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The cab driver had kicked them out. It was hard to be so bad that a cabbie would kick a customer out of their vehicle but Gunnar Jensen and Barney Ross had managed it somehow. It might have been Gunnar thrashing around in the backseat and swearing loudly in several languages while Barney yelled at him to calm the fuck down, or it could have been Barney dry heaving a few times out the passenger seat window. It could have been how drunk they were and how threatening looking the knife that clattered out of Gunnar’s jacket and onto the middle console of the car was.
Whatever the reason, the cabbie pulled over and demanded they get out with a mostly firm tone; only a few of his words sounded shaky. Barney protested but in the end conceded to pulling Gunnar out of the back seat. The tall blond slumped out of the cab after scrambling to retrieve his knife. He sat on the curb of the sidewalk with his head cradled in his hands as Barney struggled with his wallet to pay the cab fare. As the cab peeled away with the crunch of gravel and a squeal of tires, Barney sat down next to Gunnar.
“What do we do now?” he said.
Gunnar managed to stow his knife back in his jacket. “I’m starving,” he replied.
Barney’s stomach rumbled slightly. Food would be a good idea. He was getting hungry and it would help fight off the hangover the next day. “Wait,” he said. “I... I know where we are. There’s some restaurants close by.”
--
They stumbled into a Denny’s. It was some time after three in the morning and it was the only thing that was open. Barney had heard someone say once that you never went to Denny’s; that Denny’s happened to you, and he supposed that was correct. It was not an establishment that he would frequent on a normal day. At his age and with all of the physical damage he had endured over the years, he tried to eat healthy. But sometimes all he needed was a huge plate of waffles and bacon, goddamnit.
The waitress, a college-aged girl with brown hair, seated them in a more or less empty section of the restaurant. Other customers seemed to be tired travellers just getting in from late flights from the airport nearby. A few men in dress shirts with loosened ties sat across the room. A couple booths were taken by teenagers who had nowhere else to be so late at night. There were also some drunk people but no one was as near wrecked as Gunnar and Barney. The waitress greeted them with a pained smile. She knew they were hammered and really didn’t want to deal with their bullshit but the two of them managed to pull themselves together long enough to make it to their booth.
“Would you like anything to drink?” she asked. Her name tag said ‘Bailey’.
“Water,” Barney said. He glanced at Gunnar who had lapsed into a brooding silence. “Coffee, too. For both of us.”
Bailey gave them another fake smile. “Great. I’ll be back right away with menus.”
The two men stared at each other from across the table. Gunnar blinked slowly. “How are we getting home?”
“Uh,” Barney ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”
The waitress came back with the menus and their drinks. She put them down with her customer service smile on. “I’ll come back for your orders!” she said with convincing cheerfulness after depositing the water and coffee on the table from the carrying tray.
“I can’t believe the cabbie kicked us out,” Gunnar grumbled. He flipped the menu open.
Barney took a sip of water. “If you weren’t such a drunk idiot he wouldn’t have.”
“What did I do?” Gunnar said indignantly. “You’re just as drunk as me. You were puking out the window.”
“Almost puking,” Barney corrected with annoyance. “I didn’t actually do it.”
The Swede rolled his eyes. “Right.” He lifted the menu to indicate that he was turning his attention away from the conversation. Barney snorted and busied himself with choosing what he wanted to eat. Bailey returned to take their orders not long after. Barney ordered waffles with easy over eggs, hash browns and extra bacon. Gunnar decided to get pancakes, sausages and scrambled eggs with toast. Bailey wrote it all down in a worn out notepad, gathered the menus, and promised it would be ready soon.
“I love you,” Gunnar said quietly, reaching a hand across the table.
Barney made a face at the unexpected declaration. “Don’t... don’t do that here,” he muttered, ignoring Gunnar’s extended hand. “There’s people around.”
“They can’t hear me,” Gunnar snapped. His face was flushed red. “They aren’t looking. What does that matter anyway? It’s none of their business.”
“You never know,” Barney said, feeling his cheeks burning too. “Someone might start trouble. I can’t handle that right now. I’m too hammered.”
Ugly laughter burst from Gunnar’s mouth. “So you’re protecting us, right? You’re not ashamed of me?” His tone was bitingly sarcastic. The words stung and made Barney flinch. That was not what he had meant. He was not ashamed of his relationship with Gunnar. He loved the big man, but it was also a private relationship. No one outside of their personal lives needed to know about it. He was never the type to broadcast the status of his relationships, even when he had been seeing women. A part of him did struggle with being seen as gay— he didn’t want to attract the ignorant attention of strangers; he didn’t want to be made to feel abnormal, to feel less than somehow.
