Royal Welcomes
BAILEY WAS actually relieved to drive the family minivan, although he was surprised to find that after his father and Catherine noped out in the back row, he ended up next to Reg while Anthony and Chance napped in the middle seats.
He was pleased for a chance to talk to the quietest Royal without any interruptions from the rather boisterous crowd he found himself with.
Reg made a sound of disgust. “Only compared to my little brother,” he muttered. “My God, he’s terrifying.”
Bailey couldn’t argue there—although for entirely different reasons. “How long have he and Marcus been dancing?” he asked, figuring that would give Reg something to chew over.
“That feels awfully personal,” Reg said, surprising him.
Bailey hmm ed. “You’ll have to forgive me. I was an only child. Having an entire family to gossip about is such a luxury. And Dean really only started opening up about you guys recently.”
Next to him he could feel Reg relax. “I guess that’s understandable,” he said. “It’s just… my baby brother has carried such a torch. I hate to encourage him when Marcus is older and way more worldly, you know?”
Bailey remembered the odd note in Marcus’s voice when he and Dean had been discussing somebody Marcus was waiting on to grow up. “I get the feeling Marcus is just as worried about making a move on one of Dean’s younger siblings,” he said carefully.
Reg made a subtle “ hmm ” in the back of his throat.
“What?” Bailey asked, amused that it should be as hard to get information from Reg as it was from Dean.
“I think if Marcus was to make a move on Chance,” Reg said carefully, “he needs to be very, very prepared. Chance has been planning their wedding for four years, since Dean first brought Marcus home. Yes, he was just about to graduate from high school, and Marcus was so terrified, he hit on everybody else in the family, including our straight brother, Prock. Chance was warned off since then, but… you know. Whatever happens between them….”
“We’d all better put on our flak jackets and our helmets and duck,” Bailey said, getting a full picture of the potential disaster.
“And be prepared to pick up the pieces after the explosion,” Reg told him grimly, and then he cast a half-guilty glance behind him, probably to make sure Chance couldn’t hear.
Bailey felt him stiffen again, and in response to a quiet voice from the back, he said, “Good. Did you hear what we were saying?”
Anthony’s voice was a little louder and clearer this time. “No, Reg, because you’re not broadcasting. Don’t stress so much!”
“Sorry,” Reg said, a thing that sounded automatic.
“What’s the rule,” Anthony said.
“Oh God, really—”
“Reg?”
Reg huffed out a little breath. “Unless I back a car over your foot unintentionally , then I never have to be sorry. And if it’s intentional, you probably deserved it.”
Anthony’s response was cut off by a yawn, and Reg turned back toward the front. “Just as well,” he grumbled. “I’d get carsick if I had to spend too much time turned around like that.”
Bailey grunted. They were still in the city, and traffic sort of crawled along at forty miles an hour in what seemed to be an urban knot of overpasses and entrances.
“Does it get any faster than this?” he asked.
“Once it opens up around Burbank,” Reg promised. “And then you need to put your foot on it and just accelerate steadily because you’ll be making a steep climb into the mountains. It’s really twisty up there. There’s a reason it’s called the Grapevine.”
“Oh!” Bailey cheered up. “I’ve heard of the Grapevine. Never driven it, but nice!”
Reg grunted. “If you’re this excited about the Grapevine, you should take the next exit and go back the way we came. Disneyland is back there, you know.”
Bailey let out a dry chuckle. “I’ve never been. Is it everything they say?”
“Yes,” Reg said, with no apology in his voice whatsoever. “My parents pretty much mortgaged their retirement to take us. It really is the happiest place on earth.”
From the back seat, Bailey heard Anthony say, “I’ll take you someday.”
Reg didn’t answer him, and Bailey risked a quick glance to see his cheeks had heated.
“So,” he asked, voice quiet, “tell me about Dean.”
Reg gave a quick glance over his shoulder, and then practically broke his neck whipping around to face front.
“What about him?” he squeaked.
“What’s he like as a brother?”
Reg let out a sigh. “Protective,” he said after a moment.
“He was always smarter than we were, stronger than we were, and he always knew the bad stuff we didn’t.
He made it his job to protect everybody from the bad stuff.
My folks were always bringing people into the house, letting them sleep in the basement if they were having trouble with their parents, that sort of thing.
Dean would walk into their room armed with statistics on domestic disputes, and Dad would say, ‘And that, son, is why you are not expected to answer the door should anybody’s parent come knocking.
