Chapter 10






"This is the kitchen." Damien led his father into the shining, modernized kitchen, agleam with all of the new stainless steel appliances that he'd had installed for Fanny. "And our cook, Fanny. Fanny, I'd like you to meet my father."
 
The cook nodded her head at them, not bothering to try to shake hands since she was wiping traces of flour off her hands with a kitchen towel. "Nice ta meet you," she said.

 "And it's nice to meet you, Fanny. I'm looking forward to trying your cooking," Damien's father said smoothly.  When he wanted to be, Thomas Burkley could be very personable. 

She looked pleased. "I'm making shank of lamb," she told them. "With new potatoes and fresh vegetables from the farmer's market." 

"Sounds wonderful," Thomas told her. "Do you enjoy cooking in your new kitchen?"

  She nodded again. "The old stove was pretty cranky. But this new one cooks like a dream," she replied. She beamed at Damien. "He's a good boy," she added.

 Damien squirmed a little, as his father's green eyes came to rest on his face. "Yes. Well, I must say he's done wonders for this place. So far, I'm very impressed."

   Damien felt butterflies in the pit of his stomach. His father was complimenting him! It seemed like some strange dream. "Anyway, shall we continue with the tour, Damien? We'll be back later to try that shank of lamb," Thomas went on to Fanny.

 "Yes. Come this way," Damien said. He led the way out of the kitchen, watched by Fanny and her assistant. Out in the small hallway, Damien turned to his father. "This leads to the laundry room and the backdoor," he told his father. 

"I'm sure that we don't need to inspect the laundry room," his father remarked dryly. 

"If you want, I'll show you an empty bedroom," Damien said. 

A nod. "That would be better...." his father began. But just then, the back door opened, and someone came walking down the hallway toward them. 

Damien felt his breath catch when he saw that it was Michael. The handyman paused, his face closing up when he saw the two of them. "Err...Michael," Damien began. "This is my father. Daddy, this is our resident handyman, Michael Hewes."

   "Nice to meet you, Michael," Thomas said. 

  "Nice to meet you," Michael replied, his voice as expressionless as his face. 

   Thomas blinked, his eyes going from Michael's face to Damien's. "I'm showing Daddy around the place," Damien gabbled, feeling horribly uncomfortable under Michael's blank brown stare.  

   "I see," Michael said stonily. 

  Damien sighed. "Don't let us get in your way," he said tartly. 

  Michael nodded and walked past them, not looking back. Damien watched his retreating back, until he became aware that his father was staring at him. "What?" he asked defensively.

   "I take it that Michael there isn't just your...handyman, Damien," his father remarked. 

  Damien stared at him. "I don't know what you're talking about, Daddy."

 His father frowned. "Don't play games, Damien," he chided. "You're not any good at it. You've always been very straightforward. And that's one of the things that I like about you. What's going on between you and Michael?"

  Damien sighed, rolling his shoulders. "We're sleeping together," he admitted tightly. 

   Silence. Then: "Sleeping together? I've never heard you use that term before. Does that mean you've had sex with him more than once?"

 "Well...yeah," Damien said. "What's wrong with that?"

 "Nothing. Nothing at all.  But I can't remember the last time that you were with somebody for more than a one-night stand. In fact, it might have been back in high school. That boy, what's-his-face. Peter or something? That's a pretty long time, Damien."

  "Geez, Daddy, can't a boy do something different once in awhile?" Damien said lightly.

  "Yes," Thomas said slowly. "He seemed upset. Why is that, Damien?"

  He felt his shoulders tense up again, along with the rest of him.  "I can't imagine," he replied, his voice full of false gaiety.

His father's eyes narrowed. "Damien," he said in that implacable tone of voice that always made his sphincter tighten up and his balls try to crawl back up into his body. 

 "Fine," he said through stiff lips. "Michael and I are...lovers...I guess. And when I told him that you were coming, he got upset because he's afraid that I'll go home with you. Happy?"

