FIC: My Brother's Keeper--Ian T/Pieter and Robbie Van den Hoogenband
Title: My Brother's Keeper
Author: shimmer
Pairing: Ian T/Pieter and Robbie Van den Hoogenband
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest (obviously) and drugs (it is ME, after all). Also, this is another long fic. Really long.
Disclaimer: The people may be real, but THIS is fiction.
Thanks: To spherissa for the beta, and to sodiumlight for encouragement and faith.
Summary: “This is what I want,” Ian said, edging closer to the brothers. “The two of you. Just once.” Please don’t leave me, Ian thought. Please let this be right.
xposted to my journal olympic_slash and ian_pieter
My Brother's Keeper
They say that once you’ve been to Paris, a part of you never leaves. A little piece of your soul stays, captured by the romance, in the City of Lights.
If that’s true, Ian thought, I wonder just how much of my soul is left to me by now. What with leaving it in Paris, giving it to the sport and having it stolen by so many different men. He laughed into his cappuccino, I suppose it’s better than leaving my heart in San Francisco. Tony Bennet invaded his peace, then, as he breathed in the scents of Paris in autumn: clove cigarettes, coffee, cold, damp air, and expensive perfume that didn’t quite cover up the human smell of all big cities.
A hand touched his arm and he started.
“That’s an odd song to be singing, even for you.”
Ian smiled, “I did leave my heart in San Francisco, though, didn’t I?” he asked Pieter after they kissed each other’s cheeks in greeting. Apparently, there were bits and pieces of him left on every continent.
Pieter, used to Ian’s random way of thinking after so long together, just nodded, “Wasn’t it Aaron? Didn’t he take you to Berkeley and try to teach you about American civil rights?”
Ian thought back. It would have been a year after Athen's. So, seven years ago? And he had fallen in love with Aaron’s enthusiasm and his budding activism. That was the thing about Ian, no matter how many men there were, he always found a way to love them.
Now, Aaron was a politician, still in California, and still fighting for all of the disenfranchised Americans. His idealism had never dimmed, not even when Brendan-big, strong Brendan-had been diagnosed with HIV just before Beijing.
“It’s not a death sentence anymore,” Aaron had told Ian, looking pale but driven as they lay together on the beach, where Aaron went to heal. “But because of that, people have forgotten about it and our generation- ” he’d pointed at Ian in the dusky light, “our generation is at risk.”
“You’ll save us, though, Aaron. And those who come after us,” Ian had reassured him with utter conviction, feeling a wriggling fear in his gut, remembering his own carelessness. Until Brendan, until that cold Northern California winter spent in and out of hospitals, he’d been a god; he’d been immortal. He didn’t believe that anymore, having seen the plague and faced his mortality. But he still believed in Aaron and he put his name behind his causes, funding him and endorsing him whenever he could.
He shook himself back into the present and took Pieter’s cold hands in his. He had been waiting for Pieter in the café for hours, and seeing him, seeing how he’d changed (there were new lines, and a few silver hairs threaded amongst the gold), was bittersweet. It had been months since they’d been together, and if it hadn’t been for the debut of Ian’s special collection at le Carrousel, he doubted that they would be together now. It was, Ian knew, his chance to put things right, to close the distance between them. And he wanted to do it. Because losing Pieter after more than a decade together wasn’t just losing a lover, it was losing family. And a friend.
Ian had learned a long time ago how those distinctions between family, friend and lover became blurred within the gay community where love was sought after so greedily, yet came so dear. And since Brendan (because despite Aaron’s optimism, they had watched the breastroker eventually waste away), there had been more friends lost. And more hospital vigils and chilly graveside rites. Not Pieter, Ian vowed. Not ever.
Success had put things in perspective for Ian. He knew what he wanted now that he was in his thirties. He wanted a husband, a home. A family.
“How was your flight?” he asked.
Pieter shrugged and asked the waitress for a coffee, “It was fine. You know Robbie hates to fly.”
Ian felt a twinge of nervousness. Robbie had flown in from America, where he had run away after his brief affair with Ian, to the Netherlands and then with Pieter into Paris. And he did hate to fly because of his numerous, ever-changing addictions which were an unfortunate by-product of his life in the modeling industry. “But he’ll be ready for tomorrow, won’t he? You left him at rehearsal didn’t you?”
“He’ll be fine,” Pieter said, drawing his hands away from Ian. “He always is.” And Ian could almost hear Pieter thinking, But I don’t really care. I am not my brother’s keeper.
Ian sighed and stretched his legs out next to Pieter’s under the table. Robbie was always such a touchy subject between them, and although Ian knew that his model and Pieter’s younger brother was part of the problem in their relationship, he’d never been able to pinpoint why. Ian and Pieter had opened their relationship after Athens, back when they were young and planning to live forever. Back when the world and all of the pretty boys in it were their's for the taking.
Ian hadn’t blinked when Pieter had embarked on a passionate affair with Grant while living with Ian in Australia (the only affair with a man that Grant had ever had), and Pieter had remained typically Nordic and aloof while Ian worked his way through lists of men, both anonymous and old friends.
“It’s the way we are,” Ian explained to Pieter once.
“Whores?” Pieter had asked, laughing.
“In a way, Piet. We need to prove our masculinity to the straight world, and what better way then through promiscuity?”
It had been pretentious and a lie, although it had taken Ian a lot of soul searching to figure that out. There had always been a part of Pieter that he kept closed off from Ian, and it left Ian feeling incomplete, empty.
He’d filled the void the only way he knew how. He still did.
Pieter had accepted Ian’s lifestyle, and had even been amused by it, until Robbie got involved. That had almost been the end of them. It had changed everything, and it scared Ian into seeing what he had in Pieter.
Now, Ian was much more discreet. The gorgeous model who was getting his first big break in Ian’s show tomorrow night- the same show that Robbie was in - had been safely packed and out of Ian’s suite long before Pieter and Robbie had even left the Netherlands.
*
As they walked though the snow back to the hotel where Ian lived, Pieter slid his hand into Ian’s and they swung their arms together. Like little kids.
“It’s good to see you,” Pieter said, tilting his head back to catch snowflakes on his tongue.
Ian tugged him close. Pieter looked so at home in the snow with cold, glittering crystals caught in his blond lashes and with the chill bringing a flush to his cheeks. And, Ian thought, he looks stunning in that coat I designed for him.
They sat in Ian’s suit and drank champagne in candlelight and played their parts: famous, playboy fashion designer and his pretty, cosmopolitan boyfriend.
Sex, as always, was decadent and painfully perfect. They had been together for almost twelve years, and far from breeding contempt, familiarity had led to comfort and easy pleasure.
They lay on the floor in the funny, radiant light that comes from snowstorms and guttering candles, and Ian drank thousands of dollars worth of champagne off of Pieter’s body. And the entire time he did it- pouring cool, bubbling liquid over Pieter’s skin from his chest to his cock- he kept two fingers lodged inside the other man, perfectly still, forcing Pieter to fuck himself on Ian’s hand while Ian got slowly drunk.
“Nothing tastes better,” Ian told Pieter as he rolled a condom over himself, “than Crystal and come.”
Their skin stuck together as Ian entered Pieter, and the little pains from the friction excited him. The way Pieter smelled, of come and IT cologne and spilled champagne, made him wild. Possessive.
He thrust harder than he meant and was rougher than he wanted - but Pieter invited it with his breathy, little girl moans and his restless, clinging movements.
And always, in the back of his mind, was the fact that Robbie was in the extra bedroom, and secretly, Ian wanted more than anything for Robbie to hear what he was doing to his brother.
*
In the morning, champagne-sex didn’t seem quite so romantic. Headaches aside, the room was a mess and they were late.
Ian dashed about the suite, trying to get organized. Pieter made sure that Robbie made it to the venue, and then laid back and smoked a joint. He offered it to Ian, who declined. He was fuzzy headed enough without getting stoned on top of it. “Later, baby.”
Ian appreciated how patiently Pieter waited for him to pick out his clothes. That had been another sore spot. “It’s not as if I can’t dress myself, Ian. No one’s ever accused me of looking shoddy. And besides, Robbie’s your model.” Not me, was the unspoken accusation. Ian had agreed, placating Pieter, but reminding him that even if Robbie was the model and the face of IT clothing, Pieter, as Robbie’s brother and Ian’s husband-in-all-but-name, had to submit to Ian’s compulsive desire to clothe everyone around him.
The limo ride from the hotel was tense, mostly because Ian was nervous about having his clothing line debut in Paris for the first time, and Pieter was always uptight when Robbie was around. And he hadn’t been in such close proximity to Robbie in years. Come to think of it, Ian thought, I don’t think that Pieter’s ever seen Robbie model for me. There had always been excuses before, and Ian had let it go. But this time, it was for real. Ian had made it big, become somebody beyond the swimmer. He’d created a life of his own, and he wanted more than anything for Pieter to be a part of it.
