Chapter 3 - Life Unexpected.

I have to agree with Emmett - although I never thought I'd be saying THAT - but how a person deals with the unexpected says a lot about his character.

He once told me this story about a friend of his who would intentionally sabotage all of his potential boyfriends to test them on how they would handle the unexpected. Mostly, this guy would do little things, like forget the corkscrew when they were out on a picnic so the wine couldn't be opened, or remember an important appointment at the last minute that would scuttle long standing plans. One time this guy apparently went so far as to tamper with the spark plugs on the potential boyfriend's car so it wouldn't run. After creating these scenarios, the guy would sit back and watch what transpired. If the boyfriend got all nuts, freaking out or getting angry, he was history by the next day. But, if the boyfriend somehow managed to muddle through, rolling with the punches and making the best of things, then he was deemed worthy of a more lasting commitment, or at the very least, a second date.

I gotta admit that system, while a little far fetched, seems as good a test of character as any. It would certainly force the guy being tested to show his true mettle. And if he couldn't deal with something as little as that, you definitely wouldn't want him around when life threw something really unexpected at you.

Which life tends to do a lot of the time.

It was probably pretty eye opening for the potential boyfriends too. I mean, I didn't know how I would react to the unexpected until life threw me a curveball by the name of Gus. And I was certainly handed a lot of unexpected moments in a very short period of time when that little midget landed in my life . . .

.:G:. .:G:. .:G:. .:G:. .:G:.

After breakfast, Brian and Gus headed off to do some shopping. Their first priority was to get a booster seat since Deb had already chewed Brian out - explaining to him that it wasn't safe to just belt Gus into the back seat like a sack of potatoes - and threatened to do something dire to his balls if he didn't fix that oversight pronto. Brian grumbled a bit at the cost, especially seeing as he didn't expect to have the midget as his guest for long, but Debbie refused to back down. Which is how Brian found himself wandering through the aisles of the local Toys ‘R' Us store.

And, yes, it WAS the nightmare that he thought it would be. A warehouse full of breeders with screaming kids was really not somewhere that he ever thought he'd find himself. All the crap they were trying to hawk made him want to puke - even though some of it was crap sold by his own clients, and that he'd even written the copy for. Brian wasn't about to play the ‘begging for toys until the adult gave in' game, though. Instead, he picked up the kid, tucked him under his arm in a football hold, and sprinted past all the plastic from China at full tilt. Gus thought this was a great game, and was giggling so hard he didn't seem to notice the brightly colored toys and games he wasn't getting to look at.

Brian didn't breathe easy until he made it to the relative safety of the back aisles which were full of children's furniture and other useful gadgets. Of course, then he had to decide between half a dozen booster seats, all of which looked exactly the same to him. What the fuck did he know about fucking booster seats, anyway? And it wasn't like he could ask the kid - the extent of Gus' help consisted of pointing out that he liked the one with the race car stripes on the sides. So, despite his longing to get out of that place as quickly as possible, Brian was forced to push the little ‘Assistance Needed' button on the nearby wall and wait till a pimply-faced teen clerk shuffled over to help him.

Brian strongly suspected that Acne Lad didn't know any more about booster seats than he himself did, but the kid at least talked a good game and was able to point out the safety ratings on the labels for each of the various models. Brian eventually settled on the one that was the best rated. Unfortunately, it was not the one with the cool racing stripes, and Gus complained very vocally about that fact. As a result, Brian, who wasn't at all experienced with a five year old's powers of persuasion, was easily manipulated. In the end, Brian was forced to go back into the kitschy, toy-filled part of the store after all and buy Gus a race car just to get him to shut the fuck up about the damn booster seat. Acne Lad snickered at him quietly as Brian caved and then hustled them off to the registers to ring up the car seat, as well as the THREE new toy cars that Gus had selected because he couldn't decide on just one.

