The Breaking Point: M/M Mpreg Alpha Male Romance Read online

  Their last call before the big day arrives, Vinny reassures Lance.

  “Baby, you’ll love Frankie too, he’s a fun guy, we’ll make such a fun pack together. As soon as you can get away, me, you, and him, we’re all so damned talented we can call our own shots for the rest of our lives if we play it right.”

  It’s going to be hard to get away for this vast future with a whole kid wandering around somewhere with Vinny’s coloring and Lance’s awkward grace, but Lance doesn’t bring that up, he likes listening to Vinny tell him these stories of fame and fortune. He’s decided on a name for the kid, be it a boy or a girl, but he doesn’t want to tell Vinny until he can introduce them face to face.

  “Tell me more about Frankie,” Lance says, even though he doesn’t really want to hear about Frankie, he just wants to hear Vinny being so happy. He’s such a kid under that exterior, he’s so amazed any time that someone actually likes him, or listens to him, or trusts him, it’s like giving a little boy a fake badge and watching him treat it with gravitas and respect, it’s so sweet and so serious at the same time.

  “He’s got this smile you wouldn’t believe, girls go crazy, and he’s got these blue eyes like a couple of shiny nickels someone’s thrown into a wishing fountain, blue like a bright happy sky.”

  Oh, come on! Lance thinks, but he doesn’t complain about it. It’s making him feel a little sick to know that Vinny’s so happy without him right now, but that feeling isn’t emotional. As Vinny goes on and on in glowing praise of Frankie, Lance feels something clench within him, and he knows: today’s the day or tonight’s the night, it’s starting to happen. It might take hours, there’s no big rush, and Lance opens his mouth to say something about it, but he’d have to interrupt Vinny to do it, he’s so busy talking a mile a minute about someone else, and so Lance keeps his secret to himself for a while. He rides out the discomfort by squeezing hard on the armrest, and lets Vinny say, “I’ve got to go,” first. He’s being beckoned away for a night on the town. Lance is staring down the barrel of a night on his back, or on his knees, and not in the fun way.

  “I’ll let you go,” Lance grits out, and then hangs up the phone and turns it all the way off, he needs to block that out, he’s got tension to deal with, and a sudden cold sweat on his skin. “Momma!”

  She pops into the trailer fast, and Dad comes following after, closing the door, and cleaning up the area and inflating the plastic kiddie pool they’re going to home-birth in if it all goes well. They’re like a military team, here to do a job and do it well, they work in synchronicity.

  “Ready for this?” Mom asks.

  “Like that matters, it’s happening anyway,” Lance says. His dad snorts, and that puts everyone in an oddly festive mood.

  “Is Vinny excited? That was him on the phone, wasn’t it?” Mom asks.

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Lance says, cutting his eyes away from his parents. They both hear that something’s up, something in his voice, the way he deflected the question, but now is not the time to question him about it, there’s enough stressing him out. The deal with Vinny…Lance just wants to deal with that later. Once there’s a kid, everything’s going to change, so he’s pretty anxious to get it over with already and meet this new kind of life.

  11. As Plain as the Nose on Your Face

  Vinny doesn’t have his eye on the calendar at all, he’s not even really aware of the assumed due date that the Hershkowitzes have done the math on. He’s been busy down in Florida, with a million things, the first one being his first trip to such a warm place, to a real beach next to the vast ocean of the Atlantic, to a place that looks fake enough when he first arrives that he’d believe the whole city was a movie set if someone told him with enough authority. The sun’s too bright, the horizon too far, it can’t be real, can it?

  The sun feels better down in Florida, and the people you can tell, they just have different problems than northerners, better problems if you ask Vinny. They’ve got too much sun, or too much water, life’s too interesting and the people too wild, that all sounds way better than having too little of everything, which is Steubenville in a nutshell, and even Chicago, New York—those cities are old and cramped and grimy, and there’s nothing down here in Miami that a good hurricane couldn’t wash away, that’s special.