 Thomas' dark brows drew together. "You have a lover, Damien?" he said incredulously.   

"Yeah. What of it?" Damien snapped defensively.

  Thomas took a deep breath. "I'm amazed," he began. "Frankly, I didn't think it was possible for you to be monogamous, Damien."

 He glared at his father. "Are you saying I'm a slut, Daddy?" he growled angrily. 

 To his surprise, his father laughed. "No, son. I thought you were a chip off the old block," he remarked dryly. "Look at me - on my fourth wife, and she'll probably divorce me soon when she realizes that I can't keep it in my pants. I'll be the first to admit it. I'm just not a naturally faithful guy. Neither are you - or so I thought. If you've actually found someone you can be faithful to, then you should keep him, Damien! If I ever found a woman I could be faithful to, I'd buy a private island and whisk her off to it so that we could spend the rest of our lives together. Damn it, now I'm envious of my own son." he added, shaking his head.

   Damien's jaw was scraping the floor. He just stared at his father in disbelief. "I-I didn't know that you felt that way," he managed to say after a moment.

Thomas shrugged. "It's not something I advertise," he remarked dryly. "Thomas Burkley, hard-nosed corporate CEO, happens to be a hopeless romantic. I'm pretty sure that that's where you got it from, Damien."

 He blinked. "I'm not a romantic," he said. 

 Thomas laughed. "Sure you're not. When you were a kid, Damien, you used to play this game where you were a princess and you were waiting for your prince to come and rescue you from a dragon in a tower. I pretty much knew that you were gay then," he added sardonically, "So I was prepared.  But getting back to my point...is this guy Michael your prince, Damien?"

  Shaken, he huddled in on himself. "I don't know," he whispered.  "I'm scared, Daddy."

   "Of what? Of being happy? Of finding somebody to love you? That's just stupid, Damien. You should be scared of bad things, not good things. Good things should be grabbed a hold of and never let go. Otherwise, you might lose them. Do you want to lose this? To lose him?"

 Damien's face was stark, his eyes wide. "No," he breathed. 

 Thomas nodded. "All right. Let's finish the tour, Damien. I'll spend  the night here, and then I'll fly back to New York in the morning."

 He tried to pull himself out of his daze. "You'll...without me?" he asked forlornly.

 Thomas sighed. "Damien, you don't need to come back with me. You need to stay here. This is your home now. And these people are your family, way more than I am, sadly," he added, regret in his voice. "I've always known that you weren't happy, that that's why you caused so much trouble for me.  I don't want you to go back to a life that doesn't make you happy, not when you have one that does. For God's sake, Damien, I'm not exiling you here. You're welcome to come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and bring Michael with you. I'd like to get to know him better if he's going to be my future son-in-law."

  A blank stare. Thomas' lips quirked. "Gay marriage is legal in this state," he pointed out dryly. "So I expect you to make him an honest man one of these days. Anyway, I'm going to leave you in charge of this place because you're damn good at it. Much better than you ever were at anything involving my company. And you don't have to worry about taking it over when I die, either...I've decided to name Ross as my successor. I decided that months ago anyway, because you clearly hate even the thought of it. I'm not going to force you to do something that you don't want to; something that will make you miserable."
 
Damien felt tears well in his eyes. "I don't know what to say," he sniffled, wiping at them ineffectually.

 Thomas smiled slightly. 'Say 'thank you, Daddy', and give me a hug," he remarked, opening his arms a bit.

 Damien stepped into them, hugging him tightly. "Thank you, Daddy," he said rather muffledly against his father's suit.

"I love you, Damien," Thomas said softly. "I know I don't say it as much as I should, but, damn it, you drive me crazy!  Still, you're my only child. And I only want what's best for you. Clearly, this place and that man are the best for you. So I'm going to make sure that you have those things."

