A rapping of knuckles on the door frame was followed by, "Yo, Bri," as Theodore sauntered into his office.

Brian looked up, his eyes traveling along the slender, toned body, which was encased in a pinstriped Corneliani suit. Ted had been hitting the gym religiously for several months, and it showed; in addition to putting on muscle, he'd shed at least twelve pounds, Brian estimated. Of course, it wasn't just the frequent workouts, but also because he'd cut back on the-

"Carbs," his friend groaned, plucking the word right out of Brian's head. "I can feel them glomming onto me now. I can't decide whether I should give in to the inevitable and wear my old size 34 Levis tomorrow, or if I should risk Debbie's wrath and turn down second helpings."

It was a valid concern. Brian still hadn't found a satisfactory means for coping with the overload of food that was shoved at him during Sunday dinners at his surrogate mother's house, never mind the Thanksgiving feast they'd be faced with on the morrow. Probably best to just succumb to a tryptophan-induced daze, he was thinking when Cynthia poked her head into the office.

Good timing, Brian mused. Before Ted got him worrying about a tryptophan overload, Brian had been thinking about starting off the holiday with a shot or two of Beam and inviting both Theodore and Cynthia to-

"Leo's on the line, boss," she cheerfully informed him. 

Rather perfunctorily, he snarked, "You do know how to patch a call through, right?" Brian was in too good a mood - mainly because of the fuckin' brilliant television ad they'd put together for Brown Athletics - to truly sound aggravated with his assistant. 

Again almost disturbingly in sync with him, Theodore guessed, "Brown probably wants to congratulate us again on the bang-up job we did." Dollar signs danced in his eyes as he gleefully rubbed his hands together. "This advertising campaign is gonna net us one heckuva bonus."

Blowing out an exasperated sigh, Cynthia drummed her fingers on the base of Brian's executive phone. "It doesn't work when you've muted the ringer."

Brian glanced down at his phone, where he could indeed see the mute indicator glowing a steady orange. Right, he hadn't wanted anyone to bother him as he got ready to leave for the long Thanksgiving weekend. With everything in order, he'd told his staff they could take off early, and most of them had already vanished, jabbering excitedly about their plans... which he wasn't the least bit interested in.

His only acknowledgement that Cynthia was correct, however, was a negligent wave of one hand and a grunted, "You can put him through now." As soon as the blonde's back was turned, Brian pressed the button to take the phone off mute. A quick glare at his CFO was enough to get Ted to tone down his sniggering at the first ring of his phone mere seconds later.

Brian let it ring once more - it wouldn't do to appear too eager, despite Brown being on hold for the last few minutes - before pressing the buttons to accept the call and place the phone in speaker mode. He might as well let Theodore listen in as a small reward for all his number crunching; the man really had come through for him during this insanely busy month.

"Leo," he jovially greeted the CEO of Brown Athletics. "What-"

Brown cut in before Brian could get anything else out. "It's a fucking disaster!" the usually phlegmatic man yelled. "We've got to pull that commercial. Stat!"

Brian stomach sank. He couldn't recall ever hearing Brown curse before, not even during the dust-up after Drew Boyd came out. Shit. Something truly major must have gone wrong. 

When all he heard from the other end of the line was heavy breathing, he repeated, "What-" only to be cut off again.

"That cocky little shit," Brown growled before trailing off into a string of unintelligible profanity. 

Ted jolted upright as they listened to the incoherent rant from one of their major account holders. Then he raised his right hand to his mouth and started to chew on his fingernails. 

Brian stared in horror. His own nails still had a slight orange tint, despite all Manuela's efforts to fix them following yesterday's pumpkin trepanning. Brian'd nixed Manuela's suggestion about polishing his nails to hide the orange - that was further than he was willing to go - but he'd still been subjected to a lecture from the manicurist, in a thick German accent, about treating his hands better.

He'd never do something as awful as bite his nails, not even to get rid of the hideous orange tint. Fucking nasty habit, the adman thought in disgust, and it was gonna ruin the expensive manicure Theodore had just gotten.

