Fic: The House Guest

[jess-d-10.livejournal.com]

Title: The House Guest
Author: jess_d_10 
Fandom: Shelter
Rating: R
Pairing; Characters: Zach/Shaun; Gabe, Cody
Chapter: 4
Summary: Gabe needs help more than he ever has before, and Zach and Shaun step up to the plate.
Notes: This is a multi-chaptered story, but I've already completed writing the whole thing, so I should be posting chapters fairly quickly. I had so much fun writing this ... I hope you'll all have fun reading it!

To those who have been reading so far, sorry for the delay with this chapter. I've been away on vacation for the past two weeks.

Previous Chapters:

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

New Chapter:

Chapter Four

Gabe

Gabe woke up early on Tuesday morning, which was testament to how nervous he was about starting his job that afternoon: he never woke up early, even when he had to. As he had told Zach, though, he had never had a job like this one, and he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Both Zach and Shaun were full of reassurances at dinner the night before.

“Trust me, it’ll be fine,” Zach insisted.

“The first day at a new job is the best day,” Shaun theorized, “because no one expects you to know anything yet. You basically just follow someone around who shows you what you need to do.”

“You’re good at talking to people, and you already know surf and skate equipment really well: you’re going to be great at this.”

Despite all of this insistence that Gabe would have the time of his life at his new job, he wasn’t feeling like his normal, confident self. He wondered if he would ever feel like that guy again. He missed him.

At one o’clock, Gabe pushed his worries aside, and stepped into Swell/Snow/Sidewalk. It was a fairly large store, divided into four main sections: one for surfboards, one for snowboards, a small one for skateboards and inline skates, and one for clothing and accessories for all three sports. It was a beautiful day out, and the store was busy with shoppers and sales people, identifiable only by their nametags. There was no employee uniform, a fact that had certainly made the job more appealing to Gabe. He walked up to the register where an employee was just handing back a customer her change.

“Hey,” the employee, whose nametag identified him as Mike, said as Gabe walked up to the register.

“Hey, I’m Gabe. I’m supposed to start working today?”

“Oh, awesome, man. One sec. Ben!” he hollered toward the skate section of the store.

“What?” a guy who must have been Ben hollered back.

“The new guy’s here!”

“Tell him I’ll be right there!”

“OK!” Mike looked back at Gabe. “He’ll be right there. I mean here.”

“Got it,” Gabe said.

A moment later, a man who Gabe figured to be in his early thirties walked up to Gabe. He had shoulder-length curly brown hair, and he wore light blue and white board shorts and a fluorescent green V-neck t-shirt. His nametag said, “Ben.”

“Gabe?” he said.

“Yeah, hey,” Gabe said, holding out his hand.

Ben grabbed it and shook it enthusiastically. “Hey, man, I’m Ben. I’m the manager here.”

“I thought Lance was the manager. He interviewed me.”

 “No, man, he’s the assistant manager.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Ben stared at him solemnly. “You better be. Fuck, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

Gabe was so nervous, he almost took the man seriously, but as soon as their eyes met, they both laughed. The laugh felt good, like something had just clicked between them. He felt a little better.

Ben gave him a tour of both the back and the front the store. He was shown the storeroom where they kept additional inventory and the employee room where he could keep his stuff and take his breaks. He was shown how to use the cash register, which was simple enough, and was given some basic guidelines as to what was expected of him in terms of helping customers. Basically, answer questions and try to get them what they need. Be helpful, but don’t push: there was no commission. They told him he would learn what he didn’t already know about the products they carried as he went: Gabe hoped they were right.

“So, any questions?” Ben asked when he seemed to have run out of things to show Gabe.

Gabe had about a million, but there was one in particular that had been on his mind. “I really don’t know anything about snowboards. I told Lance that in the interview, and he said it was no big deal, but what am I supposed to do if a customer asks me something?”

Ben shrugged. “Point them in the direction of someone who knows about snowboarding. Or convince them to buy a surfboard instead.” He grinned.

Gabe laughed. “Sure.”

The rest of the afternoon was a piece of cake. He worked on the register for part of the day, then helped Mike restock some wetsuits. Gabe got along with Mike and Ben easily. He also met Hanna and Eric, who were also very chill. He was starting to get a very good feeling about this job.

