The 485th Day of March

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1“Australia’s still on fire,” Brian said, pouring coffee in a travel cup for Tristan. Outside, the sky was still relatively dark.

“Really? How many weeks has that been going on now?” Tristan came into the kitchen, tie flung over his shoulder, as he worked on buttoning the top two buttons of his dress shirt.

“Five or maybe actually more, I confess I only started paying any attention once the holidays were done.” Brian Townsend, architect, turned around and leaned back against the counter, his own coffee cup in hand.

Tristan Blake drank a few sips from the cup and pulled his tie into the correct position for tying it. As a detective for the NYPD, his usual work mode involved a shirt and tie, and often a jacket, too. “Is today the official day?”

“Yeah, and that will mean that thirty days from now I will be officially unemployed.” Brian had been second guessing his decision for the entire month of January. He had spent a substantial chunk of the past few years frustrated by the use of his architectural degree to design stores and office buildings and other corporate steel and glass ugliness. When you worked for a large company, you mostly got stuck with whatever assignment you were given. What he really wanted was to specialize in remodels of older structures, mainly houses, finding ways to preserve elegant historic features. After much discussion with Tristan, he was finally preparing to take the leap and start his own business.

“Not unemployed, babe, self-employed.”

“Considering the two year non-compete I’ll have to sign chances are there’s going to be precious little income for at least a couple of months. Guess it’s a good thing I have some money stashed.”

“Which you don’t really actually need to rely on at all.” Tristan glanced at the clock on the microwave. “I gotta go.” He grabbed the lid for the coffee cup and pressed a kiss to Brian’s lips. “I’ll text you around five and let you know what time I might be home.” And Tristan went out the back door toward where the cars were parked.

* * * *

Not long after Tristan got to the precinct, a colleague flagged him down and told him Lt. Giannotti was looking for him. That could indicate anything from a missing piece of paperwork to an impending ass chewing. Tristan gulped down the last of his almost cold coffee before going into his boss’s office. “You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah, just a quick question. I got a back ground check notice…for you. You have some deep dark secret that you’re hiding?”

Tristan relaxed. “Brian and I applied to become foster parents.”

“Oh. Okay. That was not what I was expecting,” Gianotti said.

“In what way?”

“Uh, er, I guess I didn’t think you were the two point five kids kind of guy, but, no offense, I didn’t think you were a -get married- kind of guy either.”

“Because I’m gay?”

“No, more because of history…that other guy you lived with for a while left you high and dry when things got just a little tough.”

Yeah, Gianotti had been around back when that was going on. Even though they had only talked a small amount at the time, Gianotti did have some comprehension of those events. “I know you haven’t met Brian except once for about five minutes, but he’s…significantly different,” Tristan said. “And we still haven’t exactly committed to becoming parents but the process takes a while, so we thought we’d start the ball rolling.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Was there anything else?”

“You’re going to be in court Thursday not Wednesday. I just got an email about the change.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * * *

Near the end of the day, Alicia came by Brian’s cubicle and sat on the corner of his desk. “I know you said you were going to do it, but I thought you meant in the summer.” She had worked with Brian for nearly five years.

“My thirty days’ notice?”

“Yeah that. Damn, Bri, I’m going to miss you.”

“I’m not dying,” Brian said with a grin. “We can still go out and grab lunch or have a drink. And unless you’re planning on banning me from your parties…?”

“Oh, hell, no. You’re a required guest. On a related note, have you finished remodeling the third floor of your brownstone yet?”

Brian opened his mouth to say it wasn’t his brownstone, but then realized that since he was legally married to the man who did own it, that did more or less make it his. Either way, it was home now. “No. It’s a work in progress since I’m doing everything but the electrical work myself. I redid the walls of the stairway in some gorgeous white wainscoting, and have most of the evil nasty wallpaper stripped off in the rooms. Underneath it’s plaster and lath. I’ve watched about six hours’ worth of YouTube videos on how to repair it and have a meeting set up with a plaster specialist who’s done some historic site work. I’m still not certain if I have the skills to pull off that particular part of the remodel.”

“Dang, you’re really putting a crap ton of energy in this. Trying to save money or trying to stay busy?”

“More the busy part. There’s only so many hours a day I can go chat to contractors and work on the website trying to drum up a business from scratch. I’ll need something to keep me occupied now and then, so I don’t obsess about the lack of income,” Brian admitted.

“You’ll do fine. I have faith. So, since you’re busy upending your life, did you go through with submitting the foster parent paperwork?”

“Last week. I’m sure it’ll take a hefty chunk of time for it to make its way through the system.”

“Are you going to put a room for the hypothetical kiddo up on the third floor?” Alicia asked.

“Not unless we end up deciding to take an older child. The other room down the hall from the master used to be a bedroom way back when Tristan’s mother lived there as a kid. We actually have my old bed in there currently, along with a completely miscellaneous bunch of boxes and Christmas decorations that came from my apartment. I suspect reorganizing all of that so there can eventually be a social worker assessment visit will become one of my projects, too.”