  Vinny’s got a full day to himself before he needs to be on set, and just like when he arrived to Chicago, he feels like he’s really escaping something, and he yearns to feel free. Though the air is chilly, the sun is not, and Vinny dresses down to just one shirt, half-sleeves, and takes a walk out to the beach.

  He’s like a kid, literally seeing stuff for the first time. A pelican, right up close; a jellyfish like snot upon the sand; kids digging around for sand bugs and tiny shells with their parents praise and encouragement (it’s not the same with digging in dirt as it seems to be with sand, you got yelled at for digging it dirt). He eats something from a Cuban food cart, he gets a big silly drink with an umbrella sticking out of it, and then he keeps the buzz going steadily as he wanders around feeling the gentle breeze, smelling the salt of the ocean, like he always dreamed he would when he was little. He doesn’t think about Lance at all until the next day.

  Because the next day he’s on set, and what was a private moment of victory having earned himself to paradise the day before is now the victory of the craft, and that always requires an audience. He walks in, gets told how to look going forward (“Don’t cut your hair, don’t bruise that face any more than you already have, though we can use the nose at least for this roll, you’re supposed to be a bit of a thug.”). He’s measured and then someone goes shopping for his character. He’s make-upped in streaks to see which colors work on his skin, he’s shown the areas they’ve blocked out for scenes on a map (they’re filming in only about five locations, indie movie’s keeping it small, less about the scenery and more about the characters, so the pressure to perform well is on, no one’s coming to gloss over anything with CGI or pyrotechnics). There’s less than twenty-five people working with him on this, and a quarter of that number is the full cast. Women playing their mothers, another guy playing their nemesis or whatever, a couple of kids for siblings, non-speaking parts the director will fill in with his family members, uncles as cashiers and whatnot, and other than that it’s mostly just Vinny and Frankie.

  The first introduction is casual, but it doesn’t feel that way. The director, who is also the script writer, is showing him around the set and talking through what he sees in his mind and how he might get close to it using Vinny, and suddenly he stops and says, “Oh, hey Frankie, come meet your co-star, everyone meet their co-star.”

  Frankie Artanis is a short little guy, face as smooth as a baby girl’s, with bright blue eyes and a white-picket smile. He bounces over as cheery as you could stand from the golf cart he was riding on with the camera guy (the cameras are mostly mounted on the cart, those are for the action shots). He’s wearing a light trench coat when he’s really too short to look right in one, and Vince can’t tell if it’s a costume or not, but it doesn’t exactly look bad on him. He just looks cute, like a boy in his father’s coat, and happy to be playing dress-up like a grown-up. They shake hands a few times (Frankie won’t let go), and then Vinny’s pulled in for a hug.

  “We gotta be a little more friendly than that, don’t you think? We’ll be all up in each other’s business for the next few weeks.”

  The director looks on in approval at this interaction, either happy that they’re one big happy family already, or appreciating how his leading men look in real life together, and already mathing out his lighting and scene directions. He doesn’t say; he just stands with his back to the gaudiest sunset Vinny has ever seen in his life and nods.

  That’s the start of the greatest bro-mance of Vinny’s life.

  Because Lance is one of a kind, that’s the thing. No one’s replacing him or anything, but Lance is so unexpected and so unusual that just…Vinny never dreamed of him before they met. That’
s sweet, that’s a nice thing to tell someone, Vinny knows it. In fact, he knows exactly how he’ll sing it to Lance too, when they meet again, he’s trying his hand at song-writing for him and their unexpected critter. They’re uncomplicated songs, he wants them to be popular someday, and not just for the sake of his career, but because wouldn’t it be nice for the kid to grow up hearing his own song on the radio? What a lucky kid that’ll be, he and Lance will make sure of it.

  But that’s still a while off, the baby’s still cooking, and Lance…he controls a room when he’s in it, but when he’s gone he’s hard to remember, like a really sweet dream you had while asleep that fades after you wake up. Those are his lyrics, You’re a dream that walks into the day, you make a hard man want to play, and when you’re here you’re it my dear, and I’m lost when you’re away. Right now, Lance is away.

