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When he’s asked (by gossip columnists, party guests, family friends, all the various busybodies with varying degrees of good intentions), Don will always say that he fell in love with Kathy at first sight.
“She just dropped into my life - or rather,” and here he’ll shoot a glance at Kathy, who is usually nearby, mouth quirked with amusement though he’s made this joke a hundred times, “I dropped into hers, and I took one look at that sweet face and knew I never wanted to be parted from her.”
“Which was just as well,” Cosmo will chip in, taking over the patter like a well-oiled machine, “because the two of them had a teensy tiny misunderstanding that first evening, and if Don hadn’t been properly motivated to turn Hollywood upside down looking for her, he might never have got her back. And then you would never have got to see a Lockwood-Selden picture.”
“And that would have been tragic,” Kathy adds, smiling sunnily at Cosmo as she presses a kiss to Don’s cheek.
It’s a good story. Budding starlets sigh romantically, maiden aunts pat Don’s shoulder and call him a good boy, reporters make satisfied notes. It doesn’t really matter that the truth is a little more complicated.
Oh, Don was certainly attracted to Kathy the first time he met her. Drawn to her piquant little face, so expressive, and to her utter refusal to be intimidated by him. Driven crazy by her sniffiness about his movies (always a good sign - Don gets bored of people who don’t know how to make him crazy in very short order). Utterly delighted to find the shoe on the other foot so soon afterwards, Kathy in her pink confection of a chorus girl’s outfit, dancing with perfect synchronicity and scowling at him every minute she could get away with it.
The thing was, though, even when he set up the lights and the soundstage and felt how beautifully she danced in his arms, delicate and just a touch unsure, he was still - pursuing her. Chasing her down, saying, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’; wanting her to feel something for him, so she could never again see right through him and dismiss him like she seemed to so easily the first time. Not for revenge. He didn’t mean to hurt her with it. He meant to love her, of course he did. It was just that nothing in him was thinking about happily ever afters, not in those first few weeks.
But then there was a day when he came off shooting The Duelling Cavalier just about as miserable as he’d ever been. That morning they’d spent three hours sitting around in full costume and make-up waiting for the sound department (a grandiose term for a handful of new guys who seemed to change their minds about how their equipment worked from day to day) to fix some problem with the microphones they couldn’t even explain. And by the time that was done with, the lighting was wrong, and they’d lost most of another hour while it got reset. Lina’s patience, never certain at the best of times, had worn right through by then - she’d gone from lounging vampily at Don to complaining loudly at thin air about the incompetence of everyone on the set to sitting in sulky silence, punctuated by an occasional pointed yawn. When the cameras finally started rolling she practically flounced her way through the scene, and every re-take of her dialogue seemed to make it worse. To be fair, Don wasn’t helping either, forgetting his lines as his temper frayed and improvising some things in their stead that definitely weren’t suitable for the chaste ears of the viewing public. By the time Roscoe finally, mercifully wrapped for lunch, even Lina’s usually immovable vocal coach had lost her air of placidity and looked like she was thinking of throttling people; starting with Lina but not necessarily ending there.
The afternoon had been better - an action scene. He liked those. His stuntman days might be behind him, but he’d never lost the joy of throwing his whole body into a sequence and feeling the camera drink it all down. Still, he had his limits, and getting bruised all over in a fencing routine by some bruiser who didn’t seem to know his left from his right was certainly one of them. When they’d made it to the end, and he’d put the tip of his sword to the guy’s throat and called on him to surrender or die, he’d done it with rather more steely-eyed menace than the tone of the picture called for.
By the time he got off the lot he was in as foul a mood as he could remember. Cosmo and Kathy were waiting for him round the back in Cosmo’s new four-seater, and they took one look at him and didn’t so much as ask how his day had been. Instead, Cosmo gave up the driver’s seat without a fight, sliding into the back with Kathy and talking quietly with her as Don gave his attention to the traffic and tried to bring his shoulders down from around his ears.
