Chapter 14 - Falling In Love At A Coffee Shop.

By the time we’d all made it back upstairs, firmly closed all the doors that might allow Bill the chance to wander again, and the cat had slunk off to finish his personal toilet so as to remove the remaining cobwebs and other dust that coated his fur, I figured it was probably time for me to leave. I’d caused more than enough havoc in the poor man’s life for one day and I could tell he was teetering on the edge of a real anxiety attack. Eating my lunch, in and of itself, would have been a major accomplishment for the man, but to also have to go through the stress of finding a hidden staircase in his conference room, a hidden room in his basement, and to have to deal with whatever emotions had bubbled up from the memories he shared about his grandfather . . . Well, even a well-adjusted person might be feeling a little worn out after all that. I could tell that my Eggy was ready for a little alone time. Far be it from me to outstay my welcome. Besides, I didn’t want him to accuse me of turning into a lesbian because I was ready to move in after our first ‘date’ or anything.

So, I took my fine ass home like a good little boy with blue balls and spent the rest of the afternoon wanking off to memories of a wet Egbert just out of the shower. I was still wearing the T-shirt that he’d lent me and the thought that I was draped in his clothing helped fuel my wankfest. I loved how big it felt on me. I imagined that it was his arms around me instead and . . . yeah, did I mention I am a total degenerate and proud of it?

Luckily I’d finally reached the limits of even my recuperative abilities, and moved on to drawing him instead of fantasizing about him, by the time my roommate made it home, because you know how annoying Daphne is when she catches me masturbating? She always tries to get me to keep going so she can watch. Talk about a buzzkill, right? She’s not nearly as excited by watching me draw. Or at least not usually, although that evening seemed to be the exception.

“Wow, does he really look like this?” Daphne asked as she grabbed my sketchbook out of my hands and stared at the sketch in front of her. “He’s so . . . hairy.”

Trust Daph to state the most fucking obvious thing. “Yeah, he’s pretty . . . shaggy,” I laughed, thinking about the delicious cave man I’d left behind. “I kinda like it though. He’s so . . . rustic. Plus, it’s also fueling this recurrent fantasy I have about shaving him. Fuck, I can just see it.” I lick my lips at the delicious images I see all over again in my mind. “First I strip him down till there’s only skin, then I lather him up with one of those old-fashioned shaving brushes till he’s all soapy and wet, and then I have to get super close to him, straddling his lap, because I’m using a straight razor, which I scrape against his cheek ever so carefully . . .” I think I might have even moaned at that point because, hotness, amirite?

“Damn, boy! You have it even worse than I thought!” Daphne laughed at me, backhanding my shoulder to jolt me out of fantasy-shaving-land. “Leave it to you, Jus, to have some kind of weird hairy caveman kink.”

“I know, what can I say? I’m full of surprises.”

“Seriously though, Jus . . . his eyes here . . .” she gasped, continuing to look at my latest Eggy Masterpiece. “They’re really intense.”

I was impressed that she got that from my drawing - I mean, I know I’m good, but to be able to feel the emotion I sense when gazing into Brian’s eyes just from looking at my sketch was pretty damn impressive. Especially as she’s never met him. I must be a better artist than I thought.

“You should see them in real life though, Daph - they’re gorgeous. But you can definitely tell he’s hiding some pretty dark stuff in that head of his. He shared some grim stories about his childhood with me while I was there and if he has more of the same that he’s keeping to himself then I understand why those eyes are so haunted. It’s almost like you can see through the mask of pain he wears when you look into his eyes. I can’t explain the feeling I get when our eyes meet sometimes - I’ve never felt so . . . connected . . . to anyone else before,” I tried to explain, getting frustrated because the words were wholly inadequate to convey what I knew about this enigmatic man from deep in my soul. “Of course, that makes it all the more aggravating that I can’t actually touch him.”

“You’re doing the best you can, Jus. Give it time. It’s not like there’s an overnight cure for OCD or anything,” Daphne tried to console me. “How’d the lunch thing go, anyway?”

“He ate it.” I couldn’t help but feel proud when I said that. “And I could tell he really liked it too, so it’s all good.”

“Wow, Jus, that’s amazing. I mean REALLY amazing. You understand how big of a deal that was for him, right?”

I nodded.

“How did he handle it?”

