at stake, and Rob hadn't even thought twice, he'd just thrown open the back bedroom window and steadied Joe until he'd gotten a good grip on the drainpipe. Then he'd waited, guarding the opening, until Joe was safely down on the ground. Get out of here! Yeah, Joe could see him, leaning out the second-story window, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. Don't be an asshole, he'd hissed. Not without you! And once he'd said it, he’d had to wait there in Trevor's crummy little garden while Rob huffed and puffed and scrambled his way down the pipe. He could hear the cops and see the lights, see Paris receding from his life like it had never been a possibility. But he waited, and then Rob was literally tumbling into his arms, panting and grinning with a low warm laugh building in his chest. Joe could feel the vibrations. He felt them, and they held each other for a second too long before sense caught up with them and they ran.
Joe blinked and he saw that the stairwell had narrowed. Rob came up beside him, breathing hard; they were squeezed tight and Joe had to mentally prod himself to get moving again. "Please tell me we're not just going up here so you can pick up a painting of a cat in bondage gear."
Rob gave him a funny look. "You're into some weird stuff, Joe."
After another ten flights or so, the staircase narrowed again and they found themselves faced with a set of metal steps that were barely more than a ladder. Rob took a deep breath and mounted them, pushing open the door that led out onto the roof. Joe followed, blinking into the sun. He must have left his sunglasses in Rob's van.
As Joe stood there, shading his eyes, Rob moved decisively toward the edge of the roof and looked off toward the mountains. It was an impressively clear day for L.A.: not only could Joe (if he squinted and blocked out the worst of the sun) see all of Downtown's shining towers, turning west revealed the shimmering blue band of the Pacific Ocean. Rob was leaning up against the north wall, looking out at the Hollywood Hills. He gestured at the iconic white letters, so familiar to Joe now that it took him a moment to re-see their significance. Rob was grinning. "Cool."
"Yeah." Joe leaned against the rail. He could see cars and trucks and red and white metro buses moving along Wilshire Boulevard, no bigger than Matchbox Cars. He felt godlike, and it was a little scary. But he said, "Yeah, it is," and brushed Rob's shoulder with his hand.
Rob turned to him and grinned. "Cheese," he said, and a camera he'd pulled from nowhere clicked in Joe's face.
Joe blinked, even though no flash had gone off. "I think I'm the one who's supposed to say that."
"It's okay, you were already smiling." Rob gave the rail a satisfied slap and turned back toward the door. "You want a burger? I want a burger. And a milkshake."
"What, that's it?" Joe wasn’t referring to the menu.
"I got what I needed." Rob shot Joe a wicked smile. "Race you!" he said, and hurled himself down the stairs. Apparently down he could do.
Joe could do it, too. His feet moved almost without thought, and he careened off the wall and past the first landing. Rob, ahead of him, was leaping down the steps like a little kid splashing in puddles: a plunging, ungraceful descent. Joe knew he could beat him for speed, but he'd also have to get by him, and the stairway was so narrow... He seized his opportunity as soon as they hit the fifth floor and the passage widened up. Ducking under Rob's arm, darting and crowing his triumph as he barreled down the penultimate flight, then the last... He spilled out into the lobby, Rob close on his heels. Too close: their feet tangled together and they skidded, sliding across the intricately patterned marble. They hit the opposite wall with a crash, both of them laughing too hard for it to really hurt. Rob nearly toppled over but Joe caught him and for a moment they just slumped there, wheezing and chuckling and generally acting like twelve-year-olds. Joe had been trying so hard to be an adult lately, but it was hard. He wanted his newspaper and his skateboard both, and it didn't seem like the world was prepared to let him have them.
Rob had a tendency to throw even the world's most carefully prepared plans out the window; he was Mr. Spontaneity, Mr. Crazed Four-in-the-Morning Jaunt. He was an uncontrolled descent, and Joe found him both terrifying and exhilarating, an irresistible combination that Joe had finally learned to resist.
Rob was still leaning against him, his breath warm on Joe's neck. Joe remembered again that late-night scramble down the drainpipe, but this time all he could think about was how he wouldn't have been at that party at all were it not for Rob, how he'd had a test the next day that he'd barely been able to keep his eyes open for, how he'd torn his pants and cut his thigh and how he'd almost lost everything. How he'd been terrified crawling out onto that windowsill, and Rob had squeezed his hand and his heart had beat faster and faster.
It was pushing 2 o'clock; in 24 hours, he'd already be standing in front of the altar. "It's getting late," he said, straightening up, adjusting himself. "We should-"
"Food," said Rob.
And Joe said, "Yeah, all right," because he was hungry. He had a right to be hungry, after all.
They got into the van and drove back up Wilshire to Fairfax, where Rob swung right and then abruptly left, into the parking lot of Johnie's Coffee Shop. They were led to a table in the back where the red plastic booth made obscene noises under the slide of Joe's thighs. Rob, unsurprisingly, ordered a burger and a milkshake; Joe stared at the menu for a long time before ordering a salad and an iced tea. Rob kicked him under the table as soon as the waitress had gone. "You turning into a girl, Flanigan?"
Joe did not blush. "It's Hollywood." Though it was at times like these that he missed the magazine business, as miserable as it had been: as a journalist it was not only accepted, it was practically encouraged that you do nothing but sit behind your desk and wolf down Philly cheesesteaks. It meant you were dedicated.
Rob made a little 'hmm' sound and fiddled with the jukebox. "You got a quarter?" Joe dug around in his pocket and handed him one. In absence of anything more hardcore, Rob's tastes apparently went toward The King: he put on "Pocketful of Rainbows" and drummed his fingers on the Formica until the food came. In ten years, he hadn't gotten over the habit of slopping ketchup all over everything or slurping his milkshake, but Joe forgave him when he discreetly offered up his fries.
Joe was alternating bites of lettuce, chunks of fried potato, and brief glances at Rob's pale and surprisingly pensive reflection in the diner's window, when something he'd been thinking about before crept back up on him. "Rob...have you been to L.A. before?"
There was ketchup on Rob's chin; he didn't seem to notice. "Yeah. A couple of times."
Joe had figured that had to be the case: Rob clearly had friends here, he knew people and places. More, seemingly, than Joe did after five years' residence. But that wasn't (mostly) what was bothering him. "How come you never looked me up? Did you not know I was here?"
"No, I knew." The ketchup was still there, a red dot just below the corner of Rob's lip. Joe stared at him, waiting for him to…to wipe it away, to continue, explain himself.
"I didn't think..." Rob shrugged. "I guess I didn't think that you'd want to see me."
Why? But Joe didn't need to ask why. He could think of a thousand reasons why Rob would think that. Whether or not they were true.
"Oh," he said. "Well. I'm glad you did come. I'm glad to see you now."
Rob blushed and ducked his head. For a dangerous moment, it seemed like the most natural, sensible thing in the world for Joe to reach out and wipe the ketchup from his face, hold Rob's chin in his hand and rub the pad of his thumb over the corner of his lips. But then Rob coughed and pawed at his own face with the back of his hand. "Eat your rabbit food, Flanigan," he said. "We've still got a long night ahead of us."
It actually went by remarkably fast. They drove down to the Venice Boardwalk, where Rob talked Joe into buying a ridiculous leather jacket that Joe was never going to wear, and Rob bought a hideous Hawaiian shirt that somehow looked strangely perfect, vivid and bright against Rob's pale skin. Then Joe made the mistake of remarking on how surprised he was that their day had yet to include massive drinking, so they nipped over to a pub on 2nd Street and drank warm beer while a lot of British and Australian ex-pats screamed expletives at some soccer game. It wasn't a sport either Joe or Rob followed, but after the first time Rob joined in the shouting for no reason other than that he could, Joe discovered that it was remarkably therapeutic to bellow obscenities at people who couldn't hear you in a room full of strangers. They ended up staying on for a cricket match and a meal of bad pub food before tumbling back out onto the sidewalk, still shouting "Go, Chalky!" and snorting with laughter. By then it was already dark.
Staring at the lights coming on along the Promenade, Joe spent a brief moment wondering what Kathy was doing, and how she was feeling: excited, ready, nervous, trepidacious? Then Rob tugged on the sleeve of his new leather coat. "Roller coaster," he said. "Cotton candy." Joe stuffed his hands into his pockets and followed him toward the pier.
The rides were stupidly expensive, and more creaky than fast, but they went on once anyway, earning odd looks from the pair of ten-year-olds in front of them. They really shouldn't be out here unsupervised, Joe thought, and then one of them stuck his tongue out at him. "Naaaah," Joe said back, without thinking.
Rob chuckled. "Better hold on," he advised the kids as their car rose up and up. "If you don't hold on your fingers will come off."
"That doesn't make any sense," said one of the kids, while the other flashed his tongue again. But they both held on until their knuckles turned white.
The ride kind of sucked, but Joe got off feeling energized-positively bouncing with it. Rob wanted to go look off the end of the pier, and Joe trotted along after him, semi-reluctantly. "You know," he said. "That ride was kind of anti-climatic. If we really wanted to make a killing, do you know what we should do?"
"What?" Rob picked at a barnacle. It was too dark to see very much, but the sound of the waves breaking against the pier was very loud, almost primal.
"Charge people to ride in your van with you." Joe shot off a sloppy grin. "It's an extreme experience even for thrill-seekers!"
He should know, Joe thought. Sure, his life hadn't been all that exciting lately, but he wanted, he wanted- Suddenly, he was scrambling up onto the rail. "Jesus Christ!" said Rob, as Joe did a little high-wire act, standing above the waves like he was walking across the sky with only the big top above him. He hummed circus music and waggled his arms. "For fuck's sake, Joe, get down!"
