Val followed Gavan back into the living room and toyed with his beer bottle while food was delivered and money exchanged hands. The apartment soon filled with the smells of hot, Chinese food. It was an oddly comforting scent and Trist must have agreed because he came out of his bedroom sniffing the air.

“That smells fantastic!” His hair was damp and loose around his shoulders and he was deftly welding a hairbrush to force it back into it’s tight braid. As he was tying off the end he hurried over to hover around the brown paper bag that Gavan was carrying into their kitchen.

“Get back and what are you wearing?” He shooed at his cousin as he started to pull cartons from inside.

Trist looked down at himself, the sweatshirt had always been baggy but now he almost was drowning in it, but it was warm and had a picture of Ben Franklin on it wearing sunglasses. He liked it. Going with the theme of warmth, he’d pulled on red checked flannel pants and thick, dark green socks that had plenty of room for his toes to curl about in.

“What?” He looked generally hurt. “I was cold.”

“You look homeless.” Out came chopsticks from the paper bag and sodas from the fridge.

“I was fucking cold!” Trist snapped a bit more sharply then he needed to. Gavan gave him a hard look and he shook his head. “Sorry. I need one of those heat lamps like lizards have.” His stomach growled loudly in a long low rumble. “Oh, come on Gav, I’m dying here!”

He pushed a box across the counter and shoved a pair of chopsticks after it. “It’s like feeding time at the zoo!”

“There’s a kung fu movie marathon on too!” He grinned and brushed past them to curl up in the corner of the sofa and flip the television on. “So, Val, did Gavan give you my care instructions. No food after midnight, never get me wet… oh wait that’s something else.”

Val nodded his thanks to Gavan as his own carton was passed over to him. “Yeah, he said I’m to take you to the park for walkies twice a day and if you mess in the house I’m supposed to smack your nose with a rolled up newspaper.”

The joke was so unexpected and stated with such dry, dead pan seriousness, that Trist snorted and nearly choked to death on a carrot. Gavan chuckled, more amused at seeing Trist laugh so fully then at the joke. Too many days he felt like taking a rolled newspaper to Trist to find much humor in the joke.

“You two will be fine this weekend.” He nodded, convinced everything would be okay.

They sat and ate, sucking in vegetables and rice balanced at the points of chopsticks and watched Trist’s kung fu movies. Oddly, Val felt comfortable there, sitting on their sofa, eating the take out food. The cousins were so easy together and so easy around him, that it felt foreign to him. His family had been so formal, so proper, they’d never sit together like this, laughing at good action sequences and bad dubbing. If he was a touch silent, the cousins over looked it.

“It’s for you Gavan.” Trist announced seemingly at random. “It’s Wally.”

“Cool!” He was on his feet and half way to the phone before it started ringing.

Val turned and could tell from the smile that cracked across Gavan’s face and how he quickly carried the phone into his bedroom that Trist had been right. He shook his head, bit his tongue and turned back to the movie. Only, a few short seconds later, a sock clad foot nudged his shoulder.

“And you,” Trist punctuated his words with little nudges from his foot. “Cut yourself some slack.”

“What?” He glanced to where Trist was mostly curled up on his end of the sofa, one leg drawn up close to his body and the other left to drop between them.

“It’s only been six months.”

Val rubbed at his eyes that suddenly felt too watery. “I’m fine.”

Trist nudged the man again with his foot. “Bullshit but it’s okay, just, don’t be so hard on yourself. If that fiancée of yours wasn’t so cold hearted she would’ve had you snuggled on the sofa every night since.”

“If you must know, I told her I wanted space. I have to deal with this on my own.”

Trist rolled his eyes and snatched up Gavan’s box of food and started finishing it off. “Just like I like my privacy but Gavan doesn’t leave me alone. Sometimes, what we want isn’t what’s good for us.” He picked out the mushrooms and happily popped them into his mouth.

“I’d rather not talk about this.”

“Fine by me.” He grinned and it carried a honey warmth to it. “So, tell me, why’d he call you Pony?”

“Another subject I’d rather not talk about.” Val kept his eyes firmly on the television but he could feel the smile the other man wore.

“Don’t make me guess, and don’t make me dig for it. I’ll find out one way or another, it’s cute. Better then something creepy and morbid like lamb chop or something, what boy wouldn’t want his very own Pony? Was it kinky? Were you a naughty boy in college? Beyond the entire homosexual affair thing, did you two get wild? I know he’s the only one you let call you that, I know it was a joke between the two of you alone.” Trist poked again with his foot.

“Stop that! It wasn’t kinky, I’m not naughty and I’m not gay!”

“Of course not, sweetheart, whatever helps you sleep at night. Though, a good hard fucking can help you sleep at night too. Something to be said for both sides.” He slurped another mushroom into his mouth, licking the sauce from his lips.

“Fine, you want to know? It’s terribly dirty. When I started tutoring him, he accused me of not having any fun, said I was just a workhorse. I protested and tried to make a joke of it and show I was a smaller workhorse, that I was more of a work pony. He laughed, it stuck and he never called me anything by Pony, ever again.” Val sighed in frustration and hoped the grinning man across from him didn’t pick up on the double meaning. It had started out just as he’d said but once they’d become lovers, Matt often teased him about taking his Pony out for a ride. “Happy now?”

Trist set the now mushroom free box of Gavan’s dinner down but his smile fled. “Yes, thank you. Sweet that it was Matt that didn’t let anyone else call you that, very protective of him.”

Val held up a hand. “Please, I don’t want to talk about him.”

Trist studied the closed and carefully guarded expression on the handsome face. It made him want to crawl into Val’s lap and lick his ears like an overgrown cat just to make him smile again. Well, he had all weekend to test the waters and once Gavan was gone he doubted Val would call him home because of a little sexual tension.

“Hey,” Trist cheered up. “Do you like Kurosawa? I think Seven Samurai is maybe my favorite movie? Have you seen it? The man is a fucking genius.”

“Can’t say that I have, sorry.”

“Well, I know what we’re doing sometime this weekend. You have to watch Seven Samurai with me. It’s fan-fucking-tastic.”

“With praise like that, how could I refuse?” Even Val wasn’t sure if he was being sincere or sarcastic but he knew he’d end up watching the movie so it didn’t matter.

Gavan’s door opened and he came back into the living room smiling. “Wally is thrilled. God, this is going to be amazing. He’s picking me up tomorrow at nine, we’ll be back sometime late Monday, is that okay?” He slid down between the two men, lifting Trist’s extended leg to make room and setting it down across his lap.

Trist shrugged.

“Suits me.” Val muttered, a few hours more or less wouldn’t make any difference.

“Thanks so much, both of you, thank you.”

“Thank me on Monday afternoon.” Trist sighed and wiggled around to curl up in the corner again.

“Everything will be fine, I just know it, I…” Gavan glanced into his dinner. “Hey, what happened to all my mushrooms?”

“I told Val you wanted them but he just kept eating them and eating them. Kept licking the sauce off his lips and getting me all hot and bothered too. He’s insufferable. Ow! Hey!” Trist flinched from the pinch Gavan delivered. “I’m fragile, quit it.”

“Just be glad I’m in a good mood, brat.” It didn’t miss Gavan’s notice that Trist was steady, stable and almost balanced like he hadn’t been in ages. Nor did he miss the quiet way Val was keeping to himself and his mind quickly started putting pieces together. Trist could be obsessive about things, and if he’d latched onto Val as a new way to distract himself, well, it would get them past the next few days. Even if Val might not ever speak to him again after dealing with the relentless Trist for the weekend.