It felt so natural to have Pieter next to him, like they were a part of one another. And Ian realized how faded the boundary between lover and friend and brother had become between the two of them.
“I’m glad you’re here, Piet,” he whispered to Pieter, but the other man was distracted by the patterns of frost forming on the mirrored window glass and didn’t answer.
*
The show went off without a glitch, though. And it gave Ian a chance to watch his lover watch Robbie on the runway from backstage.
He saw resentment, sadness and something that he couldn’t put his finger on. And it brought him back to when Pieter had confronted him about his affair with Robbie. Even at the time, he hadn’t been able to tell what Pieter was really angry about. Some sort of sibling rivalry? Did Pieter think that because Robbie was a model that he was more attractive than he was? Protectiveness, maybe? I’m not a sexual predator, Ian thought, slipping an arm around Pieter’s shoulders as Robbie made his way past them, slinking down the runway with a look of perpetual disdain etched on his face. Robbie was an adult, and I didn’t hurt him. But Ian had to admit that at that time in his life, before Pieter had confronted him and before Brendan had gotten sick, he hadn’t always been careful. And, on top of that, Pieter knew that Ian wasn’t always the most gentle and compassionate lover.
So, it was entirely possible that Pieter had simply been playing the overprotective older brother, if one discounted Pieter’s continuing insistence that: I am not my brother’s keeper. And it didn’t explain the bitterness that still surrounded the three of them. The hint of . . . jealousy.
“He’s not as beautiful as you, mate.” Ian said into Pieter’s hair, believing it as he said it. Robbie’s haughty, manufactured good-looks did nothing for him, not like Pieter’s honest, open beauty.
Pieter looked at him, his blue eyes unreadable. “He’s the sun,” he said, and he ran a hand carelessly through Ian’s shoulder-length hair, “he’s all I see sometimes.”
What the hell does that mean? Ian wondered as Pieter left him alone in the crowd.
*
Pieter drifted through the after party like a ghost, and Ian had a hard time keeping track of him. Robbie, unfortunately, was stuck to Ian’s side like a burr.
He hadn’t bothered taking his make-up off, and he was all dark lips and smoky eyes, so hauntingly like Pieter’s. Like a distorted afterimage of the other man.
Robbie was there, flitting in and out of Ian's peripheral vision, when Aaron found them. He still had a full head of curly hair, and, Ian was glad to see, a healthy tan. His eyes were serious, though. Not the laughing, unconcerend eyes of the boy on the beach that Ian had loved. Life, and then death, had taken it's toll on Aaron.
"How are you, mate?" Ian asked, and for the first time that night, his concern was genuine.
Aaron smiled at him and Ian's heart fluttered, "D'you mean 'am I sick?', 'cause, I'm not. I'm still virus-free." He didn't bother to hide the bitterness in his voice, the survivor's guilt. He may have loved Ian for a moment, but Brendan had been his soul mate and he had been forced to stand by, impotent, and watch him fade away.
Ian just shook his head and gathered Aaron into his arms, not bothering to feel ashamed that his body still responded to the other man. He kissed Aaron's cheek and whispered under the music, "I was wondering if you'd found someone, someone to surf with and someone to cry with." He ran his hands up Aaron's back, feeling him begn to shake. "I was wondering if there are times when you smile and you mean it. And if you still wish on stars."
"I only have one wish, Ian," Aaron mumbled into his neck. "And I think the stars have gotten tired of hearing it."
Ian was at a loss for words, so after requesting a song that he remebered Brendan liking from the DJ, he grabbed a couple of drinks so that they could toast Aaron's lost lover while they danced together under the light of the disco ball.
*
The song was still playing, we're flying above the clouds, so beautiful and clear. We're flying above the clouds, I can see happiness from here, and Ian was on his fourth rum and coke when he cornered Robbie and let the model slither over him.
“Where’s your brother?”
Robbie laughed, high pitched and affected. “Can’t keep track of your husband, sugar? Shame on you.” He flicked his tongue out, and Ian could see the flash of metal imbedded in it. Lord. That’s new. “For all you know Ian-baby, he could be out getting it on with Phelps. You wouldn’t like that would you?”
“Michael is here?” Ian was incredulous.
“Oh yeah. His flight was late but he made it to the party- for a while. You didn’t see him?”
“No.” I want lipstick and cold metal on my cock. I don’t want to think about Michael.
Robbie sighed and his breath smelled of fruity drinks and the American cigarettes he liked so much. He’d been living in L.A. and then New York for the past several years, and along with picking up a taste for Marlboros and cocaine, he’d acquired an edgy effeminacy and lost his accent. To the untrained ear, he could easily have passed for an American.
Robbie blinked and then refocused his glassy, coked out stare on Ian. “The repressed ones, the closeted ones, are the very best in bed aren’t they, sugar?” He slid a hand up boldly between Ian’s legs. “I know you like them when they’re vulnerable.”
“Fuck off, Robbie.” But Ian didn’t move. He just let his hair fall forward and cover his face.
Robbie kept talking, dropping his voice but still singing the words. “There was me . . . and oh, sugar. My first time and it was with my brother’s man.” He squeezed and Ian jerked forward. “I got just what Pieter had been getting.” Squeeze. “This.” Stroke. “And I’ll never forget it either. Sucking the same cock my brother sucked, having that same cock in me, tearing me . . .”
Ian was choking on the smoke, on Robbie’s heavy cologne, and on the younger man’s words.
“Was I as good as Pieter?” He shook his head and smiled. “No? How about Michael, then?” He unbuttoned Ian’s pants and Ian couldn’t stop him. He was lost in the strange/familiar eyes. “I mean, that must have been one hell of a fuck, sugar.” All the rings that Robbie wore were cold on Ian’s erection and it only made him think about the ring in Robbie’s mouth.
“Shut up, Robbie.”
“Poor Mikey had a nervous breakdown when you were done with him. Hurt his back, started drinking. Got arrested.” Robbie had him by the balls, now. “I knew you were good, but not that good.”
“Where’s Pieter?” Ian asked through teeth that felt like they were chipping.
“Gone, gone, gone,” Robbie sang, working Ian in earnest now, his rings catching on Ian’s flesh.
“With Michael . . .oh fuck Robbie . . . Did he leave with Michael?”
“No. I think he left on his own,” he jerked hard, and Ian came silently, shamefully, in his pants.
He pushed his hair back. “How do you know?”
Robbie laughed, this time a real, masculine I beat you motherfucker laugh. “ ‘Cause Michael’s right behind you, sugar.”
“Shit.” Ian shoved Robbie away from him and straightened himself up before turning around. “Michael.”
“Ian.”
Michael was the only one of them- those of them that had been there in the golden years in Sydney and Athens and Beijing- that was still swimming, still clinging to his fifteen minutes.
And while Ian hadn’t seen him in God knows how long, he wasn’t in the mood to be nice to the other swimmer. The man had almost destroyed everything that he’d built, all of his dreams, his life with Pieter, because he’d gotten drunk one night and let Ian fuck him silly.
Then he’d cried rape.
Perhaps, Ian admitted to himself, just perhaps, I wasn't the perfect gentleman with Michael. But it wasn't bloody rape.
He hid his irritation, though, and put on his party face.“What’re you doin’ here, Mike?” he asked, taking the other swimmer by the arm and guiding him through the throngs of people-keeping an eye out for Robbie. “You don’t belong in places like this.”
Pieter had been so strong then, standing by Ian as Michael had waged a silent war against him. It had never gotten to the press, but it had been precariously close, particularly after Michael was hospitalized with ‘depression.’
“I’ve never known where I belong, Ian.” Michael shrugged. “I just wanted to congratulate you. Bury the hatchet, and all that.” His eyes were dangerously soft and, like Robbie goddamn him to the deepest part of hell, had said, Ian liked them vulnerable.
But he wasn’t going to fall into Michael’s trap again. Not now. Not now that Ian was so much older and so much wiser.
He grabbed a drink from a passing waiter. And grimaced. It was a gin and tonic. He was mixing his drinks now, and he was going to pay for it later. “What is this? Some twelve step program?” he asked Michael before he stopped himself. He had heard something about Michael’s drinking problem becoming serious, hadn’t he?
“Something like that.”
“Fine,” And Ian turned on all of his famous charm. “Buried. In the past. Forgiven.”
Michael looked relieved, and Ian felt better than he had since he and Pieter had watched Robbie flaunt himself for them on the runway.
“When are you and Pieter gonna make it legal, Ian?”
Ian snorted his gin and glared at Michael. “Soon. And you are definitely invited.”
“Now,” He grabbed one of his PA’s as she rushed past, “follow this young lady out and she’ll get you a cab-or you can take my car back to wherever you’re staying.” Someone as fragile as you’ve always been shouldn’t be around these people. Especially not Robbie.