"Top of the world, ma!" said Joe, and leapt back to the safety of the pier's big, warped boards. He over-balanced and landed on his knees. "Ow."
He felt Rob's hands close around his back, under his arms. "I actually can't tell if you need more alcohol, or less."
"Oh, more." Joe turned and blinked out at the horizon: the sun was completely gone; it was almost tomorrow. "And what about strippers? I thought for sure there would be strippers."
For a moment Rob didn't say anything. It was very dark: Joe couldn't make out his expression at all. Then, "I've got a cooler of beer in the car."
"I knew I could count on you," Joe said.
"Yeah," said Rob. "Old reliable. That's me."
They drove down the coast until they found a more secluded stretch of sand. Joe didn’t even know what neighborhood they were in anymore; as far as he was concerned, they were off the map. But this looked like the kind of place Rob would like, that both of them would have liked. There were little pits dug at irregular intervals along the beach, ready-made for campfire tales and roasted marshmallows. Joe pulled Rob’s cooler out from under a stack of magazines (Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, and The Economist) and dragged it over to where Rob was trying, futilely, to light a fire. Joe watched him for a couple of seconds before bursting out laughing. Rob shot him a peeved look. “You sound like a dirty old man when you do that.”
Joe changed his mind about pointing out that he wasn’t the one with back issues of The Economist tucked away in his van. “I am a dirty old man,” he said.
“You’re twenty-nine!” Rob flopped back into the sand. He sounded angry. Joe stared.
“You want me to do that?” he said after a moment.
“Yeah.”
Joe tried to grin. “It’s easy, you know.” He rearranged the sticks. “Haven’t you ever been camping?”
Rob shook his head. “No.”
Joe felt oddly pleased that he had done something Rob hadn’t, although of course he’d done plenty of things that Rob had never even thought about-filled out a tax return, for example. Bought drapes. Signed a pre-nup.
“I’ll take you sometime,” he said as the fire sparked to life in his hands.
“Yeah, sure,” said Rob. “Gimme a beer.”
They lay back in the sand, each clutching a bottle of Labatt. Constellation-wise, it wasn’t a particularly spectacular night. The sky looked muddy, but the sound of the waves was powerful, and Joe could see the rise and fall of Rob’s chest out of the corner of his eye. His own chest felt tight. He attempted to soothe it with another sip of beer.
Something in his throat itched. He tried to hum it away. The humming felt good. He tried to think of songs he knew-“Pocketful of Rainbows” came to mind. I don’t worry, he thought as he hummed, whenever skies are grey above… And then he wasn’t humming, he was singing, only it wasn’t Elvis, it was them, one of their shitty little Ramones-knockoff songs. Joe sang and Rob joined in, harmonizing poorly and drumming his foot against the cooler. They sang as much of “Gunk” as Joe could remember (and there wasn’t all that much to it, really) then transitioned into “(I’m Not A) Monkey For Your Love” before Joe’s mind blanked right in the middle of a line. Rob kept going for a couple of bars before trailing off. “Huh,” he said. “We really did sort of suck.”
“Yeah,” said Joe, sighing. “But it was fun.”
His current bottle (No. 5 including the pub beers, he was pretty sure) was disappointingly empty, but Joe held onto it. He wet his finger on his tongue and ran it slowly around the rim. “Hey,” he said suddenly. “The other guys…when are they showing up?”
Rob was silent, and Joe spent a moment wondering if he had fallen asleep. He had once crashed in the middle of an A&P, his arms tangled around the handle of the shopping cart, his head almost in the-
“They’re not.”
Joe sat up, sand drifting down around him like rain. “What?”
“They’re not coming. I’m not really in touch with them anymore.”
“Oh.” Joe blinked. He wasn’t disappointed, not really, but his stomach felt all tied up in knots. “And this bachelor party…”
Rob had pulled his legs up to his chest, the hand holding his beer slung loose over his knees. “I didn’t really plan anything,” he said, flatly. “I just…”
“What?” said Joe, surprised at the intensity of his tone. Not surprised. “You just…what?”
“I just wanted to see you, all right?” Beer sloshed into the sand. “Ten years, Joe! And tomorrow…”
“We can still see each other,” Joe said. But he felt like he did when he was in front of the camera sometimes, saying someone else’s poorly-written, insincere words.
Rob snorted. “I know which way your life is going, and which way mine is, and they’re really not the same. So.” He scrambled for the beer bottle, which was now sand-encrusted and most likely sand-filled. He thrust it upward in a poor attempt at a jaunty toast. “One last hurrah!”
Joe looked at him. His empty bottle was still cold and glassy in his hand. He could easily raise it.
But, “I don’t want one last hurrah,” he said. “I want…
“I want,” he tried again. “I want-”
The word died in his throat. He stared at Rob, and it was like their last goodbye, ten years ago. Rob had brought him to the airport in his stupid, smelly van, and at the gate they’d exchanged lots of idiotic pleasantries-“Don’t eat too much brie” and “Take care of Sally for me” and “See you soon, see you soon.” And then, as their handshake had turned into a hug, Joe had almost- He’d almost-
“-You,” he said, and kissed him.
He meant it to be a short kiss, a simple statement of intent. But instead Rob opened up beneath him, took him eagerly inside. Joe clutched Rob’s shoulder and tried to cling to rationality, to realize that it was strange that he was suddenly sitting in his best friend’s lap. But it wasn’t strange, not strange at all-just overdue. Well, actually, the press of Rob’s erection against his own hardening cock was a little weird, but if there was anything that Rob had taught him, that Rob had shown him, reminded him of today, it was that weird could be good. And anyway, Joe was a pretty weird guy; he only made it worse when he tried to hide it.
And it would be impossible to hide this forever, for the rest of his life. Rob tasted boozy and delicious and he made Joe moan-just kissing him made Joe make noises he had never heard from himself, desperate relieved sobs and pants as he pushed Rob back flat against the ground. Rob was saying “Joe, Joe, Joe-ack, sand in uncomfortable places!-Joe,” and moving against him, clawing frantically at the hair at the back of Joe’s neck. And they were making out on the beach like teenagers. It was fantastic.
So they kept doing it. Rob rolled them onto their sides-so they’d each get an equal dose of sand in uncomfortable places, probably, but it also allowed Joe to run his hand up and down Rob’s side, touching his cheek and then his shoulder and arm and elbow, then threading their fingers together, then caressing Rob’s thigh and the generous curve of his ass. Joe was hard, but he felt like just kissing Rob had released a huge dam of want. He could wait. They had time.
Time. Joe froze. Rob was working his way up under Joe’s shirt and feeling his spine stiffen, he froze, too. Joe let out a breath. “I’m getting married tomorrow,” he said.
Rob’s hand was shaking as he carefully pulled back. “I- I’m so, I’m so sor-”
Joe caught Rob’s hand. He knew he had to say something, had to make a decision, a decisive movement. Do I dare, do I dare, do I dare…
He swallowed and said, “I’ll have you know I’m not that kind of girl.”
Rob said, “What?”
Joe laughed. He felt drunk and completely sober, both at the same time. “The type to give it up the day before her wedding. You’re not going to buy the cow if you can have the milk for free.”
Rob furrowed his brow. “You want me to marry you?”
That had not been at all where Joe was going. That was exactly where he was going. “Yes, please.” He thought for a moment. “Let’s go to Vegas!”
Rob leapt liltingly to his feet. “My friend Dave can take us!” Then he knelt back down again and gave Joe a long, wet, obscene kiss. “Bring the cooler.”
There was a payphone in the parking lot. Rob made a quick call, then joined Joe over on the concrete bench where he’d plopped down. Joe’s mind was buzzing. He was terrified, and yet he felt great, happy and excited and horny as fuck. He opened another beer and made out with Rob for a while.
He had his tongue down Rob’s throat and Rob’s hand down his pants when a beat-up old Cadillac pulled into the parking lot at a speed that looked positively grandfatherly compared to Rob’s driving, but still resulted in an impressive squeal of tires. The window was unrolled and a man leaned his head out. “You rang?”
“Dave!” Rob practically dragged him out the car, enveloping him in an octopus-like hug. Joe would have felt jealous of the hand patting Dave's back, but it had just been wrapped around Joe’s dick, so. As Rob stepped back to allow Dave to breathe, Joe offered him a theatrical bow. “Jeeves?” he said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Dave, good-naturedly. “Why don’t you guys get in the back? You’re not allergic to dog hair, are you?”
Joe wasn’t, and even if he had been, he wouldn’t have cared. He opened the door and yanked Rob into the car, pulling him on top of him. He licked at his ear.
“Las Vegas, Jeeves!” he said, catching Dave’s raised eyebrow in the rearview mirror. “And step on it!”
For the first half an hour or so, as they lurched along the I-10, Rob and Dave caught up in a series of snorts and half sentences, and Joe sucked on Rob’s neck. It was only after they hit the 40 and were gliding through the desert toward Victorville that Dave stole a glance over his shoulder and said, “So. You guys are getting married?”
“Yup!” said Joe.
“I’m going to make an honest man out of him,” said Rob, proudly.
“I have a tux fitted and everything,” Joe said. “Although…” He frowned. “I left it in L.A.”
“You should wear white,” said Rob, poking his arm.
“I should! I’m a virgin,” he told Dave, confidentially, and then ruined it by snickering.
Dave fiddled with the radio, flipping past a bunch of late-night evangelists before finding some weird, crackly jazz recording. “You’re sure you want to do this,” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” said Joe, decisively. “Although,” he added, after a minute. “Somebody’s probably going to need to call my fiancée.”
