The Bailout

Hello again everyone, happy holidays. Here's just a new story that started as a Christmas-themed one shot but then kinda got away from me. These first couple chapters are kinda light on sex but we'll get there soon. Hope you enjoy.

The Bailout

Chapter 1 - Blue Christmas

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It was raining the day that Jamie, freshly cut loose from his torrential life, arrived in Vancouver.

He rather morosely thought it matched his whole situation at the moment: sopping wet, miserable, and just a little bit pathetic. He felt a sour, chagrined smile crack his face, thinking of the weeks-long pity party he had been throwing himself. How it all finally culminated into him standing outside Vancouver International Airport, watching the cold rain lash this almost entirely alien city before his eyes. He had never seen such a blue Christmas in his life.

The whole plane ride here, he had wallowed. He watched the sky as it turned from snow to hail to nothing at all, to Vancouver's iconic mild rainfall; all of it grey, drab, and passed by before Jamie's sore, tired eyes. It was god awfully pitiable but he couldn't help it--he just wallowed like his life was ending. His ruined romance, his car--now abandoned in Montreal--his worse than ever relationship with his mother...

His mother, who had instilled in him the flair for the dramatic that made his woe so strident and loud, who had just recently kicked him out for being.... What did she say?

"A fucking homosexual!"

In any other context, that would have been just mildly irritating, and at least a little funny. But no, that tiny woman, a whole head and a half shorter than her son, had levelled so much hatred at him, so much vitriol, that he didn't recognise her, with her bulging eyes and the vein threatening to break through the skin of her neck. It sunk him to think that she seemed not to recognise him. Her only son.

It doubly didn't help matters that the day she found out, he had already had his illicit partner of a year over to their house. She was supposed to leave on a trip to the US for work--but had only remembered she'd left her crucial portfolio at home just as she'd arrived at Montreal-Trudeau Airport. And she simply could not leave without it. She never told Jamie that she'd be turning around.

Needless to say she'd gotten the shock of her life when she'd discovered her son naked on the living room floor with Markus, the son of her friends, the Conjuangcos. "A very nice boy!" she'd called him; "would be wonderful for my Jessie." How she had screeched. She missed her flight that day. It kept Jamie up at night.

That awkward catastrophe cascaded directly into his whole family finding out, then the Cojuangcos finding out soon after. Suddenly, the two of them were personas non grata in their once tightly-knit community. Friends and friendly acquaintances became strangers with hard, antagonistic stares. Yet worse still was the pity; mournfully acting like Jamie had died.

Markus deleted everything, going so far as to block Jamie's number. It was over. And while Jamie hadn't been kicked out of the home, he found it unbearable to live in a house where his mother refused to speak to him. Worse still were the hushed, ragefully whispered conversations he knew were about him, taking place in his mother's bedroom.

"You think it's my fault, ga?" he spied upon his mother saying one night. "Because he didn't grow up with a dad?" The barbs of her words and self-pitying misery wrapped around his heart and cinched in. This had nothing to do with her, and yet here she was, throwing herself on the funerary pyre.

Couch surfing with his friends was not a sustainable option, Jamie knew that. So he only relied on it for as long as he could bear before finding something else. Anything. It didn't matter. The few good friends he had accepted him in with uneasy smiles, and he always set a mental hard limit of never staying longer than a business week. By the time he crawled out of their homes, stumbling over a mountain of self-deprecating pleasantries, he had a list of people he never wanted to bother again for anything.

He wasn't sure if that said more about himself or them.

For a brief, dark moment he even considered living as someone's kept boy, a live-in caretaker that took care of home and owner. A body to warm someone's bed. If other people could pull it off.... Of course, his prospects for that slimmed as he approached thirty-one, but still. The internet was a vast place.

Not that at thirty-one, Jamie Revillame looked bad. He had his full, thick figure, whipped into bulky, bearish shape from an overweight childhood. Wisps of black hair coursed up and down his body, and his hair, cut short and neat, was just starting to be streaked prematurely with silver. And it wasn't like he was a slouch in the dick department either. All things considered, he was a catch. It was just too bad he had to be "a fucking homosexual!" in a violently conservative immigrant family, whose contacts and friends were all the same as them.

Jamie spent weeks feeling laid low, drifting from place to place as needed. The shining light at the end of the tunnel came in the form of an Instagram message, from a person most unexpected.

