At Odd's Ends (Bruce Kulick x Eric Carr)

Ch 2: What's the Plan?

The phone rang and I rolled over in bed with a sigh, fumbling about for it before lifting it off the hook. "Hello?" I mumbled. "Hey it's Gene. You want to meet up for lunch like we talked about?" "Lunch? But it's..." I trailed off, trying to twist my alarm clock around to see the time. "Ohh, it's one. Oops. Yeah, we can meet up. Where do you want to go?" I asked.

"Look, I don't want to go anywhere popular or super public. I hate getting recognized and dealing with all that. So give me a few minutes to find a smaller restaurant and I'll call you back," he said with a sigh. "Yeah alright, sounds like a plan. I'll talk to you then," I said, dropping the phone back to the stand and flopping back on the pillows with a groan. "Alright Eric, up and at 'em," I muttered, sitting up and stripping off the blankets. I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the floor, before heaving a sigh and rising to my feet. 

Humming to myself, I rummaged through my dresser, trying to find a shirt to wear. After a few minutes I had thrown together a decent enough outfit that hopefully wouldn't attract too much attention and was in the middle of the daily struggle of brushing my hair when my phone started to ring. "Y'ello?" "Hey! I found a place, but I'm going to make your life easier and just come pick you up." "You know, you say that almost as if you don't trust me to find my way there without getting lost," I teased. "That may or may not be exactly why I'm saying that. But seriously, I'll just pick you up. Be there in twenty." "Sounds good, see you then!" I said, hanging up.

There was a knock at my door half an hour later and I pulled it open to find Gene there giving me a grin. "Took you long enough," I said with a grin, and he just rolled his eyes. "Oh, shut up. Come on, I'm starving. Took you ages to answer the phone." "What do you mean?! I answered it right away!" I cried, following him down the steps to his car. He laughed, shaking his head. "No you absolutely did not. I called you like five times before you picked up. Figures you'd sleep in until past noon. I mean hell, what were you doing last night?" 

"Ironically, nothing. Just tired, I guess. So what's the place?" "Just sandwiches and stuff. And I know how much you love fans but we really do need to have a conversation, so try and keep the interactions to a minimum, alright?" I stuck my tongue out at him, crossing my arms with a huff. "You're no fun," I grumbled. He rolled his eyes, driving off. "Look, you want to end up with the man of your dreams or not?" "Point taken, point taken. You got a plan worked out then?" 

"We'll talk about it when we get there," he said mysteriously, keeping his eyes on the road. Rolling my eyes, I sat back in the passenger seat, trying to ignore the grumbling in my stomach. 

To Gene's credit, he did manage to find an absolute hole in the wall for lunch. "Damn man, this place looks like a dump," I said, nudging him in the ribs. He scowled, face going red. "Look, I don't want to get recognized and I really don't want to risk having Bruce and Paul walk in on us. The food supposedly is good, if we get sick from it that one's on me. But we won't, it'll be fine." "Against my better judgement, I'll trust you!" I said cheerfully, walking into the small cafe. 

Thankfully we didn't seem to be recognized and managed to sit at a table in the far corner, ordering a sandwich each. Once the food arrived, we set to work. "Alright so what's the plan, huh?" I asked, taking a bite. He frowned, swirling his straw through his drink absentmindedly. "I mean look, Paul's my best friend, he's been my best friend for years. And Bruce is your best friend. And so it makes sense for them to date us instead of each other, right?" 

I nodded, taking another bite. "Seems right to me," I said. "So...so in order for them to see that we need to split them apart." "Right," I said. Gene frowned, eating a handful of french fries. "So to split them up, we're gonna have to like...create some conflict between them, you know?" "Riiiight," I said, nodding slowly. "What'd you have in mind?" "I think maybe first we could figure out how to make one of them miss a date, you know? Like you stall Bruce for a few hours so he's so busy he doesn't realize he's missing his date with Paul." 

"Okay! Yeah that could work. That way it just seems like honest mistakes but the frequency of them from both sides will make it seem like they don't really care that much about each other and then they'll drift apart and it'll be fine! When should we try and do it though?" I asked, resting my chin on my hand. 

"I heard from Paul he's going on a date with Bruce at 7 tonight. You think you could keep him busy until like 8 or 8:30? If he's over at your place he won't be able to get any calls from Paul and I doubt that Paul will call him anyway from the restaurant," Gene mused. I grinned, nodding. "I can absolutely do that. I'll just ask him if he wants to come over and hang out at like 5 or something or I'll come up with some excuse to have him help me out. But yeah, I can definitely stall him!" I said eagerly. 

Gene returned my smile, giving me a high five. "Sounds like we've got a pretty solid start to our plan. And hey, if you're not able to completely keep him away from the date, even him being late is worth something." Nodding, I went back to my sandwich. "In the end it'll all be worth it once all of us are happy," I said, half to myself.