“I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t easy. I let him do his . . . stuff . . . before I started cooking. There was a lot of cleaning.” We both laughed at that deliberate understatement.

“That’s good - although I don’t think you should encourage any of his rituals if you can help it.”

“That’s gonna be tough, Daph. He’s so regimented in what he does.”

“Hey, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. It’s not. It’s going to be fucking hard. But trust me, it’s what he needs. He needs you to show him that nothing bad will happen to him if he doesn’t do something that his brain is loudly telling him that he MUST do, you know?”

“Yeah. I just wish I understood what’s going on in that gorgeous, screwed up head of his,” I sighed. “It’s like . . . I don’t understand how he can sit there and stroke his cat, Bill, without even thinking about it. Yeah, he washes his hands like crazy afterwards, but he does it, you know? But he can’t touch me at all. Just the thought of it sends him into some kind of crazy panic. And yet, he’s told me that he wants to.”

“That’s the thing about OCD, though,” Daphne began to elaborate, getting that college lecturer tone to her voice that I recognized meant I was in for a long-winded explanation. “It’s a very personal condition. The compulsions are inherently illogical - that’s the nature of the disease - so you can’t really look at something a person with OCD does and say, ‘that doesn’t make sense’. They KNOW it doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical. The compulsions are a result of years of built up stress reactions and rituals that are organic to that one specific person. So, it’s really not out of the ordinary for your guy’s symptoms to be focused solely on human contamination rather than germs from his pet. And, if you’re right and there’s some type of childhood abuse mixed in there, it kinda makes sense that his compulsions are focused solely on HUMAN contact, right? This is his way of dealing with the fears he has about being hurt by a person, which is why he doesn’t want contact with people. He was never hurt by a cat, so he has no rituals - or at least fewer rituals - about that. Does that make sense?”

I bit my lip, it really did made perfect sense. Listening to Daph’s little lecture, I had one of those metaphorical lightbulb moments where it all just seemed to click. That little story Brian had told me about his grandfather locking him in the dirty basement, the hints he’d given about other abuse . . . Damn, Daphne was good, wasn’t she? It was like my poor Egbert had taken all that abuse he’d suffered and internalized it to the point he was now unable to leave his tower. It wasn’t germs he was afraid of; it was people in general. It all made a lot more sense now.

“So, what you’re saying is that the handwashing and bottomless supplies of wet wipes aren’t really about the germs at all. They’re more a way for him to deal with other stress. Which totally makes sense. But, then, how the fuck will I ever get through to him? I mean, making him eat the lunch I prepare doesn’t exactly count as psychotherapy, which is what he needs if I’m hearing you right.”

“If what you’ve told me is true, I don’t doubt he could use some serious therapy, but until he can leave the building, that’s not gonna happen. Besides, that’s not what he needs from YOU. You just need to keep doing what you’re doing. Keep encouraging him to push his boundaries. Make him WANT to push. Which, if he’s as smitten with you as you obviously are with him, shouldn’t be too hard,” she teased me, and to my horror, I found myself blushing at the memory of just how much I truly was ‘smitten’ with my Egbert.

“Okay, so what’s next then? Do I move on to dinner? Then what?”

“That’s a start, but if you really want my advice, I say, be bold - give him a real incentive to want to make changes. Just don’t do anything to surprise him,” she suggested. When my confused expression clearly betrayed the fact that I didn’t understand what she meant, however, she continued to explain. “Tell him you’re going to hold his hand - don’t just do it - and use that to show him that nothing will harm him because of you doing that type of thing. You know, talk him through the process. Because that’s part of the compulsion thing; he already knows his rituals are irrational, but he’s so caught up in the compulsion that he can’t help himself. And even though the ritual may bring some relief from the worry, the obsession still returns and the cycle repeats over and over. So you have to break the cycle. You have to PROVE to him that nothing bad will happen when, for instance, you touch him. There will definitely be a bit of panic when you try it, too, so you’re going to have to roll with it. Even if he tries to pull away, don’t let go. Don’t freak out. Show him you’re there for him. And be prepared to do the same thing over and over several times before it finally gets through to him - it’s exposure over time that will truly break the cycle, not just a one time thing and he’ll be ‘cured’. Right?”

I nodded. God, this was gonna be tough, but I was prepared to do it. Prepared to free my Eggy from himself. If I didn’t, then all those fantasies I’d just spent the last few hours envisioning, would only exist in my head, and that would be a real shame.

