Chapter Text
I have rats, can I come over?
It was almost midnight, which was late, late, late, especially if the receiver of the text had to film some extra takes for Brazzos with a 9 a.m. call and was generally falling asleep on his own couch after a dinner, a glass of wine, and a bunch of tv shows that swam before his eyes, indistinguishable from one another.
Yes? Charles wrote back. Why the hell not. Back in 70s he might have been alone, no parties with theater impresarios to attend, but at least he could watch Dick Cavett have an actual conversation with someone about music or politics or show biz. Now there was just Jimmy Fallon yapping away and Cinda fucking Canning confusing him with that other weird actor who happened to have Haden as part of his name.
Oliver descended like a tornado on Dorothy’s house. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he cried out, dropping what suspiciously looked like an overnight bag on the floor in the foyer. He was already in his night clothes. “I got up to make myself a snack because I couldn’t sleep and I guess I’m feeling a little manic right now and I saw these round black shiny things by my toaster and I almost had a heart attack. Look!” He shoved his phone in Charles’ face where Charles could see a photo of a toaster and a slightly blurry Oliver making a vomit motion with his finger and if he zoomed in, a small collection of something black that could be from a rodent.
“It’s a pretty poor excuse if you’ve come over here all panicked and you’ve actually just spilled the chia seeds again,” he noted, handing the phone back.
Oliver flopped on the couch and glared. “It’s not that, I’m sure of it. I sent the picture to Will and posted it on my twitter account and everybody’s been commenting that it’s rats. Or mice. One person did say something about chia seeds but that’s an outlier. It’s obviously rodent in nature!”
“Well, what do you want to do here? Do you still need a snack?” Charles padded to the kitchen and flipped on the light, the little room awash in a soothing golden glow. “I don’t have any dip but I’ve got yogurt, that’s the same consistency, right? Or fruit?” he called from inside the refrigerator.
Oliver declared, “No one eats fruit at night. Don’t you have something like ice cream or a package of a really disgusting processed treat like those Lady Gaga oreos?”
Unsurprisingly, Charles had never heard of that. “Here,” he said, pulling out a plastic container of mango salsa that would have to be sweet enough for Oliver’s taste if he wanted to eat, and grabbing a bag of chips from the pantry. “It’s this or yogurt with chia seeds.”
“Ugh, I’ll take it,” Oliver relented. “Bring Charles some real midnight snacks for his kitchen in case I get hungry again,” he said into his phone.
First the spatulas and now snacks! Oliver might as well just come in and take over his entire life at this point. “Sure, sure, I’ve got plenty of room for the snacks of someone who doesn’t live here!” Charles said pointedly, but just received a winning smile from Oliver in return. He gave up trying to reason and plunged his chip into the fresh dip instead, feeling triumphant that ha, Oliver was indeed going to eat fruit at night. “So what else has been going on with you?” he asked conversationally.
Oliver had fallen quiet and wasn’t actually eating any of the snacks he had wanted. “Look Charles, I’m sorry I ran out the other day in the kitchen when Lucy was over.”
“Oh yeah. Luce and I thought that was weird.”
“Beyond the Sea, that was one of Roberta’s favorite songs. We used to dance around the apartment to it all the time. She was a beautiful dancer, my Roberta.” Oliver didn’t look up, he was transfixed in the retelling of his memory, and the apartment seemed so still, so frozen in the moment, Charles had wished he had turned on the television, or played a podcast through his speakers, or was holding his banjo right now. Anything to direct them away from the unusual sound of Oliver’s sad voice in his darkened living room. “Anyway, I hadn’t heard it in forever, haven’t wanted to hear it at all, until yesterday when you and Lucy were dancing away.”
Charles said softly, “I’m sorry, Oliver. I didn’t know.”
“Of course not!” Oliver huffed with a little laugh. “Who would know?”
“We wondered why you left. But I’m glad you told me now and I think you could tell Lucy too, if you wanted to.”
