"Mom, you have to promise to not get mad," Greg's voice was barely more than a whisper, and he sat on the other end of the couch while James perched on the arm of the couch closest to Greg, and Lisa couldn't help but notice that both men were sitting in the spot closest to the door closest to the exit, closest to an escape route. Lisa thought as she continued to watch from afar.
"Greg, you're my son, nothing you could do or say would ever make me mad," Blythe tried to sound comforting, but instead just saw Greg flinch and James shut his eyes; maybe a bad choice of words, she considered, but there was no way to take them back now.
"O-okay," Greg stammered, and James hesitantly yet comfortingly placed his hand on Greg's shoulder in a sense of I'm here, I've got you. "Mom, umm, James and I have been seeing each other, romantically. We've just been friends for a long time; but then we decided to try taking things further. Dad was wrong, so wrong, in his execution; but he was right in knowing that James and I are together, and we have been for a while now,"
Blythe smiled, "Greg, darling, I know. I've always known,"
"Did Lisa tell you?" Greg questioned, feeling a little bristled, and Lisa felt her stomach and breath hitch slightly.
"Somewhat? She confirmed what I already suspected, but Greg, I've always known that you and James would one day end up with each other, ever since I first met James," Blythe continued carefully.
"Hold up!" James interrupted, "when I first met you, I was married, why would you think that a relationship with Greg would even be on my radar?"
Blythe shrugged, "but was it a happy marriage?"
"Well, no, but that still doesn't mean that I wanted to be with a man- at the time!" James countered, panicked.
Greg placed a hand on James' knee to halt him and stop him from spiralling, "this is good," he whispered to James, "weird, but good," he turned to his mother; "out of curiosity, what did you mean that you knew?"
Blythe sighed before going on to explain, "I always knew that you weren't completely straight, Greg," she continued, "and then I met James, and he reminded me the same as you; whether you want to call it confused, in denial, repressed, compensating, whatever. I saw how close the two of you were all the time and how similar you are, and I just knew, I just knew that eventually the two of you would come to realise that you were meant to be with one another. It was like watching a dance from afar, but knowing that you two would eventually come in together,"
"Wait, you said that you 'always knew I wasn't completely straight', what does that mean? When… how old was I when you started to 'figure it out'?" Greg stumbled.
Blythe closed her eyes trying to remember; "I had a pretty good idea by the time you were about four-ish,"
"Hold on," James interrupted, leaping off the arm of the chair, "you didn't connect it to what else was going on?"
"James, shut up," Greg warned, his eyes cold and staring.
"Tell her!" James argued, "tell her!"
"Tell me what?" Blythe queried, having absolutely no idea what James was now going on about.
Greg stood up and stared James down, "don't you fucking dare," he growled and then dropped his voice to a whisper, "don't you break my mother's heart like that. This isn't your place. This isn't your story,"
Lisa came into the room to halt the quickly disintegrating feel good family moment happening here, "and I think that concludes the end of tonight's show," she smiled falsely at Blythe and then began pushing both Greg and James out of the room altogether, "go fight in the hallway, or in the other room," she shut the door behind her, "this is something you probably need to tell your mother at some point, Greg, she's your mother, and it's clear that she loves you very much, but," she pointed at James' smirking, smug expression; "that is not your decision to choose when and what method in which he chooses to do so, this is not your story, got it?"
"Yes," they grumbled in unison.
"Okay, so now apologise," Lisa instructed, and they did, then she smacked them both across the back of the head, lightly of course, "now go play, leave the adults alone. Here is your hotel room key, do not trash this hotel room, do not get the front desk to receive multiple phone calls about the noise level, and yes that happened," Lisa continued as James blushed, "don't think that, that charade went unnoticed by everyone else on this floor, as well as the floors below and above it. Do not order ridiculous amounts of room service, and for the love of God, do not get the police called on us again. Now, go play, or do whatever it is that you six feet tall children do, go," she ushered them away, before returning inside.
"My son did all of that?" Blythe questioned when Lisa entered the hotel room again and she gasped in shock that all of that had been heard.
"Actually, most of it was James, or both of them equally. I swear that together they turn into some kind of extremely destructive tornado that just tears apart the world around them molecule by molecule. But that's just them, that's always been them. That's just who they are," Lisa concluded, opening up the fridge, "would you like a coffee?" knowing that it was a very poor attempt at changing the subject.
"What do you want to do?" James asked as they approached the hotel room door.
"I dunno. We could watch a movie, I guess?" Greg shrugged.
"Or…" James opened up the door and led Greg inside, "we could do something else, something that is a lot more… fun," he grinned up at Greg, before leaning in to kiss him.
"My mom is here," Greg grumbled, pulling away.
