A/N: Third and final chapter. Thank you to anyone who has read and left a review, I really appreciate it!
Eileen had tutted about the size of their allotted table on arrival, but Michael kept her docile with a bottle of her favourite white on the table waiting, he'd even called down especially to do so. He was thankful that Brendan and Ste were late, that way he hoped it might make it look as if it were Brendan's idea all along.
A waiter came along promptly, asking if they wanted any water for the table – or any other drinks – and then corrected himself, asking if they wanted to wait for the rest of their party.
"It's just the two of us, goodness knows you wouldn't think that judging by where we've been shoved-" Eileen began.
Michael's face creased and he turned to Eileen. "Actually…"
But he was interrupted immediately by Eileen herself, who was quick to reach for her glass and mutter: "Jesus and Mary," into it, knocking back a swig.
The waiter hung, antsy, to the side as Brendan and Ste approached and stood at the table. Ste was a pace behind and his expression was a mingle of sheepish tension and elation at the horror on Eileen's.
"Brendan," she said, mouth tight.
He acknowledged Michael with a nod. "Eileen."
"I'll come back when you're all settled," said the waiter, fleeing off quicker than he could have been shoved away by Brendan.
As Brendan went to touch the chair to sit in, Eileen pre-empted the scheme and glared at Michael, steely eyed. He knew she was too proud to blow up at him in public, but he could feel the rage like a sweltering vapour around her.
Ste and Michael shook hands, saying little to Eileen. Opening up the menu, Brendan cleared his throat and flicked his eyes up at Eileen.
"Dried off then, I see," Brendan said, gesturing with his hands.
Eileen shot Ste daggers. He fidgeted opposite Michael, picking up the array of cutlery. He'd wanted to compliment the hotel's restaurant but it didn't feel the right time.
"Well I'm glad it was so amusing to you,"
Brendan's nostrils flared a little, keeping his laughter supressed at the image.
Michael was behind. "What's this?"
"Oh we bumped into each other earlier, din't we Eileen? I was messing and she got a bit soaked," Ste said. He didn't mind Michael so much, he seemed more amiable than Brendan had made him out to be. Ste wondered if Brendan was still a bit protective over the men that moved onto his territory, even if it was his ex-wife, Michael was still playing step-dad to his kids a lot of the time. They both knew how hard it was to be the part-time dad, to see someone else playing your role.
Brendan still had these ticks in these mind, these scars about real men and masculinity and fatherhood. It made him guarded and uptight around men like Michael who could play husband and father like a natural. Whereas he could spend a day doing the same, and at times it was as though the outside world still saw him as play-acting, that it wasn't in his blood to be at ease. They could see it; the whole world saw a fraud. Some days they'd motivate him to try harder at acting "normal" and others, he'd retreat into himself. It wasn't a battle with a victory, it raged on.
Michael was filled in on the sketchy details, despite Eileen's half of the conversation keeping clipped and cold and the waiter came to take their orders, skipping over the specials in lightning speed because any fool could have felt the unbearable tension. There was a moment where Brendan and Ste shared a fluttering, quiet chatter when Michael was ordering, they were all smiles and flirtation in a private joke. It prompted Eileen to reach for the wine. She looked over her glass at Ste, still scrutinising him like she had all their other meetings: why him? What made him the chosen one? She'd learned over the years that there had been many others who'd come and gone – literally – and the thought made her twist with shame at her own naivety, but here he was, the one that changed everything. Some boy ten years his junior, some slight thing, a teenage dad with a bad attitude and simple mind. And yet by some short miracle had got a man as thuggish and closed off as Brendan to come good, be honest. Christ, she thought, he got Brendan to say the g-word and leap as far as marriage. Not what God deemed as marriage, of course, but she had to pick her battles.
When the waiter disappeared, and half a bottle down, she got braver.
"So I was surprised you brought Ste here, Brendan. Considering,"
He cocked his head to the side. "Considering?"
"The millennium…? We came here on our first wedding anniversary," Eileen said, keeping check on Ste as she spoke. She neglected to mention, of course, that Brendan drank himself stupid that night and she went to bed early and cried. By the time she woke up he was back in the room showered and sober, she had make-up smudged down her face and they had compulsory sex, saying very little to each other.