Oliver leaned back and put his slippered foot on the coffee table, dangerously close to the bag of chips on the edge. He sighed and admitted, “It’s stupid. I guess I just don’t want you or her to think of me as oh, Oliver Putnam, the guy who can’t direct a play to save his ass anymore and owes everyone a shitload of cash for his failures. Or, the guy who lost his wife to a Greek hummus-making criminal sociopath and isn’t even a dad to his own kid.” Instead of knocking the bag off the table, he used his foot to slide the chip bag further from the edge, back to safety from spillage.
Charles recalled the conversation they had that time Oliver had come over for wine and cheese, when he told Charles not to think of himself as such a sad case. He leaned in and put his hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “That’s not how anyone thinks of you, let alone Lucy or me,” he stated firmly with a light pat and then sighed. “We’re really a pair, aren’t we.”
Oddly, Oliver brightened at that. “I guess we are,” he said. “You and Lucy looked so happy yesterday when you were dancing. I forgot what it was like for that song to be happy for someone. Does that make sense at all?”
Charles smiled, thinking of something as stupid as the aged gouda, even though there was still a twinge at his heart, a tiny kiss of sadness fluttering there at the same time. “Yes, it definitely does.”
“We are a pair,” Oliver agreed, and reached up and squeezed Charles’ hand.
It was beyond late now, no sounds of nightfall, no errant notes of conversation floating from the courtyard, no random chime of the elevator and weary footsteps in the hall. From the looks of it, Oliver was reluctant to go and intended to stay the night and Charles resigned himself to that fact as he tidied up the kitchen and found the proper chip clip for his opened bag. After washing his hands, he returned to the living room where Oliver’s head was tipped back on the couch and his eyes were closed.
“Oliver.” He lightly kicked at Oliver’s leg. “Don’t sleep like that. Get comfortable.” He moved to his bedroom to trade his sweater and jeans for his comfy flannel pajamas that he liked to wear in colder weather.
To Charles’ mild horror, Oliver appeared at the bedroom door with his toothbrush dangling from the corner of his mouth and a small, well-worn looking pillow in his hands, the kind that had seen tears from childhood heartbreak and had been dragged to summer sleepaway camps and humid, crowded college dorms and hidden away from ex-wives and decorators because it didn’t match any of the decor. “Um,” began Charles, feeling entirely awkward. He stared at the pillow - it was mint green, with tiny white polkadots. “I know we’re close, but you definitely told me you slept on the couch when you stayed over at Mabel’s.”
“I did. But that’s because she’s younger than Will! You and I are more like the same age, even though you’re definitely older than me by quite a bit.”
“Oh so it was age that made it inappropriate. Okay.” He didn’t know why he was protesting so much.
Oliver balked. “Look, Charles. We can top and tail it if you insist.”
“Top and tail? What are we, the Beatles in Hamburg?” Charles started to organize his phone and his glasses on the bedside table. “Is this like how you told me you used to bed women in college by using a fake British accent?”
Oliver put his pillow down on the bed and made a face that said Charles was being ridiculous. “I didn’t bed women in college using a fake accent. Mainly because that technique was shit and didn’t work. No, I was just giving you and your Victorian sensibilities an out.”
In Charles’ mind an out would have been Oliver returning to his own perfectly good apartment to sleep, in his own bed with his special pillow and dog and bird. A second out obviously would have been the couch. Instead he said, “Hey! I don’t have Victorian sensibilities! I had sex with Jan in this bed don’t forget.” And Emma, he wanted to add, but for some reason didn’t. Oliver hadn’t known Emma so there was no reason to go there. This whole conversation was making him exhausted and stupid.
Oliver rolled his eyes and replied, “Ugh. I’m not forgetting, believe me, although I’d like to.”
“I may not have attended glitter orgies or be on a first name basis with the check-in guy at every public bathhouse in the tri-state area. But I got around. Plenty.” Despite the idiocy of this discussion, Charles found himself pulling back the duvet and settling into the left side, as if he had a side to settle into. He put his head back on his own pillow and stared at the ceiling.
