Seen and Unseen
LAURE: WAIT—he got into a shouting match? With DEAN? Dean! What did you do?
Dean: I told him to take Anthony with him on a little adventure we won’t talk about here.
Laure: Anthony, did you object?
Anthony: No. Why are we on group chat again? I am DRIVING here.
Dean: It’s called speech to text—it’s a beautiful new invention.
Anthony: Why am I doing it again?
Dean: Because we are WORRIED about my little brother!
Anthony: Don’t be worried. He can hold his own. In fact, he was doing a pretty good job standing up to YOU tonight, wasn’t he?
Dean: Yeah he was—which isn’t like him at all.
Anthony: Well maybe that’s the problem. You all are so sure you know what Reg is like, you don’t leave any room for him to be Reg.
Chance: Just got here for this. Anthony, I like you very much. Everybody else, get off their backs. Give Reg room to be himself. It’s all he’s ever needed.
Anthony: And just like that, I have a favorite.
Big words, Anthony thought now as he walked into the guest room, but somehow they didn’t seem as powerful as he needed them to be when confronted with the rather lost man sitting on the bed.
“What’s up?” he asked, depositing both the knapsacks on the floor with a thump. “I talked to your dad—we’re wheels up pretty early. I guess we’ll be taking Bailey’s SUV?”
“He just bought it,” Reg said, shaking himself and standing up. “The registration hasn’t been mailed in yet, so it’ll take them a minute to track it.”
“Good idea,” Anthony said. That had been the vehicle he’d actually been driving—it had been bought used, was a nice average navy blue and very comfortable. The kids had places to power their phones, as long as they were in airplane mode, so that would help stave off boredom.
With a nod, Reg went into the attached bathroom (Laure had often boasted that this tiny bathroom with a shower barely big enough to hold an adult human had been the sole reason she’d survived being the only girl in this little house), and Anthony went to his own knapsack and pulled out his kit.
“Shower in the morning?” he called into the bathroom.
“Yeah,” Reg called back, garbled. After a moment he spit and drank and spat again, and then stuck his head into the bedroom while wiping his mouth. “If we’re up at five, there should be hot water and water pressure. Right now the dishwasher’s running.”
Anthony grimaced good-naturedly. “Old house?”
“Old house, old plumbing, lots of use,” Reg confirmed.
“When there were seven of us, Mom used to run a bath for me and Chance every other day, and then she made a schedule—five-minute showers before school, and if you didn’t make your time slot, you were screwed.
The only exception was Laure, because it took her fifteen minutes to wash her hair and shave her legs.
” He shook his head and smiled a little.
“She could do it in seven, but sometimes, I think she just enjoyed the time alone.”
Anthony chuckled. “Lots of jockeying for position,” he said.
“Yeah. But still, nobody was happy when Val moved out, or Laure….” His voice trailed off, and Anthony realized that Reg would have watched all his siblings move out, because he had no doubt Reg had waited until Chance had gone off to school to get his own place.
“That must have been hard,” Anthony said, toeing off his battered lace-ups. “I’m going down to boxers and a T-shirt,” he said, thinking Reg would need the clarity. “Feel free to do the same.”
Reg gave him a sudden, devastating grin. “Not birthday suits? I’m disappointed.”
Anthony took off his overshirt, which was a little ripe and might get left here in the hamper, and fought the urge to clutch his chest. “Look at you, all sassy,” he teased.
“No, I did not engineer us in the same bed to grope your poor little body. Although,” he added for good measure, “I will not be saddened if that is a perk.”
Reg bit his lip and retreated into the bathroom for the rest of his nightly routine, and then Anthony followed.
When he was done brushing his teeth and setting out his shaving kit for the morning (and taken a washcloth to all pits and crevices in the name of general human decency), he dropped his cargo shorts on top of the knapsack and did what he’d promised.
Crawled into bed next to Reg, turning the lamp off by the bed as he did so.
Reg scooched down to put his own head on the pillow, his face naked of glasses, which had been left in the bathroom.