  So it’s good to have a friend in Frankie, since Vinny’s so alone out here. It’s not bad to take comfort in your buddies, and though Vinny wonders if he isn’t feeling too happy while Lance might be feeling like crap, that concern fades because there’s nothing he can do for Lance right now except be good at his job—and to be good at doing this movie, he has to throw himself into the magic of pretend. And so that’s what he does.

  Movie-making is weird. They actually film the last scene first, just because it’s the one that needs them both with longer hair, like time has passed, then at the end of day one after the director checks the footage for good use and backs it up about four thousand places, they are sent for haircuts. This is when he and Frankie get their first moment of pow-wow, after a scene where all Vinny had to do was look sad and grim (so easy for him), and stare off at the sunset and let Frankie hug him and sob. It’s not an easy movie but it’s not exactly a sad ending either—the friends live through a lot of bad times, but they live and get reunited at the end. That’s the part they just filmed. “Vinny and Frankie say hello with goodbye,” that’s the way Frankie puts it when the director calls cut and they’ve got to go get haircuts. They’ve got more cut scenes to film together afterwards, non-speaking, just a couple of outfit changes and lighting tricks, stuff to edit into the whole later on. Movie-making looks like a huge pain in the ass, it’s almost good to be an actor, though that’s not the easiest gig either (the self-consciousness is off the charts). Vinny says as much to Frankie, who’s been more of an actor than anything else so far, though he’s got good pipes and got this role for the singing aspect. Troubled singing thugs, is what they’re playing, the tragic lives of boys with potential unrealized. Vinny doesn’t like to think about that too much.

  “Hey, what’s your favorite song? Or your favorite singer? Who do you want to sound like and is that guy who you like to listen to or who you want to be? Same person or totally different things?” Frankie talks fast as the hair stylist runs her fingernails through Vinny’s hair and across his scalp, making his whole body tingle.

  “I love Sinatra’s voice, but his songs are so…I mean I like them, but they’ll never make anyone famous again. They were pure generic claptrap, and that’s why they showcased his voice so well, and that’s what I’m looking for, honestly—not a song that makes itself famous, but a song that makes me famous.”

  “Oh HO, big dreamer, huh, guy?”

  “Might as well be, dreaming’s free,” Vinny says. That makes Frankie laugh, and he’s got a clear, pure laugh, the kind that has never once escaped from Vinny.

  It turns out Frankie likes that about Vinny, that he’s stoic and tough the way Frankie can only pretend to be. Frankie’s acting better because he’s actually acting, he’s thought about it, and studied how to move and indicate and express, and Vinny’s just being himself and following orders. The director likes them both, because they’re both giving him what he wants, but for totally different reasons, from different places. They learn that about each other as the weeks go on.

  They’re out drinking after a long day and Frankie says, “Hold on, my phone’s ringing and it’s my mamma, got to take this,” and he does, and talks to her for real, not just dismissing her and hanging up. Vinny might not ever talk to his own mother again, unless somebody needs money and the other one has some.

  They’re out on the beach on the weekend enjoying the sun and horsing around in the water, and Frankie starts talking to guys like the kind they portray, guys who are clearly only talking to them hoping they know where there’s a party, something or someone to take advantage of. Frankie thinks it’s cool that these guys are the real deal, but Vinny won’t talk to them. If he wanted to talk to thugs, he’d still be one. He’d have broken his nose a few more times and started roughing up people late in paying their debts, but he didn’t, he wanted better. Frankie’s always had his loving mamma, so he can’t help but think a tough life has a sort of glamour and confidence that he can only fake. That’s why he likes Vinny so much, but it’s not why Vinny likes him.

  Frankie’s a debonair little peach, is what he is, kind of a nerd for every gangster movie and true crime instance of mobsters and organized crime. When he finds out that Vinny used to do some underbelly work, fighting and gambling and whatnot, he’s over the moon with admiration, sweet dimples in his cheeks with such a wide smile.

  “Really? Is that what happened to your nose?”