Michael nodded and after kissing Ian with soft, please-hurt-me lips, he let himself be led away. And Ian turned his attention back to locating his erstwhile boyfriend. Husband-to-be, actually, as he’d just told Michael. And that thought made Ian warm and sweet inside.
Pieter was nowhere to be found, though, but that didn’t worry Ian too much. The other man had likely gone back to Ian’s suite, or just took off for a club. Maybe, Ian thought as he said his goodbyes and thank yous, he’ll get laid and feel better.
*
Ian had sobered up to the blinding headache point by the time that the party wound down and fans, critics and fashion reporters had let him be.
It was lucky, Ian concluded, serendipitous perhaps, that he was a designer and that other designers who were used to impulsive celebrities, had been at his party. A jeweler friend of his had indulged him good-naturedly when he had approached her in a fit of romantic whimsy, taking him back to her house when they left the party and showing him some of her exclusive designs at three o’clock in the morning. “Because,” she told him with mist in her eyes, “I’m a sucker for a happy ending.”
He was thinking of endings, whether happy or lingering and tragic-and of Aaron and the heavy silver ring that he still wore on his left hand, when he came home alone, with his mission accomplished. He fumbled through the ashtray until he found Pieter’s joint from earlier and lit up. And as the headache faded, he began to feel naughty.
He wandered to the door that connected his bedroom to Robbie’s and let himself in. Once there, he gave into a childish sense of anger, curiosity and rebelliousness and began pawing through Robbie’s things.
He stopped when he found Robbie’s cologne on the floor. He sat down next to it, in the dark, and pushed it around with his finger- watching the cut glass of the bottle catch and fragment the light that filtered in from his suit.
On an impulse, he sprayed himself with it.
*
Someone stumbling through the room, tripping on oversized shoes, eventually woke Ian. The ceiling was spinning slowly and he couldn’t seem to look away from it, but he knew from the quiet curses in Dutch that Pieter had finally come back.
“It’s almost dawn,” he told the ceiling, which was covered in watery, gray shadows.
“I know.” Pieter answered, crawling up onto the bed, “but what’s the use of being in Paris if you can’t party until the sun comes up?”
“You could have partied with me,” Ian admonished the chandelier, which looked to be listing precariously to the right.
“You were busy,” Pieter muttered as he made his way to Ian’s side, collapsing next to him. “And Robbie was . . .being Robbie.”
“I know,” Ian said. Believe me, I know.
Suddenly, Pieter was snuffling around him, stoking him and then thrusting against his side, dog-like.
“Ian . . .lord . . .you smell like him.”
It clicked. As Pieter frantically humped him, licking at him and ripping at his clothes, it clicked. He knew what had been missing in Pieter’s life, what he had taken from Pieter and why Pieter closed him out. How could I not have seen it, Ian wondered. Am I that self-absorbed?
“Fuck me Ian, please. Fuckmefuckmefuckme . . .” Pieter was chanting.
Ian pulled Pieter close to him, God I’m an asshole, he thought, before whispering, “Hands and knees, sugar.”
Pieter wailed; and he’d never made that noise, that desperate, hurting, needing, noise in all the years they’d been together. But he rolled onto his stomach, and then struggled to kneel for Ian, all the time burying his face in Ian’s pillow. The pillow saturated with his brother’s cologne.
There was no time to be nice, and for once Ian didn’t feel guilty about it. He took Pieter without any preparation, hoping that the lube on the condom would keep the other man from getting too badly hurt.
He reveled unashamedly Pieter’s sobbing cries, but he knew that they weren’t from his rough handling. Pieter was loose and slick; he’d been well used already that night, and not by Ian. For over a decade Pieter had been the model boyfriend. He had stayed with Ian through Michael, through the revolving door of boys, through Ian’s hypochondria after Brendan got sick . . . through Robbie. And he had never once come to Ian still wet from another man, and he had never once slipped in bed and called out someone else’s name.
Until tonight.
Tonight, when Ian had let Pieter’s brother give him a hand job in a dark corner at his own party. Tonight, when Ian had doused himself with Robbie’s cologne on a whim.
Tonight, the only name on Pieter’s lips when he came was his brother’s.
*
Ian didn’t sleep again; he kept a silent watch over Pieter as the sun rose, breaking through the clouds at one point and bathing the room in yellow warmth.
When Pieter finally woke, he let Ian feed him breakfast. It was simple: waffles and fruit. The things that Pieter liked.
It became clear to Ian, as Pieter licked the remains of a strawberry of Ian’s finger, that Pieter didn’t remember much of the previous night.
“I’m sorry,” he said around a blackberry.
Isn’t that typical? Ian thought. Pieter The Thoughtful. Pieter The Ever-Apologetic. And Robbie’s words came back to him once again, ‘You like the vulnerable ones, don’t you?’
“Pieter, honey, you have nothing to be sorry for.” And Ian smiled, really big.
“Your shark-grin is never reassuring, Ian,” Pieter said, smearing some syrup around his plate with a bit of waffle. “And I do need to apologize. Last night was your big night. The proof that you made it, and I took off on you and . . .” he trailed off. “I should have been there.”
Ian knew he had to tread very carefully. “Did you have a good time when you went out?”
Pieter blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Did you get laid?”
“Yeah. I guess I did,” Pieter admitted. “It was some kid in a bathroom. He looked like Michael- did you see Michael?”
“I saw him,” Ian said. “And I’m glad you got what you needed.”
Pieter wasn’t manipulative enough to try to twist the conversation around to his favor, and Ian knew it. Another man might have simpered and fawned and tried the ‘You’re all I need’ bullshit. Not Pieter.
“Anonymous sex in club bathrooms? Does that sound like what I need, Ian?” Pieter looked mildly astonished at the thought.
“Maybe. It doesn’t matter, though. I love you no matter what,” Or who, he thought to himself, “you need.”
Pieter shrugged. “I don’t even remember getting back here,” he stopped and looked at Ian. “It smells an awful lot like Robbie in here.”
“His cologne is really strong. It probably seeped through the walls after he put in on yesterday.” And Ian was truly proud that he said that with a straight face.
*
“What can I do to make it up to you, Ian?” Pieter asked later as he knelt on Ian’s back, carefully massaging knots of tension out of the other man’s shoulders.
“I’ll think of something.” Ian said into the pillow.
*
They were getting stoned before dinner when Robbie wandered in.
He looked awkward; with his makeup smudged and runny and his hair damp from the snow, he wasn’t the cold, perfect ideal that he hid behind on the runway and in magazines. He was just Robbie, Pieter’s baby brother.
“Smoke?” Ian asked, and beckoned Robbie to join them on the bed. Robbie hesitated, seeming unsure of himself without his coke and his wild friends. It wasn’t until Pieter nodded at him and moved the box of chocolates that was lying between him and Ian that Robbie shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed.
Ian handed him the joint and watched as Robbie took a hit and then passed it to his brother. Pieter waved it away and Ian took it, breathed a quick prayer that he wasn’t about to destroy the most important thing in the world to him, and inhaled. Then he caught hold of Robbie’s head and kissed him, urging him with his tongue to open his mouth. He exhaled into Robbie’s lungs, and let the younger man go when he slid into a heap next to his brother.
Pieter automatically brushed the hair back from Robbie’s forehead, and then looked up Ian, fear on his eyes.
“This is what I want,” Ian said, edging closer to the brothers. “The two of you. Just once.” Please don’t leave me, Ian thought. Please let this be right,.
Pieter shut his eyes. Then, he nodded.
Robbie, bless him, took the initiative. He sat up, caught Pieter’s hand where it had been resting on his head and kissed it, before pushing Ian onto his back and working his t-shirt off.
His lips were on Ian’s neck, and his hands were skittering across Ian’s chest when Ian felt another pair of hands tug at his pants.
Oh Pieter, he thought as he lifted his hips. Oh Robbie.
There were hands and mouths everywhere then, and he couldn’t tell the difference between them. Same amount of pressure, same sharp teeth, same teasing fingers.
Until, God, until someone went down on him and he felt the rasp of metal against the skin of his cock.
“Robbie, Jesus . . .” Ian said, and looked over to see Pieter watching his brother. Watching Robbie give Ian head.
Ian took Pieter’s hand in his and put it on the back of Robbie’s head, linking their fingers together in Robbie’s hair.
“Clothes, baby,” Ian mumbled to Pieter. He needed to feel Pieter’s skin against his, holding him together, because Robbie was taking him apart.
Pieter, always obedient, got rid of what little he was wearing and was soon pressed to Ian’s side, his legs barely touching his brother.
Ian knew when it happened. He could feel it in Pieter’s body. The tensing of his muscles, the sudden feverish heat. Robbie had put a hand on Pieter’s leg, just below the knee.
