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It definitely wasn’t 5:04, like the Homefill digital clock unblinkingly announced, but Gob couldn’t quite tell just how late it was. It was morning for sure, probably late, as made all too clear by the garish sun screaming through the window. His eyes stung, and he rubbed them, and fell asleep again. When he opened his eyes the second time, the square of sunlight on the floor had moved, but he still couldn’t.
As he woke up, he became aware that he was lying on the guest bed, curled up on himself, still fully dressed, and not quite sure why. He was cradling his phone, which told him it was early afternoon, and freaked out for a moment upon seeing his doppleganger face staring back at him, dead-eyed, before realizing it was his stage mask. Investigating the sweatiness in his crotch, he was surprised to find the other mask down the front of his pants, because he didn’t remember when or why he put it there.
Absently, he started playing with the two masks, making them talk wordlessly to each other, laughing, staring into each other's blind eyes, pressing them together... then he pushed them hurriedly off the side of the bed, embarrassed, even though no one was there to see.
Not having anything to do, or anywhere to go, and lacking both the desire to go back to sleep or to get up, Gob just sighed, lying there in a stupor, without closing his eyes, thinking about nothing. And it was in thinking about nothing that he inevitably ended up thinking about something: How he wished he'd had some rohypnol the first time, then probably none of this would be a problem right now, and how he also wished he had had some last night, instead of having forced it on Michael. But it didn't matter now, he supposed: Michael got the bliss of ignorance; he got to remember.
And it wasn’t just the previous night’s blunder that he recalled, but things he hadn’t really thought about for years - hadn’t want to think about - didn’t really ever <i>try</i> to think about, but now the thoughts just crept up on their own.
His junior year in high school: James Fishhead's gym locker was right next to his, their PE classes scheduled at the same time, and from the moment Gob had laid eyes on his disarming smile and his tanned-surfer's freshman body and had trouble tearing his gaze away, he knew he had to find a way to get out of Phys Ed. Luckily, his enthusiasm in sports had never quite made up for his lack of ability, and his teacher had made sure to ardently promote that year's alternate-credit talent show for those who were "more artistically inclined." Gob had sniggered along with everyone else at the announcement wondering which losers would be missing next class. But, casting a sideways glance at James, he thanked his lucky stars for the opportunity, signed up immediately, and pulled a 'talent' out of a hat that very night.
Despite his best efforts to avoid being in the locker room at all, halfway through the semester he found himself showering egg yolk out of his hair, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with his two-eggs-turn-into-one trick and wondering if he could get a refund on the chicken that had suffocated in his jacket and was currently being preserved in the home ec freezer.
The showers had thankfully been empty, but as he rounded the corner to his locker, he stopped dead in his tracks. There was James, white towel around his waist just like Gob, reaching into the back of his locker. In the split second that it took him to realize that he had neither the equipment nor admittedly the skill to make himself disappear, but that he could probably just duck back to the showers before he was spotted, James spotted him. Gob blushed from his chest to his forehead, and he dropped his eyes to the ground willing the image of James’s gorgeous, muscular chest out of his brain, and failing. Walking across the cold tiles, Gob kept his eyes open only enough so he wouldn’t run into things, trying only to look at the floor, then only at his lock, then only for his underwear - at which point his unsteady fingers lost the grip on his towel. It fell to the floor exposing his pale skin and his implacable erection. The nightmarish dream he'd dreaded since the moment he'd had to scheme a way to get out of gym was coming true. He braced for the pain that would surely come from having his head slammed into the locker as James grabbed his arm.
But it never came. Instead, he was pulled up against him into an inexpert kiss, being groped from behind. The moment after he realized the lucky turn of events, he also became aware of the bulge equalling his own that he felt behind James's towel. And, still being kissed by him hard, James opened his towel and draped it around Gob, pulling him closer, moist skin touching in all sorts of places, and Gob’s eyes were still closed from the kiss and he felt like his knees were going to give way. And it seemed kind of fortunate, because James was pushing him down, and just as soon as Gob felt the floor tiles cutting into his knees he forgot it as the warm, wet tip of James's cock pressed against his lips. A moment's disappointment darkened his mind: he had wanted to kiss his way down James's stomach, linger at his navel, licking and exploring it with his tongue, taken this first time slowly, after finally having found someone else like him, and just do all of those things he had dreamed of doing when he lay in bed just before going to sleep... but he didn't have the time before he had to open his mouth, and then wondered if it had been a good decision as he half-coughed, half-gagged, but caught his breath and savoured the warm, hard softness filling his mouth.
It was a minute before he noticed that he was touching himself, or that James was stroking his hair to the same tempo that he was sucking him off, and, just to try it, he slowed down and nearly gave himself an orgasm, but stopped short because he didn't want this to end.