“You don’t have to sell me on that, okay? I have no trouble believing that people want to bed you, Charles,” said Oliver in a quiet and matter-of-fact tone. With no indication that Charles was going to deny him a spot in his bed, Oliver also peeled back the neatly made covers on the right side of the bed and crawled in. He folded his hands over his chest and smiled expectantly.
“You never did like Jan,” Charles finally said.
Oliver turned over to look at him. His little personal pillow was underneath his left cheek. “Well let’s just say, despite my rather glaring failures, I have a director’s instinct for the big picture. And I’m keeping it real for you, her rolls were horrific.”
Charles shook his head. He was quiet for another moment and then confessed, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was talking to Jan. I should’ve told you and Mabel.”
“You must’ve missed her.” Oliver did a small shrug and scooched the minutest inch closer.
“That’s the thing! I don’t miss Jan, as a person. I think I just miss the idea of her. I liked that we had our own jokes and got our bagels. I had someone who wanted to do things with me and tried to get to know me and made plans with me. How pathetic is that?” There was no answer from Oliver next to him. “Jan wanted to take a trip upstate,” he said, out of nowhere.
“Ha! Well, it’s best you didn’t go - nothing good ever comes from going upstate. You would’ve picked some apples and bathed in a lake and she would’ve dumped your body well off the trail in the Adirondacks and a pack of ravenous wolves would’ve feasted on you while you decomposed. And this is New York so everybody probably would’ve thought that old Brazzos just disappeared into a retirement home in Poughkeepsie, where you would star in your nursing home’s version of Death of a Salesman.”
Charles laughed. He liked Oliver’s imagination. “But you wouldn’t have thought that. You would’ve worried and come looking for me. Or called someone to come looking for me. And you never would’ve believed those rumors. I’m way too much of a hottie to be Willy Loman.”
“I’ll give you that, you’re no George C. Scott,” Oliver said, his voice warm with a low thrum. He had scooted himself down in bed like a small child, Charles’ clean cotton sheet and sensible comforter and duvet pulled up to his chin so only the tops of his shoulders and bobbly head and wild hair stuck out. “I guess I miss the idea of Roberta more than I thought too. I was always busy with my own schemes and grandiose plans so we didn’t take a lot of trips as a family but I sometimes wish I had that now. Not the Adirondacks though,” he added, as if there were any doubt about that.
Charles found himself smiling. “You’re not the outdoorsy type.”
“They offered me a chance to do Into the Woods in a real woods and I turned it down, so what does that tell you?”
He couldn’t help it, he laughed out loud at that too and Oliver joined in. After a pause Oliver said, “One time Roberta and Will wanted to go to Niagara Falls. Moi! In Niagara Falls! I don’t do water very well, in case you hadn’t noticed!” Oliver made a little gesture to himself and continued on. “We had a hotel room, I don’t know who booked it, but there was a huge fucking heart-shaped bed in the middle of the room! But no fucking happened on that trip because Will had to sleep with Roberta and I had to curl up at the bottom of the bed on my own! I think it was also the start of my arthritis too.”
With a quick glance over, Charles said, “I can’t tell if this is the worst trip or the best trip you’ve ever taken.”
“Well it was the worst because you would not believe the blue balls I suffered through for a week in that heart-shaped bed! But it was also wonderful, because we all were together and I had everything I loved in the whole world in this one special place, outside of the city.” Oliver sounded happy, not sad. He smacked Charles in the arm. “Hey, so you tell me, what’s the best trip you’ve ever taken?”
This was a sore subject, because Charles could easily name the worst trip he had ever been on. It involved being audaciously dumped and ghosted while sitting in a circular dining room eating the crappiest highest-fat food known to the world, surrounded by pleasantly mediocre families having the time of their lives. Unlike Oliver, his worst trip was definitely not simultaneously his best trip.
Charles said instead, “Three years ago I went to Vienna because I was filming this commercial for a supermarket and their version of mayonnaise in a tube. It’s an Austrian thing, just believe me, don’t ask. It only took a day to film, but I stayed in Vienna for a week just to look around and stuff.”