--hey jamie,-- he read one night, his face stuffed in his poor friend's sofa cushion. --heard some shit happened to u. listen man im here for u. just msg back when u can bro.--

It was Mustafa Amihan, at one time, his childhood best friend (a wonder, since the Amihans were Muslim and the Revillames, Catholic). He was someone he'd admired for practically his entire young life. Two years older than him, Jamie had always looked up to Mustafa, and had a deep sense of admiration that later morphed into confusing attraction.

He was popular and cool, and great at football. He could have any girl he wanted, and all throughout school, he did. Of course Jamie had a crush on him. How couldn't he? But as time passed, they had started to grow apart, having landed in different social brackets at school. It was natural, Jamie knew now, but at the time, it crushed his teenage heart. He'd made new friends but had lost his oldest one.

Jamie had inadvertently followed him to university too, where he saw him running with an urbanely diverse crowd of similarly cool people at McGill University. And after graduation he had lost track of him. Even the obligatory birthday messages had dried up.

Now, he was married (he thought?), no kids, blindingly successful, and he lived in just about the best city Jamie had ever been to in this country. Vancouver, that distant, mythically hip west coast city, with its promises of anonymity; an open, better life. Far, far away from the hard winters and drudgery of Montreal. And the pocket of outwardly conservative Filipinos he had the misfortune to be born into.

He could hardly believe that he, Mr. Cool, Mr. Successful, would extend a hand to him like this. Mustafa Amihan had become a distant, tender memory, and Jamie had been content to leave him as such. But in just a few conversations, he had set him up with a room in his condo and a one-way ticket out to the city. A way out. He felt feverish as he negotiated with work that he was switching to an entirely remote position: "I'm leaving Montreal". He could hardly believe it himself.

He said goodbye to the ones he cared to do so to, not least of all his younger sister Jessie who begged him to reconsider. She cried every day for weeks, it killed him. But Jamie was unrelenting, as was their mother and community in their silence, their ostracism. With a final hug, he promised her he would return for her, and then the Uber that would take him away swallowed him whole. In the rear view mirror, he watched his sister's face crumple into a broken wail. He tried his best not to cry on the way to the airport.

Five hours and a time zone change later, he was touching down on new soil. The dizzying hum of activity at Vancouver International surrounded him as he collected his luggage and stumbled his way to arrivals.

Within minutes, Mustafa Amihan was there in the flesh to greet him. He had pulled up in a polished silver Lexus, the rain ricocheting off of it as if it had a repellant sheen to it. Jamie had held his breath as he watched him emerge from his car, wind and rain whipping him about like a shape from a dream.

Everything about him now contrasted what he used to be. He was huge, bulky; at least fifty pounds heavier than he used to be. He sported a long, healthily-oiled beard that reached his chest, and the rest of his hair was tied up, long and fractally wild in the wind. He was dressed in a crisp black shirt; a fine blue blazer and matching pants, and exuded professionalism. Small lines now crossed his face, but there was still the sparkling youth there, unabashed in his chocolate brown eyes.

Jamie couldn't believe it. Both envy and arousal rushed in his throat as he saw how much hotter Mustafa was now. Like he had been changing over time to exactly match his taste in men. He felt--and looked--like a rube in comparison. Within minutes, he was greeting him with a huge, deep hug like they hadn't just spent years, provinces, and tax brackets apart.

"Jamie!" he called in a gravelly, coarse voice, in sharp contrast to how Jamie remembered him sounding; "it's been too long!" Gone was his bright, boyish tone; he now sounded like smoked every day.

"Mustafa," he muttered, the words stumbling out of him; "I can't thank you enough for this." His old school friend just gave him an ear-to-ear smile and put a warm, broad hand on his shoulder, pulling him into his centre of gravity. He smelled like cold pine trees and warm, intoxicating spice. Like Christmas.

"Come on," he said with an easy, casual tone. "You've seen my Instagram. I'm just Moose now, bro. Let's drive! We've got a ways before we hit my part of town."

As it turns out, Mustafa--Moose's--part of town was North Vancouver, the part that Jamie remembered romanticising as the nicest. Because of course he lived there. There was plenty of time to commiserate this on the way, and naturally, to catch up. The streets of Vancouver passed by, alternating swaths of grey and the colourful twinkling lights of the holidays. All of it danced blearily before his eyes.

