Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots (The Cabots)

Chapter One

It was Mary’s husband, home for the weekend, who started all the trouble.

They had reached the point in the evening where dinner had long since turned into drinks and drinks had turned into drinking. The four of them—Paul and Mary, Daniel and Alex—were lingering at a table in the back of the restaurant. They were all pretty comprehensively tipsy on frightening Hungarian brandy and it was going to take some time to even think about standing up. Alex’s arm, warm and solid, was the only thing keeping Daniel from toppling off his chair.

“So how did you two meet?” Paul asked, cheerfully oblivious to the havoc he was about to wreak.

The difference between “how do you know one another” (a normal question to ask anyone) and “how did you meet” (which you only ask couples) might have been subtle enough to go over Alex’s head, either because of the nuances of English, Alex’s general indifference to social niceties, or the heroic quantity of pálinka they had drunk, but apparently it wasn’t, and he visibly bristled. Daniel sighed, knowing they were all in for a night of it.

They’d been asked both versions of that question a dozen times before, usually by Daniel’s friends, once by Daniel’s mother, sometimes with a sort of cheerfully camp malice, but generally with undisguised curiosity as to how someone like Alex—beautiful, brilliant, sharp-edged Alex—came to be friends with someone as unremarkable as Daniel.

But Paul Chan was sincere. Earnest. A prince among men. Alex had described him as the least dickish surgeon he’d ever met.

The point was, Paul obviously was under the impression that Daniel and Alex were a couple couple.

Daniel sat up so Alex wouldn’t have to make the choice to extract his arm. In the restaurant’s dim lighting, Alex’s cheekbones looked like they were cut from stone, his hair spun from white gold.

“We’re not—” Alex began, but then petered out, clearly unsure of how to end that sentence without coming right out and saying fucking in the middle of a Hungarian restaurant.

Because what else could he possibly say? That they weren’t together? They were nearly always together. That they weren’t dating? Sure, fine, but here they both were on what was essentially a double date, and it was far from the first time that had happened. They celebrated holidays together. They had keys to one another’s apartments. Alex called Daniel’s mother on her birthday, and vice versa. Alex’s nephew called Daniel uncle. It was Alex’s phone number Daniel had written on the emergency card he kept in his wallet.

There was no way Alex could finish that sentence without lying unless he said they weren’t fucking, which was true. It was true and it didn’t change anything.

Across from them, Mary was clearly torn between kicking her husband under the table and settling in to enjoy the show. Daniel glared at her. She beamed at him. He had terrible taste in friends.

“He thought I was a junkie,” Daniel supplied, because 1) that answered Paul’s question, 2) it was a good story, one even Alex could make funny despite a total lack of comedic timing, and 3) bafflingly, Alex seemed to be under the impression that he came across as an asshole in this story, when the truth was the exact opposite.

And even when Daniel knew they were all going to have to endure Alex’s pissy chilliness for the rest of the meal, he still wanted the world to know that Alex was, ultimately, kind of a sweetheart.

Daniel was an idiot, at least where Alex was concerned, and he had known it since the night they met.

Chapter Two

It was a year and a half ago, Alex minding his own damned business as he walked down Mercer Street after a middle-of-the-night house call on a newborn whose mother thought he had measles. Alex didn’t do many house calls, but newborns had no business being outside in weather this cold, and it wasn’t like Alex had anything better to do anyway. The baby, it turned out, didn’t have measles, just standard newborn acne.

The sidewalks were slippery with ice and cluttered with garbage cans. It was late enough and Alex was tired enough that even though he only had a ten-minute walk to his apartment, he decided to hail a cab that was pulling up in front of one of the seedy nightclubs that peppered the neighborhood.

He crossed the street, lengthening his stride to catch the cab before it pulled away, when he realized that the loose crowd of people outside the club weren’t waiting to get in, but were instead gathered around two men involved in the sort of incomprehensible shouting match that was either the prelude or accompaniment to a fistfight. Idiots. Even after nearly fifteen years in this country, he still couldn’t understand Drunk American. He could perfectly comprehend three-year-olds and hold his own in any conversation about medicine, but was spared ever having to think about what drunk people said to one another, so he didn’t have any complaints.

He turned toward the cab, but was shouldered aside by someone who was hauling one of the drunks away from the fight. The man had been shoved into the cab and the cab had pulled away from the curb before Alex could properly realize what had happened.

“Sorry about that. It figures he’d be a cab-stealer on top of everything else.”

Alex turned to see a man with a bloody lip. A kid, really, not that much older than some of Alex’s patients. Skinny, messy dark hair, pale skin, no coat. Holding one of his hands at an odd angle. Blood on his knuckles visible even in the flickering streetlight. Alex sighed.

