Born at the Right Time (Josh)

[Dr. Sean Neville]

((OOC: This takes place the weekend of Sean's birthday 2014.))


Unlike his partner, Sean had long since stopped asking for anything involving his birthday. He had never enjoyed being the center of attention to the same degree that Josh did, and, somewhere along the line (coinciding with his fiftieth birthday), it had ceased to be fun. However, his partner enjoyed marking the occasion, and the telepath enjoyed spending time with the younger man, which resulted in coordination.

“Let’s take a trip,” the attorney had proposed. It could work for Sean’s birthday weekend, as well as an early celebration of their new anniversary the next month.

The proposal had resulted in a discussion, before they had settled on Rhode Island. Sean had selected the hotel, although Josh had insisted on making the reservations.

The drive to Misquamicut Beach had been pleasant enough, primarily because they had left early enough to beat traffic. They had arrived at the hotel, checked in, received their beach passes, and had then been invited to a wine and cheese tasting at the hotel.

Sean had no reason to turn down wine on his birthday weekend.

They had a lot to fit into two days, between the beach, restaurants, and site-seeing.

That brought them the next morning to the historical Newport Mansions. The tour had been informative, but then they had been left to wander.

“Can you even imagine having this much money?” He asked his partner, fingers linked with Josh’s as they wandered the gardens.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh was glad that Sean had agreed to this getaway with him. He enjoyed splurging on his partner, and he felt that he didn't often get enough chances for this.

"It's unfathomable," he agreed as they meandered through carefully cultivated gardens. "I would have to focus on celebrity clients to get anywhere near this kind of money, and I'm not anywhere near poor."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

There were topiary gardens, which Sean found interesting as a matter of artisanship. Admitting that to students or to certain other people would surely earn him judgment for being boring or being effeminate, neither of which he believed about himself. However, as he was on vacation with his partner, and the topiary gardens were nearby, he gestured in their direction, a silent indication that he wanted to view them.

“Neither of us have ever been anywhere near poor.” Josh’s father had, in his early childhood, as a direct result of the rise of Nazism in Germany. However, he also knew that Bobby Bernstein had come from a family with education. And he had been a stockbroker in the U.S., albeit before the switch in the economy from goods to hedge funds.

Sean came from a line of doctors, all of whom were at least middle class. Sean’s family had qualified as upper middle class by values and earning potential, and they were all in high tax brackets.

The telepath knew poverty, of course, but that came from patients and students and the empathy allotted to him through his telepathy. It was not at all comparable.

“These mansions make our house look tiny.” Which it was not. “And these were only summer homes.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh altered his course to follow the direction Sean indicated.

"I enjoy looking but I don't know if I could handle a summer home. How many apartments could you pay rent for in a summer for the price of a home like this?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“Far too many.” It had been two and a half decades since Sean had lived in New York, far longer than he had had to shop for real estate there. It had been two and a half decades since had needed to shop for real estate anywhere, and his house in Pilot Ridge, though expansive, was cheaper than this type of real estate. The housing boom had caused prices to skyrocket, and, even with the Great Recession, prices had not fallen so drastically as to make these mansions cheap. “We could look it up when we get back to the hotel.”

If they were not otherwise distracted by then.

Given the course of their vacation so far, the telepath thought that they would be distracted by then.

He continued to lead his partner towards the topiary gardens, the green leaves towering over them in the variety of animal and building shapes. This was an art form that he would never master; it was a landscaping task that he would never even become a novice at.

“What do you think about getting a rabbit for our lawn?” He asked, pointing at one of the sculptures. He suggested a rabbit because of Josh’s interests; the telepath was ambivalent towards them.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh's face lit into a grin at Sean's suggestion, facetious as it had been. "Oh, we should." He agreed, moving in front of the rabbit sculpture as nose to nose as he could get without leaving the path. "Two rabbits, one on each side of the front door."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean watched his partner’s antics, and a smile crossed his lips. In this moment, he could see the echoes of the other man’s youthful exuberance, and, at once, memories of their years together as young men flooded his mind, reminding him of why he had fallen in love with Josh in the first place, those decades ago. He had heard once that falling in love was not a lightning strike, something that occurred a single time in any relationship. Rather, it occurred over and over, and those fortunate enough to fall in love would fall in love again and again with their partner.

That had proved true for him and Josh. In the decades that they had known each other, as friends and as lovers, he had fallen in love with the other man more times than he could count. Even after the Break Up and before their reconciliation, he had fallen in love with the attorney.

In that moment, he fell in love with Josh again.

“Anything you want,” he promised his partner, as a lazy smile flitted across his lips. Then, after taking a breath, he returned to the banter. “Although I think that the other gargoyles in the neighborhood might make fun of them for being skittish.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Who else has one?" Josh demanded as they meandered down the garden path. "Not the plant manipulator who lives two doors down, I'm sure I would've seen."