Back at Don’s place, Kathy linked her arm through his while Cosmo headed over to the bar to fix them all some drinks. Kathy deposited Don on a sofa, gave him a once-over, and said, “That bad, huh?” Don smiled at her weakly, and grunted acknowledgement. In a couple of minutes Cosmo headed their way, drinks balanced neatly on a tray, and stumbled, catching himself just in time. Then he tripped over a footstool. By the time he’d made it all the way to them, Don at least had recognised Buster Keaton’s ‘clumsy waiter’ routine - a pretty fine version of it too, actually. Cosmo finished with a headlong dive that left him sprawled at their feet, the tray proffered above his head, not a drop of drink spilled. Kathy gave him an enthusiastic round of applause. Don, aware that he was behaving badly but not knowing quite how to stop, picked up his cocktail from the tray and drained about half of it.
“Maybe you’d best just leave me to it,” he said. “I’m rotten company this evening.”
“Rotten!” Kathy exclaimed suddenly. Her voice had taken on a new but instantly familiar nasal quality. “I should say so!” She picked Cosmo up off the floor and arranged him so she could sit on one of his knees, facing Don.
“Isn’t it just terrible, Mr. Brown? The way some people carry on.” Her voice wasn’t quite a match to Lina’s Brooklyn tones, but it was, as they said, close enough for jazz, and the way she irritably uncrossed and recrossed her legs was dead on. “Here he sits in the company of just about the biggest movie star there is - not to mention some passably funny piano player -” here there was a brief pause as Cosmo poked her and she squealed and poked him back “- and he’s all doom and gloom. Disgraceful!”
“Abominable,” Cosmo agreed equably. “But maybe he’s just come off a really hard job?”
“Hah! Him? Never done a day’s honest work in his life. I know for a fact he’s been lounging around a movie set all day. And -” she turned back to Don again, “- he’s had yours truly to look at while he waits! Plenty of people would pay for the privilege.” And she tossed her curls defiantly and stuck her nose in the air.
Don snorted; Kathy glared at him with a very passable imitation of Lina’s haughty disapproval, poker face not budging an inch, and that was just about enough to blow through the remains of his bad mood - he laughed out loud. Kathy broke character and laughed with him, then turned to look expectantly at Cosmo. Cosmo slowly and theatrically reached into an inside pocket, produced a dollar bill and handed it over to her.
Don raised an eyebrow at them.
“We had a bet on who’d make you laugh first,” Kathy said airily. “Cosmo has the home advantage, of course, but I figured he wouldn’t be mean enough for your mood today.”
They grinned identical grins at him, Kathy slowly folding the bill in half, Cosmo leaning forward to murmur something to her as she did.
And Don watched them, already looking away from him and back towards each other, Kathy giggling over whatever Cosmo had just said in her ear, and thought, Oh, I’m going to marry that girl.
It wasn’t like being struck by lightning. It was almost the opposite - something blooming inside of him, slow and inexorable, filling in spaces he hadn’t known were empty, until it felt like it had always been there.
It still took his breath away.
~
When they were fifteen, Cosmo had had a girlfriend. His first one - he was still awkward, back then, already using jokes to paper over the moments where he felt shy, or angry (or, Don suspected, any strong thing at all), but not yet practised with them, so they sometimes came out too loud, or too soon, or just plain wrong. Alice hadn’t seemed to mind, though. She’d throw back her head and laugh heartily whenever he came out with something even halfway funny, shooting Don a look as she did it, as if to say ‘This guy, right?’. Don loved that she did that. She had that coltish look that some girls got, with long skinny legs she hadn’t quite grown into yet, and long brown hair with a bit of a curl to it that she let down every time she could. Cosmo looked at her like she’d hung the moon. She held his hand, and didn’t kiss him often, and came with them everywhere.
They double dated a lot that summer, movies and dance nights and picnics, Cosmo with Alice and Don with whoever felt like coming along. Cosmo teased him mercilessly about being irresistable, which wasn’t true at all; plenty of girls said no to Don. It was just that, well, plenty of other girls said yes, and that suited Don just fine. Alice never seemed to pay much attention to who he brought with them. She was happy to be in company and doing something fun. They all were. It was a good summer.
One weekend Cosmo’s folks went out of town, and when Don came over to see him Alice was already there, and they spent the afternoon just the three of them, talking - well, mostly he and Cosmo talked while Alice listened, smiling slightly - and singing while Cosmo played his mom’s beat up old piano, and dancing to records.
