“I don’t need that much of it,” Flynn responded. “I just… I only figured out that I’m probably bi yesterday, so… y’know, I need to take things a little slow. Just at first.”
“And I mean it when I say that’s okay.” Zach stroked the band on Flynn’s finger gently. “You’ve broken your barista’s heart, by the way.”
Flynn shrugged. “He probably deserves better. Coffee’s still great.”
“He deserves better than you?” Zach asked. “And I don’t?”
Flynn smiled another tiny smile. “You do,” he said. “But I’m hoping you’ll settle for me. Or at least… give me a chance?”
“I think I could manage that,” Zach said. He finally sipped his own coffee, and it was just as palatable as last time. He probably could have cut the amount of sugar down, even.
“This was easier than I expected,” Flynn spoke up after a few moments of silence. “I mean… I still feel a little like I wanna throw up, but I probably won’t. And you’re not yelling at me. And it even sounds like you wanna keep hanging out.”
“I do,” Zach agreed. “I definitely want to keep hanging out. And whatever else happens… happens. Or doesn’t. I promise not to be an asshole about it.” He paused to wet his lips. “But you should know that I think you’re really hot. On top of… kind and funny and all the rest.”
“Hot being the most important quality of those,” Flynn joked, a broader smile starting to spread across his face.
Zach could feel the tension easing out of him—out of both of them—now that they knew more or less where they stood with each other.
“Obviously.” He grinned. “You didn’t think I wanted you for your personality or something, did you?”
Flynn laughed. “I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid,” he said.
“You’re not stupid,” Zach murmured softly, unable to keep insulting Flynn even as a joke. “You’re kind, and warm, and funny, and your heart and soul are beautiful.”
A dark blush colored Flynn’s cheeks, creeping down his neck and up his ears. Which was unspeakably endearing.
Zach wouldn’t have any trouble falling in love with this man. All he needed was a little more time, and for Flynn to keep being himself. He could already feel it happening, all the joy he felt around him starting to seep into his cracked, bruised heart.
Flynn would be good for him. He knew it.
He just hoped he’d be good for Flynn, too.
“You can’t keep saying things like that,” Flynn mumbled, sipping his coffee.
Zach grinned. Now that he’d found this weakness, he had every intention of exploiting it. He was going to make Flynn blush all the time. He was going to shower him with affection, as much as he was allowed to, because Flynn deserved for someone to be nice to him.
They both deserved someone to be nice to them.
“Yeah I can,” Zach said. “Just you wait. I’ll come up with dozens of compliments.”
Flynn licked his lips, staring down at his coffee cup again, but still smiling. “I guess I could get used to that.”
“You’ll just have to.” Zach sat back, finally able to relax. Excitement filled up his chest, making it feel tight enough to burst, but not in a bad way. He couldn’t wait to get to see more of Flynn, get to know him better, to be allowed to be closer to him.
He’d had a taste of it on Saturday night, and it’d only left him wanting more.
“So uh…” Flynn looked up again. “Would it be weird if I wanted to see your studio? I mean… you’ve seen where I work.”
“I’ve even slept where you work,” Zach said, flattered that Flynn was interested. “I could give you the tour, yeah. It’s a shared space, though, and I’m only part-time, so I can’t take you today. Can I ask why?”
Flynn shrugged. “Curiosity, I guess. You’re my first artist.”
Zach snorted. “So first man is no big deal, but first artist you’re gonna need some time to adjust to?” he joked.
“First man is a big deal,” Flynn admitted. “But I’m trying to tell myself it’s not, because it probably shouldn’t be. First artist is more interesting, anyway. I dunno. If it’s stupid, or too… private, or something, just tell me.”
“It’s not stupid or private,” Zach said. “I’m flattered, honestly.”
He didn’t say that Aiden had never asked to see his studio, but he figured that was implied. The last thing he wanted was for Flynn to feel as though Zach was constantly comparing him to his brother.