Ste's eyes dropped and then he turned to Brendan, like the rest of the table, looking for his explanation.
"No? No," he said, frowning. He laughed nervously.
"It's changed names, mind, it's more up market than we came," she said, taking another sip.
"I don't remember," Brendan said.
"Clearly,"
Brendan paused, but before he had the chance to apologise for encroaching on her nostalgia, Ste spoke instead.
"So what brought you back 'ere then? The memories?" Ste asked, that attitude flaring in his tone.
"We won a trip away," she said. There was an embarrassment in the speed in which she said it.
Michael placed his hand on her arm tentatively, still uncertain if she'd snap. "If only we could afford to escape to a place like this when we fancied getting away!" It wasn't a dig, Eileen was perfectly capable of defending herself, it was honest.
The main courses arrived, moments after the drinks, and topics rooted into safer ground. Eileen kept check on her snipes, banking them for another time, another conversation. There were friends she went to, people who had met the infamous ex-husband and people who had only known of the elusive Brendan through well told stories of adulteries and his misdemeanours, friends who would appreciate her commentary on the situation. Increasingly, however, she tried to build an identity away from 'the woman whose husband fled to England to marry a man' even if that wasn't the exact way she'd told the story.
Their wedding itself, she hadn't attended, but she'd heard plenty about from the boys and had snuck through Declan's Facebook photos when he'd left his laptop unlocked. She guessed from the photos, that Brendan hadn't had much to do with the organisation of it. The levels of tackiness screamed her ex-sister in law and Ste. She wasn't throwing any stones, considering her dress was thigh high and sculpted around her baby bump, but at least she had the excuse of it being the late nineties.
One thing hadn't changed, Brendan's guest list was minimal at best. From the photos she could see very few sitting on his side and he'd rebuffed the idea of a best man. The boys looking handsome in their suits; Cheryl - eight-months gone at the time and nearly exploding out of her sweet-wrapper inspired outfit - and Nate by her side keeping a watch on her fizz intake; a woman who Declan had gone gooey-eyed over (although how Brendan had befriended an ex-glamour model was beyond her) and her young son; and a dark haired man who she recognised to be Pete from their childhood, a man she could have sworn was Brendan's sworn enemy at one time.
By the looks of it, Ste didn't fare much better on the popularity stakes, but her mind was on other things when she scrolled through the rest of the photos. When she stopped picking them apart, stopped looking for things to criticise, signs that it was doomed, she realised that her biggest oversight was not looking at her ex-husband at all. She glanced, of course, she thought he looked like he'd not slept and that the fear was making his eyes whiter, that he might bolt or punch the registrar. But then she really looked. There was a spark to his eyes she hadn't seen before, a youth and a coyness she had never expected he'd possessed. It was as though he looked lighter somehow.
She didn't linger on them long. There was a discomfort to seeing your ex marry again and she'd like to declare she was modern enough to say it made no difference that he was marrying a man, but it did make her feel unusual.
"How's your steak?" Ste asked Brendan, demolishing the pastry of what was essentially a pie with a fancy name.
Brendan chewed, rocking his head to the side. "Bloody,"
Ste laughed, a repeated snort through his nose. "Not as good as mine,"
"Little beats perfection, Steven."
"How is business, lads?" Michael asked, almost too cheerily, given the situation.
Brendan raised an eyebrow at 'lads'.
Ste was the only one who seemed willing to ignore the tension and chat away. Eileen noticed how he was full of Northern colloquialisms, and although she had occasion to twist her ear to keep up with him, his enthusiasm bounced across the table and despite herself she could see why her boys were so fond.
As Ste gabbled about menus and cliental, Brendan's gaze opened towards Eileen.
"The boys have fun today?" she asked. Her eyes drifted mournfully over the salad she wished she hadn't ordered.
Brendan shrugged. "I think so. We just went to the pictures and had lunch at the restaurant." Brendan was briefly distracted by the raucous laughter of Ste beside him. He and Michael were forging a friendship much to the tight jawed chagrin of their other halves. "It's been so great seeing them and making it up to them, you know?"
