Scandal 11
Once Nathan and Andrew were back in the Residence, they let out a collective sigh of relief. Andrew's staff were frantically busy, working on the leak, trying to backtrace it to the original source. But it was still early hours and they had barely cracked the first layer of the encryption. "You both did brilliantly." May cooed proudly towards both of the men in her life, her husband and son. "I am so proud of you both, especially you, Nate. Your words were beautiful."
"They weren't my words." Nathan confessed to his family with a boyish, imp-like grin. He flopped into the armchair, exhausted. Reaching up, he delicately untied the double Windsor knot at his throat, undoing three buttons of his shirt as well, before gently placing the strip of silk on top of his already discarded navy blue blazer. "They were Tim's words. When Pop died, Tim and I ... we had the biggest fight of our relationship. I was being unreasonable and wanted him here, by my side, but because he wasn't out, so he wouldn't come. I was hurt I wanted him out, just for my grief alone and no other reason. I had tunnel vision. All I knew was that I needed him by my side, I didn't take him or his feelings into consideration at all. Those words, he screamed them at me, before calling me obtuse. Well, actually... His exact words were 'you obtuse, thick-headed imbecile'."
Andrew chose to chuckle because everyone in that room knew that in his younger days, he could be obtuse, especially when it came to his relationships with people. "Clearly, Tim knows you as well as we do." His mother May, retorted laughing. "Nathan, darling, you were born a little obtuse, but you've been a lot better since you finished at MIT."
"Wait, it's been almost ten years since you finished MIT." Jess teased him with a wink and sat down on the arm of the chair he was lounging on, in a protective manner. "I wonder who's been helping you become less obtuse?" She asked conspiratorially.
"I wonder how he's doing." Nathan mused out loud, as his father handed him a glass of whiskey. Nate let his vulnerable side show to his family. He let them see his worry for Tim. Very few people are ever allowed to see him like this. "He has been freaking out and someone shot up the front of the house, where he was staying. He was supposed to be safe there."
"What?!" His father boomed angrily. "Where the hell is he, now? He should have been brought in with you. For his protection, as well as yours. If I had of known this, I'd insisted upon it." Andrew was angry. He wasn't aware that had happened. He wondered why his son had omitted that little detail from their communications.
"One of my details are with him, Mark, as well as his boss, at an undisclosed, confidential location." Nathan whispered, looking at the roof, imagining himself staring at the night's sky. It was something both men did when they were away from one another, in an effort to feel closer, more connected to each other.
"No matter where we are in the world, look to the sky and know I'll be looking at the same sky." - Tim had written that on the back of a dinner napkin and left it on the pillow beside Nate, after they spent their first night together at Tim's apartment, in Norfolk, all those years ago.
"Do you know where that 'undisclosed, confidential' location is?" Andrew asked his son, directly. Andrew had lowered his voice for the emphasis on the importance of honesty in relation to the question that he had just asked.
"We have a place." Nate confessed and he saw his three family members' eyes widen. "We bought it together, the first year I worked for Turner and Banks. It's where we go to recharge, our private retreat. It is our home, our real home. Not the apartments we have for show."
At his father's raised eyebrow, Nate steeled himself. His mother had however interrupted the honest conversation between him and his father. "Just how many nights a week do the two of you spent together when you're in the same city?"
"Every night." Nathan admitted softly. "I have never spent the night at my apartment in Dupont Circle, since I started leasing that monstrosity of an apartment. It's so ... ostentatious. He has a small, but modest apartment, in Silver Spring, Maryland, that he keeps for professional reasons and the close proximity to his work. Even when he is out of town, I always sleep better in his apartment. It's just very homely. It's us."
"Do you love him?" His sister suddenly asked, with an indecipherable smile on her face. She could just feel it in her bones, not to mention that it had been written all over Nathan's face.