For a quiet moment in the darkness, Anthony was face-to-face with his dream boy, and he smiled, appreciating.
“What?” Reg asked, his voice a faint rasp. “What’s that smile?”
“It wasn’t how I wanted to get here,” Anthony admitted, “but I’m glad we made it.”
Reg rolled his eyes a little, but Anthony held up a finger to push against his lips.
“I mean it,” he said soberly. “Reg, why did it take so long for us to kiss?”
Reg’s enormous eyes grew even larger in the dark and then closed, and for a moment, Anthony was afraid that was it.
Then he started to speak, and Anthony felt like he was made of ears.
“Lots of little things,” Reg said. “All of them are so small, but… but they add up. They become sort of this terrible weight, you know? Pressing against me, making me smaller—making me need to be smaller so I don’t get noticed. Don’t get taken away.”
Oh God. The relief of hearing his voice in the dark, the honesty—Anthony almost cried with it.
“Just one,” Anthony murmured. “It’s been a long day—just tell me one.”
“Mm.” Reg reached for Anthony’s hand and pulled it to his chest, and Anthony thought he might die right there. Who knew? In a world where sex and human touch seemed to come at no cost, who knew they could be worth so much when meted out by the right person?
“Nice,” Anthony praised, splaying his fingers against Reg’s chest.
“And there it is—groping,” Reg said, but he sounded dreamy.
“Don’t sleep yet!”
Reg’s eyes popped open. “Sorry,” he said. Then, sincerely, “I didn’t mean to break my promise. It’s just….” He stroked the back of Anthony’s wrist, and Anthony tried not to whimper. “You know. Nice.”
“Yeah. Just one. A small one,” Anthony told him. A pebble, one of many, weighing down Registrar Julliard Royal’s old soul.
“Lost children,” Reg said, and Anthony frowned.
“Your siblings?”
Reg sighed. “Yes. But… but not… see, there’s a four-year gap between Dean and me. And another four between me and Chance. None of the older kids talk about it, but….”
Anthony felt it then, an unbearable chasm of sadness.
“Did your mother miscarry?” he asked, hating that he had to even ask that of the irrepressible Miss Julie.
“Three times,” Reg murmured. “Once before me and twice between me and Chance. I… I think… I think she had a hard time with Chance. I don’t remember much.”
“You were practically a baby,” Anthony said, aching for him.
“Yeah, but I remember that Chance was their last one. Like that was final. So, you know, you don’t ask your parents too many questions about their birth control but….”
“But you’re pretty sure that’s when they started using it,” Anthony said dryly.
“Pretty much.” Reg gave a small smile. “But see, I didn’t know any of that.
All I knew was that Mom and Dad had lost children.
I had two little sisters that got lost. And somewhere in there—heaven knows who said it to me, but I remember the words.
‘Stay close, Reg. Don’t get lost. Good boys don’t get lost.’”
“Oh my God,” Anthony said, and part of him wanted to laugh.
It was the simplest, most childish misunderstanding.
But weighted on a sensitive child, one who took his responsibilities in the family seriously…
. “That could be devastating,” he said, feeling the heft of that child’s fear deep in his stomach.
“No,” Reg said, shaking his head. “There were so many worse things. My parents—they were so sad. Hoping for that new sibling and hearing that it was lost. That was so sad. Me thinking—”
“You thought if you weren’t good, you’d disappear!” Anthony said, not wanting him to make light of it. “Reg, that’s terrible.”
“But nobody did it to me on purpose,” Reg said, as though begging him to understand. “I did it to myself—”
“But you made yourself invisible,” Anthony told him. “Because you were afraid of being lost.”
He actually heard Reg swallow. “Well, yes.”
And Anthony wanted to rail at him, to cry, to beg him to break that one restriction, and then another, and then all of the thin, fragile bands that seemed to be wrapped around Reg Royal’s heart to keep him so very, very still. But….
“You promised,” Reg whispered. “Only one.”