“You don’t think that holding his hand is a little too advanced?” I asked, just to be sure. “Not that I wouldn’t love to push things a little, but he was struggling today with just the lunch thing. Not to mention the fact that I broke his house - twice - and introduced his cat to the joys of cobwebs . . .”

I proceeded to tell Daphne all about our secret passage adventures that afternoon, which took up the rest of our time talking before she had to run to get to her cell bio practicum. Daph was almost as enamored of the romantic idea of a secret passage as she seemed to be with the idea of my Egbert by the time she left. She was all for coming with me next time I went to visit Eggy so that she could help investigate, but I figured that might be too much for my boy at this point. Plus, I really didn’t want to share just yet. I know it’s selfish, but I sorta liked knowing I had my hermit in his tower all to myself. So I told her that we’d work on it for later, and left it at that - although in my mind I was thinking, much, much later, like, maybe next summer later even. Of course, it might just take me that long to get past all Brian’s neuroses, so that’s not saying much, I suppose. But just thinking about trying for more, the way Daphne had suggested, gave me hope. I always had been a sucker for a slow burn romance, because what fun was it if the guy you were pursuing wasn’t at least a little bit of a challenge?

I spent the rest of the evening after Daph left for class daydreaming up other ways to push my Eggy forward.

“Good morning!” I sang out as I came through the door to Eggy’s office the next day, my usual latte in one hand and a Cafe Viennois I’d brought to tempt my hermit in the other. “Who’s ready to play Corporate Executive and the Naughty Coffee Boy?”

“Couldn’t you at least pretend to respect my privacy by, say, knocking on the door before you break in?” the annoyed hermit grumbled, turning around in his desk chair to glare at me despite the half-smile I could see he was trying to hide.

“What fun would that be?” I plopped the cup of coffee down on the edge of his desk and took up a seat in the nearby armchair.

“I don’t have time for fun. I still have to finish the project I was working on yesterday afternoon when you forced me to eat lunch with you and then traipse all over finding secret passages and collecting dust bunnies,” he complained, as if I didn’t see right through his feeble protests. “You wouldn’t believe how nasty Bill was afterward. It took him two hours to finish grooming himself and then he coughed up the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life into my slipper. So now I have to buy new slippers too.”

I chose to ignore the reference to furballs and focus on the primary goal here - coffee. “Come on. It’s 10 o’clock. That’s the universally recognized time for your first coffee break of the day. Nobody expects you to work at 10 o’clock in the morning.” I pointed to the cup waiting not far from his elbow. “I brought you something extra special today, too. Cafe Viennois. All the caffeine of espresso with the sweetness of whipped cream to boot. I thought it would suit you.”

“What are you babbling about now?”

“Come on, it’s just like you. All the bitterness countered by the sweet yumminess. You don’t see the parallel?” I teased, smiling into my own cup to hide my amusement.

When my Eggy started to pull a wet wipe out of the package waiting in one of the cubby holes on the desk, I decided now was as good a time to implement Daphne’s Exposure Therapy thing as any so I coughed loudly enough to get his attention. Brian looked up at me, a little curious and a little anxious. I had to give myself a little mental shove because I knew what I was going to ask would be difficult and I didn’t know how he’d take it. Would he think I was out of line for interfering? Would he be offended. Would he be embarrassed? Would he tell me to get my nose out of his business and throw me out for good? I had no idea, but I did know that if I ever wanted a chance to find out where this whatever-it-was between us might go, I had to start somewhere. So this was me being all fucking brave and shit.

“You know,” I held up my hand to stop him from the wet-wiping. “My med-school friend, Daphne, was telling me about this thing called Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy for OCD. She says it’s pretty effective. You just have to try and do shit that would normally cause you anxiety, over and over again, while stopping yourself from reacting with one of your rituals. The theory is that, once you see that nothing bad is going to happen when you do the thing you’re freaked out about, you won’t need the ritual.”

“Yeah, I know what it is. I’ve read about it,” Egbert answered warily. “I just don’t think I could . . .”

“Bullshit. You can do anything you want, especially with me here to help you,” I countered. “And it doesn’t have to be anything big. At least not at first, right? You could just hold the cup today, you know, without wiping it off first. Maybe?”

He looked at me as if I was fucking insane. I was tempted to laugh, but I knew that would probably insult him. Instead I just smiled and pushed the coffee cup a little bit closer to him.

