“Well… fuck,” Taylor mumbled through his hands which were currently balled up into a conjoined fist in front of his mouth. He had been sitting there in the dark for hours doing Google searches of his name. News certainly spread fast these days, he mused, and he found himself longing for the days when the fans would have rallied behind him, all preteen obsessors. Now they were older, snarkier, and much more willing to make judgments. He couldn’t blame them. He’d never been in any sort of serious public relationship, so they’d never had anything to complain about before. And now, there was visual proof of him sitting next to a world famous gay supermodel in a gay club in Tulsa. Even though the picture displayed no foul play, it gave many fans all the proof they needed.
He turned his head to the side, fist still pressed against his lips, and looked at the bottle of Jack Daniels sitting next to him. It was already a fourth of the way gone and he was having to seriously fight the urge to take another swig. He had recently had the thought that he had been drinking far too much, but at the moment, he didn’t care.
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!” he announced in his best Rhett Butler impersonation to Mr. Spanky, who was sitting directly behind the bottle. He picked up the bottle and took a sip before setting it back down and taking the stuffed giraffe into his arms. “Sometimes I think you’re the only one who understands me.” He gave it a hug, crushing its neck against his chest, before sitting it back down and resuming his search. Before he could get fully immersed in the activity that was quickly turning into a sick exercise in self-torture, his phone rang in his pocket. Even though his life was falling to shit around him, he couldn’t stop the shots of adrenaline that were shooting themselves continually into his bloodstream, taking him to levels of weird far beyond his norm. He knew that he shouldn’t have been excited to talk to anyone at all because they would undoubtedly give him the pity party he was already throwing for himself, but he couldn’t help but be excited when Flannery’s name showed up on his phone.
“Pumpkin Tits!!” he practically shouted into the receiver and he abandoned staring at the screen of his laptop for spinning at increasing speeds in his desk chair.
“Don’t call me that, Taylor,” Flannery sighed, “I just called to see if you’re doing okay.
“Oh, I’m just fucking great, Flannery! I’ve been outed to the entire world even though I still don’t know whether or not I’m gay. The whole world thinks I’m gay! This is the best day EVER!!” he said with a hugely over-exaggerated mock enthusiasm, still spinning.
“How much have you drank?” She sounded exactly like his mother when she asked him that, and he reeled in the desire to tell her so. He also wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, but kept that to himself as well. Even when drunk and crazy, he still knew when to bite his tongue with Flannery.
“That’s between me, the bottle, and Mr. Spanky,” Taylor informed her instead, wagging his finger at her even though she wasn’t there to see it. He heard her sigh into the phone again.
“That’s it. I’m coming over. You sound like a fucking train wreck,” she stated, hanging up the phone before Taylor could protest. Before he even had the chance to shut his phone, he heard a key turning in his front door.
“Go away! I’m busy!” he yelled out to the intruder. Not able to think of anything else to do in his mostly drunken and entirely panic-stricken silly state, he grabbed the bottle and Mr. Spanky and ran towards his bedroom, slamming the door and then hiding himself on floor in the closet amongst his shoes and dirty clothes.
“Taylor Hanson!” he heard Adrian call out sternly, seemingly aware that Taylor was hiding from him.
“Fucking Adrian,” Taylor grumbled through gritted teeth to Mr. Spanky before filling his mouth again with the bourbon that was undoubtedly keeping him from losing it entirely.
“Are you in the closet?” Adrian asked as he entered Taylor’s bed room before saying “How appropriate” under his breath, but still loud enough for Taylor to hear. “Are you going to come out or not?”
“NO!” Taylor shouted, immediately realizing that he had just given up his hiding place. Adrian took his sweet time walking towards the closet and when he reached the threshold, he just stood there with his arms crossed, shaking his head disapprovingly at Taylor’s huddled, drunken form.
“You, sir, are a mess,” Adrian told him as he turned on the lights, “Do you honestly think that getting drunk and acting like a child is going to fix anything?”
“Nope,” Taylor admitted, accenting the p with a popping of his lips. He took another swig, this one merely to annoy Adrian.
“I saw what you wrote on the website and it was good. I thought you might be handling this okay, but obviously you’re not.”
“Of course I’m not handling it okay! Why does anything think that I would be anything other than furious right now?”
“You don’t look furious. You’re a cup of change away from looking like that crazy old guy who sits in Crawford Park meowing at people,” Adrian said with disgust, “And at least that guy makes a living being weird. All you’re making is an ass out of yourself.”