“Higher, Robbie,” Ian said, and watched as Robbie’s hand crept higher on his brother’s thigh. Pieter moaned and buried his face in Ian’s shoulder, refusing to watch.
Too fast, Ian thought, and kissed Pieter’s cheek. “ ‘S alright, baby,” he murmured, and pulled Pieter up until he was on his knees, straddling his chest. “Now you can’t see him, yeah?”
Pieter nodded.
“Then give me your cock.”
Pieter, gasping, braced himself with one hand on the headboard and fed Ian what he wanted.
And Ian let one brother surround him, while the other choked him.
He came into Robbie’s mouth when Robbie put his hand on Pieter’s hip, forcing him down Ian’s throat.
*
Pieter had stilled after the one, sudden thrust Robbie had caused him to make into Ian’s mouth. Now he was frozen. Terrified.
Feeling Pieter start to lose his hard on, Ian pulled away from him and reached his arms around him. He wasn’t reaching for Pieter, though, he was reaching for his brother, and after shedding his own clothes, Robbie came to him willingly.
Together, they held Pieter, and Ian felt Robbie begin to move against Pieter’s back, kissing his way up to his brother’s neck and then his cheek.
“Kiss him, Piet,” Ian said, looking up into Pieter’s wide eyes.
Pieter turned his head and let Robbie kiss him; it was chaste as first, but Robbie was persistent and Pieter was so naturally submissive, so eager to please, that he gave in to Robbie’s coaxing and opened his mouth.
Ian propped himself up on his elbows so he could lick and whisper in Pieter’s ear: “Can you taste me, baby? Can you taste me in his mouth?”
Pieter made a rough, strangled sound, and then he and Robbie were both on their knees, above Ian, and Robbie was pressed flat against his brother’s back, holding Pieter against him with one hand and letting the other hand slide down Pieter’s waist toward Pieter’s renewed erection.
“No,” Pieter mumbled into Robbie’s mouth, breaking away and rolling awkwardly to the side of the other two men.
Robbie was stunned, but Ian moved fast, pinning Pieter to the mattress before he could flee any further. “Piet, you’re going to do this if I have to tie you to the fucking bed,” he growled. “I want you with me forever, you goddamn, crazy Viking.” His hair was a sun-bleached curtain where it fell around them, and it was long enough for them to hide in. “But, I won’t settle just for the part of you that’s not desperate for your brother, and riddled with guilt because of it. You need to get him out of your system, because I won’t let anything else come between us.”
Then Robbie was there between his brother’s legs. “Let me touch you, sugar,” he said and all affectation, all trace of America, was gone from his voice, making it an eerie echo of Pieter’s.
It was enough. Pieter gave up the fight, and Ian left the two of them alone.
He crossed the room and settled in one of the chairs, not caring about the clothes that he crushed, seeing only the bothers entwined on the bed.
Robbie was murmuring reassurances to Pieter, “Easy, sugar . . . Jesus . . . Piet . . .”
And then Pieter had Robbie on his back and was shoving his fingers down his brother’s throat.
“Should have been me . . .” Ian heard over the wet, sucking sounds that Robbie was making. “God . . . baby brother . . .always flirting with me, teasing me.” He worked the hand that had been in Robbie’s mouth down between his legs and Ian saw Robbie scrabbling at Pieter’s back, wanting more. “Your first time, Robbie- ” and Pieter began rolling a condom on, “like this. It should have been me.”
Robbie was chanting, “yesyesyesyes,” to Pieter, and Ian knew that when he’d fucked Robbie- so long ago it seemed- he’d just been a poor substitute for a beloved, idolized older brother whose body had been paraded in front of Robbie for years, both in public, and then at home. Ian had simply been the closest thing to Pieter that Robbie could get: Pieter’s own lover.
When Pieter entered Robbie they cried out in one voice and their bodies, always so similar, became almost indistinguishable.
Ian was hard again, painfully so, and he began to stoke himself in time with the brothers’ movements. He wondered idly, how long it had been since Pieter had topped anyone, and further, if Pieter had ever wanted to top anyone but his brother.
As Pieter’s thrusts lost their rhythm and became frenzied, Robbie reverted to the boy that Ian remembered. His accent returned, and finally, he began to cry to Pieter in broken English: “I’m sorry. Ik houd van u . . .wilde u altijd, Piet. Als dit . . .in me.”
And Pieter responded in the same language, “I know, weinig broer het. Ik houd ook van u.”
Ian knew enough Dutch to make out what they were saying to each other, and it made his heart ache even as he came onto his stomach and chest.
‘I’m sorry. I love you . . . always wanted you, Piet. Like this. In me.’
‘I know, little brother. I love you too.’
*
Pieter and Robbie made love twice more during the night. And Pieter was insatiable, desperate for his brother. He couldn’t seem to get enough until he was laid out flat with his head in Ian’s lap and Robbie’s hand buried inside of him to the wrist.
Only then did he seem satisfied, complete.
After Robbie fell asleep, Ian watched Pieter silently trace his fingers over his brother’s body, relearning it. He trailed a hand down Robbie’s back, counting the prominent bones in his spine, before doing the same to Robbie’s sides, where his ribs were just visible under his pale skin. Ian understood what Pieter was telling him: Robbie was going to need a lot of attention and a lot of love to get healthy again. And Pieter was finally saying to Ian what Ian should have known years ago, I am my brother’s keeper.
Toward late morning, Ian dragged Pieter down to the hotel pool, insisting that they both needed to swim. He told Pieter, half seriously, that days of lying about and eating rich food and drinking fine wine was going to make them fat.
Of course he had an ulterior motive. Their relationship had begun in the pool, and for eight years and three Olympic games, it had been focused on competing in the pool. It was only appropriate, in Ian’s mind, that in order to finally move forward, they had go back to where it all began: the water.
Once in the pool, though. Pieter couldn’t relax. He swam a few laps, and then ducked into Ian’s lane and blocked the other man’s progress. “Why, Ian?,” he asked. “Why do this? It has to shock you, appall you. My brother and I.”
Ian shook his head; he’d been ready for this question. “You know me better than that. There’s not much that can shock me.” He was treading water easily, feeling loose and warm from swimming.
“But Ian,” and Pieter turned to him in anguish, “don’t you see? Now that I have had him, I can’t give him up again.”
Ian paddled to the side of the pool near his gym bag and reached into it, rummaging for the box he’d put there before they’d come down. “How long have we been together, Piet?”
Pieter didn’t have to think. “Since the Sydney games. Twelve years.”
“We’ll then, I guess that this question is about a decade overdue, then.” He pulled out the jewelry box and opened it. There was set of plain gold bands inside. “Pieter,” he asked, taking the biggest risk of his life, the deepest dive, “will you marry me?”
Pieter’s eyes sparkled with tears and he looked like he might refuse on principle. It had been twelve years. Twelve very long years, and Ian knew that he had never proven himself to be husband material, but Pieter took one of the bands and turned it over in his hand. “But what about Robbie?”
“Remember what I told you the first time that we visited Brendan in the hospital?” he asked. Pieter nodded, looked at the ring, and slid it on. “His parents weren’t there. It was just you, Aaron and I.” He floated closer to Pieter so he could touch the other man. “And I told you and Aaron that it was OK. That when we come out- when we stop hiding who we are, and Aaron just had - we often lose the family that we were born with.” He ran a hand up and down Pieter’s arm. “They can’t relate to us anymore, or they don’t even try. So we make new families. We make new kinds of families. Like what we became to Aaron and Brendan. Right?”
Pieter twisted the ring around his finger and nodded.
“Part of what makes us special, keeps us unique, is that we have the power and the freedom to create the kind of relationships and the kind of families we want. Friends become lovers, lovers become family. And it works the other way too. ” He kissed Pieter and he tasted like a memory. “I want you to be my family. You and Robbie.” Besides, Ian thought, family is what gives us hope in the face of the harshest adversary. And when you do grow up and realize that you’re not going to live forever, it’s not fame or clothing lines that immortalize you: it’s family - and their love and their memories - that give you real permanence in life and after.
We’ll never forget Brendan. And Pieter and Robbie and Aaron, and even Michael- will never forget me.
Pieter took the other ring from the box and slid it onto Ian’s hand. He blew a kiss over Ian’s shoulder to where Ian knew that Robbie had to be standing, then slipped under the water for a moment.
When he surfaced, it looked like the water had literally washed the years away. His hair was dark and slicked back, and the fine lines around his eyes had faded in the light of his smile.
He looked twenty-one again.
And when Pieter launched himself at Ian, splashing at Robbie, and laughing out loud while he did it, Ian felt like he was eighteen again.
He was eighteen and immortal with his whole life in front of him, because he was in love with a boy.
And because he had his family around him.
