It was too late, the drawer was open and something purple and phallic shaped rolled to the front to rest against a bottle of lube and a new box of condoms. The dildo and accessories rested on a rather thick stack of brightly colored porn magazines. Nick’s guess had been right though, the glasses case was sitting inside the drawer. “Found them.” He tried not to laugh as he turned back to the blushing Epi.

“It’s…I forgot I put them in there because Delmar was batting at the case. It’s not… Tori keeps bringing things up with him. They’re not…I mean…I…”

Epi finally being the one off guard and embarrassed made Nick oddly happy and he wasn’t going to let the situation pass without some tormenting. He tossed the glasses case onto the bed and pulled the magazines out. The box of condoms was new and untouched and the lube was still sealed so he doubted if Epi had taken Tori’s hints about the dildo but some of the magazines had a well paged through feel to them.   

“Oh come on don’t…” Epi pleaded but Nick was grinning and flipping through the titles.

“I see a trend…”

“Do you?”

“You seem to be gay.”

“Funny.” He reached over and tried to snatch the stack away from Nick but the man pulled them out of reach.

“You don’t seem to be a deviant…” The magazines were fairly tame and definitely had a bent toward masculine men and not twinks and there wasn’t one that wandered into anything too kinky.

“Thanks.”

“What’s up with this?” He flipped the title over and Epi blushed brighter. It wasn’t a porn magazine but the current issue of Men’s Vogue and it seemed to be the most read of the lot.

“I like the articles.”

“So you keep it with your porn?” Nick laughed. “Are you jerking off to Vogue?”

“Nick!” He was bright red now.

The other magazines lost his interest and Nick dropped them on the bed. He had to move back a little as Epi made another grab for the Vogue as he opened it. Only his laughter stopped as he paged through the magazine and came across one hot guy after another, all dressed and photographed beautifully.

Epi gathered up the magazines from the bed and felt some of his own embarrassment fade when the look of surprise crossed Nick’s face. “There’s a nice article with Will Smith in this one.”

“Huh, these guys are…”

“Hot?”

Nick nodded.

“I can loan it to you when I’m done.”

Somehow Nick’s efforts to tease Epi had managed to turn the tables and he was the one starting to blush now. Epi offered the stack back to him, obviously suggesting he put them away and Nick took them back. “I didn’t know you wore glasses.” He said to cover the awkwardness of putting the porn away.

“Only when reading or watching tv for too long. You should go home, I’ll just stay up here and read. It’s a pain in the ass to get downstairs.”

“We’ll manage. Just tell me how to help.”

“If I’d just lost the leg? I could just use normal crutches when it’s off but I can’t because my knee is such shit and I lost my balance when I blew out that ear. So I get to use a wheelchair or crawl on my ass. Dignified it is not but at least I’m out of bed.” He swung himself from the bed into the waiting wheelchair with a wince. “I’m not even supposed to stand on that knee without the brace on, not yet anyway.” He settled in place but didn’t miss the way Nick’s eyes caught how the pants leg on his left leg swung freely, empty now of a lower leg and foot. “If I rip things again they won’t be able to fix it so I’m supposed to baby that side. It’s a pain the ass. Grab my glasses?”

“Sure.” Nick answered but Epi was already wheeling toward the stairs. He had known about how difficult things had to be for Epi but he hadn’t suspected how the other man had adapted. He wasn’t what Nick would call resigned or graceful in his new situation but he had a silent stubbornness that had dug into his desire to try to have his life back.

By the time Nick caught up with Epi by the steps he had slipped from the chair and was already making his way down the steps sitting down. “Want help?”

“I’m fine, just my pride that hurts.”

Nick followed behind him but didn’t ask when he reached the bottom of the stairs, he just moved the wheelchair closer and Epi hauled himself up and into it with a wince. “A movie huh?”

“Or tv, something has to be on.”

“Ice pack?”

“I’ll get it, you get settled in.” Nick moved back to the kitchen and took a moment to wonder what he was doing before he went back to the living room.

Epi was already half curled up on one end of the sofa and Nick sat down not quite at the far end. The tv was still off but Epi sat looking straight ahead, a plan manila envelope clutched in his hands.

“Want me to find the remote?” Nick asked as he handed the ice pack over, Epi ignored it and he placed it on the sofa beside the other man.

“Nick, I....” He glanced to the envelope he held. “Would it be to much to ask if you’d watch this with me?”

“What is it?”

“Timothy’s funeral. They taped it for some of his family that couldn’t come out. Tori got a copy for me, I haven’t been able to watch it. I tried but…I…”

“You sure you don’t want to wait until Tori is up visiting?”

“Yeah, he was there you know?”

Nick did know. “If you’re ready to see it, let’s put it in.”

“I’m not sure I am but…” He handed the envelope over to Nick. His ugly old round hassock was near by so he propped his sore leg up and put an ice pack on the bruised knee the other ice pack he held gingerly to his head.

“It’s on dvd?” He shook the disk out. “Fancy funeral home.” He popped the disk into the player and took his seat back after he handed the remote to Epi.

The video started before the service. The camera was mounted high on the back wall and caught most of the room as people in somber clothes sat in chairs or milled about speaking to each other. Epi didn’t see any of it his eyes were fixed on the front of the room. Timothy’s casket sat closed under a shower of flowers, white and yellow roses, with flowers in displays around. A large blown up photo of Timothy was placed nearby and the man looked smiling and happy.

