safe as houses: part 3
When Neal wakes up, he wakes up sad. Dave’s not there. Neal calls him one more time and the phone clicks over to voicemail on the second ring.
And Neal-Neal just knows that’s it, the end of him and Dave, and all of a sudden he doesn’t know what to do because he was never supposed to get to this point in the first place.
No one’s at Dave’s, of course no one’s there, and it all just feels too big and too empty to Neal. It’s hard for him at first, finding all of his things, and then after that, it’s hard to pack them away into the brand new cardboard boxes that Neal brought with him. It’s even harder to put the boxes in his car after that, but Neal manages.
He leaves his key on the kitchen table and locks the front door from the inside on his way out.
When Andy knocks on the door-and of course Neal knows it’s Andy, because who else could it be?-Neal doesn’t bother to get up to open the door. Andy has a key, and Neal knows he’ll use it.
“Hey,” Andy says once he’s inside.
“Hey,” Neal says.
Andy holds up a shopping bag and says, “I brought Cheetos.”
Neal nods, says, “Cool. There’s Fritos and Tabasco sauce in the kitchen.”
And then they just sit there, and neither of them really says anything. On tv, Maury says, You are not the father, and there’s some guy sitting real close to a woman and her child and he’s saying, I don’t care. I don’t care! Imma raise that baby like it was my own.
“No, you’re not,” Andy says to the tv. “You’re just saying that because you’re on Maury Povich.”
“You should’ve seen the last episode,” Neal tells him. “Obese babies.”
“Fuck,” Andy says. “You know those episodes are my favorite.”
“I do,” Neal says, and maybe there’s something in his voice because then Andy looks at him, just looks at him, and it makes Neal uncomfortable. He doesn’t know what to say.
“It’ll all work out in the end,” Andy tells him, and they both knows he’s not talking about Maury.
“No, it won’t,” Neal says, and the second those words are out of his mouth, he’s never been more certain of anything in his entire life. “But I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
And then Neal turns back to the tv and he can feel Andy next to him, feel his body heat through his shirt sleeve, through the side of his jeans. Neal wipes the orange powder on his fingertips off onto the armrest of the chair and Maury Povich says, Until next time, America.
Neal doesn’t know what to do. He thinks about it more than he’d care to admit, but he doesn’t get any closer to deciding what to do, to deciding how and if and when he can salvage things with Dave. Neal doesn’t go out much for a few days, and showers even less. He doesn’t care; he’s not expecting visitors.
Which would explain why Neal is pretty fucking irked to be answering his door at only half past nine.
“Look,” he says, “it’s still pretty fucking early for-” and he just stops there, because what the fuck is he supposed to say to David Archuleta anyways?
“Um, hi,” Archuleta says, and he says it loudly and with such a force that Neal thinks he’s trying to make himself seem big and bad and unafraid.
“Dave’s not here,” Neal says. “LA.” He makes a move to shut the door, but Archuleta throws his hand out against the door to stop him. Neal raises an eyebrow.
“So, um, listen,” Archuleta says. “I don’t usually like, condone this type of language, but you’re being a huge jerk to Cook and you have to stop.”
“Yeah,” Neal says, unconvinced. He crosses his arms over his chest. “That’s really none of your business.”
“Well, um, it is my business because he’s one of my best friends,” Archuleta says. Neal almost laughs.
“Look, you’re like, what? Sixteen?”
“Nineteen.”
“That’s great and all,” Neal says calmly, “but you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, and you’ve never been in my shoes, so if you could just shut the fuck up-”
And then Archuleta has the guts to cut him off. Neal’s impressed. Honestly.
“No, how about you just-you just shut up, okay?” Archuleta says. “So what you’re a big musician. So what you travel the world and don’t have a nine to five job and don’t have to worry about money or any of that stuff. I hate to have to be the one to, you know, break it to you, but you’re still an adult. And adults sometimes have to do things that they don’t want to do for the people they love. And if you love Cook? You’ll just grow up and move in with him because he loves you and he would never want anything bad for you. So, um. Grow up.”