“And there was something good there?” Oliver prodded.
“I mean, what do you want me to say? I did the usual, ate chocolate cake and drank coffee out of tiny cups with a tiny saucer. I looked at art and walked around the streets in the rain until it got dark and I felt my soul had as much angst as it could take.” He paused. “I guess it was nice to just be with myself and do the things I liked. I didn’t ever really want to go on cruises or have dinner with cartoon characters. I wanted to be with Lucy and Emma.”
“Well maybe you should take me there,” said Oliver decisively. “I’ve never been to Vienna and if you liked it so much alone, it’s gotta be even better with someone like me. It’s never really about the place or the thing, like you said. It’s about the person.”
“Someone like you! Okay!” Charles laughed but Oliver wasn’t looking at him like anything was funny anymore.
“Someone you like,” Oliver supplied for him, like he was totally dense, and he wasn’t wrong about that.
Somewhere in the city, even though the cold had invaded, young people were dancing in a swirl of color and light, kept warm in each other’s arms, and their hearts still soared with the thrill of a touch, a kiss, the possibility of something new. And somewhere else there were old people, sleeping in sterile white beds inside buildings that masked life’s inevitability with cheeriness. They dreamed of loved ones they hadn’t seen for years, they hoped to just go home to the place they knew and loved soon. Charles was in between, not in the thrall of life and love but not so out of touch that all good things were lost or buried in a time capsule, unreachable until some appointed date.
He had a vital, magnetic person right beside him who willingly endured quiet sunsets by the courtyard and cozy mornings with oldies and omelettes. Who would share a laugh with him before bed instead of tension or arguments, plan a trip to a place he’d never been just so they could be together, and fill moments of his day with such surprising sweetness.
Lying there, Charles felt brave. And happy. No strings attached, no secondary thought to weigh him down, no percolating on a past that clearly wasn’t better than the present or the future. He glanced at Oliver, who was looking directly at him with those big, expressive eyes, sometimes blue, sometimes grey, though right now they seemed to be the color of the morning sky right before a storm rolled onto the shore from the ocean. His face was carved with beauty in the dim bedroom light. “All right, I’ll take you to Vienna,” Charles said. “It’s a date.”
“Ooh baby,” crooned Oliver, now blissfully happy like a cat who had eaten the cream and found a perfect sunspot for lounging. He pounced and curled in to rest his head on Charles’ chest without hesitation, even though he had probably been waiting for some sign for god knows how long now. “It’ll be way more than that.” He made a sound like a content little tiger, somewhere halfway between a growl and a purr.
In another show of bravery, Charles reached over and carded his hand through Oliver’s amazing hair. It was surprisingly soft. He didn’t know what he thought it would be like. “You’re so lucky, you got such good hair genes,” he said fondly.
“If this is your way of trying to say that I’m a hottie, I’ll take it,” Oliver joked. He was so good natured, so easy and open about basically everything. “You can just say what you’re thinking. I swear I won’t pull the rug, or the football, or anything else, away at the last second.”
“I feel weird saying ‘Oliver, you’re a hottie.’”
“We’ll get there,” Oliver promised him.
Eventually Charles had to turn off the light. He had no idea how young people slept sitting up or with all the lights in their apartments on, probably costing lots of needless money in electrical bills. Oliver’s breathing, up and down like an accordion, slowed as sleep fell upon him. It amazed Charles how such a whirling dervish of a man could also be so still. Whether they went to Niagara Falls and slept on a heart-shaped bed or wandered the dark, dramatic streets of Vienna, conspiratorially close, it didn’t matter. Together they made a pair and he would make a home of loneliness no longer. Reaching out, Charles closed the distance in the bed to put his arm around Oliver’s waist. He gently nestled behind him to be the big spoon.
“Oliver,” he whispered and Oliver made a small noise that said he was awake but incoherent. “You’re a hottie.” Oliver shook with laughter and quickly kissed Charles’ hand that he held loosely in his own.
He could’ve waited, there would be plenty of time to tell him. But why not start now.