Before leaving, Ben had him sit in the employee room and fill out forms. When he had almost finished his W-4, someone else walked into the room. Gabe glanced up to see who it was and nearly dropped his pen.

She was short: no taller than 5’2”. She wore sandals, tight dark jeans, and a white tank top. She had bright red hair tied back in a ponytail, and freckles sprinkled over her skin. A tattoo of a mermaid took up most of her upper left arm. Her eyes were wide and blue. When she smiled at Gabe, they seemed to not just sparkle, but burst with light. “Hey,” she said brightly, “who are you?”

“I—I’m Gabe. I just started working here. Hi.” Smooth, Gabe, he told himself, real smooth.

“Oh, thank God. We’ve been needing new people for a long time. Well, I’m glad to meet you, Gabe. I’m Sara.”

Gabe smiled. “Hi Sara.”

“So, what’s your dep?”

He blinked at her. “My what?”

She rolled her eyes. “Your dep. You know, as in your department? Are you more swell, snow, or sidewalk?”

“O-oh, right, got it,” he nearly stuttered. What was wrong with him? Since when had he not been able to talk to a girl? “Uh, swell, I guess. A little sidewalk too, but I mostly surf.”

She groaned. “Oh, great, another stoner surfer. Just what this place needs.”

“Dude, I am not a stoner.” Gabe was adamant about this: he firmly believed that you had to get stoned every day to be called a stoner, and he did not get stoned every day. Except, of course, for during spring break, but that didn’t count.

Sara, on the other hand, did not seem to agree. She rolled her eyes, and said, “Whatever, dude, we’ll see about that.” She reached her arms up and pulled the elastic out of her hair. She immediately commenced to retie the curly mop on her head back into a ponytail. Gabe tried to keep his eyes averted as he did so, willing himself not to look at how the raising of her arms caused her shirt to lift, revealing a strip of skin that was smooth except for the pierced navel. When she had finished with her ministrations, her hair looked identical to how it had before. Gabe would never understand the rituals women went through with their hair.

“So,” she said, “surf and skate, huh? Do you snowboard?”

Gabe shook his head. “Fuck, no. Me and snow—we don’t mix. I try to keep as far away from that white shit as I possibly can.”

“Spoken by a typical southern California stoner surfer.”

“As if stoner snowboarders were any better.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What would you know about it, Mr. Afraid of the Snow?”

“Hey, I never said I was afraid. I just don’t see the point in bundling up, going out into the fucking freezing cold, strapping a board to my feet, and throwing myself down a mountainside. Sorry, not my cup of tea.”

“Oh really. And how is that any better than going out into the middle of the ocean, where there are sharks, with a board, jumping on it, and trying to ride along the biggest waves you can find, waves that are known to drown people?”

“Well, it isn’t exactly the middle of the ocean. It’s more like the beginning of the ocean. The tip of the iceberg, really.”

She smirked at him, and suddenly, Gabe couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He also could not stop looking at her. “Well, stoner, I guess I’ll see you around,” she said.

“Y-yeah. See you … snow … person.”

Gabe could still hear her laughing as she left the room and shut the door behind her.

As Gabe returned to his form, he tried to ignore the fluttering in his stomach, and the fast beating of his heart. He did not want to be feeling this way. He understood that this was the worst time in his life to like a girl, but, as he knew very well, he had never been good at fighting the feeling when he was attracted to a member of the opposite sex.

That night, at dinner, Shaun introduced a welcome distraction to Gabe’s spinning thoughts when he announced to everyone else at the table—everyone else being Zach, Cody, and himself—that he would be going on a book tour for the entire month of April. The announcement was delivered with a tone of excitement, and he described precisely why this was such a great thing for himself, and for their family. Gabe understood: Shaun was going from the guy that wrote that one book to a real author, someone who wrote books, plural. There was a hint of worry in Shaun’s eyes, though, as he glanced at Zach every few seconds, clearly trying to read his partner. Gabe could understand Shaun’s concern as well: leaving your significant other for a whole month was not a small deal, especially when there was a kid involved. From what Gabe could tell, Zach seemed to be taking the news well. He may not have been jumping up and down at the prospect of Shaun being gone for so long, but he had a big grin plastered across his face, and he kept telling Shaun how proud of him he was.  All Cody wanted to know was what it would be like to sleep in a hotel every night for a whole month, and how many sleeps was a month anyways?