“Come on, Eggy. I know you’re not ready to actually drink it yet, but you want to take a sniff, don’t you?” I tempted. “I swear that nothing bad will happen if you just pick up the cup without wiping it down.”

Brian reached for the cup but quickly pulled his hand back. “I don’t know . . .”

“Come on. I KNOW you can do this,” I said encouragingly. “Look at what you did yesterday; you never thought you’d be able to eat my lunch, did you?”

He shook his head.

“But you did it and I’m so fucking proud of you.”

Brian smirked as I said that but it didn’t take long before it turned into a genuine smile. Which made me realise that nobody had probably ever said those words to him before and that made my heart hurt.

“That was different though . . .”

“Yeah, it was different, but you still did it. Tell me you see how awesome you were yesterday.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he chuckled shyly.

“Maybe YOU don’t think so, but I do. So, go on, Eggy, pick that cup up. Give it a sniff. Your nostrils will thank you - trust me - that drink smells fucking amazing.”

Brian’s hand tentatively moved forward again but then just hovered a few centimeters away from the damn cup. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head and hear the arguments he was having with himself. I had to restrain myself from reaching over and just taking the cup and shoving it into his hands. For someone who didn’t have the same obstacles, it seemed like such a simple thing - just holding a fucking cup - but I could tell how hard he was struggling. Hell, there was even a drop of sweat on his temple, that’s how hard he was thinking this thing through. But at some point I could see that he just mentally told himself ‘fuck it’ and after that the struggle was over. He grabbed hold of that damn cup with a heavy sigh and lifted it up close enough to take a good long inhale of the bitter-sweet aroma.

“That’s my boy!” I teased, hoping to deflect a bit from the seriousness of the moment with a little humor. “I’m going to turn you into a coffee connoisseur in no time.”

He shot me a killer glare for making fun of him, but I could tell the bravado was only skin deep. Those incredibly expressive hazel eyes were showing the first signs of true panic and the hand holding the cup started to shake just the tiniest bit. Shit. I didn’t want this first attempt to go badly. I couldn’t let him fail. But what could I do? All I could think of was to distract him before his freak out had a chance to take over.

“So, after I left here yesterday I spent the whole night jerking off to thoughts of you,” I spat out, shocking us both I think, with my brazenness.

Brian’s head shot up and his eyes bore into mine with a fierce intensity that made me feel weak at the knees. “Huh?”  

“It’s true. I have these recurrent fantasies about you, Eggy. You wouldn’t believe what my lecherous brain comes up with sometimes. But it’s your fault, you know? You just had to go take a shower yesterday and then come out looking all delicious and wet and smelling so damn appetizing. I have this thing for wet men. Someday, if you’re a good boy, I’ll show you what I mean.”

“You are a complete freak. You know that, right?”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” I replied, licking my lips as I recalled some of the ideas my fevered brain had come up with regarding this delectable morsel of yummy manliness. “I want to soap you all up - head to toe - and then run my hands all over your body. And then I want to shave off that bush on your chin that you’re hiding behind so I can better kiss your luscious lips.”

“You don’t like my beard?” he asked, sounding kinda hurt, and totally missing the point of the whole wet ‘n’ wild fantasy, I thought.

“It’s not that I don’t like it, but you have to admit there’s something erotic in the idea of me shaving it off you.” I almost moaned at the very thought - okay, maybe I did moan out loud - but you couldn’t blame me what with that image flooding my brain.

“Did I mention you are a freak?”

“Maybe. But, did you notice that you’ve totally forgotten about the cup in your hands while I was detailing my wicked little shaving fantasies?” I pointed out with a smug little grin. “See, I told you you’d be fine. More than fine, if that bulge in your pants is any indication.”

We both directed our attention to his crotch, which was sporting a rather impressive bulge - one which matched the bulge in my own pants right at that moment - and then we both broke out chuckling. We might be totally pathetic, engaging in this seduction of words when we couldn’t actually touch, but at least we were pathetic together. Plus, my distraction techniques had worked like a charm. Eggy’s first brush with ERT was a total success and we were both horny as rhinos. I’d take that as a win, wouldn’t you? And I couldn’t get over how proud I was of my Eggy right then. I wanted to tell him that, but I also didn’t want to make a huge deal about it either.