   Damien wiped at his eyes as he stepped back. "I can't come home?" he asked, not sounding terribly upset.

 Thomas glanced around. "Damien, you ARE home," he replied simply.




   Damien found Michael working in the shed out back. "Hey, Michael," he said, pausing in the doorway. 

The handyman glanced up. "Hey, Damien."

   "I thought I'd find you back here. What are you doing?"  

   "Fixing the motor for the back-up generator," Michael told him, still in that rather flat voice that said that he was deep behind his walls. 

   "Oh. Can I talk to you?"

 Michael stiffened slightly, but set down the part he'd been working on. "Sure."

   "Well, I showed Daddy around, and he's very impressed with the place," Damien began, his eyes fixed on Michael's profile.

 "That's good." 

 Damien sighed gustily. "You're sure a chore, you know that?" he grumped. 

 Michael glanced at him. "Am I?"

 "Yeah. For once, I'd like it if you'd show me how you really feel. Are you angry because I might be going home? Hurt? Come on, Michael, open up to me," he said coaxingly.

 It was the handyman's turn to sigh. "How would that help?" he asked tiredly.

 Damien sniffed. "Well, it might make me rethink leaving, if I knew that you cared and didn't want me to go," he remarked tartly.

 Michael frowned. "Of course I don't want you to go, I told you that," he said acerbically.  "But I also think that you have to make your own choices about your life without me interfering."

 Damien shook his head. "Maybe I want you to interfere," he said caustically. "Maybe I want you to yell at me, or kiss me, or get down on your knees and beg me not to go. Did you ever think of that?"

  Michael took in a deep breath, then turned to Damien. His brown eyes were intense and full of darkness, as he said in quiet but raw voice: "Don't go, Damien. Please."

  He found himself blinking back tears for the second time in an hour. "See? I knew you had it in you," he said hoarsely. "Fine. I won't go."

 Startled silence. Michael's face was a picture. "You...won't?" he asked, sounding more tentative than Damien had ever heard him sound before this.

  He shook his head. "Nope. Besides, Daddy told me that I couldn't go home anyway," he added with a grin.   

"He said that? Why?" Michael frowned like a thunderstorm, making Damien's grin widen. 

"Before you go and make a fuss at him, he told me I had to stay because I'm happy here," Damien remarked as he stepped into the shed. "And that clearly I've found somebody special, so I should stay here with him rather than going back to where I WASN'T happy.  Daddy's very sharp," he went on as Michael's mouth opened a bit. "And he's always given me whatever I wanted. Even things that I didn't know I wanted, until he pointed them out to me," he added as he wound his arms around Michael's neck and looked up into his eyes. "Are you happy that I'm staying?" he breathed.

 "Yes," Michael replied simply, setting his hands at the small of Damien's back. 

"Good," Damien sighed, just before he kissed Michael thoroughly.




   Later, they sat together on a couch on the wide porch. The sun was setting, spreading a colorful display across the evening sky. Damien snuggled in under the blanket they'd draped over themselves, enjoying the warmth of Michael's body.  "This is nice," he remarked happily. 

   Michael said nothing, but his hands stroked down Damien's back in a comforting rhythm. "Oh, Daddy invited us for Thanksgiving," Damien said after awhile. "Would you come, Michael?"

 "Yes," he replied after a second. "I don't have any family..." he began.

   "That's depressing," Damien said, rubbing his cheek against Michael's chest. "I guess that I'll just have to be your family from now on, Michael."

   More silence. "I'd like that," Michael said quietly after a moment. 

"Okay, then. I'm your family. So that means you're going to be horribly dysfunctional from now on," Damien remarked impishly. 

 Michael smiled against his hair. "That's fine," he replied. "It's just fine."

                                       The End 
 
  
  
A/N: Another one done!  I love finishing stories as much as I love starting them. Maybe more :P Anyhoo, see y'all next story and I hope you enjoyed this one. -DL