" ... 'A physical attraction is often desired above many things, but you'll discover it to be short lived. Find yourself someone that gets under your skin, seduces the dusty corners of your heart, and provides you with a mental connection. That is when you'll know true intimacy.' ― M.J. Abraham." Nathan recited out loud from memory. He knew that it had taken Tim all afternoon to find the perfect quote to send to him, as a constant reminder of how much Nate really did get under his skin and how much they truly loved each other. "Tim wrote that to me, and it was then, that I realised that there would never be anyone else for me. It's in those damned emails that Wyatt leaked. Those words were for me, from Tim, and no one else's to see. I can't even call him because of this fucking leak!" Nathan huffed, frustrated and angry, before excusing himself to go lie down in the room that he stayed in, when he stayed in the residence.
" ... 'Love is no game. People cut their ears off over this stuff. People jump off the Eiffel Tower and sell all their possessions and move to Alaska to live with the grizzly bears, and then they get eaten and nobody hears them when they scream for help. That's right. Falling in love is pretty much the same thing as being eaten alive by a grizzly bear.' ― Jess Rothenberg
Every single moment of every single day, you make me feel like doing something stupid in the name of love. But when you sinfully sit there, looking like the innocent schoolboy I know you weren't, I can't help but want to kiss that impish grin from your lips. You have no idea the fantasies that one of your lips can conjure up in my imagination, let alone both of your lips.
Your lips are sinful and, I know firsthand, skillful enough, to drive a man to distraction. Especially that one bottom one. So plump, sweet, soft and tasty. A distraction that you use to your advantage, whether you realise it or not. The way you tuck that bottom lip between your teeth when you're unsure about something. The way you tuck your bottom lip between your teeth when you're thinking. Thinking thoughts so loud, I can hear them from inside your big, beautiful brain. The way I like to take it betwixt my thumb and a forefinger with a connoisseur's care. Before I take it betwixt my teeth, when I take you apart and make you beg.
I am safe in the knowledge that I can take you apart with my teeth in the same way that you can do unto me. But this is a next level of intimacy. I have said it before, and it bears repeating. 'You have no idea the fantasies that one of your lips can conjure up in my imagination, let alone both of your lips. Your lips are sinful and, I know firsthand, skillful enough, to drive a man to distraction.' One of my favorite ways to take you apart is to work that lip until you are nothing but a messy pile of sated goo.
Woody Allen said it best, 'The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.' or perhaps your tastes run more along the lines of 'Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right.' Also, by Woody Allen. Alas, it is the truth to say, he might just be the horniest man on the planet. He's certainly got us beat ...
But I've kissed your mouth in that corner that your mouth turns upwards into your impish grin, so many times now that I have memorized it. Like the topography on the map of you, a world I will never tire of charting. I know I added it, the key. Inches to miles. I can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude and recite your coordinates.
Your mouth, and this thing you do with it, it's what you do when you're trying not to give yourself away. Not in the way that you do all the time in those empty, greedy grabs of you. I mean in the truth of you, the shape of your heart. The perfect shape of your heart. The one that's outside your chest, on the map of you. My fingers always find the green hills, cool waters and the sandy shoreline. There's this ancient part of you, carved out of stone, in a prayerful circle, sacrosanct. Your spine is the ridges, I'd die climbing.
If I could spread it out on my desk, I'd find the corner of your mouth where it pinches with my fingers, and I'd smooth it away for you. You'd be marked with the names of the saints, like all the old maps. I get the nomenclature now - the saints' names belong to miracles.
You could give more of yourself away, Sweetheart. There is so much of you.
... 'And you have fixed my life - however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I was spun round you, a satellite for a month, but shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you blaze.' - Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon in 1917."
Tim had dozed off some time ago, Gibbs had covered him with the afghan he had seen on the back of the sofa, and he had continued to read in his head. Nathan had written such beautiful, lustful words to Tim that spoke like a love letter of an epic nature to Gibbs. Gibbs'd had to take a moment for himself and admit silently, Nathan and Tim loved each other so wholly and so fiercely, above something that even he and Shannon had ever dared hoped to have.
Gibbs had felt like a voyeur, as he had read ahead. Their emails and such intimate thoughts were provocative and image inducing but held an underlying sweetness to them. He wondered what Leon and Sarah's thoughts on them. Surely, they would have made some headway on the emails, back in the office, by now.