Meanwhile, Brian smirked at me and shook his head, but he didn’t immediately put down the cup either, so, bonus. “Don’t you have something better to do than torture me with your puerile delusions and your strange coffee fetish?” he asked.

“Nope. All done with finals and, except for picking up a few shifts at this diner where I sometimes work for spare cash, I’ve got nothing to do till school starts up again in January. So, lucky you, you get me all to yourself.” I smirked at him with my brattiest grin, eventually coaxing him into a shy return smile. “Which also gives me more time to work on figuring out the great Triangle Building Mystery,” I announced, pulling out my phone so I could show him what I’d discovered. “And lookee what I found!”

I twisted the small screen around so Brian could see the picture I’d located online of one William J. Carnegie. See, I’d been so taken with that photograph I’d seen the day before in the old boardroom, that I’d snapped a quick pic of it. Then, that morning while I was lying in bed thinking back over the day before, I’d remembered it and decided to do a google image search to see what else I could find on our dear, sweet William. It turned out there was quite a lot, too.

My google search had confirmed that the man in the photo was indeed William Carnegie. The handsome youth even had his own Wikipedia page, imagine that. William was the eldest son of Thomas Carnegie, the less well known brother of the famous Andrew Carnegie. Back in the post-Civil War period, Thomas had been almost as much of a big shot as Andrew. Thomas founded the Union Iron Mills, which turned into the Iron City Forge, then into the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, which eventually became a subsidiary of U.S. Steel, the industry giant that provided the majority of the nation’s steel for almost a century. Thomas, who was never as outgoing or social as his older brother, was instead a real family man. Thomas and his wife, Lucy Coleman, had nine children before he succumbed to pneumonia in 1886 at the relatively young age of 43. Many of Thomas’ children went on to become movers and shakers among the burgeoning capitalist elite of the late 19th & early 20th centuries. William, however, despite being the eldest, never actually amounted to much, and generally fell out of the public light around the time of his father's death. William’s obituary, years later, said only that he was ‘a sportsman and traveler who did not marry’.

I tried to wait patiently, holding up the phone and scrolling down for him while Brian read through the Wikipedia page, but before he’d reached the end my enthusiasm got the better of me. “See what it says there? That William Carnegie was ‘a sportsman and traveler who did not marry’? Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, back in those days, the oldest son would have been expected to marry and follow dad into the family business, right? But not our William. Instead, he spent his life as a pretty little playboy, who apparently had no interest in women. That, and the photo of him in your boardroom showing a rather effeminate young man - which, coming from ME, a guy who’s not exactly what you’d call butch, has got to tell you something - made me think that maybe young William might have been batting for OUR team. What do you think?”

Brian shrugged, waggled his head side to side as if weighing the possibility, looked at the photo of William again, and then nodded. “Yeah, he was definitely too pretty to be straight.”

“Exactly! And that got me thinking about another gentleman of the same time period who also never married, lived with his male ‘business partner’ for several years, and then constructed a huge building that he secretly dedicated to his lover ‘B’,” I continued, laying out my suppositions one at a time in a logical progression. “B as in, maybe, ‘Bill’, which is the most common nickname for someone named William . . . ?”

“Peebles? I know you said before you thought he might be gay, but we don’t know that for sure,” Brian replied, trying to dampen my wild speculation. “And, even if we did, we don’t even know if him and this William . . .”

“Billy,” I interjected.

“. . . Billy . . . knew each other. I mean, except for that picture in the other room, there’s no connection. Peebles’ love interest could be anyone.”

“I know. I just thought it made sense since they were both odd ducks in a time when pretty much every other man was expected to marry, you know?” I gave in because I had no proof, only this gut feeling. “But, whatever. It was just an idea.”

“You are a fucking romantic twat, aren’t you?” Eggy accused me, setting down his untasted but well-smelled cup of coffee and smiling at me.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But, if nothing else, my romantic day-dreamings seem to have distracted you long enough to get you through your first exposure therapy session.” I pointed to the cup and grinned at him smugly with an impish waggle of my eyebrows. “So at least the Tale of our Peebles and his Billy seems to have brought about some good. Right?”

Brian huffed a little deprecatory laugh, smiled at me, and then immediately got up and ran down the hall where, a minute later, I could hear the water running in the sink of his room where he was probably scrubbing his hands raw.

“Oh well. It’s a start,” I told myself and got up to follow my crazy hermit man.