After the car seat debacle, Brian would have preferred to just head home, but alas, there were still more errands to be done. This taking care of midgets thing was already starting to seem like a lot of work. Brian, however, had noted earlier that the kid didn't have much clothing with him and the few things his mother had sent were pretty shoddy. They looked like the kind of crap you'd find at the Big Q, which was definitely not acceptable. Even if he was only going to be around a few days, Brian didn't want to be seen taking the midget out wearing tacky, sweat-shop-made rags. He had standards and the clothing in Gus's suitcase didn't even come close to meeting them. So the next errand on their agenda would have to be clothes shopping.

After consulting his smart phone, Brian settled on a nearby boutique that specialized in designer clothing for children. As soon as they stepped through the door, Brian was sure they'd come to the right place. Now THIS was his kind of shopping. The obsequious clerks that immediately trotted over to help him were a bit pretentious, but they were also very helpful and eager. Within minutes, Gus had a pile of shirts and pants to try on. The kid seemed amused by the experience and apparently liked playing ‘dress up', so he wasn't any trouble, at least until he started to get tired, which is when Brian wisely decided it was time to go.

Brian selected a few outfits, still not sure what was going to happen with his temporary charge, and unwilling to shell out too much money on a kid he didn't think he'd ever see again once they found his mother. Hopefully what he'd picked up would be enough to get them through the weekend. In style.

Then, before they could finally head home for good, it was off to the grocery store. Brian figured he needed to have at least a few things in the loft that he could feed a child with. He didn't think the kid could get by on beer, poppers and the occasional splurge of takeout Thai, which was his own usual fare. Not that Brian was an expert or anything, but he did have a vague idea that kids ate a lot. So, because he was trying to be a good host and a reasonable stand-in for the midget's absent parents, he would make the sacrifice and hit the grocery store on their way home.

Setting Gus in the shopping cart once they arrived at the market, Brian pushed him around the store, asking what kinds of things the boy ate at home. Gus prattled on about all his favorites, not that Brian really understood half of what the kid was saying even if he had known how to cook any of it. But he made sure to get what he thought constituted the basics: bread, milk, cheese, eggs, peanut butter, jelly, and guava juice. Then he picked up some cereal, canned spaghetti, sliced turkey, and some fruit. He even threw in some junk food type snacks, vaguely thinking they might come in handy to distract or at least shut the kid up if all else failed.

He also picked up a box of crayons and a couple of coloring books, making sure Gus knew he was only to color in the books, at the table, nowhere else - Brian could already see in his mind the havoc a five year old with crayons could wreak in his pristine loft and wanted to head that possibility off right from the start. Gus seemed thrilled with the art supplies though, so he easily acquiesced to Brian's terms, spending the rest of the drive home prattling on about how good a ‘drawer' he was, how his mommy was an artist, how he wanted to grow up to be an artist too, how good he could draw doggies, how much he liked doggies, how much he wanted a doggy, asking Brian if he wanted a doggy, and then about an hour of further discussion all about the kind of doggy Gus wanted to get one day. Brian tuned the kid out about two sentences in, so he wasn't really engaged in the discussion about doggies, thankfully, but he did wonder about just how much the midget could talk. It was truly a wonder.

By the time they made it back to the loft, Brian was exhausted. He hadn't slept much the night before - what with his midget guest in the bed with him - so, after everything was put away and he'd given Gus a PB&J sandwich for lunch, he put some cartoons on for him and hoped that would keep the young un' out of his hair for a bit. It seemed to work too, as evidenced by the waves of giggles coming from the transfixed midget. While Gus was watching television, Brian decided to stretch out on the bed for a few minutes.

Unfortunately, a tuckered Brian fell asleep almost immediately.

When the now-refreshed Stud woke up several hours later, he found that his guest had been very busy during his unexpected naptime. The television was still blaring, but there was no longer any midget watching it. Brian quickly looked around and discovered Gus sitting on top of the kitchen counter. Brian walked over to the kid, and found Gus up to his kiddie elbows in some sticky, red mess, almost finished eating what looked like an exploded plate of spaghetti. The opened bag of sandwich bread was sitting next to the stove, along with the can of spaghetti he'd just bought a couple of hours earlier - it's ‘easy-open' lid halfway removed - laying on it's side and leaking more red goop onto the cutting board. Brian's white countertops were now stained red-orange, along with most of Gus's face and hands as well as the kid's clothes.