Life quickly got back to normal as the week continued. At least, life got back to normal for Zach, Shaun, and Cody, and Gabe started to learn what his new normal was. He was scheduled at the shop on Tuesdays through Saturdays. It was a new feeling for him, getting up every morning to go to work. He kind of liked the new sense of purpose he felt each day, knowing that he had somewhere to be, that people were depending on him. Work was pretty easy to feel good about, though, since it didn’t really feel like work at all. His days were spent talking to people: talking to customers, and talking to his coworkers, whom he had quickly befriended. He had not yet met a single person at Swell/Snow/Sidewalk he didn’t like. The only person he was apprehensive about being scheduled with was Sara, and that had nothing to do with not enjoying being around her. The problem was that he enjoyed being around Sara too much.

On Saturday evening, Gabe got home to find a teenage girl playing with Cody in the living room. After locating Zach and Shaun in the kitchen, the guys quickly informed him that the girl in the living room was Ashley, and that she would be babysitting Cody for the night, because the three of them were going out and they would not take no for an answer. Gabe didn’t bother resisting: he could see his brother and his best friend were set on this. Besides, a night out was sounding pretty good right then.

The plan was to start at a bar where they were going to meet some of Zach’s friends from school. Shaun drove, and insisted that he would be the designated driver for the evening. On the ride over, Zach was moving around in the passenger seat almost as much as Cody moved around in his seat at the dinner table each night. He kept turning back to Gabe, a dopey grin on his face, as he tried to brief his friend on who they would be meeting up with that night, and why they were so amazing. He tapped his hand on his knee, he turned up the music in the car, he switched the song, he turned on the radio, and then switched it back to his iPod. Zach seemed … excited. This was not a normal thing for Zach. In the seventeen years that they had known each other, Gabe could probably count on his hands the number of times he had seen Zach truly excited. Sure, he would express enthusiasm for plans they made, music they listened to, and girls they liked (though that, Gabe now realized, may not have been the most genuine enthusiasm on Zach’s part), but it was never the true giddiness he saw those rare times when he knew Zach was really looking forward to something. Now, Gabe realized, Zach was excited about this. Zach was excited for him to meet his new Cal Arts friends. This, in turn, made Gabe nervous. Gabe was getting so used to loss of confidence; it was starting to feel like a normal thing for him. He wished it didn’t. He wished Zach’s friends could meet the old Gabe, the one who may have gotten into trouble, but who was always the life of the party.

They arrived at the bar, a funky place with dim lighting, abstract art on the walls, and a guy rocking a ukulele on a small stage at one end of the room. Zach quickly spotted his friends, seated around a corner booth. Gabe was introduced to Spencer, in black and green plaid flannel, with well-coiffed hair and thick-rimmed glasses, then Allie, who sat up straight, and whose long brown hair flowed like water down all over her shoulders, and Marcus, broad-shouldered, bearded, tattooed, and holding hands with Christian, dressed in a vest and white t-shirt, with multiple bracelets and necklaces, and tattoos covering both his forearms, and finally Marie, with her asymmetrical haircut, her heavy eyeliner, and her purple V-neck t-shirt that Gabe was pretty sure was meant for a guy.

“Uh oh,” Christian said, seeing Shaun, “the old man is here. Quick, everyone, hide the drugs.”

“No, Christian,” Marie said with a thick accent that Gabe couldn’t quite place, “Shaun is very familiar with drugs. He must take them every day. The one he takes is … what is it called again? Oh yes, Viagra, right, Zach?” Something in the way she said “Christian” and “Viagra” made him think French, but he wasn’t sure.

“Now, now,” Shaun said, smiling, “settle down, kids. You don’t want my blood pressure going up, do you?”

“If you’re worried about your blood pressure, you might want to lay off the Viagra, grandpa.” Christian shook his finger at Shaun as he spoke.