“Oh, brother,” said Dave.
They stopped for gas on the far side of Barstow. Rob was telling TRUE STORIES-“And my friend Pete’s brother Ted, his girlfriend Jill went to school with the guy whose cousin picked up this girl on the side of the road and brought her home, but she forgot her sweater-” and Joe was laughing and making appropriate sounds of disbelief and surprise and awe when he had an urgent realization. He scrambled at Rob’s arm. “We need stuff! We can’t get married if we don’t have stuff!”
“Oh, I have condoms,” said Rob.
Dave choked on his Coke.
“No, no, no,” Joe said. “Although, that’s good.” That was really good. “But for the wedding-we need something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…”
Rob nodded. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Oh!” he said after a moment. “My underwear’s pretty old!”
“Good, good!” said Joe. Suddenly he was back in his kitchen that morning, watching Rob leaning into the fridge and wondering what the hell he was doing there. The memory seemed colored by a different brush, now, but that didn’t change the fact that- “And hey! They’re blue, too!”
“And you can borrow them!” said Rob. “Here, take off your pants!”
The sound of Dave thunking his head against the wheel was drowned out by Joe’s frantic struggle with his buttons. He kicked his pants down his legs, revealing his own near-new Hanes boxer-briefs. Rob paused with his hands on the fly of his own pants, staring at the bulge of Joe’s erection. Then, Dave must’ve swerved to avoid a coyote or something, because Rob fell on top of him, his big hands clutching at Joe’s thighs and tugging them apart. “But my virtue!” said Joe.
Rob started mouthing Joe’s cock through the cotton. “Of course, blowjobs don’t count,” Joe reflected. “I’m sure the world will one day agree with me.”
“Mmsure,” said Rob. His voice was muffled.
“Oh, God,” said Dave. He cranked up the music.
Joe threaded his fingers through Rob's hair. He stared down his body and it was like looking over an alien landscape. The car bumped and Rob yanked Joe's boxers down, pausing to bite at Joe's hipbone. Dreamily, "You have a pretty mouth," Joe said.
"I know," said Rob. "I'm going to suck your cock with it."
"La la la la!" said Dave. Joe laughed his dirty old man laugh and pet the back of Rob's head.
Then Rob was taking him into his pretty, pretty mouth, and Joe couldn't make any noises that didn't sound choked and desperate and kinda slutty as he tried to keep a grip on the upholstery and not fuck into Rob's mouth. Like everything about Rob, his cocksucking was kind of sloppy and poorly thought out, but he made up for it in enthusiasm and sheer, ballsy creativity. Pun not really intended, because Rob wasn't actually touching him except with his mouth, but Rob's mouth was all Joe needed, all he had wanted or needed, and now Joe had it, was surging into Rob as the car bounced along a desert road at night and a man Joe had met less than three hours ago tried not to listen and switched the soundtrack to heavy metal.
Joe came in the middle of KISS’ “Lick It Up,” and almost as soon as he had recovered enough not to be seeing stars (spinning spinning spinning high above the desert dust) he was laughing again, pulling Rob up his body and kissing his swollen lips as he jerked Rob’s beautiful blue boxers down his hairy thighs and took him in his hand. Rob rutted sharply against Joe’s hand and against Joe’s belly and came almost right away, slumping down and burying his head against Joe’s shoulder. Joe kicked until his own shorts were free of his foot and wiped them both off. His head was propped uncomfortably against the door handle. He sighed happily.
“You owe me, Rob!” said Dave from the front, in the tone of someone who was both horrified and amused, not to mention a little turned on. “You owe me big time!”
“I’ll buy you a pony,” said Rob, sleepily. Joe felt his own eyes flutter closed.
They opened again when the car lurched to a stop. “We’re here,” said Dave, and blinking, Joe could see an impossible rainbow of lights, shadowed by- “But I’m hiding behind this bush until you put some pants on.”
Joe had dozed; he felt a lot more sober than he’d been on the beach. He paused for a second, wiping dog hair off of his cheek, half-expecting his sensible self to regain control at any minute. But instead he jerked Rob’s old blue boxers up his hips and said, “That’s a topiary.” Dave peered around the seat, then quickly faced front again when he saw that Rob was still pantsless. “Not a bush.”
“Topiary’s a type of bush,” said Rob, searching for his trousers with his ass in the air. Joe wet his lips.
“There were going to be topiary sculptures at my wedding,” he said, still waiting for that terrifying roller coaster drop. “I guess there still are.”
“We still need something new, though.” Rob seemed perfectly pleased at having to go commando.
“How about my emotional trauma?” suggested Dave. “That’s pretty new.”
Joe and Rob considered this. “Naaaw.”
“Well, we’re newly gay,” Rob said, getting out the car, still hopping as he put on his left shoe. “Maybe that counts.”
Joe flushed. Now he wanted to be drunker again. Luckily, they’d brought the cooler. “Sure,” he said, popping open another beer as Dave went to check if Elvis was available. But he snuck a stick of gum from the pack Dave had bought in Barstow out of the glove compartment and stuck it in his pocket.
Rob found him leaning up against the hood of the Caddy, drinking his beer and admiring the topiary. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. He glanced at his wrist, which did not sport a watch. “It’s only, er, three a.m. or something. There’s still time…”
Joe turned him around and kissed him. He was forceful, pushing until Rob was practically splayed across the hood. “We’re doing this,” he said. “I am doing it…”
Rob’s eyes looked large and drunk with-something, something that wasn’t booze; that had smashed all over the pavement. “Yeah. Okay.”
Inside, Elvis was not pleased to see them. He shot Dave an irritated look. “You realize that this is illegal, right?”
“But this is Vegas,” said Joe. “You guys do prostitution, and that’s illegal in forty-eight other states.”
“I love Rhode Island,” said Rob, dreamily.
Joe elbowed him. “Shut up, you’re about to pledge yourself to me.”
“I don’t care if this is San Fran-fucking-cisco, I’m not gonna-”
Dave finished digging around in his pocket and gave Elvis a long and lingering handshake.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” said Elvis, slipping the hand into his own pocket before brushing down his jumpsuit. “Now if the, er, grooms would walk this way, a-thank you very much.”
Joe and Rob moved to stand in front of the pulpit. “Oh, shit!” said Rob, suddenly. “Rings!”
Joe blinked away the image of the ring he had bought Kathy, tucked away in its black velvet box. His face felt hot. “Don’t worry,” said Dave, coming up behind them. He tossed aside a plastic bag and produced a pair of Ring Pops. “Courtesy of your local 7-Eleven, Barstow.”
“That is a convenient store,” said Rob. “Can I have the blue raspberry one?”
“Sure,” said Joe, breathing again, smiling again. “I like watermelon.” He took the bright blue ring from Dave’s hand and held it at the ready.
“Just for the record,” said Elvis, “I dress up as a dead guy for a living and frequently go sequin-shopping, and I think you people are weird.”
“Weird can be good,” said Joe, and for once didn’t feel like he was acting.
Then Elvis was encouraging them to hold hands and saying all the things about love and commitment that Joe had been preparing himself for months to hear, and maybe it was because they were now coming from the lips of The King, but they didn’t seem so scary anymore. And then he was saying, “I, Joe, take you, Rob, to be my semi-lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better or for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness, drunkenness, and in health; to love and to cherish and to do dirty things to; till death do us part-or we both come to our senses.” And Rob said it back, and then, before Elvis could even figure out what, exactly, to pronounce them, they were kissing, and Joe was sucking blue raspberry flavor off Rob’s fingers, and for an extra five bucks, Elvis sang them “Pocketful of Rainbows” as they spun and danced and ran for the car.
Dave dropped them off at a hotel further up the strip, announcing they he was now going to go get very drunk. “You have nice friends,” said Joe, as the Cadillac bounced away.
“I do,” said Rob, with great sincerity. He ripped some flowers out of the hotel’s landscaping and presented them to Joe. “A bouquet for my bride?”
Dirt dripped down Joe’s front. “Awesome,” he said.
Rob nodded vigorously. “I’d like to destroy your virtue now.”
Joe thought about this. Then he grabbed Rob’s sleeve and dragged him inside. “The honeymoon suite!” he told the clerk, slamming his fist and his flowers down on the desk. The clerk narrowed her eyes at them. “Oh,” said Joe. He grinned and produced his AMEX.
A bellhop whisked them upstairs and into a room with a gigantic heart-shaped bed. There were flowers everywhere (although Joe liked the bouquet Rob had given him best) and an iced bottle of champagne and two glasses. “Wait, how does that go again? Beer before champagne…”
“You’ll never abstain.”
“You’ll be master of your domain.”
“Top of the food chain.”
“In the fast lane.”
“Batshit insane.”
“Oh, but I like it there,” said Joe.
He laughed and his flowers went everywhere as Rob toppled him onto the bed.
Later, with his legs up over Rob’s shoulders and Rob in him, holding him steady and yet moving in him, moving him, taking him there; later, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling because he felt like it was about to fly off, Joe thought: This is the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever done in my life. More than climbing down a drainpipe or running up a building, this-this was it. Freefall.
Joe grabbed Rob’s arm and held on.
On the morning of his wedding day, Joe woke up with a hangover in a big heart-shaped bed in the wrong state already married to the man who was sitting across from him, his hair sticking straight up as he stared back with wide, scared eyes. “Hey,” said Joe bravely, and his voice cracked a little.
“Hey,” Rob said.
Joe’s ass was sore. He rolled over to look at the clock, and that felt a bit better. The numbers, too, were somewhat reassuring: it was still early. If he left now, if he drove hard, he could still make it. Last night, everything that had happened-he could put it all away behind its veil of unreality and return to his real marriage, his real life. He could.