"Nate, my darling,
I can't think of a single other way to start this email except to say, and I do hope you will forgive both my language and my utter lack of restraint: You are so fucking beautiful.
I've been useless for a week, driven around for cases and interviews, lucky if I've made a single meaningful contribution to any of them. How is a man to get anything done knowing Nathan Taylor is out there on the loose? I am driven to distraction.
It's all bloody useless because when I'm not thinking about your face, I'm thinking about your ass or your hands or your smart mouth. I suspect the latter is what got me into this predicament in the first place. Nobody's ever got the nerve to be cheeky to me like this, except you. The moment you first called me a prick, my fate was sealed. O, fathers of my bloodline! O, ye kings of olde! Take this crown from me, bury me in my ancestral soil. If only you had known the mighty work of thine loins would be undone by a gay heir who likes it when cute, smart boys with chin dimples are mean to him.
Actually, remember those gay kings I mentioned a while back? I feel that James I, who fell madly in love with a very fit and exceptionally dim knight at a tilting match and immediately made him a gentleman of the bedchamber (yes, a real title), would take mercy upon my particular plight.
I'll be damned but I miss you.
Your Sorcerer."
"My Sorcerer,
Are you implying that you're James I and I'm some hot, dumb jock? I'm more than fantastic bone structure and an ass you can bounce a quarter on, Tim!
Don't apologize for calling me pretty. Because then you're putting me in a position where I have to apologize for saying you blew my fucking mind in LA and I'm gonna die if it doesn't happen again soon. How's that for lack of restraint, huh? You really wanna play that game with me?
Listen: I'll fly to DC right now and pull you out of whatever pointless meeting you're in and make you admit how much you love it when I call you "baby." I'll take you apart with my teeth, sweetheart."
Your Menace "
"My dearest Nate,
You know, when you write a couple of best sellers, as I have, people always want to know who your favorite author is.
The press team compiled a list of acceptable answers. They wanted a realist, so I suggested George Eliot—no, Eliot was actually Mary Anne Evans under a pen name, not a strong male author. They wanted one of the inventors of the English novel, so I suggested Daniel Defoe— no, he was a dissenter from the Church of England. At one point, I threw out Jonathan Swift just to watch the collective coronary they had at the thought of an Irish political satirist.
In the end they picked Dickens, which is hilarious. They wanted something less fruity than the truth, but truly, what is gayer than a woman who languishes away in a crumbling mansion wearing her wedding gown every day of her life, for the drama?
My fruity truth: My favorite author is Jane Austen. So, to borrow a passage from Sense and Sensibility: "You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope."
To paraphrase: I hope to see you put your money where your filthy mouth is soon.
Yours in sexual frustration
Your Sorcerer."
"My Sorcerer,
The way you speak sometimes is like sugar spilling out of a bag with a hole in the bottom. Your ass in those trousers is a crime, too. So come back to me when you're done being flung through the firmament, you lost Pleiad.
... 'One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.' ― Stephen Hawking
Remember what you wrote? On that napkin and left by my pillow, after the first night we spent in your Norfolk apartment? I don't know if you know, but no matter where in the world my work takes me, I still do that.
Just like you, it's a hard habit to break.
Your Menace
Gibbs lowered the copy of the emails down on to the coffee table and placed his reading glasses on top of them. He couldn't read anymore tonight. They made his heartbreak for Tim and Nathan, and what had happened today. They made his heart hurt for Shannon, too. They made him miss her, more than he ever had, since she passed.
All forcing himself to read these emails had done, was reinforce the opinion that he had always held. Tim was too good of a man to be alone.
Tim had his unwavering support. He would help Tim, in any way he could. He had felt like he was forgetting Shannon and his love for her, in the last couple of years. But Tim's love for Nate, and vice versa, had brought it all back, in spades. He couldn't thank Tim and Nate enough for that.
Gibbs looked to the ceiling and let off a silent prayer to Shannon, and to the heavens above. He thanked her for the joy and for the love she had brought to his life, thanked her for the blessing of a child and then he prayed. He prayed that Tim and Nate would weather this storm together, because like him and Shannon, their love story was one for the ages.