Geordie tries to settle a very disgruntled Gus once more but he's not having any of it. In desperation she takes him into her bed and picks up the phone.
"Hi, it's me. I know it's late..."
Maddie puts her pen down when she hears Geordie's tired voice, "Is everything alright?"
"It's Gus, he's in one of his moods!"
"Oh I remember those moods!" Maddie can hear him grizzling on the other end of the phone.
"You're the one with the magic touch. Would you mind?"
"Over the phone?"
"I'm desperate. I'll try anything!" Geordie admits.
Maddie clears her throat as Geordie puts the phone to Gus' ear and then starts singing "I Say a Little Prayer" down the phone, softly, not perfectly like Aretha Franklin, but hers and Gus's version of it.
Gus quietens in Geordie's arms as he listens to his other mother singing to him as Geordie looks down in wonder that he settles so fast, each and every time. Maddie's voice gets stuck on the words 'You'll stay in my heart and I will love you, forever and ever...' and she has to clear her throat again before she carries on with the next line.
She misses him so much, his warm little body and soft downy hair would normally be cradled into her shoulder when she sings this to him and now she's sitting on the other end of a phone in a chilly room at the end of a long lonely day, still working on her laptop.
"Did that work?" She asks Geordie at the end of the chorus.
"Like a charm, he's still the only one who appreciates your singing!"
"What?! I have a lovely voice!" Maddie assures her.
Geordie laughs quietly, knowing she's joking, "You can barely carry a tune!"
"That's not true!"
"Yeah it is!"
"Yeah it is," Maddie agrees softly, her heart hurting at how much she loves both of them and misses them.
"Listen, thanks for helping. Night Mads..."
Maddie has a tear rolling down her cheek when she pulls her ear away from the phone, sitting quietly for a while afterwards staring out from her desk into the dark of the room.
~~~
Michael unbuttons waiter's shirt and pulls it off him as he leans over to kiss him in the kitchen. Luke twirls around the living room with the jazz fusion guy as Corey dances like he does at Arq, with his pink clad arms up in the air.
In fact the whole room is dancing when a waiter spills a strawberry daiquiri all over the front of Corey's pink and black suit, making his outfit even more iconic. Corey splutters, list for words as the red splash seeps all down the skirt, threatening to drip on Stephen's pale cream carpet.
Michael whispers into the waiter's ear and they both move off in the direction of the stairs.
"Michael!"
"What?! I'm just giving him a tour of your lovely home!" Michael tells Calum, leading the waiter up the stairs by his hand before attaching his lips to the man's mouth at the top of the stairs.
"...right in the balls! Only he hasn't got any!!!" Joy chortles as she recounts a story to the Senator.
"Oh my god!" Calum's gets more and more uptight by the minute as he moves towards his mother and the Senator who are giggling together by the cheese platter.
"Mum can you stop monopolising the Senator?" He asks quietly when he arrives as Joy's side.
"I'm sorry Deborah!" Joy laughs, nudging the Senator with her shoulder.
"Deborah?" Calum mutters under his breath. When did they get on first name terms?
"Calum, your mother is a remarkable woman. You know Stephen, I attend a lot of fundraiser and, everyone means well, but I've got to tell you they're usually very boring things but not this one! I'm having a ball!!!"
Calum laughs politely, not believing a word of it, "Mum can I talk to you for a second?"
"Sure sweetie! Excuse me Deborah! Hey Sunshine!" Joy grabs Luke's hand as she walks past him and pulls him towards the Senator. "Tell Deborah about the club you started! This is one goddamn brave kid. I love him, talk to her," she instructs Luke as Calum starts to pull her away.
"You need to carry that tray high!" Joy tells a passing waiter who's in danger of getting a load of drinks knocked over. "That's the way sweetie! It's a professional courtesy!" She tells a stony faced Calum.
"How DARE you do this to me?! And to Stephen!" Calum glares at her in the middle of the room.
"Do what? I was just talking to Deborah!" Joy asks, confused before breaking out into a smile again as she remembers something she wanted to tell Calum, "Did you know that she worked as a waitress to take care of her family?!"
"She was just being polite!" Calum tells her through gritted teeth.
"Polite?"
"Do you actually think she wanted to spend her ENTIRE evening talking to you?!"
Joy blinks and looks at her son, "It's not as if I nailed her to the floor!"
"I think you should all leave."
"This party was a stinker when we got here, you should be thanking us!"
"FOR EMBARRASSING THE HELL OUT OF ME?!" Calum shouts, finally losing it.
Sam looks over, hearing everything. Corey and Dave stop what they're doing too. From over by the buffet Luke turns when he hears the shout, cutting short his conversation with the Senator.
Joy swallows, taking in Calum's hard expression and crossed arms, "Oh I know I'm hard to take sometimes. My jokes and my appearance and my enthusiasm...and I know that sometimes you're ashamed of me. And that's okay because I'm your mother and that's part of the deal but Calum, I NEVER thought the day would come that I would be ashamed of you..."
Joy turns on her heel and walks to the front door, letting herself out quietly. Luke instinctively follows her, apologising quickly to the Senator before leaving. Calum watches silently as Stephen's friends go back to dancing and chatting whilst his own friends leave one by one, Sam and Corey giving him dirty looks as they walk past. Dave can't even bring himself to look in his nephew's direction as he lets himself out.
YOU ARE READING
Queer as Muke
Fanfic"The thing you need to know is, it's all about sex. It's true. In fact they say men think about sex every twenty-eight seconds. Of course that's straight men. With gay men it's every nine." Twenty nine year old advertising executive Michael Cliffor...