And he knew what that would be like. Like getting up in front of the camera every day, acting the responsible person, the perfect husband. It was not a bad way to make a living. He knew that.
But it was no way to live your life.
He looked at Rob, sitting sentry at the end of the bed with his face propped on his hands, wearing one of the white terrycloth robes provided by the hotel that already Joe knew with 99% certainty they were going to steal. It had ‘His’ stitched in blue thread over the heart. Convention dictated that Joe was therefore going to be stuck with the ‘Hers’ robe-but not if he went naked. Joe was pretty sure that Rob wouldn’t have any problem with Joe going naked, with either of them letting it all hang out.
He got out of bed, sure enough naked as the day he was born. He knelt beside Rob, reaching up to touch his cheek. Rob breathed out; it was his only indication of relief. They kissed, long and sweet…until Rob started back, sneezing. “I’m sorry, I think I still have dog hair…somewhere. I didn’t want to tell Dave, but I am a little allergic.”
Joe grinned. “Well, let’s get it off of you, then. Shower?”
Rob’s eyes lit up. “Together?”
Joe nodded and tugged Rob to his feet, toward the bathroom and whatever awaited them. “It’s nice to be clean.”
NOTES:
1. The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a real place. I highly recommend a visit.
2. Joe and Rob’s breakfast conversation was inspired by a much funnier exchange in Garden State: “I can’t believe you’re not really retarded!” Actually, I think that movie inspired this story in a lot of weird, subtle ways. Hmm.
3. Pocketful of Rainbows by Elvis Presley
4. (I’m Not A) Monkey For Your Love-the lyrics in Latin!
Simia pro amore tuo non sum
Simia non sum
Simia pro amore tuo non sum
Simia non sum!
(Any resemblance to Poe’s “Junkie” is purely coincidental.)
Fandoms: RPF/Joe’s Wedding
Author: trinityofone
Recipient: libitina
Pairing: Joe Flanigan/Rob Fitzgerald
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Los Angeles, 1996. A young actor named Joe is about to tie the knot when his old friend Rob blows into town for one last crazy night…
A/N: Many thanks to siriaeve for her thoughtful and helpful comments, and to isiscolo for running this awesome fest.
Disclaimer: The Joe and Rob in this story are equally real, which is to say, not.
Joe’s Big Fat Gay Wedding
Joe almost didn’t invite Rob to his wedding at all. They hadn’t seen each other in at least ten years-they had drifted apart. Still, when Kathy had stacked the invitations into ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ piles, ‘Hers’ so vastly outnumbered ‘His’ that Joe was too embarrassed to argue when she gently suggested that he do something to fill the pews on his side of the aisle.
He’d had the same address book for years: leather bound and musty-smelling, held together with a blue rubber band. The page with Rob’s name and address was appropriately beer stained. Joe dutifully copied it out and handed the fresh piece of paper to Kathy, so that she could do more of her beautiful calligraphy. A waste, but the gesture was important. No matter what he did, his side of the church was still going to be emptier, but at least now he had tried.
Then two days before the wedding, Rob showed up at his door holding a guitar and a six pack, and Joe’s life went completely to hell.
Their first conversation in ten years went something like this:
“Joe! Wow, man! Congratulations!”
Joe is pulled into an awkward, tight and beer-sloshing hug.
“Rob? Um. What are you doing here?”
“I have it all planned out! The best bachelor party ever! Just wait till you see the swans!”
“Swans?”
“Yeah! They’re for- No, wait; that should be a surprise. This is so exciting! The rest of the guys in the band can’t wait to see you.” Pause. “Hey, what’s up with your hair?”
“The rest of the-”
“Check it out!” The guitar is thrust forward. “Remember Sally? I thought you might want to have her, in case you want to do a solo at the reception. That is...” A leer. “...Unless you’re gonna be too busy with the missus.”
“It’s not really that kind of wedding...”
“So! Where can I crash?”
Joe made up the couch.
Dreamlike, Rob sat across from Joe the next morning, eating a bowl of fruit loops. Joe contemplated hiding behind his Wall Street Journal until Rob went away, but the chewing sounds and milk slurping were too distracting. “So, uh,” he said. “What have you been up to?”
Rob shrugged. It was a very expressive shrug, implying that even Rob, to whom the last ten years of his life had occurred, was not sure what exactly they had entailed. Mouth full, “What about you?” he asked.
“Well, some journalism,” Joe said, managing fairly well to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “And lately, acting.”
“Oh yeah!” Rob made a dynamic gesture with his spoon. “I saw you in that thing!”
“Which thing?” He didn’t have too many credits yet, and Joe couldn’t help being curious.
“That chick flick thing! You were gay,” Rob took a large bite of fruit loops and resumed gesturing before the spoon was even fully out of his mouth, “I remember that. You were very convincing. Actually, I thought you were gay, until I got the invitation to the wedding and all.”
“...Thanks,” Joe said.
“You gonna play a rock star soon?” Rob got up and went to the fridge, displaying his vibrantly blue boxers. Joe tried to think of a polite way to ask him to put on a shirt. “You know. Utilize your skillz.”
Joe scratched his head. He had to say it. “Don’t you remember? We broke up because we were terrible.”
Rob turned around; Joe hadn’t even seen him reach for it, but he was suddenly holding an open Molson. “No way! We broke up because you left!”
And I left because we were terrible, Joe wanted to say. But he couldn’t quite tell the lie.
He changed the subject. “So this bachelor party...”
“Now, don’t you worry about a thing,” Rob interrupted, offering what he must have thought was a reassuring smile. “Like I said, I’ve got it all planned out. All you have to do is sit back, relax, and enjoy the party!”
Rob was apparently starting the party a little early; it was only 10:15, and he was already drinking. “So,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Do you have…like, wedding stuff you have to get done?”
Joe considered lying, could almost see himself nodding and saying yes. But Rob’s face was wide and open, his eyes eager. “No,” Joe said, “Kathy’s mom thought it would be simpler if I let them handle it,” because Kathy’s mom thinks I’m a moron, Joe didn’t add. “And Kathy thought it would be more romantic if we didn’t see each other for a few days before the wedding.”
Rob nodded thoughtfully, finishing off with a philosophic belch. “Okay. Okay, that’s cool. Then you can come with me while I pick up some stuff.”
No thanks, Joe thought. “Stuff?” he said.
“For tonight,” said Rob, vaguely, and chugged his beer like a champ.
Stepping into Rob’s van was like breaking his nose on a wall of memory: it smelled exactly the same as it had ten years ago. Joe hadn’t realized that he remembered that smell-some magical combination of beer and pot and damp sheepskin and fake cheese product and five guys’ sweat-but as it wrapped around him, he found it to be as familiar to his nostrils as the light floral scent of the air fresheners in his bathroom, as Kathy’s perfume. He thought he could almost pick out the ghost of his own smell there, and of course, Rob, suddenly vivid and present beside him.
Joe hastily unrolled the window. “So,” he said, staring back at the door of his house (carefully shut and locked). “Where are we going?”
Whatever Rob said was lost in the sound of the engine turning over. “What?” said Joe.
“The freeway’s this way, right?” Rob asked, tilting his head and pulling abruptly out into traffic.
Joe gripped the strap above the door and bit his lip to keep from yelping.
They started heading east on the 10. Rob popped in a tape-no, not a tape, an eight-track. Who still had eight-tracks? The song was familiar, and Joe felt the slow creep of aural nostalgia to compliment the strange déjà vu he was already experiencing. He shot Rob a look. “Have you been living in a bunker?”
Rob shook his head. “No, I’ve got a waterbed!”
“No, no-a bunker. A fallout shelter? Have you experienced the world since 1986?”
Rob chewed on his lip for a moment, then cut in front of a bus and into the left lane without signaling. “Do you remember Fred? He still lives in his parents’ basement!”
Joe found that he did remember Fred-quite vividly, though he hadn’t thought about him in years. “Huh.”
“Whoops, that’s our exit.” Rob yanked on the wheel to sent them squeaking past the orange barrels in front of the traffic divider and onto the ramp. Joe’s knuckles were white by the time Rob pulled into the parking lot of a bank and shut off the gas.
He peeked outside. “Chinatown? Why are we in Chinatown?”
“Because-ooh, dumplings!” Rob said, throwing open the van door and leaping outside. Joe caught up to him inside the first of a long row of shops selling all kinds of strange and bizarre things, from food to jewelry to odd plant life to petite Chinese silk dresses to coarse western-style sweatshirts. Rob was emerging with what looked like two little balls of dough wrapped in paper; he was enthusiastically licking his fingers like he’d already consumed one and was eager to move on to another. But he pushed one of the dumplings at Joe before darting back into the crowd. Joe watched it wiggle in his hand, like a blob of flavorless JELL-O, and contemplated a discreet nip over to the trashcan. Instead he clutched hand and dumpling close to his chest and started forward, trying to follow the bobbing shape of Rob’s hat or latch onto the bright band of color that was his shirt collar.
They went through a wide arch with columns carved like dragons, turning their backs on the main road and venturing into a section that looked like someone had actually put some effort, poor as it might've been, into making this small square with its concrete paving look like an ancient Chinese village. The roofs were done in a faux pagoda style, and there was a small well in the center that looked like it had never seen a drop of water but was quite familiar with cigarette butts. Rob swerved around it, heading purposefully toward one of the shops, but Joe paused just outside, blinking. He tried to remember if he had ever been here. He didn’t think so. He’d been living in Los Angeles for more than five years.