~fin~
The songs mentioned and the lyrics used in this story include:
'I left my Heart in San Francisco'--Tony Bennet
and, 'Above the Clouds'--Amber
Author: shimmer
Pairing: Ian T/Pieter and Robbie Van den Hoogenband
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest (obviously) and drugs (it is ME, after all). Also, this is another long fic. Really long.
Disclaimer: The people may be real, but THIS is fiction.
Thanks: To spherissa for the beta, and to sodiumlight for encouragement and faith.
Summary: “This is what I want,” Ian said, edging closer to the brothers. “The two of you. Just once.” Please don’t leave me, Ian thought. Please let this be right.
xposted to my journal olympic_slash and ian_pieter
My Brother's Keeper
They say that once you’ve been to Paris, a part of you never leaves. A little piece of your soul stays, captured by the romance, in the City of Lights.
If that’s true, Ian thought, I wonder just how much of my soul is left to me by now. What with leaving it in Paris, giving it to the sport and having it stolen by so many different men. He laughed into his cappuccino, I suppose it’s better than leaving my heart in San Francisco. Tony Bennet invaded his peace, then, as he breathed in the scents of Paris in autumn: clove cigarettes, coffee, cold, damp air, and expensive perfume that didn’t quite cover up the human smell of all big cities.
A hand touched his arm and he started.
“That’s an odd song to be singing, even for you.”
Ian smiled, “I did leave my heart in San Francisco, though, didn’t I?” he asked Pieter after they kissed each other’s cheeks in greeting. Apparently, there were bits and pieces of him left on every continent.
Pieter, used to Ian’s random way of thinking after so long together, just nodded, “Wasn’t it Aaron? Didn’t he take you to Berkeley and try to teach you about American civil rights?”
Ian thought back. It would have been a year after Athen's. So, seven years ago? And he had fallen in love with Aaron’s enthusiasm and his budding activism. That was the thing about Ian, no matter how many men there were, he always found a way to love them.
Now, Aaron was a politician, still in California, and still fighting for all of the disenfranchised Americans. His idealism had never dimmed, not even when Brendan-big, strong Brendan-had been diagnosed with HIV just before Beijing.
“It’s not a death sentence anymore,” Aaron had told Ian, looking pale but driven as they lay together on the beach, where Aaron went to heal. “But because of that, people have forgotten about it and our generation- ” he’d pointed at Ian in the dusky light, “our generation is at risk.”
“You’ll save us, though, Aaron. And those who come after us,” Ian had reassured him with utter conviction, feeling a wriggling fear in his gut, remembering his own carelessness. Until Brendan, until that cold Northern California winter spent in and out of hospitals, he’d been a god; he’d been immortal. He didn’t believe that anymore, having seen the plague and faced his mortality. But he still believed in Aaron and he put his name behind his causes, funding him and endorsing him whenever he could.
He shook himself back into the present and took Pieter’s cold hands in his. He had been waiting for Pieter in the café for hours, and seeing him, seeing how he’d changed (there were new lines, and a few silver hairs threaded amongst the gold), was bittersweet. It had been months since they’d been together, and if it hadn’t been for the debut of Ian’s special collection at le Carrousel, he doubted that they would be together now. It was, Ian knew, his chance to put things right, to close the distance between them. And he wanted to do it. Because losing Pieter after more than a decade together wasn’t just losing a lover, it was losing family. And a friend.
Ian had learned a long time ago how those distinctions between family, friend and lover became blurred within the gay community where love was sought after so greedily, yet came so dear. And since Brendan (because despite Aaron’s optimism, they had watched the breastroker eventually waste away), there had been more friends lost. And more hospital vigils and chilly graveside rites. Not Pieter, Ian vowed. Not ever.
Success had put things in perspective for Ian. He knew what he wanted now that he was in his thirties. He wanted a husband, a home. A family.
“How was your flight?” he asked.
Pieter shrugged and asked the waitress for a coffee, “It was fine. You know Robbie hates to fly.”
Ian felt a twinge of nervousness. Robbie had flown in from America, where he had run away after his brief affair with Ian, to the Netherlands and then with Pieter into Paris. And he did hate to fly because of his numerous, ever-changing addictions which were an unfortunate by-product of his life in the modeling industry. “But he’ll be ready for tomorrow, won’t he? You left him at rehearsal didn’t you?”
“He’ll be fine,” Pieter said, drawing his hands away from Ian. “He always is.” And Ian could almost hear Pieter thinking, But I don’t really care. I am not my brother’s keeper.
Ian sighed and stretched his legs out next to Pieter’s under the table. Robbie was always such a touchy subject between them, and although Ian knew that his model and Pieter’s younger brother was part of the problem in their relationship, he’d never been able to pinpoint why. Ian and Pieter had opened their relationship after Athens, back when they were young and planning to live forever. Back when the world and all of the pretty boys in it were their's for the taking.
Ian hadn’t blinked when Pieter had embarked on a passionate affair with Grant while living with Ian in Australia (the only affair with a man that Grant had ever had), and Pieter had remained typically Nordic and aloof while Ian worked his way through lists of men, both anonymous and old friends.
“It’s the way we are,” Ian explained to Pieter once.
“Whores?” Pieter had asked, laughing.
“In a way, Piet. We need to prove our masculinity to the straight world, and what better way then through promiscuity?”
It had been pretentious and a lie, although it had taken Ian a lot of soul searching to figure that out. There had always been a part of Pieter that he kept closed off from Ian, and it left Ian feeling incomplete, empty.
He’d filled the void the only way he knew how. He still did.
Pieter had accepted Ian’s lifestyle, and had even been amused by it, until Robbie got involved. That had almost been the end of them. It had changed everything, and it scared Ian into seeing what he had in Pieter.
Now, Ian was much more discreet. The gorgeous model who was getting his first big break in Ian’s show tomorrow night- the same show that Robbie was in - had been safely packed and out of Ian’s suite long before Pieter and Robbie had even left the Netherlands.
*
As they walked though the snow back to the hotel where Ian lived, Pieter slid his hand into Ian’s and they swung their arms together. Like little kids.
“It’s good to see you,” Pieter said, tilting his head back to catch snowflakes on his tongue.
Ian tugged him close. Pieter looked so at home in the snow with cold, glittering crystals caught in his blond lashes and with the chill bringing a flush to his cheeks. And, Ian thought, he looks stunning in that coat I designed for him.
They sat in Ian’s suit and drank champagne in candlelight and played their parts: famous, playboy fashion designer and his pretty, cosmopolitan boyfriend.
Sex, as always, was decadent and painfully perfect. They had been together for almost twelve years, and far from breeding contempt, familiarity had led to comfort and easy pleasure.
They lay on the floor in the funny, radiant light that comes from snowstorms and guttering candles, and Ian drank thousands of dollars worth of champagne off of Pieter’s body. And the entire time he did it- pouring cool, bubbling liquid over Pieter’s skin from his chest to his cock- he kept two fingers lodged inside the other man, perfectly still, forcing Pieter to fuck himself on Ian’s hand while Ian got slowly drunk.
“Nothing tastes better,” Ian told Pieter as he rolled a condom over himself, “than Crystal and come.”
Their skin stuck together as Ian entered Pieter, and the little pains from the friction excited him. The way Pieter smelled, of come and IT cologne and spilled champagne, made him wild. Possessive.
He thrust harder than he meant and was rougher than he wanted - but Pieter invited it with his breathy, little girl moans and his restless, clinging movements.
And always, in the back of his mind, was the fact that Robbie was in the extra bedroom, and secretly, Ian wanted more than anything for Robbie to hear what he was doing to his brother.
*
In the morning, champagne-sex didn’t seem quite so romantic. Headaches aside, the room was a mess and they were late.
Ian dashed about the suite, trying to get organized. Pieter made sure that Robbie made it to the venue, and then laid back and smoked a joint. He offered it to Ian, who declined. He was fuzzy headed enough without getting stoned on top of it. “Later, baby.”
Ian appreciated how patiently Pieter waited for him to pick out his clothes. That had been another sore spot. “It’s not as if I can’t dress myself, Ian. No one’s ever accused me of looking shoddy. And besides, Robbie’s your model.” Not me, was the unspoken accusation. Ian had agreed, placating Pieter, but reminding him that even if Robbie was the model and the face of IT clothing, Pieter, as Robbie’s brother and Ian’s husband-in-all-but-name, had to submit to Ian’s compulsive desire to clothe everyone around him.
The limo ride from the hotel was tense, mostly because Ian was nervous about having his clothing line debut in Paris for the first time, and Pieter was always uptight when Robbie was around. And he hadn’t been in such close proximity to Robbie in years. Come to think of it, Ian thought, I don’t think that Pieter’s ever seen Robbie model for me. There had always been excuses before, and Ian had let it go. But this time, it was for real. Ian had made it big, become somebody beyond the swimmer. He’d created a life of his own, and he wanted more than anything for Pieter to be a part of it.