  Frankie reaches to tweak Vinny’s nose. They’re sitting at a really tacky bar, a place full of tourists, usually discussing the differences between the out-of-towners and the locals, so they know which behaviors to mimic for the movie. Tonight though, they’re a few drinks in and just babbling about nothing, about everything. Most of what runs through Frankie’s mind he says, Vinny still tries to play his cards close to the vest, but some people…Lance can be like this too, and Frankie: some people really magnetize a fella. He tells the truth.

  “Yeah, I took a bad shot to the face, and the nose broke. Lance helped me deal with it, but he knew it hadn’t set right, I don’t know how. I’ll have to get it fixed if I want it to be right again.”

  “I’ll ask my mother who she knows, a lot of her friends get nose jobs, I’m sure it’s all the same nose to the doctors. Lance, he’s that guy you were on TV with, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, we’re partners,” Vinny says, using the one word that means both things he could say about Lance and him. “We started working together in Chicago, we got hired together, and in fact this is our first gig apart.”

  “So where’s he, on vacation? Did he get another job too, are you guys ever going to get back together?”

  “We’re always together,” Vinny says, though it bums him out to say that because it’s not exactly as true as he wishes it was. They’re apart now, separate, and with what’s happened between them, who knows if it’ll be like it was before? For better or worse, it just won’t be the same.

  “So you’re a real tough guy,” Frankie says. “I know it’s stupid to be jealous of a hard life, but a hard life makes such a man out of you, and you’re living proof of that.” He frogs Vinny on the arm when he says this, but since he wasn’t raised tough like he says, it’s not that hard a hit.

  “You can always go bad if you want to, that’s what’s nice about your gig. Me? I was born low and will never really know what it’s like to feel…” Vinny knows he’s getting maudlin with booze, but fuck it; he can’t talk to Lance like this, good or bad or ever, because he doesn’t want Lance to know any more than he already does about what’s weak in him, what he wants, and how badly he wants it. Lance knows too much for comfort already, but Vinny still has to talk about it sometimes. “You’ve got the privilege of having known a nice life, and you can choose a tough one if you want to, or if you make bad choices, but it doesn’t go the other way. For me, I’ll always be what I am, feel how I do.” There’s a Steubenville of the soul in Vinny; he doesn’t like it, but it is what it is.

  Vinny sighs and looks around this tacky bar. There’s fake fish on the wall. Even in the place where one could catch fish and display their carcasses as trophies, everything’s
fake. There are replicas of old ship wheels and pictures of famous people who have been to Florida, but never to here exactly. As fake as the movies, and this is real life! How unfortunate.

  “Hey, how about we do something delinquent tonight?” Frankie asks. “Teach me how to sink, why don’t ya?”

  Vinny’s feeling so sick of this fake bar that he agrees. Like he can’t find trouble on command? Of course he can, it’s why he’s doing well in his movie role.

  Vinny and Frankie start walking until Vinny can find something worth doing wrong, but he doesn’t want to do anything too awful. He wants to give Frankie a good story, but he doesn’t want to do anything that could get either of them into real trouble—Frankie’s mamma would probably help him fix it, but Vinny’s got to fend for himself always.

  They find a row of shops, some easier to break into than others, and Vinny knows how to do that, he knows a weak door when he sees one, a forcible lock. He circles a couple of buildings to see if anything’s maybe left open so he doesn’t have to legally, actually break Frankie in anywhere, and eventually he finds a place, a bowling alley that may well be closed, abandoned, though it looks legit enough to impress Frankie, break his law-breaking cherry so to speak.

  Vinny walks in the back door and lets Frankie in after fetching him, pretending he jimmied the lock. He made sure the place has no real security before letting Frankie run around it like a kid in a candy store. A place that makes no money needs no real security, so they’re good. Frankie sets some pins up by hand and makes Vinny bowl a ball towards them (strike, easy), and then he starts trying on balls—these finger holes are too big, these too small, like Goldilocks. Finally he finds his favorite and Vinny says it’s his, they’ll take it. Frankie insists Vinny picks one too. Vinny doesn’t want one at all, but he pretends to discern, picks the one he would have picked if he had a gun to his head and they both walk out with the balls. Frankie locks the back door behind him, though, and Vinny smirks but hides it. Someone’s a good boy to the core. Vinny’s not.