There was really no comparison. Zach had more or less discarded the idea of ever going back to Aiden twenty minutes after he’d met Flynn. Being reminded that there were better men in the world had been a wakeup call.
The fact that this better man was actually into him was the equivalent of winning the lottery, as far as Zach was concerned.
“You could come by tomorrow,” Zach added before Flynn had a chance to respond. “I could come meet you, or text you the address…”
“You don’t have to come get me,” Flynn said. “I can make my own way over. But that’d… be cool? If I’m not disturbing you?”
“I was just planning on doing admin stuff. I hate to not be there when I’m paying for the space, but I’m waiting on deliveries right now before I can get started on the next project. So your timing is actually perfect.”
“Awesome.” Flynn beamed at him. “Then I’d love to come by tomorrow.”
Zach sipped his coffee again, thrilled at this turn of events. He could see Flynn was trying, and he planned on giving him all the encouragement in the world.
Besides, the artist in him really wanted to see how Flynn reacted to his work.
He could hardly wait for tomorrow.
Chapter Fifteen
Even the three-flight stair climb between him and Zach’s studio wasn’t enough to spoil Flynn’s excitement at getting to see where Zach worked. He was a little out of breath when he got to the top, sure, but the way his heart was pounding wasn’t just about that.
Maybe it was stupid, but this felt… intimate. Intimate in a strange way he’d never quite experienced before. Flynn always thought of artists as broody and secretive, closely guarding their work, but Zach had been anything but.
He’d been eager to show Flynn his work, and that… it felt special. It felt like trust.
Flynn doubted that just anyone got to see this, shared space or not.
Zach answered the door almost as Flynn knocked on it, beaming broadly at him.
“I heard you coming up the stairs,” Zach said. “Or… I figured it was either you or Suki, and she was going for supplies, so I thought it’d be nice to open the door either way.”
He stepped back, giving Flynn space to slip inside.
The moment the door closed behind him, Flynn looked around the space in awe. The opposite wall was all glass, the way a lot of old factories were, though it’d been hard to tell from the entrance side that this building was one.
The whole high-ceilinged room was flooded with light, four distinct work areas each taking up a quarter of the room lengthways, a few makeshift screens and industrial galvanized steel shelving units in place to mark out the borders. It seemed like those borders tended to spill over a lot, though.
Everything was barely-contained chaos, and there was a sense of urgency in the air that infected even Flynn’s completely unartistic soul.
“Wow,” he said after a moment, realizing he’d gone quiet. “This place is cool.”
Zach grinned at him. “I’m glad you think so,” he said, rocking on the balls of his feet. “I like it here. It’s kind of more a home than my apartment is. I mean, my apartment is the third one I’ve lived in in two years, but this place… it’s always been here.”
Flynn nodded, his sense that this was special to Zach confirmed. He was seeing something important. Something that mattered.
Which was why he’d wanted to see it in the first place. He wanted more of Zach, and that didn’t just mean he wanted to kiss him.
He wanted to know him, really know him, understand the kind of person he was. Because Zach was fascinating to him, and if he was the first man Flynn had been interested enough in to finally realize that he wasn’t as straight as he’d been telling himself? Then he was important.
“Show me what you’re working on?” Flynn asked, glancing over to the space that looked most likely to be Zach’s.
Zach headed over to it, gesturing for Flynn to follow and stopping in front of a huge set of shelves.
“I mostly do commercial work here,” Zach said. “I mean… work I can sell, I still do it all by hand, but…” he trailed off, gesturing broadly at the shelves. “The left side is finished, the right side is stuff that’s still drying before it’s ready to fire or re-fire. There’s a kiln downstairs. I could show you, but it’s not all that interesting.”
Flynn was listening, but he was also already wandering over to the finished side, taking in shelf upon shelf of beautiful mugs and plates and vases, all catching the sunlight and showing off the beautiful jewel-bright colors and intricate patterns of their glazes.
