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“Damn right, it wouldn’t,” Dean told him smartly. “And we’re probably going to invite Johns and his boyfriend too. Jesus, do I have any straight friends?”

“You did,” Marco reminded him. “But then you seduced him to the gay side, and now you have him being all homey and grumpy with you.”

“That true?” Dean asked Sloane. “Did I seduce you to the dark side?”

Sloane’s voice was unmistakable. “I was helpless before your power of seduction.”

“Seduction?” Dean asked, sounding affronted. “And here I was hoping for something sweet, like my laugh, maybe the light I bring into your life.”

“There’s that,” Sloane agreed. “But your ass is pretty great too.”

“What a romantic,” Dean muttered into the phone.

“It is a pretty decent ass,” Marco admitted.

“Iheard that,” Sloane called.

“I swear to…” Marco grumbled. “I told you to warn me before you put me on speakerphone.”

Dean chuckled. “Sorry. But he knows you don’t mean anything by it. He just likes sounding big and scary.”

“Heisbig and scary,” Marco affirmed.

Dean snorted derisively. “I can promise you, he’s anything but.”

“Hey!” Sloane protested angrily from the background. “You be careful, or I’ll show you how big and scary I can be.”

“Hmm,” Dean hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t know about you, Marco, but it sounds like he’s trying to threaten me with a good time right now.”

“Do not pull me into your strange courtship rituals,” Marco groaned as he reached his apartment building.

He also knew better than to ask if anyone else was showing up. Neither Sloane nor Dean’s family lived anywhere close to Port Dale. Not that Dean’s family would bother showing up, though Marco suspected Sloane’s family would. Dean’s family had always been strangely distant.

Strange only because Marco had, much like Dean, grown up as an only child. Unlike Dean, however, Marco had grown up with parents who had doted on him, guided him, and loved him without reservation. Poor Dean had to deal with parents who treated him more as something they could chat about over dinner, at least before he joined the military and settled down with another man. While talking about gay rights was perfectly acceptable for Dean’s parents, having a gay son was altogether different, and his parents’ dreams that he might one day find a nice girl and settle down from his ‘phase’ had been slowly dying and so too had their interest in his life.

Marco’s parents, by comparison, had barely batted an eye when he’d come out to them. There was worry on his mother’s part about how the world would treat him once he stepped out as a gay man. His father wondered if he might be a little hasty, as Marco had only been fifteen. Yet they’d been happy for him, with his father proclaiming he’d never seen Marco as happy and content as he’d been after finally coming out.

“You can feel free to invite anyone,” Dean told him. “I know damn well you’re not going to bring trouble to my doorstep.”

“I don’t know,” Marco said as he reached his apartment door and unlocked it. “I did have pretty colorful friends back incollege. I might ring a couple and see what kind of trouble we can stir up, for old time’s sake.”

Dean groaned. “I know you’re kidding, but I remember the stories you told me. There is no way in hell my house can survive whatever you bring to it if you call your old buddies.”

Marco laughed. “It wasn’tthatbad.”

“You set a bar on fire.”

“No. We got drunk, really drunk. And the bar burned down at some point when we weren’t there.”

“And you don’t remember if you were the cause or not. Which might as well be the same thing.”

Marco snorted, tossing his bag onto the living room couch. “Your logic is beyond argument.”

“Normally, I’d agree, but that sounds like sarcasm,” Dean said slowly.

“Me? Never, I would never privately think you were being ridiculous and intentionally trying to get a rise out of me,” Marco told him.

“Oh yes,” Dean said. “That was incredibly convincing. Please, do go on.”