“OK, guys, that’s enough,” Zach said, though he was grinning. In fact, he was practically beaming. “You don’t want my friend to think you’re all assholes, do you?”

“But, Zach, we are assholes,” Spencer said earnestly, stirring his drink with his straw.

Without further ado, Gabe, Shaun, and Zach joined the gang at the booth, and a waitress arrived, looking harried and irritable when she saw that she had three more people to attend to in her section. Her attitude change, though, when she noticed who she had taken the last drink order from. “Hey, I know you. You’re … I saw you read at Zen Cup last summer. You wrote Pacific Bluff.”

Shaun, Gabe was rather impressed to see, was completely composed and modest at being recognized. He widened his eyes and half-smiled, looking surprised. “Yes, I did, actually. You came to my reading?”

“Yeah, and it was rad, man. Your book was great. It was like, exciting, and torrid, and stuff, but it was also, like … there was also this whole other level of stuff going on, like, beneath the surface. Like, there was just this irony to it all, right?”

Shaun smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Wow, well, I really liked your book, uh, it’s Shaun, right? Shaun Andrews?”

“Yes. And you are?”

The waitress blushed and looked coyly down at the order pad she was holding in her hand. “Eliza,” she said. “I’m .. Eliza.”

Shaun held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Eliza.”

Eliza took it. “You too.”

As soon as she left, everyone was all over Shaun. Christian started: “Poor Shaun, can’t go out anywhere without having to deal with his adoring fans.”

“Honey, don’t you understand? A rare creature has graced our table. A creature who has actually read Shaun’s book, that is,” Marcus said, throwing a wink Shaun’s way. Looking at him, Gabe realized that Marcus, unlike everyone else at the table, didn’t look much younger than Shaun. It was clearly the thing, though, to tease Shaun. Gabe could dig it: he’d been doing it for years, and it was easy, because Shaun brushed it off with the grace of a ballerina. Gabe almost snickered as the thought of Shaun as a ballerina crossed his mind. Yes, Shaun could be fun to tease.

“Where is my camera?” Marie demanded to know, banging her fist on the table. “I must photograph this strange beast.”

“Come on guys,” Allie said, still laughing. “I think that’s enough. We all know that lots of people have read Shaun’s book. We’ll all be lucky if we ever get as many fans as he has.”

There was a moment of silence before Spencer said, “God, Allie, why do you always have to be such a buzz kill?”

“I do not paint in order to get fans,” Marie stated. “I paint because I could not live if I did not.”

Allie rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s wonderful, but personally, I think the whole starving artist thing is a touch over-rated.”

With that, the debate began for why one does art, whether gaining popularity means selling out, and if it’s better to remain obscure and misunderstood by the rest of the world. Gabe did not have much to contribute, but he enjoyed watching the exchange. Marie was opinionated, outspoken, and never allowed the fact that English was not her first language to get in the way of her saying her piece. Her accent was French, Gabe learned, but not from France. She was French Canadian, and had travelled all the way from Montreal to attend Cal Arts. Christian liked to tease everyone, and often displayed a rather dark sense of humor that Gabe kind of liked. Marcus stated his opinions in a deep, steady, smooth voice that made it hard to disagree with anything he said. Spencer seemed to enjoy arguing, and started most of his sentences with, “But what if,” and “What about.” Allie was clearly the most conventional of them all, rolling her eyes at anyone’s notions of “true art” and the evils of selling out. Gabe learned that Marie and Christian were in the art program with Zach, Allie was a violinist in the strings performance program at Cal Arts, and Spencer was in the writing program. Marcus did not go to Cal Arts: he was a florist and owned his own shop, and was Christian’s boyfriend. Gabe could not help but thinking that he had never seen a florist who looked quite like Marcus did.

Over the next hour, they saw their waitress often. Eliza had returned with their drinks within minutes of taking their order, and popped back over to their table frequently to see how they were doing, and to tell Shaun about her favorite parts of his book. She blushed a lot, giggled often, and took every opportunity she had to lean across Shaun’s place at the booth, whether it was to take an empty glass, or readjust a coaster, so that he could see right down her low-necked shirt. Gabe knew flirting when he saw it, and so did everyone else at the table.