"And your mom is supposedly moving in with us too. Unless you plan to break that promise, or for us to become celibate monks for the rest of our lives, then she'll just have to get used to her son having sex under the same roof that she lives under," James growled, drawing closer and dragging his finger up Greg's arm, then across to his chin so that he was looking straight at James, "wouldn't you agree?"
"I guess. But what about-" Greg started.
"No, we can't palm your mother around the diagnostic's department like a class pet. She's not a hamster or a goldfish, Greg. Now, let's have us a bit of fun," James giggled, as he painfully pulled his shirt over his head.
"That's not what I meant. James, I'm just not sure if I'm really in the mood," Greg muttered, pulling away ever so slightly.
"Oh, come on! How about if I get you into the mood?" James grinned wickedly, "come on Greg! Once I get you excited and thinking about something else, then all of the bad thoughts about what happened will just disappear,"
"Or- they will become vastly worse," Greg countered.
"No it won't," James mumbled, pushing Greg against the wall, "everything will be just fine Greg, I promise, just do as I say… do it for Jimmy, do it and make little Jimmy feel good," James began kissing Greg who was now hemmed in against the wall, feeling progressively more and more trapped and feeling increasingly put off by James' choice in language. Greg shoved James back, and soon the two of them were fighting viciously, with yells and threats being screamed at the top of both of their lungs, and then James grabbed the toaster out from the wall and launched it at the wall while they continued to scream and roar at each other while the toaster lay smashed on the floor; with yells of "no, no!" as glasses and plates were smashed around the room.
On the other side of the wall, Lisa and Blythe were relaxing, Lisa had a novel on her lap, enjoying the peace that came with not having Greg and James in her immediate vicinity before she heard the noise that made her want to scream out in frustration and fury, the sound of screaming, yelling, fighting and some kind of appliance smashing and breaking into the shared wall, followed by smashing glass. "What's going on?" Blythe asked.
"The boys have decided to ignore what I told them is what, and now I'm going to go over there and sort them out," Lisa snapped, "Lord, give me a break from them! Please!" as she slammed the door shut and went next door and pounded on the door, to which everything in there went silent; "Greg! James! I know you're in there! I can hear you! Open this door before I really get mad!"
The door creaked open, "everything's fine, we just got in an argument, that's all," Greg muttered holding the door just ajar enough to peek his head through.
"Let me see," to which Lisa walked in to what more closely resembled a war zone; there was James standing half naked in the lounge room with his chest heaving and looking infuriated, surrounded by broken glass and plates, and what Lisa peeked around to see a smashed toaster resting directly below a small dent in the wall; "so that's what that sound was," she muttered, "I can't deal with this right now. I understand that you're both traumatised and upset and angry, but this is not the right way to go about dealing with it. You can't keep leaving trashed hotel rooms in your wake because you're upset and angry. Clean this all up, right now," Lisa spun on her heels and marched out of that room, slamming the door as hard as she physically could behind her, and feeling as though steam was about to blow out of her ears.
"I don't want to clean up," Greg muttered, "we're grown up! What gives her the right to tell us what to do and what not to do?"
"Neither do I, and I agree," James crept up behind him, and to Greg's credit he only flinched ever so slightly as James' arms snaked around him and he kissed him on the neck, "why don't we do something more fun than just cleaning up all this shit? Please baby, please. I need this release," James grumbled in Greg's ear, his right hand reaching around to tug on his belt.
"Okay, sounds good," Greg conceded, as he turned around and kissed James, as they stood in the wake of destruction they'd caused in this tiny hotel room; with the casualties of the toaster and a few plates and glasses lain on the floor.
The two of them lay in bed afterwards, ignoring everything around them as they each gazed longingly into one another's eyes. "I can't believe that I was so lucky to find someone like you. My person, the one I want to spend the rest of my life beside until we're old and grey," James whispered as he ran his fingers through Greg's hair.
"Are you feeling any more relaxed now than you were before?" Greg whispered quietly as James lay his head down on Greg's chest and listened to him breathing as he simply just nodded.
"I'm always calmer and more relaxed when I'm with you, my boo," James purred, and Greg just smiled back at him and took a deep breath.
"Me too, Jimmy, me too. You don't have to stress, I'm never going to go anywhere, I'm never going to leave you; you're stuck with me forever, okay? Until death do us part," Greg promised as he bent his head down and kissed James on the crown of his head, wincing slightly at the pain when he put pressure on his bruise.
James nodded, "until death do us part," as he relaxed deeper and went on to fall asleep on Greg's chest, feeling safe and secure; as though nothing could ever harm them or pull them apart. They were destined to only ever be each other's. Sure, they fought, but what couple doesn't? At least their love was true and real. The intensity only affirmed to both Greg and James that they were each other's true and only love, and now they found each other, neither would ever stray- because they'd both found their missing puzzle piece in each other, and nobody could ever take that away.