The shop was long and narrow. In the center was a long table covered in baskets filled with a complete miscellany of odd little trinkets; the two walls were lined with row after row of the same. Joe reached into one basket and absently removed a small tin figure-two people on a seesaw, it looked like. Pushing on one made them both rock back and forth, and Joe fiddled with them as he gazed distractedly across the store, finding Rob deep in animated, but from where Joe was standing, near-silent conversation with the clerk. It felt surreal that he should be here. Joe wasn’t sure what he had imagined doing on the day before his wedding, but it certainly wasn’t this.
“Joe!”
Rob’s voice startled him out of his fugue (it would be overly generous to call it a reverie) and Joe blinked, becoming newly aware of the objects in his hands. The dumpling was leaking and the people on the seesaw…were fucking. Oh. Oh! Joe dropped them with an embarrassed, almost spastic movement. He walked over to Rob with red cheeks and his left hand sticky from the dumpling’s juices.
“Are you going to eat that?” Rob asked. Joe shook his head and gratefully passed it over. Rob set to with a flourish, unmindful of the dripping. “Joe, this is my friend Zhou,” he said, mouth full. “Zhou, this is my friend Joe.”
“What’s up?” said Zhou. Joe shrugged.
Rob finished off his dumpling, crumpled up the wrapping, and handed it to Zhou, who threw the damp ball of paper in the trash. “Okay, we’re all set,” Rob said, turning to grin up at Joe. “See you around, Zhou.”
Zhou waved. “Peace!”
“What was that about?” Joe asked once they were back out in the faux village square.
“That was my friend Zhou.” Sensing that this explanation was not thorough enough for Joe’s tastes, Rob elaborated. He pulled a scrap of colorful cloth out of his breast pocket. “I lent him a handkerchief a couple years ago. He gave it back.” Rob rearranged the handkerchief in the pocket of his coat, fluffing it and almost running smack into a woman with a stroller.
“You came all the way here to get your handkerchief?” Joe couldn’t help sounding incredulous.
“Well, I was in the neighborhood.” They had reached the van, and Rob pulled himself up into the driver’s seat. “Come on, let’s go!”
Warily, Joe got into the car. “Where are we going now? On a mission to retrieve a lost sock?”
Rob shook his head. “No. You can’t get those back. They go into the dryer and they’re gone forever.”
Rob’s tone was serious, but his eyes were full of humor. Still, Joe frowned. Maybe it was the beer-pot-sheepskin smell, but something about being in this car again was making him nervous.
Then Rob backed sharply out of his parking space and careened onto the street. Oh, right, Joe thought. Rob's driving.
Joe’s life had flashed dully before his eyes a few times over when Rob pulled a sharp right off Venice Boulevard and parked outside a plain grey shop front, windowless and featureless save for a jutting terra cotta fountain that didn’t work. A brass plate on the door said THE MUSEUM OF JURASSIC TECHNOLOGY. “What?” said Joe, but Rob had already rung the bell. Joe could hear the lock being undone, and then the door was swinging open. “Hello,” said a blonde woman, pleasantly. She stepped aside and ushered them in.
They were in what looked like a small museum bookshop, but the items on sale didn’t make any sense. Books about lightning and Freemasonry stood next to a Russian translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Joe looked around, then realized that Rob wasn’t beside him: he was talking in low tones to the blonde woman, who then nodded and gestured toward the inner doorway. “I have to go in the back, but Amy says you can wander around,” Rob told him. Then he turned and went through the door, into the area marked EXHIBITS.
Amy was smiling at him, impressively bright in the dimly-lit room. Joe glanced down at the object that had made its way into his hand, suddenly afraid that it would be another pornographic tin toy. It was an eraser with a picture of a bee on it. Joe put it back in its dish, flashed Amy an awkward but indubitably charming smile, and stepped through into the inner room.
It really did look like a museum. There were exhibits, and small type-written cards with explanations. There was also the recorded sound of a dog barking, and ridiculous things like a ghostly sliver of membrane in a velvet box with a label that proclaimed it to be a caul, and a bunch of what looked like nail clippings artfully arranged on top of an open Bible. It was freaky, and bizarre, and really, incredibly cool. Joe was grinning to himself when he felt the air shift behind him: Rob was standing there, holding a small, framed picture of a dog wearing a space helmet, done in oils. Joe’s lips twitched, the grin growing wider. “What is this place?” he asked, his voice switching naturally to a hushed and respectful whisper. “How did you know about it?”
Rob shrugged. “Wanna see the mobiles?”
There was a whole hall of them, hanging from the ceiling, some dangling down low enough to brush the top of Joe’s head like spiderwebs. There was room full of dioramas of trailer parks, and another with nothing in it but four tiny paintings, each done on the head of a pin. Upstairs there was a small theater, the picture flickering and silent and ghostly as the caul, but there was also a table set up with tea and cookies. Rob helped himself to several.
Joe took a Madeleine and nibbled thoughtfully, glancing over at Rob. He felt like there was something he needed to ask him. “Is that…” he decided finally, gesturing toward the painting. “Is that for the bachelor party?”
It was actually a pretty dumb question-why would you need a painting of a space dog for a bachelor party? (Then again, why would you need a painting of a space dog at all?) Yet Rob gave the query a reasonable amount of consideration before admitting, “No. But it can be a wedding present? If you want?”
Joe looked at the painting again. The dog’s ears were sticking up inside its helmet and there was a hammer and sickle patch on the sleeve of one paw. “No thanks,” Joe said. Here, in this museum, it was kind of funny and cool, but on his own wall it would look terrible. Besides, Kathy would hate it.
“That’s cool,” said Rob. “I can still get you something else.” He grabbed another handful of cookies and headed for the door. “Errands,” he said, mysteriously.
These errands apparently took them back east to the Miracle Mile. “You’re zig-zagging all over town,” Joe complained, hating how whiny he sounded.
Rob shrugged. “I don’t know the city all that well.”
“Yeah, but…” Joe trailed off. Halfway through, he’d lost the point of what he was saying.
They pulled up behind one of the old grey Art Deco buildings that lined Museum Row, just east of LACMA and the La Brea tarpits. Joe supposed himself lucky that the tarpits themselves weren’t their destination-Rob seemed like just the type to fall in, and then Joe would have to stage a heroic rescue, and it would be potentially deadly if undeniably fun.
But the tar would get all over everything.
Instead they entered the lobby of a building topped with a large sign that read DESMOND’S. It was a tall building, for L.A., and though it looked somewhat seedy and ill-used-the windows facing the street were all empty, save for the one on the end, which held a Kinko’s sign and a small fan of multicolored copypaper-the lobby was decorated with an intricate tile floor. The elevator was one of those old wrought-iron jobs with gates, but Rob walked right past it. Joe personally liked taking the stairs-when he’d lived in New York he used to go running in his building’s stairwell in the winter, tearing up flight after flight-but Rob wasn’t exactly the posterboy for physical exertion. Joe quirked an eyebrow at him. “My friend Adam says it sticks,” Rob explained, inclining his head in the elevator's direction, and started determinedly up the steps.
He was panting before they'd made it even two flights, and though Joe had no idea why they were there, why they were climbing this staircase at all; and though he was still kind of annoyed at this fact, it was suddenly funny, it was suddenly fun. He waited until Rob caught up to him on the third floor landing before he turned and started jogging up the steps backward, ahead of him, then sinking back down so they were side by side, and spinning around at Rob's heels and darting back up ahead of him again. "You are such a bastard, you know that?" Rob wheezed.
Joe grinned and started humming the Rocky theme.
He kept that up till they reached the sixth floor when a memory suddenly hit him: him and Rob escaping out the back window of, of-what was that guy's name? Yes, Trevor! Trevor's apartment! Escaping out the back window when the cops were busting up that party. Rob had had a little bit of weed on him, but that wouldn't have mattered much: it was Joe's scholarships that were the vital thing at stake, and Rob hadn't even thought twice, he'd just thrown open the back bedroom window and steadied Joe until he'd gotten a good grip on the drainpipe. Then he'd waited, guarding the opening, until Joe was safely down on the ground. Get out of here! Yeah, Joe could see him, leaning out the second-story window, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. Don't be an asshole, he'd hissed. Not without you! And once he'd said it, he’d had to wait there in Trevor's crummy little garden while Rob huffed and puffed and scrambled his way down the pipe. He could hear the cops and see the lights, see Paris receding from his life like it had never been a possibility. But he waited, and then Rob was literally tumbling into his arms, panting and grinning with a low warm laugh building in his chest. Joe could feel the vibrations. He felt them, and they held each other for a second too long before sense caught up with them and they ran.
Joe blinked and he saw that the stairwell had narrowed. Rob came up beside him, breathing hard; they were squeezed tight and Joe had to mentally prod himself to get moving again. "Please tell me we're not just going up here so you can pick up a painting of a cat in bondage gear."
Rob gave him a funny look. "You're into some weird stuff, Joe."
After another ten flights or so, the staircase narrowed again and they found themselves faced with a set of metal steps that were barely more than a ladder. Rob took a deep breath and mounted them, pushing open the door that led out onto the roof. Joe followed, blinking into the sun. He must have left his sunglasses in Rob's van.
As Joe stood there, shading his eyes, Rob moved decisively toward the edge of the roof and looked off toward the mountains. It was an impressively clear day for L.A.: not only could Joe (if he squinted and blocked out the worst of the sun) see all of Downtown's shining towers, turning west revealed the shimmering blue band of the Pacific Ocean. Rob was leaning up against the north wall, looking out at the Hollywood Hills. He gestured at the iconic white letters, so familiar to Joe now that it took him a moment to re-see their significance. Rob was grinning. "Cool."