They got particularly energetic to some new number Cosmo had found, jumping about, whirling each other round in circles, and when it finished they collapsed back onto the sofa in a heap. Cosmo threaded his fingers through Alice’s, and she cocked her head a little, so it just brushed against Don’s shoulder. Cosmo had looked over at Don, something in his face that Don couldn’t quite place, and Don had smiled at him, still alight with the joy of the dance, and after a beat Cosmo had smiled back, and nestled into the sofa again, nose towards Alice’s neck.
For a little while they just sat there like that. Then Cosmo cleared his throat, and said his mom had left some lemonade out and he could go and fetch it for them. He brushed his lips over the back of Alice’s knuckles, and dug himself out of the sofa. He was just a little flushed when he left the room. It was a hot day.
Alice had said, “Don,” at something just above a whisper, and Don had looked down at her, warm and full of fondness.
And then she had put her fingers under his chin and leant up, trying to kiss him. He’d pulled back a fraction and said, “Cosmo...”, and the thing was, he hadn’t meant ‘Stop’, not really, not then. He was a little confused, but it wasn’t - well, he wanted to kiss her.
But Alice said, “Oh, Don, you don’t think a girl could really pay attention to Cosmo when you’re around, do you?”, and Don felt himself go suddenly cold all over. He almost tripped over his own feet scrambling to get up and away from her, and he pushed past Cosmo coming back down the corridor with their lemonades and couldn’t even look him in the face.
He didn’t see Alice again after that. Cosmo came over to his place the next day and they read comics and played one of Don’s pa’s old jazz records over and over again and stubbornly didn’t talk about it.
He was glad not to have to talk about it. He didn’t know what he would have said. But he thought about it a lot afterwards, that moment with the three of them pressed up together, Alice’s fingers twined through Cosmo’s as her head rested on Don’s shoulder, and he wanted - something. He didn’t have words for it then, and not for a long time after. But it had felt important.
~
It was a sign of how comfortable he’d gotten with Kathy that when the subject came up the first time it wasn’t even on purpose.
“And of course,” he was saying, “George and Teddy are having another of their dramatic patches, and it’s not that it’s that disruptive, it’s not like having stars who hate each other, but they do treat their arguments as a competitive sport and the rest of the crew do tend to egg them on....”
He trailed off, aware that Kathy was looking at him, puzzled.
“George is head grip, and Teddy’s head of lighting,” he explained. “Best in the business, and of course they work together brilliantly most of the time, but when they’re at outs there tend to be fireworks.”
“Artistic disagreements?” she ventured, which was the point at which the rest of Don’s brain caught up to his mouth.
“Not exactly,” he said, mind racing. What if Kathy had never - what if she was shocked? Or just didn’t understand? “More like - domestic disagreements.”
“Oh!” she said, face clearing. “You mean they’re - ” and the slight pause while she thought of a word was just long enough for Don to think of all the words she could use, and wonder what the hell he was going to do if the one she picked was something he couldn’t bear to hear coming out of her mouth “- together?”
“Yeah,” he said, relieved, too fast; and then, because he could never help pushing his luck - “Oldest married couple in Hollywood, by some accounts.”
She chuckled; but she was looking at him speculatively.
“Don, you didn’t think I was sheltered, did you?” There was a prim sort of horror in her voice.
“A great doyenne of the theater such as yourself? Never.” He ducked as she made to swat him round the back of the head, and caught her hand in his. “Not everybody approves, though.”
“Oh, I know, but it’s all such nonsense,” she said, decisive, squeezing his palm almost absently. “A couple of friends of mine from school - well, that’s their story to tell, I suppose, and it’s not as though it was easy for them, but the point is, people have to do what makes them happy. Nobody has the right to approve or disapprove of love.”
Don opened his mouth, then shut it again. He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to say. She smiled at him.
“And I suppose you’ll remind me I said that the next time Zelda gets remarried. I may even deserve it,” she added archly.
“Do you really think that when Zelda gets married love enters into the picture?” he asked, smiling back at her, and she let herself be drawn on the topic easily enough; but she kept watching him, eyes warm and thoughtful, all that evening.
~
The first time Don kissed Cosmo, he hadn’t stopped to think about what he was doing. If he’d thought about it he might not have dared.