He screwed up his face into a look of concentration, trying to remember if anyone else in their neighborhood had any topiary animals or gargoyles.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean walked in step with his partner, keeping their fingers tightly linked as they walked. Years later, decades now, he still found it so liberating that they could engage in such public displays of affection. When they had first started dating, and for the entire time that they had lived together in the 1980s, they had hidden their relationship in public. Always pretending to be friends, settling for playing footsie under the table if it was sufficiently dark or had a tablecloth. Occasional trips to a club or bar in the Village as the only sanctuaries wherein they could admit that they were on a date like all of the straight couples in New York. Like Sean had gone on when he had dated girls and to which he had returned when he dated women after the Break Up.

Being able to hold hands at a conservative historical tour of Victorian summer houses demonstrated how much social progress that they had made.

“The Wilsons have those statues in their yard, and I think one of them is a gargoyle. I don’t think anyone else has topiary.” Not to his knowledge, although what people did in their side yards was hardly his primary area of focus.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"If the Wilson's gargoyle makes fun of my rabbit topiary, I will have to have a talk with Mrs. Wilson about her gargoyle's behavior." Josh announced, leaning as they walked such that his shoulder bumped against his partner's. This public display of affection was far different than anything he had engaged in before, unless one counted the times he and Sean had been sloppily affectionate between the Break Up and the Reconciliation.

As all of those displays had been under the influence, Josh didn't think they counted. He'd been reluctant at first to show such affection in public and sober; he had never had a relationship before where that was part of the package. But he had warmed up to it, and now it was almost second nature, an outgrowth of the physical affection and banter they had shared as (mostly) platonic friends.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean could hardly argue with that logic. Fanciful banter could only be met with fanciful banter, such was the way of things.

“You might be better off going straight to the source. I’m sure we could find someone with animation to bring the gargoyle to life so that we could have a conversation with it.” Then, should they fail in that area, they could go straight to Mrs. Wilson or Mister Wilson and have them intercede on the hypothetical topiary rabbit’s behalf.

As they strolled through the topiary gardens, occasionally the telepath would point out one that he found particularly interesting. Passing by a row of trees cut into the shapes of buildings, he gestured to one with his free hand, the only one that did not immediately resemble a famous architectural structure (unlike the Empire State Building, Taj Mahal, and Eiffel Tower that they had already passed). “That one looks a bit like our old apartment building, don’t you think?”

Perhaps the nostalgia guided his thoughts there. After all, their old apartment building had been one of many similar buildings in the heart of the Village at that time. Nothing in particular made it memorable, neither as part of history nor for its architecture. It mattered to them only because it had once been home.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh laughed at Sean's assessment of the topiary building.

"It could be. Do you think someone transformed it into a tree and brought it here?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean affected an expression of serious contemplation, as though Josh’s suggestion bore a legitimate hypothesis of the topiary’s origin. Rather than mere coincidence, owing to the same part of the imagination that allowed humans to see faces and shapes in the formless clouds in the sky. “It’s a distinct possibility,” he murmured. “Some kinetic meta-humans might be able to do that. Although that prompts the question of why. And whether they evacuated the residents before they did so.”

Assuming that it was possible, if it was part of an informed demolition or experiment, they would have evacuated. If this had been part of one of Ryan’s comic books, the act of a supervillain, then they likely would not have been.

Not that this warranted any true deliberation. It was harmless fantasy, the type that belonged on this anniversary and birthday vacation they had taken.

Although other people had come into the topiary gardens at the same time that they had, the two men found themselves alone in this area of the gardens. That granted them some degree of privacy. Unwilling to let his hand slip from his partner’s, instead he reached over (thankfully he had a long wingspan due to his height and torso to limb ratio), to gently grab the younger man’s backside.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh was too busy squinting at the topiary and contemplating Sean's reply to his banter to notice just where his partner's hand was drifting to. He wasn't expecting to be groped in public, even if there was no audience -- they were, after all, sober. Alcohol fueled the most demonstrative of their displays.

"Hey!" He half-yelped. half-laughed his objection, then twisted about so that he was nose to nose with Sean -- or as near as a couple with several inches height difference could get.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Alcohol always fueled the worst of their boundary issues, much to the horror of anyone around them, and to their embarrassment, later when they had regained their sobriety. Since last summer with Josh’s hypertension diagnosis, the two men had promised to cut back on their drinking, to great success. They saved so much money by not drinking out as often, and drinking less when they did. Josh’s blood pressure was under control between that, the other lifestyle changes, and the medication, and Sean knew that his own health benefitted from the cutting back as well.

Sober, both men remained physically affectionate, and Sean saw no reason to hide that while on vacation, in a place and time where they would not be judged for doing what every heterosexual couple could do in public without judgment.

After all, his hand had remained outside of waistbands, and, despite the squeeze, had not lingered unduly.

Still, with his partner’s yelp, he paused, moving his hand back so as to get a better read on the younger man. Fortunately, Josh laughed and then turned in his embrace so that they faced each other. In return, the telepath offered him a smile, and then leaned in to brush his lips against Josh’s.