"What the fuuuuaaaa . . ." Brian moaned, rushing to the sink to grab a damp dish cloth before turning back to tackle the mess. "Why aren't you watching cartoons, Gus? I thought I told you to watch tv and not make a mess."

"You was sleepin forever an' I gotted hungry B'ine, so I makded a pisketti sammich. See?" The kid proudly held up the creation he had made, eliciting another groan from Brian as one red sauce-drenched noodle slithered out from between the two slices of bread and, after dribbling down Gus' chest, splatted onto his hardwood floor.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Brian tried to fight back his anger. He knew he needed to calm down. He would NOT yell at the kid. Yes, he was angry about the mess, but he didn't want to scare Gus. He had lived that way throughout his own childhood and would never do that to another kid. It wasn't easy though. His entire kitchen was pretty much a fucking disaster. Somehow, though, Brian managed to fight back his annoyance.

Taking a deep breath, Brian told Gus, "okay, finish your sandwich and then you need to get in the shower. And I need to get this mess cleaned up."

"Okay, B'ine. I's sorry I made a mess. Is you mad at me?"

"No, Midget, but when you want something to eat, tell me and I'll get it for you, okay? We need to have some rules while you're here, and that's one of them."

"Okay, B'ine. I's sowwy. I'll try ta be gooder."

"Eat up, Midget," Brian responded, touched by the boy's sincere desire to please.

While Gus took another few bites of his culinary masterpiece, Brian turned back to the mess in his kitchen. He threw out the empty pasta can and put away the bread but didn't know what to do next. Thankfully, Gus chose that moment to declare he was done eating, so Brian decided to tackle the grubby kid first and come back to the kitchen disaster later. He shuddered as he lifted the orange covered kid off the counter, thinking that at least it was on the counter and not his leather sofa. Holding Gus at arm's length, he gingerly carried the wreckage of boy and clothing from the ‘pisketti sammich' staging area up to the bathroom. Taking care not to spread the damage too much, he got Gus stripped and into the shower. The t-shirt the kid had been wearing looked like a total write off to Brian. But, since it was one of the crappy items the boy had arrived with and not one of the new items Brian had just purchased, he didn't feel bad about just throwing it out. The jeans might be salvageable. He tossed those in the laundry and then left the kid to shower alone while he went back out to clean up the kitchen.

Luckily, the disaster in the kitchen looked worse than it really was. After rifling through the cupboard for a minute or two, he located a can of scouring powder which seemed to do the trick on his counters. With a little elbow grease, Brian managed to get all the sauce stains cleaned up in fairly short order. Another quick effort with the broom and his floors were back to their usual spotless condition as well. And, since Gus hadn't bothered to use a plate or any cutlery, that was the extent of the clean up.

Once the kitchen was set to rights, Brian glanced over the rest of the loft to make sure Gus hadn't caused any other damage while he was sleeping. Most everything seemed to still be in one piece, except that, in the living room area, he noticed that all the cushions were off the sofa. Walking over and hoping for the best, Brian saw that the cushions, along with several pillows, were all set up around the coffee table and the throw he kept on the back of the sofa had been draped over them. Once he'd gone around to the other side, he saw that Gus had made what looked like a fort to sit in while he watched the television.

Noting that nothing was damaged, Brian let out the breath he didn't know he was holding. Now that he was assured that there wasn't any real destruction involved, though, Brian found the little blanket fort kind of sweet. It was such a kid thing to do. Not that he'd ever been allowed to do something like that when he'd been a child. Saint Joan would have killed him if he'd treated her sofa so badly.

With a wistful smile, Brian turned away, leaving the boy's fort intact so that he could use it again later, and headed off to the bathroom to see how the little pillow architect was faring in the shower.