Gaining confidence, he gently worked a finger between James's butt cheeks and pressed against him evoking an excited "Ungh!" and a thrust forward, which forced Gob to suck a deep breath through his nose.
Through the noise and the frenzy, neither of them heard Coach Sportler approach.
“Fishhead! Bluth!" he bellowed, "What the shit do you two think you're doing?!”
Gob banged his head on his locker door as he tried to stand but never got up.
“Sick pervert,” James yelled at him looking hurt as he fumbled for his towel, pushing Gob so hard he fell over backwards, and threw his clothes in his face.
“Get dressed and get out of here!" the teacher yelled at him. "If I EVER see...”
The pulse throbbing in his head dulled everything, but he still heard James simpering his innocence to his football coach as Gob scrambled off to change, trembling and missing a sock, in a locked bathroom stall before chemistry class.
At home, just before dinner, he was reading algebra problems about finding length and width in a failed attempt to keep his thoughts anywhere else, trying to listen to Frankie say 'Relax' from the crumpled t-shirt on the floor. Ever since the phone had rung, he couldn't drown out the argument between his parents with his Walkman, and he tossed the headphones aside. Even though he couldn't make out what his father was saying, he couldn't miss the shrill outbursts from his mother:
"Don't need this sort of scandal! - Ruin his life; ruin our life! - You go talk some sense into him!"
A second later, he heard his father on the other side of his bedroom door, but it was a few moments before he opened it without knocking to announce that the school had called. Gob felt his heart speed up and try to jump out of his chest somewhere around his throat, but his father, unable to find any more words, looked awkward, then sighed.
"Why can't you be more like your brother?"
It was all he said, voice quiet but laced with disappointment, before he closed the door.
Gob shrunk at his father’s words and wished he had just been yelled at. He thought about what he had said, and figured he was probably right, though he quickly ruled out Buster as the brother he was supposed to be more like: Gob's parents seemed unconcerned with how quiet or how loud he was, and he had to admit he was pretty loud most of the time. Lindsay wasn't a boy, even if she was as old as Michael and still in a training bra, so he assumed it must have been Michael his father was talking about. Michael, who was among the top students in his class, was first in Junior Achievement, class president, and captain of the Speech and Debate Club. He was also the only one of the Bluth children who had had a steady girlfriend for the last three years. Gob decided there and then that he would outdo his brother: he would have more girlfriends than all of the Bluth children put together, ever.
So, despite James Fishhead calling him a faggot while slamming him into a locker that one time before French class, and his subsequently deteriorating marks in the subject, Gob found he could grope and sleep his way through half the female population of the school with his badly accented Voulez-vouz couchez avec moi ce soir? and an increasing repertoire of magic tricks (which he started referring to as illusions when Fishhead pointed out that tricks are something whores do for money, right after copping a feel in an empty hallway, pushing him against a row of lockers, and tossing a handful of quarters at him).
He snapped back to the present as the first glittery notes of You Can Do Magic sounded on his phone and was so happy that he started singing along and almost missed the call.
"Hey," he said, his smile in his voice.
"Hey," Tony replied flatly.
"I didn't think you we're going to call," Gob gushed.
"I didn't think I was, either."
Gob's heart dropped into his stomach.
"I - you - what?" he stammered. "What's wrong? Was it something I did?"
"Oh no, everything's fine,” Tony retorted, “if it's fine that you jump right out of our bed and into the arms of your boyfriend."
"George Michael? No, we're not seeing each other anymore! We only - just that one time - I mean - no! He's my nephew!” Gob stammered by way of what to him sounded like an explanation.
"George Michael is your nephew? Are you crazy? He's got to be, like, at least three times as old as you. … But that's not what I'm talking about: I mean 'Michael' - last night? He even had the audacity to let himself in!"
"Michael?” Gob said, relieved, "no, Michael's not my boyfriend - he's my brother."
"You're sleeping with your brother?!"
"What? No! At least,” he said, brow furrowed, trying to think back, but remembering that he would probably make himself forget something like that, “I don't think so..."
There was silence on the other end of the line, and Gob checked to see that the call hadn’t been disconnected.
“Tony?” he pleaded, and started to panic a bit when he still got no answer.
“I mean,” Tony continued finally, and Gob started to breathe again, “I even broke up with my girlfriend because of you, and then I have to deal with this shit?”
Gob couldn’t put the pieces together.
“Huh?”
“My... I didn't? Girlfriend... Didn't mention? Huh. Well, she is kind of famous, so I couldn't really talk about it. Anyway, it doesn't matter. She's gone.”
Even though he couldn’t quite figure the whole thing out, the overall sentiment made Gob ridiculously happy, so much so that he became bold enough, or stupid enough to ask:
"Can I see you again?"
And couldn't help but squirm with glee when Tony answered:
"Yes."
And all was right with the world.