A New Kind of Denial

“Hey, would you mind to go find that husband of mine and tell him Mae’s here? He’d probably like to know, seeing as how we haven’t seen for so long.” Jason asked me, most likely trying to change the subject for his cousin’s sake. When I first saw her, I couldn’t help but stop dead in my tracks. She looked so familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I knew her from. I figured I’d ask her about it later; from the looks of her luggage, it seemed that she’d be staying for a while.

“Yeah, sure. I think he’s messing around in your guys’ closet. I could hear him banging against the back of mine earlier, because they butt up to each other,”

“Thanks hon,” he smiled.

“No problem Jason,” I nodded, turning and walking back down the hallway. I went straight to their bedroom and looked in their closet for Ianto. He must have been looking for something and not known I was behind him, because before I could say anything to him, I got nailed in the shin with a stray, flying boot. “Ah, God damn you Ianto!” I cried, falling to the floor out of pain. He literally knocked my leg out from underneath of me. “Who’s boot is that? It’s enormous!”

“Oh, hi Gavin,” he greeted, turning around inside the closet to see what I was fussing about. He gave me a weird look as I rubbed my shin. “Why in God’s name are you on the floor?”

“You knocked me over,” I said bluntly.

“How’d I do that, then?”

“You threw this at my shin,” I grumbled, picking up the humongous leather boot to show him. I’ve never seen either of them wear it and I honestly wouldn’t ever want to see either of them wear it. It was a knee length, black, leather, lace up, studded boot that weighed as much as your basic high school text book, only a lot more menacing. “Who ever even wore this thing? It’s quite scary.”

He smirked and laughed lightly. “Reach inside of it; there should be a picture in there somewhere.”

Hesitantly, I reached my hand all the way into it and felt a piece of glossy paper and pulled it out to look at it. “Oh, no way,” I chuckled.

“Seriously,” he laughed back, surely picturing this from memory.

“He actually wore these on stage?”

“Multiple times actually. They were his favorite pair of performance shoes. He used to say they gave him a bit of spunk when he wore them,” he said, popping the word ‘spunk’ as he said it.

“Oh they’re spunky alright,”

The picture was of a Karma concert, but it was a close up of Jason playing his bass with a bit of Ash and his drum set in the background. It was a great picture overall, but it was comical as well because of how it depicted their goofy and quite homosexual personalities when the band was together; especially Jason. He was standing legs spread, wearing cut off blue jean shorts, and orange mesh tank top and those damned boots. His bass guitar was hanging so low from the strap that it was covering most of his shorts, not that there was a lot of fabric there anyways. His hair was slightly sweaty as it flopped into his face, and by the look on his face, it seemed that he was quite enjoying himself.

“I never understood why he ever liked them in the first place or why he wanted to keep them after Karma spilt up. I guess it was just for memories, because he’s never worn them since, that I’ve ever seen,”

“Thank God,” I sighed, laughing.

“I know,” he chuckled before steering himself and I back on topic. “So what did you need anyways?”

“Well Jason told me to come get you. His cousin Mae is here to visit and he said you’d -”

“Maebell’s here?” he asked excitedly, popping himself up onto his feet from his hands extended behind him.

I laughed at that. “Yeah, I guess so. Why’s she so special? Not to be rude or anything,” I added quickly, trying not to sound insensitive.

He laughed at me too. “It’s okay, Gavin, I know what you’re trying to ask. And it’s really just that we don’t get to see her very often. She’s kind of like a nomad, I guess,” he chuckled, thinking about it. “She never really settles down and when she stops by, you want to spend as much time with her that you can, because the next thing you know, she’s off again.”

“Wow, what a way to live,”

“She’s lived like that for nearly twenty years. Probably more around eighteen, actually,”

“It’s pretty cool if you think about it,”

“Well, let’s go see her before she decided to up and leave again,” he laughed, obviously joking. I decided to go with him and meet her properly instead of being antisocial. Plus, I’d probably never see this woman again in my life, so why not be around her as much as I can in case she turns out to be awesome or something. We walked down the hall and were about to enter the open area between the dining and living rooms when I heard something that made me stop dead in my tracks and pull Ianto back next to me. “What is it? Why’d you stop walking?”

“I heard her say something about Reese,” I whispered.

“They use to date,” he whispered back.

“But why would she be talking about him?”

“I don’t know Gavin. Maybe they’re talking about the past. It was right around when she and Reese broke up that she started moving around a lot. They could be talking about that,”

“I don’t think so,”

“Well come on then; we can find out when we go in there,”

“No, it sounds like something she’d stop telling once we entered the room,”

“Then don’t worry about it,”

“But I want to - there! Jason just said my name!”

“Maybe they’re talking about you being Reese and Cam’s adoptive son, then,”

“But she wouldn’t want to stop talking when we walked in if that was the case,”

“How do you know she would?”

“Her tone of voice. Plus, she’s been crying for a while now,”

“Oh, then I suppose we shouldn’t go in there,”

“And we should stay here and listen,”

“Ooh, they’re coming! Quick, duck in the bathroom!”

We ran as fast and as quiet as we could as Jason and Mae passes the hall entrance where we were just standing, going into the living room. When we knew they had passed, we ventured back to our previous spying positions.

“…input unless you ask for some,” Jason said, obviously at the end of a thought.

“Thank you so much, Jason,” Mae sighed before taking a deep steadying breath. “Okay, here goes. Reese broke up with me while you guys were on your first European tour; you know that already. Well, you also should know that I wasn’t all the devastated by that. At least, not until a few weeks later. That’s when I found out that I was pregnant and - “

“You were pregnant?” Jason squeaked slightly.

“What happened to no input?”

“Sorry; continue on,”

“Anyways, I know the baby had to be Reese’s, but I didn’t want to drag him back to me anything like that. So that’s when I disappeared for about a year, pretty much starting the rest of my nomadic life. When I had the baby, I’d decided that I wanted give him up adoption. Came back to Jersey to give him away, because I wanted him to have a good family and I knew he’d get one in Jersey. But that’s also why I was kind of depressed when I came back home; because I gave up my baby,”

“So what are you saying about Gavin?”

“I’m saying that I named my boy Gavin Tyler Evans. I’m saying that the Gavin in your house right now is my son. I can see it’s him, even just from his eyes. I know even without knowing for sure what your Gavin’s full name is that he is my son. A mother knows her baby, Jason, and this is mine, I’m telling you,”

All it too was the smallest movement - a simple look to see Ianto’s reaction - for me to fall. I’d fainted. How so very gay, right?