“This is such a waste,” Spencer said when Eliza had left their table for what felt like the hundredth time that night. “We get a cute waitress, and who does she flirt with? A gay guy, of course. And I haven’t gotten laid in three months.”

“Spence,” Zach said, “she’s read Shaun’s book. She knows that Shaun’s gay.”

“Straight men can write about gay subject-matter. She could still think she has a shot with him.”

Marie smirked. “Straight men do not write about intimacy between two males. I have read Shaun’s book. No one would think a straight man wrote that.”

“Well,” Spencer said, “I’m a straight male, and I’m going to write the gayest book you’ve ever read, Marie, just to prove you wrong.”

“Wonderful. I look forward to reading it. I also look forward to all the gay men who will flirt with you, and all the straight women who will not bother because they are sure that you are gay.”

“Shaun doesn’t seem to be having that problem right now,” Spencer insisted.

“Well, in case there’s any confusion, let me just clarify things,” Shaun said, placing his hand over Zach’s on the table. Then, he leaned over and whispered something in Zach’s ear. The grin that had already been plastered across Zach’s face widened, but he shook his head.

“No way,” he said. Shaun rolled his eyes, and then whispered something else in Zach’s ear.

Zach sighed and said, “Fine,” but he was still smiling.

A few minutes later, as they saw Eliza approaching their table again, Shaun placed his hand behind Zach’s neck and pulled him in for the most passionate kiss Gabe had ever seen them share. Christian whistled, Marcus laughed, Spencer rolled his eyes, Allie blushed, and Marie said, “Now that is hot.”

“Oh,” Eliza said, standing at their table and staring at the two men, “I’m sorry, I—should I come back?”

Shaun finally unglued his face from Zach’s and looked up at Eliza with a dopey smile. “No, Eliza, your timing is perfect, actually. I think we’re ready for another round. And you can put this one on my tab.”

When the cheering died down, Eliza patiently took everyone’s order, and the gang stayed for one more drink. They moved on to three more bars that night. First, they went to another dark, obscure place where Spencer just had to see a certain poet read. Spencer was riveted to the moody young man’s every deliberate word as he stood on the small stage, reading from a dog-eared Moleskine, while everyone else, in their boredom, had fun poking fun. Then, they went to a much louder, much livelier lounge, where they all (except for Shaun) had martinis. It took a full half hour for Gabe to realize that the place was a gay bar when he saw two men across the room kissing, and then glanced around to see that most of the patrons of the bar were male, and many of them were kissing, holding hands, or were otherwise wrapped up in each other. When Zach leaned over to him and said, “So? What do you think of this place?” Gabe smiled and said, “It’s great. I’m having an awesome time.”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck, yeah. Your friends are the shit.”

Zach laughed, and then leaned back over into Shaun’s embrace on the love seat they were sharing. Gabe realized that he had never seen his friend so happy, so carefree.

The last bar they went to was a crowded club, where they danced off the alcohol they had consumed until last call at two in the morning. The last bar was not the last stop, though: last stop was for burgers and fries at a diner crowded with other bar-hoppers who appeared to have had the same idea of finishing their evening off with some greasy, calorie-packed food as Zach’s gang did.

Shaun, Zach, and Gabe were all quiet for most of the drive home. If questioned, Gabe would have to admit that he dozed off for a minute or two, but the silence of the car also allowed him to think. He had had a great night—there was no doubt about that. He wasn’t lying when he told Zach he liked his friends: they were fun, and all seemed like great people. They were nothing like their friends back in San Pedro and Laguna, though. He also felt that they were nothing like him. Gabe came from the world of southern Californian surfers, laid back, always up for a party, and always down for a chance to kick back and enjoy life. These new friends of Zach’s, though, were not of that world. They were from the world of artists and intellectuals. They liked to party, sure—Gabe had certainly seen that tonight—but they also liked to debate and discuss. They liked to talk about music and art, and also politics, civil rights issues, gender theories, and writers that Gabe had never heard of. Gabe was happy for Zach: happy that he had found a group of friends who he got along with so well, who had things in common with him. He couldn’t help but wonder, though, if these were the people Zach wanted to hang out with now, where did he fit in?