“He was twice your size,” Alex said, in case this kid didn’t know he was an idiot.

“Didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Really,” Alex asked, flat. “No choice.”

“He called me some names.” The kid shrugged. “Made some assumptions about the, uh, type of people I fuck and what I like to do with them.”

Alex narrowed his eyes. “Fighting words,” he said, testing the waters. If this kid thought being called queer was horrible enough to warrant punching someone in the face, well—Alex would still check out that injured hand, but he wouldn’t like it.

The kid shrugged again. “I mean, he wasn’t wrong. At least some of the time. Sixty percent, maybe? Honestly, it was more the way he said it. Like, you could tell it wasn’t a compliment.”

And fuck this guy, because that almost made Alex laugh. “Yeah, it usually isn’t.” He swallowed and added “unfortunately,” in case the kid needed to know he was safe.

“It is if you have the right friends.”

Alex had to concede the point. “Let me see your hand.” The kid obediently held out his right hand. His knuckles were scuffed up—Alex found that he was glad the kid got in at least one hard punch—but it was his little finger that got Alex’s attention. It was too soon for there to be much swelling, but he didn’t think it was his imagination that the base of the finger felt a little hot. Gently, he pressed down on the fifth metacarpal, and the kid made a strangled sound.

“Fracture,” Alex said. “You need X-rays and a splint.”

“Yeah, no.”

Alex looked carefully at the kid. Way too skinny, pale in a way that wasn’t just from the ugly streetlight, not nearly enough clothes. Alex had lived in this neighborhood long enough to know what he was looking at. The junkies in this part of the city tended to be older, usually with dog tags, a beard, missing teeth. Over in Chelsea by the piers, though, near where Alex did his residency, they were younger, young enough to have been kicked out of their homes for being queer or to have run away before they could get kicked out, beating their parents to the punch—a stupid American idiom that made him wince in this context. A few blocks north you had the artist junkies, but they usually had addresses and bank accounts. There was a whole geography of heroin addiction that Alex didn’t think he’d understand if he hadn’t seen the pattern settle in over the city in the past ten years.

This guy wasn’t the youngest addict Alex had seen, not even the youngest he’d seen with a broken hand. There was no way he would willingly go to a hospital; Alex was his best shot. He felt himself shift into doctor mode, and it was as much a relief as it always was. “What’s your name?”

“Daniel.”

“Okay, Daniel, I’m Alex. I’m a doctor. If I take you to my clinic, I can splint your finger. Would that be all right?”

“No.” Not even any hesitation there, but not any attitude either, just a straightforward, factual no.

Alex didn’t know whether to be annoyed that the kid wouldn’t listen or relieved that he had enough self-preservation not to go off with a total stranger. “Okay, then let’s get you some dinner.” That, at least, was something Alex could do, and it looked like it had been a good long while since Daniel had anything to eat.

Daniel looked at him for a long minute, measured and skeptical. “All right,” he said. “The diner on Lafayette is probably still open.”

Alex could have told him that as far as he knew, that diner never closed. He and Mary used to practically live there during finals, both their family apartments too noisy and crowded to do much studying, libraries annoyingly closed overnight.

He kept a careful distance as they walked the few blocks to Lafayette.

---

Under the fluorescent lights of the diner, Alex immediately saw that he’d gotten the kid’s age wrong. Or, rather, he saw that kid wasn’t accurate in the first place. Daniel had to be twenty, probably more, but he had the sort of baby face that made judging these things difficult. He was old enough to have been drafted, which made everything else make sense. Mary’s younger brother was barely twenty-two and Alex could only hope someone occasionally bought him dinner and made sure he was warm for at least part of the night.

The waitress brought ice and a towel and Daniel meekly submitted to letting Alex construct a primitive ice pack for his hand. The fracture didn’t seem displaced, so if it was splinted and rested, it should heal fine. He wondered if there was anything in the kitchen he could use as a splint.

Daniel ordered a hamburger and Alex ordered—well, Alex ordered too much, thinking that he could probably convince Daniel to take the leftovers home with him, for whatever definition of home the kid had.

“Will you be needing anything else?” the waitress asked, giving Alex an unimpressed look after covering the table with fries, hashbrowns, pancakes, two plates of bacon, and a patty melt. He didn’t know if the look was for ordering a wasteful amount of food, for bringing a junkie in, or for some other infraction he didn’t even realize he’d committed.

“Ah, fuck,” Daniel said when he tried to bring the burger to his mouth with what was probably his nondominant hand. A pickle and some onion rings fell onto the plate.