When Ted looked at him, Brian made a slashing motion across his neck. 

An abashed look on his face, Ted shoved both hands behind his back.

While he waited for Brown to get it together and explain just what the problem was, Brian opened a browser on his Mac and entered the name of the up-and-coming forward for the Penguins they had used for Brown's new campaign. The kid really was a ‘cocky little shit' and had been a pain in the ass to work with while they shot the commercial that would air during NHL and NFL games over the Thanksgiving weekend. The annoying prima donna was the one Leo had insisted on though, because he was the leading scorer for the NHL and popular with the fans. Ice hockey rivaled football for the most popular sport in the Midwest, and with a lot of fans tuning in for both NHL and NFL games, it meant more exposure for Brown Athletics.

Penguins Star Forward Involved in Hit and Run blared the top result, a press release from ABC News. It was only the first in a long list of new entries - the next headline, Murphy's Latest Hat Trick, had a more ominous ring to it as a result.

The hockey-playing prick would have Murphy as his last name, Brian mused sourly. Fucking Murphy's law was in overdrive.

"Shit," Ted muttered over his shoulder, the puff of garlic-laden breath - a side effect of the man's lunch - flattening the fine hair on Brian's neck in completely the wrong way. "We're screwed."

"Back off," Brian whisper-growled.

Instantly, Brown, who shouldn't have been able to hear the terse, low-voiced exchange, queried sharply, "What was that?"

"I just googled Kevin Murphy," Brian replied honestly.

There was silence for a beat, and then Leo exploded, "It's already on the Internet? Murph told me he'd just been taken to the police station! How in blue blazes can it be on the Internet?"

Brian rolled his eyes, catching Theodore, who was still lurking behind him, doing the same. The Brown Athletics CEO couldn't quite get his head around the technological advances in the last decade. Seemingly instantaneous reporting happened all the time. Depending on what cell phone you had, you could even take video now, although the quality was likely to be crap.

Leo abruptly seesawed to a sort of shaky optimism. "Maybe it's not all that bad? We can't use that snot-nosed kid as the model for our new line of underwear, but if it's like Murphy said, maybe the damage can be contained. According to what the twat-"

Brian quickly slapped a hand over his mouth and coughed into his palm, doing his best to disguise the laugh that had welled up when he heard that word coming out of Brown's mouth. It was the first time he'd ever heard a straight guy use the ‘twat' slur for another straight guy. The adman couldn't help suspecting that Leo was just aping something he'd overheard Brian say, most likely in regard to Justin, although the affection that would've been clear in Brian's tone was most definitely missing in this case.

Ted added to the chorus of poorly disguised laughs, his shoulder shaking against Brian's as Brown went on.

"Murphy apologized for driving after having a second glass of wine - he knew he shouldn't have done that - but he was going really slow when he lost control of the wheel for a second and bumped into some old geezer. That guy knocked into someone else according to the kid."

That Murphy was a lying sack of shit went without saying, Brian figured, clicking on and perusing the Hat Trick news article while Leo spouted secondhand the bullshit he'd gotten from Kevin Murphy.

"He wanted me to get a corporate lawyer over there stat. I think he said he's at the Zone Three station, wherever that is-" 

Brian had no clue. He did his best to avoid police stations, only ending up there under duress, like when Mikey had mouthed off to a cop years ago or when he delivered Reichert's spunk to Horvath. Nothing good had come out of either of those encounters, and he couldn't imagine a trip to the police station ever being worthwhile.

"-so the cops won't try to railroad him," Brown wound up.

Interesting that Murphy had called Brown in search of an attorney instead of contacting the Penguins, with whom he was under contract. Sure, he had a contract with Kinnetik - not Brown Athletics, for fuck's sake - but that only spelled out his modeling obligations and the salary for a two-day photo and film shoot. If Leo Brown wasn't an ice hockey fanatic and hadn't insisted on meeting Kevin Murphy, the hockey player might not have even realized who he was doing the commercial for. He sure as shit wouldn't have cared; he'd stated more than once, always out of Brown's earshot, that he would never wear such second-rate underwear.