He was the American standard on the outside. He was masculine, he had been a soldier. He rode motorcycles and drove classic cars. He had money. Not as much as some people but enough to buy the finer things. He liked good beer and expensive cigars. He was handsome and knew it; he was proud of his body and maintained a physical standard for himself. An ex-girlfriend had said once that he was the entire concept of the ideal American packed into a testosterone-fueled Italian shell.
Holding Gunnar’s hand in public would shatter that image.
Was he ashamed of Gunnar? The answer was always no. He was not ashamed, he was simply too proud for his own good. A lifetime of meeting societal expectation had given him comfort. Stepping out of the comfort was to step into the unknown and a good mercenary never stepped into the unknown.
“You remind me of my father,” Gunnar spat. His big fists were clenched tightly on the tabletop. His lips were curled in a sardonic smile. “Gotta keep it under wraps. Don’t let people know you’re a faggot.”
Barney’s eyes narrowed and his body felt cold. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. His head was buzzing. He was so drunk. They were both too drunk to be having this conversation. It could only end badly.
“My son won’t be a faggot,” Gunnar said in a mocking voice, obviously imitating the father Barney had never met or even heard about. “Stop fucking crying. Only faggots and women cry and you’re not either of those.”
“I didn’t know,” Barney said.
Gunnar shrugged, the anger suddenly evaporating. It was replaced by exhaustion. He was drunk, tired, and sad. His arms were itching. He was craving a fix. He had managed to kick his drug habit but he still had cravings. It had been a long battle with a handful of relapses but he made it to semi-sobriety. Alcohol was a whole other way to cope. It was the crutch that replaced the drugs. There was no way in hell that he would give up drinking. It was a healthier way to deal with his problems. Healthier than self-mutilation, which had started when he was thirteen and had continued into his twenties, it was healthier than the drugs that had replaced cutting himself.
So what if Barney didn’t know about his shit-sack abusive father? That didn’t change the fact that he wouldn’t hold his hand in a practically deserted restaurant at twenty past three in the morning. Gunnar pointed at Barney. “You never got slapped around when you were a kid. I did every time I did something he thought was wrong. I learned to stop crying over things when I was six because he smacked me so hard my nose bled and half my face bruised. He never stopped yelling at me, either.” Gunnar took a deep breath. He had never told anyone about his dad. Growing up in his family had been hell. His dad was a fucking terror in the house and his word was law. Beatings were not exclusive to his son, either. His mother was a recipient as well.
When he was younger, Gunnar resented that his mother wouldn’t stand up for him. She was the only other significant adult in his life, she was his mom and moms were supposed to protect their kids. When he got a little older he understood that not standing up for him was a sort of way of protecting him. If she objected to her husband’s ‘parenting methods’, he would beat the shit out of her and then beat the extra shit out of him just to teach her a lesson. Gunnar learned very quickly what behaviours triggered his father’s rage. He had to excel in school after being identified as a child prodigy. He had to be the top of his class ever since he could remember. He learned to hide his feelings. It was not okay to show emotion. He thoroughly learned to hide his attraction to men. If his father caught him looking at another boy, even if it was innocent like seeing what sports jersey the boy was wearing, the consequences would come swiftly in the privacy of their home. His own father was ashamed of him and that shame was expressed with anger under the guise of ‘straightening him the fuck out to be a real man’.
Bailey the waitress reappeared with their food. The conversation between the men ceased as she passed the plates to them. She refilled their water and topped off the coffee, and asked if they needed anything else before leaving them again.
“But then I got bigger,” Gunnar said, continuing where Bailey had interrupted. “I started working out. I played sports in school. I got big, I got strong, I got mean. I wouldn’t come home at night anymore. I partied a lot. He caught me with a boy once. I thought he was going to try to kill me but I fought back. I broke his nose and his arm, fucked him up real good. I threatened to cut his throat if he ever touched me or my mother again.”
Barney sat in stunned silence. He had never heard anything about this part of Gunnar’s past before. He was shaken by how little he actually knew about his lover. Barney had only been with women until he and Gunnar had gotten involved so he had never experienced anything like that. No wonder Gunnar was so messed up. Besides the drug issues, he had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder which he was reluctant to get medication for. He still had tendencies for cutting. His self-esteem was horrible. Things began clicking into place in Barney’s head. Lots of things about Gunnar were making more and more sense. He no longer felt drunk.
He stretched out his hand and took Gunnar’s. He worked his fingers in between the Swede’s and clasped them tightly. “I didn’t know. I’ll try harder.” He made sure Gunnar looked him in the eye. “I love you.”
--
While they finished their meal, Barney called for another cab to come pick them up.
“Cab will be here in fifteen. Also, I want a smoke,” Barney said. “Let’s pay and wait for it outside.”