It was late, and they’d gone straight from the stage to a speakeasy that barely deserved the name - pretty much just a barn with some godawful local moonshine being sold straight out of the barrel in one corner. Half of local law enforcement were already drinking there when they arrived. It was that kind of town. Most of the acts had come out together that night, and by the time they were a few tumblers in they were doing a sort of impromptu greatest hits of the evening’s show, the two jugglers throwing apples back and forth between the spread legs of the contortionist as she balanced on her head, the family of acrobats turning cartwheels around them, the crooner belting a couple of his favorite numbers, with Don and Cosmo weaving and dancing through the whole pack of them.
The rest of the patrons were looking at them in generally uninterested silence. Occasionally they'd jeer when somebody stumbled or missed a catch.
“Hardly the worst audience we’ve ever had,” Cosmo said in Don’s ear as they whirled around for another pass. “Nobody’s even asleep.”
By the time they were wandering back towards their boarding house, they weren’t exactly drunk, but they weren’t exactly sober either, fizzing more with the dancing and the music than whatever had been in the dubious drinks. The streets were empty and still; the place might have been a ghost town. They weren’t weaving, so there was really no excuse for the way they kept bumping up against each other when they walked. They kept doing it anyway. And then Cosmo bumped him a little too hard, and stumbled, and Don caught him, and as Cosmo grinned up at him he kissed him full on the mouth. Cosmo went deathly still under him, and Don pulled back with a start. For a moment they just stood, staring at each other. Don wondered if he was about to get punched. Or worse. Surely - surely Cosmo wouldn’t leave, would he?
Cosmo said in a small, frightened voice, “Don. People might see.”
“Oh,” said Don, feeling stupid and stupified in equal measure. After a moment he added hesitantly, “We could go somewhere where they won’t?”
Cosmo blinked at him, twice, and his tongue darted out and ran around his lips. “We could do that. Yeah.”
They walked the rest of the way back to the boarding house in silence, the hand’s breadth of distance between them feeling strained and artificial. When Cosmo shut the door to their room behind them, he didn’t turn around for a long moment, and Don came up and rested his hands on his shoulders. There was maybe a hint of a tremble in them.
“Cosmo, you know we don’t have to -” and Cosmo turned around in his arms and said, “Don, I’m not a coward,” and then they were kissing, and this, this was what Don had wanted before. Cosmo wound his arms around him and pulled him in close, and Don kissed his mouth, his neck, his mouth again.
A few minutes later they made it to a bed, stumbling, and if anything it was even better lying down, Cosmo half-pinned underneath him, his fingertips digging into Don’s hip. Don slid his hand under Cosmo’s shirt, stroked the soft skin of his belly, and then reached for his trouser fastenings. Cosmo made a small, shocked noise in the back of his throat.
Don paused. “Alright?”
Cosmo nodded, eyes fluttering closed. “Yes. Anything. Anything you -” and Don cut him off with another kiss, and that was the last coherent thing either of them managed to say.
The next morning, Cosmo was quiet all the way to the theater. But once they were there he got them working on a new routine, and every time he leapt into Don’s arms, or pressed up against his back, or took one of his hands and pirouetted under it, he met Don’s eyes and grinned like they were getting away with something. So Don figured that was alright.
Neither of them stopped flirting with women, or occasionally going home with them. Maybe Cosmo flirted with men too, sometimes; if he did, he never let Don see him do it. Don thought about it, now and then. There was a sax player in New Orleans with dark, tight curls and the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen, a young magician in Philadelphia with long, delicate fingers who would catch his eye over and over again, looking away shyly every time. But he thought maybe it would be breaking the rules. Whatever they were. For a handful of years, though, while they were on the road, he had Cosmo in his bed every few days, never really talking but always smiling, always happy to kiss him and to let Don touch him however he liked, and it was - good. It was good.
~
One morning he came downstairs to find Kathy sitting with Cosmo at his kitchen table; he was busy declaiming something to her, a few sheets of paper clutched in one hand, the other gesturing melodramatically. Kathy glanced over as Don came in, and called out a cheery, “Good morning!”
“Good morning!” Don and Cosmo sang back at her in unison. It was getting to be a running joke by then.