Gus was just finishing his shower when Brian arrived. Brian held out a towel to the boy but left him to dry himself off and turned around to take a piss while Gus was doing his thing. When he finished, he shook off and started to zip up as usual, but then noticed that he had a very curious audience watching his every move. Gus - who was still standing there dripping on the tiles with the unused towel in his hands - was hovering there, next to the toilet, looking on with a very intense expression. Brian felt a little uncomfortable, under the circumstances, but didn't know what to say or do, so he just waited as patiently as he could, sensing that the kid had something important on his midget mind.

"B'ine can I asks you somefin'?" Gus finally ventured, looking up at Brian with such an imploring look that Brian's heart did a stupid little floppy thing.

"Sure, Midget, what do you want to know," he answered, taking the towel away and using it to rub the kid's wet mop of auburn hair.

"You're a boy, right? And you have boy parts?"

Brian laughed. "Well, actually, I'm a man now, but I was a boy not that long ago. And yes, I definitely DO have boy parts. So, what do you want to know?"

"Well, why come your boy parts don't look like my boy parts?" Gus asked, scrunching up his face as if trying to puzzle out one of the great mysteries of life. "I mean, you're furry and your thingy is really, really big. An' it's all long an' straight an' pokey, not short and squishy and wiggly like mine. Is it s'posed to do like that? Does it hurt when it gets big and pokey?"

Brian had to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud at Gus' questions. You couldn't fault the kid for being observant, could you? And Brian supposed it was just natural curiosity, but he really hadn't expected to have to give male anatomy lessons to a midget, so he really didn't have a good answer prepared. He would just have to try to answer Gus honestly and hope that was the end of it.

"Well, Gus, I'm older so my penis is bigger. Yours will get bigger eventually too. It's just part of growing up."

"Hmm," Gus seemed to contemplate that for a minute or two before the next question came up. "Will my thingy get as big as yours? Cause that one's really, really big. How do you fit it in your pants . . . especially when it's all pokey like that?"

Brian's discomfort with the conversation notched up at least tenfold. Although he did feel a little proud hearing the awe in the kid's voice exclaiming at his size, he was also disconcerted by that very reaction. Plus, he simply wasn't prepared for the birds and the bees talk. Wasn't five a little young for that, anyway? The way the midget was staring at him, though, he didn't think he had a choice. He hoped if he gave a short, sweet answer that would suffice and they could move on to a less awkward topic.

"First of all, it's a penis or a dick, not a ‘thingy'. If we're going to have to have this conversation I refuse to call my dick a ‘thingy', okay?" Brian started off in lecture mode, waiting till Gus nodded his understanding before he continued. "Second, you gotta understand that dicks come in all shapes and sizes, so, while yours will definitely grow, it may not be as big as mine. But that's okay, because it's what you do with it that counts." Brian stopped before he headed further into that line of discussion, hoping that he wouldn't need to go there quite yet. "And, well, the pokey thing is normal too, when you're older. It's not that big a deal - it just happens sometimes. It's nothing to worry about. You get used to it," Brian told him, not sure if he needed to explain anything more and hoping that Gus wouldn't ask any more questions on that aspect.

"Okay, B'ine. I'm glad you knows about boys' stuffs like that. I don't think Mommy knows about boys' parts. She always said it was called a ‘thingy'." Gus explained, then asked the most important follow up question. "So, I s'pose you have to buy special pants if your dick gets really, really big, huh?"

Brian decided it would be easier to just end the conversation there. "Yes. You do," he lied.

"I thought so," Gus asserted, letting the damp towel drop onto the floor and padding out to the bedroom to get dressed now that his questions had all been answered to his satisfaction.

Brian shook his head and huffed a sharp breath. He felt like he'd just passed a test of some kind. Well, at least he HOPED he'd passed. He supposed the jury was still out on that one. And he was sure that even more unexpected shit was bound to come up with the Inquiring Midget around.

He just hoped he would last through the long weekend.