"Well they are your children," Eileen said.
He bit back the sharp tongued comments and grimaced. "I've tried Eileen. The old me, it's gone. It's gone. They mean everything to me. You know that,"
She conceded, shifting her shoulders.
"I wanna have them over for Christmas," he said. There was an uneasy shift in the temperature of the table as Ste and Michael's chat dried up.
"Brendan," Eileen said, her appal barely above the volume of the restaurant. "You can't be serious." His shock request made her flippant, she was rejecting it before even considering it.
"I know it's short notice," Brendan said, "The kids are coming over," he gestured to Ste. "I want my boys there too. A family Christmas,"
She scoffed. It was petty to be hurt of his love for someone else's children, she knew it, but after years of distance from his own, it was a bitter truth to swallow.
"And what about my family Christmas, Bren?" she sat back in her seat, crossing her arms, "We go to my ma's every year, you know that. You wait until days before – what are they to you, Brendan, an afterthought?"
Brendan's knuckles were white. He stood up from the table. "Don't."
"I can't just forget the way you treated us Brendan!"
Ste touched Brendan's arm to try and get him to sit, but he flinched him off.
"Well maybe you wanna try putting down the wine and giving it a try!" He lifted his jacket from the back of the chair and apologetically Ste stood too. Brendan looked at Michael. "I'm sorry for ruining your evening."
X
Ste walked apprehensively behind Brendan as he paced up to their room. He had braced himself for a silent interaction, knowing he was best left to lift the dark moods himself. They had been to therapy a few times, Ste more so than Brendan. He didn't want Brendan to deal with Seamus's shadow alone, or with God as his only comfort. Ste didn't understand God, or Brendan's faith, but he knew when Brendan turned to the Bible, he was shut out. Brendan hated the therapist, hated the victim status. All Ste wanted from her was to know if he could do anything.
"Ste, can I ask you something? Are you still coming to these sessions alone because you want to fix him?"
Ste had shaken his head. "He's not broken." He played with the fraying edges of the seat he sat in. "We're all a bit damaged, one way or another, right? Like, in different ways. And yeah, Brendan more than most." He paused. "I don't wanna fix him. I just want him to be happy. I want him to know that whatever has happened, he can still be happy. There's nothing in the Bible that says if bad things happen to ya, that you can't be happy, is there? I never went to R.E. lessons."
Brendan threw off his jacket when they entered the hotel room. He had his hands up to his face and Ste shut the door behind them. Ste was going to speak, he was going to suggest they could hold a second Christmas just for the Brady boys, they were too old for the Santa fest that he'd planned for his two, but Brendan had spun around and was staring at him.
He was hot mouthed and hands at his clothes, pushing Ste with force against the door. His hands bolted to Ste's jeans, pulling them roughly over his arse. Ste pushed him away.
"Brendan."
Brendan closed his eyes and laughed hollowly. "You're gonna shut me off now?"
"I don't want you fucking me thinking about how much you hate your ex-wife," Ste said. There was a humour in his tone and he could feel Brendan's anger subside a little. They pushed and pulled always, but the balance was there. Words never went unsaid, they hurt sometimes, but they could bring it back, because whatever it was, wasn't as strong as their love.
Ste pushed his finger into Brendan's chest. It was affectionate more than anything else. "And I don't want you using me as a way to make you forget about all that downstairs, alright? If you're gonna fuck me, then you're gonna fuck me because you want me."
"It'll be like fucking a therapist if you keep talking like that, Steven."
Ste pulled up his trousers and drew Brendan close with his hands on his face. "We'll sort something out with the boys."
Brendan murmured. "How can she not see? I'd do anything for the kids. Both our kids."
Ste knew why. He knew she was still hurting, still grieving the husband she lost to lies, still bitter from every time he'd failed her and the boys. And of course, Brendan would never tell her the whole truth about Seamus. As she knew it, Brendan served a suspended sentence for self defence against his monster of a father; a bully and an abuser. As for the rest, it was another secret distancing them.
When Brendan returned from the bathroom, he returned to find Ste shirtless on the bed, his face shiny and a bottle of his favourite whiskey in his hand.