Ted cleared his throat, and before Brian could stop him, addressed Brown. "Er, Mr. Brown? This is Ted Schmidt. I, uh, happened to be in Bri- uh, Mr. Kinney's office when you-"

"Theodore, I've told you before to call me Leo," Brown chided, his voice calming and acquiring a teasing lilt.

Brian shook his head, baffled again at how well his CFO got along with Leo Brown. They'd evidently developed a rapport when Theodore fielded a call or two in Brian's absence, and their friendship was cemented when they met in person for the first time. Leo even called Ted by his full first name, which he'd never known anyone else except himself to do. Not even Blake.

If Brian hadn't been rattled by Leo's frantic call so late in the afternoon on Blackout Wednesday, he would've remembered how bizarrely well the two of them got along and just told Brown that Ted was in the office and that he was putting the call on speakerphone. Instead, yanked out of thoughts of how smoothly a shot of Beam would slide down his throat and fretting about too much tryptophan, he'd mishandled the matter.

Ted stuttered a little. "Uh, Leo. It's not like you could help from Chicago even if Murphy actually did work for you. Did you tell him that he should call the Penguins' coach? Not that they're responsible for him driving drunk, but they're bound to have an attorney on retainer for incidents like this."

"The punk hung up on me before I could tell him a damned thing," Brown commented testily.

Brian, who'd just refreshed the Safari browser, caught a new headline, Strip District Carnage. He began skimming the article, Ted reading over his shoulder. "Leo," he bit out, "this looks really bad. That little fucker must've been lying through his teeth. It says here that a suspect who fled the scene after driving up onto the sidewalk and hitting several people has been arrested," Brian read. "Witnesses say the Ferrari came flying down Penn Avenue, weaving all over the road. According to a source in the police department, the patrol cars had difficulty getting the driver to pull over."

"That was after he bumped into the pedestrian?"

"Yeah, it was a hit and run," Brian confirmed. "He didn't just ‘bump' into someone either. According to one of the witnesses, his Ferrari came barreling around a busy corner in the heart of the Strip District. He cut it too close-"

"Either he miscalculated the distance, or more likely, he was so fucking sloshed that he lost control of his car," Ted interjected.

Brian grunted in agreement. 

"The upshot," Ted somberly noted, "is that his Ferrari jumped the curb, mowing down people in the middle of the sidewalk."

"Jesus," Brown breathed out. "Are those people okay?"

"'Fraid not," Brian replied, a tension headache building at the base of his skull. Kinnetik might be on the edge of the Strip, but the gentrification of the onetime industrial area hadn't reached this far, stopping well short of the gayborhood. He hadn't heard any screaming sirens or seen flashing police lights, so the scene of the accident must be closer to downtown.

"All of them were transported to the hospital," Brian reported. "But according to that same witness, one of them-" He broke off, unable to relate the rest, the print on the computer screen blurring in front of his eyes.

He felt Theodore's hands come to rest on his shoulders, his friend lightly massaging through his suit jacket. Ted's voice was hoarse as he took over. "Leo, it sounds like one of them was just a little kid... and was hurt pretty bad."

"He wasn't moving," Brian choked out. "That's what one of the witnesses said." That could've been Gus, Brian couldn't help thinking. 

Brian violently pushed his chair away from his desk, knocking Ted out of the way. He had to call now and check that his sonnyboy was all right. It didn't matter that he didn't know whether it was a boy or a girl who'd been hurt or how old they were. It also didn't matter that Brian would surely have been contacted if it had been Gus... The need to hear his son's voice clawed at his throat and overwhelmed everything else.

When he stood up, digging his cell out of his pocket, Theodore reached over and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze before sitting down in Brian's chair. He took up the slack in the conversation with Leo, giving Brian privacy for his phone call.

Brian pressed the speed dial button for the munchers' house and paced back and forth on the far side of his office, listening to the phone ring on the other end. C'mon, pick up the damned phone, he silently urged as it rang a seventh time.