And Neal-Neal has no fucking clue what to say to that because he wasn’t expecting it, not one little bit. So he just stands there and tries to figure out what just happened, but he can’t because this is the kid Andy was making fun of ages ago-That’s David Archuleta, bro, Andy had said. Body of a twelve-year-old, voice of an angel-and yet Archuleta’s got his shit together better than Neal has.
“Grow up, Neal,” Archuleta says again, and that snaps Neal right out of his reverie.
“Get off my fucking doorstep,” Neal says. He’s got no patience for this shit, and Archuleta backs away like a shot.
“Look, hey, um,” he says. “Don’t um, hate me? Because I think you’re really cool, really, but like, just not when you’re making Cook cry. Just, um. Think about everything.”
And then he’s gone, back to his car or wherever the fuck he came from, and Neal’s left standing there and standing there and standing there.
Archuleta said he made Dave cry.
Neal slams the door.
Neal stares at himself in the mirror. It’s fogged up from his shower and even though he wiped it off, it’s still hard to make his face out.
“Figure your shit out,” he says to himself. “Figure it out.”
Later that day, Andy calls and Neal lets it click over to voicemail.
“Hey, so, Dave comes back tomorrow morning, at like eleven, and I know you have all his flight information, so if you’re not busy, well. The guys and I were wondering if you’d go pick him up? Besides that, guess who I saw at-” And Neal knows that Andy can’t hear him, but he yells at the machine anyways.
“I’m still trying to figure everything out, you piece of shit!” he says.
“-I guess, and that’s about it. So whatever, call me back. Bye.”
The next morning, Neal wakes up at eight and showers and takes care of Sixx and makes breakfast. He knows it takes him forty minutes to get to the airport; he’s got plenty of time to decide.
Nine o’clock rolls around; Neal’s not going.
Nine fifty-six, Neal’s definitely not going.
Ten fourteen and Neal’s grabbing his jacket and racing out the door.
By the time Neal gets to the airport, he’s early and Dave’s flight hasn’t landed yet and Neal paces the arrivals gate waiting. Standing to the side, he sees a man dressed in a suit holding a sign that reads, D. Cook. Neal stares at it, and it’s only five letters, that’s it, and yet they make Neal’s stomach clench and make him feel sick.
When David finally walks out, he’s wearing a hat and his glasses, and carrying a yoga mat. For a second Neal thinks that’s fucking ridiculous, but then he pushes the thought aside because he has other things to worry about.
“I didn’t know if you were going to come or not,” Dave says, walking up to him. “I called a car service.”
“I know,” Neal says. “I saw.” They start walking to the baggage claim and neither of them says anything to the driver a few feet away. There are tons of people milling about and they all race past him and Dave, and watching them makes Neal feel like he’s moving through jell-o.
“So why are you here?” Dave asks. “Is anything different, or are we still where we left off?”
“No. Maybe. You can’t-you can’t fucking-just fuck you, Dave,” Neal gets out, and maybe it doesn’t make much sense to other people, but it makes sense to him and it sure as hell makes sense to Dave and that’s really all that matters.
David crosses his arms. “Can we not do this in the middle of the airport?”
“I don’t know-if I call you later to talk about it, will you actually pick up?” Neal says, and David doesn’t say anything back. The conveyor belt starts moving, but the bags come out slowly and so they just stand there, each of them silently fuming, and Neal hates what they’ve become.
“Leave me when I’m yours, right, Dave?” Neal asks. “Cause you don’t want me anymore?” And it’s a cheap shot, Neal knows that, but he’s not above cheap shots, not when he’s feeling like this.
“Oh, fuck you,” Dave says. “Just fuck you. What are you even doing here if you’re going to be like this?”
Neal runs a hand through his hair angrily and says, “You don’t-you just don’t fucking get it, Dave. This is hard for me. All this stuff that you want from me? It’s hard, and I don’t know if I can give it to you, but I’m trying, I’m fucking trying, and you just don’t see that.”
