7
The ship’s piano bar ran a 0s tribute night. Leo had scoffed when Roman first suggested it, but now that he knew of Marcel’s appreciation for the oldies, he figured this might be the best place to catch sight of him. Even if not, how bad could it be?
He’d underestimated the depths to which bad could sink. The singer was murdering a Carpenters song on the mic. Someone else was clapping on the wrong beat. Leo fled through the glass doors to the open deck. The ice rattled in his almost empty glass, but a refill on his ginger ale wasn’t worth subjecting his ears to one more note. The automated doors slid closed behind him, and he was left with the sound of the ocean lapping against the ship. Leo let out a breath he’d been holding onto since the chorus.
He wasn’t alone.
Marcel leaned on the rail twenty feet away staring at the water like it held the answers to everything. Or like he was too exhausted to ask anything of anyone.
Leo walked over and claimed his own stretch of railing. They shared the quiet until Marcel sighed.
“Is being a personal assistant always this complicated?“
Leo asked.
Marcel drew a slow breath through his nose and seemed to give the question some thought. “Sometimes it’s worse.”
“Ah.”
“Sometimes it’s the day before Christmas and I’m negotiating with a dog trainer in Los Feliz.”
“Wayne has a dog?”
“Wayne has had a dog. It now lives with a trainer in Los Feliz.”
Leo laughed.
The silence after was better than the one before. Mostly because they didn’t remain silent.
Concerts? Marcel’s first was Aerosmith because his mother loved them, which was the only bit of his mother’s taste Marcel had ever agreed with. Leo’s first was Green Day when he was fifteen. The tickets were a bribe from his mother’s third husband—they’d never been interested or stuck around long enough to be given any sort of title in relation to Leo himself—to get Leo out of the house for a few hours. He’d liked Number Three. He’d enjoyed the Green Day concert even more.
They talked about Europe. Marcel had been sent running across six cities in seven days with a folder in one hand and a garment bag in the other. In one rare twenty-minute window, he’d stood in front of the Louvre Pyramid and thought about absolutely nothing.
“That’s what you remember,“
Leo asked. “The not-thinking?”
“Most profound twenty minutes of my life.”
“I apologize on behalf of all your past sex partners.”
Marcel laughed. Then he told Leo about his brother in broad, careful strokes. He and his identical twin had been pushed into showbiz by their mom. The scar bisecting Marcel’s eyebrow had come from being pushed out of a tree at age ten, rewritten in the family archives as an accident. Marcel, it turned out, secretly loved his scar because it turned out to be a release valve from the pressure cooker of being a child actor.
Most surprisingly, as much as his job was exhausting and frustrating and downright absurd at times, Marcel enjoyed the challenge, and he was damn good at making Wayne look even better. He’d simply been burning the candle at both ends without a vacation in a while, and he hadn’t counted on having to do both his job and Winnie’s on a cruise that was supposed to offer a bit of much-needed downtime for him and Wayne both.
“But hey, if being a PA ever stops doing it for me, I now know I can make the leap into wedding planning.”
Marcel’s confessions pried truths out of Leo he’d never shared. About his mother deciding to marry Husband Number Four and move across the country just as Leo was about to enter his senior year of high school. About how he’d moved in with his dad and finally got to know him without his mother poisoning the well, followed by electing to go to college in Boston because, despite their best efforts, he hadn’t felt like he fit in with dad’s new family. He told Marcel about how even when he’d returned to LA after college, he’d blown off family dinners and vacations in Hawaii, convincing himself he’d go next time. Hell, Jackson saw Dad more frequently than Leo, and Jackson lived 3,000 miles away in New York City.
“And now it’s too late because Dad’s gone,“
Leo whispered. “I had such a short time with him, and I squandered it.” He wiped away a tear, knowing he’d be embarrassed by it tomorrow. “And I’m doing the same thing with Catherine and the rest of the family.”
“I’ve noticed you ducking her like she’s a gossip columnist after a scoop,“
Marcel said.
“She could’ve washed her hands of me after he died. They all could’ve. Even though he wasn’t their biological parent, my father was their dad. I was the outsider. They got more years with him than I ever did.“
Leo couldn’t keep the jealousy and pain out of his voice.
“I hurt the man they loved with my neglect, yet they forgave me. They continue to forgive me no matter how many invitations I ignore.“
Fuck these tears. “And I don’t know what to do with that.”
Marcel turned him away from the railing and pulled him into his arms.
“You don’t have to do anything with it,“
Marcel whispered. “You just have to open yourself up to accepting it.”
Marcel didn’t seem to be in a hurry to let him go, so Leo stood in his arms and worked on accepting the comfort. He didn’t know who shifted first. It was small—Marcel turning his head, Leo leaning in—and then they were kissing. Carefully, the way you kiss someone when you’re testing if you read the proper signals. Marcel tasted like coffee. Leo cupped the back of his neck, thumb brushing his short hair. Marcel made a low sound into Leo’s mouth that landed somewhere in his chest. Leo moaned and pulled Marcel even closer, his hardness brushing against Marcel’s own hardening body.
The glass doors blasted open.
“—you can totally see them from here. I swear.”
“I thought we had to be farther north to see the Northern Lights. Like Alaska or something.”
“You can totally see them from Mexico. I read it on the bird app.”
Idiots.
“Idiots.“
Marcel’s voice echoed Leo’s thoughts.
He and Marcel broke apart and assumed an acceptable public distance as a pack of passengers stampeded to the opposite rail, phones aloft. Pointed in the opposite direction from any chance of capturing photos of the Northern Lights, even if such a miraculous event were to occur.
“I really do have to sleep,“
Marcel said ruefully.
“Yeah. Lots to do tomorrow.“
Including, if he worked up the courage, an overdue conversation with his step-people.
“Good night, Leo.”
“Good night, Marcel.”
Leo stayed at the rail after Marcel walked away, tracing his thumb along his lower lip.
He was still standing at the rail when the rowdy band of idiots gave up on spectral phenomenon and decided to go to a dance party instead.
He stood at the rail and practiced accepting his feelings.