Chapter Text
It all started with Tom not being hired by the company after his apprenticeship. His boss gave him a lengthy speech about the economic situation, the fragility of the market and all that stuff before he got to the point and Tom simply nodded and told none of his friends or family. Somehow he hoped that if he tried really hard in his last few weeks, they would see how irreplaceable he was, how efficiently he worked and how badly he needed this job.
But they did not, and one cool morning in June he cleared his desk, ate a slice of gooey cake with his now ex-colleagues and left. He hesitated once or twice on his way to the bus stop, but there was no use. Laura would kill him anyway, whether he told her now or sometime later, and the later he´d tell her, the more brutal the killing would be.
So he got on the bus, tried to prepare himself for his own death while some bloody kid wouldn´t stop kicking the back of his seat, bought some flowers in the Turkish shop on the corner and went home.
As soon as he opened the door he was greeted by loud moaning. Tom frowned as the moaning increased in volume. He took a cautious step into the flat, then another one, then he peered round the corner into the bedroom. Whoever it was his girlfriend was bouncing on top of, he was just as oblivious to his surroundings as Laura.
Tom just stood there for a few seconds, completely flabbergasted, before he cleared his throat.
Laura twirled around with a piercing shriek, clutching the blanket in a desperate attempt to cover her bare breasts. "What are you doing here?" she screeched.
Tom still didn´t know what to do or say. "What are you doing here?" he asked back, making a vague motion in her direction.
"I´m..." she started but then she seemed to change her mind. "Go! Out!"
And Tom did go out, not only out of the hallway but also out the flat.
Laura came after him, arms flailing, stark naked and with something shiny on her legs that Tom did not want to think about. She threw the door shut as soon as he stood in the stairwell.
Tom breathed, in and out. In a few moments he would wake up in his bed. His girlfriend would be lying next to him and they would cuddle a little before he had to get up to get to work. Everything was fine; this was just a dream, and a bad one at that. No chilies for dinner anymore.
Only Tom did not wake up. Instead, the door opened again and when he turned around, Laura snatched the keys out of his hand and shoved a backpack into his arms. "Your stuff" she said. "It´s over." With a bang she shut door in his face again.
Back on the street Tom noticed that he was still clutching the flowers in his fist. He threw them in the nearest trash can before he would do something stupid such as cry. He fumbled his cell phone out of his back pocket and pressed the keys in the only order he knew by heart.
Georg picked up almost instantly.
"Hey," Tom said. "You´ll never guess."
They only talked for a few minutes, but as a result of their short conversation, Tom bought a ticket for the next train to Berlin.
Tom hated nothing more than train journeys, but he was lucky this time. There was no noisy family with even noisier children in his carriage, no problem with the air conditioning and he arrived on schedule.
Because there were only a few people on the platform he spotted Georg immediately. His brown hair fell below his shoulders now and his skin had a nice tan, but apart from that he hadn´t changed a bit since Tom had last seen him a year ago.
"Tom!" Georg shouted loud enough for several passengers to turn their heads and he pulled him into a rib crushing bear hug. “Who needs women anyway, huh?" he grinned and held Tom at arm´s length to study his face. "You lost weight. But no problem, you´re in Berlin now. Fancy a döner? Ali Baba´s closed, but I discovered this Muhammad place a while ago and it´s great, trust me."
Tom just nodded and smiled and followed Georg through the main station onto the s-bahn. He felt suddenly tired but it was okay. Georg was here now to talk his ear off and stuff him with fast food and that was everything he needed for now.
When they finally got to Georg´s apartment, Tom was almost in a good mood again, but it quickly faded after he had put down his bag pack and had taken a quick look around. After having lived with a cleaning maniac for three years he spotted every dust bunny in an instant. "This is bachelor paradise," Georg said and gave him a hefty slap on the shoulder. "You´ll get used to it again."
"You have gerbils?" Tom asked. Last time he had seen this flat there had been an aquarium with a handful of fish. Now the aquarium was filled with hay and bedding and was flanked by two bigger glass boxes with the same things inside.
"My boyfriend had some kind of accident with his mice, you know." Georg tried to explain. "Or maybe more than one," he added as Tom tried to count the fur balls behind the glass. "There are eighteen of them. The girls are on the left, the boys on the right and in the middle is Chantal with the last batch of babies. You want to see them?"
"You give your gerbils names fit for a prostitute?" Tom asked bewilderedly while Georg sprinkled some seeds into one of the aquariums.
"There are enough of them called Speedy already. Okay, let´s get you a place to sleep!"
At first Georg offered Tom his own bed, but after Tom saw the empty condom packages next to the not yet empty condom packages next to the massage oil on the windowsill above the bed, he politely refused. Instead, he settled for the couch in the living room. The gerbils were a lot noisier than he had expected them to be at night, but he was too busy trying not to think of Laura to care much. All he wanted was to sleep, undisturbed by any unpleasant thoughts.