"Yeah." Joe leaned against the rail. He could see cars and trucks and red and white metro buses moving along Wilshire Boulevard, no bigger than Matchbox Cars. He felt godlike, and it was a little scary. But he said, "Yeah, it is," and brushed Rob's shoulder with his hand.
Rob turned to him and grinned. "Cheese," he said, and a camera he'd pulled from nowhere clicked in Joe's face.
Joe blinked, even though no flash had gone off. "I think I'm the one who's supposed to say that."
"It's okay, you were already smiling." Rob gave the rail a satisfied slap and turned back toward the door. "You want a burger? I want a burger. And a milkshake."
"What, that's it?" Joe wasn’t referring to the menu.
"I got what I needed." Rob shot Joe a wicked smile. "Race you!" he said, and hurled himself down the stairs. Apparently down he could do.
Joe could do it, too. His feet moved almost without thought, and he careened off the wall and past the first landing. Rob, ahead of him, was leaping down the steps like a little kid splashing in puddles: a plunging, ungraceful descent. Joe knew he could beat him for speed, but he'd also have to get by him, and the stairway was so narrow... He seized his opportunity as soon as they hit the fifth floor and the passage widened up. Ducking under Rob's arm, darting and crowing his triumph as he barreled down the penultimate flight, then the last... He spilled out into the lobby, Rob close on his heels. Too close: their feet tangled together and they skidded, sliding across the intricately patterned marble. They hit the opposite wall with a crash, both of them laughing too hard for it to really hurt. Rob nearly toppled over but Joe caught him and for a moment they just slumped there, wheezing and chuckling and generally acting like twelve-year-olds. Joe had been trying so hard to be an adult lately, but it was hard. He wanted his newspaper and his skateboard both, and it didn't seem like the world was prepared to let him have them.
Rob had a tendency to throw even the world's most carefully prepared plans out the window; he was Mr. Spontaneity, Mr. Crazed Four-in-the-Morning Jaunt. He was an uncontrolled descent, and Joe found him both terrifying and exhilarating, an irresistible combination that Joe had finally learned to resist.
Rob was still leaning against him, his breath warm on Joe's neck. Joe remembered again that late-night scramble down the drainpipe, but this time all he could think about was how he wouldn't have been at that party at all were it not for Rob, how he'd had a test the next day that he'd barely been able to keep his eyes open for, how he'd torn his pants and cut his thigh and how he'd almost lost everything. How he'd been terrified crawling out onto that windowsill, and Rob had squeezed his hand and his heart had beat faster and faster.
It was pushing 2 o'clock; in 24 hours, he'd already be standing in front of the altar. "It's getting late," he said, straightening up, adjusting himself. "We should-"
"Food," said Rob.
And Joe said, "Yeah, all right," because he was hungry. He had a right to be hungry, after all.
They got into the van and drove back up Wilshire to Fairfax, where Rob swung right and then abruptly left, into the parking lot of Johnie's Coffee Shop. They were led to a table in the back where the red plastic booth made obscene noises under the slide of Joe's thighs. Rob, unsurprisingly, ordered a burger and a milkshake; Joe stared at the menu for a long time before ordering a salad and an iced tea. Rob kicked him under the table as soon as the waitress had gone. "You turning into a girl, Flanigan?"
Joe did not blush. "It's Hollywood." Though it was at times like these that he missed the magazine business, as miserable as it had been: as a journalist it was not only accepted, it was practically encouraged that you do nothing but sit behind your desk and wolf down Philly cheesesteaks. It meant you were dedicated.
Rob made a little 'hmm' sound and fiddled with the jukebox. "You got a quarter?" Joe dug around in his pocket and handed him one. In absence of anything more hardcore, Rob's tastes apparently went toward The King: he put on "Pocketful of Rainbows" and drummed his fingers on the Formica until the food came. In ten years, he hadn't gotten over the habit of slopping ketchup all over everything or slurping his milkshake, but Joe forgave him when he discreetly offered up his fries.
Joe was alternating bites of lettuce, chunks of fried potato, and brief glances at Rob's pale and surprisingly pensive reflection in the diner's window, when something he'd been thinking about before crept back up on him. "Rob...have you been to L.A. before?"
There was ketchup on Rob's chin; he didn't seem to notice. "Yeah. A couple of times."
Joe had figured that had to be the case: Rob clearly had friends here, he knew people and places. More, seemingly, than Joe did after five years' residence. But that wasn't (mostly) what was bothering him. "How come you never looked me up? Did you not know I was here?"
"No, I knew." The ketchup was still there, a red dot just below the corner of Rob's lip. Joe stared at him, waiting for him to…to wipe it away, to continue, explain himself.
"I didn't think..." Rob shrugged. "I guess I didn't think that you'd want to see me."
Why? But Joe didn't need to ask why. He could think of a thousand reasons why Rob would think that. Whether or not they were true.
"Oh," he said. "Well. I'm glad you did come. I'm glad to see you now."
Rob blushed and ducked his head. For a dangerous moment, it seemed like the most natural, sensible thing in the world for Joe to reach out and wipe the ketchup from his face, hold Rob's chin in his hand and rub the pad of his thumb over the corner of his lips. But then Rob coughed and pawed at his own face with the back of his hand. "Eat your rabbit food, Flanigan," he said. "We've still got a long night ahead of us."
It actually went by remarkably fast. They drove down to the Venice Boardwalk, where Rob talked Joe into buying a ridiculous leather jacket that Joe was never going to wear, and Rob bought a hideous Hawaiian shirt that somehow looked strangely perfect, vivid and bright against Rob's pale skin. Then Joe made the mistake of remarking on how surprised he was that their day had yet to include massive drinking, so they nipped over to a pub on 2nd Street and drank warm beer while a lot of British and Australian ex-pats screamed expletives at some soccer game. It wasn't a sport either Joe or Rob followed, but after the first time Rob joined in the shouting for no reason other than that he could, Joe discovered that it was remarkably therapeutic to bellow obscenities at people who couldn't hear you in a room full of strangers. They ended up staying on for a cricket match and a meal of bad pub food before tumbling back out onto the sidewalk, still shouting "Go, Chalky!" and snorting with laughter. By then it was already dark.
Staring at the lights coming on along the Promenade, Joe spent a brief moment wondering what Kathy was doing, and how she was feeling: excited, ready, nervous, trepidacious? Then Rob tugged on the sleeve of his new leather coat. "Roller coaster," he said. "Cotton candy." Joe stuffed his hands into his pockets and followed him toward the pier.
The rides were stupidly expensive, and more creaky than fast, but they went on once anyway, earning odd looks from the pair of ten-year-olds in front of them. They really shouldn't be out here unsupervised, Joe thought, and then one of them stuck his tongue out at him. "Naaaah," Joe said back, without thinking.
Rob chuckled. "Better hold on," he advised the kids as their car rose up and up. "If you don't hold on your fingers will come off."
"That doesn't make any sense," said one of the kids, while the other flashed his tongue again. But they both held on until their knuckles turned white.
The ride kind of sucked, but Joe got off feeling energized-positively bouncing with it. Rob wanted to go look off the end of the pier, and Joe trotted along after him, semi-reluctantly. "You know," he said. "That ride was kind of anti-climatic. If we really wanted to make a killing, do you know what we should do?"
"What?" Rob picked at a barnacle. It was too dark to see very much, but the sound of the waves breaking against the pier was very loud, almost primal.
"Charge people to ride in your van with you." Joe shot off a sloppy grin. "It's an extreme experience even for thrill-seekers!"
He should know, Joe thought. Sure, his life hadn't been all that exciting lately, but he wanted, he wanted- Suddenly, he was scrambling up onto the rail. "Jesus Christ!" said Rob, as Joe did a little high-wire act, standing above the waves like he was walking across the sky with only the big top above him. He hummed circus music and waggled his arms. "For fuck's sake, Joe, get down!"
"Top of the world, ma!" said Joe, and leapt back to the safety of the pier's big, warped boards. He over-balanced and landed on his knees. "Ow."
He felt Rob's hands close around his back, under his arms. "I actually can't tell if you need more alcohol, or less."
"Oh, more." Joe turned and blinked out at the horizon: the sun was completely gone; it was almost tomorrow. "And what about strippers? I thought for sure there would be strippers."
For a moment Rob didn't say anything. It was very dark: Joe couldn't make out his expression at all. Then, "I've got a cooler of beer in the car."
"I knew I could count on you," Joe said.
"Yeah," said Rob. "Old reliable. That's me."
They drove down the coast until they found a more secluded stretch of sand. Joe didn’t even know what neighborhood they were in anymore; as far as he was concerned, they were off the map. But this looked like the kind of place Rob would like, that both of them would have liked. There were little pits dug at irregular intervals along the beach, ready-made for campfire tales and roasted marshmallows. Joe pulled Rob’s cooler out from under a stack of magazines (Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, and The Economist) and dragged it over to where Rob was trying, futilely, to light a fire. Joe watched him for a couple of seconds before bursting out laughing. Rob shot him a peeved look. “You sound like a dirty old man when you do that.”
Joe changed his mind about pointing out that he wasn’t the one with back issues of The Economist tucked away in his van. “I am a dirty old man,” he said.
“You’re twenty-nine!” Rob flopped back into the sand. He sounded angry. Joe stared.
“You want me to do that?” he said after a moment.
“Yeah.”
Joe tried to grin. “It’s easy, you know.” He rearranged the sticks. “Haven’t you ever been camping?”
Rob shook his head. “No.”
Joe felt oddly pleased that he had done something Rob hadn’t, although of course he’d done plenty of things that Rob had never even thought about-filled out a tax return, for example. Bought drapes. Signed a pre-nup.