“If it’s so fucking hard, then why bother?” Dave asks. “Huh?”
“Why bother?” Neal asks, and he’s pissed, so fucking pissed. “Why bother, Dave? Because I fucking love you, you asshole. Don’t you get it?”
“But you-you-” Dave says, and for a second it’s clear from his face that he wasn’t expecting to hear that. He scowls. “You can’t just say that and expect everything to go back to how it was. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Oh shut the fuck up,” Neal says, because that shit’s not easy for him to say and Dave’s taking everything the wrong way. “Look. I came because I had something to tell you.”
“What?” He sounds worn out.
“I’ve stopped renting my apartment,” Neal says, and he doesn’t know what he was expecting-maybe David to be happy or something-but whatever it was, this isn’t it.
“Oh,” David says, and he doesn’t sound excited or happy or anything. “You stopped renting your apartment.”
“Yeah,” Neal says, and he shoves his hands as deep into the pockets of his denim jacket as they’ll go.
David pauses for a minute, and he looks out at the suitcases going by and grabs one before he says, “So, where are you going?” Neal blinks. Didn’t he just explain that? Didn’t he just fucking tell David everything?
“Were you not just fucking listening to me?” Neal asks, incredulously.
“Oh, my bad,” Dave says. “My apologies that you make less than zero sense. It’s my fault.”
Neal decides to try again and says, “Where I live kind of… depends.”
“On what?”
“I don’t know,” Neal says. “On whether or not you’re still in the market for a live-in pool boy.”
David says, “Really?” but he sounds more skeptical than anything.
Neal hesitates for a second, and he realizes that this is his one chance to back out, to stop fucking with whatever it was that Dave and he had, but still he says, “Really.”
And then Dave’s smiling, small and with not enough teeth, and saying, “Yeah, I’m in the market. Yeah. Yeah, of course.” And Neal doesn’t really know where that leaves him, but he knows he’s moving in with Dave and that scares the shit out of him.
He says, “Don’t let me fuck this up, okay?”
Dave says, “You couldn’t.”
“I almost did.”
Dave shakes his head. “I love you, too.”
Neal reaches forward and curls his fingers through Dave’s belt loops and pulls him closer, leaning in to kiss him. The angle is a little awkward because Dave’s still got his baseball hat on, but Neal makes do and it’s only been a few days, really, but it feels like forever since they last kissed.
And then there’s a flash going off around them, and Neal feels like a fucking idiot because he just outed Dave in a fucking airport of all places. He and Dave plow through the cameras and the people and head to the main door and Dave’s asking, “Where’d you park?” He reaches his fingers into Neal’s front pocket to grab Neal’s keys and then he’s walking away, leaving Neal to follow him, dazed and confused, wondering what it will be like when Dave gets back to his house and has the time and the privacy to finally start freaking out.
The drive home is quiet, neither of them really saying anything, and Neal is twelve different types of tense. He looks over at Dave every once in a while, whenever he thinks he can get away with it; Dave looks exactly the same and completely different all at once.
When Dave unlocks the door to his house, he freezes. It’s weird for Neal, too, being in there and not seeing any of his stuff. He flinches because he had forgotten. Dave puts his bag down and just stares at Neal. It makes Neal uncomfortable because he doesn’t know what Dave’s thinking, and he shoves his hands deep in his pockets to keep from squirming.
“You moved out,” Dave says.
“Yeah.”
“But now you’re moving in?” he asks. Neal’s teeth worry one of his lip rings, pulling it in and out, in and out of his mouth.
“Yeah.” Neal doesn’t know what else to say.
David walks forward, backs Neal up against the wall and kisses him slow and sweet. “Okay,” he says when he pulls back. “Yeah, okay,” and Neal reads so much into that, gets so much out of it that he doesn’t know what’s real and what he’s just assuming, what he’s just projecting his own feelings onto. Dave places his palms underneath Neal’s shirt, on his stomach, and Neal’s just missed that so fucking much that he almost can’t breathe.