“I have serious brain lock envisioning Althea Blake living in that house.”

“Her and three brothers. According to Tristan, the house had gorgeous expensive period furniture back then, and between the location and wealth of the family…” Brian said.

“Which went where? Cause the overwhelming amount of the furniture in that house now is stuff from your apartment.”

“After Tristan’s grandfather died, relatives crawled out of the woodwork and took about ninety-five percent of the contents of the house. Tristan replaced a little of it when Eric moved in.”

“Eric was the boyfriend…back before Tristan met you, right? I’m guessing he took the furniture that Tristan bought with him?” Alicia asked.

“Yeah, he’s an ass of pretty magnificent proportions. That’s a whole other story.”

* * * *

It wasn’t late per se but late enough that Tristan had texted Brian earlier to let his man know he wouldn’t be home in a reasonable time for dinner. As he came in through the kitchen, he saw the light was on in the dining room, not that they used it for that. It was a big empty room with a treadmill in the corner.

As he came into the room, he saw Brian applying masking tape to the floor along one wall. “Not that I have a lot of structural knowledge but if you knock down that wall, I’m pretty sure Mrs. Reinhart, next door, is going to be upset.” Mrs. Reinhart was a woman in her seventies, who spent a vast amount of time tending the garden in her narrow backyard. Tristan’s grandfather had been friends with Mrs. Reinhart.

Brian stood and turned around. He gave Tristan a smile. “No demolition’s planned for this floor. What if we turned this into a library? I mean it has a fireplace and some good long wall space. We could finally unpack the mountain of boxes of my books that are upstairs. I was laying out the dimensions for standard book shelves just to get an idea how much floor space that would consume.”

Tristan pondered the tape marks on the floor.

“Not your speed?” Brian asked.

“I’m remembering the bricks and boards shelving that was in your apartment that held those books.”

“When you’re mostly broke and freshly out of college, cheap is the operative word.”

“You’d been out of college for eleven years before we met,” Tristan teased.

“Guilty. I came up with a lot of reasons not to spend the money on decent shelves. Bricks and boards would look pretty tacky in this room though. We could buy just two bookshelves to start, with the plan to add more later,” Brian suggested.

Tristan looped his arms around Brian’s neck. “If you want bookshelves, we could hire someone to do built-ins.”

“That would be hella expensive.”

Tristan gave him “the look.”

“The money I stashed is to float me along until my own business gets going.”

“And dropping ten grand to do custom built-in bookcases would barely put a dent in my bank account, our bank account.”

Brian made a face. “I don’t know that I’m ever going to get used to the idea that money doesn’t matter.”

“I’m choosy on what I spend it on.” Tristan cupped his hands around Brian’s face. “I drive an absolutely average car. We only have one house and it’s completely paid for. The overwhelming majority of the clothes in my closet upstairs came from a department store and not a classy one at that. The kitchen table and chairs that we bought together are the one major furniture purchase we’ve made. I think we can afford to splurge if you want built-in shelves.”

“I’m not sure. Let me think about it.” Brian turned and paced toward the fireplace. “We could go old school and contemplate a couple of wing back chairs. You can sometimes pick them up at a public auction for less than a hundred dollars each.”

“And you envision us sipping port and smoking cigars in our evenings?” Tristan teased.

Brian’s mouth twitched. “I can think of more interesting things to put in my mouth. On the other hand, you could stick your cigar in my port.”

“You couldn’t resist, could you?”

“Oh, you think that’s in pour taste?”

Tristan groaned.

“I didn’t mean to send you into a grape depression.”

Tristan yanked Brian into his arms and murmured “Be quiet, you,” as he planted a kiss on Brian’s mouth. After the long work day, the comfort of having his husband in his arms was exactly what he wanted. They sank down to sit on the floor, spending a long number of minutes just kissing and somehow that resulted in them lying on the floor looking at the ceiling.

“Why does a turn of the century brownstone have a popcorn ceiling?” Brian asked, gesturing toward the nubbly irregular surface of the ceiling.

“Uh, I think I remember my grandfather mentioning a water leak from the second-floor bathroom in the eighties. It dripped through into the dining room and there was both floor and ceiling repair work done.”

“It really needs to go.”

“Does that mean you’ve just added that to your project list?”

Brian made a snort of amusement. “Yeah probably.”

“The foster care process pinged work for my back ground check today.”

“Good. I wonder if they’ve done mine. It’s not like I would find out.”

Tristan wove his fingers through Brian’s. “And you have such a lengthy sordid record,” he teased.

“I did get a parking ticket once. I think that was shortly after I moved into the apartment. I was desperate one night and I used a spot with a meter. The plan was I’d be back in a few hours to move it. Yeah, I wasn’t fast enough.”

“Fifty lashes with a wet noodle.”

“And seventy-five dollars. At least I didn’t get towed.”

Tristan got up from the floor and held out a hand to Brian. “How ‘bout we continue this discussion in the front room, with a beer?”