“I came over to ask you to run some lines with me, but as you can see I got a better offer.”
“RF needs to fire his scriptwriters again,” Cosmo added cheerfully. “Kathy’s a great actress, and of course you two are sickeningly in love, but even so I think she’s going to have trouble keeping a straight face when you call her ‘moon of my heart’s desire’.”
“I’m calling her what, now? Give me that.”
Kathy put some coffee on as Don flicked through the script pages, frowning.
“You know Cosmo slept on the music room sofa last night?” she called over, rummaging for clean mugs. “The poor man. Anyone would think he didn’t feel at home here.” She looked at them both, pointedly.
“There are half a dozen guest bedrooms!” Don protested. “He knows where they all are, it’s not my fault he prefers to sleep with the piano.”
“Curled up with it like a puppy outside its master’s door,” Cosmo agreed. “I do love that baby grand.”
“Well I think it’s ridiculous that you don’t have a room of your own,” said Kathy firmly. “You practically live here as it is. Why don’t you just move in?”
“You’re making awfully free with my house, aren’t you?”
Kathy raised an eyebrow. “My house, too, in six weeks or so. Do you not want Cosmo to move in?”
“Of course I want Cosmo to move in! I tell him to all the time.”
She turned the eyebrow on Cosmo.
“He does,” he admitted. “But surely after the wedding -”
“After the wedding would be the perfect time! I’ll be moving all my things in, we might be doing a little redecorating, we’d barely even notice you turning up too.” She paused, then added, “Probably nobody would.”
Cosmo looked at Don, who shrugged. “Seems to me the lady’s talking sense.”
“Of course,” said Kathy, “if you feel like you’re seeing too much of us as it is....”
“Oh come on now, Kathy, no need to bring out the big guns!” Cosmo mimed being shot in the heart and slumped back in his chair. After a beat he lifted an eyelid, slow and exaggerated, and looked around at them, then sat up again. “Honestly, though, you don’t think it would be -?”
That seemed to be directed at Don, so he said, “I think it would be perfect. My two favorite faces at the breakfast table every day.” He smiled, but Cosmo didn’t smile back.
“Kathy, I think I’ll take a rain check on that coffee. Somebody had best get this script over to Monumental and beat some sense into the writers' room.”
“Of course, Cosmo,” she said, seemingly unperturbed by the sudden shift in mood. “We’ll see you very soon, okay?”
He gave a little half laugh.
“You can’t get rid of me, apparently.”
And with that, he snatched the pages back out of Don’s hands and was gone.
There was a moment of silence.
“I think,” Kathy said consideringly, “I may have done that badly.”
“Done what badly? What was he so upset about?”
“I’ve got a pretty good guess.” She met his eyes. “We should probably sit.”
He took Cosmo’s place at the little table and she handed him his coffee, perching next to him and lacing her fingers around her own mug.
“Don,” she said after a minute, “Were you and Cosmo ever -?”
He could have pretended not to know what she meant, which, Kathy being Kathy, would have slowed the conversation down by all of thirty seconds.
“Yes,” he said instead. It felt - he didn't know. He'd never even imagined what it would be like to say it. After a moment's pause, he added, “It was a long time ago. You're not asking if I'm going behind your back, are you?”
“No, no, of course not. Besides,” she added with a chuckle, “when would you have the time? We all practically live in each others’ pockets.”
“Well, there is that.”
“Why did you call it off?” There was nothing that Don might have worried he would hear in her voice - she honestly just sounded curious.
“You know, I’ve actually never been sure.” He couldn’t quite match her tone; calm, like this was the kind of thing people talked about every day. But saying it all out loud wasn’t as frightening as he would have thought, either, it was just - exhilarating. Like the moment you went over a cliff, and felt for just a second that you were hanging weightless in the air, before the water rushed up to catch you. “And we didn’t call it off, as such, we just sort of - stopped. We’d ended up here, staying in one place, jobs that weren’t so easy to just pick up and leave - I guess, maybe he thought it wasn’t safe anymore? Or maybe I did.” He shrugged at her, helplessly. “We probably should have talked about it more. Or at all. You know I’m not actually the best at that.”
“And Cosmo’s never met a serious conversation he didn’t want to turn into a patter routine.”