’ And Dean would be left sputtering that he was trying to protect the family while Mom escorted him back to bed and said that the family welcomed anybody under the roof who needed sanctuary.
And on the one hand, I think it was funny, and it was great to see him taken down a peg or two, because he always— and I mean always— knew what was best, and that was fucking irritating. ”
“But on the other hand?” Bailey asked, feeling for Dean. He could see this so clearly. Dean’s pragmatism in the face of what was, apparently, his family’s absolute generosity. Dean must have been so very baffled to see his logic twisted back on itself.
“On the other hand,” Reg said softly, “I think he must have been so lonely. He understood, knew, remembered so much , and the simple stuff that the rest of us got in our bones eluded him. He and Val used to get so mad at each other, but I remember once somebody was giving Dean a hard time—he was in high school at eleven, you know?—and Val literally left junior college to drive to high school and help Prock and Sal stuff kids in lockers. How dare anybody hurt his little brother. And Dean… he was so tough, but they got home, and he started to sob, and then he started to yell , because dammit, just once couldn’t he be the one who took care of himself?
And Val was hurt at first, and then he squared his jaw—just like Dad—and said, ‘Stanford Dean Royal, you will always be my baby brother, and I will always stand up for you. Get over it. You may be this family’s biggest pain in the ass, but you are also our pride and joy, and we won’t let anything happen to you. ’”
Bailey’s heart ached suddenly, because he could see that happening, the two of them so stubborn, so proud, and so wanting to take care of everybody else in the family.
“What happened then?” he asked.
“Hugging and crying,” Reg said, a little bit of kind laughter in his voice. “Dean and Val could piss each other off so bad, but it always ended up in hugging and crying. It’s why we bugged Val when we knew Dean was seeing somebody. We figured he’d know.”
This was a surprise.
“Did he?” Bailey asked.
“Oh yeah,” Reg said. “But Val’s as good as Dean at ducking family texts. We didn’t hear from him for three days, and then it was to come get you.”
Bailey laughed outright then. “So you all knew about me—but not the particulars.”
“Yeah.” He could feel Reg’s regard. “Did you know about us?”
“Not until yesterday morning,” Bailey said with half a laugh. “Because I almost broke up with him, because I thought he was withholding information.”
“Was he?” Reg sounded riveted.
“Nope. Turned out I only had to ask.”
Reg grunted. “And that, as you have probably figured out, is typical Dean.”
“I’m starting to get that picture,” Bailey told him, and at that moment traffic opened up. Bailey gave a happy “Whee!” as he stepped on the accelerator and headed for the hills.
TWO AND a half hours later—after one rest stop in Kettleman City for coffees, sodas, and a chance for Catherine and Mr. Bumble to be walked on a little green outside a strip mall—Anthony directed Bailey down a long roller coaster of a straight road where fifties-style ranch houses sat back on absurdly large property packets while Reg took his turn napping in the back.
Much of the scenery was brownish, with tiny little lawns, many of those with white picket fences inside a larger chicken-wire or chain link property fence.
There were even, to Bailey’s surprise, a couple of pools, barely glimpsed in what amounted to the backyard.
“I thought you people were always in a drought?” he said.
“Sometimes,” Anthony conceded. “But sometimes not, and then the pool comes in handy when it’s hot.”
“I imagine so,” Bailey said. It was barely twelve o’clock, and he could already feel the unrelenting dry July heat starting through the windshield. “I have no idea if Dean packed my trunks.”
“If he didn’t, I’m sure there’s a zillion pairs you can borrow,” Anthony said blithely. “Reg’s parents are uber prepared—and sort of the king and queen of ‘there’s always room at the table,’ you know?”
“How long have you known them?” Bailey asked.
“Only a couple of months,” Anthony said.
“But my parents had both lost their parents before I came along, and my stepdad’s folks are—” He grimaced.
“—not kind about the LGBTQA crowd.” He pronounced it all together, like “elejebetequa,” and it took Bailey a moment to realize that the young man had just told him that his step-grandparents were bigots.
“I was so excited,” Anthony told him, “when my dad told me his new boyfriend had parents who liked the whole family to be the whole family. They invited me to their big reunion picnic at the beginning of June, and it was one of the best days of my life.” His voice dropped.
“And Reg was there, so that was nice too.”
“Best friends?” Bailey asked, although he suspected it was more than that.