“Maybe I don’t care what other people think of me any more,” Taylor said, his words starting to slur slightly as the alcohol continued to flood his system.
“Bullshit,” Adrian scoffed, “If you didn’t care what people thought about you, you’d be off doing whatever the hell it is you do on a typical Sunday night, not hunkered down in your closet with a bottle of booze and a fucking stuffed animal. Will you muster up the last of your self-respect and come out here to have a grown up conversation with me, please?” Taylor wanted to tell Adrian to get the hell out of his condo, to take his overly-confident ass back to whatever life he lead when he wasn’t busy annoying Taylor. But, when Adrian finally gave up waiting for him to respond and stepped inside the closet to sit himself down next to him, Taylor wasn’t sure what to do.
“I’ll come out when I’m ready,” Taylor said softly, feeling the disturbing prickling of tears at the corners of his eyes.
“Okay,” Adrian said sincerely, doing the unthinkable and putting an arm around Taylor’s shoulders, “It can wait.” And with that single kind gesture from the guy who had only pushed Taylor since the moment they’d met, Taylor finally started having an appropriate reaction to the situation again and cried.
Taylor wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there sobbing into the top of Mr. Spanky’s head while Adrian held him, but when he snapped out of it, he immediately stood up and headed for the bathroom without a word. His eyes still swollen and sore, he stared at his reflection in the mirror, wondering what the hell had become of him. Mere weeks before he had been content. Tired, but content. He had had a routine, a perception of himself, and well-defined relationships with all those close to him. Now, boundaries had been crossed farther than he would have ever imagined in his wildest, most ridiculous seeming dreams.
After he had showered in an attempt to sober up, an attempt that had failed terribly, he got dressed and ready and headed out to the living room to find that Adrian had ordered him some Chinese food and had set it on the dining room table with Mr. Spanky and the bottle of Jack Daniels. There wasn’t a note or anything, but Taylor knew that he was gone. Taylor didn’t bother trying to figure out what had caused Adrian’s change in mood or why he had suddenly decided to be a source of comfort rather than one of irritation. The truth of the matter was that Taylor had needed someone to be there for him; someone who wasn’t Flannery. He knew that she had his back and always would, that she would support him and comfort him no matter what, but he didn’t know that Adrian cared beyond the paycheck he was getting from Isaac. Apparently he did. Either that or he was just really good at pretended that he did. He knew that hugging a drunken hot mess wasn’t part of Adrian’s job description, but he appreciated it nonetheless.
As he was about to dig into his Sesame chicken, he heard his front door unlock again, but this time he knew that it was Flannery. If he hadn’t known that she was coming over, he would have known anyway from the fact that she could never quite figure out how to unlock his door and it always took her several tries plus a liberal amount of swearing to get it open. He heard her struggle with the lock for several seconds before the door swung open.
“Taylor! Are you okay?” she yelled out before he heard her running towards the living room.
“I’m fine,” he replied with a mouthful of food. A half hour ago, he had been bizarrely giddy, but now all he wanted to do was stare blankly at the wall with his booze nearby, drinking and staring until he finally passed out and could wake up when a new day had started, hopefully better than the current one had.
“You look like hell,” she said, running her fingers through his hair from behind before placing a kiss to the top of his head. He dropped his head back to look at her and saw that she had been crying.
“What’s wrong?” he managed, his mouth now full of the crab Rangoon Adrian had been so kind as to order for him.
“I hate those bitches you call fans. I swear to god,” she said, sounding defeated, “You haven’t been on the internet, have you?” He sighed and righted himself, turning in his chair so she could sit in his lap, which she did before throwing her arms around his neck.
“Yeah, I got online,” he admitted into her fiery hair. She sniffed and hugged him closer.
“You don’t listen to a word they say!” she said once she’d finally released him from her painfully tight embrace, “You did nothing wrong.”
“Oh, I know that, but that’s not going to stop them from going bat-shit crazy over it.”
“Stupid little whores,” Flannery muttered.
“Come on now, Flannery. They’re just confused. Much like my parents will be when they catch wind of this, which I’m sure they will any second if they haven’t already. It’s not necessarily that the fans are mad at me, I think they’re just more mad that they found out from a stupid tabloid than from me. I hope they believe what I wrote on the site, but I’m afraid it’s too little too late.”
“Well, if they stop being your fans over it, just because they’re afraid you’re not going to hump them on the tour bus or something, then they weren’t really your fans to begin with.”