“I’ll take you sometime,” he said as the fire sparked to life in his hands.
“Yeah, sure,” said Rob. “Gimme a beer.”
They lay back in the sand, each clutching a bottle of Labatt. Constellation-wise, it wasn’t a particularly spectacular night. The sky looked muddy, but the sound of the waves was powerful, and Joe could see the rise and fall of Rob’s chest out of the corner of his eye. His own chest felt tight. He attempted to soothe it with another sip of beer.
Something in his throat itched. He tried to hum it away. The humming felt good. He tried to think of songs he knew-“Pocketful of Rainbows” came to mind. I don’t worry, he thought as he hummed, whenever skies are grey above… And then he wasn’t humming, he was singing, only it wasn’t Elvis, it was them, one of their shitty little Ramones-knockoff songs. Joe sang and Rob joined in, harmonizing poorly and drumming his foot against the cooler. They sang as much of “Gunk” as Joe could remember (and there wasn’t all that much to it, really) then transitioned into “(I’m Not A) Monkey For Your Love” before Joe’s mind blanked right in the middle of a line. Rob kept going for a couple of bars before trailing off. “Huh,” he said. “We really did sort of suck.”
“Yeah,” said Joe, sighing. “But it was fun.”
His current bottle (No. 5 including the pub beers, he was pretty sure) was disappointingly empty, but Joe held onto it. He wet his finger on his tongue and ran it slowly around the rim. “Hey,” he said suddenly. “The other guys…when are they showing up?”
Rob was silent, and Joe spent a moment wondering if he had fallen asleep. He had once crashed in the middle of an A&P, his arms tangled around the handle of the shopping cart, his head almost in the-
“They’re not.”
Joe sat up, sand drifting down around him like rain. “What?”
“They’re not coming. I’m not really in touch with them anymore.”
“Oh.” Joe blinked. He wasn’t disappointed, not really, but his stomach felt all tied up in knots. “And this bachelor party…”
Rob had pulled his legs up to his chest, the hand holding his beer slung loose over his knees. “I didn’t really plan anything,” he said, flatly. “I just…”
“What?” said Joe, surprised at the intensity of his tone. Not surprised. “You just…what?”
“I just wanted to see you, all right?” Beer sloshed into the sand. “Ten years, Joe! And tomorrow…”
“We can still see each other,” Joe said. But he felt like he did when he was in front of the camera sometimes, saying someone else’s poorly-written, insincere words.
Rob snorted. “I know which way your life is going, and which way mine is, and they’re really not the same. So.” He scrambled for the beer bottle, which was now sand-encrusted and most likely sand-filled. He thrust it upward in a poor attempt at a jaunty toast. “One last hurrah!”
Joe looked at him. His empty bottle was still cold and glassy in his hand. He could easily raise it.
But, “I don’t want one last hurrah,” he said. “I want…
“I want,” he tried again. “I want-”
The word died in his throat. He stared at Rob, and it was like their last goodbye, ten years ago. Rob had brought him to the airport in his stupid, smelly van, and at the gate they’d exchanged lots of idiotic pleasantries-“Don’t eat too much brie” and “Take care of Sally for me” and “See you soon, see you soon.” And then, as their handshake had turned into a hug, Joe had almost- He’d almost-
“-You,” he said, and kissed him.
He meant it to be a short kiss, a simple statement of intent. But instead Rob opened up beneath him, took him eagerly inside. Joe clutched Rob’s shoulder and tried to cling to rationality, to realize that it was strange that he was suddenly sitting in his best friend’s lap. But it wasn’t strange, not strange at all-just overdue. Well, actually, the press of Rob’s erection against his own hardening cock was a little weird, but if there was anything that Rob had taught him, that Rob had shown him, reminded him of today, it was that weird could be good. And anyway, Joe was a pretty weird guy; he only made it worse when he tried to hide it.
And it would be impossible to hide this forever, for the rest of his life. Rob tasted boozy and delicious and he made Joe moan-just kissing him made Joe make noises he had never heard from himself, desperate relieved sobs and pants as he pushed Rob back flat against the ground. Rob was saying “Joe, Joe, Joe-ack, sand in uncomfortable places!-Joe,” and moving against him, clawing frantically at the hair at the back of Joe’s neck. And they were making out on the beach like teenagers. It was fantastic.
So they kept doing it. Rob rolled them onto their sides-so they’d each get an equal dose of sand in uncomfortable places, probably, but it also allowed Joe to run his hand up and down Rob’s side, touching his cheek and then his shoulder and arm and elbow, then threading their fingers together, then caressing Rob’s thigh and the generous curve of his ass. Joe was hard, but he felt like just kissing Rob had released a huge dam of want. He could wait. They had time.
Time. Joe froze. Rob was working his way up under Joe’s shirt and feeling his spine stiffen, he froze, too. Joe let out a breath. “I’m getting married tomorrow,” he said.
Rob’s hand was shaking as he carefully pulled back. “I- I’m so, I’m so sor-”
Joe caught Rob’s hand. He knew he had to say something, had to make a decision, a decisive movement. Do I dare, do I dare, do I dare…
He swallowed and said, “I’ll have you know I’m not that kind of girl.”
Rob said, “What?”
Joe laughed. He felt drunk and completely sober, both at the same time. “The type to give it up the day before her wedding. You’re not going to buy the cow if you can have the milk for free.”
Rob furrowed his brow. “You want me to marry you?”
That had not been at all where Joe was going. That was exactly where he was going. “Yes, please.” He thought for a moment. “Let’s go to Vegas!”
Rob leapt liltingly to his feet. “My friend Dave can take us!” Then he knelt back down again and gave Joe a long, wet, obscene kiss. “Bring the cooler.”
There was a payphone in the parking lot. Rob made a quick call, then joined Joe over on the concrete bench where he’d plopped down. Joe’s mind was buzzing. He was terrified, and yet he felt great, happy and excited and horny as fuck. He opened another beer and made out with Rob for a while.
He had his tongue down Rob’s throat and Rob’s hand down his pants when a beat-up old Cadillac pulled into the parking lot at a speed that looked positively grandfatherly compared to Rob’s driving, but still resulted in an impressive squeal of tires. The window was unrolled and a man leaned his head out. “You rang?”
“Dave!” Rob practically dragged him out the car, enveloping him in an octopus-like hug. Joe would have felt jealous of the hand patting Dave's back, but it had just been wrapped around Joe’s dick, so. As Rob stepped back to allow Dave to breathe, Joe offered him a theatrical bow. “Jeeves?” he said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Dave, good-naturedly. “Why don’t you guys get in the back? You’re not allergic to dog hair, are you?”
Joe wasn’t, and even if he had been, he wouldn’t have cared. He opened the door and yanked Rob into the car, pulling him on top of him. He licked at his ear.
“Las Vegas, Jeeves!” he said, catching Dave’s raised eyebrow in the rearview mirror. “And step on it!”
For the first half an hour or so, as they lurched along the I-10, Rob and Dave caught up in a series of snorts and half sentences, and Joe sucked on Rob’s neck. It was only after they hit the 40 and were gliding through the desert toward Victorville that Dave stole a glance over his shoulder and said, “So. You guys are getting married?”
“Yup!” said Joe.
“I’m going to make an honest man out of him,” said Rob, proudly.
“I have a tux fitted and everything,” Joe said. “Although…” He frowned. “I left it in L.A.”
“You should wear white,” said Rob, poking his arm.
“I should! I’m a virgin,” he told Dave, confidentially, and then ruined it by snickering.
Dave fiddled with the radio, flipping past a bunch of late-night evangelists before finding some weird, crackly jazz recording. “You’re sure you want to do this,” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” said Joe, decisively. “Although,” he added, after a minute. “Somebody’s probably going to need to call my fiancée.”
“Oh, brother,” said Dave.
They stopped for gas on the far side of Barstow. Rob was telling TRUE STORIES-“And my friend Pete’s brother Ted, his girlfriend Jill went to school with the guy whose cousin picked up this girl on the side of the road and brought her home, but she forgot her sweater-” and Joe was laughing and making appropriate sounds of disbelief and surprise and awe when he had an urgent realization. He scrambled at Rob’s arm. “We need stuff! We can’t get married if we don’t have stuff!”
“Oh, I have condoms,” said Rob.
Dave choked on his Coke.
“No, no, no,” Joe said. “Although, that’s good.” That was really good. “But for the wedding-we need something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…”
Rob nodded. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Oh!” he said after a moment. “My underwear’s pretty old!”
“Good, good!” said Joe. Suddenly he was back in his kitchen that morning, watching Rob leaning into the fridge and wondering what the hell he was doing there. The memory seemed colored by a different brush, now, but that didn’t change the fact that- “And hey! They’re blue, too!”
“And you can borrow them!” said Rob. “Here, take off your pants!”
The sound of Dave thunking his head against the wheel was drowned out by Joe’s frantic struggle with his buttons. He kicked his pants down his legs, revealing his own near-new Hanes boxer-briefs. Rob paused with his hands on the fly of his own pants, staring at the bulge of Joe’s erection. Then, Dave must’ve swerved to avoid a coyote or something, because Rob fell on top of him, his big hands clutching at Joe’s thighs and tugging them apart. “But my virtue!” said Joe.
Rob started mouthing Joe’s cock through the cotton. “Of course, blowjobs don’t count,” Joe reflected. “I’m sure the world will one day agree with me.”
“Mmsure,” said Rob. His voice was muffled.
“Oh, God,” said Dave. He cranked up the music.