“That too.”
“Don,” she said, and for the first time she seemed a little hesitant. “I don’t think he ever stopped - wanting. And I think maybe you didn’t either.”
“Does that matter? We're getting married. I love you.” He’d always thought ‘heart in their throat’ was melodramatic drivel, but he could feel it, right then - how it pounded.
“It could,” she said simply. “If you liked. I love you too, but it wouldn’t hurt me to share you. At least, not with him.”
“And what would you get out of it?” It almost didn’t sound like a question as he said it. His mouth was dry.
“In the best of all possible worlds? You’d share him with me, too. And me with him.”
“And we’d all live happily ever after?” He meant to be sarcastic, but as he spoke he could see it, the edges of it, shining in his mind’s eye, and it came out just sounding - hopeful.
“We might.” She reached for his hand under the table, stroking her thumb along the back of it. “I’m not saying it would be easy. I’m just saying we could try, if you wanted. Assuming, of course,” she said with a humorous twist of her mouth, “that Cosmo actually wants either of us. I have been wrong before.”
“Oh, well, me, who knows? But who couldn’t want you?” He pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. She blushed, just a little, smiling up at him.
“For a man who says he’s bad at romance, you always have a line when it counts. Seriously though, Don,” she met his eyes, steady and calm, “I could love him. That would be the easy part. I could love him just as much as I love you. And I’d want you to love him too. I’d only want it if it was that. So is that what you want?”
“Yes,” he said in a headlong rush. He stopped, feeling the truth of what he’d said settle into him. Took in a long breath, let it out slowly. “Yes,” he said again. “I want that. I think - I think maybe, I might always have wanted that.”
~
It wasn’t that same evening, but it was soon after as they could swing it. The three of them had gone out for dinner, and back to Don’s house. They made their way to the sitting room, and maybe Cosmo felt something in the air, because he looked over at them and caught them both looking back at him, and when he said, “Drinks?” his voice was just a little too bright.
“Leave it a minute,” Kathy said, coming up beside him. Don followed, as close as he dared.
“Cosmo, I’m sorry about the other morning. I did it all backwards.” She smiled ruefully. “I get impatient sometimes. But Don and I, we’ve talked it over, and we really do want you with us. All the time, if you can stand it.” She hesitated for just a second. “And whatever kind of ‘with us’ you’d like.” She reached up slowly, and brushed a thumb across his lower lip, and he went quiet and shaky under her touch. He didn’t move away, but met Don’s eyes over her shoulder.
“She knows about us?”
Don nodded. “She knows that we were together, and it was wonderful.” His mouth quirked up. “For me at least. And she knows we never talked about it, because we were young and stupid and we never figured out how. And she knows -” he took a breath, “she knows I never stopped wanting you.”
Cosmo closed his eyes for a second. “Jeez, Don, you know how to lay it on a guy.” When he opened his eyes again he was looking at Kathy. “And knowing all that, you still want -?”
“Anything. Everything.” She gave him a wicked grin. “Preferably everything.” And when Kathy leaned up to kiss him he met her halfway, and Don thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful.
After a minute or two she stretched an arm backwards, fingertips beckoning, and he took her hand and let her pull him in to join them. In another moment she broke the kiss, and looked over at him expectantly.
“Well I was just enjoying the view, but if you’re sure I’m invited to this little party....” And suddenly his arms were full of Cosmo, and he was being kissed like - like Cosmo didn’t know how he’d managed to live without it all this time. Don sure as hell didn’t know how he’d managed.
Cosmo pulled back just a fraction. “Don, you’d better be really, really sure, because -”
“Yeah,” Don said, “me too.” He kissed him again, warm and firm. “I’ve only ever been as sure about one other thing. Besides,” he nudged Cosmo so he could see Kathy looking at them with proprietary satisfaction, her eyes gone just a little heavy lidded, “we couldn’t disappoint the lady, now could we?”
“Disappoint Kathy? Perish the thought!” and Cosmo yanked her in between them. Don wrapped his arms around her waist and breathed in her hair as Cosmo nuzzled her neck. “You must have absolutely everything you want.”
Kathy took his face in her hands and kissed him again, leaning back in Don’s arms.
“I do.”