"Hello?" came a breathless voice when the phone was finally picked up midway through the eighth ring.

Although he'd intended to sound calm and unconcerned and simply ask to speak to his son, Brian instead barked into the phone, "Where's Gus?"

"Brian?" Melanie sounded bewildered and a little peeved by his brusqueness. "Um, he's with his friend Timmy. I think Corinne was going to take them for ice cream. Only a kid," she added wryly "would want ice cream when it's all of fifty-three degrees-"

Not Gus, not Gus, not Gus, the prayer drummed in his brain. "Where'd they go for the ice cream?" Brian cut the bulldyke off.

"Fuck, Brian. Was I supposed to interrogate Corinne about it?"

"Yes!" Brian shouted before reining himself in and asking as reasonably as he could manage, "Look, Mel, just do me a favor and call Corinne, okay?"

Melanie's voice rose an octave, worry tinging it. "Brian, what's going on?"

"Just call Corinne on your cell and check that they're eating the fucking ice cream. Please. I'll hold."

The ‘please' galvanized the lesbian into action. She could probably count the number of times he'd said please on one finger. "Just let me grab my cell," she grumbled before setting the receiver down with a clunk.

"Take the damned phone with you!" Brian shouted into his cell, but it did no good since Mel couldn't hear him. It was only as Brian switched his cell phone to his other hand so he could wipe his sweaty palm off on his Zegna trousers, uncaring if he stained the fine wool, that he recalled the munchers' landline wasn't cordless. Lindsay had wanted a chic, retro phone with a curly cord that she claimed went with their kitchen decor. Brian had thought it stupid at the time - cordless phones in all shapes and sizes were available, for fuck's sake - but now it had him fuming. The next time he was over at the lesbians' house, he was going to tear it out of the wall and replace it with a proper, cordless handset. Unless it involved nuts and bolts of any kind; in that case he'd hand it over to the bull-

The inane thoughts with which he was distracting himself came to a halt when he heard Melanie muttering impatiently, "Come on, Corinne. Pick up already."

The dyke must've brought her cell back to the kitchen, where he was waiting on the landline. That was sensible, Brian thought approvingly. Considerate as well, he acknowledged more begrudgingly. 

"Marie?" he heard Melanie ask. "Did I dial the wrong-"

One dyke was just as good as another, Brian thought snarkily.

"What?"

Brian clenched his cell phone so hard that the case creaked in warning. It took all he had not to scream down the line to find out if Gus was all right or not. Let his Sonnyboy be in the ice cream parlor, he wished fervently. Gus could have all the fuckin' ice cream he'd ever want as long as he was okay.

There was silence for fuck knew how long as Melanie listened to her friend. "Where are you now?" After a brief pause came, "Okay, we'll go there. Tell Corinne we'll meet her in ten."

"Brian?" Melanie spoke into the receiver a beat later, her voice clipped. "Everyone's okay, just shaken up. Corinne apparently had to do some fancy driving - first to evade a drunken asshole driving a sports car and then to keep from crashing into other vehicles." 

Jesus, that fucking piss-poor excuse for a human being had really almost taken out his son. "Gus?" he choked out.

"He's okay. He and Timmy got jostled around, but everyone had their seat belts on and Corinne wasn't going very fast since she was looking for a parking place. But-" The hard-as-nails lawyer let out a sob, which made Brian's gut knot up even more.

"Mel?" he prompted.

"Gus, uh, Gus saw the drunk driver jump the curb and plow into a bunch of people."

Even though he didn't know what Gus had actually seen or what had happened, all Brian could see for a moment was a bat swinging at Justin's head and blood spraying everywhere.

"Brian?" came the tinny sound of Melanie's voice calling his name. "Kinney! You there?"

"Yeah," he husked, clearing his throat and doing his best to will away the awful memory. "Yeah, I'm here. Where are you meeting your dyke friend?"

"The diner. They're on their way now. I'm gonna-" There was a brief pause before she swore tiredly. "Shit, Linds has the car. I'll call a taxi-"

"No you won't," Brian cut in. "I'll pick you up. I'm leaving the office now and will be there in a few."