Joe threaded his fingers through Rob's hair. He stared down his body and it was like looking over an alien landscape. The car bumped and Rob yanked Joe's boxers down, pausing to bite at Joe's hipbone. Dreamily, "You have a pretty mouth," Joe said.
"I know," said Rob. "I'm going to suck your cock with it."
"La la la la!" said Dave. Joe laughed his dirty old man laugh and pet the back of Rob's head.
Then Rob was taking him into his pretty, pretty mouth, and Joe couldn't make any noises that didn't sound choked and desperate and kinda slutty as he tried to keep a grip on the upholstery and not fuck into Rob's mouth. Like everything about Rob, his cocksucking was kind of sloppy and poorly thought out, but he made up for it in enthusiasm and sheer, ballsy creativity. Pun not really intended, because Rob wasn't actually touching him except with his mouth, but Rob's mouth was all Joe needed, all he had wanted or needed, and now Joe had it, was surging into Rob as the car bounced along a desert road at night and a man Joe had met less than three hours ago tried not to listen and switched the soundtrack to heavy metal.
Joe came in the middle of KISS’ “Lick It Up,” and almost as soon as he had recovered enough not to be seeing stars (spinning spinning spinning high above the desert dust) he was laughing again, pulling Rob up his body and kissing his swollen lips as he jerked Rob’s beautiful blue boxers down his hairy thighs and took him in his hand. Rob rutted sharply against Joe’s hand and against Joe’s belly and came almost right away, slumping down and burying his head against Joe’s shoulder. Joe kicked until his own shorts were free of his foot and wiped them both off. His head was propped uncomfortably against the door handle. He sighed happily.
“You owe me, Rob!” said Dave from the front, in the tone of someone who was both horrified and amused, not to mention a little turned on. “You owe me big time!”
“I’ll buy you a pony,” said Rob, sleepily. Joe felt his own eyes flutter closed.
They opened again when the car lurched to a stop. “We’re here,” said Dave, and blinking, Joe could see an impossible rainbow of lights, shadowed by- “But I’m hiding behind this bush until you put some pants on.”
Joe had dozed; he felt a lot more sober than he’d been on the beach. He paused for a second, wiping dog hair off of his cheek, half-expecting his sensible self to regain control at any minute. But instead he jerked Rob’s old blue boxers up his hips and said, “That’s a topiary.” Dave peered around the seat, then quickly faced front again when he saw that Rob was still pantsless. “Not a bush.”
“Topiary’s a type of bush,” said Rob, searching for his trousers with his ass in the air. Joe wet his lips.
“There were going to be topiary sculptures at my wedding,” he said, still waiting for that terrifying roller coaster drop. “I guess there still are.”
“We still need something new, though.” Rob seemed perfectly pleased at having to go commando.
“How about my emotional trauma?” suggested Dave. “That’s pretty new.”
Joe and Rob considered this. “Naaaw.”
“Well, we’re newly gay,” Rob said, getting out the car, still hopping as he put on his left shoe. “Maybe that counts.”
Joe flushed. Now he wanted to be drunker again. Luckily, they’d brought the cooler. “Sure,” he said, popping open another beer as Dave went to check if Elvis was available. But he snuck a stick of gum from the pack Dave had bought in Barstow out of the glove compartment and stuck it in his pocket.
Rob found him leaning up against the hood of the Caddy, drinking his beer and admiring the topiary. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. He glanced at his wrist, which did not sport a watch. “It’s only, er, three a.m. or something. There’s still time…”
Joe turned him around and kissed him. He was forceful, pushing until Rob was practically splayed across the hood. “We’re doing this,” he said. “I am doing it…”
Rob’s eyes looked large and drunk with-something, something that wasn’t booze; that had smashed all over the pavement. “Yeah. Okay.”
Inside, Elvis was not pleased to see them. He shot Dave an irritated look. “You realize that this is illegal, right?”
“But this is Vegas,” said Joe. “You guys do prostitution, and that’s illegal in forty-eight other states.”
“I love Rhode Island,” said Rob, dreamily.
Joe elbowed him. “Shut up, you’re about to pledge yourself to me.”
“I don’t care if this is San Fran-fucking-cisco, I’m not gonna-”
Dave finished digging around in his pocket and gave Elvis a long and lingering handshake.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” said Elvis, slipping the hand into his own pocket before brushing down his jumpsuit. “Now if the, er, grooms would walk this way, a-thank you very much.”
Joe and Rob moved to stand in front of the pulpit. “Oh, shit!” said Rob, suddenly. “Rings!”
Joe blinked away the image of the ring he had bought Kathy, tucked away in its black velvet box. His face felt hot. “Don’t worry,” said Dave, coming up behind them. He tossed aside a plastic bag and produced a pair of Ring Pops. “Courtesy of your local 7-Eleven, Barstow.”
“That is a convenient store,” said Rob. “Can I have the blue raspberry one?”
“Sure,” said Joe, breathing again, smiling again. “I like watermelon.” He took the bright blue ring from Dave’s hand and held it at the ready.
“Just for the record,” said Elvis, “I dress up as a dead guy for a living and frequently go sequin-shopping, and I think you people are weird.”
“Weird can be good,” said Joe, and for once didn’t feel like he was acting.
Then Elvis was encouraging them to hold hands and saying all the things about love and commitment that Joe had been preparing himself for months to hear, and maybe it was because they were now coming from the lips of The King, but they didn’t seem so scary anymore. And then he was saying, “I, Joe, take you, Rob, to be my semi-lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better or for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness, drunkenness, and in health; to love and to cherish and to do dirty things to; till death do us part-or we both come to our senses.” And Rob said it back, and then, before Elvis could even figure out what, exactly, to pronounce them, they were kissing, and Joe was sucking blue raspberry flavor off Rob’s fingers, and for an extra five bucks, Elvis sang them “Pocketful of Rainbows” as they spun and danced and ran for the car.
Dave dropped them off at a hotel further up the strip, announcing they he was now going to go get very drunk. “You have nice friends,” said Joe, as the Cadillac bounced away.
“I do,” said Rob, with great sincerity. He ripped some flowers out of the hotel’s landscaping and presented them to Joe. “A bouquet for my bride?”
Dirt dripped down Joe’s front. “Awesome,” he said.
Rob nodded vigorously. “I’d like to destroy your virtue now.”
Joe thought about this. Then he grabbed Rob’s sleeve and dragged him inside. “The honeymoon suite!” he told the clerk, slamming his fist and his flowers down on the desk. The clerk narrowed her eyes at them. “Oh,” said Joe. He grinned and produced his AMEX.
A bellhop whisked them upstairs and into a room with a gigantic heart-shaped bed. There were flowers everywhere (although Joe liked the bouquet Rob had given him best) and an iced bottle of champagne and two glasses. “Wait, how does that go again? Beer before champagne…”
“You’ll never abstain.”
“You’ll be master of your domain.”
“Top of the food chain.”
“In the fast lane.”
“Batshit insane.”
“Oh, but I like it there,” said Joe.
He laughed and his flowers went everywhere as Rob toppled him onto the bed.
Later, with his legs up over Rob’s shoulders and Rob in him, holding him steady and yet moving in him, moving him, taking him there; later, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling because he felt like it was about to fly off, Joe thought: This is the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever done in my life. More than climbing down a drainpipe or running up a building, this-this was it. Freefall.
Joe grabbed Rob’s arm and held on.
On the morning of his wedding day, Joe woke up with a hangover in a big heart-shaped bed in the wrong state already married to the man who was sitting across from him, his hair sticking straight up as he stared back with wide, scared eyes. “Hey,” said Joe bravely, and his voice cracked a little.
“Hey,” Rob said.
Joe’s ass was sore. He rolled over to look at the clock, and that felt a bit better. The numbers, too, were somewhat reassuring: it was still early. If he left now, if he drove hard, he could still make it. Last night, everything that had happened-he could put it all away behind its veil of unreality and return to his real marriage, his real life. He could.
And he knew what that would be like. Like getting up in front of the camera every day, acting the responsible person, the perfect husband. It was not a bad way to make a living. He knew that.
But it was no way to live your life.
He looked at Rob, sitting sentry at the end of the bed with his face propped on his hands, wearing one of the white terrycloth robes provided by the hotel that already Joe knew with 99% certainty they were going to steal. It had ‘His’ stitched in blue thread over the heart. Convention dictated that Joe was therefore going to be stuck with the ‘Hers’ robe-but not if he went naked. Joe was pretty sure that Rob wouldn’t have any problem with Joe going naked, with either of them letting it all hang out.
He got out of bed, sure enough naked as the day he was born. He knelt beside Rob, reaching up to touch his cheek. Rob breathed out; it was his only indication of relief. They kissed, long and sweet…until Rob started back, sneezing. “I’m sorry, I think I still have dog hair…somewhere. I didn’t want to tell Dave, but I am a little allergic.”
Joe grinned. “Well, let’s get it off of you, then. Shower?”
Rob’s eyes lit up. “Together?”
Joe nodded and tugged Rob to his feet, toward the bathroom and whatever awaited them. “It’s nice to be clean.”
NOTES:
1. The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a real place. I highly recommend a visit.
2. Joe and Rob’s breakfast conversation was inspired by a much funnier exchange in Garden State: “I can’t believe you’re not really retarded!” Actually, I think that movie inspired this story in a lot of weird, subtle ways. Hmm.
3. Pocketful of Rainbows by Elvis Presley
4. (I’m Not A) Monkey For Your Love-the lyrics in Latin!
Simia pro amore tuo non sum
Simia non sum
Simia pro amore tuo non sum
Simia non sum!
(Any resemblance to Poe’s “Junkie” is purely coincidental.)