He glanced at Zach, and then back at the shelves, and his heart did a few complicated aerial maneuvers at the thought that Zach, who was adorable and sweet and funny could make things this beautiful in this kind of quantity. Like it was nothing. Like art just flowed out of his fingers.
Maybe that was stupid, or overly romanticized, but… Flynn was impressed, anyway.
“Can I touch?” he asked, reaching out to a vase that had a beautiful carved pattern to it that went right through the clay. It wouldn’t have held much water, but he got the impression it wasn’t really meant to.
“Go for it,” Zach said. “I like to think my work is… tactile, I guess. Especially things like mugs and cups, but other stuff, too. I think… I dunno, did your parents ever have a vase you weren’t allowed to touch?”
“Not really,” Flynn said, picking the one that’d caught his eye up and tracing the patterns in it with the tip of his finger, feeling out the shapes. It wanted to be touched, almost, the way it was designed making it satisfying to run his fingers over it, and that had to be deliberate.
“Well, mine did. It was always in the front hall, and sometimes my dad would bring home flowers to put in it, but mostly it sat idle. It was Chinese, I think. I don’t remember it clearly enough to look it up, but I remember it being covered in tiny flowers, and the edges were gilded. What I mostly remember, though, was that I wasn’t allowed to touch it.”
Flynn set the vase he was holding down, sensing that the slight waver in Zach’s voice meant he was about to share something important. Something secret, something Flynn wanted to give his full attention to.
“Obviously, telling a little kid they can’t have something just makes them want it more,” he said, shifting his weight. “So when I was three or four, I pushed a chair from the kitchen into the hallway so I could stand up and get a really good look at it.”
The sense that this story was going to go somewhere Flynn didn’t like washed over him uneasily, settling as a faint buzzing in the base of his skull. If Zach was going to share it, he was willing to listen, but…
He knew how it was going to go, and his heart already hurt.
“Anyway, my mom caught me,” Zach said. “She yelled, I jumped, the vase hit the hardwood floor in the hall and shattered.”
Zach paused to clear his throat. “There’s a little scar on my jaw from where her nails caught it when I tried to duck the first hit,” he finished, his hand going reflexively to his jaw.
Flynn hadn’t noticed it before, but he hadn’t been looking all that closely, either.
He took a step toward Zach, unsure whether or not he’d be wanted in Zach’s personal space right now. Zach didn’t make any attempt to get away from him, so Flynn took another step.
Once he was close enough, he reached out, moving Zach’s hand away gently and replacing it with his own. The scar was barely perceptible under his thumb, curving under Zach’s jaw. Not a huge injury, but bad enough for a three-year-old.
Especially from someone they trusted.
“Shouldn’t have happened to you,” Flynn murmured, keeping his voice low and soothing. All his older-brother protective instincts were going nuts, and for once they were directed at someone who appreciated them, and Flynn wanted, more than anything, to wrap Zach up in his arms and never let him go.
He’d wanted that since the beginning. Zach spoke to something in him, an instinct that had never quite been satisfied.
The need to have someone to love, unconditionally, who’d at least let him do that, even if they didn’t love him back. Who wouldn’t take advantage of him for it.
And he wasn’t there yet with Zach, not quite. He was still feeling out the edges of their relationship, still unsure of exactly what he wanted, but he could have gotten there. If Zach gave him a little more time, a little more trust, a few more small, hard-won smiles…
Flynn knew himself well enough to know who he could and couldn’t fall in love with, and Zach was definitely in the could category.
“It was a long time ago,” Zach said, just as softly as Flynn had.
Even in this huge, light-filled space, the air suddenly felt close.
Flynn leaned in, forgetting himself for a moment. He paused barely an inch from Zach’s lips, remembering that he wasn’t supposed to just do this.
“Can I kiss you?” he murmured, lips dangerously close to brushing against Zach’s as he spoke.
Zach drew a sharp, shuddering breath, and nodded.