Anthony found himself nodding. “I promised,” he echoed. “One at a time. Okay. Fair.” And then he leaned forward and captured Reg’s mouth in a very gentle, but very adult, kiss. He tasted a little bit of brine, but also curiosity. Reg wanted more kisses.
Good. So did Anthony.
Anthony groaned a little even as he pulled back. So much need inside Reg Royal. Anthony wanted to answer it, possess him, give him everything he needed, but now was not the time.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you for trusting me with that.”
“It’s so stupi—”
Anthony kissed him again, harder, to keep the word from slipping out. He had a tougher time pulling back, because oh damn, was Reg sweet, but it was worth it.
“It’s not stupid,” he insisted. “I just want to know what’s inside you. Does anybody else know about ‘lost children,’ Reg?”
Reg shook his head. “No. No, by the time I figured out that I’d gotten it wrong, I was so embarrassed—”
“But that kind of thing stays with you,” Anthony told him.
It was late—they both needed to shut their eyes, but this was so important.
“When I was a kid, my stepdad’s father—who is not a nice man, by the way, I don’t know how my stepdad turned out so sweet—he told me my dad was going to hell for being gay.
And I asked if hell was a good place or a bad place, because I didn’t know.
My mom and dad never talked about hell. I thought it was, you know. Like Fresno.”
Reg’s suppressed snicker was warming. It meant this story—this dumb, embarrassing story—was doing what it was supposed to.
“I understand a lot of people think that,” Reg said—an old joke, and not always accurate, about one of the more economically depressed Central Valley towns.
“Right?” Anthony told him. “So I went back to my dad’s that week really depressed, and when he asked me what was wrong, because, you know, he’s my dad, and he’s awesome, you know what I said?”
“You didn’t want him to go to Fresno?” Reg asked, sounding for all the world like that was the only way this story could go.
“Close,” Anthony said. “I told him that if he was going to hell, I needed to go too, because it was my week with him, and he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere without me.”
“Aw….” Reg was staring at him like he was the sweetest little kid on the planet.
“Yeah, it reflects well on me,” Anthony admitted.
“I mean, sort of, because after my dad got over his surprise and then called Mom, and then she and my stepdad lost their shit, and it was a whole big thing, and I didn’t have to see Grandpa Zeke and Grandma Biddy anymore.
But don’t you see? Once I found out what hell was supposed to be, I realized Grandpa Zeke wanted my father to go there.
I was… oh God. I was so hurt. I’d been so excited about having grandparents, and then they turn out to say things like that about my dad? I mean, my dad?”
“Who’s sort of the greatest,” Reg agreed.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Anthony said soberly.
“Those things—even when we’re mistaken—those things we learn as kids—they stick with us.
I-I mean, when I’m mad at someone, or pissed at politics, I’ll yell ‘Fuck off,’ or ‘Eat shit,’ or all sorts of terrible things, but I won’t tell somebody to ‘Go to hell’ because I still remember that awful feeling when I found out what that meant.
So it’s not stupid,” he finished up with.
“It’s… it’s important. You’re important.
And anything that makes you nervous about being with me is important.
I mean, c’mon, Reg, I waited nearly four months for a kiss.
It would be one thing if you hadn’t wanted one—”
“I did,” Reg said fervently, which did a lot to patch the thin spots in Anthony’s usually healthy ego.
“Good.” Anthony nuzzled his temple. “I just… I need to know what made you think I wouldn’t want you.”
“If I wasn’t a good boy, I’d be lost,” Reg whispered.
“Why would wanting me make you a bad boy?”
“Because you’re perfect, and that usually means Chance should get you.”
Anthony grunted, feeling like he’d gotten a fist to his gut. “And that,” he said, practically wheezing past the pain, “is going to have to wait for a whole other conversation.”
“Sorry,” Reg murmured, sounding miserable.
“Roll over,” Anthony told him. “So I can spoon you and hold you tight as we fall asleep.”
“We can do that now?” Reg asked, but he was rolling over as he said it.
“God, I hope so. It’s the only way I’ll fall asleep tonight, I swear.”