His face was expressionless. His eyes were red from tears shed, but his cheeks were dry.
He walked around the apartment. Everywhere was deathly quiet. A pin could have been heard dropping. Memories of his love enveloped him.
~.~.~.~.~
He walked into the bathroom and remembered him at twenty.
Noah was scrubbing Luke's back with a loofah sponge while the young man sat in the bathtub. Luke was fuming.
"So I told him to fuck off."
"Luke!"
"What? Just because Mr. Grayson can't understand my psychoanalytic criticism of West African poetry doesn't mean I deserved a B grade for that paper."
"A B is not bad." Noah dropped the sponge and massaged his boyfriend's shoulders soothingly instead.
"A B is a disaster! I am going to talk to him tomorrow." He was quiet for a moment.
"Why have you stopped scrubbing my back?" Luke asked.
Noah smiled and picked up the loofah again.
He walked into the kitchen and remembered him at twenty-three.
"You are doing it all wrong!" Noah said with fake exasperation. Luke was making a cake for Ethan. He was wearing a cute chef's hat and an apron that said 'Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me!'
"You have to fold it in. Otherwise it's going to come out flat." Noah continued.
Luke held up the spatula like a weapon for war. It was coated in chocolate cake mix.
"Is that so? Well I'm holding the spatula, therefore I run the show." He continued stirring. Noah dipped a finger in the bowl and smeared it on his boyfriend's face. Luke looked shocked and declared war. It was the longest, sexiest and hottest food fight they had ever had.
He walked into the bedroom and remembered him at twenty-six.
Luke lay with his head on Noah's chest, gently caressing his nipple while they both lay in bed.
Noah was trying not to be distracted as he proof read Luke's film script. The papers were balancing lightly on the back of his fiancé's head.
"Stop moving, I can't read." Noah said as Luke swooped down to lick the nipple that had his attention.
"Sorry," was the muffled reply. Noah was playing hard to get. Sighing, Luke ran his hand down his fiancé's chest and abdominal muscles. The filmmaker had read the same sentence about twenty times but refused to admit defeat to his persuasive lover. The younger man disappeared beneath the covers.
Noah bit his lower lip as Luke gave him a sensual, wet, hot and tortuously slow blow job. Eventually he dropped all pretence of reading the script and threw it to the ground.
Luke stopped his actions and flung the covers off as he heard the script flutter to the ground.
"Yes, victory is mine! The pen might be mightier than the sword but the mouth is mightier than the pen." He did a victory dance on the bed beaming with glee. Noah couldn't help but laugh, looking up at his fiancé.
"What are we, ten years old?" Noah said.
"No! That would be sick." Luke flopped back down causing the bed to oscillate.
"Now that I have your attention I thought we could play a little. How about a game of hide the..." Luke's suggestive face turned into a smile before tumbling into a full blown laugh. He couldn't complete the sentence. "I can't do it! I can't do sexy talk!"
"I thought it was sweet." Noah said.
"It's not meant to be sweet. It's supposed to be hot and stirring."
"You are hot and stirring and sweet and erotic and funny and smart…"
Luke interrupted him with a kiss.
"No more talking stud. How about some action?"
He walked into the dining room and remembered him at twenty-nine.
"Luke, what are you grinning like that for?" Noah said suspiciously.
His husband laughed and said,
"No reason." He continued to eat in silence.
"Liar!"
Luke couldn't hold it in any longer.
"Fine. Look under your plate." The blond man put his cutlery down and started wringing his fingers suddenly excitedly nervous. His heart felt like it would leap out of him.
Noah looked at the already opened envelope and withdrew the letter within. His hands had started to shake as he realized the sender.
He glanced up at his husband who gave him an encouraging nod.
As his eyes scanned the paper his eyes welled up with tears.
"No way." He whispered.
"Way. Can you believe it?" Luke smiled sweetly unaware that tears of joy were also silently falling from his eyes.
"Oh my God!" Noah got up unsteadily rounding the table to gather his husband up into his arms. They rocked together gently to a silent rhythm that they alone shared.
"We are going to be parents!" Noah murmured in awe into Luke's ear.
"Yes," Luke replied lightly kissing his husband's forehead and wiping the tears away.
He walked to the foyer and remembered him at thirty-five.
"Sebastian! We haven't got all day." Luke called from the front door.
"Coming Daddy!" The six year old was dressed as Superman and ran out of his room both arms outstretched as he simulated flying through the air. Although not related by blood to either man, the young boy was a carbon copy of Noah with wild black hair and startling blue eyes.
Luke gathered his adopted son up into his arms and raised him up to the sky eliciting a giggle full of undiluted pleasure.
"When are you going to get out of this uniform, Freckles?" Luke asked amused. The derivation of his son's nickname spoke for itself.
"I can't Daddy. I need to save the world first!" the young boy said with such innocent earnestness that Luke couldn't help but give him a big kiss on the cheek.
Noah came out of the lift having completed the penultimate trip down to the moving van to catch his husband and son in that picture perfect moment.
"Did I hear that correctly, Freckles? You are here to save the world?" Noah asked gently ruffling his son's jet black hair. He tenderly kissed Luke on his forehead.
Sebastian nodded solemnly.