They go to the bedroom and take off each other’s clothes with shaking hands and rushed movements and Neal thinks this feels more like a first time than any other firsts he’s ever had. He runs his hands over Dave’s chest, his arms and his shoulder blades, and he feels like he’s rediscovering something, remembering something from a million years ago.
“You want to, or-?” Neal asks.
“You, you,” Dave says. “You.” His voice is ragged and it tears Neal up inside. And when Dave says, “Fuck, I’ve missed this,” Neal doesn’t bother biting back the “Missed you,” that leaves his mouth.
Afterwards, when they’re both lying there languid and content, Neal says, “I’m sorry. About the airport.” And he really is, is the thing, because he knows that Dave has it so much harder than he does, that no one gives a shit about Neal Tiemann but that everyone needs to know when the American Idol decides he’s gay.
“I don’t care,” Dave says.
“Really?” It’s dark in the room, and Neal can’t make out Dave’s face.
“Neal,” Dave says. “It’s you,” and Neal doesn’t get what Dave means by that, but he also feels like it’d be wrong to ask.
“Okay,” he says instead.
And later, when he’s about to fall asleep, Dave says, “You don’t have to move in if you don’t want to.”
“I want to be with you,” Neal says, and his voice is thick with sleep.
“I’ll take whatever I can get with you, Neal Tiemann. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. So long as you’re with me.”
“I want to,” Neal says, and Dave snorts in a way that means he doesn’t find it funny, not one bit. “Hey, I do,” Neal says. “I’m just scared.” And then just like that, it’s out in the open and Neal feels a million times lighter. He’d never voiced that, was too proud to, but this is Dave and Dave has never cared about that sort of thing, not ever, not a once.
“I’m just scared,” Neal says again, because he can.
“Me too,” David says, and he doesn’t try to comfort Neal, or tell him that everything will be okay, or that they’ll be okay, or anything like that. And that, in and of itself, means the world to Neal.
He falls asleep sometime before Dave, he thinks, although he’s not sure.
They have this little get-together once Neal’s all moved in, and it’s kind of like a housewarming party except for how the house has already been warmed because Neal’s essentially and unofficially been living there since Dave bought it. The only difference now is that Sixx has a bed there and there’s a whole new army of guitars next to Dave’s, and how Neal leaves his stuff in the bedroom closet and not just all over the rest of the house like before.
Kyle is there, and he brought Hayden, who’s content to play videogames against Monty and eat pizza and ice cream with Monty and don’t tell your dad I’m giving you this soda, too, okay Hayden? Okay?
And then Andy shows up, and the first thing he tells Neal is, “I bought you two champagne as like, congratulations or whatever, but I drank it. Figured I deserved it after all the shit you put me through.” And that last part-that part’s true, and Neal feels bad because he understands now that he and Dave are not an entity separate from the rest of the band. He and Dave are the band, and so are Andy and Kyle and Monty, and whatever happens to one of them happens to all of them.
Neal opens his mouth to apologize, but Andy cuts him off, saying, “No, don’t you fucking dare.” And then he pushes past Neal and into the house, and Neal can hear him saying, “Monty, Hayden? Monty? I better still be your favorite. Somebody give me a controller so I can show this kid how it’s done.”
And even Andrew shows up, drives the hour and a half from wherever he was just to rag on Neal.
“Neal fucking Tiemann,” he says. “Living in sin with my brother!”
Dave rolls his eyes, says, “Shut up, Andrew,” and Neal doesn’t understand why, but Dave looks embarrassed.
“Correction,” Neal says, holding up his beer can and pointing one finger and Andrew. “We are living in a lot, a lot, of sin.”
Andrew pulls a face and Dave laughs, and out in the living room the rest of his band-his family-is screaming at the television, all Rematch! Rematch! and Yeah, Hayden! High five, buddy!
They all leave pretty early, but Neal doesn’t mind, especially because the following day is the start of their new tour. He and Dave clean up the mess and then he and Dave take a shower and then he and Dave go to sleep, in one bed, under one roof, together.