"Thanks, Brian. Um, we'll have to take JR with us. Her car seat's in our car, though-"

"Fuck." Brian spun around and paced the other direction. This was one of the rare times when he regretted buying the Corvette. It was just about the worst vehicle imaginable for transporting kids. "We'll strap her in on top of you in the passenger seat and I'll drive slowly."

"Yeah, okay, that'll work," Mel agreed shakily. "I'll try and get Linds in the meant-"

Brian hung up while Mel was still speaking, strode over to his desk and interrupted the discussion between Brown and Ted. 

"Leo," he said heavily, "it seems my son witnessed the accident that prick Murphy caused."

Ted's eyes were wide with shock and concern as he stared at Brian.

"Jesus, Brian, I'm so sorry," came the instant response from Brown. "Is your son okay?"

"He's shaken up but apparently okay - physically." Brian's fists clenched as he thought about strangling the fucking hockey player. He didn't want Gus to have lasting nightmares from this. "I'm going to go check on him."

Melanie? Ted scribbled on a piece of paper.

Theodore must've caught bits of what Brian'd said to Mel, all while holding a conversation with Brown. Not bad multitasking, noted Brian absently. "Linds has the car," he mouthed at his friend.

"Leo, can you hold on a sec?" Ted asked.

"Of course. Brian, your man and I can hash things out. You go take care of-" Leo paused, obviously trying to dredge up a name he'd likely never heard.

"Gus. He's seven," Brian divulged.

The Brown Athletics CEO knew he was queer - Brian had never hidden it. In fact, after he secured the account when he was still with Vangard, he'd been upfront about it; better that than have Vance possibly use the information to undermine him, Brian had figured. It had paid off, Leo Brown sticking with him when he started Kinnetik.

If Brown was curious as to how Brian had come to have a son, he refrained from asking.

"Gus," Leo repeated, his voice warm with concern. "Go take care of him. Theodore and I will work out what to do about the commercial."

"Leo, I'll be right back," Ted informed him before muting the phone. He then stood up and fished around in his trouser pocket with one hand, coming out with a set of keys which he pressed into Brian's fingers. "Take the Benz," he urged. "There's no car seat, but Mel can sit in the back with JR, and they'll be safer than in your Corvette. My car is built like a tank."

Dammit, Brian thought, sighing. This meant he'd have to lend Ted his Corvette. Since Mikey's mission to evade Hunter's mom and the police, he hadn't let anyone other than Justin get behind the steering wheel.

Theodore chuckled at whatever he saw on Brian's face. "I can take a taxi to meet you, Bri."

"No." Brian sighed again as he took out his keys and handed them over. "Just don't wreck my car. If you do, you're-"

The older man preempted him. "Fired, I know. Don't worry; I'll deliver your ‘baby' safe and sound."

Brian grimaced, still embarrassed about the time Theodore had overheard him calling the damned car baby when it was being temperamental about starting.

Another laugh escaped his friend before he clapped a hand on Brian's arm. "Now go take care of my nephew," he ordered.

A fond smile stole across Brian's lips. Theodore, he remembered, had been pleased as punch when Gus recently called him ‘Uncle Teddy' for the first time. Brian didn't say anything, but he was still smiling slightly as he exited his office.

He arched an eyebrow at his assistant, who was just smoothing her skirt as she sat down in her chair. "You get all of that?"

Unflustered, Cynthia replied, "Every word, boss. The door was open," she added innocently.

As if she hadn't been the one to leave it cracked, Brian thought, halting in front of his able secretary's desk. He needed to get going but-

"Don't worry, Brian. I'm on it." Cynthia gestured at her computer screen, where Brian could see tabs open for several windows. "I'm checking whether there's anyone we could use to replace Kevin Murphy. If I find someone, I'll consult with Ted."

The woman was worth her weight in gold, which was just about how much Brian paid her.

Ordering, "Update me by email," he turned away from Cynthia's desk and strode out to the parking lot.