"Well, I need your help Superman. There is one more box that needs to go down to the van but it is too heavy for me. See." Noah feigned struggling to lift the virtually empty box that remained in the otherwise bare apartment floor. "Do you think you can help?" Noah smiled.
"I'll try Papa." He wriggled himself out of Luke's embrace and picked up the box with ease. "See easy!"
"Wow. You really are a hero!" Noah said in mock awe. His son's smile lit up the room. "Why don't you go down with it in the elevator? Knock on Mrs. Kelsey's door. She has some cookies for you and Daddy and I will join you in five minutes, okay?"
"Yes, cookies! Bye Papa, bye Daddy!" Sebastian shouted and ran for the elevators.
Noah wrapped his arms around his husband.
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm going to miss this place Noah." Luke said leaning forehead against forehead.
"Same here. I can't believe we are leaving. There are just so many memories."
"We need to move on. Seb needs the extra space and we need a home befitting a big time director!" Luke smiled.
"I know. Who needs two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a lounge-diner when you can have five en-suite bedrooms, a tennis court, stables, swimming pool and a dining room so big you need to make a phone call to speak to the other side!" Noah mused smiling.
Luke ribbed him gently. Luke had written the script to Noah's independent movie Re-birth and it had been a hit on the film festival circuit. It had finally been picked up by an independent production film company and had exploded into the mainstream. The media was calling it the new Slumdog Millionaire putting Noah Mayer's name firmly on the A list of film directors.
Luke and Noah had been offered an obscene amount of money to produce a new film following the success of Re-birth. A new professional partnership was born.
"At least we aren't selling it. It'll be here for Seb when and if he wants." Luke smiled.
~.~.~.~.~
"In our final story of the evening Luke Snyder, acclaimed screenwriter and husband of award winning film director Noah Mayer, died tonight following a fatal plane crash that also killed the pilot and crew. The forty year old was flying on a private jet to the home the couple shared in Oakdale after visiting his partner on the set of their latest film 'Benjamin'. The industrious duo shunned the glitz and glamour of Hollywood preferring a life away from the spotlight with their eleven year old son, Sebastian Snyder-Mayer."
~.~.~.~.~
Noah stood in the door of the apartment.
He hadn't been back in so many years but with one foot in the door all the recollections came flooding back.
Seven years on and the loss of the love of his life still cut like a knife.
The forty-nine year old walked into the bedroom he had once shared with Luke. It seemed so small now.
"Luke, I don't know what to do without you here. I miss… I miss everything about you. I feel so empty, baby. And I know I have to go on. I do. I mean I love Freckles so much. He is so much like you it's frightening. He can get so overdramatic sometimes." Noah felt tears in his eyes. "But he is also kind and loyal, Luke, just like you. He believes in family and that is all you, my love. I am so glad we had him. He makes me proud every day. I never said this to you and I really wish I had, Luke. You made it worth it." Noah felt himself breaking down. "You made my life worth living."
"Pa, are you okay?"
Noah looked at his son. At eighteen years old, six feet tall and starting to broaden around his shoulders, Sebastian Snyder-Mayer couldn't be called a child anymore but Noah still saw him as his little boy.
Noah wiped his tears as his son pulled him into a hug.
Once composed Noah pulled away and said with a small smile,
"Shouldn't this be the other way round? It feels like only yesterday I was putting colored band aids on non-existent wounds to make you feel better."
Sebastian smiled.
"If you tell Nina that I'll kill you!"
Noah gave a hint of a smile thinking about his son's girlfriend.
"You were thinking about Dad." Sebastian stated somberly. "I miss him too Pa. I remember this apartment. You tried to hide it from me but I could tell you guys were really upset about leaving."
Luke and Noah had decided to stay in Oakdale even though the centre of the film industry was in Hollywood. In part this was because they didn't particularly crave the lifestyle that the place cultivated but also because they wanted Seb to grow up with as normal an upbringing as possible with family nearby.
So they moved into a large mansion not far from Lucinda Walsh, Luke's grandmother.
"Your Dad wanted you to have this apartment. Now that you are eighteen and about to go to OU, I thought it was time for you to get the keys." Noah handed them over to his son.
"It is tapped and has hidden cameras linked to your computer, hasn't it?" Seb said dead pan as he skeptically took the keys.
"How did you know?" Noah asked smiling.
"I can feel the lenses tracking me as I move." Seb smiled too.
"Damn!" Noah finished the joke.
"Thanks Pa."
"You're welcome."
"By the way, I may as well be honest and tell you that Nina is going to be staying over… a lot!"
Noah laughed as his son blushed.
"Understood. Just make sure that you are careful. Remember the chat we had."
"Oh my God, Pa! I'm not twelve."
"You'll always be a kid to me, Freckles." Noah ruffled his son's hair the way he used to when he was a child.
"Okay, I am going to start unpacking the van before you start getting really mushy on me." Sebastian smiled as he headed out the door. He stopped in the door frame and glanced round at his father.
"Papa. I love you. I promise it'll be okay. Remember? I'm Superman." He disappeared towards the elevator.
Noah nodded slowly. He hadn't called him 'Papa' in years.
Sebastian made his life worth living.