Alex pulled the plate across the table and cut the burger into bite-sized pieces, then slid it toward Daniel.

“Thanks.” Daniel gave him an odd look but he ate his burger, so Alex wasn’t going to let it bother him.

“What were you doing at that bar?” Alex asked, even though it didn’t really matter. But people who weren’t Mary hated eating in silence, and honestly, Mary did too, but she was good at filling up dead air with one-sided chatter. Besides, conversation was his best tactic for keeping Daniel at the table long enough to eat his fill.

“I was there for suicide,” Daniel said.

Alex nearly choked on his pancakes. “You were what?” he asked when he got his breath back. He supposed getting attacked by men built like linebackers was one way to get the job done, but now Alex didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t dump the kid back on the street if he was only going to—

Daniel laughed, loud and uninhibited, showing all his teeth. Which—he had all his teeth. Huh. “They’re a band. Suicide.”

A tasteless name for what was no doubt a tasteless band, but it was still a relief. “Are they any good?” Again he was just filling the air, keeping Daniel talking and eating. Obviously, Daniel liked this band or he wouldn’t have gone to see them.

“Eh,” Daniel said, making a wavering gesture with his good hand and scrunching up his nose. “Jury’s still out.”

Well, okay then. “What do you like?” he asked, the same question he asked feverish toddlers and snippy twelve-year-olds and any other kid he wanted to draw out or distract, but probably a weird thing to ask an adult. Daniel didn’t seem to notice, just embarked on the kind of monologue Alex was used to hearing, except instead of rambling about dinosaurs or American football, Daniel talked about music. Alex only understood about one word in ten. Same rate as for dinosaurs and football, actually.

Half Daniel’s burger was uneaten and he was pushing the remnants around with his fork, which Alex recognized from eating with his nephew as a sign that the meal was done.

“Do you have anywhere to sleep?” Alex asked.

Something strange happened to Daniel’s face, something Alex didn’t bother trying to interpret. “Yes.”

“Somewhere indoors?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Alex paid, then managed to convince Daniel to take the leftovers by shoving the paper sack into his good arm and refusing to take no for an answer.

“My clinic is at the corner of First and First,” Alex said when they stepped outside. “We open at nine, if you want me to splint your finger. Otherwise, keep it immobile and protected.”

“What would you have done if I told you I didn’t have anywhere to sleep?”

Alex didn’t see what this had to do with splints. “I’d have given you a subway token, two dollars, and directions to the YMCA,” he said, because that was the truth and it was neither more nor less than what he’d done for other people in Daniel’s situation.

“You weren’t trying to pick me up, then.”

Alex might have been offended that Daniel thought he was the kind of person who picked up men who were down on their luck, maybe too down on their luck to refuse. But Daniel didn’t know him, and maybe it was a fair assumption. Maybe he was used to that sort of thing. Alex didn’t like to think about it.

“No,” Alex said. “I do not pick up men by offering first aid.”

“Yeah, I doubt you have to go to that kind of trouble.” There was no leer to accompany those words, no wink, no hint that it was anything there other than a frank statement of fact, which—well, he was right. Alex didn’t have to go to much trouble, which was good because otherwise he’d be basically celibate. Mary told him all the time that it was a good thing he could get by on his looks. She wasn’t wrong.

“Thanks for everything,” Daniel said, and headed east. Alex needed to go east too, but he didn’t want Daniel to think he was being followed, so he headed north. He would turn crosstown later, even though this route would mean longer in the freezing cold. He looked over his shoulder and saw Daniel looking back. Daniel waved with his right hand, then winced.

“Keep it immobilized!” Alex shouted, too loud for the hour, for the lack of traffic.

Daniel turned back around, and so did Alex, and that, he thought, was that.

Alex wasn’t expecting it when Daniel showed up at the clinic two days later with a neatly splinted hand, insisting on taking Alex out to dinner to thank him. He wasn’t expecting that dinner to last so long that waiters began pointedly stacking chairs and wiping down nearby tables.

For the first few months, he waited for Daniel to find something better to do, to get tired of whatever it was he saw in Alex, because that was what inevitably happened. It didn’t, though, not even when Alex snapped at him for springing both his parents on Alex without warning, not even when Alex got tired and cranky and his weak grasp of the social graces slipped away entirely.

Being friends with Daniel was effortless in a way nothing had ever been for Alex. He’d never made a friend before—Mary didn’t count, because she was the one who’d made him a friend, and all he had to do was go along with it.

But Daniel was a friend, a real friend, something so rare and good that there was no use thinking about anything else he could have been.

And so Alex very nearly didn’t.