“Sure.”
Barney took Gunnar’s hand again as they made their way to the front. Gunnar raised his eyebrows in mild surprise but grinned big. Bailey came to ring them up at the cash register. She glanced at them for a brief second but did not react. She totalled their bill and Barney covered it. He gave her a tip large enough to make her smile genuinely for the first time that night.
Outside the Denny’s, Barney lit one of Gunnar’s cigarette and blew a puff of smoke into the early morning air. It was past four am now and would be getting light soon. Gunnar wrapped his arms around Barney’s waist and hugged him tightly from behind. He was warm. He pressed his face against the crook of Barney’s neck and shoulder. “I love you,” he said, voice muffled. “You’re everything.”
“I love you, too,” Barney replied, cigarette dangling from his lips.
They stayed like that for a few minutes. Gunnar finally released him and lit a cigarette for himself. The door of the Denny’s swung open and the men both glanced over. The teenagers were leaving. Two girls and three guys. The girls were giggling, eyes darting pointedly to stare. One of the boys leered and muttered “cocksuckers” as the group walked by to get to their cars.
Gunnar heard him. He took a drag from his cigarette, caught the boy’s gaze, winked and blew him a kiss. The boy dropped his head and walked a little faster. “Little motherfucker,” Gunnar said conversationally, just loud enough for the teenagers to hear. “I should kick the shit out of him.”
“You’re scarin’ them,” Barney said. “They’re just kids.”
“Yeah, and probably scare gay kids their age.” Gunnar blew a stream of smoke out of his mouth. Barney didn’t reply. He had a point.
The cab arrived and took them to Barney’s house with no incident. Barney had forgotten his keys inside so Gunnar let them in with his set. They shed their jackets at the front door. Barney kicked off his shoes while Gunnar bent to unlace his motorcycle boots. They went upstairs to their bedroom. Exhaustion had definitely set in and both were looking forward to some sleep. Barney pulled his jeans and shirt off, leaving them on the floor to pick up in the morning. He got into bed in his boxers. Gunnar collapsed on the bed fully clothed.
“C’mon,” Barney said, “Get out of your clothes. Let’s go to sleep.”
“Can’t,” Gunnar murmured. “I’ll sleep like this. Too tired.”
Barney rolled over and propped himself up on his elbows to kiss Gunnar. “You’re fuckin’ weird.”
“No, you.” Gunnar said in reply, eyes closed and fading away.
--
Gunnar woke up with a warm weight being placed on his chest. He opened his eyes halfway. It was a plate of pancakes drizzled in syrup. He turned his head slightly and saw that Barney was standing beside the bed. He had large circles under his eyes and his cheeks were pallid. His short black hair was sticking up in the front. “I made you breakfast,” he said, holding out a fork and knife. Gunnar grabbed the plate to steady it and pushed himself into a sitting position. He took the utensils with a nod of thanks.
“Did you eat?” he asked.
“Too sick,” Barney sat on the edge of the bed and leaned his head on one hand. “I’m hungover. I puked everything up earlier.”
Gunnar ate a mouthful of pancake. It was from an instant batter mix but was exactly what his hungover body needed. Barney slid off the side of the bed and sat with his back against it. His head fell backwards slowly to rest on the mattress. He groaned. Sitting up made him feel too dizzy. Being closer to the ground was better.
“Did you sleep?” Gunnar asked. He was feeling pretty good, all things considered. He drank a lot more than Barney and had developed his hangover routine to perfection. After eating he would get some Gatorade from the fridge, down it as well as drink water, fill his flask with whatever liquor he had left in the cabinet, and he was good to go for the day.
Barney shook his head. “Not a lot.” He didn’t sleep that much, even after passing out from drinking. Not sleeping seemed to be a combination of his old military training and personal demons. Fortunately (or was it unfortunately?) he couldn’t self-medicate with alcohol for long, dreamless sleep. Sometimes he envied how easily and deeply Gunnar could fall asleep. He had woken up around eight in the morning and heaved himself out of bed to the bathroom to vomit. Gunnar slept soundly through it all while Barney violently expelled the contents of his stomach. He felt marginally better afterwards and set about making Gunnar some breakfast. It was a measly apology for being an asshole, but he figured it was better than nothing.
Gunnar took the dishes downstairs to the kitchen after finishing eating. He brought a bottle of Gatorade back up for Barney and for himself. After their first few weeks of more or less living together, Gunnar had stocked the fridge with his hangover cures. He put the bottles on the bedside table and helped pull Barney up to lie down on the bed. “I’m going to shower. You gonna be okay?”
He got a miserable grunt in reply. “Kill me now. Put me out of my misery. Send me back to ‘Nam.”
“Drink the Gatorade.”