“Oh, God, that’s one of our vacation photos.” Epi shook his head. “He did look good there, that’s a good picture.”

Timothy was tanned with a bit of sun burn on his nose. His eyes were dark and so was his hair. Nick wasn’t surprised from seeing Epi’s preference of men to find Timothy had a solid jaw line and a nice, masculine look. He was handsome but there was a vague look to the dark eyes that turned Nick off. He chalked that up to knowing how things had ended more than the man’s actual appearance.

“The casket is nice.” He added and it was, a low polished steel grey.

“He would have hated it. He wanted a pine box and cremation. That’s his parent’s doing.”

“Flowers are nice too.”

Epi nodded. “Tori ordered the casket roses with my name on it. White is my favorite color rose, yellow was Timothy’s…I knew he’d done that but not what colors he’d picked. It’s a closed casket. I knew but…the impact did all this to me, he hit face first, it must have just….God.”

“It looks like he had a good turn out.”

“See the group in white? The chef whites? That’s the crew from his kitchen. He had a lot of friends. He could talk to anyone, you know? Most of our friends were his friends that just sort of put up with me.”

“I doubt that.”

He glanced over to Nick. “Not one has bothered to stay in touch since.”

“Assholes.”

“Seriously! Oh, there’s Tori, he cleans up well.”

Tori moved past the camera from where he was speaking to someone. He was in a nice looking dark suit but he sat down and appeared to be alone. “Where’s his boyfriend?”

“Dillon?”

“Yeah.”

“He met him a couple of months later. He was between infants at the moment. You just know he’s going to meet some guy thirty years older than him and fall in love and stop dating these children.”

“That or he’ll buy a sports car and get hair plugs.”

Epi poked at the sore lump on his head. “He swore, when we were in college, that he’d hang himself before he let himself go bald.”

“Well so long as we have priorities.”

The teasing stopped when the people on the video moved to sit down and the service actually began. Epi sat still and silent as the minister spoke and prayers were said. He didn’t move until people were asked to share thoughts and memories and then it was only to finally lean back against the sofa.

“I make all my new cooks take a taste. I don’t care how good they are at putting things together I want to know how well they taste. So I blindfold them, make them taste bites of onions, radish, leek and turnip and tell me which is which. After that I give them ten minutes before I make them line up sixteen water glasses. Each glass is a little more salty than the next. In twenty years no one has been able to do it right except for Timothy. I’ve never met anyone with a palate like his, it was a rare gift…”

“He’s right.” Epi agreed. “He could taste anything once and know it in any dish there after. His friends used to try to stump him.”

Epi’s voice drifted away as he watched more people speak, friends and relations alike and Nick let him wander back into his own thoughts. He tried to sit quietly and just be there without judgment or comment. It must have been enough because Epi seemed comfortable with him there and stayed comfortable until Tori stood up.

“I didn’t know he’d spoken…”

“That was nice of him.” Epi nodded but it was at the tv not at Nick’s words.

“I met Timothy because his partner Epi is my best friend. I’ve known Epi for a long time and he hasn’t ever been serious about anyone except Timothy. That’s how I knew when they met they were going to end up together because Epi never got attached to anyone he dated but with Timothy it was instant from day one.” Tori glanced down. “I don’t know why things like this happen. I keep thinking that this is some dream, that I’ll wake up and we won’t have lost him and Epi won’t be...won’t be so close to following him.” He stopped and took a moment but he didn’t look up. “This is harder than I thought it would be but Epi can’t be here to say something so I…I just wanted to say that Timothy was very deeply loved and he’ll be greatly missed.”

Nick didn’t watch as Tori returned to his seat, his eyes were on Epi. The man sat still, trembling slightly but otherwise unchanged. The ice pack on his knee had slipped off and gone unnoticed. He just sat there, watching with dry eyes as the funeral progressed. The only outward sign that he was watching something that had any meaning was how he continued to sit up further, his bruised leg dropping to the floor in front of him and how he sometimes shook his head at what was being said.

He had expected Epi to be upset and cry. Funerals were sad occasions when they were for someone casually known, they were heart breaking for a loved one. Added in with the horrible emotional strain of the day, the fall Epi had taken and his being forced to accept help, Nick had been braced for a major meltdown. Except as the service on the video began to wind down and come to an obvious ending, Epi seemed more angry than grief stricken.  

“Asshole…” Epi muttered and tried to stand. He forgot that he wasn’t wearing his leg and his weak knee wasn’t braced. He fell hard to the rug but his anger moved him to half crawl across the last few feet.

“Epi?”

“Damn you…” he half growled. “Fucking got off easy…” Epi punched the button for the dvd player and snatched the disk out almost before the drawer was open. “Fuck you, fuck you!” His curses were descending from rage to hurt as he tore at the disk. “Fucking son of a bitch coward…I wish you’d lived so I could fucking kill you!” The dvd snapped in two and still Epi struggled to snap and break it further. “Fucking glad you’re dead!” The pieces refused to break again and Epi half screamed and threw them across the room.

Nick approached where the other man was huddled over himself with care. “Epi?” He lightly put a hand on one hunched up shoulder.

“I’m fine!” Epi snapped back and shrugged the comforting hand off.

The denial when the man was obviously on the verge of a panic attack made Nick half smile. “Liar.” Very carefully he sat down beside where Epi was curled up.

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