“Oh, I know. It’s just going to be weird, just hopefully not for forever,” he shrugged. She helped him eat his late supper from her position on his lap. Just having her sitting there on his lap made him feel comfortable and safe. The weight of her sitting there kept him grounded and she stayed there until together they’d consumed every piece of chicken and every grain of rice Adrian had ordered.
“That Adrian’s a good man,” Flannery said, rubbing her hand across her very full belly before taking a quick swig from Taylor’s bottle. Her face twisted into a look of pure disgust for a moment before it disappeared along with the remnants of the taste on her tongue. She stared into his eyes for a moment before placing a big sloppy kiss to his cheek, the kind that made him glare at her and swipe the remains of the peck from his face, which is exactly what he did.
“Flannery… why do you do these things?” he sighed. She stood and left his lap cold, the chill of it immediately seeping to his bones. The parts of him that still needed someone to hold him and comfort him longed to pull her back, to bring her warmth back. But he knew that she had done her part and that now she too would leave.
“I have to go. Dinner date with Jacob,” she explained, looking at him sympathetically, “Try not to be such a disaster area any more, okay? It’s all going to work out.” And with that, she ruffled his hair and left. He felt stupid and he felt lonely. Though he had felt annoyed with the appearances of both Adrian and Flannery that day, he had been honestly upset with both of their subsequent leavings. For a moment, he seriously debated just crawling into bed and going to sleep, but he knew that his body wouldn’t succumb to sleep easily, especially not then. So, he once again turned to the Jack Daniels and Mr. Spanky.
He plopped himself down in his recliner and got comfortable with another episode of Queer as Folk. He felt bad that the DVDs were likely quite overdue and that Flannery must have been racking up some late fees because of them, but he was still drunk and wanted to give another episode to try. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do with his time. As the opening credits were rolling, his doorbell rang once again. Though he assumed it was one of his brothers there to either awkwardly give support or to continue being a giant bag of douche, he hauled himself out of the chair, still clinging to both of his items of choice, and made his way towards the front door. It took a great deal of maneuvering to stick Mr. Spanky under his arm so he could open the door, and he couldn’t hold back the breath that escaped when he saw Dominic standing on his front step.
“I thought you might want some company,” Dominic stated. Taylor nodded, suddenly very aware of the stuffed animal in his arms, but finding himself unable to do anything about it. “Nice giraffe.”
“Thanks,” Taylor replied awkwardly, stepping aside to let Dominic in. He contemplated throwing Mr. Spanky into the front yard, but changed his mind at the last second, settling for setting it beside the coat rack instead. A quick mental scan told him that his apartment was in respectable enough shape for such esteemed company. And so, he followed Dominic to the living room.
“Queer as Folk? Nice,” Dominic said, looking at the screen, “I love this show.”
“It’s only the second episode I’ve ever watched, but I like it so far,” Taylor admitted. They stood there in silence for a few moments, both watching the action on the screen before Dominic took to looking at Taylor again, making him feel strangely self-conscious.
“How’re you doing?” Dominic asked, taking a step towards Taylor and taking the bottle from his hand, “Something tells me you’re not handling it so well.”
“I’m handling it the best I can.” Dominic nodded understandingly and sat the bottle down on the counter.
“How drunk are you?” Dominic asked. Taylor looked at Dominic, taking in everything about him. The way his jeans hung from his trim waist and fit slightly snugly against the muscles of his thighs, the way his hair was in desperate need of being pushed back from his face, much like Taylor’s usually did. Though he normally would have held back the urge to touch someone else’s hair, for some reason, he allowed himself to reach out and tuck the rogue strands of hair back into place. Dominic seemed to watch him carefully as he did this, smiling ever so slightly. In that moment, feeling numb in so many ways to his life, Taylor found that he was standing right in front of what could very well be the cure. That or the catalyst for further disaster.
“Drunk enough,” Taylor said.
“For what?” Dominic asked, though he looked like he already knew the answer. Instead of replying, Taylor stepped forward, effectively closing the distance between them and brought his mouth to Dominic’s in a searing, needy kiss unlike any he’d ever had before. Different than with Tre, different than with any of the girls he’d ever kissed. It wasn’t better or worse, or even comparable. What it was, though, was exactly what Taylor needed. He knew that it would change everything, but as Dominic’s hands moved under Taylor’s shirt, inching up the fabric and setting Taylor’s skin ablaze, he knew that it didn’t matter.