"We don't have to go."
"Nonsense, Peter. You told your parents you were coming to visit; therefore, you're going to visit."
Peter lets out an exasperated sigh but continues to transfer neatly folded piles of clothing into his suitcase. "I meant that you don't have to go. I'll tell them that something came up, and you couldn't make it. They won't care, really, it'll be—"
Leight catches Peter's hand and holds it in his own. "It won't be an issue at all because I've already agreed to go. I wouldn't have agreed if I was mortally opposed to the idea."
"I was pressuring you," Peter shakes his head. "It isn't fair to you. My parents aren't exactly the easiest people to get along with."
"You may have noticed by now that I don't exactly care what most people think of me."
"Most people? Don't you mean all people?"
"I care what you think, Peter."
Peter turns away. He can't bear to meet Leight's eyes, not after that sort of admission, not in the light of what he hasn't yet said. "There's something you should know," he says softly. It's something Leight should know, but it certainly isn't something Peter wants to admit.
Leight waits, silent, almost compassionate.
"My parents," he hesitates, not sure how to say it, "don't exactly know."
"That you're seeing me or that you're gay?" Then Leight tugs Peter toward him, turns him around, and tilts his chin up until they're making that painful eye contact.
"Not gay," Peter protests weakly. "Bi."
Leight quirks an eyebrow. "You're at least a five on the Kinsey scale, but we'll ignore semantics if we must. You didn't answer the question."
It takes a moment to remember the question. Right. "Both."
"And you don't intend to tell them either." The disappointment is hardly concealed.
"It isn't that I don't want to," Peter insists fervently. Leight hasn't retreated physically, but he has restored some of his emotional barricades. His gray-blue eyes are stormy, guarded, distant, and this is exactly why Peter didn't want to have this conversation with him.
"It's just that they wouldn't understand."
"Right," Leight responds dryly, utterly without feeling.
"You don't have to go."
"I already said I would. The real question is if you want me there."
"Of course I do."
"Sure doesn't sound like it, Peter."
"Please, Mal," Peter sighs, pleads, begs. "It isn't like that."
"Who exactly did you tell them I am? Your roommate?"
"My partner!" he cries. Then the fight goes out of him, and he's limp, slack, a doll. Weakly, he tries, "It's open to interpretation."
"Sure, Peter. Sure." And suddenly, Leight's walking away.
A thousand apologies are caught in Peter's throat. He doesn't know what exactly to apologize for or what Leight really wants to hear or how much he can promise without it lying.
He struggles to think of the perfect words to get Leight to stop and turn around instead of walking out the door and heading to god knows where. (Because even if God doesn't, Peter knows that that 'where' would be the Pleasure Factory.)
Leight stops at the door. Without turning around, he asks, "What time do we need to be at the airport?"
"Seven."
"I'll be back by six." He walks out—without a single look back.
Peter wishes he had never started this conversation. He wishes he had never invited Leight to come with him to California. But more than anything, he wishes he had never agreed to visit his parents in the first place.
Peter is (understandably) bitter.
The night of Jennifer Smith's wedding was supposed to be the night everything changed. They came to an understanding. They rearranged the apartment and pushed their beds together.
It was supposed to be symbolic; it was supposed to mean something. So was the invitation to meet his parents. So is the fact that he isn't willing to tell his parents exactly what sort of "partner" Leight is. So is the way he's currently not-sleeping atop Leight's scratchy wool blanket on their makeshift double bed.
Alone.
It's funny, Peter thinks, how even in a relationship he ends up being alone.
The fact that, in a little over 12 hours, he'll be back in his hometown Claymore, California. With his parents. With the memories of years of secrets and exes and self-deception.
He really, truly, honestly doesn't want to go home. And lie. About Leight. About himself. About the two of them. As a couple. If they even are a couple anymore.
Because Leight's at the Pleasure Factory, no doubt, in Saffron's bed while Peter is alone in theirs. And it hurts. Probably as much as Peter's secrecy hurts Leight.
And that's when Peter does a double-take because he really, truly, honestly can't believe that Leight wants to be in this relationship or cares about it half as much as Peter does. And yet, Peter's the one hiding.
He wonders, as he absently hugs Leight's pillow against his chest, if Leight has told his own parents about them. And that's when he realizes he doesn't even know if Leight has parents. Well.
He has certainly never heard Leight talk about his parents (or any other family members, for that matter, with the exception of the aunt who gave him the deerstalker cap a few birthdays back).
Peter may (or may not) have subconsciously decided that Leight is an only child, whose parents died in some tragic car accident when Leight was a child; Peter may (or may not) have subconsciously created an intricate tragic hero backstory for Leight.
Leight's pillow smells like Leight's shampoo, and breathing in that scent really isn't helping Peter not be upset over any of this. The numbers on the alarm clock are flashing in neon, and he is getting a migraine.
It isn't, he thinks, as if Leight wants a lot. All he would have to do is tell his parents. That he sleeps with men. Men such as Malcolm Leight.
And therein beats the heart of the problem. Because he knows his parents would come to terms with him being gay eventually. Well, his father would come to terms with it, and his mother—Peter would like to think she would, too.
(He hasn't told them yet because he's a bit afraid of how long 'eventually' actually is, but eventually, he knows they would come to terms with it. It's just a matter of him screwing his courage. Eventually.)
What his parents wouldn't accept is that the man he's chosen is Malcolm Leight. Because he knows what sort of women his parents have picked out for him in the past: daughters of their country club friends. Sissy McPherson. Brie Langer. Claire Claymore.
Pretty, silly women who were bred to be trophy wives. Only Rachel Chatterley was different, and Peter doesn't want to think about her.
He doesn't want to think about what his parents would say about Leight, but he can't quite stop. Leight isn't good for him. He's weak and meek and lets Leight supplant his own personality. Leight can't love him. He's breathless and hopeless and so utterly lost.
And the worst part, he thinks, stomach full of dread, is that it's all undeniably true.
.
.