Tom was pretty sure that the socially most acceptable way to spend your day after having caught some other guy with his private parts in your girlfriend was sulking in bed with a case of beer next to it. Or breaking the other guy´s nose and spending the afternoon in custody. Tom was also sure that it was Georg´s duty as his friend to try and lighten him up a bit, but he had some doubts concerning the kind of enlightenment Georg had picked. Because, with all due respect to Georg´s good intentions, he was absolutely sure that the right company for him did not consist of a bald guy in rainbow colored Lycra overalls with dildos sticking out it everywhere, and a chubby transvestite in her late forties, adorned with a baroque ball gown, a wig and a fan. Or a pair of lesbian chicks wearing nothing but thongs and Dalmatian paintjobs, for that matter.
Tom also knew that he certainly shouldn´t follow some parade truck with half naked people writhing on top of it, music blasting loud enough to render him half deaf and a DJ in the back, interviewing a lady in a Wonder Woman costume with yet another plastic penis. He knew that this was wrong and that he wanted to go home, but Georg had made him drink enough beer on the way to this disaster to be able to ignore his surroundings until he was helplessly caught right in the middle of it.
If Georg had stayed with him, Tom might have been able to keep drinking and ignore his situation some more, but Georg had suddenly disappeared three Lady Gaga songs earlier and Tom got more and more sober with every minute. And he didn´t like it.
He could feel some stranger grabbing his ass, he got sprayed with glitter, he almost tripped over a broken bottle on the ground and a giant bodybuilder bee tried to stick something on his back. Tom ripped it off and squinted at a black and yellow sticker reading “Kiss me, I´m single. dildoking.de.” And to make things worse the only alcoholic beverage Tom could get a hold of amidst the dancing crowd was overprized bubble wine with strawberry syrup. Hell had not frozen over; hell had turned pink and fluffy.
Tom´s trial had lasted half of an eternity as Georg more or less materialized in front of him, pulled him into a hug and jokingly scolded him for running off without a word.
Tom tried his best to get through to him how much this whole circus sucked in every sense of the word, but Georg wouldn´t have any of it. He dragged his friend to the truck behind which he had found him and motioned to the security that Tom belonged to him. And before Tom knew what was going on, two strong arms pulled him into the inside of the truck, Georg hurried him up a flimsy ladder and he was at the heart of the glitter sparkle party zone.
There were so many people, no: gays, on the platform that there was no room for any kind of motion that wouldn’t cause body contact with some else.
Tom cringed inwardly, but Georg brought them to the front of the truck unfazed, handed Tom a plastic cup of sparkly wine without any syrup and introduced him to Gustav, his boyfriend.
Gustav said hi, grinned at Tom and that was that. In the gay community, introducing your boyfriend obviously meant making out with him in front of you.
Tom sighed and turned to the railing. At least he had something alcoholic to drink again. He found himself a place where he was only occasionally bumped into, turn a blind eye on the angel attached to Satan´s groin next to him and concentrated on the parade instead.
It was a lot less of a nightmare when you weren´t walking in the middle of it. In fact, when looking at it from above it was actually quite nice to watch.
There were the lesbians doggies again, now accompanied by a male Sailor Moon, a group of fake police officers trying to chat up a group of not so fake ones, a pink King Kong and a Superman who had forgotten half of his outfit. There were two girls trying to kiss while walking, a slender drag queen with silver wings and quite a bunch of guys who were a bit too hairy and well fed to be jumping around wearing nothing but leather jocks and harnesses. Luckily they quickly made way for a group completely clad in rubber. Tom counted five guys getting walked by their masters, three of them dog-masked, four cases of heavy bondage and two carriages drawn by two-legged horses. He couldn’t help but stare.
“That´s Berlin!” Georg shouted in his ear when he caught him staring.
Tom just nodded. If Georg had his way, everything bizarre and contrary to prude was “Berlin.”
“How much longer will this last?” Tom shouted back.
“About another hour, then we’ll be at the Brandenburger Tor. But don´t worry, we´ll go to a bar from there.”
Tom hadn´t exactly worried until now, but maybe this was good moment to start worrying again. He got himself some more sparkly wine and returned to his crowd inspection. The nearer the truck got to its destination, the more photographers were standing at the sides of the street. The people with the best costumes had trouble keeping up with the parade because of all the pictures they had to stop and smile for.
Tom spotted another drag queen with tits so large they would have caused her to fall front over if they had been real, two guys in black suits with their heads completely surrounded with artificial flowers and enough naked butts to make him down a few more drinks.
By the time the truck finally came to a halt and the parade dissolved in the open space in front of the Brandenburger Tor, where a stage and several stalls with all kinds of food and drinks were already waiting, Tom was happy to have all those sweating bodies around him. There wasn´t much room to walk, but there also wasn´t much room to fall. He made it down the ladder and off the truck somehow and turned to look for Georg and Gustav.
They were actually right behind him, but not for long. Georg muttered something about Tom being a good buddy and waiting right there and then he grabbed Gustav´s arm and went to the park with him, which flanked the street on both sides.
Tom didn´t have much time to curse him, though. As soon as Georg was gone, a tall figure stepped in his place.
“Hi,” the figure purred.