"Brought it from home," Ste said with a grin.
"What have you got on your face?" Brendan asked, wiping his cheek and sniffing. "Did you use my moisturiser?!"
Ste rolled his eyes. "Well you bought enough for a dry old elephant,"
"What sorta way is that to talk about your husband?" He had Ste pinned now, with various body parts. The whiskey rolled off to one side of the bed.
"'Fort you didn't like me calling you that. You said it makes us sound proper gay," Ste said, wriggling free, "Like Elton John."
Brendan wrestled Ste down and struggled against his snaking hips to pull off his trousers and underwear. "Maybe I like knowing your mine." He grunted with satisfaction when he flipped Ste over onto his front. His arse was the perfect round, fleshy and firm. He gave it a little slap, watching it tremble under his hand and then sunk his teeth in, growling into a little bite. Ste gave a giggled complaint, before raising up onto knees and hands.
"Where'd you put the cream?" Brendan said, abandoning Ste's poise for a moment. He stripped whilst hunting for the tub.
Ste pointed and before he knew it, he was having cold and zesty moisturiser tingling along his crack. Brendan indulged himself, coating fingers tip to knuckle in cream and sliding them inside Ste with ease.
Ste moaned, feeling Brendan's digits work him hard. "I'm sure this isn't what it's for," he said. He groaned loud, shuddering with pleasure and stifled laughter. "It tingles."
Brendan began a slick groping of his balls, rubbing the cream over his dick. He pressed the tip of his cock against Ste's opening and then climbed over him, one arm stretched out to the headboard. Ste arched, flattening out his torso so he rested on his elbows and clawed at the covers. With his eyes staring straight into the lickable curves of Ste's shoulder blades, Brendan pushed inside, hearing his balls slap repeatedly against Ste's skin as they worked into their rhythm.
Brendan was animalistic and unrelenting in his pace, Ste could barely last. He felt Ste buckling under him, so held on through those final thrusts, beginning to cum, Ste's muscles retracting around him.
"No. C'mere," Ste murmured softly, sliding out from under him, damp and sweat slicked. He guided Brendan up until Ste took his cock into his mouth, claiming that last surge of orgasm. Ste smiled through his eyes. This had been how it was that very first night in Dublin. And then they'd drunk whiskey and Brendan had rimmed him. And every year since then.
X
"Why would anyone be knocking on the door right now?" Ste asked, pulling on some boxers underneath the hotel dressing gown.
Eileen was at the door, obvious signs of earlier tears. She carried boxed up desserts in her hands. "Peace offering," she said.
"Eileen! Hi…"
"I won't bother you. It's late."
Ste hoped the room smelt more of moisturiser than sex. He definitely smelt more of the latter. He invited her in, feeling rude not, ushering her into the lounge area of the suite. He could hear Brendan hastily through on clothes and cover up the bed.
"I'm sorry," she said, when he appeared. "I was outta line tonight,"
"Yeah you were,"
"I know you've been trying to turn things around and even the boys are saying 'You'll never recognise Da' and you know what, they're right," she paused, "I can't forget all the lies and the pain you put us through. And truth be told, it's still weird for me…"
Ste looked bashful. She wasn't the battle axe she made out to be.
"But…obviously something's working, 'cos you seem different. And the drugs and the violence – all that's gone," she looked at Ste, "Maybe we've got you to thank for that."
"I'd never put any of you through that again, I swear," Brendan said, "I ain't about to lose everything I worked for."
"I wouldn't let you," Eileen said abruptly. "This is it now. Me and Michael, you two – the kids come first. Chance after chance Brendan. This is it." She paused, as though building up to her final speech. "Starting with Christmas. You wanna prove yourself, then you can take the boys for Christmas. They deserve the chance to get to know the real you properly, not just once in a blue moon."
Brendan was at a loss for words and his thanks were heartfelt. He knew that her trust wasn't easily earned. Once she'd left, he sat quietly sipping his whiskey, watching as Ste battled to stay awake. He stroked his hair softly, thinking of Christmas and how lucky he was to be granted another chance at life once more.