It felt so natural to have Pieter next to him, like they were a part of one another. And Ian realized how faded the boundary between lover and friend and brother had become between the two of them.
“I’m glad you’re here, Piet,” he whispered to Pieter, but the other man was distracted by the patterns of frost forming on the mirrored window glass and didn’t answer.
*
The show went off without a glitch, though. And it gave Ian a chance to watch his lover watch Robbie on the runway from backstage.
He saw resentment, sadness and something that he couldn’t put his finger on. And it brought him back to when Pieter had confronted him about his affair with Robbie. Even at the time, he hadn’t been able to tell what Pieter was really angry about. Some sort of sibling rivalry? Did Pieter think that because Robbie was a model that he was more attractive than he was? Protectiveness, maybe? I’m not a sexual predator, Ian thought, slipping an arm around Pieter’s shoulders as Robbie made his way past them, slinking down the runway with a look of perpetual disdain etched on his face. Robbie was an adult, and I didn’t hurt him. But Ian had to admit that at that time in his life, before Pieter had confronted him and before Brendan had gotten sick, he hadn’t always been careful. And, on top of that, Pieter knew that Ian wasn’t always the most gentle and compassionate lover.
So, it was entirely possible that Pieter had simply been playing the overprotective older brother, if one discounted Pieter’s continuing insistence that: I am not my brother’s keeper. And it didn’t explain the bitterness that still surrounded the three of them. The hint of . . . jealousy.
“He’s not as beautiful as you, mate.” Ian said into Pieter’s hair, believing it as he said it. Robbie’s haughty, manufactured good-looks did nothing for him, not like Pieter’s honest, open beauty.
Pieter looked at him, his blue eyes unreadable. “He’s the sun,” he said, and he ran a hand carelessly through Ian’s shoulder-length hair, “he’s all I see sometimes.”
What the hell does that mean? Ian wondered as Pieter left him alone in the crowd.
*
Pieter drifted through the after party like a ghost, and Ian had a hard time keeping track of him. Robbie, unfortunately, was stuck to Ian’s side like a burr.
He hadn’t bothered taking his make-up off, and he was all dark lips and smoky eyes, so hauntingly like Pieter’s. Like a distorted afterimage of the other man.
Robbie was there, flitting in and out of Ian's peripheral vision, when Aaron found them. He still had a full head of curly hair, and, Ian was glad to see, a healthy tan. His eyes were serious, though. Not the laughing, unconcerend eyes of the boy on the beach that Ian had loved. Life, and then death, had taken it's toll on Aaron.
"How are you, mate?" Ian asked, and for the first time that night, his concern was genuine.
Aaron smiled at him and Ian's heart fluttered, "D'you mean 'am I sick?', 'cause, I'm not. I'm still virus-free." He didn't bother to hide the bitterness in his voice, the survivor's guilt. He may have loved Ian for a moment, but Brendan had been his soul mate and he had been forced to stand by, impotent, and watch him fade away.
Ian just shook his head and gathered Aaron into his arms, not bothering to feel ashamed that his body still responded to the other man. He kissed Aaron's cheek and whispered under the music, "I was wondering if you'd found someone, someone to surf with and someone to cry with." He ran his hands up Aaron's back, feeling him begn to shake. "I was wondering if there are times when you smile and you mean it. And if you still wish on stars."
"I only have one wish, Ian," Aaron mumbled into his neck. "And I think the stars have gotten tired of hearing it."
Ian was at a loss for words, so after requesting a song that he remebered Brendan liking from the DJ, he grabbed a couple of drinks so that they could toast Aaron's lost lover while they danced together under the light of the disco ball.
*
The song was still playing, we're flying above the clouds, so beautiful and clear. We're flying above the clouds, I can see happiness from here, and Ian was on his fourth rum and coke when he cornered Robbie and let the model slither over him.
“Where’s your brother?”
Robbie laughed, high pitched and affected. “Can’t keep track of your husband, sugar? Shame on you.” He flicked his tongue out, and Ian could see the flash of metal imbedded in it. Lord. That’s new. “For all you know Ian-baby, he could be out getting it on with Phelps. You wouldn’t like that would you?”
“Michael is here?” Ian was incredulous.
“Oh yeah. His flight was late but he made it to the party- for a while. You didn’t see him?”
“No.” I want lipstick and cold metal on my cock. I don’t want to think about Michael.
Robbie sighed and his breath smelled of fruity drinks and the American cigarettes he liked so much. He’d been living in L.A. and then New York for the past several years, and along with picking up a taste for Marlboros and cocaine, he’d acquired an edgy effeminacy and lost his accent. To the untrained ear, he could easily have passed for an American.
Robbie blinked and then refocused his glassy, coked out stare on Ian. “The repressed ones, the closeted ones, are the very best in bed aren’t they, sugar?” He slid a hand up boldly between Ian’s legs. “I know you like them when they’re vulnerable.”
“Fuck off, Robbie.” But Ian didn’t move. He just let his hair fall forward and cover his face.
Robbie kept talking, dropping his voice but still singing the words. “There was me . . . and oh, sugar. My first time and it was with my brother’s man.” He squeezed and Ian jerked forward. “I got just what Pieter had been getting.” Squeeze. “This.” Stroke. “And I’ll never forget it either. Sucking the same cock my brother sucked, having that same cock in me, tearing me . . .”
Ian was choking on the smoke, on Robbie’s heavy cologne, and on the younger man’s words.
“Was I as good as Pieter?” He shook his head and smiled. “No? How about Michael, then?” He unbuttoned Ian’s pants and Ian couldn’t stop him. He was lost in the strange/familiar eyes. “I mean, that must have been one hell of a fuck, sugar.” All the rings that Robbie wore were cold on Ian’s erection and it only made him think about the ring in Robbie’s mouth.
“Shut up, Robbie.”
“Poor Mikey had a nervous breakdown when you were done with him. Hurt his back, started drinking. Got arrested.” Robbie had him by the balls, now. “I knew you were good, but not that good.”
“Where’s Pieter?” Ian asked through teeth that felt like they were chipping.
“Gone, gone, gone,” Robbie sang, working Ian in earnest now, his rings catching on Ian’s flesh.
“With Michael . . .oh fuck Robbie . . . Did he leave with Michael?”
“No. I think he left on his own,” he jerked hard, and Ian came silently, shamefully, in his pants.
He pushed his hair back. “How do you know?”
Robbie laughed, this time a real, masculine I beat you motherfucker laugh. “ ‘Cause Michael’s right behind you, sugar.”
“Shit.” Ian shoved Robbie away from him and straightened himself up before turning around. “Michael.”
“Ian.”
Michael was the only one of them- those of them that had been there in the golden years in Sydney and Athens and Beijing- that was still swimming, still clinging to his fifteen minutes.
And while Ian hadn’t seen him in God knows how long, he wasn’t in the mood to be nice to the other swimmer. The man had almost destroyed everything that he’d built, all of his dreams, his life with Pieter, because he’d gotten drunk one night and let Ian fuck him silly.
Then he’d cried rape.
Perhaps, Ian admitted to himself, just perhaps, I wasn't the perfect gentleman with Michael. But it wasn't bloody rape.
He hid his irritation, though, and put on his party face.“What’re you doin’ here, Mike?” he asked, taking the other swimmer by the arm and guiding him through the throngs of people-keeping an eye out for Robbie. “You don’t belong in places like this.”
Pieter had been so strong then, standing by Ian as Michael had waged a silent war against him. It had never gotten to the press, but it had been precariously close, particularly after Michael was hospitalized with ‘depression.’
“I’ve never known where I belong, Ian.” Michael shrugged. “I just wanted to congratulate you. Bury the hatchet, and all that.” His eyes were dangerously soft and, like Robbie goddamn him to the deepest part of hell, had said, Ian liked them vulnerable.
But he wasn’t going to fall into Michael’s trap again. Not now. Not now that Ian was so much older and so much wiser.
He grabbed a drink from a passing waiter. And grimaced. It was a gin and tonic. He was mixing his drinks now, and he was going to pay for it later. “What is this? Some twelve step program?” he asked Michael before he stopped himself. He had heard something about Michael’s drinking problem becoming serious, hadn’t he?
“Something like that.”
“Fine,” And Ian turned on all of his famous charm. “Buried. In the past. Forgiven.”
Michael looked relieved, and Ian felt better than he had since he and Pieter had watched Robbie flaunt himself for them on the runway.
“When are you and Pieter gonna make it legal, Ian?”
Ian snorted his gin and glared at Michael. “Soon. And you are definitely invited.”
“Now,” He grabbed one of his PA’s as she rushed past, “follow this young lady out and she’ll get you a cab-or you can take my car back to wherever you’re staying.” Someone as fragile as you’ve always been shouldn’t be around these people. Especially not Robbie.