"...you didn't know I was gay too, bro?" Moose said after a dumbfounded Jamie expressed his shock at him having a husband now. "Nah, I really don't keep up with anyone back home."

"Not even your parents?" Jamie asked with a heavy lump in his throat.

He shrugged, his mouth pressing into a hard line. "Well, since they were the ones I suggested I go to conversion therapy...no, I do not keep up with my parents." He shook his head, watching the rain roll off his windshield. "None of my friends are the same ones we grew up with, because the moment they found out, I became a stranger to them. A fucking alien. Same thing happened to you, didn't it?"

He thought of Markus, he thought of his mother; he thought of Jessie, the only person who was by his side in every capacity... "Yes," was his only reply, bitter and lonely in the stuffiness of the car. He had to fight back the impending flood of emotions, catching himself only when Moose put a hand on his knee.

Jamie's eyes bulged a little as he looked at his old friend, who deftly pulled away. "It'll be alright," he said simply. "You are among friends, bro."

The degree to which Moose seemed to have completely extricated himself from his old life and community was astounding. They made a stop at a European bakery just before downtown, and the staff were all bright smiles and friendly conversation with him. He ordered coffee and sugared doughnuts that were warm and fresh and undeniably delicious. He was a seamless part of their world now.

He noted that he avoided the Filipino store, just a couple of doors over, even going so far as to just give a curt nod when they said hello. Jamie asked him about that, and he gave him a grave smile. "The Filipinos here are like my brothers," he said in a measured, cool tone. "And I don't speak to any of my brothers." He was fully in with everyone else now, it seemed. Thus spake Mustafa Amihan.

The drive to North Vancouver was laborious, thanks to the winding path he took through the throbbing, choked throat of downtown, through all the city's districts. They passed by all sorts of landmarks and places; some impressive, and some quite innocuous, never failing to tell Jamie about each one. Queen Elizabeth Park. Gastown. The Chinese Garden. How he should take the time to visit some of them and orient himself in the city sometime.

It was all so much. Vancouver whizzed by him, chugging in some places with the traffic, and it was hitting him how well and truly new this all was. He was away from home, away from his family, away from everyone he had ever loved.... But now he had Moose. He had Vancouver. Montreal, and all of its collective memories, melted into a single blurry dot far, far on the horizon.

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Chapter 2 - Moose & Bruce

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As it turned out, the reason for Moose's success was his namesake construction company, and the related real estate company he also co-owned. He mentioned that when Jamie pointed out that, in the two-ish days he had been living in Vancouver, he saw his name, AMIHAN, plastered all over construction sites, on buildings, on offices. He managed them together and raked in untold amounts of money a year. Jamie, for his end, was just gobsmacked. It explained how he was able to afford a penthouse at the top of a new-build in the nicest part of the city.

"And the best part is, I did it...mostly...by myself," he said with a proud smile over breakfast one morning. He stood in the kitchen--their kitchen, wearing just sweatpants (Jamie found it hard to look away). They sat down to a small but formidable spread of Filipino breakfast staples: rice, omelettes, steamed vegetables and fried meats. Pork, at that. Mustafa Amihan would have never eaten Spam or longganisa, even if offered by a friend's mother; he was a good Muslim boy. But Jamie figured that 'Moose' was not.

"That's really impressive, dude," Jamie muttered as he chewed around a roll of warm pandesal. At his dead-end government job that didn't even require him to be at an office, he had long given up the dream of seeing so much money. Crystalline light poured in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting deep shadows onto Moose's chest. His skin lit up in brilliant bronze; his swatches of body hair catching stray motes of light. Gone was the toned, boyish figure of his youth. To Jamie, and next to Jamie...he looked like a god.

"It's a hard city, but a rewarding one, for sure," he said through a cheeky, boyish grin, the same one he'd worn for decades. He took every opportunity to graze Jamie's closed fist across the table, touching his calloused fingertips to his skin. Little thrilling spikes made his chest feel tight. Surely he didn't...?

"You're serious," Jamie said breathily, trying to keep his eyes off of Moose's prodding fingers; off of the conspicuous print in his new landlord's pants. "I...well, what does your family say about it?"