Flynn surged forward, the force enough to back Zach up a couple of steps, pushing his back to the wall. For the first few seconds, the only thing he could think about was the way blood was pounding in his ears, the overwhelming rush of his own heartbeat blocking out all other sensation.
But then the pounding eased back, and Zach’s lips parted just a little, and Flynn started to relax. He eased off, took his time to brush their noses together, smiling to himself. Without consciously deciding to, he widened his stance to shield Zach from the rest of the room, his heart wanting to shield him from everyone who’d ever hurt him.
That was what older brothers did, and that, Flynn was fairly sure, was what husbands did, too.
And maybe they’d gone into this as a quick fix to an immediate problem, but Flynn was on board now, and he felt like one of those old-timey people in an arranged marriage, slowly realizing that this really wasn’t so bad after all.
Zach made a soft, needy noise under him, and he tasted like orange juice and toothpaste, and he smelled clean and warm and tempting. Flynn paused to take a breath and then pressed their lips together again, parting his own just a little to soften them.
He gasped as Zach’s tongue brushed against him, heart pounding again, but he really, really wasn’t opposed to it. Warmth flooded his belly, the familiar tightness of arousal catching him off-guard, and damn.
He could have gotten used to this.
The sound of the door opening behind them made Zach jump, which made Flynn back away. His face was hot, and he reflexively scratched the back of his neck as he stepped aside, trying to pretend…
Well, not trying to pretend anything, really. Just trying not to make out with Zach in front of company, which always seemed polite.
Zach rushed over to the young woman who’d just come in, taking things out of her overladen arms. It took Flynn’s brain a few moments to come online again, but once he got back to full function he headed over to help as well, taking the remainder of the bags.
“New boyfriend?” she asked as though Flynn wasn’t standing right there.
Zach looked at him, obviously unsure what they were to each other, and Flynn didn’t have an answer, either.
He liked the way boyfriend sounded.
“He’s my husband, actually,” Zach said, smiling a wicked, teasing smile at Flynn. “Long story. Uh, Flynn, this is Suki. She routinely makes me cry over how good she is at what she
does.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Flynn said, offering his hand, and it was a pleasure to meet her.
Not just because she was sizing him up like an artist’s model and clearly didn’t hate what she saw. Because she was Zach’s friend, and they’d reached the meet-my-friends stage of this, and that seemed like a big deal.
Obviously it wasn’t what Flynn had been here for, but he realized now that Zach had fully expected at least one of his friends to be around.
“Husband, huh?” she said after a moment, looking over at Zach. “Well, I like this one. He seems… mature.”
“Hey!” Flynn protested.
Zach burst into laughter, so he was no help at all.
“What? You’ve got that hot older man vibe.” Suki shrugged. “I bet you work in IT.”
Flynn blinked at her. How the hell did she—?
“You do look like you work in IT,” Zach said before Flynn could even finish that thought. “It’s just a… young professional who doesn’t have to care all that much what people think, but still maintains a reasonable standard of personal grooming kinda… vibe.”
Flynn raised an eyebrow. “Reasonable standard.”
“Compared to me.” Zach shrugged. “I haven’t had a haircut in three months and I only bothered to shave this morning because I knew you were coming around.”
Some part of Flynn was honored by that.
“Yeah, well… you two look like artists,” Flynn said, shrugging. “I guess?”
Suki laughed this time.
“You can keep him,” she said. “He’s cute.”
“Thanks.” Zach smiled wryly. “I’m actually about to take him to lunch, so you’ve got the place to yourself. Are you still covering the market stall this weekend, or…?”
“Yeah, I’m covering this weekend,” Suki said. “But you’re right, we need to re-check the roster. I’ll… draft an email.”
“Awesome.” Zach grinned at her, reaching out to grab Flynn’s hand.
Flynn’s heart fluttered in his chest, his whole world narrowing down to where his hand was in contact with Zach’s. He didn’t even hear the rest of the conversation before Zach tugged him away to the elevator, still holding his hand.
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