Michael nodded and after kissing Ian with soft, please-hurt-me lips, he let himself be led away. And Ian turned his attention back to locating his erstwhile boyfriend. Husband-to-be, actually, as he’d just told Michael. And that thought made Ian warm and sweet inside.
Pieter was nowhere to be found, though, but that didn’t worry Ian too much. The other man had likely gone back to Ian’s suite, or just took off for a club. Maybe, Ian thought as he said his goodbyes and thank yous, he’ll get laid and feel better.
*
Ian had sobered up to the blinding headache point by the time that the party wound down and fans, critics and fashion reporters had let him be.
It was lucky, Ian concluded, serendipitous perhaps, that he was a designer and that other designers who were used to impulsive celebrities, had been at his party. A jeweler friend of his had indulged him good-naturedly when he had approached her in a fit of romantic whimsy, taking him back to her house when they left the party and showing him some of her exclusive designs at three o’clock in the morning. “Because,” she told him with mist in her eyes, “I’m a sucker for a happy ending.”
He was thinking of endings, whether happy or lingering and tragic-and of Aaron and the heavy silver ring that he still wore on his left hand, when he came home alone, with his mission accomplished. He fumbled through the ashtray until he found Pieter’s joint from earlier and lit up. And as the headache faded, he began to feel naughty.
He wandered to the door that connected his bedroom to Robbie’s and let himself in. Once there, he gave into a childish sense of anger, curiosity and rebelliousness and began pawing through Robbie’s things.
He stopped when he found Robbie’s cologne on the floor. He sat down next to it, in the dark, and pushed it around with his finger- watching the cut glass of the bottle catch and fragment the light that filtered in from his suit.
On an impulse, he sprayed himself with it.
*
Someone stumbling through the room, tripping on oversized shoes, eventually woke Ian. The ceiling was spinning slowly and he couldn’t seem to look away from it, but he knew from the quiet curses in Dutch that Pieter had finally come back.
“It’s almost dawn,” he told the ceiling, which was covered in watery, gray shadows.
“I know.” Pieter answered, crawling up onto the bed, “but what’s the use of being in Paris if you can’t party until the sun comes up?”
“You could have partied with me,” Ian admonished the chandelier, which looked to be listing precariously to the right.
“You were busy,” Pieter muttered as he made his way to Ian’s side, collapsing next to him. “And Robbie was . . .being Robbie.”
“I know,” Ian said. Believe me, I know.
Suddenly, Pieter was snuffling around him, stoking him and then thrusting against his side, dog-like.
“Ian . . .lord . . .you smell like him.”
It clicked. As Pieter frantically humped him, licking at him and ripping at his clothes, it clicked. He knew what had been missing in Pieter’s life, what he had taken from Pieter and why Pieter closed him out. How could I not have seen it, Ian wondered. Am I that self-absorbed?
“Fuck me Ian, please. Fuckmefuckmefuckme . . .” Pieter was chanting.
Ian pulled Pieter close to him, God I’m an asshole, he thought, before whispering, “Hands and knees, sugar.”
Pieter wailed; and he’d never made that noise, that desperate, hurting, needing, noise in all the years they’d been together. But he rolled onto his stomach, and then struggled to kneel for Ian, all the time burying his face in Ian’s pillow. The pillow saturated with his brother’s cologne.
There was no time to be nice, and for once Ian didn’t feel guilty about it. He took Pieter without any preparation, hoping that the lube on the condom would keep the other man from getting too badly hurt.
He reveled unashamedly Pieter’s sobbing cries, but he knew that they weren’t from his rough handling. Pieter was loose and slick; he’d been well used already that night, and not by Ian. For over a decade Pieter had been the model boyfriend. He had stayed with Ian through Michael, through the revolving door of boys, through Ian’s hypochondria after Brendan got sick . . . through Robbie. And he had never once come to Ian still wet from another man, and he had never once slipped in bed and called out someone else’s name.
Until tonight.
Tonight, when Ian had let Pieter’s brother give him a hand job in a dark corner at his own party. Tonight, when Ian had doused himself with Robbie’s cologne on a whim.
Tonight, the only name on Pieter’s lips when he came was his brother’s.
*
Ian didn’t sleep again; he kept a silent watch over Pieter as the sun rose, breaking through the clouds at one point and bathing the room in yellow warmth.
When Pieter finally woke, he let Ian feed him breakfast. It was simple: waffles and fruit. The things that Pieter liked.
It became clear to Ian, as Pieter licked the remains of a strawberry of Ian’s finger, that Pieter didn’t remember much of the previous night.
“I’m sorry,” he said around a blackberry.
Isn’t that typical? Ian thought. Pieter The Thoughtful. Pieter The Ever-Apologetic. And Robbie’s words came back to him once again, ‘You like the vulnerable ones, don’t you?’
“Pieter, honey, you have nothing to be sorry for.” And Ian smiled, really big.
“Your shark-grin is never reassuring, Ian,” Pieter said, smearing some syrup around his plate with a bit of waffle. “And I do need to apologize. Last night was your big night. The proof that you made it, and I took off on you and . . .” he trailed off. “I should have been there.”
Ian knew he had to tread very carefully. “Did you have a good time when you went out?”
Pieter blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Did you get laid?”
“Yeah. I guess I did,” Pieter admitted. “It was some kid in a bathroom. He looked like Michael- did you see Michael?”
“I saw him,” Ian said. “And I’m glad you got what you needed.”
Pieter wasn’t manipulative enough to try to twist the conversation around to his favor, and Ian knew it. Another man might have simpered and fawned and tried the ‘You’re all I need’ bullshit. Not Pieter.
“Anonymous sex in club bathrooms? Does that sound like what I need, Ian?” Pieter looked mildly astonished at the thought.
“Maybe. It doesn’t matter, though. I love you no matter what,” Or who, he thought to himself, “you need.”
Pieter shrugged. “I don’t even remember getting back here,” he stopped and looked at Ian. “It smells an awful lot like Robbie in here.”
“His cologne is really strong. It probably seeped through the walls after he put in on yesterday.” And Ian was truly proud that he said that with a straight face.
*
“What can I do to make it up to you, Ian?” Pieter asked later as he knelt on Ian’s back, carefully massaging knots of tension out of the other man’s shoulders.
“I’ll think of something.” Ian said into the pillow.
*
They were getting stoned before dinner when Robbie wandered in.
He looked awkward; with his makeup smudged and runny and his hair damp from the snow, he wasn’t the cold, perfect ideal that he hid behind on the runway and in magazines. He was just Robbie, Pieter’s baby brother.
“Smoke?” Ian asked, and beckoned Robbie to join them on the bed. Robbie hesitated, seeming unsure of himself without his coke and his wild friends. It wasn’t until Pieter nodded at him and moved the box of chocolates that was lying between him and Ian that Robbie shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed.
Ian handed him the joint and watched as Robbie took a hit and then passed it to his brother. Pieter waved it away and Ian took it, breathed a quick prayer that he wasn’t about to destroy the most important thing in the world to him, and inhaled. Then he caught hold of Robbie’s head and kissed him, urging him with his tongue to open his mouth. He exhaled into Robbie’s lungs, and let the younger man go when he slid into a heap next to his brother.
Pieter automatically brushed the hair back from Robbie’s forehead, and then looked up Ian, fear on his eyes.
“This is what I want,” Ian said, edging closer to the brothers. “The two of you. Just once.” Please don’t leave me, Ian thought. Please let this be right,.
Pieter shut his eyes. Then, he nodded.
Robbie, bless him, took the initiative. He sat up, caught Pieter’s hand where it had been resting on his head and kissed it, before pushing Ian onto his back and working his t-shirt off.
His lips were on Ian’s neck, and his hands were skittering across Ian’s chest when Ian felt another pair of hands tug at his pants.
Oh Pieter, he thought as he lifted his hips. Oh Robbie.
There were hands and mouths everywhere then, and he couldn’t tell the difference between them. Same amount of pressure, same sharp teeth, same teasing fingers.
Until, God, until someone went down on him and he felt the rasp of metal against the skin of his cock.
“Robbie, Jesus . . .” Ian said, and looked over to see Pieter watching his brother. Watching Robbie give Ian head.
Ian took Pieter’s hand in his and put it on the back of Robbie’s head, linking their fingers together in Robbie’s hair.
“Clothes, baby,” Ian mumbled to Pieter. He needed to feel Pieter’s skin against his, holding him together, because Robbie was taking him apart.
Pieter, always obedient, got rid of what little he was wearing and was soon pressed to Ian’s side, his legs barely touching his brother.
Ian knew when it happened. He could feel it in Pieter’s body. The tensing of his muscles, the sudden feverish heat. Robbie had put a hand on Pieter’s leg, just below the knee.