The smile he gave him was dripping with both pride and hatred. "It's so funny," he said, almost dreamily; "they think they're entitled to my money. 'We raised you, you should help us,' blah blah bull-fucking-shit." He sipped at his black coffee, which had to have been halfway as bitter as he was. "I told them if they were so poor, they should move back to the Philippines where their small Canadian money would go further."

Jamie just shook his head free of the thoughts that crowded his brain. "I can't believe you really told them that," he muttered, looking at the floor. "I can't imagine--"

"What, d'you think I was too mean?"

"No! No, I...it's just...you know, if you said that twenty years ago? Your dad would've beat you black and blue."

"Exactly." Moose put down his mug, and it came to the counter with a solid, deep thud. "He told me that. And I told him he was welcome to try. Jamie, in time you will come to understand that even if they raised you, it doesn't mean shit if you're a disappointment to them. That dude, Markus? Fuck, his life is fucking over. You? You got away. You're out--you're free."

Jamie swallowed at the mention of Markus. "He...didn't deserve that."

"Well, no, but did we?"

Moose stood and came closer, his sure footsteps padding against the cool, slate-blue tile. His broad, furry brown body filled up Jamie's vision. He put a hand on his knee, his touch brusque and firm, demanding that he look at him. And he did, his breath threatening to betray his fragility.

"You listen to me, Jamie," Moose said, eyes hard; "life is entirely what you make of it, not how it was laid out for you. You're here with me, and you're safe now."

He didn't know exactly when he embraced him, but Jamie found his face buried in the soft-but-firm crooks of Moose's body. His face was wet with unbidden tears: of relief, misery, gratitude, all rolled into one. An unknowable, messy emotion bubbled up from deep inside Jamie, and it was hard to rein it in. Moose draped his arms about his shoulders, pulling him in, letting him sob. It was the first time he cried since coming to the city. It felt...strange.

And yet at the same time, Moose smelled so good. He had taken his shower last night, and Jamie got soapy freshness mixed with natural musk; a heady combination that he wanted to just take a deep sniff of. He hated how messy and mixed up his emotions were--could he please decide if he was sad, happy, or horny?

"Fuck," muttered Jamie through a ragged sigh, tamping down his raging emotions. "Sorry."

"Don't be." Moose's voice was warm, and made a hazy feeling swim up from Jamie's chest. And he just held him for another long, ponderous moment. Jamie felt his head being patted, and he took another deep, heaving sigh against his idol's firm, hirsute body.

When he pulled away from his friend, he saw, from the corner of his eye, movement from across the living room. There stood Moose's husband, the handsome Bruce, having just awoken.

"Sorry," he said in his gentle, deep voice; "didn't mean to interrupt anything. Everything okay?"

Of golden-yellow Taiwanese stock, Bruce Hsieh had a gentle countenance to him; in soft black eyes, in his clean, close-cropped look. His small, reserved smile. His bathrobe, though large, barely contained all of him, and his round, smooth shapes glowed in the light of the blue springtime morning (Jamie found it hard to look away). He was bulky, round, and yet tall, in great compliment to Moose, who was blocky, hard, shorter. They were an astonishingly hot couple. Moose and Bruce. Jamie couldn't have put it better himself.

"Baby!" called Moose with a broad grin, gesturing him over. "Come on. Breakfast."

"Is it that Filipino stuff?" asked his husband with a restrained, curious smile. Moose nodded so deeply his entire mane of hair shook with him. So came lumbering Bruce's form, cast in the indefinite light of morning. At last, he pulled away from Jamie, and left the thudding of his heart between them.

Trying to sit through a meal with them had been hard enough, but in this first post-jet lag morning and with so few clothes, it was significantly harder to keep a straight face. Beside him, the firm, fuzz-covered bulk of Moose's body loomed in his peripheral vision. Across from him, Bruce's inviting, lush curves called to him, pressing in his brain. Everything was heightened; everything from misery, to relief, to lust.

Jamie had never been so emotionally volatile before. It embarrassed the hell out of him. But, he figured, it isn't every day that you're iced out of your home and family. Times were different now.

A moment of peace came when Moose took off for work. He left in a flurry of goodbye hugs for Jamie and kisses for Bruce. The last one, Jamie watched on in quiet, simmering desire as they held on for just a couple seconds longer. Savouring each other properly. He could have sworn that Bruce shot him a sidelong stare, as if to see if he was looking. Minutes later, Moose was gone; following him out was the trail of his fragrance and his freshly oiled beard.