“Higher, Robbie,” Ian said, and watched as Robbie’s hand crept higher on his brother’s thigh. Pieter moaned and buried his face in Ian’s shoulder, refusing to watch.
Too fast, Ian thought, and kissed Pieter’s cheek. “ ‘S alright, baby,” he murmured, and pulled Pieter up until he was on his knees, straddling his chest. “Now you can’t see him, yeah?”
Pieter nodded.
“Then give me your cock.”
Pieter, gasping, braced himself with one hand on the headboard and fed Ian what he wanted.
And Ian let one brother surround him, while the other choked him.
He came into Robbie’s mouth when Robbie put his hand on Pieter’s hip, forcing him down Ian’s throat.
*
Pieter had stilled after the one, sudden thrust Robbie had caused him to make into Ian’s mouth. Now he was frozen. Terrified.
Feeling Pieter start to lose his hard on, Ian pulled away from him and reached his arms around him. He wasn’t reaching for Pieter, though, he was reaching for his brother, and after shedding his own clothes, Robbie came to him willingly.
Together, they held Pieter, and Ian felt Robbie begin to move against Pieter’s back, kissing his way up to his brother’s neck and then his cheek.
“Kiss him, Piet,” Ian said, looking up into Pieter’s wide eyes.
Pieter turned his head and let Robbie kiss him; it was chaste as first, but Robbie was persistent and Pieter was so naturally submissive, so eager to please, that he gave in to Robbie’s coaxing and opened his mouth.
Ian propped himself up on his elbows so he could lick and whisper in Pieter’s ear: “Can you taste me, baby? Can you taste me in his mouth?”
Pieter made a rough, strangled sound, and then he and Robbie were both on their knees, above Ian, and Robbie was pressed flat against his brother’s back, holding Pieter against him with one hand and letting the other hand slide down Pieter’s waist toward Pieter’s renewed erection.
“No,” Pieter mumbled into Robbie’s mouth, breaking away and rolling awkwardly to the side of the other two men.
Robbie was stunned, but Ian moved fast, pinning Pieter to the mattress before he could flee any further. “Piet, you’re going to do this if I have to tie you to the fucking bed,” he growled. “I want you with me forever, you goddamn, crazy Viking.” His hair was a sun-bleached curtain where it fell around them, and it was long enough for them to hide in. “But, I won’t settle just for the part of you that’s not desperate for your brother, and riddled with guilt because of it. You need to get him out of your system, because I won’t let anything else come between us.”
Then Robbie was there between his brother’s legs. “Let me touch you, sugar,” he said and all affectation, all trace of America, was gone from his voice, making it an eerie echo of Pieter’s.
It was enough. Pieter gave up the fight, and Ian left the two of them alone.
He crossed the room and settled in one of the chairs, not caring about the clothes that he crushed, seeing only the bothers entwined on the bed.
Robbie was murmuring reassurances to Pieter, “Easy, sugar . . . Jesus . . . Piet . . .”
And then Pieter had Robbie on his back and was shoving his fingers down his brother’s throat.
“Should have been me . . .” Ian heard over the wet, sucking sounds that Robbie was making. “God . . . baby brother . . .always flirting with me, teasing me.” He worked the hand that had been in Robbie’s mouth down between his legs and Ian saw Robbie scrabbling at Pieter’s back, wanting more. “Your first time, Robbie- ” and Pieter began rolling a condom on, “like this. It should have been me.”
Robbie was chanting, “yesyesyesyes,” to Pieter, and Ian knew that when he’d fucked Robbie- so long ago it seemed- he’d just been a poor substitute for a beloved, idolized older brother whose body had been paraded in front of Robbie for years, both in public, and then at home. Ian had simply been the closest thing to Pieter that Robbie could get: Pieter’s own lover.
When Pieter entered Robbie they cried out in one voice and their bodies, always so similar, became almost indistinguishable.
Ian was hard again, painfully so, and he began to stoke himself in time with the brothers’ movements. He wondered idly, how long it had been since Pieter had topped anyone, and further, if Pieter had ever wanted to top anyone but his brother.
As Pieter’s thrusts lost their rhythm and became frenzied, Robbie reverted to the boy that Ian remembered. His accent returned, and finally, he began to cry to Pieter in broken English: “I’m sorry. Ik houd van u . . .wilde u altijd, Piet. Als dit . . .in me.”
And Pieter responded in the same language, “I know, weinig broer het. Ik houd ook van u.”
Ian knew enough Dutch to make out what they were saying to each other, and it made his heart ache even as he came onto his stomach and chest.
‘I’m sorry. I love you . . . always wanted you, Piet. Like this. In me.’
‘I know, little brother. I love you too.’
*
Pieter and Robbie made love twice more during the night. And Pieter was insatiable, desperate for his brother. He couldn’t seem to get enough until he was laid out flat with his head in Ian’s lap and Robbie’s hand buried inside of him to the wrist.
Only then did he seem satisfied, complete.
After Robbie fell asleep, Ian watched Pieter silently trace his fingers over his brother’s body, relearning it. He trailed a hand down Robbie’s back, counting the prominent bones in his spine, before doing the same to Robbie’s sides, where his ribs were just visible under his pale skin. Ian understood what Pieter was telling him: Robbie was going to need a lot of attention and a lot of love to get healthy again. And Pieter was finally saying to Ian what Ian should have known years ago, I am my brother’s keeper.
Toward late morning, Ian dragged Pieter down to the hotel pool, insisting that they both needed to swim. He told Pieter, half seriously, that days of lying about and eating rich food and drinking fine wine was going to make them fat.
Of course he had an ulterior motive. Their relationship had begun in the pool, and for eight years and three Olympic games, it had been focused on competing in the pool. It was only appropriate, in Ian’s mind, that in order to finally move forward, they had go back to where it all began: the water.
Once in the pool, though. Pieter couldn’t relax. He swam a few laps, and then ducked into Ian’s lane and blocked the other man’s progress. “Why, Ian?,” he asked. “Why do this? It has to shock you, appall you. My brother and I.”
Ian shook his head; he’d been ready for this question. “You know me better than that. There’s not much that can shock me.” He was treading water easily, feeling loose and warm from swimming.
“But Ian,” and Pieter turned to him in anguish, “don’t you see? Now that I have had him, I can’t give him up again.”
Ian paddled to the side of the pool near his gym bag and reached into it, rummaging for the box he’d put there before they’d come down. “How long have we been together, Piet?”
Pieter didn’t have to think. “Since the Sydney games. Twelve years.”
“We’ll then, I guess that this question is about a decade overdue, then.” He pulled out the jewelry box and opened it. There was set of plain gold bands inside. “Pieter,” he asked, taking the biggest risk of his life, the deepest dive, “will you marry me?”
Pieter’s eyes sparkled with tears and he looked like he might refuse on principle. It had been twelve years. Twelve very long years, and Ian knew that he had never proven himself to be husband material, but Pieter took one of the bands and turned it over in his hand. “But what about Robbie?”
“Remember what I told you the first time that we visited Brendan in the hospital?” he asked. Pieter nodded, looked at the ring, and slid it on. “His parents weren’t there. It was just you, Aaron and I.” He floated closer to Pieter so he could touch the other man. “And I told you and Aaron that it was OK. That when we come out- when we stop hiding who we are, and Aaron just had - we often lose the family that we were born with.” He ran a hand up and down Pieter’s arm. “They can’t relate to us anymore, or they don’t even try. So we make new families. We make new kinds of families. Like what we became to Aaron and Brendan. Right?”
Pieter twisted the ring around his finger and nodded.
“Part of what makes us special, keeps us unique, is that we have the power and the freedom to create the kind of relationships and the kind of families we want. Friends become lovers, lovers become family. And it works the other way too. ” He kissed Pieter and he tasted like a memory. “I want you to be my family. You and Robbie.” Besides, Ian thought, family is what gives us hope in the face of the harshest adversary. And when you do grow up and realize that you’re not going to live forever, it’s not fame or clothing lines that immortalize you: it’s family - and their love and their memories - that give you real permanence in life and after.
We’ll never forget Brendan. And Pieter and Robbie and Aaron, and even Michael- will never forget me.
Pieter took the other ring from the box and slid it onto Ian’s hand. He blew a kiss over Ian’s shoulder to where Ian knew that Robbie had to be standing, then slipped under the water for a moment.
When he surfaced, it looked like the water had literally washed the years away. His hair was dark and slicked back, and the fine lines around his eyes had faded in the light of his smile.
He looked twenty-one again.
And when Pieter launched himself at Ian, splashing at Robbie, and laughing out loud while he did it, Ian felt like he was eighteen again.
He was eighteen and immortal with his whole life in front of him, because he was in love with a boy.
And because he had his family around him.
~fin~
The songs mentioned and the lyrics used in this story include:
'I left my Heart in San Francisco'--Tony Bennet
and, 'Above the Clouds'--Amber